Transcriber: Kārlis (@townout on Twitter)
Art: I had like— I remember having ideas of what all these words meant last time and now, of course, I don’t—
Austin: Wait, no, Art, you should have a document saved? With— they all have specific things. It’s not ideas. [chuckles] You should both have a document with your notes of what each of those words means [chuckles]—
Jack: Yeah, I’m looking at my document!
Austin: You had very [laughing] complex ones, Art. Like—
Jack: Really complex ones. One was like, “The feeling of turning away from God.”
Austin: Right!
Art: Yeah!
Austin: Yeah. Whereas Jack and I both, I think, kind of just went like, “Oh, what’s this word mean?”
Jack: Yeah…
Austin: You had entire narrative structures around your words!
Jack: What do you take notes in?
Art: Probably must be a Google Doc? When did we do this?
Austin: Forever ago.
Jack: Oh-kay, but it wouldn’t be in our Scratch doc—
Austin: No, they were secret.
Jack: —because we were keeping them secret. This is an interesting new difficulty twist that I was not anticipating.
Austin: No…
Jack: Do you have like, do you keep personal Google Docs, Art?
Art: Yeah, um, but it’s not…
Austin: You should search for the word.
Jack: You want to do a search for one of the magic words.
Austin: Yeah, that’s what you got to do.
Art: Um…
Austin: What was the word that was, um, the Emerald—?
Art: It’s not here…
Austin: Do a search for “Emerald.” Do a search for “Emerald.”
Art: I mean it— but it’s— I’m looking at my Google Docs and…
Jack: [chuckles] Do a search for “Dragon.”
Austin: Do a s— [chuckles] Yeah, do a search for a “Dragon stuck in an emerald”.
[Jack laughs]
Art: Um… Oh, maybe it’s, maybe it’s here?
[Austin laughs]
Art: No…
Austin: Uh, we have to bake this in, if this goes bad.
Art: Um…
Jack: Yeah, it’s like—
Art: It might just be on my— I might have just made a document here on the?
Austin: Hey, can you all like give me like one second real quick?
Welcome to Live at the Table, [laughing] an actual play livestream, for which I almost didn’t do the intro. I’m your host Austin Walker. Joining me today, Jack de Quidt.
Jack: Hi—
Austin: Art Martinez-Tebbel—
Jack: You can find me on Twitter @notquitereal.
Austin: Sorry, I didn’t mean to step on—
Art: (cross) You can find me on… Twitter @atebbel and frantically searching for documents in my house right now!
Austin: In person— Just looking around under the pillows…
Art: If you haven’t already found me doing that, you’ve missed it.
Austin: Right. Well, maybe! I think that’ll— I think I’m just gonna leave all that in. I think we’re going to come in after the clap. That okay—
Art: Well, I mean like literally. Even if, when they heard this, they were in my house, looking at my desk, I wouldn’t be doing it then…
Austin: I see, I see. I see. Yeah, I don’t know what happened to that document of magic words. I certainly… Though I play a word thief—?
Art: I’m checking the Notes app on my phone?
Austin: Now, that seems likely to me! That seems like the thing that—
Art: Here it is, yep!
Jack: Yes!
Austin: —Eze Ki’el may have done. There we are. There we are.
Art: But I don’t have enough?
Austin: What?
Art: I have two of these—
Austin: Oh, you maybe— some of those are words that were gifts to you. What are the words you don’t have?
Art: Oh… See, I don’t— I don’t remember my gift words.
Austin: Right, yeah, but we do. Because we wrote them. [laughs]
Jack: Well, we can tell you. [laughs]
Art: Oh… Okay.
Austin: What words are your gift words?
Art: I only have one gift word.
Austin: Which is?
Art: Well, I don’t know how we pronounced it the last time.
Austin: Well, just go for it!
Art: I have— Ezer /ˈɛzər/? Or maybe Ezer /izər/? Or maybe—
Austin: That’s Ezer /ɛˈzɛər/, ascended spirit.
Art: Ezer…
Austin: Which was sort of like your, your dragon emerald. Except real. Except I really had it. I really had some sort of—
Jack: It was a ruby, that made a—
Austin: It was a ruby!
Jack: —like a spirit that was trapped in the ruby.
Austin: Yes.
Jack: Come out of it.
Austin: Yes. And then—
Art: Sacred gem, parentheses, ruby.
Austin: Ruby— not sacred, probably, probably profane.
Jack: Probably profane [chuckles].
[Austin chuckles]
Jack: Used to have a spirit in it.
Austin: Used to have a spirit. I released the spirit? Is that what I did?
Jack: I think so! When we were trying to escape from the Pope!
Austin: Estecar, here— Well, yeah, here we are. Here we are. Here’s where we’re at. We’re playing Spoken Magic today. We’re picking up our game of Spoken Magic by Dylan Grinder. And Jack, thankfully, put together a little breakdown of who we are, what we’ve been through. Can we just start by reading through this so that we’re up to date? Can we use that—?
Jack: Sure! [chuckles] Like a recap episode? A really quick.
Austin: A really quick recap! Yeah! Because I think it’s important to be on the same page here.
Jack: Absolutely!
Austin: Art, do you want to name your character, explain what your words are and give us your three kind of high-level pieces of information?
[pause]
Art: Yes.
Austin: [smiling] Do you have this document open?
Art: Yeah, but I was in the middle of typing something in a more secret place.
Austin: Ooh…
Art: It’s not secret to you.
Jack: No, we both know what it is. It is secret to the viewers.
Austin: Oh, this is very cool!
Art: Yeah, secret to the viewers, don’t look at it!
Austin: I did! But I didn’t look at it on stream.
Jack: I also looked at it. We can’t— we cannot respond to it. [laughs]
Austin: Oh, has Jack seen the other thing? Jack hasn’t seen the other thing.
Art: I don’t even know you’re talking— I mean, I know there’s things Jack hasn’t seen.
Austin: The other ones!
Art: Oh you mean the— You mean the thing.
Austin: The thi— well, there’s like—
Art: The—
Austin: —two other things but the one thing I feel like is there.
Art: Capital “The”, capital “Thing.”
Austin: Capital “Thing.”
Jack: [chuckles] John Carpenter’s capital “The”, capital “Thing”.
Austin: Capital “Thing.” Here, let me just… let me just send these on over to Jack really quick. I have to be very careful about this. I gotta be—
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: I’m gonna open up a new browser over here, so that that’s where, okay! Alright—
Art: I mean, it’s not the end of the world if this sneaks into the—
Jack: This is bad radio, but it is very enjoyable for us.
[Art chuckles]
Austin: Oh, I love it. I’m having a good time. All right, I’m gonna hit Open Original and hope it doesn’t fuck me over! All right, it doesn’t. So Jack, let’s say, let’s say that this… Let’s say… Heads or tails. Let’s go heads or— heads or tails first, Jack.
Jack: Heads, heads.
Austin: Heads. I see. I see, I see. I’m gonna have to come back over here and scroll down a little bit.
Jack: Heads or snails, Griftlands [chuckles] edition!
Austin: God, I love that game. So let’s call this… Let’s call this, this is all— I’m going to cut all this out of the… One second—
Jack: Mm-hmm. (claps and chuckles)
Austin: We’ll do a second clap here. So here’s heads. And then, let me show you, let me show you tails.
Jack: YOO [chuckles].
Austin: That’ll start to come together a little bit. This is a tease. I know we’re teasing but. And then here’s Tails. Prower. We got to deal with [laughs] Sonic the Hedgehog, everybody!
Jack: Oh, wow. At last! I know Keith’s being trying for a while.
Austin: For a while. Uhh.
Jack: YO!
Austin: [laughing] Yeah, it’s sick!
[Art laughs]
Jack: Oh, this is great!
Austin: So then, yeah, then imagine those in the following configuration… Let’s open these up over here. And this is— these are not, these are obviously mock ups. This is obviously just a little Photoshop work! Oh, you know it is. Jack just asked me a question about something and I— Yes, it is. Look at this fucking setup, isn’t this gonna be dope?
Jack: Yeah. This is great! This is excellent.
Austin: This is so good! I can’t wait for people to see the shit we’re teasing. Alright.
Jack: Fantastic!
Art: Follow @friends_table on Twitter!
Austin: Yeah, uh-huh!
Jack: Ugh, it’s so good.
Art: Your first place to find out what the hell we’re talking about. Whenever the hell we can talk about it.
Austin: Oh, but it’s (long chef’s kiss). I love it. Anyway! [laughs] We are not buying the college.
Art: We— It is not that we found $3.2 million.
Jack: Million dollars.
Art: With which was to make the minimum bid [laughing] on the college.
Austin: What if we made the minimum bid and also—
Jack: We cannot run a college, is the thing.
Austin: Why? Why.
Jack: We don’t have any of the skills necessary to manage a property on that scale.
Austin: Mmmm… I’ll teach a couple classes—
Art: My wife has a doctorate.
Austin: Yeah, listen, we can pull it together, I’ll do— I can do some ad— adjuncture. Katie could kick in!
Jack: What keeps the lights on? [chuckles]
Austin: Friends at the Table!
Art: (laughing) It’s says on the listing, public utilities.
Jack: [chuckles] Okay.
Austin: The Friends at the Table Autonomous Zone starts now! Um. We’re keeping the autonomous zone—
Jack: FTAZ?
Austin: [laughs] Yeah, the FATTAZ. [laughing] Oh no, that’s a crossover! Unfortunately, we can’t call something FATTAZ, otherwise I think that that’s just, that’s just an Adventure Zone crossover. All right. So I guess we have to be the— It can’t be the FATTOP either, [chuckles] because that just sounds like “Fat Top”. Which—
Jack: What if it’s… Unless we want to go for… Occupied— What did they call it?
Austin: That’s the Occupied, uh…
Jack: Project? The… It was CHOP, right?
Austin: Yeah, CHOP, the Capitol Hill Occup— this is what I get for not being from Seattle. Uh, Occupied Protest.
Jack: Ohhh, okay.
Austin: Don’t love it as much, I’ll be honest. I understand it! I understand why—
Jack: I’ve heard good arguments either way [chuckles]—
Austin: Me too—
Jack: But it’s less good than CHAZ.
Austin: CHAZ is great, to me.
Art: We could— we could be the Table Friends… Autonomous Zone.
Austin: The T-FAZ—
Art: TFAZ…
Austin: TFAZ. TFAZ, that’s not bad! TFAZ. Yeah! Anyway.
Jack: Anyway!
Art: Autonomous Zone at the Table is very good.
Austin: Autonomous Zone at the Table’s— yeah.
Art: Thanks, Morgan.
Austin: Friends at the Autonomous Zone. Um. All right.
Art: Eze Ki’el is my character. That’s right, right? That’s the right pronunciation on that?
Austin: You nailed it.
Jack: Yeah!
Art: Yeah.
Jack: I think so! We get to decide.
[Austin chuckles]
Art: Well, to be consistent, unlike that time that Austin I forgot the melody for all our songs—
Austin: Mm-hmm!
[Jack chuckles]
Art: —in between recordings, [laughing] and then just did Enya for an entire episode.
Austin: [smiling] Don’t even worry about it!
Art: Eze Ki’el is he/him pronouns. My words are profane. Eze Ki’el abandoned formal instruction, is against the Church of Magic and their mystical Pope. Because I cannot get away from this particular brand of bullshit, it seems.
(Austin and Jack chuckle)
Art: And is descended from the Lords of the Leopards. Is a leopard. Wears pants like this.
Austin: Ah! Okay, I see.
Art: That’s the problem, I don’t remember which way we decided that the pants went [laughs].
Jack: It’s like, around the waist. So if, if he was standing upright like a human, he would be wearing pants like a human.
Austin: I see.
Art: Okay, that— that’s the correct way.
Austin: Uh-huh. We can’t.
[Art chuckles]
Jack: I’m playing Baron Domenico Smokeacre? His pronouns are he/him. My words are restorative. I killed the previous Baroness of Smokeacre. I desperately wish for a word “Relbore” to reverse the direction of a rive, to allow the daisy fields of my, of Smokeacre to flourish again. And I attempted and failed to invade the jungle of the Panther Queen, which is why I ended up in the jungle at the start of the story.
Austin: I see.
Austin (as Estecar): (mysterious voice) Well, I am, of course, Estecar. The Maverick Resplendent. My pronouns are they/them. I encourage you to respect them. My words are stolen. At least that’s what they say. I think I simply came about— which word is not stolen? I might ask. Did you not steal your words as a babe in the crib? Those were not gifts to you.
(Jack and Art laugh)
Austin (as Estecar): I’m wanted across the world for word theft. 70 townships, three empires.
Austin: That’s not right.
Austin (as Estecar): 70 states. 70 states [chuckles]. Let it be known. Only two townships want me for word theft.
(laughter in the background)
Austin (as Estecar): 70 states, three empires and, of course, I am deeply wanted by my parents who miss me very much. I travel daily, I don’t like to stay in the same place for more than 24 hours. And I was actually born in the jungles of the Panther Queen! Not a great scene.
(Jack and Art laugh quietly)
Austin: The Jungle of the Panther Queen, or the Panther Queen, of course, is named El’en [pron. Ellenne]? Or El’en [pron. Ellen] [chuckles]. Who I’ve written— we’ve written out here, “Now following us forever! Locked her gaze on us.” Which is great. Love to be gazed at by the angry Panther Queen. Other notes here, “The Crystalline, which were like, which were like leopards with head blades, [laughs] and long clothes, I guess?
Jack: Uh-huh, yeah! Uh-huh!
Austin: We dealt with the Exiled Dukes of the Shores of Terror. Including— excuse me, including Lady Draco, the beheaded Lich. And then, and then let’s just— the quick beats here. Uh… Domain— I’ll go through the Domain of the Panther Queen and I’ll hand it off.
Domain of the Panther Queen, our home. Which is strange because, though I was born there, I also seem to be the only— That’s not true. I guess it’s also very clearly Art’s home, right? Eze Ki’el is literally descended from the Lords of the Leopards.
Art: Mm-hmm.
Austin: So you have the the greatest, easiest claim of being from the leopard, the leopard place, being a leopard. Smokeacre—
Art: Well, the panther place, being a leopard.
Austin: Wait, what? Oh, you—
Art: It’s the domain—
Jack: Eze Ki’el is a panther.
Austin: Is a panther!
Jack: Sorry, Eze Ki’el is a leopard in the panther—
Art: Leopard.
Austin: Is a leopard… I—
Jack: Though panthers and leopards are the same animal. A black leopard is called a panther [laughs].
[Art laughs]
Jack: [chuckles] And a spotted panther is called a leopard.
Austin: Of course!
Art: All cats are one animal.
Austin: All cats are one animal. Yeah, this is. This is true.
Art: Literally one animal.
Austin: Uh-huh!
Art: You’ve never seen more than one cat at the same time.
[Jack laughs]
Art: Every time you thought you have, it’s been a trick.
Austin: Wait, here’s a thing. Jack, you know you’re right, right? This is true. The thing you just said is a hundred percent true.
Jack: Oh, wait, really? I just did a— I was just doing a stupid joke [laughs].
Austin: “Leopards and jaguars that are melanistic are known as Black Panthers.”
Jack: Fuck off! That’s not true [chuckles].
Austin: So I guess— Yeah. Uh-huh. “A Black Panther is the melanistic colour variant of any Panthera, particularly the leopard [chuckles], in Asia and Africa, and the Jaguar in the Americas.”
Art: Wait—
Jack: That’s amazing!
Art: Is this like a bucket thing? Are all— are all leopards panthers, are all panthers leopards?
Austin: No. All panthers are either leopards or jaguars.
Jack: God, [laughing] nature is so fucking stupid.
[Art laughs]
Austin: We just say “panther”… We just say “panther”. Even though it refers to two [chuckles] different types of animal, two different species.
[Jack laughs]
Art: [smiling] Is this scientists fucking up? Is that what this?
Austin: Art, can I tell you? It always is. Scientists don’t give a fuck.
[Art laughs]
Jack: Especially not Linnaeus!
Austin: Yeah, can I tell you who apparently described the first, European description—
Jack: Was it Pliny?
Austin: No, no. This is, this is. In 1788, Jean-Claude Delamétherie— De— mm, moving on!
Art: Oh my God.
Austin: Described a black leopard that was kept in the Tower of London and had been brought from Bengal. Classic! Love it. I love that fucking French dudes hanging out in the Tower of London get to be the ones who determine what animals are.
Jack: (with a French accent) Like what is that cat? That’s a panther, I think!
Austin: That’s a panther, I believe! Oh my God.
Art: That guy’s not a scientist, right?
Austin: That guy was, in fact, a French mineralogist, geologist and palaeontologist.
Jack: So yes.
Art: Mm. I’m gonna tell you, when you started, I thought you’re gonna say Teddy Roosevelt for some reason.
Austin: Oh that would be—
Art: I thought it was gonna be Teddy Roosevelt [chuckles].
Austin: Yeah. Uh-huh. Anyway, we should stay on route. I’m glad we have the energy, we have the Live at the Table energy right now, which is good.
Jack: Oh, yeah!
Austin: Let me continue here, now that I remember the difference between panthers and leopards, [chuckles] which is to say there is very little. [chuckles]
[Art chuckles]
Austin: “The domain of the Panther Queen is our home. Eze Ki’el has a distant history with the Panther Queen in his family,” I’d forgotten that note! Smokeacre tried and failed to invade and is stuck here or was stuck there, until now. And Estacar, the Maverick Resplendent is secretly from here and has been trying to get away.
Next up, we had the Crystalline Forest!
Art: Um, I’ll go. “Reflections everywhere that reveal your past.” I remember that, that was awesome.
Austin: Yeah!
Art: “Estecar doesn’t want to reveal their past so suggests everybody close their eyes until night. Everybody recommends (sneezes) each other their tailor.” I think this is when we got into the pants discussion?
Austin: Yeah, that sounds right.
Art: “Estecar tries to make a bargain with the Sun so it would be nighttime.” The Sun’s assistant, as we all know, the Moon…”
Austin: [smiling] Uh-huh.
Art: “Reveals it’ll be five times the Sun hotness the day after we get through. The wizards cast a spell to create five smaller suns, rather than one big sun five times as powerful.” Wouldn’t those five individual suns [laughing] be the power of the regular sun?
[Austin laughs]
Jack: No. No! [smiling] Apparently not.
Austin (as Estecar): Exponential… Other words I’m not familiar with.
Art: And, but instead of getting a day, they only get a very long morning, so they have to move quickly.
Austin: Ah. Jack, would you like to cont—
Jack: They arrive at the Shores of Terror, which is a very frightening coastline. Shipwrecks, drowning men, sea serpents. Estecar has, quote, “Never been afraid”. [laughs] The group has to pass through a castle owned by people the Baron exiled. The Baron exiled—
Austin: There was a castle involved there? [laughs] I was imagining all of them just in the open.
Jack: No, they had like, it was like a toll gate.
Austin: Mmm, mm-hmm.
Jack: Like a castle built around the bridge out of the— only bridge out of the Shores of Terror that wasn’t being eaten by a kraken.
Austin: I see.
Jack: The castle is run by Lady Draco, who is a beheaded Lich. The Lich possesses the Baron. Lady Draco summons horses to try and kill the wizards but the two unpossessed wizards summon dogs, to— [laughing] I think to distract the horses.
Austin: Yeah!
Jack: And then trap the Lich in an emerald.
Austin (as Estecar): They were sea dogs, just to be clear.
Jack: Sea dogs! Yes, yes.
Austin (as Estecar): Merdogs.
Jack: [chuckles] Yes, merdogs! Which means—
Art: Seals, as they like to be called.
Jack: [laughs] Yes, exactly!
Austin (as Estecar): Mm, no, those are a different thing. You’re thinking— [chuckles] You’re thinking about the difference between panthers and leopards again, I think.
Jack: Mmm. Mm-hmm.
[Art laughs]
Jack: The Lich is now cursed to accompany them on their journey. Having— Eze’s backpack is now cursed and can’t be opened.
Austin: [chuckles] Right, right.
Jack: The Lich is inside it.
Austin (as Estecar): After that we, of course, went to Ithrasea, the home of the first Church of Magic. Ruins! Of a magnificent city, filled and ruined with tourists visiting the ancient site. Souvenirs, security guards, people dressed as their favourite members of the Church of Magic. Tourists asked us, the wizards, to do tricks. You’ve written here, the tourists are quote, “Unbelievably cheesy, magnificently corny. One of the tourists is from where Estecar is from and so they deflect by using magic!” I don’t remember this. This is— This is a falsehood. “Everybody immediately gets arrested for using (laughins) unlicenced magic.”
[Jack laughs]
Austin (as Estecar): “They get brought before the mystical Pope who is here on a visit. The Pope is doing a kind of [laughing] Vegas residency show. Pope comes out and does some magic. A corny magic show. And then a weird Judge Judy. Estecar begins—”
Art: Judge Judy, the Ancient Lich, as we all know.
Austin: [laughing] The Ancient Lich we all know—
Jack: Uh-huh! [laughs]
Austin: We’ve been down this path of lore!
Austin (as Estecar): “Estecar begins to plan against the Pope who speaks with two voices, since they have two heads. One of the Pope’s heads speaks French,” quote, unquote.
Art: Oh, I remember that—
Austin: Yeah, uh-huh! Yeah.
Austin (as Estecar): “Estecar summons a spirit from a ruby. The Baron summons a load of grain that passes through the ghost and rises as ghosts… As ghost grain or ghosts of grain [chuckles]. Eze turns the ghosts of grain into little living grain ghosts to cause trouble. The wizards flee.”
Austin: [laughs] Hell of a time!
Jack: [smiling] This fucking bullshit game.
Art: It’s weird that people say that our show is inaccessible. You know?
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: Yeah! Uh-huh!
Austin: I don’t get it.
Art: “We proceeded to the Meadow Eternal. Once you’re within the meadow’s borders, that’s all you can see in any direction. The meadow tries to convince everyone to stay and the wizards all think it’s great and want to stay. The Baron promises everybody Dukedoms?” That’s a binding verbal contract.
Austin: Yeah. Mm-hmm. We’re dukes now.
Art: “The wizards fall asleep and when they awake, they find they’re being chased by Estecar’s pursuers, the Panther Queen. The two other wizards plan to leave without helping, but Estecar talks them around.”
Jack: In exchange for your Dukedom, unfortunately, Austin. You are no longer a Duke.
Austin: Alright— No, no, no, unfortunately, but fortunately [chuckles] because I remember—
Jack: Yes, because they kill all the—
Austin: [laughing] —what happened to the previous dukes. They’re either killed or exiled.
Art: Um… “They cast a spell that gives the Panther Queen’s troops a crisis of faith and also traps them in a load of islands that rise out of the meadow. It doesn’t go great, doesn’t trap the troops forever, but gives the wizards long enough to get away. Estecar gets close to telling the wizards the truth about their background, but passes on it.” It’s weird that that’s in the notes.
(Austin and Jack laughs)
Art: It feels like now I know.
Austin: Uh-huh, yeah. Jack?
Jack: Oh, the Tomb of Leyla Glass. The tomb is for a giant built on its vast body. The wizards have to quote, “Pilgrimate up to the giant’s head and deliver gifts.” The Baron has quote, “Never given a gift.”
[Art laughs]
Jack: “Nestled next to the giant is a huge dragon. The dragon begins to wake up. Eze has brought a bouquet of flowers which are in his knapsack [chuckles] and have been eaten by the Lich.”
(Austin and Jack laugh)
Jack: Good game. “Estecar has brought the giant a word of magic as a gift but fears they’ve brought the wrong one. Andam, a spell for sealing things. The Baron has brought a word that causes industriousness and all they’ve done is animate the dragon further and begin to wake the dead giant. Eze considers casting a spell here to be profane. And so doesn’t. [chuckles] The spells work, the giant traps the dragon under its hand and falls back into death. Unfortunately, the wizards have desecrated a tomb.”
Austin (as Estecar): Ah, well. Such things happen on adventure!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): What else is there to do to a tomb than desecrate it?
Austin (as Estecar): It’s the only verb I respect, perhaps? Hm. Not as interesting. We finally made our way to a seaside town outside the Gilded Reef. “The sea outside the port the wizards are staying at is glowing with gold from the sea. from the Gilded Reef. It turns out that the Golden Reef is, in fact, Estecar, the Maverick Resplendent’s, inheritance! And they want to go get it.” They meaning me. “It turns out that they do not have humble beginnings at all, we should keep this reef secret, and it should not be tracked [chuckles] back to Estecar.”
Austin: This is the problem— the point at which we draw a problem, which is, uh, [chuckles] something you forgot to mention. And that was where we left off [chuckles].
Jack: Great. Excellent.
Austin (as Estecar): Yes. Yes, well…
Austin: I believe we should just jump into it, huh?
Jack: Mm-hmm!
Austin (as Estecar): So, I want to paint us a picture. We’re on a boat. We’ve commissioned a little boat to take us [chuckles] out—
Jack (as Domenico): What’s the boat called?
Austin (as Estecar): Well, now you’ve ruined this, haven’t you? It’s called the, um… the… I have the first word, word one. I got word one. I need a letter, give me a— give me a letter.
Jack: P!
Art: V!
Austin: That’s too many words! I guess it’s not, they could three words, right?
Art: You could use either or.
Austin: This isn’t a good one, but I’m gonna say the name of the boat is the Terrible Potato Vegetable.
[Jack chuckles]
Austin: Which is, I— you have to trust yourself sometimes.
Austin (as Estecar): The TPV. Uh, has taken us across the waves. We— it’s a small boat. This is the thing, when I say— [laughs] It truly is a terrible potato vegetable.
[Jack chuckles]
Austin (as Estecar): Or a terrible potato vessel, perhaps. It is, it’s— imagine a potato cut in half and then dropped into the sea, and then enlarged magically. And then you’ve kind of scooped out the flesh of the potato.
Austin: You see what I’m saying? It’s like a potato skin boat.
Jack: Mm-hmm.
Austin: And it’s not big. I don’t know how I expect us to bring back the Gilded Reef with us, necessarily. But. I think it’s us, it’s someone who’s like— Maybe we’ve just rented the boat for the day? You know, it’s one of those things where you can get like a little boat at the dock and you go, “Oh, can I rent this?” and they go, “Yeah, give us 200 bucks!” And you give them the $200 and you get the boat for the day and it’s like part of that you get back as long as you return the boat in good order or whatever. Maybe you also have to put down a… What do you call that a…?
Jack and Art: Deposit?
Austin: Deposit, you put in another thousand dollar deposit, but you get the $1,000 back, it’s not a big deal. Anyway, you’ve got this boat. We go out there. And I say,
Austin (as Estecar): Now. The… There is one— now that I have my good, good friends here. Eze and Domenico. There is one thing I forgot to mention. Ha. Hoo. Which is, of course, this is my inheritance because it is… This is where my parents live. (talking fast) Who miss me very much, I’m sure they’ll be very happy to see me. Which is why they… why I was in the Panther Kingdom— Why I was raised in the Panther Kingdom and not here, among the Gilded Reef where I was, of course, supposed to inherit…
My relationship with my parents—not extremely positive. I just wanted to put that out there in case there was any sort of weirdness. My parents are the rulers of the Gilded Reef. This is my kingdom.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Wow!
Jack (as Domenico): Well, excellent! Good job. Good job. Looks like there’s lots of gold!
Austin (as Estecar): Yes. And they left me, of course, in the… They left me, of course, in the domain of the Panther King… Because they… did not want any sort of threat to their rule, their— What’s the word?
Jack (as Domenico): Smart. Smart move.
Austin (as Estecar): Their tyrannical, tyrannical, uhhh, oppressive, authoritarian regime.
Jack (as Domenico): Mm-hmm!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Mm.
Austin (as Estecar): And thought of me and my magic stealing, (clears throat) my magic capturing. My magic reflective. My sympathetic magics.
Jack (as Domenico): Mm!
Austin (as Estecar): As a threat to theirs. And I thought we were stopping through! We just went to the tomb, maybe we could say hello and I could reclaim what was mine by birthright. The Gilded Reef.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Which is this whole kingdom.
Austin (as Estecar): Correct!
Jack (as Domenico): So we’re taking a kingdom now?
Austin (as Estecar): I— I would love to!
Jack (as Domenico): Excellent! Fantastic. I’ve done it before, I’ll do it again. And I’m sure that with my two great friends beside me, there’ll be a place to make many Dukes.
[Art laughs]
Austin (as Estecar): Unfortunately, the Duke as the title is outlawed among the Gilded Reef, we’ll have to come up with a new, different title with different consequences, if such a thing was to be imagined, in case a Duke— A not Duke did something wrong, you couldn’t simply exile or kill them, you would— We would come up with a different system, depending on what the word is, you know.
Jack (as Domenico): Well, I don’t know about that.
Austin (as Estecar): Marquis or a— Well, that’s just a— When in Rome! You know.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Is this the famous place that has the Notdukes?
Austin (as Estecar): The Notdukes! Yes, the Notdukes of the Gilded Reef, where, when they do something bad, you go, “Mmm! Do better.”
Jack (as Domenico): Do better?!
Austin (as Estecar): Do better!
Jack (as Domenico): And then you kill them?
Austin (as Estecar): [chuckles] Only if they’ve done something very bad.
Jack (as Domenico): Ah.
Austin (as Estecar): Again, tyranny, oppression, whatnot is kind of the law of the day, so. (inhales) High standards. Um! So. Is it time to do a little diving?
Jack (as Domenico): Can you swim, Eze?
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Um… yeah!
Jack (as Domenico): So can I!
Austin (as Estecar): I as well, of course, as the… the Psion of the Gilded Reef. I learned to swim at a young age. Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten, so if [laughing] you could help me swim below into the Gilded Reef, that would be—
Jack (as Domenico): Well. Well, of course, I learned to swim also at a young age, probably younger than you. Been doing it for longer.
Austin (as Estecar): Yes.
Jack (as Domenico): And I have also forgotten. So I was wondering whether or not, Eze, you would be able to help us swim to the Gilded Reef?
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Well, have you ever seen a leopard swim?
Austin (as Estecar): Well, I don’t do much swimming, so, I wouldn’t have the opportunity. Really.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): It’s a graceless affair.
[Jack chuckles]
Austin (as Estecar): I see.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): So I’m gonna ask that you not comment on it?
Austin (as Estecar): I just— zzzip! That was me zipping my mouth shut.
Jack (as Domenico): Yes. Me too. Not a word. Don’t worry about it.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): All right. Well. Here we go then. In my experience, you, you put your front paws in the water.
Austin (as Estecar): Ah. Splash, splash [chuckles].
Art (as Eze Ki’el): And then you sort of… push yourself in!
Austin (as Estecar): Mm.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): And then you take a moment to be very unhappy that you’re wet. Thinking of how long it will take you to get all of this water out of your fur and lamenting that you left the safety of dry land.
Austin (as Estecar): [laughing] This sounds like swimming to me, yes.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Let me know when you’re [laughing] done with this part. And we can continue.
Austin (as Estecar): Splash splash, splash splash. I think I have this part down.
Jack (as Domenico): Splattering splattering.
Austin (as Estecar): Yes.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): All right. Well, then… (sighs) Now that we’ve resigned ourself to the cruel wet, you just sort of… push with all four limbs in a counter motion.
Austin (as Estecar): Counter clockwise? Counter…
Art (as Eze Ki’el): No, like an alternating.
Austin (as Estecar): An alternating!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Front left, back right.
Austin (as Estecar): Swoop splash!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Front right, back left.
Austin (as Estecar): I’m dancing. This is— you’re describing [chuckles] doing a little dance— The dance from Pulp Fiction, I believe is the thing you’re describing.
(Art and Jack chuckle)
Austin (as Estecar): I’m doing it currently. Yes.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): It’s hard because of… I don’t know if you know this, but I don’t have a collar bone.
Jack (as Domenico): [laughs] Is this true?
Art (as Eze Ki’el): And you lot do.
Austin (as Estecar): Someone’s been on Wikipedia.
Jack (as Domenico): I believe so. On leopard Wikipedia? The Wikipedia for leopards?
Austin (as Estecar): The Wikipedia for leopards, yes. Yes.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Wiki-panther-dia.
Austin (as Estecar): Mm-hmm. [chuckles]
Austin: Um. What is the— how do we? So, we do this. Right? We have to— we get through this part, or we… You know what, here’s what I’m gonna do, is I’m immediately going to cast a spell or submit a spell to this. I’m going to submit a spell— I don’t know that this is like the time to do this yet? Let me reread the rules really quick.
Jack: We need a problem.
Austin: Well, the problem—
Jack: Oh no, we have a problem!
Austin: The problem is something we forgot to mention which is—
Jack: The family are there.
Austin: The family is there. This is a Kingdom. We are three wizards. We don’t get to just [laughing] roll in and say “This is mine, now,” necessarily.
Jack: I mean is this when we get attacked by my mermaids?
Austin (as Estecar): Perhaps! As we’re struggling to swim. Maybe this makes sense. Yes. They show up with tridents and what else? What else do mermaids use?
Art (as Eze Ki’el): And their dogs?
Austin (as Estecar): And their dogs. This is why I knew that word— Oh no, they don’t have the dogs because I stole that word from them. They no longer know—
Art (as Eze Ki’el): So that came with all of them?
Austin (as Estecar): They need that spell to cast the mermaid dogs, I think. Or you’re saying they’re natural mermaid dogs.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Yeah, the natural mermaid dogs!
Austin (as Estecar): Yeah, maybe their natural mermaid dogs. Maybe the spell is how you would cast them away from the Gilded Reef.
Jack (as Domenico): From the ocean. Or—
Austin (as Estecar): Yes, yes.
Jack (as Domenico): Yeah, yeah.
Austin (as Estecar): If they were in a different ocean, you could summon them to you, and they can’t do that anymore because I stole that from them. One of the many reasons why they are right to not trust me, [chuckles] by the way.
Austin: So yeah, the mermaids show up. What’s a mermaid sound like?
Jack (as the Mermaid King): [deep voice] Son.
Austin: Oh, you’re— This is…
Jack: Oh no, sorry. Not son. [deep voice] Child.
Austin (as Estecar): I didn’t know if you were my parent or not. [chuckles]
Austin: No, I feel like— did you? Did y’all see the… God, what is the, what is the video game… parody news site called again?
Jack: Hard Times— Hard…
Austin: Hard Drive? Hard Times?
Jack: Hard Times?
Austin: Hard Times? Did you see the, the way too close to home, miserable, supportive parents misgender their trans, [chuckling] their trans child story?
Jack: No?
Austin: Oh, God… [chuckles]
[Jack laughs]
Austin: It was like, as on the nose [chuckles] as so many experiences.
Jack: Oh, just being like— [laughs].
Austin: Yeah…
Jack: Yeah. Yes.
Art: Uh-huh!
Austin: Anyway. We don’t have to go down that road. I don’t want that on—
Jack: No!
Austin: —the show. But do know that in my mind, that would not be past this Merking, in terms of characterization. God.
Jack (as the Mermaid King): Child. Finally!
Austin (as Estecar): Yes!
Jack (as the Mermaid King): You have returned! And not a moment too soon. For your coronation begins this afternoon.
Austin (as Estecar): Oh! Huh!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): What?!
Austin (as Estecar): Yes, of course, it’s… Just in time! For my coronation. I told you there would be a wonderful surprise, my friends! These are my friends by the way, Papa. This is, this is Eze, perhaps you know Eze, Eze Ki’el. And, of course, you are noble kin in a sense, you know, kin of kind with the Baron Domenico Smokeacre.
Jack (as Domenico): Greetings.
Jack (as the Mermaid King): Yes, well, I’m sure that they will be able to involve themselves in the coronation. You know of which carnation we speak, my child.
Austin (as Estecar): Yes—
Jack: The mermaids are making creepy mermaid sounds in the background.
(Art and Austin make mermaid sounds that sound like dogs eating)
Austin: Yeah, good! We’re all linked on mermaid sounds.
(more mermaid sounds)
Austin (as Estecar): Of course, of course. The—
Jack (as the Mermaid King): I, of course, will wear my crown until my dying day, which I intend to be, ha, many years in the future. No, no, I am talking—
Austin (as Estecar): Oh this is not… This is not the coronation on which you die and hand over the crown and give to me what is rightfully mine, as your your heir apparent. This is not that coro— I was confused, you see, about which coronation it was going to be, I suspect.
Jack (as the Mermaid King): Quite the opposite, my child, for this is the coronation of the Pearl Eyes, in which you shall don the Bone Crown—
Austin (as Estecar): Ooh, the Bone Cr…
Jack (as the Mermaid King): —expire and any deed to your… hereditary… I lose the word. Basically everything you own will return back to your rightful family.
Austin (as Estecar): It’s funny you say you lose the word because I feel as if perhaps someone stole the word for which you’re looking for…
Jack (as the Mermaid King): I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Austin (as Estecar): Mm. Because the thing you’re describing is not so much a coronation as an, uh, there’s another word, ”execution” is what it sounds—
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Execution! I was thinking execution for this, yeah!
Austin (as Estecar): See, Domenico has great words. This, this fella. Incredible words! I think— Could you show me that— I… We can, of course, go to the coronation. I would love to see, just to make sure I get it right, you understand. I would love to see you do the coronation so that I would get the steps right. And I would have no other, no other teacher, no other tutor than my dearest father, who I know I could trust to get it right! A lesser instructor would simply get a few steps wrong. It seems like you know this, this entire sequence very well.
Jack (as the Mermaid King): You flatter me child.
Austin (as Estecar): Yes.
Jack (as the Mermaid King): Wait, so you want me to sort of do a dress rehearsal?
Austin (as Estecar): Yes, just a dress rehearsal like a director! You know. A director would sometimes say— You know, a theatre director, they would say, “Ah, what light!” and then the actor would say, “Ah, what light.” And they would understand how to deliver the line.
And it’s likewise with this, except stage directions and how do you wear a Bone Crown? And the Pearl Eyes and all of that. I haven’t been here in ever, I’ve never been able to see this, my glorious homeland. And so I would just be afraid of all sorts of little things…
Jack: Do we just snap cut to like either different— like it’s a beautiful thing and the Mermaid King is just saying like,
Jack (as the Mermaid King): And then you carry the spear like this.
[Austin laughs]
Jack (as the Mermaid King): And do this kind of downward jabbing motion.
Austin (as Estecar): Right. Yes. And this is the moment, my friends, where we throw our coup. Please. [pause] Please.
Jack (as Domenico): Now?
Austin (as Estecar): Now, please.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Right now?
Jack (as Domenico): Now’s the moment?
Austin (as Estecar): If we can do it now, if we have, if we have any sorts of special…
Jack (as Domenico): How will we— How will you know what to do with the spear?
Austin (as Estecar): Ah… Well, no, I’m saying what we do with the spear is we impale him on it. And then we take what is ours. No?
Jack (as Domenico): The Reef.
Austin (as Estecar): The reef, the Golden Reef— the Gilded Reef. Yes. And that is why, from above, I am reaching to… I’m saying a different— hmm. Hm, hm. This is a different word that— I, I seem to remember a word we thought we forgot— You know what it was. You know what it was my, good friends? I think, seeing my homeland jostled some things in my brain. And I recalled a word that we used to know! Together, we used to know it. It certainly was not just [chuckles] the word of our friend Eze. Alka! Colour of the first raise at dawn.
And I’m drawing on that that energy of the sun to shine through the top of the ocean, like a beam of sharpened, cutting light, down as my gratuitously just avaricious— we’re just using all the words we always use here. [chuckles] Terrible father, my terrible Papa is marching— is [chuckling] swimming across the stage. And I’m summoning a beam of light—
Jack (as Domenico): You want us to kill your terrible Papa?
Austin (as Estecar): I’m— that’s what we’re doing here. Yes.
Austin: And so I’m playing Alka as my word here. Alka.
Jack (as Domenico): Okay, I am going to play… [pauses, then laughs] I am going to play Relbor.
[Austin laughs]
Jack (as Domenico): The word that I have told you I have lost. And Relbor actually has absolutely nothing to do with daisy fields have everything to do with profit. Relbor means gold.
Austin (as Estecar): Oh!
Jack (as Domenico): And it is going to enact a kind of Midas Transformation upon some of the unfortunate mermaids. Anything the light beam touches.
Austin (as Estecar): Ooh…
Jack (as Domenico): You know, like in the Lion film? Anything the light beam touches, instead of it being yours, it is going to turn to gold.
Austin (as Estecar): It is also mine though, to be clear. Just to be 100% clear.
Jack (as Domenico): Yes.
Austin (as Estecar): Will you aid us in this effort? Ki’el?
Art (as Eze Ki’el): I will give you the strongest word I still have available to me.
Austin (as Estecar): Mm. A gift.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): I will give you Xarosa. An eternal beast, forever raging under the mountain range to the west.
Austin (as Estecar): [gasps]
Jack (as Domenico): Oh my God…
Austin (as Estecar): Perhaps we’ve [chuckles] gone a little overboard. These are all helping words, yes?
Jack (as Domenico): Yeah! Uh-huh.
Austin: Also, Jack, have you played that card? Did you play that card?
Jack: Oh, no. Let me pull it out and put it onto the table.
Art: Also, is this the right discard pile? I don’t remember—
Austin: Yeah, let’s put you in the first one, I guess, it’s fine. I think that that’s correct, based on our, the note order we have.
Jack: Yeah, I think so.
Austin (as Estecar): So really quick, Relbor, then, nothing to do with turning the river the other direction?
Jack (as Domenico): Only insofar as the Baron desperately wanted the river to turn in the other direction so that he could begin to claim the profits of the—
Austin (as Estecar): Right, I see. Yes.
Jack (as Domenico): —of the daisy fields.
Austin (as Estecar): Love it. Okay.
Jack (as Domenico): And was holding off it until he could, you know, find something better like, for example, [smiling] turning an entire civilization of mermaids into gold.
Austin (as Estecar): [chuckling] For instance!
Austin: All right, well, we get to roll a D6 for each of our helping words, which it sounds like these are each helping words, to me.
Art: Yeah!
Austin: I mean, I guess— I’ll be honest, Xarosa could end up being a hindering word? [chuckles]
Art: Yeah, if this doesn’t go well, that’s the word I think we should focus on.
Austin: Yeah. Alright. So let’s all roll 1D6! I guess I could just roll 3D6, right?
Jack: Yeah, that’s true.
Austin: Is that as fun, though?
Jack: No, let’s all roll 1D6.
Austin: Let’s all roll 1D6, that’s more fun! Why weren’t we doing it this way originally?
[Jack chuckles]
Austin: [smiling] Really counting on this beast.
Jack: [smiling] We really want a six here.
Austin: Really want this beast to show up with a six— Unfortunately.
Art: Oh!
Austin: “If no dice show their highest number, the spell is weak [chuckling] and only partially effective. The current player describes how the problem is solved but only partially or temporarily.” Tell me about this sea beast of yours, Art. Or this not sea beast, it’s not a sea beast.
Art: It resides into the mountains in the range to the West! Um, I mean I think my touchstone here was the Final Fantasy monster Ifrit.
Austin: Ah, yeah, of course!
Art: It’s a volcano spirit.
Austin: Yeah!
Art: Which I guess, now that I think about it, probably isn’t the best thing for an underwater…
Austin: Well it steams everything, doesn’t it. It would be like an underwater— I mean there are underwater volcanoes. Right?
Jack: They suck!
Art: But the magma turns into rock, immediately, right? The ocean cools the lava.
Austin: Mm. Mm-hmm. But then the sun beam touches it and it turns to gold [chuckles].
Art: Mm.
Austin (as Estecar): We may have only given them more wealth [chuckles].
[Art and Jack laugh]
Austin (as Estecar): Maybe the immediate group around us is turned into… Here’s what I think happens. I think this all goes swimmingly. And I don’t mean that as a pun [chuckling] except I guess I supposedly do.
Jack: It’s because we’re mermaids!
Austin: Yeah, we’re mermaids here. Um, I go,
Austin (as Estecar): Now, father, you will see the strength of camaraderie! And me! Also my personal strength and the words that I’ve— Alka!
Austin: And I summon this beam of light from the heavens, pierces the top of the waves, it lands here in the, the sea kingdom, the Gilded Reef. And then that is when the Baron Domenico casts…
Jack (as Domenico): Relbor!
Austin (as Estecar): Thank you, Relbor. Thank you, Domenico. Thank you, Smokeacre. The entire, kind of, arena where this dress rehearsal is happening, which is not packed with people because it’s a dress rehearsal. This is not the coronation. But there are guards and stage hands [chuckles], and probably some clerks, all turned to gold, including—
Jack: [chuckles] Ted Cruz?
Austin (as Estecar): Including my father, I will say. And at that moment, a… The volcano underneath erupts and out comes a bunch of lava and magma. It quickly solidifies and turns into gold and there’s a big Ifrit-style monster appears, it’s like “Rawr”. I think at that moment is when my mother shows up. Who is, by the way, the sister of El’en.
Jack (as Domenico): [gasps]
Austin (as Estecar): They’re sisters which I think is probably why El’en is chasing me, also. It’s kind of like an extension of that, you know?
Jack (as Domenico): Like a family thing?
Austin (as Estecar): Like a family thing. It’s like, she promised to keep me in the jungles and not come try to claim my birthright and failed to do that, so has to come get me. And so my mother shows up and is like, “Wait! What— What have you done?!” And the monster protects us while we escape [chuckles] with our lives, as the army of mermen show up to kill us for having done such a terrible thing.
Austin: But it does say we succeeded to some degree so, can we get out of here really rich somehow? How do we get out of here with like, “I can’t get the whole Reef. But how do we bring—” [chuckles] Do we just get back to our potato boat with as much gold as [chuckles] we can carry?
Jack: That’s very funny, it’s like the end of…
[Art laughs]
Jack: [laughs] The end of that Fallout expansion that has you carry extremely heavy gold out very slowly?
Austin: Yes. Yes.
Jack: But we’re now just in this like now foundering boat.
Austin: Half of it has been turned to gold and is sinking a little bit? [chuckles] And we’re just—
Jack: We’re carrying gold.
Austin: Yeah, as we’ve gold chains on— We each have crowns. And I say, very quickly, I say,
Austin (as Estecar): [quickly] I announced, according to the power vested to me by the Gilded Reed in this moment where I am, of course, the leader of this place that both of you get to be Notdukes of this Kingdom, in absentia. We are not allowed to be here anymore but we, of course, are still Notdukes of the Gilded Reef. And that should open many doors, shouldn’t it.
Jack (as Domenico): Huzzah.
Jack: Cheering, clinking gold goblets of seawater together—
Austin: [laughs] Clinking, yeah, goblets— [laughs]
Austin: [laughing] Seawater! [laughs]
Art: [laughing] Gold goblets of seawater…
Austin (as Estecar): Mmm! This is delicious!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Mm!
Jack (as Domenico): Oh, toast me! Toast me, Eze!
[Austin laughs]
Art: That sounds like a curse. May you drink gold goblets of seawater.
Austin: Of seawater, yeah, that’s what my mother’s final words to me [laughs].
Jack: That’s what my mother, yeah, the mermaid. And then! Oh my God!
Austin: [high-pitched voice] “May you drink gold goblets of seawater!”
Jack: “They’re doing it! They’re doing it immediately!”
Austin (as Estecar): Mm, delicious! I love this!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Great idea! Get the goblets!
[Austin laughs]
Jack (as Domenico): Toast me, my friends! The three wizards water after their… their boots.
Austin: Ah, absolute nonsense. All right, I think that that’s that problem! I think that we’ve gotten through this place. “Once the spell is complete, if two or more words were committed, the current player gifts one of the committed words to another player. All of the words committed to the spell are lost. Turn them over and do not use them in another spell.” I’m going to do what any, what anyone— Hoo, I actually have a difficult decision here! I could give Alka back to Eze. Or I could give [laughing] Relbor back to Domenico. Because I know Domenico has lost that— has felt like that word’s been missing. Even though clearly, he seems to have just had it the whole time. [chuckles] And I’m going to do the only thing that’s necessary. I’m going to say,
Austin (as Estecar): Can I have a word with you briefly? My good friend Eze?
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Of course!
Austin (as Estecar): I seem to have, while we were under the sea, remembered quite a powerful word. Relbor [chuckles]. Which means I believe something like gold, but I know that Domenico loves this word, wanted this word badly. And I thought maybe you should have it so that you could give it to him as a gift on his birthday. I already have a gift planned, you see. I already went shopping and all of that. But I didn’t want to have two gifts—
Art (as Eze Ki’el): That’s… That’s so thoughtful!
Austin (as Estecar): Yes, and if you wanted to exchange— If you wanted to— I’ll take another drink, you can pour me another bit of seawater and we’ll call it even.
[Art laughs]
Austin (as Estecar): But yes, you could have Relbor for now. And if you needed it for something else between now and the birthday, I’m sure he would understand. But you know, you can hold on to it for now at least.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Alright, I’ll— yeah! And yeah, I’ll try to figure out a good presentation.
Austin (as Estecar): Yes, yes. Parsley, I find. [laughing] Brings the presentation together.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): [laughs] It’s not what I meant but I—
Austin (as Estecar): Just a little sprig of parsley.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Yeah, great! Good, good energy.
Austin: All right! Now what? How does this game work? Let’s see. All right, we’re spells complete—
Jack: You keep the location.
Austin: I keep the location card, of course. Well, of course I do. How could I not? And then we discard the problem. And then we draw a new location card, right?
Art: Yeah, I think that’s right.
Austin: Mm. Okay! Then let us go ahead and draw a location card. I’ll draw it because I’m right here. I don’t remember whose turn it is next, but.
Jack: It is Art’s.
Austin: Art, tell us where we are and what we do, or what the prompt is.
Art: Harrow’s Hall. Why we linger.
Jack: Ooh!
Austin: Mm, Harrow’s Hall. A place to be! “On your turn, draw a location card and describe a scene at the place you’ve journeyed to. Based on the prompt written on the card, the scene may involve the other characters and you may invite their players to join you in describing or enacting this moment, but ultimately you decide what is and is not included in the scene. Take your time bringing wonder to this description. The lands you travel are quite literally only what you describe.”
Art: It has to be a new… land? Because it’s a hall.
Austin: What do you mean— Yeah, sure.
Art: I got it, I got it.
Austin: Yeah!
Art: So we, we don’t do our best job navigating, right? Because we’re drunk on seawater and accomplishment as well.
Austin: [laughing] And wealth, yeah.
Art: And wealth, yeah. And you know, it’s hard to steer the boat so heavy now because gold is very heavy. And we only had a horrible potato vessel.
Austin: Yeah, of course.
Art: And so we’re knocked off course. We don’t return to the dock we went to and and we think to ourselves,
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Who cares about that deposit! We drink from golden cups now!
Austin (as Estecar): [laughs] Right!
Art: And we eventually reach shore.
Austin (as Estecar): A gift to the dockmaster! A gift—!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): A gift to the dockmaster!
Jack (as Domenico): A gift!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): And we drink to the gift, and it’s more [laughing] seawater.
Jack (as Domenico): Toast me!
[Austin and Art laugh]
Jack (as Domenico): My friends!
Austin: Ohhhh.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): And we eventually find another dock. And it is in front of the largest building for leagues around. We’re still in the boat so you use leagues.
Austin (as Estecar): Right. Yes, of course.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Once we’re on the land…
Austin (as Estecar): Mix it up.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): I don’t know if we’re metric or [chuckles] whatever over there.
Austin (as Estecar): [laughs] Feet! We describe buildings in feet!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Well, but the distance between buildings?
Jack (as Domenico): Meters!
Austin (as Estecar): Yeah, perhaps meters.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Yeah, that’s metres. Yeah.
Austin (as Estecar): Knots.
[Jack chuckles]
Art (as Eze Ki’el): [chuckling] That’s, that’s speed.
Austin (as Estecar): Yes, so how many knots will it take you to get there? At least 0.00001. You need a little!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): It’s a giant hall. And it’s, uh, it’s full of this just bustling energy, long tables. Tables that from one end of the table you can’t see the end of the table. People shoulder to shoulder eating and drinking and carrying on singing songs!
Austin (as Estecar): Mm, mm. Hopefully songs about us and our victory.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Some of them probably! Some of them no.
Austin (as Estecar): Ah. Well.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): You know, it’s a lot of people, it’s—
Austin (as Estecar): Yeah, that’s fair! Perhaps they don’t know yet about how incredible we are.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): There are thousands and thousands of people in here, all ordering food and drinks and… and all of that. And it’s… it’s so warm here! After being on the water and in the water and then drinking water straight from the ocean, it’s—
[Austin laughs]
Art (as Eze Ki’el): It’s so nice to be here and we sit down and we, we get plates of food and we… It’s hard to want to leave here.
Austin (as Estecar): Ah. Yeah! This is, this is… Why should we leave? In fact, haven’t we sort of completed our journey, I think, at least for now. Why not make this place our new home for at least a little while?
Art: “YEAH!” says the people next to you. “Welcome to the Harrow’s Hall!”
Austin (as Estecar): Yeah!
Jack (as Domenico): Ah, welcome, welcome.
Art (as someone in the Harrow’s Hall): NICE CUPS!
Austin (as Estecar): Yes, we use them to drink seawater.
Art (as someone in the Harrow’s Hall): Oh, well, we got all the better beverages here!
Austin (as Estecar): Better?!
Jack (as Domenico): Like any—
Austin (as Estecar): Better than seawater?!
Art (as someone in the Harrow’s Hall): [laughing] Like any other beverage… Regular water! We got beer, we got wine, we have cola!
Austin (as Estecar): I’ll have them all, please—
Jack (as Domenico): More drinks!
Austin (as Estecar): Mix them— Here’s the goblet, if you could just make a bartender’s mix, you know.
[Art laughs]
Austin (as Estecar): Bartender’s choice, just a little of A, a little of B, whatever you think is the right ratio.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): All right, you get and absolutely revolting—
[Austin laughs]
Art (as Eze Ki’el): [laughing] —mix of these three beverages.
Jack (as Domenico): The wizards— I don’t know.
Austin: Coach McGuirk becomes a bartender episode. Love it. Okay. Sorry, Jack, you were saying—?
Art: “Brendan, I’ve got a golden cup.”
[Austin laughs]
Art: [laughing] Alright, I don’t have this voice.
Austin: No one does! This is why— this is why H. Jon Benjamin is H. Jon Benjamin, isn’t it?
Jack (as Domenico): I just like the fact that the wizards, the wizards canonically have no understanding of what a drink is.
Austin: [laughing] No!
[Art laughs]
Jack: It’s either sea water or every other drink, in one of our gold goblets.
Austin: Do we think that—
Jack: Ah, delicious!
Austin: —one of the earliest spells you learn is you don’t have to drink anything anymore [chuckles]? It must be.
Jack: Or we just have no idea what’s going on!
Jack (as Domenico): Ah, we are wizards!
Austin (as Estecar): [chuckles] Yes.
Jack (as Domenico): No more rules do not apply to us!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Yeah!
Austin: And there’s a feast and there’s music, presumably.
Art: Yeah!
Jack: Dancing…
Austin: Yeah, rooms— like we’re here for a little while, is what you’re saying.
Art: Uh-huh.
Austin: This isn’t just one long night—
Art: It’s nice here!
Austin: This is like, it’s like a couple of weeks. We take a vacation.
Art: Yeah!
Jack: They have room service…
Austin: Then what happens? Should I draw a problem card?
Art: Yeah. [chuckles] Figure it out.
Austin: Uh oh. Uh oh! OH! I love it!
Art: [laughs] Of course there’s a wedding! Who wouldn’t come here for their wedding?
[Jack chuckles]
Austin (as Estecar): The problem is, “A Wedding. This spell may only be two words long.” I don’t see no problem here. What’s the wedding?
Jack (as Domenico): Who’s getting married?
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Um. The lead bartender.
Austin (as Estecar): Uh-huh.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): And the bandleader!
Austin (as Estecar): Ah.
Jack (as Domenico): Oh!
Austin (as Estecar): Amazing, they met.
Jack (as Domenico): Amazing!
Austin (as Estecar): In service of joy and festivities, and now they get to have their own.
Jack (as Domenico): Cheering, flowers, festoons all over the walls. The band is playing really badly, the bar is being tended really badly.
Austin (as Estecar): We’ve stepped in. I’ve stepped in, I will run the bar, I understand—
[Art laughs]
Austin (as Estecar): I have been studying mixology. Is what I hear— Is that right? Teddy? Teddy says yes, it’s called mixology. And I will just make you— you just send me your cups. I’ll handle it.
Jack (as Domenico): I will be in the band!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): I’d like a Sex on the Beach.
Austin (as Estecar): [laughs] Yeah! God.
Austin: People should just type in “Coach McGuirk bartender,” please, thank you.
Jack: The wizard’s ingredients to Sex on the Beach are, as everyone knows, Austin?
Austin (as Estecar): Of course, well, first you start off with a little rough, the roughest moss you can find. The sort of moss— moss like sandpaper! And that is your, the foundation. That’s what you put at the bottom, you muddle it, you muddle the rough moss at the bottom.
And then you take a little bit of dragon spit, which is gin. It’s a type of gin. And you put that in, you have to get it from the dragon, of course.
Then you put in the peel of an avocado. And I know most people don’t peel their avocados but you have to peel it.
[Art laughs]
Austin (as Estecar): And then you muddle that also. But you’ve muddled— you’re infusing the rough moss with the muddled avocado.
Jack (as Domenico): The dragon spit’s so far the only liquid in the drink [chuckles].
Austin (as Estecar): Well, it’s coming, isn’t it. Then you get a little orange and you just plop that in. And then you top it off with some great seawater!
[Art laughs]
Jack: Over on the stage, Domenico is playing a violin like a guitar—
Austin (as Estecar): That’s the beach part. [laughs]
Art (as Eze Ki’el): And Eze is treating a set of timpanis like a drum kit!
Austin (as Estecar): Perfect!
Jack (as Domenico): Excellent!
Art: Bom-bom, bom-bom, bom-bom, bom-bom, bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom. I guess you do roll timpanis, that wouldn’t be as weird.
Austin: No, yeah. Uh-huh! [chuckles]
Jack (as Domenico): God. Is there a problem or are we the problem?
[Art laughs]
Jack (as Domenico): Like are we going to cast a spell to help these people—
Austin (as Estecar): Well, only two of us can cast the spell, it seems.
Austin: Whoops, what did I just do? I just moved my, Uh oh! I fucked up my screen somehow. I’m gonna refresh my page. So who’s casting a spell here?
Jack: It’s got to be Eze, right? This is Eze’s…
Art: Yeah, I suppose I have to.
Austin: Yeah, you have to—
Art: I’m casting a spell as a gift.
Austin (as Estecar): Ah, good.
[Jack chuckles]
Art (as Eze Ki’el): As a tribute… And I will use the last of my native words. The words I started with. Hekato, which is, of course, the name of a legendary wizard, who once stayed a season as the guest of the Prince of Hell, and dined at his table.
(Austin gasps)
Art (as Eze Ki’el): And I’m bestowing upon them the Spirit of Hospitality.
Austin (as Estecar): Ooh!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): All will welcome them as Hekato was welcomed in Hell.
Austin (as Estecar): Which is to say, welcomed. They’ll be welcomed. People like Hekato in Hell.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Yeah!
Austin (as Estecar): Yes, okay. I see. Well, it is up to us, then, I suppose… Smokeacre—
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Only, only with two words, so—
Austin (as Estecar): Or I! Which one of us wants to—? I certainly have other words I could use here.
Jack: Domenico cannot hear you over the sound of his own voice.
Austin: [chuckles] Okay, good. What is— wait, what is, what is he singing? [chuckles]
Art: Is he singing?!
Jack (as Domenico): [signing] Merry, merry day. Beauty day of fun. Everyone loves music. I know all the music!
Jack: Etc.
Austin: Oh, the wedding song! Okay, the wedding song. Of course.
Jack: [clapping] Clapping in time with every beat [chuckles].
Austin: Yeah, of course!
Austin (as Estecar): Well I have a gift as well, I say. I leap up, on top of the bar, and I say, “Excuse me! I have a speech! To Teddy and… uh, the other, the other groom? What is the other—?
Jack (as Domenico): Chip?
Austin (as Estecar): Chip! To Chip and Teddy! Who have shown us nothing but hospitality. And they’re getting this hospitality gift, of course, from our good friend Eze. And I have a gift as well! And the gift is to carry them away. The gift is to carry them into other world— other places, away from this beautiful place. I don’t know why they would leave, actually, I think they [chuckling] should probably stay!
But I understand they want to have a honeymoon. And so, to take them on their way, I will summon…
Austin: [claps twice] And I clap my hands, and I say out loud,
Austin (as Estecar): DRIE!
Austin: And stallions—
Jack: Thundering hooves [chuckles]!
Austin: [chuckling] Thundering hooves rush into Harrow’s Hall! [horse sounds]
Jack: Knocking over people!
Austin: [laughing] There are horses on top of tables, horses hiding under tables as if they’re afraid, as if they’re cats afraid.
Jack: There’s a horse on the mezzanine.
Austin: There’s a horse in the band. I am now on a [laughing] horse, on the bar, rearing up heroically?
Jack: Uh-huh.
Dre: Horses have taken all of the instruments, horses are now the entire band.
Jack: Austin, you’re holding your single ingredient Martini.
Austin: [laughs] The ingredient, of course—olives! [laughing] It’s just a couple of olives!
Austin (as Estecar): This is the part I really like, so I thought, perhaps, I would just dial—
Jack: Mm! [eating sounds]
[Austin makes eating sounds]
Austin: All right, let’s roll these 2D6! I’ll roll my one… YES! [laughs]
Jack: [chuckles] The crowd goes wild!
Austin: I’m sorry the hospitality is only a two but this doesn’t matter, we don’t count these individually, we really don’t. It’s one spell, right? And so, I think. And Art, correct me if I’m wrong. I think these are just very hospital— hospital—
[Jack chuckles]
Austin: Mm. Hospitable horses. [chuckles]
Art: Mm-hmm! The horses rush to the deus? And pick up the grooms? One on each of two horses who then ride side by side—
Jack: [chuckles] Like a catamaran.
Art: Yeah, other guests and family members jump on their own horses? A lot of people are going to this honeymoon now, apparently.
Austin (as Estecar): [laughs] A honeymoon for all!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): A honeymoon for everyone!
Austin (as Estecar): Horse party! [laughs]
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Horse party!
Austin (as Estecar): Woo!
Art: And carries people out of there, and soon the hall is empty, except for us.
Austin (as Estecar): Ah, well!
Jack (as Domenico): Well! Oh.
Austin (as Estecar): What a journey it has been.
Jack (as Domenico): Bloody hell!
Austin (as Estecar): Now that was a visit… That was a visit and a half, wasn’t it?
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Oh! Whoo.
Jack (as Domenico): You could say.
Austin (as Estecar): I really needed— I really needed that week among Harrow’s Hall, I’m so glad we decided to come here after the trip to the, to our new homeland, which we are, of course, exiled from. This place rejuvenated me.
Jack (as Domenico): [sighs] And we got to see all those horses! Which is just very cool.
Austin (as Estecar): I agree.
Austin: Art, are you taking one of these spells? Sorry, are you gifting one of these spells—
Art: I have to give— I have to give—
Austin: Yes.
Art: Um… Yeah, I think I got— I think we gotta keep the horses in the family!
Austin: [chuckles] Keep the horses in the family.
Art: So… I think I’ll give, I’ll trust the Baron.
Jack: This was my original spell!
Austin: Oh! It’s wrapped back around, hasn’t it. Go ahead and take Drie!
Jack: Okay! So I grab it and I…
Austin: You can just right click it and hit “Take card”.
Jack: Oh yes. Got it.
Austin: Okay! And then, Art, you take Harrow’s Hall!
Art: All right!
Austin: All right! Jack, do you want to draw another location or should I just do it?
Jack: Um! You know, I think I’ll be able to do it! I think I remember how to do it—
Austin: Okay! I believe in you, I believe in you.
Jack: And I have…
Austin: And what is it?
Jack: This is, let me just zoom in. Oh, cheers. Here we have Titan Tooth Mountains.
Austin: Ah!
Jack: A hidden way.
Art: I read that as “hidden war” before it was blown up—
Austin: Mm.
Jack: Me too!
Austin: Scary!
Art: —but I was psyched.
Austin: [chuckles] The Titan Tooth Mountains. Okay.
Jack: Mm. Mm-hmm. Hidden away…
Jack (as Domenico): Now my friends,
Jack: Says the Baron, as… snow, wind, whipping all our hair, you know…
Austin: [laughing] We— this is a smash cut from us drunk and thrilled and relieved to now bundled up [chuckles] in the blizzard?
Jack: Like on a mountain pass. Like three feet wide. Crevasse falling down, birds— Like, in the distance, a bird is plucking a mountain goat from a shelf and dropping it into a ravine. It’s like—
Austin: Incredible.
Jack: It’s bad. And we are standing in front of a. A large… What’s a cool gem color? Tourmaline! Right?
Austin: Ooh, tourmaline? Yeah, that’s a, that’s a gem.
Jack: I don’t know what color that is.
Austin: Guess!
Jack: Is it brown?
Austin: No. Well—? No. It’s like, it’s like a, it’s like a pink green. [chuckles]
Jack: Okay, cool. Yeah, great. It’s a large circle set into the wall. And then down by our feet, is what looks like a tiny mouses hole, in the wall. Like a classic cartoon mouse’s hole.
Austin: Like a little— Yeah, gotcha.
Jack: You know, like a little, like a little—
Austin: Like a little hole!
Jack: —I’m making the shape with my hands!
Austin: Yeah, I gotcha!
Jack: It’s like a little, it’s like a tiny door!
Austin: A half an oval. Or something.
Jack: Yeah, exactly.
Jack (as Domenico): Well, my friends,
Jack: Says the Baron.
Jack (as Domenico): You may or may not have noticed that the weather up here is bloody awful. And unfortunately—
Austin (as Estecar): This is too cold for me and… and me!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): It’s too cold for me and I’m covered in fur!
Jack (as Domenico): And it’s too cold for me. And I’m the third person who has spoken in this line of people.
[Austin laughs]
Jack (as Domenico): Now. [chuckles] Unfortunately— That was a beautiful pass, beautiful pass here through the Glistering Oasis, an oasis that was constructed on top of a mountain. But unfortunately, as soon as they got the trees in, the bloody wind came through and they all died.
Unfortunately, the only way through the mountain is to shrink ourselves to the size of mice and go through the Mouse’s Kingdom of Titan Tooth Mountains. Now if you will place your hand upon this rock, I believe it’s tourmaline, thought they were browner.
Jack: And the Baron puts his hand on the rock and shrinks down to one inch tall!
Jack (as Domenico): Now I’m down here, I’m much smaller!
Austin (as Estecar): I— can you hear? I cannot hear. Eze, can you make out what the Baron is saying?
Art (as Eze Ki’el): No, the—
Jack (as Domenico): You probably can’t hear me because I have a tiny mouse voice now.
Austin (as Estecar): Perhaps we should leave. [chuckles]
[Art and Jack laugh]
Austin (as Estecar): And get help!
Jack (as Domenico): Down here, my friends! No, no, no.
Austin (as Estecar): Oh! Ah look!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Oh!
Austin (as Estecar): The Baron is a tiny little ant!
Jack (as Domenico): I’m down here!
Jack: Baron waving.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): A one inch Baron!
Austin (as Estecar): I think we call those are Baronette. [chuckles] I think that’s a little Baron.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Mm!
Jack (as Domenico): Now I can’t hear you and your huge monster voices but I imagine—
[Art laughs]
Austin (as Estecar): [deep voice] I think that. [even deeper and slower] I… think… that’s… called a Baronette! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Jack (as Domenico): [mouse voice, super quiet] Down here—
Art (as Eze Ki’el): [slowly] Ohhhhhhhhh…
Austin: I touch the tourmaline and slowly—
Austin (as Estecar): Ah! I’m shrinking! Ah yes, this is…
Jack (as Domenico): Ah! Estecar, now we are the size of a tiny mouse. Unfortunately, we must quickly get inside the mouse hole for the wind that is blowing now will carry us off. I do hope that Eze I will touch the tourmaline and join us soon! He cannot hear us because we have tiny mouse voices.
Art: Well, I don’t have another mouse joke.
Austin (as Estecar): [screaming in a mouse voice] Touch the tourmaline! [squeaking sounds]
Art: I shrink down.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Whoa! I’m so small now, everything is so big—!
Austin (as Estecar): Well, now we’re all the same size again, which means we’re, everything is fine. We are— It’s our perspective on the world that matters most, isn’t it?
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Mm!
Jack (as Domenico): [chuckles] That’s what I’ve always said!
Jack: And we pass inside and it’s just like, it’s, you know, it’s like a hallway. There’s a, there’s a massive brazier that is made of a tea light or safety candle that a mouse has lit.
[Austin laughs]
Jack: There’s— what are some other fun things? There’s a champagne cork being used as a table.
Austin: Mm!
Jack: Pencils used to hold up balconies. I’m trying to think, what else is fun when it’s shrunk?
Austin: Like a thimble. A thimble but it’s filled with sea water for drinking?
Jack: [chuckling] But it’s filled with sea water…
Jack (as a mouse): Ah!
Jack: Says a mouse.
Jack (as a mouse): Wizards!
[Austin laughs]
Austin (as a mouse): The drink of your people!
Jack (as a mouse): [laughs] The drink of your people.
Jack: There is a… Yeah, there’s mice eating— there is a whole family of mice eating a loaf of bread.
Austin: There’s like a band playing, they’re playing with rubber band instruments.
Jack: Uh-huh! Little rubber band instruments—
Austin: Boom, boom, boom, boom. [chuckles] It’s a bass.
Art: Bing, bing, bing, bing…
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: Uh-huh! But there is a big problem that is happening in the Mouse Kingdom right now.
Austin: Ah!
Jack: And of course the problem, as we all know, that the wizards have found themselves instantly involved in, that they will need to solve as they travel through the Titan Tooth Mountains, is.
Austin: Ah!
Jack: Oh.
Austin: Ah, ha ha ha!
Art: Hoo!
Austin: Yikes-y!
Jack: [laughing] Yikes!
Art: Yyyyo…
Austin: Yikes! This one. We got us— What do we got there, Jack?
Jack: We got us the Crypt King’s Plague!
Austin: We got us the Crypt King’s Plague!
Jack: Mm!
Austin: Dum, bom… The rubber band bass is actually much slower and drearier than I thought [chuckles] it would be?
[Jack laughs]
Austin: It’s a dirge, playing a dirge on rubber band bass?
Jack (as Domenico): Say, mice!
Austin (as a mouse): [high-pitched] Yes?
Art (as a mouse): [high-pitched] Yeah?
Jack (as Domenico): Wait, why do you have high mouse voices, we’re all the same size [laughs].
Austin (as a mouse): [high-pitched] I just have a high voice, also! What’s wrong with that?
Art (as mouse): [high-pitched] Yeah!
Austin (as a mouse): What’s your fucking problem?
Art (as a mouse): Buddy, this is mice town!
Austin (as a mouse): You making fun of my voice?
Art (as a mouse): You come into our fucking Kingdom, you talk to us like this?
Austin (as a mouse): Like this? And a time like this, during the Crypt King’s Plagues?
Art (as a mouse): Yeah, we’re under a plague and you’re like, “Hey, why do you talk so high”?
Austin (as a mouse): Why would you do that? What kind of an asshole? I swear!
Jack (as Domenico): Wait, wait, wait. Sorry, we can take this all back— Listen. Listen. Dukedoms to the both of you!
Austin (as a mouse): Ah!
Jack (as Domenico): A duke! You’re a duke!
Art (as a mouse): Ah!
Jack (as Domenico): Duke, you’re a duke! Now tell me about this plague this guy got, dukes!
Austin (as a mouse): It’s not good!
Art (as a mouse): It’s real bad! There was a King of the Crypts! He was a… He’s a mouse!
Austin (as a mouse): Jellister, his name is Jellister. And he was jealous, sir! And now he’s mad, also!
Art (as a mouse): There was a really funny song about, I don’t think it helped us!
Austin (as a mouse): [chuckles] He kind of took it personally!
[Jack chuckles]
Art (as a mouse): [singing] Jellister was jealous, sir, and now we’re [chuckles]… Mad at him…
Jack (as Domenico): [laughing] Sorry, it’s funnier if I’m the mouse with the normal sounding voice.
Jack (as a mouse): [regular pitch] Yeah, he cursed our bassist.
Austin (as a mouse): [high-pitched] Yeah, he cursed our bassist [laughs]. And uhh… also he, uh… The curse, the plague, it’s spreading. It makes, it makes appendages bigger, it makes hand— like fingers get longer? And then [laughing] you got really long fingers and toes! And ears!
Art (as a mouse): It’s worse than it sounds!
Austin (as a mouse): [laughing] It’s really uncomfortable. Bad circulation. And—
Jack (as Domenico): Can wizards catch it?
Art (as a mouse): None of your gloves fit!
Austin (as a mouse): Yeah, wizards– of course wizards can get it!
Jack (as Domenico): Oh no! My gloves!
Jack: And my gloves are beginning to— [laughs] fall off, yeah!
Austin: [laughing] Oh no!
Jack (as Domenico): Oh no, my gloves! My gloves are getting tighter! Estecar! Your boots!
Austin (as Estecar): Ah! My boots! My boots were sized perfectly. You need to understand. I went to not only an immaculate tailor but a shoesmith beyond all, all repute.
Austin: Is that, is that the way—
Art (as a mouse): I think he called us a cobbler!
Austin (as Estecar): No, I don’t— I do not, I did not go to a cobbler mouse! I went to a shoesmith.
Jack (as a mouse): [high-pitched] Hey, what the fuck are you talking about? That’s what we call them down here! Just—
Austin (as Estecar): Oh, I didn’t know that was— in my kingdom, there’s shoesmiths, there’s cobblers—
Jack (as a mouse): Come down her! Befriend itself and our voices!
Austin (as Estecar): I don’t mean to— Your voices are magnificent, I would say. I wish I could have such registers. Anyway, how do we fix this?
Art (as a mouse): There’s no cure!
Jack: The mice look at each other.
Austin (as a mouse): There’s no cure at all. What do you— no!
Jack (as a mouse): There’s no cure!
Jack: Oh, shit now we’re all mice!
[Art chuckles]
Austin (as a mouse): We’re all mice now!
Jack (as Domenico): Well, well, I think that we could definitely help you out here— [cross] I think we could definitely help with a cure.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): [cross] Yeah, we’ll magic up a cure, we’re wizards!
Austin (as Estecar): We’ll get a cure! We’re gonna— we will have a cure, give us a little time, you know. I will be removing my shoes, if that’s acceptable, I don’t— my toes hurt now. So.
Jack (as Domenico): Yeah! Take my gloves off.
Austin (as Estecar): If we could have— direct us to your inn! Presumably made of milk cartons or something. And we will, we’ll cook up a cure and we’ll move on our way.
Art (as a mouse): That’d be really great of you!
Jack (as a mouse): Our inn is made of bricks and mortar! What do you think, we make everything out of milk cartons down here?
[Austin chuckles]
Art (as a mouse): Where would we even get the milk? We have no milk—
Austin (as Estecar): Okay, you know what, I take it back, I apologise. I should not have jumped to conclusions.
Art (as a mouse): You come down here and you talk about our milk
Jack (as a mouse): Fucking wizards!
Art (as a mouse): Fucking wizards! [laughs] Always shitting on our society!
[Austin laughs]
Jack (as a mouse): Fucking hate wizards!
Art (as a mouse): [laughs] Wizards are the worst, they’re the only ones who come and visit us, everyone else is too big!
[Austin laughs]
Art (as a mouse): We can’t hang out with angelic voices!
Austin (as a mouse): This is the real curse! This is the real curse, the real curse is only that wizards can come hang out!
Jack (as a mouse): Fucking curse. Fucking wizards! [laughs]
Art (as a mouse): Yeah, the cure better take care of the wizards!
Austin (as a mouse): [laughs] You want a cure? Get rid of these fucking wizards!
Art (as a mouse): Let’s get ‘em!
[Austin and Jack laugh]
Art (as a mouse): We’ll be playing Mouse Guard before you know it! [laughs]
Jack: Mice draw little swords which are of course made of like, like…
Austin: [laughing] Cocktail knot—? Cocktails swords?
Austin (as Estecar): I recognise those from my time as a bartender, we need to run!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Uh oh!
Jack: [laughing] Wait, so—
Jack (as Domenico): Don’t worry, my friends. The mice are approaching us.
Jack: The mice get closer and closer, pushing us back towards the exit? Or, no, I guess in order for the story to work—
Austin: Through!
Jack: —they need to push us towards—
Art: Yeah. [laughs]
Austin: Yes. And in fact I have, I have just the word for us.
Jack: No, wait, I have— [chuckling] Could I cast the first one?
Austin: Oh, please. Yes.
Jack: Rumbling! Crashing! A horse’s head blasts through [laughing] one of the walls.
[Austin laughs]
Jack: A full size horse’s head! As I call out,
Jack (as Domenico): Dris! [meant Drie].
Jack: Another horse’s head! Hooves crash through the roof.
Austin: Ohhhhh.
Art: Ha!
Jack: Mice crushed, scattered, a horse eats a mouse! Is that a thing they even do? I don’t know!
[Austin and Art laugh]
Austin (as Estecar): That’s terrible! Quickly, get on the horses!
Austin: Uh, I’m casting—
Art (as Eze Ki’el): We’re little too! [laughing] Are the horses gonna eat us?
Austin (as Estecar): No—
Jack (as Domenico): Yeah, we are getting— [laughs]
Austin (as Estecar): We just— Make them bite the little collar and toss us up to their manes, and we’ll hold on tightly!
Art: So we’re not— [laughing] We’re not solving the plague, we’re just bouncing?
Jack: [laughing] Just killing a bunch of them? Destroying a mouse city?
Austin: It seems as if maybe the way we’ve decided [laughing] to move on— In fact, I mean, maybe, maybe we need to be honest and these are hindering cards.
Jack: I mean, who are they hindering?
Austin: The problem. Right?
Jack: Oh, true.
Austin: “As each player contributes a word to describe how its meaning will help or hinder the spell.” I guess the spell is not being hindered. [chuckling] We are just not trying to solve this problem.
Art: Do the rules say we have to solve the problem?
Austin: “Some problems may,” da da da, “may have additional instructions. If these instructions cannot be followed, the spell automatically fails.” I guess it doesn’t, it doesn’t say… It doesn’t say [chuckles] that we have to solve the problem. At all! [chuckles]
[Jack chuckles]
Austin: We’re terrible wizards!
Jack: Also, Austin, I have some kind of scale stuff that I would like to talk through with you here? We are, we are like an inch tall.
Austin: [smiling] Yeah, what’s up?
Jack: And these horses that we have brought in are full size horses.
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: Like, one of the horse’s heads destroyed the town hall. Go over again how we’re going to get picked up safely by these horses?
Austin: [chuckles] They’re gonna grab us by our collars with their teeth. As if they’re going to eat us.
And then go, thwoop!
Jack: They’re like, very gently…
Austin: They’re like ‘rrr’ and then flip us into the air. And then— like it’s a God of War QTE. And we’re gonna grab onto the back of their mains and ride away, and as we ride out, we’ll slap the tourmaline on the other side and then grow us back to being big. And I know what you’re thinking, “Well, how will we, how will we get to where the the tourmaline is?” The tourmaline, of course, is on the outside, and it’s gonna be harder to break through the end of the other side of the mountain. But that is why I’m casting Thruz! With a Z at the end of it, but you don’t pronounce the Z—
Jack: The zed is silent!
Austin: Because it’s a silent Z. Which is this world’s equivalent of like allons-y! Like lets go! It means, it just means to pass through a place? And that is what gives the horses the ability to break through, not just the mouse City Hall, constructed of little mouse brick and mortar or whatever, but also through the walls of the Titan, the Titan Tooth Mountains.
Jack: Unbelievable.
Art: I don’t have a word for this, I’m gonna have to not contribute.
Austin: That’s fine. I think that’s fine, I think it’s okay. Uh… Means we should roll 2D6.
Jack: I gotta say, for sheer destructive power, the Rapid Evening have got nothing on these losers.
Austin: [chuckling] On these three asshole wizards. I’m rolling my die. That’s a one, [laughing] unfortunately.
Jack: I have rolled a two! [chuckles]
Art: So it’s a weak—
Jack: Wait, [laughing] we’re fucked, right?
Austin: It means— Uh-huh! Uhhh-huh! It would, again, just as before— it means the spell is weak and only [chuckles] partially effective. The current player describes how the problem is solved but only partially or temporarily.
So the problem… is still the Crypt King’s Plague. Uh [chuckles]. I guess.
Art: Well, I mean—
Jack: I mean, we can solve the plague by leaving, rapidly, on horseback, right?
Austin: Our part of the plague, yeah, the part of it that’s affecting us! Yeah. [laughing] I guess that’s true.
Jack: Another problem, which is like, Jaws style— You know, like the famous fish, Jaws?
Austin: Yeah. Mm-hmm!
Jack: Jaws-style, a panther just bursts up through the floor, along with the horses!
Austin: Right.
Jack: Scrambling around on the floor, like, panther versus horse now! And they’re hot on our tail! The Panther Queen’s troops have pursued us!
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: Into and through the Mouse Kingdom of the Titan Tooth Mountains.
Austin: And—
Art (as a mouse): Fuckin’ wizards!
Jack: It’s like we were the titans.
Austin: [laughing] We were the titans.
Art (as a mouse): Bringing the fucking panthers!
Austin: [laughs] Also. Two notes here about the Crystalline, the Panther Queen’s troops. Their head blades get longer, because of the Crypt King’s Plague.
Jack: Oh no!
Austin: And also their long clothes also get longer [chuckles]. I don’t know why it works like that, but it does.
Jack (as a mouse): Fucking— [chuckles] The panthers are getting stronger!
Austin (as a mouse): I hate these fucking wizards!
Jack: Death. [laughs] Death, destruction—
Art (as a mouse): We never had panthers here before!
Austin (as a mouse): They’re kind of cool! Did you know they’re just the same thing as leopards or jaguars? [laughs]
Jack: Ah, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp.
Austin (as a mouse): Oh no!
Art (as a mouse): Ahhh!
Art: [laughing] This is turning into Mr. Bill.
Austin: [laughing] I was gonna say, we’re doing Mr. Bill! [high-pitched] Oh noooo!
Art: [high-pitched] Oh noooo…
Austin: All right. Um? Jack, are you gifting a word?
Jack: Mm-hmm! Yes. I feel like horses is fucking great word! So I’m gonna—
Austin: Yeah, you gotta hold onto these horses [chuckles].
Jack: I’m just gonna give it straight back to Estecar!
Austin: Perfect, I will take them. And I will take them…
Austin (as Estecar): How could anyone forget these horses?
Austin: All right. Take the [chuckles]. Take the Titan Tooth Mountains, Jack?
Jack: Okay. Oh, this is a great game.
Austin: And I will draw the next location! A-ha, let’s see. Uh? [chuckling] Well, okay, great!
Jack: [chuckling] Plunging! Out of the Mouse—
Austin: We are rushing— yeah. Out from the Mouse Kingdom down the Titan Tooth Mountains, and into the Sparrow Song Ravine.
The, you know, it takes us a day of hard riding on these horses to get enough distance where it feels safe to dismount. And when we do, the horses thank us and disappear into the ether. And below us, as we begin to like slowly march around the ravine down… I think on the way, we’re kind of like— Actually, I’m gonna zoom back a little bit and say— Uh-oh! I think I lost connection. I did.
Jack: No, I can hear you!
Art: No, I can hear you.
Austin: Oh, OBS lost connection.
Jack: Yeah, no, you’re fine!
Austin: Weird.
Jack: Oh, weird, yeah, the stream has gone down.
Austin: Oh, reconnection successful! I think we’re back? Are we back, YouTube?
Jack: Looks to me like we are.
Austin: Okay. So what I say is, I say… You know, as we’re like getting, we’re getting through the snow bits, I go,
Austin (as Estecar): [quietly] Listen, my friends. I know a place that’s— Do you remember the Harrow’s Hall. Do you remember Harrow’s Hall?
Jack (as Domenico): Mm, indeed!
Austin (as Estecar): Imagine that but instead of a hall, it was a city. It was a place of, of rest and respite, and pleasure. Where three nobles, such as ourselves, would all be taken in and would be, would be lauded as heroes, the heroes that we are. And we would be given the grandest of feasts and a warm welcome. It’s a little town called, a little city called called Sparrowsong, in the Sparrowsong Ravine, I know just the place.
Austin: So we’re going through the snow and the snow gives way to just kind of rain, the rain gives way to fog. And we’re descending these mountains being very careful. And as we kind of come across, I’m like,
Austin (as Estecar): We’re just about there. I suspect you’ll hear the sound of drums and, and horns as certainly their scouts have seen us by now and will be readying a parade for when we arrive.
Austin: And we walk around this corner and we look down into the ravine, and the city has gone. The prompt is what’s missing? And the thing that is missing is the city. [chuckles]
Jack: The entire City of Sparrowsong?
Austin: Sparrowsong? Gone.
Austin (as Estecar): Uh, now— Mm… I believe the city was supposed to be here— [laughs] Was— Do you see below, where there is that flat—
Jack (as Domenico): Right.
Austin (as Estecar): That, that was… the city.
Jack (as Domenico): Looks like where— like I was gonna say, a great place for a city.
Austin (as Estecar): Isn’t it fantastic—? The little river, you could see where there’d be fishing. You could even imagine—
Jack (as Domenico): No, excellent!
Austin (as Estecar): —the boulevards! Filled with people celebrating just the beauty of the day!
Jack (as Domenico): And you know, it strikes me as strange that Sparrowsong has been built, presumably, somewhere further, further down, further around the corner because if I was going to build a city and I have, I will put it right here! Right there. That’s where the city would be.
Austin (as Estecar): Yes, of course— Perhaps the city— You know what, per§haps they moved the city just around the next corner of the next ravine, the next— oh, just a little over! Just one more over. And, I know a great place [chuckles]. I know a fantastic—
Jack: [smiling] Snap cut?
Austin: Yeah.
Austin (as Estecar): Huh! Well… I do believe—
Jack (as Domenico): Now you see—
Austin (as Estecar): Hmm…
Art: I dropped?
Jack: Oh, hi.
Austin: Oh, you dropped.
Art: Yeah.
Austin: Weird!
Jack: The city is gone, Art. Uh, basically, is all you need to know! We arrived, looked over a ravine—
Austin: Yeah, I told us I knew a place the way that someone tells you they know a bar? You know what I mean? “Oh, it’s just a 10 minute walk away” like that thing, except it was a city that would hold a parade for us, and now the city is just missing, magically. As if magically.
Jack (as Domenico): No city here either, Estecar!
Austin (as Estecar): N-no, well, it, uh— Ah, hmm. Perhaps they were beset upon by… you know, forces nefarious, and they hid the city! You know…
Jack (as Domenico): You can come out now!
Austin (as Estecar): We are here! Your saviors!
Jack (as Domenico): We are here!
Austin (as Estecar): Your heroes and saviors! Ahem. Ahem…
Jack (as Domenico): And out you come! They’re gonna come out on three. One—
Austin (as Estecar): Do you know—
Jack (as Domenico): Two. Here comes the city!
Austin (as Estecar): Mm. We should go back to the original place and try there!
Jack: Snap cut.
Jack (as Domenico): Here comes the city!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): One! Two? Three!
Austin (as Estecar): Perhaps it’s here—
Jack (as Domenico): No city here either.
Austin (as Estecar): Perhaps it’s here and it’s just in a different plane of existence. We should go about our day.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Ohhh…
Jack (as Domenico): Quite normally.
Austin (as Estecar): And just— you know, climb the stairs!
Austin: And I [laughing] climb—
Jack (as Domenico): Here I go!
Austin (as Estecar): Here I go! I’m climbing down the stairs!
Jack (as Domenico): Look, it’s me pretending that I’m trapped in a glass box! [laughs]
Austin (as Estecar): We should make camp here and look in our maps, and just try to… Perhaps I’ve misled us here. My compliments.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): I think you mean, “I’ll pay for a room at the inn!”
Jack (as Domenico): Mm, yes.
Austin (as Estecar): Yes…
Jack (as Domenico): Thank you, barkeep, for this tasty cup of seawater!
Austin (as Estecar): Yes, let’s take, let’s take a seat and see if we could figure out what’s one wrong here.
Austin: I really hope the card I draw is appropriate.
Jack: We just did in the middle of a plain, right? Like a Death Stranding-style—
Austin: Yeah, a hundred percent, exactly, a Death Stranding-style… Yeah, uh-huh!
And so we set up in our inn. Our fake inn, our invisible inn. We all lay [chuckles], we all lay down where there would be inn rooms, like perpendicular to each other?
Jack (as Domenico): Mm, how comfortable!
Austin (as Estecar): I’ll be putting out the light in my room now. Actually—
Jack (as Domenico): Ah, me too.
Austin (as Estecar): —I’m going to leave mine on just a little while, I hope that’s okay. We’re in different rooms so there would be no, no fear of my light bothering you, of course.
Jack (as Domenico): Indeed.
Austin (as Estecar): But I need to do a little more reading… Because it… It strikes me! It strikes me as odd, I see something here in my notes. I’m sorry, if you two wish to sleep, we could have this discussion in the morning. It’s nothing to be worried about. There’s no reason to get up in arms or pack our bags and begin to leave immediately… It’s just a little matter of a prophecy fulfilled.
Jack (as Domenico): I’m sorry, a prophecy fulfilled?
Art (as Eze Ki’el): What? I was in my room, enjoying the view of the town centre and now I hear about a prophecy?
Austin (as Estecar): What a beautiful town! What a beautiful town centre! A beautiful view. Uhhhh, prophecy seems [chuckles]. It seems to me—
Art (as Eze Ki’el): I paid extra for this view!
Austin (as Estecar): I have here, I have here a little bit of a prophecy fulfilled. Is what it seems. That I put things together. I hadn’t seen this because one of the things, one of the parts of the prophecy was, “a town of great fortune vanishes into the night”. And I thought, perhaps, that seems unlikely. This is a bullshit prophecy, like most of them are.
To be fair, I should have maybe known before that I, looking through the list of other parts of the prophecy, that may be some of the other elements would have given me a little bit of a clue… that the prophecy was on track.
There is the one here about the giant and her pet raising and then returning to slumber. Which, ehhh, yes, yes, I get— Yes. It says here—
Jack (as Domenico): We did, we did that.
Austin (as Estecar): Well, it happened, I wouldn’t say we did it. You know… It does say here that a gilded city would would become golden twice. And that seemed like nonsense to me. It still does, if I’m being honest. But I could see where it maybe fits a little bit!
Jack (as Domenico): We did that.
Austin (as Estecar): And then it says here, the most humble Kingdom ruined by horses.
Jack (as Domenico): I have no idea what they’re talking about.
Austin (as Estecar): No, so this is the one where I thought, I thought perhaps…
Jack (as Domenico): Eze?
Austin (as Estecar): Perhaps this is bullshit!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Uh, we just… we just did that one.
Austin (as Estecar): What?
Jack (as Domenico): Uh, no, I don’t buy it. Never. Never! Never visited a humble kingdom in my life.
Austin (as Estecar): What about this one, what about this one? What about this one? It says here—
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Now that you think about it, they weren’t that humble. They were kind of rude!
Austin (as Estecar): They were extremely rude! And I think that’s probably what threw me off. Maybe they just meant humble in size!
Jack (as Domenico): Mmmm…
Austin (as Estecar): Maybe. There’s also something here about a very bad Pope, but I tune out when I hear the word. Anyway! It does say the end of the world will come soon after.
[pause]
Jack (as Domenico): One more time?
Austin (as Estecar): The end of the world will come soon after these events. Assuming that the prophecy is fully fulfilled.
Jack (as Domenico): And, uh, what, what would we have to do hypothetically— Or what would one, what would three wizards, sort of hypothetically, have to do in order to fulfil the prophecy?
Austin (as Estecar): Well, it says here that the city would be taken away by nightfall, never to come back. So we could simply rebuild the city or turn it, return it from its invisible state or retrieve it? From whatever plane it’s been hidden at?
Well, that would, that would seem to put things back on track! Or take them off track, as it were. The prophecy track. The track of prophecy.
We simply need to rebuild or re-summon the missing city!
Jack (as Domenico): Well, sounds good to me! I will just turn over on my feather pillow and we can begin after a good night’s sleep, in this beautiful king-sized bed!
Austin (as Estecar): Okay, wait. Uh, you could do a little nap, I think! But we have to do it before the morning, that’s the thing! Before the night… ends! You see.
Jack (as Domenico): [sighs]
Austin (as Estecar): I know this is going to be very difficult and let me dig deep into my pockets and find a little bit of magic. You know how we do. That’ll give us a little help.
Austin: And I roll up my sleeves. And I say,
Austin (as Estecar): Bring it in! That’s what they say in sports. Bring it in!
Jack (as Domenico): Wizards!
Austin: And I put my hand out, so you put your hand on my hands.
Austin (as Estecar): Wizards?
Jack (as Domenico): Wizards.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Wizards!
Austin (as Estecar): Hands on hand. On three, give me a “Hinla”! Ready?
[Art chuckles]
Austin (as Estecar): Again, a “Hinla”! With all the, with your chest!
[someone hitting their chest with their hand]
Austin (as Estecar): Three, two, one. Hinla!
Art (as Eze Ki’el) and Jack (as Domenico): Hinla!
Austin (as Estecar): There it is!
Austin: And Hinla means industriousness. And this is a caffeine spell. This is a [chuckling] spell that’s going to give us the energy to get through the night! Pull an all nighter! [laughing] And try to figure out how to rebuild a city or summon it back from where, wherever it was taken, or whatever.
Jack (as Domenico): I am going to cast a spell. Also, I feel like I could work all night! I’m going to cast a spell. Quodrionius! Quodroninus! [meant Quodrionus]
[Austin and Art laugh]
Austin (as Estecar): I also have trouble—
Jack (as Domenico): Quodrionus!
Austin (as Estecar): Quodrionius!
Jack (as Domenico): Quodrinus! Ah, the spell, of course, meaning “question”! Now, ha.
Jack (as Domenico): I, Baron Domenico Smokeacre, have been known… Ha ha… I don’t mean to toot my own horn here. To cast blazingly simple spells. They say, “Baron, how do you make your spells so good?” And the answer is, “Don’t think too hard about them!”
Quodrioninius! I am using this spell to ask us a simple question. Wizards, can we build a city? Yes we can!
Austin (as Estecar): Yes we can!
Jack (as Domenico): The spell is cast!
Austin (as Estecar): [laughs] Well, I don’t mean to put you on the spot here, Eze, but it does seem as if, as if our good friend Domenico and I have done the bulk of the work [chuckles] on this city thing, so far…
Jack: —caffeined. [laughing] Checking if we could—
Austin: [laughing] Asking ourselves if we could do it. And pouring ourselves magic coffee.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): [fast] Well, I don’t know why you didn’t think I would be able to finish, I’ll definitely be able to finish it, I mean, we have so much time, I just feel like everything, everything’s going so slow, we just did the, the, the, the… The dawn is a million miles away! And you don’t need to be afraid of something that’s a million miles away, you know?
Austin (as Estecar): That’s true. It’s true. I think we… Do we know how caffeine hits a big cat differently than a human?
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Mmmmmm…
Jack (as Domenico): I do not think they can have it.
Austin (as Estecar): [chuckling] At all!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): What is a tail? Where’s that tail? Woooo!
Austin (as Estecar): Ohhh no! [chuckles] We may have a problem here.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Somethinnnnnnng… Something might be attacking my butt.
[Jack chuckles]
Austin (as Estecar): That is your tail, my friend.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Mmm…
Austin (as Estecar): You are in control of it. Summon your will to control your tail!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Mmm… I think I…
Austin (as Estecar): You have it! You have it already! You are a wizard! Your, your vast intelligence means that you’re in control of the situation, even if you don’t have something in your hands.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Anyway, I think we should just put the apocalypse in the ruby.
Austin (as Estecar): [chuckles] Excuse me.
Jack (as Domenico): [chuckles] Sorry?
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Take the end of, the end of all things.
Austin (as Estecar): Yes.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): And put it in Ezair, the ruby.
Austin (as Estecar): The ruby. Which once held the ghost spirit?
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Yeah, mm, it’s empty now. Put the apocalypse in there.
Austin (as Estecar): Put the apocalypse—
Jack (as Domenico): Wait, so we don’t build the city at all? And we simply say, “Apocalypse? That is no problem.”
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Get in that ruby!
Austin (as Estecar): Get in that ruby, apocalypse.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Yeah, mm.
Jack (as Domenico): Mm.
Austin (as Estecar): Well, there will, of course, still be a long ritual, we’ll have to set up— we’ll draw things in the sand. I think, I think this is good! I think we still needed these other elements of this spell. It’s good to know we could have built a city, [laughing] for instance!
Jack (as Domenico): Wait, wait, wait, wait. I’m going to enact a spell takeback. Can we put the apocalypse into a ruby? The question. The answer? Yes.
Austin (as Estecar): We could do it! Thank you. Thank you for doubling up and checking in on this one. Let’s just put it in the ruby!
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Let’s put it in the ruby!
Jack (as Domenico): Let’s just put the end of the world in the ruby!
Austin: I’m ready— I’m ready to roll this dice! Are we ready to roll this dice?
Jack: What 3D6?
Austin: 1D6 each. Ready?
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: Let’s do it at the same time. [smiling] This feels like a big one. [chuckles]
Art: Uh-huh. [chuckles]
[Jack chuckles]
Austin: Three—
Art: Wonder what a weak effect on this looks like [laughs].
Austin: Me either— Eh, I kind of do. Three, two, one. Ready? Go.
Art: Yep!
Austin: Yikes! [laughs]
[Jack laughs]
Art: Yikes!
Austin: One, two, three! No successes!
Jack: One, two, three, here comes the apocalypse [chuckles].
Austin: Um…? So.
Austin (as Estecar): I just need everyone to know we can’t be blamed for this.
Jack (as Domenico): Well, of course not. Of course not! We can’t be blamed for anything!
Austin (as Estecar): What just happened, I think, is… I don’t think we had any say in it! You understand?
Jack (as Domenico): No, of course not.
Austin (as Estecar): You understand, the world… it was heading— It was a prophecy fulfilled!
Jack (as Domenico): What have we done?
Austin: So. We cut to… God… [chuckles] I’m trying to decide if this is where the thing that I’ve been planning happens happens. Do you know what I mean? Like sometimes like—
Jack: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Austin: You know how sometimes I’m like, “Oh, is this the moment? Is this the moment to like pull back the curtain a little bit?” I kind of like the end of the world as like a metaphor for this thing.
And I like that these three bumbling wizards are there to see it happen. I don’t know that they’re to blame for it.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): How could we be?
Austin (as Estecar): We did everything we could! We tried to capture the apocalypse in a ruby! The prophecy seemed to have been fulfilled, we did our best! [chuckles] We did— [laughs] We did our best.
Austin: So the morning comes. What’s, what’s the, what’s—? Can you each give me a visual symbol of the apocalypse?
Jack: Oh, boy. Wow.
Austin (as Estecar): Can I tell you, it’s a, it’s an apocalypse of… It’s like an end of the world but it’s also more [laughs] than that. It’s a thing that will change the world irrevocably [pron. irrev-Oh-cably], irrevocably [pron. ir-RE-vocably]. [laughs] Quodroniouious.
Jack: [laughs] Quodrionious!
Austin: I’ll give a little bit more and I’ll ask for some symbols soon. I think we have the gem, this big, just beautiful ruby. We’ve drawn sigils all around the town, we’ve sketched out maybe parts of where the town would have been.
The magical energy of the morning sun arises. It’s as if there are— in fact, it’s not as if there’s five suns, it’s as if there’s 50 suns, you know. It’s the heat of a billion suns. And for a moment it is captured in the ruby. It does focus down into the ruby.
And the ruby like begins to shake and shutter, and rise into the air. And then the, the, you know how a gem has been cut and there’s like the cuts of a gem cut, you know? Where those cuts are begin to shake and open as if they’re little plates, instead of being just a gem.
And it’s like the, the energy of all these other worlds is pouring into this, this space. And I think we all see a flash of another… Of something else, as we look into this ruby. Like, each of us looks at— in each of the cuts of the ruby—
I know we’ve used this before a little bit with like independence. So like, depending on what angle you look at it, you see a different thing, right? But here you’re not just seeing a reflection of yourself or of other people. You’re seeing a reflection of other worlds in this moment.
Art, can you tell me again about— can you just give me a quick update as to how the Hamlette Omelette place is going? How the brunch, the brunch is doing these days?
Art: Oh, it’s great! They formed like a worker co-op. And they’re, they’re making Hamlettes!
Austin: Right.
Art: They’re compensating everyone fairly and they’re singing songs about all the Hamlettes that make up… the town!
Austin: Is that happening when they see the, the sun take on this gem-like color?
Art: Of course, because it’s a brunch restaurant.
Austin: You’re right, so the sun is out, of course.
Art: Yeah. No one goes to brunch when it’s raining.
Austin: [laughs] Jack, do you remember the name of the little town in the mountains where the toymakers lived?
Jack: Oh, God, yeah, they were the Marchmont Mountains?
Austin: They were the Marchmont Mountains.
Jack: So probably the town of Marchmont.
Austin: Oh! Okay. How are things there on this, this afternoon. Or this morning, I suppose.
Jack: It’s spring! It’s springtime!
Austin: Oh, so has the snow melted?
Jack: The snow has melted, there’s edelweiss in the streets. There are cows wearing floral wreaths being— doing a parade through the town square. And the toymakers are sitting in the window of the strudel shop and watching the cows! The flowery cow parade.
Austin: Aw, that’s very sweet! I think that we have the incredible… The view of the retired heroes in their tavern that is a big capsized boat from our Stewpot game? Kind of all doing their morning chores, getting ready for the afternoon rush, the lunch rush. When they see that the sun has turned into a gem in the sky in this moment as well.
And you know, I think a number of them realise, “Oh, does this mean we got to go back to being adventurers?” And there’s that kind of look between between friends as they decide like, “Oh shit, like we have to, we have to connect to each other— We have to like, get back out there, there’s work to be done.”
And I think this is the moment that these worlds… I mean, there’s another view here probably worth gesturing at and being direct about here.
Jack: Ha.
Austin: Somewhere a server is running. [chuckles] And… It is… You know how, you know how… Hm, it’s like “How much of this do I want to give away? How many layers of this do I want to give away in this moment?”
Somewhere, a server is running [chuckles].
Jack: Yeah! Several servers.
Austin: And— Well, what I’ll say is, I don’t think the server was running before. I think that there— These worlds were not in contact before this moment. And in a sense, their worlds are over, because now they are in contact with each other.
They previously… Maybe a couple of them had been? Maybe the cool bug Downfall place? And these Stewpot— or not the Stewpot, the Bell Songs game? The animal adventure game? And maybe Golden Sky Stories were like in the same vibe? But in general, these were all, these had been distinct places. Places people imagined. Places that people had thought of as distinct.
But an outside force has seen what— It has done what it does so often. And seen a way to profit [chuckles] from bringing them in connection with each other, and turning them into places other people might be able to explore.
And I think maybe that’s part of what the image that we see here is. We see these places, and we see new people moving through them. People who look a little less, a little less eccentric? Like there’s another version of three wizards, except all three wizards are all doing the same spells? And they all have like the same clothing on, except maybe some of them have dyed their clothing a little bit differently? Um, maybe we have a… a, you know, an image of some character that we know is this like more complete— We have like the…
Remember the end of the bee game, Art? We go— not the bee game, the end of the Stewpot game. Not the Stewpot game. Fuck. The Bell Songs game!
Art: Oh yeah, Bell Songs…
Austin: [chuckles] See, this is why we’re doing this because they already are so adjacent to each other! We go to the bee place, and there’s like the cool bees. And it’s like, we see a vision of that except adventurers are like fighting against the bees? In a way that’s like, “That’s not— You don’t do that to the bees! The bees are cool! We like the bees.”
And I guess I will just kind of lay it out a little bit here. I inadvertently realised about two or three weeks ago that we’d kind of built a— Alright, hmm. How to slow it down? All right. Uhh…
There is… I have wanted to do three different things for a little while in Live at the Tables. One is, I wanted a game that we could just come back to whenever that was extremely light, because it’ll help us stay on schedule.
Two is, I’ve wanted to do like an MMO, isekai thing? Like a kind of like, “Let’s play out in the world of an MMO?” Let’s play like that style of specifically, like JRPG, like… Japanese take on Western fantasy trope stuff? At least since we did Stewpot, because a lot of that felt like it was in that vibe?
And then the final thing was… I forget what the final thing was! I think it was just like, looking at this list of games and being like, “Yo, these rule. Like, why can’t the Stewpot people hang out with the Bell Songs people?”
And so, I think that that’s, that’s happening here and it’s happening in a way that is… I’m just gonna say outright, is like layered into an actual… It’s layered into another element of a story we’ve already told some of. [chuckles] Which is, there’s a hot new MMO in Bluff City. Um [chuckles], and… We’re actually probably in Bluffington Beach. And I think we’ll dip back into this universe across a couple of different games in the future.
And so that’s, that’s— I think these three wizards happen to be at the moment where those servers come online? And in the same way that this current season of Bluff City has been about, like, the ways in which these spaces have been like… The spaces of Bluff, Blough and Bluffington are interspersed with each other and are intermingling in ways that are kind of creepy and upsetting.
I think there’s a degree of that happening here, which is like… One of the big ideas I have for whatever we do with this is that I want to continue to focus on us as almost like NPC-type characters? Characters from these worlds, not necessarily the heroes who are playing the games, right? But are actually like, you know, the same types of characters we’ve already been playing as. If that makes sense.
So that is, that is, in a sense, the end of this world. Because it’s joining together certain of our past games. I have a list of ones that I think are in and ones that are out. I don’t want to touch Fall of Magic because I think Fall of Magic is too good? [chuckles]
[Art laughs]
Austin: Part of me thinks that’s cheap? Do you know what I mean? Part of me—
Jack: No, no, I’m with you.
Austin: Disney would still— Disney would absolutely put Fall of Magic in this shit, you know?
Jack: But we get to decide!
Austin: But we get to decide. We get to decide. I almost like Fall of Magic—
Art: You’re saying we didn’t do good work here, is that what you’re—?
[Jack laughs]
Austin: [laughs] No, but tonally it’s such a different thing. It’s not as unhinged. You know what I mean? So, this is not Road to Season 7, we’re not doing a Season 7 thing with this. This is 100% just like… And I’ll say, specifically, this is my excuse also to make us finally play Quest, a game that I have like some issues with? But that I’m curious about because it’s so distinct. And one of the key ways it’s distinct is that characters don’t really have stats? Or don’t level up in that way? And that, to me, feels so interesting to play with, in the idea of playing in an MMO space where you’re not playing the heroes. Heroes get to level up, heroes get to have their strength stat go up.
And so I think we’re going to try to kick that off sometime later this month or next month, and that’ll be a thing we dip into and out of, and we’ll probably play some other games are still in whatever this connected world is? I’m still coming up with a finalised name for what this fake MMO is?
But, you know! That’s, that’s, I think, one of the things we’ve been building— I’ve been building towards. I say “I” because I really got a bug up my ass about this like a few weeks ago. And yeah! So. I think these three asshole wizards get to be part of that origin story. If only they [laughing] could have summoned a city, instead of tried to capture the apocalypse in a gem, they could have stopped a weird, exploitative capitalist company from turning their world into an MMO world!
[Jack chuckles]
Austin: They didn’t [chuckles]. Um… We can end here or we can do the thing this book— this game wants us to do. Which is return home. And maybe describe the way that looks? Could be fun?
Jack: Yeah, I’m up for returning home. I also want to just like have some time with these characters.
Austin: Me too. After this?
Jack: After, yeah, exactly.
Austin: Yeah! And it’s like, yeah, and there’s a lot of these details I just haven’t done… I haven’t done a lot of stuff… I haven’t done like a lot of the connection stuff with. Like I haven’t built— there’s no— I haven’t done the world-building— I haven’t gone back and listened to all these games and like written down what the places are and stuff like that. But… Da, da, da… Let me find the rules for returning home!
Art: Are we gonna recast all the places as MMO locations?
Austin: If you want to, if you want to touch it with that, like, thing, like us seeing them that way? That’s kind of fun. Right? But we can also just focus in on ourselves and like, I don’t think that our lives have stopped because of that. Do you know what— I think we are still three asshole wizards. We’re just your favourite NPCs in that game [chuckles]. The three asshole wizards? The, you know, the three asshole wizard quest?
Jack: One of which is a leopard?
Austin: Is a leopard. Or a panther or jaguar, it’s not clear?
Jack: Same animal!
Austin: It’s all the same animal. “After the last words are used to cast the spell, no more cards are drawn. Each player takes an additional turn to share what they learned about magic over the course of the journey. Then, go around in reverse order playing your location cards and describing what you see as you take the path home. When you arrive home sit in silence, maintaining the silence, every player writes a short phrase on their index card that starts with ‘My words are blank’ to indicate how their words have changed through sharing. The game is now over.”
So. Let’s go around the table and see what have we learned about magic? What has each of our characters learned about magic?
Jack (as Domenico): Well. I believe, as I always have, that magic rules. I’m very glad that I got into it. And I think it is an excellent outlet to wield power.
Austin: [chuckles] So learn— Okay, so you’ve confirmed more than learned.
Jack (as Domenico): Well, I’ve always thought of myself as a powerful magician. And I’ve had that confirmed for me!
Austin: Great. Eze?
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Magic is a triumph over the world. [pauses and chuckles]
Austin: Period.
Art (as Eze Ki’el): Magic is how we establish that we, we shape things. Things do not shape us.
Austin: Okay, I like that. I think that’s good. I think, uhh… Hmm. What has Estecar learned?
Austin (as Estecar): I think magic is about doing things. You do them. You summon them and, poof! You do the thing. Previously I thought of it as a collection, or a state of being. But again and again, we showed up places and then things happened. And I would say that magic was a key part of the things happening.
[Art chuckles]
Austin: Alright, so now in reverse order, let’s play our location cards! God, what was the order of these locations? Also, how can I fucking see these cards? I double click them, right? Ah, alright, so mine are a little earlier. So. Who, who takes us back up [chuckles], up the mountains and into the mountain range?
Art: That would be…
Jack: That’s me, right?
Art: Yeah.
Austin: That is you.
Jack: Okay, uh. The Mouse Kingdom is gone. It is, it is absolutely— It is, it’s a crater, basically. There’s like a horse standing bemused in a crater on the top of a mountain, the wind blowing around it.
And standing next to the horse, kind of like looking up at it fairly placidly, is a small mouse carrying a pickaxe in one hand and sitting on a barrel. And kicking her feet against the barrel looking quite contempt. And there is a sign next to her that we can’t read because we’re huge. But if we were small and could read the mouse sign it would say something like, “Mouse Kingdom rebuilding effort to begin. We need your help!” Exclamation mark.
Austin: [chuckles] Perfect.
Jack: So I am gonna play this card!
Austin: All right, I think before that we were in Harrow’s Hall.
Art: Yeah, and Harrow’s Hall is much the same!
Austin: Oh! Okay.
Art: Impossibly large. Very, very active. And, you know, a lot of people have lost something just outside!
[Austin laughs]
Art: Maybe…
[Jack laughs]
Art: Maybe it was eaten by a rat? Or maybe it’s buried in the sand? Maybe it’s under the dock? I don’t— I don’t know. But a lot of people are just looking for a little something right now.
Austin: Very good. I think we then pass riding our horses all the way through this entire thing, right? We’ve definitely just continued [laughing] to summon and trade this spell back and forth, the remainder—
Jack (as Domenico): You want horses? My turn to have horses!
Austin: And then we cut to us on the boat, the potato boat. Each on a horse [laughing] on top of the potato boat. We’ve been, we’ve made the potato boat a little bit bigger using an inverted tourmaline. Don’t ask where we got that from [laughs]. And what we see is… I think… I’m like,
Austin (as Estecar): Oh, perhaps we should swing back down to the Gilded Reef and deal with my mother.
Austin: But we see people on other ships leaving the nearby port to go deal with my mother over and over again? [laughs] Um, we see like adventurers out looking for… I think we like wind up in a port and someone says, “Did you hear the Gilded Reef is filled with treasure?” And we’re like,
Austin (as Estecar): Yes, it’s my— that is my, that is my treasure!
Jack (as Domenico): Yeah, we’ve been there!
Austin (as Estecar): We have— we are wearing it! [laughing] Another gulp of seawater, please, my fine sir!
[Jack laughs]
Austin: And, uh, and yeah! I think that like it basically becomes a popular dungeon for people to run again and again. People love doing the Gilded Reef, there’s all these cool underwater elements…
Art: You end up with a lot of gold.
Austin: You end up with a lot of gold. It’s as if there’s— it’s as— at the end, a volcano erupts? [smiling] And just replenishes all the gold that went missing from the last run? It’s weird.
Jack: Is this weird to the wizards? Or are they kind of just like,
Jack (as Domenico): Welp, the world is strange and seems like a lot of adventurers!
Austin: It would be weirder— It would be less weird if we hadn’t seen the shit in the ruby, right? Because I think we understand the world has changed because it was the end of the world and the prophecy was fulfilled, or it was— it happened. I think what we’ve learned is the prophecy wasn’t a prophecy, it was like… It was like the future travelling back in time to tell us about itself. Do you know what I mean?
Jack: Right.
Austin: It was like an echo back in time. And so for us to see that and understand that the way the world is has been fundamentally like, metaphysically changed is upsetting. In a way that it is not for other people who are just like “Ah! Adventurers, right?”
And I think part of it is, there are enough other adventurers from these other worlds. The thing that’s interesting about this scenario is, these other worlds we’re already sort of like each other? In some ways. Like we are already adventurers [chuckles]. In this world. [laughing] We are chaos creating—
Jack: Yes, that’s true!
Austin: —monster player characters [laughs]. So it’s not like we’re above that shit. The characters from the Stewpot game were already like that style of fantasy RPG adventurer, it’s just that they’ve retired to start a tavern together.
And so that sort of like… I think part of like being able to meet other people from these, from the other realms or whatever we end up calling them? The other planes, I don’t know? Is like a positive thing and a thing that we can take some solace in and get to know those people and blah, blah, blah.
But I do think it’s a little weird for us, specifically, to feel like there is this new wave of people who are not interacting with the world in the same way. That we are.
Jack: But also we’re like… We are also three losers. So I imagine that on some level, Domenico is just like,
Jack (as Domenico): Well, the world’s fucked up now!
Austin: Yes.
Jack (as Domenico): Not quite sure— Not quite sure what to make of all this. Probably some money to be made. [laughs]
Austin: Yeah! [laughs]
Jack: It’s like— How does Domenico Smokeacre conceive of an existential crisis? And it’s probably just like,
Jack (as Domenico): Wow! This is all very weird, isn’t it!
Austin: This is all very weird! Yeah, totally! I’ll say really quick, one of the big things that like ended up pushing me towards Quest for this, is there’s a line in Quest, and this is the thing that pushed me over the edge with this idea. That is like, “Oh, rolls aren’t a test of skill, it’s a test of fate.” No one has skills in that game. And I was like, “Oh. NPCs don’t have skill levels [chuckles].” They can’t get better at… Like you can increase—
Jack: Right! [chuckles]
Austin: You know what I mean? When we were playing Final Fantasy XIV, yes, they have like… The boss of a dungeon has a move that they do. But they can’t like go out and increase that, that—
Jack: No!
Austin: I guess they go to to a hard— The hard mode version is different.
Jack: Like Alphinaud’s skill is question mark, question mark, question mark.
Austin: [laughs] Right. Exactly! And I was like, “Oh shit, the idea of a world where for some people, it’s fate, and for some people it’s skill. And what if the camera stayed focused on the people for whom it was fate.” Is really interesting. I think we get—
Jack: Yeah, that’s great.
Austin: The wizards feel that, to some degree, right? It’s like,
Austin (as Estecar): No, no, we have the spells that we have and we trade them and we learn new ones, of course, but I don’t get better at— I roll the dice and it’s a one or it’s a six! And that’s it! Like I don’t, I can’t get a plus one! Yeah, horses! I cast horses!
Jack (as Domenico): Doesn’t work like that!
Austin (as Estecar): Exactly.
Austin: Um. All right, that’s mine. What was before, what was before the Gilded Reef, was that the—
Jack: The Tomb of Leyla Glass.
Austin: The Tomb of Leyla Glass.
Jack: Now. When we get back to the Tomb of Leyla Glass, the giants is gone.
Austin: Oh no! [chuckles]
Jack: [chuckles] And so has the dragon!
Austin: Oh…
Jack: There is a lot of torn scaffolding. There are huge, like, cartoon giant footprints in the ground? Leading away. You can see the giant on the horizon probably like raising a club against some sort of town or something.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Jack: And, and, yeah, there’s just like, clattering in the trees and like one hundred— No, it’s 24, it’s a full alliance raid comes—
Austin: God…
Jack: —screaming out of the trees. And pursues the giants. In the way that 24 instanced players all just move like rippling water in the direction of their target.
Austin: Love it. Before that… Was that, was that…
Art: The Meadow Eternal.
Austin: The Meadow Eternal!
Art: Or no no, no. No, Meadow Eternal wasn’t…
Austin: Yeah, it was. It was. Meadow Eternal was after…
Art: Was after the church—
Austin: Church place.
Art: Okay, good.
Austin: Yeah.
Art: Um. The Meadow Eternal is still this endless lush green that you can’t see the end of. What you do see are people just popping into existence in rags and tattered armor. And they strike it at simple creatures and sticks and they get their legs in the world, and then they go to a large tree in the centre and take a portal to a new place.
Austin: Ah! I love this. This is good. Um, finally, we do get, we do end up going to… to Ithra Zaya, the once ruins, now kind of tourist trap center of the, the school of— or not, the Church of Magic is what it was called?
Jack: Mm.
Austin: Right? And I think this is like two things. I think one, there’s already a place filled with people hawking souvenirs, and it’s become that but filled with this new type of person. These adventurers come here to open up shop [chuckles] and sell the things that they’ve taken from the Gilded Reef and from the Giant’s Tomb that they don’t need or want anymore? And it’s also a place where people come to learn magic.
And that has shifted, I think, pretty substantially. I think it’s kind of weird, actually, maybe for you, Eze, because you have such a fraught relationship with the Church of Magic?
Art: Mm.
Austin: And specifically around the education aspect of it? And here it feels like there’s all these people who like don’t understand the power relationship that the Church of Magic has with this world and all the magic in it. They’re just kind of like, “Yeah, cool! Can you teach me Fireball 2?” [laughs] And that’s— “It took me [chuckles] all these years to get, to try to even learn Fireball 2 and now you’re just lining up and giving them 12 silver pieces!” And that’s, and that’s… I think that’s part of how Ithra Zaya has changed.
Jack: On the Shores of Terror… we are stopped as a group and asked if we know how swimming works by 13 different people.
[Austin laughs]
Jack: Everything else is exactly the same [chuckles].
Austin: [chuckles] All right.
Art: It’s back to me, it’s…
Austin: Ooh, this is interesting.
Art: The Crystal… what is the, I can’t remember the name of it—
Austin: Woods, Woods.
Art: Woods. The Crystal Woods are nightmarish. The Crystalline trees that you see the reflections in, they… They literally spit out a ghostly version of yourself that attacks you. Mercilessly and bitterly. It’s a version of you that might not be wearing exactly what you’re wearing or they might not know Fireball 2. But it, it’s you and it wants to kill you.
Austin: Love it. And Jack!
Jack: Um… Wait, the Domain of the Panther Queen is where we started, this wasn’t necessarily my zone.
Austin: Oh, is that not— What do you have in your—? Is that what you have in your hand?
Jack: No, I think I must have made a mistake somewhere down the line. Roll20 is now broken for me in a really fun way. No, let’s see what, what do I have in my hand?
Austin: I don’t know! I can’t open your deck the way— Oh?
Jack: Oh, I have the Shores of Terror again. That’s peculiar
Austin: Oh, did we take that twice? Yeah.
Jack: I must have accidentally picked up another one. Yeah, no. We’re just— we’re back home!
Austin: All right. So. When you are— I guess we should say, does the Panther Queen welcome us? Is the Panther Queen, is the Panther Queen gone? What’s it…? What is the, what is the Jungle of the Panther Queen look like now? Do we deliver the news? I kind of like the idea of the Panther Queen being up on this enough. Like maybe the Panther Queen had pursued us such that she was at the top of the ravine when all this happened. And looked into the same gem and was like, “Ah.”
And we return and we kneel— I kneel. I don’t know if anyone else is willing to, in front of the Panther Queen and I say,
Austin (as Estecar): My Lady. We have seen many strange things.
Austin: And… The… You know, we debrief. We debrief her on what we’ve seen and the way the world has changed. And we know that she seems to understand, like we did, that things used to be different. And we apologise, I apologise that I couldn’t stop it, but that I pledge, as the true leader [chuckles] of the Gilded Reef, to oppose all who stand against the people of this world, and who would plunder it. Because we only believe— [chuckles] What we do is not plunder. [chuckling] What we do is reclaim what is ours.
[Jack chuckles]
Austin: As the powerful members of this world, as different than what these new arrivals do. And yeah! I think that’s what, that’s what Estecar’s vibe here is.
Any other final shots there before we do this final step?
Jack: Um, I think Baron Smokeacre… What is like a small petty, like a petty act of… I think Baron Smokeacre is… His fear of what he has seen… He is not willing to show to the Panther Queen. He might show it to Estecar or Eze, but he would never admit that he, that he could experience an emotion like fear in front of someone like the Panther Queen.
Austin: Mm.
Jack: So I think, instead, he just goes and meets up with the expeditionary force that had, that he had brought to try and invade with the forest. And sort of orders them around in useless exercises for a couple of days? To be like,
Jack (as Domenico): Yes, I’m the Baron. I’m gonna get back to what I do best.
Austin: [chuckles] And… Eze Ki’el.
Art: Um. I think after the things that Eze has seen on the road, he’s afraid. He’s so scared of what might happen to the Panther Queen if people will come and attack the way they’ve attacked the Undersea Kingdom, the way they’ve attacked the Giant… If this is just going to be another place where army is.
Austin: Mm-hmm.
Art: And he tells that to the Panther Queen and… And hopes that they can figure something out.
Austin: All right, so now we sit in silence and write a short phrase on our index card that starts with the phrase “My words are blank”, as if, as before, you know, “My words are profane, my words are stolen” etc. They— “Write a short phrase on their index cards starting with the words, starting with “My words are blank” to indicate how their words have changed through sharing. My game is now over. Or the game is now over.” So let’s take a look at those phrases and update them. I know what mine is.
Jack: Ooh, man. There’s lots of words!
Austin: There’s lots of words. Art? Are you ready?
Art: Yep!
Austin: All right. My words are no longer stolen. They are given. Estecar begins to train the other inhabitants of these words— of these worlds with the sorts of incredible magic, strange magic that he— or, sorry, that they have come to practition (sic). And that they’ve come to know and hold dear. Where once they sought to basically collect all of the great words of the world and own them, they now see that these are tools that can be used by others to defend this world from this new, this new threat, that they see in the emerging adventurer class.
Jack: My words were restorative, but they are now collaborative.
Austin: Mmm.
Jack: Everything that they, everything that the Baron has done with his friends, and he’ll happily call them that, has gone excellently, and it’s only going well because he was able to have his friends standing beside him and he was able to help his friends in their hour of need and vice versa. This is a relationship that the Baron has not experienced a lot before, and he’s quite happy to have found it. And so I think that maybe some people get made Dukes but in like a good way? In like—
[Austin chuckles]
Jack: —a way that isn’t going to involve in their death or exile?
Austin: Yeah. [chuckles] Art.
Art: My words are better left unsaid. It was my word that caused this all to happen. I should find… I should find new words, perhaps with the help of Estecar and Domenico.
Austin: Mmm, damn.
Art: I have to be more careful.
Austin: That’s sad. And good.
And I think on that note, we’ll wrap this one up. I have no immediate plans for like when the next live will be or who will be in it. I guess like to be even more clear as to like what the next steps are for this weird world, we’re going to play Quest, which is a game that I’m really curious about. I’m not like… There are things about it I really love and there are things about it I’m a little frustrated by, but it’s really light in a way that is exciting to me.
Because one of the things that we run into a lot with with these Lives at the Tables is that like, either we play a GM-less game with low prep, of which we’ve had a lot of fun. But it can be kind of hard sometimes to internalise a new one of those every month and sneak those in.
Or the other thing happens, which is like, “Oh, it’s been three months since we played this thing and we want to make sure we get it right.” And da da da da da dah. And like, “Let’s make sure we all listen to it and take notes” and blah, blah, blah. And I really wanted something for Live at the Table, to be available for Live at the Tables, that’s, again, the whole— This is not—
We’re not transforming all of Live at the Table into this thing, which currently I’m calling it the Grand Tableau? But I might change— Tableau is staying there, partially because our name is Friends at the Table and having Table in there, as Ali pointed out, Tableau is literally Table A-U, which is very funny.
Jack: So good.
Austin: It’s so funny— I didn’t even mean that part of it. And Ali immediately was like, “Oh, Table A-U? Yeah. I love it!” But Tableau is definitely part of the name of this, this new world. This new continuity, I guess.
And, having read Quest, it was like, “Oh, this seems like it could be an interesting way to just have a pickup game almost?” Of like, “Oh, who’s around? Who wants to run something?” I will probably run the first few adventures in this, but I have no problem… Like, I’d be real excited to have Jack or Art or anyone else be like, “Oh, I have a really cool idea for a Quest episode or a Quest session.” I think it’d be a really good way of getting people to dip their toes into GMing, we’ll see if people want to? But it would be really fun, I think?
So, look forward to that in the coming weeks or months, as we continue to try to catch up on these Lives and… And again, we will still be including other games in the Live at the Table stuff. And stuff that is not in continuity or is part of a different continuity. You know, again, Fall of Magic is not part of this. Obviously, like, the Twilight Mirage or Bluff City lives are still part of those [chuckles] continuities?
Jack: Yes.
Austin: Et cetera. I think baseball aliens is still its own other sub-continuity [chuckles]? Inside another [chuckles], another thing, [smiling] another media property inside of Bluff City—
Jack: [chuckles] Inside of Bluff City? Yeah!
Austin: Much like this MMO is. So yeah! So look forward to that. Time.is is the website that we need to go to!
Jack: Let’s do it!
Art: All right.
Austin: Thank you all for listening. As always you can follow us on Twitter @friends_table. You can support the show, if you’re not already, at friendsatthetable.cash.
Art: And you’ll be the first person to know about the thing we were teasing earlier if you follow us on Twitter!
Austin: That’s true. That is true.
Jack: Oh yeah!
Austin: God, those things are so good. Ugh.
Art: Yeah, it’s some good stuff.
Austin: Yeah. I love it. All right. Um… Clap at… da da dah… 57 seconds.
Art: Whoa!
[all clap]
Austin: I like fast claps!
Jack: Yeah!
Austin: Fastclaps.
Jack: Fastclaps! Dot IO!
Austin: [laughs] Dot IO. Alright y’all, I hope everyone has a good weekend.
Jack: Bye!
Austin: Bye bye bye.
Art: Bye!
Austin: And…