"I just saw some shit, my guy."
Dice & Virtue is a 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons real-play tabletop RPG podcast produced by the Theotokos Productions Podcast Network. It began in May of 2016 as a filler episode for its parent podcast, Semiautomagic Inc. and launched as a full series in August of the same year starring Casey Hills, Dylan Spencer, and Kristina “KC” Stone. While Casey serves as the Game Master on Semiautomagic Inc., Dylan takes the reigns as Dungeon Master to take the characters on a zany yet heartfelt trip through the magical world of Rahale and beyond into other realms of existence in season two.
They can be reached on Facebook and Twitter (@diceandvirtue) and an archive of episodes at the website of its parent show, https://semiautomagicinc.com/
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Dice & Virtue contains examples of:
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Seasons I & II: The Salasaahim Saga
- Adaptation Name Change: The show began life as Semaiutomagic GAIDEN, a one-off filler episode for its parent podcast Semiautomagic, Inc.
- Ancestral Weapon: Kehilanja's ravakh starts off as a cultural weapon/agricultural implement, but in Season 2 becomes a literal ancestral weapon when its two halves are rejoined and imbued with the spirits of two of her fightingest ancestors.
- Artifact of Doom: What the Book Of Forlorn Blood is assumed to be until it turns out to just be a piece of a magic jerk.
- Ascended Extra: Arden was meant to be a fairly minor character, and managed to get himself kidnapped into being central to the plot.
- Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: The traditional Salasaahim entrance into the afterlife.
- Backup from Otherworld: The Salasaahim Senate are able, pending plot and dice cooperation, to offer Gwen and Lanja some pretty serious help in the Prime Material Plane from time to time.
- Bilingual Bonus: When Lanja's ravakh is broken she refers to each one individually as a 'ravakhido' and together as 'ravakhidoj', meaning 'little ravakh' and 'little ravakhs' in Esperanto.
- Big Bad: technically Nyarlathotep.
- The Big Guy: Gwenoa is described as being well over six feet tall.
- Bittersweet Ending: Nyarlathotep turns out not to have been malicious as much as horrifically powerful and incapable of self-control and is safely contained for the forseeable future in the Salasaahim Senate, but Lanja has to stay there to mind it, effectively permanently separating she and Gwen, Arden and the Salasaahim themselves are still very dead, Rahale is mostly in darkness-corrupted ruins and most of the afterlife planes and worlds besides the Prime Material Plane have been consumed by an infant that didn't know what it was doing.
- Boisterous Bruiser: Lanja has three modes:
- Jovial, affable goofball
- Fiercely loyal friend and True Companion.
- Machine that makes pain.
- Body Horror: Some incredibly upsetting stuff happens to the shell of what once was Sunny Wong in its corruption by Nyarlathotep.
- Bound and Gagged: Where working for the Albright Band gets Raj Vek. Also: thrown off the edge of a skyland with a parachute and a fare-thee-well.
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Broken Base: Some fans of the pilot enjoyed its more serious tone and were disappointed with the lighter characterization that developed in the following episodes. - Call to Adventure: Realizing your treasured family artifact might be a piece of a god and coming home to find your entire family dead and telling you to avenge them sends a pretty clear message.
- Catchphrase:
- "Thunder Twin powers activate!"
- "You suck."
- "Gross."
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Character Alignment: Casey has expressed admiration at the idea of the alignment system but dissatisfaction with its practicality, and as a result has described Lanja alternatively as Sarcastic Good and Chaotic Hungry. - Characterization Marches On: Arden is described by Martin the innkeeper as “eccentric” before we meet him, but would go on to be the closest we get to a voice of reason within the group
- Cooking Show: Gwen and Maggie learn how to make traditional Salasaahim ritual bread from the first fruits of the harvest at Castle Avalon.
- Cool Horse: Lanja uses her Paladin ability to summon a holy steed to construct an equine light-shell for Cephi to inhabit and convey the Thunder Twins to the ruins of the Albright Band's crashed skyland.
- Corpsing: Kristina and Casey dissolve into a helpless puddle of giggling idiots for, as one Twitter fan said, “38 beautiful and pure seconds” in Episode 35 when Tiamat unexpectedly complied with a request to clear all five of her hideous Dragon throats.
- Discussed Trope: Casey comments on the Absurdly Spacious Sewer below the Arcanum.
- Dumb Muscle: Gwen and Lanja are, when combined, one big guy, one strong guy, and no smart guys.
- Dying Moment of Awesome: For such a bird-boned little twerp, Arden faced his end with dignity and strength, possibly because he thought he was about to become one with some book girlfriends.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The zeroth episode, Semiautomagic GAIDEN, was very somber and bleak, as contrasted to the nigh-constant goofing in almost every other episode.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Spectre, and her child, Nyarlathotep.
- The End of the World as We Know It: what has happened to dozens of other worlds in the Planar Supersystem and what will happen to Rahale if Gwen and Lanja don't stop Nyarlathotep.
- Evil Versus Evil: seems to be the case with the Spectre and Nyarlathotep for most of the story.
- Expanded Universe: Season 3—styled D3V—will act as this, dealing with the evolution of Rahale and the long-term ramifications of Gwen and Lanja's actions hundreds of years after the events of Seasons 1 and 2.
- Green Aesop: Zigzagged; Gwen and Lanja ultimately settle on having no problem with Ars Arbold's goals or even his vaguely Monsantoid methods, it's just the fact that his research requires inflicting dangerous blights on huge swaths of living forest.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Gwen and Lanja are about as close as two people who ain't smoochin' can be.
- Last of Their Kind: Lanja is the last living member of the Salasaahim until Gwen, and later Maggie, become Honorary Salasaahim. Father and daughter Barnaby and Maggie Ironsides are the last of their clan and Maggie becomes the very last Ironsides after her father’s death.
- Meaningful Rename: Or rather name expansion; as we learn more about her past, Lanja finally accepts that the death of her sister Shelsaa was not her fault, adding 'sen Shelsaa', meaning 'without Shelsaa' in Esperanto to her litany of names.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos.
- One-Steve Limit: Kristina also goes by "KC", which could possibly lead to some confusion since the names sound the same. This leads to the initial nicknames Casey One and KC Prime (or possibly KC One and Casey Prime), and later "The Dicey One" (KC) and "The Virtuous One"(Casey). Averted in that Kristina usually just goes by Kristina.
- Overly Long Name: Kehilanja Abhorsen-Vinjaja vas-Tehir sen Shelsaa, partially justified by the heavy emphasis placed on lineage and family lines in her culture.
- Running Gag:
- Arden being accused of having an unsavory relationship with his books.
- Arden being enthusiastically convinced to accompany the Thunder Twins on their quest.
- "Lanja go yoink/hop/stab/etc"
- Shout-Out: As with its parent podcast, Semiautomagic Inc., they are without number.
- Artemis Fowl: Lanja's father, Vinjaja, is named after Raine Vinyáya, Wing Captain of the Lower Elements Police.
- Homestar Runner:
- The Thunder Twins play Three-To-One Marney while hanging around in the void; it seemed like the thing to do.
- Casey has been heard to exclaim ‘Huttah!’ to punctuate his actions.
- The exits to the Absurdly Spacious Sewer under the Arcanum are listed as being North, South and Dennis.
- H. P. Lovecraft: Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos.
- Mass Effect: The 'vas' in 'vas Tehir' is a reference to Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, who became Tali'Zorah vas Normandy if her story was explored far enough and she became part of the crew officially.
- Old Kingdom: Lanja's mother, Abhorsen, is an inherited title in a family of non-evil necromancers.
- Parks And Recreation: The residents of the Arcanum are habitually referred to as punk-ass book jockeys by Gwen and Lanja.
- Star Trek: Lanja's half-moon ravakh is specifically described as basically being a Klingon Bat'leth.
- Tribe of Priests: The Salasaahim are this to an extent; as an ancestor worship-centric society every member is responsible in part for honoring and maintaining the ancestral pantheon they're all destined to join.
- The Worf Effect: After much to-do about how she can single-handedly lay waste to entire planes of existence, Tiamat gets herself bubbled literally immediately and with zero effort by the Lord Of Leaves after being released by Lanja. The implications of this display of power are not lost on the Thunder Twins.
Season III: The Ironside Chronicle, or, D 3 V
- Cool Old Guy: Mohabbat Ali, AKA 'Dán Sixriver' is in his maybe 80's or so, making him a young older man by halfling standards, and is a helpful, kind fellow who delights in entertaining children with songs about eating squirrels.
- Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Both Kristina and Casey have stated that their characters will intentionally be the opposites of Gwen and Lanja, both because they want the audience to have something new and different to listen to and because they want to explore some other sides of their personalities.
- Didn't Think This Through: Look, sometimes you just square up, take a breath, do a Bugs-Bunny-into-his-hole swan dive down a well you saw a mysterious man climb into and only then does it occur to you to wonder: is there any water at the bottom?
- Does Not Like Magic: 'Sixriver' hates and distrusts magic, not out of ignorance or superstition but for reasons of his own.
- Familiar: Tess and her mechagremlin, Love, have a relationship of...unclear nature and origin, but it would appear to be akin to this.
- Expanded Universe:
Word of God says this will deal with the evolution of Rahale and the long-term ramifications of Gwen and Lanja's actions hundreds of years after the events of Seasons 1 and 2, and will explore much more of the world. - Magitek: Tess is specifically described as being a magitek engineer, and her mechagremlin Love is magically powered.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted; two characters named (or at least called) 'Trent' are introduced in Ironsides, one of whom is a miniature burglar and the other of which is an actual dragon who wears dope suits.
- Punny Name: Naming a character either Tess Le'Coil or Mohabbat Ali really should be enough for the authorities to step in, and yet Kristina and Casey remain unpunished and at large, like people.
- Shoutout:
Hoard of the Dragon Queen
- Bilingual Bonus: In the first episode, the Dargon respond’s to Kristina’s simulated baby Dagron cries with ‘Bezonas vi halpas?', broken Esperanto for ‘Do you need help?’, which would be ‘Cxu vi bezonas helpon?’. Naturally this error can only be attributed to the Dragum's incomplete education.
- Expy: The Dinosaurceror is exactly what would happen if you dropped Atomic Robo's nemesis Dr. Dinosaur into a fantasy setting, including his obsession with CRYSTALS.
- Shout-Out:
- The embroidery on the Dinosaurceror's hat reading "Lizard Wizard" is a reference to Critical Hit.
