Transcriber: Ida (@gentledownpour / ida.m.ailes@gmail.com)
[Music begins: Sangfielle by Jack de Quidt.]
[Intro — Recap]
AUSTIN: Let me pitch you this: The moon is always full. What changes over the course of the cycle of the moon is how big it is, and how close to the ground it seems.
SYLVIA: [chuckling] Okay, hell yeah.
Austin (as VILLAGER): Why were there three hundred funerals this year?
Austin (as VILLAGER): Hey, did you notice this repeats? I found this old book in the abbey, and it was happening even then.
JACK: The adults just, like, turn ashen-faced and say like, “You shouldn’t read that.”
Keith (as VILLAGER): I hate our rare town fruit!
JACK: The townsfolk put on costumes, and they put up a stage of some kind at one end of the town, just built out of wood. There is some sort of a ritual. You know, they maybe–
JANINE: Is this protective? If the miners are involved, is it actually the villagers trying to be like “Hey, weird force that takes miners sometimes, these guys are cool, okay?” [chuckling] Like, is it–
JACK: Yeah!
JANINE: Is it– Instead of trying to warn them, it’s trying to preserve them? Like, “Hey, they’re part of the community, we like these guys. It’s all good...”
JACK: And I think if Sylvi said we’re looking up at the fruit and they’re– it’s sort of starting to think about coming down, that’s– it’s gotta be coming soon.
DRE: But is there something that like, marks the number of times the mines have eaten everybody inside of it?
KEITH: The thought that I had was the, uh, the number of the giant redwoods.
AUSTIN: Ohh.
DRE: Yeah, so like, [Keith: It–] every time the mine eats somebody a new one starts growing in?
AUSTIN: The scrapes that have been, like, left in the walls of the cathedral are actually… they seem to be language. They seem to be old, ancient runes of some sort, it’s like– it’s been writing something down here. And we can hear coming from outside—which is weird, ‘cause it’s outside underground, or in this other realm, wherever the hell we [chuckling] are at this point—there is the sound of chanting. And I think we get him like, going to the window to kind of go to peek, but by then, uh… you know, one of the other people in this group, you know... calls him over, and he like, steps back away from the window, so we don’t get to see what… is causing that chanting. And the group goes over to this egg sac.
ALI: Yeah, is it like a river town that has just woken up, and like… there are just fish floating on the [laughing] the top of the… the water.
KEITH (overlapping): Yeah. It–
AUSTIN: The cut from the– One of these people puts the egg underneath—the egg sac—underneath some straw to hide it, and then the next morning is just like—a hundred and fifty miles away, and it’s people looking out at the river being like “What the fuck is happening?”
[Music ends.]
[Episode Start — 00:02:33]
AUSTIN: Welcome to Friends at the Table, an actual play podcast focused on critical worldbuilding, smart characterization, and fun interaction between good friends. I am your host, Austin Walker. As always this season we are putting content warnings in the description, so give those a look. Um, joining me today: Sylvi Clare.
SYLVIA: Hey! I’m Sylvia, you can find me on Twitter at @sylvisurfer, and you can other– find my other show Emojidrome wherever you get your podcasts.
AUSTIN: Art Martinez-Tebbel.
ART: Hey, you can find me on Twitter at @atebbel. And, uh, go buy our stuff on Fangamer.
AUSTIN: Ali Acampora.
ALI: Um, hi! You can find me at @ali_west on Twitter. If you like Star Wars you should go to @more_civilized, and if you like Friends at the Table you should go to @friends_table.
AUSTIN: There you go. Andrew Lee Swan.
DRE: Hey. You can find me on Twitter at @swandre3000.
AUSTIN: Janine Hawkins.
JANINE: Hi, you can find me on Twitter at @bleatingheart.
AUSTIN: Uhh, Jack de Quidt.
JACK: Hi! You can find me on Twitter at @notquitereal, and buy any of the music featured on the show at notquitereal.bandcamp.com.
ALI: And Keith Carberry.
KEITH: Hi, my name’s Keith J Carberry, you can find me on Twitter at @keithjcarberry, and you can find the Let’s Plays that I do at youtube.com/RunButton.
AUSTIN: As always, you can support the show by going to friendsatthetable.cash, we would really appreciate it. It’s what allows us to do this, and uh, we– Thank you all who do support us already. It’s really nice to be able to take the time that we are right now to do all the worldbuilding and everything like that, and we just couldn’t be doing that if we did not have your support.
Um… As last time, we’re continuing our game of The Ground Itself, a tabletop worldbuilding game about places over time by Everest Pipkin, and then– And we’re doing that as a prelude to our game of Heart: The City Beneath, a game by Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor. Um… Where’d we leave off? We advanced by a day. [chuckling]
[Several laughing, overlapping.]
AUSTIN: I remember some fish died.
SYLVIA: Yeah, it was my turn last, um…
AUSTIN: Yes.
SYLVIA: I think I described it as just a day of rest before the, um… Like, while the festival was approaching.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
SYLVIA: I… think– Yeah, we– We described, like, people playing with their kids and doing dress rehearsals for like, traditions that happen during the upcoming harvest of those big melon-sized pomegranates from the big trees.
AUSTIN: Right. Right.
SYLVIA: [chuckling] Um…
AUSTIN: And–
SYLVIA: And like… Uh, and then we had the egg thing happen.
AUSTIN: We had the egg thing, there was the… egg, uh… There was the, uh–
KEITH (overlapping): Yeah, the jelly egg.
AUSTIN: The jelly egg—I guess an egg sac—a weird egg sac that was found in an inverted cathedral that also included a weird dragon, um…
SYLVIA: You can see why I just wanted to say “the egg thing” and [amused] not struggle through it myself.
AUSTIN: [laughing] And then also, we had the zoom-out that Keith did with the river town on the other side of the mountain, with all the fish [Keith: Fish jerky.] dead in the water—fish jerky—um, and… Other big stuff, probably just as a reminder: This is a mining town, it used to be a town with an abby and—kind of a place where a bunch of nuns, and I guess monks, were. Um… Was it just nuns? I feel like it became just nuns.
JACK (overlapping): I think it was just nuns.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Okay.
KEITH: We only ever– Yeah, we only ever said nuns.
AUSTIN: Um… It is a– It’s a mining town now, in the kind of post… whatever this… we’re calling this thing that happened to the Heartland, um… where you dig up stuff from the past, but also stuff from potential futures, weird technology, strange, cursed objects, et cetera. Um, and… People, sometimes—it turns out, once a generation—go in there to do their mining work and they go missing, uh, permanently, and… It sounds like some young folks are like, aware of that, and want it not to happen anymore because of how it’s a terrible cost to keep the town going. But also each time it happens, a new big redwood tree, uh, grows, right?
KEITH: Right.
DRE: Mhm.
KEITH (overlapping): Which is good.
AUSTIN: And also they use... the seasonal harvest festival plays to try to convince people not to go in there, but it never works, it seems.
KEITH: Right. Yeah.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Uh…
KEITH (overlapping): Like in– Li–
JACK (overlapping): It’s a combination of–
KEITH (overlapping): We–
JACK (overlapping): Can– Oh, go on, Keith.
KEITH: Uh, I was gonna say, we didn’t z– We didn’t ever say whether it was… How direct it was, if it was allegorical, [Austin: No, but–] or if it was just like…
AUSTIN: Yeah. I bet it depends on who’s directing that year. [chuckling] You know?
KEITH: Oh, yeah, there– I bet there’s a bunch of different takes on…
AUSTIN: Yeah. [chuckling]
[Sylvia laughing.]
KEITH: [chuckling] ...how to warn the miners.
[Several laughing, overlapping.]
AUSTIN: Um… [drowned out]
JACK: So-and-so comes up and says [Austin: [chuckling] Yeah.] “We’re gonna warn them by killing one miner this year, at least.”
[Sylvia and Art laughing uproariously.]
JACK: [amused] I don’t think that happens. I mean, that guy’s a fucking weirdo.
AUSTIN: Yeah…
JACK: Um… No, I think, like, it’s partly warn– It’s partly kind of, like allegorical warning, and also partly like, um… Didn’t Janine– You mentioned it as like, we’re kind of trying to tell the mine that these people are okay? It’s sort of like, [Janine: Yeah, I–] “Maybe don’t eat them this time around, The Mine.”
JANINE: [coughing]
KEITH: Oh, right.
JANINE: Yeah, the idea was that, like… In the way that, like, a lot of the stuff we’re drawing on, inspiration wise, in terms of like, creepy plays with out-of-towners, usually those… usually we have stuff like that in movies like, you know, Wicker Man and Midsommar and stuff. Um… Those roles are are kind of sacrificial and ominous, [Keith: Yeah.] and I was thinking like, well, what if it was the opposite—what if it was like, they’re including these people in this– you know, in this… mummer’s play, is that what the… the thing was? Um...
ART: Mhm.
JANINE: Where… they’re including them, but they’re including them in a capacity of like, they want to protect them, they want to– [Keith: Right.] They want their inclusion to be, like, “They’re part of the community so you can’t have them,” that kind of thing.
ART: A reverse Midsommar.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JANINE: Yes.
[Dre laughing, overlapping.]
SYLVIA (overlapping): Midwintar.
AUSTIN: Um… Other– Other things, quick things.
SYLVIA (overlapping): [jokingly] Sorry.
[Keith laughing, overlapping.]
AUSTIN: Big on knife work, that’s like, a big social, cultural thing. Uh… trying to think if there’s any other big stuff here… There’s like, some tension between the townsfolk and the miners—the townsfolk being the folks who live here in a more permanent way, and… and– versus the folks who arrive to do the mining and then– and kind of leave. It’s an interesting relationship, I think, I’m not gonna try to summarize it here, you should just go back and listen.
Um, and then… I think there’s other bi– And then a couple of the main religions are here. The, um, Triadic Pyre—the kind of fire church that… It’s like a fire and death [chuckling] church—has a cathedral in town. Um, or has a church in town, I don’t know how big it is, we haven’t really discussed. And then the, uh… the Caravan—uhh, the Caravan of the… First Coin, or something like that? I already forget my own shit, um… Yeah, the Caravan of the Coin—has like an outpost, a kind of... market outpost that they arrive at sometimes. Um, and then there is–
JANINE: Also, the moon gets bigger.
AUSTIN: Also, the moon gets bigger. That’s not a here thing, that’s an everywhere-in-the-Heartland…
JACK (overlapping): And the sea gets thicker.
AUSTIN: Yes. Uh-huh. Yeah, the sea gets thicker as the moon gets bigger over the course of… over the course of lunar months.
[Somebody laughing.]
AUSTIN: Um… And the sky–
KEITH (overlapping): Outside of the Heartland, does the moon not look like it gets bigger?
AUSTIN: We don’t– I don’t know.
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: We haven’t been there.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Probably not, right? That seems like a–
JANINE (overapping): What if the whole Heartland gets thicker, what if that’s what’s happening?
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah, exactly. True. True.
JACK (overlapping): Is it’s actually, the Heartland is lifting up and everyone outside of it is just like, “What the fuck?”
DRE (overlapping): Ohhh!
AUSTIN: Oh! Here’s a thing. Wait a second, really quick.
DRE (overlapping): I could [drowned out].
JANINE (overapping): [chuckling]
AUSTIN: I made all that fucking big deal about the moon and the stars and all that shit—what’s up with the sun? Is there a sun? What do– What’s the sun situation?
ART: Mmm.
DRE: That’s a good question.
JACK: Let’s figure it out. Um...
ART: Well, the sun shouldn’t get as close as the moon, or it would be bad, I think.
JACK (overlapping): Nooo.
KEITH: We’re… We’re ta– Well, we’re talking about the sun that sometimes is… is like, green, right?
AUSTIN: I don’t know. We haven’t talked about the sun being green, we’ve talked about the sky being green—or yellow, or red.
DRE (overlapping): Yeah, the sky is green.
KEITH (overlapping): Right.
AUSTIN: But we’ve never talked about the sun in any capacity as far as I recall.
JANINE: [sarcastic] I want six suns, always… always spinning. It’s like a ring of [amused] constantly spinning lights in the sky.
[Short pause.]
AUSTIN (overlapping): Listen… that’s kinda fun.
JANINE (overapping): [chuckling] That’s not a serious suggestion.
DRE: Yeah, I don’t hate it.
KEITH: I think it’s a series of suns that spells out insults.
AUSTIN: [chuckling] We’ve gone too far.
[Keith laughing.]
AUSTIN: Six suns isn’t bad. And what if like– What if they contract and… and… the other– the opposite—expand, away from each other.
JANINE: Isn’t that another word for getting bigger and smaller like [chuckling] the moon?
AUSTIN: Yeah, but they don’t– they don’t do that. They’re–
JANINE (overapping): Oh, you mean the ring, like the ring spreads and shrinks.
AUSTIN (overlapping): I’m saying they’re orbits, the ring of the… Yeah. Yeah.
ART: But they’re probably smaller than our sun?
AUSTIN: [pausing] Why?
ART: ‘Cause six… Six sun-size suns in the sky would be really a lot.
JANINE (overapping): I mean, we could be further away from them.
KEITH (overlapping): Well, put ‘em further back.
JANINE (overapping): They’re smaller in the sky.
KEITH (overlapping): Right, that would make them smaller.
AUSTIN (overlapping): That’d be– That’s what Art is saying. Well, I guess– Yeah.
KEITH (overlapping): Oh, right, okay.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Art meant–
ART (overlapping): I don’t care about the literal size, I meant the relative size.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: Got it.
JANINE: What if at noon, they’re all close enough together that they look like one sun, [Austin: Ooo.] but the earlier or later in the day, they just like, spread out so they all set at different points around like, a plane of view.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Love it. Yeah.
JACK: Oh my god, does this mean that you have shadows like when you’re on like, a football pitch, and there are all those floodlights, and you have like, six shadows?
AUSTIN (overlapping): [decisively] Yeah. It does mean that.
JANINE (overapping): [amused] It’s probably very confusing.
AUSTIN: Yeah. And– Okay, here’s the other thing: Do we then still have a consistent night and day cycle? Do they all… Do they…
JANINE (overapping): They all set at the same time, just in opposite directions.
JACK (overlapping): Yeah.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Okay. That’s what I wasn’t sure of.
JANINE (overapping): Just in all the cardinal directions.
JACK (overlapping): Coordinated.
JANINE (overapping): Oh, god, what if the cardinal–
ART (overlapping): So it’s on six different arcs.
JANINE (overapping): Yeah, what if the cardinal directions, instead of being like, north, south, east, it’s like, you know—sun one, sun two, sun [chuckling] three…
AUSTIN (overlapping): Uh-huh, love it.
[Jack laughing.]
AUSTIN (overlapping): There’s only six though, so that means we don’t talk about…
ART (overlapping): My only problem with that is that we have to know it.
AUSTIN (overlapping): We don’t have to talk about south-west and south-east ‘cause those two don’t have suns associated with them somehow.
[Janine and Jack chuckling.]
AUSTIN: All right. Oh, yeah, that’s fun.
[Draw #1 — Art — 00:12:30]
AUSTIN: Um… Okay. We should draw a card, right? We should pick up a new… a new turn. Who– So Sylvi went last, it is now Art’s…
ART (overlapping): So it seemed to… be me.
AUSTIN: ...turn, yep. So… I think you’re… you’re drawing a card.
ART: I have the second Nine.
AUSTIN: The second Nine…
ART: [reading] “Someone, or a group, leaves our place.”
AUSTIN: Ooo.
ART: “Who ire–” [stumbles] [miming spitting] Puh! [reading] “Who are they, and why are they going? What do they take with them, and what do they leave behind?” [pausing] Is it… Is it pushing too much at the edges of what we wanna do here to say that the– that this generation of miners decides to believe the plays?
AUSTIN: [thoughtful] Hm.
ART: [pausing] You could say yes, to that, that would be…
AUSTIN (overlapping): I’m not sure.
AUSTIN: I mean, it’s– It’s… It gives us a much different vibe going forward. It might– Here– My actual thing is, does it undercut a tension that we want… to still play with for the next… however many turns?
JACK (overlapping): Yeah, I wonder if…
ART (overlapping): We’re– We’re trading it for a new tension.
AUSTIN: Which would be “Uh-oh, we don’t have a local economy anymore, ‘cause everyone left”?
ART: Yeah. And that’s not as fun.
JACK (overlapping): Plus, do people need to go into the caves?
AUSTIN (overlapping): Also– Right, also…
JACK (overlapping): What happens if the miners don’t get eaten?
AUSTIN: [chuckling] Yeah, what happens if we don’t… if the miners don’t get eaten, will the cave be mad at us? [chuckling]
[Art and Keith chuckling.]
AUSTIN: I’m curious what other people think.
ART: I’ll also– I’m also of course looking for new… If you have a different group, I’d love to hear it.
AUSTIN: Also, it could be one person. It’s “someone or a group.” We could invent someone interesting to leave here. We just don’t have many characters quite yet, you know? Is there some sort of village elder, is there someone with religious background, is there… a lead miner?
KEITH (overlapping): Uh… There was that one last nun.
AUSTIN: There is that last nun, who was running the, uh… the congregation, the kind of, uh... larger pantheon faith’s chapel.
DRE: Uhh, is there still any creature in the cave?
AUSTIN: [stammering] Presumably there’s more than one general creature.
[Ali chuckling.]
AUSTIN: We don’t know if the quote-unquote beast and… and their child [chuckling] are still in there, right? Um, we know there’s a dragon underneath [chuckling] the church. [chuckling] Does the dragon leave? Loudly?
ART: Hah!
AUSTIN: Um…
ART: I like the nun leaving.
AUSTIN: Okay.
ART: Um… Do we have– Do you have a name– Do we have a naming… Do we have anything on names for this?
AUSTIN: No– Uh, no, you’ll have to… you’ll have to come up with it. I know you keep getting those name things. No, you don’t have to name this nun.
ART: Um–
AUSTIN: This is just– It’s a nun from the… from the Count– or, from the, um… What is the name of th– Boundless Conclave. Um…
KEITH: Yeah, maybe she doesn’t use her name.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ART: Nuns of the...
AUSTIN (overlapping): She’s just Sister.
ART: Sister.
AUSTIN: Yeah…
ART: Um...
AUSTIN: She probably has some name, right? She probably has like, a… She’s Sister, um, Marisha.
ART: Marisha?
AUSTIN: M-a-r-i-s-h-a. Yes.
ART: Great. Um…
AUSTIN: Like Marsha but with an “i” in there.
ART: Sure, or Mariska but with an “h” instead of a “k”.
AUSTIN: Correct, yeah.
ART: Got it. Um… Yeah, I think– I mean, because it’s only been a day, to say that she leaves kind of suddenly is sort of baked into the prompt—but I think to like, a general bit of surprise, she like, gets up, packs her things—not her like, uh… not like, vestments or anything, but you know, the things a nun would have. Nun stuff, you know. Personal effects. And, um… And sort of just like, sets out, almost at like, first light. Like, no one’s really eaten breakfast. Um, and she just heads… north. Just due… I’m sorry, due Sun A. Um…
AUSTIN: You– North is what you want to say. I– We have to be able to point something on the map here.
ART: Yeah, right this way, toward– straight toward the S.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Okay. Yeah. In “Concentus,” okay.
ART (overlapping): In “Concentus.”
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ART: Um…
AUSTIN: Um…
ART: And there’s like, a little bit of confusion… Um, but we just– But like, as the day goes on, it becomes clear that the thing that she left behind is, um… a successor.
AUSTIN: Oo, okay.
ART: And that’s usually not how this goes. The last person... The next-to-last nun didn’t… just up and leave, they sort of just like, lived here their whole life, and then retired and stayed.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
ART: But, um... Marisha left.
AUSTIN: What is the– Who is their successor?
ART: Um, their successor is… Another lady…
AUSTIN: [amused] Okay. Is this–
ART: The new last nun.
AUSTIN: Is this nun– Is the new nun also from this same, like, abbey beast order, or is this from a different concla– one of the many hundreds of other deities associated in this kind of vast conclave of them?
ART: I think this is someone from like, a different deity, and perhaps like, kind of like… I don’t wanna be like, “Oh, the deity that everyone clowns on,” because there’s probably a lot in all of these, and… you know…
AUSTIN: [amused] Uh-huh.
ART: Let… Let ye who… [pausing] Um, but like, it’s– It seems like a really not important person to have been left in charge here.
AUSTIN: Right. And explicitly, this is the last person connected to this old abbey leaving, and not leaving anyone who has whatever knowledge may have been passed on, like, still here.
ART (overlapping): Yeah.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah. Okay.
ART: And leaves it in the care of someone whose chief deity is you know, the god of… when to… when to blow out the candles at night.
AUSTIN: [amused] Right. It’s when you go to bed. That’s–
ART: [amused] Yeah, the god of bedtime.
[Keith laughing extensively, overlapping.]
ALI: [defensive] That’s an important god!
DRE: Yeah, bedtime’s important.
ALI: Yeah, routine is like r–
ART: Slumbous, the god of bedtime.
[Ali and Dre laughing.]
KEITH: God…
AUSTIN: [amused] Write it down: Slumbous. The god of bedtime.
[Keith laughing, overlapping.]
ALI: [quietly murmuring] Mmm… I’m praying to that guy.
AUSTIN: Fan favorite character, Slumbous.
[Keith groaning from laughter.]
ART: He’s got his big, crooked hat.
Someone: Why is–
AUSTIN: Everyone loves Slumbous.
DRE: Mm.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Listen, it’s a day of rest, right? That lines up.
KEITH (overlapping): [wheezing] The god of sleep who’s always wet.
AUSTIN: It’s a day of rest.
[Sylvia laughing, overlapping.]
AUSTIN and DRE (overlapping): [mock disgust] Uuugh.
SYLVIA (overlapping): Hate it.
AUSTIN: No… Uh, spell Slumbous for me.
ART: Um… sure. He’s French.
AUSTIN: Oh, okay. Sure.
DRE (overlapping): [dubious] Hmm.
[Sylvia and Art chuckling.]
SYLVIA: [amused] I love it, but I’m mad about the “u”.
JANINE: I’m sorry, by “French,” did you mean “British”?
[Sylvia laughing.]
DRE: God damn.
SYLVIA: I love that– [coughing]
JANINE: [amused] ‘Cause that’s not…
ART: It’s been a long time since I took French!
JANINE: In French that’d be [in a French intonation] “Slum-boose,” [laughing] so that’s…
[Austin, Art, and others laughing, overlapping.]
ALI: Even better…
JANINE (overapping): Or “Slum-boo,” I think maybe the “s” would be silent. The “s” would be silent.
KEITH (overlapping): Well, but it got–
AUSTIN (overlapping): [quietly, in a mock French accent] “Slum-bou.”
ALI (overlapping): Ohhh…
DRE (overlapping): [quiet] I do like “Slum-boose.”
KEITH (overlapping): It got Concentusized, when…
[Ali and Dre laughing, overlapping.]
AUSTIN (overlapping): [in a mock French accent] “Slummm-bouse!”
ART: Yeah, but this is a frontier town, so they kinda pronounce it… you know, like “Vie-enna, Ohio.”
KEITH: Right.
JANINE: Eww…
[Sylvia laughing, overlapping.]
AUSTIN (overlapping): Oh, I hate that.
DRE (overlapping): [quiet] Mhm.
ART (overlapping): In the cities it’s “Slum-boo,” but out here it’s “Slum-bose.”
DRE: “Ver-sails, Kentucky...”
ART: Yeah.
[Sylvia laughing, coughing.]
ART: I started off that turn kinda rocky but I think I got it– I brought it around.
[Sylvia laughing.]
ALI: Yeah. Yeah.
[Dre laughing, Ali chuckling.]
AUSTIN (overlapping): [typing] “New attendant…”
ART (overlapping): ...with “Slum-boo” and his country cousin “Slum-bose”.
[Austin laughing, Sylvia groaning from laughter.]
ALI: [typing] “New attendant, the nun of Slumbous.”
DRE (overlapping): [mock New York accent] Ayy, I’m slumbin’ ova’ here.
ALI: God—[continuing typing] “God of putting out the candles at night.”
[Keith laughing.]
JACK: [joking] Sorry, Austin, “god of when to put out the candles at night.”
AUSTIN (overlapping): [jokingly apologetic] Sorry. [quietly] You said when.
JACK (overlapping): [sarcastic] “Practicing when...”
KEITH (overlapping): Correct, it’s actually important to put out the candles.
AUSTIN (overlapping): [quiet] Yeah.
KEITH: When is not important.
ALI: [desperately] They’re both important! [trailing off into laughter]
AUSTIN (overlapping): [sarcastic] Uh-huh.
[Art and Keith laughing.]
AUSTIN: I think we found the real Nun of Slumbous over here.
JACK (overlapping): Yeah, I was gonna say… [trailing off]
[Dre, Art and Keith laughing, overlapping.]
KEITH (overlapping): This is [drowned out]
AUSTIN (overlapping): [joking] Ali, you’re being a real Nun of Slumbous right now, okay?
[Art, Keith and others laughing, overlapping.]
ALI: [desperate] It’s important!
ART: [coming down from laughter] Ohhh my god…
KEITH: [laughing] Just– Any time when you’re not already sleeping… [Art laughing] is when to [chuckling] put out the candles.
AUSTIN (overlapping): I’m gonna light a candle. This one’s for Slumbous.
ALI (overlapping): [amused] Okay, you’re not gonna pray to Slumbous tonight, and you’re gonna try to put out your candles, and they’re not gonna go out, and what are you gonna do about it?
KEITH (overlapping): I’ve got one lit.
AUSTIN (overlapping): [frantic] That’s not what Slumbous does, [Ali laughing] Slumbous does not turn off– turn, uh– put out the candles, that’s a different deity.
ALI (overlapping): I just– No, you’d just get cursed, though. That’s what you get for being disrespectful.
JACK: Ohh, yeah, people curse each other all the fucking time out here. [chuckling]
AUSTIN: You want me to respect every god?
JANINE (overapping): You’re faithful to Slumbous, and as a backup plan you get faithful to Snuffous, who will take care of the candles if you can’t, if you forget.
[Ali and others laughing.]
DRE (overlapping): [approving] Ohh!
AUSTIN (overlapping): If I forget about it!
JANINE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: This is why– This is why people join the Conclave, this is why. They go, “Listen, I don’t know, if I fucking don’t worship the right god– I just– All of ‘em." Yeah– “Thank you everybody. You– I got through the day, it’s all y’all.” That’s it. Why not?
ART: [amused] Slumbous who tells me when to go to sleep, [Jack chuckling.] [chuckling] Snuffous who tells me how to– to put the candles out, they’re all important.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Love it!
JACK: It’s a real big “tucking every single one of your stuffed animals into bed so that the others ones don’t get upset” vibe in [chuckling] the Conclave.
[Sylvia and Dre laughing, overlapping.]
AUSTIN: Oh, I love a pantheon of just petty jealousy and rivalries to different candle gods.
JACK (overlapping): ...and Mr. Bear, you get tucked into bed, [Dre: Awh…] and the little dolphin, you get [chuckling] tucked into bed…
[Ali laughing, overlapping.]
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah…
DRE: Awww…
KEITH: There’s two now. Now there’s two.
AUSTIN (overlapping): I love– Yeah.
KEITH (overlapping): There were… six.
AUSTIN: I love how we have multiple polytheistic faiths, and the other one is like [theatric, over-serious voice] “We are the Disciples of the Triadic Pyre!”
[Jack chuckling.]
AUSTIN: [continuing the voice] “We worship Fulmina, Flamespark and– and the Smiling God of Death ashen remains!” and then we have Slumbous and Snuffous over here…
ALI (overlapping): [quiet] Mhm…
[Keith laughing.]
[Draw #2 — Jack — 00:22:00]
AUSTIN: Miserable… Anyway, we should keep moving. Uhh, Jack, you’re up.
JACK: Okay, I am going to draw a card here… I have an Ace of Hearts!
ART: Ooo!
JACK (overlapping): This is…
AUSTIN: This is our second Ace, or second One.
JACK: ...our– No, it’s our second Heart. Right?
AUSTIN (overlapping): It’s the second One.
ART (overlapping): No, it’s the second Ace.
JACK: Oh, our second Ace.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JACK: Yeah, you’re right, it’s not suits. Okay… This is… Uh, it is suits. [reading] “It is time to plant “the seedlings.””
AUSTIN (overlapping): [amused] In quotes.
JACK (overlapping): [reading] “What are “the seedlings”, and where are they planted? What is the harvest that is hoped for?”
ART: By putting it in quotes it makes me think it’s a band.
AUSTIN: Or a bad thing. “It’s time to plant… [conspiratorial] the seedlings…”
ART: I’m like [to the tune of (Theme From) The Monkees by The Monkees] “Hey, hey, it’s the Seedlings…”
[Sylvia laughing.]
AUSTIN: Right, [chuckling] sure.
ART (overlapping): [continuing tune] “People say we’re digging around.”
DRE (overlapping): [to the same tune as Art] “People say we’re seeding around.”
ALI (overlapping): [murmuring quietly] Mmmm…
AUSTIN: [laughing] Uh-huh. [chuckling] No one knows The Monkees anymore, Art.
ART (overlapping): [laughing] I invented that.
DRE (overlapping): Fucked up.
KEITH (overlapping): I know The Monkees. I love that. I–
[Austin laughing.]
ART: If you’re listening to this and you don’t know what that’s from, I invented it.
[Ali laughing.]
DRE: [quiet] Uh-huh.
[Austin laughing.]
JACK: Okay, we can cut this out, if needs be, but I wanna get a temperature check on a… on a gross monster. How would people feel about a monster made of teeth?
ART (overlapping): It’s not my favorite monster.
Someone (overlapping): I like it.
SYLVIA (overlapping): I think it’s great.
JACK: W– wait… Would any–
AUSTIN: Oh wait, Ali– Did Ali go [disapprovingly] “Mmm…”
ALI: I’m gonna do that every time, I’m sorry, [laughing] don’t use that as a basis.
AUSTIN: Okay.
JANINE: Which teeth?
JACK (overlapping): Would any–
ALI: Important question.
DRE: Ohh, good question.
JANINE: Front or back?
ALI: [confused] What?
JACK (overlapping): All.
KEITH (overlapping): Molars, canines?
JANINE: Or side. Or just all. Misc?
AUSTIN (overlapping): Misc.
JANINE (overapping): Assorted?
AUSTIN: Yeah. [amused] “Teeth, open parentheses, assorted.”
[Janine chuckling.]
KEITH (overlapping): It’s more about the teeth that it doesn’t have.
ALI (overlapping): I’m now curious about… Like...
KEITH (overlapping): Are there any teeth it doesn’t have?
ALI (overlapping): If Jack had said, like, “Just back teeth,” would you have been like, no? [laughing] Like, what’s the– [laughing]
JANINE (overapping): I just–
DRE (overlapping): I think– Actually, I think if it was all molars I’d be more freaked out.
ALI: Sure.
DRE: I can’t why. [sic]
ALI: Yeah, okay.
JANINE: I think if it was all canines, I think there could be a confusion about the… the source and intent of the… you know. It could look– It could look more animalistic.
KEITH (overlapping): And I think if it was all front teeth, it would look kinda silly.
JACK: That’s true.
AUSTIN (overlapping): So what are we doing with teeth?
[Someone chuckling.]
JACK: Are we pro teeth in this instance? We’re okay to have a tooth monster?
KEITH (overlapping): Yes.
AUSTIN: I think so.
KEITH: Yup.
JACK: Okay, uh, the suns are all high in the sky. They look like they’re all one sun at this point, right, Janine?
JANINE: Uh, if it’s noon, yes.
JACK: Yeah. And, uh, out on the edge of the lake shore, there is a disturbance in the water. Like, bubbles rise from the water, and the guards on the lake, you know, sort of realize what is coming, ’cause it sort of happens at about this time of year, and they retreat back up the beach towards the, uh… towards the little town. And out of the water come two humanoid, uh, beasts. I’m sort of thinking about like—you know old fairytale trolls are very lanky?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JACK: And Bloodborne does this very well—like, long limbs, uh, sort of semi–
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah, limbs down to the knees. Or like, hands down to the knees.
KEITH: Mhm.
JACK: S– Yeah, limbs do– Hands down to the knees, semi-bent over, uh, like, quite small heads for the… for the sort of lankiness of the body. Um… And these creatures are entirely made out of teeth. As far as we can see there’s no flesh or anything under them, um… They are all kinds of different humanoid-looking teeth, of different, uh… You know, some of them are pearly white, and some of them are getting yellower, and some of them in the circles near their eyes and mouth are kind of dark and blackened.
And these creatures—everybody has now retreated and is watching through spyglasses and telescopes. And these little creatures—uh, “little creatures”—these creatures sort of lope up onto the muddy shore of the lake, and with a long finger make a little hole, like you’re pricking out seedlings in the, uh, mud of the lakeshore. And they open their hands to reveal sort of loose teeth in their hands, and they plant them, one by one, in these little seedling holes. And they, uh, they close the seedling holes back up, and then they sort of slink back into the water without a sound.
And I think this is some sort of, um… sort of opposite harvest ritual. I think that some creatures in the lake are, I don’t know, making more creatures? I’m not sure what they’re doing here, but they have planted seeds, uh... which is, the two weird tooth trolls have planted fifteen or twenty tooth seeds in the… uh… in the mud.
KEITH (overlapping): Each or total?
JACK: Mmm, I think probably total. I sort of see them having, you know, maybe ten teeth in their– loose teeth in their hands, um… that they plant. [reading] “Where are they planted?” Down in the mud by the lake. [reading] “What is the harvest that is hoped for?” Well, for whom? I suppose the tooth trolls want more tooth trolls, and I don’t really know what the villagers’ response is. I’m happy to leave that to somebody else. I think their current response is they’re up on the… they’re up on the little rise, the– maybe the sort of, um… the little bluff overlooking the… the muddy lakeside, and they’re sort of like,
Jack (as VILLAGER): Well, fuck, the tooth trolls have planted the teeth. [deep breath] How’s everybody doing?
Keith (as VILLAGER, overlapping): That time of year.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Right. Love it.
Jack (as VILLAGER, overlapping): It’s that time of year.
Austin (as VILLAGER): Here we fucking go again.
AUSTIN: [chuckling]
KEITH: Or is this an unknown?
JACK: [pausing] Oh, they– This has happened before, I think.
KEITH: Okay.
JACK (overlapping): Um… I think–
KEITH (overlapping): Because there– There’s– Is– There’s a first time that the teeth trolls plant their teeth.
JACK: Yeah, totally. And I can– I think I can– Well, no. I feel like the rules of this game mean that I can’t tell you what happened the first time, that would be moving outside of the…
AUSTIN (overlapping): Mm, you’re right, that would be moving back, you’re right, it’s a frame.
DRE (overlapping): Mhm.
AUSTIN (overlapping): But you– What’s–
JACK: But I’ll put it this way: Some stuff happened the first time. [chuckling]
AUSTIN: Well like, what we know at least is, people are watching with looking glasses from up on the hill, or– uh, in the town—and are not, like, ringing the bell to go get the guard or whatever, right? Um… There seems to be–
JACK (overlapping): Yeah. Well, uh, but they’re also not down on the beach.
AUSTIN: Right. They’re also not being like,
(as VILLAGER): [enthusiastically] Yo, tooth troll! How you doin’? How– How’s the fam?
ALI: [laughing]
(as VILLAGER): Good harvest this year.
[Ali laughing.]
Austin (as VILLAGER): What’s good? Yeah!
[Austin chuckling.]
Jack (as VILLAGER): Yeah, nice one!
Austin (as VILLAGER, overlapping): [impressed] Fifteen to twenty! Look at you, okay!
Jack (as VILLAGER, overlapping): [approving] Wow, good work, tooth trolls!
[Ali laughing.]
Austin (as VILLAGER): [impressed] All right!
JACK: Like, blackened eyes turn in your direction. [chuckling]
AUSTIN: Exactly. [laughing]
(as TOOTH TROLL): [growling]
(as VILLAGER): [intimidated] Okay, okay, o– Backing up, okay.
AUSTIN: Um… All right. Love a tooth troll.
ART (overlapping): Some people are just fans for the tooth trolls. [sic]
[Draw #3 — Ali — 00:28:25]
AUSTIN: [chuckling] Uh… Ali, it is your turn.
ALI: It sure is. That’s a Four of… doesn’t matter.
AUSTIN: Doesn’t matter. Is it our– Is it our second Four? We’ve got a choice again.
ART (overlapping): That’s a choice one!
ALI: [mildly excited] Ohh, a choice– [flat tone] Oh, these are hard. Okay, my choices are: [reading] “”The bar”,” [laughing] in quotation marks, [reading] “opens their door to all. What is “the bar” and who is a regular there? ”The church’” [chuckling] changes a core mandate. What is “the church”, and [chuckling] what about their worldview has shifted?”
AUSTIN (overlapping): Whew… [chuckling]
ALI: Um, well, we’ve had a church change [laughing] today, so...
AUSTIN: We have. [laughing] “Oh my god, I can’t believe the nun of Slumbous is gonna come to get me!”
[Ali snorting, laughing.]
[Keith chuckling.]
ALI: I’m putting my foot down, I’m making this a Slumbous respect zone.
[Several laughing.]
ALI: I have the power given to me in this game.
[Austin chuckling.]
ALI: I can make this turn all about it now.
ART: It’s all Slumbous from now on.
[Ali laughing.]
AUSTIN: Or else.
ART: No more respect for other deities.
[Keith and Ali laughing.]
ART: Slumbous or get the fuck out.
DRE (overlapping): Augh, it’s so hard to not [chuckling] tweet about Slumbous right now, you know?
[Several laughing.]
ALI: Just pretend it’s a football tweet and no one will know. Um… [chuckling]
AUSTIN: [laughing] “Never count out touchdown Slumbous!”
ART: “Tom Brady looking real Slumbous right now.”
[Ali, Keith, and Sylvia laughing.]
SYLVIA: “I can’t believe Slumbous got a sponsorship from Dunkin’ Donuts.”
[Austin chuckling.]
ALI: [amused] Oh my god… Um…
JACK: It’s Slumbaccino now.
[Sylvia, Art, and others laughing.]
AUSTIN: [loud and dramatic] “It’s not Slumbous anymore! It’s Slumbaccino!”
[Sylvia, Art, and Ali laughing.]
ALI: [coughing] Um… I would like to flesh out the Slumbous thing, but it would be moving the– [chuckling] using the turn to say something that’s already happened, which is that Slumbous is in charge now—or the Slumbous lady is in charge, I guess is what we’ve had—so I don’t know if I should do an event instead. Um…
AUSTIN: No, do the... I like–
[Ali laughing, overlapping.]
AUSTIN: I would love to know what this new nun, who showed up, has like, changed the core mandate from the people who go to that chapel here, in town. Do you know what I mean? Especially because the way we think about– the way we’ve talked about, um, the Conclave, is that like, they’re kind of a like, “anything goes” group, do you know what I mean? They’re kind of like, “Hey, yeah, the Boundless Conclave, we’re a collection of hundreds of different of g– different gods and deities,” but if this nun is like “But also you have to say a prayer to Slumbous.”
ALI: Mhmm.
AUSTIN: “You’re not allowed to just come here and pray to your god,” [Ali chuckling] “you have to tip– tip Slumbous. Blow out a candle,” or whatever it is. That’s interesting. And it’s more interesting if you wanna go wider, that was just like, very low tier… thing.
AL: [snorting] Fair. Fair fair fair fair. Fair fair fair fair. Um, yeah. Well, I think that she… After– Okay, so there’s all the… there’s all the morning confusion, right? And it’s like “Where’s the old nun,” “It’s the Slumbous nun now,” and she’s like, “Hey, what’s up,” um… [chuckling] And then they’re like “[distrustful, mumbling] “Uhh, what are you doing here? You’re the one who was here,” and then, the, um… teeth people come. And it’s very confusing. Uhm, [chuckling] [Dre chuckling] people are up on the hills and they’re… they’re looking down. And then I think once the teeth people leave, the… the church lady comes out and brings a candle to every single house. And… [chuckling] Yeah.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Ooo. In the whole town?
ALI: Every– Yeah. To every house in the town.
AUSTIN (overlapping): [quietly] Mmm.
ALI: “Here’s your candle...” and [chuckling] “make use of it today.”
AUSTIN (overlapping): Oh, I hate that. If someone was like [sinister] “Here’s your candle,” I would be…
[Ali and Dre laughing, overlapping.]
JACK (overlapping): [distrustful] Oh, it’s fucked up, that’s bad.
AUSTIN (overlapping): It’s like a bullet with my name on it.
ALI (overlapping): [between laughter] It’s just–
JACK (overlapping): “Don’t let it go out… Austin…”
DRE (overlapping): [quietly] Augh…
AUSTIN (overlapping): [chuckling] Mmh!
ALI: There’s nothing ominous about it. It’s just–
AUSTIN: Ali, I need you to know I went to look up “Polish nun names,” [Ali: Mm. Sure.] and the first one I saw is named Alicia but in Polish.
[Ali and someone else laughing.]
AUSTIN: It’s like Alicja with a “j” instead of that second “i”.
ALI: Oh, suuure… That’s a way to spell that.
AUSTIN (overlapping): “Aleesh-jah.”
[Ali and Sylvia laughing.]
AUSTIN: I guess. Doing my best.
ALI: Um… Yeah. I think she gives everybody a candle, and I think with the candle is a handwritten note, um… which is just a simple prayer to Slumbous. [snorting, laughing]
KEITH: How simple?
ART: That’s also really– If someone– That’s– [chuckling] You gotta think about what this’d be like if it happened to you.
[Ali laughing, overlapping.]
JACK: Can we hear the prayer?
AUSTIN: Yeah, what’s the– Tell me about how the prayer goes, if possible.
JACK (overlapping): Simple prayer.
KEITH (overlapping): Yeah.
ALI: [clearing throat] Um… Yeah. Um, I think, um… [chuckling] I can’t– I was just gonna do the Saint Anthony prayer but for Slumbous and I can’t.
[Dre laughing uproariously, overlapping.]
ALI: I have to get out of Catholicism, and also…
ART: “Our Slumbous, who art in Dreamland…”
[Ali laughing, Sylvia laughing uproariously.]
AUSTIN: “Sleepy be thy name.”
[Dre laughing.]
ART: “Thy snoozes come, on couches as they do in beds.”
ALI: Sain– [chuckling] [displeased] Ahuh… Saint Anthony’s a different one…
KEITH: [as if dutifully reciting] “Thank you Slumbou, one and only, light a candle when you’re lonely.”
[Ali, Austin, Sylvia, and Art laughing, groaning.]
AUSTIN: I got a name for this nun, it’s Stanislaka. It’s like Stanislava, which is a– which is a name, but with a “k” instead of a “v”. So… Stanislaka. She might just go by Laka—or Stanis, but Stanis isn’t as good as Laka.
ALI: Yeah, Laka’s better...
AUSTIN: To her friends. I think everyone else just calls her Sister, you know?
ALI: Ohh, sure sure– yeah yeah yeah. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah…
ART: She doesn’t have any friends anymore ‘cause she’s… mad with power now. [chuckling]
[Keith, Ali, and Austin chuckling.]
KEITH: [mumbling something while chuckling]
AUSTIN: What’s the prayer about?
ALI: Um… the [chuckling] prayer is about, um… It’s about warmth, [laughing] it’s about, um… lighting a candle, and, um… [losing composure] Th– Oh my god, I was about to start talking about a [covering her mouth] [muffled] BTS song and I’m so mad at myself. Um...
AUSTIN: About what? [bewildered] Excuse me?
JANINE: What about BTS?
ALI: Yeah, I—I’m gonna cut this out—There’s a BTS song called Zero O’Clock [Someone laughing] where it’s like, [chuckling] “Oh, you’ve had a bad day, but then you–” [inhaling] “you see that the clock says midnight, and you feel like it’s gonna be better...” and I [chuckling] feel like that should be the Slumbous– [laughing]
AUSTIN: I think you have to leave this in, that’s the Slumbous… Yeah.
JANINE (overapping): You have to leave this in.
ART: Yeah, you gotta leave this in now. [chuckling]
[Ali still laughing.]
ART: That’s beautiful, it’s a wonderful– [chuckling]
ALI (overlapping): [defensive] It’s a really good song!
KEITH (overlapping): Yeah, I really feel like they’re kind of the modern day Slumbou.
[Ali and Sylvia laughing, Austin chuckling.]
ART: That’s what they say about them.
AUSTIN: Mmhm.
SYLVIA: [still laughing] I do– I don’t wanna make the k-pop people angry at us.
[Ali laughing.]
SYLVIA: I don’t know… That’s a compliment, please…
KEITH (overlapping): They should be thankful for such a…
[Ali laughing, overlapping.]
ART (overlapping): Yeah–
SYLVIA (overlapping): Please, no…
KEITH (overlapping): That is a lofty comparison.
SYLVIA: Yeah.
[Ali still laughing.]
AUSTIN: [inhaling] I love it. I love it. Um… Uh…
ALI (overlapping): Yeah. That– That’s the Slumbous nun.
AUSTIN: Does she insist that like, “Okay everyone, like, really do this, or else– like, there will repercussions”—not from her but like, it’s imperative that you do this now. “Light this candle, manage this candle.” Or is it more like…
ART (overlapping): [chuckling] “Manage this candle…”
AUSTIN: Is it… What’s the vibe when I close the door? On… Laka?
ALI: It’s a mix of things, right, because it’s like… you know, when you’re starting in a new position, you wanna… assert yourself, as… like, “Hey, I’m the town nun now. L– [chuckling] Last time it was–” [laughing] “It was the big wolf in the big cave… And now it’s– it’s the candle stuff, and I would like you to… to just be aware of this candle stuff.”
Um… [chuckling] I [laughing] feel like– It’s a little– I mean, it’s a little weird to be like, really assertive in that way, especially if she comes from like, a shared church to begin with, um… So, I think it’s like… You know, if there– If– Okay, so if you’re stopping at someone’s house, and you know that person is really into the like… the like, endurance goddess or whatever.
Like, when you bring your Slumbou candle, you’re like, “Oh… I–” [laughing] [Sylvia laughing] You know, I think that if she knows that you’re like, into a different god, she’s like, “Oh, by, uh, Endura’s honor or whatever, here’s your Slumbou candle, have a good day,” um… But also: “Hey, you should light this tonight.”
AUSTIN: Got it. And they do, presumably.
ALI: [chuckling] And then unlight it.
AUSTIN: Right. “Light it now, and then unlight it when you go to bed.”
ALI: Right.
KEITH: “You know when.”
[Ali laughing.]
AUSTIN: “You’ll know.”
ALI: [laughing] “You’ll know.”
AUSTIN: “Slumbous will tell you.”
ALI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: All right. Love it, fantastic.
ALI (overlapping): Thanks. Yup, thank you. [chuckling]
[Draw #4 — Dre — 00:37:04]
AUSTIN: Uh… Dre, you are up.
DRE: Yup. I got… an Eight. Is this our first Eight?
AUSTIN: This is our first Eight. Eight one.
ART: Woo!
DRE: Okay. Uh, [reading] “What does success look like in our place? What do the inhabitants want?” Okay, so quick refresher: The permanent residents here… are not miners, but it’s basically… [sighing]
AUSTIN: It’s like, the people who run the town, [Dre: Yeah.] people who presumably– who fish the lake, the people who… Uh, I’m– The people who like… s– buy and sell stuff to the miners.
DRE: Yeah. Okay.
AUSTIN: Um… stuff like that.
DRE: Okay, so–
AUSTIN: People who run the tavern, et cetera.
DRE: Farmers, fishers, [Austin: Yes.] inn owners, tavern owners, whatever. Um…
AUSTIN: And probably… I think we said there are a coup– there are some miners here too but, I think now we know why those families don’t necessarily [chuckling] stay on.
DRE: Yeah. For sure.
JACK: I think there’s also, like, some level of… We described like, the entrance of the mine was the old temple—it’s like a sacred mine entrance—and I wonder if some of the maintenance falls on the townsfolk as well, where it’s like… the… they are making sure that when the mining season comes, the miners are able to, you know, move in and out safely, or without getting… fucked over by the equipment, or the… the sort of, the venue.
DRE: [thoughtfully] Hmm. I think success in our place looks like… uh, being cast in one of the leading roles for… a recurring play that happens every year, at the harvest festival. Um…
AUSTIN: So then… If I can abstract that a little bit, [Dre: Mhm?] then… things like that would be anytime it’s like a commu– It’s like– Success, then, is being able to serve a function publicly that the community sees and responds positively to.
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Because if it’s– I’d just like to abstract it a little bit, so I could say like: Hey, this person who… is– has stagefright, I can still… we can still judge whether or not they’re a successful person in a… in a broader– You know what I mean? Like…
DRE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
DRE: Um… I think this play involves… um… oouuhh… Like, it’s probably something just about, like… the founding of the town…
AUSTIN: Mhm.
DRE: And I think that, like, the people who are chosen from like, various industries or professions are there as, like—and seen as, like—the paragon of this profession as shown in the play.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
DRE: So it’s like, the fisherman who gets chosen is like… considered to be, like, “This is the best example of what a person who fishes should be.”
AUSTIN: Mhm.
DRE: “This is the best example of a person who farms should be. This is the best of what a… a storekeep looks like.” Et cetera, et cetera.
AUSTIN: Yeah. I–
KEITH (overlapping): About the… The history bit. Is it… Is it right? The history that they tell?
DRE: [sighing] Like… Probably not.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Like– How–
DRE: This is probably very, like, your elementary school… your American elementary school like, Thanksgiving play.
AUSTIN: Totally. I mean, no one from this church is left to tell them what building the abbey was like, [Dre: Yeah.] however many hundred years ago, right?
KEITH: Right, they just know… what the last play was… every year.
AUSTIN (overlapping): [chuckling] Right. Right.
KEITH: Every year they know what the last play was like.
AUSTIN: Yeah. And over generations, that probably does change, and become increasingly more like whatever the rest of the town wants—you know?—to know that their history to be… to some degree? Or alternatively, is it this kind of frightening thing of like, [squeamish] “Ooh, I don’t like thinking of our town in this way”? [chuckling] ‘Cause that can happen too, with certain old plays, you know? Again, probably depends on the director and the interpretation and all that stuff.
[Draw #5 — Janine — 00:40:58]
AUSTIN: Um… Okay. Janine, you are up.
JANINE: I got another Eight.
AUSTIN: Ooo. [chuckling]
JANINE: [sighing] Hum… [reading] “The news is dramatic, and tensions are high. What is the news? How is this reaction physicalized in space?” “Physicalized,” okay…
KEITH (overlapping): I don’t know why, but I swear you were gonna rhyme that. I thought that was ca– card was gonna rhyme the way… [chuckling]
JANINE (overapping): I also kinda felt like the– [chuckling] Y– Yeah.
[Austin chuckling dryly.]
JANINE: Is this people noticing... the egg… situat– the eggs are gone– Like–
AUSTIN (overlapping): Ohh, that’s–
JANINE: Were people actually aware that the eggs were… in a place for a reason… but it was maybe only a word of mouth thing? So the twenty-somethings hadn’t…
AUSTIN: I… [short sigh] [unsure] Maybe? [less unsure] Maybe. I was– I was gonna say no because the previous thing was a discovery for the community, um… but...
JANINE (overapping): [clicks tongue] That’s true.
AUSTIN (overlapping): It might’ve just been, maybe it was just a discovery just for… just for them, but like…
JANINE (overapping): No, I think that’s worth honoring. Um…
AUSTIN: Um… But the news getting out about the egg seems like it makes sense—you know? Someone’s mom moves the straw and [chuckling] is like “Wait a second, why do you have a weird egg sac in your room, what is this?”
JANINE: They’re s– Oh yeah, are they still around? With the egg…s? Egg…?
AUSTIN: We haven’t done anything– [Janine: Okay.] We haven’t seen them move, yeah. I think the last thing we said about them was, there was a day of rest, and they were like, trying to figure out what to do, they were trying to consult elders and like, quietly talk about this and try to research stuff, but…
JANINE: Okay. Well, then this seems like a natural thing, right? It’s like, eventually someone’s like, [Austin: Oh yeah.] “Listen, people keep telling me you’re asking about weird eggs. What is going on?”
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
JANINE: And then, there’s a lot of like, “Noth–” you know, standing in front of their bedroom door, like, “Nothing! Nothing is going on.”
[Austin chuckling.]
JANINE: “You can’t come in here actually, I’m working on arts and crafts.” Um… And, yeah, I think it’s… I think, you know, you ask enough people and suddenly… when one person’s like, “Hey… My,” you know, “My twenty year old kid has a weird egg in their bedroom,” everyone’s like, “Oh my god, of course they do.”
[Austin, Ali, and Art chuckling.]
JANINE: “[flatly] What the fuck? What did you get– What is this? Where did this come from?” Like, “What is… What is going on?” Um… As to how this is phy… [reading] “How is this reaction physicalized in space?” I don’t know how to answer this.
[Short pause.]
AUSTIN: Umm… What do people do? Let’s just… say it that way. Once we have that… once we know…
JANINE: “Physicalized in space” to me means more like, how ha– like, how is this changing the… like, the… way that the… that the area feels, or looks, or like, you know—if someone were to [Austin: Totally, but the way–] walk into town today, how was it– how would it be different than walking into town yesterday?
AUSTIN: Totally, but that– I think that if there’s a communal reaction, that would be a way to– for… for the sense of what it feels like in that town to be… different, right? So like, if there’s a big meeting in the center of town, that would be physicalizing it in space. You know? If, um, someone puts up… puts guards at the church to say “No one can go to the church anymore, that place is fucking dangerous,” that would be physicalizing the space, right? Or physicalizing the… the thing. Um… that’s– that’s why I asked, like, “What do people do?” because if we can think about what that reaction is, that will give us… a little bit of… of direction.
JANINE: Hum… I think it is probably like, a… a massive meeting, then, that is like a… you know. There’s– You know, there are town council meetings, and then there’s like, “No, mandatory, everyone has to be here,” [Austin: (chuckling) Mhm.] “We’re going to… We’re emptying out a field for this, basically. Like, we all need to– everyone needs to get together ‘cause we need to pool our thoughts here, like, on—do we put these back, do we try and follow through with ev– whatever the fuck their plan was, like, do we have– does anyone here have some knowledge they should share?” Like, it’s a big, like…
JANINE: It’s the thing where you show up in town and there’s just fucking no one, [Austin: Mhmm.] and you wander around until you find, like, “Oh, literally every single person in town is here, and they’re all yelling at eachother.” [chuckling]
JACK: Is– Are the miners involved– allowed to be in involved in this, or is it just for the townsfolk?
JANINE: Hmm. [clicking tongue] I feel like the miners would probably… would probably [uncertainly] be there… but would probably be like, at the back of the crowd, right?
JACK (overlapping): Their own contingent.
JANINE: ‘Cause they don’t necessarily have… anything to say, but I think they’d still be invited just on like, the off-chance that one of them could be like, “Well back where I came from, we had a jelly egg sac, and here’s what we did with it.”
[Ali and Jack chuckling.]
JANINE: [chuckling] Um… You never know!
AUSTIN: [amused] Yeah, no, totally.
JANINE: Stranger things… have happened.
AUSTIN: Um… So wait, do– Is there… Do we get… If we can zoom into that meeting a little bit, like, does anyone have good advice on this?
JANINE: I bet the, uh… I bet the community’s very torn on, like… either putting it back, or finding somewhere else to put it. I’m sure there’s like, a handful of people who are like “We should cut it open, and see what it is, and…” um…
ALI: [amused] Mhm.
JANINE: And other people have, like, theories about like, “Well, you know, you could put it in an incubator, and maybe we could hatch it, and then… take care of it,” or some weird thing. Um…
ALI: [chuckling] Uh-huh.
JANINE: I think… the maj–
KEITH: [laughing] “Take care of it!”
[Janine chuckling.]
DRE (overlapping): I love Stardew Valley.
JANINE: I think the majority of people would… would… um… rather put it back.
DRE: What does the new nun think?
AUSTIN: [curious] Ooo…
JANINE: Um… Hmm.
[Someone chuckling.]
JANINE: I’m trying to think of an answer that’s not a joke about candles.
[Someone laughing sharply.]
JANINE: [chuckling] Um… I think the new nun probably thinks that if it was on an altar, it was supposed to be there.
AUSTIN: Mmm. And so, she is like, “Put it back”?
JANINE: Yeah.
[Draw #6 — Austin — 00:46:55]
AUSTIN: Okay. Um… We’re back around to me. I forgot that this wasn’t the end of the thing, advances time, this is a– we draw until we hit a Ten. I have drawn a Six. The Six says… Wait, is this our first Six? This is our first Six. [reading] “What is the most horrible thing in or [chuckling] about our place?”
JACK: Boyyy howdy.
[Sylvia laughing.]
AUSTIN: Today.
KEITH: We really can draw ‘em.
JACK: Today… [laughing]
AUSTIN: We really can. All right—I think: While this meeting is going on, while the… um… people are debating what to do about this weird… egg… I forget, were the miners invited to this, or no?
ART: Yeah.
JANINE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Yes. Someone notes... that… someone notices that a number of the miners have a symbol on their bodies, which… is new—and when I say “on their bodies,” what I mean is that there has been a like… they have been branded. And it is the mark of the Triadic Pyre, which is the big, black fire-and-death church. Um… and that symbol is… it’s like three horizontal lines, each one… uh, like, the bottom one is very wide, the second one is a little bit more narrow, the third one is a little bit more narrow—almost like three logs placed on top of each other. And then there is sort of just like, a, um… the left and right tall sides of a triangle, no base. I’ll paste it in the Discord.
DRE: Where is this? On them?
AUSTIN: Um… It seems like it’s placed on different parts for different people. Some people have it on their wrists—like, uh, you know, forearms. Some people have it on like, uh, necks, underneath sh– underneath the like, collar, or their like, upper back, basically. Someone has it on like, their calf. It’s just important that they have it, um… Maybe they… they got to choose. Maybe under interrogation someone says “They let me say where to put it.”
Um, the Church of the Triadic Pyre is paying miners to go in deeper and stay in longer. And, uh… this church is bigger than this single chapel, right, this church is like… well funded, comparatively. I think that the—whoever the leader of this church is—maybe there’s three leaders at each of the Triadic Pyre churches, um, to represent one of each of their gods. Um, uh, and… each one has like, a very imposing, uh… character.
And it comes to light—and maybe this is just– this is like, we just see this happening—that they are trying to make a second explosion happen. That holy explosion of fire from… Sylvi, did you say when that happened?
SYLVIA: Uh… I never said a time period for it, no.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Okay, but a long time ago.
SYLVIA (overlapping): I just said it was in the past, yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah. They want another one to happen, and they seem to believe that the way to do it is to like—”We just gotta get people in there deeper.” [chuckling] “We just gotta throw more people at the problem.” Um, and so they’re paying these miners a little bit more, they’re giving them like, a daily… you know, allowance—a daily– a day rate, basically—if they can go deeper in, and… you know, there’s someone there, you know, observing them and making sure that they… that they’re, you know, going in past a certain point or something. Um, and… they’re basically like—[searching for words] This is not like, a… It’s not just a “We’re the real monsters” moment, but it [chuckling] sort of is that.
[Dre laughing.]
AUSTIN: There are also really monsters in the cave, right, we know this. Uh, but this church is basically like, in… in an attempt to make a repeat of what they think of as this holy instant—or, incident—uh, to happen again, are trying to basically throw away as many miner lives as possible. And I think that’s the most horrible thing happening here today—on what should be a day of rest—instead it is– it is a day of overwork in the attempt to relight some… some old fire. Um… I think people are confused, but no one was… no one was forced. The miners liked the extra pay.
Austin (as MINER): We’re going in there anyway. Yeah, we’ll go a little bit deeper, we’ll stay a little bit longer.
AUSTIN: Um, they–
Austin (as MINER): No one made me do it. They just made me get this weird brand, but whatever, I get marked up anyway. You know? You know how many cuts and scrapes I got?
AUSTIN: That’s the attitude.
JACK: Is it also like… Some level is like,
Jack (as MINER): Well, these Triadic Pyre losers don’t really know how mining works, [Austin: (amused) Yes.] so they’re saying “Go in deeper” and I’m like “Fift”– they’re like, [deep mocking voice] “Go thirty feet deeper into the mines,” and I’m like, “Thirty feet deeper is like, no distance. Fine, okay.”
[Ali laughing, overlapping.]
AUSTIN: [chuckling] “Nothing. Let’s get deeper. Yeah, fine, pay me.” Yes, totally.
JACK: “I’ll take the mark.”
AUSTIN: But also: thirty feet might be exactly the amount of feet not to go deeper, right?
JACK: Uh-huh. [chuckling]
[Draw #7 — Keith — 00:51:46]
AUSTIN: Um… That’s my turn. [pausing] Keith.
KEITH: Seven!
AUSTIN: Our second Seven.
KEITH (overlapping): Out first– Sec– Second Seven.
KEITH: There we go, yup. Second Seven: [reading] “Invent a specific street, building, corner, overlook, or meeting place. What is it called officially, and what do the locals call it?” Um… Okay. [reading] “...street, building, corner, overlook, or meeting place.” Well, we just had a meeting place. Overloo– I like overlook.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
[Ali chuckling.]
AUSTIN: We know that there’s like, two tiers to this town, right? There’s like, the upper tier where the abbey and the entrance to the mine is, [Keith: Yeah.] and then the… or the remnants of the abbey. And then we know that there’s the lower tier where like, the lake is, and a lot of the local residents live, if I remember that right.
KEITH: Yeah. There’s also a– the steeple, and there’s also the peaks on the mountains.
AUSTIN: Sure. Totally. Yes. You can go up even higher than that, yeah.
KEITH: [thoughtful] Hmm. Uhh, I guess this… you know… I don’t know… I don’t know. I guess I’m just not– I… Nothing is jumping out at me… about this question… [Austin: (thoughfully) Um…] that fits obviously with what we’ve been doing so far, but also it doesn’t have to.
AUSTIN (overlapping): But you know, it can be– it can just be new– Yeah.
AUSTIN: It does not have to advance anything. We could just– If you think that there’s a cool place that you’d like to have in this town, when we’re doing just regular-ass, you know… the game for the rest of the campaign in it, now would be a good time to be like, [Keith: Yeah.] “Oh yeah, there’s a– Here’s a building. Here’s a building that matters to people.”
KEITH: Okay.
AUSTIN: “Here’s a corner where people hang out,” you know?
KEITH: Yeah. Um… So, I’ll say that… Uh, I grew up on the side of this weird mountain.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
KEITH: A very small mountain, um, but my back–
AUSTIN (overlapping): Oh, in real life, you’re saying?
KEITH: In real life, yes, in real life.
AUSTIN: Yes, okay.
KEITH: Um, and my backyard had like, a path straight up to the top, and at the top there’s just like… it’s– it was an old weather observatory. Back when you wanted to observe the weather, but before you would do anything—you would build anything, um… except out of stone and make it look like a castle [Austin: (amused) Uh-huh.]—there’s this old weather observatory that looks like a small bit of castle that someone took off a place– It’s like one parapet, basically, of castle.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Right. Right.
KEITH: And I’m taking that and putting it at the top of... this mountain here.
AUSTIN: Oo, okay.
KEITH: Um, and so…
AUSTIN: Is it a weather observatory, or is it something else?
KEITH: Uh… I’m gonna flip it, and I’m going to say that it is now what someone uses as a weather observatory.
AUSTIN: Looking for dust storms, and other shit on the way…
KEITH: Yes, but it’s also a place that people go if you’re willing to make the hike. Maybe it’s not at the top top, it’s like [Austin: Mhm. Yeah.] high enough up where it’s useful, but not so high that it’s inaccessible. Um…
AUSTIN: You can go up there and come back in the same day, presumably, and like spend a couple hours up there?
KEITH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Or is it a multi-day trip?
KEITH: I think it’s a one-day trip.
AUSTIN: Okay.
KEITH: I think you can… you can get there and get back within a day.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
KEITH: And, uh… And I think it’s officially called the Observatory. [pausing] Uh, or the Weather– It’s– Or… Oh! Everyone calls it the Weather Room. [laughing]
AUSTIN: Everyone call– [chuckling] Yeah. Great, yeah.
KEITH: Everyone calls it the Wea– It is called the Observatory, everyone calls it the Weather Room, but it mostly doesn’t get used for... I think people like the view, they like looking down on the town, and uh… maybe there’s some people that, uh… just like to, um… uh… I don’t wanna say spy, but maybe it’s spy. Um… [searching for words] You get a nice spy—spyglass, there you go [Someone chuckling]—and you just sort of like, get a big top-down view on your town, and you just sort of see people running around doing things. And that’s it, that’s the Weather Room.
AUSTIN: People get up to the… the strangest things. All right, the Weather Room. Okay, good to know. Good to play with.
[Draw #8 — Sylvia — 00:56:05]
AUSTIN: Uhh, Sylvi, you’re up.
SYLVIA: Okay. I got the Three of Hearts. Have we gotten a Three before?
AUSTIN (overlapping): Our third Three.
SYLVIA: Oh, damn! Okay.
AUSTIN: It’s our first third.
SYLVIA (overlapping): Ohh.
AUSTIN (overlapping): The Triadic Pyre is here.
SYLVIA: [reading] “A new style, fad or devotion” [Austin laughing] “sweeps our place. What is it? Who cares about it?”
JACK (overlapping): [amused] Oh, amazing.
SYLVIA (overlapping): Oh, man…
JACK (overlapping): [amused] Good game.
AUSTIN (overlapping): [chuckling] “This evening, after this long day, everyone has decided [chuckling] to adapt a new style.”
[Ali laughing, overlapping.]
SYLVIA: [chuckling] I know!
ART: It’s that new craze: being afraid of all the stuff that’s happening.
[Ali, Austin, and Jack chuckling.]
AUSTIN (overlapping): [amused] A new craze!
DRE (overlapping): “I was really hot, standing in this field all day.”
JACK (overlapping): “Yeah, it got dark.”
SYLVIA (overlapping): Well, actually, maybe– The– Being afraid of all the stuff that happening… that’s happening might actually be part of it.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
SYLVIA: I think people start wearing, like… More people are wearing, like, lucky ch– like, personal lucky charms around and stuff.
ALI: Ohhh.
AUSTIN: Mmm.
SYLVIA: Like, someone’s got like, a rabbit’s foot tied to their belt, and some other stuff that’s more specifically superstitious to our world but I can’t think of anything.
[Austin laughing.]
SYLVIA: Um… Just like–
AUSTIN: Everyone shout a good good luck charm for people to wear.
SYLVIA: Yeah! Like, uh… [sighing]
ALI (overlapping): Two gloves on one hand.
JACK (overlapping): Strand of grass around the wrist.
SYLVIA: Or like–
AUSTIN (overlapping): Good one.
SYLVIA: Or like, um… Maybe like, seeds from those fruit?
AUSTIN (overlapping): Ooo.
SYLVIA: Or something, from like, years past. Like, dried out ones [Austin: Yeah!] that people keep as, like, souvenirs or something.
AUSTIN: A bracelet of them, yeah.
SYLVIA: Yeah. Stuff like that, um… And it’s just sort of like, people are kind of more openly–
AUSTIN (overlapping): A little stone that you had blessed at three different churches, or three different chapels of the Conclave. Um…
SYLVIA: Yeah. This candle that you’ve had forever that just doesn’t seem to burn out.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
SYLVIA: Keeping that in your bag at all times. Um… Yeah, and I think it’s just that people are a lot more like, openly superstitious as like, these things sort of start happening, you know? Um… There’s just too much going on to ignore it. [chuckling]
AUSTIN: [chuckling quietly] Love it.
SYLVIA: Yeah.
AUSTIN: I hope people take the… Snoozeo... [chuckling] candles, whatever–
SYLVIA (overlapping): [bewildered] Snoozeo?!
AUSTIN (overlapping): [amused] What’s the name of– It’s not Snoozeo, what is it?
[Ali murmuring very quietly.]
ART (overlapping): That’s a new one.
SYLVIA (overlapping): It’s Slumbou!
ALI (overlapping): [very quiet, drowned out] ...Slumbous...
DRE (overlapping): [quiet] Jesus...
[Austin laughing, overlapping.]
JANINE: At this point we’re– [chuckling] Snoozeo–
[Intermittent giggling from others, overlapping.]
JANINE: This is– This is a Disenchantment bit where all the elves have names that are like Sleepo and Screamo and shit like that.
AUSTIN (overlapping): [groaning from laughter] Ohh– [laughing]
SYLVIA (overlapping): Oh, I love Screamo the elf.
DRE (overlapping): Screamo the elf is my favorite. [breaking into laughter]
[Austin groaning from laughter.]
JANINE: I think I’m actually thinking of Shocko.
AUSTIN: [jokingly disturbed] Guh! Okay.
[Someone chuckling.]
ALI: Sounds like somebody isn’t gonna have a restful sleep tonight [Sylvia and Janine laughing] because they’re being disrespectful to Slumbous.
DRE: Yeah, I agree.
AUSTIN: [chuckling, groaning] Joke’s on you, Slumbous, I never have [chuckling] restful sleep.
[Ali laughing uproariously, overlapping others laughing in the background.]
AUSTIN (overlapping): [amused] Asshole.
DRE (overlapping): [accusatory] Yeah, well, why do you think, Austin? Why do you think?
JANINE (overapping): [sarcastically] Ahhh.
[Ali still laughing, snorting, overlapping.]
ART: Austin, the Antichrist of Slumbouism.
[Austin and others laughing.]
[Ali blowing air, yelping and snorting in laughter.]
[Austin and Dre groaning in laughter.]
DRE: [weary] Ohhh my god.
[Draw #9 — Art — 00:58:58]
AUSTIN: [amused] All right... Um… [clicking tongue] Art, you’re up.
ART: Um… Okay, I hope I get to name the Antichrist of Slumboism…
[Austin and somebody chuckling.]
AUSTIN: Hey, it’s our third n– One.
ART: [jokingly pedantic] It’s the third Ace, they’re still called an Ace, Austin.
AUSTIN: [pausing] It’s– Okay, I didn’t realize that in the book it’s still called an Ace.
ART: [reading] “The harvest day has arrived.” [surprised] Oh!
SYLVIA: [mirroring Art’s tone] Oh! Okay!
[Someone chuckling.]
KEITH: Wow!
ART: What a busy day this is turning into [trailing off into laughter]
[Ali and someone else laughing, overlapping.]
AUSTIN: Whoa, that’s fucked up, though!
JACK (overlapping): [quiet] Whoa.
AUSTIN: Does that mean that we get to the– late in the day, and everyone looks up, and the fucking… fruit is ready and it shouldn’t be? [chuckling]
JACK: God, I love th–
KEITH (overlapping): [laughing uproariously, cutting off Jack] Ohhh!!
ALI: Well, I mean it’s like, a midnight thing…
[Sylvia laughing, pained.]
KEITH: I guess going thirty feet deeper in the mine did something…
AUSTIN (overlapping): We don’t–
[Someone coughing.]
ALI: [very quietly] Yeah.
AUSTIN: [intense] We can’t say it’s midnight yet, ‘cause it’s the same day, [Sylvia: [very quiet] Yeah.] we haven’t hit the ten yet, [amused] we don’t know when– We could still have eight turns.
JACK (overlapping): I love this.
ALI (overlapping): [quiet, understanding] Ohhh…
JACK: This is just like– This is like– Remember the first time, uh, you play Bloodborne and the sky is a different color?
AUSTIN: [amused] Yes.
JACK: And you’re just like [overwhelmed] “Oh, fuck me, all right, like–”
[Ali and someone else laughing, overlapping.]
JACK: “I guess something really concerning is happening.” Is this town just like, [exasperated] “Jesus Christ, we got the egg sac, the fucking tooth trolls came out,” [Someone laughing] “everyone, we– like– all around– we had to build a bonfire ‘cause our meeting went on for so long, and in the firelight we noticed people were marked by the fucking Pyre, and now,” [Austin laughing] “[incredulous] all the trees… are done?!”
AUSTIN: [pausing] Sorry, we shouldn’t say that, ‘cause Ali, it is your turn for har– to describe what the harvest day is. [amused] Maybe it’s a different harvest that we haven’t thought of yet.
JACK (overlapping): [chuckling] Different harvest…
ART: No, it’s my– it’s my turn.
AUSTIN: Oh, Art, sorry. I said Ali, I meant Art.
ART: Um… No, I think– I like it. I like that we get out of the meeting, and giant pomegranates are falling from the sky. Um… What do they– Oh, um… [reading] “What is being harvested?” Those things. They’re just coming down, um… I wanna say like, they’re destroying cars, but obviously we don’t have cars.
AUSTIN: No.
ART: But that’s like, the visual I’m looking for, is one just like, smashing into like, I guess like, a cart—you know? Just–
AUSTIN: Wait, does the netting break because it’s not… finished yet? Like, people don’t have the… no one’s gone through and like, made sure the nets are good for the harvest yet, because that’s still supposed to be a week away, or something.
ART: Yeah, the harvest– the net checker doesn’t come to town until next week.
AUSTIN: Fuck.
ALI: Mmm.
AUSTIN: And now we’re paying for it, see? [clicking tongue]
ART: Yeah. The net checker, they offer–
AUSTIN (overlapping): I get it, you don’t wanna pay the net checker…
ART (overlapping): They have a different… propgr– program. We could have the net checker come by quarterly.
AUSTIN: We should do that.
ART: But it costs... three times as much.
AUSTIN: [doubtful] Hmmm.
ALI: [doubtful, amused] We don’t have a local doing our nets? [chuckling]
ART: No!
AUSTIN (overlapping): Well, we want like, an expert. You know, we don’t...
ART (overlapping): What would that net checker do the rest of the year?
ALI (overlapping): Yeah…
[Austin chuckling, sighing.]
ART: To be a successful net checker, you have to really be going around.
SYLVIA: They might use nets to fish...
AUSTIN: True.
ART: Not tree nets.
SYLVIA: They– If– Okay.
ALI (overlapping): [quiet] Yeah.
AUSTIN (overlapping): [sarcastic] Art’s a net expert now.
[Art and Ali chuckling.]
JACK: Is there like… Does genuine panic begin to set in? Or like– What is the response to this?
ART: [thoughtful] Um… [clicking tongue] I mean… I guess… If you’re like, an older townsperson, the– a week early’s not that early, right? You know, it’s… it’s strange, but it’s not unheard of—but on top of this… this just bonkers day, on top of—if we’re being honest—a bonkers day yesterday…
AUSTIN: [chuckling] Also, it’s interesting that it echoes the fish situation across the mountains.
ART: Mmm.
AUSTIN: Where it’s like, “We’re not supp– No! This is supposed to happen over time. Now we have all this fish, all at once, before we were ready for it?” That’s fun. Love that.
ART: Yeah, and, “How is it being stored?” I think it’s just like, people are grabbing them and just taking ‘em. You know, like, filling– you fill your shirt with giant pomegranates and run inside.
AUSTIN: [chuckling] Ugh... miserable day!
ART: It’s– It’s… Like, people I guess aren’t scared, but they’re– It’s… People are acting as if things are– People are acting as if they’re tired, and stressed, and they’re not gonna go through the normal harvest protocols—they’re just gonna get theirs.
AUSTIN: Urgh… You hate to see a town in panic.
DRE: It’s been a long day.
[Ali chuckling.]
AUSTIN: Yeah… It has been. Speaking of, next–
ART (overlapping): Who knows how much longer the day’s gonna be. So I’m gonna say it’s like… 8:15.
AUSTIN: PM?
ART: [amused] PM, yeah. [chuckling]
AUSTIN: Okay, I like it.
[Draw #10 — Jack — 01:03:21]
AUSTIN: Jack? Is that right?
ART (overlapping): We could have like, thirty more cards, right? [quiet] One, two, three…
AUSTIN: Yeah. [chuckling]
JACK: Uhhh... Yeah, okay. I’m gonna draw a card. I have drawn… a Six of Hearts.
AUSTIN: Our second Six.
JACK: Okay… So, the second Six is… [reading] “Someone returns to our place, changed. Who are they, and how are they different?”
[Art laughing uproariously, clapping.]
[Austin whimpering nervously.]
JACK: [chuckling] Oh, boy. Hey, Janine? How long ago did Altapasqua go missing?
DRE: [jokingly frustrated groan] Ohhh, god.
[Janine chuckling.]
KEITH (overlapping): Oof. That– You reached further back than I thought.
JANINE (overapping): Like– Like, hundreds of years, right?
[Ali laughing.]
JANINE: Like, hu– hundreds… at least? It was like… It was like when shit first started going bad in the Heartland.
JACK: [understanding] Mmmm.
KEITH: Austin, correct me if I’m… I’m wrong, I guess, but, it seemed like the Altapasqua thing happened before… even the nuns went missing? L… like… ‘cause stuff...
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yes. I think that’s… [doubtful] Mmmm? Huh. It seemed like there was a town… though. At the time.
JACK: [realizing] Oh, sure, like, she was coming to visit this town, right?
KEITH (overlapping): Ohh…
AUSTIN: So it has to be post-nuns, but pre… m… modernity.
KEITH (overlapping): Have we just created a… a small plothole? [amused] That’s fun.
AUSTIN: [ambivalent] Eh. No. It means– Whatever, it was a hundred and fifty years ago instead of two hundred years ago, you know what I mean?
KEITH: Okay.
JACK (overlapping): [very quiet] Uh…
AUSTIN: The nuns went into the caves a hundred and fifty years ago… um… [reading] “Some years after things had gone bad, the Adjective Empress Altapasqua arrives and forms a large procession to cross the Heartland.” “Some years” can be any amount of years. Seventy years, eighty ye– You know?
JACK: Altapasqua uses she/her pronouns, right, Janine?
JANINE: Yes.
JACK: Okay. Um… I might have an adjective for Altapasqua. Um… uh… It’s like 8:15, and, uh… People start to notice–
KEITH (overlapping): Candles are going out.
JACK: Ca... Well, I don’t– Ali?
[Keith laughing.]
JACK: I don’t know. When is candle time?
ALI: [amused, exasperated] Depends on the person!
JACK: Depends on the person? Okay, it’s not like a– It’s a very situational god.
ALI: [amused, exasperated] You go to bed at different times! [breaking into laughter]
[Jack laughing.]
ALI: Like, that’s a very personal decision that you make with yourself, and you honor your routine in Slumbous.
[Several chuckling.]
JACK: So I think that people are, you know, they have– they are gathering the fruit, there’s like– I like to imagine that like a d– like, dogs are eating the fruit as well, like someone is trying to stop an animal in the street from being like, [stiff and formal] “Ah, yes, the pomegranate has fallen,” and people just start to hear this bell ringing. Um, and it sounds like the bell is coming from under the lake.
[Austin chuckling quietly.]
JACK: And this is not tooth trolls. People are just like, “All right, this is fucking weird,” so they get the guard together and they head down to the water, and they hear the bell ringing. And the first boat that surfaces—uh... you know, covered in algae, and… and, uh… lake slime—is just a little rowboat. Um, and it’s empty. And then two or three more rowboats surface, and one of them has like, a skeletal figure at the front, holding a lantern. Uh, and then eventually, a much larger boat surfaces. And I think we need to decide: is this Altapasqua, or is this someone from her retinue? I think someone from the expedition has returned, [Austin: Mhm.] and I don’t know whether or not it is the Sunken Empress herself, or…
AUSTIN (overlapping): I think you… Pwhoo…
AUSTIN: [sighing] Okay, I think there’s two ways about it. I think either you swing big, and it’s her, and that’s huge ‘cause now there’s an empress in town.
JACK: Well, an empress from a… place that… kind of… from a long–
AUSTIN: Right.
JACK: From like, generations ago. You know?
AUSTIN: I mean, the place still exists, and has a different empress now, which is fun.
JACK: [amused] Yeah.
AUSTIN: Um—or, has she set up… [searching for words] Does this person arrive and say “I’m an emissary from–” Sorry, what was the adjective again?
JACK: Sunken.
AUSTIN: “from the Sunken Empress,” [chuckling] “who has set up, you know, her new kingdom, her new empire, under the water.”
JACK (overlapping): Down in the lake.
AUSTIN: Down in the lake. In the inverted world. Of the lake, and the sea, and… I dunno, maybe that cathedral?
JACK (overlapping): Yeah, so maybe only one boat comes up. And I think that, in the front of it is a skeleton, holding a lantern on a pole.
[Austin and chuckling.]
JACK: And like, none of this “Emmanuel, Captain Brandish, they’re undead, but they’re…”
AUSTIN (overlapping): No.
JACK: Like, this is a fucking skeleton. Its eyes are glowing. You know? This thing could play a xylophone on its ribs.
[Sylvia laughing.]
DRE: [intrigued] Okay?
JACK: Or… If it drank a potion, it would go right out. You know? Classic skeleton.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JACK: It has a sword, or something. And it waves–
AUSTIN (overlapping): You gotta have like, a mace, you can’t– You can’t fight it with a sword, ‘cause it’d go right in the– the missing…
JACK (overlapping): ‘Cause it’d go right through it, you gotta– But it is carrying a sword.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Right, you need a smashing weapon.
JACK (overlapping): But it’s carrying in its hand–
ART (overlapping): Resistance to piercing weapons, as is popular in our… genre.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah. Thank you.
JACK: Yeah. Yeah. [chuckling]
[Dre chuckling.]
JACK: It’s carrying a lantern on like, a long pole, uh… and it waves, and it gestures, and yeah, I think it does shout out, you know… um, I think it shouts out, like,
Jack (as SKELETON EMISSARY): Rejoice! The Great Empress, the Sunken Empress Altapasqua has established her…
JACK: Uh… I don’t know what they call it, I think it’s– they call it some spooky underwater thing, some like, rotten underwater thing. Um… And then I don’t know. Do you think this skeleton arrives? What is the… What does it say here?
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah, read the–
JACK (overlapping): [reading] “Who are they, and how are they different?”
AUSTIN (overlapping): [amused] Well…
JACK: [reading] “Someone returns to our place, changed. Who are they” Emissary for the Sunken Empress ”How are they different?” No damn skin. Um…
[Sylvia laughing.]
AUSTIN: Um…
JACK: [excited] Oh! I think they arrive! I think they row in, and I think they probably immediately taken into custody, or are like, hustled off to some town hall to speak with some council or something, you know?
AUSTIN: Mhm…
JACK: I think they move out of our focus.
AUSTIN: Love it. Can’t wait to visit… well… maybe it could wait a little while.
[Draw #11 — Ali — 01:09:06]
AUSTIN: Uh… Ali, you’re up.
ALI: That is a Seven of Hearts.
AUSTIN: Our third Seven.
ALI: [reading] “A forgotten aspect of our place is recovered. What is it? A corner, a basement, a hidden garden?” Yowza. Okay. [laughing]
[Sylvia chuckling.]
ALI: Um… Is there like, a gift… for the empress?
AUSTIN: [intrigued] Ohh.
[Ali laughing, overlapping.]
AUSTIN (overlapping): That’s fun.
ALI (overlapping): [through laughter] Like–
AUSTIN: Like some– Like... Is it the gift from when she was originally going to arrive, but it’s been like, kept all this time?
ALI: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah!
ART: Like a time capsule.
ALI: [laughing] Um…
JACK: [suspenseful] Oh my god, the welcome gift.
AUSTIN: What would it be…?
ALI: Um… And where would it be? Have we– [searching for words] Have we established any other buildings in town that would have been here the entire time besides the… chapel?
AUSTIN: [trilling exhale] We talked about there being houses from different stones over different ages.
ALI: Oh, sure.
AUSTIN: Which, I don’t… I don’t think there’s any– I don’t think that the, um… the abbey. The abbey was the only other thing I can think of that was like, a specific thing. The Weather… The Weather Room, I guess, is probably old.
DRE: What about the trees? Have those been around?
ALI (overlapping): The trees… Yeah, um…
AUSTIN (overlapping): Well, some of them. Some of them have grown.
ART (overlapping): One tree per…
ALI (overlapping): They’re not… yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ALI: And they’re not forgotten.
DRE: Yeah, fair.
ALI: Um… [chuckling] Um… Um… And it’s weird, I don’t– Like, I don’t know who would remember this, and I think that it’s just someone who like, remembers it like they’re being possessed or whatever, right? Like, you know, you’re all sitting down in a room, around a fire, [Austin: (chuckling) Right.] trying to have like, this nice conversation with the skeleton, being like, “Well, so hi,” um, [laughing, with Austin] and then… this person just gets up, as if taken by a spirit, and like, goes into that abbey, um… And I think that it’s like… There’s like, a desk with a drawer in it, with like, a thing that you lift up—there’s like, a false…
AUSTIN: [understanding] Mmm.
JACK (overlapping): [conspiratorial] A secret drawer…!
ALI: There’s like, a hidden com– [breaking into laughter]
AUSTIN: [expectant] Mhm?
ALI: Um… And… Oh my god, what do you give a travelling empress? Um… [clicking tongue] Oh my god. I– [laughing] I think that it’s a bunch of… It’s a bunch of letters from the original nuns, that are just like, general like, wishes for the first harvest, or whatever—like, the first time they were there, they were like, “We set up this abbey, there’s a queen coming through, [chuckling] we’re gonna write our, uh, like, earnest desires for our place, and give them to this powerful queen.” And I think that they’re, um… [chuckling] I think that there’s like a big jewelry box with a locket, and I think the locket has some beast hair in it. Um… [chuckling]
AUSTIN: Ooo.
[Ali laughing, overlapping.]
JACK: [excited] Yo! [chuckling]
AUSTIN (overlapping): Love this.
KEITH (overlapping): Precious find!
[Austin chuckling.]
ALI: [laughing] This is all delivered to the skeleton, um… [quiet] yeah.
JACK (overlapping): How does the skeleton feel about this?
ALI: Um… um, um… What’s the skeleton’s demeanor? Um…
ART: Skeletony.
ALI: Is the– The– [laughing] Is it skeleton? But is it like– I mean, ‘cause you’re like– Is this like a… is this like a C3PO situation, ‘cause you work for the empress and you’re like, “Well, I’ll say, she’ll be here tomorrow and she likes” [breaking into laughter] [Jack chuckling] “the scent of roses or whatever.” [laughing]
JACK (overlapping): Critical skeleton.
ART (overlapping): I– Jack’s pitch to me sounded sort of like, Scooby-Doo villain adjacent.
[Dre laughing.]
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ALI: [laughing] Sure.
ART: [stiff, gruff laughter, like a tired skeleton] A-ha-ha-ha-ha!
[Short pause.]
[Ali laughing.]
AUSTIN: [sarcastic] Oo, good skeleton laugh.
ART (overlapping): Nice. Thank you.
JACK (overlapping): [sarcastic] That’s a good skeleton laugh!
DRE: [sarcastic] Mhmm.
ALI (overlapping): [quiet] Yeah, that was… that was great.
JACK: Well, this is kind of an opportunity to re… I feel like… Yeah, like, this skeleton and the– the waterlogged kingdom or whatever clearly have their own priorities. Like, I’m sure that this skeleton has got… You know. I was– I… I felt bad about making the skeleton arrive and basically go [goofy, gruff voice] “Ha ha! There’s a kingdom! My queen is coming!”
[Ali laughing.]
JACK: You know, like, he’s clearly come up here for a reason.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh. And it’s to retrieve this locket.
ALI: Yeah, I–
AUSTIN (overlapping): Which is due to her.
ALI: Yeah, the skeleton is uh, delicate in that way.
[Someone chuckling sharply.]
ALI: So… you know.
JACK: [as if listing] Grateful.
ALI: Cordial.
JACK (overlapping): [quiet] Yeah. [chuckling]
ALI: “Cordial” is the way that I would [laughing while speaking] describe this skeleton.
DRE (overlapping): [quiet] Mhm.
AUSTIN (overlapping): [quiet] Uh-huh.
ALI: Um… Yeah.
[Draw #12 — Dre — 01:13:37]
AUSTIN: Okay. Dre, you’re up.
DRE: All right. Ooo!
AUSTIN (overlapping): Oo!
DRE (overlapping): Ten of Clubs! Our second Ten.
JACK (overlapping): Ooo.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Phew, we made it out of the day. We did it.
[Sylvia and Ali laughing.]
ALI: Whoof.
JACK: The weirdest day in this fucking town. [chuckling]
KEITH: A lot happened.
AUSTIN: Yeah. All right, so what are you picking here?
DRE: [thoughtful] Uhh… I’ll go with [reading] “The gardens are planted. The work has been done, and now we wait. What was planted and what are we waiting for?” [pausing] Yeah, so there’s the teeth thing here, [Someone laughing] [Austin: Uh-huh.] there’s the trees sprouting fruit overnight, um…
KEITH (overlapping): There’s the new redwood.
DRE (overlapping): Oh, you know what? Actually, you know why the fruit sprouted overnight? Um, actually, when the trolls plant their teeth, the fruit actually has to sprout, because as people pick it up and carry it, it spreads pollen that germinates the teeth.
[Someone gasping deeply.]
AUSTIN: Ohh.
ALI: [laughing sharply] We’ve got ourselves a whole ecosystem!
DRE (overlapping): Mhm! Yeah, totally.
JACK (overlapping): [incredulous] Oh my god!
[Ali laughing, overlapping.]
JACK (overlapping): Get fucking David Attenborough out here!
KEITH (overlapping): Yeah, we really ha– We really nailed it.
[Ali still laughing.]
KEITH (overlapping): Look, it’s a whole little world.
JACK (overlapping): [croaky, mimicking David Attenborough] “Here, by the water’s edge…”
[Ali still laughing.]
DRE: Which is why everyone was… Even after a long day, nobody said like, “Ugh, we can’t– [sighing] Let’s just wait and do this tomorrow.”
AUSTIN (overlapping): No, it was immediate.
DRE (overlapping): They just felt compelled.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Mhm.
JACK: [incredulous] I’m fucking– I’m transcribing this, I don’t even know where to start with this one.
[Several laughing.]
JACK: The… fruit...
[Someone laughing.]
KEITH: Which grows because of the eating of the cave.
DRE: [amused] Jack, it’s so very simple. [laughing]
AUSTIN: It’s very straight forward, Jack, I don’t know…
[Ali and Sylvia laughing.]
DRE: The trolls come out of the water, and they plant their teeth. Um, and then, nature—sensing that the teeth have been planted [Austin chuckling]—sprouts the fruit, um…
AUSTIN: [expectant] Uh-huh.
DRE: The villagers, uh, compelled, carry and pick the fruit, and in doing so…
AUSTIN: [chuckling] Love the ambiguity of “compelled”.
DRE (overlapping): Yeah, uh-huh!
JACK (overlapping): Wait wait wait, what fruit? W- What f…
DRE (overlapping): I thought that’s what–
JACK (overlapping): Oh, the teeth planting sprouts the fruit on the trees, we’re not talking about tooth fruit.
AUSTIN (overlapping): That is–
DRE (overlapping): Yes. Yes yes yes.
AUSTIN: Yes. Yes.
DRE: Um, and then by picking and transporting that fruit, you’re spreading pollen, and that germinates… the teeth. [pausing] Now, the question is, [quoting the question] “What are we waiting for?”
AUSTIN: All right, well. [in anticipation] Roll that die, Dre.
DRE: Yeah. Um…
AUSTIN: d6.
DRE: Right. So we’re still doing a d6? I wasn’t sure if we had decided to…
AUSTIN (overlapping): Always still a d6.
DRE: Okay.
AUSTIN: No, ‘cause it’s just the day is a d6, like, it’s– The metric is always a d6.
DRE: Oh, right, okay.
[Sylvia laughing sharply, overlapping.]
DRE (overlapping): God.
JACK (overlapping): Ohh my god.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Un… believable.
[Sylvia and Keith laughing uproariously, overlapping.]
AUSTIN (overlapping): Unnnbelievable.
ALI (overlapping): Is it another 1?! [laughing]
AUSTIN (overlapping): Listen, everybody… Would you believe we’ve rolled a third one?
DRE (overlapping): [groaning] Aaaugh, these are the worst three days in this town! [chuckling]
JANINE: Huh.
[Sylvia coughing, Jack chuckling, someone snorting.]
AUSTIN: Three bad days.
JANINE: Are they ones, or are they candles?
[Sylvia laughing.]
ALI: Mmmm.
DRE: Mmm.
JACK: Or are they tree… redwood trees?
AUSTIN: Or are they the three...
[Janine chuckling.]
AUSTIN: The fucking… Pyre, baby. Um… So, [reading] “Do our characters/civilization still [chuckling] live here? If not, who does?”
ART: Maybe not! Maybe everyone just picks up and goes overnight. [chuckling]
[Austin chuckling.]
DRE: “I don’t know if I’m feeling this anymore.” [chuckling]
AUSTIN: Um, what do– yeah, which of any of these things… feels…
ART: “My wife’s sister has a place back in…” [chuckling]
AUSTIN: [chuckling] “...Western Folley.”
DRE: “You know what? That skeleton lady, she’s going places, maybe I’ll just follow her.” [chuckling]
AUSTIN: Yeeaah.
DRE: Uh, these are collective, right?
AUSTIN: Yeah, I– I think so. They are. We still live here. Um… does anything changed? [sic] The next day, do the teeth start sprouting? Or, how long does that take?
DRE: Uh… They probably– Yeah, I’ll say they start sprouting. Uh, what do other people think?
ART: Like, little sprouts, right? It’s not just full on trolls.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah yeah yeah, not– not big.
DRE (overlapping): Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. Yeah yeah yeah.
ALI: Oh, teeth micrograins…
AUSTIN: Mm. Mhm.
DRE: Exactly.
[Ali chuckling.]
DRE: Although maybe it’s, uh… Maybe it’s different fruits.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
DRE: What is– What’s a fruit that looks like teeth?
[Austin sighing sharply.]
ART: Like a… co… cocon… No. No…
JANINE: Are there like, white berries? Maybe?
DRE (overlapping): There we go!
AUSTIN (overlapping): Ooo.
DRE (overlapping): I like that.
ART (overlapping): Like an under-ripe strawberry?
DRE (overlapping): Yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, well– Or a white strawberry.
DRE: Are those a thing?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JANINE (overapping): Oh… I found something like, horrible.
AUSTIN (overlapping): I mean, they are in our weird world.
JANINE: Uh… polar… berry? I d– I– This isn’t horrible, I just don’t like it. I just don’t like to look at it, with my eyes.
AUSTIN: Yeah...
DRE: Ohh!
AUSTIN: These are like, white blackberries.
JANINE: Yeah. It looks like a bunch of teeth stuck together to me, though.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah, I can see that.
JANINE: Like, very shiny teeth.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah, I can see it now.
DRE (overlapping): Ohh.
JANINE (overapping): In like, little clusters.
DRE: Yeah, I… I like this.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah, let’s do that.
KEITH (overlapping): Oh! Oh!
DRE (overlapping): In that I don’t like it, but I like it.
KEITH: Do you wanna see a– Pictures of a, I think a different kind of polarberry?
JANINE (overapping): [curious] Mmm!
AUSTIN (overlapping): Sure.
DRE: I just… I keep expecting polar bear pictures, and I have to… remind myself otherwise. [trailing off]
JACK (overlapping): Oh, those look nicer!
AUSTIN: Oh, those are nice. Mm-hm. Those –
JANINE (overlapping): Those look like little pumpkins.
KEITH (overlapping): Well, but these have like, a real molar vibe to me.
DRE: They do.
AUSTIN: Oh, they do.
JANINE: Mhm.
AUSTIN: The shape, especially on the ones on the right and stuff.
ALI: Ohh yeah.
DRE: Uh-huh.
ALI: Um…
AUSTIN: Yeah. All right, polarberries. Polarberry bush.
ALI (overlapping): What if they were like, really long though…?
AUSTIN: Don’t like it.
[Keith laughing uproariously, overlapping.]
JACK: Ohh!
AUSTIN: Eww.
ALI (overlapping): Like these hands...
AUSTIN: I see.
JANINE: [dubious] Huh.
DRE: [intrigued] Ohh.
AUSTIN: Well, this is only one day, so all we got is a little bit of the weed coming out of the…
ALI (overlapping): Sure—No no no, I’m j– [Dre: Yeah.] You know, I’m just throwing out ideas.
AUSTIN: But good to know. I– yeah, uh huh.
[Ali laughing.]
AUSTIN: We got no berries yet.
ALI: Could be long.
AUSTIN: All right. We are still there, um… [reading] “Any other visual changes?” I wanna say the Triadic Pyre has lit… a… a special light—and when I say “a special light”—do you know that bit from… um… that Werner Herzog documentary, Lessons of Darkness, where the dude just fucking throws a… a, like a, molotov cocktail into the open… like, oil well?
JACK: No!
AUSTIN: And it’s just like, a sprout of fire.
DRE: [curious] Hmm!
AUSTIN: That hap– I think I posted it in here, uh, recently. Uh, [chuckling] because of course I did. So it’s like—it’s as if the– Imagine a… um, a… You know, again, just kind of a loose oil– Not a well, but oil, like, spout—like a geyser of oil—um… and then, if that was alight. And that is coming out of the temple of the Triadic Pyre. Like, from a high spire.
DRE: Hmm.
AUSTIN: So that’s fun. It’s good to wake up to.
DRE: That seems… I… I’m gonna say it: That seems bad.
AUSTIN: [dubious] Mm. Who could say.
AUSTIN: M… me!
AUSTIN: [amused] Ah, fuck.
[Sylvia laughing.]
AUSTIN: Um… Any other visual changes? [amused] Place still use the same name for now?
ALI: For now.
DRE (overlapping): Yeah.
AUSTIN (overlapping): M-kay.
JACK: Oh!
ALI: There’s enough going on, we don’t really have to talk about [Dre: Right, yeah.] like, “Hey, let’s all call this something different.”
[Austin chuckling.]
AUSTIN (overlapping): Jack?
DRE (overlapping): Shitville. [laughing] Everything’s terrible.
[Austin chuckling.]
JACK: I don’t know if it’s like, a visual change. I wonder if just like, the field where they held that big meeting…
AUSTIN: Yeah.
JACK: The meeting kind of hasn’t really ended. Like, new crises keep happening [Ali laughing] so like, people just are staying in the field, or going to get a meal or go to bed and then coming back to try and meet with someone, and be like… So it’s like, maybe establishing itself more as like, a…
AUSTIN: Mhm.
KEITH: There’s… It’s like… It is like, horrible in itself how much the game is making us put into single days [chuckling] at a time, like...
[Ali laughing.]
AUSTIN: It’s– Yeah, it’s incredible, I love it.
JACK: [enthused] Yeah! I was really interested when we rolled the day thing, ‘cause I was like, “W… What is this gonna do?” but it turns out that like… I guess when we play games like this, we move forward… in much bigger chunks, more often.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JACK: And being stuck to days is amazing—individual days.
AUSTIN: I– We– I will raise this, ‘cause it’s important that we make the note that we could do this: We could go back to [chuckling] yesterday again if we wanted to…
JACK (overlapping): Trap ourselves in a day again.
[Ali laughing.]
AUSTIN: [amused] I suspect we wanna move forward.
JACK: So there’s like, mud—the grass is now starting to get worn down [Austin: Yeah…] around the meeting field. Muddy footprints, little groups, someone set up a little stool to sell bread.
AUSTIN: [sighing] I think someone in town, tonight, um… Or the, like– [searching for words] overnight—just finds themselves crying, because they realized… they’ve been waiting for the mummer’s parade before the harvest. [gradually slipping into character voice] “And the harvest happened, and the mummer’s parade didn’t, and we’ll still do the mummer’s parade, I know that, but it’s not the same.” And it’s person’s had a year, where they don’t know– They didn’t expect to– They don’t think they– This is a teenager who like, doesn’t like the mummer’s parade, and it hits them. You know what I mean? Where like, “Ah fuck, ah fuck, I guess I care about this stupid town I live in.” And… and they’re not happy about it.
[Draw #13 — Janine — 01:22:32]
AUSTIN: Janiiine? You’re up.
JANINE: Okay. [pausing] Twooo.
AUSTIN: Our third Two.
JANINE: Third Two… Uhhhhh… [reading] “A major modification is made to the environment of our place. What is this change? Was it made by someone, or did it simply come to pass?” [deliberating] Mmmmm… Man, so a day has happened.
AUSTIN: [chuckling] Uh-huh!
JANINE: Hmm.
AUSTIN: “Environment” is broad at least, we can do a lot with “environment”.
JANINE: Uhhh, hang on, I need to find a picture to illustrate what I have in mind. [typing]
AUSTIN: [expectant] Mhm.
JANINE: Yes, this is exactly what I want! Um, okay… Sooo, the thing that happens, is… You know the trees? You know how trees usually– They kinda– I mean, they have branches, they do, but you know, the main part of the tree kind of goes in one direction.
[Austin chuckling quietly.]
[Short pause.]
AUSTIN: ...up?
JANINE: Yeah. [chuckling] Yeah yeah. You get it.
AUSTIN: [oddly grave] Y… yeah. I do.
JANINE: Um… [laughing] Uh, so I think people… Wake up, in the morning, [Austin: Mhm.] to these very loud popping sounds—like, very loud popping sounds. Massively loud popping sounds. Um, it is like if… a hammer as big as a mountain… is like… Or, actually no, an axe as big as a mountain—is like, cutting up firewood. Like, it’s big, just loud, like, huge pops [Austin: (in anticipation) Mhm.], that kind of reverberate. And by the time people get outside, they’re done, like, it’s finished, it happens very quickly, there’s just a series of these pops. Um… And what people realize is that the trees are now sort of resembling—instead of being very tall trees with sort of normal branches—they are more resembling, um… like, oyster mushrooms. Like, the way they branch in those little clusters, where…
AUSTIN (overlapping): Mhm…
JACK (overlapping): [grave] Oh my god.
JANINE: Where… You know, in a true cluster you kind of can’t even tell which mushroom is the main– Like, which [Austin: Mhm.] mushroom head is the main one.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JANINE: They’re all kind– Some of them are bigger, some of them are smaller, but they’re usua– There’s like, three or four that are like, the same size, um… And the trees have done this, essentially.
AUSTIN: [flat tone] Cool. Are they– Are each of the tru– new trunks the same width as the old ones, [Janine: Yes.] or has it been dispersed? [flat tone] Cool.
JANINE: So they’re all like, kind of smooshed together, like it’s also now very crowded.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Eugh.
JANINE: Um…
AUSTIN: And shadier in town, probably! [chuckling]
JANINE: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Uh… [chuckling] Another great day here in Eastern Folly! [chuckling]
[Draw #14 — Austin — 01:25:28]
AUSTIN: Okay. My tuuurn… Four. Uh, this is our… third Four. [reading, with emphasis] “Something new has been constructed” [Jack: Oh, fffucking hell.] “and stands where there was once something else.”
[Keith laughing uproariously, overlapping.]
AUSTIN (overlapping): [reading] “What once–”
JACK (overlapping): [amused] Have we considered that we might destroy this town?
[Janine and Keith laughing.]
AUSTIN: [reading] “What once– What was once there, and what has replaced it?” Well. [sighing] “What was there once” is the part I don’t know. I know immediately what the thing is. Um… [sighing] What’s–
ART: We ended up playing this season in the next town over.
JACK (overlapping): [amused] Yeah!
[Ali and others laughing.]
ART (overlapping): And now we’re like, “Wow, we can’t end up like that.”
JACK (overlapping): The fish town.
AUSTIN: This is the first dungeon, actually, yeah. Um… [more serious tone] Just to the north of town, there is a little– Oh! Do you know what it is? There had been an old, um… [uncertain] Eh, mm, do lakes have lighthouses?
JACK: This one does.
AUSTIN: No, because there’s n– Does– This one does, you say?
DRE (overlapping): It could!
JACK (overlapping): It could!
DRE: Yeah, do you want it to?
Someone (overlapping): [quiet] Sure.
AUSTIN: Not anymore, it doesn’t. Um… Becau– [chuckling]
[Ali and Jack laughing.]
AUSTIN: Because, um… Or maybe it’s– it’s incorporated, that’s kind of fun. Around the lighthouse, um, has a new structure—has been built, overnight. And, it’s one of the largest structures in town, or– you know, again, it’s just north of town, close enough to say that it would be part of town, but… not in the heart. Um, this is down on the lowest level, not up near the abbey. Um, and… You know, within walking distance to anyone in town in, you know, whatever, thirty minutes, even the furthest south point of town.
And it is a… large—maybe larger than the town, in this moment feels it would ever need—a train station. Now… [amused] the thing about these train stations is… Um, sometimes people make them, because they would like a train to show up. And sometimes they arrive as if by magic, ahead of a train arriving on its own… design. Um, there is a… a railway here, in the Heartland, called the Shape, and it is a… It is a trainline, or a series thereof, of strange hierarchies, of unpredictable arrivals… Um, it connects many places throughout the Heart, but it will just as soon run a track through your town as it will get you to your relatives’ place across the desert. And now there is a station here, um, unannounced, unbuilt by anyone here in the town, which means that one of the great trains of the Heartland has decided to make a destination… of Eastern Folly. Um… I think people are mixed on this.
JACK: [amused] Say more?
AUSTIN: I think some people are like, “Excellent! I’ve hoped to be connected to the rest of the Heartland, this will let us–” Uh, the miners especially are like, “Can’t wait to hop on this train once I make my money and get the fuck outta here.” [chuckling]
[Jack chuckling.]
AUSTIN: Um, but I think for the permanent residents, the idea that now there is a deeper connection to the rest of the Heartland—and that a train could show up carrying who knows what—especially after yesterday, is there gonna– is a train going to show up today, and if so, who or what is gonna be on it? Um… W– Will we be lucky enough that it will stop at the station, or will it drive itself into the fucking mountain, and destroy our mine? Like, who knows with these trains.
JACK: Oh yeah, one of the things about the Shape trains, right, is that like… a lot of them don’t seem to have self-preservation in the same way that… modern trains would?
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JACK: Um… They might just go off a cliff.
AUSTIN: [amused] Mhm!
JACK: Or into some water, or… [chuckling]
AUSTIN: [chuckling] Uh, and it’s worth saying, um… In the… I think in the intro, I don’t remember if this is gonna– I don’t know if this is gonna make the final intro—but I did talk about there being this, um… this… on top of the sort of sense that things– that reality was untethered from itself, um, there was also this like, mechanical logic imposed on the world, in certain places. The Shape, this railway, is a big part of that. So—or a big, uh, illustration of that, of that kind of counter… counter-structure. So yeah. That’s my turn.
[Draw #15 — Keith — 01:29:51]
AUSTIN: Keith?
KEITH: All right. [pausing] Ace! Last Ace.
JACK (overlapping): Oo.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Final Ace.
KEITH: [reading] “Sometimes, change is so slow…”
[Several laughing.]
ART: [laughing sharply] Around here it’s not!
[Jack chuckling.]
KEITH: [chuckling while reading] “...that the world shifts unnoticed. What is the groundswell that has been taking place so quietly?”
JANINE: I love this right now, because it doesn’t even ha– [Austin: Yeah.] actually have to be that small, right, because who’s going to notice anything that isn’t as big as the other things?
DRE: Right, yeah.
AUSTIN: Mhm!
KEITH: I have it! Okay, I have it. The town… is moving… closer… to… the mines.
JACK: Oh my god…
AUSTIN: [excited] Oh, I fucking love it.
[Several laughing, overlapping.]
JACK (overlapping): [desperate] Ohh my god.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Great answer. All-time good answer.
[Keith laughing.]
JACK: [chuckling while speaking] Oh-ho-ho-no…
ALI: [sighing] [quiet, defeated] Yeah…
JACK: [chuckling] How do they find this out?
KEITH: [laughing] [frantic] They– I don’t know that they do!
JACK (overlapping): [incredulous] This place is so–
AUSTIN (overlapping): [amused] Right, it doesn’t say they have to!
KEITH (overlapping): It says “the– the world shifts unnoticed”!
AUSTIN (overlapping): [frantic] It says it’s unnoticed! [laughing]
JACK: [incredulous, desperate] We’ve made the worst place in the world in our first session.
[Austin sighing.]
[Keith laughing, overlapping.]
JANINE (overapping): Is it that the–
JACK (overlapping): Oh, god almighty.
JANINE: Is it that the… the train platform, like, the area where the train would stop, is like, a few feet shorter than where it should be, ideally? And everyone’s like, “Huh, that’s… that’s weird.”
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah, maybe.
JACK (overlapping): Ohh, god. But–
JANINE: “Normally these things line up perfectly.”
JACK: [amused] But they don’t but two and two together, right?
[Janine chuckling.]
AUSTIN: No! No! [sighing]
KEITH: Here’s the– Here’s the thing—here’s the only people in town who might have noticed: the miners.
AUSTIN: Right.
KEITH (overlapping): It, like– If anyone–
JANINE (overapping): [chuckling] ‘Cause their walk gets shorter.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Walk’s getting shorter.
JANINE (overapping): [amused] Their walk home gets shorter every day.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
KEITH: Yeah, that’s it. If anyone has noticed, it would be the people who go like, “Didn’t it used to take fifteen minutes to get here?”
AUSTIN (overlapping): God, and–
Keith (as MINER): I swear– Are we walking faster, are we getting healthy in these mines?
[Keith laughing.]
Janine (as MINER): No, we’re just getting used to it, we’re just more familiar with the area, you know. Feels shorter.
KEITH (overlapping): Right, yeah.
Austin (as MINER): No, yeah, we’ve been going in deeper—we’ve been going in deeper later, it makes the whole walk seem shorter to the mines, ‘cause we do more of the walk after the– we get there, it’s– it’s a mental trick. Jimmy.
KEITH (overlapping): Yeah.
[Short pause.]
AUSTIN: [chuckling] Stanislaka and Jimmy.
[Ali laughing.]
AUSTIN: Two residents here at Eastern Folly. All right. I love that answer.
[Draw #16 — Sylvia — 01:32:01]
AUSTIN: All right, uh, Sylvi, you’re up.
SYLVIA: All right. I got… a Nine. Okay. [reading] “There’s planning going into a celebration.”
[Someone chuckling.]
JACK (overlapping): [flat tone] Hooraaay.
SYLVIA: [reading] “Is it a festival, holiday, or remembrance? What is it celebrating?”
[Someone sighing quietly.]
SYLVIA: Hm! Well… Uhh, I think we have the answer for this—it’s the harvest festival, right? Uh…
AUSTIN: Yeah… Are people like, rushing?
SYLVIA: Yeah! I think that this is like… completely an emergency for people right now. Um… and I think, like… [short sigh] There’s a lot of like, parents rushing to get like, kids’ like, costumes finished, [Austin: Oo, yeah.] for like, dress-up stuff and shit, and like…
AUSTIN: [emphatic] Uh-huh.
SYLVIA: There’s a lot of, just like… It’s kind of miserable, honestly, like, it’s just very like– It’s like… a bunch of people found out that Christmas was tomorrow, but they thought it was like, the… like, October still.
AUSTIN: Right. Right. [sighing]
SYLVIA: So yeah, a little… oh, it’s... hectic, I guess would be [chuckling] the way to describe that. Um, people are–
KEITH (overlapping): Does it feel like they lost time?
[Someone sighing quietly.]
KEITH: Or is there a collective sort of, like… um… Is there a panic over this lost time, or… Is it like—sorry for this—is it like Click, where… [Various others chuckling quietly] people feel just like they have fast-forwarded?
[Austin chuckling.]
SYLVIA: Uh… What? Like, do they feel like they’re older? [amused] I’m very confused.
KEITH: Uh, I guess it’s– Okay, so they’re– For–
ART (overlapping): No one’s seen your Adam Sandler movie, Keith.
[Ali laughing, Austin chuckling.]
SYLVIA: I– Hold on, now, I have seen Click. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, I was with Keith on that.
KEITH (overlapping): S– Okay.
[Someone laughing.]
AUSTIN (overlapping): Let’s not say things we can’t take back, Art.
[Keith laughing, overlapping.]
SYLVIA (overlapping): I just wanna be– He does age in that, as well.
KEITH: Um… Okay, so, if you– If all of a sudden… Is– Have people found out this year Christmas is in October, or have people suddenly found themselves in December?
SYLVIA: Uh… [thoughtful] Oh, that’s… I don’t think the months have changed so it’s now September—or like, December—you know what I mean? Like, I feel like it’s just, like…
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah.
SYLVIA: Because the– this is–
KEITH (overlapping): Christmas moved.
SYLVIA (overlapping): Yeah.
KEITH (overlapping): All… all the sudden.
SYLVIA: Christmas moved. The comparison doesn’t work one-to-one because Christmas is sort of an arbitrary day, and this is tied to a physical thing happening, um…
KEITH: Right, yeah.
SYLVIA: But, yeah, it’s more like… it– the date of the holiday moved as opposed to everyone else moved.
AUSTIN: Okay. Good answer. I think, uh…
KEITH (overlapping): It’s so–
AUSTIN: I think this is a… a weird day.
KEITH: It’s so good… because it’s like, no one wants to– No one wants to miss the harvest festival. It is p– It’s some people’s favorite time of the year…
AUSTIN (overlapping): Right! Right.
SYLVIA (overlapping): Yeah!
KEITH: People love the different things that you do for a harvest festival, some people love the mummer’s play—but then also, there is like, this bigger thing that the play is meant to do.
[Austin sighing.]
KEITH: And some people know that, and, like, are acutely aware of it.
[Ali laughing.]
[Draw #17 — Art — 01:35:07]
AUSTIN: Yeah. All right. Art, it is your turn to draw a card.
ART: Third– Fourth Seven! Fffourth Seven.
AUSTIN: Final Seven.
ALI: Ooh.
ART: [reading] “A previous alliance shows cracks. There is bickering and infighting. Who is fighting? What are they fighting about?” [clicking tongue] I don’t know if this is strong enough to be called an alliance. So you can tell me if this is not… doesn’t rise to the… the… standards, of the fourth Seven.
[Several chuckling.]
ART: But what if some of these skeletons are like, sick of this shit?
[Ali chuckling.]
ART: You know, the skeletons start coming out of the lake, and some of them are like, “I don’t want to serve the… Sunken Empress’...” Sunken? What was the adjective?
SYLVIA (overlapping): It was Sunken.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Sunken’s right.
ALI (overlapping): Sunken, yeah.
ART: “—Sunken Empress anymore. I’m– I’m not sunk anymore, so I’m… I’m– I quit!”
KEITH: [matter-of-factly] “I’m unsunk!”
AUSTIN (overlapping): “I’m unsunk.”
ART: Yeah, and so like, there’s like, the camp of loyalist skeletons, and then there’s a new camp of independent skeletons.
JACK: Oh my god, are they actually establishing a camp on the beach? Like, one is trying to come out, and the other one is trying to drag them back down into the water again?
ART: I think it’s like, one is at low tide, and one is at high tide.
JACK: Ohh, wow.
[Someone mumbling something.]
ART: I don’t know if lakes have tides.
JACK: [emphatic] They do in this world where the moon gets fucking big!
AUSTIN: Yeah, the moon gets big.
ART: Oh right, yeah. So… um, but high tide and low tide is probably a… a more dramatic thing, so it’s probably a… a bigger gulf…
AUSTIN (overlapping): So wait, you’re saying– When the water… When the water recedes, and it’s low tide… you get a diff–
ART (overlapping): That’s where– That’s where the… loyalists are. And the separatists are where it is always… dry.
AUSTIN: Up. Got you. Right, yeah—on the beach, and not... How do people resp–
ART (overlapping): But because of the way these moons must work… these things must be pretty far [chuckling] apart.
[Jack chuckling.]
AUSTIN: Yeah, uh-huh. [chuckling]
KEITH: The… the answer, by the way, is that lakes do have tides, they’re just usually small.
ART (overlapping): That makes sense.
KEITH: Um, but– Because usually, you don’t have a moon that gets really big.
[Sylvia and others laughing.]
AUSTIN: Yeah, that’s normally true.
ART: Usually, [amused] that’s what the moon is like.
AUSTIN: [frantic, searching for words] W- Uh- W… Are people… It’s today. What do people do immediately, I guess is the question?
[Jack laughing.]
AUSTIN: [pausing] [hurried] Also, this reframes the emissary thing in such an interesting way, because now it feels like the emissary showed up because of this internal conflict… in a way. Do you know what I mean? Where it’s like, [strained skeleton voice] “Ah yes, I’m here to call on the old– the old [chuckling] treaties,” [amused] the classic thing I go back to all the time.
[Jack chuckling.]
AUSTIN: Just like—”I want to– I’m here to establish a relationship with you, before these other fucking skeletons do.”
JACK (overlapping): Before they can! Yeah.
ART: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Mhm.
JACK: God… And–
AUSTIN: Um… So yeah, wait, [amused] what is the immediate response from the town as a skeleton camp gets set up today?
ART: I mean, it probably doesn’t… super concern a lot of people in the town… what the organization of the skeletons is, right?
KEITH: Yeah. “We just learned about you guys.”
AUSTIN (overlapping): No, but–
[Dre laughing.]
AUSTIN: [chuckling] Right.
JANINE: I’m just picturing someone like, shouting over a low fence, “Can you guys wait a week?”
[Jack, Ali, and Keith laughing.]
KEITH (overlapping): [laughing] “Yo, we’re having an unbelievably large amount of shit going on.”
AUSTIN (overlapping): But look, I– I don’t wanna– I don’t wanna–
DRE (overlapping): “We’ve got a lot going on here.”
AUSTIN: I don’t want us to deflate this, because this is not a world where people live among the undead. The undead exist, but we don’t… By and large, the people who live in this town don’t like, have– This is what– The way Jack set this up was, this is not, uh, Hieron, where the undead was like, a class of being that existed alongside elves. This is a skeleton… crew, that should impose some sense of fear or… or at least so– should feel strange to the folks here [Keith: Right.] in some way, so I’d like to see that externalized in some way, or… uh, [clearing throat] physicalized in some way.
[Draw #18 — Jack — 01:38:53]
AUSTIN: Are we… good to keep moving? Jack, I think you’re up.
JACK: [weary] Oh, god…
[Sylvia laughing.]
JACK: This is a Four of Diamonds.
AUSTIN: [uncertain] The final Four…?
ART: Yeah, it’s the fourth Four.
JACK: [reading] “A creative or artistic achievement is unveiled.”
[Austin laughing.]
[Jack chuckling, groaning.]
KEITH (overlapping): We… we… we know it.
JACK: [reading] “What is it? How is it received?” [to Keith] Do we? What is it?
KEITH: Uh… I have an immediate assumption of what it was, but I don’t wanna put any ideas in your head. It’s your card.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah yeah yeah, you should– I had probably the same one as Keith, but– but I’m more curious what Jack ends up…
JACK (overlapping): I mean, if two of– If two of you have got it, I wanna hear it, and we can… we can figure it out. Let me look at the notes.
AUSTIN: I mean… it’s the play.
KEITH: The play, yeah.
AUSTIN: People been rushing to put the– to do the celebration, Syl– in Sylvi’s turn, Sylvi said about the–
JACK (overlapping): [reading] “A creative or artistic achievement is unveiled.”
AUSTIN: It’s just– It’s really good this year, Jack. [chuckling]
DRE (overlapping): [quiet] Mhmm.
KEITH (overlapping): It’s really good and they had no time.
ART: Yeah, they had to push it up by… six weeks.
AUSTIN: I wonder if the lack of… time… Right, yeah—also, we joked about it being a week later, but you’re right, Art, originally we were talking about it being six weeks away. Right? The harvest. In fact, let me go back to like, Ali talking about the… um, the light, that was about six weeks or something between where the fruit was and where it was supposed to be. So we have a lot of time that jumped ahead. Um… But yeah, is there something about it being more improvisational, more, um… like–
JACK: Well, and it’s… The landscape that they’re in is transforming it. Like, this is site spec– [Austin: Yeah.] This has always been site specific art, in the way that like, how you described the mummer’s plays last time, Austin, where you called them “low art,” [Austin: Mhm.] and in the way that like, a lot of low art is… well, I guess like all kinds of art—dependent on where you’re performing it, and when you’re performing it. And who you’re performing it with. And so, I think like, I think we just get like, a scattered series of images that I picture as being like, very surrealistic. I’m thinking of like… Were you describing like, Tarkovsky… the other day, Austin?
AUSTIN (overlapping): That sounds like a thing I would do.
JACK (overlapping): You were using him as like, a… as like, a jumping-off point.
[Dre laughing.]
JACK: Like, I think the first thing we… Like, we just see like, uh… Like, three women, one of whom is wearing like, a massive marching drum—uh, carrying a massive marching drum—like, beating the drum and stepping carefully over the, uh, tracks, of the Shape that are there… that’s there now.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JACK: Um… And then we see someone wearing like, a… a horse’s skull over their head, uh, and we see like, someone lighting a single candle held on top of a pole, from the signal fire at the top of the Triadic Pyre. And then we just get like, little scattered shots of the play, like—miners are standing on the stage, kind of holding their cap and looking a bit unsure, ‘cause they’ve like, never seen this fucking thing before. And like, someone is playing a trumpet, and then like… They go into a cave, and a crown of like, st… um, fossils is put on their head, and they come out of the cave, and everyone like, claps and cheers, and like, people are serving fruit punch, um…
And at the same time, [animated] people are in the fucking meeting area still, just being like, [desperate] “What do we do about these” [Austin chuckling] “like, English civil war skeletons on our beach who are now–” One of them is throwing a stone at the other, and like… Meanwhile on the stage, like, a chicken on a rope has been brought in, and the chicken is like, held up, and like…
[Austin laughing.]
JACK: I dunno, and… people think this is great! But also at the same time, everyone is fucking exhausted. Um… Like… People can’t tell—is this the best play I’ve ever seen, or have I completely forgotten how to interpret this stuff? Um… You know. Someone carrying a like– takes a goat into a cave…
KEITH (overlapping): Or is it just nice to like… do the one normal thing?
JACK: I think there’s that as well. Like, I’m sure that people’s responses to it are different. Maybe that kid who was sad that they were gonna miss the– The teen who was like, “Oh, I do actually care about this,” is like, [impressed] “Oh man, it’s actually really good this year!” [chuckling]
AUSTIN: [reverent] “They’re fucking killing it.”
JACK (overlapping): “They’re doing… they’re doing amazing.”
AUSTIN (overlapping): “They didn’t have time to finish the costumes, but that gives it a real sense of like, théâtre vérité, you know?”
JACK: Everybody sings… like, sings a capella…
KEITH: This k– [chuckling] This kid loves some théâtre vérité.
ALI: [amused] Mhm.
AUSTIN (overlapping): [chuckling] Yeah, big fan.
JACK (overlapping): Dogme ninety-whatever. Dogme 95.
AUSTIN: Yeah! [laughing] Yeah, Dogme 1895, yeah. [chuckling]
[Someone chuckling.]
JACK: [amused] Dogme 1895. Uh, it has to be all natural light, uh… [chuckling]
AUSTIN: [amused] Which is good, because we have six of them in the sky at all times.
[Sylvia laughing.]
JACK: [amused] We haven’t invented electricity.
AUSTIN: Not yet! Or—uhh, I thought we had– I thought there might be…
KEITH: You mentioned occasionally finding batteries.
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, I think there might be…
JACK (overlapping): I’m sure the Shape Knights use…
AUSTIN (overlapping): I dunno, maybe not. Maybe we’re at gas lamps more than like– I think maybe we’re just at gas lamps.
JACK: Um, maybe like, really fucking shitty dynamos.
AUSTIN (overlapping): [approving] Yeahh...
JACK: Like, someone cranking a thing that goes [miming a weak sound of a squeaky gears, barely moving] and then a little light pops out.
AUSTIN: [chuckling] “See? It works!”
JACK: Um…
AUSTIN: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah.
JACK: Lots of applause.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Perfect.
JACK: No one knows if it’s gonna work.
AUSTIN: Do you– Like, in terms of convincing the miners not to do this?
JACK: Well, as usual–
AUSTIN (overlapping): Or–
JACK: As usual, the… the harvest queen steps up, and she goes to deliver the message, “Do not go into the caves,” but she can’t bring herself to say it.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Right.
JACK: Like, her tongue stops as she tries.
AUSTIN: Does she do the normal… “The mines are dangerous! The caves are dangerous!” [chuckling] or whatever, and that’s about all… that can come out?
JACK (overlapping): I don’t even know if she can get that far.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Okay.
JACK: I think she just says something like, you know… [strained] “Dark are the depths of the caves!” Long pause as the tries to “Do not go into the caves.”
[Austin chuckling.]
JACK: And then she says like, “Carry a light into the mines!”
[Austin chuckling.]
JACK: Everybody applauds, knowing what she’s trying to say.
AUSTIN: Mhm. Fantastic. Okay.
[Draw #19 — Ali — 01:44:33]
AUSTIN: Ali, we’re back around to you.
ALI: We sure are. Hi, hello. I have a Two of Spaaades. Is that a Spade?
AUSTIN: That’s a Club, yeah.
ALI: Oh, that’s a Club. Okay. [reading] “A breakthrough moment in technology, comma art, comma politics, [chuckling] comma philosophy,” [Austin: Hm.] “or daily life tips the scales of power balance.”
[Keith laughing.]
ALI: [laughing while reading] “What was this [chuckling, stumbling] breakthrough, and how does it play out socially?”
AUSTIN (overlapping): God…
KEITH: You get a lot of wild shit when stuff has to make sense for a day, and a thousand years.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah. Uh-huh.
ALI (overlapping): Yeah. Uh-huh.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ALI: [reading, thoughtful] “What was this breakthrough, and how does it play out socially?”
AUSTIN: It’s amazing that this game could be about a family living in a house.
DRE: Mhm!
[Keith and Ali laughing.]
[Short pause.]
ALI: Okay, what are the power balances we have on the field here?
AUSTIN: Good question.
ALI: We have the… We have… the skeletons v. skeletons.
AUSTIN: Yes.
ALI: We have… The miners v. the townspeople.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
ALI: Uhm… We–
AUSTIN: We’ve got the caves v. the miners.
KEITH (overlapping): We have the cave v. the town.
DRE (overlapping): The train?
ALI: We have the train v…
AUSTIN (overlapping): Cave and town.
DRE (overlapping): The town.
JACK: Everybody. [chuckling]
DRE: Yeah, everybody.
ALI (overlapping): The town.
AUSTIN: The– Yeah, the world.
JACK (overlapping): Egg– Egg situation.
ALI: We have the… egg s– Oh my god, we haven’t even talked about the egg.
AUSTIN (overlapping): We’ve yet to– Yeah.
ALI (overlapping): [emphatic] We haven’t even talked about the egg! [laughing]
AUSTIN (overlapping): That was part of the–
[Sylvia and Ali laughing.]
KEITH: Have we hit…
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah, we got to do the egg.
KEITH (overlapping): Skel– Skeletons versus each other, and town versus the queen?
AUSTIN: We did that one.
ALI (overlapping): That was– That was the first one. Um…
AUSTIN: [doubtful, high pitched] Ehh, town versus the queen seems strong. I don’t know about there’s a versus–
KEITH (overlapping): Well, there’s a power dynamic there.
AUSTIN (overlapping): I guess there’s a power relationship. Yeah, you’re right.
ALI: Yeah. Um…
AUSTIN: Oh, oh, and—Py– uh, Triadic Pyre and… and miners, also. Power balance. For sure.
ALI: [quiet] Oh, god. How does the egg affect a power balance?
AUSTIN: Does it do something that gives someone more power? Does it… change the situation—the relationship between… the cave… beasts, or the cave and the town? Does it hatch?
ALI: Yeah, I was thinking like—does somebody take it? Um, but that’s…
AUSTIN: Right.
ALI: Like, an elder’s like, “Well, I’m taking this egg now, ‘cause I know what to do with it.” Um… But then, how does that [Austin: Mm.] tip the power balance? [trailing off, quieter]
[Short pause.]
AUSTIN: Maybe another thing to do here is to think about the situation, right? Day three [chuckling] of this fucking week, um… We… Everyone wakes up. The… teeth are sprouting. The pla– The trees have split into strange new shapes. The sun is in the air. [amused] The suns are in the air. [chuckling] It’s a beautiful day. Um… A train station has arrived. More chaos. Right? But then—the Py– the Triadic Pyre has lit a new light. [chuckling] But then, there is this moment of the great play that brings everyone together, that is… what was the exact word, Jack? It was like… Not “transformative”, but, um– It– Did it say “masterpiece”? [quoting] “An achievement”.
JACK (overlapping): [quoting] “An artistic achievement.”
AUSTIN (overlapping): [quoting] “A creative or artistic achievement.”
[Keith laughing.]
AUSTIN: Um, has– Seems to have like, reset the vibe.
[Short pause.]
ALI: Right.
AUSTIN: Um, so we’re on an upswing, at least in this moment.
[Ali laughing.]
AUSTIN: So in the– Almost like, in the shadow—or, we could do it the other way where—is the scene that you’re about to describe happening in a montage, like The Godfather, uh… hitmen scene.
ALI (overlapping): While the play’s happening, yeah. Um…
AUSTIN: You know what I mean? Cut in with the parade and the… play.
ALI: Yeah—I dunno– Like, I– The thing is like, I don’t know what the last beat of the egg thing should be, ‘cause I don’t want it to be like, “Oh it hatches, and a kid has it, and they’re powerful ‘cause they have a dragon,” like that’s not… um…
AUSTIN: [agreeing] No. Um, for what it’s worth, the thing that I think that the… dragon—I think I thought the dragon said this, was like “Bring it into the cave.”
ALI: Ohhh.
AUSTIN: There’s some cave shit. With that egg. I don’t know what it is. It ain’t my turn.
ALI: I think that they give the miners the… egg. I th– I don’t know…
AUSTIN: “They” being… the people who have– Well, I guess at this point, the– The town has the egg.
ALI: Right.
AUSTIN: Uh, right? At this point?
ALI: The– The… What did Jack say before, the… the… the like, you know, the queen of the ceremony or whatever.
JACK (overlapping): Oh, the harvest queen?
ALI: Oh. Yeah, the harvest [laughing] queen.
AUSTIN: Mm.
KEITH: Yes, we all know the harvest queen.
AUSTIN: Ohh!
ALI: Yeah. Um…
AUSTIN: Like, at the end of the play!
ALI: Yes.
JACK: “Do not go into the cave!” she tries to say, [Ali laughing] but instead she says “The depths are dark!” and just silently hands them an egg.
[Keith chuckling.]
ALI: Yeah, she gives… she gives like, the main… the main… um, miner like, a tool belt, and the… [laughing] There’s like– There’s like a… like a… metal orb on it, that’s like, “Oh, it’s a nice decoration.”
JACK: [understanding] Ohhh.
AUSTIN: But in the orb is the egg sac?
ALI: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Okay, here’s a– Can I suggest something?
ALI: Sure.
AUSTIN: Which is: The…
[Ali chuckling.]
AUSTIN: In this play—this play has always been about, “Hey, be careful, this fucking”—as far we know, as far as we’ve talked about, this play has been: “The mine will eat you eventually.”
ALI: Mm.
AUSTIN: What if there was a part of this play in which the gifting of an [chuckling] egg sac, or a heart, or a… some—or, sort sort of McGuffin—was always there, some sort of glowing thing. Remember, the egg sac also glows and pulses.
[Dre laughing.]
SYLVIA (overlapping): [amused] Thank you.
Someone (overlapping): Yeah.
AUSTIN: Um, and… Uh, just as a reminder.
[Ali laughing.]
AUSTIN: Um, the… without—either—I mean… normally, a lot goes into building that particular prop. “Here it is, I’m giving you the Orb of Light,” or whatever. But, we couldn’t do that, ‘cause it’s six weeks away. We don’t have– The Orb of Light ain’t ready. And maybe someone realizes, ”Oh, shit”—And at this point we can talk about like… I don’t know when our player characters are showing up, but it’s totally possible that in this town, people are working on this problem, and are realizing, “Oh my god. The whole play—there’s a bit in the play where you’re supposed to give the miners the fucking glowy egg sac—we’ve never known there was a real glowy egg sac, we though it was a metaphor for something. Give them the glowy egg sac!”
JACK (overlapping): But she can’t explain it.
ALI (overlapping): Sure.
AUSTIN: And they do. [to Jack] No! And maybe they– I do like the idea of it being kind of hidden inside of [chuckling] the thing…
[Ali laughing.]
JACK (overlapping): Or did you mean– Ali, did you mean that… she gives it to them as like, a symbol, like, “This is the symbolic egg, now you know what you need to do,” or does she actually give it to them?
ALI: No, I was thinking it like, concealed within like, a pocket [Jack: Ohh, (chuckling) yeah.] within like, a– a fine leather… like, belt. And it’s like, “Here–”
AUSTIN: Oh, I think it’s bigger—sorry. I think it’s bigger than a thing you could put in your pocket.
ALI: Oh, sure, okay. I was thinking…
AUSTIN: It’s a big dragon’s egg sac, I think it’s like a watermelon.
ALI: Ohh, I was thinking, um… not. [laughing] I wasn’t thinking like, a chicken egg, but I was thinking like, you know…
AUSTIN: Yeah, in my mind it was like—it fit in a big bucket.
KEITH: Yeah, I was thinking like, a…
AUSTIN (overlapping): Like that– that you would–
KEITH (overlapping): Like a beach ball that’s lost like fifteen percent of its… air.
AUSTIN: Yeah, that’s about right.
KEITH: And it’s like, squishy.
ALI: Okay.
AUSTIN: It was on an altar. You know?
ALI: Um… Yeah, I guess if this can’t be a discreet handing-off, then it becomes a bucket… handing-off.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Oh, it—so, when you said… You did say “orb,” and I thought maybe it was like, a big, metal, like a… What do you call those things that priests have, that have the incense?
SYLVIA (overlapping): Oh, yeah, I think it is a censer.
AUSTIN (overlapping): A censer.
ALI (overlapping): [understanding] Ohhh.
AUSTIN: But bigger.
[Ali chuckling.]
AUSTIN: But bigger than that, holding an egg sac.
ALI: Sure?
AUSTIN: That’s my pitch, but I’m not– again, I’m happy for you to do whatever.
ALI (overlapping): Yeah, no, I mean, I think that works. I mean, I don’t wanna…
AUSTIN (overlapping): [quiet] You know, if you wanna go “egg route.”
ALI: I don’t wanna retcon the egg size here to make it a secret.
AUSTIN: [emphatic] Oh, I’m think it’d still be a secret, it just needs to be a bigger… [chuckling]
[Ali laughing.]
AUSTIN (overlapping): ...device to make it a secret.
ALI (overlapping): Well, then– Then it– Like, I mean, if it becomes a thing of like, “Oh, we used to give you this glowing thing of... fruit, and now we couldn’t do that, so we have to actually give you this egg,” it becomes less of a discreet… handing-off, right? If it’s like, a part of the thing…
AUSTIN (overlapping): Only if you tell the miners that.
ALI: Sure. I mean, I guess. Um…
AUSTIN: You know.
ALI: I [laughing] am just trying to synchronize the ideas. Um… Yeah. Yeah.
KEITH (overlapping): I do like the idea that it was always a part of it, and now it seems like, “Oh, now it’s– Now– Is this the real thing that this was supposed to be? I guess…”
[Ali chuckling.]
KEITH: “I guess do that, that’s fun.”
AUSTIN: Ab– Uh… It tips the scales of a power balance. So like, what’s it– how does it play out socially? What’s… what’s… If this is where that swing is happening, if this is where the history of the town changes forever and… this shit goes in there… [pausing] what’s that look like? Tonight? Or today, I don’t know how many more cards… until Tens.
ALI: [laughing] Yeah, I don’t know, ‘cause it’s like… I feel like the– the power balance that has changed is townspeople v… cave. The vision is the miners coming back out, right? It’s like, all of the townspeople watching them walk in with bated breath, know like, “Oh, this is the harvest entrance…”
AUSTIN: Mmm.
ALI: “We think that this is gonna happen.”
AUSTIN: Right. Right.
ALI: And then… it doesn’t. [chuckling] Um, I don’t know if there should be some sort of egg reaction while they’re in there. Um…
AUSTIN: [chuckling] Do you think that like, the townspeople walk them to the... entrance this time? Which, we’ve talked about that neutral ground stuff being kind of like… It’s… People don’t like to go up there if they don’t have to go up there, and I like the– [Jack: The procession...] I would love to see a little show of support for the miners. Yeah, procession, part of the… Like, a new final act on the…
JACK (overlapping): Like, the man with the chicken on the rope, and the woman with the drum, [Ali laughing] and then like, three hundred miners and then [Keith: The–] some townsfolk trailing along behind, and like…
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah.
ALI (overlapping): Well, I feel like it’s much of–
KEITH (overlapping): The first procession since the nuns.
[Short pause.]
[Ali and Austin chuckling.]
ALI: It’s much as– It’s just as much that, but I feel like if you’re… if you’re having the week that these people have had, [Austin: Yeah.] and you’re going through the motions of what you think is like, a powerful ceremony, you do the thing that you usually do.
JACK: Yeah, that’s true.
AUSTIN: Yeah. That makes sense.
ALI: Um… I don’t know– Where is the big, um… meeting place that Keith mentioned, via the mines?
KEITH: Above?
AUSTIN: It sounds like it’s like, down on the… like, the… ground level, so to speak? And, I–
ALI: The entrance to the mine is? And then the…
AUSTIN: No no, the entrance to the mine is up, near the abbey on the second fl– like, the second, like, on a higher tier.
ALI (overlapping): Ohhh, okay.
AUSTIN: There’s an abbey overlooking the lake, above… like, on a second tier, and that abbey is where the… There was the, um, bell tower or whatever? The spire of the abbey—and that is connected to—question mark—the… [uncertain] the entrance to the… cave?
ALI: Right right right. I assumed that the thing that Keith mentioned was higher than that, ‘cause you could like, look down onto the town.
KEITH: Right, the Weather Room.
AUSTIN: Oh! Sorry, the meeting place… You mean the Weather Room, yes.
ALI (overlapping): The Weather Room, yeah. Um…
AUSTIN: Yes yes yes yes yes. I thought you meant the meeting place where all these meetings have happened.
ALI (overlapping): Ohh, no no no. I think that like, some town official should go into the Weather Room to like… [Austin: Yeah…] watch to see what happens. And then that’s your sort of, like, solidarity… thing.
JACK: God…
AUSTIN: That makes sense.
KEITH: “Yeah, we’re with you from b– from up here.”
[Ali laughing, Austin chuckling.]
KEITH: “We’re right there with you from… from back.”
ALI (overlapping): [very soft tone] Nooo…
AUSTIN (overlapping): [quiet] And then–
KEITH (overlapping): “From… away.”
ALI: [soft tone] I j… You know… [normal tone] How much more can you mix– shake it up?
AUSTIN: Yeah…
ALI: In a single week? [chuckling]
AUSTIN (overlapping): Fair.
ALI: You do your harvest festival, and you see how it plays out. And it plays out really well, they come back out. Um…
AUSTIN: What do they see in there? What… what happens? One– Also, who gets it? Is it like, a special miner? Is it just a random miner, is the one who has this thing? [chuckling]
ALI: [laughing] I think it’s like, the head guy– It’s like, the person who was chosen to be a part of the…
AUSTIN (overlapping): The play.
ALI (overlapping): The play, right?
KEITH: Oh, great.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Well, how do we determine… that?
KEITH (overlapping): Is that Dre’s thing, for the… [Ali: That was…] the best cook, the best… miner?
AUSTIN: Ohhh, right.
ALI: Yeah. Um…
AUSTIN: So whoever hauled the most this quarter or whatever?
ALI: [chuckling] “Yeah, you get the harvest gift—which, this time, I know it’s usually some fruit” [Austin laughing] “and like, a steak, but this time it is a full dragon egg [Keith laughing] and—yes, you do need to take it into the mine,” um… and–
KEITH: In some ways it’s disappointing ‘cause there’s no steak.
[Ali laughing, snorting.]
AUSTIN: [chuckling] You can still make the steak for the poor person!
ALI: [mumbling] He gets the steak later. Um…
AUSTIN: “Well have it ready for you, promise. [chuckling] I know normally—and I can’t tell you this ‘cause of how I’m cursed—uhh, [chuckling] after the harvest festival the miners go in and then never come out, but, um… This time you’ll get the steak”—that makes the normal steak feel like a last meal, that’s harsh.
[Ali laughing, overlapping.]
JACK (overlapping): Wait, actually, hang on—they only get disappeared once every generation, right?
ALI (overlapping): Um…
JACK: So like… do they…
KEITH: Yeah, or longer.
AUSTIN: Yes. Right. Right. Right.
JACK: So sometimes they do come out after the harvest festival, but– Do– Is it like, we feel like we’re kind of due?
KEITH (overlapping): You’re right.
JACK: It’s sort of like, Yellowstone-wise, [Keith: Yeah–] that’s why they’re all waiting with bated breath. Ali?
KEITH: It was like, one of my first turns, but I think the word was “past due.”
JACK: Yeah.
KEITH: Yeah.
JACK: So they’re like, “Oh, it’s probably gonna be this fucking… today.”
AUSTIN: Mmmm.
ALI: Yeah.
JACK: Especially given what’s happened.
JANINE: Even if you’re not past due, like, think about—if you lived in a town where every– you know, once a generation, a lot of people would disappear and presumably die, you would probably treat every instance of that as like, “We should probably give them the thing that might help them,” right? Or like, “We should probably…”
DRE (overlapping): Yeah.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Right.
JANINE: “We should probably do all we can to… to try and make sure…”
AUSTIN (overlapping): Do the rituals.
JANINE: Or even, you know, beyond that, just being like… watching them being like, “Man, I hope… I hope they don’t… I hope this goes okay,” like… I think you would– You would treat every instance, even… you know, it would be extra severe when you… when you feel like you’re due for it, certainly, but I think… If we’re pres– If we’re coming from a place—and I think we are—that like, these are generally good people, and like, a place that we will want to protect, um, I think it’s fair to say that like, every instance of this happening, even if it goes okay or whatever, is an instance of like…
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JANINE: “This could go bad. These people could never come out of there.” Like… It would still feel heavy, right?
AUSTIN: Yeah, that makes sense. There’s an earnestness to it, for real. Right?
JANINE: Yeah. You do want them to come back.
AUSTIN: Which is also an interesting moment of like, unity in the town, where like… the townspeople who are often annoyed by the miners are nevertheless like, [desperate] “Fuck—no, please don’t die.”
[Ali laughing.]
AUSTIN: “Please don’t– I hope– Please this year, don’t die.”
JACK (overlapping): “I want so badly to be able to tell you… to be safe.”
ALI: I think that the… when the miners go in there and start mining, um… they end up finding… like five different pieces of a giant nest.
AUSTIN: Mm.
ALI: Like a wooden… [chuckling] nest that’s like broken into bits.
AUSTIN: Ooo.
ALI: And is like, four times as big as the… the dragon egg.
AUSTIN: So like, a– When you say a wooden nest, do you mean like, a nest that has been crafted? Or a nest made of like, loose wood bits?
ALI: Um… I think it’s– Well, I guess loose bits, but like, for you to be able to mine it out of a… a… [Austin chuckling.] wall, it’s like, together. It’s like, stuck together, right? Um…
AUSTIN: Right, right right. Yeah.
ALI: You aren’t taking it out a twig at a time.
[Ali and Austin laughing.]
ALI: You’re taking it out like, [Austin: Yes, I gotcha.] here’s a fourth of this… this structure. Um…
[Short pause.]
AUSTIN: Do they like, put the egg… Do they put it together and put the egg in it? Is that where we’re going?
ALI: I guess so! I mean, what else would you think– [laughing] You know– Yeah.
AUSTIN (overlapping): I don’t know! I’m not a miner.
ALI (overlapping): I mean, those miners are maybe like, “Hey, weird shit today. We– Hey, [amused] thanks for the egg. We found all these sticks,” uhh, “Time to…” [Austin laughing] “Time to put out my candle.” Um… [laughing]
[Austin laughing.]
JACK: Everyone in the town is like, you know, weeping with relief, and the miners are like, “Boy, that’s a weird cave today.”
[Ali laughing.]
JACK: “I’m tired.”
AUSTIN: God…
ALI: I think if they do leave it there, they leave it in front of the… cave.
AUSTIN (overlapping): Okay.
ALI: ‘Cause you kind of have to walk out of it and be like, “It’s weird that we all got the same thing. Well, let’s just leave it here.” Um…
AUSTIN: Someone watch over the egg at this point? Like… That night—’cause we’re staying on now—does someone like… watch– stand guard over the egg?
ALI: [chuckling] I think so. It’s maybe, um… probably one of like, the townspeople who were involved in the like… decision making. And then there’s probably [Austin: Mhm.] somebody from the like, “We’re a church and we… we honor mixed things,” that is like… [Austin: (chuckling) Right.] fertility and eggs and whatever, [chuckling] who is like “Yeah, I’ll co– I’ll come.”
AUSTIN: Right, they’re like, “Uh, yeah, this checks like eighty different boxes, uhh...”
[Ali laughing, overlapping.]
AUSTIN: “I don’t know who this is, but this is definitely– [Ali: Yeah.] this lines up with a bunch of shit we all… [Ali: Right.] we all think is pretty important around here.”
ALI: But I like the idea of just like, two people like, carrying these chairs up of this hill, [sic] and then like sitting outside of this cave entrance, [Austin: Mhmm.] with like, a little torch. ‘Cause everybody else has enough [breaking into laughter] fucking things on their plate right now.
[Jack chuckling, overlapping.]
AUSTIN: Yeah! Totally.
[Draw #20 — Dre — 02:01:13]
AUSTIN: All right. Dre, you are up.
DRE: Yup. Okay, so… the outcome of your card, Ali, is that the miners were able to leave– like, they came back out of the mine?
ALI: Yeah.
DRE: When they normally would not have.
ALI: Uh-huh.
DRE: Okay.
JACK: [emphatic] Has this broken the curse? Are they able to talk about it now? Or do we not know?
ALI: I mean, I guess? I mean, it’s a past tense thing, right, so it’s like, not even… Who knows if that’s curse… uh… like, rel… not reliant, isn’t the word I’m thinking of, it’s like when you follow a code. Um… [chuckling] But like, ‘cause you could be able to say to somebody like, “Oh, I’m so glad you’re back,” right?
JACK: [relieved] Yes!
AUSTIN: Right.
ALI: Um…
AUSTIN: Right right right. That’s why I’m saying like—do they even realize that they can speak it now? Right away? If we’re staying on this day cycle thing.
[Ali chuckling.]
DRE: I have an idea.
AUSTIN: Okay.
DRE: ‘Cause I drew the third Ten.
AUSTIN: Ah! I see. [chuckling]
DRE: Um… and… I’m gonna pick [quoting] “There is a great victory that enables the inhabitants of our place to build towards a new future.”
[Austin chuckling.]
DRE: Um… So, I’m gonna choose [quoting] “There is a great victory that enables the inhabitants of our place to build towards a new future.” Um, I think what happens is that… um, there are two townsfolk. I guess like, mid-thirties-ish, um… Well, one is a townsperson and one is a miner.
AUSTIN: Mm.
DRE: They, uh… These women have struck up a romantic relationship. Um, and the morning after the harvest festival, the two women are talking, and… the townsperson basically tells their partner, something along the lines of like,
(as MINER’S GIRLFRIEND): I’m so glad to see you this morning, because I… I was just so certain that when you went in last night, you would not come out, just like the last time this happened.
DRE: Um… and then is like… Claps her hands over her mouth and is shocked, because she realizes like, “Oh, okay. Is the curse broken?” [Austin chuckling] “Am I the only person who can talk about this?” And then probably just like, runs from person to person, and is basically like,
(as MINER’S GIRLFRIEND): Hey, can you talk about this?
[Dre laughing, Austin chuckling.]
DRE: And I think everyone can. I think everyone is able to talk about it.
AUSTIN: Awesome. [quoting] “What is the future they wish for? How will they set to work on it?”
DRE: Uhh, I would definitely… welcome input from other people on this one. Uh… Especially because I’ve gotten two Tens in a row now. [laughing]
AUSTIN: You have. Yeah. Um… I think it completely changes the potential demographics, right? Because previously, every generation…
DRE: Oh yeah.
AUSTIN: You would have this thing of like, “Okay, well, all the miners are dead.” And so yes, relationships ended at that point, [Dre: Mhm.] or never started to begin with, because… people who’d lived through one already knew that that’s what would happen inevitably to any miners. And so maybe there’s just… Is there immediately this thought of like, “Oh, we can start planning for”—for like, this couple at least, they can start planning for a future together. You know?
Um… And something like that might happen—you know, some percentage of miners—maybe it’s only ten percent, or something—decides to stay in the town, on average every whatever, but normally at a certain point, that number gets cold because of the curse. And if that’s not happening anymore, then… You know.
DRE: Yeah, it just keeps… it just keeps going.
AUSTIN: Right.
DRE: I mean… And I guess like, the answer we can– how far we can spread that depends on what roll [laughing] happens, but…
AUSTIN (overlapping): Comes next, I guess, yeah.
DRE (overlapping): Yeah.
AUSTIN: Sure. We don’t know how many days it is, but…
JACK: This feels like a big W, I think is the other thing, right? Like, th… Like, when you wake up and realize that you don’t have to do the deadline? Or like, the thing that you’re worried about… isn’t… actually gonna happen. And that being this vast, generational thing as well, there’s got to be this real like, “We’ve had a fucking—the day before yesterday, none of this had happened.
[Austin chuckling.]
JACK: Uhh, like it was all kind of kicking off.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JACK: So I wonder if there’s this like, exhausted relief as well.
KEITH: Does…
AUSTIN: Triadic Pyre takes credit. “This has happened in three days, as they have willed it.”
[Keith laughing.]
JACK: [chuckling] [sinister] “We told you to go deeper into the mines…” [chuckling]
AUSTIN: [sinister] “And you did and you found the nest, and the nest has the egg.”
KEITH (overlapping): But they’re also upset, because they wanted an explosion.
AUSTIN: Oh, they’re still paying people to go deeper into the mine, they still think they’ll get their explosion.
JACK (overlapping): “Continue to go deeper into the mine.” [chuckling]
AUSTIN: We– Yeah, I don’t know what the next card is, shit.
DRE: “Y’all don’t… y’all don’t think it was all those Slumbou candles that got handed out?” [Austin laughing] “Come on, now!”
AUSTIN: God, yeah, does the… does the… the nurse of—nurse, Jesus Christ—nun [Sylvia laughing] of… [uncertain] Mmmmm… I forget what it is.
ALI (overlapping): [softly] Slumbous. Slumbous.
AUSTIN: I’m not gonna get it wrong, ‘cause like– Slumbous, okay.
ALI: [softly] Slumbous.
AUSTIN: Slumbous.
ALI: There was a famous Superbowl tweet about him! [laughing]
[Keith laughing.]
AUSTIN: [amused] I forgot about the famous Superbowl tweet.
[Jack laughing.]
DRE: [laughing] God.
JACK: Also, what has the nurse of—[in disbelief] oh my god—the… [chuckling]
[Austin laughing, overlapping.]
JACK: What has the nurse…
AUSTIN: [amused] The nurse of Slumbous.
JACK: The nun of Slumbous.
[Dre laughing.]
AUSTIN: Yes.
JACK: What is her take on this?
AUSTIN: That’s what– Yeah, that’s what I was saying before, like, does she think like, “That’s right, you all said your fucking prayers. You all lit the candles, and then unlit them, and this town’s all going better.”
ALI (overlapping): Mhm.
KEITH (overlapping): This is how minor gods become major gods. [chuckling]
AUSTIN: This is how minor gods become major gods!
ALI: Mhm.
AUSTIN: For real!
ART: Slumbou is… blowing up.
DRE: Mhm.
AUSTIN: [chuckling] No, blowing out.
KEITH (overlapping): “Praise Slumbou, the curse is lifted.”
AUSTIN (overlapping): You blow out the candles.
DRE: Yeah.
[Someone chuckling.]
ALI: Pray to Slumbou!
AUSTIN: I think Slumbous definitely gets an uptick of worshippers, are you kidding me? [emphatic] If this happened the day after a new nun of Slumbous showed up…!
KEITH: “Yeah, we were– Hey, we were fools to be praying to ninety gods. It was Slumbous...”
AUSTIN: “The king. The king of gods.”
KEITH: [chuckling] “It’s always been Slumbous.”
[Dre laughing.]
KEITH: Wow…
AUSTIN: Um… [reading] “Has the place changed physically? Has anything visually changed? Does it– How does it feel here?” I think we kind of hit all this.
KEITH (overlapping): Are we all answering these, as a table?
AUSTIN: This is collective. Yeah yeah yeah.
KEITH: Okay.
DRE: Oh, wait. Do I need to roll before we answer these?
AUSTIN (overlapping): Oh, you do need… [chuckling] You do need to roll before these, I forgot.
DRE: Yeah yeah yeah.
AUSTIN: Three! Hey!
DRE (overlapping): Three.
AUSTIN: We got a little bit of a time jump here folks, we jumped three days.
JACK: The curse is broken!
AUSTIN: Three days, Triadic Pyre strikes again.
[Ali laughing.]
DRE: God… Is it really—wait.
KEITH (overlapping): They don’t– They don’t know.
DRE: Is it really only days? Yeah, it is…
AUSTIN: Yeah, it’s days, it’s always days. We’re set– We are set in days. Yeah. So three days advance, that means it’s the end of the week. Right?
KEITH: God, less than half a week, that was.
AUSTIN: But for the last three days, nothing has come up from the fucking… [Ali laughing] ocean lake ever, no strange creatures have been discovered…
ART: Slumbou is giving people peace.
AUSTIN: Yeah!
KEITH: Hey, you– If you’re putting your candles out at the right time… there’s no end to what you [breaking into laughter] can accomplish. [groaning]
AUSTIN: All right!
ALI: You just have a– have to have awareness of when you’re blowing them out.
DRE (overlapping): Mhm. Yeah.
ALI: And think about Slumbous in that moment.
[Keith laughing.]
ALI: And consider your words and your deeds, and what your next day is gonna be like.
KEITH (overlapping): [laughing] I– [laughing] I–
JANINE: I think we’ve got a… I’ve got the real nun of Slumbous in our midst here.
AUSTIN: I’d agree!
DRE: Yeah.
[Sylvia laughing.]
KEITH: I– Ali, I can’t tell you…
AUSTIN: Ali, do we have to revisit your character idea?
ALI (overlapping): [laughing] We might have to.
KEITH (overlapping): Ali, I can’t tell you how much I love that you have taken the… like… the like, “No no, Slumbou actually makes sense” position. [breaking into laughter]
[Ali laughing.]
AUSTIN: By the way, is it Slumbou or is it Slumbous? I gotta get this right.
KEITH (overlapping): I– [laughing] It is “Slumbous”?
JANINE (overlapping): It depends on if you’re French or English.
ART (overlapping): Yeah, it’s “Slumbous” if you’re…
JANINE (overlapping): Doesn’t French original– That would be– That would be [French intonation] “Slum-boo,” or something.
ART: Slu… [chuckling]
[Ali laughing.]
AUSTIN: [mock French accent] “Slum-boo!”
ART: Yeah, back–
SYLVIA: I like “Slum-boo!”
[Dre laughing.]
AUSTIN: I like to, sometimes when I get pasta, I like to put a little Slumbou on the top, you know? Give it a little kick…
[Dre laughing sharply.]
ART: Yeah—I think in some places they really put the… the “boo” in it, [Ali laughing] but some… some… Slumb… [trailing off, laughing]
DRE (overlapping): [groaning] Ahhh.
AUSTIN (overlapping): [amused] They put the “boo” in Slumbou.
ART: With the… [chuckling] [sighing]
DRE: Hey, can I jump the gun on one of these questions here?
AUSTIN: Yes.
DRE: Uh, does the place still use the same name? Is this town still named after Slumbous now?
[Someone groaning, Ali laughing.]
AUSTIN (overlapping): [uncertain] Oh, are we sure? Cause like– If something would–
JANINE (overlapping): Slumbous’ Rest… [chuckling]
AUSTIN: Candles are really, really evocative, and a town named after some sort of candle shit is not bad.
ALI (overlapping): [mumbling] Yeah…
SYLVIA (overlapping): I also do like “Something’s Rest” because that is tied to… [chuckling] to sleeping.
AUSTIN: Mmm. Slumbous’ Rest…
DRE: Uhh… Brightwick’s Rest?
AUSTIN: Brightwick isn’t bad. Wick—anything wick, wick is good.
ALI: Oh, wick is good… [regretful] I like Eastern Folly, though…
JACK: It has been a bit of an eastern folly.
AUSTIN: Yeah… It has been.
DRE: Yeah. Yeah, maybe we haven’t earned this over the course of six days. [chuckling]
JACK (overlapping): We can sleep on this.
ALI (overlapping): [laughing while speaking] Yeah…
AUSTIN: Let’s sleep on it. Let’s sleep on it.
ALI: Yeah.
KEITH: Um… Where are– What are the other questions? I’m not on that page.
AUSTIN: I think we’re good, I think we hit them mostly, here. Unless it’s– someone knows what it smells like different. [sic] [pausing] Nice candles, is what it smells like. Three–
DRE (overlapping): [expectant] Mhm?
SYLVIA: Oh, I mean, I think if they’re constructing a train station it does probably smell like… like, [chuckling] a little worse.
ALI (overlapping): Ohh, yeah.
AUSTIN: Oh, no—it’s– they’re not constructing anything, it constructed itself instantly overnight.
SYLVIA: Oh, okay.
AUSTIN: Um… It grew, is really the thing that it did. So…
SYLVIA: Yeah, nevermind then. [amused] Smells great!
AUSTIN: You know. I guess that’s not true—the insect people probably built it, right, Jack? Or the creatures?
JACK: [exhaling] Who could say.
AUSTIN: Who could say.
JACK: They probably work fast. I dunno.
AUSTIN: Yeah, let’s find out… We’ll find out about that at some point this season for sure.
[Draw #21 — Janine — 02:10:32]
AUSTIN: Um, all right. Janine, can you draw a card?
JANINE: Yeah… Um… I got the Six of Spades.
AUSTIN: Tsk. Which is our… third Six.
JANINE (overlapping): Third Six.
AUSTIN: 666!
JANINE: Uh-oh…
AUSTIN: Okay…
SYLVIA: [very quiet] Oh yeah…
JANINE: [reading] “Something small but noticeable is destroyed. What was it, and who or what destroyed it?”
[Austin chuckling.]
JANINE: Since this is—mmm. Just because we’re so far in, and we also just like, resolved some really big stuff, I kind of wanna– I kinda just wanna like, have a little bit of like, fun with this one. Um…
AUSTIN: Yeah. Totally, that makes sense.
JANINE: I think that—and small is relative here—um… I think the small but noticeable thing that’s destroyed is that like, the… the pub gets fucking wrecked.
AUSTIN (overlapping): [sympathetic] Aww! [chuckling]
JANINE: Like, the– Like– [laughing] No, it gets wrecked because the miners came back, and everyone gets to explain to the miners, [Austin: Ohh!] “We thought you were gonna die, but you didn’t die,” and the miners are like, [Jack: Ohh, yeah.] “Oh my god, you thought we were gonna die, but we didn’t die?” And they just have a fucking… blowout, right? Because also, they–
AUSTIN (overlapping): Yeah.
KEITH (overlapping): They have a bash.
[Ali chuckling.]
JANINE: You know, the harvest thing is in… is in the rearview, you know, like… It is just– It has been the busiest series of days ever, [Austin: Mhm.] and things have finally– You know, we’ve got this three-day gap now where everyone is probably… on tenterhooks waiting for like, something else horrible to happen.
AUSTIN: Uh-huh.
JANINE: But then it’s actually kind of lulled out, and the miners still haven’t died. They’re still just working, and it’s fine.
AUSTIN: Mhm.
JANINE: And it is probably just like… A group of people are like, “You know what? Let’s throw something together at the pub tonight.” And they just inv– You know, everyone invites a few friends until it’s basically everyone is showing up there, and it’s just a fucking… You know, it’s a– It’s fun, everyone has a good time, [Austin chuckling] but they leave and the place is just fucking… like, in tatters. Just like...
AUSTIN: Yeah…
JANINE: Just shit, just smashed, and stained, and busted up in a way where… where the… the pub– you know, the pub owner probably, the next day is like, “Hey, wh… I need help.” [chuckling] Um…
AUSTIN: [chuckling] [sympathetic] Mmm...! Buddy…
JANINE: It’s like, that sort of thing, where it’s like—it’s small because it’s just the pub, it’s just, you know… It’s just a place, it’s not, you know…
AUSTIN (overlapping): Incredible.
JANINE: But… Yeah.
AUSTIN: Well, that’s good, because that means we can… we can address this poor pub, when we get to…
[Janine chuckling.]
AUSTIN: I guess we’ll see, but… I wanna know more about this—whoever owns this pub is gonna be a character this season, [Janine: (amused) Uh-huh!] goddammit.
JANINE: Good. As they should be.
[Draw #22 — Austin — 02:13:08]
AUSTIN: All right. I will draw a card, so we come back around on me. [pausing] And that is our final Ten.
[Several gasping.]
AUSTIN: Um… [reading] “Ending the game: When the fourth Ten card is drawn, the game is over. No matter the number of cards left in the pile, or the stories that are in motion, our window has fogged and the clarity of vision we had in our place is lost to us. It may feel sudden, but in truth, there is never a clean exit. Places go on forever, building narrative by their mere existence. However, just because we cannot know for certain what takes place after the [chuckling] window of our game, does not mean that we cannot make some conjectures. After all, this is a game about long traces over time–” [chuckling] You know… six days.
[Jack and Janine chuckling.]
AUSTIN: [reading] “By watching our place with such attention, maybe we have learned to predict what can come to pass. As a group, without cards, decide on the following: What happens tomorrow in our place? Who wakes up? Does anyone? What do they see, and what is the feeling they get from the world?” I feel like we’ll have a lot of time to answer this in a broad way, and I don’t need to… drag this any later. We’re at our hard out here. Um, this timed out literally perfectly—um, or damn near, within eight minutes.
[Sylvia chuckling.]
AUSTIN: Um, so… you know. Um…
JANINE: People waking up under tables at the… at the pub, just…
AUSTIN: [chuckling] Uh-huh.
JACK: Surrounded by garbage.
AUSTIN: People climbing the new—the trees that have sprouted in weird, new ways. Um…
JACK: Someone wakes up, someone near the lakeside– their house near the lakeside wakes up to the sound of raised voices, the skeletons—two skeletons—have dragged a chair and a table in between their stockades and are having a loud argument. One skeleton stands and shoots the other skeleton through the chest with like, a... an old flintlock pistol, and the other skeleton goes [gruff] “Ahh, gah!” and scuttles back towards the stockade again.
[Janine, Sylvia, Austin, and others laughing.]
JACK: [amused] Massive burst of gunpowder.
SYLVIA: Oh, that’s perfect. [chuckling]
AUSTIN: Yeah…
JACK: The two people wake… You know, they were watching the egg, and they fell asleep with their chins on their chests—you know, like…
AUSTIN: Ohh, yeah.
JACK: They just wake—[grunting] “Hrgh… Oh, good, egg’s still here.” You know.
AUSTIN: Um… Do you think people start to build some– Like, it starts to… For fear of it raining, someone starts to build a little thing above the… the nest? “I dunno if this egg sac can get wet.”
[Ali chuckling.]
AUSTIN: “We should– We should make a little… You know, haven for it.”
SYLVIA (overlapping): It started out in jelly.
AUSTIN: That’s true.
SYLVIA: I feel like… you know.
AUSTIN: Yeah, but what if the clay… the clay storms come?
JACK: [emphatic, amused] Oh, yeah, fuck those things!
[Janine and Austin chuckling.]
[Outro — 02:15:44]
AUSTIN: In fact, I think where we end is, um… We see one of those storms, starting up on the horizon. And then, you know, people are going through all the motions of getting ready for it to hit. Uh, going inside, you know, barricading their doors and windows, getting ready for it to hit after this terrible week. And then it dies down. And you know, this happens rarely. Never… never so often enough that you could prepare for it or count on it. Um… There doesn’t seem to be a sign for when they hit and when they don’t. But today we are spared from it.
And… I think over the next few weeks, months… maybe up to a year… You know, Eastern Folly is recovering from not just this last few days, but from generations of this curse—of being stuck in this kind of loop that’s prevented any sort of… change, or long term growth for the town. And, uh, I think as part of that, there is… a conversation, about whether or not this is still a folly, [chuckling] um, in the sort of pejorative… way of it.
And I think a combination of the Slumbous stuff—the kind of rise of Slumbous in town—but also the sort of ashen power of the Triadic Pyre, leads the town council, as it led us off mic, to a new name: Blackwick. Blackwick county. The township of Blackwick. And it is here, in Blackwick, where, you know, a year from now… your player characters will be brought in to help investigate, uh, kind of the… the curses that might come...
[Music begins: Sangfielle by Jack de Quidt.]
AUSTIN: ...the many still uninvestigated supernatural, uh… instances in and around town, and might pursue their own interests, along the way. And next week, we will meet those characters.
[Music plays out.]