Ep. 19: Questionable Measures, Part 1
Updated: Apr 29, 2019
Our heroes finally have access to the answers they've been seeking. They receive some of them.
Listen as they:
SLOUCH in the pout corner!
CONSIDER an ambush at a discount!
BERATE their brain boy!
TRANSCRIPT (Downloadable Version)
Previously, on Quest Friends…
[Opening theme, “Friends” by Miracle of Sound, begins.]
Hallie (as Hopper)
Oh, gross!
Tom (as Xoc)
Get it out, get it out, we have to get it out!
Hallie (as Hopper)
Okay, okay! How do you get spiders out of people?
[Laughter].
Kyle
He punches into the pillow, pulls out a handful of feather, and shoves them into Xoc’s mouth.
Kyle (as Mako)
Start punching him!
Emily (as Elee)
Punching him?
Kyle (as Mako)
Start punching him!
Emily (as Elee)
Um…
[Laughter].
Like, hard?
Kyle
And you see Sue, kneeling above the small, dwarf like man, who is bloody and battered and on the ground, motionless.
Kyle (as Sue)
No, no, no, no Marv, no, no, no no!
Kyle (as Loell)
Mama?
Kyle
A voice rings from outside.
Kyle (as Loell’s mother)
Yes, Loell?
Kyle (as Loell)
You moved the mirror to the end of the shelf again.
Kyle (as Loell’s mother)
It looks nice there!
Kyle
Everett pops out and says,
Kyle (as Everett)
Oh no, my hats!
Ari
What?
Hallie
[Laughter].
Hallie (as Hopper)
Oh my God I will buy you a hat.
Kyle (as Everett)
[Sniffling] Really?
Hallie (as Hopper)
If you just shut up about it, yes.
Kyle (as Everett)
[Softly] Yay.
[Theme intensifies]
Kyle
Alright, so we are back with our latest arc. Our new arc, we’ve got one going on. So because of that, since we’ll hopefully have a couple of new people listening in, we should probably summarize the story so far. So I’m Kyle, I’m the GM for Quest Friends, and this is kind of what’s happened so far.
[Elevator music plays].
Kyle
So our party of four heroes started their heroic journey by releasing an ancient evil that included flying obsidian tiles, black spiders, and a big armored dude with a Viking horn helmet. You then went off and you saw a picture that had the dude in it called the Heroes of Navarene, and you also found a couple of other people in that image as well, including a-a mayor who had given you that job that accidentally released that ancient evil. Our good friend Xoc, who I pronounced as Jacques through most of the game so far, got bitten by a spider and got a whole lot of visions and a whole lot of deathly poison. Uh, they found one of the doctors who was in this picture, his name was Mako, and they freed him from a doomsday cult that believes causing world war will evolve humanity. He supposedly cured Xoc, who is no longer having the spider death poison. [long pause] So that’s the story so far, how did I do?
Hallie
Good.
Emily
It’s accurate.
[Crosstalk 02:22].
Hallie
It’s what happened, [Laughter].
Tom
Sure.
Kyle
It’s what happened in a way. Alright, so before we continue, I want to ask three basic questions. So one, when you’re first trying to get into Mako, this guy named Hairy Jerry, whose daughter you ended up saving by freeing Mako gave you a ruby. You never actually used the ruby, and you promised you would give it back to him. But you haven’t told me that you have yet. So did you end up giving that ruby back to Jerry?
Hallie
Absolutely, yeah. Sometime off screen.
Kyle
Okay, so y’all gave it back to him. The second is, The Jagged Dream, this doomsday cult that you saved Mako from, was creating a pseudo-scientific bioweapon called ANNEX. Now last we saw, Xoc had taken ANNEX, uh, and he had it. So Xoc, did you end up giving that to Mako, or are you still holding on to that?
Tom
I am still holding on to it, unless someone took it off my unconscious body, that is.
Kyle
Okay, did anyone creepily just steal a bioweapon from their close friend’s unconscious body?
Hallie
Nah.
Emily
Not it.
[Laughter].
Tom
Thank you, friends.
Kyle
And Mr. Mako, being an ethical doctor, also did not take that. Cool! And then the last question is that, the end of last session, Misha tried to just leave the whole party. They just tried to up and get out of there.
Emily
Rude.
Kyle
Xoc did stop them, but so far, according to me and the audience, you are the only two that know about that incident. Did you mention Misha’s attempt to leave to the party to everyone else?
Tom
Uhh-
Ari
Misha didn’t. Like, Misha wants to keep the whole thing secret if possible, but—
Tom
Xoc, uh, didn’t need words to know to keep it secret. Sure, Xoc wasn’t going to tell anybody.
Kyle
Okay, so Hop and Elee just thought they had a regular old fun, normal, happy-go-lucky day, no emotions there. Uh, cool. In that case, we are on the next morning. And after your vacation day of many misadventures, you all meet up with Mako, who has been set up in a wide, empty farm house.
As you walk in you can see that he and Shauna have been hard at work disassembling the whole poor place. Tubes and wires coil around the wooden posts on one side, like vines on a starved tree, and they’re connected to a variety of Numenera and two large vials. One is labeled Apocrita, and it’s filled with this deep, black fluid that has crimson flakes and rotates consistently around its cage like a pacing animal. The other, labeled ANNEX, is completely empty. On the other side, the posts have been just flat-out removed, and the ceiling is instead being held up by the Mauve and Mako covered wagon, which is lying on its side.
In front of you, Mako is sitting cross-legged on the floor, his eyes closed. He is reciting an endless stream of jargon, which we as listeners would recognize as 21st century chemical and biological names. But to the party it sounds like complete and utter nonsense.
[05:11]
As he’s reciting that, Shauna is standing nearby and translating this nonsense into more understandable, but still very complex, modern day notation. And by “modern day,” I mean modern for the characters. They’re—it’s like very, very futuristic notation for us as listeners.
And one last thing is Misha, you can feel the Datasphere’s presence in the room. It seems that Mako is retrieving this information by channeling the Datasphere.
Ari
Right.
Kyle
So you all step in and as you do, Mako pretty quickly stops what he’s doing, and he stands up and he happily points to all of you and he says:
Kyle (as Mako)
Oh, hello friends! How was your day off?
Hallie (as Hopper)
Alright.
Tom
Xoc is going to go sort of to the corner. Like, I’m imagining a doorway here, right?
Kyle
Yeah, yeah, yeah, [crosstalk 5:53] to the door.
Tom
Goes to like the side of it, like, along the wall, leans on it, like, arms crossed, huffing, like:
Tom (as Xoc)
[Mumbling] You know, went into town [?? 6:00].
Tom
Mutters-
Kyle
[Mocking] “You’re not my dad, whatever.”
[Laughter].
Kyle
Yeah, you stand there, uh, and actually as you go next to that corner, you see that Everett had been sulking in that corner—
[Laughter]
But now that somebody else is sulking in the corner with him, it’s no longer cool, so he gets up and he leaves the building.
Tom
I’m never allowed to have [crosstalk - laughter 6:22]. This is my fate.
Kyle
Well Mako says:
Kyle (as Mako)
Well that’s excellent. And by the way, Misha Jarvis, did you know that the Gendarme soldier that you threw into the bottomless pit of my boat is an excellent chef? I wasn’t able to get to him until late last night, and he was able to survive by turning an assortment of random metal objects into an exquisite crème brûlée. I believe I gave him a little recommendation over at the saloon, and he’s having a great career already.
Ari
When Mako first starts saying like, “Did you know that the Gendarme soldier,” they are going to have like a split second panic look in their eyes. And then when they continue and they realize that it’s the one that they tossed off the boat and not the other one—
[Laughter]
—they are going to look visibly more relieved, and then they’re just going to be like:
Ari (as Misha)
Oh, well, I certainly look forward to tasting those culinary features at some point in the future.
Kyle
Oh, and you’ll have the money to do it, too. Hairy Jerry was super-grateful that we saved his daughters, and you got back a priceless family heirloom, apparently. And he and Fasten have contributed to give you a pretty substantial payment. And he points over to a table and you can see that, in nice little bags with little happy macaroni faces drawn on them, are four bags, one for each of you, and inside, if you pick them up, you’ll find 20 shins apiece.
Hallie
Aww.
Kyle
And after you grab your money, out of the upturned boat you see Mauve come out of it, and it looks like she’s wearing these like, thick, mechanic’s gloves, and she’s got oil all over herself, and she’s just dusting herself off. And she’s really tired, but she kind of weakly waves hi to all of you. And Mako says:
Kyle (as Mako)
Well, I suppose with all pleasantries out of the way, I assume all of you have quite a lot of questions. And after the wonderful favors you gave me by freeing me and helping stop a world-ending cult, I suppose that’s the very least I can do, is give you, hopefully, a couple of answers to the questions you might have.
Emily (as Elee)
We’d appreciate that.
Kyle
Wow.
Tom
Xoc is going to glance over at that and say,
Tom (as Xoc)
So what is it? The cloud thing that we woke up?
Kyle (as Mako)
Well, it’s bad news, more or less.
Kyle
Mauve will respond,
Kyle (as Mauve)
It’s called the Apocrita, and we don’t know much about it. It appeared 40 years ago, and it consumed everything it ran across. What did--what did you all see when you went back to Rhubarb?
Tom (as Xoc)
Everyone had frozen where they stopped.
Emily (as Elee)
Almost everyone.
Kyle (as Mauve)
That’s kind of the weird thing when we say it consumes everything.
Kyle (as Mako)
It’s actually really rather impressive if you think about it. You see, the Apocrita is a hive mind. Most hive minds you’ve heard about are the kind that will do something to the bodies once they consume them. They’ll either absorb them into themselves, or they’ll otherwise find a way of disposing of them. The Apocrita realizes it doesn’t need that. The most valuable thing we have is our minds. And so that’s all the Apocrita takes before getting up and moving to its location.
Kyle (as Mauve)
It took us awhile to realize that it did this. For the longest time, we just thought it was freezing people. But the more cities the Apocrita took over, the more we realized it changed.
[Melancholic music plays, invoking a reminiscent tone.]
When the Apocrita first appeared in this titanic black cloud that was cut into 1,000 pieces by streaks of frozen, green lightning, it would make soldiers. And when it first appeared, they looked pretty much identical: They were these large, rotund figures with joints that looked like they had been made out of vines or something. But, the more cities it took over, the more people started showing up.
[10:17]
Kyle (as Mako)
It seems that the Apocrita harnesses the memories of whomever it chooses as its temporary hosts, and, through its memories, it’s able to recreate an admittedly relatively imperfect copy of its victims. And then it uses that imperfect copy to create an army to add more spiders and make more victims, and so on and so forth. The cloud gets bigger, its database gets larger, and, well, eventually there is only one consciousness in the Ninth World.
Tom (as Xoc)
How did you stop this thing before?
Kyle (as Mauve)
[Scoffs]. We didn’t, Xoc. We didn’t stop it at all.
[Music resumes.]
The reason we were able to figure out how the Apocrita works is because every time it attacked a major city, it would immediately go to the city that was most related to it, the city that its inhabitants had the most memories of. And so once we figured out this pattern, we were able to predict where the Apocrita was going to go. We were able to predict that maybe it would start in Auspar and go to Shallamus, and then maybe, you know, skip over Fasten because Fasten was so small that no one would really have a lot of memories of it and go straight for some place like Charmonde or Qi.
We never fought it. We-we tried once, and almost all of us died. And so from that point on, all we did was go from place to place trying to evacuate as many people as we could.
Tom (as Xoc)
Then why did it stop?
Kyle
Mako is going to pipe in, and he’s going to say:
Kyle (as Mako)
To be honest, Xoc, we don’t know how it stopped. We were in Bodrov and trying another evacuation, but this time the mayor did not believe us, thought we were some sort of spies, if that’s a story that sounds familiar to you at all, and he refused to evacuate. And we didn’t have a plan. Bodrov is on top of a tall, thin tower. It’s very hard to get in and very hard to get out—[Clears throat]—if you’re coming from the ground. If you’re coming from the sky, however, you’re completely defenseless. The only reason Bodrov didn’t fall is because our leader, Aegon Stormbreaker, heroically flew into it, and [scoffs] he did something. I don’t know what he did, but he saved us all.
Tom (as Xoc)
Is he the guy with the armor? The helmet with the horns? The Xi-Drake?
Kyle (as Mako)
Well, I uhh, I suppose that solves that mystery. Yes, you, all of you and Aegon are at this point fairly well acquainted with one another.
Hallie
Um, at this point did we agree that Hopper has the picture that we took from Sue?
Kyle
You can if you want.
Hallie
I took the picture, because I want to have taken the picture. So I’m going to pull it out and then hand it to him and be like,
Hallie (as Hopper)
Is this, this all you?
Kyle (as Mako)
Oh, the picture of the Heroes of Navarene! When we first formed, Aegon was insistent that we had to take this picture. Apparently in one of his ventures out as an Angulan Knight, he ran across a townsfolk of people who believed that taking pictures would trap your souls. And most of them treated it as horror, but he thought well, if we’re going to be a combined unit and we’re going to work well together, then we might as well find a way to combine our souls together as best we can. So yeah, he had us take that picture pretty quickly. Silly superstition of course, but the sentiment was good.
Emily (as Elee)
Was it?
Kyle (as Mauve)
Aegon chose to overlook the trapped part of it. Uh, he was a little recklessly optimistic at times.
Emily (as Elee)
Oh, I uh, never met anyone who was recklessly optimistic.
Emily
Then I want to eye specifically Xoc and Misha.
Tom
Wow.
Hallie
This is some shade.
Tom
Bad enough that I get this shit from Kyle.
[Laughter]
Kyle
Ohh…
Tom
Xoc is going to say,
Tom (as Xoc)
You said he flew into the swarm?
Kyle (as Mauve)
Flew right into it. He didn’t wait for us to back him up, he didn’t wait for our opinion. He just, he went by himself. I think more than anything else this proves that only a fool would do something like that.
[Dramatic, ominous music rolls in.]
Tom (as Xoc)
That’s a pretty big assumption, don’t you think? We don’t actually know what happened to him, or if he’s really alive. We just saw his body in the center of the swarm underneath the mountains in the Riage. That’s a long ways away from where he faced the swarm, and we don’t know what happened in there. It might have been the only way to stop more people from dying, and whatever it did, it kept it asleep, at least for a little while.
[14:57]
Kyle
Mauve is going to look you straight in the eye.
Kyle (as Mauve)
Are you really going to fight me on this, Xoc?
Tom (as Xoc)
No, I’m not fighting.
Kyle (as Mauve)
No, are you really going to fight me on this? Are you going to say that it was a good idea? He ran off by himself, he didn’t have his team to back him up, and now he’s either become the Apocrita, or better yet, he’s dead and his body is used as some sort of hellish host for this thing that he so desperately wanted to destroy. He may have prevented it by 40 years, but we’re not much better off than we were earlier.
Tom
Xoc will just sort of look down and say,
Tom (as Xoc)
Well I’m not the one who tried to blow up a city.
Kyle
Mako is going to look at you for a second, and actually right next to him, it looks like Shauna wants to pipe in and like correct you on something. But he kind of like raises his hand and he’s like, I’m not--I’m not going to fight him on this. Like you can kind of tell he’s like, this is kind of like, I’m not going to fight him on this, this is fair. And he’s going to say:
Kyle (as Mako)
Well, I can’t argue that I’m anything other than a pale imitation of the kind of hero Aegon was, but there are few people who would hold up to that kind of greatness. Are you all familiar with the Angulan Knights?
Hallie
Hopper nods.
Emily
I’m probably vaguely familiar with them.
Hallie
[jokingly] I wore their armor once.
Kyle
For a caricature that we had with your dads.
Hallie
[Laughter]. For a caricature, yes.
Tom
Xoc nods but like doesn’t say anything.
Kyle (as Mako)
All the Angulan Knights have a very interesting way of thinking.
Kyle (as Mauve)
They’re bullies. They’re horrible, horrendous white knightin’ bullies who just walk into any place they can, defeat the big bad guy and then walk away with little care of what disasters they’ve made. They practice a kind of morality that favors purity over what’s actually ethical and empathetical. I mean, you can even tell it in their motto, “No force too great, no cause too mighty.”
What that motto doesn’t say is that there definitely are people too small and causes not nearly glorious enough for these wonderful white knights. And Aegon, he was as bad as the rest of them. He went from place to place going and beating the big bad guys and often leaving whatever poor city he passed by worse than it started off with.
Kyle
But, Mako is going to put his hand on Mauve’s shoulder, and you can see that she is beat red at this point. She sounds very, very calm, but you’re pretty sure that like--actually, a fly comes by and buzzes right by her ear, and she just whips out a rapier and without any hesitation stabs it. Um, she is in a very bad place right now.
Emily
Elee is going to look thoughtful, be like,
Emily (as Elee)
I think I might have stabbed one once.
Kyle (as Mauve)
Well, I wouldn’t say they didn’t deserve it. So Aegon was one of these Angulan Knights, and for awhile he was pretty bad.
Kyle (as Mako)
But we soon found out that he was a little bit different from the rest. You see, Aegon’s priority was not beating the bad guy. It was saving the good guy. Helping protect people as best as he could. And that’s what he did.
[Upbeat music begins]
As soon as he was able to, he got out of the Angulan Knights and went from place to place saving people and, well, picking up a couple of us he saved along the way to help him out. We were called The Heroes of Navarene. I was the medic, Mauve was the muscle, Sue was the diplomat, and then Marvy, good ol’ Marv Strongarm, was our mechanic. And of course, there was finally the Professor. And she is—she’s interesting. She was our connection to the Datasphere, to other worlds, to our own selves—she often knew us better than we knew ourselves.
And Aegon, he was our leader, and he led us so many places. I think that’s why he left us with the Apocrita. A success with the Apocrita still meant half of a city was lost. There was no saving everyone in that case. I think after awhile it started to get to him.
Emily (as Elee)
No offense, but leaders don’t leave people behind.
Tom
Also, it’s worth pointing out that since his little bicker with Mauve and Mako, Xoc has like slumped into the corner, where before it was like a defiant, pouty lean, now he’s just sort of like, trying to shrink back into his cloak and pulling it down over his head and just staring at the ground.
Kyle
Aww.
Tom
Like he feels kind of ashamed of what he said.
Hallie
Classic acting out. Hopper will say,
Hallie (as Hopper)
So what do we do now?
Kyle (as Mako)
Well, that’s the big thing. It’s whatever you want. I suppose the first thing I need to ask is, Xoc, do you still have ANNEX?
Tom
He nods.
Kyle (as Mako)
Would you be willing to hand it over?
Tom
He reaches into his cloak, or his robe I should say, and pulls it out, extends it, walks over and hands it to Mako—
Kyle
Okay.
Tom
—but doesn’t meet his eyes.
[20:00]
Kyle
Mako is going to give it to Shauna, who is going to stick it in that jar that’s labeled ANNEX, and you’re going to hear—
[High-pitched wailing.]
—this horrible crying out, as if like ANNEX itself is screaming, begging to be let go and released and then, within moments, it’s going to fade and disappear—
[The wailing fades out and ends.]
And Mako is going to pick it out and he’s going to throw it back to Xoc and say:
Kyle (as Mako)
Keep that, it might be helpful for you.
Kyle
What you have is this little orb that it can basically store—it can store light and gases, if they’re effectively funneled through. So you can’t like, lift it into the air and be like, come to me light, come in my little device. A lot like in Charmonde they had those little things where they were able to funnel that kind of liquid light through—
Tom
The keys.
Kyle
—the keys. This is basically one of those keys. So it could work on one of those things, or you could maybe find some way to jury-rig it so you can put some other substance in it.
Tom
To be clear, this is an orb and not a rod or a cylinder, right?
Kyle
No, this is a little orb. It kind of looks like a snail, so it’s got this little like, snail shell thing which is glass, and then where the snail head should be, there’s this little metallic funnel that’s used as the keyhole. So that’s just a little artifact that you got that you can use.
Tom
[Nancy Drew voice] I should hang on to this!
Kyle
[Laughter].
Hallie
Can’t use that yet.
Ari
I got that reference.
Kyle
Alright, and then as he throws it back, he says
Kyle (as Mako)
Well, we beat ANNEX, but the unfortunate fact of the matter is that the Jagged Dream probably has a plan B. they’ve been working on this for years. About five years ago, they had this massive Coup of Ancuan, and from what I can tell they’re trying to get a war between them and the Pyranthion Empire brewing.
Kyle
And outside of character, I do know it’s called Pytharon, but we’ve been calling it Pyranthion and we like how that sounds, so it’s the Pyranthion Empire now.
Kyle (as Mako)
They’ve been causing trouble over the Steadfast for the last couple of decades. Starting that war between Qi and Navarene was endgame, and I know that they have at least one other plan they’re putting together in case this one fell apart. So that’s what I’m doing. That’s where I’m going. And you all—you can leave if you want.
Kyle
And he points to Xoc and he says ,
Kyle (as Mako)
Xoc, I was able to get out most of the Apocrita from your blood, and by my estimates, whatever small amount remains shouldn’t be more harmful than aging itself. That being said, with your consent I would like to keep what I extracted to develop, let’s say, less barbaric methods of recovery.
Kyle
And as he says that, you can still feel the bruises from your ribs—
Hallie
[Laughter].
Kyle
—from when Elee was punching you, and you can’t taste the feathers anymore, but their texture somehow has stayed on your tongue for the past 48 hours.
Emily
Elee looks a little bit guilty, and like,
Emily (as Elee)
H-he told me to!
Tom
Xoc briefly considers asking what on earth they did while he was unconscious and/or dead, but thinks better of it and says,
Tom (as Xoc)
[Exasperated sigh], but w-what about the Apocrita? We woke it up! It’s all happening again! They’re going to kill everyone if we don’t do something.
Kyle (as Mako)
Yeah, and we’ll find a solution, Xoc. But I mean, we can’t go into the Apoctita if it’s going to kill us or turn us into some zombie or whatever it is it needs to plan. We need to develop an inoculation before we try to fight it.
Tom (as Xoc)
Hmm. Did Aegon ever keep a journal or notes or anything?
Kyle
Mako is going to think to himself, he’s going to be like,
Kyle (as Mako)
N-no, his only notes were in his brain, and well, the only two people with access to that would be the Apocrita itself and, I guess the Professor.
Tom (as Xoc)
Hmm…
Hallie (as Hopper)
Where is the Professor?
Kyle (as Mako)
Last we checked, she’s doing some sort of professorship in Qi. We’ve been keeping tabs on account of the upcoming war, although I don’t think she’s been putting as hard of a focus on it as we have.
Ari
Um, Misha is going to say,
Ari (as Misha)
Would this professor have further information that we could use to help you in defeating this monster?
Kyle (as Mako)
She might. I think she might. But we need to develop that inoculation first. With this thing going around everywhere we need to have that insurance before we can do anything.
Ari (as Misha)
What is needed to develop this inoculation?
Kyle (as Mako)
Well I’m glad you asked!
Kyle
He’s going to go over and you’re going to see kind of what looks like a medikit, you know like the defibrillation kits that you can open them up and then inside there’s the defibrillator and all their stuff? He’s going to say,
Kyle (as Mako)
So I’m pretty far along in the process of creating the inoculation. I think one more day or so, I should have it together. But the thing is, when delivering this inoculation, you’re going to have to have some armor yourself against the spiders. I’d be very careful to make sure none of it got on me, and that really impeded my process to help Xoc. What I’m currently working on is a flexible glove, made out of azure steel--
Kyle
Which Elee would recognize as what her claws are made out of.
Emily
She’s going to like, wave her fist.
Kyle (as Mako)
Now the issue with azure steel is that it needs a very high surface area to meld. So I need granulated azure, which, I mean, we could find in Charmonde, but I don’t think we’d be welcome back there.
Hallie (as Hopper)
Hmm, probably not.
Tom
[Chanting, hushed, quietly pounding on the table] Heist, heist, heist, heist, heist.
[24:58]
Kyle (as Mako)
But, Mauve and I know of a black market.
Kyle
And Mauve’s going to say:
Kyle (as Mauve)
It’s a trap, Mako…
Kyle (as Mako)
And, we got something conveniently this morning with coupons for it.
Kyle (as Mauve)
It’s a trap, Mako.
Kyle (as Mako)
So, these five-finger coupons, whoever they are, have given us some pretty convenient things that I think we might just want to go shopping for. And there’s a whole lot more than just this pliable azure.
[Whimsical music begins .]
Kyle
And he pulls out this little packet of coupons and there are five things on the packet. So the first is “pliable azure: create an indestructible suit of human armor.” The second one is what’s called the Macy Day Hat Pin. It’s a small hatpin of a mace. And because this is our version of Numenera and things that are written can talk, assume that anything I say is verbally spoken by the coupons. So this mace pin has googly eyes on it, and a little word bubble that verbally says, “Hi! I’m Macy Day! I sure love … to kill!”
Hallie
[Laughter].
Emily (as Elee)
I want it!
Kyle
And there’s a little thing that says,
Sentience not included in this otherwise still very deadly hatpin.
The next one is a coupon for rap-tap-tatters, which are dark business shoes that make delightful tip-tap sounds when worn. The sound has actually been written in on the coupon as onomatopoeia, so you’re able to hear what it sounds like. They also have small wings coming out of the heel that occasionally flutter and light up.
The next thing is the Historical Adventurer’s Journal. It’s a complex book that even when brand new just has a dizzying assortment of loose papers and Post-It notes scattered across it. It includes pages made for maps, pages made for notes, pages made for fluctuating lists of enemies, and best of all, it claims to have been used by a whole host of historical adventurers throughout history. And you know those CDs where like, it has these songs, and then the song list comes up and it occasionally plays the song that’s highlighted? It has that, and then like it has the voice of the adventurer narrating whatever thing they did.
And then finally, the last thing, which actually doesn’t make any noise, there is a picture of a small locket, which is about the size of a pocket watch. There’s no exciting description for this one.
All this is under a banner of Five Finger Coupons, which is centralized in a city you’ve never heard of called Roulettia, and they all have the tagline, “Buy none, get one free deal!”
And beneath all of it, it says:
“Terms and conditions will apply.”
Hallie (as Hopper)
Oh, this is...a trap. [Laughter]. This is …
Tom (as Xoc)
So, someone is trying to lure you two into a trap in this place?
Kyle (as Mako)
You’re exactly right, Xoc. Someone is trying to lure us into the trap of spending more on things we don’t need, by trapping us in with good, good savings!
Kyle
And Mauve has her head in her hands by this point.
Tom (as Xoc)
And you two both know best how to contact the professor. So we could go pick up the materials you need while one of you somehow gets a message to the professor, and we could all work on fixing this?
Kyle (as Mako)
Sounds like a plan to me! But I really wouldn’t worry! Roulettia is deadly enough as is! It is the black market. Somebody is going to try to kill you anyway.
Hallie
Hopper will just shrug at that and be like,
Hallie (as Hopper)
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Ari
Misha is going to say,
Ari (as Misha)
I do not understand why the color of a market reflects whether or not someone will try to kill us, however I will strive to be careful regardless.
Hallie (as Hopper)
Oh, it’s a phrase, Misha. A lot of illegal stuff goes on there.
Ari (as Misha)
Are all of the materials black?
Hallie (as Hopper)
No, [Laughter].
Kyle (as Mako)
Roulettia’s stock is so vast that if you want something in black, I’m sure they have it.
Ari (as Misha)
I will attempt not to buy anything black to be extremely careful about this endeavor.
Hallie (as Hopper)
Okay Misha.
Emily (as Elee)
So-so I just want to clarify really, really quick: Mako, you know this is a trap, right? You’re aware that this is definitely a trap?
Kyle (as Mako)
I mean, this is a city that’s basically a giant casino, and as we all know, casinos are massive traps.
Kyle
Mauve is going to put her hand on his shoulder and just mouth to you:
Kyle (as Mauve)
I’m the one that’s coming with you.
Emily (as Elee)
Oh, thank goodness.
Hallie
[Laughter].
Kyle
And she’s going to turn over to Mako:
Kyle (as Mauve)
Well, since this is their first time in Roulettia, we should probably gear them up with something.
Kyle
And he says:
Kyle (as Mako)
Oh, of course! Feel free, just grab anything from my stock that you’d like!
Kyle
And he points back to that covered wagon, and you can see that trapdoor that he retrieved all his gear from when you were escaping. You see that trap door is completely open and he kind of encourages you to go inside and get a couple of cyphers.
Hallie (as Hopper)
Cool, thanks!
Kyle
Do you want to do that?
Emily
Yeah.
[Ominous music begins.]
Kyle
So you go down a cold ladder into a large, empty space. At the bottom of this space is an inch of water with a very thin sheen of ice on top of it that breaks up in chunks, kind of like the top of a fresh mug of root beer. On the end, you see this massive table of a variety of Numenera, and on the corner of it, a large, massive pile of well-worn pulp romance novels. Tready is inside there too and he seems to be going around looking for parts and picking them up and throwing them inside of himself.
So I need everyone to roll me—
Ari
Oh, boy!
Kyle
—a one D12.
Ari
Are we using dice?
Hallie
D12!
Kyle
We’re using dice!
[Dice rolling in background.]
Hallie
Deese!
Tom
My beautiful one D12. Away to me, die!
Hallie
This is a 20.
Emily
I found my 12!
Hallie
A two!
Emily
Five!
Tom
I also got a five.
Ari
I rolled a three.
Kyle
Hop, when you look around, the first thing that catches your eye is a homemade gauntlet version of the vest used by the Gendarme soldiers.
Hallie
Neato!
Kyle
With a harpoon extending out from the top of the wrist, and a breakable capsule at the palm.
Hallie
Okay.
Kyle
Kind of like Spider-Man. You know how he has to put his fingers there by the palm? It looks like that.
Hallie
I want it. Okay.
Kyle
Ari, you got a three, right?
Ari
Yeah, yeah.
Kyle
Alright, so you find something that’s really neat and not at all distracting: You find a flashlight that, when turned on, lets the shadows it casts interact with physical objects.
Hallie
Oh, no!
Ari
Ooooh!
Tom
No!
Hallie
No.
Ari
Am I like Dr. Facilier now?
Kyle
And I should say, these are all cyphers. Emily, you find an orb that sends out physical ripples as the beat of quiet music plays. It has a small dial or button extending out from its otherwise smooth surface.
And then finally, Xoc, you find a mostly empty container for a substance that is simply called “Flashback Powder.”
Tom
[Nancy Drew voice] I should hang on to this!
Kyle
Are you just Nancy Drew now?
Tom
Uhh, I mean, out of character, I am. Tom in real life is probably just Nancy Drew.
Kyle
[Laughter].
Tom
Uhh, when we come back out, Xoc is going to mention,
Tom (as Xoc)
You know, it’s not really that save to hold that many cyphers close together. They do stuff to you. There’s radiation.
Kyle (as Mako)
I don’t know what you’re talking about!
Kyle
And as he does that, his moustache seems to twitch on its own accord, and actually one half just falls off. You know like in animation when like, something gets off? So his moustache like goes down two inches, like broken animation, before just popping back up onto his face. Alright. And then, are you going to do anything before kind of like leaving this room and getting set-up for this adventure?
Ari
Uh, not really.
Emily
No.
Hallie
Ehh.
Tom
Xoc just sort of like, keeps his head down. Like, “alright, I’m in trouble.”
Kyle
So two things happen before you leave this room. The first is, as you come out, Mako actually turns to you, Hop, and says:
Kyle (as Mako)
Oh, Hop, I forgot to ask; that pin of yours, that you’ve been using, what did you think of it? I’m really rather proud of its effects.
Hallie
[Laughter]. There’s a brief moment of silence—there’s a beat before Hop takes the pin and is like:
Hallie (as Hopper)
Mr. Mako, you’re obviously very brilliant, but this pin is one of the worst things I have ever used. I am so sorry to be so brutally honest. It would be really cool if you didn’t have to prick it every time to make it work.
Kyle (as Mako)
Oh, why didn’t you tell me that?
Hallie (as Hopper)
I just did!
Kyle
And as Tready comes out, he reaches inside and he pulls out a bunch of just random, mechanical things, and he takes the pin and he puts them together. And as he does, you can see what looks like kind of those old-fashioned tape recorder speakers and you can see the pin. And between them, there’s this weird kind of, I’m going to say, weird, purpleish tube. And he says:
Kyle (as Mako)
This is the key. This will connect any input—
Kyle
And he points at the pin—
Kyle (as Mako)
To any output.
Kyle
And he points at the speaker.
Hallie (as Hopper)
Okay.
Kyle
And he sticks it down and he hands it back to you and says:
Kyle (as Mako)
Now all you’ve got to do is press the button and talk into it, and anyone with a pin should be able to hear you.
Hallie (as Hopper)
Oh, that’s so much better. Thank you! I can keep this, then?
Kyle (as Mako)
Absolutely!
Hallie (as Hopper)
Thank you! Yeah, this is much better.
Kyle
And as you leave, one last thing happens. So you all make your way out, and Xoc, you’re trying intentionally to keep your head down, correct?
Tom
Mm-hmm.
Kyle
As you do, you hear Mako say:
Kyle (as Mako)
Oh, Xoc! I am so sorry, I absolutely forgot to check in. What kind of doctor am I? You haven’t been having sort of any weird side effects or encountering anything weird since you’ve woken up, have you?
Tom
Is Loell here right now?
Kyle
Loell is not here.
Tom
Oh, damn. Would have been really cool if he was just like, sitting on the side, waving.
Kyle
[Laughter].
Tom
Uh, he’ll look around for Loell, and then say:
Tom (as Xoc)
[Voice rising as the word trails] Nooooooooo?
Kyle (as Mako)
Excellent! Let me know if anything pops up!
Emily
Elee eyes him suspiciously.
Ari
Misha is going to do it as well.