Web Video / The Unexpectables

Season 4 Cover Art^note From left to right; Remy, Panic, Task, and Greckles

Abacus: So, you're not exactly the people I was expecting...

Panic: We get that a lot.

—A recurring exchange.

The Unexpectables is a weekly Actual Play role playing series, with Nadine "Monty Glu" Arnott serving as the Game Master, using Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. Monty is joined by players Chris Zito, Gaijin Goombah, Connor "Distortion Devil" McKinley, Monty's brother Curtis "Takahata 101" Arnott^note up until his departure, and Edward Bosco^note who was originally a reoccurring guest. The setting of the game is the mysterious land of Alivast, a relatively unknown frontier land. The players' characters, each having come to this new land for their own reasons, form a band of adventurers, eventually dubbed the Unexpectables.

The campaign streamed Wednesdays on the Unexpectables Twitch Channel until March 30, 2021 where the campaign ended at 201 episodes. The streams were originally archived on Taka's YouTube channel, but were relocated to an official Unexpectables YouTube channel on April 13, 2022. A major announcement (also on April 13, 2022) confirmed that the channel will still be active and releasing new content, primarily with a sequel campaign starting May 4: The Unexpectables II Alton Frontiers, a trailer for which can be viewed here.

There is also a podcast, and two sister campaigns which air on alternate Saturdays: The Prince Division, a modern fantasy set in a different D&D setting; and Gateway, a post-apocalyptic game using a homebrewed system, inspired by the Fallout franchise. Additionally, since 2018, every October on the channel has become "Orktober", with Connor running an Ork-centered campaign within the Warhammer 40,000 universe until 2021, when it was re-jiggered into "Gob-tober" due to Games Workshop becoming more strict with their intellectual property rights.

---

The main cast features:

• Monty Glu as the Game Master
• Takahata 101 as Borky the Orc Barbarian ^note Taka eventually left the campaign due to scheduling conflicts
• Chris Zito as Task the Kobold Ranger
• Gaijin Goombah as Greckles the Kenku Rogue
• Distortion Devil as Panic Grimtongue the Tiefling Bard
• Edward Bosco as Remy the Kenku Griffon Rider ^note Mechanically an Eldritch Knight Fighter

Guest Players Include:

• Limealicious as Lily the Gnome Druid
• StarExorcist as Arivine the Tiefling Monk
• Lanipator as Digsby (it's short for Digbert) the Tortle Paladin
• Octopimp as Zenrio the Clownfish Triton Sorcerer
• JoCat as Victor "Rat" Quibble the Half-Elf Bard
• Shenpai as Object 8, "Obby", the Construct Cleric
• Mark Allen Jr. as Seika, the Fire Genasi Monk
• Sarah Anne Williams as Esme, the Warlock

---

The Unexpectables contains examples of:

A-C

• Abdicate the Throne: Episode 61 reveals the Silver King wishes to do this, because he believes dragons are unsuited to rule mortal kingdoms, but is stymied by the fact that the only valid contender, Elizabeth aka Willow, doesn't want it either.
• Aborted Arc:
  • After interrogating the party, Athtar states that he plans to send assassins after Solly and Hellina for defecting but it hasn't been followed up on since.
  • Anything that heavily involved Borky as a focus like Raunfault and the Orc Tribes ended up getting dropped after Taka's departure from the show.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The crew finds themselves in one beneath Alivast. It leads to the Underbelly, an area that houses the Crimson Pit, and most of the organized crime in the city.
• Achievements in Ignorance: Hellena is able to chew out Tiengo without any repercussions because she doesn't know him well enough to be terrified of him like everyone else.
• Aerith and Bob: An inevitability with so many races being put in, leading from names ranging from Steve to Trashfire.
• A Glass in the Hand: Brorc inadvertently shatters his wineglass when he sees Greckles dancing with Solly at the Silver King's welcoming ball.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Played with. All of the constructs made by Artimus became self-aware after he died, thanks in some part to the involvement of the goddess Oreyara. They have each pursued crafts and occupations for which they were not necessarily designed (case in point, the hulking, spiked form of the Straightforward Good Time, who works as an escort in a brothel), but none have shown any inclination towards violence, and their religious leader, Log, encourages them to help people.
• All Part of the Show: When the party attends a wedding between an elf and gnoll, the proceedings are so bizarre that when the cake starts growing and absorbing people, they are initially unsure if it's part of the intended festivities. After they defeat the cake's creator, the other guests assume the attack was some kind of clever entertainment.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Solly was treated more like a ticking time bomb than a child after she was taken in by the United Clergy. The adults were abusive in their handling of her and the other children shunned her due to what they heard from the adults.
• All Your Powers Combined: Stillhavity steals powers from other gods, and he seems to want to get all of them
• Always Chaotic Evil: Tracadian Werewolf's fall under this, only caring about eating people, or infecting them to expand the horde. A point is made to avert this for just about every other race though and believing in this ideology show's that you're either a naïve fool or a complete bigot.
• Anachronic Order: Episode 100 was decided to be a beach episode, because of a fan vote. However, since the current events of the plot made it impossible for that to happen. Monty decided to make the special happen before the current arc began.
• Androcles' Lion: A pretty classic example begins in episode 29, "Wild Hunt", when the party encounters a normal crab holding a knife. Monty expected them to squish the crab and take the knife, but instead Panic serenades it with his guitar and befriends it. In episode 34, "A Giant Performance", the crab turns out to be Crabbius the Mighty, a figure held in high reverence in the marine realm, and vouches for the party to the storm giant Stormbeard. Much later, in episode 68, Crabbius summons a horde of fellow crabs and rescues the party after they were thrown into the sea by the United Orun Clergy.
• And This Is for...: Remy declares: "For Stendin" as he uses his action surge to strike the final blow against the arcanoloth. As he does so, the spirit of Stendin appears and lays a simultaneous strike.
• And Your Reward Is Interior Decorating: As quest rewards, the party are often given Alivastian Credits which they can use to upgrade their tavern. So far they've added basic amenities such as a quest board, a kitchen, and several guard posts, before achieving the more robust expansions of a mage tower, musical stage, mail service, and bath house, a cleric ward, a fight pit, a well, a training room, a Temple of Oreyara, an Inn, a library, a blacksmith forge, and a garden.
• Annoying Arrows: Panic spends most of the sky pirate mini-arc with two crossbow bolts embedded in his chest, which he mainly treats as an inconvenience.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Darkus's deal with Alivast comes with the not so subtle threat of the Dragon Cult destroying Alivast and killing all of their hostages if they don't give him Task and Winter.
• Anticlimax: The party fought their way through the denizens of the sewers for two thirds of the chapter that went down as "Butthurt in the Sewer", found Mel, realized that everything about her offer said "bad idea", and left again, only to unexpectedly run into the infamous, long-dreaded Tiengo the Red Death, whose only interest in the party at that time was to recover the hat Greckles took.
  • After learning that the tunnels beneath the Sweet Dragon is infested with a horde of ghosts the party spends an episode preparing for it. Only for the ghosts to end up being the result of an illusion spell and are completely harmless.
  • It happens again in episode 134 "Stonks and Bonds" where the episode ends in a cliffhanger about Tai being kidnapped by presumably giant rats under the Sweet Dragon. In the start of the next episode "Getting Down to it" they investigate and learn that Tai is fine, as he was pursuing the rats since they stole a ham of his. Then they find Scarbbles is commanding them, making them worry again, only to learn that she was effectively leading the equivalent of an archeological dig.
• Apocalyptic Log: One of the soldiers of Orun trapped in the hidden room past the wall in the Underground Orun Temple left one of these, describing the steadily decaying situation as Stillhavity's monsters tried to breach the barricade. It ends with him opting to die in dignity rather than lingering on with his magic fueling his body.
• Arc Villain: Many of them have popped up through out the series.
  • Forgotten Kingdom arc: Raunfault, with Stillhavity acting as the Greater-Scope Villain
  • Construct Murder arc: Dullmar
  • Orun's Folly arc: Stillhavity and the United Clergy of Orun
  • Sky Pirates arc: Captain Bladefoot
  • The Western Expedition arc: Fleur de Mort and Arkgenos
  • The Mosnter's Culling arc: Lobo Slackjaw
  • Willow Retrieval Arc: The Silver King
  • Canary's Perch Arc: Athtar Herald of the Sun
  • Hidden Dangers arc: Jazimor the Arcanaloth
  • Of Constructs and Dragons arc: Darkus
  • The Elemental Plane's arc: The Four Primordial Oni
  • The Eclipse arc: The End
• Arc Words: The Solly arc had the phrase "A leash can be pulled from both ends" brought up a lot, in reference to the amount of trouble an Asimar can cause to their divine parent if pushed to much. More generally, it refers to the relationship between mortals and gods, who need each other in complex ways.
  • Whenever the fragments of the dead god show up, expect to hear a variation of the phrase "I will lose much but gain so much more."
• Armor-Piercing Question: Remy discusses with Gruul the prejudice of his tribe against Tanarukks, since they have the potential to be recklessly savage. Gruul points out that while he himself is level-headed, his brother was a terrible leader, and is worried that his offspring might be anywhere in between. Remy asks how that's different from any other child, and Gruul is stunned.
• Arranged Marriage: The Aasimar in Alivast are required to eventually marry another Aasimar, considering that there's a grand total of five of them, the results are varied. While Alia and Balfor ended up being a Perfectly Arranged Marriage, Hammergnar and Ios have never met each other, and neither seems to care about being faithful. Though after the UCO's invasion of Alivast they do end up actually connecting.
• The Artifact: It doesn't take long for the official character art to become outdated due to the party losing and gaining equipment at a very frequent rate. This is actually lampshaded when the first noticeable instance of a character losing a piece with Task's helmet getting destroyed by Stillhavity.
• Art Shift: In a "theater of the mind" sort of way. Greckles has a habit of responding to uncomfortable moments by cutting to a shot of his "realistic bird face." On some occasions, Task has done likewise with a realistic lizard face.
• Ascended Meme:
  • The Twitch stream features a donation jar in the corner of the screen animated to look like Tarusk, with the donations taking the form of cupcakes dropped into his mouth. This spawned tons of jokes from the players and chat about Tarusk getting fat and randomly coughing up cupcakes. A few episodes after this was introduced, the party had to leave Tarusk in Willow's care for a while. When they return, he's gained about twenty pounds from eating too much cake and does cough up a piece of it at one point.
  • Tai Borpington's introduction didn't describe him physically other than having a fish for a head, but fan artists consistently drew him as very muscular (or bara as the players put it). Eventually, Monty gave up and went with this in-universe.
• Ask a Stupid Question...: While the party is crossing a plain full of wild magic, Borky manages to trigger it and gets hit by a spontaneous 3rd-level fireball. After he's left Yamcha-posing in a crater, Greckles asks if he's okay.
  Borky: That's a stupid question, Greckles!
  • In meta, with the exception of Remy none of the PC's have the most impressive AC so expect sounds of annoyance and sarcasm to pop up whenever Monty asks if an attack in the twenties hits them.
• As Lethal as It Needs to Be: In accordance with the game's rules, Monty allows any attack to be non-lethal, leading to moments where arrows or fire end up not being deadly. By contrast, she rules that while shooting a flying foe could be made nonlethal, its subsequent fall onto the ground was not.
• Asshole Victim:
  • By all accounts, the Iron-Oath Kobolds absolutely deserved being slaughtered by a dragon, being a tribe founded by a group who left their old clan to be enslaved, and made gained most of it's members by stealing the eggs of other Kobolds, and slaughtering anyone who resists them.
  • The people who had their voices stolen by Euphoria were chosen for that fate because they mistreated her in some way. She admits this is petty, but Omnimaw has to be fed voices so that he doesn't die, which would destabilize the balance of gods and devils.
  • The two boys who ended up making the rat king in the second Mercs special, which involved them torturing countless rats that didn't fit the criteria, and forcing the ones that do to be joined at the tail. Needless to say, the rat king killed them the second they could.
• Awesomebut Impractical: The way Multiclassing works in this setting. When a main character deals with their personal arc they get an option to multiclass into lore specific classes. The issue is that said arcs take place when the party's at mid levels limiting the customization that can happen with them. The fact that they're lore related also means that there's a chance that none of the options provided actually work with the parties stat lines.
• Author Appeal: The mail system in Alivast runs on a series of recognizable and unique wax-letter seals that Monty is also into in real life. She also has a deep soft spot for Goliaths and other races of their size and bulk, and often features them as noticeable NPCs.
• Back for the Finale: In the buildup to the final session, every single guest player is brought back for their own one-shot.
• Badass Bystander: During the Dragon Cult's attack on the city, Borky is assisted in fighting a dragon by two unknown dwarves who were apparently just passing by and decided to help.
• Balance Buff: The Party switched to a point base system for stats by episode 73 to allow the weaker members of the team a chance to catch up to the stronger ones.
• Bazaar of the Bizarre: The goblins that work for Phantom Limb Sturva collect a variety of strange magical items and sell them outside of the city.
• Beast Man: The setting achieves this trope by expanding on certain animal-like D&D races: particularly kenku (bird people), tabaxi (cat people), lizardfolk (guess) and Tritons (fish people). Instead of being bound to resemble a particular species, these races can resemble any of a wide variety of species, including those from different genii of the appropriate animal family. The most divergent seem to be the Tritons, who have had appearances as disparate as clownfish, blobfish, and squid. It's suggested that they, at least, live separately according to kind, as their living requirements vary so greatly.
• Berserk Button: Few things will piss off Task more than being lied to, especially by people that he trusts.
  • Adric Metal-Mane's is insulting his work. Whenever the party contracts him to renovate their building, he adds frilly and soft things for Panic (who called the basework "ramshackle").
  • Stillhavity's is losing his pawns, the reason he ends up antagonizing the party is because the ended up killing one of his slaves during their first mission for Alivast.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Every character aside from major villains has a bit of humor in them, and nearly all of them can kick major ass if pressed. However, the undisputed king of this trope is Log the Construct Cleric; he has the personality and moral sense of a sweet-but-dim child, and Oreyara has given him enough power that he can summon celestials made of buzzsaws and, most worryingly, can cast 9th level spells! Monty has stated that, by merit of how she made him, he can potentially do anything within the sphere of being a Cleric, making him potentially the most powerful character in the campaign that isn't a god.
• Big Bad Ensemble: There's quite a few antagonist factions that the Unexpectables have encountered.
  • Stillhavity, a demigod who wants to absorb the powers of other gods.
  • The United Clergy Of Orun, a religious group that calls for the genocide of all dark dwelling species
  • The Dragon Cultists, a group responsible for a multitude of dragon related attacks on Alivast who worship the Chromatic dragon god. Whose leader is responsible for the destruction of Task's tribe.
• Big Damn Heroes: The party play this in episodes 56-58 as they rush to Humbrack village to rescue Anna and her changeling baby Thomas from a group of monster hunters who want to capture the child and sell it.
  • Near the end of the Constructs and Dragons arc, Task shows up in a mechanical dragon just in time to rescue the rest of the party after they had been captured and enslaved by the cultists.
• Big Damn Reunion: When Solly and Greckles at long last get a chance to interact, several adventures later. This also ends up happening when Remy reunites with the rest of the Unexpectables, after believing them dead.
• Big Good: The god fragment Lys for season one, who sends the party aid and eventually reveals themselves when Stillhavity invades Orun's realm.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Borky gets a pretty good one in during Episode 159 to silence Kosui, the water elemental Oni right before he stabs him in the face with a trident.
  Kosui: "Here we have a spirited on-"
  Borky: "SHUT UP!"
• Bittersweet Ending: The ending of the Orun's Folly arc. The group was able to successfully able to save Solly from Stillhavity, and thanks to LYS they all have begun to grow past their various flaws. But LYS was killed saving the group from Stillhavity's wrath, and the threat of the United Clergy of Orun still looms over Alivast.
  • The overall campaign, although it's closer to Earn Your Happy Ending and much more sweet than bitter. The newly rejuvinated LYS absorbs The End and ceases to exist, becoming the new god Lysend, and loses all his memories, while the entire cast loses their memories of LYS. The Aspects follow him, and the heroes lose their connections to them. However, ITH, AOS, KAI and TIO become Lysend's first celestials. Greckles ends up with Solly and helps her reform Paraton, Panic gets together with Hellina, has children with her and becomes a world-famous musician, Task marries Winter and they have children of their own while Tasks opens up a Zoo in Alivast, and Remy is allowed to marry for love and becomes advisor to the king of Valithea.
• Blessed with Suck: Being an Aasimar gives you a personal connection with one of the settings gods, makes you a natural at the god's field, and if they live in Alivast, allows them to almost immediately jump the social ladder up to being a council member. This also means that if you want to do something unrelated to that god's domain, like being an adventurer when you're descended from the god of agriculture...then you're shit out of luck. Your celestial parent will constantly hound you in your dreams if they don't like what you're doing, and most kingdoms heavily restrict their personal life, whether it be by forcing them into arranged marriages, or flat out making them slaves.
• Book Ends: Monty delivers nearly the exact same speach at the end of the epilogue as she did when introducing the party in Episode 1.
• Boss Rush The final episode begins with this as The End sends specters of previous bosses to hound the party.
• Brains Evil, Brawn Good: The basic conflict in the Earth Plane involves Doketsu, a Promordial Oni with no noticeable strengh but a strategic mind vs the Dumb Muscle Earth Genasi that live there. Thanks to killing the few Genasi that could potentially seal him away, Doketsu has effectively conquered the place.
• Breather Episode:
  • The "Dog Zone" mini-arc occurs right in the middle of Solly's arc, one of the darkest arcs in the campaign.
  • The festival episodes (based on generic holidays) are mostly lighthearted with no (life-threatening) combat, is designed to let the characters roam around and goof off in a party atmosphere in between their more harrowing adventures.
  • The party tried to enforce this after getting back from a very stressful adventure to the Underdark. Monty responded by framing them for assaulting a guard, forbade them from leaving the town, and tasked them with hunting down some dangerous demons.
• Brick Joke:
  • In "Curtain Call", Task summons Tarusk while the party is fighting Sky Pirates. They end up captive on the pirate ship and whisked away before he arrives. Three episodes later, after they get back home and the plot is well resolved, he finally arrives, having spent the entire time swimming in the ocean trying to catch up to them.
  • While in the Plane of Air, Borky misses a javelin throw, and it ends up falling into the void below. Much later, when they're in the Plane of Earth, it falls from the sky and impales a just-surfaced Doketsu.
• Brown Note: A song written in the songbook of a demon of Discord not only causes massive necrotic damage to everyone listening, but also forces the person playing it to keep playing.
• Brutal Honesty: Task and Borky both have a bad habit of this.
• The Bus Came Back: Many of the guest players that joined and left during a major arc make a return appearance for a special event later on, such as Digsby coming back for a Halloween episode. Additionally, in the postscript of Session 192, it was announced that Seika, the Mercs, Rat, Obby, Digsby, and Zenrio would each be getting their own one-off episodes in the following weeks to help set up the season finale.
• Call-Back: In Session 29 Panic references Ted the Goblin from Session 1, who he broke using Vicious Mockery, to break yet another goblin. In the same fight, Borky rolls max damage with his lightning javelin, resulting in a Northlander a few miles away seeing a mushroom cloud, as happened with Abacus the last time it happened.
• The Cavalry:
  • The Silver King makes his entrance this way, defeating a white dragon and its horde of servants which were attacking Alavast.
  • Tiengo and Quarion show up near the end of episode 58, helping the party finish off the chimera that was the last remnant of the Monsters Culling expedition force. Downplayed since the party was actually holding their own, due to expert preparation for the encounter.
  • Also happens in episode 100 as the party is struggling with Captain Mirages crew, the Sweet Dragon employees come in, and turn the tide of battle.
• Cliffhanger: Monty loves ending sessions with this. Whether it's the party about to face the boss of the arc, or major story revelations.
  • The campaign ends on one, as during the last few scenes of the epilogue, it cuts to Mel approaching her dracolich master, setting things up for The Unexpectables II Alton Frontiers.
• Cerebus Rollercoaster: The series is generally lighthearted, with silly characters and lots of strange creatures that invite comedy, but the ultimate villains (especially Stillhavity) are genuinely terrifying, and each of the protagonists has serious grief in their past. As such, the show can ricochet from funny or heartwarming to sad or horrific multiple times in a single session.
• Cessation of Existence: This is the fate of fiends that die while afflicted with Material Plane Syndrome. Since they're evil by definition, nobody is very sympathetic about it.
• The Chosen Many: There are many people who've been picked out by Lys to help Alivast. Including the party, Brorc, Solly, Taylor, and the man who discovered Alivast, Captain Canary.
• City of Adventure: The City of Alivast serves this purpose, with the events happening inside the city walls being just as exciting as the team's journeys elsewhere. Ironically, the city was specifically designed to avoid this, with the city itself and the various sectors within being guarded by both magic and muscle to prevent undesirables causing trouble. However, the sheer amount of magic and racial friction in the city causes situations to flare up periodically regardless.
• Civilized Animal: Monty's homebrewed world introduces many of these, by interpreting lizardfolk, kenku, and tabaxi to resemble various real-world species of lizards, birds, and cats, respectively. They also inherit various physical and mental traits based on the animals they resemble.
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • While in the Elemental Plane of Water, the party ends up sleeping next to a whirlpool that connects it to the Material Plane. While sleeping a pirate ship comes out and not only is the captain of it sympathetic enough to the queen of the water plane to help them out but his ship is a perfect counter to the baby Kraken that guards the enemy's stronghold.
  • While in the Air Plane, Borky misses with a javelin attack and it sails downward, with the party noting that'll cause someone a bad day when it finally hits the ground. Monty explains that the Earth Plane is at the bottom. Several sessions later, while fighting the Big Bad of the Earth Plane, the javelin falls out of the sky and deals the killing blow.
• Clothing Damage: Panic suffers from this, frequently losing some or most of his shirt and jacket due to enemies focusing on him.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Borky often plays this role, due to his general ignorance about the world and his wild imagination.
  • Pug of the Dog Zone also definitely counts, as he doesn't seem to have thought through the implications or practicality of creating an army of dogs.
• Colony Drop: In a plan he describes as "full of dumbass energy", Panic has the idea of combining his Dimension Door spell with Zenrio's Polymorph to drop a player-turned-brontosaurus onto the enemy. The plan undergoes numerous tweaks, especially in the midst of battle, but ultimately works, taking out the enemy sorcerer and one paladin instantly.
  Panic: Operation "Open the Door, Get on the Floor, Everybody Drop the Dinosaur" was a complete success!
• Complexity Addiction: Monty likes adding big complex battles, with a variety of enemies, that have a multitude of abilities... and it's very clear that whenever she does it, she ends up getting overwhelmed by the amount of bookkeeping she needs to keep track of, to the point of having a friend act as an assistant during episode 101.
• Cooking Duel: Tai Borpington, the Sweet Dragon's resident chef, spends weeks preparing for one of these at the Alivastian Festival. Suffice it to say that it is Serious Business.
  • Tai almost has to give up after he finds out, on the day of the competition, that he needs a sous-chef to accompany him, which he resolves by enlisting Borky. Hilarity Ensues, and Tai manages to win second place.
• Corrupt Church: The United Clergy of Orun, a violently fanatical order of paladins in service to the sun god Orun who believe that any creature that doesn't walk in the sun is inherently evil and deserves nothing but death, even if they're harmless like a Flumph or are a Drow mother and child. They're so fanatical that they can't even nap in the shade because the dark is evil. And they don't brook any sort of questioning. It turns out that it's a side effect of their god Orun dying.
• The Corrupter: Stillhavity's bread and butter. Not surprising considering he's the son of Girasil, the demon god of greed. He demonstrates great interest in striking deals with beings of the material plane, though he will always find some way to twist the deal in such a way that serves his own interests or amuses him, and corrupt the deal's recipient into a new, destructive "toy". The first example is his deal to preserve Raunfalt's kingdom and legacy. To do so, Stillhavity made the kingdom and all mentions of Raunfault's name immune to the ravages of time. However, he also bound the king as little more than a puppet, who slaughtered the entire kingdom and all of its contemporaries so nobody remained who knew his name.
• Crapsaccharine World: Alivast. Yes, it's a land filled with new people and possibilities, that are very tolerant of races that are often discriminated against. But over two thirds of the land are being controlled by a flesh-eating fey forest, the government is incompetent at best and corrupt at worst, and there's no less than two notable world powers trying to invade the place at any point in time.
• Crapsack World: Panic's home country of Tracadia, most of the people seen are apathetic at best or malicious at worst, the wilds are infested with a multitude of were beasts, and Vampires infest the land, with some of them summoning eldritch beasts to make the place even worse.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Helga against Borky at the festival's combat competition. She demolishes him in a single turn, with him clinging to consciousness just long enough to do a single point of damage before falling down.
  • Borky versus the gnoll, Raver, on the sky pirates' ship. He dominates the fight without taking any damage, until Panic gets the crowd to mock Raver to the point of giving up.
  • The Sweet Dragon Employees against the Monster's Culling group led by Captain Mirage, the former took no noticeable damage, while the latter had all but one member captured or killed.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: The Dragon Cult's raid on Alivast ends decisively in the former's favor, but that doesn't stop Greckles from killing one of their commanders, and Task and Remy were able to cripple an Ancient Dragon thanks to the help from the Griffin Corps.

D-F

• Dark and Troubled Past: Quite a few characters but episode twenty spends almost an hour examining the nature of the Unexpectables' pasts:
  • Panic was shunned as a child because of his demonic appearance. He was helped by others to pass Bard College but refused to help anyone else and seemingly has extreme commitment and abandonment issues due to his parents not loving him.
  • Greckles was abandoned as an infant and exiled by the family of his beloved for being unworthy of the Tengu. As a gift, Lys showed him the truth: That his parents died when a hobgoblin raiding party invaded their palace while he was still an egg.
  • Borky has issues with his father and greatly misses his deceased mother and seeks to know why she died.
  • Task is the sole survivor of his entire civilization after the dragon they sought to ally with and worship turned on them. He has dedicated his entire life to avenging them.
  • Brorc was sent to retrieve a fellow Aasimar, Ivan, who abandoned his post with his clergy. Brorc apparently killed him instead, resulting in Ginter's Folly, and is still haunted by it.
  • Poor Solly spent her entire life taught to be terrified of darkness by the United Church of Orun, even being punished for simply resting in the shade on a sunny day. She was beaten for speaking out of turn and ostracized by her peers when they heard the adults talk about the consequences of an aasimar going insane. She was beaten for not conforming to the Church's ideology, forced into harsh training while a child, and branded for releasing a drow mother and child from captivity. The final straw that broke her, however, was when several paladins of Orun found out she had been teaching flumphs about Orun, and resolved the situation by slaughtering every single flumph she had come across. This was such a horrific experience that Stillhavity "tempted" her by simply appearing as a flumph in front of her.
• Dawn of an Era: Whenever a new god is born a new era is declared. With the birth of Lysend at the end of the campaign it became the dawn of Etheal.
• Deal with the Devil: The nature of Stillhavity's "deals". He offers what the other party wants the most and then uses that deal to forge a connection with their realm. This is especially bad when the one making a deal is connected to a deity, allowing Stillhavity to attack said deity.
• Decapitated Army: Once Darkus is killed his group is immediately disbanded, likewise whenever one of the Primordial Oni is dealt with their army is quickly routed
  • This is invoked during the Eclipse arc as Alivast is way too weak to deal with the UCO so their only hope is for the party and Solly's group to infiltrate Peraton to assassinate the UCO higher-ups and use the resulting chaos to push out the forces occupying Alivast.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: Pug explodes when the guys beat his final trial, but it's entirely unimpressive. It sounds like somebody popping a paper bag and releasing a bunch of crappy confetti.
• Defector from Decadence: Willow, real name Elizabeth Eltmur, is the sole surviving scion of the Eltmur royal line. By all rights she should be the ruling queen in Eltmur, were it not for the fact that she orchestrated the scheme that got the Silver King to kill her family, faked her own death to get out of the kingdom, and disseminated the rumor that the sole surviving heir was a prince to throw potential royalist attention off of her. She did all of this because she hated what Eltmur was and wanted it to die, but it wound up being Not Quite the Right Thing.
• Determinator: Borky, due to a feature that orcs have, can take damage that could down him and instead stay up with 1hp left before losing consciousness. This allowed him to get a meager punch in before Helga dropped him in the first festival episode, and kept him up to land the brutally fatal strike against Athtar of the United Clergy of Orun.
• Deus Exit Machina: Whenever the Sweet Dragon is put in danger expect Arlo, Zotira, and Log to be gone for whatever reason because otherwise the three of them would destroy whatever's threatening the party.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Faced with the demonic demi-god Stillhavity, Task tells him (repeatedly) to go fuck himself. He did after the first time.
  • Panic not only terrifies the enormous flumph abomination in Stillhavity's realm, he rebukes it so hard its heads burst into flames. He then follows this up by insulting Stillhavity in person before literally flipping him the double birds.
  • In Episode 22, all of the party insult Stillhavity as part of Lys's escape plan.
• Diegetic Switch: On one occasion, a wild magic surge from Zenrio causes the battle music to become audible in-universe.
• Discard and Draw: Panic loses his sword, Fey-slicer while traveling through a sentient forest that objects to it in episode 41, and gets Copy-Cutter, a sword that mimics whatever damages him, in episode 44.
• Distant Reaction Shot: At least three times with Borky. First, his scream upon encountering skeletons scares an elderly woman somewhere in Alavast city, second, a critical max-damage lightning javelin strike against a giant spider causes Abacus to hear a "BAP!" and see a small mushroom cloud, and third, a similar lighting javelin strike with the mushroom cloud witnessed by Northlanders a few miles away.
• Does Not Like Magic: Northlanders view any magic other than druidism and shamanism as unnatural fae magic.
• The Dog Bites Back: Solly spent her whole life being abused by the United Clergy of Orun- in particular by the paladin Ragis Cade- but finally snapped when they tried to brand her for daring to teach a group of flumphs about Orun. She eventually fled after stealing a set of antique armor, but not before taking out Cade's eye with a hot poker.
• Drinking Contest: Panic gets challenged to one by Adric, to settle their dispute from Panic calling the Sweet Dragon "ramshackle." Panic tries, and mostly fails, to figure out a way to cheat, eventually resorting to consuming a disgusting mushroom that helps mitigate the effects of alcohol. His cheating actually helps him- narrowly- to win, although he winds up regretting it almost immediately afterwards.
  • For kicks, Borky and Scarbles also decide to join in. Borky, sadly, got a Critical Failure early on, but Scarbles manages to last nearly as long as Adric and Panic.
• Doomed Hometown: Task's backstory, had his entire society wiped out by a blue dragon summoned by a black-scale Dragonborn.
• Dramatic Irony: Remy ends up spending a good 4 sessions thinking that all of his allies are dead, while the audience know that they were rescued and are trying to find him.
  • A good chunk of the suspense that comes from the party's first interaction with the natives of the Earth Plane is that the audience is already aware that all the natives, along with Greckles and Remy, are being controlled by an unseen monster halfway through while the heroes have to figure it out themselves.
• Dug Too Deep: Scarbles, the goblin server the party hired for their tavern, eventually gets into the habit of building an elaborate series of tunnels underground. Eventually she hits a hidden room full of ghosts, to the worry and consternation of her employers. The ghosts turn out to be illusory, protecting a door that leads to s smugglers den.
• Dungeon Bypass: The party are able to skip out on exploring the Earth Plane's capital to find Doketsu by bribing a bunch of Xorn with rare gems to bring them straight to the heart of the capital.
• Eldritch Abomination: Stillhavity, in SPADES. An inter-dimensional demi-god and the son of Girasil, the demon god of greed, whose form is described as an endless plane of flesh spotted by multiple fang-filled mouths and eyes. Official concept art just drives this point home. To date he's demonstrated: inter-dimensional contact through dream visions, teleportation, telepathy, mind reading, laying curses on those who displease him, Super-Empowering, making magical artifacts, affecting the material plane from his home dimension (such as when he reduced Task's sister's helmet to dust), and, most disturbingly, generating life by literally "fucking himself".
  • Omnimaw (Panic's demonic great grandfather) is also this, looking less like any sort of creature and more like a tower made up of mouths.
• The Empire: The Kingdom of Eltmur was this, being horrifically racist and sexist and imperialist along with it; part of Remy's backstory (and the reason for his dislike of the Silver King) is that they deliberately stirred up trouble in his homeland and then invaded. They were so awful that Willow manipulated them into waking the Silver King, then told him about their plans to capture and kill him, resulting in the death of nearly the entire royal family and the destruction of the government. Now under the Silver King's rule he's making an effort to turn it into The Good Kingdom. There's also the United Clergy of Orun, a much larger country than Alivast and just as racist and belligerent as Eltmur.
• Enforced Method Acting: Invoked in the episode "A Giant Performance", when the party are invited to act in an opera due to missing actors. To make their performances more authentic, Monty gives the players a couple minutes to read their scripts before taking them away and forcing them to recite the lines from memory.
• Epic Fail: Rolling a natural one will earn a lavish description from Monty on just how badly the player has screwed up. Perhaps the worst instance was when Borky almost killed Panic.
  • Outside of natural ones, Greckles gets a bad one while the party is traveling through a marsh. He manages to stumble into the mouth of a frog monster, losing half his health, and leaps away... to land in the mouth of a second frog monster which knocks him unconscious. It was only a lucky roll by Monty that kept him from being swallowed and digested on top of that. And all before Greckles even had a chance to attack.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: While not technically the case, Tracadia feels this way, between werewolves, vampires, and horrific raven creatures, not to mention the instilled hostility of the general populace toward Orcs. The party happening to land in the country during an increased level of activity in an already very unsafe part of the country doesn't help.
• Eye Scream: When Solly was about to be branded for consorting with flumphs, she stole the poker and took out her tormentor's eye with it.
  • When Solar is freed from Stillhavity's grasp, the eye which had been using that power is burned out of its socket.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Dog Zone, a zone where people turn into dogs (except for Tarusk, who became a guinea pig).
• Extra Parent Conception: Aasimar are conceived in this setting by a Celestial blessing a child still in the womb.
• Faceless Eye: After getting Solly to turn her in to Brorc, Stillhavity's eye appears in place of the sun. Only those that have encountered Stillhavity see the eye though, everyone else in Alivast sees a solar eclipse.
• Fantastic Racism: As is standard in D&D, there are lots of races that often don't get along, for reasons that are more justified in some cases than others. All four of the protagonists are members of races traditionally considered monsters, so are used to prejudice, and frequently enjoy mocking humans with each other or with non-human NPCs. Alivast is an unusually cosmopolitan town with a "Racial Inclusion" principle that allows people like the protagonists to be treated fairly, and is one of the things that drew them to the region originally. But even then, it's revealed that the kingdom heavily favors towards the more traditional races.
  • This is made apparent when the group goes to Tracadia, where nearly everyone they meet treats them like second class citizens at best, and at worst make it quite clear that they want the group dead.
  • Later on, it's established that the Genasi of the Elemental Planes don't get along at all. Especially if they're of the opposing element with a multitude of racist remarks being thrown out by even the nicer natives the party meet.
• Fantasy Counterpart Appliance: The high level of magic in Alivast results in some magic items being treated as commonplace items, in particular the tickets which serve as I.D. cards allowing access into restricted areas of the city, as well as simplified PDAs in that they keep track of quest progress. At the opera, the guards have wands which detect magic, similar to metal detectors, and there's mention of one patron deactivating a scrying stone just before the show, like a moviegoer turning off their cell phone.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: For the most part, the countries mentioned in the setting seem to be generic medieval fantasy realms, and none of them have been seen in sufficient depth to show otherwise, but there are some clear analogues between certain countries and real historical places: in particular, Alivast's history thus far mimics that of the first settlements of the Americas, down to its discovery by a sailor named Christopher (in this case, with the surname Canary), albeit with considerably less slavery and religious persecution. The old-world countries are mostly reminiscent of Europe in vague ways, with specific details such as French toast being corrected to "Paraton toast". The Altmur region, based on its history and geography, is probably equivalent to either central or eastern Europe, though everyone from there has an English accent.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Due to Monty's dislike of them, guns don't exist in this setting at all. This becomes really noticeable when the party meets the Silver Kobolds, and they have the ability to make full on mechas that shoot lasers. Also, when giving Task the ability to multiclass into Artificer, Monty explicitly bans him from making guns in that class.
• Fastball Special: During the Beach Episode, Borky and Doros start an impromptu competition around throwing various allies into the ocean. Later, Doros uses this strategically, throwing Kiwi at the pirates the party are currently fighting.
• Festival Episode: Periodically Alivast holds festivals, with the party planning their adventures so they have the day free to attend. These episodes tend to be light on combat and heavy on dialog and information gathering, with lots of minigames like the pet show, combat arena, drinking competition, and cooking competition.
• Fetch Quest: Before the party can go to the Elemental Planes they first need to collect some materials to make gear that would allow them to survive in the planes.
• Fish Eyes: Tarusk's eyes look in entirely opposite directions, only heightening how completely vacant his stare is.
  • Pug was also described as having this, on top of being ugly overall.
  • Tai Borpington is afflicted with this too, but it's justified by the fact he has a fish head.
• Fisher King: The domain a god resides over is heavily influenced by their own health. So when some of the gods start dying, the effects are very bad, with Orun's followers being driven mad while Omnimaw's failing health is leading to the death of music itself.
• Follow in My Footsteps: Panic's father wanted his son to be a blacksmith like him, while Panic wanted to be a bard like his mother who ran off. It's one of many reasons for their fractured relationship.
  • Ozzy wanted to be a wizard while his father wanted him to become a warlock. Their relationship is tense at the moment.
• Food Porn: Monty likes to give detailed, drool-worthy descriptions of the meals the party eats along the way. The players often complain she's making them hungry.
• Forced Transformation:
  • In party's first meeting with their boss, Abacus, she becomes annoyed with Borky's insensitive questions and turns him into a turtle. They later learn she turned Balfor Balton into a rabbit, inciting Balfor to say he and Borky are "transformation buddies".
  • Zenrio mainly uses his Polymorph spell to buff himself or an ally, but on one occasion he turns a pair of enemy paladins into lobsters.
• Forgot About His Powers: This pops up a lot on both Monty's and the players' end. The most notable example is Borky's danger sense, which took over two years for Taka to remember.
• Foreshadowing: There's been plenty of it throughout the series.
  • When fighting against the United Clergy of Orun Panic is able to knock out their cleric Hellina with only his Hellish Rebuke. Later on we learn that most of their clerics are very underprepared for combat.
  • When talking to Dellia, an Assimar of Orun she makes comments about the sun growing colder. Orun the sun god is dying and the sun is tied to his health.
  • When the party tries to use a mending scroll on Lys's broken mask, the scroll is changed to say the word "Etheal", which is a magic pool that can properly heal gods and celestials.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: When directly bargaining with a mortal, Stillhavity takes the form of a white tiefling with needlepoint feet.
• Four Lines, All Waiting: There are some points where the entire party is separated and the episode is equally divided between each viewpoint.
• Friendly, Playful Dolphin: Subverted. All the dolphins thus far encountered have been utter bastards, many of which have tried to shank the party with found weapons.
• Frying Pan of Doom: Kiwi's weapon of choice, first seen when he clocks Audrey because he mistakenly thinks she's torturing Remy. In the battle against Athtar's forces, Monty reveals he functions as a level 3 Rogue, but the frying pan is his only proficiency.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Panic spends most of episode 52 naked as the party deals with a threat that attacked their home in the middle of the night.

G-I

• Genre Savvy:
  • At the wedding of Einford's sister, Greckles is extremely on-edge, knowing that something bad befalls the party whenever they try to have a good time. Sure enough, the wedding is attacked by Gobbo Gourmet, a goblin pastry warlock who transforms the cake into a gelatinous cube.
  • Likewise, everyone is on edge at the wedding of Willow and Doros, specifically at the Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace bit. Sure enough some of the Silver King's kids crash the party on his behalf in order to "test" the validity of the coupling.
• Gentle Giant:
  • Raunfalt, when he is "Blue", has this sort of behavior.
  • Anje, the creature that took the baby that Mirehair the Hag stole from a village, is mostly this. Besides tearing one of Mirehair's arms in order to get said baby to safety, it acts as a care-taker for the goats on the mountain it resides on, and was trying to find a mother for the baby, until the party came to get the baby back.
• "Get Out of Jail Free" Card: Pilchard has dozens of these from the king of Tracadia after accidentally saving the princess from werewolves, which he uses only to get as drunk as he likes in taverns without any repercussions.
• Given Name Reveal:
  • Task and Panic reveal their true names (at least to the audience) during Lys' visions: they are Tarask and Vergil.
  • After over a hundred episodes Greckles reveals his true name to Remy: Tobikage.
• God Is Dead: The original god that Lys and the other fragments come from died a long time ago. Exactly what they were and what happened to them is one of the show's biggest mysteries.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: Panic ends up playing the good side with Tiengo while they're searching the sewers for Eltmur terrorists; though, as Borky points out, it's closer to "good cop/terrifying cop" as Tiengo by default slaughters any foes he sees without attempting any form of interrogation.
• Gorn: Monty can get very descriptive with the various injuries and deaths that occur, leading to the players audibly cringing on more than one occasion.
• Grappling with Grappling Rules: Happens a lot due to Takahata101's inclination to solve every situation with wrestling moves. In one particularly noteworthy case, Borky puts a gnoll in a headlock, resulting in a prolonged period of Monty digging through rulebooks while epic battle music plays in the background.
• Gratuitous Japanese:
  • Greckle's bread and butter. In universe, Kenku originate from the Eastern Isles, an archipelago with a Japanese theme that's idiosyncratic with the western fantasy setting seen elsewhere. As such, the Avian language is Japanese, akin to how Common is English. Greckles uses Naruto-esque handsigns and jutsu phrases when using magic, and at one point struggled to explain the concept of "nakama" to Borky.
  • Borky also uses Japanese for purely comedic effect; in addition to mangling the word "nakama" on occasion, he usually answers the tavern door with "moshi moshi".
  • Comes back around with Remy. He was born and raised in the Alton region, so he's detached from the language and culture of the Eastern Isles. His one attempt at using the language is poor, and Greckles laments that he doesn't speak their mother tongue.
• Groin Attack: Borky is on the receiving end of a slew of these as the party explore their first dungeon, taking them from various enemies, environmental hazards, and one from Greckles after annoying him too much.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Arivine the Tiefling Cartographer and Lily the Gnome Druid, played by StarExorcist (the main artist for the Unexpectables) and Limealicious of Vinesauce respectfully in Episode 3, but Arivine returns as a NPC during the Alivastian Festival. Edward Bosco (Ed from Street Fighter V, among other roles) plays Remy the Kenku Gryphon Rider, who later became an Ascended Extra. Nick Landis, AKA Lanipator of Team Four Star, also makes an appearance for an arc as Digsby the Tortle Paladin. Later guest stars include Octopimp as Zenrio, the Triton Sorcerer; JoCat as Rat, the Half-Elf Bard; Shenpai as Obby, the Cleric Construct; and Mark Allen Jr as Seika, the Fire Genasi Monk.
• Hamster-Wheel Power: During the Beach Episode, Iggy builds a steamboat out of nearby trees, which is powered by Tarrusk and Scarbles running on wheels.
• Hand-or-Object Underwear: When he has to face a threat in the nude, Panic uses his guitar to cover himself.
• Healing Hands:
  • Panic is the primary healer of the team, having Cure Light Wounds and a wand with the same spell. Task later learns this spell as well.
  • Quite literally with Digsby, who has the Lay On Hands ability as a paladin.
• Hearing Voices: Borky apparently hears Gripples talk to him, usually telling him to kill everyone.
• Heavy Voice: How Monty voices Tubbs the Pigeon, the grotesquely overweight pigeon that Borky adopts as a pet.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Before leaving for a trip to Tracadia, the party hires another band of adventurers to hunt down the smugglers' ring that has possession of several of their magic items. On returning, they learn said items were in a tomb that the party had recently discovered but not successfully entered beneath their own bar.
• Hold the Line:
  • The main fight with the Monsters Culling follows this format, as the enemies are trying to reach the changeling baby, Thomas, and the party doing anything to stop them, until reinforcements arrive. The Unexpectables fare so well they almost win outright without needing the help.
  • The Underdark Arc culminates in this, as the party holds off waves of devils in the Realm of Discord as Panic and Euphoria thrash on their instruments in order to wake up Omnimaw.
  • This is also used in one of the final oneshots as Lily needs to lead a small village's defenses to hold out against The Orun Clergy until helps arives.
• Hold Up Your Score: Done by the four judges in the fall festival's cooking competition, with such gags as Greckles giving the infinity symbol for one dish he particularly likes, and Aila giving each entry a score of 0, to reveal at the end she thought the scorecards were a menu.
• Homeless Pigeon Person: Taylor the Pigeonmancer, an impoverished, unskilled druid who breeds pigeons for a living.
• Hostage For Macguffin: After the Dragon Cult raids Alivast, Darkus offers to return the hundreds of hostages the cult has taken in exchange for Task and Winter so he can use them to resurrect Insdroc.
• Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action:
  • Doros' relationship with Willow garners some strange looks due to his being a huge goliath and her a normal human, though only Borky is tactless enough to mention it aloud.
  • A clerk at the Romansion mentions that they have rooms to accommodate any combination of racial sizes, from gnomes to goliaths.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The fight against the United Clergy of Orun's raid vessel is this, not only was the group outnumbered almost 3 to 1, but the Clergy's buddy system meant that any damage they did would have been instantly mitigated, to make it worse, it's later revealed that Athtar, their leader, is more than capable of fighting the entire group on his own.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Borky with practically any woman, but especially the gnome Lily, who is so small she can sit on his shoulder.
• Hugh Mann: In episode 38 the party finds a mannequin among the loot of a pack of hill giants, and promptly name it "Hugh Man". The trope comes into effect in episode 42 when they use it, dressed up in whatever items they have available, in order to lure a couple of bugbear sentries into a trap.
• Humanshifting: The leader of the Alivast Underbelly is a Changeling known as Avryman.
• Hypocritical Humor: Greckles calls Remy a "dork" after the latter uses a Latin incantation for a spell, while he himself is known for stealing incantations from Naruto for his own magic.
• I Fell for Hours: While trying to find an entrance to the Underdark, the party falls for about 15 minutes.
• I Need a Freaking Drink:
  • After his semi-breakup conversation with Ozzy, Panic sits at the bar in the middle of the day and orders a stiff drink. The normally snarky Helga sees his expression and pours a double.
  • After his exhausting and stressful cooking competition experience is over, Tai immediately goes in search of strong liquor.
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals: Ienford's family, including himself, all look completely identical. They even act the same, to the point of applauding in unison. The only exception, fortunately, is the sister at who's wedding the party discovered this disturbing fact.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Frivayne normally doesn't wear clothing, which is appropriate for a dragon. However, this is maintained in her human form, which has caused some awkwardness in conversation.
• Instant-Win Condition:
  • In episode 101, all the party needs to do to win is wake up Omnimaw. This leads to a humorous situation where the boss of that encounter makes a dramatic entrance only for Omnimaw to wake up before it can do anything.
  • Later, during Willow and Doros's wedding, the party automatically won when they got The Silver King's eldest son to yield.
• In Vino Veritas: The heavily-intoxicated Rivy is quick to point out anything she believes to be racist, like assuming she and Panic are a couple because they're both Tieflings, or a mother Kenku naming her daughter who looks like a robin, "Robin."
• Invulnerable Horses: Zig-Zagged depending on what the focus of the encounter is. If it's about defeating an enemy the party's various mounts are immune to damage but if the focus is on either escape or chasing something then the mounts become valid targets for enemies
• Irony: It's been pointed out multiple times that Greckles the Rogue is the member of the party who never wants to break the law, despite being well... a rogue.
• I See Dead People: While at the Alivastian Festival the Unexpectables meet an aasimar named Aila Balton with the ability to see the dead people important those still living. She can understand emotions and intentions but not communicate beyond that.
• It's All Junk:
  • During his vision quest, Lys tears into Task for clinging to his sister's bow and helm as keepsakes, as it's keeping him from moving forward with his own life. This proves important later as he easily refuses Stillhavity's offer to return the stolen helm.
  • Panic has a softer moment when he finds the splintered remains of his guitar, and is able to let it go, because it represents his connection to his mother, and having actually found her, he doesn't need it anymore.
• It's Not You, It's Me: Panic drops this exact line on Ozzy. In this case he's not actually lying, as Lys's vision quest has left Panic doubtful he's even capable of loving somebody else.
• It's the Journey That Counts: Parodied: among the treasures found by Digsby in a black dragon's hoard is "the friends you made along the way", which is treated by its finder as an actual item and dutifully recorded on his inventory list. The rest of the treasure is more conventionally valuable.
• It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: Aasimar have a celestial parent who grants their child visions and blessings. Unfortunately, this hasn't really helped them.
  • Brorc was beaten to near-death and exiled by his clan, likely due to his aasimar heritage. This remains a sore point for him.
  • Solly was raised by a Knight Templar order that sees her liking a shady tree as a possible sign she's going insane. Her entire childhood was full of beating and training specifically meant to form her into a weapon of their god, who sends Solly agonizing visions.
  • Ivan was a skilled farmer born to a god of agriculture, yet he desperately wanted to be an adventurer. Watching others explore the frontier drove him to rebel, leading to his death and Ginter's Folly.
  • Hammergnar is the elf son of the dwarven god of drinking; his dad thought it was hilarious. Hammergnar has to work in the forges and go drinking with dwarves but would much rather be free to be an elf.

K-N

• Kissing the Ground: Borky does this after the party safely returns from Tracadia, the most consistently-lethal environment they have yet explored.
• Klingon Promotion: Most if not all Orc tribes operate on this principle. Borky takes advantage of this to get the Double Tusk and Blood Axe tribes on his side.
• Kill and Replace: The Yugoloths use this tactic to take over significant portions of the Alivast city guard, over the course of about a year. Overlaps with Capture and Replicate, since at least some of the guards were held prisoner in the hope that they would forsake their gods to save their own lives.
• Killer Game Master: Monty shows some slight shades of this after having the party go through Tracadia, how does she react to the guys gripping about a place that's infested with werewolves at every corner, no safe place to sleep, and also had them due an escort mission? Send them to the Underdark under leveled, to make Tracadia seem nicer.
• Knight Templar: The United Clergy views any being that lives in or is even associated with the darkness as an evil creature to be purged. Questioning this "fact" was enough to earn a young Solly a beating.
• Knowledge Broker: The team meets a Yuan-Ti information broker named Hassrad, who they eventually hire.
• Layered Metropolis: The city of Alivast is separated into many districts of lowest, lower, middle, and upper tiers, with movement between levels restricted.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: While they generally obey the perennial advice to Never Split the Party while on a mission (though it is sometimes forced on them against their will), the party do split up on occasion while inside Alivast, under the assumption that it's a safe zone and should be fine. Since it's a City of Adventure, things sometimes do go wrong, and they have several times had to fight several battles at once in different locations.
• Light Is Not Good: The United Clergy of Orun. They worship a sun-god and ostensibly seek to do good in the world, but they are extremely militant and self-righteous, and have been known to strong-arm nations into letting them punish those they consider "unjust" (which mostly amounts to species that live underground or are otherwise affiliated with darkness, even dwarves) by threatening to declare a crusade.
• Limited Wardrobe: Played with: The party each have one set of clothes they wear day-to-day, but they replace these as the seasons change, and as parts of their equipment get lost and replaced during adventures.
• Literal-Minded: Stillhavity apparently took Task's suggestion that he go fuck himself literally, although no one is entirely sure what that means. Though it evidently meant reproductively; it has resulted in a horde of horrific, ear invading monstrosities that resemble a mix of xenomorph and a spider.
• Love Triangle: Brorc, Greckles, and Solly are in a weird version of this. It's clear that Brorc's in love with Solly, and sees Greckles as a potential love rival. But it's ambiguous on whether Solly or Greckles see each other in a romantic light. Episode 103 clarifies it a bit: Greckles does love Solly, but is more than willing to step down if there is a person who can make her happy. Meanwhile Solly doesn't seem to be romantically interested in anyone due to her issues with her early life and states that she won't marry Brorc unless he's capable of telling the truth about Ginter's Folly. Eventually it gets settled with Solly denying Brorc's proposal and wanting to pursue a relationship with Greckles.
• Loyalty Mission: A rare PC variation but later on some arcs are set up to heavily involve the past of one of the main characters. Dealing with these arcs typically help's them with their emotional baggage, gives them a weapon upgrade, unlocks their multiclass options, and blesses them with one of the god fragments.
• Magic Eater: The Ursaiphon, as named by Task, a creature native to Alivast that can only perceive by detecting magic and can consume magical creatures and artifacts, as well as casters' spell slots.
• Magic Mirror: At one point Task is... tasked with finding a mirror made from a scale of the dragon god Orthoc, which is also being guarded by the original Gold Dragon. When he does find it, it combines with Oreyara's powers to provide him to talk to people from his past life as Sosorin, his long dead family, and an adult Tarrusk.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Borky tends to do this. Although justified by his Berserker class giving him tremendous amounts of health and the ability to mitigate the most common types of damage, he also does it when he's brought to the cusp of death.
• Makes Just as Much Sense in Context: The Dog Zone. Monty has joked that she came up with it while heavily medicated. In reality, Monty got inspired after seeing a Mastiff at her job and asking herself "What would the party look like as dogs?"
• Mark of Shame: Solly was branded as punishment for freeing captives.
• Mars Needs Women: The Iron Claw orc tribe has a severe disparity in the number of women vs. men, leading to the chief claiming any woman who enters Iron Claw territory as one of his wives. When Borky attempts to negotiate with them, the Iron Claws say flat out that they want women as part of the deal with Alivast. The party is very understandably put off by this and make it exceedingly clear that the only women who will join the tribe will be ones who do so of their own free will. The fact that they will not be allowed to leave voluntarily will also make that a very hard sell.
• Mean Character, Nice Actor: One of the prospective employees for the Sweet Dragon is a Bone Devil-descended tiefling who was part of a circus act playing a spooky monster. He says that he actually had fun with it, but he now wants a different life, and in person and out of character he's soft-spoken, polite and awkward.
• Miles Gloriosus: Lobo Slackjaw, leader of the Monsters Culling, directs his men ruthlessly, and talks trash to the party via a magical device, but when his men fall to the Unexpectables in droves, he simply fails to show up.
• Miracle Food: The tuba that Panic is given by Zenrio's parents emits live fish when played. At first, everyone assumed this was because it had been underneath the ocean for a long time, but it still has the same effect after being on the surface for a good while.
• Missing Mom: Borky's mom died before her time, and he has promised to avenge her.
  • Panic's mom left before he was old enough to remember. He desperately wants to know if she truly loved him or not. She does love him. She was told by her husband that the then-infant Panic had been drowned, leading her to believe that he was dead. She is overjoyed to see him alive and well.
• Missing Steps Plan: Pug plans to build a dog army using his magic... and that's it for the plan. He figured having one was a worthy objective in and of itself, but he supposes he could conquer the world with it... somehow.
• Mood Whiplash: The generally light-hearted and nearly cartoonish nature of the show occasionally gives way to some pretty heavy drama, some of it quite bleak. Festival episodes are known for this, being fluff-heavy sessions with little to no combat which invariably end in heartbreak of some sort. The strongest case so far, though, has been in the Orc Recruitment arc: after they take a job on a merchant vessel, the party sees a solid couple of sessions enjoying high-seas hijinks, only to get ambushed by a far superior force of the United Clergy of Orun. Episode 67 is a painful slog as they fight a slow battle of attrition against a considerably more prepared enemy. After a heart-rending cliffhanger in which the four are bound and thrown into the waves, episode 68 starts with a description of their plight, only to suddenly jump to a guest character: Zenrio, a clownfish-triton with a surfer mentality. As the party now engage in sub-aqueous hijinks, their antics are interrupted by scenes of Remy, who is still in the Clergy's clutches and whose future is uncertain.
• Mushroom House: Taken to extremes in the Underdark, where a single colossal mushroom dominates the mushroom ecology of the cave system, fed by a lake of pure arcane magic, which houses an entire civilization of Svirfneblin (Deep Gnomes) in its gills.
• Negated Moment of Awesome: When Borky is about to be sacrificed to Insdroc, he begins to make a speech denouncing destructive gods in front of everyone and tells them that the only god that he feels gives people power is Oreyara, which he ends on by attempting to break open his shackles with his bare hands...and rolled exactly one point too low for it to work.
• Never Mess with Granny: Among the orcs, nobody gets more respect than an old lady, because an orc lady only gets old if she's very tough.
• Non-Standard Kiss: Remy's goodbye kiss to Greckles is described as a literal "peck on the beak."
  Gaijin Goombah: We don't have lips, so that's the closest thing we can get.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Doros doesn't do public speeches after an unexplained incident. He also gets a distant, haunted look whenever the pygmy griffon causing trouble around town is mentioned.
  • The city was ravaged by a giant gelatinous cube a few months before the protagonists arrived there. No one they have spoken to about it know any more about the incident. It eventually comes out that the event was caused by a cuisine-obsessed goblin warlock called Gobbo Gourmet, but the exact circumstances of the incident are never explained.
  • Apparently the group that was hired to hunt down the smugglers' ring captured the Yugoloth by shackling its smaller arm to its penis. Since that adventure wasn't recorded, we're not likely to ever learn the full details that led to such a result.
  • Whatever happened in the Romansion that led both Kay and Zeus to be deeply embarrassed whenever they meet.
• No-Gear Level:
  • Episodes 33 and 34 feature the party without their weapons and most of their magical items, because they had left these behind in order to attend an opera before being captured by sky pirates.
  • The Dog Zone mini-arc also sees them without gear due to being dogs.
  • In episode 67, the party is defeated by the United Clergy of Orun, stripped of all valuables, and thrown into the sea except for Remy, who is kept as a hostage. Though the main four survive thanks to the intervention of Crabbius the Mighty, they are only able to retrieve one special item each in the following episode and have to make do with what they can find or acquisition from helpful Samaritans.
• Not Now, We're Too Busy Crying Over You: After Task falls down a hole in the Underdark, Borky is immediately convinced he's dead, starts crying loudly, and begins a eulogy before interrupted by a re-emerging Task.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: Willow's (real name Elizabeth Eltmur's) plan to get her family killed and destroy the Kingdom of Eltmur from the inside worked nearly without a hitch; her family perished at the claws of the Silver King, she faked her own death and fled to Alivast, and she even threw royalist attention off of herself by disseminating the rumor that the sole surviving heir was a prince. Unfortunately, she didn't count on one thing; the Silver King being forced into taking over Eltmur, resulting in her having an ancient silver dragon with a bone to pick hounding her everywhere she went because he doesn't want the throne either.
• No Woman's Land:
  • Eltmur was this before the Silver King deposed the ruling class; women were not allowed to pursue education, even to the point of being forbidden to read. As such, a substantial proportion of Alivast's human female population were originally refugees from Eltmur.
  • Paraton is increasingly this way, at least as seen by the female clerics of the United Clergy of Orun, who are assigned subservient positions to male paladins, who they are expected to have children with at least some of whom have no issue with abandoning their clerics or even using them as human shields.
  • The orc tribes are described this way, to the point that Alice, fleeing the destruction of her village by a dragon, was forcefully adopted by an orc tribe and an orc member of that tribe had to accept exile to free her. Further, an anthropologist seeking to explore the orc-controlled lands of Alivast stipulated that females must not apply to be his escorts. Borky also implies that his own tribe had similar tendencies, with his father Slasha having disproportionate authority and literally 100 wives. Although, of the tribes seen thus far, women have been treated with some respect and given some rights, though expected to adhere to strict gender roles.
    • Zigzagged when it comes to the Iron Claw clan. While they're currently led by their female elder and a council composed of the chief's wives it's made apparent that the only reason they're in control is due to the current chief being easily manipulated and he still has the final say on matters in the clan. Their deal with Alivast also has them asking for more females to help repopulate and make it clear that they can never leave the colony.

O-S

• Offerings to the Gods: Most gods are satisfied with prayers instead of physical tributes, but the Bloodaxe clan of orcs appease Gnash, god of destruction, by placing the bodies of anything they kill in a pit with the jawbone of one of Gnash's greater monstrosities.
• Orphaned Punchline: In episodes 89 and 90, we hear several people independently saying "That's not my [body part], that's-" before being cut off by an approaching party member.
• Orphean Rescue: During Orun;s Folly, Solly has her soul taken by Stillhavity. The party must enter his realm in order to rescue her and sever Stillhavity's connection to Solar.
• Our Angels Are Different: Solar, the Celestial parent of Solly and member of Oruns' pantheon, appears as an enormous winged human. He sends her intensely painful visions and has a feeling of arrogance about him.
• Our Demons Are Different: In the Aliverse's cosmology, the ruling demons and devils are either evil gods or, more often, celestials of gods who have been corrupted.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Every Dwarf character seen thus far has exactly the same accent and attitude, and all are craftsmen, though with different specializations.
• Our Kobolds Are Different: Chris Zito is involved in the campaign, which means that the Kobolds in the cast have long, rabbit-like ears.
• Parental Abandonment: Greckles was an orphan who didn't even know who his parents were. The worry that they didn't want him has left him feeling unworthy for much of his life. Later on, it's revealed that his mother died protecting him from a raid while his father seemed to of abandoned him and might have played a hand in exiling him from his home.
  • Solly was sold to the United Clergy by her human family. Later events show that after she was born, she was kidnapped by the proto-Clergy, and they lied to her mother about Solly dying shortly after being born.
  • Panic's mother ended up bailing on him the moment he was born, which ended up influencing a lot of his more unsavory qualities.
• Parodies for Dummies: Greckles falls asleep trying to read a book about werewolves, so Willow instead gives him A Toddler's Guide to Werewolves. "Much easier to read, and it has funny pictures!"
• Pensieve Flashback: The visions granted by Lys to the party take this form, with different variations for each of them.
• Pieces of God: When a god is killed, they don't actually die and are instead split into pieces, plenty of which gain sentience of their own Insdroc the chromatic dragon god was split into five separated dragons, along with the chromatic Dragonborn and Kobolds. And Lys was broken into four pieces before they get fixed by the Unexpectables.
• Poor Communication Kills: The whole plot arc with Solly could have been solved a lot more amicably if various characters were more open about their intentions. Brorc didn't explain why he wanted to find Solly, and Greckles assumed something nefarious was going on. Solly clammed up about her past or true reason for being in Alivast and nobody really pushed to find out. In the epilogue of episode 20, Monty notes that of all the possible outcomes to the scenario, Solly getting corrupted and Stillhavity taking over the sun was the second-worst.
• Power Creep, Power Seep: A lot of spells are weaker than their base D&D version either due to Monty finding them too powerful or in the case of Sending and Scrying, they can let the party solve most of the long-term questions a lot easier.
• Phrase Catcher: The group's rag-tag nature often results in them being informed they weren't what someone expected. They eventually adopt it into their guild name, The Unexpectables.
• Previously on…: Monty always starts the sessions with a recap of the previous events.
• Rat King: The boss of the second "Merkz" session. It was created by a couple of misguided youths following instructions from Tehir, the god of treachery.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Or script in this case. When given two minutes to come up with their insult for Stillhavity in Episode 22, Taka didn't have anything for writing. His resulting off-the-cuff speech is mangled, confusing, and not even all that insulting to anyone except an orc - which fits Borky perfectly.
  • Borky has left the active party as of episode 174 due to Taka taking up a business opportunity that would conflict with the Unexpectables schedule-wise. The in-universe explanation is that Borky's decided to focus more on setting up his new cheesery and organizing the orc tribes he's forged alliances with.
• Refusal of the Call: Ivan and Solly are aasimar meant to act as conduits for their celestial parent on the material plane. Both wished to escape from their destiny, Ivan to become an adventurer and Solly to live with the flumphs.
  • Pilchard ignores the visions urging him to seek out Solly, instead, drinking himself to insensibility every night.
• Relationship Values: The employees in the Sweet Dragon all have values that can be raised for benefits like discounts when shopping from them.
• Religious Robot: All constructs seen thus far are this, thanks to the direct intervention into their lives of the goddess of mechanical craftwork, Oreyara. They're led in their worship by the cheerful Log.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Downplayed- after being absent from the city for five months, few people actually assume the party are dead, but they do catch Helga in the middle of hanging up a memorial plaque to them when they return to the tavern.
• Retcon: Panic was originally of the Bard College of Thunder, a homebrew subclass with a heavy metal theme. This was changed to the College of Glamour when he reached level 6 because it got heavily remade by it's creator and they couldn't find the original version they were using
  • During the beginning of the Constructs and Dragons arc the party are told that they need to leave Alivast quickly due to the dragon cult telling the council that they'll trade their hostages for Task and Winter and they're already hunting for the party. Later when the party comes back, it got changed to the council deciding to see if the party could handle the cult, and the hunting groups were formed by the families of the hostages who heard of the exchange through deliberately leaked info.
• Retgone: Whenever a god dies, almost every trace of its existence is wiped away. The only person who might know about the dead gods is Ko the god of secrets. This is the fate of Lys at the end of the series as he fuses with the End to become Lysend.
• Retired Badass: Helga used to be a Shield Maiden but retired to be an innkeeper. This hasn't stopped her from killing the fire giant who wrecked her last inn and demolishing Borky in two rounds during a festival tournament.
• Ridiculously Fast Construction: The Dwarves can rebuild Alivast from scratch in about a day, which is useful as it tends to get destroyed about once a season. They also built a secondary wall around Tent Town overnight after its need became apparent.
• Rite of Passage: Task has to undergo the Northlander Trial of Manhood to get bear meat for the upcoming festival. He's required to fight the bear on his own using only a dagger.
• The Rival: Doros and most of Doros' subordinates see Panic as a rival for Willow's affection. Even after Panic and Doros make up, Sebastian Strong is there to put the "hooligan" Panic in his place.
• Ruins for Ruins' Sake: Justified: Alivast has been settled before, but all previous civilizations were destroyed.
• Running Gag: Almost every recurring character has at least one, especially the main party:
  • Borky's morning ritual, which he performs every day to the increasing irritation of everyone else.
  • Greckles diving into or swimming through bushes when he enters stealth, often described in a cartoonish way.
  • Panic arousing the attraction of almost everything he encounters, often without intention.
    • When discussing metatextual information such as his hit points or damage dice, Connor will have Panic suddenly break into a robotic voice.
  • Task being mistaken for a dragonborn child.
  • Tarusk, a draconic creature, being mistaken for a dog. After being reborn, he is treated as a normal child, despite clearly being a dragon.
  • Scarbles, the tavern's main server, always appearing right behind Borky when he asks for her.
  • Any time a character makes a purchase, they will be asked if they want the item gift-wrapped, even if it's something that could not plausibly be a gift.
  • After going to Tracadia, the party ends up complaining about it whenever possible, only to be baffled when others say that it's a wonderful place.
  • For some reason, Greckles keeps getting swallowed by various enemies.
  • invoked Whenever Task does an impressive amount of damage expect Monty to say "Rangers are underpowered" In a whiny tone to mock the typical view of the base rangers
  • Monty dropping dice, which occurs at least once an episode no matter how careful she tries to be.
  • Bosco's repeted attempts to deny that Remy is more than a guest star. Even though Remy has been in the majority of the series and appeared in half of the seasonal artwork.
• Running Gagged: When it was revealed that the ship that Borky took to Alivast was ran by Vampires Taka decided to have a running gag with all of their names being thinly veiled disguises for famous vampires. This lasted until Conner told him (both in and out of character) that the joke's gotten old and Monty plans on actually doing something with them,
• Sacrificial Revival Spell: Hassrad uses a downplayed version of this: a spell which revives a recently deceased person, but requires blood sacrifice which depletes enough HP to match that lost by the patient, as well as a permanent reduction to one of the core stats of the caster and one other donor.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Implied with Gripples, the exploding penguin statue that Borky acquired early in the campaign. It tells Borky to commit horrific acts on its behalf.
• Schmuck Bait: The sled given to Task and Greckles for the Wacky Racing interlude has a Big Red Button with a sign saying "DO NOT TOUCH". On seeing it, and having no idea what it does, Task immediately resolves to use it in the final stretch of the race, even if it's not needed. What it actually does is launch the sled hundreds of feet into the air, endangering the riders and costing them what had been an assured victory.
• Seen It All: The inhabitants of Alivast are used to bizarre magical events, meaning they quickly lose interest in any incident that doesn't seem dangerous, and allow them to recover quickly after a disaster.
• Sequel Hook: The last scene in the series is Mel meeting up with a draconic creature to give the Bead of Hoketh to, who promises to turn this new age into one covered in ash.
• Settling the Frontier: Alivast sits on the edge of a largely unexplored continent, and a significant amount of the adventure stems from the strange things found in the wild that sometimes encroach on the new settlements.
• Shameless Self-Promoter: The party, especially Panic and Borky, like to shill their tavern whenever they or their employees are in the public spotlight.
• Share the Male Pain: After Panic spends part of an afternoon teaching students the most effective way to fend off a male attacker, their principal is noticeably uncomfortable.
• Ship Sinking: Task and Mel was a popular ship early on but her attempt to kill everyone in the Sweet Dragon sunk it completely.
  • After a lot of teasing and tension Solly and Brorc also ended up getting sunk in episode 135 where she finally rejects his marriage proposal and starts making her interest in Greckles much more apparent.
• Shock and Awe: Panic's Thunder Wave spell.
  • Borky later finds a Javelin of Lightning, doing electric damage on top of a normal javelin's piercing damage.
• Shout-Out: Monty makes a direct one to Critical Role in the climax of the coastal orcs arc when Borky kills the Orun Clergy's boss.
  Monty: I'm going to take a page from Matt Mercer: how would you like to do this?
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Task gets a pretty epic one during the fight against Dullmar, who is currently in the statue of Might-Crank, after the latter's murder of Marcus Sweet.
  Might-Crank!Dullmar: I don't know how you got out, but you're not getting out of this-
  Task: SHUT THE FUCK UP!! (shoots an arrow at Dullmar's mouth)
• Sigil Spam: In a conscious effort to help their brand, the Unexpectables put the Sweet Dragon logo on a variety of products, such as the collars of their mail-carrying pseudodragons. As of season 3, Borky sports the logo on his everyday cape, as does Greckles's formal kimono.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: Every time a new season starts expect to see everyone’s artwork updated partly to reflect the party’s new gear and partly as a simple change of clothes.
• Skull Cups: Borky has one made from the head of the hag he suplexed.
• Snap Back: The dwarven craftsmen in Alivast are able to rebuild it within 24 hours no matter how much collateral damage it accrues even over a thousand dragons razing the city only makes the rebuilding efforts take a week.
• Sneeze Cut: Whenever the players crack wise about an NPC, Monty will usually retort by cutting to a scene of said NPC lounging about and suddenly sneezing.
• Soft Water: The party is unharmed after falling into a large lake, despite having fallen for over 10 minutes. Monty later simply admits that she sucks at physics.
• Something We Forgot: The campaign ends on the note that the parties laxidasical approach when it came to Mel is gonna cause problems in the future.
• Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace: Everyone is wary of this moment at the wedding of Willow and Doros, because they know the Silver King is likely to object. As it turns out, he sends his kids to act as his proxy in the matter, resulting in a formal fight.
• Stop Worshipping Me: Tel Intura, the goddess of blind luck, is the only known deity who specifically forbids houses of worship and other formal religious organizational structures.
• The Spartan Way: Solly underwent harsh training where, as a pre-teen, she was forced to spend an entire day punching a wooden post. Borky had flashbacks to his own training and was not happy.
• Speak of the Devil: Mentioning the devil lord Omnimaw draws the being's attention with unfortunate results, especially for musicians.
• Spectator Casualty: It's not uncommon for stray projectiles to kill someone in the Crimson Pit.
• The Stinger: After the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue, we're treated to a scene showcasing the consequences of not persuing Mel, setting her up as a Big Bad for the sequel.
• Stupid Evil: Cap'n Bladefoot's plan on kidnapping a theater's actors to stage a play to help appease a storm giant, not only does it anger the people of Alivast, once the storm giant realizes that the actors are there against their will, he has their airship completely dismantled.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: Panic tends to evoke this whenever convenient in season 1, to the point where "Stupid Sexy Panic" became one of the show's first fandom memes.
• Suddenly Voiced: When Doros speaks out loud for the first time, his voice is provided by Arcolf, who previously played Velcenien in a one-shot.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Four adventurers board in airship in a massive cloud of pigeons. The hundreds of pirates on board immediately spot and disarm them.
  • Happens again in episode 67 where they fight The United Orun Clergy, where a properly organized platoon of soldiers ultimately beat the party thanks to a combination of higher numbers and properly used defenses to wear down the group until they're forced to surrender.
  • The Clergy's frequent abuse of the members that question them leads to plenty of defections when possible. Out of the seven clerics that fought the Unexpectables, five of them ended up switching sides before the end of the arc.
  • Some Interspecies Romance can have some issues pop up, especially if there is a very noticeable size difference. When Panic slept with the Goliath Zeus, he wasn't able to walk properly for the entire day afterword and it's implied that Willow broke her wrist when trying to be intimate with Doros.
  • When Panic accidently gave Hellina a free pass for a brothel (he was more focused on the places hot springs when he gave her the ticket) it was treated as a joke. Especially when she returns and recounts her experience clearly ignorant to the Romansion"s more risqué businesses. But when Panic meets some Romansion employees later it turns out that they were freaking out when they realize that they had a young cleric with them that didn't know that the Romansion was a brothel and had to put in a lot of leg work to stop her from finding out the truth and freaking out.
  • After the constructs in Alivast became sentient it was noted that due to laws not accommodating for this earlier they are technically given free rein to travel to every district in Alivast. Rather than letting this slide the Alivastian council are noted to be freaked out by that and are scrambling to find a way to modify the laws to reign them in.
  • Hiding a massive secret from your lover is going to cause a lot of strain when they find out, especially if your child is also affected by it. Euphoria keeping her Tiefling heritage a secret from Sergei destroyed whatever relationship they could of have, once Panic was born and was clearly a Tiefling.
  • Brorc learns the hard way that suddenly proposing to a person who has no idea you're in love with them, nor someone who even had an idea she had a choice in the matter, might cause them to completely freak out.
  • When they finally reach The Mountain of Repetition. Home of the Silver Kobolds, the party, Task especially, expect them to guide the group and solve their current issue. Then it turns out that randomly asking a secluded village to help with your problems leads to a lot of push back on their end, and just because they know a bit more than you do doesn't mean that they know everything, especially when it comes to the divine. This revelation leads to Task losing his temper repeatedly while there, worsening the problem. The only reason the party makes any progress while they're there is because Oreyara, the goddess worshiped in that region, is explicitly on their side.

T-Z

• Taking You with Me: When the dragon mech is too heavily damaged to finish off Kriegharam cleanly, Old Rusty sends the rest of the crew away and activates the self-destruct.
  Old Rusty: I'm going to die the way I lived: In a massive explosion!
• Talking the Monster to Death: How they eventually defeat Pug and escape the Dog Zone.
  Pug: So now I ask you the final Trial of Dog, the final question... Who's a Good Boy?

  Zito: Yes!
  Task: (sighs) It's you.
  Pug: WHAT!?
  Greckles: You're a good boy, Pug.
  Borky: You're a good boy, you've been a very good gentleman, and you haven't tricked us yet.
  (Pug explodes in a shower of cheap confetti)
• Team Pet: Tarusk, a drake that Task gets when the team kills a dragon cult. He's a good boy.
  • Borky tries to make Tubs into one. Monty has none of that.
• Tempting Fate: Panic is nearly killed in one attack as a response to this insult.
  Panic: Hey, how do you kill yourself with a dragon? Climb its ego and fall to its IQ.
• The Thunderdome: A fighting ring in the underbelly of Alivast known as the "Crimson Pit".
• Too Dumb to Live: Turns out the Genasi in Elemental Plane of Earth neglected the arcane and reading so much that nobody alive has any idea how to make the seal to deal with Doketsu, and their leader's only plan is to repopulate their people over twenty years and fight back again. Needless to say, when the party finds out about this, they're less than pleased.
• Toothy Bird: Gaijin once described Greckles as "gritting his teeth." Monty tried to justify it with "gizzards." He continues to use such turns of phrase in the future.
• Tragic Keepsake:
  • Task's bow and helm were originally his sister's. They're the only items he has left of his family until Stillhavity steals the helm and Lys makes him burn the bow
  • Panic's guitar is the only memento he has of his mother and is very protective of it. At least until he actually finds his mother.
• Trash Talk: Panic is always ready to toss some Vicious Mockery at any foe, to varying effect.
• Trauma Button: Seeing the slaughter of Solly's flumph friends causes Task to freeze up due to the bad memories.
• Trial by Combat: This can happen in weddings held in the Avan faith, as anyone who objects can fight the bridal couple's guards to test their union. This happens with Willow and Doros, causing the Unexpectables and several of the Alivast city guard to face off against some of the Silver King's kids, acting as his champions.
• Trick Arrow: In addition to conventional enchanted arrows and Ranger spells that are triggered by hitting a target, Task sometimes ties items to his arrows to achieve unusual effects. This ranges from practical applications like sending a rope across a gap so the party can climb it, to lobbing a bottle of chemicals into a lava pit to impress some earth elementals. Whenever Task gets his hands on a strange item that can be used offensively, he considers tying it to an arrow.
• Twin Threesome Fantasy: Two of the potential escorts one can get at the Romansion are a pair of elven twins named Cerythia and Derythia. Considering that Panic got the two of them after simply asking to be surprised it's implied that they deliberately pander to this fetish.
• Understatement: After Panic drops a truly Vicious Mockery on a black dragon, and draws its complete ire, he activates his defensive barbed hide.
  "I feel threatened."
• Unexpected Gameplay Change:
  • The Dog Zone saw the guys faced with a number of new gameplay mechanics and challenges.
  • Episode 18, aptly named "Initial DnD", features a prolonged chase scene between the party and a cadre of fanatical Orun clergy.
  • Episode 59, "Cruel Runnings", is all about Wacky Racing, also with references to Mario Kart.
  • Episode 70 has a crab mech that the guys are forced to work together in order to use properly.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment: Nine times out of ten, whenever an enemy has a weapon or other equipment that provides a noticeable boost in their combat abilities. They either disappear along with the enemies' bodies, or they're somehow tied into their wielder and are only a regular weapon when wielded by anyone else. At one point the party was able to get around this by stealing the weapons and armor from a boss that they know will disappear with their gear when they're defeated.
• Villainous Breakdown: A common way Monty runs villains is to have them start as a Smug Snake or otherwise convinced of their superiority and inevitable victory, only to suddenly become frenzied and desperate once the party proves a major threat and manages to put a huge wrench in their plans.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: The campaign is typically a lighthearted and comedic adventure. But some of the antagonists are a whole other story with Stillhavity and the United Clergy of Orun being the most notable examples.
• Vision Quest:
  • Lys sends the party on individual quests to confront the troubles of their pasts and how they've been holding themselves back as a result.
  • Task gets one of these when Oreyara and Orthoc have him interact with the Platinum Mirror. Leading to him talking to his preincarnation, Sosorin's lover, his deceased sister, and an adult Tarusk.
• Visual Pun: Panic's redesigned outfit in episode 27 includes a pair of pants that have "thunder" written along the thighs in Infernal.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: Panic doesn't want the audience to see him hurl after he downs his final pint for the drinking contest, so he conjures the illusion of a fire-breathing dragon to hide himself.
  Task: Huh. Vomiturgy.
• The Unreveal: Regarding Lobo Slackjaw, leader of a ruthless monster hunting group called the Monsters Culling and The Heavy of a mini-arc between episodes 56 and 58. His race became a subject of inquiry among the fanbase, only to remain a question because he turns out to be a Miles Gloriosus who never faces the party directly.
• Verbal Tic: Each of the fragments of the shattered god has one of these, in some way related to their function: Lys echoes the last word he speaks unless he's lying; Ith speaks in alliteration when possible; Aos has an echo at the beginning of each of his lines, Kai speaks in rhymes, and Tio often says "no refunds" at the end of his statements.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Borky, wearing virtually nothing on his upper half, even while wearing more formal clothing.
• Wedding Episode: Episode 116 is dedicated to the wedding of Doros and Willow, and the epilogue is focused on Task and Winter's wedding.
• Wham Episode:
  • Episode 20: After Solly was taken by Stillhavity, the crew finally meets up with Lys, their mysterious helper who reveals themselves to be the fragment of a dead god, and forces the crew to relive parts of their past, giving us a look at all their backstories, as well as the past of Solly, before they are dropped off in the realm of Stillhavity.
  • Episode 61: Willow is revealed to be Elisabeth Eltmur, the last living member of the previous ruling family of Eltmur, it's also revealed that she is the one responsible for the Silver King's awakening, and subsequent killing of her family.
  • Episode 67: The United Clergy of Orun launches a surprise attack on the ship the Unexpectables were on, and due to their staggering numbers, end up beating them. Remy tries to allow himself to be taken as a hostage, in return for mercy, but the Clergy just throws everyone else overboard to sink
  • Episode 97: Bob reveals that both Orun and Omnimaw are dying and that their deaths would have far-reaching consequences in the world. With the United Clergy of Orun's slide into insanity being just one of the side effects. It's also established that Euphoria steals voices in an attempt to save Omnimaw's life, and the party finally meets her near a gate that leads to Omnimaw's realm.... which also showcases a second mouth growing out of her neck. Oh, and Tubbs is back too.
  • Episodes 112 to 114: Lys' very presence in Alivast is preventing Outsiders from returning to their home planes, meaning that they can become Deader than Dead in the material plane. Not only that, but Yugoloths were replacing officials in the government for a long while, including Stendin who died a year ago. We also finally know Lys's full name: Lysalivast.
  • Episode 118 Log steals the book that was used to make constructs and is heavily implied to have brought it to Winter and the Silver Kobolds to get it translated. During the night the entire Dragon Cult attacks the city of Alivast, with its numbers reaching the thousands, while in the middle of the invasion Task finds Darkus guarded by a pair of Ancient Dragons. The episode ends with a three-headed dragon, implied to be Insdroc, lands on the Attic and Task recognizes his blue head as the Dragon that killed his clan.
  • Episode 187: The party finally revives Lys. While conversing with the party Lys reveals The End, an evil fragment that's the false voice that the UCO listens to. When the party ends up returning home it turns out that months have passed and the UCO have already taken Alivast.
• Wham Line:
  • After having a tense but cordial meeting with Fleur De Mort, this question indicates that things are about to go downhill real quick.
  "Can you tell me what happened to my precious Ivan?"
  • Task, while interrogating a red dragon captured from an exchange with the dragon cult that's been plaguing Alivast, pries into the identity of Darkus, the dragonborn who triggered the death of his tribe. The dragon's response:
  "Ah, you speak of our cult's leader."
  • While speaking to Bob about Euphoria Grimtongue, who he recently met. He reveals that they actually have similar interests, and when asked to elaborate he drops this bombshell.
  We both wish to save a dying god.
  • In episode 135, as Solly explains what she learned during her trip to the Underdark, she reveals exactly what's been unsettling her since then.
  If Bob is the speaker, then who is talking to the speaker in Peraton?
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: While most sentient races are given their due respect. There have been two instances where the party had flat out killed and eaten Dragon children without much fuss being made of it.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Panic is reasonably upset with the rest of the party when they come back from their winter festivities and explain that a child was killed by a hag, albeit temporarily.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The series ends with the party giving notes on what they end up doing in the span of twenty years along with Monty listing off the fates of almost all noticeable NPCs. ^note The fates of Guest Players after Episode 200, including Borky (who was leading the Orkish defence of the Eastern border), were left unsaid.
• Why Did It Have To Be Birds?: As kobold hatchlings are often snatched up and devoured by birds and even adults are prey for larger flying monsters, Task is understandably leery of any flying creature. This is not helped by constantly ending up in situations where he's grabbed and carried away by said monsters.
• Whole-Plot Reference: After the second Merkz session, Monty reveals its events were loosely based on The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: Played straight and also inverted: the party discovers that various common items and materials, such as paper and clear glass, are extremely valuable in the Underdark Svirfneblin society, who have all the precious minerals they need but otherwise have to make do with what they can salvage from mushrooms and bug parts.
• Would Hit a Girl: In Tracadia, the party is attacked by a group of vampires, including one which has the form of a young woman (described consistently by the players as a little girl despite Monty's attempts to correct them) They unhesitatingly use the greatest available force to try to bring her down as quickly as possible.
• Wrecked Weapon:
  • Stillhavity destroys Task's original spear-bow out of spite.
  • Fleur de Mort, a fey creature, snaps Panic's sword Fey Slicer in half while the party are passing through his forest, though it gets repaired later on.
  • Borky's lightning spear shatters against a wall when he gets a critical fail while trying to attack some hellhounds.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Borky and his suplexes. Monty eventually has to settle on specific rules for wrestling moves.
• Written-In Absence: When one of the players is unavailable, the game usually runs a one-shot in a different setting. But when it happens on short notice, Monty will contrive an explanation for them to be out of the way for that episode. In episode 47, Greckles was pursuing a lead about Solly's whereabouts while the party was hunting the Eltmur terrorist cell, and in episode 51, Panic was suddenly called to see Scarlet at a musical recital.
• Wutai: The Eastern Isles that Greckles hails from. People who came to Alivast from there brought a slice of Japanese flair to the otherwise western-inspired setting.
• You All Meet in an Inn: A variation, Episode 1 opens with the party entering a tavern after completing their first job, and taking a break, before an elven woman comes in offering them their second job. However, in Episode 0 of the podcast it does seem that Task, Panic, and Greckles really did meet in that tavern (and found Borky working for John Fleetfinger a bit later). Later the party acquires their own tavern, and thus naturally meet many people in it.
• You Already Changed the Past: During the dragon attack on Alivast, Monty keeps having Task make rolls for actions he's not actually taking in that moment. Several sessions later, it turns out these were for actions taken by his time duplicate: himself, sent back in time to that same moment in order to save Winter.
• Your Head A-Splode: This is how Monty often describes death as a result of psychic damage.
• Your Heart's Desire: Stillhavity can discern a person's most beloved possession and what they most desire with little effort. His Eyes in particular disguise themselves as whatever the mortal seeing them most desires so they will pick it up. This allows him to establish a connection.
• Zero-Effort Boss: Pug is defeated by answering a question after two very difficult encounters (a wind elemental and a pair of Displacer Beasts).