Here comes the summary for episode 4!

Into the cave

An elder rat orders the others to stand down and invites the bloom gang to tea.

• Some mercenaries had come by recently. One was a weasel in a red hood: Cruelclaw. He led Maha to the swamp outside.
• Cruelclaw stole an egg of a Calamity Beast, which could be how he’s able to control them.
• Mabel 🐭 is determined to return the egg.

With encouragement from Zoraline 🦇, Helga 🐸 tries to meditate to get a vision of where Cruelclaw’s band went.

Fountainport. The home of King Glarb and her “greatest failure” under him.

Through the dandelions

The gang leaves for Fountainport. They take a shortcut through a dangerous dandelion field.

Ral 🦦 opens up a bit. He admits he’s a foreigner and that he misses his husband. He’s never had someone to miss before.

A storm is coming.

That’s not a Calamity Beast

A giant flying creature emerges from the storm clouds. It’s a four-winged hawk-bat, like what Helga drew in episode 1. She thought it was the Sun Hawk, but Ral calls it a dragon.¹

They try to sneak past, but the dragon notices them and attacks. Zoraline screeches to disorient it, and with Finneas’s 🐰 conductive arrow, Ral tases the dragon, driving it off.

Luckily, no one’s hurt. Ral dismisses the storm and they continue on.

[1] The dragon seems to have been transformed by Bloomburrow’s “animal rule”.

“May I ask where you hail from?” Finneas asked.

“Far away,” Ral replied.

“The Outer Woods?”

“Farther.”

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Summary of episode 3.

Going to Pondside

Mabel 🐭, Helga 🐸, and the gang head to Pondside to see the aftermath of Maha’s attack. They chat about their pasts as they walk over.¹

Pondside is destroyed. No one is left. Footprints suggest that everyone fled to Haymeadow.

Squirrels

They spot two squirrels digging in the ruins and the gang eavesdrops on them:

• Maha attacked another place recently.
• Someone called Cruelclaw assigned them to this job.
• Their colleagues are going to Three Trees City.

The gang fights off the squirrels and their skeleton army. They decide to head to Three Trees City to track down those squirrels and investigate Cruelclaw.

Before leaving, Helga takes an etched copper orb and a wand from the ruins of her grandparents’ home. This feels like foreshadowing.

Three Trees City

The gang arrives by river boat. Mabel and Finneas 🐰 ask around if anyone has seen those two squirrel necromancers but stumble upon a boisterous otter.

The otter’s also looking for someone. Unknown species, blue cloak, and… tattoos? What are tattoos?

Helga shows him a drawing of a vision she had of a fox that matches his description. Things get tense when the otter starts hassling her for more information and Mabel steps in.

Flood

Before the altercation gets worse, panic erupts at the docks as the tide rises absurdly fast.

The Flood Gar, a Calamity Beast, arrives, carrying in a huge wave. Together with the otter, the current sweeps the gang away from Three Trees City. They climb out of the water into a damp cave, face to face with a bunch of rats that don’t welcome them.

[1] Small talk

• Helga was born near Three Tree City and later moved to Pondside. She got along well with her grandparents but not the rest of her family. She learned magic under King Glarb until she got kicked for a “mistake”.
• Finneas is a farmer from a long lineage of farmers. This is his first time leaving Goodhill.
• Gev 🦎 and Hugs 🦡 once travelled past the Outer Woods. Gev claims they fought squirrel necromancers, but he’s probably masking a traumatic experience.

“He’s not alone. There’s a lizardfolk, with green and black scales, and yellow eyes. And another small creature who’s hard to see. A dark cloud follows them.”

Summary of episode 2.

Helga wakes up

Helga drifts in and out of consciousness. She dreams of Maha, the Night Owl attacking various places, and in each place was a weasel in a red hood. When she wakes up, she finds herself in Mabel’s home. She tells her story to Mabel and the mayor: the visions, Maha’s attack on Pondside, coming over to get help. Mabel believes her and invites her to join her birthday party outside, reassuring her.

Mabel grabs Cragflame

While at the party, Mabel privately considers going to Pondside to help. She decides to bring out her family heirloom, Cragflame, after all. When she picks it up, it glows like fire, which she’s never seen it do.

The mayor gives a toast to Mabel, famed in Goodhill for her courage, then Mabel herself gives a speech. She commends Helga’s bravery for coming to warn of Maha. She holds up Cragflame, to the awe of the crowd, and calls on the townsfolk to join her in an aid mission to Pondside. Several volunteer. The audience is briefly stunned, but gradually start cheering.

Who’s coming?

• Helga
• Finneas, rabbit
• Hugs, badger
• Gev, lizard
• Zoraline, bat

Bedtime

Mabel and her family prepare for her departure and go to bed. She’ll leave in the morning.

Bonus exposition

• Long ago, the Calamity Beasts were more active in Valley
• The animals of Valley learned magic and wielded swords to fight them off
  • Notably, Lily of the Valley, wielder of Cragflame

Cragflame

• Lily of the Valley wielded this sword
• Crafted from the fang of a Calamity Beast
• Vaporizes wielders that don’t deserve to hold it

Mabel chewed pensively, then swallowed. “Everything is so peaceful here, but it feels fragile. As if a storm is about to break.”

Here’s a summary.

Helga

Helga is a frog artist who gets a vision of the Sun Hawk, a Calamity Beast. As she runs off to report her vision, warning bells ring and Maha, the Night Owl, attacks Pondside village. Helga survives the attack and flees, heading to the nearest village to warn them of Maha’s arrival.

Mabel

Mabel (the lead mouse) and her family are preparing for her birthday party. The nosy rabbit mayor prods her about bringing out her precious family heirloom (presumably Cragflame), but she refuses. Their conversation is interrupted when an exhausted frog shows up in town. The frog mentions an attack by a Calamity Beast, then collapses, unconscious. While rescuing the frog, Mabel wonders how she’ll bring this up to her family.

Ral

On Ravnica, Ral is lying in bed, malding about Jace and what he did on Thunder Junction. Ral wants to kill him. With a clue from the Wanderer, he follows Jace’s trail and planeswalks away. When he lands, he is shocked to find out he’s been transformed into a literal otter.

“I’m going to kill him!” Ral shouted, his eyes filling with lightning as he shook his paw at the sky.

My unsubstantiated guess is that it’s 2B, to work with the new booster pack structure. Mark my words in spoiler season.

Magic R&D coming out of hibernation to convince me to play this set. I’ve straight up not cared about anything else from the past few years.

Joke’s on you. Slay the Spire is having a sequel!

The repo has source code and a brief writeup, including run instructions. It’s an x86 port from Atari Basic. Actually, since this video, a contributor cut it down to 483 bytes!

We should divide the year into four suits — one for each season. Each suit is thirteen weeks long, numbered ace to king. Sometimes we have a Joker day.

Once Upon a Time is perhaps the greatest gameplay-flavor integration win Magic has ever had. For a while, standard matches all began with someone saying the name of the card.

RIP

I have [[The Mimeoplasm]] as a “play your deck” commander instead of the usual mill and reanimate plan. Probably the most out-there card I include is [[Chaos Wand]]. This deck is really just an excuse to cast [[Villainous Wealth]].

Sometimes I think of interesting deck ideas but I’m too lazy to bother actually making a list and instead just browse cards on Scryfall for fun. I’m also just not playing nearly as much these days.

Pauper decks always feel so much wackier than other formats’.

I wonder if this set is going to have a minor enemy color theme. We see Mabel is RW. Among the art for her companions, the badger’s background is very BG and the bat’s WB.

Also, multiverse-assigned fursonas.

This is impressive hand-crafting!

I loved this guy’s previous game, Hyperbolica.

Steam input is absolutely baller. I use it extensively with my Steam Controller. For FPS games, I have gyro aim activate while the right pad is touched.

Oh, that’s a good example. I could never think of one.