Transcribed by: Iris (@sacredwhim)
AUSTIN: Sangfielle is a series that draws on elements of dark fantasy, horror, and Gothic fiction. As such, a list of content warnings will always be made available in the episode description.
[MUSIC INTRO BEGINS - “Sangfielle” by Jack de Quidt]
AUSTIN (as NARRATOR): I have been publishing this almanac and all of the stories in it, factual to a one, for damn near two full thirds of my life. So understand the weight I am putting into these words. In all the tales told, all the reportage run, before or after the calamity in Concentus, there is nowhere and no-when I would have rather liked to visit myself more than Blackwick on the night of that dust-storm. It’s not just the history of the evening. Sure, you could locate it as a major turning point for what was to follow, like a scattering of seeds across fertile land, but my interest in being there is so much more base, more sensuous. Sounds like a good time to me.
Those who have shared a meal with me in one form or another cannot be surprised by this. For me, there is little that improves the flavor of a dish more than contrary contexts. Yes, that’s about what is on the plate and in the cup, a sweet peach paired with coffee so earthen in profile that it’s more akin to dirt than water… but it’s also about the room, the environment. Hell, the weather. I’ve eaten a full course at the premiere restaurant of the First Canton. It did nothing for me. Not compared to the surprise of a steak cooked somehow to perfection in a Republica dive that barely had enough briquettes to heat the stove.
All of which is to say that here, towards the very end of the Blackwick Group, we have been given a sumptuous blend of tastes. Because inside of their headquarters that night, a surprise visitor arrived and the atmosphere grew thin and bitter and brittle. And outside, the breeze swirled saccharine and dense, like cotton candy air. And when those two tastes collide, mm. It is a thunderous flavor. So get yourself a helping, sit down, and enjoy one last ride.
[MUSIC INTRO ENDS]
AUSTIN: Welcome to Friends at the Table, an actual play podcast focused on critical worldbuilding, smart characterization, and fun interaction between good friends. I’m your host, Austin Walker. Joining me today, Andrew Lee Swan.
DRE: Hey, you can find me on Twitter @swandre3000.
AUSTIN: Ali Acampora.
ALI: Hi, you can find me over @ali_west on Twitter, and you can find the show over at @Friends_Table.
AUSTIN: Sylvia Clare.
SYLVI: Hey, I’m Sylvi, you can find me on Twitter @sylvibullet and you can listen to my other show Emojidrome wherever you get your podcasts.
AUSTIN: Janine Hawkins.
JANINE: Hi, you can find me on Twitter @bleatingheart.
AUSTIN: Jack de Quidt.
JACK: Hi, you can find me on Twitter @notquitereal, and buy any of the music featured on the show at notquitereal.bandcamp.com.
AUSTIN: Art Martinez-Tebbel.
ART: Hey, you can find me in unending purgatory, which is to say, on Twitter.com, @atebbel.
[GROUP CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: And Keith Carberry.
KEITH: Hi, you can find me in unending purgatory playing Uru Live Again at YouTube.com/RunButton, where we’re playing Uru.
AUSTIN: U-R-U.
KEITH: The sequel—U-R-U, the MMO sequel to Myst. It’s weird.
JANINE: They got that new content in.
KEITH: What’s that?
JANINE: There’s new content, or new, like, fan-content or something.
KEITH: There is new content, yeah. They’re still putting out Live—Myst: Live Again stuff.
AUSTIN: That’s wild. Wild.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Alright, today, we are continuing our game of HEART: The City Beneath by Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor. My goals, as always, are to have the page in front of me where I wrote down what my goals are. I am failing at my goals. “Ask questions instead of planning; evoke an atmosphere of wonder, horror, and humanity; build and break tension; pay attention to what everyone at the table wants, both long- and short-term; and play to find out what happens.”
Where did we—let’s see. We left off with y’all together in a building. Were you in the Boundless Conclave building or were you back near base? I guess you were back in the Boundless Conclave, probably.
ALI: I think it was back at base, because it was Pickman and Lyke coming back from….
AUSTIN: Oh, it was. You’re right, that was back at base.
JACK: From our successful visit.
AUSTIN: Yes. Okay, well, that makes this a bit easier.
ALI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Which is useful. When we last left off, a storm was hitting the town, a dust-storm. And I think that that storm, which, you know, has all the sound of strange thunder, and all of the normal whipping of the wind—and, in this case, of the dust and sand—across the walls and windows, is joined with additional sounds. And visuals. There is a strange light inside of this dust-storm when you kind of peek out past the shutters and blinds of your windows, and there is the sound of a train approaching, a train’s horn and also its engine, and then, finally, there is a strange music—which, when I asked you, Jack, how to describe it, you said “feverish,” but not in tempo, in kind of sickness.
JACK: Yeah.
SYLVI: Ooh.
JACK: What a lovely place Sangfielle is.
DRE: [LAUGHS] That sounds awful.
SYLVI: That sounds sick.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Uh-huh. It is.
DRE: Well, yeah.
AUSTIN: And, I think, in about an hour’s time, maybe two, the storm comes to a halt, and the sound of the train is gone, the sound of the wind and sand is gone, but the music maintains. And I would say before anyone has a chance to even go outside and see what is going on out there, there is a knock at the door. Who answers?
SYLVI: This isn’t my place. I feel weird doing that.
AUSTIN: Yeah, this is—that’s—
ALI: I’d be happy to.
SYLVI: I’m a guest.
ART: It does feel like a Marn.
AUSTIN: It does feel like a Marn thing to do, yeah.
KEITH: [OVERLAPPING] Yeah, Marn’s very ‘answer the door,’ huh?
[SYLVI LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: [OVERLAPPING] Isn’t that what’s—wow.
ALI: [OVERLAPPING] Didn’t I answer the last door? I think I might have.
SYLVI: [OVERLAPPING] You seem like a real ‘answer the door’ kinda guy.
[GROUP CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: Yeah. Fair.
ALI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: You need an ‘answer the door’ kinda guy. I don’t think that that’s—you know what I mean?
DRE: That’s true, yeah.
ART: Otherwise your door’s shut.
[ALI AND JACK LAUGH]
AUSTIN: A hundred percent.
KEITH: Yeah, we have a lot of ‘say nothing’-s and a lot of ‘come in’-s, but not a lot of ‘open the door.’
[ALI CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. As the door—as you open the door, there is a tall and imposing figure in front of you who has a piece of paper, a hammer, and some nails in hand. It looks like he was about to hammer something into your front door if you had not come over to open it in time. Behind him, you—Marn, you feel like the air is drunk out there. It’s like, dense. Like, you’re hit with a wave of strange, like—just strange air, right? There’s like a warm, an almost too-rich breeze. You catch the smell of kind of—the normal smell after a dust-storm hits, right, which is just kind of like everything’s unsettled, it makes you want to sneeze, but it’s also rich with like, a sugary smell, a salty smell. It feels as if there’s like, you know, someone’s opened up a food stall right outside your building, but you can’t see past this tall imposing figure who is—
KEITH: Is there a temperature component to this? Or is it just—
AUSTIN: Yeah, I think it’s warm. I do think it’s warm.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: But it’s like—it’s warm the way after you do a deep cleaning of your house, you feel kind of warm, because it’s like you’ve kicked up all the dust and you’ve exerted yourself. And that’s in the air somehow, even though Marn has not been outside doing anything. You know what I mean? But that’s how it feels. That’s the experience of it. And, in fact, this figure in front of you has a little sweat on his brow. This is a devil who I don’t know that any of you have met in person—I know that none of you have met in person since coming back, at least. Maybe… I don’t know if anyone would have—no one here is like, from the town in this way. Like, dealing with miners.
KEITH: I was a miner.
JACK: [OVERLAPPING] What about Lyke?
AUSTIN: I guess, Lyke, you were a miner. Lyke, give me… Lyke, give me a… huh. Give me a Haven roll. Give me an Occult Haven roll. That feels right. You have those, also, right? So.
KEITH: I do, so—Occult or Haven, and then what else?
AUSTIN: Yeah. Occult or—oh, oh, oh, right, those are both Domains. Can you tell it’s been a minute since we played this game?
[KEITH CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: I think that this is probably—
KEITH: Discern?
AUSTIN: Discern. Yeah, let’s say that’s Discern.
[PAUSE]
AUSTIN: Ooh. Oh, no, wait, wait, wait, you set it—
KEITH: Oh, I rolled Dangerous, but it’s still wrong.
AUSTIN: You set it as Dangerous, it’s wrong, so—you have a 6 in there, so that would have been a success.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: Or that would have been a mixed success. Take 1 Fortune Stress.
KEITH: Okay. That’s fine. I have—
AUSTIN: Roll Fallout.
KEITH: I have 2 Fortune Protection.
AUSTIN: Oh, well, then you’re good. You don’t—you don’t know this person to speak to him. You don’t recognize this guy, is what I’m gonna say on that roll.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: And he says:
AUSTIN (as TALL FIGURE): Oh, well, you’re here. I got a little announcement to make. Can I come on in?
AUSTIN: And you see that he has the ad hoc badge of a sheriff. It’s clear that what he’s done is taken one of the deputy badges given by the Magistrates, the Pale Magistrates—which, did we ever figure out what that badge looked like, Jack? I feel like we had some idea.
JACK: Oh, god.
AUSTIN: Was there like a lightning bolt component? I don’t remember.
JACK: It was a lightning bolt. It might have been something to do with swords.
AUSTIN: That sounds—
JACK: I feel like we had this conversation on mic.
AUSTIN: I also feel like that.
JACK: And I’ve completely forgotten what it was.
AUSTIN: I know.
JACK: It might have been in the first episode, when Pickman got that badge and then shortly afterwards melted it down.
AUSTIN: Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. You know what? That makes perfect sense.
JACK: Do we have a transcript for that yet? I think we do.
AUSTIN: I’m checking. We do. But it looks like I’ve just said “magistrate badge” over and over.
[ALI CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: Let’s see here. We don’t describe it here, so I think we probably went loose. But let’s say what we just said, which is it is—and who knows, maybe a deputy badge looks a little different, right? So it is this kind of lightning bolt crossed with a sword, and what it seems like he’s done, or has had done, is combined two of those and put them on a kind of circular field to create an ad hoc star between the crossed lightning bolts and swords of the two badges. And this is the town’s new sheriff, Maleister Price. And—
JACK: Maleister like Malevolent Allister?
[KEITH LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: Yeah, like Malevolent Allister. Maleister, M-A-L-E-I-S-T-E-R. And Price like ‘what’s the price of a cup of coffee these days?’
[ALI CHUCKLES]
KEITH: Higher than it was, I’ll tell you that.
AUSTIN: Yeah, tell me about it. That’s right.
ALI: [LAUGHS] I think there’s like—’cause I was thinking about this, I think that there’s a little bit of hesitation with Marn to let this person into the building knowing that, like—I think having a little bit of the history that the sheriffs killed a bunch of people, but also I think all nine of us could probably take this one guy, so.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
KEITH: Oh, yeah.
ALI: Yeah, come on in.
AUSTIN: He comes in and says:
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): Looks like y’all got hit down here too, huh? Well, the thralls are all dealt with, and it seems like we’ve been rewarded. Have you taken a look outside yet? The gods have delivered a carnival upon us for the work we did purifying this town.
KEITH (as LYKE): [AGITATED] What?
[ALI CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): In any case—
ART: Great response.
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): I’m here to deliver a notice handed down from the town council. If one of you could sign it to approve that you’ve—or to show that you’ve received the message?
AUSTIN: And puts the notice down on your kind of counter—like, walks across the room and puts it down on the countertop.
ALI (as MARN): And what council is this?
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): The town council? The one that pays your rent and board? And food?
AUSTIN: Also, board is rent, so.
KEITH (as LYKE): We have rent?
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): You’re standing in a building paid for by the town.
KEITH (as LYKE): I didn’t know. I definitely didn’t know that, I don’t think.
JANINE: I always thought board was food.
AUSTIN: No, ‘cause it’s—oh, I guess it’s room and board.
JANINE: It’s room and board.
ART: Room and board, yeah.
AUSTIN: So yeah, I said it right the first time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I should trust myself more.
[GROUP CHUCKLES]
KEITH (as LYKE): Look, hey, I know about the sandwiches, but I thought we just—I thought this was ours.
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): Absolutely not. We could rent this out to another business owner if not for y’all. In any case, I just need the signature.
ALI (as MARN): Yeah, uh…
JACK (as PICKMAN): Wait, hold on, hold on. Nobody sign anything.
JANINE (as ES): Do you want to maybe read it first?
JACK (as PICKMAN): What does it say?
AUSTIN: It says “Contract Termination.”
JACK (as PICKMAN): Oh, no, we’re not signing this.
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): Well, I’m afraid to say I’m gonna need a signature from somebody. You’ll see the signature includes a generous severance for your time served here, and if you don’t sign it, you don’t get the severance.
JACK (as PICKMAN): Are you firing us?
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): That’s right.
JACK (as PICKMAN): Why?
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): All the services have been rendered. There was a time when the town did not have the protection it needed. Now, we have an adequate sort. My deputies and I.
JACK (as PICKMAN): Who the hell are you?
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): I’m Maleister Black, the sheriff of Blackwick County.
AUSTIN: Sorry, Maleister Black is wrong. Aleister Black is a wrestler.
KEITH (as LYKE): [JOKING] You’re Maleister Price, you said.
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): [JOKING] I’m Maleister Price.
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
SYLVI: Oh my god.
KEITH (as LYKE): [JOKING] You said—wait, you gave us two names. Now I don’t even know that you’re the real sheriff.
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): I’m Maleister Price. I’m the sheriff of Blackwick County.
KEITH (as LYKE): Yeah, you say now.
SYLVI: You could be Maleister Black, sheriff of Pricewick County.
AUSTIN: That’s right.
[KEITH LAUGHS]
ART (as DUVALL): I thought we were, like, archaeologists.
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): No. What?
JACK (as PICKMAN): No. Why did you think that?
[JANINE LAUGHS]
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): You thought the Shape Knight was an archaeologist?
ART (as DUVALL): Yeah. I thought we, like, looked for stuff.
JANINE (as ES): I love not touching dirt. What are you talking about?
ART (as DUVALL): I mean, but, there—there’s probably lots of different kinds of—
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): Your group was hired about a year ago in order to help this county and this township work out any of the problems that occurred after last year’s festival. Risks with the egg and whatnot.
ART (as DUVALL): Yeah.
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): And you succeeded in doing that.
KEITH (as LYKE): [OVERLAPPING] We took on all those egg risks.
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): You did. And I have no notes on your work.
ART (as DUVALL): [OVERLAPPING, QUIETLY] How much is the severance?
ART: [LOUDER] Can I like, look at this contract? How much severance are we being offered?
AUSTIN: Yeah, it’s—take a d10 Haven each. Like, scrip. Dayward YVE’s Scrip, d10.
DRE: Wow.
ART (as DUVALL): Wow. That’s a pretty good offer.
JANINE: But it’s in scrip. [CHUCKLES]
KEITH: Yeah, but I’m gonna use it.
AUSTIN: Yeah, but you’re in the place it counts. Yeah.
JANINE: Yeah.
ALI: That’s like one major heal. That’s a major to a minor, that’s not even a heal.
JANINE: But like, does that count as niche because it only matters here?
AUSTIN: Nope. Nah, as this place—well, you know, maybe it’ll become niche once some things about Blackwick get learned elsewhere, but Dayward YVE’s name rings loud east of the mountains at this point.
DRE: Sure.
AUSTIN: As a reminder, things like the—there was that quarry to the south of here that some of you passed on the way back up. What was that called? The blue-something, the blue… I did not put it on the map, did I? I did not, because I’m a fool. It’s just in my notes somewhere. But there is a quarry that was being dug out, and that was owned by Dayward YVE, for instance. There are lots of places now that Dayward YVE currency will get spent. In a sense, one of the things he’s trying to do is become the face of money.
[ALI SCOFFS]
ART: That’s a great goal, I mean—
KEITH: What an annoying…
JANINE: [EXASPERATED] Oh my god.
DRE: I think at this point, Chine pokes their head in through a window, and says ‘hey—’
AUSTIN: You’ve been outside—you have not been outside.
DRE: Um, okay, that’s fair.
AUSTIN: If you’ve been outside, we have to make some rolls.
DRE: Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. I guess—okay, I come shambling down the stairs.
AUSTIN: Yeah. This makes sense.
DRE (as CHINE): What are we arguing about? What’s happening?
ART (as DUVALL): We’re being fired.
DRE (as CHINE): Oh.
JACK (as PICKMAN): By this man who says he’s the sheriff.
DRE (as CHINE): Okay. What’s the problem?
KEITH (as LYKE): It’s the principle of it.
ART (as DUVALL): [OVERLAPPING] What do you think our jobs were?
AUSTIN: One at a time.
ART: My question was “what do you think our jobs were?”
DRE (as CHINE): I’unno.
ART (as DUVALL): This isn’t helpful.
JANINE (as ES): Elegant goons?
KEITH (as LYKE): Detective—we were detectives.
AUSTIN: That’s closer to true than not.
DRE (as CHINE): So… What was your name? Sherry?
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): It was not Sherry. It was—
DRE (as CHINE): Oh, sheriff. Your name was Sheriff.
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): Maleister. Sheriff. That’s right.
DRE (as CHINE): Oh. Okay. What do you need from us?
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): Just a signature on the line.
DRE (as CHINE): Oh, sure, okay.
AUSTIN: Hands you the pen.
DRE: Yeah, I sign it.
AUSTIN: Okay.
SYLVI (as HAZARD): I thought you guys were like, mercenaries.
ART (as DUVALL): No, we’re archaeologists.
DRE (as CHINE): [OVERLAPPING] I mean, basically.
KEITH (as LYKE): No, we’re detectives.
ART (as DUVALL): But like, detectives of weird things, which I think is what an archaeologist is.
[KEITH LAUGHS]
JANINE (as ES): Just a question, what archaeology—just to really wheel things back, what archaeology were we doing at Dayward YVE’s house?
ART (as DUVALL): What do you—we were like, looking through an old house.
KEITH (as LYKE): That’s anthropology.
JANINE (as ES): Yeah, that’s not archae—[CHUCKLES]
ART (as DUVALL): And found old stuff.
DRE (as CHINE): Or burglary.
JANINE (as ES): We also weren’t really—[CHUCKLES] That wasn’t really… it’s not like we were going through scrapbooks.
KEITH (as LYKE): I was.
ART (as DUVALL): Right, we were like uncovering old things.
JANINE (as ES): If anything we were surveying. But we’re not surveyors.
KEITH (as LYKE): Okay, no, we were uncovering old things. I do see that angle now.
DRE (as CHINE): Mister sheriff, you should probably go. They’ll do this for a while.
AUSTIN: He grins.
KEITH (as LYKE): Hey, wait, no, you weren’t supposed to sign that, we were holding on on principle.
JANINE (as ES): That wouldn’t do anything.
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): I appreciate it. If any of y’all have any other questions, you can find me around the courthouse.
KEITH: I grab the paper.
AUSTIN: Give me a roll.
JANINE: [OVERLAPPING] I have a question. Oh.
AUSTIN: Let’s get this roll. That, to me—what are you rolling for? Again, we’re in Haven here, so.
KEITH: Is that maybe Evade?
AUSTIN: Sure. You’re being quick. I’ll let you have Evade. This is Risky.
KEITH: Okay. Evade, Haven…
AUSTIN: Hey, what are your—I realize we really jumped into it right now, but what are your—sorry, I don’t know that you can do this. Can you? You can, you can. A critical injury is just for Mend.
KEITH: I have a major Blood injury, but it’s fine. I can just not Mend, yeah.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. It is that your hands are burnt bad, but.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: And this is Risky, like I said.
DRE: It’s probably risky, it might hurt your fingies to grab this paper.
AUSTIN: Alright, success at a cost. Let’s see what it is… there we go.
KEITH: There’s a 10 in there, but it got knocked out.
AUSTIN: You did. You got 10-2-7. Take 3 Blood Stress.
KEITH: Oof.
AUSTIN: Take Minor Fallout. What are you doing, buddy?
KEITH: I don’t know.
AUSTIN: I mean, I guess the answer is ‘trying to snatch things from a sheriff,’ is the thing that you’re doing.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: You are Battered. “Offensive combat actions are risky. Fine dexterity cannot be used.” You take it from him, and in the process, he pulls his gun and hits you in the head with the handle, and just pistol-whips you. And you fall back on your ass, basically. And he says:
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): Don’t ever try to snatch something from me. Now give me the paper. You already signed it. It’s over.
ART: That is how it works.
KEITH: I guess I look around, and I’m like:
KEITH (as LYKE): What are we doing?
DRE (as CHINE): Looks like we’re leaving.
ART (as DUVALL): Yeah, what do—we can’t unfire ourselves.
JANINE (as ES): Fighting over a paper doesn’t accomplish anything.
KEITH (as LYKE): Well, you can tear up a paper. Eat it, famously.
ART (as DUVALL): No, you can’t.
JANINE (as ES): No one’s gonna pay us.
DRE (as CHINE): Yeah, why do you care about staying here and working for this town that wants to fire us?
KEITH (as LYKE): Well, the town doesn’t want to fire us. Just this guy wants to fire us.
JANINE (as ES): And a council of people who pay us.
KEITH (as LYKE): Right, well, who—I don’t even know that there was a council. So, I’m not upset about it.
SYLVI (as HAZARD): Sorry, how long did you work here?
KEITH (as LYKE): I’ve lived here for I think two years.
SYLVI (as HAZARD): Okay.
KEITH (as LYKE): But we’ve been working here for a year.
ALI (as MARN): And the person who we had a relationship with was unfortunately killed, as far as we know.
ART: I want to say I established in the worldbuilding episode that I lived upstairs.
ART (as DUVALL): Am I also evicted from my apartment?
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): That’s right.
KEITH (as LYKE): Yeah.
JANINE (as ES): You don’t pay rent though, right? It’s free accommodation.
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): The severance should—
ART (as DUVALL): Is there a thing about timeframe? How long do I have to find new accommodations?
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): End of the month.
DRE (as CHINE): Well, that’s not too bad. Wait, what day is it?
KEITH (as LYKE): It’s the 25th.
AUSTIN: [CHUCKLES] It’s mid-month, let’s say.
DRE (as CHINE): Oh, well, that’s not too bad.
JANINE (as ES): Lots of empty rooms in the saloon right now.
ALI (as MARN): Who do you represent?
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): The town council.
JACK (as PICKMAN): He means Dayward YVE.
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): That’s not exactly true. I mean myself, as the sheriff, Dayward YVE, as a chief investor—
JACK (as PICKMAN): Uh-huh. [DRY] The entrepreneur.
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): And Marisha, who, of course, works at the Boundless Conclave.
AUSTIN: That’s not true. Stanislaka is the one who’s there now.
JACK (as PICKMAN): So it’s you—
KEITH (as LYKE): [WOUNDED] But she gave me a candle.
[JACK LAUGHS]
ALI (as MARN): There’s no potential for a re-negotiation?
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): At this point, it seems as if the council’s chosen to go with a different organization to suit these needs.
JACK (as PICKMAN): What organization?
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): Myself and my deputies.
JACK (as PICKMAN): [DRY] Oh, isn’t that convenient for you.
JACK: Can we have a quick recap? Earlier Ali said that this sheriff had killed a bunch of people. Are you referring to the fact that they—
AUSTIN: Yeah, this person—
JACK: —sniped all the wax-people that could still have been potentially saved?
ALI: Ekashi Wolff was the uprising guy who was our former—who was like, the former town council guy.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ALI: Got killed by the deputies and the Magistrates.
AUSTIN: Yes.
ALI: And now this contract is terminated, and the people who killed him are like, ‘well, we don’t want to keep the agreement he made with y’all.’ Which is fair, I guess.
AUSTIN: Yeah, just to be clear, I am playing this extremely, like—I’m no-selling this, but this is a terrible piece of shit thing that’s happening.
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: But also, they are—that’s what the town council is, that’s what the town council is.
JACK: No, it’s not the town council. It’s Dayward YVE and Stanislaka and Maleister.
AUSTIN: Listen, you don’t even know how Stanislaka voted.
JACK: Yeah. That’s true.
AUSTIN: Stanislaka could have voted for you to stay, but two against one.
JACK: That’s a good question.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
JACK (as PICKMAN): Sheriff, was there a vote?
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): Of course.
JACK (as PICKMAN): And what were the terms of that vote?
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): We were voting about the contract for defense and security here in Blackwick County after the recent events.
JACK (as PICKMAN): Who were the candidates?
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): It was you and it was us.
JACK (as PICKMAN): And we weren’t allowed to make a case?
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): I think you made a case by not being outside when people needed it.
KEITH (as LYKE): And you were allowed to vote for you?
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): Of course.
JACK (as PICKMAN): What were the results?
KEITH (as LYKE): [OVERLAPPING] But we weren’t allowed to vote for us.
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): You’re not on the council.
ART (as DUVALL): Yeah, we’re not on the council.
KEITH: I eat the paper. I put it in my mouth. I eat it.
DRE (as CHINE): [OVERLAPPING] He does have a good point, there.
JANINE (as ES): I’m sorry, I believe—
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): Alright, well there goes your severances, everybody. I’ll be seeing you.
JANINE (as ES): Excuse—[FRUSTRATED SIGH]
DRE (as CHINE): Great. Awesome.
AUSTIN: And he steps out the door.
KEITH (as LYKE): [MOUTH FULL] We don’t [UNINTELLIGIBLE] that, right?
DRE (as CHINE): The one time you could have fucked off into your special room, you didn’t. And now you cost us all money.
KEITH (as LYKE): [MOUTH FULL] I can’t do that right now.
ALI (as MARN): Long night for you, huh, Lyke?
KEITH (as LYKE): [MOUTH FULL] Mhm.
ART (as DUVALL): I think you can probably spit it out now.
KEITH (as LYKE): [PROJECTILE SPITTING]
[ALI AND SYLVI LAUGH]
AUSTIN: No, you said you ate it. You didn’t say you put it in your mouth. You said you ate it.
ART: But that was performing a mouth full of paper.
AUSTIN: Eh, I’m gonna hold him to ‘eat.’
KEITH: Well, okay, but it’s just that it takes a minute and a half to eat a piece of paper.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
KEITH: So. It’s really the chewing and the wetting of it.
JACK: And this is especially stinging for Chine, because they could also have gotten some paper skills if they had been the one who ate the contract.
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
AUSTIN: Uh-huh, that’s true. He would have gotten Haven, for sure.
JACK: Wow.
AUSTIN: A piece of paper worth 80, or d80 or whatever, of Haven resources? That’s definitely powerful. That’s definitely a resource.
JACK: This is—okay. Pickman is steaming mad. Unidirectionally. I think maybe except Marn.
ALI: Aw.
JACK: Mad at Chine for signing, mad at Lyke for eating the paper, mad at the sheriff for hitting Lyke? That was a real ‘Pickman sitting on her hands’ moment in terms of, like, do we escalate—
KEITH: [SARCASTIC] Oh, I appreciate your restraint.
JACK: The last time Pickman was involved in a situation with escalation, they were possessed by Alaway, and they reached for their gun, and so I think that there is a real discomfort in and around that. But I think Pickman says:
JACK (as PICKMAN): I’m gonna go and see that shithead.
JACK: Talking about Dayward YVE. Do you want to come, Marn?
ALI (as MARN): You want me to come?
JACK: I feel like you’re the only person here who is on Team ‘maybe this isn’t the right call that this crew made.’ But I’m prepared to go on my own.
ALI: Duvall’s cousin chops it up with that guy all the time. You gotta bring someone who’s like—who’ll be in your court. [LAUGHS]
JACK: Oh, I’m not good at negotiating.
KEITH: Or planning.
JACK: Or planning.
ALI: Yeah, I’ll come. I’ll help you out.
DRE (as CHINE): Pickman, why are you so upset about this?
JACK (as PICKMAN): The entrepreneur moved into town and starts distributing his own scrip. The sheriff kills Ekashi Wolff. Who the hell knows what the Sister voted? This is a work.
DRE (as CHINE): Yeah?
KEITH (as LYKE): It’s principle. Like I said, it’s on principle.
JACK (as PICKMAN): You have no allegiance to this town?
DRE (as CHINE): No, not really.
JACK (as PICKMAN): Or its well-being?
DRE (as CHINE): Um, they don’t seem very interested in ours.
JACK (as PICKMAN): Okay. You can stay here. I’m off to see Dayward YVE.
JACK: And I’m gonna head for the door. I would say Pickman takes her gun, but that turned into a tree in a basement, so. [LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: [LAUGHS] Yeah, uh-huh.
ALI: Marn just very awkwardly plopping down to put on her boots. [CHUCKLES]
KEITH: You have a second gun, though, right?
JACK: I am armed, but I’m not armed in the way that I should be.
[ALI LAUGHS]
JACK: Yeah, I think I have a second gun. I think I have Blick’s hand cannon right now?
AUSTIN: You got something else. Yeah, you do have Blick’s hand cannon, that’s true.
KEITH: That’s a really good gun. That’s a better gun, I think, than the one you lost.
AUSTIN: No, the other one had some wild shit.
JACK: [OVERLAPPING] No, my gun was really good.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Alekest is gonna come with you, Pickman.
ART: I’ll go.
AUSTIN: Less because he has, like, interest in protecting this place, and more as back-up for someone who he doesn’t want to see get, you know. In over her head.
JACK: Also, in terms of the staging of this, Ali, if you would rather be somewhere other than Dayward YVE, you don’t need to come.
ALI: Oh, no, no, no—
AUSTIN: I mean, let’s even see if you get to Dayward YVE.
[ALI CHUCKLES]
JACK: Oh, yeah. We’re gonna see how this goes.
DRE (as CHINE): I mean, Pickman, if you—like, are you trying to start a fight?
JACK (as PICKMAN): What?
DRE (as CHINE): Like, are you gonna go fight somebody about this?
JACK (as PICKMAN): I don’t know what I’m going to do, Chine.
ALI (as MARN): That’s—
DRE (as CHINE): I mean, I will go with you and help you in case you get in a fight.
JACK (as PICKMAN): I’m not really interested in that if your allegiance to the town is as you say it is.
DRE (as CHINE): Okay. I mean, if it makes a difference, I have a lot more allegiance to you and Marn than to the town.
JACK (as PICKMAN): I don’t really understand what you’re getting at.
DRE (as CHINE): That I don’t really care about the town, but I care about you, and would stop people from trying to kill you?
ALI (as MARN): This guy can’t kill us.
JACK (as PICKMAN): No.
ALI (as MARN): With that big ol’ house, he doesn’t want to kill anybody.
JACK (as PICKMAN): No.
DRE (as CHINE): I assume because he owns a big old house, he probably owns a lot of people who could maybe do better at killing than he does. That’s usually how it goes.
JACK (as PICKMAN): This is part of the reason why I don’t think it’s a good idea that he runs the town. Okay. Get your boots on if you’re coming.
[ALI LAUGHS]
ART (as DUVALL): Again, I’d like to go. I’ve lived here a while.
AUSTIN: I’m just gonna—
KEITH (as LYKE): I need to go to the hospital.
[JACK LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: This is true.
DRE (as CHINE): Are you allergic to paper?
ALI (as MARN): We can walk you there.
KEITH (as LYKE): No, I am—my—I have visibly exploding organs through my skin.
DRE (as CHINE): Been there.
ALI (as MARN): We’d be happy to escort you over to Kerr Kern on the way to Dayward YVE.
AUSTIN: As you open the door again, now without Maleister Price standing in the way, you get a full view of the street, and here, where you are, the kind of southern end of town, you catch a big sign pointed outward—
[MUSIC BEGINS - “The Dust Storm” by Jack de Quidt]
AUSTIN: Actually, you know what, I think it’s pointed inward, as if it’s an entrance, as if you’re on the entrance side, but it’s actually the exit side. And it says “The Carnival of Moted Light.” M-O-T-E-D. And all around you, the town has been filled with carnival games and rides, and people in uniforms dressed up as concession sellers. There is a big tent across from the Boundless Conclave in this kind of big open field where there had been some gardens before. There’s probably a big ride across from you, because you have a big field across from you, also. I bet that’s like a carousel.
Up north near the train station there’s a big ferris wheel. There are lights, like those kind of old, big, glass bulb lights, on string, string lights, hanging from everything. You can hear the sound of carnival barkers all through the town, shouting about ‘come in, try this game or that game,’ or to come inside the tent to see a performance. You can hear someone say that the acrobats are about to go on. And I think the first person you see that you recognize here are—hm. I would say that it’s probably the toll-collectors-turned-Knights of Virtue, turned into clowns.
[ALI SCOFFS]
AUSTIN: There is Agdeline, Ettel, and Lurch all clowned up, walking down the streets juggling.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: One of them’s on stilts, let’s say Ettel is on stilts. And Lurch is like—what’s a third clown thing? What else do clowns do?
KEITH: Drive a little car.
JACK: Wait, is this person ‘Lurch’ or ‘Larch’?
[MUSIC HALTS]
AUSTIN: Larch.
[MUSIC RESUMES]
AUSTIN: I wrote Lurch in my—
KEITH: Lurch is from The Addams Family.
AUSTIN: Lurch is from The Addams Family.
ALI: Is Lurch one of the new ones?
AUSTIN: No, no. Oh yeah, maybe. [LAUGHS] I think maybe—
ALI: ‘I don’t want to be Larch with y’all, let me be Lurch.’
AUSTIN: Yeah, ‘let me be Lurch. I’m trying to be Lurch.’
JACK: ‘I’m a clown.’
AUSTIN: ‘I’m a clown now.’
JACK: ‘It’s ‘Lirch’ with an I.’
KEITH: ‘I’m my own tall man.’
ART: Are you sure that ‘clowned up’ is how we want to…?
AUSTIN: Yeah, they’re all clowned up.
SYLVI: Yep.
ART: Clowned up.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ART: Clowned up.
JANINE: So wait, what were the current clown actions? Did we cover that?
AUSTIN: I think Agdeline is juggling, Ettel is on stilts, and Larch is ‘blank.’
JANINE: Unicycle.
AUSTIN: Unicycle.
KEITH: Cream pie.
AUSTIN: Unicycle cream pie.
JACK: Yep.
SYLVI: Damn.
DRE: Ooh.
JACK: One of them has a balloon on a stick and they’re trying to hit someone with it. [LAUGHING] Unicycle cream pie.
[SYLVI AND ALI LAUGH]
AUSTIN: Please. Please.
KEITH: Lyke rubs his eyes and goes:
KEITH (as LYKE): I really gotta go to the hospital.
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
AUSTIN: Commercial break.
ALI: Sangfielle is produced by…
AUSTIN: Uh-huh, yeah. Yeah, you know, it’s what I said before. Between the juice of the too-soon fallen big pomegranates, the light of all these attractions, the smell of sugar and salt from candy and peanuts and everything else that’s being sold throughout the town, this whole night is just really rich. Like, the act of walking out the door feels dense. It’s like a really foggy day, or, you know, like walking into water, almost, you know? It’s a changing atmosphere in that way.
And it’s like, a little hard to tell where you’re supposed to go. Like, it’s a little disorienting to come out here—I think for those of you who went to Marrowcreek, the effect is sort of similar. The way that you lose track of time, the way that everything feels kind of unreal.
[MUSIC ENDS]
AUSTIN: Unfortunately, I’ll just say this is very real.
JACK: Oh, god. There’s a new sheriff for one day.
AUSTIN: And that music is playing. Just constantly.
DRE (as CHINE): What’s wrong with a carnival?
ART (as DUVALL): You don’t think it’s strange how fast this happened?
DRE (as CHINE): I mean, sure, but…
KEITH (as LYKE): Did he say that god did this? What did he even mean by that?
ALI (as MARN): He said god did it as a reward for killing a bunch of people ‘cause he’s a freak.
KEITH (as LYKE): What a fuckin’ sicko.
ALI (as MARN): Yeah. [ALI CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: Oh, in that case, he meant the wax-people, at least.
KEITH: But still.
ALI: Sure. [CHUCKLES]
JACK: Oh, yeah, but like, we can read that however the hell we want.
AUSTIN: Oh, yeah, I just want to be clear. Yeah, yeah. Totally. Totally.
KEITH: We have, on-screen, me saying ‘I think these might be people still.’
ALI: Uh-huh.
AUSTIN: Oh, yeah, for sure.
KEITH: And then killing a bunch of them by mistake, but.
AUSTIN: And then some of them were—yeah, uh-huh, yeah. Uh-huh.
KEITH: But that was competence, not—that was not malice.
JACK: Have any of us seen anything like this before?
KEITH: Just Marrowcreek. I mean, not the carnival, literally, but the vibe.
AUSTIN: I’d let you do a roll for that, Pickman. That seems like—
JACK: Hm. This is—what is this? Discern…
SYLVI: Probably Haven?
AUSTIN: Cursed or—no, this is Cursed or Occult.
SYLVI: Oh, is it not Haven anymore?
AUSTIN: Actually, this is Cursed. I mean, this place is Haven, but the—to know something about this place would be Cursed.
SYLVI: Okay.
AUSTIN: I’m gonna say this area is Cursed and Haven now.
JACK: I’m gonna roll Discern - Cursed.
KEITH: Can I help that? Do you have both of those?
JACK: I have both of those, yeah, but I’ll take help, you know.
KEITH: Okay. I’ll help.
AUSTIN: Give me the roll.
JACK: Discern, Cursed… Is this Standard?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ART: It’s one per help, though, right? It’s—
AUSTIN: Let’s say this is one per help, yeah.
ART: No matter how many of us have Discern and Cursed. [CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: No, I mean, there are situations where that maybe makes sense, but for this, let’s just do the one. Let’s just say—yeah.
ART: Yeah.
JACK: Discern - Cursed, plus one, Standard. That’s an 8.
AUSTIN: Hey, that’s a success. Maybe between the two of you, you are able to put this together. There—you each have half of it, right? I think Pickman, you have heard of dust-storms totally changing a place, and then overnight—or not even overnight, in a matter of minutes, completely redressing a place. Like, sometimes it blows something off the map, other times it just changes something. And then, Lyke, up in the Republica, one of the kind of popular urban legends about Sangfielle is that there is a wandering circus that sort of conscripts anyone it runs into into service inside of it. And it’s like, you know, haunted circus shit, you know?
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: And you’re like ‘hm, is it actually a carnival and not just a circus? Is it actually more than just a big tent and some side attractions? Is it, like, a rollercoaster?’ Which, by the way, there’s like an early rollercoaster here. I want to say that that’s built up on—
KEITH: [OVERLAPPING] Oh, that’s terrifying.
SYLVI: [OVERLAPPING] I want to go on that.
[ALI CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: Yeah, it’s called—I have it written down here somewhere. It is called The Flying Jaunt.
SYLVI: Wow, let’s go.
AUSTIN: And it’s partially built into the side of the mountain, so I don’t trust it.
JACK: I like—early rollercoasters—there’s a very famous early rollercoaster in Santa Cruz built out of wood, and when there was a massive earthquake in Santa Cruz, they shut the rollercoaster down for three years to be like ‘hey, is this good still?’ And they ended up finding that the earthquake had not damaged the rollercoaster at all, so like—
AUSTIN: Wow.
KEITH: Yeah.
JACK: I have more faith in these early rollercoasters than I would think that I do. But they are terrifying.
[ALI CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: What about ones built by dust? What about ones that the dust has—
JACK: Now, if it’s built by dust, and you did describe it as cursed.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Uh-huh.
KEITH: In a way, aren’t we all built by dust?
ALI: Mhm.
DRE: If you think about it.
AUSTIN: Damn.
JACK: Dante said that.
ART: Yeah, this is really—we’re really Catholic today.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
[KEITH LAUGHS]
JACK: Friends at the Table: We’re Really Catholic Today.
SYLVI: I mean, a guy—this session started with a guy trying to nail something to a door. We’re also a little Lutheran.
AUSTIN: This is true, that’s true.
DRE: It’s fish fry season.
KEITH: Yeah, one of my—one of the theses was ‘bring a big carnival. The church needs a carnival.’
JACK: Can we take a plus one acting against the carnival since we got a success on that?
AUSTIN: Sure.
JACK: Okay, good.
AUSTIN: I don’t know what you mean by acting against it—I mean, what I will say is, as you look to the south, there sure is a swirl of sand stopping you from seeing beyond the gates of town.
KEITH: Should I—
AUSTIN: So, I mean, maybe there are reasons to act against it, but it does not—I mean, it looks like you’re in the middle of like, the eye of a tornado, when you look outside of town.
KEITH: Should I know why there’s shrimps in the lake here, is that—
AUSTIN: Someone drew that, that’s not a me thing.
KEITH: [CHUCKLING] Okay. It’s not part of the carnival, the shrimps?
[ALI LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: No, no. You can’t get to the water, is what—eh. No, yeah, you can’t—mm. You can get to the water, but like, then I’d say, about where the shrimp is—[CHUCKLES]
SYLVI: Oh no.
AUSTIN: —the sand, again, the wall of dust, the kind of spinning wall of dust blocks you out. So there—
JACK: [OVERLAPPING] Are there—oh, god, are there horrible swan boats out in the water?
AUSTIN: Yeah, there’s exactly that, Jack. That is why I wanted the little bit of the lake.
KEITH: Don’t get caught double-dipping your shrimp.
AUSTIN: No, don’t do it. It’s about—it’s about—what?
ART: What if you’re by yourself?
AUSTIN: Then do whatever you want. That’s not double-dipping.
ART: Well, it’s not getting caught.
AUSTIN: It’s not double-dipping. I think double-dipping requires there to be other people.
ALI: Uh-huh.
KEITH: Yeah.
JANINE: It’s like saying ‘am I allowed to steal my own stuff?’ Like, yeah, I guess. [CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. Go for it.
KEITH: I’ll do a rotate, and I think some people don’t like that, but I don’t care. I’ll rotate it. I’ll dip, bite, rotate, and then dip the unbit—
AUSTIN: Yeah, to make sure you’re not—yeah, yeah, yeah. Playing with fire. What are you doing?
KEITH: [MUTTERING] But I think it’s fine, I see nothing wrong with that.
AUSTIN: You just gonna try to seek out Dayward YVE, this smaller group?
JACK: Oh, god. Well, we could make for the town council and see if he’s there.
AUSTIN: Mhm. Yeah.
JACK: Head up north—wait. Is that north?
AUSTIN: That’s north.
JACK: Is the top of this map north? Yeah, okay. Head up north down this central road.
AUSTIN: That’s correct. You do not need to—
KEITH: I’m willing to go do that with the group if we can just do a quick healing scene. It doesn’t need to be a thing except for—I have all the money.
JACK: We could stop off at the Boundless Conclave, I suppose.
ALI: Mhm.
AUSTIN: Yeah, let’s do that, because the Boundless Conclave has of course been dressed up here, also. The exterior of it, and it takes you a second to even get inside, because you have to push past a bunch of other carnival games—you know, there’s like a knife-throwing stand, there is a—one of those like, ring-tosses, you know, it’s a bunch of that stuff, and it’s all just like—it’s just in the street. Who all is here with you?
DRE: Chine’s here.
AUSTIN: Chine is—is everybody just moving at this point in the same general direction?
JANINE: No.
AUSTIN: No, okay.
JANINE: No. Absolutely not.
SYLVI: Yeah, I don’t want—I don’t really have business with Dayward YVE.
AUSTIN: Okay, cool. So where are you at, Hazard?
SYLVI: I’m genuinely, like, drawn to this rollercoaster, not gonna lie.
AUSTIN: Alright. I just needed to know that, because the people who are here at the Boundless Conclave note that the person who is running the knife-throwing is a one-horned devil.
SYLVI: Nevermind, I’m going to the one—the horned knife-throwing thing.
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
AUSTIN: Ah, nah, you are at the rollercoaster, my friend.
SYLVI: Damn it!
KEITH: Well, do we notice—do we notice the—
ALI: [OVERLAPPING] We got you, we got you.
AUSTIN: [OVERLAPPING] Someone has to come get you.
AUSTIN: I think it’s hard to not notice, having travelled with someone who’s been like [CHUCKLES] ‘if you find a one-horned devil…’
KEITH: Yeah. To everyone.
SYLVI: Every other conversation with Hazard, it comes up.
AUSTIN: Yep.
SYLVI: It’s genuinely annoying.
AUSTIN: Yep. And also this—I’m just gonna say, there are two things happening here in terms of knife-throwing. One is the ‘throw a knife at a balloon’ thing. And he is the person, like, re-blowing the balloons up with air. And there’s also, like, every 15 minutes he does a knife-throwing demonstration where he puts someone against the wall and throws knives around them. Into the wall safely.
JACK: Wait, he—like a participant?
AUSTIN: Yep.
JACK: Like someone from the crowd?
AUSTIN: Yep.
JACK: That’s interesting.
KEITH: Really?
DRE: Cool.
JACK: Usually it’s a—[CHUCKLES] it’s an accomplice.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Yeah, we’re in Sangfielle, baby.
SYLVI: Side, I have—this has—I have been in the audience when this has happened to a volunteer at a—
JACK: [OVERLAPPING] No, they weren’t a real volunteer, Sylvi.
AUSTIN: [OVERLAPPING] They were working.
[ALI LAUGHS]
SYLVI: It was my dad, so they were.
AUSTIN: Woah! Woah!
JACK: Oh, shit.
AUSTIN: I wouldn’t do it ever!
ALI: Lord.
SYLVI: Listen, I wouldn’t have minded if he fucked it up. It’s fine.
AUSTIN: Anyway.
ALI: Anyway, I think—
AUSTIN: Boundless Conclave healing—oh, go ahead, Marn.
ALI: Yeah, I think I tug on Chine’s cloak, and just like:
ALI (as MARN): Go get Hazard!
ALI: And then me and Pickman can just watch Lyke get healed, I guess. Like, stand outside of the door, or…
AUSTIN: Yeah.
DRE (as CHINE): Okay. Yeah.
SYLVI (as HAZARD): Whee!
SYLVI: That’s me on the rollercoaster.
[ALI AND DRE LAUGH]
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Yeah. Give me a 1d10.
SYLVI: Okay.
KEITH: Me give you a 1d10?
AUSTIN: No, no. Hazard.
KEITH: Oh.
SYLVI: That’s a 6.
AUSTIN: Yeah, okay, that’s—you got—this is about a 6 rollercoaster.
SYLVI: Yeah. Seems alright.
AUSTIN: You know.
DRE: Whee!
JACK: Oh, god. Austin, what’s a 1?
[ALI SNORTS]
AUSTIN: Oh.
KEITH: But what’s a 6 rollercoaster to someone who’s never heard of a rollercoaster?
AUSTIN: I think you’re maybe not as excited as you had hoped you would be. Like it’s ‘whee!’ but it’s kind of short, and the wait is long, and you have to climb the hill, the mountain to do it again.
SYLVI: Here’s a question, actually.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
SYLVI: A rollercoaster is kind of a small train.
AUSTIN: It is.
SYLVI: [CHUCKLING] So how is Pickman doing?
AUSTIN: Great question.
[ALI LAUGHS]
JACK: Oh, shit.
[SYLVI LAUGHS]
JACK: Have I seen the rollercoaster?
ALI: Oh no.
AUSTIN: It’s bad. This is—yeah, you see it. You hear it. Climbing the tracks.
JACK: Oh. Narrows her, you know, rectangular-shaped eyes at the rollercoaster.
KEITH: Pickman has just heard of this horrible thing called windmills.
[SYLVI LAUGHS]
JACK: This is wild, right? Because it is kind of like a small train, but in Sangfielle, it sort of is a train. You know, who the hell knows whether the rollercoaster is actually part of the Shape? It could just be a very small horrid Shape Train.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
JACK: But I’ve got business to attend to, you know. It’ll do what it does. If we’ve got time, I can wrap back around and see what it is.
[ALI LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: This is true. Alright, Lyke, it looks like you got some fuckin’ Blood Fallout, my friend. You have a minor which needs a d6, you have a major which needs a d8 and a d6, or a d8 to drop it to a minor, and then.
KEITH: I slam the giant Ravening Beast heart on the table and say:
KEITH (as LYKE): How much healing will this get me?
AUSTIN: I have to do some math, I think, right?
KEITH: It’s a d12.
AUSTIN: It’s a d12. D8…
KEITH: I have more stuff than that, I just thought it would be funny to say.
[ALI LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: Yeah, I getcha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s step-based, so d4 is one step, d6 is two steps, it goes up by one each time. So it’s a two-step for a small one, and then it’s a three-step for a big one. A d12 is a five-step, right?
KEITH: Oh, so I get—this is—
AUSTIN: One second. I’m doing this bad math in my head that I should have just written this down somewhere. Yeah, so that will clear your whole critical injury Mend, but it will not clear your Battered. You’ll need another d6 on top of that.
KEITH: Um…
AUSTIN: Or two d4s.
KEITH: Okay, then I add my cursed amulet and my stone fruit. Fruit stones.
AUSTIN: Okay, damn.
KEITH: [CHUCKLING] My stone-fruit fruit stones.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
KEITH: They’re two d4s.
AUSTIN: This is—I think Kerr Kern is like, super excited about this, because it’s like, this is all stuff that might even make the stuff that she is gonna go deliver to the Boundless—or not the Boundless Conclave. The Telluricist Union. This, like, weirdly becomes good stuff for your notes, Marn.
ALI: [LAUGHING] Oh, sure.
AUSTIN: Like, having a Ravening Beast heart is stuff that they can then go work on even better, so that works out. So yeah, go ahead and clear it. This takes a little bit. There’s a salve, there’s some probably magical chanting at some point, there’s just some massaging your hands, you know, after the basic healing is done. There’s some of using your own spider ink, but not so much that we have to get rid of the move. You know.
JACK: What’s it like in here?
AUSTIN: Inside’s fine.
JACK: Oh.
AUSTIN: ‘Cause they closed the door. They didn’t get—you know, the interiors of these places have not yet been converted into carn—you weren’t the only people inside, you know? Safe during the storm. I do think it’s funny if people start to just move stuff in and take up space. Do you know what I mean? Where it’s like, you know, various people move in and start to hang lights in big interior spaces like the churches. You know? And like, set up dunking booths, and you know, they turn the—part of the Triadic Pyre into a kissing booth or whatever.
[ART LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: Classic stuff.
ART: I thought I was prepared for a lot of carnival specifics there, and I was not…
AUSTIN: Neither. Neither of those?
ART: Kissing booth just wasn’t on the tip of my brain, I don’t know what it was, you got me off guard there.
AUSTIN: I mean, there is definitely a tunnel of love here somewhere.
DRE: Ooh.
AUSTIN: I hadn’t thought about a kissing booth, but there’s definitely a kissing booth.
JACK: Oh, god, a Sangfielle tunnel of love is gonna be fucking horrible.
AUSTIN: I bet.
JACK: It’s the worst. I think you might go to hell halfway through. [CHUCKLES]
[AUSTIN LAUGHS]
ALI: Well, you know. Test your relationship.
AUSTIN: Exactly.
JACK: Yeah. Uh-huh. Virgil and Dante.
[GROUP CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: Chine, do you go get Hazard?
DRE: Yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: Hazard, you’ve hopped off this 6/10 rollercoaster, and Chine is here.
SYLVI (as HAZARD): That was pretty adequate! Hey Chine, what’s up?
DRE (as CHINE): Um, you know the guy that you always ask about?
SYLVI (as HAZARD): Yeah, Uno.
DRE (as CHINE): There’s someone that looks like him at the Conclave.
SYLVI: If this was a cartoon, there’d be like a dust—like a cloud in the shape of Hazard.
[AUSTIN AND ALI LAUGH]
SYLVI: Just like—
ART: Are we sure that it’s not right now?
AUSTIN: It might be.
SYLVI: Honestly, yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, you might be able to.
SYLVI: You know what, yeah, there is a dust-storm. It makes sense. Sure.
AUSTIN: It makes sense. The dust shoots up as you run down the hill back into town towards where the knife game is. And I think—are you trying to sneak up, or are you just trying to run up? Like, what are you trying to do?
SYLVI: Oh, you know what, I might actually try and take it a little sneakier when I get closer.
AUSTIN: Give me a—yeah, give me a sneak and either Haven or Cursed.
SYLVI: Is this Standard?
AUSTIN: This is Standard.
SYLVI: Okay.
AUSTIN: You never signalled at all that you were, like, going to Blackwick to Uno. Right?
SYLVI: I don’t think so. I don’t know if I even mentioned the Blackwick Group, because our interaction was one-on-one. That is a 10.
AUSTIN: Oh, that’s a fuckin’ crit!
JACK: Woah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, you absolutely are gonna get the drop on him here. You move through the crowds very stealthily, you manage to go—you tell me. What’s this look like?
SYLVI: Yeah, I think I’m trying to get around to the, like—I was gonna say the back of the booth, but that seems risky because people are probably throwing knives at that. But I’m just trying to find a blind spot.
AUSTIN: Yeah, but you got a crit. So you tell me where you want to be.
SYLVI: You know what? Yeah. I think there’s like a—there’s like some crates and shit behind the backdrop of this stand where people are throwing the knives at the balloons and stuff. Like, there has to be something there for the knives to go into. They’re not just hitting a curtain.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Yeah. That’s where you keep all the big stuffed animals to hand out. You know what I mean?
SYLVI: Yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: When you run out of the ones up front, you go in the back and get more. Yeah.
SYLVI: And so I think I’m like hiding behind a crate of those, like behind the stand, sort of peeking around the corner trying to see what’s going on.
AUSTIN: Perfect. There he is. He does not see you.
KEITH: Are you gonna jump this guy?
AUSTIN: He moves in a way that feels frustrated. He does not want to be doing this right now.
SYLVI: That makes me happy.
[KEITH LAUGHS]
SYLVI: God, there’s a lot of people around, huh?
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
SYLVI: I’m loading my gun.
AUSTIN: Fuck.
SYLVI: You know. Listen!
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is—
SYLVI: I’m also looking to see if there’s any, like—
AUSTIN: What are your moves right now? Or not your moves, your beats? ‘Cause we didn’t go over beats.
SYLVI: Oh, yeah, so my two active beats are “Major: Unleash chaos in a haven in pursuit of revenge—”
AUSTIN: Oh!
SYLVI: And my Zenith beat, “Reap what you have sown.”
AUSTIN: Love it.
SYLVI: You know, I think we’re getting towards the end of Sangfielle. Might as well go for it.
AUSTIN: We are. Then let’s say this. Let’s fade out on you loading this gun, and we’ll come back in maybe closer to when chaos should be unleashed.
SYLVI: Okay.
AUSTIN: Es, it sounded like you knew where you wanted to go. Or did you just not want to go deal with Dayward YVE?
JANINE: Yeah, I—
AUSTIN: Okay.
JANINE: Everyone left the place, and I think Es, like—initially I was like ‘well, Es probably stayed behind,’ and then the carnival stuff happened and it’s like ‘well, no.’
AUSTIN: Right.
JANINE: That’s boring if she’s just hanging out at the—so, you know, I think what happened is that she sort of was like ‘well, they can go do whatever the hell they want, I’m gonna go—’ like, you know, maybe not pack my stuff yet, but you know. Tidy—make sure everything’s where it needs to be in case I need to leave soon.
AUSTIN: Gotcha.
JANINE: That kind of thing. And in the process of like, going into the saloon where she has a room to do that, probably noticed the carnival stuff and then went to that.
AUSTIN: Yeah. You spot a familiar face here, someone else who seems to have gotten caught up in this carnival. I mean, it’s a couple of people. The first is, the first someone who you just kind of see among a bunch of other folks, it seems as if—and maybe I should have given this more directly. I should have said this earlier when we got that success that Pickman and Lyke did on trying to figure out what’s up here.
This is a sandstorm that moves from town-to-town—or from, I guess, destination to destination—and anything that gets caught up in it in between, gets conscripted into being—into working the carnival at the next destination. I kind of gave you both the individual pieces of the information, but I didn’t synthesize it. So, anybody who’s here who’s in, as far as you can tell, the majority of the people, at least, who are here, who are working the carnival, are people who got caught up in the storm in between destinations.
One of the groups that that included was one part of the Caravan of the Coin, as we see Babor Mirah who is a Drakkan. They were one of the people who were running the Caravan of the Coin that visited here months and months ago, where, in fact, Duvall first read about that painting, you know, bought a book about rare stuff and read about that painting, from Babor’s place. And Babor is now kind of just like attending to the concession stand runners. All of the Caravan of the Coin people have been drafted to run, you know, food stalls and some carnival games and places to sell some knick-knacks, et cetera, and then someone who is in the mix of all of these kind of knick-knack stands is a sort of—there’s a pop-up shop that says—let’s see, what’s the name of it here? It is The Market of Oddities and Esoterica. And standing behind the counter there is one Dyre Ode.
JANINE: Does he have to wear a uniform? Or is he just being himself?
AUSTIN: Has to wear a uniform. Yeah, a hundred percent is in a—well, there’s something interesting, which is—he is wearing a uniform, is what I would say. Whether he has to or not is—those are different questions.
[JANINE CHUCKLES]
KEITH: What—can you describe the uniform?
AUSTIN: I think it’s like a red vest with a—you know, it’s a white shirt, black, kind of thin tie, you know, like a carnival worker, like a—
KEITH: Mmkay. Panama hat?
AUSTIN: No Panama hat. I think maybe back to the classic, that first mask, the bauta, the Venetian bauta mask that we first saw them in, with the big tricorn hat up top, that style here. Appropriate, since this is yet again, a carnival. A different type of carnival than those were used for, but you know, there’s a direct line. And I think that he kind of gives you a little nod as you walk nearby.
JANINE: Well, I’m definitely gonna walk over and see what that’s about.
AUSTIN: I think he says:
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): I didn’t expect to see you or your town again for quite some time.
JANINE: Wait, do—hang on, do I know about how all of this stuff happens?
AUSTIN: The—
JANINE: How, like—the sandstorm swooping people up?
AUSTIN: You were not part of that—no, you weren’t part of that roll.
JANINE: Okay.
AUSTIN: Unless they went back and told everybody ‘hey, here’s what we know.’
[JANINE CHUCKLES]
JANINE (as ES): No, I… I think even if I had expected to see you back in town, I don’t know that I would have expected it this way.
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): [SIGHS] It is an expression of the Course in Sangfielle. This carnival travels from place to place and any caught in its path are inevitably drawn to work it. I, of course, have no—it, of course, has no power over me, but I’m stuck in the town, and I may as well enjoy myself.
JANINE (as ES): Yeah, fair.
KEITH: Sorry, I have a question. I know I’m not in this scene, but is Dyre Ode trying to say ‘I could have chosen to not get swept up in this, but I went along for the ride’?
AUSTIN: Yeah. I think Dyre Ode would have gotten swept up, but would not have been compelled to work.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: Dyre Ode’s magic is more powerful than that, yeah.
KEITH: Okay, and you’re saying that is true, that’s not—
AUSTIN: That’s true, yeah.
KEITH: Okay, cool.
JANINE: That they’re just playing along.
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): Especially with this assortment of things—
AUSTIN: —and kind of gestures at all of the things hanging up on the walls. There’s like, a big mirror, there’s what looks like a little tiny rain stick, there is a kind of old reed pen, there’s some books, there’s like, a glowing vial, there’s a bunch of stuff here. There’s a coin up on a shelf, there’s like—there’s just a bunch of shit.
JANINE: Um…
AUSTIN: There’s a sheep head that’s been taxidermied. There’s a lot of shit on this wall.
JANINE: I think Es, like, sighs in that decompressing sort of way, and rests her elbows on the surf—there’s a surface, right? There’s like a—
AUSTIN: Yeah, there’s a counter. There’s a counter. Yeah.
JANINE: —on the counter, and sort of rests her chin on her hand or something, and says:
JANINE (as ES): What’s your favorite thing here? What catches you?
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): [SIGHS] For you or for me?
JANINE (as ES): Well, now I want to see both.
AUSTIN: Reaches back and produces this kind of thin, leather-bound journal. And they say:
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): The Book of All Books. Flip through it, page by page, and find the words from a book somewhere, and of sometime. Past, present, or future. You can’t choose to navigate it, you can’t—there’s no index, there’s no table of contents, but it’s filled with information. Some of it’s very dangerous. And…
AUSTIN: And then produces that little rain stick. Again, it’s like, the size of—it’s like a foot long, which is much smaller than rain sticks tend to be.
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): The Fleeting Rain. Hold it in your hand, turn it, feel the calm enter you.
AUSTIN: These have mechanical things. The Fleeting Rain is something that you can use once per session to get Mastery when you’re scared, when you’re making a roll while you’re scared, as the sound and feeling of the rain eases you. And the Book of All Books, which is more expensive, lets you do a d8 Risky roll to research anything. You might end up getting distracted by what you read, or you might see something you wish you hadn’t, or it might be the sort of terrible spell that gets cast when it’s read, and so you don’t know what you’re gonna fuckin’ stumble into in it, but everything’s in there. It’s like a resource that has all tags, so.
JANINE: Hm.
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): These are my favorite. There is the coin, of course, but… it seems like something I shouldn’t… be part of.
JANINE (as ES): Yeah, that’s fair, I feel that way about a lot of coins. How much? How much are they?
JANINE: I’ll let that be my dealbreaker.
AUSTIN: The Book of All Books is a d10 Occult, the Fleeting Rain is a d6 Occult, so d6 and d10. I’ll just go over all these. There is the Long Glass, which is a mirror that can save any image it sees, and become like a sort of glossy painting instead. There is the Blood Reed, which is a thin reed pen that feels delicate—it feels like delicate bone if you touch it, and when dipped in someone’s blood, it will let the blood—someone dead’s blood—they will write a message in the blood. Or with the blood. There is that taxidermied sheep head that bleats before danger arrives, there is a glowing vial of undying ember, which is just like a very powerful power source, and then there is this d12 Religion that I’ve just written down “a simple silver coin.”
JANINE: Yeah, who could say?
AUSTIN: Who could say? I think Dyre explains what they are, which is:
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): The carnival has a sense of humor about it. It takes the most precious things of those it swallows, and puts them up for auction. I’ve eliminated the auction part, I don’t like all of the shouting.
JANINE (as ES): I’ve gotta be honest, you just made me not want to buy anything. If these are important things to other people, then I don’t need any hand in it.
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): These are all things that pass from hand to hand, from person to person, over time, and have for centuries. You would not be the first to acquire it by purchase or trade, and you would be a better home for at least some of these than those who had them. But I am not a salesman, and I will make no hard sell to you.
JANINE (as ES): Um… the book.
AUSTIN: Places it down and slides it across to you.
JANINE: I’ll trade my…
AUSTIN: What are you trading?
JANINE: My Desolate Haven pre-Panic hair comb.
AUSTIN: Ooh. And I think—I think—you know the—
JANINE: Wait, hang on.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh?
JANINE: No, wait, nevermind, nevermind. Yes, yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay. I think that they like, turn it over in their hands, like ‘ooh,’ like ‘this is quality,’ and then just puts it back up on the shelf in place of the book. Alright. Dayward YVE group.
KEITH: That’s the name of his LLC.
[ALI CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: The Dayward YVE Group. I actually—did I write down what—oh, I didn’t. The company that ran Bluestone is Leberge Quarries, which is a Dayward yon Vantzon-Estonbergh subsidiary. So I didn’t actually give a company name to Dayward’s company, but there must be one. Who is this again? This is Lyke, Chine, Marn—no, Chine went to run and get Hazard, so Chine’s probably still near wherever Hazard is.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Lyke, Marn… Alekest…
JACK: I’m here.
AUSTIN: Pickman. Right, Pickman. Duh.
ALI: Oh, I assumed the Hazard go-get—[LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: Uh-huh?
ALI: The ‘go fetch Hazard’ would have been, like, while Lyke was getting hand-massaged?
AUSTIN: I think that that’s true, but I don’t—
ALI: Okay, sure.
AUSTIN: I think it’s more interesting to let the Hazard stuff hang, the Hazard sneaking around and getting ready to cause chaos. Once—listen. Hazard’s gonna do something. And when Hazard does something, there will be no more talking to Dayward YVE.
[KEITH LAUGHS]
ALI: Yeah. True.
JACK: Wow. Okay. Cool.
AUSTIN: Do you know what I mean, like?
ART: You have Duvall on your list, right? That was—
AUSTIN: I did not, so we have Duvall. So Lyke, Duvall, Pickman, Marn. Alekest. Bucho is resting. Bucho stayed home resting.
ALI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Not in the mood for a carnival.
JACK: Smart man.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
[ALI CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: You head to the town council, and I think you catch Dayward YVE coming out dressed in finery. Big wide-brimmed hat, long coat, which must be uncomfortable in this heat, you know, on each side a deputy, and then behind them both, or behind all three of them, is Ana Berylia and Mr. Kenson. And I think seeing the group of you, he gives a little wave, like, as if like—you know. ‘Oh,’ you know, ‘my friends. Here are my friends.’
KEITH: ‘I found my friends!’
JACK (as PICKMAN): Take that stupid hat off. We need to talk.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): If I take off the hat, there’s a risk of dust getting in my eyes.
JACK (as PICKMAN): [UNCARING] Okay.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): Stroll with me, I’d like to go see the train. Happy to speak with you about whatever matters have come to mind.
JACK (as PICKMAN): We can’t talk inside the council?
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): With this wonderful carnival? I don’t want to miss a second.
KEITH: Is he being sincere about liking the carnival? Because he’s like… a craven worm.
AUSTIN: Yeah. He’s being sincere.
[ALI CHUCKLES]
KEITH: He’s—okay. He doesn’t find the carnival scary?
JANINE: [OVERLAPPING] Craven worms love carnivals, what are you talking about?
DRE: Yeah.
JACK: He’s like—
AUSTIN: He’s rich and surrounded by bodyguards now, Keith.
KEITH: It’s—that’s true, but he was rich before, and he did have some bodyguards, and he was afraid to even go into town.
AUSTIN: There were wax vampires there, and now there’s a bunch of clowns, and peanuts, and cotton candy.
ART: Clowns are scary, is the thing I feel like you’re not properly—
JACK: Are you scared of clowns, Art?
AUSTIN: [OVERLAPPING] I don’t like clowns.
JANINE: [OVERLAPPING] If you’re a craven worm, you’re in among you rkind.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Yeah.
[KEITH CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: Dayward YVE is a clown, so. You know.
DRE: Fuckin’ got him.
ART: Shots fired.
SYLVI: Dayward YVE’s had clown facepaint on this entire time, it just hasn’t come up.
AUSTIN: This whole time, yeah.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): Now what seems to be the matter? You seem very… agitated, miss Pickman.
JACK (as PICKMAN): What does that matter? You fired us.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): Well, the council fired you.
JACK (as PICKMAN): And who’s on the council?
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): Well that would be myself, and Stanislaka, and the mayor, Maleister Price.
JACK (as PICKMAN): It’s three—
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): ‘Fired’ is a strong word. We ended the contract to go with a different provider of security services.
KEITH (as LYKE): Yeah, the mayor.
JACK (as PICKMAN): Is he the mayor or the sheriff?
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): The sheriff.
JACK (as PICKMAN): You said ‘mayor.’
KEITH (as LYKE): [OVERLAPPING] You said ‘mayor.’
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): Uh, sheriff, mayor, eh.
JACK (as PICKMAN): The distinction is not important to you?
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): The council is sort of—
ALI (as MARN): [MUTTERING] This is a joke.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): It’s an important distinction, you’re not wrong, it was a slip of the tongue.
JACK: [CHUCKLING] What was that, Marn?
ALI: Callin’ this guy a joke under my breath.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
ALI: [CHUCKLES] He’s a frickin’ joke,
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): Perhaps we’ll do a mayoral election next year. That could be fun.
JACK (as PICKMAN): [DRY] Oh, with three people voting? I’m sure that will be great.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): No. I think if it’s time for a mayor, we’d do a big to-do. Put up signs.
JACK (as PICKMAN): You didn’t come and talk to us.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): About?
JACK (as PICKMAN): Firing us.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): The contract simply came to its end. This happens.
ART (as DUVALL): No it didn’t. There was an early termination contract.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): Yes, that happens to contracts all the time. And you were rewarded with your severance. You were rewarded with your severance, right?
KEITH (as LYKE): No, it was cruelly denied to us.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): Oh, well.
JACK: ‘The sheriff wouldn’t pay.’ No, I’m not saying that.
AUSTIN: [CHUCKLES] Okay.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): If you just bring me your signed contract, I’ll of course make sure that you receive your payment.
ALI (as MARN): The council talk to anyone who actually lives in the town about this?
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): We all live in the town, and we all speak to our representatives.
ALI (as MARN): [AGITATED] You live all the way over there past all those trees.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): And let me tell you, more people are moving that way every day! Still part of Blackwick County.
JACK (as PICKMAN): [DRY] What a surprise.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): You seem very upset by this. We’re not kicking you out of the town.
JACK (as PICKMAN): You hitched your wagon to the man who killed Ekashi Wolff.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): Ekashi Wolff may as well have resigned from the council the moment he began to harbor a known killer, and then raised violence against those who sought justice.
JACK (as PICKMAN): Do you think those words are going to work on us?
KEITH: Point of clarification here—he wasn’t harboring anyone, right?
AUSTIN: We don’t—he was dead. You never talked to him.
KEITH: But the person he was accused of harboring, we found.
AUSTIN: You did.
KEITH: Locked up, so. Not by Ekashi Wolff.
AUSTIN: You did, but you have no idea if by the time Ekashi Wolff was raising stuff, if he may have known where Akule Polyte had been. He certainly didn’t tell where his house was. Do you know what I mean? He could have said where he lived and he did not. He wouldn’t have been there, but.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): I don’t know that my words need to work on you. I see that we are in a disagreement, but life is filled with disagreements. You signed a contract, it has been terminated according to the terms of the contract, you’ll be paid your severance, and you can continue living in the town!
JACK (as PICKMAN): Devils and contracts.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): [SCOFFS] The town made a contract. I would never make one myself.
JACK (as PICKMAN): [DISDAINFUL] Oh, sure. I understand. This is a very small town, Dayward.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): Growing every day, Pickman.
KEITH: I would love for—I would love to feed this guy to Aterika’Kaal.
AUSTIN: If only.
KEITH: I still can’t—I still can’t do anything about that?
AUSTIN: No. What? What would have changed?
KEITH: I don’t know.
[ALI AND JACK LAUGH]
KEITH: Time. Time has passed.
AUSTIN: It’s been like, three hours!
KEITH: I thought it had been like 20.
AUSTIN: No. I said the storm hit for about an hour or two.
ART: No, time’s passed for you, Keith.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): What a marvelous train.
AUSTIN: He gestures at it.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): The only one I like.
AUSTIN: And it is, of course, Chantilly Scathe’s shackled engine.
JACK: This is such bullshit. This fucking guy.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): You’re a Shape Knight. How do you think it is that she maintains control over that monster?
JACK (as PICKMAN): How do you think she maintains control over that monster?
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): I thought you would be an expert.
KEITH: [MOCKING] ‘I thought you would be an expert.’
JACK (as PICKMAN): Why would I share my expertise with you?
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): Shared curiosity.
JACK (as PICKMAN): I’m not curious.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): This is what separates us.
JACK (as PICKMAN): Oh, no. A lot more separates us than curiosity, Dayward. You looking forward to a little stroll back to your house? As far as I can see, it seems to be obscured by the storm.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): You know, with the deputies in place, I feel a lot more secure staying here. I’ve taken quarters in the town council.
JACK (as PICKMAN): [UNCARING] Oh, I see.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): Is that all? All of you came here for this small conversation between Miss Pickman and myself? Anyone else have any business they’d like to attend to? If not, I’m going to board the train and have a look around.
ART: Oh, that’s a horrible idea. I mean… no.
KEITH: I just want to get this guy. I just fuckin’ hate this guy.
ART: I mean, if you want to shoot him in the streets, we can talk about it, but.
KEITH: [REGRETFULLY] I sold my gun.
SYLVI: Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. If anyone’s shooting someone in the street—
[AUSTIN AND JACK LAUGH]
DRE: Smash-cut to…
AUSTIN: Smash-cut to, yeah.
ART: I think on a day when someone gets shot in the streets, the chances of someone else getting shot in the streets skyrockets.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ART: I think it’s a—I don’t think it goes down. [LAUGHING] You should be rooting for us to shoot someone in the streets.
DRE: Yeah, it’s an alibi.
SYLVI: I’m trying to be a trendsetter.
AUSTIN: [LAUGHS] Hazard just wants to go first.
SYLVI: Yeah. Just wait like five minutes.
AUSTIN: I mean, we can just do that now. We can cut from this conversation that feels like it’s met its end.
JACK: Yeah, I mean, I guess—yeah.
ART: Unless we’re gonna do violence.
AUSTIN: Right.
JACK: To be explicit about where I am at here, from Pickman’s perspective—and she said as much—this is a real ‘this town ain’t big enough for the both of us’ type situation, where you’ve got one crew of sheriffs saying one thing, and another crew of sheriffs saying another thing, and as much as Dayward wants to say ‘oh, we’ve reached an impasse because you signed my stupid contract,’ Pickman’s prepared to say ‘well, we’ve reached an impasse because you’re not prepared to—’ I guess give over the territory back to—or give the jurisdiction back to the Blackwick Group.
AUSTIN: I mean, do you basically make that argument to Dayward, or are you just…?
JACK: I don’t think Pickman makes arguments in that sense. I—
AUSTIN: I think, then, let me at least just have Dayward YVE speak to it. Because, I think, you know, Dayward is a fucking fool in many ways, but he’s asserting dominance in this moment. And I think maybe leans close to you, Pickman, and says, before going off to see this train:
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): You seem angry, and I understand that this is not where you thought the day would go. But you have limited recourse. This is not your town. Frankly, I don’t even see your entire crew here with you. Do you think the people here would appreciate it if you killed the number one employer in the middle of the street? Do you think that you would gain favor with Stanislaka to strong-arm your way back into control?
KEITH (as LYKE): It’s the principle.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): You cannot live by principles. You live by necessities.
KEITH: Shot of his big stupid house.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. The sand just cutting into it.
JACK (as PICKMAN): You’re talking to the wrong person. Have a good time on the train.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): Enjoy the carnival.
JACK: Can I just try and invoke the Shape?
AUSTIN: [SCOFFS] Sure.
[SYLVI LAUGHS]
JACK: I want to wait until he boards the train before I invoke the Shape. [CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
JACK: This is Pickman just taking a real punt. This is not necessarily a—
AUSTIN: Let’s—yeah. Tell me what the—yep, boards the train, I think Ana and Mr. Kenson stay outside of the train, but the deputies get onboard.
JACK: I think I’m gonna just put my hand on the metal of the—the shackled train, it doesn’t have carriages, does it? It’s just an engine.
AUSTIN: I wanna say there were some carriages. I think that we did have carriages.
JACK: I mean, so this—what I’m saying is, this thing is big enough that Pickman could just stand next to it and put her hand on it without someone being like ‘why are you touching my train?’
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh-huh.
JACK: Yeah, ’m gonna—
AUSTIN: Though, I mean, again, Chantilly Scathe is walking around, is wandering around here.
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: I mean, go ahead and try to invoke the Shape. I mean, you have—this is one of your—what are your beats, Pickman?
JACK: My beats are “show the truth of the Structure’s majesty to an outsider…” [LAUGHS] Ha ha ha.
DRE: Oh, okay.
AUSTIN: I see.
JACK: And I think that Dayward YVE might be the platonic ideal of the Blackwick outsider. And “let your curiosity lead you into danger.” Pickman is not curious about this. I think she wants him to get [CHUCKLING] mashed by a train in some respect.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JACK: So what I’m gonna do is I’m—
ART: When you said outsider, you meant outside of us? That’s so sweet. That’s not how I—
JACK: Hm?
ART: —heard that the first time I heard that beat.
AUSTIN: No, I think Pickman is—I think Jack is saying ‘an outsider to this place.’
ART: Mm.
AUSTIN: Right?
JACK: Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, Dayward YVE comes in, he physically moves his house into Blackwick. Yeah, I’m gonna put my hand on the—
ART: Alright, it’s not sweet, go to hell.
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
JACK: I’m gonna put my hand on the side of the carriage, and I am going to just try and picture as clearly as I can in my mind, the fire and the heat of the flaming engine that we last saw tearing through Sangfielle. And the power of the Zephyr when it’s in wolf mode—I mean, like, here we have this shackled train, and I think what Pickman’s imagining is just Shape Trains at their most violent and their most unshackled.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Mhm.
KEITH: Claim. It’s a claim that the train is shackled, anyway.
JACK: Yeah, I—
AUSTIN: I mean, this is—you gotta give me a roll here, Pickman. So what is this?
JACK: Um… ooh, wee.
AUSTIN: This is something Technology, probably. Compel. This is Compel - Technology.
JACK: This is Compel - Technology. This is fuckin’ ‘eat the guy.’
AUSTIN: And I think it’s Risky or Dangerous. I think it might be Dangerous. Telling a train to eat a guy.
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Is hard to do.
[ALI CHUCKLES]
JACK: No, look, Austin, I’m not telling the train to eat the guy. I’m just thinking about what it’s like when trains eat guys.
AUSTIN: Are you—is there anything that you can add to this to help your roll here? Is there anything you can add to your attempt here to—
JACK: My Sound and Fury skill only works on other players.
AUSTIN: Right.
JACK: It says “before another player makes a roll,” which I think is really funny.
AUSTIN: That would not work for you. Yep.
JACK: Uh, let’s see. I have a lot of protection, I have a lot of things that would be useful for shooting Dayward YVE, but I would prefer not to shoot him.
AUSTIN: Maybe we just roll it.
JACK: Wait, hang on. I mean, I can power up my armor. Let’s see.
AUSTIN: This is true.
KEITH: Okay, sorry, what is the—
AUSTIN: You could—
KEITH: What is the thing that you can only use on another player?
AUSTIN: It’s a special move from the new set of playbooks that Jack has a special move on.
JACK: My armor wouldn’t do shit. My armor lets me remove Stress, it lets me inflict Stress on a Delve or an adversary—
AUSTIN: You could give yourself a skill you already have twice a second time, which would give you a Knack, which would give you another die.
JACK: Oh, yeah.
AUSTIN: That’s expensive, that’s a d8 to do that, but you could give yourself like a d8 Compel - Train Talk as a Knack, or something like that.
JACK: Oh, I have a d8. I have a Technology d8. I have a Battery—ooh, wait. No, this—I have a battery-powered lamp, but that’s not the lamp to summon the Zephyr. That’s a—I think Duvall has that.
AUSTIN: No, Duvall has that. Yeah.
JACK: Okay, well—
ART: I’m standing right next to you, I could—we could just talk about it.
JACK: I don’t want to bring the Zephyr here, though, to—I mean, unless we bring the Zephyr to try and [CHUCKLING] unshackle the train, but now we’re in—now we’re in really deep water. It would have gone from Pickman being like ‘boy, wouldn’t it be nice if Dayward YVE got eaten by a tain’ to like ‘let’s try and bring in another one!’ Okay. Let’s do it this way. Let’s get rid of—
AUSTIN: You have these Gandy Dancer tools that you can use, that give you Mastery on any Shape roll.
JACK: Oh, shit, Mastery when used with the Shape, yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JACK: And can that stack with taking the Knack as well?
AUSTIN: Yeah, if you want to also sacrifice this lantern, this lamp, for a Knack, totally.
JACK: Yeah, okay, so I’ll get rid of the battery-powered lamp. I don’t get rid of the Gandy Dancer tools because they’re not expended.
AUSTIN: They’re things you’re using, yep.
JACK: I get one dice—the way that that would work, right, would be I just add one dice? And then use the Knack?
AUSTIN: Yeah, I think it’s just one with Mastery. Oh, yeah, what is the Knack that you’re taking? Because you could add something to Compel or to Technology. Maybe just Technology, the Shape is broader, you know?
JACK: Yeah.
KEITH: Is this helpable?
AUSTIN: I don’t think so.
KEITH: Okay.
JACK: Could Duvall help me?
AUSTIN: I don’t think this is—I don’t think that compelling the shape to eat somebody—I think this is a ‘you are talking to the train’ thing. You are trying to connect to it.
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: You know? I don’t know that adding a second voice to something like that is—
JACK: No, it doesn’t—it wouldn’t make sense.
AUSTIN: —actually makes it safer, yeah.
JACK: Okay, so let’s see. Compel - Technology, rolling with Mastery.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Plus one.
JACK: Plus one. Dangerous.
AUSTIN: Plus two, plus two, plus two, because you have the—no, no, plus one, because it’s Mastery.
JACK: Yeah, it’s Mastery.
AUSTIN: Plus two, because you also—no, the Mastery counts as a plus one, yeah. Plus one is right. Yep, Dangerous.
JACK: [ANTICIPATORY] Ooh, wee.
[PAUSE]
JACK: Yeah, she’s angry. This makes sense.
[PAUSE]
[JACK CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: 8, success, no Stress.
KEITH: Wow. The Shape Knight doing a little ritual besides the train. ‘Nope, nope, nobody look at me.’
AUSTIN: Tell me what your side looks like.
JACK: Oh, boy. I think I just… there’s that great moment in the del Toro horror film The Orphanage, where the kid gives the key through the window, where it’s this masked ghost who appears outside a window with a key held in his palm, between his palm and the glass, so it goes clink against the glass in a really spooky way. And I think in the same way, Pickman is holding—is sort of pressing the Gandy Dancer tool to the train. And from her perspective, there is not a great ritual maneuver. It doesn’t feel like anything changes with the world. It really is Pickman just thinking about—almost daydreaming. It’s daydreaming. She’s daydreaming about the power and the violence that the Shape has done to people like Dayward YVE.
AUSTIN: You get a look from Chantilly Scathe, eyebrows raised. And she steps up the little small stepladder onto the train, and begins to head deeper into its train cars. You can hear the clink of her cane on the floor—you can feel it, because you’re touching the train. Somehow it echoes through the metal of the hull. And then there is a brief and quick sound of the air being slashed. And you hear a few guttural moans. About a minute later, she steps back off the train, and approaches you. And your eyes note blood dripping from a small slit at the handle of her cane, where it becomes a sheath. And she leans in close to you, and with a mechanical tinge, says:
AUSTIN (as CHANTILLY SCATHE): I knew you could ask nicely.
AUSTIN: And you realize that miss Chantilly Scathe is the Shape Train.
JACK: Now, on any other day, this is the coolest thing Pickman has seen all day. [CHUCKLES]
[KEITH LAUGHS]
JACK: And we need to board the train and talk, I might even bring Duvall, given his experiences on the Zephyr. Unfortunately, we might have just killed the mayor.
AUSTIN: Oh, he’s dead.
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Dayward YVE’s dead, his two deputies are dead.
KEITH: Wow.
[ALI CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: You’ve killed them.
KEITH: Holy shit.
SYLVI: Hell yeah.
KEITH: Is the—
JACK: Well, no, hold on. I haven’t killed anybody.
AUSTIN: Hmm.
[SYLVI LAUGHS]
KEITH: No.
AUSTIN: You know who says things like that?
KEITH: The C.I.A.
[DRE LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: ‘I never signed a contract. The town signed a contract.’
JACK: [LAUGHS] Tell that to the man on board the train, Austin.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. He won’t listen anymore. He won’t hear you.
[JACK CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: She offers you her card, again.
JACK: Oh, yeah, great.
AUSTIN: Trying to remember if she gave you one before.
JACK: She did and I got rid of it. I—no, I powered up the armor with it or something.
AUSTIN: Yes, you—yeah.
JACK: This is great. I’ll take another one of these. Yeah, what’s this?
AUSTIN (as CHANTILLY SCATHE): In case you need to talk to me again in the future. I think we’d have lots to chat about.
KEITH: I’ve been saying for a year this goddamn train isn’t shackled.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JACK: Can I—can we shake hands?
AUSTIN: Oh, yeah. And you feel her cold flesh on yours. The metal of her body.
JACK: Oh, she’s a clown too, right? Or she’s in circus gear, right? ‘Cause the—
AUSTIN: She’s in ringmaster attire.
JACK: She’s always been in ringmaster attire.
AUSTIN: I think she even says to you—I know, she has to go run the circus momentarily. The like—she has a big top kind of close to the train, close enough that she can maintain her connection to the train, or to the body of the train. I mean, she is the train, right? She just can’t get too far from it, ‘cause it’s her. This is an extension of who she is.
JACK: You know when you’re playing, like, Darkest Dungeon, and you see one of the people come up in the caravan and you’re like ‘oh, cool, they’re a charioteer or whatever, I need a charioteer.’ I wonder if the carnival was like ‘oh, sick, a ringmaster! Yes!’
AUSTIN: [LAUGHING] Yeah, a hundred percent. And yeah, I think she says like:
AUSTIN (as CHANTILLY SCATHE): I have to go do my duty in the big top, but I would love to have words with you later. I knew your mind could be open.
JACK (as PICKMAN): Enjoy the circus.
AUSTIN: [LAUGHS] Alright.
JACK: Also—
AUSTIN: Hazard. Oh, go ahead.
JACK: Sorry, real quick, ‘I have to go and do my duty in the big top’ is the silliest little sentence anybody has ever said. [CHUCKLING] And then they go toddling off to be a clown.
AUSTIN: Yep. Sometimes even the power of a train is compelled by a wild dust-storm.
KEITH: What is the reaction to the death of Dayward YVE?
JACK: Nobody fucking knows, he’s on the train!
AUSTIN: He’s on the train.
KEITH: Alone, but—oh, and the two deputies are also dead, right?
AUSTIN: With the two deputies that are also dead. Oh, yeah.
KEITH: So no one knows—
AUSTIN: And the train is taking care of that right now, don’t worry about it.
JACK: Oh, Berylia and Kenson are there, we should—hm.
AUSTIN: Yeah. They’re just waiting. They’re waiting for their—
JACK: Yeah, they’ll wait. It’s—that’s train business.
KEITH: Paid to wait.
AUSTIN: Paid to wait.
KEITH: Paid handsomely to wait.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
ALI: Can I—
AUSTIN: Hazard. Uh, yeah, Marn.
ALI: [LAUGHS] Sorry, just—can I buy them like a club soda or something? [LAUGHING] ‘Cause while all this is happening, I’m talking to the two of them.
AUSTIN: Yeah, totally. Uh-huh.
KEITH: Wait, so this isn’t a thing where Pick—we don’t know what’s happening, Pickman’s not like [FRANTIC] ‘we gotta go, we gotta go, we gotta go?’ And like, fast walking away?
[ALI LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: I don’t know, Pickman seems kind of chill about it.
KEITH: But do I—we don’t know that something’s happened.
AUSTIN: No, you have no idea.
KEITH: Right.
AUSTIN: Pickman, what’s your attitude as Marn is sharing a club soda with Ana Berylia and Mr. Kenson?
[ALI LAUGHS]
KEITH: But I guess I’m just saying, what is the premise upon which Marn is buying a club soda for these two?
ALI: Oh—
AUSTIN: ‘Cause they’re stuck fuckin’—’cause they’re cool people! They’re friends! You’re friends with them!
KEITH: Okay, okay, okay, fair.
AUSTIN: Right, Marn?
ALI: Yeah, I was just—they were sitting there waiting, they’re gonna be in there, you know.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: This isn’t a sort of like consolatory soda for their boss dying? Okay.
ALI: No, no, it’s just a rare opportunity to talk to someone like a human while they’re not in front of their boss?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ALI: This is like a—
JANINE: You know when you—
ALI: ‘How do you like the carnival?’
JANINE: You know when you kill someone’s boss and buy ‘em a club soda to make it better?
[ALI LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: Ana is very, like:
AUSTIN (as ANA BERYLIA): Oh, thank you, miss, this makes my day.
AUSTIN: You know?
KEITH: Is it plain, is it flavored, is it a little salty?
AUSTIN (as ANA): It’s flavored with bubbles.
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
ALI: Yeah, doesn’t club soda have a flav—am I thinking of like, a—
AUSTIN: It has, like, a—
KEITH: No, club soda—
ART: Yeah, unless you’re thinking of tonic water.
KEITH: [OVERLAPPING] Club soda does not apply a flavor.
AUSTIN: [OVERLAPPING] Tonic water is definitely flavored.
JANINE: Yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: But is—okay, but could you tell the difference between a seltzer and a club soda? Or are those the same?
KEITH: I believe that those are the same exact thing.
JANINE: [OVERLAPPING] Isn’t that the same thing?
ART: [OVERLAPPING] I believe those are the same thing, yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay, just tonic is different.
KEITH: Tonic has quinine in it.
ART: Tonic has quinine.
AUSTIN: I mean, I know tonic is different. Trust me. In fact, I have a friend who told me they could not taste the difference between tonic and seltzer, and I watched them prove that that was a lie.
[ALI CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: They were like ‘alright, drink this, then,’ and they immediately are like ‘oh, this is not what I thought it would be.’
JANINE: They just didn’t know what they were talking about.
KEITH: Tonic tastes like if Sprite was, like, made with medicine. In a good way. I love tonic, but it’s not—
[ALI LAUGHS]
KEITH: It has an extremely strong flavor.
ALI: I think I was thinking of cream soda, which is the amber-colored one that isn’t root beer.
AUSTIN: Oh, sure. Yeah.
KEITH: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
DRE: Ooh. Love a good cream soda.
AUSTIN: I like a birch beer a lot. I wish that birch beer was sold broader.
KEITH: Birch beer’s excellent.
AUSTIN: Apparently club soda has mineral salts, and seltzer does not.
ALI: Ooh, okay.
JANINE: That’s just in the water though, right? That just means they use—
ALI: Mineral water, and then…
KEITH: Mineral water, yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JANINE: Mineral water?
AUSTIN: Yeah. Alright. Hi, Hazard. How you doing?
SYLVI: I’m great.
AUSTIN: Are we good up north at the train?
JACK: Yeah, I mean, I could tell Marn, but let’s cut to Hazard.
ALI: Mhm. [CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: Alright.
JACK: Unless—
AUSTIN: I think the timing on this is very fun to cut to Hazard here.
SYLVI: Okay.
AUSTIN: Are we at ‘operating the knife balloon stand,’ or are we at ‘throwing knives at a participant’?
SYLVI: Oh, that’s a good question.
AUSTIN: Where in the rotation?
DRE: Do you need me to be a plant? I’ll let him throw knives at me so you can get the jump on him.
SYLVI: Oh. Fuck it, yeah. Sure. If you’re down.
DRE: Of course.
SYLVI: I was also gonna just try and look around before I did anything to see if there was anything that was clearly Uno’s belongings.
AUSTIN: Just the stuff he has on him.
SYLVI: Okay. No head-shaped bags anywhere?
[DRE LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: God, maybe back here. Maybe there—has he been carrying it around with him?
SYLVI: I don’t know.
AUSTIN: Oh, I—here’s a fun thing I’ll give you. ‘Cause you got a crit on that last one, right?
SYLVI: I did.
AUSTIN: Here’s what you see.
SYLVI: Which, by the way, I should have rolled with Mastery on that too, is what I realized, because of my minor Fallout.
AUSTIN: Damn, true. Yeah. The—you see Maleister Price, the sheriff, come over and say something very quietly to Uno. And it’s sort of like ‘yeah, I got the thing you asked me to hold on to.’ That’s the vibe.
SYLVI: Okay. Okay. I’ve—he’s on the list.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
SYLVI: Yeah, okay. It’s gun time. So I think he’s doing the knife-throwing routine, right?
AUSTIN: Yep. It’s up to you. If you want to—whichever side of it, either operating the balloon-throw, or the—
SYLVI: I like the idea, ‘cause it also gets Chine involved, cause Chine’s been offscreen a while. I like the idea of having a plant—
AUSTIN: [OVERLAPPING] Chine, yeah.
SYLVI: —and also backup, in case something goes wrong.
AUSTIN: True.
DRE: Yeah, just let him throw a knife at me first, so that I have something I can grab.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Ooh, good.
SYLVI: Oh, actually, really quick, I’m also going to—before I roll anything, I want to use a move that I haven’t used this entire time even though it’s one of my core abilities.
AUSTIN: Oh, this is a good one. This is a good one. Yes.
SYLVI: I want to use The Cost of Doing Business. I’ll read this out, because I don’t think it’s come up on the show once. “A mix of scrying and luck magic lets you portion off your fortune to be used as you wish. At any time, you may consume a resource and roll its dice. Set this dice aside. When you perform an action or inflict Stress, but before you roll the dice to resolve it, you may replace any unrolled dice in your pool with the dice you set aside. Once used in this manner, it is consumed. If you have an unspent die set aside at the end of the session, you take fortune stress equal to the value rolled on the dice.”
AUSTIN: So what are you consuming?
SYLVI: I’m gonna be consuming my strange glowing light tubes, they’re Technology d8.
AUSTIN: What’s the consumption of this look like?
SYLVI: I think I’m loading them into my gun.
AUSTIN: Oh, that’s very fun. I love it.
JACK: Ooh. Gun takes tubes.
AUSTIN: That’s very fun. Okay, roll that d8.
[ART LAUGHS]
SYLVI: Yeah. What is a bullet if not a small tube?
AUSTIN: This is true.
SYLVI: Been playing a lot of Destiny lately, and this is what I’ve learned.
AUSTIN: Oh, you rolled a 1! [CLAPS]
SYLVI: It’s fine.
AUSTIN: Ohh…
SYLVI: I got the bad roll out of the way.
AUSTIN: You got the bad roll out of the way, that’s true. So just remember—
SYLVI: And you know what? Hey, maybe I’m gonna need to roll a 1 on something.
AUSTIN: This is true. Maybe. You never know.
SYLVI: I’m gonna add a little extra…
KEITH: Oh, can you use that for a Fallout roll?
AUSTIN: No, it’s only when you—
KEITH: No? Okay.
AUSTIN: Or let me see. Let’s see.
KEITH: I don’t think it said.
AUSTIN: It said—ooh.
SYLVI: “When you perform an action or inflict Stress.”
AUSTIN: “When you perform an action or inflict Stress.” So it’s on an action roll, or a Stress—like a damage roll.
KEITH: Okay.
SYLVI: Worst case scenario, I take 1 Stress at the end of this.
AUSTIN: Exactly. That’s the nice thing about the 1, yeah.
SYLVI: Yeah, exactly. The tubes didn’t fit, so I just throw them away.
AUSTIN: You load this glow tube into your fucking gun. Your filigreed revolver. Your unslaked revolver.
SYLVI: Yes.
AUSTIN: That’s a good—that’s great. And you’re gonna make the shot.
SYLVI: Yeah, hold on, I feel like I get, like, a bunch of shit for this.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
SYLVI: Really quick, because of “if you’re killing someone or something that’s shed your blood before, your attack gains the Brutal tag.”
AUSTIN: Yep.
SYLVI: So I’m gonna have that.
AUSTIN: You’ll have Brutal.
SYLVI: I think—was there another one…?
AUSTIN: Let’s see. Blood for Blood, that’s the one we‘re talking about.
SYLVI: No, I think… I think that’s it, actually. I think it’s just ‘Red and Bloody Business.’
AUSTIN: I mean, this is useful, “when you stand still and concentrate, you can quite literally see behind you as though you had eyes in the back of your head—”
SYLVI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: So you know that no one’s behind, you’re gonna—that’s very fun. Yeah, I think the only other thing here would be if someone would try to steal from you.
SYLVI: Yeah, okay. I wasn’t sure if I got another thing for bloodshed from the—from my Calling, but I don’t, so.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I don’t see it. Alright.
SYLVI: I do get something on hit, but we’ll do that when we get to it. So this is Kill… what? Haven?
KEITH: Brutal is good.
AUSTIN: Brutal’s very good. Kill, Expensive—sorry, it’s—this is Standard. Normally it would be Risky, but he doesn’t see you. You know?
SYLVI: Oh, right. And I get Bloodbound, which means—
AUSTIN: Oh, but let’s do the lead-in here a little bit. Oh, yeah, what’s Bloodbound do?
SYLVI: It’s a d4 stress. I need to look this up really quick.
AUSTIN: I believe you’re right.
SYLVI: I take d4 Blood Stress and then I roll Mastery?
AUSTIN: Yes, yes.
SYLVI: Okay.
AUSTIN: That’s for the rest of the situation, which is really good. Do you want to do that?
SYLVI: Yeah. I can’t use that 1 for this, right? So.
AUSTIN: No. Mm—no, I don’t think this is an action.
KEITH: Is it not an action?
AUSTIN: It’s not.
SYLVI: Are we sure?
[DRE LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: Maybe it is. You’re using Bloodbound. That might be an action.
KEITH: That’s an action.
SYLVI: It’s—okay, cool.
AUSTIN: It’s marking—well, actually, what it’s doing is marking Stress, isn’t it?
KEITH: Right. So I guess it’s kind of both.
AUSTIN: It’s when you perform an action or inflict Stress. You’re inflicting Stress on yourself. I’ll let you use it.
SYLVI: There we go. Okay.
AUSTIN: Boom, inflict 1 Stress.
SYLVI: So does my Protection work here then?
AUSTIN: Does it say—yeah. It always—yeah. A hundred percent.
SYLVI: I have 1 Protection, so I don’t have to take any stress.
AUSTIN: You don’t take any stress. Look at that. Gamed it.
KEITH: Nice.
AUSTIN: Alright, so then you take mastery on this. I think Runo—Runo. Uno Riscano, the Count, the Count of—
SYLVI: The Count of Cards.
AUSTIN: The Count of Cards, right? Yeah.
SYLVI: Yeah. Motherfucker.
AUSTIN: Sizes you up, Chine, and is like:
AUSTIN (as UNO RISCANO): Ooh. You’re a big’un, huh? Just stand up against the board, and I promise I won’t hit anything vital.
DRE (as CHINE): I don’t need to like, crouch or anything?
AUSTIN (as UNO): No, I want you to stand up just as tall and as—really show off how big you are.
DRE (as CHINE): Okay.
DRE: I have my arms out spread eagle, but I’m also giving two thumbs up.
AUSTIN (as UNO): Alright. Now, you’ll see, crowd gathered here, this—you’re from Blackwick?
DRE (as CHINE): Yep.
AUSTIN (as UNO): Favored child of this Blackwick. Look at how they grow ‘em here in Blackwick. God damn. And you’ll see, even with a target as wide as this, these knives will fly true, and I won’t hit even a single piece of flesh. Unless you’d like me to. That’s not—ha ha ha.
[SYLVI AND KEITH LAUGH]
AUSTIN: Grabs the knife, flips it up in the air, grabs it again. I’m gonna say these are, again, these are those same type of, like, the sticking knives that Uno had before. Maybe he stole a bunch of other ones on the way out. But I just love that as a visual cue for him. Grabs them, flips it up, holds it by the blade, throws it. Thwunk. Right next to your head, Chine. Everyone ‘clap, clap, clap, clap, clap.’
AUSTIN (as UNO): Everyone, save your applause. I have at least five more, maybe six.
AUSTIN: Goes over and picks up another one.
AUSTIN (as UNO): Where should I throw this one, folks?
AUSTIN (as CROWDSPERSON): Between his legs!
DRE (as CHINE): I need a haircut.
AUSTIN (as UNO): Oh, there we go. Absolutely. I’ll give you a little trim there.
AUSTIN: Flips it up, throws it. Boom. Right above your head, a piece of hair floats down in front of your face.
KEITH (as CROWDSPERSON): Wow, he’s good!
SYLVI: I think I’m lining up the shot right now.
AUSTIN: Yeah. ‘Wow, he’s good!’ Yeah.
KEITH: [LAUGHS] That’s an audience plant.
AUSTIN (as CROWDSPERSON): Where’d you learn to do it?
AUSTIN (as UNO): Oh, here and there, here and there. How about this?
AUSTIN: Grabs two, tosses them up in the air, catches them with the other hands, kind of juggling them a little bit—
DRE: Ooh.
AUSTIN: Getting ready to throw, getting ready to throw… throws two more, and they go underneath your arms, Chine, absolutely.
AUSTIN (as UNO): Alright. I need one more place. WHere should I put this one?
JACK (as CROWDSPERSON): Catch it between your teeth!
[KEITH LAUGHS]
AUSTIN (as UNO): Ooh. Now that is a tricky one.
JACK (as CROWDSPERSON): I think you should throw it from the side.
AUSTIN: Throw it from the—
[DRE LAUGHS]
KEITH: A very cruel audience member. [LAUGHS]
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
ART: That’s not really a throw trick.
JACK (as CROWD) I’m a monster. I want to see blood!
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
AUSTIN: ‘We got a monster in the audience, folks! Everybody clap for the monster!’
[GROUP APPLAUSE]
AUSTIN: Woo! Yay! Monsters! And yeah, gets right in—and says to you:
AUSTIN (as UNO): Well, that’s up to my participant, isn’t it?
DRE (as CHINE): Yeah, let’s—
AUSTIN (as UNO): And gives you a little wink, as if like, ‘don’t worry about it, it’ll work out.’
DRE (as CHINE): Yeah, let’s go for it. [OPENS MOUTH] Aaah.
SYLVI: I accidentally rolled it twice, but.
AUSTIN: You rolled it twice, but you got an 8 here.
SYLVI: First time.
AUSTIN: Success, 8 the first time, that’s a full success. Give me your damage.
SYLVI: Okay, um, so let’s first—
AUSTIN: Oh, it’s Brutal.
SYLVI: And now I get—so, No Relish of Salvation in it from my Calling lets me increase my damage dice one step once per session after I succesfully hit, but before I roll damage.
JACK: Oh my god.
AUSTIN: So it goes up from a d8 to a d10, and you’re rolling that twice and taking both.
SYLVI: Yep.
KEITH: Taking the higher.
AUSTIN: Wait, and it’s Bloodbound. Oh, no, yeah, taking the—sorry, taking highest.
SYLVI: Bloodbound is—
AUSTIN: Yeah, right.
SYLVI: So am I rolling two and taking the highest?
AUSTIN: You’re rolling two and taking the highest. D10 twice.
SYLVI: Okay. That’s a 9.
AUSTIN: That’s a 9.
KEITH: Wow.
SYLVI: Catch this in your teeth, motherfucker.
AUSTIN: The knife just goes up in the air. There’s a loud bang. I’m guessing there’s a loud—you don’t have, like, a silencer on that thing.
SYLVI: No, this is a big fuck-off revolver. I described this thing as looking like a black metal album cover.
AUSTIN: Right. You did in fact do that, didn’t you?
SYLVI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: One second. Let me—that might… is that it for Uno Riscano? Sometimes you assassinate a person in the middle of a carnival, you know what I mean?
DRE: Mhm.
KEITH: Wow, we’re assassinating people all over town, literally.
SYLVI: To be fair, I—listen. This was—you guys are spur of the moment assassins. This is what I do.
JACK: I didn’t kill anybody.
AUSTIN: This has been what you’ve been building to. Mhm.
ART: Well…
KEITH: Right, you just bribed the energy of the world to convince a train to murder a guy.
DRE: You were just thinkin’ about it.
SYLVI: Yeah, it’s like how Austin doesn’t play tabletop games, he just facilitates them. Sure.
AUSTIN: That’s right. Exactly. I’m just here to facilitate and have a good time.
ART: Or how no one in Rome killed anyone at the colosseum, the lions did that.
AUSTIN: The lions did it. Would 9—yeah, I think this tears through his chest, and the knife comes down, and lands in his leg. And everyone screams, and yells, and there is chaos.
KEITH: ‘That guy up there killed that guy!’
AUSTIN: People are yelling, and running, people are shoving each other, the shoves turn to fights, fights turn to more violence, everyone is scared—
DRE: If I can’t—I mean, I don’t know if this person is dead or not, but Chine does, like, leap from the stage and try and like, cover up or grab this person, just in case they’re not dead.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. I am pretty sure he’s dead. I’m double-checking. I’m trying to find my original stat block for Uno.
SYLVI: I’m also double-checking, like, in character, Hazard would be going over there.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
DRE: I am gonna take these knives, though.
AUSTIN: I thought it was in these notes… let’s see.
SYLVI: Yeah, a snack for later, for you.
[JACK AND SYLVI CHUCKLE]
SYLVI: Whenever you take an item, that’s all I think. Is like, ‘oh yeah, Chine can eat that.’
DRE: No, I’ve got Fallout to take care of, I can’t have snacks, unfortunately.
SYLVI: Oh, fair.
JANINE: I’m now picturing Chine doing, like, a carnival sword-swallowing act, but like, actually eating the swords, but like a crowd gathers to be like ‘oh, wow, aah, look at him. Look.’ Clap, clap, clap.
AUSTIN: [CHUCKLES] Yeah, he is dead. He is truly dead. Laying on the ground, bleeding out. Dying, let’s say. Coughing.
AUSTIN (as UNO): Oh, my luck.
SYLVI (as HAZARD): Finally ran out, huh?
AUSTIN (AS UNO): Seems like it.
SYLVI (as HAZARD): Where’s the coin?
AUSTIN (as UNO): You just had to—the coin? Oh, it’s right—in my right pocket.
SYLVI: Is it?
AUSTIN: No. Right pocket’s empty.
SYLVI: [CHUCKLES] I’m gonna poke him with the barrel of my gun, like in the forehead.
AUSTIN (as UNO): [PAINED] Aah, aah, aah!
SYLVI (as HAZARD): Where’s the coin?
AUSTIN (as UNO): [STRAINED] Right pocket, right pocket!
SYLVI (as HAZARD): It’s empty.
AUSTIN (as UNO): That’s where I—that’s where I had it. That’s where I had it last. I was supposed to hand it back over, and we were gonna make a little trade with your people, and have them help us out a little bit. And it should be right in the right pocket. Come on, help me out here, bud.
SYLVI: I’m gonna check again, there’s nothing there.
AUSTIN: It’s not there. It’s not there.
SYLVI: I’m going to… I want to pick up one of his—
DRE (as CHINE): Wait, check his left pocket. Sometimes people don’t know their right from their left.
SYLVI: I’ll check all of his pockets, honestly. I will probably pick up one of his knives while I do this.
AUSTIN: Yeah, you grab one of those knives again. It’s the sharp sticking knife, d6 Kill - Piercing - Good. You find some—you find a deck of cards, obviously. You find—maybe some money. You know? But no coin. I mean, we’ve seen the coin.
SYLVI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: It’s at Dyre Ode’s shop, but.
SYLVI: But he doesn’t know that, and I don’t know that.
AUSTIN: He doesn’t know that. Right? Exactly.
SYLVI: Um…
AUSTIN: There is probably some Wrights cult stuff, Ali, yes.
ALI: [GIGGLES] Any secret information onhand, membership card?
SYLVI: Yeah, I guess, like, what did you want with it? I actually do want to ask, like, ‘why did you need it so badly? Why did you need the Caravan so badly?’ Because, also, Hazard doesn’t remember their interaction before just the game that they played.
AUSTIN: Totally.
AUSTIN (as UNO): We’re building something big. Very big. And we wanted some help building it. Bringing stuff across the heartland. We were gonna give the Caravan back the coin in exchange for their hep building the tower.
SYLVI (as HAZARD): All this for a fucking tower, huh?
AUSTIN (as UNO): It’s bigger than a tower.
SYLVI: And I think while Uno’s been speaking, Hazard’s just been kinda wiping some dirt off his knife, and then when they’re done, we can cut away after this. I am going to cut this guy’s head off.
AUSTIN: Of course. There you go. Not pleased.
DRE: Do you need help?
SYLVI: Go ahead, sure.
AUSTIN: If you thought people were yelling before…
DRE: I mean, I got this big fuckin’ axe we can use if you need it.
AUSTIN: It’s chaos to see you execute somebody. This is—you know, there are people like ‘well, maybe it was a—maybe they were a bad person, I know Chine, Chine wouldn’t be hanging out, if Chine—’ blah blah blah, you know.
SYLVI: ‘It was a skit.’
AUSTIN: Terrifi—yeah.
[KEITH LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: ‘It’s fake, everybody, calm down. Carnivals do things like this.’
DRE: Uh-huh.
AUSTIN: It’s interactive theatre. And, yeah. Es, I’m imagining that you are north of this somewhat. I’m imagining—I didn’t say this, but I think you are like, up this general direction, you know? Near one of these big trees south of the town council, or maybe over near the Automat. Somewhere in that general direction. You hear people screaming and running. And you also heard a gunshot go off, you know? And I think probably throughout the town, you probably hear another couple of gunshots as some of these shitty deputies are like, ‘oh, we’re under attack!’ You know? Just shooting up into the hills randomly.
JANINE: I think Es, when these various things happen, goes to the nearest deputy and says ‘Hey, I heard something over there. You should go.’
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
JANINE: ‘You should go make sure everything’s okay.’
AUSTIN: I think he does that, he’s not gonna—he’s like ‘oh, yeah, okay.’ Of course. Dyre is like:
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): Well, this is no good. I have places to be, and the sooner this carnival ends, the better.
JANINE (as ES): Well, what are the conditions for an ending, really?
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): It has to get through the… the show. I could exert a little power and give us a way out, but that wouldn’t end it.
JANINE (as ES): Well… [SIGHS] I have to be honest with you, I got fired today.
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): Aw.
JANINE (as ES): I’m not—you know, it’s—I think everyone else is taking it a little harder than I am. I tend to think that you cannot force people to value you, and you can try your best, and if they don’t value you after that, you should find somewhere else that does. And I tried very hard to help here. And I think I did a very good job, and it didn’t matter. So, if they think they can do better, I’m not inclined to step in. However, if there’s something that I can do for you to help you hasten this show and put the carnival at an end, I would be happy to help.
[MUSIC OUTRO - “Sangfielle” by Jack de Quidt]
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): [SIGHS] Hm. If we can start to calm these people and get them to the tent, that would go a long way.