SPRING IN HIERON 08: SYMPATHETIC OBJECTS
Transcriber: Cole
Austin: So, Fero, Hella, and Lem, your bags are packed. You have enough supplies for the journey north. You’ve said your goodbyes to those who are important to you. And you have arrived at the exit gate to the northwest of the university, just beyond the preservation shed. Kind of in the little, emerging exterior community that’s around the Outhouse. And you have in front of you a choice. Either you can head north, up through the ruins of the New Archives in the mountains that, Fero, you once called home. Or you can embark on the river inside of Hella’s boat and go upstream.
And let me make it very clear to you, it will be harder to go upstream to the Isles of Flight on a boat, but the return trip will be easy. You will not need to make a roll to return from the Isles of Flight if you take the boat up with you. Whereas, if you go over land and through the mountains and through everything that’s there, I can’t… I can’t be held accountable for what happens when you come back, and so I need to know [laughs] whether or not you’re going to get in this boat or not.
Keith (as Fero): Not!
Jack (as Lem): Here we are again.
Ali (as Hella): Fero, it’s my boat.
Keith (as Fero): Not!
Jack (as Lem): It’s safer this time.
Keith (as Fero): You asked me whether we.. I want to do it or not, and I’m saying no. I don’t want to do it.
Jack (as Lem): What’s... [sighs] Why don’t you want to go in the boat? Like, beforehand we were putting our trust in some guy who we’d never met.
Ali (as Hella): I knew him. And I trusted him very well. Anyway…[laughs]
Keith (as Fero): I mean, I knew… we knew...we knew him from the… We knew him from around, and then we knew him from that last mission that we went on. We… we went out to find that guy specifically. And if anyone… if anyone fucked that up, it wasn’t him.
Ali (as Hella): It was a long time ago. And I’ve gotten better at boats. And this is my boat, it’s like, super comfortable.
Keith (as Fero): It’s up… It’s upstream.
[Jack de Quidt’s “Something” begin playing in background]
Ali (as Hella): Yeah, but when we come back…
Keith (as Fero): Do boats even go upstream?
Ali (as Hella): Listen, in the sword, there were like, these 2 islands, and like, one of them had like, this little like… did… what it was called, the like, in between the land parts…?
Keith (as Fero): Yeah, it sounds like you learned a lot more about ships. [Ali, Jack, and Austin laugh}
Austin: Alright.
[Music plays out to end]
Austin: [laughing] Welcome to Friends at the Table, an actual play podcast, focused on critical world-building, smart characterization, and fun interaction between good friends. I am your host, Austin Walker. And joining me today, Alicia Acampora.
Ali: Um, hi. My name is Alicia Acampora. You can find me @ali_west on Twitter, and you can find the show over @friends_table.
Austin: Keith Carberry.
Keith: 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.
Austin: And Jack de Quidt.
Jack: Hi, you can find me on Twitter @notquitereal, and you can buy any of the music featured on the show at notquitereal.bandcamp.com.
Austin: As always, you can find me @austin_walker and the show @friends_table on Twitter. And you can support the show and everything we do at friendsatthetable.cash. We are catching up on a bunch of Patreon stuff right now. We have had a lot of fun doing drawing maps episodes where you kind of get a peek at my prep from sessions. I prepped this entire session actually on a recent live stream. You can see us do an entire other campaign set in sort of a… strange, modern day, Americana setting called Bluff City. That is… we currently doing a Masks campaign, so if you want to hear Keith, Jack, Janine, and Art play a superhero teen game, you can go do that right along with a whole other year of Bluff City content. And a bunch of other stuff there, so go check that stuff out. Um, back to this moment, I do need a decision for the group. Actually, let’s go over some stuff real quick. I want to set the table a little bit. Let’s go over bonds and over alignment. And those will both be really good. Let’s start with… Fero.
Keith: So, I have a bond with Ephrim. I have a bond... yeah Ephrim, Throndir, Lem, and Hella.
Austin: Ok.
Keith: Uh, Ephrim. “Lord” is… in…. this is in condescending quotations. ‘“Lord” Ephrim thinks helping means being in charge’. [Jack laughs]
Austin: Great.
Keith: Throndir. ‘Throndir is a fool who will get us in trouble’.
Ali: Wow.
Keith: Uh, ‘Lem King is as clueless now as he was when I last saw him.’ [Jack laughs] And Hella, ‘I would like to rebuild my relationship with Hella’.
Ali: Awww..
Austin: Oh ok. that one’s… that one’s the good one. Ok. That’s the one that’s positive. [Jack laughs] Uh, what’s your alignment?
Keith: I’m still chaotic. And my… my little text there is ‘favor your instincts over fear of consequence’.
Austin: Cool. Um, Lem. Can I get yours?
Jack: Yeah, uh, I have a bond with Hella and Ephrim. And I hope that over the course of this journey, I will develop a bond with Fero.
Austin: Sounds good.
Jack: My bond with Hella is ‘Aubade changed Hella. I will look to her to find the ways that it changed me’. And my bond with Ephrim is ‘I draw strength from the fact that Ephrim has built something here’. Uh, I’m debating whether or not to just take ‘here’ off the end of that sentence.
Austin: Hm, yeah.
Jack: ‘I draw strength from the fact that Ephrim has built something’, feels like a stronger bond-
Austin: Yeah, it’s a stronger bond.
Jack: -than specifically built something here. My alignment is neutral. And it says, ‘avoid conflict or diffuse a tense situation’.
Austin: Great. And Hella.
Ali: So my bonds are Adaire. ‘I feel bad that Adaire feels ineffective when she’s the most talented person I know. Now that we’re home, I want her to feel supported and included’. Lem is, ‘I’ve seen Lem lost, but I know his instincts to learn are good. I hope to learn something about the Isles with him’. Fero is, ‘Fero was difficult when I traveled with him, and he still is, but I’m different now. This journey could be different’. And then I have one on ice cause it… it’s written really well, and might be better for Ephrim, but I haven’t had a scene with Ephrim yet. So...
Austin: Ok. Save that one.
Ali: Yeah.
Austin: Ok, cool. So, now that we have all that stuff out of the way. Wait, did we do alignment for you? I forgot. Did I just blank on it?
Ali: Oh, I am, yeah. My alignment is neutral. And it is, ‘increase your reputation while working to fulfill death’s task to you’.
Austin: There we go. Ok. So, now I can say [laughs] I need an answer about this boat situation.
Keith (as Fero): Alright. Where… so, Hella, you’re obviously for the boat.
Ali (as Hella): Well, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. I just think it’s a good idea.
Keith (as Fero): Give me one like, what’s one plus side? Of just like… ok, no. We’re gonna go… I don’t [sighs] I’ll be stuck in a little… in a boat the whole time, you know? Get out there and you know, walk. And do a walk. That’s that good stuff, right? That’s why we go on an adv… a journey, is to go to like, walk. Walk, right?
Austin: I have a question. Is this like, genuine, Fero?
Keith: Yeah. Yeah.
Austin: Because like, you don’t need to eat or drink or sleep. And so, like, ‘Ah, I’m going on a walk.’
Keith: Right.
Austin: And like, you can fly normally. You would normally just like fly wherever. And so you for you, it is a nice hike.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Whereas for everybody else, it’s like, ‘I have to fucking carry all this shit..’
Keith: [overlapping] I have.. I think that a lot of…
Austin: [overlapping] ...and I’m gonna starve.’
Keith: I think a lot of Fero’s participation in everything that’s happened since he left the mountains was like, ‘yeah, let’s go walk. Let’s go on the journey to there.’
Austin: Right. Whereas everyone else is like, ‘we need to get there cause there is the thing I need. And so, to do that, I have to get there somehow.’ Um, I should note really quick, Fero, people have definitely started using the Outhouse. Like, there’s a family staying there right now. Do you have someone in charge of it while you leave?
Keith: No. There’s a ledger.
Austin: Ok. Ok.
Keith: There’s just like a…
Austin: Honor system.
Keith: Yeah, it’s-
Austin: Ok.
Keith: You know, when you come in, you write that you’re there. Then you write when you leave, and then that’s how many, you know, meals that you owe.
Austin: Uh huh.
Keith: And that you can, you know, eventually you just give… you just donate the food so that the people that are there when you’re gone can eat.
Austin: Right. Cool. Any other like, things before people-
Jack: Um…
Austin: -before you leave that you want to like, mention or do? Before you leave the university and its resources.
Jack: I think I’ve gone to see Emmanuel.
Austin: Ok.
Jack: Um, to be like,
Austin (as Emmanuel): I’m leaving? That quick?
Jack (as Lem): Yeah, but I’m gonna… I’m coming back this time. I’m… I’ve got… I don’t know about Fero, but I’ve got Hella. And I know I had Hella before. I know I had Hella before, and that time I was…
Austin (as Emmanuel): Both times.
Jack (as Lem): I just wanted to see you before I went.
Austin (as Emmanuel): You had Hella both times. You had Fero one of those times. When I met you, it was those two and you. How are you going to say, you have… you have Hella? You have Fero?
Jack (as Lem): What if I?
Austin (as Emmanuel): Go, go, go.
Jack (as Lem): No, but you say that, but you’re… What can I do to go and… and… and go in good grace?
Austin (as Emmanuel): You have my good grace. I...
Jack (as Lem): I don’t know that I do have your good grace, Emmanuel.
Austin (as Emmanuel): I don’t want you to be hurt. I don’t want you to be swallowed alive- swallowed alive by some riverbeast or mountain ogre or [sighs]... There are things in this world that are greater than your good luck, Lem King. One of them will get you.
Jack (as Lem): Ok. Can I give you something?
Austin (as Emmanuel): What is it?
Jack: Um, I’m gonna give him a communications box.
Austin: Hm.
Jack: Which we’ve talked about in the past as being like a… It looks a lot like a fidget cube. And it matches… it looks a lot like a fidget spinner. [laughs] It doesn’t look like a fidget spinner.
Austin: Jack, jump back twenty… twenty minutes ago [Ali laughs] They said, ‘well, I can’t… we don’t have time to do a bit where I describe this fidget cube I’m holding in my hand.’ [Ali, Jack, and Keith laugh] Jump forward twenty minutes, frames a scene in which…
Jack: But I’m gonna do it on the podcast.
Austin: [laughs] Yeah.
Jack: No, I’m not even gonna describe it. I’m just gonna say that it works a bit like the way… it’s two sympathetic objects, right?
Austin: Mm, uh hm.
Jack: [laughs] Two Sympathetic Objects is the subtitle.
Austin: It’s my favorite [laughs] Yeah, uh huh.
Jack: It’s a great Belle and Sebastian album.
Austin: Uh huh. Yeah. [laughs]
Jack: It’s objects that move in harmony- or are supposed to move in harmony. And I’m gonna give it...
Austin: [interjecting] Which is that you press a button on one of them, and the other one depresses.
Jack: Yeah. And they come with like, a little pamphlet that… that you can read what the combination of buttons means.
Austin: Yeah. I think it’s a situation where there are certain… You can… you can do it as letters, right? You can be like, ‘ok, if this toggle is switched then this is the letter a, or whatever.’ But the way it’s primarily used between archivists is in a kind of um, shorthand.
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: Where it’s like…
Jack: Totally.
Austin: ...it’s certain button presses and toggle switches end up saying things like, ‘Just checking in. Everything’s ok.’ And you’re not spelling that out, it’s just like, the symbol for...
Jack: [interrupting] Click, click, click, click.
Austin: Yeah. It’s a few clicks-
Keith: [overlapping] Have you…
Austin: -and it’s like the symbol for like, ‘presence’ and ‘safety’. And like, ‘I would like a response’, you know?
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: Or whatever it is.
Keith: Do you… aw, god. I can’t remember what they’re called, but think of some of those mechanical calculators that are like, little cylinders.
Jack: Oh yeah.
Austin: Oh yeah, those are cool.
Jack: I think we talked about these when we…
Keith: [overlapping] The Curta. The Curta calculators.
Jack: When we talked about the communications boxes the first time.
Keith: [overlapping] Yeah, and it’s like a cylinder of switches, and then you like, you input a certain thing and then you turn the thing up top, and instead of a math problem comes out, it’s like, ‘Is everything ok? Everybody… everything’s cool?’
Austin: Everything’s good.
Jack: Um... [overlapped] and I’m...
Austin: So, you just give… this is what you give.
Jack: Yeah. And I say,
Jack (as Lem): I want something from you. Cause I’m going up there.
Jack: And I point up to the- one of the moons that we can see. And I say,
Jack (as Lem): [overlapped] I wanna put something up there.
Austin (as Emmanuel): [overlapping] You’re go… [sighs]
Jack (as Lem): Oh, ok.
Austin (as Emmanuel): You’re going to the moon, and you gave me… a little box, and you said, ‘This will let me know that you are safe.’
Jack (as Lem): Well, you’ll be able to go out in the night, and look up. And think of me up there. And then you’ll be able to say something like…
Austin (as Emmanuel): I’m not giving you anything, Lem King. Until you bring me you back, and you stay here. No. [pause] No.
Austin: And he quietly pockets the cube and walks inside.
Keith: These two, huh?
Ali: And he took the cube? [laughing]
Austin: Yeah, and he took the cube. What?
Ali: Damn. I just...
Jack (as Lem): I’d like to go on a boat. [Ali and Austin laugh]
Austin: And we fade back into… the present.
Jack (as Lem): I’d feel safer.
Keith (as Fero): Why the boat? Why does it feel safer?
Jack (as Lem): It feels… because… because...
Keith (as Fero): How could it feel safer?
Jack (as Lem): Cause there’s mountains and then there’s… [sighs] And then, and then there’s the Archives above the mountains, and I don’t know what’s there anymore. And a… we’re going to islands, Fero. A river is just like… it’s… it’s like, getting ready to be some islands. We can just… we just go down there and then we arrive.
Keith (as Fero): Yeah, whatever.
Jack (as Lem): Or we go through the home I destroyed.
Austin: I will say… I will say here’s another thing. You’re going to some islands, and they are islands. You don’t know of any bridges. Like I hadn’t even- I hadn’t even said that part, but yes, you would have needed… you will need to figure out how to get to the islands regardless of how you get there, you know?
Jack: Hmm.
Keith (as Fero): Ok, let’s.. Look. I’ve… I’m here to get away from having to explain myself and argue all the time anyway, so I guess we could just do the boat. I’ll forget about it. It’s fine. Do the boat.
Ali (as Hella): Ok. It’s… There’s like, there’s like an area if you want like a private space that’s like, a storage thing. I can set it up for you.
Austin: That’s what Fero really wants is a small space to be inside of. [Ali laughs]
Keith (as Fero): Yeah, I’m really looking to be top deck for this one.
Ali (as Hella): Ok. Well, we can arrange that as well.
Keith (as Fero): How big the top deck?
Ali (as Hella): [breathes and laughs]There’s kind of like a sail. And there’s a thing you could climb up, but you could probably fit there is you just wanted to like sit. It was… It’s probably really nice.
Jack (as Lem): Hella, I don’t think....
Ali (as Hella): You’d get like, a nice breeze.
Keith (as Fero): I would have better off getting locked in a closet and just staying home.
Ali (as Hella): I have a telescope if you want to borrow it.
Keith (as Fero): Yeah.
Keith: I take the telescope. [Austin and Ali laugh] And I pocket it and I walk inside.
Austin: [everyone laughs] Then watches it? Perfect. Good. Um, any other people who want to take care of business before you leave. It can be before this conversation that we just had, obviously.
Ali: Um…
Keith: I have nothing keeping me here.
Austin: Aright.
Ali: Yeah, no. I mean like, Hella’s been like, busy.
Austin: Ok.
Ali: I think it’s a continuation of like, the first scene where she’s like, trying to sign up for extra shifts to do other stuff.
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: And like, trying to help out with the other stuff. But yeah.
Austin: Cool. Um, ok. So, here is how these go. Do you remember how Perilous Journeys work? There is a move.
Ali: I do.
Jack: Ohhh.
Austin: Undertake a Perilous Journey.
Ali: And the telescope gives you +1, Fero, by the way.
Austin: There you go.
Ali: Anyway, sorry. Go on.
Austin: ‘When you travel through hostile territory, choose one member of the party to act as trailblazer, one to scout ahead, and one to be quartermaster. The same character cannot have 2 jobs. If you don’t have enough party members or choose not to assign jobs, treat that job as if it had rolled a six. Each character’…
Keith: What are…?
Austin: Uh, yeah, I’ll go over them. ‘Each character with a job to roll... er a job to do rolls + wisdom. On a 10+, the quartermaster reduces the number of rations required by one.’ I’m abstracting all of this. There will be bonuses and stuff or there will be consequences to how you roll, but I’m not counting how many rations you have for this journey. ‘On a ten plus, on a trail… so ten plus quartermaster, you are not… you’re able to like, spread your food out better’, which in this case means you’ll be… you will have been well-fed. Do you know what I mean?
You’re gonna get there. You’re gonna be energetic. You’re gonna have a lot of food in your tummy. Which also maybe for you, Fero, whatever the benefit is, you’ll still get that benefit. We’ll just figure out why that is. ‘On a ten plus, the trailblazer reduces the amount of time it takes to reach your destination. The GM will say by how much. On a ten plus, the scout will spot any trouble quick enough to let you get the drop on it. On seven to nine, each roll performs their job as expected. The normal number of rations is consumed. The journey takes about as long as expected. No one gets the drop on you, but you don’t get the drop on them either.’ So, who is what?
Keith: Whatever we think is the most important thing, I should do. Cause I think I… I think there’s only one possible roll that I could fail with the plus one on the…
Austin: From the…
Keith: ...from the telescope.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: Gives me a plus four.
Austin: What’s the plus... what’s the plus from the telescope do specifically? It’s like a specific roll. It’s not just… Oh, it is!
Keith: Oh, is it…?
Austin: It’s just plus one. No, you’re right. It’s just plus one Perilous Journey. That’s great.
Keith: Ok. Um, yeah, so that means that I… I’m doing two… 2d6 plus four.
Austin: Yeah. Which is a good roll.
Keith: Which is wild. Yeah. It’s a good roll.
Jack: Oh wow.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: I will say that the trailblazer has to be whoever is piloting the ship. Which is probably Hella.
Ali: Ok.
Austin: Like, trailblazer is the person who is like, when you’re going over land is like, making the path. And so, that is whoever is piloting the boat, for sure.
Ali: Ok.
Jack: So, do we think that it’s like, trailblazer Hella, Scout Fero, quartermaster Lem? Cause Fero has the telescope, as well.
Keith: That sounds good to me. And I’m the scout-iest guy here.
Austin: Yeah. Yeah, that makes the most sense.
Ali: Yeah.
Jack: I love the image of like, the boat pulling up to the shore, and Fero like, hopping out and running along the boat for a bit. Tobe like, ‘What’s around the bend? What’s around the riverbend?’
Austin: Uh huh. [Ali laughs] Alright.
Keith: Oh, I get to leave the boat? Yeah, I will take that job.
Austin: Then you’ll definitely do that. [Ali laughs] Alright, give me um… give me some wisdom rolls, friends. What are you… What are all your wisdoms?
Keith: My wisdom is eighteen, which is a plus three.
Austin: Ok. You crush it. Eleven, ok.
Keith: I got a twelve. Yeah.
Austin: Er, yeah plus one.
Jack: Um, my wisdom- [Austin, Ali, and Jack] Sorry, go ahead, Ali.
Ali: I’ve gotten a three.
Austin: Uh huh.
Ali: And it’s fine.
Jack: Uh, and my wisdom is one.
Austin: Uh huh.
Jack: Or it’s a fifteen which is a plus one. And I’ve gotten a seven.
Austin: That’s like as expected, right? Alright. [Jack laughs, followed by Austin] You know, seven.
Ali: My wisdom is an eleven. And it’s plus zero. So.
Austin: Ok. Which is why you rolled… You rolled a two and a one, and you got a three.
Ali: Uh huh.
Austin: So, you’re going up this journey. Let me get a little boat on this… on this thing. What type of boat is? It’s like a sailboat?
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: It’s a skiff?
Austin: It’s bigger than a skiff, isn’t it? Maybe it’s not. How big’s a skiff?
Ali: I don’t… we…
Keith: Uh, skiff’s are small.
Austin: It’s bigger than a skiff.
Keith: But I was told… so this is a bo… I guess, is it a… it’s smaller than a catam… a catamaran, right?
Ali: [overlapped] I have not done the proper boat research needed to play this character.
Keith: [overlapping] Is it… is it a sloop?
Austin: It might be a sloop.
Keith: Sloop.
Ali: It might be a sloop.
Keith: I bet it’s a sloop.
Ali: It’s like a sailboat that can hold like, seven people?
Jack: That’s a sloop. I think we might be talking…
Ali: With like a little storage area, yeah.
Austin: Seems like we’re talking about a little sloop.
Jack: I think we might have got a sloop here, folks.
Keith: And sloops have a… sloops have a pretty, you know, sloops can be different sizes.
Austin: It’s true.
Jack: And if a skeleton fires a cannonball at one, it sinks real fast, and I’ve learned this from popular game, Sea of Thieves.
Austin: [laughs] Tryin’ to drag this dang sloop onto the screen, and it’s just not working, friends. Unless like six sloops show up at once. In which case, that’d be funny. [overlapped] That’s the wrong...
Keith: You all ever hear that Beach Boy song ‘Sloop John B’? That’s a good song.
Austin: That’s a good song. We’ve talked about that song.
Keith: It’s got my favorite… my favorite line in anything ever, where the guy’s upset that someone ate all of his corn.
Austin: Don’t eat that guy’s corn, please.
Keith: That’s for real, part of a hit song is, this guy ate all my corn, I want to go home. It’s so good.
Austin: I didn’t know Fero was in [laughs] was in… [Jack, Ali, and Keith laugh] Alright. Fero, well that’s not Fero. Fero wouldn’t be eatin’ the… Fero doesn’t need to eat, so he wouldn’t be upset. Alright.
Ali: But he likes corn.
Austin: That’s true. So…
Keith: I do like to eat, but I get to not eat when we need to eat because it’s… you know, helpful.
Austin: That’s fair. So, you’re going up the river, the way you do, and you… it’s been a couple of days. It’s actually been probably… you’re going slow up this river, so it’s probably been like ten days. Maybe more than that. Cause you get to the mountains around day ten. And the river runs right through the mountains, and I think first and foremost, Fero, you are like, as the scout, you’re like, this river didn’t used to be here. [laughs] Like you would fucking know because you know the animals here. And that’s like...
Keith: Yeah, and I lived here.
Austin: You lived here. That’s what I’m saying. You grew up here… er you didn’t grow up here. But you moved here. You know this place. This is one of your home turfs. You know everything that’s supposed to be here. And it’s not supposed to be like, a river. It’s supposed to be all mountains, and so you’re the person who notices like, ‘that’s new.’ You also sense a great deal of new life here. And it’s turned into like, a hilly, swamp area. Like, there’s a lot of... the river has like, spilled and flooded a number of times, and there’s- on top of there being the river, there’s also just like, kind of a... almost like a bayou feel here.
The ground is mushy and flooded and like, muddy. There are times when the boat almost like- the boat is able to move with the wind, but sometimes you have to row it or pull it. There’s at least one shot of you as like, some sort of ox beast pulling this… this boat over a like, an area where there was not river. Um, but you get through it, and you just in general… there’s also the arrival of the new like, the plants from the Spring, right? There’s this… the new arrival plants that have begun to kill a lot of what was previously like, the local, dry shrubbery and all that stuff. And so like, that’s a big part of what’s happened here is the plants that arrived from Alyosha’s forge are… all that flora is just like, more- adapted super quickly to the new environment here and has taken over. And so, there’s lots of vines. It’s much more like, a swamp jungle than it is a like, hillside forest at this point. So, you’re the first one who notices that. Lem, you are busy cookin’ stuff, and makin’ food, and making sure people are eating, and keep the oars, you know, from cracking and whatever else a quartermaster does, right?
Like making sure that the sails are patched up if they rip. Or making sure they’re packed away tightly when you have to bring them down. And you’re doing all that stuff fine. And I think there’s a point at which you notice… Also, once you’re like, a little bit deeper in, that this river didn’t use to be here. You’re from the New Archives. There wasn’t a river here. How far in is it before Lem realizes what this is? [Jack laughs] Maybe it could be when Hella crashes the boat. [Ali gasps]
Jack: Oh god. Is it when… I think, I think it’s… I think it’s Lem saying,
Jack (as Lem): Oh god. Wait!
Jack: And then just. [Ali and Jack laugh]
Austin: And then crash.
Jack: Just impact.
Austin: Yeah. Um, and the thing that you impact is familiar to you. It’s like this big… It’s this big, stone pillar that you recognize that was part of the orcish stoneworks. That you flooded a decade ago. Or eight years ago, nine years ago now. You made a river by mistake.
Jack: It’s like a key historical… key historical center for the orcs.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: That is now like, ninety-six percent a river?
Austin: No, no, it’s like five hundred- you see the river on the map, Jack!?
Jack: Oh, sure. I’m... [laughs]
Keith: The scale.
Austin: The scale of it is from the top of the Archives to the City of First Light, at the bottom of the map.
Keith: How wide?
Jack: Oh, I made the whole river.
Austin: Yeah. It didn’t turn off.
Jack: Oh my god. [laughs]
Austin: You opened a faucet.
Jack: Oh my god.
Austin: And it’s still going. In fact, you then later would open a second faucet which is how you got into Aubade.
Jack: Into… I’m just…
Austin: Big power from Lem is just, yeah, flooding things.
Jack: So, I think Lem just comes, comes up onto the deck, you know, after the impact, and is just like,
Jack (as Lem): This was me. I’m sorry. This one’s on me. This..
Keith (as Fero): No, Hella crashed the boat. I saw her do it.
Jack (as Lem): No, no. Well…
Keith (as Fero): I said… this is exactly what I was talking about.
Jack (as Lem): No, no. Look. The crash was Hella. Hella, Fero, I’m really sorry. I… [sighs] The… This is… I made this. I made this river.
Keith (as Fero): What?
Jack (as Lem): Um, while you were in the Archives, Fero., I…
Keith (as Fero): Oh, the torture room?
Jack (as Lem): [pause] Right. While you were in… the torture room, I… tried to… I tried to make some- some water be here. This place is called The Stoneworks. I tried to make it, but I tried to make it like- like, not real. Like- like, I don’t know. I wanted like, really frightening fake, you know, water. But it… I… it went too far. And it… I did so much real water that I’ve made a river. And- and I drown the stoneworks. [pause]
Keith (as Fero): Do you guys understand that like, everywhere we go, we destroy? Every place we’ve ever been, we destroy it. Why do we go anywhere?
Ali (as Hella): [sigh] No. That’s not…
Jack (as Lem): No, we didn’t…
Ali (as Hella): … some of that.
Keith (as Fero): Ok, Lem destroyed The Stoneworks. We all destroyed Nacre. I destroyed Rosemerrow.
Ali (as Hella): Well, Nacre..
Keith (as Fero): You guys destroyed Aubade.
Ali (as Hella): No.
Jack (as Lem): Well…
Keith (as Fero): Well, it’s gone.
Ali (as Hella): I didn’t make that choice. That wasn’t me. That place is doing great.
Jack (as Lem): I mean, there’s a real difference between destroyed and yeah.
Ali (as Hella): Yeah, they’re like, safe. They’re like, they’re…
Jack (as Lem): We actually did the opposite of that one.
Jack: Are we taking on water?
Austin: Oh yeah. Yeah. You’re able to then like- We can abstract here. Zoom out a little bit. And you’re able to get the boat into a safe place, and like, begin the process of repairs. Fero, where are you at when you’re scouting? Where do you… where do you first see this thing… that I’m about to describe?
Keith: So, I think…
Austin: It’s a big- let me just describe the are for you really quick.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: You’re basically in like- The Stoneworks were basically a… almost think of it as like, a colosseum in shape, right? Or like, in my mind, the thing that I was going to was actually not Lord of the Rings where the orcs are made, it was the parts of Shadow of the Colossus where there’s just these old giant stonework ruins.
Keith: Uh hm.
Austin: Did you play that, Keith? Have you played Shadow of the Colossus?
Keith: I have. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: Ok, so you know what I’m talking about? Kind of like, lots of like, these old… in general all of… all of that team’s work has this feeling of like...
Keith: Yeah, yeah. I know exactly the look.
Austin: Ok. Three thousand years ago, there were- there was this huge expansive like, culture of- primarily around like, these columns and huge doorways…
Keith: Yeah, it’s very like, fantasy Greco-Roman.
Austin: Yeah. Fantasy Greco-Roman. Exactly. And so…
Keith: Moss, moss-covered columns.
Austin: Yes. And so that’s kind of what I imagine. And it was circular or semicircular in nature. So, imagine that and then the ground level is just now mud and water. And it’s hard to see where it’s mud and where it’s water. And then like, a whole wall [clears throat] a whole… one whole side of this wall has been totally torn apart. And goes, er maybe more than that, right?
I think to the north, it’s been torn apart cause the water continues that way. And to the east, it’s been torn apart and that goes out into the swamp land and jungle. So, it’s kind of like, the whole like, north to east side. It’s just broken open, and you’ve kind of paddled the boat through the giant doorway to the south. So, you’re kind of like, inside of this circular colosseum filled with mud and swamp land and marsh, and it’s hard to see where it’s solid ground. So, that is where they are at. And they are like… they’ve pulled the boat onto some sort of solid ground to kind of start to repair it, so that it doesn’t sink and doesn’t break all the way.
I’m not gonna make you… well, we’ll see. Maybe I will have to make you repair the boat at some point. I’m not gonna say I’m not gonna make you roll it, but if you have time and you’re safe, you can repair it. So, Fero where are you at given that I’ve painted that little picture for you a little bit, if that helps?
Keith: Yeah, so hey, do you know= do you remember how to um… do you remember how to do the circle, the way like, where it shows everybody where I’m clicking?
Austin: Yeah, you hold. You ping. I can… I can… you know what? Here, I’m just gonna do this super quick so that we just have a space, so you can see it. Does that make sense?
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: So, just give me three seconds. Here. More than three second. Probably sixty seconds.
Keith: There is a… there is a specific mountain that for whatever reason, that was where I wanted to be on top of.
Austin: Ok, well, let me… show me that mountain really quick, and I will… I also have to move the boat a little bit. Ok, yeah. That’s right. Um, alright cool. So, yeah, then you’re up like, on this mountain kind of above the stoneworks to the north of it. So, let me just do this, so that there’s just actually a space. Boop. See, there’s this big river that kind of runs through the middle of this colosseum stoneworks place. And then, it’s just like, a fucking mess with like, little… Oop, that’s not where I wanted to go with that. Finish that. There we go. With like, little islands and little like, it’s all mud. It’s all just mud. So, does this make sense to y’all a little bit?
Keith: Uh huh.
Ali: Yeah.
Austin: Everything white is also green, but I just needed to show you where the wall was broken. Do you see what I’m saying?
Keith: This looks nice. Yeah.
Austin: Yeah. You get it, right?
Keith: I get it, yeah. This is a good look.
Austin: [overlapping] Yeah, ok. And none of that’s high.
Keith: [overlapping] It’s a nice green. Looks like a nice mint.
Austin: None of that… the walls are high. Like, there are… the colosseum walls, the stoneworks walls are high, and there’s interior there that you can start climbing around and all of that. But it’s not um, it’s not… Like, none of these little things that are in the waterway are high. They’re just… like, they’re not… they’re barely above the ground, but they’re above the ground enough that the boat can’t go over them easily. You know?
Keith: Uh huh. Yeah.
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: So, yeah. So, you’re just like, looking down from this mountain, and you start to see a lot of weird movement from inside of the mud. I want to say to the like, northwest of this colosseum.
Keith: Ok, yeah. So, I’m gonna go- I’m gonna go check out the mud.
Austin: So, you just like, fly over? What do you… How do you walk down there? What do you do?
Keith: Yeah, I’m… I’m gonna… Can I- can I have tried to study a… or tried to invent an animal over the break?
Austin: Yes. A hundred percent
Keith: Ok.
Austin: During the… or not even during the- both over the break/on the time here. You can make a roll for it.
Keith: Yeah, I have a new sort of thing that I want to do for flying.
Austin: Ok.
Keith: Cause I don’t want to just be birds anymore.
Austin: Ok.
Keith: Um, we doing the intelligence roll or should I roll wisdom?
Austin: Doing the intelligence roll.
Keith: Ok. Let’s see.
Austin: Yep. You have to invent it to do it.
Keith: I have to invent it to do it.
Austin: That is the thing, Origin of the Species. You can just click the button.
Keith: You know what? I came to this awful realization that I’ll never going to be able to get a plus one in intelligence. There’s no way for this game to ever do that.
Austin: Oh, because of how low it is right now?
Keith: Yeah. Yep.
Austin: You could look for some like, magic shit that raises your intelligence maybe.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Alright, you got a nine. So, you got one point. Oh boy, you’re so close to it.
Keith: I was so close, yeah.
Austin: You could get help. Someone could have teamworked this.
Keith: Can I… Can someone help? Can someone like, have been…?
Austin: Tell me… So yeah, give me the scene of this.
Keith: Give me pointers. Like, show me… tell me what’s wrong with this thing that I’m doing. [Ali laughs]
Austin: Tell me the thing that you’re doing. Cause if you get a success here, you can do it. I want this…
Keith: Ok. Ok.
Austin: Like, at what point... does Fero ask for help for this?
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Ok, so…
Keith: I think I ask… I think I’m asking Hella to like,
Keith (as Fero): Look at this thing. I’m gonna turn into a thing, and I need you to like, let me know what it… what looks wrong with it.
Austin: [laughs] Describe the thing.
Ali (as Hella): Ok yeah.
Keith: Ok, so I… you guys know gliders?
Ali: [overlapping] Like a [inaudible]
Austin: [overlapping] Like a sugar glider?
Keith: [overlapping] Like, it’s like the planes with no engines.
Ali: Oh yes.
Keith: No. No, they’re like… they’re planes with… I’m making fixed wing flying animal.
Austin: Oh, interesting.
Ali: Ok.
Keith: And so, basically it uses its like, arms like… It has like, these pistol arms, and it shoots itself super high into the air. And then it has fixed… it like, fixed wing glides. And the cool thing about gliders, like aircraft gliders, they don’t have engines and they can get… they can get like, eighty miles of glide for every one mile of height that they have.
Austin: Oh wow.
Keith: Yeah, they’re wild. They’re super… and they’re small. And they’re like, very bizarre- like sleek looking.
Austin: Uh huh.
Keith: And so, this is like an animal version of that. It’s maybe even a mammal. It’s like a fixed wing mammal that shoots itself, like jumps super, super high and then can glide. And then it can dive and then it keeps that speed, you know what I mean?
Austin: Uh huh.
Keith: So, that’s what I’m… that’s what I’m describing. Yeah. that’s a glider.
Austin: Gotcha. Like big… Like long, thin wings on these gliders. Not- what you- It’s not just a plane. It’s like..
Keith: No, it’s a cockpit and a wing and a tail. [Austin and Ali laugh]
Austin: Yeah. It’s small.
Keith: Some of them look more… So, like here’s… Here’s one that looks a little more… oh, that’s wrong. Um, here’s one that looks a little more plane-like. Like just a little… like a little less…
Austin: Ok. That was…
Keith: Oh, is this…?
Austin: Wait.
Keith: Was that like a weird… is that not-?
Austin: It’s like a groupon for Bay area glider… actually, I see it.
Keith: Oh, I didn’t…
Austin: I see it. I see it. If I click back, I can see it.
Ali: Yeah.
Austin: Oh, those are tiny!
Keith: [overlapping] Here. Here’s a better… Yeah, they’re small. They’re really small.
Austin: Well, I mean, they’re bigger than people.
Keith: Right.
Austin: But they’re not as big as planes.
Keith: No, no, not even close. And then, so you…
Austin: Are you… are you…?
Keith: But you basically, you take this in a plane, and you drop it from the plane. Yeah. Yeah, just like that.
Austin: Oh, it goes up with a plane? I see.
Keith: Yeah. So, a plane is how it gets up, but my thing just shoots itself into the air.
Ali: Right.
Austin: Right.
Keith: Like, one of those- like, rockets where you pump the thing, and then you stomp the petal and it like, puts a burst of air-
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: -into the- into like, the hollow plastic base of the rocket, and shoots it up.
Austin: Ok.
Keith: It’s like that. [overlapping] That’s what I’m build- that’s what I’m making.
Austin: [overlapping] So, what is the thing that’s wrong with it that then Hella needs to fix?
Ali: Um…
Austin: Unless Hella do you have an idea?
Ali: Oh. [laughs]
Keith: I think Hella… I think it’s Hella has to tell me.
Austin: Also, Hella has to roll Aid-assist.
Ali: Ok, how do I do that? Let me pull this up first.
Austin: You roll your number of bonds with Fero, which is one, right?
Keith: Two, right? Or oh, I guess it’s not one each… It’s one each.
Austin: What do you…? No, yeah, it’s whatever the roller has with the rollee.
Ali: Ok. I think that… I think that Hella like, has a lot of um- is trying to help him like, on how much force should be in the initial like, push.
Austin: Hm.
Ali: You know, cause if this is like an animal and it’s like, sort of… Keith, how are you picturing it? Cause I’m kind of picturing it like, kind of like a cat or like, a… like, where there’s like, an arch and then you kind of have to get low and then really jump up. [overlapped] And I think…
Keith: I already did a cat, so I was thinking..
Ali: No, right.
Keith: I was thinking more like a rabbit where it’s like-
Ali: Oh, ok. Yeah.
Keith: -or a kangaroo. Where it’s got arms- it’s got like, arms, and it like, is on its arms, and then it uses its legs to just like, stomp up, almost like a… like I keep thinking of like, a piston. Or like, it has… [Ali exhales a laugh] it has like its arms on the ground, and then something in the arms moves down really fast, and that’s what does it.
Austin: And just like, ‘pop’?
Ali: Ok.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: Just like pops. Something that can be on two legs, like maybe yeah.
Austin: I like a kangaroo. And then like, are the legs also the wings when they get up there? Or the- is it… where are the wings?
Keith: Um, yeah, I guess they would have to be also the wings, and they just kind of snap into place.
Austin: Mm.
Keith: So maybe they’re- they’re not like- they’re arms, but there’s no hands, so they’re flat on the bottom.
Austin: Ok.
Ali: Ok.
Keith: [overlapped] So, it has… yeah.
Austin: And so yeah, it’s about just like, how much pressure to put in there. Or like, the musculature. Like, you know how to move bodies because you’re Hella Varal.
Ali: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Austin: And like, the muscles are hard to get right, but you have good muscles, so… [Ali laughs] Um, yeah. Give me an Aid-Interfere which is again...
Ali: Ok.
Austin: ...it’s 2d6 plus one.
Keith: Twelve!
Austin: Twelve.
Ali: [overlapped] See. I have muscles.
Austin: Hell yes. five plus six plus one. Alright. So, yeah, you get it. You just… are you like, posing? Are you doing like, jumps on this boat? Like, what are you doing, Hella?
Ali: [laughing] I think…
Austin: Like explosive force.
Ali: I think it’s part of that. I think it’s part of like, Hella like, showing her like, bending her leg and like, pushing it down. And like stomping her leg, right?
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: [overlapped] And also being like, oh [laughing]
Keith: Oh. Ok, so I just… Now that I’m thinking of it like a human, I think I know what it looks like.
Austin: Ok.
Keith: So, like Hella… I think you’re like, crouching down with your knuckles on the ground and then just like, popping up. And then that- and like, that’s the motion that I have to figure out how to do with this thing. It’s like-
Austin: [overlapping] Yeah, so like…
Keith: -crouching down like a kangaroo.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: The wings… the tips of the wings on the ground, and then just like, like a [foley] ‘ch-kunk’, and like, exploding upwards.
Austin: So, I want to underscore that this feels different for you, Fero. Like, watching Hella do this, and then you learning from it, is not the way you’ve ever done this before really. Right?
Keith: No. Never.
Austin: Like, you’ve studied things before, right? Because that is how, um, you’re Study People- er your study… It’s not Studied Essence. Whatever the thing is where you actually get to study…
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: ...animals to- to do a thing. Um...
Keith: Uh huh.
Austin: Uh… it… you’ve done that. But the… er, it is. It is Studied Essence, but that’s just about looking at stuff. That’s just about like, ‘oh, yeah. I’m looking at a thing that already exists, and like, I’m…’
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: ‘…I’m going to be that thing.’ This is like, ok, Hella is not a kangaroo glider thing. But I can learn from like, studying the way her legs move. I can learn by like, really focusing your brain on this. And like, not just your brain, but like, the part of your brain that is about figuring things out. And so, so yeah. You nail it. You get a 10. I’m not gonna make you roll to turn into it. Or… actually you do have to roll to turn into it still, but that’s not…
Keith: Ok.
Austin: So yeah. So…
Keith: Oh, the nine isn’t that roll?
Austin: No, the nine is inventing it. But the… because to… or here’s a… I’ll give you a choice here, and we’ll play it forward on this. Either that roll will be the roll, and that means that when you make a thing, it exis… it… you’re it, but it does not exist in the world. Because you’ll never get a twelve on that roll, right?
Keith: Right.
Austin: [overlapping] I guess you could. You could theoretically…
Keith: [overlapping] Oh no, you’re right. I understand.
Austin: You could theoretically get a twelve, if you rolled two sixes.
Keith: Well, ok. Well, so, so what I thought…
Austin: So, yeah. So, you can make-
Keith: Ok.
Austin: If you want to, you can carry that forward. I’ll let you have that. But you can also give it a re-roll here and be like, ‘Alright. I want to maybe try to see the world with it.’ It’s up to you.
Keith: I do. Yeah.
Austin: Alright, so give me a… the...
Keith: Wisdom.
Austin: Yeah. What is it? Shapeshifter.
Keith: Ten.
Austin: That’s a ten. So, you become it. So, you’re up in the… you’re up on the mountain and you become it. [reading] “You may take on the physical form of any species whose essence you’ve studied or who lives in your land or that you’ve made.’ Um, we need a name for this. What’s the name for this thing?
Keith: Oooh, catch me on that in a little bit.
Austin: Ok. Has… ‘you can have of the strengths and weaknesses. So, claws, wings, gills, etc.’ So, definitely have those wings. You definitely be able to jump up in the air. Blah, blah, blah.
Keith: Uh hm.
Austin: Normal stats, ‘some moves may be harder to trigger’, obviously. ‘GM will also tell you one or more moves associated with your new form. Spend one hold to make that move.’ Do you have a move in mind for this?
Keith: Yeah. So, obviously can fly. Um… and I’m thinking of its head sort of like, as a blunt instrument, so-
Austin: Ok.
Keith: -because I can’t like, attack with like, a wing or a claw.
Austin: Uh huh.
Keith: Um, and when I go down for an attack, then I’ll down.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: So, I was… I was thinking what I would do is like, either a dive bomb…
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: ...or like, land at someone’s feet and then do like, shoot back up in the air as part of like, an uppercut move.
Austin: Yeah, I think, for me, the thing that sounds cool for this is, I like dive bombing. I love just like… it’s almost like a Monster Hunter monster that just has a big, like… bonehead, you know? Just like, it’s a lot of bone up there, so you can use it as like, a ramming instrument.
Keith: Uh huh.
Austin: I do like the idea of being able to also jump up and hit people on the way up, but I think that’s a different move. Like I think that’s like… being on the ground is not the end for this. You don’t lose your hold or whatever, you know what I mean? So, I think it’s… it’s…
Keith: Right. Yeah. So, I have to be able to get back up.
Austin: Yeah. So, I think it’s just like, it’s a Hack and Slash move where you get plus one forward and um… let me look at some tags. What’s a good tag for it? So, plus one forward because it’s um… you’re above them. You just have great positioning, you know?
Keith: Uh huh. Yeah.
Austin: Like, you’re flying around. Um, and you can’t do it unless you’re in the air, so you have to then like, get back in the air, obviously. So, you can’t do them consecutively. You’d have to like, jump back up basically.
Keith: Right.
Austin: But I do like the idea of like, if you Hack and Slash, one of the things you can do is get back up. Like, I like the idea of uppercut from there. Um, yeah, I think it’s just plus one attack, you know?
Keith: Ok.
Austin: And you get… you’ll get your d8 though. You do get your d8 attack thing.
Keith: Ok, so it counts as the dangerous animal?
Austin: I does count as a dangerous animal.
Keith: Here. Let me click this. I want to see if that still works. Ok, it does. Great.
Austin: Ok, cool.
Keith: I forever ago made buttons down here, so…
Austin: Ok.
Keith: But… but we updated since then-
Austin: Yeah, so who the fuck knows?
Keith: -so, I wasn’t sure.
Austin: Yeah, this is a whole different like, instance on Roll20. Alright, so, you’re flying around, and you’re up… You see this movement, and you get a little bit closer. And you get a little bit closer. And things actually get a little weird because you just see the mud moving. And like, there’s nothing in the mud moving. It’s not… You’re pretty sure the mud is just moving. And then it gets into the water, and you see the water begin to move in a weird way. And what you come-
Eventually what you see is like, I think maybe the combination of the mud and the water confusing one of its abilities, and you can kind of see a strange like, root shape that’s struggling to either settle on looking like water or looking like mud, and then it finally it’s in the water enough that it becomes- it starts looking like weird, brown mud. Or brown water rather. Like, brown-green water. Um, I’ve drawn this river as blue, but this river is like, that greenish swamp color. You know?
Keith: Uh huh.
Austin: Very algae covered and all that. Um, so yeah. This is… so you see what this is. You got an eleven on your scout, right?
Keith: Yeah, yeah. Twelve actually.
Austin: So, this is… And it’s- so, this thing is big. How big is your ship from end to end, Hella?
Ali: [inhales] Um… [exhales] um...
Austin: I know you didn’t do the boat…
Ali: The proper research, and I’m also really bad at length.
Austin: Me, too.
Keith: A sloop is probably like, thirty feet long.
Ali: Ok. How long is that? Like two cars? Two and a half cars?
Keith: No, that’s like four cars.
Ali: Ok.
Keith: Or like…
Ali: That works.
Keith: Yeah.
Ali: Yeah.
Austin: I’m looking at thirty foot boats. These look… yeah, you could fit… Hm, you might want to go bigger.
Keith: Um.
Ali: I’m...
Austin: This is… Let me show you a thirty foot boat.
Ali: Maybe like a forty-five?
Austin: Maybe like a fifty foot boat honestly. Like, hold up. Let me look at this boat.
Keith: Uh…
Austin: Cause this boat… you could fit, you could fit… This is a thirty foot boat; you could fit three people… four people on here comfortably.
Ali: Oh yeah. No, no.
Austin: It’s bigger than that.
Ali: Yeah. It’s bigger than that.
Keith: Are you sure that’s a thirty foot boat? That looks smaller to me.
Austin: That’s a thirty foot boat. That’s a thirty foot boat.
Keith: Alright.
Ali: Wow.
Keith: Yeah, maybe the boat that I was in recently…
Austin: Maybe it was bigger.
Keith: ...which sleeps five was bigger.
Austin: It sleeps five?
Keith: Yeah, it slept five.
Austin: That’s gotta be more than thirty, right?
Keith: No, it- ok. It was very…
Austin: Or maybe it’s a tall boat.
Keith: It was a very shady five. It was like…
Austin: [laughs] Wait.
Keith: So, there was a ta… the underneath has a table that turns into a bed.
Austin: Ok.
Keith: And there’s two there. And then there’s two in the front, and then there’s like, one in the back.
Austin: Ok. That’s a shady five.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Um, who are the secret nemesis of The Six from Marielda we just never saw them on screen. [Ali laughs]
Keith: [laughing hard] The Shady Five.
Austin: Um…
Keith: And there were six of them.
Austin: I love this fucking yachtforums.com. Fuck off.
Ali: I love it.
Austin: [reading] “Forty to fifty foot dilemma. Hello all. I previously posted on a thread…
Jack: [talking softly] I’m just loading up yachtforums.com.
Austin: ...asking opinions regarding the Tiara 44 and an Azimut 46. Thank you for the feedback. We've ruled out the Tiara (as much I hated doing so) because we are looking for a Fly Bridge Cruiser to accommodate our Boating interests. I've done some research and really like the Ocean Alexander Altus 48 but still have the Azimut 46 as an option; especially since my wife is Italian and love the Glitziness of the boat.” Excuse me?!
Ali: Ok.
Keith: She wasn’t sure if she should spend $120,000 on the boat or just $50,000 on the boat.
Austin: I… that literally happened to me. I walked…I think I... Didn’t I just tell this story?
Jack: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Keith: You told it to me once, and then you retold it on an episode recently. Yeah.
Austin: Fuck off.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: How much does the Azimut… Holy shit!
Keith: By the way, the… oh, how much is it?
Austin: Guess how much this boat is.
Keith: $325,000.
Jack: Wait, send a picture of it.
Austin: I’ll send a boat. I’ll send a boat. Er, I’ll send a picture.
Jack: Austin, send me a boat.
Keith: Send me a boat, please.
Ali: Yeah, please.
Austin: Oh no, is this the new? Ok. [Ali and Keith laugh] What year boat do you want?
Keith: Uh…
Jack: Can we have a boat each, please?
Austin: one boat each.
Keith: What about 2019?
Austin: That’s… well, those… Those are gonna cost you a fortune.
Keith: Yeah, boats are expensive.
Jack: I’ll have…
Keith: By the way, a sloop ranges from thirty-five to sixty-five feet.
Austin: Ok.
Jack: I’ll have a cool 2008 boat, please, Austin.
Austin: A 2008 Azimut 46, coming right up for you, friend.
Ali: I’m just gonna add old to my google search of ‘fifty foot boat’ and see if that changes it.
Austin: Alright, here’s the boat. I’m sending you this boat over here. Azimut 46.
Keith: Oh, that’s a sleek looking boat.
Jack: Oh, thanks for this boat, Austin.
Ali: Oh wow.
Austin: Tell me how much you think that is.
Keith: $320,000.
Jack: I think...
Austin: Jack?
Jack: I think that boat is $460,000.
Austin: Ali?
Ali: [breathes in] $120,000.
Austin: You went… you were looking for that low, huh? [Ali and Jack laugh] Alright.
Keith: Well, look at the da… Look at the wear on the bo… On the hull there.
Austin: So, here’s what I’ll tell you about boats. They got a range of prices.
Jack: Uh huh.
Keith: Oh wow.
Austin: This boat, depending on the condition can go... and also where in the world you are, whether you’re in Croatia or Ukraine, apparently, uh… between $295,000 and $389,000.
Keith: So, I feel like I was right in the middle there.
Austin: You were right in the middle there.
Jack: Wow.
Austin: This is an expensive boat.
Keith: Listen. I had a weird childhood. I know a little bit about how much rich people shit costs.
Austin: That’s too fucking expensive.
Ali: That’s a lot.
Jack: Abeking & Rasmussen yacht. I’m gonna try and buy the most expensive yacht I can.
Ali: Oh.
Keith: Oh, it’s probably like a bill...A yacht is like, a billion dollars.
Austin: On… on yachtworld?
Jack: No, I just… So, I went on yachtworld, and I looked at the luxury yacht section, and that gave me this yacht company called Abeking & Rasmussen.
Austin: Yeah, great name.
Jack: Which is described as, and I’m gonna read you the blurb, “A shipyard with many faces. A family business. A traditional, and at the same time, progressive shipyard. A research hub. A yacht hotspot. And a three hundred and sixty degree business. Out of a dynamic present, we eagerly strive [laughs]… Out of a dynamic present, we eagerly stride, laden with new ideas into the future without ever losing sight of our traditional values.”
Austin: Love it.
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: So, I love...
Keith: Well, here’s a… here’s a yacht called the… It’s one of the most expensive yachts ever built. It’s a little bit over a billion dollars.
Jack: Oh my god.
Keith: And it’s called the History Supreme. [Jack laughs]
Austin: Oh, that’s a great name.
Keith: Yeah, it is a good name. It is a nice looking boat, too.
Austin: I… you know, I don’t think it’s as good though as this thing I found on yachtworld. Which is 2002 cruise ship. Two thousand thirty-eight passengers.
Jack: [laughing] Could we buy it?
Austin: Stock number S2348 for four hundred million dollars, and it’s a blurred photo… It’s not a blurred photo. It’s a photo that they put in fucking photoshop and hit the gaussian blur on.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Or put like, the posterize button on. And then wrote, details to qualified buyers. Mother fucker. If you’re not gonna show me the four hundred million dollar boat…
Keith: You can’t even look at a picture of this boat.
Austin: Yeah. Get the fuck out of here.
Jack: It’s four hundred million dollars.
Austin: Million.
Keith: If you don’t have… If you don’t have an $800,000 deposit to show me in hand right now, you cannot even see a picture of this! Get out of here!
Jack: Ok. So, uh, at our current rate, it will take us twenty-two thousand six hundred and ninety-three months...
Keith: Wow. Here’s a…
Jack: ...to buy that as a group. So, go to friendsatthetable… [laughs]
Austin: Well, there we could do a Friends at the Table Cruise.
Keith: Here’s a five… five billion dollar yacht. Look at that. Five billion dollars.
Austin: No.
Ali: [laughs] Don’t ever say Friends at the Table Cruise again. [Everyone laughs]
[crosstalking]
Austin: Yo, this looks like one of my favorite mechs... Wait a second.
Keith: Oh, now you don’t want to be on a boat, huh?
Austin: [laughs] This is my favorite mech. You just sent me my favorite mech there is. Or one of them.
Keith: Your favorite mech is a platinum adorned five billion dollar yacht called… or wait. Wall Art made of meteoric stone and bones of a tyrannosaurus rex.
Austin: Excuse me. What?
Keith: That’s what it says.
Jack: What is going on?
Keith: Ask the Malaysian businessman that just spent four point eight billion dollars on it.
Austin: Uh, but yeah. Actually yeah. The Hyakushiki is basically this, but a mech.
Keith: Oh.
Austin: So, I’m gonna send you this mech. And you’re gonna see it.
Ali: Yeah.
Keith: Holy shit. This is a… This is actually the same company that made the History Supreme. [overlapping] It’s just a different version of the History Supreme.
Austin: [overlapping] Of course it was. Of course it was. Of course it was.
Keith: Yeah, of course it was.
Jack: You want to see a real, dumb boat that I just found?
Austin: Always.
Ali: Uh huh.
Jack: This is a concept boat. Um… here you go. Click on the...
Austin: Abe-king?
Jack: Yeah, Abeking & Rasmussen. [overlapping] This is this boat company.
[crosstalking]
Austin: Ohh. This is a ridiculous fucking...
Keith: Ohhh. This looks like a little fish. This is like a weird, little fish.
Austin: It does look like a weird, little fish.
Keith: ‘New horizons, old values’.
Ali: Oh wow.
Keith: What is that saying?
Austin: [using low, soft voice] “To get to know new worlds without losing sight of old values means that we discover new possibilities and new challenges and thereby develop new qualities. This is a maxim that A and R lives by. To this end, we intensify our long existing approach to take established solutions a step further. With the courage to stand our ground in unknown territory. That is why we will always continue to anchor our ships in the market. So as to act as beacons and torchbearers of things yet to come.”
Keith: Is this…?
Austin: “Anything less than this is simply not enough.”
Keith: Is this shit selling capitalism?
Austin: Hydro-swash. Yeah. Hydro-swash. This next photo is like… If I showed anybody this photo, they would not say it’s a boat. No one would say this is a boat. What is that? Not a boat.
Keith: [laughing] Not a boat. Certainly not a boat.
Ali: Not a boat.
Austin: A drone? A remote control.
Keith: It also- it made- the picture makes it look really small. Like, I know that the…
Austin: Hydro-swash.
Keith: I can see that those are chair and stuff on it, but it looks like it’s fake.
Austin: I guess. I guess those are chairs. Yeah, ok. [reading] “Is it a spaceship? Is it a, quote unquote, Transformers version of a praying mantis? It’s hard to decide at first sight what hydro-swash actually is. Hardly surprising because the newest swash concept from Abeking and Rasmussen floats, or better said flies in a class of its own.” Mother fucker. It doesn’t fly. Oh wait.
Jack: Go in the… go in the...
Austin: Wait. She hov… ok. “What distinguishes the hydro-swash from all other ships in the world is her performance.”
Jack: Oh, it’s a hydroplane.
Austin: “She hovers high above the waves instead of conventionally gliding through them.”
Keith: High above the waves?
Austin: “Flying and sailing become one in this truly unparalleled yacht experience that stays undiminished even at the highest speeds. Thanks to its SWATH genes, the futuristic bay cruiser remains calm even in stormy seas.”
Keith: Wait.
Austin: “Apart from that, the hydro-swash will cause quite a stir with ‘dot dot dot’” And then it’s a picture of a bed.
Ali: Wow.
Keith: Oh, I don’t have the picture of the bed.
Austin: Wait, does it actually float? Well, it’s like a picture like, the bedroom. Isn’t that what that is? Is that the bed?
Ali: Right.
Austin: Oh no, it’s a… that’s a bar. That’s a bar. I see.
Ali: I thought you were gonna say the ladies, and then it was a picture of the bed. [Austin laughs]
Keith: We might be looking at a different… they might… our two pictures might have different formatting. Cause mine’s just a different boat.
Austin: No, that’s the same boat. Isn’t it?
Keith: No, that’s the… AR22… or 224.
Austin: No, I think-
Keith: Each one of these is a different boat.
Austin: Oh.
Keith: The Visions and then the Hydro-swash and then the AR224.
Austin: Are these different boats? I thought this was the same boat. This is the same boat. That’s a close-up of all those chairs in the back. Look, look, look. That’s the back of the boat. That like…
Keith: Oh, ok.
Austin: ...thing that I thought was a bed was just… was not a bed. It was a big, weird motor-bar.
Keith: Oh, but then scroll down a little bit. That’s clearly another boat.
Austin: That’s clearly… uh… You know?
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Is it a Transformer?
Keith: Is it… is it a Transformer?
Austin: Is it a praying mantis? Who could say?
Keith: Yeah, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is all the same fucking thing. Yeah.
Austin: There’s a…. There’s a big tree alligator, uh… in the mud.
Ali: [quietly] This is a great boat.
Austin: Uh, Keith. That’s where this is going.
Keith: Oh, tree alligator. Got it.
Austin: Yeah, it’s… So, I think the thing that with an eleven on your scout roll that you get is like, it is a root-based alligator monster. And it’s gigantic. It’s like…
Keith: Is this the riverbeast that Emmanuel was worried about?
Austin: [in a low-guttural voice] This is the river beast Emmanuel was afraid of. [normal voice] It is…
Jack: Did Emmanuel know?
Keith: Is that how it talks?
Austin: [incredulous] No! No. And also no. Uh, it is intelligent. It does have the intelligent stat.
Keith: Is this an Alyosha thing?
Austin: This is an Alyosha thing. Yeah.
Keith: Is this… This is the first like, creature. Like…
Austin: Yes.
Keith: -non-plant.
Austin: Yes, yes. Well, so the thing that’s happening here. There’s a couple things happening here. It is a plant. You can tell it’s a plant because like, you can study it and be like, ‘oh, yeah. That’s the way plant stuff works.’ Um, but there’s something extra weird with it which is…
Keith: And it’s also an alligator.
Austin: It’s also an alligator. It’s gigantic. You said- we said your ship was what? Fifty feet or something?
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: It’s like, thirty plus feet long. It’s very big. That’s a lot of alligator.
Keith: Yeah, you think it’ll just let us pass though?
Austin: No, it’s super hungry. Uh, and it’s coming to devour your boat. Um, and here’s the other thing about it that you notice. And I think you notice this because you’ve been in this area before and you’ve dealt with the… illusion magic that became popular among the orcs is it’s not just Alyosha’s Spring, it’s also the rampant use of illusion magic from… from the Archives. Um, it’s not- I want to be clear. I’ve said this before. Like the illusion magic worked for the pattern. This isn’t like ‘oh no, the pattern’s broke because we were using illusions. Oh no.’ It worked fine.
Keith: So, it was the- So, if I remember, it was that in order to create- to get objects for the pattern, instead of going and getting them-
Austin: Yes.
Keith: -they would make illusions of those things...
[crosstalking]
Austin: Yeah, they were making like illusory...
Keith: -and use that illusion in the pattern.
Austin: But like, so hey, if we really need an old suit of armor…
Jack: [interjecting] It’s called like apparitive magic, right?
Austin: Apparitive, right. Apparitive, apparitive. Yeah. Like an apparition.
Keith: And it was controversial among the orcs, right? There were some orcs...
Austin: It was controversial.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: But it worked. You made a sun.
Jack: It was really controversial for Lem King right up until it proved difficult for him to use the pattern in the normal way. [overlapped] At which point he went...
Keith: [overlapping] Oh is that… that’s how you made this water, right?
Austin: That is one hundred percent how he made this water, right?
Keith: Oh boy.
Jack: Yeah. It’s also how-
Austin: And, the- the- the wood.
Jack: -we turned a desk into a table, and…
Austin: And made the emberwood. Or whatever. Right?
Jack: I think yeah. And also, didn’t we do something with… Oh, the emberwood as in, the plant?
Austin:No, the emberwood was the type of desk it was. It was a desk made of this special wood-
Jack: Oh right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.
Austin: -that had the Heat and the Dark inside of it.
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: So, yeah. So, like this is just… There is illusory magic in the air in a sense here. Like, all that usage did have a long-term effect, not in a sense that’s like… It’s not evil. Right? If Hadrian was here and detected evil, this thing isn’t evil. It’s a natural being, and the illusory stuff is as real as anything else at this point. Or it’s affected stuff. It’s given this creature… this creature has, in the same way that it would sap the nutrients from another plant and kind of parasitically do that, it’s also absorbed the magic- the illusion magic from… that the like, the residue that was left behind in all these places. And so, it is like a thirty-five foot long illusion plant alligator. And you see it, Fero, but the other two don’t.
Keith: Um… I guess I go land. I guess I go land on the boat in a really cool…. I guess so this… Oh. that’s a big alligator.
Austin: Yeah, I’m gonna make it a little bit bigger here...
Keith: A big boy.
Austin: ...but you know, it’s a big boy.
Keith: Uh, so I… I think one last cool thing about this creature here is how um, perfectly it can land. It doesn’t really have to slow down, it just sort of like, catches the ground and sort of is on… [overlapped] is steadied.
Austin: [overlapping] Is on the ground.
Keith: Is on the ground, yeah.
Austin: Um, so…
Keith: Very powerful arms. It can kind of stop itself however. So, I just sort of stop real quick onto the ground and then sort of like, kind of collapse into a Fero shape.
Austin: Ok.
Keith: And I’m like,
Keith (as Fero): There’s a big alligator. And it’s a plant, too. Dangerous big to us. Dangerous big.
Jack (as Lem): How far away is it?
Keith (as Fero): Right there. Right up there.
Austin: I’d say it’s probably like, a hundred and fif...
Keith: Like eighty feet?
Austin: No, it’s like a hundred and fifty yards. This is a big place.
Keith: Ok.
Austin: You know, this is like… Maybe even more than that, right? This is like, it’s a colosseum right? So this… this place…
Keith: It’s on the other side of the colosseum.
Austin: But it’s not a colosseum. It is the stoneworks, but in my mind, I keep thinking of it as like… It’s a big...
Jack: It’s a natural colosseum.
Austin: Well, it’s not natural. It was built.
Keith: It’s colosseum-y.
Austin: It’s colosseum-y. The stoneworks were made here, right? And so, it has been carved into… like, I almost imagine this whole place was once a mountain with a peak. And it’s as if someone put in a cylindrical like, cut-
Jack: Huh, yeah.
Austin: -like, cutter, and just like, ‘Cut. Pull out.’ You know? Like a… like [foley] ‘ssswwwuuup’, like sucked it out- sucked the center of this mountain out. And now there’s just a big hole in the middle of this mountain. So, it’s big, you know? But it’s… it hasn’t zeroed in on you yet. Um, you… Fero got an eleven on the… on the scout, which means that you can get the drop on it.
Keith (as Fero): I mean we could just leave you boat here and walk the rest of the way, if you want.
Ali (as Hella): Uh. [overlapping] How is it both…
Keith (as Fero): [overlapping] Do we want to-
Ali (as Hella): ...things?
Keith (as Fero): What do you…? Um… Oh, did you not hear about the bad plants? Sorry, I know you guys have been gone. You heard about the bad plants?
Ali (as Hella): No, I… I heard about some…
Keith (as Fero): This one… I haven’t seen it like this.
Ali (as Hella): [overlapping] I know. Ok.
Keith (as Fero): But this is the bad plants, but shaped like a thirty foot long alligator monster.
Ali (as Hella): [whispering] Fuck.
Jack (as Lem): [pause] We’re not abandoning the boat.
Keith (as Fero): Why?
Ali (as Hella): [dejected] We can.
Jack (as Lem): We sailed this boat here from Aubade. I’m not gonna leave it to be eaten by an alligator.
Keith (as Fero): I don’t know if the alligator wants to eat the boat. I think it just wants to eat us.
Jack (as Lem): Yeah.
Ali (as Hella): The boat’s definitely not gonna get eaten?
Keith (as Fero): I will not say that. [Ali sighs heavily] Listen. I’m done… Here’s… here’s… I’m done arguing for what I think is the good idea. No one seems to care. So, what… whatever you guys want.
Ali (as Hella): No, we should walk. We can… We’re gonna… we’re gonna come back here on the way back, right? We should just leave it if there’s a big alligator.
Keith (as Fero): Well, we’re gonna need a boat anyway for later.
Ali (as Hella): How big is that alligator? Isn’t it just like… can’t we just like…
Keith (as Fero): Kill it?
Ali (as Hella): [long pause and then laughs] Maybe.
Austin: Oh yeah?
Keith (as Fero): Yeah, we could probably kill it.
Ali (as Hella): [sighs] You can’t like talk to it otherwise?
Keith (as Fero): Uh, I… I do not think that I really have the ability to talk to stuff like this. I could try. Let me… let me try.
Ali (as Hella): Could you? Could you?
Keith (as Fero): Yeah, I’ll try.
Ali (as Hella): Do you want me to like, come just in case of… it gets rough?
Keith (as Fero): Yeah, sure. Let’s all go. [Austin laughs]
Jack (as Lem): Ok, well, let’s not be too hasty. [Austin laughs harder]
Keith (as Fero): We’re… Listen, we’re either- we’re either just leaving the boat or we’re all going.
Jack (as Lem): What if I try and hide the boat?
Ali (as Hella): You try to hide the boat. Me and Fero will go communicate with this alligator.
Keith (as Fero): [under breath] So fucking useless. [normal voice] Yeah.
Jack (as Lem): I’m sorry?
Keith (as Fero): Huh?
Ali (as Hella): [overlapping the two] And if not, we’ll just walk… we’ll just walk. We’ll just walk. [laughs lightly]
Austin: Are you gonna have that conversation? Or are you just.. Are you shrugging it off?
Jack: I think… I think Lem is just turning around and like, kicking at the mud with his foot. And like, walking back towards the… I guess we haven’t gotten off the boat yet. Um, I think it’s Lem hopping off the boat into the kind of mud. Like mud up to his like, knees.
Austin: Uh huh.
Jack: And just like, kind of getting to work looking around the boat, waving off Hella and Fero.
Austin: As Hella and Fero walk away, I really… Jack, I really need you to start thinking about how you’re gonna hide this giant boat. [Ali laughs]
Keith: Yeah, it’s… it is fifty feet. It’s a fifty foot boat.
Austin: Alright, so the two of...
Jack: [singing] It worked before, it’ll work again. Apparative magic. [Jack and Ali laugh]
Austin: Uh huh, oh right. Yeah, true. Uh huh. Ok.
Ali: I think on the way there, Hella’s like,
Ali (as Hella): I’m sorry Like if we talk to it, it’ll be cool and then we can just leave, if we can. We’ll just leave. I’m sorry.
Keith (as Fero): That’s fine. No, that’s… I got it.
Ali (as Hella): It’s five minutes.
Keith (as Fero): Fucking… god damn… Lem insists we save the boat, but also insists that he can’t help. [Ali laughs] Piece of shit.
Ali (as Hella): Just he’s… That has to happen anyway. Let’s just… Where did you see the thing?
Keith (as Fero): [sighs] It’s in front of… It’s right there.
Ali (as Hella): Oh.
Austin: Uh, Hella, you don’t see it.
Ali: [laughs] Ok. I don’t?
Austin: No.
Ali: At all? What do I see?
Austin: We see mud and river and dirt and trees and roots. You did not get an eleven on your scout check.
Ali: I didn’t.
Austin: You don’t see anything at all in it.
Ali: Um…
Austin: And also you’re not like, attuned to the natural world in the way that Fero is. So, yeah, you don’t see shit.
Ali: God.
Ali (as Hella): This is just like, is it under there? Is it underneath there? Cause if it’s underneath there…
Keith (as Fero): It’s right there. It’s not underneath. It’s in front of you. If you cannot see it, please do not go any more forward cause it’s right there.
Ali (as Hella): I can’t even like, hear it. Don’t like… is there like…
Austin: You cannot hear it.
Ali (as Hella): Is it like, breathing? It like… where should I?
Keith (as Fero): No, it’s a plant. It doesn’t breath.
Ali (as Hella): Like point. No, but like, point to where it is.
Keith: And I’m pointing.
Austin: Nothing. Well, you can give it a… give me a- It sounds like you are now making a move, Hella.
Ali: I am now, yeah.
Austin: It sounds like you are… Oh, wow, these new uh… Look at these new fucking move sheets. These look good as hell. In the sidebar.
Ali: Where?
Austin: Do you not have these? The basic moves?
Keith: Um, no. I don’t have those.
Austin: You should.
Keith: Oh those?
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: Oh yeah. That looks good. Yeah.
Austin: They just look nice…
Keith: Those look…
Austin: To look at.
Keith: Those do look good.
Austin: Uh, this is a Discern Realities. You are closely studying a situation or a person.
Ali: Ok.
Austin: So, give me a Discern Realities.
Ali: Is that a button I can press?
Austin: Yeah, you should also just have it in your sheet, for sure.
Ali: Yeah. Ok. I’ve gotten a seven.
Austin: Yep.
Ali: Um, take plus one forward…
Austin: So, you get one question from this list. What happened here recently?
Ali: Ok.
Austin: ‘What is about to happen? What should I be on the lookout for? What here is useful or valuable to me? What really… Who is really in control here? What here is not what it appears to be?’
Ali: Uh… So, that last one seems obvious. Or what should I be on the lookout for?
Austin: Yeah, either one of them gives you enough to start seeing this thing. Um, I think the thing that you see…. The thing that you end up seeing is its eyes? Or its like.... actually, it doesn’t have eyes. What it has is these two like- there are these two flowers. Um, it’s not even two flowers. It’s actually like, um- There is like a collection of flowers that are floating down the river. Um, very slowly. And you realize those are not… those are not… um, they are not flowers floating. Those are things attached to the back of this- like, running down from the front to the back of this alligator. [typing] Um, what are… what are swamp flowers like? Yeah, I think that they are like these…
Keith: Fragrant water lilies?
Austin: What do those look like? What do water lilies look like?
Keith: Um, they are…
Austin: You know what’s sick about this season is when we look up plants, we can actually look up animals?
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah, water lilies. These are really cool. Yeah, so it’s eight of these. Um, and they’re running from the very front of this thing’s like face, so to speak, to its back. And those are what it is… you don’t… Hella doesn’t necessarily know this, I don’t think, but like, they look like they’re breathing almost. They look like they’re opening and closing. And at first, it just looked like they were doing that naturally as part of the river, but that’s… it is... It is like, seeing the world through that stuff. Maybe you actually do see it. You got an… you successfully asked the question. So like, yeah. You see that it has these lilies and that is demarcating where it is. And also, that is how it is seeing the world. And um, all of that other stuff.
Keith: So, so I…
Austin: So like, sensory nodes in a weird way. How the wind moves the lilies, it senses stuff, and it can smell stuff that way. Everything.
Keith: So, I can… I can talk to this thing. I know that I can. I guess it’s… I guess the question is whether it has anything interesting to say. Or helpful to say.
Austin: What happened the last time you tried to talk to one of these plants?
Keith: I have not tried to- I’ve only ever listened to the- to their passive voice.
Austin: Yeah. Do you remember how that was described?
Keith: Yeah, it was just like, ‘Gotta keep growin’. Gotta go do a grow.’
Austin: Yeah. Yep. [Ali laughs]
Keith: ‘Grow, grow, grow. Gotta do a grow.’
Austin: Gotta do it. Yeah. Totally.
Keith: And then specifically a lack of ‘Need water. Need sun. Need oxygen.’
Austin: Yeah, uh hm.
Keith: It was just ‘Gotta grow. Gotta do the grow.’
Austin: Yep. Um, so yeah. You can… It’s the same. It is that same impulse. I think it’s maybe filtered a little differently here. Like, it’s a little more specific and individual. Individuated. Like this is a, ‘I need to grow.’ Right?
Keith: Right.
Austin: Um, “I need to…’ Uh, you know, ‘I need more- more material.’ But it is not, ‘I need, you know, sun’. It is not, ‘I need water’. It is just ‘I need to grow.’ And I think this time, on the second attempt to hear this or whatever, um, you are struck by the fact that it is trying to grow via anything. It can grow through you. It can grow through sunlight. It can grow through water. It can grow through air. Like, it… all it needs to do is replace something else, and it will continue to grow. What do the two of you do?
Keith: Uh, I…
Austin: Uh, Hella, this is… this is scary.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Or it’s… It’s dang… It looks dangerous. I’m curious, as someone who used to have the move, um, destroy something you don’t understand, how this is making Hella feel in this moment.
Ali: [laughs] It’s tense.
Austin: Ok.
Ali: Um, I think especially the experience of like, not even being able to see it. And then like…
Austin: Suddenly it’s…
Ali: ...slowly coming to recognize like…
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: ...a shape in the mud is not super chill.
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: Um, I think she has like, her hand on her sword, but she’s trying to like, very carefully be like,
Ali (as Hella): Uh, so… like, what do you know about normal crocodiles? Like, what do they usually say? That you could be… just be like, like just move.
Keith (as Fero): Um, sometime… a lot of times they’re looking for sun. They’re not super… They are like, when they’re hungry, they’re hungry.
Ali (as Hella): Uh huh.
Keith (as Fero): But… but you know, a lot of times, they’re just like, sleepy. So…
Ali (as Hella): And this… What’s… what about… what about this one?
Keith (as Fero): Hungry. Just hungry.
Ali (as Hella): [pause] Fuck. Um… [sighs]
Keith (as Fero): I…
Ali (as Hella): Fero?
Keith (as Fero): Yeah.
Ali (as Hella): Um, just… this is… ok. Ok. Uh… and we can’t… [overlapped] we can’t just like, throw a rock?
Austin: Did you… did you try talking to it? Fero?
Keith: Oh, I thought that you were telling me that that’s what it…
Austin: I was telling you what you were hearing from it-
Keith: Yeah, ok.
Austin: -but I didn’t know if you were also trying to talk to it.
Keith: Ok, yeah. I’m gonna try to talk… I’m gonna… Well, ok. Here’s the thing. Let’s step back a little bit.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: Let’s get… let’s get to the.. To the edge of the- Cause right now, we’re sort of like, on the mud in the middle of the water.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Keith: Let’s get to the end where at least this like, half water plant monster will have to follow us onto dry land.
Austin: It’s a mess. Like, again, this is- this is not an exact duplicate of what this is. This whole place- Like, you could fail a roll here in combat, for instance, and I’d be like, ‘oh yeah. You hit a sinkhole.’ Like-
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: -this is abstracted. Just think of this in terms of just general direction and shape and distance.
Keith: Uh huh.
Austin: Like, not… this is, you know, the river is generally in the middle here, but there is not a place-
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: You can get somewhere like, ‘This is… I’m on safe, dry land,’ for sure.
Keith: Well, see. See like… See here where it’s kind of close to the green?
Austin: Yeah, ok.
Keith: So like- so like-
Austin: You want to move to like… almost to where it’s like… Sorry. That whole green is also this. This whole area is jungle, swamp land.
Keith: Ok. Alright.
Austin: So like, at any point… you can get distance, and you can get to like, where you’re current footing is sure.
Keith: Yeah, let’s just get distance. Let’s just get distance, yeah.
Austin: Ok. That works, alright. So, I can move you all up there.
Keith: And somewhere that seems like, relatively sure. Wherever that ends up being.
Austin: Yeah, perfect. Yep, that’s fine.
Keith: Um, and I… yeah, I’m just gonna try to…
Austin: Or again, if you want to right now, you could make a move that would be like, trying to figure out what here is safe to walk on and what isn’t. Cause if that’s what Fero’s doing, that is a thing that you could do. Do you know what I mean? That could be a Discern Realities check to be like, ok what can we safely stand on.
Keith: Ok, yeah. I guess… I guess you’re right. That’s…
Austin: Cause I want to… I want to reward that impulse. That’s a good impulse to have.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: And that was the impulse you had. So, yeah. Give me a Discern Realities. ‘When you closely study a situation or person.’
Keith: Ten.
Austin: Alright, so you get Three of those questions.
Keith: Um…
Austin: And remember to take plus one forward both of you on whatever you are doing next basically.
Ali: Ok.
Austin: As long as it has to do with those answers.
Keith: Um, yeah. Um… alright. So, what should I be on the lookout for?
Austin: So, that is the thing that’s gonna give you… you and Hella, you’re able to point out where there are sinkholes and there’s dry ground.
Keith: Uh hm.
Austin: And so you’re able to find like a little, a little section where you’re-
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: -able to stand and actually kind of hang and like, not- not be at risk of like, tripping and falling. So like, that is off the table now, as long as you’re-
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: -willing to communicate that with Hella, and if Lem shows up-
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: -where that stuff is. Or as long as no one hard fails a roll. Do you know what I mean?
Keith: Yeah. Yes.
Austin: Like, I’m not gonna make you Defy Danger to move around this space at this point. So, that’s good.
Keith: Um, what should I be on the lookout for?
Austin: Um… So, I think the thing you notice is… I have to actually look at this move- this thing really quick. Um, there is- you see that it has a long like, um… You follow its root system. Um, its like… Its tail like dips into the water- er into the mud, right? And so you- at first you were just like, ‘Ok. There is a root system here. Like, or there is a tail here, and it goes underground.’ But then you realize it actually… you see it moving in the distance, and you realize it’s like, connected to something else. And you see that there is- What’s the exact phrasing of that question? Was it…
Keith: Um, what…
Austin: ...else should I be on the lookout for?
Keith: What else should I… yeah. What should I be on the lookout for?
Austin: You see that there is other movement that’s behind it.
Keith: Oh, is this an iceberg situation where all we see is…?
Austin: It’s not an iceberg situation.
Keith: Ok.
Austin: It’s two different creatures who are connected with the same root system. They’re basically...
Keith: Ok. Can I see what that other creature is? Or is it another one of these?
Austin: Um, it is under… that one is literally under the ground. So, you see like, a little rumbling over to like, here I would say. Like, over to the southwest, let’s say, of this alligator, closer down towards where Lem is. And you see the- you like, see where the root system connects from the big, grass alligator thing to this other thing.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: And you see that like, ‘Oh, there’s a rumbling under the ground there.’
Keith: Ok.
Austin: So, there is something else under there.
Keith: Alright. So, this is now… Ok, so that…
Austin: Which is…
Keith: That has not made…
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: Which is what?
Austin: Which is probably just not… is probably not another one of these creatures. It’s not just another illusory crocodile. It’s something else.
Keith: Ok. So, that has made this last- this last question I’m gonna ask…. I wasn’t sure if I should ask it, and now I think that I should. Cause now we’ve got us, who are very prepared, we got this giant crocodile that is a monster-
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: -and then we’ve got this mystery third thing. Who’s really in control here?
Austin: Hmm… Oh boy... Um… [sighs] It’s… I don’t think either of you…. It’s you. You still have the drop, right?
Keith: Got it.
Austin: You have not failed a roll. You succeeded at your scout roll. You are still in control. They’re trying to move into position to where they can have control, but they do not have control.
Keith: Uh huh.
Austin: Like, you’re able to move freely. You’re able to break line of sight, so to speak. Um, I mean, not line of sight because it’s not seeing. It’s feeling through these nodes. So, actually like, it has a pretty good sensory like, area thing.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Um, but you aren’t on the defensive in an immediate sense yet. At any point, you could leave. And at any point, you can get an attack in before it attacks you.
Keith: Got it.
Austin: Either way. You could walk away, you know?
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Or you could go in. It’s up to you.
Keith (as Fero): Um… I… I think Hella- I think that you should go help Lem. I’m… I have a thing that I should try. Um…
Ali (as Hella): You don’t need me for this?
Keith (as Fero): No. I’m- I’m just gonna sit. I’m…
Keith: I just sit down on the ground. And I’m using a move that I’ve never used before which is Commune.
Austin: Ok. Hella, are you leaving? Are you…sitting with him?
Ali: Um, I think there’s like- there’s a part of her that’s like,
Ali (as Hella): You sure you’re good?
Keith (as Fero): Yeah, yeah. I’m good.
Ali (as Hella): Ok. I’m only gonna move away a little bit. [Austin laughs]
Keith (as Fero): Ok, that’s fine.
Ali (as Hella): Ok.
Austin: So, what does Commune say?
Keith: ‘When you spend uninterrupted time, an hour or so, in quiet communion with your deity, you lose any spells already granted to you, are granted new spells of your choice,’ um… uh…
Austin: So, you could have done this… I’m gonna say you could have done this on the way here. Or on the mountain even. I don’t want you to have to spend an hour sitting here. Unless you… you want to spend an hour uninterrupted as these things are moving around.
Keith: Well, I was-. I was actually…
Austin: That’s kind of an interesting image.
Keith: Uh, I…
Austin: Or were you just trying to get that so you could then do one of these other spells?
Keith: Um, well, I was- the thing was that I thought that I remembered that Commune actually let me commune with my deity.
Austin: Oh, no. There’s another one…
Keith: And it doesn’t.
Austin: There’s uh… Guidance does that.
Keith: Guidance. That’s the one that I wanted to do there. Guidance.
Austin: Yes. So what we need though there is you do need to choose what your spells are. I don’t- I think… Is Guidance a rote? Guidance might be a rote.
Keith: Ok, so it’s…
Austin: You need to… you need, so… we should… I forgot that you have the cleric thing now.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: So, ‘you lose any spells already granted to you, are granted new spells of your choice whose total levels don’t exceed your own level plus one.’ And that’s your cleric level plus one.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: So, you should have- does it… Your cleric level is one, so you can get up to two levels of spells.
Keith: Ok.
Austin: Guidance is a…
Keith: Guidance is a rote.
Austin: Yeah, so you get Light, Sanctify, and Guidance for free.
Keith: Uh huh.
Austin: You always get those, and then I need to know what those other two spells are basically.
Keith: Um…
Austin: Or other two levels of spells. I don’t think you have any. There’s no second level spell, so you get two of these other first level spells.
Keith: Yeah. Um...
Austin: Which are Cure Light Wounds, Detect Alignment, Cause Fear, Magic Weapon, Sanctuary, Speak with the Dead.
Keith: Um, so I’m going to… Yeah, I’m gonna take Cause Fear.
Austin: Uh huh.
Keith: And uh, what the hell does Magic Weapon do?
Austin: It just gives you like, some dope extra damage.
Keith: When you… ‘the weapon you hold does extra damage.’ Ok. Yeah, so I’ll take Magic Weapon, too.
Austin: If you do that, you can cast that on yourself or on other people.
Keith: Yeah. I’m gonna take Cause Fear and Magic Weapon.
Austin: Alright. Cool.
Keith: And then I’m gonna use…
Austin: Can you mark those? Is that a thing you can do?
Keith: Can I mark them?
Austin: No.
Keith: No, I don’t think so.
Austin: I just didn’t know if there was like, was like ‘These are the ones I have.’ But you’ve just said it. It’s fine.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: I’m gonna write it down under your notes.
Keith: So, yeah, and now I’m gonna be…
Austin: [typing] Cause Fear and….
Keith: I’m gonna be using Guidance.
Austin: Ok, so give me a spell casting roll.
Keith: Uh, I don’t… Do I have to roll for guidance? It doesn’t say that I do. Here.
Austin: Hm, you.. does it…
Keith: It just says, ‘a symbol of your deity appears before you and gestures towards the direction…’
Austin: It is a rote. You still have to cast the spell, I’m pretty sure,
Keith: Ok.
Austin: Cast a Spell. Uh, one second. ‘When you unleash a spell granted to you by your deity, roll + wisdom. On a ten plus the spell is successful,’ blah, blah, blah. Yeah, you still have to cast those spells.
Keith: Eleven.
Austin: Alright. So, read me… Oh, it says it. It should say it. Oh no, that just says the thing.
Keith: Yeah, it just says Cast a Spell.
Austin: So now tell me what that spell does.
Keith: Um, Guidance. ‘The symbol of your deity appears before you and gestures towards the direction or course of action your deity would have you take. Then disappears. The message is through… uh, the message is through gesture only. You’re communication is through this spell. Your communication through this spell is severely limited.’
Austin: So, I think what happens is… So, you’re praying to Samol here, right?
Keith: Yeah. Uh huh.
Austin: Um, so first of all, there is just like… You hear or feel this sense of grunt of like a ‘Ah, what do you want?’ Not in a mean way. In like a yawning, waking up way, you know?
Keith: And probably in an… in a way that hasn’t happened for Samol in a while. Like…
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: When was the last time someone prayed to Samol for guidance?
Austin: You know, like I can think of those times. But it’s not… common. And it’s not ever from people who are fighting- er who are in front of weird root crocodiles, right?
Keith: Yeah. Uh huh.
Austin: It’s a lot of like… it’s a lot of like, ‘Oh, is the harvest gonna be ok this year?’-
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: -from certain tribes who still worship him. Or it’s from…
Keith: Even know who he is.
Austin: Yeah, who even know who he is. It’s from like, I believe Samot has prayed to Samol in the last… in many years of his life. Um, for better and worse. And sometimes he gets an answer, [lightly laughing] and sometimes he doesn’t. Uh, in this case though, I think what Samol shows you is um… you know, I told you that there’s like, a bit of… a bit of dry ground that you’re on. You can kind of see it.
Keith: Uh huh.
Austin: Um, I think he… two things happen. One, a… there is a- the thing that’s underground is marked with um, some grass. Grass starts growi… like taller grass begins to grow wherever the other creature is under the ground. And it moves with it. Like, so like, as that other creature slowly, bulkily kind of crawls through the ground, there is like, grass that’s moving on top of it, so both Hella and Lem can see exactly where it is. And you can see where it is at a glance. And then two, I think, Samol just like, makes a… um, makes sturdy the ground for a brief second on the way out. Like, to the way out. And basically just like, draws you a pathway to get past all this shit and not deal with it. Samol isn’t here to have you fight some shit, you know?
Keith: Uh huh.
Austin: Samol’s decision here is like, Just leave the boat behind. I don’t give a… why do you care about a boat?’
Keith: [whispered] That’s what I’m...
Austin: But it’s easy when you’re Samol… for Samol to be like… doesn’t care about a boat because he’s Samol.
Keith: Right. Yeah.
Austin: So, that is the… that is the direction he gives you. He basically draws you a pathway out to the side and up and around. Um, and then also makes… makes the turtle… the other one’s a turtle. It’s an underground turtle… visible by putting some grass on it.
Keith: Ok.
Austin: So, those are your… That’s your guidance.
Keith: Alright.
Austin: Welcome to the world of getting like, helpful, but not that fucking helpful guidance from a god. [laughs] You don’t get to like, be like, ‘Hey, what’s up, buddy?’ You just get, ‘Yeah, here’s some grass.’
Keith: No, that’s… I mean, you know. Samol didn’t say like, ‘Yeah, you should kill this thing.’ Samol was like, ‘Who gives a shit?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s right. Right. Who gives a shit? Let’s just go.’
Ali: Ok.
Keith: And I go… I guess I go back, and I tell… I tell them… I assume that their both moving the boat or something?
Ali: Hella’s like…
Keith: Or Hella, did you ever go all the way back or did you…?
Ali: No, I like-
Austin: Let’s talk about Lem. Lem, what have you been doing this whole time? Cause this has been a little bit of time.
Keith: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ali: Yeah.
Austin: So, Lem, talk to me about where you’re at.
Jack: Um, I think Lem was like, ‘You should go deal with the crocodile. Uh… and I’ll hide the boat’ like, thinking that he was going to do apparative magic, and then just kind of stopped and looked at where he was. Um, and is just… just in a complete um, panic of indecision. Right? Of like, I spent a long time learning how this… No, not even learning how. Learning that this thing works, that I can do.
Austin: Uh hm.
Jack: That it- that it- that it works, and it got me here. I made a… I made a river, and I destroyed like a really significant place. And also, it works.
Austin: Right.
Jack: Um, and so I think that when we come back to Lem, he’s just kind of like, sitting in the mud next to the boat. Um, just kind of like, thinking it over, and then… And you can see on his face, he’s got this look of like, ‘Ok, right. What if I just hide it? What if I just hide it like… like people hide things?’ I don’t- Is there anything around that I could use to hide a boat? I guess, I could like…
Austin: You could like, yeah. Go ahead.
Jack: I mean, [sighs] Everything I would…
Austin: [interjecting] You could cover it in mud and dirt and vines.
Jack: I could cover it in mud and dirt. I could… Yeah.
Austin: But it’s really hard to hide a big boat. It’s really hard.
Jack: What- Maybe what we-
Austin: [overlapping] You could shove it into the side...
Jack: -could do...
Austin: You could shove it into the walls of the stonework. You could like…
Jack: Yeah, like…
Austin: By shove it, I mean… it’s heavy. It’s a big, heavy boat.
Jack: Alright. Here’s my… here’s my suggestion. Can I see Hella from where I am ? Or have they like, gone out of… out of...
Austin: They were pretty far off.
Jack: ...out of eyesight.
Austin: But you could see them. You could see their bodies, you know?
Jack: Can I like, call out to Hella and be like, ‘Hella, can I run something past you?’
Austin: Yeah, Hella was coming back towards you anyway. So, or sort of, right? Hella?
Ali: Yeah, I was like, in the middle of them at this point. I can see like, if Fero needs help.
Austin: Yeah, yeah.
Jack: These two… these two assholes.
Austin: Uh huh. [Ali laughs]
Jack (as Lem): Ok, I can hide it with magic. I think I can hide it with… with the pattern. I can… I can use the pattern to make the boat look like something else. You know? Like a… like a rock. Or like a… like a bird or like a… like some mud, right? But that might destroy… like the mountain?
Ali (as Hella): The whole mountain?
Jack (as Lem): I don’t… I don’t know. Like perhaps. So, what if we just… tip it over? What if we tip the boat on its side. Hear me out.
Ali (as Hella): Hmm…
Jack (as Lem): Like, we make sure everything’s all sealed up, we tip the boat on its side, and we like, cover the… the hull in like, mud, and we cover the sails in mud vines…
Ali (as Hella): No.
Jack (as Lem): ...so it just looks like a…
Ali (as Hella): Then it’ll be all dirty. And then we come back and it’s all dirty?
Jack (as Lem): Well, then we’re gonna be going down a river.
Ali (as Hella): Well… [exhales]
Austin: You could bring the sails down and like, put them somewhere or carry them with you.
Ali: Yeah.
Austin: You can do stuff with the sails. I want to be clear, the sails aren’t like, stapled onto the mast.
Jack: They’re not like fixed.
Ali: No, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: You can pull down and store them somewhere. They might get stolen. They might get eaten. Who knows?
Jack (as Lem): So, these are kind of the three options, right? Magic...
Jack: Sorry… this is something I want to retcon. I don’t think Lem would call it… Uh, they call it pattern magic, yeah, I guess.
Austin: They do.
Jack: Ok.
Austin: And Lem has been pretty big on calling it pattern magic and not like, semiotics or whatever.
Jack: Oh. semiotics.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jack: I was making sure that I wasn’t using shorthand that the character wouldn’t use.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack (as Lem): Ok, option one, magic... Option two, we just kind of leave the boat here. Option three, the sort of dirty boat method. [long pause, Ali laughs] And it’s your boat, so I wanted to run this past you.
Ali: I think [laughs] I think Hella is just sort of faded and confused at this point. Is just like,
Ali (as Hella): Fine. Put a bunch of mud on my boat. [overlapped] Just let me get the sails.
Jack (as Lem): [overlapping] I’m gonna need you to help me push it over.
Ali (as Hella): Ok, I’ll help you push over… [overlapped] I’ll help you push it over.
Austin: [overlapping] It’s a big boat. I think this might be a roll, Hella.
Ali: Great. Wonderful.
Jack: I can help.
Keith: You have that move, right? The move-a-big-thing move?
Austin: This is Bend Bars… Bend Bars, Push... Lift Gates. Yeah.
Ali: [laughing] This is Bend Bars, Lift Gates.
Jack: [laughs] Bend bars, lift gates, tip boats.
Austin: Tip boats.
Ali: Ok.
Austin: That’s the higher level version of it. Go ahead and click it.
Ali: Yeah.
Austin: What’s your strength? Three? Er, eighteen plus three? Wow.
Ali: That’s a fourteen.
Jack: Oh my god.
Austin: So, you got three, you’ve got option here. ‘Choose three. Um, it doesn’t take very long, nothing of value is damaged…’
Jack: Oh my god.
Austin: ‘...it doesn’t make an inordinate amount of noise, or you can fix the thing again without a lot of effort.’ So, which is it? Which of the three of those four?
Ali: Ooo. Ok. [laughing] There’s a wild card in there that I was not expecting.
Jack: This is a great move.
Ali: Um… [sighs] What a long day. Um, I think nothing of value is damaged.
Austin: Hell yeah.
Ali: Um, oh, I’m so torn. I can definitely fix it again without a lot of effort.
Austin: Yeah, yeah.
Ali: I…
Austin: Which in this case also just means you can get it up and running again very quickly.
Ali: Yeah.
Austin: Do you know what I mean?
Ali: Uh huh, yes I do.
Austin: Cause there’s a way in which you could have kept it from breaking, but it would have taken you a while to get it un-mudded… or muddy.
Ali: Right.
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: Oh, I don’t know the priority versus time versus noise. Um, I think it doesn’t take a very long time.
Austin: So, it does make a lot of noise.
Ali: I’m sorry that it does. [Jack laughs]
Austin: Love it. No, this is better.
Ali: [overlapped] But I don’t think that she cares, and she’s really upset.
Keith: [overlapping] Wait, we’re fixing the boat instead of?
Austin: No, no, no, no.
Ali: No, no, no. We’re tipping it over very quickly.
[Jack de Quidt’s “Something” begin playing in background]
Austin: And covering it with mud and all that. And so, yeah. Fero, it’s like, ‘Ok. Like, thanks… thanks… thanks, big guy. Thanks, Samol.’ And then you hear this like, [foley] ‘Fwunk’. And you turn and look, and the boat has been tipped over and is being covered by mud. And instantly that grass starts moving closer to them. And so does the gator.
[Music plays out to end]