Transcriber:anachilles#0191 (start to approx. 4:57:30 using YouTube feed); thedreadbiter (4:57:30 to end; edits)
[Unnamed Marielda music plays under narration]
Austin (as Samol): Well, I suppose I've got a story or two left in these old bones. And hell, since it is another one about Marielda, why not make it about stories and the people who tell them. Now, I know what you might be thinking: Physicality alive, in the era that The Six operated in Marielda, it was knowledge which was forbidden, turned into contraband and currency both, not stories. But as anyone ever wounded by art can tell you, fiction is a sharper knife than information could ever be. And living fiction, played out in front of your eyes and ears? Well, very few things are as well honed as that. And so it was that Samothes, ever jealous and increasingly suspicious that his erstwhile beau might conquer his capital with culture instead of cudgel, all but forbade the theater.
Of course, any scoundrel worth their shadow would narrow in on those two words preceding “forbade”: “All but.” There were two exceptions to the rule banning theater. The first was liturgical drama, approved by the Blessed Council and performed in the True Church of Samothes on the Day of High Sun and other feasts. Between us, these were boring. They might serve academic value to someone of today's New Archives, and I suppose, for the true believer of that old era, seeing even the most sanitized depiction of their King-God, the Artificer Divine, would make their day.
But for most folks, they wanted something a little less sacramental. Which is where the second exception comes in. Once a season, as an act of supposed Good Will, the Preceptors of the Font of True Knowledge—the Font Men—opened the gates of their domain and put on a grand show. A day of comedy and tragedy in the Font Theater—the leash let slack, so that the next time those censors pulled on it, they could claim it was done in good faith. What does any of this have to do with The Six. Well, nothin’, until those out-a-towners with mysterious pasts and glorious masks showed up, claiming they had a spot on the stage, and a job for Hitchcock, Castille, and the rest: help those actors steal their names back.
[thunderclap, music ends]
Austin: Hello, and welcome to Friends at the Table, an actual play podcast focused on critical world-building, smart characterization, and fun interaction between good friends. I'm your host, Austin Walker. Today, joining me, Janine Hawkins.
Janine: Hello. I'm @bleatingheart on Twitter, let's do the full ones.
Austin: Yeah. Art Martinez-Tebbel.
Art: Hey, I'm on Twitter at @atebbel.
Austin: Jack de Quidt.
Jack: Hi, I'm Twitter at @notquitereal, and you can buy any of the music featured on the show and on this stream at notquitereal.bandcamp.com.
Austin: Sylvi Clare.
Sylvia: Hey, I'm Sylvia. You can find me on Twitter at @sylvibullet, and you can listen to my other show if you look up Emojidrome 2.0, on your podcast app of choice. [chuckles]
Austin: [laughing] Right. Uh, and Ali Acampora.
Ali: Uh, hi! You can find me over at @ali_west on Twitter, [clears throat] sorry, and the show over at @friends_table.
Austin: You can find me at @austin_walker, and you can support the show by going to friendsatthetable.cash. And if you're listening to this live, it means you're [chuckling] listening to this while we are doing our fundraiser for the National Network of Abortion Funds, which ran or is running — excuse me, from July 3 to July — excuse me! July 3rd to July 4th, 2022. Uh, thank you so much for everyone who has shown up to give your support. It has meant the world.
For people who are only listening in the podcast feed, one of the incentives that people met while we were raising money, uh, was that we would return to Marielda and play Scene Thieves, a game by Possible World Games and Tyler Crumrine, with art illustrated by Pol Clarissou. It's beautiful, it's gorgeous, it's a great game, I'm very excited to play it. Uh, I guess I'll read from, from the book briefly and say: Scene Thieves is a theatrical roleplaying game where players collaboratively write a play, while simultaneously choreographing an elaborate heist in the background. During the game's preshow, players create a band of thieves who use their theatrical performance as cover for their crimes.
Players also establish broad strokes for the game's show, before writing down a variety of props on notecards. Then, it's showtime! In Act 1, everyone draws prop cards from a pot and incorporates them into the progression of both of the play and the heist. At intermission, players take note of whether the evening is trending towards comedy or tragedy. In Act 2, they have a final chance to reverse their fates before the end of the game. To play Scene Thieves, you'll need two or more players, a coin, writing utensils, a six-sided die (optional), a stack of notecards, 3x5 recommended, a pot for collecting and mixing cards, like a hat or a bowl. Uh, uh, all right. Uh, so, if you listened to the intro just now, you'll know that the, uh, the premise of this session is that, during the one-year period between, I guess it's between War in Azaleas and then the final arc of Friends at the Table — or, ooh, jeez, of Marielda.
Sylvia: [laughing]
Austin: It was clearly not the final arc of Friends at the Table, because we've had like, 6 years since then. Uh. If you listened to the beginning of this episode, you know that the premise, uh, is, uh, that during that year between the, uh, penultimate and ultimate arcs of Marielda, uh, a lot of, The Six got up to a lot of different heists, a lot of different jobs, and et cetera. In this one, they have been hired by an outside troupe of actors, who don't know their own names. Uh, they know their faces, they know their parts in a play. Uh, uh, they have the script for that play, uh, uh, they have a, some sort of means of transportation that allowed them to arrive in Marielda, we will find out what that is. Uh, but they don't know who they are. What they do know is, there is a registration document somewhere in the depths of the Font Men HQ, which I don't know anything about, don't look at me. All I know is there is a stage in there, and probably a library. Lots of [laughing] lots of secret libraries, in Marielda. That has some sort of document that says who they are, where they're from, other key information about, about who they are. Uh, and so they're trying to figure out what that is and why it is that they've lost their identities. I know the answers to this, because it's an idea that I came up with. Uh, uh, I pitched this idea to some other folks on the call. If y'all, if you know the answer to this, don't — let's play with dramatic irony tonight, and don't bring that up.
Jack: [chuckles]
Austin: Uh... I think that's all the intro I need to do. Is there anything else I'm forgetting? Been a minute since we've done Marielda, so...
Art: Uh, no, but can I, can I say, because Austin said, if you didn't listen to the intro. And if you're someone who listens to this show and skips the intros —
Austin: [laughing]
Art: I want to hear from you. Send me a message.
Austin: They exist!
Art: Send me a message somewhere, you skip the intro just go to the rest of the — I want to know —
Austin: Art, those people exist.
Art: What your life is like.
Austin: A lot of people —
Janine: Intros have spoilers.
Austin: Intros have spoilers. Intros can be a little... pretentious, you know? People want to get into the game!
Ali: Oh, Austin...
Austin: No, I'm, I'm just relating things I've seen on the internet. Listen. You can like whatever part of the podcast you like.
Sylvia: Oh, are we allowed to do that?
Austin: Yes.
Sylvia: Do I get to talk about how I'm too mean on Twitter?
Austin: Ha-ha-ha! No! Uh...
Jack: The intro's where we say all your social security numbers anyway, so, you know.
Austin: Yes, exactly.
Ali: Mm-hm.
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: Uh... [chuckles] go back and listen. They, they're coded in there. If you want to steal our identities, that's what you've got to do. Uh, all right, I'm going to read from the program notes really quick. [chuckles] Uh, half the fun of Scene Thieves is coming up with the setting and play elements as a group, so resist the urge to do planning beforehand.
Jack: Whoops.
Austin: Well, we've done, we've done, a little bit —
Ali: We experienced that fun over a... [laughing]
Art: 3 years of —
Ali: A couple of months.
Austin: Well, yeah, we did, we, we've done Marielda years ago, we built that world. Don't let any one person hog the stage — if someone's voice isn't being heard, explicitly solicit their ideas or opinions. And in situations where you can't come to a consensus, don't be afraid to hold a vote, either. In improvisation, unexpected content may come up as part of freewheeling creativity. A pregame conversation about how silly or how serious you'd like your game to be will help everyone get on the same page. Because Scene Thieves has players write down props that will be used in-game, an early conversation can also help identify any specific content players want to avoid being written. Likewise, if content ever bothers you midgame, always feel empowered to pause the game and ask to pivot to something else. We're in a really great place here because we play games together all the time, and also because we have Marielda as a sort of baseline. But if there's anything extra we want to kind of pull, you know, off the table, or add something that we definitely want to come up, definitely let's bring it up during the kind of prop preshow part.
Any questions at this point? Okay. Preshow. Uh, as a group, brainstorm the following elements. Pick one of the examples, et cetera.
Sylvi: [chuckles]
Austin: What type of world do we live in? Got it. Set.
Sylvia: Uh...
Ali: Mmm.
Jack: Easy.
Austin: Easy. Uh...
Art: We're going to be done in no time.
Ali: Did we say when this was taking place in Marielda?
Austin: Yes. Between War in Azaleas and the final arc.
Ali: Okay, so, okay.
Austin: The big year. There's that year, during which there's lots of free time.
Ali: Oh...
Austin: Right?
Ali: Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.
Austin: This is the time during which... so it's pre, it's pre the final arc, right?
Ali: Uh-huh.
Austin: But it's post going down into Memoriam.
Ali: Okay, right. It's mostly a question of —
Austin: There are going to be some spoilers.
Ali: Does, does, does Castille have her memories, is sort of why I was asking that question.
Austin: I think the answer is yes, right?
Ali: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: This is the period during which you do, Maelgwyn is out and about wearing a mask, doing Tuxedo Mask shit.
Sylvia: [chuckling]
Ali: Yeah, yeah.
Austin: Uh... what else is happening during this period? You've dealt the Font Men a blow, I feel like, that's happened already, so like, they've been licking their wounds, and maybe that's part of why they are going loud with this big festival of plays and stuff, is like, you've ruined their reputation a little bit, and so, here's a way for them to start building goodwill again to people. Anything else? Okay, keep going. What type of world are we in? We got that. How are theater companies treated? Uh, I kind of set up that in Marielda, Samothes, not a fan. Uh, but I'm curious, outside of Marielda at this point, what's, what's going on? Do people, do people like the theater in Hieron?
Jack: Oh god, what is happening on the mainland right now?
Ali: Isn't there —
Jack: The traitor charioteers and...
Ali: Right, there's like a big war happening, right? Or...
Austin: Eh. Sort of, right?
Ali: Well, Samot is like, bringing troops across lands...
Austin: Yes, towards... but, it's been years since that initial conflict, right?
Ali: Oh, sure. Well then yeah, I guess there's like a big bard culture. Sorry to say that.
Austin: Ooh, bard culture.
Janine: Yeah... yes.
Sylvia: Oh, boy.
Ali: [laughing] But like, you know, as there's like, people coming back from the war, or like, you know, troops of soldiers moving into cities and then going to the next one, there's like people who are like, “oh, I saw this guy do this thing,” or I met this person —
Austin: Mmm.
Janine: Yeah, people have stories to tell.
Ali: Who said that they did this thing — yeah.
Austin: Totally.
Jack: And then also probably like mystery plays, you know, a way to, in much the same way as modernism rose up out of the World Wars in Europe, I wonder if there's like religious or ritual or cult plays happening across the continent, of people, bands of former soldiers, bands of civilians, trying to interpret what they saw, like, during this great clash of gods through plays.
Sylvia: Yeah. I mean, to me, like, Samothes being so divorced that he bans theater —
Ali: [snorts]
Sylvia: Does imply that Samot is like super into it.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: Yeah!
Sylvia: And so like, is probably like, funding shit or like supporting it.
Janine: Or even like, I would wonder if, if hearing, oh, Samothes banned theater? Well, what if I just start funding theater troupes just 'cause, or like —
Jack: [laughing]
Sylvia: Yeah.
Janine: It just feels like, it just feels like you're just going harder in the other direction, at that point.
Austin: I mean that was literally what the intro says, right, is that like —
Sylvia: Right, yeah.
Janine: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: Samothes is afraid that Samot is going to do that exact thing to try to turn the people against—
Ali: [laughing]
Janine: Yep.
Sylvia: And I'm saying, I think he should be doing that.
Austin: Uh-huh. Yes. Love it. Great.
Janine: Yeah. He hears that and is like, “yeah, great idea, thanks.”
Ali: [laughing]
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: All right. How does the troupe travel? Your theater company is constantly on the move, both to reach new audiences, and to stay one step ahead of the law. The caravan you travel in can be anything you like, though, as long as it's mobile and large enough to house and transport the theater company's sets, props, cast, and crew. Travel examples include airship, spacecraft, wagon train, sea galley, sand crawler, tour bus. How do y'all move around? Y'all being I guess, I guess, just to be clear, I'm guessing that the members of The Six who are on the call, which is Jack, Sylvi, and Ali, are playing your Six characters.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Ali: Mm-hm.
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: And that, so that means that, then, the people representing the theater company here are Janine and Art, right?
Art: Mm-hm.
Austin: Okay. How do y'all get around in your theater company?
Janine: We need something that can get over lava water, right? That's a pretty significant —
Art: Yeah.
Austin: True. That's true.
Ali: Uh...
Austin: Although you do, really quick, you do have the, you do have an official, you're coming here to perform officially, right?
Janine: Oh, okay.
Austin: So they might send a boat out to get you, one of the magic boats, you know?
Janine: Okay.
Art: Sure. But then that magic, we still need something that —
Art and Austin: Fits on a magic boat.
Austin: Or you just do a bunch of trips back and forth over the lava to get all your shit.
Art: What doesn't fit on a magic boat? I mean once we're at magic boat...
Janine: That's true.
Art: I think we should all be a little nice to ourselves.
Janine: So I wonder, I have a suggestion, that is, it's a visual suggestion as much as. And I don't mean that like, it's an image that I'm linking, I mean it's like an image I have in my head that I like.
Austin: Right, cube score, right.
Janine: Uh... yeah, so [chuckles] I like the, you know how sometimes you'll see, like, a, one of those sedan chairs but it's on like, the back of an elephant or something like that?
Austin: Sure.
Art: Uh-huh.
Janine: I want like, a big, like a really big one of those. It's like the size of a room, where we store all our stuff. It's like a U-Haul, one of those boxes that you can get when you're moving.
Austin: Mm-hm?
Janine: And it's like that, and it's on a couple wooden poles [audio cuts out] across, and normally when we're on land, those poles are on top of like, maybe elephants or some kind of like big animal, there's like two of them —
Austin: Big animal, right.
Janine: And the box is like on top, or even could be slightly suspended or something, so the way that the boat gets us across, is we leave the animals behind, they're taken care of, they're safe, everything is fine. Uh, and then we suspend the box between two boats. As if they are the animals.
Jack: Woah.
Art: Oh!
Janine: And then it gets moved across like that. Is that fun?
Art: And the boats look like animals.
Austin: Incredible.
Janine: Yeah, I don't know, why not?
Jack: And, and, can I make a suggestion, for how they're carried when they arrive in Marielda?
Austin: Please.
Janine: Of course, of course.
Jack: What about, two ranks of pala-din?
Austin: Ah...
Jack: Just hoisting —
Art: Oh...
Ali: [giggling]
Janine: Ooh...
Austin: Love it.
Jack: Like a massive sort of —
Janine: Hell yeah.
Jack: Sort of, they come marching down, waiting at the dock, and they lift it up. Also, Janine, I think it is exceptionally powerful to say that this story contains two elephants that are offscreen.
Austin: [laughing]
Ali: [snorts]
Jack: [laughing]
Janine: And they're being taken care of. And are happy.
Austin: And they're being taken care of nicely.
Jack: And they're being taken care of.
Austin: Yes.
Jack: You know, any story, that doesn't visibly feature elephants, could realistically —
Austin: That's true.
Jack: Feature any number of elephants offscreen.
Janine: Mm-hm.
Jack: But it's rare you hear creators be brave enough to —
Janine: [laughing]
Jack: Explicitly mention the elephants.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Sylvia: Feel free to reimagine past seasons of Friends at the Table with two elephants, just offscreen.
Austin: [laughing]
Ali: [chuckling]
Jack: Just off screen.
Art: Being very well-taken-care of the whole time —
Austin: The whole time.
Art: No matter what's happening onscreen.
Austin: That's right. Incredible. Uh...
Art: The elephants are in the air-conditioned elephant lounge.
Austin: Oh, I love that for them.
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: Uh, all right. What is your troupe's name? An easy solution for naming your troupe is simply calling them the blank (the location name) players. Uh, if you'd like to get a bit more creative, though, here's a list of 100 percent real troupe and and theater names for extra inspiration. You wanna... Can someone read me some of these? These ones here, that are apparently all real?
Jack: Yeah, here we go. Uh, real names. Deadpan Theater, Whiskey Anorak, Elevator Repair Service, Peppermint Muse, Project Project, Blazing Grannies, Produced Moon, Dy-Nasty, Elsewhere and Otherwise, Drama Queens, Cog and Sprocket, Woolly Mammoth, Tortoise in a Nutshell, Everything I Own, Surface of a Bubble, Inside I'm a Mermaid, Les Enfantes Terrible, and Just Add Water.
Austin: A lot of great names.
Janine: [singsong] Tortoise in a nutshell... tortoise power! [laughs] That's anything?
Jack: [laughing]
Austin: [chuckles] That's how it goes, yeah.
Jack: Yeah, weird.
Ali: [chuckles]
Austin: Are the elephants in your name?
Art: Yeah, I'm, I'm sort of just at Elephant Lounge.
Austin: Elephant Lounge...
Art: The Elephant Lounge Players, the Elephant Lounge...
Austin: Oh... I love it.
Art: Company.
Jack: What part of the — yeah. I mean, the answer to this is play to find out what happens, but we're not going to be playing there. Do we know of any extant major cities in, on the mainland at this point? Does Velas exist at this point? Where have these people come from?
Austin: Velas exists, because we know that Velas gets hit hard by the Erasure. Uh, presumably the —
Jack: Old Man's Chin.
Austin: Old Man's Chin exists. Actually, I don't know if Old Man's Chin exists, right? We don't, I don't know if Marrowcreek exists. Uh...
Jack and Austin: Not Marrowcreek.
Austin: Rosemarrow. Other one.
Ali: [cackling]
Austin: Uh-huh. Uh, I don't know if the... because this is all pre-Hieron, right? So I don't know if, you know, the place... I guess we know that wharvers exists, right? So like the underground substrata and all that exists.
Jack: The Buoy is probably being built.
Austin: Uh, yeah. Yeah. Uh... Nacre is gone, right? At this point.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: That's already happened, Tristero has already, has already zipped that away. Uh, because of apples, right. Uh-huh. Uh...
Sylvia: [giggling]
Austin: Yeah.
Art: I would just like to shoutout everyone in chat who's saying, “Les Elefantes Terrible.”
Austin: [laughing]
Art: You saw it, you went for it, I love you. Thank you.
Janine: Yeah.
Ali: [laughing]
Art: I don't think we're going to use it, but it's great work.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Janine: Someone had to say it.
Art: Just fantastic work. Yeah.
Austin: It's true. Uh, we know there are orcs out there, doing orc shit. We know, again, gnolls are out there. G-N-O-L-L, gnolls, which will eventually become the location where Rosemarrow is, and the knolls with a K. Uh...
Jack: Also, I told a lie. The Buoy isn't established yet. But there are presumably wharvers digging down there.
Austin: Is the Buoy not established yet? The Buoy should be established —
Jack: Nope, nope.
Austin: Right?
Jack: Remember who, remember who founded the buoy?
Austin: Wow, you're right. Yeah, sure, okay. Uh, so, yeah, that has not happened yet. Uh, all right. Yeah. So, this is, yeah, it's pre-gnoll oppression, correct. Uh, so yeah, we don't have any other big, big cities out there that we can just like, grab. Uh... so are we going with the Elephant Lounge Players?
Art: I think the Elephant Lounge Company sounds a little more…
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: Why lounge? Where's lounge coming from?
Jack: Marielda will be so mad —
Art: It's where our elephants hang out while we're performing.
Austin: [chuckles]
Janine: Oh, true.
Jack: The first thing they'll say is, “where are the elephants, why didn't you bring the elephants? Get bigger boats.”
Art: Well in most shows, the elephants are probably not that far.
Ali: Hm...
Jack: Oh yeah, true. True. Yeah.
Art: This is a rare, elephant, completely elephantless show.
Austin: Mmm...
Jack: Elephant-free.
Austin: All right, we know where you'll be performing next —
Janine: Probably an elephant costume.
Austin: Which is the Font Theater. What will you steal? This could be an object or something less literal, like stealing back someone's freedom by breaking them out of prison. To come up with your target, the object of your heist, ask the following questions: what's valued in your world, what's valued by your theater company, do you sail for fun, profit, or survival, what could a theater company get to close to, what VIPs could you invite and then rob? [chuckles] Uh, we know that its something about your identity, but I don't know if it's a particular, like is it a particular, is it a book that literally has your name in it? Is it a collection —
Janine: If we were invited, then...
Austin: Mm-hm.
Janine: Presumably.
Austin: Yeah. Okay. I didn't know if there was a physical thing, or if you wanted to keep it broader, and then we could find out if there was a particular thing, or set of things, that could help answer the question about who you are, you know? Uh... the next one is, where is the target kept? Your troop members are all master thieves, so they know exactly where the target is located, or at least they think they do. As players, though, you're also choosing where it's kept. Be realistic and offer yourselves a challenge, but don't put it somewhere impossibly out of reach. Uh, I can tell you that it's definitely deep behind... what you're looking for is deep in the Font Men, like, archives, that are protected, for some reason. Uh, uh, but I don't know, I don't know details about what that situation is.
So, you can tell me, like, is it in a vault? Is it in, what's the place like, where... very important secret information would be kept by these folks? For people that don't remember, the Font Men were one of the groups that helped police information for Samothes in Marielda, and keep it all out of reach.
Jack: Okay, I'm spitballing here. You know how banks and, uh, safes and stuff, sometimes have those little dye bombs —
Austin: I thought you said Spanx. Really thought you said Spanx.
Janine: I also thought that.
Ali: Mm-hm.
Art: I also heard that.
Jack: You know how Spanx... that's really weird. I definitely said banks, but something might've happened —
Janine: [dubiously] Mmm...
Austin: Okay. [laughing]
Jack: Between, between my mouth and the microphone.
Austin: Mmm, mm-hm.
Jack: Uh, you know how they have those like, dye bombs that can pop and cover everything in, like blue dye, to either mark the bills —
Sylvia: Mm-hm.
Austin: Yes.
Jack: Or mark the thieves? I wonder if the information deep, the very sensitive information deep within the Font Men's sort of like, information archives, is contained within something that would like, damage or destroy the information if it is not removed in the right way.
Austin: Ah, interesting.
Jack: I don't know what that is, but I'm just saying it, so we can start rotating it in our heads.
Art: It could be like, in the middle of some like, ink reservoir, some like, giant ink reservoir with like a glass ball containing...
Austin: [typing] Ink reservoir vault...
Jack: But then, why not just put it in your pocket and... how do you get it out?
Art: No, the glass, I'm talking about like a glass ball the size of a room.
Austin: Right. The whole room floods, is what you're saying.
Art: Yeah, if you break into the glass, the whole room floods with ink, it's ruined everything in there. Every written word.
Austin: Ooh, which is better — Samothes would rather that happen, probably, anyway. This is like a... you know, if Samothes had his way, all this information would be gone. But people keep saying it's better to hold onto information sometimes, right?
Jack: Right, right, right.
Ali: Mmm.
Austin: And so like, meet them halfway, and if someone tries to steal it, it all just gets ruined.
Jack: So, I'm trying to picture this, Art. There's like a big room, full of books. And inside that room, in the middle, there is an immense glass sphere full of ink.
Austin: No, I think it's the other way.
Art: No, no-no. There's an immense room full of ink. And in the middle of that room is a glass sphere full of books.
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: Right. You're in the — there's a reservoir of ink —
Jack: [chuckling] oh —
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Austin: An underground well of ink. And in that is a Magneto prison. [chuckles] is a glass —
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: Is a glass, like, cube, or a glass ball —
Jack: Containing a library.
Austin: That a room has been built into. Right.
Art: Yeah, a library in the glass ball, in the thing of ink —
Austin: Yeah.
Art: Underground.
Jack: It's got to be underground, because this was a city where at least some point in the comparatively recent history, rocks fell from the sky, so they were like, “we gotta put the ink ball reservoir —“
Austin: Right.
Jack: “Deep beneath the city.”
Austin: I mean, also, they're called the Font Men, right? So it's a font, it's like a fountain, you know, that makes sense, this all works.
Art: Yeah.
Jack: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sylvia: Oh yeah.
Art: Yeah, at the very top, there's probably a little like, classy ink fountain.
Austin: Yes.
Art: Like a fish, spitting ink in the air.
Jack: Hey, what if it's — what if it's just called The Inkwell?
Austin: Oh, I love it.
Art: Great.
Austin: The Inkwell. Is that also the name of the theater? Or is that —
Jack: No, The Inkwell is the name of this security feature. And the Font —
Austin: Gotcha.
Jack: We know that the Font Men are real pieces of work.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: I hate those guys. And I bet they're so proud of it. They're like, the greatest secrets in Marielda are hidden within the Inkwell, and nobody can get to them.
Austin: Love it. So good. Uh, all right. So that's, so that's underground, it's past all of the rest of their security. There's hallways, there's stairwells, there's all the other — there's Font Men who have, you may recall, fire canes, cool canes that catch on fire, and they duel with them. All sorts of stuff like that.
All right. I'm going to keep on moving. Where will you stage your performance? We actually know this one, again. This is the Font Theater, which is like the most public-facing part of the kind of campus I imagine the Font, the Font Men have. Uh, what is your play's name? Come up with a name for the play you'll perform.
Sylvia: Oh, gosh.
Austin: Its plot will be improvised along the heist, so don't write out an actual script or name an existing play. For now, we just want to map out a few broad details to help guide improvising, both onstage and off.
Sylvia: Oh, Jesus.
Austin: Simple is often better here. The example one they came up with in the book is, “Betrayed by Love.”
Jack: That's a great, it's a great story name.
Austin: It's a great one.
Jack: It is also kind of what happens in Hieron. [chuckles]
Austin: It's true.
Sylvia, Ali,Jack: [laughing]
Austin: Uh...
Ali: Ah, it happens in life.
Jack: Mm.
Austin: Uh, if it helps, also, the second question here is, what is your play's major dramatic question? We could come at this the other way. A play's major dramatic question is the question at the core of its plot — how characters' behavior unpacks or complicates that question, helps keep an audience engaged, right up until it's answered at the end, even if the answer is a complicated or unsatisfying one. Major dramatic question examples include, “is all fair in love and war? Can our protagonist overcome a major [mis]understanding? Can people truly change? Can you escape fate? Do those who forget the past repeat it? What makes a family?” Good examples.
Art: Honestly, isn't that — aren't these six like, basically every...thing?
Austin: That's all the plots. Yeah, that's it.
Art: All the plots.
Ali: [giggling]
Jack: Something, so... whenever famous playwright, Shakespeare, wanted to put a play in one of his famous plays, he — the play would always, like, reflect the drama — it would be like, it would be a bit sneaky, right? Like it would reflect the dramatic question of the broader thing?
Austin: Mm-hm.
Jack: So, is this play, does this play have a dramatic question like, “can anybody really know themselves?” Or like, you know —
Austin: Ah, love it, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jack: It's like, are we trying to poke, poke in the eye of the Font Men, even on a certain level where it's like, “this is a play about... a villainous king, who maybe killed my dad,” in Hamlet or whatever, you know.
Austin: Right, right. Which also then ends up mirroring some of the The Six's core, you know, dramatic questions, right? With the Hitchcocks being twins who slowly differ, and Castille coming to know, know who she is, and Aubrey, uh, being asked to do something that she probably wouldn't, normally. Uh, that hasn't happened yet, you know, but —
Sylvia: It hasn't happened yet.
Austin: But, we'll get there.
Ali: Mmm.
Austin: Uh, uh —
Art: We can do dramatic irony backwards, I think. I think —
Austin: Sure, right. Yes. Absolutely. Uh...
Jack: [laughing] Yeah, backwards dramatic irony. So is it like —
Austin: Maelgwyn being Maelgwyn, you know, all that stuff.
Ali: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
Austin: And just so people know, I will not be — there's — you're going to be able to call on Maelgwyn once on the table, or once at the, on the... at the theater, and once during the heist. And that's, you'll get your two Maelgwyns, that's it.
Ali: Thank you.
Sylvia: Oh, wow.
Austin: Otherwise I'm not playing, because there's only, there's only so much room at the table to make this actually function with the limited amount of time we have.
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: So, yeah, you get two [chuckling] Maelgwyn cards to play. You sit on those.
Sylvia: Damn.
Ali: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Janine: Harsh, harsh.
Austin: Yeah, uh-huh.
Ali: [laughing] That was extremely generous, and we should all be glad —
Austin: [outburst of laughter]
Ali: We're getting this much.
Sylvia: [laughing]
Ali: To be fair.
Sylvia: You need to, you need to want more.
Ali: [giggling]
Sylvia: We could have bartered up to three.
Austin: Nope.
Ali: [cackling]
Janine: I tried to do the classic thing of being like, “I know how we'll figure out this name, I'll log into AI dungeon,”
Austin: Ah, uh-huh.
Janine: And I'll ask AI dungeon.
Austin: For some —
Janine: And I told it to tell me 5 names of [connection cuts out] and it said, Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth — Othello —
Austin: [laughing]
Jack: Can't trust a computer.
Janine: Macbeth [laughing]
Austin: You have to say, new —
Jack: To do its job.
Janine: I did that!
Austin: New titles.
Janine: I did that. And then it just said Macbeth. [laughing]
Ali: [cackling]
Austin: [laughing] Oh...
Ali: The computer's having a little laugh at you, I think.
Austin: It is, it's joking at your... yeah, uh-huh.
Ali: [wheezes laughing]
Janine: Truly...
Jack: What about, “Something in the Mirror?”
Austin: Ooh, Something in the Mirror.
Ali: Ooh.
Sylvia: Oh.
Art: Oh...
Austin: And then the dramatic question is, can you ever really know yourself?
Jack: What is in the mirror, yeah. I was going to —
Austin: Oh, okay. [laughing]
Jack: I originally —
Art: The dramatic question, how do mirrors work?
Ali: [snorts laughing]
Austin: Uh-huh.
Jack: [chuckles] I also want to be clear that I meant to say, like, let's name it, “X” in the mirror, you know, like...
Austin: Oh, no, you meant Something in the Mirror.
Jack: But then I said Something in the Mirror, and it's way better.
Austin: Yeah, yeah.
Jack: Uh...
Austin: And the dramatic question, what's in the mirror?
Janine: Can we do... I was going to, I was going to, I was like really trying to, I was trying to come up with something that was like, the adjective something something, like the... the... exquisite... whatever whatever. I was going to ask if we could combine that with the thing in the mirror.
Austin: Mmm.
Janine: But I don't know... that might just complicate things too much at this point.
Austin: We could just, we should just roll. We should just keep moving, because otherwise we're going to do the thing that we do —
Janine: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah, yeah.
Austin: And not get off the boat.
Janine: Yes.
Austin: So, Something in the Mirror. The, the question is, about, what's in the mirror? It's, can you know yourself, who are you, right? That lines up with what our larger question is. All right. So... something in the mirror. Question, “who am I, really? Can I know myself?” No one should be able to see this, this stuff is just for me and my notes. Uh, all right. Once you've established a setting for your game, it's time to gather your props. A prop, or a theatrical property, is any object used on stage by actors during a performance. Props are also the thieves' equipment that you'll use in your robbery. Incorporating the same props into both your heist and play is how your troupe always manages to sneak tools behind the scenes.
Each player creates four props. Write or draw something on a notecard, fold it in half to conceal its contents, and mix it into the pot. Sample props include stage weapons, fake or actual, disguises, special effects, and even live animals. Props should be specific, though. Writing just the word “disguise” on a prop card is a bit too vague to inspire creativity, while something like “guard's uniform” is perfect. Props can be random, provided they fit your setting, or catered to details you've established. The more specific a prop is, though, the harder it may be to incorporate into both your heist and play. A drill might be easy to use in your heist, but harder to justify in the plot of your play. Similarly, a cat suit might make sense for your musical, but how is it necessary to your heist? Every prop will be used.
Ali: Cat burglaring. Sorry.
Austin: Yeah, I know, I'm with you. I'm 100 percent —
Ali: [giggling]
Art: [unintelligible] people haven't seen the documentary series, “Batman.”
Austin: [laughing]
Ali: [cackling]
Austin: Every prop will be used, but because they're drawn randomly, there is no guarantee a prop will be assigned to a specific phase or player. So if you really want a fog machine, make sure you include it on a prop card. Conversely, if spiders gross you or another player out... don't write down spiders as a prop. It will come up.
Sylvia: [laughing]
Austin: So, the way we're going to do this is... am I adding this right? Let me see. 1, 2, 3, okay. So, we really only need 5 of these. Each of you is going to come up with 4. And, I'm just going to write really quick... uh, 1 through 4 on here. Uh... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And so you each need to add 4 props to these cards. We're using modified rules kind of twice here. There's special rules for online play, where, instead of drawing these from a hat, we're going to roll, uh, dice to determine what the prop is per scene. And then, finally, there's also going to be a, we're going to make some other rules changes to kind of shift how the back and forth goes during these sequences, in ways that I think will be fun and challenging. So, everybody pick a number. I'm not going to do this, because I'm just facilitating. I'm just hanging, you know? Uh, uh, add your, your props underneath each one of these.
Sylvia: I'll take 5.
Art: I'm going to take 4, because that's the card I was when we were shooting on this map yesterday.
Jack: I will take 3.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Janine: Wait, how are we hiding these?
Austin: They're not going to get hidden. They can't be hidden, because we want to make sure that —
Janine: Oh, okay.
Austin: No one gets anything that would like, trigger them, right?
Janine: Right, that's true, that's true.
Ali: I'll take 2.
Austin: So wait, Art was 4?
Art: Yeah.
Austin: Art's props...
Ali: Can I, can I ask like a, uh... like a table rules question about these props?
Austin: Yes. Yes.
Ali: Uh, because I had a conversation with Jack that made me think about it, and I don't want to spoil what Jack said, but like, Castille is a character who... [laughing] has a prop that is a part of her.
Austin: Mmm.
Ali: [laughing] So, if I'm allowed to say that thing appears, because it's a part of — I'm playing Castille, and that's the character, or like, I —
Austin: I think that works as a — if you —
Ali: Need to — okay. I don't have to write it down as a prop, is what you're saying?
Austin: Correct. Oh, no, no, no, no. I — you're saying —
Ali: No? [wheezes laughing]
Austin: Mmm. I think you should write it down as a prop. I think it's more interesting if you can use it once, per thing.
Ali: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, fair fair fair. Fair.
Austin: Okay. Okay. What? Okay.
Art: Now you have 54 cards.
Austin: That's what I wanted. Okay. I got to give you the jokers, which are your Maelgwyn cards to play.
Ali: [snorts laughing]
Austin: There we go. Okay.
Jack: Ha-ha. The adversary.
Austin: The adversary.
Ali: Oh…
Austin: Oh, fuck. God damn it.
Art: Chat really wanted a donation goal for a third Maelgwyn, if you're —
Ali: [cackling]
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Austin: Well, we're — what do we got? Let's see, where are we right now as these — we’re at 127 thousand.
Ali: We are at —
Art: …964.56.
Austin: Oh, well, there's not really a spot here. I guess 133,333 dollars and 33 cents.
Ali: [snorts]
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Right?
Art: Yeah, that would make sense.
Austin: That would make sense.
Sylvia: And he shows up doing the kitty-cat face.
Ali: [cackling]
Austin: All right, let's not, [chuckling] let's not go... wild, okay?
Ali: [another outburst of laughter]
Sylvia: Okay. Well... we'll see how we're feeling when we get there, how about that?
Austin: Yeah, uh-huh. All right. I'm making the — Maelgwyn. Third... Maelgwyn card. And then I'll put the little kitty-cat face [laughing] in.
Art: Ha-ha!
Janine: [chuckling]
Austin: Are we there?
Jack: — holding a gauntlet.
Austin: Are we good?
Ali: [laughing]
Sylvia: I think we've all got 4, yeah.
Austin: All right, let's go through this, this list. Janine, can you tell me the props for both the heist and the, uh, the play?
Janine: Yes. Uh, my props that I have listed are: prop number one, a whip.
Austin: Mmm.
Jack: Good choice, good answer.
Janine: Prop number two — yes, yes. A fur-lined purple cowl.
Austin: Mmm.
Janine: Uh, I don't know if, I guess, I guess it could be like a cape cowl, it could be like a hood cowl. I want to leave some openness into the —
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: The kind of cowl.
Ali: Mmm.
Janine: Prop number 3: a spaniel in a classical (e.g. Venetian) clown costume.
Sylvia: [laughing]
Jack: [chuckles]
Janine: The dog's name, as I have listed at the bottom, is Grimaud.
Austin: [French accent] Grimaud.
Art: [French accent] Grimaud.
Ali: [snorts]
Janine: Grimaud, Grimaud means, it's a combination of the word for mask, and a combination of the word for, “to govern.”
Austin: [French accent] Grimaud.
Jack: Oh… Wow.
Janine: [chuckles] so — and then, my fourth prop is a ceramic prop sandwich. I was going to, I ran out of space —
Austin: Ceramic?
Janine: The text was like, tricky, but I wanted to specify, it's like, glossy. It's like shiny.
Austin: Ah, I see.
Janine: It's like, it's like fully glazed. It's not like matte, it's not like air-dried clay with a layer of acrylic paint or whatever on top. It is a shiny, it's been fired in a kiln.
Austin: Okay.
Janine: Uh, yeah.
Austin: Got it. Uh, all right. Ali. Can I get your 4 props?
Ali: Uh, yeah. My 4 props are a bejeweled cat figure —
Austin: Ah.
Ali: An un— [chuckles] an unopened bottle of champagne. A candle and a match book, and a white embroidered bedsheet.
Jack: This candle works fine. If you light it and blow it out, it goes out.
Ali: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jack: Not like any silly candles.
Ali: [laughing]
Sylvia: Oh, I didn't see that we were getting [unintelligible] on there.
Ali: I Intentionally put this one so we would have access to wax.
Austin: Oh, smart. Good... thinking.
Janine: Oh.
Sylvia: Always good.
Jack: Oh, duh, taps head 3 times.
Austin: Yes, yes.
Ali: [giggling]
Janine: Oh. Pro stuff.
Austin: Uh, Jack?
Jack: Okay. My first prop is, a collapsible ladder. How long is it? What does it collapse into? Nobody knows. But we know it's a ladder that is able to be shorter than it is when it is fully extended [chuckling].
Austin: Mmm.
Jack: Uh, prop number two — Little Wolfgang, virtuoso.
Janine: [chuckling]
Jack: I think it might be “Volfgang,” actually, little Wolfgang.
Austin: Little Wolfgang.
Sylvia: Little Wolfgang. Yes, of course.
Austin: Little Wolfgang, virtuoso.
Jack: Virtuoso. Exactly, yeah. Uh, but maybe like up an octave with the voice.
Austin: [falsetto] Little Wolfgang, Wolfgang, virtuoso.
Ali: [cackling]
Sylvia: Oh, thank you so much.
Jack: [chuckling]
Janine: We love a fancy little lord boy.
Ali: Oh, yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah. Berries and cream ass.
Jack: Unusually upsetting — yeah, [chuckling]
Sylvia: Sorry.
Jack: Unusually upsetting bird mask. Uh, and finally, an identical twin.
[someone in background sputters]
Austin: Great. Uh-huh. Fantastic.
Sylvia: Mm-hm.
Austin: Art.
Art: Uh, first —
Austin: I want to be clear, you don't necessarily get to use your own props.
Jack: I don't care.
Austin: Okay. Just making sure, it's very clear.
Art: I think we, we're establishing that everyone here has an identical twin. I hear you.
Austin: [chuckles] Great.
Sylvia: Oh my gosh.
Art: Uh, the props that I'm, that I'm bringing are, a very large mirror.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Art: Because, you know. A lot of counterfeit money.
Austin: A lot.
Jack: [chuckles] How much is a lot?
Art: A lot of counterfeit money. Uh... you know, more than a briefcase full.
Austin: Ah...
Jack: Okay. And... uh, do we know whether this counterfeit money is like, stage money, in the sense that any fool looking at it could go, “that's clearly fake?” Or is this like legitimate counterfeit money?
Austin: It's counterfeit money, not fake money.
Art: No, it's counterfeit, it's counterfeit money.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: Counterfeit.
Janine: Money.
Jack: Okay, cool.
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: [giggling]
Art: We're a real production with real counterfeit money.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Jack: [laughing]
Art: A full bar set, which, to clarify, because Ali was confused, I mean like, the tools that a bartender has, and some, some light glassware. You know —
Austin: Yeah.
Art: A, a, a corkscrew, a strainer, a shaker, a jigger.
Austin: All the stuff you need to make a nice... a nice drink.
Art: Yeah.
Austin: Or to serve bar, really, not just to make yourself a nice drink.
Art: And a two foot — to serve bar, yeah.
Austin: But to like, keep up with people.
Art: Mm-hm. And a two-foot elephant, and to —
Austin: Wait.
Art: To, uh, correct a misconception I saw in chat, I do not mean a bipedal elephant.
Austin: Ah...
Jack: Oh.
Janine: [laughing]
Art: I mean, a regular elephant that is two feet tall. And because we're naming our pets in this one —
Austin: Yeah.
Art: Uh... this is Samolephant.
Austin: Samolephant.
Art: Samolephant, yeah.
Austin: Not “small-ephant”—
Art: No.
Austin: Samolephant.
Art: Samolephant.
Austin: Samolephant. Yeah.
Sylvia: Okay.
Janine: Oh, I thought you meant — Sommelephant, like sommelier. [chuckling]
Art: No, yeah. No.
Sylvia: [laughing]
Austin: Well, that's what you need the bar set for.
Janine: [laughing] Yeah, yeah, that's what I thought you meant there.
Art: I'm just doing some light blasphemy.
Austin: Yeah, a little bit of blasphemy. Samolephant. Gotcha. Can you write that down here, underneath the two-foot elephant?
Art: Every — yeah, sure, but I wanted to say, everyone in chat is exactly right.
Austin: They all got it. Samolephant, got it. Thank you. Sylvi?
Sylvia: Yeah, so, I didn't — I don't have any animals or animal effigies, I'm sorry about this.
Austin: That's fine, that's fine.
Sylvia: Uh... so I have a smoke bomb.
Janine: You can name the smoke bomb.
Sylvia: It's true, I could name, we could name the smoke bomb. I'll think about the smoke bomb name for a little bit.
Austin: [laughing]
Ali: [chuckling]
Sylvia: Uh, an exquisite captain's saber.
Austin: I have a question.
Sylvia: Yes?
Austin: Is it an exquisite, captain's saber? Or is it an exquisite captain's, saber?
Sylvia: So... the way this came about was that I wrote down a captain's saber, and Art wrote down an exquisite saber, and we were like, okay, let's combine these.
Austin: Ah, I see, I see. I gotcha.
Ali: [laughing]
Janine: [chuckles]
Sylvia: So... yes, is the answer.
Austin: Got it, got it. Mm-hm.
Sylvia: Yep. A fake head, slightly stained with fake (question mark) blood, and a trick candle.
Austin: [chuckles]
Sylvia: No one's quite sure, they've had it for a while.
Austin: Yeah, got it. Great.
Sylvia: Uh, and a trick candle that like, you can't blow out, even if you really want to, unless there's like — there's some shit going on, I don't know how they work.
Austin: Incredible.
Sylvia: We just need, I just need a... yeah.
Austin: All right. Well, that feels like we got all of the props. Showtime. Once all — oh, Ali?
Ali: I just want to say very quickly that —
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: The Maelgwyn pop is real. We just raised 2,000 dollars —
Austin: Unbelievable.
Ali: In that, like, 15 or so seconds — [laughing]
Jack: Wow! Wow!
Austin: People like... like that guy?
Ali: We're going to have to utilize these chances, I suppose.
Austin: We'll have to see. I mean, we're only —
Art: We're still not there yet, so don't —
Austin: We're not there. Yeah, we're still s…
Art: So don't use them —
Austin: 6, or 5,000 away, something like that, right? Yeah.
Ali: [laughing] I'm just saying.
Art: 4, 4.2.
Ali: I'm just saying.
Austin: Yeah, something like that. All right. Once all props are collected, both the play and the heist can begin. A game of Scene Thieves is split into two acts, with a brief intermission between. To start, write Act 1 on a notecard and place it in the middle of the play space. It's over here. We're just going to, we're just not going to actually write — we're actually just not going to do the Act 1 Act 2 thing, because we're not using cards to represent these things, uh, uh, it'll be fine. We'll explain in a second. I mean, I guess we could just, we could just make some space on the table to make this happen, I guess, right? We can just make a —
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: Act 1 spot. Let me get another, another piece of paper. One second.
Jack: Especially because the, the rules change very slightly between the two acts, and it might be worth —
Austin: And our rules are also changing on top of that, so let's just keep as much —
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: Together as we can. So let me just get a nice, clean piece of clutter paper... shrink it down, turn it on its side, and it's going to be over here to the left for Act 1. And I'll just write Act 1 on it. Boop. Act 1. Uh, there we go. I'll make that bigger. Actually, we're going to need a lot of these probably, so... okay. Uh, write Act 1 on a notecard, place it in the middle of your play space. The first card is the start of a timeline that you'll be creating of your evening's progression, both for the heist and for the play. Each turn a new card will be added to the timeline, visually reminding players of the game's story, as well as how close you are to Act 2 and the game's conclusion. Take two more notecards — title one “heist” and the other “play.” Uh, that's going to be this one over here, you can see that. Uh, uh, create columns labeled success and failure on each. You'll be tracking the results of coin flips each turn on the score cards, and the columns' values will help determine the end of the game.
Each player directs two turns per act, receiving 4 turns total in the whole game. During a turn, players construct 2 scenes. Turn order gins with the player who most recently stood on a stage, whether as a performer, an awardee, a stagehand... and proceeds clockwise. Who was, who was the most recent person on a stage?
Art: Uh, I was last on a stage at, at Gen Con, with... three of you.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah, under those contexts, I think so.
Austin: Anybody else since then, since 2019, I think that was.
Ali: [laughing]
Jack: It's a bad time for being on a stage.
Art: Been a rough time for stages, yeah.
Jack: [laughing]
Austin: Hm. Hm.
Ali: I guess — me, fortunately, me, Jack and Sylvi were also on a stage last night in a Final Fantasy XV aquarium.
Austin: Oh... that's —
Janine: That's true!
Sylvia: Oh —
Janine: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: Okay, well let's talk about digital stages. Has anyone been on a digital stage?
Art: You mean like this we're doing right now?
Janine: That would be the Final Fantasy.
Austin: Fuck. We are kind of doing that right now.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: Who was the last one on the digital stage at the aquarium?
Jack: We were all standing on there at the same time. Dre, uh…
Ali: [laughing]
Janine: How about, who was the first one on that particular stage? Since —
Art: Or the last one off the stage?
Janine: Since multiple of us got on there. That's what I'm saying, we probably don't remember that.
Ali: I think Jack was the first one on.
Austin: Okay. Well then Jack, you're going to kick things off. We've decided this.
Ali: [giggling]
Sylvia: [laughing]
Austin: Uh, Act 1. Okay. So I'm going to read, I'm going to read this, and then I'm going to explain how we're going to change it, if that makes sense. Is that okay?
Art: Yeah.
Jack: Oh, although we did just hit 130k.
Ali: We sure did.
Austin: Unbelievable. 130,000 dollars... unbelievable.
Janine: Oh my god.
Austin: Let's just take a quick peek. Oh, we got a huge donation here, 751 dollars and 38 cents, from a cat emoji. They say —
Jack: [laughing]
Sylvia: [sputters and laughs]
Austin: Meowgwyn.
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: Caitlin G. Mcdonald with 10 bucks, 100 bucks from wildvulture, thank you to wildvulture, a good friend of ours.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Uh, Samolephant is the name of a [chuckles] Pokemon. Agreed. Meowgyn real.
Art: That got me to look it up, to make sure I hadn't accidentally —
Austin: Stolen it, yeah.
Art: Plagiarized a Pokemon.
Austin: Stabworth, for 333 dollars and 33 cents — let's go Meowgwyn, and Hadrian's notes app apology for that poor, innocent skeleton man. Abortion care for all who want it. Absolutely. Maelgwyn's faithful — uh, I almost said Meowgwyn by mistake. This person just says, “Maelgwyn's faithful,” 20 dollars. Keeping the faith since 2016.
Sylvia: [sputters]
Janine: [chuckles]
Austin: 300 dollars from spam. Thank you, spam. “Donating my birthday money. I wish I could give more. I'm so proud of you all.”
Sylvia: Aw!
Austin: “And the good you do, it makes me hopeful.”
Ali: Happy birthday.
Austin: Happy birthday to spam. 33.33 from get off the boat. [laughing]
Art: [laughing]
Austin: 108 dollars from anonymous. Incredible donations here from so many — Andrew V, 100 bucks. Sam's Club, 3.33. I missed all the Sam's Club donations. Love you friends — before — but friendship is important, and so is supporting bodily autonomy. Agreed. 100 percent. Thank you to everybody who's been donating, skeleton apology included. Very good. All right. Uh, let's hop back to it, 130,000 dollars right now. Oh my god, Annie, this image. Unbelievable.
Sylvia: [laughing]
Jack: What? What has happened?
Sylvia: I put it in the Discord.
Austin: I'll just, let me see if I can just put this on stream —
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: You know?
Art: [laughing]
Jack: [laughing]
Ali: Frenzy damage...
Austin: Ha-ha! Okay. All right, I'm going to read the Act 1 rules. On each turn of Act 1, the active player draws a notecard from the pot, reveals it for everyone to see, and places it at the next point in your timeline. That would be like reaching into the pool of all the props and pulling it out. Uh, the next, or, the active player than creates two scenes — one for the heist, and one for the play, incorporating the card's prop into both. It can literally be the same prop passed from one person to another, spare identical props, or in the case of a plural noun, divided between the two. To create the scene, follow these 5 steps, keeping any previously established plot elements in mind. Feel free to ask fellow players for assistance as-needed. First you pick a lead. Onstage, a scene's lead is the character currently in the spotlight. Offstage, a scene's lead is the thief responsible for the next step of the plan.
A lead can be pulled from any established characters or invented on the spot. In either case, they should be given a name. And we'll come back to that in a second, because of one of the ways we're changing things. Give them a goal — onstage, a lead's goal is what their character wants in the scene. This is often tied to the play's major dramatic question, the question at the core of the plot.
Which, again, for us, is, “who am I really? Can I really know myself?” Uh, offstage, a lead's goal is the task they need to accomplish to advance the heist. Your goal cannot be your heist's target, though, until Act 2. Then you give them an obstacle; both onstage and offstage, an obstacle is a person, object, or situation the lead must overcome in order to achieve your goal. Then you have to incorporate the prop, saying that you used it to overcome an obstacle. Then you flip a coin seeing if you succeeded or failed. Uh, we're going to say heads, 1 — we're going to roll a D2 to figure this out. 1 is a success, 2 is a failure. And you do that for both your play and your heist.
And so, the example for this is, you know, this character says, Emily: for the first scene of Betrayed by Love, I'm going to say the lead is a character named Star Anise, a warrior princess engaged to be married. She’s spying on her betrothed, and her goal in this scene is to report back to her home planet without being found out. The obstacle is a butler who overhears her transmission. That's where fake blood comes in. To overcome the obstacle, she stabs the actor playing the butler — Emily flips a coin, tails, that means that it doesn't go well, right? We want to juice this up a little bit. I like this, this is fantastic. Uh, but given our closeness to these characters, and the fact that I like to see players sweat a lot —
Sylvia: God.
Austin: Instead of the director picking their leads and then giving them the obstacles and choosing the prop, or using the prop in the order this all happens, and it all happening kind of in that contained sense — so, instead of Jack, you saying, “here's my prop, here are the two situation, here's how they're going to get out of it,” Jack, you're more of a director in this, in this moment. And you're going to cast two members. You're going to cast, uh, uh, any of the other people to be the lead onstage, and the lead in the heist, for this first sequence. Who are you picking as our onstage leads? Or, onstage lead, and who are you picking as our heist lead?
Jack: That is a great question — do we want —
Austin: I guess we should go around and introduce our characters to be able to do that.
Jack: [laughing] to go around and introduce our characters, yeah.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: 100 percent. With the note that the actors, we do not have real names for you yet.
Jack: No.
Austin: If you want to have those in your back pocket for if we succeed at the heist, you can have those. Uh —
Jack: Do they have nicknames like... “the red-headed actor?” Or —
Austin: 100 percent — something like that, and they definitely know what roles they're going to be playing in the play, right?
Jack: Yep.
Austin: So they have those names. Uh, so yeah, let's go around. Jack, let's start with you, since it's your, it's your turn.
Jack: Yeah. Okay. I'm going to be playing Edmund Hitchcock, a former, uh, uh, soldier.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Jack: Currently, a dancing master. Teaches the noble youth of Marielda how to dance in his free time. Pronouns he/him. Uh, uh, I say teaches the noble youth of Marielda how to dance in his free time. What he really does is, use his connections with the nobles to rob them.
Austin: Ah. Right.
Jack: Uh, and as part of his, uh, uh, knowledge-stealing crew, The Six. But he is an accomplished dancer, uh, uh, semi-accomplished swordsman, uh, uh, veteran of the war, and an all-around scoundrel.
Austin: Mmm, okay. Sylvi, who are you playing?
Sylvia: Yeah. I am playing Aubrey, who is a little alchemist kobold who, uh, doesn't like hurting people. And...
Austin: That's true.
Sylvia: Is very skittish? I don't know, I'm trying to think of good ways to describe her. Uh, she's sort of like, the techie member of The Six.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: She makes a bunch of weird gadgets and —
Austin: She's an alchemist, so, yeah.
Sylvia: Concoctions.
Austin: Yeah, exactly.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Yes. And is a kobbin.
Sylvia: Yes, she is a kobbin. Yeah, she's a little dog lizard.
Austin: Which is a little — dog lizard, yeah, exactly.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Jack: Pronouns for Aubrey?
Sylvia: There were no signs. Uh. Huh?
Austin: Pronouns she/her, right?
Jack: What are Aubrey's pronouns?
Sylvia: Oh yeah, she/her.
Jack: She/her.
Austin: Ali?
Ali: Yeah, I'm playing Castille. Castille is she/her. Wow. Okay. [laughing] Castille...
Austin: Tell me about Castille, yeah.
Ali: Uh, Castille is a living statue... uh, the pala-din, who are a, like, living police force —
Austin: Mm-hm.
Ali: In the city. But she was given consciousness outside of those patrols. I guess she's a little bit of like, a girlboss of The Six.
Austin: [laughing]
Sylvia: Hell yeah.
Ali: Is what I would say [laughing]
Austin: That's cool, yeah.
Ali: Kind of, you know, living her life, trying to do her best. I remember her like, making swords or weapons at some point?
Austin: Yeah, she was an undercover, she worked as a blacksmith, right?
Ali: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, uh, uh, can change her consciousness between, uh, a cat figure, a bejeweled cat figure, it turns out.
Austin: Oh...
Ali: And herself. Can crawl on the walls like a spider.
Austin: Oh, that's right!
Ali: Uh, I think she had like, a necklace that can create firepower, but I actually can't remember that enough, so — it's not a prop, so don't worry about it.
Austin: Yeah, it's not a prop.
Ali: [laughing] She recently — so, she didn't have her memories, uh, she was just kind of out and about and being like, “why am I a statue who can think about things and not talk to anybody else? Vis-a-vis the other statues, why aren't they like me?”
Austin: Uh-huh.
Ali: Uh, but she recently [chuckling] met Maelgwyn, who, uh... told her that she used to be a mage, and that they were rivals, but that he killed her partner that she thought was going to betray her.
Austin: Right.
Ali: And she kind of set him up to do that, which was very sexy of them.
Austin: Extremely.
Ali: And [laughing]
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: Yeah, I should clarify —
Ali: [cackling]
Austin: I said War in Azaleas before, but it's actually, uh, this is the Four Conversations time skip, right? This is the year that gets mentioned in Four Conversations, which is how we know it is post Castille learning this about herself.
Ali: Mm-hm. Yeah. I think, in the time during the show, I said that she spent most of this time talking to Maelgwyn and also like, deeply disassociating...
Austin: Mm-hm.
Ali: Uh, so... ready to put on a play! [laughing]
Austin: We love that, uh-huh.
Sylvia: Did I mention the weird stuff I drink that lets me talk to Samothes's ex? I think I forgot that.
Austin: We did forget that, yeah — this is that period of time, also.
Ali: Oh god.
Sylvia: I forget that was a thing that also happened, yeah.
Austin: Yep. Yep. Uh-huh. And is this —
Sylvia: Aubrey's really into Pink Floyd right now, as well.
Austin: [laughing]
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: Oh... and this is the point at which the Hitchcocks are, they're still, you're still pretty linked up at this point, right? There haven't, there haven't been any major separations? That hasn't really started in yet?
Jack: No, not really. There's a slight divergence. There's a sort of feeling that, wait a second, maybe, maybe neither of us are quite on the same page. But, uh, no, it hasn't really.
Austin: Gotcha. Great. Fantastic. All right. Janine?
Janine: Yeah! Uh, so... the character I'm playing right now is currently asking people to call her Violet, because she obviously doesn't remember her name. But, she realized that she had a glass violet, she had a couple of glass violets, actually, in her hair.
Austin: Oh.
Janine: So she thought, well, this is as good a name for now as anything. Uh, she is an actress, of course. Uh, probably... probably late, late 20s? I don't know, around that area. She has, her most noteworthy trait is that she has sort of floor-length red hair that she usually wears in a braid that's sort of tied up in like a big, long loop, to make it a little less cumbersome —
Austin: Ooh.
Janine: You know, for certain roles you let the hair all the way down —
Austin: Sure.
Janine: You do fun stuff with it. For others, you pin it all up. And she wears a lot of sort of like, I don't want to say fluffy, but like puffy sort of white clothes. Like the big, like leg of mutton sleeves and stuff, but kind of in an older style, not Victorian clothing but like, a similar kind of silhouette. Like, big skirt, uh, but also the big sleeves, and sort of elements like that.
Austin: Incredible. And Art? Also, she/her pronouns on Violet?
Janine: Yes.
Austin: Okay.
Art: Uh... my character is, is known as Raven. Obviously, we don't know —
Austin: Ooh.
Art: Their real name. And it's, I tell you, they kind of have like, pointy features, and like, dark hair.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Art: And so it just sort of felt right, if you didn't know your own name.
Austin: Yeah, Raven.
Art: Raven.
Austin: You're both human, Raven and Violet?
Art: Yes. Or, I don't know about Violet. I'm, I'm saying yes for me.
Austin: Yes to human. Violet?
Janine: Oh, yes.
Austin: Okay. Uh... they/them pronouns on Raven? Art?
Art: Yes.
Austin: Okay. That's, so — yes, Ali?
Ali: Can we just have a, a scrap piece of paper to write down names and pronouns?
Austin: I, in fact, have been copying them, so I can just drop that in, in a second.
Ali: Okay. Great. Yay, thank you. [giggling]
Austin: Uh, I'll do it as we, right now this second. I have to write to offscreen so I can just grab them very quickly. Okay... oop, uh, uh, there we go. And then text, and then this is going to be huge, I'm going to shrink it down. I'll just, I'll just fight the text tool until I'm dead. That's what's going to happen.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: There we go... oop, still not really what I wanted, but that's fine. Make this up here, and turn it side, turn it side... mmm hm hm, I love Roll20. So much.
Ali: Thank you to Roll20 for all the years that we've used it.
Austin: I mean, that's true. This is the thing. Roll20 does frustrate me often, as you know, but also... you know. Put in some work, right? All right, there we go. Boom. Uh... all right.
Austin: So, where were we? Jack.
Jack: Yes.
Austin: You're directing the first scene, and then we're just going to use the bottom of the screen, uh, wrap around here, so Art will have the next scene, will be the next director. Does that make sense?
Jack: Cool.
Ali: Mm-hm.
Jack: So I think that I would like to see Raven acting as the lead onstage —
Austin: Mm-hm.
Jack: And I would like to see Aubrey acting as the lead in this first part of the heist.
Sylvia: Oh, boy.
Jack: Look, Aubrey, I could have put you on stage, but I'm — we're going to save that for later.
Sylvia: No, no, no, no, thank — thank you? Thank you.
Austin: Yeah, I mean, everyone's going to do both in this thing. You'll see at the bottom of the screen I'm keeping track of —
Sylvia: Oh, jeez.
Austin: Who is, who has done stage and heist here. The first line here is stage, the second one is heist, and then the divider between the two is Act 1 and Act 2. So this way we make sure everybody gets their time in the sun. All right, so, based on —
Art: I —
Austin: Yep, Art?
Art: How do I make it so I can see that card?
Austin: Which card?
Janine: Zoom out?
Art: The one that has this, because it's behind, like, everyone's little pictures for me. Is it, is in just get rid of people’s pictures —
Austin: Oh, get rid of people's pictures. I never play with people's pictures on. Also you can just scroll down and zoom out. Uh, so, the way that we're going to do this, to kind of mix it up a little bit, is you've now assigned these, the director assigns the leads. Then, the leads state their goals for the round. If you're onstage, you explain what your scene is about. Uh, and if you're doing a heist, you explain what you're trying to do, right? Then, the director will introduce a challenge or obstacle, and then we'll roll to find out what prop you have, between the two of you, to solve those challenges.
Sylvia: Oh my gosh.
Austin: So, Raven, what are you trying to — what's this scene about? Tell me about this scene.
Art: Okay. Uh, how does this play start?
Austin: Yeah. Are you playing, who is Raven playing in this play?
Art: Well, if... uh, I mean, there's only two options if you're starting onstage. And you're either the lead or like, the, the like, commentary character, right, the like —
Austin: Right, yeah, sure.
Art: You're either, you're either the Greek choir or you're the lead.
Jack: You're Hamlet or Puck.
Art: Yeah, yeah, you're either Puck or you're, uh, Hamlet, right?
Austin: Yes.
Art: Those are the two things.
Austin: Those, [chuckling], those are the two.
Art: Uh…
[17 second long pause]
Austin: September 19th, 2014, Hadrian killed a skeleton man. July 4th, 2022, Hadrian was made to apologize. That hasn't happened yet, you can't say that.
Sylvia: Yeah, you can't.
Janine: Technically the, the, our play could end in a skeleton apology, if we, if the... question of identity gets deep enough, you know.
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Austin: That's a wild... that, that would be a very strange —
Janine: Sometimes you have to apologize to your own skeleton.
Austin: Yeah. I see. Yeah. Anyway, Raven.
Art: I think it, I think the play does start with, like, with like a monologue, with like a soliloquy about the play, like introducing the...
Austin: Mm-hm.
Art: You know, a Greek choir overture, so to speak. In fair Verona, where we lay our hearts.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Art: So it's one of those, and so it's, uh, — can I use props that we don't have?
Austin: You don't pick props.
Art: No, but like, can I have like a costume that isn't on these things?
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can tell me what you're wearing. But you can't use that to overcome a challenge during the play and heist.
Art: No, no, no. But I think it's like a very shiny outfit, and I think that like, the monologue is delivered from this, this sort of like —
Sylvia: Oh...
Art: Disembodied character of the mirror.
Austin: Oh...
Janine: Oh.
Art: And the mirror is a role that passes from actor to actor through the play.
Austin: Love this. I love this so much. Wait, we do have the mirror, we just can't — you're saying this is not, the mirror.
Sylvia: Depends on the scene.
Art: Right, there is a mirror, but this is just like a shiny costume that says —
Austin: Love it, okay.
Art: “I am playing the mirror.”
Austin: Okay. And what is, what is the challenge here, Jack?
Jack: Uh, your challenge — sorry. Your challenge here is... as the mirror, uh, uh, sort of narrator, you need to introduce the key players of the play.
Austin: Okay, good.
Jack: In a, in a, in a manner that is entertaining and interesting. And uses a prop.
Austin: And uses a prop, all right. Uh, Aubrey, what are you trying to get up to, during the heist? What's the first step of the heist? When you're rolling — what's the thing that you roll in Blades?
Sylvia: I feel like —
Austin: Uh, to like, start the heist?
Sylvia: Oh, it's been like, 7 years.
Austin: I mean, it's, we've played other, we've played other Blades, Forged in the Dark games. It's always that same thing, isn't it? The engagement roll! Yes. You're leading the engagement roll. Thank you, chat.
Sylvia: Great. Well, I did — so the thing is, I did think that getting into — like —
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: There's an infiltration that has to happen.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: Uh, and I feel like this is either, like, identifying a weak point in a wall that we can get through or use, or something. Or like a gap in it, or something. Or, just like, finding a way to barrel through a wall.
Austin: It's, it's a wall, that's the challenge. The challenge is you have to get past a wall somehow.
Sylvia: Yeah, I have to get through the — yeah.
Austin: We'll see what your prop is, in truly just a second, and I think that's going to help us figure out…
Jack: Wait, I thought I was going to make the challenge.
Austin: Oh, you're right. Well, the challenge, you tell me what the challenge is, then, because if, I think... getting in, then, is the thing, right?
Sylvia: Yeah. You can just completely redo it, then. Like, fucking go for it, Jack. [laughing]
Jack: Uh, there is, the, the weakest point, uh, that could let us physically break into the building, is at the end of a long, uh, almost empty room. Which is very good in the sense that there aren't many people there. The bad news is that the room is echo-y, such that —
Austin: Ooh.
Sylvia: Ohh.
Jack: Anybody would hear a pin drop. And sitting, halfway down the room, absolutely engrossed in scratching away on a book on a lectern, sitting on a stool, with his legs crossed, is a very elderly Font Man. Absolutely absorbed by writing. But, this is the easiest way that you could break in through a wall, and really doing anything in this room is going to attract the attention of this man.
Sylvia: Okay.
Austin: All right. Well, now, it's time to roll for a prop. Uh... I guess let's start with, Art, give me a D5.
Art: Sure. Everyone knows what a D5 looks like.
Austin: Yeah, of course. And then Sylvi, get ready to give me a D4.
Sylvi: Okay.
Austin: Give me a D4. It's going to come from Ali's list.
Ali: [cackling]
Jack: Ooh.
Austin: All right, a bejeweled cat figure is the prop you both have, to overcome your respective challenges.
Art: Wait, I thought we got different props.
Austin: No, absolutely not.
Sylvia: Okay.
Austin: It's the same prop, that's the whole, that's the whole thing, that's the whole game.
Art: Huh.
Austin: Uh-huh. Yes.
Art: How is it onstage and backstage at the same time? Oh, because it's not —
Austin: It can be literally the same prop, passed from one person to another space, spare identical props, or in the case of a plural noun, divided between the two.
Art: Great. Uh...
Ali: Query.
Austin: Yep.
Art: Uh-huh?
Ali: Am I now in this scene? [laughs]
Sylvia: [sputters laughing]
Austin: Uh, yeah, but you're going to be told, you're going to be saying what, how this works, right? Or you're going to be saying, they're going to tell you how it works and you just have to, you know?
Ali: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: But, yeah, you're in the scene.
Ali: Just gotta — [giggling]
Art: Kay. Think that that means that the monologue, in like the... in the play, is given by the reflection of this cat.
Austin: Oh, interesting.
Ali: True. [laughing]
Art: The cat as the knowing, unknowing animal.
Sylvia: Oh...
Janine: That's great, though.
Austin: Oh. That's so good. Yeah.
Janine: That's great, though! Like, animals, animals react so interestingly to mirrors, that that is great.
Austin: Yeah, I love it. All right. Aubrey?
Jack: Wait —
Art: [unintelligible] speak.
Austin: Sorry, say that again, Art?
Art: The figure doesn't speak, of course. The lines come from... Raven the actor, playing the mirror.
Austin: Right.
Art: The cat's like, facing away from the audience, so that the...
Austin: Right.
Art: The reflection is what's talking.
Austin: Yeah, we know how plays work.
Art: [unintelligible] plausible.
Austin: What's, give me a little bit of, of the soliloquy.
Art: Uh, sure, yeah, everyone loves improvising a soliloquy.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Art: Uh, it's sort of like, you know... uh...
Austin: [cracks open a can of something]
Jack: [laughing]
Ali: Get a drink.
Austin: That's me in the audience. Yep, mm-hm.
Art: Uh, yeah, I'm going to go, I'm going to grab a drink in between scenes here, I'm going to, I need to loosen myself up a little bit.
Austin: It's a watermelon seltzer, for people who are wondering.
Ali: [gasps]
Austin: Very delicious right now.
Ali: [giggling]
Art: You know, it's, it's, uh... you know—
Art (as Raven): As, as nocturnal animals, we see the things that people try to conceal.
Austin: Ooh.
Art (as Raven): We see you when you're sad, when you're happy. When you look in the mirror, we are looking too. And so, we see the true reflection of yourselves, and in this story I'm about to tell, you will see — you know — not only the reflections of these players, but the reflections of your society upon you.
Art: This is as much as I have, I'm going to stop now.
Austin: Love it, great.
Jack: No, that was great.
Austin: That was fantastic. Aubrey.
Art: Thank you, Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.
Austin: Ah!
Ali: [giggling]
Sylvia: God.
Austin: Aubrey, how do you use a bejeweled cat figure?
Sylvia: I... am really trying to figure that out.
Ali: [snorts]
Sylvia: Uh, I was thinking I need to distract this guard.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: Uh, and maybe I'm asking Castille to just act like an actual cat and distract this guard. Uh, while I try and sneak by. But I don't, I don't think I put any points in sneak. That's what we in the business call a callback.
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: That's what we call a callback, that's right, that's right. Save that, because there's rules about callbacks in the second act.
Sylvia: Then, that's what we in the business call foreshadowing.
Austin: [laughing] Ha-ha-ha-ha!
Sylvia: Uh...
Ali: I feel like this is extremely really good, because Jack said that the Font Man was... really immersed in writing? And the, like the kitty-cat thing of being like, “I'm hitting your hand with my head.”
Sylvia: Yeah, exactly.
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: “I'm rolling around on your papers.”
Austin: Yeah. Give me a little pet, give me a head pat, please. All right. Both of you, give me a D2. 1 is a success. 2 is a failure.
Sylvia: Okay... [Roll20 boops] yay!
Austin: That’s a success for Aubrey.
Sylvia: I’m playing to win.
Austin: Art?
Art: I'm working on it.
Sylvia: Sure. [roll20 boops]
Jack: It's really Art versus Roll20 —
Austin: That's a success!
Jack: Oh, that's a success, too!
Ali: [gasps]
Janine: Nice.
Austin: Look at this, successes on both. All right. When you succeed, the players can elaborate on how things go. Is there anything extra that we need to say, tell me what it looks like when you succeed.
Sylvia: Uh... I think this guard's just really taken with this cat.
Austin: Fair.
Sylvia: This, this guy, it turns out, just has a bunch of cats at home, and is like, “well, I've never seen you before. You're a, oh, you're a stone cat, made of... with jewels! That's nuts!” Uh... those words exactly, actually.
Austin: Those words exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sylvia: I was in character there. Uh, and, Aubrey just like, books it by.
Austin: [laughing]
Sylvia: And I'm assuming that if other people are... I mean, we can figure out how other people get through later, but...
Austin: Yeah. Uh-huh. Maybe you're opening a side door or something, you know. Let everybody else through.
Sylvia: Yeah. Real like, Hannah Barbera cartoon, exaggerated run on the tip-toes and everything.
Austin: Yeah. Exactly.
Jack: [laughing]
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: All right. And then on the stage, Raven?
Art: What does a successful scene look like? Everyone claps?
Austin: Yeah. Gasps in the, in the crowd.
Art: Yeah, gasps. Like, people leaning in. Going, “huh!”
Austin: Mm-hm. “I hadn't thought about — animals do see us when we're looking in the mirror — they can see our faces and the mirror!”
Art: Yeah, and then I think there's like, there's like a fun little bit of stagecraft. Like the scene ends with like... everyone like, going through a trapdoor or something, you know?
Austin: Incredible. All right.
Art: As the, as the main —
Jack: The oldest piece of stagecraft.
Art: As the main company starts to come onto the stage.
Austin: “Oh!” Right. Yes. All right. Well, Art, your turn is up next as director. Who are you casting on the stage, and in the heist?
Art: All right... uh, I think we should keep, we should keep the, no offense, professional actors.
Austin: Oh, okay.
Janine: [laughing]
Sylvia: I mean, we're all going to get up there at some point.
Austin: Yeah, uh-huh. So Janine's going on, or Violet's going on?
Art: You've got to start, you've got to start strong. Yeah, so we're going to put Violet onstage.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Janine: Okay.
Austin: And then, heist?
Art: Uh... I think it makes sense to have Castille be the next heist.
Austin: Yeah, sure. Boom.
Art: Because of —
Austin: The setup.
Art: How they were sorted in the last one. She was in the last one.
Sylvia: Previous cat shenanigans.
Ali: Mm-hm. [chuckling]
Austin: All right. Then, I guess, Violet, tell me what the scene is like, that, that you'll be performing.
Janine: So I think, given the framing of this, they would probably start the story off where people will expect it to start, which is, you know, stereotypically, when you think of identity and looking in the mirror, you're going to think of a young lady who is like doing her, you know, brushing her hair, or doing her, the, the — what's the, the term is like, doing her toilette, that kind of —
Austin: Sure.
Janine: Where it's like, makeup and fussing in the mirror. Uh, so I think that's the next kind of, the next kind of thing.
Austin: All right. Then, let's see Castille. What is, what is your objective? Don't think about the difficult thing, think about what you want to get done, and then Art will come up, as the director, will come up with the difficulty.
Ali: Uh, yeah, so we just got past the door.
Austin: Yeah, into kind of like the main area.
Ali: Mmm...
Austin: We don't have to think too complicated here, right? We can think about things really broadly —
Ali: Right.
Austin: About just getting in deeper, stuff like that.
Ali: Yeah. I was thinking of like, maybe there's like, uh, like two different staircases that lead to —
Austin: Sure.
Ali: To a different place, and it's like, navigating that, and like getting to the right part of the building.
Austin: Love it. Uh... all right. Art, what are the difficulties on these two things? We should have done, next time we'll do difficulty immediately after the person speaks, right?
Art: Right. Yeah. Uh... yeah, because I got stuck thinking of Ali's. Uh, Janine, what's your...
Janine: Uh, the scene is basically a young lady who's like, doing her hair in front of the mirror, doing her makeup, checking her clothes, that kind of...
Austin: What is the, what is the goal of the scene? What's the scene trying to communicate, what's the young lady trying to do?
Art: Sure.
Austin: Is she trying to like, look nice? Is she trying to — no, I'm asking Janine this, because we should —
Janine: Yes, I —
Austin: Think about these sequences as like, what's the goal?
Janine: Yeah, that's why I tried to, that's why I tried to frame it as like, the goal in terms of like, the story is, you start of where people, exactly where people are expecting you to start off, then you give them something familiar, and then you start to turn it and go deeper.
Austin: All right. So the thing that you need, the difficult — or, not the difficulty, but the goal, that the young girl, that you the actor want to complete is, go deeper. Is take something predictable and twist it.
Janine: Yes.
Austin: Awesome. I should note, we can also give goals for characters onstage as if they're real people, right? So like, a goal for a character onstage can also be, “I want to woo somebody,” or, “I want to fight off the guards,” right? In the play. So it doesn't have to be, we don't have to think meta about the play on every one. I'm not saying we can't for this one, that's totally fine. But we've had two of those in a row. And I want to make sure that we don't just walk ourselves into the corner of always needing to talk in the meta sense, right?
Janine: Right.
Austin: So yeah, that's still fine. So that's that one. Art, what is the challenge, what is the difficulty here?
Art: I think the difficulty is that this scene is about to become sort of like a montage?
Austin: Mmm.
Janine: Oh...
Art: Like, the difficulty is that like, we're going to see your whole day, in the next like 4 minutes.
Austin: Interesting. I love it.
Janine: That's great.
Austin: Yes.
Art: And so the difficulty is like, it's just a lot of switches. It's like, you know, you're going to, the location's going to shift sort of around you. You're probably going to have to change costumes, sort of like mid-scene, you know.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Art: It's a, it's a demanding scene for an actor.
Austin: Love it.
Art: And the difficulty you have backstage is that if you choose the wrong path, it goes forever.
Austin: [gasps] I love Marielda.
Ali: [giggling]
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: Fucking love to see it. All right, uh, uh, Violet, give me a 1D5? That's Sylvi's props.
Janine: 5.
Sylvi: Oh, boy.
Austin: And, Ali? Castille? Give me a D4.
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: An exquisite captain's saber is your prop.
Jack: Oh, wow.
Janine: The saber. I love that, that's what I was hoping for, actually.
Austin: Oh, okay. Sure. Who is doing — how are y'all tackling these challenges? You said you were hoping for it, Violet, why? Do you have an answer for how you're going to use this to overcome the montage challenge?
Janine: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I guess overcome the montage challenge, is tricky. But I think I can feed it into what the goal was, right?
Austin: Uh-huh.
Janine: Which is —
Austin: I mean, you have to overcome the montage — if you fail, it will be the montage thing overcomes you, right, when you've flipped a coin.
Janine: Yes. I'm just saying, abstractly it's hard to be like, it's hard to conceptualize using a sword to do a montage —
Austin: I get it, but the rule is incorporate your prop into a short scene where your lead has to overcome the obstacle.
Janine: I, but — yes, yes. Yes. Yes. I know. And to me, the success or failure is going to be a technical success or failure. In terms of like, does it work, does, can they pull this off in terms of difficulty? Again, since we're operating meta here for this particular one, I think it makes sense to look at it that way.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Janine: Versus like, the character, sword... I don't know. It's... anyway. [chuckles] The... so I think, I should just describe the montage now?
Austin: Yeah. But, we don't know if it works, if it succeeds or fails yet, right?
Janine: I know. Yes. I know. [laughing] I know how to play tabletop games. So, I think that what happens is basically, it starts out in the sort of classical dressing room, like hair, makeup, again, those familiar spaces. But then very quickly, it's like, stagehands kind of whisking that furniture offstage, and then there's that sort of, an abrupt costume change as it's like, the day is advancing. And basically Violet changes from sort of dressing gown clothes into a military uniform.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Janine: And sort of has to catch these things as they're being thrown at her offstage, and you get these sort of... as things are being thrown on and off stage, it's a sort of advancement of the day, of like getting ready, and then going to do some drills, you know, and then doing a sort of ceremony thing. And throughout this, the saber is kind of getting tossed on and off again.
Austin: Mmm.
Janine: It's sort of the focal point of this montage, is this beautiful saber like, glittering and arching through the air, and each time, she has to catch it perfectly, and when she gets rid of it, has to throw it perfectly, and have the stagehand catch it perfectly, because it is is a sword. [chuckles]
Austin: It is a sword.
Ali: Mm-hm.
Janine: Uh, and it's a real sword [laughing] presumably. Uh, so this is one of those things where it's like, it requires a lot of rehearsal and a lot of... paying fucking attention, to nail this routine.
Austin: Let's, let's flip that coin. [Roll20 boops] That's a success!
Janine: [chuckling]
Ali and Jack: Hell yes.
Jack: Oh, wow.
Austin: So that just goes as it sounds like it was going. Uh, what does this —
Jack: Gasps from the audience, applause...
Austin: Yeah, is it more gasps from the audience? What's the, what's the...
Ali: Oh, this is great.
Austin: What's the vibe?
Janine: It's got to be... it's got to be gasps and stuff, right?
Austin: Mm-hm.
Janine: It's got to be, because, again, that's the whole point of starting somewhere really predictable, is so you can immediately like, kind of shake people up, and get reactions.
Austin: All right. Well, Castille, how are you using a saber to solve this dilemma?
Ali: Yeah... well, I was thinking of, of, of the scale of Art's prompt, right, and how you would think about a space like that. And I think that the way to find the right way is that... one of the staircases leads to like a dead end, but there's a portrait of like, like a business developer of Marielda or whatever, some dude sitting in a chair who looks like he has a lot of money —
Austin: [chuckling] Uh-huh.
Ali: And it's like a trick door. You have to like, cut the canvas —
Austin: Ah...
Ali: To move past it, to actually get into the right hallway. Uh, instead of building a wall, they just put this big painting there and was like, “nobody's going to go through this weird hole.” So let me roll a 1D2... [roll20 boops] that's a failure. [cackling]
Austin: Oh, that's a failure. Hey, Art, what happens again —
Janine: Oh, no!
Austin: When you fail?
Janine: Oh, no!
Ali: [laughing]
Art: I believe I said that you're lost and it goes forever.
Austin: It goes forever.
Ali: [still laughing]
Art: It's an infinite wrong-way.
Ali and Janine: No...
Austin: It's an infinite wrong-way.
Sylvia: Okay, well we've [unintelligible]
Ali: How could this hole in the wall be an infinite wrong way? [laughing]
Austin: Oh, no.
Janine: Oh, no.
Austin: So what's that look like, Art?
Art: Well, you know when you go the wrong way and you try to turn around and go back?
Austin: Mm-hm.
Art: What if that was also the wrong way?
Austin: Mmm! Hm hm! [chuckling]
Sylvia: Oh, wow.
Jack: And this is some sort of like, you know... in the way that the Font Men are being given special certain privileges and things, this is some sort of loophole in reconfiguration, right? Where it's like, they've been given access to a way to enable a, a building to physically shift and move, as you're in it, for you.
Austin: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, this is a bad situation.
Jack: It's bad.
Austin: This is not good.
Sylvia: Yeah...
Jack: Oh god.
Art: This might —
Jack: No, I think it's fine —
Ali: It's fine, you know [mumbling] romantic rescue, we've — [laughing escalates]
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Austin: Ah, are you playing the joker to — To switch this one over?
Janine: Wow, wow.
Ali: Should, should I play it now, or should it be like, Castille's lost in there for a little bit and then I play it?
Austin: Yeah, I think so.
Ali: Well, I'll do now, right? But we can say that there's been, we can have a literal montage for Castille, who's stuck in this place, and then —
Austin: Who's stuck in this place. When it's your turn to go onstage, we'll play the joker to get you unstuck from here.
Ali: [laughing]
Sylvia: Okay.
Ali: Thank you for that, yes, true.
Austin: I love that.
Janine: Maelgwyn shows up and goes, “you're going to miss your cue.”
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: Exactly. Well, we'll get there.
Sylvia: God.
Austin: All right. Ali, you are, you are the director now. Who are you casting onstage and...
Ali: Oh, I am.
Austin: Yeah, it wraps back around to you.
Ali: Uh... boy howdy, okay.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Ali: [giggling]
Art: Wait, so we need the card so the heist can progress, right?
Austin: Sorry, say that again?
Art: We need to play, do we need to narrate Mael — the rescue now?
Austin: Well, maybe there's another set of this, maybe the rest of the group is doing something else, right? I mean, it's up to you. But if we do want to play —
Art: No, it should follow the, what happened, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to.
Austin: No, you're good.
Art: Yeah.
Ali: Uh, I think... that we are going to get, uh, what, [giggling] Aubrey, I apologize, we are going to get Aubrey onstage —
Sylvia: Oh, gosh, oh, jeez.
Ali: And we are going to get Edmund behind the scenes.
Austin: All right. Boom. Uh... Aubrey —
Sylvia: Oh, boy.
Austin: What's your — so you've now let people in the side door and then rushed to the stage because your scene is coming up.
Sylvia: Yeah, I guess so.
Austin: What is, what's your big debut? What's, what's Aubrey's big theater debut?
Sylvia: Oh, fuck. Okay. Uh... Jesus Christ, I wasn't expecting to go next.
Jack: A big spotlight turns on, ka-chunk! Light on the stage.
Austin: [laughing]
Sylvia: Oh, no. Uh...
Jack: And what costume are you in?
Sylvia: Oh, fuck off! Why are you making this harder for me?
Ali and Janine: [laughing]
Art: Well wait, we should, we should wait for the prop roll, because there's some costumes in there.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: Oh yeah, that's true.
Sylvia: I — damn, I don't know, I was — it's the — having a prop would have this make so much more sense. Uh... what is, where —
Jack: So we know that there is a sort of narrator character who represents a mirror.
Austin: Right.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Jack: There is a young woman character who also seems to be in the military, or involved with fighting in the military.
Sylvia: Okay.
Jack: Uh...
Austin: Who's our next character? Has Aubrey been cast as something very Aubrey-like? A tinkerer, or...
Sylvia: I'm trying to think of like, something that isn't.
Austin: Oh, you're going the other way.
Sylvia: I'm trying to think of something that is — I'm trying to go the other way with it. Uh...
Austin: Is Aubrey like the sergeant above the...
Janine: [chuckling] I was going to say.
Austin: The military —
Sylvia: I was going to, yeah, say either a sergeant or a noble, but I think I like sergeant.
Austin: Noble's fun too.
Sylvia: I think... she's wearing an eyepatch.
Ali: [chuckles]
Austin: [chuckling] Ugh.
Jack: [laughing]
Ali: Yes, baby.
Janine: Scowling.
Sylvia: She is still wearing her glasses, though, over the eyepatch.
Austin: Oh, Aubrey. [chuckling]
Sylvia: Because she like, cannot fucking see without them.
Austin: Oh, no! [laughing] What is the point of the scene? What is the goal that the character has, or that the play has?
Sylvia: I think it's like a call to action for the, for the character that Violet played. Right?
Jack: Oh, are you giving her like a dressing-down? Are you like, you have not been, you've not been doing the military right, you've not been a soldier in a correct way.
Sylvia: I was thinking it's like, you, yeah, kind of similar to that, but it's also like, so you're going to go do this, you're going to go serve in this like, theater now.
Jack: Oh, yeah.
Janine: Mm-hm.
Austin: Love it. Love it.
Sylvia: Uh... not an intentional theater pun there. Just, that's what they call places where people do war.
Jack: Oh, oh, right, a military theater.
Janine: Right, yeah.
Austin: A military theater, right, right. Something in the Mirror, right.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Jack: [laughing]
Austin: What is the added difficulty, what's the obstacle to this, Ali?
Ali: Oh, sure, yeah. Uh... hm... I guess there's something, if this is a challenge for the sergeant —
Austin: Mm-hm.
Ali: Maybe they've been like, newly appointed, or are a recent transfer from a different troop.
Austin: Oh, mm-hm.
Ali: And this is like, an attempt to like, like sort of secure their stature or whatever.
Austin: Right. So it's like, part of the reason why it's hard to, to communicate this to the young girl — do we, we don't have names for these characters, right, for the, the, in the play characters? The young woman.
Jack: It's very Brechtian at this point.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: We've got the young woman, the sergeant.
Austin: The young woman and the sergeant, yeah. So the, the young woman, uh, doesn't know this sergeant, doesn't feel, necessarily —
Ali: Right, yeah.
Austin: Yeah, gotcha. All right.
Ali: Uh, and it could be, I don't want to [mumbling]
Austin: What were you going to say?
Ali: I was just going to say, like, I don't want to describe the scene too much, but I guess it's like a thing of like, is the sympathetic character here the young girl or the captain?
Austin: Sure, sure.
Ali: Of being like... yeah. Uh, yeah.
Austin: All right. Uh, and then, Edmund, what are you trying to do?
Jack: Oh, gosh. Uh... I am engaged in conversation with a Font Man in a neighboring pub.
Austin: [laughing]
Jack: I have been staking out this Font Man for a long time. I'm using Font Man — Font Person here, loosely.
Austin: Mm-hm. Mm-hm.
Jack: For a long time, because this person, I know, on certain days of the week, has a special information-locked key. This is a key where one of the, uh, one of the bits of it — I want to call them like, tines on a fork, you know, the bits that stick off the key?
Austin: Yeah. Yeah.
Jack: Like the little key elements, contains a passphrase that is read by a machine inside a lock. And... the passphrase is physically switched in and out of the key, daily.
Art: Oh...
Austin: Interesting.
Jack: And so I need to take this very specific — I could make a copy of this key very easily, but what I actually want is the little piece of folded paper inside with the passphrase on it, or the symbol that's going to be read by the computer —
Austin: Mm-hm. Mm-hm. Okay.
Jack: And I am trying to get [noticing the anachronism] the computer... the machine.
Austin: The machine, please.
Jack: You know, this is Marielda.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Yes. Uh-huh.
Ali: [giggling]
Jack: Uh...
Austin: And so that's, that is the obstacle. Ali, what is the difficulty, what is the obstacle? Why can't Edmund just grab this thing?
Ali: Uh, the Font Man wears it on a chain on their belt.
Austin: Ah, okay. Very hard to just snatch that. That, you know, that makes sense.
Ali: Well, you know...
Austin: No, no, no, I'm agreeing with you.
Ali: We'll see. [giggling]
Austin: All right, who — Aubrey, give me a D5. [roll20 boops]
Sylvia: Got a 4.
Austin: 4, so, Art's props. Edmund, give me a D4. [roll20 boops]
Ali: [laughing] Oh my god.
Austin: Your prop is...
Janine: Yeah!
Austin: Samolephant, the 2-foot elephant.
Sylvia: Okay. I know exactly how this is going.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Ali: Yes, babyyy.
Sylvia: I'm riding that motherfucker into the scene.
Austin: [outburst of laughter]
Jack: Wait, okay —
Sylvia: This is why I got the role, I'm the only one small enough for it.
Ali: [gasps]
Jack: From the orchestra pit [imitating drums] bum, ba ba bum, ba ba bum.
Austin: Right.
Ali: [cackling]
Janine: Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp.
Jack: [muted trumpet noises in background]
Art: There's a muted trumpet that represents Samolephant —
Austin: Yeah. Uh-huh.
Art: In the —
Austin: [elephant noises] Yeah, uh-huh.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: Yeah.
Jack: What does the audience see and hear, Sylvi?
Sylvia: Uh, lots of trumpets, I think they're... Aubrey's got, like, for some reason I keep going to like a tricorn hat. Maybe we don't want to do that on the day we're recording this.
Austin: Amazing. Eh... fuck 'em.
Sylvia: Fuck 'em, all right, cool. [chuckling] And, like a flag or something behind her, and like a big coat, and she's holding her saber out.
Jack: Shaking slightly with nerves.
Sylvia: Trembling.
Austin: Aw...
Sylvia: She is trembling so much that you can see how much the sword is shaking, but people think it might be — I mean, we'll see what people think.
Austin: We'll see what people think.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Give me the D2.
Jack: God... [roll20 boops]
Janine: Do you think, do you think the elephant —
Austin: Hell yeah.
Janine: Lounge group, when they were bringing people in, were like, “okay, well we, I guess, our thing says Elephant Lounge Players, do you think that means we all have to have an elephant in every thing that we do? We should probably do it just to be safe so no one knows if [connection cuts] off, right?
Austin: Just to be safe. Just to be safe.
Art: Just to be safe, yeah.
Austin: Aubrey, how — it seems like it went well. That was a success.
Sylvia: It went great.
Jack: I want to hear, I've got to hear some dialogue.
Sylvia: People interpreted my nervousness as trembling rage. Uh...
Jack: Oh...
Sylvia: So, when Aubrey just yelled all her lines —
Jack: [laughing]
Sylvia: Such as, “you're going to war, now! You have to go to war!”
Austin: [cracking up laughing]
Ali: [laughing]
Jack: [laughing]
Sylvia: People just thought she seemed really angry...
Austin: Oh, no!
Ali: [snorts laughing]
Sylvia: It worked great.
Austin: It worked great, everyone went — [gasps]
Sylvia: They did not expect such a loud voice to come out of such a small creature.
Austin: Oh... oh, uh, “are you ready to do violence?”
Sylvia: [laughing]
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: Oh, fuck. Okay. And now, behind the scenes, how are you using a 2-foot tall elephant? Edmund? Also does this mean there are two, 2-foot tall elephants? Or does it have to get run, does Samolephant have to get run from the stage quickly, down the alleyway —
Art: It's a lot funnier that way.
Austin: Yeah. I think it's much more funny, yeah.
Sylvia: Hey, do we also exit through the trapdoor?
Austin: Yes! Also, wait, what's the end of that scene?
Jack: Hey, buddy.
Austin: What's the end of that scene? Does Violet — how does Violet respond to that sequence, being asked, being told to go to war?
Janine: Uh... I think it's one of those things of like, really played-up, like dramatic nervous looks of like, wait, am I, am I really — did I just join the army because it was the thing to do? I don't know... now I have to go to war, you know, it's a lot of like, nervous looking around, kind of exaggerated gestures, and like —
Austin: Mm-hm.
Janine: You know, projecting your worry to the back rows, that kind of acting.
Austin: Yeah, yeah.. All right, well now, you have the elephant. How do you use it, Edmund?
Jack (as Edmund): Uh, what was your name, buddy? I didn't catch your name. And we've been having such a nice time this evening, I think.
Austin (as Font Man): Breddleton.
Jack (as Edmund): Ah, Breddleton. You know —
Austin (as Billiam): Billiam Breddleton.
Jack (as Edmund): I have a — I have a cousin — oh, Billiam!
Austin (as Billiam): Billiam Battlement Breddleman...t...der.
Sylvia: [laughing]
Jack (as Edmund): Absolutely. Hey, you ever seen an elephant?
Austin (as Billiam): No. No such thing.
Sylvia: [sputtering laughing]
Jack (as Edmund): I'm sorry?
Austin (as Billiam): It's a myth. They're a mythical creature, there, bud.
Jack (as Edmund): Oh...
Austin (as Billiam): You've been deceived.
Janine: This guy sounds Canadian to me.
Sylvia: Oh yeah, no, absolutely.
Janine: This guy’s probably my uncle.
Jack (as Edmund): All right, look —
Sylvia: [laughing]
Jack (as Edmund): Look, come, come out back, I've got a — an elephant.
Austin (as Billiam): You want me to believe you got an elephant, this is a ploy. I know a ploy.
Jack (as Edmund): Not only have I got an elephant, not only have I got an elephant, I have got the smallest — well, it'll be, it'll be the first elephant you've ever seen, so the effect will kind of be lost on you. Usually, they're much bigger — okay.
Austin: Shaking my head.
Jack (as Edmund): Elephants are real, and they're usually much bigger than the thing I —
Austin (as Billiam): [doubtful] Okay.
Jack: I don't know that this is... all right, fuckin hell, okay.
Austin: Give me the dice.
Sylvia: [laughing]
Austin: Of course, of course that's a failure. Of course that's a failure.
Jack: I don’t understand… How...
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Jack (as Edmund): I don't, I don't understand how I picked the only person in the city of the Marielda...
Austin (as Billiam): Uh-huh.
Jack (as Edmund): Who just doesn't believe elephants —
Austin (as Billiam): Who knows the truth, which is that elephants aren't real.
Jack: Why do you —
Austin (as Billiam): Bring it in here.
Jack (as Edmund): Okay, fine! Okay. Fine.
Jack: Hitchcock gets up, storms to the door, opens the door, looks down the street to where Aubrey should be —
Austin: [chuckling]
Jack: With the elephant. And Aubrey is onstage taking a bow —
Austin: [laughing]
Jack: Applause is still going —
Austin: [laughing] They’re in the middle of the scene!
Jack: They're playing a little reprise of the elephant's theme.
Janine: This is well-deserved.
Austin: Well-deserved.
Sylvia: I'm doing a march around the stage on the elephant.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Art: [unintelligible] and everyone…
Sylvia: But mostly because I just lost control of Samolephant, not really —
Austin: Yeah, this is, we're Bye Bye Grease-y-ing it, it's unbelievable.
Ali: [giggling]
Art: You know the moment in the middle of a play when everyone comes out and takes a bow? [laughing]
Jack (as Edmund): The elephant's going to be, the elephant's going to be right here. Believe — trust me. The elephant is going to be just coming right down — come and stand next to me, you'll see it coming right down the street.
Austin (as Billiam): Hey, everybody! This guy's an elephant con artist.
Sylvia (as pubgoers): Nyahh.
Austin (as Billiam): Boo!
Jack (as Edmund): Is my tab closed? All right, I'm out of here. Goodnight, everybody.
Austin: The door just closes behind you, they just lock you out in the alley. You've not gotten, you've not gotten the special —
Jack: Nope.
Austin: Thing you needed for this. Everything going great. Everything going great. Sylvi, you're the director.
Sylvia: Oh, gosh, okay, let me see. Who has…
Austin: I guess, actually, sorry, Castille, does any, I just responded, I just took over as GM there by mistake, because I was playing Billiam.
Sylvia: Damn.
Austin: Does anything else go wrong here, Ali?
Ali: Oh, oh, boy...
Austin: You were the director there, apologies. I just, I was so in the...
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: Character of Billiam.
Jack: Edmund's just been locked out of a pub...
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: This is the 28th time it's happened —
Ali: Yeah, I don't know that we —
Jack: During their stay in Marielda.
Ali: Have to gild the lily on this one, I think not getting the key is a big L.
Austin: Yeah, okay.
Ali: And [laughing] the suspicion meter has gone up, right? Like, what's going on with this elephant guy?
Austin: Uh-huh, yeah.
Ali: This weird liar who's hanging out in pubs.
Austin: Did I add the thing to the right... did I... yeah, okay, I did. Yes. Heist failure. Correct. Yep. All right. So we're at one success for the heist, two failures for the heist, and, uh, three successes for the play, so far. Let's keep it, let's keep it rolling.
Sylvia: Okay, so, my question is, who has done... who hasn't — the two new characters haven't done any heist stuff yet, and...
Austin: That's correct. And the two other Six members have not done any onstage stuff, yeah.
Sylvia: Okay. I think... I'll go with Ali doing the play, Castille, just 'cause we just had a Hitchcock scene. And, yeah, let's go for Raven doing the play.
Austin: Or, doing the heist.
Sylvia: Oh, doing the heist, sorry, yeah. I’m typecasting…
Austin: Yes, okay. So that means now is the time... Castille, you —
Ali: Yeah. [giggling]
Austin: Do you have an idea for how Maelgwyn saves you?
Ali: I sort of do. I think that Castille has been wandering down like a really long hallway, like, going into different rooms, and it keeps being rooms that are sort of like uncanny, that don't feel like they wouldn't be together, like one is, like, it looks like a closet door and then it opens up and it's like this grand library, and it's like —
Austin: Mmm.
Ali: [laughing] uh, and then you open up a different door, and it's like really just a weird closet. And I think one of the rooms is like, uh... there's a window that leads into a courtyard. And Maelgwyn opens the window and reaches his hand out. [laughing]
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: Yes!
Austin: And like, just, okay, but what if it's not the courtyard? What if it's, pulls you directly onto stage?
Ali: [cackling]
Austin: And it's your scene now.
Jack: Oh, wow.
Ali: Yes, baby!
Austin: You know? And Maelgwyn is already in costume, you are already in costume — or, whatever, you're not, you're in whatever you were wearing a second ago. What is the scene?
Ali: Oh, I have to decide that. God.
Austin: Yeah, uh-huh.
Ali: [laughing] uh... what is the scene?
Austin: Are we like, on the other side of this war? Whenever this war is happening, it's you and — it's, Maelgwyn and Castille are playing the antagonists to Violet's protagonist?
Ali: Oh my god, yes. And they're — [fit of laughter] uh, I think, I think Maelgwyn is in like a military uniform, uh...
Austin: Uh-huh.
Ali: And I think Castille… should also be in one, I guess?
Austin: Okay. What if we're, what if we are spies from the opposition, and we're sneaking behind enemy lines, into the city where Violet's young woman character is, and we're doing a heist onstage —
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: We're, we are romantic villain spies for the other side, and I'm like, letting you into, you know, the enemy camp, basically.
Ali: Oh, sure sure sure, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: What is our goal?
Ali: Uh, our goal is to... oh. In the previous scene, Aubrey's character left behind like a map of the...
Austin: Oh, love it.
Ali: Of the, of like, one of those like football, like, here's the circle, here's the line, here's where you're going to go on the field, or whatever.
Austin: [laughing]
Sylvia: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Austin: That's what it is. Uh-huh. Yeah.
Ali: [fit of laughter]
Sylvia: General Madden left behind —
Ali: And we're stealing that.
Austin: Uh-huh. Yeah.
Ali: [still laughing]
Austin: So we're stealing that. Sylvi, what is the obstacle to us stealing that?
Sylvia: Uh, okay, I have a good one, because this happened to me in high school when I was in a school play, is that they forgot to leave the prop onstage, so you have to improvise the whole thing.
Ali: [laughing] Oh, Aubrey!
Jack: Oh, wow.
Austin: Oh, no. Okay. So we'll have to be improvising with whatever the prop is, and we'll have to be... okay.
Sylvia: Yeah, yeah.
Austin: So wait, is the thing that's missing the map?
Sylvia: The map is missing. The map is not there.
Austin: The map is missing. Okay.
Sylvia: You'll notice that we don't have a map on any of our cards.
Austin: We don't have a map on any of the cards, that's true.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Okay. And, Raven, uh, you're doing the heist, what is your goal for the heist?
Art: Uh... that's, that's... I have something I want, let me talk it through and see if it sounds plausible.
Austin: Yeah. Yeah.
Art: I, I want Raven to swim into the ink, and try to like establish contact with the sphere.
Austin: Okay, so you've gone down the other — the other...
Jack: Oh, the other stair?
Austin: Stairwell, and found the ink reservoir.
Art: Right. And I was, I was waiting for [unintelligible] that didn't come. But it's time to go. So it's time for Raven to jump into the ink.
Ali: [giggling]
Art: And based on the prop I get, we'll see... [laughing] what the plan is to get in there.
Sylvia: Do I have a challenge for this, too? Because I've got one.
Austin: You sure do.
Art: Is it drowning in ink?
Sylvia: Uh, so my challenge here is ink fish, obviously. Uh...
Art: Ink fish...
Austin: Oh, ink fish!
Jack: Please tell us about —
Sylvia: Well, like, they're just —
Jack: Okay. Fishteen Minutes, 3.
Sylvia: They're not super dangerous.
Austin: [laughing]
Sylvia: Yeah, we've got a nested Fishteen Minutes in here. They're not very dangerous, but the thing with ink fish is that they're very territorial, so they can just get very sort of like, annoying —
Austin: Mmm, sure.
Sylvia: And like — they don't really have like, sharp teeth, but they will like, push you away, and there's a lot of them.
Jack: Are they called ink fish because they live in the ink? Or are they called ink fish because they're made of ink in some description, or ink is made of them, or...
Sylvia: It's like one of those things where it's like, people don't really, it's like a chicken and the egg situation.
Austin: Sure.
Sylvia: Because you only ever find ink fish in ink.
Janine: What came first, the ink or the fish?
Sylvia: Yeah.
Jack: Oh, like the swordfish, right. Yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Because you only ever find swordfish in swords. Uh...
Jack: Yep.
Austin: That's true.
Jack: Yep.
Sylvia: Uh... anyway, yeah. I think... just these weird, like... I'm trying to, I'm trying to like, picture what a fish size would be. [chuckles] Normal sentences that I say.
Austin: Normal, normal stuff.
Sylvia: I guess they're like, I'm thinking they're bigger. Maybe they're like, catfish-sized.
Austin: Big catfish, all right, love it.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: It's time to roll for the prop, I think?
Sylvia: Oh, yeah.
Austin: That means, who does — onstage roll. Castille, you roll 1D5.
Ali: Oh, I roll… 1D5.
Austin: Uh-huh. [roll20 boops]
Ali: That's a 2.
Austin: So that's coming from Ali's prop list. And, Art, give me a 1D3 for Raven.
Art: It's a rough, it's a rough list.
Sylvia: Oh, hell yeah.
Austin: Uh... so you have an unopened bottle of champagne!
Art: An unopened bottle of champagne...
Ali: Oh my god.
Austin: Oh my god.
Art: Okay, I got this. This is going to be fine.
Ali: [snorts laughing]
Austin: Onstage — okay. Do you have your answer already, Art? Do you want to go first?
Ali: Please. [laughing]
Art: Uh, I don't want to step on —
Austin: No, no, no! Let's do heist first.
Art: All right.
Janine: We just got a whole date to plan, now. This is just a date.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Janine: For them.
Austin: It is. It is. Uh-huh.
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Art: Uh... a bottle of champagne is, can be explosive. You just sort of like, you use the champagne as both weapon, to sort of like, pop that cork off at an ink fish —
Austin: Ah, I see, yeah.
Art: And then the carbonation sort of pushes you towards your sphere a little faster. It's, it's a weapon and a vehicle. It means that when we — oh, because, when we — onstage it's just a different bottle of champagne, probably.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Art: Yeah, it's going to be fine.
Ali: [laughing] Art, I'm really glad — the reason, I, I wrote down the champagne for cork velocity, to knock things over —
Austin: Perfect.
Ali: To attack, so... shoutouts.
Austin: Let's get the 1D2 and see if it works. [pause] Pins and needles.
Art: Oh, it's me.
Austin: Yeah, from you. From you. From the person doing the thing that, yeah. Uh-huh. Another success.
Sylvia: Hell yeah.
Jack: Another success.
Austin: It turns out that the Elephant Lounge Company are killing it today. Uh... oop, come on, let me draw a straight line, please. There we go. That's not right. That's not a straight line. What's it look like, Art? As you succeed.
Art: Oh, it looks, this is like, Mission Impossible, Tom Cruise, breath-holding, fish-fighting —
Austin: Ink-swimming.
Art: Everyone's favorite scene in Mission Impossible.
Austin: We've all seen Mission Impossible, we all know how it goes.
Art: Yeah, we've, all — yeah.
Jack: Covered in ink.
Art: Uh, and then just like, getting to the, the dome, and going through the port-hole? Probably from the bottom?
Austin: Yeah, and popping up into the air, the air —?
Art: Popping up into the air part.
Austin: Yeah, uh-huh. Perfect. Great. Uh... I think it's probably 30 seconds before we realize there's no map.
Ali: [laughing] Yeah, and I think that, uh, Castille, acting very quickly, and seeing a bottle of champagne on like a... like a... or maybe she like, digs through the desk a little bit and then pulls it out.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Ali: Because I think that if you were sitting in a city where you were ruled by this god that's sort of a jerk nerd who doesn't like wine anymore —
Austin: Uh-huh.
Ali: And you knew that he was at war with the god of wine, it would be a little on the nose, but you would be like, “I get you, play.”
Austin: It's definitely, this is why it's wine — this is why it's champagne in the play and not wine. We would never directly say it’s a bottle of wine —
Ali: Right, yes, exactly. Yeah.
Austin: This is about a god of champagne and the, and the moon god...
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: Not about the god of wine and the sun god. It's different.
Ali: Uh, yeah. And I think Castille like gasps and really plays it up, as an actress being like, oh, this was, uh, like a, like a year of this bottle that was given out as gifts to generals on the other side.
Austin: Mmm.
Ali: So now it's like, is, is the general that Audrey was playing, like a traitor? Did they originally steal this?
Austin: Right.
Ali: It's part of the like, question.
Austin: And Maelgwyn is like —
Austin (as Maelgwyn): I think it's hiding the map. I think the label —
Ali: Ooh.
Jack: Oh!
Austin (as Maelgwyn): The inside of the label, is the map. Like the reverse side, the adhesive side.
Ali: Uh-huh.
Austin (as Maelgwyn): So we have to drink it, to see it.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin (as Maelgwyn): Because we can't, if we rip it off, it might rip the map.
Ali: True.
Austin (as Maelgwyn): So, let me pour you a glass.
Jack: And there was only one bed!
Everyone: [cracking up]
Austin: And, and of course, you can't drink it, right?
Ali: Oh my god, I can't. Yeah.
Austin: Because you're a stone person. Uh-huh.
Janine: Aw...
Ali: Yeah. Oh, this is going to be a fun callback for them later.
Austin: For them later! Uh-huh.
Ali: The worst day of their lives... [laughing]
Austin: Yep! Mm-hm.
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Ali: 1D2?
Austin: 1D2. Success.
Ali: That's a success.
Austin: That's what we're talking about.
Ali: [laughing]
Art: The play is going great.
Austin: Everyone is shocked, like, “oh, wow, yeah, they're, yeah, uh-huh.”
Ali: What interesting tension between these two spies!
Austin: [laughing] Yes.
Ali: I think Castille is able to do like a really interesting thing where like she raises her arm really dramatically, so you like, can't see her, her mouth —
Austin: You can't see that it's —
Ali: [laughing] While she's drinking it.
Austin: God. All right. Uh... that's a success. Is there anything else that happens good during this scene? Is there any other thing you want to hit?
Ali: Oh... [laughing]. We're having fun, I think, you know, again — [laughing] I think the scene's going fine enough.
Austin: Oh, you don't — okay. That's it. Uh-huh. Great. Perfect.
Ali: [cackling]
Sylvia: I just want to really add that ink fish love champagne.
Austin: Oh, love that detail. Love that detail.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Uh... all right, Violet, you are up. Also, I just realized I'm counting something wrong, I've been counting wrong about a thing, which is, we can keep going the way we are in terms of everybody should have to cycle between the two if we want. But actually, everybody is supposed to do two scenes in Act 1, which is why we have so many props left.
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Ali: Oh...
Austin: So, all of these Xs and Os, all these Os are remaining Act 1 scenes based on what we're doing currently.
Sylvia: Okay. Let's pick it up. Friends at the Table.
Austin: Friends at the Table, baby.
Janine: Okay. I mean, that's —
Art: All right.
Austin: Let's just say we're going to go late.
Sylvii: Us?
Janine: That's kind of a relief —
Jack: You're trapped in here with us —
Austin: Uh-huh.
Janine: That's kind of a relief, because otherwise it's like, I have to pick myself, and I have to pick Edmund, and I don't have any choice at all, which is less fun.
Austin: Which now you don't have to, you do have choice, still. Yes.
Art: Well, eventually, we will get to that point.
Austin: That's correct.
Art: And I think it's still going to be you, but...
Austin: Well, we'll see based on how other people pick.
Janine: Well, still. Better to at least get one.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Janine: Uh, okay. So everyone therefore has to do at least two scenes of each type.
Austin: Of each type, that's correct.
Janine: Okay. All right.
Austin: I mean, to be clear, I guess that's not actually true, but I think it's more fun if we make it true.
Janine: That's the ideal, yeah.
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: Yeah. Okay. I think... onstage, I would like Edmund —
Austin: Oh yeah.
Janine: Uh, by choice, though, I think is important. Uh... and, heist-wise, I think... uh... I think... mmm... let's get Aubrey back in the mix.
Austin: Okay.
Sylvia: Okay.
Austin: Boom. Okay. So, uh, wait sorry, who was on stage? I just —
Janine: Edmund.
Austin: Oh, Edmund, yes, okay. So, Edmund, what are you, what are you aiming to do onstage? You've, you've walked back to the stage without the thing you need.
Jack: Trudged through Marielda.
Austin: Yeah. Uh-huh.
Jack: Mmm. Okay. I am playing... the doomed suitor.
Austin: Ah.
Jack: Uh, this is a civilian, he is a, he is a, god, what's a good job for someone to have in a war? He's a, he's a green-grocer. He's a green-grocer in a city that the war has swept through, in a town that the war has swept through, where he met the young woman and they fell in love. This character's name is the green-grocer. And, uh, is just Edmund on stage, chewing the scenery, pouring his heart out, about how, you know, he doesn't know, uh, really who his beloved is, now that the war has ended.
Austin: What is the, the goal of the scene?
Jack: I want to make the audience cry.
Austin: Oh, you want to make the audience cry.
Janine: Aw.
Ali: Oh...
Austin: Yeah. What's the difficulty, what's the added difficulty to that, Janine?
Janine: Hm, I think the added difficulty to, I don't know if this is too abstract a difficulty, we can workshop it if so. But I think the difficulty is that, after the last scene, I don't know that people are in the space to cry. Like I think the audience might be resistant to that kind of emotional swing.
Austin: Mmm, mm-hm.
Janine: Again, I don't know if that's too abstract, if we want to winnow it down a little bit —
Austin: That's fine, I think that's fine.
Art: And they're still too pumped from the elephant.
Austin: Right.
Janine: That's true. It's been —
Austin: Elephant plus sexual tension —
Sylvia: [sputtering]
Austin: Hard swing now, to... maudlin, yeah.
Jack: Although, I will say it — if they're spaced out correctly enough over a night in the theater, I can understand the emotional swing here...
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jack: If they're spaced out correctly, seeing an elephant twice, being ridden by somebody, some sexual tension, and then they make me cry. That's, that's all I want from the theater —
Janine: [laughing]
Jack: And anything else is overkill.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah. Mm-hm. Things that Pickman learned in the final episode of Sangfielle. Uh, all right, then, uh, Aubrey, what is your heist goal?
Sylvia: Yeah, I'm... trying to figure out something that sort of carries on from... hm. Okay. I have a thing.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Sylvia: I think I thought of a thing. We were able to get through, like, like, Raven was able to get through the ink. But we're not all such good ink-swimmers.
Austin: This is true.
Sylvia: Uh, so I think what I'm trying to do is find an alternate way for us to get... I'm trying to, it's either, my idea's either to drain the ink, but I've established there's fish in there, and now I feel fucked-up doing that —
Austin: [chuckles] Classic Aubrey.
Sylvia: Yeah, you know? Or it's like, to find an alternate entrance a la the Mission Impossible which we've already referenced, which is above it, and... Aubrey on a wire, type situation, maybe?
Janine: Mmm.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Ali: Hm.
Sylvia: Because, if the orb's in the middle of the ink, right?
Austin: The orb is in the ink. The orb, yes, in my mind there's —
Sylvia: Well, how about — I think, I think, I think, actually, my job is figure out a way to remove the orb from the ink, whether that's —
Austin: To lift the orb.
Sylvia: An orb removal device, or ink removal, we shall see.
Austin: Right.
Sylvia: But, uh...
Austin: Okay. What is the challenge to this, Janine?
Janine: Uh... to be clear, is this a thing you're doing in the ink room, or is this more of like a research-y...
Sylvia: I'm assuming... uh... god.
Austin: Yeah, is this a flashback?
Sylvia: Yeah, this could be like a flashback that, and then we can just see how it works in practice —
Austin: Right, yes.
Sylvia: When we roll. Uh, so, yeah, I guess I'm, I'm officially marking myself down as, I'm removing the orb from the ink. As opposed to removing the ink from the orb.
Janine: Okay. So you are, but this is like, this is like a researching —
Sylvia: This is a flashback. This is like her, yeah.
Janine: Flashback-y, like... okay. Uh... I think, again, stop me if this is not the kind of challenge that we want, but the obvious challenge that sticks out to me here in researching how to do stuff with, with ink and stuff is that you're also going to be using ink to take your notes, and it could get messy really fast.
Austin: Oh, sure.
Janine: Like, so my first thought is that —
Sylvia: Oh, that’s great.
Janine: My first thought is, are you using books that are just like, horribly ink-stained? My second thought is, are you horribly ink-staining things in the process [chuckling] of trying to figure out what to do here?
Austin: Ruining stuff, sure, sure.
Sylvia: Yes. Okay. Really good.
Austin: All right. Uh, well, uh, I believe Edmund, you're, you're in the play this turn, right? So, give me a D5.
Jack: Mm-hm. Oh, whoops. I mistyped the roll.
Austin: Okay. So this is from Sylvi's list.
Jack: Sylvi's props.
Sylvia: Okay. Oh, boy.
Austin: And, Sylvi, give me a D3.
Sylvia: Oh, it's Montresor, the smoke bomb.
Austin: A — it's a smoke bomb, is —
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: Your prop together. This is going to be good. Uh...
Janine: Hm...
Sylvia: What, oh fuck, okay.
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: Hey Edmund, how do you use a smoke bomb to do a sad monologue onstage?
Ali: [giggling]
Janine: As a green-grocer. [chuckling]
Austin: As a green-grocer, as the doomed suitor.
Jack (as green-grocer): [miserably] During my civilian life... I deal with apples and pies. But during my wartime life...
Jack: Holds up spoke bomb.
Jack (as green-grocer): I deal with smoke and lies.
Everyone: [laughing]
Sylvia: Oh, my fucking god.
Ali: Wow!
[clapping in background]
Austin: [swishing noise with mouth]
Sylvia: Damn! Super hot fire.
Jack (as green-grocer): Before my beloved — during the war, my beloved gave me this. Oh, it looks like a simple orb to you, citizens of Marielda. But to me... hurt by the dangers of war, I recognize this as a smoke bomb. My beloved and I named it Montresor, and they told me that I should never use — that they would never use it to obscure their own secrets and lies.
Austin: Mmm.
Jack (as green-grocer): But then, when the war ended... I no longer knew the person who had given me that gift, all those years ago. And in fact, they did let off the smoke bomb. In, in a miserable circumstance —
Jack: Losing it a little here, Hitchcock.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Jack (as green-grocer): You, you think this might, this object that I'm holding is a replica of the smoke bomb. But they set off the real one.
Austin: Can we get a roll? [pause] This does not work.
Jack: Okay, this is a replica, no — okay —
Austin: What happens? Okay, wait wait wait, Janine gets to describe how it goes bad, as the director.
Art: We're missing a, we're missing a positive tally on the play.
Austin: Oh, you're right? Are we? No.
Art: Yeah, because this is the fifth scene.
Austin: Oh, okay. You're right. Yes. Boom. So how's it go bad, Janine?
Janine: Just to clarify, have you thrown the smoke bomb, or are you purely gesturing with it?
Jack: I'm gesturing with it, but I might accidentally throw it!
Austin: [chuckling]
Janine: Well, so the [chuckling] thing I was thinking was, you're gesturing with it, and it begins to leak, but you don't notice, until maybe like, no one can even see you anymore.
Austin: [laughing]
Jack (as green-grocer): I'm here! I'm here in the smoke! Oh, it's a metaphor! It's a metaphor!
Austin: [laughing]
Janine: [laughing]
Ali: [snorts laughing]
Jack: — distantly, the sound of them bumping into pieces of scenery —
Jack (as green-grocer): It's a metaphor for my estrangement from my wartime love!
Ali: I'm not crying.
Janine: Befuddled murmurs. [chuckling]
Austin: People are getting up from this, people are going out for more popcorn.
Ali: [laughing]
Jack: “Where's the elephant?” is the chant at the beginning, “where’s the elephant”.
Austin: “El-e-phant! El-e-phant!”
Janine: Whisper whisper, “this is why plays are banned,” whisper whisper.
Austin: [laughing]
Sylvia: Oh, wow.
Jack: [laughing]
Austin: Uh... and then Aubrey, give me, tell me how you're using the, the smoke bomb.
Sylvia: Yeah, I've been trying to figure this out for that entire last bit. Uh... I... okay. Here's what I've got. According to Aubrey's calculations, when the smoke bomb goes off in the ink, it will cause a reaction that makes the ink less dense, and allows the orb to float up to the top. This is closest I've got to an idea.
Austin: I love it. I love it.
Sylvia: Okay, cool.
Janine: Fun. The ink effervesces, like carbonates a little bit —
Austin: Uh-huh.
Sylvia: I rolled a 1. I'm playing to win, as always.
Austin: Hell yeah, that's a success in the heist.
Ali: [giggling]
Janine: Hell yeah. Hell yeah.
Austin: Uh, success number three.
Sylvia: Yeah. That's a science success, right there.
Austin: That's right.
Sylvia: Yeah, and Aubrey just sort of like sits on top of the orb and paddles it over.
Austin: Yeah, so you, so we get the success in the little, we get the thing of like, it works in the model. And then —
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: You try it for real, and the orb pops up? The orb —
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Like, comes to the top of the, of the Inkwell. Inside of it, we see Raven, uh...
Sylvia: Yeah, I guess Raven's able to, is the person who's able to move it, now.
Art: We have a slight... difficulty here, in that you're not allowed to like, get the item until the second act.
Austin: Well, the item is somewhere in there. We don't know that it's...
Art: Yeah.
Austin: You don't have it yet.
Art: We might want to, we might want to have some more outside stuff come out.
Sylvia: Let me get this ink pool orchiectomy, okay?
Art: Great.
Austin: Fair enough.
Sylvia: Thank you.
Austin: Jack, you are the director.
Jack: I just ate a small peanut butter candy, I'm sorry.
Austin: Mmm. That sounds great. What, uh, —
Ali: I want one.
Jack: I've finished eating the small peanut butter candy.
Sylvia: Congratulations.
Jack: Okay, so... uh... I would like to see... I would like to see Castille on stage, please, continuing with the sort of evil, uh, villainous opposing soldier role.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Jack: And I would like to see Violet doing the heist.
Austin: Okay. Castille, what is the scene? Also, Maelgwyn is not in this scene.
Ali: Right, right right right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, what is the scene? Uh... oh, I... ooh. Uh... I guess, it's, it's, the original scene ended with like, Castille and Maelgwyn squinting at the glass and being like heh-heh-heh, we got it.
Austin: Yeah, uh-huh.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: Like Sailor Moon villains. Yeah, uh-huh.
Ali: [still laughing] And I think the scene is like, Castille is on stage, and there's like a, there's like a fence on the stage behind her, and like stagehands, and actors behind it, as if she's like, at the camp that she's going to spy on. Uh, and it's like her trying to, uh, like either overhear something, or like, get onto the, the camp, uh, —
Austin: Sure.
Ali: I don't know if I need a more specific cue than that.
Austin: No, get close enough to get information or whatever, right?
Ali: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's like, I was looking for this area, I've arrived at this area, and now I'm up to some hijinks.
Austin: Yeah. Jack, what is the difficulty to the hijinks that Castille is up to?
Jack: Oh, gosh. Uh, the perimeter fence of the theater — of the theater, god — of the military camp, is being patrolled by mechanized dogs.
Austin: [gasps] Incredible.
Jack: They have, they have candles for eyes. Uh, their, their eyes are like a candle with a mirror behind them. Again, to get this like animals and mirrors imagery.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: So that there's this like, flickering horrible candlelight coming pouring out of their eyes. They're represented on stage by two puppets, and one actual mechanized dog that the company has acquired through their time in Hieron. And they are terrifying.
Austin: Uh, all right. Then, Violet, what is your first part of the heist?
Janine: So... can I get a, just roughly, how big is the orb?
Austin: It's a room.
Janine: Okay.
Art: Yeah, it's like, uh, it's a like a small library.
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: Okay. Okay. Uh...
Art: Maybe like the library from Beauty and the Beast.
Janine: Okay. So the thing that I want is... to have some sort of person who exists, who is a sort of cataloguer. Uh, and they... [sighs] I feel like it would be convenient, uh, if this cataloguer was with the Font Men for a while. And... is perhaps dissatisfied.
Austin: Mmm.
Janine: At some, at some level. And this person is in charge of, or at least at one point — has maybe, has maybe sort of fallen out of favor, was in charge of sort of cataloguing the things that are there, so you have a good idea of what you have, and the state it's in, and if it gets destroyed, or if it is preserved, or, you know, all that stuff.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Janine: But this person is dissatisfied, and Violet, I think, what I would like Violet to be trying to do is to convince this person that what would really invigorate them is to, to be a propmaster.
Austin: Interesting. What are you trying to get from, what is the... what's the goal?
Janine: I want them to be with us, so they can tell us where our shit is, within the orb.
Austin: Gotcha.
Janine: Like to tell us, give us some direction about... so we're not just like, sifting through shit endlessly, you know?
Austin: Okay, okay. Uh, what is the difficulty to this, Jack?
Jack: Uh, this person thinks that theater is for nerds.
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: Uh, this person's name is Auguste Shortell. Uh, all right, we should roll for... a prop. [laughing]
Jack: [chuckling] They're getting increasingly weird.
Austin: Castille, give me a D5, as the person on stage.
Ali: Yes. Roll one... D5. 2. Oh, my props.
Austin: That's your props. And then, I guess we'll need a D2 here.
Janine: Yeah, we're running out of props to pull from this one.
Austin: From Violet. Yeah. 2.
Janine: 2.
Austin: A white embroidered bedsheet — [chuckling]
Jack: [laughing]
Janine: Okay.
Austin: Is both of your prop, for your, your goals here. What's the embroidery like?
Ali: Uh, I think it's really delicate. I think that it's hand-done. It's obviously not like a fitted sheet, because I don't think that you would have like the technology for that in Marielda, right?
Sylvia: [laughing]
Ali: That seems like such a modern thing, I don't know, I don't know.
Austin: Yeah, but Samothes could easily have gifted the people fitted sheets.
Ali: Yeah...
Austin: Or, I mean, let's be honest, Primo could have gifted the people with fitted sheets. That's a Primo gift.
Ali: Sure, but Samothes, Samothes is all about the building character through work, and you've got to make your bed every day.
Austin: Oh yeah, yeah.
Ali: Yadda-yadda.
Austin: That's true.
Ali: Anyway, [laughing] I think that it’s like, there's like very delicate, like, flowers around the edges.
Austin: All right, so how do y'all, what is, what is the play here? Who has the answer for how they're using a white embroidered bedsheet to overcome the challenge?
Ali: Uh, I think that... uh, Castille [chuckles] is sort of, she's standing on her side of the fence, again, weirdly like exaggerated towards the audience. Uh, and like, pulls the sheet out of a satchel, and like, does the thing where she like, opens it up really big and then spins around and pulls it around herself.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Ali: And as this is happening, the like, fence, sort of moves down the stage a little bit, and she's approaching the soldiers and the mechanical dogs and pretending to be a beggar. And that's her new character now, is being like, “oh, please help me.” [snorts laughing]
Sylvia: I’m just a little guy and it's my birthday.
Austin: All right, give me another D2...
Ali: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course [laughing] uh, roll 1D2, right? Okay. That's a success.
Austin: That's a success! That's a play success. So, you manage to get past everybody, I guess. What's it look like?
Ali: Uh... yeah. I wonder how it would look in the, the play, like, is it like... is it this fake character who's a spy who's like, using this appeal to the soldiers, to be like... oh, my son died in the war, and I'm on my own, and I was wondering if I could come onto your base to have dinner, yadda-yadda-yadda.
Austin: [laughing]
Ali: [cackling]
Austin: Perfect. Yeah. Uh-huh.
Ali: And I just want to ask because, there was a question in the chat whether Castille is a moon god spy, or a champagne god spy.
Austin: Right.
Ali: I believe, I just want to make sure —
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ali: I believe she was a champagne god spy who, Audrey's character was a moon god general, who has a connection with the, the champagne god.
Austin: Sure. That makes — yeah. Okay.
Ali: Yeah. [giggling]
Austin: Right, right right right. Because at a point it was, wait a second, this is champagne god champagne. That —
Ali: Right, why would this person have this? [mumbling] Muh muh muh muh muh.
Austin: So it's possible that the sergeant is a traitor, potentially.
Ali: Mm-hm.
Austin: You have to, you have to really be up on the political moment in Marielda to really understand how to interpret this. This makes sense.
Ali: Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. Mm-hm.
Austin: Well, that's another play success. Uh, I guess we come over to Violet. How do you use this white embroidered bedsheet to help convince this cataloguer, Auguste, to switch sides on you? Or on the Font Men?
Janine: So, I imagine this is like, this is a requested meeting. Like, they sent a little note — they found out who this cataloguer was, sent a note that said like, “we're having a show! Come meet us at an exciting job opportunity.”
Austin: Mm-hm.
Janine: So, Violet meets with Auguste, and is like —
Janine (as Violet): Listen, I know it probably sounds very boring to be a propmaster for, for a theater troupe. We have so much, so much stuff and so much of it is, is make believe, and is for pageantry, unlike a lot of what I'm sure you're used to dealing with.
Austin (as Auguste): Liars. You're a bunch of liars.
Austin: Uh, Auguste is a little, —
Janine (as Violet): Uh, not really.
Austin: Is a little kobbin with a full beard and a pair of glasses.
Austin (as Auguste): When you get onstage, you tell untruths. You're little liars.
Janine (as Violet): It's a story. It's not an untruth.
Austin (as Auguste): It's an un— story, you're telling stories? That's what they say. You're telling stories, you're telling fibs, you're telling lies, you're telling fables.
Janine (as Violet): Well, that's a metaphor.
Austin (as Auguste): Metaphors... bunch of lies.
Janine (as Violet): Listen, listen, listen. You see this sheet?
Janine: And then she unfolds — the sheet's been folded very crisply, very small. And she unfolds it to... I want to say about like a fifth or a quarter.
Austin (as Auguste): I'm looking.
Janine: Smooths it out.
Janine (as Violet): Now, you might think, and this is where traditional propmasters often make the mistake, that we would love to avoid. They might just say, “oh, well, this is just white cloth.” Or they might say, oh, it's a bedsheet. Not every propmaster's going to notice, it's white, it is cloth, it is a bedsheet. It has embroidery, it has floral embroidery. The floral embroidery is of a separate color to the sheet. All of these have to be categorized separately, so you can cross-reference it when you need it. If you just categorize it as white fabric —
Austin (as Auguste): Mmm.
Janine (as Violet): You're not going to find it when you're looking for floral motifs. You're not going to find it when you're looking for ways to dress a room.
Austin (as Auguste): Mmm.
Janine (as Violet): It's a very complicated system, and very few propmasters by trade appreciate it.
Austin: Give me your roll. [chuckles]
Janine: Nah...
Austin: Oh, no. Is this is a situation where... I guess, who's, wait, who's GMing this one, who's directing?
Jack: I am.
Austin: Jack, what goes wrong here?
Jack: I think the exact opposite thing happens, you know. Like, they wanted Auguste to be with them, instead of in the place. And, I... what is it about this character, Austin, that you think would make them redouble their efforts in cataloguing? Is it that the job interview went so badly they were like, “look, actually I am fine [laughing] with the Font Men?” Or...
Austin: Yeah, I think this is, this is a reminder of the good, important job that they, it's one of those things where it's like, a week ago, Auguste Shortell would have been like, I'm sick of looking at the same books every day, the same maps, the same paintings, and keeping track of it all. It's all the same. And now, having seen this absolute charlatan try to convince them that, actually, you could go catalogue sheets to do lies, to do complicated lies with –
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: Absolutely, I'm doing the most important thing.
Jack: The holy work —
Austin: Yeah, exactly. Yes. I'm lucky, to be able to look at the same books every day.
Jack: So in this case, uh, I think probably what happens is, inside the orb, a little door opens in what you had thought was previously just a bookshelf, that is now revealed to have been actually just like a small, like a lean-to, or a little, a little side building, inside the Beauty and the Beast library.
Austin: [chuckles]
Jack: And from inside, you hear the voice of Auguste saying like, “is someone out there?”
Austin: [laughing] So there's a second room inside the orb, and Auguste is in there, doing the work.
Jack: Yep. And has just now noticed that the orb —
Austin: [laughing] Has moved?!
Jack: I guess floated out —
Austin: Floated up.
Janine: Oh god.
Austin: Oh, no. All right, well...
Janine: Great.
Austin: Uh, Art, you are the director's chair. Currently heist, 3 and 3. Play, 5 and 1. 5 successes, 1 failure. 3 and 3 on the heist.
Art: Uh-huh.
Austin: Who's up, who you casting?
Art: I mean, I think I gotta give the people what they want. And put Aubrey back on stage.
Austin: Yeah, put the [unintelligible] back onstage.
Sylvia: Okay.
Ali: [laughing]
Janine: Hm...
Jack: [unintelligible] General!
Austin: And then, who is, who is on the heist?
Art: And, you know, this is, this is someone that I would love to get a win...
Jack: [amused] Don’t know who you mean.
Art: I'm going to put Edmund on the heist.
Austin: Ah, sure. There we go. Tell me about your scene, general. Sergeant general. Aubrey.
Sylvia: I think this is me noticing that my, my secret map on my champagne bottle has been stolen.
Austin: Oh.
Sylvia: I'm livid, I'm furious, I'm... apoplectic. Other words.
Jack: Stamping around!
Austin: Uh-huh.
Sylvia: Uh...
Austin: And what is your goal?
Sylvia: My goal, uh, is to convey that I'm blaming the main character of the play for it.
Austin: [gasps] So you're going to try to get the young, the young woman caught up —
Sylvia: Yeah.
Sylvia (as Aubrey): This must be that young woman's fault!
Sylvia: Aubrey yells very loudly.
Austin, Jack and Janine: [laughing]
Sylvia (as Aubrey): I never trusted her!
Austin: Art, what's the difficulty?
Art: I think the difficulty might just be like, that this is a, this is a lot of projecting to do.
Austin: Ha-ha-ha! Not in terms of volume, but in terms of... putting this on the young woman.
Art: Yeah, this is about, this is about making the audience buy it.
Austin: Right. [sighs] All right, then Edmund, what is your heist objective?
Jack: Elsewhere in the building, separate from the Inkwell, is a subarea designed to track — because of course the Font Men are so fucking meticulous about this — who came into the building, what event was held, and where. And, knowing that gods have long memories and are vindictive, Edmund is planning on erasing every single reference to the theater company's arrival here —
Austin: Oh my god.
Jack: On this day. With the goal being that, even if people in Marielda remember it next week, come, you know, two years down from the line or whatever, when people realize that this document has gone missing, nobody even knows that the theater company was here.
Austin: Right. You're destroying the videotapes in the Hitman level.
Jack: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Austin: Yeah, mm-hm. Love it. What's Edmund's, uh, difficulty in doing this, Art?
Art: Give it, give it to me again, I'm having a processing issue. Uh... [chuckles]
Jack: Uh, I am trying to erase any record that the theater company or The Six was ever in this building. So that even if they find out that the document's gone missing, in a few weeks' time, nobody will ever know we were here.
Art: Got it, yeah, I'm back. Uh, I think the difficulty of this is that we've already established that there is like, reconfiguration happening as part of the defense.
Austin: Ah, mm-hm.
Art: And it's sort of like, it's like, uh, it's like trying to write something on top of something that's already written.
Jack: Huh...
Art: Or like the opposite of that, but I don't know how to describe that.
Austin: Right.
Art: Erasing on top of something that's already erased doesn't make sense. But, you know what I mean.
Austin: Yeah. This, this thing's already going to change in ways that's maybe hard to keep track of, and so, is it even... is it even a thing, how could you ever be sure that you've gotten all of the records clear —
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: When the records seem like they're changing, to someone with untrained eyes. And who doesn't know how they change around.
Jack: Yeah, theoretically — theoretically, Primo could have known about this, like, two weeks ago.
Austin: Sure. Right. All right, I think we need to reveal the prop. Uh, Aubrey, give me a D5, still. We still have everybody, I believe. Yeah, D5.
Sylvia: Okay. That's a 4. One of Art's props.
Austin: So, one of Art's props. And then, Jack, give me a, a D3. A full bar set.
Sylvia: Perfect. Perfect.
Austin: Uh-huh!
Janine: [chuckles]
Austin: I mean, the champagne was already important in that scene, right?
Sylvia: Exactly.
Janine: Mm-hm.
Sylvia: And, uh, now Aubrey gets to pretend to be drunk, 'cause even though she's only done it one time. Uh...
Jack: Aw!
Sylvia: Just like, very exaggerated stage drinking, a lot of, like, swinging a... the cup around in her hand.
Austin: [chuckling] Ugh...
Sylvia: Uh, clearly no liquid, because otherwise it would have spilled like four times over.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Janine: We're in high school morality play territory, now.
Austin: Oh yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, you know...
Art: [laughing]
Austin: Give me — [roll20 dice boop] and it succeeds! Everyone buys it!
Sylvia: Oh, shit. You're goddamn right it does, I'm great at this.
Jack: Aubrey is killing it!
Austin: Aubrey, this is what you should be doing.
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: Incredible.
Sylvia: The stage, it calls to me.
Austin: Uh... and then, as everyone's, clap clap clap — “yes, that young woman clearly is actually a villain.” [chuckling]
Sylvia: Oh, no!
Austin: Or is it just buying the idea that the young woman is being thrust into —
Sylvia: It's probably the idea that she's being wrongly accused.
Austin: Right, yes, exactly, right. Uh, all right. Uh, then, I guess Edmund, how do you use the full bar set to eliminate any record of the, the theater company being here, the Elephant Lounge Company?
Jack: There is a tool, I don't know when it was made, but it is used to, uh, let researchers read multiple books at the same time in, uh, in olden times. I'm placing a link to it in our Discord chat, and I will put it in the stream, as well.
Ali: [laughing] Oh, yes, baby. [snorts]
Jack: It's like a, it's like a wheel with a —
Austin: Oh, I love this thing.
Jack: Load of places for books on it.
Sylvia: Ohh.
Jack: And Edmund has managed to get into this facility, I think, through a combination of bribery, smacking someone over the head with a short baton, picking a lock, and is now in this room that is just... it's like this spinning thing, but it's a nightmare. Individual versions of this spinning thing are attached to other versions of spinning things. There are levers that you pull, bits of it come down. Uh... and it does seem that it's shifting and changing, even as he is using it, as though the reconfiguration is taking place to obscure information or bring it into a place where it is clearer, or something like that.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: And so, with an expression of frustration and absolute focus on his face, using a stirrer to hold one thing still, while he props another bit up with a muddler, a lemon muddler, a cocktail shaker... holds something and prevents it from turning too quickly, and then falls briefly, and all the books lurch in one direction, and, you know... he very slowly and carefully, with a quill, edits out all the various, redacts all the various bits of information. Or at least tries to.
Austin: Well, we'll see if that happens. Give me a roll.
Jack: Do I have to? Can we just say Edmund gets one, for free.
Austin: No, you've got to roll 1D2.
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: I'm sorry. [roll20 boop]
Art: You really deserve this one. Yes!
Jack: Hey!
Janine: There you go.
Ali: Yes.
Austin: There you go.
Janine: You got it honestly!
Austin: You got it, that's right, you came across it honestly.
Jack: It's beautiful. At one point, it's, he's, it's going so well that he, actually makes himself a drink.
Austin: [laughing]
Jack: Continues to work through —
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Jack: All the stuff.
Austin: Incredible. Uh, who, that was, Art was directing that one?
Ali: Yes, it's me.
Art: Correct.
Austin: So it's back to Ali.
Ali: Uh, yeah, I think we're going to get Violet onstage and Raven off.
Austin: [chuckling] Okay. Violet, what is your scene, now that we've wrapped back around to the lead of this... of this very complex play? [laughs]
Jack: [chuckling]
Janine: Uh, so I think Violet's scene is, uh, she's just returned from an outing, from an excursion.
Austin: A military excursion.
Janine: And finds — yes, yes, yes. And then finds, uh, a... a note that has been left for her, communicating that there are suspicions about her. It's not, it's not a note from the sergeant, it's a note from sort of someone who's close with the sergeant being like, “hey, you are under suspicion for some shit, be careful.” And I think this is... uh, that's sort of the, the... the, what they, what the play comes in on, but sort of the meat of it is, uh, the young woman meeting up with the green-grocer.
Austin: Mmm.
Janine: Just to like catch up, but it's like, you know the whole time she's thinking about that letter, and not thinking about the green-grocer.
Austin: Ouch. Uh... Ali, what is the obstacle to this goal?
Janine: Oh, I didn't say a goal, really.
Austin: No.
Janine: Well, I guess that's the thing — I guess the goal there is, hm... goals are hard. Uh...
Austin: Is the goal to make the green-grocer think that your attention is on, on them?
Janine: I think the goal is actually probably to, to be able to focus on the green-grocer, to be able to, you know, to focus on the people who deserve her attention, when, the, you know, when the army, when the people who lead her in the army are not deserving, because they don't trust her.
Austin: Right, right, right.
Janine: But you have to fight yourself for that, you know?
Austin: Right.
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: So, what is the obstacle to... to... the young woman's ability to, to focus here?
Ali: Can you remind me of who the green-grocer is in the play?
Janine: Edmund. That was the —
Austin: Mm-hm.
Ali: Sorry. [laughs]
Janine: This is the peace, the peaceful, uh, lover. Of Edmund.
Ali: Oh, sure sure sure. Okay, yeah. That Edmund played, or...?
Janine: Yes.
Austin: Yes. Edmund played.
Ali: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is the challenge? Uh... hm. I wonder if there's like... hm. Because the thing that I was thinking of was, the way that the game works, we don't have like, player character characters interacting onstage. And also, we have the late Act 1 thing of like —
Austin: Right.
Ali: The spy is setting up Violet's character. Should they meet onstage at any point? Uh, so I wonder if it's like, a thing of like, either... uh, like Castille as the beggar character is like, trying to distract her, or like, even, like, plant something on her, so like, even the green-grocer is like, “I'm suspicious of you, as well,” or whatever, right?
Austin: Ooh.
Ali: I don't know what the like, [laughing] the plot — beat should be, between those two. But, uh, yeah.
Austin: And we also just already have the thing of just like, the letter itself being a distraction. So a combination.
Janine: If that rumor's made it around —
Austin: Right.
Janine: And the green-grocer is also, starts to intimate, “hey, I heard maybe you're a traitor —“
Austin: You're a traitor, right.
Janine: And it's like, you know, if he sees her that way too...
Ali: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: Then you're extra worried. Okay.
Ali: Uh-huh.
Austin: And then, Raven, what is your goal? Last we saw, there was a cataloguer aboard the library vessel [chuckles] that you did not expect. Auguste Small-something. Small... Shortell, Shortell.
Art: I think it's invading the... the... Auguste, and sort of trying to make, it's not time to like, find the thing yet, but it's time to like, construct what we're going to like, leave in its place, you know, the, the —
Austin: Mmm.
Art: The Indiana Jones sack of whatever, and the, you know, something to put in the spot it is so that it's not noticed, sort of like, cannibalizing the material in the library to like, make a fake... book, or whatever.
Janine: Oh...
Austin: Right. So, you're — that's the goal, the goal is to do that. Ali, what is —
Art: And to, to probably get out, because I think I'm going to be onstage soon.
Austin: We'll, uh, see about that, yeah.
Ali: [giggling]
Janine: [chuckles]
Ali: Uh... sorry, I'm also having a processing issue. [laughing] Can you give me like the one-sentence version of the scene here?
Art: Yeah, so it's to make, like, a fake book out of material in the library to like —
Ali: Oh, sure sure sure. Okay. Yeah. Uh... I guess, it's, it's, uh... maybe it's like, you open books and they're all, like, things that you don't expect them to be?
Austin: Oh...
Ali: Like you try to open a book and it's like solid wood, or [laughing] you try to open a book and like —
Art: Oh, that's, really something I didn't expect.
Janine: God.
Austin: Yeah.
Austin: Uh-oh! Uh-oh.
Art: That's above and beyond what I thought I —
Ali: [still laughing, snorts]
Austin: That's a problem, yeah.
Janine: That's a great way to hide knowledge.
Austin: Yeah. Uh-huh.
Ali: Yeah.
Art: You think these are books?...
Austin: [laughing]
Art: There is a second, worse trap to get the book.
Austin: Uh, Violet, give me a 1D5. A 3, finally, one of Jack's props —
Janine: Finally.
Austin: Is going to come onboard.
Art: I get a whole D4 here.
Austin: And yeah, you get a whole D4 here, Art.
Art: Oh, I hope it's not a 4.
Austin: I do.
Art: Yes!
Janine: Yes!
Ali: Amazing! [giggling]
Austin: Perfect.
Jack: Oh, wow...
Austin: Identical twin.
Ali: Yes, baby.
Austin: It sounds like you have an idea, Janine, uh, how you're going to use the identical twin to solve your problem?
Janine: Yes. Uh, so I think... uh, I think — I think —
Austin: Huge pop in the chat, by the way.
Janine: When you approach a group of actors —
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: When you approach a group of actors and you say, “okay, you're hiring us to do this thing, we just happen to have this guy here who's got an identical twin, that's fine, right?”
Austin: [chuckles]
Janine: And you're the actors, and you're like, “that's amazing. That's a, that's a gift.”
Jack: This is the best day of my life!
Janine: Uh, we have to change the plot of this, we have to, we have to completely change this, to incorporate an identical twin scene at some point.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Janine: Uh, and I think this is the scene that they pick, uh, where basically, because the young woman wants to be, wants to sort of be in the moment with her beloved, and not be distracted by this lingering doubt about the army believing she's a traitor and all of this bullshit, uh, they sort of metaphorically represent the attention that she has for the green-grocer as this extra person, this, you know, this identical person who's like a part of the conversation, and you can see when her attention gets drawn away, by the sort of, by the twin sort of disappearing off the, out of the — like vocally disappearing, and also the light maybe moves away. Uh, so it's like, sort of coming in and out. Uh... while the spy is, of course, in the background.
Austin: Right, in the background.
Janine: Maybe that's the thing, is there's a sort of trade-off between the spy and the identical twin, where they're kind of like —
Austin: Uh-huh.
Janine: Fighting for the attention of the spotlight while the scene's going on.
Jack: Incredible.
Ali: Mmm. Very profound.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Uh, do the roll. Let's see if it actually does manage to help.
Janine: That's a 1!
Austin: That's a 1, that's another play success. This play is going great.
Ali: We love it.
Janine: Uh-huh. It's a great play.
Austin: We love to see it.
Ali: Can you really know yourself?
Austin: Uh, Raven. How are you using... an identical twin to help?
Art: Why, that would be Raven's identical twin, Crow.
Austin: Ah.
Ali: [cackling]
Austin: Of course.
Sylvia: Oh my fucking god.
Austin: Of course. How could it be anything else.
Jack: [laughing]
Art: Who, uh, came into the sphere once it was above —
Austin: Right.
Art: The ink. On top of the ink? I don't know really how to use these terms for this.
Janine: It's floating, yeah. Floating.
Art: Float — floating, yeah.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Art: And it just like, it's a two hands are better than one situation.
Austin: Yeah.
Art: It's, it's more people to look at more books to find the ones that aren't wood and are books. Or really, like, is it a problem that it's made of wood? You're just trying to make it look like —
Austin: [laughing]
Art: You know, if it looks like a book, it looks like a book. It's about, it's about more brains.
Austin: Right. Love it. Give me a dice roll, I guess. 1D2.
Art: Who's going first?
Austin: You. You —
Art: Oh, it's just me, [roll20 boop] Janine's already gone. Boom!
Austin: Boom.
Janine: Hell yeah.
Austin: That's another heist success. 5 heist successes, only failures. This is going great so far. Uh... what's the success look like? What's having two of them there? Is this, is this kind of how you keep Auguste away, is this —
Art: Uh-huh. Yeah, I think the success looks like, just like, when Auguste gets too close to whichever one is working at the time, the other one knocks something over on the other side, or —
Austin: Right.
Art: Pushes a ladder off of one of those little tracks on the —
Austin: Yep. Mm-hm.
Art: Libraries have, with the ladders.
Austin: Yeah, we know libraries.
Art: Yeah, just, yeah, it's a game of keepaway. It's uh, it's uh, — yeah.
Austin: Poor Auguste. Incredible. Uh... great. Sylvi, you're up in the director's chair.
Sylvia: Okay. Who's left that hasn't gone?
Austin: We've got a Violet heist, a Raven onstage [chuckling], an Edmund onstage —
Jack: Ha-ha —
Austin: And a Castille heist.
Sylvia: Okay. Uh, I'd like to find a way to give Raven a break here, but... I guess... wait —
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: Was Edmund also just in the last thing?
Austin: No —
Sylvia: I'm misremembering, no.
Austin: Well, sort of but not really, right? No. Ethan.
Sylvia: No, because the — yeah.
Austin: So yeah. Are we, are we, who are we getting onstage? Ethan or Raven.
Sylvia: Uh... I'll go with, I'll go with — wait, is it Ethan or Edmund?
Austin: Sorry, it's Edmund, I said Ethan, my bad. Sorry.
Sylvia: Okay. Uh...
Ali: [giggling]
Jack: Which Hitch?
Sylvia: I think we'll go with Edmund onstage, and...
Austin: Uh-huh.
Sylvia: Who was the, who was in the last scene?
Austin: Violet was in the last scene.
Sylvia: Violet was in the last scene. Okay, then it's Castille in this one.
Austin: Okay.
Sylvia: Uh... yeah.
Austin: So, Edmund, onstage, what is your scene, and what is the goal you're trying to achieve?
Jack: [sighs] I am investigating, I'm, I'm sneaking into the general's quarters to discover a letter of confession, that the general wrote to her sister, saying “I framed that woman.”
Ali: [gasps]
Austin: Incredible. Okay. And the goal is finding that letter? Or the goal is... not being caught?
Jack: Finding the letter.
Austin: Okay.
Jack: Because I was... I’ve always been like.
Austin: You don’t believe that the young woman could have been a traitor.
Jack: No.
Austin: I see.
Jack: No. Although, I have a sick suspicion, because I'm like, “oh, our relationship's changed since the war has ended,” or whatever. But.
Austin: Right, right, right. Yeah.
Janine: Who is anyone? Who can anyone be?
Jack: Who is anyone? Who can anyone be? Yeah.
Austin: Sylvi, what is the, what is the added obstacle to doing this?
Sylvia: Oh my god. Uh... it's, like — I don't want to just say it's like, it's hard for the audience to get it. But it kind of sounds like it's hard for the audience to get it, you know?
Austin: [laughing]
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: Uh-huh.
Janine: [laughing]
Sylvia: Like, this is kind of ambitious.
Austin: Yeah, uh-huh. And then, uh, Castille, what is your heist objective? What are you getting up to?
Ali: Yeah, what's the situation in the ink orb, right now?
Austin: Ink orb hovering at the top of the ink. Inside of it, a pair of actors. One of whom is about to be onstage. Uh, looking to, to lock down the information that they need, which is information on who they are. Uh... so I'm trying find that, in this final moment. And then, uh... that's, yeah, that's what it is. We can't get that information until Act 2, which is... 2 scenes from now. We're almost there. Next scene, we're going to take a break, and then we're going to do Act 2.
Ali: Yeah, I think — yeah, I think Castille is aware of a patrol that is going to be going through —
Austin: Mmm.
Ali: The corridor, leading to the ink room.
Austin: Okay.
Ali: So she's sort of stalking the, the patrolman, and...
Austin: Keeping that, that pathway open for egress and —
Ali: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: Okay, gotcha. Ingress and egress. What is the difficulty here, Sylvi?
Sylvia: Uh... I think — okay, here's, here's my idea for this, is that there's someone who is either like, new, or straggling on the patrol, and —
Austin: Oh...
Sylvia: They're coming at a different time than expected.
Austin: Love it.
Ali: Mmm.
Sylvia: So, it's thrown off the rhythm of what you've got planned.
Austin: Fantastic. All right. Give me, uh, Edmund, give me a D5.
Ali: I wanna do a…
Austin: Another Jack prop. So give me a D3, uh, Castille.
Ali: Yeah.
Austin: A collapsible ladder.
Ali: A collapsible ladder.
Austin: A, a nice, simple prop for this. Uh, I — well... [chuckling]
Ali: [snorts laughing]
Austin: I thought about how to use them and I have no idea.
Jack: [laughing]
Sylvia: Wait...
Austin: Uh-huh?
Sylvia: Was this the collapsible ladder that just got crossed out, or is this Little Wolfgang?
Austin: This is the collapsible ladder —
Janine: Collapsible ladder, yeah.
Austin: I just crossed out —
Sylvia: Yeah, okay.
Austin: Little Wolfgang is virtuoso —
Sylvia: I like, happily for a second, I was like, oh my god —
Austin: Not yet, sadly.
Sylvia: Sorry, “Volfgang.”
Austin: Wolfgang.
Janine: If only.
Austin: [indistinguishable European accent] Little Wolfgang, virtuoso.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah. Uh-huh.
Sylvia: Thank you for doing it in the proper pronunciation.
Austin: Yeah, of course.
Ali: [giggling]
Janine: I find it very exciting that none of mine have been crossed off yet —
Austin: Uh-huh.
Janine: Because it means that, I, I truly hope, that no one, no one rolls a 1 until all of the other items are gone, and then we just have to back-to-back —
Ali: [laughing]
Janine: Go through all of mine.
Austin: That would be so funny.
Jack: Oh, no.
Janine: At the very end.
Austin: All right, so, collapsible ladder, how are you using this to do a scene of sneaking — explain, the difficulty again was, it seems like it's kind of hard for the audience to follow that you're sneaking into the general's bedroom to prove — to find a letter that proves that she set up the young woman.
Jack: Oh, god. Oh, god. [laughing] How do I use this ladder to make it clearer?
Ali: [laughing]
Jack: [laughing] The stage manager, you know, is saying to Edmund, “they're not getting it.”
Austin: “They're not going to get it.”
Jack: “Use this.” Hands them this —
Austin: “Here, take this, take this, take this —“
Ali: [snorts laughing]
Jack: Hands him a ladder. Uh... okay. This scene plays out with Edmund adopting two roles. One, as the general, which he performs by standing at the top of the ladder, to show the general's high stature, and one in which he is the green-grocer, standing at the bottom of the ladder to show his low stature. When he plays, occasionally he plays his beau, and he climbs halfway up the ladder. And, uh, in these attempts to visualize the, uh, the status of the people, he tries to communicate what he's doing in the scene and how he's doing it.
Austin: As I step up the next rung of the ladder, what I am doing is... blank.
Jack (as Edmund): I'm the general now!
Jack: Climb climb climb climb climb.
Jack (as Edmund as General): I think that woman —
Austin: [laughing]
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Austin: Oh my god, this is miserable. Oh no.
Jack (as Edmund as General): Is pretending to be —
Jack: Okay, climbs down now, it's me, I'm at the bottom of the ladder.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: Give me a D2. This is terrible.
Art: Oh, this is going to end with someone screaming, “it's a metaphor!”
Austin: Uh-huh.
Ali: [still laughing]
Austin: Hey, that's — a success!
Art: Oh my god! This one worked.
Austin: Somehow!
Ali: We love it. Yeah, we love it.
Sylvia: Finally.
Austin: Somehow?!
Ali: It's art, okay?
Austin: It's art. That's what they say in the —
Janine: They just needed clarity. They needed someone to say, “here's who I am and here's what I think.”
Austin: Here's who I am and this is what I think, yeah.
Jack: Yeah, flashforward a week, and in a broadsheet review of something, someone is like, [doing highbrow critic voice] “uh, towards the end of Act 1, the mustachioed man came onstage and, playing three roles inventively, with the help of a ladder, elucidated —“
Austin: [laughing] Oh...
Jack: “What had previously been complex circumstances.”
Austin: [chuckles] Bravo. Uh, and then, and then, Castille, how are you using the ladder to overcome the difficulty of there being a, a guard off-rhythm with the patrol you expected?
Ali: Uh, I think that Castille is like, “oh, this person isn't here yet, but if I make a little bit of a scene, they'll come approach me.” I think what she's going to be doing is like, standing tall on this ladder, being on it. [laughing] The patrol comes by —
Austin: Comes past, yeah.
Ali: Yeah. The ladder collapses, she falls down off of it, knocks this person out, and then like, drags their body and like throws them into a — [laughing]
Austin: Uh-huh.
Ali: Like a shaft near the —
Austin: Oh my god, okay. Give me a D2 to see if —
Ali: Extend the ladder again, drag this person up...
Austin: Uh-huh.
Ali: Put them in a little attic shelf, lock them in this little room, no more patrol...
Austin: So, wait, you're using the ladder to like, let you access additional places to hide bodies?
Ali: [chuckling]
Sylvia: Oh, hell yeah.
Ali: Right.
Austin: Wow.
Ali: While also using the ladder to make the patrol go be like, “what's going on over there?”
Austin: Right, uh-huh.
Ali: Perfect setup.
Sylvia: [guard voice] “Huh? Who made that noise?”
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: Uh-huh.
Jack: [chuckling]
Ali: For the love of god, let this be a 1...
Austin: Give me a — D2. And it is.
Ali: Thank you, baby.
Austin: Unbelievable. Crushing it, in the heist, also.
Sylvia: “It's the Bat.”
Austin: [laughing] “It's the Bat!”
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: Uh... okay. Uh, well, that brings us to the final, the final thing here. I'm sorry, Janine, you don't get a choice for casting.
Jack: Oh, this is going to be a real —
Austin: You want to, do you want to —
Jack: A doozy.
Austin: Do you, do you want to save your thing for next time, or do we want to — like, do you want to, still get to cast, at the beginning of the next round? Or is it fine that you're going to —
Janine: It doesn't matter.
Austin: Okay. Well then, Raven is going to be onstage, and Violet is going to be doing heist. So you are, in fact, casting yourself in this one, Violet.
Janine: Mm-hm.
Ali: Oh, no! Oh, sorry.
Austin: It's exactly — happened as expected.
Ali: [laughing]
Janine: Yep.
Austin: Uh... well... Raven, what — how are you getting back onstage?
Art: …quickly?
Austin: Quickly. Is this —
Jack: Is this like, another Maelgwyn card? Or should we save these for Castille?
Ali: Oh, no, no, no, this is the table's cards.
Austin: Yeah. Yeah, is Maelgwyn showing up to like, swap a... a Violet and a Raven quickly, somehow? Is there a... I mean, Maelgwyn, you know, Maelgwyn can only do so much, y'all.
Art: How far are we, really, from the stage?
Austin: Not that far, but are you going to show up covered in ink? I guess you could put on the mirror outfit again.
Art: Yeah. I, I, that's, yeah. Putting on the mirror outfit. My idea for this scene, and I think we can all agree, this is obviously what we were building for to end the first act —
Austin: Mmm.
Art: Is an elaborate musical number, where the mirror sings the inner thoughts of every principle character —
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Austin: Right. Yes.
Art: Except for Violet.
Austin: That's where I thought you were going.
Janine: Ooh, yeah.
Jack: The Stephen Sondheim —
Austin: Obviously. Okay.
Art: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah. Okay. I, I mean, here's my proposition. I think the challenge, you should just tell me what your goals are. The challenge is, neither of you are in the place you need to be. And you have to get there quickly. And that's the challenge for both of you for this part of the thing. So, Violet, what is your goal as part of the heist in in this moment?
Janine: Uh... I think my — I think my goal is to deal with Auguste.
Austin: Okay, you're going to deal with Auguste, after, yeah.
Janine: It's difficult to answer how until I know what the prop is, because I feel like that changes the strategy way too much.
Austin: Right. Right. Well, and again, part of the difficulty is, you have to deal with this, this extra radical you've let into the chemical compound, but you're not there yet. You were just onstage. You have to get there quickly, somehow. I —
Janine: Right.
Austin: Both of you need to roll some dice. Raven, give me a D5. [pause] This is — your props, Art. And —
Sylvia: God.
Austin: And, and — uh,
Janine: 1D2.
Austin: Yeah, 1D2. It's 2! [laughing] It's a lot of counterfeit money.
Janine: Okay. Well...
Ali: Hell yes.
Janine: This actually potentially made things a lot easier.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Art: Yeah.
Austin: How do you use — who goes first? Who wants to use the money to... succeed at their goal?
Art: Uh... Janine, do you want to go first? It feels a little, it feels a little more straightforward...
Janine: [chuckling] It does feel pretty straightforward for me, right?
Austin: So you're just hustling from the stage, with money?
Janine: Uh, I think, I think it's maybe like, I've — word has made it back, like —
Austin: Right.
Janine: This fucking guy is, someone just mentions a vague description of them or something, it's like, oh, fuck. Okay.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Janine: Well, this is my mess, I've got to deal with it now. And just, grabs a case full of counterfeit money, yeah. Knowing specifically like —
Austin: Ugh.
Janine: This is convincing enough, maybe, to get this guy.
Austin: Sprinting down the hallways —
Janine: Yep.
Austin: Extra dollars flying out of the, the briefcase or whatever.
Janine: Mm-hm.
Austin: Give me the 1D2. That's a success.
Janine: I succeed.
Austin: So Auguste... accepts this from you? Question mark? And is just like...
Austin (as Auguste): Now this is what, this is — money is true.
Austin: [laughing] For some reason buys that this is real money —
Janine: Sure.
Austin: Even though it's coming from a professional liar?
Janine: I mean, this is the thing. When you're, when you're not exposed to a lot of storytelling, you don't hear about heist stories and fake money and briefcases full of cash being thrust under the nose of unsuspecting goons.
Austin: Mm-hm. Mm-hm.
Janine: Like you just [chuckling], you don't get to put that stuff together.
Austin: Did we say that the, the ink, the, the glass ball has docked somehow with something, so that you don't have to dive through the ink to get in? At this point?
Janine: … yeah. We can say that. I thought that was kind of —
Art: It's at the top.
Austin: Yeah, it's at the top.
Janine: [unintelligible] been like pushed to the side or something.
Austin: Yeah, I don't know that we had docked, quite yet. I don't know that the — if it had — the whole bottle, the whole underwater — in my mind, this whole thing is like a lightbulb in shape. And so now it's rotated —
Sylvia: Oh...
Austin: So the bottom of the lightbulb, which is what Art had to swim up into —
Janine: I had assumed it was accessible, because... there had specifically been a roll to make it accessible that was succeed — was a success, but.
Austin: Yeah, but I didn't know if that success was like, uh, you don't have to swim all the way down through, or what. But —
Janine: Yeah, no.
Austin: In any case, it's super accessible now.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: And, and you run in with the money. And Auguste doesn't know the first thing from counterfeit money, despite being a cataloguer. Only catalogues true things, cannot understand that this is a false thing.
Janine: I mean, the thing is, you know, money goes through a lot of different changes, like in terms of when you issue it and stuff. Maybe this number that's in the wrong space —
Austin: Oh, sure.
Janine: Is just a, is just an older version. Or a newer version.
Austin: Yeah. Mm-hm. Mm-hm.
Janine: Who can say?
Austin: Who could say? Uh, Raven?
Art: Yeah, uh, hold on —
Austin: Rushing back —
Art: I'm, I'm, trying to find a good YouTube video.
Austin: Oh, okay.
Ali: [giggling] Okay.
Janine: YouTube, or U2.
Ali: A multimedia experience.
Art: YouTube.
Austin: Oh, okay.
Ali: Well, I'm trying to evoke something that perhaps some people in our audience might not be familiar with.
Austin: Okay.
Ali: Which is the entrance of the professional wrestler, Kazuchika Okada.
Austin: Ah, I see.
Sylvia: Ah, okay.
Ali: Thank you.
Austin: The, uh, the rain-maker?
Art: The rain-maker, yeah.
Sylvia: The rain-maker.
Austin: Yes.
Art: I'm going to put a video in the chat...
Austin: Mm-hm.
Ali: Thank you.
Austin: I'm not going to click it, because I don't want to get muted.
Art: Yeah.
Austin: But people at home should definitely click it.
Art: Yeah, definitely. Do I need to put it in our chat, or is everyone cool with that if they need to click it? Uh... anyway, he is the rain-maker, he makes it rain money.
Austin: Right.
Art: Uh, and, you know —
Ali: [giggling] Oh my god.
Art: I think, if really convincing counterfeit money was falling from the ceiling, I as the audience of a play...
Austin: [laughing]
Art: Wouldn't necessarily care if the person who was supposed to be in this scene was a little late.
Austin: Was a little late. Money starts falling from the roof, from the ceiling —
Art: Uh-huh.
Austin: To distract that the play has just stopped.
Art: Uh-huh.
Austin: No one is on stage, there's no music playing — or, there is music playing, but it's money music.
Art: Right, yeah. It's, uh, yeah, there's the coin-drop sound effect.
Austin: Right, right, right. Give me, uh, give me a 1D2.
Ali: Has anyone said that we're really good at this?
Austin: Oh, we're fantastic.
Sylvia: [laughing]
Ali: [giggling]
Janine: The chat, the chat has said it, a lot.
Austin: Oh, the chat has, the chat has been saying it.
Ali: [cackling, snorts laughing]
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: [roll20 boop] And that's of course a success.
Art: And it worked! It worked!
Austin: Of course it worked.
Janine: Hell yeah.
Ali: Of course a success.
Art: Ace!
Janine: Amazing.
Austin and Janine: [laughing]
Art: Of the Marielda theater!
Austin: Uh-huh. The Ace of the, yeah, of the Font Theater is here. Uh, okay. This is, it's going incredibly well. Uh, the most important part of the intermission phase of the game is to take an actual intermission from play. Encourage players to step away from the game for a moment to stretch and refuel before returning. We are going to take a break.
Austin: Once everyone is back, review the current number of coin flip successes and failures on both your heist and play scorecards. I'm seeing 7 beautiful lines here under heist. Success, heist. Only 3 failures. And 9 successes on play, with only 1 failure. At the end of the game —
Janine: It's a good play.
Austin: It's a good play. At the end of the game, these numbers will determine whether the plot ends in comedy, by the Shakespearean definition, ending with good fortune, a majority of successes, or tragedy, ending in bad fortune — majority failures. These values are independent from each other, so a play with a tragic story could cover for a successful heist, or vice versa. If there's an equal number of tallies in both columns, your plot ends with a mix of good and bad, a tragicomedy. You'll have an equal number of scenes in Act 2 with which to reverse your fortunes, and you'll also be given the ability to rig coin flips via callbacks to earlier plot points.
As a group, take stock of your story so far, whether you want to try for one ending or another, or leave things up to chance. We want a, we want a good ending here, right? On both of these?
Art: Yeah.
Austin: We're rooting for our heroes here? Okay.
Jack: Yeah, we do.
Janine and Ali: Yeah.
Sylvia: It'd be really weird if we had a bad ending, and —
Austin: Uh — it would be.
Ali: It wouldn't be that weird, but... [laughing]
Austin: Wow.
Sylvia: I mean, you know.
Austin: Yeah. Uh, how many scenes were in that first — how many props were there? How many props were there per scene, or per act?
Ali: One. So... 8.
Austin: So there should be 8, is that right? Well, no, there's, there's — there's 1, 2, 3, 4 —
Janine: Is it 10?
Austin: It should be 10? I just realized I stopped keeping track of how many, of what our props were each time, on these cards on the side and I'm trying to fix it.
Sylvia: We have 10. We have 10.
Austin: 10 crossed out?
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: What am I missing on the left? What came after the Samol elephant? Samolephant?
Jack: Uh...
Austin: Okay, let's go backwards.
Janine: So, counterfeit money was the very last one. Before that was the full bar set.
Austin: No, wait, I thought the —
Sylvia: That was the collapsible ladder.
Austin: The collapsible ladder was last.
Janine: Oh, right. Collapsible ladder, then it was full bar set, then it was champagne. Right?
Sylvia: What about the smoke bomb?
Janine: And we were all using the bedsheet.
Austin: Oh, boy. Okay. Ladder... uh, bedsheet. I'm just going to put them out here, and it's fine if they're not in the right order.
Janine: Yeah, it doesn't matter what order they're in.
Austin: Bedsheet, uh, what else do we need?
Jack: Twin.
Sylvia: Bomb.
Austin: Twin... what else did we have? Champagne... is that it? Oh, and bar set. This is important for a thing I'm about to explain.
Sylvia: Smoke bomb! Is that not listed?
Austin: Smoke bomb. It's not.
Janine: Oh yeah, shit, sorry.
Ali: Smoke bomb, yeah.
Austin: Smoke bomb. Uh...
Art: [unintelligible] bar set.
Sylvia: I must have been saying it too quietly, because I said it like four times.
Austin: No, you did, I just hadn't written it down.
Sylvia: Okay, okay.
Austin: Is that it? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6... uh-oh, I scrolled too fast. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9... and I'm missing... and I'm of course missing something. Uh... smoke bomb, got it —
Ali: You didn't write — oh, you did write twins.
Austin: Uh... bedsheet? Is bedsheet there? Bedsheet's there. Cat figure is there.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: Uh, identical twin, collapsible ladder, did I write collapsible ladder?
Ali: Yeah.
Janine: You're at 10. Oh, wait, no.
Austin: 2 of them are bar set. Yeah. Chat is probably yelling at me, I should just look at chat. Champagne, champagne.
Janine: Right.
Ali: Oh, oh, oh.
Austin: Champagne. Okay. Here is why this is important, yes. Uh, at the top of Act 2, write Act 2 on a notecard and add it to your timeline. Uh, Act 2 continues until each player has had 2 additional turns, for a total of 4 turns, or 8 scenes, over the course of the game. Act 2 plays the same as Act 1, with two exceptions. If it makes sense within the plot, any heist scene's goal during Act 2 can be: acquiring the target. Once the target is acquired, all the heist scene goals should involve extracting the target and crew from the scene of the crime. So that should be, the heist needs to be about getting the thing and getting out. From now on, we can get the thing any heist scene.
Two: instead of flipping a coin, you can add a second prop from act one into your scene as a callback. Callbacks let you choose whether a scene succeeds or fails, without flipping a coin. Act 1 prop cards can each only be used for a callback once, and callbacks only apply to the current heist scene or play scene. To avoid flipping a coin for both scenes during a single turn, you'd have to make two separate callbacks. One callback prop for the play, and one for the heist. After evoking an Act 1 callback, mark the card with an X to indicate it can't be used again.
So, that's why we needed all these, so we could mark them with an X, crossing them out, so that we know we've used them as a callback, giving you a success without needing to roll for it. Okay.
Jack: You do also have to use the —
Art: Where is this list located on the —
Austin: On the left.
Jack: On the left-hand side. You do also have to use the prop that you were given in the scene, as well?
Austin: Yes, you do.
Jack: You can just, you can just —
Austin: Yep.
Jack: Combine it with another prop to swing it towards success or failure.
Austin: Mm-hm. Mm-hm.
Ali: Oh, okay, okay. And we can all only do this once, or...
Austin: You can do it for as many things as there are, and there's 10.
Ali: Oh, okay. Okay.
Austin: But you can't callback Act 2 things. We just need the Act 1 ones over here, so we had them and knew we could cross them out.
Ali: Right right right. Okay.
Austin: Are we ready to get into Act 2?
Ali: I think so.
Jack: Yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah. I guess so.
Austin: Jack is the director, I believe.
Jack: Mmm.
Austin: Let's try to avoid the thing where someone has to direct themselves, this time.
Jack: I would like to see an Aubrey stage performance —
Sylvia: Okay.
Jack: And I would like to see a Castille heist performance.
Ali: Sure.
Austin: So we're starting with the general onstage, and with Castille —
Jack: Oh, wait, hold on. Before we go —
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: Can anybody here, on the call, confidently give a quick synopsis of the play so far?
Austin: Great, great.
Ali: [laughing]
Syvli: …No?
Art: Not it. I'm just going to say...
Sylvia: Absolutely not me.
Ali: Uh... there is a young woman, who is in the army of a moon god.
Austin: Mmm.
Ali: Uh, she is... an impressive soldier. She has a lover who feels distant from her. Uh, she has a mean general who is new to her, division, I guess you would say, who is taking her, uh, her as in the general, her like, insecurity and establishment within this place out on this young woman. Uh... the — [laughing] the general, who is overbearing, seems to have a connection with the champagne god people, which is the rival army. While her life is going through this weirdness, and who really knows themselves, there are two spies who are working against the moon god army, uh, we don't really know what their... [laughing] goals are at this point, besides to start a ruckus. Is there anything I'm missing?
Austin: Uh, do we have the green-grocer? Sorry, go ahead, Jack.
Jack: Did you say the — the green-grocer, yeah.
Ali: Oh, the green-grocer is the lover, right, who feels distant from —
Austin: Yes. Yes.
Ali: The young girl?
Austin: Yes.
Ali: Yeah. Yes?
Austin: From the woman. Yeah. Mm-hm.
Ali: Yes. Yes. Okay, yeah.
Austin: Love it.
Jack: Who is attempting to discover that the general has been framing her for the theft of the —
Austin: Right.
Jack: Champagne map.
Ali: Yes, yes yes yes, yeah.
Austin: Interesting that in the first act, a lot of the story is about knowing others, and not yet knowing themself.
Ali: Ooh.
Art: I was hoping to bring that in with the musical number, capped it off —
Austin: Okay, well sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. Right.
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: Yeah, we didn't really get much about what that musical number was, did we?
Ali: Can I get a synopsis of the heist so far? Because I feel like those are the details that I've lost — [laughing]
Austin: Fair.
Ali: Uh...
Jack: Okay, so. We have been, The Six, you and me and Aubrey — have been hired by actors who have forgotten their names and identities, to break into the Font Men's headquarters during a play and steal back their identities. Their identities are kept inside The Inkwell, a reservoir — a, uh, globe-shaped library contained deep within a reservoir of ink to protect the contents inside it from being stolen. Everybody has attempted to get into this one way or another — swimming down, fighting ink fish, using a smoke bomb to make the, the library in the center of the Inkwell float up, creating a duplicate book to leave behind, hiding, uh, the fact that the theater company was ever there from the records, protecting it against reconfiguration. And also, just like, fucking it up tremendously.
Austin: [chuckling]
Jack: You know. Failing to pay off, uh, uh, someone to come and join us. Uh, and then, uh, successful paying them off with counterfeit money.
Austin: [laughing]
Janine: [laughing]
Jack: Failing to get a key that would have made a whole thing a lot easier. Uh, I feel like Hitchcock fucked it up somewhere else, too, didn’t he?
Austin: We should note that you don't have the key, which means that, whatever the, whatever the thing is you're looking for must be locked, right? And so, that could be an early challenge.
Jack: Yeah. Yeah, that’s true.
Austin: I also just love that Auguste was like, you tried to bribe Auguste with a job, and like a new life, and that didn't work. And then you were like, “how about money?” And Auguste was like, “yep!”
Ali: [laughing]
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: Absolutely.
Art: Yeah.
Austin: All right. I think that we're good to go.
Jack: [laughing] Ugh... he's going to do well in Marielda.
Austin: Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh, Aubrey —
Art: Unless he runs into an elephant.
Austin: Oh, no! Aubrey, what is the first scene? How does Act 2 begin in this play?
Sylvia: Uh...
Jack: Oh yeah, you're opening Act 2!
Sylvia: Uh, I think... my idea is that... Aubrey's character, General Madden, I believe I said.
Austin: Yeah, General Madden.
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: The General, please. The fans like to say General Madden for other reasons, but... the play itself doesn't officially have any character names, I think that's a distinguishing — although I guess, if the only character to have a, a name, is the General, I think it's saying something also, isn't it?
Sylvia: Yeah. Dang.
Austin: Hm. All right. Let's do the Sergeant General Madden, for sure.
Sylvia: Uh... and I think it's, it's, it's this general sort of whipping people up to get ready to go arrest the, the young woman.
Ali: [gasps]
Jack: Oh, wow.
Sylvia: For treason.
Austin: Oh, no.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: I, I can remember some scenes of trying to arrest the young woman in Friends at the Table, it never goes well.
Ali: [giggling]
Sylvia: No, usually not.
Austin: Okay, what's the —
Jack: Uh, doesn’t the first time it go very well, and then the second time it starts going worse.
Austin: Uh, yeah. Jack, what is the difficulty here?
Jack: Oh, gosh. The difficulty here, is that the green-grocer has stolen the letter, and has printed it in the newspaper. Now — this is already, uh, uh, uh, striking. But in Marielda, correct me if I'm wrong here, Austin, that's exceptionally striking. Because the idea of being able to like, disseminate the written word widely —
Austin: Oh, right, sure.
Jack: In a newspaper, and it's stolen correspondence from somebody in power —
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: It's this like, deeply taboo thing to even be — to sort of appear onstage.
Austin: Yeah, I imagine, this is, this is what makes it feel like it's like, science fiction to the people here, right? This is clearly not happening in our world. The rules of our society are not being applied here. This is speculative. We're seeing how a different society might work. Maybe... maybe, Samothes was right, and this is propaganda from, from, uh, uh, from Samot, right? Uh, all right. Castille, heists. What are you doing?
Ali: Heist. Uh, I think it's, uh... Castille's, uh, time in the, the ink library, right? I think that she like, secured the like, oh, we can stay safe in there for the next hour or so, because I took out the patrol, and sucked him into a wall. Question mark. Uh —
Austin: Uh-huh.
Ali: So... [laughing]
Jack: Well fuck.
Ali: I think that... I guess we don't have to do the like, she goes down there scene. We can just say that she's down there —
Austin: She's there, yeah.
Ali: Working on the obstacle. This is a big library, we've switched a book, we're looking for this object. Uh, maybe there's some sort of complicated Dewey Decimal System or whatever, and she's trying to like, uh... like pull on the right, uh, like book in the right aisle to be able to like, unlock something.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Ali: In a different part of the library, right? And she's like, cross-referencing between like, I don't know. [laughs] Like, looking for like a certain... uh, there's like a, there's like a, a, a location card that like, has a special code on it or something or is folded in some sort of way, and then she has to go find the book and pull a thing and it'll unlock the other thing.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Ali: It's like a weird escape room puzzle.
Austin: Love it. What is the added difficulty here, Jack?
Jack: There is something else inside this —
Austin: Oh, no.
Jack: Library, that is protected by a similar puzzle.
Austin: [gasps] Oh.
Jack: And it is very difficult to know whether you are expending a lot of thought and energy and difficulty to open a door behind which there might be something that you — something valuable, which might be useful to Castille, but might not be the thing that you're spending all this time looking for.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Ali: Mm-hm.
Austin: Yeah, people should go back and watch the escape room simulator that we played earlier —
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: For a little, uh, a little peek into what that might be like. Uh, all right. I guess we need Aubrey to give me a 1D5, and then Castille to give a 1D-something else.
Sylvia: Okay.
Austin: A 4.
Sylvia: That’s a 4.
Austin: So Art's, Art — you're not going to roll anything here, Castille.
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: We are getting a very large mirror, as the key prop.
Ali: [sighs]
Austin: In this sequence. Aubrey, how do you use that in your, in your thing.
Sylvia: I'm wondering if I... can I break the mirror?
Austin: [gasps]
Ali: [gasps]
Sylvia: I feel like that's the big dramatic moment, is the bad guy breaks the mirror.
Austin: Oh my god… What — oh my god, that seems — to what effect?
Jack: Why do you break the mirror?
Austin: Yeah. Is there a big speech?
Sylvia: Yeah, uh, oh, boy, is there? Uh, uh,... yeah. Sure. There's some stuff about, uh... like... I don't know why, I'm imagining this is at the young woman's home for some reason, this part. But.
Austin: You've broken in —
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: To further the framing?
Sylvia: There's some shit about like the, the mirror taunting me, and like —
Ali: Oh...
Sylvia: Uh, uh —
Austin: Well, you're the real traitor, right? And so —
Sylvia: I don't care about — yeah, well, yeah. And just like, I need to, when I break it there's some line about like, uh, 7 years of bad luck will pale in comparison to the 70 years of misery that this person's going to go through.
Austin: Oh, no.
Sylvia: It's not a great line.
Austin: It's not. Well, let's roll 1D2 and see if it's a great line, or not.
Sylvia: You know, people might just like [roll20 boop] No, it's not a good line.
Austin: No, no, it's not a good —
Sylvia: That's my first, that is the first time I have not —
Jack: Oh, no.
Sylvia: I should have, fuck, I should have done a callback.
Austin: Oh, you — mmm...
Jack: Oh.
Austin: Can we retroactively call back?
Sylvia: I had a callback that I thought of, and then I just rolled because I was like —
Austin: I think it's fun if you get to retroactively call back, and try to save the scene, is that fun?
Sylvia: Okay, cool.
Austin: Or does that remove the strategy —
Janine: That feels...
Austin: I think it's fun.
Janine: Here's the thing. I would be, I would be fine saying it's fun, but only for plays. And not for heists.
Ali: Oh, sure.
Austin: Oh, sure.
Sylvia: Fine by me.
Austin: Let's do that.
Janine: Because a play is about constructing the drama. A heist is, you're stealing a thing.
Sylvia: This sort of like, this doesn't end up, the line sort of flops.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: And then, all of a sudden, Aubrey rides out on Samolephant again.
Austin: Oh...
Sylvia: And everyone loses their shit.
Austin: Now we're talking.
Janine: [laughing]
Sylvia: Everyone just goes fucking wild.
Austin: And in this, we —
Janine: It's the boy!
Austin: It's, it's the boy. It's Samolephant. And, it's, it's, the general, Sergeant General Madden kind of resaying, “and here's who I am, I'm the one who rides the little elephant.”
Sylvia: I'm the one who rides the little elephant with the sword.
Austin: Famous line, from this play.
Sylvia: Yeah... Breaking Bad.
Austin: [laughing] Ugh... Breaking, Yeah, Breaking Bad. Uh-huh. Mm-hm. The alternate name for this play.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: I mean, a play about, who am I, really? Do I really know myself —
Sylvia: I'm breaking the mirror, and I'm the bad guy — so...
Austin: Yeah, it all adds up. Uh, all right, Castille, how do you use this mirror to help solve the difficulty of there being a second, a second hidden riddle puzzle in this, in this, uh, this library, that might confuse you?
Ali: Uh, I think that there's a trick mirror in the library.
Austin: Ah, sure.
Ali: Uh, and that, uh, the way that you determine which of the things that you're pursuing or whatever is like, you're look in the mirror to see what's reflected incorrectly.
Austin: Mmm.
Ali: Uh, and then you go towards that shelf.
Austin: Right. Okay.
Ali: Uh...
Austin: Uh, give me the roll. Or do you want to use a callback here, on top of the mirror? To ensure a success. Because we've just ruled that you cannot do that retroactively on a heist.
Ali: Right. Well, I'm torn here because I, I've — [laughing] I think, uh... as a player of a tabletop RPG game, I sort of want Castille to fail here —
Austin: I see.
Ali: So they [giggling] can have a weird Castille looking at herself in the mirror makes her freak out, moment.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, this is fun. Go ahead and give me the roll. Yeah.
Ali: [laughing] but I do have a —
Austin: Well, okay, wait, wait wait wait. Here's the thing. You can do a callback to throw —
Jack: To make it fail, yeah.
Austin: To make it failure.
Ali: Wait a minute... [laughing]
Art: Yeah, callback says you can choose how it goes, not that it's a success.
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: Yeah.
Ali: Oh, sure.
Austin: So if you wanted to —
Jack: This is great tabletop game design.
Austin: Call back champagne, or the twin in the sense that you're seeing a twin of yourself in the mirror —
Ali: [cackling]
Austin: Or the cat figure — all of this is, you know. That's roleplaying games, baby.
Ali: Oh, fuck. Okay, okay, okay. Okay. Okay. Give me a moment. Give me — let me get in my zone. [laughing]
Jack: Slurpee... big slurpee.
Ali: Cause,it's either — uh, there's so many options here. Um, I was going to be like, oh, there's a smoke bomb, and the smoke bomb like, shows which figures — which isn't cool.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Ali: But like, maybe [laughing] it's... uh... it could be the thing of like, like, Castille's starting to shift into like, pala-din mode —
Austin: Ooh.
Ali: Like really intensely losing herself, and starting, like [laughing] will become an adversary to this, this thief group, until the like, the cat figure, like — she's losing herself in her, like, her like, consciousness is like, slipping. And she's able to like, direct it into the cat figure to like, not just be —
Austin: Keep it from —
Ali: Just be — yeah, just to, yeah, yeah, yeah, to like completely lose —
Austin: So you still do want the win here, then. You are taking a W.
Ali: [laughing] I think so.
Austin: But you're also getting the sequence where you're almost losing yourself. Okay. Love this for you.
Ali: Yeah, I'm — yes. I'm sitting in two chairs. [laughing]
Austin: Uh-huh. That's a third — that's another, the 8th success on heist. Uh, uh, so you manage to, to figure out which of these things is the right thing that has the right information in it, that's what it sounds like to me, anyway.
Ali: Mm-hm. I guess Castille fails here because she's not able to act as a human, and this cat cannot flip through these... [laughs] these books, right, like.
Austin: But you do succeed. So, wait, you do want the success or you don't want the success? You want the failure? Or do you want the... success? I thought you were saying that the...
Ali: I guess so, right? Well, because it, it's a failure because it takes her out of the scene in a —
Austin: Okay. Then yeah, so I'll slide this right over to failure, then.
Ali: Right, yeah, thank you for that.
Austin: Boom. Okay.
Ali: [laughing] Sorry, everybody.
Austin: No, that's good. Castille’s now just walking around the library as a little cat, everybody.
Ali: Yeah.
Sylvia: You're just looking for another excuse to play your Maelgwyn card.
Austin: Uh-huh!
Jack: [chuckling]
Austin: Uh...
Ali: So?
Austin: [laughing]
Sylvia: Nah, listen, I would —
Ali: [laughing]
Sylvia: I would do the same thing.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Sylvia: If I had a card I could play that made a sad boy show up whenever I wanted him to, I would play that card.
Ali: [still laughing]
Austin: Mm-hm.
Janine: Yeah, true.
Austin: The sadboy card.
Art: But we could also play these cards.
Austin: Yeah. [chuckling]
Ali: Yeah, we need a Maelgwyn-Aubrey scene, please.
Sylvia: I mean, I don't have that tension there, I don't want to...
Ali: [cackling]
Austin: You have different tensions.
Sylvia: I want to, I want to let you have, let you have this.
Ali: Well, yeah, because you like, I know your dad, isn't that what you — [cackling]
Janine: Right.
Sylvia: Yeah, I don't know. That line doesn't usually work for me.
Austin: No, that, this — [laughing]
Janine: [chuckling] The tension of, “I know your dad.”
Ali: [laughing] They have things to talk about, is all I'm saying.
Austin: It's different tension, is what I would say.
Ali: Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Well, obviously, yes. Yeah.
Art: What's up, I know your dad...
Austin: Uh-huh.
Ali: [laughing]
Sylvia: Mmm...
Art: Can you help right now? I'm acting very poorly.
Janine: Buy me some beer.
Sylvia: I know Malegwyn!
Ali: Aren't they both being whispered to via mask? Isn't that currently happening?
Austin: They are both — that is currently happening. It hasn't, it hasn't gone bad yet, right?
Ali: Sure, yeah.
Austin: Because, the — yeah, uh-huh. I guess that's true.
Ali: But that's what's happening in their lives. They have things to talk about.
Austin: Yeah. They do. They do.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: Uh...
Sylvia: [laughing]
Austin: Thesaddestdolphin says, “Austin, this sure sounds like a flag.” I, I'm just here as a facilitator. I don't get to make calls here.
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: Other people have to make calls.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: All right, that was — is Art director now? Art, you got to cast some people. [slight firework noise]
Art: All right.
Austin: The fireworks here are getting increasingly loud. Just as an FYI, hope it doesn't bleed through too much. Who you casting, Art?
Art: Uh... I would... where was... Violet did the last heist, right?
Sylvia: Castille just did.
Austin: Castille—
Art: No, no, before that.
Austin: Oh, before that, Violet did. Paying off Auguste —
Art: Yeah.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: So that y'all would have the library to yourselves. Yeah.
Janine: Yeah.
Art: All right. Uh... I think I’d like to keep Violet in a heist scene.
Austin: Okay.
Art: Just a physical space question. And... ugh, I just love all these Edmund scenes so much but I can't keep doing them, can I?
Austin: You can. There's, there's many more to go still.
Art: All right, give me — give me Edmund on the stage. I love the Edmund on the stage scenes —
Austin: Edmund on the stage...
Jack: Hello!
Austin: Violet in the backstage.
Jack: I’m a born performer.
Austin: Yeah.
Art: So much metaphor.
Austin: Edmund, what's your stage scene like?
Jack: Mmm... [pause] I've printed it in the newspaper, I have... but the General rode in on the little elephant. [gasps] I gotta take out that elephant!
Ali: [gasps]
Austin: No.
Ali: [wheezing laughing] Holy shit. [cackling]
Austin: Your goal is to kill the elephant?!
Janine: Wow.
Austin: Is to kill S —
Ali: Not in real life, in the play.
Austin: No, in the play, in the play, in the play. In the play.
Ali: [laughing]
Jack: Think about it. Everybody... we so nearly were able to save –
Janine: Like King Richard the III. It's the end of King Richard the III.
Austin: Interesting. Interesting to me, the green-grocer, self-proclaimed peaceful away from the war, and yet... in a manner, in a moment of crisis, what do they do? Go back to violence. Who are they really? Can they really know themselves? Interesting.
Jack (as Edmund): Do not talk to me such, my conscience!
Austin: [laughing]
Ali: [cackling]
Janine: [laughing]
Jack: He says to Ethan, from the other side of the stage
Austin: Yes! [laughing]
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Austin: Oh... staring through the broken mirror, the frame of the broken mirror. There is no more mirror, but there are still two figures onstage. Uh...
Jack (as Edmund): Oh, do not torment me thus!
Austin: All right, well that's — well, what's the difficulty here, Art? For killing the elephant.
Art: Uh... the sheer revulsion from the audience.
Austin: [laughing]
Janine: [laughing]
Art: The audience does not want the elephant to be touched.
Austin: Boo! [laughing]
Art: They start — yeah, they just start jeering and booing and Edmund's got to give the performance —
Austin: Villain!
Art: Yeah. To turn this around.
Jack: At one point they just get overexcited, start cheering to see, because they just want to see the elephant again.
Austin: [laughing] The elephant!
Jack: Bring, it, out!
Austin: Keep, it, safe! Bring, it, out!
Art: Keep, it, safe! Bring, it, out!
Austin: Oh, incredible. Okay. And then, Violet, in the library, what's, what's your heist situation?
Janine: Violet is sitting down at August's desk.
Austin: Mmm.
Janine: And, is sifting through... what is laid out there, hoping to find clues, indicators, backup keys, you know —
Austin: Mm-hm. Right, right, right.
Janine: The cataloguer's desk is a beast, to be dealt with.
Austin: Art, what is the added difficulty?
Art: I mean, I really hate to double-dip here...
Austin: Mm-hm.
Art: The added difficulty is the sheer anger coming through from the crowd — [laughing] chanting, “bring it out,” the hatred that's just distracting — the fervor is overwhelming from the theater.
Austin: Hard to keep focus.
Janine: It would be very distracting.
Jack: 35 feet above —
Austin: It would be, yeah.
Janine: I feel like, the story, what's going on up there? Normally they love this part.
Austin: This isn't supposed to happen — yeah.
Art: Yeah, normally when we do this play, it doesn't go like this.
Austin: It kills. Yeah. All right. Give me a... 1D4, Edmund.
Art: Oh, I forgot about the fucking props!
Austin: Uh-huh!
Janine: Uh-huh.
Art: [laughing]
Janine: [laughing]
Jack: Oh, I've got to roll again.
Austin: What'd you roll? No, no, no, no.
Art: No, no.
Janine: 4 would just be Sylvi now.
Austin: Yeah, Sylvi now.
Jack: That's Sylvi's, okay, cool.
Austin: So it would be a 1D2, Violet.
Janine: 2, we get a trick candle.
Austin: A trick candle.
Sylvia: Aw, man.
Austin: [laughing] And remember, you can, you can do a callback.
Janine: Uh...
Jack: Oh...
Austin: And on stage you can do a callback after you failed. [chuckling]
Janine: Are we saying the trick candle is... the trick that it does is the trick that we defined previously? Or is it just any trick? It's just a tricky candle.
Austin: I think it's the trick we defined previously, it's a candle that —
Janine: Okay, okay.
Austin: Does not turn off, that does not stop being alit, alight. Right? This is what a trick candle is?
Art: [unintelligible]
Janine: That was what we said before, yeah.
Art: The Joker's Trick candle, if —
Jack: To the Joker, this is a normal candle.
Art: [laughing]
Ali: Oh, true.
Austin: Wow. Yeah.
Ali: True, true, true.
Austin: Oh...
Jack: Uh, uh, Edmund, you know, sweating slightly, pulling at his collar —
Jack (as Edmund): Uh, my friends, I hear you. I hear you. This is a difficult — yes. No one wants to kill an elephant.
Austin: [laughing]
Jack (as Edmund): But, watch this!
Jack: Produces with a flourish from his coat, the trick candle. Lights it — ka-chuu — with a match. Crowd — goes a little quieter, curious about what's going on.
Austin: Hm!
Jack (as Edmund): The elephant, the noble creature of nature, my friends, the elephant... as everybody knows, when the elephant is killed —
Jack: Blows out the candle. The candle leaps back up.
Jack (as Edmund): The elephant reappears, somewhere else, on this great span of Hieron. Will it appear in —
Janine: Wow.
Jack (as Edmund): Velas? Will it appear in Old Man's Chin? Will it appear down with the wharvers, deep beneath the earth? Maybe — maybe, o crowd —
Jack: Blows the candle out again.
Jack (as Edmund): The elephant is dead.
Jack: Candle lights back up.
Jack (as Edmund): It will appear with us here, in the very city, the city of light, Marielda!
Austin: Give me a fucking die roll. [chuckling]
Janine and Ali: [laughing]
Art: Worked!
Austin: The elephant, the elephant will come back! The elephant —
Art: The elephant is immortal!
Jack (as Edmund): It might appear in your homes! You may go home —
Janine: They're mythical creatures already, so...
Austin: The myth of the elephant is true!
Jack: Edmund of course on the — sorry, Ethan, is shaking his head on the other side of the stage, because he doesn't believe elephants are real, he's been off the stage the whole time —
Austin: [laughing]
Jack: Hasn't seen this one at all.
Austin: What is it a metaphor for? I don't understand!...
Sylvia: Incredible.
Austin: All right. Violet.
Art: That's the elephant, the elephant is the spirit that lives within us all.
Austin: Violet, how do you use this, this trick candle, to make sense of —
Janine: Overcome the... uh...
Art: Now people are just — to make it so the obstacle still exists, people are just going bananas —
Austin: Just bananas. Going elephant.
Janine: Very distracting, very distracting.
Austin: Elephant! Elephant! Elephant! Elephant!
Art: Elephant! Elephant! Elephants are always reappearing!
Jack: Now they're actually excited about it being killed, because it might reappear closer.
Austin: [laughing]
Ali: [snorts laughing]
Austin: Meanwhile at the bar down the road, Billiam is like, “why are people chanting elephant now? There's no such thing as elephants.”
Jack: [laughing]
Austin: “I've been over it.”
Art: The elephant riots are going to burn this city to the ground.
Austin: Oh, no!
Janine: Uh... so the thing I want to do is, so I... because it's not very exciting to be like, I'm using the candle to read with, which...
Austin: Ah, yeah, uh-huh.
Janine: You know, makes sense. Uh, I'm going to use one of our, one of our callbacks. I got the bedsheet down here.
Austin: Ah, sure.
Jack: Ooh.
Janine: And I have pined the bedsheet up behind me to reflect the candle's light back so I have more visibility. It is like a giant soft-box situation.
Austin: Uh-huh. Love it.
Janine: So I can get a better view of everything around me as I'm, as I'm searching. So I won't miss things as easily.
Austin: Yeah. This is good.
Janine: And I'm obviously choosing a success on the heist, because we, those, it’s a little more precarious.
Austin: Yeah, it's getting, this one is a little closer to being a mix.
Janine: Mm-hm.
Austin: Uh-huh. I, uh, I did think for a moment that you were going to say that you were going to use the candle to — this is very silly. You were going to use the candle to read by, and then a regular candle would be being blown out by the sheer force of the elephant chanting, with the echoing and —
Janine: Even within this orb. [chuckles]
Austin: Even within this orb, the echoing and the, and the shouting gets here, blows it out, but it's a trick candle so it lights back up. All right.
Janine: Sometimes you've just got to give the straightforward answer.
Austin: All right. Yeah, yeah. That's fair, that's fair. All right. Uh, do you find what you're looking for? Do you find, like, whatever the key is to open the thing?
Janine: I mean, I succeed, so... y- yes? I guess it's easiest if I find a spare key.
Austin: Yeah. Then you find the spare key. With the, with the —
Janine: And like, the cataloguer would have —
Austin: Yes.
Janine: A spare key.
Austin: It's a spare key, that has the spare secret password thing that needs to be fed into the machine —
Janine: Yes, exactly.
Austin: To unlock the thing that has your true name and identity in it.
Janine: Amazing.
Austin: Amazing. Uh, meanwhile on stage, just real quick to be clear — Edmund, do you kill the elephant?
Jack: Theatrically, Austin.
Austin: Theatrically.
Ali: [laughing]
Jack: You know, we might be in Marielda but we're not —
Janine: The elephant is a theater-trained elephant.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand. It just tips over.
Art: Yeah.
Austin: And goes, “honk!”
Janine: Yeah, it knows how to take a fall, like —
Austin: “Honk, mimimimimimi.” [laughing]
Ali and Janine: [laughing]
Art: It'll be back for the, for the...
Ali: You don't think it's a — “honk shoo, honk shoo”
Austin: Oh, it might be a “honk shoo, honk shoo.” Yeah. It's a, “honk shoo, honk shoo.”
Sylvia: You mean we don't want to hold the elephant hostage for donations?
Austin: [laughing]
Jack: A big — a full-scale elephant is, “honk shoo, honk shoo,”—
Austin: You're right.
Jack: This small elephant is, “honk mimimimimi.”
Austin: You're right. “Mimimimimimi.” Yeah.
Ali: [laughing]
Jack: Uh... how does, how does he kill the elephant?
Austin: [laughing]
Jack: Trapdoor. Back offstage, filled with water.
Austin: [gasps]
Jack: Green-grocer says —
Jack (as Edmund): I will push the elephant from the cliff!
Jack: Pushes the elephant. Elephant falls into the water, sucks the water up through its trunk and spits it out, making a mighty splash as the elephant hits the water below the cliff.
Austin: Incredible. What a, what teamwork. I didn't realize that Samolephant is also like a, stunt performer. But, seems like. Incredible.
Jack: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: All right. Ali, you are the director. Who's up?
Ali: Uh, yeah. I think this is going to be an Aubrey heist, and a Raven on the stage.
Sylvia: Okay.
Austin: All right.
Art: Great.
Austin: Raven, what's your scene? What's your goal? Now that the elephant has died.
Art: Uh... okay, we're at 1, 2... that's 7 more. So I can't push, I can't push the play too far. Uh...
Austin: Right.
Sylvia: The pacing on this play could be fucked. Like, that's also a thing.
Austin: It's, that's true, right.
Jack: It's been a bit derailed by the elephant.
Austin: Yeah.
Art: I think without the elephant, the General's grip is falling apart.
Austin: Ah, I see. So this is almost like, there's almost not a montage, but — you're still playing the sort of choir, right?
Art: Yeah.
Austin: You're able to narrate things at a different pace than just, if it was a general scene.
Art: Right, yeah. So it's sort of like — the play lurches forward, you know, a week or so, and the... we see the like, yeah, the, the, the general's grip. Like I said, it's slipping because, without the elephant, just as the elephant was charming the audience, the elephant is, is the projection of the general's power —
Austin: Right.
Art: And without it, it all starts to unravel for the general.
Austin: Ugh. Uh, what is, what is the added challenge to that sequence, Ali?
Ali: Uh... huh. I guess... mmm... it already seems to be going kind of poorly. I guess it's like, how, how is this, how is it being sold to the audience, right?
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: Is part of the challenge there? Uh...
Austin: Maybe a change in like... you know, it's totally possible everyone is still just kind of like, thrown off by elephant stuff.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: To now go to this high-concept situation, where it's like, and now there's the mirror person on stage again, trying to summarize —
Janine: Yeah, what's the general popularity of the mirror character, I wonder? In the audience.
Austin: That's a good question.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: Are people like —
Janine: This audience likes simple stuff.
Austin: Yeah. [laughing] They do, they seem to like simple stuff like, an elephant is here.
Ali: Well it's like, mirror, tell us where the elephant showed up! [laughing] Are we leaning too much on crowd reacting?
Austin: No, I think —
Janine: [unintelligible]
Austin: I think it's appropriate for the choir.
Jack: These people get to see... a play like this, once a year.
Austin: Right. Yep. All right. And then what is our, who's the, sorry, who is other —
Ali: Aubrey.
Austin: Aubrey, doing the heist.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Right? Yes. What is your objective?
Sylvia: I was thinking... yeah, I was thinking of trying to find something within the big... I guess it's a lightbulb-shaped thing, now that we've talked about it.
Austin: In my mind it was.
Sylvia: Sort of like, this glass-enclosed library thing, situation. I've had a lot of trouble picturing this thing, I'll be real with you.
Austin: That's more than fair.
Ali: [laughing]
Sylvia: Uh, I wonder if it's... I feel like it's still a little too early to like, identify the thing that we're looking for.
Austin: Maybe, yeah.
Sylvia: But it could be like, identifying where it resides within this.
Janine: We do still have to extract once we find it, too, remember.
Austin: Right, exactly.
Ali: Yeah.
Sylvia: That's true.
Austin: Here's what I was imagining, in the bottom left, here. [chuckles] Is, here's the ink basin, the Inkwell. And then there's a room, in a glass kind of ball, right? And then I guess like, in the glass is... is a little room, right? And if the glass breaks, the ink falls in. You know? And so what happened is...
Ali: Oh...
Austin: And so what happened is, Raven dove in and came up through here. Into like an airlock, and then into the room itself.
Ali: Right.
Sylvia: Okay.
Austin: And then, Aubrey smoke bombed, and the smoke bomb brought it up until it was floating up top, and then it went this way until it then got onto a little dock, basically. And now it's just like, boop!
Sylvia: Well I wonder if part of it is making sense of our plans now that it’s upside-down.
Austin: I imagine the room — and I should have said this part out loud. I think it like, I think it has the sort of thing where it like, has like a gyroscope, but it's just gyroscopically…
Janine: So it's like a gyroscopic hammock. From Hammacher Schlemmer.
Ali: Oh...
Austin: From Hammacher Schlemmer, Yeah, yeah, yeah, right right right right right. Yes.
Janine: Inspired by the moon gate.
Austin: Right. Exactly.
Sylvia: Oh, of course, of course. Uh... okay. Yeah, I think I'm looking for... at the very least, the like, the, the section of this little mini-library where the names are.
Austin: Okay.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: But I think that they, I think that, I think that y'all have the thing, and you have the thing for the key. I think you've done enough prelim work.
Sylvia: I mean, I can just get the thing, and then if I fail someone else can get the thing?
Austin: It might be time. Yeah. Yeah.
Sylvia: Fuck it. Okay.
Austin: Because getting out, who knows — an alarm could sound, who could say. What is the added difficulty here, Ali? To doing the final thing of opening the case that has the information on the true identities of the Elephant Lounge Company's actors?
Ali: Uh... I guess it's like, enchanted in some way, right?
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: Like, you know.
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: You know.
Austin: I mean, this is the moment, right? Where, if it goes bad, the ink comes in. [big firework] Wow. That was it going bad outside.
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: Because it's still in the ink, right? It's not, it hasn't pulled out of the ink fountain, the ink basin, all the way yet. It's still floating there, it's just docked. And so like, the ink could still get in, if things break bad, right? It's just very accessible.
Ali: Uh, right, yeah. And it could be — and a magical alarm system is not —
Austin: Right, yes.
Ali: Ideal. You know. [laughing]
Austin: It's bad. All right. Let's get our D4.
Art: That's me, right? I'm, stage is D4?
Austin: Stage is D4, yeah, stage is, is —
Art: All right. We're getting to the Janine props.
Austin: We're on Janine props.
Janine: Hell yeah.
Jack: Oh, Janine, here we go.
Austin: Aubrey, give me a D4.
Janine: It's about to get weird...
Sylvia: Okay. That is... [laughing]
Janine: A Spaniel in a classical, —
Jack: It is! Grimaud!
Janine: — e.g. Venetian clown costume, Grimaud.
Austin: Oh my god.
Austin: [French pronunciation] Grimaud.
Ali: Oh, this audience is going to forget about this elephant.
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: [laughing]
Ali: [laughing] This elephant is not going to be a problem anymore.
Austin: Oh my god.
Art: Exactly right. Uh...
Ali and Austin: [laughing]
Art: The dog becomes a representation of the general.
Austin: Oh...
Ali: [gasps] Oh my god.
Janine: That's kind of rude.
Art: And the clownish... nature.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Art: Of his impotent attempts to, to stay in power.
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: [chuckles] Aw.
Art: Without the elephant.
Austin: Mmm.
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: It's an analogy.
Jack: What's this dog's demeanor like onstage, Art?
Art: What's that?
Jack: What's this dog's demeanor like onstage?
Art: Oh, uh... Grimaud might be wearing a clown costume, but it's an incredible dignity onstage.
Janine: Yes, perfect.
Jack: [chuckling]
[Firework bump]
Janine: It's an austere dog.
Austin: [chuckling] Fireworks —
Art: And there's — and a bowling alley is there. Uh... that's what whatever that was sounded like to me.
Austin: Yeah. [laughing] That was a firework again.
Art: Oh. Uh, yes, it's just, it's like a Shakespearean actor of a dog.
Austin: Incredible. Finely — finely-trained.
Art: Yeah.
Austin: Uh, I think we need a roll.
Art: Well, I typed it all out and I hadn't clicked on the chat. [roll20 boop]
Austin: Art —
Art: What the hell — [unintelligible] rolls.
Jack: That ain't it.
Austin: We've been at it for a little while now.
Ali: Mm-hm.
Art: [beeps again] Ugh.
Austin: That's a 2. Now, you could... that's a failure, that's the tails. But you could, because you're on the stage, do a callback to a previous prop.
Art: I don't know, the play's going so well. Who even cares if this scene —
Austin: That's very strategic.
Art: But, I have a star to make!
Everyone: [laughing]
Art: And that star is Grimaud! And what brings it over the top... is when he takes the saber in his teeth —
Austin: [gasps]
Jack: [gasps]
Janine: Amazing.
Austin: The little general.
Art: And swashbuckles against some... you know, extras.
Austin: Oh yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Janine: I saw that video on Twitter this week.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: Uh-huh.
Austin: Unbelievable. Well, that's a success. And you've made — and, you've made a star. People love Grimaud. Presumably, right?
Art: Yeah.
Jack: There's a new chant, which is, “who was that elephant?” But it's said derisively.
Austin: [derisively] Who was that elephant? Who was that elephant? Who was that elephant?
Jack: Give us the dog!
Austin: Give us more dog!
Janine: The elephant is just backstage looking very hurt.
Austin: Aw... poor elephant.
Art: They have like a thing for the, for the bows. They come out together, it's very beautiful.
Austin: Yeah. Hey, Aubrey? [chuckling] Quick question?
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: How are you using a Spaniel in classical —
Janine and Art: [laughing]
Austin: — e.g. Venetian clown costume named Grimaud to help you avoid [laughing] the enchanted alarm on the information folio, or whatever?
Sylvia: I mean, there's, there's an intersection of two things happening with Grimaud, here.
Austin: Oh, okay, I see.
Sylvia: And it’s Grimaud’s impeccable canine senses, as well as their clowning training.
Austin: Sure.
Sylvia: Helping me see the sort of antics that I need to do to get past the sort of, for some reason I'm picturing a lot of lasers and such.
Austin: Ah.
Sylvia: But, you know, you know how it is. We've all seen the Vin Diesel movie, “The Pacifier.”
Ali: We all have.
Sylvia: We're familiar with this sort of shenanigans.
Austin: Well yeah, of course. All of us.
Sylvia: Absolutely.
Jack: Uh, did you fix the check mark there, Austin?
Austin: Which?
Jack: You put the last check mark in the wrong column, per the chat, and I just wanted to make sure —
Austin: I put it in heist, I put it in heist and not in play, you're right. Sorry. I'll fix it. [chuckling] Unfortunate, uh, here we go. Play. There we go. And I'll get rid of the one I added to heist. Apologies.
Sylvia: So, I think what's happening here is, Aubrey is literally just mimicking... [laughing] what this dog does. To get by this stuff. Uh, and we're not going to have any comments about me saying that. I'm just going to roll. And it's a success.
Austin: And it's a success, so I'll put that right back. You're mimicking what a dog does? The dog seems to have —
Sylvia: I'm, I'm mimicking the dog's clownish motions.
Austin: Because the dog, of course, is the most honest animal, and therefore could not —
Sylvia: I'm always saying this.
Austin: Great.
Janine: I have a question.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Janine: Are you mimicking them on all fours, or on, like bipedally?
Sylvia: I mean, it switches it up.
Janine: Okay.
Sylvia: I'm assuming Grimaud is occasionally standing on back legs. You know.
Janine: Totally.
Jack: Yeah, for when he balances on the ball onstage.
Sylvia: Occasionally on front legs.
Austin: Oh my god.
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: Rulerriley16 says, “clownish motions, extremely funny to me.” A perfect sentence. All right. That is, uh, another turn. Sylvi, you are the director, I believe.
Sylvia: Okay, cool. Uh, let's see. Uh... oh, and the Os now are marking off?
Austin: Os are marking away, yeah. We're just flipping it back the other way.
Sylvia: Okay.
Art: Do we need to do — does it need to, do we have the line —
Austin: No, pretend the line isn't there. We don't have to protect them, we don't have to — no.
Sylvia: Okay. Okay. Uh...
Austin: But also Aubrey's the only one who's done 2 of anything yet, so.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Wait, that's impossible, isn't it? If Aubrey's gone twice —
Sylvia: No, because I did the play, and I did the heist.
Austin: Yes, yes. Okay.
Sylvia: So...
Austin: Yeah. Yep.
Art: Oh my god, someone said, “dignified prancing to the Mission Impossible [unintelligible] coffee and bikes” in the chat, and that's so funny.
Austin: [laughing]
Jack: [laughing]
Art: I know I'm a little punchy 'cause it's late, but that’s so funny.
Austin: Yeah. Uh-huh.
Ali: [snorts]
Sylvia: Uh... I'm... who did the, okay, who most recently did play stuff, and who most recently did heist stuff? [laughing] It's late.
Jack: I did play stuff recently.
Art: Yeah. It was — going backwards, it's —
Sylvia: Was that you — because I was going to pick you, Art, but if that's you agreeing that you also did heist stuff recently, or play stuff recently —
Art: No, I did play stuff recently, but it's fine. I, I —
Sylvia: No, I want to, I want to spread the love around.
Art: That is why... they love the theater!
Sylvia: I feel like we do actually need the main character back onstage.
Austin: I agree with this. [chuckling]
Sylvia: So, Violet, you're up.
Austin: Violet onstage. Uh-huh.
Sylvia: And then for the heist... uh... oh, gosh, let me see. Uh... I'm not stalling at all. I'll go... fuck it, Raven, you're heisting now.
Austin: Okay.
Art: Great.
Austin: Well, okay. So that means – that success last time, I just remembered this, just — we're very punchy and tired. Aubrey, you did reveal the, the interior —
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Of, of the thing, right? So that does mean that you, that means that the information is right there for you, Raven.
Art: Great. I think it's just about grabbing it and, and concealing it.
Austin: You're not checking it, you're not checking to see what it says about who you are or anything like that yet? You're just like, let's get it out of here first.
Art: I have, I have the rest of my life to know who I am.
Austin: True — damn.
Sylvia: Damn.
Austin: Damn!
Sylvia: That's real as fuck.
Austin: Lean back.
Jack: God, you've got to send that message to Duvall, I feel like he would really appreciate it.
Austin: [laughing] Yeah. Yep.
Art: I think we decided that these aren't the same world, so those messages won't go through.
Austin: We did decide these are not the same world, yeah. Uh-huh. This won't get there ever. Uh... all right. So then, what is, uh, uh, Violet, tell me about the young woman, and how she's handling being quote/unquote “the main character” of this play —
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Which has largely been about an elephant [laughing] thus far.
Janine: So, the army has rallied outside [glitches out]
Austin: Uh-oh, we lost Janine for a second, Janine?
Janine: Am I not here?
Austin: You're back, you're back.
Janine: The army has rallied. They were originally sent to arrest the young woman, uh, for her treason. But the, the turnabout of the, the sergeant, of the general, [chuckling] General Madden, has thrown them into doubt. And they have, they have gone to ask her for her side of the story. They want to know, what is this we're hearing? Is this true, is this false? We need to know the truth, and we don't have it.
Austin: Right.
Janine: And the challenge that Violet has — or, that the young lady has, is to convince the army, not that she is innocent because she is loyal, but to finally convey — what?
Jack: Wait, Janine. Are you allowed to make your own challenge?
Austin: No.
Janine: Isn't – no, I'm making my goal.
Austin: You're making your goal.
Jack: Oh, okay, cool.
Janine: I used challenge in the sense of like, this is what she's trying to do, not in the sense of the game.
Jack: I'm sorry to interrupt you.
Janine: [chuckling] That's okay. Uh... so she's, her goal, is to convey to them not that she is innocent because she's loyal to the moon god and is beyond reproach in that sense, but to convey the doubt she has been feeling for the entire play —
Austin: Ah...
Janine: About why she's even in the army, what is the point of being with an organization that could cast your loyalty aside, so easily —
Austin: So if you're doubtful...
Janine: And so she's conveying to them that she, that she doesn't care, that she is indifferent to the cause of both sides, and is, in fact, just a person.
Austin: Right, right. So couldn't possibly be a traitor, because a traitor would be bought in.
Janine: Yes.
Austin: Right. Uh... looks like — got a 333 dollar donation from, “the M in Milf Monday stands for Maelgwyn.”
Ali: Shut the fuck up. [laughing]
Austin: All right. And then on the heist side, Raven, how are you, what's your goal?
Art: Uh, I mean the thing is —
Austin: Is get out. Is start to get out.
Art: Is, yeah, I'm going to conceal the item on my person?
Austin: What is the item? What have we decided it is? Because I think knowing the physical —
Art: It's a book.
Austin: It's a book, okay. It's a wooden book.
Art: It's a wooden book, I mean, inside of —
Austin: That was locked up —
Art: Locked up —
Austin: And we've unlocked it, we've unlocked the outside, to reveal the inside, which you're taking.
Art: Right.
Austin: Okay. Without setting off the alarm or inking it, so far.
Art: Right.
Austin: Okay. Your goal is to then conceal it and leave the room?
Art: Yeah.
Austin: Clean, simple.
Art: Yeah. Just get out.
Austin: Sylvi, what is the — wait, did we not get a challenge from the other scene?
Sylvia: I don't — no, I didn't.
Austin: We need challenges on both of these.
Janine: Yeah, we need challenges.
Sylvia: I need challenges on both, okay.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: So... the [laughing] the, where I'm going for the challenge on the first one is just, the audience does not remember this character.
Janine: Yeah, fair.
Austin: Yeah. Uh-huh. This is — so much, has happened.
Sylvia: Yeah, there's, a lot has gone on —
Janine: She's also the least compelling of what we've seen. She doesn't have an elephant —
Austin: [laughing]
Janine: She hasn't used a smoke bomb, or done any like high-concept stuff —
Sylvia: We'll see if that changes now.
Art: Turned into a dog.
Ali: There were the sword tricks!
Austin: She did do the sword trick montage, the sword montage was really good.
Janine: Well, that was forever ago.
Austin: It was forever ago. And then she went to a war —
Jack: It was pre-elephant.
Austin: She went off to like, on a mission of some sort that was entirely offstage. Unlike the elephant, I may add.
Sylvia: I don't know if this will work for the second challenge, but what I'm thinking is that Raven notices sort of like, while doubling back at one point, that there's an inky footprint, not from them.
Austin: Ooh. Okay.
Ali: Ooh.
Austin: Someone's following?
Sylvia: Uh, and so, someone is following them.
Austin: Interesting.
Sylvia: That was around the ink pool.
Austin: Love it.
Sylvia: Yeah. And those are my challenges. Good luck.
Austin: Give me a D4?
Art: All right.
Austin: No, a D3 — yeah, D4, we still have one more Sylvi plot, or Sylvi, uh, prop.
Sylvia: Yeah, we got the big one.
Janine: From me? D4 from me?
Austin: Yep, D4 from you.
Art: Yeah, D4 from you.
Janine: 2 —
Austin: Ali —
Janine: Which means —
Austin: It's a candle and a matchbook.
Janine: Candle and matchbook.
Art: It's a candle and a matchbook.
Ali: Ooh.
Art: All right.
Sylvia: Hey, good luck.
Austin: Yeah, have fun, what —
Jack: This candle and matchbook is an easy way to convince an audience that an elephant can die permanently.
Everyone: [cracking up]
Austin: Oh, no!
Art: I know how to get you to care about me as a character! That elephant's really dead!
Austin: [gasps]
Janine and Ali: [laughing]
Austin: I don't know that would convey the — but, you know, it would make people care about her.
Janine: Uh... oh, okay, no, that's the thing, that's the thing, though. So.... She pulls out the candle. The candle's unlit. This is not a trick candle.
Jack: Ooh...
Austin: [gasps]
Janine: She shows the candle to the army and the audience. She pulls out the matchbook and strikes it, and lights the candle.
Janine (as Violet): I am not an elephant.
Art (as audience): Boo! Boo! Boo!
Everyone: [laughing]
Sylvia: [post-cracking up] Oh, I need to go lie down.
Jack: [chuckling]
Austin: Is there a “but” coming?
Janine (as Violet): I am simply a young lady.
Austin: Ah, yeah, uh-huh.
Janine (as Violet): I am simply a young lady, who joined the army and fought, because it seemed the thing to do. But now I find myself at an impasse in life where —
Austin: [gasps]
Janine (as Violet): Neither cause compels me. I am like a, like a flame that flickers in the wind. And when it is snuffed out, it is no more.
Janine: And she snuffs it out. And it doesn't relight, because it is not a candle, and she is not an elephant.
Austin: Woah. Right.
Art: Woah!
Jack: Someone in, someone in row 4 shouts, “explain that more clearly!”
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: Can I get a, can I get a dice roll? Wait, does — there you go. That's a success.
Janine: I got a 1. That's a success.
Austin: People love it.
Janine: People eat it up. The elephant metaphor, it kills every time.
Austin: It kills every time.
Sylvia: They're hanging on every word.
Austin: I understand it. Masterful how you set up a metaphor earlier without us knowing it was a metaphor!
Art: The, the transience of, of, the, the, the briefness of, of human life makes them more important than elephants! This is who we should care about.
Austin: Who live — who are immortal!
Janine: [laughing]
Ali: [laughing]
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Art: An immortal elephant faces no peril!
Austin: Uh... Raven, how are you dealing with your secret, uh, uh, what's the word I'm looking for, someone who follows somebody else? I'm losing, I've lost, I've lost my words.
Art: Stalker?
Austin: I don't know that stalker is the word, but sure.
Jack: Pursuer?
Austin: Pursuer, thank you.
Art: There we go. I feel like if you find an inky footprint, that's a stalker move and not a pursuit move, but —
Austin: Yeah, I guess so.
Sylvia: I was going for like a bumbling guard, but yeah, I mean, we'll see, I guess, depending on how you roll.
Austin: Yeah.
Art: What is the source of light in here? What's like...
Austin: Oh, that's a great question. I hadn't thought about it. You tell me. Is it just like, there's just like an effervescent glow? Is it like, are there like —
Art: What if it's like a, like a chandelier with a ton of candles? Because that's really dangerous for a roomful —
Austin: That's so dangerous.
Art: Of books, but no one cares if these books are all burnt.
Austin: Right, sure. Yeah. Uh-huh.
Art: Uh, so I think it's, it's... Raven lights the candle that they have.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Art: With the matches. And extinguishes the chandelier.
Austin: Oh, so you're the only one with light.
Art: Right, so the pursuer has difficulty following through the twists and turns of the library.
Austin: I — okay, first of all, I thought you said it was a small library. Second of all, if you turned out all the light, and you're the only —
Art: Medium-sized library.
Austin: Mmm... and you're the only light there is, doesn't the pursuer just go to where the light is?
Sylvia: Maybe that's the trick.
Austin: Maybe that's the trick.
Art: Yeah, that's the trick. Because —
Austin: And then they get there and you're not there anymore.
Art: Yeah, I've left it on a —
Austin: Ca-caw! Right.
Art: I've left it on a shelf.
Sylvia: The Raven strikes again!
Austin: Right. Uh-huh. Give me, give me a dice roll.
Art: All right.
Austin: [chuckling] Ugh... that's a failure. That's a hard failure. Which — what happens here?
Art: Uh... can I... can I use a card or are these cards only for Ali?
Jack: Not in the heist. Oh! Oh...
Austin: Oh, you can use a Maelgwyn card, is that what you're saying?
Art: Yeah. I don't want to —
Ali: Oh, please. No, no, no, no.
Austin: I think you could, you could use a Maelgwyn card.
Jack: God, in the dark...
Ali: Table's cards. Save me the last one. Table's cards.
Austin: Table's cards.
Art: Okay.
Ali: [giggling]
Janine: Table's card, then, technically. [laughing]
Austin: Table's card.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: What happens, how does Maelgwyn save you?
Art: I think that the, the person — okay —
Austin: Ah...
Art: Let me know if this is too cheesy, and we can roll it back.
Austin: Yeah, yeah, sure.
Art: So, it's, it's the, light extinguishes, lights the candle, trying to get away. The pursuer catches up with Raven, and when they're about to — because I don't, I don't know who this [chuckles] pursuer is —
Austin: That's probably —
Art: But when they're about to like, to, to do harm to Raven —
Austin: Yeah.
Art: We get, like, sort of like the hero moment of, in the dark, Maelgwyn is behind the pursuer.
Austin: Yeah, oh yeah. 100 percent.
Jack: Oh, no, yeah. That's sick.
Art: And just like Batmans them.
Austin: Well, this is what Maelgwyn does, right?
Ali: Yep. [giggling]
Austin: Mask is on, we get masked Maelgwyn mode here, right.
Art: [gruff voice] Probably talking like this.
Austin: Right. The last cast from your single candle —
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: That's not what Maelgwyn does. Cast just from the single candle is enough —
Ali: [laughing harder]
Austin: To reveal Maelgwyn's masked face in the dark.
Art: Yeah, the, the —
Austin: And then this person just slips away into the dark.
Sylvia: It's the cat.
Jack: God.
Austin: It's — mm-hm.
Sylvia: I guess we haven't made catboy Maelgwyn canonical.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: We have not, we have not yet. Yeah. Uh-huh.
Ali: Yet.
Sylvia: 300,000 dollars, and Maelgwyn is canonically a catboy.
Ali: [cackling]
Austin: Canonically becomes a catboy retroactively. Yeah. If you're a millionaire watching...
Art: We'll physically edit all of the fanart.
Austin: All right, slow — that seems really hard to do.
Ali: [laughing] I will print a new version of the Marielda fanzine [cackling]
Jack: Oh, wow.
Austin: Ugh... I really can't believe all this time the superhero Maelgwyn has been Catman, and we just didn't know the whole time. Ugh. All right.
Jack: Uh, we have a donation, uh, from, “boo! Not an elephant! Bring them back!” donates 5 dollars.
Everyone: [laughing]
Austin: Oh, boy. Uh... all right, so was that now a success because you Maelgwyned it? Is that a rule for the Maelgwyn card? It just gives you a success? I think so.
Sylvia: I thought it was.
Austin: Boom, 5. Boom. Got 'em. Whose turn is it? Janine's.
Jack: God... is Maelgwyn being spoken to through the mask at this point?
Austin: I think, I think... I think there's just a sort of confusion about the entire situation.
Jack: Yep.
Austin: Is what's happening through the mask currently. Uh, [chuckling] I think this is... I mean, but like, this has just been the year that Maelgwyn's had, right? Is like —
Jack: Right.
Austin: I guess this is what you're getting up to, right? Uh...
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: Uh... this might not even be the most strange, the strangest thing that Maelgwyn's done this year. No. I thought about it for a second. [chuckling] I think it is.
Ali, Jack, Janine: [laughing]
Austin: Uh... Janine. Time to cast.
Janine: Yeah. Uh... I think, uh... I can cast anyone — I'm ignoring the line, right? I'm ignoring the line.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Janine: Uh, okay. I think I want, uh... I think I want, uh, Aubrey onstage.
Sylvia: Okay.
Janine: And Edmund heisting?
Austin: Aubrey on stage. Edmund heisting.
Sylvia: All right.
Jack: Sounds good.
Austin: Boom, boom. Okay. Aubrey, what is your goal onstage? The general.
Sylvia: I'm, I'm trying to think. And I think at this point, it's time for this general to get hoisted a little bit, possibly by their own petard somehow.
Austin: Oh, sure, yes. Was a petard one of the props we had? I guess we had a smoke bomb.
Sylvia: No, it wasn't. I’m using it m —
Austin: Smoke bomb's close!
Sylvia: It's a metaphorical petard.
Austin: Oh, okay. It's a metaphor.
Jack: It's a metaphor.
Janine: Is Aubrey in the dog's clown costume?
Austin: [huge gasp]
Sylvia: Oh my god. Oh my — is this me doing my —
Janine: I just wanted to open the door to that.
Sylvia: My Pagliacci, am I doing Dogliacci here?
Jack, Ali, Janine: [laughing]
Austin: Is this like —
Art: Pawgliacci.
Austin: Paw..., yeah, pawgliacci.
Sylvia: Pawgliacci… Uh, yeah, I feel like this, this, this is the — is it too soon to have my plan exposed and for it to blow up in my face, but... I don't know.
Austin: I mean, it's going to be the general's last scene, right? So.
Sylvia: You know what? This is the general's last scene, let's go for it. This is where the general gets their comeuppance. And I'll figure out what that is when I roll for the prop. But that's what I'm trying to do.
Austin: That's what you're trying to do. What is the challenge to the — so you then, then, you actually, the general wants to fail, so to speak, wants the comeuppance. What is the difficulty to the comeuppance, Janine?
Janine: Uh, the difficulty, I think, is that the general, broadly speaking, has been associated with some of the most charismatic members of the cast.
Austin: Ah, sure.
Janine: The elephant and the dog.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: It's proximity —
Janine: And also had very charismatic moments just in general.
Austin: Just in general. Just, yeah.
Janine: So I think, I think, you know, to sort of dip back into the well of the audience not necessarily buying it, I think in this case it's, it's, you know — oh, I know what it is. Aubrey comes back on stage, and they're expecting like, dog or elephant levels of like, we're going to see some new shit, we're going to, finally, General Madden's back, do they have an ostrich? Like something —
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Ali: [laughing]
Janine: The expectations are like, the ceiling. Yeah.
Sylvia: We raised the bar too high.
Austin: Yeah. Uh... and then, I'm sorry, Edmund was doing heist?
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: All right, Edmund, heist.
Jack: Down in the break room, I am attempting to gather as many of the Font Men guards in one place as possible, to draw them away from —
Austin: Ah, good. Yes.
Jack: The extraction of the object. Uh, I am doing this by claiming that I have some deeply important contraband information for them.
Austin: I see. Give me — okay, that — challenge, Janine?
Janine: Uh, wait, who are you...
Austin: The Font Men.
Janine: Who are the people? The Font Men, right.
Austin: Yeah, the people defending this place, who run this place.
Janine: Right, right. Okay. So this is like, is this like fairly exterior to the orb and ink setup?
Jack: Uh, yeah. I picture myself kind of like in an anteroom where the guards have like a break table, and some of them are playing cards, or, you know...
Janine: Uh... [laughing] my first thought seems mean. And, I... don't want it to be mean. Uh... but I do think it's funny. I think one of them just really hates your face?
Austin: Wow.
Jack: [laughing]
Janine: Just like, just like, you know, you know —
Austin: Wow.
Jack: Oh, yeah.
Janine: You ever see someone and it's like, “that person has a really punchable face.” It's that kind of reaction of just like, something about you reminds this person of like, someone who, like, really, really made their teenage years a nightmare or something, you know?
Austin: Mm-hm.
Jack: Yeah. Uh-huh. This is an Edmund Hitchcock mood, I feel.
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: All right, we need a prop. Uh... Aubrey.
Sylvia: Okay, is it D3?
Austin: It is a D3. [roll20 boop] and it is a fake head, slightly stained with fake blood.
Sylvia: It's a fake head. I know exactly what I'm doing.
Janine: This is the best way this could have gone.
Austin: It's the best fucking way. [gasps] Oh my god, I just thought of two different things. Go ahead, go ahead. Tell me — let's start on the stage, what happens?
Sylvia: We're doing a stunt where I get my head cut off, but fake, though.
Ali: [gasps]
Art: Yep, definitely.
Austin: 100 percent.
Sylvia: Yeah, absolutely. Which is like, weird, because this is a human head, but that's fine.
Janine and Ali: [laughing]
Austin: We don't know, it doesn't say that. Did you say it out loud —
Sylvia: No, but I'm just saying it is.
Janine: It adds fun.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: Uh...
Austin: Oh my god. So there's a, is this a guillotine? Is this an execution with a big axe? Is this a...
Sylvia: I think it's like, the soldiers turn on me.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: They know that I'm, that I'm full of shit, and they, they saw the candle scene and were really taken with it.
Austin: Right.
Sylvia: Yeah, it's just sort of like a mutiny going on.
Austin: A sort of like organic mutiny driven by... not directly by Violet. Violet didn't say, “go get that general.”
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: But they have now taken on a similar, “we're our own people.”
Sylvia: [chuckling] I do have a callback for this, too.
Austin: Oh, good. What is it?
Sylvia: They use the champagne afterwards to celebrate.
Austin: Oh, to celebrate. Oh...
Janine: Oh, wow.
Sylvia: Like, uncork it and pop it off.
Austin: Boom. That's a success right there.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: I'm running out of space on the play because there's so many successes.
Sylvia: I think that marks —
Ali: Thing is — [giggling]
Austin: Suffering from success.
Sylvia: I think that means that I literally, because of the, like, retroactive, uh, callback, I don't think I failed a single play roll.
Austin: Unbelievable. Success.
Sylvia: Uh... I'm officially a thespian, thank you.
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: That's true.
Janine: In Marielda, they just love practical effects. They eat 'em up.
Austin: They really do.
Sylvia: I mean, good. Good.
Janine: Yeah. They all should.
Austin: Hey, Edmund? How are you dealing — how are you using a fake... fake head with fake (question mark) blood, uh, here?
Sylvia: It’s dubiously fake.
Jack (as Edmund): Gentlemen, gentlemen! Gather round, gather round, gentlemen. Take a look at this..
Sylvia: [cackling]
Austin (as Font Man): [laughing] What — what — what you got there?
Jack (as Edmund): Exactly what it looks like. What do you think this is? It's a severed head.
Austin: [gasps]
Jack (as Edmund): And not just any severed head. This severed head — oh, I found it. I found it in an alley behind... behind... in the street of Marielda!
Austin: Oh. Yeah.
Jack (as Edmund): And... the head speaks.
Art: What?
Austin: Are you doing a callback?
Jack (as Edmund): The head —
Jack: I don't think so, no.
Austin: Oh, okay.
Sylvia: [laughing]
Austin: Wait, then how are you going to make the head speak?
Sylvia: Austin, let them go. We'll see!
Austin: Okay, continue.
Jack (as Edmund): Gather round.
Jack: Uh... yeah. I'm prepared, I'm, I'm just drawing them in with the —
Austin: Oh, okay.
Jack: This is a head that speaks, that says hidden secrets [laughing]
Austin (as Font Man): What are the secrets?
Sylvia: Are you going to bonk them with the head after they lean in?
Austin: How many of them are there in this room with you? [pause]
Jack: 5?
Austin: Oh, okay. You're not doing a callback. All right, give me a — give me a 1D2. I thought you were going to — uh-huh.
Jack: Oh... yeah, no, fuck it, I will do a callback.
Austin: Okay. To what?
Jack: [chuckling] A voice comes — a voice comes from beneath the table, as they, as they get closer.
Austin: [laughing]
Sylvia: [laughing]
Jack: It’s like a bar, it’s like a closed bar.
Sylvia: Oh, great.
Jack: All these guards come in, and this is, this is the voice of, uh, of, of Ethan Hitchcock —
Austin: Uh-huh.
Jack: Who's speaking in a low and horrible tone. Intones some secret fact about these guards that he has been able to ascertain from an earlier part of the heist or whatever, something that just chills them to their very bones — the idea that the dead know a secret about you.
Austin: Right.
Jack: Uh, and they flee.
Austin (as Font Men): Ah!!!
Austin: We don't know anything about these guards, but let's pretend we did. And, we knew it, and, and Ethan said it, and that's that. Boom. Easy. Done. Jack, you are director.
Jack: That’s a W.
Austin: That's a W. We are at 14 play successes, 1 play failure. And 11 heist successes, 4 heist failures.
Ali: Yes, baby.
Jack: I will take... the general's dead... let's get a scene with the narrator onstage, bringing us up to speed.
Austin: So it's Raven. Who is onstage, with —
Jack: And let's get —
Austin: With the heist, with the, the exact, with the Macguffin.
Jack: Oh god, yeah.
Austin: Or it's the twin, I guess, but — I think it's Raven.
Jack: Uh, and let's get Castille, uh, doing some heist stuff.
Austin: Okay.
Ali: Oh, sure.
Austin: Raven, what is your goal in this moment? The general is dead. Head removed. How do you communicate the state of the play. Why is the play not over?
Jack: Great question!
Art: Because that's not what the play is about.
Austin: Ah, I see.
Art: The play is about... can, can one really know themselves? Oneself...
Austin: Mm-hm.
Art: And... oh, this is going to be a little hard.
Austin: [chuckling]
Art: [laughing]
Janine: [chuckling]
Art: Uh... well, it's Castille doing heist right now.
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: Mm-hm.
Art: So I could have the reunion of Violet and Edmund.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Art: Onstage.
Austin: You could.
Art: As the mirror, doing both sides of their internal monologues, now they connect to each other.
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: True.
Art: The, the pairing that is going to bring this to fruition, going to bring us home, on the play.
Austin: Right. What is the challenge to that?
Art: Oh, everyone in the audience thinks the play is over.
Austin: No, I mean, I was asking Jack, but I mean, that's still fine, right?
Art: Oh, sorry.
Jack: Yeah. [chuckling] Complete bafflement from the audience. Everyone thinks it's over. Some are getting up to — we're not quite at the point where the audience is getting up to go yet, but they saw the elephant die, they saw the dog, they saw the general get beheaded, they saw characters celebrate with champagne, and now the mirror guy's come back onstage and says it's actually about knowing your true self?
Austin: [laughing]
Jack: They're not angry, so much as they're just like, they're like, “is this what plays are?”
Austin: [laughing] Oh, lord. Okay. And then, Castille. Are you still a, are you still a little, a little cat?
Ali: Yeah, I, I, I wanted to, I wanted to play at least one round as a cat.
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: I feel like — [giggling] what am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing? Uh... Raven has secured the name book.
Austin: Yep.
Ali: Edmund just got past a pursuer.
Austin: Or, like, distracted all the guards so they wouldn't — presumably opening up the pathway —
Ali: Right, the pursuer, okay —
Austin: For Raven to get back onstage to do their next bit, right?
Ali: Right [laughing]
Austin: Like literally, I imagine this like the, one of the final scenes in Clue is, people are running from room to room, you know, allowing opportunity for other people to move from room to room.
Ali: Then what's our goal as a heist team? Is it like, opening the book? Or is it...
Austin: I think it's getting out successfully, which, maybe there are still guards —
Jack: Is it wrapping up the play and leaving?
Austin: Yeah, maybe —
Ali: Well is it, is it, do we have to like, destroy the evidence, so to speak? Like, do we have to get the... lightbulb back in space —
Austin: I think we got it all done. Oh, we could get the lightbulb back. That could be its own cover, yeah.
Ali: Right.
Austin: Uh-huh. Sure. That's a good — yeah.
Ali: [giggling] Uh, because we wanted to delete all evidence that we were here, right?
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: So we can't have this, this, this lightbulb all... askew.
Austin: This is true. Get the lightbulb back down there.
Ali: [laughing] Uh... okay. Okay. What is Castille doing? How can you do this with Little Wolfgang? [cackling]
Jack: The longer that Wolfgang doesn't show up, the more likely —
Austin: I — I really want Wolfgang to be the final speaker in the play, so bad. [chuckles] All of our remaining props are just impeccable.
Janine: For a little while I was bummed that none of mine had come up, and now that we are just down to mine and Jack's —
Austin: It’s — uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Janine: It's great. It's great.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: Uh, all right, so what is the, Jack, what is the added challenge for getting the lightbulb library room back under the ink?
Ali: Yeah, I guess that's the task —
Austin: Yeah, that's what you're trying to do.
Jack: The fish. The fish. Uh... so easily placated the first time, are not so comfortable about the ink, about movement in the ink now, and in fact, one great ink fish, with a, with a bioluminescent lamp on its head, has come swimming up. And the fish are butting at the bottom of the globe, and not allowing it to be lowered back down into the ink.
Austin: Mmm.
Ali: Okay. Rolling for...
Austin: I guess —
Art: I'm going to roll for —
Austin: No, we have to — yeah, yes. Raven rolls first, for prop.
Art: For prop, right?
Ali: Yeah.
Austin: For category.
Art: We're down to 2...
Austin: We're down to 2, 1D2. [roll20 boop] So it's one of Janine's. And now, Ali?
Ali: 1D3.
Austin: Yeah, 1D3, yeah.
Ali: So that's a fur-lined purple cowl.
Austin: A fur-lined purple cowl is your prop. Make it work.
Janine: Designers, make it work.
Ali: [chuckling]
Austin: [chuckling] Ah...
Art: I think this is introduced, as you want in a play, the last third... [chuckling] as an important sentimental item.
Austin: [chuckling] Oh, okay.
Jack: What?
Ali: [cackling]
Art: This is the, like —
Austin: This is between the grocer and the young woman.
Art: This is their, like — right.
Austin: Right. Right.
Art: This is their, like... I don't know why this is at the top of my brain for this, but, this is their bookstore from You've Got Mail, you know?
Austin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course.
Art: This is the thing that brings them together, yeah.
Austin: Wait a second. You — when's the last time you saw You've Got Mail? [chuckling]
Janine: [laughing]
Art: No, it brings — it does, right? Because he's — she —
Janine: I mean, an email brings them together. [chuckling] It's —
Art: But it's about the bookstore.
Austin: He puts the bookstore out of business, Art.
Ali: [snorts laughing]
Janine: Yeah.
Art: Well, he tries.
Austin: No! He succeeds.
Janine: No... it goes under.
Art: It goes under?
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: Oh, wow. I have not seen this movie.
Art: What a bummer!
Austin: That movie — yeah. Uh-huh.
Art: [laughing] Yeah, sorry, spoilers. But if you're going to —
Janine: Three people on this call have watched it relatively recently.
Austin: Very recently, yeah. Uh-huh.
Art: Well, I think in the sequel they would have brought it back.
Austin: Yeah, probably. We'll get that one day.
Jack: That was When Harry Met Sally.
Art: You've Got Mail 2.
Austin: Mm-hm. Anyway —
Art: He's like Jeff Bezos, right?
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: Mm-hm.
Sylvia: What?
Art: Wow.
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: Yeah.
Jack: So the audience — so the audience —
Janine: [laughing]
Jack: So, so, Raven has to come onstage, in his mirror outfit, and sell to the audience that a fur-lined cowl is an item of great sentimental... value?
Austin: Between the young woman and the green-grocer, from a time when their relationship was good. Because suddenly this is the key prop for the rest of this play. And so, it's kind of late in the play to be like — hey, by the way, there was this fur-lined purple cowl that's important, it means — it's a metaphor. [laughing]
Jack: [laughing]
Austin: Is that the — what's the challenge here? Jack, or, wait — Who is — Jack, you're the director? Who's director?
Jack: Uh... I'm the — I'm the director.
Austin: You're the director. Yeah.
Jack: And the challenge here is that the, the, the people doesn't understand that the play was supposed to be over. Art's response to this seems to have been to [chuckling] introduce a new prop.
Austin: Right. Yeah. All right, so give me the roll, Art, please. 1D2. Yeah, that's a failure. You — [laughing] are you going to go back and do a callback to get a success? And if so, oh my god, how?
Art: Yeah, I'm going to do a callback. I'm bringing in the [laughing] smoke bomb.
Austin and Janine: [laughing]
Art: I set the smoke bomb off and say, “it's a metaphor! It's a metaphor!”
Austin: The play is still a metaphor! It's still going on! Please... please don't leave!
Art: Please don't leave!
Austin: And everyone continues to stay. That's 15 successes in the play. Where are we at in the heist? What's happening?
Ali: Uh... so the fish were —
Jack: The fish.
Austin: The fish!
Ali: The fish were being attracted to a light?
Austin: Yes.
Ali: Is the light inside of the lightbulb or outside?
Austin: No, no, no, wait.
Art: It's a bioluminescent light, it's like one of those —
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: Yeah, it's like, one of the fish has a light on its head, and it's kind of the ringleader, bringing the other fish up to the, to the Inkwell.
Austin: Right. Right.
Ali: Oh, sure sure sure.
Austin: It's true, we have not had any Castille on, on stage scenes yet this time, right? I'm not wrong about that?
Ali: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: Okay. Okay. Okay.
Ali: Uh... which is... [snorts] [laughing]
Austin: It's fine. It'll all work out. Very important side characters will come back momentarily.
Ali: Uh... true? Uh, I —
Austin: So, yeah, you can try to overcome these fish who are trying to prevent you from putting the — under-ink-water — okay, okay, okay.
Ali: Yeah, no, I get it. Yep. I get it. Uh, I, because I was thinking there was a way to like, conceal the light with the, the cape?
Austin: Mmm.
Ali: So they're not able to like rally, I guess... uh... I don't know if that's like going inside of the ink, and like trying to catch it, trying to catch all of them —
Jack: Oh my god.
Ali: As if the cowl's like a big fishing net?
Austin: Oh my god. You're catching them — yeah, that's it, that's clean. That's understandable.
Ali: [laughing]
Jack: Castille catches a fish with her bare hands — well, no, with the —
Austin: No! With the, with the fur-lined cowl.
Jack: The fur-lined cowl.
Ali: Right. [giggling] Yeah.
Austin: And you're not a cat anymore.
Ali: Uh, I guess not. [laughing]
Austin: You've turned back.
Ali: I feel like I need to be swimming here, so... [laughing]
Austin: Uh-huh. Yeah, fair. Can Castille swim? Castille can swim. You're not so heavy that you sink to the bottom of the ink. The ink is very buoyant, because it can hold a room.
Ali: Right, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: Obviously.
Ali: Oh, no, no, no — she claws on walls.
Austin: Oh, she claws on the walls...She spider-walks up walls.
Ali: She's, she's, she's — [laughing] she's spider-walking on the edge of the glass, and then —
Austin: Okay.
Ali: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: Are you calling back, or are you rolling the dice?
Ali: I think I'm going to roll.
Austin: Let's do it, roll the dice. That's a failure.
Ali: Oh, fuck my —
Austin: Uh-huh. So...
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: Right now you're not leaving — you are going to end up leaving some, some evidence here. But maybe that's fine. What goes wrong, Jack?
Jack: Oh, god. You get the fish in your hands, and in the, in the, in the cowl, and it's a big one, it's a bigger fish than you've thought. It's got this iridescent, this bioluminescent light. And it thrashes around. And, in trying to hold onto it, one of your stone elbows crashes against the bottom part of the Inkwell. And it's not like ink rushes in, it's not like the whole thing implodes, but there is now a fairly steady stream of ink starting to trickle piecemeal into the bottom of the library in the Inkwell.
Ali: Sure.
Austin: Yeah. Okay. And is that — what's the... is that fixable at this point?
Jack: Are you asking me?
Austin: Yeah. You're still the director right now. Or is that just —
Jack: Uh... if we wanted to fix it, we would have to go in.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: But right now the Inkwell has been broken around it. We'd have to physically try and patch up the Inkwell.
Austin: So it's just going to fill with ink. All right. Art. You are the director, cast some roles. Only a few scenes left. 1, 2, 3, 4 scenes left? 4 sets of scenes left? Yeah.
Art: Okay. Let me get Violet onstage.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Art: And Aubrey on heist.
Sylvia: Okay.
Austin: Violet, what is the, what is the goal of your final scene onstage? Well, I guess the final one where you're the lead.
Janine: Yeah. Uh... uh...
Art: Oh, no, [laughing] I didn't realize I'd done that.
Austin: Nope. We're doing it now!
Janine: We had to do it eventually.
Art: I —
Austin: It's so funny! [chuckling] Oh...
Janine: Uh... I'm going to, I'll try and set this to, to like, tee this up as much as possible for —
Austin: Mm-hm.
Janine: For the stuff that has to come afterwards. Uh... uh... so I think for this final scene, the, the, that this character has sort of in the spotlight, [laughing] okay. Uh... so, we, okay, so we've had the execution. We had the sort of, the mirror sort of waxing poetic about this, the, the cloak, right? The sentimental cloak. And trying to sort of bring things back to the central themes. Uh... I think what we get is a sort of, uh... we're sort of back into the world where it's like, uh... she's been offered a promotion into the general's spot.
Austin: Ah, love it. Because —
Jack: Oh, wow.
Janine: Because the soldiers, I think, I think the people in authority recognize that the other soldiers were like, yeah, she's, she's —
Austin: Uh-huh.
Janine: She spoke to us, she really reached us. And they don't actually know why... or what that speech was, necessarily. They just know that the soldiers seemed really into it, and don't realize it was a speech about like, general apathy.
Austin: Incredible. General Apathy?
Sylvia: [laughing]
Janine: [laughing] General Apathy is, yeah. Yeah.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Janine: Uh... and... so, I think, uh, this is a thing where it's like, she's being offered this promotion, but she's, uh... she's... basically sending out, uh, she's sending out invitations to... uh, or not — hm, sending out invitations, I want something with a better, with a better, like, goal here. Uh, than that. Uh...
Austin: We can keep it pretty —
Janine: Oh, she's, okay, no, no, I got it. She's, she's throwing a party. And it's a party where it's like, I'm going to announce, uh, I'm going to announce whether or not I'm accepting this promotion at this party. Uh, because she specifically wants to, like —
Austin: The decision. Right.
Janine: Draw attention to this thing. And this is a party where like, the other characters would be, would be, not all of them at the same time, but it's like, it's basically, I'm trying to open this up so there's a plausible reason for —
Austin: Other, yep, for other people to be —
Janine: Every other character to still be onstage [laughing] if they need to be.
Austin: At the party, yeah.
Janine: [laughing] Yeah. And the goal of this, of this scene, is for her to convey to everyone, like, this isn't worth it, and I just want to live my life, you know? I'm out.
Austin: What is the added challenge here, Art?
Art: Uh, that the audience is like, too confused for this. And they sort of just like —
Austin: [chuckling] You don't say?
Art: They don't... they don't like, accept this shift, and instead go to like, “oh, yeah! A good job for a woman to have, general!”
Janine: Yeah, I was going to say, is it hard for them to accept that someone would turn down a promotion?
Austin: Would turn down the promotion, right.
Art: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah, sure. All right.
Janine: Why wouldn't you want to be general?
Austin: Uh... who is doing the heist on this?
Sylvia: I believe it was me.
Austin: It was you, yes.
Sylvia: Uh... I am struggling to think of other Aubrey stuff to do for this heist. Wow.
Art: I put you there because I thought you might be able to fix the Inkwell. But don't —
Sylvia: Well, shit. Maybe I'm trying to fix the Inkwell, there we go.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: Fixing it, there we go.
Sylvia: Thanks so much, all right.
Austin: Yeah. We can all contribute here. Collective action, in the, in the microscopic also, here.
Sylvia: We've only been doing this for like 10 and a half hours today.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Sylvia: [chuckling]
Ali: That's true. [laughing]
Sylvia: Uh, yeah. We started at noon.
Austin: That's why we're so tired.
Sylvia: We started at noon.
Austin: We did. Uh-huh.
Ali: [laughing].
Austin: [Fogie], again, if you're listening, I am taking tomorrow off. I can't work tomorrow.
Janine: We're so close, we're so close.
Austin: I know. We're very close. Aubrey, how do you try to fix — the ink is pouring into this place. How do you get in there? I don't know. It's fine, don't worry about it.
Sylvia: I don't know, I think I'm just trying to reroute it.
Austin: Oh, interesting.
Sylvia: Like I'm not necessarily fixing it, I'm just making it not our problem.
Austin: Oh, so you're rerouting like, who to — who's to blame?
Sylvia: Oh, I was like thinking — I guess — wait, I might be misunderstanding how this is broken. Are we trying to make it shoot up more, or are we trying to make it stop, uh... words are hard right now.
Austin: We can go back.
Art: We're trying to make it stop —
Jack: Gushing?
Art: Filling with ink.
Austin: It's filling with ink, currently. The room is filling, the library is filling with ink.
Sylvia: Okay.
Austin: Which will ruin all of this information, all of this knowledge. All these stories and whatnot.
Jack: Just what The Six loves.
Austin: Yes.
Sylvia: Yeah. Then yeah, I want to, I want to save these, I want to save these books, is my mission.
Austin: Okay. So yeah, you could also be trying to get as many of them out as you could. You could be trying to steal the entire amount, you could be trying to do something else. You tell me.
Sylvia: Yeah. Uh... I do think I am trying to just stop the flow of ink from getting in here.
Austin: Okay.
Sylvia: More than anything.
Austin: All right. What's the challenge for that? To whoever is the director. Art is the director currently?
Art: I think the, the —
Austin: It's the ink.
Art: It's the ink!
Austin: There's, there's a lot of ink filling a room.
Art: There's, there's a, it's, there's a lot of ink, it's seemingly an infinite amount of ink.
Austin: It keeps coming. It's a whole reservoir of ink. Underground.
Art: Yeah. An I Love Lucy episode of ink coming through a —
Austin: Yeah. Uh-huh.
Art: Hole in a library.
Austin: Well, good news. I'm looking at our props, and there's definitely something here that can help for sure, I'm sure, I'm sure, I'm sure of it.
Jack: Oh yeah.
Austin: Can we get a, a D2 here, Violet?
Janine: Yes. [roll20 boop] It is a 1.
Austin: All right. Can we get one, Aubrey?
Sylvia: Okay.
Art: Oh... do it with a sandwich, do it with a sandwich.
Austin: A ceramic prop sandwich!
Sylvia: A ceramic prop sandwich.
Janine: [laughing]
Jack: [laughing]
Austin: Okay. A glossy ceramic prop sandwich.
Jack: [laughing]
Janine: I will tell you, I will tell you. Uh... can I say for dramatic effect that there are multiple, but I'm only using one?
Austin: Yeah, of course.
Janine: I'm only like, engaging with one?
Austin: Yeah, mm-hm. That's an established rule.
Janine: So there's multiple prop sandwiches, they're like on plates, the guests have them, you know.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Janine: Uh, it's, it's representing what would surely be cheaper to just get real sandwiches for this scene. But you have to commit when you're, when you're an actor.
Austin: [laughing] Uh-huh.
Janine: And, uh, Violet has one as well, on this plate. And she sort of, she gets up to, to give her, to give her acknowledgment or denial in front of the crowd. And she says —
Janine (as Violet): I thank you all for coming today. I know that much has been said about my loyalties to the moon god. Uh, and much has been said about my possible disloyalties to the moon god. And, I know that many of you are here expecting me to accept the promotion that I have been offered by the leaders of our army, and to, to affirm my, my commitment, uh, to our god. Uh... but... I cannot do that. I cannot, I cannot commit myself —
Austin (as soldier): Sacrilege!
Janine (as Violet): To a god that, that...
Jack (as soldier): Why?
Janine (as Violet): I do not want to serve wholeheartedly. And it is the moon god that I do not wish to serve, and it is the champagne god that I do not wish to serve. I do not wish to serve anything.
Austin (as soldier): What?
Janine: And then she throws the sandwich to the ground! She's not even going to serve the sandwich!
Austin: And it shatters.
Ali: [laughing]
Janine: Shatters into a million pieces!
Austin: A million pieces, revealing it was a prop, the sandwich isn't real.
Jack: It's a metaphor!
Austin: The, the artifice of the stage —
Janine: It's a metaphor. [chuckling]
Austin: Brecht clapping in the grave.
Janine (as Violet): I serve nothing and no one but myself.
Austin: Give me a roll. [pause] No one understands!
Janine: I'm going to use a callback.
Austin: Okay.
Janine: [chuckling] I'm using a callback.
Art: I love how we're using all the callbacks on the play, it's beautiful.
Ali: [laughing]
Sylvia: As we should. We've got our priorities straight.
Austin: That's right. Which callback are you using? We have —
Janine: I'm actually a little — I'm a little worried, because I don't want to use a callback that is necessary to potentially be used in the next thing.
Austin: Well, we've only got three left.
Janine: Uh... it's true. Uh...
Art: Counterfeit money. Counterfeit money.
Janine: Yeah, I think I, I think counterfeit money is the safest one to use, right?
Austin: [chuckling] Sure!
Sylvia: Mm-hm.
Janine: I guess the bar set's also pretty safe to use. I can't use a bar — well — could patch the... I don't know. I'm going to go — well... fuck. Uh...
Austin: Mm-hm?
Janine: I'm going to use the counterfeit money, because I have a clearer idea for what to do with it.
Austin: That's the right call.
Janine: Uh... so, after shattering the sandwich [laughing] a sentence I just heard as I said it.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Janine: The, the young lady goes and retrieves a big box, and she says —
Janine (as Violet): This is the all of the money that I have earned in my service to the moon god. But, it means nothing to me.
Janine: And she just throws it into crowd, just like, scatters money.
Austin: Ugh.
Janine: It's over the crowd, it's over the party guests, and just —
Austin: [gasps]
Janine: It's a big moment of like, you're at this party, too! You're in this moment.
Austin: Right.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: Interactive theater.
Janine: And she's, and she's saying, “I want nothing to do with this anymore.” And it just, whoosh —
Austin: Incredible. Incredible. I can't — yeah. Uh-huh.
Sylvia: Wow.
Jack: It's beautiful.
Janine: And then she leaves.
Austin: And then she leaves. And the party continues onstage. Oh — as you're delivering this big speech, no one at the party stops, at that point. Like, you're, you step out of the play to speak to the audience, as the party behind you sort of like, fades, you know what I mean? And we come back and the party's still going, even though you've left the stage, and people are kind of confused now, but in a meaningful way, you know? That's very provocative, because like, the play is still going, but the lead has left. What's it mean?
Ali: Mm-hm.
Jack: “Is this allowed?” People are saying. “Can you do this? Where's the elephant?”
Austin: reptilebrain in the chat says, “the shattering of the god-king sandwich, Sandwichthese.”
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Janine and Ali: [laughing]
Austin: I thought it said, “sandwichcheese,” And I thought, you know, that's still pretty good. Uh... Aubrey?
Sylvia: Yeah. Uh...
Austin: How are you using the [chuckling] ceramic sandwich? And/or, along with a call back, potentially, to fix the destruction of this.
Sylvia: So, I was going to call back the counterfeit money, but I thought it would be funnier to just let that happen and not have that for me.
Austin: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Janine: Oh, no.
Sylvia: No, it's all good. I've, I've figured out a callback in my mind, possibly, but I don't know if it works out.
Austin: Please tell me.
Sylvia: I want to use the bar set. And I want to just use it to, put it, specific places that end up redirecting the ink flow back into the pool.
Ali: Oh yeah.
Art: That's great.
Austin: That's really fun. You've basically like done —
Janine: Very Aubrey.
Austin: Pipe Dreams, but with the ink.
Ali: [giggling]
Sylvia: Yeah. Pretty much.
Austin: I love it. That's fantastic.
Sylvia: That's exactly what I was thinking.
Austin: Well, that's a success.
Sylvia: Okay, cool.
Austin: So that's a play success, that's a heist success. Bing, bang, boom.
Sylvia: Bing bong.
Austin: Bing bong.
Sylvia: [laughing]
Austin: Love it. All right. Art, that was your turn. Ali, you're the director. We only have 2, 3, 4, 5 — 3 scenes left.
Ali: Uh...
Austin: I guess I could have just checked how many props were left. We have three scenes left on each side.
Ali: Yeah.
Art: And two of them [laughing] have to have Castille onstage.
Ali: Oh, Jesus Christ.
Austin: Yep!
Ali: Uh... so we're getting Edmund on the stage.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Ali: Uh, and Raven in the heist.
Austin: Okay. Edmund, what's your, what's your final scene as the green-grocer?
Jack: [sighs] it's a song.
Austin: During the party?
Jack: Yeah, absolutely during the party. Yeah. Uh... stands up on stage, does a song. But I think there's a dance routine, too, which like, Edmund, at least, is confidently good at, and audience is like, “wow, this guy's a lot more graceful when he's dancing than he was when he was holding a smoke bomb, and shouting it's a metaphor.”
Austin: Uh-huh.
Jack: But it's a song about, you know... I think it's a love song, about, the, the, the young woman. And now she's disappeared. She's found her own path in the world.
Austin: Right.
Jack: And he's not sure whether or not that involves him. But he hopes it does. The audience is a bit confused, because, wouldn't he not be onstage if he was going with her? You're onstage, but she's not, et cetera. All that kind of stuff.
Austin: I wonder if she walked offstage, like, just down — like didn't, just hopped off the stage and walked past the audience out the door, you know? And that's like —
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: Completely having broken the fourth wall.
Jack: Is, is that allowed?
Austin: Are you allowed to do that in a play? All right. Great. What's the challenge to this, Ali?
Ali: What is the challenge to this? Singing a song at a party, uh...
Austin: Broken ceramic on the floor, audience confused.
Ali: Is Edmund good at singing?
Austin: [chuckling] great question.
Ali: [laughing]
Jack: That's a great question. He's good at dancing...
Ali: Because... that's a challenge, for performing a song in a play, IMO.
Jack: Yep. Not an actor. Not a professional singer.
Ali: [laughing]
Jack: He's a single threat. He can't act, he can't sing, but he can dance.
Austin: [laughing]
Jack: Um, I don't know whether or not he can't act or sing. We'll find out.
Austin: All right. And... Raven?
Art: Yeah.
Austin: What is your heist maneuver here? You have the stuff. You're almost out.
Art: I think it's trying to... get the stuff into Violet's hands. Because Violet is leaving.
Austin: Right. You've got to do the handoff.
Art: And so it's just about like, being in the audience to do this handoff.
Austin: That's very fun. All right. What's the challenge, Ali?
Ali: Uh... handoff challenge is... [laughing] uh... uh...
Austin: Is it because there's like — go ahead.
Ali: Maybe — does it have to be done in like a public place or whatever, so it’s like empty?
Austin: Yeah, it's in this room, right? So it's just risky.
Art: It's in the audience, yeah.
Austin: Yeah. I don’t think it would be fancy.
Ali: Oh, sure sure sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: So, maybe there's like, maybe there's like... uh, you're crossing a guard or whatever, and like the edge of your coat has ink on it.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Ali: And it's like, you know, this might go bad, this might break bad.
Austin: All right.
Art: Great.
Austin: Prop time. 1D2. Uh... this is, who's onstage? Sorry. Edmund.
Art: This is Jack.
Austin: Jack. 1D2. [roll20 boop] All right, Jack's props. Here we go, baby. Both of these are wild. Art, give me a 1D2!
Jack: [gasps]
Austin: Oh my god. It couldn't have been the easy one —
Art: An unusually upsetting bird mask.
Janine: It had to be the bird — it had to be the bird mask.
Austin: It had to be the unusually upsetting bird mask. Edmund, how are you using an unusually upsetting bird mask... to sing a song?
Jack: During the read-throughs of this play —
Austin: [chuckling] uh-huh.
Jack: A couple of weeks ago, as we'd been planning this whole operation.
Austin: The only thing you know about yourselves, again, by the way. You've woken up among, you know, on your elephants, and going, “wait a second, who are we? We don't know who we are. But we do know this play that we have written in front of us.”
Jack: Edmund did not... understand this next bit that's about to happen. He looked at it and he went, “I sort of grasp most of this. It's a little of convoluted [chuckling]. But this bit I don't get, and it freaks me out.” And the actors kept saying, “no, it'll work. It's going to absolutely kill. This is great.”
Austin: Mm-hm. Sorry to be clear, not you, you didn't wake up on the elephant. The actors did. Just to be clear.
Jack: No, no, no, the actors, yeah. Uh... the party goes quiet as Edmund — as Edmund is singing, people start leaving the party. Until eventually it's just him alone on the stage, surrounded by [chuckling] broken ceramic —
Austin: Broken — broken ceramic sandwich.
Jack: Food, drinks knocked over, tables, revels — and he finishes this sad song and ends with the, you know, basically like, “will I find my own path in life, will I be reunited with my love?” And he sinks down and sits on the floor in the middle of all this debris.
5:11:48.1 And then, with a flutter of wings, a humanoid figure with a great, heavy, unsettling bird head, flies down on wires from the top of the, the catwalks above the stage, wraps Edmund in its feathery arms, turn a beady eye to the audience, and carries him off, up into the rafters as the orchestra plays, you know, like rising —
Austin: Uh-huh.
Jack: Elegiac, beautiful violins. Up in the rafters, Edmund goes, “yeah, I still don't, I don't —“
Austin: [laughing]
Ali: [laughing]
Jack: “I don’t know why we did that, I don't follow. I don't follow. Uh...”
Austin: Give me a 1D2. The audience —
Jack: Neither does the audience.
Austin: The audience doesn't follow either, at all.
Jack: “Is he dead?” Someone shouts.
Austin: Bring out a candle, we need clarity!
Jack: [laughing] Ah... empty stage — now there's nobody on the stage. This is not good.
Austin: Yeah. Uh-huh. I guess so.
Jack: Do I want to — no, I think it is more essential that I give it here — wait, hold on. [laughing] Wait! I can do a callback with the collapsible ladder.
Austin: You could.
Jack: [chuckling] Do people... do people want this ladder?
Art: We might want to like...
Austin: It's probably one…
Art: Have the ladder so the heist goes well.
Austin: Yeah. Yeah.
Jack: Well, yeah, so Edmund says —
Jack (as Edmund): I can just climb back down there. I can just climb down on the ladder —
Austin (as Masked Figure): No, no, no, no.
Jack (as Edmund): And tell them that I'm fine.
Austin: The person —
Jack (as Edmund): I don’t understand it. Am I dead?
Austin: Who's in the bird mask? Do we know? No, we don't.
Jack (as Edmund): Who are you?
Austin (as Masked Figure): Don't go down the ladder, it's fine.
Janine: Is it the, it's not the elephant, right?
Austin: No, I don't think so.
Jack: [laughing] No.
Austin: [Little Wolfgang voice] Don't go down the ladder, it's fine.... no, that was more Mario than Little Wolfgang, huh.
Janine: It's more — that's, I was going to say it's Luigi, that's kind of Luigi.
Austin: That was kind of a Luigi.
Sylvia: I thought Samolephant was Italian.
Austin: [laughing] Ah... all right. Raven. Handoff time. How are you using the bird mask [laughing] to —
Art: Oh, to, to conceal that I'm a performer from the play. I don't want to be recognized as —
Austin: Hey, did — Jack, did you write unusually upsetting bird mask before Art declared that, that this is Raven, that his character was called Raven? Yes?
Jack: Yes.
Art: Oh yeah, I guess so.
Austin: Okay. Great.
Art: So this is just a disguise.
Austin: Right. But a very obvious one. But one that's like, I guess maybe you're part of the play, but also... that means whatever you're doing doesn't draw attention because maybe it's part of the play. Oh, oh, okay, they're handing off a thing to the act — to the actress, to the young woman. That's clearly part of the play. Nothing to be concerned with. Couldn't be a heist.
Art: Right.
Austin: Give me a 1D2. [pause] And that's a success. Everyone just assumes, part of the play. Nothing to worry about.
Art: That's probably part of the play.
Austin: Yeah. All right. Penultimate sequence here. Sylvi —
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: We know who's onstage.
Ali: [chuckles]
Sylvia: Yeah, we sure do. Castille, come on up.
Ali: I'm here.
Austin: Yeah. Uh-huh. And then either Edmund or Violet on the heist.
Sylvia: Uh... uh, okay. [laughing] I'm going to go with... Violet, because... wait, weren't they the same — no, no, Raven was in the last —
Austin: Raven was in the last one, Raven handed off the book to Violet just now.
Sylvia: Okay, cool. Yeah. Then I do want to pick Violet for that.
Austin: There we go.
Sylvia: Because I was like, I don't want to double-dip on the Hitchcocks right now.
Austin: That's fair.
Sylvia: Yeah, I want to spread the love. Uh... yeah.
Austin: Castille, what is happening onstage?
Ali: I have no fucking clue. [squeals laughing]
Janine: [laughing]
Sylvia: Why not, this has been so easy to follow.
Austin: Why? Yeah. Okay, let's, let's —
Janine: I mean, the good news is, anything can happen right now. Someone just got flown offstage.
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: You can do anything.
Ali: And Castille was playing like a weird spy, champagne god spy —
Austin: For the champagne god.
Ali: Like, doesn't need to be... and then I have this community Maelgwyn card, which is a lot of pressure, I don't know when that [laughing] should be used.
Austin: Uh-huh. And you have a collapsible ladder. And you have a second onstage scene next.
Ali: I do. I do. I do. I do. Yeah. I'm... I'm... [snorts] I'm playing 4D chess with myself.
Austin: Yes.
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: This could be anything. I mean, and the situation narratively is kind of interesting, right? Like, these two spies came in to sow discord, and didn't — like, they found the map, which led them to the barracks or whatever, the army stuff. Uh, but didn't even have the opportunity to fuck with anything. Everything just kind of like, dissolved from the inside out, and the person who was going to take over the general position, the general had to — the general was killed, uh, after being outed as someone who tried to frame the young woman.
Ali: Mm-hm.
Austin: And, the... the young woman refused to step up and take the reins as the new general. So everything's in chaos. This is, this is a classic, we've got to bring order to the chaos, situation.
Ali: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, has — [laughing]
Austin: Or, do we just revel in the discord that has been sown, and that's —
Ali: Right.
Austin: We've done, we've done it, we've done the good job.
Ali: Well, is it, is it, uh... the... the spies leading the — [laughing]
Austin: Oh…
Ali: I don’t know that —
Jack: We're all doing great.
Austin: The spy pretends —
Ali: The spy leading the, uh, soldiers, or whatever, is really the best narrative beat.
Austin: Mm-hm. Well, the soldiers are looking for guidance in this moment, right?
Ali: Sure, sure.
Austin: They've turned the general, the backup general, or the young woman refuses to be the general. And so there is an opportunity here for someone to either pretend to be the young woman, or to say, if she won't do it, I will.
Ali: Right. Right right right. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Plus, it's like — oh, this, this mysterious spy has achieved their goal of —
Austin: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ali: How are they going to manipulate this [laughing] this soldier, this squad of soldiers that we very much care about.
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: In this, this play about if you can really know yourself in a war.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Jack: Is that what it's about?
Austin: Yeah. Mm-hm. Who am I really? Can I really know myself?
Ali: [giggling] uh...
Austin: So what is, what is — I almost said Charter, that's how tired I am. What is Castille doing as the spy number one?
Ali: I'm just leading the, the —
Austin: Okay, leading the thing. Okay, what's the — what is the challenge to that, Sylvi?
Sylvia: Wow, uh, gosh. You know, you'd think at this point I'd remember that I have to come up with a challenge for these bits.
Austin: It's fine, it's good. We're almost there.
Sylvia: You know, part of me wants to be that people are wondering when the guy who flew away is going to come back, and they're just kind of like —
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: Everyone's looking up at the rafters, or like looking around. They're expecting more special effects now.
Austin: Mmm.
Sylvia: We've sort of, we've sort of played ourselves a bit with that.
Austin: Pretty big, yeah.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Okay. And then, who's on heist duty? Violet.
Sylvia: I believe it was Violet.
Austin: It was. Yeah.
Janine: Violet, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: You just have to get out of the campus, basically, right? With the stuff.
Janine: Yeah, I think we must have like, a point that we've agreed, like, okay, we're going to rendezvous here when everything is said and done. So I think it's a matter of just like, getting out of the building, and... and getting to that point.
Sylvia: Mm-hm.
Janine: Uh...
Sylvia: Uh... I'm trying to think of a good challenge for that. I am trying to think of something a bit more interesting than like, security is beefed up now. And there's like, the place is surrounded. But I'm, again, we've been doing this a long time —
Austin: I don't think we have get fancy, I think we're allowed to just have security be beefed up.
Sylvia: Yeah, so I'm just going to go with the, I'm going to go basic with it.
Austin: Yeah. Give me a 1D2, Castille, to find out if we're using a whip... or Little Wolfgang the virtuoso.
Ali: Oh my god, that's right. What the fuck is going on [laughing]
Austin: It's the whip.
Ali and Janine: [laughing]
Austin: It's the whip.
Janine: The whip.
Ali: Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Sylvia: We get a big closing number now.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Janine: [laughing] It's so good!
Austin: Uh-huh. So this means the whip... what are you, how are you using the whip on this — Castille? How are you using the whip here, to communicate that you're taking, that you're becoming the general?
Janine: That's a tough one.
Austin: I don't know, I think it kind of writes itself.
Ali: Generals famously whip people into shape.
Janine: You don't want, you don't want to play the Maelgwyn card right now?
Austin: Yeah, they whip up —[chuckles]
Ali: Uh, shut the — [laughing]
Austin: [laughing]
Sylvia: It's a great time.
Ali: I, I, is it like a montage? Is it like a...
Austin: Yeah. Oh, is it like a montage with the whip instead of the sword? It's like the reverse?
Ali: Oh yeah, yes. That's what it is.
Janine: [laughing]
Ali: [laughing]
Jack: Oh god, this play really is like, there's some thematic work happening in here, but it's happening in every direction simultaneously, to no clear end.
Austin: Yes. Uh-huh.
Janine: I'd watch it. I'd go, I'd pay, I'd get a ticket.
Austin: This is a — I would see this in — again, Pickman sitting in a playhouse watching this going, “what the fuck is happening?”
Janine and Ali: [laughing]
Ali: That's a failure.
Jack: “Why did they bring me here?”
Austin: Oh, no! Do you want to retroactively use the collapsible ladder to get the success? [laughing]
Sylvia: [laughing]
Austin: Or do you want to save it for the heist?
Ali: Oh god. [laughing] Uh...
Austin: I mean, the failure could be that, that... the spy fails to take over as a general, right?
Ali: Right. Sure, sure sure sure sure, sure. Sure. Sure. I, yeah. Uh... yeah. I'm not going to claim this collapsible ladder.
Austin: People are saying Maelgwyn card, but there's still another stage scene with Castille.
Ali: Yeah. And... I know.
Jack: Yeah, we know who's also going to be on the stage.
Austin: Right.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: Boom.
Ali: Uh...
Janine: [laughing]
Ali: I know, I — okay. But yeah, I guess that makes sense, is that it's like a failed...
Austin: The uprising continues, but without, without your character at the head of it? It kind of just like, overwhelms?
Ali: Uh... yeah, I guess like the... the, the... what is the — [laughing] I still don't know this character's intentions at all, besides being —
Austin: No one does.
Ali: You know, getting up to hijinks.
Austin: Troublemaker. Yeah.
Ali: Sure. Sure sure sure sure. Uh... [laughing] so... uh, I think that it's like, it's like a success, for... the champagne god spy, but the, the, the audience is still invested in the moon god —
Austin: Okay. Right, sure. Well, they're Samothes people, right? So they've kind of attached themselves to that.
Ali: Right.
Austin: So it feels bad to see...
Janine: Wait, the champagne, champagne god can't win!
Austin: The champagne god can't win! Right, yeah, sure. Of course. Yes.
Ali: [giggling]
Janine: This looks like it might actually be the ending. Wait a minute.
Austin: Yes. Isn't there only one scene left?
Jack: What is happening?
Austin: All right.
Art: People are looking at their playbills, very confused.
Janine: [chuckling]
Austin: Violet, how are you, how are you using the whip to get out with the goods?
Janine: Uh... I think that, uh... I think that, okay — so, I think that I have the whip around my waist like a belt, so I just seem like an unassuming lady with a belt.
Austin: Mm-hm. But actually —
Janine: But, the second I'm challenged, I have the whip to, to, to throw things into disarray, and get some hits in, and then leave, you know?
Austin: Yeah. Yeah, I definitely understand. I do. This is actually clear, compared to many things. Uh...
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: Give me a roll. [pause] 1D2.
Janine: Oh, I have to —
Austin: You have to roll, yeah. Uh-huh.
Janine: I was waiting for Ali, but I forgot how this works.
Austin: Nope, it's you.
Janine: Uh... I was thinking, do I want to use the ladder?
Austin: The ladder, yeah.
Janine: But I think I want to save the ladder for like, the last minute like —
Austin: Just in case.
Janine: If, if this goes bad, the hail Mary, the like final —
Austin: Mm-hm. I'm with you.
Janine: The final push, right? That's a 2.
Austin: That's a 2. So they — what happens? I guess, Sylvi, how does this break bad? Do they, do they get her?
Sylvi: [chuckles] That's no belt at all!
Austin: [laughing]
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: Wait a second.
Art: That's not a belt!
Janine: Yeah, that trick really only works once, doesn't it.
Austin: That works exactly once.
Sylvia: Uh... yeah, I don't know. I guess they just kind of catch on. And they don't need to necessarily catch her, but they could start chasing her, like —
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: That puts her in like, not necessarily a great situation, but doesn't... mean... Janine's character has been caught.
Austin: That's good, because — right, it means that Edmund has to come to save the day at the end. Or Maelgwyn, I guess, theoretically, can save the day in the final scene here. Uh, Janine, you're the director. I guess you're casting Castille and Edmund.
Janine: Yep —
Austin: We didn't really think about how this would work.
Janine: Castille onstage and Edmund in the — yeah, I don't, that — it seems, it... it seems like there should be a rule in this for like, shuffling up the play order or something?
Austin: Oh, to be clear, we hacked this so that — normally, again, as written —
Janine: Oh, okay, okay.
Austin: We would, you would only ever talk about your own scenes. There wouldn't be this of like challenge —
Janine: Right, right right right.
Austin: You would say, okay, I'm going to do this, here's what the challenge is, here's how I'm getting over the challenge. And I wanted to spice that up and also stretch us for 5 hours, because that's what Friends at the Table does.
Janine: Yeah. [chuckles]
Sylvia: Mm-hm.
Austin: Castille, what is your finale? We know, we know what the prop is. [chuckling] The prop is Little Wolfgang, virtuoso. We don't have to roll for it. So, what is the final scene on the stage, and Edmund, think about what the final, the final scene in the heist is.
Ali: Right. Okay. Right. Okay.
Janine: Also, there's the dilemma here of... Little Wolfgang, virtuoso, isn't defined —
Austin: No.
Janine: Beyond being Little Wolfgang, virtuoso.
Austin: Mm-hm.
Janine: So I wonder, so does the stage definition also define the heist definition? Or can they be separate [chuckling] Little Wolfgang virtuosos?
Austin: I hadn't thought about how... they need to be in both.
Janine: Uh-huh. Yeah.
Austin: I think it has to be the same one. Little Wolfgang... Jack, have you — I mean, it's your prop. Jack, tell me about Little Wolfgang, virtuoso.
Jack: …He, he's 7.
Sylvia: [outburst of laughter]
Austin: [indeterminate European accent] Hello, I am Little Wolfgang, I am 7.
Jack: [continues accent, higher pitch] Hello, I vould like to sing my little song now.
Sylvia: [cackling]
Austin: Oh, Wolfgang is here.
Sylvia: Oh my god!
Jack: He comes out, he bows very politely —
Austin: Uh-huh.
Jack: Folds his little hands together [chuckling]
Jack (as Wolfgang): I've been waiting in ze vings all evening.
Austin: [chuckling] Oh, no!
Sylvia: [more laughter]
Austin: Castille and Maelgwyn just onstage? Question mark?
Ali: It... appears so.
Everyone: [laughing] [while Sylvi continues uncontrollably]
Austin (as Maelgwyn): It says here we just — it says here we just do a dance. We just dance while…
Ali: Right, I was thinking this. Yeah, okay. Back when I back when I thought I was, after the Edmund party scene, I was like... Castille and Maelgwyn are going to have this dance at this party, and move the plot along — but then Jack was like, “okay, nobody is onstage anymore.”
Austin: Uh-huh.
Ali: And I was like, great. Great. Yes, and.
Janine: [laughing]
Austin: Yes, and. Yeah, I had the same thought.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: But now we're just going to do it anyway, Ali.
Janine: Waltz of the spies.
Austin: It's a waltz —
Janine: He's playing “Waltz of the Spies,” and then the two spies come on and waltz.
Austin: Waltz of the spies. Yeah.
Austin (as Maelgwyn): I know exactly who you are...
Ali: [cackling]
Austin (as Maelgwyn): Castille.
Austin: Using your real name onstage loudly for everyone to hear.
Ali (as Castille): Yeah, fucking... cop son.
Austin (as Maelgwyn): No, that's what it says. It says in the, it says in the play that I'm supposed to address you with your real name to like... communicate that we do really know each other.
Ali: [laughing] Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin (as Maelgwyn): For real.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin (as Maelgwyn): I feel like I do.
Ali: [cackling] Uh...
Ali (as Castille): I know you, too, and you've led me to know myself.
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: Removes the mask. Removes the mask, uh, very theatrically, and holds it in front of the audience, between — in front of our faces, covering our faces, so we can stage kiss. But did they really? No one could see.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: No one could see behind the mask.
Ali: Little virtuoso is reaching the crescendo of the song as their lips touch — [laughing]
Austin: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Ali: [cackling]
Austin: That's a success.
Ali: I don't know know what the plot of this play is anymore —
Austin: No one does.
Ali: I don't know what the, the challenge of them kissing onstage is supposed to be...
Janine: This is a vibes-based play, mostly. [chuckling]
Austin: It's a vibes-based play.
Ali: [cackling]
Austin: Two people can come to know each other, for real.
Art: [unintelligible] anymore [laughing]
Austin: Edmund, how are you saving Violet?
Sylvia: God...
Jack: Oh my god.
Austin: Is it with a collapsible ladder?
Jack: What if we were both criminals onstage and Little Wolfgang was there, and we kissed?
Janine and Ali: [laughing]
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Ali: What if?
Austin: Truly.
Sylvia: I am, uh, picturing Little Wolfgang singing one of the songs that they play at the bar in Twin Peaks.
Austin: Uh-huh. Oh my god.
Jack: I think — okay. I mean, the thing is, I think Little Wolfgang — sorry, “Little Volfgang,” —
Austin: Little Wolfgang.
Jack: He's a funny little guy, and he's been waiting all evening, but he's fucking killing it.
Austin: Oh, he has to be.
Ali: [snorts laughing]
Jack: The song is moving — like, he's legitimately great.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: Like, people in the audience are like, they — there's tears in their eyes, Little Wolfgang is singing a song about how, you know, everybody's put on this earth for a limited time, but during that time they have the potential to figure out who they are, and work wonders —
Austin: Unbelievable.
Jack: With those, and those they love. And it's like, the maturity here, Little Wolfgang! It's really impressive!
Austin: Hey, is Little Wolfgang part of the crew? Or did you hire Little Wolfgang here, is this locally-sourced Wolfgang?
Ali: [laughing]
Jack: Uh... nobody's quite sure.
Art: Every town in Hieron has a Little Wolfgang.
Austin: [laughing] No one's sure, yeah.
Jack: Uh... could you remind me of the situation that Violet finds herself in?
Austin: Being chased. Needs help. I already crossed out the collapsible ladder, Edmund. You could just use that to get the dub.
Jack: Yeah. [pause] Little Wolfgang's here, though, that's the real [laughing]
Austin: [laughing]
Jack: That’s the bit that's a real puzzler. Oh —
Sylvia: Who do you think's helping you collapse the ladder?
Jack: I mean, all right, okay, here we are. The chase is happening through the theater. Little Wolfgang's music is playing in the background. Little Wolfgang is in this scene as he's singing.
Sylvia: [laughing] By god — that's Little Wolfgang's music!
Everyone: [laughing]
Jack: Uh, and as, as the chase continues, and as they're just about to absolutely get Violet cornered, and steal back the identities, one of them is absolutely clotheslined by a ladder, and there's a flash of a cavalry saber, as back to back, the twins —
Austin: Uh-huh, the twins appear.
Jack: Are together, Ethan and Edmund, for the first time, fighting off the, uh, the, the —
Austin: The Font Men, once again.
Jack: The Font Men. With their peculiar combination of clumsiness and grace that defines the stupid Hitchcock twins.
Austin: Janine, do you want to read these lyrics you posted?
Janine: [singsong] We are candles, not elephants. We end, we end. Not elephants.
Ali: [snorts]
Janine: It's a little more, it's a little more, you know, ballad-y, than I can do justice.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Sylvia: It’s so profound.
Janine: I'm no singer. I'm no Little Wolfgang.
Austin: Who is? Who is a Little Wolfgang?
Austin: Uh... denouement. In Scene Thieves and in theater, the denouement is when a play's major dramatic question is answered based on the number of successes and failures — yes, Ali?
Ali: Wait, do we not roll success or failure on that —
Austin: I, we had a Maelgwyn card.
Jack: I used the collapsible ladder.
Janine: The ladder.
Ali: Oh, okay —
Austin: Yeah, we both have auto-wins. Uh-huh.
Ali: Okay, okay, okay.
Austin: Take a moment to describe how your play's story ends, reflecting on whether the characters are [laughing] better off, worse off, or the same compared to the beginning.
Jack: Well...
Austin: Who could say?
Sylvia: Who could?
Austin: Regardless of whether —
Ali: Who could?
Jack: The theater —
Sylvia: I am worse off, I am decapitated.
Austin: You are worse — you were decapitated. Regardless of whether the —
Jack: The theater is a fucking mess.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: There's just stuff —
Austin: Everywhere.
Jack: Everywhere!
Austin: Uh-huh. Regardless of whether the play ended on a happy or sad note, though, the cast was glorious. Narrate a moment where they bow and [humorously excited] soak up the applause!
Jack: Oh, okay, we've got to have every, everybody's got to bow!
Austin: Everyone does a big bow...
Janine: I'm not there.
Austin: You're not [chuckling] there.
Art: We bring out Samolephant.
Janine: Is there just someone in a — do we just —
Sylvia: I'm riding on Samolephant.
Austin: Samolephant and Giraud [sic] are there, though.
Janine: Can we... can we just put a 6-foot-long wig on Ethan and just have him do my bit?
Austin: Yeah, uh-huh! Yep.
Ali and Jack: [laughing]
Sylvia: I'm here for it.
Austin: Even if you're final scene is described as an escape, da-da-da — okay, it's a success, because we have, the heist is, is there. Uh... that's, you know? We did it. You successful did — do y’all have names? Do you know who you really are? I know what happened with your identities, but I don't know who you are. Tell me who you are, Violet.
Janine: So, I think Violet opens up the, uh... paper or whatever this —
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: Their names are written on. And, for a second, her thumb is blocking it, because it just says “Violet.” And she's like, wait, wait a minute.
Austin: Oh. Uh-huh.
Janine: And then she moves her thumb, and it's Violette, with like an extra T and an E at the end.
Austin: Oh, sure!
Janine: And she has that moment, you know when you have those moments when you realize, like... oh, I'm a really corny person.
Austin: Mmm. Mm-hm.
Ali: [snorts]
Sylvia: Classic, yeah.
Janine: She realized her name is Violette, and that's why she wears the violets in her hair, because that's her name.
Austin: Oh, wow. Wow.
Jack: It was there all along.
Janine: It was there [chuckling] the whole time.
Austin: Yeah. Raven and Crow?
Art: I have no idea. I should have started thinking of something when it became overwhelmingly obvious we were going to succeed at this! [laughing]
Austin: We were going to win, yeah. Uh-huh.
Ali: [laughing]
Art: But I sort of just like... was going with it.
Janine: Random name generator, baby!
Austin: I mean, you did know yourself, right? Oh, is this where you're named after the, one of you is named after the collective noun for ravens and the other for crows?
Art: Oh, so it's like uh... what's, uh...
Jack: Murder and murder?
Austin: [laughing]
Art: It's Murder and Conspiracy.
Austin: [laughing]
Sylvia: Jeez — fuck yes it is! Holy shit.
Ali: [laughing]
Art: Uh... no I think I looked it up, and it's conspiracy of ravens. And also, these are all pretty subjective. So we're just going to say it's Murder and Conspiracy.
Austin: Right. In Hieron, it's something else, but for us, it would be...
Sylvia: I love these goth non-binary twins, wow.
Art: Yeah, and I think — and they just bounce. They like... they don't go to the afterparty.
Austin: They're gone.
Art: Murder and Conspiracy are going to... do some stuff.
Austin: The thing, the thing that —
Art: They do come back. They, they rejoin the company, but maybe some murder and conspiracy happens in Marielda for a couple days.
Austin: For a little bit, yeah, sure. The thing that happened here was, because there was a mystery at the heart of it. Uh, that y'all were leaving Nacre when Tristero did the thing. You were right on the border. And so as Tristero hid Nacre from the world, your identities got caught up in it. And you kind of passed through, and because of the weirdness of the magic, lost yourselves temporarily, lost at the border of Nacre.
And, and now we — I mean, you know your name. You don't have your memories back, though, right? Uh, so if you ever find Nacre — I mean, this was also why this information was so well-hidden. Because the Font Men know, the Font Men have it written down, that Nacre is still a place. Uh... Samothes's magic keeps that part, knowledge — like that part, protected in the Inkwell or whatever. So you also are the only people in the world who know about this place Nacre that exists. That you could go back to, I guess. Which, that's fun.
Art: That is fun.
Austin: Anyway...
Janine: Who would ever want to go there, though?
Austin: It's a nice place!
Jack: I don't think anything bad could ever come from visiting Nacre.
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: No, it seems great.
Austin: All right. We should take... like a 5-minute break before we say goodbye, and I reveal what REALIS is, and stuff.
Art: Yeah.
Austin: Uh... thank you so much for joining us for this episode. Uh...
Ali: Oh, do we want any epilogue stuff with, with Aubrey...
Austin: Yeah, do we? What's the final image of —
Ali: Castille, and Edmund? [laughing]
Austin: Of this crew, The Six?
Sylvia: Aubrey kept the fake head as a souvenir.
Ali: [cackling]
Austin: Great. Wonderful.
Sylvia: Just in her room.
Austin: It really changes the Four Conversations scene to just have that in the background now.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Ali: Jesus Christ. [snorts]
Sylvia: The tricorn hat's on it.
Austin: Ugh...
Jack: Uh... it's just the Hitchcocks sitting in their, in their blue chairs down the basement of the place. Because like, we're going to do another — within the fiction, we're going to do another job in like —
Austin: Yeah. Yeah.
Jack: Two weeks, or whatever. We're just, the planning, we keep doing it. And, uh, uh, uh, Edmund is saying —
Jack (as Edmund): I — like, was the bird death? Did it come down...
Austin and Janine: [laughing]
Jack (as Edmund): And take me?
Jack: And Ethan is saying,
Jack (as Ethan): No, like, the bird was a representation of you becoming the kind of person you could be.
Austin: Oh...
Jack: And Edmund's like —
Jack (as Edmund): The kind of person, what — the kind of person that I, Edmund, can be? Or the character could be?
Jack: They just argue all evening.
Austin: [laughing] kescon3 says, “I hope the play runs for multiple nights.” You have to go back and do it all again.
Jack and Ali: [laughing]
Austin: I don't think we could if we tried to. If you asked us to recreate this from memory...
Ali: [cackling]
Art: And, uh, Samolephant ends up being in all of the rest of the episodes of Marielda.
Austin: Yeah, just in the background — just offscreen.
Ali: Just offscreen — yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Art: All over it. Anything, any scene you can imagine from Marielda from here on, Samolephant is in the background.
Austin: [comedown from laughing] Ugh... is there a final —
Jack: What's Castille doing?
Austin: Castille/Maelgwyn, yeah, what's —
Ali: Uh... yeah. I guess they're like, sitting on the roof of her weird apartment, down in the like, industrial part of the city.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Ali: Looking out at the lava.
Austin: Uh-huh.
Ali: There's a bottle of champagne sitting between them. [laughing] She still can't drink it.
Austin (as Maelgwyn): I just don't think I'm a good actor.
Ali (as Castille): You were great, what are you talking about?
Austin (as Maelgwyn): I don't think anybody believed me.
Ali (as Castille): I — we were spies. We were supposed to be —
Austin (as Maelgwyn): Spies get believed! If you're a spy, you're supposed to be convince someone of something.
Ali: [laughing]
Ali (as Castille): Well we were very convincing that, uh, the, the heist was happening. Weren’t we doing a heist? No.
Austin (as Maelgwyn): No, we were doing like a... what were we doing?
Ali (as Castille): Well, we were very convincing that that general sucked, so...
Austin (as Maelgwyn): Yeah, I'll take it.
Ali (as Castille): Yeah. Thank you.
Austin (as Maelgwyn): Do you want — no...
Ali (as Castille): You say, “you're welcome.”
Austin (as Maelgwyn): You're welcome. Sorry. I — yeah. I'm still...
Art: [chuckling]
Austin (as Maelgwyn): Shaking off the rust, you know?
Ali (as Castille): Sure, sure. Well.
Austin: And then I —
Austin (as Maelgwyn): It's very weird to be told to pretend to be someone you're not… So that your friends can break into a different one of... one of your father's secret libraries, to find out who they — not they, but people they know, really are. It... A little dizzying. I'm glad we're back out here, things are simpler.
Ali (as Castille): Maybe we should take all of the knowledge and throw it into the streets. Then things won't be awkward anymore.
Austin (as Maelgwyn): Yeah, I'll think about it.
Ali: [giggling]
Austin: And then just, pours two more glasses of champagne, even though he knows better.
Ali: [laughing]
Austin: And sips his.
[Unnamed Marielda music plays]
Austin: Uh, we are going to say good night, but before we do, I’m just going to introduce everyone to something new, I guess. REALIS. Here is, and this is a surprise I think to everybody on the call too. I got a message, I got a message, 9:42, [laughs] two hours ago, from Annie, who said if you need a hastily thrown together REALIS background image.
Ali and Janine: [laughing]
Jack: Incredible.
Austin: And there it is.
Jack: God, the greatest.
Austin: And Jack, I guess I’ll just play REALIS demo over me reading this, right?
Sylvia: Oh, wow.
Jack: I think it is too aggr — I don’t think that it will, I don’t think that it would sit. I think that you should read it, and then we should do the music.
Austin: I’ll read it, and then we’ll play the music, the two pieces back to back. I’ll play the first one, and then we’ll say goodbye, and then we’ll go out —
Jack: We’ll do Golden Age?
Austin: I’m gonna, I think we do REALIS demo, and then we go out on Golden Age.
Jack: Okay. I’ll say this, this is earlier than the way we share music basically ever.
Austin: We never do this. Y’all have —
Jack: This is because you raised so much money.
Austin: Are you kidding me?
Ali: [laughs]
Jack: This is unmixed, this is unfinished. This is figuring out —
Austin: Well, I’m not gonna play it. I’m gonna read, and then we’ll play it after. Right?
Jack: Yeah, I just wanna get people’s expectations in the right zone.
Austin: Yeah, I gotcha. I appreciate it.
[reading] “This universe prizes passivity except after wisdom gained, recognizes friendship’s strength but rewards solitary achievement, shifts in scope and scale according to the needs of the story or the whims of its tellers, demands honesty in consequences but care at the table, is an inverted Twilight Mirage, psychedelic space and sword & sorcery, mumbling mystics at the castle observatory, meteors cleaved clean with broadswords, a thousand moons in fatal orbit with an unreachable world called Realis.”
Uh, Jack, do you wanna get in here on this document and do this dramatic read through of the first play example in this game that I’ve been writing?
Ali: [laughs]
Jack: Yeah, link me.
Austin: I’ll link you. Janine, I think, is already in the doc.
Jack: Incredible.
Janine: I’m always in the doc.
Austin: Yeah. Always adding stuff here. Um. I’ll play as Aegea, the GM, who wants to be —
Jack: I’ll play as, uh, Euan? Or Evan?
Austin: Okay. Yeah. And then Janine, do you wanna be Casey?
Janine: Uh, yes, I just have to find the page that we’re on [laughs] cause I —
Austin: We’re up top. We’re all the way top.
Janine: Okay. I was all the way in the middle.
Austin: No worries.
[reading] Your orphaned vessel has come into orbit around Yazerin, the fabled seventh moon. On the view screen you watch as your scoptics scan the planetoid’s surface, finally coming to rest on vast, labyrinthine ruins. That must be the dead city. What do you do?
Jack: I am still fixing up the Panta Rhei, my Panoply. Its armor is still dented from our last session.
Janine: Well, while the flyboy works on his robot, I’m going to start scouting ahead. Can I go down to the surface?
Austin: Of all the thousand moons of Realis, it is said that Yzerin is the hardest to reach, not only because its coordinates are ever uncertain, but because it is orbited by a countless sea of diamond shaped caltrops.
Janine: That’s not a problem for me. My descent suit has the +1 sentence, “When moving through the dark of space, I always evade traps that bar my way.” I rest my hand on our vessel’s side to say farewell, then launch myself from the rear deck.
Austin: Okay. You fly from the ship toward the surface, dodging the spikes in orbit. Just as you reach the atmosphere, you take a moment to look out on the horizon. Beyond the vast sphere of Realis around which the thousand moons orbit, you see the dark red corpse sun flicker alight. It is an omen. Today will be a good day.
[REALIS demo track plays]
Austin: I think we’re back with it playing quietly in the background now. Jack, that guitar is just killer.
Art: Yeah.
Jack: Thank you so much. It’s, uh.
Austin: Yeah, keep talking.
Jack: I’m so excited.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: I’m so excited. I’ve been wanting to make a season or a thing that has sounded like this… I don’t know, when you pitched REALIS, I think we were both in place where we were like oh, we wanna make something that feels like this.
Austin: Yeah. We were miserable. This, uh, I started working on this game right after, right in the beginning of Covid, I read, right after Kentaro Miura died I read all of Berserk and was like, oh, I gotta make one of these. Actually, what I thought was —
Ali: [laughs]
Austin: What I got was, oh, everybody’s been stealing from this and they’ve been stealing the wrong thing.
[music ends]
Austin: Um, they’ve been stealing like the grimdark violence, which is still in this, they’ve been stealing the big sword and the eclipse and the hypocritical church, and all of that’s true, but they were missing is that this is a story about a person who is a myth slowly becoming more material and real. And so that’s what I’ve been working on for a year. And a people, that happening to characters, that happening to people. So I’m very excited, hopefully, like I said, this is in the hands of playtesters now. Hopefully we get to make something with this soon. So we’ll see how it goes.