COUNTER/Weight 07: I Am Not Allowed
Transcribed by: Percy [00:00 - 53:12], Iris (@sacredwhim) [53:13 - 86:49]
AUSTIN (as ORTH GODLOVE): Hello AuDy. If you’re receiving this, it means that one of a number of protocols has activated. And my biosignature has been—has been lost. I’d like you to find where I am. Is that too much to ask?
[MUSIC - “The Long Way Around” by Jack de Quidt begins]
[RECAP begins]
AUSTIN: You’re passing through the streets and there are people that are protesting. Here they literally just have, like, it is just sharpie on—on placards, that says like, “We’ve suffered enough, we should eat, where is the food?”
AUSTIN (as OFFICE EMPLOYEE): Orth should be in Dome 7 currently. We sent him there to oversee some, just some, you know, some supply organization.
JACK (as AUDY): We would like to get into Orth’s office. You can help us do that. We can help you help us do that.
JACK: She asks us for the money, and all of us—all hell—quiet hell immediately breaks loose.
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
AUSTIN: He got on the Starlight Strait going from Dome 7 out towards another district further away, and at some point in between those two districts, his heart monitor thing just turns off.
AUSTIN: Aria, you click on the message sent to you, and then just click on, like, who he BCC’d on this email chain.
[ALI laughs]
ALI (as ARIA JOIE): Yo! He sent it to the Weightless and also to the people who killed us!
AUSTIN (as JAMIL QUARTZ-NOBLE): Something about this just doesn’t sit right with me. It all feels a little too orchestrated. It all feels a little too… on-the-nose.
KEITH (as MAKO TRIG): This is one of the more cliche protests?
AUSTIN (as JAMIL): This is one of the more cliche protests! You know, get people riled up.
ART (as CASSANDER TIMAEUS BERENICE): If you’re asking if I know if this is an Apostolosian plot to undermine the government here, I don’t.
AUSTIN (as JAMIL): If you hear anything let me know, because if you don’t, it looks real bad for you.
AUSTIN (as JAMIL): There’s this group, called the Netted Wave. They’re a bunch of Apostolosians who stuck around. I—I can’t prove anything, but, they’re here, and they’re equipped. If someone wanted to start some shit, it would be them.
[RECAP ends]
[MUSIC - “The Long Way Around” by Jack de Quidt ends]
JACK: Alright. So I guess we all hop in the Kingdom Come?
AUSTIN: Okay. And you’re headed towards... Dome 7.
JACK: Towards Dome 7, yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay. You pass back through the crowds, and things seem… to be… steady? Like, no violen—there’s nothing violent happening, people are organized, there hasn’t been—there isn’t like, much resistance here. Like, there isn’t much like—the police aren’t there to keep things in order. There are like some drones in the sky to keep things in order? But no one is like—there’s no pushback on this.
KEITH: Is there a chant? Is someone mic-checking?
AUSTIN: Oh, yeah, there’s definitely a mic-check. There’s definitely, like a—a whole, like, long—
KEITH: He’s just the guy that’s organizing it, Mike Check.
AUSTIN: Mike Check is there.
KEITH: Mike Check is there, but he’s yelling at the ground.
AUSTIN: He’s yelling—and the stuff he’s yelling is all on point, which is just like—
KEITH (overlapping): Yeah, yeah. [laughs]
AUSTIN: “We need to eat food, not only is the food too expensive, also there’s none of it.”
KEITH (overlapping): It’s also not here.
AUSTIN: Yeah, exactly. “We’re not asking for filet mignon here, we’re asking for—”
KEITH: Price is too high, food’s in the sky!
AUSTIN: Right, that’s it. That’s his chant.
KEITH: Yeah!
AUSTIN: Okay. You get on the Kingdom Come and head towards Dome 7. Dome 7 is like a very utilitarian dome. Like there is not—there are some Constellation Coffees there but like, no one goes there to chill, you know. It’s basically—
JACK: Right, the coffee shops are empty.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Yes, that’s exactly it. There’s like—and most of them are like fully automated. There’s not even a person in there to like, give it the face of—of, like a community, you know? Whereas like—
JACK: And it says you can get WiFi but you can’t.
AUSTIN: There’s no WiFi. There’s no WiFi! ‘Cause you need someone there to turn it on, and no one is there!
KEITH: You know what, here’s the thing, you know, like, I wanna go there, it’s 3 A.M., I don’t wanna deal with people, I’ve got WiFi in a chip in my brain, I just wanna sit on my laptop, do my work, and not be bothered by a real person.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Right. So it’s fine if you live there.
Aria: Is Orth just in, like, a really rundown Constellation? Just a really long week?
JACK (overlapping): Just looking really sad.
AUSTIN: Yeah, you’re going to go in and he’s gonna be like,
AUSTIN (as “ORTH”): Hey what’s going on, why are you—why are you here?
ALI (as “ARIA”): Ten credits please!
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
AUSTIN (as “ORTH”): God dammit! I knew I shouldn’t have trusted this god damn coffee shop.
KEITH: Eh, that’s why they call it Consolation Coffee.
AUSTIN: So you get to Dome 7. Where are you going and what are you looking for?
ART (hesitantly): We’re going to the drop sight?
AUSTIN: Like the pick-up place?
ART: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Sure, it’s—it is a much smaller space port than the one Jim works at, because like it has—there’s no need for it to be a place where people pass through. You know, like, there’s kind of a loading and unloading zone out front, which is like—there’s lots of automated ships, or lots of automated, like, transport units coming to pick up big crates, and little drones flying away with packages, and stuff like that but it’s all automated. There are hallways and stuff but like, there’s no Hudson News equivalent. No one is there to sell you a bottle of water for $4, like it is—it is not a place where people are supposed to be, you know?
ART: Sure.
AUSTIN: What are you looking for? Or what are you doing?
JACK: Remnants of the space Amazon drop? Or, I mean, I guess—
AUSTIN (overlapping): Thousands of packages and crates and—you know, like, this is going to a dock, is what this is like.
JACK: So there’s—so there’s—there’s not like a Jim model?
ALI: Yeah, there’s no—
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah, there’s—there’s totally—there’s totally a Jim model. Totally. Do you approach them?
ART: Yeah.
JACK (as AUDY): Aria—wait a second—Aria, do we actually have the tracking numbers and things? Did you get those?
ALI (as ARIA): Yeah, sure. I forwarded them to my—my email.
JACK: From Orth’s computer.
ALI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: So you approach the Jim model?
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay.
JACK (as AUDY): Hello there. We are looking for package number—
JACK: And then I, you know, the package number.
AUSTIN (as JM144): Automated Dynamics unit. Are you functioning correctly?
JACK (as AUDY): One hundred percent.
AUSTIN (as JM144): Automated Dynamics unit. I will need to speak to an organic to continue this conversation.
ART: Fuckin’ hell.
ALI: Man…
KEITH: Fuckin’ rude.
KEITH (as MAKO): Hey, what’s up? ‘Sup Jim.
AUSTIN (as JM144): My name is JM144. How are you today, sir?
KEITH (as MAKO): I’m good. Listen, what’s—what’s wrong, you can’t talk to my buddy?
AUSTIN (as JM144): Sir, we have—
AUSTIN: Actually, I think he just says,
AUSTIN (as JM144): No.
AUSTIN: Some—some amount of bluntness is definitely part of all of the Jim units.
KEITH: I look at AuDy and I ask for the number and then I just repeat it.
AUSTIN (as JM144): Sir, do you have clearance for this tracking number?
KEITH (as MAKO, overlapping): Yes I have clearance. Yep!
AUSTIN (as JM144): Sir, what is your name, sir?
KEITH (as MAKO): [LONG PAUSE] ...Orth.
[JACK laughs]
ART: He’s a robot, he doesn’t know how sheepish that delivery was! That’s just what humans are like!
AUSTIN (as JM144, overlapping): Hello, Mr. Orth.
KEITH (as MAKO): Hi. You can just call me Mr. O.
AUSTIN (as JM144): Place your hand here.
AUSTIN: And then he holds out his hand.
KEITH: I grab—I do like a, like a forearm handshake.
AUSTIN (as JM144): That did not register, please try again.
KEITH (as MAKO): Okay.
KEITH: And then I slap him five?
AUSTIN (as JM144): That did not register, please try again.
KEITH: Okay, then I put my hand on his hand, and then I fog him.
[AUSTIN and JACK laugh]
AUSTIN: Yeah, you do. I’m not going to make you roll against this robot.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: He like—What’s your effect here? Like what are you—not adjective-wise, but what is the—you’re just trying to get access to this thing?
KEITH: I’m just trying—‘cause I’m pretty sure he’s trying to fingerprint scan me—
AUSTIN: Yes!
KEITH: Yeah, so I’m just making it seem—I’m just making him think that the fingerprint scan worked.
AUSTIN: Okay.
JACK: Oh, could you also please make it so he can talk to other robots?
KEITH: Oh, yeah, then I also make it seem that he can talk to other robots.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Well that you have to roll for.
KEITH: Okay, I’ll roll for that.
AUSTIN: Okay. That’s Hack.
KEITH: Do I have to apply a thing to make this permanent, or is it just not even consequential enough—
AUSTIN: Yeah, you would have to apply a thing to make this permanent, and I’ll write it down.
KEITH: Okay, I’ll just do it for AuDy then.
AUSTIN: So just temporarily, you mean?
KEITH: This is temporarily.
AUSTIN: Sure.
KEITH: This is just for AuDy’s piece of mind.
ALI: Aww.
[JACK laughs]
KEITH: What am I roll—4d6.
AUSTIN: What’s the adjective?
KEITH: The adjective is, um... “malfunctioning?”
AUSTIN: Okay.
JACK: Well, no, ‘cause then like his arms and legs and head are going to fall off or something.
AUSTIN: No, no, no, no, no, I’ll—well—
[ALI laughs]
KEITH: The specific malfunction is not be—not differentiating between—
AUSTIN (overlapping): I think it’s like—yeah. I think it’s just, in general, not differentiating.
JACK: Oh, okay.
AUSTIN: Like, yeah, yeah.
ART: Are you going to get this robot destroyed? Is someone going to be like, “Ah, that JM unit’s malfunctioning, let’s—let’s destroy—let’s take it to the furnace.”
KEITH (overlapping): I think that AuDy—I think that they’re the only robot that’s gonna be talking to… this Jim.
AUSTIN (overlapping): We hope!
AUSTIN (as JM144): Thank you, Mr. Godlove.
KEITH (as MAKO): You’re welcome.
AUSTIN (as JM144): What can I do for you today?
KEITH (as MAKO): You can tell me everything you know about this package.
AUSTIN (as JM144): You received that package, sir.
KEITH (as MAKO): Mm, awesome. What was the date that I was supposed to receive that package?
AUSTIN (as JM144): You were supposed to receive that package on the date of today, sir.
KEITH (as MAKO): Oh, great. What is today? Tuesday, Wednesday?
AUSTIN (as JM144): Today is Tuesday.
KEITH (as MAKO): Tuesday, okay, cool—
AUSTIN (as JM144): Sir.
ART (as CASS): How long ago? What time?
AUSTIN (as JM144): You received this package—
AUSTIN: What time—is it afternoon?
AUSTIN (as JM144): You received this package 12 hours ago. I hope you’ve had a good day, sir.
JACK (as AUDY): It’s been terrible.
KEITH (as MAKO, overlapping): I hope you’ve had a good day too! Oh, it’s been terrible.
AUSTIN (as JM144): I’m sorry to hear that, Automated Dynamics unit. Is there anything I could do to help you?
ART (as CASS): Is there a tracking beacon in the ship, do you think you could activate that?
JACK (as AUDY, overlapping): Yeah, we are looking for—package tracking. We left one of the packages on a vehicle and we are looking to recover it.
AUSTIN (as JM144): Which vehicle was it left on?
JACK (as AUDY, very hesitantly): It was left on… a… sssspace… truck… 6.
[KEITH and ART laugh]
AUSTIN (as JM144): I’ll pull that right up, sir.
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
JACK (as AUDY): Thank you very much.
AUSTIN: He doesn’t know! He doesn’t know from trucks!
[GROUP LAUGHTER CONTINUES]
KEITH (laughing): How would he know?
AUSTIN: How would he know! “Oh, that must be a new model of truck, I don’t—”
ART: Space truck 6!
KEITH (overlapping): He like—he asked because he’s programmed to be sorta polite—
AUSTIN: Right!
KEITH: And conversational—
AUSTIN: Right.
KEITH: He doesn’t fuckin’ know!
AUSTIN: Yeah!
KEITH: “I left it on a space truck 6!” “Okay, well, I’ll still look it up ‘cause that’s what I have to do!”
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
AUSTIN (as JM144): I see. It was loaded onto Starlight Express 12-12-22, headed towards… another dome Austin hasn’t come up with a name for yet.
JACK: Oh, he’s—this robot’s very good.
AUSTIN: He has like a whole sorta meta-knowledge.
JACK: It’s like a metatextual robot, yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Also the name of the dome, is, uh… [pauses] It’s Metta. It’s Metta with two T’s. Third dome.
JACK: Okay.
ART: Named after Metta World Peace, the basketball player?
AUSTIN: Yes. Named after Metta World Peace, the basketball player.
ART: ‘Cause it’s dedicated to peace, right? It’s about celebrating the peace between—
AUSTIN (overlapping): Right. Right, exactly.
JACK (as AUDY): Oh, before you go, have you had any contact with these individuals?
JACK: And I show the robot the pictures of the—Netted Wave, they’re called, right?
AUSTIN: Yeah, the Netted Wave. Hm. Has the—has this Jim unit had any sort of—
JACK (overlapping): Also, are these Jim units—like, I don’t know what you call it—like, hive-mind enabled? Like, are they all the same Jim unit?
AUSTIN: Like, networked? I don’t—no, I don’t think that they’re all—no. They’re not all the same Jim unit.
JACK: Okay. In the same way that all the Automated Dynamics units were the same one.
AUSTIN: Right. I think they’re like touch comas in Ghost in the Shell in that they all have the same base level programming, and every night they re-sync up so that they are effectively the same one, all of them, and every now and then something weird happened and the Jim you know is part of that.
JACK: Oh, right, okay.
AUSTIN: Like, oh, Jim just didn’t sync up the same.
JACK (overlapping): Like a weird mutation.
AUSTIN: Right, weird mutation, exactly.
ALI: But like, if we ask “have you seen this person, did they come into the space port”, would we have to ask all of them? Or would one unit know?
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah, you would have to ask each individual—no, no.
ALI: Okay.
JACK: Oh, do they have like a—
AUSTIN (overlapping): You know what, they probably have—there’s probably a unit, or there’s probably a different server that you could ask that does have all of their data, but they don’t individually each carry all of their data, you know?
ALI: Okay.
JACK: We could—yeah.
AUSTIN: I think—yeah, yeah, I’m sure this unit has seen them, actually.
AUSTIN (as JM144): Yes, I’ve seen those individuals.
[PAUSE]
JACK: Oh, is—okay.
JACK (as AUDY): Could you please give us some more information as to their location?
AUSTIN (as JM144): They pass through approximately once every other week.
ALI (as ARIA): What packages do they receive?
AUSTIN (as JM144): I am not at liberty to discuss their packages.
KEITH (as MAKO): C’mon, please?
ALI (as ARIA): Mako, you can do mind stuff, right?
AUSTIN (as JM144): Who is Mako?
JACK (as AUDY): Oh, Orth.
KEITH (as MAKO, overlapping): That’s my nickname!
AUSTIN (as JM144): A mako is a fish.
KEITH (as MAKO): A mako is a fish, yeah, they call me that because I’m a really good swimmer.
AUSTIN (as JM144): That is good to hear.
ART: You don’t need to give him a reason.
[ALI and AUSTIN laugh]
JACK: This is the space truck 6 robot, we can just tell him anything!
KEITH: Yeah. [laughs]
ART: Yeah, I bet he’s putting that information in the same place as space truck 6, like “worthless shit people said to me today” file.
[AUSTIN laughs]
ART: “Space truck 6, Orth is a good swimmer, I don’t need to know any of this, I’m a package robot.”
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
AUSTIN: Well, maybe he brings it up later when other people come by! Where he’s like, “Oh, have you heard of the new space truck 6 model? I hear it’s very good.” Just like—
JACK: Oh, oh wait, oh—he brings it up later when other people come by?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JACK: There are other mercenaries hunting Orth, could we remove this information from this unit when we’re done?
AUSTIN: Sure!
ART: Space truck 6, we’ll get the mercenaries chasing a non-existent space truck.
KEITH (laughing): Well, hold on, I like the weird half-information of, “Orth came by, his nickname is Mako, and he’s a good swimmer.”
[AUSTIN laughs]
JACK: They know who the Chime is, right?
KEITH (overlapping): All that’s gonna do is like—worst case scenario they know that we’re also looking for Orth, best case scenario they think that Orth was here, today.
AUSTIN: Right.
JACK: I don’t know, but they could do the exact same thing we do, and get the tracking number from—
KEITH: No one’s as good as us.
JACK: Right, we’re the player characters.
ALI (overlapping): Yeah, no one—no one can hack as well as Mako can. Also like the—
KEITH: Well that’s—one person can.
ALI: The Chime isn’t like, really well-known?
JACK: Except for, like, the weird terrorist broadcast.
AUSTIN: Yeah. There is that.
ART: And we might be well-known by the people who shot us a month ago!
AUSTIN: Also that.
KEITH: Anyway, sorry.
KEITH (as MAKO): Who—which was the name of the person that—that is here once every other week?
AUSTIN (as JM144): I just know their faces.
KEITH (as MAKO): Okay.
AUSTIN (as JM144): Are they nice people?
KEITH (as MAKO): They’re not nice people.
JACK (as AUDY): No, very bad.
KEITH (as MAKO): Yeah, they’re trying to take our packages and mess up, you know, the hard work that you do.
AUSTIN (as JM144, overlapping): That’s not good. I don’t appreciate that.
KEITH (as MAKO): No. So what do they do when they come in here? ‘Cause we’re trying to stop—we’re gonna go ask them to not do that stuff anymore.
AUSTIN (as JM144): They receive packages.
KEITH (as Mako): Yeah?
AUSTIN (as JM144): It’s everyone’s right to receive packages.
KEITH: Aww.
JACK (as AUDY): Jim, if you—
AUSTIN (as JM144): My name is JM144.
KEITH (as MAKO): Can we call you Jim?
AUSTIN (as JM144): No.
KEITH (as MAKO): Can we call you Jam?
AUSTIN (as JM144): No.
ALI (as ARIA): Alright, 144-
ART: It’s Jum, this is one of the ones that likes Jum.
[KEITH and AUSTIN laugh]
JACK (as AUDY): If you see these people again-
JACK: Ooh, would it—would it be worth our while trying to set up some sort of notification system?
KEITH: We could turn him into an assassin robot.
ALI (as ARIA): Well, when was the last time they were here?
JACK: No, ‘cause that’s gonna kill him.
AUSTIN (as JM144): Yesterday.
ALI (as ARIA): When?
AUSTIN (as JM144): At noon.
KEITH (as MAKO): Do you have the information about the packages that they receive?
AUSTIN (as JM144): No.
KEITH (as MAKO): No. Could you get it if I ask—if you were able to?
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
JACK (laughing): What?
KEITH (as MAKO): Sorry, are—if you were allowed to get it, would you be able to?
AUSTIN (as JM144): I am not allowed.
ALI (as ARIA): If— [laughs] okay.
JACK: We’re just—we’re just basically robot god!
[ALI laughs]
JACK: Right? We’ve just— [laughs]
KEITH: Yeah, we can kinda just make the robot do whatever.
JACK: Which is horrifying.
ART (overlapping): Please refer to it as being robot god.
KEITH: Yeah, okay, so I’m gonna—I’m gonna a—I’m gonna fog him again.
AUSTIN: Okay.
JACK: This whole conver-
KEITH (overlapping): Just to—I’m going to give him-
ALI (overlapping): Does—
KEITH: I’m going to give him the—
AUSTIN: Well, this you’ll—if you’re giving him an adjective you have to roll for it, so yeah.
KEITH: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m going to give him the adjective, I am also going to roll for it.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ALI: Can I ask really quickly what it feels like for AuDy to see this?
AUSTIN: Yeah, good question.
JACK: I mean, I think that there are—
AUSTIN: AuDy, has this happened to you?
JACK: Being fogged?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JACK: I assume so. Like at—well, I don’t know, hang on, wait a second-
KEITH: I did it at a p—I was drunk, I did it at a party.
[ALI laughs]
JACK: No you didn’t.
KEITH: Like “Lemme show you! Lemme show you!”
JACK: [laughs] No you didn’t, otherwise you would not have the same amount of limbs that you have. Um—
[AUSTIN and ALI laugh]
AUSTIN: Uh huh. Are you sure it’s never happened to you?
JACK: I—I—well, so, I think the thing is that I don’t know if AuDy would remember, to be honest.
AUSTIN: That’s exactly my point.
KEITH (overlapping): This is like the Men in Black where he’s like “you ever do this to me?” He’s like “no.”
JACK: I think AuDy trusts that Mako wouldn’t have done?
AUSTIN: Okay.
JACK: But, as we’ve learned from all of these episodes, Mako is a huge goofball.
AUSTIN: Yep!
JACK: Is Mako the only person who can fog bots?
AUSTIN: No.
KEITH: No, there’s a whole academy.
JACK: Okay, so, the other thing is, I guess as a chassis, AuDy is sort of like—what, like ten years old?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JACK: They’re pretty old robots. So there’s a chance that an academy member passed through the—through the parking units.
AUSTIN: Okay, sure.
JACK: Do we know where AuDy parked vehicles?
AUSTIN: I think on Miner—not Minerva, I think we decided it was on the OriCon Expeditionary Group home planet, which I think is called Arcon.
JACK: Oh, so did they work for just like a—like a Denny’s or something?
KEITH (overlapping): Movie theatre.
AUSTIN: No, no, no, I think they worked for a—
ALI (overlapping): It was a mall, right?
AUSTIN: I don’t remember if it was—it might’ve been a mall, it might’ve been like a shopping center.
JACK: Right. But they were civilians.
AUSTIN: Yes.
JACK: Ah, okay. So yeah, I think the thing is there is a very good chance that AuDy might have been fogged, but they can’t remember it.
AUSTIN: Right.
JACK: And so I don’t know.
AUSTIN: So how does this—what does this feel like? Watching him do this?
JACK (overlapping): Unpleasant. Really unpleasant.
AUSTIN: Okay.
JACK: AuDy really prizes autonomy, I guess. Quite specifically—
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah.
KEITH (overlapping): You asked me to do it, though, the first time!
JACK: Uh—the very first time we did it?
KEITH: The first time I did it to him, you—you asked me to make it so that he could talk to you.
AUSTIN: You did.
JACK: You were—you were fogging him already. I was trying to make this whole thing a little better.
AUSTIN (overlapping): I just wanna make this—like, this is violating. And like, that is a thing to—
JACK: Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: And I think it’s like—it’s increasingly violating in that like, at first—at first this thing is a lamp, basically. Right? But like, as you do it, it’s clear that it’s—this Jim model is getting a little more sentient. Like a little bit more aware.
JACK: Added to that, the fact that I think that, minus like, a couple of modifications, the Automated Dynamics model is functionally pretty identical to the Jim model.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Oh yeah. Oh yeah, definitely.
JACK: So AuDy is watching a version of themselves—it’s creepy.
AUSTIN: Yeah, okay. I want to make sure that’s clear.
AUSTIN: So, what are you rolling to add? [laughs] Keith?
JACK: Oh, thanks Austin.
KEITH (overlapping): Violated.
AUSTIN: Violated! Okay, good, that’s bad. That’s not a good one.
[ALI laughs]
KEITH: No, compromised.
AUSTIN: Okay.
JACK: Again, that’s also—
AUSTIN: We just did compromised—yeah, that’s also creepy.
KEITH: Did we do compromised?
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s what you did to the security—cybersecurity person at the door—that had the door put in place? You got the backdoor access.
KEITH: Oh, okay, I gave him compromised? Okay.
AUSTIN: We don’t have to not repeat, but I like not repeating.
KEITH: Okay, I’ll try—I’ll roll and then I’ll think of some new words.
JACK (overlapping): There are like loads of adjectives.
KEITH: Okay, so, I rolled two sixes, and the adjective that I’m going to give them is, uh…
[PAUSE]
JACK: Wait, so, just to double check, we are—what we’re doing here is we’re removing the capacity that will let them tell us what the packages the Netted Wave are looking for. Or are we trying to turn them into a murder bot?
AUSTIN: Good question.
JACK: I’m confused as to why we’re fogging this poor—
KEITH: Sorry, we’re trying to find out the packages that—that the person they see is—is getting. I’m going to give—I’m going to—I’m gonna give them “helpful,” and then edit the way that they’re malfunctioning? From before? To include that they will give us access to this information.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Okay. Okay. Helpful’s good.
AUSTIN: Jim says—Jim 144 says,
AUSTIN (as JM144): I will check with my supervisor. One moment please. [pauses] It was—
AUSTIN: And 144 looks up, for a moment, and then looks back down.
AUSTIN (as JM144): My supervisor reports that it was 12 crates of food units, and also wishes to know why I need this information.
[PAUSE]
KEITH (as MAKO, hesitantly): Random— [clears throat] Sorry, JM, I have something in my throat.
AUSTIN (as JM144): Random is not satisfactory.
KEITH (as MAKO): Well, let’s call it—let’s call it we’re testing the robots’ abilities to access different sections of their memory banks.
JACK (as AUDY): Is this supervisor a human?
AUSTIN (as JM144): No.
JACK: Oh, this is like a—like a bot with a higher level of awareness?
AUSTIN (as JM144): Correct.
AUSTIN: Or, maybe not awareness. Authority. I’d say authority. Yeah.
JACK (overlapping): Oh, I was asking Austin, but I asked JM instead. Okay.
AUSTIN: And access to information, you know? I—I think you have what you have here, guys. Just so you know.
[ALI laughs]
KEITH: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree.
AUSTIN: We could do this all day, like—Jim is great, Jims are great, but—but we could be here literally all day and we only have an hour.
JACK: Jims are like playing a ‘90s text adventure.
AUSTIN: Right, just type in and see what funny stuff comes out.
KEITH: I love the Jims.
ALI (overlapping): Do—do we wanna set up that alert system or just go?
AUSTIN: Totally can set up that alert system. And totally can delete that you were here and that, like, you’re on the case, or you could delete where Orth is, you can delete whatever you want here.
JACK: I am increasingly less comfortable about deleting information from this robot. But I could—
ALI: I think we should not have this robot tell people that Orth was here—or, no wait, we should, ‘cause then people will be off trail.
KEITH: Yeah, it doesn’t matter, you’re right. The worst case scenario is they put two and two together like “Orth’s nickname isn’t Mako!”
AUSTIN: I mean this robot knows where those packages went. This robot told you where—like, what line the packages were on.
ALI: Yeah.
KEITH: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: So I’m just—that’s—
KEITH: I don’t think that we have that much to gain by deleting that we were here.
ALI: Yeah, okay.
AUSTIN: Okay, so you were—so nothing is deleting, okay.
KEITH: Yeah.
JACK: Or we could just tell it that, since we’re Orth, that it’s very secret, very important. We’ve already told them that the—that the Netted Wave—they’re called the Netted Wave, right?
AUSTIN: Yep, the Netted Wave, yeah.
JACK: That the Netted Wave are bad people. We—I—we could just tell them that it’s very important to protect customer privacy.
ART: We could also un-malfunction them so they don’t get destroyed when their supervisor comes and checks.
JACK: Yeah, that would be very good, actually.
AUSTIN: Okay, so you do that.
ALI: Keith, can you put your hand on his shoulder and say, “Only my closest friends call me Mako”, and then wink?
[GROUP LAUGHTER]
KEITH (as MAKO): Only my closest friends call me Mako.
KEITH: And then I wink.
AUSTIN: And when you wink, is that when you’re fogging?
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: The moment that you fog to—to change the—to get rid of “helpful” and “malfunctioning”, Jim 144 is like looking at AuDy, and then the second you’re done, just looks away.
JACK: Hm. [sighs]
JACK (as AUDY): Alright, let’s go.
AUSTIN: So you’re going to the Starlight Strait. What did I say—12-12-20, I think is what I said?
ALI: Yeah.
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay. So that’s a line that runs from here out to Metta, where—so, the Starlight Strait’s—I’m kind of picturing—I kind of described this before, that like, there are different sizes of the train? They’re like Maglev trains, and they come in different sizes. Like, you can just get in one that is just a car, basically. It’s just a little pod for like, you and one other person. Or you can get in one that’s like, bus-sized, for you and a bunch of people, and that’s cheaper. Like the—the bigger the thing, the cheaper it is.
And, when you— [laughs] When you arrive, you see that there are like, lots of flashing lights around the entrance. And it says like, “GRAND OPENING: CASINO LINE TO METTA NOW AVAILABLE” and then next to that is a picture of a—of a winking man. You recognize this man, Mako and—and Aria. His name is Jorn.
KEITH (yelling): JOOOOOOOOORN!
AUSTIN: And he’s giving a thumbs up—it’s a picture of him giving a thumbs up and there’s like, digital keno machines behind him.
ALI: He’s on billboards?
KEITH (shouting): He fuckin’ stole my idea!
AUSTIN: Listen. The—Snowtrak owns everything that happens inside of Snowtrak facilities. That idea is basically theirs.
JACK: Wait, what was the idea?
KEITH: The idea was—the whole premise was that we were building a casino line in the Starlight Express—Starlight Strait! And they fuckin’ did it!
ALI: Mako, we’re gonna have a secret private game where we go find him and get the profits from our idea.
KEITH: Yeah.
ART: It’s so fucked up that he sold you the robots to do it, and then went and did it, like—
ALI: Yeah, no, we are gonna have a talk.
ART: When are you gonna use those robots, you’re never gonna buy any more robots, what a fucker!
[AUSTIN laughs]
AUSTIN: Alright. So you go in, and—and you get tickets to—what are you—what are you doing, here? I guess what are you doing here? Is the plan to ride the line or is the plan—what is the plan here?
ALI: I guess check security footage, see if there was any, like, significant delays on that line.
AUSTIN: Security footage—there is delays, security footage is way behind closed doors. Which you can try to get into and all that—so, okay, I should actually paint this picture better than just the cool billboard. These places—
JACK: C’mon, it’s got Jorn on it.
AUSTIN: These places already feel like casinos, because there’s like, lots of buzzing and noises and like—and signage that’s changing rapidly—
KEITH: No clocks.
AUSTIN: Hm? [laughs] Yeah.
KEITH: No clocks.
AUSTIN: No clocks, which is weird because you’d think, you know, arrival and destination—well, actually, that’s kind of the thing with these, is that there aren’t set—there are not set times on these.
KEITH: It just says when the next one is showing up, it doesn’t say when that is.
AUSTIN: It just says, like—it just says if a thing is available or not, because they kind of keep cars, like—like, you know, maglev cars ready to go, and if they’re out of them then you do have to wait for one to show up, but the turnaround is fairly quick. So—
ALI: Yeah, it’s like, the next train leaving is train 6, but not like, it’s leaving in 5 minutes.
AUSTIN: Right. Line 12-12-20 is currently shut down for maintenance. But yeah, so the other thing about this is like, it’s—it’s high ceilings, with like, weird glass chandeliers everywhere, and like, the carpeting is like, red with little blue star dots on it and it’s like, very garish. Like, everything about this space is—is kind of terrible. And it smells like smoke.
JACK: So when you say that the line is shut down, is it just that no trains are departing on that line at all?
AUSTIN: No trains are departing or arriving on that line for the next—it says like, “ETA: 12 Hours.”
JACK: And these are—are they like—I’m trying to picture what the terminus is like. Are they like, tunnels going off or maglev things just going out and nothing’s going on them?
AUSTIN: Yeah, so it’s above ground, and I think it’s like—there are like airport-style terminals? Except, like, there is a hole in the wall, where the—the trains come in? It’s—in fact, it’s two things, there’s a hole—there’s a—people can’t see my hands—but there’s a wall, right? And then there is a hole coming in from like, it’s like down in the ground that comes up, and it’s a track. Right? And it’s almost like a bowling ball feeder, if you know what I mean?
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: And that’s where the train—like, the little train pods would come up, and like wrap around and go out a little bit past the window at the kind of airport terminal, and then you board at the back of the pod and then—and then it launches you. And you can see this, so there’s like a broad window at that terminal gate where you’re at now, and you can see these launching off at different directions on different lines.
JACK: Oh, Paisley’s the fixer, right?
AUSTIN: Yep.
JACK: Would it be worth our while to call Paisley and see if they know anything at all about why this line might be shut down? Like if they’ve heard any reports about 12-12-20 shutting down.
ART (overlapping): Wait, I have a much worse idea.
JACK: Oh, good. Let’s go for that one.
ART: What if we get our two giant robots and we just sort of go down those train tracks and see what’s what?
AUSTIN: That’s totally valid.
ALI (hesitantly): Eh...
JACK: I mean, I’d be up for that.
AUSTIN: You’d fly over the train tracks, to be clear.
KEITH: Right.
ART: No, I kind of see us kinda like, skating on them—
KEITH: Walking down them?
ALI: Can we at least sleuth a little bit to see what the official story on why there—
AUSTIN: The official story was that there—it’s pretty straightforward, it’s like, there was a—a derailment, and no one was injured, but they need to repair the line.
ALI: Oh, that’s—okay.
KEITH: It’s probably Jorn trying to protect his fuckin’ interest. No one will wanna go on the casino line if there’s gunfire in the tunnels.
JACK (laughing): So, are we gonna go robots?
KEITH: Yeah, I’m taking my—taking my tech deck off my back.
JACK (overlapping): The other option is that we just—we try and talk to just like a—like a customer service rep? But the customer service rep is probably just going to say exactly the same thing that the official report did.
AUSTIN: Right, that is correct.
ALI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: To get anything else you would have to talk to another contact of yours, but also, you know—this is the train that Orth got on, it was derailed, that is what you know.
ALI: Right, okay, yeah. So we don’t have to—
JACK (overlapping): Like, in a really practical sense, going down there with some robots, even to just like, sleuth around a derailed train car is like, a pretty solid move, I think.
AUSTIN: Yes.
ALI: Yeah, just to have ‘em.
JACK: Just to have the robots.
KEITH: Yeah, just to have ‘em!
AUSTIN: Also it’s just like, you can’t get out there without them, at this point.
KEITH: Right.
ALI: Right, okay, yeah.
JACK: So I guess we go back.
KEITH: I’m into it.
JACK: Pick up the Kingdom Come?
AUSTIN: Sounds good. So I think that we cut from that window of like—the view is the window where the different lev trains are flying out in different—or like, zooming out in different directions, and you follow the—there’s one that’s going kind of like, perpendicular to your view, like, just across the line, and then it cuts to a shot of the Kingdom Come following that same arc visually, and then it pans out and shows that you’re under—flying above the train line. The Kingdom Come has just lights on it, probably, right? Literal, big, physical spotlights?
JACK: Oh, yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay. So you’re aiming those—
JACK (overlapping): They’re connected to like, little joysticks and things. It’s pretty cool.
AUSTIN: Right. You’re aiming—
ART (overlapping): Space is fuckin’ dark.
AUSTIN: Yeah, it’s definitely dark now. It’s night-time. It is night. Again, to paint that picture for you, you’re leaving the dome deep behind you, it disappears along the curvature of the planet of Counterweight. Above you, Weight is still there, and like, the blue and green glow of the light bouncing off of the shared sun is kind of making the night visible? But like, down in the lev trenches it gets a little dark. So you have the light there to look for any activity. You don’t spot anything for like, the first hour or two of following this line.
And then, up ahead, you see one of the lev trains flipped over, off to the side of the—the track. It’s a long train. And it has—it has neon tubes flickering on its sides that kind of wrap up around it? And at the front it—it forms into like, a set of—so it’s neon tubes that run along the side of it that go all the way up to the front, and then they kind of flap backwards into like, a little point pointing this way, pointing back towards the end of the train, and there’s like, little neon stars above that. So it looks almost like there’s almost a mountain peak, and then stars around it. Like neon—like traditional five-point star shapes, you know? And they’re all flickering with kind of like an orange glow. Smoke is rising from the thing. What do you do?
JACK: I’m gonna keep the—the ship up here. I’m gonna keep the—because if I get out of the ship and it’s in the air, it just crashes.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah. That’s true.
JACK: So I’m gonna keep the ship up here.
KEITH: There’s no hover mode on that thing?
AUSTIN: There probably is—there’s probably a hover mode but like, you’re there to make it hover, in other words.
JACK: Oh, yeah.
KEITH: There’s not just like a—like a cruise control?
JACK: No, the ship can’t fly itself.
AUSTIN: The ship cannot fly itself.
JACK: It’s pretty useless in that regard. But at the same time—
AUSTIN: That makes you very useful.
JACK: Yeah, exactly.
KEITH: Could you fly it up out into—where there’s no atmosphere and park it and then we’ll drop down?
JACK: Well, sure, but at the same time, like… being perfectly honest, you lot are the ones that have enormous, stompy mechs—
KEITH: Well, I don’t have a stompy mech.
JACK: No, you have a gigantic—you have a thing that you buzz around the mechs on.
KEITH: I have a skateboard.
JACK: Alright, let’s—let’s— [laughs] That’s a good point.
AUSTIN: So you’re hovering—you’re hovering the Kingdom Come, what are the rest of you doing?
KEITH: Taking my skateboard off my back.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ART: Deploying the Megalophile?
AUSTIN: Okay.
ALI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: You’re crowned up, you guys launch, and—
KEITH: Crowned up!
AUSTIN: And you head down to the wreck?
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay. The—this is a pretty big lev train. Like, most of these, again, are fairly small in that like, it’s for a handful of passengers. It’s like, you and your friends need to go somewhere else, like you’re going to a different dome for this or that. This is the size of a freight train, which means that it’s like, you know, imagine like, four or five school busses end to end.
And it is—it has derailed and it’s kind of jack-knifed in different directions, and your mechs kind of—definitely are taller than it, but it is—it is about the same size, you know, it is like, in the same qua—category of size. And so you’re seeing little doors down below where like, people would get in and out. And you see a hole blown into the side of—like, the middle of one of the cars. Inside you can see that there are lights—emergency lights flashing on and off.
KEITH: I’m going to start there. I’m gonna fly into that hole.
AUSTIN: You can’t fly—it’s a small hole.
KEITH: Oh, okay.
AUSTIN: It’s like, a person-sized hole, it’s not a mech-sized hole.
KEITH (overlapping): I’m gonna fly towards that hole.
AUSTIN: Oh, sorry, you’re not a mech!
KEITH: Yeah, I’m a person.
AUSTIN: You can fly into it, totally.
KEITH: Yeah, I’m gonna fly into that.
AUSTIN: In there you see… oranges? On the far—so this is—I’m imagining this is—the train is on it’s side here, so you can—you like actually are flying in from the, like—you’re hovering down into it. And what would be the floor is actually the side of this train. All around you are like, digital keno machines and—and slot machines.
KEITH: They put the food in the casino line?
AUSTIN: You know, there might be reasons for that. And there are oranges and stuff like, all along the ground of this train car, and a smashed crate where some of them are coming out. You see—you see like, scorch marks from blaster fire. One of the—one of the machines is like, instead of doing the like “ding-ding ding-ding ding!” It’s like [gradually warped, slower] “Ding-dong ding-dong ding-dong”. It’s like, on its last legs. It’s a mess, in here.
KEITH: Is there—
AUSTIN: AuDy, what is your—what—hm. I guess, would this be with the ship stuff—give me a—actually, I guess this is trying to apply a thing to you.
JACK (overlapping): Oh, so I don’t have to roll.
AUSTIN: What is your... detect? What is your detect?
JACK: My detect is 2.
AUSTIN: Okay. [PAUSE] Alright. Take the… take the fleeting adjective “distracted.”
JACK: Okay, cool. I don’t have “shadowed” from the last session anymore, right?
AUSTIN: No, that’s gone.
JACK: Okay, cool.
AUSTIN: But now you have “distracted.” Mako—or, not Mako, sorry—Aria and Cassander, what are you doing?
JACK: Wait, how am I distracted?
AUSTIN: You don’t know. You’ve been distracted—oh, you’re distracted because you’re watching them go into the—
JACK: Oh, okay, I see, yes.
ALI: Oh.
AUSTIN: Aria and Cassander, what are you doing as Mako flies into this thing, by himself?
[PAUSE]
ALI: So, it was derailed, but is there any sign of damage to like, the tracks? Or...
AUSTIN: No, it—the tracks are weird, it kind of like—it’s a magnetic levitation thing. So it’s been knocked off the tracks and it’s blocking the tracks, and so there’s like some scratching and some damage on the tracks but it’s not—the tracks themselves aren’t like railroad tracks where they’ve been ripped out. It’s kind of like a cavity in the ground that hov—that these things hover through at hyperfast speeds.
JACK: Hm.
ALI: And then no like, identifiable damage to the train itself, just that—
AUSTIN: Just that big hole and the fact that it’s been derailed horribly. You do notice that there are tracks in the ground around this. Big tracks about the size of a train.
ART: Hm.
ALI: Oh.
AUSTIN: But going off in different directions.
[PAUSE]
ALI: Okay. Hm...
ART: Huh.
AUSTIN: I’m trying to think of other stuff you would see from here. I don’t think you see anything else from here.
ALI: There’s no other lingering like, mech footprints?
AUSTIN: No mech footprints, no, just these tracks in the ground.
[JACK and ALI laugh]
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: AuDy, what is your—what is your operate?
JACK: My operate, I think, is pretty high, let me just find it. It is… [PAUSE] Oh no, it’s not. It’s 2.
AUSTIN: Wow, that’s not great.
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: I guess the idea is that you’d still be able to spend your push dice to—to raise that, if you needed to. [muttering] What is their shoot?
JACK: “What is their shoot?” is never a good thing to hear after I’ve just been distracted.
AUSTIN: No, it’s not. Okay, there it is. They are—I will spend one push die to use their—what is this thing, is this the thing with the—yeah, okay—to use this howitzer.
JACK: Oh, Christ.
AUSTIN: They are aiming at—at your ship.
JACK: Okay.
AUSTIN: To take out—let me look at your ship’s thing again. Where—where is it here?
JACK: For the listener, I have “Quadcopter,” “Linked,” “Burst Cannon,” “Armor,” “Thrusters,” “Rotor Fans,” “Cam,” “Hover,” “Huge,” “Mic,” and “Pod.”
AUSTIN: So they’re aiming at “Cam.” They’re trying to destroy your cam.
JACK: Okay.
AUSTIN: They’re trying to give you—they’re trying to give you the adjective “blinded”, but to do that they would have to destroy—to touch you in that way they’d have to destroy the camera, y’know? And you also have armor so you could soak this, y’know.
JACK: We have windows on the Kingdom Come, right?
AUSTIN: You do but like, to see down where—to see down, you would need this camera.
JACK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: And that’s a six!
JACK (overlapping): Oh, I guess I’ve just done it.
AUSTIN: Do you destroy—do you disable the armor? Or do you let it hit?
JACK: You know what, I think I will go for disabling the armor because we’ve got the mechs for backup if need be.
AUSTIN: Sounds good.
JACK: And I would rather be able to see them on the ground.
AUSTIN: Okay, so I’m giving you that dice because I’ve disabled your armor.
KEITH (overlapping): Can—can you redirect—can you redirect damage only to armor or can you put that damage onto anything else?
AUSTIN: Only onto armor. Armor will soak that damage.
KEITH: Okay. So now that armor’s been destroyed or disabled, if it tried to target cam again, he couldn’t be like, “okay, well, it’s gonna hit my thrusters.”
AUSTIN: Right. Right. I’m pretty sure—you know what, let me just double check that. I know that you can’t redirect it, but the thing that I’m now questioning is, I can’t recall if I—if the attacker gets to call out the thing that’s hit, or if the defender gets to say what got hit. But that’s right here, so let me just double check armor here. [PAUSE]
“In effect of action, the player can damage one of a target’s vehicle’s tags…” Yeah, yeah, the attacker decides. You spend one to disable it or spend two to destroy it. But—but with armor, you—the defender can disable or destroy the armor tag instead.
JACK: Okay.
AUSTIN: So, note that you have disabled that and—what happens is, there is a loud crack in the sky as—as the Kingdom Come gets slammed with a—with a giant, physical shell from a giant howitzer cannon that is—that was fired from the—the kind of sightline—the horizon line coming from the east.
JACK: Well, I guess we know what disarmed the train now.
AUSTIN (laughing): Yeah. You can see that there is a row of—there’s like dust like, pouring from the ground, as a row of—of vehicles come pour—like, come rolling towards you. Across the dirt.
JACK (overlapping): Like Mad Max style.
AUSTIN: Yeah, like Mad Max style. And you can hear some whooping and hollering coming from that direction also.
ART: Is this—would you describe this as an overwhelming force? Or a “we should fight this with our mechs” force?
AUSTIN: That’s up to you to decide.
ART: Well I—
JACK (overlapping): So the Kingdom Come is stabilized now.
AUSTIN: It’s not an overwhelming force. This isn’t an army, is what I’m saying.
ART: Is it a dozen, is it a hundred, is it—
AUSTIN: It’s not a hundred, yeah, it is—it is two—as they get closer, you can see— are you waiting to see if they get closer before acting so you can make a decision?
ART: No, I’m gonna shoot missiles at them. I’m gonna shoot as many missile locks as I can get off of my battery.
AUSTIN: Okay, that’s fair.
KEITH: Do I—can I see what’s happening from inside the train?
AUSTIN: No, you absolutely can not.
KEITH: But I can hear?
AUSTIN: All you know is like, BOOM! You have no idea what that was.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: Cassander, which target are you aiming to hit, like, what’s your first lock? Or actually, yeah, you could spend—what’s your mech have?
ART: I have “missile battery.”
AUSTIN: Okay, I think missile battery sounds like the sort of thing that lets you attack multiple things. Remember that you need to discharge a push die to target more than one enemy, though.
ART: Sure.
AUSTIN: And then—
ART: Also, it’s worth noting that also my shoot is really bad. I don’t—
AUSTIN: Okay, that’s good.
ART: Well, I’ll just be priming some stuff, huh?
KEITH: You guys spec’d weird.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Make sure you’re priming the things that you’re missing when you roll, by the way.
ART: Sure. Alright, so I’m gonna shoot one of the big ones—let’s say two of the big ones?
AUSTIN: You just have to spend one push die to target multiple things, I’m pretty sure.
ART: Oh, one push die for—
KEITH (overlapping): No, you have to spend one per extra thing.
AUSTIN: Is it one per one? Okay.
KEITH: One per extra, yeah.
ALI: Oh, is it?
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: That’s fine.
ART: Alright, I’m gonna try and hit two of the big ones.
AUSTIN: Okay. Uh, no, no, it’s just one. It’s one push die for multiple opponents.
ALI: Yeah.
KEITH: Oh, okay. ‘Cause I thought that we looked it up last time and we did it the other way, so maybe we looked it up wrong.
AUSTIN: Yeah, maybe we looked it up wrong.
ART: Alright, then I’m saying I have a maximum of six, and I’m gonna go for six things—a big one, and then a bunch of littler ones.
AUSTIN: Yeah so it is—to give you the clear picture of what it is that’s coming at you at this point—it is two big like, lev trains? Coming across the ground? And then it’s surrounded by three other little—it’s kind of like they’re three—they’re like giant wheels with kind of carts in between the giant wheels that each have a couple of people on them.
ART: So should I—do you think the wheels or the carts are the targets?
AUSTIN: Either, it doesn’t matter. A missile’s a missile. A missile’s gonna hit them, you know?
ART: Alright, I’m gonna go for one train and the three carts.
AUSTIN: You can hit everything that’s coming at you.
ART: Yeah, but I gotta give Aria something to do.
[ALI laughs]
AUSTIN: Okay, that’s fine.
ART: It’s about drama.
AUSTIN: What are you spending here? Or what are you trying to apply?
ART: Uh, “Blown up.”
AUSTIN: You’re trying to destroy—you’re trying to damage these vehicles in a meaningful way, I guess?
ART: Yeah, but, “disabled”. “Immobile”. “Disabled”. Disabled.
AUSTIN: So you’re trying to disable—so the thing with vehicles is you’re trying to disable a specific—okay, so the train things have, “armored,” “armored,” a thing called “lane sprayer,” “flat cannon,” “howitzer,” “bolo gun,” and then like, “engine”.
KEITH: Ah! They have a lot of weapons!
AUSTIN: Yeah, they’re big.
JACK: And we don’t know what a “lane sprayer” is.
AUSTIN: No.
ART: I mean, I’m gonna go for “engines.” The engines on the—
AUSTIN: Oh, you know what, the—sorry, the engines are on the wheel things. Not on the—the lane sprayer is effectively the engine on these free levs.
ART: Alright, I’m going for the lane sprayer. I’m going for like—yeah, ‘cause I think if they can’t move they’re gonna be a lot less—
AUSTIN: Yes.
KEITH: Is a lane sprayer a thing that makes a track in front of you?
AUSTIN: Yes. It is that. That is what it is.
KEITH: Okay, cool. Awesome.
AUSTIN: They are basically spraying goop that like powers these trains in front of them.
JACK: That’s so good.
ART: And then the other ones, I guess—is the cart function—I wanna destroy the bit that’s holding people.
AUSTIN: That would be just—a hit would do that to them.
ART: Alright.
AUSTIN: They don’t have that as a tag. The wheeler tags are “off road,” “bolo gun,” and “engine.”
ART: Bolo gun.
JACK: And bolo gun is exactly what it sounds like, right? Like, firing chain shots?
AUSTIN: Yeah, it fires like a chain shot. Yeah.
KEITH: It’s a buy-one-get-one.
JACK: As far as cannonballs go.
AUSTIN: Yeah. So you’re using one to hit multiple targets, one push die to hit multiple targets.
ART: Yeah, and then I’ll also hit for “attentive?”
AUSTIN: Okay. And you’re using the missile battery, so you could use all of these if you’d like. Or you could save one for defense.
ART: Yeah, let’s save one for defense, I think I’m gonna get hit.
AUSTIN: Okay, gimme your 3d—
ART (overlapping): So I roll—so I don’t roll the one for the—
AUSTIN: Yeah, so you’re only rolling, what, 3d6?
ART: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ALI: Your shoot is only a one?
AUSTIN: No, no, one of those—
ART: No, that’s for hitting multiple targets.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ALI: Oh, okay.
ART: So two fours.
AUSTIN: So 4.1, that’s pretty good. Let’s see… hit, hit, miss, and miss. Oh, no, 4.1! Hit, hit! Yeah! You actually hit them—you hit them all! All of your missiles hit. Let me mark down what’s happening here. Two of the wheeled things just fly off and just like—you slam—one of the missiles hits it directly and it like—the cart in the middle explodes and the wheels go like, spinning off in different directions. And then the other one, you miss the cart, like they dive—they like spin out of the way, but then it hits like, next to them and it flips the cart over. The—your missile that hits one of the big lev trains, it soaks that with one of its armor.
ART: Sure.
AUSTIN: Or wait, does it? Wait, I don’t—I have no push dice—oh, yeah, I can still do that, yes. So one of its armor things is disabled and they’re still rolling towards you. What is your operate? Cassander?
ART: Three.
AUSTIN: Okay. What is this guy’s shoot—he’s also three.
ART: Ah, fuck.
AUSTIN: But then I also have to roll hurt die. Or no I don’t, because of the armor. Just the armor is disabled. It’s fine. So, yeah, you get the fleeting thing “tangled”, as a bolo gun from the big lev train catches your—the bottom of your mech’s legs with some chain shot. You could shake it off but it would take an action, basically. It’s fleeting.
ART: Oh, I can’t armor this?
AUSTIN: Yeah, I guess you could. You could just—you could—well, no, ‘cause it’s fleeting, it’s not—it didn’t actually do any damage to you. Do you know what I mean?
ART: Okay.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I think that’s how that works.
KEITH: Yeah, all he has to do is spend time.
AUSTIN: Yeah, to clear the fleeting, exactly. Exactly, yeah. What’s happening with you, Aria?
ALI: So was it one of the trains that shot the Kingdom Come? Or...
AUSTIN: Yes.
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: One of the trains has a big howitzer on it, the other one has a big bolo gun, and they’re coming at you.
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: And there are two wheelers left, I think? Is that right? Yes.
ALI: Okay. I am going to—so they’re like coming at us, I’m gonna approach the train and like, pull out my beam saber and try to attack one of them?
AUSTIN: Sounds good. Give me a—
ALI: Cut it in half?
AUSTIN: Yeah, give me an attack. Probably the one that’s already been hit by a missile, would be a good idea.
ALI: Yeah. I’m trying to see if I could use any other… no. I’m not gonna spend any adjectives on that.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ALI: Would that be a shoot or a fight, I guess?
AUSTIN: Well, you—you have to spend—you have to spend to do any damage.
ALI: Okay, yeah.
AUSTIN: Because you need to disable or destroy a thing. And “disabled” is one dice, “destroyed” is two. So yeah, that’s the way to think about this stuff with the vehicle to vehicle combat, is like, the adjectives that you’re applying are “disabled” or “destroyed” most of the time. With some rare exception like when you can blind somebody or something like that.
ALI: I guess I want to go “destroyed”?
AUSTIN: Okay. So that would need at least two push dice.
ALI: Two push dice, okay. But I don’t have any… then I’m using the adjective for beam saber?
AUSTIN: You’re using like the tag for beam saber, yeah.
ALI: Yeah, okay.
AUSTIN: And then probably, looking at your sheet, you could also use—if you can describe how it works, like, “jetpack”. You know? Or you could use “energetic”. You know?
ALI: Right.
AUSTIN: Something—if you can paint the picture in that way with what you’re doing.
ALI: Yeah, so I… Yeah, no, I mean, I guess I could use the jetpack to like get there faster? To be faster than them?
AUSTIN: Yeah, like, the vision I’m seeing then is just like, you drop your custom low and it’s just that great shot of—the missiles fire, they fire back at Cassander’s ship, or at Cassander’s mech, and then you, like, zip forward into the distance.
ALI: So that would be… 3d6?
AUSTIN: What’s your fight? One?
ALI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay, then, yeah. Then 3d6. And this is versus their operate.
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: So you got a five there. Do you have any—you don’t have any hurt dice. No one has anything bad on you, right?
ALI: No.
AUSTIN: Okay. So, that’s a five, that is good enough, I don’t have any hurt dice. So, and then, you just cut through the other piece of armor. You like, land, and give it a nice slash, and like a huge piece of metal falls off the side, and the front maglev train is now vulnerable for real damage to get done. Also, as you land on it to do this attack, you can see that there are two people at the front of this—there’s one person at the front driving it, and there is a person—the back end of this train is open-ended, or it’s like—it’s one of those trains that’s been taken off the tracks, but they’ve literally just like sawed off the roof of the back end of it and there is a man back there who is shouting into a microphone that he has set up. It’s like an old-timey microphone. And there are like—what do you call it—not just speakers, but like bullhorns set up on the sides of the open-ended thing, and he is shouting into it something about, you know, that “these infidels don’t worship the dead metal”. And that, you know, they have to be stopped.
JACK: Oh, damn.
ART: Yiiikes.
AUSTIN: He is wearing all black everything, except also a kind of neon—not scarf, really. It’s vestments. He’s wearing vestments, is what he’s wearing.
KEITH (overlapping): Is it a Dracula collar?
AUSTIN: Hm?
KEITH: I asked if it was a Dracula collar.
AUSTIN: No, it’s not a Dracula collar. It’s like a long—it looks like a long scarf to you, basically.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: He’s a priest. He’s a priest of the dead metal. AuDy, what are you doing? And then we’ll wrap back around to Mako.
JACK: So, I’m assuming that I’ve like stabilized the vehicle, now.
AUSTIN: Yes.
JACK: Okay. I’m going to try and attack the vehicle with the shouting priest.
AUSTIN: Okay.
JACK: Wait a second. We’re in radio—
KEITH: Is this a space truck 6?
AUSTIN: This is the—no, this is not the space truck. This is what’s called a free-lev.
JACK: And does this have a… road-spitter. What it’s called?
AUSTIN: A lane-spitter. A lane-sprayer.
JACK: A lane-sprayer. Does it have one of those?
AUSTIN: Yes. Yeah, so this thing has, at the front of it there is like a hose that’s running along the top of the free-lev, and into like some compartment inside, and it’s spraying out, like, a liquid that’s forming like a silvery ground in front of it. And unlike the rest of the maglev trains, this can turn by turning where the nozzle is spraying. So the track turns.
JACK: So, I have a burst cannon.
AUSTIN: Okay.
JACK: Do I have—let me just double check. I do.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JACK: And I would like to target the lane-sprayer if possible.
AUSTIN: Sounds good. Give me a shoot roll.
JACK: Sure thing. So burst cannon doesn’t count, right?
AUSTIN: Yeah, you can use burst cannon. So that’s one.
JACK: And then could I get away with using coordinated?
AUSTIN: Totally. ‘Cause like on one hand—
JACK (overlapping): ‘Cause it’s a sort of precise…
AUSTIN: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And you’re like—
JACK: So I guess—
AUSTIN: You’re like targeting, targeting, you know, you’re like—I think the display has that thing where it’s like, the train is coming across and the targeting computer is like—there’s a square and it’s bouncing around the screen and you’re like precision aiming to get a little bit closer, a little bit closer, and then it goes like [rapidly] “beep beep beep beep beep!” when it locks on.
JACK: Yeah. So I guess it’s just those two, really.
AUSTIN: Okay. So 4d6.
JACK: I don’t think I have anything else that would be tremendously useful.
[PAUSE]
AUSTIN: Oof. Three fives and a six, that’s a six. That’s a good six. I could… Could I make this not bad for them?
[JACK laughs]
AUSTIN: What’s this driver have? This driver only has—no, couldn’t do it. So yeah, you—are you spending those two to make it destroyed? To destroy the—
JACK: Yeah, I think so.
AUSTIN: Okay.
JACK: I’ve got the extra one from being…
AUSTIN: Right. Now I have four, so that’s good. I can start punching back. That’s how this game works. Yeah, you destroy the—so we can paint this whole picture, again, this is a thing I like about this is that like—we’ve spent the last twenty minutes making these rolls, but this is like what the last twelve seconds looks like.
Mako descends into the ship, or into the train, then moments later—like, sees the oranges, right? We cut from the oranges to—Mako’s like, “Huh?” You know? Outside, we hear a huge BOOM! as the Kingdom Come gets slammed into by a howitzer shell off in the distance. Then the Megalophile takes—you know, locks onto a bunch of things, shoots a bunch of missiles out, you see like, explosion, explosion, bolo fire comes back, catches the Megalophile’s like, legs, is like shaking them off, and then the Queen’s Brilliance swoops out, lands on the ship, or lands on the first maglev, or free-lev, cuts off the armor protecting the lane-sprayer, rips it, throws it off, jetpacks away, and then AuDy burst cannon fires and hits the lane-sprayer, and that explodes which means there’s no more lane for the thing to glide along, so it comes to a crash just onto the ground, and like, “shake shake shake”s and tips over, and everyone else is like—there are people inside, the priest on the back leaps off and lands on the dirt, and he’s coughing up a storm. Mako, what are you doing after this display of violence?
KEITH: I’m gonna get out of the train, and see what’s going on.
AUSTIN: You see what I just described.
KEITH: Yeah. I—there’s still one train that’s working, right?
AUSTIN: Yes. There’s still one train, it has a bolo gun.
KEITH: Alright. I would like—and it’s moving?
AUSTIN: They’re moving toward you, yeah. In fact at this point they’re close enough—they’re moving like sharks, they’re like moving—they’re like keeping a distance and just like orbiting around you, a little bit.
KEITH: Okay, well, if there’s anyone who can deal with a shark, it’s Mako Trig.
AUSTIN: Boom! Pshew.
KEITH: I’m gonna fuckin’ disable their lane-sprayer.
AUSTIN: The other one’s lane-sprayer. Okay.
KEITH: The other one’s lane-sprayer.
AUSTIN: Give me a roll. And take your dice back.
KEITH: Alright. That’s gonna be four hack—
AUSTIN: Oh.
KEITH: And then I’m gonna do—what?
AUSTIN: Is that what—you’re trying to fog it?
KEITH: Yeah, I’m gonna fog it.
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH: Because otherwise they’ve got—
AUSTIN: You reach out to touch it.
KEITH: Yeah?
AUSTIN: It’s not connected. To anything. It’s the dead metal.
KEITH: Oh, the dead metal. So I can’t do shit on that with this.
AUSTIN: You can’t do shit with that, yeah. You have other tools.
KEITH: With that. Alright. So my other tool is, I’ve got—does this thing have like a—is this a closed vessel or is it open?
AUSTIN: This is a closed one. The other one is closed.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: So at this point there is the one lev train, one free-lev, and then there are two more what I’m calling wheelers, which are those two big wheel things with carts in between.
KEITH: I’m gonna go hijack a wheeler.
AUSTIN: You’re gonna hijack one. Okay.
KEITH: I wanna hijack one of the wheelers.
AUSTIN: Okay. So you, like, fly out—they have—they just have the chain guns, the bolo guns on them.
KEITH: How many are in the—
AUSTIN: There are two people in each of those.
KEITH: There’s two people in each of them? Alright, let me just look at what I have here. So I have—I have a two for shoot, and so I’m going to roll one—two for my shoot, and then I’m gonna roll one for multiple targets…
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH: And then I’m gonna do another one, which I can’t move my last die.
AUSTIN: Oh.
KEITH: And then I’m gonna do another one for—what’s the tag that I wanna use?
AUSTIN: And this is for the two people inside.
KEITH: Barker.
AUSTIN: Oh, okay, yeah. And then one more for barker. Bob Barker.
KEITH: Bob Barker. B.B. And that is gonna be… Five, four, two, and one.
AUSTIN: Five. So, five.
KEITH: Yeah, five.
AUSTIN: Okay. Versus the operate of… who’s left here? These two. Alright, you—what’s the adjective you’re trying to apply?
KEITH: I’m trying to apply—
AUSTIN: And what are you doing? You’re trying to apply hijacked, but what’s that look like, and what’s the adjective here?
KEITH: I’m flying the tech deck—the Ring of Saturn, the flyboard—towards them, and while I’m flying towards them, I am shooting at them, I’m attempting to apply “incapacitated”.
AUSTIN: To the drivers?
KEITH: To the two people in the thing.
AUSTIN: In one of the things.
KEITH: In one of the—yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH: ‘Cause you said there’s two people in one of the wheels.
AUSTIN: Right. So one of them… Let’s see. So it’s these two people are left. This person is going to the—poor Chrome just gets got.
KEITH: He got got.
AUSTIN: He got got. Chrome got got. He is disabled.
KEITH: He got way got.
AUSTIN: Titan is—I think Prowl is to like duck under your shot, like below the dashboard? I think that’s Prowl? What do you think that is?
KEITH: Sure.
AUSTIN: That sounds like Prowl, right?
KEITH: That sounds like—no, I don’t know if that’s Prowl.
ALI: Move, maybe?
AUSTIN: Oh, yeah, maybe it’s Move.
KEITH: ‘Cause prowl is like—I think it’s just Move.
ALI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay. Mm… Here’s the reason I think it’s—let me read why I think it’s Prowl. One second.
KEITH: Okay. ‘Cause Prowl is like sneakin’ around. Like, I know where this guy is.
ALI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: It is that, but also… let me open up this guide. It is—let me read the thing for prowl. Oh yeah, maybe you’re right. I think there’s a thing in the main book that talks about Prowl as being like, that’s you in cover. Whereas Move is like, you’re diving from place to place.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: Let me just double-check that, though. He has the same score, this guy has the same score. Actually I think it’s a lady, Titan’s a lady.
KEITH: For both? For Prowl and Move?
AUSTIN: Yeah, it’s the same score for both. So it doesn’t matter, but I would like to know these things.
KEITH: I thought this was a—you don’t want her to get so got.
AUSTIN: No, I have the dice to do it. So it’s not gonna be too much of a problem here, anyway. One second. Yeah, maybe you’re right, here. So… yeah, you blast Chrome, Chrome is disabled, but the driver who is Titan is able to duck out of the way.
KEITH: Alright.
AUSTIN: Using three of these dice that I have to discharge. And how low are you? Are you—like, what is the angle of attack you’re doing here?
KEITH: I was going basically on the board, and then sort of like a throwing—an arc that you would do if you were throwing something.
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH: So I was on my way down when I was shooting it.
AUSTIN: Okay. But like, coming straight at it?
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Or coming around—okay. So, Nickel over on the other remaining—
JACK: [laughs] These names are the best.
AUSTIN: On the other remaining wheeler is like, they’re gonna like pull up parallel to where you are now, while you’re kinda looping around—
KEITH: You’re getting one of my dice, by the way.
AUSTIN: Hm?
KEITH: You’ve got one of my dice. I don’t think you brought it over.
AUSTIN: Oh, I did. Jesus Christ, I have a lot of dice.
KEITH: No, I already gave it to you.
AUSTIN: Oh, I see. Okay. We’re good now.
KEITH: Alright, we’re good.
AUSTIN: What is your Operate?
KEITH: My Operate is three.
AUSTIN: Okay. That’s a decent Operate. Nickel is going to shoot. With the Lioness, which is an assault rifle.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: And he’s going to use… let me get all of these back now that it’s my turn. Is going to use “burst fire”, and “long range”, and “stock”. So those three, the things I just moved back, I’ll move back over here. So it’s like, in the other machine, driving, like, puts it to just go, hits the gas, turns, puts the stock against his shoulder, flips it onto burst fire mode, and then it’s just like [imitating rapid burst fire] Da-da-da! Da-da-da! Da-da-da! across the plane towards you.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: And that is… [muttering] One, two, three, four, five? Is that—Nickel has two? Nickel has three, okay. Yeah, that six’ll do it.
KEITH: Alright. Well, that hits, that’s gonna hit my armor, and then the red—the red glow of the armor—
AUSTIN: It is going to destroy your armor.
KEITH: Yeah. Destroy it.
AUSTIN: There you go. Gave you two back.
KEITH: It’s gonna flicker off and then I’m just gonna—
AUSTIN: Oh, so it’s like a cool shield? Is that what it is?
KEITH: It’s like a cool—yeah, it’s like an energy shield. You know the terrible energy shield effect in KotOR where it’s just like—when you see it in cutscenes and it’s just this two inches of glowing around a person?
AUSTIN: Yeah like, who would ever use this? This looks too silly and bad for any human to ever decide to use this? Yes.
KEITH: Yes. It’s that, yeah.
AUSTIN: Great. Cassander, back around to you.
ART: I’m freeing myself from my binds.
AUSTIN: Okay, cool. So you—how do you—do you just like shake ‘em off? Do you power through them?
ART: I mean, my mech has the tag “strong”, so I imagine I’m just ripping it apart.
AUSTIN: Totally. Totally. Perfect. Yeah, you break out of them, and I’ll let you have an action here too, because it’s been a while.
ART: Alright, I wanna rail cannon the train.
AUSTIN: Okay. So you like, break out of the thing, and then take aim with your rail cannon. Give me a roll. And what are you aiming to do on this one? So this one still has—this one has everything.
ART: Am I gonna get my dice back, ‘cause I’m re—
AUSTIN: Yes.
ART: Okay. This one’s like fully loaded, right?
AUSTIN: This one is—yeah. Fully loaded. Reloaded.
ART: Alright, so… what I’m trying to do is disable that silly gun.
AUSTIN: Yep.
ART: And I’ll use a die for rail cannon.
AUSTIN: Sounds good. Give me a Shoot.
ART: Oh, where is it—five, and two threes.
AUSTIN: Five! Five is good. Five hits. And you’re trying to—so, they’re gonna disable their armor. On this one.
ART: Yeah, yeah. Gotta remember to just shoot at the armor next time.
AUSTIN: Eh, you know, that’s not how armor works. Sometimes they might let it go. You know what I mean? Like if you had hit the—something else that I care less about—
KEITH: The bolo.
AUSTIN: Right. If you had hit the flat cannon, they all have flat cannons, like, eh, whatever. Would have let that go. Or the bolo gun, right? But like, no, I can’t let you—or if you had hit the—these don’t have that. But if you’d hit like the camera or something, which they don’t have, like, eh, fuck the camera, who cares. Let’s go. You know? I’m not gonna waste my armor on protecting that, I wanna protect this other thing. So… The one wheeler that is left—or, no, you know what it is? It’s the guy—it is the wheeler that Keith is now like hovering above.
KEITH: Yeah. I’m gonna fuckin drop down on Titan.
AUSTIN: Yeah, Titan is pretty wide open at this point and has kind of one last shot to do something worth anything here, is going to launch the bolo gun on that thing towards… who’s dangerous here? I think like, she’s spun the wheeler around and is heading toward the wreck of the first train. And is aiming her bolo gun at the jetpack on the Queen’s Brilliance. So, one for the bolo gun, one for devout—this is like, she’s like—in fact, what she says is, she turns and she shouts “Brother Sterling!” and like turns to, she’s super enraged by her devotion to the dead metal and the church of the dead metal.
[AMBULANCE SIREN IN RECORDING BACKGROUND BEGINS]
AUSTIN: And… I think that’s it. And her Shoot is only two. Or wait. Her shoot is three. Titan’s is three. The wheeler people are like the actually good people. Also there’s a siren.
JACK: That’s in the game.
AUSTIN: That’s in the game.
JACK: Austin’s got a soundboard now.
AUSTIN: I do. I could.
[SIREN STOPS]
AUSTIN: I cut it off. That’s a six to hit your Operate—
[SIREN STARTS]
JACK: Oh, it’s back.
AUSTIN: Yep. There are people trying to cross the street, it’s an ambulance. They have to get people out of the way. What’s your Operate, Ali?
ALI: Mine?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
[SIREN STOPS]
ALI: My Operate is probably pretty good. It’s two.
AUSTIN: Okay, that’s—
KEITH: How do I have a higher Operate than all of our people that actually fly things?
AUSTIN: You picked different backgrounds, you know?
KEITH: I guess.
ALI: Yeah, I was not built to be a mech pilot, I just have this mech. [laughs]
AUSTIN: You were not—yeah. Yeah, okay. So, disab—hm. Destroy your armor. Or—I destroy either your jetpack or your armor. Up to you.
ALI: I can’t spend any of these dice to defend?
AUSTIN: You could spend—so you have one die, I just gave you those other two just there.
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: Because I’m giving them to you from this.
ALI: Right.
AUSTIN: Your Operate is only two. You could spend one die to raise it to three. But I still have six.
ALI (laughing): Oh. Well.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ALI: I guess I’ll destroy my armor, in that case.
AUSTIN: Okay. So then the bolo gun, in fact—the first hit chains around your jetpack, and the second one like slams into it and rips it off the back of your—of the Queen’s Brilliance, and it explodes in the night—on the ground of the night.
JACK: Jeez.
KEITH: Wait, no, not jetpack, armor.
AUSTIN: Right, sorry, right, right, you actually protected it. Sorry, my bad.
ALI (laughing): I was like, “wait a minute”.
AUSTIN: I forgot that you actually did use the armor.
KEITH: That’s what would have happened!
JACK: It’s a surprise twist.
AUSTIN: You have—what’s the armor look like on the Queen’s Brilliance? What’s the Queen’s Brilliance look like without the armor on it, is another way of thinking about it? Is it like a bulky shell that comes off or is it like… can you see the joints underneath its arms now or something?
ALI: I think so, yeah. I think like just part of it is blown off. ‘Cause it’s like—it’s built to be armored in kind of like a bulky weird-looking thing, but then it was designed to sort of look nicer than that?
AUSTIN: Okay. So now it looks back to kind of being bulky and ugly?
ALI: I guess so, yeah. Like the nice pearlescent armor that’s on it is broken away and now you can just see all of the weird joints and all of the like, shitty manufacturing inside of it.
AUSTIN: Nice. What do you do in response?
ALI: That was the—that was Titan who...?
AUSTIN: Yeah, who’d done that.
ALI: But Mako’s right above them?
AUSTIN: They used their action to rush toward you and shoot this thing. I mean, everyone’s within touching distance. Do you know what I mean? Like...
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: Everyone’s within range, at this point.
ALI: ‘Cause I think I—so it’s like two wheels and there’s like a cart in the middle, and that’s being operated by that cart?
AUSTIN: Yes. Yep.
ALI: I think that I turn around and I try to cut it in half?
AUSTIN: Okay. Go for it.
[ALI laughs]
AUSTIN: Its armor is disabled already. So. So that’s a thing.
ALI: [laughs] Yeah, so I guess… I’m definitely trying to destroy it. And kill that person, I’m sorry.
AUSTIN: Give me—so, one for your beam saber probably.
ALI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: What color is your beam saber? Did we ever figure that out?
ALI: The lights on the Brilliance are like, sort of a yellow? So the beam saber’s close to that? Like a yellow, kinda gold?
AUSTIN: Nice. Mhm.
ALI: I almost wanna use “energetic”, but I think the actual word would be like, mad.
[AUSTIN and ALI laugh]
ALI: Like, offended. But yeah, so it would be one for…
AUSTIN: One for beam saber—so, you could—again, you could use more to make this roll easier for you. In fact, you need to do another one if you’re looking to destroy this thing. Otherwise you’re just disabling it.
ALI: Yeah. I guess flexible? ‘Cause it’s a very like, per-point sort of move?
AUSTIN: Sure, that works.
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: In fact it extra works now that we see those joints. You know, like. It’s one of those things where like now that you see the joints, you can literally see that it’s bending in a way that most of the—most rooks don’t bend. You know? For this attack.
ALI: Yeah. Right.
AUSTIN: So go ahead and give me 3d6.
ALI: Okay. Yeah, like when it turns its hips move in a certain way that it has more stuff there and the arms are very…
AUSTIN: Yeah, maybe like literally the whole mech turns on its side in a weird way that is like—or not on its side, but the hips rotate way more around—like you get hit in the back, turn around, and then like the legs turn separately? You know? And then it’s like oh, okay. So you rolled a six there. Yeah, I think you just—you—yeah. You tear through this thing and give this henchman “dead”. I’ll take these back.
Coming up on time, this scene is just about over, so. Back to them, out of the crashed-over train, comes a woman who is—she is a pretty large woman, she’s like, she’s about the size of Orth, and you can make that comparison because she’s holding Orth in like a chokehold, with a gun pointed to his head. And she has in—so she has like, she has Orth like this with his—his neck is like between her elbow and her chest, she lifts him up in the air, she’s probably a little taller than him actually, and she is like dressed in—she has like some flowing robes, if you like look at her feet, it’s like oh, there’s flowing robes down there, and then like from waist up is like, handcrafted sharp metal armor. And a gun to his head. And she like, goes over to Brother Sterling who’s been knocked over, and kicks him, and like kicks up a bunch of dust around him, and then shoots in the air, and walks back over to the maglev—or the tossed-over free-lev train, and to one of the bullhorns that was like attached to the side. And then says,
AUSTIN (as WOMAN): Stop or he dies.
AUSTIN: What do you do?
KEITH: I want to…
ALI: Stop.
KEITH: No. I don’t wanna stop.
[JACK inhales sharply]
KEITH: I want to—I want to use the scope on my gun to shoot the gun out of her hands and apply the adjective “helpless”.
AUSTIN: Ooh, okay. Go for it.
ALI: That’s a move.
AUSTIN: That’s a move!
KEITH: I believe my Shoot is two.
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH: Let me make—I just wanna double-check. Shoot two. Okay.
[PAUSE]
KEITH: [snaps fingers] Six, and…
AUSTIN: Ooh, a six is pretty good.
KEITH: Six is pretty good.
AUSTIN: And you’re giving “helpless”?
KEITH: Helpless.
AUSTIN: Which is sticky?
KEITH: Yes.
AUSTIN: So I’ll take two of these.
KEITH: One of them?
AUSTIN: Oh, sticky. My bad. Right, right, right. Does she have enough—
KEITH: You have so many dice, this sucks.
AUSTIN: I do. I know, it does. I’m actually trying to decide if she should defend against this instead. ‘Cause I have so many and I feel bad about—uh, no. I’m just gonna take it.
Alright. You shoot the gun out of her hand, it falls to the ground, and she just pulls him in tighter.
AUSTIN (as WOMAN): By the Divine Order, stop or I’ll break his neck.
JACK: Hmm. Do I have enough room to bring the ship down?
AUSTIN: Yeah. It’s probably—that probably looks really cool, even. Like the—’cause it will hover down and there’s all sorts of wind billowing around.
JACK: The light from the bottom of the ship.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JACK: So I guess—I guess, yeah, I guess I’m going to land within—
AUSTIN: Another remaining wheeler pulls around to where she is and stops. I think we’re quote unquote “out of combat” here, if anyone wants to just be in this scene, you can be in this scene at this point. Land your ship and all that.
ART: Yeah, yeah, we all stop.
AUSTIN: Okay.
JACK: So I think we’re out, probably. I mean, I don’t know, Mako, do you want to keep fighting these people?
[PAUSE]
JACK: Keith?
KEITH: Um, no, I don’t think that there’s anything I can do—I guess the closest thing I could do—I guess I could jump off of my board onto her.
JACK: I kinda feel that at least potentially opening some sort of negotiations might be…
KEITH: Yeah, sure.
ART: You gotta know when you’re beat, Keith, and we’re beat right now.
KEITH: I wouldn’t say beat. We’re—it’s so not beat.
AUSTIN: You’re all there though, right?
KEITH: We’re all there.
AUSTIN: There’s a moment, there’s a breath in—
JACK: Yeah, exactly.
AUSTIN: She says… what does she say? She doesn’t say anything. She’s holding him tight to her chest, to her like armored torso, and in the distance you hear the rumblings of brakes as back towards Dome 7 a new lev train comes and flying around that are—how many do they have? How many do they have? Right, it’s three. Sorry, this is actually what it is. It is—I forgot exactly how the Netted Wave moved.
[MUSIC OUTRO - “The Long Way Around” by Jack de Quidt begins]
AUSTIN: There is like an airship coming above the maglev train. It’s like an open—it’s like a skiff, is what it’s really like. It has jet boosters on the bottom of it, sort of like one of the things in Jabba’s palace at the beginning of Return of the Jedi, it’s painted like silver and on the back of it is like a giant thruster and thrusters on the bottom, and it’s like rolling down the track the same way the Kingdom Come would but much lower to the ground. And it is flanked by three other mechs, which are called hoplites. You would know that, Cassander, because these are the three of the other types of mechs that the Apostolosians used in—and you see on the throne of the kind of skiff that’s coming through the air, you see the thing suddenly sprouts like a sail, like a golden sail, and it starts picking up speed, and flying higher into the air, like, it’s almost as if it caught a wave. And it’s like, high up into the air above you now and there’s like a trail of gold energy below it that the three hoplites are flying up and through and they turn and are coming down towards all of you on the ground. And we’ll pick up there next week.
ART: Great.
JACK: We always find ourselves in the best situations.
[MUSIC OUTRO - “The Long Way Around” by Jack de Quidt ends]
ART: I thought Keith was gonna get that guy—was gonna get Orth killed, and it was gonna be like, that’s just a thing that happens with groups—
AUSTIN (overlapping): No, he made that—he made that roll. I wouldn’t kill Orth on that successful roll. If he had missed that roll, like, if he had actually missed it, and like, where I didn’t have to spend dice to defend, then we—I maybe would have done it? But he did—he beat the base difficulty, which meant that at the very least, if I defended, I wasn’t gonna get Orth killed. That would have been a kinda dick move.
KEITH: I agree. Thank you.
ART (overlapping): No, yeah, I didn’t know he was gonna succeed at the roll, it was before—it was pre-roll that was like—
AUSTIN (overlapping): I see. I see.
ART: —oh yeah, that’s what happens with games Keith are in, the people we like die.
KEITH (exclamatory): That’s not—listen!
AUSTIN (overlapping): Also do we really like Orth?
KEITH (exclamatory): Nothing has ever been my fault ever!
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH: I did sign for those robots, but that’s on—that’s my own thing.
AUSTIN: That’s true. That is your own thing.
ART: Yeah, no one’s mad at you for being in debt.
KEITH (overlapping): Orth didn’t die.
[AUSTIN and JACK laugh]
AUSTIN: My name’s Austin Walker, you can find me on the internet @austin_walker on Twitter, at giantbomb.com, and as always at friendsatthetable.net where you can listen to this and all of our previous stuff. If you hopped in at this new mech noir game, I do think you should go back and listen to the Dungeon World campaign. ‘Cause it’s pretty good.
ART: Although I just gave away some fuckin’ spoilers on that one.
AUSTIN: Yeah, a little bit, but you should do it anyway ‘cause it’s great. Art, where can people find you?
ART: They can find me on Twitter @atebbel, they can read stuff I write at comicmix.com.
AUSTIN: Keith?
KEITH: You can find me on Twitter @KeithJCarberry, you can find the Let’s Plays that I do at youtube.com/RunButton.
AUSTIN: Jack?
JACK: You can find me on Twitter @notquitereal.
AUSTIN: And Ali. Is Ali gone?
JACK: Ali’s gone.
AUSTIN: Ali’s gone. Bye Ali. @ali_west on Twitter for Ali. She had to go catch a train or go to work or something.
ART: She’s going to NXT TakeOver.
AUSTIN: Oh, is she going to TakeOver tonight?
ART: Yeah.
AUSTIN: P.S., we’re recording this just before SummerSlam. Art, any SummerSlam predictions?
ART: Uh—
KEITH: It’s gonna be a hot one out there.
ART: It’s gonna be a hot one out there. And I think it’s a—we’re looking for a screwy finish in the title vs. title match, and I think I’d bet the farm on the Undertaker.
AUSTIN: That’s a shame. Alright—
KEITH: [laughs] I don’t know anything about wrestling.
AUSTIN: Ali’s prediction, she’s typing it into us, she says: “Friendship will win! My prediction from not voice.” So, she’s pro-friendship.
ART: Oh, and put the tag belt back on New Day, right? What are we even doing? The Prime Time Players is so boring.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Have a good week, everybody.
JACK: See you soon.
KEITH: How’d they get that prime time spot if they’re not any good?
ART: Bye.
AUSTIN: Bye.
KEITH: Bye.