The Road to PALISADE 10: Lancer Pt. 3
Transcriber: Akumu#7506 [00:00:00 - 03:17:11]
AUSTIN: The Road to Palisade is a show about war, politics, religion, revolutionary violence and the many consequences thereof. For a full list of content warnings, please check the episode description.
[Permanent Peace begins to play under several clips from The Road to PALISADE 9: Lancer Pt. 2]
DRE [as KALIOPE]: I'm getting out of here, we need to split up, so that way they will follow you, instead of following me.
SYLVI: I'm in the danger zone, everybody.
AUSTIN: This is what we love to see.
DRE: Nice.
AUSTIN: This is what we love to see.
SYLVI: This is what we've been waiting for.
DRE: Uh-huh.
JACK: Yes!
DRE: You start hearing that alarm again.
KEITH: I ignore it.
JACK: Oh, no!
DRE: That siren.
AUSTIN: What happened last time? What was the —
JACK: The reinforcements showed up with granddad.
AUSTIN: Yeah, right, right, right.
KEITH: Yeah, and remember how you were being chased through the forest.
AUSTIN: Oh, this sucks.
KEITH: Uh, foul. I call foul.
DRE: [laughing]
KEITH: This is foul.
AUSTIN: Oh, there's so many, and they're right behind you, the witch is right there!
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: How do you think those kids we rescued are doing?
JACK [as MARTILLA]: They better be fine.
DRE: Do you know what a sonic boom sounds like?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: Yeah, it’s–
DRE: One of those rips across the battlefield.
AUSTIN: Don’t like it. We gotta go. We cannot be here anymore.
DRE: As a squadron of flyers comes in from the east.
AUSTIN: No! [laughing] What?!
DRE [as KALIOPE]: In the end, you get what you want. They're not coming.
JACK [as MARTILLA]: Millennium Break?
DRE [as KALIOPE]: They're not coming. They, they couldn't. They, they were coming, but they aren't, anymore.
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: Well, what’s this mean for us?
DRE: Uh, I think when you say that, uh, Deanthe and the three Strand kind of step into the conversation. And Deanthe says —
DRE [as DEANTHE]: Now we get to see what a Strand can do.
[Permanent Peace ends]
DRE: Welcome to Friends at the Table, an actual-play podcast focused on critical worldbuilding, smart characterization, and fun interaction between good friends. I am your guest host, Andrew Lee Swan. Today we are doing our third and, unless something real wild happens, final session of Lancer on the Road to Palisade. I am joined once again by Jack de Quidt.
Jack: Hi there, you can find me on Twitter @notquitereal and buy any of the music featured on the show at notquitereal.bandcamp.com
DRE: Sylvi.
SYLVI: Hey, I'm Sylvia, you can find me on Twitter @sylvibullet, and you can listen to my other show Emojidrome wherever you get your podcasts.
DRE: Austin.
AUSTIN: Hey, I'm Austin Walker. You find me on Twitter @austin_walker, and you can listen to my other show A More Civilized Age by going to more_civilized on Twitter.
JACK: It's a good show.
AUSTIN: Not More Civilized, which is a different show about Star Wars that doesn't exist anymore, and also seems to have some, some sketchy opinions.
DRE: Okay. Last but not least, Keith!
KEITH: Uh, hi, my name is Keith J. Carberry, you can find me on Twitter @keithjcarberry, you can find the Let's Plays that I do at youtube.com/runbutton. We finally just recorded more Uru. Our Uru Let's Play is going on, and they just released, like literally, like, fan devs have released, like, a huge section of the game that got modded back in, and we played that yesterday, so that's going to be up in the next couple of weeks.
JACK [cross]: Was it good?
KEITH: Uh, it's the best thing I've ever done in Myst, in any Myst game.
AUSTIN [cross]: Wowww!
DRE [cross]: Wow!
JACK: Like, like, like, for the reasons that they intended?
KEITH: I think so!
AUSTIN [cross]: Hell yeah.
KEITH: So there's like this huge structure that we spent like two hours wandering around being like "what the fuck do you do in here?" before quitting and being like "I guess this place is for nothing," learned that it was a part of the game that was removed.
JACK [cross]: Huh. Wow, that's really fun.
KEITH: And then between last time we played and now, it got modded back in, and so we went back and we did it and it's like this, you, it's, it's this game, it's a game where one person, two people make mazes and the other two people have to solve the mazes.
DRE [cross]: Woah.
AUSTIN [cross]: Ahhhh.
KEITH: And so like, me and John, John had to do Jordan's maze, and Kylie had to solve my maze, and if John beat Jordan's maze, before, before, uh, before Kylie beat my maze, they would win, and vice versa. And it's like this big structure, it's like there's this giant cube that they're literally traversing, and the maze shows up on this big cube, and they get sort of Iron Manned into this weird suit that they climb around in.
JACK [cross]: Wow!
DRE [cross]: Dang.
KEITH: It was wild! It was so weird.
JACK: I mean [laughs], that sounds very fun. Where can people watch that, again?
KEITH: youtube.com/runbutton. That'll be up by the time this is up.
AUSTIN: Almost certainly.
KEITH: Oh yeah, definitely, definitely. There'll be even more episodes. What I'm talking about is the fourth, is going to be the fourth episode, just for anyone who wants to just watch that.
DRE: Gotcha.
SYLVI: Amazing.
KEITH: Sorry, I didn't mean to like quadruple dub. [DRE laughs] But I'm very excited about Uru for the first time.
AUSTIN: U-R-U
KEITH: U-R-U!
DRE: Yeah, uwu but with an R instead.
KEITH: Yeah, uwu, yeah.
AUSTIN: Is that what uwu stands for? You, you are you? You woo woo?
KEITH: Yeah. Yep. You wahr—
AUSTIN [interjecting]: Woo.
KEITH: You war you.
AUSTIN: Wow! Okay, yeah.
KEITH: I like art that when you, like look closer, it has—
AUSTIN: Haha, I hate you.
[ALL laughing]
AUSTIN: People can get our Clapcasts for one dollar by going to friendsatthetable.cash
[ALL laughing]
DRE: God.
SYLVI: Well done, everyone.
KEITH: Am I the only one that does that?
AUSTIN: No, Art does it a lot too.
KEITH: Art does it, okay.
SYLVI: I feel like I've done it once or twice, but I've tried to stop.
KEITH: I've tried to pick it up, I think.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
DRE: Alright, who remembers what happened and where we left off last time? I remember, for the record, but I just want to see if [JACK laughs] any of you all can fill in the gaps.
SYLVI: I did it last time, someone else has to.
DRE: It's true.
KEITH: Oh, I need to pick my person. Select character, but it's— oh, okay. Sorry, I got confused by the select character screen where it's like, you have to be either your pilot or your mech, but I can just hit save configuration. Okay. Last time, we made it through another group of people that was very scary, but it ended up being, I think, mostly fine.
DRE [cross]: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: Well yeah, we mostly got through that alright.
SYLVI [cross]: Yeah.
AUSTIN: We, we had rescued the Tress, the trio of strati, or special trio of strati. One second [sneezes]. Excuse me, I had to sneeze.
JACK: Bless you.
KEITH: Bless you.
AUSTIN: We had rescued that group of strati, the Tress, Dirwin, Elaina and Stas. We had handed those off to, uh, was that Deanthe who we handed them off to?
DRE: Yep.
KEITH: Yes.
AUSTIN: Who then ran them to a sort of extraction point while we... led? the rest of our pursuers through a sort of wild goose chase through the woods, is that correct, on our way to the, to the extraction point?
DRE: Mm-hmm.
KEITH: Yeah. Well, from our perspective, I think we thought we had escaped those pursuers.
JACK: But then they, [laughs], they came following—
KEITH: But then they showed up behind us in the middle of a very tough fight.
AUSTIN [cross]: In the middle of the follow-up.
AUSTIN: Well I think we had gone through the woods a lot, and then, and then emerged at a river, like a sort of fork in a river and had to kind of push past, just a big fucker, just a, that guy was a big fucker.
KEITH: There was an Under The Radar sized big fucker.
AUSTIN: Yeah, and then—
JACK: Wasn't the guy called, like, Crash Saxton or something, Saxton Clash?
KEITH: Yeah, his name was like, Slice Killton.
AUSTIN [cross]: Saxton Clash!
AUSTIN [laughing]: Yeah! Yes.
DRE: Big Hit Kill Man, yep.
AUSTIN: Yeah, uh-huh.
JACK: And once we beat him, another set of Pact mechs, like, came through on a bombing run, right?
AUSTIN: Mm-hmm.
DRE: Mm-hmm.
JACK: Like, strafed the, the extraction point. But we made it through, and made it out to the other side, where we were told by the soon-to-be-former mayor [AUSTIN laughs] that, that Millennium Break was not going to come and rescue us. That, I think the implication, correct me if I'm wrong here, Dre, was that the Pact had just picked them off before they were able to arrive?
DRE: Um, that is kind of, I think that's like kind of where the conversation ended, and what was implied, yeah.
JACK: Yeah. So now we have this sort of huddled crew of people from Harborview waiting to get an evacuation that isn't going to come.
DRE: Yes.
AUSTIN: Sick!
KEITH: Bummer.
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: And we, we, is there anything else, we lost that previous group by going through like an underground river tunnel or something, didn't we, right?
DRE: Yeah, it was like, you got into that tunnel, and a bombing run kinda collapsed it behind you.
AUSTIN: Right, so they couldn't chase us.
KEITH: Yes, right.
AUSTIN: A classic maneuver.
DRE: Mm-hmm. Just as you planned it.
AUSTIN: Yeah, that was 100% how we planned it.
DRE: Yeah. So yeah, you all are at the base of this large mountain. It is pretty much dusk, like the sun is setting, um, it is starting to rain, and Kaliope, the, as Jack said, the soon-to-be-former mayor, basically just said that Millennium Break isn't coming. I think she kinda goes on to say that what happened was that, um, the Columnar basically had a blockade around the planet.
JACK: Ah.
AUSTIN: Right, so there's no way for Millennium Break to break through and pick us up, basically.
DRE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I remember there, I remember there being a thought of like, "Oh, is this a situation where like they just said they'd come and they didn't," but no, we got clarity that it was specifically they had been stopped, so. Cool. Um, so who's here at this point? Kaliope is here, Deanthe is here, a bunch of people from Harborview are here.
DRE: Yes. Um, the three Tress are there.
AUSTIN [cross]: Zeke.
DRE: Zeke is there, yep.
DRE: Yeah and I think actually—
KEITH: I'm on the space map by the way so I can't see actually if there is—
DRE: No you're good, that's where we all are, that's where we're meant to be.
KEITH [cross]: Okay, good, alright, great.
DRE: I think actually the last thing, the last line from our last session was Deanthe saying, like, "it's time to see what a Tress can do."
AUSTIN: Right.
DRE: Um.
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: Well, we would love to see.
DRE: Yeah. [laughs] I'm trying to figure out a way to do this that isn't just me narrating a big thing here, um—
AUSTIN: You're allowed.
DRE: But I—
AUSTIN: As someone who does that sometimes.
DRE: That's true, yeah, that is this show sometimes, huh.
AUSTIN: Mm-hmm.
DRE: Um.
AUSTIN: Paint me a word picture, Dre.
DRE: Yeah, so I think, okay, so, you're at the base of this big mountain, um. Actually, I think before we go up there, I think, actually the thing I want to have before I have a big narration, is, um, I think Kaliope looks at... Jack, why do I always forget your character's name? Martilla!
AUSTIN: Martilla.
JACK [amused]: Yeah, it's Martilla.
DRE: Yeah, and says
DRE [as KALIOPE] Well I guess now's as good a time as any to put me in chains, if you're gonna.
SYLVI [as ZARK]: That's very forward.
DRE [as KALIOPE]: I mean, that was the deal.
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: Nah.
JACK [as MARTILLA]: Nobody's putting anybody in chains. We're still in the mess, we can sort that out once we get out of it.
DRE: I think she, kinda like, smirks at you. Both appreciative, and both like, "Yeah, I told you so."
[AUSTIN laughs]
DRE: So, Deanthe asks your all's help in transporting people up the side of the mountain. She says that she has a— or, sorry, they say, sorry, Deanthe is they/them— Deanthe says that they have a plan, and actually leads you to what looks like a overgrown, but what is identifiable as a path up the side of the mountain. So it's not— you all don't need to roll or anything like this, it's more that she's— or, they, gosh, sorry— that they are literally asking for like, hey, can people like ride on your mechs. And I think, specifically, this is mostly, like, Under The Radar.
AUSTIN: I was gonna say, yeah [JACK laughs] you can fit the whole damn town on that thing.
DRE: [laughs] Yeah. Very much, this is very much like Turn-A Gundam, all the times the Turn-A Gundam is carrying a cow or other people around. Um, I really like this image, if this is something Martilla would allow, of like, just, many camps almost on Under The Radar as it slowly creeps up this mountain path.
JACK: Yeah, I think that, I think that Martilla does it in the worst, most grudging grace possible, which is she says, she says, which is she says
JACK [as MARTILLA]: There's a weight limit. [AUSTIN bursts into laughter]
JACK: And as everybody starts loading up, we can see in the cockpit, there's like a little, um, you know, one of those dials that has a little thin needle that wobbles slowly up around it. It's just like the needle barely moves at all.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: God.
JACK: This is like a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of the weight limit.
KEITH: Of course.
DRE: Careful, this thing only holds three hundred and eighty five tons.
AUSTIN: Ah!
JACK: Yeah, exactly, but—
AUSTIN [cross]: It might hold more!
SYLVI [cross]: I'm just glad someone else is taking them.
AUSTIN: Yeah, you don't—
[cross talk]
SYLVI: My mech is technically not safe for me to even be piloting, that's like a health code.
AUSTIN: Oh but, but wait, but, I would love to see people just up on the hat, on the cowboy hat, on the brim.
SYLVI: Okay, so people can ride on the hat 'cause it's not loaded right now.
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH: Yeah.
JACK: But they are gonna get ill!
[AUSTIN laughs]
[DRE laughs]
AUSTIN: Yeah but I do love this as like, all the—
SYLVI: To be fair, yeah, my mech is full of radiation.
AUSTIN: No that's true, that's true.
DRE: It's all inside of it right now, it's fine.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. I do love each of mechs doing the things that they can do to help people here, as like a visual, the, the, Keith your thing can walk on walls, right.
KEITH: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: The... Dressage can walk on walls. I have these winches.
DRE [cross]: Well, it's a birthday party mech, right, so I imagine a lot of people have ridden on the Dressage.
KEITH [cross]: It is, it is—
AUSTIN [cross]: This is true, they're really comfortable.
KEITH: It, it just, it doesn't, it's very comfortable, it's very fast, but it doesn't fit a lot of people.
SYLVI [cross]: Zark is making people sign waivers.
AUSTIN: Right.
SYLVI: Zark is making people sign waivers before they get on, just sorta cover his own ass.
[JACK and DRE laugh]
DRE: Just to cover their butt, yeah.
SYLVI: Yeah.
DRE: Um, so the mountain path leads to what is like a small plateau that is kinda carved into the side of the mountain, and in the dark what appears to be columns on either side kinda flank the path up to the side of the mountain. I will pull us over to the other scene I have set up here.
DRE: Ope, it didn't take Keith for some reason. There's Keith!
KEITH: Um, I, I see... this.
DRE: Okay.
JACK: Wow, it's like, very dark here.
DRE: Mm-hmm, it's night time.
AUSTIN: And it's rai~ning.
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: You can see the rain!
KEITH: And it is, I was right, it is just a bunch of, ah—
JACK: Small tadpoles?
KEITH: Small tadpoles, yeah.
DRE: Yeah, it's tadpoles everywhere, all the way down.
DRE: So, Deanthe and the Tress assemble in front of the face of the mountain and lock arms, and a small blue light begins to glow from the side of the mountain.
AUSTIN: Oooooh.
SYLVI: Hmm!
DRE: And it forms the shape of like a giant, basically like a giant door, a door that is big enough for all of your mechs to have passage through. And that blue light begins to spread down the mountain path, and you realize that what looked like columns on the side are actually like crumbling Hypha statues.
AUSTIN: Oooh...
JACK [cross]: Woah! Woah!
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: I thought the ruins were underground.
DRE [as ZEKE]: They're all over, it turns out.
DRE: I think that's Zeke, Deanthe's kind of busy right now. [laughs]
AUSTIN: Mm-hmm. Where is this light coming from, is it coming from these things that look like statues?
DRE: Yeah, it's coming from the statues.
AUSTIN: Okay.
DRE: And so I think, like, they're all in various states of disrepair. Right, there's probably like some that are just like from the waist down and all you can see are kinda legs and hooves. There's probably some that have like, one arm, some that have like half a head, there's probably some that have like antlers kind of fallen on the ground next to them.
AUSTIN: For the—
DRE [cross]: So they—
DRE: Sorry, go ahead.
AUSTIN: It's just worth, really punching here, that like, really putting the point on it, that like, for a lot of Ashen, the idea that we had a history where this would have been a thing that was associated with us, that we had places like this, is... unheard— it's not, it's not a conceptualization. Do you know what I mean? We've had lots of characters in the past who've been in that sort of position of like, "we were kings once," you know, the sort of like "hey, they took something from us," but like contemporary Ashen society is not one in which, for most people, right, obviously there are people who do know this, but a lot of people who have just been, like, living in Apostolos, or living in Columnar, this is just, they don't see, they don't see their own history in this way. Ever? So I imagine there's definitely, there's like [stammering] Dre, I'll ask you, how does this hit the regular folks from Harborview when they see it?
DRE: I think there's, it is a mix, so I think definitely there is a feeling of awe and wonder. I, you know, I think there is probably, a lot of it is also tempered by the fact that people are terrified and freaked out because they have been like swept out from their city and their homes, and so— I think it is, I think there is enough of that awe and wonder and like, just like curiosity to take over some of that fear, but I think it's still there.
AUSTIN: Mm-hmm.
DRE: So I think this, it is a, it is, I think this provides like a brief, like good emotional respite from just feeling on edge and haggard all day.
DRE: Um, so, Deanthe and the rest of the Tress begin ushering people through this passageway, and as you enter the side of the mountain, you walk into a large dome-shaped room that has just tons of small, recessed platforms spread across the floor. I say small, but they are all big enough that you can fit your mechs on them as well. So I guess they are not small, they are varying size. And as each one gets filled up, so I imagine like, maybe you can fit The Captain and the Dressage on one, but Under The Radar and Ill Portent would need their own.
JACK: Right.
DRE: That same kind of blue light, that blue glow that kind of started spreading down the path kind of activates and spreads around the circle of the platform, and you go down, and as you're going down you can see a bunch of these other platforms all descending with people, and vehicles, and tents, and basically everybody's stuff with them that they had at outside. And as you go down, the walls seem to widen out further and further until you can't really see how big the room you are in any more, because you just have this dim blue light around you. And as each of your platforms touch down on the floor, that blue light snakes out from your platform, across the grounds, and goes up those walls until all the lights come together to form this like hexagonal, tesselating pattern on the wall. And now that there is light, you can see this space is, it's basically the size of the width of the mountain. This room is enormous. And as people come down, you notice that descending from the ceiling are clusters of these large suspended orbs with spiral staircases bridging the space between them. And inside each of these orbs are rooms filled with various pieces of furniture and equipment, and as more people land, more of these clusters come until it's basically like forming a small village of these clusters. And behind your mechs settles a very large orb, and when you turn to see, you see all of the parts and equipment you need to do some emergency repairs to your frames.
AUSTIN: Hell yeah.
KEITH: Very nice. [laughs]
DRE: So, this is not, you don't have enough time to do a full repair, but this is where you can use your repair cap if you have some left. The rules for doing kind of like short repairs are that, you can spend one of your repair cap to restore full HP, or to destroy, or to repair a destroyed weapon or system, or you can spend two repairs to restore one structure. Or one stress, but I don't think anybody has had any, like, reactor stress happen.
AUSTIN: Keith did— did Keith not have that?
KEITH: Another thing I can do is heat, right, I can remove my heat?
DRE: Yes, you can remove your heat, but you can do that for free, right now.
KEITH: Oh, okay.
JACK: Oh, so our heat gets repaired for free?
DRE: Yeah, I think this is a thing where it's been enough time that your heat has been like, shunted out.
KEITH: Okay.
JACK: And, you know, unless you're under one very specific kind of mountain, a mountain is a cool place.
DRE: Yes.
AUSTIN: Which type, wait, which type of mountain is, what's the warm one?
JACK: The red one.
AUSTIN: Ah, the red mountain. I see, I see, I see, I see.
DRE [cross]: The red one, yeah.
KEITH: And this is clearly a blue one.
AUSTIN: This is a blue mountain, so it's actually extra chilly. And it's rainy. Ooh. It’s rainy.
JACK [cross]: Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.
DRE [cross]: This is a blue mountain, yeah yeah yeah. Yeah yeah.
JACK: Ooh, a little cold down here.
AUSTIN: Alright, so wait—
SYLVI: It's water type.
AUSTIN: Gotcha.
JACK: Right right right.
AUSTIN: What is the, what is the, can I, is there a thing I can look at here that explains the repair rolls again? Uh...
DRE: Sure, so you're not making any rolls here.
AUSTIN: Right right right. I'm just trying to figure out, what am I allowed to spend up to?
DRE: Yeah. So, this is your repair cap, which is on your mech sheets. If you look at the mech stats, there's a, there is a space that says repairs, and let's see, yours on The Captain says six out of six.
AUSTIN [cross]: Yeah, yeah I still have... that can’t be true, I must have spent one.
AUSTIN: I think I spent one at least to get my health up.
DRE: Um, if—
AUSTIN: No! I didn't!
DRE: No.
KEITH: Stabilize is on the mech actions list, so this is basically a stabilize, right, Dre?
DRE: Um, for the one point, sort of, except you can also use it to repair a broken system, which you can't do with a stabilize.
KEITH: Okay. Gotcha.
AUSTIN: Right, okay.
KEITH: Um, so, I can—
AUSTIN: Okay, I found this in the book, but go ahead.
KEITH: I can, I can drop my Heat for free, and then I did have three out of four stress, so I can bring that up to four out of four.
DRE: Well, you would need two, and I think you only have one, right?
KEITH: I do have one, so you need two to bring the stress from three to four?
DRE: Yeah.
KEITH: To re-, to...
DRE: Um, oh, I'm looking at the wrong thing.
DRE: No, you...
AUSTIN: Can we spend as many of these as we have left, is that what you're telling us?
DRE: Yeah, basically, yeah yeah yeah. Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay.
DRE: I don't think you've taken structure or stress damage.
KEITH: I had one stress damage.
DRE: Okay, you must have already put it up, then.
KEITH: Yeah, I was, yeah, I had, I was just like messing with it while I was asking if I could.
DRE: Gotcha. Okay. Okay, so.
JACK [cross]: Okay so just to be— oh, go on.
DRE: I was just gonna say again, you can use one of your repair to restore full HP or to repair a destroyed weapon or destroyed system, if you lost one during, like, had to, doing a structure damage roll, excuse me. Or you can spend two of your repair points to restore one structure or one reactor stress.
KEITH: Oh, okay.
JACK: And we can do as many of that as we—
SYLVI [cross]: And we can only pick one of those as- Oh, sorry.
SYLVI: We were asking the same thing, I think.
JACK: Yeah.
DRE: Uh.
JACK: Can we do that as many as we have points, or is it an either-or.
DRE: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
JACK: Oh, okay, cool.
SYLVI: Yeah, okay. So it's two to repair, so I repair structure and—
AUSTIN: I have pasted the bit from the book into our chat.
SYLVI: Thank you so much.
DRE: Yeah, thank you, sorry that was one of the things I should have had ready to go.
AUSTIN [cross]: My brain is not, no worries.
AUSTIN: It's hard to find, frankly.
DRE: It's in my notes!
SYLVI [cross]: Okay, I’m going to set mine down to zero.
AUSTIN: But also this explains why we didn't clear heat before, because it says to rest, pilots require at least one, at least an hour of uninterrupted downtime or light activity like making camp or performing routine maintenance. After resting, characters may clear all heat, clear any statuses and conditions affecting their mech, restore half of their pilots' HP and clear down and out. We did not have that going from one map to another because we were being like harried on the way and needed to keep our, keep our heads down, you know. And then the rest of that is everything you just said about spending point, one-for, or, not, one-for-one but on this chart that you've read three times now. [KEITH laughs]
AUSTIN: Can we share, we can't share extra repair points, right?
DRE: No, no. Because it's like, basically like, it's part of your mech, right, is your mech built to be repaired, though.
AUSTIN: Right, right, right. That's fine.
SYLVI: Uh, I kinda toggled the destroyed off on my grenade launcher, 'cause I spent the points to get it back, but it's not, working.
DRE: Oh.
SYLVI: It might be a GM thing, Dre, I don't know. 'Cause I think you changed units, so I don't know if you want me to—
DRE: I did, but it should let you change it too, but I'll do it.
SYLVI: Yeah, no worries.
JACK: So I spent one to get all my health back, I spent one to restore my broken assault rifle, and I spent two to get that additional structure point back.
KEITH: Wow, you have four repair points?
JACK: I had seven repair points.
KEITH: I had two! What the fu~ck.
AUSTIN: You're a little sniper, you're a little, stay out of the, you know, stay hidden.
JACK [cross]: Weirdly, my, uh
JACK: My Forge sheet is wrong, per ComCon, my maximum repairs is seven, but Forge is saying I had nine.
DRE: That's because you took the two repair cap.
KEITH: Oh-h-h-h.
DRE: As your, as your like, bonus item that we had at the start.
KEITH: Oh, so you do have nine.
AUSTIN [amused]: Yeah.
JACK: Okay, Keith, I have five repairs left.
[KEITH laughs]
DRE: This is almost like, because everybody has the same amount of structure, repair cap is almost the closest thing we have to like a, like a poise equivalent.
AUSTIN: Ri~ight.
DRE: In Elden Ring. It's like, how many times your mech can get beat up, and you can bring it back from the edge.
AUSTIN: Right, everybody has twenty HP, right, is that what you're saying? And then, it's just how much, and everybody has four structure.
KEITH: I don't have twenty HP, I have fourteen...
AUSTIN: Oh, sorry.
DRE: So not everybody has the same HP, but everybody has the same structure, the amount of structure.
AUSTIN [cross]: Right, right, right.
AUSTIN: This is more like how many Estus flasks you have, in a way.
DRE: Yeah, there we go, that is a much better analogy, thank you.
AUSTIN [cross]: Yes, there you go.
JACK: What are they called in Elden Ring? Tears? Flasks of tears?
AUSTIN: Flasks of cerul— uh, cerulean is MP, uh, crimson, crimson tears, is uh—
JACK [thoughtful]: Crimson tears...
KEITH: Crimson tears for blood, blood tears.
AUSTIN: They're blood tears, yeah. Yum yum.
JACK: No that's uh, that's Bloodborne.
KEITH [cross]: Yummy yummy.
AUSTIN: Ah yeah, right right right, it's different.
DRE: So as you all are working on your mechs, the floor beneath you begins to like, vibrate and hum, and then that humming is turning into words and you can clearly hear the voice of Deanthe around you. This is the built-in communication system for wherever you are right now. Deanthe checks in and says,
DRE [as DEANTHE]: Did you, were you able to, to resupply and repair?
KEITH [as TEASEL]: Ah, no.
DRE [as DEANTHE]: That's unfortunate.
KEITH [as TEASEL]: It's okay.
DRE [as DEANTHE]: I, I thought I sent something down for you to, for you, for you to do that.
KEITH [as TEASEL]: No, none of this fits. None of it fits.
DRE [as DEANTHE]: Oh. Um, okay. [DRE laughs] [KEITH laughs]
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: Hey, can you, uh—
JACK [as MARTILLA]: Most of it worked.
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: Can you use that thing to play some tunes?
DRE [as DEANTHE]: Um, [sighs], I'm, I'm not sure?
KEITH [as TEASEL]: Yeah, I love tunes.
DRE: I think this person who is trying to be haughty doesn't know what to do with you.
JACK: They hired the wrong, look, you know—
DRE: No, for sure.
AUSTIN: I think it really does set in that, like, now that we can see the entire population of Harborview, it does set in for, for, Ketch that like, oh, it really is just the four of us with our mechs. There really is not anything like, anybody else to help protect these people, huh?
JACK: Yeah, like an organized force?
AUSTIN: No, it's us, it's us four.
DRE: Yeah. And, yeah, they're calling you because they need you four one last time. Because they have picked up the Columnar vessels are closing in.
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: Yeah of course, of course they are.
KEITH [as TEASEL]: Need us for what? What are we supposed to do?
DRE [as DEANTHE]: Come o— [sighs], we, we just need you to hold them off and buy us enough time to figure out how to activate this place.
KEITH [as TEASEL]: Oh, it ac-, this place activates?
JACK [as MARTILLA] [cross]: What do you mean, activates?
AUSTIN [as KETCH] [cross]: This isn't activated? The blue lights, and the—
KEITH [as TEASEL]: The blue light's not activ— what is activated?
DRE [as DEANTHE]: [sighs] This is a ship.
JACK [as MARTILLA]: This is a ship?
DRE [as DEANTHE]: Yeah, this is, this is the type of ship that we used to have available to us.
KEITH [as TEASEL] [cross]: Hypha, Hypha ship.
DRE [as DEANTHE]: Yeah. We're calling it the Brightsky for now.
JACK [as MARTILLA]: Hey, how do you know this thing isn't going to get blown to pieces by the Columnar blockade?
DRE [as DEANTHE]: [sighs] If, if how I understand the Strand is right, we won't really be moving through space the same way you're used to.
JACK [as MARTILLA]: Ah, what do you mean?
DRE [as DEANTHE]: It's one of those things where I think I know, but I don't know until we experience it, it's—
SYLVI [as ZARK]: Ah, I deal with those all the time.
DRE [as DEANTHE]: It's, the—
KEITH [as TEASEL]: I do not deal with those all the time. [DRE laughs]
DRE [as DEANTHE]: It's—
SYLVI [as ZARK]: You gotta hang out at my workshop more, we get down to some fun things.
DRE [as DEANTHE]: It's almost like the Strand allows us to take shortcuts, but also if those shortcuts existed on an alternate plane of dimension.
JACK: Martilla like wrinkling her face up in a frown.
SYLVI: I'm also doing that, but that's 'cause it's just like, oh, so, it's not like explosives related. Like, ah, so they've got some fancy propulsion system!
[AUSTIN laughs]
DRE: It's not just very fast.
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: This all makes—
KEITH: Do you use a bomb to blow yourself to another dimension? That's out of character.
SYLVI: I liked it.
AUSTIN: That'd be cool.
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: This all makes sense to me now. This is what Columnar wants. This is the stuff. They'd kill any amount of people to get this.
KEITH [as TEASEL]: We're a lot fewer people than any amount.
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: Grease, grease on the wheel.
DRE [as DEANTHE]: Yeah, imagine how quickly the war could be over if the Pact could just appear anywhere.
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: They'd be on Kesh tomorrow.
DRE [as DEANTHE]: They'd be everywhere tomorrow.
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: Oh, getting ideas.
JACK [as MARTILLA]: The war could be over. We could go home.
DRE [as DEANTHE]: Do you really think the war would be over just because they could show up anywhere?
JACK [as MARTILLA]: You just said, they'd be on Kesh.
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: They'd find another war. They'd have us back in the front, the Branched and them, or the uh, the unknown region, hm? It's the Pact of Necessary Venture, they'd keep finding ventures.
[00:32:43]
KEITH [whispering]: Oh, I just got it. Phoenix Down. [AUSTIN chuckles]
DRE [as DEANTHE]: Are you up for one more?
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: I don't see why not.
JACK [as MARTILLA]: In for a penny, in for a pound.
KEITH [as TEASEL]: I don't see how not.
SYLVI [as ZARK]: It's the whole reason why I'm here.
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: What're they sendin'?
DRE [as DEANTHE]: [sighs] We don't know.
JACK [as MARTILLA]: Wow, okay. Okay.
DRE [as DEANTHE]: We're trying to figure out how all of this works on the fly.
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: How much time do you need?
DRE [as DEANTHE]: Not much. Thirty minutes, tops?
JACK [as MARTILLA]: Oh, easy, yeah, we can do that. Thirty minutes? We can do that.
DRE: I think a round is five minutes, in-game time? I forget what the math is.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
DRE: But yeah, ah, out of character, six rounds!
JACK [cross]: Me and my friends think in units of five minutes, yeah.
AUSTIN: Six rounds, alright.
[ALL laugh]
DRE [laughing]: Six rounds of combat is what they need. Hella rolls.
SYLVI: I want to go back to see the math of—
KEITH [cross]: Can you give that to me in volleys?
SYLVI: I want to see how long it took us to actually go through a round, versus if it, versus how long it's supposed to be, because I bet we did pretty—
AUSTIN [cross]: Oh, definitely.
DRE: You were hovering around fifty minutes a round.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
SYLVI: Yeah!
AUSTIN: This'll be quicker, because we're not moving, right, we just shoot, we're just gonna hold position, we're just gonna try to hold—
JACK: I love to not move and shoot.
AUSTIN: Yeah, you're really good at it! I'll probably do some moving still.
DRE: Yeah, so here, I'll go ahead and drag you all out onto the field. God, every time I drag out Under The Radar, it's incredible.
KEITH: It's funny, because you can tell that it actually couldn't fit in there.
AUSTIN: Yeah, uh-huh, turn it sideways to get it in there.
KEITH: Yeah.
DRE: So yeah, there's not a, uh—
JACK [cross]: It’s like moving a piano.
AUSTIN [cross]: I love the coloring here, really changing the way all our mechs look. This is great.
KEITH: It does, yeah.
JACK: Yeah, we should say for the, for the listener, um, we're on a map that seems to have rudimentary dynamic lighting going on, it's very dark, there's rain falling, and where the Hypha statues have kind of come to life thanks to the Tress, there's this blue light that sort of moves and flickers, it's very cool.
KEITH: It really makes the maps that we normally use in Roll20 look like cellphone camera footage of Mead notebook paper.
AUSTIN: Yeah, that's intentional. That's kind of the aesthetic I'd say of all the MS Paint maps I draw. But like, Sylvi and I both had lots of orange in our mechs and now you can barely tell that, because like that's how heavy the blue is from this light, it's very cool.
SYLVI: Yeah, my mech was straight-up orange.
AUSTIN: Yeah, totally, totally.
DRE: I'll give a shoutout, the person who made this map has a website, Miska's Maps. They go by Miska, I don't know what their real name is. But you can check out their maps on their website; they also have a Patreon. They have some, they have some really cool stuff.
AUSTIN [cross]: Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah, I've seen these, these are really good, yeah.
KEITH: Also, if you zoom in on the blue orbs, I don't think we've said, the orbs of light are like, little glowing universes—
AUSTIN: They're good.
KEITH: —that like shift and shimmer.
AUSTIN: They're very pretty.
DRE: Alright, so I will let yourselves arrange yourself here before we...
AUSTIN: Alright, how does this work, let's see.
JACK: What is our deployment zone?
DRE: Anywhere.
AUSTIN: Really?
JACK: Woooah!
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: And do we, we don't know where they're coming from, right?
DRE: No.
AUSTIN: Or is their pathway, they have fliers, we know they have fliers... but, is there a pathway up? Like, what was the, we came from the left, from the west, right?
DRE: Yeah, you came from the left.
KEITH: Um, my... mech is not selected.
AUSTIN: I also cannot move my guy?
DRE: What...?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: When I hover over everyone else's mech, it looks selectable, but my mech doesn't get, like, the hexagon outline.
JACK [cross]: I also cannot move my guy.
AUSTIN: Oh, game is paused, Dre.
DRE: Oh, yep, that'll do 'er.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
DRE: There we go.
JACK: Oh!
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: Um, I wanna, I gotta be up in the mix, as you know. Uh, I guess, what's our, what're our, we need to survive six turns, is there a spot we cannot let them into?
DRE: Yeah, I mean, the entrance is kind of, there's not like a ping system in here, unfortunately.
AUSTIN: Yeah wait, yes there is, isn't there? Isn't there a way to ping? I thought we, I thought I saw you pinging before.
SYLVI: We can just see each other's, like, mouse cursors.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah, we can do that. Yeah.
DRE: Yeah, you can see your mouse, so, I mean it's this area, it's the entrance that's to the right, yeah.
AUSTIN [cross]: Yeah, okay. Okay. Alright, well.
SYLVI: Like where the rubble is and stuff.
DRE: Yeah.
SYLVI: Yeah. Sort of where, where, where Jack's mech, I guess, is a better, uh—
JACK: I was considering just parking Under The Radar in front—
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JACK: —of the thing, getting a straight sight line.
SYLVI [cross]: I was going to ask if that was, yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Um, Keith, what's the best spot for you to be able to just like, shoot at anything?
KEITH: I am currently behind what I assumed is this hard cover that also gives me line of sight because I have my mobility thing, so—
AUSTIN: Ri~ight.
DRE: Yeah!
AUSTIN: That's true, you'd just be perched up behind the head of that statue, basically.
KEITH: And I, I did also learn that the thing that I'm supposed to be doing, I don't think that I was, not that I was doing anything wrong, but one of the things that I can do is hiding as a quick action—
AUSTIN: Right.
KEITH: —and I can hide while in line of sight of an enemy, so I think one of the main things that I should be doing is staying still, firing, and then re-hiding.
AUSTIN: Right. Right. 'Cause you also have all that stuff that was—
DRE [cross]: Yeah, because you've got that stuff that was infiltorial talents, yeah, infiltrators.
AUSTIN: And also all the stuff around, like, if you just take one shot, you get bonuses on it and stuff, so like why not, why not take advantage of that by popping out, shooting, and then hiding again, basically, which will at least keep you very safe.
KEITH: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: I'm guessing, like, uh, I just have no idea where they're going to come from, so I feel like I should just be out here, and like—
KEITH: It would be very funny if they like came from down here.
[DRE laughing]
AUSTIN: I mean they might! Right, they totally might, in which case I just have to get down there real quick, right, but like.
SYLVI: Dre's switching a bunch of tokens we can't see right now to be down there.
AUSTIN: I guess here's a question, Dre. What is this up to the north, where does, does the land stop up here? Is this—
DRE: Yeah, to me, that's kind of like the edge of the cliff-face.
JACK: Of the mountain.
DRE: Yeah yeah yeah.
AUSTIN: And is that also happening on the bottom, I just can't see it super well?
DRE: Um, sort of, I mean the, the—
AUSTIN [cross]: Or is that more solid, that, that's just here?
DRE: The bottom here is, is, I guess you can't see.
AUSTIN: That's all territory?
DRE: That's all territory. Yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, okay.
DRE: Here, I'll pull out a ruler so you can see it, like all this is territory.
AUSTIN: Yeah, okay, so then I'm going to move a little bit more down this way, and just hope I can get to where I need to get to. We'll see.
KEITH: I've, I've moved.
AUSTIN: You've moved further away. Okay, but you can still shoot that far, right?
KEITH: Well, I was, I moved to where I think my back is covered now.
AUSTIN: Yeah, right right right. Except that planes can happen.
KEITH: Right.
AUSTIN: But that's just it, that's just the game, right?
KEITH: Yeah. And I have, I have pretty much full coverage.
SYLVI [cross]: I’m just double-checking my range, ‘cause I’ll draw a thing.
KEITH: Like, I can make it all the way to here, like there's one spot on the whole map I can't hit.
AUSTIN: That you can't hit? Yeah, okay, you're gold right here.
DRE: Okay, are you all ready?
SYLVI: No, I still need to figure out where I'm going.
DRE: Fair!
AUSTIN: I'm going to run to the restroom before we start.
DRE: Yeah, go for it.
KEITH: Oh, that's a good idea.
SYLVI: I might not like fully mirror what Keith's is doing, because I kinda want to take a little more fire than the smaller mechs, like at least be a little more of a presented, uh, threat. So I might be out here, 'cause then I'm also in range of most things, 'cause I've got, I've got fifteen range for most of my weapons and then ten range on another, so I think from this spot I can also hit pretty much anything.
DRE: Austin, have we talked about, have we like defined what Columnar like vehicles or ships or anything look like?
AUSTIN: Yeah. Columnar stuff is stuff that's like very flashy and toyetic. Imagine it all just came out of the plastic packaging. It is very much meant to make the viewer think that they're looking at the good guys. [AUSTIN chuckles] These are Gundam Wing machines, these are your hero units.
DRE [cross]: Gotcha.
AUSTIN: Like, in any, in any science fiction, like, world, whatever you think heroism looks like, you know, is the way Columnar has made itself, they've positioned themselves as the vanguards for justice, and they do that aesthetically as well.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: And so, but also, I've always said this, that Columnar is meant to be a stand-in for a certain sort of... non-American, Western, diplomatic nation-state that still, like, fundamentally prospers from the imperialism of, of, the broader West that it takes part in but in a less, in a lesser way. They have all the commercialism that is built on the back of American imperialism, you know without, but they get to keep their hands a little, a little less dirty. The Pact is them getting their hands dirty in a way that they previously had not, you know, so.
JACK: France.
AUSTIN: France, Canada.
DRE [cross]: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Which like, again, all of these places have done genocide, have done colonialism and imperialism, but like in the contemporary moment it's easy to look at Columnar and be like, well they're not the same as Kesh and Nideo, you know.
JACK [cross]: Right, right.
AUSTIN: Or Apostolos, they're just not as warlike, et cetera.
KEITH: And that's also how they're used, because they, that's also how people feel about them.
AUSTIN: Yeah, uh-huh, yes. But also like, I think the other thing is like, they're very built around, kind of the way you've been playing them a little bit, Dre, which is like that, oh, here's the hero, and like, there are support units around the hero. You know?
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: Versus Apostolos, right, which is like very, um... rank and file, with good equipment. The Columnar do a lot of, like, here's our big, beautiful main ship and it has like, you know, fighters around it or something. I mean, I don't know how you've prepped this particular encounter, so I don't want to take any— whatever you say is going to be true and good.
DRE: Right.
AUSTIN: But these are my notes in terms of like, what Columnar vibes are.
DRE: No, that's good.
AUSTIN: Flashy, toyetic, heroic, etc.
DRE: See, I didn't even realize that when I made everybody have the bubblegum camo.
AUSTIN: Oh, it's perfect.
DRE: But I'm glad that works.
AUSTIN: Yeah, it totally works. It totally works.
DRE: Yeah, I was just like, this looks cool, let's go for it. And hey, you know what? Columnar. Let's go.
AUSTIN: Columnar, yeah.
DRE: So I think—
AUSTIN: As always, this is what we're talking about the Columnar state, we're not talking about there aren't any, you know, blah blah blah blah blah. We know the Equiaxed exist, et cetera.
DRE: Yeah yeah yeah. Um, so I think on the horizon you do see, what I'm almost picturing is, um, the Medea from, is that Zeta Gundam? It is the transport ship that is the big orange ship that has like, almost like a large, like boxy hangar attached to bottom of it.
AUSTIN: Yeeeeah.
DRE: And has like four big turbine engines across the top and like one on each wing.
AUSTIN: Dre, that's just, that's just motherfucking first Gundam, that's Mobile Suit Gundam.
DRE: Is that just Gundam? Okay, I couldn't remember if that was first Gundam or Zeta Gundam.
AUSTIN: It's in 08th, it's in Thunderbolt, like it's in, it's from the one-year war.
DRE: Okay, okay. Um, so I think there's just a series of those on the horizon, but, before they can get close enough to deploy whatever they have, um, a, there's just a bright kind of like light that comes streaking down through the atmosphere, and you see what appears to just kind of be like, almost like a box that just kind of tapers up at the end, and it strikes the ground in front of you, and then out steps a mech, that is very humanoid looking, and it reaches up to its back, and it pulls out two very large katana swords.
AUSTIN: Aw, that's no good.
KEITH: Daaamn, look at this thing!
AUSTIN [cross]: Look at this fucking thing!
DRE: Um, so what do you—
AUSTIN [cross]: Thighs like a Thursday, you know?
DRE: What do you know about Kellister Multiply?
JACK: Kellister is like a really solid person.
KEITH: What a guy.
JACK: I don't know what pronouns Kellister uses, but every time Martilla's met Kellister, they've, they've had time for them, they've, you know, they've made sure to, they'll even sign an autograph, sometimes.
AUSTIN: Oh ho ho!
KEITH: This is—
JACK: Not that Martilla would, look, but, Martilla's grandchildren, I guess, great grandchildren, would definitely be very excited to know that Martilla had had between three and five conversations of about six minutes each [AUSTIN laughs] with this pilot.
KEITH: This reminds me of how people talk about, you know, Tom Cruise. [AUSTIN laughs]
JACK: Yeah, yeah, yeah! And like, you know, maybe you hear stories, but they, I'm sure they're just rumors, because every time you meet them in person, they come across as a really solid, dependable kind of person.
DRE: People swear, one time Kellister was really weird and jumped on somebody's couch about their wife.
SYLVI: I was going to say jumped on Gur Sevraq's couch, but I forgot the first name, so I was like, Alli, Callis, what is the name?
[ALL laugh]
AUSTIN: Oh, that's so funny.
DRE: And yeah, I don't think there's any talking or anything, this is just, they're a solid person, they are here to do solid business.
AUSTIN: Ah...
[long pause]
DRE: And again, on the horizon, you see several more transport ships drawing closer.
AUSTIN: I guess it's go time, huh?
DRE: Yeah, who would like to start?
AUSTIN: [groans] I guess I gotta get in there, but, I, but if someone wants to test the waters at range, I don't mind, you know?
SYLVI: I'm in a good spot to blast.
JACK: I can give leadership dice right off the bat.
AUSTIN: Oh, that's— you don't, doesn't that— sorry, you have to do that on your turn, right?
JACK: Yeah, but I'm saying that if I went first, I can start off with giving leadership dice.
AUSTIN [cross]: Yeah, that's not a bad idea, that's not a bad idea.
JACK: Have my leadership dice refreshed, Dre?
DRE: Yeah.
[DRE sneezes]
JACK: Okay, cool. Bless you!
AUSTIN: Bless you.
DRE: Thank you.
KEITH: Bless you.
AUSTIN: Um, so, things like core power hasn't, hasn't, right?
DRE: No, unless you have that, the, unless you took that reserve.
AUSTIN [cross]: No, I spent my, I extremely spent my battery.
KEITH: I did take that, and I did use it to refresh, so I don't have it anymore. I think I mentioned that I did that, I don't remember, 'cause it was, you know, a week ago or whatever.
JACK: Okay, so, are we okay with, who wants the leadership dice? I can give out one. Is that right Dre, it has to be one at a time?
DRE: I believe so, let me double check the...
SYLVI: If Austin's planning to rush in, then probably give it to him.
AUSTIN: I would take one, but, but, I will tell you, I'm about to activate a thing that's about to give me some bonuses, ah, [worried] I'm going to tell everybody, please stay away from me.
KEITH: Oh, this is something you never got to do last time.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Yeah.
KEITH: Uh so, okay, I do have, a couple of choices that—
AUSTIN: In fact, I may not be able to use leadership dice, now that I think about it. [JACK laughs] I don't know how it works.
JACK: Accuracy is not going to be a concern for you.
AUSTIN: I don't know, we'll see. But, yeah, if someone else feels like they want them, I'm, I'm not gonna make a request.
KEITH: Dre, can you be hidden while also immobilized, is that possible?
DRE: Yeah, I don't see why not, yeah.
KEITH [cross]: Okay, just making sure.
KEITH: Um, my only thing that I would want to jump on, is that like, while things are cool, I should use marked for death now, so that I can have it for the rest of the scene.
KEITH: Because it is a full action.
AUSTIN [cross]: You wanna mark this, this one character though?
KEITH: Um, no, marked for death, I can only focus on one character at a time, so I can start and start, stop Marked For Death as full action any time in the scene, and I can change—
AUSTIN: Oh, okay. And you can rotate who the target is?
KEITH: Yes, yes.
AUSTIN: Oh, I see, okay, I did not understand that.
KEITH: But I have to pick one.
AUSTIN: Right.
KEITH: So that might be a sort of freebie first turn, to just spend a full action, marking for death, or activating my neural shunt that allows me to mark for death.
AUSTIN: Right.
JACK: What's, I mean, do you have that could use a leadership dice, Sylvi?
SYLVI: I, I, I mean like, I have guns to shoot, yeah.
JACK: Hmmm...
SYLVI: Like, I can use it for my missile launcher, I'm assuming, and that would be helpful. But, um, I don't have anything like special lined up.
JACK: I mean, that might be, you know, that's worth it.
SYLVI: Yeah.
JACK: Although... yeah, alright, let's get off the boat. Sylvi, take this leadership die.
SYLVI: Thank you very much, I will take this leadership die.
JACK: I don't know what Martilla says as she offers this leadership die. I think she says
JACK [as MARTILLA]: That's Kellister, this is going to be a problem.
JACK: and gives you that leadership die. And then, I'm going to deploy a turret drone.
SYLVI [as ZARK]: Don't worry, I'm also a problem.
JACK [laughing]: Turret drone.
AUSTIN: Love to hear it.
JACK: Here is, oh Dre, I cannot deploy the turret drone [AUSTIN laughs].
DRE: Oh no. I'll drag it out here for you.
JACK: But could you put in on the, ah... third from the left statue in the bottom row.
AUSTIN: Thank you for putting it further away from me.
DRE: Here?
JACK: Yeah, perfect! So this turret drone, again, that's just like a sort of tumbling ball of grinding metal, scrambles across the ground and climbs up this, this statue, um, and I think this statue has had part of its head removed, and this turret drone sort of nestles where the head would have been, and then I'm gonna deploy my auto-loader drone, to just sort of hang unpleasantly heavily next to Under The Radar. And that's my full turn.
DRE: Okay.
AUSTIN: That means it goes?
DRE: Yep.
AUSTIN: Okay.
DRE: Um, going to double-check all of my stuff here.
[long pause]
AUSTIN: Is it size one? What size is it?
DRE: It's size one.
AUSTIN: Okay.
DRE: Yeah, yeah. I made it a little bit bigger just for it to stand out than a regular size one token, but it is, mechanically speaking, it is a size one.
AUSTIN: Gotcha.
DRE: Okay. [long pause] Okay, yeah. I mean, Captain, you are the closest one.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah, I am.
DRE: So I think Kellister just, um, does this—
AUSTIN: Nope! Doesn't get that close, it's already in my threat.
DRE: Oh, okay.
AUSTIN: So as soon as it moves one step towards me, I get a reaction, right?
DRE: Yeah, go for it.
AUSTIN: I'm going to try to hit it with my sword, with, ooh, or do I want to hit it with— no, yeah, I'm going to try to—
KEITH: Does that make it three away?
AUSTIN: Yeah, if it's, once it's three away is when I'm going to use, how's it, what's it called, what's over overwatch, is it just called overwatch?
DRE: Uh, reaction.
AUSTIN: Reaction. Yeah, reaction: overwatch, skirmish with a weapon against an enemy that starts moving within— oh, I guess, actually, no, that's not true, it was not in my threat to begin with. It moved into my threat, but it is not in my threat at the start of its turn, it was four away. So it can do this.
DRE: Yeah, okay, um, let me remember how to do target things...
KEITH: Oh, so it gets to make its move as long as it's not start—
AUSTIN: Yes.
KEITH: Gotcha, okay.
AUSTIN: If it tries to move again at this point is when it would be in trouble.
AUSTIN: Alright, yeah, that's a hit. God damn.
DRE: So that's six.
AUSTIN: Mm-hmm.
DRE: Okay.
KEITH [whispering]: Six, that's so much!
AUSTIN: I can take it. It's what I'm built for.
DRE: Um...
KEITH: Dre you said they, it's not just that they can't crit, it's just that they always do the same damage?
DRE: This one can crit.
KEITH: Great. But does that mean that it also could have rolled a two?
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, they all could have rolled twos. Right?
DRE: Wait, do you mean on the damage roll, or on the—
KEITH: Damage, yeah, damage, yeah.
DRE: No. Yeah, so it'll always do six, and then on a crit it can deal an extra 1d6.
KEITH: Always do six, that's so fucked.
AUSTIN: It's pretty fucked!
DRE: It's honestly to help the GM not just have to roll die constantly, all the time. Um, okay, that's it, that's it's turn.
AUSTIN: Alright, can I go? Is anyone have problems if I—
SYLVI: Yeah, you had, you had plans. I don't want to get in the way of your plans.
AUSTIN [cross]: I do have plans.
JACK: Go for it, fuck him up.
AUSTIN: Um, so, the interior of my, of The Captain, is sort of in my mind, sort of like the interior of kind of a messy eighteen-wheeler, or a messy like, boat, y'know, uh, y'know, cockpit or whatever. You know, there's like, candy wrappers stuck in the side consoles and there's like, old, y'know, eight-track tapes and stuff and, uh, there's sunglasses up on the visor or whatever. And like, that's not what this needs to look like, I think Ketch has made it look like this in a real way, this could be a pristine fishing vehicle. But in the cup-holder to my right, you know, next to, there's two cup-holders, one of them has like, day-old coffee in it, which I take a sip of, and the other one has, I mentioned this before, but a little kind of disc, I actually think it does look kind of like an eight-track, there's a particular type of like, data disc that got used through the '90s, that doesn't exist anymore that kind of has an eight-track vibe, this kind of big blocky thing. And it says, "The Captain.dat," but "The Captain" is just, excuse me, "The Captain" is just written on a piece of tape that has been taped over something, and I plug that thing in as I'm trying to dodge attacks from this incoming— what's the name of this mech, I guess Kellister is the name of the person, right?
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: And as I'm trying to plug it in, the tape I've written "The Captain" on pulls away, and instead, it says Tenacity, Tenacity.dat, and I plug the divine mind into my mech, and I say
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: Alright, Captain, it's all yours.
AUSTIN: And I'm activating, a thing that Blackbeard can get, called the Sekhmet-class NHP, which I can activate as a protocol, that says: "When activated, you give control of your mech to,” in this case, your divine, “and give it the following benefits: all melee critical hits do +1d6 bonus damage, once per round you can skirmish with melee weapons as a free action, your NHP uses [laughing] all available actions and movements to move towards the closest visible character, allied or hostile, [JACK laughs] and attacks them with melee attacks, prioritizing melee weapons. It may benefit from your talents. If there are no characters within threat, your NHP uses all actions to move as directly as possible to the next closest visible target. Your divine can't make range attacks, even if those attacks are available. You retain enough control to overcharge as usual, however, your divine uses the additional actions for the same purposes as other actions. You can take back control of your mech as a protocol; when you do, you become stunned until the start of your next turn.
JACK [cross]: Oh, that's so good.
AUSTIN: “Otherwise, this effect lasts until your mech is destroyed. The pilot's incapacitation or death has no effect."
JACK: Wow!
AUSTIN: So remember, I did one big job, and then I quit being a criminal and retreated to a Hyphan, or, an Ashen colony? The last big job was stealing this divine from the Pact and keeping it in my [laughing] cup-holder until now. Um, uh, so I don't know how, how do you want to do this, Dre? Effectively, this is your character now.
DRE [laughing]: Geez.
AUSTIN: I can say to go overcharge, but otherwise, I get to do melee attacks... I get a lot of attacks for free, effectively. I get one bonus skirmish per round, and my melee crits do an additional 1d6, that's basically what the vibe is.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Do you want me to still just basically play this character, and say, just, to those, melee only, basically?
DRE [cross]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay. Um, well I think the step one is the same as step one as always, which is I'm grappling. And that's free, because this thing is also size one like me. And then I'm going to, that's, that's one action, and then I'm going to do my free chain-axe attack. Let me target. Uh, dah dah dah, target you. Then I'm going to, I think I just hit this? Um, oh, I'm grappling, which means, god, I have to remember all this shit. I know it's, it's wild that only took a week off between things, and we all only have one character, but it doesn't matter, it's still so much to keep up, you know?
DRE: Yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay so I get +1 from Hold and Lock, my Brawler talent, +1 to accuracy that is, and, uh, and, I think that that's my— oh, and then— yeah, that's it. Okay, roll. [pause] Hey, that's a hit. Only a one damage, but it's reliable two, and it's, and, I can do another one because I still have that free attacks, so that's two damage, and this one is... oh, that was a melee hit with a main weapon, which means I get my, I just remembered, I get my blademaster die, I should have kept that in mind, because I could have resisted that earlier thing, but that's okay. What can I do with this blademaster die? Oh fuck, wait, I actually had one more accuracy on that roll, Dre. Should I just roll one more d6 and see what it is?
DRE: Sure.
AUSTIN: I say this because... the...
DRE: Yeah, you got a one on that previous roll, so.
AUSTIN: On that plus, on that other d6?
KEITH: Yeah.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay, so let me just hit a d6. [die rolling] Plus a one.
KEITH: Well, even if you had gotten a six, it still would have just been a nineteen.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Oh, true, which would not have been a crit, right, so it doesn't really matter.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Oh, wait, that's wrong, I gave myself too many— I fucked up my skills, ugh. One second. [DRE laughs] Lot of moving parts on this character, it turns out.
DRE: It's all falling apart.
AUSTIN: It truly is.
JACK: When we, uh, when we hit the point, that was a successful attack which means the turret is going to fire.
AUSTIN: Oh, true.
KEITH: Uh, Jack, did you get a little quieter?
AUSTIN: You did, Jack got very quiet.
DRE [cross]: You did.
JACK: Oh, yeah, sorry.
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH: Were you just leaning back?
JACK: No, my, I had turned my mic down, and thought that I had muted it, but apparently had not actually turned the dyne down all the way, so I just had tiny mouse voice.
DRE: And the turret doesn't roll, it just auto—
AUSTIN: It just does an extra three?
JACK: The turret does, I think it is, yeah, three kinetic damage to the target. I guess this guy has armor, but.
KEITH [cross]: It's a flat three, yeah.
DRE: Okay, alright, I need to roll something really quick.
AUSTIN: Uh-oh. Okay.
DRE: [die rolling] Four! So yeah, the turret takes the shot, and I think you've got the Ronin grappled, and so its, its one arm is— sorry, the Ronin is like the name of this, of this archetype from Lancer, I don't, I haven't named it anything.
AUSTIN: Oh, right right right. Right.
DRE: Because I think this is, this is a one of one mech.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I was going to say, this is definitely a specialty, right?
DRE: Yeah. So I think, with the grapple, you've got one of Kellister's like sword arms locked up, and we see the bullet shoot out from the turret drone and, quickly, Kellister raises his other sword and bounces the bullet back to the turret.
[JACK laughs]
AUSTIN: Wo~w.
DRE: So the turret takes three damage.
AUSTIN: That's wild. Okay!
KEITH: This motherfucker has lightsabers!
AUSTIN: I mean, yeah, we should have mentioned this. This motherfucker is a, thick-thighed, bad-ass lookin', two laser katana wieldin', bad-ass lookin' mech, like it just looks sick, I just love this design, it's very good. Anyway, I'm going to roll my big sword at it. [pause] That's a miss, but it's reliable three!
DRE: Reliable three.
AUSTIN: I'll take it. And then I do get to make a, a, I would traditionally get to reroll against a different target, but there is no other target within my range, so, so that's the end of my, that is the end— um! Yeah, that's the end of my turn.
KEITH: You were checking to make sure you didn't have to attack Sylvi?
AUSTIN: Ah, no.
SYLVI: I was checking to see if I could, if I was in range of my fuel rod gun.
KEITH: Oh, okay.
JACK: Kellister rolled 1d6 to try and bounce the bullet back at the turret, and rolled a four. What's the thresholds there?
DRE: So on a four plus, they gain resistance to damage from that attack, and the attacker must repeat the attack against themselves. So I should say, I still take damage from that. I still take two.
AUSTIN: Right, right, right. That's wild. That's fun.
KEITH: Does reliable two ignore armor?
DRE: No.
JACK: You take three. The turret does three, but presu— do you have one armor?
DRE: No, I have resistance, which means I take half from it, but you always round up with Lancer, so it goes from three to two.
JACK [cross]: Oh, rounded up, I see...
DRE: I say "I." Kellister gets resistance. [DRE laughs]
AUSTIN: I will note, really quick, I think this is definitely one of those scenes, where, I rolled twice, but you have to imagine Kellister and The Captain are exchanging lots of blows and blocking each other's attacks.
[01:00:03]
JACK [cross]: Oh, sure.
DRE [cross]: Sure.
AUSTIN: Which means that Kellister stopped midway through that to block, like, spun around and deflected that bullet back at the turret in the middle of that melee, you know?
JACK: Wait, hang on, can I pitch something? So what if he cut the bullet in half, and like, bounced half of it back, and the other half of it—
DRE: Oh, yeah.
AUSTIN: That's anime to me.
DRE: Yeah, yep, that's anime. Okay, um, I'm, Kellister's gonna go again, because he gets two turns per round. Um, so I'm trying to think how I want this to look. [pause] I think while Kellister and The Captain are trading blows, um, suddenly a set of like, small, like explosions ripple off of your arm, and I think the camera zooms in on one of the laser katanas, and underneath like the laser, there is just like a metal core here, and within that core are a series of just like, small thorns, and whenever they hit you those thorns get embedded in there.
AUSTIN: Not a fan of this.
DRE: So if you get hit by Kellister, at the beginning of his next turn, as a free action, he can deal 1d6 damage to you. [die rolls] So it's just one.
AUSTIN: Which my armor eats, so I'm good. Nice.
DRE: Yeah, good, okay, um.
AUSTIN: I literally think the arm-, like, it blows up, and parts of my armor fall off, but like, it just didn't do any interior damage, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
KEITH: Tricky, tricky.
AUSTIN: Oh, I forgot a very important detail!
DRE: Oh, give me your important detail!
AUSTIN: Which is, my little Fudgie the Whale interface, like mascot, uh, grows big fangs and turns completely white like Moby Dick, like the white whale, and all the like formerly blue interface stuff is all white now, and, and, The Captain, The Captain effectively becomes Moby Dick in this moment, right? It's like, it was the captain, it is now, it is now the whale. So, that's a very important detail, that's it I'm done.
JACK: Incredible.
DRE: I guess we can't call you Ishmael, 'cause that's not, that's not the opposite.
AUSTIN: No, I thought about leaning all the way in on this, but I just don't think that, uh, I don't think that, even if Moby Dick lasted, you know, 350,000 years into the future or wherever the fuck we are, I don't think Narmine Te’ketch has read Moby Dick, y'know?
JACK: Also, just to be pedantic, Moby Dick is the name of the captain, the whale is called Moby Dick's whale.
AUSTIN: Right, of course.
DRE: Oh!
AUSTIN: Yeah, of course. [pause] Anyway, what else is—
JACK: People always get this wrong.
AUSTIN: What else is this Ronin doing?
DRE: Yeah, um, I think as you all are exchanging blows, a crackle of electricity ripples down from the sword, and across, across the whole suit.
AUSTIN [cross, whispering]: I hate this motherfucker.
DRE: And, definitely the anime thing, where all the moves start to become blurry, right, starting to move faster than you can keep up with. Kellister has activated a system called instinct mode. Until the end of the Ronin's next turn, the first time each turn, the first time each turn they are targeted by an attack, the Ronin may first use the carbon-fiber sword to attack a character within range as a reaction.
AUSTIN: Fuck, we just—
SYLVI: This mech went Ultra Instinct?!
DRE: Yep.
AUSTIN: Yeah, this mech went Ultra Instinct. Not a fan of this.
KEITH: Wait, so, sorry. It is able to attack before it is attacked?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: Once per...
DRE: So whenever it is targeted, as a reaction, it can hit a character within range, which right now is just The Captain.
AUSTIN: Is just me, yeah.
KEITH: Right.
AUSTIN: I'm going to try to keep it locked down, too, y'know?
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Can it do that if it's immobilized, or, like, prone?
DRE: Um, immobilized, yes, 'cause that just stops you from moving. I would have to double-check prone.
AUSTIN: I'll look into double-checking prone, so when it's, when we wrap back around, we can check.
DRE: Okay, um, and yeah, so now, when it, as it goes Ultra Instinct [laughs] it brings the sword back down on you.
AUSTIN [whispers]: Okay, this motherfucker.
[pause]
AUSTIN: Hey, that's a miss!
DRE: Ah, a miss, yeah.
AUSTIN: Alright, phew.
DRE: Okay, and that ends Kellister's turn.
[long pause]
DRE: So we still have the Ill Portent and the Dressage.
AUSTIN: Yeah, so who wants to go? Keith, Sylvi?
SYLVI: I—
KEITH: Literally all I have to do is activate this thing, so we can just say I did that literally any time. That's my whole turn.
AUSTIN: You don't do, that's, your whole turn?
KEITH: It's a full action, and I'm not moving, so.
AUSTIN: Sounds good, yeah.
DRE: Okay. I'll click you off, and then, yeah, so, Sylvi.
SYLVI: I'm going to use my heavy launcher, my Gandiva missiles. Um...
AUSTIN: Hell yeah.
JACK: Hey, do those have blast damage?
SYLVI: Uh... no, I don't think so. Blast damage is this little icon, that's like a circle with a—
JACK [cross]: It's like a circle with a cross in it.
DRE: Yeah.
SYLVI: Yeah, this doesn't. The only weapon I have with splash damage is my rocket-propelled grenade, which I am not using.
JACK: Good, I just want to make sure that we don't kill Austin.
SYLVI: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: Oh, but blast damage isn't an AOE, right? Bla-, all, blast damage is like a type of damage.
DRE: No, no, it's is an AOE.
AUSTIN: Oh, blast damage is an AOE? Okay. Oh, oh, what's the—
DRE: Explosive is a type of damage.
AUSTIN: Explosive is what I'm thinking of, right, okay, yes.
SYLVI: Um, so yeah, this is 1d6+3 damage when it hits, so I'm hoping it does well. Why is it not...? I'm clicking the, the d20 and it's not letting me do the roll thing, like it usually does. I might just refresh.
AUSTIN: Do you have, do you have an, hmm, yeah, try to refresh.
DRE: Do you have me targeted?
SYLVI: I don't, hold on, I'm refreshing now, so we gotta wait for it to load [laughs]
DRE: Yeah, that's fine.
[long pause]
AUSTIN: Ah, is that thing that it's doing a reaction, Dre?
DRE: Which thing?
AUSTIN: The counter-attacky thing it can do? Or the, like, pre-counter-attack?
DRE: The one where, the, from the instinct mode?
AUSTIN: Yes, yes.
DRE: Yes, yes.
AUSTIN: Okay. That might be what I want to take care of instead, then, okay. This is very, there's like a melee game of chess that's going to be happening here, that's very funny. [pause] Oh, I should save some of this, but like, I was looking up prone, and prone and slowed, because slowed is also related to this. Um, prone says, "you're slowed, you count as moving in difficult terrain, and all attacks against you gain +1 accuracy, including tech attacks. They can stand up to clear the condition, using all of their standard movement, unless immobilized. Doing this doesn't provoke reactions." Standing up doesn't provoke reactions, it's not like moving through threat. Slowed then says "can only move with their standard move and on their own turn. It can't boost or make any special moves from talents, systems, or weapons." Is that reaction a special move from talents, systems, or weapons, or is that not a thing that exists for NPCs the way it does for us?
DRE: Uh... I mean, it's from a system.
AUSTIN: Okay.
DRE: And you said that's under slowed?
AUSTIN: That's slowed, which is a thing that happens when you get proned.
SYLVI: I got it working, if we want to keep moving.
AUSTIN: Hell yeah!
DRE: Yeah!
AUSTIN: Ah, computers.
DRE: You can go ahead, you can go ahead and take your turn, yeah, you can—
SYLVI: Can I get a +1 for this, from the leadership die?
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: I think that's right, right?
KEITH: Ah, yeah it's 1d6, it's like, plus one accuracy.
DRE: One accuracy, yeah yeah yeah.
JACK: Any luck, Sylvi.
SYLVI: Yeah, I got it working, I'm about to roll.
JACK: Hell yeah! What was the problem?
SYLVI: It was just browser.
JACK [laughing]: Oh, okay.
AUSTIN: It was just being a computer.
SYLVI: Oh, I clicked the wrooong weapon. Uh...
DRE: I mean, we can, we can...
SYLVI: Yeah, I'm just making sure that there's no stat differences.
AUSTIN: So you don't get any other bonuses, right?
DRE: Yeah, yeah.
SYLVI: No, yeah, that has like, accurate and seeking on it, so I would have gotten a lot more, on a success.
DRE [cross]: So just reroll it, just reroll it.
AUSTIN [cross]: Oh, oh, yeah yeah yeah. Yeah.
SYLVI: Yeah. Um.
[pause]
JACK: Oh, a crit!
DRE: Nice.
SYLVI: Ayyy.
AUSTIN: This is what we're fuckin' talking about.
DRE: Alright, and...
JACK: This is what we're talking about.
[dice rolling]
SYLVI: Guess who's in the danger zone?
AUSTIN: What, me?
SYLVI: M-me, as well. The heat-wise.
JACK [cross]: We're all in the danger zone.
AUSTIN: Oh, the danger zone! The good danger zone!
SYLVI: Yeah yeah yeah.
AUSTIN: Yay! Yeah.
SYLVI: So I believe that 1d6 is the additional 1d6.
DRE: Let me also make my rolls here, because I get to make a—
SYLVI: I didn't roll that 1d6, I don't know who did.
DRE: So I don't get to rebound the missile back at you.
SYLVI: Tch.
JACK: Wait, why not?
DRE: Because I rolled a one, on my—
SYLVI: Oh, that's what that was.
AUSTIN [cross]: Oh that's your one, okay.
JACK: Oh, it looks like Ill Portent rolled a one.
SYLVI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
DRE: Oh it does, that's weird.
SYLVI: So this is the additional energy bonus damage [die rolling].
AUSTIN: Yo, six more bonus damage? Let's. Go.
DRE: Nice. So is that thirteen all together?
SYLVI [cross]: And plus two heat, as well.
AUSTIN: And plus two heat? Yess.
SYLVI: Yeah.
DRE: Okay.
SYLVI: Vaporized him.
DRE: So yeah, I think this, this, I think this is Kellister choosing to take the missile because he sees an opening in The Captain.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
DRE: And strikes, and you take six damage, Captain.
AUSTIN: So, but minus one from my armor, which also I just realized I did not reduce that armor, that other previous attack, so I'm going to take that one also, so—
DRE: Sure.
AUSTIN: Not as bad as it could be. I'm down to ten HP.
DRE: Okay, so I'm taking seven from your crit, and then what is the d6 from? [pause] Sylvi?
SYLVI: Ah, the, the extra d6 is because I'm in my danger zone, so I did some extra energy damage.
DRE: Oh, gotcha.
AUSTIN: Fuck yes. This means the missile comes in and it's extra hot?
DRE: Yeah.
SYLVI: Been bakin' for a little while, pre-heated the oven, you know?
AUSTIN: Love it, love it.
DRE: This is, this is very much like the Dragon Ball Z moment, where somebody gets punched to allow somebody else to, to allow Krillin to throw the Destructo Disk.
AUSTIN [cross]: Yes. Yeah, to get the hit in. Yeah, exactly.
AUSTIN: Is that a round? Is that our first of six rounds?
SYLVI: Yeah, 'cause then Keith is just doing his thing, right?
KEITH: Yeah I just did my, I just did my, ah, my neural shunt.
JACK: It's such a horrible thing to say, isn't it?
AUSTIN: It is.
SYLVI: I don't know.
KEITH: Neural shunt?
JACK: Yeah, it makes me—
SYLVI: Shunt's a fun word.
JACK: But the idea of a neural shunt?
AUSTIN: It's very, um...
KEITH: Shunt does sound bad. It sounds like a bad thing to call someone.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: It's very, a neural shunt is, is, is very Cronenbergian to me.
JACK: Yeah, to me—
AUSTIN: You know?
JACK: —it requires a port, it requires a small vial of liquid with a needle attached, it's, uggh.
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. Are we back around?
KEITH: Maybe it's psychic, maybe I'm shunting psychically.
DRE: Yeah, we are back around.
AUSTIN: Do we go first, or does it go, 'cause we just went?
DRE: Yeah, he gets to go first, since you all just went.
AUSTIN [cross, whispering]: Fuck that guy, fuckin' hate this guy.
DRE: Let me really quick, I'm gonna throw some flares on the ground.
AUSTIN: Ah.
DRE: As the first load of transport troops drop in.
AUSTIN [facetiously]: Oh, cool.
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: Couldn't do it yourself, huh?
AUSTIN: I say, like, through the commu-, like the, when two mechs are touching, they can talk to one another, style of comms, you know?
DRE: Mm-hmm, yeah.
JACK: Oh you mean from the, the widespread mech intimacy rules?
AUSTIN: Yeah yeah yeah. Uh-huh!
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: They've been there since the jump. This is, this is, we're in year like forty of that being a true thing about mech anime.
JACK: It's so good.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Wow, there's a lot of other people here right now, huh.
[pause]
DRE: Okay.
KEITH: Okay, I have a— I should go.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I see it. I see it. I see it. I think I see it.
DRE: Alright, let me make my move, and then you'll get to go.
SYLVI [cross]: Boy, oh boy.
AUSTIN: Yesss.
JACK: Wait, there's only three more people?
DRE: Yeah. There's three at the top.
AUSTIN: But these are going to be the drop zones, where the flares have landed. [SYLVI laughs]
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Four, for people listening, four zones have appeared, two to the north, two to the south, of bright [die rolls] orange flares that are going to try to fuck, fuck us up, presumably with more, more mechs showing up.
DRE: Nice. Okay, so I rolled a five for my recharge roll, which recharges instinct mode, so I'm gonna reactivate that.
AUSTIN: Oh my fucking god. Okay. Well, that's fine actually. Is that a quick action, does that take, take an action?
DRE: That's an action, yeah.
AUSTIN: Love it. That's not so bad.
DRE: And then we'll just, keep swingin'.
AUSTIN: That's another hit, and another six damage, right?
DRE: It's always six, unless it's a crit, yeah.
AUSTIN: Uhh, do I want to use one of my points here?
DRE: What do your points do?
AUSTIN [cross]: What's resistance do?
DRE: Halves.
AUSTIN: It halves it. And does it half after or before armor?
DRE: Uhhh, pff, before.
AUSTIN: So it would go from six to, to three, and then armor would take it down to two. If I, I, sorry, I have two blademaster points, and I can use one to parry is one of things I can do once per round, sorry, it's not once per round, so you can spend them one for one. As a reaction, when hit by a melee attack, you gain resistance to all damage, heat, and burn dealt by the attack. So yeah, I'll burn one of these two that I have in order to, to, to cut that down to just two damage instead of, instead of all that other shit. [pause] So, six [rueful laugh].
DRE: How are you lookin', HP-wise?
AUSTIN: I got eight. I could be worse. And I still have all my structure, you know.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Keith, it sounds like you want to go.
DRE: Yeah, what's Teasel got?
KEITH: I have my rail gun, which Dre told me today, fires through characters, I didn't realize that.
JACK: Incredible!
KEITH: Wouldn't have come up.
AUSTIN: Oh, a rail gun.
KEITH: I could have, I could have made it, maybe made it, make it come up, but it didn't come up, so I didn't miss out on anything, but I now know that I can shoot through these three guys, in one shot, with my rail gun, with my marked for death.
AUSTIN: That works!
DRE: You certainly can.
AUSTIN: Look at that!
KEITH: So, uh, I... have targeted all three of them. I have added my accuracy for perfect targeting and for crack shot.
AUSTIN: Do you even have to target all three, or can you just hit one and it goes thr— like, how does line attacks work, Dre?
DRE: That is a great question.
AUSTIN: So, do they all get—
KEITH: So, targeting all three just allows me to hit, to target them all at once, so that I don't have to roll three times.
AUSTIN: Okay, I got you, I got you, I got you. Cool cool cool.
KEITH: So as far as I know, it's not going to change the accuracy at all. [long pause] And, let me see this, let me see. And the, I guess the marked for death target is going to be this, uhhh...
AUSTIN: Yeah, what do we got here, we got two bubblegums, and uh, is this a new guy?
DRE: This is a new one, yeah, this is a—
KEITH: If it's a new guy, I think it's going to be this Lancer.
DRE: This is a Discus.
AUSTIN: Ooh, a Discus, it has a shield, and like a cool— [cell phone ringtone sounds] That's its theme song!
DRE: And a, yeah, that's it [SYLVI laughs]
JACK: Woah!
KEITH: Yeah yeah yeah, it does that.
AUSTIN: Bum ba da bum ba da bum ba da bum, that's how it goes.
KEITH: Yeah. Um, I messed things up by clicking on one thing, uh, and it closed everything, but that's okay, I can re-, I can do it again.
DRE: So yeah, the way lines work is it, I mean, you still make the one roll, it's just against all of their reflexes, instead of against one of their reflexes.
KEITH: So, it's not accurate... but I do have two other sources, this should, this should work, this should, that should work.
AUSTIN: That's a, that's a hit, a crit, and a hit, you fuckin' love to see it. Let's go!
KEITH: And for that, for that second hit I do roll 2d6 bonus damage.
AUSTIN: Yeah, it already, it did it, look, you did nine bonus damage to it Keith.
DRE: I think they don't even hit the ground, you just vaporize them all in the air.
[ALL laugh]
AUSTIN: In the video game, this is actually a bad thing, because they didn't spawn in yet, so the game doesn't know they're dead and we get a hard lock 'cause it says we need to kill, it says we have zero of three killed 'cause they didn't ever register as spawning in.
KEITH: How, wait, but how did, no, but it did my crit damage, but it didn't even do my marked for death damage.
AUSTIN: Incredible.
KEITH: That's just crit damage.
AUSTIN: That's just regular crit damage.
KEITH [cross]: This didn’t have marked for death on.
DRE: That is even without your marked for death damage, that is just the—
AUSTIN: Let's just, let's just see it, let's just see the number. What's the, what would the marked for death damage be?
KEITH: Okay.
DRE: Give me big numbers.
AUSTIN: That's an extra 2d6, right?
KEITH: [dice rolling] It's an extra eight.
AUSTIN: Another eight.
JACK: That's eight! Keith was the first person—
AUSTIN: That motherfucker is just gone.
DRE: Yeah.
JACK: Keith, Keith Goosed three titans [ALL laugh], and you, that's really hard to do.
SYLVI? [cross]: Yeah and I did get Gooser there.
AUSTIN: Oh, happy Titanfall Day, by the way, everybody.
KEITH: Happy Titanfall, we've all got Gooser.
JACK [cross]: Hey, happy Titanfall Day.
AUSTIN: Get Gooser.
KEITH: I was gonna charge that, it took me three rounds, or three sessions to charge that up. [AUSTIN laughs]
JACK [cross]: We've got a Gooser on deck.
DRE: You were working on it for a while, yeah.
AUSTIN: Unfortunately, this means this motherfucker goes again.
KEITH: And I am now going to hide, by the way.
AUSTIN: Ah, good!
KEITH: So I'm giving myself the attribute "hidden."
JACK [laughing]: Now I'm going to hide.
KEITH: Hidden, there we go, I gave it to me. Um, yeah, 'cause I can hide as a quick action, and that was just, uh, oh no, that was my ordinance, so was that my full action?
AUSTIN: No, ordinance just means you should go, you have to fire it first, right?
DRE: Yeah yeah yeah, that just means you fire it first.
AUSTIN: Before you move or do anything else.
KEITH: Yeah, 'cause doing marked for death is a full action, but then actually [die rolls] doing the attack is still just a skirmish.
AUSTIN: Right. What's this 1d6?
DRE: That's again charging the, the instinct mode.
AUSTIN: Oh, right right right.
DRE: Yeah. Uh, okay. Hm.
JACK: Where'd your mechs go, Dre?
DRE: They're fine, they're gone, they blew up, it's fine. [AUSTIN laughs] Um, so since I'm grappled, I cannot move without trying to disengage from you, right, is that how that works?
AUSTIN: Yeah, you have to make a... um, I mean, let's, let's take a look. It's so rare that that happens.
DRE: It's a contested hold save, right?
AUSTIN: It's, it's not, I think it's, [sigh] I don't know that you can, let's see, you have to be able to, right?
DRE: Yeah, we looked this up last time, and like you said it's only been a week and I've totally forgotten how it works [laughs].
AUSTIN: Yeah, it's fine. Um, "the smaller character becomes immobilized, but moves when the larger party moves," we know this. "Either can make," no! "If both parties are the same size, either can make a contested hull check at the start of the turn. The winner counts as larger and the lo-, uh, uh, than the loser until this contest is repeated." We are not of the same size.
DRE: Oh, because you count as larger, since we are the same size.
AUSTIN: Yes, you, okay, here it is though, yes. The defender breaks free by succeeding on a contested hull check as a quick action. So you can spend a quick action, you don't get the free attempt to get out.
DRE: Okay. Gotcha. So, I don't have to do that, but.
AUSTIN: Right.
DRE: Right, okay, cool, alright.
AUSTIN: But you could.
DRE: I could. I will just keep swinging. I don't need to break away from you.
AUSTIN: Yeah I think that, like, I really want, this whole time, Ketch is just talking mad shit to, to Kellister about this.
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: My hands aren't even on the controls.
AUSTIN [laughing]: Like I'm like, literally kicked back. [KEITH laughs]
JACK: This is some real, this is some real, uh—
DRE: There it is.
AUSTIN: That's a crit.
JACK: Whoof.
AUSTIN: Mm-hmm.
DRE: [dice rolling] Alright, so that's nine.
JACK: My hands aren't even on the controls!
DRE: Bonk.
AUSTIN: Bonk is bad. Bonk is bad. Um...
DRE: Oh, wait.
AUSTIN: Yeah?
DRE: I hit you previously, right?
AUSTIN: Yeah, you've, you've hit me before.
DRE: Okay, so then I also need to spend my 1d6 to clear my [die rolling] mark on you, so that's another three.
AUSTIN: Fuck. Okay, well, give me the total.
DRE: Um, twelve.
AUSTIN: I will again cut it in half with my other blademaster point to six, and then drop it by one from my armor, so it's three. So it's five! I'm down to three.
DRE: Okay.
AUSTIN: Um, alright. Can I go, people? Or should I wait? Hm. [pause] [whispering] I fucking hate this instinct mode, it sucks. [DRE laughs] But I need it to, I need it to, agh, god, I wish I had one more blademaster point. The only way to get one is to swing, which lets it hit me. I should, okay, it gets to, the way it works is, if it gets, if it gets hit right now, it... it does what? If it gets hit right now, it can swing on me, right? 'Cause it's in instinct mode. Not just by me, by anybody.
KEITH: Right.
DRE: The first time each turn that they are targeted by an attack, the Ronin may first use the carbon-fiber sword to attack a character within range.
AUSTIN: Has it done that to me already this turn?
DRE: ...no.
AUSTIN: No, that was last turn, okay, and it has reactivated that maneuver.
DRE: Well, and that's, that's, that's not round, that is turn.
AUSTIN: Oh, it's turn, so it is all turn, it is all the time, basically. Okay.
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: Can you read me that one more time?
KEITH [cross]: Does the, does the drone count?
AUSTIN: The first time it's attacked?
DRE: "The first time each turn that they are targeted by an attack, the Ronin may first use their sword to attack a character within range as a reaction."
AUSTIN [cross]: Targeted by an attack.
AUSTIN: Gotcha, okay. [sips] Alright, this is going to be, this is about to be bloody, this is about to be bad for me. I think I just have to make a... unless, does anybody else want to go before I go? Does anybody feel like they could one-shot this motherfucker?
JACK: God, could you imagine?
AUSTIN: I would love to imagine.
SYLVI: I mean, if I rolled as well as I did last time, maybe? But we shouldn't count on that.
AUSTIN: You, you know, here's actually what I'm, okay, okay, I know what I think I'm gonna—
JACK: Remember you can brace, Austin?
AUSTIN: I, yeah, I know. Here's what I'm gonna try to do. I have reinforced cabling, Dre.
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: Oh, I can't do this, because I'm not in control, and I can only make attacks. That's the thing, right?
DRE: Yep.
AUSTIN: Fuck.
KEITH: Oh, so you can't even, you can't even back off?
AUSTIN: No, I can, I could spend my turn to disable Tenacity.
JACK: Then you'd be stunned.
AUSTIN: And then I'd be stunned, which is a bad place to be. The thing I was gonna do—
KEITH: Oh, you're stunned...
AUSTIN: —was I was going to try to do this thing, dragged down, which is make a contested hull check blah blah blah, but like, I can't do that, 'cause that's not what Tenacity wants to do [KEITH laughs]. Tenacity wants to just keep swinging, and I think that's just what's going to happen, and it's going to cost me a structure point here. Um, I think. So I'm just going to target. It's already targeted. Then I'm going to chain axe, with +1 accurate and +1 from grappling. That first accurate comes from my pilot talent, uh, uh, where is it, partisan [chuckles], gain +1 accuracy on the first melee attack you make with a main melee weapon, and then the other one comes from hold and lock, you gain +1 accuracy on all melee attacks against targets you're grappling. Let's roll that. That's a regular hit.
DRE: Okay.
AUSTIN: Which gives me a blademaster point. Does it do its thing?
DRE: Yes.
AUSTIN: Okay. How much damage does that do?
DRE: Well I've gotta roll to see if it'll hit you first.
AUSTIN: Oh, it's just a regular, it is an attack.
DRE: Yeah it's just an attack.
AUSTIN: So this could be alright.
DRE: Doo-dah-doo-doo-doo, where's my sword?
AUSTIN: That is unfortunately a hit.
DRE: Yeah. Are we both rolling structure damage? 'Cause I'm about to roll structure damage.
AUSTIN: I might, I might have to, I might not have to, depends on how I spend this point.
KEITH [laughing]: Okay.
DRE: Well I'm going to go ahead and roll my structure damage.
KEITH: I say spend it in the way that you don't have to.
AUSTIN: But if I, if I take the hit, I can spend it in a different way, Keith.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: [dice rolling] I kind of feel like it's appropriate for both of us to be spending, hitting structure damage, you know what I mean? So fuck it, let's do it, let's both, we've slammed into each other really hard here, I've dropped my structure down. Did that not automatically roll my structure thing? Normally it does that.
KEITH: I thought I had to roll my, I had to roll my stress manually.
AUSTIN: Did you? Okay, so I'll just do... what is it, d6, Dre?
DRE: Yeah. [dice rolling] I'm rolling two, 'cause I get to roll twice and choose whatever result.
AUSTIN: Gotcha.
DRE: I'm taking four, which means I have system trauma.
AUSTIN: [dice rolling] I also have system trauma.
DRE: And then...
AUSTIN: So I roll 1d6, on the follow-up to that, right?
DRE: Yeah...
AUSTIN: Four is a system of my choice is destroyed, uh...
DRE: I am also going to take a system of my choice to be destroyed.
AUSTIN: Incredible, we are just cutting each other's mechs apart.
DRE: Let's do... that one, yep.
AUSTIN: Which one is it? Do we get to know?
DRE: It's not one I've used yet.
AUSTIN: Okay. Alright, I'm going to get rid of my grapple swing, my reinforced cabling, my drag down, which I have, I've not used drag down, but you know I've used grapple swing a bunch, uh, I think that's the one.
DRE: You know what? I think what this looks like for, um, for Kellister's system that we destroyed is you knock one of the swords out of its hands, out of the mech's hands.
AUSTIN: Love it, okay, cool. So wait, does it, does it actually have two swords or is that just like—
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay, cool cool cool.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: I can't choose to lose a weapon instead, right? No, okay.
DRE: No. You gotta take a system.
JACK: Those, those reactions to each other didn't count as a successful attack for the turret to fire, right?
DRE: No, it does.
AUSTIN: I mean, I hit, I hit it first, right?
KEITH [cross]: It absolutely does.
DRE: Yeah, it absolutely does.
AUSTIN: So yeah.
JACK: So that's three—
KEITH: What are the conditions again?
JACK: If an ally within range of the turret makes a successful attack.
KEITH: Should it have attacked for my attack?
DRE: It's only once per round, I think.
JACK: It's once per round, and also we'd moved on and I didn't want to back, and be like...
AUSTIN [cross]: It's once per round, yeah, but it should have, yeah.
DRE: So I'm doing my rebound roll.
AUSTIN: What's a rebound roll?
JACK: The thing that, it cut the bullet in half.
AUSTIN: Oh, right, right, right.
DRE: Yeah, so again, it cuts the bullet in half, and does three damage to the turret drone, exploding it.
AUSTIN: Fuck.
JACK: Yeah, this turret is just destroyed.
AUSTIN: Okay, um...
JACK: But it takes damage, right, it takes two damage?
DRE [cross]: It does, yep, mm-hmm, yep.
AUSTIN: Dre.
DRE: Actually, I need to be one less HP. Yes?
AUSTIN: I'm spending one of these two blademaster tokens to make you make an agility, uh, I'm doing like a trip attack, which is, you must pass an agility save or fall prone. I think that's the one to do.
KEITH: Falling prone is bad.
AUSTIN: I guess, okay, here's, I have a real important question. The way that reaction thing works, okay I have two options, I have feint, you ignore engagement and don't provoke reactions from your target until the start of your next turn. Am I provoking the reaction if someone else shoots it, so this is, but I'm—
DRE [cross]: No, it's whoever else is shooting it.
AUSTIN: Okay, so it's prone, so let's do the prone one. So give me an agility check on this thing. Was that a hit, that's a success?
DRE: That's a success, yeah.
AUSTIN: Fuck. So it jumps over my trip. Alright, well then, my last action with my third free attack from the divine is this big sword, is big sword time.
DRE: Love big sword time.
AUSTIN: So it's this, and it's one of these...
KEITH: Does the divine just do a really good job of like, managing systems and heat, or is it that your mech is moving extremely fast and so, in the same frame of time, it can just do more things?
AUSTIN: It's just making choices more quickly than I am. Yeah, I don't, I think, this is Tenacity and really the thing is just like, um, it doesn't care if the machine dies, right, Tenacity exists in that disk that I put in the machine, right? Tenacity's going to like, run itself into, Tenacity is going to dig a ditch with its head, you know? Um, it's going to—
KEITH: 'Cause it's not really its head.
AUSTIN: It's not really its head, right, exactly.
JACK: Yeah, it's some, like Fourteen Fifteen behavior back in before Fourteen realized it was good to have connections to people around you.
AUSTIN [cross, laughing]: Yes.
AUSTIN: Oh, fuck, a miss. Still reliable three though, I'll take it.
[pause]
AUSTIN: Alright. I think that that's my turn, really wish I had knocked it over, but it is what it is.
[pause]
JACK: I mean, I'll just take a shot at it.
AUSTIN: Please.
DRE: Yeah.
JACK: I, I am wary of using my siege cannon here, Austin, even though I've got the auto-loader out, because that would just hit you, so I'm—
AUSTIN: You can't target the ground somewhere, where it would only hit it?
JACK: Uh...
DRE: You can, if we can figure out how that works.
AUSTIN: What's it's AOE?
[1:32:33]
JACK: Yeah, let's see, the AOE on the siege cannon is two, yeah.
DRE [cross]: Blast is two.
JACK: But the thing is, it, hmm...
AUSTIN: But I don't actually know how that works in this game, you know?
JACK: It doesn't, it also doesn't actually do any more damage.
AUSTIN: Oh, okay.
JACK: It's useful for firing at things far away or at big groups, but in terms of the actual damage, the payload is the same. Is that right, Dre?
DRE: Yeah, I mean, yeah. You could put it back here, is a place where it would hit only me.
JACK: But at that point, why not just shoot the direct flak cannon and take lower heat?
DRE: I mean, the answer would be, 'cause it's arcing, but I'm not behind cover.
JACK: Oh, right, yeah, sure.
AUSTIN: There are situations where that would work better, right, but not this one, I gotcha.
JACK: Yeah, um, similarly—
KEITH: If you really wanted to target the drop zones in the top corner, maybe, but...
JACK: Yeah, but that's, I don't if folks are going to arrive here, and unlike my apocalypse rail, this is something I'm going to do just in one turn. Like in, um, so I'm just going to fire my direct, my direct fire at Kellister.
JACK: Kellister. Weapons. Oh it's, [laugh], right, sometimes it tells me my siege cannon is not loaded, even when its direct fire mode does not need to be loaded.
DRE: Yeah.
KEITH: Also, you, you should be loaded to start.
JACK: Oh yeah, sure.
JACK: I don't have accurate, I don't have seeking, I can't consume lock-on, they're in no cover, okay.
AUSTIN: Nice, nice! Holy shit, that damage.
DRE [cross]: Woooow.
KEITH: Wow.
AUSTIN: Holy shit!
DRE: Well, before I get knocked back two, let me hit you with my sword really quick.
KEITH [cross]: That would have killed me in one hit.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
AUSTIN: Oh my god, it critted me again, Jesus Christ.
DRE: [dice rolling] It's eleven altogether.
JACK: Holy shit, Austin.
KEITH: Jesus Christ.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I'm just going to have to take that. It's ten, in fact.
DRE: Oh, and since I'm knocked back two, I'm no longer grappled.
AUSTIN [cross]: It breaks my grapple, yeah, uh-huh.
JACK: Oh no! Wait, no, hang on, hang on.
AUSTIN: No, it's an option, you can say not to.
DRE: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
JACK: It's an option, I can choose not to.
AUSTIN [cross]: Please don't knock back.
JACK: Nope!
AUSTIN: Thank you, appreciate it.
JACK: Um, do you, Dre, do you roll to try and reflect that attack back onto me?
DRE: I can't, I can only do that once a round.
JACK: Ha ha ha! And you wasted that on my stupid little guy!
DRE: I sure did!
[ALL laugh]
JACK [laughing]: My stupid little guy.
JACK: Um, so what this looks like is, the rain is just pouring down, and you see Martilla dialing this in really carefully, to try and not hit The Captain, and also to try and, you know, do whatever she's doing, I imagine that like, she's an artillery specialist, and I feel that like, the artillery specialist are almost like snooker players, or golfers, where they're like, the exact spin that I put on this, the angle, taking the wind into account, or whatever, and we cut outside where water is just pooling on top of Under The Radar, and, you know, streaming down the side like a house without a gutter. And as the siege cannon charges, stuff evaporates off the top of the siege cannon, and then when it explodes and the mech knocks back, all the water just like rises up in a great sort of wave around all the bits and goes further pouring down the sides. So that's fourteen damage.
AUSTIN: Love to see it.
DRE: God, that is a lot of damage. Okay.
[pause]
AUSTIN: What is the actual thing you're shooting, is it a big bullet, is it an energy—
JACK: It's a shell, it's a, it's a, it's a metal shell.
DRE: I almost imagine in direct fire mode, it's—
KEITH [cross]: Just basically a cannon ball, based on the scale.
DRE: Yeah, it is more like a, like a shotgun slug. Just a giant slug that comes out.
JACK: It's made of a material that the Pact have been mining out of a single massive planet over the course of all their various wars, and it's like this super heavy, super dense material. They've had to build whole classes of transport ship just to move it out to the front lines.
AUSTIN: Right.
JACK: And viewed from orbit, they have to use like Dead Space-style planet crackers to open the planet, 'cause now there's just like a, like a scoop from a melon baller taken out of this planet.
KEITH: I know it sounds expensive, but three wars from now, this is going to start paying dividends.
JACK: [laughs] We'll always find more wars.
DRE: Alright, I believe that just leaves the Ill Portent.
SYLVI: Okay.
JACK: You still in the cool zone, Sylvi?
SYLVI: Huh?
JACK: You still in the cool zone?
SYLVI: I'm still in the danger zone.
JACK: Nice.
SYLVI: I live in the danger zone.
JACK: Nice!
SYLVI: So, I'm going to start with a quick action here, which is activating my— well, actually, I guess, it comes a question, the flares here are like marked landing spots for future reinforcements, right?
DRE: Yes they are.
SYLVI: Cool, I'm using my javelin rockets.
DRE: Hell yeah.
SYLVI: Which we saw in the last part used by, I think Saxton Clash, right, or was it one of the support units there?
KEITH: It was one of the little stupid little guys.
DRE [cross]: It was one of the support, yeah, but yeah.
SYLVI: Okay, but basically, what this does is, I can mark three spaces within range fifteen that aren't adjacent to each other, and that'll like basically leave some auto-targeting rockets in the air on those spots until the start of my next turn, and if someone goes into those spots, they get blasted. So what I'm looking to do is, um, so we already had people come down in the top left one here, so I was gonna put a javelin marker in the middle of each of the other flares.
AUSTIN: Oh, I love it.
JACK: Incredible.
AUSTIN: It rules.
SYLVI: I don't know quite how to do that, Dre.
DRE: Yeah.
SYLVI: So your help would be very appreciated.
DRE: So let's see, if you go to the... pencil tool on your left, which is the drawing tool.
SYLVI: Okay.
DRE: I think one of those is like a circle or an ellipse, and you just sort of drop it where you want it.
SYLVI: Okay.
DRE: I was trying to find the cool animated marker thing I had last time, but I don't remember which of the nine million folders it's in [JACK laughs].
SYLVI: That's fine, I just get little circles.
SYLVI: That's what they look like on my targeting, my mech doesn't have the fancy targeting that Saxton Clash's buddies' had.
AUSTIN: They're just little, little pink circles. It's fine. Cute.
SYLVI: Yeah. I'm going to fire my heavy rocket again now. [laughs]
KEITH: We love to see it, don't we folks?
SYLVI: Or can I not do it if I did a quick— what?
KEITH: No, you're good.
SYLVI: Okay, cool. Um, I don't—
KEITH: I was just saying we love to see it.
SYLVI: I'm glad.
KEITH: There we go.
SYLVI: Let's see how we do. That's a crit. [laughs]
AUSTIN: Yoooo.
KEITH: Let's go.
AUSTIN: Let's. Go.
SYLVI: It's a, hold on, I gotta do another d6. [die rolls] It's a one.
JACK: Well...
AUSTIN: That's a one, that's fine, that's fine, that's fine, you can't hate that.
SYLVI: Still nine damage total.
DRE: It's in time for me to have made you cool little radar sweepy animations for your missiles.
JACK: Oh yeah, look at those.
SYLVI: Hey, per-fect.
AUSTIN [cross]: Ah, that rules, ooh.
DRE: Okay so am I taking nine altogether?
SYLVI: Nine altogether, I believe, 'cause the, that, that marker means my missile also is energy damage, right, 'cause I'm, I'm pretty sure it's all the same. And then another two heat.
DRE: Okay. Oh right, I forgot to take heat the first time.
AUSTIN [cross]: Eat that, motherfucker.
SYLVI: Yeah, so you've taken four heat so far.
DRE: Four altogether. Okay, let me swing my sword real quick.
AUSTIN: Yeah, uh-huh.
SYLVI: Sorry.
AUSTIN: I'll, it's fine, I'm gonna dodge this one.
DRE: Nope.
AUSTIN: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
[ALL laugh]
DRE: Eight altogether.
AUSTIN: Eight altogether, huh. Seven altogether, seven altogether, because of armor.
KEITH [cross]: This little fuckin’ thumb drive blows!
AUSTIN: Okay, phew, so I'm down to one HP on my second, my second structure, that's fine, that's fine.
DRE: Okay hold on, I gotta do math. Hey, I'm rolling structure. That's fine.
AUSTIN: Alright! Just holding up this thing's blades as you just pelt it with fucking rockets.
DRE: Okay, for my structure table... um, let's see, yeah, I'll take the five.
AUSTIN: Oh, you get to roll twice, and pick from structure? That's a good ability.
DRE: Mm-hmm, yeah. So I'm impaired until the end of my next turn.
AUSTIN: Ooh. We all know what that means. It uh, everything gets bonuses against you or something, right?
DRE: No, let me double-check it. I'm pretty sure.
SYLVI: There might be a few too many status effects in this game.
DRE: Yeah, there's a lot. [JACK laughs] "Receive one difficulty on all attacks, saves, and skill checks."
AUSTIN: Okay, that's good!
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Now is the time to try to trip you, I should have saved that.
DRE: Mm-hmm. Okay. So I'm trying to think of what is the most fair way here—
AUSTIN: What— yeah, go ahead, no you go ahead. I was gonna ask—
DRE: Oh, Keith got big!
KEITH [laughing]: I found a button that makes me big.
DRE: Keith got big!
AUSTIN: Did Keith get big? Oh, Keith got big. Oh Keith, you activated big mode.
KEITH: Ah, yeah, I have this—
AUSTIN [cross]: The Dressage gets, yeah.
SYLVI [cross]: You’re that robot, that gets big!
DRE: He put, he put big head mode in.
KEITH: No, no, I'm sorry, I'm kidding, I'll go back to being normal size.
SYLVI: Wow!
DRE: It's [???] dam rules. #1:41:59#
AUSTIN: Oh no, oh no, Keith is so small!
JACK [cross]: Wait, Keith got small?
KEITH [cross]: I'm gonna get you, I'm gonna get you.
AUSTIN: Keith is so li~ittle!
DRE: Oh my god, I can't even see you.
SYLVI: You gotta like, hitch up Keith's body, though.
AUSTIN: Well, Keith is hidden, so— yeah, uh huh, Alvin and the Chipmunks.
KEITH: Yeah that's what I do when I'm getting hidden, I become extremely small [SYLVI laughs] That's why I can hide in plain sight.
AUSTIN: Right, right. I was going to ask Dre what the impaired looks like, here, for, for the Kellister.
DRE: Yeah, um, I mean let's just, let's just lean into, into robot anime tropes. I think it's like, it's leaking oil like it's blood.
AUSTIN: Hell yeah.
DRE: And it's like, it's specifically like spurting out from like the joints in its legs and its arm.
AUSTIN: Okay.
DRE: Okay. So, a couple things happen.
AUSTIN [cross]: It gets to go, unfortunately, right?
AUSTIN: Oh, a couple things happen, really? At once?
DRE [cross]: Yeah a couple things happen.
DRE: A couple things happen all at once, yeah, uh-huh.
SYLVI: Wow, Austin, welcome to being on the other side of it.
AUSTIN [distantly]: Ah, I love it, I like it here!
DRE: Yeah, I'm going to put fifteen clocks on the table.
SYLVI: Yeah, it's fun!
AUSTIN [distantly]: Let's go! I mean you already have [returns to mic] a clock on the table, it's just, you didn't draw it as a clock, we have to hold this out for six turns. That's a clock!
DRE [cross]: Yeah, that's true, yeah.
DRE: I can put a clock on the table.
SYLVI: Also my little, my little sonar things—
AUSTIN: Yeah, those are clocks!
SYLVI: —kind of look like clocks if they were moving really, really fast.
DRE: So, first, you notice a light, rainbow light begins pulsing from the inside entrance, as the Tress begin connecting to the Strand.
AUSTIN: I can't believe they're fucking raving in there, and they didn't invite us.
DRE: Yeah.
JACK: They're fucking raving in there?
DRE: And then you hear a bass boost, and the mountain's going oontz oontz oontz oontz.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
DRE: Um, so here's the thing, I think the fairest way for me to do this, with your missiles, is I'm gonna roll a 1d4 to see where people deploy.
JACK: Ohhh.
AUSTIN: That's fun.
SYLVI: That's good.
DRE: And so, your spots are in the two, three, and four spot. Is that, does that sound fair?
SYLVI: That sounds perfect, yeah.
JACK: Come on.
[die rolls]
AUSTIN: That's a three.
KEITH: Yes!
AUSTIN: That's a hit!
DRE: Yeah, okay, so...
SYLVI: It's not a ton of damage, but...
JACK: We'll take it!
SYLVI: I'm double-checking. It's three kinetic, for each person it hits.
DRE: Hey, that's something.
SYLVI: Just a flat three, there is no roll.
AUSTIN: If they get hit while they're deploying, do they fall instead of just regular—
KEITH: Oh, is this—
AUSTIN: —land, or are they getting hit when they land? Oh-hoh, it's the big, oh no!
KEITH: Um, the, Granddad Gumdrop.
JACK: Oh, it's Granddad Gumdrop!
AUSTIN: It's Granddad Gumdrop.
DRE: You said three?
SYLVI: Yeah, it's three flat.
DRE: Sick.
SYLVI: And then it's gone after it hits.
DRE: Okay, I'll move that, I'll move him and I'll move that tile.
SYLVI: It's also, the ones that aren't activated will be gone by the start of my next turn.
DRE: Okay.
SYLVI: It doesn't say the start of the next round, though, so like, if we want me to go last, in case there's more reinforcement showing up in the middle of the turn.
AUSTIN [cross]: Ooh, that's fun, I like that.
DRE [cross]: Hmmm.
SYLVI: We have something that can go there.
DRE: Well here, let's roll another d4. [die rolls]
AUSTIN: Hey!
SYLVI: Hey!
DRE: Hey, it happens again.
AUSTIN: It does.
DRE: So yeah, another set of reinforcements drop in here. And, you said it's three? Okay.
SYLVI: Yeah, it's three.
DRE: Yeah. So how does, like, what does this look like, 'cause that's going to blow up this middle guy here.
SYLVI: Um, I think it's, it's literally like they are like hovering in the air, I don't picture it as just one missile, I picture it as a bunch of small ones hanging out in the air, like, like a, [excitedly] a little bit like Piccolo's hellzone grenade.
AUSTIN: Oh, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.
KEITH: Mmmmmm.
DRE: Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, sure.
SYLVI: If anyone's familiar.
AUSTIN: We're a very DBZ themed podcast currently, a Dragon Ball podcast currently.
SYLVI: I don't mind it.
DRE: Ah, yeah.
SYLVI: Um, but yeah, they just sort of hang—
KEITH: There's a lot of tropes in DBZ, it's great to pull from, it's easy to pull from.
SYLVI: They're basically just these very small missiles that hang in the air, and then when something enters a certain radius, they just kind of converge on it, and like, they don't do a ton of damage to mechs because they are smallish, but if it's enough to get ya, it's enough to get ya.
DRE: Yeah, it is.
AUSTIN: Every little bit helps.
DRE: Okay.
KEITH: Another underused DBZ power, by the way.
AUSTIN: Yes, agreed.
SYLVI: Most of Piccolo's are.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: Womp womp.
DRE: Um, okay. Well, Grampa Gumdrop is going to move, but only gets to move two.
KEITH: He's old and slow.
JACK: He's old and slow, yeah.
DRE: He's old and slow, 'cause he's, he's Grandpa. Um... and what to click, okay, both of these are quick, and then, the sensors... okay. I think, is this a tech, yeah, it's a quick tech, okay, so I've got to target that.
DRE: Awesome. Um...
AUSTIN: Yeah, uh-huh, yeah?
DRE: Man, so I think this looks like a little pixelated version of Gumball Grampa, like pops up on your HUD, where the whale is, and the whale and this pixelated Gumball Grampa start fighting each other.
AUSTIN: Ugh, nooo!
DRE: They've uploaded a virus into your system. Whenever you attack any character that is not Grampa Gumdrop, you get +3 difficulty to the attack.
AUSTIN: And I don't think Tenacity is just going to let me go fight Granddad Gumdrop. I think Tenacity keeps swingin', you know?
DRE: Yep.
AUSTIN: So, that's going to be +3 difficulty on this attack. [laughs] [KEITH laughs] Oh...
KEITH: That's a lot of difficulty.
AUSTIN: Yeah, but it's only, the most it can be is -6, which is a lot, but it's you know, it can't be -18, right?
KEITH: Well but what if, what if someone could make an attack on this thing and it only has one hit left that it can take?
AUSTIN: That'd be great, I mean, it would, yeah, that would be fantastic. Ah fuck.
DRE: Alright.
AUSTIN: I'm getting hacked bad?
DRE: Yeah, another, I think another Grampa Gumdrop just like shows up on the screen, and they start tag-teaming your AI whale, yeah.
AUSTIN [cross]: My whale.
DRE: You do get to resist this, though, with a, with a systems save.
AUSTIN [sarcastically]: Oh, well, good thing, 'cause I'm so good with systems, systems is definitely one of my very best... things, here.
DRE: You only need a ten.
AUSTIN: Oh, is that all?
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Nope, I got a nine, my friend, I got a nine.
DRE: Okay, take three heat—
AUSTIN: Okay, that I can do.
DRE: —and you are immobilized until the end of your next turn.
AUSTIN: Nah, I wasn't going anywhere anyway, was I? [JACK laughs]
DRE [laughing]: Right, yeah.
DRE: Yeah, that's just, well, you can't move, so, yeah.
AUSTIN: Three heat sucks, but it is what it is.
KEITH: Ohh, okay.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh?
KEITH: Sorry, I was just looking at my moves, I was trying to figure this out. Dre, does reeling, it is not knockback, reeling isn't knockback?
AUSTIN: No, we talked about this last time, reeling is just flavortext in that manual.
DRE: Yeah, it's whatever your thing says it is.
KEITH: Okay. Um, so, if I'm able to hit the thing, I can prevent it from taking, uh, reactions, at least for a turn.
AUSTIN: Oh that would be sick.
JACK: Woooah!
AUSTIN: That would be huuuge.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: You, I, I don't know where we are in the turn order, Dre. Where are we?
DRE: One of you all is up, whoever wants to go.
AUSTIN: Keith, if you, I mean, I would love for you to just headshot this motherfucker, frankly.
KEITH: I also say, I would love that too. That would be great. I'm still in, so I'm, I've got him focused, I can hit him with marked for death. Whatta we think, I can use my, I guess I'll use the Vulture DMR for a better chance of critting.
AUSTIN: That accuracy, yeah.
KEITH: Yeah. So I will get, I think I get +3 to that. Just on its, just on my own, but I can trade one of those in for a zero-in.
AUSTIN: Which is more damage, right?
KEITH: To get another 1d6 on a crit, but I've already got, I've already got marked for death which gives me 2d6 damage on a crit. That's fine.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I think that's already fine. Save your, save your accuracy, right?
KEITH: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.
AUSTIN: For another chance.
KEITH: Yeah, okay, I can do that. Target this thing, I'm accurate, I have two other source, oh I'm, am I, am I, am I invisible or just hidden?
AUSTIN: I think that's, you have weird traits for this, don't you?
KEITH: Misc. is invis— so there's a thing on here that says “are you invisible?”, you can get an extra thing.
DRE: No, you are hidden, not invisible.
KEITH: Hidden, not invisible. Different...
DRE: Different things.
KEITH: Yeah, different things. And, I have to apply the weapon that I'm using, which is... that. Okay, roll.
AUSTIN: Crit!
KEITH: Crit, and that's an extra 2d6 damage.
JACK [cross]: Beautiful.
AUSTIN: Please, just ace this fucking thing.
DRE: Man.
AUSTIN: And, it has to make, it has to succeed at a hull save—
KEITH: It does.
AUSTIN: And if it doesn't, it can't take reactions.
KEITH: Right. It, it has to, it's reeling, it must succeed on a hull save or become slowed, impaired, and unable to take reactions until the end of their next turn.
AUSTIN: And, it's already [dice rolling] impaired.
KEITH: Eleven.
AUSTIN: Woo!
DRE: So that's?
KEITH: Seventeen damage.
AUSTIN [cross]: Sevente~~~en, baby!
JACK: Yes!
DRE: Is that the marked for death?
KEITH: That is marked for death, yeah.
DRE: Okay, gotcha. Alright, so first I need to make a hull save, right?
KEITH: Yes.
AUSTIN: Yes, that's ambush.
DRE: Oh, and I'm impaired, so that's—
AUSTIN: Yeah, baby.
AUSTIN: I've lost connection to the server, attempting to re-establish.
DRE: Oh, okay.
AUSTIN: This virus is getting bad! [SYLVI laughs]
DRE: I do pass the hull check.
KEITH: Okay.
DRE: Do I, if I, if I save do I still suffer anything extra, or?
AUSTIN: No.
KEITH: No? I'll double-check, I think it's no.
DRE: Okay.
KEITH: Uh, no.
DRE: Okay.
DRE [singing]: It's time to roll structure damage again.
AUSTIN: Please blow up.
KEITH: I'll just shoot this thing again, too.
AUSTIN: Please blow up.
DRE: [dice roll] Uh, okay, those are both the same, so let me roll again. [dice roll] Okay, so I rolled a four, and then I rolled a... oh, two. So, your choice of weapon mount is destroyed. Well, I've only got the one, so...
AUSTIN: Hell yeah. Get that shit out of here. You sniped his fucking hand of, this is what we're talking about. [ALL laugh]
SYLVI: Welcome to Friends at the Table! [AUSTIN and JACK laugh]
AUSTIN: 'Cause it's not just the weapon, it's that the mount that got destroyed, right, so.
DRE: Yep.
KEITH: No hands.
AUSTIN: Mm-hmm. You are quite literally saving me a structure point, like, for sure, for sure.
KEITH: Nice.
AUSTIN: I guess, I don't know, the reaction might let Kellister do like a kick at me or something, I, I don't—
DRE: No.
AUSTIN: No, okay.
DRE: No, it's literally, it says they have to use their sword.
AUSTIN: Love it, ah!
KEITH: So does it run away?
DRE: [prevaricating noise] We'll figure it out.
KEITH: It's gonna stand until it gets killed?
DRE: We'll figure it out.
AUSTIN: Mm-hmm.
KEITH: Okay, figure it out. Maybe it has like a self-destruct.
AUSTIN [whispering]: I have not, don't give, don't fucking give Dre ideas. [DRE laughs]
KEITH: If it's not on the sheet!
AUSTIN [whispering]: Phew, that's true.
AUSTIN: I just need you to know that, uh, Caramelldansen isn't just in my head now 'cause of this rainbow effect, coming from—
DRE: Mm-hmm.
SYLVI: Fuck yeah, let's go. Welcome to my life [AUSTIN laughs], all the time.
AUSTIN: Oh, I love it.
DRE: Also, can you see this big clock I put up here?
KEITH: I can see the clock, yes.
AUSTIN [cross]: Yeah, I can see the clock. Yeah.
DRE: Excellent, perfect, good.
AUSTIN: We really only on round two? This is round three.
DRE: We're on to round three—
AUSTIN: We're on round three, okay.
DRE: —so I'll tick a, a tick a mark once for you.
AUSTIN: [sighs in relief] Okay.
DRE: Is that your turn, Keith?
AUSTIN: Keith's a—
KEITH: No, I can attack a second time.
AUSTIN: That's what we've been fuckin'—
DRE: Okay, that's what I thought.
AUSTIN: That's what we're fuckin' talking about!
KEITH: Yeah, so I'm going, I'm going to redo that exact same attack.
AUSTIN: Uh, you have to use a different gun, you have to rail gun it this time.
DRE: You have to use a different gun, yeah.
KEITH: Oh, I do? Oh, okay. That's fine.
JACK: Yeah, you can't do the same exact thing twice.
KEITH: Oh, well then I can't do the railgun because...
DRE: It's ordinance.
KEITH: It's ordinance.
AUSTIN: Well, you could have done that first, right?
DRE: Yeah, we'll handwave it, you could have done that first.
KEITH: Okay, okay, sure. Yeah, I didn't realize, it's never come up [AUSTIN laughs] that I had been in a position to use an attack twice in one turn—
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: —so I literally didn't know. Or, I knew it happened to, to you all before but I didn't know that it was [AUSTIN laughs] a rule about weapons, I thought it was a rule about your weapons.
AUSTIN: Hmm.
DRE: Now here's the thing.
KEITH: Yeah.
DRE: I don't think you can make a line to me without also hitting Sylvi's mech.
AUSTIN: Oh, fuck.
SYLVI: Well.
KEITH: With a, with a railgun.
AUSTIN: Yeeeeah.
DRE: Yeah, and normally, with all our other weapons, I don't play it like that, but I think with a line weapon, you kinda have to.
AUSTIN: Yeeah.
KEITH: I could move. Oh, I can't move.
AUSTIN: 'Cause it's ordinance.
DRE: Yeah, 'cause it's ordinance.
KEITH: And it's also marked for death, I'm immobilized.
AUSTIN: You're immobili~ized.
KEITH: I can shoot the Gumdrop.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I would love for you to shoot the Gumdrop.
DRE: Yeah, no, that's, you can absolutely do that.
KEITH: Okay. Want a fire on that, I wanna use, this, I'm gonna take two dice, and, I'm gonna roll.
AUSTIN: That's good damage.
DRE: Tch. Oooh.
KEITH: That's ten.
AUSTIN: We love it.
DRE: And that's armor piercing?
KEITH: Ten armor piercing, yeah.
AUSTIN: Ooh!
DRE: Double-checking, okay, this person doesn't have any, uh, okay. Boop boop.
JACK: We should, I don't know if we've said it in the recording, but this Grampa Gumdrop seems to be piloted by someone called Dymchurch Burrow.
AUSTIN: Great name, fantastic name [KEITH laughs for a long time]
DRE: Yeah, I guess I've never, yeah we've never had like them be on-screen long enough to bring up their name, yes.
AUSTIN: Is this the same pilot that's been hounding us since the start?
DRE: Yeah yeah yeah!
AUSTIN: Oh, Dymchurch.
JACK: Fuckin' Dymchurch.
DRE: Just being like, picked up from, and, and evacced from different places and re-dropped.
KEITH [cross]: Gonna be lights out, Dymchurch!
DRE: Okay, um—
KEITH: This is a guy who feels like he's having a very annoying day [AUSTIN laughs]
DRE: Yeah. I mean, his name's Dymchurch, it's probably—
KEITH: Yeah.
DRE: —it's probably rough every day.
JACK: What do you think his friends call him?
AUSTIN: Dimmy.
KEITH: Dumbchurch.
AUSTIN: Friends!
SYLVI: Damn, some friends!
JACK: Keith, his friends, Keith.
KEITH: Yeah, I know, I heard you said, and I stand by it. That's what his friends call him.
JACK [laughing]: Yikes.
DRE: Okay, alright. I'm gonna have Kellister go, I get to remove this impaired.
AUSTIN: Right.
DRE: And so, how do I, okay, what is it for me to break grapple, 'cause it's kind of the only thing I have.
AUSTIN: It's a, it's a, I think it's a hull check, I think is what we— I'll double-check it, but I'm pretty sure it's, it's a, I'm pretty you're right on that.
DRE: I guess you being immobilized doesn't really change that.
AUSTIN: No.
DRE: I mean, you can't move, but you can still hold on.
AUSTIN: I can still hold very tightly. Yeah, it is a contested hull check.
DRE: Okay.
AUSTIN: So does that mean I also roll?
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: Okay.
DRE: Yeah, we see who's higher.
AUSTIN: Okay! Um...
KEITH: And this is first time that, that Kellister's trying to break this grapple, because—
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
KEITH: —they were just like, yeah, I'll just stand here and whale on this little guy.
JACK: And whale on this guy?
AUSTIN: We're both the same size, we're the same size, we're the same size.
KEITH: Well, but look at you there, on the screen, though.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I mean, I can make myself bigger, I mean, you can, we've seen how this works. [KEITH laughs]
DRE: Oof.
AUSTIN: Ah, so I do, do I just click on the hull, is that what I do?
DRE: Yeah yeah yeah.
KEITH: Oh I think that you're, I think you're gonna get this, Austin.
DRE: I think you, you probably have a good chance to.
AUSTIN: Oh geez, okay. Um, do I have anything that's, that boosts this? I'm just double-checking, I know that this is silly that I'm doing this, but, uh, I don't think I do. I don't think like, my—
KEITH: "Blademaster dice make me good at hull, contested hull checks."
AUSTIN: No, I mean, I do have a grapple skill, but that's not this, this isn't what it does.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay.
[long pause]
AUSTIN: Nope. I in fact rolled a one!
DRE [cross]: Let's go. Oh, thank god.
AUSTIN: As far as I know, there's nothing, I don't get like a bonus to that because I count as being bigger, I think it's just, yeah I don't think that that works that way.
KEITH: Yeah.
DRE: Yeah.
KEITH: For the, for the listeners, this was a seven plus one, versus a one plus three.
AUSTIN [cross]: Yeah. Uh-huh.
AUSTIN: Yeah, well, here's, this is the d20 again, you know, that, that makes sense though, I've been hacked, I'm, and, you know, I don't, maybe, maybe, Tenacity is not as built to hold on, you know, so it goes.
DRE: Okay.
KEITH: But, the flipside is, this is a character with no hands left.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Yes, yes.
DRE: I think, so I think what this looks like is that, Kellister like is basically like—
AUSTIN [interrupting]: Uh-uh-uh! Uh-uh-uh! Uh-uh-uh!
DRE [cross]: Oh? Oh?
AUSTIN: You don't get to [KEITH laughing] move away from me, without me making a move.
SYLVI [cross]: You didn’t say the magic word!
DRE: Okay, do it!
AUSTIN: I'm gonna. 'Cause that, still happens, I just don't get the extremely good bonus. Ooh, wait a second, I wanna see something. Ooh, okay, alright. Now we're, now we're in the fucking money. Um, alright, so, this is probably going to miss, but it might work out in my favor.
DRE: Let's also remember, you do have to take three difficulty on this.
AUSTIN [cross]: Three difficulty on this. [KEITH laughs]
AUSTIN: But, but, but I'll, I'll just save it, let's, okay, let's swing this, let's swing this nanocarbon swords, it's plus three difficulty, um, uh, I don't think it's plus any positive stuff [KEITH laughs] but, things are going to be okay, because missing isn't the worst thing I can do here. Alright, uh, so that's probably a miss, right?
DRE: Yeah, mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: But it's three reliable, right, so I still get that three in, then, uh...
KEITH: Um, Austin, since these things are both—
AUSTIN: When I miss, one second, when I miss with a melee attack, I get to reroll it against a different target within threat and line of sight.
DRE: Gotcha.
AUSTIN: This is no escape, the executioner cut. So I can—
DRE: Oh yeah.
AUSTIN: —just swing it around and just try to hit Granddad in the fuckin' face, and I don't have negatives on that.
DRE: Now, is that, does that count for a reaction?
AUSTIN: Yeah, it's an attack.
DRE: Okay, yeah yeah, good, yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
AUSTIN [cross]: Right, I'm making an attack, right ,so.
AUSTIN: Once per round, so, this is the only time I've done it, so, so let's just roll this.
AUSTIN: Ah dah dah dah, and that's an actual hit.
DRE: Okay. What's your—
AUSTIN: Oh, I did not do the, you know what, sorry.
DRE: That's okay.
AUSTIN: What is it? It is... that is 1d6 plus four damage.
KEITH: Ooh, plus four, that's good.
AUSTIN: Yeah, when this thing hits.
KEITH [cross]: Is that your good sword?
AUSTIN: This is my good sword. [die rolls] There's seven damage to the Granddad.
DRE: Okay. Um, so I think what this looks like, is that Kellister, like, just shoves you off—
AUSTIN: Mm-hmm.
DRE: —and you go to swing your, was it your chain-axe, or your sword you're using it?
AUSTIN [cross]: This is my sword, this is my giant fuck-off sword.
DRE: Yeah, and I think just like, backflips over your sword—
AUSTIN [laughing]: Uh-huh.
DRE: —and kinda lands, like, again, we're going full anime, like splayed out like kind of like ninja landing—
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
DRE: —you know, like, kind of like has, on one knee with the other leg like spread out, um, and, reaches towards its back and another katana comes sliding out of its sheath.
AUSTIN: [sighs] Of course, of course. But my blade keeps going, smashes through this, this statue—
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: —and slams into the side of Granddad.
DRE: Yep.
AUSTIN: And bad news for Granddad, 'cause Granddad's in range now.
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: Is, they, they're equal, they are equidistant, and in fact, I think Granddad might be closer to me now, which means it's going to get my attention.
JACK: In which case it means it's got to be Granddad.
AUSTIN: Oh no, 'cause, because, Ca— oh, did Kellister move closer?
DRE: No, I'll move myself back, no, I'll move myself back.
KEITH [cross]: They're the same, they're the same distance, they're both three.
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. So I guess it's up to Tenacity. I'll flip a coin.
KEITH [cross]: I checked a couple minutes ago.
DRE: Yeah, flip a coin. Okay, that is Kellister's turn.
[02:02:56]
KEITH: And I think, I think this Granddad is, I mean, I don't know, but I would, my guess it has one HP left.
AUSTIN: I don't know, I bet it still has structure, it's a bigger, it's a bigger mech.
DRE: While you say that, I'm going to open its character sheet, so that folks at home can see.
AUSTIN: Ah, uh-huh.
KEITH: I guess that means I'm wrong.
DRE: No, [JACK laughs] I didn't say that.
SYLVI: I guess that means you're right.
AUSTIN: Hmmm.
KEITH: Well, I guess that means I'm right.
DRE: [prevaricating noise] We'll play to find out what happens.
KEITH: I just, I'm pretty sure it's taken nineteen damage, and I was just was like, I'm pretty sure this thing probably has twenty.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
DRE: Okay, um...
KEITH: I'm counting cards, I'm doing Lancer counting cards.
AUSTIN: I love it.
DRE: So who, so, Martilla, The Captain, and Zark haven't gone. I'm specifically saying The Captain because you are not controlling your mech anymore [laughs].
AUSTIN [cross]: Oh yeah, I'm not in control, yeah.
KEITH: What are you doing in there?
AUSTIN: Sipping that day-old coffee, baby.
DRE: Vibin'.
AUSTIN: Vibin', listening to some—
KEITH [cross]: Eyes closed, watching intently?
AUSTIN: Oh, watchin', watchin'.
KEITH: Watching.
AUSTIN: I think I'm doing my best now to try to like, close the pop-up window viruses that are hitting me, but, like, that's, this is, but I'm failing at it. The failure of that roll before represents me holding a day-old coffee in my left hand and with my right hand touching a touch screen to try to like, "Just turn off. Turn off."
KEITH: It's gotta be pretty tough though, even if it's a divine, to be like "I'm just going to let, I'm going to go auto-pilot in the middle of this," seems, uh—
AUSTIN: I don't think it is. I think, I think, that, that Narmine Te’Ketch was always the muscle, and part of being in a heist crew is you count on other people to do other stuff, you know what I mean? And so, it's like this is the equivalent of letting somebody else go crack the safe, it's just the safe is this mech in front of me, you know?
KEITH: And the someone is a USB thumbdrive with a sort of a god on it.
AUSTIN: With a god on it. It's not a god, it's not a god. You know, Te’Ketch doesn't believe this is a god. This is a piece of software.
JACK: It's a very powerful, yeah.
KEITH: We're also in a, we're a very late stage divine.
AUSTIN: Right, right. Um, anyway, so yeah, who's up?
JACK: Dre, I have a question about the siege cannon's blast.
DRE: Mm-hmm?
JACK: When it is in siege mode, it has a blast radius of two.
DRE: Yes, oh yeah.
JACK: How do we calculate that, on—
DRE: I'll draw it for you.
JACK: Yeah, that would be great, because I want to see if I can manage to hit both of them by aiming behind the left shoulder of that statue.
AUSTIN: Yeah, it's right here, it's right this here, you absolutely can.
KEITH [cross]: I think you sure can do that.
DRE [cross]: Yeah.
AUSTIN: And I'm safe from it, look at that.
DRE: Mm-hmm.
KEITH: Perfect. Beautiful. Love a nice circle on a hex grid.
JACK: So how do I do this, do I target both of them?
DRE: I mean in effect, you're targeting this area, right, I mean just make your roll and it'll go against their reflex.
KEITH [cross]: Yes.
KEITH: Uh, if you, if you hold shift while you click them, you can just target multiple at the same time.
JACK: Ooh, I can do that? That's good, that's perfect.
DRE [cross]: Yeah.
DRE: I realized for you, Keith, that made you do three different rolls and technically you should only do one.
KEITH [cross]: Ohh.
DRE: But, I mean, any of those rolls you did would have hit them, so it didn't, it didn't matter.
AUSTIN: We just take, yeah.
JACK: Okay, I’ll, yeah, I will just select both of them.
KEITH [cross]: Oh, I didn't realize I that I should only be doing— in my head, it sort of made sense that it was gonna be three different rolls, so—
DRE: No, it, yeah, to me it would make sense that it would be, even if you targeted three, that it would just, you know, do the roll and then compare it to all of theirs, but.
KEITH: Yeah.
DRE: Because it's, it's basically like each roll is you firing the gun, right?
KEITH: Right.
JACK: Okay, so now I am firing in—
AUSTIN: Oh it actually does say a separate roll is made for each target, Dre.
DRE: Oh, does it? Okay. Nevermind.
KEITH [cross]: Okay.
AUSTIN [cross]: Yeah, it does.
KEITH: In my head it was sort of like, I'm firing the gun, but each of these robots has a chance to, like, you know, do whatever they're gonna do to not get hit.
DRE: Yeah. So do the thing that Keith said to do.
JACK: So I target both of them using shift.
KEITH: Mm-hmm.
DRE: Mm-hmm,
KEITH: Pretty much a Lancer expert now.
DRE: Yeah, I agree [KEITH laughs].
JACK: And this is, it has arcing, it is ordinance, um, and, I wanna see if there's something else here. It does the same amount of damage, it has a further range.
AUSTIN: It's just a little hot, right, it runs hot, or something?
JACK: It runs, it runs hot, but the thing that it does is it has this, this two— oh but also I need to reload it, but my auto-loader drone can do that for me.
AUSTIN: Ah.
DRE: Yeah.
JACK: I think what happens in the cockpit is Martilla pulls down like a roller coaster seat belt over her shoulders [AUSTIN laughs], because the recoil on this thing is going to be really unpleasant from inside the cockpit.
DRE: Yeah.
JACK: Uh, no accuracy and no seeking, mark inaccurate. Are any of them in cover, Dre? Is the Grampa in cover?
DRE: Doesn't matter, because you're arcing.
JACK [cross]: No, because it's, because it's, yeah.
AUSTIN: It's arcing AOE, yeah, you're popping it behind the—
JACK: I missed both of them? What the fuck?
AUSTIN: Yeah. Yeah, that's not great.
KEITH [cross, laughing]: Oh no.
JACK: What the fuck? [laughs]
AUSTIN: Oh, you rolled, a one, and a—
KEITH [cross]: Wow, you a rolled one, two and three.
AUSTIN [laughing]: —two and a three. Ohh, that's rough.
JACK: Oh god, the recoil, and one of the, in the rain, one of the legs, I don't have siege stabilizers deployed, and one of the legs of Under The Radar just slips, and sends the rocket, you know, wide.
DRE: [sighs]
JACK: Oh, miserable. Well, I took four heat [AUSTIN laughs] and I'm gonna need to reload that at some point.
KEITH: At least you have nineteen heat. [AUSTIN laughs]
AUSTIN: That's not true, right?
JACK: I have—
DRE: You do have a lot.
JACK: —fucking tons of heat.
AUSTIN: Ooh, okay.
JACK: Yeah, I think I have eighteen heat.
KEITH: Oh I was just, I was intentionally exaggerating high, and I was only one off.
AUSTIN [cross]: Oh my god. Holy shit.
JACK [cross]: Heat is not—
JACK: I have twelve, twelve heat.
AUSTIN: That's still a lot. That's still a lot.
KEITH: Okay. Yeah. I have seven, and I don't have a weapon that doesn't give me heat.
SYLVI: You should switch some weapons.
KEITH [cross]: I thought I was being good. [SYLVI laughs]
AUSTIN: If they still have—
KEITH [cross]: If we—
AUSTIN: Sorry, go ahead.
KEITH: Sorry, Austin, you can—
AUSTIN: No, no, you go ahead, you stay on topic.
KEITH: Okay, I was just saying, in a hypothetical campaign, the immediate next thing that I would do is give myself another point in, uh, in, whatever that gives me more heat is.
AUSTIN: Yeah, it feels important for that build.
JACK: Yeah.
KEITH: Yeah, yup.
DRE: Is that your, is that your turn, Martilla?
JACK: That's my fucking turn, I can't do anything else.
DRE: Oh right, 'cause it's super heavy, yeah yeah yeah.
JACK: Yeah.
DRE: Ope! Okay, Sylvi. Or no, that was Austin, nevermind.
SYLVI: Okay! Oh?
DRE: Sorry, I was talking about the chat.
SYLVI [cross]: Austin?
SYLVI: Yeah.
DRE: Okay. Let me go, because I have NPCs on the field that I keep forgetting about [laughs]. Um, so this one's gonna move eight. Annnd, it will just try and strike you with its lance. So these, the Discus mech is another kind of like bipedal mech with like stocky shoulders, and it's holding, it's actually like a small like pistol with a huge bayonet spear underneath it as well as a shield. It kind of honestly reminds me a little bit of the Tallgeese from Gundam Wing.
SYLVI [laughing]: Okay.
DRE: Okay, so that does five damage to you, Sylvi.
SYLVI: Okay. Um, should I mark that, or are you marking it?
DRE: You can go ahead and mark it.
SYLVI: Okay, cool. So, I am down to... six HP.
DRE: Okay.
SYLVI: Five, right?
DRE: Yes.
SYLVI: Yeah.
DRE: Yeah, sorry, I forgot to click the right button.
SYLVI [cross]: I was at eleven and I'm down to six.
DRE: Yeah, okay. So is it just you and Keith who haven't gone on this round?
SYLVI: Yeah, I know I haven't gone yet.
KEITH [cross]: Did I not go in this round?
DRE: Oh no, you went, it's, it's, Austin hasn't gone yet.
KEITH: Okay, I wasn't sure if we hadn't done a whole other round, but yeah, I think I'm good.
DRE: So yeah, you are up, Sylvi.
SYLVI: Okay! This guy by my feet, is that the guy you were talking about that just hit me?
DRE: Mm-hmm. Yeah yeah yeah.
SYLVI: Okay, um...
DRE: This little gnat that's buzzing around? [laughs]
SYLVI: Yeah, this little motherfucker who's about to eat a bunch of fuel-rod gun?
DRE: Please.
SYLVI: I believe this is my last use for it, too, so. Oh wait, I already clicked that I didn't... anyway, so yeah, I'm gonna— oh wait, I'm targeting the wrong thing. I'm gonna shoot that, okay, that deals four damage, and my heat's gone back down.
DRE: Gosh, yeah. I just imagine it comes up and it, like, I imagine it like stabs you with its lance, and it almost gets like stuck, and you just eject like, the fuel rod like through its cockpit, 'cause it's stuck on the side of you, and it just evaporates.
SYLVI [cross, laughing]: Fuc—
SYLVI: Yeah. I said it earlier, I vaporize 'em, that's what Zark says he does. [DRE laughs] I can do more than just that, right, I can shoot a gun?
DRE: Oh yeah. Yeah.
SYLVI: I would also like to launch my heavy missiles once more—
DRE: Please.
SYLVI: —at, um, big fella over here. Kellister Multiply.
DRE: Yep.
SYLVI: That's another crit. I'm not in the danger zone anymore, though. So, um, I'm gonna overclock [laughs]. [AUSTIN laughs] Or overcharge, or whatever it's called.
DRE: Oh yeah.
SYLVI: Let's see how that, this goes for me. Okay, I got three, I got two extra heat, which is not what, I wanted one more heat than that, but it's fine [DRE laughs]. And I can use, it's, it has to be a different weapon?
DRE: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
SYLVI: I can prob— let me see if my, if he's in range for my grenade launcher. I think he is.
DRE: You can't do that, 'cause it's ordinance.
SYLVI: Okay, then I can't do [laughing] anything else.
DRE: So you can do your—
SYLVI: I mean I can use my, my Sharanga missiles, but—
DRE: Mm-hmm, yep.
SYLVI: Okay, I don't know what else to target with these, but I'm just gonna roll it, and whatever's nearby can be the second target.
DRE: Okay.
SYLVI: Three damage, a crit, on Kellister.
AUSTIN: Yo!
DRE [cross]: Nice.
DRE: I'm gonna delete your—
SYLVI: I guess, I guess do anoth— take the other three and put it on Grampa Gumdrop, Grampa Bubblegum, whatever his name is.
SYLVI: And that's just a flat three, regardless.
DRE [cross]: That's my favorite Willy Wonka character. [AUSTIN laughs]
SYLVI: God.
DRE: Grampa Bubblegum. Okay, um... Okay. I'm gonna have Kellister take his second turn, he will just go one, two, three, four, five.
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: Aw, what's wrong? Little baby's afraid!
DRE: And reaches back to his back and unsheathes his second katana.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
DRE: And that's his turn.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
KEITH: How uh, how is, how is holding the katana?
DRE: Well, you destroyed the weapon mount, not, not, not his hand.
KEITH: Oh, I thought the hand was the weapon mount.
DRE: Mm-mm.
AUSTIN: Isn't the mount the thing the weapon goes in, like you have a main—
DRE [cross, doubtfully]: I don’t know.
AUSTIN: Yeah, like you have a, n’yeah yeah yeah.
DRE [cross]: Yeah yeah yeah.
DRE: Here, I have, here's the thing.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
DRE: At the end of their turn, they repair one destroyed weapon or system.
AUSTIN [defeated]: Oh, okay, well, yeah, there you go, that's pretty good.
DRE: Yeah, yeah. Um, Captain.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I guess.
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: I can't believe that the renowned Kellister whatever the fuck your last was left Granddad Gumdrop to take Tenacity on, one on one. Unbelievable.
AUSTIN: I'm grappling as my first, obviously. How big is Granddad?
DRE: Uhhh...
KEITH [cross]: A two.
AUSTIN [cross]: Granddad's a two, right?
DRE: Is two, right, yeah yeah yeah.
AUSTIN: Um, so I guess that's a... that, let's actually look how grapple rolls—
SYLVI [joking]: How big is Granddad?
AUSTIN [laughing]: How, please stop praying for Gran— my Granddad Gumdrop.
SYLVI [laughing]: Yeah.
DRE: Grand, Granddad is approximately three squares, three times as many squares.
AUSTIN: Right.
DRE: As you.
AUSTIN: But that's okay, I just have to look up how an actual grapple works, since I so rarely do one against a thing.
KEITH: My memory was that when they're bigger than you, you treat them as the same size as you.
AUSTIN: As the same size, which means I think we just do a grapple, we just do a hull check, maybe? Melee attack to move a character, dah dah dah dah dah, I have to look up the actual ones.
KEITH: Can you grapple, is that an attack?
AUSTIN: Yes, 'cause it's an attack— ooh, maybe it isn't. Let's see.
KEITH: I thought it, yeah, I thought you could only do like melee, I thought you could only use melee weapons.
AUSTIN: I think... Let's see. "When you grapple," yes, you make a melee attack, "choose an adjacent character and make a melee attack." Yeah, it counts.
KEITH [cross]: Okay, melee attack, that's fine.
AUSTIN: There's like no way they made this, this grapple mech, and then said "you can't grapple [dice rolling] with your, with your grapple AI."
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: I don't think.
KEITH: Oh yeah, sure, good point.
AUSTIN: Okay, so, "if the smaller character becomes," "If both parties are the same size, either can make contested hull," or wait, yeah, I make a melee attack on it, basically, to try to grapple it.
DRE: Okay.
AUSTIN: So, let's, let's just, target it, and effectively I'm making a... is there a way to just do, "attack?" I guess, right, when I target it, it will let me, it will pull that up, right?
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: Okay. That's a... hit!
DRE: Yeah, that's a hit.
AUSTIN: It can't, it, really?!
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Oh buddy. I rolled, I rolled a four plus two and that hit.
DRE: Uh-huh [KEITH laughs]
AUSTIN: Oh, Granddad! Oh no! Granddad...! [KEITH continues laughing]
DRE: He's very old, and his legs hurt.
AUSTIN: Oh, they're about—
KEITH: And he can only move two, and he can't defend.
AUSTIN: My man's leg's about to hurt more. [KEITH laughs] Alright, let's, let's do that very first chain-axe hit, grappling—
DRE [cross]: Oh.
AUSTIN: Yeah?
DRE: Did you clear immobilized somehow?
AUSTIN: I grapple, my grapple involuntarily pulls me.
DRE: Ohhh, gotcha, okay.
AUSTIN: Because I still have grapple cable, I can grapple with targets up to range five.
DRE: Yeah yeah yeah, okay.
AUSTIN: So yeah, that's fantastic. So then, this is now going to be inaccurate, it's going to be a plus one from being, having partisan, so this is just, this. Alright, that's six damage.
KEITH [cross]: Six.
AUSTIN: And now, I get a blademaster from that, love to get that. Then, it's heavy time. [pause] Love to make it heavy time.
DRE: It's heavy time.
AUSTIN: So now—
KEITH: And this thing's not dead yet?
AUSTIN: Does not seem like it's dead yet. I really appreciated your, your belief that it would be.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Um, so I still get that plus one for grappling...
KEITH: Well, it's so slow.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I mean—
KEITH: It hasn't done much.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: It's done a couple viruses, but. So I thought maybe it would be lighter weight. I made that prediction—
AUSTIN: Right.
KEITH: —two sessions ago, that the little, that the, that the spooky green, the spooky green guy was gonna be a bigger deal than the Granddad Gumdrop.
AUSTIN: You did.
KEITH: Which is arguable that it was, I mean, come on.
AUSTIN [cross]: I think it's true, it was.
AUSTIN: I still think that that's kind of right.
[long pause]
AUSTIN: And that's a hit, and that's eight more damage.
KEITH: Pshoo!
AUSTIN: So that's fourteen total this round, against—
JACK: This Grampa is dead.
KEITH: You get a hit at a nine, too.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: So, two bad rolls that you got lucky that this thing is—
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: —kind of a slow—
AUSTIN: A slow baby.
KEITH: A slow baby. Even though a granddad, still a slow baby.
AUSTIN: Even though, [dice rolling] yeah, mm-hmm.
DRE: I'm rolling structure.
AUSTIN: I thought so. I'd hope so.
DRE: Um, I accidentally closed out the one book that I need. Here we go. Uh, let's see, I gotta roll another one, 'cause I'm, I got systems trauma.
AUSTIN: Ooh.
DRE: [dice rolling] Six. So a system of my choice is destroyed. Um...
AUSTIN: Do like it. I do.
KEITH: That's the good one, though, right? You want that one.
AUSTIN: I'm assum— I guess I don't know, it might be attacking with like some tech weapon, its hacks, I don't know how they work. Does anybody know, you know?
DRE: Who knows?
KEITH [cross]: I don't know. Dre might know.
DRE: Maybe, I don't know.
KEITH: Yeah.
DRE: Okay. Is the only... okay, so the only person that's left is this random guy over here? [laughs]
AUSTIN: Yeah.
DRE [laughing]: Who just feels so inconsequential.
KEITH [cross, as random guy]: Hey.
AUSTIN: Is this baby—
KEITH [cross, as random guy]: Hey wait.
AUSTIN: Baby Gumdrop in the bottom right?
DRE: Baby Gumdrop, yeah.
KEITH: Yeah, yeah, this is the gumdrop boy.
JACK [as Baby Gumdrop]: Can I fight? Can I fight, too?
DRE [as Baby Gumdrop]: Hey, leave my Grampa alone!
KEITH [as Baby Gumdrop]: I think, I think you skipped me.
DRE: It is gonna, it is gonna attack The Captain, because it is, it is just going to town on old Dymchurch over here.
KEITH [as Baby Gumdrop]: Granddad Dymchurch. [AUSTIN chuckles] Canonically my actual grandfather. [AUSTIN and JACK laugh]
DRE: Ugh, and that misses.
AUSTIN: Hoo!
KEITH: That's sucky, you're, you have not had an easy time this time.
AUSTIN: I can still take it, I still got shit to lose.
DRE [to himself]: And we will attack again.
AUSTIN [cross]: But you're right, I've not, it's been rough.
DRE: Okay, that's a six.
AUSTIN: Aw, fuck.
DRE: So yeah, it's opening fire with its assault rifle, so it launches a grenade to start, and that whizzes over your head.
AUSTIN [cross]: Yeah, uh-huh. Yeah.
KEITH: It's so rough, it's so easy for us to like, roll a two plus one on an attack roll, this little idiot doing six every time, ugh.
AUSTIN: I mean it, it rolled a seventeen, you know, it did. It did get that hit in, and that's going to hurt me. So even if I, I'm trying to see if there's a way for me to, I don't think there is. I already used my, my reaction this turn, so. Alright, structure drop! Time to roll that d6. [die rolling] Ooh, that's a six. Is that bad or good, Dre?
KEITH: That's the good one, I think.
DRE: That's a good one.
AUSTIN: Is it?
KEITH [cross]: Yeah.
KEITH: Yeah, the lower it is, the worse it is.
DRE [cross]: On a six, your mech is impaired.
DRE: Well actually, well hold on. You need to roll, is that your second structure damage?
AUSTIN: That is my second structure damage.
DRE: Okay, you roll two.
AUSTIN: Yikes, yikes.
DRE: And take the lowest one.
JACK: Oh shit.
AUSTIN: Okay.
JACK: Well that's better [dice rolling] than what I worried it was, that—
AUSTIN [cross]: A ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha!
KEITH and DRE [cross]: Ohhhhhh. [JACK laughs]
AUSTIN: Alright.
DRE: Alright, so one, depends on your mech's remaining structure.
JACK [cross]: Austin rolled a one.
AUSTIN: Yep, it sure does.
DRE: How much do you have? Two?
AUSTIN: This is two, yeah.
DRE: Roll a hull check.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I will. No bonuses on this, right?
DRE: I mean, whatever your hull is.
AUSTIN: Yeah, no, nine.
DRE: Oh my gosh.
AUSTIN: That's not good, that's not good.
DRE: On a failure, your mech is destroyed.
AUSTIN: Love it. Incredible. Even on two, with two structure? Damn...
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Alright. Well, do I get to eject, or am I just toast?
DRE: Yes, you get to eject.
AUSTIN: Okay.
DRE: I mean, it's your call.
AUSTIN: No, of course. What? Come on. Narmine Te’Ketch is, is not a true believer in the way that's like, "Oh, it's time for me to martyr myself." Fuck that.
DRE: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Alright. What's the eject stat, how does that work?
DRE: [laughs] I mean, normally, it's like an action you have to take, but I think in this case, it's just, y'know, it's narratively what you want it to be.
JACK: Happy Titanfall Day, shout out to me doing nuclear ejections [AUSTIN laughs], even when I don't need to, 'cause it's my favorite thing to do in the game [laughs].
AUSTIN: I slam on the eject button, so that I can [laughs] take out, uh, uh, uh, Tenacity, and then I slam on the second eject button, which ejects me, and I go flying into the air, and I'm just, I'm just a little guy now. RIP to The Captain.
DRE: Do you have like a parachute or anything, what is your—
AUSTIN: Yeah, what is my personal—
KEITH: Also rip to the parachute cord.
AUSTIN: Yeah, right? Let me look at my character sheet, I actually don't know what I have. Maybe I just hop out instead. Uh, I have, uh...
DRE: And then again, narratively, this can also be like, you know, it shoots the chair out of whatever.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I think that's what it is, I don't think that it's, or, or, no, I kind of love the idea of me being like, "Hup!" kicking, literally kicking a door open and just like leaping out.
JACK: Time to go!
AUSTIN: Yeah I don't have, I have a sound system, I have a flex suit, which lets me not have to eat or drink for a week. I still get hungry, but "the ambrosia paste generated by my suit keeps me from starving to death." [laughs]
DRE: We love ambrosia paste, don't we? [JACK laughs]
AUSTIN: Yeah. Then I have a corrective which is a way to stabilize hurt, down-and-out pilots, bringing them back to consciousness.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: But, and then I have like some weapons, and an assault hardsuit, uh, so, so yeah, there we go.
DRE: Gotcha. Man.
AUSTIN: I can't believe Gr-, oh no, Granddad didn't, Baby Gumdrop got me.
KEITH: Yeah, Baby Gumdrop got you from a distance.
AUSTIN: Damn... oh wait!
DRE: Wait!
AUSTIN: Wait, I may have had one last thing I could, let's just see, I don't know, I don't know that this is going to be enough to actually reverse this. Let's see. This is a ranged attack?
DRE: Yes.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Alright, so it really does come down to this, I can spend my one blademaster die [KEITH laughs, SYLVI chuckles] to try to deflect this.
DRE: Oh, I love this.
KEITH [cross]: You learned it from watching Kellister.
AUSTIN: I, exactly.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: This isn't going to be enough to save me, actually, but I'm still going to roll it.
JACK: Oh, fun though.
DRE [cross]: Again, like in Dragon Ball Z when Goku sees an enemy ability and—
AUSTIN: [dice rolling] I didn't do it. It doesn't work. No. It does not work.
DRE [laughing]: Okay.
AUSTIN: Worth a shot, worth a shot.
KEITH: Why, if you, why wouldn't have been enough to save you?
AUSTIN: Because it's still, if I rolled a five or more, I still would have, I just get resistance, which cuts it in half, and that still would pushed me over the edge.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: Even, even if it had been three damage instead of six damage, that still would have me over the, the structure.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: So. Wait!
KEITH: Oh my god.
AUSTIN: I did have an accuracy on that hull check that I didn't use, so actually I do think I'm going to survive. [JACK laughs]
DRE: 'Cause what did you roll, a nine?
AUSTIN: I rolled a nine!
DRE: Yeah, so there's no way that that wouldn't hit, yeah.
AUSTIN: Fuckin', well this is silly. [dice roll] Well that's literally, I did roll a one, so I literally, so I'm just stunned for a round instead of dead.
JACK [whispering]: Wooow.
DRE: Oh my god, what a time.
AUSTIN: Can you put me back on the table?
KEITH: Where did, where did that accuracy come from?
DRE: There you are.
AUSTIN: That's from my spe— it's from my Gyges frame, which is the thing that gives me, um, I really should have just looked at my shit closer, huh, where is it, Gyges frame, um, bup bup bup bup buh.
JACK [cross]: Oh god.
KEITH: People made fun of you for that Gyges frame, they said, "you're a, more like Geekes frame."
AUSTIN: That's right, that's what they said.
KEITH: But now it just fuckin' saved your life.
AUSTIN: "A mech built on the Gyges template is designed for combat – enhanced with finely tuned stabilizers and a robust suite of targeting software and hardware. You gain +1 accuracy on all hull checks and saves and +1 threat with all melee weapons." So, there it is.
JACK: You scramble out of The Captain, expecting it to explode—
AUSTIN: Yes. Yes, yes!
JACK: —and turn, and look over your shoulder, and it doesn't, and you shrug and scramble back.
AUSTIN: "Ah, fuck!" Get back in, put Tenacity back in, hit the center console so it boots back up. Ah. So I'm just stunned for this next round, right, it means I just can't do shit, right?
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay.
DRE: Mm-hmm, yeah.
JACK: Yeah, because you powered your fucking mech down!
AUSTIN: I did, you're right.
KEITH: Do you, I mean, you could take this opportunity to not put Tenacity back in.
AUSTIN: No, I can't, I, it, it, that did not actually happen that way.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: I'm, I'm, I'll let it, let it hang the way it actually works.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Also, Tenacity's going to stay in, come on.
DRE: Yeah. Okay, as we move into, mechanically, round four, our narrative marker of the way the Tress continuing to work is that, ope, if I can remember how to click things right, more of that rainbow comes flooding out the entrance.
JACK [cross]: Yes!
AUSTIN [cross]: Ah, I love it!
KEITH: It's a fucking party out here now!
AUSTIN: It is a party!
DRE [laughing]: It is a party out here! Um, okay.
JACK: A cone of, of rainbow technicolor is pouring, it looks like pouring out of Under The Radar, but it pouring out of the cave, uh...
AUSTIN: It does look like you're providing a laser light show for us, it does.
KEITH: Yeah, imagine if Martilla was way cooler and you were doing like raves, like mid-raid raves.
JACK: Yeah, yeah, yeah, rather than being a...
SYLVI: God.
JACK: Miserable old hawk.
SYLVI: Just, muffled Caramelldansen blasting from the, from this mech.
AUSTIN [cross]: Yes, yes!
JACK: This is a, like a extremely niche reference, but if you're ever been on one of the Boeing Dreamliner planes that, as you land, projects rainbow light down the roof of the entire, the ceiling of the entire cabin, this is exactly what this looks like.
KEITH [yawning]: Why does it do that?
JACK: I have no fucking idea, Keith. It's weird, though, right, because sometimes when I'm on a plane and something that I don't expect happens, my first thought is "is everything okay?" but when the ceiling of the entire plane starts gently pulsing rainbow colors, my first thought is actually, "why is this [laughs] why is this happening?" It's fine, but.
DRE: Also let me know if I need to, if I need to turn any of this off for anybody.
JACK [cross]: Quite pleasant.
AUSTIN: No, yeah, I love it, it's fantastic.
JACK: Yeah, I'm having a great time.
AUSTIN: Aw fuck, who are these three fuckers up here? I missed them.
JACK: I tell you who they are, Austin—
DRE: Just some reinforcements.
JACK: —they are about to get shot by a blast shot that might also be able to hit... that guy.
KEITH: Oh, okay, yeah yeah yeah yeah.
DRE [cross]: Yeah, sure!
KEITH: I was also gonna blast shot them.
DRE: Okay.
AUSTIN: Oh, yeah. You can hit all three of them, too.
KEITH: Hopefully we don't, we don't need to double—
JACK: Wait, no, I can't blast shot because I need to take a [laughing] quick action to reload my siege cannon.
AUSTIN [cross]: To reload.
KEITH: Ohh, yeah.
AUSTIN: Even with the auto-loader?
JACK: The auto-loader is what gives me that quick action.
DRE: Which allows it to be, because otherwise you have to stabilize to reload.
AUSTIN [cross]: Oh my god. [laughs] Jesus Christ.
JACK: Yeah, I'm going to deploy a, I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll go first because I'm going to deploy a turret, and then—
AUSTIN: Wait wait wait wait, wait wait wait wait wait.
DRE [cross]: Muhhh.
DRE: No, you all go first, 'cause an NPC went first, went last, so you all, sorry.
AUSTIN: No, I was gonna say, do we wanna let Keith go first, so that—
KEITH: So that none of them move.
AUSTIN: —none of them move out of this precious line that they're in.
JACK [laughing]: Oh yes, you are absolutely right.
KEITH: Yeah. Ah, yeah, I can do that, I can only fire at them once. This is gonna be fun. Um, because I also have to get rid of my heat, 'cause I'm at five out of seven heat. So, basically, what I'm gonna do—
AUSTIN [cross]: Ahh. Wait, wait, doesn't that mean that you can't, because isn't it ordinance?
KEITH: No, because I'm just going to use my, my Vulture rifle.
AUSTIN: Oh, so you can only hit one of them, then.
KEITH [cross]: Which is one.
KEITH: No, no, no, oh right, you're right.
AUSTIN: That's not a line.
KEITH: Ah, then, whatever, then I'll just, then I'll just wait a turn to do my heat, and I'll used my heavy mounted gun to shoot them. I'm gonna target the first one for marked for death, and then target all three of them, um, actually apply the marked for death thing, give myself two accuracy, or two other sources, and I think that's everything, I think I just roll. Ugh!
AUSTIN: Oof!
KEITH: Ugh.
AUSTIN: Oof.
KEITH: Ugh.
JACK: Eef!
AUSTIN: You did hit one of them, though.
KEITH: I did hit one of them.
JACK: Yeah, you did hit one of them.
AUSTIN: And you did still do, seven damage, like that ain't bad, armor piercing.
JACK [cross]: It wasn't a complete Martilla.
KEITH: Seven armor piercing damage.
AUSTIN: To the middle one, presumably?
DRE [cross]: Yeah, that ain't bad. Yeah.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Also, these are just dodgy folx.
DRE: Mm-hmm.
KEITH: They are. I rolled a fourteen, which missed, which isn't like that high, but it is, I mean, you hit the Gumdrop on an eight.
AUSTIN: Yeah, Gumdrop is a big sta— like, you know, that thing may as well be installation art, you know? [DRE laughs]
KEITH: It's designed like one.
AUSTIN: Those are planes. Oh, was it gone? Did that, did that just ace it?
DRE: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, it just knocks it out of the sky.
KEITH: So, then—
DRE: I think like, the other two like, barrel roll out of the way and, and the other one just takes the, the rail gun like, straight in the face.
KEITH: So I'm gonna just use my other action to hide, and the next round, I can use a, a stabilize to heat. To get down my heat.
DRE: So here's the thing, you are gonna have to roll, because you're at your cap, because you're at seven out of seven.
KEITH: I thought it, we found out last time that it, you have to exceed your cap, you have to exceed your cap. [general sounds of agreement from the table]
DRE: Oh, it's right, nope, you're right, yep yep yep yep yep yep, you are correct.
KEITH: Yeah, I was, I was banking on that.
DRE: Again, Keith knows everything about Lancer. [JACK and KEITH laugh] Like we talked about.
AUSTIN: It's true, Lancer pro, Lancer expert.
DRE: Uh, okay. Uh, Kellister's gonna go.
KEITH: I spent all my time missing over and over again the first two sessions to read the book.
JACK: To really figure it out, yeah.
AUSTIN: Mm-hmm.
DRE: [dice rolling] Okay, that doesn't charge that, um...
JACK: Good.
AUSTIN: Mm-hmm.
DRE: So here's the question. Okay. Um, so Kellister takes both the swords that he has.
KEITH: Stupid amount of swords for him to still have.
DRE: It's a, it's a dumb amount of swords, I agree. And just raises them above his head and stabs them into the ground.
AUSTIN: Oh, I hate this.
JACK [cross]: Oh, and it's so bad when people do this.
SYLVI [cross]: Oh no.
AUSTIN: This is bad.
DRE: And a line of energy arcs out, and it cuts through the Ill Portent and Under The Radar.
AUSTIN: [sucks teeth] Awwww fuck.
DRE: You both need to make an agility save.
JACK: Oh, an agility save? That's fine.
SYLVI [cross, laughing]: Oh, great.
AUSTIN: You're really good at that, right, Under The Radar?
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah yeah yeah.
JACK: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: Very, very agile.
KEITH: Actually, last time, the only time you've had to pass one, you did pass it, right?
JACK: Yeah, and it looks like I passed it here too.
AUSTIN: Oh my god, wow!
JACK: Wait, that can't be right.
AUSTIN: Yeah it can, 'cause it's a d20.
DRE: It's a d20, baby.
JACK: Yeah, but, but, don't I take the penalty every time, and that wasn't applied.
AUSTIN: Oh, what's the penalty?
DRE: Oh. One difficulty.
AUSTIN: Oh, so, yeah, minus 1d6.
JACK: Oh.
DRE: As long as you don't roll a six, you will still pass.
JACK: [dice rolling] I rolled a one!
AUSTIN: Phew, unbelievable.
DRE: Gotcha.
AUSTIN: So good.
DRE: On a success, your HP is reduced to one.
[long pause]
AUSTIN [whispered]: Fuck.
JACK: What would have happened... what?
AUSTIN: Wait, yeah, are you just dead otherwise?
DRE: You take a structure damage immediately.
AUSTIN: Yo!
[02:32:10]
AUSTIN: Fuck that!
JACK: How often is he able to do this?
DRE: So that is a full action, and it is a recharge six. So that means, in order for him to be able to do it again, I roll a charge die every time his turn starts. I would have to roll a six in order for him to be able to do that again.
AUSTIN: Fuck! That!
JACK: Wow, okay. So Sylvi and my health is both now one?
DRE: Mm-hmm.
SYLVI: Wait, I, did I not dodge? I got a nineteen.
AUSTIN: No, that's on a dodge!
KEITH [cross]: That's on a success.
JACK [cross]: That's if you succeed.
SYLVI: Oh.
AUSTIN: If you fail, you just take the structure damage.
SYLVI: Wow, okay.
DRE: I'm gonna drop that—
KEITH: Holy shit.
DRE: —there we go, I've dropped that in the chat.
AUSTIN: I hate that. I ha~ate it.
KEITH: Ah fuck. I tried to, I get, [sigh]
[long pause]
DRE: When, um, when he took that first structure, that was the system you knocked out.
AUSTIN: Ah, I see, so he's now repaired that.
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: I hate this guy.
KEITH: This is what I'm, this is what, here, I put it in the Lancer chat what this reminds me of.
AUSTIN: Oh, in, in Discord.
KEITH: Yeah, in Discord.
JACK: Oh, yeah, that's definitely it, yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, mm-hmm.
JACK: This is a GIF of some Pokemon that looks like a brick wall spinning into the ground.
AUSTIN [cross]: Oh fuck, unbelievable, I can't believe you're not—
KEITH: It's like from the third episode of the anime, it's a Sandshrew.
AUSTIN: Yeah, it's a Sandshrew. No respect. Sandshrew gets no respect.
DRE: Oh, I forgot to—
KEITH: I wish there was a better GIF of this, this is to me is like the iconic GIF from that whole first season of Pokemon.
AUSTIN: It's a good one.
KEITH: Is this, that weirdo with his weird gym.
AUSTIN: Alright, what's happenin' here.
DRE: Well, it's your all's turn now.
AUSTIN: Who's up, who wants to...
KEITH: Um, okay.
AUSTIN: You've gone.
KEITH [cross]: I haven't—
AUSTIN: Didn't you just go?
DRE: Yeah, you just went.
KEITH [cross]: Oh I thought there was a new round.
DRE: No no no.
KEITH: I'm getting my rounds confused.
DRE: You're good.
KEITH: So I just went, so I'm out.
AUSTIN: So this is Sylvi, Jack, or me.
SYLVI: I can keep doing what I've been doing every turn, which is firing missiles. [KEITH laughs]
AUSTIN: Has Gumdrop gone yet? Grampa?
DRE: No.
KEITH: Just to shoot you.
AUSTIN: Not this turn, though. No, and that was, that was, that was the end of last turn, that was, that was Baby Gumdrop.
DRE: He has not gone, yeah yeah.
AUSTIN: I wonder—
JACK: Dre I have a, I have a question about overcharging.
AUSTIN [cross]: You go ahead.
DRE: Yeah?
JACK: So if I overcharged, I could take a full action, and then overcharge and take a quick action and heat. Can I do that in another order, can I take a quick action, then make a full action, then take heat?
DRE: Yeah yeah yeah.
JACK: Okay, I mean, then, I can reload and fire this turn.
AUSTIN: You can do it.
DRE: Uhhh.
JACK [cross]: Ummm.
DRE: Is your thing ordinance though?
AUSTIN: Ah.
JACK: Wh-why?
KEITH: You can only do ordinance the first move of your turn.
DRE [cross]: Ordinance has to be first.
DRE: I mean, you can shoot in direct fire mode, that's not ordinance.
JACK: Oh~h. But, he is behind cover.
AUSTIN: He is. Anh!
KEITH [high-pitched]: Mmm, nooo, no.
DRE: No, no, also his line would have just, his short-cycle lance would have just destroyed that cover.
AUSTIN [cross]: Yeah.
JACK [laughing]: Oh, would it?
KEITH: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. [JACK laughs]
JACK: That's really funny. Okay, so, what I'm gonna do is, I am going to... I mean, in theory, I don't even have to take heat to do this, but I might take the heat, 'cause I could just fire my, in direct fire mode it doesn't need to be reloaded. But, do I want that to be reloaded. I think it is worth one heat, especially 'cause this guy is a real piece of shit.
DRE: Oh yeah, totally.
AUSTIN: Yeah, for sure.
JACK: So what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna take one extra heat, bringing my heat up to seven. Okay, and then, I am going to reload the siege cannon. And I'm going to fire it in direct fire mode.
[long pause]
JACK: Make sure that that's targeting.
[long pause]
JACK: Okay. So. That gives me two heat and hits him for [dice rolling] ten damage.
AUSTIN: Hoo!
JACK: But, he's doing his thing.
DRE: He's doing his thing, yep.
AUSTIN: Wait, what's his thing?
DRE: The rebound.
JACK: His thing where he can rebound it.
AUSTIN: Oh, he can shoot it back at you, right.
DRE: Yep. So I gain resistance, and you have to repeat the attack against yourself. So actually, you first need to roll to see if you hit yourself.
AUSTIN [laughing]: That's so silly.
JACK: How do I do that?
DRE: I would just do a d20, and we'll add two, 'cause that's what your attack roll was.
JACK: But, will this, uh, act, I repeat the attack, right, so I gain heat, as if I've fired the cannon.
DRE: Oh gosh, yeah, uh-huh.
AUSTIN: Is that true? Wait, that doesn't make sense.
JACK: Is that, is that true? I mean—
AUSTIN: Because—
JACK: —the wording says you, you do the attack on yourself.
DRE: Here, let me paste the actual wording into the chat.
AUSTIN [cross]: Yeah, thank you.
JACK: Yeah, the attacker must repeat the attack against themselves.
AUSTIN: Oof.
JACK: Yeah so I think the fastest way to do this actually is just to target myself and then, um, roll the thing again.
[long pause]
KEITH: Um, if it's a rebound, I don't think you would take the heat again.
AUSTIN: It, it seems silly to take the heat.
JACK [cross]: It's not actually rebounding.
DRE: Yeah, I would say, don't take the heat.
AUSTIN: I mean it is actually re-, like it's, fictionally, it's rebounding.
DRE: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah.
AUSTIN: It's—
DRE: I would say, don't take heat.
JACK: Okay.
AUSTIN: You're hitting like a shield, or it's, it's being deflected back at you, the, the, yeah.
DRE: Yeah.
KEITH: Yeah. Yeah.
AUSTIN: It's not like the round create— I mean, you would take whatever heat the bullet would give from the shot, but not from you shooting it.
DRE: Yeah. I agree.
JACK: Yeah. So this gives me two heat, but I'll just, I'll just take it off once I'm done.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Oof!
JACK: I hit and I deal myself thirteen damage. Okay, so.
AUSTIN: Fuck!
JACK: The first thing I'm gonna do, is I'm gonna take two heat.
KEITH: For a split-second, I forgot you dealt that to yourself, and I was like, "nice." [ALL laugh]
DRE: Hell yeah!
AUSTIN: Oh my god.
JACK: So talk me through this, my HP gets reduced to zero.
DRE: Mm-hmm.
KEITH: 'Cause you were at one.
JACK: And then immediately sent back up to eighteen.
DRE: Yes, but then the rest of the damage rolls over.
AUSTIN [cross, laughing]: But then the rest hits, yeah.
DRE: So take twelve away from eighteen, so you're at six.
JACK: Okay, hang on. First I need to roll structure, I rolled a five, uh, I'm impaired until the end of my next turn.
DRE: Okay.
AUSTIN: Crap, why do I not see that in my thing?
JACK: So now I take twelve damage off eighteen damage, which gives me six health.
KEITH: Austin, are you looking for the thing to click to do structure damage?
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, 'cause I was looking for that before, and I don't know where it is.
DRE: I'm not sure either, honestly.
AUSTIN: It's fine. Jack, wait, Jack, where did you do that structure damage button?
JACK: It did it automatically when I reduced my HP to zero.
AUSTIN: Okay. Ohh, I was reducing structure, that makes more sense, okay.
DRE [cross]: Oh, that's the trigger, okay, yeah, cool cool cool.
DRE: Okay.
KEITH: Bummer. Bummer turn.
JACK: But he took damage from when I hit him, right?
DRE [cross]: Could have been a lot worse.
DRE: He did take damage, yes, mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: Oh, fuck.
JACK: Oh, and [sigh] what happens if I say I want him to get knocked back?
DRE: You knock him back.
JACK: Yeah, but he—
KEITH: But he has, he doesn't have space to get knocked back, so.
JACK: He doesn't have space to get knocked back, so does he do damage because he hits the edge of the map?
DRE: No...
KEITH: I think we decided that they just, they just stop.
DRE: Yeah, they just stop.
AUSTIN: Yeah, unless you have special abilities.
DRE: You can knock him back, though.
AUSTIN: Yeah, ain't a bad idea.
JACK: I don't know, Dre sounded happy, when they said you can knock him back, though. [AUSTIN laughs]
DRE: No, oh no, he doesn't have anything special for being knocked back.
JACK: Alright, let's knock him back, I mean, that guy has fucking sword, so I want him to be—
DRE: Well here, I can move him up this way, there, that's two.
JACK: Uh, he's moved backwards in a line from where the bullet hit him, so I think he just has to move back one.
DRE: Oh, okay, alright.
JACK: And I would not like to knock myself back, with the—
KEITH: You can go back up there, though, if you want .[DRE and JACK laugh]
JACK: Okay, that's, yeah, that's my turn.
JACK: Oh, I guess I should say that the way that looked is that the cannon just exploded, like a shell exploded in the cannon, which is what did the damage to me. But that happens sometimes, the artillery teams are, they don't love it, but they're like "oh, the cannon blew up, okay. [laughing] Try again in future."
KEITH: Yeah. There's just nine people like, working in your mech that we've never [AUSTIN laughs] heard of.
AUSTIN: That's extremely funny, actually.
JACK: Oh god, yeah.
KEITH: You've just got a crew that we don't know about.
JACK: Just a crew. Shouting orders, but my mic is turned off to the people outside.
DRE: Gosh. Alright, [plane noises] one of the, one of the Wing units is just gonna do a fly-over, and...
KEITH: Sorry, there was an actual fly-over that just happened.
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, that was me, sorry.
DRE: Foley work.
AUSTIN: I'm in a plane, yeah, uh-huh.
AUSTIN: Oof!
DRE: That does six damage on launching missiles.
AUSTIN: So this is like a fly-by, launching some fucking missiles at... the Ill Portent?
DRE: At the Ill Portent, who is now also gonna have to do structure.
SYLVI: Ah, okay. [quietly] How do I do that again, I just roll that?
DRE: So just, reduce your HP to zero.
SYLVI: Okay,
DRE: And that should cause the, uh.
SYLVI: Oh, let me make sure my structure is at four, ugh, one second. Hold on. I messed it up 'cause I took the structure down before I—
DRE: Oh, yeah.
SYLVI: Yeah.
DRE: You can also just manually roll d6, if you want.
SYLVI: It's okay, it's fine, I got it.
SYLVI: "Parts of your mech are torn off by damage," okay, it's just roll a 1d6.
DRE: So click, "DESTROY." [JACK laughs]
AUSTIN: I love that. Oof.
SYLVI: "All weapons on one mount of your choice are destroyed," goodbye to my grenade launcher again.
AUSTIN: Is that the one you lost last time, too?
DRE [cross]: RIP the grenade launcher, a real one.
SYLVI: It's the least useful one, so.
AUSTIN: That makes sense.
DRE: Okay. Um, and so then it kicks to...
AUSTIN: Sylvi, you should go, I, I don't, I'm stunned this turn, so I should go last.
DRE [cross]: Yeah!
SYLVI [cross]: Yeah, sure.
SYLVI: Um, my shit is fairly simple. I'm gonna use my heavy launcher on, is it Callister?
DRE: Mm-hmm.
JACK: Kellister. [laughs]
DRE: Kellister, yeah, sorry.
AUSTIN [cross]: Kellister.
SYLVI: Kellister, okay. That's another crit, that's eight damage, I'm not in danger zone, so I don't, um, there's no heat affecting that at all, so it doesn't take the bonus 1d6 or anything, and then these—
AUSTIN: It still eight fucking damage, though.
SYLVI: Yeah, it does. These two, little ones here, that are kinda like flanking either side, I'm gonna use my split missile launcher on them.
DRE: Hey, first, you wanna—
AUSTIN: Let's! Go!
DRE: Do you wanna talk about absolutely destroying Kellister Multiply?
JACK: Yes!!
SYLVI: Yeah, I mean— was Kellister the one that hit me with the thing that fucked me up a bunch?
DRE: Yeah, uh-huh.
SYLVI: Um, what I'm gonna say happened is that he knocked the hat off my mech [AUSTIN gasps, then laughs], and my, I blast, it's like, I get mad about it, and I do like a big, I just unload the missile launchers on my shoulders, and then once the dust is cleared you just see my mech leaning down to pick up its hat. [AUSTIN laughs]
DRE: God. Yeah, so you just do like the, lot of Gundam Wing references for me today, but you just do the Heavy Arms, like, missile dump?
SYLVI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Absolutely.
DRE: Yeah.
SYLVI: This is kind of just Heavy Arms. [laughs]
DRE: Yeah. After the dust settles, I think, like, the Kellister's mech is like, just like, leaning, like kneeling down and like, just explodes.
AUSTIN: Way to go, cowboy.
SYLVI: Zark is smoking a cigarette in his mech. [AUSTIN laughs]
DRE [cross]: Sends a laser sword flying, and it like, and it, and it lands at your feet, like stuck in the ground.
SYLVI: Oh man, like can I pick it up? [laughs] Um, okay, and then this is targeting the other two little guys near me, and if this hits it'll just be a flat three. I shoulda them first, it's, it was a six, so I don't think it hits either.
DRE: It does not.
SYLVI: Yeah, that's fine. Too much smoke in the air. Can't target properly.
AUSTIN [cross]: Yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, that makes sense to me.
DRE: Okay, this little guy is gonna do another fly-by. I feel bad that I haven't attacked Keith, but—
AUSTIN: He's hidden!
DRE: Just hidden the whole time.
KEITH: Hidden and behind a thing.
DRE: Mm-hmm. Just living your best life.
AUSTIN: Yeah, we should just say outright, hidden is that they cannot be targeted by hostile attack or actions, they don't cause engagement, enemies only know the approxim— their approximate location, attacking, forcing, attacking, forcing saves, taking reactions, using boost, and losing cover all remove hidden. After they resolve, characters can find hidden characters with search. So the thing is that like, you're able to just dip into hidden after every shot you take, basically, to keep yourself safe.
DRE: Mm-hmm.
KEITH: Yeah, as long as I have a quick action to take, I can return to hidden, and then I have a bunch of, I have an extra thing that basically, lets me move around and still be hidden even if other, other characters would be seen if they were hidden in those circumstances. [AUSTIN voices agreement throughout]
AUSTIN: This suddenly does, like, you know, those misses still would have missed in those previous episodes, but this makes sense in terms of, in terms of like, how, how weak, or, how many times you got hit and took big damage, this would have helped against that, you know.
KEITH: Yes. I, I spent so many turns not attacking, because I was dealing with like, being too close to enemies that could see me, when I could have literally could have just gone in invisible, basically. Not invisible! Hidden. Could have gone hidden. [AUSTIN voices agreement throughout]
KEITH: Um, yeah, so. That was my biggest— oh, but I did know it, I did know about this for all of the second session, and it didn't help. [laughs] So. [DRE laughs]
AUSTIN: You got out of a situation with it that one time.
KEITH: I didn't get hit, I just didn't do any, didn't help, didn't do anything the whole time.
AUSTIN: Yeah. I mean, again, there was that bit where the reinforcements showed up at the south and you were able to hide your way out of it, that probably would have gone worse if you were visible. [KEITH voices agreement throughout]
DRE: Um, okay, so yeah, the, the other Wing unit just did another fly-by on the Ill Portent—
AUSTIN: Jesus.
DRE: —and launched another missile salvo. And then Captain, I guess, since you are stunned.
AUSTIN: That's my turn!
AUSTIN: I literally don't think, I think stunned is stunned, like, stunned is—
DRE: Yeah, all you can do is, basic, you can eject.
KEITH [cross]: You just literally can't do shit.
AUSTIN: I ain't ejecting. I'm good.
DRE [laughing]: And that's, that's it.
KEITH: Yeah, okay.
AUSTIN: I've still got two structure.
KEITH: That's plenty, that's half.
AUSTIN: That's half my structure, yeah.
KEITH: Yeah, you're half good.
DRE: Mm-hmm. Okay, gosh, who's left on my side. Um, okay, um...
JACK: Old Dymchurch, hanging on in there.
AUSTIN: I'm curious, Dre, how does Tenacity react to being stunned? Like, I don't have notes on Tenacity outside of, it's called Tenacity and what it does is like, like, is just an all-in berserker mode style situation, right?
DRE: Gosh, I imagine that your, your frame is shaking like it's about to fall apart.
AUSTIN: Yeah, okay.
DRE: Like it is, it is like saying, "Move. Move. Move. Move."
AUSTIN: I'm tryi— buddy I'm trying.
DRE: And when the systems can't, it doesn't stop trying. [laughs]
AUSTIN: Right, uh-huh.
DRE: Like you are creaking, and things are like, like cables are popping out of the side.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: Probably making it worse.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I'm like doing this, plug things back in like a telephone operator style, with some loose and cables, and some like, literally stick—
DRE: Your whale AI is like, thrashing.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Yeah. Literally stick some gum between two wires to try to keep them connected together.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: A mess.
DRE: Gotcha. Um, okay. You're grappled on Dymchurch, right?
AUSTIN: Yeah, but I'm stunned, I don't know what that does.
DRE: Eh!
AUSTIN: I guess it doesn't say it's un, it un-grapples.
DRE: Yeah, it doesn't break it.
AUSTIN: So it's like yeah, I've like locked in place, with my arms around it or whatever, you know. [DRE voices agreement throughout]
DRE: Okay, um, so Dymchurch is gonna activate its enthrone system.
AUSTIN: God, I hate that.
DRE: Which puts a shield around it.
AUSTIN: Uh-oh.
DRE: So it does become immobilized, it cannot move.
AUSTIN: Great.
DRE: But.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I see.
DRE: Oops. Where is the immobilized thing? I can never remember what the immobilized figure looks like. There we go, it's a foot in a trap.
AUSTIN: Ah, makes sense.
DRE: So, it is completely immobilized, but while the shield is active, any characters that make ranged or melee attacks against the, against it take four energy damage before the attack roll is made.
AUSTIN: Fuck.
DRE: Until the end of its next turn.
KEITH: So anything that makes any attack against it?
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: Each, like, any amount of times per round?
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Lasts until, right, okay.
KEITH: Including ranged? Wow.
DRE: Yep.
KEITH: How does that work?
AUSTIN [cross]: That's so good.
AUSTIN: I'm like, super easy to hit right now. Oh, but thankfully you were not trying to attack me.
DRE: Yeah. It misses, okay.
KEITH: Oh nice.
DRE: Yeah. So yeah, it tries to do another tech attack. It tries to send that virus spreading elsewhere, and whatever AI that the Under The Radar has in it wards it off.
JACK: God, what AI does it have in it? It has, um, just a big, slow, stupid artillery AI that doesn't need to focus on too much other than like—
KEITH: Yeah, it's a graphing calculator. [JACK and AUSTIN laugh] It just like doesn't, it doesn't even have the space to hold the virus or something.
DRE: And then, the Gumdrop is going to take its turn to reload the grenade launcher. Okay.
[long pause]
DRE: Um, as we go into the next round of combat, the mountain itself begins shaking.
AUSTIN: This is, this is, are we in round five, or are we in round six?
DRE: We're in round five, yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay, okay, we can do this, we're gettin' through it.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Um, can I, can I go first so I can see if I die?
SYLVI: Yeah, go ahead.
JACK: Yes.
AUSTIN: Because, I did not turn off, I did not, hmm, maybe I should turn it off. Then I stay stunned this whole turn.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: No, Tenacity's gonna keep swinging. Tenacity wakes, Tenacity wants to fucking move, right?
DRE: Mm-hmm.
KEITH: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: I'm still grappled, it's time to just start swinging again.
DRE: It's only four energy damage.
AUSTIN: It's only four energy damage, exactly.
DRE: Oh it is armor-piercing.
AUSTIN: That's fine.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: I mean, it's scary. It's scary to me. But, it's fine. Um, okay. This is the first time that I've been within range to the thing where I'm like, I have these three attacks that I can make per turn [KEITH laughs], so the first thing I'm gonna actually do is ram it, which we haven't seen.
JACK: Woah!
DRE: Oh, yeah.
AUSTIN: I don't know what it, I don't know, I think that that's just a contested...
DRE: No, it's a melee attack, when you—
AUSTIN: It's just a melee attack? It's just a, okay. So I'm just going to do that thing where I target it again. And then, I'm grappled, so I get that +1, and then I think that that's it. I don't think, I'm equal size to it, so I don't have like negative, I think, but I think that that's it. I'm triple-checking, that that frame doesn't... oh, this is an ac— this is a hull check? No, this is not a hull check, this is just a melee attack, right? Okay.
DRE: Yeah, mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: So let's roll that. That's a hit. So, I'm guessing that's a hit, it says it's a hit, right?
DRE: Yep! Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: Okay. So that means I, is it when I do damage, or is it when I take—
KEITH: Before you do the damage.
DRE: Before you do the, before you do your roll, you take damage.
AUSTIN: Yes, okay, so I take four from that, um...
KEITH: How do you know it's four?
AUSTIN: 'Cause it's, that's what Dre said. Dre said, when it's hit—
KEITH: Oh I thought it was three, four, or five.
AUSTIN: It's based on how many... people it's up against, right?
DRE: It's based on the tier [general sounds of enlightenment], it's based on the tier system and it's a tier two.
AUSTIN: So it's a tier two, so it does four.
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: So that means I take, and that's armor-piercing, right?
DRE: Yep.
AUSTIN: Drops me to twelve. [laughs] But it's rammed, which is nice, because that means I think it goes prone now?
DRE: Yes.
AUSTIN: Which means, it—
DRE: Did you want to knock it back, by the way, or do you want to keep it—
AUSTIN: No, absolutely not.
DRE: Okay, yeah.
AUSTIN: I'm just like shoulder-checking it, while holding it, you know?
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: So yeah, a rammed says, um, why is it not right here? Okay. Your target is knocked prone, which means that it is im— is it impaired, Dre, or is it just, it's just I get accuracy against it? I keep forgetting. I literally just looked these up.
DRE: I believe you just get accuracy against it. I just also looked it up, and forgot.
AUSTIN: It's slowed, so all attacks against it get +1 accuracy. Prone characters can stand up, but it takes a, a, that uses their standard movement, so I mean, that's not that bad. Uh, uh, but also because it's slowed, that means that it can't boost or make special moves from talent systems or weapons.
DRE: Yeah. Also because it's immobilized, it cannot go, stand up from prone.
AUSTIN: Okay. So here is my question. Is this reaction a system it has? Is enthrone?
DRE: Yeah, it's a system.
AUSTIN: So that means it can't take that reaction anymore, right?
DRE and KEITH: Hmmmm.
DRE: I don't think so, because it's already in place.
AUSTIN [cross]: Because it's not an action, it's already in place.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay.
DRE: Yeah, it's bas— it's just a shield.
KEITH: But it, in order to stand up, it would have to end.
AUSTIN: No, I think it can, I think it's, it's, I think it's good.
KEITH: No, 'cause it's immobilized because of the shield, so in order to get, to stand up it would have to end the thing, yeah.
AUSTIN [cross]: Ohhh, that's very funny.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: That's very fun. Okay, yeah, I'll take that. I'll take that as a dub. Alright now, the second attack. Thank you for turning it on its side. [KEITH and SYLVI laugh]
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: Let's chain-axe you. So now it's accurate, because it's my first main weapon melee attack, it's grappled, so that's another plus one, and it's on its side, so that's another plus one.
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: There's the crit I've been looking for, alright. [JACK laughs]
DRE: Yeah. You do take four more energy damage.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I know, I'm gonna take it every turn.
DRE: Okay.
AUSTIN: It's fine, I'm just gonna soak that up.
DRE: It's fine, it's fine.
AUSTIN: It's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. Alright, so, that's a crit, which means I did, how much damage?
DRE: You didn't roll damage.
AUSTIN: Oh, that didn't, it didn't roll damage for some reason. Alright, so that would have been, I guess I'll just roll it regular. That's 1d6 from the chain-axe, it also [dice rolling] shreds it, so it's three base from the chain axe, but it's also Tenacity gives me +1d6 on all melee crits. [dice rolling] So that's seven melee, it shreds the armor for the rest of the turn. And then I'm gonna heavy attack, oh, then I get my, I get my blademaster dealie, so let me mark that down. Good to have that. And then, yeah, here we go, now heavy. Heavy attack time. Weapons, nanocarbon. Grappling, it's on the ground, that's plus two accuracy then. Um, first dah dah dah dah dah, okay. That's the, that's actually the crit I have been looking for. So that's six damage from this, plus another d6 from the AI [dice rolling], only one, there. And then, I guess, I guess, that's not true, 'cause no one else is close enough, huh? Ugh, that's a shame. Er, wait.
KEITH: Close enough to what?
AUSTIN: I could do a, this is the thing that when I crit I do extra damage to everybody around.
KEITH: Oh, sure.
AUSTIN: But that's fine, I'll just take the solid seven extra damage here.
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: On Granddad.
KEITH: Now is that a, a third instance of the four damage, or is that just two?
AUSTIN: That is a third instance, so I take another four from that.
JACK: Wow.
AUSTIN: We are literally just trading blows on this thing.
KEITH: But it's version of trading blows is it's just lying on its side, not moving, and you're just like—
AUSTIN [cross]: I, did I do more damage than I took?
AUSTIN: Yes, yes, exactly.
KEITH: —slowly corroding away, or something.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
DRE: And I think like, narratively it makes sense for the Portent to go, or, uh, not the Portent, for Dymchurch to go, as because like, as you're hacking this, it just like, the shield goes away.
AUSTIN: Right, wait, one second, I might wanna, I have a question, can I—
DRE [cross]: You just busted the shield.
DRE: Yeah?
AUSTIN: Can you overcharge to spend, to stabilize is a full action, isn't it?
DRE: It is, yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay, so no, I'm good. Alright. That is my turn.
DRE: Gotcha. So yeah, I mean, I'm, this is Dymchurch's turn, but literally all they can do is just become non-immobilized, because the shield goes away, because you're just broken it.
AUSTIN: Love it, fantastic. Just, this is, uh, I imagine that this looks very much in like, Eva berserk mode, of just like—
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: —I'm just slamming these two weapons against it, over and over and over, and the, the kind of backlash of the shield is burning away The Captain's armor, and you know, setting things on fire, and bits of me are popping off, and it just like, slam, slam, slam, and at this point, I actually do think Narmine has like, is holding onto the controls, and is like letting my, I'm letting my body go with the attacks, you know, it's like, almost like I'm, you know, in the, I'm in the automated workout machine that's dragging me along with it, and I'm just trying to like, or I'm like on the bucking, you know, bronco and trying to like keep it from, you know, throwing itself off and destroying itself.
[02:58:51]
AUSTIN: I'm ready to basically hit the stop button the moment I think I need to.
KEITH: Alternatively, you're the little kid who's been given a controller that's not plugged in.
AUSTIN: That's not, uh-huh, [laughing] yes. [DRE laughs] No, I do think it's, I think it's plugged in, in the sense that it's plugged in enough to at least do the force feedback, right, I'm at least getting the rumble. [KEITH and DRE voice agreement] So and I'm ready to pull it out of the, out of the slot the second I need to.
DRE: Alright, who's up next?
KEITH: Uhhh...
AUSTIN: I saw someone drawin' lines.
KEITH: Who needs to go this round? I think me and Jack both were.
SYLVI [cross]: Yeah.
DRE: And Sylvi.
AUSTIN: And Sylvi, I think all y'all.
KEITH: We're all drawing lines here.
SYLVI: My stuff's all pretty quick, so I can go if you want.
JACK: Yeah, go, go ahead.
KEITH: I can't believe this fucker's not dead.
SYLVI: Oh wait, how many of them are there?
KEITH: There's two right next to you.
AUSTIN: Two next to you, there's four total.
DRE [cross]: Literally just four.
KEITH [cross]: The Gumdrop down below, and the Granddad Gumdrop.
AUSTIN: We almost got this.
SYLVI: I'm gonna use my divine punishment again, 'cause I recharged that.
AUSTIN: Oh hell yes. [KEITH laughs]
SYLVI: So they all need to do, um.
KEITH: Wow, you got a divine too?
AUSTIN: The divine Punishment, yeah. [KEITH laughs]
DRE: Yeah. The Divine Punisher, now streaming on Netflix. [AUSTIN laughs]
SYLVI: God, okay.
AUSTIN: Did you reload it when you put your hat back on? [KEITH and DRE laugh]
SYLVI: I, you know what, fictionally that is what happened now.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I love it.
SYLVI: I reloaded it when we were doing our downtime stuff, but.
AUSTIN: Gotcha, gotcha.
SYLVI: So they all need to roll an agility save, or take 1d6+4, um, or succeed an agility save, or take 1d6+4 explosive damage. On a success they take half damage, so.
AUSTIN: Hell yeah.
SYLVI: I can roll the damage now, if you want, or we can wait.
DRE: Okay, so here's the thing, even if they— so on a success they still take damage?
SYLVI: They take half, yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, let's, let's roll that damage, what do we got?
DRE: Well.
AUSTIN: Or does it not even matter?
DRE: So first, it's going to destroy all of these grunts that are out here, so both of the Wing units and the Gumball just get lit up by these missiles.
KEITH: Wow.
DRE: Um, and I'm gonna bet, that I, that Grampa Gumdrop does not pass an agility save. Oh my god!
AUSTIN: Oh no, no, no, dah dah dah dah dah. Is, is prone.
DRE: Oh my god, you're right.
AUSTIN: Right, so is a minus 6 on this, er, minus d6.
DRE: Okay, okay, so...
JACK: Come on.
[dice rolling]
AUSTIN: Yes!
JACK: Yes!
[SYLVI laughs triumphantly]
AUSTIN: That's a six, baby!
JACK: That's a six.
AUSTIN: So roll that damage.
SYLVI: Okay. [dice rolling] That's ten.
AUSTIN: Oh my god, max damage!
DRE [cross]: God.
KEITH: Nice.
DRE: So I think what happens here is, as you release your barrage of missiles, and the mountain is shaking underneath you, more of this rainbow light just comes pouring out, and just encompasses the whole field, like lighting everything up as your missiles go flying, and then in, behind you all, the top of the mountain lifts off up into the sky.
JACK: Woah!
DRE: And then you see, I'm gonna have a reference picture for this that I will drop in.
AUSTIN: Oh, I'm excited.
DRE: I'm gonna pull it up here. For folks that wanna google, the picture I'm pulling up to reference is, I forget which Phantasy Star Online it is from, I think 2, but it is called the Oracle Mothership.
DRE: Let me drop this in our Discord chat really quick.
AUSTIN: Oh, holy shit. This is cool.
DRE: Oh, maybe, if it'll let me. Oh right, I can't, hmm, can I copy-paste from Google Doc? I cannot.
AUSTIN: No, you can't. You could do, Windows Shift-S to take a screenshot of it, and then drop that in.
DRE: Googling it just did it for me.
AUSTIN: Yeah, there you go?
KEITH [yawning]: Oh you can't copy and paste from a Google Doc?
AUSTIN: No you can't, not an image, you can't copy an image out of a Google Doc, because it's ridiculous.
KEITH [cross]: Oh, got it, yes, yeah.
AUSTIN: There we go. Oh, I love this thing.
JACK: Woooah, that's amazing.
DRE: So yeah, emerging from the mountain behind you all is, so on the top of it is like a, it's like the tip of a spear, or the tip of a partisan, perhaps you would say, that is connected to that dome, which is the smaller area that you all first entered. And then tethered below that is a giant orb, and that orb is actually surrounded by parts of the mountain that have like, folded back. So pieces of the mountain are like folding back as the ship begins to take flight into the night sky.
AUSTIN: It's almost—
KEITH [cross]: It's very—
DRE: Just rainbow light pouring from everywhere.
KEITH: This image is, is, is representatively lit up like our battlefield here, pretty good.
AUSTIN: It's true.
KEITH: Pretty good.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN [singing]: Boo boop boop boop boop boop boop boop boo.
DRE: And I think with that, like, I think you all are just instantly like whisked back into the side of the ship.
AUSTIN: Yeah, we have to, like that is a hangar, effectively.
DRE: Yeah, no, and—
AUSTIN: This is not, yeah.
DRE: You are just, you are just swept up in the Strand.
KEITH: Oh that's it, that's, that was it.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: We killed everything, we did it.
DRE: Yeah.
KEITH: We killed, well, I thought, you know, there could have been another drop.
AUSTIN: There could have been, that's true. But we left before there was a drop that could happen. Where are we, what's—
KEITH: Yeah, we finished—
AUSTIN: You said we got swept into the Strand.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: We have become immaterial, is what you're suggesting.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: What's it feel like?
DRE: I mean, you're, you're not, you're like traveling along side the, the ship, the Brightsky.
AUSTIN: Right, right right right, but I'm—
DRE: So it's not like you're like, lost or anything.
AUSTIN: No no no, I just mean, what is the phenomenal experience of joining with light and color as it ribbons through the ni— the, the black. And where are we going?
DRE: That's a good question.
AUSTIN: Mm. Play to find out what happens, I guess.
DRE: Play to find out what happens, yeah. I don't know, what does going home feel like, for the first time in two thousand years?
AUSTIN: Like, home is in a way, you're saying home as in, being among the Strand in this way.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Because like, unless you're saying, is they're a place we're going?
DRE: I don't mean that, I just mean like, the feeling of going home.
AUSTIN: Yeah. I don't know. I think it's weird for me, because I think—
KEITH: I think it feels like spaghettification.
AUSTIN: S-sure. It's, I guess my question is like, I think maybe the thing that's interesting about it is, we, this is a type of thing we did for so long, that like we had, not just like technologies around, but like, this was like, in our blood, in a way that's like, we just haven't used that part, it's like, we had a, um, what do you, what do you call it, oh my god, I'm tired, what is, what do you call it, a vest— you have a vestigial organ, in a sense, that isn't vestigial, that isn't vestigial, right, like, we just haven't the technology and techniques to use them, to use our, I think it's not like we're latent strati or something but like, this is something that we were, that we all did all the time two thousand years ago, and we just haven't, and so it's like an, a, a sense opening up to us, a new, old sense. I think it's fucking weird.
DRE: Yeah.
KEITH: Like when you realize you can wiggle your nose.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: But it travels you through space-time.
AUSTIN: But it travels you through space and time. Yeah. I'm coming over here, near, near Under The Radar. [DRE laughs] I feel like we need to be close [JACK laughs] in this moment.
JACK: Yeah, I mean, I think that there is, uh... I don't think that it's like... Martilla feels like a great spectacular lightness. But I don't think— oh my god! [KEITH laughs] Holy lord! Woah, my god, Keith made his mech like a fuckin' Shadow of the Colossus colossus.
KEITH: Uh-huh.
AUSTIN: Yeah, this is very big. Now.
KEITH: I messed it up, I messed up, I don't know how to grab it. [SYLVI laughs]
AUSTIN: How could you not?
SYLVI: Coming out of health is an, is an imprecise science.
JACK [cross]: Keith has now made the mech so big—
JACK: So big that I think he has lost the controls to make it small.
AUSTIN: You can probably Control-Z that baby, right?
DRE: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can.
KEITH [cross, growling]: I am the Mayor!
AUSTIN: What were you saying about being unbearably light or something, Jack?
JACK: I think it's just like, I want to be clear, that it's not like that there's some sort of transformative, the lightness that she feels that is a surprise is because she has never felt, inside Under The Radar, a sensation of lightness before. It's not as though Under The Radar becomes light, or that this heavy artillery unit becomes easy, or that a lightness kind of sets upon her, it's more that like, she was feeling a resistance in piloting this mech, all this, all this fucking long day, and it's suddenly like when you're pushing against something and the resistance is gone, and feels like there is a weird, loose sort of giddy absence there all of a sudden.
AUSTIN: I love it.
DRE: So as far as like physically where you all go, I don't know. I know one of the outcomes of this, I mean, you know, you all saved this town.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
DRE: Because of the overwhelming success of the Tress, Deanthe is named the first Loess in nearly two thousand years.
AUSTIN: Hell yeah.
KEITH: Which one is Deanthe?
DRE: The one who, who was, who relearned how to do the Chorus Bond.
JACK [cross]: Uh, who piloted the Witch.
KEITH: Okay. One of the, one of three that were kidnapped.
AUSTIN: No, no.
DRE: No, they were the one that, that met you there, and helped recover the three that were kidnapped.
KEITH: Right, yes, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.
DRE: So they themselves are not a strati, they are just now the person who is tasked with doing the ritual to help people become strati.
KEITH: Gotcha.
DRE: To help Hypha, specifically, become strati.
AUSTIN: I kinda think it's appropriate that we don't have a firm answer on where we go, because part of what's being regained here is a life of movement, right?
DRE: Mm-hmm.
AUSTIN: Like there, like, the ancient Hypha lived moving from place to place, being kind of wardens of the ground that they did land on, you know, having a set of rules that I guess we will have to redevelop, or, or develop new, an echo of that role, of those rules, something that feels appropriate for who we are now, but ideally I think, start to redevelop that relationship with place and space that we used to have, of, of like, hey, we're here now, and we're gonna like, help people here, and we're gonna like, get what we need to get here, then we're gonna move on, because that's who we are.
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: And so I think it's kind of appropriate not to say, like, "and then we all go to place A," where like, that place is the paradise, or something, or is the place we moved.
DRE: Mm-hmm.
JACK: Especially, especially because for this particular group of people, the idea of finding a sort of paradise place is already been a sort of poison chalice.
AUSTIN [laughing]: Yeah, right, exactly.
DRE: Yeah.
JACK: In that like, Harborview was offered to them as this in the first place. So it would kind of feel a bit cheap to be like, "and then they show up at Harborview 2, the really safe place!"
AUSTIN [laughing]: Right, exactly. Exactly that.
AUSTIN: Cool, well thank you, Dre.
DRE: Yeah. Yeah, thank you all for playing.
AUSTIN [cross]: For running this for us.
JACK: Thank you so much for guiding us through it.
AUSTIN: I guess, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask, I guess I am gonna stay on like this character shit for a second. I just want to, like, if we can extrapolate out that for the near future at least, this group of Hypha, or this group of Ashen slash Hypha as we come to reacquaint ourselves with that potential identity and like nation-state, that version of who we are, not even nation-state, but this notion of being a sovereign group, I'm curious for each of us and our characters, like, how to we adjust to this new type of life? Do we stay with this new emerging kind of flotilla of, of nomads, of, of Hypha, or do we find ourselves back out in the world? Like, what is your relationship to, going from "I used to live in this town" to "I live in this fleet that moves from place to place?"
SYLVI: I think Zark would want to get dropped off somewhere, like straight up. I, he is, I've kinda had it in my head that he's a bit hermitty, you know, and I think that it's like "oh, wait, we're part of a whole thing now? with like, rules and responsibil— okay, I'm gonna, you guys let me know when you've got another mech pilot to take my place, and then I'm gone."
[long pause]
JACK: Martilla is deeply skeptical, and spends the first portion of time looking over her shoulder for both a maneuver by Millennium Break and a maneuver by, by the Pact, picking up from this Pact lieutenant who's like stolen one of these heavy artillery ships. And, I don't know whether Millennium Break, god, does she equivocate for long enough that Millennium Break does— I, I tell you actually what it is, is that Millennium Break, and whether she notices this or not, or the Hypha, have somebody keeping, keeping tabs on her.
AUSTIN: Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JACK: Her communications are read, there is somebody standing, somebody is in the living area opposite hers who has been tasked specifically to keep an eye on her. And, over a, after a while, this sort of weird guilty malaise begins to wear off, and with the same sort of grudging in for a penny, in for a pound that's slowly mutating into an actual, committed involvement, she continues to, to spend time with the Hypha.
AUSTIN: Mayor?
KEITH: Uh, I don't know, I'm trying to feel like I bet I don't become mayor of this place.
DRE: I don't know.
AUSTIN: Why not?
DRE: You were one of the four people who helped, like, save everyone.
KEITH: Yeah, and I get a lot of mileage out of like,
KEITH [as TEASEL]: Imagine how much harder that fight would have been if I didn't take out those three guys at the very beginning.
AUSTIN: Yeah, that would be fucking rough.
JACK: I could do this kind of thing to irrigation policy! [ALL laugh]
KEITH [as TEASEL]: There's nothing to irrigate, we're on a ship, job done!
AUSTIN: Yeah I wonder, yeah, I actually wonder like, is it a thing where we start with one ship, we get more ships, and you're Mayor of a ship, you know?
KEITH: I'm, I'll say this, I don't think I'm going to run for Mayor. If someone, if I get the same sort of deal where someone calls me the Mayor, I become the de facto Mayor.
AUSTIN: Right. Are you de facto Night Mayor of the [laughing] Hyphan fleet? [JACK laughs]
KEITH: It does seem sort of in line.
AUSTIN: You were already an entertainer, you know
KEITH: I was already an entertainer.
JACK: I don't know. That being said, the idea of a nightclub and night life being run by the man and woman who do donkey rides [AUSTIN and KEITH laugh] on the beach is like, one of the most cursed nightclub ideas I've ever heard.
KEITH: We already know that the ship's got the lights for it. [JACK laughs]
AUSTIN [laughing]: That's true.
AUSTIN: I think normally I would play Ketch as being like, a little bit like Zark, of like,
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: Ah, none of this is for me, let me out, I’m gonna get back to doing crime.
AUSTIN: But I think, I think this experience—
KEITH: You already did all your crime.
AUSTIN: I did all my crime, exactly.
KEITH: You're full up.
AUSTIN: Yeah, and so I think I stay on, and help train people at being mech pilots, to do fishing and other like, you know, and also probably to beat people up when it's time to beat people up, and, and—
JACK: Keep an eye on Martilla.
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I think I live across from [laughing] from you. I think I am the,
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: Oh, how you doing today, Pact?
AUSTIN: you know.
JACK: The like, the warden.
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, but no, but, you know, we pretend like it's not. Or maybe you don't, but I pretend like it's completely innocent, but maybe to such a degree that it's so obviously not.
JACK: It's so obviously, yeah.
AUSTIN [as KETCH]: I don't know what you mean, I'm just coming out here to get my paper in the morning.
AUSTIN: You know?
JACK [as KETCH]: You uh, spoken to any of the Pact leadership? [JACK laughs]
AUSTIN: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
JACK: Just, you know, jokingly, like
AUSTIN [cross]: Just jokingly.
JACK [as KETCH, jokingly]: Ah, yeah, I'll kill you if you call out to—
AUSTIN [laughing]: Yeah, exactly.
[Permanent Peace plays until end of episode]