[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello, friends, and welcome to another single serving tabletop adventure from Queentour games. That's us. Tonight, we are continuing the dying fields, a scenario from the streets run red supplement for the masquerade. As always, I'm Aaron, and tonight I will be your storyteller as we continue through the corn and the corny in the small, idyllic town of Willerton, Illinois. You can find a link to streets run red by typing exclamation point game in chat or by following the link in the show notes. If you are joining us via podcast or YouTube. Before we return to Bowman street and Magpie Road. And Magpie Road and Magpie Road, allow me to introduce our cast gangrel, survivalist guru and Magpie communicator, Hayley Drake from Queenswore games. It's me.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Hi.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Somehow still okay with the fact that she hasn't been able to get a manicure or a decent latte or any of the other normal trappings of boardroom life. La somber Roxanne Silvestri. It is Laura Tutu.
[00:01:05] Speaker C: Hello. It's not like I could drink the latte anyway.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: I think it's the smell, right? It's. It's the motif. It's the attitude. It's the. The trappings of your normal life. Right?
[00:01:16] Speaker B: That's.
[00:01:16] Speaker C: That's fair. That's fair.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: Else you can just throw it at people to express displeasure.
Also tonight, former SI agent currently wondering just what the hell is going on with this open masquerade bit. Banu Hakeem, our technical sorceress, Aubrey.
[00:01:37] Speaker C: Hello.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Still, I think, ensorceled by that quilt that we left in the hotel, it is kitsch antiquer Jordan Phipps, played by Clara.
[00:01:49] Speaker D: Hi.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: And somehow pulling it all together through force of charisma and canonically established Badonkadonk. Joining us all the way from the lovely craftsians and other cider studios, it's sade yo.
[00:02:03] Speaker E: I got a wonderful badonk. Apparently, I should use that more often.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: I want you to put one dot in attractive on your character sheet, but in the same way you would get a specialization for a skill. Just specialization.
Dump truck ass in that ass.
[00:02:20] Speaker C: Specifically, dadass.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: Well, that image is beautiful, but not all the imagery tonight will be. The masquerade is a storytelling game of personal horror, and as such, touches upon topics that some viewers may find uncomfortable or questionable. The cast has completed their safety questionnaire. We've done our check inside before starting recording. They have a full slate of safety tools on hand in case things get a little too intense. But we want you at home to stay safe, too. You can find a list of content warnings by typing exclamation point, safety in chat, also in the show notes. If, again, you are coming along via podcast or YouTube now, assuming that everybody is ready to continue the mystery. I mean, if you went to the library and you're all fine, you're like, no, nothing. We'll see here. Let's just go home. We can go, but if you want to continue.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: Look, I'm not one for books, so the library was utterly boring for me.
[00:03:20] Speaker E: I think Jack found it. I found it extremely interesting to talk with. What's the name again?
[00:03:27] Speaker D: Hannah.
[00:03:27] Speaker F: Or it was Hannah. Yeah.
[00:03:29] Speaker D: Hannah the librarian.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:32] Speaker E: Very sweet woman.
Asked her questions. Perhaps tell her. Have her tell me a little bit about something that she enjoys about the town in general.
That's about it. Nothing investigative there.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: Well, then, let's begin with the recap. I have pre rolled the dice, which means that v. Hayley, sorry to put the burden on the brain cell this early, but it's your turn to tell us what happened in the last episode.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: You're asking a lot from the cute puppy of the coterie.
Um. Cause what I remember is that we woke up after, uh. Well, okay. Before that, even, uh, Jordan got her pie, and she wouldn't stop talking about it. Um, but then also found out that there is, like. Like, a crazy amount of kindred here. And also, everybody kind of knows about them. And, like, the church actually, like, feeds them, which is kind of weird. It's like. They call it the special menu, which, like, that's all sorts of weird. And I'm not really here to investigate that.
So when we decided to head back to look, I just. Jordan. I saw that face.
So we headed back to the hotel, and we got a little sidetracked, I guess, which is strange, because it's literally one street and, like, two blocks away, but it was, like, seven streets and also an entire flock of demonic magpies away.
Don't talk to them. I learned that the hard way.
[00:05:19] Speaker D: Was.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Not great for me in that moment. But we got back to the hotel eventually.
Still don't know how, but we did. And the next night, we woke up and, oh, well, Jack fed on the lovely.
The lovely front desk clerk, much to my surprise.
But then the next night, we woke up, and we were greeted by the local camarilla representative, Nazira. She's a tremere. They are a tremere.
Apologies.
And we were told, don't feed on the people working around here. Don't feed on the staff. And just yeah, big oops.
And then Jack ended up talking to the front desk clerk's brother, who came in while we were talking to Nazira. And through all of this, we ended up at the library.
And then people did some digging around and found out about some.
Some weird, messed up shit.
The blood orgy being the big. The big piece of it all.
Yeah, it's, uh, basically found out that will, the people of Willerton, uh, would. Would sacrifice, have this blood orgy and presumably give blood to the soil, which is apparently, according to Roxanne, really common, uh, in. In pagan cultures. But, um, yeah, calling it the blood orgy kind of makes it sound a lot worse. And the missing. We found out that the missing chunk of time was related to, um. It began with this letter, the scathing editorial written that was speaking out against the blood orgy.
So I think that's it.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Sounds pretty close to me. Is there anything that Haley missed that someone else wants to drop?
[00:07:33] Speaker F: There were the.
They're, like, harvest. Their spring and their harvest were, like, slightly different and probably require sacrifices.
[00:07:45] Speaker E: Only other thing was that more people were going missing off season. Or, like, it was recorded four people were missing, but apparently more people go missing that have not been reported at all than what people are talking about. That's about it. Found that out from the sweet librarian.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: Lady, which makes it even worse, because the numbers that they report are already really bad.
[00:08:11] Speaker C: Found that size. Yeah.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: Well, an excellent recap done by all at this point. Let me tell you the rest of the story.
Well, you've done quite a good amount of research here. Books and papers strewn about the library, conversations had with Hannah, who, yes, remains adorable, excited even to. To talk to out of towners. But the library does close, and I don't think that any of you want to attract the suspicion of saying, like, hey, do you mind if we close this place down, keep it open?
It is, after all, a library in Willerton and not a bar in boys town.
[00:09:21] Speaker C: You know, they're already gonna give us a side eye for being out of towners, so. Uh.
[00:09:27] Speaker D: But will they?
Considering.
[00:09:32] Speaker E: Considering?
[00:09:34] Speaker D: I mean, if the church is in, like, the little local church, is it on, you know, a secret venue?
[00:09:41] Speaker F: I mean, do we think there's anything else to find here?
[00:09:45] Speaker C: Not necessarily. We've also got to talk to our new buddy, compare notes. They might be able to give us more. At least help us put it together.
[00:09:56] Speaker D: Yeah, weird question.
The person who wrote the scathing article in the 18 hundreds is the last name.
Like, is there a way to see if they have ancestors living in town probably isn't going to do us any good.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: You went to the county. Like birth records are going to be kept here. You want to do that work, you're talking about going half an hour in the other direction and then persuading a county official that for no reason at all, you need access to records that are, like, private health information. And then spending all that time in.
[00:10:30] Speaker F: The middle of the night.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:10:32] Speaker D: Okay, fine.
[00:10:36] Speaker C: No.
[00:10:38] Speaker D: All right. I think in that case, we've rung everything we can to the library.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: Well, then, where to?
[00:10:47] Speaker F: So, do we want to knock anything off of our checklists before we meet back with Nazira?
[00:10:54] Speaker D: There's a graveyard. That was a point of interest. And there is the saloon. Saloon. Whether or not that's necessary. Did we agree on when we were going to meet Nazira?
[00:11:05] Speaker A: Nazira did say it would be later in the evening, closer to dawn, so.
[00:11:09] Speaker D: We have a little bit of time.
[00:11:13] Speaker E: Didn't they say something about not going to the saloon for some reason looking bad and appearances and reputation and all that jazz?
[00:11:21] Speaker B: Well, because it's where the anarchs hang out.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: Yeah, that's more a nazira thing than necessarily a you thing. Oh, I wouldn't dream of being seen with them because I'm a good camarilla person who would like to be back in the graces of the court of Chicago. As you see, they are a poofy aristocrat. For the purpose of this explanation.
[00:11:44] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:11:45] Speaker D: Excellent. Perfect. Flawless interpretation.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: Flawless.
Not all of us have theater degrees, Clara.
Don't.
[00:11:56] Speaker D: However, that means that it's not verboten for us, correct?
[00:12:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:03] Speaker E: If there's information we can get from it, forget about the poofiness.
[00:12:08] Speaker D: Again, it would be nice to figure out why everyone here is super cool with us. At least our social club.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Based on the location of the library, if you wanted to go in as straight a line as possible. The motorcycle is on the way to. Sorry. The graveyard is on the way to the saloon from where you are now.
Cool.
[00:12:32] Speaker D: We can make a quick stop.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
Piling back in. Someone gives Jack the iPad. Someone gives Roxanne her book back, and then we are off. Presumably Katya. Still driving.
[00:12:50] Speaker F: Yeah, I think I'm the only one with dots and drive, so.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: Well, that's excellent. Would you mind putting them to use for me right now? A dexterity and drive test. Cool.
[00:12:58] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: Why?
I'll tell you just as soon as I figured out how badly.
[00:13:04] Speaker C: Isn't it.
[00:13:08] Speaker F: Two successes?
[00:13:10] Speaker A: Yeah. So you're driving along. And to be clear, this is the main drag in a small town, you're not gonna be going more than 35 miles an hour, right?
[00:13:17] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: At least I hope not, because that's unsafe, and I think better of you than that. Got you.
So you're driving along and you come up to a stop sign.
Wait, look both ways go, and so on. And I think it's just the rotenness of it, the town being what it is, that you just kind of drift off a little bit and then it's a blink and you miss it. Moment where you are going down this main road, it's normal craftsman houses on the right, normal craftsman houses on the left. Come to the next stop sign. You look down to, like, where the odometer is, the fuel gauge, just because, like, eyes off the road or whatever. And when you look up, the car is still moving. Did you, like, forget to take your foot off the gas? Did you not push the brake pedal hard enough? And you're doing 35 directly on a dirt road with a scarecrow smack dab in the center.
With two successes in drive, I'm going to let you decide whether you send the car off the road or whether you smash into the scarecrow.
[00:14:28] Speaker F: Scarecrow just ahead of us, just like.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: You know, doing this.
[00:14:34] Speaker F: Yeah, I think, like, tactical driving training is just like, it's a scarecrow. Fuck it. If we take this car off the road, we could damage it, and it would be. We would be unable to, like, get back.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: No, that's probably the same choice that I would make. Well, the rest of you, those of you looking forward, would have experienced the same thing. It's not like the universe just changes immediately. Like a. Like a bugs bunny cartoon in the background. There's just that moment where you look away, and when you look back, it's changed.
And if you're still looking down after the changes happen, for example, Roxanne, if your face is still in your book, what will draw your attention is the crunch of the bottom pole of the snare, of the. Of the scarecrow snapping, rolling up the window, the straw flying everywhere, a nice meaty chunk, like the pumpkin part of the head. You get that, like, pumpkins are dense, right? I mean, the insides are hollow, but that pumpkin shell. Oh, man. Rolling up the windshield. Pumpkin guts, straw, and wood flakes everywhere.
[00:15:44] Speaker F: What happens when we hit it?
Like, what after?
[00:15:48] Speaker A: Like, is it something?
[00:15:49] Speaker F: Are we still still on the dirt road?
[00:15:51] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
[00:15:53] Speaker E: What? Are you okay? Cat?
[00:15:57] Speaker A: How the.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: Here?
[00:16:01] Speaker F: I don't know.
[00:16:04] Speaker C: Just.
[00:16:08] Speaker F: Do I. I think we're dealing with weird roads again.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Do I happen to see any birds just hanging out?
Magpies, crows? Because that would be comical.
Things of that nature.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: No, no birds.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: Okay. The way you've said that makes me have to ask this follow up question. Any animals, period.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: No, you can't see any animals.
[00:16:34] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: Okay. Had to ask question in terms of.
[00:16:38] Speaker E: Like, how far away is this dirt road from where we would have been if we didn't have a sudden shift like this.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: I don't think any of you actually know where you are in relation to things.
[00:16:50] Speaker F: I'm just gonna keep driving because I don't want to stop just in case.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: Well, hold on to that thought for a second.
So the. Yeah, to more fully painted. When I said dirt road, I leapt to it immediately because I had a picture of Nebraska in my head. But it. If you leave a small town and you're not going the highway, but you drive down towards, like, the Johnson home, and it's just dirt road with, like, six foot tall corn on each side.
That's what you see. And as far as you can tell, this. Oh, like an ocean of corn, it stretches out forever. This is the amber waves of grain part of the song.
You're in the middle of it, and the road goes directly straight ahead as far as you can see. And if you turn around, it goes directly straight as far as you can see there.
[00:17:32] Speaker D: This is a dumb question. Is there, like, a moon roof in this suv?
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Of course.
[00:17:38] Speaker D: I'd like to poke my head up the top while, uh, if. If Katya doesn't deign to stop.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Well, returning. I'll keep that for a second. Going back to Katya. Weird. Car's not started, so it's just stopped. Yeah.
[00:17:56] Speaker C: Fucking kidding me.
[00:17:59] Speaker F: Just do the thing a few times. Try to turn it back on.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: You don't even get, like a. No, like, just turn and.
[00:18:08] Speaker F: Nothing.
[00:18:09] Speaker A: Nothing.
[00:18:10] Speaker B: My fault.
[00:18:11] Speaker C: I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I didn't.
[00:18:13] Speaker F: You're nowhere near it. I didn't think you would. I think.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: Fuck.
That said, though, Jordan, you're poking your head out. What are you looking for?
[00:18:23] Speaker D: Anything. If theoretically, the suv is slightly taller than I would be standing next to it. So if I can stand up and poke my head off the top, I might be able to get a better vantage point. I'm gonna die.
[00:18:35] Speaker F: I just really hope we're not about to reenact hereditary.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: Well, you see the corn, of course, stretching out infinitely in either direction. Kalya would have had to have driven miles into the wilderness of. Of Cornland for you to be this far away from anything. You can't see the glow of a city on the horizon. You can't see the. There aren't even like the little peaks of farmhouses out. It is you.
Corn. Corn road. Road. And I don't know what makes it better or worse. Literally thousands of scarecrows.
[00:19:11] Speaker D: Ha ha ha. Hailey, we aren't out in Kansas any worse.
[00:19:16] Speaker C: So much worse.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: When you poke up and you can see above that corn, everyone else is sitting down. So there, if they look up, the corn is like, you know, seven or 8ft tall. You perched above like, I don't know what an appropriate number of scarecrows is for a field. They are well in excess of that many scarecrows.
[00:19:35] Speaker E: Can we look? Can anyone look into. You look like you wanted to say something, Roxanne.
[00:19:40] Speaker D: Cause he looked Roxanne that I freak out.
[00:19:43] Speaker C: No, I. I'm just the appropriate number of one to two at best to my field of scarecrows.
[00:19:50] Speaker E: Is there any search can I like, do anything to look into something about the scarecrows besides there being like a ridiculous number of them?
[00:20:00] Speaker A: Yeah. So, Jordan, I'm guessing you go like fucking scarecrows. And everyone who is not in the mood for this shit is also now piling up and looking around, seeing all the scarecrows. Um, yeah, Jack, uh, you would.
So we'll say that Jordan is scanning the whole place. You stand up and you kind of get the first look at it. Or maybe you're following the. The lights of the car. Um, all of these scarecrows are of eerily similar construction. Can't tell from this far away. But that pit in your stomach says this is the same scarecrow over and over and over again except for one.
The other scarecrows are, we'll say, 8ft tall. Just enough to poke ahead of this corn. Corn gets quite tall even then. This is a little taller than most corn. This is, this has got to be some like con agrogenically modified shit, right? This is like bamboo corn. Just like, whoosh. And even then the scarecrows poke above it. But Jack will say that you are, you are sort of the back 180 of the car. U turn behind you on the road. You. There's no way you didn't drive through it. How did you not hit? This one is a ten foot tall scarecrow with a question mark. Well, it's, it's got all the normal scarecrow features. But these are this like pumpkin. There's like a lump of like a bag and thinking of like a grain sack or the kind of bag that concrete comes in, but. But much larger. Like, weird, misshapen. It's like, it's soggy.
Like it has a weight to it. And then instead of, like, neat arms, there's just branches stuck out of it. Like a Charlie Brown snowman kind of thing.
And then the legs, of course, are the same way. And, um, on the head, there's. There's not, like, a pumpkin. There is another sack, uh, smaller. Um, one of those, like, those black burlap bags. Uh, this says a lot about what I've done for a living. But it's the kind that, like, zero dark, dirty. You put over someone's head when you kidnap them with slits in the eyes that are.
I don't know if they're red or if it's the taillights or it would be the taillights, but then the taillights don't work. Cause the car is off. So your brain makes that trip to somewhere dark together.
[00:22:39] Speaker E: All right. I don't know who's directly next to me in the back of the car.
[00:22:41] Speaker F: I think I still am your shotgun. Cause you're too tall. We decided that.
[00:22:46] Speaker E: So, like, I'm looking over the shoulder, through the back, noticing this kind of situation.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:22:52] Speaker E: And I'm assuming you could see my face change to, like, what's that? And then, like, oh, this isn't great. Like, slowly. And then I'm just gonna point for everyone to, like, behind something.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: Oh, fuck.
[00:23:07] Speaker C: I hate it. I hate it. Can we go? Can we go? I don't even care anymore. Can we go? I hate here.
[00:23:14] Speaker F: Cars not starting.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: Want to go on foot, Roxanne? Be my guest.
How.
[00:23:19] Speaker D: How far behind us is this scarecrow thing?
[00:23:23] Speaker A: I want to say it was probably 20ft when Jack looked at it was.
[00:23:26] Speaker D: Oh, come on.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: How far is it now?
[00:23:30] Speaker D: Like, Jordan turns, like, I'll turn around still, like, with my head out of the moonroof so I can, like, look behind us now.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: I know. I hate this.
[00:23:39] Speaker D: Let me get here.
It's fine. I'm fine. I'll get better.
How much closer is it?
[00:23:47] Speaker A: I just. I just said it to fuck with you. It's still 20ft away.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: Hate fucking hate you.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: I would apologize, but I'm not sorry.
[00:23:56] Speaker B: I'm done. I'm done. I quit walking into the sea.
[00:24:01] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: Yep.
Fucking Laura and Clara. You guys want to hold hands as we do? Because I'm right there with you walking.
[00:24:09] Speaker C: Into the sea together.
[00:24:10] Speaker D: Okay, so I have a dumb idea that I'm not gonna do. But I did think about it. I'm just gonna leave it at that.
How's the car looking?
[00:24:18] Speaker B: I also had that dumb idea.
[00:24:20] Speaker C: Right.
[00:24:21] Speaker D: I have the same idea.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: You wanna share with the class?
[00:24:23] Speaker C: I have a slightly less dumb idea. Just real quick. Because I went ahead and gave Roxanne two dots and firearms storyteller. Would it be appropriate to say, like, maybe she's got a little, like, 22 snubdos that she keeps.
[00:24:37] Speaker F: Just ask me. I'll hand you my gun.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I think Kya is certainly armed. I would say a 22 snub nose doesn't strike me as the kind of thing that Roxanne would carry. It would be something a little flashier, fancier. Right.
You're not like a 1920s detective. I mean, it's your character, but I'm just thinking along.
[00:24:54] Speaker C: I mean, like, you know, there's the, there's the mother of pearl number that you leave at home. But, like, if you're going out into the middle of fucking nowhere and you're not sure what you're gonna encounter, um, considering you're in boo fu and you look the way I do, that's fair then.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Uh, yeah. Little, um, derringer piece.
[00:25:12] Speaker C: Derringer. It's. You know what? It's simple and it goes with every outfit.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: Easy to accessorize.
So, yeah, you're. You're armed.
[00:25:25] Speaker D: Gonna shoot the scarecrow?
[00:25:31] Speaker A: It's not. Not an option.
[00:25:34] Speaker D: I dislike that you're encouraging this.
[00:25:40] Speaker B: Nothing Eren does surprises me anymore, apparently.
[00:25:43] Speaker C: Nope.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: Roxanne, you're actually the one who would probably know the most about this. Will you make an intelligence and a cult role for me?
[00:25:56] Speaker C: That was a noise, but I hate it. I hate everything about this.
Piss off. I'm gonna willpower that.
[00:26:12] Speaker A: Well, before you spend your willpower, two is plenty. Because this is some goblin roads shenanigans. This is how the goblin roads do. And all those stories we talked about the very first thing in the very first part of the episode, they're serious. That sometimes you just have to walk 100ft into a field and pour some grain in a circle. Then your car turns back on. It's that kind of thing. So with two successes, you don't know. This does not ring any bells. You've not heard any stories about this. You don't understand any of the occult implications of this thing.
But is the goblin roads presenting some kind of puzzle or thing? There's a step that has to be taken here before the web of this place releases you.
[00:27:01] Speaker C: Shit.
[00:27:02] Speaker F: Should we put.
[00:27:07] Speaker D: Nicely?
[00:27:08] Speaker E: Please.
[00:27:13] Speaker C: So here's the thing. Here's the thing. Um, yeah, this is.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: This is.
[00:27:19] Speaker C: This is the guy. This is the fucking goblin roads. We're stuck, motherfucker.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: Oh, okay. We're not. I mean, we're not stuck.
[00:27:30] Speaker C: I could shoot it.
[00:27:31] Speaker B: I feel like that's not.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: I can shoot.
[00:27:35] Speaker F: Yeah, we can shoot it.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: I don't. That's not the goblin roads.
[00:27:41] Speaker D: Ask. Okay, I'm gonna ask nicely. I'm just gonna ask nicely. You know, try turning the door handle. Who knows what's gonna happen. Still standing out of the moonroof. Just.
[00:27:51] Speaker B: You're gonna. You're gonna ask the scarecrow?
[00:27:54] Speaker D: Why not?
[00:27:57] Speaker F: Look, I don't have any fucking better ideas.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: That's a lot of incredulity coming from someone who hasn't ever had a better suggestion.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: I.
I mean, it's a. It's a scarecrow.
[00:28:11] Speaker C: Is it, though?
[00:28:12] Speaker E: That appeared all of a sudden in the middle of the road and we should have driven?
[00:28:15] Speaker D: Far too meaty for me to be okay with it being just a scarecrow. I'm not gonna.
[00:28:18] Speaker B: Well, it's juicy.
[00:28:20] Speaker C: Why is it juicy, Haley?
[00:28:22] Speaker D: I wanna know why it's juicy.
[00:28:24] Speaker F: Why is that crow so thick?
[00:28:27] Speaker B: It's gooey.
[00:28:28] Speaker C: There is goo.
[00:28:31] Speaker D: Uh, hello, mister Goblin scarecrow situation.
We are so sorry about what?
We can't do this.
We are so sorry about what happened with the other scarecrow. Katya is a terrible driver. I know.
However, we would like offense to that. Your space, please.
[00:29:08] Speaker F: Okay, so, honestly, the shirt that Aries wearing does not help this at all.
[00:29:16] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:29:16] Speaker A: I did not get my scarecrow costume from Amazon in time.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: I apologize, unfortunately.
[00:29:20] Speaker C: Dammit.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: Well, seeing that asking the scarecrow nicely hasn't worked, and I'm not.
I don't really want to let Roxanne and Katya shoot it, because I have a feeling that would just anger whatever weird occult magic is happening.
I'm gonna hop out of the car, and I'm actually gonna walk towards the scarecrow.
[00:29:48] Speaker E: I'm also gonna hop out if you're gonna hop out. Cause. No, you're not going in a little.
[00:29:53] Speaker F: At the very least, I am. I will lean out the door and give you. If things go bad, I am ready to shoot.
[00:29:59] Speaker C: There's gonna be cover fire, just in.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Case my emotional support. Banu hakeem.
[00:30:05] Speaker D: My only other idea was poke it with my magic hands. But, like.
[00:30:13] Speaker A: Whether or not you roll. Well, I remember what happened when Hailey Drake tried to.
[00:30:18] Speaker D: That's also.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:20] Speaker D: I'm not going to commune with corpse.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: You're making a lot of presumptions about this scarecrow. For people who have not yet discovered that there's a heart in it. But that's just me.
[00:30:33] Speaker C: Again. You said it was gooey, sir.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: It is gooey. And Hailey will learn more about that as Hayley approaches, because, I mean, it's weird that Jordan didn't get a whiff of it, but we've already established this place isn't playing by all the normal rules. And as you get maybe a foot or two away from the car, and it is dark as shit, like, you have a little bit of moonlight, but it is otherwise dark. So you see the little, like, mound at the base of the scarecrow. Now, for the first time, I'm not 100% based on Hailey's backstory, that you would be able to recognize what, like, a freshly overturned grave looks like, but by way of metaphor, it looks like a freshly overturned grave.
And then you take one more step, and the smell hits you.
It reeks of just decay, of spoiled, of, like, of left in a bathtub. And they don't find the body for several weeks.
Offensive, syrupy, sticky, dead.
[00:31:48] Speaker B: That. Oh, God. As all my survival background just. Oh, I don't like that at all. That's looking at the mound that I may or may not recognize as a freshly overturned grave. Is there. I mean, I know it's dark as shit.
I can pull out my phone and turn on the flashlight to get a little bit of light, if that works. Unless it does not work, in which case, sure. Of course it doesn't. Why would it?
So, yeah, as I walk up towards this mound, is there anything poking out of it? Is there anything moving underneath it or in front of me in the scarecrow pieces?
[00:32:45] Speaker A: Well, rank those questions in order of how anxiously you'd like to know the answer.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: Um.
Oh, God.
Um, okay. I would like to know, I think, if something is moving at my feet first.
[00:33:05] Speaker A: No, nothing's moving.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: Okay. Is there anything poking out of the ground that I can see?
[00:33:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a tail.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: A tail?
[00:33:23] Speaker A: What, an animal's tail? Yeah. How many dots in survival do you have?
[00:33:29] Speaker B: Four.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: You could take half and get it. It's a foxtail.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: Not the flower, but the tail of a fox.
[00:33:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, obviously.
[00:33:40] Speaker A: Oh, fox glove. Sorry.
[00:33:41] Speaker B: Fox glove. Yeah, yeah. It's another piece of gear.
Is it move? It's not moving.
Okay. Okay. So freshly.
What's the decay situation on the foxtail?
[00:34:02] Speaker A: It's not. It's not fresh. If this were a grocery store, it would be on sale.
[00:34:07] Speaker B: Okay. All right. Sure, sure.
So. But not moving. No, just okay, just. Hey, you know, I gotta ask now, as I recognize this and I look.
[00:34:22] Speaker D: Up.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: What is the movement situation of the scarecrow?
[00:34:30] Speaker A: Totally still.
Well, okay, the scarecrow is still.
[00:34:36] Speaker B: Yes, the bag I'm talking about.
[00:34:39] Speaker A: Yeah, there's nothing in the bag moving, but, like, it is, it is trippy.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. Um, looking up to the face, has the face moved at all? Is it still just looking straight ahead?
[00:35:02] Speaker A: Did it move?
I don't know. Would you be able to tell?
Is it just the goblin modes playing tricks on you?
[00:35:13] Speaker B: Well, yes. I mean, that's what they're doing right now. They're playing tricks on me.
[00:35:17] Speaker A: Wouldn't really know, would you? Maybe.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: I guess not.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: Is it looking at you or is the head just pointing in that direction? I mean, scarecrow's inanimate, right? It can't do anything. What's your brain telling you? Hmm.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: Um, okay, so Hayley's not the smartest, so solving puzzles, not super. Her strong suit. Um, based on. Based on what I've seen, like, with this, the fox thing, is there. Is there any piece of information that I get from knowing that it's a fox that's been buried? Is there some piece of lore or something that, like, maybe I can find. I can. I can piece it together?
[00:36:10] Speaker A: I hate to say this, if you want to know, you're probably gonna have to dig it up.
[00:36:18] Speaker B: Okay.
I'll dig it up then.
[00:36:23] Speaker C: Nails.
Yeah.
[00:36:28] Speaker F: What are we doing?
[00:36:29] Speaker E: What's happening?
[00:36:30] Speaker B: Digging.
Why?
[00:36:32] Speaker A: Digging?
[00:36:34] Speaker B: Because there's something here.
[00:36:37] Speaker D: I'm gonna hop out of the car.
[00:36:38] Speaker E: I'm assuming that I'm, like, a few feet behind you. I don't see what you're seeing yet. And I come up behind you, and I see this foxtail as well as the dripping and.
[00:36:51] Speaker C: Yeah, Roxanne's like 10ft. I'm like, 10ft behind with, like, pistol in hand, just backing up. Roxanne making that really unhappy noise.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: Don't leave the car. It may disappear.
[00:37:06] Speaker F: No, I'm, like, sticking, like, right near the car.
[00:37:09] Speaker D: Oh, God.
[00:37:10] Speaker A: Writing that idea down.
[00:37:12] Speaker B: No, write that down.
I'm just saying, if nobody's in the car, then the car may not exist on the goblin roads anymore. So I don't stop digging, FYI. And I don't. Based on how shallow it is, I don't assume it takes me long to get a fox out of a grave.
[00:37:33] Speaker A: No, would not take you long to get a fox out of the grave. I don't think it takes that much longer to get a fox and a cat and a mouse. Out of the grave?
[00:37:47] Speaker B: Sure. Okay.
[00:37:48] Speaker A: Three animals have been sewn together. The fox has it so it's vertically the foxtail out of the ground, and then you dig, and then as it pulls up, then attached, so, like, the fox is vertical and the mouth is pointing down, and then there's a cat with the mouth sewn to the belly of the cat, and then you follow the cat over, and the cat's jaw has been sewn shut over a field mouse.
[00:38:16] Speaker C: Oh, in the absolute fuck.
[00:38:20] Speaker B: I mean, it's a cycle of predation.
Cat eats the fox, or, um, cat eats the mouse. Fox eats the cat.
That's cool. Very circle of life.
[00:38:38] Speaker E: Yeah, like a message or something. That's the point. Here. What?
[00:38:42] Speaker C: Right in front of this scarecrow storyteller. What kind of occult bullshit is this? Please roll for me.
I don't know what it means that I am afraid to ask, but here we go.
[00:38:55] Speaker D: While the occult shit is happening, is my premonition giving me anything, or are you gonna make me roll for that, too?
[00:39:02] Speaker A: When I activate premonition on purpose, you have to roll. I think you also have to rouse.
[00:39:07] Speaker D: So scared now, is there a way.
[00:39:10] Speaker E: To check if there's anything in the area that's of danger? Not necessarily the scarecrow like sense. If there's danger in the area, is that possible?
[00:39:18] Speaker A: I mean, you can. It's so incredibly still. So.
And I mean, like, incredibly still. This is not the amber waves of grain that parts. Not. This is the amber. All the grain just hanging out there. There's apparently no wind where you are, but it's quiet and you don't even. There's no. No rustle of anything, let alone, like, something sneaking up through the bushes to get you.
[00:39:40] Speaker E: Gotcha. Okay.
[00:39:46] Speaker C: Three successes, my guy.
[00:39:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Despite not having any occult background, Haley was correct. This is a totem that represents the cycle of predation.
The fox eats the cat, the cat eats the mouse, the mouse eats the grain.
Poses two questions. One, where is the grain? And then two, what eats the fox?
Because this is not a circle the way that this totem has been built.
[00:40:16] Speaker E: But a wolf, you know, fox.
[00:40:19] Speaker C: God, I hope not.
[00:40:22] Speaker D: I'm sorry.
[00:40:23] Speaker E: That's shady asking.
[00:40:24] Speaker A: Not Jack.
[00:40:25] Speaker D: It's very Jack, too.
[00:40:28] Speaker B: No, I know.
[00:40:28] Speaker C: I just had a thought of wolves, and because we're outdoors and it's rural.
[00:40:33] Speaker F: And yikes, there might be lupines in.
[00:40:35] Speaker A: The area going a little too far down that road. Normally, this would be the.
The mouse eats the grain, the cat eats the mouse, the fox eats the cat, the fox eventually dies. The fox nourishes the soil, which creates the grain. And you have a circle. But this is not a circle. It is currently open on both ends. No grain. And then presumably fox, this middle step is missing. So something is consuming the fox in this effigy that is not represented, and the mouse is not eating anything as is represented. So you have an incomplete, or at the very least, very strange totem.
[00:41:16] Speaker B: Oh, well, okay. Uh, rain, can I go grab an ear? Corn?
[00:41:25] Speaker A: You're gonna leave the road?
[00:41:29] Speaker B: You're telling me that all the corn that's lining this road is completely free of Cobb?
[00:41:35] Speaker A: No, that was not what I said. What I said was, are you sure you want to leave the road?
[00:41:40] Speaker B: I'm not leaving the road. I'm going to the side of the road where the corn is.
[00:41:46] Speaker A: Oh, no. This is the misunderstanding coming from Orange county in Iceland, where neither places have corn. The corn does not lead directly up to the road.
[00:41:53] Speaker F: It's probably, like, what, five, 6ft or so between the end of the road.
[00:41:57] Speaker B: Oh, well, based on how you were describing it, that was the visual that I had, is that we were literally driving down a, like walled corn on both sides.
[00:42:05] Speaker A: I am taking for granted that only I have and Laura have grown up in the middle of the country where that kind of thing exists.
[00:42:12] Speaker B: Seeing corn was a treat for me.
[00:42:15] Speaker A: Vee isn't kidding. When we came to my sister's wedding and saw corn for the first time, like, oh, shit, that's what it looks like before I eat it. Okay, neat.
[00:42:23] Speaker D: That's okay.
[00:42:23] Speaker C: True story.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:24] Speaker F: And if I see you about to step off the roads, I'd be like, that's probably not a great idea.
[00:42:30] Speaker D: Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I am hesitant to use spirits touch for this.
Go for it.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: I have already established that I have two sticks in my bag for Ernie made of nuts and seeds and things.
So I'm gonna run back to the car, and I'm gonna grab one. I'm gonna bring it back.
[00:42:56] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
[00:42:57] Speaker D: Yeah. Activate the creepy circle effigy situation.
[00:43:02] Speaker B: That might be what we have to do to get out.
[00:43:04] Speaker D: I'm just leave an offering.
[00:43:06] Speaker E: Let's provide corn. Not corn. Grain or something like that.
[00:43:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Because the. The mouse eats the grain, right? So if we complete this in a way where the mouse is eating grain, then. Ta da.
And I'm sorry. I know you went over it, but there was a lot of description, and I have forgotten because of who I am as a person.
What does the mouth of the mouse look like?
[00:43:34] Speaker A: The mouse isn't as far as you can see, there's nothing. No mouse is just existing. And then cat and then fox, and then.
[00:43:44] Speaker B: Great. Fantastic.
Then I'm just going to go up and I'm going to open its little mouth and I'm just going to, like, take off a piece of this little chew stick and I'm not going to shove it in the mouse's mouth.
But, yes, I would like to.
There's no way that I can say this. Yep, we already know what I would like to do, so that's what I'm doing.
[00:44:13] Speaker A: Yes.
Are you familiar with the sound that, like, an airlock makes?
[00:44:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I've seen movies when you pry.
[00:44:23] Speaker A: Open the jaw and it goes.
That's. That's normal, right?
[00:44:31] Speaker B: Um, for an airlock? Yeah. Uh, for a mouse, less. So it definitely doesn't make that sound when.
[00:44:41] Speaker C: Nope, nope, nope.
[00:44:42] Speaker A: But I have. Oh, that's wild to me. I don't know. I don't know what noises mice make when you open their mouths. Well, this one makes that noise. I'll just say that much.
[00:44:50] Speaker D: Great.
[00:44:51] Speaker B: I love that. Um, I is there just to add detail to it all? Is there, like, resistance in that way that, like you'd expect if you were opening a door that makes an airlock sound?
[00:45:08] Speaker A: This. I. It's not a question I expected. Sorry, my brain just literally blue screen. No, the. The mouse. The mouse jaw offers a biologically appropriate amount of resistance for.
[00:45:22] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. I just. I'm just trying to set the scene. I'm trying to help you.
[00:45:29] Speaker A: I blew my hole with. And then that's. That's what I got.
[00:45:32] Speaker B: Yep, yep. Great. Fantastic. Well, wonderful. Good to know that there's not any extra resistance, then. And I'm going to pretend like the sound is just the goblin roads speaking to us. And I'm going to finish. Finish this effigy by giving the mouse a grain filled chew stick.
[00:46:00] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not finished.
[00:46:03] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:46:05] Speaker A: You've completed one part of it. That much is true. Yeah, but the other end is still open. Is it?
[00:46:11] Speaker E: Something has to.
Whatever kills the fox or whatever leads the fox to die to.
[00:46:18] Speaker A: I think you might. You're leaning in a bit literal in terms of the circle of life, right? We have the land which provides food for the mouse, the mouse for the cat, and the cat for the fox, and then what eats the fox? And the answer to that question isn't like bears or barn owls. Right. It's a metaphor. It is speaking.
So the lowest totem, we have grain, and the cycle remains open on the end. What is the apex predator.
[00:46:46] Speaker D: Not eating a piece of fox. That's insane.
[00:46:54] Speaker B: Why is no one not the idea?
No.
[00:47:01] Speaker C: Well, storyteller, you also said something along the lines of, when the fox dies, it nourishes the earth. So, with my role, would it be enough to know that we might need to bury the bastard again?
[00:47:16] Speaker A: Um.
You're going in the wrong direction. Nourish the earth? That part is correct.
[00:47:21] Speaker D: Oh, no.
[00:47:23] Speaker C: Oh, no.
[00:47:27] Speaker A: Three of you have made it there. I can see that three of you have figured it out.
[00:47:30] Speaker E: I'm sorry I'm not there with you, Jack.
[00:47:33] Speaker D: We love you.
Who's got a knife?
[00:47:36] Speaker A: I don't want. I do.
[00:47:40] Speaker D: Why do you have knives, first of all, why do you all have knives?
[00:47:43] Speaker B: Why wouldn't I have a knife? I'm literally a survivalist.
[00:47:46] Speaker C: Survivalist and the fucking former soldier, like, why are you surprised anymore?
[00:47:50] Speaker B: You know?
[00:47:50] Speaker D: That's valid.
[00:47:51] Speaker A: Why don't you have a knife?
[00:47:54] Speaker D: I have tweezers.
[00:47:56] Speaker F: I mean, I have knives for everyone later, if we get back to my kit. So, you know, if we all need knives, I can supply them.
[00:48:04] Speaker D: My point is, unless Roxanne, who knows more about this than I think the rest of us do, a little drop of blood, maybe.
I hate this.
[00:48:16] Speaker C: That makes sense, storyteller.
[00:48:20] Speaker D: But, yeah, agreeing with us.
[00:48:23] Speaker B: I had that thought about a minute and a half ago, and I was just like, no, that's easy. That's too easy.
[00:48:31] Speaker D: And then give me the knife.
[00:48:33] Speaker F: Pull the knife out of my boot. Here you go.
[00:48:38] Speaker A: So then takes the blade and draws it across her own palm.
Vita doesn't flow the way that blood does. It requires an actual force of will for you to make the wound bleed, and it doesn't come out in the rivulets that human blood would. It's a little thicker, a little more syrupy dense. A bit like motor oil in the terms of the consistency, so it doesn't drip freely into the soil. It's one thick glob drop that lands on this grave, and that's when you start to hear the heart beating.
[00:49:18] Speaker D: God damn it.
Get back in the car.
[00:49:26] Speaker A: Inside the scarecrow?
No.
[00:49:29] Speaker B: Is there movement now?
[00:49:32] Speaker A: No. I mean, there's. There's the. Presumably there's the movement of the heart beating, but it's not like the scarecrow's like.
[00:49:38] Speaker B: Well, no, no, I know. I'm just. I'm wondering if there's, like the. If the. The bloody belly bag.
[00:49:45] Speaker A: Not. Not doing it.
Not falling for that tonight.
Haley, you were saying?
[00:49:53] Speaker B: No, I was just wondering if, like, the bloody belly bag was.
[00:49:59] Speaker A: I mean, it's broiling at all. Okay. Because you look at it and you just get that, like.
[00:50:07] Speaker B: Okay, now that.
[00:50:08] Speaker D: The goblin wrote something apiece, maybe we can go.
[00:50:10] Speaker B: Yes, please do that. Can I try and turn on my flashlight again just to. Does it work?
[00:50:19] Speaker A: Well, so let's just. These events are all kind of coming together. So you have the blood hits the ground, the heart starts to beat, and you all look at each other and you're like, thank fuck we can go now. And then you turn together to face the car, or at least where the car was, and it's not there. And you freak out and you turn back around. You're like, what the shit? And the scarecrow's not there, but the car is.
[00:50:51] Speaker F: I walk towards the car.
[00:50:53] Speaker C: Yeah, no.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: No.
[00:50:57] Speaker F: It's still surrounded by corn.
[00:50:59] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Corn for miles.
[00:51:01] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:51:02] Speaker C: I hate it. I hate it. Fucking hate it here. I fucking hate it here.
[00:51:06] Speaker F: Yeah, let's fucking.
[00:51:08] Speaker B: Like.
[00:51:08] Speaker A: I don't now.
[00:51:11] Speaker F: I miss Chicago so much.
[00:51:13] Speaker A: Now, to your question. Hailey, your phone works great.
[00:51:16] Speaker B: Wonderful. Love that for me.
[00:51:19] Speaker A: You have a text message. It's from Rod. Anyway, Katya. Car starts. Everything works fine.
[00:51:27] Speaker F: Let's get in.
[00:51:27] Speaker A: Kids start driving. And then just as far as the headlights reach, you move like, 4ft forward. And now you can see the end of the cornfield, and it dumps out onto one of the side streets. And you continue forward, and you'll end up on that main north south road, Hyatt street in Willerton, Illinois.
[00:51:52] Speaker D: I hate this place.
[00:51:53] Speaker E: I hate it here.
[00:51:54] Speaker B: Oh, but you loved it so much. Hayley wanted to come here so good, wasn't it? You wanted to go in Tiki ash in your mouth.
[00:52:06] Speaker D: The pie was great. I hate this place.
[00:52:09] Speaker C: I just like. I know, I know.
Blah, blah, blah. At the prince's pleasure. I don't care who I have to kill. If I can never, ever leave Chicago again, it'll be too soon.
I swear to fucking God.
[00:52:27] Speaker F: Maybe I can give somebody a tip and, yes, I can just deal with this place.
[00:52:32] Speaker A: Let them burn it down.
[00:52:34] Speaker F: At this point, we're just like, nope.
These vampires get what they deserve.
[00:52:41] Speaker D: Do we have enough time to get to the saloon and pretend this never happened?
[00:52:45] Speaker A: Oh. Oh, yeah. No time has passed at all.
[00:52:47] Speaker D: Oh, fuck. You okay?
[00:52:53] Speaker F: It's times like this I wish I could still get drunk.
[00:52:56] Speaker A: Same time didn't pass, and I took that personally.
[00:53:00] Speaker C: Yes, technically. I mean, technically, we could. It'd probably just be frowned upon in a town like this.
[00:53:07] Speaker F: I am really, like, running out of fucks to give about things like that.
[00:53:14] Speaker C: Let's just go to the goddamn saloon.
[00:53:16] Speaker D: Go to the goddamn saloon.
[00:53:17] Speaker E: Saloon or the graveyard first or where we not.
[00:53:19] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. We didn't even make our way to the graveyard.
[00:53:21] Speaker D: We didn't make it to the graveyard. Are you fucking kidding me?
[00:53:23] Speaker C: Graveyard's on the way to the saloon, right?
[00:53:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:26] Speaker F: Well, we're gonna head towards the saloon. We'll make a quick stop off at the graveyard.
[00:53:30] Speaker B: Look, if we don't go to the graveyard, I have a feeling that I'm never going to hear the end of how we didn't go to the graveyard from Jordan every single time we go antiquing from here until the day that one of us meets the sun. So I think we should just go to the graveyard and just get it over with.
[00:53:49] Speaker C: Long Drew.
[00:53:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:52] Speaker F: Yeah.
[00:53:52] Speaker D: Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. There's a reason we found a big gap in a period of time, and maybe one of the graves is from that period, and maybe a bunch of them are. We'll know how many people have to die. Right?
[00:54:04] Speaker C: Yeah, you can do your.
[00:54:06] Speaker E: Hopefully it's.
[00:54:07] Speaker B: You think they bury the blood orgy people?
[00:54:10] Speaker D: I don't know what people do with blood orgy sacrifices.
[00:54:12] Speaker B: I don't either, but that just feels like a lot of consideration for people that training their bodies of.
[00:54:17] Speaker F: I don't.
[00:54:18] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:54:18] Speaker A: I. Oh, no. You know, they bury them. They bury them in the fields. That's how you're making the fertilizer, right? Roxanne covered that for you?
[00:54:26] Speaker D: That's true. I get. I don't know. Nice graves. Who knows? Let's go.
[00:54:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:54:32] Speaker C: On the way.
[00:54:33] Speaker F: Maybe whoever led the blood orgy is buried there and we can. You can just touch them.
[00:54:38] Speaker A: Oop.
[00:54:39] Speaker B: Don't touch them.
[00:54:41] Speaker A: Well, then you will be willing to know that you don't end up in any creepy cornfields or magpie infested boulevards this time around. And given the size of Willerton, it's literally three minutes from where you are now to the base of the graveyard. It is, as promised, enormous, taking up acre after acre after acre after acre of the southwestern corner of the. Of the city of the town.
It is not, I think you might be calling to mind in your head, the kind of graveyards you find in cities where there's, like, a nice fence and there's some old trees and stuff around and it's quite manicured. And instead, I want you to get that, like, civil war graveyard feeling where mismatched headstones in various states of repair or disrepair there is no fence that surrounds the perimeter. It's just, there's the road and then the grass, and then the graveyard starts, and then there are trees around, but it's not manicured, it's not landscaped. It's just they didn't chop that tree down because we buried bodies here and so on. If you'll recall, this graveyard is the one that goes back to before Illinois was a state, when it was a territory. So it is ancient, so authentic in general. It is row after row after row and cluster after cluster and cluster after graves. And then in the middle, there appears to be some kind of chapel or outbuilding or ossuary.
That's what you can see from the car.
[00:56:13] Speaker D: Kind of wish I had brought a sketchbook so I can do little grave rubbings. But, I mean.
[00:56:19] Speaker E: You are devoted to your craft. That's all I have to say, Jordan.
[00:56:24] Speaker D: Okay, so if there's something to be found here, I would assume that it's going to be around, know, like a religious or a civil head. Considering this seems to be a townwide conspiracy. We can start at the center.
It shouldn't take very long.
[00:56:45] Speaker C: Is there, like, graveyard, this big graveyard this old? Is there like a marked spot where we can, like, as we walk through, are we gonna see, like, um, that demarcation? As the dates of death get older.
[00:57:02] Speaker A: And older and older? You can tell based in part, what is the headstone made of? How weathered is it? Um, if you go to, like, Arlington, they will replace old headstones with new stones. Very carefully managed. Cemeteries are like that. This one is, you get a piece of stone, and then, like, if your family still exists in 200 years, they can fix it. So you see some that are newer towards the bottom, and then going up the hill, they get progressively older, and more of them are cracked and more of them are missing, and more of them are molded over mossy.
But the attention to detail that you're paying, I think Jordan would actually notice it before anybody else that these headstones normally come with some kind of religious marking, right?
Not on every headstone, but you normally see crosses, certain. Not like the Star of David or a crescent moon in Willerton, Illinois, but protestant cross versus a catholic cross and so on. And you don't see any of those symbols. And the further you get up the hill, you start seeing different symbols. They are not what you personally recognize. I mean, it's kind of like Matt, can you imagine? Just like a wireframe of a hairbrush.
So you have the bottom that's like this, and then you have, like, the part on top that's like this.
[00:58:31] Speaker D: Hexagram.
[00:58:32] Speaker A: Not a hexagram. We're going back to that. Yeah, that, like a prism shape, essentially on a. On a small post on some of them and then others that are of similar design. That wireframe bit, if it's called attention to Roxanne, you've seen that. You've seen that all over this, literally all over this city. But the other symbols don't make so much sense that I would need an intelligence and a cult rule for.
You're muted, but I know you're just swearing and having to roll, so it's fine. It's a very comedic.
Like, Roxanne, you need to roll, and you're.
Oh, I got two. Super.
[00:59:24] Speaker C: Yeah. Um, I also. I also just do kind of want to know, um, because I'm fucking curious.
Hey, well, that's a messy critical with no.
[00:59:42] Speaker A: Oh, boy.
[00:59:45] Speaker D: I don't like that.
[00:59:50] Speaker A: Well, when your Lasombra, your connection to the universe, is primarily through your mastery of oblivion. Right? And if there's one thing Lasombra hate, it's not knowing the answer. If there's one thing we know Lasombra aren't afraid of, it's of going to any length necessary to find an answer to that question.
So it's probably subconscious that you feel that part of you kind of get tugged backwards into the scene.
And I suppose if I were shooting this movie, the camera would pan across everybody else, and you'd see Roxanne walking through the rows of tombstones, and then the shadow of Roxanne, like, in a kind of stilted, babadook way, following behind her as the half of you that exists in this world, like, molecule by molecule, continues walking. And the half of you that is tied forever to the umbra slides just a little behind, and it stretches out the distance, distance, distance coming apart.
And the revelation hits, like letting go of a rubber band when those two parts of you come slamming back together.
So you feel this wave of cold and dark and death and empty as your brain fills up with thoughts that are in your voice but not your thoughts, and it's just whispering to you over and over and over again. Harvest, sacrifice, rebirth. Harvest, sacrifice, rebirth.
And you, you know, intuitively, you know, in your bones, you know, in your heart of hearts, you have never known anything to be this true and this correct, even though you don't know why.
And while you reconcile with that, as you feel that cold, in fact, I think if you. If you were happening to stumble forward and touching a tombstone when you pull your hand back, there's that little rhyme on it, because you've touched that cold place, and I'll have you mark a stain on your character sheet for me.
[01:02:15] Speaker E: Okay, Roxanne.
[01:02:21] Speaker C: Mmm.
[01:02:23] Speaker B: God.
[01:02:26] Speaker C: Oh, I hate it here.
[01:02:29] Speaker E: Established. But it seems like something else happens specifically that makes you hate it more.
[01:02:34] Speaker C: It's. It's harvest and sacrifice and rebirth and harvest and sacrifice and rebirth and harvest and sacrifice and rebirth.
[01:02:50] Speaker A: When you are a Christian, they bury you with a cross in Willerton. When you're a sacrifice, they bury you with the appropriate sigil.
[01:03:03] Speaker C: Oh, God.
[01:03:07] Speaker A: It's a big damn graveyard.
[01:03:13] Speaker B: With a lot of these sigils.
[01:03:14] Speaker A: I'm guessing not every grave. Some of them are just like, oh, typhus sucks, man. That's the 18 hundreds for you, sure. But once you know, you can see the pattern.
[01:03:27] Speaker D: Is there a number of I'm looking for. I guess I've been, like, chattering away and, like, turn. Like, I wonder what that symbol is and Roxanne's having her moment.
Are then any of these from the same date?
Year? I'm looking for years.
[01:03:45] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, you'd find patterns, right?
[01:03:47] Speaker D: Yeah. I'm trying to get a sense of how many they need.
[01:03:52] Speaker A: The impression that you're going to come away with is the more the merrier. Like, two will do, but if you really mean it.
[01:04:02] Speaker D: Gross. Okay.
[01:04:04] Speaker F: Blood orgy.
[01:04:05] Speaker B: I, uh. Another. Another follow up question. Um, are the. The cause we are not here around a blood orgy time.
Um, so the thought that Everett would be taken as a sacrifice doesn't necessarily make sense. Unless we can. Unless, like, the dates on the tombstones aren't just around those dates. Like, if it's clear that they're sacrificing people all year round. Right.
[01:04:41] Speaker A: Well, consider for a moment, when you go to the grocery store, you don't eat all the food that day. Some of that you keep in the fridge.
[01:04:49] Speaker E: That's what I was starting to think.
[01:04:52] Speaker B: Wait, you don't eat all the food that you buy at the grocery store one day?
[01:04:56] Speaker A: I don't go grocery shopping. I eat out. So they bring it to me, and that's done. But I have heard tale of the legend of the grocery store where you can go and buy ingredients and then leave them in your refrigerator to make meals on your own hands, as opposed to a stranger. And that let. Sorry. And, yes, so it's. It's quite reasonable that they could take the body and then turn it into fertilizer for the festival.
They could have Everett staked somewhere or have already carved him up. Like, you don't need to immediately put it in the ground.
[01:05:30] Speaker D: A place like this where they already know how kindred react. I can't imagine he might, if it is them. And not just, like, anarch bullying, which I'm really hoping. It's just the. It's just anarchs. It's just the them. We're gonna find him sharing a beer at the saloon, which is gonna happen. Right, storyteller?
[01:05:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:05:50] Speaker D: They could just have him staked, save him for later. Mm hmm.
[01:05:59] Speaker C: Cause he won't fucking fight if he is in torpor.
Great.
[01:06:05] Speaker A: Great.
[01:06:07] Speaker D: Again, it's probably just he's at the saloon having a beer.
Right?
[01:06:13] Speaker C: So having someone who had a beer.
[01:06:16] Speaker D: Yeah, sure. Let's go. I'm.
I feel like we've exhausted this place.
[01:06:24] Speaker F: We got an answer.
[01:06:30] Speaker A: Do you exhausted the place.
[01:06:33] Speaker B: We. Cause all. All that we've done is seen the gravestones. There's.
Eh.
[01:06:40] Speaker D: I mean, I wanted to know a little more about the whole cult situation. Is it a cult? Who knows? It's all a cult.
[01:06:48] Speaker A: Seems like a cold.
[01:06:49] Speaker D: I mean, I'm gonna do a stupid thing, and it's fine. We're all fine with it, right?
[01:06:57] Speaker C: Do it. Fuck it.
[01:06:59] Speaker A: Well, before you go and touch a gravestone, I am referring to the chapel, the ossuary that sits in the center of the graveyard.
[01:07:06] Speaker D: Yeah. Oh, we haven't even made it there yet. Halfway.
[01:07:09] Speaker B: No, that's what I was talking about.
[01:07:11] Speaker D: All right, let's head to the chapel before I do something stupid. I'm just waiting to do it as.
[01:07:16] Speaker C: Like, reticent as I am, just in case. It'll help.
I'm gonna pop the oblivion sight.
[01:07:26] Speaker A: Yeah. It's weird how.
It's weird how intense the. The ley lines are here. They're not ley lines, but I'm using that. That imagery. You can see it coursing through the earth as always. And before. Before it felt venous, but now you're kind of getting, like, a tree root vibe or maybe both of them together.
You know how HR giger does, like, bio and mechanical?
So I want you to imagine, like, bio, but, arbor, what would happen if you twisted something human with something tree, root, crop.
[01:08:18] Speaker B: I think I heard about a tremere doing that once.
[01:08:24] Speaker A: Yeah, it's one of the things they had to stop doing if they wanted to be in the camarilla. No more ghoul plants. We told you.
[01:08:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:08:31] Speaker C: Where do the. Where do the roots go?
[01:08:35] Speaker A: So do you remember Jordan showed you the shape, right? Like the prism shape.
The base of that, the very, very bottom of it is probably ten minutes south of town.
The center of it is on the pie diner, and then you are in between the pie diner and where the. The anchor point would be.
[01:09:12] Speaker C: Gonna keep moving towards the thing.
[01:09:18] Speaker A: Well, the chapel itself is made of limestone. Illinois famous for that, but not from this region. It would have had to come up from. From the south somewhere. Jordan would know this, that. Remember vernacular prairie architecture. You see limestone quarries around here? Obviously not. Which means this temple was built at a time when it was important. Someone spent money on this. It's not that big. It's less of a temple and more, I think, of, like, the size of a garden shed in a neighborhood where someone is very proud of their lawn. It's got room for the riding lawnmower, then also the stuff. If you're the kind of person who can afford a swing set for your backyard, you can afford this side of size of shed. Right.
It is not well kept.
I don't want to say it's. It's not crumbling. It is still functional and standing, but it is mossy and dirty.
The door is heavy wood and has seen better days element wise, but it is still intact.
Opening the door, heading inside it is, again, just an incredibly small chapel. It's the kind of place where you would come with a couple family members to say a prayer at the gravesite, that kind of thing. If you want to go to a full service, there is a church for that, but this is more for people who are specifically here to mourn the dead.
So there's only, like one pew on the back of it. Vy, I know you can think of this because you've been to this kind of thing at the St. Roche cemetery, right?
So there's the two pews, and each one could sit two people side by side. And then ahead of that is where the altar would be.
And I say would be because there's. There's nothing christian about this. There's no cross, nothing anywhere remotely close to that.
There is human skull adorned with deer antlers, and it's sitting on a wooden table. If you, not a catholic master, is a much fancier table, but a more modest religious ceremony would have this kind of table. So the antlers are in the skull, and the skull is on the table.
And then there are these plain clay bowls, three or four of them in vaguely similar sizes, set out around the front of it, in which one contains silver coins.
They don't appear to be an american denomination, but just like minted silver, one contains seasonal harvest vegetables. So we are in the middle of summer. So you're looking like root vegetables. Early crop of. Not tomatoes, but carrots, potatoes, things like that.
The third has it some kind of, like, pigmenty, rust colored substance.
And the fourth is currently empty.
[01:12:36] Speaker F: Definitely a cult.
[01:12:37] Speaker E: Yeah, definitely a cult. That's what I was thinking.
[01:12:45] Speaker C: Would the combination of these things in this order, in this configuration, mean anything in particular from an occult standpoint? Storyteller.
[01:12:57] Speaker A: Everyone else has the right vibe. Like, you know, occult. When you see it, you don't understand, like, the ritual necessarily. Whatever the significance of these items is to these people has not been documented or a part of your studies. But there's some culty bullshit going on right here.
[01:13:13] Speaker C: Yeah, this is some cult shit. There's some cult shit.
[01:13:17] Speaker A: Cool.
[01:13:19] Speaker D: This is the kind of place where the earth is red as well.
[01:13:25] Speaker A: Not normally.
[01:13:27] Speaker D: Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.
[01:13:28] Speaker A: Certain times of year. Yeah.
[01:13:30] Speaker D: Oh, fuck off. Uh, okay. I don't need to know what's happening with this cult shit because we know it's cult shit. This town sucks.
We are still looking for the message.
I think we have enough justification that this town really fucking sucks. Sucks though, right?
[01:13:56] Speaker C: Yeah, 100%.
[01:14:00] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. No, this place is the worst, I think.
[01:14:04] Speaker A: Where do you want to go?
Saloon.
[01:14:07] Speaker F: To get a drink?
[01:14:09] Speaker B: I don't think we're going to get a drink. I think we're going to hopefully get answers, but the vibe is right.
[01:14:15] Speaker D: Okay. I have one weird thing that's just niggling at me, and we'll just deal with it later if it, like, it's just a thing I'm thinking about, and then it'll go, you know, maybe we'll get an answer later, which is like, they're smelting their own coins. Crazy.
[01:14:28] Speaker A: I mean, of all the things that would call Jordan's attention, I guess that part is, like, man, these people, numismatics, quilting.
[01:14:37] Speaker D: Okay, okay. Just think about the effort one has to do if they're gonna. Like. If a coin is part of it, like, Jordan. What?
[01:14:45] Speaker B: Take a coin?
[01:14:48] Speaker D: I.
I'm not that stupid.
[01:14:51] Speaker A: No, but do it.
[01:14:52] Speaker D: I'm stupid.
[01:14:55] Speaker A: Jordan's not that stupid. But Hayley is.
[01:15:00] Speaker B: Sure.
I'll pocket a coin. I'll pocket a coin when we're not. When nobody's looking.
[01:15:06] Speaker D: Oh, God. Of all the cursed things in my shop, and you still don't know any better.
[01:15:12] Speaker B: So, worst that could happen, we get transported into the middle of a cornfield with a scarecrow. Already happened, baby. We came out fine.
[01:15:18] Speaker A: Oh, don't worry about it.
[01:15:19] Speaker F: I got more than first magpies. I already did it.
[01:15:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:15:22] Speaker E: Magpies.
[01:15:23] Speaker B: That's right.
[01:15:24] Speaker A: The magpies.
About that. We're leaving chapel now, right?
[01:15:29] Speaker B: Yes, leaving the chapel.
[01:15:30] Speaker D: Hey.
[01:15:32] Speaker A: So, we established that there's the rows of headstones and then down the center, the slightly wider path, that footpath up and down, and you've parked at the bottom, which means you leave this chapel, and it's a congregation.
Every single tombstone, one magpie a little on the left, one magpie a little on the right.
Every single magpie totally still and staring at you.
[01:16:05] Speaker B: Staring at who?
[01:16:07] Speaker A: Collectively.
[01:16:08] Speaker B: Okay. Okay.
[01:16:10] Speaker A: They're very, very tiny eyes, and they're very far away. Hard to read intent from the magpie at this point.
[01:16:15] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:16:17] Speaker C: It's your best Haley.
[01:16:26] Speaker B: What?
[01:16:28] Speaker C: It's. It's. It's your best buddies.
[01:16:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not. I'm not gonna talk to him and see what they're doing here. Just in case you were concerned that I was going to make that mistake again.
[01:16:44] Speaker D: None of us know you took a coin, do we?
[01:16:46] Speaker A: Nope. No, it doesn't have to do with the coin. This is going to happen regardless.
[01:16:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:16:51] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:16:54] Speaker F: Let's just start cautiously walking back towards the car.
[01:17:01] Speaker B: Don't look at him in the eye. Just. Just walk.
[01:17:05] Speaker A: They stand completely still, except for the fact that they all turn and follow you at their gaze as you go.
So by the time that you are getting into the car, the same exact congregation has turned to fate. Well, their heads have. Anyway, we'll leave it at that, then. You turn the car on once everyone has loaded in and they explode up into the air, like all of them taking flight into the sky at once.
[01:17:39] Speaker B: Where do they go?
[01:17:41] Speaker A: Into the sky.
[01:17:42] Speaker F: Just away from here. That's all that matters to me.
[01:17:46] Speaker B: But not. But not my. I mean, so the direction is up. Not, like up and east or up and west, but just up.
[01:17:58] Speaker A: You ever seen a meteor shower?
[01:18:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:18:02] Speaker A: You know how there's that bright speck, and then as it comes to the atmosphere, it eventually winks out into nothingness?
[01:18:07] Speaker B: Mm hmm.
[01:18:09] Speaker A: They go into the sky.
[01:18:12] Speaker E: Oh.
[01:18:16] Speaker C: Can we go?
[01:18:17] Speaker B: Can we go?
[01:18:20] Speaker C: Can we go?
[01:18:21] Speaker F: I am definitely starting to drive.
As soon as we got in the car and everyone was in the car and everyone had their seatbelts on. Car is on. Reverse out of here.
[01:18:30] Speaker C: Fuck this noise. Yeah.
[01:18:33] Speaker A: I'll saloon, then. Next on our list of places. Hopefully we won't find any birds.
Why don't we let everybody have a chance for their heart rate to slow down, grab a drink. You can yell at me in the game, chat a little bit. We will come back in about ten minutes and then continue at the last chance saloon. Does that sound fair?
[01:18:52] Speaker F: Sounds fair.
[01:18:52] Speaker A: Sounds fair.
All right, well, I'm going to endure some abuse from my cast members. Those of you in the audience, grab up, use the restroom, have yourself a little drinky poo, or at the very least, stand up. And then just with your feet flat on the ground, just lift your toes up, get a little stretch on the back of your leg there. You'll feel better. You'll like it. In the meantime, we'll be back soon.
[01:19:15] Speaker B: Hi.
[01:19:17] Speaker A: Well, we survived the graveyard. We also survived our break. Hopefully you've all made it back to our hydrated, rested, and stretched. If not, you can do that little foot thing I was talking about while you're sitting down. Good for watching actual plays. And also, if you're on an airplane.
We are not on an airplane, though. We are in a very fancy suv, Katya, having made it an expedited exit from the the Willerton graveyard, where we found a chapel, some weird sigils, too many magpies, and a human skull with antlers on it. Everyone's dealing with that in stride.
Next stop on the Willerton tour, I believe, was the last chance saloon. We're committed to that plan.
[01:20:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:20:00] Speaker F: Yeah.
[01:20:02] Speaker A: Well, insofar as wiligen has outskirts, the last chance saloon sits on those outskirts. This is the closest you can get to the highway, the state highway that goes east west along town. Not the one you took here, but one that would take you from, you know, Indianapolis crossing through central Illinois over to Missouri, probably. It's a low slung, red painted building. The facade is wood planks oriented vertically across the top in these big, bold. That cowboy font, white letters. The last chance saloon.
The parking lot is filled with motorcycles, one or two cars, and then a lot next to it that has trucks. Most have trailers. Some cabs, though. You can see exactly the kind of bar this is.
Nazira warned you that this was an anarch hangout, but having arrived, you can kind of see this is the kind of place that anarchs would hang out.
And it looks to be, like, popping off in here. You can hear the jukebox roaring, Leonard Skinner coming out the door. Every time someone wanders in or wanders out, is that kind of establishment gonna.
[01:21:19] Speaker C: Lean over to Jack and just be like, listen, I'm gonna stay right next to you, and you're gonna stay right next to me. Picking up what I'm putting down?
[01:21:31] Speaker E: I think so.
[01:21:34] Speaker C: Have you seen anybody in this town that looks even remotely like us.
[01:21:38] Speaker E: No, no.
[01:21:41] Speaker C: Exactly.
[01:21:41] Speaker E: I got you. Don't worry.
[01:21:42] Speaker C: Exactly.
[01:21:44] Speaker A: Does anybody in the country have urban survival or streetwise sweater. Yeah, urban survival is a different game.
[01:21:53] Speaker F: One dot in streetwise.
[01:21:55] Speaker E: No.
[01:21:56] Speaker A: You could try an int and streetwise, just for chits and giggles.
[01:22:04] Speaker C: How I deal with dealing with tiny towns like.
[01:22:06] Speaker A: This in Illinois, first rule is don't stop in them.
[01:22:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:22:12] Speaker A: Three successes. Three successes on four dice. Very well done.
You would recognize on the back of several of these motorcycles, they have the saddlebags. I think that's actually what they call the motorcycles. If not, I apologize for a motorcycle writing brethren, there's a patch for the Outlaws motorcycle club.
This might come from your pre si days, law enforcement wise, but the outlaws are, ironically, outlaws, and the FBI has raided several of their clubs on suspicion of criminal activity. I was five or six or seven years ago.
Not a whole lot came of it. This particular saloon wasn't part of it, but it's a little rougher bunch than your normal. Just, we like motorcycles and Willerton club.
[01:23:08] Speaker F: And I will relay that to everyone. And just being like, point out, this is what that means.
We definitely, you know, who knows what? They're probably not connected to the anarchs. Who knows?
[01:23:25] Speaker C: No, I'm absolutely keeping this gun in my boot.
[01:23:28] Speaker F: Same. I've got a knife in my boot and gun in my jacket.
[01:23:32] Speaker E: So this is just an in and out situation, then. We look for what we need.
[01:23:37] Speaker F: Yeah.
[01:23:38] Speaker D: What we need is information.
[01:23:40] Speaker E: Mm hmm. So talk to who we need to talk to, not admire the americana vibe.
[01:23:49] Speaker C: Yeah. No, Jordan, I'm gonna. I'm just gonna let you know real quick. Not tonight, not in here.
[01:23:59] Speaker D: I cannot. I cannot think of an argument fast enough. So I'm just gonna stand here.
[01:24:05] Speaker C: Not in here, babe.
[01:24:06] Speaker E: So, Jordan, just listen. And then as you do that, we are walking in.
[01:24:12] Speaker C: Roxanne immediately loops an arm with Jack, because no one is going to be better protected than the beefy one.
[01:24:22] Speaker A: Well, I don't know if it's better or worse that when you walk up and you're approaching the front door, there's a bouncer there. He's one of, like, those four hot dog bouncers. Like, the neck has four rolls, very, like, leaning back into his posture, just kind of, like, arms crossed, and just looks over you. You're making a face like you've never heard that phrase before.
[01:24:44] Speaker B: I have not. I literally have not.
[01:24:47] Speaker C: I have at least two bouncer friends who fit that description, and they are teddy bears.
[01:24:53] Speaker A: Like, you can. You can tell how old a tree is by cutting it open kind of rings. And you can tell how experienced the bouncer is by how many hot dog rolls they have on the back of the neck. It's science.
Anyway, there's one of those standing outside the front in a. With the normal, like, big white, just plain Walmart t shirt underneath a black leather motorcycle vest. It doesn't have any kind of patches on it. Again, arms folded, regarding each of you not with suspicion, but just normal, like bouncer making an insight check.
Are these the kind of people who are going to be trouble? Doesn't card you as you walk? And presuming that you don't stop or cause any trouble, he'll just give you a very tiny, minuscule nod as you walk into the bar. It looks exactly the way you think it does inside.
[01:25:46] Speaker C: I can smell it.
[01:25:48] Speaker A: I can smell it. That is the smell of light. Beer, sweat, leather, motor oil, gasoline, a little bit.
It hardwood floors all the way across, like two or three beat the shit cool tables that are surrounded by biker people. The jukebox is there, still blaring, still Leonard Skinner. It's got one of those really long, wire like, room spanning mahogany bars.
All the lights above it are those game room lights. So it's like the green red stained glass. And then the bulbs have that yellow, sickly, smoke covered color to them along the. So that's looking. The left is the bar looking at the right is where individual booths go by. All that red fake leather. Not a single one of them doesn't have a little hole in it somewhere where like a knife went a little white puffy stuffing coming out.
If you had to guess in a fire Marshall sense, you would say is probably at about two thirds capacity this evening.
[01:26:57] Speaker F: Do we see anybody who is drinking but not drinking?
[01:27:03] Speaker A: There's no one feeding here and there's no one. I mean, like take a little bit of time before you could tell the difference between holding the beer and just pretending versus holding the beer. Because they've been waiting a really long time to tell this story and it's finally their turn. And God damn it, they're going to get all the way through it. Now, of course, some you can rule out immediately just based on the way that they're acting. But it would take a little longer for you to find Robert Warrington if you did not know who he was.
On the flip side, it's very easy for Robert Warrington, the gentleman's name who will soon meet to find you because he knows everyone in this town. And no offense to Roxanne and to Jack.
Pretty obvious when there are vampires coming into the room.
If nothing else, Roxanne, you're dressed like that.
[01:27:57] Speaker B: It is classic black.
[01:27:58] Speaker C: Thank you very much.
[01:28:00] Speaker A: I think it's delightful. And I'm a huge fan of that kind of wardrobe. But it would not be entirely out of line for five people. Just the way you are looking, the way you do, for a vampire to be like, that's a coterie. Right?
So he turns his head to see you and then kind of does the. The basic predatory animal, sizing you up. Who do I have to take on first? If a fight breaks out, I'm gonna step ahead.
[01:28:35] Speaker E: Then if he's gonna start doing that.
[01:28:38] Speaker F: Yeah, I'm gonna. I'll step next to Jack as well.
[01:28:40] Speaker A: I'm. God got their back. This is an excellent display. I like that you've assimilated a little bit of how to do toxic masculinity. Catch. It's quite nice that time on.
[01:28:49] Speaker F: Yeah, just the si. It's like you gotta learn how to. How to do it if you want.
[01:28:57] Speaker C: To, like, swing your dick around.
[01:28:59] Speaker F: Exactly.
[01:29:01] Speaker C: Roxanne is absolutely just gonna, like, peek head out around one of the massive shoulders in front.
[01:29:07] Speaker A: Front.
[01:29:07] Speaker C: And just wiggle.
[01:29:11] Speaker A: You get an up nod in return. Not. Not a full on all the way, but it's like a. More like a head tilt. Like a. Mm hmm. I see.
And then with one elbow still on the bar, he will .2 fingers towards the mirror that is behind on the wall because it's written in it just kind of sizzling into existence, you know, very. Like a red kind of hand scrawled font are rules.
Don't feed on any of the staff.
Don't feed on any of the members.
If you need somewhere to stay, Willerton hotel.
[01:29:53] Speaker C: Gonna thumbs up him.
[01:29:57] Speaker A: Uh, Roxanne, this is a very simple kind of sigil. It's basic tremere stuff, the kind of thing that you can get in exchange for a minor boon or anything like that. It's not sophisticated sorcery, but is the kind of thing that would reveal itself to vampires and to no one else. So.
[01:30:12] Speaker C: And then I look at it and look back to, uh, our buddy and just give him, like, one of those. Nice.
[01:30:22] Speaker A: From there, I will say that, uh, first of all, Robert doesn't especially care who you are. If you're just coming through on town on your way to Chicago. This is exactly the kind of information that he would give. And second, he's entirely too fucking cool to go running over the room and talk to you all. So if you would like to speak to him. You can go do that. But as far as he's concerned, he's given you the tour and his work here is done.
[01:30:51] Speaker E: I turned to everyone. It's like, uh. So we're just asking about Everett, right?
[01:30:56] Speaker F: Yeah, yeah.
[01:30:58] Speaker D: A friend of ours who. Who was passing through and went missing.
[01:31:02] Speaker E: Do you want to bring up the message or.
[01:31:04] Speaker D: Well, we'll see what they know. Where he was.
[01:31:12] Speaker A: Nothing wrong with a direct approach.
Robert Warrington, you would say. He probably looks to be in his late thirties, early forties, but having led a pretty hard road worn life.
He has that very close to his face. Kind of grayish, almost white now. Beard, sunken features, like neck. A little thinner than you would expect.
Corded body, so like a little bit of dad muscle, but still kind of scrawny overall.
It looks very much like you'd imagine him in a commercial selling like, sheep lined jackets that farmers wear.
[01:31:59] Speaker C: Like Carhartt.
[01:32:01] Speaker A: Yeah, Carhartt chic. So he's got that rugged without being like cracker barrel, right? So twice a minute of crack doesn't have the. All I eat is fast food and drink. Right. Kind of like a hard wornness to him.
The eyes, they have a cold gray just.
I mean, the word piercing is overused, but definitely the kind that regards you and you recognize and you can feel it, but you approach. There is an empty stool on both side of him. No one else is apparently interested in Robert Warrington's company this evening. And you have yourself a seat.
[01:32:43] Speaker C: I'm going to do the thing where it like pop up and like lean back on the bar.
[01:32:53] Speaker A: Finally speaks. And it is a voice that has to come out through like four packs a day of cigarettes.
There's a specific actor I'm thinking of who is famous for having this kind of voice. And I can never remember his name, but he always sounds like this when he talks. And it's kind of out of that when it's. When it's Claire's about to think of it, that kind of voice.
He's on a cop procedural.
[01:33:23] Speaker D: Oh, then I'm lost because the guy from Gran Torino whose name escapes. Clint Eastwood.
[01:33:28] Speaker A: No, not Clint Eastwood. It's deeper than that. A little more like rubbery muddy. Regardless, Roxanne, you make your introduction and he says something vainly in the same. Roughly in the same vein. How's it going new to Willerton? Huh?
[01:33:47] Speaker C: Are we are. I know it's not quite that hard to tell though, now.
[01:33:53] Speaker A: And judging by the look of things. And he kind of leans back to let his eyes go all the way from the $10,000 shirt to the $5,000 shoes and back up and says, something smells a little fancy, a little royal about you. You sure this is your kind of place?
[01:34:13] Speaker C: Not usually, but, you know, it's got character. I'll give it that.
[01:34:20] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that character is the no prince is allowed sign on the door. So if you're here to bring any of that kind of trouble, believe me, we've heard all the speeches. We've gotten all the brochures.
[01:34:31] Speaker C: I don't. Honestly, I don't care enough.
I'm just looking for a friend and an item that he lost. And if you have any assistance, I would be grateful.
[01:34:44] Speaker A: Sure. Lots of friends come through here. What's his name?
[01:34:49] Speaker C: A gentleman by the name of Everett.
[01:34:55] Speaker A: You see, his voice drops a little bit. He's speaking a little more quietly now.
Not out of nerves. It's more like, oh, we're doing kindred business. Okay.
And just bringing the temperature down just a little bit.
Oh, yeah. I heard a guy come through there. We sent him to the wilderness hotel like we always do. Last I heard of him was he checked in and a couple days later was gone.
[01:35:20] Speaker C: Hmm.
Issue being we checked the hotel, and it looks like he never actively checked out.
[01:35:31] Speaker A: Really?
[01:35:32] Speaker E: Stuff was left behind.
[01:35:35] Speaker A: So you're down here on a fact finding mission. Something like that.
[01:35:39] Speaker C: He had a briefcase. I'd like it back.
[01:35:43] Speaker A: Ah.
Like recovery mission. I got it.
[01:35:48] Speaker C: I just. And this whole time, Roxanne isn't trying to. I'm not trying to be snarky. I'm not trying to muscle my way in like some camarilla dickhead. It's just like kindred to kindred. I'm doing a job, my guy.
Not trying to be a dick about it.
It's just resting snark face.
[01:36:09] Speaker A: It's just.
[01:36:10] Speaker C: It's my face. I'm sorry. I'm not. I'm not being a dick. This is just what I look like.
[01:36:14] Speaker A: For his part, I don't think he's being combative. It's just more like, oh, well, I mean, yeah, that sucks. I wish I could help you out.
Like I said, he stopped in here just long enough for us to tell him that he's not allowed to sample the local cuisine. And his eyes take a circuit of the room before sending him to the warlock who runs the hotel.
[01:36:34] Speaker C: Didn't have anything with him when he came through.
[01:36:38] Speaker A: Oh, shit. I'm gonna be honest. I wasn't paying that close attention.
Looks at people wandering here all the time either going up to Chicago or getting kicked out of Chicago.
[01:36:46] Speaker C: Either way, that's what we hear.
Storyteller. Is he fucking lying to me?
[01:36:54] Speaker A: Well, you could roll wits awareness. You could roll wits insight just to kind of see if you can find some tells.
[01:37:02] Speaker C: Yeah, well, we'll throw a little. Throw a little insight.
Three successes on four dice.
[01:37:17] Speaker A: I mean, good on your. Your ability to finally tip probability back in your favor, but on three successes, no, you can tell he's pretty much just like he came in. He stopped long enough for me to remember his name. But as it relates to Everett, he is not doing anything. Anything else. Like, there's no. There's no deception there.
[01:37:41] Speaker C: I appreciate it.
I gotta ask, though, man. Like, the general vibe of this town is not something that I would have expected.
[01:38:05] Speaker A: Yeah, much for old country buffet.
[01:38:11] Speaker C: I'm gonna look down at the red bottom of my shoe and look back up at him. No, no, mostly the.
The cage.
[01:38:29] Speaker A: Um, yeah, the weird stuff. I mean, honestly, it's not really something, you know, me brain.
It's weird. But.
[01:38:42] Speaker C: You'Re not concerned about it at all?
[01:38:47] Speaker A: I mean, it is weird, right? But I don't know. Nothing's bad happening to me or any of my guys.
[01:38:56] Speaker C: That's fair.
[01:38:58] Speaker A: Townsfolk, they get all kinds of strange about it, but kindred wise, I mean, like, no, me, Nazira, rest of folks haven't heard anything bad along those lines.
[01:39:13] Speaker C: I'm gonna look. I'm gonna look at Jack and have, like, a. Should we warn him kind of a moment?
[01:39:20] Speaker E: Uh, I just give you a look. Like.
[01:39:23] Speaker A: Just.
[01:39:24] Speaker E: Yeah, like, I think we should.
[01:39:32] Speaker C: Robert, buddy, I not sure how much time you spent, like, hanging out at the library, getting, like, the lay of the land outside of, like, your little, um.
Your lovely little establishment here. Um, there's some weird shit going on with the fields. Um, it used to just be the direct townsfolk.
Our worry is that they have started to move on to, uh. Well, our folks. Folks from our little social club.
[01:40:13] Speaker A: Hey, I'm pausing for a moment to appreciate that if somebody is walking by and you are talking with Jack to Robert, and then you hear you're talking to Robert, I'm more than starting to take our folks and how that person's going to tilt their head and be like, what is this conversation about? Before walking directly on.
But so you mentioned that. And, I mean, Robert, he says, like, it's really. You think, is that what happened to your guy?
[01:40:46] Speaker E: He was taken from the room, is my understanding.
[01:40:51] Speaker C: Yeah. Um. I mean, the general vibe we got, he was taken. And it potentially wasn't of his own free will.
[01:41:00] Speaker A: Is that something you like? You know? No. Or is this trying to fill in the puzzle pieces we know?
[01:41:08] Speaker C: Our rose over there got the vibe of it.
[01:41:15] Speaker A: Hmm.
Oh, fuck. I mean, yeah, the town's always been weird, but they've been good to us.
Easy feeding. Keeps life simple. Far enough away from your type that we don't have to worry about any trouble.
Never heard of them taking kindred, though.
[01:41:36] Speaker E: Outside kindred, though.
[01:41:39] Speaker A: Or any, for that matter.
Like I said. I mean, there's the warlock and a couple others who still proclaim fealty to you and yours, and then my people. But haven't had any problems there, huh?
[01:41:56] Speaker E: No one's ever gone missing? Suddenly left anything like that?
[01:42:00] Speaker C: Nobody on your end of town?
[01:42:02] Speaker A: No. I mean, kindred. Fuck.
Humans go fucking missing all the time, right? It's biker gangs, and God only knows what happens. I don't keep track of that.
But in terms of people in my crew, no.
Closest I can think of is there's a ghoul I used to have.
He went missing, but, I mean, it's a ghoul, right? He'd just go back to dying.
When did.
[01:42:30] Speaker C: How long was he under your employ?
[01:42:34] Speaker A: No, like seven months. It wasn't. You know, sometimes a relationship you're really excited about when it starts and it just doesn't work out got weird, you know, spending too much time with the town. People started to call themselves Darchild, and that's when I knew it wasn't for me.
[01:42:51] Speaker C: Kamega Darchild?
[01:42:54] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, like, child of the stars can see the wisdom of the fields.
[01:43:01] Speaker C: What does that sound like to me? Storyteller?
[01:43:05] Speaker A: Sorry, as you were asking that I was doing the jerking off motion that Robert was doing, because that's what he thinks of all this.
[01:43:13] Speaker C: And you know what? Like, I. I would probably, like, snort a little bit and, like, nod in agreement.
[01:43:22] Speaker A: Oh, what does it sound like? Um, it could be, uh, that. I mean, like, okay, odds are there aren't two cults in this town, right? That just. This town's not big enough for the both of us. Uh, so it. It could be the case that start got wrapped up in that. And the way Robert is insinuating, it's like when, you know, you're a vampire, you hang out with vampires, you have a couple touchstones, but you don't do a whole lot of humaning in that way. But when you're a ghoul, you're in both worlds. So Robert is hinting towards, like, Starchild just got a little too local with the native people and like, started to worship their weird field gods, apparently. And Robert obviously does not want anything to do with that. He's also not taking it super seriously. He doesn't actually think there's like a children with corn cold. He's like, the locals do some woo woo and they practice to some God or whatever and like, great. Good for them. I'm glad they found something they enjoy.
[01:44:26] Speaker C: Yeah, I just.
You're your buddy. He just kind of skip town.
[01:44:33] Speaker A: As far as I know.
I mean, that. Already found another tap to suck on out here.
[01:44:39] Speaker C: Yeah, but town this small, you probably would have seen him around, right?
[01:44:44] Speaker A: Would have heard of somebody, sure.
[01:44:51] Speaker E: What if that wasn't the case?
[01:44:57] Speaker A: What if he left town? Or what if he stayed.
[01:45:05] Speaker E: While other. What is it? Like, the humans keep on vanishing in this town for other woo woo reasons? Oh, you're trying to.
[01:45:14] Speaker A: You think someone grabbed him?
[01:45:16] Speaker E: Yes.
[01:45:17] Speaker A: I mean, lucky me. Guy was weird.
[01:45:21] Speaker E: But if they are graduating over to kindred, isn't that a problem?
[01:45:26] Speaker A: Oh, I mean, yeah. There's only like three of us here. It wouldn't take them that long to run through all of us, but.
[01:45:35] Speaker E: Outsider that doesn't live here, and then.
[01:45:39] Speaker A: Okay, look, now you're starting to freak me out, but I'm sorry, I just.
[01:45:44] Speaker C: Listen, you're living here.
[01:45:46] Speaker E: We're concerned in our. We want to make sure that, you know.
[01:45:51] Speaker A: You were gonna say I'm Roxanne.
[01:45:53] Speaker C: Yeah, just.
Sorry. I know that's a lot coming from a handful of weirdos that just wandered in, but we were just here to pick up our buddy and go, and it got a lot weirder. A lot faster than we anticipated.
[01:46:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Town does that to people. Goblin roads, man trip. They don't tell you about that when you wake up, right? You know? Right.
[01:46:21] Speaker C: Have you seen that? The. The big. The scarecrow. The drippy scarecrow. Because we did, and I hated it.
[01:46:26] Speaker A: Drippy scrap. I know. That's a new one.
[01:46:29] Speaker C: Yeah, no, it was. There was. There was dead shit buried under it. And.
[01:46:36] Speaker A: Magpie Road, you see? No. Have you had the one with a tree?
[01:46:41] Speaker C: No, there's a tree.
[01:46:42] Speaker F: Oh, dear.
[01:46:44] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
First of all, like, real tree, right? Called the Judas tree. It's this huge, ugly, fucking hideous thing on the south side of town.
This is the kind of tree that you see in like, a fucking turfy novel about evil, right? It is like the tree of nightmares.
[01:46:59] Speaker C: There's some Stephen King bullshit.
[01:47:01] Speaker A: Oh, God. Yeah. But, like, you try to leave this place and you think, oh, I'm just gonna, like, head out east and then the trees there, or I'm gonna head out west. Fucking tree. Like, oh, my God, no.
Dead animal, fine. Have to get out of the car, run around it ten times, whatever. But riding the motorcycle and finding that fucking tree? Oh, that is not for me.
[01:47:22] Speaker C: Yeah, that's.
But no offense, this place sucks.
[01:47:29] Speaker A: Well, I mean, it is what it is. We don't all have a choice of where we can throw down.
[01:47:37] Speaker C: Fair enough.
Place let us. Doesn't let us leave. He might be stuck with a handful more folk.
[01:47:45] Speaker A: Shit. If it starts doing that, be sure to come back here and let me know. Yeah.
Hmm?
[01:47:51] Speaker C: Sure.
Just watch your ass, okay?
[01:47:56] Speaker A: Yeah, always do.
My advice. I don't know. You want to find out more? Sniff around. Maybe the ghoul kid's still around, knows something. Doesn't show his face around here, and I don't go look into town. Maybe somebody else has seen him. Aside from that, I do want to see some creepy shit. Trees right down the road. Check that out.
Got some kind of weird thing going on.
[01:48:25] Speaker C: What's his. What's his name, bud? You're a former associate.
[01:48:30] Speaker A: He went by Mary Angel.
[01:48:33] Speaker C: Mary Angel?
[01:48:34] Speaker E: Mary angel.
[01:48:35] Speaker A: Yeah. M a r I a n g e l. He won't spell it, but I will.
[01:48:42] Speaker C: Thanks.
[01:48:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Probably not his real name. Unless, you know.
Well, I don't know. Is he old enough to be. And he's thinking about, like, is he old enough to, like, a hippie kid? Couple from the seventies had him and named him that, but who knows?
[01:48:55] Speaker C: I was gonna say that sounds like some hippie family nonsense which would make sense for out here.
[01:49:02] Speaker A: Says. I mean, aside from that, just stay the fuck out of the cornfields. That's my advice.
[01:49:07] Speaker C: See, they keep. They keep dragging us back is the part that I hate the most.
[01:49:14] Speaker A: And look, you're trying real hard, and he's looking at the room. He is definitely making sure no one's around before he leans in real close. Like, in between Jack and Roxanne.
And this is. Look, I don't know what they get up to out there, but, like, every couple months or whatever, they all get real excited. Head out, all into the fields, no cars, just, like, fucking walking barefoot out into that shit. And for the next week after they come back, everyone around here tastes just a little bit better. I mean, but a fucking lot better. There is something good happening out there, but I don't do that stuff, man. Like, weird fuck rituals in the middle of the full moon. That. That's not for me.
[01:49:57] Speaker C: Yeah, no, that's, uh. There's a lot. There's.
Yeah, no, it's.
It's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. Um, and we are sincerely hoping that they haven't decided to graduate to, um, slightly stronger blood, as it were.
[01:50:14] Speaker A: Well, fuck. Here's to hoping.
[01:50:21] Speaker C: Thank you, Robert. I appreciate your time tonight.
[01:50:25] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, no offense. I'm not going to tell any of my buddies that we had this conversation. I got a reputation to uphold, but, I mean. Yeah. Yeah.
Appreciate it.
[01:50:36] Speaker C: Be safe.
[01:50:40] Speaker A: So that is Robert Warrington.
[01:50:47] Speaker C: I got what I needed.
[01:50:49] Speaker F: Yeah.
[01:50:51] Speaker E: Wasn't too bad.
[01:50:54] Speaker D: All we know now is that Starchild went.
I turn a phrase. Abort mission. Star child has now joined up with the locals.
[01:51:09] Speaker B: Maybe.
[01:51:11] Speaker D: Maybe.
[01:51:11] Speaker E: Might be. Yeah.
[01:51:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:51:13] Speaker D: No sign of Everett.
[01:51:20] Speaker E: Sorry.
[01:51:20] Speaker A: I also made one small error. Star child and Mariandel are two different people that Robert knows about. And I thought that, but I lean into it. So Star child is the ghoul?
Yeah.
Mary Angela is another gangrel kindred, who is around and spends time out in the fields.
So Robert would say to you, find either one of those people and maybe they can tell you more.
[01:51:48] Speaker D: So the anarchs aren't noticing. They seem to think of the Goblin road shit as just being amusing, but they aren't being harassed by it like we are.
[01:51:59] Speaker F: And we could always see the nightmare tree.
[01:52:02] Speaker A: Whether or not you are being harassed is a question of perspective. The goblin roads do stuff like this to everybody.
And like the Goblin energy and Goblin Road. No, he was saying they are rich. Sometimes you just got to do it. That's the price you pay to being able to safely navigate, not get eaten by werewolves.
[01:52:23] Speaker D: Okay, I have a new plan. We lie and we say that Everett went up in smoke along with the message, and then we go back to Chicago.
[01:52:37] Speaker F: Well, we should at least meet with the person back at the hotel because, I mean, we need to go back there anyways. All our stuff is there.
[01:52:49] Speaker C: My ass is still kind of on the line in Chicago, so I'd rather not have a demerit on my record as twer.
[01:53:00] Speaker F: I'm not exactly walking on thick ice either.
[01:53:03] Speaker C: No. At the very least, like, college try, honey. Like, you guys are established. You'll be fine. I will not.
[01:53:11] Speaker D: Okay, so back to the hotel.
[01:53:16] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
[01:53:17] Speaker E: And what about this star child?
Possibly either also missing or at the church or with these or in the fields or.
[01:53:29] Speaker D: Do you want to go in the fields?
[01:53:31] Speaker C: I don't want to go in the fields.
[01:53:32] Speaker D: Yell his name.
[01:53:34] Speaker C: Nope, I don't want to go anywhere near those goddamn fields.
[01:53:37] Speaker D: No, there's a non zero chance.
There's a non zero chance I can do something if I can find something that they've been with, but it's.
[01:53:49] Speaker F: Maybe our friends back at the hotel know where star child lived and go.
[01:53:54] Speaker D: To their place way easier than anything else.
[01:53:57] Speaker B: Yeah, or we could find that gangrel that Robert was talking about that likes.
[01:54:04] Speaker F: To hang out in the fields, want.
[01:54:06] Speaker B: To go anywhere near, doesn't mean they're in the fields. Now, that's fair.
[01:54:12] Speaker D: So do all gangrel, like, have a call? They use, you know, go outside and.
[01:54:16] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
I pretend like you did not just say that.
[01:54:21] Speaker D: How are we gonna find a gang girl? The same way. How are we gonna find star child?
[01:54:27] Speaker B: I think we'd have better luck finding a gang girl than a ghoul who went missing that nobody's seen for x amount of time.
[01:54:38] Speaker D: Did Robert give us any ideas to where the gangrel would be?
[01:54:45] Speaker A: He said that gangrel. I don't know if you know, Clara, know this, but gangrel later in one of their disciplines have the ability to just sleep in the dirt and not be burned by the sun. So this is talk about city control, city gangrel, and country gangrel. And Haley is a city gangrel. Right, but they're a country gang role that just go around, and when the sun comes up, they're like, fuck it, dirt time. Bury themselves and then wake up, and they just navigate that way.
[01:55:13] Speaker D: And it an insane notion. Full stop to both Clara and the toreador.
[01:55:20] Speaker A: Yes, Hailey can explain this in character. Well, we can say that Hailey is the one who brought it up so that Jordan also knows. But, yes, Mariandel is a country gang girl in the sense that if you wanted to find them, it's going to be like hunting an animal, unless they want to find you. Like, they're out there feeding on animals, living their best vampire life, not really caring to interact with the rest of everything going on.
[01:55:43] Speaker C: Hales, if you think it'll help, we can go find your associate, but I think we should probably head back to the hotel to check in with our contacts.
[01:55:56] Speaker F: Yeah.
[01:55:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:55:59] Speaker B: I I mean, either way, we have to find somebody, so.
But let's see if we get into any weird shenanigans thanks to the goblin roads on the way back to the hotel.
[01:56:20] Speaker A: I will. You'll be heartbroken, I'm sure, to know that. There's no scarecrows, magpies, or trees on your way back. The road is wide open for you. It's not curiously empty because it's well past midnight at a small Illinois town, and you can return to the Willerton hotel without incident.
Bradley not present at the desk when you arrive.
Otherwise, place is empty.
[01:56:56] Speaker D: Well, if no one's here, we should at least check back.
[01:56:58] Speaker E: Yeah, I was gonna check the back that Bradley had been looking at before on the door.
[01:57:03] Speaker A: Before. I mean, outside the hotel. Or do you mean the room, the storage?
[01:57:07] Speaker E: The room that was, like, behind the.
I'm assuming behind the desk, off to the side or something.
[01:57:13] Speaker A: As you walk into the front door, there's the stairwell ahead of you. And then just to the stairwell, there's the hallway that goes back into the kitchen and then the door to the storage rooms. On the left at the base of the stairs and then turning right is the entry, is the breakfast. Whatever. And then the desk is to the right, but much, much closer. Gotcha. Oh, yeah. The same room. Yeah. You can jiggle the handle. It is locked.
[01:57:41] Speaker E: Can I break it?
Can I just.
[01:57:45] Speaker B: Or, like, don't. Do not break the door. At the hotel, I say that you.
[01:57:52] Speaker E: See me process, jingle the handle, look.
[01:57:55] Speaker C: Down at it, and just stare at.
[01:57:56] Speaker A: It for a while.
[01:57:58] Speaker E: Like, I'm thinking of breaking it.
[01:58:00] Speaker C: And then Hailey's like, no, don't dare.
[01:58:05] Speaker B: Like a spray bottle.
[01:58:07] Speaker A: Just.
[01:58:08] Speaker E: No, like, key them. Is it behind the desk or something?
[01:58:14] Speaker A: No. In fact, where the key that you've seen. Because the management key, it's got the big, like, green, the kind of. That are stitched together. Right, those big key chain thingies.
I'm sure it has a more sophisticated than that. That is not hanging where it normally is.
[01:58:37] Speaker E: Can I do, like, an awareness check to see if anyone's down here or anywhere nearby?
[01:58:43] Speaker A: Oh, sure. What's awareness?
[01:58:46] Speaker F: Did we know where we were supposed to meet?
They said the hotel.
[01:58:51] Speaker A: Yeah, they just said the hotel.
[01:58:52] Speaker F: Okay.
[01:58:54] Speaker A: Two, uh, something going on behind the hotel, like a grunting, strained noise.
[01:59:06] Speaker D: Well, we can wait till they're finished.
No, I think.
[01:59:12] Speaker B: I think. Does Jack point this out?
[01:59:15] Speaker E: I will. I will turn towards the back of the hotel, kind of be on alert.
[01:59:21] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm gonna go investigate this. Grunting noise.
[01:59:27] Speaker F: Same, same.
[01:59:31] Speaker A: So, proceeding back through the kitchen. When the lights are on, it's empty, and then noise is getting louder at that point. And whenever the first of you to peek around, you see Bradley, this young gentleman, and you see him from the back. He's hunched over with his hands in front of his body and just kind of groaning and straining. And then I can see the face Laura's making, which is a little hilarious.
As he reaches back and then is hurling a suitcase into the back of a pickup truck.
[02:00:02] Speaker E: Hey.
[02:00:04] Speaker A: Oh, fuck. I mean. Oh, darn shit. Are you scared the f. Whatever you. God, you can't sneak up on someone like that.
[02:00:13] Speaker E: Sorry.
Are you throwing stuff?
[02:00:16] Speaker A: Did you all. God, five of you? Oh, Jesus Christ.
What's up?
[02:00:24] Speaker E: Throwing stuff out. What's that?
[02:00:27] Speaker A: Oh, we had another. Fucking people skip town.
[02:00:32] Speaker E: Someone else skipped town?
[02:00:34] Speaker A: Yeah, these two. I think they were, like, these German, these two tourists who were coming in, and they've been here, like, I don't know, like, a day or two and then went up the room. Cause they hadn't been out. We hadn't seen them, and, like. No, nobody's gone. They left out. Pang again.
Hmm.
[02:00:55] Speaker B: So what did you.
[02:00:58] Speaker E: Sorry, go ahead.
[02:00:59] Speaker B: No, sorry. What room did you say they were staying in?
[02:01:03] Speaker A: Like, 103, 1st floor, same side of the house that you're on, but underneath.
[02:01:08] Speaker B: Great. And I'm gonna make a little side eye at Jordan.
[02:01:14] Speaker D: Oh, yeah.
Fully lacking any decorum for whatever's happening here. I either want to get my hands on that suitcase, or we're checking out the room.
Sounds like they've cleaned the room out.
[02:01:29] Speaker B: So we could probably distract Bradley somehow long enough for you to touch it.
[02:01:40] Speaker E: Yeah, I had a question because I really did want to just check, and I'm gonna bring Bradley's attention to me.
[02:01:47] Speaker C: I was like.
[02:01:49] Speaker E: So I wanted to know about my friend that stayed before. We talked about it before. Is there any way that I can just check the lost and found to see if there's anything of his left behind?
[02:01:59] Speaker A: Oh, no, no. I mean, he's definitely gone.
Like, definitely, definitely gone. There's no living. Like, this was the most recent luggage. Everything else in there is just, like, cleaning supplies, like Windex, but, like, the really good Windex.
[02:02:14] Speaker E: Would you do me a solid and have me check if that's okay?
[02:02:19] Speaker A: Roll. Charisma and persuasion, please.
[02:02:24] Speaker E: Himbo charm. Do the thing.
Okay, so five successes.
[02:02:38] Speaker A: Oh, I'm.
You know what? Sure. I'm sorry. I'm just, like, really nervous because, like, this is my first job, and if I do something weird, I'm gonna get fired. And then, like, do you know how fucking boring this town would be if you didn't have any money? Like, oh, my God. But I didn't worry about it.
[02:02:52] Speaker E: I just. I just want to see if anything of my friend is there. That's all.
[02:02:55] Speaker A: Yeah, okay.
It's fine. But.
So, yeah, no, he'll lean you back into that room.
It is as promised.
There is no luggage. There was this. An elaborate ruse to distract Bradley so the others could. There we go.
[02:03:15] Speaker F: Right.
[02:03:15] Speaker E: Now it is. Because I had a feeling it was nothing.
[02:03:17] Speaker D: I'm already climbing into the truck trying to get to that luggage.
[02:03:23] Speaker A: Oh, I thought Jordan was going to head to the room, but, I mean.
[02:03:27] Speaker D: The stuff is here.
[02:03:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I. Yeah. I was not party to the decision making progress that happened inside of your head. It was. I was under the impression you were heading to the room while Katya and Haley would be in the truck. Regards.
Yeah. So the luggage is there. It's fairly nice, the kind of that you'd get, like, at a. At a nice airport. Right. It's. It's professional traveler luggage. Uh, that does not mean it is difficult at all to open up. Uh, inside usual items. There's clothing, a shaving kit, a Trudy Canavan novel, just like some really nice, light airport reading. Um, hiking shoes, shaving cream, et cetera. Toiletries.
[02:04:14] Speaker D: Okay.
[02:04:15] Speaker A: Um, pointedly no identifying documentation. There is a wallet with some cash in it, but anything with a name on it has been removed. Hmm.
[02:04:25] Speaker D: Really suspicious that.
Can I use.
Can I use spirit's touch on this stuff?
[02:04:33] Speaker A: You have to rouse for me first, and then we'll see what the dice have to say.
[02:04:42] Speaker D: All right. Rousing. One success for that on three successes, and I'm willing to willpower that.
[02:04:56] Speaker A: Oh, three is.
It's good. It's not great. I'll tell you that much.
[02:05:02] Speaker D: I spit on my hands and willpower.
[02:05:06] Speaker A: Reroll that scene when someone's trying to connect a wire. So I'm having specifically a vision of down periscope, where the electrician licks his fingers and then grabs both of the wires to really get it going.
[02:05:18] Speaker D: Oh, fuck. I lost the thingy. Where did it go?
[02:05:21] Speaker A: There we go.
[02:05:27] Speaker D: Four successes.
[02:05:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[02:05:30] Speaker D: Oh, fuck. Blood buff. That was. I don't know how to play this.
[02:05:32] Speaker A: Game or will get you the rest of the way. Thank you.
Yeah. So you're rifling through it, and it's two specifically different emotions. There is camaraderie, adventure, a hint of boredom, anticipation, self satisfaction.
And then you touch something else, and it's cold, dark, unthinking. Zealotry.
Passionate execution of a mission in service to something greater than yourself.
Remorseless, mechanical.
Hmm.
[02:06:26] Speaker D: Cult shit. This is a, for lack of a better phrase, congregation sort of situation.
Doesn't explain why they're missing sacrifices.
I was going to say is some.
They're very well convinced that they're doing the right thing, then.
[02:06:48] Speaker A: Well, yeah, it's a cult.
[02:06:50] Speaker F: Yeah, so, like cults. And even in that movie, that old movie, children of the corn, they. The children very convinced they were doing the right thing.
[02:06:59] Speaker A: So you can get a sense pretty clearly that some of these things were in the suitcase already.
The rest is someone cleaning out the room, that whoever took them is then pulling these things and throwing them into the suitcase to then dump them out.
[02:07:15] Speaker B: To then put them in the back of the truck.
[02:07:21] Speaker D: That's where they're gonna dump it after.
[02:07:23] Speaker A: Are you blaming Bradley?
[02:07:25] Speaker E: I was about to ask.
[02:07:26] Speaker B: I'm not not blaming Bradley.
[02:07:29] Speaker E: So was Bradley the wicks, both the evil person I was talking about before.
[02:07:37] Speaker A: To be a bit on the nose if it was actually children of the Willerton, before you do something terrible to this young child. No, it is not Bradley. Bradley is just.
[02:07:47] Speaker E: I would never do anything with Bradley.
[02:07:49] Speaker A: Bradley is just throwing the stuff in the pickup truck so he can take it to the dump.
[02:07:53] Speaker D: Okay, Bradley has parents, actually.
Did we discover who owns. Owns the hotel?
[02:08:07] Speaker A: It is Nazira's domain, but it is not Nazira's owned property.
[02:08:13] Speaker D: Does feel like the cult is using the hotel as a hunting ground, basically. Are we sure we can't stay in the car tonight?
[02:08:20] Speaker F: We think we need to.
We have. We have the little sun sunrise protection kit in the car.
[02:08:28] Speaker A: Good old SPK.
[02:08:29] Speaker D: I mean, I only. I guess maybe because they already got someone. It's not a problem now. Like, it's not like they need someone every night. That would be a little pointed, put.
[02:08:40] Speaker F: Like, a chair underneath the doorknob so that they can't open it from the outside, even with a key.
I. It's all how I always sleep.
[02:08:54] Speaker D: We don't have time to unpack all of that.
[02:08:56] Speaker F: No, we really don't.
[02:08:58] Speaker A: It's abandoned Hakim thing. You wouldn't understand.
[02:09:00] Speaker D: Absolutely not. Okay, so they're dead.
[02:09:08] Speaker F: Or will be dead.
[02:09:10] Speaker B: Are they?
[02:09:11] Speaker D: I don't know that I could unle. I don't. If I.
[02:09:17] Speaker F: We haven't seen anybody walking out into the corn yet because apparently it's, uh, kind of obvious.
[02:09:31] Speaker B: I have a question. So obviously not gonna talk to the demon magpies. That's not a thing. However, I'm wondering if there might be some sort of, like, night bird, owl, something like that, that maybe makes its home close to the hotel in a way that potentially they could have seen somebody dragging a body out of the hotel.
Yeah.
Does that animal exist around where we are?
[02:10:15] Speaker A: You want to talk to the chinese Batman knockoff nightbird.
[02:10:21] Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
[02:10:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Feral whispers is the power that will let you summon an animal if one is not present, and then use feral whispers to speak to said animal. But that'd be two rouse checks for two different things that you're doing.
[02:10:37] Speaker B: Okay, that is fine.
Let's see.
I mean, maybe it's fine. Ooh, did not pass the first one.
Let's see. Now. Do I have to make a roll to summon an animal? I believe I do. Okay, cool, cool, cool. That's okay.
[02:10:58] Speaker A: And the difficulty depends on what you're trying to summon versus where you are. So if you're like, can I have a hippopotamus here? Then it would be very, very difficult. But if you're, like, a barn owl, like, yeah, that can't swing a bat without hitting a bar. Now, here, you can probably get one.
[02:11:12] Speaker E: Sure.
[02:11:12] Speaker B: Okay. Okay, let's see.
[02:11:17] Speaker A: Storytellers at home, if they ask you to summon a hippo, feel free to Blake. No, there is not a hippo within the range of your thing. Do not one of those, like, I use a 20. I can swim with the waterfall. The fuck you can. We're playing vampire. The masquerade. We don't do that here.
[02:11:30] Speaker D: How long do you have to wait for the hippo to break out of the zoo?
[02:11:35] Speaker B: Okay, that is four successes to summon. What I was kind of hoping for was, would be, like, an owl or something like that.
[02:11:42] Speaker A: Oh, beautiful bar now. Gorgeous specimen.
Big, huge, wide wings floating into the night. Just like, just. No, no flapping. Just riding that nice big current. And then just thunks right onto the edge of the. Of the truck, and it turns its weird alien face at you with those, like, inverse saucer eyes.
[02:12:13] Speaker B: So I activate ferro whispers to talk to the owl.
What does it sound like to everybody else when I talk to the bird? Does it just sound like me talking, or does it actually sound like weird, guttural, like, animal noise?
[02:12:26] Speaker A: It actually depends from gangrel to gangrel.
[02:12:28] Speaker B: Oh, interesting. Okay, how fun.
[02:12:32] Speaker A: Yeah. In the same way that, like, different tori doors do. Premonition. All specs is different. Like, every thaumaturge was a little.
Every single gangrel kind of has their own little way of doing it.
[02:12:42] Speaker B: How fun.
Well, I passed that rouse check, so I'm no hungrier for it, but I. I'll just start asking the bird, have you.
First off, are you often near this area?
[02:13:01] Speaker A: Birds don't nod, but if it did nod, it would nod.
[02:13:05] Speaker B: Okay.
Uh, were you around this area last night?
[02:13:13] Speaker A: Last night?
No, no, no. I was over. I mean, doesn't know the name of, like, it's what the Macmillan farmhouse or the Thompson farmhouse. But the owl can describe an area that is not here. No, I was over there.
[02:13:36] Speaker B: Do you ever see creatures like me and my friends here leaving this area with, like, a large, like, dragging a large object with them that's like my size?
[02:13:55] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. All the time.
They bring them to the fields.
[02:14:05] Speaker B: I kind of tense up a little bit, and everybody in the group can see that I'm very unhappy with this answer that has just come out.
Which.
Which way?
Because, I mean, there's fields everywhere, right? So the question that I'm asking is, which. Which field?
[02:14:30] Speaker A: Well, I'm fairly certain owls also don't have a sense of north, south, east, and west. But through conversation, you can draw out of the owl, then just toot south past the ugly tree.
[02:14:45] Speaker B: The hair is on the back of my neck. Stand up.
If I was actually an animal, just very much, like, raised back and just.
Oh, just definitely on alert.
[02:15:00] Speaker A: You don't have to be afraid of it. It's delicious.
[02:15:04] Speaker B: Delicious.
[02:15:05] Speaker A: Oh, my God. Like, such good. Oh, my bird God. Such good hunting birds not famous for minced oaths. Wow. I've never had to talk as an animal. No one ever plays gangrels, and you just fear all this person. The games that I run, I do not have a gang in that game. So not. I'm not well practiced in how to be an animal. Talking to a vampire.
The ground is thick and sweet, and then the rodents that chew among it are, oh, they fill your belly and you just feel so heavy and strong. Not like the scrawny mice elsewhere.
[02:15:47] Speaker B: Um, how are there people at the tree often.
[02:16:01] Speaker A: Whatever the concept of often means?
Like, eh, they're not there every night, but they're not there. Like, do birds have concepts of seasons? I don't know.
[02:16:22] Speaker B: I imagine it would have to, right? Because winter is different.
[02:16:26] Speaker A: Okay, sure.
[02:16:28] Speaker F: Like, birds travel south for the winter.
[02:16:30] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that too.
[02:16:32] Speaker A: I didn't know, but sure, I guess. Is that two seasons then? Is it like, go home time and come back time? Anyway, if you're a birdologist, let me know in chat.
In this case, not every night, but more often than, like, once a season, right.
It's frequent enough, but bird calendar record keeping in the bird community is not really what it should be. So, okay.
[02:17:02] Speaker B: When did you last feed from that area? When did you last catch a rodent from near the tree?
[02:17:14] Speaker A: Like four or five nights ago.
[02:17:16] Speaker B: Okay. Okay, interesting.
Well, it's at this point that I will turn to the rest of the group who's just heard me kind of make these weird, guttural, sort of animalistic noises.
I have no.
I have good news, and I have bad news.
[02:17:50] Speaker D: Bad news first.
[02:17:52] Speaker B: Bad news first. Okie Dokie. We have to go to the spooky tree in the fields, I think fun.
Uh, because, um, this lovely, beautiful creature, and I will reach out and I will pet him because that's rad as shit.
Uh, has confirmed that that is where they take people. And, um, he's seen folks being dragged out of the hotel plenty of times.
Also, fun fact, definitely some weird magic going on over there. He mentioned that the rodents around that area taste particularly great and make you feel awesome.
That's cool.
[02:18:50] Speaker D: I mean, so did the anarch.
[02:18:53] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah. How fun. Love this for us.
Oh, sorry. I was about to make a really bad joke, and. Aaron, I'm so sorry. You can cover your ears right now, because what I was going to say is, well, it kind of sounds like we're going to have to make a field trip.
I got mad at myself. I got mad at myself for coming up with that. And that's why I had to preface it because I almost just said it, not realizing I was about to make the joke.
I'm so dying.
[02:19:35] Speaker C: And that's how we all died.
[02:19:37] Speaker D: And that's how Hailey Drake died.
[02:19:40] Speaker B: No. Yeah. Erin's just gonna murder me now.
[02:19:43] Speaker C: Okay, well, everyone dies.
[02:19:45] Speaker A: No, just Hailey.
[02:19:46] Speaker E: I'm not just there yet because I was buying time with Bradley this entire time.
[02:19:53] Speaker A: We can roll forward to the part where you reconvene and say that you let Bradley get back to the business of throwing these things away. Once you have covered up the fact that you've done it, Jack, I'm sorry to say there's nothing in the luggage room. It's honest to God in office at this point.
Haley, your glorious bird friend, departs. But maybe you will see them again in a dream on the wind.
And that information all comes together. I see Jordan making a face, but I was really just trying to emphasize how fucking beautiful of an owl Hayley had managed to summon. Because Haley rolled very well on the owl summoning role.
[02:20:27] Speaker D: No, I got you. That's probably David Bowie. Anyway, I was mostly going to ask if Nazira is back yet.
[02:20:35] Speaker A: Nazira can be back. It would be narratively appropriate.
Forged in the dark advice. Let's skip to the action. So the conversation happens between you all, and we'll say it's probably about 2 hours before the sun is going to come up that Nazira returns.
She is carrying in her arms all kinds of books, the whole little miniature traveling reference library. And when she sees that you are already there in the. In the foyer of the. Of the hotel, which is skittering immediately over to the.
I keep saying breakfast nook, but it's bigger than a nook, the breakfast capital nook on the right there, and starts spreading things out over the table. I'm very, very excited. They. I'm sorry, I've misgendered them.
They have laid this all out. And then you can almost see them ready to very tremere like, just burst into explaining everything.
But then they remember this is comparing notes. So they say, okay, I mean, I've gotten a lot of really important breakthroughs here, but what have you managed to find?
[02:21:42] Speaker C: I will go into what we gleaned from the library and from Miss Hannah and.
Yeah, just everything that we've discovered insofar as the bits and pieces that lead to the cult shit, including.
I don't think I mentioned that we talked to the anarchs.
[02:22:03] Speaker A: That's fair.
[02:22:04] Speaker C: Not gonna mention that.
[02:22:07] Speaker A: Anything. Anyone else dropping anything in?
[02:22:11] Speaker D: I feel like Roxanne would probably have a thorough understanding of what. Like what we've done. Anyway, you did mention the graveyard thingy.
I. For sigil mausoleum.
No, like the travel cappel. Close enough.
[02:22:34] Speaker C: Yeah. And what.
What? The vibe that I got when we walked through the fucking cemetery.
[02:22:41] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
[02:22:42] Speaker E: And the owl chat.
[02:22:45] Speaker B: And the owl chat.
[02:22:47] Speaker A: And the owl chat in the owl chat. Right.
Nazira is nodding along enthusiastically with all this information. You can tell already that what you have discovered has confirmed a great many things that they have managed to find in their own research. And all this comes together with Nazira beginning to explain, like. Well, yes, now, of course, the way that the sacrifices have been working, that's all a little separate, but I understand the nature of the cage when you mentioned the places that it stops and the way that it's been built. No, that makes perfect sense. So wilderness was founded in the 1880s. 1880s specifically. And the geometry seems to have held since there.
Whenever you want something bound in that way, you have to build these pillars, right? Which means. And they're flipping through these books and showing you all these kind of icons and stuff.
Somebody found something here in 1880 that they wanted to keep. And that's why they started building these buildings where they are. And it rolls out this huge map, and it just town of Willerton. And they have circled the different pieces on this prism shaped glyph, and they say, so that's what's holding this thing there, but it's also holding us, right? That's the Goblin road. That's why it's so hard to leave, because the nature of the magic is close enough to kindred that it works on us. And see, that's the thing. It doesn't affect the humans, right?
And it only kind of affects us. So what is more like us but not human?
And I mean, like, I don't have any ideas if you do, but I mean, and then look at this. And then, Roxanne, they're speaking directly to you.
[02:24:32] Speaker D: Now.
[02:24:32] Speaker A: Look, so, like, this iconography that you found. And, I mean, yeah, I'm familiar with the stuff that you have up on the. That you found on cemeteries, on the headstones. But look, it's not celtic. It's not greek or egyptian, mesopotamian. But it's borrowing from, like, the myth of Persephone and also Tammuz.
It looks like somebody took a whole bunch of different mythologies and then lumped them all in with a native indigenous myth. And then, anyway, so it seems like it's tied to the land, right? They've taken these things they already knew from somewhere else, but then tried to make them localize them, I guess, enough into the mythology, baked into the soil to let it work.
Now, we know that the pagan farmers, they have been sacrificing these things all the time, right? I mean, like, allegedly. But these settlers, like, without all their christian pretenses and all that, they're still sacrificing these things to the ground.
Now, normally do it with animals, but all those missing people, they had to end up somewhere, right?
So something is in the ground here.
They're feeding it.
[02:25:48] Speaker E: It.
[02:25:50] Speaker A: And for whatever reason, they're trying to keep it trapped.
Or maybe they're trying to keep you away from it. I don't know. But have you heard of.
I mean, this is a stretch. And at this point, they go to the other side of the table and they just whip open this enormous Tome of what appears to be poetry.
And they say, have you ever heard something called the shadow sleeper?
None of. None of you have?
[02:26:21] Speaker B: No.
[02:26:23] Speaker A: Ah, well, so then, look, it's a folklore creature. It's tied to lyrics. Just any. Just beneath all of these little pieces of mythology, the kind of thing that if you're looking for it, you can find it a lot of places. But does that mean that it's there, or does that mean that you're going crazy? Right? Conspiracy theories. I don't know. But anyway, it shows up in this poem here.
Book thump sound flips it open when love and hate turn strange and magpies filch the hours, and Judas limbs betray. Know you are a figment, a shadow sleeper's dream.
[02:27:06] Speaker B: Magpies, Judas limbs. Like the Judas tree.
[02:27:12] Speaker A: Uh, the what?
[02:27:15] Speaker B: The.
The Judas tree. The.
The spooky tree outside of town.
[02:27:22] Speaker A: Oh, that disgusting thing. That's what they call it, yeah.
[02:27:27] Speaker C: Who locals call it.
[02:27:30] Speaker A: Now, I regret a little bit not spending as much time with the locals, but that's. That's unsettling. Have you seen anything? Magpies.
[02:27:40] Speaker B: A lot, actually, and tried to. Tried to. Tried to speak to one of them before I realized that they were definitely horrible and not actual magpies, but a lot of magpies.
Like, a silly amount of magpies.
[02:28:03] Speaker A: Dang.
[02:28:04] Speaker C: They, um. Yeah, they. They got a bead on us out in the cemetery, and I'm talking, like, one on every tombstone. Kind of two numbers.
[02:28:16] Speaker B: Two on every tombstone.
[02:28:18] Speaker A: Oh, that's terribly concerning. And their brow just furrows. Well, yes, obviously, but this means that whatever is under Willerton, and I presume it's some kind of creature, it has to be more active because it's getting fed. That's concerning. Oh, but, I mean, I've been here, Robert's been here. We've been here for years, and it's never been this bad.
What about you showing up has changed something? What about Everett showing up? There has to be some variable that's been altered for it to be this.
[02:28:52] Speaker B: Like, what if they've at it, Vita. What if up until this point, it's just been blood, but now it got. Vita.
[02:29:04] Speaker F: Got a taste for something a little stronger?
[02:29:08] Speaker A: That's a truly terrifying thought, indeed.
[02:29:12] Speaker D: We've lost a kindred. And theoretically, it's likely we lost a ghoul. And there is a gangrel who has also seemed to be drinking the Kool aid, as it were.
[02:29:27] Speaker A: Well, this is truly terrifying. I.
You. You have to go out into the cornfields. Not tonight. There's certainly no time. And if you were to get trapped in the goblin roads under these circumstances, it would be certain death. But. But first thing in the Mor. And. But first thing after the. After sunset.
[02:29:45] Speaker D: Uh, about that.
The people keep going missing from the hotel.
I'm disinclined to consider the hotel a place that we should safe. We can safely rest.
[02:30:03] Speaker A: People disappearing from the hotel. You are significantly stronger than people.
[02:30:07] Speaker B: Yes, yes, but Everett York disappeared from the hotel as well.
[02:30:13] Speaker A: I suppose that's true. There are five of you in one of him, though.
[02:30:17] Speaker F: We all just huddle in one room.
[02:30:21] Speaker A: I don't mean to take responsibility for your personal safety, of course. You can make your own choices, but you've experienced the goblin roads. And if something here wants you, do you trust yourself more to be protected by at least these walls and each other? Or the windows and the tarpaulin in a car?
And to be clear, that's an honest question. Nazir is not trying to persuade you. Nazir is just saying it.
[02:30:49] Speaker D: No, because I don't. I'm not thrilled with the idea of sleeping in a car either.
[02:30:52] Speaker A: Yeah, she's like, they are like you. It's fucking crazy that you want to just, like, put a trash bag in between you and the sun when this is happening.
[02:31:05] Speaker C: Behoove us then to pile into a room together. The very least we can barricade the door, so hopefully one of us will wake up if something happens.
[02:31:19] Speaker A: Miss Kindred. Cuddlepuddle.
And besides, you look like a competent and capable lot. Desider says that they are looking directly at Kaja and Jack.
[02:31:30] Speaker D: Apparently all of us have knives, so, yeah.
[02:31:37] Speaker A: Unless you have any further questions for Nazira, we can let them pack up their things and depart. They are willing to be helpful to an extent, but who knew a tremere who doesn't want to get their hands dirty unless it's somebody else's blood they can do magic with?
[02:31:52] Speaker C: What? That doesn't sound out of character.
[02:31:56] Speaker F: Color me surprise.
[02:31:58] Speaker C: Shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
[02:32:01] Speaker A: And we can return. Sorry, go ahead.
[02:32:04] Speaker C: No, yeah, that's all.
[02:32:07] Speaker A: So we can return to some. Just broader questions about what we've talked about. I know earlier that v we're talking about, well, what is a vampire? But not in ghouls. But I think you're going in the wrong direction.
Because if it was built to trap, like, imagine on a one to five scale, right?
Level one is a vampire. Level five or level one is a human. Level five is a vampire. If I built something to trap a vampire, that would be a five and it wouldn't affect humans. And if it were ghouls, that's a three. So it should kind of affect humans and it should kind of affect vampires. Right, but it doesn't affect humans at all. So we have to zoom our scale out. And now go one to seven.
So it's not what's halfway between a human and a vampire, it's what's halfway between a vampire and whatever the fuck this thing is, is the point that Nazir was trying to make.
[02:33:14] Speaker C: Great.
I love this for us. I love this for us. I really do. We were just gonna come out and get Everett and take his shit back to Chicago. PKJ but no, now there's a fucking cult.
[02:33:32] Speaker F: I'm gonna have fun with it. This, though.
[02:33:36] Speaker C: Gray, can we bed down now?
[02:33:42] Speaker F: Yeah.
[02:33:44] Speaker C: Fuck this shit.
[02:33:45] Speaker D: Oh, I'm so tempted to try to.
[02:33:48] Speaker B: Do a thing, but it's, uh, Nazira. Have you heard of star child?
[02:33:56] Speaker A: Oh, the wretched. Yes. Please avoid them in any circumstance possible. They're a filthy child.
Not child, but like, a filthy child of this town. A mistake that Warrington made. And.
[02:34:12] Speaker E: Harsh words.
[02:34:14] Speaker B: They're still around?
[02:34:18] Speaker A: Yeah. They cavort with the congregation, engaged with the locals. I don't know who has continued to feed them Vita, but curse upon that person.
[02:34:34] Speaker B: Okay, I.
I have a weird theory. And tell me if this is weird, because, you know, like, occult stuff isn't, like, my jam or anything. So tell me if this is, like, way too out there.
So the lovely barn owl that I spoke to mentioned that the rodents that it consumes taste great after they've been near the tree.
And I've heard tell that city folk here, townsfolk, taste better after whatever weirdness happens near the tree. I'm just wondering if perhaps there's some sort of.
Could star child be feeding off of the tree? Could that be a thing?
[02:35:38] Speaker A: There's a moment where it seems that Nazira might reject your theory out of hand. And you can see them turning towards Roxanne as if to say, please control your idiot. But then you keep going, and they pause and you keep. And you can see gears spinning and different sliders being moved around. And then Nazir is just quiet for a good 15 or 20 seconds.
I don't know of that happening at any point. But that isn't to say it's wrong if something is literally buried here and the roots of that tree, that would be, in theory, a possibility with the most disturbing implication. Because at that point, this isn't the tree or the soil. It means there's something actually down there.
I hesitate to imagine the kind of trouble it would cause. And the way that they say trouble, like, ha ha, understatement of the millennium award goes to Nazira of Willerton, Illinois. And everyone shares the amount of trouble that it would cause if such a thing were to become unearthed is.
It's incomprehensible. It's indescribable.
[02:37:09] Speaker B: Yeah. By default.
[02:37:17] Speaker A: What a curious thing indeed. If the Sabbat have launched their war into the Middle east and the antediluvians are here. Oh, but it couldn't be. And now they're just talking to themselves and rubber ducking their own occultness.
[02:37:37] Speaker C: There's a lot to deal with, but, yeah, we're. We're gonna have to go look at the goddamn tree, aren't we?
[02:37:45] Speaker A: Fuck.
[02:37:48] Speaker E: All roads point to the. To the tree.
[02:37:50] Speaker D: I guess it may be that we have to go another night.
[02:37:53] Speaker A: It's.
[02:37:54] Speaker F: I mean, we're definitely gonna have to go another night. We have no time.
[02:38:03] Speaker A: Let's say, with the last few minutes that we have together, I know that everyone's going to go to sleep because you are required to by vampire law.
Does anyone want to try hunting ahead of time? We can handle that role on the quick quick or Jordan.
[02:38:18] Speaker D: Yeah, actually, I want to try something else.
[02:38:22] Speaker A: Okay.
[02:38:23] Speaker D: Just because I haven't used it, and it seems like a good thing to do at this time before we go to bed. So if we want to hunt before, I'd like to reach out with premonition.
[02:38:35] Speaker A: What are you focusing on?
[02:38:38] Speaker D: Um, after everything we've gotten.
Okay, this is gonna sound. I'm gonna. I'm gonna try to pad this so I can roll as many dice as possible.
I think, before bed, at least. I'm gonna take my shoes off and see if there's any dirt still on them and kind of use that as an anchor because it sounds like it's something in the dirt. And we've reached out to the goblin roads, and we've walked through the graveyards, and it's a muggy summer.
I feel like there's probably still mud on my converse.
And I think, oh, oh, this is stupid. We're gonna do it. We're gonna do it. I think if there's something in the earth, I'm going to see about reaching that way. Because we know what we're looking for is in the fields.
What we don't know is why.
And I don't think I can use premonition as, like, a locator device.
[02:39:46] Speaker A: No, it's just little hints and ripples about the future.
[02:39:50] Speaker D: So, yeah, this feels more like a. If you might as well confront the big unknown, you might as well do that.
[02:39:58] Speaker A: Now. I know how many dice you get. And the problem with premonition is exactly the same problem with insight check. That you roll, which is that you, as the player, know how many dice you got. So if they're lying or telling the truth, you're like, well, now I know they're lying because I failed my insight check. So what I'd like you to do is tell me how many dice you have have, and then let me handle the rest.
[02:40:18] Speaker D: Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. So, prem.
I don't know how many dice I get for this, and I just rolled it anyway.
But I was going to say if I could also blood buff it, because this seems like an important thing to do.
[02:40:34] Speaker A: Blood buff relates to feats of will and wit. I don't know if you can apply.
[02:40:39] Speaker D: It to this clench real hard.
Reach out with my third eye, the one.
[02:40:45] Speaker A: That's how you get hemorrhoids. But it's. I can say it's your blood. It's a one shot.
If you want to, then go ahead.
[02:40:54] Speaker D: Yeah, I think that only gives me two dice. I cannot remember how many dice I roll for premonition.
[02:40:59] Speaker A: Boop, boop, boop.
Resolve in auspex, or intelligence and aspects. It's tied to one of those things, but I know the top of my head.
[02:41:07] Speaker D: It's more than not familiar with the VTT. See enough resolve resolve on aspects?
[02:41:10] Speaker B: Yes.
[02:41:11] Speaker D: Well, I got four in aspects, and I resolve is a.
I can't worry. Oh, there it is. Two. So six dice all around.
[02:41:21] Speaker A: Okay.
[02:41:23] Speaker D: I'm actually much happier if Aaron rolls it, because someone has better luck than I do.
[02:41:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Because I got five successes.
[02:41:34] Speaker B: Yay.
[02:41:35] Speaker A: Jesus.
[02:41:36] Speaker D: Aaron rolls on my desk forever.
[02:41:37] Speaker A: Now then, as we approach the end of the scenario, we'll handle the feeding rolls after the fact, and then just come back in the next game to see, you know. But as we approach the end of this episode, Jordan, first tell me that the pose, the.
Do you. How do you position yourself as you channel on. On this reddish brown dirt and then try to project your senses into it?
[02:42:07] Speaker D: I think in that very, like, sometimes Jordan does weird shit, and we just, like, let her do it.
I've gone from every. I've gone to everyone's shoes now that we're huddled up in the same room and, like, gathered as much of the dirt as I can into a pile and, like, a tremere would with, like, with blood, I kind of gather it into my hands and work it through my fingers the same way that my sense, my, you know, other ability works, and then, like, huff it a little, and then it's just sort of a sit, meditate kind of vibe. It's very ghost whisperer.
[02:42:51] Speaker A: So whether you close your eyes or whether this is one of those situations where they just roll backwards and then everyone can see the whites. You feel all of a sudden, hands on you, on every single part of you, and it takes a moment for your senses kind of zoom in in the way when you're at an eye doctor, is this better or worse? And it's slowly focusing in. And as you zoom in finely, it's not hands that it's the stalks of grain that it is the corn. And you're walking through it and you can hear that heartbeat, the same heartbeat that came when you solved the puzzle of the scarecrow, but it's underneath you in the ground. And it's not just that you can hear it every time. It goes thump, thump. You feel the entire field lurch up and then down. It's in your feet and you're walking closer. You're walking closer and there's something dreamlike that starts to happen.
Do you feel yourself getting lethargic?
And slowly you end up unable to move. Move entirely.
And you're rooted in place, metaphorically, but then you're rooted in place literally, as these thick tendrils of barky black come up from the soil. And they grip at your feet and they pull you down just enough to leave you standing. And then you feel your body kind of spreading out, stretching.
And what everyone else will see and what you will realize is happening when you open your eyes out of the premonition is Jordan Phipps standing in the pose of a nine foot tall scarecrow.
Unfortunately, we will have to stop there. This has been episode three of the dying fields. A scenario from speech for unread. A scenario book for the masquerade. I hope that you have enjoyed it. If you'd like to find it and buy it for yourself, you can do so at exclamation point game. I'm about to introduce everyone one last time. Let them know where they can be found on the Internet and what products they're into. But if you'd like those links where they are clickable and you don't have to type it because, like, I mean, why would you want to type when you can just click instead? It's so easy. All you got to do is put exclamation point socials in chat. That said, we can burn through this real fast because I think someone desperately has to go to the bathroom. And spoiler alert, it's me. But that said, joining us all the way from the lovely craftings playing Jack Bowman, who has, I think, managed to successfully persuade every single person, person they have run into this game.
Excellent roles. Excellent role playing. Excellent to have you here, Sade. Where can people find more of you?
[02:46:04] Speaker E: Hi, everyone. Yay. First of all, thank you. That was so nice. Hi, everyone. You can find me everywhere. Ssambrose, except for Twitter, which is Sshambers because Twitter hates me. You can also find me at the other Sider studios. We are ramping up. We're currently recording a monster of the week campaign, which is a wonderful in between of arcane core seekers and the third season that we're going to be working on in the future. So stay tuned for that because it's, uh, it's intense. I'll give you that. Wonderful cast. Obviously, you can listen to me on the Lovely Craftians podcast. We have four seasons. We're on hiatus, so if you like binge listening, please do. It's lovely. Call Cthulhu actual play.
And I think there's more. But yes, that's me. You can check that out also on Twitter if I forgot anything. And on to the next person.
[02:46:55] Speaker A: Always more and always lovely to have it. Speaking of things that are always lovely, they are Katya Sokolov, Banu Hakeem, who I regret you haven't been able to shoot anything yet, but let me tell you, we can fix that come this week.
[02:47:07] Speaker F: I think I'm gonna fix that next week.
[02:47:11] Speaker A: So tell us who you are. Tell us where we can find you. Tell us what you get up to when you are not here. Hearing mice go.
[02:47:20] Speaker F: Hi everyone.
[02:47:21] Speaker A: I am a pre.
[02:47:22] Speaker F: You can find me everywhere on the Internet at Madquencosplay. You can also catch me as the GM over on goblets and gates for blood of kings are the final season of our first Pathfinder campaign. It's lovely if you, especially if you like Hades and or God of war Ragnarok. Go check it out. Uh, it's very influenced by all of those things. You can also catch me as sawyer over on bring your own mech and uh, as Ryan over on escaping Carcosa. So check all that stuff out.
[02:47:54] Speaker A: Love to see all of that. I am especially happy because I did not like God of War Ragnarok. It felt very tired to me. But this story like a little more.
Things I like a little more. Do not include outdoor cat Clara. I like them other about the same, but Jordan Phipps is excellent. If people want to find more of you out there on the Internet and see what you're up to, where can they do it?
[02:48:19] Speaker D: How dare you.
Hi, I'm Clara. I'm all over the Internet as clearly underscore golden. Unless you're into mermaids, in which case you can find me over on Instagram as mermaid clarity. I do have a clearly golden instagram. It is just full of shit posts as far as one can photograph shitposts.
I am here at Queen's court games playing the all night society whenever those are released wherever you get your podcasts. I play Maya Lugassi, the Lasombra problem, and I am also over on Happy Jacks, where I am. I have split custody, I guess. And on Sundays, we will be playing demigods. We may even be playing it now, demigods, which is launching soon. It may be launching by the time you hear this, so that'll be fun. I'm hoping to play a trickster. It's very weird. Time is confusing when you're recording things.
[02:49:13] Speaker A: Time is a flat circle and has no meaning.
Next up on the list, Roxanne Silvestri. You have done so incredibly well being an occultist, which means the bad things keep happening to you, and for that, I apologize. But you are excellent in this game, and I'm loving everything you got. If, hypothetically, I was the kind of person that was addicted to badass characters being flung into wag situations, where else could I find that kind of thing?
[02:49:40] Speaker C: Laura, first of all, don't, don't. Don't apologize like you're actually sorry. Don't apologize to me like you're actually sorry. Second of all, hi, I'm Laura. Or Tutu. Or Laura Tutu. You can find me on most social medias as some iteration of Laura underscore tutu. You might have to throw an underscore at the beginning, at the end of that, because, well, fuck whoever has Laura underscore tutu, all right? Just, like, contact me. I'll fucking pay you, dude, come on.
I'm here with Queen's j. Wow. I can't talk. I'm here with Queen's court games more often than not, which is, like, pretty often. Like, all the goddamn time.
You'll be able to hear my voice on tans soon, which is really exciting. You'll be able to see me playing some call of Cthulhu soon, which is also exciting, and then some cult, and then some.
I don't know, what else do we have? Everything.
[02:50:30] Speaker B: Follow me down.
[02:50:31] Speaker A: Follow me down.
[02:50:33] Speaker C: Yeah. Salt and scandal. Basically everything that's coming up in the next couple of months. You're probably going to hear my voice receiving my face. You're going to get real sick of me real soon, and I'm not sorry about that. You can also find me over with the folks at obsidian bruise. We are ramping back up after some much needed rest, and you'll find me at Crimson Tavern whenever we open the goddamn doors over there.
[02:50:53] Speaker A: I don't think I'm going to get sick of you, because I've known v for about a decade, and I'm not sick of them yet.
[02:50:59] Speaker B: It's true.
[02:51:01] Speaker A: For the people who want to know you for a decade and not get sick of you because you're pretty fucking great, where can they go find you and see what you're up to and learn more about what you do?
[02:51:09] Speaker B: Uh, yeah. If you. If you want to see more of me, you can find me on Twitter is for vampire because my name is Vy and I like vampires.
I also am here at the queen as the queen of the court. I do the art and a lot of the marketing stuff, and I'm in a lot of things. Just too. So too many things. Too many things, I think. Um, yeah, I have. I have way too much on my plate. But that's okay. That's okay. It's fun. We have fun. It's absolutely wonderful.
Speaking of things that are absolutely wonderful, Aaron, if people wanted to find more of you, why would they do that?
[02:51:52] Speaker A: Oh, see, the trick is to do a good segue is that you have to be telling the truth, right? So when you say, speaking of things that are wonderful, I'm like, you can't go back to Clara. Clara's had her turn.
Anyway, I am Aaron. You can find Merin in words on Twitter and also hive, which I wish had a web app because, oh, man, like, the energy there was just so good compared to Twitter. For real. I usually discuss TTRPG rule kits, things coming out, little bit of scenario design. But if you want to see what I am writing and running, you are best served going to court rpg on Twitter or Queenscourt games everywhere else in the social media ecosystem. We will be back next week with the very last episode. I'm sorry, y'all, but, like, you've done the. You've done the finding out. Now it's time to do the fuck around. But, like, in the mystery sense, right? Like, go fuck around in the cornfield.
That'll be here next week. Uh, same time but 3 hours ago. We'll start. You'll be able to see how this code re kicks off after that. I am fairly certain we'll be heading to follow me down pretty soon thereafter. So a lot more good content coming. In the meantime, head to our YouTube channel, see if there's things that you've missed. Find one shots and other mischief on the podcast or the online society. On podcast apps. You want to catch our vampire and other one shot games? Special thanks to our Duke tier patrons, Callie, Mark, and Ben. Oh, my God.
[02:53:14] Speaker B: I'm going to tell him you forgot about him.
[02:53:15] Speaker A: He's going to see this and know, holy shit.
[02:53:18] Speaker B: I know that's embarrassing. How embarrassing for you, because, like, you.
[02:53:22] Speaker A: Know, what happened was I said it like ally does. I went Bean and then my brain froze.
Anyway, special thanks to our duke, to your patrons, you made this possible. Along with our latest folks, you can find
[email protected] Queen court games in the meantime, bye for now.
