by Emily Maesar, Associate TV Editor

Fantasy High: Junior Year
Episode 18 “Rock the Boat”
With Brennan Lee Mulligan, Emily Axford, Zac Oyama, Siobhan Thompson, Lou Wilson, Ally Beardsley, and Brian Murphy
Streaming now on Dropout.tv

“Sorry Oisin, you shouldn’t have been such a freaking douche bag.” Riz Gukgak (Brian Murphy)

Before the events of Seacaster Manor flying through the air, Brennan gives the Bad Kids the time to have cast longer duration spells, knowing that something was going to go down, as prep for the party. Adaine (Siobhan Thompson) has See Invisibility up, while Fig (Emily Axford) has Disguised herself as Wanda Childa and has Armor of Ayda and Spirit Guardians up. She also eats the Feather of the Vulture King in conjunction with her animal mask. Riz (Brian Murphy) has Mage Hand just going around him, while Fabian (Lou Wilson) has attached one of the Vulture King bits and bobs to his sword. Gorgug (Zac Oyama) has eaten the Heart of the Vulture King. Kristen (Ally Beardsley) has See Invisibility on herself, cast True Seeing on Gorgug and Freedom of Movement on Riz. She also has Spirit Guardians and Circle of Power up and running. Plus, British!Kristen has cast Bless on everybody.

With everything up and running, it’s finally time for the air fight of their lives.

Oisin’s spell ping pong balls are meant to bring the attention of the Nightmare King to this place, as the storm is an extension of Cassandra’s corrupted form. The party realizes that the house lifting into the air and moving about is more like they’re a ball being hurled by a god and that, once the windup ends and they are fully launched, there will be nothing really stopping them from all falling to their deaths as Seacaster Manor drops from the sky.

Fabian finds Sprak LeFevre, one of the Aviation Club kids, and asks him to try and help them keep the house aloft. Gorgug attempts to see if he can steer the ship in anyway as Brennan hands out a sheet with the stats of Seacaster Manor (especially since Aelwyn put up a bunch of protection spells and such upon it).

As Brennan breaks down the Seacaster Manor sheet, it’s clear that the party must still rage on. The Bad Kids must ensure that students are still voting and having a good time, while also trying to fight off whatever nightmare might make itself known during Fabian’s birthday and Kristen’s election party. It's kind of the perfect metaphor for juggling teenagerdom, honestly.

Jawbone is confused by what’s happening with Seacaster Manor and Fabian lies and tells him, and the rest of the party, that they decided to take the party and the ship to the school (specifically the gym) because of the election. He rolls… clearly like ass on the deception check. Adaine uses one of the divination rolls and the cast toss the dice out because it’s been nothing but trouble for Lou. He ends up getting a 15 and everybody is… chill about it. Except Jawbone, who they involve in the nightmare of their situation. Then initiative begins!

Riz runs to one of the canons to prepare to shoot anything that comes at them in the sky. Kristen and British!Kristen go over to help him. Fabian attempts to get some people at the party to vote, which he succeeds at. 130 of the 500 kids cast their votes! As he does this, Fig’s present of a tattoo, gets put on his body. There’s some really funny, and very goofy, stuff going on here as the party sings Fabian “Happy Birthday.” Sprak and Gorgug go down to the basement to try and get the cloud rider engine up and running again. Gorgug succeeds and the Hangman (the ship that makes up Seacaster Manor) is now able to be in the sky and not go down.

Adaine and Fig are doing one of Fig’s insane plans. Adaine puts cameras on the three vultures for this plan. Fig then prepares the party for coolness, as she tells everybody that they also brought the ship into the air to film a music video. At the end of the round, the storm lets them go and the cloud rider engine allows them to stay aloft. Gorgug takes over as the helmsman as they try to steer the Hangman back toward Elmville.

As they navigate back toward their town, they see what they assume is the Rat Grinders and Porter trying to complete their ritual. Except… they do not have the right name for the goddess, and it fails. They hear Porter’s primal scream from miles away. The ping pong balls start to glow with their ruins. They hear Oisin’s voice, and he calls dragons to attack the ship. With Riz’s readied action, he shoots the cannon at one of the dragons. He does 47 damage to one of the smaller dragons, near the side of the ship. The other two dragons shoot acid at the ship and Gorgug.

Riz casts Haste on himself and readies his second action to shoot once Kristen reloads the cannon. Two more dragons appear out of the storm in between the Bad Kids’ turns. Gorgug and the ship take the brunt of the dragon attacks, unfortunately. Fortunately, Gorgug is the tank of the season, being a barbarian. Kristen loads the cannon and Riz immediately shoots, hitting one of the dragons and nearly knocks a second one out of the sky. Kristen then uses her movement to go up toward Gorgug, to try and get him in her range of spells. Another dragon appears, attacking.

Fabian gets more people to vote because he kills one of the dragons, while riding the Hangman motorcycle. One of the dragons goes after Riz, since he’s been firing at (and taking out) many of its brethren. On Gorgug’s turn, he rams the ship into the huge dragon ahead of him, hitting the creature for 64 damage, knocking it prone. With his own attack, he crits and ends up doing 79 damage (holy shit!) and kills the dragon.

Riz takes 25 points of poison damage from a dragon next to him, after dodging to take half. Mazey and Ragh start loading cannons for the party and Adaine joins Riz in shooting off the weapons. At the end of her turn, Oisin’s grandmother dragon shows up and she’s… massive and scary as hell. She breathes and does 45 damage (which was halved because of saves) to the ship and half that to Gorgug because he absorbed lightning earlier in the fight as his Absorb Elements.

On Fig’s turn, she continues to try and keep the party going (the DC for keeping everybody chill has to do with how much damage the ship has taken). She convinces the party members to shoot at the dragons for the “music video.” She breaks and tells Eugenia that they are actually being attacked and she agrees to help. She gets on her steed and goes to attack one of the dragons, dealing it 53 damage. The dragon does a wing attack, which does hit Fig, but her Armor of Ayda bounces back and deals the creature an additional 20 points of fire damage. Incredible! However, Fig and her steed begin to fall from the sky.

More dragons appear and the party decide that they should just keep ramming the ship and shooting Oisin’s grandmother, since she’s going to do the most damage. Gorgug goes down, except he has Relentless Endurance and is back up with 1 HP. Kristen manages to hold onto her concentration.

As they race toward the center of the town, the clouds reveal that the Nightmare King is protecting Elmville from the Bad Kids (for nefarious purposes, of course), except that it cannot be. Cassandra still has at least one true believer in Kristen. Gorgug manages to steer the ship away from the punch of the cloud form of the Nightmare King, who is trying to pull them out of the air.

Eugenia takes down another one of the dragons, but Gorgug ends up going down. Kristen heals Gorgug for 70 HP before she leaves out of the range of being attacked again because she’s close to going down. She ends up grabbing British!Kristen so she can be healed, and she sends a prayer out to Cassandra. Fabian rolls to have more people vote, which they do, and now they have the majority of the votes for student body president before he goes to fire one of the loaded cannons.

On his turn, Gorgug rams the ship into the two-headed red dragon, dealing 63 damage to it. He then rages again and does 46 more damage, making the creature bloodied. Adaine hits the red dragon with a cannon for 24 points before she runs onto the deck and punches the dragon that landed on the ship. She hits it for 65 damage and kills it, sending it off the side of the ship.

Oisin’s grandmother flies up and the few party members who have See Invisibility and True Sight can see that Oisin, Jace, and Kipperlilly are on the giant dragon’s back. They leap off and land on the ship, still cloaked in Invisibility. As they land, Gorgug notices that the two guys cast spells and Kipperlilly snaps a thing that he realizes is a one-use teleportation spell. The party is fairly certain that they used mindreading to get the name of the god from the Bad Kids before dipping.

Fig’s steed finds her, as they’re falling, and Baxter the Griffin finds them to bring them back to the ship, since he can fly. She then attacks the grandma dragon, dealing 58 damage. Her Spirit Guardians attack a few dragons that try to fly through her space. Riz shoots at the grandma dragon and takes her out. Riz helps Eugenia and they take out the two-headed red dragon. With the last two major dragon died, the smaller dragons start leaving.

Kristen, looking at the cloud of Cassandra, the Nightmare King, casts Divine Intervention with Adaine giving her the help action. Ally has both Kristens go and Brennan’s caveat is that if it works… then British!Kristen dissolves and will be gone. They agree and Brennan pulls out the Box of Doom.

Here’s something insane: the entire season has actually been leading not to the answer of who the main villain is, but to what insane thing Ally did that made Brennan threaten to quit. It’s been teased since before the season dropped with cast interviews, and the Dropout newsletter leading up to this episode brought it up. And, dear reader, it was truly insane. At that moment, I felt completely in sync with Brennan Lee Mulligan, but also like Ally Beardsley was, perhaps, the most chaotic and best D&D player of all time.

That being said, British!Kristen does succeed. The Nightmare King vaporizes British!Kristen and it allows the ship to move through the cloud. The party is then back in Elmville, traveling to their destiny. I would note that in the preview it does look like there are two Kristen figures on the battlefield of the gym, where this final fight is clearly headed for various plot reasons, so it stands to reason we might get another simulacrum of our favorite cleric.