COUNTER/Weight 0.4: New Perspectives
Transcriber: Iris (sacredwhim)
[music intro - “The Long Way Around” by Jack de Quidt begins]
Austin (as Cash): Listen. McLeod was kind of a piece of shit, but between us, none of this would have happened if it wasn’t for the debt. McLeod got in heavy. Lot of places, but here, too, with the Ithikos, and so McLeod became another one of the assets for the family. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have Coffee, I’m sayin’... McLeod wasn’t killed in some random fight. McLeod was going after Coffee.
Keith (as Mako): What’s the debt from?
Austin (as Cash): The gambling.
Keith (as Mako): Just gambling?
Austin (as Cash): [sighs]
Keith (as Mako): I mean, I get it.
-
Jack (as AuDy): Hello.
Ali (as Aria): Hi.
Austin: There’s an alarm behind AuDy.
Ali (as Aria): Are you okay?
Jack (as AuDy): The alarm has been raised. Meet me in the security room.
Ali (as Aria): W–which security room?
Austin (as Guard): Get on the ground and we won’t throw another one!
Jack: The thing that I am gonna try and do is a, you know, moment of sudden rapid violence.
Austin: Mhm.
-
Ali (as Aria): I’m gonna save you.
Austin (as Coffee): Do you have it? Did you get it?
Ali (as Aria): Um…
Austin (as Coffee): I think—I think McLeod had it. I don’t know where he put it, but you gotta get it. It’s dangerous.
Ali (as Aria): [hesitant] Orth sent me…?
Austin (as Coffee): Orth? You don’t have it.
Ali (as Aria): What?
Austin (as Coffee): You got arrested. Oh my god.
Ali (as Aria): Well, to find you. There’s a whole team. No, don’t be scared.
Austin (as Coffee): They’re not gonna let me out of here unless I give it to them, but I don’t have it.
Ali (as Aria): What’s “it”?
Austin (as Coffee): The KardSharq [pronounced like “card shark”]. You don’t know anything.
[music intro - “The Long Way Around” by Jack de Quidt ends]
[1:45]
Austin: Let’s start with a recap.
Ali: Hi.
Jack: Hello.
Art: Oh, wait, Austin, real quick, can you tell me what your Roll20 hours played is?
Austin: Oh, yeah, I’ve done that before, haven’t I? It’s like, ridiculous.
Art: Not with me you haven’t.
Austin: 5695.
Keith: Wow.
Ali: Wow.
Art: Holy crap. Yeah, wow.
Keith: Yeah, we noticed this during the Slow Knife recording that me, Art, Dre, and Sylvi all have wildly different hours played.
Jack: Oh.
Austin: Well, Dre just keeps it open.
Keith: Yes, that’s why Dre’s is 3000.
Austin: Yeah. Uh-huh.
Ali: Oh.
[Jack laughs]
Ali: Wait, how do we do this again?
Keith: Sylvi’s is like 2300, mine is 1400, and Art’s was 700.
Art: 706, yeah.
Austin: Yeah, if you just go to Roll20.net, in the top right, if you’re logged in, it’ll say “member since blank, hours played.”
Ali: I’m 2280.
Austin: Yeah. That makes sense.
Keith: Wow.
Jack: I’m 795.
Keith: Yeah, I think these are closer to reality. The 700s.
Art: Yeah, that Jack and I are about the same feels a little more…
Austin: That’s wild.
Keith: People who are diligently closing their web browser.
[Ali laughs]
Austin: I’m closing my shit all the time.
Jack: You’re exempt. You’re just in it all the time, yeah.
Austin: But it’s just that I’m in every game that we record.
Ali: Yeah.
Art: Yeah, you’re in every game, and you have to do prep often in the thing.
Austin: I have to do prep, yeah, yeah.
Ali: Right, I’ve done prep for stuff too, so that’s…
Austin: So that’s a little extra, yeah. Yeah. It’ll get you.
Ali: Weird. Anyway.
Austin: I wonder if it counts if you’re just, like, fucking around on Roll20. Like, if I’m looking at their marketplaces, is that counting?
Jack: No, I think you gotta be in a game—in a game window.
Austin: You better have to be in a game. I don’t want it to count if I’m like, “Ooh, are these tokens I could use?”
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Because they’re not. They’re never tokens I could use. That’s not what we do here, really.
Jack: [chuckles] Oh, well, sometimes you put down, like, birds and shit. Well, you use tokens for a joke. [chuckles] Exclusively.
Austin: Right, that’s right. Exactly, exactly. So, a little mystery recap before we really get into it. What are y’all doing here?
Art: Mystery recap.
Jack: Okay, I’m gonna give the top level of the mystery because it’s the bit I feel confident about.
Austin: Sounds good, Jack.
Jack: I’m out here writing the chapter headings and I’m gonna abandon the responsibility of the actual content of the text to others. The Chime has been hired by Orth Godlove to travel to the Sill, a former sort of diplomatic neutral zone meeting place turned pseudo-pleasure district and casino, to clear up a little crisis that the CCT is having. Coffee Affogato, their person inside the Sill, has been, like, imprisoned by the Ithikos family as a result of, I believe, having killed somebody called Cameron McLeod.
Austin: That’s right.
Jack: Coffee has been arrested for this. The Chime shows up and instead of dealing with the complex travel—Tourist’s Union [Austin: Uh-huh.] to get through a gate that opens quickly, develops what will become one of their signature strategies, and just breaks into the place.
Austin: That’s right.
Jack: Splitting—
[Ali chuckles]
Ali: We walked through a door.
Art: I think they call that a callback. I think that’s a callback.
Austin: Mhm, mhm.
Jack: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Ali laughs]
Jack: We sort of walked through a door. Sort of. Aria met a fan, and it didn’t go well. AuDy intimidated a stack of various guards with various success. Cass and Mako went in and met up with a sort of, like, a bar owner to get additional detail on the events.
Austin: That’s close, but not quite right. Cass and Mako met with Hunter Cash, who was an ex-boxer, a kind of, like, prize fighter, who is in debt to the Ithikos family and working as a sort of tough for the family.
Jack: Right.
Austin: But who also has an established relationship with Cass. Both of them are Apostolosian. Gestured at maybe knew each other in the war, but maybe I’m misremembering that, Art.
Art: We certainly gestured to it.
Austin: Yeah, okay, good.
Art: Decide what you think is true at home.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have the sympathetic tag with Hunter.
[Ali chuckles]
Keith: I remember it being gestured.
Austin: Yeah. Mhm.
Art: They don’t come back, so.
Austin: Right. Yeah, they sure don’t.
Jack: Aria played casino games and then [chuckles] sort of got involved in a fracas at about the same time AuDy got involved in a fracas.
Austin: Oh, you’re skipping a thing AuDy did first.
Jack: AuDy broke into the back of the cas—
Austin: Prior.
Jack: Oh, AuDy went and spoke with someone at Club Stealheart—
Austin: That’s right, Twotwo.
Jack: Their name is Twotwo.
Austin: Club Stealheart Unit 22, aka Twotwo, who told them, who gave them access to something, or let you look at them, maybe.
Jack: What did I have? I had like, records of…
Austin: They are incriminating logs that Coffee had given to Twotwo for safekeeping.
Jack: And these logs were incriminating in what way?
Austin: They suggested—there’s kind of multiple levels of it, if I recall the way that we ended up playing that out. The—partly, they were emails, they were messages between different people, including Coffee and members of the Ithikos family, and maybe Coffee and Cameron. It looked as if—I think one of the things I was trying to communicate to you—also, the reason that even I’m a little fuzzy on this is because of the way Technoir works, as a reminder, I don’t prep a mystery that we then unfold, we find the mystery together in play. And I believe that what we decided was the log suggested that Coffee—that Cameron McLeod and maybe also other mysterious people were trying to purchase something from Coffee, or vice versa, this thing that we eventually learn is called the KardSharq AI.
Jack: Yes. And at the same time, we know that Coffee Affogato is a sort of useless manager, spends most of their time, you know, playing the tables, drinking, hanging around, and is looking to win a sort of large jackpot that is about to turn over. AuDy learns this from the very friendly Twotwo, then breaks into a building setting off a bunch of alarms. Aria also gets into a fracas. In her moment of need, AuDy [chuckling] deliberately abandons Aria…
[Ali laughs]
Austin: Mhm.
Jack: Hoping to—
Keith: It was a tactic. It was tactical.
Ali: Mhm.
Jack: Oh, yeah, yeah. Abandonment can sometimes be deliberate, it just still sucks.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: I’m in jail, by the way.
Jack: Aria is now in jail. AuDy is planning on being like, well, this is the way into the jail. You know, we’ve got a person inside the jail now, presumably where Coffee Affogato is, and as needs be, I can stage a rescue. And I think that’s sort of—
Keith: The absolute most recent thing I believe was Aria making a call—or, no, it was Cass and Mako making a call [Ali: Mhm.] into the jail to the guards looking for Aria.
[Jack chuckles]
Ali: Yeah, it was—it was the guards having my comms—
Keith: Yes, yeah.
Ali: —where you were having an open conversation about our mission.
Jack: Great.
Ali: And Coffee revealing the AI situation to Aria.
Austin: That’s correct. Coffee was like, do you have it? Do you ha—hm.
Ali: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Art chuckles]
Ali: [giggles] Nooo! [laughs]
Austin: That’s where it comes from. That’s the actual—
Jack: That’s what’s called a call forward.
Austin: That’s why we had to drop this right in the middle of the PALISADE season was because it was actually deep lore. “Do you have it?” comes from Coffee Affogato. Coffee would tell that to Aria, Aria would write it down. “Do you have it?” There’s something to that. And it would bounce around for 50,000 years, until finally…
[Jack laughs]
Ali: [laughing] The “Do you have it?” bear is a TikTok of an Aria song that they—
[Jack laughs]
Austin: Oh my god.
Ali: —made into a mascot later on.
Austin: Mhm. Many, many, many generations. Infinite generations later.
Jack: It’s the—it’s that meme that’s like showing the dinosaur chicken nuggets, right?
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jack: How, like, a chicken is a dinosaur, actually, [Austin: Yeah.] and dinosaur chicken nuggets are actually like a return to the—you know, this kind of deep time.
Austin: I think I have that pinned in the Sangfielle—in the Sangfielle messages internal chat. Almost certainly somewhere in there, yeah.
Ali: I think you do too, yeah.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, yeah, and that’s where we left off, basically. I believe that that’s true.
Jack: So, I think the broad strokes—the most simple broad strokes of the mystery are Coffee Affogato killed someone, they were talking about either buying or selling some sort of weird thing called a KardSharq AI—
Austin: Well, sorry, there’s one element here you may have missed, which is that it became clear that Cameron also was working for the Ithikos family to retrieve the KardSharq. Or to get something with that, right? If I’m remember—maybe I’m—
Keith: And there’s something that is, like, forcing people to stay in this—is it debt? Are they just like, being extorted?
Austin: It’s debt. They’re deep in debt. They’re being extorted, yeah. Cameron, like Hunter, was working for the Ithikos family because of a great deal of debt. Cameron had kind of gone on a losing streak is what we learned, that Cameron had like, you know—
Jack: Cameron was like a pro gambler who had been sort of ensnared into the Cerulean.
Austin: Pro gambler—correct, correct. Like, you know, this is—the way I kind of talked about this mechanically is that Cameron is in this game, in this transmission I built, as a threat instead of like, a character, right? Instead of a connection, Cameron’s like, you know, if things had shaken out differently, Cameron is the sort of character you might have gotten into a fight with the way you got into a fight with the three Ithikos kids who all have various colors of blue in the name, in their names.
Jack: Oh, right, yeah.
Austin: You know? You may recall that you fought a bunch of them and I think ended up, like, tying up two of them, AuDy? Do you remember that?
Jack: Yeah, I really—I badly hurt one of them, and I tied up the other two.
Austin: That’s correct. That did happen.
Keith: Do we—do we know the origin of the KardSharq AI? I think that we do and I just can’t remember.
Austin: You do not. No, we do not.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: You don’t have a fucking clue what’s going on here.
Keith: And we don’t know if it’s like, been out there being used, either.
Austin: No. But the way that—I would say the way that Coffee has talked about it, it sounds like it is a singular thing. It’s one thing, it’s not like it’s a—
Keith: Right.
Austin: It’s not like it’s a type of program, it’s like it’s a unique program.
Keith: It’s a one-off thing.
Austin: Right. ’Cause otherwise, Coffee would be like, “Do you have one of them?” You know what I mean? Or “did you get a copy of it” or something.
Jack: Right.
Keith: Yeah, yeah.
Austin: But Coffee asked Aria, “Do you have it?”
Jack: In the most practical sort of mundane making the show sense, we also have this Cerulean VIP Card—Cerulean.
Austin: Yes, yes.
Jack: Cerulean VIP Card on the board, and I wanted to check and see if that was something that we have moved over in the way that plotting is often a case of going like “we’re discarding that”, or…
Austin: No, I don’t think we’ve moved over. In fact, this is the thing is like, Coffee wanted that VIP card—a thing I’m looking at in front of me says “Coffee Affogato wanted Cerulean VIP card. Cameron McLeod, missing, Cerulean VIP card.”
Keith: That gets you to the game.
Austin: That gets you into—what do you mean?
Keith: The high stakes game.
Austin: It gets you—that’s one of the things it does.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: It gets you a lot of things, right? It gets you into different parts of the casino. That VIP card might doubly serve as a room key, right?
Keith: Sure.
Austin: It’s like your identity here. It might give you access to the special version of the Mesh that exists here, which of course, we call the Holidaze. I’ve remembered this without having to check my notes, thank god.
Jack: Great.
Austin: Daze, D-A-Z-E.
Jack: It’s that old OriCon branding, comes easily.
Austin: That’s right, uh-huh. Mhm. Et cetera, right? So yeah, Coffee claimed that—I’m looking just at our map of stuff. Coffee claimed he was going to win the jackpot. You could kind of put together that maybe he was going to get access to some sort of high stakes game via the Cerulean VIP card, and then use the KardSharq—
Jack: The KardSharq.
Austin: —to win that jackpot. Right? Because this is what Aria overheard from like, the locals, is that Coffee kept talking about how he was gonna win the big one. You know?
Jack: And a possible motive here is that it’s like, it’s two factions’ men moving against each other, right? It’s the CCT guy doing one thing, and then Cameron trying to outplay or counter him, and it breaking bad somewhere down the line.
Austin: And it just breaking bad. Right. Totally.
Jack: Okay. Good.
Austin: Where were we?
Jack: Aria’s in jail, Mako and Cass are performing radio crimes. Crimes against good radio.
Keith: Mhm.
Austin: Crimes against good radio. I’ll just note a few other things on this board before we jump back in, because there’s some stuff that’s like in the air that we haven’t talked about. There is a gang war between the Ithikos family and the Revenants, the Revenants are a sort of upstart gang of Apostolosians here inside of the Sill, gestured at that they were made up largely of a younger generation, a lot of war orphans who maybe don’t—aren’t the fondest of the Ithikos family despite both being Apostolosian. And Mako, you have a connection to some—Mako and Aria, you both have connections to people who I don’t think have shown up in play yet.
Keith: Correct.
Austin: Mako, you have a connection to someone named Grandpa Hart, who you’re protective of, [Keith: Mhm.] and Aria, you have a connection to somebody named Voski Kovacs, or Kovacs, who you’re dependent on. I don’t think Voski’s come up, but I’m—I don’t think, because otherwise we’d have a connection from Voski somewhere else, I would suspect.
Ali: [cross] I don’t think so either, no.
Austin: Grandpa Hart runs a sort of a campground and kind of trailer park on the western end of the Sill, in the northwestern end, I guess, the open arms campground over here. And, you know, was—previously had some connections to the Diaspora, I don’t know if that’s come up, but that’s true. And then Voski used to—was the last actual mayor of the Sill, and now just runs a whiskey bar named Kovacs, which, unfortunately for you, Aria, does not make deliveries. Where do we want to kick off?
[15:56]
Keith: The jail sounds like a good place to start.
[Ali chuckles]
Austin: Yeah, okay. As a reminder, if I remember how I described this, they are like small hotel rooms, but instead of regular walls, they have the sort of like, plastic glass Magneto prison from those X-men movies. You know?
Jack: [chuckles] A future jail.
Austin: A future jail. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. And Aria, you’re in one of those. You have access to the hotel TV, so you can like, you can watch E! Entertainment news over and over again if you can’t decide on what you want to watch, [Keith: Yes!] you can just leave it on the hotel channel, [Keith: Yes!] and it’ll just repeat Mario Lopez talking about some C-list celebrity you’ve never heard of.
Ali: [chuckles] I—my hotel watch of choice is HGTV, obviously.
Austin: Yeah. Sure.
Art: Yeah. That’s a great hotel watch.
Austin: Last time I was at a hotel, they had on—they had a channel on the hotel network that was “funny moments from Family Feud” 24/7.
[Ali, Keith, and Jack laugh]
Keith: They had a Family Feud clips show.
Austin: Clip channel.
Keith: Clip show channel.
Ali: Oh, that’s so good.
Austin: It was so funny.
Ali: Not even full episodes? Like, you couldn’t be like—
Austin: No, it was not.
Ali: Okay, that’s so funny. Anyway.
Keith: That’s bizarre.
Austin: It was not even full episodes.
[Ali chuckles]
Art: What guy who works there was responsible for that?
Austin: Great question.
Jack: And how can we promote them?
Keith: To manager of the hotel chain.
Jack: Yes.
Art: Yeah, of all hotels.
Austin: Anyway.
Ali (as Aria): Um, excuse me! Excuse me!
Austin: Who are you calling for here?
Ali: The guards.
Austin: One of them, I think—
Keith: That’s one of the two guards.
[Keith and Ali laugh]
Jack: Is Coffee in this—is Coffee in a—
Austin: Separate cell.
Ali: Adjacent.
Jack: Separate cell, but you can hear each other.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ali: Uh-huh.
Jack: Okay, cool.
Austin: I think the—as you say “excuse me”, the phone rings, like, you have one of those little, you know, like a, it’s like a rotary phone—I guess it’s not a rotary phone. It doesn’t have, like, the buttons, but it’s that sort of handheld phone, you know?
Keith: Old-fashioned.
Austin: A little old-fashioned phone.
Keith: Does it still have a custom ringtone?
Austin: It does, but it does it with a buzzing or a bell or something. You know what I mean?
Keith: Sure.
Austin: It plays—they don’t believe you’re Aria Joie, do they? I don’t think they believe you’re Aria Joie.
Art: How could they?
Keith: Have they even thought of it?
[Ali laughs]
Austin: No, they haven’t even thought—eh, Aria—they probably think you’re an Aria Joie cosplayer, right?
Art: Well, there’s already been reports of a weirdo going around impersonating Aria Joie.
[Ali laughs]
Austin: There is. So maybe because of that, they do—-they have set your thing as an Aria Joie ringtone and it buzzes as you ask for someone to talk to.
Ali (as Aria): Hello?
Austin (as Guard): What is it?
Ali (as Aria): Oh my god, did I get a custom ringtone?
Austin (as Guard): Yeah, we give all of our prisoners custom ringtones. What is it?
Ali (as Aria): That’s so nice! I get a phone call, right?
Austin (as Guard): To us.
Ali (as Aria): Well, like—well, hey.
[Art, Ali, and Jack laugh]
Ali (as Aria): What about the classic prison phone call?
Austin (as Guard): This isn’t prison.
Ali (as Aria): I’m locked in here.
Austin (as Guard): We’ll be dealing with you.
Ali (as Aria): Are you busy right now?
[group laughter]
Austin: [laughing] Excuse me?
Jack: She can’t be beaten.
Austin (as Guard): I’m working. I’m working right now?
Ali (as Aria): Well, yeah, but I’m stuck in here, and I—
[Austin scoffs] [Ali laughs]
Art: Yeah, what about that?
Keith: [laughing] “Can you help me escape from jail? We can go on a date.”
[Ali continues laughing]
Austin: This is unbelievable.
Jack: She hasn’t yet developed this technique fully yet.
Austin: Mhm. It’s newly—it’s being worked on now.
Jack: It’s going to be really powerful for her.
Austin: Yeah. Mhm.
Jack: She’ll find love, but…
[Ali laughs]
Austin: Yeah. Sure will.
Ali (as Aria): And, so, the reason I’m stuck in—I’m in here for—to be punished—
Ali: [laughing] This is getting weird. Sorry.
[Keith laughs]
Art: This is only as weird as you’re making it.
Austin: Yeah, I haven’t said a word.
Ali: No, I heard myself say it, and I was like, “Wait a minute.”
Keith: “Something happened. This situation is getting weird all on its own.”
[Keith, Austin, and Ali laugh]
Ali: I was trying to do a thing of like, “I’m really guilty, you should—” like, “I’m not stuck here…” [laughs]
Austin: [laughing] Dig up, stupid.
Art: “I’m really guilty. Let me out.”
Ali (as Aria): If you recall, the reason I’m in here is because I was on the phone with a friend of mine, and the reason I was on the phone with a friend of mine is…
[Ali laughs]
Keith: Crimes.
Ali (as Aria): Because we’re—the—
[Ali laughs]
Ali (as Aria): They’re very sick, and I really want to get in touch.
Austin (as Guard): They arrested—they put you in here because you were on the phone?
Ali (as Aria): Yeah.
Austin (as Guard): Well, that’s—that seems like an overreaction to me.
Ali (as Aria): Thank you.
Austin (as Guard): Yeah, so what, do you want me to send flowers to your friend or are they dying or what?
Ali (as Aria): Well, um, if I can’t—maybe you could get in touch with them… You have my—you do have my phone, and, do you see a contact named “AuDy”?
Austin (as Guard): I don’t have your password. What’s your password?
Ali (as Aria): [sighs] It’s 4—
Art: Don’t give him the password.
Austin (as Guard): 4.
Keith: 7.
Austin (as Guard): 7.
Keith: 1.
Austin (as Guard): 1.
Ali (as Aria): 4.
Keith: [simultaneous] 4.
[Keith and Ali laugh]
Austin: Wow.
Art: Wow.
Austin: Yeah.
Art: I can’t believe that happened.
[Keith and Ali continue laughing]
Austin: Canonical. That’s it. That’s the Aria Joie password. 4714.
[Jack laughs]
Art: If you’re a fan of the show, don’t make this your phone password.
Austin: [laughing] No, do not.
[Keith and Ali laugh]
Austin (as Guard): Wow, you really like that Aria Joie girl, huh?
Ali (as Aria): That’s me!
Austin (as Guard): Cool—yeah. Cool background. Who are you—
Ali (as Aria): Ask me anything about Aria Joie. That’s me. Are you a fan?
Austin (as Guard): I like some of the songs, but I don’t know.
Ali (as Aria): No, I know. The work they’re putting out is awful.
Austin (as Guard): You just said you were Aria Joie.
Art: You’re making it sound like you’re…
Ali (as Aria): No, but like, the—I’m a person, and I write music, and like, my—let me tell you.
Austin (as Guard): And you think that you’re, like, close to Aria Joie, or is it like a… do you write songs for her?
Ali (as Aria): No, no, like I was there.
Austin (as Guard): You were there? You were at Aria Joie?
[Art and Ali laugh]
Ali (as Aria): I was at EarthHome, where I was Aria Joie.
Austin (as Guard): For Halloween, or like…
Ali (as Aria): Do you live in the Sill?
Austin (as Guard): Yeah.
Keith: No, I work here on vacation.
[Ali laughs]
Ali: Wait, where—what’s the name of the bar that I…
Austin: Kovacs.
Ali: Kovacs? That’s the person’s name. Is that the name of the—
Austin: Yeah, that’s also the name of the bar, yeah. It’s called Kovacs.
Ali: Okay.
Ali (as Aria): Well, I, the reason—my friend isn’t really sick. But I’m supposed to put on a show—
Austin (as Guard): Wait, you were lying to me?
[Jack and Art chuckle]
Ali (as Aria): I kind of was, but I’m supposed to put on this show.
Austin (as Guard): What about it?
Ali (as Aria): Well, I, it’s—
Austin (as Guard): You’re in jail. We arrested you.
Ali (as Aria): No, I know, I know—
Austin (as Guard): We’re detaining you. I’m not supposed to say you’re in jail. It’s not jail. You’re detained. You’re detained in a suite.
Ali (as Aria): What if I, got like, a pass?
Austin (as Guard): For what?
Art: What?
[Ali laughs]
Austin (as Guard): For detention?
Ali (as Aria): Well, can I at least—can I at least—can I at least call the bar owner and say I’m not gonna be there? Have you ever been there? It’s a really nice place and I don’t want to leave this—
Austin: Give me a Coax. We’re gonna roll some dice.
Ali: [laughing] Okay.
Austin: We’re gonna—
Art: Oh, you don’t want this to just keep going?
Austin: You know, we could do this for 3 hours and just see where it takes us, but. As a reminder, let’s take a peek here at your sheet. I don’t remember if you have any—you don’t have any hurt adjectives, do you?
Ali: I do not.
Austin: That’s good.
Ali: I have one charge dice and two discharge, but those get charged.
Austin: Well, they all recharge—mhm, yep, exactly.
Ali: Okay.
Austin: And then we will move—where does this hurt die go? I guess just back down in the hurt die pile, and then we’ll pull this back down to action dice. What does—how many action dice you get for this?
Ali: I’m opening my character sheet, which is in a confusing place. I have a 3 in Coax.
Austin: Okay. Yeah, so 3. And then you can of course use any push dice you have, which you still have all of your push dice, by calling on your adjectives or equipment or et cetera. So you could, you know, go for that.
Ali: Okay. I’m—does that include Idol and Smuggler in those programs?
Austin: No, it includes your adjectives up top.
Ali: No, okay. Okay. Then I’m energetic.
Austin: Sure.
Ali: I don’t think I’m being [chuckles] particularly alluring or savvy right now, but…
Art: What, why?
Austin: Yeah, what makes you think that? Where does that come from?
[Ali laughs]
Art: Don’t be so down on yourself.
Austin: Alright. So then, yeah, pull that over, and then pull up your—or pull it up to the dice rolling spot, Aria.
Ali: Oh, sure, sure, sure, okay.
Austin: And then we got 3 dice. 1, 2, 3, go ahead and select those. And choose random side.
Ali: Yeah. Random side, closing my eyes… There’s one 6 in there.
Austin: There is a 6 in there, it is your push die, which is really useful, actually, here.
[Ali laughs]
Austin: What adjective do you want to give to the security guard?
Ali: Curious?
Austin: Curious. Like—so in the other words, he’s like, “Huh, I wonder how this is gonna play out.” I like that. That’s good. Let’s go with that. That’s fun.
[Ali laughs]
Austin: He’s like,
Austin (as Guard): Alright, I’ll put you through to the bar. What’s the name of the bar again?
Ali (as Aria): It’s Kovacs. Have you ever been there?
Austin (as Guard): Yeah, yeah. They make a good whiskey. They put it in a glass.
Art: That’s how they do it.
Ali (as Aria): Simple’s always best.
Austin (as Guard): That’s what I always say.
Ali (as Aria): Do you get yours with a little bit of sugar?
Austin (as Guard): No.
Ali (as Aria): I don’t anymore.
Austin (as Guard): You don’t anymore. Why not?
[Art chuckles]
Jack: Woah.
Austin (as Guard): You sounded really sad about that. You made it sound like—is this ’cause your friend’s dying?
[Ali and Keith chuckle]
Ali (as Aria): No, it’s because I—my taste has gotten more mature.
Austin (as Guard): Has it?
Ali (as Aria): Well. Are you putting me through or not?
[Ali chuckles]
Art: [chuckling] Look at this jerk.
[Keith laughs]
Austin (as Guard): Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m calling now. I have to stay on the line.
Ali (as Aria): Oh, of course.
Austin: [imitating telephone ring] Brrring, brrring.
Austin (as Voski): Uh, hello?
Ali (as Aria): Hi, it’s Aria.
Austin (as Voski): Hi, Aria.
Ali (as Aria): Hey. You know that show I was supposed to do tonight?
Austin (as Voski): Yes.
Ali (as Aria): Uh-huh. I’m gonna be late. I got caught up in the casino.
Austin (as Guard): We had to arrest her.
Austin (as Voski): Oh.
Ali (as Aria): I’m not arrested, I’m detained.
Austin (as Guard): We had to detain her.
Austin (as Voski): Oh. Why were you detained, Aria?
Ali (as Aria): Well, ’cause I was on the phone in the casino, which isn’t allowed, which is crazy.
Austin (as Voski): Why are you—for the show. Right. Well, is there a fee or bail that I could put up for you?
Ali (as Aria): [gasps] [whispering] Is there?
Austin (as Guard): [whispering] I don’t know. I’ll look into it.
Ali (as Aria): Thank you.
Austin (as Voski): Well, if you find out there is, I can send a courier.
Ali (as Aria): That would be great. And I’ll pay you back plus an encore.
Austin (as Voski): Plus an encore. That sounds good, Aria.
Austin: Bling. That was hanging up. I’m not Keith, you know.
[Ali laughs]
Austin: And the guard you’ve been talking to says,
Austin (as Guard): I’ll look into that. But I also—if you’re gonna do a show, I’m curious. Can I get like, a ticket? I don’t have anything going on.
Ali (as Aria): You know, you’ve been very nice to me while I’ve been detained, so I’ll think about it. I’m kidding, you can totally come.
Austin (as Guard): Okay.
Ali (as Aria): Can you invite people?
Austin (as Guard): Can I invite people?
Ali (as Aria): Yeah.
Austin (as Guard): Do you have more tickets for free?
Ali (as Aria): You seem really nice, I’d love to meet your friends. Yeah. Well, I think you have to buy a drink. Whiskeys for everybody!
Austin (as Guard): You’re doing a show at a little whiskey bar, yeah, I guess—yeah, okay. Yeah, I’ll see who can show up.
Ali (as Aria): It’s gonna be really cool.
Austin (as Guard): Very intimate.
Ali (as Aria): Yes.
Austin (as Guard): Yeah.
Ali (as Aria): Yes! Like, broken down. Like—
Austin (as Guard): Like broken down. What?
Ali: [laughing] Like—
Art: Broken down.
Austin (as Guard): Is that one of the songs I don’t know?
Ali (as Aria): Oh, well, I’ve been working on it. Do you want to hear it?
Austin (as Guard): No.
Ali (as Aria): You’ll hear it later, it’s okay.
Art: Woah. That’s so rude.
Austin (as Guard): We’re on the phone. This isn’t the way I like to listen to music.
Ali (as Aria): I understand.
Austin (as Guard): I’m gonna look into whether or not you can pay your way out of this, alright?
Ali (as Aria): Okay. You can call me anytime. I’m kind of bored in here.
Austin (as Guard): I can tell.
Ali (as Aria): Bye!
Austin: Click. That time was just a click, not a da-ling. That’s a different phone, that was—Voski’s phone went “da-ling”.
[Ali laughs]
Keith: There’s a way you can hang it up that’s angrier and more impatient.
Austin: Yeah, can you give me that, Keith?
Keith: Oh, that’s the click.
Austin: Oh, the click is—yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh-huh, yeah.
Keith: Yeah, yeah, there’s a [imitates harsh static] crrk and then the [imitates ringing tone] bloo-loo. That’s the nice hang-up you do for your friends, yeah.
Austin: That’s the nice hang-up, yeah. Exactly, exactly. Alright, rest of you. AuDy, Mako, Cass.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: Oh, I forgot I was coming back into this game.
[Ali laughs]
Austin: You just thought you were listening?
Art: Yeah, I was—this is great.
Austin: You just hanging out?
Art: Well, I was helping. I was reacting.
Keith: Just listen to Ali and then comment every once in a while on something.
Art: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: This is how it feels in the faction side of the game, and then occasionally we do atrocities.
Austin: Uh-huh.
[Ali laughs]
Art: Yeah.
Keith: Oh, maybe we can do an atrocity.
Jack: No.
Austin: It’s possible.
[Ali and Keith laugh]
Art: Well, it’s, again, it feels like if we did an atrocity, it would have come up.
Keith: Eh, you kind of tend to stuff that sort of stuff down deep.
Jack: That’s true. I know we’re being kind to our continuity here. I could, you know, I have some thoughts about what I would like to do here, but since AuDy is, like, closer to the situation, I sort of want to give room for Mako and Cass to make a move.
Austin: Sure. That makes sense. Yeah, we got a lot of AuDy at the end of the last episode, so. So yeah, Mako and Cass.
[30:42]
Austin: You were kind of hurried out of the bar by Cameron—or sorry, by Hunter, who was like, basically like, I’m giving you a headstart. Like, they are gonna put together who you are and what this whole situation is and I’m going to be, you know, I’m gonna be kind of forced—you’re gonna force my hand if you stick around this bar too long, you know?
Keith: That was a slip because Cameron is Hunter.
Austin: That’s not true. Cameron’s dead.
[Ali and Jack chuckle]
Keith: I dunno…
Austin: But sure.
Jack: We’ve also always had success catching Austin out like this before.
Austin: I guess we haven’t seen—yeah. [chuckles] I guess we haven’t ever seen—we haven’t seen Cameron’s body, right? But.
Keith: Right.
Jack: That’s true.
Austin: Yeah.
Art: Yeah.
Jack: This is also another Friends at the Table move, is: in a murder mystery, avoid going to the victim or the scene of the crime for as long as possible.
Austin: Mhm.
Keith: Okay, so, just, quick reminder, we know that Aria’s in jail.
Austin: Yeah, you talked to her, right? Didn’t you talk to her at the very end there? Or you tried calling her? What happened?
Ali: No, no, no.
Keith: I’m pretty sure that we did, or we tried calling—
Ali: They spoke amongst themselves.
Austin: Right, right, right.
Keith: We spoke to AuDy who said…
Austin: You spoke to AuDy, right. That’s what it was, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Keith: So I guess we’re going to the casino.
Art: Yeah.
Austin: You’re in the casino. You’ve been in the casino. The bar was in the casino.
Keith: I guess we’re in the casino.
[Ali and Jack chuckle]
Austin: Mhm. That’s correct. Now what?
Art: Here we are.
Keith: [chuckling] Here we are.
Austin: Great.
Keith: We can find our way to the back room, I guess.
Austin: And you go searching for Aria, basically? Like, what are you looking to achieve?
Keith: Well, I guess I don’t want to get arrested, [Ali chuckles] so maybe there’s like, a—not a—I almost said concession. There’s like, a reception where—
Austin: Yeah, like a front desk.
Keith: Yeah, the place you go—they got a holding cell, and it’s a casino, so I assume that they use it, and people show up to be like, “Yeah, my, you know, uncle…”
Austin: We have not seen anything like that. What we’ve seen is that they have—I mean, you haven’t asked, like, “Hey, what do I do if—” You haven’t gone to anybody and been like, “I think one of my friends is being detained by security.” So we have no idea what that process would be like.
Keith: Yeah. So that’s one idea.
Austin: Mhm.
Keith: Or we could go illegal straight away.
[Ali chuckles]
Austin: Mhm. And just go meet up with AuDy behind closed doors.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: If that’s what you want to do, we should just jump to y’all being with AuDy, instead of like, doing more sneaking around the back rooms bullshit. You know what I mean?
Jack: You also have a capacity to be detectives here.
Austin: True.
Jack: I mean, I don’t want to claim that I’ve like, got it in hand, that would be hubris, but I’m here percolating a jailbreak.
Austin: Right, as a reminder, AuDy, you’re a little fucked up, aren’t you?
Jack: I’m weakened, yes,
Austin: You’re weakened. You got that EMP grenade on you, which gave you the hurt die weakened.
Jack: Yeah. But I’ve written that today is a good day on my heart, so I’m not terribly worried.
[Austin laughs]
Jack: But yeah, this is an opportunity to pursue information about the KardSharq, or about the circumstances of the murder, right?
Austin: Mhm. Agreed.
Keith: Hm. I am tempted to just say the three of us are all together, because—
Art: No, I sort of think—I’m sort of on the other side of this, [Keith: Okay.] that we should just—we should go and investigate the scene of the murder.
Keith: Right. If AuDy wasn’t confident, then they wouldn’t have blown a hole in the door and walked in like that.
Austin: Mhm.
Art: That’s what I’m saying.
Keith: So they must have it under control, and if they don’t, that’s their problem.
Austin: Right.
Art: Yeah.
Austin: So you go to where the place in the hotel is that was—where the murder happened?
Keith: Yeah, I would love to do that.
Jack: Quick question.
Austin: God, I wonder—yeah.
Jack: Do we know the weapon?
Austin: We have not—
Jack: Like, how much information have we got about—we just know there was a killing.
Austin: Yeah, I believe that’s all we’ve said. Maybe I’m wrong.
Jack: It doesn’t ring a bell…
Austin: Maybe the six weeks ago we started this recording, I said, “shot him in broad daylight” or something, but I don’t remember saying that.
Jack: No, I also don’t. I also don’t remember that.
Austin: Okay. The killing happened in a corner of the hotel that was like the basically like the cheap seats, right?
Keith: Mhm.
Austin: The, like, penny slots and the cheap hands of poker, or whatever the cheapest, you know, ante is. It’s been cleaned up, and it’s reopened, but it’s, pardon the pun, but it’s dead in here. No one—you know, word got out that a killing happened here, [Keith: Right.] and killings happen in the Sill, but they don’t often happen inside of the Cerulean, right?
Keith: Well, you don’t want to pull on a machine that someone died at. That’s bad luck.
Austin: That’s exactly right. You know?
Art: Yeah, that’s—
Austin: It’s a little weird. People are a little off. You know, there’s a handful of people here, but they seem really out of town. They seem like people who didn’t hear about this, and generally speaking, it seems as if, you know, there’s a whole row of slots that seem like they have been—it’s a short row, maybe, it’s like five slot machines that are currently offline, [Keith: Mhm.] that are currently like, out of order. And you wouldn’t know that someone maybe got shot here or stabbed here or whatever happened if you didn’t know.
Art: I love “they’re really out of town” as, like, an insult.
Austin: Yeah. They’re really out of town.
Art: They’re really out of town.
Keith: They’re really out of town.
Austin: Yeah, they really—
Keith: About as out of town as you can be.
Austin: [chuckles] Exactly. Bringing it back from Bluff, actually. A classic Friends at the Table diss. Out-of-towner.
Keith: I bet that there’s a way to get into the security here.
Austin: Oh, yeah? What do you want to try to do?
Keith: To see some video.
Austin: Okay.
Keith: I think I want to try to turn on and hack into one of these machines. The off machines.
Austin: Tell me what this—yeah.
Keith: Because I assume that that’s where the thing happened.
Austin: Yeah, you’re able to do the—tell me what this look like. Give me the description and I’ll tell if you if there’s like, if you’re gonna be opposed. Because remember, if you’re not being opposed, you can just do a thing.
Keith: Okay. I think that I will be opposed.
Austin: No, sorry, I’ll decide if the thing is you’re gonna be opposed.
Keith: Right, I’m just guessing that you will oppose this. That’s just a guess that I have.
Austin: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Keith: So, I want to use my headjack. I want to get into one of these machines. How bad—how, like, gross and psychological do you think that they get with gambling in the, you know—
Austin: Not so bad here.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: Because this is not an OriCon casino, right?
Keith: Right, sure.
Austin: And it’s not a Diaspora casino. There’s no, like, secret Divine at the heart of this thing trying to rip out people’s minds.
Keith: [cross] So this is old school. There’s not a camera behind the screen that’s reading facial micro-expressions and then giving you small wins when you start to seem, like, bored or upset so that you—
Austin: No, what there is—
Art: Wasn’t that just happening now? Don’t we already have that?
Austin: That’s happening now. The thing that’s definitely happening here is, you have an account with the casino, they know who your mother is.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: They know if she’s sick. Right? They know what other debts you have.
Keith: Sure.
Austin: They know what your favorite food is. They’re doing that version of pressure. Right?
Keith: Right.
Austin: And they know that you, like, get a big win on Thursdays. When you get a big win on Thursdays, you end up staying Friday, Saturday, Sunday. You get a big win on Tuesdays, you leave. Right?
Keith: It’s a personal touch, not an impersonal touch.
Austin: That’s right, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s still—and it’s data-driven, but it’s data-driven that starts at “there’s a person in a room looking at the data”.
Keith: Right. There’s a box with a little window.
Austin: Yes. Yeah. And like, maybe they’re moving, they’re digitizing currently. You know? But…
Keith: Yeah, sure.
Austin: They probably are, right? There’s a Holidaze—there’s a virtual Holidaze room with—about the gambler, but there’s not a—it’s not, again, there’s no Divine at the heart of this casino, you know?
Keith: Sure.
Art: Just all the bad shit that’s already in casinos.
Austin: Correct. Correct. Correct.
Keith: Okay. Well, then I might have to rely on—
Art: A regular old bad casino.
Austin: Like, if you wanted to call it a Divine, we could, but we’re not, so.
Keith: Rely on regular old security cameras.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: But I still think that this is like a real jack-in situation. I think this is like a look through—
Austin: Yeah, so I think—
Keith: “Look through the camera’s eye” kind of thing.
Austin: Oh, so you’re trying to hack the camera.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: You’re trying to hack the camera of the slot machine? Or the camera of the room?
Keith: Of the room. I was gonna hack the camera of the slot machine, but you sort of said that there wasn’t one, so I’m gonna go back to normal.
Austin: Right, I see what you’re saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Then, yeah, this would be opposed, because there is a—there is someone running security, basically, for them here. Right? Which makes perfect sense to me. Let me make sure I have what that is in front of me. Not that. Not that. Not that. Here it is. Okay. Yeah, this is gonna be like a—you’re gonna go after their Hack, basically. That makes sense to me.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Alright.
Keith: So I have derma-linked, so I’m gonna like, be at a machine sort of appearing to be interacting with the machine, but I’m actually using the skin contact to use the cerebral input on the headjack. That’s how this is working.
Austin: Sure. Okay, I’m just gonna say out loud, I believe you, so.
[Ali chuckles]
Keith: Well, this is—eventually this will be—that is what push dice I will be using for this.
Austin: That is what push dice you will be using, yeah. I get you, I get you.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Go ahead and pull that into your dice-rolling spot.
Keith: Alright. I’ve got two left.
Austin: Yeah, you have two push dice.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: And then your Hack is what? 3 or 4?
Keith: It’s 4.
Austin: Yeah, so you’re crushing this. Pull those up.
Keith: So I’m gonna use six.
Austin: Cool. So wait, what else are you using? What else are you—
Keith: The two action die.
Austin: What do you mean the two action die?
Keith: Or, sorry, the two push die.
Austin: What are you—so, you’re using your derma-linked, what’s the other push die coming from?
Keith: Oh, there’s two tags. There’s the derma-linked and then the cerebral input.
Austin: Okay, cool. So you’re like, moving fast because you’re using your brain as the input, and you’re like touching a cable or a wall or something to get access to the—yeah, gotcha.
Keith: Yeah, yeah.
Austin: Okay, cool. Love it. Alright, let’s pull those up to the dice rolling spot.
Keith: Dice rolling spot…
Austin: And then roll ’em all.
Keith: And roll ’em all. Multi-sided…
Austin: And you have no hurt die right now, right?
Jack: This is six dice that Keith is rolling now.
Keith: Correct.
Austin: That is correct.
Keith: That’s a 5.
Austin: That is a 5. You’re gonna succeed on this.
Keith: Great.
Austin: You’re going against only a 4. What is the adjective you’re trying to apply?
Keith: That was close, by the way. With six dice.
Austin: Uh-huh. Yeah, you would expect a 6 in there.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Kind of like, statistically, that’s the thing you would expect.
Keith: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, sorry, say again?
Austin: What’s the adjective you’re trying to apply? So, I think as you’re doing this, you know, this is a classic you’re hacking into a thing and you’re trying to avoid the attention of someone who is monitoring all incoming transmissions and, you know, connections and stuff, and you’re trying to remain invisible or whatever. What is the thing that you’re doing to the security, this like, IT security agent?
Keith: Um… I’m gonna say… okay. So, this isn’t—this is an adjective that’s going on that security agent.
Austin: It’s going on that security agent, yes, correct.
Keith: So, I’m going to say, like, clocked, maybe. Like, I’ve like—oh, this is like, the area that they’re operating in so that I can avoid them.
Austin: You’ve seen them, in other words, sure.
Keith: Yes.
Austin: You know where they are. Okay.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Let me make a note. Okay, cool. Then yeah, you’re able to kind of—again, this is a—you’re not going into the virtual space here, right? What’s the visualization? I’m guessing, right? You’re not fogging this machine, you’re doing—but you are doing your derma link, right?
Keith: No, no, that is the cerebral input. That’s what the—
Austin: Okay, so then what’s this look like? What’s the—because this is the first time you’ve done this particular version of this. Last time you like, busted out a little hand hacking computer.
Keith: Yes.
Austin: Though this is the first time, then, that you are in the Holidaze. You’ve never been in this thing.
Keith: Right, I am now Holidaze in, yeah.
Austin: You’re Holidaze in, exactly. I think it’s a little sickly. Like, I think that the first thing that is—there’s a smell, there’s like a saccharine smell here [Keith: Okay.] that’s being pumped into the virtual space that you’re in. We start there instead of starting at a visual difference, right?
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: And then visually, I think everything is like… You know—it’s like there’s not enough outlines on things. Everything’s fuzzy and blurry. It’s like the worlds normally here are made of hard solid lines and are often outlined in heavy black lines, and here, everything’s fuzzy, it’s almost gaseous, instead of being made of solids, it’s almost like you’re floating around, you know? Gold and neon pink and yellow and turquoise and it’s a little—it’s a little gauche. It’s a little much, you know? But, yes, you can immediately see there is the security agent is, like, literally floating above and hovering over the different parts of this sort of replication of the interior of the Cerulean. It’s almost like a layered—you know people talk about 4d chess?
Keith: Mhm.
Austin: This is like 4d Pac-Man. And you’re at a lower level of Pac-Man than a higher level of the Pac-Man game. You know? But you can see the enemy ghost, you know, floating around looking for you.
Keith: Right.
Austin: And you’re able to keep a low profile as you move through this space. What are you trying to retrieve? What are you trying to see through this camera? You know, you’re downloading the camera logs as you’re doing this. What is it you’re trying to learn?
Keith: I think I’m like, looking—I’m like, swiping past a series of televisions that each have, like, a thumbnail that are representing like a chunk of time.
Austin: Mhm.
Keith: And I’m going back and back and back, and I’m like, I want to see when these machines were on, and that’s how I know, okay, it’s like, between when they’re on and the next one that they’re off.
Austin: Right.
Keith: That’s the chunk of time that I’m looking for.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re able to go back, you see that. But what is it that you’re trying to—you have that, are you just trying to see the records of like, what the camera shows, basically?
Keith: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: Trying to see the shot of the murder, basically.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah. You see Cameron and Coffee—you see Cameron at one of these slot machines, and they are pulling the slot machine handle, and like, looking over their shoulder, and pulling the slot machine handle and looking over their shoulder. Your intuition is they don’t care about winning here. You’re not sure at first what’s going on. You’re gonna have to get a closer look. And then you see in the distance, Coffee starts coming this way, running past people, pushing past people, runs past, you know, some sort of food server, or drinks server, and like, drinks go everywhere. Cameron doesn’t seem to see what’s going on. And you’re gonna have to, like—you’re gonna have to actually engage with either a different camera or something else to see—if there’s any other particular detail as to what Cameron’s doing, but Coffee gets there. There is a brief back and forth. There is a fracas. And then it looks like Coffee reaches for something, you’re not sure what, and then there is a tussle with an item between their hands, and then the item turns out to be a gun, and Cameron gets shot in the chest, and falls over, and Coffee drops it—actually, Coffee drops to a knee as if looking for something, can’t seem to find it, everyone is freaking out in this part of the casino, security runs in, Coffee stands up, can’t find it, can’t find it, sees the—I’m gonna just give you this. Does a little back kick as if to kick the—kick something underneath one of the nearby lot machines.
Keith: Ooh.
Austin: But there may have been something else going on there, too. Cass, as the two of you are over here, and as Mako is hacking into this thing, you see, like, a pair of security guards begin working their way over towards you. They are very clearly trying to clear the space out. They aren’t trying to—they are threatening you. They are trying to intimidate you by presence. It’s clear that they don’t want you to be here and they’re trying to frighten you. I’m actually gonna roll against you here. What is your—god, what’s the roll to intimidate? I’m guessing it’s Coax. And what would you be countering an intimidation with? It would probably also be Coax? What do you think?
Art: Um…
Austin: “Trying to give someone the shakedown, Coax vs Coax,” says this cheat sheet. This is sort of a shakedown, right?
Art: Yeah, it’s shakedown adjacent.
Austin: Alright. What is your Coax?
Art: 2.
Austin: Ooh, okay. So these two big—they’re big. You know, I think sometimes we think about Cass as being a little slight and—you know, not small, Cass was a soldier, but you know, Cass is not like a big burly person.
Art: Yeah, not that kind of soldier.
Austin: Not that kind of soldier, exactly. These folks were. They have big wide shoulders, real brick house bodies, and they are using the adjective—I’m just gonna use this one person’s stats instead of trying to—it’s not multiple people rolling against you, that would be weird. They have a—I guess it’s actually—would this be their Coax or their Fight? Oh, they’re the same. That’s useful. So they’re gonna use three action dice and then they are using the tough adjective. So I’m gonna roll four dice against your two. Random side. There’s a 3. And I’m gonna give—
Art: Beats 2.
Austin: Yeah, it does beat 2. Do you have—you have some unspent dice you could try to boost your thing, right? But it only boosts by .1, doesn’t it? It doesn’t boost by a whole 1 to counter.
Art: Yeah.
Austin: I’m just double-checking that that’s right. “Determine reaction, establish vector, verb rating, and push dice…”
Keith: I thought it counts as 1 unless it’s tied and then it counts as .1.
Austin: I’ll double-check. So you also have access to this. Alright, here we go. Resolve the roll, determine reaction—yeah, you could. You could discharge a push dice to increase your reaction rating by one if you’d like to. Or you could let me stick this on you and then get an extra push dice.
Art: No, I think it’s worth not being intimidated right now.
Austin: Yeah, that’s probably fair.
Art: So I’ll just drag that over here.
Austin: So yeah, go ahead and drag that over. What are you using to resist that with?
Art: I mean, I would say, just looking at adjectives, I think being authoritative is sort of a natural resistance to being intimidated.
Austin: Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Then you—
Keith: As a minor prince, you’ve been around plenty of bodyguards.
Austin: Oh, for sure. Many bodyguards, many toughs, many such people as this. That makes perfect sense to me.
[Ali chuckles]
Austin: So then yeah, if your action roll is equal or less—oh wait, do you need to do two? If the result including da-da-da is equal to or less than—no, you’re right. If it’s equal, equal goes to the defender, right? So yeah, you successfully defend this. And I think the heavy that is taking the front is like,
Austin (as Bodyguard): We would love it if you and your friend would vacate the premises and return to the rest of the hotel.
Art (as Cass): Yeah, in a minute.
Austin (as Bodyguard): Alright, we’ll be right here if you have any questions.
Austin: And they seem a little, like, confused as to why that didn’t work. The back-up heavy looks at the primary heavy almost in a judgmental way as if to say, like, “Damn, you didn’t do it. Maybe I should try.” But doesn’t—the primary person is like, “No, no, no. Just—let’s give them some time.” Mako.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: You now know that there is something over near the one particular slot machine, but you’re also now being physically hounded by these two people, and then digitally also followed at this point.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: And you know there may even be more to learn if you could figure out a different vector to see what else was going on near that slot machine.
Keith: I want to do that. I want to figure out more.
Austin: Okay. If you keep doing this, you’re going to come under threat, also, directly. Just want to float that just so you know.
Keith: Okay. What happens with the—when do these discharged dice go back to being charged?
Austin: When you do another roll.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: So, right now.
Keith: So right now. So, beautiful, I am gonna do that, I’m not gonna push, I’m just gonna roll my four.
Austin: You’re just gonna roll your four.
Keith: Well—yeah, yeah.
Austin: So you’re staying hacked in, we don’t need to re-establish a vector here, you’re just—what is the—or, we do have to re-establish a vector, but you don’t have to re-establish, like, you’re using those things, because that’s how you started it.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: But what is the—how are you getting another, like, view on this—whatever is happening at the slot machine?
Keith: Can I use my 4d Pac-Man view to, like, access a different camera, is there like a closer camera? Or is there like maybe there’s something that has audio—
Austin: Audio makes sense.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: Yeah, let’s do audio. Let’s say that you pick up a—
Keith: There’s room mics.
Austin: Like, maybe the slot machines do have like, audio mics to pick up when people go like, “Damn.”
Keith: Yeah. This is how you learn who people’s grandmas are.
Austin: Exactly, you listen to the…
Keith: Pit bosses listening to room mics.
Austin: Exactly, yeah. Alright, give me four…
Keith: I don’t know what a pit boss is.
Austin: Yeah, you do.
Keith: [chuckles] They walk around and they intimidate, but also they sit in a back room and watch you, I think.
Austin: Yeah, that’s—yeah.
Keith: Okay. Alright.
Austin: Alright, roll ’em. Alright, that’s a 5.
Keith: That’s a 5.
Austin: You’re good. Or wait, did I—did you need a—no, no, no. 5 is right. They had a 4, I had to double check.
Keith: No, 5 is right. They had a 4. Yeah.
Austin: Yeah, they have a 4. Alright, so what do you—what—they were already—you had clocked them, what are you giving them now?
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: This is the same person who is Pac-Man-ing around above you.
Keith: Can I say misled?
Austin: Sure. What’s that look like?
Keith: I’ve led—I’m just like, you know, opening and closing doors, making it look like, you know, in the Scooby Doo cartoon, you’re like, closing a door when you turn a corner to make it look like you’ve gone in there, but you keep going straight.
Austin: Mhm.
Keith: Something like that to like, make them think that they’re on the right trail, but I’ve sent them astray.
Austin: Cool. When you get the audio feed here, you get—let’s say that you kind of hear it in reverse first. And you pick up a few things. The first thing that you pick up going backwards is Coffee asking about the KardSharq, and also about just the card, the card, the card, which maybe is the VIP card. Where is it, where is it, where is it? And you’re like, buttoning back—it’s almost like you’re playing Her Story or something, and you’re like, you have five second clips that you can listen to. And you’re going from the end of the fight backwards up to the top.
Keith: Right.
Jack: At one point he brings an acoustic guitar in and starts singing like a song that’s kind of a weird spoiler.
Austin: He starts singing—it’s kind of like, oh, that’s a little on the nose.
Keith: Is the song backwards, too? Is it a song about—
Jack: It’s about killing people, I think.
Keith: “Krahs drac?”
Austin: Yeah, and it starts at “I did it, I killed them, I killed them.” No, the segments are forward, it’s just that they’re laid out five seconds at a time from the end back, you know?
Keith: Okay. Oh, okay, okay.
Austin: Yeah, it’s not—it is not backwards, you’re listening to the record backwards and hearing Satan’s true name, you know?
Keith: Right.
Austin: You—so the argument seems to be about the KardSharq and the VIP card. “Where is it? It’s in your room, isn’t it? You have the thing, I need it, give me the card, give me the card,” et cetera. And at the very beginning, before Coffee got there, you can hear Cameron being like “Come on, upload faster, upload faster.” And you get the impression when overlaying this with the video that every time—they’ve set up some sort of system. Every time they pull the lever, the arm on the slot machine, they’re uploading more and more of a file somewhere.
Keith: Ooh.
Austin: You’re not sure where. Or what. You’d have to go look at the machine and hack directly into that machine to figure it out. However, as you just continue to—what’s this look like from the outside looking in? What do you—what does Mako—what is Mako doing in the real world, in the physical world, I guess I should say?
Keith: Well, I think it looks like a lot like Cameron, you know, uploading a file.
Austin: “Come on, come on…” Yeah.
Keith: I’m just like, I look sort of like—maybe not frantic, but just sort of looking like I’m playing—I’m like, zoned out playing slots.
Austin: But you’re hold—but your hand is on the wall or something, not on one of the slot machines? You described being—
Keith: No, it’s on the machine, I have a connection into the machine, yeah.
Austin: Okay, I thought that you were near the cameras and not near the machine originally.
Keith: I got—I mean, you know. In one way, none of this makes sense, because it’s all made up, but if—
Austin: I just want to pick one to frame whatever the next thing—
Keith: Yeah, no, I’m accessing the cameras through the network, but I got into the network through the machine.
Austin: Through the machine. At this point, one of these guards moves to just pull you away. Cass, are you gonna let them touch Mako or—am I rolling against Cass or am I rolling against Mako?
Art: You’re gonna roll against Cass.
Austin: Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Art: This is like, homeboy’s on a hot streak.
Austin: There’s—
Art: Or whatever the future version of homeboy is.
Austin: No, I’m pretty sure it’s homeboy’s on a hot streak.
[Ali and Keith laugh]
Art: I think this is how people talk in casinos, and I think I spend a lot of time—well, I haven’t really been to a casino in a long time, but I used to.
Austin: But you used to. Yeah, so this is the bigger of the two. This is the one who was making fun of the other one. And this is… The last one was tough, this is strong. I’m gonna burn one of these—you know, this is strong, and let me burn my other— one of my other ones.
Keith: Oh no.
Austin: This is strong and cyber arms I’m using. So like, you try to get in the way, Cass, [Art: Yeah.] and they are gonna try to like, twist your arm back and kick you away, or like, shove you away into one of these things. What is your Fight?
Art: 2.
Austin: Alright.
Art: The general problem with Cass in this system was that all the stats are just kind of bad.
Austin: Ah, right. Right, right, right. Let’s random side it and see what we get. 5.1.
Keith: Oh yeah, Cass doesn’t have like one real stand-out, huh?
Art: Yeah, Cass is a what we call—we call it a seven of all trades.
Keith: Oh, you could tie this.
Ali: Hm.
Austin: Cass could not tie this. Cass does not have—
Keith: No?
Austin: Cass has a 2 in Fight, right?
Keith: Right, but three dice to resist, right?
Austin: No, two dice to resist, because Cass—
Art: Two dice to resist.
Keith: Oh, because you haven’t rolled, so this doesn’t get re-charged on a second.
Austin: Correct, correct.
Art: No, but I’m ready for a roll here.
Austin: But Cass’s—what do you mean you’re ready for a roll?
Art: I—give me whatever you’re gonna give me, and then I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do.
Ali: Oh.
Austin: Oh, I see. I see.
Keith: Gotcha.
Austin: I’m gonna sticky one of these, which, as a reminder, sticky means that it lasts until you can get healing, remember? We’ve talked about this before. I believe that that’s correct. It is not—oh no, I’m sorry. That is—yeah, negative can be mended. You could mend it. But it’s not all the way to like, permanent, which would be locked, so I’m gonna give you one of these die. I’m gonna give you a broken arm.
Art: Alright.
Austin: Just breaks your arm. Just turns your around, snaps your arm, and pushes you away.
Ali: Wow.
Art: Cool. I use my other arm to shoot him.
[Ali gasps]
Austin: Oh boy.
Keith: [laughing] Oh my god!
Austin: Okay.
Jack: An Apostolosian scion pulling a gun inside the Cerulean at this time?
Austin: At this juncture?
Jack: At this juncture? Now, look—[chuckles] I love the Apostolosians, but…
Austin: Uh-huh, uh-huh.
[Ali laughs]
Austin: Alright, let’s—what’s your Shoot?
Art: It’s a 2.
Austin: Alright. I don’t know that this is like a—you know, try shooting someone in the open, Shoot vs Move is what it says. I guess that’s probably right. I don’t think it’s gonna go great for this person. Go ahead and un-discharge your hurt—or your push dice, and what do you have—you have a 2 in Shoot?
Art: Yeah.
Austin: Alright, what do you—what are your bonuses, if you’re using any? What push dice are you adding to this 2?
Art: Um… Yeah, I’ll take a push on this for—
Keith: Your loud and powerful gun.
Art: My loud and powerful gun.
[Ali snickers]
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mhm.
Art: Also, I don’t know that this is really part of it, but I think I got a great moment of surprise here.
Jack: I think so.
Art: I don’t think this guy was expecting to get shot right here.
Austin: I don’t think—I was certainly not expecting it. But again, you’d have to spend a push die on that. Maybe that’s—sorry, that was—maybe that’s attentive, you know? You’re using attentive.
Art: Yeah. Was ready to shoot someone.
Ali: Ooh.
Austin: Yeah. So are you gonna spend a second push die, or are you just gonna roll the three that you got? The two action dice and one push die?
Art: Um… I don’t—how much Move can this tough really have? You described him as so big.
Austin: That’s a great question.
Keith: I bet he has 1.
Austin: Don’t look at me.
Art: Yeah, I can beat a 1. I can even—probably can even beat a 3.
Austin: We’ll find out.
Keith: It’s hard to not beat a 1, frankly.
Austin: You’re shooting the one who broke your arm, right? The tougher, the stronger one, right?
Art: Oh, for sure, yeah.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Yep. Okay.
Art: This is a pretty bad idea. I don’t have the stats to do this.
Austin: But you have the push dice.
Art: I guess, yeah.
Keith: And, I think, you know, this goes to court, I think you’re fine, by the way.
[Ali laughs]
Art: Right.
Austin: It was self-defense.
Art: Alright, so random side…
Austin: So you’re not pushing more. You’re pushing once. You’re adding one push die. You have three other push die, you’re gonna save those for defense, presumably.
Art: Yeah, I think—
Keith: Cass needs three to defend against almost anything.
Austin: I gotcha. I see what you’re saying.
Art: Yeah. Again, Cass was poorly built.
Austin: Now we know. Alright, roll these dice, I guess.
Art: And we fixed it when we changed systems.
Austin: Hey, that’s a 5!
Art: That’s a 5!
Austin: And I only have one push dice, that’s not enough to get this 3 Move up to a 5.
Keith: Oh, 3, not 1.
Austin: Are you—what’s the adjective you’re giving me? Are you gonna upgrade it to sticky?
Art: Yeah, I’m gonna upgrade it to sticky, so.
Austin: Okay.
Keith: Trading dice, that’s the system.
Art: Now you can have that.
Austin: Mhm.
Art: What’s—I just want to one-up broken arm. [chuckles] Uh, punctured torso.
Austin: Punctured is fine.
Art: Bleeding internally.
[Ali snickers]
Austin: What was the classic one, Mako?
Jack: Perforated.
Austin: Perforated.
Keith: Perforated, yeah.
Art: I think—I don’t remember what we’d established about this gun, but I don’t think it’s an automatic, so I don’t think perforated is right.
Austin: I see, it’s a single…
Jack: I just—I hate to—
Art: Doesn’t that sound like what a barker is?
Austin: No, barker’s like a big hand cannon, right? AuDy, what’s up? What don’t you want to do?
Jack: Yeah. So, I mean, I have two questions here, right?
[Ali laughs]
Jack: The one question is about framing. I’m so curious about whether Cass took this action because they saw it as a tactical maneuver, or if this is like a shock and they are reacting to shock.
Austin: [cross] Great question.
Keith: Reflexive to having their arm broken, you mean?
Jack: Yes. Is it reflexive? Because I feel like Cass is, while they might be poorly built in this system, an interesting enough character that you could cut it both ways depending on the time that this is taking place, right?
Austin: Right.
Art: I think of this as, you know, because we sort of move from this Cass to a more tactical Cass as the game goes on, and I say “as the game goes on”, what I really mean is abruptly in the middle—
Austin: Uh-huh.
[Jack laughs]
Art: But to sort of like, back-weave that in, this is Cass—this is the moment that Cass realizes they need to think more.
Austin: That they gotta start putting plans together. This is—yeah.
Jack: Right.
Art: They gotta start putting plans together, [chuckling] because their arm’s broken and they just shot a guy in the chest in the middle of a casino.
Jack: Which leads to my second point, and I hate to be the person reminding the teacher we have homework, [Keith: Yeah.] but the tags on this gun are loud and powerful, and you did just discharge it in the middle of the casino.
Austin: They sure are.
Keith: Oh, this is—okay, this isn’t what I thought you were gonna say.
Austin: In the—no. And, you know, Mako, it’s confusing for you.
[Jack laughs]
Austin: Because you just saw this happen. It just happens—it’s like a repeat of the Cameron and Coffee fight.
Keith: Oh, I’m watching live TV.
[Ali laughs]
Austin: It’s like you’re watching live TV layered on top of an archive of the same performance. Do you know what I mean?
Keith: Right.
Austin: It’s like you’re watching Cass lipsync Coffee shooting someone right here.
Keith: Right.
Austin: Like, literally, it’s here. It’s—this is the spot.
Keith: I’ve got—this is where it was, yeah.
Austin: There was a tussle, there was a little hand to hand, and then a gun came out and someone got shot.
Keith: This is like, it’s like, tesseract layered television with the reality.
Austin: Correct.
Jack: It rhymes.
Austin: [chuckling] It rhymes, yes.
Keith: It’s not just rhymed, it’s the same words.
[Austin, Jack, and Keith laugh]
Austin: [laughing] It’s the same words. [singsong] “Someone got shot in the casino, someone got shot in the casino.”
[Ali and Jack laugh]
Keith: You can’t rhyme casino with casino.
Art: I hope that you take this opportunity, which I’m sure will be a big distraction, to look at whatever got kicked under the slot machine.
Keith: Okay. I’ve been—
Austin: Mhm.
Keith: I’ve been—I had to toss and turn, I did a quick night’s sleep just now, tossing and turning, ’cause I wasn’t sure about this.
Austin: Oh. Well, good morning.
Jack: Welcome.
Keith: Did we not roll hurt dice for that?
Austin: Oh, Keith. Thank you. We did not roll hurt dice for that.
[Ali chuckles]
Keith: I was really, like—I really just wanted—
Austin: That’s a 6, it’s fine, because you hit a 5.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: 6 doesn’t cancel out the 5. You’re good.
Keith: It’s not greater than.
Austin: It’s not greater than, it has to actually hit.
Keith: I hated doing that, I really wanted to get away with it, but then I was like…
Art: Talk about “Teacher, did we have homework?”
[Austin and Ali laugh]
Keith: Well, that was what I thought Jack was gonna say, was what about the hurt dice. But then, you know, Art, your impassioned speech about having to learn to make plans, I was like, well, maybe Cass deserves to fail. [chuckles] If that’s what comes out of this.
[Jack laughs]
Austin: Yeah, no.
Art: I think the broken arm is failure enough, thank you, thank you very much.
Keith: Yeah, that’s fair, yeah.
[Ali laughs]
Austin: I actually think—I don’t know that the game works this way, but I’m doing it anyway. That gun is loud, and this was a tight space. I think all of the characters here have stunned as a non-sticky hurt die right now, including the NPCs, including the out-of-towners down the way who are just playing the slots. So I’m just giving everybody sticky—
Keith: What about me? Was I prepped?
Austin: —including you, and you’re double stunned.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: You’re not actually double stunned, you’re just single stunned. But part of your stunning, Mako, is just it’s loud and you saw it twice, the rhyming thing happened, it’s vibrating in your head—
Art: Well, surely I’m not stunned. I pulled the trigger, I knew it was gonna be loud. [chuckles]
Austin: This is—you didn’t—what’d you do about—do you have, like, cyber ears that you can mute? You might.
[Ali laughs]
Keith: No, but they knew how loud their own gun is.
Art: No, I braced my ears.
Austin: Oh, you braced your ears.
Art: [chuckling] You know when you brace your ears?
Austin: Yeah, yeah, you brace your ears. Uh-huh. I see.
[Jack chuckles]
Ali: Oh, uh-huh.
Austin: No, you took—
Art: That’s why they say brace your ears.
Ali: I’m always saying this.
Austin: I’m giving everybody stunned for a brief moment here. Mako, are you digging around at the bottom of this thing to try to find whatever got kicked under?
Keith: Oh, yeah.
Austin: Alright. Yeah, you just come up with it. You have the Cerulean VIP card that says Cameron McLeod on it. And you spot hanging between two of the slot machines, a—like a data cord, you know? Like a—I’m picturing this like the internal sort of—the sort of like data cables on a PC, you know what I’m talking about?
Keith: Mhm.
Austin: Like, long, flat.
Jack: Like a SATA cable.
Austin: Like a SATA cable, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Keith: So there was a—is there still a hard drive there somewhere?
Austin: There is not. It looks like it was ripped—it looks like whatever that was hooked into was ripped away. You know, there’s like a loose screw or something. So it’s like there was something being uploaded here, there was something plugged into the network here, that was being manually uploaded one pull of the slot machine at a time. It’s as if they, you know, the thing that happens is these slot machines record data every—between every pull of the handle, and every time that you pull it, it uploads the data to the network, and so they were using that as a mechanism to upload something from here to somewhere else. And you’re able to intuit all of that because you are a hacker. Because you have the hacker background twice and I’m gonna respect that, you don’t have to roll for shit. I guess you have the, is it the—the Engineer background twice. Whatever it is.
Keith: Engineer, Engineer, Criminal.
Austin: Yeah, that’s—yeah. So you totally are like, “Oh, I see what they were doing here.”
Keith: Nice.
Austin: But, let me tell you, the other less tough tough, is not reacting well to their friend being shot in the chest.
Keith: Okay, gotta move.
Austin: Yeah, you are being—I think Cass is—they are diving at Cass to try to tackle you, Cass.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Which, let’s pull this up. They are using—one second, let me make sure. Because they don’t have the same stuff. Uh… and they have a hurt die now, because they are stunned. So they have 3 in Fight and they have—what can I use here? I guess I said before they had tough. The other one had strong, they have tough. So they’re gonna use tough. Do I want to use another one of these die? Let me see.
Art: This is why I’m so glad one of my adjectives is not tackled.
Austin: It’s a good one to use.
[Keith chuckles]
Austin: It’s a good one to use.
Jack: Safe. Adjective safe.
[Ali chuckles]
Austin: You know what they have?
Art: Attentive, attentive.
Austin: They have reflex stimulants, and so they’re quick enough to get in on you. Or that’s what their hope is. So they’re using two—
Art: [chuckles] They better be, because otherwise they’re gonna get shot.
Austin: They’re gonna get shot, uh-huh. [chuckles]
[Jack laughs]
Austin: Alright, and what do you—this is probably Move, also, right? Or are you—what are you doing? You’re just gonna shoot—
Art: Probably Move. I mean…
Austin: I guess it could be Shoot. But you wouldn’t give them an adjective, that’s not how this system works. So yeah.
Art: Yeah, it’s too—unless it’s—I guess my Move is worse than my Shoot, so I shouldn’t…
Austin: What’s your Fight? Is your Fight better or worse than your Move?
Art: My Fight is better than my Move.
Austin: Let’s go with your Fight, then. This is someone trying to dive and tackle you. What is your Fight?
Art: 2.
Austin: Alright.
Art: Are you sure it’s not an Operate?
Austin: I am certain it’s not an Operate.
[Ali laughs]
Art: Aren’t we all really just mechs in our own bodies?
Keith: [cross] Operating our own bodies?
Austin: Wait, did those—did those actually change? Wait, they—
Art: The red one definitely changed. Did you change all of them?
Austin: I did, and it says on the chat that they all changed, but it doesn’t look like they did. Did I just roll the same thing?
Keith: I mean, it could just be an outrageous—
Jack: That can’t be right.
Austin: Holy shit, I did.
Jack: What?
Austin: Look. Art, you rolled a 2 on this one. O the higher push dice. Then a 5—
Art: A 5 on this one.
Austin: And a 1.
Art: And a 1.
Austin: And then—
Art: So these 3 just didn’t change.
Austin: Yeah. Uh-huh.
Art: They rolled the same… Wow, what are the fuckin’ odds? I guess—
Keith: Something like 46,000 to 1.
Austin: Oh, okay. Thanks, Mako.
Art: No, isn’t it just 36 times 6?
Keith: Wouldn’t it be 6 times each of the dice, so 6 times 6—or 6 to the 6th power?
Art: No, I think it’s 6 cubed.
Austin: Yeah, I’m not sure. The 3 doesn’t cancel anything out, the 5 is the high die here. Are you going to discharge any dice to defend this? They are gonna try to give you the—they are gonna try to give you the sticky adjective—they are gonna try to give you the sticky adjective concussed. They’re just gonna slam you against the opposite row of slot machines.
Art: Oh, and I can just discharge these three dice and—
Austin: Well, you have to tell me what you’re using when you discharge those three dice. What adjectives or equipment you are using to boost your—
Art: Yeah, I’m on it.
Austin: Okay.
Jack: It’s gun, isn’t it?
Austin: You have three is what you have right now, right?
Art: Yeah. Well, again, attentive.
Austin: Sure.
Art: I saw it coming.
Austin: You did.
[Ali chuckles]
Art: That’s one.
Austin: Boom.
Art: Um… Let me come back to how much I want to try to argue for intuitive. [chuckles]
Austin: Yeah, I don’t—that’s a rough one, I don’t know about all that.
Art: Um…
Austin: You just need one more.
Art: Well, I need… Um, I’ll—the gun.
Austin: Yeah? Yeah.
Art: “Try to avoid the gun” [Austin: Sure.] is a mitigating factor in a tackle.
Austin: Yeah, sure, I don’t want to line that up.
Art: Because if you tackle into the gun, you get shot.
Austin: Yeah, that’s no good. Sure. So go ahead and discharge one more. And yeah, you’re able to like, slip away. They can’t get the angle on you, exactly. So hold on—
Art: I need one more, but–
Austin: No, you only need to get to 5, right? Ties go to the defender.
Art: Yeah, and my Fight is 2.
Austin: Oh, your Fight is 2. It’s not 3, it’s 2? Yikes.
Art: It’s 2.
Austin: Okay, well then, you’re gonna need one more.
Art: I think it’s intuitive.
Austin: Mm. I think we started by saying it couldn’t be intuitive.
Keith: Okay. So it’s the 2 Fight plus…
Art: Well, what about authoritative? Wouldn’t it be weird if you were trying to, like, [laughing] tackle Prince Harry in the casino?
[Austin and Jack laugh]
Art: Wouldn’t you be like, “Holy—is that Prince Harry?”
Austin: They recognize you, like, “Wait, I can’t—you’re Cassander.”
Jack: No, they just shot at them.
Austin: I agree, I agree.
Jack: I think that the shooting first is the…
Austin: I agree. I do agree.
[Ali laughs]
Art: Shooting first is…
Jack: I would hear the argument for authoritative if you had, like, gotten into a fracas with them, but you shot one of them.
Austin: You shot one. In the chest.
Art: What’s more authoritative than shooting someone? That’s the American way.
Austin: We’re not in America.
Art: But I’m in America.
Austin: Right. No, I understand.
Keith: So the problem is that you just need one more—
Austin: We need one more, and you just don’t have—
Keith: —die, but you have no justification. What are the two dice that you have right now?
Art: [chuckles] I think my justifications have been fantastic, and I’m being railroaded here by…
Austin: Uh-huh.
Keith: [chuckles] Hold on, hold on. So you’ve got three action dice, but you should only have two, right?
Austin: Push dice, push dice.
Keith: Right, but there’s three action dice here.
Austin: Those are mine, that’s my roll, Keith.
Keith: Oh, this is your roll. Oh, so you’re defending.
Austin: Yeah, Art is trying to defend from a 2 up to a 5.
Keith: Right, and—
Austin: And is using attentive—
Keith: Attentive.
Austin: —and using the gun.
Keith: The gun.
Austin: Which, I’ll give you the gun. And then the remaining adjectives here are intuitive and authoritative.
Keith: Well, I have—I mean, I could do it. Instead of using the gun, use loud and powerful, fire the gun again into the air to stun everybody.
Austin: That’s not what was actually happening, right? Art was not—Art was not resisting with Shoot, Art was resisting with Move. Or with Fight, which is your strongest thing, right?
Keith: Right. I feel like you could fire the gun into the air, and punch someone.
Art: [cross] Well, it’s the same as Shoot.
Austin: And you’re saying—the thing about this is like, this person’s already stunned by the loud gun.
Keith: Right.
Austin: So it’s not like that hasn’t been accounted for. That’s the red die I rolled, you know?
Keith: Okay.
Austin: I want a new vector. You have to determine vectors for reactions. Intuitive is not…
Art: I think attentive and intuitive are…
Austin: Yeah, I can give you intuitive. It’s a real stretch, it’s just one of those things where it’s like, intuitive is just so strong, I’m side-eyeing past Austin to be like what roll does intuitive not give you a vector on, you know? It’s very strong, so.
Art: Well, lucky for present Austin, this is almost over.
[Ali laughs]
Austin: Yeah. Well, is it? We—okay, sure.
Art: Well, compared to your life.
Austin: Compared to last session, right. Compared to my life, sure. That makes it sound like a reverse threat? I don’t know. It’s weird. Alright, I’ll let it go. So, yes. This person misses you, all of your dice are discharged.
Austin: Mako, [Keith: Yeah.] the gun went off, what are you doing at this point?
Jack: Are there alarms?
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: Okay.
Austin: Yeah, it’s—everyone is screaming. You know, AuDy and Aria, you can hear security officers beginning to move to try to like, [Keith: Okay.] it’s—the world is on fire in this moment.
Keith: Alright. So I gotta try and think about what I might want to do.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: And my immediate first impressions, I can turn off the alarms. I can misdirect where the alarms are headed.
Austin: Sure.
Keith: I can shoot the second person. I can abandon Cass.
Austin: I like this. This is really laying out all of your options on the table. I respect it.
Keith: Yeah. I can, um… maybe hack into some cybernetics on the second person or fight directly. That’s ill-advised.
Austin: Mhm.
Keith: And I guess—and my top two are turn off the alarm, use Hack to turn off the alarm, and abandon Cass. Those are like my top two. Because I’ve got the thing, and the thing is really important.
Austin: Right.
Keith: And Cass is just gonna go into the holding cell, and that’s where Aria is.
Austin: I think—“Cass might go into a holding cell” might be a leap.
Keith: Okay, might get shot out back.
Austin: Might get shot out back. Cass just killed some—potentially killed someone.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: He’s not dead.
Austin: Yeah, but “at the end of any scene in which one or more adjectives were asserted to describe physical harm against a character, there’s a chance the adjective might lead to the character’s death. Do this for each character who’s been so harmed.” So we’ll find out if you shot to death here.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Also if you broken arm’d to death here. That seems unlikely, but.
Art: That would be so surprising.
Austin: It would be so funny.
Jack: One murder from a—
Art: From the rest of everything.
Jack: One murder of a—like, by a CCT operative led to the Chime getting deployed here, [Austin: Mhm.] and we might be on the verge of potentially two further murders by CCT operatives.
Keith: Get another…
Austin: Yeah, why was Orth so weird about y’all at the beginning of the season?
[Ali and Jack laugh]
Keith: Let’s get another crew in here to investigate this murder. You know, I’m gonna be—I’m gonna bet on us.
[Austin laughs]
Art: [chuckles] I love to hear it.
Austin: It’s kinda sweet.
Keith: And use Hack to misdirect the security forces—
Austin: One more time here. Yeah.
Keith: One more time, get them—
Austin: Now, I need to tell you—
Art: I hear the person who shot those people is already outside.
Austin: Right. I need to tell you, a thing you will know about this is, the person who you were up against before is not the person you are up against now that the alarm is going off.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: Right? They have gone into high security mode at this moment, right?
Keith: Right, yeah.
Art: Like a bunch of cowards.
Keith: Right.
[knocking sound in background]
Austin: Do you hear that? You can hear that.
Art: Yes, I can hear that.
Austin: That’s my freezer. That’s my freezer? It’s—
Jack: Oh, weird.
Ali: Oh.
Art: Oh, is your freezer chopping onions?
[Keith and Jack laugh]
Austin: [laughs] Yeah, basically.
Keith: Badly?
Austin: It’s my icemaker, but I thought I turned my icemaker off so that it would stop doing that, but it’s still doing it. I don’t know what to do about it. Anyway.
Keith: Maybe it’s gotta get all the remaining ice out.
Austin: It has. Trust me, I’ve looked—it’s a whole thing. Anyway.
Keith: Okay.
Jack: Mako—take advantage of the chaos, opportunity full scale casino heist.
Keith: I do—I do like the sound of it.
Austin: Mako, full chaos, take advantage of the chaos opportunity heist.
Art: Mako’s full name doesn’t come up a lot.
[Ali chuckles]
Keith: I think the flaw is that after the alarm has been sounded is not the right time to steal from the vault.
Austin: Right, right, right.
[Jack chuckles]
Austin: Sure. That makes sense. So instead, you’re gonna try to deactivate this. Alright, what’s your Hack? Let’s build that pool.
Keith: 4.
Austin: Alright.
Keith: I’m gonna use one push die.
Austin: Let me pull it up here. For what thing?
Keith: Criminal.
Austin: Criminal. That makes sense, yeah. That—
Keith: Oh, I moved five of them.
Austin: Yeah, I pulled one back here.
Keith: Yeah, I know about shutting off alarms.
Austin: Yeah. That’s true, you do.
Keith: I specifically know about shutting off alarms.
Austin: You do. That’s kind of the thing you do.
Keith: Yeah. 6.
Austin: That is a 6. I have this one die. Do I want to discharge this? Is this worth discharging for this?
Art: There’s probably gonna be something more fun later.
Austin: No, the thing that I like is that the alarm is going off, you know? I like that part of the—yeah, I’m gonna discharge this one to defend and bring mine back up to 6.
Keith: I should say, I’m not shutting the alarm off, I’m just moving where the alarm is telling everyone to go.
Austin: Right, I get you. Oh, I see what you’re saying, you’re saying—
Keith: So the alarm’s not going off.
Austin: No, I’m keeping the pressure on you here.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: This person moves faster than they seem they would, this new person that you’re dealing with. They have nerve-linked, so they are moving at the speed of thought, just like you are, and they’re able to keep up. So, you do not pull this one off. You don’t give them a new adjective.
Keith: Can I—
Austin: No.
[Jack chuckles]
Austin: You spent one push die, that was the thing that you did. You’ve been—you’ve missed here.
Keith: There’s no resisting the resist.
Austin: That is correct. You would have had to have—that is the thing the defense gets in their, you know.
Keith: Yeah, I would have had to have rolled two 6s to get…
Austin: Correct. This is why—or you would have had to have had another push die—yeah, you would have had to have rolled two 6s, is what you would have had to have done. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, the alarm is continuing, you feel like the tension is really coming down hard on you right now, there is still this other person up, and they are going to—seeing you hack, this time, this person who missed you, Cass, goes after Mako. And they are gonna try to fight Mako and take Mako hostage.
Keith: Shouldn’t have bet on us.
Austin: [chuckles] They are going to try to give Mako grabbed. That, again, is—that’s from the..
Jack: This is a kind of shoot the medic situation, right? Where it’s like, they recognize the capacity of Mako in this moment as a way to aid Cass?
Austin: I don’t think it’s a shoot the medic kind of—I think it’s a take a hostage moment, right?
Jack: Okay, sure.
Keith: Mhm.
Austin: Which I think is slightly different here. And yeah, they are gonna roll four. What is your Fight?
Keith: My Fight is—I think it’s 1.
Austin: Okay. That’s bad.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Alright, rolling. And that is a 6.
Keith: Let me check… yep, that hits.
Austin: Oh wait, wait, wait I gotta roll a hurt die. From being stunned before, that’s still happening.
Keith: No, there’s no—there’s no—you have a 5.
Austin: Oh, I do, you’re right.
Keith: Even if you canceled your 6, which you do.
Austin: [cross] Which I do, I do cancel the 6. But the 5 is just too much for you.
Keith: Right, yeah.
Austin: Okay.
Keith: I couldn’t even beat the 3.
Austin: You couldn’t even beat the 3. You’re right. I am gonna give you this hurt die, because I am going to give you the hurt—the physical hurt—actually, I’m not. I’m gonna give you a psychological thing here, which is just like, some version of scared.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Someone is, like, you feel light in this person’s arms. You know?
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: And not in like, a fun way. [chuckles] In a “Oh my god, they lifted me up like a ragdoll.”
Keith: I’m nothing, I’m… yeah.
Austin: Yeah, exactly. So go ahead and add that hurt die. I think scared is simple. It works. Go ahead and add scared to your…
Keith: Scared, got it.
Austin: Your adjectives, your negative adjectives. They got Mako, Cass.
Art: Yeah.
Austin (as Bodyguard): Put down the gun.
Art: You think Mako’s ever seen Speed?
Keith: Yes.
Austin: Are there movie nights on the Kingdom Come yet? I don’t think so. I don’t know.
[Ali chuckles]
Keith: They show us all the old action classics at the September Institute. I’ve seen Speed and I’ve seen Speed 2: Cruise Control.
Art: Well, that’s not as relevant to this situation.
Keith: If we were on a boat, it would be.
Art: [chuckling] The fact that you say that tells me you don’t know the reference I’m making.
Austin (as Bodyguard): Everybody shut up!
[Jack chuckles]
Keith: No. I haven’t seen Speed. Mako has seen Speed.
Austin: I see, right. Uh-huh.
Art: No, I can’t, right?
Austin: I mean, what’s your Shoot?
Art: Shoot’s a 3.
Austin: Shoot is a 3. You got some dice. You got three push dice to work with.
Art: Yeah. Well, I mean, Speed says to shoot the hostage.
Austin: Right. Oh, sorry, I should not have taken—oh, no, I gave it to…
Keith: Oh, sorry, I’ve seen Dragon Ball Z.
Austin: Right.
[Ali snickers]
Keith: This is a Raditz Goku situation.
Austin: You could—Piccolo, Goku, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Keith: You’re Piccolo.
Austin: You could Special Beam Cannon this guy.
Art: But with a 3 Shoot, maybe I could just like…
Austin: Just do it.
Art: Maybe I could just shoot ’em.
Austin: You could just do it.
Art: Just like, he’s really big and Mako’s not that big. There must be a lot of non-Mako space to shoot.
Keith: I don’t know if there’s a mechanic in Technoir to like, trade shooting your friend for not having to roll Shoot still. [chuckles] You would have had to have rolled your Shoot anyway.
[Ali laughs]
Austin: I don’t think that there is. But I do get what you’re saying.
Keith: That’s not a bad idea, though, for a mechanic.
Austin: [laughing] You could shoot your friend?
[Jack chuckles]
Keith: I will—for an automatic success, I will take an extreme negative consequence upfront.
Austin: Yeah, that’s a—that’s like a devil’s bargain.
Jack: A devil’s bargain.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah. That’s a classic devil’s bargain collateral die.
Art: But the way that like, the tempo of this is, that I have to let them react, and the point of shooting the hostage is they don’t react.
Austin: Right, yeah, uh-huh.
Art: You know? So it’s gotta be, like…
Keith: Sure.
Austin: Yeah.
Art: Losing out on the double tap is the real…
Austin: Mhm.
Art: So I’m just gonna, you know. Whatever he’s not covering with Mako I’m gonna shoot. If it’s the head, it’s the head, if it’s the—probably not the chest.
Austin: It’s whatever you—let’s talk about this as writers, or as storytellers. What do you think is interesting for Cass to shoot here? ’Cause that’s gonna be the part that’s not being covered by Mako.
Art: Um…
Austin: Like, is it a—
Art: I think there is a part of Cass that wants to think of this person as their countryperson, right?
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Art: And so, that—
Austin: Could do the headshot, chooses to shoot the leg instead. Or the arm, or something.
Art: But like, a serious leg wound.
Austin: Yeah.
Art: You know, like a—you know, break the femur, make it so you have to get immediate medical attention or you’ll die.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: Well, that’ll cost you.
Austin: It will. Alright.
Art: I mean, I can’t—we can’t lose anyone here. It creates a paradox for the rest of these.
[Ali snickers]
Austin: Well, we started this by saying if it does—if it happens, it happens. [laughs] If he dies, he dies, and it’s a weird—don’t worry about it so much.
[Jack laughs]
Art: [laughing] Okay.
Ali: Aria died in the first arc.
Austin: Mako Jr. Mako 2.
Keith: Right.
Art: It turns out that for the whole season, Cass and Mako were actually the fond memories of Aria and AuDy.
[Ali laughs]
Jack: And we’ll do it like they do it in King of the Castle, right, where it’s like, oh, Cass 1 was executed.
Austin: RIght, yeah.
Jack: Cass 2 has entered the game.
Austin: Has entered.
Art: No, I think it’s ghosts.
Jack: Oh, wow.
Austin: Mako’s been a clone the whole time, everyone knew except Mako.
Jack: Have you ever been a ghost?
Austin: Have you ever fought a ghost before? Mako, or sorry, Cass, you’re—what are you rolling here? Your Shoot is a 2, right?
Art: My Shoot is a—
Keith: Your Shoot is a 3.
Austin: Your Shoot is a 3.
Art: 3, so I’ll take these.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Art: I got two hurts, right? No, I missed—I did not get concussed.
Austin: You did not. So one hurt.
Art: So one hurt. And it’s two push dice?
Keith: Go for it—I say go for it.
Austin: I say fucking go for it.
Art: But do I need to save the other one for—
Austin: Not if you win.
Keith: Right, not if you win.
Art: I guess, yeah, alright.
Jack: Right, no need for defense if the attack is sufficient.
Keith: Well, that’s not true because—
Austin: So what are you—
Keith: It’s only—
Austin: This is attentive, intuitive, and whatever the barker one was?
Art: This is—I think, yeah, it’s barker, it’s attentive, and it’s—
Austin: Authoritative. No. That’s not really…
Art: Oh, that’s AuDy.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: You can use the tags. You could just use loud and powerful, right?
Art: Loud and powerful?
Austin: Yeah.
Art: Yeah, I’m counting on powerful to do the damage.
Austin: Yeah. Powerful for sure. Powerful will do the damage.
Keith: Loud is so significant that Austin made it stun everyone in the room, so, loud—
Austin: Right, but—
Art: And I want—what I’m really going for with loud is I want a little bit of a flinch.
Austin: I see, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I gotcha.
Art: When the shot goes off.
Austin: That makes sense.
Art: Don’t at me about how you don’t really have that kind of time when someone shoots you. [laughs]
[Ali laughs]
Austin: It’s anime rules. Let’s roll ’em.
Art: Yeah. Alright. Multi-sided. Random side.
Austin: 6s cancel out, unfortunately.
Keith: 4.
Art: It’s a 4.
Jack: Oh.
Keith: That’s rough.
Austin: 4. What are they responding with? Sorry, I didn't even think about this. This would probably be Move, right? What are you—what are you giving—
Art: I don’t know. It’s hard to dodge a point blank.
Austin: It really is. I think—
Keith: I think that you—it’s Shoot, is what it is.
Austin: Well, it’s not Shoot versus Shoot. You shoot with Shoot, but what do they respond with, is what I’m looking for. And I think—
Art: It probably has to be Move, just because like, what else is there?
Austin: [cross] It has to be Move. Yeah. It’s Move because it’s, I’m trying to move—
Keith: Right, you’ve got to move—
Austin: —behind Mako, basically. And I think that this is gonna hit. I don’t think I can get to—I don’t think I can get to 4 with this character at this point. So, yeah. What are you giving them?
Art: Um, immobilized?
Austin: Sure. And you’re making it sticky?
Art: Yeah.
Austin: Okay. I’ll take one of those die and put it in my discharge. Alright. They fall to the ground, they yell, and the two of you are, for the moment—I mean you can hear, you know, everyone has fled, this whole part of the Cerulean is on lockdown, or is getting locked down, you can hear—Mako, you can see through the Holidaze, that they are deploying, like, hover security drones to come try to find you. This is not a good place to be, but you do have the Cerulean VIP card, which should get you out of here. So.
Keith: Yeah, I should know from being in—from being Holidaze in, where the nearest VIP door is.
Austin: Right. A hundred percent. And it’s not that far away. I will, now, need—Art, you took a physical harm, or Cass did, right?
Art: Yeah, broken arm.
Austin: So, for any time that you take physical harm, roll a hurt die for each sticky or locked negative adjective that you have applied to you directly. So go ahead and roll this die.
Art: What am I trying to get here?
Austin: You don’t want a 6. Hey, that’s a 4. You’re good. And then both of my characters also took physical harm, so I am gonna roll these. Oh yeah, you’re—one of them’s dying. The one you shot in the chest is dying.
Jack: [chuckling] Okay.
Austin: I got a 6 here, so.
Art: Well.
Austin: They are dying. The other one is just immobilized, as you said, but the first one that you shot, they received—
Art: That’s a shame. That one deserved to die less.
[Ali scoffs]
Art: Wait, no, that’s the one who broke my arm.
[Austin laughs]
Keith: Yeah, that guy died for no reason.
Austin: Alright. And then y’all break off into a run, presumably, towards the nearest VIP exit?
Art: Yeah.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: And you’re not using your—it’s not like you have a VIP card, this is being registered as Cameron McLeod’s VIP card, and it’s not just that this is a VIP card, this is a VIP card for someone who has been—[Keith: Right.] who explicitly has security access and was working as an agent for them.
Keith: But also, is explicitly dead.
Austin: Correct. Doesn’t—you know what? I’ve been talking about this casino being real person-operated. They did not deactivate that card, right?
Keith: Right.
Austin: If anything, they were hoping that card would be used.
Keith: No, but you did say the word registered.
Austin: Oh, yeah, totally. So like, it does—
Keith: Like, somewhere it ticked, like, dead guy using card.
Austin: Yep, [chuckling] that is exactly correct.
Jack: Well, especially because Cameron was—we know that the family was surveilling Cameron pretty thoroughly, right?
Austin: Correct. Exactly. Well, and they probably want this card back too, right? And so, I suspect that they didn’t shut it down so that if someone tried to use it they would see where it got used, right? So, back in the back rooms, AuDy, people are running around like wild, Aria, the TV has switched onto, like, the emergency channel only, and it’s playing like—
Keith: Celebrity E! Emergency.
Austin: Celebrity E! Emergency channel, and it’s Mario Lopez—
Art: E!mergency with Mario Lopez. [laughs]
[Jack chuckles]
Austin: [chuckles] Uh-huh. Telling you—it’s comforting words from all of the C-list celebrities Mario Lopez knows.
Keith: Singing—they’re all singing Imagine by John Lennon.
[Jack chuckles]
Austin: [laughing] They’re all singing Imagine, they’re all, yeah. Uh-huh.
Keith: “Don’t worry, we can get through this.”
[music outro - “The Long Way Around” by Jack de Quidt]