Red Markets Play Test

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello, friends, and welcome again to another single serving tabletop adventure from Queen's court games. That's us. Woo. I am Aaron. I am your storyteller, and tonight we're playing an original teaser scenario for red markets, a game of economic horror by one of our favorite authors, Caleb Stokes. If you want to check out the system for yourself, you can find a link by popping exclamation point scenario in chat or taking a peek at the show notes. If you're catching up on YouTube or one of our podcasts also being a horror scenario in a zombie apocalypse universe, there might be some topics that certain viewers find uncomfortable or objectionable. You can get a list of those topics by typing exclamation point safety in chat or in the show notes. We've done our check ins and our session zeros. We want to make sure you at home are safe as well. Our lovely cast is waiting, and I am downright giddy at the prospect of introducing them. But first, a small note. If at any point in this game you find your mouse sliding down to that subscribe button, consider instead making the short journey over to our Patreon page. You will get way more bang for your content buck, including special episodes and exclusive art rewards. And we won't have to split your generosity with an evil hyper capitalist whose shaved head resembles a lumpy peeled potato. With that out of the way, allow me the great privilege of introducing our amazing, astounding, incredible cast, joining us for the first time, literally writing shotgun in this scenario as content. It's Mark. Mark, how you doing? [00:01:29] Speaker B: Oh, hey, I'm doing good. Hey, everyone, my name is Mark J. My pronouns are he and they, and you can usually find me on Everrealm adventures, an all Poc D and D live play podcast where I play Farley's the rakish, strawish, roguish badass you can typically find me tweeting about curious inspiration for artistic endeavors today, at least it anyway, more the merrier on the twitters. Hi. [00:01:52] Speaker A: If you pop in exclamation point and cast, we will have links to everybody's socials, everyone's stuff. That way you don't have to remember and very quickly clip back. Although if you do, I mean, that's on you, man. Don't, don't. Let me tell you how to watch our show. Adjacent, Mark, taking a small break from his GM work at Nat 20 Productions. Again, thrilled to have you here in the time you have available as hush. [00:02:13] Speaker C: It's PJ, everyone. PJ, great to see you all again from NATS 20 productions official here on Twitch. I love hanging out with Queen courts games. I'm excited to do it again with hush. If you are familiar with edge of legend or wayward Arcadium. Wayward Arcadian, by the way, coming back in August. 08:00 p.m. To 11:00 p.m. Check us out. Hope you have a great time and I'm looking forward to being hushed the sniper with a silent, I guess, communication palette and a bad attitude. [00:02:43] Speaker A: We'll see what happens. [00:02:44] Speaker C: I'm looking forward to it. [00:02:46] Speaker A: I can vouch that there are very, very few actual plays that I will actually watch, given how much time I have to spend writing and working in things like that. But I am a fan of Edge of Legend and I'm a fan of playwright arcadium. So if you. If you sank like this Aaron guy, I like his games. He probably has good taste. Take it from me. You should be also watching Nat 20 Productions now adjacent to PJ here on my overlay, keeping this entire group of folks stitched together when things go wrong. As medic doc, it is QCG's very own techno wizard, Jish. [00:03:19] Speaker D: Hello there. I'm George. I go by Kiki him. You can find me on Twitter avournite 225. And you can also find me here on Mondays doing various things every now and then. Might be astral sea stuff, might be stuff like this. Who knows? [00:03:38] Speaker A: Multifaceted, multi talented, and speaking of multifaceted, multitalented, she has put down her paintbrushes just long enough to pick up a bow playing the stealth Archer Nightingale. It's vy. Hi. [00:03:52] Speaker E: Super excited to be here. [00:03:56] Speaker A: I'm not really prepared for that amount of energy you're making me feel self conscious about, like, well, do I sound excited enough to be here? Because, I mean, like, am I being outpaced? [00:04:05] Speaker E: I can bring it down, maybe. [00:04:07] Speaker A: I think I should bring it up. I think is the right. [00:04:09] Speaker E: Oh, you know what? Yeah. Yeah, we can. Yeah. Well, meet in the middle. Mark has a great. Yeah, just. Yeah, hold on. [00:04:16] Speaker A: One time. Together, they are planning a group of mercenary entrepreneurs called takers. Scamming, scouring, and screaming their way through a zombie post post apocalypse in the world of red markets, a zombie outbreak on the west coast has spread through most of the United States, with the government only managing to stop it. Just on the right side of the Mississippi river, west of the Mississippi. Zombie hellscape east of the Mississippi. Permanent refugee camp. Capitalist hellscape. Not the best world to live in. But if you have to choose between the two, not having to worry about being turned into a zombie by being bitten. Yeah, you know, you can kind of see why people feel that way. Unfortunately, getting from the loss west of the Mississippi to the recession east of the Mississippi requires a great amount of money. You have to smuggle yourself in, you have to find false paperwork, you have to have some cash in reserve to find yourself a house, find yourself some land. And that is what our takers are trying to accomplish, fighting their way through the loss, scamming and scouring everything they can, trying to wring every dollar out of this wasteland to make it to safety on the other side of the fence. Today's scenario, I am calling it no train, no gain. Our taker crew are operating in a scenic rail line in the Colorado, Utah Rocky Mountains, which has now been converted into a commercial war train. It ventures up and down the railways, visiting various enclaves, little pockets of survivors. It has been armored to the gills to keep the zombies out. It has put turrets and such on the top gun, firing ports along the side. If you want to just go ahead and Google World War one wartrain, you'll get a little bit of a picture of what we're talking about. In exchange for this labor, they are paid in bounty, the universal currency of the loss, with again, the final goal of either escaping to the recession or finding themselves a long term home here in the recession. So, as our scenario begins, the train has departed Idil, the central enclave where it's maintained and such. You are one of four groups of takers who are on this train responsible for keeping the tracks clear, dealing with any threats that come along the way, pretty much anything that needs to be handled, aside from the trading and the engineering, the people who run the train have a very specific skill set. They are super territorial about who gets to touch the engine and pull the horn. On the commerce side, you know how it goes when it comes to capitalists. They're not going to share any of that, which means while other people on the train are making huge amounts of money with specialized skills, you are getting paid bottom market rates to scrape the goo off the train tracks before the train goes by. It's a shitty job. That's why you're trying to get out of it. Now. That said, because you are paid bear market rates, you are also given bear market accommodations. Each taker crew is given one converted cattle car to call their own for the duration of this journey, they'll be living here for two or three weeks. Now, when it was presented to you, here's where you'll be staying. There were maybe four or five not, not bunk beds, but the kind that hang off ropes from the ceiling the way, like an old world War one or world War two battleship had that kind of stuff. Or if you've seen like, little hobo nests from the highly romanticized version of travel, that's what they gave you to start with. And then for your biological needs, there was a bucket. Whether or not there was a toilet seat scavenger, that bucket comes down to luck. However, this has been your cattle car for many, many journeys like this. And I'm wondering, what have you done to make your little section of it a little more homey? As always, this is the time when I've asked the question. I can see all of your brains racing around to see. See who gets to answer it. And there's no volunteers. So I am going to turn to my trusty d four to see who gets the responsibility for starting us off. And that would be v. [00:08:34] Speaker E: Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be? [00:08:37] Speaker A: Do me a small favor. Introduce me a little bit about your character and then tell me how she has made the most of these cramped and crowded quarters. [00:08:45] Speaker E: Absolutely. Nightingale is a who. She's a very interesting character. She's been in the loss for a very, very long time. She actually spent a lot of time working the walls and things like that before joining up with these guys. So she processes dealing with everything in her own specific ways. She likes to sing a lot, which is actually how she got the name Nightingale. It's not one she picked herself. It was one that was given to her when she was on the wall. So she likes to hum. But she also has a friend that helps her kind of through it. An emotional support animal is not exactly what you would call a millennium, but because here's the thing. Millennium is actually a very highly trained falcon. So as time has gone on, in addition to making a nest for herself, she's also made a nest for millennium. Well, she hasn't made a nest for millennium. Millennium has made a nest for himself. Let's be clear. A lot of times it's a little bits of fur or things like that. Folks will find little holes missing from their blankets as millennium has decided that he's wanted that to kind of put in his little nest up in the corner. But because of this, she actually sleeps highest off the ground, right next to where millennium roosts as well. She's a little on the dismissive side. She's very cold. She had to be. But, you know, millennium is always going to be her soft spot, so. And she's always got her taker crews back. [00:10:13] Speaker A: Of course, you know, they are just your co workers. You can't make too close of friends. In a world where people die pretty frequently, that would just be asking for emotional trauma. But as much as you can trust anyone in the loss, it is your three fellows here. Based on the detail that you have given me about millennium nesting. As I continue through this, I'm also going to ask the rest of you not only what you've made, uh, to what. Not only what you've done to make your little neck of the woods more comfortable, but something that millennium has stolen from you, uh, and is now in the nest. So, moving, we'll say counterclockwise around the cattle car. Uh, PJ, hush, why don't you tell me what your little, uh, little bed space looks like? So. [00:10:58] Speaker C: Hush has had to build an entire lifestyle off of being not only autonomous, but kind of self protective to the point where they don't like being around people. Generally, they picked out a corner where their back is against the wall. They can see all entrances and exits of the place and that's kind of their little spot. Their home, kind of slung with a tactical sling around their body at all times, is their rifle. They keep it tucked with one hand kind of resting on it. So if they need to, they can just snap up and shoot whoever walks through that door. That being said, they seem to really prize noise, or at least noise that cancels the world around them. So they have a lot of docking stations for their stereos and their ipods and all these little accoutrements, but they keep themselves very shut off in the corner, in the dark, weapon on their chest, listening to Metallica on repeat. If you ask them a simple question, you will get a simple answer. If you ask them a complex question, you will get no answer. Hush used to run with a hard of hearing group of takers. His sign language is very rusty, but as he was encouraged to communicate in this manner, he still signs as part of his communication, although not very well. And the thing that was taken from him by the bird, which, by the way, he hates that damn bird. And he will not hesitate to tell you to your face that I want to kill your bird. But the thing that he is missing is definitely one of those cubes that you would put for the docking station. The cable usb to charge his iPhone. He has had to get a second cube and he hates that damn bird. [00:12:44] Speaker E: Look, if you would just let me listen to the music once in a while, maybe millennium would be nicer. [00:12:50] Speaker A: Am I. Wait. Am I to understand that you ordered the bird to do that? Or is it. Or is it that the bird detected your spite and acted independently? [00:13:00] Speaker E: Definitely the latter. [00:13:05] Speaker A: I will let planned that. Well, in the beginning, we're gonna learn the PvP rules in red. Marcus. No, but moving once again counterclockwise through the space content, what has your little neck of the woods turned into looking like? How do you spend your time when you're not at work? And what has millennium stolen from you? [00:13:30] Speaker B: Absolutely. So content is surrounded by these loners, to say the least. His space looks really cozy, actually. He's trying to get everybody to come together. He's got as many scrounged dirty, the least filthy blankets that he can find, um, a bunch of pillows. He's got a little bit of extra bootleg hooch that he's been brewing. Um, but he's trying to get. To get the group to come together. He's trying to get everybody come together. He's a big guy, takes up a lot of space. He's a former, uh, pro wrestler turned content creator turned zombie killer. Gosh, it's a. A hard world in this apocalypse, but either way, he's been trying to get everyone to come together and just bond and just see each other eye to eye instead of this hyper capitalist, dog eat dog zombie world. He's a big guy, really rough looking, but inside, just a big teddy bear. Wants everyone to get along. That damn falcon. Well, it's actually not too bad of the falcon. He has almost given it an old action figure that he used to carry with him, something that was really sentimental to him, something that came from his childhood. But he's pretty much gifted it to the thing because, gosh, there's no time for action figures in this world, so why not have a falcon buddy make good use of it? [00:14:53] Speaker A: And not for nothing, it's better than the bird stealing your blankets piece by piece. [00:14:58] Speaker B: That's true. That's true. Gosh, hell, no. [00:15:02] Speaker A: And having made our full rotation around the car, we arrive at Doc. Doc, what's your little neck of the woods look like? And what has the falcon stolen from you? [00:15:12] Speaker D: Doc is Doc. His position on the car is very tactically chosen. He is in a position where he's in between at least two of the other part of the team. So if anything does come through, he's got someone to hide behind quite easily. His bed is up against the wall, and in front of it there is a sheet of metal probably an old sign that they've picked up that he's sort of molded into a table. And on one half of it there are medical supplies where he will use to fill up and, you know, bandages and chemicals and all that sort of stuff to make antidotes and all that sort of thing. And then on the other side, there are a lot of mechanical parts for fixing things. There's a couple of Hush's stereos there that he's fixed up and everything. A few of the other taker crews will come through and he'll do a little bit of bartering with them to, you know, fix their bits for a little bit of some extra rations or some extra ammo or something. Will fix their bits. In terms of what the falcon, now, he's got a bit of a. I'd say he's got a bit of a love hate relationship with falcon, sort of like a route rivalry. He's got these very small, very, very small sets of tools that he uses to get into all the little tiny bits. Fix watches, get into the stereos and fix all the little wires on the inside. Every now and then, the falcon will come down and nick one of those tools and, you know, you'll look around for it. And then when he goes to pick up another one of those tools, that tool will appear and the other tool will disappear. So it's very much a. But he doesn't do it all the time. It's only when you can. He. Only when you can see that I'm concentrating on something. [00:17:04] Speaker A: It's like a friendly menace. Nothing goes wrong forever. But he just. The falcon's just fucking with you. [00:17:10] Speaker D: Yeah. And I do have a stopwatch and I have timed it and it can do. The pass will run in 12 seconds. [00:17:16] Speaker A: Jesus Christ. [00:17:19] Speaker E: And not for nothing, I, you know, Millennium does let me into his nest and I do monthly go in and kind of collect things and then redistribute them among the group. And if hush lets me listen to some music, then miraculously he gets things back. I'm. It's weird how that works. [00:17:43] Speaker A: I am. What comes to mind is the old, like the organ grinder where they would have the monkey that would dance, but the monkey would also be a pickpocket and do crime. And somehow you've managed to create that relationship with the falcon. That's what I've taken this. That's what I've taken away from this. [00:17:58] Speaker E: Yeah. I mean, the thing to know about millennium is, again, like, highly, highly trained. We use him for scouting runs. He's got a little camera attached to his body that we can kind of have, like, a direct feed to. So he's. He's actually incredibly useful. So even. Even if you dislike him, you know, you see the value in him. So that's how. [00:18:19] Speaker D: That's how Falcon millennium and I got so close is because that camera needed fixing at one point, and I had to get in while it was still attached to his chest. And I've got a few scars on my hand from where he nicked me. But eventually he sort of came around to me, and now he just winds me up. [00:18:37] Speaker B: And generally just kind of adorable, to be honest. I mean, I've always got, like, a handful of just, I don't know, bits of corn, a bit of grain that I can find. Old bag of Doritos. Did I feed him. Just a nice little guy. [00:18:52] Speaker A: I like the relation. [00:18:52] Speaker C: Don't get me wrong. He pisses me the fuck off. But he's a very good bird when he does his damned job. That's not job. [00:19:03] Speaker A: Job. [00:19:05] Speaker C: I remember now. I'm really bad at sign language sometimes. [00:19:08] Speaker E: Better than I am. [00:19:10] Speaker A: Better than I am as well. Well, I think this. I think we can all imagine what this living relationship is like. As you have woken up, had your first meal of the day today, you do know that it is your day shift. The way that the schedule is organized will be four taker crews who are on the journey. There's always one guarding the train in a day and a night shift, there's one that has the. That has, like, that shift off, and then there's one who's responsible for actually going off the train to do things. So if, you know, like, there's a bridge that's out, then the away team wants to get up and go while the others of the train. Because when it's. When it's stationary, that is when it is most dangerous. It's your shift today, which means when you hear the sound, some of you would probably notice the sound of the footsteps coming down the gangway in between trains. If not, you will definitely hear the very metallic bong, bong, bong on the doorway to your space. And the voice of one of the train conductors, one of the actual engineering staff, yelling, y'all up in there, work to do. [00:20:21] Speaker D: I instantly jump out of my skin when he knocks on the door and go to hide behind content. [00:20:30] Speaker B: Doc, while you're back there, got a rest? Mind checking it out for me? [00:20:35] Speaker D: Um. Uh, yes, that's, uh. That's the same one that I looked at last time. It's fine. Just a little bit of cream. I've got some in the container over there. We'll wait until. Yep. Okay. [00:20:45] Speaker A: Bong, bong, bong. I can hear you in there. Open the door. [00:20:48] Speaker E: Will one of you just open the door, please? And I just kind of like roll over and pull the blanket up. [00:20:56] Speaker C: Once I hear the banging and see, like looking around, that no one's doing anything, I take out my earbuds. I pause my iron maiden put on the shelf, readjust the strap, jump to my feet. I walk over to the door, slide it halfway open. What's up? [00:21:16] Speaker A: There's always this look that he gives, really all the engineering staff give when they see the takers. And it is obvious that he considers himself way better than you as a person. Like, look at the peasants who I have allowed on my train. Ugh. I hate coming to this section. If any of you manage to see Snowpiercer before the crash, you understand the dynamic that's going on here because you are definitely the kind of people who live back in the eat insects part of the train. But he only indulges that for a second or two because there is something actually a bit urgent on his mind. So the scouts have found an obstruction. There's some kind of vehicle stuck on the tracks ahead. It's about 4 miles up. So we're going to keep moving as slowly as possible. But we need you to deal with that before the train gets here. This thing cannot stop. You know that. [00:22:05] Speaker D: Hush. [00:22:06] Speaker C: Just nods twice. Understood. Slams the door in the guy's face and turns around. Work. [00:22:17] Speaker A: Now. [00:22:20] Speaker B: Hush. I was gonna ask him about his kids. How's family doing? But okay, I guess. Right to work? Sure. Fine, fine. [00:22:28] Speaker C: We can talk later. That guy's an asshole. [00:22:33] Speaker A: I would believe that that is the one word of sign language that Nightingale has learned. [00:22:37] Speaker E: Yes. Yes. Because I see it all the time. Yeah. [00:22:41] Speaker A: Or. Or she thinks it means bird. [00:22:44] Speaker E: Oh, yeah. [00:22:46] Speaker C: Bird asshole. I could combine them and make bird hole. [00:22:51] Speaker E: Oh, there you go. [00:22:53] Speaker C: That's your birds. [00:22:53] Speaker A: Millennium. [00:22:54] Speaker C: Birds and asses. [00:22:54] Speaker A: Millennium. [00:22:55] Speaker C: This is millennium. It's a hole, brother. [00:22:57] Speaker A: Bird. [00:22:58] Speaker E: Perfect. Perfect. [00:22:59] Speaker A: Excellent. Nightingale having been rolled over, are you the kind of person. No. You were a fenceman. You can get right the hell back to sleep, right? [00:23:07] Speaker E: Oh, yeah. Yep. [00:23:08] Speaker A: Which means in addition to getting ready, one of you has to go wake Nightingale up. Who gets that job? [00:23:14] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Contents. Got it. Definitely pushing forward. Hey. Hey. Nightingale. Nightingale. Good morning. Another beautiful day on the train. [00:23:30] Speaker E: How. How is it possible that you can always sound just so happy and pleasant. I don't. What? What's. What's going on? [00:23:42] Speaker B: Listen, we're on this goddamn fucking train. The only way you can go up is up. The only way. The only four we can go is up. [00:23:48] Speaker A: So. [00:23:49] Speaker E: Yeah, the only way up from up is here. [00:23:52] Speaker B: Yeah, up. Only way down over there is if we go up. Okay, now it's time to. [00:23:57] Speaker E: Great. Great. Ugh. Fine. And I'll just, like, fling the blanket off, and it'll just, like, flutter to the ground because it's just. I'm making a big show of it, and I'll just, like, swing my legs around and just stare at him and then just, like, hop out of the bed. [00:24:19] Speaker A: Hush. Can you tell me the sign language for drama queen? V. A. [00:24:30] Speaker B: Hey, this man. [00:24:30] Speaker A: Perfect. [00:24:32] Speaker E: Oh, I love that. [00:24:34] Speaker A: So you all have your own individual rituals for getting ready to check over your equipment and things like that. You don't have a ton of time to speak with some urgency. And you know what happens to people who displease this crew. It's a bit like those passive aggressive jobs where they don't fire you, but they just stop scheduling you until you quit. But instead of, like, you then having to go file for unemployment because you live in the loss, you have to then go out into the wasteland and find a new place for your family to live. So there is a strong motivation to get right to work. Even Nightingale in her own way, that, which is why it only took you one trip over to wake her up. Now there is a one almost like an airlock car. It is the only way in and out of the train, unless you're using the docks for the goods and such in the back. But for just passengers hopping on and off, that's closer to the middle. So you'll have to go through a few other cars like yours where other takers crew. Taker crews live or work before finally arriving at the that place. Now there is one crew guarding the train. They're currently up on top with their various weapons, binoculars, making things make sure nothing's creeping up on the train, whether human or zombie. I would like to know, PJ, as your taker crew jumps down off the train, who is up there to send you off. [00:26:00] Speaker C: On top of the train? Watching us believe to go to work is a representative of another taker gang. You can see, you can tell what gang he's in because he is wearing a lot of duct tape and old sporting equipment and he's got a football helmet on. And as we leave, they blow a whistle, almost like a penalty whistle. The referee would. Would call. This is almost like them saying game on, in a way. In fact, that's the kind of greeting they give us. Game on. So this is sort of the goodbye call for a gang called the Gridiron, which is a sort of group that's kind of almost ideal ified football to a religion in a way of life. And, you know, these post apocalyptic football warriors live for game day, which is when they take the field and take a job. [00:27:02] Speaker A: So are these, like, dad athletes who are getting into something? Are these, like, actual professional or semi professional athletes who, who at some point made the transition? Like, are they cosplaying? [00:27:17] Speaker C: It is absolutely a cult that has been so far spread from the original concept that it's kind of anyone who joins anyone who's in the huddle. Oh, you're a. You're a gridiron now. You have some maybe professional athletes that grew up doing it after the crash, some that survived it. You have some. Yeah, some. Maybe some dads like to throw the old pigskin with their son or their daughter or their child and goes, I want to. I want to do what they do. Because once you're a team man, once you're a teammate, you're a teammate for life. [00:27:49] Speaker A: I like that, that it's essentially like a beer league sports team that has become a taker crew. [00:27:56] Speaker B: Yeah, you got Raven, you got Bengal, you got saint. All my favorite boys are up there. I mean, if I didn't love you guys so much, that is perfect. [00:28:06] Speaker A: Every single one of them. Yes. Their taker names are all old sports teams. That is amazing. [00:28:11] Speaker C: Which means there's got to be a group called the cheese heads somewhere in this world that are just open. The Coles. Yeah, Coles. Parts of Wisconsin just tackling people shirtless. [00:28:22] Speaker A: Of course, because that's how they demonstrate their superiority as a team. Well, if the. You call them the gridiron. If the gridiron ever franchises, then they can have a sub office called the cheese heads. But in this case, they are happy to watch. Part of their job is to make enough noise that if there are any casualties around the area, no one uses the z word. In this universe. They're called casualties. They will draw them to the opposite side of the train. So, yes, their leader is giving you the whistle and the game on. But the others, they all line up kind of along the side, and they do the cheer. Let's go, takers. And they're banging their hands down on it just to create a distraction enough for you to make it off into the treeline nearby without having to worry about casualties immediately. Now, as you take off, let's talk a little bit about the terrain. It is closer to the summer, so even though you're up in the mountains, you turn. You're not so far up that there will still be snow. It's more like a little alpine. So if you think about, like, southern Germany, if you have not been to this part of the country, which we already know, but like southern Germany, fairly rugged, there's a lot of pine evergreens. The terrain is very, like, dry and rocky, in part because this has been a railway that has been cut for an old mining company. But also, you're in the part of that Colorado Utah border where all the really expensive ski resorts are. So the roads are pretty well main, well were pretty well maintained. And then the leftovers of that kind of stuff have been pushed down all the rocky slag into the area around you to the right. It's up as far as up goes to content. You will have to do some mountaineering pretty quickly after that because this cut is really only wide enough for some access roads and the train lines the way on. So, like, if you're facing from the train on the right side, mountains crawling up on the left side, it's a much, not as steep as an incline, but you've still got two or 300 yards to go before it starts to kind of spill down into that. If you ever made the drive from, like, Las Vegas to Denver, you pass through the part of Utah that looks like the shadowy lands in the Lion King, and that's the kind of vibe you're talking about. So this terrain is. Is safe within about 100 meters on either side of you. And then it starts to get either arduous to climb or dangerous to descend. On the bright side, casualties don't. Not really known for their physical dexterity, so harder for them to crawl up here. On the downside, if you get surprised or end up fighting, it's fairly easy for you to end up losing your footing in godliness. What happens from there? You've been told to walk down the tracks. It's about three or 4 miles, so you figure you're talking about an hour before you get there. In the mechanical universe of red markets, this is called a leg. There's a job you have to do, but you're walking there. So first things first. Everyone's going to have to burn a point of rations, so go to your character sheet and mark one of those boxes. For those of you who haven't played red markets before. It's a game of capitalism. Essentially every single action has a cost. If you want to swing a bat, you have to spend some caloric energy in the form of rations. If you want to shoot your gun, you have to spend bullets. So we're going to get used to that as we continue. Love to think there's a little bit of party banter, but you also can't be too loud because things that want to eat you will. Will come wandering up out of the woods, but eventually you will arrive, indeed at a truck that has been parked over the train tracks. There's an at grade crossing where there's the kind of road you'd see, like in a national park. It's. It's like 1.5 cars wide. So if you, you know, came head to head with someone, you have to kind of, like, come off the shoulder real slow, let them go. It's just poured asphalt. There's nothing fancy on the side of it. The asphalt has been broken up by the climate, but it's still fairly drivable. At the crossing, someone has parked one of those Toyota work trucks. They have a really shorter bed, like, if you're a farrier or. That's a really just random thing for me to pull out. Like, if you're traveling like a handyman, you'd have this truck. You don't have, like, the big f 9000 because it gets not enough gas mileage. So something a little small, maybe a hilux. It is parked over the rails. The tires have been removed. You can see that it's just not sitting on blocks. It's just sitting right on the rims of the wheels. And then for the other details, I'm actually going to have to ask you to roll your award awareness. So who is leading the party here? Who's your scout? I have an idea, but I just want to confirm. [00:33:20] Speaker E: I mean, I'm guessing it's me, actually, with millennium in the air, when I mentioned that he's kind of got a camera, it's actually modified yubic specs, so he's got one around his head. And then I actually have the other one. Doc helped me modify it so it's more of like a little wristwatch kind of thing that also connects to, like, a little bit of like a thing on, like, a little, like, think, like the. Like, the power counters from, like, dragon Ball almost is kind of what we're dealing with. [00:33:50] Speaker A: That's a metaphor our audience understands. Yeah. [00:33:52] Speaker E: Yeah. It's like one of the ones I know the scouter fy. Oh, there, yeah, there you go. The scouters. Oh, perfect. [00:34:02] Speaker A: No, I was definitely going to say that. There's, there has to be a moment either in the future, in the past where like you've, you've sent the falcon up and someone's like, well, how many casualties are there? And you're like, there's over 9000. And then we've all made the joke. [00:34:14] Speaker E: We all made the joke. Yes. So I would actually be moving a little bit ahead of everybody else just because I'm quick and I'm very quiet and I have the benefit of having literally eyes in the sky. [00:34:27] Speaker A: Okay, well, if you're going to scout with your falcon, I need you to do two things. One, you have to burn a charge of falcon because falcons have their own caloric needs. If you work him too much, he gets exhausted. I'm sorry, is millennium is a male. [00:34:39] Speaker E: I did not know he is. [00:34:41] Speaker A: Yeah. And then second, you'll have to burn a charge from your ubic specs to use the energy to maintain the Wi Fi. And once you've done both of those things, you can roll your falconing skill on and. Yeah. So just start to roll falcon. [00:35:00] Speaker E: All right, so that is, uh, three for the market versus eight for me. [00:35:06] Speaker A: So eight over three will always say the black diapers just makes it easier to keep track. [00:35:10] Speaker E: Okay. [00:35:10] Speaker A: Uh, that is a very clean success. So you send the falcon up. Um, what? Is there a noise that goes with this? [00:35:16] Speaker E: No, there are casualties around here. Why would there be a noise? [00:35:21] Speaker A: I was just trying to trick you into going and making a bird noise, that's why. [00:35:23] Speaker E: No, no, I only have one bird noise and it's a peacock noise and he's not a peacock, so I'm not going to make it. [00:35:30] Speaker A: And we strive for realism on this. [00:35:31] Speaker E: We do. We wouldn't never. [00:35:35] Speaker A: So the falcon goes up, you have your scanner on and you're watching, you will notice a couple things. There are casualties milling about the area. Now red markets is a very low prep game. So anytime casualties appear, unless there's a specific reason for them to only be one or two, some kind of narrative thing when they're just around and you need to know how many the GM rolls dice. So in this case there are four casualties and they are all within two distance of the, of the truck. You measure distance in shambles. That's just arbitrarily how much the zombie can move. So they're all clustered pretty tight around it. Just the four of them. [00:36:24] Speaker E: Okay, awesome. I assume having worked with this crew, for a while, I would kind of find a little space where I can see them. And then once I get this information, I would just turn and just be like, four. And then whatever our hand signals are for casualties, hush, I'm sure, has tried to do whatever to teach me a little bit of sign language. And sometimes on principle, I purposefully mess it up, which just annoys him, because then he'll sign back the correct one, and I'm like, what? I don't, I don't. And then, you know, we get back to work just to kind of mess with him a little bit. [00:37:01] Speaker A: I'd like to believe that, like, one of these things. I don't know what the actual sign language for zombie is or casualty, but I'm imagining Nightingale just doing this. [00:37:08] Speaker E: Yeah. Because that's definitely one of the songs that Hush has collected. But just on, like, after. After Nightingale started doing that, hush actually stopped listening to that song. [00:37:23] Speaker A: So you like it? So I hate it now. [00:37:25] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:37:26] Speaker C: Yeah, I made it. I made it. Not cool anymore. And the irony is, I do believe this is like. Like, creepy, scary hands clawing down is part, if not all, of the sign language for zombie. Oh. So if you want to kind of. [00:37:41] Speaker E: It's literally just me doing this. So it's almost. But not quite. [00:37:46] Speaker C: I would definitely be like, hmm, son of a bitch. Yet. I got it. Start trudging over there. [00:37:54] Speaker E: Yeah. So. So I just kind of, like, I signal the guys. There's probably, like, a whistle or something that I have, which also gets. Well, it would. It would be a small, like a high pitched one. [00:38:04] Speaker A: No, probably not a good idea in terms of noise. One thing. This is a bit of a deep lore. Cut casualties and animals, like, they don't really like. You don't find dogs that are eating casualties. There's something about the blight that animals recognize as bad. So casualties not so interested in eating animals. Animals not so interested in eating casualties. And because of that, if you bird song did a whistle, that would be one thing, but otherwise, any noise that's loud enough could attract attention. [00:38:36] Speaker E: Got it. I mean, it's totally plausible that I would have developed some sort of close ish bird sound to communicate with millennium and also with the rest of the taker crew. So I would make that noise and I would just for just to kind of piss off. Hush. [00:39:01] Speaker D: I think we would have all. The fact that we've all worked together in the past as well. We would know that. We would let Nightingale go in front to do the scouting first, and then we wouldn't move until she's provided the information. So with that, I'll then move forward and I'll go to investigate the truck itself to see what's going on with it, although I'm constantly looking to see how close the others are to me. [00:39:26] Speaker A: Yeah. So with the proximity of the casualties, there's. There's no way you're gonna be able to get to the truck to investigate it without either getting them to go somewhere else or dealing with them here. You can come up to, you know, if you want to, like, go a little bit off the road and kind of hover in the treeline. You're creeping up to a safe distance where, okay, if they're not agitated, they're just going to mill around to observe the situation. And we can say that you all arrive at that distance, but to solve the problem, you're either going to have to get the zombies to go stop the casualties to go somewhere else, or you're gonna have to kill them. [00:40:04] Speaker C: Could I use my binoculars to try and find something else in the area? Maybe something that could be a distraction or if there's any other casualties that we're not seeing. [00:40:18] Speaker A: The game does not tend to surprise you like that. I'm not gonna have secret casualties somewhere because we've established there's four in the scene. The only way that will end up more is if there's, like, a clown carve them in the truck. Or if you make noise, like an unsiled gunshot always attracts casualties. And we have. We have to bend very similar to a little bit about where these zombies have come up or these casualties have come up from. But you're safe in that regard. [00:40:48] Speaker C: I mean, I can shoot all of them. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. [00:40:52] Speaker B: Oh, no, shooting works too. I was going to say that if that's the case, we all know that content pulls out of the silence handgun. [00:41:00] Speaker E: Oh, yeah. I mean, I've got my bow. Like once. Once the guys start moving, I'm getting in position because I can. I can take one out really easily. [00:41:08] Speaker D: I move to the back. Everybody would have noticed. And it happens every single time. When we come off the train, it takes Doc about five to ten minutes to actually get his handgun into his holster because he doesn't quite understand how it goes in there. And whenever he pulls it out, it's always got a layer of dust on it because he never uses it. He's there to patch people up, not to fight. [00:41:32] Speaker A: So let's talk a little bit about the combat system. Now, your weapons have various qualities, so silence is one of those things that means you don't attract attention when you come, you don't attract attention when you fire. I'm not going to explain what my brain was doing there. It wasn't what you think it is, but something else I was going to say when you come into contact with enemies, but then I realized you're not. You're already in contact with them. And then I stopped at probably the worst possible place in that. [00:42:05] Speaker E: I tried really hard. I want. I feel like I deserve a lot more praise for how I. [00:42:11] Speaker A: You are not the only one. If you go back and you watch this. PJ had just like a little bit of a wince. That's the one that I noticed because he's closest to me on the. On the thing here. [00:42:19] Speaker E: Great. [00:42:20] Speaker A: So a silence weapon is fine. Some of you also have weapons where you can spend extra bullets to get a bigger bonus. That is a theme in red markets that you can always spend extra resources to get a better chance of succeeding. It's a game of risk and reward where you have to decide what's worth it or not. In terms of initiative, casualties are dumb and slow. They always go last. So the four of you will get to do an action before they move. We have established that they are two shambles away, which means you'll get a turn. If any casualties survive, they will then move one shamble closer to you. When casualties are at one shamble, they can lurch and attack. So initiative order is technically by speed. In this case, it doesn't matter. So whoever would like to go first, we can walk through that role. [00:43:19] Speaker D: In terms of speed, I am at one, so I will go last. [00:43:24] Speaker A: Nightingale has a three. And then hussian content, you have. [00:43:30] Speaker C: I have three as well. [00:43:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Great. There are no tiebreakers, so just. You're just gonna have to decide amongst yourselves. [00:43:39] Speaker C: Well, why don't you. Why don't you start off? [00:43:43] Speaker E: Okay. Great. That is. Ooh, ten over nine. Just barely. [00:43:49] Speaker A: Okay, so mark a charge off on your bow as the arrow goes sailing out. Brains of casualty. There are three of them now. There's also. The great thing about this system is that casualties, just plain old regular ones, if you hit it, it dies. There's nothing else to it. Which means, as the GM, if I start out, I just have the red die on four, and I can just move it down to three to keep track of how many people are there. That is super convenient. Next, hush content, or whichever view we're. [00:44:19] Speaker B: Saddling right up to. Nightingale, slowly blow out my weapon, take a. And that is a five. Three. [00:44:27] Speaker A: Excellent. Second one goes down at this point. Hush. If you miss, it's going to be really embarrassing. [00:44:32] Speaker C: Oh, man, let's hope I don't miss. Yeah. I take my weapon from the ready position, look down the scope, and I fire. Okay, so when it's. When it's two evens, that's a critical. [00:44:49] Speaker A: Yes. Unmodified. If you roll two evens, it's critical. So what did you get? [00:44:54] Speaker C: Two sixes. [00:44:55] Speaker A: Two sixes. In that case, criticals. There are a lot of different things you can do, including having narrative effects. But when you're mostly. When you're just chewing down casualties, the most common is that you manage to get them lined up and take down two at once. That's got to feel pretty smog. You see Nightingale take down one. You see content take down one. And they're like, just wait. And. Like a video game. Just two brains, one bullet. Damn. [00:45:22] Speaker B: Hush. [00:45:23] Speaker D: Good shot. [00:45:25] Speaker E: I mean, that's what he's there for, right? [00:45:28] Speaker D: The entire time they've been doing that, I've been trying to get my pistol out and just like, get out and go. [00:45:38] Speaker C: Next time, gently put the hand down, check to make sure the safety's on. [00:45:42] Speaker A: And just pat him on the shoulder. [00:45:44] Speaker D: Oh, I've been walking around with it off the entire time. [00:45:48] Speaker B: Sorry, Doctor Jabba said, create, cat. Create. Treat us, not shoot us in the back so you can treat us later. Right? [00:45:57] Speaker D: Yes, good point. [00:45:59] Speaker B: Don't. Don't create more job than you need to do. Yeah. [00:46:01] Speaker D: Yes, sorry. [00:46:05] Speaker A: So in the preceding two or three minutes, as doc tries to get the pistol back into the holster as an administrative piece, please hush from content. Remember to mark off one of the charges on your. On your weapon. At this point, there are four dead casualties and the vehicle. Anytime you kill a massive casualties, you can scavenge them in case they've got something useful on them. However, if you critically fail a scavenging roll, you've done something bad and cut yourself on an object or got stuck. Maybe it wasn't as dead as you thought it was and you have a risk of being infected, so that's the risk. There might be stuff in here. You also might die. [00:46:52] Speaker E: Is anybody really good at scavenging? I'm, like, mediocre at best, but I can. [00:47:00] Speaker D: I would say I'm probably, like, two out of three. [00:47:08] Speaker A: Same on a scale from zero to five arbitrarily. I am about. [00:47:13] Speaker E: Yeah, I'm a. I'm a one, for what it's worth. So somebody else should do the scavenging. [00:47:19] Speaker B: In terms of scavenging, I pretty much let everyone else, you guys do the job, so. [00:47:22] Speaker E: Cool. [00:47:23] Speaker D: I would assume it normally falls down to me to do it because I don't normally do the fight because you're. [00:47:28] Speaker E: Not fighting, so you got to do something. [00:47:30] Speaker D: And I do carry a abundance of surgical gloves with me, so I can treat everybody. So I'll put some surgical gloves on as a form of extra protection, make sure that my sleeves are over so there's no skin exposed. Clean up the best I can. I'll go over to the bodies and I'll try and scavenge, see if there's anything on them. [00:47:51] Speaker A: All right, go ahead and make a scavenging roll for me. [00:47:56] Speaker D: That is. I rolled. What do you get if you rolled the same number? [00:48:01] Speaker A: If they're double evens, that's good. If they're double odds, that's bad. [00:48:05] Speaker D: Ah, right. That's double odds, then. [00:48:08] Speaker A: So two threes, but it would be. [00:48:10] Speaker D: A three over five. [00:48:12] Speaker A: If you critically fail a scavenging role, you have a chance that we then would have to choose to determine if you've been infected. Now, this is where your willpower comes into play, because every character has a certain number of willpower points to start the game with, which, among other things, can be used to upgrade a critical failure into a normal failure. So by spending a point of willpower now, you would go from we have to see if I turn into a casualty to, I just didn't find anything. [00:48:43] Speaker D: I think I'll do that. I have two willpower, so I will do that. [00:48:46] Speaker A: Okay, so you go piece by piece. Maybe there's some deeper pockets you just can't really commit to getting into. Unfortunately, no bounty. No gear on these cash? [00:49:00] Speaker D: Nope. Nothing on these ones. Should we go check the truck? [00:49:07] Speaker E: Yeah, I mean, we gotta. We have to move it, so. [00:49:13] Speaker D: I mean, it's got no. It's got no wheels on it, so I can. [00:49:16] Speaker E: I can see that it has no wheels on it, doc, I have eyes, and you check them, and they're fine. [00:49:22] Speaker D: I know, but you don't. Let's just have a look. Yeah. Somebody check inside. I'll check the engine. [00:49:31] Speaker C: I call overwatch, if that's okay. [00:49:34] Speaker A: I'll let. [00:49:35] Speaker C: I'll let you know when they're attacking. [00:49:43] Speaker A: Well, if you would like to go into the interior of the car or the truck at this point, you can see it is a mess. The same black Icarus blood that comes out of casualties is all over this place. You've been around long enough. You see it. It's the kind of situation where, like, the driver didn't check the passenger for the bite. Someone goes vector inside the car and at that point, just a blender, that kind of spray. More than happy to let you scavenge it. You now know the risks. But if you want to dig around, otherwise, cursory glance just kind of looks like that normal scene. As for the car, the engine is not in perfect shape. You might be able to get it rumbling with a mechanics check. Or the wheels aren't, aren't that busted. They're not. Like the brakes aren't locked in or anything like that. You could just use plain old human power to push it off the tracks. [00:50:47] Speaker D: We could. Okay, could turn the engine on and we could sort of brim it. What's inside? [00:50:55] Speaker A: Goo. [00:50:57] Speaker E: Human vector. Human vector goo. [00:51:00] Speaker D: Oh, lovely. Okay, yeah, maybe not then. So push it. I don't. The brakes aren't locked in, so we could just sort of. [00:51:08] Speaker E: I have the upper body strength of a very small flightless bird. But sure, we can try it. [00:51:15] Speaker B: Why don't we ghost ride it? Put a. Put something heavy on the jazz pedal. [00:51:21] Speaker D: That's also good idea, because then if it keeps going, that will attract more casualties away from us. [00:51:26] Speaker E: Yeah, I just. It still requires opening and dealing with the vector goo. [00:51:34] Speaker B: But doc's got gloves. [00:51:36] Speaker E: I'll tell you a great doc then you do? [00:51:38] Speaker A: No, I'll tell you, if you really dig around the globe glovebox, look in the console. That would be scavenging. If you just want to open the door and throw a rock on the accelerator, that's fine. I'm not going to make you roll for that. To get the, the engines serviceable, to get it jumped up and running, that will take a mechanics check. If someone wants to make that, I'll. [00:51:57] Speaker D: Do a mechanic check. Psych. Oh, that is a 13. No, nine over 13. I'll get higher than ten. I rolled a ten, okay. On my black dice was nine. And then I order ten on my other dice. [00:52:19] Speaker A: And then what is your mechanic skill? [00:52:21] Speaker D: That's three. [00:52:21] Speaker A: So your, your nine becomes a twelve over ten. You said your black was a nine. [00:52:27] Speaker D: Yeah, my black was a nine and my normal dice was the ten. [00:52:30] Speaker A: Okay, so, yeah, you, you pass with your mechanics check on top of that. So, uh, you see doc go in there and then you connect the thing to the thing. I know that engines are how cars go and make noise. Um, I'm not going to be able to tell you specifically how you get this thing going. But you do manage to, to get that there. Um, it's going to drive fairly slowly on no wheels. It's going to be loud as shit. But once it hits that little downslope, it'll start to kind of take its own, uh, adventure down the hill. And you are correct that the casualties in the area are going to be too busy following the loud noise to worry about you. So the truck goes crashing along in the distance. You might hear like the general clacking or moaning of casualties. It's one of the creepier things about red markets is that when left to their own devices, casualties, the brain is still looking for food. So you just hear jaws clicking and they'll start, like, moaning when they're agitated, when they notice prey, and it's called frenzy for them, and they'll start moving faster and moaning. But in general, if you just stumbled across some casualties in a big pool, you just hear the snapping of jaws, teeth clacking against teeth. Very unsettling. Yes. Wow. Well, you've solved this problem as far as you can tell. Can go back to the train, report what's going on, can continue to progress in case there are any other problems. Very unlikely that somebody, that by accident, this truck appeared here with the tires being gone, with it being exactly on the bit that does look like it was done intentionally. [00:54:25] Speaker E: Um, is, is there like a tracking sort of thing that we can do? Because I was checking my sheet and I don't see it, I guess. Would that be an awareness role you're. [00:54:36] Speaker A: Looking for, like footprints and things like that? Yeah, yeah, I'll take awareness. [00:54:40] Speaker E: Okay, that's really good. That's nine over one. [00:54:47] Speaker A: Hey. Yeah. For purely intellectual things, of course you don't, like, mark off a charge of brain, but because they don't have a cost, it means they can only be attempted once. So if Nightingale had failed that role, you couldn't then go, well, can I do it? Because the law of averages say eventually someone succeeds and it takes all the risk reward out of it. With this. Yeah, you can see that the casualties have been mulling around in that area, kind of making the tracks hard to find there. But if you follow, once you get out of that area, you can definitely see that the car was somewhere else. You can see the tire tracks, and then adjacent to it sets the footprints. And it's pretty obvious that there are people pushing it along and then walking back up that road. So the crossing is there. There's the downhill where you just shove the truck, and then if you go, go up the other direction. It crosses and then makes like a left turn heading away from the train, away from you are, and starts to snake up in the mountain in a road that begins to overlook the tracks. And the train tracks, the foot tracks go back up into that road. Train tracks continuing along. [00:56:03] Speaker D: Well, I think we've sort of, you know, we've done what the conductor asked us to do, so we'll just report back what we've seen, and then we can just be on our way. I don't think we need to investigate it further. [00:56:15] Speaker E: You don't think so? You don't think that whoever was out here trying to sabotage the train might have other plans to sabotage the train? Potentially when the train gets closer. [00:56:30] Speaker B: Right. As soon as we turn around, they might just pull back up with another car, another something to stop on the tracks. [00:56:37] Speaker D: We could wait here until the train gets here because it's moving along at a slow pace. So we don't have to go back just yet, do we? All the. All the casualties are being led away by the truck, so we could sort of. I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what we could do. We could hide in the grass in the bushes and see if anybody comes along while the train approaches. See, I see. I do have tactical ideas sometimes. [00:57:07] Speaker B: Right. So wait in the kill zone. [00:57:11] Speaker A: For. [00:57:11] Speaker B: The next ambush to come along. [00:57:13] Speaker D: Yeah, but we would be hidden, so. Yeah. Is that not a good idea? We could ambush the ambushes well, on. [00:57:25] Speaker A: On the point of the train. Um, you. You could use your ubic specs to contact them. So if you wanted to just check in and see what's what, spend a charger, ubix, and go from there. If you're looking for instructions, aside from that, you could wait here. We would just kind of to see what. What happens on that front. It's a little bit up to you. [00:57:46] Speaker E: Yeah, I mean, I was thinking that since we have the specs, there's got to be somebody on that train that we can communicate with that also has them, which is one of the benefits of the specs. I'm fine doing that. I also see benefit in going to either see what we're dealing with. I mean, I might just send millennium out to do a little bit of scouting in that area anyway, just see if there's anything, like, if we can see, like a camp or if we can see, you know. Oh, yeah. There's obvious, like, people congregating in this general space just to kind of get a little bit more information while I'm contacting the train. [00:58:21] Speaker A: Well, you can't do both at once because you only got the one pair of specs, but I'll let you decide in either order. It does get more difficult over distance. So having millennium scout your immediate area, pretty simple. If you wanted him to go up very, very high and get a bird's eye view of the situation, then the role becomes more difficult just as he's further away, harder to keep him focused. It's the mountains, so there's wind buffeting. Is he going to be able to get you a nice steady picture? And that, that rule only exists so you can't send your falcon on a seven mile down the tracks journey and then get all the information, right? [00:59:01] Speaker E: No, of course. That would be ridiculous. [00:59:05] Speaker C: Would. Oh, sorry. [00:59:06] Speaker E: Oh, no, go ahead. I was, I was going to ask, I was going to pitch to you guys anyway, so go. [00:59:10] Speaker C: Perfect. Would we be able to do two actions simultaneously? That is, have v send the message by specs and I could use my binoculars to start kind of scouting ahead manually while we do that? [00:59:31] Speaker A: Oh, for sure, yeah. Do you go with that plan then, vy or nightingale? [00:59:37] Speaker E: Sure. [00:59:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, well, hush. Why don't we start with you? Why don't you make your awareness check? And I believe your binoculars give you a bonus. [00:59:45] Speaker C: Yes, my binoculars. When I am outdoors making an awareness check gives me a plus two to that check. Okay, so that would be a total of nine over four. [00:59:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Wow. So you get your. What is your awareness skill? [01:00:03] Speaker C: My awareness is a two. And the binoculars gives me a. [01:00:07] Speaker A: So it's not, not all. You still would have passed without the modifications, but you can, you can see very quickly how equipment is super useful in getting you the extra you need to get over the randomness. So then we'll say this happens like this, that Nightingale, you use your ubispects, you call in, there's a radio operator in the front and you're. Sorry to describe it, and then you're talking about the problems and he's like, yeah, I'm. Hang on, let me get the junior assistant manager, whoever that equivalent is, that you're about to get bureaucracy a little bit, because like a. That the captain of this train is a captain of the ship, he's a master of his own world and nothing can happen without that level of permission. So you're getting kind of bounced around trading information. And as that's happening, while Doc and content comes, make sure that nothing's creeping up on you. Hush. You're looking down the tracks. You make it a few hundred yards to begin with. And it just looks perfectly normal. And then you see there's no. It's a head. You see a head on the ground, like, positioned in the tracks, and then you're like, okay, well, that's weird. And if you go, like, five or ten yards more, there's another head. And then five or ten yards more, there's another head. And some of them are, like, directly in the middle of the tracks. And some of them are centered off across the tracks at this distance. You know, the binoculars are great, but it's also been, you know, 30 years since anyone has made binocular lenses, so it's not perfect. A crit would give you more, but it just be. On this regular success, you can see that they're there. Hard to tell. [01:01:48] Speaker D: If it's. [01:01:49] Speaker A: Is it decapitated sitting there? Is someone buried? [01:01:51] Speaker D: I. [01:01:51] Speaker A: No idea. But, yeah, there's probably, as you can, if you scanned around long enough, 20 or 30 of them spread out over a couple hundred yards. A bit like a minefield. [01:02:05] Speaker C: So, to clarify, it's not like in a straight line, it's kind of sporadic, but throughout the area. Okay. [01:02:13] Speaker A: But never more than ten or 15ft away from the train track. [01:02:17] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:02:18] Speaker A: So some of them are on the train track, some of them are adjacent. The train track, we'll call it. It's about like a 30 meters wide corridor that stretches for two or 300 meters as far as you can tell. And then inside that space, there's one of these heads, like every five or 10 meters ish. Obviously not done with a. Like a measuring tool of any kind, but they are dispersed in the area. [01:02:42] Speaker C: Okay, well, I'm gonna immediately stop the scouting and, you know, kind of say to myself, what in the Reese piecey bullshit is this? And I walk back to my group, uh, and I. I just kind of say, I don't know how to tell you all about. [01:03:05] Speaker B: What do you got? Hush. Spit it out. [01:03:08] Speaker C: 300 meters down that way, minefield of heads. No idea if they're human or casualties. [01:03:22] Speaker B: Sorry, what? [01:03:23] Speaker D: That's. That. That sounds horrifying. [01:03:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:03:27] Speaker B: Heads. [01:03:29] Speaker C: Heads scattered about like a minefield. There's. There's. It's not like a trail, just field with heads. [01:03:40] Speaker A: So just to specify. Just to specify. Like. And it's not like some that they're not like, laying down on their sides. It. There are heads that are just like, set. Like Jack O'lanterns, right. Not knocked over, not upside down. It could be feasible that it's 35 people buried up to their necks. Right. You can't tell. But the important part is that the heads are all set like that. It is deliberate. It would be like there's some weird shit out in the loss, but it would be the very extreme creepy coincidence if there's a whole bunch of heads had fallen off the head truck and all landed that way. Right. [01:04:18] Speaker E: And I'm guessing that in all of our time passing through this exact corridor, we've never seen this before. [01:04:25] Speaker A: Yeah, no, this is not the. The much vaunted head field where you're like, hey, come on your left, you're going to see that. It's main tours attraction. The head field. [01:04:34] Speaker E: I mean, I had to ask, right? [01:04:36] Speaker A: Head henge, what we're thinking about putting on that. [01:04:39] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:04:40] Speaker C: So I clarify and I say field heads. It's kind of like sprouting up. It's hard to do sign language when you have a microphone by your face. Sprouting up like flowers. [01:04:54] Speaker B: So there's a garden. Someone's growing people is what you're telling me from the ground up. [01:04:59] Speaker E: Are both of you high? [01:05:02] Speaker D: All those heads are filled with explosives that are set to go off when the train goes past. [01:05:07] Speaker E: That would be my guess. [01:05:12] Speaker A: It's about now that the senior shift or the senior watch manager or whoever it is on the train is now there asking you for. Okay, you've dealt with the truck, but now there's this new problem. [01:05:25] Speaker E: Yeah. No, I would relay this weirdness to him. Our initial concerns that it is in fact potentially explosives. We have no way of knowing this right now because we've just uncovered it, but looking for information on how best to proceed given that, you know, I don't think any of us are demolitions experts. I'm not, but. [01:05:50] Speaker A: Well, in point of fact, there are two things that he's gonna really zero in on. One, doesn't matter if it's your demolition x, like no one's a fucking demolition expert in the loss anymore. It's still your turn. It's still your problem. And two, if it is explosives and this rail goes like that is the end of civilization for us. And we barely just got it back on our feet. So, like if it's bombs, bombs, and we have to, then we got to turn this whole trainer. That's a big damn deal. So at the very least, I need you to go and confirm for me. I don't know, shoot one, throw a rock at it, figure out if there's going to be some kind of explosion. And if it's not bombs, bombs, then, then deal with this thing. Then you have to let us know if it's if it's safe for us to travel. Like you said, minefield. Is it like anti personnel or anti train? Figure it out and get back to me. [01:06:45] Speaker E: Roger. Roger. And I'll just, like, as I, like, hang up, like, close the connection. I'm just, like, rolling my eyes and, like, taking my headset off and just, like, dropping my hand to my side, just being like, well. Hmm. Hey, hush. You think you can brain one of those heads from this distance? [01:07:09] Speaker C: Yeah, but good. Yeah, but, um, if the heads are a bomb, with the casualties we just killed a little while ago, I'm a little worried that more would come at the sound. [01:07:29] Speaker B: We're gonna have every casualty from miles out come to greet us. If that's the case. [01:07:35] Speaker E: Well, I don't. I don't imagine any of us are really, really good at diffusing bombs or anything. Doc, you didn't happen to mess around with any of that in your younger years? [01:07:52] Speaker A: For what it's worth, in most cases, unless it's a very sophisticated device, diffusing something that's homegrown is just mechanics. Check. [01:08:02] Speaker D: I mean, growing up, there was a few times where I may have fiddled around with a few explosives, maybe. [01:08:16] Speaker B: Yeah, that. That's what we want to do. Send our medic out to clear the minefield. I think that's a safe bet. But again, we don't know if they're bombs. Could just be a cool art installation. You know something. Okay, you are apocalyptic nouveau. [01:08:30] Speaker E: You know, you are so. You are far too positive for this life, I swear. [01:08:35] Speaker D: I mean, the good thing we've sending the magic the medic out is if I then blow up, I can patch myself up. [01:08:42] Speaker E: Unless you die. [01:08:46] Speaker B: The three of us can put you back together basically, right? [01:08:48] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:08:49] Speaker B: Hush. Mengil millennium. [01:08:53] Speaker E: I'm a songbird, not a medical bird. Thank you. [01:08:57] Speaker A: Ah, yes, the. The medical bird of southern California, known for its making nests in the cactus of the sonoran desert. [01:09:03] Speaker E: Yep, exactly. [01:09:05] Speaker B: Everybody's heard the bird. [01:09:08] Speaker E: The bird. The medical bird is the word. [01:09:10] Speaker A: Uh, well, I can tell you that the train is still moving, so you'll have to make a decision soon enough. [01:09:17] Speaker D: But why don't we get a little bit closer so we can get a little bit of a closer inspection, but not get too close in case they've got approximately on them. [01:09:27] Speaker A: Um, making the. The journey down. Uh, one of the things about binoculars is they don't. You see through the. The grass and scrub that has overgrown the area and surrounding the heads. Now that you get close enough, it is not just a field of heads. Surrounding the heads are dead casualties. Hundreds of them. Like, somebody lined up a bunch and just gunned them all down. And then amongst that, there are these heads, also good news. Coming closer to them. Uh, you can hear that clacking of jaws that I talked about. And within this distance now, still safe enough. You're not, like, walking right up to it. Um, you can see that from the best you can tell, these are casualties buried up to their. Their necks or sometimes their shoulders. Uh, yeah. [01:10:24] Speaker C: Can I make a search check elevated around the trees or tree line to see if there's maybe, like, snipers nests that maybe this might be, like. [01:10:35] Speaker D: A. [01:10:36] Speaker C: Bait kind of kill box situation. [01:10:38] Speaker A: All right. [01:10:43] Speaker C: Can I do my binoculars? Can I do. [01:10:45] Speaker A: I assumed. Yeah. [01:10:46] Speaker C: Thank God. Okay, that's seven over five that way. Oh, boy. [01:10:50] Speaker A: Oh, did. Wait, well, did you roll. If your binoculars are plus. Did you roll five five, or. [01:10:55] Speaker C: Oh, no, no, no. It was. It was originally three over five. So with my awareness, plus my binocs, it's seven over five. [01:11:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Um, there are no. I mean, like, there are a few spots where, like, you could climb up to a tree and kind of brace yourself, but in terms of, like, they're in a good ambush point, there's not a lot. And they're just. No, you don't see anywhere. There's no, like, glint of a scope coming up from the rock lines above you. There's no evidence of anyone creeping around. And it looks. I mean, aside from the. Just the continuous snapping of jaws, it's actually quite. Well, that and the field of dead casualties. Aside from those two things, it's quite serene. [01:11:34] Speaker D: So it could be that these people were maybe. I don't know, these casualties were maybe prisoners, you know, being punished before they turned and buried. Because I doubt. I doubt people would bury casualties up to their necks. [01:11:50] Speaker C: Why not just kill them then? [01:11:52] Speaker D: Yeah, well, they could have just left. Whoever these people are, they were. They probably did something really bad, and this was, like, a form of torture. I I don't know. [01:12:02] Speaker E: But why is it so close to the train tracks? You could have done it anywhere. You could have left it out in the forest. You could have, you know, put them close to water or, you know, you could have done any number of things. So why situate them around the train tracks like this? What's the point? [01:12:17] Speaker D: Somebody marking their territory sent an assignment, maybe. [01:12:20] Speaker A: Hush. [01:12:21] Speaker E: Remind me. [01:12:21] Speaker A: You just had a regular success. [01:12:24] Speaker C: Yeah, it was okay. It wasn't critical, just regular. [01:12:28] Speaker A: So for the sake of it, if someone wants to, in my head I have separated between hush is searching around the field looking for an ambush. If someone wants to make an awareness check actually in the field to kind of get a look at it, I would take, take that. Another skill that can be useful here is foresight, which allows you to kind of ask, hey, would I know this questions? Would I recognize this questions? If you have ubic specs, you can do research, you can go on. There's a forum actually that people in the loss use to communicate. And you can be like, hey, essentially like r. What is this thing? Put a picture of it up and see if someone has recognized it before. So if you don't have information, there's lots of ways to get it. You could also contact a reference. You still need to spend a ubic charge to communicate with them, but you're allowed to have as many references as you have charisma. So there might be someone who, you know, who might be able to help. [01:13:31] Speaker D: Nightingale, can I nick your auspex? [01:13:35] Speaker E: Um, sure. Well, hand them over. [01:13:39] Speaker D: Yep. I'm gonna go on to Reddit .5 and I'm gonna use research to take a picture of the head. Yeah, dead it. I'm gonna go into dead it and then I'm gonna see what um, if anybody send in like these sort of hits anywhere else in the country or. [01:13:58] Speaker A: Anything in the uh, in the canon. It's called lifelines is the name of the forum. It is operated, yeah, Ubic for ubiquitous is a kind of starlink Internet where they use mylar balloons, they put them up and there's just a big network of them giving Internet out. It cannot be controlled by the government, which is why you still have access to it. And then there's, yeah, lifelines is the name of the forums that takers and their enclaves use to trade information. So Nightingale, you burn a charge off of your ubiquitous specs and then, doc, go ahead and make your research roll. Yeah, hi. [01:14:36] Speaker D: Drop the dice. That is a, that is a nine over six. [01:14:47] Speaker A: So there you go. Very lucky in that regard. So you take a picture, what is this thing? And you have to wait a little bit because I mean, like the bandwidth isn't that great and you're at the mercy of people who know what it is. You see a lot of things filtering in where not unlike that, it's a bunch of sarcastic, sarcastic responses saying, you know, oh, it looks like a grateful Dead concert. Get it? You know, like deadheads. Deadheads, haha. And then someone has given it lifelines, gold or whatever. Eventually an answer that is useful does come in though, and the person says, actually, I know I've seen this before on our side of the things in Wyoming. It was a trap set by the black math. Like, go ahead and see. But look around on some of the dead ones. You should be able to see a DDJ or something. You know, a DDJ is a tool invented. This game takes place in like ten minutes past tomorrow or 20 or 30 in the future. And it's essentially a door jam that they would use to secure buildings where you attach it to one end and it's got a trigger. And then when that trigger goes off, it explodes with carbon monofilament wires. So you can like throw it down a tunnel, detonate it, and it creates an instant zombie proof barrier. Or if you walk there, it perforates the shit out of somebody's close enough to it and you find yourself pierced with all these wires. Based on that information, doc, you give that to Nelson, you'll be able to see. Yeah, several of them. Not all of them. Several of the dead casualties are rigged up that way. The rest of the post is a tactic used by a group that are essentially death fetishists. All those doomers who were like, humans are killing the planet. You know, we don't. We are the problem here. The zombies are the thing and they're essentially, their goal is to just create as many casualties as possible, take out civilization centers. This is the end of the world. And, you know, God willing, whatever comes next will do better than we did. [01:17:07] Speaker E: Great. [01:17:12] Speaker A: Yes. So the premise here being that you would walk up, you'd trigger one of the ddJs, you would fall screaming pain, you'd get infected, you would turn into a vector and then you would go spreading the infection that way. [01:17:28] Speaker D: Yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't get any closer. That this is 100% trap. Would we, would I know, or relay that information to everybody else? Would we know what these wire traps would do to the train? Would they get caught up in the wheels or is this just like a person track? [01:17:47] Speaker A: Yeah, they're not usually. It's not like an explosive. So you're not. I mean, it wouldn't be great. It might not be the worst thing. Oh, man, that's. [01:17:59] Speaker D: Would it jam? The wheel was up as well. [01:18:03] Speaker A: Sorry, I thought you're having the tracks. Yeah, no, if the train drove over it and that thing went off, it would come up the works and probably derail the train. [01:18:10] Speaker E: Okay, can we. I feel like getting close enough to remove them is dangerous, but can we set them off? Like how far away. Do we have to be like, to be safely away from them that we could still theoretically shoot to like, set them off? [01:18:29] Speaker A: You could do it without. Yeah, they did. They have a. It's not a short range, but it is certainly the range of the DDJ is certainly less than the range of a firearm or a bow. Okay. Yeah, it would be hard to shoot. You're aiming at a precise target. So I'll double check in the rules. But I believe in that case, it's a precision roll, which means you can't add more charges to succeed. [01:18:55] Speaker E: Well, luckily I can't do that anyway because my bow is capped. So it doesn't matter. [01:19:00] Speaker A: I'll double check on that before we actually make the. [01:19:04] Speaker C: Now I know my rifle because I spent like all my resources or gear points on making sure my rifle had literally every attachment that I could throw on this bad boy, including a scope. So I don't know if, if that would help with the precision. I'm obviously when the market is ready. [01:19:25] Speaker A: Yeah, it's one of those things that I think I know and I'm double checking because normally there are a couple different levels of difficulty. The most difficulty is you just roll black and red and whatever happens, happens. But it's not on the GM chart that I can find it. So I'll have to go into the book. But yes, that is one way to solve the problem would be to shoot them. You could also do mechanics to disarm them. Now that you know they're there, I will say you're not going to stumble across one accidentally. I will also give you the benefit of the doubt and say you're not just going to go like, go running up, that you'd be being careful and that because of that you wouldn't. If you, again, if you fail the role, we would say that just doesn't, you can't disarm it. If you critically fail, it goes off. If you critically succeed, you disarm it in a way that you keep it and you could sell it later. A normal success on disarming it means that you're just, you know. Okay, good. It's not going to go off now. I will ask though, doc, do you have a mechanics kit? [01:20:32] Speaker D: I do, yes. [01:20:33] Speaker A: Okay. [01:20:33] Speaker D: So I haven't got the statistics for it. [01:20:36] Speaker A: It will take you charges off of that kit because you're going to be using specific tools. It's not with the engine. You could just move the various pieces around. Right. You could connect the hoses and such. But this is a pretty specific device that will require the use of toolkit. You're going to need some of those really fine tools that millennium keeps stealing. [01:20:57] Speaker D: Luckily, last time I checked, I had all of them in there. [01:21:01] Speaker E: When was the last time you checked? [01:21:04] Speaker D: I think it was this. When. When did you ask me to fix that speaker of yours? Hush. [01:21:12] Speaker C: I want to say like two weeks ago. [01:21:18] Speaker D: Yeah, that's probably not something. [01:21:21] Speaker E: You're probably fine. I think I did like a. I did a sweep like a week ago and I didn't find any, so. [01:21:28] Speaker D: That's right. I will try and disarm one of them. Can you guys just, just in case those heads like get out and try to go for me? Can you go? Yeah. [01:21:43] Speaker A: Thank you. [01:21:44] Speaker B: Yeah, we got you, doc. No, worse. How many heads are there? [01:21:49] Speaker A: A dozen or more. But the heads are in terms of how many ddjs and how many heads there are, those are two different numbers. There's 20 or 30 heads. But I mean, honestly, like, don't need to worry about that. Like if the train drives over a head, no one gives a. And ddjs, we will say there are. There are five that are positioned such that if they go off it would wreck the train. There are some others that are on the periphery that are just there to take people like you and turn them into vectors. But the ones that are dangerous to the train will say there are five. I have solved the difficulty question. The first level of difficulty above normal is for precision and that just means you can't spend extra charges to add. So in this case, doc, you would spend one charge to do the thing, but you could not spend extra charges to help yourself. Beyond that, there are difficult roles which, to quote the book says another name for this skill check might be ill advised, in which case you need a critical success to succeed and every other result is a failure. But in this case, yes, just a precision roll. Same thing. If you wanted to shoot them, it would be a precision roll. But to start, Doc, if you want to go about the disarming process, just. [01:23:17] Speaker E: A basic mechanics check, because I'm definitely not going to try and shoot them if he's up there trying to disarm them. That sounds like a bad idea. For doc's physical safety. [01:23:26] Speaker D: That is a. As a twelve over one. [01:23:32] Speaker A: Well, yeah, that'd do it. At the risk of having you go around and do a whole bunch, like five different roles, would it be more interesting if we said that each of you can contribute in some way and we'll just kind of see how many successes and failures we rack up sure. Sounds good. So Doc goes about and is removing some of them just doing his mechanics check. We will. We will give you the benefit of the doubt in terms of not shooting ones next to Doc, but just whatever kind of skill you would like to use to see if you can resolve this problem. We'll take shooting them. I'll take mechanics. You could probably. I'd say you could scavenge to try to maneuver the body and such or whatever. Like, I'm open minded to some creative solutions. If you don't all just want to shoot. If you don't all just want to mechanics. [01:24:29] Speaker B: I'm trying to think if I want to use my sensitivity point, but drawing a blank. [01:24:36] Speaker C: Well, I can at least make things worse for everyone, regardless of what skill I chose. I rolled double seven s. [01:24:48] Speaker A: You can spend a point of willpower to buy off that critical failure if you'd like. [01:24:53] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm definitely going to do that. I do not need this to be the time I could fail. [01:24:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Because I went for one of those goes off. I'm a big fan of the, of the child psychology rule of critical hits. Like, if a kid is being a nightmare, you're not supposed to say, sit at the table and eat your peas. You're supposed to say, well, do you want to eat your peas at the table or on the floor? And if you give them a choice, you trick their child brain into, like, not being bratty about it. And I found this also works on players and TTRPG games. So I can give you a choice. [01:25:22] Speaker E: I say me specifically, and I was about to get mad. [01:25:26] Speaker C: You did say bratty, so that's why I went there. [01:25:30] Speaker A: So I will. I would give you a couple options to choose from in terms of how a critical failure went. I'll let you hear them first. If you don't want to spend the willpower yet, we can say that in shooting it, there was another one that you didn't see, and it says a train reaction. Chain. Chain reaction. [01:25:48] Speaker B: Train reaction. [01:25:51] Speaker A: I would roll randomly to see which of you needed to make an athletics check to dodge being injured by the DDJ. That's option one. Option two is that something happens with the tracks. Not enough to. To cause a huge problem, but that grinding noise of the steel being moved around would cause casualties to arrive. [01:26:19] Speaker C: So, not gonna lie, I kind of like the potential drama for the chain reaction, but I want to get everyone's consent, because that means one of y'all is gonna have to, like, you know, get down, mister president. Out of the way. Of this bad boy. So who. Who is feeling feisty? [01:26:40] Speaker E: I mean, I'm. I'm fine with that. I was going to say that I was going to try and scavenge and see if I could make that work to my advantage. So I would definitely be kind of in that fray, not thinking that hush was going to try and shoot me. [01:26:57] Speaker C: Oh, yes. I mean, if you want to. If you want to jump on that grenade, I am down, because I know that that goes against my soft spot. I would be mortified that your life was just put in danger specifically because of me. And I'm willing to jump. I'm. [01:27:15] Speaker A: Let's go for it. [01:27:15] Speaker C: Let's screw this character up. [01:27:17] Speaker E: I'm ready, girl. [01:27:18] Speaker A: Let's go. All right, so just so I'm clear. Rotate that curls of failure. You're going to say it sets off a chain reaction. And then, like, as you shoot the one, you see the tendrils, like, boom, spiking out, and then there's another one next to it and it goes off, and all of a sudden, it's the motion. Your brain's like, oh, shit. And you are turning and seeing Nightingale in the line of fire. Now, let's escalate this. This question, PJ, is for you and you alone. Um, your soft spot is, uh, women and children first. You would be mortified if you put a woman in danger. So I'll tell you, I will give you a point of willpower. If we don't let Nightingale roll athletics. If we just see what damage happens and that you take, you gain the willpower from suffering, because your mistake, the way it played out, there was no chance she had. Like, it would fuck. She doesn't even realize you fucked up until, like, 7 seconds after the thing rips through her. Now, for damage, it's just two d, ten. You would take a certain number of damage to a certain body part. Nothing more sophisticated than that. But I'll give you that willpower point if you want to sign on to that plan market. [01:28:37] Speaker C: Am I allowed to console? Am I allowed to ask my constituents of my action economy? [01:28:47] Speaker A: I mean, like, I think I like the pressure of you just having to decide. [01:28:54] Speaker E: I would agree with Aaron on that. [01:28:56] Speaker C: No, that's valid. That is valid. And I like what my brain is telling me, what my brain is showing me in the future. So I'm going to take that. Have. Wait. Can I go beyond my normal willpower threshold with this willpower point? Because that could be a huge thing, too. [01:29:11] Speaker A: Uh, no, you are, cap. So if you're already at two, then. Then don't worry or whatever. [01:29:17] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm. I don't believe, uh, not spending the willpower on. On redoing this means I wouldn't. I wouldn't gain the benefit. But I do like drama, so, yeah, let's let it happen. [01:29:30] Speaker A: Excellent. [01:29:31] Speaker D: I also have women and children as my soft spot. [01:29:34] Speaker A: Ah, well, then what? We'll see how bad this gets. Uh, so, Nightingale, um, let's. Let's. Let's talk about this chronological. Chronologically, like, you are. You are in the safe zone. Based on the DDJs that you identified, there's no possible way to come to me. So make your scavenging role, because I want to see what you're up to when the situation changes dramatically. [01:29:53] Speaker D: One blows up in your face as another one attacks you from the side. [01:29:56] Speaker E: Jesus. Uh, that's a nine over six. That's a good role. [01:30:01] Speaker A: Yeah. So, um, let's see you find, uh, as you're scared. Wow. So you've been going through. There's a whole big field of them. Casualties by themselves can only ever carry bounty and light goods. Like, there aren't just casualties running around with any material rifles on their backs. So when you scavenge, eye roll a dice to see what you found, and there's ten bounty among these different things, like, you're going around, like, one has a couple, like, there might have been. Like, you just imagine the circumstance in which someone would have ten licenses. Driver licenses are kind of the stand in here. So you're going through. You're having a really good time. Like, holy shit, I found a bunch of them. And then you sit up to be excited, and you turn to the group, and you're all like, hey, look what I've got. And doc and content and hush. I'll turn and like, yeah. And then cloud, black cloud of. Of wires, and we'll roll damage for that. Red markets uses a. Oh, my God. Okay, that's not so bad. I thought it was going to be bad. Not so bad. Red markets uses a hit location system. So you roll two dice. I believe it is. The black determines the hit location, and the red determines the damage. The red is dead. Red is your blood. Right. A ten on the black dice is the head. [01:31:26] Speaker E: Mm hmm. [01:31:28] Speaker A: But you. [01:31:29] Speaker E: Is that what you rolled? [01:31:30] Speaker A: Yes. But you only take three damage. And I'm going to double check real quick to make sure that it is not. Whether it's killing or stunning damage. Red markets uses a system a bit like vampire, the masquerade, where you have superficial and aggravated you know, but absolutely. Let's see. Close proximity detonations inflicts kill damage. Uh, okay. Yeah. So if you're right on top of it, you take that amount of kill damage to all locations. But we're gonna say you're far enough away based on this. So you will take three to the head. Three killing damage to the head. Great. You are also grappled as these carbon nanotubes, like some like up to your ear, across your cheek. So you're going to have to find a way to get out of that. [01:32:32] Speaker E: I can't imagine I am taking this on the chin. Just. [01:32:36] Speaker A: You literally are. [01:32:38] Speaker E: Literally are. No, I can't imagine that. As, as things kind of settle. Well, actually maybe, maybe I am. Maybe like the shock. So this, this cloud of wires comes out and you see me just kind of like go a little flying and get knocked back and everybody's like really still as they're trying to see what happens. And I just kind of like sit up and you just see this mass of wires like sticking through the side of my face. And I just kind of like look at my hands and my hands are okay. And like I go to like touch my face and I'm just like oh, fuck. But I'm kind of in shock so I'm not, I don't think I'm screaming yet. I think I'm still trying to process exactly what's happening. [01:33:28] Speaker A: Not to put too fine a point on it. Will you make an athletics check for me, just. [01:33:32] Speaker E: Sure. Let's see. That is ten five. [01:33:40] Speaker A: Excellent. So bring a point of rations just for the athletics check because that is you not managing to land on or near one of the buried casualty heads. So that's not a problem to worry about. You use the athletics to land, to stumble, to just fall, not somewhere that's not especially dangerous. [01:33:57] Speaker E: Great. [01:34:00] Speaker D: I will be straight over to Nightingale trying to help her. 00000 that doesn't, um. Hang on, let me just go into it. So I'm gonna have to go into my toolkit to get a pair of pliers out so that I can cut it. And then I'm gonna have to go into my med kit which is on the other side to get the healing bits out to then heal her. [01:34:22] Speaker A: I tell you, as I'm being a boy scout, if you get pierced with a fishing hook, the first thing to do is to straighten it out and then you don't pull it back because it's a hook, you got to pull it forward. And it's like that except there's carbon nanotubes and all kinds of other nonsense. [01:34:35] Speaker E: And my head, my face, my brain. [01:34:38] Speaker A: Yeah, like up through, like. Like pierced, like, the meat of a cheek, right? And then like, the other. Yeah, it's not great. These. These things did some good. Some good penetrating. On the bright side, if you need to drink, you can just put the straw in, like, the new hole on the side of your cheek and then just not use your mouth. [01:34:59] Speaker C: I'm also running over there in both anger and panic and confusion. Like, weapon, just like running over. And then once I get there, I'm. [01:35:08] Speaker A: Just like. [01:35:11] Speaker C: You got this. I'm just kind of like, eyeballing your face and, like giving you a quick pat down. [01:35:19] Speaker E: Do I. Do I got this? Do he got this? [01:35:22] Speaker C: Sorry, Doc. [01:35:27] Speaker D: Just stay still. Right, both of you hold her down while I just snip through the bits here. And then I can get this. We can get this off. Stop moving. [01:35:38] Speaker E: Do we. It hurts. But also, do we have time for this? Because we kind of. There's the other ones. And the train is still coming. [01:35:46] Speaker A: You know what I like about this is that you all sound really stressed. So as doc is doing this. Nightingale, hush. White makes self control checks for me. [01:36:02] Speaker B: That good, huh? [01:36:05] Speaker E: No, I rolled double nine, double nine, double nine. [01:36:14] Speaker C: Six over eight for me. [01:36:16] Speaker A: Okay, well, also. Yeah, failing critically. Failing the stress test, unfortunately upgrades it from the level that it was to the next one. So in this case, that is the trauma. We'll call it trauma for. For Nightingale, from experiencing injury. And you will take. It's two for being seriously injured. And then it becomes three because it was one of your asshole friends. So take three, two trauma. [01:36:47] Speaker E: I think that feels correct though, given what happened. I think a little bit of trauma damage. Yeah. [01:36:55] Speaker A: Hush. For you, watching a dependent suffer because of your actions and takers, including your dependents, here is two. So you'll take two to attachment. Okay. I don't know, doc. We'll come back to it in a minute and I'll just ask. Content on your own, is it? I want to say it's a stress test because, like, these are your co workers and like, this is the kind of fuck up that gets teams killed. But I'll say it's a pretty light. If you fail, it's a pretty light burden because like, you didn't do it. You're just kind of watching. If it sounds fair, then, doc, would you also like to make a self control check for me as well? [01:37:46] Speaker E: I mean, doc. Doc also has a women and children soft spot, so I think that also. [01:37:51] Speaker A: Okay, cool. [01:37:51] Speaker E: That makes sense for him too. [01:37:53] Speaker A: Then I'll upgrade it if he fails and make it worse. [01:37:56] Speaker D: Eleven over one. [01:37:57] Speaker A: Okay, so then, yeah, you will just take one, uh, to detachment. Detachment? My. My coworker is a fucking idiot. How could he possibly. He's reckless. My life is in the hands of someone who makes those kind of decisions. I am not long for this world. And then what was your role? [01:38:12] Speaker B: Uh, it was, uh, two over was 3333 total. Uh, it was a black two plus one. [01:38:23] Speaker A: Uh huh. [01:38:24] Speaker B: And a red three. [01:38:25] Speaker A: Okay. Ties go to the market, so you'll take one to detachment. Just again, like, this is your sniper, right? This is unbelievable. [01:38:38] Speaker E: Yep, kind of is, actually. [01:38:40] Speaker A: And yet to get the healing part, doc, you will roll your first aid skill. And then the natural result of the black die is how many points you will heal there. [01:38:57] Speaker D: My first aid kit says spend charges to make a first aid check on an injured hit location. Give the player's choice extra charges. Add bonuses to check every point of black. Can reduce a box of kill to stun or stun to be healed. Okay, first a let's is a one and a two. That is a four. Hang on. That is a five over one. [01:39:23] Speaker A: Okay, so you can reduce one kill to stun and then one stun to healed, which means you'll have. So it costs you three of those points you rolled to reduce all that kill damage to stun damage. And then from there, you could heal two of those stun damage away. So you will end up with one stun damage to your nugget. [01:39:46] Speaker D: I'll do that. [01:39:48] Speaker E: Well, that's actually way better than I was expecting. Not. I mean, I don't look pretty, but, you know, here we are. [01:39:56] Speaker A: I was. I was worried because you only get ten damage to your head, and, like, ten killing in the head, that character is gone. And then, like, if you fill it up with stun damage, they fall unconscious. I saw the first ten come up and I was like, oh, shit, I'm not ready for v to die. As we head in, how bad would. [01:40:17] Speaker E: You have felt, PJ? [01:40:20] Speaker C: Uh, the answer, Alex, is, uh, like shit for 10,000. [01:40:24] Speaker E: Yeah, yeah. Uh, but. But I mean, my. I'm still thinking about the mission as Doc is doing this. Uh, so I definitely still pointed out that, like, the train is still coming and we still have at least two of these because how many hush sent set off? Two. One. [01:40:42] Speaker A: Oh, no, no. His fuck up. Like. [01:40:44] Speaker E: Yeah, all of them are done. [01:40:46] Speaker A: Yeah. And I was gonna let you have some more opportunities to search, but at this point, like doc disarms one or a couple of them. He's starting on like the right side of it. And then hush is like I fucking got this. And on the left side you just see like just down the line and then just all spreading through all of that. [01:41:05] Speaker E: Got it. [01:41:06] Speaker A: They have a small explosive chart. It's not like a big bomb so you're not going to like have casualties coming in. But we've learned a lot about. Yeah. Where did you get that scar? We can ask in the future and you can just gesture at hush. [01:41:22] Speaker E: I think weirdly this ten extra bounty that we got isn't going to go to hush. Weirdly. Don't really feel like sharing. Something tells me not really in the mood for it. [01:41:34] Speaker D: That seems fair. [01:41:36] Speaker A: Well, that is the conclusion of the second leg. That's the way that red markets works is you create small scenarios, risk versus reward. And then the job. Job is a more complicated thing. In the very first case there was the truck that was there. You had to get rid of it. If you'd feel the mechanics check, it would have cost you the resources of rations to push it out of the way. You did the scavenging, hoping to get a little extra reward. It ended up costing you some resources. And the same thing has happened here. That clearing this trap you had the opportunity to scavenge. But like had you just said, no, fuck it, we'll shoot one, set them all off. You wouldn't have gotten a ten bounty, but then you also wouldn't have had to spend the charges off your kits. And that's the core loop of red markets. We've been going at it for about an hour and a half now. So how do we feel about we'll take a little break of Rooney here and then when we come back we'll continue on with the scenario and see what happens. [01:42:29] Speaker E: Sounds good to me. [01:42:30] Speaker D: Sounds good. [01:42:31] Speaker B: I'm hit. Let's do it. [01:42:33] Speaker A: Awesome possum. Then we will be right back. Loyalty. Awesome. See you. Welcome back everyone. We've had a chance to go refresh our drinks, visit the little cast room, and for some people have an important discussion about choices that you make in role playing games that affect other people. As we left the group, Doc had done a pretty, actually good job stitching night and gill back up together, removing most of the kill damage, leaving her with only a little bit of stun from that DDJ explosion. Everyone is feeling a little bit of the stress from the encounter. The loss is not a friendly place and sometimes things go wrong. Sometimes those things go wrong, because your teammates do them. And that is just the way that the world works. [01:43:18] Speaker E: Not naming any hush names or anything. [01:43:21] Speaker B: Yeah, hush. The least you could do is apologize, right, doc? By the way, good job. Good job on the work, but hush. Come on. [01:43:28] Speaker A: Thank you. [01:43:31] Speaker C: So Hush walks up to Nightingale. On his arm, you see this kind of, like, kind of neoprene bracer with a little slot, and in there is his iPad, or as his ipod shuffle or whatever that he has connected to a stereo system. He hits some things, so it goes off stereo, pulls out two headphones, pops one in his ear, pops the other in yours. Your ear starts scrolling through and starts playing sorry by Buck Cherry. And then he looks at you for a while, kind of looks at everyone else, leans in. You don't tell anyone about this. Understood? [01:44:17] Speaker E: Okay. [01:44:18] Speaker D: Okay. [01:44:20] Speaker C: Goes to his secret files under his good. You know, his jams, and then starts playing sorry by Justin Bieber. And he gives you this look like. [01:44:35] Speaker E: I just. I get this big old grin across my. My face because, oh, my God, this is not. [01:44:42] Speaker D: Oh, watch. Watch the plastic. Don't smile too much. [01:44:49] Speaker B: Starts oozing out of her face. [01:44:51] Speaker E: Oh, God. Yeah, no. [01:44:53] Speaker D: With a baby walk. Trying to clean it back up. Stop it. [01:44:56] Speaker A: Okay. [01:44:57] Speaker E: I start to smile, and then I immediately just, like, grimace because half of my face varies. Very painful still. But I was definitely not expecting that song, so I just. I kind of just give a little nod and, like, a thumbs up to hush because. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I get it. It wasn't on purpose, even though it sucked. Still don't really feel like giving him any of the bounty, though, because I think it's got to go to, like, refill all the metal medical supplies that. That cost anyway, so kind of COVID your expenses. Yeah. [01:45:30] Speaker B: I do like the imagery of Nightingale finally breaking a smile, but at the same time, there's just blood oozing and dripping down her face. It's like, wow, she's smiling. [01:45:39] Speaker E: It's like, this is what happens when I smile. It's bloody why I never do it. [01:45:46] Speaker A: It's a very specific. Oh, don't do that. Don't do that. Very specific gothic Twitter aesthetic that you've accomplished. There's a sub forum on lifelines specifically for this kind of stuff. [01:45:56] Speaker E: Yes, I'll. [01:45:58] Speaker D: I'll take the scouter off of you. And it is. When we were saying about it being a scout, it is actually, like, one of the scouters. You would get, like, a collectible from a comic con. But I've repurposed because I would say that myself and Nightingale share a bit of a anime sort of secret between each other, and so it's all repurposed. I'll take it off of her and I'll put it on for the minute just so it doesn't rest and aggravate anything on her face. And I'll just make myself look really cool. [01:46:30] Speaker A: The anime joke is really funny. In another game, one of the characters was a dj, but because it's the lost, they could only use the. The stuff they'd found to play. And unfortunately, that radio station played nothing but japanese video game music. [01:46:44] Speaker E: Oh, no. [01:46:47] Speaker A: Man, he was loathed. That was his, uh, his disadvantage was that, like, everyone knew him because he was the DJ. Everyone hated him because, like, hey, it's Tuesday time for your eight hour Sephiroth main theme marathon. [01:46:59] Speaker E: Oh, that's all I would want to listen to. One winged angel just on repeat. [01:47:08] Speaker A: I'll put you in touch with, um, Aaron Carsten from role playing public radio, and you can see if he'll do a cameo in the meantime. That is the one leg completed. There's one leg to go, another traveling. So you contact the people on the train. They've set the pace according to what you're doing. You've solved two of the problems. The train can continue moving, so spend one more point of ration as you make the next leg. And for this, we are going to focus on another piece of red markets, which are interludes. Any time there is a leg that you don't want to see an encounter, you're just going to kind of go through it. You can do an interlude between two characters where we can do a little bit of role playing and learn more about the universe. And at this point, I think it is appropriate for doc and content to have this moment. As is true of all things, in red markets, there is a random table that you can roll on. So I'll grab the dice and we'll see what the two of you will see, the two of you chat about. So on a black five, one of you will sow doubt about. And on the red die eight, a client or job. So you're going to have some misgivings about what's going on, maybe some doubt about the enclave, some skepticism about the train or the mission. That's your prompt and then take it from there. [01:48:37] Speaker D: I think my skepticism wouldn't be so much with the enclave. I reckon that would probably be more content because of your life as a content creator. Maybe, but mine would be definitely. I don't like being out on these missions, I prefer. I would much prefer if I was sort of a homebody inside the car. So I would definitely be speaking to you while we're traveling. You know, while I'm not looking after Nightingale. Once she's stopped smiling and stopped oozing, it would be more of a case of I would talk to you and it would be along the lines of, I don't understand why we have to take it turns coming out here. I mean, I. I know how to fire a gun. I'm not particularly good at firing a gun. All I do is patch you guys up and, you know, scavenge. So why can't I stay on there? But why can't we stay on there? Why can't we be the ones in the turret? Those guys are wearing full on football outfits. Why can't they be out here doing it? And we're on the turret. [01:49:56] Speaker B: Doc. It's. It's part of what we do. I mean, imagine this. Sorry. Thunderstorm going heavy. [01:50:06] Speaker D: That Foley is nice in the distance. [01:50:10] Speaker A: No? Yeah, we'll. We'll wrap this in. [01:50:11] Speaker B: You can see a water going. [01:50:14] Speaker A: There's a desert storm rolling into this moment. You all have to get your wellies and your wet gear on because it's about to downpour in universe. [01:50:21] Speaker E: Well, yeah. [01:50:26] Speaker B: Doc, think about the trade, right? Imagine there's one person pushing it and there's ten people pushing against it. We've all got to do our part, man. I mean, look at this place. It's. It's still our home. It's still the place. It's still the place we used to call home. Imagine we all work together to rebuild this place. It could be better than it was before. [01:50:48] Speaker D: It's just a shame that the enclave won't work with any of the other outside territories or people that have, you know, formed their own communities. So that we can do that and we can just rebuild. Get rid of all the casualties, stop the spread of the infection. Wow, this shit's going deep. Wow, that rain's really hitting hard. [01:51:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty emotional. But that's what we're here to do, right? We're here to show the world what we can do as people. I know it's hard. I know. I know none of us sleep well at night. But if there's anything we can do to make this world a little bit better, we have to show the enclave. We have to show everyone that we can work together and build a better world. [01:51:37] Speaker D: I just got a feeling that the enclave don't really care about us. On the rank and file. Doesn't matter what we do. They're just, um. They'll just carry on doing what they're doing. You know, they'll reinforce their walls and lock out people. And eventually, you know, there are people who buy their way into it, but eventually they'll stop that. You know, once spaces fill up and there's no more accommodation in the big cities and all of that sort of stuff, it will just stop. And then the people like us will be left to fend for ourselves, even though we've done all the work. [01:52:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I see where you're coming from, but I still have hope that we're gonna work together. I mean, the enclave is made up of people just like you. Just like me. I mean, geez, there's my power going out. The enclave made up people just like you and me. If we can show them, you know, meet them one on one, show them the humanity of everyone that's left, there's a chance, man, there's a chance. [01:52:42] Speaker D: See, I'm always the dobby downer and you're always the bright sort of light that we always come to when we want a little bit of hope. So it's always good to talk to you content. [01:52:54] Speaker B: Well, yeah, doc, it's your job to basically touch dead and dying people. So I can see why things get a little shitty for you. [01:53:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:53:03] Speaker B: You ever thought of like, you know, adopting like a little puppy or a kitten or something? You know, Nightingale's got a gotta got millennium. I actually have a sign of life. [01:53:14] Speaker D: I do actually have a cat. [01:53:16] Speaker B: Right. [01:53:17] Speaker D: Not on the train. It's back where, you know, where we come from. But I do have. That's my own. It's the only dependent I have, unfortunately, I lost friend. I lost some people to casualties. So anyway, let's not get into that, because that's just. Yeah, anyway, thank you for that. I needed that. Let's positivity. Let's do that. Yes. And hopefully this thunder and lightning disappears in a minute because I really want to get back on the train because I'm starting to get wet. [01:53:55] Speaker B: I love it. Bring it in. [01:53:58] Speaker D: I'm just going to go. I'm going to guess you're quite big. I'm going to come right underneath and be like. My arms don't quite get round because you're all muscle. [01:54:11] Speaker A: I mean, the only people you can trust are the people that you work with. And Doc is absolutely right. [01:54:19] Speaker E: The only people you can trust are people you work with. [01:54:22] Speaker A: Not naming any hush names, sometimes it does go wrong. But I mean, hush. Caused you trauma by accident. Whereas people in the enclaves, the kind of people you work for, they kind of do it on purpose. The end of the world changed many, many, many things about how you live your lives. But it did not change the fact that some people have lots of money and want to exploit the people who don't. Because, yeah, if you have enough money, you can pay other people to go do the dangerous shit. You're out here risking your lives so the people on the train can live the way they live and so the enclave can live the way that it lives. But in small moments like this, at least you can find comfort in some people. So you spend the way walking through the storm, it's not great, but I mean, this is not the first time that you've had to be out. So we don't really have the luxury and the loss of just avoiding weather anymore. And you're all fairly used to it. Not pleasant, but it's not the end of the universe. [01:55:26] Speaker E: It's very uncomfortable for me though, because I had to dig around and try and find a plastic bag to basically kind of like wrap around my bandages on my face, like a half turban almost. And it's just. It's very awkward because I can't. I can't. I don't want to risk any of that getting wet. So I have to minimize that. So I just look like a really strange mummy. [01:55:47] Speaker A: You did remember to leave a breathing hole, right? [01:55:50] Speaker E: Well, yeah, but like. But it's like, it's from like here down, right? So like, I just have to like, wrap my head and like, it's just. It's very uncomfortable. [01:55:59] Speaker A: I get it. Well, it is good to have those moments where you can look away from the horrors of your reality and just kind of bond with folks. Not too close again, because, I mean, only moments ago had that gone just a little bit worse, like Nightingale done different problems in the world. It's the difficult part about being a taker. Half of the difficult parts about being a taker is you have to work with these people. You will eventually get close to them, but that's a risk. The other hard part about being a taker is that, you know, lots of things have changed in the world. But the rich exploiting the not rich, not one of those things. You are out here having to do shit like that because the fat cats at the enclave are the ones who have the resources, they're the ones who have the control. And you're out here scrambling because the only way you can get in there is with enough money. Funny how even the end of the end of the United States did not change that factor. Still have to pay too much for rent, still don't make enough money at your day job. Your boss is still an asshole and sometimes your coworkers. But enough about that, right? Hush. But with that piece going, we will say that the conductor of the train did in fact contact you. You've communicated that this is a problem with, that has been associated with this death cult, that they're taking it more seriously now. So with that in mind, they have asked you to just go ahead to the next station. The train is. Keeping it running in this post apocalypse is not the easiest thing in the world. And it is an older kind of train, so you still have watering towers that it needs to stop by, things like that. Now, thankfully, technologically, they are all automated, but every now and again, there is still a problem. So, for example, if like one of the. One of the pumps went dry and the screeching causing problems, you'd have a huge crowd of casualties, right? That's among the kind of things that you have to work around or work about. So your superiors, they say, just go ahead, go to the next station, let us know what's going on. We're going to keep moving at a really slow clip. If that place is safe and secure, we can stop there and then we'll swap out, right? Because at that point, you've definitely been on your shift. So you continue marching along. That's when the storm rolls in, that's when the vignette happens. And as it ends, you'll be coming around one of the very large. Those are those sweet vistas that you get in moments like that, where the train curves around the edge of the mountain and then you see sweeping out in front of you one of those real large ravines, and there's a great big rail bridge. And then just before that bridge is where they have constructed the refueling and kind of like the last safe stop area. And there's a really big gate in front of the rail bridge. That way no one can get on it unless they have. Train comes through, stuff like that just to keep it from people going down, causing trouble on the supports, or worse, casualties, running out onto the bridge. For whatever reason, you are elevated above this position. I'll call about 30ft. So as you follow the train, it slowly comes up, elevation wise, to meet that road that's been following around. The road cuts across, comes down, and then makes a big sweep towards the actual complex where the various buildings and sheds are. While the train still tilts. Right. And now the train is on the upper level of this two tiered thing. It will eventually kind of spin left in a big arc and then be pointing out towards the rail bridge. Now, very appropriate time for you all to make awareness checks if that is the kind of thing you are into. Remember, you can only have one person because it is a mental role. So who do you want to assign that to? [02:00:03] Speaker C: I'll jump on that if you all don't mind. Can I use binoculars? [02:00:07] Speaker A: Yep. [02:00:08] Speaker C: Yeah. Plus four. Let's rock and roll. So glad I did that, because that's still a fail. No, no, that's. What am I doing? I'm an idiot. That's a super success. That's a 13 over two. [02:00:21] Speaker A: Okay, so you scan the place, and, yeah, there's already a problem. There are casualties milling about the place there. I suppose you would maybe have heard this coming up earlier, but for the sake of drama, we'll say it doesn't take you very long to find out why. Because on, not constantly, but, like, on a timer, someone has rigged up, there's a pillar on top of it. There's, like an old tornado siren that on an interval, like, maybe 15 minutes, just spins up. And you see all the catalogs, like, maybe some new one's pouring in, and then it turns off. As it turns off, they kind of, like, disperse, and then it goes off again. So someone has rigged up a system that continues to attract people, casualties, but also lets them filter around this complex. Right. If it were on all the time, they'd be directly under the siren. That would be an easy thing for someone to deal with. But by having a kind of cycle, they're milling about this whole place. Then where the arm that would swing out and deliver the water or deliver the fuel on that arm, they've turned it so it's parallel to the track. And hanging from it are three cages. There are people in those cages. You can see them into the binoculars. You can see them. They're alive. They don't look especially thrilled. A. Cause they're in a cage. But they're also, like, they're not ambling, moving, they're not shaking. So they've been there a while. They're a little tired, and there's casualties underneath them kind of milling about. Now, that is what you can see from a distance through your binoculars. But right off the bat, you know, that's not normal. It's very obviously human, engineered. And three people appear to be in danger. [02:02:31] Speaker C: So I just kind of say to myself again, like, why not just kill them? But I turn to everyone else, and I report back. Um, I say, uh, I basically describe the entire facility. Uh, give them the lowdown on the, uh, horn and those three cages with living people. Out of curiosity, I don't know if I need to roll better for this. Did I see any, like, latency marks on them? [02:03:01] Speaker A: On the people in the cages? [02:03:03] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:03:04] Speaker A: No. And I mean, like, it's. It's fairly easy to see when someone is latent. They have, like, the big, thick, black, bulging veins. So even from a distance, unless they had gone out of the way to conceal it, maybe. But from there, you do not know. They do not look to be latent. [02:03:20] Speaker C: Okay. [02:03:21] Speaker D: Okay. [02:03:22] Speaker C: So, yeah, I just report back about the people in the hanging from the cages and the sound and all the. All the casualties is kind of milling about. Feels like a trap. [02:03:33] Speaker D: Do we want to report the casualties? Not the casualties. The prisoners. Back to our superiors to see what they want us to do, or do we just proceed into our ending? [02:03:48] Speaker C: I don't think they want to know. I feel they would make them pay to board the train. [02:03:59] Speaker D: That makes sense. So we could just release. If we. If we are able to. We can get them out, and then they can go off on their own. [02:04:10] Speaker C: Yeah, do your idea. Or. And hear me out. I killed them. [02:04:23] Speaker B: Excuse me? [02:04:27] Speaker C: Peace and mercy. Let them rest. [02:04:31] Speaker B: You know better than the cultists who set this whole thing up. [02:04:36] Speaker C: Those three people are starving right now, being used as bait for the casualties. Hanging. I don't know how many feet off the air we go to save them. We're dead. If we don't go save them, those three are dead. Or worse, casualties, and no one needs that. [02:05:09] Speaker D: It is shit. [02:05:11] Speaker C: I know, but what are our options? [02:05:16] Speaker D: Killing them. Draw attention, though. You have to shoot them. [02:05:21] Speaker C: I'm quiet. [02:05:23] Speaker A: His rifle is silenced. Yeah. [02:05:26] Speaker B: Listen, we. We kill casualties. That's part of the job. And we'll defend ourselves, certainly. But just to kill helpless people? [02:05:35] Speaker E: I can't survive with that market. I have a question. Does the train need to stop here, or could it go on to the next station and be fine? [02:05:46] Speaker A: I know it would need to stop here if nothing else. If you solve no other problems. Regardless of their moral complexity, that equipment they're hanging from needs to move, so they can't be on it. That's a problem that needs to be dealt with in a way. [02:06:03] Speaker E: Okay, that's great. Okay, that's. That's kind of what I was thinking. Um, so, I mean, I. As they're having this moral dilemma discussion, I'll just say it doesn't. Doesn't matter what we do, but we have to move the equipment because the train needs it. We're fucked if we don't. [02:06:24] Speaker B: No, you're not arguing that. Just how we do it. [02:06:28] Speaker E: Either way, the cages have to come off. [02:06:31] Speaker D: The siren, is it linked? Can you see where it's linked to? [02:06:37] Speaker A: As best as hush could tell, there is cabling running down to the ground. But this complex of buildings, there's a small shed where there's maybe a circuit breaker that runs off to some solar power or some battery system or a geothermal whatever. Right. There's a second building that controls the pumping equipment for the fuel or the water. There are several large tanks that collect those various things. So for the fuel tank is probably long dry, or if it's being maintained automatically, the water tank has been rigged up to collect rain and such, so there's still things to pump in. So there's a small assembling of various buildings, and the tower with the siren on it is poking up out of the middle of that. So you know it's rigged to something. It's connected somewhere. But the controls could be at the bottom of the tower, or there could be. That cable could still run off into another building somewhere. Yeah. [02:07:42] Speaker D: I think the problem we've got is, from what Hirsch has said, the casualties move away once the siren goes, but then they come back again once the siren's there. So that gives us an opportunity, or it gives us a timeframe, a safe timeframe, when the alarm's going off, because they're drawn to that. So if we're able to get to the siren controls, we can set the siren control to go off constantly, in which case that should then draw the casualties that are around it and the casualties that are under the cage to that, we can then get the cages down with the people and pull the training, hopefully. But we need to find where the. [02:08:33] Speaker C: Controls are, and if we, like, basically go off to do that, best I can offer is making sure that I'm shooting at your rear so I can, like, basically kill any casualties that are chasing you. I don't have mechanical skills. I'm not going to be a lot of help once you go inside for the horn. [02:09:00] Speaker D: Yeah, the main thing is going to be, is that we move when the siren goes off, and when the siren stops, we. We stay as still as possible. What is. What's the. What's the intervals, how long does the alarm go off for, um, you're on. [02:09:18] Speaker A: About 15 minutes on, 15 minutes off? 15 minutes on, 15 minutes off. [02:09:22] Speaker D: Oh, that's plenty of. Okay, so, um, if we set a 15 minutes timer when it starts, then we know two minutes before that. We need to find somewhere higher, somewhere that we can hide where any sham chambers and any casualties that move away don't bump into us. And then when the alarm starts again, we move again. Just as an idea. [02:09:52] Speaker B: I mean, seems. I hate to use the word easy. It seems easy enough and definitely keeps everyone alive. [02:10:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I will say hopefully. [02:10:05] Speaker B: Hopefully. [02:10:06] Speaker A: As opposed to giving you an endless, uncountable horde of zombies, I will say, sorry, casual. I will say that each location that we talked about, I will just make a market roll for the casualties that are there when you're around. And that'll just represent the number that have filtered out into that specific area. So we'll say there's. There's five zones. There's like the center around the tower. There's the water tank area. There's the fuel tank area. There's the pump control area. And then there's the actual, like, mechanical swinging bit area. And we'll handle those things with kind of like discrete units. If you make noise, obviously going to draw them. But that way we're not just sitting here with a thousand casualties that we have to keep track of. [02:10:50] Speaker D: Also, would there be, on one of the buildings, would there be like a blueprint of what the area looks like? Not a blueprint, but like a. Like a layout of what the place looks like. You know, you go to some stations and it gives you a general vicinity where you are here. The engineering room is here. The shed is here. The. Is there one of. One of those nearby? [02:11:16] Speaker A: I don't know. That hush could see one through his thing without getting closer. If you wanted to use the falcon, if you could train the falcon and have him go, like, land on the ledge in front of it, that might work. Otherwise you're going to have to scoot down in there and actually see it. [02:11:36] Speaker E: Yeah. I have no idea exactly how I would have trained millennium to do this, but, yeah, we can. We can see if. If it works. [02:11:49] Speaker D: I mean, I've got the scout on, so. Because, obviously because of your face. So if you tell millennium to go do it, then I'll. [02:11:57] Speaker E: I can still have a face. Thank you. [02:12:00] Speaker D: I know, but it hurts. I don't need you putting pressure. Putting the thing on and causing pressure. Pressure on it. [02:12:06] Speaker C: Look, I'm the doc. [02:12:07] Speaker D: Don't argue, please. Don't hurt me. Move towards content. [02:12:15] Speaker B: Dark. While you're back, do you mind checking out rash? [02:12:19] Speaker D: Oh, yes, yes. I'll pull into that pocket. [02:12:21] Speaker A: Wet. [02:12:22] Speaker D: Yeah. I'm gonna give you a little vial. Put this cream on it three times a day. [02:12:27] Speaker B: What? Why don't you do it? You're right there. [02:12:31] Speaker D: I think I've got to take all your clothes off. [02:12:33] Speaker B: All right, later. Later. [02:12:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I saw imagining, like, when your arms get that big, there's certain parts of your back you can't reach, and you have just, like, a muscle blind spot that you can't get to. [02:12:45] Speaker D: So even if you. [02:12:46] Speaker A: Yeah, even if you gave him the cream, he'd be like, all right, but, like, I physically can't. [02:12:52] Speaker D: You want to backstrack, PJ? [02:12:56] Speaker C: It's true and it's real. I have to scratch my back against edges of a wall or against a tree, and it's, uh. [02:13:03] Speaker A: It's not a good look. Not not a problem. I have. I can just, uh, part of it because I'm tiny, part of it because I have freakishly long limbs. Uh, nightingale, would you like to make a falconing check? [02:13:14] Speaker E: Sure. Uh, no. Nope, nope, nope. That's a three over eight. [02:13:22] Speaker A: Yeah, uh, maybe it just doesn't exist or it's faded, uh, beyond usefulness. Maybe the falcon cannot find it, but the map you are searching for does not appear. Do make sure to burn charge of falcon, though. [02:13:39] Speaker D: Okay, so should we push forward, then? Do we want to split up to do this, or should we sit together? [02:13:54] Speaker A: I know that hush. Talking about being on Overwatch, more than happy to allow that. I will say that it's going to rely on you having a clear line of sight. So there will be times where, if you want to shoot, I'll have to figure out an ad hoc system to determine that. But there will be occasions where you just won't have a field of view to help out your friends. [02:14:16] Speaker C: Yeah, and that does kind of cut on the efficacy of overwatch. Um, I mean, if we want to go together, uh, add a character. Just knowing what I know about our. Our current weapons. Uh, we have a bow and arrow, so that's super, super stealthy, I would imagine. I know I have a silencer, a suppressor, so I'm also pretty stealthy. But I feel like we put the shotgun in front for when things get loud, and you put the quiet cleanup crew on the back, have doc run point ish so that we can get the mechanic to the point as fast as possible. It gives us the best odds of survival. Because we have the most weapons going downrage. I don't know. What are y'all's thought? I mean, that's the only way. That's the only way I can see us making use of everything that we have at our. At our disposal right now. [02:15:03] Speaker D: I'm not that great at sneaking, which is why I normally stay, like, away from all of the sneaking that you guys normally do. But, yeah, we do need to get some controls, so I'm gonna have to do some sneaking. [02:15:20] Speaker A: So, time wise, if you attempt to go, if you want to go figure out the controls, go. If the siren is on, all the casualties are gonna be there. So you're gonna wait until they start kind of ambling about, and at that point, you would have 15 minutes to deal with the zombies, the casualties that are there then also solve the problem, which is doable, but there's a time pressure there. The alternative would be wait till the sirens on, let the casualties flow out of some of those other buildings you think it might be in, and then see if you can kind of find the controls rigged up in one of the buildings. Right. And just maybe you get lucky. [02:16:03] Speaker D: That's my thinking, is to move when the casualties go towards the alarm. That would be when. When it will be more free flowing for us, less risk. [02:16:14] Speaker A: I will say that when the siren is running, you don't have to make a stealth check because it is so goddamn loud. But if you want to move around when the sirens off without attracting casualties, that would require stealth checks. [02:16:29] Speaker E: Okay. [02:16:31] Speaker D: I vote when it's going. I don't know. I don't know what the rest of you think. No. [02:16:38] Speaker E: As long as that's not going. I mean, I. What's the time pressure? Read the train, though. [02:16:47] Speaker A: You've got. I mean, like, hours, right? [02:16:50] Speaker E: Okay. [02:16:50] Speaker A: Unless you really fuck this up, it's gonna be hard for you to not accomplish it in time. It just needs to be solved. [02:16:59] Speaker E: Okay. I just wanted to make sure you weren't giving us, like, a really ridiculous time constraint. [02:17:03] Speaker A: Time? Yeah. Trains here in three minutes, so I. [02:17:06] Speaker E: Well, see, this is my. [02:17:07] Speaker A: Yeah, no, the. The time constraint is how to deal with the siren, and then the train will. Train will get here. [02:17:12] Speaker E: Okay, cool. Uh, then, yeah, I mean, I'm fine, uh, moving when the sirens on, best case, I think. [02:17:20] Speaker B: Yeah, minimize the risk in and out. [02:17:25] Speaker D: Okay, well, what I'll do is I'll fiddle with the settings on the scout and a little stopwatch app comes up in the corner, and. And then when the. When the siren starts, I'll push the scout a button and it will start counting down. [02:17:42] Speaker A: And then just again, the. The four buildings that are like. So there's a central area we talked about. Then there are water tank and equipment, fuel tank and equipment, a pumping slash, mechanical shed, and then the actual refilling apparatus. Where are we starting? Here? If you'd like, I can give you. You can make a foresight check, doc, to see which of those buildings is most likely to have the equipment you'd need. Like. [02:18:16] Speaker D: That is a ten over four. [02:18:19] Speaker A: Okay, so makes sense that whatever power source and controls are probably not in or on top of one of the fuel tanks, right? So the best, if it were you, the place that makes the most sense, that has power and you could get things would be in the pump control room. That. That's where there's going to be outlets to plug things in or mains to find. That's where it would be. If it is not at the. Just through my dice across the room. Um, if there. If that is not, um. If it's not in the center, then that's where it would be. [02:18:54] Speaker D: Okay. Also that, you know, we'll go there first. It also means that we can check the systems for the actual pumps themselves, just to make sure they're working. So it's sort of two birds, 1 st sort of thing. And then when we come back, we can deal with the cages. [02:19:11] Speaker A: Who's going with you? [02:19:15] Speaker D: Everyone. [02:19:16] Speaker B: Please, doc, I thought you had this on your own. [02:19:22] Speaker D: No, there's no way I'm going on my own. [02:19:25] Speaker B: You've got a gun. I've seen it. [02:19:28] Speaker D: Takes me ten minutes to get out of the bloody holster and it's hardly ever loaded. [02:19:32] Speaker B: You want to borrow mine? [02:19:36] Speaker D: What are you going to use? [02:19:38] Speaker B: I have. I have my wits and a shotgun which are sharp. [02:19:45] Speaker D: Is that what the shotgun is called? [02:19:48] Speaker B: Sometimes, yeah. [02:19:51] Speaker D: I think. I think it'd be good if we all went. [02:19:53] Speaker B: I'll go with you, doc. I'm just fucking with you. Let's go. [02:19:57] Speaker D: Thank God for that. I just thought after that heart to heart we had earlier, now you're sacrificing me. Oh, right. [02:20:04] Speaker B: Everyone knows you got to protect the medicine. [02:20:07] Speaker D: I go for that. [02:20:08] Speaker A: Okay, so you proceed down into here. If there were windows at one point. Not anymore. There's glass broken. You can kind of clamber in and out of them. So we're not going to have difficulty getting in to the building. We'll say that it's about 15ft long or wide, rather, and then about 50ft long because the pumps are all in there of that space, there's, there's one very small room at the front where the controls are that's maybe 7ft wide. And the rest of the building is pumps and pipes and generators and industrial mechanical equipment entering before you even enter. Before you make that decision, you will see one obstacle that you're going to have to deal with. Inside the pumping infrastructure room, someone has set off a ton of DDJ's after chumming a bunch of casualties into the room. So there are have the dice, there are 18 casualties by total count, immobilized by this forest of carbon nanofiber. Now, that wasn't enough to, like, destroy any of the pumps. All that works. But if you wanted to get to, like, the valves to open things up, you have what is essentially a thick jungle of nanofiber that is punctuated with a very curious, bitey fruit. Say someone has gone through a lot of effort to chum a bunch of zombies in here and then lock them in place with those DDJ's. The controls still work. All that's fine. We will say that there is two casualties, just kind of like thumping around in that room, being the ones that didn't make it into the main pumping section. And then you can, can see that there is, in fact, yes, a laptop computer there that is rigged up crudely, wired for power, and that is controlling the siren. Not like a full laptop, like a raspberry PI hole kind of thing, a very crude little piece of kit. [02:22:33] Speaker D: Well, I've got a feeling that those casualties there have been set up, so they've obviously. So whoever's been in here has obviously done something to the valves and the pipes. So that might be something that we need to deal with as well. [02:22:50] Speaker E: Question how? Like, how difficult would it be for a creature, say, I don't know, something Falcon sized, to get around and snatch up the little raspberry PI and bring it back? [02:23:08] Speaker A: Oh, it'd be. I'm pretty simple. Also, it's only those two casualties have to worry about. If you just wanted to go, like, if you wanted something like Nightingale sized to go snatch and grab. [02:23:19] Speaker E: Okay, sorry. For some reason, my thought was that the laptop was on the other side of the. [02:23:25] Speaker A: No. [02:23:26] Speaker E: Of the mess. Oh, great. [02:23:29] Speaker D: The laptop's on its own with those two casualties. Think whoever's set this trap up with the 18 over there, it looks like it's about 18 of them over there. It makes me think that they might have done something to the pumps for the. For the trains. [02:23:51] Speaker E: I mean, perhaps. Um, but let's I. Let's deal with these casualties first and see what we can figure out with this little raspberry PI thing and. And go from there. [02:24:05] Speaker A: Okay? Yeah. [02:24:09] Speaker D: I'll gesture to everybody else. [02:24:13] Speaker E: Yeah, I'm just gonna pull up my bow and just give it a quick little plunk. That's the sound when you do it quickly. Oof. Sadly. Wait. Maybe, maybe, maybe. No, unfortunately, six over eight for the first one. [02:24:30] Speaker A: Not gonna work out there. Hush. [02:24:34] Speaker E: You know what? It's hard because I can only see out of one eye right now. [02:24:39] Speaker A: No regrets. Hush. And content. Do you wanna take a shot? [02:24:43] Speaker B: Absolutely. It sounds pistol. [02:24:45] Speaker D: Absolutely. Ooh. [02:24:49] Speaker B: Four over hid. [02:24:52] Speaker A: That is not going to do it. What do you got? [02:24:55] Speaker C: Peach really made it. But it's a five over four, so. [02:25:00] Speaker A: One of them goes down, which is good. We will say that at this point. Yeah. There are many, many shambles away, so you all have to spend those charges. But the worst thing that happens is that the casualty. Here's the plink of the thing, and then turns and starts getting like. Is clambering up out of the window at you. It is seven shambles away, so you have six rounds to kill it between the three of you. Best of luck. [02:25:27] Speaker D: I still might not pull my pistol out by that time. [02:25:34] Speaker B: Doc, you sure safety is off? Get a notch on your belt there. [02:25:39] Speaker A: Be a wonderful teaching opportunity. Right. [02:25:41] Speaker D: Okay. [02:25:42] Speaker B: See if that thing works. Right. [02:25:44] Speaker A: Test fire before you pull the trigger. Is your handgun silenced? [02:25:48] Speaker D: No. [02:25:49] Speaker A: Then you'll not want to. You'll not want to be doing that, I imagine. [02:25:53] Speaker E: No, definitely not. [02:25:55] Speaker A: Well, no, the siren's running, so, yeah, you're fine. [02:25:58] Speaker D: I'll point at the casualty. Is it all right that it's not? I will shoot. I went a bit trigger happy, so I'm guessing that means it goes to the market, because I got a seven over seven. But I didn't roll the seven. I didn't roll two sevens, if that makes sense. [02:26:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Ties go to the market, so the shot goes wide. [02:26:29] Speaker D: Shall I try again? [02:26:31] Speaker B: Well, we know the gun works. That's critical. [02:26:34] Speaker E: Yeah, true. [02:26:37] Speaker D: I'll try again. [02:26:39] Speaker A: If everyone else is going to take their. Their turn off, then we'll say that the zombie, the casualty has proceeded. It is now five shambles away. [02:26:47] Speaker C: Okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna shoot then. [02:26:55] Speaker A: Mechanically, doc has three more rounds to try to shoot it before it becomes a danger to any of you. [02:27:04] Speaker C: Now, remind me how automatic works versus spray, because I got both. [02:27:12] Speaker A: I think spray. You can add charges ahead of time to increase your odds of success. And then automatic lets you do more damage, adding after the fact. [02:27:26] Speaker C: Okay, that makes sense. All right, well, since we're not too worried about the damage you're doing, we just need to hit these casualties and I'm gonna roll to shoot. [02:27:35] Speaker A: There's only one. [02:27:36] Speaker C: There's only one. [02:27:37] Speaker A: Yeah, the ones that. The big crowd of them that are in the pump room, they're dd jed up. It's just like, no, not moving. I mean, they are moving, but they can't get to you. Yeah. [02:27:46] Speaker C: In that case, I'm just gonna. Doc, save your bullets. Oh, yeah. That's going to be a ten over two. [02:27:54] Speaker A: Okay, so doc is going through a tremendous amount of effort. [02:27:57] Speaker D: Like, I rolled a five. I rolled a five of five again. It was goes to the market, but the hit that hush does. I'm going to count as mine. [02:28:07] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [02:28:07] Speaker D: Yeah, I don't notice that you shot it. I'll go bang. Not realize it's gone wide. See it fall to the floor and go. That counts. I'm never firing this thing again. [02:28:21] Speaker A: I'm looking around the room and waiting to see if any of you are going to ruin this moment for document. [02:28:26] Speaker E: No, absolutely. [02:28:28] Speaker A: Okay. [02:28:29] Speaker E: Yeah, it's like we all. I think. I think we all kind of like, look at each other like, oh, yeah. Good job, doc. Good, good job. [02:28:40] Speaker D: I hit one. I never want to do it again. [02:28:42] Speaker B: You're ready for the fences, doc. [02:28:47] Speaker C: So I'll see you at nighttime. [02:28:51] Speaker A: So you have a clear access to the place. Now you can get to the pie hole. It's not complicated at all how it's rigged up. You can change the timer however you'd like, letting it run. The casualties will be in the center area, but that also kind of gives them light of line of sight, line of smell to you if you were to start messing with the cages. So if you were going to try to fix the cage problem from under, you're going to be making stealth checks just to make sure. One of the catfleet doesn't even, like, turn around and be like, hey, so you can keep them all there? Um, if you like. If you want to come up with a plan to deal with all of them in a big clump, fine, um, whatever. You can turn the siren always on. You can turn the siren always off. It's totally up to you. Um, just imagine this is like a. This is like a resident evil game. And then you just get to control where the zombies, where the casualties go. [02:29:48] Speaker D: Are there any bottles anyway? [02:29:53] Speaker A: Bowls? [02:29:54] Speaker D: Bottles? Sorry? Any bottle. Any empty bottles or containers that we could perhaps put some fuel into with maybe some cloths and lighters. [02:30:08] Speaker A: For that, you would have to make a scavenging check just to see if any of things around. [02:30:16] Speaker D: That is nine over five. [02:30:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Maybe not the perfect situation, but you can scramble out together to make. What was your black dye? Black dye was a five to make five molotov cocktails. Assuming you can find fuel. [02:30:32] Speaker D: I take it out of the fuel tank. [02:30:34] Speaker E: Fuel tank? [02:30:35] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. The pumps aren't pumps and valves, right? [02:30:40] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. We got to clear those things out of the way first. Um, that will be the plan. Well, we need to do that anyway because I reckon they've been sabotaged. I should have said that in character, but, yeah, yeah, I've found these. We've got rags, we've got bottles. We just need to get the fuel out of. If we can get rid of those things. There. Get. And then once all the casualties are together, we can set them apart, slowly realizing I have a really dark side. [02:31:14] Speaker E: So we have. We have to deal with these 18 casualties. There's no way around it. [02:31:19] Speaker A: Um, I mean, strictly speaking, no. Uh, there are boundless opportunities to change. Like, if you. If you want to let the train show up and be like, look at what we fucking found, that's fine, right? Just a matter of, like, the risk and reward pieces. Is there something on those casualties that is worth scavenging? Do you want the rep with the train? When the train pulls up and, like, sees this fucking mess and they're like, oh, my God, you guys handled this like, wow, you've got your shit together. [02:31:56] Speaker D: I'm also very suspicious that underneath those casualties, where the valves and things are, that something has been tampered with. [02:32:06] Speaker A: I will say it's a mess in there, but I want you to understand that the room is fairly, fairly big. So even though there's a lot of casualties, I'll say that if you made a successful stealth or athletics check that would let you get to the valves without being bitten. [02:32:29] Speaker D: I think content could be good at doing that. [02:32:32] Speaker A: And then the question is, who's gonna deal with whatever is going on on the other end? [02:32:42] Speaker D: Not me. [02:32:45] Speaker E: Yeah. Because I assume we need somebody to run a little bit of a. Of distraction for the. The guys to, uh. Or whoever goes to deal with the valves, right. To try and give them a little. A little breathing room from the casualties. [02:33:01] Speaker A: Oh, the casualties cannot move. [02:33:03] Speaker C: They're stuck in the ddJs. [02:33:05] Speaker A: Right. [02:33:05] Speaker E: Okay. [02:33:06] Speaker A: Yeah. So what, essentially what you're doing is, um, that scene from, uh. Well, there's two heist moves that I'm thinking of. Like, there's oceans twelve where he's doing like the laser grid thing, and then there's the one where they robbed patronus towers that I can't remember of where one of the female stars does the laser thing. Essentially, like, you're doing entrapment, so you're doing athletics or stealth to like find a way to through the DDJ's and bend around to get to the controls without being bitten. [02:33:37] Speaker D: Are they able to turn their heads within it? Are they able to do that? [02:33:42] Speaker A: Yeah, they have enough movement to where it's dangerous. Dramatically. The alternative will say, if you wanted to spend the resources to kill them, it's not going to be hard. If you just want to go and bang, bang, bang four of them, you totally can. That's just charges in your weapon that you have afterwards. [02:34:03] Speaker D: Couldn't we just get Nightingale? Couldn't you just take one of your arrows and just sort of go? [02:34:09] Speaker E: That was, that was going to be my question. Can I, can I, can we use an arrow and like, then pull it out and then continue down the line? [02:34:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Mechanically, I have to double check, but I believe you can try to scavenge after you shoot arrows to find them because one of the upgrades is RFID arrows. Let you go. But again, so we're talking about the post pokeapop, post apocalypse. So these aren't like bass pro shop production arrows. And the risk would be that if you. But okay, yeah, you can scavenge afterwards to see how many arrows you managed to recover in the process. [02:34:41] Speaker E: I, I mean, I just. There, it's, it's not super worth it. I'd rather just like, if I'm the best person to make the world, I don't know who's the best person. Um, but I've got. I'm really, really great at stealth and athletics. Um, but like, if, if content is really great at it too, then, then by all means, my dude, you are more than welcome to slide your, slide your butt through or hush or whoever, but somebody's got to do it and it's not worth killing these guys right now. [02:35:08] Speaker C: I mean, he's putting this out here, right? On a scale of like one to five, my stealth and athletics, both are three. So, yeah, if you want to like tag team or whatever, like, seems like we all have the same stats and with the random number generator, these two dice, we all have the exact same chance of getting. Getting it. [02:35:29] Speaker E: So, I mean, honestly, like, my face is busted up and I've been really, really close to the DDJ's very fair, like, very up close and personal. So I'm. I'm fine to let content get a little closer. Tell you what, I'm not really keen to do it, so let's go. [02:35:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:35:49] Speaker A: 100% safest way. Just spend the resources, kill the casualties, then if. But if. So, this is your risk reward, right? You will have more resources later if you take on the risk of being bit by doing this. Also, if you do. If you do an athletics check, um, you can burn extra rations to improve your results. [02:36:08] Speaker B: Right? [02:36:09] Speaker A: So you have a couple different options here. Um, just don't. [02:36:13] Speaker E: If we don't kill them, we can't scavenge them. [02:36:16] Speaker A: Yeah, if you don't kill them, you can't scavenge them. Um, and if you fail this role like this, it will attack you. And I don't. And, like, this is the thing about red markets is, like, the attack succeeds until you do something else. So failing this athletic check means that you have stumbled into something, and a zombie has a pcu. So. [02:36:36] Speaker E: Fine, I guess we'll kill them. [02:36:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Scap them. [02:36:40] Speaker E: Yeah. [02:36:42] Speaker D: I tell you what. Hang on. Before. Before all of you use your resources, let me or somebody use my gun, because I'm not going to use it to use that first and then use your stuff. That sound fair? [02:37:01] Speaker A: Sure. I mean, yeah, I just. Well, however it ends up, we'll say you needed to burn six charges to kill enough casualties to get a clear shot. No risk to the controls. [02:37:16] Speaker E: Okay. [02:37:20] Speaker A: Um, but because they're immobile, you. There's. You don't roll dice for it. Right. Because you can just point the thing directly at the head and go. So there's no need to go to the long combat thing there. Yeah. Just, uh, if you want to dock, burn six charges off of your pistol. [02:37:33] Speaker D: Yeah, I'll still hand it to. I'll still hand it to content because I would still miss, even though they're stationary, and I would be put in blank. [02:37:41] Speaker E: Uh, and then, I mean, if we're going to scavenge anyway, um, I mean, I'm fine using bows because hopefully I can get some of those errors back. [02:37:48] Speaker A: So if you want to clear out the whole place, there are 18, so you have to burn twelve more charges, which you can do collectively. Like, you could all. Whatever. [02:37:59] Speaker E: But I mean, I've got. I've got eight charges on my bow. Uh, so I've got. I've got eight arrows left, basically, so I can. I can burn all of them and then hope for the best. Or I can burn six of them and then know for sure that I have at least two arrows for later and then hope I can get some of those back. [02:38:15] Speaker A: This is also a good time to talk about your adaptability score, your ADP, because that is the amount of times you can refill your gear. So if you have an ADP of two, that's twice that you can say, I'm out of charges on my gun. I brought extra magazines and refresh it. [02:38:34] Speaker C: Okay, good. [02:38:37] Speaker D: Also, just realized that as part of having a handgun, it has hungry, so it takes two charges for every one use. So I did use all of it when I shook, when I let content use it. [02:38:49] Speaker A: So, doc, you're out. If you want to put more bullets in your gun, you have to spend one of your adaptability points for this adventure. [02:38:58] Speaker D: I think we'll remain out and it's. [02:39:02] Speaker A: A bit like languages in knights black agents. You can just decide whatever, like, you don't need to plan. It's not D and D where you need to plan in advance how many fucking heirs and torches you brought. You just have two times you can say, oh, yeah, I brought more of that, or whatever your ADP score is. [02:39:18] Speaker E: Okay, great. Well, I will burn my last eight char or my last eight arrows, uh, for my bow. So those are for sure. Done. So there's ten more that get taken care of. Uh, I'm hoping that I can get some of those arrows back. And worst case, I'll blow an adaptability point. [02:39:34] Speaker A: Uh, so of the twelve we needed to kill, uh, because. So, uh, Doc killed six, you've killed eight. So that's 14. There are four more, we said. Yeah, there were 18 to start. [02:39:45] Speaker E: So doc. Doc used all of his. Before, I thought. [02:39:48] Speaker A: Yeah, there were 18 total casualties in the building. Doc killed six. [02:39:54] Speaker E: No, because my point was, like, his. His gun is hungry, so he used up charges from before when he was, like, shooting. So I don't think he has any to spend. So right now it should just be eight for me. [02:40:05] Speaker A: Okay, so then there's, what, ten left? [02:40:11] Speaker C: I don't mind. Yeah, I don't mind taking five if content. You want to also put some rounds in these bad boys? [02:40:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll take the rest. No problem. [02:40:21] Speaker A: Okay, so burn off those charges, and then you can do two scavenging rolls. One to see what is on the casualties and then one to see Nightingale. You specifically will roll a scavenging. If you succeed, the result on the black die is the number of arrows you've recovered. [02:40:42] Speaker E: I recovered two whole arrows. For. From a three over two. [02:40:47] Speaker A: If you have a three over two, then you recover three. [02:40:50] Speaker E: Oh, okay, great. Great. [02:40:53] Speaker A: Hooray. [02:40:55] Speaker E: No, could be better. [02:40:56] Speaker A: But, yeah, it sucks when you're like, man, I can't even flip that to make it good. I just. [02:41:03] Speaker E: Yeah, no, like, literally, I'm just staring at this. I'm like, really? That's my. Okay, great. Thanks. Awesome. [02:41:08] Speaker A: The second scavenging rule would be to see what is on those casualties. Just a reminder, if you critically fail this scavenging roll, you have to make an infection check. [02:41:20] Speaker C: I originally. Well, first, let me check to make sure. Mark, how good was your scavenging roll? [02:41:27] Speaker B: Mine is not good. No, I have no points in scavenging. [02:41:32] Speaker D: Okay. [02:41:34] Speaker C: I at first got a one over eight, but I have a lot of will, so can I. And please correct me if I'm using this mechanic wrong, can I use a willpower to flip it? So instead of a one over eight, it's now a. I'm sorry, a three over eight, it's now a ten over one. [02:41:51] Speaker A: Cool. [02:41:52] Speaker C: Then that's what I'll do. I'll spend the point to make it a ten over one. [02:41:54] Speaker A: Okay, so then roll one d ten. Just. [02:42:03] Speaker C: That's a seven. [02:42:04] Speaker A: Seven bounty that you find among the various casualties. [02:42:09] Speaker C: Well, since you guys are all having the ten, I'm not getting any of that. That's fair. I think I'm just gonna pocket the seven bounty. [02:42:16] Speaker E: Don't even. Do not even what? [02:42:20] Speaker B: Hush, please. [02:42:21] Speaker E: Literally, the only reason that you're not getting bounty is to fill the medical supplies that doc had to spend to patch up my face. [02:42:31] Speaker C: And again, just want to say I'm sorry, and I'll just kind of, like three, and then, like, slowly hand the rest back. [02:42:39] Speaker A: All right, fine. [02:42:40] Speaker D: I know that song from somewhere. [02:42:43] Speaker C: You don't. [02:42:43] Speaker A: Distant, terrible. [02:42:44] Speaker C: No, you do not. No, you don't. [02:42:48] Speaker A: And then last things last. It will be a mechanics check to get the valves open to get the pumps running. At this point, as you're tiptoeing through a forest of goo and like, oh, it's so gross. You're not worried about being infected, but like, oh, your shoes. You're covered in it. [02:43:08] Speaker D: Oh, that's lovely. I rolled. I rolled a six on my black dice and a five on my normal dice, but I had a plus three, so that's an eight over six. [02:43:16] Speaker A: Yeah, totally fine. So sirens are running, which is great, because that means that the noise of these things could chunk chunking to life does not attract more attention. And at that point, both the fuel and the water systems are back online. You can go make your. Your Molotov cocktails now, as you like. Yep. [02:43:36] Speaker E: Oh, yes. [02:43:37] Speaker A: And just narratively speaking, it's not going to be difficult to just chuck those things into the room. Rules as written, though. I do require you to spend one ration to exert yourself to throw them. Uh, so, yeah, just anytime you. Because to throw requires an athletics check. To do an athletics check requires rations. And sometimes it's very silly in that you have to spend a can of baked beans to throw them all top cocktail. But them's the breaks. [02:44:07] Speaker E: Here we are. [02:44:09] Speaker C: If someone has been spending too many rations. I'm okay. I'm pretty good on rations. Uh, I can use that resource so you all don't have to. [02:44:18] Speaker B: I've only used one ration so far, so. [02:44:20] Speaker D: Or two. [02:44:21] Speaker A: I think you should have spent, at minimum, three. There have been three legs. [02:44:26] Speaker C: Okay, thank you. I missed that last one. [02:44:28] Speaker A: Thank you so much. [02:44:28] Speaker B: Yeah, me too. [02:44:29] Speaker A: And then if you've done anything else that requires athletics, there should be more, but, yeah. [02:44:34] Speaker B: Oh, then. Hmm, hmm. [02:44:39] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:44:40] Speaker A: If you haven't been keeping trouble track, that's. That's totally fine. We're not going to bust anyone's balls over it. It's the first game, but every leg, no matter what, requires a ration. And then athletic stuff also requires it. [02:44:52] Speaker E: Yeah, I don't think you went over. [02:44:53] Speaker A: That, tbh, my mistake. I'm not gonna punch anyone over it. Just. If you haven't been keeping track, you should have seven now. And if you can remember, like, oh, yeah, I did that one thing, then go ahead and take it down to six, but I'm not gonna bust anyone's balls over it. [02:45:07] Speaker E: Yeah, I'm at five. And I also have a falcon that takes rations, so I'm not gonna throw anything you guys can. [02:45:13] Speaker B: The falcon doesn't have its own rations. [02:45:15] Speaker E: I'm not happy about that. I have not taught the falcon how to hunt for itself yet. That is an upgrade on the falcon that I have not taught. So I have to give it rations currently, but eventually he will be able to hunt for himself. [02:45:29] Speaker D: I'm going to move over to the laptop to see if I can turn the alarms on. [02:45:33] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, no, that's easy peasy. That's just like. Yep. [02:45:36] Speaker E: Boop. [02:45:37] Speaker A: Push the button. Sirens on forever. And I only thought you'd done that before you turned the equipment. I've been operating under that. That was the first thing. [02:45:47] Speaker D: Yes, I know. We did do that. Now. Now we can take the Molotovs we can wait for the horde to gather around the tower, and then we throw the molotovs and we burn all of them. [02:45:59] Speaker C: Oh, sorry, this is a document question. Um, how long will the fire take to kill the casualties? To dead the casualties? [02:46:11] Speaker D: Um, that is a very good question, and I think we should experiment. [02:46:18] Speaker A: Okay. In terms of mechanics, again, um, whenever you're dealing with casualties, any amount of damage is enough to put them down. Uh, and tends to abstract the time. People, vectors, other weird things. You find more sophisticated hit rules, but, like, casualties are never meant to be more complicated than, like, how do I deal with this without dying? And is it worth the expense of doing so? Yes, it does kill damage to all locations on a single target, or the opposite. Yeah, right. So anytime you have an explosive weapon in this game. So a DDJ, a grenade, Molotov, you can decide whether you want to do damage to every hit location on one thing or do damage to one hit location on many things. So if I were going to throw a grenade at this group, I could decide to either do two kill damage to every single hit location on hush, or. Or to do two damage to each of your left arms, for example. Casualties don't have hit locations, so you just spread it around. And that problem solves itself. And we abstract the time away because nobody has time to be like, okay, well, the duration of this spell, it does one damage every round, and a round is ten minutes. And so they each. And, yeah, they're only level one zombies, so they have seven hit points each one. Well, hang on a second. I need to get that. My table. Okay. No, in the first round, none of them. And then. That's just ridiculous. Not what the game is about. Um, so for the purposes of the zombies being there, um, we can. I, uh. We'll just say there's two ways to do it. The one would be to have you burn a ration, roll a black die, and see how many you kill. Even that would take too long. I'm willing to say, uh, as they are all crowded up, um, three Molotov cocktails would do the job. And whatever combination of how you want to spend those rations, it's fine by me. Um, which means we do it in like a. [02:48:25] Speaker D: If we're going to use three molotovs, we'll do it. I'd say do it in like a. In like a triangle formation. So we'll throw one in one corner, one on the other corner, one at the furthest point, so we get as much splash as possible and take as many out as possible. [02:48:40] Speaker A: It smells fucking terrible. It casualties already smell bad. The loss already smells bad. Now it smells like that and on fire. Like burning, rotting body filled with an alien virus. Not alien as in from the universe, but alien as in understandable virus. Yeah, it's not great, but. [02:49:06] Speaker D: I'm gonna look to content with, uh, with a really sinister grin on my face and go, can I add them to my kill count? [02:49:16] Speaker B: Yeah, doc, the whole room don't care. [02:49:22] Speaker A: Unfortunately, burning them alive means that any, any scavenging material was, was probably consumed in those flames. If you've burned them enough to kill them, you definitely burned them enough to melt the driver's licenses or ruin the wallet, etcetera. That said, though, you don't have to get bit or die. So at this point, there's only one problem that remains for you to solve, and that is what to do with the folks in the cages. [02:49:51] Speaker D: Get them down. Sounds like a good idea. I will quickly give them a quick examination to make sure they've not been bitten. If they have been, we push them into the fire, and if they haven't been, then we send them on their way. [02:50:05] Speaker A: So two things. One, now that you're this close, you can obviously tell they're not latents, definitely no black veins, anything like that. And then, doc, to your point, being bitten, you turn quick. In this universe, it's a matter of minutes. In most cases, latents who already have the blight in them. The second they die, like, boom, instantly, a vector. So you have less of a problem with people hiding bites. In most cases, you have like five minutes tops before you turn. Now, the casualties that you see, that's the cold strain of the blight. That's the mostly dormant version. You all know this as characters. In characters, if someone gets a bite that's hot blight, you go vector. So the game says there's two kinds of casualties. In this game, there's like fast 28 days later, screaming murder, machine casualties or vectors. And then after a period of, like, you know, four or five days, the nervous system breaks down, and then they become the slow, wandering, menacing kind of casualties. So the three people totally look, they look fine. I mean, they're wearing just generic loss outfits. They are obviously dehydrated, a little hungry, but aside from that, like, yeah, no bites, no latents. And that's the information that you have as you approach one of them. We'll go from left to right. There's a fairly young, you'd say, like, 17 or 18 year old woman, very short, curly red hair, pale, freckly, looking a bit like a very, very. I want to say the word dirty, but I don't want to say the word dirty. Like doll. Like one of those. Who am I talking about? The raggedy Ann and Andy. Yes. Looking like a very dirty post apocalyptic raggedy Ann doll. 17 or 18 years old. There is a gentleman. [02:52:20] Speaker B: I'll give that reference. [02:52:23] Speaker A: I was going to say Annie from a hard knock life, but then anyway, Annie's black now. [02:52:29] Speaker B: Oh, the last Annie that I saw in a movie. She's black. [02:52:34] Speaker A: The last Annie is the title of my post apocalyptic zombie retelling of that story. [02:52:39] Speaker B: Nice. [02:52:40] Speaker A: So, yeah. Young black girl protagonist surviving in a post apocalyptic wasteland. The middle cage is a gentleman. You'd peg him 25 to 30, like college age if you had to spend eight years because you were a little fratty. Looks skinny in like a marathon runner kind of way. Dark black hair, southeast asian kind of complexion. In the third, there's another gentleman. He's not wearing the outfit, but from the face, you would say, like Marilyn Manson, Chicago. You have those kind of features that. A little greasy, a little sunken. And that's before the hunger and the thirst take on. Definitely the kind of person who would get bullied in an enclave has a kind of like, me personally, if I went to see a movie and this person came into the theater, I might pick a different showing, that kind of vibe. And he's just an ordinary caucasian fellow. Otherwise, when you approach the one on the right, the caucasian man and the young girl are totally. They're silent, they're nervous, they're watching you, but they don't say anything. And the southeast asian gentleman in the middle is thrilled. He sits up with the last energy that he has. He's got his hands up on the bars like, oh, my God, thank you so much. You. Those crazy people that they put us here and I die. I think you can get us down. I'm really ready to be. To be. For someone to put me down. [02:54:38] Speaker D: So who put you up there? [02:54:45] Speaker A: I don't mean. I don't tell me their names. I don't. I don't know where we were. We were. We were traveling between enclaves and. And they kidnapped us. They were some kind of bandits or human traffickers. I don't know. They just said they put us up here, and then they were laughing and then continues to give details. [02:55:03] Speaker D: It's all. [02:55:03] Speaker A: It's all a bit vague in the way that, like, I don't know, man. In a world where there's bandits we got bandited. And I guess, like, I'm. I'm happy they didn't kill us, but, like, they put us here, and that also sucks. How. [02:55:17] Speaker B: How long have you guys been up there? [02:55:20] Speaker A: Okay, I'm gonna keep doing this. It's fun. I mean, God, it's been what? And, like, he looks over to the younger girl, and she's looking up at him. I mean, it's been five or six days now. I mean, it's been. Honest to God, it's just hard to keep. And I mean that. Yeah. You can see how he might have lost track of time a little bit. [02:55:40] Speaker E: Um, I have a question. [02:55:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:55:43] Speaker E: Can I, like, is sensitivity kind of like an insight check in other games where I can, like. [02:55:49] Speaker A: Yes. [02:55:50] Speaker E: Okay. Can I make a sensitivity check right now? [02:55:53] Speaker A: Um, absolutely. Before you do, remember that sensitivity, because it is a mental skill that has no resources. That is one and done. [02:55:59] Speaker E: Yeah. If anybody is really good at it, I'm mediocre at best. But if anybody's really great. Okay, fantastic. [02:56:07] Speaker D: I'm a one out of five. [02:56:09] Speaker E: Then, uh, then I will make this roll, and we'll see what happens. [02:56:13] Speaker A: I believe it. [02:56:15] Speaker E: Okay, well, damn it. That's a. That's a. It's an eight. Uh, with my bonus eight to eight. So, unfortunately, it goes to the market, which means I don't win. [02:56:25] Speaker A: If you want to know bad enough, you can. Otherwise, uh, I know. [02:56:30] Speaker E: I'm kind of. I'm kind of tempted. I'm kind of tempted to burn a willpower because I haven't yet. So, um, yeah, I'm gonna spend a willpower. I'm gonna swap it. So it's a nine over seven at that point. [02:56:40] Speaker A: Okay. Uh, yeah, it's, um. It's fishy. [02:56:46] Speaker E: Yeah. [02:56:47] Speaker A: You would expect someone who got bandit, which is the verb we're using now, to be more, um, physically injured. And they're not. They just. They'd look like they were, like, captured in whatever sense, for being people who haven't really explained how they know each other. There's a lot of, like, cross, like, hey, this person. Hey, this person. Like, looking around and in a situation where you see, like, three people who are. Who are captured, the idea that only one of them is, like, taking on the lead. That's weird. [02:57:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:57:16] Speaker E: Yeah. As, so, like, as content is standing there kind of just, like, chatting to them. I'm just going to, like, elbow hush, and I'm just going to just do that. Just because I out here like you, you don't get by, by giving people second chances. If something feels off, you just. You take them out. It's not even worth a discussion. [02:57:38] Speaker A: Sorry, just for me. You're going to shoot a child? [02:57:44] Speaker C: No, no, no. Not the child, the adults. [02:57:49] Speaker A: Okay? That's. That's what I'm asking. Are you going. Are you shooting everybody or just the sketchy dude? [02:57:53] Speaker E: Just. Well, the sketchy dude. Because, I mean, I'm. [02:57:57] Speaker A: He's. [02:57:57] Speaker E: He's the sketchy one. [02:58:00] Speaker A: Okay. No, I want to make sure because I was like, I have a. I have a stress call ready. When you brain this girl who, like, she looks 17, that means she's like 15 to 22, right? In that range. [02:58:11] Speaker E: Like, yeah, no, just. Just the sketchy dude. So as he's trying to, like, sell. Sell this bridge to content. Uh, because, you know, I don't. I don't want to. We're not going to have a conversation about this because content is never really going to be satisfied with it. And Doc might try and talk us out of it. So, like, no, I'll just elbow hush. Just. And then let him do his thing. [02:58:34] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:58:35] Speaker C: So clearly not shooting Annie on the left. I'm going to. I'm going to shoot the guy in the center. [02:58:43] Speaker B: Listen, the train's coming. We can load you up on the train and everything's gonna be fine. There's. There's food there, there's water, there's shelter. You can help them. They can probably find you a job. [02:58:54] Speaker D: Yeah, we've got rations. [02:58:55] Speaker A: And then eleven over four, as I. [02:58:58] Speaker C: Shoot him in the leg and he's. [02:59:00] Speaker A: Like, yeah, no, you should wait. You should know. Oh, well, so if you. [02:59:03] Speaker D: Okay. [02:59:04] Speaker A: Um, I want to. [02:59:05] Speaker C: I want to give him a chance to tell him not. [02:59:07] Speaker E: No, no, no. We have been together long enough that when they're sketchy people, when you've got a gut feeling, like you have to trust the other takers in your crew, that when their gut feelings are bad, you have to trust it. You just go. [02:59:21] Speaker C: And you gave me the kill sign, so, sure enough, seven over four. I'm sorry, eleven over four right in the head. [02:59:25] Speaker A: Brian, what's the unmodified role? [02:59:29] Speaker C: Without my bonuses to shoot, that would be seven over four. [02:59:34] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, so, yeah, when you're doing a headshot, you just use the naked black and red because it's precision. So. But it works out. So, yeah, content. Like, we can help you out. And Doc's like, yeah, we'll get you some rations. And he's like, oh, my God. Thank you, God. So, you know, and then just the head goes, you know, vomiting back outwards. [02:59:55] Speaker D: Oh, what happened there? [02:59:59] Speaker A: Immediately, the younger girl starts shrieking, oh, my God, you killed him. Why would you do that? He just freaking out. And while she's doing that, the man on the right says, oh, it doesn't matter. Fuck, they know now. And he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a syringe of thick black goo and jams it directly into his own neck. And you see him starting to shake and starting to tremble. And that's when you realize the cages aren't locked, because the last thing he does is the door, opens it up, he falls down the ten or 15ft to the ground and he's twitching as he gets back up. And here's the thing about the blight. It starts with the motor functions. It handles the brain in pieces, taking over subsystems. So there's this moment where, like, his body is being taken over by the blight, but his brain, his talking brain, is still alive. So, doc, in content, you were the two who were closest to this. See this guy? And he's getting up onto his feet and then his body is doing, I'm about to eat you. But he's going through what the game calls the apologies, which is going, oh, my God, it hurts. God. Fuck, it hurts so much. I'm so. I'm so sorry. I got. I didn't know. And feel this. And then you can. As his language centers are devoured by the. This disease thing, it starts to turn into burbling. You see the snarling and full blown vector in front of you? [03:01:46] Speaker D: How far away is it from us? [03:01:48] Speaker A: So, because we haven't been super specific about it, but I do want to get some mechanical things out of the way first. Casualties are, you can kill them. One, damage, whatever. Vectors have hitboxes, and the only way to kill a vector is to fill the head with kill damage, which means I'm just killing. Yeah. So just keep that in mind. The second piece is that vectors get a murder modifier to their roles, which is based on the speed of the human who was killed. So, for example, if nightingale became a vector, your speed is three. So she would get in vector form, a plus three bonus to all of her rolls and all of her daniels and all of her knockback. Yeah, vectors don't fuck around. No, that's also their. Their. They get that speed as well. So they can move three shamble at a time and that kind of thing. In terms of actions, you, many of you have two for your initiative, right? For speed? [03:02:58] Speaker E: Most of us have three. [03:02:59] Speaker D: Yeah, the speed, yeah. [03:03:02] Speaker A: That's. That's gonna be okay. Uh, I wanna. In terms of initiative order, I wanna give you the chance to do it, but that's gonna be really disappointing if you all just, like. I'm gonna burn willpower, make it a fucking extra critical, and then it just dies. Right? That's boring. So I wanna double check the initiative thing. The very least, we'll say that some of this happens synchronously. Feel free, though, to use this opportunity to express your reactions in the way of a stress test. Make a self control check, because this is. This is fucking terrible. Even if you've seen. If you've seen someone turn before, you are now being reminded of some of the worst moments of your life. If you've never seen someone turn before, having them apologize to you for being about to rip your throat out is one of the most horrible things you can imagine. [03:03:54] Speaker E: Ten, seven. I've seen this shit all the time. The wall is. I had friends turn. It was fine. [03:04:03] Speaker D: Yeah. I've been up close and personal to this. I do have something I'd like to do, though. [03:04:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll get there in a second. If you pass, take one. If you fail, take three. That would be to trauma. [03:04:20] Speaker C: Trauma. Okay. [03:04:21] Speaker A: Okay, cool. I'm sorry. If you fail, take two, because. Yeah, three is for a. No, no, no. That's right. It's one. Three for a vector outbreak. So, yeah, there you go. Really, really fast. Really. [03:04:34] Speaker C: So I have. I start off cracked in humanity with my detachment. Does my trauma start before the cracked line, or does it start after the cracked line starts? [03:04:46] Speaker A: Before each track is independent, so you can. You can add them as you go. Cool. All right. Got it. [03:04:55] Speaker C: Perfect. [03:04:56] Speaker B: Does it add any more to mine? Because can we all be friends? Was my soft spots. [03:05:04] Speaker E: Um. [03:05:05] Speaker B: And these guys clearly just did not give a fuck. At least that was. [03:05:09] Speaker A: I guess I'll ask. [03:05:10] Speaker B: Also, my own friends did not. They were like, friends headshots. [03:05:16] Speaker A: I'll ask you this way. One does. Can't we all be friends include, like, slavery and cultists? Does content believe there are certain people who just cannot be? Like, the world ended, and some people were like, fuck, yeah, it's Mad Max time. And they started putting on gigantic trucks and wearing human skin. Do those people get included in the. Can't we all just get along as. [03:05:40] Speaker B: Much as want them to be? They are. They are the antithesis to everything that kind of isn't. It's cadence. Part of, like, we can all be friends. We can all build something, but these guys just want to see everything burn. [03:05:53] Speaker A: So, yeah, so, I mean, if that's your honest and sincere belief about the character, then. No, I think once the shot might have surprised you. Only because Nightingale had not communicated something was weird. When this guy injects hot blight into his neck, you're like, crazy person and you don't have to worry about it. [03:06:13] Speaker B: Cool. [03:06:15] Speaker A: Okay, so then, yes, in terms of initiative, it starts this round. What was your plan, Josh? [03:06:30] Speaker D: So, as he injects himself with. As he pulls his syringe out and puts it in his neck. I've seen this for some. Something similar to this before. I've seen the black Hoosier. There have been certain militaries that have tried to weaponize vectors. And as he falls to the floor, I dash forward, reach into my first aid kit, and I've pull out a syringe of my own, and I go to jab it into his neck. I have a suppression k 7864, which is the one that kills the blight and makes them elate. [03:07:10] Speaker A: Okay. I think it's gonna be an athletics check to get there, because if you want to sprint and jab this guy before he turns. [03:07:21] Speaker D: Well, that is a eleven over four. [03:07:25] Speaker A: Okay, that is. That is downright heroic and quick thinking. He's going through it. You see him, he falls in the twitchy face. Before he's gone, you run up, you either take the shot or you take the shot. Right? So you hammer this. It's like one of those atropine injectors, right? It's not a cute little injection. It's a. Just jam it into the largest mold muscle group you can find. Who cares? And you apply it. Now, I. Because I understand what you're going for. Also, remember that suppressant means you're a latent, which means if this guy finds a way to kill himself again, he's going to go. So I want everyone to. Yeah, this is a good plan, and I want it to work, but the next thing is, someone needs to find a way to stop him from, like, finding the nearest piece of broken glass and making this a problem. [03:08:18] Speaker B: So, question then. What if we just dome him? Just cap him in the head? Was that not. [03:08:24] Speaker E: Yeah. [03:08:24] Speaker A: You can also just kill him. [03:08:25] Speaker C: Yes. [03:08:26] Speaker E: Yep. [03:08:26] Speaker B: Okay, so that would kill him. Super kill him. That really kill him? Okay. [03:08:30] Speaker A: Yeah. If you hit a latent in the head, like, the head is the important part, you can't go vector without a head. So if you wanted to be like, yep. You took advantage of my soft spot, or try to. And then just shotgun him double barrel in the brain, I'm here for it. [03:08:45] Speaker B: Yeah, that's probably what content's going to do. Probably right over doc's shoulder. We're just going to pull doc aside and just want to one to that. [03:08:54] Speaker D: I'd fully, I'd fully allow myself to take some damage from getting hit by a little bit of the shrapnel from the shotgun because I'm like right in the way. [03:09:02] Speaker A: Oh, it's just a precision shot. [03:09:04] Speaker D: Yeah, okay, that's fine. [03:09:05] Speaker A: The game doesn't get too wacky about like shooting into melee and stuff like that, so the only precision shot, so you'll just roll. You can't spend extra charges, you just get the result of your skill. And the black and the red. [03:09:19] Speaker B: Okay, one over three. [03:09:27] Speaker A: So you can spend a willpower to flip it if you want. [03:09:29] Speaker B: Otherwise, definitely, definitely burn a willpower three over one. [03:09:38] Speaker A: And then for the sake of damage, like, yes, obviously you're going to double barrel someone in the brain at this range. I am not concerned with the damage dice. So Doc does that stops him from turning. He doesn't hit the vector speed, at which point he can scramble up and get at you. And then content just wham. [03:10:05] Speaker B: And I kick, doc, just kick him. I kick him to the ground. Doc, you fucking save that for someone who needs it, for someone who wants it. Not these cycles. [03:10:16] Speaker D: I know, but I didn't want us to fight one of them. We were at the front. I would have died. [03:10:24] Speaker B: You fucking heard me. [03:10:26] Speaker D: I know. I won't do it again. But that was a lot easier to kill now than what he would have been if he was a vector. [03:10:35] Speaker E: I kind of call out and I just like, don't forget, we can just take it out of his bounty. [03:10:43] Speaker C: While they're having that, I am pointing the rifle to the lady and with an intimidation check. I'm not going to shoot her, but I'm going to look at her and I'm. And I'm going to, you know, kind of stop signing and go on my speaker, go to out loudspeaker and start playing. In the arms of the angel by Sarah McLaughlin. As I raise this weapon and this sad music comes out and I say, like, I killed your friend because he was a liar. You killed your other friend because he was a monster. Now, you can decide to be one of those two things, or you can be the third thing. You can be the girl that lived, or you can be the girl I track down every goddamn day running away from the bullet that I'm going to spit at her. It's gonna got her name on it. The choice is yours. You can be the one that lived, the one that died, or the one that died running. I mean, one out of three ain't bad, right? It's a six over one. I also. [03:11:56] Speaker A: I kind of watching you hold the gun pantomime, I also kind of like, they didn't have a character who, like, rolls dice in the game. She's like, so I don't know, am I gonna let you live? Three or two? [03:12:08] Speaker E: It's like two face, right? You just gotta, like, flip the coin. Yeah. [03:12:12] Speaker A: Um, so you have the gun on her. Um, you're being, uh, as. As intimidating as your dice, uh, allow you to be. Um. And you see, like that, there's, um, there's definitely hesitation. And, like, you can kind of. You notice at this point, um, the whole plan has come together. All three of them. We were going to turn. And the plan was like, if you came there, if the train showed up, whoever got rescued, that was because when you pull your gun back on her, you can see she's got her own little thing. And then you intimidate her and you see her just like she didn't really want to do it. And now you've given her the last little nudge to just drop it, and the syringe comes clattering down out from the thing, and she will explain to you the entire plan, that they could lock the gate, they could delay the train with all these different trainers that were all designed to get the takers to turn. Eventually the train would get here and either someone would be too stupid and take pity on them, bring them on the train where they could turn. Or if they got again caught by takers, they got figured out, they could turn them and walk people out, too stupid that way. [03:13:26] Speaker B: How dare you? [03:13:28] Speaker A: They have different ideas about the value of sensitivity in the lost. And that's it. Now, there's plenty more to learn on that. What, because is it just the three of them? No, of course not. You saw all the work that happened. What? Why do they hate the train so much? What's. What's going on there? What's the motivation? Who is supplying them? Where's all this come from? Because it's mean. There's really only a few enclaves around here. And the odds that someone just wandered up into these woods to cause random trouble is not worth it. But there, I believe now we will have to stop. No train, no gain. You did the thing. Congratulations, everybody. I'm slightly upset that Josh had an incredible idea that was entirely too good for me to GM. Veto. You saved the day. [03:14:22] Speaker D: Oops, sorry. [03:14:23] Speaker A: Thank you. But yeah. Hey, I'm Aaron. I'm your storyteller. Sometimes I don't tell a story that I want to. That is because I am surrounded by so many incredibly cool players, among them playing hush who did not shoot a child this game. PJ. PJ. If people want to see more of your skills, where can they go? [03:14:44] Speaker C: Hi everyone. My name is PJ. I'm the GM and big time lead showrunner for Nat 20 productions official on Twitch. You can find me doing Edge of Legend Wednesdays eight to 11:00 p.m. As well as Wayward Arcadium. If you like kind of magic high school, magic college kind of environments. We'll be coming back with Wayward Arcadium in August. Also eight to 11:00 p.m. And if you like podcasts, there's a certain vampire podcast your boys on. So go check out the all night society. Believe a new episode just dropped today. By the time you see this, it may be a different episode, but who cares? They're all good. So naturally productions official on Twitch, check us out at the YouTube. Same natural prods and also the all night society queens court games on Spotify. [03:15:30] Speaker A: Well, shit, my job's done. So I'm just going to have pass on now to Mark. Mark J. It was just a ton of fun, your first game with us. I hope that you liked to come back. [03:15:38] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah, I'd love to be invited back. Thanks so much for having me. You can find me on the Twitter. You can find me on Everrealm Adventures podcast. All Poc D and D adventures venture. We are back from our summer break. I just came back from vacation. Some other people just came back from vacation. So we are back to recording this Friday, expecting new episodes coming out very soon. And yeah, come check us out and thanks. [03:16:04] Speaker A: I'm excited for it. It's on my mind, my listen list. I generally have a real hard time listening to other people's podcasts and shows while I'm writing because then my brain is filled with all of your ideas. I don't feel like I've stolen them, but I'm a bit ahead of my writing quotient so I'm going to spend some time with that. The people who enable me to be ahead on work are also here right now, saving the day. But Dick and my story over is Doc Jersh. People want to see more of this stuff, they can come here. But why don't you tell us a, where they can find you on Twitter, and b, what they can look forward to in some of the games you're running. [03:16:37] Speaker D: So you can find me on Twitter at Devonnight 225. Uh, I. You can see some content that I'm doing called astral seed Chronicles, which has v in it. V is somewhere on the overlay. And some of our other fantastic people, I might be dragging some other people from here into it as well. Be prepared. And I play on planet allies every now and then. Um, on a Tuesday, but. [03:17:07] Speaker A: And then lastly, you know what? Honestly, she wasn't even supposed to be here. We called her in to ask a question. She's like, oh, my God, you're playing red markets. And we're like, do you want to play? And she's like, well, I mean, if it wouldn't be too big. And now she's here as Nightingale, whose falcon saved a little bit of the day. Also, I got a lot of good mileage out of that falcon. It's v. V. Tell people. Tell people the truth. Tell people where they can find you and what else you're up to, or else. [03:17:34] Speaker E: Or else what? [03:17:36] Speaker A: Was not prepared for you to ask that question. [03:17:39] Speaker E: Yes, I'm v. I'm the queen of the court here at Queen's court games. You can find me on Twitter at. V is for vampire because my name is V and I love vampires. With PJ, obviously. I am the voice of Ivy Larue over on the all night society. I play every now and then with roll together, and I'm just. I don't know, I'm kind of, like, everywhere. But mostly, obviously, I'm here because I love what we do, and I love the content we put out, and I love getting to play games with my friends, all of these wonderful folks here. So, yeah, just keep checking back at Queen's court games, because there's always good stuff coming. [03:18:14] Speaker D: Always. [03:18:16] Speaker E: And, Aaron, what about you? Where can people find you? [03:18:20] Speaker A: Well, you can always find me here on Queen's court rpg, because this is the place where I run all of my games, where I find really great people on the Internet and then begged them to play obscure indie titles by my favorite authors. Been running cold and running red markets, and then someday I will eventually run, like, a real big marquee game. No, no indies for me the whole life. You can find me on Twitter, where I am really good at sharing the different indie stuff that I like. Also my little bit of rules, occasionally some writing advice, but more often, if you want to see them, you should just go to court rpg on Twitter or Queenscort games on Facebook, on YouTube, on the clock app, on everywhere Instagram, everywhere else. [03:19:00] Speaker E: Everywhere else. Yeah. [03:19:02] Speaker A: Where we are playing D and D. We're playing vampire, the Masker rave. We're playing cult, Divinity, lost. We're gonna be got big, big, big list a lot. We'd love to see you there. Before we totally head out, I would also like to especially thank Callie. I would especially like to thank Ben. I would especially like to thank Mark S. Because they are our Duke patrons, the kind of people who put the forward the money that lets us make this happen. So if you're in chat, say thanks to them. We've all said to them, and you know what? Do it again next week, right? Same time, same channel. See more games. Bye.