Autumn in Hieron 02: You Found Out What Was Magical
Transcriber: Hannah
[Autumn Not Winter begins playing in the background]
KEITH: Last week on Friends at the Table.
AUSTIN: As we pick up the game, you’ve already traveled towards this island, the island of Eventide. The leadership, the government of the Burg has sent you here to investigate this strange tower.
ART: The two boons I would like are senses that pierce lies, and a voice that transcends language.
AUSTIN: The tower is way more imposing than you thought it was. It’s massive. A whole, a whole bunch of people could be living here, this isn’t just like a lighthouse.
NICK: I keep thinking about like, one day, Hadrian’s really hungry.
AUSTIN: Right.
NICK: And is like [exaggerated voice] “It is my holy quest to make the best sandwich ever!”
AUSTIN: [while laughing] But then he takes as one of his abilities that he can’t die from hunger!
[laughter]
KEITH (as Fero): Yo, they’re saying that we gotta get out of here. [laughter] And they’ve got people faces! [louder laughter]
AUSTIN: You do know that there’s someone Evil nearby. It’s Hella.
JACK: What if it lived here?
ALI: Yeah!
NICK: Aw.
AUSTIN: In the - in the…
ALI: It definitely lived here.
AUSTIN: In the bones, you find, uh, a duplicate set of the keys that Jack had found, or that,
JACK: [cross] Goddammit, it lived here.
AUSTIN: [cross] that Lem had found.
AUSTIN: There is a portrait of a small woman, who has a smile on her face, that looks… [hesitates] it looks, it looks like one of the most genuine smiles that you’ve seen, as if she’s thrilled to be, being made the subject of, of a painting.
[Music ends]
NICK: [laughing] I say:
NICK (as Fantasmo): Is the skeleton creature dead?
[Jack laughing]
ART (as Hadrian): It looks like it.
KEITH (as Fero): Yeah, it’s dead.
[Nick and Ali crosstalk]
NICK (as Fantasmo): Somebody check-
ALI (as Hella?): Shouldn’t we like- Is it for sure dead?
AUSTIN: It’s not movin’.
ALI (as Hella?): Should we like, seperate the bones?
KEITH: I kick one of the bones and see if anything happens.
AUSTIN: Noth- --It, it --When you kick it, it turns to, to like dust.
ALI (as Hella?): Aww, what a bummer!
KEITH (as Fero): Yeah. Hadrian killed the dude that lives here, now it’s dead again.
[Art, Jack and Austin laughing]
ART (as Hadrian): This isn’t my fault. This just simply isn’t my fault.
NICK: Fantasmo reappears-
AUSTIN: Okay.
NICK: ...going like this [presumably doing a hand gesture].
KEITH: I, I remember my first impression of Hadrian. Which was that the spirits spoke to me of a great danger that follows Hadrian.
[Jack and Ali laughing]
KEITH: I remember, I remember that.
[Austin laughing]
ART: [upset] Ugh. You’re suppos- --Ugh. He was an unnatural creature!
JACK: Armed with a broom!
ALI: That’s rough.
[Keith and Art crosstalk]
KEITH: While you were in his house.
ART: [unintelligible]
ALI: He was just a guy!
JACK: You are a monolith wearing plate armour, carrying like a halberd.
[Austin laughing]
KEITH: You hit him once and he turned to dust.
ART: This is scale armour.
[Austin and Ali laughing]
KEITH: All you did was-
ART: Scale is a different kinda armour.
KEITH: ...one blow and it turned to dust. You’re not that strong.
ART: [offended] The hell I’m not!
[Austin, Ali and Jack laughing]
AUSTIN: So what’re you, what’re you doing?
JACK: I think we’ve basically got everything we need to out of this room. We’ve searched it-
ALI: Yeah.
JACK: ...Hadrian’s killed somebody here.
ALI: Oh! Someone grabs the second pair of keys obviously, I guess I do.
AUSTIN: Sure. Yeah, you said.
JACK: Oh, yeah also could I, could I --What’s the nicest painting? Or wh-
NICK: [whilst Jack is talking] Yeah, I’ll grab those.
AUSTIN: Are you digging through them?
JACK: Yeah, is there a painting I particularly like or evaluate as being --Actually, can I do discern realities on the worth of the paintings please?
AUSTIN: [overlapping Jack] There is --Who knows what these are worth. You’ll never know.
[Jack makes a disappointed noise]
AUSTIN: Like, they’re not, there’s not much of an art --I mean, maybe in the New Archives there is. But like a lot of the value of a piece of art is being able to trace who did it and who, who that person was and what the value was, like then-
JACK: [whilst Austin is talking] Alright.
NICK: Yeah there’s no providence with these paintings.
KEITH: This is painted by a skeleton man in a haunted tower.
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: [overlapping Keith] There is, there is a painting of two small.. --This takes you about five minutes. So while everyone else is, is, well I guess finishing up, you’re doing this. You’re flipping through the paintings that are stored and you find one that features the woman that I mentioned before which is, which is painted beautifully. It’s like a master at leisure painted this. It took them a long time to do this, you can see that the brushwork was careful and, and done with great love.
NICK: Oh, so Genji.
AUSTIN: Wait, I’m not done yet. Yeah, yeah Genji.
NICK: Okay.
AUSTIN: But then next to that person is another person of the same size and stature, an older man, big round features, tiny. Behind them is the, is the garden and that part of the painting with the man was also done with a great deal of love but was done by an amateur. Someone who hadn’t done much painting before but who worked really hard to, to paint this portrait of both of them together.
JACK: Can I take it please?
AUSTIN: Sure. You roll it up-
ALI: This is rough stuff.
AUSTIN: ...and, and pack it away and take it.
[Keith laughing]
JACK: Is that one weight?
AUSTIN: That’s not any weight. That’s no weight.
JACK: That’s no weight?
AUSTIN: That’s no --It’s just a little-
ALI: We’re gonna, we’re gonna deal with a sad skeleton lady now.
[Austin and Jack overlapping]
JACK: Well maybe [unintelligible] sad skeleton man.
AUSTIN: Oh no.
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: What were you gonna say, what were you gonna say Fero?
KEITH: Oh I was gonna say, while Jack is doing that can I see if I can make friends with a nearby mouse?
AUSTIN: [overlapping Keith] Okay.. The mice have bounced man.
KEITH: [upset] Oh man!
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: Someone started swingin’ weapons around, there was a loud clattering.
KEITH: Yeah.. Man.
ART: [laughs] There was a skeleton monster!
NICK: [overlapping Art] Magical reverberation.
KEITH: He wasn’t a monster! He was a man.
ALI: All you got was a black eye.
JACK: And, let’s put it out here as well-
ART: [interrupting] I established it was a bloody nose.
[Ali laughing]
JACK (as Lem?) : There was nothing of value on that skeleton that we didn’t already have!
[Austin laughing]
NICK (as Fantasmo): It was a vile creature from beyond the grave! Who cares?
ART (as Hadrian?): Thankyou!
NICK (as Fantasmo): Let’s move on!
[Austin laughing]
ALI: Well I guess now we have two sets of keys.
AUSTIN: Sure. [pauses] So you, you head out?
JACK: Yeah.
ART: That didn’t look like a good life.
AUSTIN: And you’re [noise of disagreement]
ALI: All that bread and art? Buddy!
AUSTIN: [laughs] And you-
KEITH: [interrupting] Oh I’d love some nice bread right now.
AUSTIN: I know, me too. Someone bring me some good bread.
ALI: [overlapping Austin] I just ate some.
[Keith and Ali at the same time]
ALI: Some good bread.
KEITH: Ah some fuckin’ good bread.
AUSTIN: Can I get some jam downstairs?
KEITH: God damn I want some good bread!
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: This is what we’re talking about. Welcome to Dungeon World we’re gonna talk about stuff we wanna eat. I bet you this will happen every week
KEITH: [overlapping Austin] What’s your fa-, what’s your favourite bread guys?
ALI: Italian.
KEITH: Italian bread?
AUSTIN: I like, I like a good french bread.
NICK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: There was a place in Brooklyn that had really good French bread.
NICK: [overlapping Austin] French bread.
JACK: As a, yeah as a kind of salt and pepper bread.
AUSTIN: I like a good, I like a good biscuit? That, Ali that place we got biscuits..
KEITH: [as Austin is talking] Here’s what I had-
ALI: Oh yeah Austin let’s get, Austin let’s get biscuits again.
NICK: I’m looking forward to my Thai curry leftovers that’re waiting for me as soon as we’re done.
AUSTIN: Mmm, that sounds alright. Alright! Alright, alright, alright.
[Ali laughing]
KEITH: Wait, wait wait. I just wanna, one more thing. Last month I had a fuckin’ bread knot that was like an Italian white bread-
AUSTIN: Mhm.
KEITH: ...twisted up with a, like a rye bread and baked.
AUSTIN: Oh that sounds goood.
KEITH: Goood!
ALI: That sounds really good.
AUSTIN: Mm. Eats!
KEITH: I had some honey on that and it was so good.
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: Alright, we have to keep going otherwise I’m gonna die of hunger.
KEITH: Alright, let’s go to the tower, let’s go to the tower.
AUSTIN: You finish the little trek up to the tower. The tower is massive and if you can picture it it’s, it’s round in shape and then next to it on the bottom level is a big kind of boxy building attached to the bottom level. It has its own entrance that seems to be filled in with solid stone sheet, but(?) there is an archway that’s filled with the solid stone sheet. There is, to the tower itself big wooden doors with a with big iron handles on it.
ALI: Can I use my Bend Bars Lift Gates move to try to open it?
AUSTIN: Which, which thing? [pauses] The main door or the big, the big stone door on the square building?
ALI: The like big wooden door?
ART: Has anyone tried knocking?
AUSTIN: You need to, you don’t have to.
JACK: [overlapping Austin] Oh, that’s rich coming from you!
AUSTIN: Ali’s already opening them. Ali rips open those doors. You open those, you open those big wooden doors.
KEITH: Art, knocking is like the worst idea! [laughs]
AUSTIN: Ali, you open the wooden doors no problem, you don’t even need to use the move.
ALI: Okay, okay.
AUSTIN: You just, you just. They’re big wooden doors but they’re openable. So that’s those open, and as you look inside there is this big, dark room. It’s lit by, by these crystals that’re in sconces around the wall. They’re kind of a blue-purple light. It’s a big open space like a, like a giant entry hall that has at the far end a balcony with two staircases coming down. The left, or one staircase coming down, the left side has already broken and it’s under complete disrepair. There are bits of it here and there hanging out of the side of the wall but there’s no way you could climb it. At the bottom level there is --It’s almost, it’s almost like a big multi-purpose room where you could see where it could be used for, for organising people or meeting, big meetings, big events. But it’s kind of like all of that stuff is in the corners. There’s tables in the corners and chairs. There’s little, there’s another, not little, there’s another one of those archways with the solid stone door. Or like, not even a, it’s not a door, it’s a solid stone sheet going straight down to the bottom of the, of the floor. And also scattered around the place are like, just like trash cans and like trash like receptacles.
ART: Is this a convention centre?
AUSTIN: It’s sort of like a convention centre this bottom floor. Y’know, it’s the sort of place --Art, you would recognise this, Hadrian would recognise this as the sort of place that you bring in people, you don’t do the service here, do you know what I mean? But like, your church compound probably has a room like this. It’s kind of a big multi-purpose public room, y’know?
ART: Sure.
AUSTIN: And then at the top is the stairway that goes up higher into --Or, I guess it’s a, it’s a --You kind of like go to the back and then go up and there’s a stairway that goes like in and then up through the next like level.
ART: Is this the kind of place that you would have a funeral or a celebration?
AUSTIN: Both.
ART: Okay.
AUSTIN: Good question but both, depends.
JACK: Just before we start searching this room can I take a really tiny break?
AUSTIN: Sure.
ALI: Yeah.
JACK: I’ll be back in just like 30 seconds.
AUSTIN: Sounds good. [pause] [sighs] Oh boy.
KEITH: Why-
AUSTIN: What’s up?
NICK: Actually-
KEITH: I, I remembered that the thing that I was thinking of earlier-
AUSTIN: Mhm.
KEITH: ...and its alright if it’s too late to change it. When you said ‘What animal?’ and I said gila monster. The thing that I was thinking of was a komodo dragon.
AUSTIN: That’s what I thought. I did say komodo dragon.
KEITH: Oh, you did?
AUSTIN: I did. And then you were like, a gila monster. Those are, I believe you that they’re very different. Those are the same thing in my brain.
[Ali laughing]
KEITH: Yeah, yeah that’s why I made the mistake. Komodo dragons are like ten times as big.
AUSTIN: [surprised] Are they??
KEITH: Yeah, yeah yeah.
AUSTIN: I believe you.
KEITH: Gila monsters yeah are like, are like a thing that you could have in a tank in your house if it was big enough.
AUSTIN: Okay.
NICK: Yeah.
KEITH: Yeah.
NICK: I’ve had a friend that had gila monsters.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ALI: I was picturing the drakes from countforce(?)
KEITH: Yeah, that’s what I was picturing too.
AUSTIN: Oh right sure, sure those. I’m now looking at komodo dragons while Jack is away. These are big.
KEITH: The problem is that --Yeah, they are big.
AUSTIN: Gila monster has the word monster in it.
NICK: They’re cool-looking too.
KEITH: Yeah, yeah it has the word monster so it’s like damn that’s gotta be fuckin’ big. But it’s like no it’s like a foot long.
NICK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Do you think those people were over-reacting when they called a gila monster a gila monster?
KEITH: Yeah I absolutely do. Or they were, they were very small. Like a foot tall.
AUSTIN: Like the people were?
[Nick laughing]
KEITH: Yeah the people who discovered it were a foot tall.
AUSTIN: Right. I’m gonna look this up, I’m wondering why they’re called that. [pauses] Maybe they were just really sheltered. They’d never seen anything before.
KEITH: Yeah. Aaah Its a --The only other thing I’ve seen in my life was a moth!
[Austin, Ali, Keith & Nick all laughing]
KEITH: What is this monster?
JACK: Alright, I’m back.
AUSTIN: Welcome back. I guess gila monsters are mon- or, are venomous, right?
KEITH: I think that’s a myth.
AUSTIN: No, this says they’re monsters, or, they’re venomous.
KEITH: Okay.
JACK: They’re also monsters.
[Art laughing]
KEITH: Oh, the myth is that they’re way more venomous than they actually are.
AUSTIN: Oh, sure, sure, sure.
KEITH: Yeah, the myth is that they’re fatal and they’re actually not fatal.
AUSTIN: Not a big D.
KEITH: Yeah, not a big D at all.
AUSTIN: Little d, okay.
KEITH: Yeah, a teeny little d.
[Jack laughing]
AUSTIN: Hmm.
JACK: So we’ve got this, we’ve got this enormous room.
AUSTIN: Yep.
JACK (as Lem?): [pauses] Does anybody have a particular interest in.. I mean, I don’t know what our, what our strategy here should be, are we trying to get to the.. From my perspective the thing that is possibly causing stuff in a tower is either at the top of the tower or very, very deep underneath the tower. So I’m not entirely sure whether or not there’s-
AUSTIN: Why do you think that?
JACK: Why do I think that? Past ex-
AUSTIN: Why does Lem think that?
JACK: Past experience with towers.
AUSTIN: Okay.
JACK: You know, partly from actual towers that we’ve found and catalogued and things.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JACK: And also just from the general cultural --There’s a, there’s a mythological, cultural through-line of towers, villainous towers being powered by stuff at the top and bottom.
AUSTIN: Okay.
JACK: So I don’t know whether or not --Shall we just, shall we just push forward? What do people think?
KEITH: I think that before we decide whether to go up or down we should hang out and look around in the bottom, the bottom floor.
ALI: Yeah, we should do discern realities.
AUSTIN: [overlapping Ali] How long, how long do you guys-
KEITH: Is there --Are we --Have we already seen the entirety of the bottom floor?
AUSTIN: You’ve see the entirety of the bottom floor minus that, that big building that’s attached to the tower. There’s a, that there’s this solid stone doorway into.
KEITH (as Fero?): Now Lem, I hear you on this top and bottom thing, I do. But I’m thinking maybe the sealed off area is probably an important place?
JACK (as Lem?): Yeah alright, let’s give that a shot.
KEITH: Yeah, what’s the --Can I find from the inside where it looks like the wall would be? Like, is there a doorway to that thing from the inside?
AUSTIN: Yeah, there’s another --There’s a duplicate of that archway, that solid stone sheet, inside and outside. Those, those kind of archways in that’ve been shut off with the stone sheet are the way in.
KEITH: Okay.
ART: Hey, around about what time is it?
AUSTIN: I’m gonna say it’s like [pauses] 1 pm.
KEITH: Okay.
ART: Okay, so I don’t have to do ch- --I’m, I’m not in desperate time fronts.
AUSTIN: [overlapping Art] By 5pm you should do it. Like by, by evening, by the time the sun starts to set, lets say.
[Sound of clock chiming in the background]
AUSTIN: By the time the sun starts to set you must have worshipped the sun god that day, y’know?
[Clock still chiming]
KEITH: Okay, yeah.
ART: Sure.
AUSTIN: The god that put the sun in the sky, so.
ART: But I got, I got time.
AUSTIN: Sure.
KEITH: Yeah, yeah, can I --Are there any cracks in the walls big enough for a small thing?
AUSTIN: Nah.
KEITH: No? Like not even a mouse?
AUSTIN: This is solid.
KEITH: Solid? Dang.
ALI: [overlapping Austin and Keith] This is a --Is this an inanimate obstacle that I can get past?
AUSTIN: Is it?
ALI: That’s literally my only move, so [laughs]
AUSTIN: I mean, you have other moves, just they’re weird and different. But yes!
ALI: Right.
AUSTIN: Yes, you could, you could try to lift it. You know like get down there and put your fingers in and try to find purchase and lift it? Or are you gonna try to --How are you gonna try to get through?
ALI: I’m brawly, I’ll do that [laughs]
AUSTIN: Alright.
ALI: [thinking noise] Okay.
KEITH: Should I wait until Hella rolls, goes, before I aid or interfere?
AUSTIN: [overlapping Keith] Yeah, yeah, let Hella finish this, let Hella finish this move yeah.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: I’m --Y’know it’s not very clear if aid/interfere should come before or after a roll, and I, I’m gonna play it fast and loose and say that there are times when it makes sense to be before and times when it makes sense to come after? Kind of like, what’s the most dramatically appropriate. Does that make sense?
KEITH: Yeah, yeah.
NICK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: In this case, let’s save it and see if she can do it herself.
ALI: So-
ART: Wait, I have a, I have a question?
AUSTIN: Sure.
ART: Would it be appropriate for, for anyone to just turn into a bear while this is happening?
[Ali laughing]
KEITH: Are you-
ART: Just like, while waiting, does anyone wanna be a bear?
[Austin, Jack and Nick laughing]
KEITH: Are you asking me to be a bear right now?
ART: I’m just, I’m just teasing-
AUSTIN: He’s teasing.
ART: ...because of the time I attacked something, and you were a bear.
KEITH: [annoyed] I was trying to help you out! I was like okay, while he’s doing it I’m gonna j-, I’m gonna start on my shit, so we can double-
AUSTIN: [overlapping Keith] Right. I should’ve said this before, but the way, the way dungeon world-
ART: And it was funny.
AUSTIN: It was funny. The way dungeon world positions itself, it’s sort of like it’s a conversation between the players and the gm and if a player says something then the gm says something, if the gm says something the player says something. In general I wanna resolve moves one at a time. So like, even if fictionally you would be turning into a bear while that was happening, that’s the, that’s kind of how we’re gonna do it.
NICK: Okay.
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: So, Ali.
ALI: I def-, I definitely just rolled a four.
AUSTIN: Cool.
ALI: Which isn’t great.
AUSTIN: Bend bars lift gates [quoting from guide] ‘when you use strength to destroy an inanimate obstacle roll plus strength. On a 10+ choose three, on a 7-9 choose two.’. Those options, just for the record, would’ve been: it doesn’t take a very long time, nothing of value is damaged, it doesn’t make an inordinate amount of noise, you can fix the thing again without a lot of effort. But on a four, that doesn’t really, that doesn’t super happen.
ALI: No?
ART: Four plus modifier?
AUSTIN: No, two plus modifier.
[Ali laughing]
ALI: Yeah that was a bad roll.
ART: It was snake eyes, it was snake eyes!
AUSTIN: Snake eyes.
ALI: That was a rough roll.
AUSTIN: [pauses] How are you trying, how are you trying to get through this place again?
ALI: Well, it’s just like a metal-
AUSTIN: It’s like a-
ALI: ...like a stone sheet right?
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. So are you..? Were you trying to lift it, were you trying to punch through it, were you trying to like just break it down? Like, what’s the..?
ALI: I guess, I was tryna’ lift it so people could like sneak under it?
AUSTIN: Okay, you just can’t get it up. Like it just is not moving at all from, from the lift. You can tell that it, it does move up. Like you can, you can feel that this isn’t just concrete. That there --It should be able slide upwards, but you’ve never felt anything this heavy in your life. You can’t, you can’t lift it. While-
KEITH (as Fero?): Lem, Lem I’m still on you top and bottom thing, maybe it needs a lever??
AUSTIN: With, with this, while she’s doing this, you hear a bell ringing from above you.
JACK: [overlapping Austin] What sort of a bell?
AUSTIN: Those of you, those of you who have lived in kind of posh civilisation before? Posh for post-post-fantasy-apocalypse, which means, I’m thinking Fantasmo and I’m thinking Lem here, maybe, maybe Hadrian. Know that it’s a dinner bell.
JACK: Oh! Noo, oh noo.
[Ali laughing]
JACK: This is not a good situation! Right okay-
ALI: It’ll distract everyone maybe?
JACK: Is there any way we could find [laughs], is there any way we could find keyholes, possible keyholes, or mechanisms. Like, a concern-
AUSTIN: How much time do you guys wanna spend down here on this level, I guess is my question, searching?
KEITH: I’m mostly done down here.
JACK: I’m curious as to what’s-
AUSTIN: Like, how closely do you look through this place?
ALI: I guess we’re just giving it a quick glance and then moving on?
ART: I think I’m trying to find a defendable position at this point.
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: Where [laughs] okay.
ART: If things are gonna come to eat..
AUSTIN: Nothing comes --How long do you wait, after that bell?
ART: To, I don’t understand your question, to do what?
ALI: Well, once we hear the bell all of us go, right?
AUSTIN: What do you do when you hear the bell?
ART: Like I move to, to a, to what I think is a defendable position. Maybe, like near the stairs, near the, the-
AUSTIN: Sure. Okay, so you’re standing like near the stairs-
ART: ...is, is lectern a word that you would use to describe-
AUSTIN: There is. There, there, yeah, but those are like off in the cor- --I’m picturing this as kind of like-
KEITH: Maybe like a parapet?
AUSTIN: [amused] No, you’re not near any parapets. I don’t think.
[Keith laughing]
AUSTIN: You can be by the stairs kind of hidden behind, let’s say, a little table that you can pull out and put in front of the stairs.
NICK: Let’s hope it’s not a pair-o’-pets that’re coming to eat us.
[Ali laughs]
AUSTIN: Nailed it. Nothing, but nothing comes down the stairs.
ART: Okay.
AUSTIN: You can hear activity from up there, but nothing’s coming down the stairs.
KEITH: Alright, I’m --I vote, let’s go up those stairs, is what I say.
ALI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: To Lem’s question earlier, you look and look and don’t find any keyholes. There’s no keyholes.
JACK: Alright. Yeah, no.
AUSTIN: There’s nothing hidden in this room that you can tell, you could spend-
NICK: Fantasmo moves behind the big armoured guy standing on the stairs.
AUSTIN: Good call.
[Ali laughs]
ART: These stairs are positioned --These are --It’s a spiral, it’s a, its a flight system?
AUSTIN: This is a, this is a flight up to a balcony that then has a second flight up to the actual next floor.
ART: Okay so visibility is, is not great but not terrible.
AUSTIN: Good for this this whole floor, this is a big floor. These floors are gigantic in si-, in height. There aren’t many, there aren’t many of them that, that you can tell. That’s based mostly on Jack looking at the floors from outside and based on, or based on Lem looking at the floors from outside, and based on Fero flying up past it. You can kind of tell there are only a handful of floors but they’re big, huge things.
ART: Sure, but like, I’m not gonna --Y’know the, the stairs are clear.
AUSTIN: These stairs up are clear, the second flight up you can’t see from down here.
ART: Alright, so yeah I guess I y’know start moving up-
AUSTIN: Mhm.
ART: With I gu-, I assume, I weird collection of people amassed behind me.
AUSTIN: That seems to be the case.
KEITH: I’m, I’m going to-
AUSTIN: Yeah what is the order here? So Hadrian’s at the front..
KEITH: I well, I was going to --I was next to the stairs when I decided this, to transform into a hummingbird.
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH: Yeah.
[Ali laughing]
NICK: Can I try to --Knowing what, knowing what we’ve seen of the inside of this tower-
AUSTIN: Mhm.
NICK: ...and combining it with what you said previously, that I recognised the architecture as being built by the university. Right?
AUSTIN: Mhm. Yes, by, by --With the same, like the kind of automated construction constructions. You have con-, the university had constructs that would build them things, even when you were there.
NICK: Sure, right.
AUSTIN: At the time there were only a few left functioning so they built little things for you. But back in the old days you heard stories of the great construct constructors that worked for the university to build magical sites.
NICK: Did we do that for other people? Like, did people contract the constructs? [laughs]
AUSTIN: There [pauses] --It’s hard to know-
NICK: Okay.
AUSTIN: ...because, y’know, it’s, that’s a very political thing.
NICK: Sure.
AUSTIN: Did they --Was this a joint effort between the university and y’know someone else? Did the university say it was their doing? Did they do it on the sly without any record? As someone from the university the ones that you do know of, of that happening, it’s all very like ‘oh we did this, this was ours’.
NICK: Sure.
AUSTIN: But who knows for real, y’know?
NICK: Right.
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Did the United States build military bases for foreign count-, for foreign, for foreign powers? [indecisive ‘ehhh’ noise]
NICK: Can I [laughs], can I see if, can I like make a spout lore check to see if I [pauses] can recall anything based on the layout of this building and, and the outside the-
AUSTIN: [overlapping Nick] I’m gonna say you know, based on that former one, that ones covers what you know about this place.
NICK: Okay.
AUSTIN: Y’know what I mean?
NICK: Alright, sure, fair enough.
AUSTIN: There could be individual things that we could see going forward in here that you might be able to spout lore on, but right now there hasn’t been anything new for you to think about.
NICK: Okay.
AUSTIN: So you guys go up the stairs. Hadrian’s up front, Fero is a hummingbird.
KEITH: I’m a hummingbird.
ALI: I’m in the back.
AUSTIN: Okay so, so big, big, people in the front and the back.
ALI: Right.
KEITH: Oh by the way, I have hold [uncertainly] four? On that?
AUSTIN: Okay, so you can make four moves as a hummingbird.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ART: Can we not let the hummingbird go?
KEITH: Yeah, that’s what, my plan is to kinda be a little stealthy bird.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
[Ali laughing]
KEITH: Stealthy little bird.
[Nick laughing]
ART: Can’t we like stop at the landing and let him go?
AUSTIN: [overlapping Art] Wait, I have a question. How do you have hold four?
KEITH: Oh, is that not the maximum?
AUSTIN: No, three is the max.
KEITH: Three? Then I have hold three.
AUSTIN: It’s three and then two, yeah, okay.
KEITH: Yeah. Okay.
ART: So we’re all at the landing?
AUSTIN: Yep.
ART: Unless there’s like a giant there, then we don’t do that
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: [overlapping Art] There’s no giant here. There is a landing and then there is a stairway up that’s in a kind of enclosed thing. Do you know what I mean? It goes up past the ceiling of this level to the next level-
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: ...which is far away up a kind of looong enclosed stairway.
ART: Sure.
AUSTIN: You can see light from the top.
ALI: Does the-
AUSTIN: From the next level.
ALI: Does the landing lead to anything like a doorway or..?
AUSTIN: No. [thinking noise] There’s a big mural that’s faded quite a bit here. But it is of --You can see a tower on the, on the mural, but you can’t make out any other details than the tower. [thinking noise] You can make out the tower and you can see that it’s daytime, you can see like bits of sunrays around the tower like it’s, it’s kind of trying to communicate the daytime. That’s about all you can make out on this giant, huge mural. I’m talking like, like it’s as long as a bus and as tall as --Like, y’know it’s like a Times Square mural, y’know?
JACK: Mm, yeah. So this is definitely --This is not some rinky-dink tower. There was like, there was absolutely, yeah, there was something definitely-
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JACK: This was a place where a lot of stuff was happening.
[Austin laughs]
KEITH: While they’re on this landing I’m gonna-
AUSTIN: Yep.
KEITH: I’m gonna head up the stairs a little bit. Staying, y’know out of sight of --And try and see if I can see anything that’s going on on this next floor.
[Austin and Nick at the same time]
AUSTIN: Mhm. You don’t see-
NICK: Is there anything-
AUSTIN: Go ahead.
NICK: Is there anything meaningful to --Nevermind, you should probably go on ahead.
AUSTIN: Not, not on this landing, not on this landing. I’ve told you everything on this floor.
NICK: Nothing, nothing in the, the mural I mean? That’s meaningful to me?
AUSTIN: I’ve told you what’s left of the mural is it’s, it’s a --You can make out that there is a tower and that it was sunny.
NICK: Sure, okay.
AUSTIN: And like but there --It’s faded, it has not been cared for.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: I just stumbled into a cool thing that I hadn’t thought about but is really cool. Sorry!
KEITH: Okay.
[Nick and Ali laughing]
KEITH: No, no magic paints here though?
AUSTIN: Yeah! You recognise that these are the same paints that-
KEITH: Oh, they are the same paints.
AUSTIN: These are the same types of paints.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: I’ll tell you the thing I just thought. That person, one of you can put this together, that person should have been taking care of this painting, and instead was painting his wife. You go up to the next floor-
ART: Feeling better and better about killing him by the way.
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: Yeah, great [scoffs].
KEITH: Yeah, because he was painting his wife instead of taking care of a dumb painting?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ALI: Yeah!
ART: Because he wasn’t doing his job?
ALI: Let that man live!
AUSTIN: He was using, he was using paint, that paint, to paint his wife and his garden and nature. Instead of-
ART: Sounds like, sounds like blasphemy to me.
KEITH: He sounds like a sweet man!
AUSTIN: Next floor!
KEITH: I love nature I’m a druid.
[Nick laughing]
AUSTIN: You fly up to the next floor as a hummingbird-
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: ...and you hear clanks and clattering and it’s very active. But it’s not like combatitive, it’s like really hyperactive. As you come to the next landing you see a lo- --It’s so bright. The sun is, is --Say it’s like 1:32 now, the sun is streaming in through these giant beautiful windows. You can see out onto the islands that are off in the distance.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: Y’know, you can see dolphins in the distance, jumping out of the sea. It’s gorgeous. But it’s kind of --It’s super bright, that’s like the first thing you see as you hit the top of the f-, of the stairs.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: It’s so bright that like your first instinct is like ‘This is too bright! This isn’t-’
KEITH: Yeah, mhm.
AUSTIN: This is like your eyes hurt from being downstairs in the barely lit-
KEITH: My little birdy eyes can’t handle it.
AUSTIN: [overlapping Keith] The second --Yeah, your little birdy eyes, woof it’s rough.
[Keith laughing]
AUSTIN: The second thing you notice is that it’s a big empty room. It’s a gigantic empty room there’s no furniture anywhere. There’s long rolled out carpets with red and, and gold trim. There are sconces on the walls here that are, are not lit currently. And then, it takes you a second to like put together what it is you’re looking at, but there are hundreds of plates lined up one after another , after another. With forks and knives laid out. And, just sitting there. And that’s what you see from this distance. You can’t tell what’s on the plates and in the bowls.
KEITH: Okay. [pause, thinking noise]
AUSTIN: Those are all on the floor, let me be clear.
KEITH: Yeah yeah yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH: They’re on the floor. Does the, does the clanking sound like it’s coming from this room?
AUSTIN: Not from this room, from an adja-, from an adjoining room, which you can see there are a number of hall-, there are a number of doors that lead into a room on the side, on the right side. So what I’m saying is like, you come up and then straight ahead is the huge open windows and this huge banquet hall and on the, and on the left side a painting that’s been fading. And then on the right side are doors into where that sound is coming from.
KEITH: Okay, and you said there were like big windows?
ALI: But like-
AUSTIN: Huge windows.
KEITH: The lights --Yeah.
AUSTIN: Light is streaming in.
ALI: So, but Lem and the other two know, or can put together, that this is where...
AUSTIN: [overlapping Ali] No-one else-
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: The only person who’s there is Fero.
ALI: Oh okay.
[Keith and Austin at the same time]
KEITH: Yeah, you guys are at the bottom of the stairs still.
AUSTIN: Everyone else is at the bottom of the stairs still.
ALI: Okay.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, Fero flew up ahead to peek as a hummingbird.
KEITH: I’m gonna t-, I’m gonna motion for them to-
[Austin laughs]
KEITH: Can I communicate with them as a hummingbird?
[silent pause]
ALI: No.
AUSTIN: How? I don’t, I don’t think so.
ALI: You can’t, you can’t like do a..
KEITH: I dunno I’m a druid and I have fuckin’ weird magic!
[Art laughing]
AUSTIN: No, I don’t think you can. If you were a bear or something, you could be like [bear grunting noises]. But as a hummingbird I don’t-
ALI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: I think you have the limit of a hummingbird. You can’t communicate past-
[Nick humming (imitating a hummingbird trying to communicate)]
ALI: Yeah, wings can’t move like arms.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: Oh! Oh, wait no! Art has, Art has his language thing.
AUSTIN: [laughing] He does!
KEITH: So I’m gonna talk to him, yeah.
ALI: Do hummingbirds have language?
KEITH: Art has his language thing, I’m gonna hummingbird at him:
KEITH (as hummingbird Fero): Hey, come up and be careful. Kind of stay, stay down.
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH (as hummingbird Fero): But come on up.
KEITH: And then I’m going to fly up to the ceiling. Above everything.
AUSTIN: Okay. It’s a very high ceiling, there are chandeliers, crystal chandeliers, up there.
KEITH: I’m gonna like perch on one of the chandeliers.
AUSTIN: Okay. You do.
KEITH: Yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: Everyone else makes it up-
KEITH: How high up am I? Am I like twenty feet up?
AUSTIN: Forty feet up.
KEITH: Forty feet up?
AUSTIN: It’s a huge level, yeah.
KEITH: Okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna go on the closest, the chandelier closest to the wall that the stairs are on.
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: You’re yeah, you’re there.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: Everyone else can make it up fine, there’s no --You all walk into what I just described. Big empty banquet hall,-
ART: Sure.
AUSTIN: ...huge bright windows, your eyes hurt for a second. Slowly they adjust to this new amount of light and on the, on the ground are, are plates with stuff on them.
NICK: I wanna do a detect magic.
ART: Wait, I wanna look at the plates.
AUSTIN: Fantasmo go ahead and roll detect magic.
[silent pause]
NICK: Ooh, twelve.
AUSTIN: What do you --Tell me how detect magic works as a spell?
NICK: [musical thinking noise, sound of pages turning] It is, one of your senses is briefly attuned to magic.
AUSTIN: Hm.
NICK: The GM will tell you what here is magical.
AUSTIN: What, what sense is attuned to magic? [pause] For you, right now.
NICK: [pause, thinking noise] I’m gonna go hearing because of the dinner bell before.
AUSTIN: [overlapping Nick] Okay, yeah.
NICK: And because of the clanks and stuff that we heard from the next room.
AUSTIN: [overlapping Nick] Yeah. You can in fact, you can still hear like the last echoes of that dinner bell bouncing around inside of here. Do you know what I mean? Like, you can still hear like the [very faint humming sound].
NICK: Sure.
KEITH: So a magic bell?
AUSTIN: So that’s, that’s magic. The clanking is magic, for sure, absolutely. And then you hear just the faintest, and this is --You can, you can hear it from above you [Austin makes a ‘duh, duh, duh, duh, duh’ musical tune noise] Like a kind of percussive-
KEITH: [excitedly] Oh my god is this a magical ghost dance?
[Austin still going ‘duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh’]
NICK: Is it, is it musical?
AUSTIN: [non-committal mehh noise] Maybe.
KEITH: It sounds, it sounds like a waltz like for sure.
AUSTIN: [laughs] I hate that you can see my face! This is the worst!
[Ali and Nick laughing]
KEITH: [laughing] No, no no.
AUSTIN: How am I supposed to lie to you??
KEITH: It’s-
AUSTIN: Yeah, it’s a waltz. It’s a, it’s a little percussive waltz from above you.
JACK: But magical.
AUSTIN: But magical.
KEITH: [whispering, excited] Ghost waltz!
JACK: Yeah, no, this place seems pretty cool actually! This place is great! There’s waltzing, there’s food, there were some paintings and then Hadrian just killed a skeleton.
[Art, Ali and Keith laughing]
AUSTIN: Hadrian, Hadrian you approach the plate to take a look at it, you said?
ART: Yeah.
AUSTIN: On it is --You get really close before you can see it. You’re taken aback at first because you’re not sure what you’re looking at, and then you realise you’re looking at like a chopped up arm rest that has like a lion on it? Like a lion --It’s like an armrest of a big nice throne chair and it’s been cut up and presented as if it’s the main mea-, as if it’s the main piece of like meat on a dinner plate. And then surrounding it are some like finely chopped wood like scraps, as if they’re vegetables. And then there are-
ART: Sorry, sorry, this is like a central platter or each individual plate has this?
AUSTIN: [overlapping Art] No each individual plate --This is the one that you look at. This is like a nice plate.
ART: Sure.
AUSTIN: There are also ones with the little metal nubbins that go on the bottom of chairs that are presented as if they’re vegetables. There are, there are a couple with like wilted flowers, that might have been centrepieces once, that’re now presented as if they’re the vegetables on a dinner plate. That’s what all of these plates-
[Art and Jack at the same time]
ART: That’s weird.
JACK: These are all on the floor?
AUSTIN: Yes.
JACK: So there are no tables?
AUSTIN: There are but they’re on the dinner plates.
[Art laughing]
KEITH: I, I wanna-
AUSTIN: There were tables-
JACK: Oh!
AUSTIN: ...that have now been cut up and made into dinner!
ART: That’s fuckin’ weird!
[Nick laughing]
KEITH: I’m gonna t-, I’d like to make a discern realities roll?
AUSTIN: What’re you, what’re you doing? Tell me, don’t tell me you’re doing a roll. Like, what’re you doing?
KEITH: I’m going, I’m, I’m like trying to figure out like what-- I’m trying to figure out what all these plates are for and why they are lined up like this and why they contain a bunch of garbage.
AUSTIN: They’re dinner. They’re for dinner.
KEITH: Right.
AUSTIN: This is how people line up --This is like a real nice dinner!
KEITH: No, no, no. Like I know that they’re for dinner.
AUSTIN: Uhuh?
KEITH: I wanna understand, I want to like figure out like what is eating this for dinner. Is what I-
[Ali laughs]
AUSTIN: [non-commital mehh noise] Not --There are no signs --You succeed. There’s no-one here eating anything.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: As far as you can tell.
KEITH: No, no, no. I mean, what is-
AUSTIN: [overlapping Keith] No-one has been here eating I don’t-
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: You can’t discern that like --There’s no-one here to eat this stuff as far as you can tell.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: I don’t know, maybe that skeleton man liked armchairs a lot?
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Like, there’s no way for you to just figure that out from looking.
ART: Is it like dusty? Is this fresh?
AUSTIN: There are, there are varying degrees of dust. Some of these plates have, have been here for quite some time, some have been-
JACK: [overlapping Austin] Is there-
KEITH: I remind, I remind Art that:
KEITH (as hummingbird Fero): The birds told us not to --Or, or the, like the birds probably wouldn’t like us eating, so don’t eat this arm rest [laughing]
[Ali and Nick laughing]
[Art and Jack at the same time]
ART: Don’t worry!
NICK: Can I-
JACK: Is there like a centrepiece dish in this room?
AUSTIN: Yeah. Yeah, there is.
JACK: What is it?
AUSTIN: It is, it’s like, it’s on --It’s actually not a centrepiece, it’s like the main --It’s like, it’s like at the end of the t-, it’s like a banquet table, where a banquet table would be, is a big bowl, as if for salad. And it’s like right in front of the big glass windows. And in there is a collection, it’s like a salad, but it’s made of forks and knives which have been bent in different shapes. Or, it could be like a collection of pasta, they look sort of like tortellini, that’ve been like bent into that shape. And then they’re like resting in the dinner bowls.
[silent pause]
KEITH: I, I wanna tell Art [pauses] to like, like:
KEITH (as hummingbird Fero): Hey man, hey! Like, come on forward a little bit.
KEITH: And I wanna fly towards the source of the clanging and stuff.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ART: Oh I’ll go in there no problem.
AUSTIN: Okay! As you approach the-
JACK: I would also like to go there.
AUSTIN: Okay. Is anyone not going there? Is anyone staying here?
KEITH: I wanna, I wanna tell Art specifically so that he can say like ‘Hey we’re going, we’re going this way’.
AUSTIN: Alright.
ART: Yeah, yeah.
ART (as Hadrian): Hey, we’re going this way.
ALI (as Hella): Alright.
JACK: (as Lem): Excellent.
NICK: Before they go I warn them of what I’ve heard up there.
AUSTIN: Good call. Okay.
JACK: Okay.
NICK: But Fantasmo’s staying here because he’s fascinated by this, this strange scene.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
NICK: Because he hasn’t seen something like this before and he, he needs to study it.
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: Yeah, good call. The rest of you walk through little hallways in the back that’re kind of like --They’re not labyrinthine in that you can’t get turned around, but there are twists and turns that don’t make any sense. You’d have to be a real expert to know like --You guys can find your way to the sound okay, but it feels like there’s a whole system of secret passages that run not just on this level but up and down into different places in this tower. But, but you’re able to go right to the sound, and what do you do when you’re at the door?
ART: There’s a door?
AUSTIN: There’s a door. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a door that opens on hinges, it just opens by itself, it doesn’t --You don’t have to turn a handle.
KEITH: Does-
AUSTIN: It’s like a push door.
KEITH: Is there, is there room enough for me at the bottom for me to duck down and look under?
AUSTIN: [pauses] No.
KEITH: No? Okay.
AUSTIN: No. There’s just not enough.
KEITH: Okay. I want to, I’m gonna fly. I fly up as close as I can get to the ceiling-
AUSTIN: Mhm.
KEITH: ...and kind of hover there and I, I let Art know like:
KEITH (as hummingbird Fero): If you wanna open this door you’d better open this door!
AUSTIN: [laughs, makes clanking noises] Y’know?
KEITH: Yep. There’s --I say:
KEITH (as hummingbird Fero): Keep in mind there were hundreds of plates.
[silent pause]
ART (as Hadrian?): But no-one eating.
NICK: Is the clanking rhythmic at all? Or is it like chaos?
AUSTIN: Not --No. It’s rhythmic in, in that its practiced but there isn’t a musicality to it.
NICK: Right, okay.
AUSTIN: Or there is but it’s a sort of found musicality. Does that make sense?
NICK: [overlapping Austin] But is it --Sure. It’s a more organic rhythm as opposed to a machine.
AUSTIN: Right. Yes.
KEITH: It’s --So you’re, so you’re all saying that it’s, it’s, it’s arhythmic with the waltz?
AUSTIN: Yes, absolutely.
KEITH: Okay.
JACK: I think we’re probably going to be dealing with some sort of machine here. Whether or not that’s an organic machine or like, you know like a, like a magical machine, or whether or not it’s some s- --Like, the thing I’m expecting is like some sort of weird like dishwashing system. Or [laughs]
ALI: So, what’s like the shape of the door? Is it rusted? Is it-
AUSTIN: [overlapping Ali] It’s a pair --No, it’s in good shape. It’s a wooden door that is on hinges, that can be just like pushed open easily.
KEITH: Okay.
[Keith and Ali at the same time]
ALI: Can we like just kind of peek?
KEITH: I do, I wanna make-
AUSTIN: Sure! Do you peek?
[Art laughing]
ALI: Do I? [laughing]
AUSTIN: You said! I dunno I --So, here’s a question, how would you know you could peek?
ALI: Well ‘cause-
AUSTIN: Are you guessing? Or are you trying it?
ALI: No, well ‘cause I’m sensing that I would just be able to push it open-
AUSTIN: Mhm.
ALI: ...without any sort of like..
AUSTIN: Resistance or pulling, yeah, yeah, yeah.
ALI: Yeah! Or like-
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ALI: ...knob-turning.
AUSTIN: Mhm. You could peek.
ALI: Like, mostly minimal noise because it’s not a rusted or rusty door.
AUSTIN: Yep. Probably, yeah.
ALI: So I just kinda like push it open like two inches.
AUSTIN: Alright! You peek in and you see just the cleanest kitchen you’ve ever seen in your life. Like, where y’all are from kitchens aren’t nice. Do you know what I mean? No-one does good clean kitchens. Again, maybe the university has some. Maybe, maybe Fantasmo can think about a time in his life where there was a kitchen that, that y’know did something like this. Or was this clean and this beautiful. But here it’s-
ART: First of all, how dare you?
[Art and Keith laughing]
AUSTIN: Y’know. It’s been rough times for everyone.
KEITH: Is it some Fantasia shit?
AUSTIN: This is some Fantasia shit.
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: Inside are, are butcher knives going up and down, up and down on tables. There are people --There aren’t people. Sorry. There are bowls hanging in the air with, with whisks spinning things around inside of them. Right now the, the bowl has a collection of little nuts and bolts that it’s whisking around. And then on this huge long like, like a long grill, like as long as this room, not my room but the, the room that you’re in --Which I’m gonna say again is like a couple of buses long. Are massive, red, velvet curtains, hung like across this grill. Grilling, cooking. And like, they’re being chopped up and flipped and like prepared as if, as if they were meat.
ART: Okay. Would you say these count as NPCs?
[silent pause]
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ART: Okay. I’m gonna use, I’m gonna use a move.
AUSTIN: Okay, what’re you, what move are you gonna use?
ART: I’m gonna use ‘I am the law’.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ART: When you give an NPC an order based on your divine authority, blah, blah, blah..
AUSTIN: I mean, read it ‘cause people in the chat, people who’re listening wanna hear this.
ART: When you give an NPC an order based on your divine authority roll, roll plus charisma. On a 7+ they choose one: do what you say, back away cautiously and then flee, or attack you. And yeah I hope this room full of knives doesn’t decide to attack me.
[Ali and Nick laughing]
AUSTIN: Sure. What’re you doing? So how, how are you using that move?
ART: Oh there’s like extra stuff. If I get a 10 it’s really good, if I get a 6 or lower it’s bad.
AUSTIN: Mhm. Yep, okay. What do you do? [pauses] Remember the door is --Ali is, or Hella is peeking through the door. So what do you do from that point of her peeking through the door?
[Art laughs]
ALI: Yeah it’s only open like two inches.
ART: Can I like --I like kind of brush her back and like push the door open.
[Ali snorts]
AUSTIN: Okay.
ART (as Hadrian): In the name of S-, of, of Samothes, King God, Crafter of the Sun and, and Once and Future Ruler of these Lands, stop what you’re doing... [pauses] We can just start with stop what you’re doing.
ART: I was gonna go ‘And explain yourself’, but what the fuck are they gonna explain, they’re fuckin’ knives.
[Ali laughing]
KEITH: You can understand all language.
ART: Oh right! Well, I don’t know if they --Oh yeah.
ART (as Hadrian): And explain yourself.
ALI: What is there to explain? They’re making food.
[Ali and Jack laughing]
AUSTIN: Alright, make that roll!
ART: They’re, they can explain lots of stuff.
KEITH: I wanna, I wanna guess how this is about to go real bad. And the way that I guess is that your shit only works on one NPC. Right?
[Jack laughing]
ART: Oh yeah, give ‘an NPC’.
AUSTIN: Sure.
ART: Well..
AUSTIN: Which one are you picking?
[Jack, Keith and Nick laughing]
ART: The cl- --I dunno, it’s a kitchen!
AUSTIN: Mhm.
ART: Is there like an expediter? Like a floating expediter?
AUSTIN: There’s like a chef hat.
[Art, Nick and Ali laughing]
ART: Okay, I’m doing it to the chef hat!
AUSTIN: Okay.
ART: Hold on I have to, I have to check my crap.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ART: I rolled a six.
AUSTIN: Plus?
ART: Plus, plus my charisma modifier, which I believe is a one?
KEITH: [fake impressed] Dang, that makes a seven.
ART: That makes a seven.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ART: So it works. They do what I say, back away cautiously and then flee, or attack me. And I can take any hat.
[Keith laughing]
ART: This hat, a bigger hat, smaller hat, bowler hat..
AUSTIN: Hm.
KEITH: Newsie? Can you take a newsie?
[Nick and Ali laughing]
ART: Oh, I’ll mess up a pageboy!
[Nick laughing]
AUSTIN: I’m thinking about what they would do here.
ALI: Are there any snapbacks?
[Austin laughing]
JACK: Austin are you, are you-
ART: Not after I stab ‘em!
AUSTIN: I’m thinking about what, what their intentions are. I’m thinking about how --So one of the things that’s neat in Dungeon World is every creature from a human to a ghoul has kind of like instincts that they wanna follow, or something that they want, or something that they do. So I’m trying to think about how this character will react. I think it [pauses] --And if it can communicate with you. It, it [pauses] --You hear it, you hear its voice. It’s a, it’s a loud [pauses] well def- --Like loud and proud voice. But, but also kind of, it has kind of a blue collar tinge to it, do y’know what I mean? Like it’s a worker, it’s a worker’s voice.
KEITH: So this is like a sous chef?
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. Like this isn’t, this is not, this is not a celebrity chef, y’know?
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: But it’s-
KEITH: This isn’t Bobby Flay?
AUSTIN: Not Bobby Flay.
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: Not, not Guy Fieri, I’m sorry @Vorpalfemme, if you’re listening
[Keith laughing, sound of clock chiming]
AUSTIN: @notquiteclock, normally I only do @notquiteclock once but this is long. We might have to cut this up, I don’t know.
[Ali and Jack laughing]
AUSTIN: So you --That chef hat does like a little, there’s a little whistle coming from that general area, and everything stops for a second. [pauses] and it says [pauses]
AUSTIN (as Chef’s Hat): In the name of Samothes..
AUSTIN: Samothes, is that right?
ART: Yeah.
AUSTIN (as Chef’s Hat): In the name of Samothes, we welcome you. Would you like dinner?
KEITH: Oh dang!
[Ali laughing]
ART (as Hadrian): Uhh..
AUSTIN (as Chef’s Hat): Get these boys some dinner!
KEITH: Oh shit!
AUSTIN: It says and like [makes shuffling sounds]. And then in the, in the kind of far end of it there’s one, there’s a big metal door that opens up and you can feel the cool air come out. And from inside --From here you can see that there’s just like a bunch of stuff in there.
JACK: [apprehensively] What sort of stuff?
AUSTIN: [non-committal mehh noise] You can’t tell from this distance.
JACK: Oh! Ali has a telescope!
ALI: [laughing] I’m not pulling out my telescope just to look.
[Art and Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: Good call Ali!
KEITH: Reminder, those birds told us not to eat.
ALI: Did the birds tell you not to eat the [unintelligible]
AUSTIN: [overlapping Ali] They pull out a looong-
ART: Yeah I wasn’t gonna eat curtain, no matter what happened I wasn’t gonna eat curtain.
KEITH: They’re gonna, they’re so polite to you! They were so polite!
NICK: You’re just gonna turn down a free meal? Come on!
JACK: Of curtain?!
[Nick laughing]
AUSTIN: They’re preparing --They’re on a little side grill now and preparing something that actually smells really good. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a red meat smell. You’re not sure what type of red meat.
JACK: [overlapping Austin] I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna eat orc.
ART: Oh! What here is evil?
AUSTIN: Nothing. [pauses] Ah, Ali! Hella is.
ART: Alright.
[Keith laughing, Jack humming nervously]
KEITH: [laughing] Are you bothered by that?
ART: I’m sure cannibalism is evil, right?
AUSTIN: [overlapping Art] One of, one of the pairs of knives is definitely evil. But that’s, but [non-committal mumbling], y’know? Sometimes, you just get a hit.
[Ali and Art laughing]
KEITH: One yeah, one of hundreds.
AUSTIN: Every now and then. Like it’s almost everything here is neutral, but like also that dude’s kind of an ass.
[Ali and Nick laughing]
ALI: It’s just me and that guy.
AUSTIN: [laughing] It’s just you and that guy. You guys should talk later.
JACK: Is there, is there any way that I could use [laughs] --This is probably cheating. Is there any way that I could use Art as a translator?
AUSTIN: Sure.
JACK: Ah okay so, I have a move called charming and open-
AUSTIN: Mm.
JACK: ...and it says ‘When you speak frankly with someone-
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JACK: ...you can ask their player a question from the list’. Does that mean an NPC or just player characters?
AUSTIN: NPC. For sure.
JACK: Right, so, is speak frankly with someone --That’s not on the moves list at all.
AUSTIN: No, it’s just, it’s just, it’s a move on it’s own. It means like --So, so with moves in Dungeon World you --To do them, you do them.
JACK: Okay.
AUSTIN: Do you know what I mean? If you, if you do it, do the move. And if you wanna do the move you have to do it. So in this case, you have to speak frankly with someone for a while.
JACK (as Lem): Hadrian, do you --Would you mind being a translator?
ART (as Hadrian): No.
[Keith laughing]
JACK (as Lem): Okay, cool! So could you, could you get his attention please?
ART (as Hadrian): I, I think he’s still, I think he’s still listening.
JACK (as Lem): Alright.
AUSTIN: (as Chef’s Hat): Yeah, I’m, I’m right here. What do you need?
JACK (as Lem): Could you ask him who he serves please?
ART: [pauses] How does this work?
AUSTIN: [overlapping Art] You’re not --No no no no no. See, you haven’t --This is the thing, Jack. You haven’t spoken frankly with him.
JACK: Oh.
AUSTIN: Do you see what I mean?
ART: [overlapping Austin] You gotta like commiserate with him like ‘Hey, buddy’.
AUSTIN: You gotta like talk with him. You can’t just ask him these questions, you need to have spoken frankly with him.
JACK: Oh, I actually have to speak frankly with him. Alright, yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, to do it you do it. Yeah.
JACK: Cool, right, so:
JACK (as Lem): Look, man. We’re just --We, we’ve been sent here. We’re, we’re just investigating the area. There’ve been some strange phenomena that we’re seeing, we’re trying to, trying to get to the bottom of it.
[Austin (as Chef’s Hat) sniffs]
JACK (as Lem): We just wondered if you could help us out here,-
[Austin (as Chef’s Hat) sighs]
JACK (as Lem): ...we’ve been like, like-
AUSTIN (as Chef’s Hat): [sighing] Listen, I got a, I got a kitchen to run. You got a point, kid? What’re you doin’?
[Ali laughing]
JACK (as Lem): Yeah, sure, uh..
[Art laughing]
JACK (as Lem): Who do you serve? You’re a chef, who are you working for?
AUSTIN (as Chef’s Hat): Y’know, whoever’s visiting, the captain obviously.. Sometimes the little dwarves they come up, I give ‘em a little scrap here or there. Y’know.
JACK (as Lem): Well, I guess that’s my question. Thanks! Thanks Art, oh, Hadrian.
ART (as Hadrian): Yeah. So the captain?
KEITH (as hummingbird Fero): This fella the captain’s been here?
JACK (as Lem): And dwarves.
ART (as Hadrian): He probably doesn’t mean our captain.
KEITH (as hummingbird Fero): Can we ask him real quick about the ca- [laughing] --If he means the same captain we mean?
ART (as Hadrian): He can probably understand you guys! It’s probably just the, the hearing back that’s the problem.
KEITH (as Fero): [overlapping Art] I’m a hummingbird, only you can understand me.
[Austin and Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: Oh this is the fucking worst!
[Keith laughing]
ART: Right.
AUSTIN: He-
NICK: At this point, Fantasmo’s coming up the stairs.
AUSTIN: Oh right! Fantasmo hasn’t --Or, you’re on the same stair level, you just haven’t been on --You’ve just been in the main hall. Or the, the food hall.
NICK: Oh, okay.
AUSTIN: The banquet hall instead of back in the kitchens, basically.
NICK: Well, I, I’m coming to join the rest of you.
AUSTIN: Fantasmo, you see a sight man! I don’t, I-
[Art and Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: You found out what was magical! This is it. This is --They’re back here, preparing that curtain up. You see tossed in the corner also, like as if like ‘This is what’s next!’, are a bunch of kind of, of shittier chairs, and a bed. There’s just a bed hanging out here. Ready to just, ready to get made!
[Nick laughing]
AUSTIN: Gotta make, gotta make dinner!
KEITH: Gotta make dinner.
ART: Did they-
JACK: Can we ask them what the meat is?
AUSTIN: Can you? I don’t --Do you wanna?
JACK: Yeah:
JACK (as Lem): What’s the meat?
AUSTIN: And then Art you translate?
ART: Oh I was assuming they could und-, that the hat could understand, he just couldn’t talk back.
AUSTIN: He cannot understand.
ART: Okay then yeah. I’ll ask him.
AUSTIN: Or like he makes it --In fact, Lem says that, and you assume that, and the chef, the chef’s hat kind of like tilts at you. As if like ‘Yeah?? Are you gonna fuckin’ tell me what he said??’
[Ali, Nick, Keith and Art laughing]
KEITH: This chef has no time for us!
ART: I like that, that I’m also, while, while also transcending language, I’m getting, I’m also transcending inanimate object body language.
AUSTIN: [laughing] Yeah, you’re very-
ART: That’s an added bonus.
AUSTIN: It is, I tossed that in for free. Samothes works in mysterious ways.
[Nick laughing]
AUSTIN: You ask what the meat is?
ART: Yeah.
AUSTIN (as Chef’s Hat): Ah, it’s just some old stuff we had for, hmm, I guess [pauses, blows air out], it’s been a while! But it’s good. Freezer, freezer works good.
[Ali laughing]
ART (as Hadrian): Do you know there’s no-one here?
AUSTIN (as Chef’s Hat): Gotta make the meals. Gotta make the meals.
AUSTIN: And he starts to walk away.
ART (as Hadrian): Why? That’s weird. I mean, it’s a, it’s-
KEITH (as hummingbird Fero): It sounds like a magic-y thing.
[Austin and Art laughing]
[Nick and Keith at the same time]
KEITH: What I mean by that-
NICK: Can I just walk over and look at the meat that’s cooking?
AUSTIN: Yeah, totally! They let you, they let you like --You get, you kind of like elbow past a few of these knives carefully, y’know like..
ART: Be careful, one of them’s evil.
[Keith and Ali laughing]
NICK: Are there, are there like, as I’m walking through the room-
AUSTIN: [overlapping Nick] It’s, it’s a big chunk of red meat.
NICK: As I’m walking through the room do I like bump against invisible constructs of some kind?
AUSTIN: [overlapping Nick] No. There are no, there are no constructs, no.
NICK: Okay.
AUSTIN: They’re just f-
KEITH (as hummingbird Fero): So they’re, they, this --What I mean by a magic thing is that, like it just seems-
AUSTIN: [laughs] Are you-
KEITH: What?
AUSTIN: Are you still a hummingbird in this scene?
KEITH: I’m talking to Art!
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH (as hummingbird Fero): Art, it seems like fucking-
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: Hadrian.
KEITH (as hummingbird Fero): Hadrian, it seems like these things are [laughing] under some sort of fucking crazy enchantment, and now they are cursed to forever make meals regardless if there, if there’s anyone here to eat them.
ART (as Hadrian): Sure, but like [pauses] but, but to what like, to what end? That’s, that’s not causing, they’re not working so hard that waves are emanating from this island.
JACK (as Lem): Yeah, I think we’re kind of burying the lede here, which is, what is eating carpets and stuff??
ART (as Hadrian): Nothing!
KEITH (as hummingbird Fero): Nothing.
ART (as Hadrian): Right? It’s just there’s just plates full of it out there.
NICK (as Fantasmo): Yeah.
KEITH (as hummingbird Fero): They just have to-
NICK (as Fantasmo): They’re just, they’re just going.
KEITH: [overlapping Nick] Oh okay so [laughing] I transform back into a halfling.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Thankyou.
KEITH: You’re welcome.
[Nick laughing]
KEITH: And then I say [laughing], I say:
KEITH (as Fero): Lem, I think that they just have to make stuff, regardless of if there’s anyone here to eat it. I don’t think anyone is actually eating any of this, it’s just-
JACK (as Lem): [overlapping Keith] Okay, so, if they ran out of like carpets and stuff they’d be chopping us up.
KEITH (as Fero): Ah, maybe they’d go to the walls first? Start getting pieces of rock.
[Ali laughing]
ART (as Hadrian): Is, is your boss gonna be here?
AUSTIN (as Chef’s Hat): Gotta make the meals.
KEITH (as Fero): Do you --Can you ask, can you ask him about the waves?
ART (as Hadrian): Sure. We’re here because of, of some disturbances to the, the, the town. There’s a, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of current coming from here. Do you, do you know anything about that?
AUSTIN: One second, I wanna make sure I’m right about something.
ART: He’s just gonna say ‘Gotta make the meals’ again.
[Jack laughs]
AUSTIN: I gotta, I gotta-
ART: It’s like a fuckin Dunkin Donuts commercial over here.
[Austin, Keith and Nick laughing]
AUSTIN: [thinking noises] I’m trying to decide if I want [pauses] --He goes, he says:
AUSTIN (as Chef’s Hat): No, we’re all out of currant.
[Ali laughing, Nick groaning]
AUSTIN (as Chef’s Hat): We got some meat. We got some bread in the freezer. I don’t know, frozen bread’s alright isn’t it? Ah, it’s not that good.. But, y’know, the weather? The weather’s been alright lately. [clicks tongue] Bad storm. Bad storm a couple weeks ago, but other than that..
ART: Was there a bad storm a couple weeks ago?
AUSTIN: Not in the Berg.
ART: Okay.
JACK: Anybody got any kind of like weather divination magicks or anything?
[Ali laughing]
KEITH: No..
ART: I think you’re thinking of meteorology.
[Jack and Nick laughing]
AUSTIN (as Chef’s Hat): Alright, listen! You guys gotta get out of the kitchen. We’ll bring your food when you’re ready, but we need the space. Y’know, it’s a, it’s a sanctuary for, for me.
ALI: I was-
KEITH (as Fero): Real, real quick can you ask him about that room that’s blocked off? And then we’ll go? Promise him we’ll go.
ART: I, I don’t think we have a choice. Yeah sure:
ART (as Hadrian): Hey what’s behind, what’s, what’s in that room back there?
AUSTIN: Wait, which room?
KEITH: The sealed, the one sealed off downstairs.
AUSTIN: Oh, the downstairs ones.
ART: Oh, that’s what he meant? I thought you meant the room behind him.
KEITH: Oh okay. Oh! I didn’t realise there was a room behind him.
AUSTIN: There is no room behind him. There’s no-
ART: Well then, the storage room?
AUSTIN: Oh yeah, that’s just, that’s like a freezer.
NICK: Yeah, the freezer.
AUSTIN: That’s a freezer. Yeah.
NICK: I’m, I’m gonna wander in that direction to the freezer while they’re talking.
AUSTIN: There’s like bunch of wrapped meats, and breads, and soups that’re in big buckets. You don’t know what type of any of that stuff it is though.
NICK: Okay.
JACK (as Lem): Does is look good, Fantasmo? Does the meat look like, not horrible? Like, is it greying? Or is it --Does it look like actual meat should look?
AUSTIN: It looks like meat that’s been-
NICK (as Fantasmo): I am a vegetarian!
[Austin and Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: It looks like meat that’s been frozen quite a while.
JACK: Okay.
AUSTIN: But like maybe, maybe magically frozen. Like maybe it’s okay.
JACK: Alright, yeah.
ART: Not like full freezer-burn?
AUSTIN: Not full freezer burned, burn. No.
JACK: But what about that room, yeah, the sealed room?
AUSTIN: Downstairs?
ART: I think he’s getting rid of us.
ART (as Hadrian): What’s downstairs? That big, behind that big door.
AUSTIN (as Chef’s Hat): They don’t eat.
KEITH: Oh!
ALI: Jeez [laughs].
JACK (as Lem): We’ve got to open that room. We’ve got to open that room. Alright, peace [laughs].
ART (as Hadrian): Thankyou, thankyou.
KEITH (as Fero): Well, we should stay and get our food.
AUSTIN: [laughs] He said he’d bring it out.
ALI: No, I-
ART: He said he’d bring it out.
KEITH: No no no, I meant we should, instead of going downstairs we should wait for the food. Do we know how to get back? You said it was labyrinthine.
AUSTIN: You’ll be fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’ll be fine.
ART: [overlapping Austin] You were the one who was like the bird said don’t eat it. Also, there’s, it’s like --It’s people. It’s gotta be people. I guess it’s not evil. Cannibalisms evil.
[Nick and Keith at the same time]
KEITH: [overlapping Art] We can, yeah we can take five, we can take five birds, over a room full of knives.
NICK: Well, but evil-
ALI: I-
ART: I don’t think they’re gonna fight us over it.
ALI: I am in the corner like quietly insisting that we move on.
AUSTIN: Good job!
[Ali laughing]
ART: Yeah.
ALI: I’m just by the door like gesturing to everyone like ‘Come on guys, let’s just go’.
ART: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I agree.
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: You guys go back out. Do you wait around to get the meal?
[Art and Keith at the same time]
KEITH: While we do it you could pray?
ART: Oh, I thought you said they --Wait, they’re gonna --I guess we wait til they bring it out.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ART: Yeah I was gonna go downstairs and, and hold services. I figure that these-
KEITH: Okay, I mean you can do it up here while we’re waiting for the food, so that we don’t look rude.
AUSTIN: You could pray-
ART: Can’t they fucking bring it downstairs?
AUSTIN: They’re not gonna bring it downstairs, this is where they..
ART: They’ve got a whole fucking-
KEITH: They’re not gonna bring it downstairs!
AUSTIN: Jeez, Art!
KEITH: Fucking, dude, come on!
AUSTIN: This is their dining hall! What are you doing?
KEITH: Yeah. They won’t bring food --There weren’t plates downstairs, buddy.
ART: They’re magic, they’re urgh [sighing].
KEITH: They’re magic, but they’re incredibly short-tempered.
ART: They didn’t seem incredibly short-tempered.
ALI: Yeah.
KEITH: That sous chef didn’t seem quick to you?
ALI: He was busy!
KEITH: He was busy but he was a little rude.
ART (as Hadrian?): You guys can stay up here. I don’t expect you to go to services, you pack of godless heathens. You can wait for your meals, bring mine down for me.
ALI: I follow Art downstairs.
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH: I very an-, I tell Art, I tell Hadrian I’m not going to bring him his food and I wait upstairs.
[Art and Jack at the same time]
JACK: I follow Hadrian downstairs.
ART: Well that’s unnecessarily hostile.
AUSTIN: Fantasmo, where are you at?
NICK: [pause, thinking noises] Let’s see.. I can’t talk to the, the cooks at all, no.
AUSTIN: [overlapping Nick] No. Now that Hadrian is gone, no-one can talk to them.
NICK: Okay. I just, can I like hang out and just study them, watch them do their thing for a while?
AUSTIN: They are getting like, they are getting increasingly aggressive that you’re staying there.
NICK: Okay, alright.
KEITH: I told you they were annoyed.
AUSTIN: Like, more and more knives start pointing in your direction, and like gesturing out and then pointing back at you.
NICK: Sure, alright. [long pause, thinking noises] I guess I go down to the door?
AUSTIN: You know what, here’s a thing, okay. So you go downstairs to the door. The only one upstairs at this point is Fero who --The chef comes out with the hat, or just the hat comes out, with the floating plates with nice steaming meat, and some nice veggies, and there’s like some bread that’s been thawed so like ehh.. And it giv-, it like, the chef hat like duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. Look, look. Looks at you. Shrugs. And puts the plates on the ground and then leaves.
[Ali laughing]
KEITH: I shrug and give him a thumbs-up.
AUSTIN: Yeah, he’s like ehh. He does a little nod like ehh y’know, I know bud, and leaves.
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: Downstairs-
KEITH: Alright, cool. I have a-
AUSTIN: Y’all I’m gonna like get a, cut to the --You are done downstairs. There’s no-
ART: Great.
AUSTIN: You can’t get in that room, you’ve nothing --You can’t seem to get into that room. And there is no-
ART: No, I’m not trying to get into that door. I’m, I’m doing my services.
AUSTIN: Oh I’m talking to, yeah, everybody else who was like ‘I’m gonna go back to the door’. There’s no way in that you can tell from here.
NICK: Okay.
AUSTIN: Ali had a chance, Hella could have lifted it, or broken through it. But, but once she failed that role that’s, that’s locked off at this point. [pauses] Art what’re your service like? What --How do --What’s Hadrian doing?
KEITH: Well, I’m chowing down, first of all.
ART: [overlapping Keith] I’m not perf-, I’m not like performing services, right? I’m not like leading them, ‘cause I know they don’t give a shit, right?
AUSTIN: Mhm.
ART: You guys don’t give a shit?
[silent pause]
NICK: No, I don’t.
LEM: [overlapping Nick] I kinda give a shit, but I don’t follow your religion, so y’know..
ART: Right. But like I’m, I’m doing this for me, right?
AUSTIN: Right.
JACK: Yeah.
ART: So I like, y’know --There’s no windows, this room does not have windows, correct?
AUSTIN: Mhm… Correct.
ART: [pauses] So there’s no like, I can’t like do anything, in that sense. So yeah, I think it’s just like, y’know there, there’s prayers, y’know. I, I go over y’know basic prayers, y’know, the whatever the Lord’s prayer equivalent would be.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
NICK: Going down the rosary.
AUSTIN: Right.
ART: Right, going down the rosary.
NICK: Yeah.
ART: I’m showing my, my gratitude for the gifts I’ve received and, and yeah..
KEITH: Is your heart in it?
ART: Absolutely!
KEITH: Okay.
ART: I’m a zealot!
[Austin and Keith laughing]
AUSTIN: Alright, alright you succeed at that, that’s-.
KEITH: [overlapping Austin] Some days you don’t feel it, or some days people don’t feel it.
AUSTIN: Right. Sometimes some, yeah.. Alright! That’s-
ART: That’s been really helpful. The thing-, the gifts I’ve received have, have been useful, right? Like, why would I doubt.
KEITH: Very useful.
ART: Yeah, I got to talk to that stupid hat.
KEITH: I wanna say that as a druid I literally do not need to eat or drink, and I’m eating out of spite.
[Ali and Jack laughing]
AUSTIN: Great.
NICK: You’re still a living creature? What? Okay, whatever..
KEITH: Yeah, as a druid I don’t need to..
AUSTIN: Is always, or is it only on your-
ART: [overlapping Austin] I can do that too!
ALI: Yeah.
[Austin and Keith at the same time]
AUSTIN: Oh no, you’re right!
KEITH: It says-
ALI: When you’re camping.
KEITH: Yeah, yeah. [reading from the guide] ‘By nature sustained: you don’t need to eat or drink. If a move tells you to mark off a ration just ignore it’.
AUSTIN: Yep, yep.
NICK: Weird, okay.
AUSTIN: It means like, he still does, you still need to eat and drink sometimes, probably. But like, not to the degree that like..
NICK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Y’know, you don’t have to eat a big ration when you’re out in the world. Do you know? Like, eat and drink at your pleasure.
KEITH: Right, yeah. It’s for fun.
AUSTIN: Alright so, at this point the direction you guys can go is out of the tower, still I guess, or up further. What do you, what do you do?
ART: Oh, right, there’s up further.
AUSTIN: Yeah, you’ve got that waltz.
ART: Let’s go up further.
NICK: Yeah.
JACK: Yeah, the waltz. Up further.
NICK: I, I walk around to try to gather everyone together.
AUSTIN: Good job Fantasmo.
KEITH: [overlapping Austin] When they come up and meet me I, I go and I hand a plate to Lem. I’m like:
KEITH (as Fero): Hey, you want some?
[Ali laughing]
NICK: And when, when I’m walking up to Art I say:
NICK (as Fantasmo): If you’re quite done with your barbaric rituals, we should probably move on.
[pained laughing from Austin]
ART (as Hadrian): [frustrated noises]
ALI: I roll my eyes dramatically.
[Nick and Austin laughing]
JACK: I’ll have-
ART: I’m not having any of it.
AUSTIN: Alright.
[Ali laughing]
KEITH: So wait, so they do have to pass me to get further up, right?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: This isn’t a separate staircase?
AUSTIN: No.
KEITH: Okay, yeah so-
ART: [laughing] Oh, you’re not gonna like gonna like force feed us?
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: [laughing] No.
KEITH: [laughing] No, no, no. When they pass me I’m gonna hand out, I wanna offer a plate to Lem. And if he doesn’t take it, he doesn’t take it.
JACK: Nah, I’m cool.
AUSTIN: [laughing, overlapping Jack] Fero’s turned into a bear and is blocking the entrance, and is [makes bear(??) noise]
[Keith and Nick laughing]
AUSTIN: Alright, I think you guys can eat and then you guys can, can, y’know, move on. It’s, it’s --The meals good. It’s like, it’s gamy, it’s a little gamy. But it’s good.
KEITH: Yeah?
AUSTIN: But it’s good.
KEITH: I mean, I’m a druid, I live in the woods. I kind of like it a little gamy.
AUSTIN: [overlapping Keith] It’s like a, It’s a little bit like boar meat, I guess is the closest thing.
KEITH: [sarcastically] Yeah, sure, yeah. I have had boar meat a ton and I know exactly what you’re talking about.
JACK: Oh my god, what if we ate the birds?
NICK: What is-
ART: They wouldn’t taste like boar
NICK: Is there anything besides meat, on the plates?
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. There’s, there’s, there’s --If you, if --Yes. They have offered vegetarian options.
[Nick laughing]
JACK: Pro’s!
NICK: That’s, that’s what Fantasmo’s eating then.
AUSTIN: So it’s, it’s just like some pretty good bread and a nice, a nice --What’s a, what’s a thing you want to eat? What’s a nice thing you want to eat right now? I bet it’s like-
KEITH: A burger.
AUSTIN: Well, [sighs] they don’t have veggie burgers. Maybe like a curry with some rice, and you can dip the bread in the curry and like, get like a good hmm..
NICK: Sure.
KEITH: [whispering] Oh that sounds good.
NICK: With some beans in the curry, yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah some beans, yeah sure. They have like one veggie plate that they brought out with the other stuff like [sighing] ugh just in case, y’know?
KEITH: [still quietly] Aw dang that sounds good!
AUSTIN: They’re good here. So further up, as you, as you step closer and closer, everyone’s regular ears can start to hear that [Austin repeats ‘duh, duh, duh, duh, duh’ musical tune noise from earlier], as you get closer and closer up the next level. Previously, it was just I think The Great Fantasmo’s magic ears that could hear it. But now everyone can hear it.
KEITH: I, when I start hearing it I start doing a slight dance as I walk. To the music.
AUSTIN: [laughing] You rascal!
[Nick laughing]
AUSTIN: It’s definitely a waltz. And as you reach the top there is now a door on this level. It’s kind of like a nice, it’s like a solid door that is almost meant to communicate separation. Do you know what I mean? Like, it’s built heavy and strong, and it has, again kind of like iron bars on it here and here. The, kind of like at the head level and at the knee level. And, it it --There’s something like solemn about it.
ART: Solid or solemn?
AUSTIN: Both. Both.
ART: Okay. Huh.
AUSTIN: There is a sign that --You can’t read different languages with your thing right? No, you can’t.
ART: No. I’m not even really sure I can understand other languages.
AUSTIN: Yeah, me either but it’s really, but it’s interesting. So I did it. Lem, you recognise that one of the words on this thing is quiet. [continues ‘duh, duh, duh, duh, duh’ musical tune noise]
JACK: Hmm. Well..
NICK: Do you share that with everyone else, Lem?
JACK: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
NICK: Okay.
JACK: Shall we try, shall we try another little peek? Unless anybody’s got any objections?
KEITH: Let’s, I say take a, let’s take a peek. [quietly] Just take a little peek.
AUSTIN: Okay, you open the door-
KEITH: [quietly] Peeeek.
AUSTIN: -a little, tiny little bit you’re peeking, [copying Keith’s quiet voice] peeking.
KEITH: [even more quietly] Peeek.
AUSTIN: And immediately you can make out the waltz. And it’s a strange waltz because it’s all percussive. It’s all claps, and soft brushes, to communicate the entire melody. And you realise while looking that the melody is being made by the opening and closing of countless books. Some are on tables, long brown, like deep brown tables. Some are on the floor, there are some on shelves that’re opening and closing to make this rhythm. And then, like the thing that is dancing along with the rhythm is also books that have formed the shapes of dozens of people. Little people, but people. Who are dancing with each other, hand in hand, except the hands are just solid books. They’re sort of like a low-poly vision of people, if that makes sense. Like a PS1 game where the hand is just a big block, and they’re moving around-
KEITH: [overlapping Austin] I invite, I invite someone to dance with me.
AUSTIN: [surprised] Wait, so you go in??
KEITH: I invite someone to dance --Yeah.
AUSTIN: [concerned] Okay..
ART: Is this a-
AUSTIN: When you go in you get a full vision of this space which is a big library with a nice reading room-
KEITH: Oh! One of the companions, I invite, one of the group to-
AUSTIN: Yeah, I know, I know what you meant.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: But let me finish.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: You open the door and you see what the space is, and you see that there are --I mean like there’s chandeliers here, there’s candles. The flames were dancing along with the music too. It’s beautiful. It’s like one of the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen in your life, that you didn’t know things --One, no-one dances like this anymore. This is the sort of dance that, it hasn’t died, but the culture around this sort of practiced like high nobility dance, is gone. And so, like you’ve read about them, Lem has definitely read about that. Maybe you’ve seen a person like come to town and do like [fake excited voice] they’re gonna show off what old people, like what people danced like before the erasure! Oh, this is so ridiculous! [normal voice again] Like, little travelling entertainers have done this. But like you’ve never seen it done well. You’ve never seen it done by book people.
[Keith laughing]
AUSTIN: So. You open the door and they all turn and look at you. And a few of the books in the, in the space --So it’s like, it’s definitely masculine and feminine figures because you can see some of them have what look like dresses which are made of other books. And you see some of the, the figures --There’s like [makes a mur, mur, mur vibrating noise] turning and it’s like [makes a clack, clack, clack crashing noise] and then like [gasping noise] which is like a gasp coming from some of them. And one of them points out at you and, and a bunch of the book people start to fall away, and the books start to move together and rise up towards you. What do you do?
KEITH: I-
AUSTIN: And this is, this is really Lem whose stepped inside and turned back. So again, so here’s the vision. Lem opens the door, sees these people dancing and is like ‘Ah!’.
NICK: You mean-
AUSTIN: Turns to do this to like offer his hand to someone to join him to dance and then [makes a whooshing noise]
KEITH: Fero did it.
AUSTIN: Fero!
KEITH: Yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: Fero, I said Lem sorry. Fero. My bad.
KEITH: Yeah, yeah. I --If no-one takes my hand I start fucking dancing as quickly as I can. Like, ‘oh shit! We gotta get this thing back on track’.
AUSTIN: [laughing, questioningly] Okay!
KEITH: I think if they see me dancing they might understand like ‘No no no, we’re just here to dance’.
JACK: I’m not dancing.
NICK: Before-
ART: I’m not going in that room.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ART: [laughing] Sorry.
KEITH: Alright, does, is no-one dancing with me?
AUSTIN: We’ll get there.
ART: No, I don’t think so.
NICK: Hang on.
AUSTIN: What’s up?
NICK: Before, while we were peeking-
AUSTIN: Uhuh.
NICK: -before everything stopped. If anyone looked in Fantasmo’s direction you would have seen the faintest bit of a smile forming.
AUSTIN: [laughing] Mmm.
[Jack laughing quietly]
AUSTIN: That’s good.
NICK: ‘Cause he was.. And then, he’s a little --Like, you, you, you hear a grumpy old man grunt when Fero walks into the room and brings it all to a halt.
[Austin and Jack laughing]
AUSTIN: Uhuh. The, the --You’re still dancing?
KEITH: Yeah I’m gonna go --If no-one will dance with me then I will go in and I will do the moves solo.
AUSTIN: You do, you’ve started dancing and you see now that the books have formed a giant wave and it’s coming right in your direction. This is like a, a big library, a nice sized study filled with books.
KEITH: Okay. And this is like a, this is like a, ‘oh this is a wave of books that’s gonna fuckin’ hit me’?
AUSTIN: Yes.
KEITH: Okay, then I..
ART: [chanting] Book eating bear, book eating bear.
[Ali and Jack laughing]
KEITH: [laughing] No. I don’t do a book-eating bear. I, I--
JACK: Invulnerability to books, is the quest you should have picked, Art.
[Ali laughing]
KEITH: No no no no, I, I transform into a giant bird and I, I go as high to the ceiling as I can..
ART: [sighing] Your tiny bird bones.
KEITH: No no no the big bird.
[Jack and Art talk at the same time]
JACK: Was there any way to [unintelligible]
ART: Birds have hollow bones!
KEITH: I’m doing the big eagle again, that’s --I’m doing my old eagle friend.
AUSTIN: The eagle friend who came and warned you?
[silent pause]
KEITH: No no no, the, the-
AUSTIN: [quietly] A different eagle?
KEITH: That was the, the komodo dragon.
AUSTIN: Oh right that was the komodo dragon. Right right right.
KEITH: Yeah yeah yeah. This is, this is just the eagle that I transformed into earlier, against the, the birds yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay, okay. Are you gonna roll for it?
KEITH: Yep. Sure. Yep [long silent pause] Right. That’s a seven and then a --Whatever I’m adding to that..
AUSTIN: Probably a two.
KEITH: Would p- --Yeah, a two. So I guess that’s a nine yeah.
AUSTIN: Mhm. So you hold two. You turn into this, into this eagle and fly up just above the waves that come crashing. Everyone else, y’know whose now behind this closed door, hears just like [loudly] bang, bang, bang, bang, bang [clapping his hands]. As books crash against the, the near wall and the door which is now shut closed. What do you do?
ART: So it’s a push in door?
AUSTIN: It’s a push in door. Yeah.
ART: Okay.
NICK: Fantasmo-
KEITH: Can --I look at, I look at the door and I wanna see real quick if it’s, if it’s openable.
AUSTIN: It’s still openable, in fact the books, when you look down, the books have begun to shuffle away and start to form new humanoid shapes. Who look like, y’know again, humanoid figures with, with, that’re holding other books and some pamphlets that’re wrapped up so that they’re like tight tubes-
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: ..holding them like spears. And some of them are looking like they’re about to start throwing them at you.
[Jack laughs]
KEITH: Okay. Can, can you describe the, what the, the ceiling looks like, and if there’s windows up there or anything that I can..
AUSTIN: There are windows again on the far wall but these have the curtains again and the curtains are all drawn. This is the same exact shape as that big dining hall. So just like rows and rows and rows of these books, with a big empty space in the middle, which is what you guys kind of walked into. And, and the ceiling is just like some nice like moulding there that’s like, it’s decorated. Again there, there was once some murals painted on the ceilings. And the chandelier’s hanging from up there.
KEITH: Okay, I would like to [unintelligible muttering] I would like to [long pause] I would like to, to swoop down and, and grab the nearest guy and pull him aloft.
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: I’d call that a Hack and Slash, let’s say.
KEITH: Sure.
AUSTIN: Oh, you know what?
KEITH: What’s up?
AUSTIN: Oh, yeah, yeah that’s fine. That’s fine. I think you can dodge down into the, as this eagle. The kind of javelins made of books and pamphlets and, and other p-, and papers like fly past you as you start to swoop down.
KEITH: Okay, I have, I got an eleven.
AUSTIN: So how does Hack and Slash what’s the..
KEITH: Uh, Hack and Slash..
AUSTIN: Read for the audience, again.
KEITH: Oh, when you attack an enemy in melee roll plus strength.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
KEITH: On a plus ten roll you do, deal damage to your enemy and avoid their attack.
AUSTIN: Right.
KEITH: At your option, you may choose to do plus 1d6 damage but expose yourself to an enemy attack. On a seven to nine you do your damage to the enemy and the enemy makes an attack against you.
AUSTIN: Okay. So what’re you --Are you just gonna do your base damage or are you gonna do the bonus?
KEITH: I’m, yeah, I’m going to do my base damage. Which is 1d6 [silent pause] I got a five.
AUSTIN: Okay. So you’ve lifted this thing in the air. What do you plan for it after you’ve lifted it?
KEITH: After I lift it I wanna try to drop it on another one of them.
AUSTIN: Sure. So you do that, you [making his voice sound strained] lift up one of these people and you drop it and it slams down into a different one. And those books fall dead on the ground and don’t seem to move any more.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: What are the rest of you doing while this nonsense is happening?
[Keith and Ali speak at the same time]
KEITH: It’s pretty dope though!
ALI: Panicking.
AUSTIN: It’s pretty dope.
ART: I yell through the door:
ART (as Hadrian): Don’t hurt our friend.
NICK: I, Fant-
ART: ‘Cause I can talk book.
AUSTIN: Right, you can talk book.
NICK: Fantasmo is cringing at the sound of books being smattered, or, clattered around and destroyed-
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: Mhm.
NICK: ..and, and pages being ripped.
KEITH: I mean I don’t wanna sound like, I don’t wanna sound like a Hadrian here..
[Sound of clock chiming and Austin laughing]
KEITH: ..but, these guys, I tried to dance with these books and they tried to destroy me with a tidal wave.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
[Clock chiming in background fades away]
JACK: Yeah but, maybe they just-
ART: Yeah, I don’t think you should have gone in that room.
AUSTIN: No.
JACK: Some dances aren’t for you, man.
[Nick laughing]
KEITH: Think of, okay, but think of how cool it would have been if they was a gigantic wave coming at me, and then they were like ‘oh shit this guys dancing’, and then they stopped and danced with me. That would have been cool! That would have, that was worth the risk!
[Ali laughing]
ART: No! That’s not how, that’s not how this works.
NICK: I mean.. Whatever.
KEITH: I thought it was gonna work.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
NICK: I, Fantasmo, I try to cast invisible.
AUSTIN: Okay.
NICK: Standing outside the door..
AUSTIN: Sure. Go ahead.
NICK: ..still. I rolled a twelve.
AUSTIN: Nice!
NICK: So I successfully cast that.
AUSTIN: Without losing anything. So you’re invisible now, great.
NICK: Yup. Invisible. And I, I open the door, the just the bare amount for me to pass through it.
AUSTIN: Mhm. You do.
NICK: I’m a, I’m a super skinny elf.
AUSTIN: Yep.
NICK: So it doesn’t have to be that big, even. And I’m just gonna try to skirt around the edge of the room?
AUSTIN: Okay.
NICK: To get to the other side.
AUSTIN: Yeah, on the other-
NICK: Just to see-
AUSTIN: Yeah, so-
ART: Do we notice him go in?
AUSTIN: Yeah, the door opens up for a brief moment. Also, you notice that he is gone. Fantasmo has vani- --In fact, you’ve seen him do his like [makes hand waving sound] and now is gone and now he’s, now the door opens slightly and then he’s in.
ART: Mm.
AUSTIN: You can see can see, like so, stairwell, and then at the far end there’s the curtains and the windows. And then on the other si-, on the right side, where you’re headed, is another stairway up to another floor.
NICK: Okay.
JACK: Do I have any identifying paperwork or cards to indicate that I’m from the New Archive?
AUSTIN: You probably have a badge or something.
JACK: Okay. I’m gonna take the-
AUSTIN: Or like, yeah, sure. What it, what do you have, to show that you’re..
JACK: I think I have like, like some sort of, whatever this world’s equivalent of like a laminated library card is.
[Nick laughing]
AUSTIN: Yeah, I mean so what is, what is this version’s laminated li- --I am curious.
JACK: I think it’s prob- --We talked a bit about like orc symbolism.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JACK: Or, orc like use of semiotics and stuff.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JACK: So I, I guess it’s probably like a, like a wood chip-
AUSTIN: Mm, I like it.
JACK: ..like a piece of wood with a, a branded mark into it.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JACK: Two marks, one is the symbol of the New Archives and one is probably like my signature or something.
AUSTIN: Right.
JACK: So I’m just gonna take a complete shot in the dark in that I essentially work for a big library. This seems to be a big magical dancing library-
AUSTIN: Mhm. Sure.
JACK: ..based on the like quiet sign on the door.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JACK: So I’m just gonna like slide it under the door like an air hockey puck.
AUSTIN: Right.
[Nick laughs]
AUSTIN: It [pauses, thinking sound]
NICK: I was really hoping you were gonna bust open the door holding your badge in the air.
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: It [sighs] it just doesn’t --Nothing happens, nothing happens.
JACK: Okay. Alright, well-
AUSTIN: You slid it under. It sits there for a moment, some of the, the books seem to take regard of it for a second and then keep going.
JACK: Alright, well. So now my badge is just lying in the middle of the book tidal wave like..
AUSTIN: It is, it is.
JACK: [laughing] Okay.
AUSTIN: Well no, the tidal wave has now cleared and they’re in these, they’re humanoid figures in this moment.
JACK: Okay.
KEITH: Did you say how many there were? Two of them are gone.
AUSTIN: Two, two-
KEITH: They’re collapsed.
AUSTIN: It’s hard to identify how many there are.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: Because it seems like they are interchangeable. So like, there, at the beginning there were dozens of figures dancing.
KEITH: So you’re saying they’re just, they’re just very fluid.
AUSTIN: [overlapping Keith] Then, but then there was one big wave, and now there are ten large warriors.
KEITH: Right. Okay.
AUSTIN: So they’re very fluid and it’s hard to identify how many there are.
KEITH: Okay.
JACK (as Lem): Hadrian, how would you feel about some more like, shouting at things?
JACK: ‘Cause that’s a pretty good strat, so far.
ART: I, I guess I was hoping my, my non-magical shout would do anything, but I guess has..
AUSTIN: Nothing. No, yeah.
ART: The, the way this is f- [thinking noise, pause] I guess ten’s.. not a bad number.. [laughs]
AUSTIN: Again, that’s just how many figures are here as the soldier figures, each warrior.
ART: I guess, I, I guess I’m trying to think of a --Do I think this is one big entity that’s, that’s expressing itself like this. Or do I think this is every book is it’s own thing and if I convince one to stop it’s not useful.
AUSTIN: Make your decision. What are you doing?
ART: I guess I gotta try it. I, I open the door and I use I am the Law, I give that --I don’t remember what I said last time. ‘Cause I was just making it up [laughs]
AUSTIN: Yeah, that’s fine.
ART (as Hadrian): The, in the name of Samothes, the King God, the Crafter of the Sun.
ART: And I think I said Once and Future King, which is a new part of that mythology.
AUSTIN: Yep, you did.
KEITH: You said once and future ruler of these lands.
ART: Okay.
ART (as Hadrian): I com-, I command you to stop.
AUSTIN: Three of the soldiers turn to you and it’s like a loud [claps] clap, as the, as many of the books close shut and you read that, or you hear it, and all you hear is:
AUSTIN (as books): [loudly] Quiet!
AUSTIN: And three of the javelins are tossed in your direction.
ART: Wait, I didn’t roll my thing.
AUSTIN: Ehh, it worked.
[Art laughs]
[Art and Austin at the same time]
AUSTIN: They hea-, I mean, they-
ART: But I, But I get a plus one.
AUSTIN: Okay, I forgot that you actually have. Go ahead make your --I forgot that you actually have a, a like a thing. My bad.
ART: Yeah, Okay. I get like a plus one forward.
AUSTIN: Okay, so you get your plus one forward, their response is to attack.
ART: I, yeah, I got it [laughs]
AUSTIN: What do you do as they’re hurling javelins at you?
ART: I don’t know, what’s a quiet way to, to cover yourself? I, I defend that’s a move right?
JACK: Defy Danger, or-
AUSTIN: Defend, defend --Yeah, you’re probably gonna wanna defy danger here. What do you do physically? Tell me what you do and then we’ll figure out the move.
ART: I like cover my face. Right? Like, I’m wearing armour and I’m wearing a helmet-
AUSTIN: Yeah, okay.
ART: ..but like I shield my face with my arm.
AUSTIN: That sounds like. That’s Defy Danger. And probably Defy Danger strength not Defy Danger constitution.
JACK: That sounds-
AUSTIN: ‘Cause you’re just kind of like holding up.
JACK: If he’s covering himself up, that’s enduring, right?
AUSTIN: No. Enduring. So end- --This is the thing. For, for me the division on this is that constitution isn’t about not taking damage, it’s about enduring it with, enduring the damage and like continuing on in spite of it?
JACK: Right.
AUSTIN: It’s it’s Ernalda in, in Glorantha’s mythology suffering the blows of the wolves and continuing.
JACK: Oh yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: It’s not being, it’s not blocking damage. It’s living through it.
JACK: So if he wasn’t covering himself up but was like, just like charging in.
AUSTIN: If he was just like --If he wanted to like charge through to the next level and take those hits? Maybe that’s constitution. But I, I think he would still take that damage, it would just mean he was also able to get across. Do you know what I mean?
JACK: [as Austin is talking] No, that makes a lot of sense.
AUSTIN: Defy Danger doesn’t say you don’t take damage, y’know? But with strength I think that, that is what this would be.
ART: So this is roll 2d6 plus strength modifier?
AUSTIN: Plus strength. Yeah. For this Defy Danger.
ART: [mumbling] two.. [silent pause] that’s an eleven!
AUSTIN: Uhh.. great!
KEITH: Nice!
AUSTIN: On a 10+ you set out, you do what you set out to do. The threat doesn’t come to bear. On a 7-9 you stumble, hesitate or flinch. But no, so you, you’re able to like block these blows. People, meanwhile, what is The Great Fantasmo doing here? And, and also the same goes for Lem and for Hella. [silent pause] What are any of you guys doing as this stuff happens?
NICK: I’m looking for any kind of like [pauses, thinking noises] like magical mechanism, or activator, or something in the room?
AUSTIN: There’s nothing you can see here.
NICK: Okay.
AUSTIN: You know what to look for. There’s nothing here that you can see. [pauses] You do see something strange, which is, for a brief moment Lem’s card, his woodchip thing with his brand on it, lifts into the air and pushes forward as if it’s ident-, as if it’s saying: ‘Here, here I am. This is me. I’m identifying myself’.
NICK: Mm.
AUSTIN: So it, it seems to be caught into this, this whatever this is, and it’s doing a thing.
JACK: Wait. Hang on. [pauses] Okay, so maybe this doing something to the printed word. Does anybody have any particular books that we might be able to use on our end?
[Austin laughs]
JACK: Like..
KEITH: I mean, Nick, Nick and I have a stack of books hanging out.
NICK: What do you mean?
JACK: Well if, if my woodchip just like lifts itself into the air and asserts itself seemingly on our side. Maybe we could bring in a [laughs] a weird book hireling by using our invent- our inventory that this might have an effect on. I don’t have any of this stuff so.. Actually, I have a map!
AUSTIN: Hm.
ALI: Do maps count?
NICK: I don’t --Are you talking about trying to like craft a little person out of books?
JACK: Yeah! Or kind of like just letting.. [laughs]
NICK: To parlay with these other people?
JACK: Letting this thing --But they don’t, they’d probably just kill --I think what I’m going to do is I’m going to play my violin. I’m going to start playing, but I’m gonna start playing-
ART: No!
JACK: What?!
ART: Don’t make more noise!
JACK: Well, oh yeah that’s true. I guess I could play it like pianissimo.
[Nick and Keith at the same time]
NICK: Do you have like a calming song or something?
KEITH: Well, what if the noise hurts them.
AUSTIN: He does not have that I don’t think.
JACK: No, I don’t. Actually no I’m not going to because I think if somebody probably played a --On the one hand, how much more angry could they get? On the other hand, if someone just started straight up playing a violin in the library, I don’t know if that’s a particularly good thing.
KEITH: My --The only thing I will say is that if the noise hurts them, that would help us. Or distracts them or makes it harder for them to concentrate.
ART: I don’t know if I think that’s what we saw.
NICK: Alright, here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna sneak back over to the door.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
NICK: I’m gonna pop out, I’m gonna tell them what I saw, which was essentially nothing. And I’m gonna say:
NICK (as Fantasmo): I have a plan. I’m going to run back to the edge of the room, prestidigitate a [pauses] an illusion of some kind on the other end. To hopefully distract them. While I’m doing that, the rest of you just run through and just go up the stairs right away.
ART: The stairs are in this room? Or the stairs are [unintelligible]
AUSTIN: [overlapping Art] Yes.
NICK: [overlapping Art] They’re on the other end of the room, yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JACK: Could you try detecting evil, Art?
ART: Sure.
AUSTIN: No evil. Uhh! A couple of tomes are evil in this, in this room.
JACK: Ohh right.
AUSTIN: And normally your b-, normally your sense wouldn’t pick those up, but there are a few things here that are. But they’re, they’re not, it’s not like an overwhelming presence.
KEITH: And then also Hella.
AUSTIN: Also Hella.
JACK: So do we wanna, yeah.. If we go for that plan, we essentially, at least in this particular instance, leave the mystery of this room behind? Is that something we wanna do? Or do we wanna stand and fight and try and pick something out of the paperwork?
ART: I don’t have a great desire to sit here and, and fight a room full of books.
[Jack laughs]
[Keith and Art speak at the same time]
KEITH: Hey we’ve already got..
ART: Because it feels in a very real way like fighting the ocean.
KEITH: We’ve already got a sixth of them!
[Austin makes a noise of disagreement]
ART: That’s not, that’s not necessarily true.
NICK: Are there new books flying off the shelves to create new people, or anything, to replace the downed ones?
AUSTIN: We’ve talked about a twenty second period of time so you haven’t really observed enough to see if that’s true. Do you know what I mean?
NICK: Alright.
AUSTIN: Like, what’s happened here is: Lem, or, I keep saying Lem, Fero opened the door, asked you guys to dance-
[Jack and Keith laughing]
AUSTIN: -waves came down, he lifted up off the floor. The Great Fantasmo snuck in briefly. Like it’s been --And then, and then only then did, did the book guy fall onto another guy. Like it’s been a minute let’s say total. So it’s hard to tell if there will be more books coming. The ones on the ground seem to stay on the ground.
NICK: Okay.
KEITH: I’m all set with running if you guys wanna run. I would fly.
ART: I mean, I would try, I mean I would suggest parlaying but, you know we’d be whispering. BUt like i’m okay with threatening them. We’re bigger than them, I do believe we’d win if we fought them, y’know? I can see like y’know whispering something like y’know: Please stop, we don’t want to destroy you.
ALI: Are we bigger than them?
ART: Yeah, they’re, they’re books.
NICK: Yeah they-
ALI: No, well they’re a form of books. They’re angry men.
NICK: Austin said that they were smaller, they were smaller figures though.
AUSTIN: Those, those first figures were small. There were a bunch of them. Then the second w-, the ten warriors were big humanoid warriors like..
ALI: Yeah, yeah.
NICK: Oh, I see.
AUSTIN: It’s yeah, they’re fluid like, like we said.
ART: But yeah-
JACK: I’d be up for parlay.
ART: Much like I did, much like I think I can kill all the hats in the hats in the world, I think I can take on all the books in the world.
[Jack and Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: Mhm.
KEITH: Even Moby Dick?
AUSTIN: I will say-
[Jack laughing]
ART: Especially Moby Dick.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Remember so, so [pauses] --You could talk to them. You’ve already talked to them, and they’ve responded. You could parlay, but parlay as a move is about having some sort of leverage.
ART: Right.
AUSTIN: Something that they want or something that they don’t want. So, so you have to communicate that so keep that in mind.
ART: Sure. So I could, I could go both ways, which is like, well y’know I --Well, let’s, let’s not talk about it, let’s do it.
AUSTIN: Mm.
ART: I, I whisper.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ART: And I whisper, y’know:
ART (as Hadrian): We’re sorry. We didn’t, we didn’t mean to, to offend. We just need to cross to the other side of the room [pauses]. Let us, please let us do that, we don’t want, we don’t want this to get out of hand.
AUSTIN: So this is just you talking to them? Not you trying to use the parlay move? Right?
ART: This is, I am, I guess, I guess I’m, I’m starting us talking, if you’re saying it’s a parlay..
AUSTIN: It’s not a parlay unless you can offer them something.
KEITH: Would this, would since they’re attacking us-
ART: Well, I’m offering them that we’re, that if they let us go we’ll, that’s it, this ends and..
AUSTIN: You have to offer them something they want. Like, like money or-
ART: Like quiet?
[Nick laughing]
AUSTIN: [pauses] Yeah, I guess you could offer them quiet. I guess that’s fair.
ART: Like, I’m offering them that if you let us go-
AUSTIN: Yeah. Okay.
ART: We’re the, we’re the noisy things.
AUSTIN: Mhm. Yeah, that’s fair.
ART: Catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, bookstack.
AUSTIN: That’s not true, but yeah.
[Ali laughing]
ART: [pauses] The fly thing, or?
AUSTIN: Yeah, the fly thing is super not true [laughs]
KEITH: The fly thing yeah, that’s the opposite of true.
AUSTIN: [laughing] It is.
ALI: Is that a myth?
KEITH: Yeah, flies fuckin’ love the shit out of vinegar.
ART: Well, that’s not in any of these books.
AUSTIN: [laughs] Alright so go ahead and, and give me your parlay roll.
ART: Alright [pauses] 2d6 plus charisma? [pauses] So that’s a nine.
AUSTIN: Which says..
ART: Next question? I have no idea.
AUSTIN: On a 7-9 they need some concrete assurance of your promise right now.
ART: I mean-
AUSTIN: So they say, they-
ART: Look how quiet I’m being.
AUSTIN: They say.. [sighs] How do, how do they say this to you? Okay so the ten form closer and closer until instead of being ten individual figures, one figure, that isn’t that much bigger than a normal, normal person, but they are arranged in such a way that they’re full and they have a lot more features and, and depth than they did before. Do you know what I mean? Instead of just being the outlines of figure they are a full person. And they-
ART: What, have they got like book kidneys in there?
AUSTIN: Yeah, exactly. Their organs are books.
NICK: [laughs] The fidelity went up.
AUSTIN: Exactly. Exactly.
NICK: They’ve pulled all of their book pixels together now.
AUSTIN: [laughs] Exactly.
[Jack laughs]
AUSTIN: And one approaches you and it claps at you in such a way that even the people who can’t hear the words can recognise talking. And its, its like very soft and the pages are moving back and forth [making a rustling sound] to make ‘L’ sounds and stuff. But again no, no-one but Art can really understand this. And they say
AUSTIN (as Books): [softly] Fine. But leave our kind with us. You should not torture them with your sound.
AUSTIN: And they, they look towards the door behind you, which is where Fantasmo is. And his floating book companion.
KEITH: [whispering] They want all the books.
ALI: Oh no.
ART: Yeah they’re-
KEITH: [still whispering] Let’s fuck these, let’s fuck these books up [laughing].
[Jack laughing]
[Keith and Nick speak at the same time]
KEITH: I don’t wanna give my-
NICK: Fantasmo’s first instinct is to-
AUSTIN: They-
NICK: ..like grab all the books.
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: Uhuh.
NICK: And like clutch them to his chest [laughs]
ART: Well I mean you didn’t, you didn’t hear that [laughs].
AUSTIN: Yeah you --No-one else heard that except for Art.
NICK: Oh well, alright. Yeah you’re right, I’m sorry.
ART: [overlapping Nick] And I’m trying, I can’t like yell out [loudly] ‘Hey guys! They say leave the..’ Like, that’s, that’s not..
[Austin laughing]
NICK: Yeah.
ART: That’s not, that’s not doing what I’d said I’d do.
AUSTIN: Well, they also, they also don’t know about-
NICK: Sorry.
AUSTIN: It’s okay! They also just don’t, they don’t know about the book that Keith has in his bag, presumably.
[Keith and Art at the same time]
KEITH: No, no I gave him them to Nick’s-
ART: No, no Keith gave those books-
KEITH: Yeah, yeah.
AUSTIN: Oh he, gave him the books, oh right!
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: [happily] Oh, that’s perfect!
JACK: Wait, where’s that book gone?
[Jack and Austin speak at the same time]
JACK: [laughing] Oh, he gave it to-
AUSTIN: Those books are with Fantasmo’s floating book servant.
JACK: Ohhh. Man..
ART: I don’t know. For all I know they have a fuckin’ magic book sense.
AUSTIN: That’s true. [pause] So what do you do, Art?
ART: How, like, is this --Could I whisper in a way that they would hear me?
AUSTIN: Yeah, sure.
ART: Like, I understand not everyone would hear me.
AUSTIN: Yes.
ART: But like --Okay, this isn’t, we’re not in a concert hall.
AUSTIN: No.
ART: So yeah, I, I y’know:
ART (as Hadrian): [quietly] Alright, they say we can leave. You need to leave your books here. They wanna, they wanna protect them.
[short silent pause]
NICK: This is where, this is where Fantasmo gathers all his books up and holds them to his chest.
AUSTIN: Right. Right, yes.
ART: Okay. [pause, thinking noise]
NICK: I give you [laughs] I just give --I, I stand there for a second. Look down at the books, and I look up, I look up at Hadrian.
[Austin laughing quietly]
NICK: I look through the crack in the door at, at the giant book men [pauses] and then I like, with a huge pouty lip, I just sort of like drop my head and then hand the books over.
[Ali, Art and Jack laughing]
AUSTIN: They float over and at the same time Lem’s ID card floats back to him and slips into his like shirt pocket-
JACK: Oh, cheers!
AUSTIN: ..and they form up the, the kind of the librarian of this s-, of this space, the new book librarian turns away and starts walking away with like a step [taps mic], step [taps mic] step [taps mic]. And the books turn and look at you for a brief second and then like kind of nod goodbye-
[Nick laughing]
AUSTIN: ..and then step, step walk to the far end and let you through. As long as you don’t make any noise.
JACK: Keith-
KEITH: How are the ones that I-
AUSTIN: They’re all-
KEITH: ..picked up and dropped on eachother?
AUSTIN: They’re all-
KEITH: All of them are fine?
AUSTIN: They’re all, all of them are with the book people, now.
KEITH: Cool.
[Keith and Nick speak at the same time]
KEITH: Except for the fact that you gave them my book, you jerk.
NICK: Alright, so can we all just move through the room now?
AUSTIN: [laughs] Yeah, you can all walk through this room now.
NICK: Okay.
KEITH: We’re gonna have to go get more of that dude’s books later.
NICK: Once we’re up the stairs, into the next room, I say [laughs]
NICK (as Fantasmo): I expect replacements for all of those tomes.
[Austin and Jack laughing]
NICK (as Fantasmo): From each and every one of you.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
KEITH (as Fero?): What about me? Those were my books too.
AUSTIN: How are you guys feeling at this point? We’re getting there. We’re, we’re not super far off here. But I don’t know how you guys are feeling in terms of tiredness. I know it’s very late in, in England.
NICK: Yeah.
JACK: Yeah..
NICK: I’m really tired, and I’m starving.
AUSTIN: I have, yeah I figured, I have two things left, planned. Sort of, not planned, I --There are two floors left, is what I’m willing to say. You would know that, at this point, because of the way that Lem flew up it and because of Fantasmo whose not-
JACK and KEITH: [simultaneously] Fero.
AUSTIN: I keep saying Lem instead of Fer- --Lem, keeps, in my ears --It’s because of the way he’s acting. Lem-
KEITH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m acting kind of like a Lem.
AUSTIN: He’s acting, I feel like a Lem.
[Keith laughing]
AUSTIN: Fero flew up. That’s fine.
KEITH: I’m a fuckin’ Lem right now.
AUSTIN: Fero flew up the thing-
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: ..and knows what height you’re at, lets say. And Fantasmo knows about these, these types of towers. He’s, he’s heard of the towers of the, of this size. So you would know that there are about two floors left. So it’s up to you guys. We can, we can call it here and re-, and come back at some point to finish this up? Or we can push through it. Completely up to y’all.
JACK: I don’t know..
KEITH: If we push through I’d need a break.
AUSTIN: Yeah. And at which point we should just call it, because a break means Jack should go to bed, y’know?
JACK: Yeah.
KEITH: Mhm. Yeah.
JACK: I need to be up before ten o’clock tomorrow so..
AUSTIN: [laughing] Okay. So-
ALI: [sympathetically] Aww..
NICK: Oh jeez.
JACK:
AUSTIN: What I will say is.. Do you guys go up the next flight of stairs?
[short silent pause]
KEITH: Yep.
ART: Sure, give us a cliffhanger.
NICK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JACK: Yeah, go-
AUSTIN: So, as you first, as you start, as you start climbing up the stairs you head like a little murmur behind of the books opening and shutting again. And then [Austin makes same ‘duh, duh, duh, duh, duh’ musical tune noise from before] and the waltz goes off again. At the top of the stairs you, you do your little peek again, presumably and inside this floor is a lot smaller it looks like than, than the other floors. So not smaller in, in total size but it doesn’t open up to as big of a space. There’s kind of a hallway with doors on the left and then right. And then straight ahead there’s a another door, and all those doors are, are wide open as soon as you come up this next flight of stairs. Down both of the sides are hallways, or not hallways but rooms filled with supplies like ropes and, and building materials. And the other door is what you can immediately understand to be an armoury, filled with swords, and spears, and armour, and shields. And then straight ahead is a, a, very nice bedroom and on the back wall of that is a mural with a tower and a sun and all sorts of different land around it. There’s a, an ocean, and a desert, and a mountain, and a long plains region, and little cities off in the distance away from this one central tower. And that tower looks sort of like the tower you’re in now, but much bigger and instead of sandstone it’s marble. And you can tell that this is a miniature version of the mural that was on the base, the bottom floor. And resting in one of the chairs is a suit of black and gold armour with red feathers coming down under the torso and a, a black, red --A black and gold cap with red plumes. And it turns and looks up and says:
AUSTIN (as Black Armour): [abrupt, kind of scratchy voice] What is it?
AUSTIN: And we’ll find out, next week, what it is.
[silent pause]
NICK: Good cliffhanger.
AUSTIN: So let’s do, let’s do experience stuff I guess?
NICK: Okay.
AUSTIN: So, at the end of a session choose one of your bonds that you feel is resolved, completely explored, no longer relevant or otherwise. Ask the player of the character you have the bond if they agree. If they do mark, mark XP, write a new bond with whoever you wish. You don’t have to do this. You can say like ‘Nah, none of my bonds have really wrapped up’.
KEITH: You can tell me if this is a stretch or not. My, I have ‘the spirits spoke to me of a great danger that follows Hadrian’?
AUSTIN: Mhm.
KEITH: And I would like to resolve that and replace it with that I, I personally feel that Hadrian is dangerous.
[Jack laughs]
AUSTIN: That’s a g-, I like that switch because it goes from, it goes from this a thing I have to be on the lookout for, to it being a personal judgement of yours. If Hadrian’s okay with that, if Art’s okay with that, then I’m okay with it.
ART: I, I would agree that he’s dangerous.
AUSTIN: [laughs] Yeah so go ahead, both --Oh, actually, just Fero marks experience, yeah.
KEITH: Okay [pauses] And that means, that’s just, that means one? One XP?
AUSTIN: Yeah, one XP from that.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: Once --Does anybody else have any bonds they want to, they want to change up?
JACK: No, I’m, I’m good.
NICK: None for me either.
AUSTIN: Do you want to form a n-, oh yeah so you did, you formed a new one, and it is ‘I believe Hadrian is dangerous’.
[sound of typing in background]
KEITH: Like, to the group.
AUSTIN: Yeah yeah yeah.
KEITH: Not just any, like not like a, not[pompous voice] He’s a great fighter!
AUSTIN: [laughing] Right. I know what you mean.
[Keith laughing]
AUSTIN: Yes.
ART: Oh. Well then I don’t agree, but whatever.
AUSTIN: Mm.
ART: I mean, I agree that he thinks that, I don’t agree..
AUSTIN: Right. Yeah, yeah.
KEITH: Yeah yeah yeah.
AUSTIN: Once bonds have been updated, look at your alignment, everyone.
ART: Oh wait, I think I do have a bond I wanna do. Because I had ‘Hella stood by me in battle and can be trusted completely’.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
ART: And I don’t know that, that, that I wanna trust someone completely who sets off my, my evil sense every time I use it.
AUSTIN: Sure. That’s fair!
[Keith laughing]
AUSTIN: No that’s totally fair.
ART: So I think I wanna change it to ‘Hella’s misguided behaviour endangers our very soul’.
AUSTIN: Ooh okay. Let me write that down.
ALI: That’s fair.
AUSTIN: That’s fair.
[Jack and Austin speak at the same time]
JACK: That’s --To, to be fair to Hella it’s not really misguided be-
AUSTIN: Wait, misgui-, misguided what though? Yeah, it’s not misguided behaviour. Let’s, lets update that and change it to something else.
ART: Suure.
KEITH: Misguided nature?
[silent pause]
ART: Like ‘Hella is at a, is at a spiritual crossroads and, and only I can see her through that’?
AUSTIN: Sure!
[typing noises]
ALI: That works ‘cause he-
ART: It’s a little flowery.
ALI: You’ve yet to see me act evil yet.
ART: Right.
ALI: Just, god is-
AUSTIN: No, but he knows his god is saying..
ALI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: ..this is an evil person.
ALI: Right.
AUSTIN: I think that’s, that’s like, that speaks to Art’s, to Hadr --Sorry. That speaks to Hadrian’s faith that that’s enough to give him that. Do you know what I mean? So yeah go ahead and, and take that. As long as, again, as long as Hella is in agreement with it.
ALI: Yeah, that’s-
AUSTIN: That that’s fair, that that’s a fair change.
KEITH: Real quick Austin, can you tell me what I had exactly written for my alignment.
AUSTIN: Sure. Your alignment was ‘destroy a symbol of old civilisation’.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: Which I don’t think you did.
KEITH: No.
AUSTIN: The Great Fantasmo had ‘gain respect through power’. Which I don’t think.. came up in this game?
NICK: Did anybody-
AUSTIN: I don’t think..
NICK: Did anybody, anybody respect my ability to be a dick?
[Austin and Jack laughing]
KEITH: No.
NICK: [laughing] By just disappearing on you.
KEITH: No. I, if I didn’t feel, if I didn’t, if I wasn’t so interested in switching up the, the bond that I did switch up. I might have switched up ‘The Great Fantasmo has something to teach me’, and resolved it in that [laughing] ‘This guy can’t teach shit’.
[Austin and Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: No, let’s keep that and see how that goes.
ART: I think he’s way more dangerous to the group that I am, but ‘yknow..
AUSTIN: [laughs] Lem King’s alignment was ‘avoid a conflict or diffuse a tense situation’. Did you do that at all there?
JACK: I don’t think I did that.
AUSTIN: No, there were moments where you could have done it.
JACK: I think I tried to but I don’t think..
AUSTIN: They were close. You were close a couple of times.
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Hadrian’s was ‘deny mercy to a criminal or unbeliever’. You did not do that, I don’t care-
ART: No.
KEITH: Well, to be fair Hadrian destroyed an innocent man skeleton.
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: That man, Keith, that man was a believer. Hella had-
ART: Yeah, I, I didn’t figure that out til much later though.
AUSTIN: That’s fair. Evil-
ART: I also forgot I have that power. That power would have been super useful right then.
AUSTIN: [laughing] Hella’s is-
KEITH: [laughing] I reminded you of the power in the moment I think.
ART: No you didn’t.
AUSTIN: ..‘Kill a defenseless or surrendered enemy’. No, no-one technically killed, you did not kill a defenceless --You didn’t kill anything and Art didn’t even technically kill a defenceless person. But-
ART: Not even close to defenceless! That was self-defence, not a jury in the world would convict me.
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: He was a nice old man!
KEITH: You were, you were invading his home. He, he stole, he risked himself to steal pains from his job to paint his wife.
JACK: Yeah like, you’re all, you’re all nice and liberal when it comes to y’know, not wanting to hurt some book people. But just some little skeleton man, you’ll just him right off the bat.
ART: He hit me!
AUSTIN: [pained] Mhm.
KEITH: You were in his house, he was frightened of you!
ART: He was a-
ALI: Yeah.
NICK: Too hungry for arguing this.
ART: Also! He was a thief.
AUSTIN: [in disbelief] Ooh.
NICK: Too hungry..
AUSTIN: That’s.. Okay.
[Jack laughing]
AUSTIN: Okay.
NICK: Can we please wrap this up, sorry.
AUSTIN: Once bonds have been updated, look at your alignment, blah, blah, blah. Three questions as a group we have to answer: Did we learn something new and important about the world?
JACK: Um, yeah..
AUSTIN: [pauses, laughing slightly] What did you learn that was new and important? I’m fine with that but you have to agree that you did, like what was it?
JACK: Yeah.
NICK: We learned there’s a lot of ancient magic that still apparently ticking away.
AUSTIN: That’s good.
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Did you overcome a notable monster or enemy.
ALI: No.
ART: Yeah, that thieving skeleton!
[Ali laughing]
KEITH and ALI: [at the exact same time] No.
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH: I do, I don’t know, I feel like, I feel like those books could have posed a pretty serious threat.
[silent pause]
AUSTIN: Are you all-
KEITH: There was a lot of them.
AUSTIN: Are you all in agreement on that?
JACK: Yeah, I think I am.
NICK: Yeah, I think so.
AUSTIN: Okay, that’s two.
NICK: Yeah like, they wanted to, if they wanted to bring the full power of the entire library to bear like..
AUSTIN: Oh yeah, yes.
NICK: ..that would have been..
JACK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: It would have been rough.
ART: But Keith did like five damage and killed two of them.
[sound of clock chiming in background]
AUSTIN: Right, so this is the question, is like, right but-
KEITH: I did five damage to one of them, and then dropped that on another one.
AUSTIN: Right. Whatever, the point is, did you overcome it? I think so. I think you overcame that, that..
NICK: Yeah.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: I wanna encourage non-combat solutions, as much as I want --Like, yeah, I’m gonna give you the one XP for this. Sure.
KEITH: I would have liked to have not killed-
AUSTIN: Sure.
KEITH: Or not, thought that I killed those two books for a little while.
AUSTIN: Right. Did we, did you loot a memorable treasure [silent pause] No. That meal was good but not-
KEITH: I’ll never, I’ll never get that book.
AUSTIN: ..great.
[Keith laughing]
AUSTIN: For each answer, for each answer everyone marks XP. So multiple XP. Also! Here’s a thing we didn’t do all game and now I need to remem-, to remind you guys to do it. And I feel bad about this. Every time you fail a roll, like a six or under, mark XP.
KEITH: Okay.
NICK: Alright.
AUSTIN: So think about that. I guess, we can, once this is-
KEITH: I think I only failed one roll, that, the very beginning roll.
[Austin sighing]
ALI: Wait, that you lose it or that you get it?
KEITH: Gain one.
NICK: Yeah.
AUSTIN: You gain an XP whenever you miss a roll.
ALI: Okay.
NICK: So it’s like-
AUSTIN: So Ali at least has one, for when she missed the opening roll. What were you gonna say, Nick?
NICK: I was gonna say, it’s like you’ve made mistake and you’ve learned from it.
AUSTIN: Exactly like that. Yep.
NICK: Which is, I, I love to death.
AUSTIN: Me too, it’s the best.
KEITH: Yeah, that’s great.
NICK: Yeah, I, I got one when I failed the, when I bungled the invis-, the first invisibility.
AUSTIN: The first invis-, yes, yes. Did anybody else make a complete goof, on this? A six or under?
ART: No.
AUSTIN: I don’t think so.
ALI: Not in the goof troop.
NICK: The complete goof troop.
[Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: Oh! Keith did! Keith missed the first roll. The, the-
KEITH: Yeah, no I mentioned that, I already mentioned that.
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Alright! That’s it. We’ll schedule-
KEITH: Okay, so what was that, four XP? I think for me?
ALI: Three?
AUSTIN: Three from these questions, right?
KEITH: Okay, three from the questions.
AUSTIN: No two, two from the questions.
ALI: Two from the questions and then one.
AUSTIN: And then bond.
NICK: Yeah, yeah.
KEITH: Bond one, roll one, so yeah four.
AUSTIN: Yeah, four total for you, yeah.
ART: Oh wait! Ehh it’s I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna bother..
[Ali and Austin laughing]
ART: I’m thinking, I’m, I’m, I’m still on alignment. I’m still thinking I did fail to show mercy to a criminal, but I didn’t know he was a criminal at the time.
AUSTIN: You didn’t know he was a criminal.
ART: I don’t know how..
AUSTIN: It’s debatable if he was a criminal.
ART: [indignantly] I! How dare you, he was a thief!
AUSTIN: You don’t know the whole thing. He may have once been a criminal but I’m not sure that he was anymore.
ART: That’s outrageous.
NICK: Wait, are you talking about the skeleton?
AUSTIN: He’s talking about the skeleton.
KEITH: Yeah, he lifted a couple things of paint from his job.
ALI: Yeah.
ART: That’s a crime! That’s what the lawful alignment seems to be about-
AUSTIN: Here’s what I’ll say, here’s what I’ll say-
ART: .. is making you identify what crimes are.
AUSTIN: The man who, the man who stole the paints is dead, he was dead before you got there. What you killed were that man’s bones. Who were doing something else.
ART: Okay..
JACK: Well, hitting, hitting him with a broom.
ART: Yeah!
AUSTIN: That man’s-
ART: Also a crime!
AUSTIN: That man’s broom-
ART: That was assault.
AUSTIN: That man had, that skeleton had a broom, was doing something with the broom beforehand that wasn’t.. That man, hm.. I’m not gonna tell you how this thing works.
[Jack and Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: That man’s bones were doing the job the man wasn’t. Is what I’ll say.
[silent pause]
[Keith and Ali speak at the same time]
ALI: Wait, but I thought the, I thought the-
KEITH: [spooky voice] Ooh that man was cursed to forever do a good joooob.
ALI: Oookay.
AUSTIN: So-
ALI: Okay [laughing]
AUSTIN: That’s, that’s the game. Thanks for joining me, I’m Austin Walker, you can find me at austin_walker on twitter, the calcutec over on twitch, which is a place that we do streams. You can find our, our videogames streams on streamfriends.tv, you can find our, our archives. And at twitch.tv/streamfriends for our live stuff. You can also read the stuff I write at clockworkworlds.com.
[Autumn Not Winter begins playing in the background]
AUSTIN: Joining me this time from east to west is: Jack deQuidt.
JACK: Hi there. You can find me on twitch and twitter at notquitereal. And at my game studios website thetalltreesgames.co.uk.
AUSTIN: Keith Carberry.
KEITH: My name is Keith Carberry, you can find me on twitter at something dumb. You can find the LetsPlays that I do at runbutton.net or youtube.com/runbutton and if you’re not into that whole pre-recorded thing you can go to twitch.tv/runbutton and watch the live stuff.
AUSTIN: Also joining us: Ali Acampora, or Alicia.
ALI: Yeah I’m Alicia Acampora, you can find me at ali_west on twitter.
AUSTIN: Nick Saundergraf(spelling?), who I think is in the middle of the country somewhere.
NICK: Yep. You can find me at twitch, twitter and youtube /drevilbones.
AUSTIN: And, last but not least, playing our lawful paladin Hadrian, out of Los Angeles.
KEITH: Really playing that lawful paladin.
AUSTIN: Really, really playin’ it. Is Arthur Tebbel.
ART: Hey I’m Art Tebbel. You can find me on twitter at atebbel. On mondays or sometimes tuesdays, you can read my movie reviews at comicmix.com. I’m also generally around the streamfriends experience.
[Austin and Ali laughing]
AUSTIN: Thanks for joining us everyone. We’ll be back, hopefully next week, to wrap up this adventure. And then we’ll see where it goes.
[Autumn not Winter fades out]
AUSTIN: Bye!