PALISADE 48: A Palette of Colors Pt. 3
Transcriber: Iris (sacredwhim)
Austin: PALISADE is a show about empire, revolution, settler colonialism, politics, religion, war, and the many consequences thereof. For a full list of content warnings, please check the episode description.
[music intro - “See All Of This” by Jack de Quidt begins]
Ali (as Brnine): We’re, like, disconnected. We’re, like, stuck. We’re like—we’re, like, detached.
Janine (as Thisbe): As is our opposition.
Janine: Thisbe adds in, helpfully. [chuckles]
Dre (as Lattice): Yes, the opposition is weaker. Which…
Ali (as Brnine): Well, this is bigger than that. This isn’t just fighting, this is people. This is connection. This is—I have to talk to the people that I can’t.
Dre (as Lattice): Kalvin Brnine, please state clearly what it is you wish to discuss and what you would like to change.
-
Jack (as August): Clementine, come in.
Art (as Clem): Yes.
Jack (as August): Do you copy?
Art (as Clem): Of course.
Jack (as August): I think Coriolis can handle the rest of the air support. We need support inside the caves. They’re pinning us down in here. Can you deploy Iconoclasts?
Jack: He says it like the word coming out of his mouth is sour on his tongue. And as a cook, he’d know.
[Austin hums]
Art (as Clem): Just a moment.
Sylvi: I would love to show up Clementine Kesh’s stupid fuckin’ ferrets, you know?
-
Austin (as Elle): I’m gonna leave here with a handful of people. A handful of powerful people. Got a one-way ticket. If you dream of more than being a hero on a tiny planet in a tiny system, you can come with me and show me how powerful you are.
Sylvi (as Cori): That’s… That’s the big dream? You’re—sorry. I just, you gave me so much shit for the Devotion stuff, but here you are trying to be a middle manager.
Austin (as Elle): It’s not that I’m trying to be a middle manager. It’s that no one counts but middle managers. We lost that fight thousands of years ago. So you can call it middle management, you can call it client-service relations, you can call it…
Sylvi (as Cori): I call it giving up.
Austin (as Elle): I’m fine with that. I’ll die decades from now, and I’ll have lived a happy life.
Sylvi (as Cori): And now it’s my turn to not believe you.
Austin (as Elle): Build me another dream, then.
Sylvi (as Cori): You’re hedging all your bets on a Divine that nobody has heard of outside of us. Meanwhile, I’m here with a power that has taken the entire Golden Branch. More than the Golden Branch. The entire universe is afraid of the power that I am now part of. I think you’re betting on a losing horse.
-
[music intro - “See All Of This” by Jack de Quidt ends]
[3:46]
Austin: Alright, next up in the spotlight, Eclectic Opposition.
Keith: Hi.
Austin: Hi.
Keith: God, I’ve been thinking for weeks about what to do here, and I think that this is… I’m rolling this into Eclectic. I think Eclectic is like, kind of lost for what to do, [Austin hums] like, you know, the thing that I was here is kind of—like, it’s not over, but it’s not the same. And, you know, I don’t have, like, my—I don’t have orders, I don’t know what is next for me. I have this vague idea that I should still be investigating stuff because that’s why I was sent here, but to what exact end? And I think that this sort of—I think that Eclectic and I sort of land on, like, I’ve got one big clue. I have like, one—I have like, a wireframe stack that should—it says “clues” and it’s empty except for one thing, and the only thing in my stack of clues is the vague location of where the Fabreal Duchy is keeping Divines for Delegates.
Austin: Mhm.
Keith: Something that—
Austin: Which was up in the Caldera Stretch, the huge volcanic crater on the top of the world.
Keith: Yeah. And, you know, I got it and, you know, I wasn’t—like, I was interested in it, but I wasn’t champing at the bit. But now it’s like, well, this is my clue, this is all I have left, this is my—these are my… my only leads, and so I’m gonna… And it’s not bad, like I’m—
Austin: No, it’s a good lead for something, yeah.
Keith: Again, me and Eclectic are both like, there’s nothing wrong with this, I don’t know why I think there’s something wrong with doing this, it’s totally a good lead.
Austin: Well, it’s that the other thing that you have—right, the only other thing that you have is the thing of Future hiding out somewhere, but that’s…
Keith: Yeah, Future’s hiding out off-planet.
Austin: Yes, yeah.
Keith: And I’ve thought a lot about, like, what can I do on Palisade to be like, dealing with Future’s propaganda off Palisade? Where, you know, Future’s being…
Austin: You don’t want to go do, like, a bounty hunting arc of like, going off-planet and hunting down Future.
Keith: No. You know, I really felt like doing something on Palisade made the most sense.
Austin: Yeah, that makes sense.
Keith: And, you know, sort of like, I don’t know why Eclectic thinks that this isn’t a good enough lead to follow, that there’s something else better out there. But, you know, I’m gonna put that aside and just focus on it and maybe something—maybe it’ll be really good. Which I feel like is such a weird attitude, but that’s how I’m feeling.
Austin: [chuckles] Uh-huh. Yeah, the irony of course here is like, it’s gonna be as good as we all decide it is, right?
Keith: Yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah. And who…
Austin: So what is the scene? Is the scene going to investigate the location that you kind of zeroed in on? This kind of…
Keith: Yeah, I think we’ve gotta get there. I think—I want to see what’s up there, I want to see who’s guarding it, I want to see, like, does it—is it underground? Is it, you know, is it huge, is it tiny, is it obvious? And, you know, depending on the answers to those questions, see how far I can get.
Austin: Yeah. I think we should come in on this in a similar way that we did with the Refrain scene, which is like, in medias res on the way, you know?
Keith: Uh-huh. Yeah.
Austin: You know, you’re staring down into this vast hole in the ground from where one of the Lucia Whitestar landers crashed, I don’t know if people remember that from a faction game months ago.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: One of her landers just like, slammed through the kind of ground of this old volcanic crater, and revealed a huge cavernous space. So maybe it’s you and whoever’s with you looking down into that space and being like, we gotta go down there.
Keith: Yeah, and that’s interesting. “Who is with me” is an interesting question.
Dre: Levi’s there, if you’ll have him.
Keith: I was about to extend an invitation to Levi. I think Levi hasn’t gone on a mission yet, right?
Dre: Yeah, and I’m a scout.
Austin: And you’re a scout.
Keith: You’re a scout, you haven’t—this is your first—yeah, it’s just sort of, it is a natural fit, I think.
Austin: And you think that Eclectic is cool, right? Or am I misremembering?
Dre: Yeah.
Keith: No, not cool. Not cool.
Austin: Oh no.
Dre: Well, he’s fine.
Keith: I’m fine, but I’m not cool. Which is obviously insane. [laughs]
Dre: Well, change my mind.
Austin: Damn.
Keith: And, you know, I was thinking that it could just be me and Levi, but, you know, I’m totally open to other people. I’d be open to Brnine if Brnine wants to come, I’d be open to, you know…
Dre: Clem if Clem wants to come.
Keith: Uh, not really open to Clem.
[Ali and Dre laugh]
Sylvi: Keep those ferrets at home.
[Austin and Dre laugh]
Keith: I can’t remember—I know that we talked about it with about August Righteousness and Delegate stuff, but I couldn’t remember, like, what Jack had to say about that, I just remember that it came up. But I know that August Righteousness is out there doing missions, so that also works.
Austin: August Righteousness is in fact part of a group called Reunion whose entire, like, goal is to reconnect with the Divines that they were shaved away from.
Keith: Yeah, I’m not—I don’t know about that.
[Ali chuckles]
Austin: I know you don’t want to do all that, but that is the origins of Reunion as a group.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: That’d be a really funny reason for Eclectic to not tell him. [chuckles]
Keith: Yeah, that’s such a good point. Like, I know… Yeah, I think that maybe I don’t even—I don’t think I want to even invite that.
[Dre laughs]
Keith: Because that just sounds like the shit that Brnine did that I got mad about, but a different version of it.
Jack: Wow.
Ali: I’d be happy to join you, by the way. [chuckles]
Keith: Yeah.
Jack: I don’t know this information, so I can’t get mad, but this is a phenomenal betrayal.
Keith: I don’t know you. I don’t know August Righteousness.
Austin: You’ve been in the same room. Y’all have talked.
[Sylvi laughs]
Keith: Barely. Barely.
Austin: Okay, I’m just saying.
Sylvi: I’m so sorry to this man.
[Ali laughs]
Austin: I’m just saying, you know.
Jack: The Righteousness at the end of my name isn’t just a surname, you know. [chuckles]
Keith: It is.
[Ali laughs]
Jack: Okay, fine, okay. August Righteousness in a hospital bed [chuckling] having had one of his fingers bitten off by a ferret.
[Austin and Sylvi laugh]
Keith: I don’t know, do we want to bring August Righteousness? I feel like that’s interesting to have the tension there.
Jack: It is interesting to have it not, and I don’t want to play an August Righteousness scene into an Eclectic scene, if that makes sense.
Ali: Mhm.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: It’s Eclectic’s scene.
Ali: It feels like, the game, [chuckles] the mechanics will set us up in like, the aftermath of whatever this scene is will be a place-setting for you in a later scene.
Jack: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Keith: Yeah. But the flip side is, you know, like, not wanting to make my scene too much of an August Righteousness scene, the other side of that is like, Eclectic is sort of grasping for something, and you know, I think, like, August Righteousness is a branch that Eclectic can see, but won’t grab, but just having it there could, you know.
Jack: I think we should—I think what you said about “keep him in the dark, because it makes Eclectic kind of queasy,” [Keith: Yeah.] is really interesting. And I think Ali is right that it’s table-setting as well. There is—it will create interesting questions that we can or do not need to find answers to later as it happens.
Keith: Alright. Let’s go.
Austin: So, looking down on this hole. What do you do? Sorry, let’s—one more statement, then. It’s you and Brnine and Levi. Those are the three?
Keith: Yes. Yeah.
Austin: Okay, so Eclectic, Brnine, and Levi are looking down into this massive hole, into this crater, and it is a hole. Like, it is like, the ground stops, it cracks, and it, you know, if you get too close to the edge of the hole, underneath you it begins to falter, you know? And it opens into this huge, dark chasm that goes on for seemingly miles downward and outward. And there’s like, a faint glow from the dormant giant volcano.
Keith: This doesn’t look like people come here on purpose.
Jack: Ooh, wait.
Austin: Sorry, say that again?
Keith: This doesn’t look like people come here on purpose.
Austin: Oh, correct. It’s only the big hole because someone crashed through the top of the thing. Yeah.
Keith: Yeah. Sorry, Jack, what were you gonna say?
Jack: I have a question that I would also like to act as a mechanical reminder.
Austin: Yes.
Jack: Janine, you’re currently holding the card “it’s kind of spooky here.”
Austin: Ah, yes, good point, yes.
[Ali laughs]
Jack: Could you speak a little bit to the ways in which a hole carved into the earth near a dormant volcano that has the bodies of sort of, like, flensed Divines in it is spooky?
Janine: Yeah. Um… Let me grab something out of the brain bag here.
Austin: Oh.
Keith: And I do think it’s gross that you keep that right on the desk. [laughs]
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: Yeah, yeah.
Austin: It’s very Baki-esque of you.
Dre: Aww.
Keith: It’s like, what is the… God, who’s the—
Janine: That’s mean, I’m hanging up.
Dre: I don’t blame you, I don’t blame you.
Austin: Aw! I take it back, I take it back, I take it back.
Keith: What are those flash cards, the oblique…
Austin: Oh, from—is it Brian Eno made those?
Keith: Yeah, Brian Eno’s oblique thing. Oblique cards?
Austin: Oh my god, what are they? Strategies. Oblique strategies.
Jack: [cross] It’s like oblique strategies.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: So it’s a bag full of brain matter, and oblique strategies cards. [chuckles]
Jack: [chuckles] Eugh.
Janine: So, the way that it’s creepy is because it’s near a volcano, probably a lot of obsidian, a lot of volcanic glass, a lot of, like—
Austin: Ooh, sure.
Keith: I don’t know anything about that.
Janine: —surfaces that are not just shiny, very shiny, but also sharp. Lots of, like, extremely sharp edges chipped off of like, you know, because obsidian makes for good knives and stuff like that.
Keith: Yeah, it’s like one of the sharpest things on the planet, I think.
Janine: Yeah. Because it is truly volcanic glass, and glass will cut you.
Keith: Yeah.
Janine: But in addition to this volcanic glass, there are patches of normal igneous rock that are dark that look like the obsidian, but the reason they are shiny is because there is a sort of weeping—not slime, but like, it’s a—it’s like water, but more viscous. Like, it’s sort of—
Keith: Ooze.
Janine: There’s like a squish to it.
Keith: Goo.
Janine: Yeah. And it’s not like, super deep, it’s not like… Yeah, it’s—
Keith: It’s like those shampoo plants that people squeeze and it’s disgusting.
Janine: A little bit, yeah. It’s like a sheen, right? It’s one of those things where it’s like you can’t tell if it’s an oil, or if it’s like a water thing, or if it’s like a gel, because it’s just like… There’s just barely enough of it there to make it shine, but it’s unpleasant and unsettling. Is that good?
Jack: That’s great, yeah.
Austin: Yeah, it’s spooky. It’s spookier.
Janine: You get cut—you slip and fall and then you cut yourself. That’s the trick down there.
Keith: And then it gets full of goo.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: That’s what the goo wants.
Dre: Aw, I don’t want to be full of goo.
Keith: Yeah, the goo wants you to—wants an entry point.
Austin: Sorry, I was thinking of the Christina Aguilera song “What a Girl Wants”, but I was thinking “what a goo wants”.
[Keith and Dre laugh]
Austin: What a goo needs.
Keith: What a goo needs.
Art: What a goo wants, what a goo needs.
Janine: What a goo wants, what a goo needs.
Austin: Yeah. I’m really mad at this advertisement—
Janine: Whatever gets me in your arms.
Sylvi: It’s so bad.
Dre: It sucks.
Austin: Well, so, this is the problem. This is the problem, Janine, is there is a—hm. There is an advertisement right now during the NBA playoffs where two players, I don’t want to get into specifics, are—stumble into saying the lyrics, except they say the word “pro” instead of “girl”—what a pro wants, what a pro needs, whatever makes me happy sets you free, et cetera—and then they go—they do it the second time, and the beat comes in, but they don’t say “whatever keeps me in your arms”. They skip that line, or they do the version of it at the very end of the song where it’s just “and I’m thanking you for giving it to me”. They do that, they go “what a pro wants, what a pro needs…”
Janine: That’s…
Keith: Me to the slime.
Austin: And it’s wrong. The scansion is broken. It doesn’t feel like…
Janine: It’s weird, because like, you could make that a thing about, like, guarding, blocking, right?
Austin: You easily could.
Janine: Like, they use arms.
Austin: They do use arms.
Janine: Reaching for stuff, using hoops. You’re using arms.
Austin: They sure do. Uh-huh. In fact, the refs have not been calling breach and fouls that often this post-season, you might say. So, you know.
Janine: Yeah, they should definitely celebrate that in a song.
Austin: I mean, I think some people think it’s actually, like, a return to form, and so—it doesn’t really matter. Also, the two players are too young. The two players were both born, like, after that song hit, so…
Dre: Yeah, they probably were.
Austin: Yeah, so.
Janine: Probably most of the players were born after that song hit.
Dre: Nah.
Austin: It’s right around—it’s right on the edge, at this point. They’re very young players. They’re young, they’re kids.
Dre: Some old heads still out there.
Keith: 1989.
Austin: Anyway, you’re looking at the hole. You’re looking at the ooze.
Keith: Yeah. I’m looking at the glass. I’m looking at the shards.
Austin: You’re looking at the glass. The glass is far away. It’s far. You know, it’s a far way down from here. What is the next shot that we get of y’all, like, getting down the hole? We could probably stay in montage on whatever this approach is, you know? I don’t think that the—in other words, I don’t think that the scene is going to be “how do we get into this hole,” I think it’s going to be eventually “where do you go,” and we should talk about this in, like, wide, broad brushstroke terms, you know? We shouldn’t feel like we have to be beat by beat by beat.
Jack: Alternatively, we could do a hex crawl.
Austin: Right.
Keith: It’s too steep to, like, just hike down, right? So it’s like…
Austin: It’s not steep, it’s “straight drop down.”
Keith: It’s straight—right, so…
Austin: Yeah. It’s like, imagine a huge sinkhole opened underneath you, and it was a cavern the size of the Grand Canyon under there. You know?
Keith: Yeah. Mhm. Grand Canyon, I hear that’s pretty big.
Austin: It’s pretty big.
Keith: So we’ve got—I mean, do we have a—do we have, like, a slowly descending hovercraft? Do we rappel?
Austin: That’s fun. Let’s—yeah, let’s—give me beats of y’all getting down there and exploring. I love a slowly descending hovercraft, that’s fun.
Keith: Yeah, like a Halo elevator.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: You get on and it just sort of slowly goes down.
Austin: Big flashlights.
Keith: Yeah. Pitch black, you know, like those videos of people turning off their flashlights at sea at night, and it’s like, oh my god, it’s just pure darkness.
Austin: Levi, what type of cool scout tools do you have?
Dre: Oh… Can I still get to my old character sheet somewhere? Oh yeah, that’s just in Google Drive. I only ask because I remember there being, like, a specific scout thing where it’s like, “Hey, pick which equipment you want to have.”
Austin: Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Dre: Um…
Keith: Yeah, right at the end of here. “Figure - Old” and “Figure - Dead.”
Dre: Oh, that’s Realis. That’s not what I need to look at.
Austin: Different one. Scout, here we go. What do we got? Maps and tools.
Dre: I have “maps and tools”, and “aid and repair kit”. Specifically, “maps and tools” was cool because the equipment perk is “You can always find a way through or past.”
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: This counts as always, I think.
Austin: It does count as always.
Dre: Sure, sure.
Austin: Yeah, maybe you lower yourself down on the hover cart all the way down to the bottom of this thing, and then, you know, you’re surrounded by the glass, the obsidian ooze glass that Janine described, and maybe you can see a structure out in the distance, and it’s like, “Well, how the fuck do we get across this?” You gotta save the rest of your hover elevator juice to—actually, maybe the hover elevator can only go up and down, it can’t go side to side. It’s like one of those Mega Man, you know, tools.
Dre: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Keith: Right. They don’t have Wonka tech.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Dre: I can just—I can rocket jump my way off of there.
Austin: But what about Brnine and Eclectic?
Dre: Well, maybe I go over there and I find the bridge button.
Austin: Oh, I think it’s pretty far.
Dre: Okay, okay.
Austin: I’m imagining this as being, like, you know…
Keith: A kilometer.
Austin: More, you know? Yeah.
Keith: 4 kilometers.
Austin: 4 kilometers, yeah.
Dre: 16 kilometers.
Austin: How far is the—I guess this is a different planet, so the horizon is different there, but.
Keith: How far—what were you gonna say?
Austin: How far is the horizon line on earth?
Keith: Okay, like…
Austin: It’s 4.7 kilometers.
Keith: Okay.
Dre: Oh.
Austin: Like, if you were standing flat looking out at a flat distance, how far could you see before the curvature of the earth hit?
Dre: That’s less than I thought it would be.
Austin: It’s not that far. But you start climbing up high, you get above sea level, and you can see further.
Keith: Surely if anybody heard that, [chuckling] they’d immediately believe that the earth was round.
Austin: Certainly.
[Sylvi laughs]
Dre: Certainly.
Janine: No.
[Keith laughs]
Austin: No?
Janine: No, they wouldn’t.
Austin: Hm.
Janine: Their rebuttal to that is that the human eye just can’t see far enough.
Keith: [laughing] Okay.
[Dre hums]
Austin: I see. I see, I see.
Keith: Like the moon. Can’t see the moon, can’t see the sun, can’t see the stars.
Janine: Yeah. Yeah, they say that if you use certain cameras, then you can see past the horizon.
Austin: Well, they don’t believe that those things are far away, Keith.
Keith: Right, that’s the other—but surely they’re farther than a mile.
Austin: No. They’re just above us.
Keith: Okay.
Janine: Well, this depends on—this depends on the school of flat earth philosophy.
Keith: Yeah, it depends on the type of weirdo you’re talking about.
Janine: If you’re a firmament person, or if you’re a… yeah.
Keith: I’m a firmament…
Austin: Yeah, come on.
Keith: I very strongly believe in firmament.
Austin: If you have not—if you have listened to Friends at the Table for 9 years and you didn’t think that many of us would be firmament people if we had to be this type of weirdo? Come on.
Keith: Yeah. Those stars, it’s just people shooting guns up at the firmament making little cracks.
Austin: [laughs] Little holes left in the firmament.
Keith: Yeah, little holes. That’s what I do at night. Go outside and shoot my gun.
Austin: Don’t do it.
Dre: Don’t do that.
[Sylvi laughs]
Austin: Levi, cool scout tool.
Keith: Straight up in the air. It’s totally safe. Goes through the firmament and just lands in the firmament ceiling.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Dre: Okay, maybe I have, like, a fuckin’ portable zipline.
Austin: Ooh, sure. Big, long, portable zipline.
Dre: Mhm.
Austin: You’re doing Death Stranding shit here from like save spot to save spot, setting up ziplines. Is it—
Dre: Sure. I still haven’t played that, but sure.
Austin: Okay, well.
Keith: Death Stranding’s cool. You should play Death Stranding.
Austin: Death Stranding’s cool.
[Dre chuckles]
Austin: Oh, maybe I should stream Death Stranding. Uh…
Keith: Let’s build the longest highway ever in Death Stranding.
Austin: That sounds so good.
Art: I also want to stream that game because I haven’t played it.
Austin: Did you say you also want to strand that game?
Dre: Oh, shit.
Art: I’m pretty sure I said stream.
Keith: [laughs] Well, that’s what you do. It’s a—well, it is a strand game.
Austin: Streaming out, stranding in. Is it cold down here or hot? It’s probably hot, right? Because of the volcano. It’s hot. It’s getting—is it getting hotter or colder as you approach this place? It’s getting colder. Out—right when you both descended—
Keith: Can it be, like, really hot air, but really cold wind, and so it’s like, this bizarre feeling where it’s hot and you’re sweating and you’re freezing?
Austin: That’s really fun, yeah. But then as you get closer to this place, the heat beneath you begins to, like, disappear. And the ooze is less runny, ’cause it’s not—it’s hot.
Keith: Over-medium ooze.
Austin: It’s over-medium ooze.
Dre: I hate when I go to the diner and they cook my ooze over-medium.
Austin: Over-medium. You said over-hard.
Keith: No one said over-hard.
Dre: Oh, no, gross, ew, that’s worse.
Austin: I agree. I’m an over-medium person.
Keith: Yeah, me too.
Austin: But if you don’t like it runny, then you aren’t gonna say over-easy.
Dre: Oh, no, I like it runny.
Austin: Oh, you do like it runny. You don’t like over—you like runny? You like over-easy over over-medium?
Dre: Hm… I guess I don’t get either one.
Keith: A lot of people don’t even know about over-medium.
Austin: A lot of people don’t even know about over-medium.
Ali: Yeah, it seems too fussy to order. That’s why I order over-easy.
Austin: What?
Keith: It’s not, it’s one of the three.
Dre: No, I’m with you. I’m with you, Ali.
Art: What?
Austin: It’s one of three.
Ali: Yeah, no, it’s… [laughs]
Austin: Love yourself.
Keith: I’ll say, it’s the hardest one to cook, but if your job is to cook eggs, then they do it all day.
Austin: Yeah. It’s not hard if you have—
Ali: It’s a fussy order. [chuckles]
Austin: It’s not a fussy order for a diner. Because they have a perfectly hot surface.
Art: There’s no—do you know what people fuckin’ order in restaurants?
[Ali laughs]
Art: You’re definitely not in the top 20 fussy orders in a diner for asking for over-medium eggs. God.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: You—how many times have you seen me order—Ali has seen me order over-medium eggs probably a hundred times in my life.
Keith: This fussy motherfucker, over-medium.
Janine: But also, don’t—
Dre: Wow. Austin “Underscore” “Fussy” Walker.
Austin: Every time, Ali’s been like, this fussy bitch.
[Ali laughs]
Janine: You order scrambled eggs.
Austin: Me?
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: No, I don’t. I’m an over-medium boy.
Art: No, yeah, Austin’s a—
Janine: No, but, okay—no, we were at the fuckin’ IHOP and I ordered an egg, and you were—
Austin: Yeah, I don’t trust IHOP to cook an egg.
Ali: Yeah. [laughs]
Janine: Okay.
Austin: IHOP is not a diner.
Art: At IHOP, I order my eggs well-done.
Austin: [laughs] I like an IHOP, but I’m gonna get my eggs scrambled at the IHOP.
Keith: And you know the real problem with IHOP?
Art: Give me a sear on the outside of the egg.
Sylvi: At IHOP, I’m not…
Austin: And that IHOP was good. That was a good IHOP.
Janine: That was a good IHOP. And they did my eggs right. I ordered them the way I like them, [Austin: You did.] and they came out the way I like them—
Austin: They did. They did, you know?
Janine: —which is hard as fuck.
Austin: [chuckles] Okay, well.
[Sylvi laughs]
Dre: Damn.
Art: Is that what you say?
Keith: [laughing] Hard as fuck. Can I have my eggs hard as fuck, please?
Janine: No, I say break the yolk and fry them until they’re hard.
Austin: Yeah, well, that’s…
Art: Yeah.
Austin: If they fuck that up, that’s a bad restaurant. That’s the thing.
Keith: What’s a bad restaurant?
Janine: I don’t understand what the problem is.
Austin: If they get over-hard wrong.
Keith: Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: If they get a fried egg with a hard yolk, and they don’t give you a hard yolk, they are trash. They should not be in the business.
Keith: The problem with IHOP is—
Art: Jess is very picky about eggs, so I have a lot of experience with…
Keith: The problem with IHOP is, yes, they totally will maybe get your egg style wrong in terms of yolk hardness, but the real issue isn’t that you’ll order medium and it’ll come out too runny or too firm. It’s that they don’t put anything on their eggs, so it just tastes like a horrible plain egg.
Austin: It’s a plain egg.
Janine: The sauce is right there.
Keith: Because it’s—there’s no crispiness, there’s no hot oil on it, there’s no salt.
Austin: The lack of crisp is actually the…
Dre: Yeah.
Keith: The lack of crisp is really bad.
Austin: It is a perfectly, like, soft egg white. There’s none of that good crispy edge, yeah.
Keith: Yeah.
Dre: Need that Maillard reaction.
Keith: Yeah, you need the Maillard reaction for sure.
Austin: We should get a diner. Can we get a diner?
Keith: We should be a diner.
Dre: Yeah.
Janine: You’re in a gel hole.
Dre: Yeah, I’d rather be in a diner.
Keith: [chuckles] I want to be in a diner, but I’m in a gel hole.
[Austin, Ali, and Jack laugh]
Austin: And you’ve crossed the gel hole towards this—
Ali: Wait, I—wait.
Austin: Yeah?
Ali: I wanted to describe my descent and special ability. [chuckles]
Austin: Please describe your descent. Please, yes.
[Sylvi laughs]
Keith: So we’re going down in our little elevator, and Brnine is doing a special ability.
Ali: [laughs] We all describe cool things we’re doing!
[Keith laughs]
Austin: Yeah, no, I want to know what your ability is. I was gonna give you the “how do you get into the building” thing, but go ahead.
Ali: Suer, okay, yeah. Well, I just want to have, like, a Nintendo Switch or something [Austin scoffs] that has, like, a—that’s like, doing—[laughs]
Dre: This MF.
Ali: That’s like, a Google Maps 3D situation.
Keith: This is—I heard the Switch 2 rumors, I heard that they can do this.
[Ali and Dre laugh]
Austin: You got the Sheikah Slate from Breath of the Wild.
Ali: Yes, yes. Uh-huh. And I just want to be, like…
Austin: Brnine about to do Cryonis or whatever the fuck.
Ali: Uh-huh. Yeah. [laughs]
Austin: So you pull up the map. Is that what you’re saying?
Ali: Yeah, but it’s cool. It’s 3D.
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: And it looks nice.
Keith: Can you touch it? Can you, like—
Austin: Does Asepsis, like, jump up and do a little 3D scan of the whole area, and so you get like, the—
Ali: I think so, yeah.
Austin: That’s fun. That’s fun.
Ali: I think it’s doing, like, the floaty drone thing.
Austin: Yeah, yeah.
Ali: And it’s—yeah.
Austin: Wait, is there an Asepsis drone inside of a floaty Bing—or an Asepsis bot inside of the Bing 32, the floaty Bing 32? It’s been so long since we’ve brought a Bing on board or out into the world, you know?
Ali: Yeah, but we need levitation right now. Levitation times two.
Austin: No, we already have Levitation.
Keith: We already have Levi.
Austin: That’s Dre’s character.
Ali: [chuckles] Yeah, no, that’s the joke.
Austin: Oh, okay. I see. I got you. I got it, I got it. No, I see. I’m keeping up.
Ali: Yeah.
Austin: You get to the facility.
Keith (as Eclectic): We’re at the facility.
Austin: I mean, actually, the thing that you get to first is you get close enough that the heat has died down to where it’s almost—the heat underneath you…
Keith: Snowing.
Austin: Did you say smelly?
Keith: Snowing.
Austin: No, it’s not snowing. It’s very temperate. It feels, here, like a nice, breezy day. A nice breezy spring day, and in fact, poking up through the obsidian, are flowers. There’s grass, and there’s flowers, and everything seems, like, a little… You know, there’s a little bit of the you’re in the middle of the desert and some motherfucker has decided “I don’t care how much water it costs, I’m going to have a yard,” you know? “I’m gonna have a garden.” But there’s also just the—I’m sorry for taking the “spookier” card here—there’s a thing of like, actually the wilderness—the oozy obsidian is somehow less creepy than suddenly there is a well-tended-to garden that surrounds a building.
It surrounds a structure made of stone and glass. Their windows are pretty high up. You don’t see any doorways in, and the glass isn’t like… You know, there are windows, but like, I don’t know what light would be being let in here, necessarily. Not necessarily clear. And you realize, actually, some of the structure from the design of it reminds you a little bit of some of the stuff from the Diadem. Like, there’s a little bit of a design architecture similarity here from what you’ve seen in the Diadem, so maybe it’s from that same era of creation of this kind of, like, early Principality Palisade colonial era. And there doesn’t seem to be a door, just these windows that are high up. What do you do? How do you get in there?
Keith: I want to scale the wall. Do I check for a secret door?
Austin: Do you find a secret door? Again, this is not—there’s no rolls in this system, right? We’re just gonna—I just kind of want to see how do you get into this place, and what do you…
Keith (as Eclectic): Brnine, can you scan for a secret door?
[Sylvi chuckles]
Austin: Yeah, does Asepsis pick up some sort of…
Ali (as Brnine): Scanning now.
Ali: No, Brnine wouldn’t say that. [laughs]
[Keith laughs]
Austin: Brnine would never “scan now”. How would Brnine say that they’re scanning something?
Ali (as Brnine): Yeah, got you.
[Ali chuckles]
Austin: There it is. That’s right. And…
Keith: The bots are scanning.
Austin: The… Asepsis does not find a secret door, but does pick up the presence of a number of Divines. And it kind of, like, freaks out and fizzles, and the Bing 32 drops, like, lowers to the ground to let you look at whatever went wrong with this overloaded Asepsis drone. You know? There’s like, a little smoke wisp came out of the side of the drone.
Ali: No…
Keith (as Eclectic): Is that normal?
Dre (as Levi): Hm.
Ali (as Brnine): No.
Keith (as Eclectic): Oh, is it bad?
Dre (as Levi): Yeah, it seems broke.
Ali (as Brnine): Oh, come—no, it’s fine. It’ll be okay. Hey, man.
Keith (as Eclectic): Okay, so it’s fine.
[Austin chuckles] [Ali laughs]
Austin: Hey, man.
[Keith laughs]
Austin: Are you good?
Keith: Hey, man.
Janine: Oh, I thought you were imitating the drone there, like, answering back. Like, sort of weakly, “Hey, man.”
Austin: Oh, that’s very funny.
Keith: “Hey, man.”
Dre: “Hey, man. Beep boop.”
Keith: “It got weird in there.”
Austin: Aw. I mean, that’s kind of it, yeah. It is kind of a “it got weird in there” vibe.
Ali (as Brnine): I think we must be close.
Austin: Yeah, your scouter, like, beeps up a list of Divine names, Brnine. And they are names that you immediately can associate with Delegates. Welkin, and Versatility, and Righteousness, and Responsibility, and Mercy, and Reflection, and Opposition, and Leadership, and Influence, and Guilt, and Emphasis, and Communicant, and Consultation, and Dissent. And at the top of the list is Fidelity, and it, like, beeps three times, and then your scouter via the Asepsis information says—like, it’s one of those things where, like, you’re off the GPS for so long, and then you’re back on the GPS, and it says that you are in the Garden of Fidelity.
Keith: That’s weird. Can I try and… What I want to do is call on my cool Divine meditation magic that I did [Austin: Ooh.] with Thisbe's help to see if I can get some communication from in there from—maybe from Opposition to be like, “What’s going on in there? I’m right outside. What’s up?”
Austin: That’s—yeah, sure. I think that’s probably—if you’re—what’s this look like to Brnine and Levi? Brnine and Levi—
Keith: I think I just say like,
Keith (as Eclectic): Hold on, hold on.
Keith: And then I, like—I think I sit down against, like, a rock or something, and just kind of like, look like I’m chilling out.
Austin: Uh-huh. [hums]
[Dre hums]
Austin: Classic detective maneuver.
Keith: Eyes closed.
Dre (as Levi): [whispering] What’s he doing? Hey, what’s—what are they doing?
Ali (as Brnine): Shh. Shh, shh, shh.
Keith: Like Brnine knows. [laughs]
[Ali laughs]
Dre: I was literally about to say.
Dre (as Levi): So you don’t know either. Okay.
Ali (as Brnine): Hey, no. Shh…
Austin: I think the same thing that happened before happens here, and the ground begins to rumble. But it feels like—what’s it feel like? It feels like there’s not really a good exact version of this, because the thing I’m about to describe is like, the opposite of what happens. You know when you’re carrying a couch with somebody, and you can feel them holding half of the couch, and you’re holding the other half of the couch, and you’re like, “Alright, you need to move this way while I move that way in order for us to go around this corner, or go up these stairs,” or whatever.
Keith: Right.
Dre: Sure. You gotta pivot. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: You gotta pivot. [chuckles] Yes. Like in Friends, you gotta pivot. I’ve also seen that ad a lot lately.
[Dre groans]
Austin: Yeah, cursed. There’s that sense of another person’s hands on something, except instead of it being like, “Pivot,” or like, “Help me go up the stairs,” it’s like, “You have to pull your side while I pull my side so we can break this thing.”
Keith: Pull? There’s nothing to pull. It’s a wall.
Austin: And that is the feeling you are getting.
Keith: Brain? Pull, brain pull?
Austin: Maybe brain pull. Maybe magic brain pull.
Keith: I’ll pull with my brain.
Austin: You’ll pull with your brain.
Austin: I’ll think really hard about, like, pulling.
Jack: Use your ren.
Austin: Yeah, use your—what does this—yeah, what does it—
Keith: Yeah, I start glowing purple.
Austin: [chuckles] Genuinely, do you?
Dre: Wow.
Keith: No.
Austin: Does Eclectic—no. Is there a visualization of this activation of your Divine, your awakening Divine powers?
Keith: Uh, yeah. He looks constipated.
Austin: Looks constipated. Like a constipated teapot.
Keith: Yeah, like a constipated teapot.
Austin: Robot, yeah.
Keith: Yeah. This is not like a—like, this isn’t cool, it’s not a nice look, it’s unpracticed and intense.
Austin: Okay. Yeah.
Keith: You know, strain. This is straining.
Austin: And one of the windows breaks. It’s a little high up, so you’ll have to do some climbing, but the window broke. The ground shook, and then it shook more, and then one of the windows got a single crack in it, and then the pane broke and fell out.
Keith (as Eclectic): Okay, I think I did that with my mind.
Dre (as Levi): That’s pretty sick.
Keith (as Eclectic): Yeah.
Dre (as Levi): You done that before?
Keith (as Eclectic): Nope.
[Sylvi chuckles]
Dre (as Levi): So you didn’t know he was gonna do that, did you?
[Keith laughs]
Ali (as Brnine): Shut up.
Keith: Wait, Ali, what did you say?
Ali: I said “shut up.” [laughs]
[Keith and Dre laugh]
Keith: Alright, let’s climb through the window.
Dre: Sure.
Austin: And… yeah. You got some ropes and gear to climb up this window?
Jack: I mean, I don’t need that shit, but I guess I’ll leave it for everyone else.
Austin: Oh, right, you don’t, yeah. Do you have your big—
Ali: Do you hop good? Wait, what? [chuckles]
Austin: Yeah, what?
Dre: What?
Austin: Yeah. Levi got ups. Levi can jump.
Keith: Levi can jump. Levi is Levi.
Ali: Okay.
Austin: Levitation?
Ali: Okay, I’m sorry, I missed when hopping was part of it, I guess. [chuckles] I remember the big…
Keith: Oh, you did. Well, you went inside and made me watch.
Dre: Yeah, you went inside and you missed it, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have my pile bunker that I use to, like, launch myself up into the air.
Ali: Oh, okay. Okay.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ali: That launches you. I didn’t know that. Okay.
Austin: That launches, yeah.
Dre: Mhm.
Ali: Okay, right. I thought that was like, a punchy…
Austin: It can be. It’s both.
Keith: it’s like a Halo 2 super jump.
Dre: Hey, what is jumping but punching the ground with your foot so hard that you move backwards?
Keith: It is nothing but that. It is exactly that.
Austin: It is exactly that, yeah.
Ali: Got me.
Dre: I’m pretty sure that’s how Gon would explain it.
[Jack chuckles]
Austin: It’s true.
Keith: Well, Gon knows the word “kick”, so I think that he…
[Austin, Ali, and Keith laugh]
Austin: Yes.
Dre: You’re right, my bad, my bad.
Austin: You get inside, and this garden metaphor—or, I mean, it’s not a metaphor outside, but inside it becomes metaphorical. There is a facility that you are in. It is a Divine facility. I’m gonna speak in broad terms here, because we are not playing Armour Astir, we will not be getting into, like, gun fights, et cetera. But what you’ve entered into is, you know, you scan out this first level of it, and realize there’s another elevator here that goes down, and where you are is a containment facility that produces Delegates.
You know, if we were gonna play this whole thing out, we would get the whole, like, System Shock-esque you’re finding audio logs of how this facility was set up. You’re finding, you know, early model Delegate shells that have just, you know, security robot features built into them, so you’re, you know, they’re prowling the hallways, and you’re hiding with them or dealing with them. You know, there are—there’s evidence that this place was set up by, you know, someone who worked for Aram Nideo, and that literally some of the early architecture was the same—maybe the same architect who designed the Diadem designed this place. And you can confirm that in the kind of lower levels—and, you know, partly this should feel like late game Resident Evil, right?
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Where like, oh, you’re past all the fucked up creepy house stuff, or the police station, or whatever, and now you’re in the Umbrella secret laboratory, right?
Keith: Well, and then the twist is that it’s an Umbrella secret laboratory that’s, like, full of prototype mes.
Austin: No, we did that. That’s COUNTER/Weight. We did that one, Keith.
[Jack and Ali laugh]
Keith: It’s still true here, though.
Austin: That was the September Institute. We already did that one that one time. We shouldn’t do that again.
Ali: It’s rhyming.
Keith: It’s rhyming.
Austin: Oh, it’s rhyming.
[Dre hums]
Jack: It’s rhyming.
Keith: It’s rhyming.
Austin: I’ll tell you what the twist is here. This is the Garden of Fidelity. The Divine Fidelity began by taking some cuttings of herself and seeing if they would sprout. And then, understanding what was coming, understanding the curse of immortality in service, decided “I bet I can live a better life if I do that to some other Divines for the Principality.” And so, here in the garden, she does that. A dedicated faithful gardener.
Jack: What does Thisbe’s thing say? It says “Some Divines and their shards are antagonistic, evil, or dangerous.”
Austin: It does say that.
[Ali and Keith chuckle]
Keith: I don’t know about that one.
Ali: [inaudible] Thisbe.
Austin: Yeah. And so that is what’s happening here. Here they are. There is a shipment schedule, you know, every decade or something, new Delegates get delivered while old ones are replaced, are killed, are taken away, they are disappeared. You know, ones that go bad are taken to facilities across the Fabreal Duchy’s territory to be reworked by Fidelity. This is what’s happening here. A Divine is making the Delegates.
Keith: Fidelity, great name for this.
Austin: Yeah. Mhm.
Keith: Excellent double entendre.
[Ali chuckles] [Sylvi laughs]
Austin: Thank you. It’s an old one, actually. Fidelity originally popped up in on the planet of Altar, in the Twilight Mirage. One of the—the kind of planet of shrines to the various to the various Divines.
Jack: Oh, wow.
Austin: Including new ones that were imagined up, or old ones that came back to life via being reimagined in towards the end of Twilight Mirage in the vault of Anticipation.
Keith: Did it have the same thing then of like…
Austin: It wasn’t a big deal. It was just there. It—
Keith: Fidelity like faithful, but also Fidelity like copies?
Austin: No, we did not have the—we did not zero in on what was up with Fidelity at the time, so yeah.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: But yes. I’m glad you picked that up. That makes me feel good, Keith.
[Dre chuckles]
Austin: So, this is the place that you’re in. And I guess my question is, what are you going to do about it? And, you know, we can zero in here on any of the types of endgame Resident Evil scenes you want, you know?
Keith: I’ve never finished a Resident—I’ve never seen the end of a Resident Evil game.
Austin: Well, you know. Normally what happens is, like, you learn that Umbrella is making some fucked up virus to be a bioweapon, and then it got loose, and then someone’s like a sad dad doctor, you know?
Keith: You shoot the biggest monster.
Austin: And then the super monster shows up. Also, you fight some plant monsters inevitably along the way.
Keith: Yeah.
Janine: Did you see the end of Outlast, Keith?
Keith: No.
Janine: Oh, okay.
Keith: Is that the one with the serial killer named, like, Henry?
Sylvi: What?
Austin: No, that’s… isn’t that Condemned?
Jack: That’s…
Keith: No, no.
Jack: The serial killers in Outlast do have weird names, like Henry.
Austin: Like Henry? Okay. I believe you.
Keith: This has come up on RunButton before, which is why I sort of know about this, like, [Austin: Yeah.] where the main antagonist’s name is like, Henry, and he’s just like a monster serial killer.
Austin: That would make sense to be in Outlast, also.
Keith: What was that about Outlast, Janine?
Austin: Anyway, the point being that there is this sort of like, you know, you’re in the high tech facility part of this. The Divine is here, right? The Divine is in—this is the Divine, right? The Garden of Fidelity effectively is Fidelity, but also Fidelity is anywhere the garden is, right? This is the thing that’s special about Fidelity is you go plant her flowers somewhere, and there she is. And so there are other places around Palisade where Fidelity has been planted. Presumably, at this point, throughout, like, the—anywhere that Resonance is, you know? Any of the Stel Nideo stuff. But originally, all through the anything that’s gold on the map, any of the Fabreal Duchy, especially the Western part, the, like, Carleon-Upon-Wisk, or Carmathen, or any of these places. Any time that you see, like, a little park or a little garden, there’s a good chance that that’s a Garden of Fidelity.
So yeah. That is—and again, she has, like, security bots here. We can find whatever—whatever scene y’all think, or anybody else here on the Opposition side, what’s a good—where’s the roll come here? And I guess kind of, what is the thing you want from this—and we should have actually started here, in retrospect. What’s the thing you want from this scene? What is the goal at this point for you in this scene, Eclectic?
Keith: Um, you know, it’s tough because it’s such a big thing, it’s hard to distill down exactly what my goal is, when part of my goal was kind of just to find out what this was, [Austin: Right.] like, what does it, you know, and I—
Austin: So is it—some pitches—
Keith: And I feel—unfortunately, I’ve done that without rolling.
Austin: Yeah, well, I guess some pitches are like, do you want evidence of it? Do you want to free the Delegates? Do you want to, you know, [Keith: Yeah.] destroy or find all the locations that Fidelity is?
Keith: Um, yeah, and those three things are kind of tied together in an interesting way. I’m really stuck…
Austin: But also are separate enough that not getting—not succeeding—or succeeding might not get you all of them, you know?
Keith: Right, right. And I feel like if I had to axe one, weirdly it would be “get evidence,” because it would feel so bad to, like, come here for evidence, and then find such an intense thing, and like, write it down in a little book and snap some pictures, and be like, “Alright, let’s scram.”
[Austin and Keith laugh] [Ali chuckles]
Austin: Right, yeah. But you would—but, you know, there’s ways of like, as a writer, you might set that scene up because this is a place where there’s overwhelming force against you, or something, you know?
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: “All we can do is get evidence.” You know, really, it is—this is why I say it in those terms is like, what’s the most interesting… You know, what's the most interesting stakes for you?
Keith: Um… I think that the most interesting stakes would be—it’s really tough to be like, “free the Delegates” or “free the Divines,” that’s like, not… as like, separate things. Because then the Divines just grow more Delegates.
Austin: Mhm.
Keith: Part of me does wonder if there’s nothing, like, there’s no—if because there’s no good solution, maybe the best thing would be to set up a better solution later.
Austin: I think try to swing as big as you can given that you’re gonna have three scenes.
Keith: Like, my ideal thing would be like, a big red button that is, like, “free the Divines,” but…
Austin: Right, but you’re not—you’re not—the thing that we’re setting up here is going—and please, opposition people which is everybody not—everybody, even people who are in the scene. Anybody who isn’t the spotlight player can suggest complications here or things that would lead to a roll.
Keith: Right. Yeah.
Austin: But really, it comes down to: what is the one goal that you want to achieve? And I guess “shutting it all down” is a thing you could say.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: I think it’s a harder thing to get narratively all at once than…
Janine: I do have opposition that could be suggested.
Keith: Sure.
Austin: Yeah, always, please.
Janine: I think Fidelity wants to kill you.
Keith: Sure.
Austin: I mean, sure. Yeah.
Keith: Yeah.
Janine: It’s getting rid of the old useless ones, and you’re not doing whatever you were supposed to be doing, for sure.
Austin: Yeah, a real, like, the security voice comes on and says like, “Defective model.” You know, “Defective model detected.”
Keith: So maybe, here’s the thing. There’s one—maybe—if there’s one thing that I can do, if, like, if the idea is that I can get in, I can do something big, and I can do one thing that’s big, I think that what I would be—what I’m being led to by what we’ve done already is, like, I can tell where Opposition is from the thing that we did to get into the window.
Austin: I mean, yeah. I think you can tell where the Divines are. Like, they’re down the elevator, there’s like, another—there’s effectively a vast prison for the Divines below you. You know?
Keith: Yeah. I think it’s gotta be the Divines. I think it’s—I think that that’s the real thing. The, like…
Austin: Freeing them.
Keith: Yeah, freeing them.
Austin: Okay. I think that’s a great stake. I think that’s a great goal to have here. So, yeah, what is the visual circumstance for this? Is this you found the, like, the room where you have to hack in to the open—they’re not like cells, necessarily, but [Keith: No.] you know, we’ve talked about them being literally chained up. What’s Opposition look like? I mean, what do any of these ones—I’ll post the list of these in the chat, and I would love people to describe what some of these look like.
Janine: Remember the end of Heavensward?
Dre: Yeah, I do.
Austin: I do.
Janine: When you go to Azys Lla and there’s all the dragons that are, like, frozen up and stuff? That’s the first thing that comes to mind for me.
Dre: Oh, that’s a good pull.
Janine: That was sick. I love that place.
Dre: It’s also got all the weird, like, laser-looking neon lights all over the place.
Janine: Yeah, and the music there really slaps.
Keith: I never played this.
Austin: How do you spell this place again?
Keith: Oh, this is Final Fant—sorry, you said Heavensward, and in my head, I thought Skyward Sword. Neither of which…
Dre: Austin—can I try and get this off memory? It is A-Z-Y-S, space, I think it’s two Ls and an A.
Austin: That, yeah, A-Z-Y-S, space, L-L-A.
Dre: Still fucking got it, baby.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah. I remember this place, yeah. I remember this place now.
Keith: I think probably the most significant thing about this place is that it’s like, you know, Divines can be giant, and a lot of them are, [Austin: Yeah.] and it just looks like a horror show. This is like, you know, creatures that are having their personalities shaved away, they’ve been here for thousands—thousands of years? Hundreds of years?
Austin: Thousands of years. Thousands, yeah. Five thousand years.
Keith: Yeah. You know, like, no sunlight, no—limited communication.
Austin: Yeah. Except for the ones that are like, “Oh, I need sunlight to live,” and then it’s like, this terrible false sunlight has been produced. Also, this whole thing is running—I don’t know how I skipped this important audio log you would have found if we had ever done this as, like, a real encounter, a regular Armour Astir thing, the geo-thermal power of the Caldera Stretch, like the dormant volcano, is being used as a power source to lock all these guys down, right?
Keith: Sure, yeah.
Austin: This kind of core of the world that opens up into this volcano, which is itself part of Partial Palisade, who probably should be here, actually, in retrospect. That’s the guy who should be here that we left out, is Partial Palisade.
Dre: Yeah, that makes sense.
Austin: Right?
Keith: You mean Palisade. The other part.
Austin: Well, Partial Palisade. The guy. Who is Palisade.
Keith: Right. Oh, sorry, you said “be here” as in, like, be in the party.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Keith: I thought you meant “be down here.”
Austin: Yeah, no. No, no, no. I meant be here with y’all as—[Keith: Okay.] and, you know, maybe came on the trip, but like, is up top, and is like, “I don’t know if I can do it.” You know? Ah, maybe not. Would he… Would he not have it in him after all this?
Keith: He seems beat, I don’t know.
Jack: It’s tough. I—
Austin: But this is the thing for him, right?
Jack: I think he—it’s really hard, [Jack: Yeah.] because I think he would be there, but I also… [chuckles] I don’t want to just go like, “Oh, and now he’s here.” Just like, slot him into the scene suddenly, you know?
Austin: Yeah, yeah. I’m not too afraid of that in a game that’s this loose, you know? In terms of its structure, you know?
Keith: Yeah. I mean, maybe…
Austin: Especially because there can be roleplaying here, at this part of it, but you’re right, Jack. I do get where you’re coming from.
Keith: Maybe he couldn’t come, and maybe that’s why I came. Maybe he convinced me to do it.
Austin: Yeah. Or maybe he got too—he came down the elevator, but he couldn’t do the ziplines, you know? Not literally physically, but like, he got close to it and felt… it felt off. Or maybe he did the ziplines and then got to the garden, and when Asepsis—when the Asepsis stuff happened, he also got hit. You know? He was like, “Ooh. I can’t get closer. If I get closer—something’s wrong here. Something’s dangerous here.” You know?
Jack: And he’s intuiting that it is Divine…
Austin: Yeah. Oh, feels it, for sure.
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: You know. Like Eclectic, Partial Palisade is in a Delegate body, you know, and has that same sort of Divine energy running through him even though he is not literally a Delegate in that way. So yeah. Is waiting outside, and maybe that’s a good way into a particular sequence here, which is like, over the Bing 32 radio, Partial is like,
Austin (as Partial Palisade): The flowers are growing. They’re growing like vines. They’re gonna close this whole place in. You’ve gotta get out of there.
Keith (as Eclectic): I wasn’t warned there would be plants.
Austin (as Partial Palisade): Here they are.
Dre (as Levi): Damn.
Ali: Just like in Resident Evil.
Dre: Ah, fuck.
Austin: And then, yeah, I think, similarly—I don’t know, what’s this place look like? Is this a room with a computer in it? Is there—I mean, you described the big horror prison, but like, where is the—what is the way in which you will interface to try to save these people? Save these Divines, rather?
Keith: I don’t think there’s a computer. I think there’s like, huge levers and gears, like, ratcheting things in place.
Austin: Yeah. That’s fun, too, because it’s like, it’s—one, Fidelity’s, you know, the Garden of Fidelity feels very, you know, the dark side of “cultivate saplings”, you know?
Keith: Yeah. Plant shackles.
Austin: Very—yeah, very like, “I’m here with my tools doing my individual work,” all of the bad garden metaphor stuff that Future as Gur Sevraq has been doing all season. And here, yeah, it’s not computerized in that way, and it’s not mechanized, it’s like you have to go do all this by hand. Maybe you won’t be able to save them all. Maybe you’ll only be able to save some of them.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: By unshackling them, by breaking down the gears, by destroying whatever you know, whatever weird—
Keith: By pile-driving bolts.
Austin: Right, yes.
Keith: What is your thing called, Levi?
Dre: Pile bunker.
Keith: Pile bunkering bolts.
Austin: Yeah. So yeah, so then maybe that’s the scene here that we’re gonna roll for, is: can you free them before this whole facility is kind of consumed and closed off by the growing Garden of Fidelity? Let’s get some dice.
Keith: It’s time to look at dice, right?
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: Yep. Alright.
[55:08]
Austin: So, opposition starts with three.
Keith: Mhm. And then there’s relevant obstacle…
Austin: And burden.
Keith: And burden.
Austin: And any troubles at 3, which is none, currently.
Keith: That’s a relief.
Austin: Your obstacles are: “Doubt runs rampant; people are closed off; is this the best use of your time?” and “The Bilats are covering up their misdeeds.” They sure are.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: I think the latter is what this is, right? It’s literally them doing this live, is an actual material literal covering up is happening.
Keith: Right, it’s underground. It’s literally covered.
Austin: And then the plants are growing to kind of consume it and hide it from the world again.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: You know? And lock you in, bury you in it. So I’ll add one.
Keith: Yes, thankfully avoided doubt on this one.
Austin: Yeah, I don’t know who’s here—unless Brnine or Levi are doubting your ability to do this, but that seems rude.
Dre: Yeah, no.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: I believe in you, man.
Keith: Thank you. And this does feel like a good use of my time.
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: [chuckles] Uh-huh.
Austin: Wow.
Ali: What?
Keith: And then—
Austin: That was not sarcastic? That was a real—
Ali: No.
Keith: No, no, no, I got it. I felt it.
Austin: Okay. Okay, yeah.
Ali: Yeah, me and Keith.
Keith: So I get two dice, then relevant mastered obstacle, don’t have it, relevant boon, don’t have it, relevant relationship? Question mark.
Austin: Brnine’s here.
Keith: Brnine’s here, Levi’s here.
Austin: Levi’s is exhausted, so you don’t get one from that.
Dre: Aw.
Keith: Oh, you don’t get one from exhausted ones even if it’s relevant?
Austin: I believe that’s correct, yeah. So. And in fact, you’re both exhausted the same way, right? You’re both exhausted with each other, right?
Keith: Yeah, we’re exhausted with each other, yeah.
Austin: Yeah.
Dre: Yeah.
Keith: And Brnine is exhausted with Thisbe. So that’s one that works.
Austin: Yeah. So that’s three dice.
Keith: Three dice. 3v3.
Austin: 3v3. Do you want to add one up to your spotlight player dice section and then roll all three?
Keith: Spotlight player section…
Austin: It’s like, it’s here. It’s up here. What I’ve been doing is dragging them into the section.
Keith: Oh, right, I forgot about all the way up here.
Austin: Uh-huh.
[Ali laughs]
Keith: [laughs] Okay, spotlight player section right here. There we go.
Austin: Uh-huh. And then…
Keith: And then select them, and then multi-sided random side.
Austin: Multi-sided random side. Oh, buddy.
Keith: 1, 1, 6.
Austin: 6, 6, 5.
Keith: Holy shit.
Dre: Woah!
Austin: Fidelity doesn’t fuck around.
Keith: Okay, well, obviously, I’m…
Austin: [laughs] What is your weakness?
Keith: My weakness is cheat.
Austin: Oh, okay.
Keith: “Break the rules, reroll any of your own dice.” So I am going to do—
Austin: Well, remember that you can—
Keith: I can mix and match, I don’t have to do mine, yeah.
Austin: You can mix and match, you can do two, you can do up to two cheats—or up to two weaknesses.
Keith: Yeah, I am absolutely gonna do up to two. The two that I would do are either lash out and cheat, or lash out—or, sorry, cheat and lash out or cheat and menace, [Austin: Right.] but I’m gonna reroll—I’m gonna do cheat first by rerolling my two 1s.
Austin: Menace does not work on 6s, as a reminder.
Keith: No, but I do have one 6.
Austin: You do. That’s true.
Keith: So, it probably would be best to make you reroll your 6s. Because it almost definitely—well, actually, reroll everything.
Austin: [cross] I mean, 6, 6, 5. Maybe roll everything.
Keith: [cross] Fuck it. 6, 6, 5, yeah, reroll everything.
Austin: Do you want me to do that first or second? Or do you want to do your thing—
Keith: I want to do that second. [Austin: Okay.] I’m gonna reroll my two first, and then add one to get my…
Austin: Yes. So you’re gonna reroll a 1 and a 1, and then add one more die on top of that. You’re gonna keep, presumably, this top 6. Yeah.
Keith: Yeah. So I’m gonna keep this 6, move that, select that, multi-sided, random side.
Austin: Oh, 6, 6, 5 is so bad.
Keith: 6, 6, 5 is so bad. 1—oh my god.
Austin: Oh my god.
[Ali gasps]
Dre: Oh my god.
Austin: No…
Keith: Oh my god. Oh my god. Okay, so—
Jack: Keith rolled a 1, a 1, and a 4.
[Ali laughs]
Keith: The two ones remained, and then I added a 4.
Dre: Did they…
Austin: It’s literally the same two, also.
Keith: It’s literally the same two.
Dre: But they did reroll, right? Oh, yeah, I can see them here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: They did, you can see the reroll, and they both rerolled 1 again.
Keith: That—the odds are staggering.
Austin: Yeah. 6, 4 is better than 6, 1, you know?
Keith: Yeah, and please, Austin, reroll your three dice, please.
Jack: Oh, wait, mark misfortune.
Keith: Please reroll those.
Austin: Uh-huh. Go mark your two misfortune.
Keith: Yeah. And…
[Austin and Ali gasp]
Keith: Oh my god!
Art: Oh!
[Ali, Sylvi, and Jack laugh]
Dre: Bro. Game cheatin’.
Keith: Sorry, um, Eclectic dies here.
[Austin laughs]
Ali: Nooo…
Jack: This is great, right? Because there was a moment where I was like, we’re breaking into a Divine prison built by another Divine.
Austin: Mhm. Yeah.
Jack: The stakes here are really high, and I’m worried they might not be reflected in the dice, you know, this is how the game works, we’ll just see—we’ll play to find out what happens.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: And the game said, “You’re breaking into a Divine dungeon run by a Divine. Have some 6s.”
Austin: I rolled a 6, 4, 6, replacing my previous 6, 5, 6, so, uh… And it’s different ones, too. The previous 6 became a 4, and the previous 5 went up to a 6. So, and the—
Keith: So your two 6s remained, and my two 1s remained.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: On two rerolls.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Keith: Staggering. Staggering odds.
Austin: This is brutal.
Keith: Yeah. I think Austin is cheating.
[Ali laughs]
Austin: I’m not cheating!
Dre: Why you cheatin’, bro?
Keith: Austin paid Roll20…
Austin: I’m not the enemy. I’m barely even—this isn’t even…
[Sylvi laughs]
Janine: I heard that Austin took the dice, [Austin: Oh, boy.] took the multi-sided dice tokens out of Roll20 somehow—
Austin: That’s right. I put—
Janine: —and then put them in the oven just for a little bit so they’d get weighted down.
Austin: [laughs] On the 6s.
Janine: And then put them back in Roll20. That’s what I heard.
Austin: That’s right. That’s what I did. So, you have a choice.
Keith: Where do I mark misfortune? Oh, there we go. Circle—fill for misfortune.
Austin: Yeah. Fill in two, for now, at least. So, what you could—you could block one of the 6s.
Keith: Yes.
Austin: And then the 4—you could block a 6 and a 4.
Keith: Right, yes.
Austin: That’s not so bad. You just take one doom. Or you could get one 6 victory, and then take two 6s, which are really bad.
Keith: No. It’s one doom, one solitary doom, and two ties.
Austin: Uh-huh. So you’re gonna block, block, and lose.
Keith: Yes.
Austin: Okay. Well…
Keith: Unbelievable.
Austin: You only put two. You only ever put two.
Keith: Oh, okay.
Austin: So this doesn’t even go over there, yeah.
Art: But you could put the 6 on the 4, and then you could get like, a positive 6.
Austin: Yeah, you could get a resounding success, and then two dooms.
Keith: And two dooms. Well, can we just read real quick what—okay, resounding success and doom.
Austin: Yeah, I’ll read from the big book.
Keith: “Mark misfortune, escalate a random trouble, and impact the map.”
Austin: Yeah, okay, so here are dooms. “Doom: Spotlight player marks misfortune, then draws a new trouble from the deck. The opposition narrates the trouble’s effect on the kingdom and its impact on the map. Doom causes trouble for the kingdom at large. The card suit tells you which kingdom trouble increases by one. The opposition then describes a major escalating event. The event might be related to the scene, but can also be a report of something unrelated happening in the world.” And then the resounding success is: “The spotlight player marks fortune and narrates their spectacular victory. Winning on a second 6 in the same turn instead reduces a trouble’s severity by one.” So that wouldn’t happen. You didn’t get a second six.
Keith: No.
Austin: So you would mark fortune, and then narrate your spectacular victory. And, I mean, I guess… I guess… You don’t end up getting the—you wouldn’t end up changing the map on only one 6, huh?
Keith: No, I gotta do it. I’m taking the two 6s. Fuck it. That’s my—that’s how I’m getting one over on this big loss.
Austin: So you’re…
Ali: Huh?
Jack: Wait, wait. [chuckles]
Sylvi: Hold up.
Keith: I need to take two 6s.
Dre: Yeah, come on. Take two 6s.
Keith: Take two 6s for a win.
Jack: Take two 6s for the whole kingdom?
Sylvi: Dre, you’re the last person who should talk about taking 6s.
[Ali laughs] [Jack chuckles]
Dre: Yeah, what’s wrong?
Austin: You’re gonna mark doom twice?
Jack: Marking—that’s—
Keith: How many times can you mark doom?
Austin: A bunch, but like, I’m just saying—
Keith: Yeah, there you go.
Austin: So in other words, you’re gonna get one resounding success in exchange for two dooms.
Keith: Mhm.
Jack: It’s worth saying in case—just making it clear that it’s doom for the kingdom, not for the character.
Keith: Yeah. Right.
Austin: Okay. Which means you’ll draw—I mean, first of all, I guess we have to…
Keith: Hold on, you know, it seems like everyone’s upset with this.
Austin: No, I’m not actually upset about this, I just…
Art: I suggested it, but not as a thing that you should actually do.
[Ali and Austin laugh]
Keith: So Art lied.
Austin: I think it’s interesting, because what it does is immediately—I think of some cool ideas about, like, the Garden of Fidelity starts spreading, which is probably what I was gonna do with the one doom, or my suggestion with the one doom.
Keith: [cross] Right. Okay, this is what—
Art: “Lie” is too strong, I think, for what I did.
Janine: Oh my god.
Keith: This is what I’m thinking. So, it’s either a doom and nothing, or it’s two doom—
Austin: No, it’s two doom—right, right, yes.
Keith: It’s doom and nothing, or two dooms and a win. So it’s like, it’s a net one doom either way, but at least we get something from the one resounding success.
Janine: Well, except, doesn’t doom fundamentally put pieces on the board that aren’t already there in terms of, like, how bad stuff can be?
Keith: Yes.
Austin: Right.
Dre: Yeah.
Janine: And we’re interacting with those even if we—so there isn’t a net thing, there isn’t a one hand—there isn’t like a, you know, “they cancel each other out” thing. It’s just there’s stuff on the board that wasn’t there before.
Keith: Right, they don’t, like, literally cancel each other out, but in the same way, with a resounding success, you do succeed in a way.
Jack: With a fail, with a 6 failure, a doom, you mark misfortune on the character, you escalate a random trouble on the world, and you impact the map.
Dre: And you do all three, right?
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And on a resounding success…
Keith: You just mark fortune.
Jack: You mark fortune on the character, and that’s it.
Austin: And that’s it. If you got two 6s…
Keith: And then the fictional thing succeeds, also, at least in a way.
Austin: Well, it gives you the opportunity for it to succeed, because you’ll have gotten a success. Right? And so as a reminder, when you narrate the outcome: “First the spotlight player narrates their victory, starting with the lowest die result and continuing to the highest. If the spotlight player has at least one success, then they can have achieved their goal. As long as the spotlight player has any victories, they can narrate whether their scene goal was accomplished.” So otherwise, the opposition decides. So like, yes, if you take that success, then you can have saved these Divines. And then it’s at what cost, right?
Keith: Right, yes. I agree.
Austin: Then the cost is two dooms, you know?
Keith: I agree to those—I agree to those terms.
Austin: It’s your scene. It’s not my scene.
Dre: It’s true.
Austin: So, if that’s what we’re doing. That’s what it sounds like we’re doing, is—that means Keith, go ahead and take—
Keith: Well, I don’t want to make everybody mad about it.
[Jack chuckles]
Ali: No, do what you want.
Austin: I’m not mad.
Ali: Follow your heart.
Dre: Yeah.
Austin: Follow your heart. Let’s play to find out what happens, baby.
Keith: Alright.
Art: Yeah, we’re all just here having a good time.
Austin: Yeah. So…
Keith: How often do these damn dice roll four 1s and four 6s in a row?
Austin: Yeah. In a row. Which is wild. So, you know, that means you narrate your lowest die result, and then continue to your highest, success-wise.
Keith: Success-wise. So just one—just the one.
Austin: I believe so.
Keith: We’re running through this awful—the, you know, like, thicket of mean-looking flowers and chains and gears, knocking off chains, opening latches, cranking levers… and that’s it. That’s what we do.
Austin: Well, and the Divines are getting free, right?
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: And so it’s like, the Divine Welkin, which is like a big sky whale, breaks free from its chains and begins to, like, fly upwards, bashing a new hole through the Caldera Stretch. And then, you know, whatever. I don’t know the—I know Righteousness is currently in a little briefcase. One of you picks up Righteousness. You know? What’s Opposition look like? I forget if we’ve described the literal body of Opposition before.
Keith: No, I think I’ve been given multiple opportunities and declined, or not declined, but like, didn’t do it.
Austin: Right.
Keith: What does Opposition look like? Um… Opposition is like a perspective trick where it appears to be your exact size no matter what distance you are from it.
Austin: [hums] Interesting.
Keith: And so as you get closer and closer, it gets smaller and smaller, and then you get away, and it gets bigger and bigger, but then it’s also doing that for anybody that’s looking at it.
Austin: Wild. Okay. And it’s like, person-shaped?
Keith: Yes, yeah.
Austin: Okay. Yeah. Then yeah, becomes, you know, you free—they’re all exhausted, they’re all tired, they’re all wounded, right?
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Bashing their way out of this place.
Keith: Beyond wounded, like, you know, thousands years wounded.
Austin: Yeah. And interestingly, scattered, right? You did not get the boon “Divines have joined Millennium Break,” right?
Keith: No, they’re just out.
Austin: They have been freed, but like, are they even Divines still in that way? Who knows, right? This is one, two, three, four, five…
Keith: I mean, how many Delegates can you make before you’re not a Divine anymore?
Austin: I don’t know. I don’t know what the answer to that is.
Keith: I don’t know.
Austin: So you have 15 of them freed. Maybe more than that, I don’t know how many Delegate families there are. I have these 15 names. Or not families, but you know what I mean. Delegate surnames. I have these 15 that I’ve read from, but there maybe are more than that, and the bulk of them go free here. So yeah, there’s your win. You’ve added your positive fortune? Add your positive fortune.
Keith: Sick.
Austin: So circle one of these things.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Hey, who wants to narrate doom?
Keith: By the way, I did start off unlucky. That is my recent luck, unlucky.
Austin: You did. You did start off unlucky.
[Jack chuckles]
Austin: “Doom number one: mark misfortune,” so then go ahead and also mark a misfortune.
Keith: Okay. What happens when this fills up?
Austin: And then escalate a random trouble. Huh?
Keith: What happens when this fills up?
Austin: Well, it does—well, it’s gonna impact your ending for your character.
Keith: That’s fine.
Austin: But you can start to work through them by spending them during interludes.
Keith: Yeah, true.
Austin: We’ll get there probably today. We’ll get to our first interlude, maybe. Maybe. We’ll see.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: It’s a little later than I thought it was. Doom number one. So this, again, is, like I said, “mark misfortune, escalate a random trouble.” Keith, can you draw a card?
Keith: Yeah, sure. Draw a card. Do I have to give it to myself first?
Austin: I think you can just draw it out—well, just, yeah.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: It doesn’t really matter as long as you get it out on the sheet or on the thing somewhere. Oh, it was the—[laughs] ah.
Keith: It was the other joker.
Jack: Oh, god.
Sylvi: Oh.
Austin: It was the other joker, a thing we don’t have any rules for.
Keith: Earned. Oh, that’s great. So it’s free.
Sylvi: Yeah, that means we don’t get one.
Keith: It’s a free one.
Austin: It’s a freebie.
Keith: It’s a freebie, yeah.
Dre: Yeah.
Keith: No—we actually don’t escalate that one.
Austin: Perennial protected you. No, let’s leave that up here. Draw another one.
[pause]
Keith: Seven of hearts.
Austin: So hearts goes up by one to—war and conflict goes up to 3.
Dre: Good.
Jack: No, wait, hearts is health and spirit.
Keith: Health and spirit goes up to 2. Yeah.
Austin: Oh, sorry, you’re right, I did that wrong. Whoops, whoops, whoops. Two—what’s—oh, health and spirit goes up to 2.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Hey, who has our health and spirit?
Ali: That’s me, right?
Austin: Yeah, I think so. How is this…
Keith: Health and spirit levels up. So how is that good for everyone?
[Jack and Keith laugh]
Austin: It’s bad.
Dre: It’s bad.
Austin: It’s bad, yeah. As a reminder, at 2, it’s one of those things that not everybody knows about, but if you’re, like, tuned in, you start to notice things are getting worse, I believe. Yeah, two cards in the suit is “a more widespread problem. Most people on the street could tell you about it, but the majority have been spared from its impact. Some people may still deny its existence.”
Keith: And that’s 2?
Austin: That’s at 2, yep, mhm.
Keith: Okay.
Ali: Is it something like, the—this might be too weird—
Austin: No, no, no.
Ali: But something like the Delegates are being way more persecuted against? Like, have less independent movement, are like, getting carded more often.
Austin: By—in the remaining…. Maybe.
Ali: Yeah, it’s…
Austin: I kind of feel like it’s tough, because it’s like—
Keith: This sounds a little like spirit, but it also sounds kind of like unrest or conflict.
Ali: Yeah, that’s fair. Um, spirit…
Austin: I do like the idea of it being Delegate-focused.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: The idea that, like, the Delegates have been, like, Fidelity takes some sort of… You know, the garden spreads, and a sort of pollen fills the air in Palisade, and Delegates have, like, a negative response to it. You know?
Janine: Can I—I have a—I also have an idea that’s creepier.
Austin: Please, please, please.
Keith: Spookier?
Austin: Please.
Janine: Yeah, it’s a little spooky. What if Fidelity tries to call Delegates back [Austin: Oh, fun.] with the thinking that it could, like, reshape a sort of doppel-Divine, and then, like regrow that as sort of like a graft—you know, like a grafted apple tree.
Austin: Oh, that’s good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Janine: And then, like, “Okay, I can just—I just have to take my grafts back. I’ll plant them, I’ll regrow it, and then I can cut grafts from that, and then we’re just back to where we were and it’ll be fine.”
Jack: That’s so creepy.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a nightmare. Also, it’s a really fun play on Reunion, which is…
Janine: Uh-huh.
Keith: And it’s a fun use of Gumption tech.
Austin: It is a fun use of Gumption tech. It really is. Right, and it’s like, “Hey, did you hear 17 of the Delegate—the Emphasis Delegates have gone missing?” It’s like, well, that’s weird. What happened? They just got up and left?
Janine: I thought you were gonna say, like, it was from the point of view of the Delegates, like, “Hey, did you hear—” [Austin: Oh.] I thought it was gonna be like, “Did you hear about that wall with all the holes in it?”
Austin: Right, yeah, exactly.
Janine: “Let’s go check that out.”
Austin: Let’s all—yeah. “There’s one for me.”
Ali: “There’s one for me there.”
Austin: There’s one for me there, yeah. Crawl right in there.
Keith: My name’s on that.
Austin: Shelved by Genre next season, Junji Ito, by the way. Starting with Tomie. So, get ready for that.
Jack: Very exciting. “Ooh, wee, I’m getting called to the pit!” Say the Delegates.
Austin: That’s right. So yeah, health and spirit. I like that as one of these. You good with that, Ali? As the health and spirit holder?
Ali: Mhm. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Austin: Alright. Keith, draw me another one.
Keith: So we’re not doing the joker.
Austin: I don’t know. I think maybe we can see if we can work in some joker stuff, but we didn’t last time.
Keith: There we go. You wanted war and conflict, there you have it.
Austin: Well, there’s war and conflict.
Keith: Although there was nothing left to not be a 3, so this was gonna be a 3 no matter what.
Austin: It was gonna be a 3 no matter what, you’re right. So war and conflict becomes a 3. Who has war and conflict? Sylvi?
Sylvi: I do. Oh, boy.
Jack: And Keith needs to mark another misfortune.
Austin: Oh, right, yeah, Keith, mark another misfortune.
Keith: Oh, because it’s a 3?
Austin: Yeah. And also we need to update the map. Can someone draw Delegates walking towards the Caldera Stretch?
Keith: I now have 4 misfortune and 1 fortune.
Jack: Oh, no, it’s a—you mark another misfortune because—not because it was a 3, but because the doom triggered the second time.
Austin: It’s the doom, the doom triggered again.
Dre: Yeah.
Keith: Oh.
Dre: Because there’s two dooms, so you take two more…
Keith: Oh, no, I already—no, uh… I thought I already did that.
Austin: No, you didn’t. No, you did not.
Keith: Oh, okay, gotcha, gotcha.
Austin: Those are from your cheats, or your weaknesses, [Austin: Right, yeah.] and then it was one good one, and two more bad ones.
Ali: Oh, god. [laughs] No…
Austin: Yeah, Eclectic now has 4 misfortune and 1 fortune.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: Normal.
Keith: Hanging in there.
Austin: Hanging in there. Yeah, what’s going on in the war? Again, it doesn’t have to be directly related to this, though I do think the idea of there being 15 extra Divines in the world is interesting.
Sylvi: I feel like that’s gonna cause some conflict. I don’t know. Things are a little messy right now, I feel like… I’m trying to find—’cause we literally just mentioned how, like, when it becomes a 2, that’s not necessarily something everybody knows.
Austin: Oh, at a 3—yeah, sorry, I’ll read from the book. I have it.
Sylvi: Yeah, thank you so much.
Austin: Yeah, totally. “At 3 or 4 cards, the trouble is widespread, causing significant harm. War, starvation, rebellion, economic collapse.”
Sylvi: I mean… yeah. War feels like the most straightforward of these to be like, kind of breaking out all over the place, right? Like…
Austin: So we’d thought that it had been—that the Principality, the Bilats, had been pacified. Is this just them delivering a big counter-attack? Is this tied to these Divines being released in some way? Is it tied to something the Twilight Mirage fleets are doing?
Sylvi: There’s like, a thing in my head where I’m like, thinking about a bunch of Divines being sort of like released being seen as, like, an act of aggression from a bunch of people that isn’t necessarily coming from the people they assume it is. Maybe I’m way off base here, but like, just…
Austin: In the sense, that, like—I guess I’m asking, yeah, what’s that look like on the ground?
Sylvi: Um…
Austin: And, again, it doesn’t have to be tied to these Divines, necessarily. I was just…
Sylvi: Okay. If it doesn’t have to be tied to these, then I think, like, honestly, with—like, there’s gotta be some sort of power struggle happening on the planet itself now, right?
Austin: Yeah. The thing that I’m trying to zero in on is like, at the beginning of this, we thought, “Oh, the war was basically wrapped up,” [Sylvi: Yeah.] and so is this simply… Is this the thing that we kind of teased last time, of like, there’s more of them than we thought there were? That they in fact were like, hiding reinforcements or, you know. I’m trying to be—you know, part of this is like, it’s called doom, right? [Sylvi: Yeah.] And things went from 2 to 3. Something somewhere—and importantly, we’re gonna have to draw something on the map. So what’s the thing that happened on this map that, you know…
Sylvi: Could be Bilats that were, like, got away—or, like, because some got away from the ferret attack, right? Like, that didn’t go well. Or am I misremembering that?
Austin: I don’t remember if any of them got away from that, but I do remember that the—our side—
Jack: The ferrets got away from their sense of what a target was.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvi: Right, okay, okay.
Austin: Any other thoughts?
Keith: Could it be more—could it have more directly—could it have something more directly to do with the Divines where like, they’re out, there’s 15 of them, they’ve been together for two thousand something years or whatever, they don’t know what’s going on politically, they don’t know who—everyone they’ve known is dead or is a Divine somewhere, and they just like, take over part of the map?
Sylvi: I think that works.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvi: It becomes sort of like a no man’s land.
Austin: They emerge as violent and angry, and, you know, de-subjectivized into simply kind of this kind of—we already know that, you know, they’re like the Afflictions in some way, right? They’re not looking to communicate, they’re not looking to—and I don’t want to undercut your thing, Keith, right? Which is you freed them.
Keith: Right.
Austin: Which is true. So as long as—I mean, you suggested it.
Keith: They are now free to do what they want to do.
Austin: Yeah. Which maybe is destroy anyone who comes near them.
Keith: Sure, yeah.
Austin: I kind of like that. That’s kind of fun.
Keith: Here’s a question. You know, I’m sure that this has been asked and answered. I feel like I’ve asked it before, but I just don’t remember the answer. When August is—becomes August Righteousness, [Austin: Yeah.] does Righteousness [Austin: Lose…] still have August?
Austin: I don’t believe so.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: It has been shaved away. To this point, to your point, right? Which is like, they are…
Keith: And this is what I thought was true.
Austin: Right, yes. Right, so like, Opposition—
Keith: Where you’d make a thousand August Righteousnesses.
Austin: Opposition—so no, you couldn’t make a thousand, you can make one.
Keith: That’s what I’m saying.
Austin: Yes, correct.
Keith: Or if you could do it, you would.
Austin: Right, otherwise you would. And so like, Eclectic Opposition means—you existing means Opposition cannot be Eclectic.
Keith: Right. And there’s—
Austin: It has to be simple. It has to be straightforward. It can’t be multifaceted.
Keith: How many Delegates ever have there been? And those are gone from these Divines. They’re, like, missing…
Austin: Well, some of them may have been reclaimed or re-integrated as raw material, or whatever, right?
Keith: Sure, yeah.
Austin: We know that they get cycled through. I don’t—we’ve said this number before, and I don’t know it off the top of my head.
Keith: Right. Just to—not looking for a definite answer—
Austin: For a specific—yes, yes.
Keith: —but just to illustrate the point that they’re missing huge chunks of themselves.
Austin: Of themselves, yes, exactly. That is right.
Keith: And important chunks. Useful—the chunks that someone who had no—who did not value their safety thought these are the most useful bits to take off.
Austin: Right. Right, so examples here from our known Delegates list: Bright Mercy. What does a mercy that can’t be bright mean? Right? Faithful Emphasis. Lucent Reflection. Particular Emphasis, yeah.
Keith: Oof.
Austin: Gentle Influence is one here. You know?
Jack: Reflection without “lucent” is a real… [chuckles] You’ve got a real problem going on there.
Austin: Yeah. Some of them, maybe not so bad. Cruel Emphasis, you know? Not so bad, getting rid of cruelty from emphasis.
Keith: No gentle, but no cruel.
Austin: But no cruel, but no cruel.
Ali: That’s tough, though. Walking around like that.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: [chuckles] Lopsided.
Ali: It’s like when Dengar couldn’t feel love.
Austin: It is like when Dengar couldn’t feel love. You’re totally right.
[Ali and Keith laugh]
Keith: I don’t even know what that is.
Austin: Dengar from Star Wars.
Ali: Star Wars.
Keith: Oh, Dengar? Do I know Dengar?
Ali: You know Dengar.
Austin: You know Dengar.
Janine: I thought you were—
Art: He’s the bandage-y boy.
Keith: Oh, I know Dengar. Of course I know Dengar, yes. Of course I know Dengar.
Janine: I thought you were talking about Gengar, and like, there was an episode of Pokemon where Gengar couldn’t feel love, and I was like, I didn’t know Gengar could feel love in the first place.
[Ali laughs]
Keith: Sorry, I know Dengar as Payback.
Austin: Right, from Clone Wars? Is that what his nickname is in Clone Wars?
Keith: Um, yes?
Janine: Wait, is the name—
Sylvi: I thought you meant the Pokemon move Payback.
Ali: You didn’t read the bounty hunters book?
Keith: No. Wait…
Ali: Oh, you should.
Dre: Oh, wow.
Austin: You should. Tales from the Bounty Hunters is fun.
Keith: No.
Ali: That’s a good one.
Art: A classic.
Austin: Yeah. It is. Anyway.
Jack: So, have we got, like, a sort of ruined Divine kingdom emerges?
Keith: Mhm.
Austin: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jack: Like a colony of fractured, fractious, free Divines?
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvi: Some sort of Divine Free State?
Jack: [laughs] I don’t think that’s what the DFS means.
[Keith laughs]
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s what it was. What’s a good color for this? What are colors we haven’t really—are there blues? There’s not a lot of blue on this map.
Jack: God, where does these—where does—
Austin: I think it’s just the rest of this, right? It’s, zhoosh. It’s this.
Jack: Because sometimes it’s—I bet one of the Divines just immediately flees, and is like, “I’ve had enough of this.”
Austin: Sure.
Jack: Another Divine just goes and lays into Gentian or something, and there’s like, a really odd fight.
Austin: Right.
Jack: This is the war, you know?
Austin: But another one lays into the Bontive Valley, or lays into the Crown of Glass, or, you know?
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: One of them goes into the ocean, and for the next month, the Carmine Bight, you know, pirate ships are being harassed by a giant, you know, mechanical kraken that is actually one of these Divines, you know?
Jack: Yeah. God.
Austin: Influence.
Jack: We got ourselves some more Afflictions. [chuckles]
Austin: We got ourselves some more Afflictions.
Jack: Okay, where are we drawing this?
Austin: Oh, I already did. [typing] The Afflicted Lands. Let’s lean into—let’s lean into fantasy season, you know?
Jack: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: This has always been a little bit, from the jump, going down into the dungeon, and here they are at the top of the world, the Afflicted Lands. You know what, actually, they probably keep going. They probably go all the way around the world, don’t they? They probably go, like, brrr, all the way around, fuck it.
Jack: God, it’s wild that Elle Evensong was like, “I foresee a future of small semi-autonomous warring states,” [Austin: Uh-huh.] and then a bunch of Divines immediately appeared and were like, “Like this?”
Austin: Yeah. Uh-huh.
[Keith laughs]
Sylvi: Don’t worry about it.
Austin: Don’t worry about it. It’s gonna be fine.
Sylvi: It’s fine.
Austin: Alright. And people can draw in some cool Divines into the Afflicted Lands as they want. I’m gonna draw that little—the thing that I mentioned, the kraken, down here. What’s a kraken look like? It’s like a squid, right?
Keith: Yeah, it’s like a monster squid.
Art: Yeah.
Jack: I drew a bunch of Delegates processing into the pit.
Austin: I saw that. Thank you very much. How many—9? How many tentacles does a squid have?
Art: 8.
Sylvi: A squid?
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah, is it 8?
Keith: For a squid?
Janine: Squids actually—so it’s they have a certain number of tentacles, but also then arms, and they’re different.
Austin: They got arms. Do they? [typing] Squid arms.
Keith: I think that it’s 10.
Sylvi: They got 8 arms, 2 tentacles.
Austin: There we go. So it’s 10.
Keith: Yeah, 10.
Art: It’s always 8. Every animal is 8.
Austin: Oh.
Keith: Every animal is 8.
Art: Every animal is 8.
Jack: Except insects, who are 6.
Keith: Kittens, 8.
Jack: [chuckles] Kittens, 8.
Art: Well, some—yeah. Insects are 6, but then bigger insects or arachnids are 8.
Jack: I’ve drawn a spiral in the Afflicted Lands. That is a Divine in the shape of a huge snake that, after tearing through the Afflicted Lands, has coiled itself up into a spiral, and nobody can tell if it is asleep or has died.
Austin: Oh, good. I love the spiral.
Keith: I can tell.
[Art laughs]
Austin: Oh, you can just tell.
Keith: Yeah, I can tell. It’s asleep.
Jack: [chuckles] It’s asleep. Okay, good.
[1:25:30]
Austin: Alright. Who’s up?
Dre: I think it’s me.
Art: I am.
Dre: Oh, no, is it you? I don’t remember what order we’re doing here.
Austin: We’re going clockwise of the sheets.
Art: We’re doing the order on the—clockwise on the sheets.
Austin: Yeah.
Dre: Oh, okay. Alright, alright.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, Clem.
Art: So that we don’t have the same people over and over again.
Austin: Is that right?
Art: That’s correct.
Austin: Yeah. Which your goal, again, of course, is…
Art: I want to rule Stel Kesh.
Austin: Cool.
Art: Who’s still here?
Austin: What?
Art: Like, who are still the Stel Kesh assets on this…
Austin: Remaining, Lucia Bright—not Brightline. Jesus. Lucia Whitestar folks, so whoever’s in Lander Three or whatever. What was the lander AI called again, jack?
Jack: Oh, it’s called Fire Support.
Austin: Fire Support.
Jack: It is a—it’s a combat AI. It’s not really connected to the Landers, it sort of ran a planet once.
Austin: Right.
Jack: And like, caused a small internal civil war when it went to war against Stel Kesh, [Austin: Right.] and Lucia managed to put it down, and sort of, like, bring it onto her side.
Austin: Right.
Jack: I don’t know where it—
Art: I think—
Jack: Oh, go ahead.
Art: Oh, sorry. No, no, I thought you were finished, I have a completely separate…
Jack: Oh, just, I am happy whether it is interesting that Lander One—sorry, that Fire Support has been captured, or whether one of her last actions before she was captured involved Lucia hiding Fire Support somewhere off the planet.
Austin: Right, right.
Jack: I think either is interesting.
Art: I think I should just ask for what I want here.
Jack: Stel Kesh. [chuckles]
Art: Instead of trying to, like… Yeah. I would like to capture every remaining Stel Kesh dignitary on the planet.
Austin: What—uh-huh?
Art: Capture for Millennium Break as their prisoners, everyone, you know, above rank.
Austin: Uh-huh. Yep. I’m gonna say again that this should be a scene, so… okay.
Art: It’s gonna—yeah. The scene is gonna be the strategic planning of the operation.
Austin: I see. That’s fun.
Art: With my close personal friend, “I won’t be betrayed this time” August Righteousness.
Austin: Okay. Anybody else there?
Art: And I mean, probably a lot of other people, right? This is…
Austin: Is Gucci here? Is Brnine here? Is…
Art: Yeah, sure. I mean, unless any of these people wouldn’t talk to me.
Ali: [laughs] I think I have to.
Austin: Is General Mourning here? Yeah, right, yeah.
Art: Yeah, I mean, you don’t have to. You can show up and just like, read your phone the whole time.
Ali: Yeah, that’s a very Brnine thing to do, but. [chuckles]
Austin: Yeah, mhm.
Art: Well, my point is you have options.
Ali: Sure. Sure, sure, sure.
Austin: Oh, it’s good to see Clem—
Art: Each of us contain multitudes.
Austin: Can this be in wherever the room with the rest of the Millennium Break council is, with like, Millennium—or Mustard Red at the head of the table, and like, you know, the council room where Eclectic and Brnine went to talk about Motion a few arcs ago, you know, all of the leaders of the different Millennium Break groups are here.
Jack: Oh my god. Yeah.
Art: Yeah, but I mean, we’re not gonna use them, [chuckling] because as we’ve established, the Iconoclasts can’t tell the difference between Cause soldiers and Bilat military.
Austin: Well, you’re not gonna have them—yeah, sure, right. But the leaders need to be here to be like, “Well, what are we doing?” Right?
Art: Well, yeah, and you didn’t know where not to go.
Austin: Uh-huh.
[Ali laughs]
Austin: So what is—so that’s—so Clem has called a meeting with the leaders of the Cause.
Art: Uh-huh.
Austin: It’s in—so the “where” is “inside of Cause headquarters”.
Art: Yeah. I’m thinking—you know those pictures of like, FDR, and Stalin, and Churchill?
Austin: I do. Yeah, uh-huh.
Art: What if Clem was in that picture?
[Jack chuckles]
Austin: She will be by the end of this week, now.
Jack: Yeah. You might be describing the final shot of The Shining with the photograph and Jack Torrance smiling in the frame.
[Austin laughs]
Sylvi: Oh my god.
Austin: Yeah, I getcha.
Art: Well, sure, but with a little more gravitas.
Austin: Yeah. Uh-huh.
Dre: A little more zing.
Austin: Oh…
Art: That’s what they say about The Shining. Not enough gravitas.
Austin (as Gucci): Thank you everybody for coming today.
Austin: Says Gucci Garantine.
Austin (as Gucci): I’d like to give…
Art (as Clem): Yes, thank you.
Austin (as Gucci): …the floor to the reason we are here. An operation proposed by our… ally and our, um… our—our ally, I’ll just say that again, I think leaning on that makes the most sense in this circumstance as things have really, I’ll remind everyone, gotten a little worse in the time since the operation in the Caldera Stretch. Here is Clementine with a proposal for everybody. Clementine.
Art (as Clem): Hello, thank you for coming. I appreciate it. Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it, and I believe that with your intelligence and my forces, that we can just cut off the head of the Kesh forces on this planet. You know where they are, I know how they think. We won’t endanger any more of your soldiers. Again, I’m sorry about what happened last time. I sort of think that that was someone else’s fault, but…
Art: Sort of like, gestures—not gestures towards. How do—what is it—how do I make it clear that this is August Righteousness?
Austin: [chuckling] Oh my god.
Ali: Oh, I think that’s clear. [laughs]
Art: Okay.
Art (as Clem): So, yeah, that’s the point of this. I want to know what you all know, and give you the warning so that we don’t have any unintended casualties this time.
Jack: Sorry. August—
Art (as Clem): Thank you for coming to my presentation.
Jack: August Righteousness stands up, he’s leaning on a cane or something. I think he was, like, bitten—I said he had a finger bitten off, but I think that he got, like, a sprained leg or something, you know, in the flight from the Iconoclasts. And he says,
Jack (as August): Sorry, I just have—I have one question. What you’re describing—
Austin (as unknown): No, I have—I actually have some questions.
Austin: Says Jesset, cutting off August Righteousness.
Austin (as Jesset): What the fuck are you doing here?
Art (as Clem): Um…
Austin (as Jesset): Do you—
Art (as Clem): I guess I’m sort of like a special forces commander.
Austin (as Jesset): Do you think we haven’t been trying to capture the Kesh people?
Art (as Clem): Yeah, I think I’m gonna be better at it than you.
Austin (as Jesset): Unbelievable. [scoffs] Go ahead. I’m sorry, August. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
Art (as Clem): I mean, do we want to—
Austin (as Jesset): No, go ahead. Give me—
Art (as Clem): Do we want to go over—
Austin (as Jesset): [cross] Didn’t have any pr—didn’t even—
Art (as Clem): [cross] —how many Kesh people have been captured by every group here? Because I brought one with me when I came in.
Austin (as Jesset): August, I’m sorry.
Jack (as August): No, no, we’re on the same page. Our operation was going to be a success, Clementine, in completing the exact objective you just laid out, were it not for your forces turning against us in the tunnels. Now you come to me with my own plan and say that you’re going to execute it on your own?
Art (as Clem): I mean, I think that what you did ended up being a great, but ultimately failed, test of systems that we should have tested before large-scale deployment.
Jack (as August): [cross] You should have tested your fucking Iconoclasts. You can’t control them.
Art (as Clem): Yeah, it seems obvious now. I understand that retrospect is—
Art: Not—sorry.
Art (as Clem): I understand that hindsight is 20/20, but, you know, you shouldn’t beat yourself up about this.
[Jack chuckles] [Keith laughs]
Austin (as Jesset): Clementine hasn’t—Clementine—
Art (as Clem): I understand that we all make mistakes sometimes, and this was yours.
Austin (as Jesset): Clementine hasn’t passed a test since her mother died and couldn’t keep bribing the teachers.
[Sylvi gasps]
Jack: August just like, wheels around and looks at Gucci.
Jack (as August): And you said this wouldn’t happen.
Ali (as unknown): Now, everybody, let’s just calm down.
Austin: [laughs] [exclaims]
[Sylvi laughs] [several people clap]
Sylvi: By god, that’s Mustard Red’s music!
Dre: The queen is here.
Ali (as Mustard Red): I think this is getting a little heated.
Jack (as August): Why are you in this meeting?
Ali (as Mustard Red): [scoffs] I’m in every meeting.
[Sylvi laughs] [Austin groans]
Jack (as August): Okay, fine, Mustard, what’s the play?
[Ali laughs]
Ali (as Mustard Red): Well, I—
Jack (as August): You signed off on this operation. The papers crossed your desks. Did you think the Iconoclasts would be safe to deploy my troops with? To deploy our troops with?
Jack: Gesturing at the broader group.
Ali (as Mustard Red): I think you’re delegating your own tasks here. I’m not the one who determines safety of missions.
Janine (as unknown): Is that some kind of fuckin’ joke?
[Ali chuckles]
Austin: Who’s this?
Janine: I don’t know.
Jack: It’s the pirate representative.
Austin: That’s the pirate. Yeah, that’s absolutely a Carmine Bight person.
Jack: It’s—yeah, I have a list of the pirates. Hang on. Their head is a guy called Skelton Knaggs, but there is also Iklins Slinger, who is the vanguard.
Austin: That’s who I thought it was, yeah. Uh-huh.
Jack: Captain Piccolas[1], who is a scout. Captain Washko, and Captain Trives, who is a Hypha navigator turned captain.
Austin: I think this is Iklins. I think that was the voice of Iklins Slinger. Not Iblish Trigger, which is what I think every time I hear the name.
Sylvi: Oh.
Jack: August just like, sits down. He slams his papers down on his desk.
Ali (as Mustard Red): Clem, you have the floor.
Art (as Clem): Thank you, but I was—I had pretty much laid out the plan. I was just waiting, you know, for this approval, and we just keep going.
Jack: Stands up.
Jack (as August): Your plan is that we give you our intelligence, and you have the courtesy to deploy your freak soldiers in a way that won’t kill our army? That’s the plan?
Art (as Clem): Yeah, I think it would have worked last time. I think it’ll work this time. You know, my freak soldiers will do their thing, your freak soldiers can do whatever they want. If I’m the first member of Millennium Break to have ever been called a freak…
Austin (as Jesset): You’re not a member of Millennium Break.
Art (as Clem): I’m not sure that’s what we agreed on, but it’s not important. Do you want this done or not?
Austin: What do Veronique and—
Art (as Clem): And if it doesn’t work, what do you even lose? And if you decide that our arrangement isn’t good enough anymore, we can go our separate ways. And then what?
Austin (as Jesset): I can think of some things.
Art (as Clem): I know I can get out of this room. Do you?
Austin (as Jesset): Let’s find out.
Austin: And Jesset jumps up and pulls a gun on you.
[Jack chuckles]
Ali: [chuckling] Come on.
Sylvi: Yo!
Dre: Let’s go.
Ali: You can’t do this. It’s against the rules.
Austin: It’s not against the rules.
Art: Is it against the rules?
Austin: It’s not against the rules.
Sylvi: I think that was in character.
Ali: We did so much to not do this to Clem, [chuckles] that like…
[Keith laughs]
Sylvi: Oh, okay.
Austin: You know. Don’t put Jesset City in a room with Clementine.
Ali: Okay. I—yeah.
Austin: It doesn’t have to be—Jesset doesn’t have to pull the trigger here.
Art: I mean, I just…
Austin: Let me make it—okay. Let me make this a moment with Jesset—let me do a classic de-escalate by escalating Jesset’s own situation. Jesset jumps up and puts his hand out, and his hand is, like, turns into a gun. The Kalmeria particles in the air, because of this fucked up Motion shit that he’s going through, just turn him into a gun. Speaking of freak soldiers.
Jack: Um…
Art: Um—oh, go on.
Jack: It is so amazing that Clem’s Iconoclasts are like, children’s drawings, because, like, Clem saying “I know I can leave this room, are you sure you can?” and we cut outside where, like, an Iconoclast the size of a barn with, like, four dogs’ heads is just bobbing around waiting to eat anybody who comes out. Is this the roll? God.
Austin: This is the roll, I think.
[1:37:00]
Jack: I mean, let’s see. The options here are Clem goes ahead and the roll is to determine the success, but the stakes of Clementine are not, “Can she [chuckles] beat Kesh?” The stakes of Clem, as I’ve always seen it, are “Can we exist in a world with Clementine and the party?”
Austin: Art’s stakes were can Clem…
Jack: Oh, that’s true. Yeah. That’s true.
Austin: Art stated the goal. We should honor that. Which means, a success here means Art decides whether that happens or not.
Jack: Yes. Yeah. I’m just trying to work out whether or not we should want the focus of the tension to be inside this room, or outside the room against Kesh.
Art: Well, there’s two—
Austin: The roll should be “do we all work together,” right? Because then if we do, you get what you want.
Art: Yeah, and—yeah. So if we can put aside our differences here, we can have the thing.
Austin: Yeah. And so, at the moment of gun being drawn, is Clem’s response—what is Clem’s response, and I think that’s—or do you want to roll for it and determine Clem’s response from that? Or do you want to say what Clem’s response is to that and then we determine the outcome based on—the outcome of that, you know, a strategy, that rhetorical strategy in response to “gun drawn on you” is the result of a roll.
Art: What happens if Clem gets shot?
Austin: I don’t know.
Keith: Probably fine.
Austin: Might be fine.
Jack: It is probably weirdly fine. I think that she’s a fell construct, more black malice than human at this point, and I think that—I don’t think that a gunshot would—we can see what happens, but I think it probably wouldn’t affect her in the same way it would affect me, Jack, if I were to be shot.
Austin: Right. Yeah. Are you suggesting that Clem let herself be shot?
Art: Yeah, as proof that, like…
Austin: “I’m built different”?
Art: “I’m built different.” Clem, most impervious to bullets in the room, right?
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: Give me the keys to the car. [laughs]
Austin: You smoke too tough.
Art: Yeah, we’ve been over this.
Austin: That’s kind of fun.
Art: The, like, Clem gets shot and just, like, you know, Jesset shoots Clem through the eye, and Clem just looks out through a void-y, starry, new eye.
Austin: The astral eye.
Art: The astral eye.
Austin: Well, we roll dice and see if that’s effective.
Keith: Putting the ass in astral eye.
Ali: She already doesn’t have eyes.
Austin: She already does not—well, you know.
Art: Well, but you can still get shot through the eye.
Keith: Where the eye would be.
Art: That’s just a place where a bullet goes.
Keith: Can I do a joke that I was accidentally muted while I delivered?
[Jack laughs]
Austin: Yeah, go ahead.
Art: Do you need a set-up?
Keith: Yeah, I need a set-up. Ali, can you have Mustard Red tell Clem that she has the floor again?
Ali (as Mustard Red): Clem, you have the floor.
Keith: Don’t give her the floor. She’ll take the carpet.
[Ali laughs] [Jack chuckles]
Sylvi: Fuck yeah, man. Yeah! [cheering] Woo!
Dre: Fucking got her ass.
[scattered applause]
Austin: Alright, three dice from the opposition. One more for each trouble at 3+, that’s one. Relevant obstacle or burden. “Stel Kesh is out there and you were exiled anyway,” or “has no skills and incapable of learning new ones.” That latter one feels universally applicable, which is…
Art: Yeah, we have to figure out what that means, or it’s just like an extra die all the time.
Austin: You’ve gotta master that shit ASAP, is what you gotta do.
Art: What do I have to roll for this?
Austin: Three. You get a win on a three.
Keith: And I feel like if there’s one thing I can say about Clem, it’s that she’s been trying to master having no skills and being incapable of learning new ones her whole life.
Austin: Her whole life.
Keith: It’s sort of like the mission statement of her life is trying to get a hold of that instead of…
Austin: Yeah, yeah.
Keith: It’s not trying to change it.
Art: Yeah, there’s an interesting tragedy of Clem if you are willing to overlook that she’s terrible, which you shouldn’t, [Austin: Yeah, yeah.] but like, there’s an alternate universe version of Clem where she’s worthy of our pity.
Austin: Right.
Keith: Little ticker down at the bottom that says you don’t have to hand it to her.
Austin: Yeah.
[Jack chuckles]
Art: You absolutely do not have to hand it to her. I’m saying theoretically.
Austin: But if a literal saint had been her mother or teacher or something instead, then maybe she could have gotten somewhere.
Art: Maybe.
Austin: Sorry, that actually isn’t true, because a literal saint was—[chuckles] did try.
[Keith laughs]
Janine: Yeah, I was gonna say, we don’t exactly have the most encouraging character gallery of literal saints, quote unquote.
Austin: No.
Janine: To make a quote like—to be saying shit like that.
Austin: No, no.
Keith: Well, it’s really like the—Clem’s successes have come directly from not really being good at anything. It’s kind of astonishing.
Austin: It’s true.
Keith: Like, if anyone could master and use to their advantage not being good at anything, it would be Clem.
Austin: Well, maybe we should roll some dice and see if this is the case. Who, if anybody—so what do you got? You got—start with two. Any relevant relationships that are adding to your dice. I’m gonna look at the book and see how that works, because up until now…
Art: What counts as relevant?
Austin: Yeah, that’s my question.
Art: That’s on page thirty—55. Not 35. 55.
Keith: You’d have to give the August one.
Austin: “Be generous in calling things relevant.”
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: “Remember—”
Art: Even antagonistic relationships can be relevant.
Austin: There you go. “Even if a character is actively opposing you, that challenge might inspire you to greater effort.”
Keith: That’s exactly how I feel about this situation.
Austin: Oh, yeah. Take that die. And then relevant—anything else? No relevant boon, no mastered obstacles. This is a five versus a three.
Art: Which isn’t that much different than a four versus a two.
Austin: I guess not.
Keith: I guess not.
Art: Which we’ve seen several times.
Austin: Ready to roll it.
Art: You go first.
Keith: Oh my god.
Austin: I cannot believe Clem’s fucking luck.
Keith: I fuckin’ hate Clem. I hate—I just hate—I just hate Clem.
Austin: 3, 3, 2. Rolled a 3, 3, 2, 2, 1. Un-fucking-believable.
Sylvi: Oh my god. Oh my fucking god.
Keith: Oh my god. I—can I quit Friends at the Table right now?
[Ali laughs]
Austin: You can do whatever you want. You’re a free person, Keith. I believe in you.
Sylvi: Keith and I are going on strike.
Austin: Yeah, no, I—I can’t right now, but I respect it, I support it.
[Sylvi laughs]
Austin: What’d you roll, Art?
Art: I rolled a 6 and two 4s.
Sylvi: Motherfucker.
Art: So this is gonna be two wins.
Austin: And one reversal of fortune. You’re gonna get a misfortune, but otherwise you’re fucking winning.
Sylvi: That’ll show her!
Keith: What’s the misfortune?
Austin: So what happens?
Sylvi: Definitely no misfortune.
Austin: So, Jesset pulls the trigger. A bullet is formed from raw Motion, from the Kalmeria, and…
Art: Oh, that’s how to do the—okay, sorry.
Austin: And fires through you.
Art: I don’t think it does. I think Clem is bigger than emotion. I think…
Austin: Sorry, “emotion”. You said “emotion”. I said “Motion”.
Art: Motion, that’s right.
Austin: But “bigger than emotion” is kind of fun. Certainly the Iconoclasts would like her to be bigger than emotion.
Art: Yeah, okay. Yeah, so it goes through Clem, and it just makes these, like, inky starry blotches in her persona, [Austin: Yeah.] and I think Clem is like, “my turn,” and sort of reaches into one of these holes and pulls out this mass that forms into its own gun, and then I think someone holds her back. Maybe August Righteousness, maybe someone else, maybe Gucci. Gucci, maybe.
Austin: Gucci, Gucci, yes.
Art: Like, does, like, the “you’re in a bar and you have to hold your friend back,” holding them back.
Sylvi: Oh my god.
Austin: Uh-huh. Gucci said she’d hold the leash.
Art: And then it’s like, you know, and Gucci is placating Clem, you know?
Austin: Right, right.
Art: “Stop it, we’ll give you the…” you know.
Austin: The intel that you want, yeah.
Art: We’ll give you the intelligence, yeah. I don’t want to narrate Gucci too much, that’s not my…
Austin: I mean, you narrate right now. You have—you narrate your two successes.
Art: Yeah, but I don’t want, you know, put necessarily—we’ll give you the stuff.
Austin: No one here plays Gucci. You can narrate Gucci.
Art as (Gucci): Walk out of this room right now. We’ll give you the stuff you want.
Art: And Clem walks out of the room.
Austin: And so that’s the 4. Form a new relationship.
Art: Oh, can I have a relationship with Gucci?
Austin: You can have a relationship with Gucci. Yeah.
Art: Great.
Sylvi: Makes sense.
Austin: It makes perfect sense.
Jack: Are you sure you don’t want a relationship with, like, “meaningless hissing symbols”, your Iconoclast lieutenant that has now been granted…
Austin: [laughs] Yeah.
Art: I mean, I thought I had to do a player character, and I was getting ready to try to figure out how to have a relationship with Brnine.
Sylvi: No, I literally earlier did not take a relationship with a player character.
Austin: So that’s your 4. That’s “you gain a relationship.” Then your 6…
Art: Let me—I’ll figure out the relationship another time, I guess.
Austin: …is a resounding success.
Art: Sure is.
Austin: Mark fortune. So you don’t get to mark the map, because it’s only one—you sure you don’t want to try to reroll? You don’t want to try to—what’s your weakness?
Jack: Favored weakness.
Austin: Lash out?
Art: Lash out.
Austin: Yeah. I wouldn’t want to lash out here.
Art: That’s not good. I could flee, but that’s not…
Austin: Yeah.
Art: That’s just trading a misfortune for a fortune, right?
Austin: You would, yeah, it would actually, weirdly, nothing would happen, right? If you fled, you would ignore all losses in exchange for a misfortune, but you’re gonna get a misfortune anyway, so it doesn’t…
Art: Oh, but it swaps a fortune for misfortune. I’m getting a fortune, so I could have one fortune, one misfortune, or I could just have misfortune.
Austin: That’s correct, yeah. I guess that’s true. Because you’re getting a—wait, where are you getting a fortune from?
Art: From the 6.
Austin: Oh, right, you’re right. You’re right.
Art: So I should flee. I would argue I’ve already done it. And…
Austin: You did. Which means that when you flee—so you mark a misfortune, and then you ignore the loss from the two.
Art: Yeah. And then I also—right.
Austin: And then you still have to narrate your resounding success.
Art: Hold on. But I’m marking a fortune and I’m circling a fortune.
Austin: Correct. Yeah.
Art: Is it the same one, or are they…
Austin: They’re different ones. Each one—each circle—each thing is a different marker space.
Art: And then, so, mark fortune. On a second victory. Also…
Austin: That’s the thing you’re not getting. You’re not getting a second 6 here. That’s why I was like, do you want to try to play for a second 6, instead of that…
Art: Oh, it’s a second 6, not just a second victory. Not the…
Austin: Yeah. That’s how we played it before. Let me double-check. I’m pretty sure that’s right. I’m pretty sure that’s right.
Jack: Yeah. It’s a second 6. Ooh.
Austin: Did we fuck this up before?
Jack: Yeah, I think it is on a second 6 victory.
Art: No, no, it’s winning on a second 6.
Austin: Winning on a second 6 in the same turn.
Art: It’s just the sheet is a little breezy.
Austin: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Art: The resounding success is they turn over the information, and Clem does round up every—over the next, let’s say, over the next 9 days, Clem rounds up every ranking member of Stel Kesh and turns them over to Millennium Break.
Jack: God damn.
Art: She decapitates the Stel in a week and two days.
Jack: My quest—
Austin: Hey—yeah, I got a bunch of questions. Go ahead.
Jack: Okay. First question, this doesn’t necessarily have to be the obstacle, but it could be. How do you prevent the Iconoclasts from just killing everybody?
Austin: All of—you mean the—when you say everybody, you mean the Stel Kesh people.
Jack: The—yeah.
Art: I don’t think that she does do that. I think Kesh takes heavy losses.
Jack: Okay, so rank and file, Kesh gets turned into giblets by Iconoclasts.
Art: Not all of them.
Jack: [chuckles] Okay. And then…
Dre: [chuckling] She’s not a monster.
Jack: And then, so when you say you bring in Kesh rank and file, [chuckles] you mean you bring in surviving Kesh rank and file.
Art: Not rank and file. Only high-ranking, yeah.
Jack: Oh, sorry, yes. Okay, what are your questions, Austin?
Austin: Hey, what’s this look like? It’s spookier. Janine? What’s the…
Art: Oh, it’s probably pretty spooky.
Austin: Yeah, what’s it look like when the horrors who walk the world go to war against Stel Kesh?
Janine: Uh… hm. Can I get a refresh description of Clementine’s horror army? Just a…
Art: Yeah, they largely look like what a child would draw if you made them do an illustrated Lovecraft book.
Janine: Okay.
Art: Lots of blacks and purples, probably. Some red.
Janine: I think a thing they do is sort of the—so there’s a thing that bison, I believe, do. No, it’s—yeah, it’s bison, where they will stand in—if there’s predators around, they will stand in a circle with all their horns facing out, and all the babies in the middle between them, so that wolves can’t get in there. It’s just like a wall of horns, right? I think they do the opposite. I think Clementine’s folks do the opposite, where they make a wall of horns, functionally, but it’s a wall of other—it’s not horns, obviously, around whatever they want, and then they just close in and subsume it, [Austin: Oh my god.] and then, you know, sort of like cartoon piranhas, once everything in there is dealt with, they move on and do it to someone else.
Austin: Cool.
Dre: Seems bad.
Jack: God, yeah.
Austin: It is. It does seem fuckin’ bad.
Jack: There is a platoon of soldiers in, like, an abandoned lighthouse, who experience the wildest single night horror movie that you have ever seen. Iconoclasts come rippling out over the sea, and down through the inside of the lighthouse.
Austin: That’s good. That’s good.
Ali: But it’s only…
Art: It accomplished a goal.
Austin: It did.
Ali: This is like two percent of Stel Kesh though, right?
Austin: Yeah, I—you’ll note I started drawing on a map, I drew, like, I closed in the Carleon-Upon-Wisk part of the gold Kesh area but then I remembered, one, you didn’t get two 6s, so we can’t update the map. And then two, it isn’t—what was your exact desire? It was—who are you bringing in? Who are you killing? Leadership.
Art: Leadership. It’s everyone above, like, a certain rank.
Austin: Yeah, okay. Does that include the Fire Support, the Ai, or is that still out there?
Art: No, I don’t think I would have counted that.
Austin: Who cares about a little AI?
Art: I think Clem is just, like, too myopic for that.
Austin: Yeah, that makes sense.
Art: Like, “That’s not what I get attention for.”
Austin: Love that. Okay. Yeah. So I think it’s probably more than two percent leadership, can be bigger than that, but it’s…
Ali: But it’s only the forces on Palisade, right?
Art: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, sorry, of Kesh? It’s point zero two—yeah, it’s nothing.
Jack: [cross] It’s like point—yeah.
Ali: [chuckles] Yeah, okay.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sylvi: She completed a Helldivers mission.
Jack: [chuckling] Yes.
Austin: But it was a pretty big one. But it was just one. Yeah.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: Yeah, you’re not—but you’re not mad it happened over here at Millennium Break headquarters.
Ali: No, no, no.
Austin: Yeah, yes, yes. Right, because that’s the other big obstacle, right, Ali? Is they’re out there, or whatever.
Ali: Right, to say that you decapitated Kesh when they, like, lost a fingernail is… [chuckles]
Art: Well, decapitated Kesh here, the place where we are.
Austin: Uh-uh.
Ali: Sure, uh-huh.
Art: And are stuck forever.
Austin: Mhm.
[1:52:13]
Austin: Thisbe, do you have thoughts on a scene?
Janine: Okay, so I’ve been thinking about this for like a week now, and I think Thisbe needs to go [laughing] buy a gremlin.
Austin: I don’t know.
Dre: Okay.
Ali: Wow.
[Janine exhales]
Art: I think it’s actually [inaudible]
Austin: Friendsatthetable.cash for context on that one. Maybe not yet.
Janine: Yeah. Oh, we have cash for context now? Dot com?
Austin: Yeah, cash for context.
Keith: [laughs] Cash for context dot com.
Janine: Okay. I think—is August Righteousness able to do things, or is he still laid up? Or they—is it he or they? I forget.
Jack: It’s he/they.
Janine: Okay.
Jack: He’s up and about. He’s, like, he got wounded—he got, I think, one of his fingers was bitten off by an Iconoclast, and he’s walking with a cane at the moment, but I think it’s like a—he is recovering, he has doctors, he’s able to be out and about. Especially because time has probably passed a little since we last saw him, if not by a ton.
Janine: Okay, that’s good. What would happen if Thisbe approached them and asked if they would like to join them on a trip to the Afflicted Lands?
Jack: [laughs] Um, you would need to make a—I mean, do you want to play that out? No, we should go to the Afflicted Lands if you’re gonna go to the Afflicted Lands.
Austin: No, we should not, because the scene should be…
Janine: Yeah, the scene—that’s the thing, that’s why I’m asking, is like, the scene should be the Afflicted Lands, because that’s the big thing for sure.
Austin: Let’s—yeah. What’s the goal you want from that scene? And then maybe that can help us decide who goes.
Janine: The pitch is to establish contact with the splintered Divines, and as sort of an attached thing to that, the fact that all of the—a bunch of the, uh… fuck. Word. The…
Austin: The Afflictions?
Janine: No, the things that August is.
Austin: The Delegates.
Jack: Oh, Delegates.
Janine: Yes, sorry. All the Delegates are like, or a bunch of the Delegates are getting, like, lured into the horrible Delegate factory, and that’s probably a concern. And we also don’t really know how the Divines feel about various Delegates, so it just feels like a conversation that should be had. Especially if the Divines could maybe be cool with the Delegates in some way, and maybe we’d make a group, and…
Austin: Mhm. Can you reread your goal for the listener? Because I think that connects to this pretty clearly.
Janine: Yes. Oh, fuck. [chuckling] My goal is to mend the scattered shards of Divinity, so it’s right there, folks.
Austin: Mhm.
Jack: Yeah, I mean, I would go if you made the case that, you know, my people are disappearing into the [Janine: Yeah.] moor of the place. That is interesting. I would come under duress. You are gonna have to make this worth my while, or rather, there is a sense of “this had better be something special, because we’re fighting a war right now on other fronts.”
Janine: Is August hearing or feeling or whatevering the thing that’s bringing the Delegates into the horrible factory?
Austin: I would think so.
Janine: Is this, like, a Grey Warden calling situation?
Austin: I don’t know that we got specific enough to what the phenomenological experience of it was, but I don’t know why—I don’t know why they would be immune to it, you know? Maybe they’re overcoming whatever that draw is, or maybe they got lucky. I guess that’s the question. It is a thing that’s applying to everybody and some people are being caught by it, or is it a thing that’s being applied randomly and some people aren’t being touched by it? We haven’t…
Janine: Who has Delegate system as their feature and norm? Does anyone?
Austin: I don’t think so. So someone should take that at this point. Yeah, someone should claim it.
Jack: Oh, yeah, and then answer it.
Austin: And then we can answer it.
Keith: Oh, I thought that one of us took that.
Austin: I don’t think so.
Keith: Maybe it was one of the ones that got traded around a couple times.
Janine: No.
Austin: No, it did not. It never got written as a card.
Janine: Afflictions got taken, but not…
Austin: Yeah. I’ll write a new one.
Keith: Well, I was gonna take it, and then it was the thing of you’re supposed to take something that you’re not really involved in.
Austin: Right. Exactly, yeah.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: Which is true.
Janine: Is this me getting involved in Delegate system, though? Is that…
Austin: Yeah, I would say you shouldn’t take it, because you’re about to go do a scene about it.
Janine: Yeah. So, who should…
Jack: And neither should Keith or I.
Austin: Correct, yeah.
Janine: Ali…?
Austin: Does someone want to raise their hand for it?
Janine: Brnine? Or maybe Levi [pronounced lee - vie]?
Ali: Sure, I mean…
Austin: Delegate technologies.
Ali: If I’ve been…
Dre: Levi [lee - vie]. [laughs]
Janine: [laughing] Or Levi [pronounced leh - vee]. Sorry, I keep saying Levi [lee - vie].
Keith: Yeah. “Denim?”
[Sylvi laughs]
Janine: I keep reading it as Levi [lee - vie]. You know, Levitation. Lee, vitation.
Austin: Yeah. Lee-vitation.
Sylvi: Oh my god.
Dre: Mhm, mhm.
Sylvi: That’s a Bluff City guy.
Keith: Not a bad name. Write that down.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Janine: Art could also take it.
Austin: Was it Dre? Was it Ali?
Dre: I thought I heard Ali say…
Keith: I heard—yeah, Ali.
Austin: Okay.
Ali: Um, yeah. I’ve been… nominated.
Austin: Wrong place. Boom. I’m giving you the card.
Ali: Cool.
Austin: I do want to come back, also—I think that the goal of “make contact” is too broad. I think you can make contact pretty easily. The question is—a goal should be a little sharper.
Janine: Yeah. Well, we did also say that they were going to kill anyone who entered the lands, so…
Austin: That’s contact. So what you want is an open line of communication or something like that? Like an ongoing—because I think—I read contact pretty broadly. If what you want is…
Janine: Okay. I mean, listen, I’ll swing—I can swing harder.
Austin: Yeah, always swing big.
Janine: I want to—I thought I was, but I can swing bigger, is what I mean. “Go into the place where they’ll kill you” [chuckles] is a big swing.
Austin: Mhm.
Janine: I think, then, the pitch is basically get some sort of group of Divines to agree to work with some sort of group of Delegates in order to—like, specifically with the goal being the most immediate problem here is we need to keep the Delegates from getting sucked into the factory.
Austin: Into—yeah, into the Garden of…
Janine: And maybe we develop things beyond that down the line, but right now it’s like…
Austin: I think that is a good goal, yes.
Janine: Pieces of you are getting sucked back in there.
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: To make more pieces of—like, we gotta stop that for sure.
Austin: I think that that’s a good one. I think that that’s actionable and big. A way that I’ve been thinking about this, or a way that maybe I kind of realized I was thinking about this is like, if you think about this as being three—there’s three turns, right? If you think about each big turn as like, a book in a trilogy, you can think of your turn as, like, what’s the one thing your character tried to achieve in that whole book? And that way it’s like, you don’t think of it as, like, a small chapter, because it needs to be a big thing. So I think that that makes a lot of sense.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: So yeah, saving the Delegates from going into the Garden of Fidelity. So that’s the where, and the what, and the goal. Is there anybody else on the “who” side? Is it just… Is it just Thisbe and August? Is anybody else going to the Afflicted Lands to talk to the…
Janine: I’ll be honest, this is a thing that I think Thisbe would specifically not invite Brnine and Eclectic to.
Austin: Interesting.
Janine: I was gonna say Electric.
[Sylvi laughs]
Austin: Oh, because of their…
Janine: Yeah, because of what happened before with, like, being like, “Hey…”
Keith: What happened?
Janine: “Come on the ship and stuff.” With, uh… theater.
Austin: With Refrain, yeah.
Janine: Yeah, with Refrain.
Austin: Yeah. With Refrain, yeah.
Janine: Thisbe was there and I think did not say anything, but like, really did not…
Austin: Janine, that is your contempt token.
Janine: Oh, right, yes.
Austin: At the time.
Janine: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: Yeah, mhm.
Janine: Thisbe doesn’t think that they should be part of the Cause without being something else first, basically.
Austin: Is there anybody else NPC-wise that you would ask to come to this?
Janine: Hm…
Austin: The answer can totally be no. I just want to make sure we ask it before we…
Janine: Yeah.
Keith: Right. Because of missing out on Partial Palisade.
Austin: Right, because that last scene we forgot Partial Palisade until maybe too late, you know?
Janine: Is Partial Palisade in this one, maybe?
Austin: Yeah, maybe. That would make sense. You know, specifically…
Janine: I don’t know if that would be interesting to them, specifically, though, like…
Ali: Didn’t we retcon him back in?
Janine: We kind of did, yeah.
Austin: We did, we did. That’s what I’m saying, though, is that’s why I’m raising it now ahead of time, is like, oh, let’s not… this time, let’s…
Janine: He like, stayed outside and was freaked out.
Austin: That is right, yeah.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: That’s why I’m like, oh, let’s make sure that we take into account characters right now, NPCs that we would otherwise forget about. So yeah, maybe feeling some sort of way about that, he comes with you on this, you know? Feeling some sort of responsibility for having not been able to confront the situation there, he is now, like, wants to make right by this.
Keith: Yeah. But that, I mean, that worked out last time, so it’s fine.
Austin: Mhm.
Janine: And he like, even if he didn’t go in, he witnessed some of what was happening and can speak to that.
Austin: Yes, yes. Yep, and saw them—yeah. Exactly.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: I’m gonna re-link the list of all the Divines that exist now inside of the Afflicted Lands, including, of course, there are also the Afflictions, but… I’m dropping into Palisade chat, there they go, boom. Alright, so, where do we come in on this scene? It feels like we have the who, the what, and the where, and it feels like we have a goal, so where do we—where does this start?
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: And I guess, as a reminder, maybe some interesting topics that could come up here include the Afflictions, who of course, you know, that is—this is their territory, so Levi, think about that. Brnine, both Delegate technology and health and spirit. What else here? War and conflict in a broad sense, because the war and conflict is a thing that ticked up when these Divines got out, and started doing damage to the world. Really, most of these have—some doubt from Clem, you know, could come into play here. Basically, everything could come into play, but. As members of the opposition, think about how that—is that what it’s called? Is it called the opposition? I guess it is. Yeah, opposition dice. Yeah. Think about how your stuff could come into play here as we zoom in. We don’t know. We’ve never really met these Divines, right?
Janine: Okay. [chuckles]
Austin: Or, many of these Divines we’ve never met. We’ve met people who have their last names, or I’ve said these names before into a microphone, saying that these are Divines who have been captured. I’ve always imagined Welkin as being a some sort of sky-related Divine, some sort of, like—I guess I described a space whale before. Maybe there’s a sky whale that was Welkin, maybe I described someone else as being a space whale, I don’t know. But Welkin is—
Keith: Is this why we were talking about a firmament last time? Is that what Welkin means?
Austin: Probably, because Welkin does mean firmament, yeah, it is like—yeah. I don’t think—
Keith: Or is that somehow totally unrelated?
Austin: It was totally unrelated, we were talking about the different types of flat earthers, and the firmament flat earthers versus the… yes, yes.
Dre: Jesus.
Keith: [laughs] Oh, okay.
Austin: Yes.
Janine: Yeah.
Dre: The darkest timeline.
Janine: Can we also get a list of all the Afflictions just because their names aren’t on the map?
Dre: Hold on, I’ll drop the wiki article, because I have it pulled up.
Austin: And I’ll drop names atop of the little drawings. How’s that sound?
Janine: Love that.
Dre: Ooh.
Jack: Oh, yeah.
[Sylvi laughs]
Janine: Okay. I had been looking at one of these as like, oh, this would be a good contact… I think it was Ravel. I think Thisbe was like, oh, I should talk to Ravel, as much as we know about—it’s one of those things that’s like, I don’t know, does Thisbe know about Ravel?
Austin: I think the one—that’s the one we have not—you would know what is, like, colloquially, or like, culturally known, right? Which is big, weird, creepy neuron that walks the hills and valleys and does strange rerouting of the world, like, changes the place that, like, roads and pathways go. This is Cleave. We all love Cleave. We all remember Cleave. Short for Cleveland.
Sylvi: The most dangerous one.
Austin: That’s right. Dust is this one, I think.
Keith: I think Cleveland rocks.
Austin: I keep hearing that. Oversight. Maybe Oversight’s the one that we actually have never met. Maybe we did—yeah, Ravel we met in the—we met—Ravel’s minions we met in the tunnels, those were the tricerataurs. How could I forget?
Sylvi: Oh, of course.
Austin: How could I forget? Alright, I’ve added names for all of the Afflictions on the map directly so that we can see them. And I’m changing the color to be a little easier to read. But I guess my question here is, we know that these Divines have gone to the Afflicted Lands. Have they joined with the Afflictions in any sort of direct way? Is that what’s happened, or are they their own thing? Are they even united themselves, or are they all—we kind of described them as, you know, being so badly traumatized from thousands of years of being down in the garden [Janine: Yeah.] that, you know. I don’t know where they are today. Emotionally speaking.
Janine: I wonder if—yeah, I wonder if Oversight is actually maybe the better connection than Ravel. Although I don’t really know what Oversight’s deal is these days.
Austin: We’ve never met them onscreen, really.
Janine: Yeah, yeah.
Austin: We—yeah. I have some notes, obviously, but—and can happily bring them up. I would say that it doesn’t—I don’t know that—the thing I like about going to the Divines that escaped, or that were freed, not—I mean, they escaped, but they were freed by player characters is that they are directly connection to the Delegates who are being pulled in, right?
Janine: Yeah, true.
Austin: Whereas the Afflictions do not have that direct connection, so like, [Janine: Yeah.] that’s an interesting angle on whatever that contact and communication might look like.
Janine: Mhm. Okay. Ooh, man, what a list, then. I mean, I guess I don’t know that we’d even really be able to specifically be like, “Hey, let’s go find Dissent.”
Austin: Right. I’m interested in what one you want to find as an author more than as a character, do you know what I mean?
Janine: Okay, right.
Austin: If we think about it as like, not “what does Thisbe set out to go do,” but hey, as a writer, who—as a storyteller, what did—who did Thisbe and August Righteousness and Partial Palisade run into, and what’s that look like?
Janine: I think—actually, there’s an obvious choice, and the obvious choice is Leadership.
Austin: [hums] Fun.
Janine: And that also feels like a Divine that would like, probably be making themselves relatively visible compared to others.
Austin: Compared to others, yeah.
Janine: Like, I think of, you know, if I think of the logic of like, how do you find these Divines, I’m thinking, like, well, you probably look for like, maybe a group of them, because that’s gonna be pretty obvious and strange. And it doesn’t need to be a big group, it just needs to be like three. Three Divines is noticeable.
Austin: Mhm.
Janine: And does Leadership have two other Divines with it? Probably. It’s Leadership.
Austin: Right. That’s the thing it does.
Janine: Like, okay, it probably doesn’t have Dissent and Opposition, but like…
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: It’s probably—maybe Responsibility and Righteousness, or like, you know. They got Fidelity—
Keith: Who do we—
Janine: Not Fidelity, Fidelity’s a bad one. [chuckles]
Austin: Fidelity’s a bad one, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Janine: Communicant, Consultation, they all, you know, I’m sure they all hang.
Keith: Who do we know from Leadership, Delegate-wise?
Austin: We don’t, actually. I was just double-checking this.
Keith: Okay, that’s great.
Austin: It’s just listed as a name—I listed it out loud in an episode as one of the Delegates who were—or one of the Divines who Delegates had been taken from.
Keith: This is great, because this could have been tough. We could be missing, like, Rational Leadership or something. [laughs]
Austin: Right, well, I mean, that might be out—
Janine: I mean, dice are dice.
Austin: Yeah, that might be out there in that way, Keith. And when you say “missing”, you’re talking about the idea that, like, [Keith: Right.] part of what’s happened here is these elements of the Divines have been taken from them in this metaphorical but material sense.
Keith: Right, yeah. Which is a big unknown. That is a blank space.
Austin: Yeah, uh-huh.
Art: I like that we’ve established a number of Divines that makes a group conspicuous that’s one lower than the number that the Blue Channel is fucking around with.
[Sylvi, Janine, and Austin laugh]
Art: Two, that’s fine. No one even notices two.
Austin: Two is fine.
Art: Three, that’s conspicuous.
[Austin, Keith, and Jack chuckle]
Janine: Well, these are also Divines that don’t have Excerpts or, like, people to do—
Austin: Any sort of—yeah.
Janine: So it’s Divines that are operating on their own, which is different.
Austin: Yeah. Alright, so we got Leadership here, we got—and then you said maybe two more.
Janine: Yeah, I think that there’s a bunch there that make absolute super easy sense.
Austin: Totally. Does anybody have fun ideas about what Leadership—does anyone want to play Leadership?
[Jack chuckles]
Keith: That’s not… That’s hard. That’s so hard.
Austin: Uh-huh. Yeah, tell me about it. What’s the—any ideas for what the Divine Leadership would look like?
Art: I can’t shake Optimus Prime from my head in this discussion.
Keith: Big podium.
Austin: That’s right, it’s Optimus Prime at a big podium.
[Keith and Dre laugh]
Sylvi: It’s Optimus Prime, but he transforms into a big podium.
Austin: Into a podium, yeah.
Dre: Ooh.
Art: Into a podium. Oh, we did it, we got there with group mind.
Sylvi: As opposed to—instead of a truck. Yeah.
Austin: Great.
Janine: I keep thinking of, like, a guy with an obelisk face.
Austin: I was thinking about obelisks. [Janine: Yeah.] I went from podium to obelisk pretty quickly, and like, the idea of being like, a Divine that builds things around them, or that puts—that like, others who are around them get some—you know, we’ve had Divines where like, oh, being part of this Divine’s network gives you some sort of, like, bonus to dice rolls. You know what I mean? Like, as a—but in-universe.
Janine: I have an idea.
Austin: Uh-huh?
Janine: How robotic does it have to look? Like, fully robotic?
Austin: It can look however we want. It’s been—we’re in…
Jack: The Divines are varied, right?
Austin: They’re varied, yeah. We’ve had Divines that look not mechanical at all, you know?
Jack: We’ve had Divines that—I mean, Righteousness is a briefcase. You know? We’ve got some latitude here.
Austin: That’s right. Yeah. And Belgard was a big butterfly. You know?
Janine: Well, still a robot.
Austin: Still a robot, but you know.
Jack: Future is a sphere.
Austin: Future is a sphere, is a little golden sphere.
Janine: Okay, I was thinking—
Art: Well, that’s a shape that robots are. Let’s not be…
Austin: That’s fair. That’s fair.
Janine: I was thinking of, like, a gigantic crystalline turtle with an obelisk on its shell, and the thing that it does is like, it buries itself in the dirt, and then the obelisk sticks up.
Austin: Oh, that’s fun. Just the obelisk is there.
Keith: Ooh, that’s good.
Austin: That’s fun, yeah.
Dre: Ooh.
Keith: We should start calling Future Guilty Spark.
Austin: We should not do that.
Jack: I don’t think so, no.
Austin: They will sue us.
Jack: They’ll get us.
Keith: No, no, I think it’ll be fine.
Sylvi: It’s spelled S-P-A-R-C.
Keith: Halo’s dead.
Austin: Oh, it’s different, it’s different.
Art: Oh, that’s it.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Dre: If you want to name him something that people really don’t care about in Halo, call him the Didact.
Austin: Damn. Get ’em.
Keith: The Gravemind.
Dre: No, Gravemind’s still cool.
Austin: Speaking of guilt, Guilt is one of the other Divines here. Of course, I think, Guilt has—Guilt is a Divine of, like—I don’t mean this in any sort of way. Guilt, like, is a Divine of lashes, and, you know—
Keith: Eyelashes?
Austin: —and ropes. It has tied itself to Leadership’s obelisk. Right? Guilt, like, is a burden that will attach to something else. In this moment, it has attached to the front of the obelisk of Leadership. And then we need one more. Give me a third of this list of Divines that’s here. I think it’s, like, dragging Leadership, effectively. You know? Like, pulling it like a penitent would drag the cross. You know what I mean? Or that style of, you know.
Janine: Maybe Reflection? I feel like Guilt and Reflection are an interesting duo.
Austin: That’s fun. A good pair? A good duo, yeah. A good Divine duo.
Keith: Responsibility also works like that, I think.
Janine: Yeah.
Keith: Should have them tugging it in two different ways.
Austin: Oh, yeah. That’s pretty fun. That’s pretty direct. Great image on the landscape in front of this trio of characters is just this obelisk with two Divines pulling it in different directions. That’s pretty fun.
Keith: Look, sometimes there’s a nose.
Austin: Yeah, uh-huh.
Keith: Go right on the nose.
Austin: You just go right on the nose. Yeah, let’s go Guilt, and—you said Responsibility?
Jack: Reflection.
Austin: Janine said Reflection, Keith said Responsibility, right?
Keith: I said Responsibility, yeah.
Austin: Or do we get Opposition in the mix just so that we have Opposition in the mix? Because of our connection to Eclectic? And I know Eclectic’s not here.
Keith: I don’t mind it.
Austin: But there’s something nice about getting Opposition onscreen because of the way that that would have a fun knock-on.
Janine: I will say, I would feel shitty about not inviting Eclectic on this—like, deliberately excluding Eclectic on this and then meeting Opposition. That would…
Keith: Well, you knew Opposition was here when you excluded Eclectic.
Janine: That’s the thing, is like, I think if Thisbe knew that Opposition was here, she wouldn’t have excluded Eclectic, but…
Austin: This is the drama. That’s the drama. That’s why it’s appealing to me, is that it’s—it produces an effect where we can actually have something that then connects back to a different player character who also has said doesn’t care about this part of his background.
Janine: Yeah, true. Nevermind, I don’t feel bad anymore.
Austin: Right, you know? But, you know.
Keith: But then did go on that big mission.
Austin: Did go on that big mission. Keith, have you described Opposition before? I don’t remember if you have.
Keith: God, I…
Austin: Maybe you have and I just don’t recall. I know we did some, like, earthquake-y stuff, you know?
Keith: I think that I may have, in the last one, described Opposition as, yes, as a sort of a non—an extra-dimensional, non-Euclidean shape that always reflects back to you your exact shape and size no matter the distance from it to anyone who’s looking at it.
Austin: Oh, right.
Janine: Right.
Austin: That’s really fun. Yeah, that’s really fun. Yes. I like that quite a bit. Yeah, I like the idea of like, Guilt being this statue of the kind of, like, ideal penitent, you know, walking slowly, leashed to—leashed to the obelisk, pulling it in one direction, and then—and it’s gigantic, right? It’s as big as the obelisk is. And then this other figure who does not have that scale, because the scale is always yourself, as you said, right?
Keith: Right.
Austin: Tiny figure—or I guess it’s not a tiny figure in the distance. It’s you, scaled and huge.
Keith: It’s huge in the distance, it’s tiny as you approach it.
Austin: But as you get closer, it gets smaller and smaller—
Jack: God, that’s so weird.
Austin: —and when you’re right there, it’s small in relation to the gigantic figure of Guilt going the other direction.
Keith: Right. But then struggling still with the other two in the same way, because to them, it’s their size.
Austin: It’s their size, right. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that quite a bit.
Keith: Impossible to draw. Good luck. [laughs]
Austin: You know. You just pick a particular perspective character at a particular distance, and make sure that it’s, you know, “POV: you are looking at Opposition dragging…” But that wouldn’t work, because no one does POV TikToks right. Anyway.
Art: Oh, it drives me fucking crazy.
Austin: It drives me crazy. It drives me crazy. It’s frustrating. Anyway, yeah, you see that in the distance as you’re approaching, and, I don’t know, maybe it’s not obvious immediately which way Guilt is moving and which way Opposition is moving, but I do think that it’s fun to imagine, you know, one of them walking towards—either towards the nearest Principality thing, or towards the Garden of Fidelity, and then one of them walking away, or something, or trying to drag Leadership away.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Also the idea that Leadership is buried and only the obelisk is showing right now is really fun, because it’s like, you know, Leadership is not—
Keith: Swimming through the earth like…
Austin: And is not leading in this moment, but is being dragged. Where do we come in? Thisbe, your scene, you’re the spotlight.
Janine: Yeah. Um… I—so I picture them sort of having some sort of small ship vehicle to get here, and land…
Austin: Yeah, that makes sense. Some sort of like, cool hover vehicle.
Janine: Yeah, maybe like—you know, parking at a bit of a distance because Opposition’s probably a little bit weird to look at, and you’re just like, not sure…
Austin: Mhm. Uh-huh.
Janine: Like, so, a bit of a—maybe a bit of a walk.
Austin: Mhm.
Janine: Maybe a slightly longer walk than they expected, but they’re robots, they’ll be fine. I think Thisbe shouts at them, just straight up,
Janine (as Thisbe): I’m the bearer of Integrity. Speak with me.
Austin: Damn.
Jack: August Righteousness turning his head to, just like, “Shit, really? This is how we’re opening? Okay.” [chuckles]
Janine: [chuckles] Thisbe and August Righteousness have not hung, huh?
Austin: I don’t believe so.
Jack: No, this is—I mean, I know of your reputation.
Janine: Yeah.
Jack: I’ve seen a lot of reports, but yeah.
Austin: Yeah, I think that the—and as a reminder, this is not the Austin Walker GM hour, anybody can hop in here as the opposition, but I have an image of them kind of letting their ropes go slack on the obelisk, you know? As if to allow a moment of—for you to approach and address them. I almost said “who goes there,” and that’s not fucking anything, but…
Keith: [laughs] “Who goes there?”
Austin: Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
Janine: “Answer me these riddles three, and you shall have Divinity!”
[Keith laughs]
Dre: Ooh, good rhyme.
Sylvi: Christ.
Keith: Smart leadership.
Janine: We have Partial here, right?
Austin: We do have Partial here, yeah.
Janine: Okay, alright. Uh… God.
Janine (as Thisbe): The Garden is taking Delegates back. I have brought two of them with me. I want your help in protecting the Delegates as well as protecting you and your fellow Divines.
Austin: I’m gonna play Leadership, but I need someone to play Guilt, and someone to play Opposition.
Keith: I could do one of those.
Art: I would also like to do one of those, but I sort of don’t want to pick.
Keith: Yeah, I felt the same way.
Austin: Oh, boy. Let’s flip a coin.
Dre: Keith, you play Guilt, Art, you play Opposition.
Austin: Thank you, Dre.
Keith: Yeah, that was my—
Sylvi: Thank you, Dre.
Art: Wait, I’m sorry, which one am I?
Keith: That was my gut instinct, was to not play Opposition because of the—you’re Opposition. I’m Guilt.
Art: I’m Opposition, okay.
Keith: Because of the thing of not having too much control over the stuff that you’re directly involved with, that’s why I was gonna go with that. But good instincts, Dre. Thank you.
Austin: Thank you, Dre. Leadership does not respond.
Keith: Guilt also does not respond.
Art: Give me the lead-in again?
Janine: I said that the Delegates are being drawn into the Garden, where the Divines had escaped from, and that I wanted the help of the Divines to prevent that, and also to protect the Divines and Delegates as like, a group. I want some unification.
Art: Alright. I do think Opposition is the person to respond to this.
Art (as Opposition): We have no interest. Move along.
Janine (as Thisbe): No. I will not. This is important. If we do not act, if you do not act, there is no telling what the Garden of Fidelity will turn those Delegates into. It concerns all of you.
Austin: An eye opens on one of the kind of pyramid top sides of the obelisk, and simply looks at you. No words, but attention.
Janine: Listen, that’s not nothing.
Keith: Remind me where Guilt is in relation to the obelisk again?
Austin: They are both strapped to it, dragging it…
Keith: Forward.
Austin: Well, different directions.
Keith: Different directions, okay.
Austin: It’s not moving. Yeah.
Art (as Opposition): I will not be dragged into these politics again.
Janine (as Thisbe): You do not have a choice.
Art (as Opposition): Make me.
Janine (as Thisbe): If no effort is made at this point, there will be no chance for opposition later.
Keith (as Guilt): Please…
Austin: A second eye opens up, now looking at Guilt from the top of this obelisk.
Keith (as Guilt): Please, don’t argue. You’re making—it’s confusing.
Janine (as Thisbe): It isn’t confusing.
Austin: How does—oh, okay.
Keith (as Guilt): It is confusing. Don’t tell us we’re wrong. Why would you do that?
[Sylvi laughs]
Janine: [chuckles] I would love to know what August thinks of this.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: August has just been, you know, he’s been getting, like, increasingly sour, or increasingly agitated. He’s been, you know, first he was sort of gently tapping the cane of his staff on the ground, and now he’s sort of like, grinding it into a hole in the desert sand of the Afflicted Lands, he’s sort of digging a little hole with this cane.
Keith (as Guilt): I can hear that. It’s so loud. Stop that.
Jack (as August): Be quiet.
Keith (as Guilt): Stop—oh my god…
Jack (as August): Shut up. You would abandon us at this point? Okay, I understand what you’ve been through, but you would look at your children suffering? You would look at your children being torn away to create shattered ruins of the things that you hold closest to yourself, and you would abandon us in that moment? We are slivers of you, and we have—
Keith (as Guilt): We are slivers of us.
Janine: Damn.
Jack (as August): We have the courage to act where you don’t?
Keith (as Guilt): I don’t have courage.
Austin (as Partial): How much time do you need?
Keith (as Guilt): Don’t offer.
Austin (as Partial): How much time do you need?
Janine (as Thisbe): Time?
Austin (as Partial): I don’t know if they remember me. I don’t look like I used to, and I wasn’t—I didn’t go through what they went through, but… How much time do you need before we should expect you to…
Keith (as Guilt): Don’t make a commitment. You’ll break it.
Austin (as Partial): No, you can—a loose commitment. How much time do you need before we should come calling again?
Keith (as Guilt): You can’t make an appointment.
Janine: What does that mean?
Jack: This is Partial Palisade talking to the Divines, right?
Austin: Mhm.
Jack: Yeah.
Janine: Oh, okay. I thought this was Leadership.
Austin: No, this is Partial. Sorry.
Janine: I was like, huh?
Austin: No, this is Partial. Leadership is not speaking.
Keith: I now hear that it was Partial.
Austin: Yeah, apologies.
Keith: I’m not changing what I said, though.
Austin: Yeah, yeah.
Keith: I think it still works.
Austin: I think it’s still appropriate, yeah.
Jack (as August): Partial, this is a lost cause.
Janine (as Thisbe): We don’t have time.
Austin (as Partial): There’s nothing but. The scale…
Keith (as Guilt): It’s already been said, there’s no time.
Austin (as Partial): No, that’s not true.
Art (as Opposition): They do not deserve our help.
Jack (as August): [muttering] “They do not deserve…” [sighs]
Jack: August turns and is like, pacing back towards the ship and then back towards the group again.
Keith (as Guilt): It’s so loud.
Austin (as Partial): How can we help? You’re walking in different directions. Can we help one of you move it the way you want to go? Or either of you want to rest while we pick up the slack, or, um…
Keith (as Guilt): Help me. I can’t make it—I can’t do it on my own. Help me.
Austin (as Partial): Yeah, I can…
Austin: And like, begins to walk towards you. Which, of course, you stay gigantic as Opposition from the perspective of Palisade shrinks.
Keith: Mhm.
Austin (as Partial): I don’t know how I’m gonna help you, but…
Keith (as Guilt): Just grab the chain. Just pull.
Austin: It’s not doing anything. Leadership opens another eye here, this time facing—this is the third one, so it’s facing Opposition. As if to put a spotlight on you, as if to say, how do you respond to this new interloper?
[pause]
Keith (as Guilt): More help. I need more help.
Jack: Thisbe, is Integrity pulling you in a particular direction here, do you think?
Austin: Great question.
Janine: I don’t know—I’ll be honest, I don’t have a great—I have a solid grasp of Thisbe with Integrity, but I don’t have a solid grasp of Integrity on its own. I can say that I do have a very strong feeling about what Thisbe wants to do.
Jack: What does Thisbe want to do?
Janine: Thisbe wants to cut the chains.
Jack: Damn. The…
Janine: Yeah, just like…
Austin: Yeah, a little Gordian Knot situation.
Janine: Yeah. Enough of this bullshit, like…
Austin: Mhm. I think that’s Integrity—I think Integrity supports that at this point.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: I think that that’s a classic—that’s a classic Integrity move. That’s a classic in the era of Sokrates Integrity ass move. Just cut the chains, you know?
Janine: Mhm.
Jack: Pull to the thing you believe, you know.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah. Do you do that? Is that—does Thisbe attempt this?
Janine: I think if Partial tries to help and it sort of does basically nothing—
Austin: Nothing’s happening, yeah.
Janine: Thisbe, you know, I don’t think she feels the impatience and righteousness of August Righteousness, but I think there is a sense of just like, “We don’t have time for this, and I am prepared to scour this place for every single Divine, but I would prefer not to.”
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: And with that, there’s a… yeah.
Austin: There’s a good—yeah. There’s a good visual mapping here of like, Partial and August doing the same thing that Guilt and Opposition are doing, [Janine: Yes.] like one is going in the direction of them, one is going the other direction, one is being pissed and like, “No, we’re not gonna help,” the other one is—and then you just kind of cutting through all of that is very fun. This feels like a dice roll to me.
Janine: Yeah.
[2:28:12]
Austin: Which is like, how does this—does this—is this going—less “will you cut the chains,” more “what does that affect?”
Jack: What happens? Yeah.
Austin: Yeah, what happens, exactly.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: So, opposition starts with three. They get one for there being a trouble at 3, so that goes up to four, and then are there relevant burdens or obstacles? What are your obstacles?
Keith: I think so.
Janine: “Some Divines and their shards are antagonistic, evil, or dangerous.”
Austin: Uh-huh.
Janine: And “Thisbe is an outsider; why should she be the one to do this?”
Austin: [laughs] Oh, this is bad. Those both seem relevant to me. Is it fair to say?
Janine: Yeah…
Keith: Yeah.
Janine: Those are both pretty relevant…
Jack: More the—
Janine: And I have no boons, and no mastered obstacles, and no relevant relationship.
Austin: Oh, you didn’t bring either—right, you didn’t bring… Cori would have been the one to bring for the relationship boost. You could just roll good. Or we could figure out—let’s see how rolls go, I guess.
Sylvi: You just roll good.
Keith: [laughs] Combine roll good with roll bad, is the real—that’s the tricky bit.
Austin: Right. I have to roll bad. And then maybe cheat good, or whatever. Or not cheat. Weakness good.
Keith: Yeah.
Janine: Mhm.
Keith: Lash out.
Austin: Alright, I’m gonna roll.
Janine: Okay.
Austin: Random side.
Keith: Oof.
Austin: I mean, yeah, this is…
Janine: Oh my god.
Austin: Okay.
Jack: Oh. Okay. That could have gone a lot worse.
Janine: No…
Austin: Woah, what happened? Oh, you only rolled one, huh? You only rolled the first—
Janine: I rolled each of—wait, did you roll all of them?
Austin: Yeah, you roll all of them.
Jack: Oh, shit.
Janine: Oh, no, you rolled all the black ones, and then I rolled…
Keith: A 1 and then a 2.
Austin: A 1 and then a 2.
Janine: Yeah. A 1 and a 2.
Keith: It looked like a good roll because one of them was on a good roll, and you rolled one die and the other one stayed on a 5 or a 6 or whatever, yeah.
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: Alright, well, I got a 6, 5, 4. You got a 2, 1. So we gotta figure out some weaknesses here.
Keith: It feels like the classic combo of cheat and lash out to me.
Austin: What’s your chosen weakness?
Janine: Cheat.
Dre: Classic.
Austin: Okay. Which is reroll any of your own dice.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: Which, also, add a die, because it’s your weakness, it’s your chosen weakness. What’s cheating—well, I guess, do you want to do that, and then also…
Janine: Wait, it adds an extra die, or I get to reroll two?
Austin: You get to—because it’s your chosen one, you get another one to roll.
Janine: Okay.
Keith: So when you reroll, you’ll reroll three.
Austin: Yeah, you’ll reroll all three of those at once.
Janine: Cool. I love that.
Austin: Yeah. You’ll still only get to place two, but you get to reroll all three of them. I mean, reroll two, and then roll the third.
[pause]
Austin: Alright, that’s better.
Janine: It’s better.
Jack: It’s a 3, 4, and a 2.
Austin: Yeah. Then you could—so that, sorry, we should have been very clear about that. That gives you one misfortune, so you have to fill in a misfortune dot. And then you could—I guess with this, what could you do? You could block out the 4—oof, this is still bad.
Janine: It’s still bad.
Austin: You don’t have a win here.
Jack: You could do it again. You could do another weakness.
Austin: Or you could lash out and make me reroll the high dice.
Janine: I’m kind of wondering if lash out is smarter, or flee.
Austin: Ignore all—yeah, that’s actually not so bad.
Keith: Well, then flee is still—you’ll still lose on the 6.
Sylvi: Right.
Austin: Yeah, but that’s one loss…
Sylvi: It’s just, 6s are like a big loss.
Austin: Oh, I guess the thing you—yeah, 6 is a huge loss.
Keith: So basically, the gamble is should you flee and take the 6 loss, and tie on the 4, or make Austin reroll and chance two out of two dice that he will not roll a 6 again. Which has been a bad bet so far, but…
Janine: Yeah, I think—I see the value to lash out. I think lash out is also kind of what Thisbe is already doing. [chuckles]
Austin: Is—yeah, and I’m gonna ask you to narrate what cheating and lashing out looks like.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: And you’re right, it is kind of already that. So, should I only—I should reroll, presumably, the 6, 5, 4? Or just the 6, 5?
Keith: I think just the 6, 5, because we’ve already got the tie on the 4.
Art: Well, the 4—you should reroll the 4, but if the 4 rerolls higher, it’s gonna feel worse.
[Austin laughs]
Keith: Right.
Janine: I would rather keep the 4.
Art: See, that’s what I’m saying.
Janine: Yeah.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Alright. So just reroll the 6, 5.
Janine: Yeah.
Keith: Please. And please do bad.
Austin: I did not do bad.
Keith: No. Well, it’s better.
Janine: Well, one of them is better.
Dre: Jesus christ.
Austin: I got a 6 and a 3.
Keith: That’s the exact combo that fleeing would have been, basically.
Austin: Well, yeah.
Art: Yeah, it’s the same as fleeing.
Austin: You could—okay, so it does open an opportunity here, which is the—it’s the Keith option from last time, [Keith: Right.] which is you could either, right now, lose the 6 and tie the 4, 3, so you’d get the doom outcome, which is bad, and then you wouldn’t have any wins. Or you could take the 6, 4 loss and that—which, 6 again is doom, 4 is exhaust one relationship, but then you could get the win on 4, forming a new relationship. And the reason I say that that’s an option is as long as you win one thing, you get to decide if it was a win or a loss overall as a scene, narratively speaking.
Keith: Yeah.
Janine: Yeah…
Austin: Now, maybe—
Keith: Can I add something to that?
Austin: Please.
Keith: So, the counter to this—so it would be great to win the scene, I will not—again, I valued winning the scene high enough to take two 6 losses.
Austin: That’s why I called it the Keith maneuver, yeah.
Keith: So totally, you know, not ideologically opposed to this, but the consequences of two 6s, which, really bad, don’t make you exhaust your second relationship, and those relationships are key to rolling well in the future.
Austin: That’s true.
Keith: So if you have zero exhausted relationships, then you’re dooming yourself, basically, to low dice rolls for your next two scenes. Wait, sorry, Thisbe, have you already had a scene?
Austin: Well, no, because we’re about to get—we are about to get an interlude after Levi’s turn—
Keith: Oh, interlude, right, yeah.
Austin: Which there is a chance that you could end up—I mean, I guess there isn’t, because…
Keith: Back to square one, best case scenario.
Austin: Yeah, yeah.
Jack: Oh, you do need to mark another misfortune.
Austin: You do have to mark a second misfortune, yeah.
Keith: I just wanted to add the context that exhausting a relationship makes future turns really difficult.
Austin: You’re a hundred percent right. You’re a hundred percent right. Because it means you couldn’t have Cori in a scene in order to get that bonus die, yeah.
Keith: Right. I may have taken those two 6s, but I still have Brnine as a die that I can use.
Austin: Also, I actually don’t remember if you did end up—did you end up taking those two 6s, or did we just discuss it? You did end up doing it, huh?
Keith: Sure did, yeah.
Austin: Yeah, that’s why we drew on the map, I guess.
Keith: That’s why these Divines are here.
Austin: Yeah, yeah. I drew the obelisk of Leadership here, by the way, partly because that’s still—we’re only supposed to draw on two 6s, two bad 6s or two good 6s—or maybe it’s one good 6, I don’t remember—but we didn’t really finish drawing in your double bad 6, the Afflicted Lands, the Divines out there, [Keith: Right.] so I felt like that was still part of that in some ways. Anyway, Janine. [chuckles] How bad is it?
Janine: Uh-huh. Um… So, wait, I have a second option. No, wait, can—did we discuss what happens if I use my 4 and my 3 and then menace?
Austin: You can’t cheat three—you can’t weakness three times, I believe.
Janine: Okay.
Austin: You can only weakness twice. That’s—I believe that that is correct. But I’ll double- check it.
Keith: I support both of these. You know, I did release these Divines, I do want to see something happen with that positively. I just don’t want to see you doomed on your next turn where you only have—it’s the same situation where you have no, you know, Brnine’s along, but there’s still no dice.
Janine: Yeah.
Keith: Or wait, no, not Brnine. Cori.
Janine: Cori.
Austin: Cori, yeah. Da-da-da… Section sides, da-da-da… Ooh, this is a tough one.
Janine: Yeah. Yeah…
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: It’s tempting to form a new relationship, but I don’t know.
Austin: And get the narrative—open the door to the narrative win. You could theoretically do that one and then still say you didn’t succeed here, but I think that would be a waste. I think you should—if you did take the win on the 4, you should, at that point, you know?
Janine: Yeah. Okay, so that would involve putting the 4 on 3, and then eating the…
Austin: The 6 and the 4, which is rough.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah. Exactly that.
Janine: But an exhausted relationship is still a relationship on the board, it’s just exhausted.
Austin: It’s just exhausted. Yeah, but you can’t—you can’t add a…
Keith: Get a benefit, yeah, can’t add a die.
Austin: It can’t be relevant, yes. It has to be an unexhausted relationship in order for it to…
Janine: Yeah, but you can un-exhaust it.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: You totally could, yep.
Keith: Yeah, the chance is like—
Janine: Which is a thing that is separate from creating a new relationship.
Austin: That is correct, I believe. You’ve placed the—did you place these, Janine?
Janine: Yes.
Austin: Are you committing?
Keith: Yeah.
Janine: I think so.
Keith: Looks good. Looks good to me.
Austin: Alright. You begin by narrating your victories, starting with the lowest dice, and continue to the highest. So narrate your win, your 4 over the 3.
Janine: I’m conflicted on if I want a relationship with Leadership or August.
Austin: Both are good. August will probably be in more scenes.
Janine: Yeah. That’s the thing, right?
Austin: Mhm.
Janine: Um… I think maybe I want a relationship with August. Just in terms of like, counteracting the dice situation.
Austin: Mhm. Totally. What does—what happens? What’s the thing that happens? What’s August see that kind of leads to this relationship? How are you cutting these chains?
Janine: Um… I think… God, I had like—I had electric hands or some shit, right? [laughs]
Austin: You did have electric hands. You do have Integrity, which, like, further enhances you.
Janine: I wonder if it’s just like a fuckin’, like, just like arc welding the chains open.
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: Just some, like, high-intensity electric shit melting the metal, and just ripping it.
Austin: We’ve never seen Integrity become—Thisbe has not had the old—and remind me if I’m wrong about this, maybe, Keith, if you remember, maybe you don’t remember, actually, maybe this wasn’t a Keith thing, maybe this was a Sylvi or Dre thing by the time it happened. Didn’t Sokrates as Integrity end up having wings?
Sylvi: I think so. I’m pretty sure early on…
Dre: That sounds right.
Sylvi: I remember doing some sort of space fight where they were flying around.
Keith: I don’t give characters wings, so, I don’t think it was me.
Sylvi: I frequently do.
Austin: Yeah, and I think Integrity was post-your Sokrates play. I think it was…
Sylvi: Yeah, that was a faction game.
Austin: A faction—yeah.
Sylvi: The Sokrates–Integrity stuff was faction game.
Austin: And it was you, I’m pretty sure, Sylvi.
Sylvi: I do—I’m pretty sure, yeah.
Austin: Because we talked a lot about Cronenberg-esque technological body…
Sylvi: Yeah.
Dre: That’s not me.
Jack: Sounds like Sylvi.
Austin: Yeah, that sounded like Sylvi to me.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Dre: [dry] That’d be my Sylvi!
Austin: I’m asking this only because Thisbe getting cool wings might be an option, and I wanted to say that out loud before we moved on, you know?
Sylvi: I mean…
Janine: Okay, so what am I narrating here?
Austin: You’re narrating that you succeeded—sorry, you’re narrating the 4, which is forming a new relationship, but it’s what are you doing that—what does the action of you breaking these chains look like in such a way that what we can do is kind of relate it back to your new August relationship? Which is why I framed it as what does August Righteousness see that leads you to have a relationship with him?
Janine: I think this is extremely dangerous.
Austin: Mhm.
Janine: Generally just like, being a robot—a relatively big robot, but nevertheless—and just like, hands on fucking with Divines, [Austin: Yeah.] [chuckles] that’s not usually how you go about it. But I think it’s a good display of, like, Thisbe is not just performing some sort of thing that she was told to do or whatever.
Austin: Right.
Janine: This is belief, and this is like, “I am going to put myself on the line because I believe that we need to do something.”
Austin: Are they, like, swinging at you? Are they trying to prevent you from doing this? Are they just continuing to try to drag the chains away as you break them? I think both are cool images, I just—you know, you’re narrating.
Janine: I imagine Guilt is like cowering more, but Opposition is like…
Austin: Uh-huh.
[Keith starts]
Janine: Who was gonna—someone was gonna say something?
Keith: Yeah, I think, you know, this is—I don’t want to, this is your narration, but…
Austin: It is, yeah.
Keith: I would have—if this was a scene, I would have played Guilt as, like, screaming angry about this.
Austin: But not doing anything.
Keith: Like, belittling, belligerent…
Austin: Uh-huh. Well, again, except that this is going to be a success, right?
Keith: Yeah. I know, can’t stop it, but…
Austin: Right, right.
Keith: I can be mad and angry about it.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: Mhm.
Janine: Yeah, I think this is a thing where, like, easier to do on Guilt’s side than on Opposition’s side.
Austin: Are we in full quick time event on Opposition’s side running up the—I guess you’re not, because Opposition’s small for you. What this looks like for other people is wild. [chuckles]
Keith: Yeah.
Janine: Yeah, this is—[chuckles]
Keith: Yeah, no one can tell how big Opposition is. Opposition doesn’t have a canonical size.
Austin: Love a Divine.
Janine: Can Opposition hit?
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Opposition can hit, yeah.
Sylvi: Woah.
Janine: What’s Opposition’s hitbox like, is I guess the question here.
Sylvi: Can we pull up Opposition’s Dustloop page?
Austin: Yeah, I’ll pull up the Dustloop real quick. I think it’s—
Keith: I think it has to be what you see.
Austin: What you are, yeah. It is that for you. Which is silly and weird, but…
Keith: But then if—yeah, it is weird.
Austin: Twilight Mirage.
Keith: If Guilt were to try to throw a punch, the hitbox would be different. There would be a punch that doesn’t look like it connects, and then…
Jack: Oh, yeah.
Austin: But does. Yeah.
Keith: You know what I mean? But does, yeah.
Austin: Yeah. A hundred percent. So yeah, I think this is like a—in my mind, this is like a cool chain fight, you know? Like, using the chain to sweep at you as you’re trying to break it.
Janine: Yeah. Sick.
Dre: Hit the button, Keith.
Keith: Hit the button? Oh. [laughs]
Austin: Oh, yeah, can you hit the—
Dre: Can you hit Chain Bastard?
Austin: Thank you. Yeah!
Sylvi: Yeah.
Dre: Listen to Media Club Plus.
Austin: The name of the song is Chain Bastard. Everybody should listen to Media Club—
Janine: Isn’t the titular chain bastard a child?
Keith: Yes.
Jack: Yeah.
Janine: Okay.
Austin: Legally a child, correct. I believe Kurapika is 16?
Dre: Yeah. Anime age rules, you know?
Janine: That’s a child.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: I think by the time that arc happens, I think that Kurapika’s 18. Because he’s 17 in the first one.
Janine: That’s still kind of a child.
Austin: [chuckles] Still a child.
Dre: That’s—yeah.
Keith: Well, someone said “legally a child”.
Janine: We’re recording this days after the Kendrick drops. That’s a child.
Austin: Uh-huh. That’s a child.
Dre: Jesus christ.
Keith: Look, someone said “legally”!
Janine: Anyway.
Austin: You break the chain.
Janine: Hell yeah.
Austin: So that is the—tell me what the broader success here is, because the success was getting them to help you save the Delegates, right?
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: Presumably, Leadership responds to this in some way, question mark?
Janine: Yeah, I think for me the success here is getting Leadership’s attention in a way of, like, Leadership—being recognized by Leadership when Leadership is in a sort of passive state isn’t nothing.
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: I think having the backing of Leadership is incredibly powerful.
Austin: Right. Right, is this, like, August Righteousness looking back and seeing, now from a distance, back of the hover vehicle or whatever—
Janine: [gasps] Oh! Oh! Oh! I know what it is!
Austin: Yes. Uh-huh.
Janine: It’s at the very—[laughs] at the last link being broken on Opposition’s chain, and Opposition’s, like, using that newly freed chain to, like, swing extra hard.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Janine: Leadership tilts, and the chain wraps around the obelisk, and maybe crunches into the crystal a little bit, [Austin: Ooh.] but then the chain breaks instead of the crystal.
Austin: Oh, that’s very fun.
Jack: Oh, yeah.
Sylvi: That rules.
Janine: Anime.
Austin: And then Leadership gets out of the fucking dirt.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: And like, the ground underneath you shakes, and this big, you know, turtle-shelled Divine stands up, you know? And begins walking back towards the Garden of Fidelity, the big hole in the Caldera Stretch, and is going to presumably begin leading people—trying to be Leadership again in some way, in some capacity, whatever has been, you know, whatever has been slivered away finding, you know, synonyms for whatever has gone missing inside of itself to still serve that role, which is fun.
Janine: Time to form a crusade, but it’s like a reverse crusade.
Austin: A reverse crusade.
Janine: Because it’s all gods in the crusade, and then they’re going towards the children.
Austin: I see. Mhm.
Dre: Oh.
Keith: Ooh.
Austin: So then, the opposition gets to narrate the negative outcomes. So first up is the negative 4, which is “a relationship gets exhausted.” Sylvi, I guess I’m most curious if you have a thought on this. I guess, actually, I don’t know that. Is it the Cori relationship that gets exhausted, or is it whatever the new August one is getting exhausted?
Jack: Oh, god.
Austin: Janine?
Janine: I think it has to be the Cori one.
Austin: Okay.
Janine: Just because looking at this arc, I think Cori and Thisbe are on slightly different trajectories.
Sylvi: A little bit.
Austin: Sure, yeah.
Janine: And the August one might be a little bit more smart to keep around.
Austin: Mhm.
Keith: Does that mean—so the Cori relationship is “Cori’s been poisoned by conflict, but she is not beyond saving.” Does that mean that this event—
Sylvi: [chuckling] She’s beyond saving.
Keith: —leads you to believe that Cori is beyond saving?
Janine: No, I think it means that like, it’s not my job to save Cori.
Keith: It’s not your job? Okay.
Austin: That’s interesting.
Janine: Like, Cori is an adult, and like, I don’t think she’s on the right track, but I got other stuff to do.
Keith: Busy. Sorry, busy.
[Sylvi laughs]
Janine: I mean, you know. Thisbe isn’t—it’s not busy, it’s just like, no, it isn’t my place.
Sylvi: I think you’re right. Like, I think it’s a good angle. I just think it’s really funny for Thisbe to be like, “I don’t got the time.”
Dre: Yeah. This is what your dead rock friend is for.
Austin: Yeah. I mean, is this—
Janine: At some point, you have to believe that someone will figure themselves out eventually.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Austin: I mean…
Keith: What was that viral tweet about the, like, the August of our friendship, I don’t have the—you know, it’s been fulfilling, but…
Dre: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Keith: You know what I’m talking about?
Dre: It’s like the weird text message somebody gets from their friend, and their friend is like, “I don’t wanna be friends anymore.”
Keith: Yeah, like, this is what you… yeah.
Austin: Oh, I remember this. Yeah.
Keith: God, that was so funny.
Austin: Is this, like, a bunch of unanswered texts, or a bunch of unanswered, like, message—you’re busy, you know? Or is it the opposite? Is it the text—the text chain that has no new messages for like, a month, and it gets scrolled off your recents?
Janine: [chuckles] I don’t think Thisbe texts people, y’all, I’m sorry.
Austin: Okay, I guess that’s true.
Janine: I know it’s cute, but…
Austin: Okay, sorry, we need to visualize this in some way.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: So you tell me what it looks like.
Dre: Oh, your Snap streak got broken. That’s what happened. Thisbe Snapchats, right?
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: I think probably the way that this looks is that, like, when Thisbe goes back to sort of regroup after this outing and figure out, like, “Okay, Leadership is slowly plotting along the desert gathering stuff, what’s my next move?”
Austin: Uh-huh.
Janine: I think this is a thing of like, Thisbe probably checks in on Cori sometimes, like, we saw Thisbe, I think, checking in on Cori in the hospital and you know, bringing her plants and stuff, and I think there’s a degree of like, maybe she doesn’t interact with Cori, but she does, like, poke her head in to make sure she’s not, like, I don’t know, ascending or something. [chuckling] Whatever the fuck…
Sylvi: [chuckles] Setting fire to things.
Austin: Right, right. And this time that just doesn’t happen?
Janine: Setting fire to stuff, like, finding bad father figures.
Austin: Right, right.
Janine: And I think this time—
[Sylvi laughs]
Dre: Jesus christ.
Janine: [laughing] And I think this time—
Sylvi: An indirect shot at Figure.
Austin: I know. And Brnine.
Janine: I think this time Thisbe—yeah, yeah.
Sylvi: And Brnine. I mean, you know. I think that’s a fair assessment.
Janine: I think Thisbe just returns to the cargo bay and is just like—just like, needs to think. Needs to stew, needs to plan. And for the first time, that’s the priority.
Austin: Okay. “Doom: the spotlight player marks misfortune, then draws a new trouble from the deck.” And then we decide, the rest of the opposition decides, how that visualizes. So Janine, go ahead and draw a card.
Janine: Nine of clubs.
Austin: There we go, the nine of clubs, and clubs is unrest and revolution.
Jack: Ooh, dear.
Austin: Which also now tips up to 3, which means, as we’ve said before…
Janine: That is kind of what I did, though, so…
Austin: I mean, yeah, that’s one way—let’s—the opposition should describe what that—what’s that unrest and revolution ticking up look like? As a reminder, at 3, it means that—where is it? “The trouble is widespread—”
Keith: Everyone can tell you about this, but it doesn’t affect everyone?
Austin: No, this is “the trouble is widespread and causing significant harm.”
Keith: Oh, okay.
Austin: “War, starvation, rebellion, economic collapse.”
Keith: Yikes.
Austin: 2 is the one where it’s like, eh. Some people don’t know about it.
Keith: Oh, okay, sure. Now, okay, so, remind me, Thisbe, about the very end of your thing. Leadership is headed towards the garden to start trying to help out?
Austin: To save the Delegate—we were pretty open about this. Yeah, like, this is going—
Keith: To save the Delegates. To stop the Delegates. Right. This is happening.
Austin: Yes. Fidelity was trying to, like, “Alright, fine, if I don’t have the Divines to make new Delegates, I’m going to make new Divines by…”
Keith: Out of the Delegates.
Austin: By recombining the Delegates, effectively, yeah. And then—
Keith: Like a tree cutting is the…
Austin: Yes. That was exactly what it was, right? Yeah.
Keith: Yeah. Gotta wrap it in soil and bury it.
Austin: Yeah, yeah. And so that does get, you know, we should say out loud—I mean, I’m guessing—Janine, this was a success. You did succeed at your goal, correct?
Janine: Yeah. The idea is that they aren’t just, like, solitarily walking over to get fucked over.
Austin: No, yeah.
Janine: They’re gonna gather along the way, and then…
Austin: Yeah. I imagine there’s like a—yeah, like a march of Divines, right?
Janine: Yeah. That’s why I evoked the crusades.
Austin: Yes. Yes. And at a certain point, the Delegates stop walking to the garden of Fidelity at the very least, and maybe some of them go towards the Divines, I don’t know.
Keith: Look, we’ve got a—we have a famous thing about when Divines fight.
Austin: That’s true. It goes great.
Keith: It goes great. They end it quick.
Austin: Yeah. Uh-huh.
Keith: Minimal splash damage.
Austin: And that’s the thing, is like, maybe it doesn’t even get all the way to a fight with Fidelity. Maybe it only gets to their presence under Leadership is enough to start countering the pull of Fidelity’s garden, right?
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: And then the new—that particular, you know, goal that had been put into place.
Keith: What is Fidelity’s team looking like? Like, who’s still here working with Fidelity?
Austin: Fidelity was tied to the… I almost said Crown of Glass, which is wrong.
Jack: The Fabreal Duchy.
Austin: The Fabreal Duchy.
Keith: The Fabreal Duchy.
Austin: The Fabreal Duchy, and therefore Kesh, effectively, but any of the Bilats, broadly.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: Though, perhaps now there’s also something else emerging with unrest and revolution ticking up, which we have in the past been associating with whatever this emerging power of Devotion and Future has been, you know?
Keith: Yeah. I wonder how these Divines sort of hook into Devotion and Future.
Austin: As a reminder, they don’t need to directly—
Keith: No. It would be nice.
Austin: The doom outcome does not necessarily have to tie one to one with the outcome of a scene. It can, you know? And it’s easy to imagine it affecting it only in the sense that like, this is such a big world-spanning problem that, you know, Delegates waking up suddenly miles from their—hundreds of miles from their homes having been, you know, brain-controlled towards the Garden of Fidelity are in a different, you know, they’re in a different headspace than they were before. Does that open them up to being manipulated in a different way? Does that close them off from—like, I don’t know. But it’s a big event, so you could imagine it indirectly tying into whatever fake Gur Sevraq and co. were doing, or it might just represent a new, you know, a new front in the war—not the literal war, but the kind of propaganda unrest and revolution war. You know?
Jack: Something that might be fun to touch on is Gentian and the crew of—Gentian’s crew, [Austin: Yeah.] who we haven’t really seen much recently, but they, you know, command the sort of eastern side of the planet. And I wonder whether or not they take this moment of, like, the Divines moving across—you know, is this a moment to pounce or to take action from Gentian in some way? We know that there’s more Kesh soldiers, there’s more Whitestar soldiers than we thought, but, you know, what if Nideo is now mounting an assault?
Austin: To me, that feels war and conflict.
Jack: That’s true. Yeah, you’re right. That’s true.
Austin: The version of it that feels unrest and revolution is some sort of open-armed “the Cause can’t protect you,” we’re, you know. Does Gentian make some sort of strange, you know, propagandistic play?
Janine: You said Genshin.
Austin: Isn’t that right?
Janine: Isn’t it Gentian?
Austin: Oh, it’s Gentian. Soft G, soft G.
Jack: [cross] I think it’s Gentian.
Keith: Genshin is a video game.
Art: Genshin’s the video game, we are legally distinct from them.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah, I’ve been looking at the hard G in my head. Yeah, Gentian. How does Gentian take advantage of this happening? Is there a world where—and maybe this is a question for you, Art—is there a world where Gentian tries to separate at this point from Kesh or from Whitestar? Is there a play that Gentian makes on being on the side of these Divines, you know? We already suggested the sort of crusade, you know, imagery. Is that a terrible doom?
Art: Yeah, it does seem like a flag.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: It’s also, Gentian might be the last remaining, like, great Divine on the—like, G, capital G, “Great”. Are there any sort of huge iconic-level Divines? I mean, there are iconic-level Divines to us as players, but in terms of—you know, something we have come back to more in the earlier seasons than the later seasons is how the presence of a Divine is like a—
Austin: Yeah. Shapes the world around it, yeah.
Jack: Shapes the world, and I think Gentian is the largest Divine openly left on the planet prior to the escape or the freedom of these…
Austin: Of these ones. There are ones that are very impactful in big ways. I think the Divine Resonance is distributed, and is not a big robot, right? And so doesn’t have that same effect. There’s, of course, the Divine You in City City, [chuckles] which we have not seen necessarily…
Jack: [chuckles] Less of a Divine and more of a 2000s British government project.
Austin: Yeah, uh-huh. More of a tourist trap that you can pay big money to get into. In terms of big—
Jack: Still counts.
Austin: Still counts. And you might be right. Someone is yelling at us because we’re forgetting something very obvious, but ain’t that how it goes?
Jack: I mean, Fealty is a Great Divine.
Austin: Fealty, yeah. I think Fealty, Crusade… you know, Integrity is small, but Integrity has this kind of historical weight to it. But yeah, big old giant “when two—when Divines fight, millions die.” It had been Fidelity—last time we saw that happen or almost happen was Fidelity and Fealty.
Jack: It was Crusade and Fealty.
Austin: Not Fidelity, Crusade and Fealty. Also, Fealty and Fidelity is a real fun pairing.
Jack: Yeah, ooh. Yeah, so, I mean, I don’t know. Art could speak to it, but yeah, I think my pitch would be Gentian making a kind of play—seeing Thisbe make a kind of play for the Divines and saying, you know, “but we’re your kin.”
Austin: Right, the fun knife twist here on it being a doom is the goal was “save the Delegates,” which has been done, not “get the Divines on the side of the Cause.”
Keith: Right.
Art: Yeah, I’m also having trouble just squaring this as unrest, but I get it.
Austin: I mean, a question we should ask here is: is there something new emerging inside of—on Palisade and in the Twilight Mirage, where there has been a break from the Divine Principality as it stands, where Devotion, Future, Crusade, you know, maybe Resonance, I don’t know, want—want to build something new where they are trying…
Keith: Let’s get a legion of Divine monarchists.
Sylvi: God.
Austin: Right.
Keith: They’re so big and impressive and they definitely can protect us.
Austin: Right. Take the peop—we already have a—there’s already a sort of line on that, which was there was a type of, you know… In the Divine Principality, we’ve talked about there’s different types of religious belief, and one of the versions of Asterism is like, oh, the Divines are the true embodiment of the virtues of the state.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: This would go even further than that and be like, no, no, no, we don’t need a state, we just need the Divines.
Keith: And we can—it can even be a dark mirror to Janine’s goal, and be like, look, in order to get these guys operating at a hundred percent, we gotta feed all the Delegates back into them so that they really represent what they mean to represent.
Austin: The goal was to save the Delegates, so I don’t want to—we shouldn’t go that far. Right?
Keith: Oh, okay, yeah, that’s fair. That’s fair.
Austin: I won’t—now, will some Delegates—could some Delegates decide to join with them? I mean, again, August Righteousness’ group was called Reunion, and it was about re-meeting and deciding, potentially rejoining with their original, you know—
Keith: [cross] Yeah. Their version of maybe the—yeah.
Austin: —with the Divines. That was always vaguely metaphorical [Keith: Sure.] in the sense of, like, “You have ripped us from something bigger than us, and we are together,” and da-da-da-da-da. And now here’s Opposition in front of me. Do you—does Eclectic—you know, Eclectic isn’t part of Reunion, but imagine Righteousness was there. Does August—facing that, does August actually want to give…
Keith: Righteousness was there.
Austin: I know, well, I’m saying, in this—this is what I’m saying. Would Righteousness—would August, now seeing Righteousness here, say “I’m willing to, like, rejoin with this thing and become part of it?”
Keith: Right. “Open the briefcase, let me in.”
Austin: Right, open the briefcase, yeah, [chuckles] let me hop in that briefcase. Carry me out of here, you know?
[Keith laughs]
Austin: Is that even an available option? I don’t know, but probably, because Divines. Yeah, I kind of like the idea that—your pitch of new Divine monarchists is not bad in thinking about—
Keith: Thanks. [laughs]
Austin: I mean, it’s terrible, right? It’s like, we finally—we did it—we thought we already had our tradcaths, but now we have our dark monarchism, we have our dark reactionary-ism, it’s here.
Keith: We have a real—yeah, yeah. Let’s get a Mencius Moldbug in here.
Austin: That’s exactly it, uh-huh. In a way, the Divine Future is the Mencius Moldbug of Palisade, right? They’re truly, the neo-reactionary shit has been—
Keith: Yeah. Just as online.
Austin: [scoffs] Yeah, absolutely. I don’t know what the Dimes Square of Palisade is, but we have to destroy it immediately.
Sylvi: God.
Keith: Well, it’s in City City.
Austin: Oh, it’s City City. Of course it is. We are way too online right now, we have to eject.
[Keith laughs]
Sylvi: Yeah, I want to die.
Austin: Don’t worry about it. Yeah, I like this as a potential—like, the doom doesn’t actually—one doom doesn’t mean that we add anything new to the map, I believe, right? You would have to get two negative 6s on that.
Keith: I thought that it’s two if it’s a win, to add something to the map, but only one if it’s a loss.
Austin: Oh, maybe you’re right. Let me see.
Art: Well, it’s—the dice are currently covering the rules text on the…
Austin: Oh, I’m in the book. Let me finish—let me just—
Art: Well, I just moved it.
Austin: Yeah, you go ahead and move stuff. You can touch those dice.
Keith: Yeah, mark misfortune…
Art: “Mark misfortune, escalate a random trouble, and impact the map.”
Austin: And impact the map.
Keith: Yeah.
Dre: Oof.
Art: So, that seems like a great place to decide where this new horrible group of…
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: This is also appealing to settlers who came here [Austin: Yeah.] and have now been stranded, and are looking for an ideology that, you know, to a certain kind of person in the galaxy, in the galaxy of this story, a Divine is a thing to cling onto when it feels like you have been stranded, you know, thousands and thousands of miles from home.
Austin: Yeah.
Art: Yes, Jack, we’ve already shouted out the tradcaths.
[Keith and Jack laugh]
Art: You’re gilding this lily further…
Austin: Yeah, to underscore this in a real way, like, I’m gonna read from the book just so that we’re all on the same page, for people who might think we’re being a little big on what the doom could be. “The opposition then describes a major escalating event. This event might be related to the scene, but could also be a report of something unrelated happening in the world.” This is a major escalating event, right? The idea…
Keith: I mean, you know who’s a great Divine to rally around as the new king of the Divines? Is Leadership.
Austin: Is Leadership, right.
Sylvi: Oh…
[Dre hums]
Austin: God, the idea that Crusade joins up with Leadership, [Keith: Guilt.] and then is like—and Art, I can’t do this, but swears fealty to Leadership, you know?
Keith: Guilt is so important to Leadership, I think. That chain was important.
Art: Well, I mean, I think that there’s something there, right? That like, now cut off and stateless, [Austin: Right.] yeah, why wouldn’t… And presented with a self-described crusade, that’s really appealing.
Austin: Uh-huh. Yeah.
Jack: This is, for reasons that we don’t have to go into now, but can explore through the rest of the story, fucking tragic for August Righteousness.
Austin: It’s miserable.
Jack: Who is watching a Fabreal Duchy construct itself.
Janine: Yeah, I kind of feel like we’re getting further away from “help the Delegates” again.
Austin: It’s a—no, because we prevented them from being literally swallowed whole into this thing.
Janine: Yeah…
Austin: it just opened the opportunity for a big—the move from 2 to 3 is gigantic on these things.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: Like, unrest and revolution is now 3. The thing I actually really like is the splintering that’s happening, which is war and conflict is now pretty clearly about Kesh, and about Whitestar, the Whitestar Fleet. That’s the open warfare that we’re seeing. Maybe there is some open warfare with the new Divine kingdom? Let’s workshop that one.
Jack: Well, we could call them something like the Divine Collaborate or something, and…
Austin: Yeah, uh-huh. Autonomy Itself, maybe. And then, you know, that’s unrest and revolution, is this emerging new kingdom. And I don’t know what’s going on with Exanceaster Leap[2] continuing to hide out somewhere in City City, but not—that’s not war and conflict, right? Exanceaster Leap does not have a big military, so maybe that is health and spirit and wealth and resources or something, but I do like that that fracturing is happening, and the idea—I mean, part of this is like, the remnants of the Whitestar Fleet might not be allied with Nideo anymore here, or this new emerging kingdom.
Jack: No, because who’s gonna court martial them?
Austin: Right. Cool.
Jack: August Righteousness.
Art: Well, that was fun. That was a fun turn.
Austin: Yeah.
[Sylvi, Jack, and Dre chuckle]
Art: Lot of horrors made flesh on that turn.
Austin: Yeah. Yeah, does someone want to decide where the new Divine kingdom begins?
Keith: Um, maybe they take up the Fabreal Duchy.
Austin: Well, no, they probably don’t, because that’s still Kesh territory. So it’s red. It’s one of these red places. Temple of the Threshold, Aram’s Gate, City City is technically in the red…
Dre: Oh, man.
Austin: But it’s—we do know Exanceaster March is hiding out there. Though would probably welcome them.
Keith: You can see a god from Dimes Square.
Austin: Cadent’s Reach.
Art: The Divine City City.
Austin: The Divine City City.
Art: The Holy City City.
Austin: [chuckles] Oh my god.
Art: The Vatican City City.
Austin: [cross] The Vatican City City? [laughing] I was going the same place.
[Keith laughs]
Sylvi: The Vatican Vatican.
Keith: Vatican Vatican City City.
Austin: The Vatican Vatican City City.
Art: Vatican Vatican City City.
Austin: Yeah, the Holy See is here. The “C” in “holy see” stands for City.
[Keith laughs]
Jack: Temple of the Threshold is fun, in part because, at least not explicitly, Future is not really involved with this Divine kingdom right now, and the idea of Future, you know, pissing off into the Mirage to start a propaganda empire and then a Divine kingdom immediately…
Austin: Oh, sorry, I think that they are connected. I think that’s what we’re—that’s part of what I was suggesting, right? Is like, if the—if Future, Devotion, and—
Jack: Oh, right, yes sorry.
Austin: —and Crusade can recognize that this is a moment of opportunity for building something new, which they were already talking about as part of their propaganda campaign, right?
Keith: Temple of the Threshold?
Jack: That’s the one I just pitched.
Austin: That’s what—yeah, Jack was pitching.
Keith: Oh, sorry, Jack.
Austin: Yeah, that makes sense. We’ve seen it, it’s where Figure was killed, that’s a very powerful place narratively.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Oof.
Keith: It’s also, like, where all the Future people are.
Austin: Yeah. It’s the center of the world. Yeah. Mhm.
Keith: I was looking at the map, sorry, Jack.
Jack: [chuckles] No, it’s okay.
Keith: Trying to see the red.
Art: Alright, but we’re really turning down an awful lot of fun stuff.
Austin: In the Divine City City.
Art: Vatican City City.
Austin: Yeah, I know.
Keith: I agree.
Austin: It can be—I mean, it’s still in the red. It’s still Nideo territory, which makes it part of this, you know?
Keith: Remind me about New Oath?
Austin: New Oath is not Nideo. New Oath is where Fealty and Veronique’s territory is. It’s pink.
Keith: Oh, it’s a different red. It’s a pink, right, okay.
Austin: Yeah, it’s a pink. And, you know, as part of this, it’s like, no open hostilities against the Cause outside of “don’t come into our places,” but we’re not—they’re not going into the Shale Belt, right? They’re not going into the Bontive Valley. They’re building something new inside of the red territory. And saying, if you’re one of the arriving settlers who got stranded here, or if you’re someone in the Twilight Mirage who thinks that Divines should be at the head of the table again, you know? Come here.
Keith: It’s been too long.
Austin: It’s been too long. Who’s General Mourning, anyway?
Keith: Was it really so great not having them in charge? I mean…
Austin: Right?
[music outro - “See All Of This” by Jack de Quidt]
[1] [1:35:45] Spelling of the following character names unknown.
[2] Misspeech of “Exanceaster March”.