Curseborne - Stealing the Show, Episode 3 • Sponsored by Onyx Path Publishing

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello, friends, and welcome to another single serving tabletop adventure from Queenscourt games. This is the third serving of our single serving tabletop adventure as we continue in Curseborn, a game of liminal spaces, folk horror, and multi flat monsters by Onyx Path Publishing. If you have been watching, and you are like, I would love to play a shifter and a vampire and a wizard and, uh, extraplanar deity all at the same time, all in one game with all my friends not to worry about getting all the books to cooperate. Well, I have good news for you. As of the time this episode is going out, the Curseborn Kickstarter is live. You can follow the link that we are putting in chat right now to go and give them their money and buy a copy of the book for yourself. We've been having, I assume, a lot of fun with it. Otherwise, these three have been lying to me in our postgame chats, but I don't think they would do that. That's very rude. And we have fairly good taste in rpg's, so, I don't know, go check it out, maybe buy it, but not right now. You're gonna want to wait until the episode is over because we are reaching the climax of our story and there are no three people I would rather reach climax and Curseborn with than the following. First and foremost, as our dead, it is Blake Sweeney. It is v lock. [00:01:21] Speaker B: Hi. Hello. [00:01:24] Speaker A: Joined by our outcast super stern, Clara Allison. [00:01:29] Speaker C: Hello. [00:01:30] Speaker A: And lastly, but not leastly, Lucas Somerset, the hungry. It is Kai. You know the deal by now, folks. Put exclamation point cast in the machine and then it'll do a little whirring noise and then social media links will fall out and you can pick them up out of the little thing there. If it doesn't, you just gotta shake a little bit. Don't worry about it. Follow them like their stuff, follow their accounts, share, subscribe, etcetera. And if you haven't figured out how to get to the Curseborn page right now, you can do explanation point game where I'm probably doing it for you because I am in the room right now running this stream. You can go find your way to the Kickstarter, get things sorted out. Also, you're gonna want to put exclamation point safety in chat because we are getting to the spookier part of the spooky game. Nothing too terrible coming up, but you never know where people's lines and veils are. I don't know where yours. I don't even know who you are, really. I'm just kind of speaking into the void. So you're on your own for figuring out if these various topics are not something you're into. All of that said, our cast is into it. I checked in advance. And are we ready to get into it? And by it, I mean a pocket dimension. [00:02:41] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:02:42] Speaker B: Yes. [00:02:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Excellent. That is the spirit. In that case, let us continue our story. When we left our trio last, you had arrived in the wee hours of the morning at the local pool hall. You're looking for trouble right here in College City, which starts with a t, which rhymes with p, which stands for paranormal dimensional fuckery that we are about to get into. This, like many pool halls, has had a long life just being near it. You can smell the wallpaper from. From before there was an indoor smoking ban. There's that scent of stale beer, of sweat, of bites that spill out into the parking lot. The building is locked up tight. But Lucas, in our last episode, you mentioned being able to feel that thrum pushing out from the thinner parts of our mutual dimensions. And much like a neighbor whose music is too loud for walls that are too thin, each of you can feel that little rum as reality buckles against that which is contained inside it. We are on the old town street of an old college town. So you can see a fairly narrow street, parking, parking meters, little planters with regional flowers sponsored by the local chamber of commerce, and then row after row after row of brick faced stores, kind of windows where you still do hand painted lettering on. And thus we end up at our pool hall a couple ways in that I can think of. Don't expect you're going to take the second one, which is to just go through the window. But before we decide our plan of entry, I am interested in our plan of thought. You've all been fairly calm to one another in terms of when are we going to go into the place we don't understand? Yeah, we're going to end up in a pocket dimension or some crazy liminal space, and I don't know what's in there. And you've been very calm about it to each other. Is that an honest calmness or our you hiding something beneath that shell? [00:05:31] Speaker D: Lucas is academically curious, even more so than he is thrilled to be playing Professor Harold Hill. He's never been to a pocket dimension that's not really the wheelhouse of a black heart. He mostly just dwells in the land of the living, or slightly less living. And this is something different, something liminal and strange that he has never experienced before. And in his heart of hearts, he wants to know if it feels different, because as a hungry, the thing he's mostly chasing is something new. [00:06:22] Speaker A: So mostly on the excited side of the scale with a teensy amount of careful what you wish for. [00:06:32] Speaker D: Yeah. And he doesn't really know to be wary of what you wish for, despite it biting him in the ass many times throughout his entire life and unlife. [00:06:42] Speaker A: So I'm getting notes of, wow, this would be really dangerous if someone less cool, talented, and capable were doing it correct. Incredible. And then, Miss Sweeney, Miss Stern, similar thoughts. Do you share Lucas Somerset's self? I couldn't think of a nice word, and I only got mean words. But you can already tell the vibe I'm going for. Do you? Similar mind? [00:07:21] Speaker C: Absolutely not. Lucas has no idea, and I have. I have a strange mix of incredible Zen calm, of being resigned to the fact that we're doing this, and also a little bit of defiance. This isn't where I'm from. Not all outsides are the same outside, but they are the same outside. [00:08:01] Speaker A: It's a bit like being in your own little suburbia, and you're about to go into someone's backyard, and it's not your backyard, but it's adjacent your backyard. [00:08:10] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's interesting because I'm not supposed to go back. Technically, not allowed. [00:08:20] Speaker A: You worried? What if the neighbor sees? [00:08:24] Speaker C: Mostly I'm angry in a way I haven't been in a really long time. [00:08:29] Speaker A: I'll explain that. [00:08:34] Speaker C: People get to go back and forth for no reason. Sorcerers especially. They don't know what they're playing with. Lucas has no idea what's on the other side waiting for him. Blake probably doesn't either. And it means so much more than they're going to give it. It's not my home, but it's close enough. And I have to go back because I'm cleaning someone else's mess up because they won't leave us well enough alone. [00:09:07] Speaker A: Oh, is it your first time, Blake? [00:09:12] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. But, you know, supra made the comment that it's kind of like looking in someone else's backyard. And to that regard, I feel a little bit like Ferris Bueller right now. I jump from backyard to backyard, being bodies all the time, and so this is just another place for me to jump and to experience. And I'm really excited to see what this is all about because, you know, I've experienced life in so many different ways, but only from. From this side. So it should be neat to see the other side. [00:09:54] Speaker A: That'S what they all say. And then they end up trapped in the aether beyond our world. But you might not be worried about that. There might be a second worry. How do you feel about having to share your first time with Lucas? [00:10:12] Speaker B: Lucas and I do enough together. It's. You know, sometimes you just. You just. I don't know. We're friends, right? Like you share experiences with your friends. At the very least, we don't hate each other, so it's fine. [00:10:27] Speaker A: Well, you and I have grown up very different. I have never shared an interdimensional experience with any of my friends. I don't know, that says something about you or something about me, but it does say something about where the game is headed. Well, then we have a pretty clear sense of what people's faces like as they settle in outside of this building. A quiet little moment. Three faces reflected in the glass of the front, giving Luxe the credit for having parked the Hummer somewhere else. Or not brought it here on a case of not wanting to put the city's most identifiable vehicle in the vicinity of what may or may not be a crime scene. [00:11:08] Speaker D: We parked it far away. [00:11:14] Speaker A: Then we'll return to the question that we opened with. How do we entertain? [00:11:20] Speaker C: It's a pool hall. [00:11:23] Speaker D: The locks can't be that modern. Nothing about this place even looks modern. I'm happy to just try and break in. [00:11:32] Speaker A: A small amount of physical effort will do it. I don't suppose you need a terrible amount of security. It's not like you can take the pool table out through the front door. Those things are heavy. [00:11:43] Speaker D: Super. Could. [00:11:45] Speaker A: Possibly, when you enter inside, the scent raising a few, uh, nose octaves in intensity as you get closer into that stale beer. Smell that. Bodies stuck around. Bodies sweating and crowded. Smell that. Ah, dried blood in the corner. Must have been a fight. Smell that. White, chalky. Don't know what to do when I'm playing pool, so I just continually chalk the que. Smell. What you do not smell, though, are a particular kind of flowers or the oil one would put on a trumpet for being a portal to an extra dimensional part of the universe. It doesn't seem to be very lively in here. [00:12:35] Speaker D: I love billiards. Don't you all? [00:12:41] Speaker C: Technically, this is a pool hall. It is a different sport. [00:12:46] Speaker D: All the same. And he goes up to one of the tables and just pantomimes shooting a pool ball. But with his rapier one handed, he's enjoying himself. Maybe a little too much. [00:13:02] Speaker A: Apropos. Nothing. Not for any real benefit, but for narrative. Will you roll close combat and dexterity for me. [00:13:09] Speaker D: Sure. Just for funsies. Sure. As I drop dice. Let's see, what is my dexterity? That's not bad. Oh, this isn't a terrible role at all. What could go wrong? I got no successes. [00:13:32] Speaker A: Yeah. So Lucas lines up this shot, leaning over, making a big deal about it, and then you go to do the. Whatever, the verb, with the pool cue. But the thing about a rapier is that it's got different weight and it's slightly curved, so every other one of you can hear that tear as the, I'm assuming, well kept edge of the blade just cuts through the green felt surface, not ripping it end to end. But there's a good four inch long, we'll say, nick through the top of it. I'll also give at this point, only you can see it, so unless you call attention to it, it's our little secret. [00:14:12] Speaker D: Well, anyways, let's find the, um. Let's find our way into the next plane. And he's just kind of like, do, do, do. Nothing to see here. Kind of skips around the table and kind of leans in front of it. [00:14:29] Speaker C: There should be a Google Drive link on your phones for the choreography I sent out earlier today. I figure we can do. I did it for the last part of the finale of the show with the whole. When he plays it for the kids to manage to do the thing, it's that part. It's pretty simple stuff. I wasn't sure what youre dance backgrounds were. [00:14:58] Speaker D: I could do ballroom. [00:14:59] Speaker A: Dear show of hands, who has opened the choreography before this moment? [00:15:06] Speaker C: As expected, if you're more than I expected. [00:15:13] Speaker B: Look, I have been listening to a lot of podcasts today, okay? I just. I've been busy. [00:15:22] Speaker D: Find anything good? [00:15:25] Speaker B: No. [00:15:27] Speaker D: You'll have to send them to me. [00:15:30] Speaker A: There's only one way forward. Um, you. You. I have not choreographed anything in my entire life, but I assume it starts with you sitting in front. I'm just imagining, essentially, a zumba class, that zubra is in the front. And then Blake and Lucas are an appropriate distance behind. And then Subra does the end of one end, a two. And then Subra and Lucas perform the dance. And Blake stares gormlessly at choreography notes that she cannot interpret at all. [00:16:07] Speaker B: I assume Subra took a video and attached a video of the choreography. [00:16:12] Speaker C: Yes. There's a video file. [00:16:14] Speaker A: Staring, staring gormously at the phone, doing, like, a half second delay as the reaction speed following through. [00:16:24] Speaker B: I'm trying. [00:16:26] Speaker C: That was really good. You could put. I really value the energy you brought to the space. [00:16:33] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:16:34] Speaker C: If you maybe could. The beat is on it, you know? [00:16:44] Speaker B: On. On what? What do you mean, the beat is on? [00:16:48] Speaker C: The numbers are on the beats, to the steps, to the music. [00:16:52] Speaker B: What numbers? [00:16:54] Speaker C: Okay, okay. [00:16:55] Speaker B: Um, I don't. [00:16:57] Speaker A: Subra runs an impromptu intro to dance clinic, but I regret to inform you that having performed it once with two and a half dancers and once with three dancers, uh, there is no, as. As they say in the cartoon's great big kaboom. [00:17:14] Speaker B: Hmm. [00:17:16] Speaker A: Something's missing. [00:17:18] Speaker C: Oh, this was just rehearsal. [00:17:21] Speaker A: Mmm. [00:17:24] Speaker D: Yes. How can we perform it without all of our indicators? And Lucas pulls the plume out and, like, shoves it in his pocket. [00:17:42] Speaker C: There's. I'm gonna go out on a limb here. I'm assuming there's, like, some decoration in this bar. [00:17:51] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:17:55] Speaker C: Hmm. [00:17:57] Speaker A: It's late nineties chic. [00:17:59] Speaker C: Yeah. I'm trying to figure out how to make this happen without being actually. Fuck it. I'm gonna have a, like, stuffed doll situation that I've brought from home. Fuck it. It's a nutcracker. Put nutcracker on pool table. Give nutcracker mellophone. We need a kid in the band, obviously. And then pulling costume pieces from similar period, different show. Corgi and Bess. I'm gonna. Same time period, different. Close enough. I'll put on what is an approximation of Marian's look, complete with little glasses, giant blue bonnet, or straw flat hat with flowers. [00:19:02] Speaker B: I have my big old rosette. It's red, white, and blue. [00:19:06] Speaker A: First place. No, sorry, grand champion. Right. First place would be blue, so it needed to be grand champion or reserve champion, depending. [00:19:12] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:19:13] Speaker A: My sister was a horse girl. I did not ride. That's for the audience. There's only one thing missing. You have the steps, you have the costumes. What is the last piece we need for a musical number? [00:19:26] Speaker D: Music, of course. [00:19:30] Speaker A: Lucas strikes me as the kind of person, as a Bluetooth speaker, that he listens to music full volume at all. [00:19:35] Speaker D: The time in public. Yes, absolutely. We get a nice smash cut montage moment of him slamming it on one of the pool tables, putting his Spotify attached to it, and starting to just bump it obnoxiously loud. But, of course, again, we're bumping the music man. [00:19:58] Speaker A: Through a Bluetooth speaker, and no matter how expensive the speaker is, it's always a little tinny. But then the step happens, and a one and a two, and the overture swells. There is a triangle on purpose in this one, as opposed to the play we watched, which had an accidental triangle. Then you feel the floor start to shake. It has earthquake. I don't need to wake up for, but my parents will ask about vibes for Californians in the audience. And then it starts to intensify, starts to get a good rumble. The pool table starts to kind of bounce across, shimmy, shaking across the floor. That's when you look out the window. And it's not the street. It is wide open, flat terrain scrolling past. And then, in a way that, depending on your particular entertainment background, will either be a tony Award winning stage effect or reminiscent of the clockwork mansion, the walls begin to spin on their axis, flipping from pool hall up to a wood paneled train car. Open windows, red curtain, not curtains like rolling shutters that you pull up and down with little cute brass rings on them. Seats in pairs, red velvet stuffed, looking up to the top of the car. Because it's a high rail car, there was no air conditioning, so they have those high ceilings like southern homes. And all along the side, a series of black suitcases with hand painted calligraphy advertising so many products. You realize now that that shaking is the clacking of the train wheels as it goes by and as this reality twists and distorts and this spans out, and then, like a rubber band being let go at both ends, pops back in the. Just in time for the steam whistle to play. The three of you are sitting in a train car filled with men in suits that are too thick and too hot for this weather, hats matching what subra has brought on, and you arrive just in time. I need to make a ransom. So, Blake, you are the one who is. We start with, pop into the seat, first of all, posture. [00:22:43] Speaker B: It takes me a minute to get my bearings, so a little disheveled, I think, kind of like hunched over. And then immediately, once I see the surroundings settle in, all straight back, very proper. [00:23:02] Speaker A: Looking, slightly out of place, given your gender in this car. But it appears this is a very progressive version of the musical, where no one notices. And the man turned next to you. He is sitting. You kind of shimmer into existence, at least as far as you can tell. His head snaps to the side, a gesture that is entirely too fast, a bit marionette about it, and then just staring at you, unblinking. Cash for the merchandise. Cash for the button hooks. Cash for the cotton goods. Cash for the hard goods. Cash for the soft goods. Cash for the fancy goods. Cash for the noggins and the pickens and the firkins. [00:23:38] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Yep. [00:23:46] Speaker D: That. [00:23:47] Speaker B: Yep. [00:23:49] Speaker A: So you're just blinking at him and then there's, like, a pause, right? [00:23:53] Speaker B: Yep. [00:23:53] Speaker A: And then, like a Disney doll, you can see the track rewind so that when the next car comes by on, it's a small world. Head back, forward, snaps back to you. Cash for the merchandise. Cash for the button hooks. [00:24:12] Speaker B: I'm stunned and also incredibly out of place. I. I don't know how to respond in this moment. [00:24:26] Speaker A: Being a subra stern is doing any better because three or four rows up, opposite side of the car. You can talk, you can talk, you can bicker, you can talk, you can bicker, bicker, bicker. You can talk, you can talk, talk, talk bigger. Bicker, bicker, bicker. [00:24:47] Speaker C: Can we hear them down the way as well? Or is this the same part? [00:24:51] Speaker A: You're all in the same car, if that's what you're asking. [00:24:56] Speaker C: Trying to just figure out if it's how chronological it is. Let it play out. [00:25:06] Speaker A: Which means Lucas, same question, posture happens, pop into existence, and then you take the position of. [00:25:18] Speaker D: This is like a well worn glove for Lucas. He lived through this era. He lived in a place full of trains, always on time, in Europe, and he didn't come to America until well after. And this is almost like stepping into a dream for him. And then he, I think, is a little jump scared. [00:25:52] Speaker A: That's valid. You at least have the benefit ahead of the other two of being able to hear it coming down the track at you. Right? But that won't make it any easier. When the time finally does come, a third person, a larger man, a little mustache that stops, like here on my face. Leans over again, very boxy movement. Leans over. Gone with the Hogshead casket and the Debbie John. Gone with the sugar barrel, pickle barrel, milk pan. Ever meet a fellow by the name of Hillendez? [00:26:28] Speaker D: Oh, that's me. [00:26:33] Speaker A: Say that the entire car, person by person, row by row. Hill, hill, hill, hill, hill, hill, hill. Now, you will realize two things. This repeats, essentially, as long as you let it go, as does the train car, essentially, infinitely in each direction, up and down, at least as far as you can see. I'll take your questions. [00:27:10] Speaker C: I have a. Hear me out again, and I apologize. Outcasts can see other outcasts. We know what they look like. Does that work in reverse? Does everyone here look like an outcast? And Lucas and Blake look like non. Like they don't belong? [00:27:26] Speaker A: In point of fact, no one here looks like an outcast. [00:27:29] Speaker C: That's worse. That's so much worse. [00:27:34] Speaker A: And best you can tell, barring some kind of magic, you're not familiar with these have all, like the. The sense of people about them. The movements are robotic, but the face's skin, and it's all in the right parts and proportions. You can see the little beads of sweat on them as they roll along in this train car. [00:27:55] Speaker C: I think, by contrast, if Lucas and Blake are looking at Subra, who always sort of looks like she's got too much highlighter on, Subra is glowing. That's just a thing that happens. But I'll find the other two. It's a whole cast. They're all here, sort of. [00:28:24] Speaker D: This is marvelous. It's terrible for sure, but it's. Hmm. The chanting has really gone to his head. [00:28:38] Speaker C: Um. [00:28:40] Speaker A: It's important for you to know that in between these sentences. Now, what you get is, what do you talk? What do you talk? What do you talk? What do you talk? Where'd you get it? And then Lucas will give their line. And it's happening constantly. [00:28:54] Speaker B: So question, um, do these bodies look like something that I would be able to inhabit? [00:29:03] Speaker A: Look like in terms of skin and such? Yeah. I don't expect that's what you're getting at, though. How would a dead tell? [00:29:12] Speaker B: So it's especially noticeable when I'm incorporeal. But there's always a bit of a light inside people. Right. It's kind of what folks consider the soul. And when I. There's a body that does not have a soul, that light is missing. It's a little darker. It's empty. Able to be inhabited. [00:29:40] Speaker A: New. In this case, you are in the suburbs. It is Halloween. All of these houses have candy you can trick or treat here. That means the lights are on. I understand how that can be. Can confusing in the context, yes. [00:29:58] Speaker B: I mean, that's actually good in a sense. It means that they're not just hollow husks. And I will let Lucas and Subra know this, which perhaps complicates things in that. Now there's a whole bunch of bodies that still have souls that definitely shouldn't be here. But at least, again, we know that they're not husks. So it's a positive. Mostly, I think. Why? [00:30:22] Speaker A: It's the model T. Ford made the trouble. [00:30:26] Speaker D: Someone's been collecting for a very long time. Um, can I get a gauge as to how long some of these people might have been here? Like, based on maybe, like, if there. If there's any anachronisms that maybe were intrinsic to the people or anything like that? [00:30:47] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a really good question. I know that would probably be cunning but what would go with it? Could say culture is a way to go. Maybe culture and cunning. [00:31:03] Speaker D: Hilariously, they're both. The skills are zero. So I'll just roll cunning. That is 110. Oh, and another regular hit. So three hits on two dice. [00:31:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, what do we know about the. About the production you watched in the very first episode? Right. Sometimes the prop department doesn't quite have the budget. And I don't mean, like, these suits. Pants have zippers and no one's ever going to see them kind of way. I mean, that Rolex is obviously not what a salesman would wear. And the particular tie that this person wearing is a synthetic fabric. It's a blend that is different. So, yeah, with three hits, you can tell that not only are they anachronistic, but there's a fairly good spread decade by decade by decade. [00:32:12] Speaker D: What is the oldest one that I can find? [00:32:19] Speaker A: Probably just post war or 4950. [00:32:27] Speaker D: Well, this magician must have been at this for an extremely long time. Or there's more than one, because that man is wearing a Norfolk suit from, well, a very different era. [00:32:51] Speaker C: What do they have to gain by cramming people into the music? [00:32:54] Speaker A: Mandev, this is a lot of power. [00:33:00] Speaker B: Can we find a car that's a little quieter? [00:33:04] Speaker C: I want to try one more thing, and it's dumb. So let's get to the door of the car, and then I want to try something. [00:33:11] Speaker A: What door? [00:33:14] Speaker C: There's got to be doors between the car. No, I guess there isn't, is there? How does that. And. All right, well, I'm just gonna do the dumb. The thing I think I can do. And I'm trying to remember how this song ends. It's. Pattersons are so hard to remember. [00:33:39] Speaker A: That is quite all right. I understand the intent. [00:33:45] Speaker D: You also hear Lucas trying to follow you, but he keeps on getting stuck on. He's a music man. He sells clarinets. Just over and over and over again. [00:33:54] Speaker C: The piper pays him, yes, sir, yes, sir. The man dances and certainly boys what else? [00:33:58] Speaker A: The piper pays him, yes, sir, yes, sir. And then the line. This is the line. [00:34:03] Speaker C: But he doesn't know the territory. [00:34:06] Speaker A: Screeching halt. Anyone who's standing up tumbling forward. Then from the back. River City. River City. We cross the state line into Iowa. River City, population two. 2112 cigarettes, illegal in this state. Boot. [00:34:26] Speaker D: Cigarettes, illegal at any rate. Shall we? [00:34:34] Speaker C: Yeah, we shall. [00:34:37] Speaker B: Okay. [00:34:41] Speaker C: Oh, taking pieces of stage paper out of things and. [00:34:48] Speaker A: Oh, it's flimsy, not staged at all. And I need to. And to be very clear, as you go through this. This is not a set that you are wandering through when the change happened. You are on an infinitely long train driving through an infinitely long Iowa. Now you step out into an early 19 hundreds Iowa town, eternal River City. [00:35:19] Speaker D: Oh, this is like Christmas to Lucas. His eyes light up. [00:35:26] Speaker C: A little like Disneyland, isn't it? [00:35:30] Speaker D: It's funny. They filmed part of it there. And he is fully, like, skipping. [00:35:43] Speaker A: Yeah. It is ordinary life, these people, what appear to be, at least from your immediate ability to see hundreds of them going through the motions and not like the motions of life. But if you've seen the film, you know, Harold Hill gets off the train and the first person he stops next to is a man minding his, like, backyard garden. And there's a dog and then a child sitting in the distance, and Harold Hill walks up. This is the beginning of the song. And Iowa. Kind of nice. For those of you following the script at home or Iowa, kind of stubborn. Sorry. And that man is just there. And like pirates of the Caribbean, he has his pitchfork and he's moving the hay. But he will do that for eternity. At least as far as you can tell. [00:36:46] Speaker D: Well, it seems like it's more than just the dance number we have to have learned. Subra. [00:36:56] Speaker C: Uh, do you have cell phone service and access to Wikipedia? [00:37:03] Speaker B: You think cell phones work here? [00:37:05] Speaker C: I don't think so, but check, look. [00:37:08] Speaker D: This pulls his phone out immediately. [00:37:11] Speaker C: You know what we could have brought with us? Probably could have acquired the script to this show. Oh, does that count as a tool? [00:37:21] Speaker A: Uh, I don't know that it fits in the category of, like, wrench, padlock, id badge. But remember that in this, uh, in story path games generally, but also in curseborn, you can always spend momentum to add a narrative fact. Uh, so if you wanted to, you live four currently, I believe so. If you wanted to spend one, say that you brought a paper copy of the script. We would. That would be well within your purview as players. [00:37:48] Speaker C: We cool with that? [00:37:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that'll help us a lot. [00:37:53] Speaker C: Out of the carpet bag I have brought with us, I realized I said porgy and Bess. I think I meant hello, Dolly. Don't worry about it. Out of the carpet bag I've brought, I can pull out a copy of the book. [00:38:13] Speaker A: One thing, verisimilitude wise, that if you open up to the core of this, at least the original version that I recall, there is a note from Meredith Wilson to the director insisting that the music man is like, it's not a caricature. So you should not let the actors, particularly Zenita Mershin and misses Shin Mug or readdez, reach for comedy effect. That the entire point of the show is that it's technical faithfulness to a real small town, nice. Of 1912, Iowa. [00:38:49] Speaker C: Well, Clara's very disappointed, but Subra understands we have a map, kind of. [00:39:06] Speaker D: And he's fully eyeing the man that is probably, like, picture perfect. And I have something of a photographic memory and perhaps a bit of an affinity for old films. Oof. I just got them old. Well, shall we? [00:39:35] Speaker C: Somewhere around here, there will be someone upset about a pool hall. [00:39:43] Speaker D: Yes. [00:39:45] Speaker A: I would like to believe super did not need the script to know that about the music man. [00:39:50] Speaker C: No, that's true. [00:39:51] Speaker D: I have an idea. In order, he skips past the guy and goes looking for a man wearing a very sad hat and says, which way to the center of town? [00:40:11] Speaker A: As you expect, it is a very stern glowering right down the center of the road and then continues to make the hay. [00:40:24] Speaker D: Wonderful. [00:40:26] Speaker B: Come along. [00:40:28] Speaker D: And he is now strutting. We put the wrong person in this role. He's going to be a nightmare about it. [00:40:36] Speaker B: I'm following behind, and I've got the script, and I'm just trying to go through it and asking super questions like, okay, so what's going on? Going on here? [00:40:46] Speaker C: As we're walking slink arms, it's giving. [00:40:49] Speaker A: Family at Disneyland vibes, where Lucas is the excitable child, and Subra and Blake are Lucas two mommies, and they have the map to the magic kingdom and are trying to, like, plot out their day as Lucas bounces from thing to thing. [00:41:04] Speaker B: But also, Blake has never gone, and Subra used to have a pass, so it's very awkward. I have a lot of questions. [00:41:14] Speaker C: I'm both trying to be as comfortable and in the moment as possible and also terrified because we are outside capital o. [00:41:28] Speaker A: Like the weather in October, which is close to December, because we can be cold as our falling thermometers in December. If you ask about our weather in July, which is about where we catch up with Lucas, you've committed to the bit, Lucas? [00:41:48] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. He's just gonna keep on spouting off the odd line here and there. Only the ones that he can remember, which is definitely not all of them. He would like to think that he'd be a very good actor, but he has a very short attention. Spanish. [00:42:05] Speaker A: So then you make it through the. Through the script until you get to the big townspeople number at the end of the first song because they are piling up behind the character of Harold Hill. In this scene, you make it to the end. They say, you really ought to give Iowa. They name all the cities, ought to give Iowa a try. Then there's, like, the orchestra goes boom, and then we go back into narrative mode, as opposed to sing songy mode. And it is about that point that, Lucas, you can add yourself a cursed eye to your pool. Yeah. [00:42:43] Speaker D: And he is in the town square, grinning from ear to ear. He didn't bring his horrible briefcase, so he is. I think his hand feels naked, and he has bought in fully. And during this scene, of course, Professor Harold Hill has his traveling salesman kit. And so I think he finds, like, an errant piece of luggage and at some point has picked it up. [00:43:13] Speaker C: Do you need the carpet bag? [00:43:15] Speaker A: In fairness, there was an infinite number of luggage suitcases on the train, so you could have had any of those. [00:43:22] Speaker D: I think he has one now, but. [00:43:24] Speaker A: I want to zoom back a little bit, because mechanically, I can say you add a cursed eye, but that feels very different in the moment because it's a. It's a swelling, roiling feeling. You know what it's like when it's coming from an act. You choose intentionally, right? And I don't mean like you've intentionally chosen to participate in the op, in the second song of the music manda, but, like, you have to get someone riled up, and then you have to do the emotion breathy thing. This is different. This is that I. In a way, I guess it is kind of that musical theater. The number is there, and your heart rates up a little bit, and you hear the audience clapping because they really like the show, but in your curseborn parts. Right? And you can get that kind of, like, ooh, tingle of knowing that you are more powerful now, and you have that kind of, like, crackling, energetic feeling in your skin or whatever particular way it manifests for you as a hungry. [00:44:31] Speaker D: I think he feels that bit of peak, the same thing that he was looking for that night at the theater. The reason why he live streams very loudly in public and things like that. That feeling, he usually gets just a low level bit of thrill out of it. But there's something about this moment where he's like, I've done it. I've been searching for this the whole time. [00:45:03] Speaker A: Looking forward to the future of the scenario where Lucas refuses to leave the music man dimension. But in the meantime, Subra and Blake, you're watching behind you. See all this pan out. We have ended up essentially a block down from the main town square. So on your left are some stores we actually never see in the film. But on the right there is a barn with a horseman, and he does wagons and wagon pulling things. And then directly ahead, if you were to continue that way, you know, the town hall is going to be on your left. And then to the right of that, there will be the big square with the bandstand, absent band until the final number. For those of you following along at. [00:45:45] Speaker C: Home, there should be at some point a person who gives piano lessons. I just don't know how much involvement Lucas needs to have yet. [00:45:59] Speaker D: I. [00:46:02] Speaker C: Also Blake. Cause Lucas seems to be a little too busy. We have yet to find our producer in all of this. Yeah, if Lucas is playing Harold, which is, I would argue, the main role, where would you be if you were putting on the music, man? [00:46:40] Speaker B: I mean, I suppose there exists a world in which somebody wants to direct. [00:46:50] Speaker C: Well, do something that needs to be directed, then, I guess, draw it out. [00:46:58] Speaker B: Okay, so I'm gonna flip through the script, I guess. And because I am the mayor, I'm going to find fast forward, I guess, because it doesn't look like right now the mayor has stuff in this scene, right? Like, kind of looking around. So I need to find a moment where the mayor has a line. Or you know what? Maybe. Maybe I come in early. Maybe that's the thing, because I don't have a line here. So maybe I come in and if they are directing, I will get a stage direction. So I'm going to flip through the script until I find. I'm literally flipping through the script right now to find a line. [00:47:41] Speaker A: All right. And. Sorry. Well, I mean, joke here. It's quite all right. It happens to everybody. Sometimes you just too early, stumble into the scene where Harold would be discussing with JC, I believe the name is, and then finds the man who knows that he's Greg. Right? You show up and you are in your mayor costume. You affect the mayor's line. I don't remember which one it is next. But if you barge into the scene saying it too early, two things happen. [00:48:23] Speaker B: I do have a line that I'm barging in with early, if you're ready. I'm sure we're all grateful to my wife, Eulalie Makanaki shin, for leading the singing into Jackie Squires for his fine stereopticon slides. [00:48:39] Speaker A: I appreciate that. Even though you are trying to fuck up and play on purpose, you still put a fair amount of effort into your delivery. [00:48:45] Speaker B: I spent a lot of time preparing method acting, Aaron, come on. [00:48:52] Speaker A: So you finish that line, you put the punctuation point on it. Everything stops for just a minute, like microseconds, if it's in a cinematic sense, like in the matrix, when they're doing the bullet spinny camera and the time stops while they move the camera, and then everything speeds up again. So you feel that of kind of queasy weirdness in your stomach parts and a queasy weirdness in your curseborn parts. And then in a voice that booms down from the heavens loud enough that you feel like it may have convinced earlier men to form a religion, you hear no, no, no. In a shrieking, shrill, Gilbert Godfrey level of voice, you are early back to the beginning. And then a clap and you bolt upright in a train. Cash for the merchandise. Cash for the button hooks. Cash for the cotton goods. Cash for the hard goods. Cash for the soft goods. Cash for the fancy goods. Cash for the noggins and the piggins and the perkins. [00:50:19] Speaker D: Oh, dear. [00:50:21] Speaker A: Well, Lucas, uh, your curse type's gone. [00:50:29] Speaker D: Oh. [00:50:33] Speaker C: Are we back in time or do we fuck up that bad? I'm reacting to a thing. I can't tell. Nevermind. Once more with feeling. [00:50:54] Speaker D: Away we go. [00:50:57] Speaker A: And we're back on the train. Now, a couple things that are going to be important. One, Lucas, remember that you stole a bit of luggage right from the first train, and the luggage you have is still in your hand, and the place you stole it from is still up on the wall with a new baggage there. Anvil salesman, I believe, is the. The joke one from the story. Second, you all appear in the same seats where you started. Third, entirely different face looking at you, Blake, and giving you the first line that you heard. Last time, that man had, like, big, curly brown mutton chops, fuller cheeks. And now you have, what's, how do they describe it? Rat faced hot boyfriend kind of vibe. Cash for the merchandise chalamet. Cash for the merchandise. Cash for the button hooks. [00:52:02] Speaker B: Interesting. Interesting to note. If I look around, can I tell that all of the people here are different? [00:52:10] Speaker A: I don't know, to the degree that you took like, a full inventory of the room, but a few faces that you're like. Oh, yeah. Huh. If nothing else, the three of you will be able to confirm. [00:52:25] Speaker B: Okay. Okay, great. [00:52:31] Speaker C: Well, we know how to get out of this. At least this part. [00:52:34] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Okay. [00:52:42] Speaker D: Isn't this a bit of a laugh? I wonder who that was. Obviously it's our sorcerer. [00:52:51] Speaker B: Obviously. [00:52:54] Speaker A: Not reach to assumptions. It could be goddesse. [00:52:58] Speaker D: Unlikely. [00:53:01] Speaker C: Technically, we're all gods. Or at least I am. [00:53:08] Speaker B: Anyway. Okay, let's get off this train. Yeah. And I'm just gonna kind of, like, gesture at Lucas. [00:53:17] Speaker D: Lucas, enthusiastically, maybe too enthusiastically. Leans over to just a random person on the train and says, ever meet a fellow by the name of Hill? [00:53:29] Speaker A: Hill? Hill. Hill. Hill. Hill. Hill. [00:53:38] Speaker D: He's just gonna continue to egg them on through the song, peeking at the book every so often now that he's kind of figured it out. [00:53:44] Speaker A: And eventually we arrive at the line, which, does someone else want to do it this time? We get to Subra. [00:53:53] Speaker B: But he doesn't know the territory. [00:53:57] Speaker A: Crashing. Slowdown immediately. Brakes on. You are used to it this time. So you aren't standing up, but there's still that, uh, slamming on the brakes in a car. You're like, who gotta hold yourself off against the back of the chair? River city. [00:54:11] Speaker B: River city. [00:54:14] Speaker D: This train breaks smoothly much harder than it ought to. Shall we? [00:54:22] Speaker C: Is the train breaking your problem with the whole, uh, spooky, uh, musical world we're in? Is that the problem? [00:54:28] Speaker D: It's not spooky. I'm spooky. Blake is spooky. This is fun. [00:54:36] Speaker C: Fun. All right, let's go. [00:54:39] Speaker D: And he goes skipping off the train. It does the exact same thing right. [00:54:46] Speaker A: Up to the man with the pitchfork. [00:54:49] Speaker D: Mm hmm. [00:54:50] Speaker A: Send to the road. Come along. [00:54:57] Speaker D: You two wouldn't want to disrupt. God. [00:55:02] Speaker C: Well, let's keep going. Maybe the director will make themselves known in a more visual way. [00:55:17] Speaker A: Well, how far into the two hour runtime are you going to go? For my sake? I have essentially broken it down into song beats. [00:55:29] Speaker C: Let's get to the. Hmm. My thought is, let's get to 76 trombones. [00:55:38] Speaker D: Yeah. And if we got there, you're not going to stop Lucas. He will just do the whole song from memory. [00:55:49] Speaker A: Second question. Are you performing the role, or are you observing the thing play out? [00:55:57] Speaker D: He is definitely performing the role of Harold Hill. If there is not a Harold Hill already present, and even if there is one, honestly, he would probably hipchase that person out of the way. [00:56:06] Speaker C: Actually, I was going to say we probably should stop it. You got trouble? Because that'll be faster. To find out whether. Whether or not there is a Harold Hill. Harold Hill. Wow. [00:56:14] Speaker A: Well, I mean, strictly speaking, Harold Hill appears immediately off the train. The bit in the beginning explaining to v is that all these salesmen are on the train, and one of them is bitching about this guy named Harold Hill, who's giving everybody a bad name. And then someone says, well, I should avoid that Harold Hill. And the man says, yes, you should. What was your name? And the guy says, I didn't say, but grabs his suitcase and it says, Professor Harold Hill. And he steps off the train, which is going to make things very awkward for Lucas. As you bump from the next scene you are going through and you do Iowa, kind of stubborn, and you're ready to cruise on to the next thing. You know how this works. You get into all the small town and you hear it coming from the barn. There's someone doing your part. [00:57:08] Speaker D: Someone's taken my line. [00:57:12] Speaker C: Lucas. There are no small roles, only small actors. [00:57:17] Speaker D: Oh, I'm not small. And then he basically sashays towards the barna. [00:57:23] Speaker A: And you see a gentleman there who is exceptionally well cast for a production of the music. Man has the wavy kind of Cary Grant, the exact right posture, is able to do, like, the very specific suspender lean that. Actors who try to do these, you know, you have to be able to pull that off. And there's someone crouched down behind the horse, but. Greg, what are you doing here? Why didn't you let me know you was coming? And then a voice like a musical theater angel. Not in a God way, but just like in a that is how good they are for this role kind of way. Well, I didn't know myself. Besides, how could I know you'd end up in a little tank town like this? And the scene goes on. [00:58:12] Speaker D: Lucas looks to the other two very like, is, do we attack this person? Person? [00:58:19] Speaker C: I see you licking that face and I'm like, maybe don't kill him. Also, we can't. Well, they don't want us to go off book. But as far as I'm concerned, our characters don't accompany Harold Hill throughout the entire show, which means no one's tracking us when we're not doing the wrong thing. Just when we're not doing the right thing. [00:58:49] Speaker A: Hmm. [00:58:51] Speaker D: So you're saying we should snoop around a bit? [00:58:54] Speaker C: I think that there's an opportunity. Opportunity to do so, maybe. [00:58:58] Speaker D: Well, obviously, I won't be missed. [00:59:01] Speaker C: Oh, Lucas, why don't we let. We can come back for the musical numbers. [00:59:09] Speaker A: I will say both of the show. I will say both of these potential plans of action will get you some form of development. They will both teach you something. [00:59:22] Speaker C: Well, I would like to not be around for goodnight, my someone. For multiple reasons. I think I will let someone else take that part. [00:59:33] Speaker D: We know who it is, don't we? [00:59:38] Speaker C: What do you mean? [00:59:40] Speaker D: The young woman that was taken in the 1970s is obviously the original Marian for this production. [00:59:46] Speaker C: Then you can stay correct while we look for clues. [00:59:52] Speaker A: And based on the child, we should be able to tell where Lucy is. [01:00:04] Speaker C: This poses a second problem. Are we here for. [01:00:11] Speaker A: Hmm? [01:00:13] Speaker C: Are we here for Lucy, or are we here for everyone? [01:00:19] Speaker B: I mean, they're all still people. [01:00:26] Speaker A: I assume this conversation is happening in the vicinity of the barn. So there does come a moment where Harold pushes past you to get on to the next part. [01:00:43] Speaker D: Does he smell weird? [01:00:46] Speaker A: No, he smells like flowers, if that's what you mean. [01:00:50] Speaker D: Like blue bells. [01:00:56] Speaker A: Hmm. [01:01:00] Speaker C: Does everyone smell like blue bells here? [01:01:03] Speaker A: Yes, they do. And, in fact, the. Yes, the entire set, the entire production smells that way. To the extent that smell based theater ever took off in the United States, this is emblematic of the form someone googled somewhere that Iowa has a flower, and it smells like this. So wouldn't it be great if the theater smelled like Iowa in addition to looking and sounding like Iowa, and then took that thought to its logical, artistic conclusion? [01:01:35] Speaker D: And smell o vision did exist. [01:01:38] Speaker B: Does that mean that it's also humid as all hell? Oh, God, there's so much corn sweat. [01:01:45] Speaker A: Corn's not the only thing sweating. [01:01:47] Speaker B: No, it never is. [01:01:50] Speaker C: This many musical numbers. [01:01:54] Speaker D: My question is also a bit of the as a hungry, does he smell more like everyone else here? Is there a whiff of something strange on him? [01:02:12] Speaker A: For that, I believe you would need esoterica and cunning that I can give you. Trying to suss out the weirdness. [01:02:25] Speaker D: Yes. And I'm assuming I did not get that cursed eye back. [01:02:30] Speaker A: No. [01:02:33] Speaker C: We can take part in another musical number for you. [01:02:39] Speaker D: That is a wicked success with three hits total. [01:02:47] Speaker A: Yeah. So trick wise and investigative stuff, it's always hard, but you can turn it to momentum, or you can buy an additional clue with it. So what would you like to do? [01:03:03] Speaker D: I think how we feel in friends. Do we need more momentum, or shall we take a clue? [01:03:10] Speaker C: Let's take the clue for now, I think. [01:03:12] Speaker D: Yeah, agreed. Clue, please. [01:03:21] Speaker A: Well, I will say this, Harold Hill, this character has energy in proportion to what you would expect, given his importance in the show. So he is not especially radiant. There's no secret lurking underneath. It's not like Subra, where you could peel back the ear a little bit and then see the universe come out. It is just that in this particular performance, there are some roles that are bigger than others, and the amount of energy that radiates from that person and you're in your very hungry kind of way is relative to their investment line wise in the scene. The second piece, though, relying more on your hungry background. We know two things about Lucas. Right? One, you prefer to feed on what kind of person? [01:04:21] Speaker D: Intellectuals, darling. [01:04:23] Speaker A: And two, you prefer to feed on, like, what kind of emotional state? [01:04:29] Speaker D: Fury, rage, frustration. [01:04:32] Speaker A: Mm hmm. And then on the grand, like, continuum of emotions. What emotions sit right next to anger on each end? [01:04:46] Speaker D: Are you speaking of despair? [01:04:51] Speaker A: This milk is sour. [01:04:56] Speaker D: Hmm. Replaying the starring role, he seems quite unhappy about it. [01:05:07] Speaker A: But we'll recall that this was a wicked success, which means it comes through your curseborn power and your frustration and or your overenthusiasm. I won't put an emotional bend. I don't leave that to you. But the only way to really get a sense of what's wrong here is to get up fairly close to, either literally or metaphorically, sniff around this man. No. Can't sing. I have to. What is that? Hmm? Which means, and I think. [01:05:43] Speaker D: I think as he gets closer and he can get a whiff of that souring, I think it's very rare that people see Lucas feed. Blake has seen him feed, but very few others really have seen it. And there's almost like, you know, like a mirage or when there's, like, heat waves in the air that you can see with your eyes. The air around our professor, Harold Hill, warps as he gets closer, as he can just smell that edge of frustration. [01:06:23] Speaker A: I assume Subra or Blake have questions, or Lucas would like to explain himself, but we're not going to have time for that before a loud, rat like voice. Jeremy, you've missed your mark. You're supposed to be in the musical square by now. It's the pool song matures and then. [01:06:54] Speaker B: Back to one. [01:06:57] Speaker A: And as we go on our break, you return to the clacking, clunking of the train. Welcome to the Music Man. I hope everyone in the audience is having as much fun as the players are. This is my favorite part of the adventure for obvious reasons, but my second favorite part of this episode will be when you all stand up, you go hydrate. You move your legs around a little bit so that no one has any health issues, and then you come back in about ten minutes, a little early just to be safe. When we continue with episode three of stealing the show. Be right back. We are back, some of us in more pieces than other. I will have you know, over the break, we've been talking exclusively about how much effort it took to memorize the parts of the show that I could commit to. The bit hard enough, and everyone was like, it was really cool the way that you read that without looking like you read it, and I have to tell you, no, I spent several hours today memorizing the opening of the music man commitment. [01:08:08] Speaker B: Commit to the bit. We love it. [01:08:10] Speaker C: I can link you to several teleprompter apps. [01:08:13] Speaker A: A new being the word. Because, Lucas, with your unusual die result causing a bit of a kerfuffle in the performance, have sent everyone rubber banding back to a train car. There are a few things that you will note as different. One, you are holding the suitcase. Right. Has incredibly detailed, like, so nice of the props department to put the extra effort into that stencil. Hand painting. No one's gonna see it. It's too far away. But they cared. Yours looks amazing. The one above looks less amazing. There's something like, worse. Yeah. Transcription error is the specific kind of graphical artifact I'm looking at. But in more common terms, if you're like me, a copy of a copy, and then the lines start to blur, or, for those of you not of a certain age. There's too much jpeg in this suitcase. Lucas. That's. You're gonna pick that up immediately. Blake, you, as the person turns and delivers the patter, there's a jerkiness in the movement. If you've ever driven an especially old car or something that hasn't been maintained well and you are trying to merge onto the highway, and it's like, yep, I'm in first gear. I'm in second. Wait, where's third? Ooh. Can't quite find. Oh, there it is. And then it jerks forward. There's something at that about the movement. Like, he gets to the 50 degrees and then, like, it kind of sticks a little bit, and he has to push his way through it to make the turn all the way to your face. And subra, your turn for the pattersong comes up. They deliver. And bonus note for everybody, one of the crucial abilities that every pattersong performer must have is the ability to enunciate, because the magic is in the alliteration and the tongue twistery nature of the song. So when someone begins to slur their words, you can tell, especially in this context, because you don't get that crisp staccato in between text. You don't get the clean emphasis on the alliteration, and everything feels just a little bit worse. [01:11:06] Speaker C: The production's degrading. [01:11:10] Speaker D: Hmm. Seems like someone needs to oil the gears of this machinery. [01:11:22] Speaker C: That or replace the actor. [01:11:32] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [01:11:33] Speaker C: Cause these aren't machines. [01:11:35] Speaker B: They don't get oiled. [01:11:40] Speaker A: Uber coming at this from the Disney parks perspective, when someone makes a mistake, we pull them off stage and replace them. [01:11:51] Speaker C: Maybe there's an understudy. Somewhere. [01:11:56] Speaker D: I think we might be the understudies. And Lucas looks down at his outfit and the briefcase that he is holding. Oh, no. [01:12:07] Speaker A: And your costumes are immaculate. Nothing has happened to you, plural. [01:12:12] Speaker D: I I could do the role, but with rehearsal and time. [01:12:22] Speaker C: That'S not explicitly the problem. I think what happens when they. You know, what happens when they stop being as good? [01:12:42] Speaker B: This is our third time back here. Um, do I recognize these people at this point? [01:12:51] Speaker A: No. It's changed again. [01:12:53] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. [01:12:57] Speaker A: But you've all. You've all put pieces together that are important. There are clues that you have correctly identified. You just haven't put them in the right order yet, so you're on the right track. [01:13:08] Speaker C: So there's at least three scenes worth of people you can replace people with. Where is he? [01:13:17] Speaker D: More. [01:13:18] Speaker C: Where are they holding them? [01:13:22] Speaker D: Isn't that the question? [01:13:24] Speaker B: Well, where do actors go when they're not on stage? [01:13:29] Speaker D: Oh, the green room, of course. Or the bar. [01:13:35] Speaker B: Okay, so we have to find the green room here or the bar, but probably the green room. [01:13:43] Speaker C: Uh, grab something. But he doesn't know the territory. [01:13:51] Speaker A: Oh, it's. It's that the wine of the breaks is that high pitch that just gets to the part where, like, it's that tinnitus tone of screech as you all rocket into existence again. Cigarettes. Illegal. You can depart. Right. [01:14:17] Speaker C: I assume River City is more likely to have a backstage than on the train. [01:14:22] Speaker D: Yes. Given that there's no doors, shall we go snooping? [01:14:30] Speaker B: No. What happens to all the people on the train? [01:14:36] Speaker A: They turn around. [01:14:39] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [01:14:41] Speaker A: It stays there. [01:14:46] Speaker B: The people don't move at all? [01:14:49] Speaker A: No. In point of fact, you can kind of put this together that the person you are interacting with has lines, performs, and when they are not performing, they just sit there or stand there. Some of them in the loop of the action they will be performing when someone walks onto screen, sometimes frozen entirely, but definitely that. Pirates of the Caribbean. It's a small world, animatronic vibe. [01:15:27] Speaker B: Okay, I have a theory here. Really quick. Just need to test it. I'm gonna go back to my seat, and I'm going to just grab something sharp and just kind of, like, carve something, like, small and innocuous into the table, because I want to see if we are being teleported back to the same place, like the same train car, or if we are being teleported to a different train car with different people, different sets, etcetera. So I'm going to go and just. [01:16:01] Speaker A: Do that real quick, while Blake is carving the s into the table, I will also say Subra or Lucas, if you look, that eeriness persists. Your pitchfork wielding gentleman who is ready to set you up for the first 2nd rather musical number, mid journey hands. [01:16:32] Speaker D: Hmm hmm. But still humany human. [01:16:41] Speaker A: E entirely, entirely human. [01:16:45] Speaker D: That's not supposed to do that. [01:16:49] Speaker C: Human esque. [01:16:51] Speaker B: Oh, I'm not there. [01:16:53] Speaker A: I mean, you're gonna come off the train eventually, I presume, right? [01:16:56] Speaker B: Yes, that is true. Is there. Is there a soul in there? Is anybody home? [01:17:02] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [01:17:03] Speaker B: Okay, that makes it worse. Cool. Thanks. [01:17:07] Speaker A: Yeah, it does. [01:17:09] Speaker C: Uh, the last thing I want to do to fuck with this. We're not gonna go back very far if we get reset. Um, I want to take someone from the train off with me. I'm gonna grab them by the mid journey hand and, uh, step out. [01:17:27] Speaker A: Yeah, they don't, um. They don't come with you? [01:17:31] Speaker C: I pull harder. [01:17:34] Speaker A: Yeah. At first it feels like they're just resisting you weight wise, and you might not be able to see it from your angle, but Blake, if you were adjacent or a suburb, you're looking around trying to figure out what the trick is. The back panel of that suit is very much attached to the chair, and the back panel of the person is very much attached to the suit. I will say the stitch work is immaculate. That is incredible craft. Which is weird because you expect that would hurt, like, a lot, right? And even if they were used to it in some way, like, once you start trying to, like, pull them, that it's screaming or pain. No. Well, that does explain the one little tear. [01:18:43] Speaker D: Are you two quite done playing in there? [01:18:48] Speaker C: Yeah, I exit the train as fast as possible. [01:18:53] Speaker B: I finish carving b's on the table and head out. [01:18:59] Speaker A: Yeah, for chronology's sake, we can say that Lucas, you witnessed the major Nihan's farmer, and Subra will just say you didn't get off the train, that you and Blake were doing the same kind of experiment. So Blake and Subra, you arrive, Lucas waiting. [01:19:17] Speaker D: You see, our friend has, um, three adjacent fingers and a thumb. [01:19:24] Speaker C: That's not the thing. That. That's not the worst of it. They can't get off the train. [01:19:36] Speaker D: So they're more like puppets than people. [01:19:40] Speaker B: They're people still definitely people. Trust me, they are still definitely people. [01:19:46] Speaker D: They are people being used like marionettes. [01:19:51] Speaker C: Which was the guess originally, but worse now. Much worse. [01:19:57] Speaker D: That seems like they might all be failing. [01:20:04] Speaker C: Let's what happens when the show ends? [01:20:08] Speaker B: We haven't made it that far. [01:20:12] Speaker C: Perhaps we get farther along this time. [01:20:17] Speaker D: I'm worried that that's the goal in all of this. That that is why our director is being so strict, dont you think? [01:20:30] Speaker C: Maybe. Didnt seem to object to the patter being rough. [01:20:37] Speaker A: But. [01:20:38] Speaker D: Well, if the show must go on, whats at the end? Im worried that that is the sorceress grand finale and not just the one with the marching bandaid. All of these souls with a lot of power. I could feed for years here. So all of this misery and he looks at the smiling people. I could feed for lifetimes here. And were I a sorcerer. Seems like a bit of paradise. [01:21:26] Speaker B: Um, okay, I. Because here's. Okay, here's the thing. You. You talk about, you know, all of these people and you could feed forever, but could you? Could you really? Like. Obviously there's. There's one person here that we've been able to tell feel's emotion and everybody else is. I mean they're people, but they aren't emoting in a way that we would expect. [01:22:06] Speaker D: But there's, um. How do I put this? An ambient aura of displeasure here. One that though they might not have my proclivities, I would imagine that the sorcerer is using it to an end. Imagine if this were a farm of unlimited peak condition bodies or a drove of eager dance students. I'm not entirely sure how you subsist, Subra. [01:22:48] Speaker C: It's complicated. I don't want to make this any more complicated than it has to be, but there is one other issue. We are here. We're in. Did we leave the back door open? [01:23:16] Speaker D: How am I supposed to know? [01:23:18] Speaker C: Well, the hope was maybe that I thought we would pop in, grab Lucy and leave. [01:23:28] Speaker B: We never found a backdoor. We don't know if there is one. [01:23:34] Speaker C: Well, let's make that a future problem then. And let's focus on finding the rest of the people. [01:23:39] Speaker B: Right? [01:23:43] Speaker A: Yes. [01:23:43] Speaker C: If anything, let's see if it's the same. Well, you're Harold Hill now, are you? [01:23:51] Speaker D: Well, I believe Jeremy is still Harold Hill, if I understand the situation correctly. Unless there's another Jeremy. [01:24:00] Speaker C: Let's see if Jeremy's okay. [01:24:04] Speaker B: And I am gonna give Lucas a little shit for the venom that he just spewed out of his mouth. [01:24:10] Speaker A: I think he'd be used to it by now. But this is an important thing we've stumbled into that we're looking for certain actors, certain performers, and the Herald Hill you met was not the Herald Hill would have expected based on the casting. On the other hand, we know that people are changing to include for example, the herald Hill you encountered this time, because. [01:24:38] Speaker D: So it isn't. Jeremy. [01:24:43] Speaker A: We know that they break down sometimes. We know there are multiple copies of the same show. Understudies. Right. Hmm. In any case, we discussed wanting to move further into the. Into the story a. The story of the music man, not the story of this scenario. [01:25:11] Speaker C: Yeah, let's get a little further in. Where do you want to stop this this time? [01:25:17] Speaker A: Well, before we make that decision, do recall that we have reset the loop. So everyone bleeds a cursed eye. [01:25:29] Speaker D: We all. [01:25:30] Speaker B: Wait, sorry. Why do we bleed a cursed eye? [01:25:34] Speaker A: Well, it's quite simple if you're a sorcerer, actually, and, in fact, I believe Luke has pointed out explicitly at some point earlier that what would you do with this kind of dimension, these kind of people, this kind of thing? You would harvest them. Right? We don't know to what end, but we can take their joy in their performance. We can take the things that come out of them and convert them into something else. It just so happens that something's been taken out of you. Horrible. We do, however, know how to resist this. [01:26:11] Speaker B: Lay our parts. [01:26:13] Speaker A: The bounce in Lucas's step was, yes, mostly just being smug with his performance. But also recall that there was a certain cursy swagger that came along with it. [01:26:31] Speaker D: I think the moment that he starts to feel a little. And all this talk about feeding on the displeasure here, he first thinks, hmm, what if I feed from them? Oh, right. Then they break the cycle, and then we go back on the train, and then it's all wrong again anyways, no matter what. So instead, he almost leaps in place into that cartoonish musical theater struth with his briefcase in hand. Well, then I guess we must play the part here in River City. Shall we? [01:27:13] Speaker C: Let's go find trouble. [01:27:18] Speaker D: Begins with t, rhymes with p, and stands for. [01:27:25] Speaker C: All right. [01:27:25] Speaker D: So, yes, he goes and plays Harold Hill every place that he can. [01:27:31] Speaker A: This creates an interesting moment, because you've recited the line, of course, but we haven't done the Iowa kind of stubborn song yet, which means, boom. Back on the train. And I imagine that what follows is a montage of simultaneously getting further into the music as you perform with every now and again, someone making a quip or a joke and being like, as everything rockets back. But the important part of this is every time you sing a song, you get a cursed eye to completion. The song each person can participate once. So even if it's a duet between Miriam and Lucas, well, Harold Lucas, you would not be able to get two, right? And there are like, 14 songs in this musical. So we don't worry about running out. We just have to worry about making sure. So, for the giving you enough credit for being smart enough to have figured this out, because you did. But in a mechanical sense, that means you can arrange it such that no one's ever going to be out. At worst, we will assume you have one when you reset on the train, because I do imagine you are all I give you credit for, being paranoid enough as to not want to burst into literal starlight in the middle of a pocket dimension. That said, things get worse. So you hear Lucas say, we've got trouble. And then Subaru says, right here in first city. And then a shrill, nasally back of the mouth, and reset back to one, as they say on the train. But it is different. In here. [01:29:18] Speaker D: Is my carving starting with the difference. [01:29:21] Speaker A: So many thoughts all at once. [01:29:24] Speaker B: Is my carving on the table first thing I look for? [01:29:26] Speaker A: Yes, the carvings on the table. [01:29:28] Speaker B: Okay, curious. [01:29:30] Speaker C: Resetting back to one. [01:29:34] Speaker D: Lucas, literally, like, the moment that he's back in the seat, instead of being prim and proper, just starts swearing for a moment. [01:29:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I get the scene. That so? Yeah. Resets. Lucas swearing. Super. What are you doing? [01:29:55] Speaker C: Trying so hard to just contain my rage. [01:29:58] Speaker A: Okay, so then we have three. We have screaming, stewing, and then I will add to this, shaking brackets gently as you examine the s. S does not rhyme with p, nor does the word I'm looking for start with it. But there is an s in viscera, which is a word that will probably be useful, because let's imagine we've made a copy of a copy, and some of that copy is fabric stapled to fabric stapled to skin. And now there's that kind of medical smell, that kind of bedsore smell lurking underneath the floral. And when you're appointed seat mate, it was not my intention to make you be in the same seat every time. But it worked out that way, and I kind of like it. As your seatmate turns to you and begins to talk about the value of credit. No, no credit. Cash only. In the future, you can see the seeping blood from the mucus membranes. [01:31:19] Speaker C: Say the line, let's get off the train. [01:31:24] Speaker B: But he doesn't know the territory. [01:31:27] Speaker A: The train lurches, and you don't come into the station all nice and pretty because things have started to degrade, which means you'll have to walk a little closer to the station as the front left wheel of the carriage jostles off the rail and grinds across the dirt. [01:31:49] Speaker C: We can't keep resetting this. [01:31:53] Speaker D: No, I believe we hop to and sing a few songs. Shall we? [01:31:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:31:57] Speaker B: Just don't get the lines out of order. [01:32:02] Speaker D: Of course. And he hops, too. [01:32:07] Speaker A: So where do we want to go? Either in River City or in the musical? [01:32:12] Speaker C: Um, when the director yells at us, it is from everywhere, correct? [01:32:20] Speaker A: Mm hmm. [01:32:21] Speaker C: All right, well, that's not helpful. I wish there was. Do any of the doors to any of these buildings open? Yeah, I guess all of them do. [01:32:35] Speaker A: The town you are in, Harold Hills. Hell, LarP like this is a full size river city town stretching into an Iowa that goes forever. [01:32:46] Speaker C: My first instinct was to check a place that is nothing, that is an edifice in the town, but is not, in fact, useful in the show. But it's all complete. Okay. [01:33:00] Speaker A: On the superficial level. Right? But what do we know about pocket dimensions? How did we find this one? [01:33:11] Speaker C: Oh, we found a liminal space, and we did the ritual to get in. So, um, what's a liminal space in a little town that isn't the train station? The train station. [01:33:31] Speaker D: Town square. [01:33:36] Speaker A: Where maybe at night, right. [01:33:41] Speaker C: I. [01:33:41] Speaker A: But, you know, having watched the show that the town square people have it at night, there's at least enough people there to have a small chorus play. Right. But I like this idea because this means as you investigate various liminal spaces, you will arrive at the town square in time for the Buffalo Bills segment. Right. Those four men hate each other ice cream. Right. But there's something that happens when your four performers are starting to get a little tired. At the end of the day, the choreography isn't matching. They are not as in sync as they need to be. So are you familiar with standing puppets? Or you might have heard it be like a walking marionette. The important part is there are puppets in which there is a performer in the center and then a number of life size puppets extending out in some direction, and they are connected with rods and pulleys and such that one person in the middle could perform a group dance choreographed together. Right. Most commonly seen on America's Got Talent, but not the later rounds. They never make it that far. Or Disney parks. They used to have them. So, yeah, I know Subaru's already made the face. But for those of us who haven't caught up visually, the barbershop quartet, Ewart, Oliver Olin, and I don't recall the fourth name are in the middle of haranguing Harold Hill. We need papers. Right. To which Mister Hill does the correct distraction. You get to the ice cream and so on. But it's as they move to begin their song, what can be fair and farewell, dear etcetera, that you notice why they are moving so well in sync. And it is because they don't have a choice. Because the joints are bolted together. [01:36:05] Speaker D: No. [01:36:06] Speaker A: Connected it with rods where necessary, as they have to move around. But your human marionette has turned your barbershop quartet into a barbershop solo of sorts. But also as the. I can't say illusion, because that's a cult word. But as the vernier begins to crack upon this world you have discovered, so, too, is the performers overall level, the ability they have to keep that fear back. Lucas, I don't know. How far is hungry go to be able to detect that in the air? Right? Is it a smell you can pick up? I don't know, but suffice it to. [01:36:58] Speaker D: It'S like a shark smelling blood in the water. [01:37:02] Speaker A: Well, in this case, both the water and the blood are rancid. The water feels fetid, not stagnant, not rancid, but just still in a naturey kind of way that suggests breeding mosquitoes. And don't drink this water. The blood smells sour. We think of the adrenal chemicals that pump into your blood, how that might change the flavor. It's acrid when it hits your nose. And even for those who can't detect that level of emotional nuance in the night air here, Sabra and Blake, you'll be able to see all too well and hear all too well that undercurrent of pain, emotional and otherwise, as they stare at you, slightly pleading in their eyes. How can there be any sin insincere? I will take the stun. Silence. [01:38:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I. [01:38:36] Speaker D: I. [01:38:37] Speaker B: This is. This is terrifying. This is horrifying. And I kind of wish that we had just stayed in the first version of the show. It seemed like the best, but here we are with the. The people, so. So maybe. Maybe we should. We should. We should finish this, because I don't think we should keep going back. Seems like a really bad idea to keep going back. [01:39:08] Speaker C: We certainly can't keep going back. But I don't want. I don't want. Is there something I can do to get a better understanding of the way that this outside works? [01:39:21] Speaker A: What is it you're trying to figure out? [01:39:23] Speaker C: I want. I want. I want to understand, like, and obviously, you can be like, no, figure out, like, do this thing. Like, do the thing. I assume there might be rules or something. Like, where does one be? Outside the outside. Right. But not on the human side. Sort of a native lore. Outside. [01:39:51] Speaker A: You are an outcast. You have a certain amount of insight to these things that the others don't. That was a long time ago, quite literally in a galaxy far away for Subra. So it would be a difficult role. But I'll let you give cunning and esoterica a shot. [01:40:10] Speaker C: I'll take it. Let's see. It's not a terrible pool, either. How many curse ties do we have? [01:40:22] Speaker A: I think number of songs. You would be at two. [01:40:31] Speaker C: That is four hits. [01:40:33] Speaker A: Okay. [01:40:35] Speaker C: One of them is a ten, but nothing on anything. [01:40:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So difficulty of three, which means you have one extra if you want to keep that. Decide what you want to do with it. Investigative role. So you can use it for momentum, or you can get more information. But I will tell you this easiest, most straightforward way would be to, essentially, you have to break through the set, right. But the whole thing is the set. So you have to find that place where, like. No, but the set is the set. Right. What do I mean? Liminal spaces, nonsensical geography. So geometry. Those are the two things. Right. You've been to Disney and you've seen. That's a rock face. Hey, wait a minute. Why is that rock suspiciously smooth? Oh, because it's a door disguised as a rock. Right. [01:41:29] Speaker C: That's what I was trying to do earlier, but obviously in the wrong places. [01:41:33] Speaker A: Yeah. So you have to find those places. It's not the whole thing. Everywhere. Right. And you want to find that liminality, but. And this is the piece where I say you can. You have that extra hit for a clue, right? [01:41:48] Speaker C: Mm hmm. [01:41:49] Speaker A: You are an outcast. You know how to make your own. So if you were going to investigate the behind the worldness of this place, the director is, safe to say, probably watching the stage door. Right. But, subra, you have the ability to climb up into the catwalk or irritate the electricians by going underneath where all the other cabling is, in a matter of speaking. The trade off is that which is predictable and that which is dangerous. And you would have to decide between the two. The third option, it gets easier to find that place, the more broken the set is. Right. Have you ever ridden on Space Mountain in between repair cycles? Downside to that being that the set isn't the only thing that deteriorates here. So that creates a question that I'm sure you'll want to discuss together. You can make this easier for yourself by making it worse for the people you want to save, presuming you want to save them. [01:43:11] Speaker C: Um, I can get us somewhere kind of backstage, but it's worse. [01:43:21] Speaker D: You mean worse? [01:43:23] Speaker C: Um, I can take us outside. Outside? [01:43:33] Speaker B: Okay. [01:43:34] Speaker D: Again, how. [01:43:35] Speaker B: How is that worse? I'm not, um. [01:43:42] Speaker C: Pausing because if I get this lore wrong and Matthew Dawkins kills me, I need a record of that. I. Can we call it a battleground, sort of where I'm from, but not. I am not supposed to be there. It also may be where someone else is. It's hard to explain. I don't know how to. We don't have words for it because we don't do words anyway. [01:44:22] Speaker A: Yeah, so let's just. To clear the battleground bits are, like, the thinnest places where the outside touches the real world, but like, raw dogs it. As opposed to this, which is like a protected little pocket dimension space. So in the lore universe, like, we've seen Yetis, why do we think, like, the Jersey devil exists? And the in universe thing is like, well, yeah, that's where the realities are touching and don't have to stop. And if you can find those places, it's easy to get around. I bring this up, though, because that's not quite what you have to do, Clara, essentially. [01:44:59] Speaker C: I know I have to bleed the dye to do it. [01:45:01] Speaker A: Well, no, I mean, like, you don't have to go to. It's not a battleground you have to go to. You can just essentially tear away through the scenery to the backstage by being an outcast about it. [01:45:17] Speaker C: All right. [01:45:18] Speaker A: The difficulty is that that is hard, and it becomes easier the more you make all these people suffer. [01:45:25] Speaker C: Yeah, and I don't intend on doing that if I could avoid it. But to that end, let me see if I can get us to that point so it doesn't seem as weird. [01:45:33] Speaker A: It's a bit like an onion. [01:45:36] Speaker D: I think. Before anyone has a chance to move, Lucas does something very out of character for him, because looking at these marionetted people, he can't help but feel a little bit of the curse that he knows is the curse on him. And he sees the tear and probably a bit of the blood and can smell the stagnant nature of what's going on here and has a moment of odd self awareness. The stagnant nature of his life. The stagnant nature of being a hungry for now over a hundred years. And he steps in line with the quartet and sincerely sings aren't we sincerely in love? Oh, we're in love. To finish the song. [01:46:40] Speaker A: The results are as expected so far as your cursed eye is concerned, but you have also liberated them from the end of their scene. And because they are no longer on stage, no longer necessary. As the imaginary camera pans around, all that is left for them to do is to exit stage right and stop. [01:47:11] Speaker C: They're just standing off in a corner. [01:47:14] Speaker A: Essentially outside peripheral view. If you imagine that you are the audience or the main character. Like in a first person VR performance of the music man. They have wandered just far enough to be outside of your frame of view. [01:47:32] Speaker C: Interesting. [01:47:33] Speaker A: Or in a very Disney way, like steps behind a bush or hidden around a corner. It's all very programmed. [01:47:41] Speaker C: Cedary mostly trying to get see if we could follow them off stage. [01:47:48] Speaker D: Poor bastards. [01:47:50] Speaker A: Yeah. They are not the ones who can break the rules here. [01:47:55] Speaker C: We don't have to go all the way out out. But it sounds like we can't let them. I don't want them to be more hurt. [01:48:08] Speaker D: I need this to end. [01:48:13] Speaker B: Okay. Well, uh, I mean. And I look through the script and I'm like, okay, well, this is page 53 of. And I flip to the back 135. So we've got a ways to go. [01:48:31] Speaker D: I say we break the rules a little, shall we? [01:48:34] Speaker C: Let's go find someplace where it's thin. [01:48:40] Speaker A: These are two separate goals, sort of. Are we just following the musical to its conclusion? Or are we looking for the place that will be liminalist? In the context of the musical, I. [01:48:58] Speaker B: Think we're looking for the place that is the liminalist. But it's kind of one of those things where looking at how much is left to go, it gives us an idea of how much time we have. We know it's not going to end immediately. And theoretically, these people know how to play their parts at least well enough. So we have an idea of how long we have until it either ends or resets. [01:49:27] Speaker A: Well, yeah, you haven't. I haven't actually ever seen how it ends. But my point being, the musical ends with the entire town watching a marching band made up of, I think, all the children in Iowa, based on the count. Liminality, defined in part by its emptiness. Means you would not be able to see both of those things happen at the same time. [01:49:54] Speaker C: No, but we could probably find the empty theater or the empty gym. I think it's in the gymnasium. [01:50:02] Speaker D: Yeah. Because anytime the subject of going to the very end of the musical comes up, Lucas will repeat that. He's fairly certain that that is completing a ritual. [01:50:11] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't intend on completing anything. Based on the show that we know of. There's a couple places that are empty that are liminally. [01:50:23] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I don't know if you can find them. I'm just making clear that you can't be seeing how the thing ends and also avoiding the end of the thing at the same time. Right? [01:50:33] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:50:34] Speaker A: In that case, then pick a musical number. We could do the train station. When he is trying to sing miriam back into his good graces would work. You could just hang out in the gymnasium and wait for everyone to go do 76 trombones the first time, not the reprise. In the end, at a certain point there's going to be a big kerfuffle in the library, which might leave something else available. But also, as far as you know, the train only comes to town here twice. I'm sorry, three times. There's the Wells Fargo. [01:51:10] Speaker B: We. [01:51:12] Speaker C: I say we head to the library. I don't think that there's much happening in there. Most of the show. [01:51:19] Speaker D: Do a lot of library. [01:51:22] Speaker A: Well, then we will proceed across town. The good thing about storybook River City is it's quite easy to navigate. It's not that big in time. This is where a swaggery, swindly herald Hill will attempt to put the best moves on a certain librarian. And as she rejects him, a number of townspeople will begin tap dancing in the lower levels of the building. But now is not that time. This happens later, I believe in the musical. If you are leaving directly after the barber shop song, then you have tonight. And then tomorrow morning will be when Harold shows up. And there's a certain sense of liminality about an empty library. There are places of transition. You never stay here. You show up, you get the thing and you leave. And when they are empty, you are keenly aware of how much space they take up without people in them. Which means it does seem to meet the definition of where it should be. Which raises the question, how are you going to open the door? That is a question I believe we will have to wait to answer, among other reasons, because we have run out of episode time here on the precipice of discovery. Once again. How odd. What a coincidence. [01:52:52] Speaker B: Almost like you plan it this way. [01:52:55] Speaker A: Well, I wouldn't know anything about that. Cause we've got trouble here in Queens Court city, which starts with a t, which rhymes a c and stands for cliffhanger. [01:53:09] Speaker D: Not even a little. [01:53:13] Speaker B: So dumb. I love it. [01:53:15] Speaker C: Be more smug. Aaron. [01:53:20] Speaker A: Hi, my name is Aaron. I've been your story guide as we continue continue through stealing the show, an original scenario for Curseborn. This game is up on Kickstarter right now. If you want to explore liminal spaces, some of them musical theater based, others not. You can be heading on over to the Kickstarter link. It's in the show notes. It's also in the chat right now. Have at it. I think we've had a fairly good amount of fun with this game, and we are barely scratching the surface of what is available. So at the very least, pop on over there, check it out. Wouldn't have been able to do this without three especially accursed cursed people. They are delightful in order of equally delightful across the board, beginning with Lucas Somerset in the role of Harold Hill. It's Kai, truly. [01:54:09] Speaker D: Oh my goodness. Hi everybody, I'm Kai. I use he, then she, pronouns. You can find me all over the Internet as a style of mladros, where I usually play various shades of pathetic men, including Mister Lucas Somerset roles and insufferable hungry. You can find me. Gosh on for sure on hold please. My calendar didn't load. It's thinking about it real hard. Oh my God, there we go. You can find me on Badhouse RPG on Thursday in sun and tales of the valiant campaign with an all API cast telling a post colonial story in a east asian inspired world where I play another horrible man named Hoshiro, who is normal. And very, very soon you can find me on the premiere of transplanter RPG's third arc for the chaos protocol as Mister Zanan Esh, who is the team's not dad. He's not their father. And then on Sunday on the Doomsayers playing Marek, also known as Patroclus of ancient Greece, where we are solving the mystery of a dead. Two dead gods. And then back here for your entertainment very shortly thereafter. [01:55:42] Speaker A: A terribly busy schedule we've got. Busy right here in TtrpG City, which starts with a B, which rhymes with V, which stands for V as Blake Sweeney, and also the mayor. [01:55:59] Speaker B: That's me. Do you not have a question for me today? [01:56:05] Speaker A: No, I spent my entire day memorizing the music, man. [01:56:13] Speaker B: I was looking forward to a question. [01:56:16] Speaker A: I will have one for you. Well, not tomorrow, but one week from now, 2 hours ago. I will have a question for you. Well, we can mix it up. Do you want you ask me a question? I'll answer it. [01:56:30] Speaker B: Oh, okay. You know what? Let me think about the question and I'll get it. After Claire is the. After Claire's outro. I'll come back. I'll come back, but. Hi folks, my name is Vy. You can find me on the Internet at v is for vampire because my name is Vy and I like vampires. I also do a whole bunch of stuff over here at Queen's court games, like art and I don't know, I show up in things like the all night society where I play Ivy Larue. And if you're caught up with the third season, you've got some fun stuff to figure out. Lots and lots of mysteries going on. And if you haven't, what are you waiting for? Go check it out. It's pretty great. You can also see me on crit hit chronicles right now, where we are doing a haunting of Hill House inspired kids on bikes playthrough. So definitely go check that out. I play the terrible, awful Megan Heather, just one half of the Heathers. So you should definitely go go check that out. Thank you for the face, Kai. You know exactly what I did there. Yes, but that is me. Just, I don't know. Keep an eye over on Queen's court games. If you want to see more about me and all the stuff that I do. [01:57:45] Speaker A: I need you to know, Claire, I've been spending a really long time trying to figure out how to make a joke about rhyming with s or finding a way to get back to c without realizing that I already used it on cliffhanger. So this is me failing to make the appropriate segue to introduce Subra Stern in the role of Miriam, is it? Clara Allison? [01:58:09] Speaker C: Honestly, that's good for me. I enjoyed that. Hi, I'm Clara. I'm all over the Internet as clearly golden, and you can find me all over the Internet with that username because I usually manage to get it. And now that I've said it, I will never acquire it again. Yes, I'm here on Queen's court playing a myriad of games. Specifically, most consistently, I am Maya on the all night society, kind of spiritual siblings with every character that Kai plays. And sometimes, depending on when you're watching this, I can be found over at Howlet Haven Studios playing a myriad of games over there and also spending time with Happy Jacks rpg podcast, my first home and the place that feeds me every once in a while. And I drag my friends to do. [01:59:09] Speaker A: And I am 76 GM's in a trench coat. I am aaroninwards on Twitter or bluesky or other social media sites as you may see fit. I don't really play games. It's kind of not my thing because when you start writing games, you don't get to play them anymore. That's a bit the rule. Except the two times I have, but I'm not gonna tell you. I'm gonna make you go follow me on Twitter to find out. That's called engagement baiting. I'm pretty sure I don't know. I'm too old for social media. If you want to know what I'm doing, you can probably better find it at Queenscourtrpg on Twitter. Queenscourt games literally everywhere else. Or, look, I don't tell everyone this, but if you want, like, the extra super curated, behind the scenes QCG experience, best way to do it is patreon. Patreon.com queenscourtgames little bit of $5. Well, but you will get access to, among other things, talkback notes from these show. It's early access to the all night society. V makes not one, but two in entire art pieces every single month that only you will have access to. You can also bop over on our discord. We're having a conversation right now about whether or not a house in Switzerland is haunted, and if so, is it by someone's cat? These and other things, yours to behold, some for free, some for not, but all the same, give it a go and check it out. Now, before we leave the did you have a question? [02:00:39] Speaker B: I do have a question for you, Erin. If you could replace all of the grass in the world with something else, what would it be? And why grass? Like, you know, the green stuff grows up out of the ground. [02:00:54] Speaker A: Is my objective here to be fun or, like, good for humanity? [02:00:58] Speaker B: Whatever you like. That answer is completely dependent on how you are as a human and I think will color our opinion of you forever. [02:01:06] Speaker C: You will be judged. [02:01:07] Speaker A: Okay. And then if I pick something solid, is it, like the blades of grass are changing individually, or can I, like, change, like, a lawn into an equal kind of surface of this thing? [02:01:20] Speaker B: I think we could make the argument that you could like, because if you were like, oh, I want to make it turn the blades of grass into grapes. Right? Obviously, cool. Like, a grape is a thing. But if you were like, no, I just want concrete instead. You know, you're not going to have just, like, a shard of concrete. Concrete everywhere. That would be weird. So I think it's completely dependent on the object, and it's up to you, at your discretion. [02:01:41] Speaker A: No, in this case, I know the answer, because, one, I don't want to mess up everyone's landscaping and color palettes and the way they've handled their house. But also, two, I'm a child of a certain age with a very specific dream I never got to fulfill, which means I would replace all the grass on the planet with a glowing piece of that radical rock. The agro crag from Nickelodeon. [02:02:03] Speaker D: I. Terrifying choice. [02:02:06] Speaker B: Love this answer. I am. [02:02:08] Speaker A: So you'd look out over your lawn and it would just be like a jagged kind of, like, spread out over the kind of thing. Right. Imagine, like, you'd be based, like a sheet cookie of agrocrag, and then it's kind of left it. Yeah, that's what I would do. [02:02:20] Speaker D: No, I love minecraft texturing. [02:02:23] Speaker B: Mm hmm. [02:02:24] Speaker A: But imagine how much joy you would feel. [02:02:26] Speaker B: Oh, immense joy. I always wanted a piece of the agro cracker. Are you kidding me? [02:02:30] Speaker D: Oh, man. [02:02:32] Speaker A: Well, I tell you what. I'm gonna tell you a story about me as a child in the agrocrag, but I'm gonna do it in like, three minutes on the Patreon thing. So if people wanna know the answer, they're gonna have to come sub. [02:02:43] Speaker B: Luckily, that should be live, like, right now. Like, you could go check it out right now. Get this answer right now. Go get it. [02:02:51] Speaker A: But we haven't recorded it yet, so let's not bend causality. [02:02:54] Speaker B: Okay, well, by the time they hear it, we will have. You see, it will have had happened, Aaron. [02:02:59] Speaker A: You will see, which rhymes with t, which is 2 hours ago. A week from now, we will be back with the final episode of stealing the show for curseborn. Until then, bye for now.