Transcriber: logan
First Card (Act III) [0:32:42] 24
[“Eyes of a Killer” by Jack de Quidt begins playing]
Keith (as Sanidine): In a way, and of course I’d never not pay you back, but if you think about it in a way the returns you’ve already been seeing are…the returns that this is for. [Dre wheezes]
Sylvia (as Gabrielle): Uh huh. You need to learn to quit while you’re ahead sometimes, Sanidine.
Art: A lava leak.
Sylvia: Oh no!
Art: Right under Mack Magoo’s house. Goes up in an instant, that’s it for Magoo and his whole Magoo clan.
Dre: Maybe Basalt found a competing fuel source? Like on the island?
Art: I’m Alabaster Clad and I’m here to talk to you about power.
Keith: These people are sick. They’re out for blood. They’re out for literal blood. In a hideout type shit, like my house is burned down.
Sylvia: Okay.
Dre: Mm.
Sylvia (as Luetta): No, oh I couldn’t ask for anything like that. Though, things have been hard with, with my dear Steel’s mountain starting to dry up a bit, and he hasn’t been able to quite find…maybe, y’know, if you had a position back home…
Dre (as Eliza): Luetta, you know that the family business is always open to family. You just have Steel forward over his resume and it’ll be taken care of.
Sylvia (as Luetta): But that’s more of…that’s just a formality, correct?
Sylvia: [laughing] Hey everybody! Welcome to Friends at the Table! An actual play podcast about critical worldbuilding, smart characterization, and fun interaction between good friends. Today we are continuing, possibly finishing our game of The Slow Knife. Oh fuck, I didn’t pull up, I didn’t pull up the Slow Knife credits before I started this intro. Um…
Keith: Talk slow. Talk very slow.
Sylvia: Designed by Jack Harrison, illustrations by Rafael Nobre, published by, I believe…whoa, wait the publisher’s not listed on this PDF I’m looking at.
Art: It’s fine, it’s fine.
Sylvia: It’s fine. I’m gonna find it in the middle, while we introduce each other, but first of all my name’s Sylvi Bullet. You can find me everywhere, SYLVIBULLET, S-Y-L-V-I is how it’s spelled. Also, I don’t promote this a lot, but you guys should follow my band’s Twitter, ‘cause we have shows happening this summer. If you go to XxEBKxX, and that’s my one personal project I’m gonna plug. You can also check out, well this is Patreon so you know friendsatthetable.cash. You should know the Friends at the Table YouTube, we have a lot of good stuff up there. Streaming a ton over at twitch.tv/friendsatthetable. That’s a segue to another plug, which is also good. And TikTok is friends_table, Cohost friends-table, friends_table or friends-table, aside from the Twitch which is also friendsatthetable and I think I said that already. With me today is Keith J. Carberry.
Keith: Hi, my name is Keith Carberry, you can find me on Twitter at KeithJCarberry, and cohost at KeithJCarberry, and when this comes out it’ll be May and May is Subscribe to Run Button Or Else month.
Sylvia: That’s right.
Keith: Go to youtube.com/RunButton and subscribe Or Else.
Art: Or else!
Sylvia: You don’t wanna know.
Keith: You don’t wanna know what that means!
Dre: No you don’t.
Sylvia: You really don’t. Stern talking to. Also with us here today, Andrew Lee Swan.
Dre: Hey. You can find me on Twitter at Swandre3000 and if you haven’t yet, you should specifically go to our YouTube that Sylvi just plugged and watch the Content Warning stream that Keith and I are on along with Jack and Janine.
Sylvia: Oh yeah…
Dre: That game’s great. We had a good ol’ time.
Sylvia: There’s a very funny moment of Keith suddenly appearing. [Dre laughs] And that’s all I’ll say.
Keith: That was so, yes.
Sylvia: It was really good.
Dre: The magic of Keith.
Keith: I saw it from the perspective of the camera today and it was really funny.
Sylvia: Incredible work. Even in a video game, you got that physical comedy timing. And of course, last but not least with us today, Art Martinez-Tebbel.
Art: Hey, you can find me on Twitter at atebbel, Cohost amtebbel. We have a new merch drop, I guess it’s probably not gonna be new when you hear this but on friendsatthetable.shop. And Sylvi, you were plugging your band just a moment ago, but you didn’t say, if I want to talk about that band with someone, how do I pronounce that name?
Sylvia: Oh, the band’s called Emo Boys Kissing. I shoulda said that.
Art: Okay. ‘Cause you just said a string of letters—
Sylvia: Yeah, ‘cause we abbreviated it for Twitter because, surprisingly enough that username wasn’t available.
Art: [shocked] What? [Keith laughs]
Sylvia: I know.
Keith: I’m not surprised.
Dre: I’m not surprised either.
Art: I’m not surprised either, but I was feigning shock, I mean I’m here to play a game.
Sylvia: I appreciated the effort.
Art: Yeah.
Sylvia: You at least fed into my illusions there.
Keith: Did they lift the ‘no feigning’ rule? [cross] I thought we couldn’t feign on Friends at the Table.
Art: [cross] Yeah, you can feign whenever you want.
Sylvia: [cross] We’re allowed to feign again.
Keith: Oh, fuck…
Sylvia: When we redid the agreement, feigning got added back in.
Keith: Oh my god. [Sylvi laughs] I’m so behind.
Sylvia: Yeah man. You gotta read the paperwork.
Art: Yeah, previously you were forbidden from feigning, but it’s over now.
Sylvia: Like I said earlier, we’re gonna be finishing, or at least continuing—
Keith: [loud whispering] Did we talk about Media Club Plus? Did I…
Sylvia: You know what? I knew there was something I was missing. Go to mediaclub.plus!
Keith: Media Club— three of the four of us are on Media Club Plus, we watch and then talk about Hunter X Hunter, it’s been so good!
Sylvia: Yeah, there’s also some bonus episodes you should have access to if you're listening to this.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: We just did some Jojo ones.
Keith: Three will be up. Two episodes of Dragon Ball Z and one episode of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.
Sylvia: Yeah. Not gonna say who, but somebody who I made watch that show for the podcast seems to enjoy it quite a bit.
Keith: And that somebody has now seen the third intro, and it might be the best intro.
Sylvia: That’s— okay. We’re gonna talk about that too long if, if…oh. That just broke my brain.
Keith: [laughing] It’s really good!
Sylvia: I’ve never heard anyone say the third one’s their favorite.
Keith: It’s so good!
Sylvia: It’s a good one, it’s just, y’know. But yeah, mediaclub.plus, please check that out. I also, while we were doing my super professional, super practiced intro for all of this, I looked it up. It is mouseholepress.itch.io if you wanna check out the Slow Knife. I highly recommend it, it’s like twelve bucks. It’s a really fun time, if you didn’t already know that from the hours of creating the volcanic island of Oligo. So yeah. It’s been a minute, just to give you guys a peek behind the curtain. It’s been a little while since we’ve been able to record one of these. The PALISADE finale has been taking a lot of our free recording days and energy, and also just life’s busy. So, we’re probably gonna have to recap a little bit here, for us. And hopefully you also enjoy it before diving into the third of four decks, the Snares deck. Top level, do you guys just wanna go through and introduce characters again really quick? Give like, a name and what their deal is.
Keith: Sure.
Sylvia: I can start if you’d like.
Keith: Okay.
Sylvia: So I’m playing Gabrielle Feldspar, she’s the heir to this sort of like zeppelin industry that runs Oligo and helps to frame our Knife who we will introduce soon. Stuff that most recently happened, I have been involved in investing in Keith’s character Sanidine Vug’s multiple Ponzi schemes. [Keith giggles] There is a rumor that I had an affair with Basalt, the Knife, who we had framed for murder many years ago at this point. And, just generally speaking kind of a, I’m just kinda playing a useless nepo baby I guess is the quickest way to put it there. Who would like to go next?
Keith: I can go.
Sylvia: Yeah, please.
Keith: I’m playing Sanidine Vug, who is a weasel, worm, snitch, instigator, informant, descended from a, a multigenerational ex-Born Warm. It’s been 500 years since the Vugs were like, landowners.
Sylvia: Yeah. They’re Dormant now.
Keith: Yep. They’re Dormant. And, I spent the last few years, I think the first thing that I did was invent, like, a financialization crime. Like a financialization Ponzi scheme, and then I think I pivoted to like a crypto Ponzi scheme.
Sylvia: You started selling gold.
Keith: [chuckling] Oh, I started selling gold!
Sylvia: Yeah, you started trying to make gold the new currency. If I’m remembering correctly.
Keith: Oh right yeah, okay so the thing that I did was I was like, I started financializing the like, the monetary system of our nation with a bank that turned into a Ponzi scheme.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Keith: And then in order to like, recover from that, sort of pivoted from obsidian? What were we, what was the…
Sylvia: I think we were trying to, we had a long conversation about what the most valuable material was and I think we came across obsidian as an answer there.
Keith: And then, ‘cause everything is made out of it so it’s like you literally use it to build your castle.
Sylvia: There was also a thing you brought up where it’s like, because the people in power here are the ones who own volcanoes, they’re just constantly making more of it for themselves, you know?
Keith: Right, yes. Yeah. Like it, yeah, having a volcano literally generally generates wealth. And yeah, pivoted towards selling gold because we got a contact with, we’re a sort of isolated island, we made financial ties with a neighboring country and started importing gold. And gold is just like, y’know, look at it. You can tell it’s valuable just from lookin’ at it!
Sylvia: Yeah. It’s shiny!
Dre: Sparkly.
Keith: Yeah, and so I became like, the person to go to to convert currency into gold. Oh, I remember the details of the Ponzi scheme involved selling, speculating on pieces of a volcano, you could own a part of a volcano as an investment vehicle for, or as a hedge against people losing their volcanoes which is known to happen.
Sylvia: Right.
Keith: So that was the original crime.
Sylvia: What a upstanding member of society.
Keith: Yeah this guy’s the worst.
Sylvia: Art or Dre, which one of you would like to go next?
Dre: I can go. I’m playing Eliza Cinder, she is a gatekeeper and a hater, god’s favorite princess and the most interesting girl in the world.
Sylvia: [laughs] Okay! Good for her.
Dre: Yeah.
Sylvia: Her and Gabrielle getting into fights over that title.
Dre: Yeah, I am a paranoid, power-hungry bad person who killed my dad and then framed Basalt for the murder because I thought Basalt was making me soft and care about poor people.
Keith: Damn. Get bit by a snake, cut the hand off.
Dre: Uh huh.
Sylvia: Is that, yeah? That’s the way to deal with that?
Dre: That’s the way to do it.
Keith: Yes.
Dre: Keith would know, that’s big snake country up there in the northeast.
Keith: We got timber rattlesnakes out here, they’ll kill ya!
Dre: Do you?
Keith: Yeah, ‘course we do! I grew up, I would see a rattlesnake probably once a year.
Dre: I grew up! [wheeze]
Sylvia: You gave him an opening to talk about local New England facts. [Dre laughs] How dare you.
Keith: I lived in the mountains! [Sylvi laughs] I lived on the Great Blue Hill!
Sylvia: I live in the— [wheeze] I live in the mountains! [Dre and Sylvi laugh]
Keith: That’s what Massachusetts means!
Sylvia: [still laughing] Oh my god…
Dre: Wait, does it mean the Great Blue Hill?
Art: God, imagine what kind of flat place you had to come from to see Massachusetts and be like, this is it. Name it the mountain place.
Keith: Yeah. I mean that is, yes. That is, I don’t know exactly what it translates to but it is like, describing it as a mountainous place, I think. If I’m wrong cut that out.
Dre: [cross] Don’t.
Sylvia: [cross] Don’t cut that out, ever.
Keith: [cross] Don’t even worry about that.
Sylvia: Alright, Art, do you wanna give us a rundown on your character real quick?
Art: Yeah, I will stop my Massachusetts research for a moment. [Sylvi laughs]
Keith: Sorry, it is Algonquian for “at the large hill.”
Art: Oh, that’s a little different.
Keith: In reference to the Great Blue Hill. Which is where I lived.
Art: Yeah, that’s not saying it’s mountainous, but also like, y’know.
Keith: It’s a mountain. It’s a very small mountain, it is a mountain.
Art: Sure.
Sylvia: Okay.
Art: Anyway, Claxton Cascade is just a shitbag chief of police. Has been just consolidating more and more power in effort to like, put in all those reforms that are gonna end crime and protect the moneyed elite. We’ve used Claxton a lot in this game to grease some wheels and put some lava in some people’s pockets, [Sylvi laughs] I say that metaphorically, doing that for real would kill you.
Sylvia: Yeah, you definitely didn’t do that last session to beloved character Mack Magoo.
Art: Well it’s not what we did, I mean I wish I had thought of that.
Sylvia: Yeah, good point.
Art: [chuckling] The next person is getting lava in their pockets.
Sylvia: In their pockets as opposed to in their house.
Art: Yeah.
Sylvia: Hmm. Can’t go wrong, if you ask me.
Art: Just like, that’s what, y’know, if this was Who Framed Roger Rabbit? But in a lava society, that’s how they’d do it.
Keith: Yeah. [cross] Although if they live, the side effect is…
Sylvia: [cross] [chuckling] Who flamed Roger Rabbit?
Art: Who flamed Roger Rabbit. [Dre laughs]
Keith: If they live, the side effect is you’ve given them a bunch of money.
Art: It’s just gonna harden.
Keith: Into obsidian, then you peel it off, and then ya…
Dre: Then you trade it in for gold.
Art: I don’t think you can peel obsidian out of your pants.
Keith: Oh, sorry, no no I mean if you do it to someone’s house. If you fill someone’s house with lava.
Art: Oh yeah.
Sylvia: [laughing] Sorry. I always forget the energy on these until we’re in it.
Dre: Oh yeah.
Sylvia: Okay, let me go over some other stuff here, high level. Or Art, do you have any other things to mention about your character?
Art: Nah, I think I’m good.
Sylvia: Okay cool. So our Knife, who is the protagonist of the story that has been ruined by the four delightful characters we’ve just described for you. Basalt Caldera, he was a Born Warm whose family went Dormant years ago, a couple generations ago.
Keith: Loser.
Sylvia: Yeah, we all hate him, he stinks. No, he was framed for murder because he discovered a new vein of lava and it seemed like he was about to become more important than he had been for years, which was a problem given the fact that the Laze have a real affection for him and his big beautiful peepers. Most recently after being exiled to a deserted island for multiple years, like this is on the timeline of years at this point, returned with the help…We never really answered what happened with Slate, but I think we assumed he’s dead. With the help of Slate, an old man who was exiled on that island, helped him get back to Oligo with these special vibrating crystals, which vibrate when exposed to electricity and it’s a more… We deal with a lot of Minecraft science on here [Keith and Art laugh] in that it’s very vibes based. It’s a more efficient power source than the lava is because of this. And he has returned. You know what, we can actually talk about how he returns with the first question, the first card for this next act because we kinda got ahead of ourselves. Either that or we answered this before we ended last time, but i don’t think we did.
Keith: Which frame is this?
Sylvia: This is, we’re on, wait what do you mean? Like which card?
Keith: Yeah, yeah.
Sylvia: So it’s this first one here in the top left on our Roll20, ‘the Knife has returned ot society, answer together…’
Keith: Oh these, okay. Not the stuff up top, we already did those.
Sylvia: Yeah yeah, no, I don’t think we wrote it down. One of the reasons why I was like oh okay, we should just jump into this is because we kind of half answered this. If I’m wrong about us having not done this card last time, it’s added value for the subscriber… That’s my excuse.
Keith: It’s a value ad.
Sylvia: Exactly! Exactly. Who doesn’t love a do over? So. The Knife— I’m gonna just jump in, if we’re good with that.
Keith: Mhm.
Sylvia: Okay. If we have any more questions about stuff, clarifying, I’ll do my best to dig into the recesses of my memory from listening to this episode like four hours ago.
Keith: Oh here’s a question, is the Knife involved in this gold business at all? Have I accidentally gotten myself in… Because there was something, I remember there was something about the Knife—
Sylvia: There was a dignitary that came, that I think was involved with it.
Keith: Yeah. Okay, I just remember that he gets back to the, sorry, what’s the name of our country again?
Sylvia: Oligo.
Keith: He gets back to Oligo and is kind of a big deal as Alabaster Clad. But I don’t remember why he’s a big deal.
Sylvia: I think I remember—
Dre: I thought it was ‘cause he brought the rocks with him. The electricity rocks.
Sylvia: Yeah, it was just because he brought his cool rocks.
Keith: Oh, okay okay. It was just like a different thing, it wasn’t the gold thing. It was just similar to it.
Sylvia: So, I’m gonna read out this whole question ‘cause we could work this into the answer for this. ‘Cause we all come up with the answer for this question together.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: ‘What grand event announces the Knife’s arrival and why could you never recognize them?’
Keith: Covering the peepers.
Sylvia: I mean, they’re covering the— I do, listen. I like big bushy white beard and like, long white hair mixed with some sunglasses.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: Lookin’ like, lookin’ like pimped out Santa is all I can think of to say.
Keith: Sure, yeah.
Dre: Did you say pimped out Santa?
Sylvia: I said pimped out Santa.
Dre: Let’s fucking go.
Sylvia: I had too much caffeine today. Okay cool.
Keith: I was thinking Rick Rubin, is who I was thinking.
Dre: That’s kinda the same thing. [laughs]
Sylvia: I’m not picturing Rick Rubin.
Keith: Rick Rubin looks, her, I’ll…
Dre: He looks like pimped out Santa.
Sylvia: No I know what Rick Rubin looks like, it’s just RIck Rubin’s a white guy.
Keith: [cross] Oh, you’re saying you don’t want to picture Rick Rubin, which is fair.
Dre: [cross] Oh that’s true, yeah yeah yeah.
Keith: Because Rick Rubin sucks.
Sylvia: Most often I don’t. So I was thinking just based off the stuff Keith was asking about, the thing that could mark the arrival of the newly named Alabaster Clad to society could be the arrival of this gold-bearing dignitary that you’ve gotten into business with. Like it could be at the, maybe not necessarily one-to-one like they’re working together, but there could be like a big welcoming party or some shit that he shows up unannounced to, grand entrance. White suit, white hat, white beard.
Dre: Oh! You know what? You know what conducts electricity really well?
Sylvia: What does?
Dre: Gold.
Sylvia: [squeaky rasp] Gold… Sorry I turned into Goldmember. Yeah, nah man.
Keith: Oh right, the electricity thing.
Sylvia: Yeah the electricity thing is huge. We need to remember the electricity thing.
Dre: Yeah.
Sylvia: Like he is bringing in a new power source to completely disrupt this island’s infrastructure.
Keith: Which is bad for them.
Sylvia: Which is bad for our characters, not necessarily bad for everybody.
Keith: Oh that’s what I mean, not bad for real people.
Art: Remember the electricity thing, forget the Goldmember thing.
Sylvia: Yeah, please forget the Goldmember thing. Sorry I did that.
Dre: Do you want a blunt and a pancake? [pause, laughs, Sylvi groans]
Keith: Do you want Mike Meyers in a Scottish accent?
Sylvia: There’s a lot of that, I actually think I’m good. So… [chuckles]
Keith: Do you want Scott Aukerman as a young Michael Caine?
Sylvia: I—I never—they’re never gonna let me facilitate a game ever again. [Dre and Keith laugh]
Keith: No this is fun, this is normal.
Sylvia: Listen, I know, but, y’know. I’m having a great time, but also, oh yeah this’ll cover a couple months bonus Patreon thing going is gonna end up being half a year long. [Dre laughs]
Keith: I heard that if this is two or three episodes, then that is great. That’s what I heard.
Art: I don’t think that they necessarily meant of Goldmember content.
Sylvia: Yeah this is a good—
Dre: Welp. Too bad.
Keith: Well luckily I do not have three episodes worth of Goldmember content, I only had Scott Aukerman as a young Michael Caine.
Art: I think we’re actually on the verge of a weird Austin Powers renaissance.
Sylvia: Oh no. That can’t be true.
Dre: I can’t believe you’re spoiling season two of Media Club Plus in this way. [Keith laughs]
Sylvia: [Doots the Austin Powers theme jingle] Jack would do a great rendition of that, though.
Dre: [laughs] They really would.
Art: I think we’re just gonna license the Ludacris song.
Sylvia: Okay. [scoffs] I’m bringing us back to the game!
Dre: Thank you. I brought that up because that is maybe also a way in which Alabaster Clad is getting into your gold stuff, Keith.
Keith: Sure.
Sylvia: [whispering] Dre, you’ve given me an idea.
Dre: Ooh! Okay.
Sylvia: What if they’re doing like a World’s Fair type thing?
Dre: Oh!
Keith: What if they’re building fembots? [Art and Keith laugh hard]
Sylvia: Hey man, I’ve been asking that for a while.
Dre: Man…pour one out for Elizabeth Hurley, you know?
Sylvia: I’m on some mailing lists, no news yet…
Dre: Wasn’t that how they started Austin Powers two? Elizabeth Hurley turned out to be a fembot?
Keith: Yeah, it was insane.
Art: Yeah, because she did not want to do the sequel.
Keith: And that’s fair.
Dre: Yeah. And she just posted weird horny pictures with her nephew or something that one time?
Keith and Sylvia: What??
Dre: Yeah.
Art: I’m not familiar with whatever you’re referring to.
Sylvia: I— We— I hate Austin Powers for what he’s done to this recording session.
Keith: [laughs] And that’s it. That’s the only reason.
Art: We haven’t even started trying to do impressions.
Sylvia: [sighs] Please don’t do an Austin Powers impression.
Art: I don’t have one.
Sylvia: Okay, I got really scared. We were excited about that idea and then we started talking about Austin Powers again.
Keith: I put in Google, ‘Elizabeth Hurley nephew’ and the first thing is ‘Elizabeth Hurley nephew stabbed.’ [laughing] That is the, that is the first…
Sylvia: Oh no!
Dre: Well so he got stabbed, and then she posted this tweet about like, oh I’m so grateful my nephew can be with us at Easter, but…
Sylvia: Oh that’s a bit much.
Dre: Yeah.
Sylvia: That’s, that…
Keith: That’s too much.
Sylvia: That is a bit much. It’s a bit much.
Dre: It’s readily the ears that make it.
Sylvia: Yeah there’s just a whole, there’s a lot of that. There’s a lot going on there. Are we comfortable with the World’s Fair idea?
Dre: Yes, I really like the World’s Fair idea.
Keith: Yes. I like the World’s Fair idea.
Dre: Yeah.
Sylvia: Gold theme, not gold-themed but like a big gold like, exhibition.
Keith: Sponsored by the idea of gold.
Sylvia: Yeah, straight up, straight up. Like, fuck, what’s the periodic table of elements for gold? Is that Ag?
Dre: Au.
Art: It’s one of those.
Dre: [cross] It’s Au, I’m pretty sure.
Keith: [cross] It’s one of those, I think it’s Au, yeah because Ag is silver.
Sylvia: Okay I’ll try and think of a fun thing that could stand for for the name of this. And if I don’t, then the listener can do it for me. Okay, I like that a lot, and then I think it’s like…
Dre: Au…
Sylvia: Alternate universe.
Dre: Something united.
Sylvia: Oh…
Dre: Back to Googling volcano terms.
Sylvia: I like the idea of him showing up and behaving like a kooky inventor.
Dre: [cross] Ooh. Which is another way that we can’t recognize him.
Keith: [cross] Right. Like an Emmett Brown.
Dre: Because his affect is so different.
Sylvia: Right, yeah like it’s kind of a hiding in plain sight thing, right? Where it’s like, oh he’s acting like this similarly animated to the way that like, not to call Sanidine Vug a snake oil salesman or anything, but, y’know.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: Maybe evocative of some techniques.
Keith: Although Caldera was sort of a passionate nerd scientist kinda guy.
Sylvia: Yeah, you’re right.
Keith: Isn’t so far from…I’m not saying we shouldn’t do kooky inventor, it’s just different when you're a young man versus bushy beard Santa Claus.
Sylvia: The aging has helped a lot in terms of hiding his identity and I think like, I don’t know. I guess I have this one image of him in front of his what we described as like, fuckin’ Final Fantasy crystal looking rocks that power his tesla coils and stuff.
Keith: Mhm.
Sylvia: Like, showing the way electricity can arc and stuff in ways it doesn’t when it’s these slow, sort of like analog, like we described them as analog a lot, the magma based…
Keith: Yeah they have basically everything works on big electric abacuses.
Sylvia: Yeah. And so like, I feel like the crux of this demonstration is like, look at how quickly these magic crystals I brought can power something, or like activate something that would take ages for magma to properly power.
Keith: I like it.
Sylvia: I guess my question is, how does everybody feel about that?
Keith: Good. Pro.
Dre: Awful.
Sylvia: Okay yeah, that’s what I wanted to see. Are you genuinely into it, Vug? Like you think it’s cool?
Keith: Oh, sorry, you mean everyone…
Sylvia: Everyone’s characters, like character-wise how do we feel about it? ‘Cause I wanna get like, we odn’t need to do like a full on scene but if you think your character would be at this event, which is again being help to honor this dignitary that’s funding Vug’s fuckin’ pyramid scheme.
Keith: Right.
Sylvia: The latest in a chain of them.
Keith: Yeah. Cash for gold.
Sylvia: Yeah yeah yeah. I know I’d be there because I’m also one of the sponsors.
Keith: Well I think it’s complicated because I don’t think that this directly affects anything that Vug is involved with but it does affect the sort of like, fabric of the…like, the ruling class and their technology.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Keith: And those people are important to my scheme.
Sylvia: That is true, that is your target audience.
Keith: So I think, I guess I would have to say like, ambivalent/not knowing…’cause if this is gonna be good for me thenI wanna go with it, but it’s hard to say, I think it’s just sort of like, let this play out a little longer before I make up my mind.
Sylvia: Yeah. Personally, I am seeing an investment opportunity. Y’know? I’m a businesswoman. Y’know, let me handle my business, woman. Sorry.
Dre: You’re not a businesswoman, you’re a business, woman.
Sylvia: I watched Monkey Man yesterday and I kept in my head repeating, ‘I’m not a monkey man, I’m a monkey, man, let me handle my monkey, man.’ [Dre laughs] Great movie by the way, very Slow Knife-coded.
Art: I’m sorry, but wouldn’t it be ‘let me handle my monkey, damn?’
Sylvia: Oh yeah it is, but I don’t listen to Jay-Z that much. That was Jay-Z right?
Keith and Art: Yeah.
Sylvia: Okay. I at least got that part right.
Art: I guess it was on a Kanye West album.
Sylvia: That’s even harder for me to evoke in memories, y’know?
Art: Yeah, it was a long time ago.
Sylvia: Now if he did a track with Bladee, I’d know it. But that’s ‘cause I’m horrible. Okay, anyway, Gabrielle, into it. Intrigued. Kind of trying to hide that she thinks it could be a worthwhile opportunity because she is there to invest in the other shit going on around her. But hey, if there’s something that could power both my zeppelins and my shitty carts that the workers are always suffering in. Maybe it’s, I don’t know! Maybe it could be worth it even if it does upset the natural order that has given me everything that I’ve wanted in my life. It’s not like if that came toppling down then things would be bad or anything. Y’know?
Dre: Mm. Mhm.
Art: Yeah, and I think Claxton is against it but is unable to stop it, y’know?
Sylvia: Mhm.
Art: Y’know, as anyone that’s invested in traditional power especially in this way, upsetting it’s very bad.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Art: But y’know, to suggest that it shouldn’t happen is to expose his ultimate lack of political sway, right?
Sylvia: Yeah.
Art: No one who thinks they’re gonna make money is gonna let the cops tell them they can’t do it.
Sylvia: God damn if that ain’t true.
Dre: Yeah. Eliza hates this shit. I think part of her acknowledges how world-changing this could be and that’s why she hates it so much.
Sylvia: Fair enough.
Dre: I mean also her whole ambition, I guess I didn’t say this in the intro, but my ambition is to find out a way to automate lava harvesting. And so if, we’re not harvesting lava anymore, what the fuck are we even doing here?
Sylvia: Great point. Alright, I feel satisfied with this answer. Oh, I did not mean to move that… I feel satisfied with this answer. If there are no complaints we can start drawing cards. I don’t remember our order so if you guys want I could go first or if someone’s feeling antsy they could go.
Keith: No that’s fine, let’s start drawing cards.
Sylvia: Okay, I’m pullin’ it. I forgot that they draw so tiny…Oh!
Keith: This is our first or second…ooh. Our second Snares card, right?
Sylvia: Yeah, this is our second Snares card. Yeah, ‘cause the acts always begin with the same card. Someone else you left for dead returns. Their vengeance is one of simple violence. What do they wreak before you stop them? Oh boy!
Keith: [deep voice] Magoo.
Dre: Oh boy.
Sylvia: Magoo— bro, Magoo’s burned up.
Dre: Or is he?
Art: Yeah we done burnt up Magoo— ohhh!
Sylvia: Ohhh! Mack with a vengeance.
Keith: The ‘oh’ was so loud that Discord ducked it. [Dre and Keith laugh]
Sylvia: That’s really good. Yeah, ooh, I’m peaking a little bit. My bad.
Art: I regret nothing.
Sylvia: I didn’t think you would.
Dre: How did we kill Magoo again?
Keith: Lava.
Sylvia: Burned house down with lava.
Keith: Burned house down, with lava.
Sylvia: Like, I believe Art, you described it as, you know the way that it’s impossible to outrun lava? Like, that was something you evoked while he was getting burnt to death.
Art: But maybe that wasn’t right!
Sylvia: [cross] Or I might be wrong.
Keith: [cross] Maybe that wasn’t Magoo.
Dre: My proposal on how Magoo lives is that, god I don’t know, he somehow finds something he can ride the lava down. [Sylvi laughs] It’s very much like, is it Crystal Skull, the Indiana Jones movie where he jumps in a refrigerator [Sylvia: Yeah!] and that saves him from a nuclear bomb? It’s very much that kinda logic, right?
Keith: Yeah, yeah. Well it’s lined with lead.
Sylvia: Also happens in Heavy Rain.
Dre: Sure. Then, well first you gotta piss on the refrigerator. Oh, that’s not Heavy Rain, that’s a different game, that’s a different weird game.
Sylvia: I’m moving us on. I do like the answer being Mack Magoo. This might not necessarily apply to my character, but I’m happy to answer this with that. ‘Cause ‘vengeance is one of simple violence,’ I do kind of like the idea of burnt up Officer… I almost called him Officer Dipshit and I’m really sorry. [Keith giggles] But we have sort of presented him as being a dumb guy.
Keith: He was picked because, the assumption was that he would fail.
Sylvia: Yes. That is a hundred percent true.
Art: I’m comfortable with Officer Dipshit to be honest, I don’t…
Sylvia: I know you are. [Keith chuckles] You’re his boss! Yeah, so, I… I got an idea.
Dre: Mhm.
Sylvia: Art, this applies a lot to your character so you can veto me here if you want.
Art: Sounds like me.
Sylvia: Ah, y’know, I wanna give the option. We’re collaborative storytellers.
Art: Yeah.
Keith: Not Art. [chuckles]
Art: Here I come.
Sylvia: What if you tried to, like, we talked about you having this specific like, police station called Cascade’s Thumb, I think is what we called it? Where a lot of your power is consolidated. And like, he could burn that down? As an act of revenge? Is kind of where I immediately go to.
Art: That’s a pretty good one.
Keith: Yeah. That’s classic fire with fire.
Dre: Art, didn’t your character have like a, like isn’t there a special police force or something that you founded?
Art: Yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Dre: Mm.
Sylvia: And I think that’s where they’re based, too.
Dre: Okay, okay. That makes sense then that that’s who he targets.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Art: Definitely.
Sylvia: Yeah okay. Is Mack Magoo, Mack Magoo’s caught, yeah? After this? ‘Cause it is, ‘what do they wreak before you stop them’? And I kinda, I kinda like the idea of once again, the society just being like, just send the fuckin’ guy to the fuckin’ island. Just get ‘em… [Keith laughs] God dammit, we clearly can’t kill people properly here, send him to the goddamn island.
Keith: Send him to the island. That’s what it’s there for.
Art: Yeah.
Dre: I don’t know, would…
Sylvia: Listen, we’ve killed Mack Magoo, we can kill him again. [wheeze]
Dre: Yeah, and maybe this time, Claxton, maybe make sure he stays fuckin’ dead.
Sylvia: Yeah I mean now you don’t have to be secretive about it.
Art: That’s true.
Keith: Is it in the papers?
Art: It was the secrecy that was the problem the first time, I bet.
Sylvia: [laughs] Well now people, now there’s at least a subset of people who are like, oh fuck yeah they got the criminal! Y’know?
Dre: Oh yeah.
Sylvia: There’s always those type of guys.
Keith: Yeah, there is always those type of guys.
Sylvia: Unfortunately, but there are. Yeah, okay, okay. Cascade’s Thumb has been incinerated and Mack Magoo got executed.
Keith: Magooted.
Dre: Mm.
Sylvia: And I think we decided, isn’t the execution method for people who aren’t Born Warm just, go in the lava? Am I remembering that right?
Keith: [cross] Yeah, that sounds right.
Art: [cross] I do believe we decided that, yeah.
Dre: Do they just throw you in or is it like, you’re sitting somewhere and they dump lava on you?
Sylvia: Oh, you walk the plank.
Art: Well they wouldn’t try that again.
Dre: Well, I don’t mean you pick up a Minecraft bucket and pour lava over someone’s head. Like I’m thinking the equivalent of like an actual execution chamber at American prisons.
Keith: You sit in a chair, you fill the room up with lava, [Sylvia: Oh my god.] then the walls come down and then you got a block at the end, you use the block to build…
Sylvia: Oh yeah, Minecraft.
Dre: Yeah.
Keith: …A public school.
Sylvia: Jesus! [Keith laughs evilly]
Dre: That’s how Mack Magoo survives.
Sylvia: I kinda love how grim that is. Sorry, Dre.
Dre: Mack Magoo had a bucket of Minecraft water and that’s how he survived his burning house. But yeah, what do we want to say about the government and law enforcement here? Do we want it to say that it is horrific and theatrical or is it just horrific in normal ways?
Art: Yeah.
Sylvia: I feel like horrific and theatrical is the way we’ve been moving with a lot of this stuff, right? Like we have been trying to be a little campier than just, we’re baddies.
Dre: God…what if when…what if when you kill someone in this way you call it that they sit on the Obsidian Throne. [Sylvi chuckles] You’re gonna sit on the Obsidian Throne, Magoo! [cross] I guess that just sounds like you’re taking a poop.
Sylvia: [cross] It just makes me think of porcelain throne, yeah.
Dre: Yeah yeah yeah, you’re right, you’re right.
Sylvia: Dre, I’m glad you got there before I did.
Keith: It makes me think of, in the French Revolution when they would, like I think mostly out in the provinces when they were fighting kind of a different war than what was happening in Paris, but they would take you and drown you in the river and call it a Republican baptism. [Art and Dre laugh]
Sylvia: Oh, man.
Art: Sorry for laughing.
Keith: No, it’s sick. It’s fuckin’, it’s really sick.
Sylvia: French Revolution’s kinda, kinda sick.
Keith: Yeah. So, I don’t know, you could call it an Obsidian baptism if you don’t wanna do…
Sylvia: Obsidian baptism goes kinda hard. That sounds like a deathcore band.
Dre: It kinda does, yeah.
Sylvia: Alright…
Dre: Hey, what happens if you get covered… hm. That wasn’t, that’s not what led— it was like, the heat and the gas at fuckin’ Pompeii that caused people to get turned into statues, right? That wasn’t anything to do with lava.
Sylvia: I don’t know enough about Pompeii.
Keith: I don’t know about this.
Sylvia: I haven’t done a ton of volcano research in between these recordings.
Dre: I took four years of Latin class in high school so that’s where I learned about Pompeii. [chuckles]
Sylvia: I swear to god I thought you were gonna say I took four years of lava class. [Keith laughs]
Dre: Man I wish, it’d be way cooler.
Art: A lot of Latin class is just reading, [vague Italian accent] ‘oh my god! The people of Pompeii!’ [Keith and Sylvi laugh]
Sylvia: I like the little Italian accent that kept trying to come out!
Dre: Mama mia! [laughs]
Art: Well it’s the same, right?
Sylvia: You’re not wrong!
Art: You would have to assume that Latin would be in an Italian accent.
Dre: Et tu, Bruté? Mama mia!
Keith: You have to assume that.
Sylvia: You have to. Yeah. Much like we must imagine Sisyphus happy, we must imagine Latin speakers having Italian accents. I think that’s gonna be it for my turn. Turn order, are we good to move just left to right on the Roll20 here?
Keith: Yeah, that works for me.
Sylvia: Dre, you’re next. Is that cool with you?
Dre: Snares. [makes hi-hat sounds] I guess that’s more hats than snares, but.
Sylvia: Nice. Oh. Oh!
Dre: Oh!
Sylvia: Someone you are respons— Oh actually, do you wanna read it? I shouldn't read everyone’s cards.
Dre: Yeah. Someone you are responsible for is in love. Who’s their beloved, why do you disapprove of them so intensely? Hmm, I mean the place where my mind initially goes is Luetta, my younger sister has a husband named Steel who I got a job in the family business.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Dre: I think it has already been established that I don’t like him. Why do I disapprove of them so intensely?
Sylvia: The scene we played out last time, if it helps, was her, was Luetta was visiting sort of the capital mountain that we’ve all consolidated to on Oligo and asking you, basically indirectly fishing for a job for Steel. And using the guise of like, oh my god you should come back, visit, you should come back home and visit us, you have nieces and nephews you need to meet! And shit like that, just to…
Keith: Am I…
Sylvia: Huh?
Keith: Am I right that part of this was that maybe she didn’t even want him to get the job, but just to get the paycheck for the job?
Sylvia: Um, I think…
Keith: Maybe I was just reading into that.
Sylvia: No, that’s not a hundred percent wrong.
Dre: Yeah.
Sylvia: I think the way I described it was it’s like, she is too proud to ask for money so she’s asking for like, her husband to get a cushy, well paying job instead.
Keith: Okay.
Dre: Sure. I despise him intently because one, he’s fucking useless. [Sylvi laughs] Like any romantic partner is. Two, he keeps having sex with my sister and making children and that’s more fucking—
Keith: That’s gross, it’s gross to think about.
Dre: —grubby little hands that are try to get their fuckin’ hands on my money.
Art: Fuck yeah.
Sylvia: [still laughing] Oh my god!
Keith: I didn’t imagine the children being, Dre, I thought that you were just gonna be like, it’s gross that I have to think about my sister having sex.
Dre: It’s so gross. [Keith laughs]
Sylvia: Fucking grody dude!
Keith: Fuckin’ gross! Who am I, Elizabeth Hurley? [all laugh, Sylvi loses it]
Dre: If you wanna get the context for that joke, you gotta listen to the Clapcast probably.
Art: That might have made it in!
Sylvia: With how this recording’s going, that probably made it in.
Dre: Yeah.
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Dre: But yeah, no, y’know, the more children there are in the family tree the more people are gonna fuckin’ keep wanting to freeload off of me and ask for things.
Art: Fuckin’ freeloaders.
Sylvia: Fuckin’, ugh. Goddamn parasites.
Dre: And then, y’know, probably watching them be in love reminds me of my greatest shame, which was being in love with Basalt Caldera and the weakness that it gave me.
Sylvia: Right. I forgot how normal you are.
Dre: Yeah. I got this shit figured out, I don't know what everybody else’s problem is.
Art: Damn.
Keith: Damn.
Sylvia: You make a great point. [Dre laughs] Alright! I guess that is just all the questions answered there, so we can keep moving if you’re up for it.
Dre: Yeah sure. We definitely, at some point we should probably get multiple characters onscreen so we get a scene going.
Sylvia: I would love to do some proper scenes.
Keith: I’m gonna draw this card, draw one card…draw. Oh it’s little! Oh wait I have to play it now.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Art: [chuckling] Oh, it’s little.
Keith: It is even littler now.
Sylvia: Oh, it’s so little. Why are you so small?
Keith and Art: Ooh! Answer as the Knife.
Keith: I’ve never gotten one of these, I don’t think.
Sylvia: Oh, that’s exciting.
Keith: Your facade breaks, just for a moment. What caused this lapse of control? Who glimpsed your true self? Oh, that’s great— well we were just at this party, right? Everybody was there. We were all there.
Sylvia: We were. We could set it there.
Keith: I think that we can set it there. I think that it would probably have to be Gabrielle. This is the, I mean I’ve gotta assume, ‘cause maybe I don’t know every detail of how this frame went down, but I’ve got to assume that Gabrielle’s at the center of it because it was her father.
Dre: Wait, do you mean Eliza?
Sylvia: No, no, you’re thinking of Eliza.
Keith: Oh, sorry, yeah, Eliza.
Dre: But yeah, I, yes.
Keith: So that’s Eliza.
Sylvia: I think that works really well too.
Keith: And, so I think it’s gotta be at this party, I’ve seen Vug, I’ve seen Gabrielle Feldspar, I’ve seen, what is the chief of police? I've seen the chief of police!
Sylvia: Claxton Cascade.
Keith: Claxton Cascade, right. I’ve seen everybody, but it’s the person who I think is really the one who put me on the island that sort of makes me break for the first time. And, do I think that it would be Eliza? That would have clocked me also? Or, Claxton? Who is also there, right?
Sylvia: Yeah, I mean we can have as many of us here as possible. Or as you like.
Dre: My kinda pitch for this is this probably starts the downfall for Eliza.
Keith: Okay.
Sylvia: Ooh…
Dre: Because this is like her, like, Lady Macbeth downfall moment. Where she sees you and is like, oh god it’s him. And then I try to tell everyone and everybody’s like what the fuck are you talking about? [Keith laughs] That’s Alabaster Clad, he looks nothing like Basalt Caldera, what are you talking about?
Keith: And his name’s Alabaster Clad!
Dre: [cross] Yeah, it’s a different person. He invented electricity.
Sylvia: [cross] Yeah, it’s completely different. [inaudible] even in—sorry.
Keith: They hadn’t, this culture hasn’t invented changing your name. So they’ve never heard of, how could he be… [laughs]
Dre: Yeah, how could he be someone else? Look, I looked at his driver’s license, and it says Alabaster Clad. [chuckles]
Keith: The other thing is it could be Mosey.
Sylvia: Oh…
Art: Mm.
Sylvia: Oh, that, yeah. I could see that, where it’s like, it breaks in the other way, right?
Dre: Ohh… yeah. Breaks in a nice way.
Sylvia: Where instead of it being out of anger, it’s like…
Keith: I think it would still be, ‘cause I’m thinking not necessarily that the lapse of control and who glimpsed your true self, the reason for the lapse and the glimpse of your true self don’t necessarily have to be the same person.
Sylvia: That’s a good point. That’s actually a really good point.
Keith: So I was thinking, Eliza for both, Eliza and then Cascade or then, Eliza and then Mosey. Those were my three things. But Dre, if you wanna play this as sort of the start of your downfall I’m happy to do that.
Dre: Um, I mean yeah, but I— could be both.
Keith: I have no real preference, I just had the thought of… it could be both, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be both. We have Eliza seeing— it could be all three, fuck it.
Sylvia: Yeah, it could be all three.
Keith: Fuck it, all three. Let’s get all three.
Sylvia: Fuck it.
Keith: Can we get a, if we wanna get these characters talking again, can we get them talking again?
Sylvia: Yeah!
Keith: Can we get Eliza trying to bring this to Gabrielle…
Dre: Sure.
Keith: Or, and/or Claxton and just see how people are reacting to the idea.
Sylvia: Which scene… ‘cause it sounds like we’re trying to get some characters onscreen, but remember that we don’t have to necessarily be always playing our assigned conspirators.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: So if we wanted to do this, someone should probably play Basalt?
Keith: Sure.
Sylvia: Unless you guys would rather do the aftermath, like play out the aftermath of the facade breaking and have the people discussing it.
Dre: Yeah.
Keith: That’s what I was thinking, was the aftermath, but y’know. Dre’s played Basalt in almost every other scene I think just by chance.
Dre: Oh yeah, that’s true.
Sylvia: Yeah, it has kinda lucked out that way.
Keith: But also I’m happy to do it if we wanna do it there, like with the crowd, with everyone there.
Dre: I do kinda like the idea of it being like, with Basalt not being there. ‘Cause I feel like it, if I’m thinking about this through like a camera lens frame, right? Like it continues keeping him as like this looming offscreen threat. Y’know, it’s the guillotine that’s about to fall and we’re all just freaking out about it.
Keith: [whisper] The shadow of the Knife.
Sylvia: We’re being enSnared.
Dre: Yeah.
Keith: Whoa.
Sylvia: Whoa.
Keith: And then it also leaves us all free to play our own characters.
Sylvia: This is true. Okay. So wait, how are we starting this off then?
Dre: I got a pitch.
Sylvia: And also what was the tell? You got a pitch?
Dre: Yeah yeah.
Sylvia: If you just wanna roll in, just fuckin’ go.
Dre: Okay.
Dre (as Eliza): Claxton. You need to arrest that man.
Art (as Claxton): For what?
Dre (as Eliza): [sigh] It’s Basalt. I don’t know how, I don’t know how he got back here, I don’t know how he left the island, I don’t know how he lived. But that’s him. This whole thing—
Art (as Claxton): I don’t know, I’ve seen his driver’s license. [Keith laughs]
Dre (as Eliza): I can tell. The way he smiled at me…
Art (as Claxton: The way he smiled? I mean, I can… Okay. But eventually, someone’s gonna have to—
Dre (as Eliza): You think I’m full of shit, don’t you?
Art (as Claxton): Of course I do. You sound like a… [Sylvi laughs]
Dre (as Eliza): Gabrielle, tell Claxton about the power of a woman’s intuition.
Sylvia: Gabrielle’s just walked over and has her third champagne flute of the night in her hand.
Sylvia (as Gabrielle:) Wha? What was that? What’s going on?
Dre (as Eliza): This Alabaster Clad…
Sylvia (as Gabrielle:) Oh, he’s so stylish, isn’t he?
Dre (as Eliza): It’s Basalt, it’s him.
Art (as Claxton): People say he’s very stylish, yes.
Dre (as Eliza): It’s him. It’s Basalt. He’s back. He’s going to ruin everything.
Sylvia (as Gabrielle:) Oh, Eliza! Are you getting okay in your, y’know, older years? That seems a bit irrational. There’s—
Art (as Claxton): Yeah, you sure you’re young enough to identify people? [Sylvi laughs]
Dre (as Eliza): You all—
Sylvia (as Gabrielle:) I’m just saying, we sent him to a deserted island, who’s gonna get off of that?
Art (as Claxton): No one comes back from the island.
Sylvia (as Gabrielle:) It’s never happened!
Dre (as Eliza): We also said no one comes back from being burned in their house by lava.
Art (as Claxton): Well I hear he had a refrigerator. And a bucket of water.
Sylvia (as Gabrielle:) On a policeman’s salary?
Art (as Claxton): I know!
Sylvia (as Gabrielle: Impressive.
Art (as Claxton): I’m trying! [Sylvi and Keith laugh]
Dre (as Eliza): Vug, you’ve talked with him. Doesn’t he give you the wrong… ugh.
Sylvia: Doesn’t he give you the ick? [Dre laughs]
Keith (as Sanidine): I don’t know. Hm.
Dre (as Eliza): Can you look past the dollar signs in your eyes and listen to your goddamn brain for once in your life, Vug?
Art (as Claxton): Whoa, whoa. Hey, whoa.
Dre (as Eliza): There’s something not right here.
Keith (as Sanidine): The dollar signs go all the way back.
Sylvia (as Gabrielle:) What? [wheeze]
Keith (as Sanidine): Dollar signs in your eyes, they go all the way back right into your head.
Sylvia (as Gabrielle:) Oh.
Art (as Claxton): Oh.
Keith (as Sanidine): This made sense.
Sylvia (as Gabrielle: No, yeah no, it does.
Keith (as Sanidine): Dollar signs in your eyes, listen to your brain, dollar signs go all the way back, dollar signs in the head.
Art (as Claxton): [mumbling] Go all the way…dollars…
Dre (as Eliza): I cannot believe I got into bed with a bunch of buffoons.
Keith (as Sanidine): Wait, you got into bed with them?
Sylvia (as Gabrielle:) Wouldn't be the first time you’ve gotten into bed with someone and regretted it.
Dre: I think I slap you.
Art: Whoa. Yeah, that’s out of pocket. [Dre laughs]
Sylvia: It was, but! Hey, I’m the one who has the rumor that’s clearly about her being told about me. We don’t like each other.
Dre: Yeah, I think I slap you and then I stomp off.
Art (as Claxton): O-kay.
Sylvia (as Gabrielle): She is losing it.
Keith (as Sanidine): If I’m being honest, I can see it. But. [Dre laughs]
Art (as Claxton): I don’t know, do you think we should take him in?
Sylvia (as Gabrielle): Nah. No.
Dre: Do you wanna take a minute, Art?
Art: Not take a minute, take him in.
Dre: Oh, oh okay sorry. Continue, I have left the scene, continue. [chuckles]
Sylvia: Out of character, I think it’s really fun if the three of us think she’s delusional and it’s one of the reasons this all falls apart.
Art: Yeah, I think you overestimate their chances, the watchword of villains everywhere. [Dre laughs]
Sylvia: Yeah. Alright.
Art: Can’t be him, I checked his driver’s license.
Sylvia: We checked his papers, they all say Alabaster Clad. And they’re all very convincingly made.
Keith: You can tell he’s Alabaster Clad because he’s alabaster clad. White suit, white hair, look at that.
Sylvia: Oh my god. Every time we describe him it sounds like a ZZ Top song.
Keith: [laughs] And a ZZ Top lead singer.
Sylvia: Yeah. [chuckling] Are we satisfied with that scene?
Dre: [to the tune of “Sharp Dressed Man”] All the ladies go crazy for a sharp dressed Clad. [mouth guitar] No? Okay, alright.
[all assure Dre they were doing great]
Sylvia: Yeah, we were all rockin’ out.
Dre: Okay alright. Who’s drawing next?
Sylvia: It’s Art’s turn. I can draw the card for you if you’d like.
Art: Yeah, why not.
Sylvia: Okay, and then I can just enlarge it quicker. Oh!
Art: Does anyone wanna play Alabaster Clad now?
Sylvia: I could do it, [Dre: Yeah, do it.] if Dre, obviously has played it a few times, but. Huh? What’s that Dre?
Dre: I mean, they are swaggering and insufferable. And if there’s anybody who’s got the most swag, it’s either you or Ali and Ali’s not here, so.
Sylvia: Wow. I love to be insufferable.
Dre: Well y’know, I didn’t say that. [Sylvi laughs]
Sylvia: I’m fucking with you!
Dre: I know it’s implied, but…
Art: And maybe now’s the time for your Austin Powers impression if you wanna…
Dre: Are you saying that to me or Sylvi? [laughs]
Sylvia: [Australian accent] G’day, mate! [Keith laughs] It’s me, Austin Powahs!
Dre: Ah, I love the scene in Austin Powers where he says, [Australian accent] That’s not a knoife! This is a knoife!
Sylvia: [Australian accent] That’s not a penis pump. [Dre and Art laugh hard]
Art: Ozzy Powers.
Sylvia: Yeah you doubted me but I landed that, I landed that bit.
Dre: So yeah, I think because of that you have to play Alabaster Clad now.
Sylvia: Okay but I’m not doing an accent.
Dre: Aw, boo. [chuckles]
Art: Boo.
Sylvia: I’m sorry. You got it! Listen!
Keith: Yeah that was way more than I expected honestly.
Sylvia: I’ll, maybe it’ll pop out, we’ll see. Do we— I don’t wanna decide the challenge before we get into it, unless you would like me to.
Art: Nah I mean I think we could let it just develop.
Sylvia: Okay cool.
Art: We’re still at the same party, we’re continuing on?
Sylvia: I kinda like having this set there just because it’s like, a easy introduction. And like, especially we’re about to be done our first round of card pulls.
Art: For sure, yeah.
Sylvia: I think if we wanna move on from it after, we can but, y’know.
Art: Great.
Sylvia: Okay, Mr. Big Bushy Beard just like, approaches you probably not that long after the argument that just happened. And I think, the only way I can think to start this, that he’d start a sentence is,
Sylvia (as Basalt): Ah, you my good man!
Sylvia: [chuckles] ‘Cause for some reason, that’s swaggering and insufferable to me.
Art: No, I hear it.
Sylvia (as Basalt): You’re in charge of the security around here, isn’t that right?
Art (as Claxton): Absolutely, what can I do for you?
Sylvia (as Basalt): Well, I was just… [sigh] I hope you don’t take this the wrong way. I was just a bit curious about the…modernity of your force. It just… [deep breath] It’s a bit of a…I hope you don’t mind me saying. A bit of a dated air to the equipment you’ve got your men lugging around here? I don’t mean to, y’know. I don’t wanna step on, I’m not from here, obviously. You’ve seen my license.
Art (as Claxton): Thank you for having all your paperwork in order by the way, it makes…
Sylvia (as Basalt): Oh, of course. But I’m just, it seems… On this quaint little island of yours, everything seems so antiquated these days. I just was wondering if, if there was any interest in sort of bringing your men into the modern day, so to speak.
Art (as Claxton): Why, do you got some sort of electrified police force in mind?
Sylvia (as Basalt): Oh, now you’re getting ahead of me! No I just, I think, y’know, we both want the best for this island, don’t—
Sylvia: I’m slipping into Daniel Plainview a lot.
Sylvia (as Basalt): We both want the best for this island, don’t we? And I just think that with my help, we could bring the good, all of the good working folk of Oligo into modernity, into the next golden age.
Sylvia: And I think while he does this his hand goes up, and there’s like a banner that says like, ‘a golden age!’ ‘cause again, this is a gold convention when we really get down to it.
Sylvia (as Basalt): Of course, if it’s too rich for your blood, don’t mind me.
Art (as Claxton): You know, I might mind you sayin’.
Sylvia (as Basalt): I meant no offense. I guess, this is all to say…
Sylvia: And he gives you like a business card.
Sylvia (as Basalt): Here’s where I am, here’s where I’m gonna be located while I’m staying here in your lovely little country. If you do feel like a consultation could be in order, y’know, really want to sort of supercharge things a little bit.
Sylvia: He’s talking a lot with his hands ‘cause I’m talking a lot with my hands while I do this but it’s an audio medium.
Sylvia (as Basalt): Just, day or night, always happy to help out a man of the law. A paragon of virtue, et cetera.
Art (as Claxton): Yeah, maybe I’ll see you around.
Sylvia (as Basalt): Take care, Mr. Cascade.
Sylvia: And tips his hat and walks away.
Art: Hmm…
Sylvia: Yeah so clearly he’s calling your shit old and dusty, definitely won’t go wrong if you enlist his help to outfit your police force is what, y’know.
Art: Yeah, and he’s definitely thinking about it, but it’s one of those like, it was just a little too insulting.
Sylvia: Hey, it said swaggering and insufferable.
Art: Yeah, you did a great job.
Sylvia: Thank you, okay cool. [Keith laughs]
Keith: Swingin’ back around?
Sylvia: Yeah, you happy with that Art?
Art: Yeah.
Sylvia: Alright, I’ll pull. This one’s for me, and it’s tiny and I can’t read it. Oh man. Someone from your past demands what they are owed. Do you give them what they want or move against them? Oh my god, who could this even be for me? I’m just looking at all my links to stuff real quick. ‘Cause the problem is, oh I moved the thing by accident. Yeah, we, sorry, I accidentally moved a notepad thing and noticed an incredibly cool note that we made on this guy’s sheet that we need to remember.
Dre: Oh.
Keith: On whose sheet?
Sylvia: The birthstones one? On Basalt’s. Deadly hunting skills over the past three years, kills with a sling. Uses the birthstones of noble families as ammunition.
Dre: Oh yeah!
Keith: Oh yeah! [laughs]
Sylvia: Like, we made—
Dre: Yeah yeah yeah! I forgot we made Arrow, yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Keith: I forgot about that.
Dre: [old timey mobster voice] Now listen here copper, if you really want to be in the future, see, you gotta use these electric slings. [Sylvi and Keith laugh]
Sylvia: I shoulda done that voice. So, my kinda knee-jerk idea for this is that it is someone who got caught up in one of Vug’s schemes, but knows that I funded it. Kinda the only thing I could think of that would apply to me. I could also pass this card to somebody if they think they’ve got a better answer for it.
Art: Great opportunity to bring back Magma Goo again.
Dre: Goddamn.
Sylvia: For the third time?
Art: Yeah.
Sylvia: Thrice burnt Mack Magoo?
Keith: Just endlessly causing problems.
Dre: God dammit Magoo…
Sylvia: He’s gonna be Anakin Skywalker the next time he comes back, but post episode 3.
Keith: He’s gonna dig his way out of his obsidian baptism into a second grade classroom. Everybody screams.
Dre: I left you for dead on the Obsidian Throne, Magoo!
Sylvia: [deep voice] You forgot to flush. [Dre laughs]
Art: Alright, great. I think we’ve—
Sylvia: We shoulda made him the Knife.
Dre: Damn.
Sylvia: No, okay. So my answer’s gonna be, I, damn we already disgraced that general who owed money by Vug, right?
Keith: Yes?
Sylvia: I’m pretty sure. But I do like the idea of Gabrielle just being distracted now, trying to destroy the reputation of an already disgraced family just because they demanded money from her. Like, could be the like the widow of this general or something if things went really bad for him. And she’s just like, well now I’m going to launch a full-fledged smear campaign against you and your children.
Keith: Wow, including children.
Dre: Yeah, do what you gotta do.
Sylvia: Yeah, including the children. Listen, we have established the anti-child sentiment that at least half of our Conspirators have now, so. I also just think it’s a great weakness for the Knife to exploit eventually, just her being spiteful at anyone who demands something from her. Especially when it’s justified.
Keith: Or she imagines someone is demanding something from her.
Sylvia: Yeah. It’s like straight up, it’s like could we like, the fuckin’ investments we made with your business associate went really terribly but we are still entitled to such and such amount or whatever.
Keith: Really the most Ebenezer Scrooge among our Conspirators.
Sylvia: Yes! Thank you. I was going for cunty Scrooge this entire time. [Keith chuckles]
Keith: By the way, that is Scrooge’s real first name.
Sylvia: Yeah. Cunty Ebenezer Scrooge. [laughs] Okay, I think I’m satisfied with my answer for that if you guys are.
Dre: Yeah.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: Alright. Should I just keep pulling the cards and then…
Dre: Sure!
Keith: Keep pullin’ those cards.
Sylvia: This is gonna be yours, Dre.
Dre: Keep slangin’ them cards. Oh, answer as the Knife.
Sylvia: Ooh…
Dre: Oh… You make a costly, showy acquisition. What is it, and why does it make you the envy of all high society? And that’s answering as the Knife.
Sylvia: This is a good card.
Keith: This is really good.
Dre: Oh man… I buy one of the lava mansions of like, a lower family.
Sylvia: Oh!
Dre: Like I basically get them to go all in on my electric crystals.
Sylvia: And now you’ve got the Alabaster Estate.
Dre: Mhm.
Keith: And this isn’t a family, you’re just like a wealthy merchant basically, at this point? You’re not like, this isn’t a mountain that you’ve bought, you’ve just bought the…
Dre: Yeah, I guess, yeah. I’ve bought like, an estate that owns, I don't know, like a quarter of a mountain? Or somethin’?
Sylvia: Yeah sure.
Dre: I imagine it’s more likely that like, probably only a handful of families own like a whole mountain. I assume it’s much more likely that there’s multiple stakes and claims.
Sylvia: It would explain why Vug’s, like, future business on volcanoes got going.
Dre: Mm.
Sylvia: If the people tend not to own one themselves, you know?
Keith: I’ve sort of felt the opposite, I’ve sort of been going around thinking every one of these people has their own volcanic mountain. We’ve just got like, dozens of them.
Dre: That oculd be cool too. Then okay, yeah. Buy a whole fuckin’ mountain then.
Keith: Yeah, there we go. So what does it mean to be, like, ‘cause you are now like, literally, I mean not literally, sorry.
Dre: Figuratively. [chuckles]
Keith: Yeah. You appear to be, you appear to be a foreign Born Warm, which is like obviously the implication of who can become Born Warm is baked into the name Born.
Dre: Mhm.
Art: Well it’s kind of nouveau-hot. [Sylvi laughs]
Dre: Yeah.
Sylvia: Spelt H-U-T-E.
Dre: Yeah.
Art: Yeah.
Dre: I think what makes it the envy of all high society in particular is that I build a giant lighthouse on the top of it and it’s always on. ‘Cause my electricity is just so powerful and you can see it—
Keith: Whoa.
Art: And the lighthouse is made of gold. [Keith laughs]
Dre: Yeah! Hell yeah it is!
Sylvia: I like that a lot honestly, ’cause the why does it make you the envy of all high society we kinda answered with, [Dre: You can see me.] oh shit someone bought themselves to being a Born Warm.
Dre: Yeah and, and, because of my big fuckin’ lighthouse. You can always see me at night.
Sylvia: Yeah. Oh my god.
Keith: The neighbors are gonna be furious.
Sylvia: Yeah, I’m the neighbors. I’m pissed.
Keith: Vug is now pissed too. This is so…
Sylvia: Yeah, I bet!
Keith: I’ve been working for decades to get a mountain back for my family, my horrible cynical family.
Dre: I mean you can come live on mine.
Keith: That’s not what it’s about.
Dre: Ah, c’mon, we’re friends.
Sylvia: Can I make a little suggestion? Just to add a little flavor to things?
Dre: Yeah, please.
Sylvia: The reason why you are able to buy this mountain is ‘cause the people who owned it were fucked over by Vug’s schemes. [Keith and Art chuckle evilly]
Dre: Oh, I love that! Hell yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Keith: So they had two mountains, they needed to get back their money so they could—
Sylvia: Either that or they’re just like, we’re cutting are losses and we’re gonna be like, comfortable Dormants.
Dre: God, what if it is that Vug is about to take possession of the mountain and then I swoop in at the last second? Bail them out.
Art: Oh, with a higher bid.
Keith: With a higher bid.
Dre: Yeah.
Keith: Jeez. My, oh I can draw little arrows, what the hell.
Sylvia: On Miro?
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Keith: Well I mean I knew you could draw arrows, but I didn’t know the arrows were like a button that you click and drag.
Sylvia: Yeah no there’s some cool tools that I have been too overstimulated while running this to explain. [Dre and Sylvi laugh]
Keith: You can basically, [chuckles] you can basically do it like a conspiracy board connecting lines.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Dre: Yeah…
Sylvia: In my mind, that’s what we were gonna do. Instead it’s a bunch of sticky notes.
Keith: I think the sticky notes work, sidenote I haven’t been adding sticky notes since the first episode.
Sylvia: No I know. [laughs]
Keith: You know that I haven’t?
Sylvia: [still laughing] Yeah dude, we’ve talked about it every time.
Art: I also have not been adding enough sticky notes. We have two diligent note takers and two real fuckin’ assholes in this game.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: Nah, y’all are doing great.
Keith: Well, okay nevermind.
Sylvia: What?
Keith: No no no,it’s fine.
Sylvia: Okay.
Keith: I’ve never been a good note taker. Never in my life.
Sylvia: Me neither! I’m just trying.
Art: Now if you’re clever enough, you can really get by without it.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: I hope that’s not what ends up happening with my daughter, I hope we can teach her to have good habits, but.
Keith: Mhm.
Sylvia: Most parent’s dreams.
Keith: Please let my kid take notes. [chuckles]
Art: Hey Jess has a PhD, so she must have taken notes at some point. [chuckles]
Keith: Sure. What are we doing?
Sylvia: I don’t remember.
Dre: I think it’s—
Keith: Oh, costly acquisition, right. Dre is the Knife.
Dre: Yeah yeah yeah.
Art: Yeah do we want a scene now? Do we want a…
Sylvia: Yeah, do we wanna play that out at all?
Art: Do you want to see yourself not get this mountain?
Keith: I can show up to sign the papers.
Sylvia: Oh my god…
Dre: Yeah Sylvi, show up and do your voice.
Sylvia: [Australian] G’day mate! [Returns to a human voice] Okay. I don’t remember the voice I was doing earlier, it was just like a bad Daniel Plainview thing.
Dre: Do that some more.
Sylvia: How does this end up going? Are you, Vug, are you showing up to sign…
Keith: Yeah, I’m here, I like, knock on an open door, confused like, what’s going on? I’m here to sign. Here, today’s the day, I’ve got my mother here, my mother’s here with me. [Art laughs]
Sylvia: Yeah. Your mom’s here to see you get there a second too late.
Keith: My old mother, my like, she’s like 87 years old.
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Keith: We did it. Mom, we did it.
Sylvia: [chuckles] Then when you get there, you see a guy in all white. In the office already, signing the papers that you thought were for you.
Keith: Oh my god. It’s like, I cannot, y’know, it’s like a frame from a comic where it’s just a closeup on an aghast face. Like, set to a black background with speed lines coming off of him. Like, oh my god! I think I rush in.
Keith (as Sanidine): What is this? What’s happening here?
Sylvia (as Basalt): Ah, Mr. Vug! Wonderful to see you!
Keith (as Sanidine): What are you doing?
Sylvia (as Basalt): Oh, I believe in the business we call it a real estate acquisition.
Keith (as Sanidine): This is my mountain. I signed for this mountain.
Sylvia (as Basalt): Hmm… That’s not what I was led to believe.
Keith (as Sanidine): Today. I’m signing today. I put in an offer, I put in a cash offer.
Sylvia (as Basalt): That was you! Oh, they did mention that someone else had been trying to acquire it…
Art: Should there be like, a realtor here? Should we have someone like…
Sylvia: Yeah, does someone wanna play the realtor?
Art: Yeah okay.
Art (as the realtor): Oh, Mr. Vug. Someone should have called from the office—
Keith (as Sanidine): What is this, did you double cross me? You sold to this man?
Art (as the realtor): I don’t think you understand how real estate transactions work—
Keith (as Sanidine): [starting to shout] This my mountain! This is five hundred years in the making!
Art (as the realtor): I think you’ll find mountains are much older than that, sir. [Sylvi laughs]
Sylvia (as Basalt): Mr. Vug, I am so sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.
Keith (as Sanidine): Inconvenience? I’ve been toiling my life, for generations! Toiling our lives to get back to this! Inconv— you waltz in here, and sign for a mountain in days, weeks? Who even are you?
Sylvia (as Basalt): Um, Alabaster Clad. Pleasure to meet you, once again.
Keith (as Sanidine): [muttering] This is disgusting that you would sell to him.
Sylvia (as Basalt): I truly did not know that this was your deal happening. I just, you know…
Sylvia: What’s this— I don’t remember the realtor’s name. I guess I’ll play it in character that he doesn’t remember the realtor’s name.
Sylvia (as Basalt): I spoke to this fine gentleman here and they said it was still in the market and I, I’ve just fallen so deeply in love with Oligo over the past few days that I wanted to have my own little slice of it.
Art (as the realtor): It is perfectly legal for new offers to be taken until paperwork has been signed.
Keith (as Sanidine): You didn’t even give me an opportunity to, to, to, to counter the offer!
Art (as the Realtor): I assure you you could not have countered this offer. [Keith giggles]
Keith (as Sanidine): What does that mean?
Sylvia: Big ol’ smile from Alabaster. Big ol’ smile on his face.
Keith (as Sanidine): Well what was the offer? I’ll counter it right now!
Art (as the realtor): I’m sorry, the papers have been signed, we can no longer counter these offers.
Sylvia: We’re not coming up with an economy for this world. The papers have been signed.
Keith (as Sanidine): You’ll be hearing about this, both of you. I have lawyers. I have rights! I have my money to spend, now! A mountain’s worth of money to spend!
Art (as the realtor): I think you’ll find it was not a mountain’s worth of money.
Sylvia: Ah, you beat me to it!
Dre: God damn.
Art: Oh, sorry. You can have it, it’s better coming from you.
Sylvia: It’s fine, he’s gonna be like,
Sylvia (as Basalt): I think you’ll find it’s quite a bit less than a mountain’s worth.
Art: Just wanted to make sure it got in there, y’know.
Sylvia: Yeah no, we’re high-fiving right now. [Art laughs]
Keith (as Sanidine): Come, mother. We’ve been stabbed in the back.
Art (as Ma Vug): [shrill old lady voice] Oh no!
[Keith and Sylvi laugh]
Sylvia: I was wondering which one of us was gonna try and do old lady voice first. Alright. That was really good!
Art (as Ma Vug): My back! It’s been stabbed!
[Keith and Sylvi laugh]
Keith (as Sanidine): Come, mother. It’s back to the hovel. You’ll die in the hovel now, they’ve ruined it for you.
Art (as Ma Vug): Okay!
Sylvia (as Basalt): You’re welcome to visit anytime!
Art: That’s not a contractual, um…
Sylvia: Statement?
Art: There’s like a word for someone who’s allowed to use your land and I…
Sylvia: Oh…
Keith: An easement?
Art: Yeah,
Art (as the realtor): It’s not a contractual easement, Mr. Vug.
Sylvia: No, it’s a social invitation. That’s it. Alright. That was Dre’s card, correct?
Dre: Mhm.
Sylvia: Alright. Keith, this one’s yours.
Art: And we didn’t let Dre play for a second. [Keith laughs]
Dre: That’s fine.
Art: Not even as the old woman.
Dre: Nah, it’s great.
Sylvia: You were happy with though, right?
Dre: Yeahyeahyeahyeah!
Sylvia: Wow.
Keith: You are caught in a violent protest. Who leads the furious rabble, how do you secure safe passage? Okay, we all know how a Ponzi scheme works?
Sylvia: Yeah. For the most part.
Keith: When this thing starts crumbling, and the people are trying to pull their money out and I needed new money to go give them to be pulled out. You know there was the general, obviously, who couldn’t withdraw and that was a big deal. But I think part of this process was trying to sell this idea to retail investors. So, there’s a bunch of, I think that in addition to, y’know, big money investing huge sums for at least measurable fractions of a mountain. I’m also taking money from small time, small businesses, families, just regular people being like, this is how you can invest in a mountain. This is how you can move up, is by generating wealth in the marketplace by getting a piece of the mountain and investing and saving, buying more bit by bit, but all of this is just taking money from them to pay out bigger clients who would cause much more of a legal issue for me. Who cares about these people? Well, they are now violently protesting Sanidine Vug and my shitty bank. Who leads the furious rabble?
Sylvia: [dramatically] I have a suggestion.
Keith: Please.
Dre: Magoo.
Keith: Magoo. [Keith and Dre laugh]
Sylvia: No. If we bring him back, he becomes Jason Vorhees, is the thing.
Dre: I thought you were gonna say Jason Bourne. [laughs]
Sylvia: Oh my god, that’s Jason Vorhees.
Dre: Oh my god, that’s Twice-Burned Magoo. [chuckles]
Sylvia: That’s the twice-baked potato! I was gonna suggest, so okay. We did kind of say that Slate was dead. So my initial gut instinct was like, well maybe it could be Slate, who was brought over and is like, you’re my little buddy now.
Keith: Yeah, we only kind of said Slate was dead.
Sylvia: This is true. So we don’t have to commit to that, if you want it to be Slate.
Keith: Yeah. Sure.
Sylvia: My other suggestion was gonna be Officer Crust. Chief Inspector Crust.
Keith: Officer Crust…
Sylvia: Who also got sent to the island and could theoretically have been recruited by Alabaster Basalt.
Keith: Chief Inspector Crust.
Sylvia: Chief Inspector Crust, yes.
Keith: Now Chief Inspector Crust, tell me, explain Chief Inspector’s job in relation to Claxton Cascade’s job.
Sylvia: I don’t know the specifics but I feel like the reason he got exiled was because he also was catching onto things?
Keith: I have a vague memory of them being like, equals but in like different branches of like, the law enforcement system. And so they were kind of like siloed into their own things so neither of them had chain of command on the other one, which is why he had to be sent to the island. That’s like my vague memory for this, if that rings any bells for anyone.
Sylvia: No that sounds right.
Keith: Okay. I think Slate has better, I think Slate under the like, direct— Slate has gotta be so old. He’s like 110. [laughs]
Sylvia: Yeah, which I love. Yeah.
Keith: I like the idea that, y’know, that, ‘cause it would have to be under the direction, ‘cause Slate doesn’t care about this. Or maybe Slate does care about this, I don't know. But this would have to be like, I’m going back. I’ve gotta pull this big job, we’re gonna murder a bunch of people, it’s fine. Why don’t you rile up, [chuckles] why don’t you rile up the Laze.
Sylvia: I mean it is one of those things that’s like, listen I wanna get revenge on these people who wronged you.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: Do you wanna start a riot that your old boss is gonna have to deal with, and then also the local Ponzi scheme ward is also gonna have to deal with.
Keith: Was Slate a cop too?
Sylvia: Oh, sorry, I was hung up on Crust, my bad.
Keith: Oh okay.
Sylvia: Much like a kindergartener getting a sandwich they don’t want, I was hung up on the Crust. [Keith laughs]
Keith: Gotta get those Crustables! Uncrustables? What are they called?
Sylvia: I don’t know. Those have peanuts.
Keith: Oh okay. Well they have just jelly ones, I think.
Sylvia: Oh okay. I also don’t know if we have them here.
Keith: Okay that’s fair. I’ve never had one, they’ve been…
Sylvia: Me neither.
Keith: I was always a big crust boy, I love the crust.
Sylvia: You were a Crustable.
Keith: I was a Crustable. I was a double Crustable. I was a gimme-your-Crustable.
Sylvia: Gimme… [laughs] You were extremely crustworthy.
Keith: Do we have any other contenders? Does anyone have a contender for who the proletarian leader is here?
Art: No, I think this is good.
Sylvia: Yeah, I’m rockin’ with it.
Keith: Alright, so who leads the furious rabble? Slate. And how do I secure safe passage? I have two thoughts. One is, I have to get bailed out by like, a police escort from Claxton who I have a long standing relationship with, or either Eliza or Gabrielle from, because we’re y’know, business partners. The other idea is that I get personally saved by Alabaster Clad, who I’m now in personal debt to.
Sylvia: Ohh…
Art: Or it could sort of be Alabaster unveiling this modernized police thing too, right? [Keith laughs]
Sylvia: Oh shit, you’re right!
Art: Alabaster starts sort of establishing a private police force.
Sylvia: Which, to be fair, to be clear to everybody, this will be sabotaged at some point. This guy isn’t just showing up and being like, for my revenge, I’m taking over the police.
Keith: [laughs] It won’t be? Okay, so—
Art: Well no, I think it’s more about just like, rug-pulling the police, right?
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah, no. That is more what I mean.
Keith: I’ll say, I really like… So we set up Basalt, he’s sort of the salt of the earth…
Dre: Heh.
Art: Aah.
Keith: [chuckles] As salt of the earth as a guy in his position can be, sort of like an intelligent Mosey type. Y’know, rich but sort of down to earth. Gets Lazed. Becomes Dormant. And then becomes sort of a hit in the community of workers who work at the, for these big megaindustrialists. And so we’ve sort of set him up in opposition to them, but not necessarily fully allied with the Laze. Like, it really makes sense to me that this is a tale about his revenge in a very personal way that uses the fact that he’s gotten very close with the working people of this country as a way to exact a kind of revenge. It doesn’t necessarily make him a guy with good politics or a revolutionary…
Sylvia: No, you're right. I mean, the basis of his story was, I wanna be a rich guy. If we really nail down into it.
Keith: Right, he really wants to be a rich guy again. It’s Schitt’s Creek. It’s like, a story that —
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Keith: —seems like a lovable exploration of what if a family had to be normal, but actually ends up being a story about like, well we desperately want to become rich again, but we’re nice now.
Sylvia: Yeah. We started a boutique in this tiny town. [Keith laughs] That show’s bad. My mom loves that show, that show’s bad.
Keith: We started a gay boutique in this tiny town.
Sylvia: In this tiny Ontario suburb.
Art: Eugene Levy is really funny.
Keith: He’s really, yeah.
Sylvia: Oh they’re great. Great cast.
Keith: The performances are phenomenal, the writing is fun, the jokes are funny, the overarching plot is a nightmare.
Art: The message is bad.
Sylvia: It’s one of those shows that when I think about it, I go, eughhh.
Keith: Yeah, it seems to have been written by someone with good intentions but no brain in their head.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Art: I would love to tell you some things about that not on mic.
Keith: Sure.
Sylvia: Okay.
Art: Or not on recording.
Keith: Sure, sure.
Dre: Mm.
Sylvia: That’s fun.
Keith: Both Levys great in that, Catherine O’Hara, what, oh my god, so good.
Art: Oh, she’s, she’s, ugh.
Keith: Unbelievable in that.
Art: Who would ever decide to talk like that? It’s brilliant. [Dre laughs]
Keith: [laughing] It’s so…! Right, both as a person and as a character. Like, Catherine O’Hara herself decided to talk like that and then also the character. Oh, it’s just so good. Anyway. So this is, it doesn’t really, like, when you, I do sort… This is all to say that for as compromised of a character politically as Basalt Caldera has been, I think that taking the intentional step of being like, and I’m making a private robot army, [chuckling] is another whole step of being really terrible that we should either lean into or lean away from now as an inflection point.
Sylvia: Part of me is really tempted to just be like, let’s just fuckin’ lean into it. [Keith chuckles] Like, he doesn’t need to be perfect. Like, revenge stories are messy.
Keith: [laughing] This is so far from perfect!
Sylvia: Yeah exactly. No, that’s what I’m saying.
Keith: [still laughing] He can make a robot army, he doesn’t need to be perfect. He can mess up once or twice and—
Sylvia: Boys will be boys, right?
Keith: —accidentally create a private militia of electrified soldiers.
Sylvia: Who among us. Yeah, like I do this every other week.
Art: Let those among us who have not accidentally created a private militia throw the first stone.
Sylvia: [wet thuds] That’s me throwing stones at my microphone. [Keith laughs] [more thuds] Yeah, I don’t know how to make an impact noise with just my mouth.
Dre: Keith, you got anything?
Keith: [dull thuds, like a rock against a padded surface]
Dre: Yeah, there it is. [Sylvi laughs] Any sound.
Art: That was pretty good.
Keith: So we’re doing it?
Sylvia: I think so.
Keith: Okay.
Sylvia: And I think, like, y’know, there’s ways for us to slightly walk it back. But it is hard to walk it back completely and that’s kind of the fun of it.
Keith: Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff you can do with an army. People have done great things with armies in the world.
Sylvia: [cross] Can’t argue there…
Dre: [cross] That’s true. I’ve seen Lord of the Rings.
Keith: [chuckles] Yeah! A perfect example of something in the world.
Sylvia: Yeah. [Keith laughs]
Dre: Yeah, they filmed it in New Zealand, Keith.
Keith: They filmed in New Zealand, which is in the world.
Dre: Get a fuckin’ map.
Keith: Yeah, they built all those swords. [Dre laughs]
Art: Get a fucking map.
Keith: They made all those leaves.
Sylvia: They did make a lot of leaves, actually.
Keith: Yeah. Hobbiton was full of fake leaves that they made.
Dre: Oh! That’s fun.
Sylvia: Do you also know that because of Taskmaster?
Keith: Yes. I do. [Dre laughs]
Sylvia: Thought so. Thought so. Like, wait a minute.
Keith: Yeah. Same season we were talking about earlier. That was a Nish Kumar task. Great season. Everybody watch season 5 of Taskmaster.
Sylvia: Yeah, it’s a good time.
Dre: [sigh] Alright, next card?
Sylvia: Yeah I think so. If we’re happy with that.
Keith: Do we wanna… oh, I guess we can save for later what the outcome of Vug having to be saved by Clad is.
Sylvia: Yeah, we could also, like do you have anything that you wanted to… ‘Cause this is your card, I wanna make sure you’re feeling satisfied with it before we move on to anything.
Keith: Honestly, it’s such a bad situation for me emotionally, me as Vug. Not Keith.
Sylvia: Not Keith.
Keith: I’m fine. [Dre laughs]
Sylvia: Are you sure about that?
Dre: You sure bud?
Keith: I feel like we won’t, I feel like we can’t, I feel like I need another card to prompt what that’ll do, and to let that feeling be unexamined and just percolated till another card generates it having to come back up.
Sylvia: Sure. Okay. I’m fine with that. I can pull the next card, Art, this one’s gonna be for you. [wheeze] This can go a different way if you want it to be for someone else, given the last card you pulled was the one directly above it.
Keith: Oh. [laughs]
Art: Yeah, I do think I need to pass this. And it can’t go to Keith either, so.
Keith: Honestly, I think that the game is forcing my hand here.
Sylvia: In what way?
Keith: Well, we just had a scene that set up the two of us together, like, we should have a card that triggers us having to have a scene about this and then immediately just draw one.
Sylvia: You’re right, actually!
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah, this could just go right into Alabaster helping you, saving you.
Keith: They are pleasant and sincere. What invitation do you offer them before you leave? Jeez, that’s rough. Art, do you wanna give this up? You, I mean—
Art: Yes, I do.
Keith: Okay. Who do we want as the Knife here?
Sylvia: I’m happy to keep doing it if you want. I’m also like, we should all feel comfortable playing him, he’s not that concrete of a character. He’s a little cartoony. [Keith laughs] I hope that, y’know. And I think also that it adds some fun flavor having multiple people trying him.
Keith: Yeah.
Dre: Art, do you wanna take a spin? As the Knife?
Keith: Take a spin on the Knife machine?
Dre: I can play Vug’s mom for you this scene.
Art: [laughs] No, I don’t, I wanna keep the Knife in the hands of the person who’s…
Sylvia: I, y’know, I’m known to wield a knife. I’m happy to do it just so we can keep things rolling. But I just wanted to mention for future scenes, if people feel like, oh I’ve got a good idea for something the Knife could do.
Keith: I wanna be pulled into, like a vehicle, like an armored vehicle? Can you come up with a vehicle for us to be in?
Sylvia: Yeah! So, I’ve genuinely been trying to think of some, like, oh what type of fancy car would this guy have or whatever? And because of the weird vibrating stones and stuff, my brain just keeps going to some kind of hovercraft. What if it’s some sort of hovercraft?
Keith: That is such a crazy escalation of technology. [laughs]
Sylvia: I know. I know! Hey, what’d I say?
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: It’s vibes based.
Keith: Yeah. Okay, hover, yeah. Hovercar. Sure. VTOL.
Sylvia: [laughs] I mean like, even if it’s just like a couple feet off, or inches off the ground even.
Keith: Yeah. Yeah.
Sylvia: Like, doesn’t necessarily use wheels but just kinda like glides just above the ground.
Keith: Sure.
Sylvia: Like, hums a bunch because of the way it’s powered.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: Do you have something to say, or should I?
Keith: Yeah, I was just gonna go right into it.
Sylvia: Yeah, do it.
Keith: In a pulled-in, sort of breathless panic,
Keith (as Sanidine): What is this? What are you doing here? What is this?
Sylvia (as Basalt): I was under the impression that I was helping you get away from the people trying to break your door down.
Keith (as Sanidine): Why are you following me around? Is this you? Did you do this?
Sylvia (as Basalt): I had business in the area. I know this might be hard to believe, but I do not spend every day of my life thinking about Sanidine Vug. You’re welcome, though.
Keith: This is funny because it’s not true.
Sylvia: Yeah, it’s not true.
Keith: This is a lie. I wanna call this out as a lie.
Sylvia: Yeah! [Keith laughs] That’s one of the four people that he spends every day thinking about.
Keith (as Sanidine): Fine. Why help me? Why, who even cares?
Sylvia (as Basalt): Well I’ll admit, I felt a little guilty about our little real estate kerfuffle. But also, what kind of man would I be if I saw someone in trouble and didn't help them out?
Keith (as Sanidine): I don’t know. A smart man?
Sylvia (as Basalt): You say smart, I say cowardly. But agree to disagree.
Sylvia: Driving, by the way. While saying all this stuff.
Keith (as Sanidine): My house is that way.
Sylvia (as Basalt): Alright. Is it a good idea for you to go straight there? They started at your place of business, I assume that they also know… Eh, it’s, it’s…
Keith (as Sanidine): It’s fine. I have to—
Sylvia (as Basalt): It’s your life.
Keith (as Sanidine): I have to be there in case anything happens. I don’t have a mountain—
Sylvia (as Basalt): You called this a hovel?
Keith (as Sanidine): It’s a—
Sylvia (as Basalt): Quite nice.
Keith (as Sanidine): It’s a hovel compared to the mountains.
Sylvia (as Basalt): Right. Right. Again, sincerest apologies.
Keith: What invitation… I need something to… okay.
Keith (as Sanidine): I’m putting on a presentation. For investors. You should be there.
Sylvia (as Basalt): Oh! Well I’m glad that we’re on better terms all of a sudden.
Keith (as Sanidine): I’m on good terms with anyone with money to burn.
Sylvia (as Basalt): A man after my own heart. Yeah. Give me the time and place, and I’ll be there.
Keith (as Sanidine): I will do that. But I don’t have that. That’s fake, so I won’t.
Sylvia: You know where to find me. It’s in the mountain that you almost bought. He doesn’t actually say that. [Keith laughs] I said that and was like, that’s funny for me to say.
Keith: Yes.
Sylvia: That’s funny for me to say. Not necessarily for Alabaster to say.
Keith: Right. That is a invitation retracted, if you said that.
Sylvia: No! You’re good with that?
Keith: That’s it unless you’ve got anything else.
Sylvia: Nah I’m good, I’m good. I’m good to keep rolling.
Keith: Ooh, train.
Dre: Yeah, it’s me.
Sylvia: A choo choo. This one’s gonna be mine. Oh… oh… The Knife hints at a lucrative opportunity in passing. What is it? How do you plan to seize it for yourself? Okay. I got a good idea for this. I think he mentions where he got his rocks from, or at least appears to be mentioning where he got this sort of like, these vibration crystals that I’m too lazy to name. But it’s not the right island. Like he gives her the location of a different island, the island from his—
Keith: Right, because it would give him away instantly.
Sylvia: Exactly. But also, it means Gabrielle’s on this wild goose chase now where she’s sending out like, blimp after blimp of miners and workers to go excavate for these rocks—
Keith: They’re sending children?
Sylvia: Yeah, I mean, probably.
Keith: [laughs] You send you're sending minors.
Sylvia: No I know.
Keith: Okay. [laughs]
Sylvia: Both vowels. Both possible final vowels in those names.
Keith: Child miners.
Sylvia: Yeah. And also adult…
Keith: Adult miners.
Sylvia: Adult miners. With an E.
Keith: I think they're identical.
Dre: They are.
Sylvia: I think they are, I think homonym, synonym…
Dre: Min-ors.
Art: I think we hit the, you could decide to go like min-ors.
Dre: You’re min-or min-ers.
Keith: Min-ors. Well that’s what I mean, miner min-ors and miner adults. Both miners. One double.
Sylvia: Yeah, so she’s using child labor and adult labor, I guess is the point. [laughs]
Dre: She’s inclusive.
Keith: I’m glad we…
Sylvia: Yeah.
Art: United by their…mining.
Keith: We really drilled in.
Sylvia: I’m gonna write this down on my, by my flood of post-it notes.
Keith: Mhm.
Sylvia: I don’t know if we need ot really linger on that too much outside of Gabrielle’s off on a wild goose chase now.
Keith: Sure, yeah.
Sylvia: Dre, are you good for your next card?
Dre: Yeah, sure. Card me.
Sylvia: Boom. I’m carding you right now. I’m gonna need to see some identification.
Dre: Oh ho ho ho!
Sylvia: Wow!
Keith: Oh wait, where is it?
Sylvia: Just scroll down, it’s a little lower. Dre, do you gotta read it?
Dre: Yeah. The Knife rescues someone important to you from peril. Who? How do you display your gratitude?
Sylvia: Oh, is… I mean, you got anything?
Dre: Who’s important to me?
Sylvia: That’s a great question, given your character’s whole deal.
Dre: Yeah. Well I guess important doesn’t mean important and I care about them. It could be important and like, because they have some sort of dirt on me or something. Like important doesn’t necessarily mean positive.
Sylvia: That’s true.
Keith: That’s true, and a fun interpretation of important.
Sylvia: Yeah, that is, I really like the twisting of that.
Dre: Now the display my gratitude part, that’s the tricky part. I don’t know if Eliza has that.
Sylvia: Y’know.
Dre: Let’s see… Okay, who would be important to me?
Sylvia: I love that you’re not like, well my sister.
Dre: I mean that’s where my mind went first, but that doesn’t, like, I don’t care if she fuckin’ lives or dies. I probably want her to die.
Sylvia: Yeah, damn. Okay.
Art: Damn.
Dre: I, hmm. I think maybe it’s Claxton. ‘Cause I think Claxton probably has the most, like, inside knowledge about the frame job.
Art: Sure.
Keith: The Knife again.
Art: And I hear that there’s riots, so there’s a lot of peril.
Dre: Yeah.
Dre: Just…
Sylvia: Yeah. Just zoomin’ around in his hovercar, saving people. [Keith laughs]
Dre: Yeah, just pickin’ us all up.
Sylvia: In his Batmobile.
Keith: Yeah somehow part of the plan has been to become a minor Batman character.
Sylvia: Yeah!
Dre: Yeah.
Sylvia: I like him being Batman more than I like him being Arrow, so.
Dre: Sure. I don’t know Art, who or what does Alabaster Clad save you from?
Art: I mena, it could just be the roll of the Ponzi scheme riot.
Dre: Like it’s just spreading throughout the whole city?
Art: Yeah, I don’t think those are gonna stop, y’know?
Dre: Probably not. No.
Art: I wouldn't stop being mad about all my money being stolen in a Ponzi scheme and nothing being done about it because it’s protecting monied elites, that wouldn’t go well with me.
Dre: Sure.
Sylvia: Is this also like a instance of like, does this sort of reinforce the shit that Basalt was saying about the police force too? It’s like he’s able to do some dispersing thing with one of his gizmos and gadgets.
Art: Yeah, some sort of… first thought was some sort of taser drone. [Keith laughs]
Dre: Sure!
Sylvia: Oh no.
Keith: And the other thing is also— [laughs]
Sylvia: Oh no, wait. We’ve invented something very evil.
Art: Only just now.
Keith: The other side of this is Claxton has invested a ton of like, thought and also police resources into grand conspiracies and also quashing dissent. And I’m not surprised that the actual police force not working very well because you’ve put most of your money in secret police and conspiracy making.
Art: That’s true.
Sylvia: That’s true.
Art: A lot of the money is going other places.
Keith: You’ve done, you’ve done more secretly killing police officers than you’ve done police work.
Sylvia: Secretly policing kill officers, yeah.
Keith: Secretly policing kill officers.
Art: Yeah. I regret nothing, I don’t know what you’re…
Keith: Sure. I think that’s, I think that there’s a way to interpret that as a net good. But…
Dre: Sure.
Art: Yeah, that’s true.
Keith: Usually those people have been trying to stop you from being evil.
Art: Yeah.
Dre: Cowards.
Art: But like, yeah.
Keith: No vision. Low vision.
Dre: Mhm.
Art: Low vision. Gotta get a better eye test at the academy, you know what I’m sayin’?
Dre: Boy. And how do I show gratitude? I guess like, one, how do I learn about this? So the Knife rescues Claxton Cascade, pulls up in his fuckin’...
Art: Maybe it’s on the news. Maybe there’s like a press conference.
Dre: Ooh. Yeah.
Sylvia: Do we…do we have TVs?
Art: Wait, do we have television?
Sylvia: Yeah, you said that and I was like, is that…?
Art: I mean it could be a press conference— it could be in the newspaper.
Dre: Yeah yeah.
Keith: Sure, newspaper.
Sylvia: Yeah, you’re right. We have established those before.
Art: The press conference I think predates the filming.
Sylvia: What? …That was me overemphasizing surprise for comedic effect. I believe you.
Keith: [cross] The press in press conference is printing press.
Art: [cross] Right. We’ve established we just got permission to do that again.
Sylvia: What was that, Keith?
Keith: The press in press conference is printing press.
Dre: Mm.
Sylvia: Printing press conference.
Dre: Alright, tell me if I’m bending this card to far.
Sylvia: Bend away.
Dre: But how I display my gratitude is… I send someone to drop off a bloody knife on Basalt Caldera’s front door.
Sylvia: Yo.
Art: Whoa.
Dre: I know who he is, I know what this fucker’s doing. I’m not playing this game.
Keith: Oh that’s true, you do! I forgot that you did.
Dre: I see what he’s trying to do here, he’s trying to get fuckin’ cozy. Up to everyone that he thinks can throw me off of the mountain, quite literally. I’m not scared of this shit.
Keith: Yeah, this is Tekken. We’re in Tekken now.
Dre: [laughing] Yeah we are in Tekken now!
Sylvia: We are in Tekken.
Dre: Damn. Mack Magoo was truly Heihachi Mishima.
Sylvia: Actually in this case I think Claxton would be Heihachi ‘cause he did the throwing. He’d be Jin Kazama maybe.
Dre: That’s fair.
Keith: Well, there’s different characters do the throwing depending on who wins.
Dre: That’s true.
Sylvia: This is true, but I just mean canonically Heihachi has done it most I think. To his son.
Keith: Sure.
Sylvia: You ever watch that video of Brian Cox explaining all that?
Keith: Brian Cox, the astronomer or whatever?
Sylvia: No the actor.
Keith: Oh! [laughs] That would be so funny!
Sylvia: No, not the physicist. Not the British physicist. The Scottish actor.
Keith: Equally ridiculous, I think. Equally funny.
Sylvia: Equally funny! Honestly, kinda want the— get Brian Cox the physicist to explain Street Fighter.
Keith: Did they hire Brian Cox to do this or is Brian Cox a Tekken fan?
Sylvia: They hired him to do it.
Keith: I don’t know! Brian Cox can do whatever he wants in his spare time. If I was rich, I would still like Tekken.
Dre: Yeah that’s fair.
Sylvia: I mean yeah. Why wouldn’t you? Tekken’s dope as hell. Okay. I like that he’s—
Keith: I wanna be the little dragon kid with the koopa shell.
Sylvia: [baffled] What?
Keith: The little dragon kid with the koopa shell!
Dre: In Tekken?
Sylvia: In Tekken?
Keith: Yeah, in Tekken!
Sylvia: Keith, you’re making—
Keith: Gon! Oh, he doesn’t have a turtle shell, he doesn’t have a turtle shell. Gon.
Dre: Isn’t that a dinosaur?
Keith: Yeah he’s a little dinosaur! Gon from Tekken 3.
Sylvia: Gon from Tekken 3, yeah.
Dre: Oh, so he was not a dragon or a person with a turtle shell.
Sylvia: No, he’s Agumon.
Keith: He’s totally a little dragon guy.
Dre: No, he’s a dinosaur!
Keith: He’s kind of, y’know, he could go either way! What the fuck is a dragon? It’s just a fake dinosaur.
Art: What?
Sylvia: Wha?
Dre: I’m reading Gon’s bio on the Tekken wiki, Gon is a small silent dinosaur of an actual species Gigantosaurus.
Keith: By the way, I gotta say this, I’m looking now at images, he does have a costume where he wears a koopa shell.
Dre: He does. You’re right on that front.
Sylvia: What are we—
Keith: He does. So I was right.
Dre: It’s his player two outfit from Tekken…3?
Sylvia: We need to— Yeah Tekken 3.
Keith: Yeah, Tekken 3. Sorry, we can stop doing Tekken.
Dre: Yeah we should stop doing this, we should keep going.
Sylvia: Yeah no sorry, my brain has fully short circuited, ‘cause now I’m thinking of Mokujin. Oh my god, they’re so cute. Okay, we need to… You also just put that not in our thread, just in the live shows chat. [laughs]
Keith: Oh, that’s the wrong one.
Dre: Nah. Keep it there. [Keith chuckles]
Sylvia: They don’t need to know. Okay, are we, I think we’re done with that card, I think we should probably keep rollin’.
Dre: Yeah.
Sylvia: Okay, so that was, Dre, that was your card right?
Dre: Mhm.
Sylvia: Okay, next one goes to a little dragon with a turtle shell, AKA Keith.
Keith: Hi. I’m a little dragon with a turtle shell. Let’s see what my cards say.
Sylvia: Congratulations. Oh wow, this works great.
Keith: You are hosting a prestigious seasonal event. What detail are you obsessed with? What calamity does this fixation obscure? Okay, obviously what I’m doing is hosting, seasonal event… Seasonal event? That’s such a…
Sylvia: Could this be the investor thing you were talking about? We could twist it.
Keith: This could be the investor thing, yeah. This could be, I was thinking of it like a presentation but now it maybe could be a presentation at a conference. Obviously the detail that I’m obsessed with is getting the word out about gold.
Sylvia: Well yeah. You love gold.
Keith: Yes. Gold, the new money.
Dre: Boo.
Sylvia: Nu-money, right?
Keith: Yeah. And the calamity that this fixation obscures is that the rapid devaluation of our currency in favor of, essentially a product, like a value-storing product, is crashing the economy.
Sylvia: [laughing] Yeah sure!
Keith: It’s causing a full economic collapse.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Dre: Hm.
Sylvia: As evidenced by the full-scale riots happening constantly?
Keith: Yeah, yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah, okay! I’m into it!
Keith: Mhm.
Sylvia: Let’s just keep that meteor right on track for Earth going, y’know? Yeah, do we wanna do a scene for this at all or do you wanna just sorta…?
Keith: I would love to do a scene for it, but I think it’s a scene that would require me to know about gold and more about, like, normal economics. Than I do. Or it would be like, a cheesy commercial for gold. [Keith and Sylvi laugh]
Art: Now hold on.
Dre: I do love those old cash for gold commercials.
Keith: Like super low information, which I do kind of like as a nation of people that have a really unsophisticated understanding of their own economy because it’s mostly based on self-generating dollar bills from volcanoes that they live on. And so like, never having to think too hard about the economy is I think sort of funny. But no, I think that we should—
Sylvia: I think it makes sense with the like, insular nature of this island that we’ve built. Like, they only just started letting people who weren’t form there start being important parts of things is the way it feels.
Keith: Yeah. But no, I don’t think we need to a scene. I would like to do a scene if it comes up again at this event, but maybe not the like hosting scene that this would I think call for.
Sylvia: Okay. So wait, that means we’re just good?
Keith: Yeah we’re just gonna go, we’re gonna go to Art.
Sylvia: Alright.
Art: We must be running out of card.
Sylvia: We have to be, because I believe there’s fifteen per deck. Art, you got a Knife one.
Keith: Oh wow.
Sylvia: Oh, I accidentally stretched the…
Art: Squished it.
Sylvia: It’s fine, it’s wider, it’s cool. It’s a special edition.
Art: Someone brings you genuine happiness. Who? Do you live a lie with them, or tell the truth and drive them away?
Keith: This is so funny, dating Mosey and Mosey doesn’t know. [laughs] ‘Cause we don’t have anybody else that we’ve introduced that he knows, we can invent someone for this, right? We should.
Sylvia: It could be Mosey.
Keith: Sorry Art, I didn’t mean to, I just had this idea of like, Superman, y’know, people not recognizing Superman that know Clark Kent. And just thought that was a funny image.
Sylvia: Ah, it’s Mack Magoo. Back from the dead once more. [Dre laughs]
Dre: God, I thought of that and was like, god I can’t make that joke again.
Sylvia: I’m gonna make that joke every time we need that character.
Dre: That’s fair. That’s fair.
Sylvia: [cross] I am on team—
Keith: [cross] Look, Sylvi sees deck, she eats it.
Sylvia: I eats it! Yeah, exactly! Watch the 999 streams everybody, and you’ll understand that joke.
Art: Yeah we’re sort of, y’know there’s very few arrows over here on the…
Sylvia: I mean yeah, that is kinda the way this game works, right? Is you build the web and then you condense it towards the end of the game. At least in my experience.
Art: The problem with exiling someone before thing started is it didn’t give us a lot of, uh…
Sylvia: Yeah…
Art: Unless we wanna make a Vicki Vale character in here.
Keith: Yeah, I think that’s what the card is asking for, is like you need to invent a person for this. I don’t think that that’s true, I think the suggestion would be like, there’s someone we haven’t talked about, who is that person?
Art: Sure. Alright.
Keith: But it could be Mosey!
Dre: Could be Slate.
Art: Looking at my list, gonna need a new list of lava words.
Dre: Could be Chief Inspector Crust.
Keith: Yeah, it could be Crust. No, they must both know. They have to, because we were on the island with them.
Dre: Yeahyeahyeah.
Keith: They’d see that white beard and be like, I know that white beard.
Dre: Here’s my question, Art. I guess this is a question for everyone, let’s look at all our cards down here, is there anybody that speaks to us?
Sylvia: Oh, the like face cards down at the bottom?
Keith: Oh yea, I forgot about those.
Sylvia: Uh…not really.
Dre: Okay.
Sylvia: I mean, if you guys got someone that speaks to you, let me know. If you see a vibe and you’re like, oh wait. I think Basalt should fall in love with this Young Republican here.
Art: Yeah that’s the problem is that I’ve spent too much time inventing bad stories about all these people. [wheeze]
Dre: Yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah that’s the thing with this game.
Dre: I like this lady with the hoop earring.
Sylvia: I do like her too. I, what was the argument for it not being Mosey again?
Art: The card seems to want us to not.
Dre: But hey, if we want Mosey…
Sylvia: Does it? ‘Cause it doesn’t necessarily say it’s someone new.
Keith: I think for me, the argument against Mosey is the implausibility of Mosey not knowing. Just, on spending ten minutes with us.
Art: Well that’s why it’s gonna be Alana Irestone.
Dre: Sure.
Sylvia: Oh, great, yeah.
Art: Irestone is on my lava words, but I’m gonna confess that the first time I’ve thought we’re just in the Flintstones.
Keith: Sure.
Dre: Mm.
Art: And I will just take one of these, this one. And I am just gonna keep leaning into the Batman thing.
Sylvia: Yeah, do it. It’s fun.
Art: This is a reporter for…we didn’t name the newspaper, right?
Sylvia: No, we can just say the…
Keith: The paper.
Dre: The paypuh.
Keith: Of record.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Art: [typing] Reporter for the paper of record, does a lot of…
Keith: Slate. [laughs]
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Dre: Yeah, mhm? Mhm?
Sylvia: Was that his origin story? He invented the newspaper?
Keith: Whose?
Sylvia: Slate’s.
Keith: Oh, no no no.
Sylvia: I thought that’s what you were saying. That the newspaper was called like a slate.
Keith: No, well, it was a pun on slate like a thing you write on and also slate, like a rock, because of the rock stuff, and also Slate, the online newspaper that already exists in real life.
Sylvia: I forgot about the online newspaper that already exists in real life.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: So that’s my quick little sketch.
Keith: Can you read out your cards?
Art: Yeah, Alana Irestone, reporter for the paper of record, does a lot of work on gold/electricity beats. Sees Alabaster, a lot of news/society events, they get close.
Keith: [laughing] Gold/electricity beats!
Sylvia: Gold/electricity beats rules. In the club listening to gold/electricity beats.Sylvia: [Keith and Art laugh] Untz. Untz.
Art: Zzzt!
[Keith, Art and Sylvi acapella gold/electricity beats, Keith does the Strongbad email techno song]
Sylvia: [laughs] That was great!
Keith: Did that song come up, did the Homestar Runner song come up in one of these? I think it did.
Sylvia: I don’t know, but I will always laugh for that Homestar Runner bit.
Dre: [Strongbad voice] The cheat! We are not having light switch raves!
Art: We have to be careful with Homestar Runner because it’s disappearing from the public consciousness.
Keith: Oh, that’s true.
Sylvia: We’re losing recipes.
Keith: We can’t lose it. It’s still good.
Sylvia: Please go watch some Homestar Runner.
Art: What’s that Lord of the Rings quote, the like, and soon all who remember will be gone. That’s what Homestar Runner is.
Keith: They still do like one video a year. I watch it every year.
Art: And god bless them.
Keith: Yeah. Good for them. And it’s the same! Same as it ever was. Just like, yep. That’s Homestar Runner still. Good for them.
Sylvia: Same as it ever was.
Art: Why would you change?
Keith: Yeah. They gotta get the Talking Heads on a Homestar Runner video.
Sylvia: That’s a natural fit.
Keith: It is, it is.
Sylvia: Hey, anyway.
Art: And I think to stick with the weird evil superhero genre we’ve put ourselves in, Alabaster has to live the lie.
Keith: Right. And like, be the…
Art: And be Alabaster, now they can’t even be Basalt Caldera in their private moments.
Keith: Right. Is that a problem?
Dre: [gravelly singing to the tune of Nirvana] Something in the way… [Sylvi laughs]
Art: I think it is generally a problem if you can’t live as your authentic self.
Sylvia: Yeah, no, you’re gonna lose… Lemme tell ya! It can be kinda tough!
Keith: No, I think it’s easy. [Keith and Dre laugh]
Sylvia: This motherfucker. This motherfucker right here.
Keith: Now I’m thinking about it, I’m just thinking about it, I think it’s easy.
Sylvia: A guy like me wouldn’t experience any kind of ego death.
Dre: Built different!
Sylvia: Yeah. I would simply hold onto my internally without any validation.
Keith: [sigh] Alright, who are we doing? Or is there more? Do we wanna do a scene, do we wanna do a…
Art: I don’t think I wanna do a scene with this yet, I think I want to hold this in the chamber, y’know?
Dre: Yeah, let that be a slow burn.
Keith: What is the last question? Oh, so you live a lie with them. Right, that is the question, yeah. Which we do. We do live that lie as the collective Knife.
Dre: But the fun thing about that is that it implies that telling the truth drives them away. So giving them the lie only makes you grow closer.
Art: Yeah. Is that not how…?
Dre: That is how tragedy works, yes.
Art: I don't think this is supposed to be a tragedy for the Knife, though.
Keith: It kind of is. Doesn’t it end with the Knife dies too? Isn’t that the end of the thing?
Dre: No, I don't think so. I think the Knife wins. But y’know, what does it mean to win?
Keith: Well, I think you can win and still die.
Art: You’re thinking of Hamlet, Keith.
Dre: Yeah. Listen, Batman wins at the end of the movies, but it’s usually not happy.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvia: Damn.
Art: Damn.
Sylvia: Makes you think.
Dre: I watched him drive away on his motorcycle from Catwoman.
Sylvi and Keith: Who’s Tim? [Keith laughs]
Dre: Oh I said him, not Tim, but.
Sylvia: I heard, ‘I watched Tim drive away,’ and I was like…
Dre: [cross] Yeah, I watched Tim Burton drive away at the end.
Sylvia: [cross] There is a Tim in Batman, but.
Keith: Tim Burton, I watched Tim Burton drive away on that motorcycle.
Dre: Yeah.
Art: Also I’m pretty sure that that’s not, doesn’t that movie end with them in like the cafe and they see Alfred?
Dre: The latest one? That’s a good question, I don’t know.
Keith: I have no idea.
Sylvia: I don't know.
Art: Oh no, the latest, the Robert Pattinson was not the one I was talking about, yeah.
Dre: Yeah, I was thinking about the Robert Pattinson one, yeah. I’m sorry, the best Batman movie. I don’t actually think that, I just wanted to say something fun.
Keith: I don’t have an opinion on that.
Dre: Yeah no, me neither.
Keith: I like the one with Jim Carrey. That’s my favorite.
Dre: Smokin’. [Art laughs]
Keith: Yeah that’s the one. My favorite Batman movie is The Mask. [Dre and Keith laugh]
Art: Well they’re talking about Batman’s mask, right?
Keith: Yeah, that’s the mask from—
Sylvia: Nobody cared until he put on the mask.
Dre: That’s what The Mask of the Phantasm is about.
Keith: My three— here are my four favorite Batman movies. One, The Mask 2. Two, The Mask 1. Three, Batman Forever, four, Son of the Mask.
Dre: Oh, I thought you were gonna say Ace Ventura.
Sylvia: I’m gonna pull a card.
Dre: Yeah, please do. Save us. Save us.
Sylvia: Whose turn was it this time?
Keith: The Mask and Ace Ventura… [laughs]
Art: It’s yours.
Sylvia: Oh, it is my turn!
Keith: Yeah, you did this.
Sylvia: Okay, I was the one holding everything up. I love that.
Dre: Yeah, what the fuck Sylvi. It’s all your fault.
Art: Yeah, if it weren’t for you we’d be—
Sylvia: Well, everyone continue to be mad at me because you betray one of your conspirators. What do you take from them?
Art: Oh, what the fuck?
Sylvia: Why are they powerless to stop you?
Dre: Curse you, sudden but inevitable betrayal.
Sylvia: I am so torn between all of you, honestly.
Dre: True, that’s fair.
Keith: Equally.
Sylvia: There’s a great way to fuck over pretty much everybody here. Part of me is like, well, only one of us slapped me at a party. Which is my domain.
Dre: Now, to be fair, you did say some mean stuff.
Sylvia: To be fair, you’re a tough lady. You’re a grown up, you can handle it.
Dre: Yeah, and I handle it by slapping your fuckin’ face!
Sylvia: Yeah well, now I’m getting your fuckin’, your shitty brother in law to start leaking me company secrets.
Dre: Oh god yeah, that rules! [chuckles]
Sylvia: They’re powerless to stop me because you don’t really pay attention to your family.
Dre: Yeah that’s true, I just shoved that dude into a hole somewhere and have never thought about him since.
Sylvia: Yeah but, unfortunately he’s got enough connections to be like, oh y’know I’m related to the boss. And then, oh wow, all these dossiers just start crossing my desk.
Dre: What are you gonna do with those?
Sylvia: Don’t know yet. But I feel like there’s like a part of me that’s like, y’know maybe I should expose someone for committing some heinous acts. And why not this bitch? [Dre laughs] Is it the most self-preserving move in the world? Not really. But it’s still fun. Yeah. What do you take from them… Y’know what, you’re trying to automate things, right?
Dre: Yes. Yes I am.
Sylvia: What if I take blueprints and shit?
Dre: Ooh, love that.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Dre: I mean, don’t love that, but love that.
Sylvia: You, Dre don’t love that.
Dre: Yeah. Yeahyeahyeah.
Sylvia: Eliza less so. Not bluebrints, I wrote bluebrints.
Keith: Bluebrint’s a good name.
Sylvia: Yeah I’m gonna save that for our next Friends at the Table season, my character Bluebrint.
Keith: Bluebrints Parcheesy.
Sylvia: Yeah. He’s a paladin.
Keith: I think he’s the master of disguise. [laughs]
Dre: Oh, another cool movie we can start making references for!
Sylvia: You know what’s incredibly fun, is that was our last card for this deck so we are probably ending this on a Master of Disguise reference.
Dre: Turtle.
Art: Yeah, I’m only sad that we couldn’t—
Keith: Talk more about The Master of Disguise?
Art: Talk about the turtle club and its turtliness.
Dre: Turtle.
Sylvia: Never forget.
Keith: You’re trying to tell me that PIstachio Disguisey couldn’t get into the turtle club?
Dre: [sighs]
[“Eyes of a Killer” by Jack de Quidt plays]
[1] They forgot to read the card aloud, whoops. The card they drew reads, “The Knife speaks with you briefly. They are swaggering and insufferable. What challenge do they bait you with as they leave?”
[2] The full card reads, “The Knife speaks with you briefly. They are pleasant and sincere. What invitation do you offer them before you leave?”