PALISADE 54: A Palette of Colors Pt. 9
Transcriber: vesta
[music intro - “See All Of This” by Jack de Quidt begins]
Jack: I'm going to the Temple of the Threshold, the heart of the gestalt. And he opens his briefcase. And inside his briefcase is a list of the Nidean Divines that he could pull together, as well as a list of Nidean officers.
Austin (as Bright Mercy): We'll take this into consideration.
Jack (as August): You'll take this into consideration today.
Austin (as Bright Mercy): You would rush us on carving away part of who we are, even given our history?
Jack (as August): I don't care too much about these people's capacity for change. I care about making right what was done to me. What was done to my other brothers and sisters. Very little patience for talking through slow change.
Austin: As you get close, the sound begins to muffle. Fog descends, and you can still see it in the distance, the shape of it as it walks in circles. What does the reaching out look like?
Janine: I think much like going to the Lantern, there's a degree to which it happens up on the approach. Because there's a desire to not take certain kinds of things by surprise?
I think much like going to the lantern, there's a degree to which it happens upon the approach. Because there is a desire to not take certain kinds of things by surprise. I think we need an Affliction who will hear us out. That is Dust, who has sort of, who has interfaced a little bit with Cori through this sort of sanctuary. And then it is also the Chimeric Cadent, who, from my limited understanding, has you know, has this long history of like, protecting Divines who want out.
They have to leave because it's not safe for them to be there while this is happening.
Art: I should have used those two fortune to destroy Arbit and become the Queen in Crystal.
Austin: Incredibly, Clementine has left the Crown of Glass on Palisade to go to the planet Crown, which was formed by the Crown of Glass, the culture of the Twilight Mirage, where Arbit is. And another thing that we said at the time, which is fun, is a city slowly grew around it. And it's specifically a city of other people who build their own Divines. It's that culture which is what allows Arbit to continue because like, this culture of Divine-makers has the skills to maintain Arbit over time.
Art: Clem is surprised by the resistance. Clem always thinks that this is gonna be no problem. And of course it is a problem. But she's got a sick dragon. And just, what do we say this dragon shoots?
Jack: Oh, ichor?
Austin: Yeah, a sort of burning ichor.
Art: And it clogs and then degrades—
Austin: Right.
Art: Arbit, and Arbit collapses.
[music ends]
Austin: I think we have two scenes left? Is that correct?
Sylvi: I think so. I know I have my left.
Ali: It sure is.
Austin: It is Brnine and Cori.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Ali: Uh huh.
Austin: Who is—?
Austin: The dynamic duo!
Ali: Yeah! Uh huh, let's power up our scenes.
Art: Are you guys gonna share a scene?
[Ali chuckles]
Sylvi: No! But like Brnine's probably gonna be in mine.
Ali: Oooh, okay!
Austin: Okay, that’s fun.
Ali: I thought we had similar scenes in that, once our scenes are over, we're not here anymore.
Sylvi: Yeah, that is true.
Ali: Because of—the thing. So maybe— [chuckles]
Sylvi: We gotta figure out the order of operations here.
Austin: Yeah, talk through them a little bit.
Ali: [giggles] I can go, I can go. [Austin: Okay.] We can have a—there could be a goodbye. But yeah, I, so—hi. This is, hello. Welcome to my scene.
Austin: Oh? Hello!
Keith: Thank you for having me.
[Ali wheezes]
Art: Oh!
Dre: It's very cozy.
Austin: Yeah!
Art: No one's welcomed me in any of the other scenes!
Ali: I know, this is my last opportunity.
Austin: Brnine does it different.
[Ali chuckles]
Sylvi: Ain't that the truth?
Art: Built different.
Ali: You know…
Keith: Are these for everyone?
[Ali and Austin chuckle]
Austin: Shoes on or off? Should I—by the door? Okay.
[Sylvi laughs]
Ali: So I—my goal—my goal is to connect to the wider network of Millennium Break. [Austin: Yeah.] And so far, I set up things on Palisade in a way that I felt like would be good if I left. And then I found a big catapult [Austin: Yeah!] that can bring me outside.
Austin: Mhm.
Ali: I did have a question that—I don't know if this is a good idea, but I did have this question—is the Combustor inside of the Twilight Mirage now?
Austin: Yeah, the sun is here. Phrygian's Combustor is here, uh huh.
Ali: Okay.
Sylvi: Is that what we're calling it now?
Austin: No, [Ali laughs] but the abandoned Stellar Combustor—
Sylvi: Yeah, sure.
Austin: The Stellar Combustor. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sylvi: I did picture Phrygian's Combustor in Dark Souls font on the screen.
[Austin, Dre, Ali chuckle]
Jack: The Combustor is in, but the gate—the Portcullis gate is out.
Austin: That is correct.
Jack: Yeah.
Ali: Okay, sure. But I—and maybe this is the wrong thing, because I don't know that the conundrum is like knowing where the Twilight Mirage—it was for a little bit, but then they found it.
Austin: It used to be that, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Ali: But I was sort of thinking of like, there's a way for Millennium Break to use that in the way that like, if you think of the Twilight Mirage as an ocean, and then that Combustor is like a glass bottle with an air tag in it?
Austin: That's like giving you like, a GPS signal, effectively.
Ali: Right! That like—
Austin: That's like, oh, here's the—
Ali: Right. That you could triangulate yourself back to [Austin: Sure.] getting to the Twilight Mirage if you needed to. But that doesn't really solve the in and out part.
Austin: It's the time bit that's so hard, right? Because you know where it is, you can get into it. It's just going to take you some unknowable amount of time to breach the kind of shore of the Twilight Mirage, depending on the size of your ship, and the—you know, how much you're carrying, and what speed you're going at, and all that other stuff that we've seen. Can sometimes take generations if it's a really big ship—
Jack: [cross] We’ve seen them do it.]
Austin: [cross] —and can otherwise take—say again?
Jack: We– we saw the— [Austin: Right.] We saw on screen a demonstration of it taking generations with the Earth Cult.
Austin: Yeah, with the NEH, exactly; during Twilight Mirage, exactly. So at other times we've seen it breach fairly—we've seen it go out fairly quickly, when Cori's crew presumably came, right? Though that was after Devotion's—the Cult of Devotion made it closer to Palisade and etc., but yeah, getting out at this point, not a problem between this catapult and that part you have down. It's the getting back that's the tough part, you know? And even I think, sending messages, I'd like the idea—I do think the idea that Phrygian could theo—if you could take over another different Stellar Combustor out there, Phrygian could—
Ali: Well, Phrygian did, right?
Austin: Well Phrygian shut down Authority, the Divine Authority, shut them down so they wouldn't blow up. But you didn't take over those facilities, you know? Like.
Ali: Oh, I get what you mean.
Austin: There's still space stations filled with Bilateral Intercession people, Stel Kesh soldiers, and if you could like have one out there, you could send a signal through Phrygian effectively to send like a message through, you know? You could have Phrygian be sort of the switchboard operator who's, you know, passing the network from outside the Mirage into the Mirage through that system. But that still doesn't help with the like, how do you get a person—how do you get people and equipment back and forth in a reasonable time? You know?
Ali: Mhm. Yeah. I, and it's tough to like, like a great goal for a scene would be for Brnine to figure that out? But it's like tough to do that when they're on Palisade, you know? So, um—
Austin: We can come in with you—we can do the farewell scene—you know, the farewell can be a short scene, you know, and then the actual thing that you're going to end up rolling for is setting something up on the outside if you have a cool idea, you know?
Ali: Yeah, sure. I mean, I was thinking it's funny because there was, there was a—it felt like there was a possibility of the end of Levi's scene [pronounced like lee-vye], uh, Levi [pronounced like levy], Levi— [panics]
Austin: Levi.
Ali: Why do I—! Janine! [panicked laughter]
Janine: Ha-ha!
Ali: [chuckling] At the end of Levi's scene, it would have been like Brnine and Jesset, like, you know, launch out of the place to keep Jesset from getting court-martialed.
Austin: That’s fun, yeah.
Ali: And I think that like having that as a cliffhanger and then instead it was like scene after scene of Brnine being in different meetings, right? [Austin: Right, right.] It was just that you had to go back and face the music in that way? Brnine could just be like, yeah, Jesset was working for me when they were being homicidal. It was fine.
Austin: I'm covering for him in this way. [Ali: Yeah.] [Ali chuckles] Yeah, uh huh. Yeah actually, we didn't talk about whatever happened to Jesset there, I guess like, is, is—did you—Jack, did you say there was no court-martial? I don't remember what you said as August about that.
Jack: Um, I said that I was uninterested in court-martialing Levi as like— [Austin: Levi, Right.] like, don't take a good soldier off the thing? I'm also uninterested in court-martialing Jesset because we can see pretty clearly that Motion was working some sort of, uh—or rather, it is more complicated—what is happening to Jesset is more complicated than simply, I'm going to steal Future and go completely off-piste, um, and I think that the process to untangling that complexity within a revolutionary organization, where again, Jesset is a capable soldier, is not to immediately put him under military trial.
Austin: Right.
Jack: Um, I think he is detained, but I think he's detained in like a, uh, like a, like a—I can picture like Mirage people trying to unpick bits of Motion that are still, you know, [Austin: Mhm, mhm.] entangled in Jesset. Whether or not they're succeeding is not, not up to us without the dice, but I think that's a different thing than Jesset in shackles in a dungeon next to Lucia.
Austin: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Ali: How do I get him undetained?
Jack: That's a good question!
Ali: [chuckles] I feel like I should be able to out-Gucci here in my, [chuckles] [Austin: Mmm.] in my final moments. Um, cause that feels like a real Gucci thing of being like, well, I'll protect the Blue Channel. Um.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: I can—I can speak to Motion’s—or rather, I can help untangle the effects of Motion on this person.
[Ali chuckles]
Austin: You can, Jack?
Jack: No, no, no. That's, that's me saying like, is that what Brnine—that's the Gucci perspective, right? Is it's like, oh, I can help untangle that.
Austin: Oh no—yeah.
Ali: Right. Or even just the shield of like, well, uh, Jesset was a part of Blue Channel. Um, I was aware of Jesset's actions. Uhh, they were killing Principality people anyway, so like, what's the problem? Um, you know. [laughs]
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: Yeah. I mean.
Austin: Let's—let's just, you know.
Jack: It's my authority.
Austin: Right. Get my boy free, like—
Ali: Mmm.
Jack: Yeah. That's a compelling case, especially if you're leaving, right? I mean—
Ali: Right. [chuckles] There's that too. Um, but yeah, I mean, I feel like the scene is probably—I, in my head, it's probably giving the Blue Channel to, uhh, Hunting?
Austin: Oh, damn.
Ali: And then recruiting—
Austin: Not taking it with you?
Ali: Yeah, I don't know. I don't think so.
Jack: Oh my god.
[Ali chuckles]
Jack: End of an era!
Austin: I imagine you're flying off on the Blue Channel, but what are you leaving with or on?
Ali: Yeah, that's a—that's, that's what makes that idea complicated. [laughs] Is how I should leave—
Austin: Oh, okay. You should probably have a spaceship.
Ali: There's other spaceships.
Austin: There are.
Ali: Uh huh.
Austin: We had a whole list of names for other spaceships we could come up with, you know? But—
Ali: Sure. Uh huh, exactly. Yeah. I don't know—but that was like a holdover from the fleeing idea that I still sort of like?
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: Um, but I do think there's probably like a—there's, there's probably, you know, the—the post on the Millennium Break forms that's like, “Looking for 10 people. Let's go. Let's see if you want to go. Let's go.”
Art: What are the other posts on the Millennium Break forms?
Austin: Oh that’s a—
Ali: Oh, you know, don't go to the Crown of Glass anymore, you’ll get killed.
Austin: The drink special isn't worth it, you know?
Ali: We need—we need thirty tomatoes. [chuckles] [Jack chuckles] That was one that we saw a lot during, [Austin: Mhm.] during the downtime.
Austin: We're very tomato focused to this season, so.
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: That's weird.
Jack: Um, I can just say off the top, that Kalar wants to leave.
Austin: Sure.
Jack: Kalar would sign—sign on.
Austin: It has been some amount of years at this point for—you know, at least—I don't know how many months this finale game has been? But it seems like a number of months. Take that number of months, multiply it by ten. That's how many months it's been outside. Right?
Art: Feels like that from inside too.
[Ali, Dre, Austin chuckle]
Austin: Sure does. Sure does. [Ali snorts] And so—and so like, Kalar has a family out there. [Jack: They’re all getting older.] Kalar’s kids are growing up. Yeah.
Jack: Kalar’s husband is getting older. [Austin: Yeah.] You know.
Austin: Yeah. And the fight is out there at this point too, to some degree, right?
Jack: Yes. And I think that there's an extent to which Kalar—we've heard him say, I am a revolutionary soldier. My job is where the front is, you know, where the commanders need me. That's where I'll go. But I think it's very different where it's like my husband and children are aging ten times faster than me.
Austin: Right. I guess another thing then—a question here is, do you put the question of how do we build a bridge back here to the Millennium Break forums also? Or do you just—is that just a Brnine original? Is that just a Brnine dilemma to solve? Or is there a degree of like, hey, can we all collab on this?
Ali: No, I think that Brnine would be a collaborator in that regard. [chuckles]
Austin: Oh?
Dre: Mmm!
Ali: I, you know. They built the messaging system, [Austin: Right, right.] so I think that they made good use of it, that is what I’ll say. [chuckles]
Austin: Yeah. Well, and I guess your goal is actually—you know I've been thinking about your goal as getting people and stuff back and forth, but it's actually just “Connect to the wider network of Millennium Break.” We could read network as the Strand network, and not the revolutionary network, you know?
Ali: Mhm.
Austin: But it does feel like—
Ali: It handicaps it a little bit. It feels like that should be—
Austin: It does undercut the strength of what it could be, yeah. [Ali: Yeah, uh huh.] Which is like, it would be sick if there was a way for Millennium Break—I think you've talked about this on recording, I think you've talked about it?—maybe not just privately, but like, it would be cool if Millennium Break had the kind of like, one route, quick route in and out of The Twilight Mirage as a way of like, hey, we have some folks who need to lay low for a while, or hey, the Millennium Break wants to send some supplies out to y'all to support you, and da-da-da-da-da. Like having that secured, you know, kind of highway special route, is a real material benefit to the greater anti-Principality movement beyond the Mirage, and it would be cool to have that.
Ali: Mhm.
Austin: Should we—are there people who have other ideas on how to build one of those in the Millennium Break or in the Cause? Because it's not just the Millennium Break presumably, right? Like I'm sure if—I don't think August Righteousness is this guy, but like if somebody else in the Cause had an idea for this, you would hear it. So, I'm looking at a list of NPCs and being like, I guess none of these people are really engineers like that, but still.
Ali: Right, I'm kind of the engineer.
Austin: It's kind of your deal.
Dre: Yeah.
[Ali chuckles]
Jack: I had a worms-based idea? But—
Austin: Huh?
Jack: You know, like a classic worms-based idea?
[Sylvi laughs]
Dre: Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.
Keith: Worms, like the little guys with the rockets and stuff?
Jack: Sort of.
Sylvi: [cross] The ones, the wriggling ones in the ground.
Jack: [cross] It's a bit like those, but they wriggle through the ground.
Austin: Ohhh.
Sylvi: Yeah yeah yeah.
Jack: They're like the ones with the rockets, but they don't have the rockets.
Austin: [cross] I see I see I see.
Sylvi: [cross] They love mud.
Keith: Oh, so not like Worms, the video game.
Jack: No, no, no. Worms in real life.
Sylvi: [cross] And not like, the dragon-like creature.
Janine: [cross] I feel like if they don’t have the rockets—they could have the rockets, they just haven't shown them yet.
Jack: That’s true—that's absolutely true.
Sylvi: Beware.
Jack: Yeah, I had had a sort of an idea for a—way back in Twilight Mirage, we saw [Austin: The fish.] fish that could be used to sort of communicate. And I had an idea for like—in the same way that seagulls follow fishing boats, or like follow a plough when it has dug up a field and all the worms are there, these sort of like creatures that rushed in and started eating the very meager edges of the Mirage when the Mirage bombs went off? And that is something that we could do?
But at the same time, you know, it's like you said, Ali, Brnine is an engineer and is like a problem solver. And if you wanted to go for like, a more mechanical solution, or actually a solution that came once you had left. You know, that you did it from the other side of the door, as it were—I'm not tied to worms. I mean, lord knows we've got stuff recorded [Art laughs] for Friends at the Table—
Sylvi: It would be really hard to! It’s very slimy.
Jack: It's very worms focused—it's already in the can.
Austin: That’s true. People won't know about the worm for like a year, Jack.
Jack: I'm just teasing worms.
Sylvi: They've been doing that dance for years, Austin.
Austin: You're right, you’re right.
Ali: A worm. I'm not going to know about this for months—anyway, I do like this idea. I think that there's like a—a barrier in my head where it doesn't feel like it's very reliable long term?
Jack: Oh, the worms? Yeah, that's true.
Ali: Yeah, but I do—
[Sylvi bursts into laughter, with Dre, Ali, etc. following]
Sylvi: Sorry!
Keith: I found the worms to be very reliable.
Ali: I do think there is like good potential there in terms of like, there being this sort of structural weakness that one, for instance, could like put a straw in, or something.
Jack: Yeah, yeah, yeah! [Ali wheezes] Definitely, absolutely. I mean part—
Austin: Fr—
Jack: Oh, go ahead—
Austin: Keep going—you keep talking.
Jack: I mean, part two of the worms idea is, of course, the people who harvest the worms? Which I sort of saw as like deep-sea fishermen almost, [Austin: Oh—] and that could absolutely be your infrastructure if you were looking for one, right? Which is like people in—you know, we've talked about the Mirage—
Austin: We have this, I think, actually already.
Janine: Deep-sea wormsmen?
Austin: No, because—it’s—I hate to pivot us off of worms and we can stay on worms—but Jack, you already invented something that does this, which is the particular fish that we—maybe I—we collaborated on this. When when Fourteen Fifteen met the Fisherman on the—The World Ends With You. That was the name of the ship, right?
Janine: N… no.
Jack: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly! The World Ends With You Neo.
[Sylvi chuckles]
Austin: What the fuck is the name of the—what is the name of the ship? Why am I blanking on this?
Jack: It's called The World Without End.
Austin: The World Without End. [Janine chuckles] I'm tired, alright? Listen.
Keith: I think it was called Goldfinger.
Sylvi: It's not The World That Never Was. That's different.
[Ali chuckles]
Austin: No—that’s different. Yeah, exactly. The World Without End.
Austin: You invented resonant minnows, right? Which were these—these fish that you and I talked about, and the thing that we talked about I'm going to read here. We talked about them as being having to do with communication, particularly? But we talked about them being that if you had two schools of resonant minnows, they're quantum entangled. And they then they can reach between like, past the Mirage. And part of the reason that you fish them in the Mirage, is to keep them from getting out of the Mirage? Because someone could use them for nefarious ends if they got outside the mirage, basically.
And I think a combination of that and the fact that they're called resonant, makes me of course think also about the—the Hypha and their particular brand of Strati, and the Hyphan ability to like, go between two places using what was called the Strand? This is all like Road to PARTIZAN shit now, but some combination of those fish, plus Hyphan navigators, and the Hyphan special ship that Dre invented? Dre, do you remember in the Lancer game, [Dre: Mhm?] you had that—that ship that could—that like had a different type of warp drive, basically?
Dre: Yeah.
Austin: I could imagine there being something here already with—and the thing about it that I kind of like, is this idea of like it's not just fishing, it's like cultivating schools of fish to produce a tunnel, or a connection between two places. Where it's like, hey, these fish basically are connected over massive amounts of space, and when you swim with them, when you travel with them, they can kind of zap you between those two places. And that feels Twilight Mirage weird and also feels like something different than “we've constructed a big teleporting device” because it requires the sort of ongoing care and maintenance that is so indicative of the way we talk about revolution as process and blah blah blah blah blah, you know? Also maybe I just want to get Brnine into The World Without End if Brnine's giving up the Blue Channel. [Ali laughs] The idea that Brnine's like, I guess I'd be on this fucking shitty fishing ship is kind of funny to me.
Jack: How close is that to the sort of “the straw in the hole” that you were thinking of, Ali?
Ali: That works. [slowly grinning] It feels like my scene goal is to build an aquarium on the edge of the Twilight Mirage?
Austin: Oh, that's kind of fun.
Jack: Oh my god.
[Ali laughs]
Austin: Yeah, that’s kind of fun.
Ali: A little shark pet tank, for the homies, I guess?
[Sylvi laughs]
Austin: And then basically leave with enough fish to go do it out there, too, right? Because you have to bring them with you outside the Twilight Mirage—or unless that's what you mean when you say the edge, you mean the edge is in, the edge is on the other side?
Ali: Right—well, yeah. I was thinking of like, you know, a—I don't want to say this about the Twilight Mirage—but like a border crossing place, you know? [chuckles] [Austin: Right, right.] If there are those two points, there is one on the map there? And then it sort of does have this sort of like, perfect, speakeasy situation, right? Like where, you know, presumably if you're in a situation bad enough that you're running from the Principality, that Millennium Break is like literally helping you like, move through that space? It's like the—what am I thinking of?—the Witness Protection Program? [laughs]
Austin: Mhm.
Jack: Oh, yeah.
Ali: It's like, yeah, you don't have your name anymore, go to this aquarium, [Austin: Mhm.] and…
Janine: You’re a fish now.
Ali: They'll figure it out for you. [chuckles] Yeah.
Austin: To be clear—sorry, to be clear, they're space fish. They live in space.
Ali: Okay, yeah.
Austin: Yeah, but it can still be an aquarium, but it's a—
Janine: Spacequarium.
Austin: Yeah, exactly. Yeah yeah yeah.
[Dre chuckles]
Ali: Right, well I mean, if they need to be maintained, then there would have to be like, a—a place for that, right? [Austin: Yeah yeah yeah.] Like somebody to—yeah.
Austin: It's like running sheep, you know? You know, it's like a degree of like having a herd of them, like having a school of them that you would take care of in that way. And again, the thing that's wild about them is—this is just based on what we talked about back in Twilight Mirage—they are entangled, they are quantum entangled, which means that this works over further distances. You could theoretically set these up across the galaxy and they could be connected.
Jack: But they don't really know how to live outside of the Mirage? And I think that that is part of Ali's aquarium.
Austin: Sure, yes. Yes, yes. Yes.
Jack: Layer Luxurious hosts a spin-off podcast of Perfect Imperfect called Fishteen Minutes.
Austin: Fishteen Minutes, right. [Ali snorts] Yeah, of course.
Sylvi: My god.
Austin: Of course, of course. Yeah. Uh huh. I like it, it's fun—the idea that your final scene is going to be being on a boat, a space boat, trying to set up an aquarium, is very funny.
Art: I'm sorry. A space boat is different from another kind of space vessel in what way?
Austin: A space fishing boat is really what I mean.
Ali: Right. The Blue Channel is not set up for fishing, unfortunately.
Austin: No.
Ali: It has that cloak I guess.
Austin: It's a military vessel, right? [Ali: Yeah.] [Jack chuckles] Whereas The World Without End literally was a fishing vessel, and even the little mech suits on it that were the exosuits, were fishing suits originally.
Jack: God, could I—could we make a compromise and have it be a ship like The World Without End?
Austin: Yeah, we don't have to be The World Without End, but it can be that style of thing.
Jack: [cross] Yeah, The World Without End—
Austin: [cross] We know what happened to The World Without End.
Janine: It feels like it would be so old.
Austin: No, it's actually—compared to some of the shit?
Jack: What do you think happened to The World Without End?
Austin: Huh? Oh, Tannoy Kajj and—
Jack: Tannoy Kajj
Austin: Yeah, and the rest of his crew ended up with it.
Jack: Oh, sure! They become a new—
Janine: I just feel like it’s—it feels like, okay, I want to get a minivan, or like I want to get a speedboat; what I'm going to get is a trireme from 2000 BC.
[Jack chuckles]
Austin: Yeah, I mean, but we're talking about a setting where—
Janine: I know! I'm just—I'm backing Jack up here. I'm just saying.
[Dre chuckles]
Austin: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s fine.
Jack: No, I'm up for...
Austin: Sorry to people who like the cool golden ship from our—
Janine: It could be a modern rebuild trireme.
Jack: A modern, cool golden ship.
Austin: I'm just saying the amount of time is not that long for the shit we do here, you know?
Jack: Yeah, Clem flew the Panther—I mean, flew is an inverted comma since she— [chuckles]
Austin: Yeah, yes.
Keith: It’s also been ten times less long than—
Austin: Right.
Jack: That it was out there?
Keith: Than it was on the actual time scale, right?
Austin: That's what I mean, yeah.
Jack: But in any case, I think that we can litigate the boat at other times; we can zoom in on the Brnine—
[Ali chuckles]
Austin: Yeah, mostly what I was doing was cheating so that we didn't have to describe a boat right now, [Dre chuckles] [Sylvi: Yeah.] and had something we could just leverage quickly so that we could picture Brnine somewhere in the world.
Sylvi: The evocative power of language, you mean.
Austin: That's what I mean.
Sylvi: Huh.
Ali: The scene goal is probably this slow—like the dice roll should be this like slow months of [cross] facilitating this thing?
Austin: [cross] Yeah, of building it.
Ali: But the scene should probably be figuring out who's leaving—who's going on the boat trip—who's coming on the cruise?
Austin: Right.
Ali: Who's cruising?
Austin: Mm! That’s different. That’s different!
[Ali laughs]
Sylvi: God damn.
Ali: Uh-huh. We will not be cruising out there. It's going to be just the same 12 people.
Sylvi: Never?
Ali: Well— [chuckles] That's what we're fighting for!
Dre: Jesus.
[Sylvi howling with laughter and clapping away from the mic]
[Ali wheezes]
Austin: Hoo!
Ali: Uhh, yeah! So, okay. Of the Friends of the Table cast, of the Blue Channel crew, who would like to leave?
Austin: Who is—who's leaving?
Ali: I think Hunting is probably staying.
Austin: Hunting’s from here.
Ali: Hunting is getting the Blue Channel.
Austin: Yeah, yeah.Midnite’s leaving, right?
Ali: Yeah, Midnite’s probably leaving.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvi: So, Cori's leaving, but I think she's leaving through the method—like, Elle has a different way of leaving, right?
Austin: Elle has a different way of leaving that could take you anywhere in the galaxy.
Sylvi: And I think that’s how—yeah, I think that's their plan. So, she's definitely down to say a farewell, but—
Ali: That makes sense, yeah. Question for the table, does Cas want to come on this hunting ship? Or is that going to be like, I'll call you later? [laughs]
Austin: Cas’alear. Cas’alear Rizah, [Ali: Yeah.] the—I think the fishing is secondary, but would come along with Routine and Corinna Corinne and Misericorde, to help you set it up, as long as the next stop is Millennium Break leadership out there somewhere, you know?
Ali: Mhm.
Austin: I mean, I'll read what I sent you y'all before we started recording today, which was a list of—I won't read the whole thing—but I listed a bunch of open threads for us, and one of them was, “Cas’alear Rizah, Apokine, and de jure claimant of the title Princept has offered to end the Perfect Millennium and declare the end of the Principality, in exchange for Millennium Break support in returning to Apostolos and enacting that program.”
So the idea being like, hey, look, if you bring me out of here, and like hook me up with your military forces, and then we hook up with the loyalist Apostolician forces to me, this is what I'll give you in exchange. And so I think if you make a trustworthy offer to Cas, [Ali chuckles] you know? then that could happen. I don't think that—Cas doesn't need to be like a big military escort out, you know? [Ali: Right, sure sure sure.] Cas was smuggled in here and expects to be smuggled out, so.
Ali: I—cool. I do think that Brnine is maybe kicking that can down the road a little bit. [laughs]
Austin: In the sense of?
Ali: I wanted to bring it—yeah, I wanted to bring it up because I am curious about like, what the Millennium Break decision is there? [Austin: Mhm.] I like, think that Brnine sort of supports it in some sort of like dark, horrible nationalist part of themselves that's still like, just like a nail in their head basically? Um, but is not so tied to it that they would be—they would fight for it. You know what I mean?
Austin: Yeah, it's interesting because it's—it's—and Apostolos not connected to the Principality is the sort of thing you've never been able to imagine happening, right? [Ali: Mhm.] Like—or maybe we've been able to imagine it, but we—it's never seemed possible, you know? Um, and here is the person who, by the way, their—their half, or their—their adopted sibling is the one you killed, uhhh, right?
Ali: [wheezes] Uh huh!
Austin: Uhhh, so I don't know what the vibes there are—I don't know if they—do they know you did it? People know—do people know? I probably keep forgetting if people know?
Ali: I think people know. I think people, like, um, kept congratula—or no, people kept congratulating me at the barbecue for the Combustor thing, right?
Austin: Yeah, yeah.
Ali: No, but people knew—cause it was like, Brnine missing from ship, Princept dead.
Austin: Yeah, but space is so big!
Jack: You were also extremely on television for a while before that.
Keith: I think that never got aired, but they did know enough to get you.
Austin: It did get aired—it did get aired eventually, just after it all went bad. It definitely did get aired eventually. They held it over you as a thing that they wouldn't air if you agreed to work for them, you know, but then everything went bad instead. So—but I don't remember if it was as open and shut as, people know that Brnine did this.
Ali: There's—there's conspiracy theories. [Austin: Uh huh.] But yeah, I don't want a scene with Cas here, so. [Austin: Yeah.] I just mentioned it to mention it.
Janine: I do think Thisbe comes as well.
Ali: Oooh! Oooh, okay! Hi, Thisbe!
Austin: This was in Thisbe’s wheelhouse. Like if we weren't—we were rolling a different system that had one of those moves that was like, work—you get a bonus if it's a thing that's like tied to your original agricultural purpose? [Janine: Yeah.] I think aquaculture is agriculture, you know? [Ali: Oh sure, yeah.] Sort of, not really, but kind of.
Janine: Yeah, I think this is a project, though, that Thisbe would think is worth doing and like, kind of a step back from the—from the shooting out of her weight class kind of stuff, but in a smart way? [Ali chuckles] [Austin: Mhm.] She's engaged in slightly more powerful help in that department, and can now focus on slightly more achievable things, maybe?
Ali: Sure. Okay, yeah, I didn't know if you wanted to stay to see that through, but I've been there.
Janine: You know, I mean, ideally this gets set up and then there's a way to talk and figure that stuff out [Ali: Mhm.] otherwise, but.
Ali: Happy to have you, Thisbe.
Austin: Okay.
Ali: Perfect.
Austin: Anybody else? I think who else? Partial is staying, obviously. Jesset would come with you for this. Who else? Who else is a Blue Channel core person that we haven't talked about?
Ali: Also just Millennium Break NPCs that we feel attached to.
Austin: Yeah, yeah. Like you said, Kalar?
Ali: Kalar was one, yeah.
Jack: Kalar, yeah.
Keith: Yeah, I don't know what—I feel like Leap just got here, so I don't really know like, what the deal is.
Dre: Mmm.
Austin: Leap, Leap, can just kick it here for a little bit.
Keith: Yeah, I don't know.
Austin: Yeah.
Dre: Does Levi go?
Austin: Yeah! I mean, to some degree, part of me wonders if that's the case, because, you know, Levi, your goal [Dre: Yeah.] is about being acknowledged across the galaxy, not just here in the Mirage, right?
Dre: Yeah. Yeah, I think Levi goes.
Austin: That's fun.
Ali: Shout outs. Hell yeah.
Art: Wow, RIP.
Dre: He's not dead.
Austin: Yeah, what?
Art: Well, who could say?
Dre: …me! [laughs] [Ali laughs] Listen, I think I would know when my characters are dead or not.
Ali: True, true true true.
Janine: That's actually the secret of the Mirage is like when you leave the Mirage, all your atoms are obliterated and then reconstituted into a being that has your memories, but technically you’re dead.
Austin: Oh right, right, right.
Keith: It's Star Trek teleportation.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: Yeah. You play a clone. It's that Paul Rudd thing.
Austin: Does he do that?
Ali: Sure..! [wheezes]
Art: Did that happen to Paul Rudd?
Austin: Did we lose Paul Rudd?
Keith: Paul Rudd was in a Netflix show about this.
Austin: Ah, I see, I see.
Art: Oh.
Ali: Oh.
Dre: Did we lose Paul Rudd?
Art: Paul Rudd was reconstituted from its atoms once.
Janine: [chuckles] That's how he stays so young.
[Ali chuckles]
Keith: Sorry. It was a documentary about Paul Rudd.
[Janine and Jack chuckle]
Austin: Yeah, I'm looking through this list.
Ali: I want a Carmine Bight person, I feel like we need some pirate energy on this fishing ship a little bit.
Austin: And specifically, again, part of the thing that could end up being useful here is, someone who's a Hyphan—who has that Hyphan Strati stuff.
Jack: Oh, yeah. They can spare you a navigator. And so much of the fun of the Carmine Bight pirates is that they really are just caricatures of pirates? So I really do think that the pirate they give you [Ali chuckles] is excited about the new, like the open seas, the new frontier outside the Mirage. The pirate's name is… Trives. T-R-I-V-E-S. Captain Trives is a Hyphan navigator and pirate captain.
Ali: Love it. All the cool gold inlay in their horns.
Jack: Yeah, to balloons and shit.
Austin: Mhm. [chuckling] Yeah. Anybody else? I'm looking at the list of NPCs.
Art: Balloons and shit is just a great—
[Ali laughs]
Jack: Oh my god—oh god. Does Mustard go? Because Mustard has a—
Dre: Oh god.
Austin: I don't know. There are big open questions about Mustard. I don't think so.
Ali: I feel like it would be a thing she wouldn't be included for, right? Like, the possibility of her taking advantage of whatever this is, is worse than the idea of her being like, on a cruise for a month with a bunch of weirdos, right?
Jack: You’re more worried about the dagger she's holding behind her back.
[Ali chuckles]
Austin: And more interested in it.
Ali: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah yeah yeah.
Keith: It seemed like Mustard was going to get fired anyway.
Ali: Yeah.
Austin: I don't know if fired is right. I think like, like on retainer, but not actively hired, you know? [Keith: Sure.] Maybe it's paid a little bit each month. Some Glint hits that account somehow. But it's not a—you're not getting—not you—Mustard isn't getting updated orders day in, day out, right?
Jack: Doesn't have the Battle Pass. Playing on the old Battle Pass.
Ali: Right.
Austin: Right. Exactly. Playing on the old battle pass. Exactly.
Keith: I want to make sure, I meant from the Cause.
Austin: Ohhhh, I see. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Ali: It felt like August was on the pathway to sniffing her out.
Austin: I see. I thought you meant Arbitrage had fired her.
Keith: Right. Yeah, I realized that.
Austin: Gotcha gotcha, yes.
Keith: But the last scene that she was in, everybody was like, why did we ever even like her?
Austin: Yeah. [Ali chuckles] [Keith laughs] She’s keeping her head down now, and we'll figure out a way forward probably.
Ali: Yeah. This is—this is not her epilogue, thankfully [chuckles]
Austin: Mhm. This is—Murchy stays behind because Leap is here.
Ali: Ooh, yeah.
Austin: Leap, yeah.
Ali: Sure, uhhuh.
Keith: That's funny.
Austin: Yeah. Okay.
Ali: Sure.
Austin: That seems like a set of people. Gucci's staying here, question mark? For now.
Ali: That’s a great—yeah, I—
Austin: Right? Well, Gucci is a problem right now, which is—where is Gucci?
Keith: Right now.
Ali: Yeah, Gucci is like in a closet? [chuckles]
Austin: Yeah, is Gucci in prison—?
Ali: Being knocked out?
Austin: Is Gucci aboard the—Crystal Palace?
Art: Most people are not unconscious for that long?
Austin: Is Gucci dead? Did you kill Gucci?
Sylvi: Whoa!
Keith: Woah.
Dre: Hell yeah, dude.
Art: But like, people are usually unconscious for a couple minutes.
Austin: I– you know what I'm saying.
Keith: I think even that is, I think maybe like four seconds.
Ali: I regrettably—
Art: Yeah, your brain really wants to be on.
Ali: Hm. Yeah.
Keith: In movies, you can get a few minutes, sure.
Austin: More importantly, is Gucci a captive of Clementine?
Art: No.
Austin: You let Gucci go.
Art: Gucci didn't come to the—
Austin: But you knocked Gucci out inside of your territory and escaped her, right?
Art: Yeah, but I mean—I thought we'd sort of said that Clem's not back yet, so—
Austin: Oh, I thought you returned to the Crown of Glass.
Art: I thought we were saying that, like, fictionally, that was too far.
Austin: Oh, I didn't say that.
Art: Oh, great. Then, yeah, Clem's back—I don't know.
Austin: You succeeded in that scene!
Art: Sure. It doesn't mean time doesn't function.
Keith: Oh, yeah. That was just something that I said, like, how long does it take to get there and back? And it just seemed like a thing that would take kind of a while.
Austin: Yeah, no—I think you're back. I'm sorry. I should have been clearer about—you got this, you succeeded. You should get the thing that you that was your goal, you know? you got your goal.
Art: Yeah. I don't know. Gucci's wherever.
Austin: Is Gucci a captive, or is Gucci—was Gucci released somewhere? Like I—I think this is important because it—
Art: Yeah, I think Clem has no specific use for Gucci anymore.
Keith: So.
Austin: So dead?
Janine: Oh my god!
Art: So released!
Austin: Okay.
Ali: I, yeah—
Janine: In the ocean. With a weight on her ankle.
[Ali chuckles]
Art: I don't think Clem is that bloodthirsty.
Austin: I mean, I don't trust Clem not to do that, right? I mean.
Keith: Right.
Austin: Or if I do, it's because Clem, it's only because we don't know what Clem is like now post-trying to connect to a vast predictive engine. I guess my question, the reason I'm asking this is because I—we need to know, we need to know what Gucci's goals are in this moment.
Art: Well, I don't know yet!
Austin: Okay. [Ali giggles] I do think if she were attacked and left, you know—you know, whatever released— [Keith: Left for alive.] Yeah, left for alive, she is going to be pretty committed at trying to stop Clem and will not go with you, Brnine.
Ali: Sure.
Art: Yeah, that's fair.
Austin: And will probably be a little pissed off at you for trying to leave in the mid—[slipping into Gucci voice] “in the middle of all of this.”
Keith: Oh, that's not like her.
Austin: Yeah.
Ali (as Brnine): Well, a very smart person once told me the fight is out there.
Austin: Mm!
Ali (as Brnine): So, welcome to movie night.
Austin: Mhm.
Ali (as Brnine): It’s the final movie night on the Blue Channel.
Austin: Mmm!
Sylvi (as Cori) and Dre (as Levi): Damn!
Ali (as Brnine): And I'm leaving tomorrow.
Austin: What's the movie? Who decides the movie?
Janine (dubiously in character/as unknown crew): Wait! But—you're leaving the Blue Channel, so someone else could take up the mantle of movie night.
Austin: Damn, true.
Ali (as Brnine): Well, yeah, but oh, I guess it's not—yeah, it's not the final movie night. I'm sorry.
Keith (as Leap): It's your final movie night.
Ali (as Thisbe): Hunting, I'm sorry about that.
Austin (as Hunting): Are you taking—are you taking your movies with you?
Austin: Asks Hunting.
[Art chuckles, Ali wheezes]
Ali (as Brnine): No, I'm coming back. That's the whole thing.
Austin (as Hunting): Oh! Okay.
Ali (as Brnine): I'm going out there to come back.
Janine (as unknown crew): Well, you're the one who said last—
Keith (Leap): Going out there to come back—
Ali (as Brnine): I misspoke! It's my last movie night. I'll have other movie nights.
Janine (as unknown crew): But—so it’s not—!
Austin (as Hunting): But you're coming back—
Art: You just said it was the last movie night!
[Janine laughs]
Austin (as Hunting): Is it my ship or not?
Ali (as Brnine): This is confusing.
Keith (as Leap): I thought it was going to be my ship.
Ali (as Brnine): Why did you think that?
Keith (as Leap): It just felt natural. I outrank you. We've worked together the longest.
Ali: Anyway.
Janine: There’s like a different—
Austin: What's the movie?
Ali: What is the movie?
Austin: Who decides?
Keith: I slide documentary-style Leap B-roll of pirating.
Ali: [laughs] It's probably like a action comedy.
Austin: Ohhh, Rush Hour.
Ali: A little bit like—Rush Hour! [laughs] I was just about—!
Janine: I also thought Rush Hour and I was like, no, I don't need to say that.
Ali: [laughing] Rush Hour, but sillier. Rush Hour, but one of them is like— [wheezes]
Keith: So Rush Hour 2.
Art: Rush Hour but—yeah, Rush Hour 2.
[Keith laughs]
Janine: Is there like a kid's Rush Hour, did they do one of those? Like a Rush Hour Junior?
Keith and Austin: Spy Rush Hour.
Austin: Yeah.
Art: I think Rush Hour for kids is that one where it's Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson in the Old West.
Keith: Oh, High Noon?
Austin: Shanghai Noon
Ali: Oh, Shanghai Noon!
Keith: Shanghai Noon! Shanghai Noon, sorry—I mean, it's an actual other movie.
Sylvi: I saw the sequel to that before I saw the first one, [Ali spit takes] I was very confused.
Janine: They made a sequel to that..?
Sylvi: Yeah, they go to England.
Art: Shanghai Knights, they go to England.
Janine: Ohhh.
Ali: [chuckling] Oh god.
Janine: It’s always night in England, so that makes sense.
Keith: Again, it is sillier than saying Shanghai Noon.
Austin: That makes sense.
Art: K-N-I-G-H-T-S Knights.
Keith: Right, yeah.
Janine: Ohhh, okay.
Austin: Knights with a K-N.
Ali: Oh, that's hilarious! I should check that movie out. [laughs]
Keith: Oh, yeah, it's really good.
Sylvi: It’s okay.
Austin: It's so funny—
[Art laughs out loud, Ali wheezes and laughs]
Sylvi: I don't know if you've heard of this, [Janine: Uhhh…] but there's this British food called Spotted Dick, and they got some mileage out of that one.
Austin: Oh, I bet they do.
Ali: Wow!
Art: The next moment Keith is back, [Austin chuckles] giving bad movie recommendations.
Keith: They were supposed to—
Austin: The director of Shanghai Nights went on to immediately direct Wedding Crashers right after that, which is extremely funny.
Sylvi: An auteur.
Art: They're basically the same film.
Ali: Sure.
Keith: They were supposed to make a sequel called Shanghai Dawn, and they never did. [Sylvi: No…] In 2015, it was announced.
Janine: Where was that going to be? In like China again, or?
Keith: Um, I don't know. No information.
Art: Well, they never actually went to China.
Janine: No, but I mean, I mean like—is it supposed to be around the world, and then the guy goes to China?
Austin: Right, right.
Keith: Oh, yes, set in China. Yeah. Want to showcase China in the way that the first film showcased the Old West. So a perfect—
Sylvi: Not to be confused with the Around the World in 80 Days movie that I think also starred Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson.
Austin: Oh, they did three movies together?
Sylvi: It might have just been Jackie Chan, but you know.
Ali: I do think [chuckles] it is probably Shanghai Noon adjacent? Because I bet Brnine thinks that it's funny that it's like a historical movie, [Dre chuckles] but also secretly really likes the like, robot spider that's in it?
Janine: Wild Wild West! [Sylvi: Ohhh!] You’re talking about Wild Wild West!
[Ali laughs]
Austin: Wild Wild West, that’s what you’re talking about.
Sylvi: [singing] Wild Wild West, Wild Wild West—
Keith: The Kevin Smith movie.
[Dre laughs]
Ali: Okay, sure—
Austin: We talked about the time that Art terrorized the college campus that we went to, right, with that song?
Dre and Ali: No.?
Keith: That you went to for college or that you visited for college?
Austin: For college—that we went to for college. Art—there was like a club recruitment day, is that what it was, Art?
Art: Yeah, it was club recruitment day.
Austin: And—yeah, you tell the story.
Art: And we mixed just—just that end, the last—the [singing] “Wild Wild West”, to like repeat and like chop.
Austin: [singing disjointedly] West, West, Wild Wild West—
Art: [singing disjointedly] West, West, Wild Wild West. And it was like—
Austin: And played it for hours.
Art: Yeah, the whole time.
Austin: Hours blasted it across the entire studio.
Janine: You're right, that is terrorism.
Art: I wasn't there for a second of it.
Austin: I was.
Janine: Oh.
[Art laughs]
Ali: Wait, then who cut it?
Art: I didn't cut it, I just approved it.
Austin: Art was the editor-in-chief of the comedy magazine.
Ali: Sure, okay. Uh huh.
Art: And I said, this sounds like a great idea and I don't want to come. [Jack and Ali laugh] And that was the end of it!
Austin: Art had a Fu Manchu mustache at the time also.
Janine: Oh my god.
Sylvi: Woah.
Jack: Oh my god.
Austin: It was good. It was a different time. [Art: Yeah.] That was allowed.
Sylvi: I'm just picturing it. [Dre laughs] That's the more—
Art: It wasn’t really a Fu Manchu mustache, it sort of grows down—
Janine: Was that for Burning Wheel or something or was that just for fun?
Dre: Wow.
Austin: It wasn't a Fu Manchu. You're right, it wasn't off your face.
Art: Yeah, it wasn’t off the face.
Austin: It was like a Western—it was like a Wild West type mustache.
Keith: Like a Hulk Hogan mustache?
Art: Like a Hulk Hogan mustache!
Keith: Okay. That I learned recently is not called a handlebar mustache and that's a different kind of mustache?
Art: What's called a Hulk Hogan mustache?
Ali: That was movie night.
Austin: So that was movie night!
[Ali laughs]
Sylvi: This conversation is happening afterwards. They're talking about mustaches that were in the film.
Austin: Yes. The mustache debate, the post-movie mustache debate.
Ali: Mhm, mhm.
Keith: Owen Wilson was in Around the World in 80 Days, but as one of the Wright Brothers who showed up.
Sylvi: Oh sure. It counts.
Keith: Steve Coogan was the—
Sylvi: We take those.
Austin: The meta has changed. The—somebody needs to do a count of Jerma references at the beginning of the season, and Northernlion references at the end of the season.
Ali: Wow.
Sylvi: Huge win for Canada. [chuckles] It's Cancun!
Austin: Boston loses again.
Keith: Is Jerma from Boston?
Austin: Yeah!
Sylvi: Yeah.
Ali: So I get two dice.
Austin: Wait, so then what happened? [Ali laughs] Then you go and build this thing—then, do you want to say goodbye to Cori and Hunting and?
Ali: I—I you know, [laughs] we kind of got into a movie vibe there.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Ali (as Brnine): But yeah, thanks for joining me, everybody. I'm going to have an early morning tomorrow, but uhh, it's been fun!
Sylvi (as Cori): I can't believe you beat me to the dramatic exit. I'm so mad.
[Ali laughs]
Sylvi: She says that. She's like, joking about it, but she says that.
Ali (as Brnine): Yours is going to be way more dramatic.
Sylvi (as Cori): Yeah, but! It feels like I'm following in—someone's going to think I'm stealing your style again.
Ali (as Brnine): Well, it's great stuff.
Janine: You can?
Sylvi: I don't know. People—
Austin: Oh, Cori.
Sylvi: People say that—she—it's fine—she—you know. [laughs]
[Austin and Sylvi laugh]
Ali: Thisbe, people—
Art: Yeah, boss, everyone says that!
Sylvi: Boss, everyone says, it's like, wow, you should captain a ship someday. It's fine.
Ali (as Brnine): Thisbe, I don't know if you know this, but people have been making sort of a big deal of me recently.
Janine (as Thisbe): Why?
Keith: Yeah, why?
Ali (as Brnine): The Combustor thing, mostly. It's been weird.
Janine (as Thisbe): That was months ago.
Ali (as Brnine): Yeah—
[Keith laughs]
Ali (as Brnine): I mean, you're right.
Keith: Things move fast.
Sylvi: In this new cycle?
Austin: Incredible.
Ali (as Brnine): It's fine, Cori. You'll just do something cooler and I'll see you another time.
Sylvi: To be clear, she's all smiles during this, like, she is goofing too, [Ali giggles] like, purposely so.
Ali: We’re goofing, yeah.
Sylvi: Yeah, yeah. I don't want people thinking I’m being—she's actually upset about this, that’s all. Cause I—when I'm silly, I'm just always silly on this show, so like, I'm acting as well right now.
Ali: Okay, sure.
Art: Don't write down that I'm mad.
[Jack, Dre, Keith laugh]
Sylvi: Please don't write—yeah, don’t write down that I'm mad.
Keith: “Cori… says… not… mad.”
Sylvi: Yeah, yeah. [laughs]
Austin: Alright. I think it is time—so you go out there as a crew on a new fishing ship, and you begin the work of corralling, and taming, and harvesting, and directing these fish, these space fish.
Jack: Yeah, there's like a—General Mourning has like, sent along with you an extremely old fisherman who knows how this business works? Just like—grouchy. I don't think it's the same fisherman that Fourteen—
Austin: That type of person.
Jack: Oh no, older, grouchier. You know, like this is the deal, here's how it all works.
Art: Definitely says “this is how it works” many times.
[Austin chuckles]
Jack: Listen to me, this is how it works—to sort of guide with these Mirage fish.
Keith: And they just go out there and they die?
Ali: Huh?
Austin: What?
Keith: I thought they couldn't live outside of the Mirage, so there’s—you always have to replace the dead ones with new ones.
Sylvi: [softly] There’s dead fish floating in space? Wha—?
Ali: No, the point of this was to— [laughs] Like, okay—
Keith: What was the point of it not to kill the fish? That’s what—
Ali: No!
Austin: I have said that they can live outside—we said in The Twilight Mirage that they can live outside of The Twilight Mirage, which was part of the threat—
Keith: Oh, maybe I heard the opposite.
Austin: I think Jack said—
Jack: Oh yeah, I think I was just wrong.
Austin: —the opposite, but was just not right about it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
[00:52:00]
Ali: I… don’t have a relevant relationship here.
Keith: Wow.
Ali: I tried to win on a four this whole time—You didn't come with me! [laughs]
Keith: Oh, sorry. Yeah, we're already out of the party. Okay, I thought you're looking at the room full of people saying bye and saying to them, none of you are relevant.
Janine: I don't have a relevant relationship here, Brnine out.
[Ali and Sylvi laugh]
Austin: Yeah, it didn't sound like that—I mean, I guess could Leap help you here in some other way? Could Leap have sent another message out via the catapult, via Faultless Blue, saying like, hey, Brnine is going to show up on the other side of this place, you should help them when they do.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Oh.
Keith: Hero’s welcome.
Austin: You know? Here's the coordinates to rendezvous at, you know.
Sylvi: If you need a tow after the launch.
Austin: Right, sure. Totally.
Keith: Oh my god, it costs a toe?
Sylvi: No.
Austin: Oh, boy.
Sylvi: This fuckin’ guy.
Keith: Womp womp womp.
Art: It's a real Shanghai Nights joke.
[Keith laughs]
Austin: I suspect the Twilight—
Keith: I just watched the—I just watched the Jackie Chan movies, so.
Austin: “The Twilight Mirage is impenetrable” feels relevant here, so I'm adding that as an opposition die. You're not on the Blue Channel, so is Lattice just staying there? I guess so? On the Blue Channel, did not follow you.
Ali: I think so. Yeah, I mean, that was sort of the point of that. I do—
Austin: Mhm.
Keith: Oh, you got that burden and then never used it?
Austin: Neither of these burdens, I think, are going to come up, [Keith: Yeah.] because Future has been regained. But likewise, I don't think “Liberated Steeple Catterick” or—I think if “Liberated Stepple Catterick” and “Access to Divine Fleet engineers” are relevant, then so are the two burdens. Do you know what I mean?
Ali: Mhm.
Keith: Sure.
Austin: “Working catapult” is definitely relevant.
Keith: So one for me and then one for—for catapult.
Ali: Okay, sure.
Austin: And we could say all of the relevant boons and burdens—and all the burdens and boons are relevant, because they are mood shifters, you know?
Ali: Right.
Keith: Mechanically, it would be a wash,
Austin: Sort of. They don't literally cancel out, so I think it would be harder.
Keith: Sure.
Austin: I think 6v4 or whatever is, harder—or 6v5 is going to be harder than whatever this is, you know?
Keith: 4v3?
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: I feel like I could make the argument for the engineers thing, because we're using, like, Twilight Mirage fishing technology and also, like, trying to establish this, like, garden-slash-base?
Austin: Yeah, I think—
Keith: Then wouldn't that just bring Lattice with them?
Austin: Right. My thing is, I think if we say “Access to Divine Fleet engineers” is a plus, then also Lattice—the Lattice thing should kick in, right? That you've been hanging with Lattice is a bummer, you know?
Ali: Right. Yeah. I mean, even—I’m even willing to evoke it as a burden, like, in general, of, like, leaving the Blue Channel?
Austin: Sure. That makes sense. Yeah. Then yeah. So let's add five—yeah, 5-5, 5v5.
Ali: 5-5. 5v5.
Austin: Someone will want to roll the opposition dice.
Keith: I can do that. Oof. Oof. Oof.
Austin: Keith.
Janine: Yeah, I was going to say, Keith should stop doing that.
Sylvi: Yeah, Keith’s not allowed to roll.
Keith: Well, hold on! I've had—my track record is—is, like even.
Austin: 6-6-4.
Janine: No, but that's not how it works. This is vibes based—this is vibes based die roller hatred. So you're in the bad time now.
Keith: That's—that's fine. But the time to shut that out would have been before I rolled.
Austin: Brutal, this is brutal…
Art: This isn't that bad.
Ali: No, it's pretty bad. I can't win?
Austin: Well, you could—with misfortune, whatever.
Art: Well, you can, you put a five on a four.
Ali: Yeah, but at the—if we’re taking two dooms—so I need to do something.
Janine: I mean, if you accept it as a foregone conclusion that you want to re-roll those sixes, then it is a good roll because theoretically, if the sixes are lower, then the highest becomes a four and then you can sweep, kind of.
Keith: And you've got the Lash Out as your thing. So you get another die too.
Ali: This isn't really a scene I can lash out against.
Austin: I mean, it is, but I don't—but it's—it's sad in some ways. You could always lash out at people, trust me.
Art: A sad Brnine scene.
Austin: I've done it. The idea that, like, Brnine gets frustrated during this process is interesting. It's not what we've seen from Brnine traditionally, I think, but.
Ali: Yeah, it feels like it would be narratively better to figure out a Cheat, and hope I find a six in there then—
Austin: Oh.
Ali: I know. And then—
Keith: You can't, like, slam your fists on a console that's not working? [Ali: Yeah…] I mean, it's just so much worse than Lashing Out.
Ali: I know…
Janine: Or, like, maybe one of the fish herding tools gets, like stuck, and you have to like, jiggle it around and kind of break something, but you know.
Ali: Mhm. Yeah.
Janine: There's options.
Austin: There are options, yeah. And I think the idea that, like, going to do work like this makes you lash out is fascinating. The idea that like, doing the war is easy, comparatively, in terms of like, you're not going to yell at your own people. You're not going to, like, get mad. You buckle down. You do the work. But you get out here and you start needing to deal with fish and, like, and weird spaceship stuff you've never dealt with before. And it just gets under your skin, and like, every day is just doing the work over and over again? It's not a cool new mission tomorrow, is—that's kind of interesting, you know?
Keith: And I'll say that for however out of character it would feel to lash out right now, it is your favored weakness. So it is—
Ali: Yeah.
Janine: Also, what if you find out that you hate the fish and find them really fucking annoying?
[Ali chuckles]
Evil Keith: Yeah, you start killing them.
Janine: No no no no! No no no no no no!
[Ali and Evil Keith laugh]
Sylvi: Evil Keith!
[Dre chuckles]
Janine: I'm just saying it's like—it could be a situation of being like, yeah, I'll babysit your twins, and you've never, like, been around a baby before? And you're like, oh—this, I shouldn't have done this!
Sylvi: That’s a Brnine move too.
Janine: I'm miserable.
Evil Keith: I don’t know. It would relieve a lot of stress to start shaking one of those fish.
Sylvi: Jesus Christ!
Janine: Oh my god.
Art: Shaking the fish..! [laughs]
[Keith cackling in the background]
Ali: This is one of the many reasons I don't love Lash Out—but it does make sense, and it—it feels like it's not too much of a stretch to say things like, Brnine is having a bad relationship with the crew.
Austin: Yeah. And it doesn't stick—
Keith: Crazy foresight if this is one of the reasons you don't like Lash Out.
Austin: It's interesting because it's like this—this happens, right? And you'll get a misfortune for it, that doesn't mean that it’s—you're not burning all your relationships, you're not taking a burden. You are taking a misfortune, but. [cross] Yeah, we’ll see what the dice do.
Ali: [cross] Sure. I also get an extra dice to—
Austin: Yeah, you can roll your six.
Ali: —god willing, win on a four in this fucking game.
Austin: Are you—?
Art: Jesus Christ!
[Ali wheezes]
Ali: I've been really wanting to do that.
Keith: Talk about lash out!
Austin: Lash out!
Ali: [strained] I really want to, but, it’s not gonna happen.
Austin: You should—what are you rerolling? You're rolling the two sixes?
Ali: I…
Austin: Here we are again!
Keith: We've litigated this in the past. I think it would be insane to reroll that four. You can already beat it.
Austin: That's true.
Ali: Sure.
Art: That’s true. Sometimes context matters.
Ali: Uh huh. Sure.
Keith: But only sometimes.
Ali: Okay.
Art: Sometimes it doesn't.
Ali: I'll reroll both of the sixes, yeah.
Keith: Does someone else want to reroll that, or should I do it again?
Janine: I'll do it.
Sylvi: Which ones are being rerolled? The two sixes.
Austin: Just the sixes.
Janine: The sixes? Let's fucking go. [slight pause] Okay, well. One of them is better.
Austin: Okay! That’s a little—
Keith: Okay, yeah.
Art: Well no, that four plays—
Jack: It's a six and a three.
Austin: Yeah, it becomes four—yeah it becomes six, four, four.
Janine: That's still better.
Austin: It is better. You roll your one new one.
Ali: Uhhuh.
Austin: Yeah, it doesn't, that’s a two.
Ali: That’s a two.
Art: That didn't help, no. But!
Keith: But.
Art: You got two wins here.
Keith: Yeah, two wins.
Ali: Sure.
Dre: Mmm.
Art: Maybe one of your boons could be some sort of like, relationship thing.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: So that's what? Two total fortune?
Austin: And one misfortune.
Keith: And two misfortunes?
Austin: And two misfortune total. Yeah.
Keith: Yeah. And one for the six and one for the cheat—for the Lash Out.
Austin: And unfortunately, a doom means we have to draw a card also, but let's go through the wins first.
Ali: Sure. I guess it feels like just five, five, right? There's no reason to think about it?
Austin: Get your two. Yeah.
Ali: Cool. Okay, so yeah. It works, I guess.
Austin: Yeah. You get two things that you could describe here. You get two boons, technically, which again are two fortune also. First one seems like it works, right?
Ali: Mhm. Yeah. I guess the first step of this is setting up sort of like a satellite/pier/swimming pool portal thing at the edge of the Twilight Mirage? [chuckles]
Austin: Edge internal or edge external?
Ali: Well both, right? External.
Austin: External, yeah. Like, the time outside of the weird time shit, or inside of the weird time shit is really the question, you know what I mean? Like, where Palisade used to be, so to speak.
Ali: Oh, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, touching it, right? Like, it has to be—
Austin: It doesn't. It can be wherever you want because of the way these fish work.
Ali: Okay, sure.
Austin: Right?
Ali: Yeah.
Austin: Near it is useful, but it doesn't have to be.
Ali: Right, but it feels like it has to be—it has to be as close as you can get to make the actual work of going through it work. You know what I mean?
Austin: Sure.
Ali: Like, if it was as far as Palisade was, then it doesn't feel like a secret entrance.
Austin: Right, right, right, right.
Ali: It feels like a different Brink.
Austin: Sure.
Ali: You know what I mean?
Austin: The Brink is inside the Mirage.
Ali: Right. No, but yeah, but like, as its own spaceship station on its own, [Austin: Right right right.] like, serving its own purpose.
Austin: Right, but not a—just a little secret entryway, so to speak. Yeah, that makes sense.
Ali: So yeah, on the outside, on the edge. Lapping the shores of the Twilight Mirage.
Austin: Right, right.
Ali: And then I guess the—the second win here, is like establishing a—like a Twilight Mirage base even farther out?
Austin: Sure. Like a staging ground that isn't so close to this that it gives it away, but is close enough to like, get supplies ready to go out into the rest of space or whatever.
Ali: Mhm.
Austin: And this, I just just to confirm, you ended up not bringing out Cas as part of this? That might come later, but it was not part of this.
Ali: Not as this first step.
Austin: Okay. Yeah.
Ali: Get the door open before we cross that bridge, I think is Brnine's—
Austin: Sounds good—
Ali: —justification for not— [chuckles] for not answering that question. So yeah. And then there's this doom to—
Austin: There's this doom. Can someone draw a card?
Ali: I can do that, I suppose. Draw a card.
Dre: Yeah, It's been a long time since we had a draw a card.
Austin: Yeah, we’ve gone doomless for a minute.
Ali: [mumbling] Sorry about that.
Art: People have been a little lucky in their lash outs recently.
Austin: Mhm.
[Dre chuckles]
Ali: That's an Ace of Spades.
Austin: It’s an Ace of Clubs.
Ali: Ace of Clubs! [Keith laughs] The other one!
Keith: It's an Ace of Hearts!
Jack: Wish it would’ve been an Ace of Spades.
Austin: We all see a different one—yeah, Ace of Spades would actually have been a little less bad for Cori, specifically, but it brings Unrest and Revolution up to three. What's this mean, what's this look like? I have a thought, but I'm curious what other people do.
Jack: What have we been characterizing Unrest and Revolution as?
Austin: This is Wakeful now.
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: This had been Devotion and Future, and then it kind of became—because of them kind of sliding into Wakeful—it becomes Wakeful, this emerging new power, right, that people are interested in supporting. Yeah.
Keith: I mean, it sort of feels like you're trying to keep a way out of the Mirage from Wakeful? That sounds like an instigating event.
Austin: Yeah. Or it feels like maybe what's been activated here is, Wakeful decides, oh, right, we have to go outside of the Twilight Mirage. We can't be limited to here. Wakeful shouldn't just be a Twilight Mirage thing, right?
Jack: [chuckles] Yeah. Yeah, the—our scope is broader.
Austin: God. They had a vision of the future where—you know, space travel in this era has largely been based around—long distance space travel has largely been based around the Divine Space, which is the big Portcullis gates that connect systems to each other. And the idea that that Divine becomes Wakeful? And it's like, instead of going through Stel Orion bureaucracy and commerce, it's like, oh, right, the weird gestalt Divine has to decide, is the one who controls space travel now, is fun and nightmarish to me. But especially because it's ambivalent. It's not an evil space God. It's not, Wakeful doesn't seem cruel—you got rid of the Nidean elements of it.
Jack: Oh, but you know?
Austin: It would be like, oh, what if we went and integrated Space into our being, you know? What if we were the big gates that connect systems one to another?
Jack: Yeah, what if the spacing Guild was the actual ships? Which they kind of are, but you know what I mean.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Keith: Really gotta figure out how to kill Divines.
[Dre chuckles]
Jack: Yeah, and I mean, you know, I don't think I'm under any misapprehensions about sort of saying like, well, we've gotten rid of Nideo from Wakeful, so therefore, they're—you know, they're all good now. Because that's not how cruelty works.
Austin: Mmm. Well, I don't think it's—yeah, hmm. I mean, on one hand, I need to make sure that you let yourself have the W. Which is—
Jack: Ah, that's true. I’m happy to take—
Austin: You excised the most explicit imperial parts of it.
Jack: Yes, exactly. I'm happy to take that W, and I'm happy to follow that forward into the fiction? But I'm always so wary of the, like, all you need to do to remove abusive and violent entities is get them out, and then we're just sort of set, you know?
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Keith: We talked a lot in the last recording about, like, you know—what is—you know, at Divines as—the ways that they're a part of and different than, like, a citizen of the Principality, or another government official or whatever. But the thing that is, feels to me anyway true about Divines, is that they've been given an enormous capacity to do something. [Austin: Right.] They have huge amounts of control over everything around them? And a planet full of people are like, “this is my king now”. And it, you know, it feels like a natural extension of the kind of attitude that being able to control the world the way that a Divine can, that they would go like, well, let's fill this space like a gas with as much as possible as we can do.
Jack: Oh, yeah! To Austin's point, they're not saying, and this is an arm of Stel Nideo disguised, you know? This isn't Nideo saying, well, now we have the Portcullis gates.
Keith: Right, sure, it feels like a new thing.
Austin: Well, yeah, and unlike Future/fake Gur Sevraq, that is not—whatever their new program is—is not literally a phony way of bringing people under. [Jack chuckles]
Keith: Sure.
Austin: I think Wakeful is kind of figuring itself out—
Keith: They’re out to win hearts and minds.
Austin: —and it's big and weird and dangerous, but it isn't, [Jack: Oh yeah, totally.] you know, it is a dozen Divines who've been tortured for 500 years being like, what if we were all one being together, [Jack: Yeah.] and what's that make us?
How do we fill the space? What do we do with the power we have? How do we exist? What's cool to do? [chuckles] You know, they learned about skateboarding recently, you know? Like they're just in the world in a different way suddenly.
Jack: And it's this kind of exploratory space that is the W, as far as August is concerned, because it's like, [Austin: Instead of—] he is not prepared to tolerate a kind of, well, we're just muddling our way through, if under your roof, you have a bunch of war criminals. Who are like—
Austin: Ooh, I know what we could do, we could be the king! [Jack: Right, now—] And they might still get there, but that's not what they start at here.
Jack: Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I like that as a, I like that as a—as a—I mean, it's doom. It's doom in the sense of, what we thought was a fairly small operating force is actually going to be a much larger operating force?
Austin: Yeah. And there are people who want them to be, if not king, then they're at least leashing there, or they're like tying their wagons to this particular star, you know? Hey, what's life like in Wakeful, around Wakeful, where Wakeful goes, you know? It's a little bit—you know, there is a sort of like, wandering the wilderness with your—with the cool cult leader you love, you know? And it's like, oh, this could go bad!
Keith: Mhm. And it feels kind of like a hindsight 20-20 thing where it's like, oh, of course they don't want to stay here.
Austin: Right, why would they? The world is so big.
Keith: Why would they want to just be here? Why would they want a continent? They’re—Divines are interstellar, like almost always.
Austin: Right. There's something that's like—I mean, one, the last time a being like this existed, it became Autonomy Itself. And I don't know, they—that's what they want to go do, right? But Perennial had that moment of realization of like, oh my god, this is the birth of something like Autonomy Itself again. Which we've seen as being sort of like a scary power, but not necessarily—I don't know, we haven't gotten into like what the Nobel are like today, too deep, but that's the type of being it is.
And that—that is powerful and frightening. And people want to organize their life around it in some way; I know Janine, Thisbe, has talked a lot about like, how do Divines exist in ways that aren't just religion, you know? And this does feel like a religion popping up again, but it's also one that's like—I don't know that anybody—I don't know that it's clear yet what it is, even to the people who feel compelled by what it is, you know? So.
Ali: I do just wanna ask—and not to like veto it, but to just put context on what this is—is, like, does that mean that now Wakeful also has like a similar trajectory in and out?
Austin: No. I don't know that they have a trajectory—well, Wakeful always had a trajectory in and out, because all Divines do, because they exist on a time scale where they don't—what they don't have is the ability to get in and out quickly.
Ali: Okay sure.
Austin: They're just now focused on, hey, what if we were outside of here also?
Ali: Okay, yeah.
Austin: Yeah, I don't think they have a, they don't have fast travel enabled.
Ali: Okay, sure.
Austin: But they do in the sense that what is a generation, a human generation to a Divine?
Ali: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just had this moment of like, did I spend this whole game to open a window, and then now this garage door opened beside me?
Austin: No, I don’t think so.
Ali: Which could be true and is a doom and like the scale of power there, but I just want to say it explicitly as of now.
Austin: I don't think so, but I also think that if it is, it's explicitly not the Principality has a door here, right? [Ali: Mmm.] Which I think is distinct.
Ali: Important context, yeah.
Austin: Yeah. And it could have been that if August Righteousness didn't separate Wakeful from the Principality, right? So, but I don't—yeah, I don't think that they care about it taking a generation, you know? Like I think when they go—if there are people coming with them—and maybe that's what this actually looks like. It's like Wakeful sends part of itself with a generation ship, right? With a ship, with part of itself that's meant to take generations of people, you know, over time through the edge of the Twilight Mirage to spread out into the greater galaxy, right?
They don't expect to make it out there and back in a rapid fashion where they can bring supplies back and forth—that's not what they care about. They are not like, how do we make sure we can get people fed? You know, how do we get military supplies out for the fight? That's not what they care about. But what they do care about is spreading themselves through the galaxy writ large, you know? So I think it's different. And is good context to have. Okay.
Ali: Yeah, that sounds like a scene.
[01:14:24]
Austin: That sounds like a scene. Cori—whoa! I made that dice really big by mistake. It's gone now, it's fine.
Sylvi: Oh no.
Austin: Fixed it. Cori—
Sylvi: I wanna roll big dice, that would’ve been fun.
Austin: It was long dice, I'll show you what happened. It was this. Do you see what it is now?
Sylvi: Oh! You don't want that—oh wait, can I roll that though? Yay!
Jack: Sorry, did we narrate Brnine's two victories?
Austin: We started with those, yeah.
Jack: Oh okay. [Siri’s voice comes on in the background] Oh my God, Siri, I do not want to know directions to Victory. Jesus Christ. [Dre and Sylvi laugh] Get the hell out of here.
Art: Wait, wait, hold on.
Janine: Yeah, hang on a second, yeah.
Sylvi: What up!
Jack: Be quiet!
Austin: Yeah, as a reminder, the two victories were setting up the—the fish dock, the fish pier, the fish tunnel, and then also setting up a Millennium Break base on the outside.
Jack: Right, right, right.
Austin: A little further out, that could be a sort of good staging ground for stuff going in both directions, so. Cool.
Sylvi: Okay.
Austin: Cori.
Sylvi: Yeah, well, so I've already basically said what's happening here.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvi: So, yeah, I think that like, the way that I've—when I was trying to figure this out, I looked at like the other scenes, cause Austin, you said that thing about trying to think of it as like a three act, [Austin: Yeah, yeah.] like a trilogy of stuff about your character? And I feel like the thing of getting the consecrated land and making sure that that's like secure, and is like taken root in Palisade, is like the proof Cori needs to feel confident going out of, going off Palisade.
Austin: That she can go do something like that in the world beyond, that’s fun.
Sylvi: Yeah, because like you can't cut off the head of the snake from here, right?
Austin: You sure can’t.
Sylvi: Like there's just, there's only so much you can do on Palisade and it's—I don't know if she can necessarily say, oh, it's in good hands now, but it's in better hands. [Austin: Uh huh.] So yeah, it's her and Elle start making a plan trying to figure out where to ship off to.
Austin: Well, you know.
Sylvi: Cause it can go anywhere, right? That’s what you said?
Austin: Elle says to you that what she was promised is a one-way ticket anywhere in the galaxy.
Sylvi: Yeah. Which is, you know what? Doesn't help the choice paralysis.
Austin: It doesn't. It doesn't.
Sylvi: Should I be looking at the map of the—?
Austin: I mean, you could, but I mean—I think that the, yeah, I mean, you could, but we're gonna have the epilogue to talk about some of that too here. Here's the map of the galaxy as it stands. [Sylvi: Thank you.] That little white spot in the red part of the lower eye is the Twilight Mirage, [Sylvi: Okay.] that is in the depths of Nadeo space.
And then you know, the northern half of that eye is Kesh's space. And then the purple area is Columnar. The big blue area is Orion. The kind of greenish area is Apostolos. And then the like blue gray is Caelestia Nullius, which is where the Nobel are from, and where Valence was from originally, and etc. And the big white spot where they all meet is of course Partizan.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Austin: Counterweight’s in the gold, and the gold is like the Golden Branch and then also just where the Branched are. But all of that's separate than just like big picture—
Sylvi: Big picture, it needs to be like Divine Principality space that they're going to. It can't be like we're gonna go to the, what was it?
Austin: Caelestia Nullius—you're not like, going to like, chill somewhere.
Sylvi: Yeah, no. This is to get into the mix. Like, this is like we need—if Perennial is going to spread more, it needs to be planted somewhere where it can. Just to continue rolling with all the gardening metaphors I've been doing. It's such easy shorthand.
Austin: Do you want to like, go just meet up with another Millennium Break base somewhere? You know?
Sylvi: That might be the move, right? And then now that we're out of the Mirage, we can more freely move around.
Austin: Yeah, yeah. I mean, not to get too cute, but we know that there is a deep, safe Millennium Break base on a planet called Collier, which is the farming world where Dahlia was originally kidnapped by the Farmer. It's where I believe Thisbe spent some time, and I believe Millie might be there now?
Sylvi: Oh my god. Yep, it might be.
Austin: And that's like the big Millennium Break secret base, you know? But there's also probably other similar bases. We saw some in the Road to PALISADE. We saw that there was a Millennium Break base that Veronique and Fealty destroyed and kidnapped Gucci from. And there's probably more places like that throughout the galaxy, you know?
Sylvi: Yeah.
Jack: The place that the postcard, one of the postcard writers this season [Austin: Yes.] from Patreon was at, you know?
Austin: Yes.
Sylvi: Oh. Ooh!
Austin: So, many places.
Sylvi: I like—Like the Millennium Break base idea. [Austin: Okay.] I don't know if like, [Austin: Yeah.] picking the right one ends up being part of the roll here? Or something like that.
Austin: Maybe, yeah, that's fun. Yeah yeah, how you arrive—well, we'll get some context here.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Austin: Because I know how this one-way ticket works, which I don't think you necessarily do.
Sylvi: That I would love to know, that would be so helpful.
Austin: I don't know that Elle knows how it works, but I'll describe it.
So, the way this works, I mean, I guess it—not to just zoom into a scene, but, [Sylvi: You know.] you know, there is a place that Elle knows to go to. I think it's in the hills of Steeple Cataract. It is a—actually it wouldn't be there. It would be somewhere in one of the—oh, you know where it is? It's in the one remaining area of—or maybe it's like deep in City—it's either deep in City City, or it's in the Frontier Syndicate places. Maybe it's in Composure's Coliseum, which I'm guessing, Composure—we didn't talk about this, but I'm guessing Composure was also brought in by August Righteousness. August Righteousness arrested a giant arena.
[Sylvi and Jack laugh]
Austin: Is very funny to me. Somewhere in one of these Frontier Syndicate places, there is a shed, you know, like out in the outskirts of a town.
[music —“Recalibrate Some Priorities” by Jack de Quidt begins]
Austin: And in the shed is a button. And she hits the button. Screen pops up. Puts in a code, it verifies that it’s her. And then there is a loud sound, as the Divine Present teleports in. Present, of course, one of the founding members of The Pact of Necessary Venture.
Sylvi: Oh, fuck!
Austin: Gallica, the Elect thereof, one of the two remaining members of that Pact, who most recently tried to kill Cas’alear Rizah on screen. We've seen Gallica show up a number of times and offer a poison pill to the player characters in some way or another. And here she is again, folks, in her all-white everything outfit.
Except this time, she moves not of her own will.
Sylvi: [whispering] Oh fuck!
Austin: When she steps down the stairs, she does so clearly in distress. Clearly in compulsion. She signed a contract, and this is at least one part of it.
This is what Elle had access to, and in some ways, I think Elle, I think you see fear in Elle. Because here she is faced with the truth, which is there is no way that we know getting out of one of Arbitrage’s contracts. Even one of the most powerful people in the galaxy, has been compelled by one. And we know that Elle has her own contract with Arbitrage, or we suspect she might. Nothing has been explicitly elucidated.
Sylvi: We gotta learn how to kill Divines.
[Jack chuckles]
Austin: We gotta learn how to kill Divines, folks. And—I mean, actually, Arbitrage predates Gumption too!
Jack: Oh, just shoot it, grind it into a paste.
Keith: We can paste this one.
Sylvi: Maybe I know where we're going.
Austin: [chuckles] And, you know, stands in, sort of—not attention, but, you know, a full standing posture, as if to let you on board, you know, like an usher awaiting your entrance on board the ship, you know? Seems upset about this, but does not seem capable of resisting this compulsion.
Sylvi: I mean, I think the big thing is like, is Elle still cool with going through with this?
Austin: I think Elle looks to you and asks you that, and says,
Austin (as Elle): Is this okay with you? I didn't know.
Sylvi (as Cori): I mean… okay is a stretch, but usable is still on the table. Like, I don’t know. Kind of just recalibrates some priorities, I think.
Austin (as Elle): I’ve always been a more of an effects than a cause girl, so.
Sylvi (as Cori): I know this about you.
Austin (as Elle): After you.
[music ends]
Sylvi: Yeah, Cori did like pull a gun or something.
Austin: Oh, sure, of course! Yeah!
Sylvi: Probably still has it in her hand, when she is getting on this thing.
Austin: And Elle's gonna follow you, board, and you know, some stuff can get loaded on, if y'all have bags or—I don't know if your mechs are gonna fit on this thing, but that was not really part of the deal, I think, so.
Sylvi: No, Perennial's got my back.
Austin: Yeah, you'll figure it out as you go.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah, and there is not a betrayal coming or anything like this. So with this said, what is the goal of this scene? Is it to go out into the world and successfully set up shop somewhere or?
Sylvi: Yeah, it kinda is. Like it isn't necessarily—I don't know if they're necessarily gonna be setting up their own like, full-on like [Austin: Right, right right.] resistance cell out there, but it is to start up their own sort of operation.
Austin: Yeah. Joining up with a Millennium Break cell. Something like that.
Sylvi: Yeah, finding more ways to get Perennials like, influence spreading so it can slow the bad of Arbitrage and things like it too.
Austin: Yeah. God, another place I hadn't thought about where you could go, [Sylvi: Yeah?] is the center of the galaxy. You can go see Perennial. What you’d—
Sylvi: Why the fuck wouldn't we?!
Austin: Because I don't know what you'd do after that! [Sylvi: Yeah!] but maybe that's fine! I don't know.
Sylvi: Fuck! That's cool though.
Austin: We've not seen that place since our original Armor Astir game.
Jack: Damn. I mean, if you can go anywhere in the galaxy.
Sylvi: Because is that the plan, right?
Austin: Maybe, yeah.
Sylvi: Like go to Perennial and then get redirected to where, like make the decision with Perennial itself to where to go after that.
Austin: Maybe, that's fun. What's—you know, I haven't looked at the way we described all that in a long time. And maybe that's part of what this roll is, right? Is like, can you actually get there safely?
Sylvi: Yeah! And if I fuck it up, we got some, oh no, they landed somewhere else.
Austin: They landed somewhere else, yeah.
Sylvi: They slingshotted too far or something.
Austin: Exactly, exactly. Was there somebody else asking a question at some point? Did I miss that?
Jack: No, I'm just excited.
Austin: Yeah, I believe, yeah—in our initial Armour Astir game, that is how things wrapped up. Was Perennial took—I say this like, I think this is what happened, when it's been one of the core truths of this setting since then. This is like the big NEH nanomachine Dyson sphere thing—Perennial takes over the center of it, and you know, that's where you're going back to. Where Teasel Mode uploaded—or connected Perennial to this machine.
I guess—I guess, yeah, this is gonna be a roll in which you're trying to—you along with Elle, and Gallica, and Present—who have to give this the best of their ability—are trying to navigate to the center of the galaxy. Using Present, which is like a teleporting Divine.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Austin: Right? So it's like, I think it's less, I mean, I don't know, you get to see it firsthand from the cockpit of this thing. And maybe it is more like flying very quickly? Maybe there's a time dilation thing happening, where like you actually, there is an active sense of piloting this machine, and not just it—you select your fast travel point on the map and it goes there, you know?
Sylvi: Yeah.
Austin: And maybe it becomes more difficult the closer you arrive to, towards the center of the galaxy.
Sylvi: Yeah, I kind of like the idea of it being—honestly, the way you're describing just kind of reminds me of the way like, I would do stuff in Elite Dangerous? [Austin: Yes, yes.] Which is like, when you're traveling really far, you're going fast and you're not really paying attention until you need to start narrowing in [Austin: Yeah.] the more precise way you're flying? And I think that works here.
Austin: And like Elite Dangerous, if you don't decelerate at the right time, you end up—
Sylvi: You’re gonna fly into the sun.
Austin: Flinging yourself into the sun, exactly. Exactly—at the very least, you're going to overshoot your destination, and be like, I have to fucking circle back around now. This is annoying. And then someone jumps you, you know? Ugh.
Sylvi: Yeah, it's, you know—I don't think I could ever go back to that game because it's just too crunchy for me now? [Austin: Yep. However—] However, when I accidentally ended up on a—right in front of a dying star and had to like, pilot out of it?
Austin: Very cool.
Sylvi: Killer. It was dope as hell.
Austin: Alright.
Sylvi: Alright. Relevant stuff.
[01:29:35]
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvi: I feel like Elle counts, right?
Austin: Yeah, Elle counts. Elle's here, Elle's in the scene.
Sylvi: And then, this is the boon.
Austin: This is the one way ticket out of the Mirage.
Sylvi: I don’t know if the Afflictions help me here.
Austin: I don't think the Afflictions help you here. [lowers voice] “Hunted by Iconoclasts”.
Sylvi: Fuck!
Austin: Is wild.
Sylvi: Yeah!
Austin: They start crawling on Present—it's like the gremlins on the side of the wing in the Twilight Zone movie. They're fucking on the—on Present with you, you know? Trying to break their way in.
Sylvi: There's a ferret on the wing of the plane.
Austin: There's a ferret on the wing of the plane, yes. [Keith chuckles] “Put up or shut up/overwhelmed” seems relevant also, unfortunately.
Sylvi: Yeah? Okay. I thought this was her doing that.
Austin: Oh, I guess this is her doing it, right?
Sylvi: Yeah, the fact that like—
Austin: Yeah, but I still think that's why it's—it's still a burden. It's you doing it, which is hard.
Sylvi: Yeah, okay.
Austin: Right? You're overwhelmed.
Sylvi: I’ll take it if I got it. Yeah, so—
Austin: I don't think. How do you break the wheel from this place of relative peace, though, because that obstacle is—is you're not doing that. You're not in the place of relative place.
Sylvi: I am actively addressing it. Relevant relationship—
Austin: Yeah. I'm torn on “Cori's only skill is violence. Do you even know how to build something?” Thoughts?
Jack: Um.
Keith: This isn't really building, it's more like going-to building.
Jack: And while you could hear an argument that it's like, well, this is a precursor to building, it is a precursor that is being offered through an engine of violence.
Austin: Right. And weirdly, the iconoclasts attacking you has made violence relevant.
Jack: Ha! That's true. [Keith: Mmm.] Yeah, oh god, your right eye is really itchy.
Austin: [chuckles] Oh, it's good. Five opposition dice. Four for Cori.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: Who wants to roll?
Art: Oh, Art, you should roll this for your Iconoclasts.
Austin: For your Iconoclasts, yeah.
Dre: Mmm.
Austin: Mhm.
Sylvi: Should I roll first, or?
Austin: Let Art roll. Let's see what you're rolling against.
Sylvi: Okay.
Jack: Oh, that ain't good.
Austin: 6-6-5.
Sylvi: No, it’s not.
Austin: Here we are again. We've gotten so many 6-6-5s, I feel. Okay! Well.
Dre: Ohhh…
Keith: Okay.
Art: This is—this rough.
Austin: This ain’t great.
Keith: Well, I mean, what's your, what’s your—
Sylvi: It's Lash Out, and you know I'm doing it.
Austin: Is it Lash Out?
Art: It's a tough Lash Out, though, because you have bad numbers.
Austin: You do have bad numbers.
Sylvi: Yeah, I do, but—
Keith: But it just get rids of those sixes—
Austin: You rolled 6-3-2-1.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Can I… suggest… rerolling the four, too?
Jack: [laughs] He's back.
Sylvi: I'll do it.
Dre: Evil Keith.
Art: Wait, You said just reroll the sixes, then you said the four, so you're going to leave the five?
Keith: I never said that! I didn't say just reroll the sixes.
Art: Oh, was that someone else?
Keith: Yeah, I think that was someone else. I think reroll 6-6-5-4, because you can't beat the four.
Art: And no one owned up to that, Keith.
Sylvi: Because I also get an extra die, right?
Austin: Yeah, you're Lashing Out.
Art: Yeah.
Keith: You will get an extra die, yeah.
Austin: Which means what, visually, narratively?
Sylvi: This feels like trying to figure out what combat capabilities whatever vessel we're in has.
Austin: Sure, yeah. And maybe like taking the controls of it from—
Sylvi: Yeah.
Austin: From Gallica, right? I feel like Gallica’s like, a real letter-of-the-law thing here? Which is not—there’s not—Gallica hasn't been compelled to protect you during this trip, you know?
Jack: [chuckles] I'm just the bus driver.
Austin: Yeah. So taking control of Present’s, you know, defensive capabilities.
Sylvi: Lashing out at Gallica as well.
Austin: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. Alright, Art, do you want to re-roll—so wait, 6-6-5-4 is being re-rolled?
Sylvi: I got it. I feel like there's no other way I can pull this off. And I’ll roll my other die here.
Austin: Okay. Let's see the roll. Yeah, you roll your extra die.
Sylvi: Because Fleeing isn't going to work—there's two sixes there.
Austin: Oh my god.
Keith: Oh my god.
Sylvi: I'm going to kill myself.
Jack: That's that re-rolled—
Sylvi: [away from the mic] I’m going to end it all!
Keith: It's a little better.
Austin: It's a little better.
Jack: It is a little better.
Sylvi: It’s a little better.
Jack: 6-6-5 re-rolled to 6-6-3.
Austin: You do have a choice to make, unfortunately. Well—
Sylvi: Yeah?
Art: And the four became a two.
Ali: I'm never using Roll20 again.
[Jack chuckles]
Austin: I said for next season, we could try to find something else.
Ali: I don't trust this anymore.
Sylvi: I don't trust them.
Ali: The vibes are off!
Art: How would they know?
Austin: Yeah, how would they know which side are—
Ali: But it feels like—you know how Apple did this and Spotify did this where they would have randomized playlists, and then the algorithm just got worse over the time and you would like, hear the same 20 songs out of 7,000 songs?
Jack: Yeah, they're just rolling the same—
Art: Yeah, we have been seeing the same six numbers over and over again.
Ali: No, but I feel like there's something wrong. [wheezes] Just feel it inside of me.
Keith: Isn't it famously hard to make a random number generator? Isn't that true?
Ali: I'm just saying!
Art: Yes, it is very, you can't actually do it is the real—
Ali: I don't trust it!
Art: Computers can't generate random numbers.
Ali: We're all buying dice.
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: Turning on webcams.
Austin: Oh, wow.
[Ali chuckles]
Jack: We'll be streaming live on Twitch.
Art: I don't think next season is my webcam season.
Ali: We'll just have it pointed at your dice.
Sylvi: If I can tell a quick anecdote, when my girlfriend was visiting, we needed to find a single six-sided dice to play a tabletop game, and I could not find one in my entire apartment.
Austin: It's so funny. It’s so funny.
Sylvi: It's so funny considering what I've been doing for the past almost a decade.
Ali: I also don't own any dice.
Sylvi: I just don't bring my work home!
Ali: Yeah!
Austin: I see.
Dre: Yeah, you got a good balance, you know?
Austin: We all go to the office together, right? Yeah.
Sylvi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughing] We're gathered around the boardroom table right now.
Austin: So, right now, 6-6-3, you could lose this scene and only take one doom by blocking a six, [Sylvi: Yeah.] and blocking the three, or you could get a win by putting the six on a three and then taking two dooms.
Sylvi: The dooms, I'm so—
Austin: It's scary.
Sylvi: I am so worried about at this point in the game too, because that's just—
Austin: It won't tick up anything to six or higher, which means you won't—
Sylvi: No, I'm worried about my misfortunes for getting both of them.
Austin: No, no, that part is 100% scary, yes.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Austin: But you've already taken one—I guess that's one way to think about it. You've taken one misfortune now because you Lashed Out.
Sylvi: But if I take the victory here, I get one—one fortune.
Austin: You'll get one fortune. Right now, if you take the victory, you take one fortune and then get two more misfortune.
Keith: Did we not say the thing where you can block one of the sixes and then beat the three?
Austin: You can't.
Sylvi: I can't beat the three.
Austin: She can’t beat the three. That’s not—
Keith: Oh, that's not your five.
Sylvi: No, that's not my five.
Keith: Sorry, it’s just there was a straight five.
Sylvi: Oh no, ha ha! Yeah, there it is.
Austin: Which, the other thing you could do— [chuckles]
Art: You could Menace to win on your three.
Austin: You could Menace to win on your three.
Sylvi: Oh, I can do it again?
Austin: Well you could Cheat.
Keith: You could Cheat.
Austin: You could also Cheat and re-roll any number of your own dice.
Keith: Cheat, cheat.
Austin: You could re-roll the one, two, two, three, but that's—
Art: And your chance of getting a four or higher is pretty good.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvi: [nervous] I mean, in for a penny, in for a pound, right?
Keith: Yeah, yeah.
Austin: Again, the choice here—I'm going to say it out loud again—it seems like the choice here is either Cheat, which lets you re-roll your one, two, two, three, or you put the six and the three on, you block the six, one of the two sixes, and you take a—you—what is it? Menace? Ties become wins?
Art: Menace.
Austin: So that could get you one win, which gives you the win for the scene, and you end up leaving with—oh my god, that's still—that’s still three misfortunes.
Keith: Yeah. It's impossible, yeah. The real choice is bad.
Art: Cheat is the way to go.
Keith: The real thing is that it's either Cheat, or no win and one doom.
Austin: I hate it.
Keith: That's, I think, the two real options here.
Austin: I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.
Keith: Yeah, this is really bad.
Austin: This sucks.
Evil Keith: But hey, it's the finale, it's time to roll those dice!
Sylvi: It is time to roll those dice, Evil Keith.
[Evil Keith cackles]
Austin: So you're cheating. What's that look like?
[Art laughs at Evil Keith’s cackling]
Art: I love Evil Keith.
[Keith chuckles]
Sylvi: How does that work in this situation? Yeah, that's a great question.
Austin: Is that Perennial magic? Is that—
Sylvi: Probably. Perennial take the wheel!
Austin: Yeah, I mean—
Sylvi: Like, it literally might be like, overriding Present and Gallica stuff with Perennial [Austin: With Perennial, yeah.] and Cori respectively, right?
Austin: Which—
Sylvi: And then that—
Austin: Yeah, we know that Perennial can't turn back the clock and split the timeline again. [Sylvi: No.] But we have seen some Perennial time magic stuff in other ways where it's like you go into bullet time, you go into slow motion, [Sylvi: Yeah.] you see little visions of what might come next. You, you know, on top of traditional Perennial—
Sylvi: Enter the zone.
Austin: Right, you enter the zone. Yeah, you cheat by entering the zone. You put in the game genie and, [Sylvi: Yeah!] you know, put on slow motion effect, so.
Sylvi: I'm so stressed about this.
Austin: You just got to roll good.
Keith: I think this is going to be great. I think you’re going to get a six and a four.
Austin: Everybody put their hand on their screen and cover up the dice.
Ali: Mhm. I close my eyes every time I do it.
Austin: Okay I’m—
Art: Oh we’re not doing—I think we're doing a Dusty Jones.
Austin: I'm passing the power. I'm passing the power, I am. It’s all—exactly.
Jack: I’m doing it too.
[Janine chuckles]
Jack: My hand's on the screen. I'm touching the dice.
Sylvi: I'm ready.
Dre: I'm touching.
Keith: I think we're doing a spirit bomb, is what we're doing.
Sylvi: I feel your power. I'm clicking.
Janine: This feels a lot more Captain Planet.
Sylvi: Fuck!
Austin: Well!
Janine: Enh.
Dre: Enh.
Austin: Well—
Sylvi: You know!
Austin: No, this is not better.
Art: It's the same as if you hadn't done it.
Austin: It's the same as if you hadn't done it, except you're plus on one misfortune.
Sylvi: Is it?
Austin: I think so—
Keith: No.
Art: Yeah, because you would have had to—
Austin: Oh, you're right!
Art: Because you would have gotten the misfortune anyway.
Sylvi: I couldn't beat the three before.
Austin: Couldn’t beat the three before. Yeah, right.
Keith: So now it's the same as if you had fled—
Austin: Or Menaced. The same as if you had Menaced.
Sylvi: Menaced, yeah. Which, in this case, like, it's fine, because I think the—I don't know.
Austin: It sucks.
Sylvi: Whatever, I did it. It sucks.
Austin: You get three misfortunes and one fortune.
Art: And one fortune.
Sylvi: You know, you gotta...
Austin: Oh, it sucks out there.
Sylvi: You wanna make glue, you gotta kill a couple horses, ain’t that the phrase?
Art: Oh my god. You have five misfortunes and only one total fortune?
Jack: Yeah, it's gonna another—it’s gonna be another—
Sylvi: The economy's really bad right now.
Keith: I'm telling you, this is why you die.
[Jack chuckles]
Sylvi: I don't wanna!
Austin: It's too late now.
Sylvi: She just got a girlfriend!
Austin: She can't die now.
Art: It's too late, you can’t die now.
Keith: No, it's too late. Yeah, I'm saying this was—you should have died before you had a girlfriend.
[Sylvi and Keith laugh]
Keith: Then it wouldn't have been so sad.
Austin: Ohh… Well, we get to narrate your victory here, Sylvi.
Sylvi: Sorry, I was laughing too hard.
Austin: Now you have to narrate your victory here, because you got one victory. You got a five here, [Sylvi: Yeah.] which gives you one fortune and a boon. What's the success part of this look like?
Sylvi: I think they make—so, hear me out on this. I think they make it to Perennial, but the ship's like fucked. Kind of like drifting in space fucked. [Austin: Mmm, mmm.] They're not necessarily going to like, die—
Austin: Well you succeeded! Again, you did get a success.
Sylvi: Like I succeeded, I got there. [Austin: Yeah yeah yeah.] But I think that part of the—I still take a doom here, right?
Austin: Well, the opposition decides what the doom is.
Sylvi: Right, you decide that.
Austin: And you have to draw a card. Somebody has to draw a card to see what the doom is.
Sylvi: Should I do that? No, I want to do that. I'm not there anymore, so.
Austin: Great.
Sylvi: I'm not going to be here.
Austin: Wealth and Resources goes up to a three. We'll figure out what that looks like in a second. So yeah, you make it to Perennial, but you're drifting in space. Or you could—again, it is a success. You can narrate the successes as hard as you want. As long as you get one victory, you can succeed in the scene, you know?
Sylvi: Yeah. Okay, then I guess the ship's probably—it's damaged, maybe not completely inoperational, like I described? Like, it'll take some time to fix.
Keith: One time when I had no money, I was running out of gas before I got to the gas station, but I had just enough to run out of gas while rolling into the gas station.
Austin: Good, yeah.
Sylvi: There we go. Thank you, Keith. We've nailed it.
Austin: Which strands you with one of the members of the Pact of Necessary Venture at the center of the galaxy with Perennial?
Sylvi: Did I not kill her when I was Lashing Out?
Austin: Oh, you didn't say you killed her.
Sylvi: No, I didn't, but I could.
Austin: God. You know.
[Sylvi laughs]
Keith: Shake her like the fish?
Austin: If—you know, I'm not going to say no. I'm going to ask you what it looks like to kill one of the two remaining members of the Pact.
Sylvi: There was a thought in my head where it was like, the way Cori lashes out to take control of this is she just shoots her in the head.
Austin: Jesus. Which also explains like—
Janine: It's kind of like shooting your cab driver. Like, I guess you can drive it yourself, but you're going to have to leap over the scene.
Ali: I told Cori to do a cool thing. [wheezes]
[Jack laughs]
Janine: [cross] Like murder.
Sylvi: [cross] I’m just following captain’s orders.
Austin: Brnine—this is like a little minor version of Brnine killing the Apokine, you know? Killing the—
Sylvi: Yeah, to be fair! A Pact member—like. Gallica—
Keith: Wow. Copying Brnine once again.
[Ali laughs] I'm assuming, yeah, everybody's, wow—everybody's discussing this. It must be just like, whoa, crazy!
Austin: You know, I think this is—this is big in the sense that it leaves the Pact of—what was the Pact of Necessary Venture, down to its only—there's only one remaining original member of it on the living human side still around, right? Motion is back up and at it, I guess, but only Rye, the Elect of the Divine Space, is left. Everybody else has been killed at this point, which helps us in the vision of fragmented, bad future, you know? Also helps explain part of why this went bad, if you then have to try to pilot the Divine Present after killing its Elect.
Jack: Oh my god, because the Divine is still alive.
Austin: Yeah! So partly—maybe why this goes so rough is, yeah, you get there, but you don't—it fights you all the way there, you know?
Sylvi: Yeah.
Austin: Until finally you're close enough to where, like—to the point where it's—have you played FTL, ever, Sylvi?
Sylvi: Oh yeah!
Austin: You know when it's like, oh shit, there's enemies on my ship, I need to like, [Sylvi: Yeah.] open all the doors to let all the oxygen out, and I need to like, okay, I can like lock them into the room where their fire is, and it's going to hurt my ship—like that shit is happening to you. The Divine Present is trying to like space you, you know, and you're like—
Sylvi: That fits with the roll.
Austin: Yeah, a hundred percent.
Jack: That's sick as hell.
Austin: But you make it close enough to where like, Perennial’s nanomachines are able to reach out like, a giant hand and like, bring you in to the orb—to the big orb. And that's the last we see from this scene.
Sylvi: They're in Vegas now, in the orb!
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: Sorry, did we end up—did you end up doing the shoot?
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvi: Yeah yeah yeah.
Keith: Okay.
Keith: It's kind of crazy—we waged this big war against the Bilats, [Austin: Uh huh.] but with the Pact of Necessary Venture, we just like murdered all of them.
[Ali laughs, Keith laughs]
Austin: Yeah. Uh huh.
Ali: Winning strategies.
Sylvi: You know what?
Austin: But that's like—
Keith: That's so funny!
Sylvi: They're problem solvers!
Austin: In a way, that's the whole thing.
Keith: That is their whole thing. It makes sense. It does make sense.
Jack: It's also very much the sort of like, Crusader Kings approach to statecraft? Where it's like, well now [Keith: Oh yeah.] over here, I'm throwing a load of men at arms. And over here, I've simply sent my assassin to go and knife someone.
Keith: Yeah. These are the kinds of countries we go to war against, and these are the kind of countries that I just like, kill all of the heirs of.
Austin: Right, exactly. Cool. That's a lot of misfortune, I'm afraid.
Sylvi: Yeah. What could go wrong?
Austin: The doom that you drew was Wealth and Resources. What's this mean for Palisade? Obviously, we can narrate something that has nothing to do with that scene; this is a reminder, it doesn't have to be directly tied to what just happened. Though one thing that comes to mind here is maybe Arbitrage's links to Palisade are not so gone, as we thought.
Jack: This—that was what I—that was what I figured. And I wonder if there is, you know, I think that Arbitrage is a character who is like, very often the intricate web weaver? But I think also would like to depict itself as the intricate web weaver very often? And I wonder if part of what we feel here is a bit of Arbitrage lashing out. Going, you killed one of my—you know, I had an agent in the Pact and you just killed them.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: So I need to recover my losses there on Palisade. And doesn't necessarily like redouble their efforts, but I wonder if there is that little angry sting, that swell of resentment from Arbitrage going, hey, fuck you.
Austin: Yeah. Some sort of like, you know—maybe it's not even just—maybe it's not even as simple as it's just on Palisade, right? Because we know Arbitrage spent a lot of time in The Twilight Mirage, right? Was part of the Divine Fleet, was part of the Twilight Mirage. Maybe it's like, all right, I'm going to activate something old, something that's going to cost you money to deal with, something that's going to—I'm going to release a bunch of—what is this? This is Wealth and Resources—I'm going to release some sort of insect that, like, chews through trees or chews through—or poisons water, right? Like, I'm going to release something from Moonlock that flies across space, lands on Palisade, and is a bit of a plague to deal with, you know?
Ali: I'm going to republish the magazine that kills people! [wheezes]
Austin: I'm going to republish the magazine that kills people!
[Ali and Keith laugh]
Sylvi: Oh my fucking god!
Keith: I love a reissue.
Austin: I mean, that's the other version of this is, like, the Arbitrage network comes online inside of the Twilight Mirage, right? Is like, it's so convenient here, you know? It's not called that, it's called something else here, but it's, you know—it's like, yeah—it's like when a—when an app gets, like, a different name in a different region, or when something gets, like, re-released, but it's just, it's—all it is is the name change?
Keith: But this is, like, Old Country Buffet and Hometown Buffet.
Austin: Right, exactly. It's not called Glint anymore, it's called Glimmer, and everyone loves Glimmer! It's replaced Glint as the currency du jour. But it's just fucking Arbitrage again, you know? Something like that. Arbitrage's web is deeper than we thought it was, is I think generally what that might mean.
[music - “See All Of This” by Jack de Quidt begins]
[music ends]