Austin: Alright, if we're all here, can we go over the characters that we have here now? Your names, your pronouns, your specializations, your values and dispositions, your mechanical contraptions on your back, etc. [chuckles] Let's start at the top left and go clockwise. So, Art and Dre.

Art: We have Tomor Presh. We haven't talked about pronouns— Dre what do you want to—?

Dre: Uhh! We can do he/him.

Art: Alright, for— in honor of Goku, who uses he/him pronouns.

Dre: Yeah.

Ali: [laughs]

Keith: [laughs] To honor him.

Sylvi: [howls with laughter]

Jack and Dre: [chuckles]

Sylvi: Oh my god!

Art: To honor Goku as we do in all things.

Sylvi: That is one of the funniest things I've heard in a while.

Keith: Amen.

Art: Tomor is an Explorer. Their value— his value is curious, and disposition is challenge. He's Goku— [Austin chuckles] I just want to make sure we're afraid about that.

Austin: Yeah yeah yeah, I got you.

Art: With calloused, bare feet, as I— Goku wears shoes, but Goku doesn't have to wear shoes.

Austin: Yeah.

Art: And different colored eyes, [Austin: Mhm.] wearing well-worn robes— as I would have to imagine Goku's robes are at this point. And a mechanical contraption on back— that's not very Goku-like at all.

Austin: But it's very Toriyama-like.

Dre and Sylvi: Yeah.

Keith: It is, yeah. That's where— now we're in Sand Land again.

Dre: It’s— I mean, that's like early Dragon Ball, like I think. I mean, Goku used to fly around on an Nimbus— he couldn't fly for a long time.

Keith: Yeah sure, yeah. Carry around a staff, yeah.

Austin: A staff— yeah, totally. There's all the stuff. Alright.

Art: Do we want it to be a portable smelter? I just threw that out, it can be anything, it’s—

Austin: I think it's like an all-in-one mining machine. It helps you dig.

Art: A— a mining backpack.

Austin: Yeah, it helps you smelt, it helps you refine, you know? An all-in-one.

Art: Yeah. A miracle invention, frankly.

Austin: Yeah. Maybe you stole it when you left. Maybe it's like— maybe they're going to replace the miners with this machine. I don't know.

Art: Well, we couldn't have that. Goku won't stand for that.

Austin: Definitely not. Jack and Janine.

Art: Tomor, rather.

Jack: Janine and I are playing Glesi Sydney. She/her— pronouns she/her, and her evil pet— well, not evil, terrifying, maybe evil.

Janine: Defensive— defensive pet.

Jack: Defensive pet, Yukai. Yukai also seems to be maybe like a treasure hunter who is also kind of a map? We are a Nomad, which means that we added one extra biome die to the pool. [Austin: Love that.] We value beauty, and our disposition is focused, and Yukai's disposition is defensive. We didn't do reputation.

Austin: Reputation starts at zero, I believe. I believe it—

Jack: Oh, right. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I couldn't remember if it was one of those like, where I left, everyone hated me or something. But no, you're right.

Austin: No, because it's about— reputation is, what do the people at this new place think of you?

Jack: Yes, yes, you're right.

Austin: So I think that's right. Alright, Keith, do you want to describe our character?

Keith: Sure. So we have Harlow Presh, in honor of Richard Kind, I believe. He/him.

Austin: [chuckling] Uh huh.

Art: [guffaws]

Sylvi: [howls in laughter]

Keith: [laughs]

Dre: [chuckling] It's good, it's good. It’s good.

Sylvi: Well done.

Keith: He's a scientist of magic, an awkward who values safety. And we were asked by our—

Janine: An awkward?

Austin: [chuckles] Yeah, I think an awkward.

Janine: [chuckles] An awkward who values safety?

Keith: An awkward scientist— [laughs]

Sylvi: Like, a normie.

Keith: Yeah yeah, awkward normie. A jock. I think I meant to say “and awkward”, and then I sort of trailed off.

Austin: Yeah, that's fair.

Keith: He's carrying overflowing scrolls, and is also maybe covered in spilled ink, and he may or may not have beautiful long hair— I think we'll get to that. And our company asked us to take on this expedition, and we need to make a big discovery, or else we'll lose our job— this is a problem that we've left behind.

Austin: Also a thing to note, we—because we're scientists—add four more coin to our pool, so we're all at eight coin, not at four coin.

Keith: Oh, nice.

Austin: Yeah.

Keith: Did I— I think I added that already.

Jack: Oh yeah, it’s in the—

Keith: Oh, to the middle,

Austin: I added to the middle. I added to the middle, but everybody should add it to their little subsections. And finally, Ali and Sylvi.

Ali: Yes, hello.

Sylvi: Yeah. Do you want to take this, or should I?

Ali: I can.

Sylvi: Go for it.

Ali: So, yeah, our character is Arley Bates. [chuckles] He/him. Our specialization is Collector. Our value is Thrill. Our disposition is Jovial. Um, were we reading everything?

Austin: Yeah!

Ali: Um, yeah. So as a Collector, we have our camping equipment. We have our antique briefcase. We have a lantern-hung staff— really a guy who cares about his possessions emerging.

Sylvi: Yeah!

Ali: And we are a physical elemental elf from the gloomy, thriving woods. And I don't think that we said this into a microphone yet, [Sylvi: No, we didn’t!] but we have, uh, titled it. Do you want to say the title in case I—

Sylvi: Sure.

Ali: Our pronunciation ideas are— [laughs]

Sylvi: I mean, I don't know if I'm pronouncing this right either.

Ali: Well, you say it and it'll be what it is.

Sylvi: Okay. We decided to name the Elfin city that we're from, The Balming Willow, comma, Salix— you don't say the comma out loud, I just wanted to make sure that—

Austin: It's not like an Arbitrage situation.

Sylvi: No, it's like— I messaged this to Ali, the way I started trying to visualize it was the way a title card would pop up when you arrive at an RPG town in a Namco-developed game? Like, I'm specifically thinking like Taleshere, where it'll be like the blank blank, comma, name of the city.

Austin: Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.

Sylvi: Yeah.

Austin: Yeah. Strongest tree, strongest roots.

Sylvi: Strongest tree, strongest roots, yeah. That's the— [Austin: Yeah, got you.] the motto there.

Austin: I think I read about that once, says Harlow. Alright, that's the crew. Before getting into the game proper, you may like to know how exactly you came to the new land and what complications you faced in doing so. Roll on the below tables and make a short journal entry, answering the prompt and detailing your voyage to this new place. My voyage to the new land was made by way of— and I believe we have collectively already said airborne vehicle. I think that— Jack, you are pretty strong on pitching us as an airship group?

Jack: Yeah, I think a really weird airship.

Sylvi: I’m down.

Jack: I think that, you know, sometimes you see those drones that are like four rotors rather than just, you know, two, they're like a quadcopter type thing? I'm imagining like, an airship that is, that comprises several small balloons that are lifting it up. Not as many as like the house from Up, [Dre chuckles] but almost like what if Mother Base in Metal Gear 5 was a series of like dirigibles. With big weird sort of like propellers and fans, you know, transporting the crew across the ocean between the continents.

The Journey Was… [00:08:00]

Austin: To the Western continent, yeah. I'm happy with that. Do we all want to roll our “The journey was” here on page 11?

Jack: Yeah, yeah, I like that! I'll go first. For Glesi, the journey was… 6. Painful and marred with betrayal.

Art: Oh!

Sylvi: Oh my god.

Dre: Oh.

Keith: Wow.

Austin: Geez!

Jack: Who broke your trust? Okay, Janine, my first pitch is, do we begin this game on the outs with Yukai?

Ali: [chuckles]

Janine: I think we have to.

Austin: Oh no.

Jack: We're bound to each other?

Janine: Did Yukai—? I wonder if there's like a thing here of like, Yukai is the map. By definition, Yukai has to leave. Yukai does not want to leave, or maybe Yukai doesn't see why we have to be part of a group of other people.

Jack: Ohh… Yukai has a point. We might be— we might be the ones doing the betraying here, you're saying, or?

Janine: I don’t— I don't know. I just think, like, what's Yukai's standard of expedition before us? Like, are we failing to meet Yukai's— you know?

Austin: [chuckles] Jack, you had pitched that the airship had had some sort of complication and crashed. Did Yukai sabotage our airship?

Jack: Yeah! Oh, that's such a good idea. Yeah, the horrible— the horrible pet.

Janine: [gasps] Oh!

Jack: Yukai had spent the last 200 years in, like, a Chao garden inside the box.

Austin: You pulled— you pulled Yukai out?

Janine: We—

Jack: Yukai was having a perfectly good time.

Sylvi: Yeah, you are— that is a betrayal.

Austin: You kick Yukai?

Jack: Out of the Chao garden?

Art: Is this like a Chao and also a gremlin from Gremlins?

Austin: Oh, it kind of is.

Art: Is this a Mogwai situation?

Austin: That’s the vibe.

Janine: What if the thing that happened is that like, Jack, you like casually mentioned crystal eating in our— the DO Cover interview.

Keith: [chuckles]

Austin: Just a little casual crystal eating.

Sylvi: This makes sense.

Keith: This wasn’t a recording, this is just something Jack talks about.

Janine: What if— what if we truly just unboxed Yukai, like we're really— we’re fresh to the Yukai experience, we don't really know his deal.

Jack: Yukai loses his value immediately once he's unboxed.

Sylvi: [laughs]

Janine: Yukai needs to eat crystals to maintain his energy or something. He eats the crystal powering the ship or something like that? [Jack: Yeah!] Because we don’t know— we haven't fed him, we don't know what he needs.

Jack: And this is a dazzling betrayal. He doesn't just eat the crystal, each of the little airships has their own crystal powering them together. And Yukai just chews through all five of them, the one for each pod and then the main pod.

Sylvi: It's like when your cat gets at your phone charger but with way bigger stakes.

Austin: Mhm.

Jack: Yeah, absolutely.

Janine: He hasn’t eaten in so long! He's hungry.

Jack: No, because in the Chao garden you don't need to eat.

Janine: No.

Sylvi: Why did you take him out of there?

Jack: To get the map!

Sylvi: Mm.

Jack: Well, so firstly, actually, we didn't know him—

Janine: No.

Jack: We didn’t know Yukai was in the box. We were told there's a map.

Austin: There's a map, I see.

Janine: It's willed to you by your grandmother, the explorer.

Keith: Which was true.

Jack: Yeah.

Austin: Yeah. So this is the last thing that happens on our journey across the ocean.

Jack: Yes, this happens last. I do want to be explicit as well, I feel like a well-worn trope in fantasy stories is that the discovery that the map is a person rather than a document, you know, either they're a map because they know the path or they're a map because they have it tattooed on them. I want to be clear. Yukai has a very small paper map that he holds.

Austin: Oh. Okay.

Jack: And he won't give it up. And he knows how to read the map, it has a complicated legend.

Austin: I think he might put it away somewhere. Like, where did you put it away? I put it away. There's no pocket, there's no backpack, it's just gone. Yeah.

Janine: There's a scene where someone tries to shake him upside down and get it out, but nothing comes out. Except like crystals, little small crystal—

Austin: Little— [Jack chuckles] yeah, with nibble marks on them, yeah. Alright. Let's do— let's go clockwise. Keith, do you want to roll how our journey went?

Keith: Sure, yeah. What's the, how many D?

Austin: 1D6.

Keith: 1D6. That's a 1.

Austin: Complicated and strange. What left you bewildered? Mmm… did we know our brother was going to be here?

Jack: Oooh.

Keith: N… no. Did we know we were going to be taking an airship that's traveling— how many thousands of feet in the air?

Austin: No. Did we know that there was going to be a weird little creature?

Art: [wheezes] This is, you asking yourself rhetorical questions?

Keith: Did we know the food was going to be gross and pre-packaged?

Art: No. And did we know that it could have been delicious because we had the premier sous chef [Ali, Jack, Sylvi laugh] of the Balming Willow, Salix on board, [Art chuckles] but he refused to cook?

Keith: And at the end of the day, did we know that the bed was going to be lumpy and hard and impossible to get a good night's sleep on?

Austin: Did they make it with rocks?

Keith: They made it with lumps at the lump factory?

Austin: No. We didn't. Complicated and strange. I miss my bed.

Keith: I miss my sous chef.

Sylvi: [laughs]

Ali: [spit takes]

Jack: [chuckles]

Sylvi: Oh my god. Okay. It's us now, right?

Austin: It’s you— yeah, uh huh.

Ali: Yeah, go ahead.

Keith: [chuckles]

Sylvi: I was going to point—

Keith: [laughs]

Ali: [wheezes] Do you want to reroll, or—?

Sylvi: I kind of like it being, this fucking guy [Ali and Keith howl] kept asking me to cook for him. I would have been fine if he asked nicer!

Art: [laughs]

Ali: Yeah!

Keith: I'm fine with soups. Just any kind of soups I'll eat. I don't mind— I just don't want to eat the slime stuff they gave us.

Dre: [wheezes]

Sylvi: Just can’t appreciate—

Austin: I'll take a cream soup. I'll take a broth based stew. I’ll— ifhere's any type of soup you have, I'll take it. Cold—

Sylvi: He says this, but his palate doesn't seem to allow for it. [Ali: Yeah…] Every time I make something, it's wrong.

Ali: I don't even think I should spare my premium trail mix for somebody like this. [wheezes]

Sylvi: No.

Austin: We're not on a trail.

Sylvi: Not a cracker. Not a single bit.

Keith: Lumpy beds, lumpy snacks.

Austin: Tomor.

Sylvi: [chuckles]

Ali: Imagine a pomegranate seed, but like the size of a gumball. I'm just snacking those in front of you.

Sylvi: Yeah.

Ali: Fuck off. [wheezes]

Austin: Damn.

Ali: [snorts, laughs]

Sylvi: Jovial.

Austin: Jovial.

Dre: Whew.

Austin: Tomor.

Art: You wanna roll or should I?

Dre: Go for it.

Austin: Oh my god.

Dre: Oh Jesus.

Art: Oh goodness. I rolled “perilous and rife with loss”. What important thing was lost? Uhh, our brother!

Sylvi: [laughs]

Austin: Alright, we— right, sure.

Keith: We got lost on the journey.

Austin: We are separated, right?

Art: Yeah, we're—

Austin: We— we found each other for the first time in decades. We barely got to talk. And then the creature chewed all the crystals.

Art: And there was no soup.

Austin: I'm glad we were still— we're still connected on this one. Despite all our differences.

Art: You’d think—

Keith: [chuckles]

Dre: [chuckles] That's how we knew we were brothers.

Austin: Mhm.

Keith: Once and forever bonded over soup.

Austin: Can you imagine being Arley or Glesi, and coming on this ship, [Sylvi: And there’s two of them?!] [Sylvi laughs] and seeing either Harlow or Tomor, and then seeing the other one, and then learning that they haven't seen each other in 30 years?

Janine: It's like an Agatha Christie look.

Austin: Yeah.

Jack: [chuckles]

Keith: One with long, beautiful hair, the other with big, golden, spiky hair.

Art and Keith: [laughs]

Austin: Ohh… Keith has added long hair Richard Kind to our chat, by the way.

Art: [howls with laughter]

Austin: I kind of— I think it kind of goes. It's giving 70s British like, [Sylvi: Oh sure.] [Dre: Yeah.] metal band to me. You know?

Keith: Yeah, I see it. He could be in T-Rex.

Austin: He could be in T-Rex, yeah, Richard Kind.

Janine: He kind of has a Spinal Tap thing

Austin: It is a Spinal Tap look.

Keith: This guy can bang a gong!

Austin: This motherfucker can bang a gong.

Jack: [chuckles]

Austin: Alright. We've done so much already. And yet we haven't started really digging in to the game. Resources.

Sylvi: On Friends at the Table?

Resources [00:16:48]

Austin: On Friends at the Table. Throughout the game, your cartographer will be acquiring and losing a variety of resources as you respond to prompts and take actions during the rest phase. You'll need to keep track of these— we can do that.

Jack, you mentioned reputation, I said already. Positive reputation reflects that we are welcome. Negative reputation reflects that we are seen as an uninvited guest. As reputation goes up, things get cheaper for us to buy. As it goes down, they get more expensive for us to buy. Likewise, reputation can be spent. Reputation is a resource that we can spend to reroll during the exploration phase.

Wounds are things that can come up from prompts. We start with three wound slots. If we need to take a wound, and we have no slots left, our a cartographer perishes. A wound is a little sentence fragment that we write down— we know that.

There's also coin. We started with eight coin. This is money, we buy stuff with it. We can spend it to take additional actions in the rest phase, or buy items and converse with the locals when those are options.

We also all started with wares. We have four wares. Wares are commodities and goods that we can acquire during play and that then we are able to sell at settlements. It's a way to make money or to converse with locals who can give us information and stuff like that. Whenever we get to a place, we kind of roll dice to see how much our collected wares are worth? Ware— wares is really abstract. And so it could be that we have— we could go in and decide what our four wares are. So they give an example of like, oh, you could have grayberry wine, or you could have whatever other stuff it is. But it fundamentally is just like, it's a thing you can sell, you know?

Food is very important for us. There's no hard limit on how much food we can carry, so we should make sure we always have some. Food is our primary way of replenishing dice while in the wilderness and traveling to distant locations. The way this game works is you spend food to travel further than the nearest location to where you are on the map. Importantly, because we are playing in multiplayer mode, every round— every rest phase, we all have to lose one food per player. If you can't do that, you start losing wares. So we really got to get food going quickly.

Jack: God, can I pitch just an opening shot that is really straightforward? It is a bright blue sky and four—plus Yukai—people falling separately in four corners of it. And in the middle of the screen, it says, “Select your player.”

Austin: [chuckles]

Jack: And of course, because we're playing, we're choosing all four of them. But this would be the moment at— you could, you know, the Dreamcast is going—

Austin: Well it is, Jack. It's the single character, like— like button.

Jack: Oh, yeah yeah yeah.

Austin: And like you're doing like, flipping between the character choices. And then it's like the bling, bling, bling, as the other—

Jack: Yeah, it says, “Arley Bates”. “Harlow Presh”.

Austin: Yeah yeah yeah. And then it's like, new player joined— new— new— new— new player joined. Right?

Jack: Yeah.

Austin: And then there's all of us here. And we're picking our own.

Janine: Yellow jester.

Jack: Yeah, exactly. And I—

Austin: [chuckles] Exactly, yes.

Dre: [chuckles]

Jack: It really is.

Sylvi: Buff elf needs food badly.

Jack: That vibe of like, the four of us are gonna fall in different places in the world, and we're gonna you know, pick up from— there's also a bit of weirdly DayZ in here? If you've ever played DayZ with a friend years ago before they added more matchmaking, they would just spawn you in completely different parts of the map and there is no in-game map.

Keith: Yup, yeah.

Jack: So your first game would be, where… are you? And can we find each other?

Keith: And no, we can't.

Austin: The answer is no. I’m going to get shot by some rando first, yeah. Okay. So do we just want to get into it and then play through as we play through? Do we want to— everyone's read the rules, so we should have a general sense of how things go. And we can zoom into particular rules as they pop up?

Jack: Yeah.

Austin: Okay.

Jack: That sounds good to me.

Austin: Let me just read the principles of play because these are broader things that are worth thinking about. One, intuition first. There are occasionally situations in Cartograph where the rules dictate a nonsensical outcome, or an idea to you that isn't stated by the rules. Sometimes creativity is best served by those constraints, but sometimes it's better to put the rules aside for a moment and go with your gut. That biome dice indicates a lake in the middle of the ocean. Maybe shift it inland. A prompt tells you of a snowy city in the middle of a desert. Maybe it's not a snowy city at all.

Or Art's variation of the rule— put that lake in the middle of the ocean. [Jack chuckles] Damn right there's a snowy city in the middle of the desert. [Art: Mmm.] Go that way, if anything, I think, for our— for Perpetua. That's the way we want to push.

Art: Yeah, snowy city in the middle of the desert rules.

Austin: Yeah, a hundred percent. Two—

Art: I want to know about the moment it goes from desert to snow. I want to know that three feet of land is the most interesting thing in my whole—

Austin: Yes. [Jack chuckles] Embody your cartographer. It goes without saying, but try to view everything through the lens of your cartographer. Inject their demeanor and value as often as you can into your journal or into your roleplay. Remember our backgrounds to contextualize their story, and importantly, remember that they are an interloper into this land. This place is alien and unfamiliar.

And three, fantasy setting. Cartograph is built to create fantasy worlds. That isn't to say that magic must exist in our world, but it likely does. It sure fucking does, as we just said.

What I think also we're thinking about in terms of the outsiders moving here, our goal here is to try to piece together our various— our various personal goals, you know? For instance, it seems like I would imagine that Glesi wants to figure out Yuki— Yukai's map situation, and that Harlow wants to discover something big and new, and that Arley wants to like have a big adventure and such. And then also we should be working towards the expedition's big goal, which is hunting down information about the so-called Altar of Perpetua, and also this mysterious prophecy of the sun rising in the west on the last day.

Those things don't need to be solved immediately, and in fact, you know, I think for our purposes, the number one thing I want from this game is for us to continue doing what we've already started doing, which is adding a bunch of cool shit to the world for us to build off of as we continue with characters and world building and stuff like that before we get to Fabula proper.

Alright, again, worth saying the game ends if we all have to take wounds and we have no more wound slots. We'll be tracking our Joker pools. If we draw a Joker of the same color a third time, the game ends. And if we run out of dice, the game ends. There are like, positive and negative endings based on like, how much mapping you get done. We'll see how that goes. I think we'll get a lot of mapping done.

Alright, Cartograph is divided into three distinct phases of play, which form the cycle of play. The game begins in the exploration phase. Get out your sextant and roll out your parchment. It's time to make a map. Don't worry, you don't have to do it all at once. Procedure. Roll your dice pool directly onto your map. Try to roll them close together— no, we're not doing this, but we are going to roll some dice. Our dice pool— I guess, let's start. Who wants to start? I feel like maybe our Explorer should start, and we'll go around in a circle, go clockwise?

Tomor’s Exploration [00:23:53]

Dre: Sure.

Austin: So, Tomor— Tomor, what is your dice pool?

Dre: Let's see. We have one landmark, three biome, and then two temporary.

Austin: Do they have to spend the temporaries right away, Jack? Do you remember?

Jack: I believe you have to roll it. Or rather, you roll your entire dice pool.

Austin: I see.

Jack: And temporary dice are part of your dice pool. Now temporary—

Austin: And you lose them during the rest phase, right? So you may as well.

Jack: During the rest phase.

Jack: Temporary dice can be either biome or landmark dice, [Dre: Mhm.] and you can, I believe, decide that after you have thrown them.

Art: Yeah, the sentence on this is, you may treat these dice as either landmark or biome dice when you roll them.

Austin: Interesting.

Art: Which is a touch unclear, but—

Jack: So. You are going to click the macro for a landmark dice once— and let's just do this with the one landmark dice.

Dre: Okay.

Jack: Okay. So you are 16 across the top and 6 down, which is… I'm pinging it here, and that is a value of 6.

Austin: Now, what's that value of 6, Jack?

Jack: The value of 6 is a discovery. This is very exciting.

Austin: And this is on— and where are you seeing this? I guess actually maybe the best thing I can do is drop in the rules reference page. I'll add that as a handout in Roll20.

Dre: Yes please.

Jack: Yeah, I am looking at my— the rules reference page that I printed out. A discovery is represented by sort of just like a question mark? This is— what you have found is you have heard a rumor, or you have seen something on the horizon. You know, you've seen something strange and indistinct. And in this phase, you're being very vague about what it is. This is sort of like a general location. For example, you would say like, oh, it's a forest of pine trees, or it's a glint on some water or something. You haven't been there, so you don't really know what it is. And this is your vaguest, the discovery.

Austin: So yes, as you said, Jack, that first one is a discovery. And the discovery is— I mean, I guess for now, maybe just put a D there.

Jack: I like question marks.

Austin: Sure, I like question marks.

Jack: Just because I like the sort of like RPG feel of like, you've seen something on the horizon and on your map, it's just a little—

Austin: How are we— yeah, so I guess that's my question is, how do we want to— so a question mark will be a discovery?

Jack: Yep.

Austin: Okay, I like it. So go ahead and put a question mark on 16 and 6. And we're going to be rolling a few more of these. So, we’ll see how it goes.

Art: Now we need to roll three biomes, then just like— I don't know exactly how we're going to do temporary.

Austin: We'll do them—

Art: Because they need coordinates, right?

Austin: Well, we'll just roll them like regular, and then we'll decide if they're a landmark or biome, right?

Art: Sure.

Austin: So now three biomes.

Jack: The first biome—

Art: We should roll our three biomes first?

Austin: Yep.

Jack: That is 18 and 8.

Dre: And so if we're rolling three biome die, that we press that macro three times?

Austin: You hit that macro three times, you got it.

Jack: Yep. But it might make sense to go through them one at a time [Dre: Yeah, for sure.] so we don't get stuck. That is a value of two on the biome, which is a mountain.

Art: A mountain.

Austin: Draw a little mountain.

Art: Well, if we roll two of the same, right now we can get a mountain range?

Austin: We could, it's possible. Yeah, so that’s what I'm saying, is do we wanna just roll all three and then look at them.

Dre: Yeah, sure.

Art: Yeah. Do you want to hit one?

Dre: Yeah.

Austin: Alright, so, they’re not— yes.

Art: They're not too much.

Austin: So what we've got here is a mountain, a forest, and some open land.

Art: That's a great mountain.

Jack: These are things you see as you're falling.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: [chuckles]

Austin: Incredible.

Art: So 25, 6 is over here and that's [Jack: A forest.] a forest.

Austin: I was going to ask, do we want tokens for these?

Sylvi: I think that would probably be quicker?

Dre: It would probably be easier.

Austin: Preferable to— to doing. Yeah, sure. So I will do—

Dre: I think at least in the marking phase, [Austin: Yep.] and then once we start filling up more of the map, we could start drawing details.

Austin: Yep, I’m happy to do that. Let me grab some real basic ones.

Art: So I'm the only person who drew something. I'm going to get rid of that, it was a pretty bad mountain.

Dre: Wow.

Jack: But yeah, I think tokens for marking. [Sylvi: I liked the mountain.] But I think we should absolutely be drawing for the map. I feel like drawing on the map and like having fun with different drawing styles, different sizes, [Dre: Yeah.] mistakes appearing is like central to map making games.

Austin: I agree with this. What I want to do though—

Art: I still don’t see where the explanation of the exploration table is? I found the table, but I don't see like, where it defines discovery, for example?

Jack: It's on page 24. It says discoveries— Discoveries represent points of interest on your map. When you mark a discovery, your cartographer has heard of something interesting or caught a glance of something on the horizon. Like all locations, you only learn the specifics of a discovery should you choose to travel to that location. Then it—

Austin: Alright, so it's a discovery at 16, 6. It's open land at 17, 6. It's a mountain at 18, 8. And it's forest at 25, 6. Added. A lotta northeastern quadrant stuff that you came down around, and there's two—

Keith: Sure, it wasn't even that far away from each other.

Austin: Yeah, totally. And there's the two temporaries. Do you want to do biome or landmark?

Art: Well, it sort of suggests we can roll them first.

Jack: Yeah, sure.

Austin: So go ahead and roll either. I mean, it's the same— it's the same. There's nothing special about these two macros.

Dre and Art: Right.

Austin: Alright. It's just one of them says biome, but there's nothing magic on the other side.

Dre: Okay.

Austin: So just take one of them.

Dre: Do you want to do one each, Art?

Art: Sure, yeah.

Dre: Okay.

Austin: Ooh.

Dre: So 5, 14 all the way over here.

Austin: Very far away.

Jack: That can be—

Art: And that could be a settlement, or same as closest biome—

Austin: Which I think is a mountain.

Art: Mountain.

Austin: Could be a big mountain range.

Dre: Yeah.

Art: Yeah. That's kind of fun.

Jack: That's a big mountain range.

Austin: Yeah, but that's how continents work sometimes. Where was it, it was here?

Dre: 18, 18 right?

Art: It was 5, 14— No, it was 5, 14.

Dre: 5, 14— wait.

Austin: We're looking at two different things, Dre.

Dre: We're doing your roll.

Austin: Yeah yeah yeah. We're looking at yours first, which is 5, 14.

Art: So we can make a big mountain range like bisects this area. I— I like this, but—

Jack: Yeah, I think that's a good idea.

Art: Okay.

Austin: And that rule reflects the fact that when you are doing exploration and you get two of the same biome types in the same roll, you can connect them, right?

Jack: Mhm.

Art: Yeah.

Austin: I'm making sure I understand that right.

Jack: You can connect all of them technically, but you could specifically, they call out a mountain to turn into a mountain range and a lake to turn into a river.

Austin: Right, right. Yes. For example, two rolls of one on a biome dice might denote one large forest rather than two smaller ones. I love that. And then, Art, what was yours?

Art: 18, 18, 2, which means it could be an encampment or more mountain. And I think we should take an encampment.

Austin: An encampment.

Art: Here on 18, 8.

Austin: What's an encampment? I guess we haven't investigated yet, right? So—

Jack: Yeah, no, we— we don't know yet, actually. The— I'm trying to see if there's like a broad definition of an encampment.

Art: It's all under settlement.

Austin: Yeah. Settlement refers to any kind of location that houses a people. Mechanically, this is either an encampment, a town or a city. If you're instructed to mark a settlement or you roll a settlement result on a die, choose between an encampment, a city or a town. So like some sort of like tents?

Jack: Yeah.

Art: Encampment would seem to be the least.

Austin: Least permanent, maybe.

Art: Yeah.

Austin: I'll put this little village down. Boom. Okay. So that is your—

Art: And do we want to— can we draw a line? I forget how to do—

Austin: I mean draw a mountain range. If that's what you're— to connect the two mountains, you mean?

Art: Yeah.

Austin: Let's start drawing some mountains. Let's get some mountains going. And also, I'm wondering if we've fucked one thing up, because I thought we were supposed to draw a coastline at some point, right?

Jack: We were just about to do that. [Austin: About to do that, okay.] So any settlements, sorry, any landmarks of which there are two, there's that discovery up there and then the settlement— sorry, the encampment down there, have a little bit of coastline around them. Almost like—[Austin: I see.] I'm just going to draw it in as a demonstration, but it doesn't have to be like this—just like that. Or even like this.

The book also says you could say, I'm going to make it an island. [Austin: Sure, sure.] Like that. And you only do that with landmark tiles. The book sort of qualifies this as, landmarks are usually built near water. But I have to imagine this is to create maps that are like, internally consistent, and also, another win condition is creating a particularly long line of coastlines.

Austin: So, yeah. Mark coastlines around all landmark dice. Settlements often find themselves near water. Mark a rough coastline around each landmark die, no more than a few centimeters. You may wish to fully surround the die, denoting an island. Amazing.

Art: What are we calling a few centimeters in this scale here?

Austin: I think—

Jack: One to two squares.

Austin: Yeah.

Jack: I would say two squares probably.

Art: So like… that?

Jack: Yeah, perfect!

Austin: Perfect.

Jack: Art has suggested that our encampment in the bottom is attached to a small piece of coastline.

Art: Oh, it's the discovery that also has one?

Jack: The discovery also has one, yeah.

Art: Well, connecting this to that is going to be very hard.

Austin: Well, it doesn't connect right away, you know? Consult the exploration table. Begin sketching your map. If some dice would make sense, shifted around slightly, do it. These rules are not rigid here. It's more important to make a cohesive map. Return all rolled dice back to your dice pool. You might want to do this as you draw your map, returning a die one at a time once you've drawn its location. We’ve— we should get rid of your two temporary dice. Then it's time to choose which location interests your cartographer. It is during this phase—

Jack: Or you tumble too.

Austin: Yeah. Which one do you fall to? It is during this phase that you will flesh out the details of one of the locations on your map. This is done by chronicling your expedition in your journal.

Procedure, choose any location on your map. If the chosen location is not the closest to your current location, you must lose one food to travel there, which you don't have to do because it's the first one, right?

Jack: Yes.

Austin: You can choose a landmark or a whole biome.

Jack: There will be something interesting wherever you fall.

Austin: Yes. So where do you want to fall? We have forests, we have a mountain range, we have the open plains, we have the discovery, and we have the village— or the encampment.

Dre: Settlement or encampment, yeah.

Austin: Also, do we want different icons than these pictures of our characters?

Dre: Absolutely not.

Austin: Well, then I will copy you over here, and you can move yourself to where you need to be.

Keith: [laughs]

Dre: Thank you. Thank you so much. This is perfect.

Keith: He belongs.

Dre: Yeah. Art, do you have any strong feelings?

Art: No. I can't decide if going to the mystery box is more fun or going to the encampment is more fun.

Dre: Mmm. Let's go to the encampment.

Art: Great.

Austin: Move yourself down there.

Dre: That's how we sound, yeah, with our mechanical contraption on our back.

Tomor’s Arrival [00:34:44]

Austin: Oh, this is true. Alright. Draw a dashed line. If this is the first arrival phase, skip this step as you have no previous locations— alright. Draw a card from the deck and consult the journey table. Write a short sentence or two in your journal, answering the prompt and describing the journey to this place. In this case, we could play out that scene a little bit if we want to, we can be descriptive if not. So you're going to draw a card, and we'll compare it to the settlement table.

Jack: No, the encampments table.

Austin: Sorry, the encampment table, yes.

Jack: And there are going to be two of these tables, one for black cards and one for red cards.

Austin: So who's drawing? Dre, Art?

Art: I'll do it.

Dre: Yeah, go for it.

Art: Ten of hearts and I don't know how to move it away from here.

Austin: I got it. You got it? I got it. So now there is the red encampment prompts on page 54. Ooh, okay. Do y'all want to read this?

Dre: Yeah, let's see.

Art: I'm still scrolling.

Dre: Red encampment prompts. Yeah. Ooh! A grand tower out— overlooking the surrounds. Who built this place? Gain one biome die or lose two food and gain one landmark die. Losing food right now seems bad.

Austin: It sure does.

Art: Yeah, I don't think we have enough food to fuck around with a landmark die.

Dre: Yeah. So I guess we will gain one biome die, and I guess we need to draw a big tower now in this settlement.

Austin: Yeah.

Art: Yeah, but still in the same like square?

Austin: Yeah, in that square, in there, which can replace this. We don't need these tokens.

Dre: Gotcha.

Austin: You know? So I can pull that over there. This reminds me of a thing that we already have talked about, but I don't know if y'all have ideas first for what's up with this tower.

Art: Uhhh— great tower, Dre.

Dre: Thank you.

Art: That's outstanding work.

Austin: Does anybody remember, I think it was Ali's idea that was tower adjacent.

Dre: Ooh.

Keith: I don't remember the tower adjacency.

Dre: Me neither.

Ali: Towers on the shores.

Austin: It sure was, which is right here.

Ali: [chuckles]

Art: We have a tower on the shore.

Ali: I… the— one sentence is that there are people who worship dragons who gather in towers near shores.

Austin: Almost like a lighthouse for dragons.

Art: Great!

Ali: Yeah, a lighthouse aspect, like a watching the skies aspect.

Austin: [whispered] Yeah…

Art: I love that there's like a watch— there’s a dragon lighthouse, and then just like people living in small impermanent housing around it.

Austin: Maybe they're visiting.

Art: This is their devotion to— to the giant tower.

Ali: Ooh!

Austin: Ooh, that's fun. Maybe they like go from tower to tower. Maybe they are like, first we're on this one and the next season we move to another one, you know?

Art: Yeah. I mean, slow down. We don't have another tower yet. So can we like move the— can we like put the, the little— the little buildings back there and can you send them to the back?

Austin: Oh, to the back. I see, I see. Yeah yeah, I can do that. I can do that. Bring— send it back, and then like behind the tower, you mean?

Dre: Oh, yeah.

Art: Yeah, like that.

Austin: Totally. What's this look like? I mean, this is, this is the point where we should be asking, does it feel at this moment that you should be rolling dice to earn this— this bonus outcome?

Dre: Ah, okay.

Austin: Which was?

Jack: One biome dice or two landmark dice.

Dre: No—

Austin: I think you should get this.

Art: Yeah, we're sort of like asking what's around and the people who live in the— who are up in the giant tower are telling us.

Jack: Well, I mean, [chuckling] you come crashing through the like, tiled ceiling of the observatory room at the top of the tower and into the middle of a circle of like four dragon worshipers. What do these dragon worshipers look like, Ali, in your brain?

Ali: Um, I mean I think it depends? I was— I was thinking of like a, you know, the priestess in a JRPG, you know. Kind of self-spoken, robes, race of your choice.

Jack: Yeah!

Ali: You know?

Art: Could the robes be like, textured? Like— like scaly, kind of like— not actually scaly, but like fabric with like the little like, lines on it.

Ali: Mm!

Keith: Do we have a look for this tower yet?

Art: Yeah, Dre drew a tower.

Keith: No, not the—

Jack: Is that a dragon's claw?

Austin: Oh, a claw is great! Yeah.

Jack: It's meant to mimic a dragon's claw coming out of the ground.

Dre: Yeah!

Art: Oh yeah.

Jack: But like, not like one to one, not like a photorealistic dragon claw. They were like, you know, it's a—

Austin: Well none of these people have seen a dragon, right?

Austin: I don’t know? Maybe?

Dre: Mmm?

Keith: I don't know.

Dre: There's probably one guy who says he has.

Ali: Yeah.

Austin: Oh, for sure.

Art: But we all know liars.

Keith: [chuckles]

Austin: I mean, one of the notes that, Ali, I think you'd given in our previous conversation was like, a little like UFO chasers, or UFO watchers, or tornado hunters, right?

Ali: Yeah. I think that was like a combination of an idea that Dre had?

Austin: Oh, okay. Gotcha gotcha.

Art: Well, I believe that the people who's hunting tornadoes have seen tornadoes. I don't know that I believe that UFO hunters have seen UFOs.

Austin: Sure. Sure.

Art: But I do not wish to enter a new contentious conversation about this. [chuckles]

Keith: Where I grew up in the, you know— I grew up like on the side of a extremely small mountain, and there's at the top an old weather observatory that looks like the parapet of a castle, but without the castle attached, which is like a tall kind of castle-y looking building?

Austin: Yeah.

Keith: That you can see— the visibility— it was for visibly looking at weather. So the visibility is excellent, and that's what I'm thinking of when I think of a place like this, where it's just like, yeah, every— people just sit here and just kind of look around and wait.

Austin: We've referenced this place before, Keith.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: We have. This is the second time we've cast it. This is like the Hebridean Ram that got cast this morning, with Brnine (Thisbe?) and Pickman.

Keith: That makes sense because I've been here 500 times in my life.

Austin: Yeah, yeah it's fair. This is the observatory above Blackwick, is what we referenced this before.

Keith: Mmm

Sylvi: Oooh.

Ali: Oh, that’s right.

Austin: I like— I really like the idea of the abstract dragon claw tower here. I think that feels strong.

Jack: Yeah. I don't want a whole scene here, but I do want like our first moment to a woman who, like you said, in clothes that are textured like dragon scales. She's a very, very, very tall woman with sort of like ash-colored skin. Stands up and you know, you've fallen into the middle of a circle of a bunch of people all you know, sitting around looking out of these big windows and she says,

Jack (as priestess): Dragonscriers of the Right Claw, stay your blade.

Jack: As everybody— everyone sits down, the consternation. She looks up at Richard Kind and— [chuckles]

Keith and Sylvi: [chuckles]

Jack: She says,

Jack (as priestess): From whence do you come, and have you seen the creatures?

Art: That's a great question— do we have dragons back—?

Austin: I don't think we have dragons. I mean— I think we globally have a belief that dragons exist, and that they're very powerful and strong and brilliant, and that they have some sort of like, timeless cosmic quality, you know what I mean? You know, like—

Art: Like Richard Kind.

Austin: Like Richard Kind.

Ali: [spit takes]

Keith: Like Richard Kind.

Austin: You know— I mean, like the— they're not just big lizards you fight and kill. There are something mystical and otherworldly about them.

Dre: Mmm.

Austin: Like Richard Kind.

Keith: I'm sure there's a dragon out there, like one of the four of us.

Austin: Right. Yeah, we each have a dragon. I think a lot about— I really love the thing of Dark Souls dragons that are like, they're like literally— not just prehistoric, but like they existed in an era that was— that before history existed, they existed in this kind of flat gray plane. I like the Dragon Ball Z dragon that seems to be in its own little like, metaphysical realm that you can summon. I think that they're more like those types of big mystical weirdo dragon, than they are the one in the cave you kill, Yyu know what I mean? Maybe there are also minor dragons that go and live in the cave you kill, but I don't think you build watchtowers for those so much.

Ali: Oh, like they're not fully grown yet or whatever.

Austin: Right. Or they're descendants or minor— you know, they're wyrms, they're wyverns, they're not dragons.

Ali: Wyrms…

Art: Lesser.

Austin: They're lessers. Yeah, exactly.

Ali: Who needs some frickin wyrms, man? [laugh] I’m so— I'm ready, man.

Sylvi: Hell yeah! Call me Sluggo and paint me in wyrms.

Austin: You and Olivia Nuzzi both.

Sylvi: Jesus!

Keith: Sorry, what do we need the worms for?

Ali: We're moving on.

Austin: We’re moving on.

Sylvi: We’re moving on.

Ali: Whose roll is it?

Austin: Alright, so is that it? [Art: No, we still have—] So wait, how do you get the bonus of the biome die? Is it just— because you have to like— oh, also, who built this place? We've answered that. It's the Dragonscriers of the Right Claw, as Jack just said.

Art: Yeah. [Austin: You were.] And we were asked a question in character and then answered with this meta conversation.

Austin: Yes. So what is the actual answer?

Art: We— we've never seen a dragon.

Dre: No, yeah, I don't think we have. [Art: Yeah.] Especially if we grew up in this mining town.

Austin: Yeah, that makes sense. [Art: Never seen ‘em.] Maybe there's like etches in the mining town of a sand dragon or something from a previous culture, but you've never seen a fucking dragon, you know?

Jack (as Dragonscrier priestess): Truly a sight to behold, wondrous golden eyes cresting the horizon, a sharp forked tail, and of course—

Jack: And all the people in the circle hold up their right hands.

Jack (as priestess): —the right claw. Why have you fallen through our roof and smashed our perfect tilework, the tilework depicting the right claw as it struck at the communities in the north?

Art (as Tomor): We had an airship problem.

Jack (as priestess): It was attacked by a dragon.

Ali: [laughs]

Art (as Tomor): I don't think so.

Jack (as priestess): A shame.

Art (as Tomor): I think this was a mundane airship problem. I don't know how aware everyone was exactly what happened there at the end.

Austin: Amazing.

Dre: [chuckles] Do these people know what an airship is?

Austin: Yeee…eah? I don't know.

Keith: Yeah, they live here.

Dre: Okay.

Art: If they're a sky-based observatory and we flew over an airship but they didn't see us, they're not doing a very good job.

Austin: Yeah. I don't think this is the first airship that's come across, we're not the first— you know, maybe there's not a ton of back and forth between these two continents, but I bet it's happened before. Otherwise, we would have spent a lot of time being like, “whoa, we're the first people to ever do this!” [Jack chuckles] They probably would have sent a different crew—

Jack: We’re the Montpelier guys. (Jack is referencing the Montgolfier brothers)

Austin: Yeah.

Keith: They also seem to be a group of people that excels at talking a lot about stuff in the sky that people aren't seeing very often. So the airships probably come up.

Dre: Yeah, fair.

Jack: But yeah you know, I think that when they realize that you have fallen from an airship wreck, and once they make— you know, make do with the fact that their tile work showing the right claw has been smashed, they show you to a bed in these little huts down at the bottom of the tower.

Austin: I even think that they maybe do think about this as a sign of some sort. You know, maybe there will be a dragon sighting, maybe we should— this is an omen of what's to come, you know?

Jack: Yeah.

Austin: And also from this height, you're able to see pretty far, it turns out, which is probably what gives you this other biome die, you know? Before you end up leaving here next turn, you're gonna be able to see a little far.

Jack: And a smoking piece of airship wreckage hit, you know, so. [Austin: Yeah.] Like, an open field somewhere.

Austin: And so now here's my question. Is this now— does it now go into a rest phase?

Jack: Yep.

Austin: Okay. So, at this point, Tomor loses all of their temporary die, right?

Dre: Mhm.

Jack: I believe so, yes.

Keith: Tragic.

Austin: Loses one other remaining die.

Jack: Oh, wait but— because now we all lose one food.

Austin: This is what I’m saying, Jack, yeah yeah yeah.

Ali: Yeah, because we're not all together— are we together?

Austin: That's the thing. We are not all together because of the thing that we pitched at the beginning of this, which was that the airship broke. But I don't think that it's written with that in mind, it's written it to be in mind of, oh, we're all one big group, you know?

Ali: Yeah.

Austin: So what we could do—two pitches here—we could now each do an arrival phase before we do a rest phase.

Art: That makes a certain amount of sense.

Jack: Yeah. Let's do that.

Austin: Right. Alright, so then do we want to do a new first exploration phase for the next player— which is Jack, you and Janine, if we're going clockwise.

Glesi & Yukai’s Exploration [00:46:56]

Jack: Yeah. Janine, do you want to roll?

Janine: Yeah. I just need to be told explicitly what to roll, [chuckles] because I'm confused about a lot of things.

Jack: We are going to roll one landmark dice by hitting the landmark die button and then four biome dice.

Janine: Cool, okay.

Austin: Damn.

Janine: Landmark 6, 6, 5. I was kind of concerned—

Sylvi: Wow.

Austin: And that's a settlement.

Jack: Ooh.

Austin: Which of course we’ll represent with— is that bigger than a city?

Jack: No, smaller.

Austin: Is it? Even though it's higher?

Jack: I think so.

Austin: It doesn't go encampment, town, city, settlement?

Art: Settlement is a catch-all. [Austin: Ohhh, interesting.] Settlement is any of those three.

Austin: Oh, and then we decide which it is.

Keith: Oh, so it's like a wild— a wild card [Austin: Gotcha.] for exploration—

Jack: Yeah, let's put a city down.

Austin: Okay.

Dre: Hell yeah.

Austin: I’ll get a city icon.

Keith: Shout out to cities.

Janine: No. [Jack chuckles] I refuse to hand it to cities.

Austin: Big. There we go— city there.

Jack: Great. And I am immediately going to draw a coastline around it.

Austin: Okay.

Jack: And then we want three biome die— dice.

Austin: Yeah.

Jack: Plural of dice is die.

Janine: Okay.

Austin: So slam that button three times.

Dre: [makes three airhorn blaring sounds]

Austin: Alright. Biome die number one is open land.

Jack: 16, 9— ooh! That's open land in the middle of this mountain range. It's like a plateau.

Austin: It's— oh yeah, totally. It's like here, is that right?

Jack: No, down one. 16, 9.

Austin: Oh, 16, 9— it is, okay.

Jack: Look at that.

Austin: I think there is a plateau in here. I think I've seen that, I think I’ve pulled that up.

Jack: No, we should just keep the icons the same.

Austin: We should draw— we should— you're right, you're right.

Jack: Yeah. 12, 10.

Austin: Uh huh. Is—

Jack: Which is same as closest biome.

Austin: Well, that's a mountain. So do you want to reroll that one or move it?

Jack: We could actually say it's another plateau.

Austin: Okay, sure. Right, because it's the same as the other one we've just rolled.

Janine: It's along that range, which is kind of just fun. Like it's consistent. It's not just, you know.

Jack: Yeah.

Austin: Totally.

Jack: Yeah. 15, 7— is a mountain. That's another— that's a mountain up here.

Janine: Damn, mountains.

Austin: Damn, okay. We've done that, cool. Then— that's the exploration phase, now it's the arrival phase. Where are you landing here?

Glesi & Yukai’s Arrival [00:49:32]

Jack: I would like, unless you have thoughts—

Janine: Go nuts.

Jack: —to land at this discovery.

Janine: That'd be great.

Austin: Okay.

Jack: I'm compelled. I'm fallin—or we're falling, Janine and I are falling as one—and we've reached out and grabbed the leg of Yukai, who is also falling.

Janine: I was about to correct you by saying— I forgot the character's name, but my kneejerk was gonna be like, it's Kremis— It's not Kremis, it's Yukai.

Sylvi: Someone is now though.

Austin: It is Kremis.

Janine: Shit.

Austin: Falling, yelling.

Austin: That’s Kremis.

Sylvi: Was Kremis there?

Jack: Was Kremis there? Okay, so I'm gonna draw a card.

Austin: From the discovery pile?

Jack: Yep, and I have drawn a red 9.

Austin: I thought it was a 10 again. Oh my god.

Jack: A near impossible structure among the countryside. [Sylvi: Ohhh.] What makes the structure so impossible and strange? What people protect it? Gain one landmark die and one wound.

Austin: Oooh.

Ali: Woah.

Jack: Okay. I'm going to adjust our die. Janine, do you have anything?

Janine: [exhales] You know, in Minecraft, when you want to get up really high to like a thing you're building up there, [Austin chuckles] you pour a water block up top and then it makes like a little water elevator?

Jack: Yeah!

Keith: Oh yeah, and you jump up the water.

Janine: Yeah. So what if it's just like a perfect column of water, like to the point that it looks like glass or something? [Austin: Oooh.] Like it's like got sharp edges, but it is fully liquid.

Jack: Yeah.

Keith: Laminar flow.

Jack: Is it—

Austin: Oh yeah. That's the thing, right? [Sylvi: Oh yeah, yeah.] That's the— I was just looking at this.

Jack: Is it at all related to the fact that it's by the ocean? Like, is it responding in any way? Or is it almost like on a cliffside, just completely separate?

Janine: I don't know.

Jack: I think it's on a cliffside completely separate, and seabirds are diving through it to catch fish that are swimming [Janine: Oh, I love that! That's cute.] in this column of water. They've lived their whole life up there. Austin, if you delete the question mark.

Austin: Yeah, the question mark, okay.

Jack: Yeah yeah yeah. I’m going to draw—

Austin: And I’ll add a text thing that says, “vertical water tower, perfect water tower, immaculate water tower”.

Jack: And then there's going to be these little colored dots in it. These are fish.

Austin: Oh, those are fish.

Jack: Yeah. Those are the fish swimming about, getting eaten, colorful— I think that like up here, up in the north, it's like, I'm drawing like sand on the beaches up here. It's like crystal blue water. [Austin: Yeah.] And then this perfect blue tower, but seabirds like gannets and albatrosses are just diving through.

Austin: And so who is— or what is protecting this place? Is there a cult of this place? Is there a— is someone using this place as a resource and they're defending it?

Janine: You know who I bet would be like a real pain as far as fantasy races go? Like seabird people, like gull. I'm thinking like Gull Knights? Like really—

Jack: Oh yeah, yeah!

Janine: Because gulls are really fascinating, like they have massive wings. They're really strong, they're really built, so like translating that to something humanoid, [Austin: Yeah.] they'd be like extremely jacked and also like really loud.

Jack: Yeah. And I'm sort of picturing like that weird— Boy and the Heron does a really good job of like getting across the kind of like grace and power of birds? And also how they're sort of like noisy, and goofy, and kind of ungainly.

Janine and Austin: Yeah.

Jack: So I'm drawing in like a Gull Knight here. He's— god, he’s perfect. He's got like a big crest on the top of his head. He's got a beak that has shiny silver like inlay, almost like he's wearing jewelry on his beak. He's wearing a big red scarf. I'm sort of creating the Rito, except I'm picturing less— of the Rito are sort of like elves, you know with their like bows and arrows, and the woodland town, this is more like medieval knights but dressed in like, you know, they’re gulls. [chuckles] And yeah, the gulls that are diving through are their fisherpeople. They're not actually seabirds.

Austin: Wait why are they not— maybe they can be both. Maybe they can be trained seabirds that are like—

Jack: Oh, yeah yeah!

Sylvi: Kind of like falconers but seagulls?

Austin: Like falconers— exactly, exactly.

Keith: This is a Pluto and Scoo— or—

Jack: It is.

Austin: It is.

Keith: What the fuck— Goofy.

Austin: Goofy.

Keith: Pluto and Goofy.

Austin: Yeah. Gull Knights defend a perfectly… a perfectly—not constructed—a perfectly still, massive tower of water. They use—

Jack: It's blue, it's sunny. The weather here is hot, you know, we land and we're just immediately sort of sweating. That feel of like a sunny day where the air itself is warm.

Austin: Amazing. And are these— are they seeing you as trespassers as you arrive?

Jack: Yes. I think what happens is that in like classic JRPG style, we get immediately roughly arrested. And, you know, we get released later that day after we explain what our deal is. But we're just, you know, like low-key roughed up by— I'm going to write down roughed up by Seagull Knights.

Janine: They’re probably super territorial, so that makes sense.

Austin: Yeah.

Jack: Yeah, yeah. That kind of— yeah.

Janine: They're going to detain you and then ask what you're doing there. And then if they're satisfied, fine, whatever, but.

Austin: What's interesting is so far, we don't have any sort of settlement for them near here. This is just—

Jack: No.

Austin: This is—

Janine: Well, I mean, where do seagulls live?

Jack: It’s almost like—

Austin: I guess so. I mean, they’re Gull Knights.

Janine: They find a place where the food is.

Austin: Yeah, yeah yeah.

Jack: Yeah. I like the idea that this is almost like their equivalent of, you know, I'm trying to think of like— the humans don't live down in the, like, outdoor fisheries out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, [Austin: Right.] they just go there to get the fish.

Austin: To fish, yeah.

Jack: So I feel like the Gull Knights have showed up here— by the time we get to Perpetua, things like Gull Knights will have a cool name. They'll be the Gull Knights of so-and-so. But right now, we're just coming up with them.

Austin: Exactly. I'm taking careful notes over on our Scratch doc for everything we do.

Jack: Yeah, nice.

Austin: Cool. Is there any other thing we want to do here? I guess we won't fill in more detail about these plateaus because we haven't hit them yet, right? Because nothing gets filled in until we visit it, importantly, right? Outside of just the general vibes.

Jack: Uh, yes— no, it's just details.

Austin: Cool.

Keith: Right.

Austin: Alright. We've named the location. We've consulted the table— alright. Lose all temporary dice— oh no we're not going to go to rest phase yet, we're going to go back to exploration phase, right?

Ali: Mhm.

Jack: Yes.

Austin: Alright. So, Keith.

Keith: Yeah.

Harlow’s Exploration [00:57:09]

Austin: What do we got? We got one landmark die and three biome?

Keith: We got your standard one and three.

Austin: One and three. I'll hit the one, you hit the three?

Keith: Yeah.

Austin: Alright.

Keith: Three for biome— ok yeah.

Austin: Boom. Oooh.

Sylvi: Ohhh.

Jack: Rght up here in the north.

Austin: Yeah. We're really— really north focused here. What's the value?

Keith: We did all fall out of the same area.

Austin: Three is a town—that's true—we found a town here. Found a town—

Jack: I bet it's like, icy as hell up there in the far north.

Austin: Oh, for sure.

Jack: Or maybe if, you know, if down by the Gull tower, [Austin: Oh yeah, we don’t know.] it's sunny— yeah, I don't know.

Austin: So this is 13, 10. Is it a town?

Jack: No. 13, 1.

Austin: 13, 1. Sorry yeah, 13, 1. And that's a weird place for a— we're going to make a—

Jack: Coastline around it. You could make it an island.

Austin: No, I'm going to do this. I'm going to— oh I don’t want this to be— I also changed all of the coastlines to be black so that we can kind of—

Jack: Nice.

Austin: I'm going to go down this way. And then, what did you get, Keith?

Keith: We got— I guess I don't know how to read the biome table yet. Where does the—?.

Austin: It is— In the rules reference—

Keith: It's 6, a 1, and a 6.

Austin: Yeah, so 6 is a same as closest biome, a 1 is a forest, and a 6 is same as closest biome, so it depends on where we're placing these things.

Keith: Okay.

Austin: So 7, 10 is going to end up being another plateau or a mountain— I guess mountain is actually—

Jack: Mountain, yeah.

Austin: Uhhh, it's kind of equidistant, isn't it? I guess the mountains are closer.

Jack: Also, it wouldn't necessarily be a plateau, it would just be open land.

Austin: Right, it would be open land. But that's what, one, two, three, four, five away from that icon? What do you think, Keith? Is this open land, or is this a mountain?

Keith: It's—there's so many mountains over there, let's give it some open land.

Austin: Okay. Gonna copy that and paste that there, okay. And then what's your next one?

Keith: One.

Austin: And where is it? 4, 12?

Keith: Oh 4, 12. Yeah 4, 12.

Austin: 4 and then 12, boom. There's a little forest, okay. We getting a little forest action.

Keith: Yeah.

Austin: And opposite end of the other forest.

Austin: Yeah. Very far from the other forest, unfortunately.

Keith: And then 13, 17.

Austin: 13, 17. Down here. This feels like it would be another mountain, is the closest?

Jack: Yeah, I think so.

Keith: Yeah.

Austin: But maybe not part of that same giant range, you know?

Keith: Yeah. Although, you know, mountains go crazy like that.

Austin: They sure do. Cool. Alright. So now we have a bunch of— for the listener at home, I'm not going to go over numbers or anything, but in terms of like the big picture of this map right now, we have a big mountain range that crosses it, kind of going from south-southwest to north-northeast around the middle of it. It's kind of like, big scar across the center of the map that has some plateaus in it. We have some open area land around to the northern side? We have a lot of detail to the north of the mountains. We don't have that much to the south of it, we have this one mountain and we have the dragon-watching towers where Tomor landed. And we have a little forest over to the northeast. And we have this single town all the way to the north. Keith, where are we coming down here? Where are we arriving?

Harlow’s Arrival [01:00:26]

Sylvi: Where are we dropping?

Austin: Where are we dropping, boy?

Ali: [giggles]

Keith: I— maybe we should go the furthest from where anyone else is yet, which would be that second plateau at 7, 10.

Austin: You think that's further than the city, the one above it?

Keith: Oh, no no, I guess not, no. I just forgot that that's where that was.

Austin: Oh okay, yeah, I'd say you— yeah, the city.

Keith: Go to the city, yeah.

Austin: Yeah. That feels like the thing Arlo would do—fuck I said Arlo—Harlow would do. Harlow would be like, can we drive this thing to a place where there's soup?

Keith: Yeah. [Austin: Like—] Can I— is there somewhere where I can get nuts and cheese?

Austin: I mean, given that we have money, right? We're coming in with coin, that's kind of our best option. That feels like the thing we should do. [Keith: Yeah, yeah.] I'm going to drop us over there. There we are. Oh, I missed— oh boy, I changed our ratio. There we go. Alright, here we are. Keith, do you want to draw a card?

Keith: Sure.

Austin: This is from our city deck.

Keith: Tiny card. Three of hearts.

Austin: Three of hearts. A red 3. This city is a bastion of defense with a prominent religious influence. What makes the city so protected? What religion are its people enthralled to? Heal one wound.

Keith: Hm. Enthralled is doing a lot of work.

Austin: It's doing a lot of work.

Keith: Yeah.

Austin: Oh boy.

Keith: They’re not— this is not just a place where people are religious. It's a place where people are enthralled to do a religion.

Austin: The word enthralled was used here.

Keith: Or is this just us being like, these people are clearly enthralled! [laughs]

Austin: [chuckling] I think that that’s— we should— I mean, what was that one— one of the big rules was embody the character.

Keith: Yeah.

Austin: And yeah, I think this is Harlow being—

Austin (as Harlow): A little preachy in this town, don't you think?

Keith: Yeah.

Austin: Writing down—

Sylvi: Give it a rest.

Austin: Give it a rest—!

Austin (as Harlow): What? You got to go to church every day? Come on.

Austin: What's the— what’s the vibe? What's up with the religion here? Also again, why is it so defended? What's interesting about this place? Is this like the—

Keith: Um, maybe we could combine it into one thing where there's some sort of important— there's some sort of important bastion, like a religious bastion that is itself a defense?

Austin: Mmm.

Keith: And so the reason it's so protected is because it is the thing that protects.

Austin: Right. Right. So it's like the equivalent of, you've walked into the sci-fi town that has the big bubble shield generator. Except that in this case, it's about some sort of religious—

Keith: It's a religious bubble shield generator.

Austin: It's a religious bubble shield generator. Is there a like, central to the core theology, or the core religion here, like temple? Is there a— is this where like holy knights of the core religion are trained? Or of a major religion are trained?

Keith: Yeah. I like a knight training zone.

Austin: Yeah. Because then it's like, well yeah, it's well-defended because that's what it is. Like this is where, you know, I don't know—

Keith: This is where knights come to train.

Austin: Yeah.

Keith: This is where the— this is where the religious, you know—

Austin: I don't know that we have quote unquote “paladins” this season or not. [Dre chuckles] But we certainly might have holy knights or, you know, there's a lot of other similar classes in Fabula. There's the Guardian class, you know, there's—

Keith: There's a lot of stuff in Fabula.

Austin: Oh yeah.

Jack: What here sets it apart— in that thinking of like, you know, they're not just elves.

Austin: Yeah.

Jack: From the sort of like Ishgard, or Holy See, sort of like—

Austin: Okay, let me give you— okay, here's— let me give you the big shounen version of this, then. What if this is the, like— what if this is where— okay, let's say that there's a pantheon of gods. There's ten gods in the major—

Keith: Okay.

Austin: What if— what if this is the Colosseum city [Keith: Ohhh.] where they each send their champion for the yearly tournament?

Keith: What if— okay.

Austin: You know what I mean?

Keith: Yeah.

Austin: What were you gonna say, Keith?

Keith: I was gonna say, what if it is the religious site of two different religions, [Austin: Oooh.] and one— and they are both religious over the same event, but one of them on the attacking side and one of them on the defending side? So they're constantly like, re-engaging in this almost semi-real re-enactment of this ancient battle. So they’re—

Austin: It's not a new battle. It's not a contemporary battle.

Keith: It's not a new battle. It’s not that it’s const— it’s not that just that it's constantly defended, it's also constantly attacked, which means that it's constantly extremely dangerous.

Austin: Can we— can we blend these two ideas [Keith: Yes.] and say that it is like— it is this— I wanna go bigger than two because I wanna get this idea of a big godly pantheon in? I want, you know, we're talking Greek pantheon, you know what I mean? We're talking— maybe not that big, the Greek pantheon is fucking gigantic, right?

Keith: Right.

Austin: But like, you know, ten big gods. And I do like the idea of like, alright, this Thursday, we reenact the time that, you know, [Keith: Okay.] Poseidon went to war with whoever, you know? But it's not just a reenactment, it's an open-ended reenactment?

Keith: So you have to schedule it like you're playing soccer at a public field.

Austin: I think it's maybe— it's like scheduling soccer at a whole— sorry, scheduling soccer at a holy field or a public field, [Keith chuckles] but it's also like Saints' Days, you know?

Keith: Right.

Austin: It's also like a holy day on a holy calendar, where it's like, this was the such and such a thing.

Keith: Yes, you get it on the 25th, obviously.

Austin: Right. Or you—

Keith: I've got it scheduled on Tuesdays that don't fall on someone else's day.

Austin: And there are definitely overlaps, right? Because sometimes there was some great conflict tied to the full moon in the third month. And it's like, yeah, but the full moon in the third month is the 16th, and we always— we always do T-ball practice on the 16th, you know?

Keith: Yeah. Does this—

Austin: Is this anything?

Keith: Is this anything? Does it chill tensions between these groups? Or does it inflame— to like, have it sort of be constantly active, but also quarantined to one weird place?

Austin: I think it chills. I think it's—

Keith: I think it chills.

Austin: Well, and I think— ok, hear— I think it chills globally. Do you know what I mean?

Keith: Right, yes. That's what I mean, it chills globally.

Austin: I think locally you get people who are fucking weirdos still about it all, you know?

Keith: Right. This is like, what if they built a town for sports rivalries?

Austin: For— right. Exactly

Keith: And you were really into it. [laughs]

Austin: But also—

Keith: [laughing] If you were really into it, you could move there.

Austin: But also these are your gods, and you take that shit super seriously.

Keith: Right. So like sports rivalries.

Austin: Unlike sports fans, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, yeah.

Jack: I think this is great. What's the architecture look like?

Austin: Great question. I'm drawing like a Coliseum that's not great, but like just out of habit. Because it shouldn't be that exactly, right? Is it, is it— what is it?

Keith: Huge, huge blocks of concrete that have been like chipped away.

Austin: Oh, sure.

Keith: They were so huge and they're still huge. And you're like, this might be 40% smaller than it was, and you could tell that at one point it was like a utilitarian block. And now it is like this sort of gorgeous eroded piece of this chunk of what it was.

Austin: Mmm, mhm. What do we get here? What was our— we would heal is what we would get. Unfortunately, we are healed up all the way, right?

Keith: Sure.

Austin: Yeah, heal one wound is what we would have gotten. So, there is some sort of religion here, we— I have been calling it ten gods, but I don't know what— if that is accurate or not. Maybe the reason we think that they are enthralled is because it is so central to everything in life here? [Keith: Right.] But also, it is sort of like going to Disney World and being like, everyone is enthralled to this mouse. This mouse is everywhere— like, yeah, you are at the mouse house. Like, that is what happens.

Keith: Right. We have gone to Hershey Park and it is like these people— [Austin: Love chocolate.] People in this place love chocolate. They are enthralled to chocolate.

Austin: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Sylvi: Religious fervor to chocolate.

Austin: Alright. I think that that is our turn. I’ll add it to our thing and continue to make notes.

Keith: I love the Gull Knight, look at that! That is great.

Austin: The what?

Keith: The Gull Knight from a minute ago, I just had not seen the picture.

Austin: Oh, Jack's wonderful Gull Knight? Yeah.

Keith: Yeah, it's a great Gull Knight.

Austin: Yeah.

Keith: All the details.

Jack: JWGK.

Sylvi: Oh, I love that.

Jack: Well, I thought that you had made up that it looked like this because obviously it's impossible to draw in Roll20, but it does look like what you said, I can see the scarf.

Austin: Well yeah.

Jack: [chuckles] Thank you.

Austin: Jack did a good job. Alright.

Arley’s Exploration [01:09:00]

Ali: Let's go. Hi.

Austin: Let's go.

Sylvi: It's us. Big boy season.

Austin: Big boy season's here.

Jack: [gasps] Plummeting big boy! He falls.

Ali: [chuckles]

Sylvi: He’s in one of those like, skydiving wing suits that people use.

Jack: Oh, yeah!

Sylvi: Bought with his— bought with his princely money. [Ali squeals in delight.] I'm just trying to think of like, what would a— what would an adrenaline junkie guy be diving in? Alright. We are rolling.

Ali: One landmark and— yeah.

Sylvi: Landmark first? Okay.

Austin: Yeah.

Sylvi: Do you want to do one of these and I'll do the other?

Ali: Yeah, let me take landmark and then you can do the biomes.

Sylvi: Okay.

Austin: Ooh. 21,1. So, high up again.

Sylvi: I'm rolling three of these, right?

Ali: Yeah.

Jack: Mhm.

Austin: Boom.

Ali: Okay, so.

Austin: We're getting another city it looks like from this landmark. 21, 1, 4. I should not have deleted the city I fucking put down earlier, I should have just shrunk it.

Ali: City…

Austin: But I got it, I got it. Boom. City. Very northern city.

Ali: Oh, that's a big old city.

Austin: All the way up top.

Jack: I bet that place is like all snowy and—

Austin: We've been here.

Jack: [chuckles] Just gunning for a snowy city.

Austin: And then we have three biome die.

Ali: Oh, we even have a 21, 2. Ooh! Okay.

Austin: Oh, do we— we have a 21, 2. Wow!

Ali: Yeah!

Austin: Wild!

Sylvi: Yeah.

Austin: So wait, what's the— 11, 12, 1 will be a forest.

Jack: Ooh, a mountain forest.

Austin: And then what's the next one?

Sylvi: For the—

Austin: Biome.

Sylvi: For the biome die?

Austin: 21, 2, 5.

Ali and Sylvi: Yeah.

Austin: So that could either be open air or it could be forest, it looks like, because the 5 is same as closest biome? And that looks about equidistant to me.

Ali: Sure.

Austin: One, two, three, four. One, two— yeah. So do you want that to be a forest or open plains, open land?

Sylvi: Ohhh.

Ali: Hmm. Maybe open lands, and then we like sort of draw the coastline like here, you know what I mean? [Austin: Yeah.] Seem to have imagined that these lines might connect one day.

Jack: Oh, yeah!

Austin: Yeah, I like that. That's great.

Sylvi: Oh, yeah, I like that a lot.

Austin: I'm going to make that this color. And then we're going to need another biome die, because you rolled 11, 12, 5 after rolling 11, 12, 1.

Ali: Woah!

Sylvi: Oh, wow.

Austin: I don't think we're allowed to double up like that.

Sylvi: 24, 8, and 6.

Austin: There's something special in the book about doubling up, right, Jack, that I'm forgetting?

Jack: You can just— you can just move it, although that forest should— that forest is actually at 10, 12. That forest needs to be one to the right.

Austin: One to the right. Oh, I made it inverted.

Jack: Oh, it did, it flipped! Okay. 24, 8.

Austin: 24—

Sylvi: Yeah, it's a discovery here. 6 is discovery.

Austin: No, that's only for landmark. Same as closest biome.

Sylvi: So it's same as closest biome.

Austin: Which is this, which is forest. [Sylvi: So it’s a forest.] Which starts to suggest maybe we got a big forest over there.

Jack: You could make that a really big forest because you rolled 2 on the same— it's up to you.

Ali: I mean, I would— I would put a forest mark at like, 25, 7.

Sylvi: Yeah, just to like bring them together.

Austin: Do you all want to draw that in? Do you want me to just drop a token in?

Ali: Yeah, I think that's just—

Sylvi: Let's drop a token in.

Austin: Okay, boom. There we go, the forest mark. Alright. Where are you headed in your first exploration— or your first arrival phase?

Arley’s Arrival [01:13:10]

Ali: Yeah, I mean, our choices look like mountain forests, a desolate you know, out there forest, or city.

Sylvi: Yeah.

Austin: You can go anywhere also, it doesn't have to be one of the ones you just dropped.

Ali: Ohhh.

Austin: Also, it could be one of the ones you just dropped. So if you were like, I want to go to this fucking mountain off by itself, [Ali: Ohhh.] I want to go to the forest over on the wet— like, you can go anywhere you want.

Ali: Okay. Okay okay.

Sylvi: I’m trying to think like, what he'd be drawn to— trying to think— I'm trying to keep the both jovial [Austin: Yes.], and value thrill in mind when it comes to making these decisions. Because like, one of them is like, go to the city, meet some people. But the other one is like, I could go climb a mountain right now.

Ali: I'm feeling mountain climb.

Sylvi: Let's go mountain climbing.

Austin: I love this.

Ali: Yeah!

Sylvi: Let's go mountain climbing, bro.

Austin: Which mountain?

Sylvi: Hmm.

Austin: Where should I bring this wonderful image you've given us to?

Sylvi: Our beautiful mountain elf.

Ali: [chuckles] Do you want to go to our mountain forest, or do you want to go to this mountain plateau? Like right in the— like in the 17, 9 slot.

Sylvi: Ohhh. 17 being— right, right.

Austin: Like here.

Sylvi: Yeah, I'm down with that, the plateau over there. I think that would be fun.

Ali: Yeah.

Austin: Okay, do you want to draw from the open— the open land prompt, [Sylvi: The plains that we were on?] or the mountain prompt?

Sylvi: Oh. Probably mountain, right? We want something to happen on the mountain.

Ali: Yeah, yeah. We're climbing— we’re, yeah.

Austin: Yeah. Alright.

Sylvi: Do you want to pull the card since I got it for our item earlier?

Ali: Yeah. Okay, so that is a three of clubs? Is that a club?

Austin: Ten— ten of clubs?

Ali: It's so little on my screen, I cannot tell you. [laughs] Yeah, it's a ten of clubs.

Sylvi: Yeah, it is a ten.

Keith: This is a cool one.

Austin: So it is a ten. So that is the black mountain prompt.

Sylvi: This is a cool one.

Austin: Ohhh. This is on page 65.

Sylvi: Yeah, I've got it if you want me to read it, Ali. Hewn and strong. Elaborate carvings embellish the stone telling an epic tale. What is the tale? How is it related to the mountain? Gain one reputation or one coin.

Austin: Oooh.

Ali: Oooh, an epic tale.

Sylvi: God. Yeah. what would be carved in here?

Austin: Big— carved into a huge stone.

Sylvi: Yeah. Are they like, statues carved out of the mountainside or is it more…

Ali: Yeah, maybe. I was thinking of like, like because we— because there's the adjacent plateau, that like there would be a legend of like, somebody like hammering down the peaks or something.

Austin: Ohhhh. That’s sick.

Sylvi: Oh I love that!

Ali: And then there are these like crop circle-esque, like this is where they did it. You know what I mean?

Austin: Oh, that's great.

Sylvi: Yeah yeah yeah yeah!

Austin: Say more. What's the— who did this? Who was powerful enough to do this?

Sylvi: I kind of like the idea of it being kind of hard for Arley to figure out just by looking at— like, because I, it'd be cool if this was sty— like, the depictions were stylized in a way, right? [Austin: Yeah yeah yeah.] So it's not just like you can look at it and be like, these are normal humans, these are— oh, these are elves, these are whatever.

Austin: They're just figures.

Sylvi: Maybe there's some sort of garb in the— [Austin: Yeah.] that they're wearing. Yeah, some sort of figure. [Ali: Oh, yeah.] Like— I go straight to blacksmith because of your talking about the hammering down, and also because if we go to carpenter, we're doing Catholicism.

Ali: [chuckles] Yeah. Do we have golems yet? Do we have giants yet?

Sylvi: Oh, we should have giants, Ali!

Austin: We should have giants.

Ali: [laughs]

Sylvi: So maybe that's the thing, actually. It's like, it— the thing that's confusing about it isn't that it doesn't look like people. It's that the scale is weird.

Ali: Yeah.

Austin: Interesting.

Sylvi: It's like, why is this guy so much bigger than these people? Like this stuff just doesn't make sense— like there is reasonab— you could reasonably assume that it's giant in terms of— like they're being made giant for poetic reasons, [Austin: Right, right.] versus literal reasons. But I think we're leaning literal.

Austin: So this is— these are stone carvings of these giants, like hammering down the mountains into the plateaus.

Sylvi: Yeah. So now— and for the effect of this, it says we gain one reputation or one coin.

Ali: Oooh!

Sylvi: I'm torn here— because like coin would be, he finds something while he's here, right? Like—

Austin: Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Sylvi: Some— not like an item to put on the sheet, but like something material that has value. Or he's got a story to tell, and that ups his reputation.

Ali: I think there's something about like, meeting people at the settlement, and like helping them move something, or studying with them—

Sylvi: Makes dinner.

Ali: Makes dinner! [laughs]

Austin: I'm surprised neither of you have gone for like, is a big guy standing near statue— [Ali laughs] or standing near carvings of big guys.

Sylvi: You know what, that's a good point.

Austin: And someone nearby is like, damn, “I guess those giants didn't go extinct! [chuckles]”

Sylvi: [laughs]

Austin: You know? I guess it's not a myth after all.

Sylvi: He strikes a pose when someone says that.

Austin: Yeah!

Ali: Yeah…

Sylvi: Yeah yeah yeah. Ends up going to— making like— coming home and meeting like, their family and making dinner with them and being like, oh, so how long have you guys been here?

Austin: This is very cute. I like Arley.

Sylvi: I think that sounds like reputation to me, right?

Austin: That sounds like reputation. [Ali: Mhm.] Reputation is also very good, so give yourself a plus one.

Sylvi: So this is just a plus one— should I just like, mark a tick on this or just put plus one?

Austin: Where it says reputation, put one.

Sylvi: Okay.

Austin: Because it can go up to three and it can go down to negative three, so.

Sylvi: That is a little small, I’ll adjust that.

Austin: That is a little small, but that’s okay. Alright.

Sylvi: Better.

Austin: Do you want to draw in the giant statues or the—

Ali: I’ll draw it. Yeah, I’m doing my very best.

Austin: You're doing a good job, okay.

Jack: Oh, we should name it.

Austin: Yeah. What do we want to name this place? Hammerfall Plateau. Is that a fucking WOW thing?

Sylvi: I— hold on, let me look at my— I have a thing on my Notes app that is just fantasy bullshit names [Austin: Uh huh.] that whenever something comes to mind, I try and write it down.

Austin: Hammerfall is one hundred percent some sort of WOW thing, isn't it?

Sylvi: I’ve— let me Google this to make sure this isn't a wow thing.

Jack: Hammerf— you're thinking of Hammerfell from Elder Scrolls.

Austin: Oh, I am thinking Hammerfell from Elder Scrolls, fuck.

Sylvi: How do you feel about Qarroth, which is spelled like this—

Austin: Ooh, sure.

Sylvi: Or “Cha-rrath” maybe if we want to do that sound for the Q?

Austin: Sure.

Jack: Wow.

Keith: HammerFall is a Swedish power metal band.

Sylvi and Austin: That makes sense.

Keith: From Gothenburg.

Sylvi: I’ve been playing—

Austin: Maybe Qarroth is the ancient giant tongue for Hammerfall.

Sylvi: Yeah! I like that. I could even be like, just even more simple than that too. But yeah, I really like that.

Austin: Sure. It could be just be for plateau, it could be for—

Sylvi: Forge.

Austin: Forge, yeah. Well, there's no forge here, right? Or is there?

Sylvi: No, I know— yeah.

Austin: Is there? Then we've got to discover it.

Sylvi: Well, that could be part of the story, right? This used— this was— the giants used this as a forge and that hammered down the mountains. [Austin: Oh, I love that.] But I don't want to take— Ali, if that's not the vibe you have.

Ali: Oh, no. I love that. Yeah, I love that.

Sylvi: Okay cool.

Ali: I was thinking of, yeah, you like, can walk to this plateau and see the like, remnants of a society that people are—

Austin: Love it. Okay.

Ali: Being like, “what the fuck?”

Art: What the fuck?

Ali: [laughs] That's what they say!

Keith: [chuckles]

Austin: That's what they say— that is what they say.

Jack: They flatten those mountains?

Sylvi: These guys are big! Is that Cesaro?

Ali, Dre, and Jack: [laughs]

Austin: I think that's that Cesaro.

Keith: A little sign that says, “the carvings that will make you say, what the fuck?” [laughs]

Jack and Sylvi: [laughs]

Sylvi: Oh, I love this drawing.

Austin: It's really good. Alright. It is time for our first rest phase. A thing I think we could all use.

Sylvi: In the game or?

Austin: You know, in real life—

Jack: Page 28.

Austin: Page 28.

Keith: Page 28.

Rest Phase [01:22:03]

Austin: After a hard day's travel, your cartographer has some downtime. Kick up your feet, talk to the locals, buy some items or supplies, go out hunting or sell some of your wares. Procedure. One, lose all temporary dice in your dice pool. If you gain any temporary dice from your last prompt, keep those dice. Two, lose any one remaining die from your dice pool.

Jack: Okay, Janine, I propose that we lose one of our biome dice because we have four of them.

Janine: Yeah, that makes sense.

Austin: Keith, same, even though we only have three.

Keith: Um, [exhales] yeah.

Austin: I don't want to lose our one landmark die.

Keith: No, it just doesn't make any sense.

Art: Yeah, I also don't want to lose a landmark die. And we also got a fourth biome.

Austin: You also— right, sure. And then?

Keith: How do we earn those back?

Austin: Through finding them?

Jack: You will see in these rest phase actions in a second.

Keith: Okay.

Austin: And then, Ali and Sylvi, what die are you losing?

Ali: I am open to ideas here. But what do we have? We just have the base three and one, right?

Austin: Yeah.

Keith: Yeah.

Sylvi: Yeah, I'd rather have a landmark die.

Keith: I like the landmarks.

Austin: Me too.

Sylvi: They’re fun!

Keith: Yeah.

Austin: Alright. If you are at a settlement, roll a die.

Art: Dre, you— this four is yours. Can you—?

Austin: Oh, I can do it.

Dre: Oh—

Austin: Yeah. Boop, there we go.

Sylvi: I’ll— ours too—

Austin: And then you can add a—

Sylvi: I'm going to move our little dice tracker down, Ali, and then make it bigger. [Ali: Yeah yeah.] Hell, yeah. Okay so—

Austin: Okay. If you were at a settlement— who is at a settlement right now? Let's see.

Jack: The two Richard Kinds.

Austin: The two Richard Kinds.

Ali and Keith: [chuckles]

Austin: Is the dragon watching and the dragon—

Keith: Richards Kind.

Austin: Oh, that is right. Yeah, the two Richards Kind, okay. Yeah. Roll a die and have the results to determine the value of wares at this location. Some settlements are more interested in buying your stuff than others. You should always round up when determining ware values. Alright. Let's each roll 1d6. Alright. Keith, you want to roll one—

Keith: Sure.

Austin: And then either Dre or Art—

Dre: I'll roll one, Art.

Austin: Oof!

Jack: Oh no, Keith.

Keith: This place does not care about our wares.

Austin: What— no one here wants to buy any of our stuff! They don't— they don’t understand, they don't recognize value.

Keith: Who wants a pot? All the pots break in a day.

Jack: But you do luckily round up. So the value in the place where they're constantly reenacting religious battles is one, and the value in the dragon-watching tower is three.

Art: Which is maximum. So we should just unload all our one ware.

Austin: What is the ware that you have that you want to sell to these people?

Jack: Well—

Art: It's a really nice rock.

Austin: Oh!

Keith: Woah, look at that thing! Look at the striations!

Sylvi: [laughs] That's what they were saying to us over at the— Qarroth. [Austin and Keith chuckle] We were like, woah, the striation. Wow.

Austin: Yeah yeah, the priestesses—

Sylvi: You're not on gear, man, are you? No, all natural.

Austin: The priestesses of the Dragonscriers of the Right Claw are like,

Austin (as priestess): Ah, the dragon's eye! We knew you would bring us something of value.

Jack: [chuckles]

Jack (as priestess): We shall use it to replace the tile work!

Keith: They look at the geologic layers and they associate it with a dragon of that era.

Austin: Yeah! That's fun.

Keith: And some dragons are more rare than others.

Jack (as priestess): Trees, like dragons, can be cut open and you can count the rings inside.

Austin (as priestess): We would never cut up a dragon, though.

Jack (as priestess): Nor tree!

Keith: Most rocks have at least one rare.

Austin, Jack, Keith: [chuckles]

Jack: Okay, so usually you would now be able to take two actions [Austin: Right.] from the appropriate action list. For the Richard Kinds, that would be the action list in the settlement. For everyone else, it would be the action list in the wilderness— that's on page 29 and 30. However, because we're playing in multiplayer, we're going to take one action each. You can also lose a coin to take a third action.

Austin: So let's go over those actions. For those of us—

Jack: Oh.

Keith: Austin, I assume we have a bunch of extra coins, we're not selling our stupid ware.

Austin: We're not going to sell our ware, but we are going to spend a coin here, right?

Keith: Right.

Jack: Actually, literally before we forget, we all lose one food as we have a yummy meal.

Yummy Meal [01:25:44]

Austin: Oh— what's that? Can we all describe our yummy meal a little bit?

Dre: Oooh…

Austin: Keith, I think we finally found our soup. We made it ourselves out of the food that we already had.

Keith: It's a cassoulet.

Austin: Of course.

Keith: It's a— it’s a meat-he— it’s a meat-heavy cassoulet with some sort of braised beef. It's full of hearty turnips and beans.

Austin: That sounds so good to me.

Dre: Mmm.

Keith: Yeah. Mushroom stock.

Austin: We're eating this while watching the water god fight— the water god's avatar fight against the— some minor god, you know, like a bunch of people representing a bunch of different minor gods. They're just going to get washed away.

Keith: They’re gonna— yeah. No one's even in the stands.

Austin: Yeah.

Keith: No one's along the wall watching. It's like derby, you know, where like— [Jack chuckles] where you know, people stand so horrifically close to where the cars come by in the middle of the woods, [Austin: Yeah.] and you're like, these people surely are going to die!

Austin: [chuckles] Yes.

Keith: Just to watch cars?

Jack: There's one guy, an old guy, next to you, who's also eating something out of like some folded up newspaper or something, and he sort of elbows you and says,

Jack (as old guy): Oh, super fans too, huh?

Austin: Yeah, it’s—

Keith (as Harlow): I just like leeks.

Jack: [chuckles]

Austin: I just like leeks. Any other food pictures as we eat?

Janine: I was thinking like, what's left over after you catch and cook and eat fish? And it's like bones and like [Dre: Yeah.] [Keith: Yeah it’s bones.] guts and stuff. So I wonder if they also have a soup, but it's not a good soup— it's like a very thin fish broth.

Keith: Fish bone broth soup.

Janine: With like– with some sort of sea grapes, or some sort of greenery in it?

Keith: You just made this out of the gulls' trash?

Jack: Sort of. Glesi is you know like, being very studious, eating it, checking the map, checking the compass.

Janine: They're territorial. They're not going to let you have good fish. The fish are for birds.

Jack: Yukai is fighting and eating a seagull just outside. [chuckles]

Janine: [chuckles]

Keith: There's a bin on a block of ice with a sign that says “Visitor Bones”. [Ali, Janine chuckles] [laughing] Which sounds ominous and it's meant to. But it's actually bones for visitors.

Austin: For visitors, yeah.

Janine: It's kind of like the butcher when they have the bin of stuff. Like, here, give this to your dog, whatever, make soup with it, who cares. We don't want it.

Jack: Yeah. The seagull guards kind of like cackle loudly. Some sort of like seabird cackle.

Austin: I love it.

Ali: I have a very clear idea, I think.

Sylvi: Ali, please.

Ali: So we have this antique briefcase, right?

Austin: Mhm.

Sylvi: Yeah.

Ali: And the idea of like, full like, video game cooking mini-game of like, opening up this thing, and it's this like bento box of different compartments? [Sylvi gasps] And it's like, oh, I have a skeleton tail, [Austin: Ohhh, that’s good.] and I have some berries of— [laughs]

Jack: I love this.

Sylvi: Oh, my god.

Austin: It's good.

Sylvi: I'm so happy right now.

Ali: Of this, you know, whatever, and then some mint leaves, and I'm just going to make myself a little stir fry. And there's going to be a little song that plays.

Keith: Is this a— this is an MRE? Is it like self-heating?

Austin: Well, no. I mean, I think it's like a campfire.

Janine: I found something amazing for this, actually. [Ali: Oh okay.] I found a really good picture that I think everyone's going to really like.

Sylvi: Wonderful.

Jack: Really? I'm scared, though.

Austin and Dre: Oh? Oh!

Keith: Oh yeah.

Ali: Oh, sure!

Janine: Now it’s kind of a backpack, but—

Ali: Yeah.

Keith: I can see this as a briefcase.

Austin: I can see this as a briefcase.

Keith: I’ve seen—

Jack: Imagine if the guy in Mushishi opened his briefcase up and it was this.

Ali: [chuckles]

Austin: I'm imagining. Mushishi is good. Love this. Sorry— what do you make for yourself?

Ali: Yeah, like a scorpion tail stir fry, I think.

Austin: Oh yeah, of course. Of course, yeah.

Sylvi: Oh, I love that.

Ali: Little acid, little heat, little pepper, little greens, you know.

Austin: It’s all there.

Sylvi: Using some like, tubers or something he got [Ali: Yeah!] when he was up on the plateau, that like— that guy he ran into’s like family farms.

Austin: Tomor. Food time.

Dre: Yeah, what do dragon worshipers eat?

Austin: Oh yeah, because you're eating down there with them.

Dre: Mhm.

Art: Yeah.

Austin: Great question. I mean, you know, they're coastal, so maybe fish again.

Dre: Ooh, yeah. They got this big observatory.

Art: Yeah, maybe it's like, they made these like blackened seasoning because—

Austin: Ohhh, yes.

Keith: Everything's burned. [chuckles]

Austin: Everything’s— yeah yeah yeah.

Art: [chuckles]

Austin: Or smoked, or like—

Keith: Smoked or charred.

Ali: Oh smoked.

Dre: Yeah.

Austin: Oh, smoked is fun— what if they have some sort of like, eternal dragon flame that they can use?

Dre and Art: Sure.

Ali: Yeah…

Dre: Can I propose that they have big chicken-like animals that they keep like high up in their tower?

Austin: Sure.

Dre: Okay.

Austin: Say more.

Dre: I just really like the idea of like, maybe this is a type of bird that can only be kept super high up? [Austin: Interesting.] Maybe that's where some of this tower originates from.

Austin: I like this.

Keith: Oh, the reason why they can only be kept high up would maybe be that they're so big, if they had more oxygen in their blood, they'd grow even bigger.

Dre: Oooh!

Keith: It would be too big to keep. So you have to deprive them of oxygen to keep them small.

Austin: Wonderful.

Jack: God, can I add a detail about the eternal dragon flame?

Austin: Please.

Jack: They basically have this huge sort of like, they have you know, the thing that they're going to use to smoke the stuff, but they also have like a gigantic wok, you know, like a wok the size of a room or something, that is being heated by what one of the worshippers says, you know, in real reverent tones, you know, “this is one of the eternal dragon flames”. It's been burning for a thousand years and she gestures underneath the wok and it's like a tiny thin flame, the height and size of like a candle flame that has just been burning for so long that it has heated this massive wok to this immense temperature and it never, you know, it never goes out. It has gotten so hot because it's been burning this tiny flame for so long and she says, you know, of course, you know, the integrity of the wok is weakening.

Austin: Right, right.

Jack: Soon it will need to be replaced or whatever, but the flame is going to keep burning.

Austin: Love this. Almost like a filament-thin fire flame.

Jack: Yeah yeah yeah. And you could put— you could pass your hand through it like you could a candle flame. [Austin: Right.] It would just— it would, you know, because the heat is now in the wok. It's not in the—

Austin: Love this. Heated a wok.

Jack: Actually, I don't think she says that the wok is going to need to be replaced. I think she says, of course, the wok will break soon, and then just sort of leaves.

Austin: Yeah, she just kind of walks away from this. Perfect, alright. So next step.

We lost our die, we already rolled for the settlement ware. Now we have rest actions to perform. We've been very settlement focused, so let me read the non-settlement— let me read the wilderness actions first, which are what those of you in the wilderness can choose between, which I believe is Arley and—

Sylvi: The non-Richards.

Austin: Yeah, Glesi.

Jack: Glesi.

Austin: Glesi. You can camp, losing 1 food and gaining 1 biome die. You can converse, losing 1 ware or coin and gaining 1 temporary die. You can hunt, rolling a die and gaining that much food, lose 1 die of your choice. See page 82 for inspiration on what you might hunt.

So in other words, you're going to spend— effectively you'd be spending a biome or a landmark die to hunt to gain food, right? This is how hunting works. And then for those of us in a settlement, we have converse— these are on page 29 and 30. Converse, lose 1 coin, gain 1 temporary die, if you're in a town, gain an additional temporary die. Sleep, gain 1 biome die, you may choose to lose 1 food to gain 1 additional biome die. Heal, lose 1 coin to remove 1 wound. Restock, gain 1 food or wear. Sell, gain coin equal to the settlement's ware value— we talked about that before. So for example, if the ware value was 2 , you could sell three wares to get 6 coin. Shop, draw 3 cards from the deck. If you're at a city, draw an additional card. Consult the item table to see what's available, and roll a die for each item to reveal its price. Remember, item prices are modified by your reputation. If you wish for a less random way to determine item prices, simply consider all face card items as 4 coin and others as 3 coin. We should go shopping, Keith.

Harlow’s Rest [01:34:49]

Keith: We should go shopping and we should hope to get an item that gives us another landmark die, because that's what I want.

Austin: That would be so good.

Jack: And now the shop music plays— this is going to be a season of shop music.

Austin: That sounds great.

Ali: [chuckles]

Keith: That is great.

Austin: Alright, so we're drawing three cards from the die— or from the thing. One, 5— red 5— no, red 6. Two, red 7— okay, phew. And three, 10— Jack of, Jack of Blacks.

Jack: They got bigger each one. [Keith: Okay, so—] There are three increasingly tall tables.

Austin: Red item table.

Keith: Red 6, region map, gain 4 biome dice.

Austin: Holy shit.

Keith: Holy shit.

Jack: Wait, you have to roll a dice for the price.

Austin: What was it? 1d6? Is that what it is that we roll for the price?

Jack: Mhm.

Keith: But then it rounds in some way? Tell me again how—

Jack: No, it's your reputation. Item prices are modified by your reputation, it will get cheaper based on—

Austin: Oh we're at zero rep, unfortunately.

Keith: We're at zero.

Austin: Which is not bad.

Jack: It's the price it is.

Austin: So roll 1d6.

Keith: Sure.

Austin: I just did. I just did.

Keith: Five.

Jack: Five. So that’s—

Keith: Too much.

Austin: So that's too much. Well, we have that much money. It's just all of our money, right?

Keith: Ri— I thought we had four.

Austin: No, we have five because everybody starts with one, but we get a bonus for—

Keith: Okay. So that would be huge. It would cost us everything, but it would be enormous.

Austin: Yes.

Keith: Camping equipment, gain 1 extra die when camping— is the red set.

Austin: What's that extra die mean?

Sylvi: I was going to ask when it came around to our turn, [Austin: Yeah, because you have this.] because we have that. Yeah, and I'm not entirely sure.

Austin: Jack?

Jack: Well, you would lose 1 food and you gain 1 biome die? So you would actually gain 2 biome die.

Ali: Ohhh.

Jack: Gain 1 extra die when camping.

Austin: While using the camping ability, while using the camping rest action.

Ali: I see.

Sylvi: Oh, okay.

Austin: That's awesome, actually. Yeah. Cool.

Sylvi: Yeah, that is pretty sick.

Austin: And then the Jack— what's the price of the camping set? [Jack: The camping kit?] Do you want to roll this one?

Keith: Oh sure, yeah. Do you have the next thing?

Austin: I will, I will.

Keith: I have it if you don't have it.

Austin: I don't have it.

Keith: 3 for that.

Austin: Okay.

Keith: Which is not a bad deal. And then the black Jack is, official papers. You may lose 1 reputation instead of 1 coin to take an extra action in the rest phase. So that's good if we had a bunch of rep.

Austin: Unfortunately, we don't have a bunch of rep, [Ali chuckles] we have a bunch of coin.

Keith: Right.

Jack: And that costs—

Austin: Yeah, I'm not going to buy it, but let's roll it. Roll D6, 5. Okay.

Jack: Okay.

Austin: Got it. Well, it's sort of a 5.

Keith: Do you want to go for broke here?

Austin: I don't know. Let's think about it— does anybody else know what they want to do while we con—?

Sylvi: Let me look here.

Austin: I don't want to spend all five of our coin. I want to— what I want to do is use our coin to take extra actions.

Ali: Mmm.

Keith: Yeah.

Austin: I'd almost like—

Keith: But this will give us all those extra actions that we would want to do.

Austin: Well they’re not— no, it wouldn't give us extra actions, it would give us extra—

Keith: No, it would give us extra stuff for the map.

Austin: It would give us extra stuff for the map, and it would give us extra— not HP, but like, you know, we do need to have biome dice, [Keith: We do need to have.] because biome dice— because dice are we— you know, if you run out of the dice, you lose, but.

Keith: What is more Harlow? Camping actions or map drawing?

Austin: Map drawing for sure.

Keith: Even though I guess—

Austin: But it's all our money!

Keith: I Google— I control F-ed for it, I don't— I guess I don't understand still what the camp actions, rest actions are.

Austin: What do you mean?

Keith: That's just like the non-settlement rest action?

Austin: Yeah, there's wilderness rest actions. One of them is camp, lose 1 food, gain 1 biome die. So— so what we're— we may be about to see is that when Arley— if Arley camps because he has the camping equipment, he will lose 1 food in exchange for 2— gaining 2 biome die. It's on the— it’s on the—

Keith: So you lose the food anytime you do that anyway. Camp, lose one food.

Austin: Yeah.

Keith: Okay, but we don't— okay, I understand. [Austin: Yeah yeah yeah.] But we all— we lose 1 food automatically. So we lose 1 food just because it's a rest.

Austin: Yeah.

Keith: And then we have to lose another one, which means using this once would take us from 2 food— 3 food to 1 food. And then we would need to figure out how to get a bunch of—

Austin: We get more food from hunting.

Keith: Yeah.

Austin: Which is another wilderness action.

Keith: Yeah. But also loses us 1 die of our choice.

Austin: Yes, yes. I'm happy to do the— to buy this map. This map is great. [Keith: The map is great.] It does mean we will not get a second action, which is kind of what I thought we were going to use those coins for.

Keith: Yeah, that’s fair. We—

Austin: But that's fine— it's fine.

Keith: Maybe we don't, maybe we pass.

Austin: We could pass.

Keith: On the store.

Austin: And then that's alright— and then we just don't do anything. Or we could then spend a coin to do a second action.

Keith: Right. Then we could actually spend our coins to do, like, the stuff that we thought we were going to do.

Austin: You want to DM me and we'll come back around?

Keith: Yeah.

Arley’s Rest [01:39:17]

Ali: I think me and Sylvi are gonna be—

Sylvi: Yeah, we got ours. So, should we start with the more active one?

Ali: Yeah, I think so.

Sylvi: It feels like just fictionally it makes more sense to—

Austin: Well, you get one action.

Ali: Oh.

Sylvi: I thought we got two actions when we rest.

Jack: You usually get two, but because we're playing in the multiplayer rules, you only get one

Ali: Sure sure sure.

Sylvi: Ohh… Do you want to do the hunting one, then? Or do you want to get that extra die for this round and then save that?

Ali: Yeah, I think maybe camping and then refilling the food on a hunt next time makes sense.

Sylvi: Cool. So that'll bump us up to four biomes then, if I'm reading the camping equipment, right?

Jack: Yeah. If you're camping, you lose 1 food and then gain 1 biome.

Ali: And then plus one.

Sylvi: So we get an extra die from our item.

Jack: Oh yeah, yeah you do.

Sylvi: 1 landmark for biome and then we're down to 2 food.

Austin: We have a— we have a quick— a quick update. We were in a city. City shops are bigger than town shops.

Sylvi: Oh?

Austin: We get an extra card.

Jack: Draw an additional card.

Austin: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. Fuck, it's one we already got! But!

Ali and Sylvi: [chuckles]

Austin: Roll— but, we roll! We roll a D6!

Keith: Oh, and there's actually a good chance [Austin: That it's going to be cheaper.] that it’s less. Alright, roll four.

Austin: We're driving a hard bargain here is what we're doing.

Keith: Yeah, we're doing it.

Austin: We— we left the shop and we came back. And—

Keith: No no no no, we're good. 5, it's too much.

Austin: 5 is too much. We can't— what do you mean, spend 5 on the maps? It's only 4— it’s 4 maps!

Jack (as shopkeeper): Hey, hey! Put up your money or leave. You know, we got lots of business coming through.

Austin (as Harlow): Lots of business— we'll see how long those maps sit there. You know, the people here live here. They don't need the maps. What do they need the maps for?

Jack (as shopkeeper): Tourists coming in from all over to see the gods fight, you piece of shit.

Austin (as Harlow): No one sees them— we were just at the Coliseum— I was just at the Coliseum. No one's fighting.

Keith: Yeah, it was a lot.

Austin (as Harlow): No one's watching.

Ali: [laughs]

Jack (as shopkeeper): I was just— because you don't have the program, you haven't seen the program. There's a big fight tonight at six. God of water, you saw him stomp all those little weirdies. He's going to fight the god of fire. Gonna be fucking amazing.

Sylvi: I love that this is like pro wrestling, but they're dressed as their gods.

Austin (as Harlow): And I need a map to see it? It's going to be where the fire is.

Jack (as shopkeeper): No, you idiot.

Keith (as Harlow): And by the way, god of fire vs. god of water, you don't need a map to know how that's going to turn out.

Austin (as Harlow): The water puts out the fire.

Jack (as shopkeeper): Where are your accents from anyway?

Austin (as Harlow): From around.

Sylvi: This guy doesn't know what evaporation is.

Austin: This guy doesn't know what evaporation is.

Sylvi: This fucking guy.

Jack: He just like pulls down one of those like, rolling screens in front of his thing and on the front it just says shop closed.

Austin (as Harlow): No no no no! Wait a second.

Jack: Thing comes up. [makes sound effect of screen unrolling]

Austin (as Harlow): Four coin. Four coin, four coin that adds up.

Keith (as Harlow): Four coin, four map.

Austin (as Harlow): Region map, gain 4 biome dice— 4 coin, plus throw in a program so we know the good fights.

Jack (as shopkeeper): Plenty of demand for these maps. People are gonna come in.

Jack: He gestures behind him at a completely empty street. [Austin chuckles] A dog is chasing a cat down the street.

Keith (as Harlow): I've got a— I've got a cassoulet getting cold.

Jack (as shopkeeper): You got what?

Keith (as Harlow): Cassoulet.

Jack (as shopkeeper): Is that like a kind of soup?

Keith (as Harlow): It's like a kind of soup.

Jack (as shopkeeper): You a soup guy?

Keith (as Harlow): It's a hearty stew. Yes. I'm a soup guy.

Jack (as shopkeeper): Ha ha, soup guys! Yeah, you know. A big soup town here.

Sylvi: [laughs]

Keith (as Harlow): Okay.

Jack (as shopkeeper): Okay. How much you want for that map? Or rather how much—

Keith (as Harlow): Four. Soup guy to soup guy.

Jack (as shopkeeper): Four?

Austin (as Harlow): Four— yeah.

Jack (as shopkeeper): Soup guy to soup guy? Yeah, okay. Okay. What do you think I'm gonna spend that four on?

Austin (as Harlow): Soup!

Keith (as Harlow): Soup.

Jack (as shopkeeper): Soup. Cassoulet, I'll have to tell people about it.

Jack: He rolls up the map, hands it over to you. He's got a tattoo on the inside of his wrist of a big ladle.

Austin: [chuckles]

Keith: [chuckles] He's also now heard the word cassoulet, but not anything about it.

Austin: That's all he needs.

Keith: He's gonna go around town and, “have you heard about cassoulet? It's a kind of soup, I think.”

Austin: Well, this is great because this brings our biome up to six.

Keith: That's crazy.

Ali: Woah.

Austin: Hoo. Alright, that's our turn. We don't need anything else.

Ali: We’re gonna have a billion biomes, that's what I'm saying.

Jack: [chuckling] I know, they're gonna roll so many dice. It's gonna take 45 minutes.

Ali: Will we have—

Jack: Austin, you have to delete that bit of the five that you drew.

Austin: I'm working on it.

Austin: Wait, what bit of the five? Oh, I see. I got it.

Jack: Collabo five. Sorry, were you gonna say something else?

Ali: I was just gonna say we 4 now, so that's 10 biomes with only half of the table, so. [laughs]

Jack: Jesus Christ.

Austin: Good. That's how we— that’s how we do.

Sylvi: Power gaming.

Austin: Power gaming.

Glesi & Yukai’s Rest [01:43:56]

Jack: Janine, what do you think we want to do here?

Janine: I liked your suggestion.

Jack: Yeah, we're gonna hunt.

Austin: Yeah.

Jack: We've made up camp on the cliff side. We can see the tower in the distance— god, it's amazing. The sun sets behind it and like refracting through the water and the fish. Super, super cool.

Janine: Yukai pulls a little sleeping bag type thing out from his like skirt of fluff, [Jack chuckles] and like stretches it out, but it's like the same colors as fluff. So it's like, is it made of the fluff? Probably.

Austin: Probably.

Jack: He lies on his little sleeping bag fluff, checks the map. [Janine chuckles] Nods—

Jack (as Yukai): Mm, yes. On the right track.

Jack: Okay. I'm going to roll 1D6.

Janine: We have to say what we're hunting, right?

Jack: Yeah. What are we hunting?

Janine: Man, we're in an area where we're probably asking for trouble if we hunt either fish or birds.

Jack: I want to hunt like a real early zone JRPG enemy. These are eggs with legs.

Austin: Eggs with legs!

Keith: [laughs]

Ali: Ohh yeah!

Keith: They're called legs, L-E-G-G-S.

Austin: Oh, they’re called leggs.

Janine: No, they can't call that because that's copyright. That's a brand of pantyhose.

Austin: Okay, well.

Keith: Yeah.

Janine: Sorry.

Jack: [laughs] I'll put another G on the end there, Keith, it’ll be fine.

Keith: Yeah. They're called sleggs, S-L-E-G-G-S.

Sylvi: I don't like that.

Jack: [chuckles]

Keith: Sleggs?

Sylvi: I don't like sleggs.

Keith: You're not supposed to like them, you're supposed to kill them and eat them.

Sylvi: Okay.

Ali: What if it was fleggs?

Jack: Eggs—

Austin: Are we going on— fleggs?

Ali: Yeah.

Austin: Yeah. Fleggs.

Ali: F-L-E-G-G-S.

Austin: F-L-E-G-G-S. Yeah. Yeah, sure.

Jack: Béla Flegg of the Flegg Tones.

Austin: And the Flegg Tones, yeah.

Jack: Legendary band joke—

Austin: Legged—

Sylvi: Flegg Tones? I love Change (In the House of Flies)

Austin: I've added my— I've added the fleggs to the— to the— thank you.

Jack: I'm going to roll this dice to see how hunting the fleggs go. Beautiful flegg. 3.

Austin: You're getting 3.

Jack: Oh, we get 3 food.

Austin: And only lose one biome die? Or one die of your choice.

Jack: Yes. One die of our choice. What dice do we want to lose here? Let's lose maybe another biome die?

Janine: Yeah. Why not?

Jack: Hunting these fleggs goes preeetty well! One of them has a skull above his head!

Austin: Ohhh.

Jack: And so we avoid him. You know, we're not at the point yet where we can take out—

Austin: Lomelet.

Jack: Lomelet, the flegg with the skull above his head. [chuckles]

Janine: Yukai shouts,

Janine (as Yukai): That's a challenging leg there.

Janine: Or whatever the fuck we're calling them. Leglet?

Austin: Fleggs!

Janine: Fleggs?

Austin: It's a flegg.

Sylvi: Oh that one's really hard boiled.

Austin: It's one flegg.

Jack: Something that might be worth saying, because I don't know if it's going to come up. I don't think that Perpetua is set in a video game [Austin: It is not.] like the Grand Tableau?

Austin: Yeah.

Jack: But I'm describing it in the same way that we describe the regular seasons through like the language of film, as through like the language of Dreamcast games. [Austin: Uh huh. Yeah, a hundred a percent.] It's not supposed to be like a one to one, this is a video game, so much as this guy has a skull above his head.

Austin: Yeah, one of the— when— at the beginning of the season or before we started recording, you know, I sent out a bunch of notes and one of the big notes I sent was like, we should lean into the gaminess of this all. This is a season about game in a big way or games. And we should think about that sort of iconography, and that sort of structure and all that stuff, so.

Jack: But we're not teeing you up for a twist where this is Greed Island.

Austin: It is not Greed Island, I can tell you like, very firmly. There are some big twists and stuff, but it ain't that. That's not what I'm looking at.

Ali: But the song that plays when Arley is cooking is important.

Austin: Oh yeah, a hundred percent, exactly.

Jack: It is so important. It's eight seconds long and it sounds like this.

[“Untitled cooking song” by Jack de Quidt begins playing]

[song ends]

Jack: And then it plays.

Ali: [giggles]

Austin: I guess we need a Tomor action?

Tomor’s Rest [01:48:14]

Dre: Yeah. Let's— let’s restock. Let's get an extra ware.

Austin: Oh, interesting.

Dre: If we're gonna be— if we're explorers, we're gonna be traveling from place to place, so.

Austin: Yeah.

Dre: Get something new here, take it to another settlement or another place.

Austin: Do you know what it is?

Jack: What is it?

Dre: Hmm.

Art: Maybe like a little dragon figurine.

Austin: Oh, a little dragon figurine.

Dre: Oh yeah!

Austin: Like a little collection of dragon figurines, like a little— a little like—

Art: A little playset.

Dre: Yeah, I was gonna say, it's like some kind of like board game or something.

Austin: Oh, perfect.

Jack: Oh, yeah! I have something for this, I wrote it in the scratch doc.

Austin: Say more.

Ali: [giggles]

Jack: Uh, in the scratch doc, I wrote down—I think it's just worth reading this—pieces from a celestial board game are scattered all over the world. [Dre: Oh shit.] A huge set. The common piece—pawns, tokens, little pewter farmers—are found pretty regularly. Rarer pieces have a set number and people are out there trying to collect whole sets. The rarest pieces are kept in museums, or dragon's hoards, or queen's jewelry boxes, but even those sets are incomplete. Somewhere—and then at the bottom of a crystal cave—a silver wagoneer. The pieces do things mechanically— obviously, they don't do things mechanically— well, they do right now, [Austin: Well they do! They’re wares.] you can sell one as a ware.

Dre: Yeah.

Jack: But you know, when we play Fabula, you find one and it's like, oh, this will give you a bonus dice or whatever, because you found one of the— but yeah, this is like a— what's this piece called? It’s like— is it multiple dragons or is it one dragon piece from the game?

Dre: Is it a— is it one big piece that's made up of multiple pieces?

Sylvi: Oooh.

Jack: Like Voltron or like, Megazords. Yeah.

Austin: I kind of like that, yeah yeah yeah.

Dre: I mean, because if it's going to be a dragon piece, it probably is going to be bigger and more rare and majestic or whatever than just like a normal— a normal piece.

Austin: Mhm.

Jack: Yeah, this is like your rook or your bishop rather than your pawn, but not quite your queen or your—

Austin: Yeah, maybe it's like three— the three dragon piece, which is, it’s like two of the dragons can become the wings of a third dragon, or become like a second set of wings for like the body piece of a third dragon, do you know what I mean? Or you can deploy them all separately, you know?

Jack: Yeah.

Austin: Well, they're not as strong, but you know, you get to cover more ground that way in whatever this board game is.

Jack: I had a name for it that I wasn't sure about, [Austin: What is it?] but I want to speak into a microphone to see how I feel. But what if this board game is called The Speel? [Austin: Sure, yeah.] Spelt S-P-E-E-L, like a spool of thread, but also like spiel in German.

Austin: Let's do it. I'm going to write it down in my thing here. We got The Speel, a celestial board game whose pieces—

Jack: And there's like thousands of Speel pieces, you know? You could find like a— what's the game called?

Keith: Mousetrap.

Jack: What's the— like checkers? You could find like a checkers board— a checkers tile, you know, like you're just plowing in the fields and you find ten of them where, you know. But some are much rarer.

Keith: Reminds me of Pentiment.

Austin: It's actually called the Dragon Three piece, is what it's actually called, not the Three Dragon piece.

Jack: Yeah, yeah.

Austin: The Dragon Three.

Jack: What about Red Dragon Three? [Austin: Red Dragon Three…] Because there's also Blue Dragon Three or whatever.

Austin: Yes, yes.

Keith: And we're going to have thousands of these.

Austin: That's right.

Jack: [chuckles]

Keith: Are there people working out how to play this game?

Austin: Oh yeah, we're all working on it.

Jack: Yeah, oh yeah. But because it’s— because there's so many of them and it's all around the world, a lot of people are like, well, it's just for collecting. You know, you just kind of have it. [Sylvi laughs] But then there are other people who are like—

Keith: No no no, this is— it's important that we figure out how to play this [Jack: It’s a game.] so that we can play it.

Austin: Right.

Jack: Yeah, something will happen when we complete a full set.

Austin: Something important happens.

Sylvi: In the RPG version of this, there's a triple triad-esque like thing—

Austin: Oh, yeah.

Jack: Oh, this is where it came from—

Keith: In the Hunter x Hunter version of this, there's hunters who are desperately trying to win this game.

Sylvi: Because when you do, you unlock the ability to rule over life and death.

Dre: [chuckles]

Jack: Yeah.

Sylvi: Or something like that.

Jack: This comes from the video game thing of when you're playing Witcher 3, or you're playing a Final Fantasy game, and you loot a regular dungeon chest and you have one purple scale, a broadsword, and then like the king of diamonds from the minigame. You're like, fucking yes! I was looking for that card.

Austin: Wait, really quick, did you end up, you did or didn't sell your one ware that you had before?

Keith: The rock?

Art: We did not. That’s separate. We do not have enough—

Austin: So you now have two wares.

Dre: We have two wares, yeah.

Art: Two wares.

Austin: Oh okay, gotcha. Alright, is anyone going to spend a coin for an additional action? If not, then we've come to the end of our rest phase.

[excerpt of “Perpetua” by Jack de Quidt begins playing]

[song ends]