Sangfielle 49: Dead in the Dust Pt. 2
Transcribed by: Iris (@sacredwhim)
AUSTIN: Sangfielle is a series that draws on elements of dark fantasy, horror, and Gothic fiction. As such, a list of content warnings will always be made available in the episode description.
[RECAP BEGINS]
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): Well, the thralls are all dealt with, and it seems like we’ve been rewarded. Have you taken a look outside yet? The gods have delivered a carnival upon us for the work we did purifying this town.
KEITH (as LYKE): What?
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): In any case, I’m here to deliver a notice handed down from the town council. If one of you could sign it to approve that you’ve—or to show that you’ve received the message?
ALI (as MARN): Yeah, uh…
[MUSIC INTRO BEGINS - “Sangfielle” by Jack de Quidt]
JACK (as PICKMAN): Wait, hold on, hold on. Nobody sign anything.
JANINE (as ES): Do you want to read it first?
JACK (as PICKMAN): What does it say?
AUSTIN: It says “Contract Termination”.
JACK (as PICKMAN): Oh, no, we’re not signing this.
ART (as DUVALL): I thought we were, like, archaeologists.
AUSTIN (as MALEISTER PRICE): No. What?
JACK (as PICKMAN): No.
ART (as DUVALL): What do you think our jobs were?
DRE (as CHINE): I ‘unno.
JANINE (as ES): Elegant goons?
KEITH (as LYKE): Detectives. We were detectives.
AUSTIN: As you open the door again, now without Maleister Price standing in the way, you get a full view of the street, and you catch a big sign. And it says “The Carnival of Moted Light”. And all around you, the town has been filled with carnival games and rides.
[STITCH]
AUSTIN: The people who are here at the Boundless Conclave note that the person who is running the knife-throwing is a one-horned devil.
SYLVI: Nevermind, I’m going to the one—the horned knife-throwing thing.
AUSTIN: Ah, nah, you are at the rollercoaster, my friend.
SYLVI: Damn it!
[STITCH]
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): You seem… angry. I understand that this is not where you thought the day would go. But you have limited recourse. This is not your town. Do you think the people here would appreciate it if you killed the number one employer in the middle of the street?
KEITH (as LYKE): It’s the principle.
AUSTIN (as DAYWARD YVE): You cannot live by principles. You live by necessities.
[STITCH]
AUSTIN: You get a look from Chantilly Scathe. You can hear the clink of her cane on the floor; you can feel it, because you’re touching the train. And then there is a brief and quick sound of the air being slashed, and you hear a few guttural moans. About a minute later, she steps back off the train, and approaches you. And your eyes note blood dripping from a small slit at the handle of her cane. And she leans in close to you, and with a mechanical tinge, says:
AUSTIN (as CHANTILLY SCATHE): I knew you could ask nicely.
[STITCH]
AUSTIN: I think this tears through his chest. And the knife comes down, and lands in his leg. And everyone screams, and yells, and there is chaos.
KEITH: ‘That guy up there killed that guy!’
AUSTIN: People are yelling and running, people are shoving each other, the shoves turn to fights, fights turn to more violence, everyone is scared.
[RECAP ENDS]
[MUSIC INTRO ENDS]
AUSTIN: Es, I’m imagining that you are north of this somewhat. I’m imagining—I didn’t say this, but I think you are like, up this general direction, you know? Near one of these big trees south of the town council, or maybe over near the Automat. Somewhere in that general direction. You hear people screaming and running. And you also heard a gunshot go off, you know? And I think probably throughout the town, you probably hear another couple of gunshots as some of these shitty deputies are like, ‘oh, we’re under attack!’ You know? Just shooting up into the hills randomly.
JANINE: I think Es, when these various things happen, goes to the nearest deputy and says ‘Hey, I heard something over there. You should go.’
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
JANINE: ‘You should go make sure everything’s okay.’
AUSTIN: I think he does that, he’s not gonna—he’s like ‘oh, yeah, okay.’ Of course. Dyre is like:
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): Well, this is no good. I have places to be, and the sooner this carnival ends, the better.
JANINE (as ES): Well, what are the conditions for an ending, really?
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): It has to get through the… the show. I could exert a little power and give us a way out, but that wouldn’t end it.
JANINE (as ES): Well… [SIGHS] I have to be honest with you, I got fired today.
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): Aw.
JANINE (as ES): I’m not—you know, it’s—I think everyone else is taking it a little harder than I am. I tend to think that you cannot force people to value you, and you can try your best, and if they don’t value you after that, you should find somewhere else that does. And I tried very hard to help here. And I think I did a very good job, and it didn’t matter. So, if they think they can do better, I’m not inclined to step in. However, if there’s something that I can do for you to help you hasten this show and put the carnival at an end, I would be happy to help.
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): [SIGHS] Hm. If we can start to calm these people and get them to the tent, that would go a long way. And if you can help me do that, then I might have further opportunity? I’m heading towards Concentus, you see. One final piece of the puzzle. And I would love you to come with me. Provide a… a sort of escort.
JANINE (as ES): Are there any spare costumes?
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): I’ll see what I have.
AUSTIN: And he dips back behind the counter and, you know, probably comes out with one. Um, Dyre Ode gang, you also hear the chaos.
JACK: Wait, Dayward YVE gang.
KEITH: Dayward YVE gang?
AUSTIN: What’d I say, Dyre Ode? I meant Dayward—yeah, Dayward YVE gang. Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
KEITH: It is all—like, 90% the same name.
AUSTIN: It’s basically the same name. One of them sucks a lot. The other one is just very dangerous.
[KEITH LAUGHS]
KEITH: And the one that sucks a lot is not very dangerous anymore.
AUSTIN: Not anymore.
KEITH: How do we—you said how do we react to the chaos?
AUSTIN: Yeah. And you’re the furthest away from it, being up at the train station and coming back down—maybe not the furthest away, because I bet there are rides up near the abbey and the trade hall and, you know, other stuff—those people probably are looking down at it being like, ‘what’s all the ruckus?’ You know?
KEITH: I feel like my first reaction would be like, ‘did they somehow find out about this?’ But then I was like, that doesn’t make any sense, that—
AUSTIN: But you don’t know about it yet either. Unless Pickman’s told you at this point.
KEITH: I was just thinking that some time had passed and probably we heard about it, but maybe not yet.
AUSTIN: No one’s found a body.
KEITH: I mean, is Pickman trying to hide this from us?
JACK: No, but—
KEITH: Okay.
JACK: If gunshots and chaos have erupted elsewhere in the town, now might not be the time to tell. I’m—Pickman is looking very pleased with herself, for some reason.
[ALI CHUCKLES]
JACK: [CHUCKLES] Um… But yeah, you know, turning her head to look at the—in the direction of the gunshots.
ALI: Ain’t our job anymore. [CHUCKLES] No, I’m kidding.
AUSTIN: You hear somebody like, ‘not again.’ And then yeah, you see deputies begin to run in that direction.
KEITH (as LYKE): We should prob—we should figure out what’s going on, right?
JACK (as PICKMAN): Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Sounds good.
ART (as DUVALL): Wow. I just thought that one of you would take a more spite-based approach here. I thought I would hear at least one of you be like ‘well, they fired us, so we’re not gonna help’, but—I’m pleasantly surprised, but surprised.
KEITH (as LYKE): Marn said, you know, under breath, ‘not our job anymore.’
[ALI AND KEITH CHUCKLE]
KEITH (as LYKE): It was very quiet.
ALI (as MARN): That’s as far as I—I have a—
ART (as DUVALL): Yeah, the ‘under breath’ worked, I didn’t—
ALI (as MARN): I have a duty as a healer. That was between the group. Just for us. Yeah, let’s go. Let’s—
KEITH (as LYKE): Also, the rest of us are down there, you know, it seems like, dangerous.
ART (as DUVALL): Again, I’m not trying to argue with you that you should not help.
ALI (as MARN): I’m not very good at spite.
JACK: How valuable in terms of real—if I wanted to give Mr. Kenson and Ana Berylia—no. No. [CHUCKLING] No, I changed my mind halfway through.
AUSTIN: Ah. Uh-huh.
JACK: That stuff can—
AUSTIN: Yeah, there’ll be time. Presumably.
JACK: Yeah, there’ll be time. Presumably.
AUSTIN: Maybe.
JACK: They’re gonna figure something out. Or Chantilly Scathe is just gonna be like ‘well, I’m leaving,’ and they’ll be like, ‘our guy’s on that train.’
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
JACK: Who knows?
AUSTIN: I mean, you know, if you’ve walked away at this point, they—maybe at the sound of gunfire, they rush onboard to be like ‘oh, we’ve got to get our boss and get out of here,’ and they don’t find him or the deputies.
JACK: Oh, no bodies?
AUSTIN: Yeah, that’s what I said, there’s no bodies in there.
JACK: Oh, that’s great. That turned out really well.
AUSTIN: Train dealt with them.
JACK: But we don’t see any of that. Let’s go.
AUSTIN: Mm-mm. Mhm.
KEITH: The whole way down I’m complaining about Dayward YVE and how much of a fucking asshole he is.
AUSTIN: I wish it was quietly.
KEITH: And saying ‘He’s gonna get his. This motherfucker’s gonna get his!’
AUSTIN: [LAUGHING] Yeah, uh-huh. ‘One day!’
KEITH: One day!
AUSTIN: Uh, Chine, do you want to say what you said in chat?
DRE: Yeah. I’m remembering that one of my major beats is to “destroy a haven, returning the land to the Course.”
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
DRE: I was fired this morning.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
DRE: And I know Chine doesn’t know this, because I wasn’t there for the conversation, but—Dyre Ode said that this dust storm that’s creating the carnival is like an extension of the Course.
AUSTIN: It is. You can sense that. You’re Course-tuned at this point. I think that It is extremely of the Course in this way such that—or is, maybe not of the Course in this way, but is also attuned to it in this way, such that you can pretty clearly tell that this is like, you know. I think It’s wagging its tail, and like, playfully barking at the wall of sand that’s surrounding the town.
DRE: Mhm.
AUSTIN: As if like, recognizing another animal. You know? Like, ‘who are you? Who are you?’ Like, that type of thing.
DRE: ‘Can we be friends?’
AUSTIN: Yeah, exactly. So you’re—can you read what you wrote? You wrote “How do I empower the dust and the carnival?” Right?
DRE: Yep. Mhm.
AUSTIN: Yeah. I mean, I think you know that you have to do something—I mean, you don’t know this particularly, but kind of something like Pickman just did. Right? Which is like, you have to try to reach out to it—I mean, that’s one way to do it, is to like, talk your way into it. Maybe the other way—give me a Discern. I mean, this is funny, because even a failure on this could actually go away. I mean, you—basically, you have to investigate this wall of sand somehow.
DRE: Sure.
AUSTIN: It’s Cursed Domain for sure. And I would say Discern. If you want to investigate it some other way, let me know.
DRE: No, yeah, that’s fine.
AUSTIN: Okay. This is Risky.
[PAUSE]
AUSTIN: Oh, it’s a 5 anyway, so no. Um—oh boy. Take 6 Blood Stress—
DRE: Hell yeah.
AUSTIN: —as the sand recog—it like whips at you, and begins to—
DRE: What Tier are we at right now?
AUSTIN: —abrasively rub against you. Tier Two. This has made it a Tier Two. Actually, I think maybe this is a Tier Three, so take only 3. I think this thing being here has made this a Tier Three. You’re at the middle of a weird dust-storm carnival that arrived and transformed the town, and a train just stabbed and ate someone, and the carnival stole the coin from the Caravan of the Coin, and there—like, this is a wild—yes. Yeah. So give me that, give me your fallout test? Oh, you—yeah, you still took some, right? Yeah.
DRE: Yeah. Woof.
AUSTIN: Take Minor Fallout. You hate to see it. I think, take, uh… is Blinded a Minor? I think it is. But it gets in your eyes, you know? You just can’t see.
DRE: Okay.
AUSTIN: Let’s see if that’s true. No, that might be Major. Blinded might be Major, so don’t take that. I’m always bad at reading this cheat sheet, unfortunately. Yeah, that is Major. So don’t take that, because you only got a Minor, right?
DRE: Mhm.
AUSTIN: Take, um… take Ringing Head. “Your head swims and you taste blood in your mouth; the next action you take is Dangerous, the one after that is Risky,” and then you remove it. A classic here.
DRE: Okay.
AUSTIN: I’ll just drop it in for you. Boom. The—as you step into the—or as you get close to it and try to make sense of what you’re looking at, the sand and dust kind of sweeps up into your vision and around you, and for a second you feel as if you’re being pushed back, and you actually see the sand take a sort of humanoid form, but with like, long, lanky arms, and like, reverse-jointed legs; a sort of monstrous, almost alien form, as it shoves you back and steps closer. And what I’m gonna do is put a clock on the screen.
ART: Drink!
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. I mean, it’s been a minute, honestly.
SYLVI: It’s been a while. I feel like this has been a low-clock season.
AUSTIN: Yeah, this is not a—
ART: I think it’s been a clock-free season.
AUSTIN: Yeah, this is not a clock game, really.
ART: You gotta play the hits.
AUSTIN: Yeah, uh-huh.
ART: For the—for the fin—for the—for the—
AUSTIN: For the whatever this is. Near-finale.
ART: Yeah, it’s not finale, but you know.
AUSTIN: I mean listen, we’re fuckin’ killing people out here, so maybe—I don’t know how close we are.
ART: The end of the show, you play the hits.
AUSTIN: This is a 4-step clock. Here, at one step, the thing you notice, Chine, is that the welcome sign at the southern end of town gets swallowed by the sand as it moves closer in. You’ve angered it, and it’s starting to swallow things—in fact, some of the buildings, some of the gardens; and I think in touching you, you’re able to kind of realize what it’s doing. Maybe it scrapes some of your shirt away and brings it in. Or some of your flesh, I don’t know if you’re wearing a shirt.
When a town—or when the storm catches something between destinations, it drafts whoever that is, or whatever that is, into performance at the next destination and then they’re free to go. When a town doesn’t let the storm—let the show go on and let it complete its night at the town, it will begin to swallow the whole town to make them permanent additions to the carnival. That’s why in the mix, besides people who have been caught up on the way from Point A to Point B, you do have people who are just permanent carnival barkers. Or permanent, you know, concession stand workers or ride operators. And seeing this and feeling this now, you can see, you can look into their eyes and into their faces and you can see that there’s a grit to them, like they’re very, very tightly-packed, and kind of glued-together dust.
KEITH: Hm. This is—
AUSTIN: So you’ve marked that once. It’s only a 4-step clock. If you fuck with this thing three more times, it will try to swallow the whole town.
KEITH: Hey, but look on the bright side, you did wanna empower the dust.
DRE: Mhm.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
KEITH: So.
DRE: And, I mean, it sounds like fucking with it also includes, like, not letting the show happen.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. That’s definitely worth a tick. I think trying to escape is one, trying to fuck with the show is definitely at least another one. Maybe you can get more other ways.
DRE: Okay.
AUSTIN: It sounds like Marn and Es, at least, are team ‘calm people down, try to get everybody under control.’ Is that right?
JANINE: Yeah. I have a plan.
AUSTIN: Es, what is your new outfit? What’s your uniform?
JANINE: [SMILING] So, I’ve been looking up vintage circus costumes.
JACK: ‘Yes… Yes!’ Sickos voice.
[DRE LAUGHS]
JANINE: [LAUGHING] And I started—I started in my mind with a really clear idea of the sort of early 20th century, like, the lady who would stand on a horse while the horse was running in a circle.
AUSTIN: Yeah, sure. A classic.
JACK: Classic carnival.
JANINE: But the—I ended up finding a vintage tightrope-walker costume that I like way, way, way more. And it’s a Pinterest thing, which means that it’s uselessly hard to, like, be like ‘oh, it’s here—’
JACK: Woah!
SYLVI: Ooh.
JANINE: But it’s tagged like, ‘shapely vintage tightrope-walker’ or some shit like that. But, in a nutshell, like, dark stockings, and then the—I think the important part is the really structured, solid-looking bodice that’s got like a really small, tight waist. I imagine maybe there’s like a skirt component or like, some puffy shorts, and then there’s a big flowery corsage on the one shoulder strap, and then like a big ribbon tied on the arm, it’s all very—it’s very fancy. So I imagine it’s something like that, but with a mask component that covers the en—a mask that like has—it is a whole face mask. It is a mask with a face upon it. This is important. For plan.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. What type of mask is it? Do we know?
JANINE: I kind of picture it as being a porcelain kind of, like, painted, um… you know, like one of those fancy clowns?
AUSTIN: Ah, sure, yeah. I gotcha.
JANINE: Yeah, that kind of thing. Um… yeah. Because my plan is to basically present as an acrobat. Like, get somewhere really high up, like if there’s a flagpole or just like a tall—like a—something, something like that.
JANINE: Or even—rigging up a trapeze, I think, would be ideal, but that seems like a lot to ask. And to, in this costume, true form, dazzle everyone, and then sort of redirect their attention to the main show.
JACK: Wow.
AUSTIN: Ah, sure. That’s fun. This time you’re gonna use that power immediately instead of waiting until we realize you have it the whole time and then—
JANINE: Yes.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Uh-huh.
JANINE: And importantly, so I have—importantly, and I should—I feel like I need to mention this because the last time I used this, the last time I used my true form, it came with giving everyone damage, Stress—that is technically only for adversaries.
AUSTIN: Ah. Sure.
JANINE: And this crowd, I would say, is not adversaries.
AUSTIN: Is not your adversary. Yeah. Mhm.
JANINE: And also, I’m trying to—I’m trying to mitigate the horror effect by having a face.
JANINE: Like a mask face—
AUSTIN: A mask face.
JANINE: So that it’s just like, ‘oh, she’s glowing and pretty, and are those hairs or something?’
AUSTIN: ‘And doing something some sort of weird—this is a—’
JANINE: ‘I don’t know, but she’s very far away up in the sky, and it’s very cool.’
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Alright, is this—
KEITH: ‘That’s one person I know isn’t an eyeball.’
JANINE: [CHUCKLES] Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, I—
AUSTIN: What is the—okay.
JANINE: Again, ‘cause I have ‘Great And Terrible’ now, which sort of leveled up my true form to be a little bit not just a straightforward eyeball. I’ve described it as kind of like glass and opal with a kind of internal light at first.
AUSTIN: Ooh. That’s fun.
JANINE: So it’s a little more like—yeah. It’s a little more circus-friendly, let’s say.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Alright, give me—take your d4 Echo Stress.
JANINE: Um… Wait, what?
AUSTIN: That thing that you do requires—it says to take d4 Echo Stress to do it. Right? Enthrall?
JANINE: Uh… Oh, right, yes, yeah.
AUSTIN: “You may mark d4 Stress to Echo.” Yeah.
JANINE: The thing I’m gonna do is I’m gonna put—actually, well, Echo—no, Echo helps me. Echo’s—
AUSTIN: Yeah, Echo’s kind of okay, right? For you. You end up getting some stuff with Echo. Well, take 4.
JANINE: I got 4. Straight-up 4, okay.
AUSTIN: Straight-up 4.
JANINE: I am gonna actually—well. No. You know what, I’ve never used my Echo thing, I just—I’m just gonna do it. I just want to—
AUSTIN: What’s your Echo thing?
JANINE: I have like a thing that I can roll Echo to do, and I’ve literally never used it, and I just want to use it once.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JANINE: Anyway, I’ll do my Fallout.
[PAUSE]
JANINE: No Fallout.
AUSTIN: No Fallout. You got a 12. Crushed it.
JANINE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay, and then the one thing you’re doing is beginning to direct people? Right? Towards—to calm them down and direct them somewhere, or you’re just trying to…?
JANINE: Yeah, so like, the idea is basically to stun them into—
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JANINE: Like, everyone’s panicking, I just want to—
AUSTIN: Everyone stops, yeah, yeah, yeah.
JANINE: ‘Everyone just stop. Check this out. Let’s all head into the main show.’
[KEITH CHUCKLES]
JANINE: [CHUCKLING] Is kind of the—
AUSTIN: I think—can we still get a Compel - Haven roll, and Marn can help you on this since Marn’s helping you down below? Yeah.
JANINE: I think that makes sense. I think it makes sense for everyone to stop, but what happens after that is still a little bit of a—
AUSTIN: A little bit of a—yeah. So then go ahead and give me a Compel - Haven with Marn helping. Or Cursed, because this is still a Cursed place.
JANINE: Yeah, I was gonna say, this carnival doesn’t seem particularly Haven-y.
AUSTIN: It’s still a town, but.
JANINE: And I will take Compel - Cursed, because I have Cursed, so.
AUSTIN: You have Cursed, so there you go.
JANINE: So that makes it a little more appealing. I basically never have the things that we need to roll.
AUSTIN: Marn, how are you helping?
JANINE: Is Marn—yeah.
ALI: You know what, it sounds like I’m Dazed, I’m—[LAUGHING] I don’t know—to be honest I really—you know?
AUSTIN: Oh. Fuck. I hadn’t thought about that, had I? Shit.
ALI: I’d love to be helping, I mean I’m, you know, very—I—
AUSTIN: Yeah, y’all didn’t change—
ALI: —after the outfit change, and after being up in the hill, I don’t know that I know that this is—maybe at the point of the glowing I know this is Es. Maybe Es does like a hand signal once she’s up on the thing and it’s like ‘oh, that’s Es.’
KEITH: Did you see—
AUSTIN: Oh, right, you didn’t see Es doing this before. Because you were down in the wax prison when it happened.
ALI: Oh, sure, yeah.
JANINE: Oh, right. [LAUGHS]
ALI: But I’ve seen Es transform. I know the glow.
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. You don’t know this effect. This is new.
JANINE: The glow is new. The glow is brand new.
AUSTIN: You know the eyeball, you don’t know the glow.
JANINE: Uh-huh.
ALI: Sure. But, okay, so, but—let’s—okay.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
ALI: Es goes up on a trapeze and is like ‘hey, everybody,’ sees Marn and the ground, gives, like, a hand signal—we have hand signals, we’ve used hand signals before.
AUSTIN: The hand signals. Yeah.
ALI: Marn is like, ‘oh, this is Es.’
AUSTIN: Doin’ a little thing.
ALI: Turns her back to Es, I guess? [LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: Yeah, this is where it breaks down.
ALI: To face the crowd, to be like, ‘hear ye, hear ye.’
AUSTIN: Oh, right. So you’re looking out at the crowd instead of looking as Es goes up in the air.
ALI: Right. Yeah. [LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: Take the extra die. Let’s see your roll.
JANINE: [LAUGHS] Uh, Standard, or?
AUSTIN: Standard, yeah.
JANINE: Actually, wait. This is—’cause I’m in my—if I’m in my true form—
AUSTIN: Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. No, it’s no longer Risky. Didn’t you get that upgrade?
JANINE: That’s certain things—oh, it’s so hard to, like, see what the fuck I have right now.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Too many things.
JANINE: Uh… Nope, that’s not it. No, it’s Risky for me, yeah. ‘Cause Sneak, Evade, Kill, and Hunt are not Risky for me.
AUSTIN: Oh, I see. But Compel still is.
JANINE: This is a murder form. But Compel is still Risky.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I guess you are in your murder form. This is true. Alright, well, it’s Risky. You know—
JANINE: Mhm. It’s Risky to use this thing to not terrify and hurt people.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I guess that makes sense to me, so.
JANINE: Yeah. Do I get a bonus from the costume or anything?
JACK: [CHUCKLES] A clown bonus.
JANINE: I did ask for a costume and get one.
AUSTIN: You did get a costume.
JANINE: And it’s a circus costume. It’s official.
AUSTIN: You’re wearing a—I’ll give you—yeah. Uh-huh. Go for it.
[JANINE CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: That’s a success at a cost. What is the cost? I feel like this is, uh… this is Supplies cost? Someone—when you changed into your stuff, someone like, riled through your shit and stole some stuff from you. Take 3 Supplies Stress.
[ALI LAUGHS]
JANINE: What? Fuck off. That’s rude. That’s so rude.
AUSTIN: In the chaos, someone robbed you. Mhm.
JANINE: I’m putting my one bonus thing into Supplies. I’m only gonna take 2.
AUSTIN: Okay. Give me that Fallout test to see if we get the very rare Supplies Stress. Especially very rare during what I guess is a downtime episode? Question mark?
JANINE: Yeah. Minor Fallout.
AUSTIN: Minor Fallout! Unbelievable.
ALI: Oh, do I have to roll too, since I assisted?
AUSTIN: Oh you do, because you assisted, yeah, absolutely.
ALI: Jesus christ.
AUSTIN: I’ll give you the Stress. One second. No, you take 1 Supplies Fallout, Marn. Yeah. Stress, Stress.
ALI: Oh, but then it doesn’t hit me, because I have 1 Protection—okay.
AUSTIN: Because you have 1 Protection.
JANINE: Hang on, a thing I just realized is that because we’re in Cursed, I can just roll whenever I want to remove Stress.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. That does not—you still have to roll a Fallout test. As soon as you get Stress, you have to take—you have to roll the—
JANINE: I know, but I could have done it before is all I was saying—but then I wouldn’t be able to do the Echo—man. Nevermind, it’s fine.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. I mean as soon as you got that Echo Stress, you—oh, so you’re saying before you did the roll, right? Yeah. That’s true. Yeah. I mean, this is not that bad. Right? This is a—I’m giving you—
JANINE: I just already have a Minor. So it’s—they’re stackin’ up.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Mhm. Let’s see. Take Empty. “You’re down to your last scraps of food, your last scraping of spireblack. You cannot use Supplies Protection.” I know you just put that 1 in there, so that’s how that goes sometimes.
JANINE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: People do listen to you, fundamentally, and begin to calm down—I mean, they’re magically stunned. And then begin to walk towards the tent. For those of you coming from the train station, this is just kind of weird and confusing at this point, ‘cause it’s like—’okay, I guess everyone’s going to the train station. I just heard gunshots, but okay. Sure.’ Or—not the train station, going to the big top. The big tent. And at this point, I mean—it seems like Chine wants this to go bad. But everybody else is going to the circus. And I want to take a quick break, because I need everyone to brainstorm one act at this cursed circus.
JACK: Okay. Should we take five?
AUSTIN: Let’s take five.
ART: Like an act for the circus?
AUSTIN: Yep.
ART: Or an act for—
AUSTIN: Not for you, just a thing that’s happening at the circus. Yep.
ART: And you want it to be circus-like, but bad.
AUSTIN: But—I mean, weird. Weird. Let’s say weird.
ART: I’m just trying to understand the assignment.
ALI: What are circus things?
AUSTIN: I don’t know, you tell me.
ALI: Does anyone want mine? [LAUGHING] Does anyone want to think of two?
AUSTIN: Absolutely not. Alright. Be right back.
[STITCH]
AUSTIN: Alright. Here, at the big top tent, at the Carnival of Moted Light, there are eight acts after Chantilly Scathe gives the big introduction. We each get to name one act, and describe it for the crowd gathered. Also—
ART: Oh, it’s a—it’s a big top act, not a sideshow act.
AUSTIN: Correct. This is the center stage. This is it, buddy. Chine, it sounds like you’re trying to fuck this up somehow. So, you tell me as we describe these when you’re making actions to try to fuck it up, which could derail the whole thing. In the case that it gets derailed, we should still list what our acts are because I want to know what they are. Who wants to go first?
JANINE: Do we need a name for the act or can we just describe the act?
AUSTIN: No, you can just describe it.
KEITH: I can go first.
JANINE: Should we have a name for the act?
AUSTIN: If you’d like to have a name.
KEITH: I’ve got a name for mine. “Human Cannonball Bowling Ball.”
AUSTIN: Ah.
[SYLVI LAUGHS]
JACK: Oh, this is gonna be good.
KEITH: It’s a human cannon[ball] that fires a human cannonball into human bowling pins.
ALI: Oh my god.
JACK: Wait, it’s all people?
AUSTIN: Are they good at it? It’s all people. Yeah.
KEITH: It’s all people, and it’s trick shots, so there’s people up on platforms getting knocked down by human cannonballs.
[AUSTIN LAUGHS]
KEITH: There’s people, you know—
AUSTIN: ‘Ooh! Strike!’
KEITH: And they’re falling, and they’re falling into nets, probably.
AUSTIN: Probably?
KEITH: I don’t know this circus.
AUSTIN: ‘Oh no, that’s a 7-10 split!’
[KEITH AND JACK CHUCKLE]
AUSTIN: So you fire a—
KEITH: Yeah, so you gotta get fired out—
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: —and then in mid-air, you’ve gotta elongate yourself.
AUSTIN: Yeah, you’ve got to reach yourself out, so that you’re like—yes, a hundred percent. Alright, that is our opening act. Chine, are you interfering at this point?
DRE: Um—no, I don’t want to create like a Batman sidekick origin story right now, so.
[AUSTIN LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: Alright, who is next?
SYLVI: I have—
ART: I’ve got one.
SYLVI: Okay, go ahead.
ART: Oh, I can wait.
SYLVI: Okay, so, is anyone familiar with the Globe of Death?
KEITH: Yes! I literally almost did that, so yes.
SYLVI: Okay, good, I’m glad you didn’t.
JACK: Please tell us about the Globe of Death, though.
AUSTIN: Of course.
SYLVI: So the Globe of Death is basically this big mesh steel sphere—this big mesh steel sphere that people go in and ride around on motorcycles and circles and stuff, and there’s people—two going at once, and they’ll like, barely miss each other.
JACK: See, this is where North America has really got a leg up over Britain, because we call that the Wall of Death, and it’s not a globe, you just go up on a wall.
SYLVI: I believe that this was based on the Wall of Death, actually.
AUSTIN: That would make sense.
KEITH: That’s so funny. I literally almost did this up until about a minute before we—
SYLVI: I’m so glad you didn’t, because I had nothing else. Yeah, and—but we don’t have motorcycles, so maybe there are just people on bikes pedaling really fast?
AUSTIN: Really fast bikes.
ALI: Unicycles?
KEITH: Really fast and they can go upside-down—if you’ve never seen this, it’s amazing how small the globe is.
SYLVI: It’s incredible.
AUSTIN: It’s so scary.
KEITH: Like, you’d think that it would be small so it’s not that impressive, it’s actually so small that it’s impressive. Like, there’s almost no movement on these bikes.
SYLVI: I think—If you’ve ever seen the movie Place Beyond the Pines, Ryan Gosling’s character has a job doing this.
JACK: I have a question that’s going to sound glib, but I really don’t mean it facetiously. Is it dangerous?
KEITH: It’s extremely dangerous.
SYLVI: Very dangerous.
JACK: Okay. I didn’t know if it was one of these things like a lot of circus stuff, where it looks very dangerous but they’re actually just super practiced and everything.
KEITH: No.
JACK: No, this is deadly?
KEITH: If something happens—
ART: I believe practice is a big part of this, yes.
KEITH: If something goes wrong, then a human being is trapped in, like, an 8 by 8 cube, or an 8 by 8 sphere, with a motorcycle that is going 60 miles an hour.
SYLVI: Dirtbikes, I should say—dirtbikes. Slightly smaller.
JANINE: Also sometimes they put multiple people in there at the same time.
SYLVI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: The record is six. It’s six people. That’s too many.
SYLVI: In 2014 in Belgium, Johnny Strange became the first person to swallow a sword inside the Globe of Death. So maybe that’s going on too.
JACK: Woah! Oh, that’s sick as hell!
AUSTIN: Oh yeah, they put people in there, and they just stand there, and the motorcycles or the dirtbikes just go around them. Yeah, I hate it. I’m watching this happen and it’s making me a little nauseous.
JANINE: I have one.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh?
JANINE: It’s called The Vessel of Tykere[1].
AUSTIN, SYLVI, ART: Ooh.
JANINE: It is based on the magician act where someone lays down in a box and gets sawed in half, except they are not laying down in the box, they are standing in the box, so I guess it’s kind of like the box where they have someone standing in the box and then they put blades through. But it’s also not that. I want to say I think it’s like a carpana magician and then maybe like a—what are the devils called?
AUSTIN: Devils.
JANINE: ‘Cause we just call them devils.
AUSTIN: We just call them devils. Yeah, we don’t have anything.
JANINE: Okay. Good. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t just fucking up there. So the devil’s the one in the box, and there’s a carpana magician who has like, a—you know like one of those big—it’s like a hand-drill, but it’s very big for like, boring holes?
AUSTIN: Uh-huh? I think. I think I know what you mean.
JANINE: Yeah, so it’s like that instead of a blade—and that’s like right in the middle. And he drills through the box, and a bunch of stream comes out, and then he has like, a big cork that he puts in the hole in the box, and then he gets a big glass, like, vase, like a very big glass vase, and puts it in front of the box, and then pulls the cork out, and then a bunch of like, seawater with little fish in it spills out of the hole into the vase—like a lot of it, like more than you would think could just be hidden in the box. So it’s like, ‘oh, it definitely can’t—that devil’s full of seawater.’ And then puts the cork back in, spins the box around, and the devil steps out and is completely whole.
AUSTIN: Ooh.
JANINE: And probably a little bit shaken-looking, but you know.
AUSTIN: But fine.
JANINE: That’s a magic trick for ya.
AUSTIN: No extra seawater in there.
JANINE: No.
AUSTIN: Clap, clap, clap, that’s scary.
JANINE: Oh, but the shirt is—their shirt is ripped.
AUSTIN: Oh, as if they’d been pierced by the drill.
JANINE: Yeah. Mhm.
DRE: Huh.
JANINE: And it’s like—I should say that the diameter of this drill is probably the size of an Eggo waffle.
JACK: Oh, yikes. That’s a big drill.
JANINE: Yes.
AUSTIN: Hm. Okay.
JANINE: The Vessel of Tykere.
KEITH: That’s a good trick.
AUSTIN: That’s a great trick. I got one. It’s the Pantheonic Wheel. And a guy comes out, you know, just a kind of acrobat-looking guy, suspenders on—I say acrobat, but then I’m going to describe to you a mime. Striped shirt, you know. Suspenders, black pants. Clown makeup. And he’s holding one of those big wheels, like a—I think they’re called a Cyr wheel. C-Y-R wheel. Or a mono wheel. It’s like, just big enough to stand into. Do you know what I mean? Like if you were, like, trying to Vitruvian Man yourself inside of a wheel.
JACK: Oh yeah.
AUSTIN: And he begins to spin on it. You know, you do a little—you’re like, ‘oh, I’m doing a cartwheel, but I’m in the wheel,’ so the whole wheel spins. And he spins around in a big circle. Around the outside of the—or I guess maybe on the inside of the main circle, the main, you know—what’s it called?
JACK: The ring?
AUSTIN: What’s the center circle called? The ring, yeah.
KEITH: Is this thing like, gyroscopic? Is it going in multiple—
AUSTIN: No.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: No. No, no, no. Have you—I’ll put a picture of this guy. It’s not this guy, but it’s one of these. You know? You’re just holding onto this thing, and you’re spinning around over and over again. Right?
KEITH: Oh, okay. I was picturing another wheel that has another axis so you can spin—you know. Gotcha.
AUSTIN: No. Just the one. But he’s going really fast. And he’s like doing tricks on it, and spinning around it, and he’s like letting go at certain points, and—but he’s like, getting speed, and not just like standing still, like going in circles. And so, eventually, you can’t see his body at all. You see like the—it’s like looking into helicopter blades. And in the place of his body, a face emerges, and I think I’m going to need a number from 1 to 10 as I use this deity generator.
JACK: Oh!
KEITH: 4.
AUSTIN: 4, alright. [PAUSE] “This playful god of autumn takes the form of a young man. He has a slender build. His eyes are lavender. He has light-colored skin. He’s usually portrayed wearing an unconventional costume that’s mostly black in color. He carries a rope. He causes plants to go dormant.” And he’s just been woken up by this strange, weird circle trick. This ring trick. And it’s like—literally, a face appears where a body was a moment ago, as if you’re looking into something moving so fast that you’re seeing a new image inside of it like an optical illusion. And bellowing out from here is a voice waking up, this god of agriculture, or sorry, this god of autumn, and is like—[WEARY] ‘Where am I now?’
JACK: Clap clap clap clap clap clap clap!
KEITH: It’s confused! [LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: ‘Who are all you people?’
SYLVI: Yay!
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
AUSTIN: And that’s the pantheonic ring.
KEITH: So it’s basically like a—in the early 2000s there was like the Sharper Image thing that everyone had—
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
KEITH: Where it was a voicemail thing that would tell you who called by spinning lights real fast, but it summons a god.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Yeah, but it summons a god.
JACK: Who just could be a confused god.
AUSTIN: Yeah, it’s waking up a sleepy god, and making them perform in front of—sometimes you get someone who’s like, ‘yeah, I’ll answer a question,’ but this one, this sleepy autumn god is just like ‘Whaaat? Where am I? Take me home.’
JACK: God, so—this is Boundless Conclave, so, at some point you’d get the god of like, having a fun time in a ring, and then you’d—then it would be a great show. ‘Cause he’d be like ‘whee!’
AUSTIN: That would be—-ah.
KEITH: ‘Woo! I’m in a ring!’ He’d know exactly what’s going on.
AUSTIN: [LAUGHING] Exactly. Yes.
SYLVI: Would have been fucked if they got Aterika’Kaal.
AUSTIN: Oh, boy. God, can you imagine if I had gotten one that was like—
DRE: Oh, man. How do I make Aterika’Kaal come out of this ring?
AUSTIN: I mean, fuck. I mean, now would be a good time to try to interfere, Chine. I don’t know what you want to do, but god shit’s happening.
DRE: I mean someone did say catch it in your teeth, so I could just—I mean, I picked up all those knives earlier.
AUSTIN: You’re gonna throw a knife at this thing?
DRE: Yeah, sure.
AUSTIN: Fuck. Are you gonna do it stealthily? Where are you?
DRE: Um—
AUSTIN: What is Chine doing? What are we getting our inner cuts of as Chine decides to ruin this?
DRE: I mean, I’m probably—I’m backstage.
SYLVI: Hanging out with a blood-covered devil.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Oh yeah, have you voiced your desire to do this to Hazard or do you just kind of wander off by yourself?
DRE: Oh, wander off by myself, yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay, yeah.
SYLVI: Okay.
AUSTIN: So yeah, you’re backstage, you’re climbing some rafters, you’re looking for an excuse—okay, I guess throw me a knife. That sounds like Hunt to me.
DRE: Sure.
KEITH: So far two people have died at this circus, which puts it roughly in line with every circus ever. But this could really put it over the top.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
JANINE: Are you sure it’s not like, four? How many bodyguards were there?
AUSTIN: Three. There were two bodyguards, so yeah, it’s four dead people so far.
KEITH: Oh, okay, yeah. So I guess we are ahead of the curve.
DRE: What’s the domain? Are we still in Cursed?
AUSTIN: It is still Cursed. Cursed Haven. Question mark? Haven question mark?
DRE: What’s fun is I get to do this on a Dangerous roll.
AUSTIN: Wait, what? Why? What?
DRE: Because of my Ringing Head.
[SYLVI LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: Oh, you’re still Dangerous. Oh my god. This is gonna go bad.
ART: This doesn’t sound like something you would want to do with a ringing head.
DRE: Has it ever stopped me before?
JACK: Holy shit, that’s very bad.
AUSTIN: Take Stress. That’s a 8-4-5, you take—the 8 gets discarded, the 5 gets discarded. You’re gonna take [EXHALES] 5 Stress here. What—what—what—this is—what type of Stress is this? What are you doing? This is—this is definitely Fortune Stress.
AUSTIN: You got these knives from—the knife you’re throwing is from Uno?
DRE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s one of the sharp sticking knives, yeah.
AUSTIN: This is very funny to me. Alright. Take 5 Fortune Stress.
DRE: Okay.
AUSTIN: So take 2 and give me your Fallout test.
[PAUSE]
DRE: No Fallout.
AUSTIN: No Fallout. You understand suddenly how Uno was so good at this. You can’t hit anything with these knives when you throw them.
[JACK AND KEITH LAUGH]
AUSTIN: This is just true, it’s in my notes that when Uno’s throwing those knives—in my mind, this may have turned into a running chase where Uno’s trying to throw the knives at Hazard, and would constantly miss because they’re cursed to miss as part of not being able to hit anybody as the job of being the knife-thrower.
SYLVI: Oh god.
JACK: Oh wow. Marn should get to look at these cursed knives.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Yeah. Mhm.
SYLVI: It makes cutting his head off with it really hard.
AUSTIN: I think it’s only when you throw. I think cutting, you still—you—yeah. Uh-huh.
SYLVI: It’s very funny. Just wildly swinging around. [LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: Yeah, ‘woah, woah!’ So that does it—so, a knife appears as if from nowhere and just misses—I think the god is like ‘Wuh! I’m going back to bed.’ And then, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap.
SYLVI: ‘Yeah! He’s sleepy!’
JACK: ‘He’s going back to sleep!’
AUSTIN: ‘I love a dormant god!’
KEITH: ‘We love 4/10 god!’
[AUSTIN LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: So Chine, unfortunately, I think you’re gaining more negative attention, but this has not derailed the big top quite yet.
DRE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: Art, I know how badly you want to go. Is it time for your thing?
ART: Yeah. I have Reverse Lion Tamer.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. A classic.
KEITH: Man-taming lion?
ART: A man-taming lion.
[KEITH LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
ART: It’s a lion and it’s wearing a costume.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. [IMITATING LION SNARLING] Rargh!
[KEITH AND SYLVI LAUGH]
ART: And I believe—and if you look, lion tamers often wear flashy and gaudy costumes, which I think is funny on its own, because lions have a dignity about them that I think is sort of ruined if you put them in a sparkly outfit.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ART: But prove me wrong, fanartists. Prove me wrong. Or right. Um—and yet, they’ve—they train a group of people into doing tricks, like—
AUSTIN: It’s a group!
JACK: It’s a group?
ART: It’s always a group of lions.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I guess so. Is it like a cheer squad? What is happening?
KEITH: Are they—
ART: No, I think it’s a little sadder than that. You know, like how circus animals are always kind of sad.
KEITH: The people are trying not to do these tricks, but the lion is cracking a whip at them.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
ART: Uh-huh. And like, snarling.
KEITH: ‘No, I don’t want to go on the chair!’
[ART GROWLS]
KEITH: ‘Fine.’
AUSTIN: ‘Fine, I’m jumping, I’m jumping through the hoop, I’m jumping through the hoop!’
ART: Yeah, standing on chairs, jumping through hoops, balancing on balls.
SYLVI: ‘The bouncy ball again?’
JACK: Lion puts his head in a man’s mouth.
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
KEITH: There’s no way to really explain—[LAUGHS] there’s no way to really explain the attitude of these people who know that their role is to be dissatisfied with having to do these tricks.
AUSTIN: This is definitely a bunch of people who got added to the—the circus just didn’t know where to put them. The carnival’s like, ‘we’re not gonna put you on the peanut stand. You’ve got to be the people that get trained by this lion tonight.’
KEITH: ‘We already have enough bowling pins.’
AUSTIN: [LAUGHS] Yeah. Great one. Fantastic. You letting this one go through, Chine?
DRE: Uh, no.
AUSTIN: Uh-oh.
KEITH: Gonna make the people eat the lion.
DRE: No, I’m gonna—I’m gonna—I find the backup costume for the lion, and I put it on It, and It runs out onto the stage.
AUSTIN: Oh my god. Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, ‘a second weird lion!’ What’s It doing? What are you—
DRE: I mean, it’s just—I think it’s still—like, it’s just playing with everything. So It’s like, grabbing the whip, because it thinks that’s like, we’re playing tug-of-war. It’s like, a person is trying to climb up on the chair and It just like pulls the chair out from underneath them.
AUSTIN: Chine, I have to tell you, you might be making this a better act.
[KEITH LAUGHS]
JACK: The crowd is going nuts!
DRE: I guess I’m trying to piss off the lion.
AUSTIN: I see. That—okay, well, that sounds like a Compel Cursed to me.
KEITH: Oh, you’re ruining all the lion’s hard work.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Take Mastery from having It do this, because It is—you know?
DRE: Okay.
AUSTIN: I feel like—actually—yeah. Alright, well that’s a success at a cost. Take 4 Echo as you continue to draw the ire of—
DRE: Oh, I don’t take any.
AUSTIN: Oh, do you have—what, how?
DRE: Because I have a—I have like, a lot of bonus Echo Protection.
AUSTIN: Oh, remember, the base 3 that you get does not add with anything else.
DRE: Mm, that’s right. Okay. So I take one.
AUSTIN: So you probably—you might still get a plus from something, but yeah. You’re still gonna get—yeah. Still take one, give me your Fallout check. Unbelievable, Minor Fallout.
DRE: Man. I’m just rolling terrible on Fallout.
AUSTIN: I mean, you are trying to fuck this thing over. What’s—so, you tell me what happened while I figure out this Echo Fallout.
DRE: Oh, boy. Um…
AUSTIN: I know what it is. It’s Conduit. You now can’t use Echo Protection. Your Echo Protection is zeroed out.
DRE: Okay.
AUSTIN: As it—not It, sorry, It is your animal—but as the carnival gets between you and the Echo Protection. It’s kind of like, trying to interfere between your connection to the Course that is what protects you, and yeah.
DRE: Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: But what’s it look like as It begins to draw the lion’s attention away?
DRE: Um… man, what does it look like to ruin this enough that the crowd gets upset?
AUSTIN: Great question.
DRE: ‘Cause I’m like, what does it actually look like to mess it up where the crowd isn’t like, ‘oh, that’s so funny. That’s just more animals being goofy.’
AUSTIN: Yeah. I think it has to be that something either bad happens, or, you know. Something scary happens.
DRE: Yeah, I—
AUSTIN: The human—go ahead.
DRE: Maybe one of the humans tries to shoo It away, and It like, bites their hand.
AUSTIN: Yeah, it’s like, ‘oh, well, that’s not good.’. And Chantilly Scathe has to come out and be like ‘We seem to have had an accident. Just so you know, this animal is not part of the show. Don’t bring your animals to the carnival, folks. The circus is a place for our animals, not yours. [THROUGH GRITTED TEETH] Someone usher this thing away.’ And—
JACK: Confused response from the crowd. ‘Huh, this is very animal-focused in a way I wasn’t expecting.’
AUSTIN: Yeah, very strange.
DRE: ‘I brought my dog!’
AUSTIN: Yeah. Who do we still have? We have Ali, we have—Jack? Jack, did you go?
JACK: No, I didn’t go.
AUSTIN: Okay. So we have Ali and Jack left? Is that it?
JACK: Yeah.
ALI: I guess so, yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay, who’s up?
JACK: Yeah, I’ll go. Out comes a woman dressed in black. Like a fairly normal—well, she looks normal, but she doesn’t look normal for a circus. Slim-faced, pale woman, wearing black, people behind her wheeling a huge cart covered in a black cloth. And the lights in the circus dim, and she pulls the black cloth off to reveal a sort of gigantic—you know those, like, those doors that look like a mouth that you sometimes see? Like, big, weird, grotesque carnival door that’s also a mouth? Door that’s a mouth.
AUSTIN: Ah. Yeah. Yeah, I think I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JACK: Yeah, if you Google image ‘door that’s a mouth—’
AUSTIN: You’ll find things like this.
JACK: Yeah. And she says, ‘You know, ladies and gentlemen, this next act is called Disappear Altogether and Never Return. I would like a volunteer.’
[SYLVI AND KEITH LAUGH]
JACK: And there’s like a murmur among the crowd, and she begins to make her case. Which is that this act will cause one member of the audience who steps into the mouth to disappear altogether and never return. They will be free of all obligations, she can’t tell you where you’re going to go or what you’re going to see. But she speaks about it with a kind of reverential purity, that there is something majestic and terrifying here. And, you know, lads in the crowd, young lads try and egg each other on to like, ‘oh yeah, you go do it, Dave. Sangfielle Dave.’ Or whatever, and ‘you’re too scared’ and—
SYLVI: Oh, Sangfielle Dave.
AUSTIN: Sangfielle Dave.
JACK: Until eventually, you know, a small man is like ‘I’ll do it, I’ll do it.’ And he comes down the stairs and the crowd goes deathly quiet. It’s sort of the mood of a public execution or some sort of bizarre piece of church performance. And he steps—
KEITH: It’s sort of is a public execution.
JACK: Well, no, he’s not being killed. He’s disappearing altogether, and he will never return. Steps into the mouth.
SYLVI: We’ve already had a public execution today.
JACK: Yeah, we’ve already had one!
SYLVI: It’s a little same-y.
AUSTIN: You’re back at ‘I didn’t kill anyone’ real quick there, Jack.
[JACK LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: They just—Sangfielle Dave just walked through the door.
JACK: Well, no, it’s not a door. He just stands in the mouth of the door.
AUSTIN: Oh, right. Uh-huh.
JACK: And you know, other acts have a curtain involved, or whatever. But no. He just disappears. And there’s like a shocked moment of silence for about 15 seconds, and then the pale-faced woman and her attendants put the black cloth back on the mouth, and they wheel it back out of the arena. Nobody quite knows what they saw.
SYLVI: ‘Woo-hoo!’
AUSTIN: Yeah, there’s like a slow—yeah.
[GROUP SLOW CLAPS]
AUSTIN: ‘Yeah!’ It takes a second to get there, but.
KEITH: Every group’s got a Sangfielle Dave.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JACK: Ah, Sangfielle Dave.
ART: Wait, was it Sangfielle Dave?
JACK: No, it wasn’t Sangfielle Dave. Sangfielle Dave was part of the lads.
AUSTIN: Oh, Sangfielle Dave is fine.
ART: [RELIEVED] Phew!
JACK: Who were like—the guy who disappeared, I think, was just some guy who was like ‘yeah, I’ll fuckin’ disappear altogether and never return. Let’s see what it’s like.’
[KEITH LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: God.
KEITH: Hey, it could be the definitely right move, depending on how these ticks go.
AUSTIN: Yeah, you know? True enough. Uh… Ali. I guess, again, Chine, are you interfering? Is anyone noticing Chine’s weird—I mean, y’all are there, you know that was It, Chine’s weird pet.
JACK: Yeah. Pickman has been sitting in one of the rows eating some sort of food, and feeling very smug. There’s a warmth in Pickman’s heart today. [CHUCKLES] Despite the gunshots. Seeing It, sours a little, and gets up and sort of begins to head backstage.
AUSTIN: Ali?
ALI: Because you all have been such a lovely audience, and because we want to give our kudos to Blackwick tonight, the Blackwick skeletons are gonna be joining us for a performance.
[JACK AND AUSTIN GASP]
JACK: [CHEERING] Oh yeah! Woohoo! Skeletons!
SYLVI: Oh my god.
ALI: Of a marching band and bone juggling.
JACK: Oh my god!
AUSTIN: They’re juggling themselves.
JACK: They’re juggling their own bones! Do they take their heads off and on, Ali?
ALI: I think so, yeah.
JACK: Do they play their ribs like a xylophone?
ALI: And they’re all singing a little song. [LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
ALI: Yeah.
JACK: Does one of them drink a potion to—
AUSTIN: Do a little dance.
ART: That’s a finale. You can’t start with the bone xylophone, because that’s—
AUSTIN: Yeah, this is—yeah. This whole thing is the finale.
KEITH: I can’t believe we’re ending the show with the ‘start the Muppet Show’ theme song.
[ALI LAUGHS]
SYLVI: People are cheering so loudly that it feels like the place is shaking.
JACK: Oh my god.
AUSTIN: This is the sequence, Pickman, when you find Chine preparing, probably, again to fuck with stuff.
DRE: Mhm. I can tell you what I’m doing.
JACK: Wait, hang on—I have another skeleton question.
AUSTIN: Please, please, please.
JACK: Is this both armies of skeletons? Like, both factions? And as such, is there onstage bickering?
AUSTIN: Oh, sure.
ALI: No, I—unfortunately, I was thinking that this is shore skeletons. Because I feel like shore skeletons would be more compelled to work for the carnival.
JACK: Oh, sure.
ALI: They’re looking for a new spot together, yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, the ones deeper down—this is true, this is true. I appreciate the thought though, Jack. That would have been very funny, but we’ll have to—you know, one day we’ll write things between these two groups of skeletons who have barely been onscreen all season, and once they’re alright, we can do a group skeleton performance, and that would be fantastic.
SYLVI: I’m just gonna play a skeleton next season and just make sure it happens.
AUSTIN: I can’t wait. Truly. Chine, what is it that Pickman sees you doing?
DRE: So my act was gonna be animal stuff, but Art already one-upped that.
AUSTIN: Oh, right, right, right. Yeah. Sorry, I skipped you.
DRE: No, it’s okay. I mean, you didn’t skip me, we’re going in order. [LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: Right. Sure.
DRE: But I think Chine—there’s bags in the back where clowns are gonna come out and do, like, you know, clown tricks and stuff, and they were gonna like throw confetti or like, glitter into the audience, and Chine is replacing their bags of glitter with bags of the dust.
AUSTIN: Oh.
JACK: Oh, shit. [GROANS] Pickman coming, storming over.
JACK (as PICKMAN): [STERNLY] What are you doing?
DRE (as CHINE): Uh, putting dust into the clown bags?
JACK (as PICKMAN): Why?
DRE (as CHINE): ‘Cause that’s what the Course would like?
JACK (as PICKMAN): Don’t do that.
DRE (as CHINE): Why?
JACK (as PICKMAN): Because this town has seen enough.
DRE (as CHINE): What do you think is gonna happen?
JACK (as PICKMAN): What? Really? The Course is gonna sweep in and destroy the town, Chine.
DRE (as CHINE): I mean, this whole circus is the Course. It hasn’t really destroyed anything.
JACK (as PICKMAN): It’ll pass, it’ll move on. Come back to the—
DRE: I think Chine shrugs and goes back to swapping out the bags.
JACK (as PICKMAN): You don’t give a shit about any of these people.
DRE (as CHINE): I give as much of a shit about them as they have given about us.
JACK (as PICKMAN): Not how it works. Stop putting the dust in the bags.
DRE (as CHINE): Actually, I think if I gave as much of a shit, then I would be actively trying to hurt and arm people in the crowd right now.
JACK (as PICKMAN): Oh, and you’re not doing that? With the—
DRE (as CHINE): No, that’s not what the Course does. It changes things. Doesn’t mean it hurts things.
JACK (as PICKMAN): Mm. What do you think the people in the school will think when the Course comes sweeping through? Will they be happy with the change?
DRE (as CHINE): What school?
JACK (as PICKMAN): The town has a school.
DRE (as CHINE): Ah. That must have been built after I moved away.
JACK (as PICKMAN): I don’t know how to explain to you that you are making a dangerous mistake. You might not care about the consequences, but I do.
DRE (as CHINE): I mean, I care about the consequences, so that’s why I’m doing things.
JACK (as PICKMAN): I’m not interested in debating this with you, Chine.
DRE (as CHINE): Okay. You came back here.
JACK (as PICKMAN): To make you stop.
DRE: I think Chine shrugs.
DRE (as CHINE): I mean, I’ve already filled up a bunch of the bags, so, sure. How is this any different than the Shape or whatever it is that you care about?
JACK: Pickman doesn’t know how to talk about caring for things, and I want to be honest to how the character—Pickman is feeling an emotion, and doesn’t know how to explain it.
AUSTIN: What’s it look like on Pickman’s face to hear this from Chine?
JACK: She’s sort of just like, set her jaw, I think. Um…
[PAUSE]
JACK (as PICKMAN): Dayward YVE is dead.
DRE (as CHINE): Oh. What happened?
JACK (as PICKMAN): The Shape killed him. I asked it to. He boarded the train.
DRE (as CHINE): [NONCHALANT] Oh, okay.
JACK (as PICKMAN): And him and his guards were killed.
DRE (as CHINE): Uh, so, who else was on the train?
JACK (as PICKMAN): What do you mean?
DRE (as CHINE): I mean, was there anyone else on the train?
JACK (as PICKMAN): I don’t know. They weren’t killed. Chantilly’s precise in that way.
DRE (as CHINE): Oh. Who’s that?
JACK (as PICKMAN): The train.
DRE (as CHINE): Oh. So where—did it leave?
JACK (as PICKMAN): Nope. Still in town. Part of the circus.
DRE (as CHINE): I thought—wait, I thought you didn’t like trains. I thought that was like, your whole thing.
JACK (as PICKMAN, JOKINGLY): You’ve completely misunderstood my whole deal, Chine.
[AUSTIN AND SYLVI LAUGH]
DRE (as CHINE): Okay. So you are calling upon the Shape as you see fit.
JACK (as PICKMAN): [CHUCKLES DRYLY] No, I’m not.
DRE (as CHINE): I—you didn’t like somebody, and you called upon the Shape to kill them. I mean, I didn’t like them either. I’m not upset about it.
JACK (as PICKMAN): So?
DRE (as CHINE): My journey is to serve the Course, so that’s what I’m doing.
JACK (as PICKMAN): Okay. Alright. Fine. It will mean the death of many people in Blackwick, and possibly me. And I’m asking you not to do it. If not for them, but for me. But, you know.
JACK: Go off I guess. Those are my dipping mustards. [LAUGHS]
[AUSTIN LAUGHS]
JACK: Yeah, she can’t articulate this any better. I don’t know. And—yeah. It’s a—oh, I think what she says is ‘it’s a waste.’
JACK (as PICKMAN): It’s going to be a waste.
DRE (as CHINE): It already has been.
JACK: [GROANS] Okay, well, nothing to be done. Time to go back. Mood fully fucking ruined.
AUSTIN: Alright, well, Chine, what are you doing? I mean it sounds like I know what you’re doing, which is like, bringing the Course in closer.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Using this stuff as almost like a medium by which you can—I mean, we didn’t say it, but I checked another bit of the clock, and that means that I think like southern Blackwick and far northern Blackwick have just been swallowed by the storm at this point as it pushes closer in.
KEITH: Uh—
AUSTIN: You know like, the Blackwick Group’s building might just be gone. Lyke?
KEITH: Well, so, Pickman went over to talk to Chine, and it was a long-ish chat. There was nothing preventing anyone else from going in.
AUSTIN: I mean, no, but I think that moment probably—I think we should let Chine—the result of that was Chine committing to do a thing. So if you want to interfere at this point, it should be while Chine does a thing.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: Versus—for the sake of dramatic pacing. Do you know what I mean? We had the big talk, the payoff to that talk was ‘Chine is committed.’ I think Chine is committed. You know?
KEITH: Well, I ask because part of the payoff to the talk was also Pickman not really being able to articulate why it’s wrong to destroy a town.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
JACK: Full of people who might have different feelings about the Course than Chine.
KEITH: Right. Pickman realized ‘oh, I feel that this is wrong,’ but then also realized, ‘oh, but I don’t know why.’ [LAUGHS] So—
AUSTIN: Mhm. Yeah, yeah.
DRE: Just to clarify, in Chine’s mind, this is not destruction.
JACK: No, no, no—
DRE: The Course taking this over is not destruction.
AUSTIN: Mhm. Yeah.
JACK: No. But also, and correct me if I’m wrong, here, Austin, right? Like, the Chine—[LAUGHING] The Chine.
DRE: The Chine.
JACK: The Course sweeping destructively through—I mean, the beat says “destroy a haven.”
AUSTIN: Yeah, Blackwick will be gone.
JACK: And this will—
AUSTIN: And everything in it will be permanently added to the Carnival of Moted Light.
JACK: And—
AUSTIN: The next time the Blackwick Group’s headquarters appears, it will be some sort of, you know, big carnival—
DRE: Ooh, a funhouse.
AUSTIN: A funhouse. It’ll be a funhouse–a mirror. A funhouse mirror. You know?
JACK: With people who were—
ART: Well, I have some fun side-show ideas if you’re looking for them just like, between seasons. If you have some time to think about them.
[JACK CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: Love it. Great.
JACK: —people, you know, without their consent, drafted into an eternal circus.
AUSTIN: A hundred percent.
JACK: Okay.
AUSTIN: Yep. And changed to be members—at least until something 600 years from now changes that also, such as the Course.
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Chine’s perspective is broad and different. You know?
KEITH: Anyway, so, my point was, you know, I’m fine if what we want to do now is stop Chine from doing this, but also, I want to recognize that what Pickman did wasn’t really make the case that Chine shouldn’t do this.
AUSTIN: Yeah, but that’s the scene. Do you know what I mean?
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: The scene is, you sent the—the wrong person went. And also, I don’t know that’s true it was the wrong person. But like, I don’t want—
JACK: We can’t be like, ‘do it again!’
AUSTIN: We took the gun down off the shelf, we can’t be like ‘and there’s a second gun on the shelf!’ You know what I mean?
KEITH: Right.
AUSTIN: We can, but I want you to—that should be in the middle of Chine doing something. There should be forward momentum.
JACK: It’s—yeah. It’s sort of the equivalent of like, rolling to open a door, failing to open the door, and then doing the same roll again to try and open the door.
AUSTIN: That’s exactly it. And I didn’t want to bring it down to rolls, ‘cause this didn’t feel like—like we could have, like—Jack could have insisted on doing some sort of convention—
JACK: The thing Pick—the move Pickman would make would be to attack Chine, and Pickman is not prepared to do that in this moment.
AUSTIN: Right. Right. And if someone’s going to do that, or make a Compel check, I want it to be with like, Chine’s arms filled with these bags. Because that’s sort of the narrative momentum we’ve set up, if that makes sense. Which it sounds like is happening. Chine is—you’re just coming to the middle of the big ring in the middle of this circus act? What are you doing?
DRE: Oh, no, I was gonna—I was gonna—
AUSTIN: Oh, you’ve replaced it, so the clowns are gonna do this. Right, right, right.
DRE: I’ve replaced the bags, so the clowns—yeah, yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Lyke, what you can see is—the way this would be done in the film, right, is the clowns take the center stage, they begin to do their big run-around, everyone’s saying ‘thanks for coming out tonight, let’s have a big celebration,’ you know, ‘the rides will be open for another few hours, and there’ll be peanuts and cotton candy for everybody, make sure to tip your waitresses’ and all that, and meanwhile you see Pickman come out angry. As if her mood has just soured. So, for me, that is the—that is the, like, the way you get in on these stakes. As these people begin to run around getting ready to toss the cursed dust on everybody.
KEITH: But I don’t know about the cursed dust. I—
AUSTIN: No, but you could talk to Pickman, who now looks angry, is what I’m saying.
KEITH: Okay. So I’m going to do my best to learn about the dust. And, then you know, if I’m—if Pickman’s just like, ‘oh, you know, they’ve filled the bags with dust instead of glitter and it’s gonna be really bad,’ then.
AUSTIN: I mean, yeah, Pickman, what do you say when Lyke is like, looking at you confused?
JACK (as PICKMAN): Chine’s got it in for the town. Bringing the Course down on it.
KEITH (as LYKE): Oh, so we should—we gotta stop them.
JACK (as PICKMAN): Well, yes.
KEITH (as LYKE): Okay. Let’s go. I’m gonna go.
AUSTIN: What are you doing? And everybody, there seems to be—everybody else, there seems to be something conspiratorial happening here as—
JACK: Oh, a conspiracy at the circus?
AUSTIN: No, you. Pickman and Lyke are talking off to the side and looking concerned. I was saying to, you know, Es and Marn and Duvall that this is happening. I don’t know where Hazard is.
SYLVI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: I guess, Hazard, are you looking for your head?
SYLVI: Yeah, I think so. I’m look—I was gonna probably look for Maleister.
KEITH: Oh, I thought—
SYLVI: Though I assume Maleister would also be here?
AUSTIN: Maleister’s probably here. I think based on what you overheard or kind of saw, you would assume your head might be in the town council, or wherever the sheriff’s department is. You know? Wherever that is.
SYLVI: Okay. Then I might be over there, then. I might just be there.
KEITH: I thought that the reveal was gonna be that you were cutting off his head to take it, ‘cause it was your head.
SYLVI: No, that was just petty.
KEITH: It was just revenge. It was just normal revenge.
AUSTIN: It was just petty revenge, yeah.
SYLVI: That was just like, ‘Hey. Time for—it’s your turn!’
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: You are the one, then, who totally sees this storm gaining—you know, getting closer and closer, consuming parts of Blackwick.
SYLVI: Huh.
AUSTIN: At this point, even the ruined abbey is like half-gone.
ART: So, I—
AUSTIN: So here’s a fun thing. Roseroot Hall may have been consumed at this point.
JACK: Ahaha!
AUSTIN: I think it’s—if it stretches that far north, it will have been consumed.
ART: Well, I hope Duvall’s cousin wasn’t still there.
AUSTIN: No, no, she’s here somewhere.
ART: I’m going to be completely honest with you, I don’t remember her name.
AUSTIN: I wrote it down. It’s, uh—her nickname was Reese. I remember that part.
ALI: It was Theresa—yeah.
AUSTIN: It was Theresa, nickname Reese. Yeah.
SYLVI: This is my funny movie line of the episode where Hazard goes ‘oh, well, there goes the neighborhood.’ Thank you very much.
ART: We can just call it there if you want.
SYLVI: Yeah, end of the season. See you guys in like a year. We’ve got PALISADE to do.
AUSTIN: Bye. Yeah. We did it.
ART: Um—
AUSTIN: I mean, you know. It’s a very good axe hanging over the head of the town, but. What were you going to say, Duvall?
ART: I mean, I’m—I’m interested—hm. I’ve said that one of the two things I want to get done before this season ends is have a conversation with Chine about the nature of memory as part of Duvall’s overall arc toward philosophy understanding.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Yeah. Philosophy understanding.
ART: You know—you know what really feels heroic at the end of a season, where someone feels like they understand philosophy?
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Yeah.
ART: And I don’t know how to get it in here. Um—
DRE: I mean, I think the thing Chine was—
ART: ‘Cause it also isn’t dramatic.
DRE: Well, I think the thing Chine was gonna do next was try to go, like, sabotage a ride or something, and I think there would be something very hilarious but interesting about Chine and Duvall having a conversation while Chine is doing that.
AUSTIN: It sounds like, then, there are two groups. There is a ‘go get Chine’ group and a ‘stop these fucking clowns’ group.
ART: Yeah, and I guess I want to be in the Chine group.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
ART: And—but I—if we want to have more of Pickman and Lyke telling people what’s happening, I don’t want to like—I don’t want to cut that off.
JACK: I’d be prepared to handwave that.
KEITH: Yeah, same.
JACK: I would like to tell Marn about Dayward. Oh, also, Pickman is fucking steamed with Chine right now. She’s just gone back into the circus, so. I don’t know. Um—
KEITH: Um—
JACK: What are Marn and Es doing?
ALI: I think I was gonna look for Bucho and then have a very dejected conversation over some funnel cake. [LAUGHING] But I was gonna wait to see how this shook out to see how depressing it was gonna be. [LAUGHS]
JACK: [LAUGHING] See where the needle is set before you…
KEITH: I think that some people should go do the dust.
JANINE: Yes. Uh-huh.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Uh-huh.
KEITH: And those—I guess those people should be good at convincing people of things?
AUSTIN: It’s a combination at this point of convincing and doing like, anti-magic shit. You know? I think at this point, Es, Dyre tells you—Dyre’s like:
AUSTIN (as DYRE ODE): Ah, well someone’s interfered. I’m going to go see what I can do to hold it back.
AUSTIN: And like tips their hat to you. Stands up, all tall.
JANINE: Is that it? There’s no—[CHUCKLES] You gotta—you have to throw me a bone here. Like, what do—like, do what? Interfere—because Es is not privy to literally anything that’s happened, right? Like, other than—other than Pickman looking peeved? Like…
AUSTIN: I thought we said we handwaved Pickman explaining this. Did we not?
JACK: Yes.
KEITH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re gonna—
JANINE: Oh, I just didn’t know if Es was like there, even.
AUSTIN: Oh. I—yeah, I guess I had assumed you were together a group.
JANINE: ‘Cause that seemed like it was like, a Lyke thing.
AUSTIN: Yeah, for some reason I had assumed you were all watching the circus as a group together because it’s fun to think about in my head. But I didn’t say that out loud, so.
JANINE: Okay. We can say that happened. Um… Yeah, I think if that’s the case, then Es is probably on team ‘collect the dust bags.’
AUSTIN: Mhm. Yeah, the thing I was gonna say here is like, the way that that is—at this point, there is like a sort of—Chine has almost dared this thing to do the thing it wants, and so we’re seeing the like—the clowns feel compelled to do it.
[SYLVI CHUCKLES]
AUSTIN: Once it’s cleared, the clowns are compelled to throw this stuff. So yeah, that’s—group ‘wrangle the clowns’ is one.
SYLVI: ‘The clowns feel compelled’ is such a good phrase.
KEITH: Is it our friends? The clown—are the clowns our friends? These are different clowns?
AUSTIN: No, these are not. These are different clowns, yeah.
AUSTIN: Those are outside clowns, who go around and like—you know, you ever go to a thing and there’s outside clowns? You go to like a street fair and there’s outside clowns?
JANINE: Is that one of those places where you get personal clown attention?
AUSTIN: You get personal clown attention.
JACK: Oh, no.
ART: Even a circus has outside clowns and inside clowns.
AUSTIN: Exactly. This is—yes. Yes.
JANINE: I just don’t believe that outdoor clowns are ethical, that’s all.
JACK: Killing birds.
KEITH: If they’re cold—if you’re cold, they’re cold.
JANINE: Yeah. They really—they screw with the local ecosystem by being opportunistic predators.
DRE: Y’all ever looked up clowns on Wikipedia?
JANINE: No.
DRE: Because I did, and the sentence at the top of this thing is a real fuckin’—it’s a whole thing. “A clown is a person who wears a unique makeup-face and flamboyant costume, performing comedy in a state of open-mindedness, all while using physical comedy.”
JANINE: Uh…
SYLVI: I do that exact same thing.
KEITH: Yeah, clowns—clowns have a whole real serious deal.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Yeah, you skipped the part in here, Dre, where it says “by reversing folkway-norms.”
DRE: Oh yeah, sure.
AUSTIN: Because—yeah.
DRE: Well, we all know what those are. That part’s self-explanatory.
AUSTIN: Yes. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all knew. Alright, what is your ‘stop the clowns’ behavior?
JANINE: Um… I kind of want to just take their bags? Like, how aggressive are they gonna be about it? They’re clowns.
AUSTIN: They’re a little—they’re a little—they’re a little—
JACK: Oh, Janine. Gotta be careful.
AUSTIN: Yeah. How aggressive are the clowns gonna be? God damn. They’re clowns. They’re dust-clowns.
JANINE: But I—but I look like one of them. Can I like, pretend to be…?
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can get Mastery on this roll.
JANINE: ‘I too am with the carnival, and actually, the dirt-bags have been rescheduled.’
AUSTIN: [CHUCKLES] ‘The dirtbags have been rescheduled.’ Punch into open hand.
JANINE: I forgot what they were originally supposed to be. Like, glitter?
AUSTIN: Like confetti, and glitter, and yeah.
JANINE: Okay.
AUSTIN: I bet they have like—you shoot them out of a T-shirt cannon type of a thing. You know what I mean? Anyway.
JANINE: Anyway, that’s—yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, and as you get close to them, you do realize—and it’s a little gross, because their paint—their facepaint is painted onto this really gravelly, like, texture, because these are dust-clowns. These are people made of dust. These are permanent members of the circus at this point.
JACK: Oh, you get made into dust when you become—when you get drafted? Okay.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JACK: So there’s a physical transformation as well as a sort of role transformation.
AUSTIN: Oh, yeah. If you get permanently drafted, not—
JACK: Like what’s happening to Blackwick.
AUSTIN: Like what’s happening to Blackwick, yeah. I’d say so far people have been able to avoid this.
JACK: Because you run away from there, right? Take shelter.
AUSTIN: You run away from it, yeah. Mhm. So what are you rolling here, Es? And who’s helping?
JANINE: Um…
AUSTIN: Is this Compel? Is this—
JANINE: What’s Dyre—is Dyre going after Chine?
AUSTIN: Dyre is going to the wall to try to hold it back. You know?
JANINE: Ah, okay, right. Because they have good magic. Because he’s strong.
AUSTIN: They have—he’s strong. Yeah. Uh-huh.
JANINE: Yeah. Okay. Um—okay. I wonder if this is—is this another Cursed - Compel? This feels like Cursed - Compel.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I think this feels like that. Yeah. I think this is Risky. You’re interfering now with—it’s like the carnival has tasted blood in a sense. This is not—the carnival is happy to show—to do the show and move on. Do you know what I mean? But if you’re gonna push it a little bit, it’s gonna push back. So I think this is Risky. But you have Mastery, and people can help. Whoever’s here. Marn is helping, I think. Is that—or is Marn going to Chine? I know Duvall is ‘Chine’, Lyke is… ‘Chine’?
KEITH: Yeah, I think Lyke is ‘Chine’.
AUSTIN: Hazard is ‘head’.
[SYLVI GIGGLES]
JACK: I would help, but I also have Mastery against the circus, because I did that roll earlier, so.
AUSTIN: You do. You do. Uh-huh. Do you want to save that for a follow-up or something?
JACK: Yeah, possibly. But I could help here without using that.
AUSTIN: You can. Yeah, I think this is a big—I think getting more people is viable here. I think this is—you’re trying to stop a bunch of clowns, and you’re trying to do it in a big single roll, you know?
ALI: So the—the groups are ‘stop Chine’ or ‘stop the clowns’?
AUSTIN: That’s what it seems like. It’s both. It’s both. Those are—we’re doing both of those, but yeah.
ALI: Right, right, right.
AUSTIN: But someone’s chasing after Chine before Chine can go ruin the Flying Jaunt, you know, or the big ferris wheel or whatever. The Tunnel of Love.
ALI: I think I’m on team ‘lead people into buildings so they don’t die.’
AUSTIN: Okay. That might not save them if the storm gets there.
ALI: Sure.
AUSTIN: ‘Cause it’s destroying these buildings and taking them at this point. But, I think team ‘help people’ is still a good team to be on. That might be ‘lead people to Dyre,’ ‘cause Dyre might be able to get out—get people out through a hole that he cuts into the storm. Do you know what I mean? But—but who knows, maybe it does bad. So yeah, maybe that’s ‘go with Dyre.’ That’s certainly—you know, here’s what I’m gonna suggest to you, Ali. That’s certainly ‘go get Kerr Kern and make sure your fucking report gets out of the storm.’
ALI: [LAUGHS] Yeah, I figured this was—when I was saying ‘in the buildings,’ I was figuring like a Boundless Conclave situation.
AUSTIN: Yeah, that place will get swallowed by this if this place—if this clock ticks up all the way, it’s gone.
ALI: What about the basement with that big bridge? Okay.
AUSTIN: Gone. This whole place, gone. The Course does not fuck around. Maybe if you go deep enough. You know? But… Or if you go up the mountain. Right?
ALI: Right.
AUSTIN: Above the—through the underground tunnel. Maybe that’s part of it, right? Because you know that path. You could lead people there. That’s possible.
ALI: Yeah. I think I was on team—
AUSTIN: I kind of like that.
ALI: ‘Leaving the carnival early, getting a funnel cake, casually looking for Bucho, crisis occurs, helping people.’
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Yes.
ALI: That’s the Marn montage we’re getting.
AUSTIN: We can do that Bucho conversation before we do this—the, sorry, before we do the Chine-Duvall-Lyke conversation. But we should do this clown roll first, for sure. So Pickman helping—I’m just gonna write this out. Wait one second.
JANINE: Okay.
AUSTIN: ‘Lyke, Duvall, Chine’ is one group. ‘Pickman, Es’ is a second group. ‘Hazard’ is a third. ‘Marn’ is a fourth? Is that right? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Yeah, that’s right.
ALI: Yeah, I guess I could be attached to the ‘Pickman-Es’ group if I’m like a part two to the Dyre Ode plan, is what it sounds like you were just pitching?
AUSTIN: Well, I think I liked—I actually like your idea of bringing them underground and then leading them up towards the weather room, because that would get you out from under the storm. That would be a tunnel under the storm in a way that’s kind of fun.
ALI: Oh, okay. So I’m on—yeah.
AUSTIN: Like if it consumed it, it would consume it. But I do like the idea of you leading people that way, including the Keen or Kerr—
ALI: Okay. I’m on team ‘evacuation’, then.
AUSTIN: Yes. Yeah, exactly. “Clowns.” Alright, cool. Just making a note. So then, yeah, this is—what did we just say? Compel - Cursed plus help.
JANINE: Okay.
AUSTIN: Did I say Risky? This is Risky.
JANINE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah. It’s Risky.
JANINE: Success.
AUSTIN: Success. Take no Stress. 8-7-10-3-7. You lose the 10, but you keep the 8. What’s it look like as you stop these clowns? These dust-clowns?
DRE: These old dusty clowns.
JANINE: Uh… I think this is—I think this is, um… Es, like, no longer true form, of course, just, like, in the costume being like ‘nix the dust, the dust—’ I keep saying dust. ‘Nix the confetti, we won’t have enough for the next town if we use it all here,’ you know.
AUSTIN: I think that there is confusion at first from these clowns, because they’re like ‘but we’re supposed to spread it, and it’s good to spread it. It’s good—’ And then like, they get progressively calmer, and it’s—I think the thing that you realize—also, Pickman, how are you helping here?
JACK: Oh, I’m doing a different approach elsewhere, and I’m saying ‘drop the bags, you little weirdo.’
[AUSTIN AND JANINE LAUGH]
JACK: [LAUGHING] Just threatening these clowns.
AUSTIN: The thing that you’re realizing, Es, is that there’s something in the rhythm and cadence of your voice and the tone, that is working more than your particular words. It’s like hitting the selves that these people still are deep under there. Like they’re part of the circus, but they are still—like ‘oh, yeah, this smart lady is telling us to stop throwing the confetti, we need it for the—okay, yeah, that’s good, yeah.’ And so you’ve connected to them there. But people start booing, they want the confetti, they’re like ‘boo, we want the confetti! We wanted like, a big blowout farewell!’ But, it doesn’t come.
JACK: You know, like a crowd famously says.
AUSTIN: Chantilly—yeah. ‘We want a big blowout finale. Woo, where are the fireworks and confetti?’ But Chantilly Scathe, having now served her duty, begins to usher everybody out, and says ‘that’s it for the show, folks. It’s time to wrap it up, thank you so much again. Hot dogs available outside. Hot dogs and popcorn.’
JANINE: Together at last.
AUSTIN: At last, yeah. [LAUGHS]
JANINE: Cut-up hot dogs in your popcorn, we do it that way here.
ALI: Damn, that must be sort of good.
[AUSTIN AND JANINE LAUGHS]
ART: I’m worried about it from a texture perspective.
AUSTIN: Very. Same.
ART: You would reach in, you would touch too much hot dog.
JANINE: Okay, but here’s—okay. Counterpoint: mustard seasoning, like powdered mustard, like the spice, just sprinkle it on top.
ALI: Also pigs in a blanket. Hot dogs are already hand food. I would not worry about the—the hand-ness of the eating it. Yeah.
AUSTIN: Mhm, mhm, mhm.
AUSTIN: Halfway across town—which ride are you fucking with here, Chine?
DRE: Uh… hm. Not the rollercoaster.
JACK: Is it the Tunnel of Love? Can we get a really horrible Tunnel of Love?
DRE: Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JANINE: We gotta know what’s in there. We gotta know.
AUSTIN: What’s in there? Alright. It’s dark. It’s spooky. It’s a converted haunted house that’s been turned into a Tunnel of Love. You get onto some sort of terrible bird. It’s not one of the swan boats. It’s a different sort of waterfowl. What type—is it like—it’s like a duck.
JACK: It’s a cormorant.
JANINE: Oh, it should be one—it should—I was going to say it should be like a heron, something that walks on like, long legs.
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, I love it.
JANINE: Because then you’re not gliding, you’re like, kinda stilt and long. It’s a little bouncy and nauseous.
AUSTIN: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, definitely. And it is, like—they’re stomping through, it’s very bad. What’s in there? Lots of hideous hearts. None of them have the right proportion for a beautiful romantic heart. The water—
JACK: A room that just has a lot of mask faces on the walls that are all making kissy sounds.
AUSTIN: Yeah. [KISSING SOUNDS] Over and over.
DRE: I don’t know what I can do to ruin this ride you’re describing. [LAUGHS]
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
AUSTIN: The water is murky, and like, a little too warm. And it smells.
JANINE: What’s the viscosity like?
ART: You’re just making more people go on it. That’s how—
AUSTIN: [LAUGHS] Yeah.
KEITH: Tunnel of Uncomfortable Love.
AUSTIN: It’s very viscous. Uh-huh. Terrible animatronics. There’s an animatronic that just rocks back and forth creakily, and goes, ‘You’re in love now! You’re in love now!’
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
JACK: [LAUGHING] There’s a drop, like, a full-scale splash—
AUSTIN: [LAUGHS] Like a log flume?
JACK: Yes.
KEITH: It has like a splash mountain drop.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Like, unannounced. Totally—there’s no build. There’s none of the anticipation, there’s just the drop.
SYLVI: That’s so funny.
AUSTIN: Fuck that. So how are you making that worse, Dre?
DRE: Um… let’s see. I’m gonna cause a traffic jam in the log flume.
JACK: Oh!
AUSTIN: Ohh. Love it.
JACK: Oh boy. Yeah, I once got stuck in Pirates of the Caribbean during a really irritating bit. And there’s a lot of those.
AUSTIN: Oh, no fuckin’ thanks. Yeah. Hate that. And that’s where you find Chine, Lyke and Duvall.
DRE: Literally about—like, holding up one of the animatronics and about to like heave-ho throw it into the water at the base of the log flume.
AUSTIN: Yeah. So yeah, there’s Chine. Maybe like, pushing around one of these, like—an uninhabited giant heron walker boat thing.
ART: I guess that’s better than an inhabited one.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Oh yeah.
ART (as DUVALL): Hey, Chine. How’s it going?
DRE (as CHINE): [GRUNTS IN EXERTION] Good, how are you?
ART (as DUVALL): Mm, I’ve been better.
DRE (as CHINE): What’s going on?
ART (as DUVALL): A really unsettling circus has been happening all day.
DRE (as CHINE): Yeah.
ART (as DUVALL): And I got fired.
DRE (as CHINE): Yep. Uh-huh.
ART (as DUVALL): Also, my job wasn’t what I thought it was?
DRE (as CHINE): Oh, what’d you think it was?
ART (as DUVALL): I thought we were like, explorers?
DRE (as CHINE): You know, now that you’re saying this, I don’t think I knew what our job was either.
KEITH (as LYKE): Clearly.
ART (as DUVALL): Yeah. While we’re on the subject—
[KEITH LAUGHS]
DRE (as CHINE): Uh-huh?
ART (as DUVALL): It definitely wasn’t this, that you’re doing now.
DRE (as CHINE): Oh, that’s true. But like you said, we’ve been let go.
ART (as DUVALL): Mm. So it was professional courtesy that was keeping you from doing things like this before?
DRE (as CHINE): Hm. No. I would say… lack of purpose.
ART (as DUVALL): Mm. I understand that.
KEITH (as LYKE): Yeah?
ART (as DUVALL): Yeah. I mean, you remember before, right?
KEITH (as LYKE): Yeah.
ART: Wait, was that you, Keith? I was—
KEITH: Yeah, I’m here.
DRE: Wait a second.
ART: That question was directed to Chine.
KEITH: No, it was me the whole time. I was questioning you being—saying that you understand that.
ART (as DUVALL): Oh, I understand the desire to have purpose. I think a lot of what—a lot of what I’ve done has been about purpose. It’s kind of how I got here in general. Purpose.
DRE (as CHINE): Mm. So what were you saying about before?
ART (as DUVALL): Do you remember before? Before Blackwick?
DRE (as CHINE): I mean, yeah. What about it?
ART (as DUVALL): I mean, just—that was a genuine question. You and I knew each other before.
DRE (as CHINE): Mhm?
ART (as DUVALL): And both of us have changed a lot since then.
DRE (as CHINE): That is very true.
ART (as DUVALL): But you still remember those times.
DRE (as CHINE): Yes? Do you—wait, do you not?
ART (as DUVALL): Of course, but is it… if you’re not the same person you were when you did the thing, is your memory of it real?
DRE (as CHINE): Yes?
ART (as DUVALL): How would you know?
DRE (as CHINE): Also, when you say you’re not the person, as in like—wait, what do you mean? Like, that you have—like, you’ve changed your opinion?
ART (as DUVALL): I mean, people are always changing, right?
DRE (as CHINE): Yeah?
ART (as DUVALL): You know, you’re doing something now that you wouldn’t necessarily have done this morning.
DRE (as CHINE): Mm. That’s not true, but I get your point.
ART (as DUVALL): Well, necessarily. But like—and also, you and I have physically changed.
DRE (as CHINE): Well, I think on that part, maybe you more than me. But, yes.
ART (as DUVALL): Sure.
AUSTIN: Chine’s skull poking through head, body covered in reflected mirrors.
DRE: Uh-huh.
AUSTIN: Strange bugs also following you around, we just don’t talk about it that much.
DRE: Yeah, but they’re not me.
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, fair, fair, fair.
KEITH: To be fair, Duvall’s not sure that those bugs are him either yet.
ART: Yeah. Jury’s out on that.
ART (as DUVALL): But I mean, since you got off the boat, let’s say. You’ve been—I would say that was like a scene change moment for you.
DRE (as CHINE): Sure.
ART (as DUVALL): Yeah. Like me going to the city was.
DRE (as CHINE): Hey, will you hand me that big sign that’s over there?
ART: What’s the sign say?
DRE: Oh, god. Um… What is a sign that would be in a haunted house that you turn into a Tunnel of Love?
AUSTIN: Oh, that’s good. Oh, that’s such a good question.
DRE: Like it’s a sign that says, like, ‘no hope ahead’, but it says, like, ‘no hope ahead… to NOT be in love!’
KEITH: They just add a comma. ‘No,’ comma, ‘hope ahead!’
JANINE: Yeah. ‘No, hope ahead!’ It’s the Lionel Hutz joke, it’s the Lionel Hutz joke.
DRE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
ART: Can we get there with the ‘abandon all hope, ye who enter here’? Can we comma that into something?
KEITH: Abandon.
AUSTIN: Abandon all!
JACK: You could do—
ART: Abandon all!
AUSTIN: ‘Hope ye enter here!’
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
ART: There’s a connotation there that I’m not sure I love.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. Leave it all behind, you know?
DRE: Yeah, yeah.
KEITH: For love. Leave it all behind for love.
AUSTIN: For love.
DRE: For love. Yeah.
AUSTIN: ‘Hope ye enter here!’ Open parentheses, closed parentheses, ‘(for love!)’
KEITH: And never return.
DRE: ‘I would do anything for love,’ and that’s the end of the song. That’s just—that’s the line.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
ART (as DUVALL): What are you gonna do with the sign, Chine?
DRE (as CHINE): Oh, I’m gonna—I’m gonna throw it on top of this dam I’m making.
ART (as DUVALL): No, I don’t think I’m gonna do that. I think you’re gonna have to get your own dam sign.
KEITH: Get your own damn sign.
DRE (as CHINE): No, that’s fair.
ART (as DUVALL): Yeah.
AUSTIN: Walks over and gets it, presumably.
DRE: Yeah.
DRE (as CHINE): Yeah, this was a pain in the ass. I don’t blame you for not getting it.
ART (as DUVALL): Alright, I sort of thought that this would be more revelatory for you…
DRE (as CHINE): I don’t know—I mean, you’ve asked me if I remember things, and then you’ve basically said ‘but do you really, though?’
ART (as DUVALL): Yeah. But do you really, though?
DRE (as CHINE): Yeah.
ART (as DUVALL): Okay. No, it’s… that’s great. [PAUSE] You have to stop doing this. I understand that Pickman tried to talk you out of it, and that it didn’t work, and—
DRE (as CHINE): I mean, I don’t—Pickman told me that she didn’t like that I was doing it. And then I kind of asked what’s the difference between me having a vision of the Course and serving it versus what she does with the Shape, and then she kind of walked away.
ART (as DUVALL): Okay. If—
DRE (as CHINE): Do you know that she killed the new mayor guy?
ART (as DUVALL): No, but that’s not surprising.
DRE (as CHINE): I mean, I’m not upset about it. I think it’s pretty cool. I just also think it’s a little hypocritical.
ART (as DUVALL): Sure. I could see how you’d think that. Um, this is so many more people than one?
DRE (as CHINE): I’m not killing anyone.
ART (as DUVALL): Well, but you’re sort of turning them into dirt-people.
DRE (as CHINE): Not—do we know they’re made of dirt? Did you cut open, like, any of the performers?
AUSTIN: We know they’re made of dirt. I mean, no, no one ever cut anybody open. But, you are speaking to a bug-person.
DRE: Yeah, that’s fair.
ART (as DUVALL): And you’re kind of making them endless slaves to a horrible circus? Look around. Do you want to be in this every day for the rest of your life? Follow-up question: do you think most people would want to be in this every day for the rest of their life?
DRE (as CHINE): I don’t know. That’s a good question.
ART (as DUVALL): No, I think it’s almost rhetorical.
[KEITH LAUGHS]
ART (as DUVALL): This is terrible, and being in it is also, itself, terrible.
[PAUSE]
DRE (as CHINE): Alright, well… What’s your plan?
ART (as DUVALL): Let the carnival leave.
DRE (as CHINE): Well, I meant, like—okay, so once all this is—we don’t have anything holding us here or holding us together, so what is your plan after this?
ART (as DUVALL): Oh, I don’t have one yet. But I don’t think I need to have the rest of my life mapped out to know that it’s not this.
DRE (as CHINE): Oh. Well that’s—because I mean, that was my plan.
ART (as DUVALL): You want to be in the carnival?
DRE (as CHINE): Sure.
[SYLVI LAUGHS]
ART (as DUVALL): I—
DRE (as CHINE): What, you think I was gonna do this and then just like, run away?
ART (as DUVALL): Maybe? It’s a really odd thing to do.
DRE: Looks at bugs crawling all over Duvall. [LAUGHS]
ART (as DUVALL): Uh-huh. But like—I don’t know. I think this is worse. I think this is a lot worse.
KEITH (as LYKE): Yeah, I mean, you’re about to blow up the town because you don’t care enough about it. But you don’t even know—
DRE (as CHINE): I’m not blowing anything up.
KEITH (as LYKE): —anything about the circus, it’s been like 20 minutes. And you’re like, ‘yeah, I’ll definitely be locked into the circus forever and be fine.’
DRE (as CHINE): I don’t even know that this is gonna keep being a circus.
ART (as DUVALL): Well that’s—you can’t be doing this because you think it’s not gonna be a circus anymore.
DRE (as CHINE): I don’t know.
ART (as DUVALL): Yeah, but it’s a bonkers assumption.
KEITH: Okay. Duvall, did you—I feel like Chine is a villain now.
AUSTIN: Lye Lychen, everybody.
ALI: You’re really assigning villainy to folks.
KEITH: Oh, yeah, no, this is totally debatably not villain behavior. Chine is doing almost the exact thing that every bad person that we’ve been put up against has done, I mean almost to a T!
JANINE: I think we’re all just saying when you point one finger, you got three pointing back at you, is all.
ALI: I was literally about to say that, so thank you. [LAUGHS]
KEITH: That is insane! Of course not!
ART: I think this is literally the plot of a Batman story. I think—
[DRE LAUGHS]
ART: Chine is all the way in Joker strip territory.
KEITH: Yeah! This is incontroversiable—like it’s a—Chine is at the point in a villain’s—
AUSTIN: I just think it’s very funny that you do this a day after creating a much bigger threat to Sangfielle than this.
KEITH: This is not—there’s no—I find—there’s no cognitive dissonance here, there’s not even dramatic tension.
AUSTIN: No, it’s irony. It’s not cognitive dissonance.
KEITH: I don’t think that there’s any—I mean, like, ‘oh, it’s very funny that you’d accuse Chine of being a villain a day after drinking a glass of orange juice.’ Is that funny? I don’t think that’s funny.
AUSTIN: Well, if you drank a glass of orange juice that created an evil god, I would think—
[MUSIC OUTRO - “Sangfielle” by Jack de Quidt]
DRE: And that people told you not to drink a bunch of times. [LAUGHS]
AUSTIN: Yes. What I’m saying—the comedy in it for me is about knowing there would be consequences that other people might be affected by in doing the thing anyway.
[1] [32:20] Pronounced (TIE - KIER). Spelling unknown.