For just a moment, things feel almost normal in the gate. The sun still hasn't risen, the Marshall Station hasn't been rebuilt, but it feels like a collective breath being held has finally been released. No company envoy, no arborist in Hellstone, no man in black as far as anyone has seen, and no Adeline, either, who you know to be out on the long, dangerous road to Bell's Landing. What do you do? [Music], the way you do it. [Music], the way you do it. [Music], the way you do it. [Music], the way you do it. [Music] Huge sigh of relief. Finally, she's gone. Wow. You've given us a lot of riddles over the years of doing this podcast, Christine, but everything seems normal. What do you do? It's a pretty rough one. My heart is puzzled yet. That's one that I hadn't, I wasn't prepared for. We were waiting for them. Do you know what they say about the calm before the storm? Yeah. It exists. Sure am. Do you, we just, normal things. Yeah, deliver the mail, I guess. Yeah, have my, my brothel office hours. I don't, I don't do. Your, your, your brothel office hours, yes. Yeah, brothel hours. Hazel, let's start with you. Has your week or so with the road's spin? Uh, it's been, it's been lovely. It hasn't been a hundred percent with them, but I, I think that it's been a lot of horse riding lessons. It's been, uh, I think to lean into sort of that lost being like getting really involved there, I think it's also like, I think Hazel has taken a slightly more active role in the community of the gate as well. Like a lot of times spent with the roads is, but also a lot of time, like, I don't know, help working with the Marshall on like some, you know, getting things back in order, maybe working with, uh, I've forgotten his name, but the new, the wing Dubois replacement as far as head of the buzzer. Thank you. Lazarus able, uh, as far as like helping to organize things. Like the buzzards and their, uh, position in the gate. She's sort of been taking on a little bit more. Like she's always cared about the gate, but usually it was in a like, I will do odd jobs when requested. And now she's being a little, taking a little more initiative and trying to help make this a nicer place to live. All right. Well, we should probably do some downtime actions. Yeah, I guess. This is going to be our last set of downtime actions. Well, we'll see. We'll probably. Well, yeah, I guess we will see. Play to find out what happens. Maybe my entire plan. Play to find out if everything I've been planning for the past three months is going to happen or not. In terms of the playbook, you've maxed out on doom and we'll address that. I think towards the end of this episode. Um, it's not a lot of like playbook maintenance or anything to do here, but. Don't we have a job posse level up? For the last session. We do. We do have a posse level up. So we could like upgrade training or something. If anyone's planning to spend their downtime actions training. You could, uh, you could finally get quality horses. Finally get some quality horses in here. That's so sad. I love horses. Yeah. Well, they're trash horses. Maybe Hazel's been training our horses. Mmm. Someone has a fine horse. Is it Adeline? Probably Adeline. Yarrow, I think has a fine horse. Oh, that is true. Yarrow has a fine horse. I have a fine horse, right? Uh, Adeline also has a fine horse. Oh, okay. What do you want to do for downtime? Um, I mean, I think if, if all seems, if there is no fires currently burning. Then I'm, I mean, I'm going to, I guess it feels silly knowing that this is the last time we're playing Fistful of Darkness to do anything about my grit. Yeah. Are you going to do something about your grit? Well, I was about to, and then I just had that thought. Well, I'll go first. I mean, I think none of them are grit related. I, I think that like, I think that things like cutting loose and indulging vice here are still like narratively worth doing, especially cutting loose, right? This is sort of our last chance to like get these one on one interpersonal scenes before we move into the finale, you know, finalize some beliefs about one another, for instance, especially for the people that you've got, you know, three out of four takes and a belief clock with. It might be nice to use this time to test one of those beliefs. I think we can make something interesting out of some grit roles, even if they don't mechanically matter right now. But Bartholomew, if you want to start since you're not doing anything about your grit, since you've got a bunch of other stuff you need to do. Yeah, I got a lot of stuff I need to do, and a lot, and by a lot, I mean, I have one long-term project I need to fill before we're done with this game. Yeah. Oh, also, I didn't, I forgot to say during my recap, we can cut this. I also got another mutation. How exciting. Oh. Oh. That's right. I like that. Oh. I'm scared. Oh. Um, I got cut -- Tell me about your new mutation. I got cut on the cheek by the Arboressen Hellstone, and it cut down to the bone. But instead of like being a grizzly, like, bloody cut or something that like scarred over, it stayed open. Oh. You can see the bone. Oh, gosh. But there's white light coming from it. That was pulsing in time with Arboressen Hellstone. Shiny bones. Shiny bones. Shiny bones. Shiny bones. Shiny bones. Shiny bones. Shiny bones. Shiny bones. Shiny bones. Shiny bones. Shiny bones. Shiny bones. My favorite magic, the gathering card. Don't get that reference. This is a joke for only Chris. Yep, and I appreciated it very well. Well, if you'd invited Sam to this recording, you would have thought about it too. Anyway. Yes. That's a great name than what it has now. You and I talked in between. Yeah. Given the revelations about Proverbs at the end of the last downtime. Yeah. Your project had previously been called "Aust Proverbs." Would you like to tell us what it's called now? Yeah, I changed its name. I'm still not like positive about this name, but it's as close to what I want as I found. Yeah, I used to say "Aust Proverbs" and how it says reform and replace Proverbs. Nail, nail some words on the old church door. I gotcha. Kind of. I mean, it's mostly just about the view of Proverbs. Like instead of seeing him as like the enemy that we need to like quote unquote defeat. More of like a compassionate, empathetic view of like, well, yeah, freaking sucks to feel the way you feel. You probably shouldn't be in power. Yes, you should not be in power, but we don't need to like other him and make him more upset than he probably already is. We don't need to make him go through his villain arc. I don't want to find out about those sharp teeth and the finale or anything. No, I'm trying to do. Also, boy, revelations about Proverbs is the most like evangelical Christian band I've ever heard of. Okay, so what is, uh, you've got four takes left on this. It's almost certainly going to take you two actions. So what is sort of step, step one here? Yeah, um, step one. I honestly kind of hope it takes me three actions. So I hope I don't hope my role poorly on the first two because I have three actions I want to do for this. Um, but I'll just, I could just fake use my last downtime to. Yeah, do the end if I have to. That's fine. Um, yeah, my first one is actually going to be that I want to actually reach out to Jeremiah again. Mm hmm. About the response that she gave me because she kind of obviously implied in her message that for all confessors, like they don't think it's like black and white for any of them really that it's like, it's not like you are or aren't in control or like the angel demon thing, whatever that is with us is in control or not. Um, and that the other confessors aren't in agreement or as unified as Proverbs maybe wants to imply. So I want to send her a message. I almost said email. Not an email. Strong, a strongly worded. Eight hygrdys fine earthen goods, a borrow a laptop computer. Um, I'm going to send her a letter and I actually just, I want to straight up pretty much tell her like what I've learned. Um, and I want to then kind of ask her to let other people know. Okay. Um, like try to try to build support for what you're doing in the sort of network of confessors beyond the gate. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, what skill do you think this is? Oh shit. [laughter] That's fine. That's actually fine. That's actually fine. No, no, I think that's fine. If it's consort, like I said, I mean, I have three actions, so right. Hopefully between all three of them, I can get this thing filled up. Um, so I mean, I'm fine if it's consort. I don't really, I don't necessarily think, I don't, I mean, I could say it's a sway, but I kind of feel like she's already on the same page, you know? Yeah. I'm not really gonna fight for a sway on this one. I'm okay to, to take a consort. Yeah. This also, this also feel like this action thought of more broadly feels less like persuading her and more just like how strong is that network of confessors that you can draw on through her, right? Yes. Which also feels consort. It does. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not trying to like convince people because it kind of, it's more like, yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You're just trying to see like how much common ground you can find without pushing too hard. Exactly. That they already are thinking. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So one die here unless you want any bonuses. I mean, I guess not because probably shouldn't take just, you know, stigma out right here. Extremely funny to take another stigma doing this. That would be super funny. Um, yeah, no, I'll just go for the one. All right. Let's see it. A two, which is fine. All you need is one take out of this. Yeah, so you're up to three out of six now. I think that part of why this is less effective is just the like speed of communication, right? It is you have to send her a letter and then she has to send letters to the other confessors, right? Right. I think you like, maybe there is more happening beyond what you know of, but like you have sent a letter out into the void essentially and you are not going to hear back about it. You're back about it for a while. Yeah. That's very fair. Okay. Adeline and Tessa, the two of you have just set off for Bell's Landing in pursuit of our good friend, Chance Gladwish, who unfortunately left without you as you were pursuing the man in black. Now, Chris, you joked, and I don't remember if this was recorded out, but you joked at the end of our last session together that we would be playing together among the stars today. A reference to a game that you and Dylan played for the Patreon a while ago at this point. Yeah. That's not true, but it's also not not true. Oh, hell yeah. Okay. Because today we are going to be playing a little hack I've pulled together that I've lovingly called together on the road to Bell's Landing. Oh my God. Let's go. I'll put that in the chat for you all to view the whole year. It is not exactly the same rule set as together among the stars by Takama Okata, which you guys played on Patreon, which was an excellent episode of people looking for something to listen to, $1 on Patreon. Um, but it has the same card-a-draw mechanism. It is, however, unlike together among the stars, not using a standard deck of cards. Today, we're going to be using a deck of covenant cards and covenant, of course, as after our last episode, I think our audience is probably well aware. Is the card game that people on Antares play instead of poker? Um, and there's some cool things about the covenant deck of cards. It has five suits, shots, stones, skulls, snakes, and stars. And instead of being ace through ten Jack Queen King, it has null, which is a zero, it has an ace, it has two through six, and then it has a face card. Uh, so as I read these rules, those are the cards that we will be playing this with. Um, as you all are on the road to Bell's Landing, you're going to be filling a eight-step progress clock. Uh, when you hit eight, you've arrived in Bell's Landing, and we will see what happens then. You'll also be racing against a 12-step consequence clock. Okay, so it's all- That fills- It's together among the stars, and also Excommunicato. Exactly. Hell yeah. Okay. Uh, if the consequence clock fills before you all reach Bell's Landing, or at the same time that you reach Bell's Landing, you will have missed your opportunity to try to stop whatever is happening. You will be too late. Oh shit. Okay. Now what's going to determine how those clocks take up will be a series of obstacles that you all will draw and describe, and then your normal forged in the- your normal fistful of darkness rolls. So, I'm just going to read this document here very quickly for our audience and for you. Um, what's going to happen is that you're going to take turns drawing cards. One player will draw- will describe the obstacle that you both are facing based on the card they drew. The other player will then describe how they attempt to overcome that obstacle and then roll dice in an appropriate skill. On a one to three, no progress is made, and the consequence clock will take by an amount appropriate to the scale of the obstacle, so one to three ticks. On a four to five, you'll make progress, one ticks worth of progress, and take appropriately on the consequence clock. On a six, you'll make progress, and the progress clock will take by one, but there won't be a tick on the consequence clock. And on a critical success, you make significant progress, and the progress clock ticks by two. Um, any of your normal special abilities which might impact the number of dice you roll will apply as normal. And then special abilities that impact things like position or effect might affect how clocks tick when appropriate, so feel free to invoke those as they feel narratively relevant. The obstacles you describe will be based, like I said, on the card that you draw. The suit of the card will determine what type of obstacle it is, and the number of the card will determine the scale of the obstacle. So a two to three is a minor obstacle. Consequences are going to be one tick. A four to six is a standard obstacle, so consequences are two ticks. And then a null, an ace, or a face is a major obstacle. Consequences are going to be three ticks. There's also a list here of what each suit represents, but I figure we can read that out loud as we start drawing those cards. Any questions about how this is going to work? I don't think so. No. Great. It is pretty straightforward. It is exactly halfway between together among the stars and ex-communicado, as you said, Chris. Cool. Extremely, extremely sick. Okay. I'm going to let the two of you decide who wants to draw the first obstacle. Or we can flip a coin. That's kind of fun and flirty. Let's flip a coin. Let's be fun and flirty. Love being fun and flirty. I got to find a quarter. Hold on. Here we go. I got one. All right. Adeline, this is your important narrative beat, so you call heads or tails. Ready? All right. Heads. I dropped the coin behind my nose. I was trying not to hit my microphone with it, and I aired too far. Super fair. All right. You said heads? All right. It is heads. That means, Dylan, you will draw the-- you'll draw the first card. So you can drag that into the middle and then flip it over. This is the four of skulls. So a four means it's going to be a standard obstacle. And skulls stand for supernatural phenomena. Hell beasts, hallucinations, or other Hellstone weirdness. Hmm. So what is the first obstacle that the two of you face on the road to Bell's Landing? I think it would be cool if we happened to ride through an area that's dense with Hellstone, and it causes my fucked up eye to start freaking out. Ooh, okay. Same more. What does that mean? What does that look like? Yeah. So I think in my mind, what the scene is, is maybe where we're going through a canyon or a valley, or valley seems a little bit more appropriate. And it's just-- Canyon is more dramatic, though. Well, it could be a canyon. Is that a fun? All right. Yeah, sure. And I think I start to notice, like, Hellstone isn't in itself supernatural. Well, I mean, I guess it is, but I guess I start to notice it. Okay, so this is going to be a weird pull, but, like, you know how, like, sometimes your eye will get, like, floaters, and it'll just kind of mess with your vision a little bit. Mm-hmm. That same similar kind of sensation happens, but only when Adeline looks up at the walls of this canyon, and it is, like, as we've been, like, progressing through it, it's gotten more and more intense. And I think-- God, I'm trying to figure out what-- So it's a standard consequence. So I want it to be, like, narratively fitting. Yeah, I think Adeline just kind of starts bugging out a little bit, and, like, to the point where she can't properly ride on her horse anymore. Like, she's having trouble keeping her balance. She's having trouble staying the course. Do I need to go deeper than that? No, I think that's great, yeah. Cool, cool. So, Chris, it'll be up to you to describe how you attempt to overcome this obstacle, and then roll the appropriate skill to see how it turns out. Oh. So seeing Adeline freaking out here because of her messed up vision, what does Tessa do? I think Tessa's going to pull, reach under their pack and pull out a hood and take-- Adeline, what's your horse's name again? Maribel. Maribel, take Maribel's reigns and lead the way. Sort of take the lead and give Adeline a hood or a hat or something to allow her to, like, block out her own vision. For as long as it's necessary. Okay, what skill do you think this is? What kind of role do you think this is? Um... It feels like sling, handle a vehicle or a mount. Okay, so the difficulty here is about leading the way through this terrain. Yeah, leading the way through the terrain and leading a horse that I am also not on. Right, okay, so you've got two dice and sling, and I will say, as always, you are welcome to push yourselves. You are welcome to use any skills that you might need. I think with this system probably-- I'm probably helping is okay. Um, I don't know if the devil's bargains make any sense. Sure. Though if I think of a good one, given what you've said, I will certainly offer it. But yeah, feel free to modify this role in terms of number of dice, as usual. Uh, and then we'll roll it and see how it goes. I think I'll just roll this one flat. This was a four. This is a four, yeah. So a possible two ticks. Two ticks. Yeah. We'll start off regular. We'll start off regular and get myself a point of grit back. Okay, that's right. I forgot about your free grit mechanic. It's insane, by the way. Yeah, five. So, on a four to five, you make progress and take appropriately in the consequence clock while I make those ticks. Uh, tell me how this goes. Tell me what a five looks like here. I think it is-- well, it's successful, clearly. We make our way out of this, uh, uh, Hellstone-rich canyon. I think what a consequence here feels appropriate. I think-- Is it about moving more slowly in terms of just, like, taking, like, an abundance of caution here? Yeah, I think it takes a little longer than Tessa would want, and maybe Adeline is left with a little bit of, like, a lingering migraine. Like, the way-- Sure. I don't know if this happens for y'all, but the way that you can get those, like, kind of blind spots. Yeah. In your eye that go along with, like, a migraine. I know exactly what you're talking about, yeah. Less severe than whatever was going on in the canyon, but some lingering effects there. All right. Who else has a downtime action? Um, I do actually have my downtime action, yeah. Wonderful. Let's hear it. Uh, I mean, it's still a-- it's still a great, related thing, but-- Yeah. And it's not the type of cutting loose that you suggested, which would be complete a clock. I think I actually want to cut loose with Hazel. Sure. Because I sort of want to figure out what her deal is. It's a good idea. Yeah. All right. What are you doing? What are you in Hazel doing? To cut loose. I would like to ask Hazel if she'd like to join me for a drink at the nest. And my reason for that is I just want to figure out what's going on with Hazel. And I feel like going to, like, a more, like, Hazel-specific place that I've been to before as, like, uh-- Like, obviously, we've had drinks at the tavern saloon many a time. But I feel like the, like, one time we went to the nest was, like, a thing. So I kind of want to get a read on her. Yeah. Yeah. Can you remind us of your two current beliefs about Hazel? My two current beliefs about the artist formerly known as Hazel were. She's a better person than she thinks she is, and her rougher sides have their uses at times. Hazel, you don't have any grit, right? Because you have her indulged, so you cannot reciprocate this cut loose. But do you want to let us know what your beliefs about Jay are? Yeah. Uh, I've got belief number one was Jay means well, and belief number two was this town would be better off if Jay were really in charge. So you invite Hazel to have a drink with you at the nest? How does this go? Uh, I mean, hopefully it goes well. I don't know. I think Jay's goal here is to try to get, I don't know. I mean, maybe, maybe this is a, I guess it's your decision, whether it's a fortune or not. But I'm wondering if this is sort of like, as a secondary thing to the cut loose is a read roll from Jay. Because Christine, remind me if we, as characters, discovered the double locket. Yes. Yeah, Sherlock Holmes in the case of the double locket. Hazel revealed her locket and then Sidney had the locket that you all found. So as characters, yes, you do know about that. Right. So I think that's other than all the other things. I mean, there's also just like the physical appearance situation. Mm-hmm. Um, but I think especially the locket is really, really bothers Jay. Sure. Like, I mean, you know, like the fact that she looks different or she looks not like as weathered, you could, you could, that could be explained potentially as some sort of Hellstone mutation or something like that. But the double locket thing seems real concerning. So I think Jay's goal here, which is not like, devious is just like out of concern is like, is this really Hazel and what does it mean to be Hazel and who? Asking the real philosophical question. What does it mean to be Hazel? What does it mean to be Hazel? Sort of the ship, the ship of Hazy is what's going on here. The ship of Hazel. Um, yeah. I think that seems like a reasonable thing to do a fortune roll with Reed on. I don't think there's any inherent risk here. Cool. Would you say I'm speaking on behalf of a look? No, I wouldn't. I'm the community I want to know too. Yeah. Andrew is speaking on behalf of the local community. Look, maybe the listeners. But Jay is not, unfortunately. Damn. Okay. Uh, then I will roll this fortune roll. I have three in Reed. So it will be three dice. It's a two, three and a two. Um, fuck. I'm sorry listeners. I'll let you down. I will offer you here. And I've done this before when you've rolled a fortune roll that it felt worth giving you the answer to. And then you rolled badly. Um, you see when you fucked up. This exact thing has happened before. Uh, it's almost like whenever you try to gather information, this happens. Um, I will, I will offer to let you make this roll again and make it risky. I'll take it. All right. Would you like any bonus dice? I'll hear devil's bargain. Actually, you know what? Fuck you. I'll push myself. Who cares? I got to know it right now. And I'm about to clear. And you're at least one of it. Done. Oh, we have fun here. Um, all right. So that is, uh, risky standard. One bonus die. There's a five. Good thing I took that bonus die. Two, three, one, five. Hmm, yeah. Um, okay. I'm going to bring this consequence up in a bit, but first I want to answer this question for you. So I guess to sort of frame this, how is Jay, what is Jay looking for? How is she doing this? What are her particular concerns and how is she sort of trying to get this information? I mean, Jay's like concerned that she doesn't really believe, but is like the nagging concern is like this isn't really hazel. It is some duplicate of hazel, either knowing or unknowing some sort of strange health stone man in black construction. Uh, some kind of crazy, uh, annihilation situation. Right. Yeah. I think the way that she's trying to go about it is, I mean, not that this would necessarily work on the annihilation alien, but like, just trying to sort of like question her, not like, quiz her on like, what would the real hazel say? Yeah. Say something, only the real hazel would know. Yeah. But like, that's the kind of, I mean, that's why she's doing, that's why she's meeting her at the nest. Yeah. And is trying to like, see if this hazel like remembers the same things in the same ways that Jay remembers them from the past, however much time it's been that they've been working together. Sure. And then secondarily would be also trying to get any additional information. Like, see if there's anything that she, that hazel can remember about the like pivotal moment of the confrontation with, uh, uh, Delmar Hassel. But I imagine since I've rolled a five on this, my second roll of this, I will not be getting my secondary goal fulfilled. Well, a five on a risky roll is a complete success. It's just a success with a consequence. So I could reduce the effect or I could give you a totally different consequence. And you could have full effect here. Yeah. Yeah. I think a couple of things here that you get and Chris at any point feel free to step in and contribute or contradict what I'm going to say. Especially about, for instance, what hazel remembers around all of that. Yeah. Um, I think that is sort of on you in terms of like how open hazel is with sharing all of that. I think that like, does hazel know anything beyond what we've seen on screen? Probably not. Yeah. My, my gut is no, but yeah, maybe something you'll say will change my mind about that. Who knows? I think Jay, that there are two important pieces of information that you glean over the course of this evening. Maybe it's three. I think for this, there are three levels to it. I think is really what it is. Right. First level. This hazel in terms of what she remembers, in terms of how she comports herself, in terms of what it feels like to be around her, seems to be for all intents and purposes, the hazel that you knew. That there are not lapses in her memory or things that she remembers differently than how you might expect that would signal to you that she is not the person that you know. That's level one. Right. Level two is that despite that, at no point can you shake the feeling that there is a difference. Right, and maybe it's just this locket issue sort of nagging at the back of your mind. Maybe it's that you really can't, even though you think you could rationally explain it away as mutation or whatever, maybe it's that you just can't get past the fact that she looks different. Right. I mean, I do think that that's not that not to jump on any particular thing. I do think that's a big thing because if the hypothesis is she's some sort of double, like the fact that she doesn't have the evidence of the time that she had spent existing is a real thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that like, does she have the scar plus tattoo? The tattoo? Yes. Scar. No. What the fuck? Which is weird because a tattoo is just a scar. And I think especially with the memory thing, right, you could very easily say she is missing that that period of memory for nefarious reasons, right? You could also very easily say she almost died or did die. Amnesia seems like a reasonable thing, right? Yeah. I think the third reason that you cannot quite shake the feeling that something is not quite right is I think that especially coming off of being in such close proximity to the man in black, and you mentioned it in your question, right? Like, is she some sort of weird man in black kind of thing? There's a feeling of similarity there that you can't quite wrap your head around. And maybe it's just all the sort of weird Hellstone stuff she's got going on now, right? It's very difficult to like place that firmly either way. And so I think despite the fact that for all intents and purposes, she seems identical to the hazel you knew, you cannot shake the feeling that she's different. And then the third level to that, which I think is probably something that probably only comes to Jay at like the end of the night, right? You finish your drinks, you put your hats back on, you're headed home, you're saying goodbye. I think the thing that Jay finds herself thinking is, does it matter if she is? And what Jay's conclusion to that is, is up to you, not to me, but I think that like the parting feeling that you get at the end of this evening is a sense of, maybe that question is less important than you thought it was when you set out to do this. And listeners, that's a real fuck you directly to you from Christine, the crit. Maybe you don't deserve to know. No, it's not that at all, but here's the thing, do I know what hazel is and what happened to her? Did Chris make a deliberate decision in our game of an amnesis to say, it doesn't matter, I'm hazel. Yes. And am I honoring that decision on Chris's part? Absolutely. Okay, so just sort of passing the buck over to Chris. That's fine. Yeah. It's okay. We can find out. I'm the one who said fuck you to the audience. It was me. We'll find out on the post word of it's fine. Yeah. Email your post word and questions to us. I'm also curious about that in all honesty, but narratively, though, that's good. Yeah. The only thing I would add to that, because again, there's elements here that I also don't know is that just to kind of echo what Christine already said, hazel in personality is the same. Especially given the time now, I think there was a period of shakiness, but now that she's used to being back, I don't think that there is any like notable change in how she's carrying herself, how she's acting, anything like that. Yeah. I also, I think that the other thing that's important here and maybe annihilation isn't the best touch point for this because part of the point of annihilation, right, is that there is no malice behind it. There's no purpose. There's no, you know, driving force behind what the annihilation clone is doing. I wrote a whole academic paper about that. It's fine. Yeah. So listeners, you understand why my suspicion was annihilation. When Christine was like, Hazel, you have two of the same rocket and you look slightly different. I'm like, oh, so it's another. Yeah. So it's just so we're doing an annihilation. I think the important bit, right, is that like whether or not something like that is true, J absolutely gets no sense of like malice or like subterfuge or like being around Hazel feels like being with your friend. It doesn't feel like there's something sort of nefarious happening in the background or anything like that, right? Okay. Um, do you want to make your cut loose roll? Oh, yeah. I guess so. It's a five, five and a fours and you can now write a new belief about Hazel and take your clock up to three. Ooh, what if I decided that I believe about Hazel now? That's on you, buddy. Okay, my new belief is metaphysical concerns aside, I can trust this Hazel just as I have in the past. Uh, Hazel, speaking of? Yeah. Downtown actions. Sure is. Uh, I'm going to cut loose so I can overindulge again and I'll be in the finale and not be in the finale. Later. Um, I mean you suckers to deal with whatever comes next. I've seen what's coming and I want no part of it. Chris has seen what's going on. I have a long-term project that I started a while ago. You do. And then I think... So long ago. I'm even looking at the wrong character sheet for it. Yup. I think that... I'm going to transfer that over. Uh, it's a four-step clock, then I'll put one tick in a called info about Earth. Aw. Uh, and I think the parameters of this project have changed slightly. Sure. And how does pivoting, uh, an unfinished long-term project into maybe something slightly different but along the same route? How does that sit with UGM? Yeah, I think that seems reasonable. I mean, the work you did there was pretty preliminary and broad strokes. So I think that, uh, probably whatever it is, will still be useful to whatever you're pivoting to here. Yeah. And I think I'm going to pivot it from info about Earth to info about family. And I think Hazel wants to work with AE Haggerty to, like, AE Haggerty, I know that, uh, we had communication back and forth from Earth with Sydney earlier as well. And I think Hazel wants to see if she can't track down any info about her family, whether any of them are still alive, what the, the circumstances with them on Earth right now might be. Yeah. I think that seems reasonable. AE Haggerty, good guy to go to, has some pretty good communication back to Earth through his various networks and routes. What are you rolling here? And what is the, like, pitch that Hazel makes to Haggerty to get this help? Boy, that's a good question. Um, right. I'm not playing Tess anymore. My interpersonal skills are garbage. Um, hmm, how, how trustworthy is a Haggerty? Great questions. Um, AE Haggerty has not explicitly done anything to gain your mistrust. Mm hmm. As far as you know. Yeah. No, I mean, like, genuinely, I don't think he, I don't think you would have any, like, any reason not to trust him. I think Jay's the person who's had the most interaction with him and, and Jay, he's been a pretty all around useful resource for you, right? For the most part here. Yeah. I mean, he's a salesman. Yeah. And, you know, his, his store has three words on it and I, one of those seems to be accurate. One of them is definitely true. One of them seems probably true based on the content and one of them's definitely not true. And it goes in reverse order of, of the words. Yeah. Fine. Earth and goods. Fine. No. Earth and probably goods. Yeah. Definitely. Sure. Why not? Definitely. Good. Good. Good. Good. Um, they're definitely girds. They're definitely girds. I think it's about AE Haggerty. He does do. He does do. And girds. Fern. Earth and girds. Um, I gen, I mean, genuinely like, I think when he first arrived, there was some, a little bit of like, what is he doing here? How does he, I mean, the first thing he got gave Jay was like a bottle of like genuinely nice Earth champagne. Um, so like he does, one, he does seem legitimately connected. It is unclear what those connections are and what like, what various like, strings come with those connections, right? Yeah. Um, but he has not at any point, I mean, he's a salesman salesman for sure, but he's not at any point been like outwardly suspicious in any way or outwardly deceitful. The reason I was asking is what jumped into my head is I am familiar with an organization that is looking to travel to and from Earth out of strictly the, the company's hands. That is true. And that seems like the kind of thing that Mr. Haggerty might be interested in. But I don't know that I like now that I've been filled in on clarinet town and what they're up to. So that I want to like rat them out if Haggerty is, you know, more of an opportunist than I'd be aware of. And so it sounds like I maybe don't know. Yeah. I would say, I mean, you could always give me a read roll to decide. Or you could ask the opinion of one of your posse members who might know him better. Yeah, I might. I might. Maybe that's, maybe I bring this up while we're, uh, while we're at, while I'm having drinks with Jay. Smart. Jay's temperature, because I know that Jay has spent some more time with, uh, with Haggerty than I have. Do you ask the specific question or the general, like, are you asking about, or are you asking about the clarinet town angle? I think it would behoove me to ask the specific question. Maybe the general first and then lead into the specific, if the answer to the general seems good. Exactly. So I guess what is the, is the form of the general question, can he be trusted or what, what is it? Let's move the character. I think it's maybe the best thing to do here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ask the question as Hazel. So I'm, I'm trying to look into some things back on earth and I know Haggerty is a little more plugged into channels are getting to and from, I was hoping to use him to send some messages, get some information, that kind of thing. But I know he's, uh, uh, some of a mercenary fella and I don't know that I have much to offer, you know, to make it worth his while. Do you think, because I know them folks in, uh, in clarinet town are working on getting their network to and from earth, up and running. Do you think that, and it, it, it occurs to me that Haggerty would probably be interested in a way of circumventing the company and getting, getting his things to and from without needing to go through their channels. But I don't want to throw the folks in clarinet town under the bus if he's not as trustworthy as I would like him to be. And I want to know what your temperature on that is. Well, that's, uh, that's a complicated question, uh, yeah. My first instinct is to, uh, is to protect clarinet town at all costs, uh, to be honest with you, Hazel, I, I, uh, I mean, I, I imagine you would know better than, better than anyone else that clarinet town, while they can defend themselves, they are still in a very precarious position. I mean, from, from here in your story, sounds like it was from, for them, it was, it was pretty touch and go there. I mean, they, they, they managed and luckily they didn't have to deal with Hazel McCalla at her, uh, full commitment, uh, but, you know, the, the graveyard gang even, even plus you is, is nothing compared to what the company would bring. If they knew they were out there and, and what they were trying to do. And that's, uh, it's a pretty serious concern. I don't see Mr. Hagerty as a, as a company man in, in any sense, but I, I do think that his loyalty to any one person or any one ideal is maybe outweighed by his interest in, in profit. I, I can't tell you what to do, but I, I would, I wouldn't give him any information about clarinet town unless they asked you to. I mean, personally, I, I wouldn't even ask them if I could. I would, I wouldn't say a word unless they specifically told me to start spreading that word. Or it's not that I mistrust and mistrust Mr. Hagerty. It's that I, uh, I think what what's going on in a clarinet town is a little too precarious to be using his leverage in a third party situation. I know that that leaves you with, with not necessarily having a route for, for getting what you want. But, uh, I don't know what to tell you about that. I mean, I'd, I'd rather go back to the drawing board than risk messing up what they're going on, doing over there and bringing the company down on their head. So I appreciate that. I appreciate that very much, Jay. I'm, I'm glad to hear you say that. Now I have to think of something else. You got any money? Nope. Y'all took my money. Oh, right. I've got, okay. I've got a, I've got a, however much will get hold in my wallet. I've got a full, full pockets of coin. You got, you got three coin and one hellstone. That is not an insignificant amount of money. I guess that's fair. Yeah. Coin, coin, am abstraction. I'll, I'll bribe a hagrity. Yeah. How much are you bribing him with? Two coin. Here's what I'll say. Damn. Mm hmm. Bribing him with a dispatch song from 2004. Loneliness, your lips and the two coins of your eyes into my mouth. Yes. What a joy to have someone get and like, and one up my, my dispatch joke was a big dispatch fan back in high school. Yeah. Weren't we all? And we all, I mean, you and me. We were not all. Here's what I'll say. I also have terrible news. The album Bang Bang is from 1997. Oh, wow. That's almost as old as us. It was reissue 2004 so you know what, that was pretty good. What I will say is I won't make you roll a stat here. Instead, I will let you roll dice equal to the number of coin that you are bright. I like that. I'll, I'm going to use two good, I think I'll stick with two and I like what you're doing a lot. Thanks. All right. Fortune two dice. Can I push myself? Sure. I'll push myself. Three dice. You had to get a Chris Roland here. Good job. Oh my god. Oh my god. Right before we stop rolling dice, we got to get one more. Jesus. Oh my god. You had to tell the audience what you're old Chris. I rolled that three-dive fortune roll and I got a one. I got another one and I got a third one. Holy shit. I don't know if I've ever seen three ones in a row like this on Roll 20. Oh my god. I'm screenshotting this. Yeah. Yeah. Don't worry. Yeah. All right. Well, you get one tick here. Jesus. And what I will say is that I already agrees for two coin. Of course, happy to have a favor for a friend. Oh my god. Your friend of Jay's is a friend of mine. Communication back to earth does take a pretty long time though and there are, you know, there are ways to accelerate it. Of course, there always are. Money will buy you a lot. I don't quite have the capacity to pull on those opportunities right now. If you were to perhaps help me out with the price of that expedience, I'd be happy to help. But in the meantime, I will get started on this for you and hopefully it won't take more than a couple of months. Give him another coin. I assume that's what you want. Well, we can find out. Yeah. Well, no, I'm just giving you an option for more ways of pursuing this to try to fill the rest of your clock. But for now, actually, I do think the book says you can pay a coin to upgrade a result on a long-term project. So in fact, you could pay him more coin and get a second take here. I'll wait on that because I don't have much else that I want to do with my downtime. So I was going to do this for my second action also, figuring it would take me more than one. You can always pay that extra coin to take a third action if you don't fill it next time. Yeah. And this can be what that is. Okay. Holy shit. Chris, would you like to draw our next card? I would love to. We've got the six of skulls. Oh boy. More skulls. Oh man. Okay. So more health stone, more supernatural phenomena, hell beasts, hallucinations, or other health stone weirdness. And again, this is a standard obstacle. As we come out of this canyon, I will sorry. I will also, just in terms of what the journey of bell landing looks like, obviously much more dangerous without a buzzer guy and without the sun. It also, it takes, what, it takes like 12 hours by train. So this is like a probably close to a week's long journey on his back. Okay. So like feel free to like have to make camp and that kind of stuff in terms of the scale of the journey that we're looking at. I think that's it. I think we, we make it through that canyon and that's the night that we both left, ruins gate. And I think at that point, we settle in for at least a few hours of rest until the sun, well, no, the sun won't be rising, so that ignore that thing I just said. But a few hours of rest and we get random encountered during our camping. And I think it's one of the, it's fading and it is, it is perhaps, I don't know if dying would be the right word. But it's one of those bear Tars from the mother of bones, big skeleton. But it's just, it's like the back half of the horse half is like collapsing. It is, it is fading. It is no long, like whatever the mother of bones power that was animating her followers is, is gone, is gone, but it's there and it stumbles across our campsite and we are woken into a final fantasy random encounter. Love this. Yeah. Yeah. This is great. Question about the scale. Is the reason that this like falling apart monster, right? Not a minor obstacle. Is it because it's taken you by surprise? Is it what's the like sort of active inherent, like, or is it just still really dangerous, even though it's falling apart? I think it's a combination to do. It's, we are caught by surprise. I think that like two folks in the ruin are not just in the wilderness, but like still not ever on, you know, the front foot. Right. And I think it's also just like it's still very dangerous. Like it is a, it's a bear tar and even though it's weakened, it's maybe, maybe that's it. Maybe it is, it is weakened, but like there's almost like a survival instinct kicking in and it is more feral and more aggressive. Sure. At a line. Yeah. How do you attempt to overcome this obstacle? Probably just got to shoot it, honestly. Shoot it with your gun. Now that's interesting because we've just talked about the impact to your vision and to us to your aim that you're dealing with right now. Yeah. It's, it is something, isn't it? And damn. Yeah. Silver bullets is potency. Not. Yeah. I think narratively that I think that the potency is letting you have the upper hand in this fight narratively, but I don't know that mechanically it's going to help you out here. You're also, you also currently have a level two harm, which is an additional minus one die. Right. From last arc, you did not take any downtime in between the end of the arc and leaving. So you are at a disadvantage here. Yeah. Oh, shit. Yeah. Trying not to get trampled by the men in black, unfortunately, um, so you're it. I would say minus two dice to try to shoot this thing. That's like the thing. That's the thing I'm good at. And this is what happens when you run off into danger without taking downtime, you know? Yeah. I know. Um, all right. You can always push yourself. You can always get help. You can always. I probably need help, but, um, let me, hmm. What is the skill that is, um, associated with like laying a trap? Is that please tell me that's not like craft or something. That is hunt. I believe. Okay. I have. Uh, hunt a target, gather information about its location and movements, find a trailer left behind, attack with precision, um, oh, maybe it's not. I mean, I think hunt makes sense here. I think disable also feels like laying a trap, probably one of those two. Okay. Yeah. That's probably not going to happen. Um, yeah, I feel like it would still have to be slaying just because that's what I have the most. Yeah. Um, do you ever get angry at yourself for committing too much to the character? Um, Dylan, it only brings me joy when you commit too hard to the character. Well, I know you're happy. When I commit to the character, I'm asking if you're ever upset at yourself for committing to the character. Okay. Here's what I'm going to do. I also can't really push myself because I have six great, um, you can push yourself once. I can put. I'm going to hell. Thanks. Christine. I'm going to hell. Thank you, Chris. Help. It sounds like. Thank you, Tessa. Tessa, how are you helping? That's a great question in it. Um, I'm going to run interference. I'm going to run around trying to draw this thing's attention, uh, firing ineffective pot shots off at it to try to let Adeline line up her shot. All right. Sounds good. You've got one. Do you want to read us your belief about Adeline? Yeah. Buh-buh-buh, my belief is Adeline's the most interesting person in this backwater. Sounds good. All right. So that'll cancel out one of your minus ones, giving you two dice on this roll, unless you also want to push yourself or something. And Tessa Mark one grit. Done. Um, yeah. You know what? I'll, I'll push myself for, yeah, I'll push myself. Okay. So two grit for you and a flat three dice link roll. It's a four, a four, a three and a two on a four, you make progress and take appropriately on the consequence clock, bringing us up to two on the progress clock and four on the consequence clock. Scary. Um, Sydney, what would you like to do for your first downtime action? Well, I think it would be smart to go out into the world and relieve some, some stress. Yeah. So we, this is a fun conversation we get to have now because you don't currently have a vice. Everybody has a vice. Well, you're going to, I, I, in big letters on your character sheet, it says here, new vice because you were, your vice was obsession and you've sort of shaken off that obsession. So what is Sydney's new? Sure it does. Vice. Um, I think Sydney's new vice might be public service. Is that? Oh, I mean, that's basically what Jay's is. So I think that's perfectly allowed. What does Jay call theirs community, I think, do a little, a little recon obligation, obligation parentheses, community, no, it sounds heavier. Um, I mean, I can look at, on one hand, we can look at the book and we can see what the suggestions are for different vices. On the other hand, I think that like, there's been a significant amount of character development for Sydney in the past, in a recent, very recent past. And I think that if theoretically she wanted something a little more positive as a way to, you know, indulge her time and blow off steam, I think that seems reasonable. Obligation is fine. I'll just put obligation, okay, public service. Okay. So you'd, but you, I think that means you do feel obligated to do it in some way. Yes. Repentance. Maybe that's about a... Repentance. Sure. Yeah. I think that seems fair. Um, public service, are you undertaking during this period of sort of relative peace in Ruins Gate? I think that what Sydney is gonna do is gather up all of the active health stone that she's aware of and ride it out into the ruin and bury it or something. Okay. Interesting. Let's talk about this. Mm-hmm. Because I think there one are gonna be some people in town who are not happy to see their health stone go. Yeah. And for two, um, I think the miners go might have something to say about this. And for three, I do, I think that like, we've talked maybe a little bit about, um, I don't know if the guys that talked about this, right? Um, the health stone tends to like power a bunch of stuff, right? Yeah. Certainly health stone powered generators and machines in this town. So like where are you drawing the line here for what you are, what you are taking and disposing of? And also health stone worth a lot of money. So I don't know that a lot of people would see this as public service for Sydney. It reminds me of this as a tangent, but I used to play, I used to play, I played Animal Crossing on the GameCube many moons ago, and I didn't know as a kid that fossils if you hadn't like fossils were worth money, if the museum couldn't take them, they threw away so many of them. Oh, no. Um, so he's like, wait, you guys are using this for more than his weird experiment? You guys are making money off of this? Um, you guys are getting paid? I feel like that's a good question. And that's why I feel like this is a good offshoot of obsession in that now we're going to go into kind of like a, I don't want to say holier than now, but, um, sure, maybe a little overly enlightened, um, sure evangelical type of swing. So I don't know that I exactly know where the line is. I think Sydney would start with like, do we know of any pieces nearby that could just quietly disappear? Um, I mean, the posse certainly has some in storage. You could start with that. Yikes. Cool. I'm going to be really popular, but maybe, maybe that's, that's what I do. Just, you know, maybe people or I guess I already took all of my stuff. So yeah, communal stuff is next. Um, so I guess my question that is, are you seeing the act of public service as protecting the people of ruins gate from the influence of Hellstone? Yes. Okay. Let's see how this goes for Sydney. Do you want to give me a, uh, an indulged vice role? Sure. And that is a five, which brings you down to what one grit. So good. So you feel great about this then. It was the right decision. I think we can all agree, right? I feel that if we were recording this with the whole group, there would be a whole lot of outrage from the peanut gallery that we're not getting in this, which is great. Let's take a moment of silence and imagine them all. Yeah. Hmm. Let's imagine Andrew getting really indignant. Yeah. Okay. Moments passed. Okay. So you're, you're writing this out into the ruin. Are you just like dumping it back in a mine? Are you just leaving it somewhere? How are you disposing of it? Um, I don't want to go in a mine. Maybe we. Down a mine shaft. A mine shaft. I mean, if there's a mine shaft nearby, that would be there. Many mine shafts do. I think. Oh, sure. Let's do that then. Okay. Do I have a shovel? I could just dig a hole. Yeah. Very sure. Then if Andrew is really upset later, I could go dig it back up. Um, yeah, absolutely. And useful item. Have a shovel, dig a hole, bury some health stone, feeling great about yourself. Easy. Easy peasy. Yeah. Something that could go wrong here. Yeah. Um, alright. Oh, I'm glad that went so well. Yeah, that went great. Um, Bartholomew, let's do your second action here. And then I want to jump into the writer event and also the consequence of Jay's mixed success from earlier, but we're going to save that for now. Oh, God. Um, Bartholomew, what is step two for you on working on this long term project? Um, step two is going to be, um, to talk to Corner, Second Kings, um, yeah, I used my little knucklebone to talk to them. Again, I want to tell them everything that I have seen and discovered. Um, but also more importantly. I want to talk to them about Proverbs, sure, because I know that Proverbs has gone to him before, and I never actually found out like what they, you know, what kind of conversations we had, what was the mood. I'm looking for advice on how to approach this, basically advice on how to approach the Proverbs. Yes. Got it. Yeah. Okay. Um, this is going to tune because we're going through the conduit of Lamentations in Second Kings. Oh, I hope so. Great. Um, it better be. Um, I also want to like add in there too, like, I'm, I would be very clear. Well, I'm clear, who knows what Lamentations the same thing is. I would be clear in my intentions to Coroner, like I want him to know what the plan is, and to also know that like, I can use his help, right, and, and belief, um, and support, you know. Yeah. Great. All right. Three dice. Oh, whoops. Six. That's going to fill this clock, which I think makes sense here. Okay. Right. Because I think what this means is that like, everything is in place. Um, I think that with the, the legwork that you've done with establishing your, again, we've been calling it a cult, right? But like, your group gaining public support from the religious members of the gate, including at this point, like not explicitly, but like habeas grace was at one of your meetings. Yeah. Right. Um, and not in a like, I'm going to write about how awful this is kind of way, like genuinely trying to like, right, get a sense of what is going on here. You've laid that groundwork through Jeremiah. You've got general support from at least a portion of the other confessors, corner second kings, I think will come to ruins gate to help you if you want after this conversation, right? Oh my God. Not permanently. Not long term. Um, he quite likes being a hermit out in the ruin, um, but like, yeah, you need help. He'll be there. I wrote a note that said, of course he can go back and lift his best hairment life once we're finished. And that's exactly what he will do. But yeah, if you need backup, he's got, he's got your back. Oh my gosh. Like, I think that the pieces are in place and like, and he will give you some advice and talk to you about Proverbs and we can talk about all of the details of that in a minute. Um, I think there's a third, there's a, there's a, I guess it's the fourth at this point. There's one other thing here that I think is happening in this conversation between you through lamentations to second Kings and through second Kings to corner, right? Right. Which is that I think it does not feel like that. Okay. I think that this conversation, unlike when you've done it in the past, you've kind of been like, okay, Lamentations, ask them this, right? I think you perceive this as having a conversation in your mind with second Kings. Oh. And I think that you don't notice that it is strange and different until you've finished having this conversation and gone to like, get up and do whatever it is you were going to do next. I think that in this moment, you realize that you are feeling a connectedness with Lamentations that you have not fully felt before. Hmm. I think that for a moment here, as you were doing this, acting through Lamentations doesn't feel like sort of bridging a gap and having like this other being that shares your body do something for you. It feels the same way that moving your hand to pick up a glass would feel. Wow. In terms of what corner can give you about Proverbs here, I think that his sense of Proverbs having met with him is a little bit of a sense of. There is a desperation behind Proverbs's actions, right? He acts and he makes decisions from a place of desperation and fear. Right. I think, and I think with a six here, right, filling this long term project, I think the sense that you get is like the attempt to, you know, being put into a position of power, the attempt to solve his problems by leading the church in a direction that he thought would solve his problems hasn't worked. I think the sense that you get talking through all of this with Professor Second Kings is that it might even be a relief for him to step down. Yeah, that's big. I think the sense that you leave this conversation with is like, it won't take a lot of convincing, right? The hard part is done. The work is done. The rest is a formality. Love that, love that for me, love that for the town, love that for Proverbs, love that for Proverbs, Jay, what brings you down to the hideout in the course of this few days? I would say assisting with the new preparation since we should, we're going to spend our posse advancement on getting the secure upgrade for the hideout. Well, unfortunately, you've told me that too late and other clocks have filled that were in motion and writer events have been rolled. Because as you go down to start preparing, to start securing, right, there's some general concern in the air, Sydney went into the secret escape tunnel. Have I spent the XP yet before this happens? No. Quickly pivot to weapons as whatever is down here versus the ugly head. I think this makes sense to try to secure things. Sydney went into the secret tunnel and there was a weird Arboresn't Hellstone incursion. Maybe it would be best to be a little more careful about the whole hideout and all of that. I think this makes sense. You descend the ladder down into the hideout. When somebody is sitting in one of the chairs at the table in your hideout, a familiar face sitting down here, familiar for the most part except the last time you saw it about half of said face was covered by quite a large bandage and now instead is covered by a kind of simple leather eye patch and a bit of a scar as Egress Stanton says, "Hello there." I shoot her with my gun. Little sling. I draw my fine concealed pump pistols, what I meant to say, and ready to shoot if completely necessary. She nods to her own gun, which is currently also aimed in your direction. All right. Well, little does she know I leveled up and took all of Dylan's moves. I'm spending the posse level up on giving all of us all of Dylan's moves. That's a cool one. I can't believe we didn't take that upgrade earlier. Yeah, it was kind of embarrassing that we didn't realize it. Yeah. I mean, it would have been a little rude to upstage Dylan until Adeline wasn't here anymore. Because it does say Dylan specifically, you can't do it for anyone. Yeah, you can do it anyway. Yeah. All right. Well, just Stanton. How's everything been, Mayor? Peachy. Can't complain. Two jail breaks in a year. Not a bad record. All things considered. That's true. Now that you're here, I've got a couple of requests and we'll start out with the easiest one. I need to talk to Hazel. All right. Think I can arrange that. Glad to hear it. And what's the next thing? Well, why don't we start there and we'll address the rest when we get to it. All right. Well, she's not here, so we're going to need to go find her. She like holds both her hands up, gun in one hand, no longer pointed at you. And she says, I'll wait here. No, I don't think you will. I think you'll live up to your name and find the exit and I'll follow behind and we'll go find Hazel. How about that? Give me a, give me a roll here. Was this a sway, a command? I think it's a command. All right. That's a risky standard. Oh, and a quick before I roll, I say, and I think I speak for all of us when I say, go fuck yourself. Oh, last. No. Okay. Do you want any bonuses? You got a devil's bargain? Yeah, yeah, I do have a devil's bargain. You guys got anything valuable down here? No. Why did you ask? Like, I mean, of course I was going to say no, in that context. No, we don't. Pause, he's got one health stone, which I imagine is being stored down here. You know what else is stored down here? What? Look at guns. A bunch of health stone guns. Okay. I mean, okay. Well, then you know I'm not taking this. I'm not taking this. I'm not taking this devil's bargain. You fucking kidding me? Of course not. Okay. Risky standard? Risky standard. Five. Five? On a risky five, you do it, but there's a consequence. You suffer harm. A complication occurs. You've reduced effect. Do you end up in a desperate position? I think a complication will occur. She gets up. Holsters her gun, follows you up with a ladder to go find Hazel. So you're not going to tell me what the complication is that occurs so I can't resist it? Oh, I guess I should let you resist it, huh? Yeah. I mean, that's sort of part of the game. Yeah. Part of the game that my character is good at, which is why I'm okay with not rolling as good sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. There are two other members of the graveyard gang who could feasibly get in through the secret entrance that she got in through while you are away, offering backup to her when you all return. I wasn't planning on returning. Um, well, I don't know that there's a way I can resist that, actually, is the problem. I mean, not returning, right? Not returning would resist that consequence, right? Angling such that you have the rest of this interaction elsewhere would certainly resist the consequence. Okay. And that's what I'm going to do. Wits, I think. They're all even for you, so it doesn't matter, but... Oh, that's true, right, because I have extra wits. There's a six, a one, a six, a three, and a three, no grit. This feels personal at this point. The fact that people are rolling successes and your good numbers, yes. Yeah. Don't forget that Andrew did roll a two, a three, and a two earlier. And Bartholomew did roll a two earlier, so everyone's failed. That's fair. That's fair. I mean, no one else has rolled three ones on three dice in the history of time. Right, but... All right. You guys going to find Hazel? Yeah. Before we finding you, where is this conversation going to take place? Um... Why, in the taverns? No. Um... Just upstairs. Just upstairs. I think you find Hazel, as you exit the tavern saloon, you sort of find Hazel in the town square. She's riding back into town on Freddie and leading. Is it Honey, your horse, Andrew? Yes. Leading Honey, coming back from another horse riding lesson with Aster. As you are riding back into town, you see Mayor J accompanied by a newly eye-patched egress Stanton, who you have not seen alive yet since, uh, since that day. Only a pretty normal conversation going to happen, uh... And she does like a cute little wave when she sees you. One of those like wiggling her fingers kind of waves. I swing down out of, uh, Freddie's saddle and I think Hazel just sort of like leans back against Freddie's side and sort of cocks an eyebrow and waits to hear what egress has to say. Nice to see you alive too. Glad the people of, uh, Claret Town had patience for you, I suppose. Look, I'm just here to ask a favor and then I'll be out of your hair. Last time you asked me a favor, things went pretty sideways. I'm looking for Delmar. That long silence is... in character. Yeah. And what makes you think I'd be able to find him? Last person to see him alive? Seemed like the right person to go to. That's a funny way you have a put in that. Aw, so I take it he didn't check back in with, uh, the rest of your gang after he dumped me in a shallow grave then. She shakes her head, but given you managed to crawl back out seems reasonable to expect he might have done the same. God. I think that at the sort of long pause here, she sighs a little bit and she says, "Look, I don't expect you to know exactly where he is. I'm asking because I genuinely don't know who else to ask. But if you don't want to help, you don't know me anything. At this point, that's your prerogative. If you don't help, I'm going to stick around and make your life." And she points at Jay, "Uh, all your friends' lives as miserable as I possibly can. It's up to you, ultimately." Oh, and you put it that considerably. Uh, Hazel sort of sigh and pinch the bridge of her nose and say, "I don't have a clue where he might be." And that's as honest as I've ever been. But I can take you out to where I last saw him. That'd be a start. Beyond that, I don't know how much help I can be, but I can, I can do that much. All right. I think we don't need to deal with this right now. I think probably in between now and the finale makes sense. All right. Do you want to-- Oh, I was going to-- Oh, go ahead. I was going to try to come up with a real quick way to deal with it, which is do some sort of flashback in order to have some way to signal newly reminted Marshall Valve Bishop to come up and just sort of clean up this situation real fast. [laughter] I can't act. But I guess we can turn this into more content, no, Christine. No, it's okay. All your-- I won't kill your favorite character with your other character. All right. All right. All right. Adeline, you want to draw the next card? Yes. All right. The next card is-- The Four of Stones. All right. I can tell without zooming in because the card is red. Perfect. Okay. So stones are natural phenomena, landslides, quicksand-- sorry, landslides, quicksand, steep cliffs, hellstone rain, a broken bridge, et cetera. And again, this is a standard obstacle. So we're still in the canyon, right? I think you've gotten out of the canyon at the-- We're out of the canyon. Okay. You were camping after-- was that right, Chris? Yes. Yes. Okay. Cool, cool. And also, like, we're thinking a journey of about a week, and you've got eight progress ticks, so, like, they shouldn't all be on day one. Mm-hmm. That's fair. Okay, cool. We're now in today, too. And the days don't have to matter, because one is no sun, so we can't tell, and two, we're in just full montage mode. Mm-hmm. Because my first thought was like, "Ah, it'd be really cool if there was, like, a flood in this canyon." We can still be in the canyon. We can still do. My nonsense about us having left the canyon can be gone. We could have just left the-- The hellstoney. The particularly hellstoney section of it. Yeah. Works for me. That's cool. With everyone involved. There's a bit of a flood that we need to-- and we need to get to higher ground, essentially. Does this come on super suddenly? I think there's, like, the flood is-- Yeah, I think rain's on Antares, right? We've seen some particularly notable rain on Antares. You see, that's what I was thinking. So I think it kind of-- it's like one of those sudden thunderstorms where it just, like, goes from, like, a drizzle to, "Oh, shit, it is now pouring." Mm-hmm. And I think it is with such immediacy and such force that the thought from, "Oh, we should maybe get to higher ground," to, "Oh, shit, this is, like, you know, we are in immediate danger." It's, like, very sudden. Okay. Tessa, how are we dealing with this obstacle? How are you attempting to overcome this? This feels like one that a lot of my interpersonal skills are not gonna be super helpful for. I promise one of the categories is-- two of the categories do involve people. We just haven't drawn well for your interpersonal skills. That's all good. Um... I was a-- you've got a three-die skill that I think, "Well, no, that's a-- no, yeah." Yeah, that's the problem, right? I'm just mixing up a read-in survey here, right? Yeah. Survey-- if I had three dots in survey, I'd be in ecstasy, but it's not how this one is shaping out so far. Yeah. I think that-- I think it does have to be survey. I think that I've got a-- it's just a matter of, like, real quick. Take the lay of the land, find-- maybe there's a small cave in the wall of this canyon, not something that's gonna, like, lead into a hellstone mind, but just, like, a depression that we can get the horses to and-- and wait out the storm. Mm-hmm. So, again, this is a standard obstacle? Yeah. You've got one die in survey, which is like a bonus. Good deal. Bonus dice. I think I'm gonna-- I will also offer a devil's bargain here. Please. I will give you an extra die if you're both willing to make a mutation roll as you go further into a cave that may have some hellstone in it. Dun-deedo. I'm down. All right. One die each on this mutation roll. Cool. Uh, roll fortune, one die, a two. What does that mean? I don't know that I've done a lot of this as-- It's-- Nothing happens on a two. You were good to go. Hell yeah. At a line. A three. Also nothing. You're very lucky. Cool. All right. Uh, nothing happened lucky you. The chart says. Um, okay. So that buys you an extra die here. Um, do you want any other bonuses or anything like that? Um, I think I'll push myself. All right. What does that look like? That's not a grit to spare. Uh, I think it's just-- I look really hard. Um, what does pushing myself in the circumstance look like? That's a good question. Maybe there's a little bit of-- maybe it's-- I spot a likely opening, but there's been like a small like rock slide that's partially covered the entrance to this cave. So we have to kind of shove some stuff out of the way and work a little bit to make this work. All right. So survey two bonus dice. And two bonus dice. A five. One of four and a five on a five. Once again, you make progress and take appropriately on the consequence clock. You're up to three now on progress and six halfway on consequence. You all got to start either roll, either drawing some lower cards or rolling some higher dice. Thanks, Christine. You just just do an approach it here. Have you tried drawing like lower cards? Have you tried rolling higher dice? Of course. Let me grab my horseshoes and four leaf glovers so we can-- It is funny that we do have the notoriously worst roller on the podcast playing the character who has a move about how lucky they are. See, the magic of tabletop role playing games means that we can live out roles that we're not typically accustomed to. It's so good to be me and every time it's so good to be me. Who's up next? Who's got downtime actions? To me. Could be you. Everyone's got one left, I think, at this point. I've done two. Yeah. What even are downtime actions? What even are downtime actions? You want to acquire an asset? I mean, like, I was genuinely thinking about that, but I'm like, I don't like-- that's not going to-- that doesn't do anything. Yeah. For me. I think we can also hear like, start long-term projects that might continue into the time jump between now and the finale. We can-- Okay. We can-- I mean, you know, situations will change given the fourth rider arriving, but like, we can still set stuff up that will be ongoing. Also, if you just like have a character you want to have a conversation with, it doesn't have to be a mechanical action necessarily. There are options beyond just the list of actions, I think, that we can think about. I think I'm more interested in like, narratively, what are your characters doing during this time? Weird lull of relative peace. What are your priorities? Where are you putting your energy? I mean, I think that you got to say post-egressed in encounter. I think we definitely need to secure the party. I think that seems reasonable. Like I'm-- I'm taking those boxes now and clearing the posse in face, man. All right. Hideout secured. I could go-- I could go talk to Proverbs. Let me just take the drink of water first. Yeah. I think that yeah, Bartholomew just has to go do it. Yeah. Are you going alone? Is anyone coming with you? No, I think I'm going alone. Okay. I think this is something that needs to be like a personal conversation, not like a-- I'm bringing my backup to gang up on you. Right. It's not that sort of vibe. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I actually think maybe I don't go to find him. Okay. I think maybe I would ask him to come-- to come for tea. Sure. At my apartment. A lovely little repeated image of the first time we saw you talking to him. Yeah. Yeah. And not in a way of like, you know, we're on my turf vibes, like in a nice, like this is personal, this is not-- we're not sitting in the church. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I would just invite him over for tea with my little bird and me. Okay. Now it's a nursery rhyme. I feel like I've really missed the opportunity to have my bird sit on my antlers. So I really want to have that in the last downtime. Damn. So true. Yeah. So I really do need my bird to be sitting on my antlers. Yeah. I do think I established a few episodes ago that it does hang from things like a bat. So I think it is hanging from your antlers rather than perched atop them. Honestly, even better. Even better. Still good. Yeah. I know this is unusual to ask you to come to me, but I thought we needed to have a more personal conversation than any of the other conversations we've had before. I want to be honest with you, so I hope that you'll be honest with me, too. So that's something we could agree to. I just not even didn't say anything as if that was going to communicate. That's real. He nods. I don't say anything. I think that's fair. I don't know how much you've heard about the most recent pilgrimage, but a lot happened down there and a lot has happened since we've all come back. And something strange happened when I saw you for the first time, after I came back. I'm not sure if it's anything you might have noticed, if it's something you've felt before too, but I saw you and I, well, I felt your fear. I felt your disgust and despair, your loneliness. And I felt that you don't think what happened to you, what happened to us, could possibly be God. And I'm not saying I don't agree with you. I do agree with you. We are not the work of the God we were taught to praise. I think that seems fairly clear. But I do feel certain that this is something, there is something divine in this. And I don't just mean in me. I mean in you, in all of us that have been through what we've been through. And I know we are not exactly the same, but I felt a different sort of fear too when I realized what I had become before I was nothing but complacent. So after I became other, before you feared being prey, and so you became predator. But in our fears made concrete, we've been given a choice. Somewhere along the way, we seem to have forgotten that Lucifer was once an angel. And if there's one thing I feel certain of is that there is something sacred in what we've become, if we choose it, does that make sense? I think that through most of what you have been saying here, he has been kind of shaking his head a little bit, and trying to find moments to interject, but not quite having the force to actually interrupt you, right? And I think that at this point now that you have given him space to say something, I think that all he manages to say right now is Bartholomew, I cannot have this conversation right now. I'm sorry, but it's not a choice. That part of it can't be a choice. I need you to have this conversation right now. I know it's not easy. What choice do you think I have? You've seen the choices I've made. You have that too. No, no, it's not. It's not the same. I know it's not the same. I talked to you already about how everything we've done was based on lies or not entire truths. Well, when we were at the gateway, because I did go back to the gateway again, I was shown the truth. I wonder if maybe I could show you and you might understand and you might feel like it is a choice that we can have. I don't, I don't want to understand. What do you want? There cannot be a choice because if there is, if there is choice, there is accountability. And if there is accountability, I cannot forgive myself for what I've done. It sounds like you've forgotten that you're human too though. I won't say it doesn't matter what has been done, what you've done before now, but that is a large part of this whole thing, isn't it? Forgiveness, having another chance. If you can't give that to yourself, then how can you give it to others? But at the same time, you don't, you don't have to give it to yourself. I'm here. I know we don't have a project clock to fill anymore, but I think this is a role. Okay. Hmm. Yeah, it's a role, huh? Yeah. Which one? Which one? Um, I mean, I mean, I'd probably be sway. I don't, I mean, I don't know because I was gonna, I don't want to like force him to see the stuff if he doesn't want to, but I will, I will say that when we initially made this character and you picked command as a skill that you were going to have a lot of points in. But part of that was about like, like, not necessarily right about Bartholomew forcing people to do things, right? It was about being backed up by the, like, power of an institution and the sort of like force of like, priestly rhetoric, right? Yeah. And so I think we can color command here if you're interested. Yes. Not as, not as like, you're forcing him, right? As you are using those, those skills, right? And the force of, in this case, not the church that he's in charge of, right? But this new, this new version of it that you have created to back you here. I think that's actually perfect. Yeah. I think Bartholomew probably like pauses for a second to kind of, I don't know. I mean, this does feel pretty like it feels life or death. It's not life or death. But this feels like it's more than just like, it's not even necessarily about the church or, you know, the quote unquote cult or anything. It's about proverbs and wanting to like, get through to him. So I do have a question. Sure. What is proverbs actual name? It's a very good question. I don't know. I have to, I have to decide upon a lot. Let me, let me pick one. Hold on. I figure it would be pretty, like, even obviously no one uses it, but it would be common enough knowledge since I think so. He's fairly young and everyone, that one intro, not intro, that one description you wrote was like, formerly a possible lover. Yeah. I think it is. Tom and knowledge. I think it's probably something very simple. I think it's probably something very biblical. I think it's probably like a, like, John, John, it's probably John. It's probably John. Okay. John Proverbs. John Proverbs. John Proverbs. That's right. Hi, I'm John Proverbs. I don't know if I can read John. I'm John Proverbs and I'm running for State House of Representatives. Fuck. Yeah, actually, John Proverbs probably got elected already. Yeah. Now, I don't know if I can use this as a name. I can use the problem. I don't think there's a first name that sounds good with Proverbs as the second part of it. That's real, not actually true. Because I then said, oh, like Matthew Proverbs, that also sounds bad. Mark Proverbs. Still bad. Hi. I'm Matt Proverbs. Do you need a new forage? Come on down to Proverbs for Ford and Chevrolet. Paul Proverbs. I mean, you can make it Old Testament, but it's still going to be weird. Yeah. Job Proverbs. Job Proverbs. No. I can't stop. Oh, God. That's good. I need to get that. Alistair Proverbs. Ezekiel Proverbs. There's no name that sounds good with Proverbs. Proverbs is great as a confessor's name, but when you try to put it with a regular name, it doesn't work as well. So maybe what has to happen here is that he can't make this choice. And you do have to just get rid of him. I do. Sorry, dude. Get out of here, Job. I don't care for Job. Oh, my God. Whew, okay. Everything that has happened since my pilgrimage, everything I've been shown, everything I've been able to do, it only makes me more certain in this. We do have a choice and in that choice we maybe have a duty as well to provide comfort and shelter and hope to the people that we shepherd, whether that is in the church or not in a way that has been lost in the church. But I know that's something that you can't do without a journey yourself, but I want to help you find that certainty so that we can give it to others. I can't say John! Okay, okay, okay. Honestly, I think that he would like reach out and like take his hand, like forcefully take his hand. Like I'm sure he doesn't want this to happen. Like he wants to... I swear to Jesus Christ. I swear to John Proverbs. I swear to John Proverbs. He's freaking ambient. I swan to John Proverbs. Impossible, impossible this thing we found. The ambulance is for me, honestly, take me. Okay, yeah, he takes his hand and he says, "My arms are open, John. Lay your burdens down. Let me carry them." Let's see that roll. Let's see that roll, baby. Any bonuses? Um, not really. I mean, yeah, but not really. Once the devil's bargain, I have to say John Proverbs again without laughing. You just say John Proverbs three times without laughing and then you can have a bonus down. I can't even say the new stage rage. Oh my God, you can't cry that loud. Yeah, I can't do that. Is this a feat of social grace? Oh, that's... Hold on, let's push yourself. And then I get him to say yes and then I pass out. If there were a better option for a stigma you could take here, actually taking stigma to do this would be really interesting. Yeah, I just don't know what I would. The promise that I don't know that any of them make any sense. Yeah, I kind of took the one that made the most sense and in this moment I don't really know. Yeah, I don't think any of the others would feel like good payoff in this moment. Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah, I'll just do it as it is. We'll see what happens. Is that risky? Yeah. Oh my God. It's a three of three and a one. You've filled your long-term project clock successfully and so I think that this role is not about successfully removing Proverbs from a position of power, right? That's done. But on a three here, I think there's a sense of the reform aspect of this is a little bit of a lost cause. I think he is, despite the beautiful sentiment of everything you have just said, I think that he is lost to his own fear here, right? You can resist. And take stigma. And take stigma. Or not. You'd be rolling a whole lot of dice. But I think that as it stands, he pulls his hand away and stands up and steps back towards the door. Dang. No, I think I do have to resist because I really wanted a nice... I was really trying not to do this to him. Yeah. It's really important to, like, Bartholomew and, like, the story, his story in my head that he doesn't absolutely do to Proverbs. But Proverbs did to him. Like that's important. Yeah. All right. I think this is a wits resistance. Oh, shit. Which is still three dice, which is good. Not as good as I was hoping. All right. Let me double check. I mean... That's his mental strain, willpower, or supernatural threats. Wits is understanding is what I was leaning towards there, right? Because I don't know that this is about your willpower. Yeah, probably not. It's kind of more about his. Yeah. Which... Which ain't great. I'm not sure that much for freaking... Which ain't great. Okay. I'll give it a try. Oh, thank God. A six. A six, a one and a four. Wow. Oh my God. Ugh. All right. You tell me what happens. I mean, I don't even know if anything, like, big needs to happen. Yeah. I think it could be as simple as instead of him, you know, pulling his hand away and getting up and leaving, like, he doesn't even have to say anything, like, even just a squeeze of the hand, you know? Right. The silent understanding. That feels like enough. All right. Anything else here? Umm... For you and John Proffer. Shut up! I'm so sorry. I'm the one who has to decide how much of the John Proffer's bullshit stays in the final episode. If you cut a second of it, Chris. We are done professionally. You drew on special John Proffer, John Proffer's. Oh. Yeah. I don't really think there necessarily used to be anything else. I mean, you know, I think they would probably probably just sit there in silence and silent understanding for a bit. Yeah. All right. Uh, Chris, do you want to draw the next card? Let's do it. I hope it's something I can handle. It's the null of snakes. The null of snakes, snakes, are people in need of help, an overturned cart, an injured horse, fellow travelers, and a null means a major obstacle, so consequences are three ticks. Now, unfortunate that you've drawn the snakes, given that you're the one with the social skills and outlines the one who has to roll for this. Christine. Man! Okay. So Chris, what is this obstacle? The rain lets up after a few hours. We get back on the trail and after riding for a few minutes, we hear somebody calling for help. And we rush to see what it is, and it is a, there is a representative of the Lightfoot Express who is currently, they've got a, like a covered, like, Conestoga wagon. That's the, that's what those things are called, right? Sure. No choice but to believe you. Uh, yeah, Conestoga wagon, like the ones that, like, like a, you know, an Oregon Trail ass wagon. Yeah. I knew what you meant when you said it, I just didn't know if that name was right. Yeah. Uh, but they are a drift. There is a, there is a river that has, uh, flooded or it's banks. And they are sort of out at sea, so to be being, being, the wagon is floating for now, but they have been swept up by the swell of this river, or due to this, uh, sudden rain storm. At a line. How do you attach to overcome this obstacle? Am I still suffering from, uh, the Hellstone eye or? I don't think so. You're still strained, but I think that your vision, now that you all have cleared the canyon and net net, I think that one, one, affecting one role is a fine consequence for that having happened. Okay. Cool. Um, I'm going to try the, I'm going to try to use a lasso to rescue them. Yeah. You're good at that. Pull them to shore. You know? Um, okay. So given that you're strained, this will be minus one die, which gives you two dice on this sling roll, uh, Tessa can help again if we want or you can't push yourself at this point. Uh, you're at eight out of 10 grit, uh, I feel like I got a help then. And what's your, what's your skill in this stat? What would need dice here? Roland, Dylan. Uh, I will. Two dice. Yeah. And then minus one for being strained. Right. Cause things suck. Um, that you smoke. Yeah. Can I use smoke and mirrors to appear the drowned, but then show up miraculously. You thought. But it was actually me. I'm on the other knee. Inside of the bank. Joke's on you loser. I don't know if that makes sense here. No, probably not. Yeah. Oh, I'll, I'll assist. I'll, once you have lassoed, uh, Tessa will be standing by to help with the old heave ho. Okay. Right. So Chris mark one grit and Adeline once again, or sorry, Tessa mark one grit and then Adeline once again, uh, three die sling roll. Oh my God. So one of four and a three. So once again, one tick on the progress clock. And in this case, oh boy, three ticks on the consequence clock bringing it up to nine and four. It's really as a skyrocketed. Why does this, does this take a long time? Are there, what's the, give me the, like, I feel like a lot of the consequence stuff here is about time, right? Cause this is what this clock is literally taking down to when the plan is supposed to happen. Yeah. I think what happens is that the actual rescue doesn't take very long. I think it's like making sure they're all right, getting a chance to kind of rest and regain my strength as, you know, pulling someone out of a actively raging river is not that, that's going to take its toll on anyone. So I think it's kind of checking in and recuperating afterwards that costs us as much time as we do. Do you also like maybe see this person to relative safety before you continue on? Yes. Yes. All right. Sydney, what about your second downtime action? Um, so as a part of our last journey, Sydney discovered that one of the scientists was looking into health stone mutation, kind of vaccinations, unclear if it was a cure or a vaccination. But yeah, absolutely. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a good point. I would like to try and learn more about that, maybe I could corner, um, the scientist who we freed who was totally trapped in Dunzo if we hadn't. So here's the thing. I think that Aston Bekitrick has left town for the time being. No, um, fortunately, the person who was working on that health stone mutation stuff you discovered was Nev Cross, your friend from Clarettown. And so I think that if you want to get some real answers about what was going on there, you've got a pretty good inn to go talk to her about all of that. Well, that sounds like a great place to start. So you want to maybe, maybe after you've dug your hole and buried in some health stone, you can make the rest of the ride out to Clarettown? Yeah. You love Clarettown. Taking anyone with you? Dakota coming along? Sure. Dakota can come along. Great. Yeah. Why not? Why not? Because you guys' second couples trip out to Clarettown. Yeah. I'm sure he just loves this. I mean, by this point, the third time he's been out there, I think he's pretty used to the ride now. That's true. Um, it's not quite as nice now that it's fucking dark outside all the time, but what can you do? Just like here. Perfect. Just, yeah. All right. So you and Dakota head out to Clarettown. And I think that as you have been the past couple of times, you've been here, right? Kind of welcomed with open arms. People here have been really generally appreciative of what you've done for the town, how much you've helped out, all of that, you know? I think it seems a little bit like the last time you all were here was right after the graveyard gang hit attacked. Oh, yeah. And they were kind of like rebuilding stuff a little bit. And I think that they seem pretty much back up on their feet after that. They've sort of gotten used to the like new status quo of it being dark all the time. They seem to have gone back to work on the, um, the ship off planet that they were working on that they still have not completed, but was the last, uh, the last thing they were working on after completing their Hellstone refinery. Yeah, they've filled a lot of clocks since we've been gone. They actually haven't filled any clocks. The refinery was already done last time you were here. The ship is not finished yet and they've, they'd stalled on progress for that for a while, but have gotten back to work now. Regardless, you were easily able to find Neve Cross, who's very happy to see you. Uh, what do you do? Say howdy. Maybe we brought some donuts. We love sharing donuts with our friends. Absolutely. And I don't know that you kind of brought donuts because I think we established that the person who makes the donuts is Tessa King and Tessa's currently in Bell's Landing with Adeline, so maybe not donuts, sadly, but you can have brought something else. Okay. Anyway, I want to sit down with our good, good friend and see what's up. Have a little chit chat. I wanted to bring donuts so we could have a little friendly chit chat before I hit her with the hard questions. Sure. So I guess the hard questions, um, so, uh, Bartholomew and I got into a bit of a situation a while back and, um, ran into some, what appeared to be some research that you might have been connected to. I'm not sure if it was, um, immunizations or something that's meant to reverse the impact of health stone, but I was just hoping that you could share a little bit of what you learned. She looks surprised to hear this, I think, um, she says, I didn't realize there was any record of that still around. I thought they would have wiped everything when I left. Well, it must have been interesting to them too then. It's sort of a long story. Give me a, give me a consort role with a bonus dive for the fact that you are, you know, sort of in her, in her good graces from all the work you've done here. It's a five on a risky five, you do, but there's a consequence, um, this was probably controlled realistically. Um, I should have said that before you rolled, uh, which actually means you hesitate with your own trade, if you're a pro drill to it with a minor consequence, a minor complication occurs, you have reduced effect, you suffer less or harm, you end up in a risky position. And I think here what I will offer you is either you can, you know, she, she looks reluctant to talk about this. So you can either withdraw and try a different approach or else I would say your minor consequence here is a reduced effect. She's not going to give you as much information as she might have otherwise, but she'll still give you, you know, some. So if this is a project, how many clock ticks might that represent? Or are we so close to not having clocks that it doesn't matter? Um, I think it depends on like, oh, you mean like, if getting this information out of her work, right? Mm hmm. I think it's less about clocks here and more about like, with great effect, she would give you all of the information that there is to have about this, right? With standard effects, she's going to give you a pretty good amount of information and with limited here, she'll give you the sort of broad strokes, but won't give you a lot of details. She'll even continue to press her for more information, but it's going to, you know, it's going to take some more effort to get that. Okay, I'll say consequence, minor consequence. All right. So I think what she says here is I worked in research and development for the manufacturing for about eight years, all in all. I moved to Ruins Gate, part way through doing that work, in order to be closer to the ruin, in order to be closer to, I guess, the, I guess the availability of test subjects. It sounds awful when I say it that way and realistically it, let's just say I left the manufacturing because of some moral or ethical quandaries that I found myself unable to resolve working in that context. I left without telling them I was leaving and because of that, the options for where I could go from there were fairly limited. I had met a few of the people here in Claretown in my time in the room and when I was working on those experiments and when I needed somewhere to go, they told me I was more than welcome to stay, which is why I'm here now. I've tried to do the best I can to use my knowledge and my research and my training to make things here easier for people. She sort of gestures over towards the refining machines and all of that. For the deal was that I used what I had of the cure, I suppose, to help the people here out as well. At the time living out in the ruin, near all the halestone that's out here, it was virtually impossible to not have, to not end up with fairly severe mutation, sometimes cosmetic, but sometimes disabling and so what I took with me when I left the manufacturing I used here and the small stores of it that we had left after that, we've used for those who joined us since then. Okay and I mean, could you make more? It wouldn't be easy, I don't have the resources or the equipment out here to do it and I can't exactly go back. Of course, I have notes, but I'll be honest, the research was still at a fairly experimental point in the process before I left, so using it out here was a risk and it was a risk that the people of Claritown undertook willingly and I'm not sure it's a risk that I would be comfortable sharing or spreading. Okay, thank you for sharing, I think it's important that we're honest with each other about these things, so I appreciate it. If I could get you the right equipment, would you consider it? I think it would depend on the circumstances. Okay, everything does. Can I, in pursuit of honesty, can I ask why this matters to you? It's impacted a lot of people around me and I feel responsible, it feels like if there's the option to go back, people should have that option. So any part of the reason that I left the manufacturing was because, well frankly I was worried about how it would be used and I guess more than that, who would get to use it. I think that we take on a lot of risk working with Healthstone and I think that sometimes risk is a good thing when it prevents us from overreaching. That sometimes the risk of something happening is productive for making us really consider whether something's worth it or not. I acknowledge that that risk is often unevenly distributed, that sometimes the people making the decisions aren't actually the ones being put at risk. That was why I started the project in the first place and that was not the direction that it seemed the manufacturing wanted me to take that work. But I trust you, I mean, do you and your friends, and especially you, have been a huge help for us here. So I want to help, but I can't make any promises. I'm not asking you to promise. It will always be your decision and I don't even know if I could get you the stuff that you would need and I'm still not sure it's a good idea, but it feels like the right thing to try. All right, well, given the speculative nature of the idea, then I'll say a tentative yes, if you could get me the equipment and the materials and the resources, I would consider it. And if that ever becomes a reality, we can talk about it then? Absolutely. All right. Dylan, do you want to pull the next card? Not really, but yeah. Here we go. So that is the knoll of stones, another knoll once again, a major obstacle and stones are natural phenomena, landslides, quicksand, steep cliffs, hell, stone, rain, a broken bridge, et cetera. Wow, we've really been drawing against each other, huh, Chris? It's not been a great vibe, the vibe is pretty bad. All right, well, the earth splits open and we fall in and now we die. We die. Is that what you want, Christine? No, they want a show, they want a story to tell. Thank you. I got you. I mean, hey, as if we haven't like suffered enough in this canyon, the fucking rock slide happens. It's hell so. You're the one who wanted this kill be in the canyon. I know. And I'm using it to my advantage because I was trying to think of another natural phenomena. Goodness. Yeah, we're really struggling here. Yeah. I'm going to say rock slide. Or actually, wait, let me let me amend that, please, I don't think this'll help you very much, Chris, but great, I mean, yeah, natural phenomena, let me just open your character sheet real quick, see what I can lob at you, just like, you know, okay, so we are not actively avoiding a rock slide. I think a rock slide has happened, and it is blocking our forward progress. We have to either find another route or find a way over the rock, like over, not rocks, cave in, like however you want to, our forward path has been obstructed, sure. Maybe it's like a particularly narrow section in the canyon. It's the most direct route, and just due to like the torrential rain, like mudslides and falling rocks have just kind of rendered it impassable. Okay. I'll challenge the rock slide to a game of chance. Um, I will. Can I have an useful item? Absolutely, you could have an useful item. I'd love to have an useful item, and I'd love to have a map of the sort of known wilderness between the towns from my time doing favors for the Lightfoot Express. Of course. And I would love to read that map to see if I can identify an alternate route that isn't going to be obstructed, and maybe we'll get us out of this apparently cursed canyon. I think that sounds extremely wise. You've got a three in read. And I think I'm just going to roll that as is and regain a grit. All right, let's see it. Hey. Critical success. Critical success. Alright, nice. On a critical success, you make significant progress, and the progress clock ticks by two, up finally to six. So the clocks are now even. Uh, alright, how does this, how does this shake out? What does this look like? Um, I think I'm just able to, I mean, I think it is as simple as like, I'm able to pick us out, like pick out roughly where we are. And I think I identify, maybe at this point, maybe we're in more of like a canyon network, like a series of, of gullies or gulches. Sure. And I'm able to spot a, uh, an alternate route that is available to us to take, uh, slightly off the beaten path, but we'll not only let us avoid this landslide, but also we'll get us onto slightly more level ground. Making progress easier from here on out. Yes, theoretically. Great. Let's see. I have to say. Would that be cool? I cannot imagine that spending several days in this canyon network is how people usually get between towns. Have you all taken some sort of shortcut in order to try to catch up with chance glad wish? Is that what's going on here? And it's just worked out badly for you. I would have to say so, yes. Great. Excellent. Jay? Last downtime action. I think the thing that makes the most sense for Jay is to, uh, start a long-term project. Like do this start a long-term project that will then be continued. If anything, more of a symbolic long-term project of like how I'm hoping the finale goes. And I know what that long-term project is. I'm just not sure my first, uh, action on it is going to be. But the long-term project I think is to sort of, um, I was going to just say like strengthen the community coalition. What I really want to do is like start to fully realize the community coalition as not just another faction, but like set it on the path of what Jay's overall hope for it is, which is becoming the primary, uh, sort of governing body. Yeah. Like governing body. So, so that we can have the self-determination as like, that because the community coalition is the best option for self-determination for the gate to install as like the governing body so that we can start to do that. Yeah. I think that sounds totally reasonable. And I've just come up with what the first, what the first action is. Excellent. Because one of the things that, of course, we need to do is not just have, I feel like I feel like the community coalition is, is running itself now. And that's good. We also need buy-in from people who are not part of the community coalition, right? Yeah. So I think I would like to go talk to our newly reminted Marshall Bishop. Yeah. Um, and talk to her about what we can do, not necessarily be like, here's what you need to do, but like, hey, what can we do to make this make sense for you, for your, in your knowledge of the company and also sort of your role as both a company representative and the law, more or less in town, right? Where do you talk to her? Does she have some sort of, she rebuilds some sort of office or, like, when it was like, it was the buzzers were just like via the nest. So there wasn't really a, no, she does not currently have an office. Oh, well, then I have a great idea. Okay. I am going to go talk to, maybe this is two things. That's fine. So someone who is part of the community coalition must be a carpenter or some shit. Absolutely. What I would like to set up to happen is the construction of a new building that is a joint financial and labor effort between like the company as it exists in ruins gate via the Marshall and the community coalition to house both the normal stuff that the Marshall needs and a permanent meeting space for the community coalition. Absolutely. So maybe that's what the long term project is, is construct the first ruins gate town hall. That is really in all, in all ways, like a newly constructed building for the larger community. What we've had for so many years is prefabs and then adapted prefab, like, you know, added onto prefabs and then some newly constructed buildings, but for particular ventures and sorts of things, there isn't really a thing that belongs entirely to the community of ruins gate, a building, like a public building like that. Great. There's things that we use like that. Like the tavern saloon is something that is a community thing or the brothel is something like that, but they are their own businesses first. So I think to build that public building, which requires public funding via multiple sources is like the long term project that Jay wants to do. Yeah, absolutely. Is this cool and interesting for our podcast audience? I love this for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is because we are once again seeing Jay take a position of initiative and leadership. I knew you were going to hit me with that. 100% knew you were going to hit me with that and I'm embracing it now. They're really good now. And we're going to call it the Mayor Jay Green Memorial Town Hall in honor of her passing. I'm going to take a devil's bargain to pick up the Jay as obsolete. She's going to finish constructing the town hall and then die directly, die during the ribbon cutting ceremony. But no, I think that's great and I think that's a good way of sort of tying together the marshals thing as a piece of this larger power structure rather than as its own individual power structure, right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I do think that the first, my action for this is going to be talk to the marshal because I think it will go over, we can have it come from one direction or the other to the other half of it. I think it makes sense for the marshal to be the one who's extending the olive branch thing. Yeah. I think so. So I will read the question I asked a few minutes ago before all of this, where do you find her? Where are you having this conversation and how do you broach this topic? I think I encounter her on, where is she living at this point? She has a home in Ruben's Gate, you know? Oh, okay. She always has. She always had, she didn't live in the marshal station. I just assumed that the teacher lived at school. Yeah. I guess. Well, then for a while, she was weirdly living in the church, so it's a fair question, but she did go home eventually. Okay. Then I think I talked to her as I'm delivering her mail. Sure. She's definitely getting more mail now that she's the marshal again. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's also the opening. Right. Yeah. More than marshal. Uh, got a big stack of letters for you on pretty nice envelopes here. I'm not surprised. Yeah. Got a lot of paperwork in the lake. I'm sure. You know, I was, I was thinking though, uh, last time I was delivering this sort of thing, it was to the station, not to your home. I imagine it's, it's different having, not having a place to call work and a place to call home separate. That is true. I gotta figure out what to do about that. Sounds like you've got a suggestion though. All right, no, I, it doesn't sound like that because I'm using my fine bedside manner. I feel like at this point, Marshall Val Bishop has interacted with you enough to know when you were fishing for something. I feel like that's fair. That's all right. Fair. Fine. Well, I might. Yes, but, you know, only if they're, uh, only if you're looking for suggestions. I'd love to have a real desk. I'm sure you would. Well, I, I was, uh, chatting the other day with, uh, uh, fuck, I need to come up with them. For the carpenter? Yeah. What was that, um, highway sign that I passed at some point driving to Rochester? There was a good one. That was a good one. Search sign. Wow, I found it immediately. Well, old forage tailor is not going to be the one. Yeah. Forges of black. Oh, right before that is, is Junius Pawns, which is a good one. Old forage of tailors is, is the blacksmith who will be helping, but is not the person I'm going to mention as the one to talk to. Great. Uh, well, I was, uh, I was chatting with a Mr. Junius Pawns. You know him, the carpenter. I know him. I was talking about, uh, how to shame with, uh, you know, the prime real estate that the Marshall station used to take up has just been sort of lay in fallow for, you know, since all that went down. He was saying that, uh, might be nice to see something new up there, something fresh and clean set of the old, you know, charred timbers of, of what's left. And you know, at the same time, I was, I was talking to some folks from, from the community coalition. They were saying that they were looking for permanent space as well. So I don't know if it'd be to your like and just to share a space when you used to have one of your own, but I think a nice new building that could serve the people who ruined skate in a variety of capacities might, might be a welcome addition to our little skyline. She looks at you for a second, considering everything you've just said, a little bit of a kind of familiar skeptical look on her face here. And she says, is it going to have room for a mayor's office? Well, I can't say why we need one of those. As far as I'm concerned, we don't have a mayor and, uh, don't think we've ever need one, but there'd certainly be offices for a marshal, for some members of the coalition. And, uh, you know, maybe this is an, an optimistic choice. We, we give ourselves a little room to grow as a community. Leave some, some extra space, uh, for whatever happens in the days to come. I think that sounds reasonable. Can I make a request? Of course, Marshall. I want a nice view. Well, uh, I'm no carpenter, but, uh, I'm pretty sure that can be arranged. Why don't we, uh, set of meeting with Mr. Pawns and we can figure out some plans? All right. Um, do you need me to roll for this long-term project? Do we even need to make a clock or? I don't think, I don't think we need to since this is the last downtime. I think that like, there will be time for this to happen, right? Yeah. You've set the wheels in motion. I don't think a roll is useful or necessary here. Cool. All right. Hazel, last downtime action. Well, now, now I feel like I need to start another downtime action, parenthetical of intent. Um, giving up on your, I don't think like giving up in the immediate sense, like, but, I think I would like to do a little preliminary research into Del Mar hassle. Okay. I know that his brother is dead, but I just want to like, maybe this is sending like a telegram to Bell's landing, maybe this, like, I don't, I'm not positive what this would look like. Sure. But like, if I want egress off my back, I want, I need to help her find this guy. And so like, you know, in addition to going out to where I last saw him, if I can learn a little bit more about him beyond he hates me for good reason, right? That might be helpful. So you're trying to learn anything about him as a person, are you trying to discern something about his whereabouts, potentially? I think like that is the ultimate goal, but I don't know that there's any good way of doing that. Because I have a suggestion for how you might start to go about doing that, then tell me so I can sound like I know what I'm doing on this podcast. I mean, in at least like, ruling things out potentially. Yeah. If you want to get a message around to a lot of people about, have you seen this man? Who knows? Maybe he has amnesia too, right? Like, there are really things that could have happened. A male network is an awfully good way to get word between towns. Sure is. Yeah. A male network would be how you find out if someone's seen this man. But get it, a male network. Yeah, I think we all got to get it. You got it. I got it. I feel like you guys didn't get it because nobody was like, Hey, that's so smart. Ha ha ha ha. That's great. You're so funny and handsome. Yeah. Nobody said that. So. Um, I just feel like Jay is still not obsolete, so we might as well pull on those connections while we've got. Yeah. No, that's super fair. Okay, congrats, no memorial services, never be obsolete because she has an office. She's about to have two offices. Yeah, that's wild. Yeah. Although I feel like if she became the actual mayor, we would necessarily have to tick Jay's obsolete parenthetical to the Lightfoot Express. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I'll use the Lightfoot Express to see if I can find anything. Yeah, about my murderer. Yeah. Um, again, I don't know that it makes sense to roll here. I also, I don't know where Delmar Hassell is, you know, do we think, is there something interesting we can come up with together that you might find out here? Do we want to like leave the result of this hanging? Yeah, I think that I think like, take a role and then like, uh, what, what is it in, uh, in power by the apocalypse, like I can take hold to, to, to ask some questions when we, when we next get there. Yeah, I think that makes sense. All right, give me a roll with, uh, what skill do you think this is? Um, it feels like hunt after a fashion. It does feel like hunt. Yeah. I'm male hunting. Uh, do you want any bonuses? I'll push myself. Why not? Why not? This week don't matter. Yeah. All right. It's a three, a two and a three. I've got that one, I've got that one to hold to find some, to have some information when you follow up on this. Cool. Chris, would you like to draw our next obstacle? I would love nothing more. Um, it's the null of stars. The null again, a major obstacle, stars are interpersonal, a disagreement over which way to go, a nightmare, something lost, et cetera. We continue to get each other's challenges. Mm hmm, Chris, what is this major interpersonal obstacle? I think, I think after this no good, very bad handful of days, Tessa wakes up the morning after we've emerged from these gullies and kind of begs Adeline to reconsider that we, we've been out here for so long. I don't know, I know you got something important in Bell's Landing, but I don't know that we're going to make it, where it feels like we're kind of battling the odds out here and I don't currently feel like we're, you know, favorited to win. They want to bail and they're going to, they're trying to convince Adeline to, you know, we've gotten back to level ground. Let's use that to go back to the gate and rest and we can go to Bell's Landing after, you know, maybe with some other people once we're a little more, more fit and ready. The major obstacle indeed, Adeline, how do you attempt to overcome this? I'm going to use my one in sway now. I would love to help, but that feels disingenuous and present. Mm hmm. Yeah. Mm hmm. So my gut instinct, my gut instinct is to survey the land just so I can see how close we are. It feels like this would also have to be a sway because, you know, I want to get an idea on how close we are and like we're nearly through it all. We can't just go back, we're over halfway there. That's what my thinking is. But that's also, would require me to sway Tessa. So I don't think that's actually going to work super well. I, here's a thought. Okay. Because sway does feel right here, but you don't really have a way of getting bonus dice. Right. If you were to push yourself and take trauma, I wouldn't have that drop you out of the scene or drop you out of, you know, because this is a montage, right? Right. I would just trade that for one take on the consequence clock. Interesting. At this point, if you get anything other than a six on this role, that consequence clock is filling anyway. It's going to fill. Yeah. Okay. So take trauma. It won't affect this particular moment, but am I, am I basically out after that then? No, you won't be out. Instead of trading the, you drop out of the scene, right? For one take on the consequence clock. Oh, I, I meant after the scene, but. Oh, yeah. No, no, no, no. I'm saying. Cause getting trauma doesn't take you out of the whole run, right? It just takes you out of the current scene. It's just that so often the current scene is, the, the whole run is by the time someone takes trauma, the current scene is the final scene of the run. Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. Okay. Um, yeah, I'll take that then. Okay. So you can reset your grit down to zero, but, and I'll take this clock up, but do tell me which trauma condition, or sorry, stigma, I'm so sorry. Stigma condition. No, it's fine. Stigma, yes. Adeline is going to take. You know, it's funny when I first, uh, when I first rolled Adeline, I was thinking if she does get stigma, I wanted her to have, to, to get voices, but in the context of this scene, shamed feels like it makes a lot more sense. Um, something you did was too wrong to be forgiven. You shy away from social bonds because you believe you are no longer worthy. Be aware they may guess your secret. Is this shamed for failing to meet up with Gladwish on time? I think it's shamed for everything, just not being good enough for any of the tasks that I set out to do, um, within recent history. Yeah. I mean, it feels appropriate. It's a heavy burden to bear going into the finale, even if it doesn't affect you mechanically, but it does feel fitting. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what I'm going to go with. Yeah. Okay. But that gives you a bonus die for pushing yourself. So you have two dice on this roll. Okay. It's a five and a four. One take on the progress clock. Man. That one's clock fills. It cannot get a dub. So it was so close. Oh my God. Um, first, tell me what it looks like to convince Tessa, and then I'll tell you what it looks like as you arrived to Bell's Landing too late. Okay. Um, Edeline's just going to look at Tessa and say, Tessa, you're not going to, I'm sorry to hit you with my sob story. You're not going to understand what I'm saying, but ever since I was a little girl, my life has been a series of failures and I failed you now. And the thing is, I'm afraid that if I don't go through with this, I'm going to fail even more people. I, I understand you might resent me for all this, but I need to see this through. I can't turn back now. I have to do this. You didn't fail me, Edeline. I'm, and you've got to go through with this, and I'm not going anywhere. Thank you. Now, what dreadful thing is going to happen to us now? We'll see. Yeah. Uh, I, I have to say in advance, I'm so sorry about this. Oh, no. Um, Edeline and Tessa, you ride into Bell's Landing and it's busy in town. The hustle and bustle of the city, especially after days, essentially alone in the wilderness, is overwhelming, and Edeline, you look and look and you can't find a chance, Gladwish. But you do find someone else as you ride into the center of the city towards the company's primary, only really, landing pad. A ship is landing is about to land, a big company ship, which based on what Gladwish told you, you have to assume one of the passengers forward is the CEO of the company, come to Antares to check in on what has been a chaotic and trying time for the company. And as you step into this sort of big open plaza at the center of the city surrounding this landing pad, standing just to the edge of where that ship is landing, you see your mother. It's as if she knows you're there. The second you see her, she turns and from 100 to 100 yards away, locks eyes with you, as if she sees you too. And then the ship touches down and then the bombs go off, rigged underneath the landing pad. There's only one way to Antares from Earth, only one place for ships to land safely, and if the company takes enough hits here, penitence and progression has probably rightly assumed. They might not think Antares is worth interfering with, and if there's no Hellstone trade back to Earth, there's no reason to keep mining it. The explosion knocks you to the ground or knocks the wind out of you, and when the smoke starts to clear, your vision does not. Instead of the area around you, destroyed by the force of the explosion, you see something else, you see something that only a few days ago, before you left the gate, the man in black showed you. In ruins gate, you feel it first as a tremor in the ground. The barest hits of an earthquake that starts to get bigger and bigger, until you hear something start to crack. The sky that has been dark for so many days is cast in a dark shade of red, as the glow of Hellstone from beneath the ground radiates up, and the light catches in the clouds overhead. In the gate itself, you don't see that the cracks that start to form across the surface of the planet, but on the roads between towns they do. The earth tearing itself apart, isolating towns from one another, breaking apart the roads and the pathways between them. And when the ground stops shaking, and Antares once again is still, ruins gate is cut off from the rest of the planet, at least for now. There is chasms in the earth, not unlike the ones that surrounded Jericho. Everything in town is okay. Minor damage maybe to a few buildings, a broken window here or there. No one is hurt. No one is injured, no one is killed, but to cope with this change, things are going to be different. And what you all do with that difference, we will find out in the finale. [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
