Sangfielle 32: Passage on the Jade Moon Pt. 1
Transcriber: robotchangeling
Austin: Sangfielle is a series that draws on elements of dark fantasy, horror, and gothic fiction. As such, a list of content warnings will always be made available in the episode description.
[Music begins: “Sangfielle” by Jack de Quidt]
Austin (as narrator): Oh, what a moment in our tale. Half the Blackwick Group reunited and victorious, emerging from below the city like sprouts from soil. The other half, scattered and broken. Some readers of this almanac might think that we are on the precipice of a grand and final confrontation. And I say some readers, ‘cause it always vexes me when an editor or columnist asserts their claim on my opinion, writin’ “I know what you're thinkin’,” or “You must suspect…” You do not know me. You could not. Even with my title and reputation well in hand, I am too numerous for that. In any case, some readers of this almanac might think that we are on the precipice of grand confrontation. And, well, I will not speak to how it plays out in particular, but those readers might be surprised, given the pallid shadow cast by recent events, with just how much time the Blackwick Group can find for loungin’ around and card playin’ and memoir writin’ and just how little they spend on hard truths. Tough to put that all on them, though. It's a common observation that the hand is as guilty as the player for a bad turn. I'll go a step further. Sometimes you gotta blame the deck itself. That’s where the whole matter of suits and numbers first starts. The point is: difficult conversations demand difficult contexts, and the Jade Moon riverboat is anything but difficult. Can you really imagine it? The Blackwick Group brought to blows, [amused] shoutin’ at each other from the comfort of a sun deck? No. You get dealt a royal flush on a bad day, and what? You’re supposed to fold in loyalty to misery itself? Please. So I say let ‘em enjoy the rest and relaxation of a long float upstream. It is a rare luxury for those in their line of work, and who knows what sort of characters they’ll meet? For those of you hungry for blood, well, a river is only but so long and its banks taller than you might think.
[song ends]
Austin: Welcome to Friends at the Table, an actual play podcast focused on critical world building, smart characterization, and fun interaction between good friends. I'm your host, Austin Walker. Joining me today, Andrew Lee Swan.
Dre: Hey. You can find me on Twitter at @swandre3000.
Austin: Alicia Acampora.
Ali: Hi! You can find me over at @ali_west on Twitter. You can find the show over at @friends_table.
Austin: Sylvi Clare.
Sylvia: Hey, I'm Sylvia. You can find me on Twitter at @sylvibullet, and you can listen to my other show Emojidrome wherever you get your podcasts.
Austin: Janine Hawkins.
Janine: Hey, I'm Janine. You can find me at @bleatingheart on Twitter.
Austin: Jack de Quidt.
Jack: Hi. You can find me on Twitter at @notquitereal and buy any of the music featured on the show at notquitereal.bandcamp.com.
Austin: Art Martinez-Tebbel.
Art: Hey, you can find me on Twitter at @atebbel.
Austin: And Keith Carberry.
Keith: Hey, you can find me on Twitter at @KeithJCarberry, and you can find the let's plays that I do at youtube.com/runbutton.
Austin: As always, you can support Friends at the Table by going to friendsatthetable.cash. I feel like we have had a pretty good run of arcs in a row here, kind of big, some big swings. If you've been enjoying the show and you'd like to support us to continue making it, you can go to friendsatthetable.cash. We have a ton of, you know, extra stuff there. We're in the middle of recording our next Bluff City arc, which is extremely fun so far. I hope you're ready for just some absolute nonsense. Just truly unbelievable how… [Ali laughs softly]
Jack: Real idiots on the beach.
Austin: Oh yeah. So look forward to that. I hope you like balloons and also the early 1900s. [Ali snorts]
Keith: Oh, yeah, that was great. I just…
Austin: Remembered—
Keith: ...kind of wasn't listening.
Austin: Okay. [Ali laughs]
Keith: But I am now, and that was really good. You should listen to that.
Austin: It's not done yet. We have to finish it still, Keith.
Keith: Yeah. Oh yeah, we had a whole story to wrap up, huh?
Art: [overlapping] Balloons, the early 1900s, and a flagrant disregard of how long a game should take. [Sylvia laughs]
Austin: Yes.
Keith: But the half of it that’s done is great.
Austin: It's funny that he keeps saying half, because so much of that recording was us talking about how we weren't even close to done like a fifth of the game yet. [laughs]
Ali: [softly] Mm-hmm.
Art: Yeah, I think we're about a third done. I think that’s...
Austin: I think that's even generous.
Keith: The portion that has been completed.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: Is great.
Austin: Friendsatthetable.cash. As we've been doing throughout Sangfielle, we are continuing our game of Heart: The City Beneath by Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor. We should go over characters. I’m gonna go from the top here, and just give me your character's names and their Beats. Dre, let's start with you.
Dre: Yeah. I'm playing Chine the Cleaver. Chine has he/they pronouns. My active Beats are “Perform a rite at a place of power that's tier two or deeper.”
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Dre: And “Gain information on why you have been chosen by the Course.”
Austin: Mmm. Art.
Art: Hey, I'm playing to Duvall. Duvall’s pronouns are he/him, and Duvall's current Beats are: “Meet someone from your old life who is trying to get you to give up on your quest,” and “Destroy a Haunt to learn more about your task.”
Austin: [amused] Ah, good.
Jack: Hmm.
Art: And if possible, could I backdate this Beat?
Austin: No. [Ali laughs]
Art: To the previous...no? [Jack laughs]
Austin: To just get it automatically? No.
Art: [laughs] Just cash in a quick Major right now?
Austin: I...oh, yeah, I wish you had taken that one before, ‘cause you did it. [Austin and Art laugh softly] You did do that, didn't you? Well, it’s not destroyed.
Art: I can do it again. Don't you worry.
Austin: Yeah, I believe in you. [Ali laughs softly] Um, Janine.
Janine: I'm playing...whoa, I was...I extremely lost myself in some tabs here. I'm playing Es, she/they. My Beats right now are to “Engage in reckless abandon with drink, drugs, or sex.” That's my new one; it's a Minor one. And my old Major one is “Catalogue your exploits for an extended period. Either do it yourself or hire a bard.”
Austin: Been working on that one for quite some time. I feel like we're just about there. If only you had like enough time to sit down and do it.
Janine: Yeah, I feel like I can justify it.
Austin: Yeah, exactly. Um...Sylvia, we're gonna skip over you for now [Sylvia chuckles] and come back around at some point today.
Sylvia: Sounds good.
Austin: Yeah, mm-hmm. Keith, tell you about your character.
Keith: My character's name is Lye Lychen. I've got two Minor Beats today. One of them, though, I'll have to go over with you. One of them is “Claim a resource of at least D10 from a dangerous location.”
Austin: Mm.
Keith: And I'm worried that I've already done this one, so we can edit it to make it fit, but “Have at least three Havens know your name, for good or ill.”
Austin: I think only two Havens know your name. I think.
Keith: I was thinking maybe Roseroot was the third.
Austin: Roseroot is not a Haven, I don't think.
Keith: It's not a Haven— oh, I thought it was a Haven. Okay.
Austin: It’s a person’s house. You know what I mean?
Keith: Yeah. I thought it was a Haven. So, okay.
Austin: And it's a person's house who has since abandoned it because of being terrified of the truth it tells him, you know? [Jack laughs softly]
Keith: Mm.
Austin: Increasingly, let's say that that space is probably Desolate, come to think of it.
Keith: Okay. I didn't realize that, uh...did I know that?
Austin: Yeah, Dayward moved into town.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: I mentioned it offhand at the top of a downtime—
Keith: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: The downtime right after that. But like, you know, that's one of those facts that lives in my mind as a complete truth of the world, but it's a thing I said very offhandedly, so why would...I don't blame anyone for not remembering that Dayward YVE basically moved into town after that.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: But I would say...I would say Sapodilla and Blackwick, but you're not quite there yet. So if you can get a third place to know your name, that's probably the case. In fact, I would say Sapodilla is up in the air. It depends on how much publicity your actions there took. You know? It's one of those things where like, the things you were part of were big, but were you known to be part of them? Who knew Lye Lychen was out here being part of the stuff...
Keith: Damn, I’m gonna have to work on...I’m gonna have to work on that. [Ali laughs softly]
Austin: You know what I mean? Let’s think about it.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: But I would say Blackwick, obviously. Yeah, I think that's probably right. Anyway.
Art: You have to go hire a hype man. [Keith laughs]
Austin: Right. Sure. Exactly.
Keith: “Damn, did you know that Lye Lychen was associated with the people that killed those cops?” [Ali and Austin laugh]
Jack: They blew up Sapodilla.
Keith: I whisper around town.
Austin: Uh huh. [laughter] Yeah. Ali.
Ali: Um, yeah, I'm playing Marn Ancura. Marn is she/her. And my current Beats are both Minor. It is “Dissect something or interrogate someone that could shed light on your task,” [Austin takes amused breath] and “Sell or sacrifice a D8 or higher resource to secure a secret.”
Austin: Mm. Love that. And Jack.
Jack: I am playing Pickman. Pickman’s pronouns are she/her. Her class is Shape Knight, and I have two Minor Beats right now. The first is “Find a Heart-touched sapling on a Delve, and bring it back to a Haven for planting.”
Austin: A thing I was certain you were going to have done by...inside of Sapodilla. [Ali chuckles]
Jack: [sighs] You know, I feel like Sapodilla’s got...the trains have got their prize in Sapodilla.
Austin: Mm-hmm. Sure.
Jack: They'd go, “Oh, a sapling?” I'm gonna bring this back to Blackwick, I think. And my second Minor Beat is...oh, no, sorry. This is a Major Beat.
Austin: Yes.
Jack: It is “Show the truth of the Heart’s majesty to an outsider.”
[0:10:01]
Austin: Mmm.
Jack: Which in this case, I believe, is Pickman thinking of the Shape and the Structure. When we talk about the Heart, that's...
Austin: That’s the version of the Heart that you're...not the Course, specifically, yeah.
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: All right. Truly fun to see Pickman go from “Don't ever fuck with the Shape,” to “I want to show the majesty of it to somebody.” [laughs softly]
Jack: These people. You meet people who have ideas worse than yours, and they put your bad ideas in new context.
Austin: Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. All right.
Janine: Could we—
Austin: There is one other— yes?
Janine: Sorry. I was gonna say, could we like get a recap of what everyone did? In the last, like, things?
Austin: Sure.
Dre: Oh, good idea.
Janine: I feel like this time it's particularly big.
Austin: Yeah. I mean, in some— to some regard, you can kind of see the...the effects of it just by looking around wherever you may be, right? Lyke we left on a beach kind of north of...just north of Sapodilla, or I would say probably more fair to say one of the northern beaches of Sapodilla. Looking, you know, to the south where once there had been the Hibiscus District. The sort of like fancy upper class district of Sapodilla has since been overtaken by the machine god, the Oratorio of Davia Pledge, but which was then leashed by Virtue Mondegreen. Sylvi, you have any final Virtue notes? You thinking about any sort of like images of Virtue in that time?
Sylvia: Oh. Gosh, I honestly have been so focused on new characters stuff that I don't...
Austin: Mm.
Sylvia: Don't really have anything right now.
Austin: Fair enough. I will say, I will take this opportunity to say, that we picked up on a missed roll or a missed success during the climax of those scenes, and I do want to honor that. I talked to both Sylvi and Keith about this. Keith, while Lyke was trying to get a success during the big kind of like final ritual off, there was a roll that was Dangerous, but you rolled it as normal. And we were like, “Oh shit, no, it's Dangerous. The top two dice have to come off.” But it isn't Dangerous, because you used a Good piece of equipment that would have dropped in from Dangerous to Risky.
Keith: Hmm.
Austin: So you would have gotten one success there. And at the time, we had talked about what does multiple successes look like? Result of whatever we would have ended up with. We're just going to roll forward because it's actual play. But I want to...I also want to...I want to recognize that that success happened by doing what we kind of talked about at the time, which is like, you know, maybe what we see is very much just indication that Virtue’s hold on Sapodilla or Virtue’s hold on immortality is less, you know, permanent than we thought, right? It's contingent on her ability to continue to return to this machine. Sort of like a, you know, a Ra’s al Ghul...uh...Lazarus pool? Lazarus...Art, help me here.
Art: Pit.
Dre: Pit?
Austin: Pit.
Dre: Yeah.
Austin: Lazarus Pit. Yes. Type of a situation, right? Where it's like, this is something that you could undermine long term. So that's, I think, probably the way we think of it, right? It's like, we get the shot of Virtue waking up and being a little more pale than then she was the night before and needing to return to this machine. And, you know, the machine takes a little bit more of the sea. It takes a little bit more land. Like, it...and every time it's a risk, like maybe it breaks bad this time. So, if Lyke, for instance, wants long term to get revenge, that is a weakness that, you know, maybe you find yourself aware of or thinking about as you wake up on that beach. So again, to Janine's point, that crew went to steal a painting, managed to steal the magical painting—which I guess, Duvall, you have that with you, as you wake up on some rooftop in western Sapodilla that the bugs in you led you to to keep you safe. You managed to— you did manage to steal that. But along the way, Virtue became a vampire queen, [Sylvia laughs] and Lyke blew up and got knocked away, and you got separated. And now that whole district has become sort of a new Citadel, for all intents and purposes, of Virtue and her many thralls who were already— many of whom were already tied into this machine, and who have been freed in a sense, but also enthralled to Virtue, which is just a different sort of being tied to the machine, I think. [Ali laughs softly] So that's that side of the game. The other side of the game, y'all are all kind of doing okay, right? I mean, I think some of you have some...some of y'all are beat up, from what I looked at when I looked at all of your Fallouts.
Dre: Yeah.
Austin: Y'all need some help. And, you know, it's kind of a downtime episode. I promise there's some...there is help on the way, in a sense. There are places to go to. Sapodilla is not that place right now. Sapodilla is a nightmare. When you came out of...you know, I guess in the hours after you came out of the Interred Citadel—the kind of underground secret castle beneath western Sapodilla where the Glim Macula and the Wrights of the Seventh Sun were kind of embedded—the rest of the city has kind of fallen to shit in response to what happened out east and in response to the removal of Dyre Ode’s sternum. Y'all went down there to free Chine, to free a number of heritrixes who had been separated from their hosts, and to find the egg that had been stolen, and you succeeded at all of those things. I guess the egg had...the egg hatched.
Dre: Mm-hmm!
Austin: And Chine has a lil pet baby now. Just a lil baby monster walking around with Chine now. Do you want to describe that thing for people who did not hear that episode yet?
Dre: Oh, boy. I'm trying to remember. God. I'm gonna go look at that illustration that somebody did.
Austin: I think that was an Annie one.
Janine: It was like four jaws, right? That was part of it?
Austin: It did have four jaws.
Ali: (??? 16:20)
Dre: Yeah, it’s got— well, it has one jaw. It just splits open in four different ways.
Austin: Right, right.
Janine: Yeah.
Dre: It's kind of like a mix of a velociraptor—
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Dre: —and an eel and a dolphin.
Austin: [laughs softly] Uh huh.
Dre: But it's got four legs.
Austin: And also kind of has like a baby deer vibe a little bit to me.
Dre: Yes, yes.
Austin: The way you described, you know what I mean?
Dre: Mm-hmm.
Austin: Like, kinda like shaky on its legs. Anyway, that's what popped out of that egg, the egg that was missing from Blackwick, which Blackwick desperately needs back, by the way. The...so y'all did that, and you also recovered Dyre Ode’s sternum. As a reminder, Dyre Ode has been going around collecting pieces of their body, pieces of their bones, to reconnect to himself, which in each case seems to be also tied to some sort of magical gift that Dyre had given at some point. In this case, the sternum had protected Sapodilla from the kind of...from the Shape, from the Structure, from the Course, from the wilderness, from everything out there in Sangfielle, from what I keep calling the truth of the Heartland. It had kind of stabilized the city in a way that had allowed it to prosper during the Panic, as a gift for how it opened up its doors for people who were in need. So he has that back now, and that means it's not safe from the trains anymore or anything else, and it has to deal with all that shit. So that all happened. Was there any other big, big stuff that happened on that side? I think in the response to that, part of what I'm saying is that like, Sapodilla is not a place you can do downtime right now, you know? Sapodilla is...the Haunts that you had access to you are in worse condition at best, but mostly people are just scrambling to kind of make sense of their new environment and figure out what the new way of living is. And on one hand, the Glim Macula has been effectively defeated here, right? Between the death of their chief inventor, which happened earlier in the Davia Pledge arc; the destruction of their of their core facility in the second arc; the, I guess, escape of the Wrights of the Seventh Sun leader, Mabriella du Feza, who y'all did not kill, but did drive away; it seems like Sapodilla is just in a fucked up place right now. [laughs softly] So. Am I missing anything super important about this stuff?
Jack: We...did you cover the scale model that we found of Zevunzolia?
Austin: No. You also found a scale model of Zevunzolia, a once hypothesized— or I guess you'd heard of, some of you had heard of this place Zevunzolia in various forms, I guess. I guess you could say...you could argue that a version of it was first mentioned in a sense by Regan Alaway, back in the the Yellowfield arc, the kind of city of lights, which is not Zevunzolia, but is adjacent to it. This kind of hypothesized future city where everyone would be able to like live a better, more utopian life, and also vampires wouldn't have to worry about like, you know, everything shutting down at night, because of electricity, basically. They'd have a lot more conveniences available to them as nocturnal people. The next time you definitely heard about it was in Calen’s notes in Bell Metal Station. And then...and then that group heard, not just heard more about it, but also found a large scale model of it, that upon seeing it, healed them. So, you know, ideal was its form. So drawn to it they were, that...I mean, it's not even just that. Like it literally, just seeing it reshaped reality around them. In one case, we learned that a sort of bounty hunter set on Pickman no longer wants to kill Pickman. That's a thing that seeing the model changed about the world, because of the connection between Pickman and a Shape Knight dispatched to kind of bring her in, right?
[0:20:39]
Zevunzolia’s scary, I think is the takeaway. Zevunzolia seems to be a city between dimensions? Someone named the Visitor came through it to Sangfielle and gave some books to people or traded some books to people. The Wrights of the Seventh Sun are desperate to build it. There's some indication that maybe they're racing to build it. Who or what they're racing, it's not clear. And then you saw a brief glimpse of it through a massive, um...what do you call it? An orrery. A sort of like...an orrery that had like a sort of optical illusion center above that was being powered by the egg, that seemed like it was opening a door into that place. You got the egg away. I mean, you got the creature away, and then that door shut, but for a brief moment, you even saw a place that looked a lot like the model you saw. So, you know, to some degree, it seems as if Zevunzolia is there, is real, was briefly in reach for the Wrights of the Seventh Sun before you disrupted that? Who could say? That's all the big stuff, you know? Janine, you're probably right that we needed a recap.
Um, so the two places that I can...I guess where I want to come in on image is: Duvall, when you come to, there are like, a couple...two things happen at once. The first is that you hear the voices of your companions coming down a street. The street is filled with rubble. You know, the partying of the night before has been replaced with people trying to like make sense of what's happened in the city and why half of it fell into the water and the other half, you know, also fell into the water, but in a different way. [laughs softly] People are doing their best to help each other, et cetera. And I think you probably just hear the bulk of the...I guess all of that western group. I say western, because the eastern group was taking— was in Hibiscus, which is the eastern half of the city. The western group was in Sunflower District, so. But you know, Marn and Pickman and Es and...who was— oh, Chine, who was rescued there. It’s like, I remembered everyone who went— I remember who went in there. Chine was already there. [Dre laughs] And Chine. I imagine Bucho might be with you also. I know, Ali, you'd mentioned that Marn probably wanted to check in on Bucho at some point.
Ali: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Austin: I don't think that's like a hard thing to do. Bucho...Bucho is someone who's easy to find, [Ali laughs] as the Macula have proven. But also just, Bucho is just a big personality in such a way that's like, you're gonna find Bucho if you're looking for Bucho. So that’s the thing that kind of brings you to, is hearing their voices, Duvall, you know, a couple floors below you. But in front of you, there are ten...nine? Nine moths. At the center is a kind of beautiful green moth, and the ones around it are golden. And they're kind of circling— they're not circling it in terms of like actively moving around it, but they're like seated around it. And as you come to and like, you know, wipe your eyes or whatever, the moths circling that green one...you don't know if like, you just, your eyes are playing tricks on you, or if they've changed, but they've turned into golden coins, nine golden coins. And they're like...the closest thing I can, you know, they're golden coins, but they feel kind of chintzy. And they feel kind of like...I mean, they say Admit One on them. They look like arcade tokens more than currency, you know? And that remaining moth is a luna moth. Or that's what I would say it looks like, which is, I'm posting it here in Sangfielle underneath all of these [laughs softly] Goku pictures we've posted. [Dre and Keith laugh] And it kind of lifts off as you look at it and just kind of like flies around you and above you and kind of in a northeasterly direction, as if like to pull you along, like a dog. You know what I mean? Like Lassie trying to lead you somewhere, but it's a big green moth.
Art: Oh, like it's a dog. Not like...
Austin: Not like you're a dog.
Art: Yeah.
Austin: Not like you're on a leash.
Sylvia: Ah, okay.
Austin: But also, I mean, isn't this the core question of Duvall?
Art: It is, yeah.
Austin: You know? Who's holding the leash, really?
Art: Who's the dog now? [Sylvia laughs]
Austin: Right.
Keith: The moth or the skin or the bugs?
Dre: Or the man.
Keith: Or the other bugs.
Austin: Or the other bugs, yeah, exactly.
Sylvia: You’re the dog now, man. [Dre laughs]
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Ali: Hmm. [Sylvia laughs]
Austin: And if you follow that moth, I mean, it leads you down, you know, the stairs and out in front into the rubble in the streets where you do bump back into the rest of your companions.
Keith: Of all the animals on the planet, I think moths have the widest gulf between the worst one and the best one. The worst moths suck.
Ali: Oh.
Keith: But the best moths are all really cool.
Ali: True.
Austin: I can see this.
Dre: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: I can see this.
Dre: That makes sense.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: I used to live in the woods. I used to get swarmed by those common moths with the powdery wings.
Austin: The powder wings, yeah, sure.
Keith: They used to live by the thousands on my front door, so I hated them.
Janine: I thought you said the common moths with a powdered wigs. [Janine, Ali, and Keith laugh]
Austin: Yeah, the powdered wigs.
Janine: And it just...
Keith: You know, the barrister moths? [Sylvia laughs]
Ali: Mm.
Janine: I was gonna make a comment like a commoner joke, and then you said powdered wigs, and it like short circuited my brain.
Austin: [laughs] That feels like a real...what was that, Bell Songs? The live game we did with like the Court of Owls and all that stuff?
Ali: Oh.
Austin: I feel like…
Sylvia: Oh, yeah.
Austin: I feel like...not Court of Owls. That's a Batman thing. [Ali and Dre laugh] But there was like an owl aristocracy in that game that we did with the...what was the name of the...ham? The hamlets?
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Anyway, people should go support us at friendsatthetable.cash.
Keith: Oh, that was a great one.
Austin: That game’s great.
Art: That’s a classic unhinged Friends at the Table…
Austin: Oh, a hundred percent. [Dre and Keth laugh]
Keith: I cannot...I cannot overestimate how good and how much fun the Lives and the Bluffs are.
Austin: People should go listen.
Keith: If you haven't heard them. They're so good.
Austin: Anyway.
Art: If you think we’re too buttoned up here.
Austin: Yeah. [laughs] Talk about moths.
Keith: You’re gonna be wishing for some of those buttons when you're listening to Lives. [Ali and Austin laugh]
Austin: Duvall, you have now bumped back into Chine, Marn, Es, and Pickman.
Art (as Duvall): [awkwardly] Oh, hello. Hey. Hi.
Ali (as Marn): Welcome back.
Dre (as Chine): Hey!
Art (as Duvall): I'm so...I'm so glad they found you.
Dre: Chine looks around trying to figure out who Duvall’s talking about.
Art (as Duvall): Mm. Well, it's you.
Dre (as Chine): Oh.
Art (as Duvall): [quietly] It’s you I'm talking about.
Dre (as Chine): Oh, oh! [Sylvia laughs] Oh, yeah. Uh huh.
Art (as Duvall): You were missing. No one else was. I mean, I guess we've been apart. If someone else has been missing and I'm behind, I'd love to hear about it, but… [Janine laughs] [softly] But I meant you.
Jack (as Pickman): Where's Lyke? Where’s Virtue?
Art (as Duvall): Mm. [Austin and Keith laugh] I don't know.
Janine (as Es): Oh, god.
Art (as Duvall): Well...
Dre (as Chine): Wait, as in like, you know, “you ate lunch and then went your separate ways” don't know, or…?
Art (as Duvall): Um...no. Uh… [Keith laughs]
Dre (as Chine): So it's been since breakfast, huh?
Art (as Duvall): At least. Um, I've...I just...I just woke up. I'm not a hundred percent sure how long it’s been.
Janine (as Es): Are you all right?
Dre (as Chine): What do you mean you just woke up?
Art (as Duvall): I think so, yeah. Or, you know, as all right as one can be. Um, Virtue has come into some...new opportunities.
Dre (as Chine): Oh, good for her.
Ali (as Marn): [positively] Mm.
Art (as Duvall): Yeah, I think so too, maybe.
Jack (as Pickman): What kind of opportunities?
Art (as Duvall): And Lyke is pursuing other interests at the moment.
Janine (as Es): [uncertain] Okay.
Ali (as Marn): So they both quit? That's a bummer.
Art (as Duvall): Maybe.
Janine (as Es): I made him this gift basket. I got all this stuff.
Art (as Duvall): I think it’s gonna be a conversation, at least. A lot of stuff happened. How are you?
Ali (as Marn): Tired.
Art (as Duvall): I hear that. [Ali laughs softly]
Austin (as Bucho): Sore.
Austin: Says Bucho.
Art (as Duvall): Oh, Bucho.
Austin (as Bucho): I spent all week running from the Macula, and now my town is rubble.
Art (as Duvall): [exaggerated] Yeah, wild how that happened, huh? [Sylvia laughs]
Austin: Squints at you. [laughs]
Dre (as Chine): Oh, did you all do that?
Art (as Duvall): No. Well… [Sylvia laughs]
Dre (as Chine): I mean, if so, I owe you one.
Art (as Duvall): We didn't start it.
Dre (as Chine): Sure. No, you finished it. Proud of you.
Art (as Duvall): That is kind of—
Janine (as Es): You weren’t even in town when it was going down.
Art (as Duvall): Uh huh. Um, Virtue...mm. I don't want to use the verb consumed here because of because of the way that Chine operates, but Virtue got some help from a...god?
[0:30:02]
Ali (as Marn): Mm.
Dre (as Chine): Interesting.
Jack (as Pickman): [displeased] Mm...
Austin (as Bucho): Which one?
Art (as Duvall): And might be the Vampire Queen of Sapodilla now.
Austin (as Bucho): [displeased] Ah...
Dre (as Chine): Oh, good for her!
Janine (as Es): Aw!
Art (as Duvall): I think so too. I think it's a role [Sylvia laughs] that gives her a lot of opportunity for growth.
Jack (as Pickman): What are you talking about?
Austin: Bucho’s head in his hands.
Austin (as Bucho): [displeased] Mm...
Dre (as Chine): I mean, also, it's, I've never known a queen before.
Jack (as Pickman): Uh huh.
Art (as Duvall): Me, I...you should have been there.
Dre (as Chine): Like, I've known of them, right? But like...
Art (as Duvall): You and me have a similar perspective here that I feel was very lacking when Lyke was a thousand percent against this idea.
Jack (as Pickman): Did you kill Lyke?
Art (as Duvall): No.
Jack (as Pickman): [not totally convinced] Ah.
Dre (as Chine): Did you…
Austin (as Bucho): Is he alive?
Dre (as Chine): Yeah, that's a good...that's a better question.
Art (as Duvall): [stilted] Um, I think Lyke is fine, wherever he is. And I don't think I know that. [Keith laughs]
Janine (as Es): The answer’s not heaven, right? [Keith laughs]
Dre (as Chine): Oh, definitely not.
Ali (as Marn): Hm.
Art (as Duvall): Um, well, the way that Lyke interacts with divine spaces, um… [Ali laughs softly] You know, are we sure that none of us have been to heaven with Lyke already?
Austin (as Bucho): He’s...it's possible. It is. [groans]
Art (as Duvall): But to my knowledge, no, not heaven. [Janine laughs softly]
Austin (as Bucho): What is this bug?
Austin: Points up at the moth that’s circling you.
Art (as Duvall): Um, the moth helped me find you all.
Ali (as Marn): [positively] Oh.
Art (as Duvall): I thought you might be involved.
Austin (as Bucho): In the bug?
Art (as Duvall): With the bug, not in the bug. That would—
Austin (as Bucho): In the bug’s business.
Art (as Duvall): The bug is clearly smaller than all of you.
Austin (as Bucho): Yeah.
Dre: Um, Duvall, you feel paws like trying to scramble up your back, as my creature’s trying to climb up on you to try and bite at the moth.
Art (as Duvall): Oh, hey, hi. Um…careful. [muffled laughter]
Austin (as creature): Raaah. [Keith and Jack laugh]
Art (as Duvall): Um, I don't know how solid everything is right now. [Austin laughs]
Janine: Oh my god.
Dre (as Chine): [stammers] Here, I'm sorry.
Art (as Duvall): It's okay. It’s okay.
Dre: Chine picks it up and cradles it.
Art (as Duvall): Adorable.
Austin (as creature): Rararara.
Art (as Duvall): Yeah.
Dre (as Chine): It's still...it's still learning.
Art (as Duvall): I...I feel that.
Austin (as Bucho): It needs a name.
Austin: Says Bucho.
Dre (as Chine): It hasn't told me yet.
Austin (as creature): Rarar.
Art (as Duvall): I think we could go see Virtue eventually.
Jack (as Pickman): Nope.
Art (as Duvall): You know, Virtue and I left on good terms.
Jack (as Pickman): [distrustful] Mm-hmm.
Art (as Duvall): Um...and Lyke'll turn up.
Austin: Saying that, the moth does begin moving north northeast, kind of down a little alleyway. Or maybe not a little alleyway, but it's all kind of twisting and turning. I don't want to give the impression that it’s leading you into a trap when I say little alleyway, you know what I mean? But this whole city is a fucking mess right now. Half the buildings are toppled. So it's, you know, it's moving you forward, in any case.
Art: Oh.
Austin: Or it's trying to guide Duvall at least forward.
Art (as Duvall): Um, excuse me, I think I have to keep going. I don't know if anyone wants to come with, but I, uh, seem to have an appointment.
Jack (as Pickman): All right.
Dre (as Chine): Yeah, no, it’s…
Jack (as Pickman): After the moth.
Dre (as Chine): Yeah.
Austin: Lyke, you are on a beach, like I said before.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: How you doing? The water is lapping.
Keith: Hurt.
Austin: Yeah, you're hurt pretty bad.
Keith: I am critically injured.
Austin: Well, tell me what that means. You're not— but to be clear, it's not critical Fallout, right? It's Major Fallout.
Keith: It’s Major Fallout.
Austin: Yeah, mm-hmm.
Keith: Called Critically Injured. Uh...I actually don't remember if you...it says the GM picks—
Austin: Yeah, it’s Mend.
Keith: —where I'm critically injured.
Austin: It's your hands. It's…
Keith: Oh, right! I can’t Mend.
Austin: It’s ripped tendons in your fingers, could remove Mend.
Janine: Ugh.
Austin: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Keith: Right, okay.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Bad. It's actually not ripped. That's what the description says, but it's burn. It's your hands got burned by using the eternal ember.
Keith: It blew up.
Austin: And it blew up, and it burned your hands bad.
Keith: Got it. Got it.
Austin: Yeah, so.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: Which is not good.
Keith: No.
Austin: But it's...you're not dying, you know? But it's really bad.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: And so yeah, you are there on the beach. Again, you can kind of see this new structure that's jutting off into the sea, this kind of darkened pier where Virtue is making her new home. And you can see the destruction did not stop there, or at least you can see that like towers of the Macula around town have fallen into the earth from what else was happening in the city, though you don't know the details of that at this point, certainly. And the Ravening Beast which dragged you away from there slash wants to kill you slash is somewhere deep inside of you also, like spiritually speaking, has seemed to have left you alone at this point, kind of on this beach equidistant between the shore and the coastline. Or not the coastline, the kind of treeline north of Sapodilla. And I'm curious if you just have like, do you have anything you...do you have any moments here before I introduce new things to the scene? Is there a Lye Lychen wakes up alone on the beach sequence here that we should see?
Keith: Um…
Austin: Or not totally alone. Tombo is with you. Aterika'Kaal is presumably in the little jar still in your bag.
Keith: Well...okay. Is there any—
Austin: Or is not, perhaps.
Keith: Yeah, maybe I have...maybe I have a moment here to sort of set up my new…
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: Sanctum.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: Although...yeah, let's do that. I'd rather have it all set up ahead of time.
Austin: Yeah. And also, maybe that's part of what we can backload into that success also, right?
Keith: Okay.
Austin: That's kind of fun, right? That like, you were trying to build a Sanctum in that moment. Maybe you also did succeed at that, just not for what you were trying to do, right? [amused breath]
Keith: Right. Yeah. I don't know. I guess I get Aterika'Kaal out.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Keith: And I get Tombo out. Why not? Tombo loves the beach. Look at the water.
Austin (as Tombo): Ah, love the beach. Love this. Would love to go swimming in that water.
Keith (as Lyke): Yeah, sorry, but you're a freshwater fish. You'll die.
Austin (as Tombo): [grumbles]
Keith (as Lyke): Yeah, you can’t go in there. [Keith laughs]
Austin (as Tombo): Can you take— just take— just take the salt out. Just take out the salt.
Keith (as Lyke): No. No, you can't. It's baked in.
Austin (as Tombo): You baked the ocean? That doesn't sound right.
Keith (as Lyke): No, it's an expression. It's just, it's locked in. It's part of it.
Austin (as Tombo): Unlock it.
Keith (as Lyke): No, it's ‘cause then every other fish in there will die.
Austin (as Tombo): Die.
Keith (as Lyke): Except the bull sharks.
Austin (as Tombo): Yeah, fair enough. That's fine. I’ll just look. But the next time we're near freshwater, you gotta let me swim.
Keith (as Lyke): Yeah.
Keith: So I guess I—
Austin (as Tombo): Wait, wait, wait. You got— yeah, just for the record. I'm writing it down, in my mind.
Keith (as Lyke): Okay. Write it down.
Austin (as Tombo): Written.
Keith (as Lyke): Take out your pen.
Austin (as Tombo): [condescending] It's in my mind.
Keith (as Lyke): You're writing it down— oh, you're writing it down in your mind?
Austin (as Tombo): It's an expression.
Keith (as Lyke): Oh yeah?
Austin (as Tombo): Yeah. Oh yeah.
Keith (as Lyke): So the pen and paper’s baked in?
Austin (as Tombo): I'd say that it's locked in.
Keith (as Lyke): Locked in? Okay, great.
Austin (as Tombo): Yeah. Uh huh.
Keith (as Lyke): I'm gonna do this thing now.
Austin (as Tombo): Mm.
Keith (as Lyke): Just look at the water.
Austin (as Tombo): [quietly] Okay. Prick. [Keith and Sylvia laugh]
Janine: Wow!
Jack: Ooh. Oh, it’s rough with the fish.
Keith: [laughs] I thought I was doing something nice!
Austin: [laughs] I just want to remind everybody that on Lyke’s sheet, it says Tombo as a name of equipment, and the domains and tags Tombo has is Good Fish and Headache. [Ali laughs]
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: So I just gotta play it true. [Ali laughs]
Keith: I'm always arguing with Tombo.
Austin: It's true.
Keith: So I guess the way that I would think to do this would be to, like, try to cast Sanctum of the Stone Chorus as I normally would—
Austin: Mm.
Keith: But with Aterika'Kaal, like, as...like, either in my hands or as like a focal point in my mind.
Austin: Yeah. I feel like...I feel like if we're gonna, if we want to like tie it to that stuff in the back, it's like...I almost want there to be...I almost think it comes super naturally to you in this moment, right? It's like you, in trying to do it with the Oratorio, you...you've built it, you know what I mean? It's like, maybe you built the raw space, and it's about opening the door and now letting Aterika'Kaal in. Like, you couldn't get the Oratorio in there.
Keith: Right.
Austin: But it's...it comes to you so easily. I don't...I'm not even gonna make you roll the Discern Religion here. Do you know what I mean?
Keith: Okay.
Austin: And so what's it look like as you finish this kind of ritual, in a sense?
Keith: Um, I think that it should look like...the first time that we went into the plant at Roseroot—
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Keith: It was sort of creepy and foreboding.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: And I'd like a place that looks like that, but like, it's nice out and it's bright and it's not like gloomy and foggy. And there's not like menacing vines all over the place.
Austin: I’m gonna meet you halfway. How about this?
Keith: Okay.
Austin: Because that's just not who Aterika'Kaal is yet. I know that the long term plan on Lyke is getting Aterika'Kaal to be like...there's a sort of like, I want Aterika’Kaal to be not just sort of ambivalent, but like in a good relationship with the world.
Keith: Right.
Austin: And young Aterika’Kaal may not have been corrupted yet, but was still not like a pleasant, joyous, social god.
[0:40:02]
Keith: Okay.
Austin: And so I think maybe we get the halfway thing here, right? Which is like, it is...you are in a garden in an overcast day, you know?
Keith: Okay.
Austin: It's that like late after— you ever— I have a very particular sense memory of going to the beach as a kid and then coming home from the beach and being like, the temperature felt weird, ‘cause I’d just been in the ocean all day. And I'd been at the shore, and now I'm like, on the mainland. I grew up kind of on the mainland, like 15 minutes away from an island that had beaches on it, right? And so I would come back and go home, and like walking through into my house, you know, through my mom's garden, it was always like a little too cold, because I had been, you know, out in the sun all day. And by now it's like 5:30 p.m., 6 p.m. Maybe the clouds come out and that's part of why we came home, was it was getting colder because the sun was gone, sun was behind the clouds. And like the wind is just a little too brisk. It's still the day. Like, it's still not the ominous, you know, night terror place that we'd seen before. And those vines are still there. They're just not coming for you. They're just, you know, it's a rosebush, right? It's a vast rosebush, and so the thorns still exist, but they're not trying to kill you. And I think Aterika’Kaal there— I mean, one, is the whole thing, right? is the rosebush, is the grass, is the vines hanging all around, et cetera. But is still small? Like, remember where the skull of Dyre Ode was. That is where the Aterika’Kaal kind of creature that you've been carrying around goes, goes right there into the kind of center of the kind of thickest part of the rosebush. And it's still...it is still its own thing. Like, it's not...it's not tied into the rosebush directly. It doesn't have like...it's not just a bud. It's still like a little spider creature that jumps around and crawls around and stuff. And it’s just kind of like exploring its own space in the weeds, in the— not the weeds. In the kind of, um, the...what do you call it? Like, the bramble.
Keith: Brush?
Austin: The bramble is what I— yeah, the brush also would work, but specifically that sort of like spiky, thorny...
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: You know, bramble. All the branches and stuff. And that is kind of the space that you would normally go to, to like, do your Sanctum of the Stone Chorus thing. And what we should say, like, this is the thing that's like, this is the new move, which is like, this is where your skill takes you now, right? When you use that skill, you come here, and it's your place. You can use it as like a reliable place to keep stuff. [laughs softly] This is a way, for instance, if you wanted to get dynamite in past a wall, you could go in—
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Drop it off in here, leave, come back in when you're on the other side of the wall, and get it, you know? [Ali laughs softly]
Keith: Right, ‘cause the other thing that we realized in the last arc is that this— or, I mean, I guess, I think you knew this the whole time. I just didn't realize.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: This is not a once per session move. This is an as many times as I want move.
Austin: Yeah. Uh huh.
Keith: I don't know why I thought it— oh, I actually realized that later, something else that I read was once per day—
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: And I sort of applied it to this by mistake.
Austin: That makes sense.
Keith: So, okay, yeah, so, they make...now, yeah, using it as a thing that you can go back to and keep stuff in makes a lot of sense.
Austin: Yeah, definitely.
Keith: Would not be practical if it was once a session.
Austin: Right. And yeah, I think it's...the impression you get is that Aterika’Kaal is very happy to have this much space.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: ;Because it's such a big increase from the jar. You don't know if that means that Aterika’Kaal will be happy with this space as it continues to grow, you know? There is a...you know, you have...Aterika'Kaal is growing. And for now at least, it has the space it needs. But I don't know that you're assured that this will make it happy indefinitely, you know? The kind of ambivalent vibe of the space I think really does come through. But again, it’s hoppin’ around. It looks thrilled, and it doesn't seem violent towards you, at least. It seems grateful towards you for having given it this.
Keith: Sick. Sweet.
Austin: Is there any stuff you want to do here in the sanctum? I feel like you—
Keith: Uh, well, I can't try and heal myself.
Austin: No. I mean, you couldn't heal that Critical Injury anyway, because it's Major Blood Fallout, and you need a...you need a Haunt to get rid of Fallout. But also, you just don't have any Stress.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: ‘Cause it's all turned into that Fallout, right? So.
Keith: Well, we...I know that we...I know that we determined that with Minor Fallout I could use my move, but I wasn’t sure.
Austin: Yeah, if you use your move.
Keith: Yeah, Major Fallout, I don't know.
Austin: Yeah. I think Major, truly Major needs to be treated as like a special thing, otherwise Haunts become kind of not important.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Anyway.
Keith: Well, only Blood.
Austin: For now— I mean.
Keith: For now.
Austin: I guess, right, is that all you can heal is Blood?
Keith: All I can heal is Blood. That's what we decided, yeah.
Austin: Gotcha. There are other...there are other people who might have moves that can heal at this point, is what I will say.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: So. I have to try to be consistent on some of that stuff. So then, yeah, I guess after you...you’ve kind of...I will say that, like, this is a restful moment for you, at the very least.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: And when you return...I guess you return at some point, ‘cause it's still only lasts an hour, I guess?
Keith: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Austin: Yeah. Which is weird to think about. I don't know what happens, because of how this place is. I guess I do know where it is physically, in a sense, even though it's also a non physical space, but. Um, which is interesting, so I guess we’ll find out what happens if you ever stay in it more than an hour. But when you return—which I guess it has a similar kind of vine door that we saw the first time that you went in here—you notice two things. The first is the sound of a...like a horn, like a boat horn, you know?
Keith: Huh.
Austin: Like a foghorn, as a steamship comes down through a river, a kind of river mouth into this inland sea. It is a steamship in the kind of stereotypical way that we talk about steamships, you know? It is the archetypical riverboat, you know? It’s probably got a, you know, a little casino in there. It's probably got, you know, a bunch of passenger quarters, and it definitely has a big spinning wheel. And it's riding along the shallows now. It comes out of that, the river mouth, and begins heading west along with a kind of—I’ll pull us back over to the map—the kind of northern part of this, of the sea that connects to Sapodilla. Very close, I guess, to where you are. The second thing you notice is, from your west, the sound of approaching feet, as the group being led by this green moth brings you eastward, or brings them brings them eastward closer to you. Everybody, Lyke has appeared through a vine door. [laughs softly]
Ali: Mm.
Dre (as Chine): Oh, hey!
Jack (as Pickman): Oh, good.
Keith (as Lyke): Hello.
Ali (as Marn): How's it going?
Keith (as Lyke): I'm seriously injured.
Ali (as Marn): Mm. [Ali laughs softly]
Dre (as Chine): Hey, join the club.
Keith (as Lyke): Oh, is there a club for that?
Dre (as Chine): Yes.
Keith (as Lyke): Sucks. [Sylvia laughs]
Ali (as Marn): You want me to take a look?
Dre (as Chine): Yeah, it’s not great.
Keith (as Lyke): Sorry, uh, what did you say, Marn?
Ali (as Marn): Do you want me to take a look at that?
Keith (as Lyke): Can— oh, yeah, [Ali laughs] I would love to not be like all burned.
Ali (as Marn): Oh my god. Yeah, yeah.
Ali: Marn approaches, and…
Keith (as Lyke): Yeah, my hands are like pork rinds. [Ali laughs]
Austin: Ugh.
Janine: Oh my god.
Ali: Ew.
Janine: Ugh.
Sylvia: Pork rinds confirmed canon in Sangfielle.
Art: Do they not have bones anymore? Is that what happened?
Keith: No, they have bones. They’re just really burned.
Jack (as Pickman): Lyke, who did this to you?
Keith (as Lyke): I...I mean, in a sense...the most literal sense, it's self inflicted. But it is the result of, um...I guess a broad disagreement about is it okay to become Vampire Queen.
Ali (as Marn): Ohhhh.
Jack: I don't...Pickman…
Janine: Yeah.
Jack: Pickman slowly turns her head to look at Duvall. [Ali and Janine laugh]
Art (as Duvall): That's...yeah, that's right. [Keith laughs]
Keith (as Lyke): Yeah, I thought that when the machine god that was tearing apart the city was doing that, that we should stop it instead of give that power to Virtue. And Virtue said, “No, we should give it to me.” And I tried to stop it with an explosion, and it burnt my hands instead.
Jack (as Pickman): Where is Virtue now?
Keith: I point to the ominous pier. [Austin laughs] Surrounded by fallen towers.
Austin: Yeah. Uh huh. Castlevania is in front of you. [Dre laughs]
Jack (as Pickman): Huh.
Janine (as Es): Well, um, I have some good news for you.
Keith (as Lyke): Oh, great.
Janine (as Es): Remember that dynamite that I borrowed?
Keith (as Lyke): Yes, I do. [Sylvia laughs]
Janine (as Es): I didn't actually use any of it.
Keith (as Lyke): Ugh. [all laugh]
[0:50:00]
Janine (as Es): So...no, but it's 'cause you can have it back if you want on it.
Keith (as Lyke): [burdened] Okay. Thank you.
Janine (as Es): If you don't want it back, I also have other— I have other things you can have instead, if you don't want the dynamite back.
Keith (as Lyke): Oh, okay. All right.
Janine (as Es): Or if you wanted to split the dynamite. You know, I don't want to...I don't want it to be an albatross around your neck, necessarily. That's why it's good news.
Keith (as Lyke): I have a place to keep it now, but what sort of… [Austin laughs] What's the other stuff?
Janine: Uh, Austin, I want to confirm. The Hollowfield bombs were single use, right?
Austin: Those were single use, yeah. I think you use—
Janine: Okay.
Austin: You used that, right?
Ali: Mm-hmm.
Janine: I did, yes.
Austin: Yeah, I thought so.
Janine: I just wanted to confirm.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Janine (as Es): Uh, I'm not giving you my nice cloak. That's for me. So, I've got...I've got the dynamite, and I've also got this sconce that I found on the floor in a place. [Ali, Austin, and Jack laugh]
Dre (as Chine): [fully on board] Mm, mm-hmm.
Keith (as Lyke): Okay.
Janine (as Es): And I've got some tar that burns very slowly.
Keith (as Lyke): Okay.
Janine (as Es): This comb is for me. That's not for you. There's a wicker finger. [laughter] There's like a finger from a...it was like a puppet person. And these eyes are for me. They're not for you.
Austin: I will note… [laughs] I will note for Lye who likes Occult things because of how they can give him Protection—
Janine: Oh.
Austin: —that both the tar and the finger—
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: —are Occult in terms of their domains.
Janine: Yeah. That slow burn tar is D6 Occult. The wicker finger is D4 Occult, if those appeal to you.
Keith: And what was the Dynamite?
Austin: That was D...big.
Janine: D8.
Keith: 10, right?
Austin: 10.
Janine: Limited one, Dangerous, Kill. Oh, wait, it’s D10?
Austin: You split it, didn't you? Or did you split it from…
Janine: Yeah, it’s…
Austin: D12 down to two D8s or something?
Janine: Yeah, because it was...that was the way we got around it being too big to like move around.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Keith: Okay.
Janine: Was like, we split it into some less effective shit.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: So then I say:
Keith (as Lyke): Yeah, I'll take the tar and the finger.
Janine (as Es): Okay.
Keith (as Lyke): All right.
Janine (as Es): There you go.
Keith: And I tear up the IOU. [Ali and Austin laugh softly] Okay. Wicker finger. I wrote puppet finger.
Ali: Eh.
Dre: Eh, you know.
Austin: Eh, you know. [Ali laughs]
Keith: Wicker finger.
Janine: Wicker puppet finger.
Austin: Yeah, mm-hmm.
Keith: Wicker puppet finger.
Ali: Can we just have said that like [laughs] Marn has been working on Lyke’s hand while this interaction was happening? A nice distraction from...
Austin: I mean, yeah, but you can't heal Fallout, right? You don't have a thing that does that either.
Keith: So, can we say that Marn was looking at my hand this whole time, and then has said, “Oh, I can't do anything for this.” [Ali and Keith laugh]
Austin: Yes, a hundred percent!
Ali: I could, like—
Keith: And then— now I'm saying,
Keith (as Lyke): Okay, I need a doctor, please.
Austin: You need a doctor.
Ali: Yeah, I can fictionally like clean it up a little bit. I can give you like a bandage, but you're not like good.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: That's exactly right. You can make sure it's like it doesn't get infected or something.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Right? But.
Keith (as Lyke): Oh, am I not good? [Ali and Keith laugh]
Ali (as Marn): I'm sorry to say.
Keith (as Lyke): It's okay.
Austin: Mm-hmm. I don't want to leave this energy like without...Pickman has some energy about how some shit just went. And I want to know is that just, you just have that on simmer right now, Pickman? Or are you gonna...is there a confrontation that you want to have at this moment?
Jack: I think that Lye’s injury—especially if Marn has realized that there's not much she can do about it—is more pressing.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Jack: I think simmering is the right idea, right? Where it's like...there's definitely like a “we're gonna have to talk about this” vibe. [laughs softly]
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: I think what Pickman actually does is like wheels around to Duvall and says:
Jack (as Pickman): Okay, so your moth brought us to him. Where now?
Austin: The moth is already, in fact, heading towards a dock—
Jack (as Pickman): Oh, great.
Austin: —just east of you, as the riverboat begins to pull in.
Keith: Do you riverboats have riverboat doctors?
Austin: Sometimes. [Ali laughs softly]
Keith: Sometimes.
Dre: Mm.
Keith: I guess?
Jack (as Pickman): We're gonna get you back to Blackwick.
Art (as Duvall): Yeah.
Janine: There could just be a doctor on the riverboat.
Keith: Yeah.
Janine: It doesn't have to be a specific riverboat doctor.
Keith: I will—
Art: Nope. Nope. It’s gotta be a riverboat doctor. [several people laugh]
Jack: Wearing a paper hat.
Art: Or they won’t understand the complexities of this swaying.
Austin: This is true.
Janine: Uh huh.
Art: You want a doctor with sea legs.
Janine: Mm-hmm.
Austin: Uh huh.
Jack (as Pickman): We can get you a doctor on the way back to Blackwick.
Jack: ‘Cause like, presumably right, the river will pass through towns and things? I don't know. I...that's an educated guess Pickman is confident to make.
Austin: It’s a good question.
Jack: Based on Sangfielle.
Austin: Mm-hmm. I mean, you're not even sure what's up with this riverboat yet, you know?
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: You don't know if you're walking home yet.
Keith: Did we—
Austin: Maybe this riverboat’s...
Keith: Sorry, did we decide we were gonna let the Virtue thing simmer longer?
Jack (as Pickman): Yep. [Ali laughs]
Keith: Okay.
Jack: Well, I mean, you—
Austin: You mean— wait, wait, wait. Do you mean the conversation, Keith? Or do you mean doing something about what Virtue is right now, the Queen of Sapodilla?
Keith: Oh, I meant the former.
Austin: Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Art: Vampire Queen of Sapodilla.
Austin: Sorry, Vampire Queen of Sapodilla.
Sylvia: Yeah, it’s important to get the full title.
Austin: Yeah, it is. I gotcha. [Ali laughs softly] Then yes, we did.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: It seems like that is what Pickman decided. Pickman seems to have decided simmer. Yeah, that moth has led you for— or is continuing to fly forward at this point, Duvall, towards the...
Art: But calling it my moth would be premature, I think.
Jack: [distrustful] Hmm.
Keith (as Lyke): Hey, what’s up with this moth?
Jack (as Pickman): It's Duvall's.
Art (as Duvall): Hmm? [Austin laughs]
Keith (as Lyke): What's up with your moth?
Art (as Duvall): Nah, I've never seen this moth before. It's been guiding me around. I found all of you by moth.
Keith (as Lyke): Is that not suspicious?
Jack (as Pickman): Yep.
Art (as Duvall): I do not find it sinister at all, no.
Keith: Does it smell like anything?
Austin: Oh, right. You can smell magic, right?
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: This—
Art: Oh, I thought that was a question to me. [Keith and Ali laugh] I was gonna say no.
Austin: Uh, it smells like the—
Art: Vaguely mothlike, I would say?
Austin: [laughs softly] It smells like the Structure, which is like the Shape but a little less like burnt oil. You know?
Keith: Okay.
Austin: It's like...it’s like if the Shape smells like crude oil, then the Structure smells like gasoline. You know what I mean?
Keith: Oh, that's worse?
Austin: Well, it's...it's different, certainly.
Keith: It's more processed, and…
Austin: It is certainly more processed. Yeah.
Keith: It's more volatile.
Austin: Sure.
Keith (as Lyke): [sighs] Smells like...smells bad.
Dre (as Chine): Aw.
Keith (as Lyke): Yeah, sorry. I mean, I'm not saying that...stop following it. I'm just saying your moth smells like gasoline. Or, you know.
Art (as Duvall): Not my moth.
Keith: [laughs] Totally disowning this moth. The moth’s gettin’ all bummed.
Janine (as Es): Well, if it wasn’t your moth before, I think it’s your moth now. [Austin laughs softly]
Art: No, it might be my moth in the future, but I think right now we're still in a non-specific moth territory.
Dre (as Chine): I'll take it.
Keith: Does this moth...does this moth have any communicating to do outside of just sort of suggesting that we follow it?
Austin: Well, no one's asked any questions to the moth.
Keith (as Lyke): Moth, can you...do you do talk?
Austin: It flutters back your general direction.
Keith (as Lyke): Okay. What's your deal, moth?
Austin: It lands on Duvall’s shoulder. [laughs]
Jack: Ha!
Keith (as Lyke): It’s Duvall’s moth.
Jack (as Pickman): Uh huh.
Keith (as Lyke): The moth says it's Duvall’s moth.
Art: We've never met before, to my knowledge. Although I suppose there's a metamorphosis potential here.
Art: That's moths, right?
Austin: Moths do do that, yes.
Keith: Do I know...can I Discern anything about this?
Austin: You wanna roll Discern?
Keith: I would love to roll Discern about the moth.
Austin: Give me a Discern and then either Technology or...it’s Technology. Its Technology, ‘cause it's the Structure.
Keith: Now, I was gonna ask if my magnifying glass could help me here.
Austin: The magnifying glass is not...unless you like...are you gonna go up to Duvall’s shoulder and start studying it with a magnifying glass?
Keith: I'm not above that.
Austin: Duvall is that a thing you're going to al— you're good with? If so—
Art: ‘Cause it’s not my moth.
Austin: Okay, then yeah. Then go ahead and use it.
Keith: It is your shoulder, though.
Austin: Then...I mean, the thing worth saying here is...or, I guess it’s...
Keith: It doesn't do anything for me, because it's not a Risky roll.
Austin: It doesn’t do anything for you.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: It’s not a Risky roll. Yeah, exactly.
Keith: But I'd still like to do it, visually.
Austin: Yeah, okay. Visually that's fun.
Keith: I don't have Discern Technology, so if anybody with Technology wanted to help, I'm down.
Jack: Yeah, I have Technology.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Keith: Okay, so I’ll add a plus one to that. And then, uh...I don't think I have anything that helps with this...besides that I can smell it!
Austin: Uh huh.
Keith: Does that give me Mastery, maybe?
Austin: That does not give you Mastery, no.
Keith: Okay. I'm gonna roll.
Austin: Hey, that's a critical success.
Keith: Ten. Look at that.
Austin: So, I mean, the...what is revealed very quickly with your magnifying glass, looking at it up close on Duvall’s shoulder, is that at the smallest level it is made up of little, you know, gears.
Jack: Hmm.
Austin: This is a moth that is made of machinery.
Keith (as Lyke): This isn’t a bug. [Ali and Jack laugh]
Austin: It is— I mean, you haven’t looked very closely at Duvall's bugs, either.
Keith: Alright.
Austin: So.
Keith (as Lyke): Duvall, are your bugs bugs?
Art (as Duvall): Uh, I mean...sure. Yes?
Keith: Can I— while I'm over here, can I take a look at Duvall’s bugs?
Austin: It's the same thing, right? Which is like, it is, at the smallest level, there are lots of little, you know, mechanical parts interwoven, right?
Keith (as Lyke): These aren’t bugs!
Austin: I mean, there's buggy stuff in there, too. You know, I think the moth wings probably read like moth wings to you.
Keith (as Lyke): These are—
Keith: I don't even...there’s no way I know, that I can conceptualize a cyborg, right?
Austin: You...Keith?
Keith: I can’t just be like, these are cybernetic bugs.
Austin: Lyke just came out of the Oratorio, which blended human and machine parts.
Keith: Oh.
Austin: I think you have a pretty good… [Keith laughs] Maybe you can't say the word cyborg, you know?
Keith: Right. Well, I'm gonna say the word cyborg, and I'm gonna say that Lyke is...
Austin: Inventing—
Keith: —communicating that idea. [Dre laughs]
Austin: Uh huh.
Keith: But Keith Carberry in the real world knows the word cyborg, and I'm gonna use it.
[1:00:00]
Ali: Mm.
Austin: Gotcha.
Keith (as Lyke): These are cy— these bugs are— these are cyborgs. These are cybernetic bugs.
Austin: Cybugs.
Art (as Duvall): I think they're biomechanical.
Austin: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Keith (as Lyke): Okay. Biomech— these are biomechanical bugs. There’s gears and stuff in there. Do you know that about your bugs?
Art (as Duvall): I think so.
Keith (as Lyke): Oh, okay. So it's just not important to you.
Art (as Duvall): I'm not sure it's important to anyone.
Keith (as Lyke): I don't know. I kind of...I thought that you were full of bees or whatever. And now I know that you're full of little bee-shaped machines. It's just a whole new kind of thing for me.
Art (as Duvall): Well, they're not built, if it makes any difference. [Austin laughs softly]
Keith (as Lyke): I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I guess I'm just surprised that this isn't a moth. Are all bugs in the whole world like this?
Austin: I don't know how many bugs you've studied.
Keith: None. Two now.
Austin: Yeah, I don't know.
Keith: But I just assumed that they were made of like bug skin and blood.
Austin: There's some blood in there. Don't worry. [Ali laughs]
Keith: Okay.
Keith (as Lyke): Well, there's some blood in there, it looks like.
Austin: Or like, there's liquid in there, certainly.
Keith: Sure. Something that looks—
Keith (as Lyke): There's something that could be blood in there.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith (as Lyke): But there's also little metal bits like a watch.
Ali: Do you know what a watch is? [brief pause, then laughs] I'm kidding.
Austin: Yeah, we have watches.
Keith: I think somebody had a pocket watch earlier.
Austin: Someone had a pocket watch, I think, so.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: Duvall has a pocket watch.
Austin: On the ten, there is also...there is a sound here as it begins to flap again. You can hear that with each flap, it's like, [softly] “A gift, a gift, a gift, a gift, a gift.”
Keith (as Lyke): Oh, what's the gift?
Dre (as Chine): Oh, a gift?
Austin: And it begins to continue leading the group towards the riverboat.
Keith (as Lyke): It said “a gift.” It said it like eight times.
Austin: I mean, it's saying it every time it flaps.
Keith: Right. It's saying it a lot. I heard it eight times.
Austin: It’s like...it’s as if, you know, the act of flapping is producing that sound.
Keith (as Lyke): Do you say anything else?
Austin: It's leading you at this point.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: You know.
Keith: I guess I'm following. I'm interested now.
Austin: As you approach the riverboat, you see the name of it on its side, painted in big, you know, gaudy letters. It is called the Jade Moon. It is a luxurious vessel. It is about, you know, 200 feet long. 40, maybe 50 feet wide. You know, huge river wheel, you know, on the back, you know, third of it.
Keith: Double decks? Three decks?
Austin: You know, Keith, it's funny say that. Here's the Jade Moon. Three decks is right.
Ali: Ooh!
Keith: Nailed it.
Jack: Oh my god!
Art: Ah.
Keith: Oh, I know a riverboat.
Jack: Ah, it’s my favorite kind of map in the world. [Ali laughs]
Austin: Uh huh. A riverboat map. And, you know, it drops its stage to let y'all on, the kind of like boarding things. Or, as you approach, I guess you see—
Art: Are those gangplanks? Is there still gangplanks on something like this?
Austin: [sighs] Yeah, they're called a stage on this sort of boat, apparently? I did a bunch— I looked at a bunch of diagrams for riverboats over the last couple days. But yeah, I would have called them gangplanks, and I don't know why those changed. Do you know what I mean? But yes, apparently the swinging stage is referred to as the gangplank, so yeah, it's the same. It's the same thing. The landing stage also, it's also what it's called. It's like the big, like...let me tell you, steamboats.org is an old website, [Dre laughs] and so all of the images are super tiny. [Ali laughs] But yeah, basically up front, there is a thing that...this is not it, but it's sort of like that shape and near there on the thing. This I've drawn as like a steam pipe basically. But yeah, so it is a three floor...I mean, more, if you want to talk about— it depends on how you count decks, right? There is an underwater part of it or a mostly underwater part of it that is the...you imagine the boiler and the engine and other kind of mechanical stuff down there. There is a kind of sort of open air kind of part that's cargo and supplies towards the front, this kind of top, this kind of main deck, I guess. It's not open aired, because it's, you know, there's a deck above it, but it's not like it's like closed in from the front. You know what I mean? Like, the front is open. You could just walk. You could see in there and see that there's a bunch of like...there's like a bunch of wood and other materials in there that are, you know, used for repairs and used for fuel and other stuff. Also on that that first floor, that first deck, is dining and dancing. There's absolutely like a dance hall and a dining room and a kitchen and other stuff in that kind of the back half of this largest public deck. On the second floor, there is passenger quarters, and towards the— from there, that’s kind of the middle of the deck, and towards the front of the ship is an open deck kind of parlor where you can go and take in the air and sit on nice chairs and et cetera, and the back end of that is a gambling hall. And then above that is like the crew-only stuff. There's the crew quarters, and then above that is the pilot house, where the kind of ship's captain drives the ship and, you know, orders everyone around.
You haven't gone through any of these places yet, but I'm just saying that 'cause that's what you can see on screen at this point. At this point, you're still on the shore, and you can see, you know, a couple of people get off the boat and begin to head east down the sea towards some destination, you're not sure where. I think you see one other person maybe get on board from Sap— maybe it’s like, actually I’m gonna say it's like a family. There's a family getting on board from Sapodilla. And you see that they each give someone something at the...they give the sort of person at the gangplank a coin as they enter for passage. And you realize, of course, Duvall, that these are the coins that you were given via those other moths.
Art: Mm.
Austin: And it strikes you, perhaps, that this is a gift for you, for the service you rendered. For a detail we have not raised, which is while Queen Virtue—sorry, Vampire Queen Virtue—is becoming Vampire Queen Virtue, you also...you helped ensure that but also left some bugs in there with her.
Art: Sure.
Austin: And in many ways, this is your gift for doing that. This is your most immediate gift, at least, for doing that. A safe and pleasant return trip on the Jade Moon, a luxury steamship that seems to have some connection to the Sleeping City and the Structure.
Jack: Hmm.
Art: It's like transfixing.
Austin: Yeah. Yeah, it is. Um...do you hand out those coins? Do you let people know— what's going on? Like, what do you do?
Art: Yeah, uh huh.
Art (as Duvall): Oh, I've got this.
Austin: I think Bucho is a little like…
Austin (as Bucho): Um, I'm not sure if I should come with you or stay behind. I was just going to see where the butterfly went.
Jack (as Pickman): No, come with us.
Art (as Duvall): You should come, Bucho. I don't think…
Austin (as Bucho): [uncertain grumble]
Art (as Duvall): I don't think you want to stay.
Austin (as Bucho): The Shape Knights could use my help repairing things and preparing for this Vampire Queen, hmm?
Jack (as Pickman): I don't think it's a safe place for you.
Austin (as Bucho): No.
Jack (as Pickman): We can watch each other's backs on the boat. You can figure out where you want to go once we make land.
Austin (as Bucho): Where is the ship going?
Jack (as Pickman): I have no idea.
Austin: Looks at Duvall.
Art (as Duvall): I've only known about this ship as long as you have.
Jack: Um, is there someone...there's someone at the gangplank taking the tokens, right?
Austin: [pleased] There is someone.
Jack: Can I go up to them?
Austin: Yes. They are wearing...they are a human-shaped person.
Jack: Oh, when you put it like that.
Austin: [laughs] They're wearing black slacks with shiny brown shoes, brown belt, white shirt with a green...like a green dress vest, you know, like a green, a fancy green vest with a golden pocket watch or pocket watch chain, you know, running into one of the front pockets on this vest. And their...above their shirt, their head seems to be covered in...you could call it a mask, but you could also call it a bag, like a cloth sack that is tightly pulled across their entire head. Like, drawn extremely tight, completely solid, black. It kind of goes concave where the eyes and mouth are. It's like you put a sack over someone's head or a cloth bag and closed it as much as you could, you know?
Jack: Oh, uh...
Austin: And as they breathe, the...it's as if their mouth is open, and it's like the the cloth is going kind of in and out of where their mouth hole would be normally.
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: You know? Normal stuff.
Jack: Yeah. We're thinking of...it's not quite one-to-one, but we're thinking of the monster from the second Fear Street movie if you've seen that.
Austin: I have not seen those movies.
Jack: Gonna put a picture in there.
Austin: You got a picture? I would love to see a picture.
Jack: You can't quite see it here, but it is pulled tight enough that when he breathes the...just put this in the Sangfielle chat. This guy looks a lot more menacing than I imagine this nice boatman does.
Ali: Mm.
Art: Come on, Discord.
Austin: Let’s see here. Clicking on this.
[1:10:00]
Ali: It’s an axe murderer.
Jack: Uh, I think Fear Street two— he is an axe murderer, and he really goes for it.
Dre: Mm.
Austin: Okay. Gotcha. This character, less baggy. Like, even more tightly drawn than this.
Keith: Looks kind of like scarecrow.
Austin: More tightly drawn than scarecrow.
Keith: Right.
Austin: Like, it's cloth. In fact, it's silk, let's say. Or it's something satin maybe, right? There's something...there's a sheen to this cloth, and it's tucked into their shirt. It's not like it's a...it doesn't hang loose like a burlap sack that you put on last. It's like something you put on before you put on the rest of your suit. Again, just...it's a really nice material, but it is kind of spooky.
Jack: That does— Pickman’s seen worse, I think. I think—
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: This is…
Jack (as Pickman): Hello.
Austin (as usher): [unsettling voice] Hello. [Art and Jack laugh]
Jack (as Pickman): Where is your boat bound?
Austin (as usher): North. We have many stops. Would you like to see a schedule?
Jack (as Pickman): Yes, please.
Austin: And produces one for you from inside of the vest. And it says pretty clearly where it's gonna go. I'm gonna move us off the picture, even though the map is— or the, uh, the schedule’s on this picture that we're on or this map that we're on, I'm gonna move us back over to the world map and make the river, the Ojan, visible.
Ali: Oh.
Jack: Huh.
Austin: So, as the schedule says, first you'll be going to the Bridge Cathedral. I'll just read the schedule for everybody. It says: “Schedule, ongoing. False war tournament, begins Night Two. Lessons available, ask Hazard. Day Three: arrive at Bridge Cathedral. See Deacon for medical services. One night stay.”
Jack: Oh.
Austin: Day Six: arrive at Cantbank, resupply and shopping available, one night stay. Day
Seven: dance lessons, day. The Broken Quartet live, evening. Day Nine to Eleven: remain inside. Day Twelve: departure available. Day Thirteen: false war finals, true false war format, evening. Winner takes all. And Day Fourteen: final arrival, scuttling.” And then underneath that, it says “Breakfast available, lunch at noon, dinner later.”
Keith: And which day is this?
Austin: Day one. This would be day one of the journey.
Keith: Okay, so I can go to the doctor tomorrow.
Austin: You can go to the doctor on day three.
Keith: Day three. Day three, okay.
Austin: Yeah. I mean, there might be medical services available on the ship already. I'm gonna tell you there are, but not good enough.
Jack: The steamboat doctor.
Austin: They're not— the steamboat doctor. There is a...I mean. You know, I can just...this isn't a spoiler, because you would just go on board and be like, “Hey, is there a doctor here?” And what they would tell you is go see Mr. Pest, the second mate and the ship's nurse. And let me tell you, Mr. Pest is not gonna heal Major Blood Fallout for you.
Keith: Mm.
Austin: But all that means is you can't use Mend until day three of this fourteen day trip. Or I guess twelve day trip, if you leave as soon as departure is available. I mean, I guess you could leave before that. I would just say you probably shouldn't leave from day nine to eleven, remain inside.
Jack: Yes. Probably concerning during that time.
Austin: Uh huh. And as you— for people who can't see—obviously, for the listener—this is a river that sort of cuts northeast and then kind of northwest and then west towards an area north of Blackwick. It kind of cuts across a big part of the map we have not gotten to yet, this kind of eastern half, I would say, of Sangfielle. Not quite the far eastern half, not quite to where Aldomina is. You know, if you're looking at the map of Sangfielle from session one, if you go back to the first session’s page, you can see that that map is there. I think that’s the first session it's there. It's like around where the word Sangfielle, it's like around the E of Sangfielle and then up towards the north. By the far north, you're kind of close to Concentus, actually, where it seems the river lets off. But, you know, it's, uh...it's...and you don't know where river would technically let off necessarily. But, you know, it goes up, eventually passes near Last Rest. And there was— I will say there's a big chunk of stuff and a big chunk of map here, where I've not...I've not...you don't see that there's anything on the map, unlike where I've put Bridge Cathedral and Cantbank. But that does not mean that there is nothing there, you know? There might be other stop points there. Or, again, the can't leave, or don't leave, remain inside section. Let me tell you, there's some stuff up there.
Keith: I have a question real quick.
Austin: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Keith: When we were dealing with the machine under the Oratorio.
Austin: Yes.
Keith: It started eating the ocean.
Austin: It did.
Keith: And was doing so for quite a while.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Keith: I just want to make sure that this river was always here?
Austin: So, there's a...there's two answers to this.
Keith: Isn't there always?
Austin: Yeah. The answer is this river...this river used to be much bigger, but when it got smaller was not this past weekend of the Oratorio or whatever. [laughs softly]
Keith: Okay. Got it.
Austin: This is the Ojan. The Ojan...I would suspect people in Sangfielle, I would suspect non-Ojantani call it the Ojan River, because that is what people do to words they don't understand and don't look into. But the Ojan means running water. It already kind of means river. And it is where the Ojantani and Ojantan gets its name. Ojan means running water, tan means something like land or place, and tani means to be of the land or of the place. And so the Ojantani are those, are kind of those of the land of running water. And if you're asking, “Wait a second, aren't all the Ojantani to the south in the Fifth Canton, the Protectorate Kingdom of Ojantan? Yeah. And it got its name from up here, where the Ojantan originally were. And over, you know, millennia, first expanded south and then were pushed out of Sangfielle by Aldomina in the many wars that we know that they fought. But the river maintained its name. It's fair to say that this part of Sangfielle—not all of it, but at least this part—was once called Ojantan, named for this river, named for this, the biggest river in Sangfielle. It used to run further south. It used to run down into where the Fifth Canton is. It was a huge part of what the kingdom of Ojantan, how the Kingdom of Ojantan, you know, communicated and moved stuff around and lived. I've always imagined the Kingdom of Ojantan being a sort of kingdom in the sense of there being multiple sub kingdoms or clans or tribes that kind of built up into a sort of larger kingdom, but lots of autonomy between a bunch of smaller groups.
And I don't know that your characters know this. I don't know how many histor— I guess, like...Virtue’s not here anymore. Virtue may have known this. Es, depending on how old you are. But we’re really talking about 700 years ago type shit, not quite even...not like Panic era, like well pre-Panic era. This river didn't— or this sea didn't used to always be here. How it got made and to what end, I think is probably something that is worth investigating in your spare time, but...and I have an answer for it. The answer is is grim, right? The answer is...is not positive, obviously, as it cut off a key supply of water and transportation deep into Ojantan, right? So. So yeah, Keith, good intuition here. But no, the river is not new in that sense. In fact, in fact, really what I should be saying, it's not that it was new ever. I mean, all things were new at some time, obviously, right? Rivers take a long time to form, but they do form over time. The sea is the thing that is historically new, because it used to just be the water of the river that ran further south. Anyway. So yeah, you have that schedule. I'll move you back over to that schedule now. And you have the...I guess this is the thing. Duvall, you have the entry coins, right? More than enough, in fact.
Art: Yeah.
Austin: Which I gave you just in case you wanted to bring someone else on board that I couldn't remember. I knew Bucho was up for up for grabs, and I think Bucho is kind of interested. Gets bad vibes from the Sapodillan Shape Knights at this point.
Ali: Mm.
Austin: Given some stuff. Do you report back, Pickman?
Jack: Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna report back. I'm gonna say:
Jack (as Pickman): Boat goes north. A long journey around the northwest. Makes its way into the mountains just north of Blackwick. They got a doctor on the third day. They got a whole schedule I can show you. And...yeah, it's unsettling, but where isn't?
Dre: Wait, why is it unsettling? It just looks like a boat.
Jack (as Pickman): The proprietor.
Jack: Big point at the silk masked person.
Dre: Yes?
Austin: Oh, by the way, you should describe yourself right now, Chine.
Dre: Oh.
Austin: I feel like we haven't necessarily desc—
Dre: That's true, yeah.
Austin: Because you do look different than…I guess Pickman’s seen you.
Dre: Let me double check which Fallout I still have to make sure.
Austin: Yeah, what Fallout do you still have?
Dre: Um…
Austin: I guess Duvall and Lyke haven't seen you with your current set of things, right? Though maybe you healed them. I don't quite remember what you healed.
Dre: No. Um… [Austin laughs softly] So, I still...I'm not like...I'm not as fucked up. I don't have like the bones sticking out of me and stuff like that.
[1:20:05]
Austin: Okay.
Dre: I'm still Blooded though. And I'm trying—
Austin: Which was whatever the first part— that was you just being stuck in a kind of—
Dre: Yes. Mm-hmm.
Austin: —mid form between human and shrew, right? Wereshrew. Okay, so, worth noting that.
Dre: But yeah, I don't have a giant like, you know, nose bone sticking out of my head anymore.
Austin: Right Uh huh.
Dre: So, growth.
Jack (as Pickman): The proprietor trended sinister, and lately I am increasingly suspicious of him.
Jack: Points at Duvall.
Jack (as Pickman): But what's new? We can get Lyke to a doctor on the boat. We need to travel north. We are capable people.
Dre: Yeah, I mean, I...Chine holds out their hand for a coin.
Art: Duvall passes out coins to anyone who takes it.
Austin: Bucho accepts and says:
Austin (as Bucho): All right. I hope I can be of some use.
Jack: I think Pickman makes like a camaraderie, you know, like...it's like the “I'm watching you” gesture, but not in the “watch out” sense, in the like, “I've got your back” sense.
Austin: With Bucho.
Jack: Yeah, with Bucho.
Austin: Yeah, yeah.
Art: Wait, like the...the...when you point to your own eyes, then point at someone else?
Jack: Nah, it's a new gesture in Sangfielle.
Art: Okay.
Austin: What's it look like?
Jack: Hmm?
Austin: What's it look like? [Dre laughs]
Jack: [bluffing] You're breaking up, Austin. It’s some sort of Discord problem. I can't hear you. [laughs quietly]
Austin: [laughs] Okay. I can't tell—
Art: ‘Cause I was trying to think of how you could do the one I was thinking of—
Austin: Yeah.
Art: —in like a friendly way, and it's…
Austin: Uh huh.
Jack: I mean, the thing is, can Pickman make a gesture in a friendly way? [Ali laughs] I don't know. [Austin and Sylvia laugh]
Austin: Do people...and so people get on board. It doesn't sound like anyone has any qualms?
Janine: I—
Austin: Es?
Janine: I have a question.
Austin: Yeah.
Janine: I have just one… [laughs softly]
Austin: Please.
Janine: Just one question I don't think was answered. It says Day Fourteen: final arrival, scuttling.
Austin: Uh huh?
Janine: Isn't that when you destroy the ship?
Keith: Uh huh.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: That's definitely what that means.
Janine: Okay.
Jack: That doesn't bother me.
Janine: So, final arrival, as in we get off and then the ship is destroyed, right? [laughs]
Keith: Um…
Art: That's the order they’re on on the schedule.
Keith: Does…
Janine: Final arrival could be— could mean that we all die, though, technically.
Keith: Does anyone know—
Jack: Then we fight them.
Art: Mm...
Janine: I mean…
Keith: Does anyone know what false war tournament is meant to mean? Or is that just something we're gonna all find out?
Jack: Uh…
Austin: Lyke, I feel—
Art: I think that's much more interesting than final arrival.
Janine: Do you?
Austin: I think Lyke specifically would know this.
Keith: Okay, great.
Austin: Because Lyke feels like the sort of person that knows that false war is a popular card game in the world of Sangfielle.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: It is a modified version of war, the game war. I know the rules to it. I could teach you the rules.
Jack: Wait, is war a real game?
Janine: Yeah, yeah.
Austin: You might know the game war as battle in the UK, Jack.
Jack: I don't either. But I trust you both.
Keith: War is a very simple card game where you—
Austin: Yep.
Keith: —basically pull a card from your hand, and if it is higher than your opponent's card, then you just win.
Austin: You win that round.
Jack: And this is a Sangfielle variant called false war?
Austin: Yeah, except for the long format, which is called true false war. [Keith laughs]
Ali: We just got that deck of cards.
Austin: We just got that deck of cards. Yeah. That’s true.
Jack: Oh, we did just get that deck of cards. Who has that?
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Ali: You, I think.
Austin: Mm-hmm. So, the way you play false war is you draw three cards, and you place them in front of you facedown. Whatever order you want, left, middle, right. Your opponent does the same. Then you draw a fourth card, each of you, and you can look at it and then play it facedown on top of any of those three cards that you want. And then you flip all those cards over, and you compare them across the way to your opponent’s side to see who wins. So it's sort of like war, but you have a...you get like a second round to buff one of your...I mean, war also doesn't have three stacks like that, you know?
Jack: It’s multi-lane war. [Dre laughs softly]
Austin: Yeah, uh huh.
Jack: Dota.
Austin: Exactly.
Sylvia: Oh my god.
Austin: And in regular false war, you just do that, and you bet money per round. And then the whole deck gets shuffled, and you're dealt a new three, a new, you know, three card hand and then the kicker or whatever we're gonna call that fourth. That fourth, you know, your reserves kick in. I don't know how they frame it. But that fourth card that you can— the river, I don't know. [laughs softly] And you place it down where you want. And then every round, you shuffle the whole deck and you do it again. True false war is the way the game was originally designed, which is when you win a round, you get all of the cards on the table. You put them in your discard. And then you have to play until someone has all the cards in the deck. Which is how— which is the way war is played.
Keith: That is the way— yeah, yeah.
Austin: That's how war is played. So it's kind of like you have to keep going and try to— and win enough times in a row to clean the deck, to clean the whole the whole table of all of the cards.
Art: Well, wouldn't someone end up with fewer than four cards at some point?
Austin: Yes, and they play—
Art: Oh wait, no, the deck’s divisible by four. You wouldn’t.
Austin: I guess that's true, right? So yeah. Uh, but, but you could theoretically maybe tie in certain circumstances. Who knows? If that's the case, Art, you play the cards you have left, and you have to win that whatever you have left with what you have left, otherwise you lose those cards. But there’s always a chance!
Keith: Make a great comeback, though, if you won that hand.
Austin: Exactly. It would be an incredible comeback if you happened to somehow—
Art: That’s how it goes in all the false war— the true false war movies.
Austin: In the movies. And everyone who plays true false war is like, “That never fucking happens. This is the corniest shit.” A hundred percent. So. Anyway, that's how false war is played. And that's one of the games available to be played at the gambling hall. And that is the...that is the tournament that will be happening across this journey.
Keith: Lyke’s definitely a gambler. I think that we've established this already.
Austin: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. [laughs]
Jack: Do you bring up your concerns about scuttling, Es?
Janine: Uh...I think I bring it up in the sense of like, hey, we should all probably be aware that this could end in a weird way that we should be prepared for.
Austin: Do you say that close enough for the kind of ship’s usher to hear or is that a private thought?
Janine: Um...okay, I think maybe I asked the usher like loud enough for everyone else to hear, like:
Janine (as Es): I don't suppose you could you afford me any more detail about the scuttling, the final arrival and the scuttling?
Austin (as usher): Oh, of course. Do you see the silk, the curtains, the sun damage? This is an old ship. It's done its tour well, and its time with us passes. This will be the final journey of the Jade Moon. You understand.
Janine (as Es): Not is completely as I might like, but partially.
Austin (as usher): We owe it to the ship that this last journey be impeccable. In that way, we assure you that you’ll have only the finest time aboard.
Janine: [laughs] What's the T-shirt meme? The…
Austin: [laughs] Yeah. [Jack laughs] My creepy, haunted boat usher is...
Janine: My T-shirt says you're not gonna die on this… [laughs]
Austin: Oh. Uh huh. Yes.
Janine: On this...yeah.
Austin: Is raising a lot of questions already asked— answered by. [laughs softly]
Janine: Uh huh.
Austin: Uh huh. Anyway.
Janine (as Es): Okay. Well, I'm probably an okay swimmer. I guess I haven't checked in a while, but...
Ali (as Marn): You'd fly. [Sylvia, Jack, and Ali laugh]
Janine (as Es): No, Marn, I don’t— well, oh, yes.
Janine: Yeah, sorry. [laughs]
Austin: Yes, you do! [several people laugh]
Janine: I totally forgot.
Janine (as Es): Yes, I suppose that's true.
Jack: But it's just so normal to you. It's like breathing. [Ali continues laughing] Yeah, I'll take a coin.
Austin: All right.
Jack: I'm just like, you know, up the, you know.
Austin: Up the ramp, onto the ship.
Jack: Hoising gun on shoulder, up the ramp.
Austin: And you are escorted by other people who look exactly the same except their masks are different colors. You got someone with kind of a, like a gold colored mask. You got someone with like a kind of maroon or burgundy colored mask. You get someone with a kind— you know, there's all— a lime colored mask. All letting you up on board, and they guide you to your private quarters. Each of you has a room aboard. This is the nicest place you've stayed since this game has started that we've seen on screen, easily.
Jack: Ah, this is great. This is so much better than getting killed by the Macula in the ruins of Sapodilla. Or Virtue.
Austin: Uh huh.
Dre: Mm-hmm.
Austin: [laughs softly] I don't think Virtue would have killed y'all. Well, depends on what you did.
Sylvia: Yeah, I mean, you know.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Sylvia: Play to find out what happens. Don’t wanna say for sure. [Ali laughs]
Austin: You're right. You’re right. Apologies, apologies, apologies. Yeah, uh huh. Keep my principles in check. I didn’t read my principles. Fuck. This is what happens. [Sylvia and Dre laugh] This is the thing that happens, right? is I didn't read the principles, and now I'm all fucked up. I didn’t—
Ali: It’s a free-for-all.
Austin: It's a— exactly. Exactly. My principles, for the record, are to ask questions instead of planning; to evoke an atmosphere of wonder, horror, and humanity; to build and break tension; to pay attention to what everyone at the table wants, long and short term; and to play to find out what happens. There you go.
Ali: Sure.
Austin: So yeah, everyone's ushered aboard and given private quarters. It's a beautiful place. Again, I mentioned that like, in my mind, this is greens and golds primarily in terms of the way this place is dressed, the kind of decor. The outside of it is so covered in cloth that it's hard to find the wood underneath sometimes. Just like banners and curtains of various shades of green with gold trim. But the...when you see like, you know, the deck is this kind of nice dark wood. And, you know, I'd say that there are a couple dozen people on board already. It's a...and it's a mix of people who are, you know, folks that you...there's a mix of people who are people wearing these masks and people who are not wearing these masks, both on the...I guess on the kind of people working here side, many of them are wearing these masks and have that that appearance that I've described, but some of them do not. You know, you see a, you know, a number of people who work in the kitchen who are Kay’van— or, sorry, Drakkan or Ojantani or human or devil or cap— not Capybara, sorry, Carpana. You see people who...who, you know, work in the kind of ship’s crew who are both these kind of masked figures and also non. The gambling hall is filled with people, both. There are a lot of dealers who are the masked type people, who have that kind of very neutral vibe, and there are also a lot of gamblers who are just doing free gambling. You know, you kind of go in and take a table and do your own side games, which have to be overseen by someone from the ship, but you're allowed to just kind of gamble by yourself off to the side. And then there is someone who is, you know, among the card dealers, who is running false war games, and that is, as it says on the schedule, “Ask Hazard if you need a false war lesson.” Sylvi, do you want to tell me who Hazard is and what Hazard looks like?
[1:31:35]
Sylvia: Yeah, so I mean, currently, Hazard is clearly just a regular ol’ like, card dealer. Nothing going on there.
Austin: Uh huh.
Sylvia: That's why they're...that's why they're a player character, ‘cause they're boring. [Ali and Austin laughs softly] So, Hazard is my new character. They use they/them pronouns but are also comfortable with like any pronouns. Their appearance right now...they're also wearing a mask. It's different from the masks that are being worn here.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Sylvia: It's like more of a plain wooden mask, kind of inspired by like the happy mask stuff in Majora’s Mask.
Austin: Oh, sure.
Jack: Oh, wow.
Sylvia: In terms of like shape. They're wearing like a hood, like none of their face is visible at all. You can tell they're a devil, because they have two horns sticking out of the hood. And like, they've got some like charms hanging off of those. They're like five feet tall. And currently doing like card...like fancy shuffles for the people at their table, [Austin laughs] I think is like the way we first see them.
Austin: Love it.
Sylvia: And like, kind of casually explaining the rules to someone who's clearly asked for like a pointer or two.
Austin: Do you want to tell me what your Class and Beats are?
Sylvia: Yeah, so my Class is the Incarnadine.
Jack: Yo!
Sylvia: Yeah. Which is sort of the fortune magic slash debt magic class in Heart.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Sylvia: Very cool. And my Calling is from a—I want to get the name right—from ICHOR-DROWNED, which is an unofficial supplement to Heart.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: And that Calling is retribution. So, I'm currently on a quest for revenge. [Austin laughs softly] My active Beats are “Enlist someone in your plot for revenge,” and “Find evidence of your target’s whereabouts,” both Minor.
Austin: Shoutouts to—
Keith: Who are you revenging?
Sylvia: I'm revenging myself.
Dre: Sure.
Keith: Oh, sorry.
Austin: But who are you—
Keith: I meant who are you revenging against.
Sylvia: Oh. Yeah, we still… [laughs softly] We still—
Austin: I know who it is. I have a name.
Sylvia: You know who it is. Cool.
Austin: I— yeah, yeah, yeah. But I don't know that you...you told me that you don’t necessarily know—
Sylvia: I don’t have a name yet.
Austin: —know his name.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: What I can...what I can tell...you want to say what Ha— do you want to say...hmm. You're in charge of Hazard and Hazard’s information. So, you tell me.
Sylvia: Yeah, I'm like...I wonder if it'd be more fun to have them tell the story in character at some point, right?
Austin: Yeah, so let’s...yeah, let's sit on it for now, I'd say. What I will say, two things. One is shoutouts again to ICHOR-DROWNED—or ICHOR-DROWNED. I never know how to pronounce that word. I've heard it said both ways—which is by Sillion L and Brendan McLeod. I don't know Sillion’s Twitter. I know @_sulcata, S-U-L-C-A-T-A is Brendan's. But I believe it's on Itch. That's where I think I bought it. Maybe I'm wrong. Yeah, it is here. Here it is. If you do a search for ICHOR-DROWNED on Itch.io, you will find it. It's a really, really cool supplement for Heart. There are four new character classes, all of which rule. There is like a dream stealing nightmare. There is a sort of like, what you would think of as a monk class, a sort of barehanded fighter class that does all sorts of reality bending stuff. There is a sort of—
Sylvia: That one was really tempting.
Austin: It's really cool.
Sylvia: That was a really cool class.
Austin: There's an artist class that I think does stuff with that that is incredible and really surprising and like plays with your kind of, quote, unquote, bard idea in really fun ways. And then there is like an artificer who also deals with genies. That is incredible. And then there is also, you know, if you're playing in the traditional Heart setting, there is a new ancestry there and there is a new Calling, which is what Sylvia’s chosen for Hazard’s, Retribution. There's also a thing that I'm definitely gonna use at some point, not this session, but there are Delve draws, which is like a sort of Tarot-inspired oracle that lets you build Delves via card draws.
Dre: Ooh.
Austin: That is just incredible. And there's a whole system on vehicles and some fun landmarks and enemy types and stuff like that. So. There is also, I'm now seeing this. I did not get here in the book. Finally, Testament, an adventure that takes place— sorry, takes delvers on a whirlwind heist down a cursed river of ichor into the golden depths of heaven. That sounds sick. We're not doing that, but if you feel like what you want is a riverboat adventure, then that sounds like a fun one. So, consider going to check that out. So yeah, that's Hazard, and welcome aboard to...I mean, not the Blackwick Group quite yet, but certainly on board this ship. Hazard.
Sylvia: It’d be great if we end this session, and it's just like, okay, that character didn't take. I'll be back next time with another one. [Keith laughs]
Austin: Yeah. We’ll figure out a new one. Exactly. Exactly.
Keith: A series of guest appearances.
Austin: Yeah. Why not?
Sylvia: Ah, that’d be a good idea for a season, though.
Austin: That's fun. That's a cute...yeah, I like that. So, y'all are on board. It's day one. Day one of, question mark, fourteen? What do y'all want to get up to here? I guess I'll give you a little bit more of a run— I mean, I've given you the rundown of what's on board in terms of raw, like, here is the ship, here is the stuff. I've moved you back over to that map. But in my mind, this is, like many of our downtimes, pretty freewheeling. I will say that, structurally, what's gonna happen here is that there are a couple of Haunts on board already. I already told you about Mr. Pest, the kind of mediocre on board nurse. But there's also the Emerald Deck, which is what they call the dining and dancing and drinking and et cetera place, and that's a D6 Mind, which is enough to deal with Minor Mind Fallout. I'll just say outright that like, as we go on this journey, new things will become available when you check into ports and as new people move on board, so. Obviously, for instance, someone named the Deacon or Deacon is coming on board when you get to Bridge Cathedral. That person, it says see Deacon for medical services. That will be better than the current D4 Blood Haunt that's available. There might be other stuff available when you get to the bridge cathedral. There might be other stuff available when you get to Cantbank, so. So, we'll see, right? But if someone wants immediately to get access to that D4 Blood Haunt, which isn't enough to heal any Fallout but is enough to reduce Blood Stress, you can do that now. Or you can deal with the D6 Mind kind of dining hall if you want to hang out and get rid of Minor Mind Fallout, but Major Mind Fallout currently is still not available to be dealt with. Also, if you just have scenes you want to do on the ship, that is ideal. But we...but, you know, think about what this journey looks like. And feel free to ask me questions about places you're going or ask how you would look— you know, we'll talk about how you find out more about them. Or if you think like, oh, I really want to do a scene when we get to this cathedral, think about that, and, you know, when we get there or when you want to do that, we can do that. You know? Also, I would love someone to meet Hazard at some point and have a little...I'm curious who meets Hazard first.
Jack: Yeah, I'll meet Hazard. I have a question for Hazard.
Keith: I mean, my questions for Hazard right now have to do about how do I get in on false war. [Jack laughs softly]
Austin: So we have a Pickman and Lyke showing up for that first, that uh...I guess the lessons are available immediately. The tournament only starts the next night, but day one you can start getting lessons from Hazard. So, do the two of you show up to Hazard’s table?
Jack: Yeah, I'm not here for the lesson— uh, will I get a mechanical bonus from the lessons? [Sylvia laughs]
Austin: Yeah.
Ali: Ooh.
Austin: You'll get a plus one on that. Yeah, totally. You’ll get a Mastery from lessons from Hazard.
Jack: To playing...yeah.
Austin: To your false...your first false war tournament roll, sure, if you want to play in the tournament.
Jack: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, great. Uh, yeah, I’ll, a hundred percent. I mean, I feel like Pickman knows how to play false war, but you could always use…
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Jack: You know, bit of practice
[1:40:02]
Keith: Well, and keep an eye out on the competition.
Austin: Says Lyke, producing a deck of cards. [laughs]
Jack (as Pickman): Hello. My name’s Pickman.
Sylvia (as Hazard): Well, pleasure to meet you. Come down to play?
Sylvia: Doing more fancy card tricks, fanning ‘em out and stuff. [Austin laughs softly]
Jack (as Pickman): I could use a little practice. I'm actually here to to ask you a question.
Sylvia (as Hazard): Yeah, I mean, pretty much all I do all day around here is answer people's questions. What, you're not sure about all the different suits or something? It's...it can be a little confusing.
Jack (as Pickman): No. Again, I know how to play false war. I could use the practice, but uh...
Jack: And yeah, I reached into my little bag and I put down one of the Marrisa Lefebvre novels that I found from the library.
Austin: [laughs softly] Uh huh.
Jack: You...I have three, Austin.
Austin: You have three.
Jack: They are Niche D12 resources. The one you gave me is called The Ivory Staircase.
Austin: Uh huh.
Jack: And there are two others called Like the Silvered Dove and Fling Wide the Gates.
Austin: We had a— no, there was a second one that was named. There was a second one that was named.
Jack: Oh, was there a second named one?
Austin: Here we go. What was the one that you just said?
Jack: Uh, you gave me Ivory Staircase, I think.
Austin: Oh, maybe I didn’t write them. Hmm.
Jack: And I had Like the Silvered Dove and Fling Wide the Gates.
Austin: There was one that had to do with a vase, for sure.
Jack: Oh my god.
Austin: For sure, for sure.
Jack: Well, we can just change this to Like the Silvered Vase. It's a...
Austin: [laughs] I thought I wrote down the names of them in this episode description, but apparently I didn't, so maybe I decided to leave it vaguer. I don't know. [Keith laughs] Anyway.
Jack: In any case, um…
Austin: Yes.
Jack (as Pickman): You strike me as a gambling type. Someone who goes up and down the river on river boats.
Sylvia (as Hazard): Now, whatever gave you that idea?
Jack (as Pickman): The cards. [Sylvia laughs]
Keith (as Lyke): Being in the gambling room. Casino.
Jack (as Pickman): This is my friend, Lyke.
Keith (as Lyke): Hello.
Jack (as Pickman): Well, I don't know about friend. Lyke and I travel together.
Keith (as Lyke): What?
Austin: Oh my god!
Sylvia (as Hazard): Ah, nice to meet you, Lyke.
Keith (as Lyke): Yeah, I gue— yeah, nice to meet you. [muffled laughter]
Jack (as Pickman): Question one: have you ever seen anything like this before?
Jack: Pushes the book over with like a big finger.
Jack (as Pickman): And question two: where do you think I could sell something as strange as this?
Sylvia (as Hazard): You’re asking if I've ever seen a book before?
Jack (as Pickman): Take a look at it. Open it up. It won't hurt you. Put the cards down for a second. It'll do you good.
Sylvia (as Hazard): Yeah, sure hope not.
Austin: Jesus Christ.
Keith (as Lyke): [hushed] Is...is it gonna hurt them?
Art: Now I think it’s gonna hurt someone.
Sylvia (as Hazard): You sure got an interesting attitude, Pickman.
Austin: You can't read this book, Hazard. It's written in a dialect of the kind of common tongue that is distinct.
Sylvia: Mm-hmm.
Austin: I would say it seems like...it seems like you might be looking at like a dialect that has a Drakkan or specifically a Kay'van influence, but farther than anything you've ever seen before. Like, you're not even able to read this and be like, “Oh, yeah, this looks like it's Kay’van.” It feels like maybe from a language— it's hard to say. It’s as if there was a Kay'van language that existed that you'd never heard about. Like, I guess sort of like if you'd never heard of, you know, a creole or something ever.
Sylvia: Mm-hmm.
Austin: But you've heard of that, so you know it exists, and this is not that. You know what I mean? But, but that...yeah, so you can't quite make sense of it.
Sylvia (as Hazard): Uh, this...so, did you make this, or...?
Jack (as Pickman): No, no. I found it in a library.
Sylvia (as Hazard): [uninterested] Okay.
Keith (as Lyke): And— sorry, no offense to you. I'm sure that you know a lot about a lot of things. Why did you think they would know about this?
Sylvia (as Hazard): I'm also curious about that, actually.
Jack (as Pickman): You're traveling up and down the river.
Keith (as Lyke): Mm.
Jack (as Pickman): Spend a lot of time with strange people. This boat seems to be, uh...
Jack: Like, Pickman just gestures at like the drapes hanging all over the…
Jack (as Pickman): We were led here by a moth built like a machine.
Sylvia (as Hazard): Gosh, you two sure are an interesting pair, huh? You know, I gotta be honest, I'm not sure where you could offload something like this. It's interesting enough, but, um...I don't know, maybe try talking to some Kay'van about it? There's a little bit of hints here and there that makes me think at least they might be able to make some heads or tails out of this. But um...I'm just not much of a book learner, I guess. You know?
Jack (as Pickman): Are there any Kay’van on the ship?
Austin: Sure.
Sylvia: I think, out of character, Austin mentioned—
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: —that there were staff members who were Drakkan and stuff.
Austin: Yeah, definitely. Also, I found it. It's The Ivory Staircase and The Broken Vase. Those are the two that I gave you.
Jack: Oh, The Broken Vase. Excellent.
Austin: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jack (as Pickman): Well, okay. We'll take the lessons now, thank you.
Sylvia (as Hazard): Okay, great. Uh, have a seat. You're both here for the lessons, right? Or did you also have questions about some sort of literature that I'm not gonna be able to understand?
Sylvia: I should point out, because Hazard is wearing the mask, they do a lot of like gesticulating with their hands while they talk.
Austin: Incredible.
Sylvia: To like, show like where they're directing their attention and stuff.
Austin: So that was to Lyke, the...
Sylvia: Yeah, that was to Lyke.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith (as Lyke): I have some literature, slightly confusing, if you want to see it, but I will take a lesson specifically.
Sylvia (as Hazard): You know what, let's see how the lesson goes. And then maybe, uh, maybe I'll take a look at whatever you— whatever weird objects you guys have. You know?
Keith (as Lyke): Yeah.
Sylvia (as Hazard): Seems like a fun time to wind down after my shift.
Keith: I have one...I'll say it. It's a cool book. I have one cool book.
Jack: Pickman looks over.
Sylvia (as Hazard): Okay, well, now I want to see the cool book.
Keith (as Lyke): Okay.
Keith: I take it out.
Austin: This is…
Keith: Uh, the Sa’Ferna-ta-Fera.
Austin: Yeah, Sa’Ferna-ta-Fera. Yeah.
Keith: This is my every domain book.
Jack (as Pickman): Huh.
Sylvia (as Hazard): Oh, wow.
Austin: As a reminder, it is a transcript of a discussion, of a long series of discussions with a Carpana sage from before the Panic.
Sylvia: Are you like letting me like flip through it?
Keith: Yeah, sure.
Sylvia (as Hazard): See, now this? This is interesting stuff right here.
Jack (as Pickman): Hey.
Sylvia (as Hazard): Mm-hmm?
Jack (as Pickman): No, I'm just...we can't all have Lyke’s book of everything. [Keith laughs softly] Where did you get this?
Keith (as Lyke): Library.
Jack (as Pickman): Oh, come on. [several people laugh loudly]
Sylvia (as Hazard): All right. Well.
Austin: Friends at the Table, baby! We have libraries out here.
Keith: Did we get— we got these at the same library. No, we didn’t. No, we didn’t.
Austin: No. You didn’t.
Keith: Yeah, absolutely different. Wait, did we get them from the same library at different times?
Jack: No.
Austin: No. Different libraries.
Jack: Completely different libraries.
Keith: Okay, totally different libraries.
Austin: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Sylvia: While they're talking about this, I'm dealing cards.
Austin: Hey, are you using the deck of cards you keep?
Sylvia: Uh, yeah.
Austin: Okay.
Sylvia: I'm using my own personal cards for this...for this lesson.
Jack: Is there some sort of trick involved with these cards?
Austin: No, but there is something—
Sylvia: No.
Austin: —that you see get dealt out during this session, at some point. Maybe it's not this first hand, right?
Sylvia: Mm-hmm.
Austin: I guess...you know. All of you just roll a D10 real quick.
Sylvia: Okay.
Keith: All of us?
Austin: Yeah, all three of you.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: There's no cost for if it’s a failure. I just want to see who gets high.
Sylvia: I got a two.
Austin: Yeah, it's not you.
Keith: I got a six.
Austin: [laughs softly] You rolled the book.
Keith: Yeah, I did. [Sylvia laughs]
Austin: Jack.
Keith: It’s a D10!
Austin: Yeah, its a D10.
Sylvia: [laughs] I mean, it was used in the scene.
Austin: All right.
Jack: I rolled a nine.
Austin: Pickman, you get three cards. So first of all, the...you recognize this particular deck of— not this particular deck, but this type of deck of cards. This is the same Wrights of the Seventh Sun style deck.
Jack: [suspicious] Is it, now?
Austin: That is, has six suits. It's puppets, bread, chairs, blades, wheels, and cards. And each of those decks is one to six, like numbers one to six. And then the seventh thing is a traveler or a visitor, a type of like, depending on the thing, right? So, you know, you can imagine the one for bread is like someone carrying a bunch of loaves of bread, and then the one for, you know, wheels is like a car moving— or not a car but like a carriage.
Keith: Wagon.
Austin: A wagon or something moving quickly, right? The seven is a knight or a warrior or a soldier of some sort. The...that was the eight, not the...the seven is the visitor. The eight is the knight. The nine is a wizard or a mage or a witch. And the tenth is a noble. And you are dealt the ten of cards among your your opening three cards, your opening hand. And that card has like, on it, burned into it, a pair of lips as if someone's kissed it and burned it with their lips. Dead middle. Not close enough to the edge that anyone could like count cards with it or like cheat with it.
Jack (as Pickman): What's that?
Sylvia (as Hazard): Ooh. [sighs] Long story there, friendo. I'm gonna just have to say it's a little, um...a memento of sorts. It shouldn't affect the game at all.
Jack (as Pickman): Shouldn't?
Sylvia (as Hazard): I mean, I don't know. You get distracted by that sort of thing?
Jack: Shakes head.
Sylvia (as Hazard): And there you go.
Austin: You look back down at the card and you take in what it's of, and it is...it's, you're looking at again the kind of king of the deck, but in this case, it's a count. This is the count of cards. Who is you know, this is a pretty stylized deck. I don't know if you, Sylvi, if you have an idea of like what the art style is on these.
Sylvia: Oh, um…
Austin: I know it's a big question, but.
Sylvia: My immediately— my mind like immediate went to, if anyone's familiar with the artist Micah Ulrich, the tarot deck that they've done.
Austin: Mm. [someone typing]
Sylvia: I'll try and find an example of that.
Jack: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah. Love that.
Sylvia: Where it's also—
[1:50:00]
Keith: Friends at the Table, everyone knows the tarot deck people. [Jack laughs]
Austin: No, I just did a search in the time it took to…
Keith: Oh, okay, okay. [laughs]
Sylvia: Yeah, I'm linking one of them just to show off the like art style.
Austin: Yeah.
Sylvia: It’s a sort of like Gothic...
Austin: Very stark black, white, and like some red, you know.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Kind of embellishment. These all rule, a hundred percent.
Sylvia: The Flux Arcana tarot deck is what it’s called.
Austin: Yes. Yes.
Sylvia: That's sort of just my mental picture for this sort of thing. I also think just that sort of art style fits with Sangfielle stuff in general.
Austin: Yeah, I agree with this. Then, you know, let's say that like, that's the vibe here. And so you have a...sitting on a throne with his hands up, one of them is holding a scepter and the other one is holding a hand of cards, and the hand of cards is covering this kind of devil skull, covering the face of it with the cards like it's a fan, right? Hiding some sort of expression behind there. And there's kind of like a red, you know, halo coming off and around this figure’s head, and this is the count of cards. As a reminder, you might recall that Mabriella du Feza—those of you who went underneath the Interred Citadel—was the queen of puppets, was the ten in that deck of the Wrights of the Seventh Sun. That was the position that she held. And so here we have someone else, the count of cards. And again, this is partially obscured with the kiss, with the lips here.
Jack: Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I'll just— I'll take the loss. Pickman is now in a very bad mood between all of this stuff with Duvall and all of this, the Duvall and Lyke and Virtue stuff, and then having to get on a strange boat.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Jack: And then meeting this person, and then getting slighted with the...you know, Lyke’s book is demonstrably better. [Sylvia laughs]
Austin: Wow. [Keith laughs]
Jack: And now there's something screwed up going on with these cards. So I think I, you know, Pickman just sort of goes quiet and sulks and plays the lesson.
Austin: Mm.
Sylvia: Aw. [laughs] I might actually try getting, like...trying to get you out of your shell more, then, if that's the case. Where it’s like:
Sylvia (as Hazard): Oh, come on. What's with the sour look? We're trying to have fun here. You have a— what, you have a shitty week or something?
Keith (as Lyke): Well, okay, yeah.
Sylvia (as Hazard): What— what happened?
Sylvia: Dealing another hand of cards. [laughs]
Jack (as Pickman): We traveled with a woman, a vampire. Virtue Mondegreen. Something broke bad in the catacombs beneath Sapodilla, and she transformed into a Vampire Queen. This caused a disagreement among our traveling group.
Sylvia (as Hazard): Huh.
Keith (as Lyke): Wow, you...said the whole thing.
Sylvia (as Hazard): Damn. Okay. So...you know, we heard— I've, there’s been like some whisperings here and there about some bad stuff going on down by Sapodilla, but uh, gotta be honest, Vampire Queen was not on my list of predictions.
Keith (as Lyke): What was?
Sylvia (as Hazard): You know, now that you mention it, can't say that I really had any for it. You know, there's all sorts of things going on down in the Heartland. You know, I gotta be honest with ya, Pickman. It was Pickman, right?
Jack (as Pickman): Mm-hmm.
Sylvia (as Hazard): Not entirely sure if I can do much to help with that one. But, uh, hey, I'll give you one thing. When it comes to bad weeks, you've got me beat, and that's, you know, that's saying something. [laughs softly]
Jack: Like a—
Keith: Yeah, and I thought your books were really cool. [Austin laughs softly]
Sylvia (as Hazard): Oh, I didn't mean any offense with the books. I'm not much of a reader, so I didn't mean to be, you know, too rude or anything. I just, it...sometimes you try and focus on something, and when it confuses you, you tend to be a little grumpy towards it, you know?
Jack (as Pickman): Oh, yeah. I know. It’s okay. [Ali laughs softly] I've had a...I've had a bad week. I'm not good with new people. Can we play false war now?
Sylvia (as Hazard): Yeah, yeah.
Sylvia: Do we actually...do we actually want to play the game? [laughs]
Jack: No, I mean, I...
Austin: We don’t need to. I mean… [Sylvia laughs]
Jack: I'm just happy to mark down...
Sylvia: Yeah.
Jack: Get a plus one forward on...
Austin: Yeah, uh huh.
Jack: Gonna put this in my Fallout, and it's called Excited About a Tournament.
Austin: Oh, yeah. The good type of Fallout.
Jack: Roll plus one...
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Jack: On...false war?
Austin: On false war. Yeah.
Jack: ...rolls, thanks to Hazard’s lessons.
Sylvia: Oh, Austin, I have a question just again about that card thing.
Austin: Absolutely.
Sylvia: The face that was covered was not the face of the person on the card itself, right?
Austin: Yes.
Sylvia: Like, the count—
Austin: Or…
Sylvia: The count’s face was covered or the skull was what was covered?
Austin: The skull...I mean, that figure is...the person who kissed that card is the count of cards.
Sylvia: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Austin: Right? The face is a skull, because that's how the faces are stylized in this deck.
Sylvia: Okay, cool.
Austin: Right? I believe probably a devil is the, you know, species. And Aldominan devil is the person who is the count of cards.
Sylvia: Okay. Then, I—
Austin: If, I don’t— yeah, go ahead.
Sylvia: I was gonna say like, I was gonna ask Lye and Pickman, while the lesson is going on, if they've had, like…
Sylvia (as Hazard): You know, you seem like you've been in the thick of some interesting things. You, uh, run into any devils down Sapodilla way at all?
Keith (as Lyke): Yeah, s— yeah, several.
Austin: Bucho came on board with you, right?
Jack: Uh, is...Duvall is a human, right?
Austin: Duvall’s a human, but from Aldomina.
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: But a human.
Jack: Spent a lot of time with the devils.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Jack (as Pickman): Yes.
Sylvia (as Hazard): See… [sighs] I'm kinda on the lookout for someone. I don't know if you could tell, but this isn't actually my main gig most of the time. Just made a deal to...I run the cards, they give me safe passage, I get to talk to people. It's very helpful, but um...I'm looking for a specific devil, and if you...I feel like you'd know if you met them. They make an impression.
Keith (as Lyke): What’s their name?
Sylvia (as Hazard): Can't tell you that. Wish I could. Can't tell you that. I know they've got one horn. That's about it.
Jack (as Pickman): Mm.
Keith: I...do I know off the top of my head a devil with one horn?
Austin: No, but I do think maybe...do you think...Sylvi, were you suggesting that the skeleton on the card only had one horn?
Sylvia: Yeah. Then yeah, I think that's what the card looks like too.
Dre: Hey, Austin. Um, I know my storytelling— storytelling move is about— storyteller move, bleh, is about a beast. I couldn't use that in relation to this person that…
Austin: Read me the move.
Dre: Once per session, when you're tracking a beast, you can declare it to be a renowned beast. You've heard tell of it before.
Austin: Yeah, I'd say that's a distinct thing from this pers—
Dre: Yeah.
Austin: This is a— yeah. Because I don't know that Chine— this is not a renowned beast in the sense that like...you know, you just learned about— you just learned about the Wrights of the Seventh Sun, you know, this week or something, right?
Dre: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Austin: So. That's— it's fun. I think like...it's something to think about, broadening that out with like a Minor, maybe?
Dre: Mm-hmm.
Austin: You know what I mean?
Dre: Oh, for sure, yeah.
Austin: Let's think about that, if we do want to do a custom Minor move to where that could be like, you know, some sort of special subset of people too.
Dre: Cool.
Austin: Course can open up some possibilities for you, for sure.
Jack (as Pickman): I do not.
Austin: So then, yes. The thing I wanted to point out, though, was that when they say a devil with one horn, you do of course now realize that the count of cards that you drew in the first round only had one horn in the deck. That is to Pickman.
Jack (as Pickman): I do not know of this devil, but I came on board with a devil Shape Knight. They call him Two-Step Bucho. And one of my traveling companions has spent time in Aldomina.
Sylvia (as Hazard): [intrigued] Mm. That’s promising.
Jack (as Pickman): I'm sure that I could introduce you.
Sylvia (as Hazard): You know, Pickman? You're good people. I appreciate that.
Jack: [laughs softly] Sort of like combination of rabbit in the headlights look from Pickman and like kind of nervous grin.
Sylvia: [laughs] Okay, do we want to move on from that here?
Austin: Yeah, let’s move on. That’s good.
Sylvia: Cool.
Austin: Other folks on board in these early days, anything, any scenes you want to? Or do we want to— you want to head upriver?
Dre: [sighs] Did you say that the dining room would do Minor Mind Fallout?
Austin: It totally will do Minor Mind Fallout.
Dre: Cool. I would love to do that.
Austin: All right. What are you— what are you hanging out, ordering...you know, there’s...I want to say there's like probably some live music here already. I noted that there is a quartet that's gonna come on board in a few days here, I think on day seven . And that's like a...they're gonna really give this place a boost when it comes to Mind healing, because, you know, they're renowned across the Heartland. But the people who are playing now aren't too bad. So you can go there, get yourself something to eat, get yourself something to drink, hang out, vibe. You know, meet some people, talk, dance. Up to you what you want to do. [Ali laughs softly] But yeah, we can totally do that. D6 is what you're looking for to get rid of a Minor Mind Fallout. What are you gonna pay with here?
Dre: Um…
Austin: God, they must have— they must have something on, you know, on board that is like a...you know like a casino, like where you go to cash in your chips to somebody? What is that called? A broker? A, uh...
Art: Cashier.
[2:00:00]
Austin: Cashier.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: Who just takes stuff and gives you like, you know, on board chits, you know?
Dre: Mm-hmm.
Austin: In fact, I know what the money is used on board. There are silverish coins here that get used. I know what's on them. This whole place uses coins and paper money, uses banknotes. And it's probably...can I just...Duvall, can you be with Chine while getting some cash for being on board so that you can recognize this? Is that fair?
Dre: Yeah.
Austin: I feel like you two get along pretty well and haven't been together in a minute.
Dre: Mm-hmm.
Austin: Well then, while you're getting your money to go get your, you know, your food and drink, you know, money or whatever, Chine, where you're looking to exchange your resources. The money they use here has different stuff on the front and the back of the coins and the bank notes. Even seeing bank notes, I think, is weird. Like, that's not a type of money...money is not the primary way you buy things in this world. Obviously, we do a lot of bartering. This is not a...that's not the way the bulk of Sangfielle, even Sapodilla, was structured. Sapodilla did have coinage, but it was used alongside of bartering. This is very clearly a sort of like primary currency that has, you know...you know, these things have art design, right? [laughs softly] The front of both the coins and the banknotes, the bills, have insects on them. The front of the coins have crawling, various crawling insects. You know, ants and termites and other small crawling bugs, centipedes. You know, normal stuff. The bills have flying insects but also like floral designs on the front. You know, kind of like floral, you know, backgrounds or like branches with little leaves on them and then the flying bugs. You know, there's a ladybug on one. There's, you know, a bee on another one. There's a butterfly, et cetera. As the amounts go up, there's different bugs. On the other side of both the coins and the bills, it is like, you know, architecture and technology. Gears, hammers, you know, a vast skyline on the back of one of them. And you know it immediately. You haven't seen these in a long time, Duvall, but this is Sleeping City money. You held some of this in your hands once, years ago. So yeah, what do you want to spend here, Chine, to get yourself your Mind Fallout healed?
Dre: Uh, you said it's D6?
Austin: It is D6. You need a D6 resource.
Dre: Sure. I'll give up my corrosive horn.
Austin: Okay. [laughs] The person who takes this from you is...I just, you know, we do a lot of...we go a lot of places with different species and different da-da-da-da-da. This is just a...this is just a human, I think, in like a kind of gray flannel vest and a pink short sleeve dress shirt and a black tie and gray pants, gray slacks. Balding, you know, much shorter than both of you.
Austin (as cashier): What do you got there? You got a horn?
Dre (as Chine): Yeah.
Austin (as cashier): Ugh! I don’t want to touch— let me put on my gloves. Here.
Dre (as Chine): Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin (as cashier): Hand it over.
Austin: Looks at it with a magnifying glass, puts the magnifying glass, picks up a...what are those things called that jewelers use to like really look in close at a thing?
Keith: A loupe.
Austin: Yeah, uses one of—
Dre: Yeah, a jeweler’s loupe.
Austin: Yeah, a jeweler’s loupe. Looks in at it.
Austin (as cashier): Hmm. Hmm. Yeah, okay. Yeah. All right, here.
Austin: Slides over some coins to you.
Dre (as Chine): Oh, thanks.
Austin (as cashier): This’ll— it’ll cover you for a little bit. You got anything, sir?
Austin: Looking at you, Duvall.
Art (as Duvall): [fascinated, confused] Where did you get these coins?
Austin (as cashier): These are the coins we use on board the Jade Moon, sir. Surely you know them.
Art (as Duvall): I—
Austin: And like a knowing look at you.
Art (as Duvall): [slowly, contemplating] I do. I don't need any right now.
Austin (as cashier): No, no. But, you know, when you do, I'll be right here.
Art (as Duvall): Of course.
Austin (as cashier): You know, good job, by the way. Hmm?
Austin: And then turns to take care of something else.
Art (as Duvall): [shaken] Thank— thank you. Bye.
Keith: Suddenly very curious about the “boiler and engine?”.
Austin: [laughs softly] Sure.
Dre (as Chine): What, uh, what’d you do for that guy?
Art (as Duvall): I’m not sure.
Dre (as Chine): Oh. He said “good job.”
Art (as Duvall): Yeah, uh huh.
Dre (as Chine): You good?
Art (as Duvall): Yeah, I'm gonna be fine. This might be very dangerous. [Austin laughs]
Dre (as Chine): “This” being...
Art (as Duvall): This boat. [Jack laughs]
Dre (as Chine): I mean, they did say it was old and they're gonna break it.
Austin (as boat person): [overlapping] All aboard!
Austin: And the gangplank pulls up, and you've pulled away.
Art: Yeah, that tracks.
Austin: They say “all aboard” on boats, right? That's a thing that they say?
Art: Uh huh.
Dre: Sure.
Austin: Okay.
Art: I think, well, 'cause they probably don't say it on trains here.
Austin: Oh, yeah, you're right. So—
Jack: A boat is a kind of train.
Austin: You know, it kind of is.
Art: [doubtful] Mm…
Jack: Or a train is a kind of boat.
Austin: This is true.
Dre: Yeah, no, that checks out.
Art: They might have nothing to do with each other, trains and boats.
Austin: That’s true.
Keith: Mm, I'm trying—
Jack: What were those bugs made out of in you again, Duvall?
Art: They're made of matter. They're made of animal matter.
Jack: Hmm.
Austin: But, you know.
Jack: Hmm.
Art: It looks like…
Austin: Mm.
Jack: No, see—
Art: Looks like. It isn’t.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Jack: Right. Just like you’re made of bugs that looks like but isn't a man.
Art: Well, that's the question, isn't it?
Austin: The river is wide, you come to learn, for those of you who have not traveled on it before in some way or other. You know the— again, the boat is like 50 feet wide, which is pretty wide, but the river at places is like two miles wide. It is a drop in the bucket of the river, you know? And it is easy going this first night. You know, the sun begins to set. You put Sapodilla behind you. The world is your oyster here. Also, they have oysters for dinner available.
Dre: Mmm.
Austin: And your basic needs are being met. You know, you need to trade resources to get your Fallout taken care of, but Fallouts— and to reduce Stress, but like, there's meals available. There's a continental breakfast. There's, you know, your basics are being taken care of, so you kind of have some time here to do what you want and take care of whatever you need. So yeah, Chine, you get to hang out that first night, and I'm guessing you're clearing that Nullified Minor Mind, right?
Dre: Yes, yes.
Austin: Which means your domains come back, the ones that you’d previously lost.
Dre: Mm-hmm.
Austin: That's good. Anyone else want to do something before we get to the Bridge Cathedral?
Janine: Um, can I spend this first night writing?
Austin: Yeah. In fact, I kind of imagine you're gonna spend a few nights here writing, you know? On and off— or maybe even days, who knows, right?
Janine: Probably.
Austin: I think it is fair to say, and I'm like...I thought about gamifying this for you and being like, “Oh, we can do a clock and you can slowly make progress.” But I think like, you have two weeks on this ship. You're gonna find the time you need to do this work if you want to spend the time.
Janine: I have also been working on this since our very first downtime.
Austin: Exactly. So I'm not gonna make you roll for it. I think this is the opportunity where it goes from being like a thing that we say you've been doing slowly in the background, to like, you know, the montage of this trip is a lot of you writing things down and like firming things up and finishing this Beat finally.
Janine: Mm-hmm.
Austin: You know? So yeah.
Keith: Yeah, I don’t think anyone's had a Major Beat longer than that
Austin: No, that’s definitely the longest one, for sure. So. So yeah, you absolutely can catalog these exploits for an extended period, either doing it yourself or hiring a bard.
Janine: [quietly] Nice.
Austin: I really want to emphasize that like, it is a nice— this is a nice place to do that work, you know?
Janine: Yeah.
Austin: Assuming that Es— assuming that Es likes being on the water, [laughs softly] but like, needs are being taken care of. You're being treated with respect. You don't feel like you're under threat. You're able to structure your time the way you want to structure your time. Like, all of the things that get in the way are not getting in the way during this trip.
Janine: Mm-hmm.
Austin: So.
Janine: Also, I— this is like a flavor thing. I don't—
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Janine: This isn't an important thing. I want to say that Es like writes a letter to Virtue to be like, Hey, I heard about the queen thing. That sounds really nice. [laughs]
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Janine: I hope it works out for you. I'm gonna miss hanging out.
Sylvia: [touched] Aw.
Janine: Like, it's one of those letters of just like…
Austin: That’s very sweet.
Janine: Hey, you know, if I'm back that— if I'm back in Sapodilla, I'll try and catch ya. Not catch as in apprehend.
Austin: Yeah. [Sylvia laughs]
Janine: Catch as in we can have tea or something.
Austin: Uh huh. Yeah. Great.
Sylvia: Aw, I love that.
Austin: I was gonna say, someone like takes that letter to you and says like, you know, we'll hand it off at the first stop to be delivered. Yeah.
Janine: Nice.
Keith: I'm writing a letter that says, “You are my mortal enemy!” [Austin, Ali, Art, and Janine laugh]
Ali: Uh…
Austin: Ali.
Ali: I just...hi, yeah.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Ali: [laughs] I have specific things that I want to do on specific days, but I just want to characterize this—
Austin: Yes.
Ali: —by showing Marn on the first day like getting a copy of that schedule, very meticulously going through the like entertainment and like circling what she wants to do.
Austin: There's definitely other stuff on this schedule that I've not written down, right? Like, deck games, you know?
Ali: Oh, sure, sure, sure.
Austin: Like, there's definitely, you know, some sort of deck bowling.
Janine: Shuffleboard! [Dre laughs]
Austin: Shuffleboard olympics. You know what I mean? A hundred percent is happening.
Janine: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Art: Big cover artist doing entertainment, you know? Someone who’s...
Janine: Singles mixer! [Ali laughs]
Austin: A hundred percent. All that stuff is happening here.
Ali: Hmm.
Art: Midnight breakfast.
Ali: Ooh!
Austin: Love it. Exactly.
Art: Wait, that might be too sinister.
Austin: No, that sounds delicious. [Ali laughs] I'm starving. I would love to do a midnight breakfast.
Ali: Yeah.
Janine: It says midnight breakfast, and the last item on the menu is scuttling, and I don't know what that means. [Janine and Austin laugh]
Austin: It's fine.
[2:10:00]
Ali: I will say that Marn is probably in the background of other scenes, [Austin laughs] drinking iced tea and translating occultist medical journal. [Jack laughs]
Austin: Yeah, sure, okay.
Jack: Living her best life on a boat. [Ali laughs]
Dre: Mm-hmm.
Keith: I also am putting a pin in “boiler and engine?” as something that I want to do but I don't want to do immediately.
Austin: Yeah, not a day one? Maybe after your hands are healed up.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Yeah, that makes sense.
Jack: Hey, real quick. This is, again, this is a question with hopefully an easy answer. Do we...is the captain present? Have we heard anything from the captain or seen anything of the captain?
Austin: I bet the captain came out that first night, right?
Jack: Okay, right. They’re not like a [ominous] “nobody ask about the captain” type situation. [Keith laughs] You know, from a cursed boat? [Sylvia laughs]
Austin: From a cursed boat.
Dre: Mm-hmm.
Keith: Wanna come on the boat? And by the way, do not ask about the captain.
Jack: Do not.
Dre: Don’t do it.
Jack: The captain’s door says “don't knock” on it.
Austin: I mean, but what if it is one of those situations? [laughs softly] Now you’re talking me into it.
Jack: Well...
Art: Shut up about the captain, everyone.
Keith: Or else.
Austin: Don't worry about the captain.
Jack: You know, there’s like sign on the bridge— there’s like a, the door to the bridge is locked.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: And every night someone goes out and lights a single candle in front of it or whatever.
Austin: Yeah.
Dre: Oh, Slumbous is the captain.
Austin: Slumbous is...yeah, Slumbous.
Jack: Oh! Oh.
Keith: Yeah.
Austin: Slumbous take the wheel. [Sylvia and Dre laugh] I am now leaning in that direction. You know, I think—
Jack: It’s a “don’t ask about the captain” situation?
Austin: It's a “don't worry about the captain” situation. [laughs]
Keith: Don’t worry about the captain.
Austin: Yeah.
Keith: Or else.
Austin: Or else.
Jack: If we—
Austin: Teak—who is the name of that usher who, or the, you know, the person who helped you on board that originally took the coins—is the person who you see for all of your like questions. The first mate of the ship or something, you know?
Jack: Great, great, great. If we stand on the deck and look up at the pilot house, can we see anything through the window?
Austin: It is dark in there now.
Jack: It is dark in there.
Austin: It wasn't gonna be, but it is now.
Jack: Okay.
Janine: We’ve truly learned nothing from the undead pirates.
Austin: This is true. Yeah, uh huh.
Janine: All these years later.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: I just feel that if, you know, following up on Art saying, “I think we might really be in danger.”
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: But don't worry, the captain's fine. Look, he’s here!
Austin: Captain’s fine. Mm-hmm. Teak assures everyone that they're going to have a safe and prosperous journey and if you have any questions to ask the nearest staff member, you know, nearest member of the crew.
Jack: Pickman moves, uh, like a small bookcase or like a small shelf—
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Jack: —over her door in her private room when she goes to bed.
Austin: Ah, to be a paranoid Shape Knight. Hey, is this when the thing happens to your body, your armor?
Jack: Oh.
Austin: Do you wake up the next day?
Jack: Yeah. No, I wake up in the middle of the night.
Austin: Mm.
Jack: I think I'm getting sick. I wake up— you know when you wake up in the middle of the night, and you're like, “Oh, no. I think I'm ill.” I think Pickman just wakes up in like a high fever and, you know, stumbles to the washbasin and, you know, splashes water on their face and seems to be running a pretty high temperature. And when they look down at their their forearm, there's just...it seems like there's like a small piece of metal moving under it, because the iron worm parasite that was in my gun is spreading.
Austin: Oh, okay. Into you?
Jack: Into my armor.
Austin: Mm, I see.
Jack: I think it's spreading. I think it is— it parasites metal.
Austin: Right.
Jack: I don't know that it...I think it views Pickman as sort of like the thing that moves the armor around. And in the same— in much the same way that, you know, you know when you're coming down with a cold or something and you get really— you exert yourself during the day, you work a little too hard on a thing.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Jack: And your exhaustion means that the illness takes hold more quickly.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Jack: Something about what we have done in Sapodilla and the way that the trains are now able to move more freely around Sapodilla—
Austin: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Jack: —has sort of wormed the condition around such that it's easier for the iron worm in the gun to to make a nest in Pickman's armor. The good news, though, is that now I have the Discern skill. [Austin laughs] And if one of my senses becomes damaged or unusable, you can replace it with the weird echoes— the book says the weird echoes that shudder through your exposed blood. It's not perfect, but it'll do. But I think in Pickman's case it's that Pickman's armor with the iron worm in it is now resonant with the Shape in a way that it wasn't before.
Austin: Mm, mm-hmm.
Jack: But Pickman just has a...the way it's manifesting now is just like Pickman has the flu.
Austin: Incredible.
Jack: In a ship's cabin. Just awful fever dreams all night.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Keith: If you're saying the— so the way this works is if you lose your sense of smell you can smell through your parasite armor?
Jack: The Shape— yeah, I can— that sense will be temporarily replaced by sort of like using my armor as a...as its own sensory organ, I suppose?
Keith: Sure.
Jack: You know when you, uh…
Dre: Mm-hmm.
Jack: You know, you see the tracks vibrating as the train moves down the line?
Austin: Right, right.
Keith: Uh huh.
Jack: It’s those kinds of senses.
Austin: Mm.
Jack: Just having a bad time on the boat.
Austin: Fantastic.
Jack: And I think this also retroactively explains part of Pickman's shortness with Hazard as well. [laughs softly]
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: With Hazard and Lye, where it's just like, they could feel the illness. They could feel the flu beginning, and, you know, they were like, why was I acting like that? And it's like, oh, you're sick.
Austin: That's why. Yeah. All right. Anyone want to do anything else before we get to this bridge? I guess the false war tournament begins. [laughs softly] Which sounds like—
Keith: Sign me up.
Austin: Yeah, it sounds like you want to go.
Keith: What is the— what's the prize?
Austin: All the winnings, it says. Winner takes all.
Keith: Winner takes all. All of...
Austin: You gotta bet something, right? There's gotta be a D2 or a D4 to get in the bet, to get in the tournament, probably.
Keith: Okay.
Austin: And then the prize is like a D12 false war prize. True false war tournament.
Jack: It's a Marrisa Lefebvre book. [Austin, Jack, and Dre laugh]
Austin: It's not. But it's something— it has to be something remarkable, right? It has to be something from the Sleeping City. I'll think about it. I don't know what the prize is yet, but it's...it's something great. [Sylvia laughs]
Keith: God, this is gonna be sick.
Sylvia: That's just all it says on the flyer is “It's cool, we swear!” [Dre laughs]
Austin: Uh huh.
Keith: Mystery prize.
Austin: Well, it says— I mean, the flyer says “winner takes all,” so I mean…
Sylvia: That's fair, yeah.
Austin: You know.
Jack: Don’t ask about the captain.
Austin: Don't ask about the captain.
Sylvia: [laughs] Every official piece of any like advertising anything has “don't ask about the captain” in very small print somewhere on it.
Austin: [overlapping] Don’t ask about the captain, please. Yeah.
Janine: Winner has to be the captain during the scuttling.
Austin: Uh huh.
Jack: [laughs] Oh no.
Sylvia: Winner take all, including the boat.
Austin: Including the boat! Boat’s yours. Do you want to not scuttle it? Maybe it's yours. Maybe it's the boat. That's fun.
Dre: Now we’re talking. [Sylvia laughs] Now, okay.
Austin: Maybe it’s the boat. I don't know. Anyway, yeah, you gotta buy your way in with at least a D2 resource. I know some people still have some D2s kicking around. And then I think it's just some sort of roll, right? At each stage, you gotta get a success to stay in.
Keith: Nice.
Austin: The loss is that you lose the thing that you’ve put in, you know? [Jack laughs]
Keith: I'm glad I do, I do actually still have a D2. Look at that.
Austin: You have this inaccurate map of the Heart, right?
Keith: Yeah. Yep.
Austin: [laughs] Which is extremely funny.
Jack: On the boat, trading some… [Keith laughs]
Austin: Just, yeah, the cashier being like:
Austin (as cashier): Well, this map’s no good, but I guess the parchment, you could write on it.
Keith (as Lyke): No, no, the map’s good. The map’s good.
Austin (as cashier): It's not. It's not. [Sylvia laughs]
Keith (as Lyke): It is! It’s good. There's a lot of useful stuff on there. It's just not all useful.
Austin (as cashier): I mean, this river isn't on this map. We're on the river. Not on the map.
Keith (as Lyke): Just draw it on. Just draw it on.
Austin (as cashier): [mumbling] Okay, I'll draw it on. Anyway, here's your entry ticket.
Art: Uh, they making change?
Austin: Making change? Yeah, what do you need? What do you got?
Art: I guess they're just giving currency and then they’re...
Austin: Yeah, but…
Art: I don't think a person with a fascination luck could turn down a card tournament.
Austin: Oh, you're right. I agree with that. Yeah, agreed.
Jack: Huh.
Austin: Anyway, what do you need? What do you need me to cash for ya?
Art: I’ll count— I’ll trade in the carapaces.
Austin: Ew.
Art: My D8 cara— carapi?
Austin: Carapi.
Art: Carapaces. Carapaces must be right, yeah.
Austin: Sure. So I guess what you'll take back is D6 Sleeping City currency.
Art: D6 coins.
Austin: Coins, yeah, 'cause the missing D2 will have gone into the…
Keith: Carapode.
Austin: Uh…
Art: Is that right?
Austin: That's wrong.
Keith: [clicks tongue] I don't know. [Art laughs] I don't know where that word comes from, so I don't know what...
Austin: Yeah, which thing it would become, yeah.
Jack: Oh, fine. I'll...
Austin: It's carapaces.
Jack: Just Pickman sweating horribly, [laughs softly] emerges from her room.
Austin: Ugh.
Jack: To go to the cashier's desk. I'm gonna give you this charged wicker finger. It's Occult D4.
Austin (as cashier): You doing okay there, pal?
Jack (as Pickman): I think I’m sick.
Austin (as cashier): You shouldn't...you should not be in public.
Jack (as Pickman): Yeah, go fuck yourself. Give me a coin. [Jack and Ausin laugh softly]
Austin (as cashier): All right. That's a little rude. You know, it’s...we’re all doing our best out here, pal.
Austin: Slides a coin over to you.
Jack (as Pickman): I'm sorry. I don't know why I said that.
Jack: Picks up the coin, turns around, [laughs softly] and goes back to her room.
Austin (as cashier): [confused] Okay.
Austin: Yikes.
Sylvia: I'm kind of under the assumption that I'd be helping run this.
Austin: Yeah, I think you're running it.
Sylvia: Yeah.
Austin: I think you're dealing in it, you know? So you don’t get to…
Sylvia: Yeah, that makes sense.
Austin: Yeah. A different— if this was a Bluff City game, you would also now have already gotten into cahoots with another player to try to cheat them into win.
Sylvia: Oh, for sure.
Austin: But maybe the cursed boat—
Sylvia: Listen, if I knew these guys better...
Austin: Yeah, fair.
Sylvia: Maybe it wouldn’t even need to be a Bluff City game. [Sylvia and Austin laugh softly]
Austin: Yeah, all right. So I guess round one—
Jack: Wait.
Austin: Yeah?
Jack: Is anybody else playing?
Austin: It doesn't sound like Es or Marn are interested.
[2:20:00]
Dre: No, Chine’s not playing.
Janine: I'm writing the great Sangfielle novel right now.
Austin: Right, yeah.
Jack: I didn't know if Marn, sipping mint julep [Austin laughs] or whatever, was like…
Austin: It was iced tea.
Janine: Marn and me are coworking buddies right now. [laughs]
Austin: [laughs] Yes. You set up a coworking—
Janine: We take turns getting the drinks.
Austin: Yeah. That's very cute. I love that. Y'all can be on that open deck, you know, when the sun is out and...ah.
Janine: Gotta have a view of the water, you know?
Ali: Mm.
Austin: Yeah, yeah.
Janine: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Austin: I love that. Do your morning aerobics out there, and then…
Janine: Sharing an inkwell. [Ali giggles]
Austin: Yeah, exactly.
Jack: Oh my god.
Austin: Ah.
Ali: Yeah, I think translating a divine slash evil language is time consuming.
Austin: Uh huh.
Ali: So...
Austin: No to the card tournament, unfortunately.
Jack: Marn, you could win a boat! Maybe.
Austin: [laughs] We're not sure what the prize is.
Ali (as Marn): I don’t need a boat.
Sylvia: Picturing a very sweaty, feverish Pickman being like, “Marn! You could win a boat!” [all laugh]
Austin: This is extremely Always Sunny in Philadelphia vibes to me. [laughter continues]
Sylvia: That's— oh my god.
Austin: Ah.
Sylvia: Just a Charlie Day Danny DeVito scene.
Austin: It really is. [Ali laughs]
Sylvia: [laughing] I mean, Marn’s canonically Italian. [several people laugh]
Art: But the character Frank is not, I think is important to…
Sylvia: Ah, damn. Okay.
Austin: Boo!
Ali: That’s— Danny DeVito could wear a little silk shirt.
Sylvia: Oh, he should.
Ali: You know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Art: And certainly has.
Jack: Oh my god.
Austin: Abs—
Keith: Oh yeah, definitely has. [Ali laughs] In that show.
Austin: Ahh.
Jack: Do you think we could get him for the adaptation?
Austin: You know? [Sylvia laughs] Maybe.
Keith: Yes.
Ali: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Keith: I think DeVito’s getable.
Art: He picks weird projects.
Austin: I think, yeah, of all the celebrities, I think DeVito might be the closest. Anyway. Who wants to roll dice to see if they win at cards? We could also play cards, but that's a whole thing. You know?
Jack: Takes time.
Austin: It does. If there was like a website—
Jack: I mean, maybe we should play the final round or something.
Austin: Yeah, maybe. Well, but that's...but that's true false war. That takes forever.
Jack: Oh, yeah, true. Okay, well, I'm gonna roll. What am I rolling, Austin?
Austin: What do you want to roll? I don't know. What do you want to roll to win? To play?
Jack: Well, I get Mastery. Um...
Austin: You get Mastery. But what's the...I think this is a Haven domain, probably. And then you tell me. Is it Discern? Is it Compel? Is it Sneak if you're cheating? [laughs] I think it's Compel if you're like bluffing, right? And there's bluffing in this game, right? ‘Cause you could be like, you could put your fourth card on—
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: —a place to try to trick your opponent into putting their fourth card on a certain place, you know?
Jack: Okay, I'm gonna roll Compel Haven. [laughs softly]
Austin: Uh huh.
Jack: Pickman does not have Haven, but I do have Mastery, so this is two D6. I'm rolling Compel—
Austin: Three D6, three D— or, three D10, not...yeah, three D10, Jack. This is a D10 system.
Jack: We roll D10 in this game? You're right. We do roll D10 in this game.
Austin: Oh my god. [Keith and Ali laugh] It’s been a long time since that— yeah, since we’ve played, I guess.
Keith: To be fair, we do— we roll a lot of different, sometimes. We roll a lot of based on what equipment we have.
Austin: That’s for damage. Yeah.
Jack: I literally just rolled a D10.
Austin: But yeah, to succeed, we always roll D10s. To see if we do the thing, it's always a D—
Jack: I don't know what the hell’s happening.
Austin: It’s always a set of D10s. Also, you get a D10 for free at the start, so that's why it’s three and not...
Jack: Oh yeah, three D10, yeah. You're right.
Austin: Not two, yeah.
Jack: Um...I think it's Compel, because Pickman is playing a very complicated bluffing game, with a high fever, that she does not understand.
Austin: Uh huh. Great. Good. Hey, that's a nine.
Jack: [laughs softly] That’s a nine.
Austin: A nine is success. You're still in. All right, who else is playing? It's Duvall and it's, uh, Lyke, right?
Keith: Yep. Yep.
Austin: What are y'all rolling?
Keith: I want to roll Discern Haven.
Austin: Yeah. All right, let's do it.
Keith: This is a very— I'm playing a very analytical game here.
Austin: Yeah, exactly.
Ali: Mm.
Austin: Yes, absolutely.
Jack: Mm. [chuckles]
Austin: Thinking about, you know. The thing is that the way I've described it is you're shuffling cards between every round, so it's not like you're counting cards necessarily. I guess you're...you could theoretically count based on what you have in your hand, but...it does change the odds, but not by a ton.
Jack: Sort of like a liar dice type situation.
Austin: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, let’s see—
Art: You're describing less counting cards and more counting. [Keith and Jack laugh]
Austin: Period. Just counting. Yeah, uh huh. [laughs]
Keith: Yes, I've decided to count my cards. [Austin and Keith laugh]
Austin: Alright, so give me your Discern Haven. Did you get Haven? Wait, I thought— I didn't know you had Haven. Do you have Haven?
Keith: Yeah, I have Haven.
Austin: Okay.
Keith: Yeah. I got Haven a few…
Austin: Oh, right, from Frontier Etiquette.
Keith: Yep.
Austin: Right, yes. Yes, yes, yes.
Keith: Ten.
Austin: Unbelievable.
Keith: Yep.
Austin: People are cheer— you did the thing.
Keith: Yeah, I counted my cards so good.
Austin: You did the wild comeback that seems impossible, somehow. I don't know how it was comeback, given it wasn’t—
Keith: Oh, I fought my way back from one from my last hand?
Austin: The thing is, you can’t, ‘cause it's not false— it's not false— it's not true false war.
Keith: It’s not true, true false war.
Austin: So, I guess you can't do that. But it is some sort of remarkable set of plays or set of wins in a row. Where you maybe just crush it, you know? You're just…
Keith: Yeah. Yeah.
Austin: You get higher placement. I think with a ten, you go ahead and you keep that plus one forward. Whereas, Jack you’ve now used your plus one forward on this.
Jack: Oh, shit.
Austin: Lyke, you get to keep it with a ten. Duvall.
Art: Um…
Austin: What do you— how’re you playing? How's Duvall playing false war?
Art: [laughs softly] I'd like to roll—and I have a backup on this—but I'd like to roll Delve Occult, as I am trying to just ride luck. I'm like…
Austin: Oh, you're—
Art: Throwing out cards I'm not looking at. This is—
Keith: This is a religious experiment for you. [Jack laughs]
Art: This is a journey [Ali laughs] through the channels of luck.
Austin: I love this. I did not suggest you could use Occult, because if I had, I think I would’ve— oh, I guess, Jack, you don't have Occult or Pickman doesn't have Occult anyway.
Jack: Mm-mm.
Austin: But like, if you're doing it, you are...it's funny, because it's luck, but it's also you putting your finger— it’s you putting your thumb on the scale, ‘cause you're rolling Occult instead of Haven which you don't have. So, is it luck? [laughs] Or is this Duvall exerting...like literally formally speaking, DuVall is exerting Occult pressure on this roll in a way that makes it not just luck, which is fun. So go ahead and roll it. [brief pause] Very funny that it blew up in your face and you failed.
Art: Didn’t work. [Jack and Keith laugh]
Austin: Yeah, uh huh.
Keith: The Lyke ten, Duvall fail is...
Austin: It's classic. That’s Sangfielle right there, baby.
Keith: It’s classic Sangfielle. [Ali laughs]
Austin: Yeah. So yeah, Duvall, uh, it doesn't work out for you.
Art: Well, maybe looking at the cards is important.
Austin: It turns out you should probably look at the cards, instead of just placing them face— you get dealt them, and you're like, I don't need to look at them. You just placed them facedown straight away, you know? [laughs softly]
Art: Yeah, just place it face down. I mean, left to right.
Austin: Yeah.
Art: And then I take the fourth one, and I've just sort of been…
Austin: Putting iit—
Art: Chucking it, you know?
Austin: Yeah, just chucking it where it goes. [Austin and Keith laugh] And it’s just, you keep losing things you could have clearly won. [Keith continues laughing] Do you know what I mean? It’s like, your numbers are just better in every case. And you're just...you know, you'll draw a ten, and it's like, well, you don't need to put your bonus fourth card on top of that ten. But you do anyway.
Art: Only if you look at the ten is that even important.
Austin: But only if you've looked at the ten. Exactly. [Austin and Ali laugh softly] You should be using your bonus card to shore up a week number or something.
Keith: People are watching this, right? So they’re just like, “What is he doing?!” [laughs]
Austin: Yes! Why is he doing this?
Art: Not paying attention, looking at other things.
Keith: Is he mad at someone? Did he not want to play? Like...
Austin: [laughs] Is this a political statement? What's going on? [Keith laughs]
Art: Afterwards, several people come up and ask: am I okay? Is this a cry for help? Is there like a...
Austin: [laughs] Yes. You’ve convinced at least two people that you're onto something somehow, even though you've lost miserably. It’s like, well, there must be something. There must be some, you know, some chance that this would have worked out in his favor. Who could say? He kept doing it even after he was losing!
Art: And there’s people like, that person's clearly been kidnapped. [Keith laughs] And is trying to signal somehow. [Art, Austin, and Ali laugh]
Austin: All right. We'll check back in with this, maybe at the end of the first week. I think there’s probably three rounds. There’s this first one. There's one the night...maybe the night before? the night after the Broken Quartet. And then a final night before, you know, where I’ve marked it, the false war finals. So. I'll update the schedule to say when Round two is. But then, yeah.
Art: Now, wait. Is the false war finals and the true— oh, the false war finals are in the true false war format.
Austin: In the true false war format.
Art: Okay, got it.
Austin: Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Art: It's not the false war finals end and then some sort of bonus true false war event.
Austin: [laughs softly] Event.
Art: Kicks off.
Austin: Side— yeah, uh huh. I think you could probably—
Art: You're describing the utter length of this event.
Austin: Oh, yeah. It's a long one. It's a long one. [typing] Day eight, uh, false war tournament round two. Okay. Or, you know, I imagine it's ongoing every night, but for our...that's when we'll do the roll on that, you know? If there's no other objections, y'all arrive at the Bridge Cathedral here. It's day three. And let's say, Marn and Es, y'all are the ones who are out on that open deck. You're eating your breakfast. You're getting ready to dive into your work for the day. And in the distance, you see the Bridge Cathedral, named such because it is both a bridge and a cathedral. It is black, and it is just, you know, launching smoke into the air. Pyres of fire are lit across it like smokestacks. This is a cathedral of the Triadic Pyre, a religion we have perhaps not seen in quite some time, but you may recall has some some hold in Blackwick.
Jack: Yeah, fucking assholes in Blackwick.
Austin: If you say so. Pickman, you maybe, given your connection to trains, already know what this is. You may recall that this is a big river, two miles across. And it turns out even the best of the trains need a way to cross that two miles of water by either going under it or I guess through it or over it. For the train that the Triadic Pyre worships as one of their three key deities, the Fire Alight, also known as...uh, let's see here. What have I written down here? The burning god among iron trains. It uses this cathedral to cross the river. And as you approach it, the water around you begins to boil. The ship seems okay with that for now, though it creaks under the increased heat pressure, and makes gesture to pull into port here, underneath this vast bridge of metal and wood that, you know, shakes maybe as you approach it, as a smaller non-god train passes across the tracks.
[Music plays: “Sangfielle”]