COUNTER/Weight 04: The Bells Are Ringing
Transcribers: Lune @daffodilian#8872 (0:00 - 1:44:00); Jen @wronghandle#1989 (1:44:00 - 2:38:56)
AUSTIN: But I’m imagining you in a public space, on the ship, with the person that you, uh, kidnapped.
[INTRO MUSIC starts playing: A Long Way Around]
JACK: We could maybe do the Batman I’m-going-to-throw-you-out-of-this-craft if needs be, but I don’t think it’s going to come to that.
ART: D’you want to just start with that?
[Cut to]
AUSTIN (as SHELL): Our guiding ideal is that things were better back before we were on speaking terms with the fucking Diaspora.
KEITH (as MAKO): So you’re sort of like a… terrorist thing.
AUSTIN (as SHELL): No, we’re sort of like patriots.
[Cut to]
AUSTIN: On the screen, you see the Kingdom Come in the sky, and the fight that you just had. And that just plays for like, 45 seconds.
[Cut to]
KEITH (as MAKO): We work for a construction company that is contracted out to do repairs on maglev stations.
AUSTIN: He’s going to keep trying, he’s trying, he doesn’t see—
AUSTIN: (as RECEPTIONIST) I don’t see anything. I don’t see anything.
KEITH (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR, doing a more exaggerated voice): Well, then. Where’s the tour manager?
AUSTIN (as RECEPTIONIST): The tour manager?
KEITH (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR): The tour manager?
AUSTIN (as RECEPTIONIST): Jorne is the sales associate here but—
KEITH (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR): It might’ve been Jorne.
[Cut to]
ART (as CASS): He wants us to come in and pretend we have a tour as well.
[laughter]
JACK (as AUDY): Tell him we’re not going to do that.
ART (as CASS): I’m telling him we’re not going to do that.
ART: I think— I think I like the rip out the camera plan, it’s not a good one but I like it for some reason.
[Cut to]
JACK: We don’t know whether or not this door’s locked or unlocked, do we? Alright, I’m just going to punch through where I think the handle’s going to be.
AUSTIN: Okay. Do that. Punch through it, there is a handle there. AuDy, what is your detect score?
JACK: Oooh, okay. My detect score is… two.
AUSTIN: I’m going to try to give you the adjective shadowed.
[INTRO MUSIC ends]
[Cuts to]
ALI (as ARIA): There’s not really a lot that we can talk about, but we’re interested in what more you might have to offer in the future, you know?
KEITH: I give a very big grin.
[ALI laughs]
AUSTIN: He nods.
[ART laughs, loudly]
AUSTIN (as JORNE): I— I think I understand, I think I get where you’re coming from—
KEITH (as MAKO): I think you do.
[laughter]
AUSTIN (as JORNE): (at a loss for words) Ah—
[more laughter]
AUSTIN: Okay. Cass and Audy. (JACK: Double doors.) You head back through the double doors, give me— who’s going in first?
ART: Probably I am? ‘Cause I’m the one on camera destroying the merchandise? (JACK: That makes sense.)
AUSTIN: AuDy, okay, give me a Detect roll? (JACK: Cass or me?) With… Actually no, it’s the opposite. This is the thing I need to keep reminding myself. AuDy, what is your Detect score?
JACK: Ooh, okay. My Detect score is… two.
AUSTIN: Okay. That’s pretty low.
JACK: It’s not big.
AUSTIN: Um, I’m going to try to give you the adjective shadowed.
JACK: And presumably shadowed is a thing we’re unaware of? Or is it a thing where we notice, essentially—
AUSTIN: You do not. If I succeed, you will not notice this.
JACK: Okay.
ART: C’mon, ones.
JACK: One. One. One.
ART: One. One.
JACK: Just all one.
AUSTIN: What d’you have on Detect again? One? Two.
JACK: Two.
AUSTIN: Two would go to you. Just so you know. Tie goes to the defender. I’m pretty sure that’s right. Is that right?
ART: Two. Two Two. Two.
JACK: Two. Two or one.
AUSTIN: Um, okay. This is a…
ART: Are you sure they don’t have some hurt dice? Because they were really upset about their camera being destroyed? Like emotionally?
AUSTIN: No, they are not, I apologize, they are not. So yeah, take the followed— or sorry, shadowed. (ART: Shadowed.) Shadowed.
JACK: Alright. Is that fleeting?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JACK: Okay. I’ll just add that to my character sheet.
AUSTIN: Me too. Okay. You go in through the double doors, and you are now a few floors above where the reception area would be?
JACK: Okay.
ART: Okay.
AUSTIN: And here you see that there is a, uh, you’re kind of looking down in a space that’s smaller than the garage area was but it’s like a floor shorter, right, ‘cause it doesn’t go all the way down to the reception area. This goes down to a floor above the reception area, and this room is like, stark white and clean, and it is rows and rows and rows of giant server banks, and along the walls in glass, in kind of glass containers, there seem to be some sort of fabric somethings? With text printed out on it? You can’t read it from this distance, and— down below, the room is filled with, again, let me use one of these rectangles we already have, let’s use Art’s again, so.
You guys are here on the eastern side, right.
JACK: Mmhm.
AUSTIN: From here — and you’re two floors above the ground here, the ground of this floor — all the way on the western side, in front of a computer, you see the back of Cene, who is kind of, like, seated in front of a computer. Throughout this room there are armed guards walking around.
ART: So he’s[1] gotta play it cool?
AUSTIN: Heh. Uh, up here there are another set of catwalks, but it just runs along the exterior, like the walls of the room, it doesn’t run across the center in the same way. It’s also just like, twelve degrees cooler in here than it was outside. Or in that other room. Maybe it’s even more than that because in the other room they were working on machines and stuff. Here it’s like, it’s a little cold. And that’s from the air conditioning vents.
ART: So here’s my first idea. AuDy could just continue to pretend to be this malfunctioning robot, make a big scene, and in that commotion I could kinda slip past and go over to where Cene is?
AUSTIN: Okay, I thought there was an “or” coming, and there was not an “or” coming.
ART: Or, we just sorta try to play it cool. We try to like, (AUSTIN: [laughs] Okay) get by some armed guards. What are they gonna do?
AUSTIN: AuDy, what do you think of that?
ART: They don’t know we’re not supposed to be here.
KEITH: How’s your Coax?
ART: Two.
KEITH: You could tell them you were doing a security test and they all failed and they’re getting demerits.
[JACK laughs]
AUSTIN: Great. AuDy, how are you feeling?
ART (doing an exaggerated voice): And I can talk like this when I (crosstalk, laughter) said, Where’s your supervisor, boy?
AUSTIN: Nope. I don’t— I quit.
[laughter]
JACK: How far is the fall?
AUSTIN: It’s two floors. Again, I think— I’ll let you do this. (JACK: Okay. Alright.) If it’s the thing I think you’re going to do.
JACK: So I will have seen robots’ parking chassis or specifically— well they don’t know I’m a parking chassis— I’ll have seen Automated Dynamics and the chassis break before, right?
AUSTIN: Yes.
JACK: What do broken chassis do?
AUSTIN: It depends on how they’re broken.
JACK: If there’s something, uh, sort of their processing. Not a hardware problem, a software fault. Other than instantly shutting down.
AUSTIN: They act erratically. I think it’s probably like, one routine fires in place of another. So like, instead of walking forward they do the hand motion for opening and closing doors over and over again? Or something like that. (JACK: Mhm. Yeah.) It’s about a routine, the routine isn’t firing in the right way.
JACK: So I think what I’m going to do is, I’m going to take out— without saying anything— take out my earpiece and hand it to Cass, (AUSTIN: Mhm) (ART: Alright) and I’m going to take off my vest and hand it to Cass, just like— just putting these in his[2] arms. I don’t think AuDy has any other identifying marks, necessarily? Other than, I guess, extra armor—
AUSTIN: Right, and the shotgun built into your arm, but you haven’t shown that. (ALI: I think that’s okay. That’s fine.) That’s in your arm. Yeah.
JACK: So then I guess—
AUSTIN: And your baton is clipped onto the vest, so you’ve given that away also. Right?
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay.
JACK: So I guess I just sort of like, glance at Cass, as far as a thing without eyes or a face can glance, then just pitch backwards over the rail (AUSTIN: Unhhuuuh!) down into the room.
AUSTIN: Okay. What are you— go ahead.
JACK: And as I hit the ground, the circuits— the servos in my wrists are clenching and unclenching themselves. And then I just go limp.
AUSTIN: I think— I think this is a Move test. You’re trying to coax via movement. So give me a Move— what sort of adjective are you trying to give here? And to the security guards I’m guessing?
JACK: Yes. I think— I think distracted. I was going to go with shocked but I’m worried about the implications of shocked to be honest.
AUSTIN: That’s fair.
JACK: So I have two Move. I’m going to augment that with tough because (AUSTIN, laughing: Yeah, yup!) I throw myself off a balcony and I’m also going to augment that with blunt because I throw myself off a balcony.
AUSTIN: [laughs] Yes. Sounds good.
JACK: So that’s four but I’m going to carry across two… one, two, and I’m going to roll four d6.
AUSTIN: Remember you’re going to need one more, you’re gonna to spend another push die, just spend it.
JACK: Oh I do? I thought I attached two adjectives.
AUSTIN: You did, but if you’re going to affect multiple targets you need to spend an additional push die to affect different targets.
JACK: [gasp] Oh! You’re right.
AUSTIN: You have one, which is good, but it means you don’t get to use it for defense if something happens. (JACK: That’s true.) Okay so six?
JACK: ‘Cause I’ve rolled a six ‘cause I’ve been playing this game.
AUSTIN: Because this game is— you’re blessed, this is bizarre. Okay. There are three here, three guards in this room and I’m going to write down that you’ve given them distracted. Distracted?
JACK: Yes. And I think at least for the moment, AuDy is out of action. I think that they’ve turned themself off.
AUSTIN: Okay.
JACK: I need to spend one of those dice, right? Or turn those dice.
AUSTIN: Uh, no. Unless, are you making it sticky, or is this fleeting?
JACK: I don’t know. Art, do you want something a little more than fleeting distraction?
ART: Fleeting is probably enough to get across a room, right?
JACK: I mean, you need to get down there.
ART: I thought it was on the same level, I thought it was—
AUSTIN: No no, he threw himself [sic] from two floors up down to the middle of this floor.
ART: No, what I meant was (AUSTIN: Two flights up, rather) I’m just trying to get to Cene, right?
AUSTIN: Cene is also (JACK: Yeah, Cene is on the ground floor) on the ground floor here.
ART: Oh.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ART: I mean, what’s the worst thing that happens?
AUSTIN: Alright, fleeting.
JACK: Alright.
AUSTIN: Um. Distracteeeed, okay. Art?
ART: I try to move through this space in a predictable manner, like oh my god, look at that, that robot just flew right, like did you see? Woah, he wasn’t [sic] moving right, it was something in the servos.
AUSTIN: [laughs] Okay. The three of the— two of the three guards move in on— uh, AuDy’s body. The third one remains in the northwestern corner, keeping an eyesight on both— I think he probably can’t see the body from here but he’s still looking over in that direction, because there are servers between him and the body, and he has the other eye on Cene still.
He is— so the way I’m imagining this is there’s a stairwell down that is off to the side of him. So that you can come next to him. But he might— You would have to Prowl to get past him without him seeing you. Or you could— Well you could Prowl to get closer. You would have to Prowl to get past him.
ART: Prowl to get past him, uh. I’m choosing between do I want to sneak past him or do I want to try to just kinda con him? Like, hey, they say they need all the hands downstairs.
AUSTIN: I think you’re smarter than that. I think you’re probably— probably smarter than to think that here you could do that. (ART: Sure.) Like this isn’t— you don’t have any, you have no way of showing that you work for Snowtrak, you’re not wearing a uniform like they are, you’re—
ART: Yeah but a lot of shit just happened, it’s confusing times, man. (AUSTIN: Mhm.) No, I think Prowl is the right move, I think I’m going to try to give the adjective… tricked?
AUSTIN: Sure. That’s good. Okay.
ART: Two d6, but it’s going to be fine because everyone rolls amazingly in this game.
AUSTIN: Wait. You’re rolling— What do you mean— You’re going to spend three more— no, I see what you’re saying. I see. I didn’t see that you already rolled. Okay. So giving this character tricked? This character’s in a way right now. That’s good.
And you kind of like, you’re able to sneak past them to Cene. Maybe they hear you coming across the catwalk above so when you come down you like, do the audio equivalent of tapping on their one shoulder and then sneaking past the other way, you know?
ART: Sure.
AUSTIN: And you run up to Cene, who is seated cross-legged in front of a hovering screen, like a holo-screen? And is— you can hear Cene saying words over and over again that don’t seem to have too much to connect them to each other? It’s just— uh— let’s go to a random word generator and see what happens. It’s just like, let’s create ten random words here.
AUSTIN (as CENE): Major legend lockbox blueberry? [voice becomes monotone] Excess, reverse, deadbeat, land, proposal, pipe. Fortune, timid, uprising, painkiller, six, call, pick, criminal, eternal. Eternal? Eternal. Combat. Gutter? Horizontal. Hor-iz-on-tal. Ho-ri-zon-tal.
ART (as CASS): Cene.
AUSTIN (as CENE): Ho-ri-zon-tal.
ART (as CASS, quietly): Shit.
AUSTIN (as CENE): Belong. Insecure. Union. Hundred. Hundred. Thousand.
(15:06)
ART: I kinda like, go for like a shake?
AUSTIN: Okay. Um. You shake them and they like, pull away from you.
AUSTIN (as CENE): Concrete. Committee. Poetry. Eagle. Parallel. Parallel. Parallel enemies. Parallel enemies.
AUSTIN: Words are streaming across the holographic display.
ART: Uh. I gotta, we gotta move. I try to lift them.
(15:45)
AUSTIN: Okay. Give me a, that sounds like a Fight to me.
ART: Yeah.
AUSTIN: You have a connection with Cene?
ART: I do not.
AUSTIN: Or, they’re on your list but you don’t have an, actual adjective, right?
ART: No, they’re not on my list. My list is Paisley, Koda, J-m.
AUSTIN: Oh, I’m on the wrong person. Sorry. I was on the wrong thing. So yeah. Give me, that sounds like Fight to me.
ART: Yeah. I’m going for like, restrained?
AUSTIN: Or carried? Or—
ART: Or carried? Yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah. I think restrained is like, hands behind the back, or like, wrapped up somehow? (ART: Sure.) Um, okay, and then, lemme actually pull Cene up, instead of forgetting to do that. Video games are hard, or— role playing games are hard (ART laughs).
KEITH: Everything’s hard, it’s all a struggle.
AUSTIN: Everything’s tough, right? (ALI: Mhm.) Everything’s a struggle. Why’s everything gotta be a struggle?
ART: But I’m not going to be able to drag— drag Cene out of here.
AUSTIN: Uh… yeah, uh, you give Cene— you easily give Cene the carried trait. Or the carried adjective. Um, Mako and Aria.
AUSTIN (as JORNE): Alright, what I’m gonna show you is, uh, it’s very, very new. We think we’re on— listen, I know you don’t like the automatons, but what if I told you that there was, uh, you know, something that was as smart as a person but as obedient as one of them automatons.
KEITH (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR): I do not trust those automatons.
AUSTIN (as JORNE): Me either. Listen, me either. But we think we found a thing out in Ionus, deep under the ice. Thing, uh, old thing. It is filled with knowledge. We think we could put it in a robot and make the robot better, you know. [KEITH (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR): Mm.] We got one of our crack experts right now, come with me, follow me—
AUSTIN: And he leads you back towards the reception area and up a flight of stairs. You have not yet retrieved your gun. I’m saying that so you know that you have not yet retrieved your gun.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ALI (as ARIA): How did you find this?
AUSTIN (as JORNE): You know, we have a lot of work out on Ionus already, we’re doing a lot of work there with the snowstorm and whatnot, and, uh, you just find things sometimes.
KEITH (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR): You got them Saturns drilling up there.
AUSTIN (as JORNE): Got the Saturns up there, sir, we got all sorts of stuff up there. All— all day and night. We’re helping the economy, giving ‘em jobs. And we figured, like, you keep digging eventually you hit oil. Or in our case you hit, uh, something a little smarter than oil, you know. So. Right this way. (ALI: Mm.)
AUSTIN: You [snorts]— he opens the door and AuDy’s body is on the ground.
[JACK and KEITH laugh]
KEITH: Wait, is this still Jorne that’s talking?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: AuDy’s body is on the ground surrounded by two guards with their guns down at AuDy. Um, and they turn up at you and point at you. Uh—
KEITH (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR): I thought this was a secure facility. [ALI laughs]
AUSTIN (as JORNE): Gentlemen, uh, guns down, this is just— we’re just— What is happening here, don’t ruin this for me.
AUSTIN: He says, to the two guards, “I’m trying to make a big sale.” The guard, one of the guards, puts his hand up to his ear and he says, “Sir, sir, they’re here,” and aims right at you. What do you do? You, being Aria and Mako.
KEITH: Um, he’s got sticky trusting, I’m—
AUSTIN: Not— Jorne isn’t— Jorne is like, hands— Jorne is hands up, in his shitty suit, and is like, [JACK snorts] here to— like, I don’t, what is happening?
JACK: Jorne is Saul Goodman (AUSTIN: Yes) (KEITH: Alright.) from Better Call Saul at this point.
KEITH: I’m gonna, can I, I’m gonna do, I’m going to make a move, (AUSTIN: Uhhuh) and the move I’m going to make— I’m gonna start, I start sort of like, um,
KEITH: (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR) Ah, come in here,
KEITH: and I’m— so first Coax on the guard who’s pointing his gun at me.
AUSTIN: There’s two guards, both of them are pointing their guns at you.
KEITH: Well then, Coax, uh, hmm. I can coax them both.
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH: I can give them… I’m gonna Coax them both, I wanna try to give them both, uh, fleeting trusting.
KEITH (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR): I come in here, with my money, [someone snorts] and I spend my money on your robots and this is how I get treated, I never.
[ALI laughs]
AUSTIN: Give me the roll.
ART: Well I consider that contract null and void, don’t even send any of those robots.
AUSTIN: [laughs] Oh, lord. Uh, give me a— actually you know what? You’re not acting on Jorne. Mm.
KEITH: I’m not acting on Jorne. Jorne’s got sticky (AUSTIN: Oh, no, I think—) trusting.
AUSTIN: Yeah, but you’re not affecting Jorne here. Give me a hurt die here. Uh— It’s not going to matter, it’s not going to matter, ‘cause you rolled two sixes, so you have a six point one. (KEITH: Yeah.) In the system two sixes bumps up your number a little bit so you’re— even if you rolled a six on your hurt die— oh. No that would work. Roll a hurt die. Because you have charmed by Jorne which means some little bit of you is a little afraid of fucking up Jorne’s life. (ALI: Aw.)
KEITH: Five.
AUSTIN: Not that much of you though, it turns out. Fuck ‘em.
[giggling]
KEITH: Five sixths of me but not the last sixth.
AUSTIN: [laughs] Not that last sixth. That last sixth is very committed.
KEITH: —very important. That’s the criminal sixth. [ALI laughs]
AUSTIN: Right. Um, so then they just slide their guns away from you and at Aria. “What about her? We know her. She’s with the Chime,” they say. (KEITH: Um.) Aria, what do you do?
ALI: Uh, [laughs]. So I have my gun.
AUSTIN: You do.
ALI: [laughs] Um—
KEITH: I’m on board with that.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ALI: I— Well, do I see Cene?
AUSTIN: Cene is in the distance with, at this point, this is where Cass is putting Cene over his[3] shoulder.
ALI: So I see that Cene— or Cass could run with Cene at this point. We could get out of here.
ART: Have you ever carried a human being? [ALI laughs]
AUSTIN: It would be rough. It would not be an easy run.
ALI: No? Yeah. But—
KEITH: AuDy’s very strong— oh. And on the ground. Never mind.
AUSTIN: Yes.
ALI: Well. But guns aren’t pointed at AuDy. Backs are to AuDy. Um, yeah, I think that I pull out my gun (AUSTIN: Uhhuh.)
KEITH: Well, you shouldn’t.
ALI: [laughs] which I, um, I listened to the char gen episode and I’ve renamed it to be a Bang.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I saw that. That’s a good name for a gun. [ALI laughs] Good.
ALI: Um, and because it is loud and meant to be intimidating, she just pulls it out and points it to the air and shoots? and it just makes like this— this really intimidating bang. (AUSTIN: Okay.) Um, she’ll probably say a thing?
AUSTIN: What’s she gonna say?
ALI: Um— [laughs]
JACK: I didn’t want to buy those robots anyway!
[laughter]
ALI: Uh, what’s a, uh, mm.
AUSTIN: This is a hold up! That doesn’t work, this isn’t a hold up.
KEITH: That might be the opposite of a hold up.
JACK: Stand and deliver!
ALI: Um, I think she says, she shoots the gun and she says, “The bells are ringing.”
AUSTIN: Okay. Good. [ALI laughs] Good.
JACK: Nice.
AUSTIN: So take one of the push die for loud, and then you have to spend the other one to affect multiple people.
ALI: Yeah. Okay.
AUSTIN: So.
ALI: So that’s— and then—
AUSTIN: So this is intimidated, is that what this is?
ALI: This— yeah, this should be intimidated, I guess.
AUSTIN: Suggestions?
KEITH: Can I put my hands up and go next to the guards?
AUSTIN: Yes.
KEITH: Okay.
ALI: [laughs] or like, step over to, uh, George? Jorne?
KEITH: Jorne.
AUSTIN: Jorne, uh-huh.
ALI: Also what am I rolling here? Am I rolling a Coax?
AUSTIN: This is a Coax.
ALI: Okay. So this is gonna be five d6.
KEITH: They don’t try to stop me from like, hands up and over, right?
AUSTIN: Wait a sec. Wait, er, where’s five coming from?
ALI: So no, it’s three plus one.
AUSTIN: Three plus one, yeah. Yeah.
ALI: Six— (JACK: Shit!)
AUSTIN: Okay, ey, no sixes.
ART: This is the first bad roll.
AUSTIN: This is the first time you didn’t get a bad roll, or you didn’t get a perfect roll, rather. Uh, okay. You, one of them jumps back when you do that and drops— not drops his gun, but like, lowers his gun. Another one pulls the fucking trigger. Aimed at your… where’s— where. At your gun.
ALI: Okay. Sure.
AUSTIN: Three d6 plus— oh boy, look at all these dice I have. One, four— okay, so the gun that this character has, by the way, is a shotgun, it’s a duster, (ALI: Oh boy.) which is loud, scattershot, cam, dermalinked, explosive rounds. It’s gonna use those. And,
KEITH: That’s bad for your hand, it sounds like.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ALI: Eh, I can get a new hand.
AUSTIN: So it’s gonna use—
ALI: I could take a hand off one of those robots over there.
AUSTIN: It’s gonna use scattershot and it’s gonna use explosive rounds.
ALI: Okay.
ART: Ali, that’s a robot you can’t resell. [laughter] You can’t take the hand.
ALI (as ARIA): This one is missing a hand. Don’t worry about it, I’ll give it to you at a discount.
AUSTIN: How are you… what’s your Move score?
ALI: Uh, good. It has to be. (AUSTIN: Good.) I am a former dancer. My Move is three.
AUSTIN: Okay. Hope for the best.
ALI: Can I use energetic here?
AUSTIN: You can’t ‘cause you’ve already spent all of your push dice. (ALI: Right) Um. Ah. I’m trying to decide how mean to be. [ALI laughs] Mm. Hwoo. How bad does this get? It’s at least— here’s the thing. I’m at least giving you back one of these die. (ALI: [laughs] Okay.)Make sure that’s all players, yup, that’s an all players die. I don’t know if I want you to be disarmed or dis-armed.
[laughter]
AUSTIN: How much do you want a robot arm?
ALI: Um, not very, but, you know.
AUSTIN: I think— Okay then. I think you are… hmm. What’s a good synonym for, for what I want here. Uh…
JACK: Screwed.
[laughter]
AUSTIN: Screwed is right.
KEITH: Mangled?
AUSTIN: Mangled is rough but it might be right. Um.
KEITH: Sticky mangled?
ART: Agony.
AUSTIN: Agonized? Agonizing? Agon— ag— hmm. What’s the adjective form of agonized.
KEITH: That’s, that can be an adjective.
AUSTIN: Is that right? Agonized? (KEITH: Yeah.) Yeah. That’s right. That’s it. The one that I said. That was it. (KEITH: Yeah.) You have agonized. (ALI: Okay.) Your gun goes flying out of your hand, which is not in good shape. Um, it’s— you know what it is? It’s scattershot, so it’s like buckshot, and each of the little pellets explodes, [someone hisses] so in fact, it was never going to take your hand away, but it puts you in incredible pain. Um. (ALI: Okay.) It feels like your hand is on fire. That is stickied.
ALI: Oh. Well, of course.
AUSTIN: That’s why I gave you back that— that one—
ALI: Thank you. Alright. Sticky…
AUSTIN: Let’s write this down.
ALI: Thanks, Mako.
KEITH: You’re welcome.
AUSTIN: Agonized.
KEITH: This does not sound like my fault. You took out your gun (ALI: Oh, no) and said, like, the words of the organization they accused (AUSTIN: Also—) you being a part of—
AUSTIN: —you guys sound like terrorists now. [laughter] You have a… catchphrase, it’s… okay.
ALI: Sorry.
KEITH: I’m— Mako’s never heard those words before in his life!
ALI: I— It’s really funny because I’m the only player who like, chose a bell theme, (AUSTIN: Uhhuh) and I think with Aria— I think that she thinks that the Chime is more of like, a political group than it is.
AUSTIN: Than it is? Yeah. (JACK: Mm. I see.) That’s interesting.
ALI: It’s just very much of this like, a character thing. It’s like—
AUSTIN: Mm. I like it a lot. It’s really good. Cass, what are you doing?
ART: Well, you know, in the future, shoot at— shoot at the people. [laughs] (AUSTIN: Yeah, lesson learned.) That’s what terrorists do. [ALI laughs]
AUSTIN: Cass—
ALI: That wasn’t a good call…
AUSTIN: What are you doing?
ART: I mean, do I have a reasonable path to the front door?
AUSTIN: The path to the front door is AuDy’s body on the ground, uh, uh, Aria with her hand in pain, and these two guards. You’ve lost sight—
ART: I mean, it feels like they might not be paying a lot of attention to (AUSTIN: Yeah. They’re not) like, carrying a dude out—
AUSTIN: They are, in fact, distracted and one of them is intimidated.
ART: Uh, yeah I think— I think I wanna, I think I wanna try to just get him [sic] out the front door.
AUSTIN: This sounds like a Move to me. Um,
ART: Oh my Move is one, (KEITH: Wow) that’s not a good— that’s not good news.
AUSTIN: Oh, boy.
KEITH: Could be— could be Prowl.
AUSTIN: It could be Prowl. If you’re sneaking— well, the thing is, at a certain point you’re not going to be able to sneak through their sight line, like, Prowl— (ART: Carrying another person?) carrying another human. It feels like there’s no vector there.
ART: Sure.
KEITH: You could fight, you have a gun.
AUSTIN: You do have a gun.
ART: I’m going to put this person down, to shoot?
AUSTIN: I mean, you could one arm ‘em, right? Actually, wait, are you— How tough are you. How strong are you?
ART: Not… very. (AUSTIN: I, ah—) I was an emissary and then a doctor.
KEITH: He’s a fish king, not very strong. [AUSTIN laughs in the background] Fish very (ART: Hey) bad at upper body strength.
AUSTIN: Yeah—
ART: No, they swim all the time.
KEITH: That’s mid-body, that’s core strength. You got sweet abs and noodly arms. [ALI giggles]
AUSTIN: As you pull Cene away, by the way, Cene— they continue to talk. Like,
AUSTIN (as CENE): Genetic. Record. Prophetic. East. Exit. Gobbling.
AUSTIN: Over— just, they’re reading, yes.
ART: Um,
KEITH: It’s like they’re mining for bitcoins.
(29:55)
ART: No. No, that’s, that’s silly, but it’s super— (AUSTIN: Uh-huh?) I could cerebral input to my mech and have my mech shoot missiles at this compound.
AUSTIN: You could, you’re at the front of the compound. Like we did establish—
ART: I could probably get more people not caring about me.
AUSTIN: Right. No, I think this is it. I think that’s a good plan. I think that’s the plan. Give me a, uh, Operate roll for that. Or, that’s probably a Shoot roll.
ART: Probably Shoot.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ART: But I can take missile battery (AUSTIN: Uh-huh) and I can take cerebral input?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ART: Alright, I’ll do that. [pause] I got a six, a five, and two fours.
ALI: Dang.
AUSTIN: Um. Oh, you know what? That’s not even— keep those dice. Those are still charged. It’s just a thing you do. This is— You’re not rolling to put an adjective on anybody, right?
ART: I mean, I’m puttin’ an adjective on a building.
AUSTIN: Yeah… great.
ART: That’s not—
AUSTIN: Okay, you know what? You can put an adjective on… if you want this to be a, like— you can put a— I’ll pull these back over here. This is an adjective on the character Adler, who’s the one— the security lead that you ducked eariler.
ART: Okay, (AUSTIN: That’s the one closest to you.) I’ll put… terrified?
AUSTIN: Good. Good, are you stickying that, or is that just temporary?
ART: Uh, just temporary, I don’t need him to stay scared. I just need to get out of this building.
(31:17)
AUSTIN: Okay. Um. That person’s in a place now then. Okay. You… the missiles explode, and Adler[4], who is the lead of this group, who was distracted when you came down the catwalk, is now up on the catwalk, um, and does the thing that, this is the thing where, remember, you were like, I don’t know, shocked might be a bad one to give them. Um. ‘Cause this is, they’re like, oh okay, and they just dump with their gun, ah, toward you. Just like bdda— ah. Let’s see— let’s see how that goes. They have lots of negatives. They have to roll, they have to roll— let me count this—
JACK: Wait towards me or towards Cass?
AUSTIN: Towards Cass. (JACK: Okay.) They have to roll three hurt die after this. So that’s a good thing (JACK: Yeah.)
Art: Hey how do they identify me as the person doing this?
AUSTIN: Wha— because you’re next to the big explosion and you have Cene over their head. Over your arm or whatever, like.
JACK: Also like, one person’s panicking, one person’s just had their arm shot off, and one person is literally turned off lying on the floor. [ALI laughs]
AUSTIN: Right, and you’re the one who has the person they’re supposed to protect and now you’re standing near (ART: Sure) a big open hole to the outside? And presumably your mech is coming in from the distance, right? Like, to pick you up?
ART: Oh yeah, I guess that is my exit strategy.
AUSTIN: Okay I wanna— I should’ve probably clarified that but, okay. One, two, uh— let’s do, this is a shoot, plus, the, uh. What gun is this. This is the Lioness. I’m going to give it the burst fire ability that it has, and, the, uh, maybe the long range? No, the stock. So the shot is of Adler who is kind of like, beefy security nerd, shoving the gun, the stock up against his shoulder, and doing kind of a burst fire, blatt! blatt! blatt! down at you. Okay. And then I have to roll some hurt die, hope for the best here—
ART: I am.
[typing]
AUSTIN: That’s a— (KEITH: Ey! Nice)] That’s the best! Uh, what is your, how are you avoiding getting shot?
ART: Uh… [AUSTIN laughs] how does one avoid getting shot?
AUSTIN: This is a good question.
ART: Uh, I guess with Move? My Move is a one, and then I’d like to use attentive (AUSTIN: Yeah!) to not get hit with bullets.
AUSTIN: That’s good. So, so, discharge that dice. Okay. AuDy, are you still just out on the floor?
JACK: Ummm, okay, So. [laughs] We’re assuming collectively that this has gone bad, right?
AUSTIN: I— It depends on what you—
ALI: I’d say so.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Aria would certainly say so.
KEITH: I would disagree. I can still get out of this fine.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
JACK: Alright. Okay. So, is anybody covering AuDy at the moment?
AUSTIN: No.
JACK: Like, vi— Any baddies?
AUSTIN: No.
JACK: I guess, there’s just a startup chime? (AUSTIN: Ding!) And this voice says, “The Automated Dynamics, uh, corporation apologizes for your chassis’ outage.” And then I’d like to try and shoot one of the guards’ legs off with my shotgun arm, please?
AUSTIN: Good! Okay. Go for it.
ALI: [laughs] Please?
JACK: What do I roll for that?
AUSTIN: Shoot, that’s a Shoot.
JACK: Okay. So I’d like to roll… my Shoot is two. And I would also like to roll, uh, blunt, please, so that’s three—
AUSTIN: Uh, mm— Blunt seems to me like a stretch here.
ALI: You could do tough maybe?
JACK: Well I mean, uh.
AUSTIN: I get what you’re going for. I wanna give you that dice (JACK: Yeah) but I think that’s such a, that’s like. Are you going to get to roll blunt every time you attack?
JACK: No, that’s, yeah that’s a super good point actually. Um.
(crosstalk)
AUSTIN: Is that what we mean when we say— is everyone who ever attacks blunt, basically, is another way of saying it.
JACK: I mean I think it’s to an extent—
(at the same time)
AUSTIN: If you, like— kicked in the door—
JACK: I mean, I’m lying on the floor—
[pause]
JACK: I mean, I’m lying on the floor and no one’s covering me and I’m attempting to shoot someone’s leg off, (AUSTIN: Right) who isn’t facing or attacking me, um,—
AUSTIN: To me, blunt— to me, I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong here, but when I hear blunt, I think of, like, they absolutely know it’s you. You’ve kicked in the door, you say “Hey motherfuckers, it’s me—”
JACK: Oh that’s true, actually, yeah. Blunt, blunt (AUSTIN: Whereas this—) doesn’t have to do with stealth.
AUSTIN: Yes.
ALI: I feel like this could be like tough, because it’s a particularly heartless move? (AUSTIN: Mm.) Shooting someone point blank, on their leg, with a shotgun, (AUSTIN: yeah) is (JACK: Yeah, I could go tough) a thing that is, you’re not putting in a lot of thought for their leg. [laughs]
AUSTIN: Right. Sure. You could also use duster, shotgun, and implant, even. That’s— the tags on your things are part of the ability. It doesn’t matter. You have— yeah. Between tough or the implant you could totally use either of those.
JACK: Oh, um, then I think just narratively, I’d like to go implant. (AUSTIN: Yeah) because I think the moment of this, this supine robot just transforming into essentially, just this shotgun? (AUSTIN: Yeah) Um. Is probably visually interesting.
AUSTIN: That’s, so yeah, that’s the way to think about, spending push die for me? It’s like, oh, the camera such that this feature of the character is highlighted. So for this, it’s just like, the ding! and the shotgun appears out of your forearm, or whatever, y’know?
JACK: Especially I think that, um, I don’t think that the robots do it, uh, no, I don’t think that AuDy does it, but the parking robots have a screen (AUSTIN: Uh-huh) on their head, (AUSTIN: Uh-huh) and I think that AuDy’s turned theirs off because— why? But mm, I think that for the moment of the attack the screen is just displaying the Automated Dynamics logo? (AUSTIN: Mhm.) On like a sky blue background.
AUSTIN: That’s really good.
JACK: So I’m rolling three dice here.
AUSTIN: Sounds good. And which one are you aiming at?
JACK: Um. Which one was the one that shot Aria’s arm?
AUSTIN: Um, that was Pretty.
JACK: I’m shooting Pretty.
AUSTIN: Okay. He’s very pretty.
JACK: Yes! I rolled a six. Take that.
KEITH: Is that a nickname or a given name?
AUSTIN: Eh. Hard to know.
KEITH: It would’ve been a nickname if it wasn’t already his given name?
AUSTIN: [laughs] Yes. Yes. Exactly. Uh, okay, and you’re giving him what?
JACK: Uh, winged.
AUSTIN: Winged doesn’t sound like you shot your leg off.
JACK: I don’t know, like if you winged some— if you wing something—
KEITH: You could go winged as a slight hit. (AUSTIN: Yeah.) As like, a, uh—
AUSTIN: Like, so this is just fleeting then.
JACK: Oh. No, no. Alright, okay, let’s go.
KEITH: Winged sound like nicked to me.
[sounds of agreement]
JACK: Alright. What about—
KEITH: Devastated.
JACK: We could just straight go incapacitated to be honest.
AUSTIN: You could. You could, uh, that would take two. Anything that removes agency like that, is two, you need to discharge two dice. (JACK: Okay.) ‘Cause it’s locked until— I’m, let me double-check that, but I’m pretty sure that’s the deal, with,
JACK: No, that would make sense. What is a suitable adjective to apply to someone who is, um, is in a somewhat legless situation.
KEITH: Legless.
AUSTIN: Legolas. [pause, JACK laughs] No, it’s not Legolas?
KEITH: The leg—
JACK: I don’t think that’s why he has that name, Austin.
AUSTIN: Oh. Hm. Weird.
KEITH: Um.
ALI: Sure?
JACK: What about, uh—
AUSTIN: You can do— you can do sticky for incapacitated, or something like that.
KEITH: Yeah, ‘cause we did sticky for knocked out or whatever.
AUSTIN: Yeah. That’s totally fine.
JACK: Alright. So—
AUSTIN: The thing is, for future reference, is that there are kind of two different classes of NPCs, NPCs like bad people, bad guys. There are heavies, and then there are henchmen. Henchmen you can just give something like incapacitated or dead to, whereas for heavies, like Adler, the guy who’s shooting at Art— at Cass, currently, you can’t just give them incapacitated or dead. It has to kind of like, emerge from the fiction.
JACK: Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. ‘Cause otherwise you could be the sort of player who’d just arrive and go like, “All those guys are dead.”
AUSTIN: Right, and spend another dice to make it multiple, and. And you could totally do that with henchmen, like, (JACK: Mm. Yeah, that’s true) oh I use my burst gun and boom! All those henchmen are just fucking dead, here’s my extra die, or whatever. But you can’t do that with, yeah. So.
JACK: Okay. So I’m going to give you this diiiiice. To make it sticky.
AUSTIN: Thank you.
JACK: And I think that Pretty goes down and AuDy’s just standing behind him?
AUSTIN: Nice. Yeah. I like that a lot. Pretty screams. It’s not good. Pretty is incapacitated. In-ca-pa-ci-ta-ted, writing. Writing, writing. When that happens, Pretty’s friend, the one who had been just convinced by Keith, um, I— hm. Who… this is Bee, by the way. Bee… you’re pretty convincing, Keith. I want someone to shoot at you so I can give you some of these dice back [KEITH laughs] but you’ve insulated yourself in a weird way.
KEITH: I did, I have my hands up, I’m standing with the guard.
AUSTIN: Okay. Bee goes to grab Aria and put a gun to her head. Uh. Which I think is probably Fight, right?
KEITH: Fight or Move. I don’t think it’s fight because there’s no physical actual, like, wrestling.
AUSTIN: I mean there’s a grab.
KEITH: Yeah I guess there’s a grab. But that sounds like more like a quick movement than a tough movement. Like a strength thing.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Hm. I had a list of things right here, that would be useful if I could actually just read exactly what Fight says, let’s see. Uh, Fight says, no what Move says, Move is “get around under your own power, run, swim, climb, jump.” Fight is “bar— use to attack, barricade with melee weapons or with a rig’s limbs.” I think it’s Fight because Move is about traversal not about— I would let it go either way, I think. I think the way this character is doing it it’s Fight.
I’m going to use this character’s… discharge, or recharge these. This character only has a one Fight. Does, though, have erratic, I think this is definitely erratic behavior, just like “Ah!” grab, uh. Using the stinger that they have. Um … the fuck is this thing ...
I’ve given these characters all sorts of weird stuff that I don’t remember how it works. [ALI laughs] Cause I made these characters a month ago! Okay. Uh. That’s it. So three dice here.
KEITH: D’you think you can drag the numbers in Roll20 and move them around?
AUSTIN: Which numbers?
KEITH: The numbers in the, uh. Look at AuDy’s thing right now.
AUSTIN: What are you— nothing’s happening for me.
KEITH: Does that not happen for you? Oh I can drag the numbers in the roll box and change their order.
AUSTIN: Weird. That’s weird. Um, I’m also going to roll Bee’s hurt die, which is distracted and terrified, which is 2d6. Oof, that’s a six, Ali. And… what is your… you don’t have a Fight or Move at six, huh.
ALI: Um… my Move is at three…
AUSTIN: So there’s no way that you can— You’d have to be at five and then you can spend that last push dice to go up to six to counter it. Which definitely isn’t going to happen. So… what do I want to give you and how bad is it. Um. I think it is…
KEITH: This sounded more like a hostage move.
AUSTIN: Yeah this is— detained.
KEITH: Okay.
ALI: So I’m taking detained?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ALI: Is that fleeting? Or, I guess.
AUSTIN: Yes. Right now it’s fleeting, it could be upgraded with a different move on my part.
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: What are you doing, Aria? Let’s go to, let’s go to Mako.
KEITH: Okay. Alright. Um.
AUSTIN: and then we’ll go to Aria.
KEITH: So Bee starts to move away from me, towards Aria.
AUSTIN: Aria is being held hostage.
KEITH: Being held hostage. What’s Jorne doing?
AUSTIN: Jorne— In my mind his hands are just still in the air. He says, like,
AUSTIN (as JORNE): I don’t know what the fuck is going on, I’m outta here! I do not get paid enough for this Bull Shit!
AUSTIN: And he starts backing away, slowly.
KEITH: Okay. I’mma let Jorne leave.
ALI: I was so afraid that you were gonna leave with him.
KEITH: No I’mma let him leave, I’d prefer him not to see this.
AUSTIN: Uugh.
[ALI laughs]
KEITH: I want to, I want to… spray my water into the guard’s eyes and tackle them.
AUSTIN: Okay. Uh. [ALI and JACK laugh] Okay. That sounds like Shoot?
KEITH: It sounds like Shoot.
AUSTIN: Uh— The tackle sounds like Fight to me. I think—
KEITH: Tackle sounds like Fight, I guess— but the thing that keeps, is keeping Aria alive and not shot is the (AUSTIN: Uhhuh) “Ah! Water in my eyes!”
AUSTIN: Then I think that that’s Shoot and I think that’s different than the tackle, I think we have to zoom in and decouple those two moves. So I think it has to be, again, something like blinded.
KEITH: Okay. Then I’m gonna, shoot at— what’s the other guard’s name?
AUSTIN: This is Bee. Bee is the one who’s—
KEITH: I’m shooting Bee with the water, trying to blind him, (AUSTIN: Mhm) and I’m going to for, I’m just going to recharge my die, and I’m going to use another one, I’m gonna use a push die, and— Can I use just this object that I’m holding? does that count as a push die? Cause it’s gear that I have—
AUSTIN: I know, I know. Yeah, I’ll let you use it for this.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: Remember that by using it you’re, in a sense, going defense— you won’t be able to use that dice to boost your defense score, on a counterattack, but yes.
KEITH: Right, yeah. Um. Alright. So that’s a six.
AUSTIN: That is a good roll! All these sixes! Um.
KEITH: Mako's really competent. [laughs]
AUSTIN: Um, I’m gonna mark that down… [typing] So, Bee is now blinded and does, again, Bee is also erratic. (KEITH: Mm.) Bee unloads that gun in your direction, Mako.
KEITH: Okay. [ALI laughs]
AUSTIN: Bee is also better at shooting.
KEITH: And intimidated.
AUSTIN: Intimidated and distracted. Bee has three—
KEITH: Blinded, distracted, and intimidated.
AUSTIN: Yeah, 3d6 hurt die. (KEITH: Oka)] Like, this could be okay. But. Is also again, erratic, and again is going to use that pistol. Um, aaaand, ah. Using the camera on the pistol so that they don’t have to actually look with their wet eyes, with their blinded eyes. They’re using the cam, lock— like their neurolink with the pistol to see what’s happening here. So.
KEITH: Okay.
ALI: Oh. Nifty.
AUSTIN: It’s pretty nifty. It’s the future, okay? [laughs] (KEITH: Alright.) So a six right now? (KEITH: Alright.) Uh, six gets cancelled, but the five stays. What is your Move?
KEITH: My Move is one, or two, so that doesn’t matter either way.
AUSTIN: And you’re probably not behind cover or anything, right?
KEITH: Um… No, I’m not. (mumbling) No fuckin’ cover.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ALI: Do you wanna lift up the ring of Saturn as like a—
KEITH: Damage the Ring of Saturn?! [ALI laughs] No. I can take a bullet.
AUSTIN: I’m giving you riddled, locked.
(47:18)
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: You are riddled with bullets.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: That is not a good look.
KEITH: Locked?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: Okay, well.
AUSTIN: No, there’s a better word. Perforated.
KEITH: Okay.
JACK: Y’know, like one of those napkins.
AUSTIN: So that’s not great for Mako.
KEITH: No. Um, I still wanna attack him, though.
AUSTIN: I don’t think that there’s a vector.
KEITH: No?
AUSTIN: You’ve been shot in the chest, badly.
KEITH: Yeah, but like, I’m kind of a tough guy. [ALI laughs]
AUSTIN: You’re not, that’s not— that’s the thing, the system only works if we respect the fiction. (KEITH: Okay.) Because there isn’t another, y’know. There isn’t a way to— you could try. You know what, you could try.
ALI: I could tackle him.
AUSTIN: Or actually, what’s Aria doing? Now that his gun is not pointed at her head anymore.
ALI: Uh. I would say that she… I would say that she tries to grab the gun, but because one of her arms is not being able to used right now, that she just kind of like—
AUSTIN: Mm, yeah. And it’s her gun arm, it’s her gun hand that got damaged, right.
ALI: Yeah. She just sort of like, yeah, just throws her weight onto him.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ALI: Just to kind of knock him down at least to give AuDy or Mako an opening.
AUSTIN: Okay. That’s a Fight.
ALI: That’s a Fight? Okay.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ALI: Uh… What else could I possibly use… nothing? Probably?
AUSTIN: Let’s see, what else do you have. Yeah, energetic, maybe? Hmm. Hmm.
ALI: I— Yeah…
AUSTIN: No— Mm. You could try it. You could— No, ah, it could be like, oh you’re energetic in the sense that, even though you’re in a lot of pain, you can still just like, whack, y’know? (ALI: Right. Yeah.) That might be a stretch though. Thoughts from the table?
ALI: Well, ‘cause like, being— the way hurt die works, or like, hurt adjectives, doesn’t mean that I lose my main adjectives, right?
AUSTIN: Right, that’s true, yes, one hundred percent.
ALI: So like, my ability to put force into actions [cross] is not tainted by that, right?
AUSTIN [cross]: Yes. That’s a good way of thinking about it. Correct. I like that way of thinking about that a lot, putting force into action is a good way of thinking about the adjectives you have. So yeah, go ahead.
ALI: Ok. Um,
ART: That’s how you use energetic?
[laughter]
ALI: Well, there’s no other… [laughs]
AUSTIN: Give me a roll.
ALI: So this is a 2d6?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ALI: Sure.
AUSTIN: Then give me your two hurt dice? (ALI: Oh okay yeah.) And hope that it isn’t a six? Also after the roll?
ALI: Okay, I got a six.
AUSTIN: Okay, and then hurt die?
ALI: Alright I roll one, and then…
AUSTIN: Okay, the six sticks!
ALI: Good, we did it!
AUSTIN: Good! And what were you… tackling? You were… And remember, this is a henchman, you could just give this character also, like,
KEITH: Dead.
AUSTIN: Unconscious or dead, if you sticky it. (ALI: Um) Dead would be locked but you can make it sticky for unconscious or something like that. Or it could be fleeting and you could hold on to your dice so you have those dice.
KEITH: Can we get more dice?
AUSTIN: By being hurt more.
ALI: How does this system work because I don’t think that I have the dice to sticky it?
AUSTIN: You do, uh, cause you used energetic?
ALI: Oh, okay. And then I just—
AUSTIN: So I would just grab one of those dice from you.
ALI: Oh, that’s how that works. Okay.
AUSTIN: Yep! so I’m just gonna— boom.
ALI: Also, should I take my—
AUSTIN: They should both come back.
ALI: Uhh… yeah! I’ll spend it, it’s fine, I have my two dice.
AUSTIN: Alright, so.
ALI: So I think I’m going to sticky…. yean i think that she probably does it in such a way that with her good arm she can, sort of put it on their head and make sure that during the fall—
AUSTIN: Aw yeah, you just fucking face plant this guy? I’m putting face-planted. Stickied.
ALI: Yeah. [laughs]
AUSTIN: I know what that means. That means he’s knocked the fuck out.
[laughter]
AUSTIN: That’s a good adjective, right, that was the adjective of the year last year? Face-planted?
KEITH: Yeah.
ALI: Yeah.
KEITH: That was— yeah, the Webster’s new word—
JACK: Gawker wrote a piece about it, it was—
AUSTIN: Cass, the… Megalo-phee-lay? Megalo-pheel? Megalo-phee-lay? [cross] has shown up.
ART [cross]: Megalo-phee-lay? Yeah, probably. Megalophile’s what I keep saying.
AUSTIN: Did we talk about what it looks like?
ART: Uh, we talked about its color scheme.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ART: Uh, it’s probably like a more, the weapons are probably like a secondary thought, it’s probably a more industrial robot? I think toward the end of the war there was kind of like, well, if it works, put it in.
AUSTIN: Right, right.
KEITH: Art, what d’you imagine that Megalophile means?
ART: Big buddy.
KEITH: Big buddy? Okay.
AUSTIN: It’s “large friend.” Megalo-, then -phile. Like Philadelphia. -phile.
KEITH: Mhm.
ART: Just like Philadelphia.
AUSTIN: I really hope in the future Philadelphia will be called Megalophiladelphia. City of big buddy. [ART laughs] I’m pretty sure.
KEITH: City of— yeah.
ART: City of big buddies.
AUSTIN: Uuuuhhhh. So what are you doing?
ART: So—
AUSTIN: Your ship is there, Megalophile is there.
ART: Is there, a passenger— how much room is there inside?
AUSTIN: That’s up to you. I think by (ART: I wanna like, get—) default there’s enough room for you in the cockpit and then someone else, like, in there? but not necessarily super comfy.
ART: Well, I was just going to like, stick him [sic] in there, and then help the rest of everybody rest evacuate.
AUSTIN: [pauses, laughs] Sorry. Someone— Keith just sent a dictionary definition of megalophilia, which is the thing you think it is. You like big things a whole bunch.
KEITH: Yeah. A whole bunch.
AUSTIN: Yup. [ALI laughs] Um… Aria, so you—
ART: That’s not what this is.
AUSTIN: You load—
KEITH: No, you love your big buddy, it’s fine!
AUSTIN: [groans] I’ve seen a TV special about that, people who love their rigs, y’know? You’re able to load Cene into the Megalophile pretty easily.
ART: Sure. The controls are disabled, right? I’m the only one who can operate it?
AUSTIN: Yes. Cause you literally have that special thing, that lets you use it, the, what is it called? The Rigalia?
ART: Rigalia?
AUSTIN: Yeah, and it uses a different language that most people don’t know, it uses the Apostalistian home language? (ART: Sure.) Both in terms of, oh the UI is in that language and the coding and the whole interface just works that way? So, it’s hard for anyone who isn’t from there to hack into it. That’s probably what the September Institute program did a lot of during the war, like well, if we know how to hack divines, we can also teach you guys this other language so you can hack Apostalistian mechs. So you load him— or them.
ART: I wanna get everyone out of this situation. I think it’s hard retreat time.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Are you actually doing a thing to do that? Or are you just saying “Let’s get the fuck out of here”?
ART: Uh, who’s still up? Who of the enemies is still up?
AUSTIN: There’s Adler, who is the leader, up on the catwalk, who was shooting at you with their rifle.
KEITH: Oh I forgot about that guy.
ART: Sure.
AUSTIN: The two other guys are down. There is a third person, who is shadowing AuDy still, (ALI: Hmm) (ART: Right) and has not made themselves aware yet. Uhh…
[collective hmmm-ing]
ART: I think I would like to shoot the gentleman upstairs.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ART: And while doing that, yell to the rest of them,
ART (as CASS): I think it’s time to go.
AUSTIN: Okay. Give me a Shoot roll?
ART: Uh.
AUSTIN: Are you shooting with your gun, or are you shooting with your robot’s gun?
ART: I’m shooting with my gun, I don’t believe that the Megalophile has—
AUSTIN: Oh no, it’s missiles and (ART: anti-personnel weapons), it’s missiles and a (KEITH: I’m gonna—) rail cannon, that would be big and bad. Keith?
ART: I am gonna use powerful.
AUSTIN: Okay. ’Cause like the shout, or? Oh, the gun is powerful.
ART: The gun is powerful.
AUSTIN: Gotcha. Are you using the gun also, as a thing to roll?
ART: No. Boom!
JACK: Oh my god.
AUSTIN: That’s a fuckin’ great roll.
JACK: Two, six, six.
ART: I forgot which adjective to give him. I don’t know. Just, messed up.
[Ali giggles]
AUSTIN: Art, you gotta, come on. Come on. Play the game.
KEITH: Jacked up.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Jacked up, at least.
ART: I want him to stop. Weary.
KEITH: Bloodless.
AUSTIN: Weary is good. Or even like, disengaged. Weary is good, let’s go with weary, I like weary.
ART: I want him to think, ‘cause he just got shot, “let’s think about this, is this worth it?”
AUSTIN: Weary is definitely sticky, so can I take that die? Otherwise it’s not weary, weary sticks with you a little bit. Alright.
ART: I don’t want to ruin his life or anything though.
AUSTIN: Right, right, he just needs a day off, work out that weariness.
KEITH: If he was a skeleton it would be a whole fuckin’ other story.
[AUSTIN and JACK laugh]
ART: Yeah, skeletons don’t have lives.
JACK: That one did.
AUSTIN: That one was a painter.
KEITH: He was a painter and he loved his wife!
[ALI giggles]
ART: His wife was also dead!
AUSTIN: For people just joining us, this is a reference to the beginning of Friends at the Table where Art (KEITH: The first episode) mercilessly killed a nice skeleton man.
ALI: In protection of his friends.
AUSTIN: Okay. So—
JACK: And thus Hadrian was born.
[ART laughs]
AUSTIN: The… oh yeah, so you definitely give Adler weary, I think it’s a thing where Adler’s, kevlar vest or armored vest stops the bullet from killing him, but it hurts a lot, and it’s like, man, fuck this. I don’t need this shit, like they aren’t paying—
KEITH: He and Jorne don’t get paid enough.
AUSTIN: Yes, exactly. [ALI giggles] Um.
KEITH: I gotta find Jorne, cancel my order, and get my gun back.
AUSTIN: Okay! This sounds like the end of this bit of the scene, at least. Um, but there is the matter of, so. Cene is in the Megalophile, and Cass, you can fly him [sic] back to the ship with that. What is everyone else doing?
KEITH: I’m going to get Billy and Jorne and get my gun and cancel the order, and tell them I’m definitely keeping the Ring of Saturn for my troubles.
JACK: Is there a, parking lot to this place?
AUSTIN: Not to this place but there’s like, a municipal lot nearby, and there’s a big back area that isn’t a parking lot, but where they get deliveries.
KEITH: Yeah. I thought that you were going to give a list, A. Parking lot. B.
AUSTIN: A. Parking lot.
[laughter]
ALI: Are there employee cars around? Probably, right?
AUSTIN: No, I think most people who work at places, get driven there by robots. (ALI: Right, okay.) They don’t get to own their own shit. Unless they’re real rich.
ART: We can do this the super-dramatic way, though where we can have as many people as they can cram in my mech and fly away, with me standing on the head and AuDy grabbing onto the shoulder.
ALI: I was gonna have the Brilliance come pick me up. I can do that.
ART: Sure.
KEITH: I mean, I have a flyboard now, so.
ALI: Oh…
AUSTIN: You’re going to unpack the flyboard? In the…
[JACK laughs]
ALI: You gotta set it up, you gotta go plug in your security code, you gotta link it with your smartwatch…
AUSTIN: I actually like that image a whole bunch, actually, of Mako, uhh okay, unfold this thing, and then I have to, okay, it’s pairing, it’s pairing, it’s pairing—
[ALI laughs]
KEITH: And I’m bleeding, like real bad. (AUSTIN: Yeah. Yeah.)
ALI: He’s like, in a room doing this with those two guys, like, I am never shopping here again, is the contract cancelled,
KEITH: Never shopping, this has been a nightmare of business!
AUSTIN: This is actually a good point. You’re not actually in a good place, because you’ve been perforated with bullets.
KEITH: I was imagining me limping toward the front desk and getting my gun and telling Jorne the deal’s off, and limping out the front door.
AUSTIN: Okay. We can start that, at least, you’re doing that. AuDy, what are you doing?
JACK: Um,
ALI: AuDy, can you leave?
JACK: I’m assuming Aria is going to call her mech, right?
ALI: I don’t have to. I could, that’s the cooler version of doing this, but it’s kind of dangerous, maybe? (AUSTIN: Mm—)
JACK: Yeah, no, but, you’re a space adventurer.
ALI: I’m a hurt space adventurer, and my mech is a little ways away.
JACK: Alright. So, how far is it to the municipal parking lot, Austin?
AUSTIN: Five minute walk.
JACK: Hmm. Is there any way I can flag down a taxi?
[1:00:06]
AUSTIN: Mm… I’m picturing—
ART: There’s been a lot of explosions.
AUSTIN: Yeah, a lot of explosions. Also, this is a little industrial park, in my mind? This is not a taxi— You could call a taxi (JACK: Yeah yeah) there is definitely—
JACK: I don’t have a phone.
KEITH: Oh, you can take my flyboard. (AUSTIN: Right, you could take his—)
ALI: I have a phone.
AUSTIN: Uber is not picking up across from the explosion— [ALI giggles] Okay, that’s not true. It will cost you a credit.
JACK: Oh I don’t have any credits. (ALI: I have credits, but not like that.)
AUSTIN: Ah— ‘cause surge pricing.
[Keith laughs]
JACK: I know, surge pricing, there’s been an explosion down at Snowtrak.
KEITH: Y’know, one time I took an Uber, and it cost me one tenth of what it cost me to get a mech?
[AUSTIN and JACK laugh]
JACK: Um, okay. Right.
ALI: I can also just call the Brilliance at this point. Is the ‘Phile gone, at this point?
AUSTIN: Yeah, the ‘Phile is taking off.
ALI: Alright, ‘cause only Cene is in there, I could’ve jumped in there, but. I can just call the Brilliance, it’s easier.
ART: Also, Cass is gonna go, if no one else is coming, Cass is also going to use his giant robot to get away from —
AUSTIN: That’s what I thought Cass was doing. [JACK: Yeah]
ALI: Oh, okay, I thought. Okay.
JACK: I don’t want to take Mako’s hoverboard, ‘cause—
AUSTIN: It’s a Ring of Saturn, Jack.
JACK: Sorry. (KEITH: Saturn) Mm, actually, wait a second. I don’t think that this is actually something AuDy would communicate to Mako. How amiable would Mako be to AuDy picking him up?
KEITH: In my arms? I mean, in your arms?
JACK: Um, like, over my shoulder, I think.
KEITH: Well, I’ve gotta go get my gun and tell him the deal’s off to buy the robots. And if you come with me, that’s a problem.
[crosstalk]
ALI: If anyone’s being carried, I think it should be me?
KEITH: ‘Cause I’m still in character.
JACK: Well, you’re only missing an arm.
AUSTIN: You’re not missing anything.
KEITH: I feel like we’re arguing about a boat.
AUSTIN: Yeah, we’re arguing about a boat. See: the first episode of Friends at the Table.
[ALI laughs]
JACK (as AUDY): Aria, if you call your mech, can I hang onto the outside of it.
ALI (as ARIA): Yes. You can also just, I can make room for you.
JACK (as AUDY): Oh, cool. Alright.
KEITH (as MAKO): And uh, AuDy, just pick me up at the front door.
AUSTIN: What? Like, also on the mech?
KEITH: Nonono, like in the ship.
AUSTIN: The ship doesn’t get into the city. Uh— it could, but that’s like, bad.
KEITH: Oh, okay.
JACK: We would be doing the equivalent of the um, Blue Sky disaster.
AUSTIN: Yes.
KEITH: No. Then I’ll just, I’ll just, uh, take the bus out.
[AUSTIN snorts]
ART: How, who d’you think is falling for this?
AUSTIN: No one.
JACK: Yeah like, we have completely screwed up this exit, and I don’t really know how? I mean, Cass is out.
[AUSTIN laughs]
ALI: Well, I think Mako could still—
ART: And I got the objective.
KEITH: I feel like— I’m in character, I feel like I’m fine. (AUSTIN: Ahhh—)
ALI: Yeah, then he could be like, “I’m cancelling this, and you guys better arrange [laughs] safe transport out of here.”
KEITH (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR): You’ll call a cab, you’ll let me keep the Ring of Saturn. [ALI laughs]
AUSTIN: You’re bleeding to death. No one is gonna let you get on a ride.
KEITH (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR): —you’ll get me a doctor—
AUSTIN: Yeah. So that is the thing that you actually might want to— that is what would happen.
KEITH: Yes.
AUSTIN: I think.
KEITH: I’m going to say it third though, for sure.
AUSTIN: [exasperated] Okay.
[ALI laughs]
JACK: Alright. Cool.
AUSTIN: Okay. (ALI: That’s his big plan.) Aria and, AuDy get into the, (ALI: The Brilliance) the Brilliance and begin to take off and fly back towards the spaceport. Um, [sighs] Mako, you’re in the, you’re back at the, fucking— this is ridiculous. You’re back at the receptionist,
KEITH (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR): Ah, doc!—)
AUSTIN: Billy and Jorne are there, Jorne is back in the back room again talking to Billy as the Billy hologram is like,
AUSTIN (as BILLY): Hello! How can I help you?
KEITH (as MAKO): Still pretty neat.
AUSTIN: And in the background, Jorne is just like,
AUSTIN (as JORNE): I can’t believe this shit, [ALI and JACK laugh] I’ve been working here for ten years, never in my life have I been put through this!
AUSTIN (as BILLY): I know, sir, I know [mumbles]
AUSTIN: Billy comes out again as you come through the sensor,
AUSTIN (as BILLY): Oh my god! Oh my god!
KEITH (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR): It’s not as bad as it looks.
AUSTIN (as BILLY): Drillbot! I mean, Mr. Taylor! Uh—
KEITH (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR): Thank you for the courtesy.
AUSTIN (as BILLY): (stammers) We need to get, Jorne, call a doctor. Jorne—
KEITH (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR): I need to cancel my order, I need my sidearm, and I need a doctor. And I’ll see you do it quick, and I’ll see you do it right.
AUSTIN (as BILLY): Sit down, sit down, please sit down.
AUSTIN: It is hard for you to breathe. I like, I can’t emphasize this enough. This is hard. (KEITH: it’s hard) This is hard for you. I want you to keep being— charming, but also you’re in a lot of pain.
KEITH: Mhm. Well, I know that they’re getting me a doctor, (AUSTIN: They are!) and then I’m worming my way out of this deal.
AUSTIN (as BILLY): Well, we can deal with the deal later, we just need to sit down, and—
AUSTIN: Jorne comes out and says,
AUSTIN (as JORNE): Oh my god! Oh my god!
KEITH (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR): I’m first a businessman and second a victim. First I’ll cancel this order and then I’ll see a doctor.
AUSTIN: Uh, a man comes through the hallway that you first went through, um, that is Beck, who is the one who put shadowed on AuDy. He walks up to you, gives you a fuckin’ look, looks at your bulleted chest, is like, hhmph, walks past you, and out the door, into a waiting car, like a waiting drop-top convertible, with another guy with their security team, and that takes off, driving away after the Regent’s— what’s it called, Ali?
ALI: The Brilliance. the Regent’s Brilliance.
AUSTIN: The Regent’s Brilliance, right, the Brilliance. Um. So, Ali, you’re piloting?
ALI: Uhhhmmmm,
AUSTIN: Presumably? Or is it, autopiloting? How does Aria, I don’t know, it sounds like you could be piloting, you’re just also in intense pain, right?
ALI: I… Right, yeah, I think— I think I’m probably like, sitting in the seat and AuDy is crouching next to me and that I am piloting it via my nerve thing. (AUSTIN: Right, right.) And not actually using hands and arms to move it.
AUSTIN: Yeah, definitely. What is your Operate score?
ALI: Mm, something. Hold on. It is a two.
AUSTIN: Okay. Let’s roll, let’s see what this guy who’s been shadowing AuDy can do with a rocket launcher. We’ll see. We’ll see! We’ll just see what happens.
[ALI laughs, stressed]
JACK: We’re in a great situation!
ALI: Yeah, we’ll be fine.
AUSTIN: Everything is good!
KEITH: Luckily Ali’s still got two dice.
ALI: Oh, that’s true. Ehhh.
AUSTIN: So I’m using the, rocket launcher itself, and the thermal tracking feature. That’s a good roll. That’s gonna be higher than your Operate, probably.
JACK: Oh, that’s a very good roll.
AUSTIN: Six.
JACK: Oh, is there any way I can aid?
AUSTIN: You could take, you could use one of your stats to interfere? But with a six there’s nothing—
JACK: Oh, yeah.
KEITH: Is there any way I could use my stats to interfere, by hacking the trajectory of the missile?
AUSTIN: Not at this point. Also you’re inside.
KEITH: Okay. I know, I wasn’t sure if I could still see them. Like if they just went outside and just shot—
AUSTIN: No, this isn’t like— no, they’re chasing through the streets at this point. The Brilliance is like, sputtering its way back, not in the most attractive pattern because it’s just kind of on— not completely on autopilot? But Ali’s in a lot of pain, or Aria’s in a lot of pain. The fact that your character’s name is Aria makes me continue to want to say Ah-li, Ali, Ali, every time. [ALI laughs] So I think they were trying to destroy your thrusters, (ALI: Okay) is what they were trying to do?
ALI: Can I use, I mean, how does defense work in this game?
AUSTIN: So— in this game— that’s why I was asking what your Operate score is. (ALI: Okay.) Your Operate score would have to be equal or greater than their highest roll, but they rolled a six, and your Operate score is not a five, presumably?
ALI: It’s a two.
AUSTIN: So it’s not gonna fly. They’re destroying your armor.
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: Back inside, ah— Mako. (KEITH: Yes.) They give you your gun back, and they sit you down. Jorne is not letting you out of this deal without some sort of roll. Without you convincing him of doing that.
KEITH (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR): I have been shot, sir, in your facility!
AUSTIN (as JORNE): Of course, sir, you will, we’ll make that good in the future. But uh, I hope you understand. We are men of, we are people of contract.
AUSTIN (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR): And I am a person who does business with those who can keep me from bullets in the chest!
KEITH: Got a six.
AUSTIN: That’s a— uh, you have to roll your hurt die.
KEITH: Um.
ALI: Ooohh.
AUSTIN: It should be—
KEITH: Can I also— do charming? Can I have a—
AUSTIN: Yeah, definitely. Spend that charming.
KEITH: So then I’m gonna roll that, then roll that back over there, then add— this is an addition of the—
AUSTIN: What was the, why was the, oh I see what you’re saying.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: I gotcha. Just roll one more.
KEITH: Another six.
AUSTIN: Okay. You’re lucky that was not your hurt die.
KEITH: Yeah.
ART: Is it, is he still charmed? Is it perforated and charmed?
KEITH: Six.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Is it, oh— ouch. You only—
KEITH: So it would be better to have a five there. Or does the hurt die only cancel out one of the sixes?
AUSTIN: No, the hurt die cancels out all of the numbers equal to it, (ALI: Oh.) so that six goes off, and, you do not— you should prime Coax. (KEITH: Okay.) Anyone who’s missed anything should make sure they’ve primed all the verbs they’ve missed.
KEITH: How do I prime the thing?
AUSTIN: You just write it down, that it’s primed. Then, later, when you’re recovering from being perforated, you can maybe advance your Coax.
KEITH: Alright.
JACK: Did I, miss a thing for the shadowed roll, or was that just them acting on me?
AUSTIN: That was them acting on you. If you have a negative thing, that was them acting on you.
KEITH: Is this the first— this is the second failure.
AUSTIN: Of the game? I think it’s, someone else has failed. I don’t remember what that was, but we need to figure out what that was so that person can prime their verb. At the very least, I think this is the second one.
Jorne shakes his head and says,
AUSTIN (as JORNE): No, you’re wounded, we can deal with business later,
AUSTIN: And he,
KEITH (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR): I assume you’ll cover the cost?
AUSTIN (as JORNE): Of course, of course.
AUSTIN: Uh, and, sirens can be heard in the distance. Aria? And AuDy? What are you up to?
ALI: Hey, hey, hi,
AUSTIN: Are there cats? Were you making cat noises?
ALI: No, that was me, making nervous noises. [laughs]
AUSTIN: Oh, okay. That’s fair.
ART: Is there, is there an opportunity for me to interfere with this rocket chase?
AUSTIN: I think you’re gone at this point.
ART: Too far ahead?
AUSTIN: I think you’re at the— Yeah, I think you’re too far ahead. I think you’re back to loading Cene. In fact, what you’re doing is Cene has gone from, there was a bit there where Cene was just repeating the same word over and over again, which was. Hm. I wanna make it good. Oh, heh.
AUSTIN (as CENE): Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Freedom.
AUSTIN: Over and over again.
KEITH: Seems pretty fucking creepy.
AUSTIN: Then, eventually, just goes silent. I remind you, Cene, in the past, when you’ve known Cene, Cene has been cute, brilliant, and clinical.
KEITH: Yeah. They’re a very excitable person. They— they took their position at the place to just ‘cause they were super into looking at all the stuff.
AUSTIN: Yes. So, this is not— this is like, bad! This isn’t good.
ART: And in the short term, but not now because that’s not what the action demands, I should start doctoring on Cene, right?
AUSTIN: Sure, yes. When we get— that’s a good plan. Aria and AuDy. You’re continuing— you’re still being chased. They are trying to lock onto you again.
[at the same time]
ALI: Mm— I feel like—
JACK: I don’t think— No, go on.
ALI: I feel like I’m just trying to rush back to the ship? Because once I get there, I mean, Cass can help, AuDy can get into the ship,
AUSTIN: Right.
ALI: Um, so I’m going to roll, I guess it’s not a Move score for me.
AUSTIN: It’s an Operate, if you’re moving the.
ALI: It’s an Operate, plus… um, jetpack?
AUSTIN: Yeah!
ALI: [quietly] I’m trying to see if there’s anything else I can…(AUSTIN: Um... ) I don’t think so?
AUSTIN: I think that’s it— Depends on what you’re trying to do. What are you trying to do?
ALI: Um.
AUSTIN: Just trying to lose them, basically?
ALI: I guess just try to go faster, but— what am I flying it through right now, essentially?
AUSTIN: It’s like, you’re basically flying through an industrial sector, so there’s like factories below you, and automated production facilities, and eventually up ahead there are some taller, skyscraper-y buildings, but not many.
ALI: Um— instead of flying in the air, can I kind of go lower, and go in between the buildings and see if I can do some, lose sight of them that way?
AUSTIN: Sure! Totally. And you only have to roll against the driver, here, or the shooter, one or the other.
ALI: Okay. Um.
AUSTIN: You could go after both, if you wanted to. That would, you know what I mean?
ALI: Oh, right, yeah, because I have the dice to try to do it for both of them.
AUSTIN: Yeahyeahyeah.
ALI: Okay, yeah. Okay. So that’s still a…
AUSTIN: That would still be an Operate. Operate plus jetpack, I think that’s probably it, I don’t see anything else here that would really fit. As an adjective or a tag to help. Um, y’know, you could make a case for some of this other stuff, but I don’t think so.
ALI: Not yet, at least. (AUSTIN: Yeah.) But fiction-wise, breaking line of sight seems like a really good idea. So I’m going to do that. So that’s a roll…
AUSTIN: What were you going to say, Jack? While Ali rolls.
JACK: Oh, there’s— is there any equivalent to this game to roll to Aid or Interfere?
AUSTIN: You could give Aria a bonus adjective here, before she rolls.
JACK: Yeah, I think that would be out of— I think AuDy would want to help, but I don’t really think they’d be able to do anything tremendously useful, they don’t know how to fly this mech.
(1:14:59)
AUSTIN: Right.
KEITH: You can say, hey, do good, you’ll do good.
ALI: Well, actually, AuDy could…
AUSTIN: That is a thing you can do.
JACK: Well— they’re not really the reassuring type, are they?
AUSTIN: It’s up to you.
ALI: What does AuDy have? ‘Cause I feel like AuDy could be helping her, directionally. Like, “turn here, this way”—
JACK: So yeah, I guess what, AuDy does is goes,
JACK (as AUDY): How can I make myself useful.
AUSTIN: Yeah and the answer for this has to— you can help people in two ways here. One is, you can use your reaction score in defense of them instead of their reaction score, so it’s like, if someone’s being attacked, you could be the one who jumps in front of them, or if someone’s trying to hack them and you’ve established that you have like, a protective routing through your thing, you could use your Hack score instead of theirs. The other thing you can do is give adjectives that are plusses. Um, so this is a scene where like, yeah, before Aria does something here, AuDy can give her a positive adjective, that would work.
JACK: Okay.
AUSTIN: But you have to tell me what that is.
JACK: Right. So, from the inside of the mech, can we see the outside, or is it linked into your brain?
AUSTIN: Yeah, I think— uh, I guess I haven’t said that.
ALI: No, there’s, no in there’s cockpit there’s like, video screens all around?
JACK: So I think I’d like to give the adjective focused, (AUSTIN: Sure) by calling out almost the equivalent of, take a left, take a left, take a left, (ALI and AUSTIN: Yeah) so that Aria is just able to focus on, like, the sheer…
ALI: Movement.
AUSTIN: Just moving forward, right. Okay, then, you can recharge your push dice. This is an unopposed action. [reading] If no one is actively trying to prevent the adjective from being asserted, which often happens when a character is giving a positive adjective to a friend, then we can bypass the rolling dice and comparing numbers part of the process and skip right to applying the adjective. (JACK: Oh nice.) The acting player still recharges her push dice at the beginning of her turn, since there’s no push dice from the roll to be spent, the acting player can spend her charged push dice to increase the action’s severity.
So you can give her a better one here, but given what you’ve just told me—
JACK: I think it just needs to be fleeting.
AUSTIN: It’s a fleeting focused, yeah.
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: So it gives you another thing you can just spend on this thing. So the picture of this scene is definitely just like AuDy, looking back at the convertible chasing them down— I like how they just have a fucking— in my mind it is just a Lambourghini convertible. [ALI and JACK laugh] And it is just, a, military grade Lambo. And like, huge rocket launcher on their— the one dude’s shoulders. And yeah, I see AuDy looking back and then looking forward like, “Left. Definitely left.” Um, go ahead and give me a roll, an Operate roll.
ALI: So I’m rolling three but then, uh … spending three to?
AUSTIN: Uh, the three is what, it’s—
ALI: Wait.
AUSTIN: It’s jetpack, it’s focused, it’s—
ALI: So it’s two for Operate, then one for jetpack, then one for focused?
AUSTIN: Yeah, so it’s four, yes, that’s four.
ALI: So I’m rolling four but then I’m spending three dice to use both of those adjectives plus to apply to two people.
AUSTIN: Right. Perfect. Got it.
ALI: We’re doing it. Oh, my god.
AUSTIN: That— what happened?
ALI: I’m the bad roller. I got a four.
AUSTIN: Ah, four’s not terrible.
ALI: At this point I feel like anything under a six is bad in this game?
JACK: Yeah, we’ve set the bar so high.
AUSTIN: You’ve set the bar so high by just being really lucky.
KEITH: Yeah, I failed a roll by rolling three sixes in a row. (AUSTIN: Right.) Hold on one sec. [speaking away from mic, unintelligible]
AUSTIN: [laughs] Keith is yelling in the distance. Uh, let’s look at— that’s the wrong group, that’s the Weightless, this is not the Weightless… It’s these guys. What did you roll? A four?
ALI: Mhm.
AUSTIN: I think this is Detect, probably? Yeah! Okay.
ALI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Um… Do I wanna be a jerk. No, I don’t wanna be a jerk. Ah— hmm. Hmmm. [ALI giggles] What are you giving them?
ALI: Mm. Um, huh.
AUSTIN: Tell me what you’re giving them and I’ll decide. [laughs]
ALI: What could I give them.
AUSTIN: That’s a good question, um.
ALI: Lost?
AUSTIN: Lost? Dusted?
ALI: [excited] Dusted. Hmm.
AUSTIN: Oh, you know, I think you’re going to win no matter what here.
ALI: Stranded? No. Okay.
AUSTIN: Er, wait. No, I’m wrong, if I spend this push dice I can block it. For the person shooting you, not the driver. The driver will lose you, the person who is shooting at you will not get this adjective if I want. Um. I’m going to save my remaining dice, I think— I’m going to save my remaining dice. So you can give it to both of them. You’re giving it to both of them.
ALI: Okay, well thank you. [AUSTIN laughs] You should hold onto that dice. You only have the one.
AUSTIN: I am. I only have the one. How else am I supposed to hurt you all?
ALI: [giggles] We need to be hurt.
AUSTIN: Apparently.
KEITH: I got a locked adjective.
AUSTIN: You do, it’s not good.
KEITH: It’s not good.
AUSTIN: We’ll go over that in a second.
KEITH: That was a choice.
AUSTIN: That was a choice. So what are you giving them? Lost?
ALI: I think lost is fair. I think lost works because they’re trying to navigate these streets now, and also trying to find me.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I like that too, like they literally get lost, it’s not just, they have uh—
ALI: It’s, they didn’t just lost me. Now they’re like, oh shit.
AUSTIN: Yeah, it’s like, where the fuck are we? Yeah. Okay. You have Cene inside the ship now, Cass. Would you like—
ART: I’m trying to Treat?
AUSTIN: I think so, what are you doing? What’s that look like?
ART: I don’t know, because all I’m thinking is, I want to know what’s wrong? But that’s like, diagnostics stuff.
AUSTIN: Mm, so you’re looking to diagnose. It is—
ART: But that’s not like, Treating.
AUSTIN: It’s not but you’re like, a doctor, right? So this is one of those things in the middle.
ART: I want to flash a light in his eye and see what happens when I hit his knee with a hammer.
AUSTIN: Right.
ART: One of those little hammers, not like, a big hammer.
AUSTIN: Their, their.
ART: Their. Sorry.
AUSTIN: It’s fine. You can just tell, this is again, your background as a doctor, and your, what was one of your, uh? You have doctor and you have attentive, I’d say, gives you— and intuitive. Those three things let you know, because Cene isn’t working against you at this point. Um. Cene is having a, kind of psychological break, where they are … they have been overstimulated by something vast. And big.
This is not— psychological break is probably too strong. This is a state of shock, and there is a disassociation here. Which I guess is like a psychological break, but it’s maybe a little more specific and a little less grody because it’s more specific? So yes, there’s a degree of disassociation here, because of, being overwhelmed by— sensory data. It’s almost as if they’ve been submerged in information.
ART: Gross.
AUSTIN: Yeah, ugh. It’s all over ‘em.
ART: Uh, what d’you suppose fixes that?
AUSTIN: I think it’s like a mix of things? I think it’s like a, Treat score where Treat isn’t surgery, right, Treat here is like.
ART: “Here’s a comfy bed.”
AUSTIN: Yeah, and, “I’m right here.” What’s your, do you have a relationship adjective with Cene or is this new?
ART: No, this is, we’re just meeting.
AUSTIN: Just meeting.
ART: Or, not just meeting, but we’re not on the map.
AUSTIN: You might be just meeting, then, y’know.
ART: Sure. It’s that person that AuDy won’t shut up about.
AUSTIN: Right, right, yeah. Give me a Treat roll, and I will go to Treat really quick and explain how that works. Um. So, let me actually—
ART: Huh, that’s really bad.
AUSTIN: Hm, that’s— um, that might be enough, actually. You don’t have any hurt adjectives, right? (JACK: It’s a four.) Thank you.
ART: No, I got out of that pretty well.
AUSTIN: Uh, good job! So in this case, there is a sticky adjective on Cene, which is I think shocked is— consumed is probably what Cene is right now. Uh, and if I go to recovery here, I think what you need is a four. Here we go.
[reading] Sticky adjectives require mending. To remove a sticky adjective that describes the physical, psychological, or social damage to a protagonist, make a Treat roll.
And so you did, you rolled a four.
[reading] Whoever makes a roll to remove a sticky adjective adds a hurt die for each—
You also have to roll a hurt die for Cene, because you have to add a hurt die for each of their own negative adjectives and one for each of the negative adjectives of their patient. Actually roll two for Cene, Cene is also beat up.
ART: Ey!
AUSTIN: You’re good! So Art totally rolled two twos and a four on their, on his Treat roll, and then he rolled a two and a six on his hurt dice, so that cancels out the two, the six doesn’t do anything, so four. The difficulty he rolled against is four. So that means, you can resolve the roll and you can remove the sticky adjective… that’s eliminated, after the necessary recovery time, which will be, I think, a 24-hour thing.
So Cene is like, in bed, basically, recovering. Through some combination of treatments that we don’t really understand, I guess. Because we’re not future space doctors.
ART: Yeah, it hurts that we don’t have space medical knowledge. Or even a lot of world medical knowledge.
AUSTIN: Yeah, totally. Right, we as players have very little— we’re not doctors.
JACK: Also does just being away from the data help?
AUSTIN: Yes, it definitely does, but that wouldn’t have been enough because of the nature of that data.
JACK: Right. Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay. Mako?
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: So like, hospital bots?
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Show up?
KEITH: Cool!
AUSTIN: And—
KEITH (as MAKO as DRILLBOT TAYLOR): I will tolerate the automata.
AUSTIN: (laughs) They uh, lay you down on a cart and look you over a little bit, and— not a cart, but a, what do you call the thing you lay on, a cot?
KEITH: A gurney?
AUSTIN: A gurney, thank you. And they look you over a little bit, and they do a couple of scans of you, and it’s like, they do a thing that sounds a little bit like a 56k modem at each other, (KEITH: Awww) like high squeals-screeches, really quickly, maybe? They hit a button on a gurney, and it lifts off the ground and flies away. Towards a medical center.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: You’re in bad shape. Uh, in fact, Aria and Mako, you need to make some rolls.
ALI: Yeah?
AUSTIN: Uhhuh. How many negative adjectives do you both have?
KEITH: I have just the one.
AUSTIN: Okay. Aria, also just the one I think?
ALI: Just the one, yeah.
AUSTIN: That’s good, I think you make—
ALI: I also have one positive one, from.
AUSTIN: Right, I think that’s cleared now too, that was a fleeting focused (ALI: oh, okay), that’s what that was. (ALI: Yeah.) Okay. At the end of any scene in which one or— and AuDy, you didn’t get one, did you? Did you get a negative one?
JACK: I don’t think so, no.
AUSTIN: Okay. [reading] At the end of any scene in which one or more adjectives were asserted that describe physical harm against a character, there is a chance that the adjective might lead to the character’s death. (JACK: Oh.) Do this for each character who has still been harmed. Roll a hurt die for each sticky or locked adjective that has been applied to him directly, you can ignore negative adjectives that apply to his objects. If one of the rolled hurt die shows a six—
KEITH: Six.
AUSTIN: —the character receives dying— Uhh. That’s good. —as a new sticky adjective. So take dying as a new sticky adjective, Mako.
KEITH: Got it.
AUSTIN: [reading] Uh, if two or more hurt dice show a six, the character receives dead. Characters who are dying still have agency and can act. Characters who are dead lose their ability to act in any way. In either case, the character can still recover from this new adjective using the rules in the following chapter, Restoration.
Um, so now we’re going to—
KEITH: So now I have dying and perforated, right?
AUSTIN: That is correct.
KEITH: Dying is sticky—
AUSTIN: Dying is sticky. You’re all at the ship, Mako is not at the ship.
KEITH: I’m not worried.
JACK: We should probably do something about that. Well, I don’t know. To be honest, Cass—
KEITH: Well, I’m on my way to a hospital. (AUSTIN: Yeah, you’re—)
JACK: Cass, how d’you feel about going up against a hospital?
ART: Not fantastic?
ALI: Should I roll— also we wouldn’t have to go against it, right.
KEITH: Yeah, you can just show up and be like, “We’re here for my friend!”
ALI: Should I also be rolling mine, should we settle that before we go forward, or.
AUSTIN: Oh, sorry, I thought you did already roll, yeah, you should also roll.
ART: Discharge that dying person to our custody, I don’t think that’s how it works.
ALI: Uh, I rolled a six too.
AUSTIN: Oh my god.
JACK: Oh no!
AUSTIN: So for you, it’s weird ‘cause it’s, the pain is just too much. (ALI: Yeah, that’s reasonable.) And like, you can feel it slowly moving through your body and your body is shutting down. You didn’t know, maybe it’s like, a cardiac thing, like it’s just too much. It’s just too much.
KEITH: Did you like, seed Roll20?
AUSTIN: I swear I didn’t! So Aria, take dying.
ALI: Is it, that’s probably sticky.
AUSTIN: Oh, that’s sticky. (ART: Ugh, that’s uncomfortable.) Cass— the Brilliance lands, and AuDy opens up the cockpit. And there’s AuDy, nicely seated next to Aria, who is hyperventilating and slowly fading away.
ALI: I guess it’s just going into shock at this point, is that what that is? Yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I think that’s so, that’s what that is.
ALI: I— probably need blood— I’m gonna stop talking.
AUSTIN: No, tell me, keep talking, that’s, you probably do need— some something.
KEITH: You know what I need, I need a—
ALI: I was gonna say blood but I don’t think that we have that on the ship so no, I don’t need it.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I hope you don’t need it.
KEITH: What I need, is like Silly String but like, tissue, but it’s human tissue.
AUSTIN: Yeah— yeah. Just, spray that on. Um.
ALI: Is there a medi-tank on board, can I just hop into those tanks?
AUSTIN: I don’t think so. You didn’t spend money on that.
JACK: No, we have— a box that contains some plasters.
AUSTIN: Yeah, that’s about it. Cass, you need to roll Treat to remove the sticky adjective dying. Which, yeah I just think that’s going to be Treat versus the difficulty of four again. Aria, did you miss a roll? I think you missed a roll.
ALI: I don’t think I ever did. I rolled a four at some point.
AUSTIN: No? Yeah, that’s still a hit if it— the other person’s thing.
ALI: But I didn’t fail anything.
AUSTIN: What were the two misses? Let’s figure this out. Okay, you snuck in. Keith, you failed Coax. You failed to Coax somebody.
KEITH: I failed Coax, yeahyeahyeah, I have that written down on my character sheet.
AUSTIN: Oh, you did fail, because you failed to… no wait, who did? Someone failed to affect two people at once is what it was.
KEITH: Oh, that was, uh, yeah that was Aria.
AUSTIN: What did she fail— oh, she failed to intimidate two people. (KEITH: Yeah. Intimidated one, not two.) Again using Coax, I think?
ALI: That was… when I shot the ceiling, right? That was Coax.
AUSTIN: You shot the ceiling, yeah, that was Coax. Okay Coax is primed, which is important because your Coax could go up at this point.
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: Sticky adjectives require mending, to remove a sticky adjective, uh, make a Treat roll. So that’s Cass, you can do that. Um.
ALI: Can I aid him in any way?
AUSTIN: No, I don’t think so. Not, no, you’re dying. (ALI: Okay. Yeah.) AuDy could, again, by giving a positive adjective, to Cass.
KEITH: Cass rolled pretty well by himself.
JACK: Also, AuDy’s not a doctor, really, (AUSTIN: That’s the other thing. Yes) and I feel that if someone’s going into cardiac arrest, (AUSTIN: Uhhuh?) a— a blunt robot is not necessarily what you need.
AUSTIN: [laughs] Is not the one. I appreciate you letting the fiction follow— [ALI giggles] lead the rules here. So yes, you can now roll the, Cass, to—
ART: It’s one hurt die?
AUSTIN: It is, one hurt, oh no it’s two, ‘cause now, now she has both dying and, agitated.
ART: Sorry.
AUSTIN: No, that was good, right, oh, no.
KEITH: No that’s not good.
ALI: Is that bad? (JACK: Oh, no) Wait, why is that bad?
AUSTIN: That’s real bad. That’s real bad.
ART: ‘Cause those hurt die—
KEITH: ’Cause those hurt die cancelled out the six.
AUSTIN: Uhhuh.
ALI: Wait. Okay.
KEITH: AuDy’s turn to Treat.
AUSTIN: No, no. This is— so you failed the dying check. Characters who are dying, duhduhduhduhduh, if you roll— the roll to mend dying fails, upgrade the adjective in severity to a locked adjective of dead.
(ALI groans)
JACK: Oh no! And then, there is this figure, with a sword, in a beautiful hallway, and the chain is unbroken—
[ALI and AUSTIN laugh
ALI: [distressed] Is Tristero here?
AUSTIN: Tristero’s not here yet because we live in a cyberpunk future where coming back to life— dead is not— You’re not done. The way this system works— (ALI: Right. Aww…)
JACK: But otherwise it would be Tristero C.
AUSTIN: But there still is a bad thing here, though. Who else could you go to to help? Let’s see. ‘Cause there is one person who can help you really easily here. [pause] Oh, okay. We know where this is going. Good. It’s good that you know where to go for this. Okay. Phew. I just remembered— I was thinking Cene would be the one to help you [laughing] but Cene is in no condition to help you.
[ALI laughs]
JACK: Hey Cene, quick quick, she’s—
[ALI and AUSTIN laugh]
AUSTIN: She really needs some help! So [reading] locked adjectives require replacement. To remove a locked adjective that describes physic— physiological or social loss, implant an object that replaces what has been lost. This requires purchasing or otherwise obtaining the object and having it implanted by paying five creds or calling in a Splice favor.
JACK: Oh my god. I can’t believe we killed Ali.
ART: So it’s Koda.
AUSTIN: It’s Koda.
JACK: Again.
ALI: We can’t kill Space Beyoncé.
AUSTIN: Space Beyoncé’ll be fine. I think you have to call in a…So, what’s your relationship with Koda again? Cass?
ART: I am loyal to Koda, Koda was my commanding officer in the war.
AUSTIN: Okay, Koda is another, another space medic, and another space fish.
ART: Space fish medic.
AUSTIN: Space fish medic. And the thing with Koda was that Koda is from COUNTER/Weight, back in the days of Apostolosian control of COUNTER/Weight? And, has since moved back, even though Apos— Apost— Apostolos, I’m going to learn how to say this thing I wrote, one day, even though Apostolos doesn’t control here anymore.
Also we’ve had some talks about the pronouns for Apostolosian people, and we’re not really settled on anything yet. We’re going to keep using they for this character because we have to figure that out. Because it’s an alien culture, and maybe they don’t have the same gender norms as we do? Maybe we could do something more interesting and more— something. We should do something different than what we have here. But for now—
ART: For right now it’s they.
AUSTIN: It’s they. Koda, is, let’s just say for convenience’s sake, a city away from here? But it would mean taking the Kingdom Come away from where Mako is.
KEITH: I’m in a hospital, whatever.
AUSTIN: The other players don’t know that— the other characters don’t know that.
KEITH: Hmm.
AUSTIN: You’re not checking in.
KEITH: We’ve got like, earbuds.
AUSTIN: You do. You have connection but you’re dying.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Again, respect the adjective here—
JACK: I mean, I kind of feel that we sort of, it would be the logical move, right? And we can’t possibly know that he’s there. I think anything else would be untrue to how the world’s working?
[crosstalk]
AUSTIN: That’s fair. I just want to make sure that— that is, the image we get—
JACK: I mean, is that the consensus?
ALI: I mean, we could split the party though, right?
JACK: But how would you know where— would you search all the hospitals?
KEITH: I mean, when I’m done being dying, I’ll let you know where I’m at.
AUSTIN: Right.
AUSTIN: I mean, in other words, the thing that I want these characters to be aware of is that that’s happening.
ALI: I— Yeah, I just feel, it would probably be a situation where Cass would be like, “Okay, I’ll take her to Koda, you wait for Mako.” ‘Cause at this point we’re all assuming he’s on his way, right?
AUSTIN: But Koda—
ART: But we need AuDy to drive us to Koda. (ALI: Oh) (AUSTIN: Right.) Everyone needs to go to Koda.
KEITH: Didn’t I mention that I was going to force them to get me a doctor? On my way out?
AUSTIN: They did! And they did! They sent you to the hospital.
KEITH: Yeah! But like—
[various noises of consent from entire cast]
ART: You could just easily be in a prison hospital right now. Like, best-case scenario you are committing fraud there.
KEITH: I mean, they still don’t know that. And I bought the things, I actually bought the things!
ART: They’re— (AUSTIN: Oh my god) the hospital might find out that your name isn’t real.
AUSTIN: The hospital knows who they are, uh, the hospital knows who he is. Yeah.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Frankly, I think, so does SnowTrak, they just don’t care. They have his credit agreement.
KEITH: I have no money. It doesn’t matter. Yeah.
AUSTIN: Those payments are going to start coming in.
ALI: Could me and Cass take the… ‘Phile?
AUSTIN: Oh, maybe. Yeah.
ART: NO.
AUSTIN: But there would be blood all over it and that doesn’t sound nice.
ART: No, it’s a— foreign war machine [ALI laughs], I’m not that loud!
AUSTIN: That’s fair.
ALI: You could…
ART: To the other foreign dude’s house! That looks like a war!
[AUSTIN and ALI laugh]
ALI: We could take the Brilliance.
KEITH: That idea’s not bad. I mean, the war’s not happening right now.
JACK: It just blew up a warehouse—
KEITH: Anybody who had a problem would just be a racist.
AUSTIN: I don’t— Mm.
ART: We blew up a factory, guys!
KEITH: Yeah, but nobody knew that!
AUSTIN: Mm. I did describe all the cameras nearby.
ALI: We are being sought after. Still. Sort of.
KEITH: Yeah. I guess AuDy did escalate this to an unreasonable level.
ALI: AuDy knows that there is a person chasing us and maybe might not want to stick around.
AUSTIN: Yeah. I think this is go, I’m not saying don’t do it, I was just making sure that we’re clear that is the image of what’s happening here.
ALI: Yeah.
JACK: So. Thrusters power up on the Kingdom Come, everybody hustles up the ramp, and I guess we shoot towards Koda’s house. I don’t know, where is?
AUSTIN: Yeah. I think you probably call ahead to Koda, who’s a city away, and say like—
JACK: We got a bad situation.
AUSTIN: We have a bad situation. In fact, Cass, let’s do that call really quick?
ART: Sure.
AUSTIN: Um, I think Koda’s place is, let’s see what are Koda’s adjectives? (at the same time as ART) tall, practiced, and—
ART: Stubborn.
AUSTIN: Stubborn, yeah. Uh, I think Koda’s just come off a long shift, and they have like, it’s not that they’re tall, it’s that their features are tall, you know what I mean? I’m picturing like Egon Spangler, the cartoon version, here? (ALI: Oo.) Thin but also, kind of a fish person? Kind of like a fish person. We don’t know what that looks like yet, we haven’t decided—
JACK: Just kind of like a fish person!
AUSTIN: Kind of— maybe they have fish DNA in there! We haven’t decided how much that that’s true.
ALI: Just a real attractive tired fish person.
AUSTIN: Y’know, yeah. (ALI giggles) Um, and you ring up and appear on their comm. Uh.
AUSTIN (as KODA): Cass?
ART (as CASS): Staff sergeant.
AUSTIN (as KODA): (sighs)
ART (as CASS): We have a— we have a situation, a— a big problem.
AUSTIN (as KODA): What is it Cass?
ART (as CASS): Um, my friend is dying. I tried to save her and I— I couldn’t.
AUSTIN (as KODA): What’s the sit— what’s the problem?
ART (as CASS): I— (AUSTIN: You think it’s cardiac arrest.) I think it’s cardiac arrest caused by, massive trauma.
AUSTIN (as KODA): (sighs) Where is—
ART (as CASS): I think she pushed it too hard.
AUSTIN (as KODA): Alright. Well, take the— how quick can you get here?
ART (as CASS): Uh, reasonably quickly, we’re just over by the factory.
AUSTIN (as KODA): Alright. Okay. Okay, I’ll meet you by the port. I’ll— I’ll bring my kit.
ART (as CASS): Alright. We have bad provisions here but we have some stuff.
AUSTIN (as KODA): Alright. Appreciate it. Listen, this can’t be every day. You know that this puts us both under the microscope. And—
ART (as CASS): I know.
AUSTIN (as KODA): And that could go bad real quick.
ART (as CASS): Yeah.
AUSTIN: Alright. They, turn off the call. I think this is one of those flights that’s, y’know, you can go as fast as you want and it still feels slow. And it’s just like, we’ll be there in forty-five minutes. This isn’t a situation where there’s traffic. You’re flying through the dusk sky and it’s lonely and no one is there to tell you everything is going to be okay.
Um, Mako, you’re in a weird situation. I think I just need to roll for these doctors, right?
KEITH: Yeah, these doctors are probably pretty good at fixing stuff.
AUSTIN: Yeah, they’re probably like a four at Treat, right?
KEITH: Four, five?
AUSTIN: I think they’re probably a four.
JACK: Maybe a six?
AUSTIN: Five is the— cap. Five is the highest it gets.
ALI: But they’re doctors.
KEITH: They are doctors.
AUSTIN: Yeah, but like, five is like you’re the best doctor on the planet. (KEITH: Okay.) (ALI: Ah.) I think—
ART: But Koda’s a five.
KEITH: So I’m the best hacker on the planet?— oh, I’m a four at hacking.
AUSTIN: You’re a four at hacking. But also, you went to a weird Jedi hacking school. So if you were, that wouldn’t be too out of the realm of possibility, y’know?
KEITH: Right yeah.
AUSTIN: Uh, yeah. Koda is a five in Treat. So I’m just gonna roll these… what’s your— how many hurt things do you have? Oh, lord.
KEITH: Ooh, Jesus, what are you doing to me?
AUSTIN: I rolled a two and— I rolled two 2’s and two 3’s.
ALI: [giggling] That adds up to ten.
[KEITH laughs]
AUSTIN: It does, it does add up to ten.
KEITH: I have perforated, locked, dying, sticky.
AUSTIN: No, you have dead, sticky, currently.
KEITH: No I have dying sticky. (ALI: I have dead sticky— Oohh.)
AUSTIN: Yeah, but I failed that roll, so now you have dead. Which means you also need to go even further into debt (JACK: Oh my god) to get—
KEITH: No, they said! Fuckin’ Jorne said they’d cover it! Fuck that, I’m not paying. I’ll take whatever, but I’m not paying a cent!
AUSTIN: (laughing) Okay, we’re going to give you some sort of cyber-torso. Yeah, what sort of— Keith, think about how you fix being filled with bullets with some sort of cool technology.
KEITH: Okay. Uhh, it’s a, uh, liquid metal that you pour into the hole (AUSTIN: Uhhuh. [grossed out] Ueghhh) and then as it hardens, it creates capillaries and veins and everything.
AUSTIN: Okay, (JACK: Aw, man) so it’s some sort of bio liquid that you pour in?
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: [still grossed out] Uueeghhh. And that just stays with you, it has to be a permanent thing that’s now just part of your body.
KEITH: Yeah. It’s also super hard and you can’t shoot it. [laughs]
AUSTIN: I think it probably just feels weird.
KEITH: And then it has Skittles in it.
AUSTIN: O-kay. This is a stretch. I was with you ’til the Skittles.
KEITH: Alright, I’ll take out the Skittles if you take out that it feels weird.
AUSTIN: [laughs] No. I think it feels weird.
KEITH: Forever?
AUSTIN: Yeah! Forever. This is the cost. The cost is, your skin feels weird in the places you got shot.
KEITH: I’ll get used to it.
AUSTIN: You’ll get used to it, but that’s a thing about your character now, is that you’ve got a weird chest, y’know.
KEITH: It probably looks pretty fuckin’ cool though.
AUSTIN: It probably looks like, have you seen, Fist of the North Star?
KEITH: A little bit.
AUSTIN: I’ll show you. Do a search for Kenshiro, Fist of the North Star.
KEITH: I think I know what you’re about to show me.
AUSTIN: He has those weird finger holes from where he got— It looks like he got shot, but in fact, he just got like, death punched or whatever? He has these weird indentations on his chest? I think you have those. Gonna link that there. You see the one I’m talking about?
KEITH: Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
AUSTIN: Those. But you’re alive, again. I think that puts you to— You’re no longer dying, but you are—
KEITH: There’s only one, right? ‘Cause he only got shot one time.
AUSTIN: No, you got perforated.
KEITH: Well, you can get perforated by one thing.
AUSTIN: No, he shot you a bunch of times, Keith.
KEITH: Okay. I guess I assumed it was one because you changed it from riddled to perforated.
AUSTIN: Oh no, I was trying to go more than—(KEITH: Oh oh) Like, if you had a napkin and there was a hole in it, you wouldn’t say that the napkin was perforated, would you?
KEITH: Yeah, you would.
AUSTIN: With one?
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay, I think it’s, in my mind I was thinking he pulled the trigger a bunch of times.
KEITH: Well I thought it was a lateral move from, you were shot a bunch of times but it’s not (AUSTIN: Oooh, no) they’re surface wounds to you were shot once but it went literally through you.
AUSTIN: No, for me it was, I like the way perforated sounds.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: That’s the move I was making.
KEITH: Okay. So I’m dead, sticky?
AUSTIN: No, your dead is now gone, ‘cause you’ve gotten this cyber implant. That’s the way—
KEITH: Okay. And perforated?
AUSTIN: Perforated is now—
KEITH: Gone, ‘cause I have these holes filled.
AUSTIN: Right. Uh, I just searched this document for perforated, which is not gonna work, this document doesn’t just tell you how to get rid of the perforated thing. So, [reading] once the replacement has happened, change the adjective’s severity from locked to sticky. It can then be fully mended by making a roll as indicated above.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: Someone else has to Treat your perforated still.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: We’ll do that again for them right this second. We’ll get this done and then we can do the thing with Koda. That’s a better roll.
KEITH: That is a better roll.
AUSTIN: They still have to make a hurt thing, though.
KEITH: But there’s a five there too, so.
AUSTIN: Yeahyeahyeah, that’s a good point. So you rolled a six, a one, a six, and a five. You still have two—
KEITH: I just have one.
AUSTIN: Right, ‘cause—
KEITH: Sticky, perforated.
AUSTIN: I’m just gonna double check that, ‘cause does dying?
KEITH: Dead was sticky.
AUSTIN: Dead is sticky. Sorry, this is the first time we’re dealing with these death rules.
KEITH: Yeah. We got rid of dead, and now we’re trying to end perforated.
AUSTIN: I’m making sure that is how— that dead is just gone. Is that correct? I just wanna make sure. This is the first time any players have ever died for me in this game. So yeah, it was dead … replacement goes through, good.
Oh, also one of the hurt die was a higher— what was that? What did I roll on the hurt die for you? I rolled a six on the hurt die.
KEITH: Yeah. No. That was for Ali.
AUSTIN: So Ali, your Coax goes up. That’s one thing that’s good. (ALI: Oh yay.)
KEITH: You also rolled the six against me then. No wait, where is it?
AUSTIN: No, I don’t see it now.
KEITH: I don’t think you rolled against me.
AUSTIN: I’m sorry, I didn’t roll those hurt dice for you because I didn’t roll a success. But I should go back and roll those hurt dice for you.
The thing I’m doing now, the hurt dice rolling? You also increase your Coax. I rolled a six in the first set of hurt dice. (KEITH: Nice.) Ah, so that second roll with the sixes, that was the successful Treat for installing the cyberware. That’s what that was, and that should also have a hurt die set to it.
ALI: Does Coax become unprimed now?
AUSTIN: Yes.
[rolling] Neither of those cancelled out, so the surgery went through okay. So now this is the third Treat, which is the robots. This is all better when it’s actual characters doing it instead of just me, but this is where we’re at.
Duhduh duhduh duhduh. Just double checking to make sure that dead doesn’t do anything weird here. It doesn’t look like it does. Okay. Aaaand—
KEITH: A six, a four?
AUSTIN: Yeah, as long as you’re only running one here, yeah you’re good. Okay. So! Now that you’ve been repaired. [reading] When a replacement part is implanted to downgrade a locked adjective to sticky, the character needs about 48 hours of recovery time.
And then after that, the roll that I just did? That second one? Will be the Treat roll to recover your sticky adjective to not be there anymore. (KEITH: Okay.) But that means you have three days of downtime at this point in this hospital that you’re just gonna be gone for.
KEITH: But doesn’t 48 hours make two days?
AUSTIN: 48 hours and 24 hours. 48 hours is removing dead, and then … yeah.
KEITH: Okay, I understand.
AUSTIN: Okay. Ali.
ALI: Hey.
AUSTIN: How’s it going bud?
ALI: [laughs] I’ll be fine.
AUSTIN: Yeah?
ALI: Koda’s a five.
AUSTIN: Koda does have a five. That helps. That’s gonna help this situation a bit.
KEITH: In those three days, will I have any time to tell them that I’m not dead?
AUSTIN: I don’t think so. I think this is like, you’re knocked the fuck out while they’re doing—
KEITH: Three days that I’m out. I’m in a bacta tank?
AUSTIN: You’re in a bacta tank right now, absolutely. What’s the other thing besides bacta in Star Wars?
KEITH: Colto?
AUSTIN: Colto.
KEITH: Yeah, colto is in Old Republic.
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. Right, ‘cause they haven’t figured out bacta yet.
KEITH: Right. Yeah.
AUSTIN: Bacta is better colto. Right? (KEITH: Yeah.) It’s refined. That’s a fuckin’ choice.
KEITH: I think bacta is just refined colto.
AUSTIN: That’s a thing that they’re like, “well, this takes place a long time ago, so let’s just change it from bacta to something else.”
KEITH: Something not as good. (AUSTIN: Yeah.) Some parts of Star Wars are pretty cool.
AUSTIN: So you land the ship, and Koda is there. Koda is there with a bot that is … I’m kinda picturing it as having a chest cavity that’s filled with surgical things that Koda can open up and take out. Or maybe serve up automatically. And two of those walk on. And there’s also just a— not a gym bag, but something in that vicinity. Kinda over-the-shoulder small duffle bag filled with plastic-wrapped cyberware. And they come on board.
Koda gives you kind of a familiar nod, Cass. Do you want to help here at all? Do you want to give Koda a positive adjective? Right now Koda has— I said this already. Tall, stubborn, and what’s the third thing?
ART: Practiced.
AUSTIN: Practiced. So practiced will help.
ART: Which is pretty good.
AUSTIN: The thing that’s weird here is there isn’t really a way for me— I think it’s right for me to spend my push dice here. But there isn’t really a way for me to spend more push dice because I just don’t have them for Koda. Y’know? I don’t think there’s rule for NPCs using push dice to help you. So I think I just have to— maybe you can spend a push dice to help activate an NPC thing?
ART: Activate practiced?
AUSTIN: Yeah. I’m using the one that I have to activate practiced. I feel like that makes sense for what Koda would do. But it seems weird that Koda couldn’t use more than that. I guess that’s, 6d6 is a pretty good roll.
KEITH: 6d6 is a good roll.
ART: Yeah, I mean, we can talk about ways to help, but the adjectives I’m coming up with are all bad. (AUSTIN: Uh-huh.) We used to do this together, right? So the adjectives I’m coming up with are like familiar?
ALI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: That really doesn’t—
ART: Rehearsed?
AUSTIN: Rehearsed isn’t bad.
ART: Yeah.
ALI: Nostalgic? (AUSTIN: That sounds—) No, rehearsed it better.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Everything you need to know about me is that when you said nostalgic, my first— I was like, no that’s a bad thing.
(group laughter)
ALI: Yup.
ART: It’s probably not great when you’re practicing medicine, right? You want to be pretty focused.
AUSTIN: Mmhmm.
ALI: Yeah, you don’t want to have memories of other times that you’ve done this.
KEITH: Yeah. Wow, Koda’s really got rose-colored glasses. No no no, that’s blood. That’s blood from the surgery he’s botching because he’s[5] thinking about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
AUSTIN: Yup. Yup.
ART: Maybe it’s focused, maybe that’s it. Going into this old rhythm we had is refreshing.
AUSTIN: Yeah. I can see that. It might also just be that I don’t have to roll at all because they have the Splice tag. The Splice favor. So I’m checking on that really quick to make sure. Again, I apologize to the listeners who are listening to us figure this out as we go.
ALI: Well, now if you want to play the game, you will be better than we are.
AUSTIN: That’s right! Exactly. Okay, so there are two things here. The Splice I think just works, and lowers it from a locked to a— yeah. So in fact, I didn’t have to roll as many times as I did for you, Keith, but it all worked out. We’re fine.
What are you getting? Are you getting a cyber heart, Ali? Is Aria getting a cyber heart? Is it a cyber arm? What is the thing here that needs to get all roboticized?
KEITH: It sounded to me like the cardiac arrest, the problem isn’t with the heart. It’s with the pain. And then once you fix the (ART: But that problem—) pain in the hand …
AUSTIN: That pain is—
KEITH: Well, she needs a hand.
AUSTIN: But the hand is—
ART: She needs a hand, but she also needs a heart.
AUSTIN: It might be both. The thing that died was the heart.
KEITH: Yeah, but you can have a couple heart attacks with the same heart.
AUSTIN: That’s true. That’s true.
ALI: That’s the thing. I don’t think her going into shock is a cardiac arrest sort of thing. I think there’s so much pain that her body shut down. That’s not—
AUSTIN: Again, none of us are doctors. [ALI laughs]
KEITH: I think that might still be because of a cardiac arrest.
AUSTIN: [typing] How … does … shock … kill … you?
KEITH: I’m pretty sure that going into shock means that your heart is fucking up. I’m pretty sure that’s what that is.
ALI: I don’t know.
KEITH: But you know, I know a dude’s that a couple heart attacks. That guy’s kicking. With the same heart.
ALI: Uhh, your body enters shock when there’s not not enough circulating blood. So her heart is fine. It’s just she lost too much blood to be alive.
AUSTIN: No, ‘cause you can go into shock, ‘cause the problem is that the blood isn’t circulating. It’s not that you don’t have enough blood.
ALI: Right.
AUSTIN: Okay, so it depends on what. There are four types of shock. One of them is bleeding.
KEITH: That sounds like the one that is not gonna—
ALI: I feel like bleeding is what happened to her. ‘Cause she should have wrapped up that wound, and instead she got into a robot [KEITH laughs] and—
AUSTIN: Right. That is true. That did happen. [ALI giggles] But the thing that we were describing was death from the shock of pain, not the shock of—
ALI: That’s before we looked up what shock is.
AUSTIN: [laughs] This is true.
ALI: [laughs] What are the other types? Is there anything that sounds—
KEITH: There’s also emotional shock.
AUSTIN: Yes, here’s the other one. This is emotional shock, where like, trauma. [reading] The news of the event can cause the body to produce large amounts of stress hormones, including adrenaline which narrows the main arteries which supply blood to the heart. This paralyzes the heart’s main pumping chamber causing a sudden change in rhythm similar to a heart attack.
ALI: I still think it’s bleeding out because it’s not like there was a trauma and she was emotionally affected. Because then she would have been dying in the factory, right? She had enough time to get away, but she was dying because there was too much—
KEITH: My point is, regardless of— it could have been both types of shock. But now those things are still treated without robo-hearts. (ALI: Yeah.) Even if it was both types of shock at the same time.
AUSTIN: Right. So you want a robot hand, then.
ALI: Yeah, I just feel like a robot arm.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ALI: Or a whatd’youcall thing?
AUSTIN: Blood. You need more blood right now.
ART: Or does she need anything?
AUSTIN: Yes.
KEITH: Well, a hand.
AUSTIN: Through the rules of the game, which are thematic, this is a game about the relationship between humans and technology. Moving towards being more mechanical is a kind of thematic. It’s a rule because it lines up thematically. (ART: Sure.) And also it references the way this culture functions at this point, which is like, “well, her heart stopped because of X, Y, or Z— her body’s broken, replace it, improve it.” Y’know?
ALI: Yeah, I guess Koda isn’t gonna be, “Her hand will be fine.”
AUSTIN: Right, exactly.
ALI: “Those wounds will heal, who cares that the bones will heal, just get rid of them.”
AUSTIN: Also her hand is fucked, right? She got shot in the hand.
KEITH: It got exploded off.
AUSTIN: Yeah, it got exploded pretty bad. So do you want a cyber hand, or do you want a cyber arm? This is just a thing you get to decide, basically. One is not necessarily better than the other for our purposes.
ALI: Forearm forward.
AUSTIN: Okay, that sounds good.
ALI: ‘Cause that seems like what had been damaged. Her hand, her wrist.
AUSTIN: Yeah, okay. And then there is a Treat for dropping you from— what’s the bad thing you have? (ALI: Agonized.) Agonized.
ALI: So dead is gone?
AUSTIN: Dead is gone ‘cause of the surgery, ‘cause of the Splice. But you still have agonized, so that’s also 1d. That’s the only hurt dice you have, right?
ALI: Yes.
AUSTIN: Okay, you’re good.
ALI: Whew.
KEITH: Thankfully.
AUSTIN: Ok
ALI: So both of those are gone. I just have to add that cyberarm (AUSTIN: Yup.) to my gear.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. And I’m adding Koda to the map because you called in a favor.
I think this all happens over the course of the rest of that night. Things are tense, and it is stop and go for awhile there. But it looks like everything’s gonna come through.
ART: Is it the same 72-hour thing?
AUSTIN: Yes. It is that same exact, yeah. AuDy and Cass, what are you doing during that time, during this period where everyone is out and recovering?
JACK: I think AuDy’s probably watching the surgery robot really carefully. Maybe AuDy just finds themself standing next to the surgery robot.
JACK (as AUDY): You’re doing a good job. You’re doing a good job.
JACK: AuDy’s attitude towards robots is really strange in that there’s almost a parental feeling toward them. But at the same time, AuDy is nowhere near as competent as these robots in their jobs. This robot can do surgery so much better than AuDy could. And arguably, a robot who has only ever had to think about parking cars could probably park cars better than AuDy could. So it’s this weird mixture of parental feelings and also “Hey weird, what’s this thing doing?”
AUSTIN: Yeah. Yeah. Cass?
ART: I was helping, right? I was doing surgery for a while, I mean assisting surgery for a while. Then I think it’s fretting, kinda just being nervous during the recovery period. I don’t think Cass has— Cass has seen a lot of these go wrong (AUSTIN: Right.) and so he’s[6] like, “Koda says she’s gonna make it. But Koda’s said people were gonna make it who didn’t make it before.”
AUSTIN: So I think we end with— okay. So you report back to Orth?
Cene wakes up is probably the actual next important thing that happens. In fact, Cene wakes up before Mako or Aria do and has recovered some of their natural character. They walk over to you, to AuDy and Cass, during Cass’s downtime. You’re all just sitting in the cockpit of the ship. Or I guess you could be anywhere because you’re not flying right now. You’re not doing surgery while flying? (ART: Yeah.) So you’re in the main public area. Cene has their hand at the back of their head, kinda scratching it.
AUSTIN (as CENE): I … thanks. Thanks.
AUSTIN: There’s a very guilty look on Cene’s face.
AUSTIN (as CENE): I owe you. I owe you a whole lot.
ART (as CASS): What was that?
AUSTIN (as CENE): I’m not sure. They found something very old but not really alien. The closest thing that I can think of is, it was sort of like a divine. But a little less narrow. Y’know?
AUSTIN: That’s way over your— you are not a roboticist. If Mako was there, he would understand.
KEITH: You’re saying that instead having one virtue that they exemplify, it’s a full AI with a range of emotions?
AUSTIN: Maybe. Or it’s a couple of them? Or it’s one that exceptionally broad?
KEITH: You mean wide.
AUSTIN: Right, like wide. Like broad actually. It was just broad. Or like freedom, something that’s explicitly about not being limited. But also it was in the Oricon tongue and not in the language of Diaspora’s divines. So that’s weird. There’s a lot of weird here.
Cene explains that they were brought on as a translator, as a coder. They work with bots, they’re from the Diaspora. They were brought in to help translate whatever was happening there and help make it productive.
AUSTIN (as CENE): I didn’t finish, but I think I gave them enough to start using the thing. I’m sorry.
JACK (as AUDY): You did what you had to do.
JACK: Then I think AuDy just goes and sits down. (AUSTIN: Yeah.)
AUSTIN (as CENE): Yeah. I should— they’ll find me again. What am I supposed to do?
JACK (as AUDY): We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
AUSTIN: Cene nods and sits back down.
ART (as CASS): You’re sure a person who knows how to get of the planet, I don’t know how that— we could go to you. (AUSTIN and KEITH laugh)
AUSTIN: That’s true. Do you tell Orth?
ART: I think so. Unless AuDy wants to not.
JACK: I feel like we should withhold something (AUSTIN: Yeah) partly because I don’t fully trust Orth necessarily, and partly because I feel that the information that Cene gave is really quite hot. And also I don’t know whether there’s something vindictive about it. I think AuDy knows that Orth was holding something back from them.
KEITH: I feel like Orth isn’t super invested in Cene and more with what happened in the explosion and why it happened. And we know why it happened. We know that they abducted a bunch of scientists.
AUSTIN: No, they only abducted Cene. Cene’s the only one who went missing.
KEITH: Oh, I thought that the person in the last episode said that they took a handful of people. ‘Cause I remember asking if Cene was the most important person taken.
AUSTIN: Cene was the most important person for sure. If I said that before, then yeah sure, that’s as established. But Cene is the important one there.
ART: We sure didn’t rescue anyone else.
AUSTIN: Yes, that’s also true. That would have made things a little more complicated, even.
JACK (as AUDY): Shall we contact Orth then?
ART (as CASS): Yeah, let’s give Orth information until he feels the job is done.
KEITH (as MAKO): Yeah. Gotta get paid, you guys!
AUSTIN: You gotta get paid!
ART (as CASS): Yeah, someone just bought 30 robots.
KEITH (as MAKO): Listen, my hands were tied! My hands were tied (ALI: He tried) and my tongue was not.
ALI: He died trying to undo that deal. [laughs]
AUSTIN: He did! You call Orth. You can see— this time it’s just regular video call, he’s doesn’t even try with the holo shit this time. There’s a big monitor behind him that’s running the news: “Snowtrak facility attacked today” and smoke pouring out of it. “Apostolosian rig blamed for attack” and images of the Megalophile flying through the air.
KEITH (as MAKO): It needed a paint job.
ART (as Cass): I did repaint it! It’s been repainted! I think there’s a lot of military surplus out there. It’s really hard to prove—
AUSTIN: Right. Fox News equivalent is definitely trying to start some shit. Other news outlets are less aggressive about that point, let’s say. (ART: Sure.) Orth turns from looking at that monitor to face the camera.
AUSTIN (as ORTH): You recovered Cene, I see. You recovered Doctor Sixheart, I see.
KEITH (as MAKO): Wow, he knows.
JACK (as AUDY): Correct.
AUSTIN (as ORTH): What the hell happened?
JACK (as AUDY): A situation developed.
AUSTIN (as ORTH): What sort of situation?
JACK (as AUDY): A violent one.
AUSTIN (as ORTH): I saw that. I need information. Why did they attack the dome?
JACK (as AUDY): They were looking for Cene.
AUSTIN (as ORTH): For what reason?
JACK (as AUDY): We don’t know.
AUSTIN (as ORTH): You don’t know. What was Cene doing?
JACK (as AUDY): Working on a terminal.
AUSTIN (as ORTH): Okay. I see how it is. Well for whatever reason, I’m glad that Doctor Sixheart is out of their control. I hope that your losses weren’t too costly.
JACK (as AUDY): Two of our friends died.
AUSTIN (as ORTH): I see. The unit’s still operational?
AUSTIN: The Chime— he’s referring to.
JACK (as AUDY): Absolutely.
AUSTIN (as ORTH): Good. I’ll have more work for you in the future. I’ll have my office send over the agreed-upon funds. Plus a little more for discretionary purposes.
JACK (as AUDY): Excellent.
AUSTIN (as ORTH): [sigh] I need you to know you can be honest with me, AuDy.
JACK (as AUDY): I haven’t quite yet worked out what honesty is, Mr. Goodlove.
AUSTIN (as ORTH): I get it. Be safe. (JACK: Okay.)
AUSTIN: And he hangs up. Alright.
ART: Um, Jack— is it, it’s Godlove right?
AUSTIN: It is Godlove.
JACK: Is it Godlove? Okay.
AUSTIN: It is, it is.
JACK: I didn’t have the character sheet in front of me.
AUSTIN: That’s okay. It’s good enough.
ART: It’s fine. I was just wondering if you were sticking it to him. [AUSTIN laughs]
JACK: Nooo, I don’t think so. I mean, maybe I was. Let’s retcon it. [ART laughs]
AUSTIN: Mako, you’re in a situation.
KEITH: Okay, what’s up?
AUSTIN: I— huh, okay. I’m trying to decide who’s there. Who’s there when you wake up, buddy?
KEITH: I don’t know, but I got hella Coax right now, so they better watch out or I’m gonna lie to them. [group laughter]
AUSTIN: Good. My Roll20 broke, one sec. I have to relaunch my Roll20. Breakin’ everything.
KEITH: I can only move one of my dice, by the way.
AUSTIN: Weird. I will continue to work on that. My Roll20 is starting up again so I can look at this sheet and see who you’re connected with. My god, what is up with —
KEITH: I’m connected to Paisley (AUSTIN: Right) and I’m connected to J-m.
AUSTIN: Right. Okay.
ART: And who’s your third?
KEITH: Oh. I don’t have an adjective with them. It’s Jamill. Big J.
AUSTIN: Oh right, Jamill is gonna want to know about Cene. I forgot. I forgot about Jamill and Cene.
KEITH: Wait, what’s up with Jamil and Cene?
AUSTIN: Remember? Jamill was talking to Aria last time, was like, “hey, please save Cene, like please.”
KEITH: Right right right right, I remember that now.
AUSTIN: Uh-oh, I think my OBS—
ALI: Okay, you have Cene, J-m, Paisley.
AUSTIN: It might not be any of those people, though. Who definitely knows? Did we sticky Jorne stuff?
KEITH: What’s that?
AUSTIN: Did we sticky Jorne?
KEITH: I stickied trusting, yeah.
AUSTIN: I think Jorne is there. We’ll go light here. I thought about really rubbing your face in it, making you be in a situation. But Jorne is there.
KEITH: I went through a lot already, Austin!
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: Do I have to do my voice still?
AUSTIN: That’s up to you. (KEITH: Alright.) I don’t know if you have it in you necessarily.
KEITH: I do. Yeah. Maybe I’m whispering.
ALI: You have a five Coax.
AUSTIN: You do have a five Coax.
JACK: [laughs] It’s true.
AUSTIN: Jorne is there. He says, as you wake up
AUSTIN (as JORNE): Drillbot Taylor. You told me your name was Drillbot Taylor. It’s Mako, Mako Trig. That’s a whole different name!
KEITH (as MAKO): I can’t remember a thing! [group laughs]
KEITH (as MAKO): Who are you? Naw, I’m fucking with you. What’s up?
AUSTIN: He gives you a look, like mmm. Then he gives you a punch on the side of the arm.
KEITH (as MAKO): Listen, I bought the thing. So we’re good, right?
AUSTIN (as JORNE): Are you good for this? ‘Cause—
KEITH (as MAKO): Yeah, I’m good for it.
AUSTIN (as JORNE): Okayyyy.
KEITH (as MAKO): Listen, hold on. You still payin’ for the fucking shit I went through?
AUSTIN (as JORNE): Of course, of course! I just— shake my hand on it?
KEITH (as MAKO): Alright. And— hold on, and the Ring of Saturn? (AUSTIN as JORNE: Keep— ) This is the top-tier one you’ve got?
AUSTIN (as JORNE): Top-tier, Ring of Saturn all yours.
AUSTIN: Shake his hand. He looks over his shoulder at a camera in the corner, and he shrugs.
AUSTIN (as JORNE): Alright Mr. Lawyer Man? He shook on it. He’s good. He’s good for the money. [KEITH laughs]
AUSTIN: And he walks out the door.
Alright, the last image of the game we’re gonna give is back on the ship. In the middle of the nightly news, it’s talking about the attack on Snowtrak Synergies. It switches to footage of the server— that server room, from days before you were there. It shows them shoving Cene down, locking them up, and kind of beating Cene until they decide to cooperate. And then fast-forward footage throughout the next day or two of the soldiers coming up and checking on Cene to make sure the work is going on. It’s switching from angle to angle with a rapid shot. Then you’re there. You break in. The explosion happens, you carry Cene away. It’s all of the violence quickly, all rapid shots of what’s happening. And then the Angels of CounterWeight symbol shows up in the corner again, and on the screen it says, “When the bells chime, you’re out of time.” And it goes back to the regular programming.
KEITH: I hope that the footage is very confusing about my role in this.
AUSTIN: [laughs] It sure is!
KEITH: I want to know what—
AUSTIN: I don’t think it’s ever clear enough, I don’t think anybody really is identifiable in this footage.
KEITH: There’s no faces.
AUSTIN: I think there’s faces, but the resolution that they’re broadcasting at is not high resolution. They could be broadcasting really clear pictures. They’re choosing not to.
KEITH: Okay. Do you think they like us? It sounds like they like us.
ALI: Aria believes—
AUSTIN: They’re like, those people.
ALI: Aria believes, “Yeah, I’m an angel of CounterWeight! I’m doing a good job!”
AUSTIN: Uh huh.
KEITH: But then there’s that weird rhyme that is very sinister.
AUSTIN: Yeah, weird.
ALI: It’s kinda like what she said. Eh, it’s fine. It’s fine.
KEITH: What did you say?
ALI: When I shot the gun, I said, “the bells are ringing.”
AUSTIN: You said, “the bells are ringing,” which is great. Good.
ALI: I’m glad I thought of it.
JACK: I kinda feel that everything everybody’s seen of us so far has just been explosions?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH (as MAKO): They didn’t broadcast any of my funny voice.
[ALI giggles]
JACK: No funny voice broadcasting at all.
AUSTIN: None of it. Alright. I was gonna say XP, but that’s not how this game works. So I think we’re done?
ART: Clap?
AUSTIN: Oh. My name is Austin Walker, I’m good at hosting podcasts. You can find me on Twitter at austin_walker. You can find me over at giantbomb.com where I write about games.
ART: And host podcasts! It’s weird that you’re not super pro at this.
AUSTIN: I’m on a podcast, I don’t host that podcast really. People should listen to my other podcast, people should listen to the Beastcast. It’s really good.
KEITH: Please advertise the Beastcast.
AUSTIN: Listen, we need more listeners! Like, comment, subscribe! Review on iTunes! (ALI: For both podcasts.) For both podcasts, yeah. [ALI giggles]
AUSTIN: Ali, where can people find you on the internet?
ALI: You can find me at ali_west on Twitter. And just really quickly, even though this is gonna be so long form here, I want to say happy birthday to Hadrian (AUSTIN: Uhhh, okay) who is not the character but a fan of ours named Hadrian (AUSTIN: Oh, right!) which cracks me up all of the time. So happy birthday.
AUSTIN: Hadrian did really great art for Ali’s character from the Dungeon World campaign, Hella. It was really good.
ART: And by now their birthday is five weeks ago.
ALI: It’s fine. They listen to this podcast. It’s fine.
AUSTIN: Uh huh. [ALI giggles]
ART: If you have an upcoming birthday, send it to us.
AUSTIN: Right. That way we’ll time it out, and we’ll say happy birthday to you. In fact, here— let’s go to a name list here.
JACK: Ooo, good plan.
ART: Yeah.
AUSTIN: This is an image titled List of Names of the Childrens. [laughter]
ART: Don’t use that, Austin, I think that’s a spell. [laughter]
AUSTIN: Happy birthday, Phil. Happy birthday Jim. Happy birthday Michael. Happy birthday Theresa. Happy birthday Mark. Also these all have last names, and I don’t know who they are so I don’t want to read them all. But happy birthday Stephen [redacted]. Happy birthday, Javier! Happy birthday Doctor Daniel Gregory Walter [redacted], that’s a really good name. Happy birthday Jack Dean [redacted]. [redacted] is in quotes.
KEITH: Austin, can I get a shout out?
AUSTIN: When’s your birthday?
KEITH: It’s June 25th.
AUSTIN: Oh, happy birthday.
KEITH: Thank you.
AUSTIN: Mine’s in 14 days (ALI: Happy birthday, Austin.) It just happened. I just turned 30. Thank you. Happy birthday, Richard Lee [redacted]. Happy birthday, Charles “Chuck” [redacted]. You have to stop me from doing this.
ALI: Where can we find you on the web?
AUSTIN: I’ve already given mine.
ART: You can find me on Twitter at atebbel, and you can read stuff I write at comicbooks.com
[MUSIC comes into background]
AUSTIN: Jack, what about you?
JACK: My name is Jack de Quidt, and you can find me on Twitter a notquitereal.
KEITH: You can find me on Twitter at keithjcarberry. You can find the Let’s Plays that I do at Youtube.com/runbutton or runbutton.net, or you can find the comedy podcast that I do, “How Are You Today?” also on that channel or on iTunes. There’s a new episode coming out. I swear to god! No, it would’ve already been out, this’ll be in a couple weeks.
[crosstalk]
AUSTIN: Thank you. Happy birthday Michael W. “Bullwinkle” [redacted]. Happy birthday Bruce—
ALI: We’re clapping at 15, we’re clapping at 15.
ART: Wait, is his last name Quidditch?
[crosstalk]
AUSTIN: Yeah, Quidditch.
ALI: Aaaaand [claps]
ART: Wait, I don’t have time.is up yet.
AUSTIN: Happy birthday, Bruce “Popcorn” [redacted].
[crosstalk]
JACK: 25.
AUSTIN: Happy birthday Ruben [redacted].
ALI: Three, two, one.
AUSTIN: Happy birthday—
[group claps]
[MUSIC ends]
[1] Cene uses they/them pronouns.
[2] AuDy uses they/them pronouns.
[3] It is suggested later in the episode that Apostolosian pronouns should default to they/them. This would probably include Cass.
[4] Note for new listeners: After episode 12, Adler's pronouns are she/her.
[5] It was suggested earlier in the episode that Koda uses they/them.
[6] It has been suggested that Apostolosian pronouns should default to they/them.