#c2e81

Caleb: “My old teacher.”

Jester: “Wow. That would be really cool. I don't know if it's really his style, but...”

Caleb: “It will be soon. I can't let what happened in here be for nothing. It's time for him to be silenced.”

For anyone that watched episode 129 and didn’t know what Caleb was talking about when he had Jester help him fix the collar, and said he wanted to use it on Trent: not the first time they went into the HFB, but the second time, when they went in to rescue Yussa, one of the HFB’s mage hunter golems slapped a collar on Caleb after it chased them from The Garden into The Tower Machine (episode 81: “From Door to Door”). The golem already had a 60 ft. cone anti-magic gaze that was causing the party plenty of grief, but then this collar, once applied, completely silenced Caleb. He couldn’t talk at all, and therefore could not cast spells (at least, not ones with verbal components), even when he wasn’t within the gaze.

After they managed to get away from the golem (Cad using Command and saying “OFF,” and it failing its save 2 rounds in a row, thank the gods), Nott (according to Matt) just barely met the DC to pick the lock on the collar, with a total of 25.

This is important context if Caleb really does plan to silence Trent. I think this would be clutch in a combat scenario, and would absolutely turn the fight in their favor, but it’s no long-term solution, as it is possible to remove it with a high but not unreasonable lockpicking check. Then again, I don’t know if the work he’s done on it now just brought it back into working condition after it was disabled the last time it was removed, or if he’s made alterations to it to make it more permanent or powerful. He did say he’s been working on it for a while. When I watched the episode though, and he said he planned to “silence” Trent, I got the sense that his goal may be to render him powerless forever, rather than kill him. That would be a nice🖕since Trent actually wants Caleb to kill him, but I’m not sure how the collar would achieve that if it is possible to have it removed. I can only really see how it would be used to temporarily weaken him before dealing a killing blow, and even that relies on the assumption that high-level mages still have to speak in order to cast, which may not be true (I will be so sad for Liam if it turns out Trent can cast silently). I guess we will see!

Beau, newly equipped with Headband of Intellect: Would Frumpkin like it? Would Frumpkin get jealous?

Caleb: No, it's not a cat.

Beau: Can you build something better than Frumpkin?