S2 Ep1 - The Grey Desert

Phantom Nirvana is a short-form Dungeons & Dragons live-play podcast packed with action, dark fantasy, and immersive storytelling. Follow the cast of players as they face eldritch mysteries, high-stakes quests, and perilous battles under the guidance of their Dungeon Master. With shorter episodes and a focus on intense moments, this series delivers a thrilling D&D adventure where every roll of the dice could lead to doom or glory. 

Music in this episode by: Sun Umbra, Turntrie and Sagey

Warning: Contains dark themes that may not be suitable for all audiences. Instagram @phantomnirvana
Email phantomnirvana@gmail.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:00 In the Museum
• 18:14 Arrival in the desert

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Close your eyes and open your mind. This is Phantom Nirvana, a Dungeons& Dragons podcast. Be advised, this story contains dark themes that may not be suitable for some audiences. And now we present Phantom Nirvana.

UNKNOWN: 0:19

Phantom Nirvana

SPEAKER_03: 0:44

What you are

SPEAKER_00: 0:45

about to hear is the seven of us playing Dungeons and Dragons. Most of this is improvised. Please enjoy the story. This is Season 2, Episode 1, The Gray Desert. You stand together in the Museo de Prado. You're standing in front of the painting, and you're watching it crumble to sand. You're shoulder to shoulder just as you were before. You breathe heavily. Your eyes follow the sand as it spreads thinly across the floor before you. It is matte gray. There is a sun stain on the wall in the shape of the painting. One day in the summer of 1998, you all walked out of the convenience store Axel had purchased ice cream for the group and you laughed together as you unwrapped the cones and popsicles and strolled around the side of the building. You all paused and looked at the poster tacked to the wall outside. There was a missing girl. Her name was Rachel. You remember her from band. She played flute. The poster had been there all summer and they hadn't found her and you wondered if they ever would. Some people said she drowned in the river or was kidnapped. or that she ran away. Some kids said she was abducted by aliens. Whatever happened to her, it wasn't good. After a moment, Lucas reached up and pulled down the poster and crumpled it up and threw it in the dumpster. Rachel was gone. You blink and come back to the museum and look around and several other paintings in the gallery have crumbled to sand. The lighting is strange. There is other structural damage to the walls. The floor is cracked and uneven. It's like an earthquake has hit the museum. There's a tepid closeness to the air. You wear the same clothes you wore to the museum, the same clothes you wore to the funeral. Mal, you still clutch the crystal, and Marcus, you pat your pocket and feel the kazoo. You look around at each other, and then back at the room. There are two exits to this gallery room. One you recall leads back towards the entrance of the museum. You hear the sound of a ticking clock, but there's something off about it. It's too slow. Your brain anticipates the next tick, but it comes half a beat later, startling you. Is everybody okay? Where are we? Back in the museum, but it looks like, I don't know, wherever we were, and this crumbling dust is infiltrating the real world. See, that'll happen when you take LSD. Just pop a multivitamin. That'll help out. I really want to do that again, though. I haven't seen that much fire since, like, Woodstock 1999. That was crazy. Is this real? Is this back to the real world? What? Listen, you guys, this has been great. This has been good. I think I'm going to head out, though. Axel starts walking towards the exit. Let's get out of here. I'm going to. We're leaving? Have there been any windows up to this point? No. Where are you going to go? To my dog. It seemed like... lucas said it was somehow up to us to save the world or something and we failed the last time and there would be another chance but no you're out he gave me the box with the drugs in it i mean that was a pretty wild trip but you know i there's no more it's empty there's no more of it Mal's going to start walking down the walls to any framed paintings that are still there that aren't checking them out, like putting her hands up against the paintings. As you touch the first one, your hand sort of smooshes against the canvas, and it gives way a little bit, and you can feel that your fingers sink into it like Play-Doh. Come over here. Check this out. The painting that you happen to be touching is of two... Giants locked in combat. They're standing over a village.

SPEAKER_03: 5:34

Did anyone come to see? Can I show

SPEAKER_00: 5:36

you? Yeah, I think we all come together. Yeah, I think Axel turned around and he's kind of like, hey, that's wild. Are we still high or was that all real? This feels pretty fucking real, Axel. Yeah, usually it does. But it's been a few days and usually most things are over by now. He's kind of like fidgeting and panicking a little bit. I don't think any of us knew where we've been, but we're not back. We're back, but we're not back. That's the question, I think. This is either some sort of in-between space, or this is the new back. When we were in the other place, and we were looking for the entrance to the temple in the woods, we couldn't find the entrance, and then I just felt it. Like I could sense it. Try doing that again. Okay. I cast Detect Magic. At that moment where you would feel the spell kick off, nothing happens. You have the same sense of the room around you that you normally would. Nothing. I got nothing. What about you, Mal? Can you do that thing that you've been doing?

SPEAKER_01: 6:47

Mal grabs her rock and holds it

SPEAKER_03: 6:50

out in front of her and thinks

SPEAKER_00: 6:52

eldritch thoughts. Sure enough, nothing happens. When you hold it out and pose just so, it just is a rock in your hands, a crystal in your hands. Meanwhile, Mal has been continuing to go painting to painting, looking to see if there's a painting that's peaceful. They all seem pretty gruesome, right? Yeah, in this particular room, most of it is pretty rough stuff. There's scenes of gore, fantasy violence. Which gallery had the landscapes? I think one of the other rooms probably had the landscapes, yeah. Some of the paintings in this room have crumbled to sand, just like yours. Not all of them. There's probably three or four in this room that still are intact. Is there anything about those that we can see that's in common amongst them? Yeah, they're all oil paintings. They're all going to be 16th century. You've got one that depicts a battle between a group of sea gods, aquatic creatures battling in the surf. I put my hand up against the ocean. You touch it and it feels cold, but it's that same Play-Doh sort of smoosh as you press your hand into it. You're seeing another one that depicts, looks like there are some hags. They are battling with a man with a short sword, maybe casting a spell. One of them's pleading for their lives. There's some ghosts in the background, ghostly figures. Marcus sits on the floor back against the wall in a corner or somewhere and just, head in his hands, does not. Axel's furiously trying to turn into an animal, a cat. Just standing there, just... You know, and really hard. Yeah, it's not happening. Unfortunately, the spells you were able to cast in the fantasy world are not working here. You're all kind of doing your own thing. And after a little while, you are startled because standing in the doorway is a pair of figures. They are humanoid figures. They're hunched. And they're facing away from you, looking out of the doorway. And very slowly, they turn toward you. And they have no faces. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Just featureless ovals on their heads. Nope. I know a couple things. Hunched isn't good. Facing away from you, not good. No faces, really not good. And you're sort of spread out throughout this room exploring or sitting in the case of Marcus. And you see this and they start to shuffle towards the nearest person, which happens to be Axel. Hello? No answer. I'm going to reach out and grab Axel by the arm and pull him away. I'm Sir Axelson, shorts wearer. Who might you be? And as you pull him away, they continue to shuffle at the same slow pace across the room. One of them moving now towards Sam. Sam is wasting no time backing up away from this. If you're all backing away from them, they sort of move you towards the other opening in the room. Was that the one? It was the one towards the entrance. Oh, okay. Can Marcus try to fire his short bow at one of them? You reach for it and it's not there. Must be a Monday. And now you're all sort of crowded around the opening to the next room and they're moving towards you past the broken benches, past the cracked floor.

SPEAKER_03: 10:51

Yeah, can we get the fuck out

SPEAKER_00: 10:52

of here? I think it's time to get out of here. It's time to run. So you move to the next room. It is portraits. A room of portraits. And you kind of look around. Look for what was an opening to... the metal detector to get out of the museum, but is now gone. And it is just another arched doorway into another room of paintings. And these creatures, these humanoid creatures continue to shuffle through the doorway towards you as you move through. You can see in this room that several of the paintings have crumbled to sand as well. And as you turn around, there is another figure standing there. It is a humanoid figure dressed like a nurse, very obese, large, a lot of grease on the chest. It's a female figure wearing a paper bag that has a first aid symbol drawn on it with what looks like red paint or blood. It's over this individual's head. and its arms are blackened. It looks like they've been stuck into a fire, and this thing extends its arms towards you and begins to shuffle towards you. The feet are looking like they've been cut. The ankles are cut and bloody, and there's trails of blood as this thing moves towards you. These faceless figures continuing to shuffle, corralling you towards the next opening and the next doorway and the next room.

SPEAKER_03: 12:33

My thought is a portrait is never going to be too crowded. What do you think?

SPEAKER_00: 12:36

Sure. And I like our odds better where I knew how to fight and y'all had powers than this nightmare, whatever this is.

SPEAKER_03: 12:48

So we want to take a look at the portraits that are right around us.

SPEAKER_00: 12:51

Okay. You're moving towards a portrait. This is sort of an abstract style portrait. You can see that the face is broken into different geometric shapes. Nope, I think we want realism. Okay, you move quickly towards a painting that depicts an older man. He's wearing sort of like a soft cap.

SPEAKER_03: 13:14

How about this? Do we have one of those like, you know, a rich lady covered in jewels with like drapery and stuff? Anything like that up in here?

SPEAKER_00: 13:21

Yeah, I think you look around and you're seeing something more Renaissance, like a woman in a poofy dress sitting in a parlor. There's food stacked around and she's got, she's sort of a little portly and she's smiling in a funny way. She looks happy. Let's go. So you run towards the painting and you, what, press your hands up against it?

SPEAKER_03: 13:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 13:47

You get that same Play-Doh feeling. You push through. Axel jumps in head first. Okay. You jam your head through this painting and you are able to see this inky blackness and stars and this universe around you. It is as if you are suddenly poking your head out of a spaceship or something.

SPEAKER_03: 14:10

And my one arm is there?

SPEAKER_00: 14:12

Yeah, right, and the arm is there to your right, wiggling fingers. It feels cold, the dead cold of space. What part of me is still outside of the painting? The rest of your body. Probably only your head is through. Okay. He's like his arms are pull him out. I'll grab him by the back of the collar and yank him. OK, as you pull him out. you see an arm extend after him out of the painting. It reaches out and it sort of claws its way down and around and grips the frame. And then another arm comes out and around and grips the other frame and pulls through and a leg and another leg. And it's that same arm and leg creature crawling out of the painting that you just stuck your head through. And it starts to writhe its way out. This hairy center rolls rolling out and thumping down onto the ground in front of you there. This nurse, this wretched nurse creature is sort of shuffling towards you, these faceless things. They're corralling you towards the opening, the next room. Guys, run. Run. We're gone. Josh runs. I've never put my head in a worse thing. That was awful. The next room are abstract paintings. And there are several of them that depict people on stilts that are walking through deserts and people who are dangling from ropes. And you're looking around for something that looks normal, I guess. Maybe something that might be safe. What were you looking for, Mal? Habitable, I think. Navigatable, yeah. And you come across a fairly barren landscape of a... Desert, The Oasis in the Desert by Antal Ligeti, 1862. Mark his points and says that one. And all of these creatures, these faceless, these facelings, this nurse, the arm and leg monster, they are corralling you towards this one piece of art. All of you there standing backed into the corner around this one desert painting.

SPEAKER_03: 16:29

Mal's going to do the same she did with the portrait and just press a hand through.

SPEAKER_00: 16:32

There is an ease to how it opens. It opens much simpler. There's a warmth, and as you press It's as if you can feel the wind of the desert on your skin and your hair, your arm as you push through. Marcus just walks through. He pushes his way through. All of you are entering. Axel goes in feet first this time, horrified of what he saw. Okay. What about Josh? Josh, after seeing Axel go through, goes through feet first too.

SPEAKER_02: 17:07

And

SPEAKER_00: 17:10

Sam's going to follow with his hand on Josh's shoulder and checking to make sure Mal's coming as well. You're tumbling in. Upon entering the painting, you are rolling now through your own minds, flashing on distant memories of desert scenes in your own lives. A band trip to Palm Springs by bus. The bus broke down in the Mojave Desert and the kids had to kill time in a place called Joshua Tree. Walking through a little spiritualism store together. Little indigenous items there on shelves. smelling the burning incense and seeing dream catchers and tapestries and candles floating around you, little carved statues of faceless mother and child in an artful embrace. Stepping back outside the shop and feeling the intense blanket of heat from the sun, you tumble suddenly into a new reality.

SPEAKER_03: 18:11

You

SPEAKER_00: 18:13

open your eyes. All around you are long rolling dunes of endless gray sand. There are several rock outcroppings. The sand all around you, it's matte in color. Dunes and distant hills. There is an occasional breeze that blows gouts of curling sand into the air. You see as you look around the occasional burnt out tree, dead and limbless. The bark blackened, they stand as strange sculptures dotting the landscape. The smell is clean with a faint sourness. Something far away is rotting. You look around at each other and realize that you have been transported back to that other realm. Remembering what it felt like to inhabit this body, you look at yourselves and you are once again your fantasy characters. Yeah, you stand in a semicircle and take each other in. You wear the same simple clothes from before, but you seem to have several items on your person from before. Now, briefly, can you just describe what you each see as you look around to each other? And let me know if anything has changed about your physicality. Let's start this time going the other way with Mal. All right. Mal is a tall, lean person. Pixie haircut, half drow, gray skin, pointy ears with a very deadly dagger. Thank you very much. And a chunk of amethyst as a focus item. Ready to party. What about Sam? Sam Campbell. Sam looks familiar to his fantasy self that you've been spending the last several days with, which is very close to real world Sam Campbell, brown hair, a little bit thinner. His, his gut a little, a little bit, a little bit wider and his face a little, just a little bit more wrinkled. Okay. A little bit around the eyes. You think Sam burns in the sun? Oh, absolutely. Okay. Okay. Cause you're feeling the sun. I mean, there is, there is warmth. There is heat. It is all around you beating down on you. How about Axel Reagan? What is Axel looking like? Well, Axel is very much the same as he was before. Very small, very silver-haired, wearing incredible jorts. I think he puts the hood of the cloak on to mask himself from the sun almost immediately out of, you know, reflex. He's used to this climate. Okay. And Marcus Burkett, Kevin? Marcus in the fantasy realm is about six foot. Youthful half-elf. Black hair, a little bit of gray in it, and Marcus looks tired, depressed. How about Josh? Josh is just over like four feet tall. He's got shaved, stubbly hair, a patchy, terrible beard, and a just a nose that's been broken too many times, a scar over his left eye, and a solid pot belly. Like, you know, when you know it's a beer belly, it's one of those. It's just like, you know, a solid tank of a stomach. It's a round sort of a globe of a tum. You could balance your cup

SPEAKER_03: 21:58

on it. Yeah. Yes,

SPEAKER_00: 22:00

you could. Okay, so you're all there. In the desert, you're looking around and you see two things. First off, you see that in the distance is what looks like an oasis with palm trees. And it is settled beside a large outcropping of rocks. And there is what looks like a caravan. There are tents in varying sizes. Some are little huts and others are as large as circus tents. And it's somewhat obscured by the billowing trees. blowing sand. The other thing that you see as you're glancing around at your feet is that at the center of the group you see something tan and smooth buried in the sand. Hey, what is that? I cast Detect Magic. And boom! That thing fires off. You can see the waves of magical energy emanate from you in a very pleasing way. Does

SPEAKER_03: 23:04

detect magic make things light up?

SPEAKER_00: 23:07

Yeah, let's say it does. I like that. It makes things light up. So let's see. Probably the flail of Inogu would light up on Sam's body. You're holding that. If you sense magic, you see a faint aura around any visible creature or object in the area that bears magic. Yeah. But only you see it.

UNKNOWN: 23:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 23:26

That is true. He would also see what? The amethyst would probably glow. Mal's amethyst. Whatever this is that's partially buried under the sand is not glowing. And I don't think the range is enough to hit the caravan. That's pretty far out there. The thing is the sand doesn't glow? It does not, no. What about Josh's hands? Do those glow? Yeah, because they've got what? You put those in your pockets, you could be arrested for carrying concealed weapons.

UNKNOWN: 23:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 23:57

What is it? Just because they're so awesome? They're just so powerful. Are you saying that Josh has magic fingers? I don't think they glow, no. Oh, darn it. All right, so Marcus is, well, it's not magic, but that is, and that is, and I think whatever powers I had in the other place are back, so... No way. Axel turns into a camel. What does it look like when you pop into a camel? Like, is it just you pop and suddenly you're a camel? Yeah, I think what we did last time was it makes like a like like I just instantly right into it. Okay, look up the stat block for a camel in 5e while we're doing this. Is it a white camel? Yeah, I'm assuming it's white. Yeah, you know, we got to keep that canon, right? Okay, you're a camel. Everyone reacts to this how? I think timing wise, Mal was on her way down to like observe the object just as this happened. So just saw the shadow shift from little Axel shadow to great big camel shadow. Love that. that's great what noise do camels make right

SPEAKER_03: 25:24

okay okay

SPEAKER_00: 25:24

all

SPEAKER_03: 25:28

right all right

SPEAKER_00: 25:29

this is actually a common joke in my family so my my mom's from egypt and so like we're egyptian and so we talked about that and the sound that camels make are you ready it's

SPEAKER_02: 25:40

what

SPEAKER_00: 25:41

yeah is that for real Look it up. They go. Wow. They've got this weird tongue bladder thing that they inflate to try to intimidate or it's a mating thing. But they're weird, disgusting aliens. They are the weirdest. OK, Reagan, let's hear your best camel. Oh, gosh, I wasn't expecting this. Yeah, you were. You dirty dog. You wanted to be a camel. So let's hear it. Give it to me one more time. What does it sound like? It's roughly like a lot of tongue and a lot of growl.

SPEAKER_03: 26:22

Perfect.

SPEAKER_00: 26:23

That is actually perfect. That is actually perfect. Josh thinks it's adorable and goes and starts petting Axel's neck. Yeah, he has to jump a little each time he does it. Are you a one hump or two? Is there a difference between a dromedary and a camel? I don't know. One hump, for sure. Axel's a one hump guy. Okay. Two might be more fun. We could settle down in there between the humps. But, you know, to each his own. I don't know how they'd do it. Mal kneels down and knocks on the thing on the ground. What does it sound like? It makes sort of a hollow thump sound. Like maybe a tonk tonk sort of sound. And she hits it. Some of the grayish sand sort of slides off of it. and reveals more of it. And you can see that there is another of these ovules that is under the sand, right next to the first one. Marcus walks up and steps on one. It crunches like what it is, which is an egg. You jam your heel down into this thing, and it gooshes underneath your boot. And you've got this runny yoke and viscous white all over your shoe as you draw it out. And all around you, the sand starts to billow like air is being released from beneath the sand. And out from beneath the sand come curling and whirling these large... Fire-like creatures. They spin and swirl up, and they stand all around you. There are three of them, these. They look like snakes. They're, like, on fire, though. You can see that their heads, and they've got these big whiskers. They have, like, these big flaming whiskers that come off of their faces. And these snake-like bodies. And you are now in combat with these three beasts. fire snakes, and I would like for you to roll initiative. Oh my god. Axel is a freaked out camel. There won't be that much combat this time.

UNKNOWN: 28:40

Play with the way I got to.

SPEAKER_00: 30:34

Thank you for listening to this episode