2026-3-30 — Akasha

Argyle:Josh?

Argyle:Hello?

Anzu:Gentlemen, gentlemen.

Argyle:Hello, hello.

Gamemaster:Hello?

Argyle:Oh, Josh can hear me.

Anzu:Yes, hello, Josh.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:Okay, I don't know why I had to unplug and plug my microphone back in.

Gamemaster:I think it just doesn't like me.

Argyle:How are you guys?

Anzu:Sometimes the tech hits the snooze button on you and you got to, you know, re-up it.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:I'm pretty sure it's a conspiracy against me to embarrass me in front of my friends.

Anzu:Oh, yeah.

Gamemaster:And it worked.

Argyle:Yeah.

Argyle:It worked.

Anzu:So a funny, I guess, occurrence due to the virtual background, Jorge, is you kind of lose perspective of the size of things.

Anzu:So you're currently sitting here and you're one size, but for just a second before your full body came into view, much prospectively smaller than your head is now.

Anzu:And it was just kind of amusing.

Argyle:It's good to know.

Gamemaster:I can't believe you guys bribed Jeff to get the book early.

Gamemaster:Mine is still out for delivery.

Gamemaster:It's rude.

Argyle:Oh, I got mine on Sunday.

Anzu:I... Yeah, I realized...

Argyle:Because I like Noah.

Argyle:And I care about him.

Argyle:So I didn't do late shipping.

Gamemaster:I think I purchased it the same time as you.

Gamemaster:You just don't like me.

Argyle:It's a conspiracy.

Anzu:I was awake after midnight on Thursday, and I was like, you know, let me just check if it's come up yet.

Anzu:And it was up, and it told me Saturday.

Gamemaster:it had.

Anzu:I said, all right, send it.

Gamemaster:But, I mean, like, it's a lot of effort because once I get it, I'm just gonna have to mail it to Noah so that Noah can sign it and then mail it back.

Gamemaster:So I'm not actually gonna be able to read it for, like, two weeks.

Gamemaster:But, you know.

Benny:Thank you.

Gamemaster:I assume that's what all of you are doing as well.

Gamemaster:You're mailing the book to Noah so that he can sign it and then have him mail it back to you.

Argyle:Noah's going to mail me a stamp.

Argyle:Then I'm just going to... Okay.

Anzu:Yeah, but I don't like Autopen.

Gamemaster:Yeah.

Anzu:I don't believe in that.

Gamemaster:We were just talking about you.

Argyle:Well, he's going to write on some Saran Wrap with the marker, and then I'm just going to place it on mine.

Anzu:Oh, okay.

Anzu:That I like.

Argyle:Yeah.

Anzu:I think... Oh, here he is.

Argyle:Yeah.

Johnny:Oh, no.

Anzu:Yeah.

Benny:Thank you.

Argyle:Nice haircut.

Gamemaster:Sorry.

Johnny:Thank you.

Anzu:Dang, this guy's quick.

Anzu:Quickest draw in the West.

Johnny:Jorge, is that on your resume under special skills?

Johnny:Quick haircut noticing?

Argyle:It really should be.

Gamemaster:Oh my god.

Gamemaster:Why?

Gamemaster:Why does Discord even let you set a video or whatever as your background?

Johnny:Bad.

Anzu:No, this is too much.

Anzu:This is too much.

Benny:I like how even your internet is like, buddy, you're pushing it.

Argyle:Well, you can have yours update with roles, so maybe that's basically the same idea.

Benny:You can no longer compress 80% of your video and it's decided to remove 90% of the pixels.

Johnny:you

Gamemaster:I just don't know when that would be useful.

Anzu:Oh, yeah.

Gamemaster:What?

Anzu:You know how you used to be able to show our rolls?

Argyle:You can have a dynamic background that used to show the roles.

Gamemaster:Oh.

Gamemaster:What?

Anzu:No, no.

Anzu:You had it, Josh, when it would show what we got from the dice roller.

Gamemaster:Oh.

Argyle:Thanks, Tanner, because he's trying to gaslight me.

Gamemaster:I thought... Okay.

Benny:I really, Josh, I wasn't looking, and I was going to look at him and be like, what are you guys talking about?

Gamemaster:Well, first off...

Benny:And hope that you were actually gaslighting him, because I would have jumped in 100% and been like, are you guys okay?

Johnny:this you

Gamemaster:First off, that wasn't a background in Discord.

Gamemaster:That's why I use OBS just for this, so that I could have a different thing fed into my webcam to have it show up.

Anzu:I don't have a server role.

Gamemaster:But also, when you guys were talking about roles, I thought, since we're talking about Discord stuff, there was some way to display server roles in the background.

Gamemaster:So whenever you signed on, it said in the background, admin or whatever, so that everybody knew, which felt strange.

Argyle:O-R-O-L-E What about gay and lich?

Anzu:I'm just a guy.

Gamemaster:That's not true.

Gamemaster:You have a bunch of server roles.

Gamemaster:One second.

Gamemaster:What are your server roles?

Gamemaster:Your server roles are fighter, y'all, and folks.

Gamemaster:No, those aren't roles on the server.

Benny:Wait, why is Fighter there?

Benny:Would you ever notify only a single class of characters?

Benny:Like... Uh...

Gamemaster:No, it was so that his name could be a color.

Johnny:Oh no.

Gamemaster:And I didn't change it for the new campaign because I imagined everybody got used to whatever colors their names were and it didn't really make much sense to switch it around.

Anzu:What's my color right now?

Gamemaster:But that is an option.

Argyle:I'm demystified now.

Gamemaster:You're demystified?

Argyle:Just broke my immersion.

Gamemaster:I'm sorry?

Argyle:That my colors don't change.

Johnny:Jorge's immersion.

Gamemaster:Do you want me to change the colors?

Argyle:For me at least.

Gamemaster:Okay, fine.

Benny:Yeah, Josh, can you mystify us?

Gamemaster:Okay, one second.

Anzu:I'm kind of happy with my color.

Gamemaster:First off, you can see what color your role is.

Gamemaster:What class are you now, Jorge?

Benny:Is there a VR version of Foundry?

Anzu:Something dumb.

Gamemaster:Something dumb.

Gamemaster:There is not a VR version of Foundry.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Argyle:We can vibe code one.

Benny:It's breaking my immersion.

Gamemaster:Jorge is a cleric now.

Benny:You know what?

Benny:I hate that.

Benny:Because we definitely can't.

Gamemaster:Mike is a fighter.

Argyle:What?

Argyle:The vibe code one?

Benny:Yeah.

Gamemaster:Okay, so there's a 3D version of Foundry.

Gamemaster:It's Foundry.

Gamemaster:You can make Foundry be 3D.

Benny:Means it's 80% vibe coded.

Gamemaster:To my knowledge, there isn't a VR version of it.

Benny:That just means the hard part was done, and the vibe code is now 10 times easier.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:Tanner is a psychic.

Argyle:I love listening to vibe-coded projects that get upvoted by people.

Gamemaster:Sorry, I'm just updating all of these.

Johnny:you you

Argyle:Like, Mike showed me one that was, I'm able to run a model that's 400 billion parameters on my MacBook Pro without any loss.

Argyle:Then you look at the code and they're like, well, first of all, I downsampled the model by, I only take a 20th of the original model.

Argyle:And you're like,

Argyle:All right, so first of all, you already shrunk it.

Benny:Oh, that was crazy.

Argyle:What's the fucking point?

Benny:People are like, dude, I ran fucking Kimi K2 extra large, a 1 point whatever trillion parameter model on my fucking floppy disk, and it's just like it has 0.5 bit quantization.

Benny:You're like, what are you talking about?

Argyle:It can generate one word every two seconds.

Argyle:And you're like, all right, well, this isn't useful.

Benny:The one model that...

Benny:the dude had running on his phone.

Benny:I wanted to send you the tweet, but I didn't want to send you too many things to open.

Benny:It literally was half a word per second.

Benny:So I just watched the video for 30 seconds.

Benny:I was like, I'm going to kill myself if I watch this any longer.

Benny:It's like, you're running on my phone.

Benny:And it's just like, wow.

Benny:That's amazing.

Johnny:you

Benny:I'm like, I'm done.

Argyle:And then it's like, this is why.

Argyle:And it has like a finger gun emoji.

Benny:You feel your iPhone heating up as it uses a fucking 30 gigs of swap.

Argyle:Yeah.

Argyle:Have you guys read the book Dungeon Crawler?

Johnny:Yeah.

Gamemaster:Dungeon Crawler Carl or just Dungeon Crawler?

Anzu:Okay, I guess I will.

Johnny:Thundercrawler Carl, you're missing one.

Argyle:Which is the one where he has a...

Argyle:Pet cat from his girlfriend.

Johnny:Thundercrawler Carl.

Argyle:Bailey got it and she's like, you should read this book.

Argyle:And I'm like, after I read Noah's book, I'm going to read this book.

Johnny:One, thank you.

Johnny:Two, you should read it.

Argyle:I'm going to start reading books while I vibe code, so.

Gamemaster:I haven't read Dungeon Crawler Carl, but my understanding of it, and it sounds like, Noah, you have read it, is that it's like an intro into... I don't know what you call the genre of books where, like, there's a status screen and you get to level up and stuff, and the main character does that, right?

Johnny:Lit RPG.

Gamemaster:Yes, there we go.

Johnny:It is... The audiobook's really good.

Johnny:There are a series of books that don't have the right to be as good as they are.

Johnny:I read them and I was like, these shouldn't be good, but they're really good.

Anzu:I should add Dungeon Crawler Carl to my list.

Argyle:Sounds good.

Johnny:I would suggest it, yeah.

Johnny:They're really good.

Johnny:They're just like fun books.

Anzu:All right, add it to the queue.

Johnny:And there's a talking cat.

Johnny:So, you know.

Gamemaster:That's always fun.

Gamemaster:People like this.

Anzu:I've slacked in my reading in recent years due to all the time I spend reading patents during the day.

Anzu:But the goal is 12 this year.

Johnny:How many are you at right now?

Anzu:I'm on pace.

Anzu:I've read three.

Anzu:Song of Monsters is going to be number four.

Anzu:It's currently number four.

Anzu:I've re-read the first three chapters, so now I'm back caught up to where I was.

Johnny:Thank you for reading, Tanner.

Anzu:Yeah, no problem.

Anzu:Number five is The Martian.

Anzu:Let's see how that goes.

Argyle:Oh.

Gamemaster:Have you read Project Hail Mary?

Johnny:Andy Weir.

Gamemaster:Also by the same author since there's a movie out?

Anzu:No, but I did go see the film.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Johnny:How was the film?

Anzu:And funny enough, I've not seen The Martian.

Gamemaster:Oh.

Johnny:So far.

Gamemaster:Also a good movie.

Gamemaster:And a good book.

Johnny:Wait, Tanner, what were books one through three?

Gamemaster:Yeah.

Anzu:I read The Left Hand of Darkness.

Johnny:Oh, that's cool.

Anzu:That was actually a great book.

Benny:Okay.

Johnny:First, Caleb Wynn.

Anzu:I read The City in Glass.

Anzu:which I did not like as much, but also wasn't what I thought it was going to be.

Anzu:What was my first book?

Johnny:Yeah, I've heard of that one.

Anzu:I think it was Salvation Day was my first book, but I could be getting my order wrong.

Johnny:This is a cool cover.

Anzu:For the city in Glass, the concept seemed very interesting to me.

Anzu:It follows a demon and an angel who reside over a city over the course of centuries.

Anzu:And I was like, that sounds cool.

Anzu:And then it's like a weird semi-romance kind of thing between the demon and the angel.

Argyle:All right, something that's more shitty for you than reading.

Anzu:And I was like, all right, this isn't really what I was looking for.

Benny:No.

Argyle:Have any of you guys played the new Left 4 Dead game?

Gamemaster:There's a new Left 4 Dead game?

Johnny:Is it good?

Argyle:It's good.

Argyle:Sorry, not Left 4 Dead.

Argyle:Resident Evil game.

Gamemaster:Oh, yes.

Gamemaster:Yes.

Argyle:You've played?

Gamemaster:Big fan.

Gamemaster:Yeah.

Argyle:Yeah.

Argyle:Have you finished it yet?

Gamemaster:It's a good time.

Gamemaster:I, um, no.

Gamemaster:So, I play the Resident Evil games when I visit my parents.

Anzu:Heh.

Gamemaster:because my mom is invested in Leon specifically.

Argyle:Really?

Argyle:Leon!

Argyle:I love Leon.

Gamemaster:So last time I visited, I got to the first main Leon section, where he's running around and you get the upgrades and stuff.

Gamemaster:I'm trying to get the motorcycle right now.

Argyle:No, but I'm going to play it after.

Gamemaster:But I'm not too far in.

Gamemaster:I've been enjoying it.

Gamemaster:Not as much as Village, if you've played Village, but it's a good time.

Johnny:you

Gamemaster:I really liked Village.

Gamemaster:But you have to play 7 before you play 8 because those stories are related.

Argyle:Yeah, same guy, the husband, right?

Gamemaster:Ethan.

Argyle:For context, for people that don't know, at least 9 is structured in a way where

Argyle:you play either as this like woman who's getting traumatized by these evil zombie monstrosities.

Argyle:And then it'll like switch to this like guy named Leon Kennedy.

Argyle:That's like doing one liners and back flipping.

Argyle:And you're just like, it feels like it's a horror movie for the zombies when you show up and he's just like got shotguns.

Argyle:He has an ax that he can bury fucking anything.

Argyle:Like I saw a clip from an earlier game.

Argyle:He like buried a RPG and a car.

Johnny:And this is the same game?

Argyle:Same game.

Anzu:I've not played any of the Resident Evil games, but my brother's been playing them.

Anzu:And he said that the previous games in the series are all like one or the other of the two halves of this game.

Argyle:Yeah.

Anzu:And so they just switched them both into one.

Gamemaster:The Grace parts are like 1, 2, 3, and 7.

Gamemaster:And then the Leon parts are like 4, 5, 6, and 8.

Gamemaster:And people didn't like when they switched from the earlier survival horror to the later...

Gamemaster:like, action zombie whatever, except some people only started playing with the action zombie whatever and then didn't like the survival horror bits.

Gamemaster:So this was them being like, we can do both in the same game.

Gamemaster:It's two characters, one of them survival horror, one of them is action.

Gamemaster:And I think, like, the bit that I've played so far, they've done a really good job of mixing the two together.

Gamemaster:It's a good time.

Argyle:I hate the survival horror.

Gamemaster:That's my favorite bit, actually.

Gamemaster:I prefer the Grace bits to the Leon bits.

Argyle:I love unnecessary backflips and one-liners.

Argyle:Like when a zombie turns into a doctor and he's like, I think I want a second opinion.

Gamemaster:Is it... Is it...

Argyle:And backflips and shoots him.

Argyle:It's so fucking stupid, man.

Gamemaster:Is 9 the only one you've played in the Resident Evil series?

Gamemaster:Because in, I think, 5, the main character of that game is Chris, and at one point he punches a boulder so hard it flies over a volcano to make a bridge.

Argyle:Okay.

Argyle:Oh, my God.

Anzu:Thank you.

Gamemaster:You know, the heroes do some funky stuff in it.

Argyle:Yeah.

Argyle:No, like, Leon, let me send you one.

Gamemaster:I've seen the clip of Leon on the motorcycle going into Raccoon City, so... Yeah.

Argyle:Oh, yeah.

Argyle:Yeah, wait.

Argyle:Check this one out, guys.

Argyle:I think this is the most unnecessary backflip in all of media.

Argyle:This is Leon Kennedy.

Johnny:Oh, there's an actual backflip here.

Argyle:I think he put him in more danger doing this.

Anzu:Can't just take a step back.

Johnny:Why?

Argyle:No.

Johnny:Why did he have to backflip between them?

Argyle:There's also a part... Yeah, with the...

Benny:I think I've seen the clip.

Benny:I think it's the only clip I've seen other than some of the more recent ones.

Benny:It's the most iconic.

Argyle:Yeah.

Argyle:There's another one where there's, like, he needs to go by this, like, wooden door, but it's locked, and there's, like, a metal latch.

Argyle:But the latch is on his side.

Argyle:Sorry, it's a wood door, metal latch.

Argyle:Latch is on his side.

Argyle:He can open it, but he has a chainsaw, so instead he just used the chainsaw to cut the metal latch, and then it breaks, so he kicks it down.

Argyle:Oh, yeah.

Argyle:So, that was great.

Argyle:I, uh...

Argyle:His one-liners are so funny.

Johnny:happening in this game?

Johnny:This is a zombie game?

Gamemaster:Yeah, it's a game about zombies.

Gamemaster:Can't you tell?

Gamemaster:Because that's where the evil zombie weapons manufacturers are hiding out.

Johnny:Why is there a volcano?

Gamemaster:Duh.

Anzu:Mm-hmm.

Johnny:I'm so sorry.

Johnny:I should have known that.

Johnny:I started playing Returnal this week.

Johnny:Have you guys played Returnal?

Gamemaster:Colonel's a good time.

Gamemaster:Especially since Saris is coming out soon, which I'm excited for.

Johnny:That's why I started playing it.

Johnny:I downloaded it, like, two years ago on PlayStation Plus, and I was like, oh, I should play this now.

Johnny:And it's the first roguelike I've played where there isn't, like, a meta progression, and so I didn't realize that at first.

Gamemaster:a meta progression.

Johnny:Sorry.

Johnny:It's the only one I've played where when you die, you don't keep stuff.

Gamemaster:Oh, sure.

Gamemaster:Okay, yeah.

Gamemaster:Because I was going to say, like, there are... I don't know how far in you are at this point, but... Okay.

Johnny:I'm fighting...

Johnny:I am currently trying to get back to fight the third boss.

Gamemaster:Because, like, you get to keep some things between rounds, just not much.

Gamemaster:Like, you unlock the sword and then you have the sword type deal.

Johnny:Yeah, I just like kept expecting something to show up and be like, you can increase your health or you can get any sort of starting benefit.

Gamemaster:But...

Johnny:Now, eventually I was like, am I missing something?

Gamemaster:Nope.

Gamemaster:Nope, they're mean to you.

Johnny:Should I be exploring the first floor more?

Johnny:And I looked up and they were like, nope, you just got to be good.

Gamemaster:Yeah, meta progression is you yourself getting better, and therefore getting further.

Johnny:Good luck.

Johnny:I was like, oh, okay.

Anzu:I've had some folks recommend I try Slay the Spire 2.

Anzu:I don't know if anybody has any Slay the Spire experience.

Johnny:I'm not playing.

Gamemaster:How do you like... Do you like deck builders?

Argyle:There, brother.

Anzu:I have played... Yes, I think so.

Gamemaster:Okay, because the original Slay the Spire was like the original roguelike deck builder.

Gamemaster:Like it was so good it created a whole genre of games.

Gamemaster:And from what I've played of Slay the Spire 2, I put some time into it.

Johnny:Oh.

Anzu:It's pretty good.

Gamemaster:It is just Slay the Spire, but better.

Gamemaster:Like, in that, I don't know if you've ever seen gameplay of Slay the Spire, but if you have and you liked it, you would like Slay the Spire 2.

Gamemaster:But if you haven't, then... Like, the general flow is you start at the bottom of an area, you have a deck of cards.

Gamemaster:Cards do basically attack or defend and cost some energy to play.

Gamemaster:You do some stuff, the enemies do some stuff, and then you shuffle your hand and you get the cards back.

Gamemaster:and then as you progress through battles, you get new cards to put into your hand that have special abilities and stuff, and you end up developing loops of, oh, if I play this card, it makes this card better, and then I can play that card, and it gives me more energy to play this third card, so on and so forth.

Gamemaster:It's a strategy game, but it's a good time.

Gamemaster:I enjoy it.

Anzu:Good to know.

Gamemaster:It is still in the roguelike genre, though, so if you dislike doing the same thing over and over again, then you won't like it all that much, because it's in the same Fane of you get as far as you can, you won't make it to the end of the game, your first or, like, 15th run or whatever, and you get sent back to the beginning, and then you might gain, like, one or two new cards added to the deck that might make your run easier if you find them.

Gamemaster:something like that but you are you are just like playing through the same loop a bunch it's a fun loop uh it's also a pretty fast loop like most of my play time has been uh i have it on my switch uh so i've been playing it on my switch like in bed for half an hour before i go to bed or something like that and you can get like two or three runs in that's a good time yeah

Anzu:Okay, very good.

Argyle:There you go.

Johnny:Oh no.

Argyle:You got to ask Claude to fix it.

Gamemaster:Sorry.

Gamemaster:My basic Steam Deck plugin is broken for playing music, so I have to click the buttons in a different application like a plebe.

Benny:Claude

Gamemaster:It's terrible.

Gamemaster:I asked the dev to fix it, but I'm the dev.

Anzu:That could be tough.

Gamemaster:Ask who to fix it?

Argyle:Well, that's the problem, Josh.

Gamemaster:I will never...

Johnny:you

Gamemaster:ever let Claude near code that I've written I've seen code that Claude has written for other people I prefer artisan handwritten code but I need to fix it when it's broken and it's always broken no but if it didn't write it well the first time why do I trust it to fix it the second time okay no no no no

Benny:No.

Argyle:You're not supposed to look at what it writes.

Argyle:You're supposed to look at the output.

Argyle:No, no, you have it fix itself.

Benny:You haven't fixed it.

Argyle:It will, eventually.

Benny:Ask it to write tests.

Argyle:Don't ask me to write tests.

Argyle:The tests are the worst part of Claude.

Gamemaster:My manager, I got a new manager at the beginning of the year, and he wanted to feel like he was contributing.

Gamemaster:So he took it upon himself to raise the code coverage of my codebase.

Gamemaster:And admittedly, not very good code coverage.

Gamemaster:Mostly in part because I prioritized writing new stuff instead of testing old stuff, and it's been fine.

Gamemaster:But still, I get wanting to raise the code coverage.

Gamemaster:But this man doesn't know how to program.

Gamemaster:So what he does is he says, Claude, write code for this, like, write tests for this file, and then he puts up a PR for me to review, and it is, at best, bad.

Gamemaster:He has multiple times submitted PRs that test literally assert true equals true, and technically, yes, the test passes, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that.

Gamemaster:That's not useful to me.

Johnny:Thank you.

Gamemaster:It's dumb.

Benny:Well, I mean, he's trying to increase code coverage.

Benny:He's not trying to make the code better tested.

Benny:So I think he's accomplishing

Gamemaster:It's stupid.

Gamemaster:He's accomplishing what he set out to do.

Gamemaster:I had to talk with him that I'm like, hey, either I can review your code or I can write new code.

Gamemaster:You have to choose.

Gamemaster:And so he promised he would stop doing it.

Gamemaster:So I imagine I'll wake up tomorrow to like four new PRs of code that he's written.

Gamemaster:We'll be good.

Gamemaster:Either way, AI doesn't know how to write tests because it doesn't understand the semantic bits of the code that it would need to test because it doesn't have a brain.

Gamemaster:That's not how LLMs work.

Argyle:You see, Josh and I have taken two polar opposite views.

Argyle:I do about four times the workload I did before.

Argyle:And I just have dispatched... I have literally... There's a fleet.

Argyle:No, there's a command for fleet.

Argyle:So it uses a bunch of sub-LLMs to do stuff.

Argyle:And then I use other LLMs to grade its work and then do corrections.

Argyle:And it's a little ridiculous because my teammate and I, we've been like, have crazy velocity and we've been...

Argyle:producing a lot of good quality products but like we can't even keep up with it anymore so like he'll send a pr for me to look at but i don't have time to look at so i have my claude look at his code and then propose some comments based on live numbers then i check it and then i go that makes sense this makes sense that doesn't then i comment on his pr and then he uses his claude to look at my comments and then if they make sense

Argyle:He applies them.

Argyle:And then it proposes comments.

Argyle:And I'm like, guys, do you want results?

Argyle:There you go.

Gamemaster:It sounds like you two have just become managers for like your own pet idiot.

Benny:Bye.

Gamemaster:And then you just have the two pets talk to each other.

Argyle:Yeah, yeah, no.

Argyle:It's literally what we're doing.

Argyle:But it's funny because other teams are like, how the fuck are you guys doing all of this stuff?

Argyle:And we're like, oh, you got to get into this.

Argyle:I have a coworker that sometimes works with us that's even crazier than I am.

Argyle:So he talks about how it's confusing because he's managing too many context things in his head.

Johnny:you

Argyle:So he's like, well, I can't just have it explain to me what it's doing because then I've got to read a bunch of things.

Argyle:And that's too slow.

Argyle:So he has been experimenting with, he's been hosting his own LLM that looks at Git histories.

Argyle:And produces comics.

Argyle:So now.

Benny:I've seen some of the most crackpot shit ever.

Argyle:He can read what's happening.

Argyle:As a graphic novel.

Argyle:And it's awful.

Argyle:It's really awful.

Argyle:And he's like this doesn't make any sense.

Argyle:But sometimes it does.

Argyle:He's like there's got to be a new way to do it.

Argyle:He's like a full blown scientist.

Johnny:you

Argyle:Like a post doc in physics.

Argyle:He's just a smart weird guy.

Argyle:But yeah.

Argyle:And I'm like well you know.

Argyle:His name's Paul.

Benny:written by an llm like absolutely and it's because the person using it doesn't know how to tell it to not be an absolute fucking psycho i and this guy did it completely wrong because it was really funny so he opens this pr it's supposed to be a simple ingestion job like say like loads from some other team's db safe to rdb in some form it's like almost as straightforward as it could get

Argyle:Well, that's part of it.

Argyle:If you know how to prompt it, it's much better.

Benny:I think it's supposed to save to two tables.

Benny:Instead of saving to two tables, it had five tables it saved to.

Benny:And it's like, wait, how did you?

Benny:And it has all of these insanely complicated constraints between the five tables.

Benny:And what it does is it has the two tables it's supposed to save data, an error table if something goes wrong during ingestion, an attempt table to record attempts.

Benny:And a run table to record runs.

Benny:So one run contributes to the attempt table.

Benny:And attempts can contribute to the error table.

Benny:And they all have these complicated foreign key constraints to keep the IDs straight.

Benny:And I think several people in my team wanted to fucking kill him.

Benny:Because it's like a 2,000 line diff for all of the complicated key constraints.

Benny:And we're like...

Benny:Write something that loads from that table and saves to two.

Benny:This should be 200 lines at the absolute maximum.

Benny:Do not give us a 10x larger PR.

Benny:We'll kill you.

Argyle:Oh, no.

Gamemaster:Is that, like, workplace-approved language?

Gamemaster:Can you threaten to kill your coworkers?

Benny:No, I also... I don't think it was as violent, but I don't know if it was as nice.

Benny:Because the first time he opened it, it had emojis in the log statements, and it was so clearly like he sicked an LLM on the task.

Benny:And...

Benny:He had it write up a full description of why it's the perfect PR ever.

Benny:Nulls can never, ever enter these DB tables.

Benny:We track every single error with high-grain fidelity in all of these DB tables.

Benny:And it was like, dude, we'll just read the logs.

Benny:Please don't pollute the code base with 2,000 lines of foreign key constraints.

Benny:Please, please, please.

Benny:We'll kill you.

Benny:And also, I was looking at it like, attempt ID?

Benny:What the fuck is he doing?

Benny:And then I looked at the tables, and I was like...

Benny:Oh, he's turned the database into the most structured, perfect logging machine, which is good for some things, but we don't give a shit.

Benny:Just read the logs, please.

Benny:Just log what's important and read the logs.

Argyle:One final thing about my work for a second.

Argyle:I've been trying to do... I've been trying to convert drawings of molecules to the smiles or the IUPAC names of a molecule.

Argyle:Sometimes these drawings are low-res.

Argyle:I've found the best way to upscale it.

Argyle:Anime upscaling AI work.

Argyle:AI work that's meant for shitty anime TV shows and movies.

Johnny:you you

Argyle:upscaling it it's really good at drawings so it's really good at chemical drawings it has been the best thing and it's so funny because i have to get like info like my my like security team i have to be like can you let me get the wafu supreme it's not actually called that but it's basically that and they're like what the fuck i'm like these weebs are really good at lines guys they're really good at wine

Anzu:You wouldn't want to reinvent the wheel.

Argyle:No, it is like really good.

Argyle:Yeah.

Anzu:That's great.

Johnny:That's wild.

Benny:Probably, like, ordering a fucking... Hey, can we get, like, 10, like, NVIDIA RTX, like, 500s?

Benny:Like, what, the fucking thing that gamers use?

Benny:And it's just like, no, no, it'll help us.

Benny:Trust me.

Benny:Like, the gamers know how to make some GPUs.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:On that note, do we want to place a Pathfinder?

Benny:Mm-hmm.

Anzu:Alright.

Johnny:We fought some oozes and slimes and some puddings.

Gamemaster:If that's the case, which it kind of sounds like it is, does anybody want to do a recap?

Gamemaster:All right, Noah.

Argyle:Hell yeah.

Johnny:Do I have a pudding?

Gamemaster:No puddings, unfortunately.

Johnny:Oozes and slimes.

Johnny:And flans.

Argyle:And flans.

Benny:Shall we?

Johnny:We fought a flan.

Johnny:I think we fought one Panacotta too.

Gamemaster:Yum.

Johnny:It was a surprisingly long fight.

Johnny:Johnny almost got killed again, but survived with one hit point.

Argyle:Really?

Johnny:We did do it eventually.

Gamemaster:Yes.

Gamemaster:No, Johnny did almost die and survive with one hit point.

Argyle:Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Gamemaster:Because of some very cheeky, here's how the rules actually works.

Gamemaster:Which was correct.

Gamemaster:But, you know.

Gamemaster:Touch and go for a second there.

Johnny:I took that mythic feat and I was like, there's a lot of good mythic feats at this level.

Johnny:This is the one that's going to save my butt.

Johnny:And it did immediately.

Gamemaster:Mm-hmm.

Johnny:Paid off immediately.

Johnny:We looked around.

Johnny:We were like, what's this statue?

Johnny:It had a bunch of little people climbing it.

Johnny:It had horns.

Johnny:We were like, is this a fiend?

Johnny:I don't know.

Johnny:Is this Giant?

Johnny:I don't know.

Johnny:How old is this?

Johnny:I don't know.

Gamemaster:Correct.

Johnny:We found some tubes with a lot of blue stuff in it that looked like they were...

Johnny:Refining magic, maybe?

Johnny:It was going somewhere to something.

Johnny:And then it was going down, which is scary.

Argyle:to hold.

Johnny:Don't know why it's doing that.

Johnny:Anytime someone goes down, can't be good.

Johnny:And then we were like, oh, hallways, let's walk down this one forever.

Johnny:And we got super light.

Johnny:And then found a crack in the air, which is bad.

Johnny:Oh, Anzu looked at it and had a moment when King Trident took off his crown and everyone's like, bald, bald.

Johnny:But it was just, he's looking at magic.

Benny:When he did the detect magic.

Johnny:Yep.

Gamemaster:What?

Benny:You're going to look up bald.

Benny:Just do Spongebob bald.

Anzu:It's from the hit film The SpongeBob Movie.

Benny:Spongebob Squarepants movie.

Gamemaster:Oh, it's SpongeBob.

Johnny:There you go.

Johnny:I got it.

Johnny:I love the gif.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:I've seen the SpongeBob movie.

Gamemaster:I saw the one with, I want to say, David Hasselhoff in it.

Johnny:Yes.

Anzu:They rode the Hasselhoff!

Johnny:Where are we, Patrick?

Johnny:It's some kind of wall of psychic energy.

Johnny:That one joke really shaped my entire sense of humor.

Gamemaster:I clearly remember nothing from this movie because I have no idea what you're talking about.

Johnny:Yeah, I think that's all we did.

Gamemaster:Yeah, no, that is it.

Gamemaster:We actually, uh, it was an action packed last session where you fought some oozes in a panicata, uh, and then you walked down a hallway and then that was the whole session.

Gamemaster:Um, so we, uh, that correct.

Gamemaster:You get a mythic point.

Gamemaster:Um,

Gamemaster:we pick up today's session in the hallway.

Gamemaster:Yes.

Anzu:One clarifying question about the statue.

Anzu:I feel like Argyle did some kind of role that semi-ruled out the fiendish possibilities.

Gamemaster:Mm-hmm.

Gamemaster:Yes.

Argyle:Mm hmm.

Gamemaster:Okay, so just to cover stuff you learned about the statue and the area around the statue.

Gamemaster:The statue itself is about eight feet tall from where it's sitting, but it's sitting cross-legged, so you're only really measuring the length of the torso and head.

Gamemaster:It is humanoid.

Gamemaster:The face is relatively androgynous.

Gamemaster:The only thing that sticks out are it has two horns.

Gamemaster:The right horn turns upwards to a point.

Gamemaster:The left horn looks like it's been sanded down to a stump.

Gamemaster:It was wearing robes of some kind.

Gamemaster:The robes themselves didn't match with any particular time period that you guys had identified, but I don't think you looked into the clothing all that much.

Gamemaster:So they're just nondescript robes.

Gamemaster:Climbing at the feet of the statue and on its legs were very small versions.

Gamemaster:They looked to be humanoids, like this big compared to the size of the statue itself.

Argyle:Thank you.

Gamemaster:The statue resonated when you resonated as well, but it felt off, like out of key or shifted, like up or down an octave, something like that.

Gamemaster:But it did resonate in some fashion.

Gamemaster:It was not, or the role that Argyle made to see if it was fiendish, it did not seem fiendish to him.

Gamemaster:It didn't carry the markers that he would expect of a fiend.

Gamemaster:The only thing that would make you think fiend, I think, is the horns.

Gamemaster:And these horns did not appear to be, like, devil horns.

Anzu:Thank you.

Gamemaster:And I think that might be it.

Argyle:Cool.

Gamemaster:I think that's all the stuff you learned from it.

Gamemaster:and it was amidst all of the light blue liquid-filled machinery that populates this hallway and the area beyond.

Gamemaster:Speaking of, the hallway you're in.

Gamemaster:It is about 60 feet across from one side to the other.

Gamemaster:The hallway itself is relatively sparse.

Gamemaster:It appears to be made out of the same stone that the rest of the royal waterways are made out of.

Gamemaster:The...

Gamemaster:The sewer that you're in, this part of the compound, this hallway is in, is part of the original sewer that was built in Calaria back when it had a royal family.

Gamemaster:So it is not the same infrastructure as the sewer that you had originally entered.

Gamemaster:It kind of converted back into this older...

Gamemaster:waterway as you traveled.

Gamemaster:But it's like relatively smooth hewn stone that makes up the floor walls and ceiling of this area.

Gamemaster:There's no like furniture or anything like that.

Gamemaster:The only thing that is...

Gamemaster:that takes up space in the hallway other than you are on the left and right side.

Gamemaster:About every 20 feet as you move down the hallway is another pillar made out of that same dull metal with the blue liquid passing through what appears to be a pipe of some kind inside of it.

Gamemaster:If you get close to one of the columns, you can see that there is a flow of liquid.

Gamemaster:The columns on the left, it looks like the liquid is flowing upward.

Gamemaster:The columns on the right, it looks like the liquid is flowing downward.

Gamemaster:Um, you walked down this hallway, um, for about half an hour, uh, maybe a little longer.

Gamemaster:Um, which you would know from, you had rolled a good survival check originally.

Gamemaster:Um, you would know that it brought you across about the length of Teller's Run, assuming you started at the beginning of it and were just walking straight north.

Gamemaster:Um, as you continued forward, the, the two of note phenomena, phenomenon?

Argyle:Thank you.

Gamemaster:Phenomena.

Gamemaster:that you encountered were, A, you felt like you were getting ever so slightly lighter with each step.

Gamemaster:It wasn't exactly noticeable in each individual step, but as you got closer to what seemed to be the end of the hallway, at this point, it's like you're walking on the moon.

Gamemaster:If you exert pressure, pushing down, like do a half jump, you get some considerable airtime as you float in the air for a little bit before returning back down to the ground.

Gamemaster:The other thing of note is there is,

Gamemaster:You can't actually hear it, but there's water that is entering your sub... the sound of water that is entering your subconscious that seems to be getting louder and yet simultaneously staying the same volume as you proceed forward.

Gamemaster:It's like you can't yell in your head.

Gamemaster:Like, you can make the sound seem louder when you're talking to yourself, but the actual amplitude of the voice in your head doesn't actually change volume, I think.

Gamemaster:I know people...

Gamemaster:Yes, that's supposed to be a thing.

Gamemaster:The sound is very much like in the back of your mind as if you had just woken up from a dream and it's starting to leave your head, but it hasn't actually left yet.

Gamemaster:It's an interesting sensation because it seems to get louder as you progress forward in the hallway, despite you walking further away from the water in the sewer.

Gamemaster:You imagine that this is a different source of water if you're actually hearing it.

Benny:Thank you.

Gamemaster:All of this culminated at what you believe to be the other end.

Gamemaster:of Teller's Run, the northern end, where you came across a crack, a fracture just seemingly floating in the air in front of you, as if there were a perfectly clear pane of glass across the hallway with a hairline fracture of no width, just the fracture itself directly in front of you.

Johnny:you

Gamemaster:Anzu was the one who decided to experiment a little bit with it.

Gamemaster:So he moved over to one side of the hallway and then kind of extended out his wing.

Gamemaster:And he saw that as he got closer to where the pane of glass would be, his vision kind of split as if approaching it was causing the fractures to grow across the range of his vision.

Gamemaster:But as he pulled back, those fractures...

Gamemaster:re-knit themselves back together into only the hairline fracture that you see in the hallway.

Gamemaster:And that's where we left off!

Benny:we probably leave before we think about how exactly we're going to deal with this.

Anzu:yeah i'm kind of intimidated by this um i don't want to make the crack any bigger

Johnny:yeah i don't this is josh when Anzu had that like splitting effect was he walking directly towards the crack or like if we even try and walk around it does that happen as well

Argyle:Make it bigger, we can go through it.

Gamemaster:even if you tried to walk around it.

Gamemaster:He wasn't actually moving towards the crack.

Gamemaster:He was just moving towards where the pain would be, and he saw a similar effect.

Gamemaster:To that note, you guys didn't see anything.

Gamemaster:You would just see him kind of reaching out.

Gamemaster:Actually, can I get a perception check as he reaches his arm out towards where the pain glass would be?

Argyle:Yeah.

Anzu:And.

Benny:pain you

Johnny:25.

Argyle:27.

Johnny:Oh, no.

Gamemaster:25 is lower than 27, so you guys fail.

Gamemaster:No, so Argyle, you would catch this.

Gamemaster:I don't think you would, Johnny.

Gamemaster:One second.

Gamemaster:Yep.

Gamemaster:Argyle, you catch this.

Gamemaster:As Anzu reaches out his arm towards where that pain would be, that split in the hallway, it's almost as if the bit of his wing that gets closest to... Sorry, wing.

Gamemaster:Anzu, his arms are wings, right?

Anzu:Uh, like, not really.

Anzu:They're kind of arms and there's, like, some, like, extended feathering, but you wouldn't call them wings, I don't think.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:I just wanted to clarify to make sure it wasn't he had regular arms and then also wings on his back.

Gamemaster:It's like...

Anzu:Oh, no, definitely not.

Gamemaster:Okay, as he reaches his arm out towards where that pain would be, you can see that it almost seems to stretch slightly towards the... It stretches out towards the pane of glass, and then as he pulls it back, it seems to reseed itself back into its normal proportions.

Argyle:If there's a Voidsong, could this be the starward song?

Johnny:You think maybe this is how it's getting in?

Argyle:I was going to say if there's a void singer, maybe there's a star singer.

Anzu:Oh, someone in the other direction.

Johnny:Do you think?

Johnny:Do you think if we walk into it, we go through?

Johnny:What happens?

Argyle:Do you want to send us hello?

Anzu:Josh, is there a starward limit, like there is a voidward limit?

Gamemaster:Yes, there is a wall on the starward side.

Gamemaster:It's not, like, symmetrical, but it is similarly about two million horizons out from where you currently are in the starward direction.

Anzu:Mm-hmm.

Anzu:Okay.

Argyle:You want to send this hello?

Anzu:So the first, if we are to mess with this at all, the first thing I would do is telekinetically carry some object towards it before sending my bird.

Argyle:I support investigating it.

Anzu:But not messing with it is also an option that I theoretically support.

Johnny:I'm pro touching the crack in the air.

Argyle:Well, actually, to be completely honest with you, I believe I'm supposed to tell my proper chain of command about this.

Benny:Touch it.

Argyle:However, I believe my chain of command would yell at me for telling them about this, so I think we should investigate first.

Benny:Of course, silly honest thing to do.

Anzu:Okay.

Anzu:In that case, I'll take out a small stone and cast Telekinetic Hand.

Gamemaster:Good.

Anzu:And I myself will stand like 20 feet back.

Anzu:What's the range on this?

Anzu:30 feet, but can I then move it?

Anzu:further beyond that.

Anzu:Anyway, I'll stand 20 feet away and just very slowly advance the stone towards the crack.

Gamemaster:Okay, absolutely.

Gamemaster:So you put a stone in your telekinetic hand, and you will the hand forward towards the crack.

Gamemaster:As it gets closer to the crack, especially as it gets very close to the crack, you see the same thing that Argyle described with that kind of stretching out, although it becomes much more exaggerated the closer you get to the crack.

Johnny:you

Gamemaster:um where as it gets closer it almost seems to pull out like it's made out of like play-doh or something and being stretched out in that way um or silly putty is a is a closer comparison are you having it go through the crack or just get up close to it

Anzu:Well, first, do I, in the telekinetic hand, do I feel any kind of pull, like any kind of change in how the rock feels?

Johnny:you you

Gamemaster:Yeah, I mean, do you get to know how heavy the things in your hand are?

Gamemaster:We'll say yes.

Gamemaster:It would start to feel lighter the closer it gets to the crack.

Anzu:I'm going to try to...

Anzu:Put it through, I guess.

Gamemaster:Okay, absolutely.

Anzu:We're breaking stuff.

Gamemaster:You push the hand and the rock through the crack.

Gamemaster:It seems to stretch out and then all of a sudden snap through.

Gamemaster:The hand is gone from view after it passes through the crack.

Gamemaster:Or past the crack, it's unclear.

Gamemaster:It doesn't look like it necessarily entered the hairline fracture.

Gamemaster:It's just as if it passed that point.

Gamemaster:And you cannot see it on the other side of the fracture.

Gamemaster:But it's still within 30 feet of you, and so you can feel it from this distance.

Anzu:Guys, I could still feel it on the other side.

Gamemaster:You obviously can't see around, but you would note that the rock, once passing through, immediately feels full weight.

Johnny:Yes.

Anzu:It's wherever it is, it is.

Argyle:You want to send your boat through next?

Benny:Bird time.

Argyle:Shall we go through?

Anzu:Well, first let me pull the rock back.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:You go to pull the telekinetic hand and the rock back through the crack just towards you.

Gamemaster:And you see the same snapping motion that you had seen originally played in reverse, where it seems to just snap out of the fracture and then slowly reconstitute back into the hand as it pulls further away.

Gamemaster:The rock light again.

Gamemaster:Seems no different than it was before you put it into the fracture.

Benny:Thank you.

Anzu:Yeah, I'm a little nervous about it, but it could be fun.

Argyle:What happens if Othello perishes?

Argyle:Can you reconstitute him?

Anzu:I don't know.

Anzu:He's never died before.

Argyle:Argyle looks at the bird and goes, good luck.

Argyle:Cast Guidance on it.

Anzu:Shoot, I guess Othello will try to fly through the crack.

Gamemaster:Okay, absolutely.

Johnny:Well.

Gamemaster:You ask Othello to fly through the crack.

Gamemaster:What do you share with Othello?

Gamemaster:Like, normally familiars let you share their emotions.

Gamemaster:Do you have something that lets you, like, see through its eyes or something like that?

Anzu:Yes, but it's limited.

Gamemaster:You do, right?

Gamemaster:Okay.

Anzu:I have the share senses ability, which means once every 10 minutes, I can share his sense for up to a minute with an action.

Gamemaster:Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

Argyle:This seems like a good candidate of that.

Gamemaster:Are you doing that, I suppose, is the question then.

Anzu:Yes, indeed.

Gamemaster:Or are you letting him do that?

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:You share your senses with Othello.

Gamemaster:You watch as Othello experiences something very similar to what you had experienced.

Gamemaster:As it gets closer to the crack, its vision almost fractures into individual shards.

Gamemaster:And those of you watching Othello from the outside see that as he approaches the fracture, the same...

Gamemaster:spaghettification of him appears as it looks like it's being stretched out.

Gamemaster:Although Anzu, like, through Othello, Othello doesn't appear to suffer any ill effects.

Gamemaster:He doesn't even notice that that's happening.

Gamemaster:It doesn't look like that's happening from his perspective.

Gamemaster:And then all of a sudden, he's through.

Gamemaster:He vanishes from everybody else's view.

Gamemaster:There is a sudden wait.

Gamemaster:You can feel, since you're looking through, you're feeling Othello in this moment.

Gamemaster:There is this...

Gamemaster:intense uh vertigo uh as all of the weight returns and it feels like he dropped all of a sudden it is very similar to the feeling that you get when you move between different horizons when you when you like slip from void one to void two and all that kind of stuff but much much more pronounced than it normally is because it's normally like a momentary it's

Gamemaster:Slight sense of vertigo, slight sense of vertigo.

Gamemaster:This is very harsh, and it's almost extended.

Gamemaster:It's like you're on, it's like Othello is on a roller coaster that's just going down.

Gamemaster:It takes a little bit for him to get his bearings.

Gamemaster:He's flying through the air, so he has to actually land just to recover before he can actually take a look around.

Argyle:you

Gamemaster:I would like you to roll for Othello a perception check.

Anzu:Very well.

Anzu:You know, I think it's still his senses.

Gamemaster:Or do you get to use your own perception check since you're looking through his eyes?

Johnny:Might be might be a big 1.

Gamemaster:Lie.

Gamemaster:Then roll a perception check for him.

Anzu:The sheer senses thing doesn't specify, but... I think Othello might honestly... We have the same perception, so... Ooh, bad.

Anzu:Oh, do we use the point this early in the session, gentlemen?

Benny:Just a bird.

Johnny:What's on the other side?

Argyle:What's the other side?

Anzu:Heck it, we'll use the point.

Anzu:Why not have a little fun?

Johnny:Using the point.

Anzu:Now what?

Gamemaster:Wow.

Johnny:I picked the wrong one.

Johnny:There's two horns.

Johnny:Oh.

Anzu:Oh my god.

Anzu:Well, that worked out.

Gamemaster:What'd you get?

Anzu:35?

Gamemaster:35.

Johnny:Huge heroes.

Gamemaster:Hot damn.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Anzu:What do your bird eyes see?

Gamemaster:What does this bird I see?

Gamemaster:So, the...

Gamemaster:Despite the fact that, from your perspective, the area just beyond the fracture is just more hallway, Othello does not appear to be in a hallway anymore.

Gamemaster:Instead, he's looking around, especially as I imagine he's flying upward to get a bird's eye view of everything, because he's a bird.

Gamemaster:He has emerged out onto a metal platform, like metal grating platform, with two pillars also filled with that blue liquid and the fracture in between them.

Benny:you

Gamemaster:The platform itself is maybe 20 by 20 feet.

Gamemaster:It looks like a relatively new piece of construction.

Gamemaster:It is not the same architecture as the sewer in which you guys are standing.

Gamemaster:But the platform is out in the open.

Gamemaster:It appears to be built in a meadow of some kind, like just large open grasslands.

Johnny:Thank you.

Gamemaster:Looking around, I think...

Gamemaster:Anzu would recognize, with that perception check looking through Othello, he would recognize some of the landmarks here.

Gamemaster:To the north, there are some mountains.

Gamemaster:There is this Giant river that kind of passes through to the south of where you are.

Gamemaster:This looks geographically very similar to Hallia, just without the city.

Argyle:Oh.

Argyle:Oh no.

Johnny:Slip.

Gamemaster:It's like as if you had the whole area of where Hallia is constructed just without the city itself, as if it had never been built.

Gamemaster:Not to say that there aren't some buildings that have been constructed here.

Gamemaster:There is, beyond the platform that you're on, there appears to be a path that leads off from it, kind of closer to where the river itself is.

Gamemaster:And there's a small set of almost like shipping container buildings that have been set up, kind of temporary buildings.

Argyle:This is so bad.

Gamemaster:There's some temporary-looking lighting as well, because it is, at this point, probably pretty late.

Gamemaster:Yeah, I think it's pretty late.

Gamemaster:And so those are on just to illuminate the area.

Gamemaster:You don't see any motion from up here.

Gamemaster:It doesn't look like anybody's out and about, but this place does look at least a little bit lived in.

Gamemaster:There are three buildings in total in this little complex that comes off of the...

Gamemaster:platform that Othello rose from.

Gamemaster:With the crit, though, I think the thing that most stands out to Othello is past the complex, looking further south, is the river that you would recognize as the river that normally runs through Hallia.

Benny:you

Gamemaster:Directly...

Gamemaster:in front of the river, maybe like a few hundred feet north of it, separating where you are from the river itself, is this shimmering, translucent barrier of some kind.

Argyle:Thank you.

Gamemaster:It seems to extend, as best Othello can tell, from fully up in the sky all the way down into what seems the ground, although you wouldn't have a good enough perspective to see how far down it extends.

Gamemaster:But it is this barrier that separates this northern area of where you are with the river area behind it.

Gamemaster:And the barrier feels a good idea to Othello.

Gamemaster:And Othello, like, you can feel his emotions.

Gamemaster:You're not quite sure where this...

Gamemaster:relief that the barrier exists is coming from.

Gamemaster:There's some kind of primal something going on in the back of Othello's brain that's like, hey, it's good that that's there.

Gamemaster:But he kind of has to search around to figure out where the source of that is coming from.

Gamemaster:And maybe two miles downstream in the river, what...

Johnny:you

Gamemaster:Othello, like, in the corner of his eye as he was going around surveying, would have originally mistaken for a mountain.

Gamemaster:Just because it's off in the distance, it seems like it's the direction that the river is traveling, is not, in fact, a mountain.

Gamemaster:It is a creature standing both legs, both feet in the water, the river crashing against its ankles.

Gamemaster:It is humanoid, but it is maybe two miles tall.

Gamemaster:It is tall enough that you cannot see above the chest because there is cloud cover that is congregated around the chest.

Gamemaster:It is wearing these long, reddish-looking robes that extend up past the cloud cover.

Gamemaster:And Didia's...

Gamemaster:It doesn't look like it's moving.

Gamemaster:It's just kind of standing still, letting the river crash up against it on the other side of the barrier there.

Gamemaster:Yes.

Johnny:Do the robes look similar to what the statue was wearing?

Benny:Welcome back.

Johnny:Okay.

Gamemaster:Yes, the robes do look similar to what the statue is wearing.

Anzu:I relay all this, of course.

Argyle:You should recall Othello.

Anzu:I recall.

Gamemaster:Othello comes back.

Gamemaster:The figure in the distance doesn't appear at all interested, as best you can tell, at what's going on near this complex.

Gamemaster:And there's no one outside that Othello could see that would take notice of a bird coming in and out.

Gamemaster:So Othello, unaccosted, just returns back to the fracture and returns.

Anzu:Now, a question about the world.

Anzu:I seem to recall that there are shortcuts that you could take when slipping that will skip multiple iterations.

Gamemaster:Yes.

Gamemaster:You're talking about a shoot.

Gamemaster:And yeah, they are believed to be naturally occurring.

Gamemaster:And they tend to... They are unpredictable in where they show up and how far a jump they make.

Gamemaster:Um...

Anzu:Does traveling in one of those feel more intense than moving one step?

Gamemaster:roll in a cultism check to see how much you know about shoots and the like.

Gamemaster:Because it's not like that's a common thing that people have to deal with in their day-to-day.

Anzu:Right.

Anzu:22.

Gamemaster:I think a 22 is enough, yes.

Johnny:you

Gamemaster:The sense is exacerbated because you're jumping over multiple horizons instead of just moving from one to the next.

Anzu:Is there any technology or tool that can tell you where on the horizon you are or estimate?

Argyle:This is.

Gamemaster:No, there is not.

Gamemaster:The only way that people have figured out how to tell where they are on the horizon is by starting at prime and counting.

Anzu:Right.

Johnny:there there are like slides and stuff right where you can hit uh like one world and shoot down like voidward five oh

Gamemaster:Well, so those are two different things.

Gamemaster:If you're looking to jump straight from one to five, as best anybody is aware, you need a chute, which is like naturally occurring.

Gamemaster:You can't just make one and it'll jump you from one to five if you find it.

Gamemaster:There are vehicles called slides that basically you tell it move 30 voidward and then it just does 30 jumps in rapid succession voidward.

Gamemaster:But it is still one at a time.

Gamemaster:A lot of public transit that runs in Hallia, for instance, as you're moving from one to the other, will just make that trip for you.

Gamemaster:It just has to go through each one.

Gamemaster:With the occultism rule that you had, you were not familiar with one.

Johnny:And then final question, is there a precedent for other worlds pressing in on ours like this with the crack?

Anzu:Hmm.

Benny:So.

Argyle:Does, after hearing that description, does Argyle know anything of Giant beings like this or bubbles that contain it?

Gamemaster:Well, roll a nature check or a religion check for different things.

Johnny:Oh.

Argyle:OK.

Argyle:I will roll a religion.

Argyle:25.

Gamemaster:Okay, with the 25, the religion check tells you more about the bubble than it does about the Giant.

Gamemaster:There isn't a lot of talk about giants in most of the religion that Ardell would be familiar with.

Gamemaster:The...

Gamemaster:The bubble is interesting because there is only one reference to a barrier that extends from the heavens, and that is the firmament.

Johnny:Wow.

Gamemaster:That is the thing that separates Færrin from the outside world and the gods.

Argyle:Uh.

Argyle:Yeah.

Argyle:So that's what this sounds like, a different god.

Argyle:OK.

Argyle:All right.

Argyle:We also can agree, everyone, that they're using this.

Argyle:Hallia has all those guards, so you can't just slip around different.

Argyle:They're using this to get around them.

Argyle:That's how they're funding and powering this tiller's run, right?

Benny:Wouldn't we have seen something come through here in the time that we were here?

Argyle:I'm assuming the Teller's Run people are using this to bypass all that.

Argyle:And that's why they have shipping containers, because they're just sending stuff from other worlds through here.

Argyle:We're here at an off hour.

Argyle:And there's a settlement on the other side of this wall.

Argyle:They definitely know about this.

Anzu:There's a couple buildings over there.

Anzu:Either that or they have specifically come to this place because the big guy is there.

Anzu:And they want a direct link to that.

Johnny:Yeah, because it feels like... Yeah, it feels like... It feels like this guy was here before them.

Johnny:There was the statue.

Argyle:Or Pyre.

Johnny:Almost like this was some sort of prison world.

Johnny:So what is this... Who is this guy?

Johnny:Do we...

Benny:This is Giant, is it not?

Anzu:I mean,

Benny:I mean, I feel like Pyre can be like 30 feet tall and still imposing, but that big seems like a Giant.

Benny:I mean, there's a Giant statue.

Johnny:but the one thing i mean i feel like that's the easy conclusion too but my one thing is that doesn't Giant want to kill little people and you know this one there's a settlement right there there's people climbing up this statue

Benny:We read about Giant.

Benny:There's a Giant in that room.

Benny:I feel like I'm connecting stuff.

Argyle:I don't remember that, but yeah, look,

Benny:Didn't we ask an unusually high number of questions about Giant, and Giant will cooperate with the little people so long as it means to its end of destroying other little people?

Gamemaster:you had asked that and that was the response that you got.

Gamemaster:You have heard that before, yes.

Benny:Yeah.

Johnny:So somehow Giant got trapped over there and now... It's not good.

Argyle:I'm okay with the assumption that this is Giant or it's Pyre or literally any of those guys.

Johnny:We can all agree this is not good.

Anzu:Is there any association with the two edges of the horizon and the firmament?

Argyle:Okay.

Benny:Thank you.

Gamemaster:No.

Gamemaster:Like, no rule necessary.

Gamemaster:No.

Gamemaster:But a big part of that is the horizon feels very unexplored.

Anzu:Sure.

Gamemaster:There are a lot of mysteries about the edges of it.

Gamemaster:There are a ton of crackpot theories about what may or may not be on the edges.

Gamemaster:There's nothing concrete or provable.

Gamemaster:So the answer is a strong eh when it comes to where the firmament is versus where the horizon is.

Benny:Isn't all the way starward is the Godhome?

Benny:Or am I misremembering something?

Gamemaster:That is a theory that you guys came up with in a one shot.

Argyle:Argyle came up with.

Gamemaster:That's not been confirmed or denied in the universe.

Argyle:Yeah.

Argyle:But I think the Gotham's actually up.

Benny:Yeah.

Argyle:Um...

Benny:Does the Godhome exist?

Johnny:you

Benny:Actually, I guess, I don't know.

Benny:This would be like a very, very niche question.

Benny:Does the Godhome exist in...

Benny:in adjacent worlds, or is it just in Færrin Prime?

Gamemaster:So going off the religion check that you made,

Gamemaster:Yes, the Godhome exists in other horizons, as proven by if you move voidward or starward, there are still two suns in the sky, and you still have magic, because the way that it works is that your magic and stuff is granted by the gods, your raiments are at least, and those are still there, even when you move voidward or starward.

Argyle:Okay.

Argyle:So I think downward bad.

Argyle:Upward good.

Argyle:Sides bad.

Gamemaster:What about forward?

Argyle:Yeah.

Johnny:i mean they don't have a bomb on them i am a terrorist could just go in and bada bing bada boom and then get out

Benny:movie title.

Argyle:So should we just head back to our bar?

Benny:I mean, unless you think we can... Yeah, I think we should head back.

Anzu:Like to get a closer look at the buildings.

Argyle:We could investigate those houses if we want.

Argyle:Does anyone want to experiment on the little houses there?

Benny:Can we send the bird in?

Johnny:Oh.

Benny:The small one?

Benny:yeah yeah but if all four of us are there we get caught hey listen there's a big guy in there i don't i don't know yeah i know but i don't know what else they have in there

Argyle:Yeah, but if we do this and we get caught, they're going to know someone's investigating.

Argyle:We kill them.

Argyle:The big guy's behind the wall.

Anzu:I mean, we could send him to do a little closer fly to the buildings if we want.

Argyle:All right.

Benny:Bird, bird, bird, bird.

Argyle:Yeah.

Benny:Yes, if we can see what's in the buildings.

Argyle:Or should we send someone that's stealthy?

Johnny:Do you want me to make... I can make you invisible.

Benny:Listen, I could get away with being in a restaurant's back room.

Benny:I don't think.

Benny:Oh, I'm just a kid.

Benny:For how long?

Johnny:10 minutes.

Anzu:Me too.

Johnny:I could... How many spells?

Argyle:Who is the best stealthier?

Benny:Probably Benny.

Johnny:I got a plus 11.

Johnny:I'm guessing it's Ben.

Benny:Benny has also a plus 11.

Benny:I think I had a plus 12.

Benny:Benny also has a plus 11.

Johnny:Does anyone have Godspeed to run really fast?

Benny:Benny has Godspeed.

Benny:Benny also has a 35 foot movement speed.

Johnny:Oh, shoot.

Argyle:Do you think we have 10 minutes?

Benny:Gimme.

Anzu:Thank you.

Johnny:All right.

Johnny:You ready, Benny?

Benny:Yeah, but also, I mean, like, the bird started thinking weird shit, too.

Benny:So... Uh... Yeah.

Johnny:You start thinking weird shit, get out of there.

Johnny:I think so.

Argyle:All right.

Argyle:Do you want to walk back to where the slimes were?

Argyle:I can cast Augury and see if this is a bad idea to go in there.

Johnny:Maybe that's a good idea.

Benny:Go for it.

Argyle:But that'll take 10 minutes.

Argyle:Should I cast it here, or should we walk over?

Argyle:All right, I cast Augury.

Anzu:I don't think that anything's really going to happen here in the next couple minutes.

Argyle:It takes 10 minutes.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Johnny:you

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:You're casting Augury.

Gamemaster:As part of Augury, what is the question you are asking of your god?

Argyle:Yeah.

Argyle:OK, what question should we ask?

Argyle:Should we?

Gamemaster:So, the way it works is you have to ask about a particular course of action.

Argyle:Sorry.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:And then you hear if the action is good, bad, mixed, or none of the above.

Argyle:Should Benny look more into this?

Argyle:Should we look more into this?

Benny:Well, should we send Betty in right now?

Argyle:To find out more about these houses.

Argyle:Yeah.

Argyle:Alright, that's what we ask.

Argyle:That's what Argyle asks.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:You spend 10 minutes.

Gamemaster:Give me a second.

Argyle:As Argyle casts Augury, he lays his sword out on his lap, he kneels down, his eyes go completely gold, and his raiment starts spinning.

Gamemaster:I need to roll a d20.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:At the end of the 10 minutes, as you deliberate this particular course of action, as the spell fades,

Gamemaster:In your head, you see an image of a Scale, of a balance, and you see as it tips towards the good side.

Argyle:Okay, let's do it.

Benny:Lace me up.

Anzu:We lace him up.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:I assume lacing him up is casting invisibility on him.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Johnny:Bibbidi-bobbidi.

Johnny:No more Benny.

Johnny:He's invisible.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:The nine-year-old disappears from view.

Benny:Mm-hmm.

Benny:Benny will head through stealthily.

Gamemaster:Okay, so then I'm going to need a stealth check.

Argyle:Are you going to Godspeed?

Benny:What if I need it?

Anzu:I'll cast Guidance right before he goes.

Argyle:Yeah.

Anzu:Yeah.

Benny:Oh, so I got a plus one to that?

Benny:25?

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:Sorry?

Argyle:My cat's light on Benny.

Gamemaster:With a 25...

Gamemaster:With a 25 sabotaged by Argyle, Benny walks into the fracture.

Benny:Yeah.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Johnny:you

Gamemaster:The experience had been described to Benny a few times.

Gamemaster:This is the first time he's experiencing it.

Gamemaster:It's like everything fractures.

Gamemaster:And then the shards pull away until it's just nothingness for a split second.

Gamemaster:Before he's made it through the fracture, he is standing on that metal platform.

Gamemaster:On the other end, intense sense of vertigo.

Gamemaster:Can you roll a fort save for me, please, Benny?

Benny:Absolutely.

Benny:24.

Johnny:Oh.

Gamemaster:24 is enough to bear the effects of the vertigo without issue, and he is no longer in the sewers, so he is not sickened anymore.

Benny:All it takes.

Benny:All it took to not become Zigen was to go through a portal of unseen technology to a dimension with a being of untold power.

Gamemaster:But you're not in the sewers anymore, so you're great!

Anzu:I'm glad this allowed you to clear your mind.

Johnny:Great.

Gamemaster:So Benny breathes in literally the cleanest air he has ever breathed in in his life, because this world is unpolluted by anything, really.

Gamemaster:And looks around, he can see that behind him is just the Opaline Mountains, the mountain range north of Hallia, in front of him facing south.

Gamemaster:is this kind of like dirt gravel path towards the compound of the three buildings and beyond it in the distance, like two miles that away is a Giant figure or the shoulders down of a Giant figure with presumably the head above the cloud line.

Benny:Sure.

Benny:Benny, we'll head towards the three buildings.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:Can I get a perception check as you approach them just to see like what's going on with the buildings?

Gamemaster:What's happening?

Benny:Absolutely.

Benny:22.

Gamemaster:22.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:With the 22... Excuse me.

Gamemaster:Looking at the three buildings, there is one that is kind of separated from the other two.

Gamemaster:There's one on the left, and then there are two on the right.

Gamemaster:They all have this same crinkled metal... I don't know what you... Corrugated metal?

Gamemaster:Is that the term for the exterior of a shipping container?

Gamemaster:They're very clearly temporary.

Gamemaster:They don't look like they're insulated in any way.

Gamemaster:They're just a thing to cover people's heads and the like.

Gamemaster:The building off to the left, the separated building, it looks like two of the shipping containers stacked next to each other.

Gamemaster:It is maybe 40 feet across and 60 feet deep.

Gamemaster:There is a doorway that heads in.

Gamemaster:There are no windows or anything in the exterior wall of this building, but you can see that there is a doorway, not a door, with like some kind of weather barrier, like a kind of tarp kind of hanging in front of it.

Argyle:you

Gamemaster:The tarp is clear, and with your roll you can see inside.

Gamemaster:It looks currently unoccupied.

Gamemaster:But there are what you can see, two sets of bunk beds, as well as some storage.

Gamemaster:It looks like these are sleeping quarters for whoever might be here.

Gamemaster:Of note is there are, the metal itself and that like plastic looking tarp thing are unharmed, but there are fabrics on the beds.

Gamemaster:And they look, even from this distance, pretty singed.

Gamemaster:You can tell that they started out green, but are clearly blackened and almost flaky at the edges as you walk across the outside, as if they had been exposed to fire of some kind.

Argyle:Might be Pyre?

Gamemaster:Regardless, you can enter that building if you like, or you can continue on to the two other buildings on the right.

Gamemaster:I don't know what your angle of attack is here.

Benny:We'll go to the two other buildings and circle back.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:Okay, so the two buildings on the right are, there's one, the one that's directly across from the residential area that is structured very similar.

Gamemaster:It's got the exact same footprint, just kind of mirrored on the other side, including there is another clear tarp hanging in front of where the doorway would be.

Gamemaster:This one is definitely interesting.

Gamemaster:It's substantially more lived in than the other one.

Gamemaster:It is filled with glass vats of glowing blue liquid, a number of tubes and various machinery kind of wrapped around those vats of liquid.

Gamemaster:You can hear the sound from the inside of dot matrix printers and seismograph reels of paper being written on by automated machinery of some kind.

Gamemaster:And you can see from your vantage point on the exterior, there are a handful of figures inside there.

Gamemaster:It looks like working with operating some of the machinery inside of that building.

Gamemaster:Next to that is another set of two storage containers, this time stacked on top of each other.

Johnny:Thank you.

Gamemaster:So there's like one long one and then directly on top of that to give it increased height is a second one.

Gamemaster:Same deal as before.

Gamemaster:There's a clear plastic tarp hanging in front of the storage container.

Gamemaster:Of note is there are a handful of what look to be cables of some kind, really thick-looking rubberized waterproof cables that travel from the building with all of the machinery in it into this building.

Gamemaster:And looking through, you don't see anybody inside, but the entire interior of this building is dominated by a single machine.

Gamemaster:Can I get a crafting or arcana check to identify the machine?

Benny:Uh, sure.

Gamemaster:I suppose, what's your lore?

Benny:Uh, and lower would be, is it a plus 12?

Gamemaster:A lore check would fit here as well.

Gamemaster:I think you have a plus 10 right now.

Benny:Plus 10, plus 10, yes, yes.

Gamemaster:Yeah.

Argyle:Do you guys think... Never mind.

Benny:24.

Benny:Yeah.

Gamemaster:24?

Gamemaster:24 is enough.

Gamemaster:Benny has seen something that looks like this once, back in Belvedere.

Gamemaster:It is a machine the size of a room.

Gamemaster:It looks like there are a number of reels of some kind of tape being passed between different pulleys.

Gamemaster:Every once in a while there's a click and you can see a number of these pulleys move and tape is pulled from one side of the machine to the other and then returned.

Gamemaster:Benny saw this or a version of this at Belvedere's.

Gamemaster:It had recently been developed or not developed.

Gamemaster:It had recently been installed in one of the research areas of Belvedere.

Gamemaster:This is a tape machine mainframe.

Gamemaster:It is an attempt to do some kind of computation without relying on a heart.

Gamemaster:They are generally expensive and not a lot of research has gone into them because for the most part, anything that they can do, a heart can do substantially better.

Gamemaster:But if for whatever reason you don't want to put a heart in a particular location or you don't want to involve another sentient being in whatever work you're doing, these work kind of as a stand-in.

Argyle:And why wouldn't you want to put a heart somewhere?

Benny:I see.

Gamemaster:a heart's location is semi-permanent so if for whatever reason like either you'd have to create a new heart and then it's there forever and so you have to hope that the heart that shows up there is one that you trust to do good work or you have to expend a lot of magical energy to move a heart and in doing so risk damaging and possibly destroying the heart entirely

Johnny:Okay.

Argyle:You move it.

Gamemaster:For instance, you had seen an example of a heart that got moved is Iron Gauntlet, the one that you saw in Dwellwing's headquarters.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:And he had to sacrifice a very powerful magical artifact to it just to allow it to make the move.

Gamemaster:So there are reasons why you wouldn't want to put a new heart in a new location or move one, although they have to be very good in order to not just put a heart there and hope that it works out, in order to invest in what is still a very expensive and pretty clunky piece of new technology.

Benny:I don't think Benny gains really that much by getting a closer inspection of the computer.

Johnny:uh

Benny:I don't think Benny really knows how to use it, and it's a high risk.

Benny:I mean, we can make plenty of guesses as to what it's doing.

Benny:And definitely...

Benny:Unless Benny is going to be ready to kill several people in the other room.

Benny:I don't think Benny should go into the other room because I don't know if he'll be able to kill them.

Benny:So I think Benny's going to head back to the less lived in container and head in to snoop around in the storage areas.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:I need another perception check from you as you go around snooping in what appears to be a not frequently used kind of residential bunk area.

Benny:21.

Gamemaster:21.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:Looking through, there are...

Johnny:you

Gamemaster:With the 21, so there are four bunk beds.

Gamemaster:It doesn't look, looking around, like there's a lot of... It doesn't look like there's a lot of memorabilia or personal affects anywhere.

Gamemaster:Whoever's here, it seems, is here mostly to work on whatever machinery is present.

Gamemaster:And this is kind of just a place to sleep if one needs to while they're here.

Gamemaster:As you get in, there is also a very noticeable...

Gamemaster:ashy, plastic-y smell that seems to have just kind of seeped into the walls and into the fabrics and stuff, which doesn't make it particularly pleasant to be in here.

Gamemaster:So you gather that anybody who's sitting around here is doing so because they need the bed and not because they want to hang out here.

Johnny:you

Gamemaster:With the 21 looking through, for any kind of information you might get from the people here, there is a small, what looks to be like a backpack, that's been perched up near one of the beds that you can take a quick rummage through.

Gamemaster:Inside are a handful of what look to be like breakfast bars, as well as a bottle of water.

Gamemaster:There's a handful of writing utensils.

Gamemaster:It looks like pens and pencils that have been packed away.

Gamemaster:A set of keys.

Gamemaster:They don't look like car keys.

Gamemaster:They look like they might be house keys.

Gamemaster:No address written on the keys, unfortunately.

Gamemaster:Beyond that, not much else, unfortunately.

Johnny:no you

Benny:I think Benny will take the keys and then head out.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:When you say head out, do you mean he's going back through the fracture?

Gamemaster:Meet up with his friends?

Benny:No, he lives here now.

Benny:He's trying to find trees to create a... No, yeah, he's going back through the...

Gamemaster:Oh, okay.

Gamemaster:Yeah.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:He heads back through the fracture.

Gamemaster:I don't know if Benny's ever felt vertigo in reverse, but it feels like his gut is just pulled upwards, up his esophagus almost for a split second.

Gamemaster:And then he's hit with the smell of the sewers again as he returns to the other side.

Gamemaster:Make a fort save, please, Benny.

Benny:32 crit.

Johnny:Oh my God, there's that.

Gamemaster:32 crit.

Gamemaster:Benny, having already experienced the smell of the sewers, has been inoculated to it, and it does not bother him anymore.

Benny:I'm not going back.

Gamemaster:Yeah.

Benny:So I got these.

Benny:Does anyone have any magic to just... Oh, yeah.

Benny:Sorry.

Benny:Is it just floating keys?

Benny:What's...

Gamemaster:Mm-hmm.

Johnny:Quick, play something.

Gamemaster:As soon as, like, when they're in his pocket and stuff, they're invisible.

Gamemaster:It's just when he holds them out for other people to see, they just appear.

Benny:I got these.

Johnny:And he brought a theremin.

Benny:This is the only interesting thing.

Benny:So there's three buildings.

Benny:One is a bunkhouse for burning corpses, it smelled like, which is where these were.

Benny:The other two were a nerd hut one and nerd hut two.

Benny:They have a computer.

Benny:They're monitoring the situation.

Benny:There's blue liquid like we saw in here.

Benny:I'm guessing that they're just, I don't know, trying to keep track if the Giant guy farts or something.

Benny:I mean, it seems just to be instrumentation.

Anzu:Yeah.

Benny:There's nothing really going on.

Benny:I don't think they'd be monitoring the dead corpse house.

Benny:I think they're monitoring the Giant thing that is in the clouds, yeah.

Anzu:I wonder if they're hoping it wakes up or if they're people trying to keep it away.

Johnny:I feel like we came down here for answers and got just so many more questions.

Argyle:Well, we could go ask them for answers.

Argyle:They shouldn't lie to us, right?

Johnny:I'm kind of juiced out if we're about to walk in there and start popping people.

Benny:I didn't get a good look at them.

Argyle:We can also chat with my supervisor.

Anzu:All right.

Argyle:You guys would like her if she doesn't like rules or me.

Johnny:What do you think should we get out of here and regroup?

Anzu:Yeah, we don't want to go through this crack anymore.

Anzu:So the question is... Oh, yeah, go ahead.

Benny:What?

Benny:But also...

Benny:As you say, I can't imagine those are people that are wanting to stop the guy in there from getting closer.

Benny:Because I smell burning in the bunkhouse.

Anzu:Yeah, it's more likely, yeah.

Benny:It does seem like this is an Embercall operation.

Benny:And last I heard, they're kind of like bros with the gods that want to kill everyone.

Johnny:Let me take a quick peek and then go back home.

Anzu:Right.

Anzu:Yeah.

Anzu:All right, so we either go all the way back home, or we go through that one other route off of the shrine room.

Benny:we could try sleeping down here but have to go further to the sewers because this is dangerous how far was the trek once we were in the sewers to the shrine room

Anzu:Yeah, definitely don't want to sleep right here.

Anzu:At that point, we might as well just go home and sleep.

Johnny:Yeah.

Argyle:Thank you.

Gamemaster:like five-ish hours.

Benny:So, yeah, I guess it's not that bad.

Benny:Round trip back to the place in here, I don't think it's going to be that long then.

Benny:I mean, it's going to be significant, but it's, you're right, probably worth it to sleep in its safe area.

Johnny:Argyle, you got any thoughts?

Argyle:I'm fine sleeping with the sewage, but I understand your qualms with it.

Benny:Thank you.

Anzu:Josh, while we were going through the sewers, were there occasional ladders or stairs or things to get back to the surface?

Gamemaster:yeah yeah i mean you you effectively walked from the southernmost part of the city to the northernmost part of the city um so there were definitely ladders that like exit points uh onto street level from the sewers uh in effectively every district in a straight line through through the city

Anzu:Yeah.

Anzu:So we could probably shoot up to the surface.

Anzu:Obviously not right here, but maybe catch a ride, cut down on our travel time.

Argyle:Be easier to get back here as well.

Anzu:Right.

Johnny:Yeah.

Benny:Sure.

Gamemaster:Okay, so the plan is to, like, how far down, how far south do you want to move away from Teller's Run, I guess is the question.

Anzu:Let's do like one of those five hours worth of trekking.

Gamemaster:Okay, absolutely.

Gamemaster:It's not that long a distance.

Gamemaster:You're just having to deal with the fact that you're trekking through literal sewage.

Gamemaster:But with an hour trekking, and you've already been through this part of the city, through this part of the sewers, so you're familiar with the particular twists and turns you need to make.

Gamemaster:So it's easy enough to find an exit that pops back up to street level about an hour south of where you were before.

Gamemaster:If you do so, which I assume you are,

Johnny:you

Gamemaster:Whoever sticks their head out first will pop open the man cover and...

Gamemaster:surprise a number of people.

Gamemaster:It's relatively late at night, but there's still people out because the district south of Teller's Run is the Masque District, which is the most heavily populated with nightlife.

Gamemaster:There are a number of bars, casinos, burlesque shows, and the like that happen in this part of the city.

Argyle:Okay.

Gamemaster:That said, most of the people walking around are drunk.

Gamemaster:So you turn some eyes, but nobody actually points it out as particularly strange.

Gamemaster:And you all, smelling like refuse, can emerge back onto the streets of Hallia.

Anzu:We take some public transport.

Johnny:Yep, I'm on it.

Gamemaster:You're...

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:You're not the worst people to ever take public transport, but you do clear a cab.

Argyle:Does anyone have prestidigitation?

Johnny:I slowly clean us up.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:You all get cleaned up on the way to public transit.

Gamemaster:You swipe your tram cards.

Gamemaster:There's like a little Nixie tube display that's supposed to show how much you have left on the card.

Gamemaster:And when you swipe it, it just maxes out.

Gamemaster:It says 9999999 into our let through onto public transit and on home.

Argyle:So what do you guys think?

Johnny:We all just sit silently on the train.

Anzu:Looking confused and a little awestruck.

Argyle:Should be our next move.

Johnny:I don't even know.

Johnny:Talk to Anaïs and a nook.

Johnny:Maybe they'll have some idea what's going on.

Benny:I like that

Argyle:I would only speak to my supervisor about this.

Gamemaster:Okay, so you're...

Anzu:I'm not...

Anzu:fully against Argyle speaking to some of your folks, as long as you believe that they have the world's best interests at heart.

Argyle:She's unorthodox.

Argyle:I think you'd get along.

Anzu:Right.

Gamemaster:Okay, so what's the first plan of action?

Johnny:You are Anaïs on a knock around.

Anzu:First plan of action is maybe to sleep.

Gamemaster:Okay, you guys can... Yeah.

Argyle:You don't want to check with the two crazy people?

Benny:Well, are they up?

Gamemaster:It's like, by the time you get home, it's probably like 11-ish.

Argyle:Yeah, wake those bastards up.

Gamemaster:So...

Gamemaster:They're not asleep yet.

Gamemaster:It's fine.

Johnny:Okay.

Gamemaster:They are currently in one of the booths in the back of the bar talking about something animatedly.

Gamemaster:You pop up.

Gamemaster:They both at the same time turn to look at you and deny the guy will say, Oh, you all look like you just trekked through the sewers.

Benny:I like it too.

Johnny:You want to hear the craziest thing that you've probably heard this week?

Gamemaster:Lay it on me.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:He waits for you to, like, finish your story.

Gamemaster:And he says, okay.

Gamemaster:So, what do you want?

Gamemaster:Did they rocket hammer?

Gamemaster:Was that what you were... Was that the plan?

Johnny:Oh, no, we just... We were kind of sitting on the train going, what the fuck?

Johnny:And you're kind of the guys we go to when we got nothing.

Gamemaster:I figured you were telling us because you wanted to hit things.

Gamemaster:And that's just what the rocket hammer is for.

Gamemaster:No, this is, to be honest, I don't really know how to take it.

Gamemaster:Like, did it seem like who you presume is this Giant fellow who's trying to get in?

Johnny:hey i mean

Benny:Yep.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Benny:Oh, I think.

Gamemaster:It seems like something that we should stop, no?

Gamemaster:Or at least you could tell someone, I suppose, if you don't want to do the stopping yourself.

Anzu:Yeah, we were considering that.

Anzu:There were some folks in there doing stuff.

Anzu:We don't know exactly who they are, but with a little bit of rest and recuperation, we could head on in there and interface, but we didn't want to do that tonight.

Johnny:We could do that.

Gamemaster:This is fair.

Gamemaster:I mean, I wouldn't be worried about sealing them in if that was the concern.

Gamemaster:Or did you mean you wanted to see them face-to-face?

Gamemaster:Extract some information out of them?

Gamemaster:Because you could do that too.

Argyle:Epiphany letter.

Gamemaster:That could be useful.

Argyle:Give them the chance to cooperate when they resist we.

Johnny:I mean, we could go back in.

Benny:I don't think these people are pushovers.

Anzu:Yeah, they could be tough.

Anzu:They probably are pretty tough.

Gamemaster:Yes, it is a little unfortunate to not know exactly what you are walking into.

Gamemaster:I mean, you could always do the same thing again tomorrow.

Gamemaster:Take a peek and see who you're dealing with and if they seem too scary.

Gamemaster:Head back out, break some stuff, hopefully close whatever crack they have, and then, you know, let them starve.

Argyle:Not bad.

Anzu:I don't know how to break it.

Anzu:I mean... I guess the tubes are probably...

Argyle:No, we can break the factories.

Johnny:Yeah, we go in there.

Gamemaster:I mean, really, the question before you break stuff is, were you planning on using that area for anything else?

Gamemaster:Because it seemed like it wasn't particularly occupied as you were walking through it, no?

Gamemaster:So...

Anzu:I think that they are there because that creature is there.

Anzu:Oh.

Gamemaster:Sorry, this is not what I meant.

Gamemaster:Not before you go through the fracture.

Gamemaster:In the sewer side.

Gamemaster:Because if you break stuff, that will call attention to that area and will not make it an easy way to come in and go out, so to speak.

Argyle:Yeah, destroy that.

Gamemaster:Which, if you don't care about that, that is fine.

Gamemaster:Then break shit.

Gamemaster:But if you want to be able to continue to use that path, if you want it to be not particularly involved, then you can't just start breaking things.

Gamemaster:Or at the very least, you can't start breaking things on that side.

Johnny:Thank you.

Benny:I'm not sure how much attention we want to cause.

Benny:I mean, so we could go in with like a bomb or something and plant it on the machine.

Benny:Because it didn't, I mean, at least when I went in, there wasn't anyone attending it.

Benny:It could rocket hammer.

Argyle:Rocket Hammers.

Gamemaster:Only downside with rocket hammer is you need to hold it to use.

Benny:Yeah.

Anzu:So we could just use a bomb instead of getting the whole rocket hammer involved.

Johnny:I could probably rustle us up a bomb if we need one.

Gamemaster:Yes.

Gamemaster:We do not have a bomb on hand, if this is what you are looking for, but I'm sure we could find someone to make a bomb.

Anzu:I'm sure Smiler's got a bomb.

Benny:Hmm.

Benny:Yeah.

Benny:So we go in.

Benny:We bomb.

Benny:But I don't know.

Benny:It's going to call attention to the entire area.

Benny:So chances are they're going to start guarding that entrance.

Argyle:Okay.

Benny:Maybe they seal up parts of the sewers.

Johnny:that's true i mean we could we could make our big move and go in there guns blazing set off the bomb run for Teller's Run we don't know what's in there though

Benny:Maybe it's more difficult for us to get Nithilers run overall.

Anzu:Yeah, I would want to check out that offshoot path before we do anything rash.

Benny:yeah bit of an oxymoron

Anzu:I definitely don't want to run for my life into Teller's Run.

Anzu:right hmm

Johnny:We could take another day to go in there and try and scout out Teller's Run, see what's happening there.

Argyle:How long do we have until the journey takes place?

Gamemaster:About two weeks.

Argyle:The pilgrimage?

Argyle:But if we get made in Teller's Run, we also risk exposing this thing too.

Benny:Yeah, I think we go in.

Johnny:I mean, I think there's risks either way.

Johnny:I agree with Benny's point, though, that I don't...

Johnny:want to call attention lose our easy way in um

Argyle:Well, tell us Ron.

Anzu:Thank you.

Benny:We bring the bomb with us.

Benny:And, you know, just pretty much hope we lose them so that they don't know how we got in.

Benny:Then we can head to the sewers and bomb our way out.

Argyle:Okay.

Argyle:um second question what do we plan to get from going into telestron like are we planning on stealthy in there looking at people

Johnny:I mean, the end goal was kill the spark.

Benny:Yeah, we could gain info on, like,

Benny:What exactly is the goings-on inside?

Johnny:Hey, Josh.

Johnny:What day of the week is it?

Gamemaster:What day of the week do you want it to be?

Gamemaster:I don't think we actually said anything.

Johnny:I'd like it to be Friday.

Gamemaster:It's Friday.

Johnny:I mean, tomorrow's Saturday, which means the party's tomorrow.

Johnny:So if we go in at night, we can sneak into the party.

Benny:in order to gain info at the party

Argyle:Let's see if that makes sense.

Argyle:What do these party people normally wear and do they have invites?

Johnny:Mm-hmm.

Johnny:They do have invites.

Johnny:It's at the door.

Johnny:I think there's...

Johnny:like a fee that they also have to pay.

Gamemaster:Yes, there is an entry fee.

Johnny:But if we're trying to go in and not be made, that's a pretty good cover.

Gamemaster:They have invites with their name on it, and they tend to wear pretty high-class stuff.

Johnny:We can try and sneak into the party or we just look around Teller's Run.

Johnny:Either way, a couple extra people won't draw as much attention.

Argyle:I assume we would.

Benny:Yeah, Josh, would we know if we would stick out like sore thumbs in Teller's Run?

Benny:Okay.

Gamemaster:I don't think you would know that.

Gamemaster:There aren't accounts of what the average Joe looks like inside of Teller's Run right now, because most people aren't coming and going there.

Benny:But it's not like you show up and we're the only people that are not on fire and it's like, hey, get him!

Johnny:Everybody else is on fire.

Johnny:I think that's why we should go during the party.

Gamemaster:I don't know if you would know that.

Gamemaster:You would know at the very least the people attending the party aren't on fire, because they're not coming from Inside Teller's Run.

Gamemaster:As to what the people Inside Teller's Run living in there look like, you couldn't say.

Argyle:Yeah.

Johnny:Because if someone's like, what are you doing walking around?

Johnny:We can be like, we're here for the party.

Benny:so we wait for the

Johnny:Because then if everyone in there is on fire and we're not on fire, we're going to stick out.

Anzu:Mm hmm.

Johnny:Maybe we spend tomorrow with some nice clothes.

Johnny:We have nice clothes.

Johnny:We got nice clothes for the other shindig.

Argyle:Which index?

Johnny:Oh, you weren't at that shindig.

Johnny:Okay, our guy, you need nice clothes.

Johnny:You're on a suit.

Johnny:You're fine.

Johnny:We went to a shindig.

Argyle:Sounds good.

Benny:A little smackerdoodle, but who's he, what's it?

Benny:A hoedown.

Johnny:A hootenanny, if you will.

Argyle:All right.

Benny:A screaming pig.

Johnny:A ya-ya with your ma.

Benny:A breakdance, breakleg, breakfest.

Johnny:A poppin' off or a poppin' out.

Benny:A peepin' Tom pizza parlor.

Johnny:A big old ice cream sundae with a cherry on top, and we were the cherry.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Benny:The renegade ramp around.

Anzu:Anzu goes to sleep.

Gamemaster:Anzu goes to sleep.

Argyle:Am I allowed to call my supervisor?

Gamemaster:Yeah, if you want.

Johnny:Yeah, I think me and Betty are going to do this for another couple hours.

Benny:Sure.

Argyle:Anzu, would you like to come with me?

Anzu:Oh, yeah, sure, if I'm allowed.

Argyle:I ring up the dame.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:I mean, you have her number.

Gamemaster:She is always around.

Gamemaster:So you call her.

Gamemaster:You know, it's midnight, so it takes half a second for her to respond.

Gamemaster:And you hear on the other end of the line a very exasperated Dame Quay say, What are you calling about now?

Johnny:Okay.

Benny:you

Gamemaster:Okay.

Argyle:I have a status report.

Gamemaster:Are you dying?

Argyle:No, I have actually been helping out people around here and I've been doing improv.

Gamemaster:Ray, did you find your other half?

Argyle:No.

Gamemaster:Are you closer to finding your other half?

Argyle:Not really.

Gamemaster:So what could the status update possibly be about that I care?

Argyle:We have found a

Argyle:shoot point.

Gamemaster:Okay?

Argyle:And it goes to what I can only imagine, a prison for a Giant evil deity with people manning a mainframe-like computer in front of it.

Gamemaster:How the fuck did you get so lost?

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:Start from the beginning.

Gamemaster:And then she... Yeah, absolutely.

Argyle:I'll give her like

Argyle:update, and I'll go to Anzu to clarify magic stuff and bird stuff.

Gamemaster:Magic stuff and burnt stuff.

Argyle:Yes.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Anzu:My two areas of expertise.

Gamemaster:Um... After you go through, she says, Okay.

Johnny:you you

Gamemaster:Shit.

Gamemaster:Um... Yeah, I mean, good bringing this to our attention, because that sounds exceptionally dangerous.

Gamemaster:Do you... Are you looking to hand this off to the overseers?

Gamemaster:Is that what you're calling it?

Argyle:I thought you did not trust the Overseers.

Gamemaster:I don't, but no offense, this seems a little bit out of your pay grade.

Argyle:You said they were lazy.

Gamemaster:Did you want me to come and help?

Gamemaster:Is that the plan?

Gamemaster:Okay.

Argyle:Mostly reporting in case I disappear again.

Gamemaster:I'd rather you didn't.

Gamemaster:Because if you disappear again and we fish you out of some river and you're worse the third time, I don't know what I'm going to do.

Gamemaster:So... Okay.

Argyle:We will investigate further and update you.

Johnny:Thank you.

Gamemaster:When are you planning on going in?

Argyle:Tomorrow, I look at Anzu.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Anzu:Possibly, quite possibly tomorrow.

Gamemaster:Can you... I will... I have something for you if you're planning on going out that far.

Gamemaster:If you could just hold off until it gets delivered to your current... You're in your Sin and Tonic where your friends are, right?

Argyle:Yes.

Gamemaster:Yeah, just hold off.

Gamemaster:It should come in the morning.

Gamemaster:I don't know how long it will take the courier to get there.

Gamemaster:It'll come with instructions.

Gamemaster:They're super basic.

Gamemaster:It's just, if you're going that far out, I just want to make sure that, like, we have contingencies.

Gamemaster:Even if you do end up dying.

Argyle:Sounds good.

Gamemaster:Yeah.

Gamemaster:But don't, you know?

Argyle:Ideally.

Argyle:Second question.

Argyle:Can you supply us with a sizable, explosive device?

Gamemaster:Probably.

Gamemaster:Not on this short time frame.

Gamemaster:I don't know if I can get it to you necessarily by tomorrow.

Gamemaster:I can try.

Gamemaster:How big of an explosive are you looking for?

Argyle:That'd be appreciated.

Gamemaster:Oh, you know, that's a small bomb, of course.

Argyle:I look at Anzu.

Johnny:well

Anzu:We really only need like a 20-foot area of...

Argyle:Do I need to go get Johnny?

Gamemaster:Right.

Gamemaster:A bomb... You know what?

Gamemaster:Does it need to have, like... How remote do you need the detonation?

Gamemaster:Because I can get my hands on an old artillery shell.

Anzu:Yeah, that could be done, probably.

Argyle:How far do we have to be to activate the device?

Gamemaster:You just have to be able to aim a gun at it.

Johnny:Anzu's like a walking gun.

Johnny:He's basically a gun with wings.

Argyle:Can we hold the gun?

Johnny:Gunbird.

Gamemaster:I'm giving you an old artillery shell.

Gamemaster:You're going to put it somewhere and you're going to explode it by hitting it from range.

Gamemaster:I don't really care how you hit it from range.

Gamemaster:It's just you have to hit it from range.

Argyle:That should work.

Gamemaster:Okay, I can do that.

Gamemaster:I can get that to you in the same time.

Gamemaster:It's not a recurring gift, by the way.

Gamemaster:It's not like I just have a ton of old artillery shells on hand.

Argyle:Can you research this, Scott, on your side?

Gamemaster:But if you need one, I can get you one.

Johnny:Amateurs.

Johnny:We asked the wrong group.

Johnny:Should have asked the group that has old artillery shells on hand.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Benny:Thanks.

Gamemaster:Before you get yourself killed by worshippers of some weird other god, is there anything else you needed from me?

Gamemaster:Sure.

Gamemaster:Did you want to say anything to your grandma before you go?

Argyle:Oh.

Argyle:Hello, grandmother.

Gamemaster:I'll pass the message along.

Gamemaster:God, you suck.

Argyle:Wait.

Argyle:I thought she was right there.

Gamemaster:Anything else?

Johnny:Okay.

Argyle:I thought she was right there.

Gamemaster:No, she's not here.

Gamemaster:Obviously.

Gamemaster:Because it sounds like you're going to your death.

Argyle:I turn to Anzu and I just look confused.

Argyle:I don't understand why you would have said that.

Argyle:Tell her I'm fulfilling the mission.

Gamemaster:I'm sorry.

Gamemaster:I tried having a human moment with you.

Argyle:No, no, no, no, no.

Argyle:I got this.

Gamemaster:That was my mistake.

Argyle:Yes, and.

Gamemaster:It's fine.

Argyle:I have this.

Argyle:Tell her.

Argyle:I'm fulfilling my duties as a soldier for the Scale, and I hope to bring glory to the judge.

Argyle:And if I do not make it back, Uncle Toboggan can have my stuff.

Johnny:Josh, while this is happening, I'd like to walk over to the fax machine, get a piece of paper, write down, need big explosion by tomorrow afternoon.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:You know what?

Gamemaster:I will pass that message along.

Gamemaster:All right.

Gamemaster:Good luck.

Argyle:Yes.

Argyle:Goodbye.

Johnny:And you provide, question mark, remote detonation.

Johnny:And send it to the actual terrorist group.

Argyle:Ha ha ha ha!

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:Are you sending it to Red, or are you sending it to Donnie?

Gamemaster:Donnie?

Johnny:Oh, I don't need to fax this.

Johnny:I'll just pull out my little chess piece.

Johnny:I need to blow something up tomorrow afternoon.

Johnny:Preferably remote detonation.

Gamemaster:Sure.

Gamemaster:What size of explosion are you looking for?

Gamemaster:...

Johnny:I look back at Anzu, like 30 by 30.

Gamemaster:Remote detonation might be a little difficult on that time frame.

Argyle:So Johnny was there.

Argyle:This is great.

Gamemaster:Do you mind timed explosive?

Johnny:No, that might be even better.

Johnny:I agree.

Gamemaster:Okay, yeah, sure.

Gamemaster:It'll probably be like 80 gold pieces and funds if you want it on short notice.

Johnny:Yeah, no worries.

Johnny:I can stop by Smiler's tomorrow afternoon to pick it up if that works.

Gamemaster:Yeah, I'll make sure he has it ready for you.

Johnny:Cool.

Johnny:Thanks, Red.

Argyle:Quick question.

Argyle:Can I ask a question into your mouthpiece?

Johnny:Oh, yeah.

Johnny:Red, this is my friend Argyle.

Johnny:He's weird as hell.

Argyle:Hello, Red.

Gamemaster:Hello!

Gamemaster:I hear you're weird as hell.

Gamemaster:I am too.

Argyle:I would not use the term hell.

Argyle:Anyway, what if this was paired with an old artillery munition?

Gamemaster:Okay.

Argyle:How big would the explosion be?

Gamemaster:Well, explosions don't really add.

Gamemaster:They're not additive like that.

Gamemaster:You don't just get to combine them.

Johnny:Don't have a question.

Gamemaster:I will say the explosives that I'll be readying for you guys will be particularly effective against structures and the like.

Argyle:Very nice.

Gamemaster:If you're just planning on chucking an artillery shell on it as well, I imagine it'd do damage to things that aren't structures, if that's what you're going for.

Anzu:Good combo.

Benny:Benny will exit his room and like...

Argyle:Might I ask where you acquired this exclusive?

Gamemaster:Get it, Bob?

Johnny:Thanks, Rhett.

Johnny:I put the chess piece away.

Johnny:I got us a bomb.

Anzu:All right, so we're set in a big way.

Johnny:It's part of my backstory.

Johnny:I can just get us bombs.

Argyle:Can anyone else?

Argyle:Supervisors get us bombs.

Benny:Wearing pajamas.

Benny:Like, ask for milk at the bar.

Benny:They're like, what are you guys doing?

Benny:What's going on?

Johnny:And we're getting bombs.

Argyle:We're looking just yeah.

Benny:Bumza?

Benny:Ass?

Anzu:Turns out they both have sources for explosives.

Argyle:Can your dad?

Benny:So we're using one of them?

Argyle:Wait, does your dad's permission slip account for bombs?

Benny:I think I'm going to handle them.

Benny:I don't know if...

Benny:I think I need a separate slip for getting one.

Benny:Why do we need a third?

Gamemaster:Thank you.

Anzu:I, for the record, don't think we need a third.

Argyle:I have been learning over the past few months that you should always say yes and bring more to the table.

Johnny:It's a bomb party.

Argyle:So I think we should each come with a bomb tomorrow.

Benny:It's like a competition.

Johnny:BYOB.

Benny:What's the plan?

Benny:Are we just picking whatever is the best bomb?

Argyle:That's what that acronym means.

Argyle:I never understood that.

Benny:or the... We're going to stack them.

Johnny:No, we're going to stack them.

Benny:So me, a child, is going to run invisible into this foreign world and throw several bombs into a storage container filled with electronics and then scuttle my way up.

Johnny:Oh, no, mine's timed, so you can just boop, boop, boop, and then hit the time button, and then run out.

Johnny:I think we need two more bombs.

Benny:It's still the same.

Benny:I'm going to run in

Benny:Like I'm carrying a stack of 50 pizzas with all these bombs.

Anzu:I think the two bombs is fine.

Benny:And I'm a... Of course.

Anzu:I think... Definitely not.

Gamemaster:Thank you.

Argyle:Well, we don't have to put them on top of each other.

Argyle:We can put them next to each other.

Argyle:Or mine can be on the other side.

Argyle:And as we're running, it destroys the other machines.

Johnny:Maybe an X or a diamond pattern?

Benny:One under each arm.

Argyle:Anzu, are you able to get a bomb?

Benny:Anzu specializes in truth bombs.

Johnny:you

Anzu:This is actually correct, yes.

Anzu:yeah my father does not have bombs he doesn't make bombs I think in order to get a bomb I would be severely outed in my standing here and I'd prefer that not to happen

Argyle:Does he know anyone that can procure one?

Argyle:I guess that's fair.

Benny:i'm same

Anzu:But I'm feeling really comfortable with the current number of bombs that we have planned.

Anzu:I just want to emphasize that.

Johnny:It's also good.

Anzu:And all that being said, I think it's time that Benny gets to bed, so I think I'll probably go too.

Anzu:No.

Argyle:Are you going to go to his room?

Gamemaster:Right.

Argyle:I wasn't sure if we moved to bunk beds or something.

Benny:no we have more money now than before

Johnny:We all.

Johnny:Just a hunch.

Argyle:OK.

Gamemaster:You all head back to your own individual bedrooms.

Gamemaster:And you can all get the benefits of a rest.

Gamemaster:In the middle of the night, banning your dad contacts you and asks you if you need a bomb.

Gamemaster:I'm joking.

Gamemaster:He does not do that.

Argyle:How long does it take to change a skill feat?

Benny:the week.

Johnny:Yeah.

Gamemaster:Yeah.

Argyle:Can I start that process before the trip?

Gamemaster:You want to retroactively have started swapping out the skill feed?

Argyle:No, no, I'm OK.

Argyle:I'm OK not waiting until the pilgrimage.

Argyle:I just want to put it on record.

Gamemaster:Oh, yeah, okay.

Argyle:Fourth level, I want to get medical researcher so I can use my medical skill for crafting medical stuff.

Argyle:No, this doesn't do anything.

Argyle:It's just vaccines, antidepressants.

Gamemaster:Oh, not bombs?

Argyle:Oh, addiction supplements, not antidepressants.

Argyle:I guess I can make that.

Argyle:Antidotes, anti-plagues.

Gamemaster:So you'll be able to...

Argyle:And then I'm going to convert all of my gold to alchemical stuff so I can...

Gamemaster:That's totally fine.

Gamemaster:You're going to need it anyway because everybody in the city is starting to get addicted to this new soda that's recently come out.

Gamemaster:Nobody's been serious.

Gamemaster:It's fine.

Argyle:Also, another thing.

Argyle:After last session, I felt guilty about the soda.

Argyle:He's going to phase out so it's only the zero.

Argyle:He's going to have to come up with a conscience.

Gamemaster:Sure, he's going to follow the standard Koch method of you start with the drugs and then you get rid of the drugs once people get annoyed that there are drugs in them.

Argyle:Yes, yes.

Gamemaster:That's totally fine.

Argyle:Yep, yep.

Johnny:when there are drugs and stuff.

Benny:It's going to contribute to background idle dialogue.

Benny:You'll be like, over here, someone at a train station was like, I remember when they used to put fucking drugs in this shit.

Benny:Those were the good days.

Argyle:Yep.

Argyle:And then he's going to rebrand it so it's just going to be a Polish classic, which is without the drug.

Gamemaster:Classic is without the drug?

Argyle:Yeah, but, you know.

Gamemaster:Okay, sure.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Argyle:It's that whole thing.

Gamemaster:You all get the benefits of a rest.

Gamemaster:You rest successfully.

Gamemaster:Since Benny asked for a glass of milk from the bar canonically, Ginny has gotten his fourth ingredient with which he can cook.

Gamemaster:Milk.

Johnny:um you

Gamemaster:He's working his way up.

Benny:Bilk is on tap.

Anzu:Think we've gotten milk in the past.

Gamemaster:Have you?

Gamemaster:Because I know the three ingredients he had to work with previously that I remembered were eggs, bacon, and I want to say goat's blood.

Argyle:you

Gamemaster:But now he has milk too, so it's fine.

Gamemaster:He's got enough to make some food.

Gamemaster:Either way, benefits of a rest, you wake up, the bar is mostly cleared except for some regulars that took a nap overnight.

Gamemaster:As you wake up, there is somebody who is standing.

Gamemaster:in the middle of the, uh, the Sin and Tonic, uh, wearing, uh, the black and gold that would be very recognizable as part of the Scale.

Gamemaster:Um, Ginny, uh, like, twists as you enter to look at you guys coming in from the back, and he says, Oh, um, Mr. Argyle, sir, uh, this man said that he would only give, uh, what he was holding to you.

Argyle:If he passes the credentials.

Gamemaster:Uh, he's been here for half an hour.

Gamemaster:Uh, can you please take the stuff off of him?

Johnny:you

Argyle:And I go up to him and go, what is your name and credentials, sir?

Gamemaster:He is, oh gosh, I think he's a scribe.

Gamemaster:He tells you his information.

Gamemaster:It checks out.

Gamemaster:I don't have a name on hand.

Argyle:We exchange the credential, whatever stuff we do, and then we hand off.

Gamemaster:Yeah, absolutely.

Gamemaster:He hands you a wooden box that's about the size of a softball, as well as a metal carrying case.

Argyle:I salute him.

Gamemaster:It's like...

Gamemaster:this big, like three feet across with like a handle on it.

Anzu:Thank you.

Gamemaster:He appears to be handling it very carefully as he gingerly passes it over to you, gives you a nod, and walks out.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Argyle:Oh, one other thing that I just hope we don't have to address now.

Argyle:I just want to address before we leave this pilgrimage at some point.

Argyle:Did Argyle's senator friend ever come out of the meeting?

Johnny:Thank you.

Argyle:Or was he just gone?

Gamemaster:Oh, yeah, no.

Argyle:Okay, he wasn't like killed by Grayson or anything.

Gamemaster:No, Minister Fane got back.

Gamemaster:It took, like, four days after the thing eventually, like, closed, but Arctos's, like, friend absolutely returned from the meeting.

Gamemaster:He was needed.

Gamemaster:No.

Gamemaster:No, he really was in an extended meeting.

Argyle:Okay.

Gamemaster:The, like, I imagine you would have asked about it when he returned, like, what was going on, and what he could tell all of you

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:was that somebody, oh gosh, what company?

Gamemaster:It wasn't Grayson.

Gamemaster:Somebody that worked with, somebody on the council, one of the orgs sitting on the council right now is called Ethervolt.

Argyle:Okay.

Gamemaster:They're like a power company.

Gamemaster:They called the council to convene an attempted vote to oust another one of the council members, Concordia.

Gamemaster:They had established what they thought were the requisite amount of votes to get them removed from the council and replaced.

Gamemaster:But at the last moment, one of the participating companies that had agreed to vote with them...

Gamemaster:chose to abstain instead, leaving it in a deadlock.

Argyle:I see.

Gamemaster:And so it was just a handful of days, kind of like deal-making and stuff to make sure that the votes happened.

Gamemaster:In the end, Concordia won the vote and got to stay on the council.

Gamemaster:And you imagine there will be consequences for Ethervolt for attempting to oust them and failing to do so.

Argyle:And just for our own.

Argyle:Concordia was doing a weird thing by even attacking the Prime Meridian, right?

Argyle:The Prime Meridian thought that was odd that Concordia people would even do that.

Gamemaster:This is a... Sorry, we're talking about when Concordia went to Prime Meridian for the Keystone?

Gamemaster:When you guys were there?

Argyle:Yeah, because even then they acted like that was a weird thing.

Gamemaster:Yes.

Argyle:So they've been kind of weird.

Gamemaster:Yeah, I mean, over...

Gamemaster:But overt combat like that between the larger orgs tends not to happen, is quite rare, because of the fear that it kind of spirals out of control and becomes like a full-on corporate War.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:So that was definitely strange.

Gamemaster:Aetherbolt attempting to oust them is also strange, because generally they don't come to the table with something like that unless they are 100% sure that they can make sure the enemy gets removed, in this case Concordia.

Gamemaster:The fact that they failed means that

Gamemaster:Concordia probably got to one of the people that was going to vote against them before the vote happened.

Argyle:Yeah.

Argyle:Okay.

Argyle:Sounds good.

Gamemaster:But yeah, no, it wasn't Grayson or anything like that.

Argyle:Someone's shifty's going out with Concordia.

Gamemaster:Something funky is going on with Concordia there, but they are still on the council.

Argyle:Okay.

Argyle:All right.

Johnny:Nice.

Argyle:I hand my bomb to the bomb expert.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Argyle:Or the child.

Argyle:Either one.

Benny:Funny for you to think they're not the same.

Gamemaster:Johnny, I assume you were the one he was mentioning when he said bomb expert.

Argyle:Yes.

Gamemaster:The interior of the case is a foam-lined briefcase.

Gamemaster:Sitting inside is a two-and-a-half-foot-long green-painted artillery shell.

Argyle:Does it have like a little Scale logo?

Anzu:Very good.

Argyle:It says like, glory to the gods.

Gamemaster:No, actually...

Gamemaster:It does not have a Scale logo on it.

Gamemaster:It has a logo of the old Calarian royal family.

Gamemaster:This is like a 400-year-old artillery shell that you gather.

Gamemaster:Dave Key got out of some museum archive somewhere in order to, like, on short notice, get you an explosive.

Argyle:She's crazy.

Johnny:Wow.

Johnny:This is, uh... This is good shit.

Argyle:Yes.

Johnny:Alright, do you guys want to stop by Smiler's this afternoon to pick up our other bomb?

Anzu:Sure.

Benny:What choice do we have?

Gamemaster:Benny does not want two bombs.

Benny:Well, he's the one who's going to carry both.

Johnny:I gotta carry two swords and all these bombs!

Argyle:Can this temporarily go in the shadow?

Gamemaster:Two swords, a pick, a Swiss army knife, an artillery bomb.

Argyle:Or just leaves?

Johnny:He's a one man band, but it's all weapons.

Gamemaster:He's got two guns up his sleeves.

Anzu:I'm fairly certain that this bomb is too big for my sleeves.

Benny:It's going to be like when they arrested the Joker in The Dark Knight.

Gamemaster:Uh, the, the gun is sorry.

Gamemaster:The artillery shell is three bulk.

Anzu:Yeah.

Benny:You could put it... Is it eight bulk as the shadow or six or something?

Benny:Or the sleeves?

Anzu:I have sleeves.

Benny:Yeah, yeah.

Anzu:The sleeves can hold up to 10 bulk, but one individual item can only be up to 1 bulk.

Benny:Oh.

Benny:That way you can't put people in your sleeves.

Argyle:Because if they get into the sleeve... Do you think we should get a rocket launcher?

Anzu:Because it has to be.

Gamemaster:I, so.

Anzu:No.

Gamemaster:Like, to translate, one bulk is usually like 5 to 10 pounds.

Anzu:No.

Gamemaster:This is like a 20-pound bomb.

Gamemaster:It does not fit in the sleeves.

Benny:uh josh is a rocket launcher a one-handed weapon just

Johnny:And if you carry a rocket launcher to.

Gamemaster:No, and also you can't just take an artillery shell and put it in a rocket launcher and have it go.

Gamemaster:That's not how it works.

Anzu:I'm pretty sure that's called retrofitting, Josh.

Argyle:Leon Kennedy could do that.

Gamemaster:Right, of course, I'm sorry.

Gamemaster:If you had the world's greatest crafting engineer, then maybe, but not with the skill set you guys have.

Johnny:The big question.

Benny:Pour out a cannon.

Argyle:Can we put this on the end of a hammer?

Anzu:I call up Big Fish.

Johnny:Somewhere the Dawnmonger is sitting in a workshop, hitting a hammer, he pulls it up.

Johnny:Finally, an RPG that can fit any grenade.

Johnny:Any explosive can be fitted to this.

Argyle:All right, shall we go?

Johnny:The big question is, can Benny double slice with a rocket launcher?

Argyle:Pretty nice.

Gamemaster:If you guys have the 5,000, sorry, the 10,800 gold pieces it takes to create a rocket launcher on hand.

Benny:If it's one handed.

Benny:Anything is possible.

Johnny:Oh.

Benny:Wait, hold on.

Benny:Let me take a look at the rocket launcher.

Benny:I might just have to put this shifting rune on a rifle or something.

Argyle:How expensive are the ammunitions?

Gamemaster:It explodes in a 30-foot radius burst that deals 12d6 fire damage.

Anzu:Archives of Nethis is telling me this is a first edition Pathfinder item.

Gamemaster:They are... I don't understand.

Johnny:Thank you.

Benny:you

Gamemaster:It says it has a capacity of 10, but it also says it has usage 1 disposable.

Argyle:So I guess you can have a backpack.

Argyle:It's like Helldivers where there's a backpack and then you go... Yeah.

Gamemaster:I think it's just you use it one time and then it's done.

Gamemaster:I think they are a one-time use.

Gamemaster:Yeah, no, of course there isn't a rocket launcher in second edition Pathfinder.

Gamemaster:We have to go old school a little bit.

Gamemaster:I'm just surprised I found it under Pathfinder and not Starfinder.

Anzu:Thank you.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:I found it because I googled rocket launcher and pathfinder and I found a Reddit post where somebody said I was hoping a rocket launcher would be a level 1 or 0 weapon.

Benny:That's my post.

Gamemaster:Which is crazy.

Gamemaster:That's your post.

Argyle:That's from 12 seconds ago.

Gamemaster:Yeah.

Argyle:All right.

Johnny:Nice.

Gamemaster:Okay, so you guys are in the afternoon heading over to Smiler in the Undertable.

Argyle:Wait, so do we have time to go to Smiler and then make it to this party five hours away?

Argyle:Oh, wait, wait.

Argyle:How much time do we save by going above the sewer?

Gamemaster:Oh, it was probably only like a 45-minute tram ride.

Argyle:Okay.

Argyle:Dope.

Argyle:Should I get a new outfit to go out there or is my suit fine?

Johnny:I think your students good everyone, everyone in their nice clothes.

Anzu:Mm hmm.

Benny:Mm hmm.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Johnny:Oh yeah, I pull out 80 gold.

Gamemaster:You head on over to Smiler's.

Gamemaster:Smiler is expecting you guys to come in.

Gamemaster:So as you come in, he says,

Gamemaster:I've got your heavy ordnance all loaded for you.

Gamemaster:You got... You know this costs money, right?

Gamemaster:I don't know how much Red told you.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:We'll take it.

Gamemaster:He'll pocket it.

Gamemaster:And he will hand you a...

Gamemaster:like a two liter bottle filled with a silver looking gel of some kind.

Gamemaster:It is corked.

Gamemaster:He says, once you uncork this, you have 15 seconds to get out of the way.

Anzu:Hmm.

Benny:okay yep yeah is benny carrying the other case as well

Johnny:Good to know.

Johnny:Benny, did you hear that?

Gamemaster:Great.

Argyle:Benny has the full Secret Service earpiece at this point.

Argyle:He's holding the football.

Argyle:He has the swords on his back.

Gamemaster:I'm giving this to the child then.

Gamemaster:Here you go.

Argyle:Yes.

Johnny:Yeah.

Johnny:I mean, I could set off the bomb, but he's more of a fighter guy.

Johnny:I can have the briefcase still.

Johnny:If that's... I thought it was given to us.

Benny:Well, I don't know if it's a briefcase.

Benny:Nothing brief about this case.

Johnny:I thought the first explosive was given to us in a briefcase.

Gamemaster:Yeah, it's like a green metal case.

Benny:Yeah.

Gamemaster:I don't know how else to describe it other than briefcase.

Benny:But isn't it... It's like three feet by what?

Benny:Oh, okay.

Argyle:Like a gun case, right?

Gamemaster:Yeah, like a gun case.

Gamemaster:One sec.

Benny:Flat like a gun case, or is it like...

Argyle:There's a lot of different gun cases.

Gamemaster:Yeah.

Benny:Is it like a trumpet case?

Benny:Trumpets the kind of gun.

Johnny:Oh, okay.

Gamemaster:It's a kind of gun.

Benny:Oh, OK.

Benny:Are we heading directly there then?

Argyle:I guess.

Anzu:I know where else to go.

Johnny:Yeah, I got nothing else you guys...

Argyle:Oh, can I open up the other box they gave me?

Gamemaster:Yeah, absolutely.

Gamemaster:You open up the other box they gave you and inside there is a, in the very center, it's a kind of...

Gamemaster:It looks kind of like a brazier, almost.

Gamemaster:It's like this... It's a metal cup hanging from a series of chains to a post of some kind.

Gamemaster:When you take it out, the post unfurls and becomes rigid when you twist it to lock it in place.

Argyle:To the other side of the portal.

Johnny:cool you

Gamemaster:The instructions are just when you make it to the other side, you should plant it and light it before you go.

Gamemaster:Yeah.

Argyle:Sorry, re-describe it.

Argyle:Is this a beacon?

Argyle:Is this a cognitive beacon?

Gamemaster:Yeah, it is.

Argyle:Hell yeah.

Argyle:The Scale's gonna fuck up that place.

Gamemaster:It is a... There's a metal cup hanging with three chains on a post that gets placed into the ground.

Argyle:We're giving them artillery notifications of go there.

Argyle:Yeah.

Argyle:Honestly, not... Well, there you go.

Argyle:Birdman.

Argyle:We got the way to figure out where we are in the world.

Argyle:You just put a cognitive beacon.

Anzu:Thank you.

Argyle:Alright.

Benny:Also, I just... We're bombing if we realize that we have to... We're probably not going to be able to go back there.

Benny:So this is, like, kind of... This is the primary focus...

Gamemaster:It is very unclear to me what you guys are doing, because you got a bunch of bobs for going through the fracture to the other end, but you also dressed up because you're going to the party?

Johnny:Well, we're going to go bomb stuff and then go to the party.

Gamemaster:Okay, sure.

Argyle:No, no, I thought we were going to... So here's tentatively what I think.

Argyle:I think we're going to stash the bomb somewhere safe, close there.

Johnny:Oh, good.

Argyle:Go to the party, do party stuff, hopefully sneak out, grab the bombs, bomb the thing, leave, and never come back.

Johnny:That might work better.

Benny:Probably.

Gamemaster:All right.

Johnny:Light the beacons!

Argyle:We'll light the beacons, let the crazy people come in after we bomb it, and then we'll just leave.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:So what's the plan now?

Gamemaster:You guys are going to the spot that you emerged from in the Masque District and then going into the sewers and then, and then, okay, absolutely.

Gamemaster:I need, as you guys, easy enough to take the train, take the tram up, and then hop into the sewers from there.

Gamemaster:I need everybody but Benny to make a fort save.

Gamemaster:Benny is immune to the sewer stench.

Anzu:Ooh, I got it.

Benny:Victory.

Johnny:Okay, I gotta succeed on this for once.

Johnny:Are you kidding me?

Gamemaster:Hmm.

Anzu:I got a 28.

Gamemaster:What did you get?

Johnny:I immediately start puking.

Argyle:Oh, no.

Argyle:This isn't an emotional effect, is it?

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:It is not an emotional effect, no.

Argyle:I get an 18.

Gamemaster:Well, at least it's not a critical failure on the 15.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:15, 18, 28.

Gamemaster:Okay, 28 Anzu is totally fine.

Gamemaster:15 and an 18, both of you are, unfortunately, so long as you are within the sewers, sickened.

Gamemaster:Sickened one.

Johnny:I hate the sewers.

Gamemaster:Which is a minus one to all your checks.

Gamemaster:Just keep that in mind.

Argyle:Why don't we just get like masks or something, guys?

Gamemaster:Alright.

Gamemaster:Are you... Are you being stealthy as you head north?

Johnny:I mean, that would be.

Argyle:I think so.

Gamemaster:If you are, then I need stealth checks.

Benny:Of course, of course, stealth checks.

Anzu:Wait, Jorge, you rolled a d10.

Johnny:I wasn't as bad as Antus.

Argyle:Oh.

Argyle:Thank you.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Argyle:Ha ha ha ha ha.

Anzu:Don't hamstring us like that.

Anzu:We might have a chance to do well here.

Anzu:Oh my god!

Johnny:Oh, he brought it back around.

Argyle:Ha ha ha.

Argyle:Great.

Gamemaster:Argyle got a 28 crit.

Gamemaster:Anzu got a 12 fumble.

Gamemaster:Benny got a 19.

Argyle:Cancel.

Gamemaster:Johnny got a 13.

Gamemaster:Honestly, not fantastic rolls, except for Argyle.

Argyle:Yeah.

Argyle:Well, it's because Argyle's very stealthy because he's trying not to touch the stinky stuff.

Johnny:Thank you.

Gamemaster:Right.

Argyle:He's sick, so he's like... Mm-hmm.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:So, Argyle, like Legolas, walking across the refuse without leaving footprints in it, the three of you splashing through.

Argyle:Mm-hmm.

Gamemaster:Some of you slightly stealthier than others, but ultimately kind of making a little bit of a ruckus as you walk by.

Gamemaster:Uh, can I get a, uh, marching order?

Gamemaster:There's enough for you guys to walk, like, all four in a line if you really wanted to.

Gamemaster:But, just... Okay.

Argyle:I can be in the front

Benny:Two by two.

Benny:Benny and the bird in the back.

Benny:The observers in the front.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:Well, then I would like the observers to make a perception check, please.

Johnny:It smells gross down here.

Johnny:Did mine not go through?

Gamemaster:He needed his eyes for that.

Johnny:That's so weird.

Gamemaster:You have to leave Noah broken.

Benny:Well, the music.

Johnny:There we go.

Johnny:These are bad rules.

Argyle:Yeah, do you want to hear a point there or do you want me to?

Johnny:I don't even get a hero point.

Johnny:I got two hero points, I'll use one.

Johnny:Six.

Johnny:Much better, 33.

Argyle:Oh, shit.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:33 is a crit, which is lucky, because if you had both rolled fumbles like that, then you're about a half hour in.

Gamemaster:as you are navigating northward.

Gamemaster:It's not like a straight shot.

Gamemaster:You have to handle the turns that the sewer itself makes.

Argyle:And it.

Gamemaster:You've been this way once before, so you don't need a survival check in order to figure out where you're going, but you come across a number of intersections as bits of the sewage collect and then get distributed further downstream, eventually heading towards the river to be disposed of.

Benny:Thank you.

Gamemaster:With your very good perception roll, you see enough to catch the group before they proceed forward into the next intersection where it looks like a lizard of some kind.

Johnny:you

Gamemaster:I don't know if Johnny would know enough to distinguish what kind of lizard necessarily.

Gamemaster:Alligator or crocodile looking.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:as it drifts along the sewage in a way across from you.

Gamemaster:Because you rolled high enough on the perception and you saw it ahead of time, you can wait for it to pass by, if you like.

Gamemaster:Or you can run forward and engage with the crocodile if you wanted to fight a crocodile.

Johnny:Yeah.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:So then you guys can hold on for a few moments as it drifts beyond before you continue forward.

Gamemaster:Eventually making it to that same under-sewage processing plant area with the machinery and the blue glowing stuff and the shrine and all that fun stuff.

Gamemaster:You do make it there unscathed.

Gamemaster:With your perception check looking around, it doesn't look like anybody's in the immediate area.

Gamemaster:You do not see any oozes having congealed.

Argyle:Mm-hmm.

Gamemaster:It's good that in the one day it's been since you were last here, the oozes don't seem to have returned.

Gamemaster:Although...

Gamemaster:You can be pretty confident that over time the oozes will return if you let this area sit for too long.

Johnny:two three

Benny:We're stashing the bumps.

Gamemaster:That said, you are back at this intersection.

Gamemaster:Directly in front of you is the hallway.

Anzu:Are there any crates around, or crannies, maybe nooks, perhaps?

Gamemaster:To the right is the... further into whatever this area is.

Gamemaster:Uh...

Gamemaster:Can I get a thievery check to look for a place to stash your heavy ordnance?

Anzu:Not from me, that's for sure.

Johnny:I will aid this thievery check.

Benny:for benny okay 23.

Argyle:Can I make a perception check to try to scope out places for him?

Gamemaster:You can, but the DC is much higher.

Johnny:What are these rolls?

Johnny:It doesn't work.

Johnny:You don't get any pluses.

Gamemaster:Would you roll?

Johnny:I'd roll the 17.

Gamemaster:So at least not a grip foul.

Argyle:I got 29 for my perception.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:What do we get for thievery?

Gamemaster:23.

Gamemaster:Okay, so with the 29, there aren't, like, crates just lying around.

Gamemaster:There are some nooks and crannies one could feasibly leave things in.

Gamemaster:It's a question of which one do you think is least likely to be disturbed should somebody happen upon this area.

Gamemaster:You pick out one that seems to be pretty far out of the way but isn't necessarily, like, in the water, so you're not worried about the stuff getting ruined.

Gamemaster:You can put it there.

Gamemaster:Unfortunately, there's a little bit of guesswork going on right now.

Gamemaster:But you've picked out a spot that'll work as good, if not better, than any of the other ones.

Gamemaster:And you can just pray.

Gamemaster:I mean, you're next to the sewers.

Benny:Is there some refuse we can use to cover these things?

Gamemaster:So, like, yeah.

Johnny:Okay.

Benny:Like cohesive refuse?

Benny:I don't want to just like shovel shit onto it, but I mean like plastic.

Gamemaster:Well, I mean, unfortunately, you're downstream of where the stuff would be collected.

Gamemaster:That's more like where you had seen Whiskers originally.

Gamemaster:Sorry, not where you had seen Whiskers, where you had gone to visit the Whiskers and his friends.

Argyle:All right.

Gamemaster:This is further downstream, so you're really left with a stream of water that's got human refuse in it.

Gamemaster:There's not really a lot of, like, plastic that's been chucked and flushed down the toilet or whatever at this point in the sewers.

Benny:Fair enough.

Argyle:Well, people don't, I feel like, normally come by this way, so this should be fun.

Benny:Yeah.

Argyle:All right, let's go.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Johnny:um

Gamemaster:So you are now going to...

Argyle:other holloway we never went down which we're just banking goes it goes there yes all right

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:Are you keeping the same... Yeah, absolutely.

Gamemaster:Are you going in the same marching order?

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:So then I need the... We're in a new area now, so I need everybody to re-up their stealth checks, and I want two more perception checks.

Johnny:This is a stealth check.

Argyle:Alright, my stealth isn't great.

Johnny:My stealth was so much better this time.

Johnny:29.

Benny:Anzu.

Benny:Yeah, let's show up this doctor.

Benny:29 stealth.

Anzu:I got a 24 stealth.

Johnny:29.

Gamemaster:A 24 stealth.

Gamemaster:Ooh, okay.

Argyle:I got a 12 stealth and a 23 from my perception.

Gamemaster:Ouch.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Johnny:I got a 17 perception.

Johnny:29.

Gamemaster:What'd you get for... What was the last stealth?

Gamemaster:I'm missing one stealth.

Benny:29.

Argyle:I'm 12.

Gamemaster:Yeah, I had... Oh, were there two 29s?

Benny:And then odds was 24.

Gamemaster:Hot damn.

Benny:Yeah.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:That 229s does actually kind of fix the 12 that Argyle got for his stealth.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:So you look down this hallway.

Gamemaster:You had looked very briefly down it the last time you were here.

Gamemaster:It just immediately turns out of view, appearing to head slightly more north.

Gamemaster:But at this point now you can start stealthing down it.

Gamemaster:um after you make that bend it uh quickly opens up into a metal graded uh area this is clearly a new recent addition into the into the sewers it is not part of the original construction here um which maybe lends credence to the fact that it might be related to Teller's Run and the like um but uh this first area is um it's like a kind of

Johnny:you you

Gamemaster:You have to pass through a set of, at this point, familiar-looking, kind of clear tarp to get into an intermediary room that has that same tarp all around the walls.

Gamemaster:The floor itself is metal, but the interior has a number of racks where the racks have rubberized suits hanging on them.

Gamemaster:I think the one most likely to know what these are would be Johnny, because they're suits that tend to be worn by people handling caustic material or perhaps going into an area with a particularly smelly sewer.

Benny:Thank you.

Gamemaster:These are like hazmat suits, effectively.

Argyle:Can I stuff one in my bag?

Gamemaster:Yeah, if you want to steal a hazmat suit, you definitely can do that.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:They're a little bulky.

Gamemaster:So it'll take up a lot of space in your bag, but you can do that.

Argyle:My bag's only this, the box, and then I have my syringes in my doctor's bag.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Argyle:Argyle doesn't have anything else.

Gamemaster:It's just the equivalent of stuffing a winter jacket in your backpack.

Argyle:Okay.

Gamemaster:It's doable.

Gamemaster:It's just taking up a bunch of space.

Gamemaster:But yeah, you can do that.

Gamemaster:You find one that looks like it would be about your size, and you just go and get off of one of the hangers on the side.

Gamemaster:You pass through another curtain on the other end to get further in.

Gamemaster:And notably at this point, for the two of you that are sickened, it seems to have done a pretty good job...

Gamemaster:of cutting back on a lot of the smell coming out of the sewer into this part of the complex.

Gamemaster:Presumably because it looks like this is a working space.

Gamemaster:Thankfully, empty at this time of night, on a night where a lot of guests are coming in, it seems.

Johnny:Thanks.

Gamemaster:But there are a handful of desks strewn about a rectangular room.

Gamemaster:These desks have a handful of them have paper stacked on top of them.

Gamemaster:You can see some instruments that would look familiar to Benny, as they appear to be similar to the ones that he had seen on the other end of the fracture.

Gamemaster:There is a box with like a kind of greenish glow coming off of it on the wall, on the left wall, the western wall, the side closest to the hallway.

Gamemaster:There are a series of blue glowing tubes running alongside the walls here.

Gamemaster:This place looks like a new construction in that it doesn't match with the stone cut part of the sewers.

Gamemaster:This is mostly metal.

Gamemaster:But it doesn't look like a...

Gamemaster:A high... What's the term for it?

Gamemaster:It's very slapdash.

Gamemaster:It's like they used a lot of metal.

Gamemaster:Some of it already looks rusted and unpainted and the like.

Gamemaster:It looks like they used either metal they could scavenge from somewhere else or stuff that they had on hand.

Gamemaster:It's not very well taken care of.

Gamemaster:It looks like cleaning and organizing has kind of fallen to the wayside.

Gamemaster:compared to doing whatever kind of experiments they're doing here.

Gamemaster:They don't really have the manpower to spare for other stuff.

Gamemaster:It is a mess, really, is a nice way of putting it.

Gamemaster:It's clear that they were doing some kind of work here.

Gamemaster:It's clear that it wasn't perhaps particularly well-funded.

Anzu:Onward.

Gamemaster:Sorry, on the other, besides all of the stuff strewn about, there is also another door on the other side of this particular room that appears to add further into whatever this complex area is.

Argyle:Not particularly well-funded.

Johnny:Thank you.

Benny:We didn't.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:This door leads out into what looks like a cross intersection.

Gamemaster:You can see it moves directly forward into another area further beyond, but there's also, you can move left and right into doorways on the left and right as well.

Gamemaster:From the perception check that you guys have gotten earlier, which we'll re-roll as we move into other rooms, you can hear the sound of some people speaking further straight ahead.

Gamemaster:It's kind of muffled from this distance, but you can definitely hear people speaking.

Benny:Actually, in the staging or, I don't know, the messy storeroom, was there anything of, I don't know, that seemed to be on or functioning that maybe we could investigate to get a better idea of what exactly the machines are doing?

Gamemaster:Yeah, so there's a box that a kind of green glow is coming off of.

Gamemaster:And then there are some machines that look like they're actively pumping stuff from the pipes.

Benny:Hans, do you want to

Benny:because I don't know what this, well, I guess I know what some of these are.

Argyle:I can take a look if you want.

Argyle:I can take a look.

Anzu:I mean, I could make a crafting check.

Johnny:I'll aid.

Anzu:Would that give me any additional... Oh!

Gamemaster:Sure.

Argyle:I have no idea what I'm looking at, but I can also help.

Gamemaster:I will... Unfortunate.

Benny:That's why we learn.

Johnny:I'm gonna aid.

Argyle:I give him guidance.

Anzu:Big number!

Argyle:Oh, okay.

Argyle:I don't care.

Argyle:Screw you.

Johnny:What are these rolls tonight?

Johnny:I can't roll higher than a five.

Johnny:I got an 18.

Argyle:I should have guided you.

Anzu:I got a 31, which...

Gamemaster:Okay, an 18 gives you no bonus, but a 31 is a success here.

Gamemaster:So, you have the help of...

Gamemaster:Going off of what Benny described earlier, to kind of prime you for what you're looking at, this box with the green glow is an interactive terminal attached to a mainframe.

Gamemaster:It seems it is part of the same system that was set up on the other side of the fracture, which raises an interesting question off of that 31 of, is this thing connected specifically to that mainframe?

Gamemaster:or have they installed a separate mainframe?

Gamemaster:Because either they've gone through, given the state of this place, they've gone through the effort of purchasing and installing a second mainframe over here, or they figured out a way to send data across the fracture, either of which raises some interesting questions.

Gamemaster:I don't believe Anzu would have ever interacted with a terminal.

Gamemaster:So there's a little bit of a learning curve there.

Gamemaster:But there is in front of it a kind of... It's not quite a keyboard.

Gamemaster:There are what look to be a set of four buttons with arrows on them for up, down, left, right.

Gamemaster:And then next to that is a pad of paper, by the looks of it.

Johnny:um you

Gamemaster:with a pen or a quill of some kind.

Gamemaster:The quill has an armature, like a piece of metal that's extruding out of the terminal onto the quill.

Gamemaster:And it looks like you interact with it by moving the quill around and that gets fed into the terminal instead of like typing on a keyboard.

Gamemaster:Currently on screen, it looks like whoever last used this either forgot to log out or there isn't such thing as logging in and logging out.

Gamemaster:But there are three sections.

Gamemaster:One says experiment results.

Gamemaster:The other says personal logs.

Gamemaster:And the third one says connection status.

Anzu:Okay.

Argyle:first

Anzu:Let's look at the connection status.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Anzu:Do I write connection status?

Anzu:Or is it a click?

Gamemaster:If Anzu writes connection status on the pad of paper, it moves to the connection status section and opens that up as a display, and then the paper erases itself.

Gamemaster:The screen very slowly updates.

Gamemaster:It does this thing where there's this small green box that has to display on each individual piece of the screen as it very slowly scans over each line as it passes, updating it with a new character or blank if need be.

Gamemaster:So after like 15 seconds of waiting for it to refresh, the connection status page loads, where it has a very simple connection active status marker.

Benny:Thank you.

Anzu:It just says active, or did you say something after it?

Gamemaster:It just says active.

Anzu:Okay.

Anzu:I guess I'll try writing back.

Gamemaster:You're right back, and it refreshes, and you're back on that initial menu again.

Johnny:you

Anzu:All right, let's look at the personal logs.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:You look at the personal logs, it takes even longer to refresh this time around, where you can see there are a number of logs in order.

Gamemaster:Most of them are grayed out.

Gamemaster:It looks like they're non-interactable for whatever reason, but there are a handful that are glowing slightly brighter green than the rest.

Gamemaster:The ones that you see are 46SYN, 53SYN, 58SYN, 2049HYZ, 2071HYZ, and 2ENT.

Anzu:Uh.

Gamemaster:If you like, you can just open them.

Anzu:Yeah, I tried typing those, but I don't know if I caught up.

Anzu:So we'll start with the first one, 46SYN.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Anzu:Oh.

Benny:Oh.

Gamemaster:Pull up the first one.

Johnny:oh in viewer

Benny:AP mainframe secure terminal.

Benny:Skin viewer 5.3.

Benny:Con established.

Gamemaster:That's a skein, not a skin.

Benny:Project lead.

Gamemaster:Please don't call it a skin.

Benny:Project lead.

Benny:C. Levine.

Benny:We've started installation of the dishes in earnest since our test in the run went so well.

Benny:It wasn't easy putting together the shells needed to manufacture radio components in a reasonable time frame, but now if anyone digs, it'll look on the up and up.

Benny:Alara is estimating we'll need more than 300 to get large enough coverage for anything to stick, but I'm hoping she's just being overly conservative.

Argyle:Oh, no.

Benny:I ran the numbers.

Benny:I'm going to need to do some more fundraising if we want to hit that quota.

Benny:Guess we'll see as we get closer.

Benny:God, I really hate...

Benny:anthropomorphized polar bears.

Benny:That's a weird last thing to... Yes.

Johnny:That's weird.

Johnny:This is Camden.

Argyle:Guys.

Argyle:This is what this makes so much sense.

Argyle:This is what those radios are doing or sending out.

Johnny:Yeah.

Argyle:All right.

Argyle:More, more logs, more logs, more logs.

Gamemaster:Yeah, I think Mike has been volunteered as log reader for these, which I'll take.

Argyle:Yes.

Benny:AP mainframe secure terminal.

Benny:Skin viewer.

Benny:Same project lead, Clevin.

Gamemaster:No!

Gamemaster:11.

Benny:God's beyond it makes my skin crawl every time I need to grovel at Grayson's feet for more funding.

Benny:He's always all smiles, says it's for the good of the pact, and we get what we need.

Benny:But I cannot but feel like I'm selling my soul to the wrong devil when the deal gets closed.

Benny:I can tell he thinks we're disgusting, but he's been ordered to play nice the same way we have.

Benny:He served us pigs in blanket, and it tasted weird.

Benny:Regardless, he's given us the last bit of funding we need for the project, and all we have to do in return is punish one of our contractors.

Argyle:Oh, that's, yeah.

Gamemaster:Thank you.

Benny:Apparently he did something to fall out of Grace's good graces, but he isn't our only contractor, so that's a cheap price to pay.

Benny:The Embercall people are contractors?

Benny:Maybe.

Argyle:Or the deer guy was a contractor.

Benny:Chucky?

Benny:Skin viewer 5.3.

Argyle:Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Benny:Llewellyn... What's his name?

Benny:Llewellyn Moss?

Benny:Uh...

Benny:Grayson was right to be crossed with that contractor.

Gamemaster:What?

Benny:He's a fucking idiot.

Benny:Somehow he bungled the one job he had so badly our entire operation onto the Inquisitor's radar.

Johnny:Yes.

Benny:We didn't even give him the whole map specifically to avoid this situation.

Benny:He must have been mapping them himself for whatever reason.

Benny:Doesn't matter now anyway.

Benny:Have to scrap the whole project.

Benny:Don't have the funds to replace the dishes that we're taking down and couldn't put up new ones with the inquis breathing down our neck anyhow.

Anzu:Did I do that?

Benny:Told Spark and they said they'd take care of it but I need to move to another project in the meantime.

Benny:Fuck.

Argyle:Ha ha ha.

Gamemaster:Thank you.

Benny:Oh, a different project lead.

Benny:Yeah, that's right.

Benny:This guy left, I guess.

Benny:Al Crowe.

Benny:Testing 2049B saw promising results.

Benny:Our issue previously was attempting wholesale conversion to the desired harmony.

Benny:Resulted in catastrophic failures on machinery and acceptable but unsustainable loss of personnel.

Benny:C logs 1992, 1941, 1901 for details.

Benny:2049B checked alternative hypothesis.

Benny:Graft newly synthesized harmony onto Voidsong.

Benny:Thanks to Levine's help, this appears to be a success.

Benny:Pros.

Benny:No explosive rejection of harmonization.

Benny:Positive resonance on inner horizon barrier.

Benny:Conversion mechanism is simple.

Benny:Cons.

Benny:Expensive.

Benny:At this rate, we will drain our two-year store in a month.

Benny:Oh.

Argyle:Are they trying to teleport us into that fucking dome?

Benny:So they are attempting.

Johnny:Wait.

Argyle:That would suck.

Benny:That would be weird.

Benny:Skin Viewer.

Benny:Russell Crowe.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Benny:Tried running collection during a fundraiser.

Johnny:Wait.

Benny:What?

Johnny:El Crowe.

Johnny:Isn't he one of my contacts at Sable and Suns?

Johnny:What the fuck?

Benny:They got your boy, dude.

Johnny:Oh, no.

Benny:They got your boy, bro.

Johnny:No.

Benny:Tried running collection during a fundraiser.

Benny:Was able to harvest for almost 12 minutes before suspicions were raised and we had to turn off.

Benny:We have enough to keep going for another month or two, but not nearly enough to see the project's completion.

Benny:Lawson scolded the team after we were noticed, reassured him that this will not happen again.

Benny:His collection was not as efficient as I had hoped.

Benny:He seemed satisfied by my answer, but I fear that any additional scrutiny will endanger the operation.

Benny:We are so close.

Benny:I can feel him on the other side of the firmament, but we have no way to break through.

Benny:I will consult with the other teams to see if they have any knowledge that may help us.

Anzu:Do we know Lawson?

Benny:Disgusting.

Anzu:That's me.

Johnny:Who is Lawson?

Gamemaster:You can make a society check to know if you recognize the name Lawson.

Johnny:I don't have anything.

Johnny:I don't know.

Benny:Another one.

Argyle:Who's good at society?

Benny:Skin viewer.

Argyle:After this.

Benny:Skin viewer.

Benny:Project lead, Randy Moss.

Benny:Wait, go ahead.

Anzu:I'll just society quick for Lawson.

Gamemaster:Nope.

Gamemaster:Bad.

Argyle:I will roll once.

Argyle:Oh, you got it.

Anzu:I got a 30.

Gamemaster:30 is pretty high.

Gamemaster:There is only one famous person you would know named Lawson.

Gamemaster:I don't know how likely you think this is related, but the current prime minister is Reese Lawson.

Argyle:Oh, no.

Anzu:Wow.

Johnny:What is happening here?

Benny:I kind of want to blow the thing up just to read these.

Benny:Anyways.

Benny:Skin viewer.

Benny:Project lead.

Benny:A piece of moss.

Benny:Also known as a moss.

Gamemaster:Yep.

Benny:The first meeting was interesting to say the least.

Benny:So many little birds running around with their heads chopped off.

Benny:All playing the wrong game in the hopes of securing their birth.

Benny:I will let them run.

Benny:Prance on the palm of whichever fiend is playing their game.

Benny:The master of ceremonies seemed to be...

Benny:Backed by someone powerful, so I think I will have some of my vipers sneak amongst the chickadees.

Argyle:Oh, that's the pilgrimage.

Benny:In truth, the hardest part will be losing connection with my little ones.

Benny:I will simply have to trust that they play their part or clean up the evidence should they fail.

Johnny:What the fuck's happening down here?

Gamemaster:And those are the luck messages that you are able to recover.

Benny:Amos.

Gamemaster:You can make a society check if you like to know if you recognize the name Moss.

Gamemaster:Excuse me.

Benny:Does bird know moss?

Anzu:Please hold.

Anzu:I only got a 19.

Johnny:I just got back-to-back nat 1s on... This one brought me up to full, so I'm at full mythic points now.

Argyle:Well, I guess you can reroll this one.

Gamemaster:Good for you.

Gamemaster:You're just farming mythic points is what's happening.

Benny:It rolled points.

Argyle:Yeah, somebody has to reroll one.

Gamemaster:Unfortunately, with a 19, the name Moss does not ring any bells.

Johnny:I'm going to reroll, Josh.

Johnny:I'm trying again.

Johnny:I'm going Mythic.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:He's mythic.

Johnny:25.

Johnny:This guy's not as important.

Gamemaster:Similarly with the 25.

Gamemaster:Unfortunately, you still do not recognize the name Moss.

Argyle:So I guess pilgrimage is good.

Benny:The Pilgrimage might actually be like a legit Voidsong thing.

Johnny:Interesting.

Argyle:Well, it opposes these people.

Benny:Whether or not the Voidsong is good, we don't know, but it's not these weirdos that are trying to duplicate it or harmonize with it.

Anzu:Yet, I was not expecting there to be science behind this work with the harmonies.

Argyle:Okay.

Johnny:The country.

Benny:You thought it was too dumb?

Argyle:OK.

Argyle:Alright, does the experiments right?

Benny:You thought it was a bunch of bonehead idiots?

Anzu:No, I thought that it was just influence from Pyre, but it seems like they've engineered this in a way.

Benny:They're trying to, what, get something that resonates with the Voidsong to try to crack the firmament?

Anzu:Yeah, we could look at the experiments.

Benny:What does that say about the Voidsong, if it's true?

Argyle:Yeah, I think there's something.

Argyle:And they basically were talking about how they were going to try to get some people on the inside of this travel, and he's like, I know I'm going to lose contact with them.

Argyle:So that's once we go across the border.

Anzu:Well, this means that they have plants within the pilgrimage.

Benny:Could be one of us.

Argyle:Yeah.

Benny:No.

Johnny:Oh my God.

Anzu:Are you guys one of their vipers?

Argyle:Vipers are untrustworthy.

Gamemaster:Clearly, you just have to look for whoever is a snake person when you get on board.

Anzu:I write back...

Argyle:Thank you.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:It re-scans back to the main menu.

Anzu:And I write experiment results.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:It scans over to, there are now four more items in another menu.

Gamemaster:Project synthesis, project hybridization, project entrainment, and project dissonance.

Anzu:All right, we'll start with what we know first.

Anzu:Let's go to synthesis.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Benny:Thank you.

Gamemaster:You write synthesis, it scans again.

Gamemaster:There is a readout shows up that immediately on the top it says project failed.

Gamemaster:But then there is a series of printouts that just going through and summarizing effectively say the attempt was to recreate

Johnny:you

Gamemaster:the Voidsong into a new harmony that they called it.

Gamemaster:They're listed like results of the experiment and the like, which are, it is possible to synthesize a new kind of Voidsong.

Gamemaster:There is an interesting call out as part of the research that says that the Voidsong appears to be able to pass through the firmament without issue.

Gamemaster:But a property of their replication of it is that it instead appears to destructively interact with the firmament.

Argyle:Thank you.

Johnny:um

Gamemaster:which is listed as a positive.

Gamemaster:That is apparently a property that they are looking for here.

Gamemaster:It also needs a physical sentient or sapient antenna.

Gamemaster:They don't know if that's a requirement of the Voidsong as well, but it is a requirement of what they call the Embercall.

Gamemaster:There needs to be a living person that acts as an antenna to kind of reify it and let it exist in this space.

Gamemaster:Pros are that it's substantially easier to distribute here than they'd seen with the Voidsong.

Gamemaster:But cons are that it's actually apparently quite noticeable, setting up all of the receiver dishes and the like.

Gamemaster:Eventually they found that it wasn't worth the investment to try and clandestinely pay off people and manufacture the radar dishes and get them installed on multiple roofs.

Gamemaster:Especially now that there is an Inquisitor group that is very familiar with the locations of every single radar dish going through taking them down.

Argyle:he's such an asshole that fucking uh all right so one quick question on that were they saying that their new song or their new harmony breaks the ferment but the Voidsong doesn't or did they say the Voidsong breaks the ferment

Gamemaster:So that project is listed as a failure.

Anzu:OK, we'll look at hybridization next.

Gamemaster:Hybridization is... The Voidsong appears to be able to pass through the Firmament without issue.

Argyle:Okay.

Gamemaster:The Embercall does not.

Gamemaster:It negatively interacts with it.

Gamemaster:Moving over to hybridization, this says experiment's still ongoing.

Gamemaster:The base of this experiment is instead of creating a new harmony, they're looking at taking the Voidsong and then tacking new things on top of it to give it new behaviors.

Gamemaster:This is still in progress, and it's been showing promising results.

Gamemaster:They report a positive fracture, but it's apparently very expensive to run.

Gamemaster:They talk about eating through their store of built-up magic energy very, very quickly, like unsustainably quickly.

Gamemaster:So they're...

Gamemaster:looking to see if they can make the process more efficient in some way.

Gamemaster:It appears that they haven't found that yet, but they haven't given up either.

Gamemaster:The experiment is still running.

Anzu:Okay.

Anzu:Entrainment.

Gamemaster:Entrainment is listed as in planning by the looks of it.

Gamemaster:The idea here is in order to avoid the cost of tacking on new things to the Voidsong, they're hoping that if they can get to the source of the Voidsong, they can impart new properties into whatever's emitting it instead of adding new properties onto the harmony after it's been emitted.

Gamemaster:That's still waiting on them getting to the source of the Voidsong, but they appear to be pretty confident that it will work for much cheaper than their existing scheme.

Johnny:Thank you.

Anzu:And I missed the name of the final project.

Gamemaster:Dissonance.

Anzu:All right, let's hear it.

Gamemaster:Dissonance is also still in planning.

Gamemaster:It looks like the plan of this particular project is to instead take the Voidsong and direct it back on itself, such that it becomes destructive against the Firmament without any additional modifications or anything like that.

Gamemaster:They think that this one is the most likely to work of their experiments, but they also think it'll be the hardest to do because it'll require the cooperation or coercion of a number of receivers of listeners of the Voidsong in order to be able to redirect it in any meaningful way, and they don't have the manpower to do that right now.

Anzu:It would require a lot of Voidsong listeners.

Gamemaster:Yes.

Benny:So are they planning on just co-opting?

Benny:Because I don't think they're the planners of the pilgrimage, but they could easily just co-opt the pilgrimage or hijack it.

Anzu:Yeah, well, the message about the pilgrimage that we read was part of Project Entrainment.

Anzu:which lines up with wanting to get to the source of the Voidsong to just change whatever the source is.

Benny:To get the big Giant in here.

Argyle:They probably want to give it whatever song they're producing and let the Voidsong cover the energy costs.

Anzu:Right.

Argyle:So we need to get there first and stop that.

Johnny:Yeah.

Anzu:Yeah, and it kind of seems like, yes, I 100% agree.

Anzu:Kind of feels like their overall plan is to just kind of wreck the firmament.

Argyle:Yeah.

Anzu:Right.

Argyle:Yeah, that makes sense.

Anzu:And probably the rest of them, too.

Argyle:So.

Argyle:Should we still go to this party or just blow shit up?

Anzu:All right.

Argyle:Because I think I know enough.

Argyle:I know enough about why we need to go on this Voidsong journey.

Anzu:Yeah, it did sound like there were people through the door, right?

Gamemaster:You didn't get a look at them yet because you doubled back, but you could definitely hear people further in.

Anzu:If we walk through that door and are like, oh, we're looking for the party, they're going to be like, this was not the entrance.

Anzu:If you were coming to the party, this is not where you would have showed up.

Argyle:Well, if we sneak, if we blow our cover, then Benny's going to have to run it and bomb that in a lot of, a lot hotter.

Johnny:Maybe we should take a peek, see how many people there are and if we can sneak by.

Benny:I mean... Yeah, I guess it's either sneak by or kill.

Benny:I like that.

Anzu:I think that, yeah, maybe we stop here.

Argyle:Well, it takes like 30 minutes to get there, right?

Gamemaster:It's about a 30-minute walk down the hallway.

Gamemaster:It's like a mile and change.

Anzu:I mean, we're not going to go up there and take down all of...

Anzu:Pyrelight.

Anzu:So...

Benny:I'm curious to what information we're going to get.

Benny:So maybe we invert it.

Benny:Maybe we go bomb now.

Benny:Maybe the people that are in that other room.

Benny:Alarm bells go off.

Benny:They have to run and whatever.

Benny:And we somehow get past them.

Benny:And then maybe the room is clear for us to head up to the party.

Anzu:Yeah, it's currently unclear whether or not they would know if we bombed something over there.

Argyle:the connection would probably drop there's a connection thing they probably wouldn't know why but should we yeah maybe we should do that

Anzu:Yeah.

Johnny:On the other side.

Johnny:It may just go, oh, that's weird.

Benny:Yeah.

Johnny:And then be like, we should go investigate.

Johnny:That would clear the way up a little bit.

Benny:Yeah.

Anzu:Josh, one last thing.

Anzu:In this experiment folder, does it list the project leads for each project, like the messages kind of did?

Gamemaster:Yes, it does.

Gamemaster:The only one you're missing is Project Dissonance, which is led by... No, no.

Anzu:Yeah.

Gamemaster:It is led by one Damien Reese.

Gamemaster:I'm reusing names.

Gamemaster:That's fine.

Gamemaster:We're sticking with it.

Gamemaster:Damien Reese.

Anzu:I thought it was going to say Sir Arctos.

Gamemaster:Oh, actually, to that point, it would list the full names, not just the abbreviated names.

Benny:Thank you.

Anzu:Uh-oh.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:So you get Damien Reese.

Gamemaster:You get, oh gosh, what's this man's full name?

Gamemaster:Lark Crowe.

Gamemaster:You get, what is this man's name?

Gamemaster:Camden Levine.

Gamemaster:And you get Alastair Moss.

Johnny:Thank you.

Argyle:And then one of these is the dealer that John is using to get laser guns.

Gamemaster:So Lark Crowe is somebody working at Sable & Sons who you were redirected to talk to regarding the firearms with the strange blue glowing liquid inside of them.

Argyle:Oh, that's the liquid we're seeing pumping through this.

Gamemaster:Presumably.

Argyle:Yeah, yeah.

Argyle:All right, I guess we just go blow some shit up, right?

Benny:We do.

Argyle:Okay, are we going to... I guess we should start getting out of this room.

Argyle:Should we put both bombs in the... Maybe we'll just use the structural bomb.

Argyle:Are we going to use both bombs in the same place, or put another bomb on this side of the firmament to try to blow up the machines that are pumping this stuff?

Johnny:you

Anzu:You want to set off a bomb right here.

Argyle:Resettle on here.

Argyle:We could set off a bomb in the factories.

Benny:Is the whole hallway has these pipes?

Gamemaster:The entire mile-long length of pipe, the entire mile-long length of hallway has those columns running up and down them, where the left column has liquids going up and then the right column has liquids going down.

Benny:Yeah, I'm not sure.

Benny:I think we might use both bombs on the two, the computer room and then the observation room.

Benny:Those seem to be the two highest value targets.

Argyle:Sorry, which one are... So one's the actual mainframe on the other side, right?

Argyle:So the computer room.

Argyle:And then what's the observation room?

Argyle:This one?

Benny:The one with all the people.

Benny:No, the one with all the people.

Benny:It's next to the mainframe.

Argyle:Oh.

Benny:Or we could hit the mainframe and then something on this side.

Argyle:Yeah, I was thinking potentially on this side, the actual, like, machines that are pumping it, like, right by the wall.

Argyle:But I'm tired to hit the pupil.

Benny:I think there's just too many.

Argyle:Oh.

Benny:Like, we might destroy 1,000.

Argyle:Yeah, it's not...

Argyle:Yeah.

Benny:So I'm thinking maybe further down this route, like where the people are talking, there's maybe something equally as important as the mainframe on the other side.

Benny:So I think we... So, okay, we have the two-liter.

Benny:We have the Coke and Mentos.

Benny:And then we have the... We have the mortars in a suitcase.

Benny:One of them is more structural.

Anzu:It's one order.

Gamemaster:So the Cocomentos, when uncorked, is designed to attack structures.

Gamemaster:It will explode, and then the gel inside will start eating into the metal around it, anything that doesn't get destroyed in the original explosion.

Gamemaster:The artillery shell is an artillery shell.

Gamemaster:It will blow up, as artillery shells tend to do.

Argyle:It goes to people.

Benny:I like the Cocomentos for the mainframe then.

Argyle:Yeah, yeah.

Anzu:Indeed.

Argyle:And then... Okay.

Benny:Solves that.

Anzu:All right.

Benny:And then I guess we just save the other one for if we find anything deeper in here when we come back, if all goes to plan.

Anzu:Sure.

Johnny:um

Gamemaster:Okay, so is the plan that all four of you are going to the Fracture, but just Benny's going in?

Argyle:Benny, do you have a gun to shoot the artillery thing?

Argyle:Who's good with guns?

Benny:I can use a gun.

Anzu:I mean, I could send a telekinetic projectile 120 feet.

Argyle:OK.

Argyle:That sounds like an explosive pin for C4.

Argyle:Or we could split up and then put the artillery at the end of this hallway when people come in.

Gamemaster:Or are you like waiting here at the other end of the hallway?

Anzu:I think we should all pass through the crack.

Gamemaster:Like, who's going where?

Argyle:Boom, boom.

Argyle:Someone by the main.

Johnny:Do both the ones.

Benny:I think we should save the artillery for another target.

Argyle:That's what I meant.

Argyle:We could save it for the people in here.

Argyle:Or do you want to do it?

Benny:I meant like a research apparatus.

Johnny:Bigger.

Argyle:Okay.

Anzu:I don't think we should send Benny in there just by himself with the bomb.

Argyle:Oh, in case it gets severed or something?

Benny:Well, then we'll all be stuck.

Argyle:Yeah, but stuck together would be better.

Johnny:Yeah, I think it's better we're all stuck together than you get stuck alone.

Johnny:Oh, so you got a job over there anyway.

Anzu:I mean, Benny, unless you disagree, this is...

Benny:I mean, I don't know.

Benny:I don't have super preference.

Argyle:I have to light this beacon on the other side, too, so... Yeah.

Benny:Oh, yeah.

Benny:Okay.

Argyle:I just imagined at the Scale headquarter, they're just, like, waiting with, like, old-school, like, sonar things, and they see the blip, and they're like, go, go, go, go!

Benny:The Apollo 11 mission room.

Anzu:i wonder how far it is i mean for us to be feeling that much vertigo it's got to be a pretty big jump

Gamemaster:Okay, so all four of you head down the hallway towards the fracture.

Argyle:And it's got to be in the boonies for people not to have found it.

Argyle:All right, so we head that way.

Benny:you you

Johnny:Thank you.

Argyle:We back out the terminal so it's at where we found it.

Gamemaster:Sure, absolutely.

Gamemaster:It continues to not be locked.

Gamemaster:You don't actually see a way to lock it.

Gamemaster:You gather that it's...

Gamemaster:not really set with that kind of protection in mind.

Gamemaster:Either way, you leave everything as you left it, except for you still have the stolen hazmat suit that's in your backpack.

Argyle:Do we pick up the bomb, though?

Gamemaster:You head back over to the hallway, and you start your half-hour trek down towards the Fracture.

Gamemaster:Like, no rules or anything necessary.

Gamemaster:Yeah, I assumed as much that you guys retrieved your bombs unmolested as your... Yeah, you can take up both if you like.

Benny:Yeah, because we hid them.

Argyle:Yeah.

Argyle:All right.

Argyle:I just wasn't sure if we'd got both, but yeah.

Argyle:Okay.

Gamemaster:If you wanted to leave one, you can do that as well.

Argyle:Yeah.

Argyle:I would take both.

Gamemaster:But you guys head down towards the fracture.

Gamemaster:No rolls, because you would see if somebody was coming.

Gamemaster:This is just a really straight, mile-long hallway.

Gamemaster:You make it to the end without issue.

Gamemaster:You've gotten to the point where...

Gamemaster:Almost no gravity.

Gamemaster:You can see the airline fracture is still just floating there in the air, waiting for your entry, if you are.

Benny:Yes.

Argyle:We want an invisible Benny first, or just all of us go through?

Anzu:Indeed.

Anzu:What's 10 minutes?

Benny:Well, I need to be invisible.

Benny:I mean, I don't know.

Benny:You guys might be seen.

Benny:I would prefer to be invisible.

Johnny:You're making good.

Argyle:Do you want me to augury to see if all of us should go?

Gamemaster:Okay, you can augury.

Argyle:Where'd I augury?

Argyle:That was crazy, guy.

Argyle:And I'm seeing if we... Yeah.

Gamemaster:It's been 24 hours.

Gamemaster:Sorry, I just have to roll a d20 for you.

Gamemaster:What's your course of action?

Argyle:What does the d20 do?

Argyle:Do I know?

Gamemaster:If I get a 6 or lower on it, then I tell you the wrong information.

Argyle:Oh, no.

Argyle:On failure, it's always nothing.

Gamemaster:Oh, is it just always nothing?

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:Okay, yes, on failure the result is nothing.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Argyle:So the question is, if we follow Benny,

Argyle:Will something bad happen?

Benny:I think we just described the course of action, which is all of us going in.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Johnny:you

Argyle:Okay.

Argyle:All right.

Argyle:Why don't we just grab that instead?

Gamemaster:Okay, sure.

Gamemaster:All of you going in.

Argyle:My raiment's spinning.

Argyle:Sword.

Gamemaster:You spend the ten minutes casting.

Argyle:Uh...

Gamemaster:The image of the balance appears in your head again.

Gamemaster:Gosh, as a GM, I'm not really sure how to answer this.

Gamemaster:If all of you go in, I think the answer is... The Scale will move towards good, but slightly.

Johnny:Okay, so it's better than nothing.

Argyle:Okay.

Benny:Well.

Argyle:Alright.

Benny:OK.

Argyle:It doesn't necessarily mean it's bad, but it doesn't mean that going betting by himself isn't better.

Argyle:But yeah.

Benny:Yeah.

Argyle:Alright, let's go.

Gamemaster:It's not comparative against the other stuff.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:It's just like, if you do this.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:So are you casting invisibility on Benny?

Gamemaster:Or are you all just going in?

Johnny:Yeah.

Benny:I think Benny's going to be the closest to whatever weird people are in the tent.

Benny:He's going to walk by that one to get to the mainframe.

Argyle:How about we cast Invisibility on Benny?

Argyle:He goes through.

Argyle:He'll come back immediately regardless and be like, there's someone there.

Argyle:There's not someone there.

Argyle:And then we go.

Benny:I like that.

Johnny:Oh.

Johnny:Bippity boppity, invisible.

Gamemaster:Okay, Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Benny is invisible again.

Gamemaster:You are heading through.

Gamemaster:I need you to make a fort save as you get hit with the intense wave of vertigo.

Benny:Mm-hmm.

Benny:32 crit.

Gamemaster:32 crit.

Gamemaster:I don't know.

Gamemaster:Benny got fed up with being sick yesterday and has just decided to never be sick again.

Gamemaster:Benny has gotten used to the experience of following this chute to however far he's traveling and ends up iron-stomached on the other side.

Argyle:Bye.

Gamemaster:Roll a perception check.

Benny:So now Benny has to go back and then back through.

Gamemaster:With a 25, looking around, it is as much as you left it.

Gamemaster:There don't seem to be anybody around.

Gamemaster:The Giant figure in the background doesn't appear to have moved much at all.

Gamemaster:And the three buildings are where they were.

Gamemaster:Mm-hmm.

Benny:Yeah, Benny will go back.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:Benny goes back.

Gamemaster:Benny has an iron stomach.

Gamemaster:Benny does not need to roll another fort save at this point.

Gamemaster:He just returns invisible to his companions.

Benny:It's good.

Anzu:All right.

Benny:Then Benny will head in with the Mentos, the Coke and Mentos.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:Are you guys being stealthy as you emerge?

Johnny:30 for Jonathan Skyfall.

Gamemaster:Because if you are, I need stealth checks.

Argyle:I'd like to.

Anzu:Might as well give it a try.

Anzu:Ooh, let's see if I round it out.

Argyle:24 for Argo.

Benny:27 for Benny.

Gamemaster:18.

Benny:Let's go.

Benny:We need one bad roll on Zoo.

Benny:Yes, there we go.

Anzu:18.

Anzu:Indeed.

Gamemaster:18 isn't great, but it could be much, much worse.

Benny:Always need one.

Gamemaster:All right, the four of you, possibly the stealthiest you've ever been as a group.

Argyle:Thank you.

Gamemaster:sneak through this fracture in the universe.

Gamemaster:For those of you experiencing it for the first time, it's thoroughly unpleasant.

Gamemaster:For those of you experiencing it now for, like, the fifth time, eh, you've had worse.

Gamemaster:But the three of you that are doing it for the first time, I do need four saves from you, please.

Gamemaster:Everybody but Benny.

Johnny:I'm historically super good at this.

Gamemaster:Othello doesn't need to roll a check.

Gamemaster:He's fine.

Anzu:I got a 13.

Benny:Mindbird's arms come out of his mouth.

Johnny:Yeah, these are not good.

Benny:He's just disfigured by the prick.

Gamemaster:13.

Anzu:Oh my god.

Anzu:We all did really bad.

Argyle:I will reroll mine.

Argyle:What do I add if I'm an expert?

Gamemaster:Six.

Benny:I can't believe Josh lied to us on the augury.

Argyle:23.

Gamemaster:How could I have known?

Gamemaster:Yeah.

Benny:You're the DM, aren't you?

Johnny:Sixteen.

Benny:Sitting there typing in the rolls every time someone rolls a DM.

Gamemaster:Every time somebody rolls, I'm just like, okay, what is this?

Gamemaster:And two, you get a 12.

Benny:He just imperiously said, can you roll?

Benny:And it's just...

Anzu:Um, I got a 13.

Gamemaster:That's a 13.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:What did the other two of you get, end up with?

Gamemaster:16.

Gamemaster:23.

Argyle:Uh, 23.

Gamemaster:23 is a success.

Gamemaster:For the two of you that failed, you are unfortunately retching as you come out.

Johnny:Huh?

Gamemaster:And once you're done retching, you are sickened.

Gamemaster:This is not like the sewers.

Gamemaster:If you want, you can retch again to get rid of the sickened condition.

Gamemaster:You can attempt a fortitude save to attempt to retch again and get rid of the sickened condition.

Gamemaster:But I will note that you immediately vomited everywhere upon exiting.

Gamemaster:So I don't know if it'll end up being important, but there is no evidence that you guys are here because there's vomit just all over the floor in front of the crack.

Johnny:Just so much eggs.

Johnny:All we eat is eggs.

Argyle:All right, we'll clean it up.

Gamemaster:Eggs and milk.

Benny:Yeah.

Benny:Do you want to prestidigitation that?

Gamemaster:Yum.

Benny:Because I want to go set this bomb off.

Johnny:While you're doing this, I'll puke and press digitation.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:It's another fort save to attempt to save against the second.

Anzu:I guess I should do that too.

Johnny:What the heck?

Anzu:31 crit.

Johnny:How many of these can I get off before he gets there?

Gamemaster:Well... What did we get?

Johnny:We got a 16.

Johnny:Wait, I'm going to use a hero point.

Gamemaster:A 31 crit, you are no longer sickened.

Gamemaster:A 16 is a failure.

Gamemaster:You are sickened too and cannot try again for another 10 minutes.

Johnny:I have many hero points.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Anzu:He does have many hero points.

Gamemaster:He does have many hero points.

Johnny:Oh, great.

Anzu:and he earned them

Johnny:If I fail, he's upset.

Johnny:35.

Johnny:Bibbidi bobbidi boo.

Gamemaster:35.

Gamemaster:You are no longer sickened.

Gamemaster:You're fine.

Argyle:All right, clean this up with prestidigitation.

Gamemaster:We switch perspectives.

Gamemaster:The boy has the bombs.

Gamemaster:Or just the bomb one.

Gamemaster:You just have the Cocomentos.

Benny:Yeah.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:What is the plan here?

Gamemaster:Where are you putting it?

Gamemaster:What are you doing with it?

Benny:All right, guys.

Benny:You should set up the stick and ball and then pretty much get ready to leave because this goes off in 15 seconds.

Argyle:I'm going to be good.

Argyle:Should we?

Argyle:Should we put the other bomb in front of the door to the other way so that when they go out to look at it, we can blow it up?

Argyle:Like a two-bomb situation?

Johnny:Thank you.

Argyle:We put our human bomb on the researchers when they... Alright, alright, let's go.

Argyle:I'll set up the cognitive beacon.

Benny:You guys should be out of here by the time it's set.

Argyle:Right after he explodes, I'm gonna light it.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:All right, where are you putting it?

Argyle:Uh...

Argyle:Is there like a place I could hide it at all?

Gamemaster:I mean, you're in an open grassland.

Gamemaster:You could put it on the other side of one of the buildings or of the platform that this particular like fractures hovering over.

Gamemaster:The platform itself is kind of just raised off of the ground on these like pylons that are like a foot high.

Gamemaster:So long as nobody walks around the platform, they wouldn't come across it.

Gamemaster:But it's not like that there's a hidden place here.

Gamemaster:It's not a full town.

Argyle:Yeah, I guess I'll try to hide as much.

Argyle:I mean, I hope it doesn't need to be constant, because if that is true, they should have told me that.

Argyle:So I hope it's just like a get the signal out type of thing.

Anzu:We'll find out.

Argyle:I'll do that.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Johnny:Okay.

Gamemaster:Yeah, you can find a place that you think is fine.

Gamemaster:So what is the plan?

Gamemaster:When are you lighting it in regards to when Benny is... Okay, absolutely.

Argyle:I'm just going to light it, and then I'll leave.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:You light it, and a golden flame lights in the brazier, and you can leave it unattended.

Benny:All right, Benny will head over.

Benny:Invisible.

Gamemaster:Mm-hmm.

Benny:I guess the Coke and Mentos probably fits in his bag.

Benny:I don't think a floating bomb would be the best thing for anyone to see.

Gamemaster:That's fair.

Benny:So he'll head over.

Benny:He'll place it, and it's 15 seconds.

Benny:How far is the mainframe building from the crack?

Gamemaster:About 90 feet.

Benny:Oh, okay.

Benny:Yeah, this is easy.

Benny:So as soon as, I guess, onlookers see the bomb out, they're probably good to leave, to just step through.

Argyle:Oh yeah, yeah, I stepped through after lighting it.

Benny:Benny will follow the instructions.

Benny:I forgot exactly what they were.

Gamemaster:Just uncork it.

Benny:To right, uncork it, and then bolt to the crack.

Gamemaster:Absolutely.

Gamemaster:I assume you can make 90 feet in two rounds or less, effectively.

Johnny:you

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:So Benny bolts it.

Benny:you

Gamemaster:The other two of you, I assume he does it in a place where you can see him.

Gamemaster:You just see the bomb appear out of nowhere and a cork just pops out of the top.

Gamemaster:you guys can jump through if you like.

Gamemaster:Benny makes it as well.

Gamemaster:There's another intense sense of vertigo, but you've all experienced it at this point.

Gamemaster:So no more fortitude saves necessary.

Gamemaster:And you find yourselves on the other end back in the hallway.

Benny:We had.

Johnny:yeah i think we should

Argyle:Go back to the computer room, I guess, and see if they got alerted and killed them if they did.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Benny:Away.

Benny:We're probably going to run into them in this hallway.

Benny:I don't know how we're going to get past them.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Anzu:I mean, we should start heading, yeah.

Benny:Yeah.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:Are you hurrying?

Gamemaster:Are you just walking?

Gamemaster:Are you stealthing?

Gamemaster:What's the game plan?

Benny:I think we want to hurry.

Argyle:Yeah, hurry.

Argyle:Hurry.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Benny:you you

Gamemaster:How fast can you guys make it across?

Gamemaster:I don't know how to tell how fast you could make it a mile.

Argyle:There's this thing actually built in Foundry.

Gamemaster:Is it?

Argyle:I forget where, but there's some movement calculator.

Argyle:I found it once.

Johnny:Well, the mile's 5,280 feet.

Gamemaster:Thank you.

Johnny:Let's say everyone's moving 25 feet per action, three actions.

Johnny:It's like showing like 70 rounds.

Argyle:yeah we can do two and a half miles per hour i think if we click on a party i think yeah 25.

Benny:So there is... So if we... Do you... Yeah, that's okay too.

Gamemaster:I'm just looking at travel speed.

Gamemaster:What is the slowest movement speed amongst all of you?

Johnny:I have 30.

Anzu:I have 25.

Anzu:You want to say 24 minutes.

Gamemaster:Okay, so at 25, you can go two and a half miles an hour.

Gamemaster:So other way around is, gosh.

Benny:Justin had to solve one of those seventh grade math brain teasers.

Gamemaster:I don't... Yes.

Benny:If one train leaves this nation at two and a half miles per hour and the other train... Honest.

Benny:When did it...

Gamemaster:The answer is regardless, it takes too long because people are alerted to your presence before then and will start heading down the hallway, so you will meet them in the middle.

Johnny:Thank you.

Argyle:Thank you.

Gamemaster:You see as you... You're like two-thirds of the way down the hallway as you're hustling in the direction where you came from originally.

Anzu:Thank you.

Gamemaster:Before you see...

Gamemaster:One second.

Gamemaster:I don't have a map of the hallway on me.

Gamemaster:So what's going to happen is I'm going to show you a map that isn't what the map will look like when we enter combat tomorrow.

Gamemaster:Sorry, next week.

Gamemaster:But we'll have the people that you see in it, just so you can look at them.

Johnny:Oh, no.

Benny:I love seeing people.

Johnny:That means they're so specific.

Gamemaster:Don't.

Johnny:They're specific.

Gamemaster:Stop looking at them.

Gamemaster:Don't look at them.

Gamemaster:Coming down.

Anzu:It's going to be that freaking dork Camden.

Johnny:Oh, Campbell will be.

Gamemaster:Coming down the row are three figures cloaked in fire in various states of immolation.

Argyle:Thank you.

Gamemaster:One of them appears to be fully made out of fire, just like a silhouette of flame.

Gamemaster:Another one is wearing a suit of armor.

Gamemaster:They are a human.

Gamemaster:It just looks like they've spontaneously combusted and are just continuing to combust over time.

Gamemaster:And then the third one is...

Gamemaster:like the most human of them.

Gamemaster:It looks like their clothes are made out of flame.

Gamemaster:Uh, they each have, uh, like, considerably sized raiments, uh, slightly larger than Jerome.

Johnny:Thank you.

Gamemaster:Um...

Argyle:But we could take him in a fight, possibly.

Gamemaster:as they walk in your direction, you are not hidden by any means.

Gamemaster:It is this wide open hallway just for the same reason that you can... You see them enter the hallway like a third of the mile down the road and they see you and it becomes this extended process of just like...

Gamemaster:You each heading towards each other, like, kind of hurrying, kind of not, because you're trying to save stamina for the eventual encounter.

Gamemaster:It's just a question of who enters range first.

Gamemaster:But I do think we're going to pick this up with next session, because it's 1053 and we don't have time for combat.

Gamemaster:Yes, Anzu.

Anzu:Is Benny still invisible?

Gamemaster:Benny, are you... At this point, no, it would be more than 10 minutes, so the invisibility would have worn off.

Anzu:Aha.

Anzu:Alright, so they have some way of communicating across these... Yeah.

Argyle:I think it's the server.

Argyle:It says the server is not connected.

Johnny:Wow, distances.

Anzu:Right.

Anzu:It's just impressive.

Argyle:Yeah.

Anzu:I think it's impressive.

Anzu:I'm not sure.

Gamemaster:If nothing else, you've confirmed that you actually blew something up, because otherwise nobody would be coming to say hi.

Gamemaster:I mean, average combat does take, like, 24 seconds.

Argyle:Yeah.

Anzu:Hopefully we don't get pincered.

Anzu:They're going to come through the crack at us.

Benny:These people will die quick enough.

Johnny:Benny's ready.

Johnny:Listen, these are humans.

Anzu:Bye.

Johnny:They're all, they all got regular weaknesses.

Johnny:We can poke them.

Johnny:We can stab them.

Johnny:They all have minds that work to mental things.

Johnny:That's all we need.

Gamemaster:Some of them do look like they're on fire and may not be able to be poked.

Gamemaster:Actually, can this guy be poked?

Anzu:My computer does not like loading Foundry.

Argyle:Is Morgan one of the project managers?

Gamemaster:I'm sorry.

Gamemaster:None of these names are familiar to you.

Johnny:I feel like we just pick them off one at a time, gank up them.

Argyle:So I guess to answer earlier questions, if we went up to Teller's Run, yes, they might all have been on fire.

Benny:Yeah.

Johnny:We walk out.

Johnny:Hello, fellow fire people.

Johnny:They're all on fire.

Johnny:We walk out with, like, bad dyed orange hair.

Argyle:It's like Arctos and Red Face.

Johnny:Crackle, crackle.

Argyle:Oh, hey, I am a fire bear.

Benny:Red face.

Gamemaster:Right.

Argyle:Yeah.

Johnny:It's just like the face, though, not the rest of him.

Gamemaster:A lot happens in two years after you cordon off your district from the rest with a wall of fire and start worshipping something called Pyre.

Gamemaster:Sometimes people turn into fire.

Argyle:So... Just a quick... Okay.

Gamemaster:It happens.

Johnny:I will not be here next week.

Johnny:I'm going to be in Mexico City.

Gamemaster:Oh.

Gamemaster:Okay, so then we're not going to do it next week.

Anzu:Oh, he's gonna get that bread.

Johnny:All of next week, I'm out.

Argyle:Did you crack your bread recipe?

Benny:Fair enough.

Gamemaster:I should be good Monday next week.

Gamemaster:It is Passover, so I won't be able to eat bread during the session, but other than that, it should be fine.

Johnny:Oh, yes.

Gamemaster:I've got it really close.

Gamemaster:One second.

Gamemaster:So, the crust looks a little bit wonky.

Johnny:Oh, hey.

Gamemaster:But, like, that kind of looks like bread, right?

Argyle:Yeah.

Johnny:Yeah.

Anzu:What's in there?

Gamemaster:It's kosher for Passover.

Johnny:I look better than any kosher Passover bread, don't I?

Argyle:Do you think your mom will eat it?

Gamemaster:There's no beans.

Gamemaster:No beans.

Johnny:nope

Benny:No big deal.

Gamemaster:Millet flour.

Gamemaster:Tapioca starch.

Gamemaster:Sorghum flour.

Gamemaster:Xanthan gum.

Gamemaster:Psyllium husk.

Gamemaster:I have a little bit of sugar, because otherwise it's teeny but unbearable.

Gamemaster:And egg.

Gamemaster:There's egg.

Argyle:So...

Argyle:Two things.

Argyle:One, do you think your mom would eat it?

Gamemaster:Yeah.

Argyle:Okay.

Gamemaster:So the problem here is that it is totally kosher for Passover if you go off of the, like, the rules as written.

Argyle:Rules as written.

Gamemaster:The problem is that a group of Jews, the Ashkenazis, were like, we understand that those are the rules that are in the Bible, in the Torah, whatever.

Gamemaster:But we've come up with some extra rules.

Gamemaster:Because they didn't know these foods existed when they wrote the rules.

Gamemaster:And that includes things like legumes and rice and all that kind of stuff.

Argyle:All right.

Gamemaster:And millet falls in that category.

Gamemaster:So if you're an Ashkenazi Jew, this is still, it's kiniot.

Gamemaster:It's like technically kosher for Passover, but they tend not to eat it.

Gamemaster:My mom is Sephardic.

Gamemaster:So it's totally fine.

Gamemaster:But my dad is Ashkenazi.

Gamemaster:He has, however, been worn down over the like 30 odd years of their marriage because my mom will not give up rice and beans on Passover because what does that have to do with bread?

Argyle:One final question.

Gamemaster:So it's possible he accepts it as well.

Gamemaster:We'll see.

Gamemaster:Either way, I don't follow the Ashkenazi rules.

Gamemaster:I follow the Sephardic rules.

Gamemaster:So I'm going to have the bread.

Gamemaster:It'll be great.

Argyle:Do you cook that with any water in the oven?

Gamemaster:No.

Argyle:Because if you do, it might brown less on the outside.

Gamemaster:No.

Gamemaster:Maybe.

Gamemaster:I noticed it was browning relatively late on, and then I put tinfoil on top, and that kind of stopped it.

Argyle:Hmm.

Gamemaster:I think I should have just kept a better eye on it.

Argyle:i see looking good yeah it's looking good

Gamemaster:It has to bake for like an hour and a half, which is a long time for bread.

Gamemaster:But...

Gamemaster:It works.

Gamemaster:I also, I didn't proof it long enough, which is why it's a little, it's not quite bread shaped.

Gamemaster:It's a little squished.

Gamemaster:I think if I proofed it for longer, it would be more two size.

Gamemaster:But bread, like if you gave this to somebody and said, this is unleavened bread, you can have it on Passover, they would think that you were lying to them, which is really the majority of why I made it.

Anzu:and the taste is mm-hmm mm-hmm

Gamemaster:It's fine.

Gamemaster:It tastes a little bit like whole grain bread instead of the white bread that I'm trying to get.

Argyle:Very good, very good.

Gamemaster:Because I wanted to effectively have Wonder Bread, but for Passover, because I thought that would be funny.

Gamemaster:Having tested 13 different kinds of flour at this point, I have come to the conclusion that it is not possible to make Wonder Bread for Passover.

Gamemaster:Or at least it's beyond my abilities.

Gamemaster:But this is a pretty close second.

Gamemaster:It tastes like whole wheat bread.

Anzu:Nice.

Gamemaster:Which is fine.

Gamemaster:Whole wheat's tasty.

Gamemaster:I'll take it.

Anzu:Okay.

Gamemaster:Yeah.

Anzu:Are there other times in April that are not going to be good?

Anzu:I feel like a couple weeks ago we discussed this.

Argyle:The week of the 20th for me will not, 20 to 25 will not work for me.

Benny:mm-hmm

Anzu:Okay, so we have some time to figure that out.

Johnny:okay um i just can't do monday the 27th but any other time i can after the next one i can't do monday the 27th or next week that's it that's my

Gamemaster:Okay, so...

Gamemaster:Wait, sorry, you can't do Monday or the 27th.

Gamemaster:Okay, sure.

Gamemaster:Are the rest of us around next week?

Gamemaster:Does somebody want to do a one-shot?

Argyle:I don't know if I can.

Argyle:I would like to.

Argyle:I can try to prepare something as a backup.

Gamemaster:I... wait, no, okay.

Gamemaster:You're going to be the primary, and I will have something as a backup if you can't do it.

Gamemaster:It doesn't make sense for you to be the backup, because I can run a one-shot.

Argyle:Well, I meant backup for someone that's not you.

Argyle:In case someone...

Gamemaster:Oh, okay.

Gamemaster:That's fine.

Gamemaster:Does anybody else want to run a one-shot?

Gamemaster:There's no need to force you if you don't want to.

Anzu:Yeah, I don't have any plans, but I can try for the week later in the month.

Benny:Higher level?

Gamemaster:Okay, that's fine.

Gamemaster:So for next week, Jorge, do you want to try and I'll back you up or do you just want me to take over?

Gamemaster:It's up to you.

Gamemaster:I don't want to make you do extra work if you don't want to.

Argyle:I'll be realistic.

Argyle:I'm probably not going to get it done.

Gamemaster:Okay, then that's fine.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:I'll do it.

Gamemaster:Do you guys have a level in mind that you want to do it?

Argyle:Okay.

Gamemaster:Low level, high level?

Anzu:Level one.

Gamemaster:Okay, well... Mike can play high level and Tanner can play low level.

Johnny:And it's like, all right, I roll the hit.

Benny:Six or up?

Argyle:And I'll just split the difference and I'll play 10.

Benny:I killed Tanner.

Gamemaster:We'll figure it out.

Gamemaster:Yeah.

Argyle:One 10 and 20 try to go on an adventure.

Anzu:I would die round one.

Johnny:Ken rolls a 15 hit.

Anzu:Like full dead.

Johnny:Jorge rolls a 30.

Johnny:And Mike rolls a 65.

Benny:Banner would get hit by one of those dumb AOEs that's like an afterthought, like, oh, if you strike someone with an arrow, someone next to them takes five times your strength modifier, or three times your strength modifier, and it's just like a plus ten strength, which is fucking wonderful.

Argyle:Sorry, one final question.

Argyle:Do you guys remember the old man that Lev impersonated inside that...

Gamemaster:Yeah, how would I balance that?

Johnny:That was a wild session.

Argyle:that could just one of us could be the old man and there were just different levels of power of his ghosts every encounter has three enemies one for our corresponding strength and then it's just gentlemen's agreement

Johnny:That would be a real fun one-shot, actually.

Johnny:We're all... I don't know.

Benny:The balancing would be awful, though.

Johnny:That's a you problem, because you're the other.

Johnny:We'll just have fun.

Gamemaster:Oh.

Anzu:All right, guys, I'll take the rat.

Anzu:You guys cover the rest.

Benny:Yeah, actually, that makes sense.

Gamemaster:I get the rat.

Benny:No, no, no.

Gamemaster:You guys take God.

Gamemaster:We'll split up.

Benny:This makes sense.

Benny:Tanner is a level one rat, and he has a tidy.

Benny:Which is like a level 10th level spell.

Benny:Because you can tidy someone to death.

Benny:I want to tidy his eyeballs out of his head and replace him with hot coals.

Johnny:Mike's waiting for the day we go back and do a familiar problem again and can tidy away blood from inside a lift.

Argyle:Oh, wait, wait.

Benny:That works for the spell.

Anzu:I have been thinking about a rescue mission for the dog.

Gamemaster:He can say help.

Gamemaster:He speaks English.

Benny:Every one of these one-shots with Tanner, we just rescue one thing, and then something else gets captured, and we just have to keep saving.

Gamemaster:And lose another one.

Gamemaster:Yeah.

Anzu:Easy.

Anzu:Easiest DMing.

Argyle:Who was the dog last time?

Gamemaster:Me.

Argyle:Oh, if it was Noah, that would have been perfect for us.

Johnny:i think i was what was i don't remember

Anzu:Yeah, true.

Gamemaster:I, um... Okay, so...

Gamemaster:I need to get my question answered.

Gamemaster:There are three of you.

Gamemaster:It's impossible for you to tie.

Gamemaster:Vote on a high level or a low level.

Benny:What does high level mean?

Gamemaster:Probably 13.

Gamemaster:I think we're deciding between 6 and 13.

Gamemaster:Tanner, which would you prefer?

Benny:Oh, I'm fine with six.

Argyle:I'm 5'13".

Anzu:Oh no.

Anzu:This makes me the...

Argyle:All right.

Anzu:Ugh.

Anzu:Like, I lean slightly towards 6 just because building a level 13 character from scratch is a pain in the ass.

Gamemaster:Great.

Gamemaster:We're doing level six.

Argyle:I will not be a healer, guys.

Argyle:I'm putting that out there now.

Benny:I'll make a healer.

Argyle:So if you guys want any healing, someone's got to be a healer.

Argyle:That's not me, okay?

Johnny:That's so nice of you.

Benny:It's going to be a dog-based fighter that does a bunch of damage.

Gamemaster:If you play a shooty again, it'll be fine, but I'll be cross.

Benny:Well, it's a healer, right?

Benny:It's a healer.

Benny:He'll be a blue healer.

Anzu:Oh, geez.

Gamemaster:Oh, no.

Argyle:One final question before we go, actually.

Anzu:Josh, can you remove him from the call manually or no?

Gamemaster:I could, yeah.

Argyle:Did Tywelwyn tell us... I'm pretty sure Tywelwyn told us when we said, like, you know, they're using you, and he's like, I'm not an idiot, I know that.

Argyle:Did he say he was working against Grayson, or just that he knew Grayson was trying to use him?

Gamemaster:Tywelwyn at no point told you anything about Grayson.

Argyle:Okay.

Anzu:That's correct.

Gamemaster:Yeah, Tywelwyn never mentioned the name Grayson around you guys once.

Argyle:Okay.

Argyle:Because I remember when we first went there, we thought he didn't know he was getting used.

Johnny:Yeah, we did that.

Anzu:Thank you.

Argyle:And then Johnny was just like, you know about this?

Argyle:He's like, you fucking idiot.

Argyle:Of course I know about this.

Gamemaster:So when, yeah.

Johnny:It went really poorly.

Gamemaster:When you first met with him, you're like, hey, you know, the Embercall people, like the Embercall, they're using you.

Gamemaster:And he's like, no, duh, but I have magic now.

Gamemaster:But Grayson didn't come up.

Gamemaster:He specifically spoke about like the Embercall.

Argyle:Yeah.

Gamemaster:And even that was like in couched terms.

Gamemaster:He didn't say Embercall specifically.

Argyle:Okay.

Anzu:Thank you.

Gamemaster:You guys found out about any interaction he had with Grayson from the journal that you stole out of Grayson's house.

Benny:I do like how in the personal logs, it's just like, ah, there's this fucking idiot, and we gotta get rid of him, and it's just like, he's not a problem anymore.

Johnny:And it all happened.

Gamemaster:Well, he made a very big mess before he became not a problem anymore.

Gamemaster:But it happens.

Benny:Where's our shout-out?

Argyle:I mean, I think that's better.

Gamemaster:They don't know you did it.

Gamemaster:Do you want to let them know that you did it?

Benny:Nah.

Benny:Nah, we're going to kill these people and we'll be never seen near the bombing of this.

Johnny:Easy.

Argyle:Alright, well.

Johnny:I will see you guys in a couple of weeks.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Argyle:Also, now we actually know why we should go to the pilgrimage.

Gamemaster:It's crazy how when you explore things related to plot events, you learn things related to plot events.

Benny:I...

Anzu:Hey, I was all in on the pilgrimage from the start.

Johnny:Yeah.

Anzu:I did not need any other reason.

Anzu:We were going to the Voidsong.

Anzu:That was good enough for me.

Benny:Well, so I was paying half attention, and then we left the room, and I was like, wait, wait, there's a bunch of shit in that room.

Benny:I feel like we should look at some of the shit.

Benny:Guys, can we look at some of the shit?

Benny:And I'm so glad that we did.

Benny:I didn't think it was going to be that.

Benny:I thought it was going to be like, ah, there's a metal ball.

Benny:It's some cool alloy.

Benny:All right, let's go kill the scientists.

Gamemaster:That's true.

Argyle:Alright.

Johnny:It's always a metal ball that's a cool alloy.

Gamemaster:Frequently a metal ball that's a cool alloy.

Argyle:Alright, sounds good.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Gamemaster:I hope you have fun in Mexico.

Benny:Please.

Anzu:As do I.

Gamemaster:The rest of you, I'll send you a prompt.

Argyle:I'll have Claude read it and then make the character.

Argyle:I'm kidding.

Gamemaster:That's fine.

Argyle:That'd be blasphemous.

Gamemaster:You can do that if you like.

Argyle:That'd be blasphemous.

Gamemaster:Okay.

Argyle:I don't vibe Pathfinder.

Argyle:Bye-bye.

Gamemaster:Bye-bye.