2024-11-11 — Akasha

Noah:Yeah, me and Mike were recording it.

Jorge:Both came in at the same time.

Jorge:Were you guys in a separate... Yeah, you bastards.

Noah:We were on another call, and we were like, okay, three, two, and we hopped on this one.

Mike:Yeah.

Mike:And we were like, we had Craig in there as well, and we were like, Craig, you have to join at the same time.

Jorge:How are you guys?

Mike:It's a busy week.

Jorge:I was at a bachelor party this weekend.

Noah:How was it?

Jorge:Good.

Jorge:Good to be sober.

Noah:What did you guys do?

Jorge:We drank so much.

Jorge:We drank so freaking much.

Jorge:We golfed.

Jorge:I've never golfed before.

Mike:Oh, drinking and golf.

Jorge:Yeah.

Mike:That's pretty.

Jorge:I did mini golf before, but then it was real golf.

Jorge:Actually, I had a lot of fun.

Noah:Oh, it wasn't even fun golf.

Jorge:We were in Myrtle Beach, California.

Jorge:We started the trip off at the New York airport, most of us, where I drank three espresso martinis and an old-fashioned, two mimosas on the plane.

Noah:you you

Jorge:We get to Myrtle Beach.

Jorge:We go to the bar in the airport.

Jorge:We then drink another two beers.

Jorge:We then go to our Airbnb.

Jorge:We go to the Walmart.

Jorge:We then bought stuff.

Jorge:We averaged like...

Jorge:12 beers a day from Friday through Sunday from our Walmart purchases.

Jorge:Each, there were 10 of us.

Jorge:We also did shots and other mixed drinks.

Jorge:When we golfed, so the morning of golfing, we wake up, make eggs, all that, more booze.

Jorge:We ran out of beer at this point.

Jorge:This is the first time we went through 120 beers.

Jorge:The Friday before.

Jorge:Hey, I like the beard.

Noah:Good beard.

Josh:Thanks.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Are you going to say you didn't get a beard grow?

Jorge:I don't know what you're going to say.

Josh:I did get a beard grow in that I haven't shaved it.

Jorge:Yeah.

Tanner:Hello.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:Classical way to grow a beard.

Jorge:Yo.

Jorge:I also, one fun thing I found out about golf, at least at this course, is when I first got onto the golf cart, it was pretty slow, like when I was driving it.

Jorge:But I found the more drinks you drink, the faster your cart gets.

Jorge:It's a pretty cool mechanism they have built in.

Jorge:So keep in mind, at this point, this is my second day of just drinking.

Jorge:The bar cart lady comes.

Jorge:There's 10 of us, but we split into three groups for golf.

Jorge:When she comes over, the other two people are like, all right, so collectively, the three of us will take nine beers, and then we'll do three shots.

Noah:Thank you.

Jorge:So I was like, all right.

Jorge:And then she's like, you sure you don't want some more beers?

Jorge:Because you can just get two six-packs.

Jorge:That's a better price.

Jorge:And we're like, Tammy, you're crazy.

Jorge:Like three holes, four holes later, she's coming around again.

Jorge:And we're like, you were so right, Tammy.

Jorge:We'll do another nine beers and then another three shots.

Jorge:And then keep in mind, we all spiked Gatorades, where we put a third of it of just tequila.

Jorge:So we're drinking that.

Jorge:We leave.

Jorge:We then go, oh, we should get food.

Jorge:We go back, shower, go out to Margaritaville where we drank.

Jorge:And then we left that to go to another bar.

Jorge:And then we said, no, no, no, we should play drinking games.

Jorge:So we went back home.

Jorge:And this is like midnight at this point.

Jorge:And my body was like, I can't do this again.

Jorge:So I just crashed.

Jorge:And then the rest of them drank again until 3 AM, like the night before.

Jorge:But yeah, and then I left on Sunday, but it was more drinking, but I've never drank that much in my life.

Tanner:I don't know how people do it

Jorge:I don't know how they do it either.

Noah:That's...

Jorge:What are the dudes, though?

Jorge:Friday night?

Jorge:We got so drunk, and we got an Airbnb.

Jorge:It was 10 of us.

Jorge:The Airbnb had three bedrooms.

Jorge:Four bedrooms, sorry.

Jorge:Three of them were normal.

Jorge:So there were queen-sized beds, one king-sized bed.

Jorge:And then the rest of the beds, the rest of the seven beds, were just in one room with three bunk beds and then two beds next to each other.

Jorge:So I was just sleeping there with just dudes I don't really know.

Tanner:Thank you.

Jorge:The first night, we were so drunk, right?

Jorge:And then two of them, Tyler and Andy, Tyler was in one bunk bed, like the top, and then Andy was in a different one's bottom.

Josh:you you

Jorge:And then, like, Tyler was, like, I guess going to bed.

Jorge:No, Andy was going to bed.

Jorge:Then Tyler was walking over to him.

Jorge:And then all I hear for, like, an hour is Tyler being like, please, somebody help me.

Jorge:Please.

Jorge:Tyler's trying to rape my little butthole.

Jorge:Please.

Jorge:And we're like, what the fuck is happening?

Jorge:And then Andy's just like, no, I'm not.

Tanner:Hmm.

Jorge:And...

Jorge:Please, please.

Tanner:Jorge, does that make us your normal friends?

Josh:you you

Noah:Okay.

Jorge:They were fucking crazy.

Mike:That's a sad state.

Jorge:And then, like, when it finally got quiet, right, one of them then started shaking the bed.

Jorge:They're like, please save me.

Jorge:And another dude was just like...

Jorge:I guess texted Tyler and that he was in the room.

Jorge:He's quiet, Dan.

Jorge:And then Tyler's like, why did you send me a text saying sodomy is such a weird word?

Jorge:And he's like, it is a pretty weird word.

Jorge:Isn't it a weird word?

Jorge:And then we got to Margaritaville and then like half of them were trying to decide if Nancy Pelosi's are real.

Noah:who who are these people like are you are these like is this the other half of your life like is this your alter ego

Josh:Yeah, how do you know these people?

Jorge:So this was a bachelor party for my future brother-in-law.

Jorge:But these people, the crazy ones, were my sister's friends that are guys.

Tanner:Yeah.

Jorge:And it was funny, because there was a couple of times throughout this trip where Ryan, that's my sister's fiance, other friends, one dude was named John Henry, and the other dude was just named John.

Jorge:There was Liam and Peter.

Jorge:All the normal ones.

Jorge:There'd be a couple times where they're just like, these dudes are pretty weird.

Josh:Thank you.

Jorge:We went to a Waffle House on Sunday morning.

Jorge:You can't drink at a Waffle House, right?

Jorge:Fantastic establishment.

Jorge:First time being the one.

Noah:It seems like a weird rule for Waffle House.

Noah:It seems like the one place you really would drink.

Jorge:Yeah, that's why you can't, because it's feral.

Jorge:We just had a server that was a dude.

Jorge:And as we were leaving, one of them was just like,

Jorge:That dude had a fucking massive dump truck in him.

Jorge:John Henry was just like, these dudes have to be, like, they're not straight.

Jorge:I don't know what they are.

Jorge:They're just, they're like, no one's fucking safe.

Jorge:These people are crazy.

Noah:Did you know any of these people going into this weekend or this was just like...

Jorge:No, not really.

Jorge:I kind of met them.

Jorge:I didn't know they were this feral.

Jorge:They just, like, they had to have, like, at least one of them had to have been to an all-boys school.

Jorge:Like, they're just so fucking... It was, uh... Yeah, yeah.

Tanner:Classic.

Josh:Thank you.

Jorge:Oh, God, they could just just kept drinking.

Jorge:And then at midnight, we came back from our bar after Margaritaville, and then the other bar, and then all the drinking for golf, and then all the drinking before golf, I was like, guys, we woke up...

Jorge:We went to bed at 3 a.m.

Jorge:the night before from drinking.

Jorge:Don't you think it's time?

Jorge:And they're like, oh, yeah.

Jorge:We need more booze.

Jorge:And I was like, yeah.

Tanner:wild.

Josh:So would you go out with them again?

Mike:like a marathon.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:Jorge is going out with them after this.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Yeah, yeah.

Jorge:But yeah, you know.

Jorge:They're all from BU, actually.

Josh:Our age?

Jorge:Yeah, one was electrical or chemical engineer.

Jorge:No, electrical or computer engineer.

Jorge:The other were international relations.

Jorge:And I remember, I forget the other.

Josh:Older?

Jorge:Two years.

Josh:Did you do well, given that you were very drunk and also a novice?

Tanner:What a fascinating crew.

Tanner:Now, Jorge, have you done much golf before, or was this also a...

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:First time.

Noah:them.

Jorge:Well, we did scramble.

Jorge:Do you guys know scramble?

Mike:Like the eggs?

Jorge:So when you play, you can play a few different ways.

Jorge:One way is everyone tees off at the start of every hole.

Jorge:And oh my god, my brain is rewired.

Jorge:I'm scared of saying the word hole right now just because of that weekend.

Jorge:But anyway, when you tee off for every round, you can hit.

Jorge:And then what you basically have to do is you basically play until everyone gets

Jorge:you know and yeah yeah um but if you play it that way it's kind of long and slow god i fucking can't help myself i'm trying not to sorry i've been ruined my brain's been rewired this weekend from steak sex stuff yeah

Mike:Just to time out, do not overstate us.

Mike:Josh did have to check with us if Bulgay would be an acceptable enemy name.

Mike:And we didn't even tell him no.

Noah:is...

Mike:We just laughed in his face.

Mike:So he changed the name.

Jorge:To be honest, I actually was thinking midway through.

Josh:Like on Teams, or just everybody starts from whatever the best position was?

Jorge:I was like, these people are feral.

Jorge:But if our D&D group was there, it would have taken like three hours to assimilate.

Jorge:Anyway, we were playing.

Jorge:But Scramble is basically everyone goes.

Jorge:Everyone tees off.

Jorge:Then whoever hits it best, you just play from that position.

Jorge:Then whoever hits it best, you play from that position type of thing.

Jorge:So it goes quicker.

Jorge:That way, if someone's...

Jorge:You go in a group.

Jorge:You go in small groups of three to four.

Josh:Okay.

Jorge:And then you do scramble.

Josh:Because if somebody gets a hole-in-one, that doesn't mean the whole hole is done for everybody.

Josh:It's just that team.

Jorge:You do, actually.

Jorge:You take the best average of that.

Josh:Okay, sure.

Jorge:So that was scramble.

Jorge:We played that.

Jorge:We actually, in the beginning, before I got drunk and after I warmed up a little bit, we used mine.

Jorge:They're like, wow, this is actually really surprising.

Jorge:I'm like, awesome.

Jorge:And then we kept drinking.

Jorge:And then I was like, guys.

Jorge:I don't have a coordination for this.

Josh:Oh, what is it?

Josh:The, like, Balmer curve or something?

Josh:One second.

Mike:Steve?

Josh:It's an XKCD.

Tanner:Is it where the cart goes faster but your swings get worse?

Josh:No, it is, uh, like, it's, yeah, it's the Balmer peak.

Mike:It is Steve, right?

Josh:That's what it is.

Josh:One second.

Mike:Oh, programming skill, yeah.

Mike:I was very annoyed when I found out that this was a real thing for most stuff.

Jorge:Yeah.

Mike:If you just drink a little bit before doing most things, you're just better at the thing.

Josh:That's not true.

Josh:Like, one drink... One drink is enough to lower inhibitions and reduce motor function.

Mike:It is.

Mike:I've had my best... No, I've had...

Jorge:You might perceive yourself better.

Josh:Like, you take one drink and then you think you're better at the thing, but you're actually just more confident about the thing.

Josh:Those are not equivalent.

Mike:they are if being more confident makes the outcomes better i've had my best valorant games like a quarter of a drink half a drink in which is a very technically demanding fine motor coordination game you can feel it no you can feel it you just keep it at like

Josh:Sh...

Josh:Every 10 minutes you take exactly like 10 milliliters.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Just keep that going.

Noah:Are you telling me if Mike told you he drinks out of, like, a measuring cup for the perfect amount?

Mike:Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Mike:Guys, guys, hold on.

Mike:Don't push yet.

Tanner:I mean, if it was going to be someone in this call...

Mike:Like a... Don't push it.

Jorge:Or I could see Mike just setting up an IV with the perfect amount and just having a drip.

Josh:The caption text of the image I just sent you, if you hover over it, is Apple uses automated schnapps IDs.

Jorge:So he's just playing, and he's like, so I could play for three hours with this bag, you know?

Noah:Thank you.

Josh:So it could happen.

Josh:You don't know.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Yeah, so it was solid.

Jorge:It was solid.

Jorge:I don't know if I'd recommend Myrtle Beach to visit, unless you like golf.

Josh:unless you're drunk the whole time and so it doesn't matter.

Josh:Well, what temperature was it while you were there?

Jorge:Unless you like golf and, I guess, beaches?

Jorge:I don't know.

Jorge:I didn't go to the beach.

Tanner:Yeah, I don't know if November is really the time for that.

Jorge:A lot of beach.

Jorge:Yeah, but I feel like if you go more... Those actually got a little chilly at some points.

Josh:Because it was like 80 degrees this weekend.

Josh:Really?

Jorge:But the thing is, it might be good other times, but then it might just be way too crowded and trashy.

Jorge:I would, however, consider buying properties to rent there.

Jorge:Just because I was there and I was like, I can physically see the gentrification happening.

Tanner:because people eat it up.

Josh:on other people.

Josh:But isn't it going to be underwater in like two decades?

Jorge:And

Josh:Like, serious question.

Josh:Isn't Myrtle Beach going to be underwater in two decades?

Tanner:Josh, you are thinking way too long term.

Noah:That's... That's...

Mike:It looks like.

Josh:It's a rental property.

Jorge:Well, apparently, you can rent them.

Josh:You have to think long term.

Josh:The whole point of a rental property is a lot of money up front for small gains incrementally.

Jorge:I was looking.

Jorge:They rent pretty consistently for like $200 to $250 a night during the summer.

Jorge:And then they mostly rent on weekends outside of it.

Jorge:And then the properties were pretty cheap.

Josh:sure that that sounds very not correct

Mike:They're going to... It's going to rise one meter in the next 240 years.

Mike:So mortgages are less than that, I think.

Mike:So you're probably good.

Mike:It's from Tufts.

Jorge:Also, the TBH, I don't know if it's pretty flat over there.

Jorge:So I don't know if three feet is enough to take out a lot of it.

Josh:Send me the Tufts article, I want to know.

Josh:Oh.

Mike:Oh no, it's Zachary Smith's final project for... It was enough for Google's citation.

Josh:I don't trust Google Citation.

Josh:It has been wrong for me multiple times in the past.

Mike:So this other thing says it's going to be 20 to 30 feet in the next three years.

Mike:So this one seems to be way in the other direction.

Josh:Yeah.

Josh:That also doesn't seem correct, but for the other reason.

Mike:It's three and a half feet in 20 to 30 years.

Josh:So... Okay, I feel like three and a half feet is enough to... Like, that's all of Massapequa, I think.

Tanner:I'm fine.

Tanner:I'm north of sunrise now.

Tanner:I've not heard of that.

Noah:Tanner is... I heard that Tanner is currently underwater at this moment.

Josh:Yeah, Unified, the bit that's on the coast?

Josh:Yeah.

Josh:Listen, when Tanner is underwater, it means I have another year and a half before I'm also underwater.

Josh:So... That's... Is that just a swap of myrtle to pigeon and beach to forge?

Mike:You can always buy property in the Myrtle Beach of the Mountains, which is Pigeon Forge.

Noah:The...

Jorge:That sounds like a place from D&D.

Mike:After saying it, I now realize that Pigeon Forge sounds like an entirely made-up town.

Tanner:Oh.

Noah:Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

Josh:Oh!

Noah:A mountain town vacation area.

Noah:It's the home of Dollywood.

Josh:Dolly Parton's Appalachian Themed Park.

Mike:It's absolutely a horrific travesty that resides in the mountains of Tennessee.

Mike:If you've been to Myrtle Beach, Virginia Beach, Hampton Beach, any of these East Coast beach places, honestly, Virginia Beach and Myrtle Beach are very close to Pigeon Forge, and Pigeon Forge is in the middle of the fucking mountains.

Mike:It's like you're driving, and all of a sudden, there's a fucking strip and 40 ice cream places and 70 go-kart places.

Jorge:Have you guys?

Mike:You're like, what happened?

Josh:But does Myrtle Beach have an upside-down building?

Josh:Because Pigeon Forge does.

Noah:Pigeon Falls.

Mike:Pigeon Forge also has the Titanic Museum, one of two Titanic museums.

Jorge:It's a cool looking building.

Noah:The Pigeon Falls.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:This place is wild.

Noah:How is this?

Mike:It has a prison.

Noah:This doesn't seem like a real place.

Mike:I played mini-golf in Pigeon Forge, so it's kind of like real golf in Myrtle Beach.

Noah:Wow.

Jorge:So, no, apparently some championship mini golf, I think they said those World Series mini golf was in North Myrtle Beach.

Tanner:Hmm.

Josh:That's not a real thing.

Tanner:Well, now I know where to go for my honeymoon.

Josh:That's fake.

Josh:I'm fairly confident that mini-golf isn't real.

Mike:The same people that bowl also... The same people that bowl... What other are the nerdiest sports?

Mike:Bowling, mini-golf championships... I won't say pickleball because I play it now and people are very good.

Tanner:Table tennis.

Mike:But I would have... Table tennis, yes.

Josh:People are very good at that, too.

Josh:I don't think skill level has anything to do with how nerdy the activity is.

Josh:I think miniaturized tennis, but still bigger than ping pong, is nerdy.

Josh:Like, pickleball's nerdy.

Mike:Yeah, there's some weirdos that play it.

Tanner:No, pickleball has sweeped the nation, Josh.

Tanner:Geriatrics close to coast.

Josh:I didn't say it didn't... I remember playing pickleball when I was six in elementary school, because that was the thing, because they didn't trust us to use tennis rackets.

Mike:They tore down a... Geriatrics.

Mike:They tore down a school near me for pickleball courts.

Josh:That's sad.

Josh:I mean, there aren't any children in New Jersey, so it's fine, but... Not real.

Tanner:That's wild.

Mike:No, I'm joking.

Mike:Oh, that is not true.

Jorge:The U.S.

Mike:I am surrounded by schools.

Mike:If I walk outside at 3 p.m., I can't walk down the street.

Jorge:The U.S.

Jorge:Pro Mini Golf Association Masters Tournament is held in the U.S.

Josh:No, that is a prank, is what it is.

Josh:Somebody just made a website.

Jorge:The U.S.

Jorge:PMGA Masters Champion Olivia Provoca of Texas.

Jorge:It's held every year at Hawaiian Rumble in North Myrtle Beach.

Mike:Because they have a whole YNC.

Josh:Uh-oh.

Josh:So you could have gone.

Jorge:No, we were going to go, but it was 30 minutes away, and we were like, we could drink so many beers in 30 minutes.

Josh:You can do that on the way over.

Jorge:We shouldn't go there.

Jorge:Not in an Uber.

Josh:Why not?

Jorge:They don't let you.

Josh:You give the Uber driver some too, and then it's fine.

Mike:It's a Hawaiian-themed mini-golf place.

Mike:If you go to Hawaiian Rumble, you're like, oh, this is in Maui.

Mike:They play the golf.

Mike:It's like a nice vacation.

Mike:No, it's like fucking Arctic Tundra mini-golf course in fucking Myrtle Beach.

Tanner:Thank you.

Jorge:Yeah.

Mike:Like, oh, yeah.

Josh:So, completely unrelated to golf or smaller golf derivatives, I do have an item block for an item that you guys picked up last time that I didn't have prepared because I'm stupid for some reason.

Josh:I knew I would be giving it to you, and I still just didn't have it.

Tanner:you

Josh:So you have that now.

Josh:That's the little crossbow-fiery thing that you picked up.

Noah:Agus Suburbs.

Jorge:Oh.

Mike:Did I get this one?

Josh:You did.

Mike:Yes, it's the suppression thing.

Josh:Yeah, so there's a pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.

Jorge:So keep track of this and then that black stone.

Jorge:What was the name of that?

Josh:The answer?

Jorge:Yeah, the Aeon Stone of like, I have it written down somewhere.

Mike:Yeah.

Jorge:But it's the black one.

Jorge:That one's also it.

Josh:Black disk.

Jorge:I think that one's also 15k, and then we have the Popat, which is also 15k.

Jorge:So our group fund's about to get 45k.

Josh:Well, you have to find somebody to sell it to, but yes.

Jorge:We sell it.

Jorge:Yeah, yeah.

Jorge:I think Lev's technically holding at least two of those, but I'm not.

Noah:Thank you.

Josh:I know, well, so both Lev and Henrik can attune to the black disc, so I assume one of you have it.

Josh:I don't know which.

Jorge:I attuned just because I could get the positive resistance, since he already has that.

Josh:Sure.

Josh:I just, I still cannot get over the fact that thaumaturges at, like, level 17 get 18 investments, or it's not even 17, is it?

Jorge:No.

Josh:There's like a skill feat that lets you increase your investment limit to 12.

Josh:And the Thaumaturge says you get that, but then also you get more if you like.

Jorge:Yeah, I used to have that.

Jorge:Yeah, I saw that.

Jorge:Thaumaturge Investiture.

Jorge:It's 10.

Josh:Oh, it's based off your charisma.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:It's two for each charisma bump you have from plus four up.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:yeah avex right now i think honestly that one might be worth not selling that seems pretty dope

Josh:Which is crazy.

Josh:Regardless, that's the stat block for it.

Tanner:Well, it's got the interesting...

Josh:If you lose it, it's not my fault.

Noah:Oh no, who has the Aegis of Urge?

Mike:I think Divex can wield it.

Jorge:But while Lev does love collecting things that gives him resistances, I don't know if 15,000 gold is worth positive resistance.

Josh:Well, okay, so Lev right now has resistance 10 to acid, electricity, fire, sonic, and vitality, and then resistance 13 to cold, resistance 8 to poison, and also resistance 1 to all physical damage just for fun.

Tanner:Is there thaumaturge stuff going on in there?

Jorge:Yeah, yeah.

Josh:No.

Jorge:No, but since I don't... Yeah.

Josh:thaumaturge stuff.

Josh:Actually, that's not true.

Josh:Some of it is from items he has invested in that he can do so because his thaumaturge gets to invest up to 1890s instead of 10.

Josh:But a lot of it is like, well, I mean, you know what it is.

Jorge:Do you remember those charms of resistance?

Jorge:You can get them in the forms of tattoos.

Jorge:You know those tattoos Lev was showing Hedrick?

Tanner:I see.

Jorge:Those are all resistance.

Jorge:Yeah.

Tanner:So it's not runes, it's mostly tattoos.

Jorge:Yeah, so you just need a two-in-one slot.

Josh:charm of resistance.

Jorge:And then I have Aeon Stones that I'm.

Josh:Yeah.

Josh:So, he has three charms of resistance, because they all just have one, so they don't, like, take a slot.

Noah:you you

Josh:You can just stack them, if you like.

Tanner:Right, right.

Josh:And the... Sorry.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Oh, I also have a three persistent blood resistance.

Josh:Sorry, yeah, that doesn't show up in your, like, resistances thing.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:But true.

Jorge:It's one of my three Aeon Stones.

Jorge:One's for that.

Josh:Right.

Jorge:One suppresses confused, frightened, and stupefied, I think, with an action.

Josh:It's just...

Jorge:Then I get 15 temporary hit points.

Josh:It's just funny to, like, imagine your character.

Josh:Lev is walking around with three rocks orbiting his head at all times.

Josh:He has three different chains on.

Noah:To be fair, if you look at... In Jorge's defense, if you look at the iconic guy for the thaumaturge, it just looks like that.

Josh:He's wearing a cape, a badge, a mask, some boots, two rings, a locket.

Josh:Sorry, four chains.

Jorge:No.

Josh:Sorry, you also have a charm of fire resistance.

Josh:Five chains.

Josh:Yeah, no, absolutely.

Josh:He is playing the thaumaturge correctly.

Josh:It's just goofy to be like, oh yeah, I have five necklaces.

Noah:When we get up in the morning, everyone else's daily preparations are like preparing spell components, doing stretches, putting on armor.

Noah:Lev's is four hours of him going, one ring, two ring, three ring, chain, chain, chain, chain.

Jorge:And he doesn't even have his armor or sword on him.

Jorge:So it's literally just all this gear that he hides behind his shirts.

Josh:Yeah.

Jorge:Oh, and the charlatan.

Josh:You're walking around in cartoons where there's the guy in the trench coat that has watches and VHS tapes and stuff in the pockets.

Josh:That's Lev.

Jorge:Well, canonically, he wears a charlatan's cape.

Jorge:So he's like, ooh.

Jorge:And then when he's in cities, he has the charlatan's gloves, which I think are described as red or something.

Josh:So both the cape and the gloves are red and gold, but the gloves also have tiny silver hooks.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:so that you can yoink things.

Noah:Just insane.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:The gaudiest of adventurers.

Josh:Ridiculous.

Josh:I mean, like, you can carry that experiment through all of the players.

Josh:Henrik is walking around with a full-on Bowser shell of multicolored spikes at all times.

Tanner:Very spiky.

Noah:The rainbow spikes.

Jorge:That's with a shell made of dragon hide.

Josh:Okay, so in my head, the shield has been rounded this whole time.

Josh:What does it look like in your head, Tanner?

Josh:What do you envision the shield looking like?

Noah:And I think that's what we're trying to do.

Tanner:Uh... Like you're picturing it as like a circular shield.

Josh:I am literally picturing it like if you shelled Bowser and then was just holding his thing.

Josh:I don't know if that's what you actually imagined.

Tanner:Oh, like it's got some...

Josh:Yeah.

Tanner:I think I've kind of molded to the picture that you put for my icon.

Josh:So, like, a circular... Okay, a circular, like, flat shield with spikes coming out.

Tanner:Which is close to that.

Tanner:Yeah, it's got like a concentric kind of thing going on with the spikes.

Jorge:All right.

Tanner:And there's, like, regions of color.

Josh:Sure.

Tanner:Like, yeah.

Josh:You can choose which spike to primarily use.

Tanner:Like, if you attack with the bottom left, you got Abyssium.

Josh:That makes sense.

Tanner:If you attack with one side, you got the Warp Class, you know.

Jorge:So I've been wondering this for all of campaign.

Jorge:And then right when Josh was asking, my headset died.

Jorge:So I was just like scrambling to do it.

Josh:Did you miss it or did it come back?

Jorge:And I see Tanner talking.

Jorge:I was like, I didn't hear anything.

Jorge:Is it rounded?

Tanner:It's pretty rad.

Tanner:I don't picture it as being like a... Yeah, right.

Jorge:Okay.

Jorge:Like Captain America?

Noah:What happened last week?

Josh:Concave.

Josh:It's flat.

Josh:It's not concave.

Josh:It is a round shield with spikes on it.

Jorge:Okay.

Tanner:Yeah.

Jorge:Gotcha.

Jorge:Gotcha, gotcha.

Josh:Yeah, so...

Josh:Does anybody want to do a recap before we play some Pathfinder?

Jorge:I got it.

Noah:Oh, we just had that.

Tanner:I would give it to Jorge.

Jorge:You can do it.

Tanner:Yeah.

Noah:Yeah.

Jorge:All right, so we continued walking after chatting with the admiral.

Jorge:It's actually pretty productive of a chat.

Jorge:We were walking.

Jorge:We see this start of a ruin, and we're all like, fuck yeah.

Jorge:I know we said we're going to travel up top, but we really did want to go through at least one ruin.

Jorge:So we walk over.

Jorge:Henrik's looking, and Henrik's like, I don't really know technology, but I think something's watching us up top.

Jorge:And then there were these animated Teletubbies at the bottom.

Jorge:Lev was just like, we should just start swinging.

Jorge:There's no way these things will not be nice.

Jorge:Will be nice.

Jorge:And everyone's like, eh.

Jorge:You're kind of bloodthirsty.

Jorge:And Lev's like, I'm usually right.

Jorge:And everyone's like, you are right.

Jorge:But let's not do that.

Jorge:So then Divex passed an invisibility curtain around it.

Jorge:Lev disguised himself as a Teletubby.

Jorge:We start walking in.

Jorge:Turns out Lev was wrong.

Jorge:And all of them were non-aggressive on site.

Jorge:So we did not need to fight them.

Mike:as usual.

Jorge:Some of the magic and techie boys started fucking around with the door.

Jorge:While they were doing it, we hear a man talking out of the camera.

Jorge:He's like, I can't see you guys.

Jorge:Who's there?

Jorge:Lev does an amazing old man impression.

Jorge:Tries to shake his hand multiple times.

Jorge:Ditsy, all of that.

Jorge:Convinces the man he's old for really no reason.

Jorge:So in the beginning, it was kind of to see if he was a bad guy.

Jorge:But as we progressed,

Jorge:We were like, oh, he probably would help us even if he wasn't helping an old man.

Jorge:Because he's also trapped.

Jorge:But we're like, nah, we can't fucking tell him.

Jorge:So then we start burning through spell slots.

Jorge:One of them is an invisible sphere that everyone just started huddling around Divex for.

Jorge:As Lev roleplays an elderly, senile man.

Jorge:We start...

Jorge:Interacting with some of these switches and, I guess, pumps or wheels, whatever it is, by the fire area.

Jorge:Sprites come out.

Jorge:Old man suddenly gets a lot stronger, and his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather emerge to help protect him.

Jorge:Guy on the screen still watching.

Jorge:I guess he bought into it.

Jorge:There was an amazingly convincing role from Don to be like, I am...

Jorge:Grandson, I will help you.

Jorge:I don't know why he sounds like Yoda.

Jorge:And then we continue the fight.

Jorge:Turn it off.

Jorge:We continue going forward.

Jorge:And we see another room after we steal some stuff.

Jorge:Solve another puzzle.

Jorge:And then we see another room that has some of the evil guys like Bracken from Lethal Company.

Jorge:And now we're going to go try to save our buddy behind the glass and punk him.

Jorge:As if it's MTV.

Josh:The only, I think, caveat there is we find another room and the bracken is in it.

Josh:I take issue with that for a bunch of reasons.

Josh:Namely, because you haven't seen anybody in the room.

Josh:And also, there's no indication that the bracken is around.

Jorge:We know.

Jorge:Someone kidnapped him.

Josh:Somebody did kidnap him.

Jorge:And he blacked out.

Josh:I'll give that to you.

Jorge:And all of his friends left.

Josh:You know what?

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Fine.

Josh:Sure.

Josh:The bracket is around.

Josh:Um, yeah.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:So, uh, like general recap, uh, the items that you guys picked up, you guys went over them, just wanted to call out again, uh, besides the things that you found, uh, besides the things that we've already spoken about earlier, you also had the, uh, eyeglass, which will highlight things that need to be interacted with in a particular order that helped you solve some of the puzzles previously.

Josh:Um, and this baton that can be used to switch things on and off.

Tanner:Thank you.

Josh:depending on what's needed.

Josh:So, yeah.

Josh:Damien, the guy behind the cameras, has been kind of helping you guys through.

Josh:So, you guys never actually... Never mind.

Josh:It's fine.

Josh:You guys were going through this dungeon area to try and save Damien.

Josh:I take it.

Jorge:Are you about to say we never tried to just go forward and just leave?

Josh:So... Yeah, unless you've never tried to, and more, you never even asked about it, you're just like, yeah, okay, we're going to go off on the side path, which is fine.

Noah:Thank you.

Josh:It's just, you know, good for me to know that if I just indicate which direction the correct direction is, you guys will do the side quest.

Jorge:Well, the thing is, unlike a lot of the guys we've met in this campaign, Damien seemed nice, and he didn't insult us meanly.

Josh:Sure.

Jorge:He just said I was an old man, but that was fine because he was insulting a persona of us.

Tanner:But he's like chill.

Jorge:If he insulted the real us, we would have been mad.

Jorge:Honestly, we still might have tried to find him just to kill him, but...

Josh:He is weak.

Josh:I'm just going to throw a bad guy at you that is very complimentary.

Josh:This is going to turn into an evil campaign.

Noah:Oh no, we've never run into a bad guy who's like, hey, you guys are pretty cool.

Noah:You want to do bad stuff?

Josh:Yeah.

Mike:No, we have, though.

Jorge:Ooh.

Mike:Not in this campaign.

Jorge:Ooh.

Mike:But fucking Pants Guy was pretty cool.

Mike:We just called him Pants Guy.

Jorge:Yeah, he was cool until... If Dorcan didn't try to steal his book, we probably would have gone down a very different path that campaign.

Mike:Methi.

Tanner:you

Noah:Guys, if I hadn't made a real stupid move, we would have been the villains.

Noah:I'm just saying.

Mike:Mm-hmm.

Jorge:We would have been.

Mike:Mm-hmm.

Jorge:We literally would have been.

Jorge:And we would have done it looking fucking great.

Jorge:We would have looked like the people out of Mad Men, all right?

Jorge:Or Peaky Blinders, just fucking people up.

Jorge:We're like, maybe we're the bad guys.

Jorge:Nah.

Jorge:You forgot we were even dancing with him at the tavern.

Josh:Yeah, you danced with him, you had food with him, he made some clothing for you.

Jorge:We were like... Yeah.

Josh:Can't believe that's your weakness.

Mike:Great stuff.

Mike:Unfortunately, he had a really interesting book, and unfortunately, that campaign, we were all about collecting books.

Noah:That was an old thing and he wouldn't give us that book.

Mike:It was Dork and Spark.

Mike:We're like, guys, we've got to find more fucking books.

Mike:If books can get us in trouble this badly, how important do they have to be?

Noah:Was it?

Noah:That was the catalyst.

Jorge:You know what?

Jorge:I know it was a stupid thing to try to steal the book, but Dorcan did not trust him.

Jorge:When we were doing the tailor, he's like, I'm just going to suss out his house.

Jorge:And we're like, why would you try to rob this nice man who's so nice to us, who dances and makes suits for us?

Jorge:Like, you fucking asshole.

Mike:Yeah, literally all three of us were in like a suit warehouse.

Noah:The best part about playing Dorcan was that I had such high wisdom.

Jorge:And then there was just like the Grimacon or whatever it is.

Noah:I, as a player, could be like, I know a name and don't trust this guy.

Noah:Therefore, I can reason that Dorcan doesn't trust this guy.

Noah:Now he's gone.

Josh:uh anyway

Mike:We were so drunk on Mephi's charisma.

Mike:We were like, this guy's fucking... Okay, go to fucking check out his house.

Mike:He'll probably have puppies in there or something.

Mike:And we're like...

Mike:dancing like trying on suits like and meanwhile Dorcan's about to make a pact with the devil we were

Jorge:Honestly, if Dorfin didn't get branded, we still might have been like, because I think at the time we're like, why'd you touch his stuff?

Noah:We legit know.

Jorge:He even showed up.

Jorge:He was in two places at once, moving like a superhuman.

Jorge:And we're like, why'd you touch his shit, man?

Jorge:It's on you.

Jorge:And then when he got branded, we're like, hey, why do we have to settle with this?

Jorge:He wasn't that bad.

Jorge:And then we're like, oh, he's actually evil incarnate.

Noah:It was like two years later, we were like, oh, this is the bad guy.

Tanner:He's pretty bad.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:It happens.

Josh:So, you guys, find yourselves in this campaign.

Josh:Entering further into this bronze, weird steampunk lair that you've found yourselves into, heading in the direction that Damien has told you is both where he is and where the mechanism required to lift the bridge and continue forward is, although that seems a secondary concern at this point.

Josh:So...

Josh:As you enter into this next room, you see that the walkway that you're on kind of falls off to either sides, and you can see the lava flows that you had seen in earlier parts of the dungeon have...

Jorge:Thank you.

Josh:seem to be collecting at this point.

Josh:Whatever this facility's original use is for, why it's been embedded in the lava river underground here however many cycles ago, appears to be for the mechanism here where it's collecting the lava.

Jorge:We didn't even think about that.

Jorge:We weren't even like, why was it here?

Noah:True.

Jorge:Why are those dudes over there?

Mike:Thank you.

Josh:This just, it's weird.

Josh:You know, it's Dungeons & Dragons.

Josh:There's gotta be dungeons.

Josh:Sometimes the dungeon's gotta be a lava dungeon.

Josh:Everybody knows that.

Josh:Um...

Josh:As you walk along this bridge, heading towards... Damien has indicated that the far end of this room is where he is locked up.

Josh:The way that he described the room that he's currently in, the one exit will not budge from where he currently is, and he can't find the correct series of valves to open it.

Josh:He's fairly confident that it needs to be opened from the outside for whatever reason.

Josh:And he has indicated that that is at the end of this hallway.

Josh:It is hot in this room.

Josh:You all have thermal protection.

Josh:I know you got it for the cold, but I don't know.

Josh:I think all of the items you got work on all temperature ranges and not specifically for the cold, if I'm not mistaken.

Josh:Am I mistaken?

Jorge:It might have just been... I think it was just cooling.

Josh:Is it just cooling?

Mike:yeah I think we got heated cloaks warm jackets

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Okay.

Jorge:It was like warm jackets or something.

Josh:So then it is hot in here.

Jorge:For everyone besides Lev, because he got his resistance.

Josh:Right.

Josh:Those of you who are resistant to all damage types...

Josh:the two tanks of the party, effectively, are fine.

Josh:The guy that has an arm made out of metal and the guy that has no elemental protection except for, like, a rope that he's wearing is hot.

Josh:It's not, like, damaging hot, but it's like walking directly into a sauna hot.

Josh:And it's...

Josh:It's dry, too.

Josh:Like, you walk in and you feel moisture being almost wicked off of your skin.

Josh:You sweat and then immediately dry off so quickly, it feels dehydrating being in the presence of this room.

Josh:That said, I'd like a perception check to see if there's anything interesting, you know, as you... Yes.

Jorge:Can Devix and I swap positions on the map?

Josh:You guys can move yourselves around as much as you like.

Jorge:All right, Devix.

Jorge:I don't know if Don wants to swap with Henrik, but I would guess you want me in front of you.

Josh:Yeah.

Josh:Your character tokens are in there so that you can see the map, not necessarily because that is the position you will be in when things jump up from the sides of the bridge to attack you.

Mike:I want to be over here then.

Mike:Did you roll a square dice?

Josh:You can.

Josh:You can walk.

Josh:I mean, your character would have had to walk up this bridge and then down, but you absolutely can go up there.

Josh:That's fine.

Josh:I should have put moles in place of your character as the pathfinder.

Tanner:I tried to roll and it didn't work.

Josh:Sorry.

Jorge:What do you have?

Noah:No.

Josh:What do you mean it didn't work?

Josh:Oh, is the dice bot not on?

Noah:Oh, God, the dice.

Josh:That's... Like, it's 2D?

Mike:I don't know.

Josh:Let me run the dice bot.

Josh:Okay, now you should be able to roll a die.

Mike:Dicebot.exe.

Tanner:I don't like it.

Tanner:I got a 33.

Josh:Okay, I'm sorry.

Noah:Got it.

Josh:That sucks.

Josh:Okay, so...

Jorge:Anyone else want to roll?

Jorge:We only get two rolls a team.

Noah:Could not be me.

Mike:I'll roll.

Jorge:Cool.

Mike:I have a plus 12.

Tanner:To perception?

Mike:Mm-hmm.

Josh:He has a plus 26.

Mike:I pretend I do not see.

Josh:He's taking a voluntary minus 14 to his perception in exchange for nothing.

Tanner:Thank you.

Josh:He's just doing it.

Josh:That's just his character flaw.

Noah:Hmm.

Mike:I can't be hit with visual effects because I'm just eyes closed.

Mike:I got a 40.

Josh:40.

Josh:Okay.

Josh:So...

Josh:The room itself is as well maintained as the rest of the facility.

Josh:There are wandering around in this room a few more of those red hazmat suited...

Josh:things.

Josh:It looks like walking from one part of the area to another, tightening valves and the like.

Josh:Similar to the previous room that you were in, there is evidence that Damien had mentioned about this kind of like earthquake thing that had happened recently that had knocked things out of place.

Josh:Hence why you're doing this journey in the first place.

Josh:And it looks like the red-suited hazmat things are at least attempting to fix different parts of the system.

Josh:They're working with piping.

Josh:It looks like there's two of them that are around one particular broken...

Josh:piece, it looks like a welding with some kind of acetylene torch.

Josh:There's another group that looks like it's fixing some cogs in the side.

Josh:Nothing reacts to your presence as you show up, as is familiar to you from previously.

Josh:These things don't seem to even notice the world around them.

Jorge:tell me young man what what do we do now alright alright

Josh:They don't react to you interacting with them at all.

Josh:Yeah.

Josh:So, I am at the other end of this room.

Josh:You gotta go past, like, the... There's a proper power source thingy for the whole facility.

Josh:You gotta go past that, and then there's a room beyond that that I remember being dragged into.

Josh:I...

Jorge:What happened when you were in there?

Josh:I don't remember.

Josh:I get dragged in, it goes dark, and then I wake up and I'm alone and locked in.

Josh:And I'd really like somebody to undo it.

Jorge:Sounds good.

Jorge:Where are you from again, young man?

Josh:It's just like up north of here.

Noah:you

Jorge:What does that mean?

Josh:Let me roll something.

Jorge:Do you know what cycle it is?

Tanner:Thank you.

Josh:Like, what year it is?

Jorge:Oh, 600 something.

Josh:I don't know.

Josh:Like, yeah, 600 and change.

Jorge:All right.

Josh:I don't... Like, I don't remember the exact year.

Jorge:What are you doing down here?

Josh:We've been... Me and my party have been underground for, like, at least a few years at this point.

Josh:So, I don't...

Noah:Why?

Josh:The money's better.

Josh:There are all kinds of monsters in the underground, and there's, like, guild setups underground.

Josh:So you just, you go, you kill some monsters, you bring back the pieces that you killed, sometimes you find some treasure in a ruin, and then you sell them.

Jorge:What rank are you?

Josh:It's easy.

Josh:You don't need to go, like, up above ground and, you know, because traveling underground.

Josh:I don't remember.

Josh:Yes.

Tanner:Amen.

Noah:Don's going to pull out one of the many books he has gotten on the societies of all things.

Josh:Roll a society check for me, please.

Noah:We're asking this guy, are you from, and just start reading off places that could be up north.

Josh:Yes, Divex.

Mike:Can Dybex attempt to identify the thing that's powering the facility?

Josh:Yeah, you can roll either an occult or religion check.

Josh:What'd you get?

Noah:I got a 44 crit.

Josh:Okay, you're just reading off names, and one of the names in your, like, I guess, almanac that you've picked up of areas north of here, you say Knoxville.

Josh:And he says, oh, that sounds familiar.

Josh:Like, not quite that, but, like, kind of a variant of that.

Josh:Maybe you have, like, a weird translation or something.

Noah:Oh, gotcha.

Jorge:Is Knoxville what it sounds like, where it's like Knoxville?

Noah:That's all the information I have in this book.

Noah:It's just a list of places in the area.

Jorge:Is this near the Umbral Keep?

Josh:It's spelled N-O-X-F-E-L-L.

Josh:It is a relatively small town on the Athrean side of the Elbra mountain range.

Josh:So it is close-ish to where you guys would guess Nox is, but it's not in Oresk.

Josh:Like, Noxfell is solidly in Athrean territory.

Jorge:gotcha he might it'd be so funny if he's a vampire that's gonna try to kill us

Josh:I think it's technically under the Thyrapae.

Mike:I got a 40 for occultism.

Josh:A 40 for Occultism.

Josh:Um... So... The thing... Feels... You've experienced things like this before.

Josh:It's got this weird kind of... Pull on the mana around it.

Josh:Kind of similar to... Um... Hallia and Tenno's Orb.

Josh:Uh... Kind of similar to Savick.

Josh:Um...

Josh:a little similar to Beast.

Josh:It's like a vibe that you're kind of getting that's similar.

Josh:You are very much at this point, especially when you make occultism rolls, you're getting to the point where Divex does actually feel things based off of vibes and that is useful to him.

Josh:And this has a vibe that feels similar to divine entities you have interacted with in the past in some way, just on a much, much smaller Scale.

Josh:This thing doesn't feel like you're necessarily looking at another Savik just hanging out in the floor, but it does feel like if you let it cook for a few million years, it might be, you know?

Jorge:I tap on Schism.

Jorge:Hey, man.

Josh:That is neat.

Jorge:Yeah, this is.

Josh:Can somebody do me a favor and roll a religion check for Schism?

Josh:He has a plus 32.

Noah:A religion check.

Josh:Yes, please.

Jorge:I'll do it.

Jorge:I asked him.

Noah:That's not what you want.

Jorge:42.

Jorge:No.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:42.

Josh:A schism will say, oh, this is awesome.

Josh:You could use this as a catalyst if you wanted.

Josh:If you guys were looking to beef up your hearts, you could definitely use this thing as a catalyst.

Josh:If you want, if you like, while you guys are helping out your friend, if you want, I can analyze this thing and see if there's anything useful you could lop off of it if you didn't want to use for catalyst stuff.

Jorge:Also, if you could...

Jorge:Think of a way we can tether so that we can come grab this later if we don't want to use this right now for the catalyst.

Josh:Oh, you mean like an interplanar beacon?

Jorge:Yeah, yeah.

Jorge:So the way I see it is before we fight the men downstairs, we may just want to swallow a bunch of divine items.

Josh:Sure.

Josh:Well, so there is... I don't have it right now.

Josh:We'd have to find somewhere that we could pick up the plans for it, but it wasn't uncommon.

Josh:in, you know, the old days, to make a kind of beacon which could be used as the target of magic that had the teleportation trait, regardless of distance.

Jorge:Oh, I mean, Buddy Marshall has one of those, I think.

Noah:you you

Josh:Sorry?

Jorge:Yeah, he had like a torch thing.

Josh:Not quite.

Josh:You're talking about a cognitive beacon.

Jorge:Oh, those are different.

Jorge:I mean, oh, those are different.

Josh:Cognitive beacons are cool because they don't need nearly as expensive a material, and they don't need to be powered by anything.

Josh:But they do need to be seen because they draw their energy from the cognitive...

Jorge:What would you need to make one of those?

Josh:like, cognitive participants of the beacon, so to speak.

Josh:You can make a kind of self-contained one that doesn't need to be observed in any form, which is how the Sundom used to do it, but that does require, like, expensive materials and a pretty difficult-to-manufacture magic circuit.

Josh:But, yeah, I mean, listen.

Josh:Um, I can pull up... Actually, I need to construct one of those.

Josh:because this is an actual icon.

Jorge:Yeah, what do you guys think?

Jorge:What do you guys think, fathers?

Jorge:Do you think we should... I say we keep Anaïs on it.

Jorge:Thank you, grandfather.

Noah:I think we definitely can.

Mike:It seems worthy for our bloodline to pay attention to this, yes.

Noah:Yes, grandson.

Jorge:Hey, uh...

Josh:I just need to... I need... Yeah.

Jorge:Damien, what race are you?

Jorge:Got that abouters to me, but I'm just curious.

Josh:Oh.

Josh:I... I mean... That kind of... I'm human.

Jorge:Okay.

Jorge:That's cool.

Josh:It's kind of a rude question to ask.

Noah:Oh.

Jorge:Well, I was just... You know, I'm an old man.

Jorge:I can ask questions.

Jorge:Son.

Josh:Gosh, you're old so you can be insensitive.

Jorge:Yeah.

Tanner:And he has shameless request.

Josh:So... Schism will say, to make the beacon, you need jeset or a calcum and a resonance crystal.

Jorge:You're right.

Jorge:I do have shameless requests.

Noah:Thank you.

Josh:I will send you the...

Jorge:So what would that be different than Divex just being able to teleport to this place now?

Jorge:Does this mean you will always be able to lock on?

Josh:So, once linked, any creature can use a teleportation effect to target the beacon directly, regardless of line of sight.

Josh:You can dimension door or gate to it as if you can see its location, you can travel to it via plane shift, it eliminates any kind of imprecision and the like.

Jorge:Gotcha.

Josh:Because, like, right now, Divex could not teleport here.

Josh:I don't believe.

Mike:Let me look at maybe an 8th level teleport.

Josh:At 8th level, you can travel to any target on the same planet, but you will be 1% off of the total distance.

Josh:So you wouldn't be here, you'd be outside, and then you'd have to navigate your way through.

Mike:Uh...

Mike:Yeah, I don't know if... Has 1% of the total distance traveled?

Mike:I don't know.

Mike:The phrasing sounds like the heightening... I don't know.

Mike:I thought the heightening made it more precise.

Josh:It's 1% up to a maximum of 10 miles off.

Mike:Like, for 8th...

Mike:Yeah.

Mike:Oh, I see.

Mike:Okay.

Mike:So it does change the accuracy, but just not in the direction.

Noah:Thank you.

Josh:It, like, caps the accuracy.

Mike:Yeah.

Mike:Fair enough.

Jorge:All right, so that'll be dope.

Jorge:And then we can just grab it.

Jorge:Anyway.

Jorge:Should we go to the other room first, fathers?

Josh:Sorry, did you want me to analyze this while you guys were off saving?

Jorge:Oh, yes.

Josh:Okay, just drop me on top of it.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:I'll take care of it.

Jorge:They do it.

Josh:Okay.

Mike:Divex will say into Sauron, yeah, are we sure that the guy that ran the experiment to make divine beings, we want to leave him with another catalyst to make a divine being?

Jorge:I don't think he's going to... He gave it to us.

Noah:Thank you.

Jorge:Who is he going to make... He needs a whole facility.

Jorge:I'm not... I'm going to be honest with you guys.

Jorge:I trust him.

Jorge:Sundom trusted him.

Jorge:I think he was honestly on a better path than the Admiral.

Mike:I disrespect Mr. Library.

Mike:I guess we could leave him there, but I think that's something we should keep in mind.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:Thanks very much.

Jorge:so what do you think like do you think he's on the thessian side who said would he be on yeah yeah we are yeah

Mike:This is his forte and something he's done prior.

Mike:I don't know.

Josh:Saran will say... I assume you're talking through Saran right now, and not through Zizek.

Mike:Yeah.

Josh:Okay.

Josh:Saran will say, I mean, the Sundom weren't good people.

Tanner:Can you expand on that?

Noah:you you

Josh:I mean, no offense to all of you, since you are at some point in your, at this point, many lives from the Sundom.

Josh:I...

Josh:This whole experiment of having people live whole lives and then killing them off repeatedly is, I think, hard to justify in the grand scheme of things.

Josh:And in order to get the planet ready, like, they did have to genocide the existing civilization here.

Josh:I...

Jorge:All right.

Jorge:The other one I think is bad.

Jorge:The other one I was okay with.

Jorge:They were volunteers.

Jorge:That one, the genocide, it was bad.

Josh:Yeah, I guess you are all volunteers, that's true.

Josh:I just, like, I don't know if your sense of morality necessarily is aligned on a local Scale with that of the Suntum.

Josh:On a global Scale, trying to get rid of Thessians and outside interference, I agree with.

Josh:I mean, that's a big thing of the brokers.

Josh:But, you know...

Jorge:You think the broker is a good person?

Josh:I think the broker is an effective person and a net good.

Noah:In schism, you hear it, that's a no.

Jorge:yes uh so okay sounds good um i still want to keep hold of a heart and honestly he's the only guy who knows hearts and he helped us turn into gods so personally he hasn't done anything bad to me she wouldn't recommend leaving him with the Heart

Josh:All I've been saying is maybe you should keep him on a short leash.

Josh:I'm not inclined to trust floating sentiences that aren't me.

Tanner:I wouldn't even care.

Noah:Tell you what.

Noah:Sauron, how about you hang out and watch over him?

Josh:I mean, I can do that, I guess.

Jorge:I don't like that idea because we need Serran's help.

Tanner:I think we keep involving this.

Jorge:Hey, you know what?

Jorge:Skezian, we'll come back here.

Jorge:We'll come back to take a look at the heart together.

Josh:uh schism will say are you sure because like i can do this while you guys are doing other things it's no it's no proverbial sweat off of my proverbial back you know

Jorge:I think the thing is, we have...

Jorge:an archmage here, and we have this arch mechanic over here who really kind of want to learn what's happening with these arts.

Jorge:And they got kind of mad to me because I was, I figured, why don't we do duplicates?

Jorge:But they want to be here to see what you do.

Josh:I didn't hear you guys say anything out loud.

Josh:Have you been talking behind my back?

Jorge:No, it was just, we were chatting with Henrik over there.

Jorge:Henrik has bad hearing.

Josh:I can hear you guys when you talk.

Jorge:Well, that's why we can't have to use his name.

Josh:I know you didn't talk.

Jorge:The other guy, you know, because he can't hear us, we have to go directly into his head.

Josh:So you are talking behind my back.

Jorge:Not behind your back, just we have to talk.

Noah:And so that's .

Jorge:Would you prefer we talk through you next time?

Josh:I mean, yeah, it's kind of hurtful for me to know that there are conversations about me going on while I'm right next to you.

Jorge:I guess it's fair.

Jorge:So what would you like to say in the matter?

Jorge:My apologies.

Josh:Sorry, you're asking what I'd like to say on the matter?

Jorge:Yeah, if you do not... Yeah, I guess we'll all hold off.

Josh:I mean, like, I can hold off.

Josh:I was kind of excited to dig into this, but, you know, I just, it's disappointing.

Jorge:They want to see what happens.

Jorge:I know, I know.

Josh:Okay.

Noah:Thank you.

Josh:I mean, I am a little bit at your whims, but when you decide that it's time to investigate this, you know, world-shaking, possible, extremely powerful artifact, then I guess I'll be around.

Jorge:Lev glares at the other party members.

Jorge:He's like, I can't believe you would do this.

Tanner:I put my hands in my ears.

Jorge:You know, the nicer schism is... Did I insight check that to see if he's trying to lie to me?

Josh:Surroundances in all of your heads.

Tanner:What?

Josh:He's just guilt-tripping you.

Jorge:Or if he seems sincere?

Josh:Which one?

Jorge:Computer.

Josh:Schism?

Jorge:Yeah, schism.

Noah:We need a third method of communication.

Josh:That's what you get for carrying around multiple floating orbs that are sentient and can talk in your heads.

Noah:Two intelligences trying to plan.

Tanner:Josh?

Tanner:While he's doing that, Josh, there's this item in the middle of the room that looks kind of like it could be a ballista.

Josh:Upon closer investigation, it is not a ballista.

Tanner:Does it look like it could kind of be a ballista to be?

Josh:It is a... Oh, shoot.

Josh:I had that in my head.

Josh:It's an escapement, is what it's called.

Josh:If you've seen a grandfather clock before, an escapement is the gear that turns and is powered by the movement of the pendulum.

Noah:Thank you.

Tanner:And it doesn't appear to be a weapon?

Josh:This is similar.

Josh:It is a gear that is turned by some kind of motion.

Josh:um tracing it through divex got a 40 so this is free you can see that it is being driven by like a kind of water wheel that is underneath it being pushed by the lava it does not look like it is a weapon no

Jorge:um,

Tanner:How about these Giant cannon looking things around the room?

Josh:Those are also not weapons, as best you could tell.

Tanner:Excellent.

Noah:Thank you.

Josh:Those look to be some mechanical armature related to the rest of this room.

Josh:I don't think it would be immediately obvious to you what the armature does, but you don't see... It doesn't look like a turret, if that's the question.

Jorge:I rolled a deception for my insight to see if he was lying to me.

Jorge:Is that the correct thing, or should I roll something else?

Josh:Deception is fine.

Josh:This is to see if Schism is lying to you about wanting to investigate the object.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Yeah, see if he's trying to guilt us.

Josh:I mean, he's definitely trying to guilt you.

Noah:Oh no.

Josh:I think his excitement for investigating the thing is genuine, though.

Jorge:He's like, do it.

Josh:He is sad.

Jorge:Okay.

Josh:He wants you to know that he's sad.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:I feel like we're going to... I feel like Schism's a good guy that we're going to turn into a villain by neglecting him.

Jorge:I'm going to be honest, guys.

Jorge:This is the second time we did this to him.

Noah:Oh no.

Jorge:Lev is going to be trying to just make an impression to just make him like Lev more.

Josh:Okay, so he has a favorite, and the favorite is Lev.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Yeah, Lev is just going to be doing the make impression action or whatever it is to just try to... Yeah.

Noah:Oh, no.

Josh:Sure.

Josh:That's fine.

Josh:You don't have to roll anything.

Josh:You guys are adventuring with him, so you have ample time to interact with him.

Jorge:The end of this campaign is going to be the party versus Lev and Schism.

Josh:I would say that it has broken down, especially how Lev has communicated with him, because the decision to not interact with it was the other party members and not Lev's.

Josh:So...

Josh:There's a definite favoritism going on there.

Jorge:Fully ascended Lev.

Jorge:Who has an army of vampires.

Josh:It's going to be all of Jorge's characters in schism versus the rest of the party.

Noah:oh no still

Josh:Those are even numbers.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Desmond, Marzo, and Lev, and Schism versus Divex, Henrik, Dawn, and Sauron.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:You could make two different parties with floating sentient orbs.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Okay, so... What are you guys doing?

Jorge:I guess we'll go to the back rooms.

Josh:Okay, so you cannot actually proceed.

Josh:I know there's like, it looks like there's an open doorway over here, but this door over here is locked.

Noah:Thank you.

Josh:If you like, you can roll a perception check as you get close to try and figure out how to open it.

Josh:Because as you approach it, Damien will say, okay, yeah, so like...

Josh:From the plans of this place, I've had time to look around.

Josh:This is the only area that I don't have a camera into, so I'm pretty confident that's where I am.

Josh:So if you could get that open, that would be awesome.

Jorge:Hey, uh, Damon, can you, uh... Son, can you, uh, see your own hands?

Noah:you

Josh:Yes.

Jorge:How many fingers are you holding up?

Josh:Right now, I'm not holding up any fingers.

Josh:I have ten, if that's the question.

Jorge:I was just gonna... No, I was just gonna try to pull a dad joke and...

Josh:Do you believe that I'm human?

Jorge:I was really hoping I was going to guess how many fingers you had.

Mike:He didn't have a southern accent.

Josh:You didn't tell me to raise a certain number of fingers.

Josh:You just asked how many I had.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:Yep.

Josh:Okay.

Jorge:All right, let's go.

Mike:He didn't have a southern accent.

Josh:You used to be an old man.

Josh:Why are you Southern now?

Jorge:Yeah, I don't know what's happening.

Mike:How many fingers are on your hands, boy?

Jorge:Oh, oh, oh, all right.

Mike:Hey, son.

Jorge:Should I try to open this up?

Jorge:With my sword.

Jorge:This is why you're the oldest of us.

Tanner:Shouldn't we be looking through the lens to see if there's like valves or something?

Mike:through the looking glass i just want to see where it goes okay can i look through does divex have the uh well

Jorge:You're so wise.

Noah:I'll look for the other one.

Tanner:That's correct.

Josh:Henrik, canonically, the great-great-grandfather.

Josh:You have two of them.

Jorge:Yeah, Divex does.

Josh:Who has them?

Jorge:Divex and Don, I think, had them.

Jorge:Because Divex had it, and then the baton.

Jorge:And then Don had the other pocket.

Mike:That's right.

Mike:I have extra peekaboo.

Josh:Okay.

Josh:Perception check.

Noah:Can I give this to Henrik because he is better at seeing things than I am?

Mike:Perception.

Mike:Checked.

Josh:It's not bound to you.

Josh:You guys are free to change hands as much as you like.

Josh:Okay.

Noah:I'll hand this over to Henrik.

Mike:I love a free hero point.

Mike:Give me them hero points.

Josh:Actually, it's a mythic point now.

Mike:I love mythic points.

Tanner:I got a 37.

Mike:God damn, what the fuck are we rolling?

Josh:Okay.

Josh:So, the door is structured similar to the other doors that you have seen in this place.

Josh:It is effectively a very large slab of metal that has been spring-loaded into the upward position, and you need to build up pressure to kind of push it down into the ground.

Josh:It is heavy, and it is well-shot.

Josh:You do not see an obvious...

Josh:area to, like, there's no switch or anything to open it, nor do you actually see a lock of any kind.

Josh:It looks like it's really just held in place by the strength of the spring underneath it and the heft of the door itself.

Josh:Things that do stand out to you, though, are on the side of the door running along one of the...

Josh:I don't know what you call this thing, like the threshold frame.

Noah:Bye.

Josh:It's a door frame.

Josh:Running along the right side of the frame of the door appears to be a tube, a cylindrical glass tube that extends the entire length of the door that has a bluish, purplish-looking liquid inside of it collected at the bottom of the tube.

Josh:It is almost empty.

Josh:There's maybe a few inches.

Josh:of the liquid gathered in the tube currently.

Josh:But you see that at the top of the tube there is an inlet valve of some kind that you can then trace the tube upwards, the pipe upwards, and then see that it kind of bifurcates and bifurcates again and travels around different parts of this room.

Tanner:you

Josh:With the eyeglass on, you can see that there are

Josh:what look to be maybe breaks or weird twists in the pipes at various parts of the room that appear to be preventing this liquid from collecting in the tube right now.

Josh:It seems like if you wanted to fill up the tube, which appears to be the mechanism for closing this thing, you would have to go to different parts of the piping and actually repair them.

Noah:I'm on it.

Jorge:Lev puts his sword away, pretends to put it in his bag, which absorbs it, and then sprouts wings to follow and help his father, Bjergsen.

Josh:Okay.

Josh:Ah, Bjergsen.

Josh:That was the name.

Josh:I couldn't remember it.

Jorge:Bjergsen, Bjergsen, Bjerg.

Josh:It's Bjergsen, Bjergsen, Bjergsen, and Bjerg.

Jorge:Yep.

Josh:Which is the worst law firm.

Josh:So... Sorry, Don.

Josh:Bjergsen III.

Josh:You are tracing one of the pipes down and following it?

Noah:Yep.

Josh:Absolutely.

Josh:So you can trace one of the pipes.

Josh:The fracture in this particular pipe does happen to be where two of those red suited hazmat guys are just kind of...

Josh:It looks like they're trying to repair it.

Josh:These things look handy, but not necessarily very intelligent, because it looks like they're just trying to patch over it.

Josh:And you see the two of them, from somewhere, take out what appears to be sheet metal of the same material as the rest of this place, lay it over top, one of them's holding it, the other hammers it a few times.

Josh:Uh...

Josh:They both look like they finished.

Josh:They stand up.

Josh:There's a hissing sound.

Josh:The sheet metal rockets off, falls into the lava below, and then it just goes and picks up another piece of sheet metal and puts it back on top, and the other one starts hammering it in place.

Tanner:you

Josh:Yes.

Jorge:Is it the type of metal that those bikes ran on?

Jorge:Does it look like it?

Jorge:I can't believe you guys pissed off that other dude for bikes that won't work.

Josh:No.

Josh:So the bikes...

Josh:To clarify, the bikes do not just need contact with the metal that the Leviathan is made out of.

Josh:They work in the Leviathan.

Josh:But...

Josh:The material that the Leviathan is made out of is some titanium alloy that has a number of useful anti-magic properties.

Noah:Thank you.

Josh:It is dark gray.

Josh:It's like gunmetal gray.

Josh:It is dull.

Josh:It doesn't have a luster.

Josh:It is not similar to the metal here, which is all coppery, bronzy in color.

Josh:The least bronze-looking thing in this place that you have found has been that crossbow thing, which is like a slightly purplish-blackish bronze, but it's still bronze.

Jorge:Okay.

Noah:Wait, wizards are more proficient than simple weapons?

Josh:The material is very clearly different.

Josh:You know that copper was included here.

Josh:You don't know why they made this entire place out of copper.

Josh:There's probably a reason for it, but it just hasn't been relevant.

Josh:But it's definitely different from the material that the Leviathan is made out of.

Mike:Although someone else should have this crossbow.

Mike:I am not proficient in simple weapons.

Jorge:Why?

Josh:Dimex isn't proficient in simple weapons.

Mike:No.

Jorge:Does that make sense?

Josh:You have no weapon proficiency, right?

Mike:I have spell proficiencies if you're interested.

Josh:That's not a weapon proficiency.

Jorge:Does Henrik have any range?

Mike:Just trying to sell, man.

Tanner:I have a gun that I've had for a long time, so I guess I could take the crossbow.

Jorge:All right.

Jorge:Well, I have no range at all.

Tanner:Oh, alright, yeah, go for it.

Tanner:I don't know if I'd do very good with the crossbow.

Jorge:OK.

Jorge:Well, I'll take it, because.

Mike:Does Dawn not have high dex and simple weapon proficiency?

Noah:I do have high decks, but I have a... I have a... I mean, I have a pretty good deck.

Jorge:Yeah, you can take it.

Noah:If... No.

Noah:Okay, I'll take the... I'll... Egg... Eggster... Right, the Eggster...

Mike:Sure.

Jorge:I'm going to be honest with you.

Jorge:I'm going to be honest with you, Father.

Jorge:I will never be needing range.

Mike:Don't say that, son.

Mike:Don't say that.

Mike:It's Aegis Sever.

Josh:Okay.

Mike:Oh, I like the name.

Josh:No, he's saying it correctly.

Josh:It's aegisfur.

Noah:It's carrying a meat tree around.

Josh:That's how it's pronounced.

Mike:Oh, it comes from a tree that only grows in the very cold areas of Ulfheim.

Josh:The aegisfur?

Mike:It's an Aegisfer.

Mike:Yeah, it's an Aegisfer.

Josh:Oh, it's an aegisfur.

Mike:Yeah.

Josh:It's a black angus, 100% meat fur.

Mike:It's just a meat tree.

Mike:It's a meat tree with needles.

Josh:A meat tree.

Noah:So I'm going to try and fix this thing.

Josh:Absolutely.

Josh:Roll a crafting check.

Josh:49.

Noah:Yeah, crafting, crafting.

Noah:That's the wrong channel.

Noah:49.

Noah:I'm going to use my beast.

Josh:Just to make it an even 50.

Noah:Even 50.

Josh:Okay.

Josh:So...

Josh:The patch that they're doing would, under normal circumstances, actually work.

Josh:Like, that should solve the problem.

Josh:The issue is, if you look just slightly inside of the pipe, there is this weird, like, bluish-yellowish ball of light and energy that's kind of coalesced on the inside of this pipe.

Josh:It just feels to Dawn like...

Josh:as if somebody had cast a spell, but had not told the spell what it was supposed to do, so it's just magic energy stuffed into this pipe.

Josh:And as soon as the pipe is closed, pressure builds on it, and it just immediately pushes the thing back off.

Tanner:Hmm.

Josh:Under normal circumstances, what Don thinks he could do is disrupt the magic energy somehow, and that would cause it to just dissipate away.

Josh:But, you know, a way to disrupt the magic energy is all the way over in his pocket right now, and he doesn't have time for that.

Josh:He got a 50, so he just knows how to take a hammer, hit it in just the right place to cause the magic to flow out, and he fixes it without needing that.

Josh:You clean out the magic essence, it dissipates, and the steam just starts flowing through the pipe.

Josh:No problem.

Josh:And then you can step away and let the guys do their patch job and it stays, no problem.

Josh:When you do that, there is a dripping trickly sound, and if you look over towards the door, you see that some more of that bluish-purplish liquid...

Josh:has come through the inlet valve and filled up that tube on the side of the door up to about a third of where it currently is.

Josh:In addition, you hear...

Josh:It's like you blocked this clog that was blocking a large flow through some of the facility.

Josh:There are belts close down to the lava floor that start moving as you have restored energy to them.

Josh:It looks like they are picking up lava and then, as best you can tell, letting it cool down to rocks and then just dumping them back into the lava again.

Josh:You take it, you have fully completed or powered back up the mechanism of what's supposed to be happening, but you have definitely brought pieces of it back to life.

Josh:Damien will also say, oh, that definitely did something.

Josh:I see steam flowing through pipes that I have not seen steam flowing through in a while.

Jorge:Oh.

Josh:So that's awesome.

Noah:Ooh!

Jorge:I'm going to also I would like to try to pickpocket the guys helping and then take one or two sheets if there's a bunch.

Josh:Yeah, I mean, you don't need a roll for it.

Josh:They wouldn't react if you go rummaging around in their pockets.

Josh:You can absolutely take... As you take it out, you note that it's actually stored in a roll of, like, foil.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:But when you take out the foil and you separate it, it becomes rigid.

Mike:Can DiveXCast detect metal on all this brassiness?

Tanner:Hmm.

Mike:Get some properties of the brass.

Josh:Absolutely, he can cast Detect Metal and get some properties of the brass.

Josh:Do you have to roll anything or do you just know things?

Josh:I think you just know things.

Mike:I just know things.

Josh:I like how the description is sense whether metal is nearby.

Noah:That.

Josh:There's metal nearby.

Josh:Yeah, they do.

Mike:Don't they have those before you get on airplanes?

Mike:... ... ... ... ... ...

Josh:You'd be an excellent metal detector.

Josh:You discern all types of metal.

Josh:You don't have to roll or anything.

Josh:It's not a metal hidden by an illusion.

Tanner:Thank you.

Josh:Well, I mean, like, the actual in-universe use, I think, of detect metal, if you're not, like, a guy who's at a forge, is you're a merchant who learned approximate and detect metal, so you can tell if you're being swindled with copper coins made to look gold, and so that you can count things really quickly, and that's it.

Josh:That's all the magic you learned.

Jorge:you

Josh:Regardless, you don't have to roll anything.

Josh:You detect the type of metal...

Josh:So you would know that this is a specific alloy of copper, gold, and silver, where the gold and silver are in equal quantity.

Josh:The...

Josh:I don't know how much to give you for just casting a cantrip.

Josh:I don't think I can tell you the full, complete properties of the metal.

Josh:You'd have to take some and then do testing on it, but you have some, so you could do that.

Josh:But I think the broad overview is it feels like it has a very, very high conductivity of magical energy compared to perhaps some other metals.

Josh:In that...

Josh:Like, the immediate usage I think divex would come to when looking at this metal would be, oh, if I were to make a wire out of this metal, I could put one end of the wire very far away from me, and then I could stand on the other end of the wire, and I cast a spell on one end, and it'll transfer through the wire to the other end.

Josh:That's kind of what he's figuring all of the piping and stuff in this facility are.

Josh:They are magic condiments.

Josh:They are transmitting magical energy from one side to another.

Josh:It is similar to Palladium, except Palladium requires a consciousness and is wireless.

Josh:This isn't wireless, which is a disadvantage, but it has less loss and it doesn't require a person being at the helm, necessarily.

Mike:Interesting.

Jorge:How many sheets are there?

Josh:So you picked up a roll of 300 meters worth of this metal.

Mike:Hell yeah.

Jorge:Cool.

Jorge:And divex knows the composition, so theoretically we could make this.

Josh:Sure, I mean...

Josh:It'd be like, this is not a material that forge masters and smelters and the like are familiar with in this cycle, so you'd have to do some reverse engineering to figure it out.

Josh:But as you said earlier, you have one of the best mages and one of the best crafters on the planet.

Josh:So I would say it's not unreasonable that with a sample of the material and understanding its properties, you guys could figure out how to reverse engineer it.

Jorge:How many rolls do these people have?

Josh:It's not... What?

Jorge:How many rolls do these people have?

Josh:I will let you get in total 600 meters worth of the material if you go around pickpocketing people.

Noah:you

Jorge:Nope.

Jorge:There you go.

Jorge:Let's go fix the rest.

Josh:It does literally look like a roll of aluminum foil, just copper colored instead of tin colored.

Jorge:You write that down, Davix?

Mike:Oh, yeah.

Josh:The actual, the name of the metal, one second, I can't remember.

Josh:It's Hepatian.

Jorge:Can you type that in the chat?

Noah:Oh, that's the same thing as the Aegiser.

Tanner:making the

Josh:Sure.

Mike:Yeah.

Josh:Yes.

Jorge:Of the what?

Mike:The Biggie River.

Noah:The Aegiser, the new crossbow.

Jorge:Ah.

Noah:The Aegiser.

Josh:It's a real metal.

Josh:Nobody uses it, but it does exist.

Jorge:Does it make good swords?

Josh:No, I think it's extremely fragile.

Noah:Hello.

Josh:Like, it's super malleable to the point that you could forge a sword out of it without heating the sword up at all.

Jorge:uh uh

Josh:Which is cool, except it doesn't work well as a sword anymore.

Josh:Both in-game and in real life.

Josh:Anyway, you have repaired one piece of it.

Josh:Some liquid has flooded back into that, like...

Josh:room-sized thermometer, for lack of a better term.

Josh:There are, as best you can tell tracing through, four individual piping subsystems that are in disrepair that you could fix if you wanted to.

Noah:Let's do it.

Tanner:Keep rolling.

Mike:Yeah, I'd say give it a shot.

Noah:Let's keep fixing stuff.

Josh:Sure.

Josh:So you could roll a crafting check, or you could just shoot it with Angus beef.

Josh:Both would work.

Noah:Josh, I noticed it has this this overflow effect.

Josh:It is active where you currently are, yes.

Noah:Oh, it's active right now?

Noah:Okay, great.

Noah:Because it specifically lists this anticyclic framework.

Josh:Yes, if you are in this area, there is no reload time.

Noah:I will... I will pull it out and go, guys, guess who I am?

Josh:It fires as quickly as you can shoot it.

Josh:And you can use the disruption shot as much as you like.

Noah:I hate vampires.

Tanner:That was Desmond.

Jorge:That was a very good impression of him.

Tanner:That was Desmond.

Josh:Damien will say over the loudspeakers, what's a vampire?

Jorge:Sorry, this is very dry down here.

Noah:Grandson, you're getting older every month.

Jorge:I am losing moisture.

Noah:Who the heck is this dude?

Jorge:Did I... Did I tell you the story?

Josh:I'm sorry.

Josh:If you're not allowed to talk about it, that's fine.

Josh:I wanted to be in on the joke.

Mike:Thank you.

Jorge:Did I tell you the story about when I killed a god?

Josh:I don't know, but... Like, I... I don't believe you, if that helps.

Noah:Oh no, he did.

Noah:It happened.

Noah:My grandson killed a god.

Noah:I feel like you still don't believe us.

Josh:Okay.

Josh:I...

Josh:No, because I'm fairly confident he's old enough to already have dementia, and I don't know if that affects summoning ancestor spirits, like if you guys inherit the dementia.

Jorge:But I told you.

Josh:That's actually been a question.

Josh:Like, did you all die of old age?

Noah:No.

Noah:I was actually caught in a mass disintegrate.

Josh:Okay.

Noah:I wink at everyone.

Noah:It's very high-level magic stuff.

Josh:Oh, that sucks.

Josh:How are you back?

Josh:Like, doesn't your whole body get evaporated from a disintegrate?

Noah:Only people my age would understand.

Josh:How old are you?

Noah:How old are you?

Josh:You know?

Josh:Touche.

Josh:I don't know.

Josh:If I had to guess, like, mid-twenties.

Jorge:I'm 125.

Jorge:Yes.

Josh:That's so old, old man.

Josh:Listen, I am...

Jorge:But now I'm a god with a little g. Um.

Noah:Savok.

Josh:I'm sorry you're caught in this predicament.

Josh:I do think being 125 is not unreasonable for you to start having dementia, but listen, you fought your way through here to get to me.

Josh:So if you say you killed a god, then I believe you killed a god.

Josh:Congrats.

Josh:Which one?

Tanner:Thank you.

Jorge:He had a black hole for a head.

Jorge:He's very old, and he was made.

Josh:I don't know what that is.

Noah:Savok.

Noah:His name was Savok.

Josh:Yeah, I don't know.

Josh:I guess... Is that like a new one or something?

Noah:you

Josh:Did I miss it while we've been underground?

Josh:Did they make new ones?

Jorge:It's okay.

Jorge:We don't have to talk about this now.

Josh:Okay.

Jorge:I also definitely said this to him earlier.

Jorge:I'm just going to keep bringing up... Yeah, I know.

Mike:Well, no, you said it, but you didn't tell him the story.

Jorge:So we're going to keep opening the doors up.

Josh:Okay.

Josh:Okay, so you...

Josh:fix the second broken pipe system.

Josh:Similarly, the red hazmat suit guys are doing what should fix it normally, but there's like this weird bundle of energy that's clogging up the system.

Josh:It is notably kind of explosive.

Josh:Like, the energy is not particularly stable.

Josh:It's super volatile, which is why you can disrupt it just by kind of shooting it.

Josh:But it's not safe.

Josh:You very much have to, like, safety squint.

Josh:Actually, wait, you have goggles, don't you?

Josh:You don't have to safety squint.

Noah:Always have goggles.

Josh:When you clear the second one, there's a huge groaning sound, almost.

Josh:Like, the structure you're in kind of starts moving slightly.

Josh:The armatures that you had pointed out before, Henrik, across the different parts of the terrace, do start moving.

Josh:The conveyor belt is picking up lava, letting it cool down, and then the armatures kind of follow individual chunks of rock.

Josh:And then every once in a while, you watch as a kind of grappling hook almost shoots out from the armature, grabs one of the rocks, saving it from the lava, and pulls it back up.

Josh:And then it just kind of drops it again.

Josh:It doesn't look like it has anywhere to go at that point.

Josh:But you've definitely done another piece of it.

Josh:I would like, at this point, another perception checklist.

Tanner:Yeah, I'm going to do that one.

Noah:Woo!

Josh:If you like.

Josh:You don't have to.

Josh:You could... Oh, never mind.

Josh:Pretty good.

Josh:44.

Josh:Henrik, you know two things.

Josh:The first is, as you begin to restore power to this place, as you wake it up from whatever weird half-state it's been in, it's getting hotter in here.

Josh:It's actually... It's not that it's getting hotter so much as that the source of the heat is getting closer.

Josh:The lava flow that is below you is slowly... It's not a continuous rise.

Josh:It's every time you restore power, it pops up a little more.

Tanner:Okay, we're definitely waking the facility up, guys.

Noah:All right.

Josh:So you've raised it up two increments at this point.

Josh:The other thing is that weird power source energy pseudo-heart thing started to spin.

Tanner:It could get interesting, but I don't think the door's ready to open yet, so we have to keep going.

Jorge:Does the heart look like it changed at all?

Josh:It's spinning.

Jorge:Oh.

Jorge:Keep going, I guess.

Noah:I'll just keep fixing whatever I can fix.

Jorge:I'm going to have Schism take a look at it, actually, really quick.

Mike:Yeah.

Josh:Okay.

Josh:You can bring Schism over to it, and Schism will say, oh, now I can look at it?

Josh:What is it, I can only look at spinning things?

Josh:Sorry, I'm complaining.

Josh:I shouldn't be.

Josh:You're letting me look at it.

Josh:Please?

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Let's get a laugh and be like, man.

Josh:And you can, if you want, you can bring Schism over to it.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Schism will say, yeah, just kind of like drop me on it.

Josh:I'll like stick to it.

Josh:It's fine.

Josh:Contact is best.

Josh:Do you drop him on it?

Jorge:What do I look at?

Jorge:I look at the science guys.

Mike:Yeah, go for it.

Jorge:Drop them.

Josh:Okay, you drop him and he makes contact with the thing as it's spinning and just becomes part of it.

Josh:And now he's slowly rotating around as it's rotating until, say, in your head.

Josh:Oh, this is going to be dizzier than I expected.

Josh:Okay, I'm going to dig into this.

Josh:It might take a minute or two.

Josh:So, you know, just hold on.

Josh:I guess you could.

Josh:I mean, the thing's up to halfway.

Tanner:Oh.

Josh:I don't think you're in danger of breaking anything too much if you keep repairing it.

Josh:I'll shout if something goes wrong.

Jorge:Are you lava-proof?

Josh:I'm very lava resistant.

Josh:It depends on what is the lava.

Josh:Like, if the lava's molten rock, then I'm fine.

Noah:Yeah.

Josh:If the lava's molten something else that has a higher melting point, maybe not.

Jorge:All right.

Jorge:Well, let's... Oh, it's safe for you, little buddy.

Josh:Sure, I mean, if it's not safe, I'll start yelling.

Josh:So... Do you move on to the third one?

Jorge:Cool.

Josh:Okay.

Josh:You move on to the third one, same deal as the other two, clear of the blockage.

Josh:And...

Josh:Once again, lava rises slightly.

Josh:The spinning of the heart gets faster and a little bit off-kilter now that there's an asymmetric weight on the side of it.

Jorge:A little heart.

Josh:It's like you put a really heavy load in a dryer.

Josh:Though it's just shaking around as schism is moved.

Noah:Thank you.

Josh:It bounced around like that.

Tanner:you

Jorge:Imagining the RTD2 noise.

Josh:Yeah, a little bit.

Josh:You got a little bit of the R2-D2 scream going on.

Josh:The bar on the doorframe is filled up to about three quarters of the way.

Josh:There's more sounds of things further into the facility that maybe aren't open to people moving through them, but machinery that is behind the walls that has become more active.

Josh:And you've hit the third part of the construction process here.

Josh:Rock's cool on the conveyor belt, so Grappling Hook goes and picks it up.

Josh:And then the arm cracks it like an egg yolk.

Josh:And most of them, they crack open, it's just rock, and then they drop the rock.

Josh:But you do catch one of them, they crack it open, and the moment of cracking, there is this greenish-yellowish spark, similar almost to that of those blockages that you see in the pipes that you've been clearing out.

Josh:And you watch as the spark just kind of moves from the rock to the heart, and then the remains of the rock are dropped down.

Tanner:Whoa.

Josh:At this point also, Damien will say, oh, okay, okay, okay.

Josh:Okay.

Josh:Good news, bad news.

Josh:Good news.

Josh:Actually, wait, do you guys care which order the good news or the bad news is in?

Jorge:Bad news first.

Mike:Bad news first.

Noah:in person.

Josh:Okay, if you add any more power to this thing, I'm pretty sure you're gonna, like, attract the attention of the things that pulled me in here.

Josh:Because I don't see them anywhere, which means they're in the walls.

Josh:And I...

Josh:You know, I don't know if I necessarily want to call that.

Josh:So good news.

Josh:You have actually restored enough power for me to open up the gate and the bridge and you guys can just go on.

Josh:I like I don't want to see you guys die because if you die, then I don't get rescued.

Josh:So, Pops, if you could, like, I can lift up the gate, I can take the bridge, and then you could go and fetch help.

Josh:And then, like, bring a force back so that it's not just you and your dead ancestors.

Jorge:Um... Son... Son... I... Gonna break it with you.

Josh:I don't want to put you in danger because you didn't volunteer to be in this position in the first place.

Josh:And it will be dangerous.

Jorge:I'll be honest with you.

Jorge:The other side is a risk.

Jorge:Ain't no backup coming.

Jorge:It's just us.

Josh:I mean, if you go and you, like, tell them that there's somebody trapped in a ruin, I'm sure they'd send somebody.

Jorge:They might just... They're greedy bastards.

Jorge:They might come and get you and kill you.

Jorge:to be honest.

Josh:I could pay, I think.

Josh:I don't know where my bag is.

Josh:I'm sure my party members have it.

Josh:But, like, there is money for a bounty.

Jorge:I look at my other family.

Jorge:We got this, right?

Noah:We got this.

Mike:Of course.

Jorge:Pops is going to swing his sword on his back.

Josh:Okay, well, at the very least, I'm going to open the gate and raise the bridge so that if you need to run, you can run, okay?

Jorge:Alright.

Josh:It's not worth you dying, because then all of us are stuck here or dead.

Josh:If you make it out, you can get help, and then none of us are stuck here or dead.

Jorge:Well, technically, I think if I die, my powers get transferred to that.

Josh:Your kid?

Josh:Do you have a kid?

Jorge:I do.

Jorge:Bjergsen, probably if I die...

Josh:Could your kid come in you?

Noah:Only if he dies, that's the way it works.

Josh:Okay, well, I'd rather that that didn't happen.

Josh:You've been a pretty cool old dude, as far as old dudes go.

Jorge:Thanks.

Josh:Okay, listen.

Jorge:Thank you.

Jorge:I am a mythic rank guild member.

Jorge:And we save the world.

Jorge:Isn't that right, fathers?

Noah:Yes.

Mike:Yes.

Josh:I... I don't know what that means.

Josh:Unless they came out with new rankings...

Josh:for mercenaries, but that's fine.

Josh:Okay, um, and you, there's a very loud, um, like, metal-on-metal creaking, scraping sound, and the whole place shakes a little bit, and Damien will say, okay, I raised the gate, I raised the bridge, if you guys go back to that room that you got teleported into in the first place, uh, you can just take the bridge down, and you'll be home free.

Jorge:I really hope those things are escaping.

Josh:They can't leave.

Jorge:Why not?

Noah:Thank you.

Josh:I mean, I know you haven't opened one up, but I've seen them being repaired before.

Josh:They don't have organs or anything like that.

Josh:They don't function outside of the facility.

Jorge:Oh.

Jorge:Hey, Curiosity.

Jorge:Are these weaker things going to help the other things?

Josh:I haven't seen them be aggressive in the past.

Jorge:Have you seen the big things be aggressive?

Josh:Yes, one of them pulled me in here.

Jorge:Besides you, the other things were not being aggressive when that was happening.

Josh:Well, I have to imagine that they would have been aggressive to the rest of my team if they hadn't run.

Jorge:All right.

Jorge:Okay.

Tanner:But not the general workers, just the...

Josh:Yeah, no, it's not...

Josh:If you guys see, like, a bigger, like, a black suit-looking thing, like, I would just run.

Josh:It just doesn't sound worth it, you know?

Josh:But if it's, like, the smaller red suit guys, those are, they just fix stuff.

Jorge:Okay.

Jorge:What are these... Can you describe this black suit a little bit more?

Jorge:Can I do a recall knowledge esoteric on this?

Josh:You can try.

Josh:I...

Jorge:I would just like to remind you I have a feat called Know It All.

Josh:Uh-huh.

Jorge:So having heard every rumor or story in the book...

Josh:What does that get you?

Jorge:You know that if you've heard of... Basically, I get some information on success and I get even more on... Yeah.

Josh:You gain additional information or context.

Josh:When you critically succeed, you may get even more.

Josh:Okay, sure.

Josh:So if you succeed, you'll get more information than you would otherwise get from a recalled knowledge.

Josh:That's fine.

Josh:And this isn't like your... It's a recalled knowledge.

Josh:It's not your...

Josh:whatever your do more damage thing is, right?

Josh:What is that called?

Jorge:exploit vulnerability.

Josh:Yeah, that one.

Jorge:Yeah, it's not that.

Josh:You're not trying to exploit a vulnerability.

Josh:You're just trying to see if you can... That's fine.

Jorge:I'm just trying to see if I know these things.

Josh:Okay.

Josh:Yeah, I'm just saying, like, you can try and recall information about them.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:You definitely cannot give yourself a bonus to your attack before the combat.

Tanner:you

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:40.

Josh:40.

Josh:So...

Josh:The difficult thing about this is you obviously have not encountered these things before.

Josh:What I will say is looking into these guys and looking at the smaller red worker drones, whatever, I mean, it is easy enough.

Josh:You can unzip one to take a peek at what's going on inside.

Jorge:Uh huh.

Josh:They're not people.

Josh:It's like...

Josh:flesh that's been grown around spooled wire on the interior.

Josh:It's just mostly muscle, honestly, to the point that I think this would be most familiar to you as to Morning Light Endless Chasm, the fungal hive mind that you guys saw in...

Jorge:Uh huh.

Josh:in fire.

Josh:In that, this is... this thing is not thinking.

Josh:It's got some actions programmed into it, it's effectively a huge biological if-then statement.

Jorge:They'll probably have healing.

Josh:So it's just going through the motions.

Josh:To the point that you're pretty confident that whatever's going on in there...

Josh:would fix itself because it's mostly redundant.

Josh:Like, if you ripped out some of the musculature, it'll just grow back together.

Josh:You wouldn't be doing damage to the thing as a whole.

Josh:I think you can extrapolate that to the bigger things as well.

Josh:It is unlikely...

Josh:Healing of some kind, or more resistance, generally, to other stuff.

Jorge:Cool.

Noah:Never heard of them.

Josh:I think the biggest takeaway, though, would be these things don't have a mind of their own, but there's definitely room for one, if that makes sense.

Jorge:So the big ones might.

Josh:They could be piloted, at the very least.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Fucking doll is here.

Jorge:This is doll.

Jorge:All right.

Jorge:I will exploit vulnerability on these weak ones.

Jorge:I will at least try.

Josh:On the little guys, 38 is a success.

Jorge:38.

Jorge:Does that succeed?

Noah:Thank you.

Josh:So you would learn that the little guys are, what do you learn?

Josh:You learn it's resistances.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:I think I learned it's highest resistance.

Josh:Okay, one second.

Josh:Its highest resistance is... Its highest resistance is 14 damage resistance to all damage, except force, spirit, vitality, and ghost touch.

Jorge:Okay.

Jorge:Yo.

Jorge:All right.

Jorge:So now that I got it in here, if something else has these resistances, I can swing on it.

Noah:Thank you.

Jorge:Works.

Jorge:Shared vulnerabilities.

Josh:I mean, you have to choose somebody to share it with.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Oh, sorry.

Jorge:No, sorry.

Jorge:I meant sympathetic vulnerabilities.

Josh:Sorry.

Josh:Yes.

Josh:Okay, yes.

Jorge:I meant to say that.

Jorge:If I shh.

Josh:If you find other guys like this and they have the... If they're the same monster type, yes.

Jorge:No.

Jorge:I don't think so.

Josh:By default?

Jorge:I have sympathetic vulnerabilities, which is another feat.

Josh:I know, so it's the same monster type then, isn't it?

Josh:Same pathetic vulnerabilities.

Josh:When you have mortal weakness, your strikes also apply that weakness to any creature that has that weakness.

Josh:So not the exact same monster, any monster that has that same weakness.

Josh:Which is the general type, is how that works.

Josh:Unless you get super lucky and you find a completely unrelated monster with that exact same resistance, which you won't.

Josh:So...

Jorge:OK, but yeah, so if it's like a red dragon, I still get it for fire elementals.

Jorge:OK.

Jorge:Does my share of vulnerabilities work with that, or no?

Josh:I should, unless... I don't... What is its share weakness?

Noah:Hello.

Jorge:Does it work with the sympathetic, is what I'm saying?

Josh:Share weakness... The ally strikes apply the weakness from your mortal weakness the same way your strikes do.

Jorge:Share weakness, yeah.

Josh:So yes, because this is a mortal weakness, so you could share it with somebody if you wanted to.

Jorge:Okay, so.

Jorge:Can I technically share with multiple people with the actions?

Jorge:I can, right?

Jorge:Just normally I can't do that in fights because it's just not efficient.

Josh:Oh wait, sorry, that's resistance, not a vulnerability.

Josh:In order to do mortal weakness, it needs to have a vulnerability.

Josh:I apologize.

Josh:It doesn't have weakness.

Tanner:This is kind of wild.

Josh:So you would have to use your personal antithesis.

Jorge:Okay.

Jorge:So then I can't share.

Josh:Correct?

Jorge:Okay.

Josh:Yes.

Jorge:OK.

Josh:I got them confused, I'm sorry.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:No worries.

Jorge:All right.

Tanner:I need to go.

Josh:Oh.

Noah:Oh.

Jorge:Oh.

Mike:Fair enough.

Tanner:My brother's having a bit of an emergency situation.

Jorge:Oh.

Josh:Okay.

Noah:No worries.

Josh:Do you want us to, like, hold off?

Tanner:I don't know how long I'll be gone, so I'm not really sure.

Tanner:I mean, if you want to have someone pilot me, I assume there's going to be a battle pretty soon.

Noah:We can come up with a 10 or no.

Tanner:Okay.

Josh:Yeah, I mean, I'm fine to just hang out, and then if you can come back, we'll resume.

Mike:Yeah.

Josh:If you can't, you can't.

Noah:Yeah, no worries.

Noah:Everything's okay.

Tanner:Yeah, thank you.

Tanner:Yeah, I'll let you know.

Tanner:All right.

Tanner:I'm sorry, guys.

Jorge:I push Henrik into the lava.

Josh:Yeah.

Mike:Yeah, no problem.

Josh:Henrik immediately burns up and dies.

Noah:He rolls onto his back and floats like a turtle on his shell of many spikes.

Josh:You've got to be careful what you say, because this whole thing's being recorded.

Josh:You could find out at some point in the future.

Jorge:I hope he does.

Jorge:Please, Tanner, please.

Mike:Here's Bowser carcass.

Jorge:Save me.

Noah:Let me get some more water for her back.

Josh:I've been trying to get, or I have gotten OpenAI's Whisper to run on a CPU locally so that I could do some kind of automated transcription.

Jorge:You can run something from OpenAI locally?

Josh:It just doesn't output in a very friendly format, so I need to convert it into something that's more useful.

Josh:Whisper.

Jorge:They gave a wait?

Josh:Yeah.

Josh:I think it's OpenAI.

Mike:You're saying that OpenAI doesn't publish their models?

Mike:It's in the name.

Mike:Oh, yeah.

Mike:This is a couple of years old, which means they

Jorge:Oh, that's why.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:I mean, they last updated it last week.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:But it was originally a before they started making all their money project.

Josh:Oh, probably.

Josh:Gross.

Jorge:Yeah.

Mike:was the commit last week update readme they changed small to turbo model

Josh:Nice.

Josh:Either way, you can get it to run on the CPU and it doesn't take much memory.

Josh:So it's handy.

Josh:It's not super fast in that it took...

Josh:like 30 minutes on a relatively fast CPU to transcribe the four hours of our game for one person, but with all of the silences cut out.

Jorge:Does it not work on GPU?

Josh:So it only ends up being like 20 minutes of audio.

Josh:It's not fast, but I can just run it, you know, overnight.

Josh:It does.

Josh:I just don't have a GPU in my server.

Jorge:OK, so their open source models are Whisper, Jukebox, Clip, and Pointy.

Josh:I don't know what any of those do except for whisper.

Jorge:Neither.

Jorge:Point E looks like this shit looks old.

Jorge:Yeah, it's used for 3D rendering stuff.

Jorge:OK.

Jorge:Whisper is also an older model.

Jorge:Apparently, the Whisper open source is not anywhere.

Jorge:They say it's not different from the API at all.

Josh:Well, that's interesting.

Jorge:So yeah.

Josh:I don't have to pay for it when I run it locally, though.

Jorge:Yeah, this is a thing.

Josh:I mean, obviously I'm not using the largest model.

Josh:I'm using a smaller model, I think.

Jorge:No, that makes a lot of sense.

Jorge:Clip is, yeah.

Josh:It is handy.

Jorge:Jukebox, what is jukebox?

Josh:Does it make music?

Jorge:I assume, right?

Jorge:This is four years old.

Josh:Oh, gross.

Josh:It's ancient history.

Jorge:Yeah, neural net that generates music, including rudimentary singing as raw audio.

Jorge:Yeah, I don't think we're going to end up playing anymore tonight.

Josh:good for them.

Josh:And poor Tanner's brother.

Jorge:Shame.

Jorge:I hope they're all right.

Noah:Oh, God.

Jorge:If they weren't having an emergency, I'd say we should just keep playing.

Jorge:But it feels bad for an emergency.

Josh:Yeah.

Jorge:You're like, something horrible happened, but my friends kept playing.

Josh:I think it's fine.

Josh:Worst comes to worst, we'll do the fight.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:There's going to be a fight.

Josh:I think I've telegraphed that.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:I don't think that's a spoiler.

Mike:Also, we're not listening to this, too.

Jorge:Yeah.

Mike:We're not running.

Mike:I mean, he's like, hey, guys, the area I'm in has the most information about this facility.

Mike:You guys got to run when I get out of here.

Mike:It's like, I think we'd rather kill several things to get information than dip with our new friend.

Jorge:I think we'd rather die than run here like.

Josh:You can leave.

Noah:Good.

Josh:He opened the door.

Josh:You're free to walk away.

Josh:It's not like Savick where you walk in and the door was locked behind you and it's like, whoops, guess we gotta fight.

Jorge:I can't wait to do the Willy Wonka opening with this dude when that door opens where I fake a cane and then I just roll.

Josh:Our hands are tied.

Josh:You could just, you could dip at any point.

Josh:And you just go into a somersault.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:You could do it.

Josh:Do you have a cane?

Noah:We just kept pushing the bit and it just kept getting funnier.

Josh:Are you pretending to use a cane?

Josh:Yeah, I vaguely recalled that from the previous session.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:So, that's fine.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:You know, sometimes you just pretend to be an old man for no reason.

Jorge:The beginning made sense.

Jorge:I don't know why we kept doing it.

Josh:For the bit, I think.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:That's not what this is.

Noah:Oh, what is it?

Josh:Rude, mostly.

Josh:They've discovered, or they had discovered a while back, Jorge is familiar with this, that it is fun to knock the water fountain completely over so that they no longer have anything to drink and my floor gets all wet.

Jorge:Hmm.

Josh:And so I asked them kindly not to do that, and they ignored me.

Josh:So after the fourth or fifth time of them knocking it over, I'm like, okay, you guys suck.

Josh:I'm Velcroing this to the wall.

Josh:You can't knock it over if it's Velcroed to the wall.

Josh:One second.

Josh:I think I have a video of it.

Mike:I'm attempting to knock it over.

Josh:I don't know why he's mortal enemies with the thing that provides him with sustenance.

Josh:But he is.

Josh:He's so mad at it all the time.

Josh:Um...

Josh:And so it's sending.

Josh:I thought that I won.

Josh:Because he tried really hard.

Josh:He could not knock it over.

Josh:It is stuck to that wall.

Jorge:Thank you.

Josh:And so, like, two days ago, I find that instead what he's done is he's ripped the thing that feeds the water up to the top just off of it.

Josh:Like, he's deconstructed the individual pieces, and then he pulled the motor out from underneath it, like the pump.

Josh:And then he ate the pipe that moves the water

Josh:from the uh from the uh base up into the basin that he drinks water out of um and like he didn't actually swallow it so it's fine but his teeth are sharp so he punctured holes in the pipe so it doesn't work anymore

Jorge:It only works if it's 100% full.

Josh:It only works if it's 100% full, which is what I've been doing.

Jorge:So... It's also funny... He did that... He took it all apart when I walked in.

Josh:I contacted the company that makes it and they said, yeah, we can send you a replacement water pipe.

Josh:That's no problem.

Josh:And I said, yes, but he's just going to do the same thing to this one.

Josh:It's an arms race that I'm losing.

Noah:it's a really cool fountain though

Jorge:Like, like before I got there that when I was watching them, like those pieces were scattered across the apartment.

Mike:... ...

Jorge:If only I didn't like, I know you said it was full.

Jorge:And the first time you're like, Oh, last first night I was there.

Jorge:I was like, let me just take it apart.

Jorge:I might as well clean it.

Jorge:And then I had to learn how it worked then to put it back together.

Jorge:And I'm so thankful I did that.

Jorge:Cause I never would have been able to put that back together.

Josh:There are enough weirdly shaped middle pieces in there that he just, like, it's not easy to intuit how it fits together unless it's starting from a constructed shape.

Jorge:Well, okay.

Josh:And now pieces just have holes in them.

Mike:He's just struggling the whole video.

Josh:Yeah!

Noah:Thank you.

Josh:Yeah!

Mike:He's like, what the fuck?

Mike:Why can't I push this?

Josh:I don't know!

Mike:Does he take apart TV remotes?

Mike:Is he just a deconstructor?

Josh:It's just the water fountain.

Josh:It's just the thing that gives him water.

Josh:He's decided he hates it so much.

Jorge:So to be fair, he does look like he's just trying to put his paws on the top.

Mike:I'm going to rewatch that video.

Jorge:And if you got a lower one, it might work.

Jorge:The only reason I say that is because one of my cats, Esty, just needs to have her paw in the water while she drinks.

Jorge:And apparently this is a cat thing.

Jorge:I don't know why she does it.

Jorge:And then her paw is fucking soaked.

Jorge:And then she, like, gets out and just flicks her paw.

Josh:He spills water on himself and he just tracks it across the apartment.

Jorge:And every... And then every time she does it...

Josh:I don't know if I want to encourage that.

Josh:What's going on?

Jorge:Misha, if he's there, he looks with crazy eyes at me.

Jorge:He's like, can you believe this?

Jorge:And Misha's chronically trying to steal every other water source because he hates the foot water.

Josh:Why are they doing that?

Josh:I don't get it.

Josh:And his brother just watches.

Josh:You'd think with two cats that one of them would stop the other one from getting rid of all of the water in the apartment.

Mike:Or double down and help.

Mike:Be like, he's doing the right thing.

Josh:Or double down.

Mike:Yeah.

Josh:He does none of them.

Josh:He just sits there and he watches.

Josh:And I just... He's beaten me.

Josh:He's gonna get a bowl of water and he's gonna spill it everywhere every day.

Jorge:Yeah, that's fucking wild.

Josh:Where is he now?

Jorge:What a wild, wild time.

Noah:He's gone.

Josh:I'll be back in a second.

Josh:I have to check if he's at the water fountain right now because that's his favorite pastime.

Josh:Where are you?

Noah:Oh no.

Jorge:You might be at the water fountain.

Jorge:Dude, it's so nice how all the stock markets are out.

Josh:Oh, no!

Jorge:Sorry.

Jorge:All the US stock markets are up.

Josh:He was not at the water fountain.

Josh:He had stuck his head into the feeder bowl because I didn't realize I didn't have it enough.

Jorge:That's why you said, oh, no.

Josh:It's fine.

Josh:It's closed now.

Josh:They're okay.

Josh:I don't... They don't eat enough.

Josh:That's a weird way of saying that.

Josh:I thought that cats just eat as much food as would be presented to them.

Josh:And they don't do that.

Jorge:I found generally it's the opposite.

Josh:But...

Jorge:I just leave a bowl out and they just graze.

Josh:See, like, the... Right, it goes bad.

Jorge:Besides wet food.

Jorge:Wet food's timed just because it goes bad.

Josh:I, like, looked into automatic wet food feeders, and you can get one for, like, two or three days, but past that, like, it has to be refrigerated.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Don't you have to still open them or something?

Josh:Yeah, you, like, you open it, you open each individual can, you put it into, like, different slots, and then it just kind of rotates in openings so that they can get to a specific one at a certain time, which isn't great.

Jorge:Yeah, that seems like a pain in the ass to clean.

Josh:I think it's more for like if you're going on vacation for a weekend and you still want them to have wet food.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:But they are eating substantially less than like their bag of cat food says that they're supposed to eat.

Josh:Like it recommends a certain amount and they eat a quarter of that.

Josh:But I leave out more food.

Josh:It's not like they're starving and they're just not eating it.

Josh:And I asked a vet and they're like, you know, they just do that.

Josh:But they're growing.

Josh:I don't know where they're getting the material to grow from.

Jorge:Are you also giving them wet food?

Josh:Yeah, like, they have wet food and dry food, but collectively it's not enough.

Josh:Like, they're eating... They each individually eat slightly more than what it recommends a newborn kitten to eat.

Jorge:Gotcha.

Josh:Which is weird to me, but... They each split a can of kitten wet food, and then they get...

Jorge:How much they eat?

Josh:Throughout the day in dry food, three-eighths of a cup.

Jorge:Gotcha.

Jorge:I know when you were gone, they were fucking housing food.

Josh:Maybe they're, like, stress-y or something.

Jorge:They would each... I think they also just played non-stop when you were gone.

Josh:Hmm.

Jorge:But they would each house a wet food can.

Jorge:I thought that's what you told me to give them.

Josh:That is.

Josh:I told that because they hadn't been, like, they hadn't been having wet food.

Jorge:Okay.

Josh:But, like, normally, I take one can and I split it between the two of them.

Josh:And that's, like, enough.

Jorge:Hmm.

Jorge:So what's annoying... There you go.

Jorge:What's annoying about my two cats are if I put two cans down, they won't fucking touch it.

Jorge:They're like, absolutely not.

Jorge:That is gross.

Jorge:If I put one can down, they'll scarf it.

Jorge:And then I put the other can and they'll scarf that.

Jorge:And then I do the same thing at dinner.

Josh:What if you split it, like, is it all on one plate or is it split between two different plates?

Jorge:But if I put two down at the same time, they will not touch it.

Jorge:I've tried both of them.

Josh:They just, it's too much.

Jorge:They won't touch it.

Josh:It's overwhelming.

Jorge:They won't touch it.

Jorge:But they'll also... It's not like they're trying to resource compete with the other one.

Jorge:Because they'll eat like half and then leave the other half for the other cat.

Jorge:They're pretty respectful about that.

Jorge:But like... They're like, fuck no.

Jorge:What am I?

Jorge:A pig?

Josh:Cats aren't pigs?

Jorge:I'm a cat.

Jorge:Canonically.

Mike:Yeah, canonically.

Josh:Yeah.

Josh:Canonically.

Jorge:I'm creating my Pathfinder character for next campaign.

Noah:It's crazy because I was going to go for a gunslinger, summoner, sorcerer, thaumaturge.

Josh:Oh.

Josh:You don't know anything.

Josh:I guess you're just... Have you looked at Exemplar or Animus at all?

Josh:Or are you just going full thaumaturge?

Jorge:No, I think I'm going to try to go in Inventor.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:well listen you gotta look at them because in a year two more are coming out so

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:I'm either probably going to do a Thaumaturge or Inventor.

Jorge:And I also started looking at the other classes.

Jorge:I didn't really look at them too much.

Noah:I was looking at the exemplars.

Jorge:I thought you wanted to play a Wizard next campaign.

Noah:They're pretty cool.

Noah:They're pretty fun.

Noah:I know, but then they came with the exemplar, and I was like, dang, recency bias is my favorite.

Josh:We'll just do Gestalt classes.

Josh:You can play two classes at the same time.

Jorge:Well, didn't you also say you're trying to configure the campaign so we can switch easier?

Noah:Oh, great.

Josh:Yeah, I'm relatively set, I think, at this point on at least the general structure of where you guys are going to be.

Josh:And you'll be in an organization.

Josh:that is mildly fungible in that you will be able to swap characters as you like.

Jorge:Hmm.

Josh:Actually, this is a good time to ask you guys questions.

Josh:So, you're going to be in an organization.

Josh:You will be in an organization in Calaria, which is the country that's in the setting in Færrin, like, twice so far.

Josh:Um...

Josh:Would you guys, and you don't have to agree on this, and it's not set in stone by any means, would you prefer being insiders or outsiders?

Josh:In that, the two possible orgs that I'm thinking about you guys start in are either...

Josh:you are part of a convox that is a member of the Inquisition, in that your convox goes around finding the occult and worshippers of false idols and all of that kind of stuff, and roots out the evil from the church.

Josh:Or would you prefer to be outsiders, unaffiliated, a mercenary company that sometimes takes jobs for Calaria, sometimes finds themselves on, like, the other end of the Calarian government and all that kind of stuff?

Noah:and one sounds a lot more us.

Mike:It does sound very us.

Josh:I figured.

Josh:I know.

Jorge:I wouldn't be mad, though, about being part of the church.

Josh:Well, either way...

Jorge:I could be a disgraced church employee.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Sure.

Josh:That is also an option.

Josh:I was thinking perhaps Split is being a member of the Convox that is where they send all of the misfits and stuff.

Josh:You know how it's a trope in movies where there's in the military the platoon that's full of all the other people who flunked out of the other platoons and stuff?

Jorge:The other guys.

Noah:We're the expendables.

Jorge:I think the latter is the most...

Josh:Yeah.

Josh:Yeah, you could be the Expendables, which is like a third middle option.

Josh:But either way, those all provide an opportunity for you guys to be members of an org that can exist even if your character dies or retires or decides to take a break for a little bit to commune with Amun.

Josh:So, you know.

Josh:The options are available.

Josh:What else?

Jorge:on brand that were outsiders.

Josh:Yeah, that's fair.

Josh:I mean, there are, like, you don't have to be part of the government.

Josh:You guys could be a mercantile that take jobs on behalf of and perhaps against the Cleric government.

Jorge:Or also, potentially, one or more party members could be with the government that's temporarily contracted with the other group.

Josh:That is also true.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:And then, you know... Sure.

Jorge:I just had a whole character themed around being part of that government.

Josh:I mean, it is an option.

Josh:Like, it's not...

Jorge:I have an idea about it.

Josh:Calaria, I mean, you know, I think, effectively nothing about the setting except the very small bits you've been exposed to in the two one-shots.

Josh:So I think it would be difficult for you to have made a character with actual ties to the setting at all.

Jorge:It was going to be basically the strength.

Jorge:It was going to be a strength inventor build.

Jorge:And I was going to theme it as a young Tony Stark that's trying to get his company off the ground.

Jorge:So he's doing contracts with the government to learn about it and all of this.

Jorge:And then he has a really small company that has zero contracts.

Jorge:And that's the whole idea.

Jorge:He's trying to work his way up.

Jorge:And he has a sister, almost like Black Panther-wise, that's working.

Jorge:So that's the character idea.

Jorge:But it can work with both of them.

Jorge:It works with both sets.

Josh:What is Tony Stark's dad?

Josh:Because he was the one that's, like, who starts the company in World War II.

Jorge:Oh, yeah.

Mike:Howard.

Josh:Like, that is just a mapping there.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Oh, you're right.

Josh:Howard Stark.

Jorge:Howard Stark.

Josh:You could be Howard Stark.

Jorge:Yeah, literally, that's what my character's going for.

Josh:Yeah, I mean, that's neat.

Jorge:And he could be on either side.

Josh:I'm down.

Jorge:And then I think it's also funny.

Jorge:It'd also be cool if he had some non-spherical tech, like he just found some tech that explains why he's able to iterate quicker than most people.

Jorge:He has no idea how it works.

Jorge:So it's a little Blue Beetle-ish.

Josh:He could have gotten it out of the scar.

Jorge:But yeah, that's the idea.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Which is a thing that was definitely always planned to be in the setting.

Mike:It's only a nuke, I mean...

Josh:There was a 50-50 shot.

Josh:I mean, I legitimately didn't know if you guys were going to set off the nuke or not.

Josh:And then you did!

Josh:So it's fine.

Noah:Cheers.

Josh:I mean...

Jorge:Is that the same nuke that Mephi gave us in the first campaign?

Josh:It works on the same principles, yeah.

Jorge:Same style?

Jorge:OK.

Jorge:Is that similar to Grim's nuke or different?

Josh:I don't know what you're talking about.

Jorge:When Grim just bombed those Egyptian people?

Josh:Oh, no, Grim just stacked up a bunch of, or not really Grim, Oresk stacked up a bunch of refined beast blood and then just kind of blew it up.

Josh:It is not nearly as sophisticated a bomb as what Mephi had given you or what you guys had detonated at Raelion.

Jorge:Gotcha, gotcha.

Mike:Egyptian?

Jorge:That's it.

Josh:In the Dea Caldera, in the Gulch, that town that was broken, culturally, the people who lived there had an Egyptian flair, I suppose.

Mike:Yeah.

Noah:Oh yeah, we met those shadows of people and then never came back to them.

Mike:And no pyramids.

Noah:They just dipped.

Jorge:They might have died or dips.

Josh:You guys didn't really investigate very far, so I don't think you have a full conclusion on what happened to them, but you can definitively say you haven't met them since.

Jorge:May have been related to Marza.

Jorge:Mom's side had Egyptian sounding names.

Mike:Good.

Jorge:Maybe.

Jorge:I don't know.

Jorge:Too bad for Marza.

Jorge:Unless the shades are there and they're in Beast Town.

Jorge:Fatcock City.

Jorge:If they never left.

Josh:Right.

Josh:Which canonically has existed in every cycle.

Josh:That is the one persistent thing.

Josh:Marzo, in every cycle, decides to make a city, calls it Fat Cock City.

Josh:It's moved locations, it's moved people, but it's always been Marzo.

Jorge:I mean.

Jorge:Oh yeah.

Josh:I'm going to turn off Ballarat Tower Settlement.

Josh:We don't need this right now.

Noah:We always need Bellarat Tower Settlement.

Josh:I can turn back on the Finnish opera singing from The Lighthouse, if you would prefer.

Noah:More Dancing Lion Beasts, Josh.

Josh:Okay.

Jorge:Hello.

Josh:I have that, I think.

Josh:I really like that soundtrack.

Noah:That was a very good soundtrack.

Noah:That was a good fight.

Josh:Where is... There you are.

Josh:The Elden Ring OST only has two modes.

Noah:It's always intense opera in a language.

Josh:It's either really soft, really quiet, or you need to be stressed out.

Josh:You're being attacked right now, and you are going to continue to be for the next hour.

Josh:Oh, there's...

Josh:So I've been like trying to stay relatively thematic with the soundtrack for different parts of the campaign in that I have like most of the standard Western stuff.

Josh:I'm going to make this quieter for me.

Josh:I can't hear myself think.

Josh:most of the standard Western stuff has been using that, like, the jazzy soundtrack for most of it.

Noah:Thank you.

Jorge:Mm-hmm.

Josh:And then when you went into another branch was when most of the Elden Ring stuff came up, another part of the wick.

Josh:And there's a particular soundtrack that plays when you fight people from outside of the sphere.

Josh:But I found a soundtrack I'm going to use for next campaign.

Josh:Actually, I'm just going to play it.

Josh:Let me see if I can find it.

Josh:I just think it's really fun.

Josh:It might be a little too distracting for the most part, but I think it fits the vibe.

Jorge:It won't distract me.

Jorge:He's broken inside.

Josh:It won't distract Jorge, because Jorge doesn't see music.

Josh:I don't know if I would go that far.

Josh:He's broken in his head.

Jorge:He's broken inside.

Josh:That's unfortunate.

Josh:That's fun.

Jorge:I met one of the dumbest people, I think, ever at Google.

Jorge:That's a five.

Jorge:I was trying to help them work on a project that they're doing with internationalization, basically just to get to work with non-English things.

Noah:Thank you.

Jorge:And they're wondering, why does this transformation not work on my data set?

Jorge:And then I was like, oh, you're trying to build 20 new data sets at once.

Jorge:That's your issue.

Jorge:And he's like, oh, all of them are broken.

Jorge:And I was like, oh, did you test any of this?

Jorge:And they're like, nope, I just added 14 transformations at once.

Jorge:And I was like, all right, let me take a look.

Jorge:They were harassing me for days, and I had other more important things.

Jorge:I finally look at it.

Jorge:First transformation they use is labeled filter out non-English data.

Jorge:And I was like, because when I first looked at it three days ago, I was like, oh, you have no training data that's getting filtered out.

Jorge:It's like, I don't know what's happening.

Jorge:And I was like, is this it?

Jorge:And they put me in a group chat with my manager, their manager, and them.

Jorge:And they definitely thought they were doing something.

Jorge:And then I took a look, and I just linked to it in their code.

Jorge:I'm like, do you need this?

Jorge:And they were too stupid to realize I just outright clowned them.

Jorge:They're like, oh, I tried an ablation study by removing that, and it didn't change anything.

Jorge:And then his manager's like, we definitely don't need this.

Jorge:Thanks for taking a look with your time.

Jorge:And I was like, no problem.

Josh:Oh.

Josh:That's unfortunate.

Josh:I don't know.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:How long do you have to be there to be an L5?

Josh:What is that?

Josh:12?

Jorge:It depends.

Jorge:It's mind-boggling, that man.

Jorge:I was like, wow, you're a fucking idiot.

Noah:Jorge, what level are you now?

Noah:Wasn't there a time period where they just, like, kept giving you raises but didn't give you bonuses so you were, like, the highest paid junior engineer in history?

Jorge:I'm like a five.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Yeah, I was a three that had interns and was paid.

Jorge:Honestly, very similar to what I'm getting paid now, which is sad.

Josh:But now you've leveled up.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Yeah, you know, it's fine.

Jorge:It's fine.

Jorge:All I want to do is just leave to a company that will either pay me more and not have just stupidly worse everything else, or

Jorge:be pretty good at everything else and not pay me worse.

Josh:I think you're going to be hard-pressed to find a company that gives you the same hours that Google does, that gives you the same pay that Google does.

Jorge:The thing is, I've been doing a lot more hours recently, but it is definitely not worth it to sign with some of these crazy finance companies where it's like, hey,

Jorge:If you want me to work 50% more time, you're going to need to give me more than 50% more money.

Jorge:But some of them are like, you don't want it?

Jorge:I'm like, no, I don't.

Noah:Jorge, you don't want to work more hours for the same money?

Josh:which

Jorge:No, I want my hourly to go up or stay the same.

Jorge:I don't want it to go down.

Noah:But you could work more hours for the same amount.

Noah:Even more hours.

Jorge:Or even less.

Jorge:For less, I could do that too.

Noah:True.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:I did have a funny meeting with the hedge fund today, though.

Jorge:I was meeting with their research guy.

Jorge:He really liked me.

Jorge:He wants me to build their AI engineering stuff for the researchers to use.

Jorge:And we're making fun of researchers.

Jorge:He's like, we got a lot of PhDs from MIT, Harvard, Stanford.

Jorge:And I was like, oh, so you got a lot of people who don't know how to code.

Jorge:And he laughed so hard.

Jorge:He's like, that's the problem.

Jorge:He's like, they're smart.

Jorge:They don't know how to get anything to work, though.

Jorge:So then I was like, yeah, I do that professionally.

Noah:Thank you.

Jorge:I do that professionally.

Josh:Okay.

Jorge:And they started laughing.

Jorge:And then as we were leaving, he's like, oh, by the way, do you know, like, how are your stats?

Jorge:And I was like, he's like, you probably don't even need to use that, right?

Jorge:Because all large language models.

Jorge:I'm like, yeah.

Jorge:And he's like, what's R squared?

Jorge:And I was like, I've heard that.

Jorge:I used to know it.

Jorge:Kind of blanking.

Jorge:I know it has to do with coefficients.

Jorge:And then he's like, yeah, I'll tell all my guys to not ask you stats questions.

Jorge:And I was like, thank fucking God.

Jorge:He was like, sometimes you interview with quants from other teams, and they like to be dicks.

Jorge:But I'll tell them that you're coming for me, so don't ask them stat questions.

Jorge:I was like, thank you, man.

Jorge:Thanks.

Noah:Oh.

Josh:That wasn't temporary.

Jorge:I thought that was Tanman.

Josh:Sorry.

Josh:I just found the soundtrack that I was looking for.

Josh:I'm going to play it then.

Mike:Oh yeah, Josh, the headhunter got back to me and said that the job opening was not for my firm.

Mike:And I don't think she's telling the truth.

Josh:Oh.

Mike:But I'm talking to her on Wednesday, so we'll figure it out.

Josh:Oh.

Josh:Okay.

Mike:Yeah, so for context, yeah.

Josh:I mean, if you...

Josh:If you think they're lying to you, I don't think I would go forward with them as a recruiter.

Mike:Well...

Mike:That's the thing.

Mike:It's not like I'm applying.

Mike:I want to talk to her because she's like, hey, you applied for this role.

Mike:She emailed me.

Mike:So the context is I saw a role.

Mike:I was like, wow, this is very close to what I do.

Mike:I'm going to apply because the pay range is much higher.

Mike:And then I double checked internally with recruiters we use and we use that firm and no other jobs they have posted look like stuff I do.

Mike:And I'm like, oh, I might have applied for my job just for much higher pay.

Mike:So I sent them a message and then now they've gotten back to me like, hey, there's no phone number on your resume.

Mike:Like.

Mike:Can we get your phone number and talk?

Mike:And I'm like, yeah, but can you confirm that the firm that I applied to, like the job posting is not for my current firm or you haven't sent a resume over?

Mike:And she said, it's not your firm.

Mike:And I'm like.

Mike:Because she said in an email, you know, I'm emailing you about the machine learning research engineer job.

Mike:which is not what the posting was.

Mike:Not the exact verbiage, but it's close enough to where it's kind of plausible it's the same posting.

Mike:I'm going to talk to her on Thursday, and I'm not going to apply unless she discloses the name.

Jorge:Thank you.

Mike:And if she gives me a different job description than the one I applied for, then I know for sure that she's just fucking with me.

Mike:Like, oh, no, no, it's not your firm, but we have this very similar role that's not the same thing that you can apply for.

Mike:a fucking horrific mess.

Josh:Unfortunately, you can't put that cat back in the bag if it is, you know.

Mike:Oh, no.

Josh:Fingers crossed it's not.

Jorge:You can just do it as a joke.

Jorge:You can be like, yeah, I just want more pay.

Jorge:It seems to be what I'm doing.

Mike:Well, I mean, yeah.

Mike:Like, can they even... Are they even going to say anything if they see my resume come through?

Mike:Like...

Mike:Oh, the same thing I'm doing now for significantly more pay?

Mike:I feel like I'm a moron if I don't attempt, like, what's the interview process?

Mike:Hey, can you do this?

Mike:Yeah, I'm currently doing it.

Mike:Literally the exact job description.

Mike:I'm currently doing it.

Mike:And they're like, oh, okay.

Josh:You're currently doing it, but for less money, which makes you a more attractive employee than if you were being paid more money.

Mike:Yeah.

Mike:So we'll see.

Mike:And then I...

Mike:I talked to another guy this morning.

Mike:There's a fucking... There's a bunch of shit.

Mike:To places.

Mike:But work is.

Jorge:I like this song.

Josh:We haven't gotten to the fun part yet.

Mike:Okay.

Josh:It's Esperanto.

Noah:I mean, I don't know.

Josh:They... ...make more music.

Jorge:I'm going to do some experiments.

Jorge:What if we use jukebox to create

Noah:I mean, I don't know.

Noah:I don't know.

Jorge:Aurora Cafe.

Mike:They make more Esperanto music?

Mike:I can't believe Josh found a song in Esperanto, bro.

Josh:What do you mean I found a song?

Josh:I found a whole playlist of songs of a monk chanting Esperanto.

Josh:It's a game that I've been playing, and I'm like, I don't know what language this is in the background.

Mike:Wait, let me find the line.

Noah:Amazing.

Noah:What game is this?

Josh:And I look it up, and they taught a Japanese guy Esperanto and said, okay, now go chant.

Mike:Dada got me speaking Esperanto.

Josh:Oh no, there's not a Dracula flow line for Esperanto.

Mike:There is.

Mike:There's a Dracula flow line for everything.

Jorge:I can't believe.

Noah:No.

Jorge:No, we were playing Lethal Company, and there was a mod that wasn't made by Mike or any of his friends that brings in a TV with just Dracula Flow looped in from YouTube.

Mike:the mods for that game.

Jorge:So there's one TV that lets you just put YouTube in there.

Jorge:There's another one that's literally just for Dracula Flow.

Mike:It's an extension... Yeah.

Jorge:It changed voice lines.

Jorge:from the monsters.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:No.

Mike:Yeah, it's an extension of that mod, except it doesn't let you put any YouTube video.

Josh:It's stupid.

Mike:It just fixes it to the playlist of all the Dracula Flow videos available.

Josh:It's dumb.

Josh:I dislike it.

Mike:We had the radio that you could put in a YouTube URL, and it would download the MP3.

Mike:And I can't remember what I was tormenting people with, but I think I found several things to torment.

Jorge:You're also tormenting us with fitness videos.

Mike:That's right.

Mike:I found a fitness video that I was playing at the ship, and then I also started looking up the sound effects from Lethal Company.

Mike:So it made it sound like there was a jester and shit.

Josh:I think the mod scene kind of died a little bit.

Mike:I would be so down to play Lethal Company again.

Noah:Thank you for your attention.

Josh:There was weird drama.

Mike:What the fuck?

Josh:They shut down the mod servers that I was part of.

Josh:Stuff happened.

Jorge:Oh, yeah.

Josh:It was... I didn't care enough to investigate.

Jorge:I wonder what happened with that.

Jorge:I don't care enough to investigate now.

Mike:There's also that Secret Labs game that came out.

Josh:The SCP?

Josh:Like, next one?

Mike:Yeah.

Josh:I mean, there are a few games in that Fane.

Noah:I think there are a few things I would like you to take a look at.

Josh:There's Pilgrimage, which is like that, but you're walking from one town to another and then being attacked by monsters.

Mike:And weird shit just happens?

Josh:Yeah.

Jorge:There's another, I saw this game, I saw someone playing it, where it was like, you have access to the dark web and you're trying to catch a killer.

Jorge:So there's cycles of you, you also need to hack websites to make money so you can buy stuff.

Jorge:But as you visit these dark web websites, which are very flushed out, there's also just really gross dark web stuff going on.

Jorge:And then when you're visiting them, you'll randomly trigger these different serial killers that are then going to try to kill you.

Jorge:It's like a horror game.

Jorge:I was watching a playthrough, and I just had to stop because watching them go through the fake dark web websites where it's like, this is too much.

Jorge:I don't want to see this.

Mike:It's a very interesting game.

Noah:Bye.

Mike:I saw people trying to speedrun it.

Mike:Which, like, when you watch a game get speedrun, it kind of ruins the experience.

Jorge:Yeah.

Mike:But it is a very, like, you sit on the computer, you click, you, like, buy a Bitcoin miner or whatever you try to do.

Mike:And, like, the more activity you have on these, like, killers start entering your apartment building and trying to kill you.

Mike:So you have to get off the computer and, like, leave and go run in the hallway and then, like, find a place to hide.

Mike:And people will, like, come in, search your room.

Mike:They might hide in your apartment.

Mike:and you just have to figure out how to battle different people that come in or like hide and run from different people that come in yeah

Jorge:And then the police are also trying to go in on you.

Jorge:It's like, yeah.

Josh:It sounds unpleasant.

Jorge:And then like one of them was like the doll face murderer.

Jorge:So like that.

Jorge:And then he like grabs you and he's like, you have to then put this like thing on a woman's door and then he's going to go kill her or something like that.

Noah:Thank you.

Jorge:But if you don't do it, you die.

Jorge:And I was like, I don't want to be a part of this.

Josh:Yeah, sounds unpleasant.

Josh:That doesn't sound like a good gaming experience.

Jorge:No, no, it was just like, I was like, ooh.

Jorge:And then some of the websites are just gross, and I'm like, ugh.

Josh:Unfortunately.

Jorge:Yeah.

Mike:it's can is it can no it's not containment breach there was there's one that i saw just huge lobbies of streamers playing it they had like 50 person lobbies where there's like the scps there's like prisoners in the facility there's guards in the facility and then there's scientists and i think it had like different win conditions depending on what happened like the guards could win but like the prisoners lose or the scps win and uh they're all player characters

Noah:Thank you.

Josh:Yeah, probably.

Jorge:Should we call it?

Noah:Yeah.

Mike:okay to call it

Jorge:Unless he wants us to kill our great-great-grandfather.

Noah:Oh, no.

Josh:Well, it's canon now.

Josh:You said as soon as he signed off that he gets sent into lava, so Henrik is dead.

Josh:He's gonna... He's had a backup character this whole time prepared.

Noah:Oh, God.

Noah:That was pretty awesome.

Josh:It's Schism.

Jorge:Only Lev spreads with him too.

Jorge:You know, I love how Josh asked us if we wanted to be part of the church or like a random mercenary group when he let us build characters and organically we all had convergent evolution to be terrorists for an oppressive government.

Josh:uh on terrorism yeah

Noah:Hey, there is no document where I came from.

Jorge:It took me three iterations.

Jorge:It took him two.

Jorge:And the other guys just rolled with it.

Josh:Well, so, like, of the... Yeah, no, that's fair.

Josh:I mean, I have to ask.

Josh:I thought maybe you wanted a different vibe for the next campaign.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:I mean, it could be a totally different vibe depending on who we all are as characters.

Jorge:So.

Josh:You guys were the establishment the first campaign, so... You founded and then lorded over a city.

Noah:Yeah.

Mike:Were we?

Mike:Oh, we founded an establishment, but like...

Noah:We... We did... We did...

Jorge:Yeah, we were... And they didn't like us.

Josh:Yes.

Josh:So you're the establishment.

Jorge:They didn't like us until we made our own establishment.

Josh:Nobody disliked you.

Josh:Who were your enemies before you started the Phantom?

Noah:Larryl Silverhand specifically spat on us and was like, you all are dumb.

Jorge:Thief.

Noah:I remember it happening.

Josh:Wait, who said that?

Noah:Larryl Silverhand.

Josh:Oh, I don't think that happened.

Noah:Pretty sure it happened.

Josh:Pretty sure that happened.

Noah:Pretty sure she said, hey, I don't like any of you.

Jorge:Thief didn't like us.

Josh:Who didn't like you?

Jorge:Thief.

Josh:Yes.

Josh:One of the seven people running that city said, no, I don't like you.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:And therefore, the whole city hated you.

Josh:And you needed to go off and start your own city.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:Yep.

Jorge:That dude was so lucky his face was anonymous.

Jorge:Because we definitely would have killed him.

Jorge:Because he was literally just like, no, I just don't like him.

Jorge:And we're like, what the fuck?

Josh:See, how would you have reacted if I told you that Thief was actually the plumber the whole time?

Jorge:I would have fucking knew it.

Noah:The mother.

Jorge:I would have fucking knew it.

Josh:tougher story so that he can case the joint where he steals stuff.

Jorge:The two brothers living together in a house.

Josh:Yeah.

Josh:The two brothers live together, obviously.

Josh:Like, even Mario and Luigi don't live together in most iterations in which they have a house.

Jorge:At least we wouldn't charge them for reviving them.

Josh:Like, that's something you just decided on your own.

Jorge:Yeah, yeah.

Jorge:So, you know, we weren't that.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:Thank you.

Jorge:People were just nicer in that campaign.

Josh:People were nicer, but also, you guys didn't burn bridges nearly as much.

Jorge:No one gave us the amount of disrespect that so many PCs gave us in this one.

Josh:Who's given you a lot of disrespect?

Josh:Other than Ashmon.

Jorge:Rector.

Josh:You have a chip on your shoulder about Ashmon.

Josh:Ignore Ashmon.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:People are allowed to be mean to you in life.

Jorge:Lady Grave was actually pretty dope.

Josh:You did betray her literally the first opportunity that came up.

Jorge:She wasn't mean to us.

Jorge:I know.

Jorge:She was actually pretty nice to us.

Jorge:The first broker's guy is kind of a jerk.

Josh:How?

Josh:What did he do?

Josh:He said, I don't like Grave.

Josh:I think you could be useful.

Josh:I will pay you if you do this for me instead of Grave.

Josh:And you said, sure.

Josh:He's a dick.

Josh:And then left.

Josh:I don't think I played him like a dick, to be honest.

Jorge:You know what?

Josh:He was brusque, maybe.

Jorge:I'm looking through this.

Noah:Now that you're saying it like this, Josh, it feels like it was us.

Jorge:You know, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm actually being like, yeah, well, first of all, Marzo liked Grave, but no one else did.

Josh:doesn't really marzo never met grave

Mike:Thank you.

Jorge:He was also never mean to us.

Jorge:No, no, not Grim.

Josh:Grim was only nice to you guys.

Jorge:He liked Grim.

Josh:Grim was exceptionally trusting.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:He was happy to let you guys into what was effectively his inner circle very quickly.

Josh:You guys were on your first mission with him, which was to place a beacon.

Josh:And you're like, okay, instead of that, we're going to go recruit a bunch of gun monks to murder you.

Josh:and the rest of the townsfolk.

Noah:We play as adventurers.

Noah:Next campaign, maybe we'll listen to the cult leader.

Noah:It was scary.

Jorge:That's true.

Josh:This campaign, one of you has become a cult leader, so... Yeah.

Jorge:Okay, so I'm actually thinking about it.

Jorge:The Baron was also nice, but we didn't murder him.

Josh:Yeah.

Josh:But it's been nice.

Josh:Seraphine could have been meaner to you guys, given that you did murder her nephew.

Josh:Like...

Jorge:That woman was justified.

Jorge:She was a scary old vampire.

Jorge:Who other people did we have to kill?

Josh:Did you have to kill?

Josh:I don't know.

Jorge:You know what?

Josh:I understand not liking the first house.

Josh:They've been antagonistic towards you the whole time.

Jorge:Picnic game, they were pretty nice too.

Josh:Picnic King, you guys were not nice to.

Jorge:No, no.

Jorge:They were nice to us though.

Mike:Thank you.

Josh:I wouldn't say nice.

Josh:They did rob a train that you were in it, but then you murdered a bunch of them and they just left.

Josh:And then you followed them and then you murdered a bunch of them again.

Josh:But, you know, that's fine.

Josh:And then you stole the horses and starved them to death.

Jorge:You know what?

Jorge:I really thought...

Jorge:until moments ago that this campaign everyone was just a dick to us but looking back at it i think it was only rector ashwag

Josh:I...

Noah:Thanks.

Josh:Like, I have been pulling my hair out with, like, trying to get you guys allies, like, organizations that have reached out to you that you have been like, yes, okay, we're totally on your side, and then you immediately double-cross them the second you have an opportunity to do so.

Josh:Like, the only reason you're friendly with the broker is specifically because I had to pay you a large sum of money and then introduce a character that was a PC from a previous campaign for you guys to be like, okay, maybe we'll work with you.

Josh:You guys took a Færrin from one town to another that got attacked by pirates.

Noah:Maybe it was us.

Noah:Maybe we were the problem.

Jorge:You know what, guys?

Jorge:We have to work out this for next campaign.

Jorge:I don't know why we became so untrusting.

Noah:Next campaign, Josh, you're going to throw any organization at it.

Noah:Next campaign, any organization will be like, yep, you're the guy.

Noah:We'll work with you.

Josh:You saved them, and then immediately tried to ruin the life of the captain of the ship, who I stand by wasn't at fault for being attacked by pirates.

Josh:Like, that is not a foreseeable circumstance.

Josh:And even if it is, the result of that is not, okay, you were just attacked by pirates.

Josh:Clearly, you should never be on a boat again.

Noah:You know, Josh, we hear what you're saying, and we're taking this feedback to heart for future role-playing.

Josh:That is the problem.

Jorge:Yeah, we are.

Jorge:I will say, though... No, they were actually... Most of those are 100% our fault.

Jorge:But they kind of insulted us.

Jorge:No, most of them didn't insult us first, actually.

Josh:Who insulted you first?

Josh:You guys, you got an in very quickly because you met some friendly people in the trust.

Josh:So Divex became a member of the trust.

Josh:You make your way over to Iliara, the capital where the trust is located.

Josh:You are welcomed in as members and guests.

Josh:And so you break into their facility of dangerous magical artifacts and then debate stealing...

Josh:like, one of the largest consequence swords that they have contained, which would have made an enemy of them.

Josh:And the only reason that you didn't is because you had other more pressing things to do, and then the person that really wanted to do it got vaporized.

Josh:So, like, I cannot think of an instance in which you have approached, completely friendly, another organization, made it through the conversation with them without turning them against you.

Josh:made it to after they've given you the task and successfully completed the task that you did not decide to double-cross them on, and then returned to accept the bounty from them.

Noah:No, no.

Noah:There was that caravan that we said we would escort, and we did our best.

Jorge:We did.

Josh:That's true.

Jorge:That be damned.

Noah:They were attacked by a bird.

Josh:You guys did your best, but they didn't blame you.

Josh:Like, you did not make an enemy that day.

Josh:The caravan leader, the only survivor other from you guys, was more or less like, this has ruined my life.

Josh:I would be dead if not for you guys.

Josh:Thank you for giving me a second opportunity.

Josh:Yes.

Jorge:So, I think for next campaign, Dahl shouldn't be mysteriously there.

Jorge:Because I don't trust anyone because I think Dahl might be there.

Josh:I...

Josh:So the problem is that you think anybody could be called so you're mad at them?

Jorge:I'm lying.

Jorge:I'm lying, Josh.

Jorge:I'm lying.

Josh:So am I telling you that Donald won't be in the third campaign and you can be friendly?

Jorge:I'm lying.

Josh:I can't roleplay a good person because I'm afraid that somebody I'm talking to could be a gay lich.

Noah:The meta knowledge.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:It could happen.

Noah:You admit it.

Noah:You did a thing for Henrik.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:The insinuation there is that all gay liches like all other gay liches, which is, you know, a step above.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:Not Henrik.

Noah:What was the name?

Noah:Brodick.

Josh:Rodak, yeah.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Rodak was just an old man with a bad knee that was like, let me die, and you're all like, no.

Jorge:I will.

Jorge:Yeah, we did.

Mike:Didn't we force him to drink something that makes him 10 years younger?

Josh:You have to stay alive forever.

Noah:Okay.

Josh:Yes, you did.

Mike:Yeah, yeah.

Josh:And then I killed him off in the epilogue before you two could go so that you could be like, and then we forced Rodic to stay alive by polymorphing him into a younger version of himself.

Josh:Just let the man pass away peacefully at the ripe, unnatural age of like 120, given that the average orc lifespan was like 60.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:He was a half orc, so that half was really doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Looking back at it, we did make a lot of bad decisions.

Josh:Anyway.

Josh:You guys have been rude to a lot of people, and then one person was rude to you back, and that justifies retroactively all of the times that you were rude to people beforehand.

Noah:Next campaign, we're going to be really congenial.

Jorge:No, we won't.

Josh:No, you won't.

Jorge:But we'll be better.

Jorge:We'll amass more allies.

Jorge:We definitely need more allies.

Josh:I just, I don't see a world in which the group of people, like, as people, not as characters, see that their enemy is, like, not doing too great, and immediately switch to insulting them.

Josh:Like, without fail.

Jorge:What the problem is, Josh?

Jorge:If you just gave us more money, we would have been nice.

Jorge:Because we were nice in the other campaign once we got money.

Jorge:And we were nice to the broker once he gave us money.

Noah:Thank you.

Josh:I'm just going to repeat what you said back to you.

Jorge:We just need help.

Josh:The problem is, we would have been nicer if you gave us more money.

Josh:Which is not being nice.

Josh:That's extortion.

Mike:But it's true.

Mike:We just kept double-crossing, so we kept piling up that cash.

Josh:Yes!

Josh:You guys work meta, the people playing the characters are somehow exceptionally monetarily motivated.

Josh:Like... It took... You have so many cool things!

Noah:Thank you.

Jorge:He buys cool things, Josh.

Jorge:I want cool things.

Jorge:God.

Josh:It's fine.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:I'm not faulting the way you play.

Josh:What I am faulting is you coming at me saying that all of the NPCs have been mean to us this whole time.

Josh:Because I like- that's slander, is what that is.

Jorge:It's definitely the money because

Jorge:Problem is, every time we see a bigger price tag, we immediately double-cross.

Noah:Thank you.

Jorge:In the old campaign, we were really affluent, so we didn't need to double-cross for petty cash.

Josh:Yes.

Jorge:We were above the problems of lesser people.

Josh:The novice GM made the mistake of giving you like a trillion billion dollars.

Josh:So then you were all, instead of being mean to everyone, were like, I'm going to leave and make my own city.

Josh:Josh, come up with the rules for making a city, please.

Josh:I want that.

Mike:Excuse me for a second.

Josh:I don't want to talk to people.

Josh:I want to hire them.

Josh:I don't want friends.

Josh:I want employees.

Noah:no we had excellence she was kind of our friend we had uh martin i think his name was martin

Josh:And I want denizens that I can lord over.

Josh:Okay, sure.

Jorge:We definitely did not rule over her.

Josh:I made ad NPC.

Josh:You could not direct it your whims.

Jorge:Yep.

Josh:Yeah, you and Martin, the poor shell-shocked PTSD guy you pulled out of the archive that you kind of just led around to do things.

Jorge:Yep.

Noah:Ooh, we gained a wonderful political career, too.

Josh:Yes, you did say, we made this town.

Jorge:Yep.

Josh:We don't want to rule it.

Josh:Here, Martin.

Josh:You can rule it for us.

Josh:You're welcome.

Jorge:We are good friends with water deep people besides Thief.

Josh:You were not good friends with the Waterdeep people.

Josh:You were on friendly terms, I suppose, with Volo, because he was the one that gave you the original campaign starting mission.

Jorge:Yep.

Josh:You were on... Yes, the ghost.

Jorge:Tavern guy.

Jorge:No, no, no, not him.

Jorge:The one with the hole.

Mike:No, but him too.

Josh:Oh, yeah, him too.

Noah:Oh, there was, um, that cat lady that Zugg married.

Josh:Yeah, sure.

Josh:You were friendly with NPCs of no consequence.

Josh:That's fair.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:We were also friendly with the... Doug became good friends with Mage.

Josh:Yes.

Jorge:Yes.

Josh:Although, like, you know, that was an off-screen, hand-wavy friendship, but sure.

Josh:I will give it to you.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Yes.

Josh:The... She was not mean to you, she just didn't immediately give you all of the answers you were looking for upon the first time you met.

Jorge:And she was mean to us, kind of, in the beginning.

Josh:Also, Lycia and Dura were friends.

Noah:Lyra and Dura, both of them became friends.

Josh:Yeah, no, that's fair.

Jorge:And they were kind of mean to us.

Josh:They were, once again, very much not mean to you.

Josh:Were they even sassy?

Noah:Dura was like, anyone vaguely sassy, super mean.

Jorge:We were friends with the lich.

Josh:Lycia, like, taught you a bunch of stuff.

Jorge:We were friends... Yeah, she was.

Noah:They were all sassy.

Josh:I, like... Juro was a little sassy.

Noah:Dura was kind of sassy.

Josh:I'll give that to you.

Jorge:We were friends with the lich from the bottom.

Josh:In the Undermountain.

Noah:Almost.

Josh:Yes.

Josh:Gosh, what was his name?

Jorge:We became friends with Tuesday.

Jorge:The new Tuesday after we killed the other Tuesday.

Josh:Right.

Noah:killed the other.

Josh:And you were friends with Monday for a little bit before you decided to no longer be friends with Monday.

Jorge:Yes.

Noah:I think the exact moment where we went, maybe we should stop being friends with this guy, was when we brought Tuesday to him and he ate Tuesday.

Noah:And we all went...

Josh:Yeah.

Jorge:And then Roderick was like, it was him!

Jorge:Architect, we were friendly with the Architect.

Josh:I definitely...

Jorge:Kind of friendly with the Architect's son.

Jorge:And Dragon, we were friends with both of them.

Josh:Dragon?

Josh:Oh, yeah.

Jorge:Dragon did help us.

Josh:Actual dragon dragon.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Like, the full dragon.

Josh:That's fair.

Jorge:Yep.

Josh:Gosh, you guys need to go on more vehicles.

Josh:I can't introduce all powerful beings to you unless you're on a boat.

Mike:Thank you.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:canonically all fog beings only appear to those on boats.

Josh:Also, we're going to have to do a one-shot to explain how Uriel ended up in Færrin, because that's complex for a bunch of reasons that I have not yet explained to you guys.

Josh:But now I need to clean up the pothole that I made there.

Josh:So we'll do that at some point, which is a good time.

Josh:But you were friendly with Uriel.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Loose, whatever he's going by.

Josh:I have to give him a new name every campaign, I think.

Jorge:What other.

Jorge:Well, if he makes it out of this one.

Josh:No, he... Canonically, he makes it out of this one and makes it into the next one.

Jorge:There's a lighthouse.

Josh:And I know how he does it, but it seems like a plot hole if we don't play through it.

Noah:We did.

Jorge:Okay.

Jorge:What other ones?

Jorge:We were friendly with most people we met in the last campaign.

Jorge:Once we got our money.

Josh:Yeah, once you had the money, you were... You did.

Mike:Bye.

Jorge:Oh, we were also friendly with that lord.

Jorge:We saved him.

Josh:You beat up his wife.

Jorge:In fact, we were so good people, we then became friends with the evil lord, and I guess the evil wife and kids, but we also became friends with the other lord that we saved.

Josh:You did help the two evil devil-contracted lords poison people easier.

Jorge:Here we go.

Jorge:And then we helped... Yeah.

Josh:I know that wasn't on purpose, but you did do that.

Jorge:And then we also helped...

Jorge:No, we did do that on purpose.

Jorge:We just had money at that point, so we were okay being friends with people.

Josh:No, no, no, no, no, no.

Josh:This is before you.

Josh:If you recall, you knew that there was a big feast and they were planning on poisoning the food, and instead you said, hey, how about we spread out the feast across the whole city so that nobody would be around when they poison the food.

Noah:I remember that.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Yeah, but... But...

Noah:That was maybe one of our dumbest ideas as a party ever.

Josh:Yeah, I don't know how you guys came up with that idea, and then all four of you were like, yeah, we should do this.

Josh:We'll do this.

Jorge:But what we did do, though, is we thought they were bad people, got them incarcerated.

Jorge:Then we stole the money.

Jorge:And then we're like, actually, they're not that bad.

Jorge:So then we hid them on the eighth floor.

Jorge:Oh, we were friends with people on the eighth floor.

Josh:Gosh, what was on the eighth floor?

Jorge:Forgot about that.

Noah:Pellark and the druids?

Jorge:Callow.

Mike:Yeah, Calo.

Josh:Oh, right, Callum.

Noah:Right.

Josh:You were friends with the Spike driven into Wednesday.

Noah:Your friend Lee.

Josh:You were friends... You did... Like... You were kind of friends with Pellark.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:You were on and off friends with Pellark.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:We were friends with nice Petlark.

Josh:You were friends with young Pellark.

Josh:You were not friends with old Pellark.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:No, no.

Josh:Old Pellark hated you very much.

Noah:Old.

Noah:Old alternate timeline Pellark.

Josh:Same timeline, Pellark.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:dang real old far future Pellark nah future Jorkin like burned down burned down the village

Josh:It was literally just older Pellark.

Jorge:Wait, so why did he hate us so much?

Jorge:In that case, did we not win?

Josh:The... Well, the...

Jorge:Uh,

Josh:Yeah, the whole loop is... Dorcan is born in the forests outside of Volcantum.

Josh:He does accidentally do a bit of a burn-the-whole-forest-down thing, which is a repeat of a previous massacre of firbolgs that Pellark had witnessed in Callow.

Josh:But obviously Torkin doesn't know that.

Josh:So Pellark is like, it's my job to ruin this kid's life forever to make him suffer now.

Jorge:Thank you.

Josh:Torkin gets time warped all the way back to before Volcantum and all of that kind of stuff.

Josh:He founds Volcantum, he raises the firbolg druids up from Calo to the forest, establishing...

Josh:like, the area that Pelarc will live in, and eventually creating the group of people that will give birth to Dorcan and start the cycle again.

Josh:And it's just kind of a loop there.

Noah:And then Dorcan becomes God.

Noah:Does Dorcan watch that all happen?

Josh:And then Dorcan becomes god.

Josh:So Dorcan... Yes, Dorcan absolutely does witness Dorcan burnt down the forest.

Noah:100% Dorcan.

Josh:His hands are tied, he can't change that.

Jorge:He's ruined.

Jorge:He understands.

Jorge:Some things need to be done for the greater good.

Josh:Well, no, that's not what that means.

Noah:I can picture this.

Mike:Merry Christmas.

Josh:Ruin is not like, oh, we gotta kill people for the greater good.

Josh:Just that, you know, entropy is a natural state of life in general.

Josh:But also because if he stops his younger self from burning down the forest, he ceases to exist because he doesn't get sent back in time to become ruin.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:That's a, you know, classic paradox.

Jorge:Yeah, so...

Jorge:Did you foresee us working with Lady Grave longer?

Josh:Well, I expected you guys would either side with Lady Grave or the network and the broker.

Josh:I think I very clearly offered to you two different paths with two different factions to work with.

Josh:I expected it was possible you might decide to say no and walk away from both.

Josh:I did not expect that you would double-cross both of them.

Josh:I really did think you guys would decide one or the other and then continue down one of their paths or decide you didn't want to get involved with an organization because they didn't match up with your story things.

Jorge:Yeah, well, I think we might be a little more cooperative.

Josh:But to just straight up take their money and dip and then go somewhere completely unrelated was at least mildly unexpected.

Jorge:It depends on... I think the... Yeah, yeah.

Josh:Well, see, the cool thing, if you guys do end up being a mercenary company, is that I can very easily lure you with money.

Josh:Hey, I'd like to hire you for this job, and you here, you're going to pay me money?

Noah:Like.

Josh:What do you need killed?

Josh:And then that's it.

Josh:That's the whole deal.

Jorge:I mean, even in the one shot, Mike and Noah didn't follow the rules of protecting our chancellor, prime minister, even when it was a one shot.

Josh:I gave you guys one line of backstory, which is, this god has handed down a mission to you.

Josh:And you took that and said, eh.

Jorge:Don't say you guys.

Jorge:I tried my damnedest.

Josh:Yes, you're right.

Josh:Johnny Sixfingers and Mr. Lies-A-Lot like, just decided, eh.

Noah:This is the backstory of the mercenary company.

Jorge:We're going to have such a... I can't believe we're just fucking up our next campaign so much.

Josh:Nobody cares about Renge.

Noah:They, in that moment, saw through the power structures and the leaders of this mercenary company are Johnny Sixfingers and Sir Liza Lott.

Josh:Yeah, well, so I have, like... There are, in my head, a few one-shots we could do that could have, like, lasting effects on the world of Færrin that I think would be fun, because then as your actual PCs, you might come across those things and they are relevant.

Josh:I don't mind... I think I've established at this point that I don't mind just completely destroying parts of the campaign setting, because I think that's fun.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Um...

Josh:In that, like, in this campaign, there have been a series of actions you guys could have done at multiple points in the campaign that would have ended the cycle.

Josh:And I would have just gone ahead with it.

Josh:That would have been a complete left turn, but it was possible.

Josh:Still is.

Josh:I don't mind just blowing stuff up.

Josh:You can't do that in a video game.

Josh:You can't do that in D&D or Pathland.

Josh:So...

Josh:If you guys want to nuke a city, there's a chance of that happening.

Josh:And then I'll just have to figure out what happens when you nuke the city.

Josh:And the answer is interesting either way.

Jorge:Yeah, that's fair.

Josh:What's going to suck is when we play another one-shot, which is you are all Raelion operatives sneaking into nuke Calaria at coincidentally the exact same time.

Josh:And so both civilizations are wiped out at the exact same moment.

Mike:Yes.

Mike:Start from scratch.

Mike:We are the campaign.

Josh:I mean, there are, like, rule sets where everybody is a GM at the same time, and it kind of just switches around from one person to the other.

Noah:That's the end.

Jorge:Oh, yeah.

Jorge:I've seen those.

Josh:So if you wanted to do that, I mean, it's a stark departure from the D&D Pathfinder-esque RPG playstyle, but it is possible.

Mike:Lie to people, ask them for shit that they should be insulted that we're asking, hopefully get gold and then leave.

Josh:Yeah, I kind of figured that we would want to lean more into the rules heavy, do some fighting, get some money, see a monster, whatever.

Josh:Instead of like the stars without number, worlds without number, we're all friendly and we're just going to build a little hut together and then make some friends.

Jorge:gross.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Just for fun, I'm going to make it so that the entire sphere of Færrin is communist.

Josh:There's no money.

Josh:They abolished it.

Mike:Time to invent currency.

Jorge:You just made us evil.

Mike:Again.

Mike:Yes.

Jorge:Like, we've seen what happens when we don't get enough money.

Josh:Yeah.

Jorge:If we get zero, we're evil.

Jorge:It's an evil campaign.

Noah:lighting Scale.

Noah:The more money we have, the nicer we are.

Noah:The less money, the easier.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Because then we've got to take things by force.

Mike:Bankrupting the research institute called in Calo.

Josh:I don't remember.

Mike:bankrupting them was probably the largest... I hardly remember any of the events in D&D, so...

Jorge:I think it was just the Institute.

Josh:It might be.

Josh:I'm getting dumber as time goes on.

Josh:I can't remember anything from a few years ago.

Jorge:Really?

Jorge:I could give you a whole recount.

Jorge:I still can't

Josh:Wait, what do you mean in D&D?

Josh:Like, of that whole campaign?

Mike:Yeah, well, especially names.

Mike:Like, if you describe someone, I'm like, oh, that guy.

Mike:But if you're like, oh, Pellark hated you, I'm just like, was that the pope of the church in Calo?

Mike:And then you guys mentioned a couple more things.

Mike:I was like, I remember Pellark.

Mike:I remember, I remember Pellark.

Jorge:I... Yeah.

Josh:No, the Pope was Xanathar.

Mike:Yeah.

Josh:And the... He fucked around in most people's places.

Mike:And we fucked around in his place.

Jorge:I... I still can't believe you guys haven't let... I still can't believe you guys haven't let us rob a bank yet.

Noah:Hmm.

Mike:Yeah.

Jorge:Josh has given us multiple opportunities and multiple banks and multiple D&Ds and no one lets us fucking do it.

Mike:we did we robbed a vault a vault in like the session two see but we won't be but we're not gonna rob a bank because it's not gonna like we need something like a bounty that gets us a lot of money at the end rob like what is robbing a bank get us

Josh:Because he played good characters.

Josh:You did rob a vault.

Josh:Like, I...

Jorge:Yeah, it's not the same thing.

Jorge:I want a bank.

Jorge:I wanted the bank in Sigil.

Jorge:I wanted the bank here.

Jorge:I wanted a bank over in Corbahi.

Jorge:You guys don't like banks.

Josh:You just need to find the flayed corpse of preservation and you get a ton of money and you're fine.

Jorge:That was Mephi that put that, right?

Mike:We could... We could try to rob Tark's wife.

Jorge:Can you say?

Josh:Yeah.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Yeah.

Josh:That was one of his I guess more obvious ploys, just to see if it would happen.

Mike:I forgot her name.

Josh:Oh, I have that.

Josh:See, I told you I'm getting dumber.

Jorge:Yeah.

Mike:Yeah, see, I don't even know her except in relation to events, so... I do remember Turk, yeah.

Josh:I mean, you remember Turk.

Jorge:Which we double-crossed for no reason.

Mike:We did not double-cross.

Josh:Elwynn Lucky.

Mike:We left the bikes.

Mike:Elwynn Lucky.

Mike:Yeah, she has the... probably a more locked-down vault than the fucking bank in, um... Uh... No.

Jorge:Sigil?

Jorge:Oh, the bank?

Mike:Uh... Dairapay, yes.

Josh:It's got good stuff in it, though, let me tell you.

Mike:Her vault seems way more locked down than that vault.

Mike:Oh, I bet it does.

Josh:Like, better than the gong, which you guys did not steal, but did break.

Noah:And once again, thank you.

Mike:Yeah, we broke the gong.

Jorge:You're right.

Jorge:That's not even in the vault.

Josh:Yeah.

Jorge:We definitely need to go into that fucking vault.

Josh:There's good stuff in that one.

Josh:It is hard to get into.

Mike:I like the description of, like, oh, they have people going and doing accounting, like, every three minutes, and they have to be blindfolded and shaken up so they don't know where they are, and then they somehow have to tell where everything is every three minutes.

Mike:There's just, like, circulating rounds of just the most disoriented people ever being like, yeah, there's 87 Fabergé eggs in there.

Mike:Like, that vault is crazy.

Mike:Also, whatever else is in that fucking... I wanted to walk that facility so bad, but it was not optimal.

Mike:The... What was the name of it?

Mike:There's a specific name, but it's where the Elder Council has all their shit.

Jorge:Oh, yeah.

Mike:There's probably such good shit in there.

Mike:You just can't risk it.

Josh:Oh, Khyber Khaist.

Mike:Mm-hmm.

Josh:Which I do.

Josh:I had to, like, I came up with the name of that town and then I had to furiously Google because it felt like it was a slur somehow.

Josh:It's just one of those words.

Josh:I'm like, oh, am I am I being racist accidentally?

Josh:I couldn't find any evidence that it was racist.

Josh:So and nobody said anything when I said it out loud the first time.

Jorge:I feel it I feel it

Josh:So it just Kuiper felt like it could be a slur for somebody, you know.

Noah:yeah me too yep yeah you can't uh you can

Mike:Yeah.

Josh:It's just like I. The word for the thing that Mother of Pearl is made out of.

Josh:It's just, it's like, the material is great, I like the motif, I can't say the word.

Mike:Let me see.

Mike:I could probably see it.

Josh:N-A-C-R-E.

Mike:I guess I can't see it.

Mike:Hmm.

Josh:I can say it out loud.

Josh:I know how it's pronounced.

Mike:It's nay?

Josh:It's N-A-C-R-E.

Noah:Nah.

Mike:I know, but I've seen the phonetic.

Josh:It's like lacquer, but with an M instead of an L.

Mike:It really just sounds like I'm trying to get around some sort of pronunciation rules.

Josh:It's an innocent word.

Josh:But I'm recording myself.

Josh:And I'm planning on running for president someday.

Josh:So... Not if I say that word out loud.

Mike:Thank you.

Noah:I knew it.

Noah:You have my vote.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:There was, there's a story of a politician from like early, I think like 2001, 2002 maybe, who said I also, a word that does not mean what it sounds like at all, but sounds like a slur and it ruined his career.

Josh:Nice.

Jorge:What was the word for?

Jorge:You don't want to say it.

Noah:I'll send the Google search.

Mike:Send the Wikipedia article.

Jorge:Do you want to suggest a word?

Jorge:Oh, yeah.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Oh, yeah.

Josh:Sure.

Josh:Yeah, that's one of those things that you just kind of... don't.

Mike:Yeah.

Jorge:What was the politician?

Jorge:There's a politician.

Noah:I cannot remember his name.

Noah:Let me see.

Jorge:Yeah, you can Google politician after David Howard.

Noah:There you go, David Howard.

Josh:I had him mixed up with David Duke, who is somebody who would say that word, but thinking it meant the other thing.

Noah:Everyone knows.

Jorge:i see an ap article he could have used another word it's like yeah we know i'll use the dc mayor yeah all right i think i would be sending off

Josh:Everyone is aware.

Josh:How dare he?

Josh:the mayor.

Mike:You gotta be the marble.

Josh:What?

Mike:Sure.

Josh:That's fair.

Noah:I will not be here next Monday.

Josh:I will see you all next Monday.

Noah:I can't do next Monday.

Noah:I'm sorry.

Josh:Can you do next week?

Noah:I can do next Wednesday or Thursday.

Josh:I can do Wednesday.

Jorge:I can do Wednesday.

Mike:Wednesday.

Josh:We'll ask Tanner, but we'll aim for Wednesday next week.

Jorge:Sounds good.

Noah:Cool.

Jorge:Who's going to tell Tanner that Divex pushed his character into the lava?

Mike:Uh...

Josh:I will.

Jorge:Cool.

Noah:I think we start next session with that just to keep things shocking.

Josh:It'll be part of the recap.

Jorge:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jorge:Was it just one thing, or did one person do the table and another person pushed?

Josh:I'm pretty confident that...

Josh:Schism and SeRaan got together to be like the table to push him over.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Divex pushed Henrik, but lost his footing because he's an unethical nerd.

Josh:And so they both fell into the lava.

Jorge:All right.

Noah:Oh no, we lost half the party.

Noah:The only single we hadn't lost yet.

Noah:All right.

Josh:Yeah.

Jorge:Good night, gentlemen.

Josh:Alrighty.

Noah:All right, guys.

Josh:Yep.

Josh:See ya.

Mike:Yeah.