Drawing Maps 30: Hark! The Citadel Beneath - September 2021

Transcriber 1: Kellar [0:00:00-0:42:49]

Transcriber 2: AnAchilles [43:00 - end (100)]

Austin: Hi, everybody! Welcome to Drawing Maps, September 21. I am your host Austin Walker. Joining me today--Alicia Acampora.

Ali: Um, hi! You can find me over @ali_west on Twitter, and you can find the show over @friends_table.

Austin: Andrew Lee Swan.

Dre: Hey! You can find me on Twitter @Swandre3000.

Austin: Jack de Quidt.

Jack: Hi! You can find me on twitter @notquitereal, and buy any of the music featured on the show at notquitereal.bandcamp.com.

Austin: And Janine Hawkins.

Janine: Hi, you can find me @bleatingheart (Austin clears his throat) on Twitter.

Austin: Sorry, I did not mean to ahem over your twitter handle (Janine laughs). Uh, you can find me on Twitter @austin_walker, you can follow the show @friends_table, and you can support us by going to friendsatthetable.cash. Um, as a quick reminder, if you don’t know what “Drawing Maps” is, it is a kind of behind the scenes Q&A podcast, where we go through our arcs of the current season--or, at least that’s what it is right now, it has been a bunch of other things in the past--but right now it’s that. We will do our best to answer the questions that you sent in, or as many of them as fit into this format.

Uh, we will be careful about spoilers, we probably won’t spoil anything, um, from--I will try very hard not to spoil anything that is after this arc, the “Hark! The Citadel Beneath!” arc in Sangfielle, and we should do our best to say “hey! I wanna talk about this thing from a previous season because it relates to this,” by saying that first and giving people the opportunity to, you know, back off, or jump ahead, or whatever.

Um. The--today we are talking about the “Hark! The Citadel Beneath” arc, which I guess now, is a few back, um, and I guess we--I would categorize that arc as being the one where you busted Chine and the Heritrix souls out of prison. Out of terrible, super-cop prison that’s underneath the city, Second City and underground castle? I think that’s probably right (noises of confirmation from the rest of the cast).

Before we get into questions, I’m curious if people have thoughts about that arc, or kinda broader ideas that they’ve been thinking about in the time since recording it? You know, it’s been a minute, now, and I think are heads are all probably much more forward-focused because it’s been so long, but, you know. Any stand out moments, any stuff that you wanted to do, we didn’t get to do, or stuff that you were really happy we got to do?

Dre: Hmmm.

Austin: Yeah. It’s a big one.

Jack: I think it’s gonna come up in later questions, um, but I was really excited to play a dungeon crawl.

Austin: Yeah.

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: Um (Ali laughs), and I think maybe the time to talk about that is probably later, but I--

Austin (cross): Yeah we have that--those questions for sure.

Jack: But I think the big takeaway for me was like, “Oh! We don’t often make episodes like this!” And it was fun.

Dre: Mhm!

Austin: Yeah. It’s something that, um, I think I’ve probably done two or three times as a GM, is to go to that playbook. And we’ll talk about that when that question comes up, for sure. Um, for me--we do also have a question on this, on the Zevunzolia stuff, it was the moment to like, zoom out a little bit narratively and that was fun. And reinvigorating for me, a little bit. We started to tease some of that stuff in the Bellmetal Station arc, and even technically in the Yellowfield arc in terms of Alaway and The City of Light, and like, these big picture ideas of--competing ideas of what the world should be. (Clears throat) Um, and--so that was a fun bit. And having that stuff show up…as a non-objective, and just a thing that’s in the world that you intersect with--

Jack (cross): Yeah

Austin: --vs. “The party has to go find out about this thing!” (Ali laughs) It’s much more fun for me to do it that way than to--to like, you know there will be moments when it's time to do that. And to some degree Pickman--you were trying to investigate some of that stuff because of Calen, but still. That’s what kind of stands out for me--

Jack (cross): It was sort of serendipitous, right? Like, PIckman was just sort of generally motivated by a like, “fuck that guy” thing--

Austin (cross): Oh, yeah.

Jack: --and then just sort of (laughter) walked into the place where information was--

Austin (cross): Yeah, that’s not serendipity, that’s authorship (Dre laughs). That’s--that’s me going “ah! I can use Pickman’s revenge motive to get plot on screen.” You know what I mean? Um, which we just hadn’t had up until this arc, in a real way. Which I think is fine. I don’t think--I don’t regret that at all. But now that we are moving in that direction--and even there, like, I don’t think we stuck with that stuff as like, super super front--you know, this didn’t become the “Rites of the Seventh Sun” show after this arc. And I think it’s better for not having done that, too. You know?

Jack: Yep.

Austin: There’s more of it now. With characters that have been introduced, and other side plots. But it’s not--that is not the focal point, still, so. I appreciate that. Any other thoughts or should we just jump right into these questions and see where they take us?

Ali: Yeah, I’m letting my thoughts marinate--

Dre (cross): Go for it!

Austin: Okay, alright.

Ali:  --until they become relevant.

Austin: “Let’s jump into some serious questions. We’ve got two in at one time together, one from Ollie, one from Addison. Ollie writes in, and says:

        Hi! I was wondering: in what order did Chine eat the mattress? Like, did he eat the whole cover--

Jack: That’s a great question (Ali snorts).

Austin:

        And then the springs, and then the stuffing, or just big bites like a sandwich with all the components in each mouthful. This question is very important to me, personally. Thanks.

Dre: Yeah. (sighs)

Austin: Yeah? Uh huh?

Dre: Do we wanna start the--’cause there’s a second--

Austin (cross): There’s a second question. Addison says:

Hi! This might be a silly question, but I haven’t stopped thinking about it since the episode aired.

It’s as if Addison saw Zevunzolia as Chine eating a mattress, ah:

        Is there a fictional reason for Chine eating the stinky bed? I know Austin establishes that if Chine ate the entire bed they will receive the benefit of the Desolate domain--which was important since they don’t have access to any of their things--but I just wanna know if there was any narrative reason behind that choice, or if it was just a mechanical decision. Thanks.

That one’s easy for me--

Dre (cross): Yeah, yeah.

Austin: --comparatively. Because the answer is: Chine--there’s no distinction between the mechanics and the narrative, there. Chine knows that if I eat the stinky bed (Dre laughs), I’ll be better at everything I do here. Right? That’s just narratively true.

Dre: Yeah. Also, there was literally nothing else he could do besides eat the stinky bed.

Austin: Right. He wanted to eat the bed--

Dre (cross): Or wait.

Austin: Was there-- do you think there was a degree of hunger, there? Or just a degree of, “I’m asserting some amount of control over my situation in this moment.”

Dre: Yes.

Austin: Okay. Yes to both, or--?

Dre: The latter, the latter. Yeah.

Austin: Um. But yeah, I think--I think just, at the high level, that is not a move that exists. That’s not like a, an XCOM move where hit the button and then you do 8 damage or whatever. Like, it’s a literal thing that happens that Chine is aware of happening, that Chine knows--when Chine eats a little, you know, stone carving of a god, and gets the, uh, the Religion domain, they know that’s happening to them. They--it’s not like a, um, it’s not like that is a non diegetic thing that’s happening. It’s not like, the verb isn’t “Dre erase that resource.” It’s “Chine, eat that resource.” Uh, and Chine feels that in the way that we’ve talked about Chine feeling the Course move through him. Like, that is--that is a real literal thing that is happening.

Um, and so I think in that situation, like, maybe we could zoom in better on the situation like that, where after you eat the mattress or the stinky bed, I could be like, “Okay, you feel more deeply connected to the emptiness of this place, to the decrepitude of this place. You can feel yourself be at ease here, in a way you weren’t a moment ago.” Because that’s what having a domain is--one way you could read having a domain is just knowledge. The other way is about comfort and ease, and like, you know, you could have two people who are equally skilled, um, at driving or something, right, um, but one of them is driving, you know, on the right side of the road and one is driving on the left side of the road, and depending on which context you’re in, one of those is the way the rest of traffic is driving, right? And the person who is used to the way the rest of the traffic is driving are going to be probably a better driver in that scenario because of their familiarity with the context.

Um, or just, you know, think about going in--I was just trying to talk to somebody about this fairly recently, um, for me, having, say, like the haven domain, or--it’s really easy to talk about this with Spire domains because Spire domains are like, things like academia, or like, government. Um, so it’s like, think about the difference between two different types of people who have to walk into a government building. And the degree of comfort you might have. One of them could be, you know, a state prosecutor, and one of them could be someone who is on trial. The degree--the way in which they feel comfortable in that building is a domain. Um, and when Chine eats things, they get the domain (laughs). And they get to feel that comfort, and that ease and don’t have to worry as much, so. That part’s easy. Much harder for me is this first question, which only you can answer, Dre.

Dre: Oh, okay. So, um, you know, textural difference is such an important part--

Austin (cross): Uh-huh.

Dre: --of cooking. So I think, probably couldn’t eat the whole thing like a big sandwich, but definitely--at times--did.

Austin: Wanted to get both the spring and the, the stuffing together, the, the fluffy--

Dre (cross): Mhm, sure.

Austin: Yeah, yeah.

Dre: And you know, maybe sometimes balled it up a bit so it was just the cover and some springs.

Austin: Right, right.

Janine: Is it like eating a--one of those really, really big hamburgers where once you get to the end it all just kinda falls apart (Dre laughs) and you have to kinda give up on the idea of holding it?

Austin (cross): Yeah.

Dre: Probably, yeah.

Austin: Or, when you get to the end of a big sandwich like that and you’re like, “I can’t eat any more bread. I still want the stuff that’s in the sandwich to be in my stomach (Janine laughs). But I’m gonna move over to a fork, at this point.”

Dre (cross): Sure.

Austin: “And I’m gonna leave the rest of this bun, or this gyro, or whatever it is, this roll. I’m gonna leave that here. And that’s, yeah, but I’m gonna eat the middle out. I’m gonna eat it! Mmm mmm. Delicious.” And that’s like, trying to maybe finish the whole bed frame but did finish the mattress, or something.

Dre: Yeah, when I was a kid, I would take slices of bologna--

Austin (cross): Sure.

Dre: --and like, crush up potato chips and then fold the bologna in half over the potato chips and call it a bologna taco, and think there’s probably, Chine took some crushed up springs and then folded the cover over it, and I don’t--

Austin (cross): Yeah. Can I ask you--

Dre: A little cover taco!

Austin: Which domain do you get when you have a bologna taco? Dre?

Dre: Um. depends on the potato chip.

Janine: That’s Haven, though. That’s Haven.

Austin: That feels like Haven, yeah (Dre laughs).

Jack: How does--

(A pause.)

Austin: Yes, Jack?

Dre: Uh-huh?

Jack: Chi-- (Jack cuts out mid-word.)

Austin: Are we--we’re having a Jack connection issue.

Janine (laughing): We are.

Jack: Ohhh, I’m back. Sorry.

Austin (cross): You’re back! Alright, say it again, one more time, Jack.

Jack: How does Chine feel about, like, regular food?

Austin: Like Haven--that’s Haven food, right?

Dre: Yeah! Yeah, that’s good!

Jack: Yeah, it’s not like--it’s not like… they’re… you know. Chine like, you’re telling me that Chine would like a bologna taco as much as--as they would like a bed?

Austin (smiling): Alright, well wait a second, is ‘bologna taco’ regular food? Is this what we mean when we say ‘regular food’ (Janine laughs)?

Dre: Well… I think there is a--there is a distinguisher there, because, like, regular food probably not all of that is a resource, per say. The same way that--

Austin (cross): Right. Yes.

Jack (cross): Oh, true!  

Dre: --the eating the bed was a resource.

Austin: Right. True.

Dre: Um. So I think they’re--there is a different experience there, between like, eating food to eat food, and, you know, ah, eating food to--to gain a power.

Austin: Yeah. To align yourself in this way, the way that Chine does. Yeah, I think that’s--I think that’s an important distinction. But I think that, like, you know at that point--

Ali (cross): I’d be eating food to gain power, though. (Laughing) Like, that’s not a bad--

Dre (cross): No, for sure. Yeah yeah yeah.

Ali: Like, Chine is just like--”I feel,” you know… “I’m in the Warren domain, things are really tight in here--”

Austin (cross): Yeah.

Ali: “I’m kinda nervous.” “

Jack (cross): “Time to eat a worm.”

Ali: “I gotta eat these rocks just to like, calm down.” And I feel that way about, like, the ginger cubes that I (laughter) leave on my desk. Like, the little cough drops. Sometimes you need to just, like be grounded.

Austin (cross): Right. I get this. Yeah. I agree with that.

Jack: When you called them ‘cough drops’, it was much less exciting than when you called them ‘ginger cubes’.

Ali (laughing): I know!! I’m sorry!

Dre: Yeah, I thought maybe you had some candy ginger, there.

Austin (cross): I love some ginger cubes, yeah that sounds great.

Ali: I know. If only.

Austin: Um, I wonder if it's a situation where it’s like, quote-un-quote regular food, Haven food, is like to Chine what various, you know, types of food are for us. Like, the entire category of food that gets made at--at you know, tables or kitchens in Blackwick, is like for us going out for Thai food or something. Like, “Oh yeah! Oh, you mean like regular people food?” That’s one category of food, that’s one…style of food for Chine.

Dre (cross): Mhm.

Austin: In the same way that we might think of, like, you know. Different types of cuisine.

Janine: I’m just, like, now thinking of it as, like, you know you can go to the zoo and and the zoo has some signs that are like “The bears are this way! The tigers are this way!” But also, you can pick up one of those cartoon novelty maps. And that’s--that’s fun too! Like--

Austin: Right.

Jack (laughing): Yeah.

Janine: I’ve been thinking of this as--as we have this conversation in the context of like, you can use Google Maps but also when you go to a theme park you get a map that tells you where like, Pancake Land is, and that’s (laughs)--that’s okay!

Dre: Yep.

Austin: Yeah.

Jack: I would love to go to that theme park.

Austin (quietly): I wanna go to Pancake Land (Janine laughs).

Dre: I do think Chine would view a bologna taco and a very nice steak in the same light.

Austin: That’s the same food, for--for them.

Dre: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah.

Austin: Great.

Dre: I hadn’t thought about it before but I also feel like they probably don’t taste.

Austin (intrigued): Ooh!

Dre: Or if they do, it’s--it’s not… well if you think about it, yeah, they probably don’t taste.

Austin: Hm (a creaky, mechanical noise is heard over his mic). Sorry, that’s my radiator being (Ali laughs)--I dunno I’m having weird sounds happen. Welcome to New York.

Ali: Well, it’s just like different taste buds, right? Because like, Chine is also experiencing like a physical transformation… so that’s like how-- how dogs can see more--different colors or whatever? Is that true? Am I--

Dre: Wait, I thought dogs were colorblind (Ali laughs).

Janine (cross): Yeah, dogs are colorblind. Yeah, they can only see, like, yellow and blue, or something.

Austin: Yeah, dogs are colorblind.

Jack (cross, amused): Fewer colors.

Dre: But they can smell more smells. They have like, better receptors that allow them to have advan--more advanced experience of smell than we do. I think.

Austin: Are we sure that there is also not a color that dogs can see that we can’t?

Dre (cross, typing): Is there a color that dogs can see… (Ali laughs)

Austin: Like obviously we know that they’re colorblind, compared to--but is there, like--can they access, like an ultraviolet, or uh…you know what I mean? An infrared or something like that. Do they see at night differently? Stuff like that. Do you know what I mean? Dogs have more rods. So they can--so some colors seem brighter to dogs than--no, other way around. They have more rods, (reading) “giving them an edge to seeing in low light and identifying moving objects.” So yeah. They have a different type of sight to us. I’m always cautious about the, like, “they just see worse.” Or the “they see better than us” thing. It’s always different.

Janine: They see different.

Austin: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Jack: Dogs can see the color SPINK! Canine Pink! (Ali laughs)

Austin (smiling): Canine Pink, oh I see. Yeah. Um, anyway Dre, thank you for your--your generosity with this question.

Dre: Of course!

Austin: Um…David writes in--Jack, do you want to read this from David?

Jack (slightly robotic): Yeah, absolutely. If my connection holds.

Austin: Ah! Sure. (Dre laughs)

Jack: Uh,

        Hi Friends! I really love the direction this arc went in and how it leaned into the dungeon crawl-y nature that Heart seems to aim for. I went “Oh!” out loud on the train after realizing what the title was doing, too. I was wondering for the players if this style of moving through rooms and solving little puzzles to advance towards your goal was more enjoyable, or made you think about the world your characters were in any differently? And for Austin, I would love to hear your motives for switching to this style for this arc, and what you were hoping to convey with it. Thank you! David.

Austin: I want to note that we got in a couple other questions in a similar, broad, like “Oh, hey! Dungeons. What’s up with that?” Uh, we had one from Dustin, for instance, who also wanted to know if we thought that Heart, uh, Heart’s dungeon-focused design clashed with our expectations coming in from mostly playing a lot of PBTA and Forged in the Dark games. Um, and that--and also asking if we thought that Heart, or something else would be a good fit for bringing dungeon-minded players into the world of narrative games. Like, like the ones that we tend to play. Um, so if you want touch any of that stuff, too, that’s also a valid--a valid subtopic on this. But I’m curious for y’all, mostly--what did you think about this?

Dre: I definitely felt like this was the most I have felt like…mechanical stressful-ness in Heart so far. Um, I mean it’s probably not a coincidence that this was also the most fucked up Chine has gotten in Heart so far (laughs).

Austin: Yeah, I think so.

Dre: But I definitely really felt like…I felt like that was like, the most I had felt the designed tension that Heart wants to be there of, like, “Okay! Fuck! How much longer are we going through this? Do I need to, like, save stuff? Should I just blow all my resources and all my moves now?” Um. It was different! It was cool, though. Stressful. But cool.

Austin: Ali, Jack, or Janine? Thoughts?

Janine: Yeah. Um…it, uh, for me it was interesting, ‘cause like, it felt…um…(sighs) I’m struggling with, like, how to describe it and I don’t want to say that it felt railroad-y. ‘Cause it didn’t. But it felt like there was a much stricter flow of space than we usually have, right? By nature of it being a dungeon. Um, where it’s like, yeah, you--there’s only so many places you can go, and only so many places you can get without first going through other places. And like, that’s the nature of it. Um, but I think that was the, like, the big difference that I felt, right? Was that, like… we tended to do a lot more stuff in, like, much more open spaces with much more, sort of, possibility. Um, and less of a focus on, like, getting through the thing?

Austin: Mhm.

Janine: Um. Which was--it wasn’t bad, but it was different. You know?

Austin: Yeah. It’s funny because the--the way delves are set up, traditionally, is even more linear, and I like, don’t love it. Um, the sort of like, getting from point A to point B, because it’s just like--I tend to try--I think about, like, going down to Yellowfield and being like “Do you wanna go over the mountains or do you wanna go through the mountains?” And then every step of the way of that arc, on the way down to Yellowfield, is, like, “Here’s another thing on my list of things you could run into.” (Ali laughs) Um, like that's--it’s just literally--I literally just wrote a list out of possible encounters and went through them in ways that felt like I could stitch them together well.

And that’s how basically every delve has been this season, going back to the Hymn of the Mother Beast, and it being like, “Okay, you go into this place and then you go--and then now you’re in the canyon, and now you went from the canyon up the--up the hill a little bit, and you’re going through the warren and you’re going duh-duh-duh” and like, that to me felt way more constricted as a GM, because it didn’t matter how you solved the situation. There was only ever one direction you could go and it was forward.

Um, from the GMing side with regard to that stuff here, it was really fun to see you make decisions about which door to open and which direction to go in, like Jack’s desire to go up the tower (Ali snorts, giggles) at the beginning of the delve–

Jack (cross): Oh my god.

Austin: instead of going down into the Citadel beneath, um to find out, like, “well what was up there? What was going on up there?” Like that, to me, was fun. And then also, realizing the thing that–it is true, Janine, that it’s a much more structured place, and that realizing that was a failure, I could fuck with that structure by teleporting you to another place, by making you, you know, turn right at Alberquerque instead of left or whatever, and wind up deep in part of the map you hadn’t gotten to.

That comes from being able to–that comes from that much more restricted structure, that normally–you get to Yellowfield, and Yellowfield is now just–I mean, Yellowfield is also a structured place, y’know? And there are parts of Yellowfield you didn’t go to. I had a layout for Alloway’s entire building and like, where things are and all that. But it’s much more–I always come back to Hitman levels. It’s much more of a Hitman level, of like, “okay, you can do–you tell me how you go about this.” And when you’re zoomed in as much as we were on, y’know, in terms of like, “here is a series of rooms that are connected so strictly” with Citadel like that, it is a different feeling. I can totally see that.

Jack did you ever–are you happy with your decision not to go up?

Jack: Yeah, I mean... ultimately, it’s like a little thing, right? It’s one of those things that, in the moment, seizes me, because I’m like–I think it’s also realizing that this was the kind of game that you–that was the moment that I realized, “Oh, this is what we’re in for today.” (Austin: Uh-huh. Dre laughs) Is you being like, “There are stairs up there, and there are stairs up here,” and… that’s just very entertaining to me. Um. But, you know, it’s not something I’m losing sleep over. I was gonna ask you, like, was there, you know, it wasn’t like–

Austin: Was there treasure up there? Is what you were–

Jack: Well, there was a very distinctive locked door early in Hieron (laughs).

Austin: Oh, yeah. I don’t think it was anything near as big as that. Um, no. No no no no no. This was not that situation of like, “the plot is up there!” (Dre and Jack laugh) It’s much more–it was much more I needed to–in my mind I wanted to put on offer a billion resources for you to pick up this session (Jack: Mmm. Ali laughs). Because you were coming in very low on resources and so I wanted there to be a spot where I could really be like, “And if you really want some fuckin’ resources, you can go ham. And just get ‘em.” Uh, there’s a bunch–there were a bunch up there.

Jack (cross): Oh, come on! (laughs)

Austin: Ranging from things like, boxes of spice, and like little, you know, jewels and gems and stuff, to like–there’s something up there that’s like, “Sorceress Contraband,” which was a super high-tier thing that was dangerous. And it’s like, “you don’t know what it does. You’ll have to figure out what it does.” And until you do, it’s dangerous. Because you could just fuck up and cause some really bad shit. By like, going through this satchel the wrong way. Um, but it wasn’t anything–there wasn’t anything like, A-plot stuff up there. I mean, there might’ve been if you made–this is the–this is the other half of–we keep having this conversation recently about how, like, it doesn’t matter if you have a good plan or not, what matters is what the dice say. Um, which like, true to a point because sometimes I’ll say, “Oh-”

Jack (cross, slightly robotic): A combo.

Austin: Right. Sometimes it’s like, “A: that’s a good idea. You can now use a different, y’know, skill that you actually have access to. Or you’ll get mastery and that makes sense now. I can see how someone could help you.” But also, sometimes the dice say, “You get a thing,” when I hadn’t planned on giving you a thing. Then so you’ll get, like–you’ll be like, “oh, I wanna open this chest,” and I’ll say “Oh okay, roll to open that chest.” And you’ll crit and well that means you get something super special here that we haven’t–that I haven’t figured out yet. Maybe it becomes an A-plot thing. Y’know? Um, so. So you never know what was up there because we didn’t actually go there. It doesn’t exist (chuckles). You know?

Jack. Yeah. Uh-huh.

Austin: That’s the way in which it’s not a Hit Man level. Is that we don’t–none of that stuff is real until it’s on–y’know, until we say it into a microphone. Um, it doesn’t actually exist and the notes are just–are fake. (Doorbell)

Jack (fake wonder): Oh my god. Who’s that at the door? (Dre laughs)

Austin (playing along): By my notes, that’s Emma Serchilde, leader of the guards.

Dre (cross, whispering): I’ll be right back.

Austin: Okay.

Ali: Yeah, that’s the thing, there were three cops upstairs! (Murmurs of assent) We were not going– (laughs)

Jack: No.

Austin: You were all beat up in the previous session, you’re fine.

Jack: There was, um… (laughs) remember that screencap that went around recently that was like, “Every morning I like to put music on and be a little gremlin and creep around my house.”

Austin (laughing): Uh-huh. Yeah.

Ali: Mmm.

Jack: That’s me, whenever a game presents me with, like, a map with clearly demarcated zones. And I think part of the reason that this was so exciting–not exciting… I felt… I don’t think it was better in any way. It was just different because it felt, like…we try a lot of different styles on this show (Austin: Yeah). Um, and move through a lot of sort of, like, um, stylistic genres. Whether we’re doing like, a little, “this is a vaudeville episode,” or “this is an episode that feels like its evoking this kind of thing or that kind of thing,” and it was just–it was pleasing and exciting to be, like, “oh, there’s Austin behind his little GM screen teleporting us deeper into the–” And like, at a certain point, we weren’t in– and there was like a swinging skeleton party going on!

Austin: There was!

Jack: And it really did feel like we were–we were just a very enjoyable kind of spin on this kind of dungeon crawl, while also rescuing our friend from abject misery.

Austin: With regard to David’s question regarding my motives for that switch, um, I don’t think–there’s not a like a big, you know, idea, big capital “I” Idea here, this is–I think thematically it felt interesting to place our one dungeon with the Glim Macula um, as the sort of group that is interested in that sort of skull-duggery and like, that sort of like, “ooh, what if we have a place where there’s like, different layers.” And also it’s, like, fun to separate out the idea of, okay, the Rites of the Seventh Sun have different levels of access here than just any random Macula person. And so there was a hierarchy–kind of an architectural hierarchy happening here. Um, and it’s also fun to just think about Sapodilla as a place where there’s this underground happening. There’s a second city under there. You know, we just barely got a brief glimpse of. And so, like, that being a fun surprise to stumble into. But none of that was like, capitol “I” big Idea that like, gates of Sapodilla is. Or, “At the Gates of Sapodilla” is.

Um, mostly, Heart is built really well for this. And I wanted to make–to play that version of Heart to see what it felt like. Um, because we just hadn’t really–like, again, the delves especially feel this way to me, but then you look at something like the way, um, I guess only Janine–Es, yeah, it was you, Duvall, and Lyke who did Roseroot Hall, where like, I had this whole other idea of how that would go, but because we play so open it just–we kinda rushed–not rushed, but we get to the final act much more quickly, um, and so maybe that’s part of what appealed to me here is the idea of a much more structured set of pacing, or structured kind of form of pacing where I knew where the big swings would be. And they were deep enough in that like–and this maybe goes back to what you were saying, Janine–you can’t make one roll to get to the end of that dungeon. Right? Whereas that’s basically what happened at Roseroot Hall. There where like, two rolls that were made that got you to–and like, one question asked–that get you to Aterika’kaal, so, there was not that–and like, I’m fine with that. That totally worked and we didn’t get the kind of like, creepy haunted house, (chuckles) you know, stay, that I’d scripted for that. But that’s why it’s actual play and not scripting, you know? Um. And so I was curious about seeing Heart play in this other mode. Especially when we start talking about resource cost and stuff like that, so. So yeah.

Um, as to whether Heart is like, especially good for bringing other players from like, DnD over: I just don’t know. ‘Cause it’s like, not what we do. Um, we get this question all the time of the like, “How do you get DnD players to play Forged in the Dark?” Or play, you know, Apocalypse World stuff, or any sort of story game stuff, or even OSR, like, stuff, and it’s like–I wish I could tell you that what I’m doing when I’m not doing this is, like, doing other roleplaying games, and like, getting other people to get in to story games. But it’s just not what my days are like. So I just can’t actually speak from experience. I can say, out loud, “I think Heart is a really flavourful game that would appeal to people who think that, like, the art in the game is sick, and who want to like, get their heads around cool combat abilities in the same way that they might like in DnD.” I think every character on the show has found their really cool niche in terms of utility. Um, and so if that’s part of what appeals to your friends that play DnD, then like, yeah, I think Heart does that pretty well. I have no idea if it will work for them. (Laughs) Like, who could say? Who could say? (Ali laughs) I don’t know.

Uh, any other final thoughts on the dungeon delve stuff?

Jack: Oh, uh, I want to talk about the title real quick.

Austin: Sure.

Jack: Um, two things. Uh, I missed the whole uh, bit in the production chat when you, ah, realized the pun here. And the second thing is, I do want to call you out, because you posted on the 10th, “This is the second time in a row that I’ve suggested a ‘Hark!’ title lmao”

Austin (cross): Uh-huh! Yeah, uh-huh, that’s true! One of our other–

Jack: The Oratorium was nearly: “Hark! The Oratorium Plays.” (Janine and Dre laugh)

Austin: Which, at that point, that was not a pun. At that point.

Jack (amused): No.

Austin: At that point, it was just me being like, “That’s a fun–” I’ll just jump ahead to this. We have another question coming up that is, uh… it’s one of the last ones here. This is from Chris, who says:

The name of this arc really stood out to me. Could you talk about how you go about naming arcs, both this season and others? Also, any cool PARTIZAN part-2-zan previews you could share with us?

Austin: I dunno. When is that show gonna happen? Who could fucking say? I’m not being coy. Who could say? I like, don’t know. You tell me, Chris. Um, I’m looking forward to it. That’s what I can share on PARTIZAN season 2. Um, but, how do we name our shows? Our episodes? Uh, I think we have a general theme per season. Right? And then Ali, Jack and I throw things at each other.

Ali: Yeah, we kinda changed it this season. And maybe a little bit with PARTIZAN. What we used to do is take–

Austin (cross): Yes.

Ali:--A phrase from the episode.

Jack: Oh, we did!

Ali: And it’d be me, like, finishing editing an episode, it’s 2am, and I’m like, “what the fuck am I gonna name this?”

Austin (cross): What are we going to call this thing?

Ali: And now it sort of ends up being, like, what do we feel like this arc is about overall and can we–if that doesn’t show up until later, can we sort of, show our hand early in like a way that’s clever in the title? Or, sometimes we’ve just been really direct because Heart has been really, like, location based. So like, being like, “The whatever of Roseroot Hall” is–

Austin (cross): So, I have like very specific genre reasons for why the stuff is this versus–and PARTIZAN is different than previous stuff. So like in PARTIZAN, I super wanted to feel like Star Trek original series, or Gundam episode titles. Or Valkyria Chronicle mission titles, or the XCOM, uh, uh, random generated names (typing). Um, uh, those are all, like, big touchstones for me. There’s–I think if we dug through our PARTIZAN chat, I know one of the first things I would find is just a screenshot of the set of Star Trek episodes that were like–I think it’s like, “A Balance of Terror?” Or is it another set? There’s a few of them in a row that are just like, “this is the coolest shit you’ve ever heard of.” (Dre laughs) Um. You know, it’s like, “The Whatever Maneuver” and, you know, stuff like that, right? Ah, yeah, “The Corbomite Maneuver,” stuff like that is like, yes, that is what–

Jack (cross, joking): Fucking hate the Corbonites. Those leftists (all laugh) trying to take Britain down.

Austin: Sorry, Corbomite (emphasizes the last syllable). Much different.

Jack (cross): Oh, the small crawling ones.

Austin: The other half of the PARTIZAN episodes obviously had this other schema that reflected a secret language Jack came up with. For at least the first half, The Rapid Evening half. Um, and then for this season, if you look at these, most of these in my mind appear on the title–the title page–oh sorry, the cover of Pulp Stories.

Ali: Mhm.

Jack: Yeah.

Austin: So it’s like, “The Curse of Eastern Folly,” “The Secret Ledger of Roseroot Hall,” you know, ah, “What Happened at Bellmetal Station.” I can just see it written on either Pulp book or magazine or like, you know, “Strange Tales”, or something. That to me ends up being the sort of like, vibe, that I wanted to go for there. Um, uh, and we don’t–we’re not always hitting that. Um, but “Hark! The Citadel Beneath” a hundred percent I can see in a giant bad comic book font as like a mid-century horror comic. You know what I mean? Or, or, adventure comic or something. Um, but then–I think there’s other–there’s two other ways to talk about our titles, our episode titles. And that is, one’s where someone, almost always Jack, has a good idea to weeks before the episode comes out (Jack laughs). And the other ones are when, at 2am, I’m like, “Are either of you up? We have to come up with a title.” (Ali laughs) “FUCK, we forgot to come up with a title. FUCK!”

Ali: Yeah. Yup. That happens.

Austin: So.

Jack: Naming things is so hard! We–

Ali: Uh-huh.

Austin: We take great pride in it, but– (Ali laughs)

Jack (cross): I feel like, it’s the subtitle of our show, but there have been so many occasions, especially in the production chat, of, some combination of us just listing things fucking endlessly.

Austin: Mmhmm. (Ali laughs) God, naming PARTIZAN–

Jack (cross): “Is this it?” “No.” “Is this it?” “No.” (laughs)

Austin: “No.”

Ali: Well. It’s gotta be right!

Austin: It’s gotta be right.

Jack: It’s gotta be right! Yes! (Ali laughs)

Austin: You’ve gotta sit with it. You’ve gotta sit with it for a year. You know? And then longer, if it ends up having legs. Right? Imagine if Hieron had been named something bad, you know?

Ali: Yeah, I can.

Austin: It would be rough. It’s easy. It’s easy to imagine. (Ali laughs)

Jack: Like a full two week period naming Sangfielle where I was just suggesting things about blood, and–

Austin: Well, you came back to blood eventually, right? (Ali laughs) “Sanguine” was right there. So.

Ali: Oh, I…if anyone’s at the Pusher tier, or is interested in that tier, I released the, like, chat log of us coming up with Sangfielle.

Jack (cross): Oh my god.

Austin: Oh, did you? (Ali laughs) God damn.

Jack: That’s so good.

Ali: I think buried in there is also you… naming–or, there was a recording of you saying all the potential PARTIZAN titles.

Austin (cross): Oh, doing all the–yeah.

Jack (cross): Oh, love this.

Ali: ‘Cause we had gotten such in a corner that you were just like, “I just need to know how these feel–”

Austin: “I just need to say them. I just need to say them out loud.” (Ali laughs) Yeah. Fuck.

Jack: That was one of the more surreal, sort of, pieces of audio we’ve produced.

Austin: Yeah.

Jack: Because I think there was like, music with it as well, of just like, Austin–

Austin: Yeah, we–you sent–you had sent me the very basics of the theme for PARTIZAN at that point. Um, yeah, here I have them all. There’s a billion of them–I have one two three four five six seven eight of these?

Ali: Mhm.

Jack: It’s so–

Austin: Give me a number. Give me a number from one to eight. It can’t be three.

Jack (laughing): Okay, is three “PARTIZAN?”

Austin: Three’s “PARTIZAN.”

Jack: Right, fine. Let’s do four.

Austin: Four.

Jack: Four and Six (Ali laughs).

Austin: Alright, four. Uh, you’re not going to be able to hear this because I’m streaming it. (PARTIZAN theme begins to play) I have no idea when this–I don’t remember what the structure of this is.

        Austin, on the recording: What might a just history–

Austin: Oh, this is Gur Sevraq talking! Spoilers for–

        Austin as Gur Sevraq: On the barren moon of–

Austin: I skipped over it.

        Austin as Gur Sevraq: It might–

(Austin rewinds the recording)

        Austin as Gur Sevraq: On the barren moon of PIQUE.

Austin: “On the barren moon of PIQUE,” I say. And then six– (PARTIZAN theme begins to play)

        Austin as Gur Sevraq: What might a just history look like? On the barren moon of VESPER, it might look like frozen time–

Austin: Much different season if it’s called “VESPER” or “PIQUE”. “Pique” of course, comes back immediately as “Pique Nideo”--

Jack (cross): Pique Nideo!

Ali (cross): Oh, yeah.

Austin: –In our Road to Season 6 game. Uh, but we have other great names in here that I’m looking at now and going, “Some of these could be Season 2 names.”

Ali: I remember (laughing) pushing for PALISADE–

Austin (cross): Yeah, PALISADE’s up there.

Jack (cross): Yes!

Ali: –Sitting in a shopping center in Los Angeles where like, a car that had just been released with that name was also there.

Austin (cross): Oh, sure.

Ali: And I was like, “Should I be rethinking this now? Am I gonna put it in with Hyundai?” (Austin laughs) “We’re gonna throw this in together?”

Austin: I’m gonna–I’m pin that PALISADE one, here. That we–(Ali laughs) I can’t, because we already have more than fifty pins in the channel. (PARTIZAN theme plays) I have to unpin something.

        Austin as Gur Sevraq: What might a just history–

Austin: Sorry, I’m playing the PALISADE one, now (Ali laughs).

        Austin as Gur Sevraq: On the barren moon of PALISADE–

Austin: PALISADE’s great. Great word. Fantastic word. Pinning it. Boom. Pinned. So there’s your PARTIZAN 2 preview. We don’t even know what the name of that fucking season is. It’s not PARTIZAN 2. It’s probably not going to take place on PARTIZAN. But, you know. Um, anyway there’s some answers for ya. Uh, someone wanna read this one from Si? (a pause) Uh, Dre, you wanna read this from Si?

Dre: Yeah, sure.

Austin: Okay.

Dre: (clears throat)

        Hark! Sangfille, in my mind, more than any other reason–

Dre: (trips over his words) Ah!

        In my mind, more than any other season, has elements and vibes of evoking from Dark Souls series and Bloodborne has been brought up as a point of reference several times. One element of the storytelling style therein is the obtuseness with which non-playable characters interact (laughing) with playable characters. Since Hark! The Citadel Beneath features both Dyre Ode and Appletun, I thought it would be the opportune to ask Austin if his approach to NPC crafting is different in Sangfielle. The way that Sangfielle’s horror and mystery elements might affect the way NPCs dole out information, and if the Soul-style exposition through being cryptic is an intentional evocation here. Is my mind “Boss Baby vibes”-ing (Austin laughs), or Souls [unintelligible] 

Dre: I had to take a minute to realize what I just read–

Ali (laughing): You did great.

Austin: Uh-huh.

Dre: Um,

        How does this interact with your principles regarding making storytelling intentions clear to the players upfront?

Dre: Is there something about the plot of Boss Baby I’m not aware of?

Austin: Uh, you don’t know the tweet?

Janine (cross): The meme, the–

Austin: Dre lives uh–

Janine (cross): Guy who lives–It’s like, guy who’s only seen Boss Baby, “This movie is giving me big Boss Baby vibes,” or something like that.

Ali: Mhm.

Austin: Yeah, that’s–that’s, yeah.

Dre: Ah, okay.

Austin: You live blissfully unaware of the internet now, Dre. I’m so happy for you.

Dre (cross): Yes, yeah, yeah. Work a job where you literally talk to people for an hour straight six or seven times a day? You don’t look at twitter very much. It’s awesome!

Austin: God bless! I gotta fuckin’ change careers. Um, the…the…there’s like–I have two answers to this, and one is: of course, Souls has been a huge influence. When we talk about Bloodborne as a lead-in and all of the sort of, like, weird history stuff and the like, the–Oh it was in the last drawing maps where I talked about the ways in which Sapodilla evokes Marielda without being Marielda. And, and how fun it is for me to be like, “But is it? What if it was? It isn’t. But what if it was?” Like, that’s just fun in the ways in which, Boletaria is not tied to Lordran, but what if it is? It isn’t. It literally cannot legally be connected because of who owns those things. Obviously we’re not in that situation but we are in a different situation–

Jack: As far as we know.

Austin: As far as we know. I mean, that’s the thing, right? I mean, is there anything more Bloodborne than finding out in the last moment that we’re actually secretly owned by some deep, you know, secret society or something? Who could say. Um, uh, so the high level of it is like, that it’s such a huge inspiration on the core idea of the setting being that history is kind of hard to parse and that, um, how you make yourself against a sort of ignoble past, or a part of the past where you have bits and pieces of it but it’s–the present is always changing and it’s hard to assert yourself against that. That’s been there since the jump.

The other answer to that is, I don’t know that I’m actually–I think the difference between Appletun and every other similar NPC to Appletun, is that Appletun was happy to say things out loud. It’s that Appletun actually talked more. As a reminder, Appletun was the Caprak that Pickman talked to that was part of the–who was like a low ranking member of Rites of the Seventh Sun who was reading books in the library, and who had a really fun voice and a really weird cadence and like, was saying things but not saying them. I mean, was saying–this–I really think the difference between Appletun and like, you know, someone who is part of a secret society in Hieron is Appletun talked more (chuckles). Like, actually said things instead of needing to be like, interrogated to get any information out of him.

Um, ah, and that’s the secret about Bloodborne NPCs is that they won’t shut the fuck up. They like, they love to talk. Um, they actually love to give you information. It’s just that their information is not built to be consumed the way that like, most video game NPC information is. None of their words like, have a like, big red bold font to let you know that it’s a plot word and not a regular word. You know? It doesn’t do the Zelda thing of being like, “when you put on this MASK, then such-and-such a thing will happen.” You know? Um, and so in some ways, it’s just like people like Dyre Ode and Appletun are–they’re not more upfront. I know I’m trolling a little bit when I say that. But like, I don’t know. Start asking them questions. You know? Appletun did not shut up. Appletun answered every question asked. It’s just he answered it the way he knew it and not the way–he wasn’t trying to do like, he wasn’t trying to teach you anything. He was just trying to answer your questions, right?

Um, and so if I lean in to any part of the Souls stuff, it’s that. It’s the part where it’s like, no one is going to speak… not no one. There are other characters that will do that, right? We had a much different conversation about some of the stuff in the recent episode with a character that Pickman was talking to where things were laid out more directly. Ah, and more for the listeners, you know? Consumption. Um, and I think that that’s–it’s reminding myself to let the first pass of the season be less…clear. And let it be in that fun, vague space. Because that’s intentional, versus, like–it’s not important that you understand Zevunzolia coming out of this arc. Right? It’s important that you might be scared of it, or upset about it, or interested in it. But it would probably be a failure if you came out and, “I know exactly what Zevunzolia is! I know who’s building it, and I know what all of its deals are. And I know if character X is part of it or not part–” like, that would be a bad version of this, um. Or it would be a version of this that’s not Sangfielle. Maybe there’s another season where that would be the appropriate thing, where it’s all about like, really focused A-plot action. But like, that’s just not what we’re doing, so. So yeah. I think that’s a fair comparison, though. Uh… Janine, do you wanna read this from Arp?

[42:49] (End Transcriber 1)

42:49        

Janine:        This might be weird to say in a horror season, but the thing that he successfully upset me the most — enjoying that, though, thank you — so far has been the contrast between how the baby monster/god has been framed as a literal infant, and the mechanics that allow Chine to keep it. There are plenty of situations where Austin translates narrative complications into mechanics, making an item less valuable or more risky to use or easier to break, et cetera, and a creature being a few days old at most with its little [glitches]

Austin:        Oh, I think we lost Janine. Or did we lose me?

Ali:        No, you're here.

Austin:        Okay, we lost Janine.

Janine:        I, yeah. I —

Austin:        You're back.

Janine:        When did I drop out?

Austin:        Uh, “With its little wobble legs.”

Janine:        [laughing] With its little wobble legs, definitely seems like a justifiable reason to do that. But it doesn't seem like that was/is the case here. So, I was wondering what the thought process is for deciding when to do that, and when to not do that. Uh, to be clear, this isn't a criticism. It's definitely scary for there to be the potential to resolve the question of Chine's ability to parent, because either it's too late for it to not be pushed to kill at 3 weeks old, or the push to violence is justified because the baby is great at it, actually, via dice roll, than it would be if the baby's fighting value was mechanically reduced.

0:43:59.4        

Austin:        Uh, I'm curious, Dre, how you think about this stuff. Uh, as the person who picked the move, and like, if you had expectations around this sort of thing. And if, to start with, I'm curious, if I'm playing this relationship to those expectations, or not, if that makes sense.

Dre:        Uh, yes. Okay, sorry, I'm getting my, I'm organizing my thoughts.

Austin:        Yeah, yeah, totally get it. Totally get it.

Dre:        Uh, one, yes. I think that you are playing it well to expectations. Uh... [sighs]

Austin:        Maybe we should start — wait, can I just read the move so that everyone's on the same page?

Dre:        Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do that.

Austin:        Because I think if I'm —

Dre:        I'm actually trying to pull up the heart, the heart book.

Austin:        Yeah, I got it right in front of me. So, it's called Bloodbound Beast. It says: you are accompanied by a ragged cryptid that follows your commands — an ancient stone-browed stag, a razor-toothed heart's-blood hound, or something stranger. You feed it your blood, and it fights for you. You gain the Bloodbound tag on all weapons, as you and your companion work in concert. And then you have a second thing, right? You have pounce, right?

Dre:        Yes.

Austin:        Uh, which is, once per situation, select an adversary you can see. That adversary marks D6 stress as your companion leaps on them. Uh, so. You, you have some thoughts, Dre?

Dre:        Yeah. And I'm trying, I'm, I'm trying to like, keep, I'm trying to make sure I'm not saying answers that are based on future episodes, as well.

Austin:        Future stuff, yeah, sure.

Dre:        But I think... so... mechanically, the first thing I would say, as far as like the mechanics part of, of the beast, and like, how it is coming across in the game, is, one of the mechanics, one of the minor abilities for the bloodbound beast is, it's called faithful until the end. And it basically is, if your character ever were to die, your bloodbound beast dies in your place, basically. Uh... Chine will never take that move.

Austin:        Hm.

Dre:        Because that's not their relationship to it.

Austin:        Sure.

Dre:        Uh, you know. And this is a, I think I, I joked somewhere in Discord about, like, “Oh, fuck, I'm playing, I keep playing horror-themed [laughing] Kodiak and Throndir again.”

Austin:        Uh-huh.

Dre:        But this is a way in which, to me —

Austin:        I mean —

Dre:        Thematically, this is a very different thing, is that —

Austin:        Yeah.

Dre:        Kodiak was an extension of Throndir in all of the ways, and was like an instrument for Throndir. Uh, and that's not what it is, whatsoever. Uh, it is a calling, for Chine.

Austin:        Mmm. It's really interesting, and I mean, this is, this goes back to that the like, I love the weird mirror reflection here of, of Hieron sometimes that we get in this season, which is just like, it's us working in a fantasy space again.

0:46:45.7        Years later, and so there's going to be some echoes. And so the fact that you kind of naturally wound up here again, but also are here in such a different, such a different way, is so fascinating to me. Uh, to, to read Chine against Throndir, and Throndir's own arcs and transformations, and, you know, life changes and all that other stuff is like, you could write a book. It's really, really good. Uh, uh, but I think, to get to the heart of Arp's question, it's really interesting. Because I, I — there are things I can do... there's an important distinction to make as a GM for me in playing Heart, between a move and a resource, for instance, right? The, the God baby is not a resource. It does not exist on Dre's sheet under the resources section. I know this is very formalist of me.

0:47:37.1        I think it is important to respect that this is a move. Can I take away moves with fallout? I think I can, I can put them at risk. I think it would feel like shit, if I said to somebody, “You got that move from a major, from completing a major beat, and I'm taking it away via a major fallout.” I don't think that this is a, I don't think that is a, a particularly — I think it's a very antagonist way to play, even if it's an interesting place for the story to go. And so, I would want to get there through story stuff first, and to have that be a decision that the player I'm taking something away from is a collaborator on, and, and maybe even the starter on. So if Dre came to me and said, “Hey, I think it's interesting if it would leave Chine's side, because it's being ordered to fight and it doesn't want to fight.” Then I'm super interested in that.

Dre:        Mm-hm.

Austin:        When I read this, I [chuckling], I should also say, I should like, pause and be like, “I know what it is.” No one else on this call or, or listening to this has a fucking clue, right? I know where it came from. I know, insofar as it has a thing like a nature, and I think it should be very clear by now, as we continue, that, like, the first thing Chine does is order it to kill, order it to fight alongside of them, and I was like, “Damn, that's the first thing you do?” It's like, I'm invested in that question of parenting and shaping it. But insofar as it has a physical form, and it's going to continue to grow and change, I'm invested in it going in certain directions already, in ways that maybe aren't always clear, because we're just not there yet. Uh, so I do want to say that there is that element to it. But on the other hand, it is not mine. It is on Dre's sheet. This is a creature that is part of Chine's identity. And as much as I want to play with what that relationship is, I think it would be really aggressive of me, and not in-tune with the, our best practices at the table, our goals at the table, for me to strip the move completely, unless there was a very particular warning about it ahead of time, right?

Dre:        Yeah.

Austin:        Or I said, “Hey, if you get fallout from this, that fallout's going to be that I'm going to take this, this beast away from you, right?” Uh, uh, and there are, I'm going to be clear, there are particular fallouts in the game that are about things like, you don't get your domains anymore, you don't get your, your, uh, uh, skills anymore. Like, that stuff is in the game and it's meant to be there. I don't think there is a fallout written that is like, you don't get to use this one particular move, and obviously it's within my wheelhouse to invent new fallouts. I do it all the time, especially when I create new monsters, and, you know, update ones that are in the, the Heart book to be more towards our setting, and stuff like that. But I just think that that's, it's really hard to say, I mean, I guess... in a, in a, in a future episode of this, we will talk about, about the idea of, could I change a move on someone's sheet? Uh, uh, because there are opportunities for us to talk about that in the future. But it's just, and again, I think you'd be fair to criticize me for being a formalist about this, but the form of this game is important to me, as someone who's trying to explore the game and what it does, uh, in the same way that if I was, you know, a poet who was doing work in a particular, in I was writing sonnets, I think it's totally fine to not write something that's in a sonnet form. But if my goal is to write a sonnet, and to stay in that form and explore that form, then I'm going to try my best to stay in that form and explore that form, and feel at its limitations and restrictions. Uh, uh, and that's part of what my, the joy of this show is for me, is getting to do that with games.

0:51:20.5        Uh, which doesn't mean you don't hack things and don't change things, and et cetera. But like, I do my best to like, keep some of the biggest pillars of the game in place. And one of those things is not taking moves away from players. And it's tough when it's like, this is a character who lives in this world in this way that's like, that character is an agent, that character has opinions. This is a beast that sees the world and wants, and wants to be taught things. Uh, uh, and so I'm going to do my best to play in that space, while still also keeping it on, on. Chine's sheet, you know? Uh... Jack. Do you — has Jack read one? Jack, did you already read one? Who hasn't —

Jack:        I read one earlier.

Austin:        Who has not read one?

Ali:        I haven't. So I'll go.

Jack:        Ali?

Austin:        Ali, go ahead. Read this one from Sawyer.

Ali:        Yeah. Sawyer writes, “I'm really interested in Zevunzolia and the riots, and I love how this arc seems to be drawing together threads that we've seen of these groups and ideas, and bringing them into focus. Could you shine, can you maybe shine [chuckling] a little bit of light on the [laughing] inspirations behind these groups, and the themes that you're interested in exploring with them? Obviously, there will be more of them to come in the future, and so some things will probably have to be saved for a post-mortem, but I'd love to hear what thoughts you're interested in sharing. Uh, also, in the last Drawing Maps episode, you mentioned a way that this season has elements with past seasons.”

Austin:        [chuckling] There we go.

Ali:        [chuckling] “I would love to hear more about that, the motivations behind it, and everyone in the cast's opinions on echoing past work into stories. Thanks for all the great stories, Sawyer.” Thank you.

Austin:        Uh... does anyone have any other thoughts on the rhyme stuff, since we were just talking about that before I answer the Zevunzolia stuff? Does anyone feel like the, like, Dre, you were saying that you kind of feel a tension between echoing past characters, or, you know, specifically Throndir with this character? Is that, is that a fair characterization? And does anyone else have similar thoughts when they go from season to season, and, you know, feeling like they want to break away from past stuff, or they want to return to further explore ideas but from a different perspective?

0:53:34.4        I know for me there's a real, like, I want to close the book, but I just know that I'm going to stay in the subject, [chuckling] you know what I mean? Like —

Dre:        [chuckling]

Ali:        Mmm.

Austin:        If that makes sense.

Janine:        I feel like — [chuckles] I feel like this is the kind of question where I might have a better answer in the like, season post-mortem.

Austin:        Mmm, mm-hm.

Dre:        Mmm.

Janine:        Because I'm only just starting to notice some things when I'm place Es that like, remind me of other situations, but like, I haven't quite unpacked it or, or put my finger on it fully.

Austin:        Mm-hm.

Janine:        Uh... so it's a little, it's a little hard to say. Like it, you know, I think that, uh, the, the one thing that I, that I do understand is like, playing Thisbe, very much affected how I play Es —

Austin:        Huh.

Janine:        Even though she's supposed to be a very different kind of character.

Austin:        Right.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Janine:        Uh, because my, my whole thing with Thisbe was to hit as hard as possible, as often as possible, and just, just like, really get in there. And Es was supposed to be a slightly more thoughtful and considerate character, but she, uh, know, other things have been happening in that regard. [laughing]

Austin:        Lives in Sangfielle, and has to do some things sometimes.

Ali:        [laughing]

Janine:        Yeah, exactly.

Austin:        Yeah.

Janine:        Like sometimes, sometimes, she is one of the few people in the party who can actually stop a very bad thing from happening to people.

Austin:        Mmm.

Janine:        Or, you know, yeah. I don't, I don't know. So it's... there's a bit of that. There's also, sometimes, I feel like... I think I also went in expecting her to feel a little bit more like Signet, uh, just because she has that, kind of internal connection. She's generally, I think, supposed to be like a capital-H Hero, you know. Slightly egotistical, but mostly in it more the right reasons, kind of, like wanting to help people, and things like that. But when I'm playing her, she often does feel kind of like Adaire, uh...

Austin:        Sure.

Janine:        But more like Adaire near the end of things, when Adaire started to mean the things she was saying a little more, and wasn't just saying them to get what she wanted. Uh...

Ali:        [chuckling]

Austin:        Well, we ran into that, right? One of the earliest things that happened in Rosewood Hall was, me being so comfortable and familiar with you playing Adaire, reading a thing that Es was doing in an Adaire-like way —

Janine:        [laughing] Oh yeah.

Austin:        As Dyre, during that Dyre Owed conversation.

Janine:        Yes. Yeah.

Austin:        Uh, and it's like, it's hard even as the GM to be like, “Oh, wait, this is not, this is not Janine retreading Adaire, and, and this is a character who might say the same words, but the intention is so different that it's hard to not fall into that trap.

Janine:        Yeah, there's — it's that charm offensive, it's that like,I want to engage with you with a big smile, and talk about your needs, and whatever.

Austin:        Mm-hm.

Janine:        But the difference is, like actually, Es isn't thinking about, “Well, what do I get out of this, if I make this person —“

Austin:        Right.

Janine:        I think Es is thinking like, Es wants to do the, the heroic things. They want to do the right things. They want to do them just for the sake of doing them, which is evidenced by the fact that I [chuckling] needed this, I needed this arc as badly as anyone to get some shit in my pockets. [laughing]

Ali:        [giggling]

Austin:        Right, right.

Janine:        Uh, because it was just not on the... you know, I mean the other thing is that like, even... so, Adaire and Es also both tend to hoard literally whatever you will give me.

Austin:        Mm-hm.

Janine:        I will put it in there. Even if it has no value. Es is still, is still carrying the canvas eyes from this —

Austin:        From this arc, right, yeah.

Dre:        [chuckling]

Ali:        [giggling]

Janine:        Uh, I haven't, like I haven't taken them off my sheet, even though there's no value to them, there's nothing [unintelligible] but —

Austin:        You never know!

Janine:        I got them, so I'm going to keep them.

Austin:        Yeah.

Janine:        Uh, Es did the same thing — or, [chuckling] Adaire did the same thing with the silk and coins, right?

Austin:        Right. Yeah. Just held onto them forever, yeah.

Janine:        Just held onto them forever.

Dre:        Oh, yeah.

Ali:        That's currency.

Austin:        [chuckling]

Janine:        Yeah.

Dre:        Currency, baby!

Austin:        [chuckling]

Ali:        [giggling]

Janine:        For, for her, and — yeah, for Adaire, it was like, well, coins are coins.

Austin:        Mm-hm.

Janine:        Uh, for Es it's like, this means something to me specifically and I don't want to get rid of it. Or, you know, there's items she's had since character generation that were created specifically to spend, and I kind of just stubbornly refused to spend them, because it means a thing to her, which is not how you're supposed to play the game [chuckling], but —

Austin:        Right.

Janine:        Is kind of an interesting, like, parallel.

Austin:        Yeah.

Janine:        It's not... Adaire is resource-hoarding in the way you resource-hoard in an RPG. Uh... and for Es, it's more of like a... meaningful —

Austin:        Scrapbooking, here's stuff that means something to me.

Janine:        Yeah, yeah. Personal.

Austin:        Yeah, yeah. Totally.

Janine:        You only get a body for so long, you know.

Austin:        You know, in Dyre Owed's defense, I bet there's a lot more Adaires in Sangfielle than there are Es's, you know? In terms of —

Ali:        [giggling]

Janine:        I don't think —

Austin:        How do you respond to charm, you know? I hadn't thought about that until this moment, but...

Janine:        I didn't, I didn't, uh... I didn't think, in that scene, that the way he responded was unfair to her. It seemed —

Austin:        [chuckling] Right.

Janine:        It seemed like. And also, like, given that situation, everyone else was kind of, it, it felt, that situation did feel like we were withholding something.

Austin:        Right.

Janine:        And I just didn't have the words to describe what she actually wanted fast enough.

Austin:        Yeah. Actual play.

Janine:        Which is a very real thing to happen.

Austin:        True, sure.

Janine:         Like that, of course that happens —

Austin:        Yeah.

Janine:        Like, of course that — it made sense. And I like, you know, in hindsight, I like that they had that sort of, uh, unpleasant misunderstanding at first. Because I think it, it gave Es at least a better understanding of like, how to prioritize those explanations and things like that?

Austin:        Sure. That makes sense. Anyone else feel like they're in this space at all? Jack, I know you're coming right off of playing Kalar, who had various similar... like, combat focus as Pickman? And I think maybe you could read a certain sort of shortness or, or, you know, like, I'm here to get the job done. Uh, but also a much different, you know, kind of social role.

Jack:        Yeah. Uh, I'm... I, uh, in the last couple of seasons, I saw Keith just absolutely destroy mechanics with his character sheet.

Austin:        Mm-hm.

Dre:        [laughing]

Austin:        Yeah.

Jack:        In ways that was really [chuckling] inspiring. And, [glitches]

Austin:        Ugh, this connection.

Jack:        — build characters that I think Pickman is a testament to the fact that I'm not building characters that can [chuckles] do those kind of tricks. But I do, it has been really nice with Kalar and with Pickman, being like, “I'm going to try and make a character that can take hits and give out hits,” —

Austin:        Right.

Jack:        And, uh, and try and reflect that in their personalities, you know. Kalar is, is very much like, I don't know, I didn't play Kalar for very long, and I'm very excited to see if I feel differently about this when we get back to it.

Austin:        Mm-hm.

Jack:        Uh, but, uh, a big thing with me for Kalar is like, he's got a job to do, uh, but he broadly respects the people he's doing the job with.

Austin:        Mm-hm.

Jack:        Uh, he's, he believes in what he's fighting for. Uh, he's going to try [chuckling] He's kind of just like a friendly dad who's showed up and had to do a, a guerrilla war.

Austin:        [chuckling] Mm-hm.

Jack:        And Pickman is just, like, is just mean. Uh, and obstinate.

Austin:        That she is.

Jack:        And trying to reflect that in the mechanics as well has just been really fun. You know, Kalar swings around and jumps into things, and takes these big daredevil stunts, and Pickman just like, tried to shoot things, and is rude to people.

Austin:        Mm-hm.

Jack:        And that's been fun. I think in terms of the way things rhyme, as well, uh, we talked about this towards the beginning of the season as well. There's something that I find really, uh... freeing and exciting in making stories by sort of saying, this is, this is not a follow up, this is not Boletaria and Lordran. Or rather, you know, these, these places are not the same place. But, what if they were? And, and, and, you know, how can I think about the story that we're telling, if I begin from the start point of like, “This is not a sequel, these places are [chuckling] not connected directly.”

Austin:        [chuckling]

Jack:        Uh, we're not going to do some big, cute reveal about how these things are connected.

Austin:        Oh, yeah.

Jack:        But it's much more like, “How am I thinking about the themes and, and about, about, uh, about the way [chuckling] that the music works, and about the ways that the characters works.”

Austin:        Uh, we should, uh, I have no problem saying that —

Jack:        And being like, what if it was like that? Yeah. We wanna talk about this?

Austin:        Right, that's the thing I'm saying openly, which is like, “Oh, we thought, there were times when we thought about, do we want to do a direct sequel to Hieron? But like, then what you're telling someone who's trying to listen to the podcast for the first time is, “Go listen to three seasons of a show —“

Ali:        [giggling]

Austin:         Plus Marielda.

Dre:        Mmm.

Austin:        Hundreds of hours.

Jack:        Then you'll unlock the Easter Egg. No.

Austin:        And then you, right, and then, and then what's it matter, you know what I mean? And then like, oh, a mural of a character from Hieron shows up and it's like, “Ooh, look, it's —“ like, that's not the type of storytellers that we tend to be. And so, the benefits of being able to draw a hard line and say, “This is not Hieron.” So far outweigh whatever would have been gained by being like, “This is Hieron 2.” Like, you know — I'll be —

1:02:32.3        

Jack:        The knife cuts both ways. Oh, sorry, go on —

Austin:        It does, I was going to say. I'll be extremely frank. If we were a bigger show, if this was like, all of our full-time careers, and we were like, able to buy houses off of this, then like, maybe there would have been value in being like, that, you know, that gum you like is coming back into style. Like, we're going back to Hieron, baby. Not enough people care. Like, that's just straight-up. And it's freeing in a real way, that we don't have to do the thing of like —

Jack:        Yeah.

Austin:        Well, Hieron's our favorite, is the fan favorite, so we have to go back to that in order to keep our numbers — like, it doesn't matter. Our numbers are going to be plateaued where they are, pretty much where they are, for the foreseeable future. And that is, in a real way, lets us go like, “That means we don't have to do Hieron 2.” That means we can do a different fantasy setting, and when we naturally stumble into those overlaps, it can be really fun to play with them, especially in a setting that is about the unpredictability of the present, and the, the strangeness of the past, and all of that other stuff, you know? Jack, you with saying something else too, though, and I, I half cut you off.

Jack:        Oh, I was — yeah, I was saying that like, it's, it's, it's, it's freeing both ways. It's freeing to go, this is not connected to Hieron, so write that off, it's not going to happen.

Austin:        Right.

Jack:        And it's also freeing to be like, “Wow, okay, so, in what ways... in what ways do Sapodilla and Marielda rhyme?” Or, you know, “Where have we sort of accidentally fallen into themes that we always find ourselves excited about?” Uh, where are we sort of —

Austin:        I mean, how many times have we —

Jack:        Bits and pieces.

Austin:        This is looking ahead, so this is a very, this is, I'm going to be as very lightly spoil, spoilery as I can be here. So, I'm talking about the, not the downtime that follows this episode, but the first mini-arc that follows that downtime. Uh, uh, which is called Marrow in the Field, Marrow in the Bone. How many times have we done a similar story to that? We did one in Twilight Mirage, we did one in Hieron, for sure.

1:04:29.0        Uh, —

Jack:        Oh, we did one in COUNTER/Weight.

Austin:        What did we do — uh, uh, yeah, I think COUNTER/Weight is, in some ways based — yeah, we totally did. In some ways, kind of it's based around it. Uh, it's both September, which you're talking about, and it's, Weight, right? Uh, this, this, this other place, the, the other place where things are good, right? Uh, the utopia, right? This is, this is not a — we've come back to this place again and again and again, and it's not the same place, and we do variations. I think the version of this that would suck would be like, if we were so afraid of doing, of like making someone think — it's why I'm happy to talk about it openly like this.

Jack:        Yeah.

Austin:        Because the alternative is to be like, “Oh, I can't do a seaside city because people are going to think that I'm doing Marielda.”

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        [laughing]

Austin:        And I don't want to fucking make that show. I want to be able to make a show that has a city by the sea —

Jack:        Yeah.

Austin:        Where there's districts and weird gods, because that's like one of the spaces that we have fun with, you know?

1:05:16.4        

Jack:        It's, it's a playful way of —

Austin:        Yeah.

Jack:        It's a way that can be playful.

Austin:        Yes, totally.

Jack:        Uh, I remember saying to you, like years ago, like, “Listen, I want to put another clarinet in a show after Marielda as soon as possible, because I don't want it to be like, ooh, it's a Marielda callback, or whatever.”

Austin:        [chuckling] Yes.

Jack:        No. If we're doing Marielda callbacks, you'll hear 'em.

Austin:        It's a clarinet. Yeah.

Jack:        It's a clarinet.

Austin:        Yeah.

Jack:        I, I wrote a track, uh, a couple of days ago, that's going to be coming up soon. And the opening of it just sounds so much like the Twilight Mirage. And for a moment, I was like, “Oh, it's too much like the Twilight Mirage.” And then I was like, “No, it's not fucking Twilight Mirage, it's —“

Austin:        [chuckling] This is, this is an upcoming Bluff City song, Jack?

Jack:        It's in a completely different episode. We —

Austin:        Yeah.

Jack:        Making music and telling stories together. This is…

Austin:        I, I wish that Bluff City arc had happened in the Twilight Mirage.

Ali:        [laughing]

Austin:        Can you imagine?

Jack:        Oh my god.

Ali:        We should, we have to play that game in every single setting.

Austin:        Uh-huh.

Ali:        I'm just — [laughing]

Austin:        Yeah.

Jack:        What is the... the Arc en Ciel theme park... children?

Austin:        Yeah. Yeah. You know what? They, they could have already, —

Jack:        In Twilight Mirage.

Austin:        They, yeah, we could have done that game there, 100 percent.

Ali:        Mm-hm.

Austin:        God. That, that, the arc was so good. Anyway, twilight — shoutouts to Twilight Mirage always. Uh, uh, let me answer the first part of this, because it's very brief.

Ali:        Well, I —

Austin:        Nope, go ahead, Ali, please.

Ali:        Well, I sorry, there's just — yeah. There's just a part of this that I want to speak on, because I feel like this is probably the best opportunity to do it —

Austin:        Uh-huh.

Ali:        While we're being sort of direct about this stuff. Because there was a time during the... the like, foundation of Sangfielle, when we were considering how much of a callback that we wanted it to be.

Austin:        Yep.

Ali:        And that's like, when I chose the... soldier class? It's not called that.

Austin:        The Hound.

Ali:        It is not at all called that. [laughing]

Dre:        Oh, huh.

Austin:        That's interesting.

Dre:        [chuckling]

Ali:        But yeah, I, 'cause we were — it, it felt like the thing that appealed to me the most in terms of like, what could gesture towards Hieron, and what sort of institutions of Hieron were still around.

1:07:10.0        And I was thinking at a time about the —

Austin:        Yeah, Golden Lance.

Ali:        Golden Sun. The Golden Sun, [chuckling] exactly. Uh, and then we swerved off of that idea pretty —

Austin:        But it's right there. The Hound is that. I think that it's like, you pick up the — you literally —

Ali:        It's 100 percent        .

Austin:        Pick up the badge and become a cop.

Ali:        [laughing]

Austin:        Which is like, there it is. [chuckles]

Ali:        Right, yeah, and like, you know, what — with that change in this new place, and then we swerved off of that, and I, like, basically just remodeled the kitchen of that whole class [chuckling] instead of like, choosing a new one. And sometimes I think, should I have, should I have, should I have swerved with the show more? But I think that like, Marn has such a specific, like... like, party — like, the skills and the, the like, moves that Marn has are so specific to like, what I wanted to be in the season anyway, in terms of just like, you can go into a place and someone will tell you about a problem and ask you to help it, or you will go into a place and somebody will like, think that you can help them.

Austin:        Right.

Ali:        Or were like —

Austin:        A lot of prepping the party as a, as a —

Ali:        [laughing] Right.

Austin:        Before you go into places, stuff like that.

Ali:        Yeah, sometimes you want to be the support class or whatever.

Austin:        Yeah, yeah.

Ali:        So like, sticking with that, despite like, really just not even being able to recognize where that idea started from at this point, uh, has been sort of fun.

Austin:        Yeah, totally. Real quick, on the Zevunzolia stuff, I'll, I'll, you know, I think that the, the... inspirations are fairly clear, in the sense that they're like are you know, we're doing a show about a particular, that's influenced by a particular sub, subgenre of horror and fantasy storytelling. And like, the secret society is a huge one. The idea of the like Rosicrucians, or, you know, every, every, every story in this genre space has some thing, whether it is the Illuminati or something else that is like, this group of people behind-the-scenes who are investigating something. Normal, or, or, or, I'm mostly interested in hermetic orders here, orders about knowledge and information, and orders that are about, uh, kind of secret societies that have a different epistemology than the rest of the world, a different understanding of what knowledge is.

1:09:25.1        And how you might obtain it. Uh, and different, a different view of ontology, and the way the world slash worlds are, if, if there is such a thing, as, as the way that they are. Uh, there is, there is an insistence there. And, and again, that, that comes out of Sangfielle being about this idea of, in a world of absolutely chaos, in, in a post-modern, once you accept post, post-modernity and the idea of the kind of free-floating signifier, the, the idea that like, meaning is socially constructed and not absolute or universal, how do you them socially construct meaning? How do you then both insist ton a personal identity that means something to you, uh, when you know that all of the signifiers of identity are, are not universal and are, in fact, you know, abstract and, and built. Uh, and then also, how does society insist on identity, not just personal identity, but meaning?

1:10:19.4        How does it insist on, on truth through the establishment of hierarchy and order and structure and all of that stuff? Which is not to say that [chuckles] that means that that process is — immoral or something. Meaning making is a thing we do as people. Uh, the meanings that we make, you can be critical of. Uh, and the ways in which meaning are made, and whether they're made equitably, and who gets a part of the meaning making, and all that stuff. And so I think that that runs through everything from the Rites of the Seventh Sun, through the shape and the structure of the Course, through Blackwick itself, through Sapodilla, through all the different places we've gone to, again and again, every story we tell in this season has been a group of people or a person insisting on what their identity is, or what, what meaning is, against something else, whether that is, uh, uh, Dayward YVE trying to separate himself from the identity that he feels he as unfairly [chuckles] inherited by being the descendant of and continuator of, uh, uh, colonial empire, uh, to the, the ways in which the identities of the people down in Yellowfield are complicated by their connection to Alaway. Uh, they are at once people and also shells waiting to be taken over by them.

1:11:36.2        Uh, and so, all, that's all the way through the whole show. So Zevunzolia, or the Rites of the Seventh Sun are that. Uh, Zevunzolia is a bunch of different things. Uh, it is, again, relooking at the place of places, the place outside of places, the, the, you know, the utopian ideal, uh, competing ideals of what that is, which has been in the show since forever, ever. Like, again, that's Hieron shit, that's Twilight Mirage, that's COUNTER/Weight. Like, it's all... it's one of the big ideas in Friends at the Table. It's all Roko's Basilisk, which I think I've called out specifically on a Drawing Maps, and certainly in an episode description. Uh, or maybe I didn't, I didn't [chuckles] call it out in an episode description, but if you don't know, Roko's Basilisk is a, was a thought experiment from, I don't know, 20 years ago, 15, 20 years ago? Maybe, maybe older than that. But I think it grew online. Uh, uh, of like... the very short version is, what if there would one day be an all-powerful artificial intelligence that would punish everybody who didn't help make it? Uh, it would therefore be in your best interests to devote the rest of your life to making it, so that you wouldn't be punished by it.

1:12:44.8        And so, Zevunzolia is a little bit — I mean, that's not what's happening with Zevunzolia explicitly, uh, but that's like, that's a, that's one of the seeds. Another seed is... uh, god, what is the name of the place? Uh... it's the, it is, for people who've read Berserk, it's Falconia in Berserk. I don't want to spoil anything about Falconia in Berserk. Uh, but reading Berserk this year, deeply influential. Uh, uh, Boss Baby voice, that's Berserk.

Ali:        [chuckles]

Austin:        That's me now playing every Dark Souls game, and, and reading anything that was inspired by, by Berserk, which is like 80 different things, honestly. Uh, but Falconia is visually definitely a touchstone, in terms of all of the white, and the structured, the ordered space, the beauty of seeing it, the, the ways in which it seems like a respite from the rest of the messy, terrible word, and the ways in which it's a bit of a poison pill. If you read Berserk, you — I'm not spoiling Berserk, people should, people should very [chuckling] cautiously undertake the task that is deciding, “Do I want to read Berserk?” Berserk is extremely dark, it's extremely heavy. It is filled with great, a great deal of graphical violence, very detailed, sexual violence, that I think by the end of it, it has, it's treating all of its characters as whole people who have very difficult lives, and who are agents in their own, uh, recovery and their own lives, and so, that's, but, you need to say that, you need to know that's what it is before you go into it.

1:14:21.3        It's not just like a fun [chuckles] adventure manga. Uh, it also becomes kind of a fun adventure manga towards the end, which is a weird place for it to go to, but there's a, it's an all-time great adventuring party. But one of the ideas, or one of the places, one of the settings in it, in the final few acts of the manga, uh, you know, rest in peace to Miura, uh, is Falconia which is this just like glistening, glittering city. And Zevunzolia definitely has its visual roots in that. Not its literal, like, the history of Zevunzolia is not the history of Falconia. Uh, but the ways in which it's complicated to want that place may be, there's some stuff there that's similar. So, those are my quick answers. Uh, I'll probably revisit those in the future. I don't, I don't — like, I don't know how much season is left, and I don't know that we'll get to see more Zevunzolia this season or not. Who could say?

1:15:12.6        Uh, but, but I guess we'll find out. Uh... Dre. Actually, wait this is about Dre, so let's not, let's do a different one.

Dre:        [laughing]

Austin:        Uh, Janine, can you read this from Lee?

Janine:        Yeah.

Austin:        Yes.

Janine:        After listening to the episode where Chine is rescued, I keep thinking about the trauma responses — sorry, about trauma responses — and how Chine seemed to be hiding it together — holding it together — despite being locked up for so long. Do any slash all of you consider your characters' responses to major or traumatic events before sessions, and plan out how to show them during play? Uh, and then think about how those responses would play out over a longer period of time? Or is it more spontaneous?

1:15:51.3        Thank you. The show has been a constant presence through some difficult times lately, and I really appreciate all the work you put into making it. All the best. That's very sweet.

Austin:        Thank you, Lee.

Janine:        Mm-hm. Also I can't answer this, because it is basically the next —

Austin:        Yeah.

Janine:        Chunk of what I do in the game.

Dre:        [laughing]

Austin:        We'll come back to it, we'll come back to —

Janine:        So, yes.

Austin:        Uh-huh — yes, you do consider it, is what you're saying?

Janine:        [chuckling] Yeah.

Austin:        Okay.

Dre:        Yeah.

Austin:        Yeah. People who can talk about it?

Ali:        But it's, it's like hard to do it beforehand, right? Because part of what we're doing is to reactionary to what happens? Uh... like I don't know if I go into a session that I'm going to fail a roll, and be gravely injured in a way that is going to stick with Marn throughout the rest of their session or whatever. That seems really hard to like, preplan. And I think also as a player, you need the time after a session to work through whatever that [chuckles] trauma was, while it was happening in a session. So I feel like a lot of those responses, we end up seeing in the length of the, the character —

Austin:        Mmm.

Ali:        Instead of thinking like, “Oh, if this thing happens to this person today, what is the best way for me to show that?”

Austin:        Yeah.

Ali:        And I think that's part of the, the — I also can't speak to [chuckling] what's, what Marn's plot beat at the moment is. But like, thinking about Marn living through that experience, seeing the way that her friends were affected by that experience, seeing the way that the like, people she sort of... indirectly interacted with would have treated her friends in that situation, has like, pointed her towards a goal, and all of that is from being like, horrified by it.

Austin:        Right.

Ali:        So like... I always feel like it's sort of an after-effect, is like... it's happening to us too, in terms of being like —

Austin:        Uh-huh!

Ali:        Okay, we have to think about this, in what ways is that going to stick with this person that I'm playing? So...

Austin:        Yeah. I think that's fair. I think that you can, you know, without even getting into what the Marn stuff is specifically, it's, it's, so much of it is grounded here, and stumbling into... being in a position where something could be done, both at the macro and micro levels. I think one of my favorite scenes here was Marn talking to Chine, uh, quietly, in that immediate moment of like, “All right, I can help calm you down and get you back on your feet and make sure you're okay.” And then in that more macro, plot-based thing, it's like, “Oh, you end the session, you end this arc by being like, I have all this stuff. What the fuck is all this stuff?”

Ali:        [laughing]

Dre:        [laughing]

Austin:        And that's, that's, a good place to be to start working through some of these bigger questions.

Ali:        Right.

Austin:        Any other [chuckles] trauma thoughts? Dre or Jack?

Dre:        Uh, I mean, just as far as addressing the point of like, Chine holding it together —

Austin:        Yeah.

Dre:        I mean, for me that was intentional, because like, throughout that whole arc, the biggest thing for me was like, Chine would not be the person — because me as player, looks at like, the traumas and is like, “Oh, okay, well I probably shouldn't try this or this or this move.”

Austin:        Yeah.

Dre:        Uh, because I can't roll as good on it.

Austin:        Uh-huh.

Dre:        And that is not, that is not how Chine thinks.

Austin:        Mm-hm.

Dre:        So —

Austin:        Chine is like, “I'm going to go do this thing.”

Dre:        Yeah.

Austin:        Until it, even if it's at the cost of, of making it harder to do other things, because you maybe did not anticipate how difficult it would be to do the thing in the state that they were in.

Dre:        And I don't know how much of that is, is necessarily specific to Chine and how much of that is, that's probably how most Cleavers are.

Austin:        Mmm, right. Right. Sure. Jack?

Jack:        Yeah. Uh, I think, yeah, I think I feel similarly to, to how, uh, Ali and Dre described it, in terms of like, uh, [chuckles] we don't necessarily know how rolls are going to go, or how episodes are going to go. And so, there's this real balance between trying to figure out, “Okay, hang on, what has happened, and how is this character going to react to that?” Without getting too much into my own head as a player, in terms of like, bogging things down, or, or, or getting too stuck in an individual moment.

Austin:        Mm-hm.

Jack:        I think, like most of the party, and I imagine like lots of people in, in Sangfielle, lots of bad things have happened to Pickman on sort of different scales, both in terms of time and in terms of intensity. Uh, and... some of that — Pickman is pretty single-minded. And some of the, she was really shaken by what happened at Bell Metal. Uh, and I think might not necessarily be able to articulate, uh,...

Austin:        Mm-hm.

Jack:        Even to herself, you know, what shook her there, and, and, and, what her, how that challenged her ideology or how that challenged how she feels about the world. Uh, and so instead just sort of funneled that. Uh... and I think this was, this was me trying to figure out what Pickman's response to this would be. You just funnel that — [connection cuts]

Austin:        No!

Jack:        That straight into like, “Okay, right, let's put a stop to this.” [chuckles] Let's find — there's clearly got to be a man responsible and we'll find him, and we'll end him.

Austin:        That's how the world works, right? There's a person —

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        Yeah, we'll find the guy —

Austin:        Who's responsible, and that's it.

Jack:        Yeah. Find the guy — oh, but I think, you know, if you were to say to Pickman, “Is that how the world works?” She'd go, “Well of course that's not how the world —“ you know.

Austin:        [laughing] Right, right.

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        Of course not. At the same time, do you know where Calen is?

Austin:        Yeah, uh-huh.

1:21:40.0        

Jack:        Uh, but there's, you know, there's, uh, there's a moment in, an episode that's coming up, which, again [laughing] I can't say —

Dre:        [laughing]

Jack:        This is sort of the theme of this.

Austin:        Yeah.

Jack:        Where, uh, I realized that Pickman has a, has a particular relationship with a, with a certain faction, uh, based on things in her past. Uh, and at the same time, I realized that Pickman probably wouldn't communicate that to anybody. She, she would just be like, “Well, this is something, this is something for Pickman to deal with, and I'm going to [chuckling] go and find the guy and kill him.” Uh...

Ali:        [laughing]

Austin:        [laughs]

Dre:        [laughing]

Austin:        Ugh.

1:22:16.7        

Jack:        And I think that, you know, I don't think that Pickman is very good at dealing with, dealing with her trauma, necessarily. She, she spends a lot of time with it, and she spends a lot of time sitting with it and moving around it, and I'm sure there's bits of it that she has, she's dealt with in ways that she feels, that she feels good with. Uh, but there are other bits of it that I think she's like... welp.

Austin:        Here we are. Yeah.

Ali:        [chuckles]

Austin:        Uh, let me not think about it. All right, uh...

Ali:        Oh, I — sorry.

Austin:        Nope, go ahead. No.

Ali:        Just speaking to this a little more, I just wanted to say, there's something about like the Heart healing system that feels like it, it sort of lets us spend the time with this, in a way that feels kind of fair to it, in terms of like, what the sort of like, “Damage” quote/unquote we're taking in terms of fallout.

Austin:        Yeah.

Ali:        Uh, where like, there's the [chuckles] frustrating thing of having to be like, “Well, I have to go to a specific pond to heal this thing,” or whatever.

Austin:        Mm-hm.

Ali:        But there's also like the, the difference in seeing Duvall be really tired and like, short with his friends, and then like, having to go through stitches is different from like, when the whole party went to that spa, and they sort of were able to like —

Austin:        Right.

Jack:        Oh, yeah.

Ali:        Think about what they had lived through, in a way that was healing.

Austin:        Yeah. And those places aren't always available.

Ali:        Right.

Austin:        Like I do like that about this, is that idea of like, sometimes you get, you go through something that like, upsets you in a deep way or hurts you in a deep way, and you don't have whatever you need to, to work through that available, because you're at work, like, I'm not going to have a free weekend for a couple weeks, you know what I mean? Or whatever.

Ali:        Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Austin:        And I, I don't — or I'm like, I'm stuck in, I'm not at my, my house. That sense of getting back to your own bed after a long trip away [chuckles] is 100 percent getting back to —

Jack:        Yeah, uh-huh.

Austin:        A landmark that has the haunt you need heal mind stress, you know what I mean?

Ali:        [chuckling]

Austin:        It's like, oh my god, I'm so — like, it's just the relief of finally getting back to my own space. Uh, and I do, I think that you, you've identified something that's way different than the way we think about like, stress in Forged in the Dark games, which is like, we get to a downtime, you clear your stress, right?

Ali:        Mm-hm.

Austin:        Maybe you overindulge by mistake. But like, there are fallouts people have had for — I mean, Duvall has been sitting on fascination —

Jack:        Yeah.

Austin:         [with luck] the whole season.

Ali:        [laughing]

Austin:        It will not go away. It's just rooted in who he his at this point.

Jack:        And I think, you know, uh, what you talked about, about being like, “You know, maybe I'm going to try [chuckles], I'm going to try and find my way to the haunt but I can't, because I'm at work.” Or like, “I need to, you know,” maybe for someone like Pickman, that feeling was there at one point, when she was on the train, where she was like, “Oh, this sucks, and I need to find the time to think about, think this through and deal with it.” And it's like there are no haunts on the train, and then 15 years pass. Uh...

Austin:        Yeah. Yeah.

Jack:        And it's like, by the end of that —

Austin:        How much fallout is on, is on Pickman's sheet that we've never seen?

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        That's — [chuckles] 15 years of going, “Can I get back to my own bed, please?”

Austin:        Uh-huh. Yeah, totally. All right. Two more questions, this one's quick. Kenan writes in and says, “Loving the show, I'm a very happy patron, et cetera. Here's my question: mechanically, what was the motivation behind the Null domain? Was it aI mechanical that conveniently fit a plot element? Or were you looking for another flavor of increasing difficulty for some rolls? Thanks for the great show.” It's A and B. Uh, the difficulty thing was very much the like, I can sense characters getting extremely strong, and I would love the ability to take, a way, a way to take a die away that isn't just fallout, or, uh, making it a risky or dangerous roll that feels grounded in physicality. Uh, two is, I wanted to get people, I wanted to put this in the hands of players, and see what they would do with it, uh, if there was a time when they would be like, “Actually, what if we just took away the domain of this thing?” And then, and mostly, the narrative thing about this is, it goes back to what I just said, which is, it is a response to the wilderness of the Course.

1:26:19.3        It is a response to the, the ungroundedness, the unanchored nature of meaning where, where, yes this castle in some places is haven and desolate, but maybe in other places it ends up being a cult, and in other places it's this other stuff, and that can be very scary. The ways in which the world can shift around you is scary to someone like the Rites of the Seventh Sun. They want to control it, and for me, the idea of obliteration as a, as a response to that arises very naturally from people like the Glim Macula and the Rites of the Seventh Sun, right? The, if, if we can't be sure of what it is, let's just empty it out. Let's just kill it. Let's kill the placeness of this place if it isn't going to be our place. Uh, that felt like a very natural way to illustrate what their ideology was, so I was like, yeah, let's do that. So, easy. All right. Last question, very important. This comes in from Chris. Nope, we already answered this one. This one comes in from Alex.

Ali:        [giggling]

Dre:        [laughing]

Austin:        What is each Sangfielle character's favorite food?

Ali:        Wow.

Dre:        Mmm.

1:27:24.6        

Ali:        I was thinking about this at the start of the recording, because I was just browsing the questions.

Austin:        Mmm, mm-hm. Not because of baloney tacos. No — that's why?

Ali:        [laughing] Uh, Marn still has that fish jerky that she got from her hometown.

Austin:        Oh, sure.

Jack:        Aw.

Austin:        Sure.

Ali:        And you know what? When you live in a tree that's growing out of a lake —

Austin:        Fish jerky.

Ali:        I bet you're into fish a lot.

Austin:        Yeah, sure.

Ali:        Yeah. Fish jerky all day. But then I was thinking, like... do I think Marn is a soup person? I don't know that Marn has like, the jaw to really eat soup comfortably, you know? [giggling] I think that Marn might be like... maybe like a big sandwiches person.

Austin:        Yeah, I could see that. Toss a sandwich in there.

Ali:        Uh...

Austin:        What about, what if Marn ate soup via straw? You know, a big straw.

Ali:        But then...

Janine:        Like a boba straw?

Austin:        Like a boba straw.

Ali:        You're like limited, you're limited by the soups that you can have.

Austin:        You are. What if you have a fork, too?

Ali:        Okay, but... [laughing]

Austin:        Oh, okay.

Janine:        [chuckling] Marn's traveling around with a boba straw and a fork. These are my soup-eating utensils.

Ali:        Yeah.

Austin:        Yeah.

Janine:        Normal.

Austin:        All right. I love — sandwiches. What type of sandwich?

Ali:        Oh, sure. I don't know why I keep going back to sausages with Marn. And I know that you —

Dre:        [laughing]

Ali:        Don't usually eat sausage — [snorts] [laughing]

Austin:        You can eat sausages on a, on a roll, you know, on a hamburger bun. A bun.

Ali:        I guess — yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dre:        Well, a hoagie roll.

Austin:        You can do a hoagie role with the sausage. Yeah, you could. Might could..

Ali:        Yeah. Yeah. Or you get like one sausage and you cut it in half, so you can have the flat side —

Dre:        Yeah.

Austin:        Yeah. Yeah.

Ali:        And then you have like your vegetables.

Dre:        Ooh.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Austin:        Love it. All right, that's Marn. We need Pickman, Es, and Chine, [chuckling] who's going to be a hell of a —

Jack:        Soup.

Austin:        Ah!

Jack:        It is soup, for Pickman.

Ali:        [cackling]

Dre:        Okay.

Jack:        It’s soup or beans.

Austin:        Mm-hm.

Jack:        Uh, yeah. You know when you're playing Red Dead Redemption 2, and you're like, the food that is available to me is coffee, or it's soup, or it's beans, that's it?

Ali:        Mm-hm.

Austin:        Uh-huh. That's Pickman.

Ali:        Mm-hm.

Austin:        A game —

Jack:        She's got a little cup, a little enamel cup.

Austin:        Yeah. Red Dead Redemption 2, specifically the camp scenes, extremely influential in Sangfielle, despite, I think, all of your distaste for Rockstar and our mixed feelings about that game, even, in places, uh, especially the conditions in which it was made, let's say, and some of the content inside of it — still, very influential on the aesthetic, I think going back to us 3 in a diner talking about the camping scenes in, in that game, and being like, “Our next season should do that.”

1:29:58.0        

Ali:        [giggling]

Austin:        So...

Jack:        I, uh, I remember — [chuckles] You told me that, uh, Morgan went to a, like a magic picture show or a [laughing] sword swallower or something.

Austin:        Uh-huh.

Jack:        And he just lost his whole mind. He was just, he loved it.

Austin:        Yeah. Yeah.

Jack:        Uh, and hes with like hootin' and hollering and everything.

Austin:        It's one of the best moments in that game, sure.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        Uh, and I feel like that kind of, yeah. I think that [laughing] I definitely aim for bits of Morgan in Pickman. I think every time Morgan is just like, “Fuck off, I don't...”

Austin:        [laughing]

Dre:        [laughing]

Ali:        [chuckling]

Austin:        Yes.

Jack:        Like you —

Austin:        Absolutely. That's Pickman.

Jack:        That's, uh, that's Pickman.

Austin:        That's big Pickman. Es. Food. Thoughts?

Janine:        I have a very specific answer.

Austin:        Mm-hm?

Ali:        Oh.

Janine:        Uh, as I think would, would be expected, maybe. Uh, I think Es, uh, well I — okay, so I think Es is the kind of person who maybe her answer changes pretty regularly.

Austin:        Mm-hm.

Janine:        Uh, and in part, that's probably because of like, Syntyche being there being like, “Okay, but have you ever had this?”

Austin:        Uh-huh.

Janine:        And then being like, “Oh, fuck, right.” Uh, I think her most common answer would probably be everlasting syllabub, which is like a classic old-timey desert.

Jack:        Wow.

Ali:        [giggling]

Janine:        Uh, it's kind of like a, it's kind of like a cup of flavored whip cream, is my understanding, sort of.

Ali:        Oh.

Janine:        Uh, it's like whip cream and sugar and sherry or like a fruit, fruit nectar.

Austin:        Sure.

Janine:        Lemon juice, lemon zest, nutmeg, and ten on top you can put like, toasted almonds, or you could put like, crumbled-up cookies, or... uh, you can use, you can use any kind of liqueur as a, as a base. And it's just like a light, fluffy, like, cup of whipped sweet stuff. Uh, I bet she's really into that.

Austin:        Syllabub, or solybubbe, or sullabub, or sullibib, or sullybub, or sullibub — there's no certain etymology, and considerable variation in spelling —

Janine:        [laughing]

Austin:        Has been known in England since at least John Heydood's Thersytes of about 1537. Quote, “You and I must walk to him, and eat a solybubbe.” The word occurs repeatedly, including in Sam Samuel Pepys's diary for July 12, 1663, “Then to Commissioner Petts and had a good Sullybub.” and in Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown at Oxford of 1865, “We retire to tea or syllabub beneath the shade of some great oak.” Love it. Fantastic.

Janine:        I also, I love that it's like, it's a dessert that is consistent throughout centuries in like, real history.

Austin:        Mm-hm.

Janine:        And that, I think, is reassuring to someone like Es.

Austin:        Mmm, sure. Yeah. Love it.

Janine:        You pop back in every century and they're putting something new on top, and it's just like, “Oh, you're doing that now, that's fun.”

Austin:        Right.

Dre:        I cannot believe I made the horrible and easily-preventable mistake of going after Janine.

Austin:        Yeah.

Janine:        [laughing]

Dre:        Because Janine has this really cool answer.

Ali:        [giggling]

Dre:        And I'm just going to say something dumb, like baloney taco, or something.

Austin:        [laughing]

Janine:        [chuckling]

Austin:        Baloney taco's very good. Uh, for a baloney taco. We know that that's not Chine's favorite, but...

Janine:        I like that baloney taco has the same cadence as apple tater. That's my favorite part of it.

Austin:        [laughs] Baloney taco. Yeah, uh-huh.

Janine:        [chuckles]

Jack:        [chuckles]

Austin:        Ugh... so what is it? What is Chine's fave?

Dre:        Man, uh...

Ali:        [giggling]

Dre:        That is a good question. Because there probably is one.

Austin:         Yeah.

Dre:        Uh... oh, okay. Uh, really thick crusty bread.

Austin:        Ooh.

Janine:        Mmm.

Dre:        Helps clean his teeth out, which...

Austin:        [chuckling] Perfect. There's all sorts of stuff in there, so you got to get something in there that has like a little extra pulp

Dre:        Mm-hm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Austin:        Yeah. Gotcha. Thank you very much, everyone, for answering these very difficult questions.

Ali:        Austin, I have an additional answer, but it's a non-verbal answer. [chuckles] I was wondering if you could pull something up on the stream for me?

Austin:        Yeah, I can, yeah, I can, yeah, go ahead, go ahead, what do you need? You got a link for me?

Ali:        Uh, also, this is annoying, but —

Dre:        [laughing]

Jack:        Yeah.

Ali:        I really want to insist that we watch at least 120 —

Janine:        [laughing]

Ali:        Or, one minute and 20 seconds of this video.

Austin:        Yep. All right. Yep. Count me, count me in.

Jack:        Ooh. Ooh.

Dre:        I will watch all of the —

Ali:        [laughing]

Dre:        This video.

Austin:        Count me in to, “capybara eat huge pumpkin ASMR.”

Ali:        [chuckling]

Austin:        I'm ready to go.

Ali:        3, 2, 1?

Austin:        Yeah, let's do a 321. Are we all ready?

Janine:        Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jack:        Yeah.

Dre:        Sure.

Austin:        All right, let me make sure I — let me turn off auto. YouTube has been putting me on auto quality recently —

Ali:        Oh...

Austin:        And it, in the middle of the video, will lower the quality.

Dre:        Oh, that's the worst.

Austin:        And it's like, stop doing it. I don't ever want you to do this. All right.

Ali:        [chuckling] All right. 3... 2... 1

[capybara video plays]

Jack:        They're coming over as soon as they see it's being set out for them.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Austin:        Oh, yeah. There are big capybara —

Janine:        They know what's up.

Austin:        Walking towards these —

Ali:        [chuckling]

Austin:        We gave capybara a huge pumpkin.

Jack:        And they did.

Austin:        And they did.

Jack:        They brought it in, on a kind of stretcher.

Janine:        As advertised.

Jack:        Oh my god, the capybara are going for it.

Dre:        [laughing]

Austin:        They just went all the way in, huh?

Ali:        [chuckling]

Dre:        We didn't weigh it —

Janine:        It looks so soft?

Austin:        It does look soft.

Janine:        Like, it's very matte. I wonder if they actually like, peeled it. Or something.

Austin:        Maybe.

Ali:        I think they're eating the skin, when you get further in this video you'll see there's like a  textural difference between…

Austin:        Okay.

Dre:        Sure sure sure.

Jack:        They're eating it so gently.

Austin:        Yeah, they're nibbling.

Jack:        There's no bickering.

Austin:        They're nibble — nibble, nibble, nibble, nibble, nibble.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Austin:        Some of them don't have a spot, though, I feel bad for those ones.

Ali:        You’ll see when you get to… [chuckling]

Dre:        Yeah.

Janine:        Yeah.

Austin:        Ali knows something about where this video goes, apparently.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Austin:        Oh yeah, you really can tell the difference, the inside-outside situation.

Ali:        Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dre:        I like —

Janine:        I wonder if they just like, took the outer layer off, though. Because it just, normally pumpkins are so shiny.

Ali:        Uh-huh.

Austin:        Maybe it's a different type.

Ali:        [cackling]

Janine:        Aw.

Dre:        Aw.

Jack:        Aw.

Austin:        Aw. Some capybara couldn't get close to the pumpkin. Just, big nose facing up. Talking about, let me get some of that pumpkin.

Dre:        Going to be your turn soon.

Ali:        [laughing]

Dre:        I do like the one capybara who gave up and is just getting fanned by that lady.

Janine:        Suggestion: hippos devour watermelon in one bite.

Austin:        Oh, I love that.

Janine:        Yeah...

Austin:        That's the, that's the play.

Dre:        [laughing]

Ali:        [giggling]

Austin:        Oh my god.

Janine:        I mean, you've got to know they're not going to let you go hungry. There'll be pumpkins after —

Dre:        Oh, that looks like a brain now.

Austin:        It does.

Ali:        [laughing]

Austin:        Goddamn. Big ol' teeth.

Jack:        I like the way this looks — there’s what looks like a Skyrim bounty board in the back of this video, as well.

Dre:        [laughing]

Ali:        [laughing]

Austin:        This is one of the bounties, this is one of the, one of the —

Ali:        Uh-uh. [laughing]

Austin:        Tasks...

Jack:         That one on the right is just sitting there.

Austin:        I know...

Ali:        [giggling]

Austin:        I'm, I'll, I'll wait my turn. There's enough pumpkin for all of us.

Ali:        [laughing]

Austin:        This close-up, really getting in on there.

Dre:        Oh, gotta lay down.

Ali:        Mm-hm.

Janine:        [laughing]

Austin:        Aw, it eats all its pumpkin, you've just got to go like, “I'm not done eating but I got to lay out a little bit.”

Janine:        [laughing] That big, slow bites.

Austin:        Uh-huh.

Ali:        [laughing]

Austin:        Oh my god.

Dre:        [laughing]

Ali:        [laughing] We've all been there.

Austin:        We've all been there.

Jack:        Oh yeah.

Janine:        You got to pace yourself. At a certain point, you got to pace yourself if you want to keep eating.

Austin:        That's right, yep, that's right.

Janine:        You got to slow down.

Ali:        [laughing]

Austin:        I just want to also note, the two suggested videos so far for this have been, “Turtles eat big watermelon ASMR,” and, “Hippos eat big watermelon ASMR.”

Dre:        [chuckling]

Ali:        [laughing]

Austin:        So... oh, this one's climbing up! He climb up!

Dre:        Mm-hm.

Ali:        Wow [laughing]

Jack:        But it's — [chuckling] Pumpkin mountain.

Austin:        Mm-hm.

Ali:        Mm-hm. Baby at every angle.

Austin:        I hope that these capybara also get to go into a hot water spring like the other ones do.

Ali:        [laughing]

Janine:        Yeah, they're probably good.

Jack:        Oh my god, the child, the child, the —

Austin:        Mm-hm. The child's approaching the capybara —

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        In the background.

Austin:        This is mine, says the subtitle.

Ali:        [giggling]

Janine:        [chuckles]

Austin:        It's sniffing at the child.

Dre:         Yo!

Austin:        Oh my god.

Janine:        There we go.

Ali:        [cackling]

Austin:        Now we're talking. Now we're talking.

Janine:        Uh-huh..

Jack:        The capybara's got its whole head in —

Janine:        It figured it out.

Austin:        Now we're talking. The whole capybara head is inside the pumpkin.

Dre:        [laughing]

Ali:        [laughing] That's where the good stuff is.

Austin:        Eating them seeds, eating that juice.

Dre:        Ugh...

Austin:        Getting that juice all over its face.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Austin:        Thank you for your support by watching our channel. And same for you. The same goes to you, listener.

Ali:        Yeah. Thanks for your support, for showing me this video.

Jack:        Wow.

Austin:        [chuckling] Yes.

Jack:        Yeah, holy shit. I could watch 10 of these.

1:38:27.4        

Austin:        Oh, —

Ali:        So anyway, uh, — [giggling]

Austin:        Ohdeerhunter in the chat says, “I have a plus-1 on all rolls until my next rest.”

Dre:        [laughing]

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Ugh...

Ali:        Imagine any of these characters coming down the stairs, seeing Marn sitting at a table...

Austin:        Oh my god.

Ali:        Just, not — no hands involved. [laughing] Just eating a pumpkin.

Austin:        Just eating a pumpkin? Ugh.

Janine:        Head entirely inside of the pumpkin.

Ali:        [laughing]

Austin:        Head entire — this is the thing, you do forget the jaw situation.

Ali:        Uh-huh!

Austin:        The snout —

Dre:        Yeah.

Jack:        Mmm.

Austin:        It's so big.

Ali:        Yeah.

Austin:        The whole face is out there like that.

Ali:        [laughing]

Austin:        You know.

Jack:        You, did you, you described Marn like, chewing on a piece of straw, right, Ali?

Ali:        Did I?

Jack:        Or was that only in fan art?

Austin:        That might be a fan art.

Jack:        I feel like I've seen some good fan art of Marn —

Ali:        I think that just — [chuckling]

Janine:        I feel like that was early in the season, that feels... maybe.

Ali:        It's accurate, but I don't know when it came out.

Austin:        Maybe... yeah. Uh-huh.

Ali:        Maybe the first scene, uh, I don't know. I think the first scene we saw Marn in, they were like organizing books.

Austin:        Mm-hm. Mm-hm.

Jack:        That sounds like Marn.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Austin:        It does, it does. Uh, all right, that's going to do it for us. As always, you can send your questions for future arcs to tipsatthetable@gmail.com.

1:39:37.5        Please do. Uh, it's good to get a bunch of them, so we can, we can see, what, what like multiple people are interested in, and just so we have a good range of stuff. The next one of these will probably be Marrow in the Field, Marrow in the Bone. We tend not to do downtime ones. But if you have questions also about The Jade Moon, you can put it there, and it'll filter into whichever's the appropriate follow up episode.

Ali:        Mm-hm.

Austin:        So, go enjoy that, enjoy the new episode that's coming out later tonight, after I write a description. [chuckling] Uh, and I hope everyone has a great night. Bye-bye bye.

Ali:        Bye.

Janine:        Bye.

Dre:        Goodbye.