Perpetua 32: A Picture of the Hills 05
Transcriber: frog (fferaldogs)
Recap        1
The Clayridge Mountains [0:02:51]        2
Danger On The Trails [0:11:10]        10
Nicky and Veile (Round One) [0:21:30]        20
Round Two [0:35:00]        35
Making Camp [0:49:40]        49
The Ritual’s Crescendo [1:00:58]        61
Recap
Jack: We have to figure out what’s going on with the sick cows—classic side quest. 
Austin: That’s right. 
Dre: Mhm.
Jack: We have to escort a kind of rude old man—
Austin: [taken aback] Okay.
Jack: To the top of a mountain. 
Dre: I- yeah, I don’t like that characterization. 
Jack: He—the third side quest is we’re trying to create an elaborate human interest story about the people of Spillaway Peak. 
[“Perpetua” by Jack de Quidt begins playing]
—
Austin: You feel blood where there is none. And you realize this isn’t blood, it’s something else, something magical is happening here. It’s like they are being desanguinated of something that isn’t liquid blood, but might be magic in nature? Spiritual in nature? Life force or essence or something. 
—
Dre (as Jonathan): Beulah, you got any reason to think there’s a person who’d try to like, do this on purpose?
Austin (as Beulah): Do this on purpose? The whole town eats our rice. I—any enemy of me is an enemy of a full tummy!
—
Jack (as Elena): This food is very bad, you have to stop feeding it to them immediately. This is bad business. Some sort of dark magic at work. I’d appreciate any more information you could give me about the merchant. 
Austin (as Beulah): Think I might have a card back home. Let me- let me go back to the house. 
Austin: The card says: D. G. Flay. D period G period Flay, F-L-A-Y. Feed and supplies. 
—
Art: So are you also suggesting it won’t be fixed by the right food?
—
Austin: You feel it, you feel this kind of draconic connection. Something is wrong with the first ox. 
[“Perpetua” by Jack de Quidt plays until track ends]
The Clayridge Mountains [0:02:51]
Austin: Alright, you are headed up the mountains into Clayridge. I think it’s- I think it’s time for a travel roll. 
Jack: Oh!
Ali: Ooh. 
Austin: And you’re walking this time so you’re only moving one thing at a time. 
Dre: Mm. Ooh.
Austin: Which is rare, normally you’re in the Little Snail. And that might—
Art: Hope I can get some free ingredients here! 
Jack: [laughs]
Art: With no chance for- for disaster. 
Austin: Well there’s always a chance cause you’re traveling, so there’s always a chance of disaster. 
Art: Well the ingredient part will not cause it. 
Ali: [laughs]
Austin: I see, I see, I see. I love that for you, yeah. Yeah. Alright, this is a—I think this is a- yeah, this is a d12 threat level. Vast forest, mountains, open sea, or swamps. You’re out of the hills now, you’re up in the mountains!
Art: Let me know if you want, we can condense all my ingredient rolls for later. 
Austin: Well there’s only the one. You’re only making one here, I believe. Right? [Art: Okay.] It’s only every move. You’re only going one- you can only move once a- one spot a day because you’re on foot now. 
Art: Alright, well I got 4d6, I get 4 ingredients, so. 
Austin: Okay yeah, you should just do them all then, in that roll. I guess. When a group embarks on a journey, the gamemaster makes use of the map sheet to track their movements. Also wait, do you get it at the beginning of travel or at the end of travel?
Art: I don’t know, what’s it say? Um—
Austin: I know we ask this all the time. Or I ask this all the time, but. 
Art: Well I’m never going to learn, so. 
Jack and Ali: [laugh]
Art: After each travel roll. 
Austin: Alright so don’t write- you don’t have these in case something bad happens and you end up in a situation where it’d be nice to have them, you know?
Art: Okay, but those are them. 3, 4, 5, 4.
Austin: Okay. I guess—is it after a roll or after a travel? Sorry I misunder- I didn’t listen. 
Art: After- it says after the roll.
Austin: Alright then yeah you get ‘em. [laughs] Cause we’re doing the roll. 
Art: We're about to do the roll, yeah.
Austin: The roll happens, I guess–we’re about to, yeah. Perform a- the game master determines the threat level. It’s a d12. If more than a single threat level is present, only apply the highest. Perform a travel roll by rolling a die appropriate to the chosen level. On a 6 or higher, the group encounters a danger. On a 1, the group makes an unexpected discovery, and I’ve just remembered that we’ve actually been using the alternative—
Jack: The extra fun. 
Austin: The extra fun ones! And so yeah, we are using those also. And I believe that is still the case though. We are still doing that and it depends on what you roll because you could end up with a minor discovery. 
Jack: Yeah. 
Austin: I believe. So give me a d12. Who is- who is leading the travel roll? Who’s in front?
Jack: It makes the most sense to be Jonathan, right? It’s Spillaway Peaks—
Dre: Ugh.
Austin: Sure.
Dre: [dejected] You always make me roll the travel roll. 
Ali: [laughs]
Jack: It’s because you’re the best at it. 
Dre: Ehh. 
Austin: That’s not true. It’s just a d12. 
Dre: Yeah, that is not- [laughing] that’s not how it works. 
Austin: Just the- it’s just the dice. 
Jack: Hang on, narratively. Narratively the best at it. 
Dre: Sure, yeah. 
Austin: Well normally it’s because Jonathan’s driving. 
Dre: Driving. 
Ali: Yeah. And that is not the case.
Jack: And here Jonathan is in the mountains above his hometown. 
Ali: Yeah…
Austin: This is true. Yeah okay, fair enough. 
Dre: That makes sense. 
Austin: Okay, give me the roll. Roll low. 
Jack: Ah. 
Dre: No, I won’t. I refuse. 
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: On a 6 or higher, the group encounters a danger. 
Dre: I can’t Fabula Point that can I? 
Austin: I don’t believe so. It’s not a skill check, it’s just a travel roll. Unless you have a special thing that says I can- you can do it. You know, on travel rolls, blah blah blah. Which some people- some classes have travel roll specific abilities I believe, so. 
Dre: Uh, and I do—
Art: Do you think they have tamarind around here?
Jack: [laughs] 
Dre: I do have the cartographer thing, but I think I have used that already since out last rest?
Austin: What is it? Wait, what is it? No. 
Dre: That’s my camp activity. “Once before your next rest [Austin: Oh.] when the group makes a travel roll, you may reroll the die and keep the new result.”
Austin: Oh interesting. Did we- did we already do one travel roll as you left the city? Maybe up to the hills, that would make sense. 
Dre: I don’t think we did? But I—
Austin: Well then you probably still have it!
Dre: Okay. I mean, I’ll take it. 
Austin: I’m double checking. Let me roll up- let me scroll up and see if you have a roll that would match the difficulty of that first step out of town. I’m double checking. 
Dre: Yeah. 
Austin: I don’t believe you did, but- I don’t think you’ve left Spillaway Peaks proper on the tiles until this moment, so [Dre: Okay.] I think you can use that. 
Dre: Woo!
Austin: And what’s it let you do?
Dre: Uh let me see…I had to remember where it was. Journal.
Austin: Mhm. 
Dre: Once before the next rest, after your group makes a travel roll, you may reroll the die and keep the new result. 
Ali: Ooh. 
Austin: Alright! Well you can’t do worse. Well, you could do one worse, but not really. 11 and a 12 are the same effectively, so. Alright well it’s still a 9. [laughs]
Ali: [chuckles]
Austin: So it’s still a fail. 
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: It’s still unfortunately not what you would love, so. 
Dre: Mhm. 
Ali: Can I ask a tiny bookkeeping question? 
Austin: Yes. 
Ali: Do you know how much 3 IP is in this world?
Austin: What do you mean?
Ali: The- [laughs] the- money. 
Dre: Oh do you mean money-wise?
Ali: How many money does it cost?
Austin: 30 Asta. They’re 10 Asta a pop. 
Ali: It’s—okay. 
Jack: Too fucking much. [laughs]
Austin: [quietly] Oh my god. 
Ali: I- [laughs] I was gonna ask if I could possibly buy an elixir from the farmer?
Austin: From Beulah? Before you leave?
Ali: Yeah. 
Austin: Yeah, I think that’s fair. You could- you could- yeah. I think you’re still enough in town that she would have—especially cause you healed one of her oxen and seemed to have done it like, for real for real, you know?
Ali: Mhm. And I’m paying her for it! 
Austin: Yeah, I get it. Yeah.
Ali: I’m just like, if you have this in your house can I drink it and I will give you money for it. Yeah, okay. 
Austin: Yes, yes that happens. 
Ali: Okay. Thank you. [laughs]
Austin: Go ahead, I’m good with it. Alright, on a 9 you get a danger. I think the danger comes not quite yet. The danger is gonna come—actually I guess it won’t cause you’re not gonna rest out here. We’re not gonna- you’re not gonna like—it’s gonna happen before you can camp, for instance, right?
Dre: Mhm.
Austin: So I think maybe as you begin to climb—let me actually just slow down for a second and talk about what this is like and ask some questions. Jonathan, what are the Clayridge Mountains like?
Dre: Um, I think can be- are like suddenly steep? Like it’s like you’re kind of flat for a while and suddenly there’s a very steep slope you have to go up. 
Austin: Mhm. 
Dre: I think lots of, if not trees- I think like trees, but also just a lot of big shrubbery. 
Austin: Yeah. 
Dre: So just very like overgrown. 
Austin: Yeah. You’re passing through some of that shrubbery and you’re being very careful because the—and like Waylon is like giving you advice. Waylon is like, 
(as Waylon): Well don’t go that way. Because- because there’s a big pit over there behind those bushes. 
Austin: You know, 
(as Waylon): It looks like it’s safe, but it ain’t!
Austin: And et cetera. And at one point you actually get to a point where Waylon’s like, there won’t- there’s gonna be a big chasm here and there isn’t. Rocks have filled in that chasm since Waylon was last here and he’s surprised by that. He’s like, you know, that chasm’s been there for—
(as Waylon): That chasm’s been there for 70 years!
Austin: You know? So for the whole thing to be filled in by an avalanche of stone is kind of remarkable and a little scary. It means there’s been some activity here of a sort that is surprising. And you know you cross through there, you’re climbing some pretty steep stuff, you’re finding ways around where Waylon can’t go up the steeper parts. He’s- he’s doing pretty good for an old photographer, but he definitely does not have the sprightliness that he would have had as a younger Terrapin. And I think at one point, two things happen at once. Tell me if you’ve heard this before. 
Art: Ayy!
Jack: [chuckles]
Danger On The Trails [0:11:10]
Austin: Up above, a few kind of like pathways above, you hear the sound of footsteps. You hear someone walking, maybe you hear like a pebble or a rock fall, and you catch sight of a Terrapin up in the distance. Without a roll you don’t know who it is, but someone else is ahead of you on this journey. And then with- with a sort of—bolt is the wrong word, but a ray of shining light, you see that your way is stopped by a quartet of Fleggs. 
Jack: Oh my god. 
Ali: Woahh. 
Austin: One of them—I guess I’ll describe actually slowly. Three of them are like the Fleggs you know, they come up to your shins. But these ones are brown, they’re brown Fleggs. And then ahead of them is a beautiful light green Flegg with these brown splotches. It’s wearing shining plate mail armor [Jack: cackles] and helm. It has a visor raised so you can see its brave expression. It wields a longsword and a little kite shield, commensurate to its size. It’s bigger than the other ones, but it’s still only coming up to your upper thigh, you know. This is the Sentishell, it is a defensive guardian of a Flegg, and it points its sword out at you and says, 
(as Sentishell): Justice!
[“To Arms! (Fields Combat Begins)” by Jack de Quidt plays]
Jack: [laughs] Oh no. 
Austin: They seem to have you confused for some evil doers and begin charging at you. 
Ali: Oh we can get out of this. 
Jack: It’s Flegg Don Quixote.
Ali: [laughs]
Austin: Mhm!
Dre: [laughs]
Jack: [laughs] I wanted to see if there was a picture of an armored—
Art: Don Quiche-ote? Don Quiche-ote.
Jack: Woahh! [laughs]
Austin: Mmmm. [laughs]
Ali: Mm!
Jack: I wanted to see if there was a picture of- on the internet of an egg wearing armor, so I typed “armored egg” except I didn’t know that I had caps lock on and that looked like a very excited search. 
Austin: [laughs]
Jack: It’s this, is the closest thing that I found. 
Austin: Let’s see what you got here. 
Ali: True!
Austin: Yeah, okay. Yeah, close! Close. I like the big spoon. There’s a big spoon. 
Jack: Yeah. 
Austin: Alright, it’s time to—you’re in a conflict, at this point at least. Who is gonna do your initiative group check? Who’s gonna lead it and presumably everyone’s helping cause that’s how these work, so everyone’s gonna roll dex, insight but one of you has to declare to be the leader. 
Jack: Is Veile our best leader?
Ali: I have a plus one initiative right now? Yeah. 
Jack: It’s Veile. 
Austin: Alright, everybody else give me dex, insight and then once we’re done, Veile, you will do it. You’ll do dex, insight. 
Austin: That’s an 8 from Jonathan, [Jack: laughs] a 1 from Elena. A 10! From Uncle Nicky. That’s pretty good. 
Art: I’m doing a great job helping. 
Austin: That’s a plus one plus another one, cause it’s- cause of the bond. So plus two, Veile. 
Ali: Oh! Okay. 
Austin: Yeah again, we’ve been doing this wrong for most of the season, we’ve only just corrected it. 
Ali: [laughs] Okay. 
Dre: [laughs]
Ali: That’s an 18 from Veile. 
Art: We suddenly got much faster.
Austin: That’s a fucking 18. You’re going faster, for sure. You’re going first in this conflict. 
Ali: Oh boy. What is- [Austin: Mhm.] what is our goal here? To prove our innocence?
Austin: That’s a great question. What is your goal?
Jack: I don’t wanna fight these Fleggs. 
Austin: Their goal is to- is to hold you accountable for your many misdeeds. 
Dre: Okay. 
Ali: Well… [quietly] I didn’t do any misdeeds.
Austin: Yeah.
Art: Is that possible? We have not committed these misdeeds?
Dre: Happens every day, Art.
Austin: Many people are held accountable—yeah. [laughs] Fucking ay, yes. 
Ali and Jack: [laugh]
Art: But they’re not our misdeeds, [Austin: Mm yeah.] they’re flawed. 
Austin: Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. 
Dre: Uh huh!
Austin: [sarcastically] You’re telling me this paladin Flegg might be wrong about who might be guilty??
Ali: Mm. 
Jack: Wow…
Art: In my experience, paladins are always right— 
Jack: [laughs]
Ali: Yeah!
Dre: Mm, mm, mhm, mhm, mhm. 
Art: Are quite wise and very, um, well-spoken. 
Jack: Yeah. 
Austin: I see, yeah. 
Ali: So true. 
Jack: I mean, do we want to [Dre: Does it—] immediately do an objective role?
Austin: Wh- no first, cause Ali is actually being- being very—
Jack: Oh, yes you’re right. 
Austin: Sharp about this. What is your goal? Because that is part of conflict starting in the game. 
Ali: Yeah. 
Dre: Mhm. 
Jack: Convince the Fleggs that we mean them no harm. 
Austin: Yes, okay. 
Art: That their priorities are scrambled. 
Dre: That we’re innocent?
Ali: [chuckles]
Austin: Hah ha ha. 
Jack: [chuckles]
Dre: Oh I see, I see. That was good, that was good
Austin: Yeah, uh huh.
Art: You’re going to need to kill me to stop this. 
Ali: [laughs]
Art: I don’t mean Nicky, I mean— 
Austin: Oh okay, yeah. 
Dre: Well we, you know, we never said it’d be over easily. 
Art: Ayy!
Ali: Woah. 
Jack: Ohh.
Austin: Mhm! [laughs]
Jack: I can’t- I can’t do it. 
Austin: So yeah, that makes sense to me. Yeah, great. So who’s up? What are you- who’s going first?
Dre: [sighs] Would it get—it depends on the roll—would it get better or worse to produce a robot Flegg at this point in time?
Jack: Possibly worse as our opener, I would say. 
Dre: [laughs]
Ali: Mm, mhm.
Jack: I’m not discounting the robot Flegg and I think that there might be some value there, but I don’t know that like foul simulacra is the— [laughs]
Dre and Austin: [laugh]
Jack: Is the best gambit. 
Art: [cross] I don’t remember how much it looks like a Flegg. 
Dre: [cross] We’re a friend of Fleggs, look at this Frankenstein I’ve made. [laughs]
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: Yeah, yeah. 
Jack: What’d you say, Art?
Art: I don’t remember- is it- will they be able to tell?
Jack: Yes! It’s very obviously a robot. 
Austin: Yeah, it’s very obvious. Yeah, yeah. 
Jack: Okay, I would like to perform an objective. 
Austin: Alright, what is the objective? 
Jack: Uh, to—
Austin: As a reminder, the way that these work is that you can do a simple objective like “I want to jump across the chasm and chase the other Terrapin we saw.” That would be one single thing, right, you’re jumping across a chasm that’s separating you or something like that. But most of the time you’re gonna have a more complex one, and so you gotta get a clock and the clock depends- the scale of the clock depends on what the goal is. 
The way that the book sets it up is that a 4 step clock provides a minor or temporary advantage, a 6 to 8 step clock can provide a decisive or permanent advantage, and a 10 to 12 step clock allows you to win the conflict outright. So if what you’re trying to do is like, I wanna start a clock that we’ve convinced them that we’re the goodies, [Jack: Right.] that’s a 10 step clock, I would say. 
Jack: Yeah, that sounds fair. And this objective is called Placate The Eggs.
Austin: Of course it is. I love it. Alright, I’m just gonna type it into chat to make it legible for future us. 
Art: But you know, we don’t have to coddle them. 
Ali: [laughs]
Austin: Oh my god…okay!
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: Right now the Placate The Eggs clock is at 0 out of 10, what are you doing to fill it?
Jack: I would like to open a dialogue. 
Austin: Okay. 
Jack: With the eggs. I see this as a persuade roll? I’m going to step forward with my hand raised, an open hand, unthreateningly. My staff is still like in a little sling at my waist or something, and I say, 
(as Elena): Brave knight, we mean you no harm! You have mistaken us for somebody else!
Austin: Give me a persuade, which in our little sheet is insight, willpower so give me insight, willpower. I think that makes sense here. A 9 will advance this clock by, I think, a single tick, I believe that’s the way—I’m double checking the thing here. Yes, one section on succeeding, an additional section for beating the difficulty level or the opponents roll by 3 or more and then two additional sections for beating it by 6 or more. 7 is the base level difficulty here, so yeah. You- you, uh, I think the Sentishell says, 
(as Sentishell): A ploy!
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: And points with its sword and one of the other- the brown Fleggs, the first of the brown Fleggs, is—actually [laughs] I think does something you’ve never seen a Flegg do. You’ve seen Fleggs blast, right? They open up their mouths and a blast of fire comes out. [Jack: Yeah.] This one does Flegg Gale, opening up its mouth and charging- or like as it’s charging at you, yelling, it goes, 
(as Flegg): Ragh!
Austin: And as the ‘ragh’ comes out, a sort of blast of wind flies out at you. 
Jack: Woah. 
Austin: What is your physical defense?
Jack: My physical defense is 7.
Austin: Well it just misses you, with a 6. 
Jack: Ohoho! [laughs]
Dre: Ooh. 
Austin: And does no air damage to you, it would have done 9 if it had hit. 
Jack: Okay, that’s a relief. 
Austin: Mhm!
Jack: And I’m- I am not Fabula Pointing that persuade, [Austin: Sure.] because I only have one remaining and I’m not going to Fabula Point a success at that point.
Austin: Fair enough. You’ve only spent one Fabula Point so far this session right? 
Jack: I believe so, yeah. 
Austin: Or maybe none. 
Jack: Mm…
Austin: Oh yeah, you spent one— 
Jack: I spent one, yeah. 
Austin: And then Veile used the 7 ch- the 7 change. 
Ali: Mm. 
Austin: Alright, back to y’all.
Dre: I would like to use my Guard move. 
Austin: Mm!
Dre: I think I used this last fight we were in, but guarding basically until the start of my next turn I get resistance to all damage types, I get a plus two bonus to all opposed checks, and I can cover another creature and prevent foes from performing melee attacks against them. 
Austin: Love it. 
Dre: So I will cover Veile. 
Austin: Okay, great. And as if to signal that, I think the second of the three brown Fleggs charges toward Veile, but instead is gonna try to hit you with a melee strike. What is your physical defense?
Dre: 14. 
Austin: It’s gonna miss with a 10! It comes- it just tries to like launch itself at you and pummel you with its stick figure-like hands and arms. And it’s hitting, but it’s not hitting, you know what I mean?
Dre: Yeah. 
Austin: It’s hard to get away from them. They’re little and quick and weird. You know, like, they’re really like trying to get away from an angry cat or something. [Dre: Mhm.] It’s just fast, they’re just little fast freaks. Positive. 
Ali: [chuckles]
Jack: There’s a little bit of the gnomes in Repo to the Fleggs. Where like one gnome does not bother me at all, but when they just start streaming out of a corridor, you know, 36 gnomes. Then you’re in trouble. 
Nicky and Veile (Round One) [0:21:30]
Austin: [laughs] That’s right, then you’re in trouble. Back to y’all. I believe Jonathan or Veile. 
Jack: Nicky or Veile. 
Ali: Yeah. 
Austin: Sorry, Nicky. Cause Jonathan just went with the Guard, right yes. 
Art: Here’s the thing, what I can do best is attack somebody, but it doesn’t like—
Ali: [quietly] Interesting…yeah. 
Art: I don’t wanna take points away from our Placate clock by—
Austin: By hurting them. 
Art: By hurting them. I’ve looked at all the things I could cook to be like, well I could try to get the right ingredient combination and then if I trick them into eating it, I didn’t hurt them. 
[All laugh]
Austin: I don’t—
Ali: So true!
Dre: You put it out under a cardboard box with a stick to just pull down. [laughs]
Jack: [laughing] You fucking trick them into eating it. This is what, let me check the name again here, D. G. Flay Feed and Supplies was planning on doing. 
Austin: Uh huh, yeah. 
Art: But I might just do—again, I just need to know what more ingredient combos do so I might just do one and if it’s something good, one of us can have it and if it’s something bad…
Jack: [chuckles]
Ali: I encourage this, yeah. Are you able to keep an inventory of premade meals?
Art: No, no.
Ali: Ohh okay. 
Jack: You do all your cooking live. 
Art: I am allowed to cook outside of combat, but like, that doesn’t sound fun. 
Ali: Mhm. 
Jack: Right. 
Art: I think the game wants me to—I mean, they explicitly don’t want me to do this, but how about some pickled limes and honey?
Jack: Woah, yeah. 
Dre: Mm.
Ali: Yummy!
Art: Find out what bitter plus sweet is. 
Jack: What does it do?
Art: I roll a d12, I get a 7…and so that means that—do I already have this one? Anyone who eats it can’t guard next turn. 
Jack: Oh!
Ali: Woah. 
Austin: Okay. 
Art: And you know who I think should have some of that?
Austin: I–
Art: The paladin Flegg. 
Austin: This- and this is good? You’re force feeding the thing that says you can’t protect your friends? 
Ali: [laughs]
Austin: To the guard- Sentishell?
Art: You think it’s a bad idea?
Austin: I don’t know. I don’t think that this—
Jack: It might be going against our, um—
Austin: The goal! You can do it, but I’m not—
Art: Well what if I don’t force feed it? What if I just offer it? 
Austin: It’s not gonna fucking eat the—
Art: What does it do?
Austin: I mean—
Art: To say someone can’t do the guard action. What if they’re just so taken with the flavor, that they—
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: Okay!
Art: Are like kind of selfish for a bit?
Austin: Yeah, I- all I’m saying is, it is an action that they are not- this thing is not like- ah, no, unless what you’re telling me is the food- the way that this is working is you’re making food so scrumptious and- that they can’t help but pick it up off the ground or the plate and eat it instead of doing the thing they’re committed to. Which is itself kind of more fucked up almost, in some ways. [laughs]
Ali: [laughs]
Austin: It overrides their will even more. 
Jack: They’re like compelled. They’re like—
Austin: Yeah.
Art: I think that by putting out snacks, I’m doing good—I think I’m helping!
Austin: Mm. 
Jack: Hmm. 
Austin: It’s- the thing that’s fucked up is it’s the best one for dealing with the very powerful paladin Flegg, you know? Stopping it from being able to guard its friends is really strong if what you’re trying to do is kill them all, so. You put it out there and the Sentishell, I guess, eats it up? Wh- how do you deliver it to the Sentishell?
Ali: [laughs]
Art: I just thought I’d make like a small plate and just sort of set it out. 
Austin: [defeated] Okay. 
Art: Not with a box with a stick on it, but it is kind of a trap. 
Austin: I—kind of? It’s- yeah, okay!
Jack: Mmm. 
Austin: The Flegg is- Fleggs are beings of drives and urges, you know?
Jack: As are we all. 
Austin: What is the actual food itself?
Art: Pickled limes and honey. 
Austin: That sounds pretty good. I think it’s gonna eat it on the way in. Now it says it can’t do the guard action, is that what it can’t do? 
Art: Yeah. 
Austin: Okay, I’m gonna expand that to saying it can’t use its Taunt, which is its equivalent. It has Threaten, which says “enemies must include this NPC among the target of their attacks and offensive spells. When this NPC suffers damage of a type they’re vulnerable to, they lose the special role until the start of their next turn.” 
I think that it can’t do this right now, however it can and does spend itself 10 mind points on its turn to grant itself and all of its allies resistance to physical and dark damage lasting until the end of the scene or until the NPC suffers damage of a type they’re weak to. So they have gained darkness resist—or sorry, they have gained, yeah, resistance to physical and dark damage as a holy—they eat your delicious pickled limes or whatever and—
Art: Pickled limes with honey. 
Austin: Yeah uh huh, and honey. And then, you know, plant the kite shield into the ground and bang the sword onto it creating a resonant hum as light appears from the heavens and spreads across all four of the Fleggs, granting them a sort of shining sparkle and protecting them. 
Jack: Woah. 
Austin: They are resistant now to physical and dark damage. 
Art: I see now that I can create foods to use later, but it’s a project.
Ali: Mm!
Austin: That sounds right. 
Ali: What if I performally fed some of this to Jonathan as well. I’m not gonna do that, I don’t think. 
Austin and Jack: [laugh]
Ali: I think I could—
Dre: Do you wanna get punched really hard??
Austin: Uh huh. 
Ali: Can I just say I was gonna even the level- it would help. It would help. I don’t know. 
Art: I also took a protect move, I just took a different protect move. It’s called Protect. 
Austin: You all have access to Guard. Guard is available to everybody. 
Dre: Yeah, it’s just a move. 
Art: Oh okay. 
Austin: Yeah, yeah. But Veile, I believe it is your turn. 
Ali: Mmm. 
Austin: You’re the last one here. 
Ali: Ahhh, okay. Looking through my- all the bullshit that I have in my journal here. 
Austin: Mhm. 
Ali: One of the things that I completely only narratively had her pick up was like a little storybook from Calstega Bay?
Austin: Mhm. 
Ali: What if she pulled that out [Austin: Oh.] and like flipped it open—the way that I described it is that it was like a kind of picture book-esque, but also one of those things that you made in high school where you would like fold the different edges and it would show different words and stuff. 
Austin: Oh yeah, I know the type. 
Ali: But it was that as if it was like a, like a paper book diorama sort of thing of a- just like a coming of age story. So like, [Austin: Mhm.] it would be like the knight goes against the dragon, or you would flip it a different way and it would be like a phoenix the next time and it would be like this sort of like very basic story of heroism that was like kind of choose your own adventure-y in that way, or malleable in that way. 
Austin: Mhm. 
Ali: So what if Veile sort of like opens- [laugh] like a- opened it up to one of the pages of like, here, you know, here’s the knight and like, you know, gathering his allies or whatever. And being like, 
(as Veile): We mean it! Honestly, we- we have righteous intentions!
Jack: [laughs quietly]
Austin: You know, if ever there was gonna be a Flegg who was gonna respond to storybook— 
Ali: [giggles] I thought so!
Dre: Mhm!
Austin: Logic and feelings, it might be this one. I guess—
Ali: I thought so! [laughs]
Austin: Give me- give me a roll. Insight and willpower, difficulty 7. 
Ali: Yeah. Flegg- Flegg sincerity. I don’t know.
Jack: [chuckles]
Ali: Appealing to Flegg spirit, is what I’m gonna write. [sighs] And that should just be- that’s just me. That’s just me rolling that. 
Austin: And that’s a 6. 
Ali: [laughs]
Austin: That’s a 6, that’s a 6. Now see, here’s the moment. 
Jack: Can you swap out?
Austin: Well, [laughing] you see what would happen though, Jack?
Jack: Oh. [laughs]
Ali: Right, I would become- it would become like a critical failure. 
Austin: You rolled a 1 and a 5. I think it would become a critical failure. 
Ali: I could Fabula Point. 
Austin: You could Fabula Point!
Ali: This is kind of fumbling a check, I bet it doesn’t. 
Austin: No, this is not fumbling. Fumbling is a- is a crit failure. 
Ali: Yeah yeah yeah. 
Austin: Yeah, two 1s. 
Ali: Yeah, let me spend it. We have two—this is gonna be our second of the session? 
Austin: Yeah, that’s right. 
Ali: Well everybody else is on- is on notice now. 
Austin: [laughs]
Dre: Got it. 
Austin: What- what trait are you calling on here?
Ali: I think that I am pulling on my theme of duty. 
Austin: Okay. 
Ali: Because I feel in my heart that I understand why this Flegg—
Austin: Yeah. This makes sense. 
Ali: Is doing what he is doing. 
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: Yes, yeah. 
Jack: Your kin. 
Ali: [laughing] Yes! 
Austin: Uh huh. 
Ali: And in this moment I am desperately trying to find common ground with him. 
Austin: Mhm. 
Jack: [chuckles]
Ali: And what does that do? It lets me reroll…
Austin: One or both!
Ali: One or both, I might as well do both. I don’t think a 5–well, a 5 is kind of serving me right?
Austin: It’s- it’s pretty close. 
Ali: Out of 10?
Dre: What’s your insight die?
Austin: No, your insight is 10 is the thing. That’s the real—
Dre: Ohhh. 
Ali: Art, what do you think?
Austin and Ali: [laugh]
Art: Umm. 5 out of 10 is lower than you would expect. 
Ali: Alright. 
Art: You would have a 50% chance of getting higher. 
Ali: Alright. I’m gonna roll both of them. 
Austin: Alright, let’s see it. 
Ali: I can certainly do better than this 1. 
Austin: You certainly can do better than this 1. 
Ali: [laughs]
Art: I would expect you to do better than 1. 
Ali: And that’s a 13!
Austin: Hey, there’s a 13!
Jack: Okay!
Dre: Wooo!
Art: But you did do worse than the 5.
Ali: [laughs] I did… 
Dre: [laughs]
Austin: That’s very funny, actually. Yeah, that would have been a 15. But that would have been the same level of success as far as the game is concerned, so. 
Ali: What’s the cut off? 
Austin: It’s every- it’s every three from 7. So it’s 7, 10, 13, 16, 19. So—
Ali: Oh, so I want the 13, I don’t want to go down to 11. 
Austin: 13’s good. That’s correct, you do not wanna go down. Yeah yeah yeah, exactly. 
Ali: Alright…
Austin: Because this now will raise that clock from a 1 out of 10—I believe it was at 1 out of 10–it is now up to a 4 out of 10. I think- I think, you know, protected by the holy aegis that it summoned, the Sentishell, you know, looks very intently and confidently that it is safe. Not safe from attackers, like not safe from your treacherous ways, but safe that even when you pull out the knife to backstab it, it will be prepared for that incoming attack. It’s gonna be—you know, it doesn’t necessarily believe you, but it is curious at the ploy you’re very clearly laying at its feet. You know?
Ali: [laughs]
Austin: And then the last- the last of the three brown Fleggs is gonna go. I’m gonna roll a die to see who it’s swinging at. That is a 3, so it’s going after you, Nicky. What is your physical defense?
Art: My physical defense is…11. 
Austin: Alright, it is- it sees something in you. After it sees you make that dish, and it’s gonna try to really play on something deep in your spirit by being as annoying as it can possibly be. 
Ali: [laughs]
Art: Oh, that’s correct, yes. 
Austin: What was your physical defense again? Sorry you just said it, but I was—
Art: 11, 11. 
Austin: Well then it hits you for 12–
Dre: Wait, no it doesn’t. 
Austin: Why’s that?
Dre: I’m gonna use my Protect skill, [Austin: Ooh!] which is a skill from the Guardian class. 
Austin: Uh huh!
Dre: “When another creature is threatened by an attack spell or other danger, you may take their place. Any checks that are part of the danger will be performed against you. You may declare the use of this skill before or after checks have been made.”
Austin: It’s after. So you’re gonna take 12 physical damage as—
Dre: No I won’t. 
Austin: Why’s that?
Dre: My defense is 14. 
Austin: Oh, interesting! So you take the- you take the place of the roll and it doesn’t hit you. What’s this look like? 
Dre: Umm.
Art: Pretty dramatic, I bet. 
Ali: [laughs]
Dre: [laughs] Yeah. [cross] Well what is it doing to try to annoy—
Austin: [cross] I should be clear, the thing that’s about to happen—
Dre: To annoy him. Yeah.
Austin: Yeah, so what it’s about to do is like, climb on Nicky’s head and pull on his hair and give him wet willys while giving him kidney punches, [Ali: Jesus.] it’s trying to like kick dirt in his eyes—
Art: Oh this would have been so bad. This would’ve not…
Austin: Yeah.
Dre: Mm. 
Ali: [laughs]
Austin: Yeah, this is Infuriate, it would have done 12 damage and caused enraged. 
Ali: [gasps]
Dre: Is it too simple to say that Jonathan just like, sees this happening and plucks the Flegg off of Nicky and then puts [Austin: laughs] the Flegg down on his head? And is basically just like, yeah man that’s fine. You just—
Austin: You go to town, buddy! 
Dre: You just do what you’re doing. 
Austin: Yeah!
Dre: Yeah, it’s fine. Whatever, I don’t care. 
Art: Really has younger sibling energy. 
Dre: [laughs]
Austin: Yeah! I think so, I think this—
Art: I don’t remember the relative ages of your family, but. 
Austin: Middle- middle child. 
Dre: Mhm. 
Art: Yeah. 
Austin: Is Jonathan. Yeah. I believe, is that right? Or are you the oldest? You- you’re the oldest?
Dre: I think I’m middle.
Austin: You’re middle. Okay. I couldn’t quite remember—
Dre: Cause I thought the brother was older. 
Austin: Your brother is older and your sister is younger. I think that that’s right, yeah. Alright, yeah. I think that that- I think that that means that it doesn’t do any damage to you. I think the check stays the same, I don’t think like it hits Nicky so therefore it hits you, you know. 
Dre: Mhm. 
Austin: So yeah. Unless- unless I’ve misread this, cause it doesn’t say you take the damage, it says you become the target, right?
Dre: Yeah. 
Art: You’re the target, yeah. 
Austin: Yeah, I think as written that’s what that sounds like to me. I’m not gonna dig into it too much right now, but I will between sessions. The round comes to an end. Is this round one ending? Am I wrong about that? Round two ending. 
Jack: Round one. 
Art: Yeah, it was round one. 
Round Two [0:35:00]
Austin: End of round one, okay. And as the round ends, the ground shakes and shudders and more rocks and pebbles from above begin to roll down the hill, filling in that nearby chasm that you crossed recently. And everybody give me a study check. This is not your turn or anything and there’s no fumbles here, it’s open ended. Or I don’t know if that’s—
Jack: An interlude. 
Austin: Yeah, uh huh. Oh good, Jonathan got a 16, that’s pretty good. Veile got a 12.
Jack: [gasps]
Austin: Uncle Nicky got a crit!
Ali: [gasps]
Art: Wow!
Austin: Everybody got at least a 7. Elena, you see that it is- you see that Terrapin again up in the distance. Veile and Jonathan, you can- you can make out that it’s someone familiar. Nicky, that is Jonathan’s little sister Mayabel, heading up somewhere, in front of you on the path. When you stopped—with a crit I’ll give you this and then you’ll get to do the crit thing—when you stopped to help the oxes, something must have happened? And without knowing it, Mayabel walked past you on the path towards the mountains. 
Maybe she was trying to catch up with you, maybe she was— [Jack: Oh no.] I mean Jonathan, you probably know this, you know how excited she was about some of Theo’s ideas, [Dre: Mhm.] and about becoming a real reporter and about—you know, maybe she overheard you getting the mission to go investigate the- what’s going on up there, you know, you heard all about the weird dragon ruins. You know she gets a light in her eye whenever something weird or cool happens. She’s so excited about the stories you brought home from visits. 
Well, she’s up ahead, and you got a crit Nicky, so that means you actually get to do something here. You get all the- you know, I made you do a roll, I’ll let you get a crit on it. So you can look at the opportunities list if you’d like to or come up with your own. Advantage, affliction, bonding, faux pas, favor, information, lost item, progress, plot twist, scan, or unmask.
Art: What page am I on?
Austin: Well this is- this is a handout, I have this in the handouts. 
Art: Oh it’s a handout. Okay, I got it. 
Austin: Mhm. 
Art: I got handouts. 
Austin: You do. 
Art: [laughs, evil chuckle]
Dre: [laughs]
Ali: Ohh. 
Austin: Okay!
Dre: That’s a good noise. That’s a good noise. 
Art: Look, advantage is the correct choice. 
Austin: Sure. 
Dre: Ehh. 
Art: But faux pas [Austin: Yeah.] could make them tell us what’s happening. Who they think—
Jack: Ohhh. 
Dre: Mmm. 
Art: We could solve this. 
Dre: You could also choose like favor. 
Art: Mm, oh. 
Dre: Or even progress. 
Austin: [laughs]
Art: Oh, I could just fill the clock. [laughs]
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: Yeah, progress: you may fill or erase up to two sections of a clock, yeah uh huh. 
Art: Alright, so that’s the right choice. I’ll fill two sections of the clock. 
Austin: What are you doing to do that with this opportunity, as you see Jonathan’s sister in the distance.
Art: I will warn her of the danger, [Austin: Mm!] showing that we are not whatever fiends these Fleggs think we are. 
Austin: What are you- are you shouting up to her in the distance?
Art: Yeah, yeah. 
Austin: What do you say?
Art (as Nicky): Look out! There’s- there’s Flegg in the road!
Jack: [laughs]
Dre: You got Flegg on you!
Austin: [laughs] Yeah, I think she looks down at you and is like squinting to try to make out if you are who you look like. And is like, 
(as Mayabel): What’re y’all- I thought y’all were up ahead!
Austin: And we move on into the next round, it’s your turn. 
Art: No we’re- we’re here. 
Ali: And that got us to, what, 6 of—
Austin: 6 out of 10. Yes.
Ali: 10, okay. 
Dre: Mmm. 
Austin: Mhm. 
Jack: I’m just checking my journal to see if I have anything…nope. I’m gonna—
Austin: Also, I should be clear, your sister walking around up there was not what was causing the rumbling of great rocks in the distance or throughout the mountains, you know?
Dre: Okay, that’s good. 
Jack: [laughs]
Art: Is she the one the Fleggs are looking for?
Austin: Ohh. 
Dre: [laughs]
Art: Probably not, but it makes you think. 
Dre: [sighs] I mean—
Jack: Entreat egg, once again. 
Dre: Oh yeah, please. 
Austin: Entreat egg? Is that what you said?
Jack: Yes. Entreat egg, once again. 
Austin: Okay, like you’re trying to talk to the eggs. You’re trying to talk to the Fleggs. 
Jack: Yeah. 
(as Elena): Brave eggs, kind eggs, I understand that you want to patrol this area, keep it safe from ne’er-do-wells, and ne’er-do-wells do stalk these mountains. But that is not us! We mean you no harm. 
Austin: Hey, that’s an 8!
Jack: Huh, eh. 
Austin: That’s an additional one. 
Jack: Eh. [laughs]
Austin: So that brings you up to 7 out of 10. The Sentishell looks at you, eyes squinting, blade now outstretched pointing at you. 
(as Sentishell): Yet you smell like death!
Jack: Ah, he does have us there. 
Art: Oh that’s the cows!
Austin: Mhm! Smells it on you though! Smells it on you though. [Jack: Mm.] Your hands were all in there, weren’t you? In the feed, in the death feed. 
Dre: Mmm. 
Jack: Yep, I know and we haven’t had like—who was the fellow who discovered germs? [laughs] That hasn’t happened yet in Perpetua. 
Dre: [laughs]
Austin: That’s right. [laughs] They only believe in the miasma in Perpetua. 
Jack: Yes. 
Dre: Yeah. 
Austin: Yeah. Alright, I’m gonna roll a 1d4 and the Sentishell is gonna leap into action here. One, two, three, that is Nicky. That is at Uncle Nicky. 
Art: Yeah, mhm. 
Austin: I think really furious at your attempt to say that you’re trying to protect that young Terrapin, you know. What a- what an absolutely, maybe not cruel, but rude and, you know—
Jack: Low. 
Austin: Low, like a bottom feeder type action to do. Eugh. And is going to charge at you with a holy sword raised high. Your physical thing was 12, right? Your defense?
Art: 11, 11. 
Austin: 11. Well it misses. With a 6, it’s gonna miss. 
Art: That’s because I am correct, this is god telling [Austin: Oh!] the Sentishell—
Austin: Okay. 
Dre: [laughs]
Art: That their aim correct. 
Jack: Does the Sentishell worship Lucenna?
Austin: The Sentishell worships the light. 
Jack: Right. [laughs]
Austin: And some things are older than any member of the Ennead. The dragons, primarily, but you know. Light, maybe also. 
Jack: Yeah, and maybe other earlier Ennead members.
Austin: That’s right. 
Jack: And then way back deeper to the light itself. 
Austin: That’s right. And would have done 14 light damage to you with this holy slash, but misses. Ball don’t lie. 
Jack: [laughs]
Art: Ball don’t lie. 
Ali: [laughs]
Austin: Ball don’t lie! Back to y’all. 
Ali: Okay I have a persuade idea here. I have the MP for this, [Austin: Okay.] if it goes well. 
Austin: Okay. 
Ali: And I think- I think Veile is gonna declare, 
(as Veile): Righteous Flegg—
Jack: [laughs]
Ali: [laughs] 
(as Veile): We only seek to heal those who are harmed with the stain you see on us. I can prove my intention. Bring me any of your wounded and I will heal them myself. 
Austin: Ooh. 
Jack: Woah!
Austin: I think one of the brown Fleggs hears this opportunity and looks at the other three Fleggs who give a sort of sharp look of like—or I guess maybe the other two brown Fleggs give them a sharp look like don’t do it. 
Ali: [laughs]
Austin: But the Sentishell nods, as if to say, let’s see what happens. We’ll take the risk. 
Dre: [laughs]
Ali: Wow.
Austin: And with fists balled up, approaches. Fists balled up and beak filled with wind, ready to launch it at you. One of them approaches. Are you casting heal on it?
Ali: Yeah, I’m gonna spend 10 MP—
Austin: Let’s—yeah, yeah.
Ali: And do the insight, willpower check. 
Austin: Yeah, give me the insight, willpower check. 
Ali: [quietly] Healing…
Austin: You know, it’s gonna heal it, but we’re still seeing how the- we’re using it as an objective check, effectively. 
Ali: Yeah yeah yeah. 
Austin: We’re playing fast and loose with these rules, [Ali: laughs] but I think it’s better to do that at this point than playing tight. Hey, that’s a 7. 
Ali: Yeah!
Austin: You get one on there, so it’s an 8 out of 10. 8 out of 10, they’re coming around! The healing light descends on the Flegg, knitting its bruised shell, and restoring its luster and vigor and it steps away. And I think that one steps back and looks at the other ones and shakes its head, as if to say, I can’t keep fighting them. 
Jack: [laughs]
Ali: [quietly] Awe. 
Art: We’re too cool. 
Ali: [quietly] Little guy…
Austin: And steps behind the Sentishell and the Sentishell nods as if to say, I understand. And then like, flexes out with the sword arm, sending its cape out dramatically as if to say, but I’m still in the fight. And I think does say, 
(as Sentishell): I’m still in the fight!
Jack: This guy’s honorable.
Austin: That’s right. The, uh, Flegg number- brown Flegg number two, I think takes a look at you—let’s actually say this is the third one because it fits better. Jonathan, the one that’s on top of your head is gonna give it another go. 
Dre and Jack: [laugh]
Austin: Now more mad because of what’s happened with its brethren here. And from on top of your head, is going to try to do the same Infuriate maneuver. Okay, you don’t want- you’re fine with having your hair pulled? Well what about having your knees bitten?
Dre: Mm. 
Austin: What’s your defense?
Jack: [laughs] That’s a good question. 
Dre: 14!
Austin: Ah, it rolls a 13! It’s one off! It’s trying so hard, but its beak is not capable of getting around those big Terrapin knees. [Dre: laughs] Those knobby, strong Terrapin knees. It’s mostly uncomfortable, but it’s not painful. 
Dre: Yeah. 
Austin: You know?
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: Back to y’all. So now Veile has gone and Elena has gone, that leaves us with Jonathan and Nicky. 
Dre: Yeah. I would also, I mean, like to do objective and I think Jonathan is entreating the Fleggs. No one has talked about the fact that it feels like the ground is moving—
Austin: Sure. 
Jack: Mm. 
Dre: So I think Jonathan shouts out, 
(as Jonathan): Hey y’all! If you really want to fight us, we can finish this later, but I think we need to get the heck out of here. 
Austin: Give me a roll. 
Dre: Okay. 
Austin: [chuckles]
Dre: 16!
Jack: Oh beautiful!
Dre: Oh and a crit!
Austin: And a crit. 8, 8, look at that. That’s enough to fill the meter! The objective is successful. They are going to—I think hearing you say that, finally, the Sentishell lowers its blade and it says, 
(as Sentishell): To me!
Ali: [giggles]
Austin: And all of the remaining Fleggs, including the one on top of- or the one biting your knees, stops and returns dutifully behind it. 
Dre and Art: [laugh]
Austin: And you know, gives you a bow. As if to say, it was simply combat. 
Jack: [laughs]
[“A Job Well Done (Fields Combat Ends)” by Jack de Quidt plays]
Ali: Oh so true. 
Austin: So true. 
Dre: Beautiful.
Jack: Wow. 
Austin: Critical success though, you get an opportunity here. 
Dre: Um…oh baby, you know what it is. 
Austin: I don’t. 
Dre: I want favor. 
Art: [quietly] Black and yellow, black and yellow, black and yellow. 
Austin: [gaps] You want favor! “Your actions earn you someone’s support or admiration.” 
Dre: I think- I think—
Austin: Yeah. 
Dre: I would love it to be the paladin Flegg, [Austin: Oh yeah.] because he sees in me a fellow guardian. 
Austin: That is correct. Yeah, I think so. I think approaches you and produces- what’s a- what’s like a sign of chivalry? What’s a gift from a chivalric knight?
Dre: Oh! His handkerchief. 
Austin: His handkerchief. Produces his and kneels in front of you and says, you know, 
(as Sentishell): Take my cloth. A symbol: friendship, honor, respect. 
Dre: Oh!
Austin: It’s a beautiful blue handkerchief. 
Dre: I’m gonna add this to my backpack. 
Austin: Oh yeah. 
Jack: I don’t—hang on, wait a second. 
Austin: Yeah. 
Jack: I still think this is good. Doesn’t the lady give the knight the handkerchief for him to carry—
Dre: Don’t worry about it.
Jack: Okay, fine.
Austin: Don’t fucking worry about it so much. 
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: Let’s see, what do you- what do you—
Dre: [laughing] Gender essentialist Jack de Quidt over here!
Austin: Yeah! Fucking ay! 
Jack: No, w—
Austin: Ugh, Guinevere wasn’t a knight of the round table, ugh. 
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: That was Lancelot, duhdaduh. 
Jack: We’re talking about chivalric symbols though, right?
Austin: Yeah, in my mind it was gonna be a little crest, like a pin or something, [Dre: Ooh.] but I don’t really know what it would be, you know?
Jack: I mean the handkerchief is really funny because the implication maybe is that a beautiful- [laughs] a Flegg lady gave the knight the handkerchief—
Dre: [laughs]
Austin: Oh I see!
Jack: And the knight has now passed this onto… [laughs]
Austin: That’s right, I see. Interesting. Well, you have it. You have it now. 
Dre: Beautiful. 
Austin: And it will remain in your favor I think, you know, until you need to call on it. 
Dre: Yeah. 
Jack: Does this Flegg have a name? That we know?
Austin: It’s the Sentishell, in the same way that the other one was the Fleggus. 
Jack: It’s the Sentishell, okay. 
Austin: Yeah, mhm. 
Jack: Do Fleggs have names? 
Austin: [sighs] Great question, Jack. Someone will have to study that one day. 
Jack: [laughs]
Dre: Oh I get it, like sentinel but it’s shell. 
Austin: Like sentinel. Sentinel, Sentishell. 
Ali: Mm. 
Austin: I worked really hard on it, I’m not really happy with where we ended up—
Dre: No, it’s good. 
Austin: But Paladin is not as—
Art: Oh I think it’s really good. 
Austin: Thank you, I appreciate it. It’s—I wish I could have done a little better, in a long enough timeline maybe I would’ve, but you know, you gotta ship what you got sometimes, you know?
Dre: Mhm!
Ali: That’s games. 
Austin: That’s fucking games. 
Ali: Shout out to [inaudible 0:49:22] [laughs]
Austin: Yeah, I think—yeah [laughs] so true. 
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: As they turn to walk away, or as they walk past you, I think the Sentishell says, 
(as Sentishell): Be wary. Evil is ahead. I hope your friend is safe. 
Dre: Mm. 
Austin: Phew! That’s the sound of its cape in the wind as it walks away, the sun setting behind it. Waylon is like—
Jack: Climbs on top of his egg charger. [laughs]
Making Camp [0:49:40]
Austin: [laughs] That’s right. Waylon goes, 
(as Waylon): [claps] That was mighty fine adventuring. Could we get to camp?
Dre (as Jonathan): I agree. I’m tired. 
Austin: The ground shakes again. 
Jack (as Elena): I think we better be hasty. Maybe find something well supported. Was that your sister up there?
Ali (as Veile): Yeah, how far ahead did she get?
Austin: How long were you at the farm?
Jack: An hour?
Ali: But we just—
Austin: Yeah, I think she’s probably like 30, 40 minutes ahead of you. 
Ali: But we just communicated with her. 
Austin: Yeah, but she’s up- she was up a higher distance. She was like up on a different tier, a different pathway, looking down at you. 
Dre: Mm, okay. You’re not saying that she like, didn’t stop to wait for us, but she is still a decent amount ahead of us.
Austin: She’s still ahead of you. Yes, exactly. 
Dre: Yeah yeah yeah. 
Jack: Right. 
Austin: Even if she started coming back towards you at this point she’s probably 20 minutes away. 
Ali: Okay, okay, okay. 
Austin: You know?
Ali: Okay. 
Dre: Yeah. 
Ali (as Veile): Well yes, if we feel like this place is safe we can start setting up here and all. Maybe we can meet Mayabel halfway.
Jack (as Elena): I’m worried about the safety. Is there some sort of ward you could place over our camp, Veile?
Ali (as Veile): Oh, well I suppose so, yeah! 
Ali: I mean, let me look at the ritual page [laughs] for the third time tonight. 
Austin and Jack: [laugh]
Dre: Yeah.
Austin: [sighs]
Ali: You’re the one with the friggin- the friggin damn dome spell you do every day. 
Jack: That’s on people! 
Ali: [laughs]
Jack: [laughing] Casting barrier on a tent, [Austin: chuckles] raising the tent’s defense value. 
Ali: [mumbling] Well, you know… Alright.
Austin: You—yeah, mhm. 
Ali: I have: extract magic from an object, activate a soul circuit, sense the presence of magic, cause the decay of physical [laughs] matter, twist the flow of time, or teleport creatures or items. 
Austin: Those are examples. You can, you know, you can extrapolate from there, but. 
Ali: Yeah…
Austin: That’s the vibe. 
Ali: I do wonder if there’s something like, you know, in the sort of physical- like in the same way that I made a, like a snow globe for us with Sincere?
Austin: Right, yes.
Ali: If there is that sort of like, shielding us both—I mean, hey, if we want to sleep for eight hours [Austin: Mhm.] and we think that this mountain is gonna collapse in one, [laughs] then a time portal would actually be kind of chill. 
Jack: [chuckles]
Austin: Yeah. 
Ali: Now that I think about it. 
Austin: Yeah. 
Ali: It’s like when Goku goes into the hyperbolic time chamber! 
Austin: Yeah. 
Ali: We get to rest, [Austin: Mhm.] and then the world, you know, doesn’t—
Austin: Continues around you. Yeah. 
Ali: For less- for less. [laughs]
Jack: Yeah, it means that—
Austin: Mhm. I like this. 
Jack: It means that Mayabel would have—she wouldn’t catch up with us straight away, but it wouldn’t be too much of a problem. You know. 
Austin: Well she would get to you faster, right? Also you could wait to do this until she gets here theoretically. 
Ali: Right, that’s kind of my idea. Like especially if Veile already suggested like— 
Jack: Yeah.
Austin: If she’s coming back. 
Ali: Somebody should go walk towards her, and then [Austin: Right.] you know, lead her back here. And presumably, I mean we sort of zoom out on these rituals a lot, but they take some time. 
Austin: They do. 
Ali: I mean, the idea that you have to—yeah. 
Jack: Yeah. Yeah, to like set up the—
Ali: Yeah. 
Austin: Yeah. 
Jack: But this would get us, like, this would let us get eight hours rest in one hour outside, right?
Austin: Yeah, mhm. 
Jack: Okay, so it’d mean that—yeah, I’m—
Austin: But that—sorry, let’s- I just wanna- actually wait. I just wanna work through this, sorry. Is what you’re doing: you’re making it so that you’re experiencing eight hours in the time of one hour from inside. You’re not like separating yourself out from—okay, like let’s say a big boulder starts falling towards you. Wh- how does this protect you from that?
Ali: I see what you mean. [laughs] Yeah, I was kind of on this Goku thing because I realized time magic, but I— [laughs]
Austin: I guess that’s my question, are you like- are you like zapping the zone of what you’re in, are you like pulling it out of the time stream for eight hours? Or are you trying to slow down time such inside of it so that in- when the outside world progresses for one hour, you feel eight hours inside, allowing you to rest. 
Ali: That’s where it ended up when I [Austin: Yeah.] realized what I am capable of, but like [Austin: Yeah.] we could say, you could say [laughs] that in a situation like this, once the boulder hits the portal it is moving at that speed as well, you know what I mean?
Austin: The slow speed. 
Ali: Yes. 
Austin: Right, I see. Okay. 
Ali: Okay. 
Austin: Yeah, so you basically have a place where the changes outside will slow once they hit the area you’re in. Will slow to a point where like, theoretically it’s possible for you to avoid them or whatever. 
Ali: Yeah. I mean, I—
Austin: I know I’m being very particular here—
Ali: [laughs] No, I know. 
Austin: But I really want to understand the- not the mechan- not the dice mechanics, but the magic of what’s happening so that I can react to it, if that makes sense.
Ali: Yeah, no I completely understand [Austin: Yeah.] cause I’m just saying a bunch of bullshit. But I- [laughing] I do think that that’s fair. 
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: But you’re moving at regular speed inside of there. 
Jack: Yes. 
Ali: In our perception of it. 
Austin: You’re living, talking, and cooking—
Ali: In our perception of it, yeah yeah yeah. 
Austin: But if someone threw a baseball- but if someone threw a baseball into it, the baseball would slow down to a halt. Or like a slow advance as it passes through. Or would it not even get to the bubble? 
Jack: It would depend. 
Austin: I know I’m being pedantic, but I’m really trying to understand it. 
Ali: No, no, [laughing] I understand why you’re saying it. 
Jack: It would depend when the baseball was thrown, right? Cause part of—
Austin: The shield goes up and someone outside shoots a gun at you, what happens?
Art: Well that sort of depends on what you believe about—
Austin: What’s this shield, which is magical or whatever, do?
Jack: Let’s see. It—
Ali: Would it like steal the inertia from it? Would it like fall—
Austin: But it’s not doing that to you, so it’s doing it to things that would pass into it after it’s established. 
Art: Well we have to be careful because it can’t be like air can’t enter it, because then the air molecules slow down and we—
Jack: I’m happy to handwave air. [laughs]
Austin: I’m not trying to—yeah, well yeah. 
Ali: [chuckles] 
Austin: I want to be clear, I’m not trying to like game hurting you. But I am- [Ali: Yeah.] but I do know what’s about to happen here. And so I gotta understand where you’re gonna be in it. 
Ali: Right, yeah. Well, I mean we can get away from the idea that I only had because it was interesting because it happened in Dragon Ball. [laughs]
Austin: No, I like it a lot, because it’s- I think it’s gonna get us to an interesting place, but I need to know— [Jack: Yeah.] I need to be able to say things [Jack: Okay.] that aren’t gonna- that you’re not gonna be able to say, well that doesn’t make sense cause that’s not how the time magic I just did works. You know?
Jack: I am taking a guess as to what is going to happen, and I think that the most interesting answer to what happens if, in this example, someone fires a gun outside and it hits the thing, is that when it enters the bubble, it starts moving extremely slowly as though it’s moving through tar or something. 
Austin: But outside you would- but if someone outside of the bubble shot somebody else, you would see that happen at fast speed? At normal speed?
Jack: Oh, uh yeah?
Art: No, we’re moving faster. 
Dre: Yeah, I—
Austin: That’s the thing. 
Art: So if something enters during—
Jack: [laughs]
Dre: I feel like it would be opposite. I feel like it would be- it would look slow, [Austin: Outside.] and then once it hits the bubble it speeds up—
Austin: Well this is—
Dre: To match our tempo inside.
Austin: That is my—
Art: Although we could make a case that increased air resistance would be an issue. 
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: I don’t care about air resistance, I really want to stay in the magical, which sounds so stupid, I understand. But I’m—this is exactly the thing, right, if you’re moving super fast in there, which is what actually is happening—or, again, we can get away from physics and just say you’re out of the time stream in some special way. I’m not trying to—
Jack: That might be more helpful. 
Austin: I’m not trying to ground us in the physical reality of the situation because I don’t need to talk about metabolism and breathing and air molecules [Dre: laughs] like I really don’t. I just need to know what happens if something happens around you and what it would look like [Art: What—] for you and how- what is available for you to respond to it. 
Dre: Mm. 
Art: I think there’s three ways to think of it. One is: it’s moving slower than us so when it comes in, it’s moving slower. Because the- [Austin: Right.] when it got its momentum it has its total momentum and when it comes in, that momentum is the same and so it is moving slower. 
Austin: Uh huh. 
Art: Another thing is to say it comes in, it starts moving way faster because we’re moving way faster? 
Austin: And so it picks up speed. Right. 
Art: And a third way to think of it is when it comes in it actually stays the same. Because— 
Austin: As what it was, but not what you were perceiving it as. 
Art: Right. 
Austin: Right. 
Art: Because it has an amount of momentum and then it comes into this area where everything has magically increased momentum [Austin: Right.] and so it also obtains magically increased momentum. 
Austin: Sure. 
Art: I think it’s the first one or the third one?
Austin: Cause that’s the most exciting. 
Art: Yeah, those are the most magical.
Austin: Yeah, okay. You’re in a time bubble, you’re setting up a time bubble, [Ali: laughs] inside of the—
Ali: Well let me see what the damn ritual is, right?
Austin: Yeah, let’s see what the damn ritual- I mean the ritual is small, a few humans, a small clearing. And it’s—what is it, medium?
Ali: Yeah. Create an illusion, treat a weakness, locate someone— 
Austin: Ooh, was it medium?
Ali: Or something, sense emotions—
Austin: Right, okay.
Ali: Provide short term energy. 
Jack: And we’re gonna try and wait for Mayabel to arrive. 
Austin: Yeah. 
Jack: Before activating this. 
Austin: Yeah, but we’re gonna roll it now to make sure it works, right? Cause it’s a roll—is it a roll? It’s a roll, yeah. 
Ali: Yeah. I’m gonna pop an elixir real quick [Austin: Mhm.] with the 3 IP that I have…for—okay, that was actually worth it. Okay. And then this is gonna be 60?
Austin: Mhm. 
Ali: MP, bringing me down to…18. 60. 
Austin: Yeah. 
Ali: And then that is an insight, willpower check. 
Austin: Uh huh. 
Ali: Time bubble ritual…
Austin: Time bubble ritual.
Ali: To hang out.
Austin: You’re getting it ready as Mayabel is coming, right? You see her in the distance, she’s getting closer. [Ali: Mhm.] The ground is rumbling, more pebbles and rocks are falling. You’re in as safe a place as you can, there’s an outcropping above you. You know, you’re not just like- you’re not like standing on the chasm, you know, [Jack: laughs] but you can see that chasm that had filled in in the distance. And so you’re- this is the—she’s almost here as you’re ready to cast it. 
Ali: I feel like- I feel like I’m walking in front of a bullet, [laughs] but it’s okay. I’m just gonna hit this button and it’s gonna be fine. [pause] A- oh that is a critical fumble. 
Austin: [clapping]
Dre: [laughs loudly]
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: Let’s fucking go!
Ali: [laughing] I don’t—
Austin: That’s the dice!
Ali (as Veile): Caliginia, Caliginia, please hear my call!
Art: [desparingly] Ohh…
Jack: [laughing weakly] My enemy!
Ali: [laughs]
Art: You’re not gonna believe what happens to time now.
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: Ohhh. 
Ali: Oh Fabula Point! I get one back. 
Austin: You do get a Fabula Point!
Ali: That means I don’t get one at the start of the next session, [laughing] so it’s like I have— [laughs]
Austin: Yeah, but you do get one now which is pretty good. Unfortunately you can’t- you can’t use it in this case cause it’s a fumble. And there’s an opportunity. Let’s see here…I get an opportunity as the GM. 
Ali: [snorts, laughs]
The Ritual’s Crescendo [1:00:58]
Austin: Plot twist, someone or something of your choice suddenly appears on the scene. That’s pretty easy. And actually, everyone’s gonna get another Fabula Point because a villain is about to show up. 
Dre: Mmm!
Jack: Oh fuck. 
Austin: Hey, the bubble goes up! And as it goes up, it goes up just as Mayabel gets into the bubble and is safe! Right before a big rock would’ve fallen and crushed her. 
And that is the least of your worries because the thing that actually shows up, smashing into the chasm that had filled up with rocks and actually making them explode out into the air—all of which you see at just terribly slow motion, right? Cause now you’re in the bubble [Ali: chuckles] seeing the world around you as these events happen in slow motion. Is the Dragon Ox, is the first ox, as it falls down the mountain and into that chasm, sending up all of the bits of the rocks that had filled it into the air. Some of them go smashing out into the sea, some of them go smashing down into Spillaway Peaks. Some of them just roll down the mountain. And feasting on it is a swarm of flies. Huge flies. 
And as that’s happening in slow motion, someone is moving around at your speed on the other side of the time bubble. It is a man in a wide-brimmed hat. Whose sha- whose face is hidden in shadows and who seems to be unaffected by your magic time bubble. I believe you got his name earlier. 
Dre: D. G. Flay. 
Austin: D. G. Flay is here. 
Ali: Ohh. 
Austin: Animal goods and services, whatever it was I said. Animal feed and other services? And I think that he approaches and as he does, you hear the sound of the insects coming up like an orchestra warming up. That sort of like, hummm! And all of the insect noises are like coming into tune around him. He is hidden under- his face is hidden under the shadow of the hat, but you can see the smile. He smiles big, with glittering teeth—glittering teeth that are of course beetle shells—in the dark. 
He does a little whistle, he whistles a little tune, and you can see behind him the insects that are devouring the ox, some of them come to surround him almost like a shield. And he looks like he’s gonna walk in after you, but he chooses not to. He stays at the very edge, maybe he leans in close enough and speaks with a surprising magical speed, such that you can hear him the way that he wants to be heard, and he says—hmm, what’s the thing he’s gonna say to you here? Separated from the time stream, that’s interesting. He says, you know whispering at the very edge of the magical bubble, 
(as D. G. Flay): What a joy! What a joy to see you work. You should find out who you’re working for, the Gambler or the Poet. Farewell. 
Austin: And takes a step back. And kind of is lifted up on the orchestral sound of the bugs. This is the Decomposer. 
Ali: [laughing] Seems normal!
Austin: He’s super- he’s super normal. 
Dre: Mhm!
Ali: There’s nothing wrong with casting magic to decay somebody’s [Jack: laughs] physical matter!
Austin: Yeah, exactly. He’s showing that it’s totally normal, it’s totally natural. All of the oxes in the world are going to die. 
Ali: [laughs]
Dre: I am judging Beulah a bit for buying food from this guy, I gotta say. 
Austin: Well, maybe—
Jack: No, no, no. He’s like a, you know, what are the—ah, Judge Holden is a great charmer! For sometimes. 
Austin: That’s exactly right. Sometimes. 
Jack: And then uh, and then sometimes he’s Evil. 
Austin: Mhm. You know I think actually something funny—
Jack: With a capital E. 
Austin: Might be happening here, which is like, you’re in the time bubble so you’re seeing—he doesn’t have perfect control over his form because of the weird time distillation. But normally [Dre: Mm.] all of the things that make him up move at such speeds that it’s almost impossible to know. You know?
Dre: Yeah. 
Jack: Hmm. 
Austin: Now, that was the opportunity that I got. That was not the critical fumble. 
Ali: [laughs]
Austin: That was not the failure of the time- of the time bubble. 
Ali: [sighs]
Austin: That was simply, I have a villain to arrive and give y’all a Fabula Point.
Ali: Yippee. 
Austin: The fight that seems to happen between the huge swarms of flies and the last gasps of the Draconic Ox, shakes something loose. I mean I guess they’ve already shaken a lot of ground loose, but bits of the mountain begin to fall all around you. You know, rocks are falling but you’re able to like—they come in slow, they do that version of it. [laughs] So you’re able to push them out of the way, or dodge them entirely, you are safe in here. What is not safe is everything around you. 
The mountain gives way and you see something that you saw in the office of the newspaper before you left up here. You see ruins, ancient ruins, Draconic ruins. You see the same architecture that was in the Dragon Tower. And the bit of ground that the bubble is around, you know you imagine you put a bubble into the ground and it kind of like captures some of the dirt and the rock that you’re standing on. And so like that whole section, that whole bit of ground that you’re on, begins to slide down into one of the pits or valleys. You’re safe inside of it, but the whole thing begins to slide down towards the ruins, the Dragon ruins that are there. 
And at the- as you get there, you see color like you’ve—I was gonna say never seen before, but you’ve actually seen this before. Some of you have, I think Elena hasn’t, but Veile, you definitely did. Anyone who slipped through the Dragon Path part of the Dragon Tower has seen this kind of kaleidoscopic blend of purple and yellow and orange. The whole bit of ground that you are on falls into the Dragon Path, [Jack: laughs] into the sort of strange ether that connects different parts of the world, the place where dragons live most of the time. And you fall into this. 
Ali: [laughs]
Austin: All of you plus Waylon, [laughs] plus Mayabel, have fallen into the Dragon Path. Also you should take some bonus XP because you finished that fight in only two rounds. 
Jack: [laughs]
Austin: So take 3 bonus XP. 
Ali: Plus 5 for the session?
Austin: Plus 5 for the session. 
Jack: That’s 8 XP. 
Ali: Boy…
Jack: So the Dragon Path is physical?
Austin: You slipped into it physically once before! 
Dre: Mmm.
Jack: I didn’t.
Austin: No, you didn’t. 
Jack: They did. They—
Austin: But everybody else did, yeah. 
Jack: Yeah, they were just like walking through a building [Austin: That’s right.] and a bit of the building had been torn through with—yeah. 
Austin: Yeah. 
Jack: Okay, interesting. 
Austin: Mhm. 
Ali: Uhh, aww. Do you feel as though I acted in accordance to the prophecy?
Austin: [chuckles] At what point?
Ali: Acted against the prophecy? 
Austin: Ooh…I think- I think breaking something from its place in the Perpetuan cycle is really a fascinating action. 
Ali: [laughs]
Austin: Do you know what I mean? Like it’s— 
Ali: Uh huh.
Austin: There’s a system and you- your prophecy is that you will break the seal to the White Lectern and stop the Perpetuan cycle? Or stop the end of the world is what you’ve been told, right?
Ali: Mhm. 
Austin: I think this might be—it’s really up to interpretation, right? I think showing that you’re capable of making things that were part of a system that inevitably ended in their death and putting them in their own stream of life probably is in accordance with the prophecy? It’s the sort of thing that feels miraculous in that someone writing a propagandistic story of this would say, and look, Veile once, you know, even though the Draconic Ox was destroyed, kept this ox alive. That ox lived! Right? That particular ox continues to live. Cause you separated it from this ox, from the first ox. The only ox in the world is Old Roger. 
Ali: [laughs]
Dre: Damn!
Austin: Right?
Dre: When you put it that way.
Jack: Wow. 
Austin: That seems to fit the prophecy, right?
Ali: It certainly seems like it.
Jack: Well sort of. [laughs] Sort of, because—
Austin: [laughs] I think it maybe shifts the prophecy. 
Jack: Because when the final bell tolls, Old Roger is also gonna get got. 
Austin: You don’t know that. 
Jack: That’s true. 
Austin: We haven’t- cause dragons live- dragons are able to live from cycle to cycle. 
Jack: Yeah, but Old Roger is not a dragon. He is if anything, the world’s truest cow. 
Austin: Are you s—well that’s what a dragon is! That’s what dragons are in this setting!
Jack: [sighs] But in a different way. 
Austin: Are you sure?
Jack: [laughing] He’s horseshoe theory-ed around to—
Ali: [laughs]
Austin: [amused] Do you know how the first dragons were built? 
Jack: I don’t know. Here’s what I sort of imagined, that like—
Austin: You don’t know. I do. I know where they came from. 
Jack: You do, that’s true. 
Dre: [laughs]
Jack: On the left hand side of the timeline we have Exo, the first dragon. [laughs] The first ox. 
Austin: That’s very close actually, do you want to know what the name is?
Jack: Is it Xo?
Austin: It’s not. It is- I used the plural, it’s Nexo. 
Jack: Ohh, Nexo. And then—
Austin: Yeah, it’s oxen. Because it’s more fun to say Nexo than Exo to me. 
Jack: Or Sxo, for the British spelling, yes. [laughs]
Austin: Or Sxo or Xo, yeah. 
Jack: And then- I sort of—
Austin: Actually I didn’t use Sxo because we already have a character named Sho from Twilight Mirage. 
Jack: From Twilight Mirage. 
Austin: So yeah, just spelled it differently. Anyway. 
Jack: Nexo on the left, this is my flawed position. [laughs]
Austin: Yeah.
Jack: And then down the timeline we have oxen connected [laughs] [Austin: Mhm.] on their left to Nexo. And what Veile has done is created a new position on the right which is just Cow. 
Austin: Which is Old Roger. 
Jack: Yeah. 
Austin: It’s still an ox. It’s the only ox. 
Jack: This is the inverse of that thing Fero kept doing. 
Ali and Dre: [laugh]
Austin: It is, it kind of is. It really—yeah, mhm. 
Ali: Yeah. 
Austin: Yeah, I think you will find some- you will find various echoes of past work of ours throughout this season. 
Ali: [chuckles]
Jack: Hmm, hmm. Yeah, we were in Sangfielle for a bit there. 
Austin: We sure were!
Jack: D. G. Flay is from Sangfielle. [laughs]
Austin: Mhm, D. G. Flay is from Sangfielle. Not literally, this is not- there is no literal connection, but I am, you know. You’re playing the video game. Uh, we should go clap. 
Ali: Yeah. 
Dre: Do we- do we wanna do any of the like rest upkeep stuff or do we just want to pick up on that? 
Austin: Y’all weren’t in a real—what? 
Dre: Okay. 
Austin: When would you have gotten to rest?
Jack: [laughs]
Dre: No, yeah yeah yeah, no fair fair fair. 
Ali: [laughs]
Austin: That was a critical fumble. 
Dre: Yeah, you’re right. 
Ali: That was certainly the idea. I, however, fully restored my hit points and mind points. But. 
Austin: Because of the prophecy? 
Ali: Yeah. [laughs]
Austin: Yeah, good. Great. 
Jack: Oh good. [laughs] Cool.
Austin: That’s actually really good because that was an expensive ritual. 
Dre: Nice. 
Jack: [laughing] I’m glad one of us could. 
Ali: [laughs]
Dre: Yeah, I guess- I guess while we’re slide- while the ground we’re on slides down into a ruin is not really the time for Jonathan to be like eh, I’m gonna work on my projects. 
Austin: That’s right, yeah. 
Jack: [laughs] 
Austin: That’s the thing, is that—
Ali: If I had succeeded, we would be in a much different situation, but I did not do that. 
Austin: Mhm. Yeah, exactly.  
[“Perpetua” by Jack de Quidt plays]