Taz Royale ep 26: nothing happens again

this one's an interlude, which means the next one’s also an interlude, so we need to wait 4 more weeks until the story starts again. This episode potentially has something going for it, as it's very likely that the party will finally decide to work against the Octave.

• The episode opens with Justin making a bad joke about how they specialize in e-joke-cation, which then turns into a discussion about them getting bad reviews from TV Guide.
• We get the usual closing ceremony.
• The octave expresses confusion at the fact that they worked as a team despite the fact that they had a team-based trial , almost always had a ban on violence, and this trial punishes you for killing people.  
• They all get gold cubes.
• And here are the interruptions  
• Lorovith tells the octave that he hasn’t enjoyed the trials and Griffin cals an insight check, but Justin fails.
• So instead lor asks "why is it so important to you that we fight”.
• So the octave explains the point of the competition again.  
• Lor responds by asking how non-cooperation and infighting would prove them worthy. Another insight check, and they succeed and learn this comment apparently catches the octave off guard, justin responds the line “seven of you sharing godlike power, how do you ever keep the peace”, Griffin reminds him that there are actualy eight members, but for some resion he likes that line more and doesn't let Justin change it.
• Ricktus adds that he also didn’t enjoy the trial, then asks which member of the octave is leaving, but the octave refuses to answer.
• Griffin calls an insight check to remember how often conclaves take place (which should be a history check) and recalls that conclaves happen once every few generations. Griffin implies that it happening so infrequently is weird for some resign.
• Hellgrammit tries to use Thri-kreen telepathy to contact the Thri-kreen octave member set, but it doesn’t work, and Griffin treats this as if it's a mystery when it is not. Set is a god, he’d have protection spells that mortals can’t cast up at all times, not to mention the fact that Griffin directly states Thri-kreen Telepathy requires a willing target.
• After the questions, Rictus sets up a meeting with the remaining aspirants.
• The meeting technically starts, but they waste time before the ad joking about pizza rolls.
• The meeting actually starts, and ricktus asks Hell to cast leomund's tiny hut to stop magic spies.
• Now, the octave should be keeping a close eye on the aspirants at this point, and if all of their spying spells went offline, they’d immediately go looking for them, and they are gods; they should be able to overpower a 3rd-level spell, especially one they willingly let a participant have.
• Ricktus explains his motivations: he wanted to win the conclave so he could be an example of good necromancy so that his son doesn’t have to grow up with the stigma that all necromancers are evil, but he no longer believes that he can finish these trials and “be good”.
• Now there’s a lot to unpack here. Killing each other was always a known part of the conclave; it was literally Lorovith's core motivation. Ricktus would have already known he would have to kill people to win. Maybe Travis is trying to do something where Ricktus’ noble motivations were broken by reality, but we didn’t get a moment like that from the last trial.
• Rick continues by describing his discussion with death and claims that during that discussion, he realized that extending your life and raising the dead are evil necromancy. Notably, that’s basically everything necromancy can do, meaning Ricktus believes necromancy is inherently evil.
• So, supposedly, Rick’s arc about his connection to necromancy was: he joins the conclave to disprove the belief that necromancers (who are normal people born with necrotic powers) are inherently evil, he then meets a god who tells him necromancy is inherently evil, then Rick immediately agrees to kill his entire extended family for the sin of using necromancy without knowing a god didn’t want that.
• What the actual fuck
• Lor and Skorpo ask Rick to get on with explaining the plan.
• Rick explains that he has a theory that the octave are harvesting their spells.
• Ricktus then asks the group if they have any thoughts.
• Lorovith cals out Ricktus by asking what kind of contest he thought he was entering.
• Ricktus explains he thought the conclave would sort out the best of them, but it actually finds the most ruthless, and that he hates the person he became to get this far. Even saying he believes he’s just as bad as the gentleman.
• I’m not even going to bother breaking this down. None of the character arcs Travis has been describing in this episode actually happened.
• Hell adds that while “he has had similar thoughts, but the reality is that they either win and become a demi god or die,” and Justin makes an insight check to find how everyone reacted to hell saying "become a demi god" but nothing comes of it.
• Ricktus asks the group if any of them wants to win for the power, and no one does
• They joke for a bit about Doober being the best candidate to become a demi-god, but for some reason, Griffin doesn’t have Doober join in.
• Skorpo reveals he joined the conclave to prevent the wrong type of person from winning, and Hell realizes Skorpo is talking about him.
• Hell uses his toothbrush of truth to prove to Skorpo that he has reformed.
• The meeting ends without the party making any actual plans to reject the octave.
• Lorovith goes to the library to read up on illusion magic since that is the next trial.
• Justin and Griffin establish that Lorovith’s obvious native-coded people share knowledge through oral tradition, so Lor isn’t familiar with studying with text.
• Griffin gives a pretty basic description of illusion magic, and planly states that this one study session has been more effective than anything Lor could get from his peoples oral teaching. That is not at all accurate. Oral teaching is a fundamental and effective part of education; we even have an entire career based on it called “educators.”

This episode was uniquely bad, unlike previous episodes, which were bad due to Griffin’s awful storytelling; this one is bad due to Travis’ awful storytelling. Most of this episode was Travis gaslighting the audience into thinking Rick had an arc, even though he never changed. Despite that, Griffin isn’t getting off for free, the implication that the conclave has never had participants team up is insane. However, Justin and Clint’s role play was pretty good this episode , but they were surrounded by horrible storytelling, so they couldn’t have any good scenes.