Dimension 20: Season 21, Episode 7 - Stress Tested (2024)

Monday morning begins with the Bad Kids returning to Aguefort Adventuring Academy after the party at Seacaster Manor, moving through the halls already buzzing with gossip about the busted party, drugs, and the debate between Kipperlilly and Penelope over the student council election. As they settle in, the school's magical PA system calls all students to an emergency all-school assembly in the auditorium, cutting short any chance for the kids to regroup or quietly compare notes about Lucy Frostblade, the Rat Grinders, or the fallout from the night before.

In the auditorium, interim principal/administrator (filling the void left by Aguefort) takes the stage flanked by staff, and announces that due to "serious concerns" about discipline, safety, and contraband on campus, the school is instituting a new set of stricter rules. The administrator explains that magical security has been increased, that there will be new, routine checks for illicit substances, and that anyone found connected to drugs, cheating, or "subversive" behavior will face harsh consequences, including suspension or expulsion. The tone is hostile and punitive, and the Bad Kids realize the school is moving into a more authoritarian posture rather than addressing the real threat they've been tracking.

As the speech ends, a magical contraband scan rolls out over the crowd--some combination of spells, items, and faculty monitoring the students en masse. Students light up for detection as the system flags any who have recently used or carry illicit substances, causing tension and panic. The Bad Kids anxiously wait to see if anything from the Seacaster party will tag them, but none of them ping positive on the scan. Around them, other students are called out, embarrassed, or hauled aside, and in the chaos it becomes clearer that this crackdown connects directly back to the Rat Grinders' attack on the party: Ivy had tried to pressure Fabian into using snuff at the manor, and she was the one who supplied much of what ended up circulating among the partygoers, meaning the crackdown is landing hardest on kids she helped set up. The group also notes that Kipperlilly's flashy food-truck lunch for everyone--ostensibly a campaign stunt--now looks suspicious, potentially another vector for manipulation or influence.

As the assembly breaks and students are dismissed back to class under this new climate of fear, the Bad Kids regroup enough to compare quick impressions, confirming that this "discipline" push seems less about safety and more like another targeted move from or related to the Rat Grinders, further tightening control over the school. They carry that anxiety into the rest of the day as guidance counselors, teachers, and administrators begin rolling out the new academic rigor system: multi-phase, high-stress assessments that will define the rest of their junior year. The kids learn that these are not just simple tests--they're structured, repeated skill checks over weeks with accumulating consequences, and each of them will have to pick how they spend their limited time and energy between studying, jobs, relationships, and their investigation, with stress building as they push themselves.

The academic "downtime" framework is explained to them: each student will have to make recurring academic rolls in different subjects over the coming weeks, with penalties for low performance and rewards for success. Fig and Kristen, in particular, are warned that because of their academic standing and prior behavior, they are on a razor's edge--if they accrue five or more results below the minimum passing threshold on these rolls, they will face expulsion from Aguefort. This transforms their day-to-day routine into a kind of extended skill challenge, where every choice to take on more stress for a reroll or to spend time away from their studies has real stakes.

The kids then begin individual scenes where they choose how to allocate their time. Riz chooses to lean heavily into hardcore academics, determined both to maintain his standing and to keep his mind sharp for the investigation. He schedules study blocks, hits the library, and works methodically through his courses. When his first wave of academic checks comes up, Riz "speed runs" them: he rolls extremely well across the board, blowing through his tests and assignments almost mechanically. His methodical, obsessive approach pays off, and he walks away from the first phase with strong marks and little need to spend stress tokens, putting him in a secure academic position and freeing his mental bandwidth for detective work.

Adaine approaches things differently, focusing on balancing her responsibilities and gaining independence. Facing financial and personal pressure, she decides she needs to get a job in addition to keeping up with school, which will let her contribute and have some control over her own life. She spends downtime looking for opportunities around town and at student-friendly establishments. She eventually secures an interview or opportunity at Basrar's Soda Fountain, a local spot that is busy but welcoming, and she commits to trying to juggle shifts there with her academic obligations.

When Adaine's academic rolls come due, the strain of juggling a job search with her heavy course load shows. She makes her academic checks, and some of them come up middling or below where she'd like, threatening her grades. To compensate, she leans on her magical abilities: she uses her divination features to adjust rolls and taps into bardic support in the group to slightly boost key outcomes. This lets her salvage some rolls and avoid outright failure, but it does not convert her semester into an easy academic sweep; it keeps her afloat rather than letting her thrive. By the end of this sequence, Adaine successfully lands the job at Basrar's Soda Fountain, committing to that new responsibility, even as she recognizes that her academics will be more precarious and will require careful management going forward.

Gorgug's downtime centers on the crossroads between his Barbarian identity and his burgeoning interest in Artificer studies. He is faced with the prospect of taking on three years' worth of Artificer classes compressed into his junior year, on top of continuing his Barbarian track. He decides to go for it, committing to an intense schedule that, if he can survive it, will massively expand his skills. The cost is increased difficulty rolls and the introduction of stress tokens--mechanical representations of pushing himself to the brink--that he can choose to spend to reroll but which, if overused, will have consequences.

As Gorgug undertakes his first wave of academic rolls, he initially does very well. His first academic roll for Artificer or core study "hits it out of the park," earning him a strong result and showing that his intelligence and growing confidence are real assets. Emboldened, he moves into his second academic roll but encounters a bad result--a failure that threatens to undermine his plan. To recover, he opts to take a stress token, pushing himself harder to study, tinker, and cram, and then rerolls. This reroll comes up as a natural 1--an absolute disaster, signaling that the stress itself is destabilizing him and shattering his initial confidence.

Facing that setback, Gorgug has to decide whether to accept the bad outcome or push himself even harder. He decides to risk it, taking a second and last stress token for this session, despite knowing he cannot keep doing this repeatedly without consequences. He channels that pressure into an all-out effort, focusing intensely on his Artificer work, and he rerolls again. This time he rolls a natural 20, a critical success that not only reverses his fortunes for that check but grants him advantage on his third roll. With that advantage in place, his third academic roll also comes up a natural 20, signifying an incredible performance as he confronts the challenge of three years of Artificer coursework crammed alongside his junior year Barbarian classes.

The narrative then tallies the outcome of Gorgug's choices. Because of the double natural 20 sequence with advantage, he soars through his Artificer track, achieving outstanding results and making huge strides in that field. However, the focus and stress cost him in his original course of study, which suffers. When the grades settle, he ends up with a C in that original course--not a failure, but far from excellence. The important beat is that he passes overall, but the distribution of his success, and the stress he has taken on, shows the cost of throwing himself fully into Artificer without perfectly balancing the rest of his academics.

Kristen's scenes focus on her cleric work, her faith, and her relationship with her goddess Cassandra, who has been silent or absent since previous events. Troubled by this silence and needing clarity about what deity, if any, still answers her, she consults with her cleric teacher. In that meeting, the teacher lays out a demanding path forward: Kristen must complete rigorous theological essays and, more importantly, perform a genuine miracle to help manifest or reveal her goddess. This is framed as both academic and spiritual work--her grades in the class and her sense of divine connection are on the line--and the teacher makes it clear that this is how she will prove whether Cassandra remains with her or if something has fundamentally changed.

Kristen accepts this challenging assignment and claims dedicated time in a cleric prayer or practice room, a sacred space designed for communion and spellwork. Alone there, she begins her first serious attempt at reestablishing contact. Mechanically, this is represented by her taking her first cleric-related academic or faith check. She focuses, prays, and reaches out to the presence that once answered her so readily, calling on theology, ritual, and raw emotion. When she rolls, she lands on a middling result--not an outright failure, but not the clear, resounding success she craves.

Confronted with this ambiguous outcome, Kristen has to decide whether to accept a weak or partial success in her attempt to connect with Cassandra, or to push herself harder and risk the consequences. She chooses to take a stress token, mirroring the academic stress mechanics but in a spiritual context, representing her pushing her faith, mind, and body beyond what is comfortable to force a clearer answer. With that stress taken, she rerolls as she doubles down in the prayer room, calling out more intensely for her deity, demanding a sign, a voice, any confirmation that Cassandra is still present.

On the reroll, Kristen manages to channel some tangible divine energy. The exact nature and magnitude of the manifestation is not a full return of Cassandra as she once knew her, but it is enough to confirm that something still answers her call. This counts as a success for this stage of her theological and miraculous requirements, locking in a better outcome than her initial middling effort. She emerges from the experience exhausted and stressed but reassured that her work is not entirely in vain, while knowing she must continue both her essays and her miracle attempts over the coming weeks if she is to solidify her grades and her relationship with the divine.

Across these intercut scenes of Riz, Adaine, Gorgug, and Kristen, the episode frames the beginning of a long-term academic and emotional gauntlet for the Bad Kids: the new multi-phase dice-roll system anchors the rest of their junior year, with each of them now carrying stress tokens, academic consequences, jobs, divine obligations, and the knowledge that five or more bad academic results could expel Fig or Kristen. The school's crackdown, the Rat Grinder threat, and the mystery of Lucy Frostblade continue to loom in the background as they move forward into the rest of the year, but this episode's events close on the Bad Kids having made their first concrete, risky choices under the new system, setting their trajectories and establishing the stakes that will follow them through every future roll.

At the end of Stress Tested, the school week wraps up with the Bad Kids scattered in different corners of Hexside life: Gorgug barely but definitively passes his overloaded course load and locks in three grueling years of Artificer with Barbarian on top, Fig gets official approval to drop Bard and fully embrace Barbarian/Paladin with her record effectively wiped, Fabian becomes wildly popular as Seacaster Manor turns into the campus hot spot, and Riz quietly makes a chilling breakthrough in Lucy Frostblade's file: she tried to change gods, canceled it, and the god she once followed is now dead and redacted, deepening the central mystery around her death.

Now, in an expanded, step‑by‑step telling, here is how that ending unfolds, scene by scene, and where each character stands by the time the episode closes.

The episode has spent much of its time on a series of "stress tests" for the Bad Kids: academic rolls, social pressure, extracurriculars, all represented mechanically as downtime checks with the option to take on stress tokens to reroll. Those pressures steadily mount until we hit the series of final, defining rolls that close the episode.

SCENE: GORGUG'S FINAL ROLLS AND FATE

In the later part of the episode, the camera of the imagination settles on Gorgug Thistlespring at school, facing the reality of a punishing academic schedule. His focus is on an overloaded course decision that will define not only this year, but his remaining time at the school.

At the table, Gorgug makes his first big academic roll for his current course of study. He "hits it out of the park," meaning the die lands on a strong, successful result. The description is concrete: he succeeds solidly in that first check, and there is a sense that Gorgug's raw capability is not the issue; he can do the work when things line up for him.

Because this episode is built around the idea of pushing themselves under pressure, Gorgug chooses to take a stress token so he can roll again for an additional course load. He is literally choosing more strain and anxiety in exchange for the chance to chase a more ambitious outcome. That second roll goes catastrophically: he gets a natural 1, the worst possible result. In story terms, you see the immediate whiplash. One moment he is thriving, the next his attempt to shoulder even more work clearly backfires.

Instead of backing down, Gorgug pushes even harder. He spends his last available stress token to try again. This is his final gamble in this sequence--he cannot take more stress after this. The die swings in the opposite direction: he gets a natural 20. That critical success does more than just pass the check; it gives him advantage on the next related roll. He then rolls again and hits yet another natural 20 for his third check.

Mechanically and narratively, this sequence underlines that Gorgug's decision to double‑down yields extreme outcomes: a brutal low followed by extraordinary highs. Concretely, what this means at the end of the episode is laid out:

– He secures three full years of Artificer classes, locked in through the rest of junior year and beyond.
– On top of that, he is still on the Barbarian track, so his schedule is demanding and combat‑heavy.
– In terms of grades, he soars in Artificer--he excels in that area--but ends up with a C in his original course, the one he started in.

The key fate note here: by the time the scene and the episode end, Gorgug has officially passed. He is not failing out; he has cleared the bar. He will continue as both an Artificer and a Barbarian student, but with a record that shows uneven performance: one area of brilliance, another where he just barely hangs on with a mediocre grade. He walks out of this episode overworked, stressed, but academically secure and pointed toward an intense future path.

SCENE: FIG'S TRACK CHANGE AND NEW IDENTITY

Another key piece of the ending centers on Fig Faeth and her relationship to her academic track. She has spent much of Junior Year trying to balance her Bard past with her present Barbarian and her emerging Paladin side. In this episode, the resolution of that tension is formalized in a concrete administrative decision.

Fig meets with Professor Porter, the Barbarian professor. The conversation is administrative in framing but deeply character‑defining in its outcome. Porter reviews her situation: she has been Bard track, but her recent choices and class focus have leaned heavily into Barbarian and Warlock, with Paladin energy also emerging.

At the table, Brennan describes Porter as being supportive of Fig; he not only approves her desire to move fully into a more martial, faith‑tied identity but actively helps clear the bureaucratic obstacles. In practical terms, by the end of this interaction:

– Porter signs off on her doubling with Warlock. Fig is allowed to formally blend that pact magic with her martial focus.
– He also offers to claim, administratively, that she was never a Bard, effectively rewriting her official school record to say she has always been on Barbarian track.

This is not metaphorical in the fiction; it is literal paperwork and formal track designation. Fig's "fate" as of the end of this episode is that she is no longer bound by the Bard identity in the eyes of the institution. Her record is cleaned up. She is on Barbarian track, doubling with Warlock, and has her Paladin potential explicitly recognized and encouraged by a professor who is willing to bend the rules to support that path.

By the close of Stress Tested, Fig stands officially repositioned within the school: a Barbarian/Warlock with Paladin energy, her Bard history scrubbed from the formality of her academic record, even if not from her personal past.

SCENE: FABIAN'S RISING POPULARITY AND SOCIAL FATE

Another ending‑beat focuses on Fabian Seacaster's social role at school. Earlier in the season, he is already a known quantity, but this episode's mechanics around Charisma checks and stress tokens formalize a pivot into full social center.

Fabian gains a specific mechanical boon: advantage on the first Charisma check when meeting somebody new. That advantage is expressed narratively as a swell in his popularity and effectiveness in social situations. The result is concrete and described directly:

– His popularity skyrockets.
– Seacaster Manor becomes a major hangout, the "local hang spot" especially for the freshmen.
– His "study nights" at the manor turn into events where students gather, blending actual academic work with socializing.

By the end of the episode, the fate of Fabian in this micro‑arc is that he has successfully cemented himself as a social hub. The house is not just a background location; it is an active set piece for the year's social life. His mechanical advantage translates into a story status: Fabian defines a major part of the school's social ecosystem, particularly for younger students who treat him and his home as aspirational and cool.

He finishes Stress Tested not in crisis, but elevated: more popular, more socially powerful, his manor a recurring gathering point as the year continues.

SCENE: RIZ'S DISCOVERY IN LUCY FROSTBLADE'S FILE

The final, and tonally most important, piece of the ending belongs to Riz Gukgak and the deepening central mystery around Lucy Frostblade.

As the episode's barrage of downtime rolls, meetings, and social scenes begins to wind down, Riz stays in investigative mode. He is still working with paper, records, clues. He accesses or reviews paperwork tied to Lucy Frostblade, the girl whose death is the core mystery of the season.

He finds a specific set of documents:

– Lucy Frostblade submitted paperwork to change her god. This means she formally attempted to alter her divine allegiance.
– She also submitted paperwork canceling that change. There is a second, equally official reversal document. So there is a back‑and‑forth: an initial decision to switch gods, then a step back, documented in the school's or the relevant institution's files.

The crucial detail that Riz uncovers is in the content of that original change request. The paperwork lists a god, but on the copy he sees, that god's name is redacted. The reason for the redaction is not that it is sensitive for any ordinary bureaucratic reason: the god is dead. Because of that, the name is blacked out.

Riz also sees, or the scene conveys, that when he brings this to a relevant cleric professor--someone in the divine magic department--the professor's reaction is sharp and telling. The professor reacts strongly to the existence and meaning of the paperwork, but notably, not to the specific identity of the unnamed god, which is still hidden from them because of the redaction. That reaction communicates that the very fact of a dead god and canceled paperwork is deeply troubling within the context of the mystery.

By the end of this scene, and thus by the end of the episode, the fate state for Riz is that he holds a critical new clue:

– He now knows Lucy attempted to change gods and then reversed that decision.
– He knows the god she was tied up with is dead, powerful enough to have the name stricken from the record.
– He has directly observed a faculty member's uneasy or stunned reaction to the existence of this situation.

The narration makes clear: "the mystery of Lucy's death only deepens." Riz leaves the episode not with closure, but with a more complex puzzle, one that ties divine politics, dead gods, and Lucy's religious choices into the heart of the case.

SCENE: THE EPISODE'S CLOSING FEEL – EVERYONE'S POSITION

As these threads close, we can account for the main characters who are active in the ending stretch:

– Gorgug: Has officially passed his overloaded classes. He will move forward as an Artificer who did exceptionally well in that track, while carrying a C in his original course. His next three school years will involve Artificer and Barbarian classes at once, reflecting both his talents and the stress he has chosen to shoulder.
– Fig: Has her track formally altered. The Barbarian professor Porter has signed off on her Warlock doubling and offered to administratively erase her Bard past, declaring her always Barbarian track. She ends the episode academically and officially anchored in her newer, more martial and pact‑tied identity, with Paladin potential acknowledged.
– Fabian: Stands as a newly intensified social force. With advantage on first‑impression Charisma checks, his popularity surges. Seacaster Manor becomes the de facto hangout for the freshmen and broader student body; his "study nights" are now a major social fixture. He ends the episode riding a wave of acclaim and attention.
– Riz: Closes the episode in investigator mode, having unearthed the redacted, dead‑god‑related paperwork in Lucy Frostblade's file. He walks away with a new lead, no resolution, and a mystery that is wider and darker than before.

Kristen is involved earlier in the episode in cleric‑room checks and stress rolls, but the surviving summary material focuses on her mid‑episode sequence rather than giving her a distinct, separate closing fate beat. The highlighted end‑of‑episode arc is given mainly to Gorgug, Fig, Fabian, and Riz.

The last impression of Stress Tested is of a group of students who are outwardly advancing--passing courses, locking in tracks, gaining popularity--while beneath that surface, Riz's discovery reminds them and the audience that something is deeply wrong at the heart of the Lucy Frostblade case. The personal "stress tests" they just endured academically and socially are a prelude to far more dangerous tests ahead.

There is no post‑credits scene in Dimension 20: Fantasy High: Junior Year, episode 7, "Stress Tested."

Once the episode reaches its narrative end and the standard Dimension 20 outro finishes, there is no additional in‑character stinger, tag, or extra scene after the credits or at the very end of the runtime for this episode.

Fantasy High: Junior Year Episode 7 "Stress Tested" is not entirely family-friendly and contains several content warnings for sensitive viewers.

The episode includes the following potentially objectionable content:

Misophonia triggers featuring crunching and squishing sounds at multiple timestamps throughout the episode. These sounds may be distressing for individuals with misophonia, a condition involving sensitivity to specific noises.

Academic stress themes are present throughout, which could be upsetting for viewers who find school-related anxiety triggering.

The episode involves religious and theological content, including discussions of faith and doubt, which some families may want to preview depending on their beliefs.

The broader season contains additional content warnings for underage drinking and drug use, though the specific prevalence in this particular episode is not detailed in available information.

For families with young children or individuals with sensory sensitivities, particularly to sound-based triggers, this episode warrants parental review before viewing.