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The Keys to Fairyland
56 Plays11 months ago
The Fixer, Maeve, and Calamity wake in the forest with NO CLUE where they are, or how they got there! Now adrift in a fairy tale kingdom of clockwork villagers, mysterious wizards, and Jousting Judoon, our heroes must reach the Queen and try to track down the Keys to Fairyland! The Fixer's accidentally jumped the map, into a whole new genre!
Enjoy thrills, chills, and laughs galore with Brand Osorio, Cate MacCoyne, and Pandora Beatrix, along with GM Casey Jones. Stick around for interviews with the players! Your ears are in for a treat!
Come say hi on our Discord! Be sure to subscribe and leave a question or comment! Don't forget to follow us on Twitter and BlueSky for more updates!
Send your questions and fan art to [email protected]!
And if you'd like to run a game of D&D or Doctor Who of your very own, find Casey on StartPlaying!
Music by Tabletop AudioTheme by RJ Pirchinello
With tabletop gaming as a storytelling tool, the show features the Doctor Who roleplaying game from Cubicle 7, powered by the Vortex System, designed by David F. Chapman.
Game Originally Created by David F. Chapman
Addl. Game Writing by Will Brooks, Zak Dale-Clutterbuck, Eleanor Hingley, Andrew Peregrine, John Sewell, Chris Spivey
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Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@AnywhereButNow
Learn more about Cubicle7!
Website: https://cubicle7games.com/doctor-who-the-roleplaying-game-second-edition
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cubicle7
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Cubicle7Entertainment
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Transcript
Introduction & Podcast Promotion
00:00:05
Speaker
Time travel, sci-fi adventures, and risky rolls of the dice lie ahead. Hello and welcome to Anywhere But Now, a Doctor Who actual play podcast. I'm your host and GM, Casey Jones. The next hour and a half or so holds a thrilling adventure in time and space, so let's dive in. With me is the daring crew of our time-traveling machine. Playing the Fixer is the charming and resourceful, Bran DeSorio. Hello, Bran. Hello.
00:00:33
Speaker
And joining him is Maeve Sullivan, played by the ebullient Kate McCoy. Welcome back, Kate. Hi. Finishing the TARDIS team is Pandora Beatrix as the delightfully chaotic and recently restored Calamity App. Hello, hello, hello. Capla.
00:00:54
Speaker
Are you all excited? You feel that energy? We play with the second edition of Cubicle 7's Doctor Who rulebooks. House rules mean our players begin the game with five. Count them five story points each so they're not empty-handed but don't have an embarrassment of riches either. Get ready for a collaborative, immersive storytelling experience and stick around after the game for interviews with the players.
00:01:21
Speaker
a bigger on the inside thank you to our listeners. Time is truly a gift, or it wouldn't be the present.
00:01:28
Speaker
We thank you for sharing yours with us. If you like what you hear, leave a review, rate the show, and follow us on Blue Sky and Twitter at Anywhere But Now. Share the show with your friends. Word of mouth is a huge help. Have questions or lovely fan art you want to share? Send them our way at anywherebutnowpodcastatgmail.com or come share them on our Discord. And if you'd like me to run a game for you, find me on startplaying.games. Links to everything.
00:01:58
Speaker
in the doobly-doo. This fine TARDIS crew have no idea what they're heading into. For today's adventure, they have not been told so much as the title of the mod brought to you. Wherever you're listening in time and space, this is anywhere but now.
The Pit and Memory Loss
00:02:51
Speaker
Maeve Calamity Fixer The smell of sour milk hits your nose. Sour milk and a lot of loose earth. You wake up in a pit.
00:03:05
Speaker
Little more than a hole in the ground, you are surrounded on all sides by towering walls of earth some eight or nine feet high. A canopy of green, leafy branches extends overhead. It is just the three of you. There is absolutely no sign of the auditor. This is new. Is everyone okay?
00:03:27
Speaker
Does anyone else remember getting here, or is that just me, or did... No, I don't remember getting here, just being here. Well, that's a relief. Everyone give me an ingenuity and intuition role, please. You are at disadvantage for reasons that will become clear. Trying to beat a difficulty of 15 at the moment. Exciting.
00:03:57
Speaker
So Calamity has a 15 with a one on one on the dice. I have a 14, nothing special on the dice. And a 10 with nothing special on the dice. Maeve, Fixer, the last day is a complete blank. And you have absolutely no idea where you are or how you got here. Calamity, with a 15 and a one on the dice, that is our first yes-but of the game.
00:04:27
Speaker
Yes, your internal time sense and the fact that your hair hasn't gotten any longer since the last time you looked at it or pulled it in front of your face or anything like that, it can't be more than 24 hours since your last clear, unencumbered thought. But it is a complete and abrupt blur how you got here and what happened to your memories in the meantime.
00:04:52
Speaker
Can we please have an awareness roll of our surroundings with intuition from our lovely trio? Trying to beat a difficulty of 12. I got the exact same thing, a 14. Got a 12 with a 4 and a 3 on the dice. I have a 12 and again, I have a 1 on one of the dice.
00:05:13
Speaker
The bad news is you have no idea where you are. The good news is you at least recognize a memory worm when you see one and smell one, or in this case, three of them. Currently sliming their way around on the floor of the pit are memory worms, which look to be undeveloped maggots with little pincers that are roughly about a foot long. You have
00:05:42
Speaker
Some of that milk stink on your person now that you're getting your bearings the memory worms that are down here with you explain why you have absolutely no recollection of How you got down here, however
00:05:58
Speaker
Maeve, by exceeding the needed roll, is that a root overhead sticking out of the soil? I mean, it could support weight, you have no idea of knowing right now, but at least there appears to be one hand-hold sized root jutting out of the earth overhead. Well, I think we might be able to use that to get out, and then I'm gonna jump and grab it and start trying to climb out.
00:06:25
Speaker
Beautiful. Give me a strength and athletics roll versus 15, please. Ooh, my favorite. It looks a one and a five for a nine.
00:06:33
Speaker
You fall, twisting your ankle. You are at a minus one to strength-related movement challenges for the next 60 minutes. The good news is you did not land on a memory worm. You land right next to it, and it immediately turns and starts inch-worming its way across the soil in your general direction. Anyone else want to try and get the heck out of here? I mean, that didn't go well, so maybe just let the memory worm have a sip and just call it a do-over.
00:07:03
Speaker
Yep, that actually sounds a little less embarrassing and, um, might try that, but maybe later. I'm happy to attempt climbing. Attempt being the operative word there. Can I give Calamity a leg up? I would like to do is as well. So Calamity with a plus four, which is a plus two from Maeve and a plus two from The Fixer, go ahead and try to use your strength and athletics to get the heck out of this hole in the ground.
00:07:31
Speaker
Oh, well, I guess the help did help. So I have an 18 with a six and a five. Okay, you climb out easily. Well done. Is there anything of immediate concern up here?
00:07:41
Speaker
You are in the woods. The trees are fairly thick in any direction you look in. Intuition tells you it would be very easy to get turned around. It appears to be daytime. There are shafts of sunlight poking through the trees in the morning angle. But beyond that, you cannot discern anything other than you've got two friends stuck in a hole with memory worms. It seems okay up here. I'm not really sure how to help from here, actually, though. That's okay.
00:08:09
Speaker
It's a forest, not a jungle, so they're not like vines. Put an arm down. Maeve, I'm gonna give you a leg up. And I think between the two of us, we can get Maeve out of the hole. Okay. So Karamri will just lay face down, you know, at the edge of the hole and just reach down.
00:08:26
Speaker
As Fixer attempts to give Maeve a leg up, a memory worm starts to inch closer to your foot. Fortunately, you are not barefoot, but the sooner you guys get out of here, the better. Can I please have more strength rolls from Maeve supported with a plus one from Fixer since he's trying to do heavy lifting and strength is not his strong suit.
00:08:49
Speaker
These are true things. And a full two from Calamity. So you've got a plus three to your roll right now. Strength in athletics versus 15. That is another one for nine. Can I use a story point to get out of this hole? You would actually need to spend two.
00:09:08
Speaker
to get the necessary successes.
Encounter with Daphne and Memory Worms
00:09:10
Speaker
Sign me up. Yes. So that's a big old yes butt. It's not pretty. It's not graceful. This will not be used as an example of how to successfully get out of a hole. Your butt swings in the air and you just swing a leg and just awkwardly and just claw your way out of the ground. Leaving Fixer alone in the hole with three memory worms that are just
00:09:36
Speaker
Might I borrow both your hands as I do a running leap up the wall? Very dynamic. Fixer, give us a coordination roll. Coordination rolls all around. If the companions are helping them to grab on a moving object, Fixer as well to grab on to help from above. Same difficulty, 15. Coordination and I guess athletics because that seems very gymnastic to me. Excellent.
00:10:05
Speaker
Well, I'm looking at a three and a five on the dice for a total of 13. Calamity has a seven with a one on one of the dice. I have an 11 with a six on one of the dice.
00:10:18
Speaker
Okay, Calamity almost falls back in the hole. Like she is full on top half from the belly button down, like, oh, oh no, and almost falls in while Maeve has to do more than her fair share of the lifting to again, gracelessly as a newborn calf, just flop out onto the top of the hole.
00:10:43
Speaker
You are in the woods and on the ground. Fixer and Maeve, can I get an awareness and intuition roll versus 13, please? I should have asked before actually, like, how are we dressed? You are dressed in your normal everyday clothes of the TARDIS. You have not put on fancy clothes. You are in your normal jumpsuit. Great question.
00:11:06
Speaker
At a story point, why not? Because that tells you just a little bit more. Like you were not expecting anything particularly special when you lost all memory of time and space and woke up in a pit. I rolled a 15, nothing special on the dice. Rolled an 8 with a 2 and a 1 on the dice.
00:11:24
Speaker
Fixer you have no idea where you are. The woods are not familiar and the fact that you have no memory of how you got here is at the very least a touch unnerving. You are going to be minus one to resolve for 30 minutes with only a single one on the dice.
00:11:41
Speaker
And might I also be deeply distracted by the fact that there's a hole behind us with memory worms? I'd like to lay back on my stomach and try to get a quick scan using the sonic screwdriver, sonic stylus, of the memory worms that are down there, specifically looking for other types of alien DNA present with it. So we might know if this was used in a weaponized form or if we just kind of stumbled upon them in a natural habitat.
00:12:04
Speaker
Hold that thought for one second. Maeve rolled enough to succeed to get your bearings. You are in the woods. The weather is clear, it's the morning, and you don't feel threatened immediately. Like, this kind of tranquility might be something semi-familiar to the estates that the Sullivan family has inside and outside London, for what that's worth. Fixer.
00:12:31
Speaker
Give us ingenuity and science plus two for being a Time Lord and another two for the sonic device you are using. You are at disadvantage versus a score of 15. That's only going to be a 13 with a two and a two on the dice.
00:12:49
Speaker
With two twos on the dice, you aim your Sonic down the hole and get nothing but vague feedback. There is some sort of interference or other white noise that your Sonic cannot penetrate that is making it difficult to make any kind of accurate scan on anything in your surroundings.
00:13:15
Speaker
Maeve Calamity, go ahead and give me intuition and ingenuity as you guys get to your feet. Versus 12. I got a 4 and a 3 for 14.
00:13:27
Speaker
I got two sixes for a 21. Okay, super. Maeve, your pocket reporter is missing. The last time you had it, you remembered putting it in one of your outer pockets because wardrobe with pockets is great. But as you pat yourself down just to make sure that everything's adjusted, you realize your pocket reporter is in fact gone.
00:13:46
Speaker
Calamity, your cattle prod is super duper gone. You cat your pockets and have trouble finding anything of actual use. Seeing the Fixer reach inside a jacket into one of his pockets that's bigger on the inside to pull out the Sonic stylus is the only reason that it was not also taken from his person. But you guys have been lightly rifled and forgotten in a pit in the woods.
00:14:14
Speaker
Do memory worms, like, mug people fix it? Is that a thing? Yeah, I don't think they steal things, do they? I mean, memories, but... Not to my knowledge, the only thing that they're interested in are memories. Well, I have been fully stolen from. So someone robbed us, left us for dead in the woods. Huh. I mean, at least it's a nice day.
00:14:36
Speaker
True. Calamity will lean down over the hall and be like, so have fun. I hope that our stay was interesting. Now what? We should probably stay together because this force seems confusing. I agree with that. You guys start to look around. Give me, please, an awareness and intuition roll. Please, the three of you. That is a six and a one for a 14. I have a 16 with a six on one of the dice. I have a 13 with a two and a six on the dice.
00:15:05
Speaker
The forest is thick and disorienting. You have almost no idea which way to go. You have the sinking feeling that you could get turned around a few times and not even notice. However, using the sunlight as your only point of reference,
00:15:24
Speaker
The ones of you with sixes on the dice have the slightest inclination that west is the best direction to go in. In a matter of minutes, you reach a tranquil glen, a small clearing in the woods. Sun breaks through the canopy in a quiet patch of the forest.
00:15:43
Speaker
sense of strange herbs and mushrooms scattering the forest floor reach her nostrils and possibly more. One tree in the center of the glen you'd swear it was almost shaped like a woman if she had bark for skin in a dress made of the same bark that reached all the way down to brush the forest floor with her hands stretched overhead and her arms and fingers branching off into leafy boughs.
00:16:12
Speaker
And the top of her head also continues to extend green foliage like she's wearing some kind of fancy hat. The tree appears to be resting or asleep. Walk right up to it and say, excuse me, I'm so sorry to bother you. You seem like you're resting, but if you could tell us where we are, I'd really, really appreciate it. The Fixer, pleasure to meet you. Presence and convince, versus ten. We're looking at a ten, but with a one in the four on a dice.
00:16:40
Speaker
You do manage to wake her. She seems very disoriented and foggy, and you notice the stink of sour milk. She looks at you and blinks, starts to get her bearings, and you can hear the slight shift of leaves overhead, scraping the wind and the groan of her feet, which are truly rooted to the spot. She looks at you and says,
00:17:10
Speaker
Fixer? Yes. Where's the garden? It's so hard to concentrate. I need... Maeve, Calamity, give us an awareness and intuition roll, please, versus 12. 13 with nothing special. 12 with nothing special.
00:17:29
Speaker
You see at her feet that memory worms slithering up and over and down her roots and they are leaving a slime, a translucent slime almost like a lacquer over parts of her roots on the loose floor.
00:17:47
Speaker
And as you look around, you can see, well, there's not a lot of them. The Memory Worm's muck has left a trail. Some of it is on the herbs and mushrooms, some of it is on the foliage, but they have been very slowly inch-worming a circuit across the roots of this tree person. And she seems quite out of it as a result. Can we try and get them off of her? Is there like a stick or something around that isn't covered in memory goo?
00:18:19
Speaker
You say aloud is there a stick around and there's a light cracking from overhead as a branch suitable for picking off small worms, buds into the dry leaves near your feet. All right, I'm just going to use them to try and get the worms off of her. Coordination plus two for the stick. This is not going to be difficult, but they are slippery slimy. So let's say it's difficulty of 12. It's an 11 with a one on the dice.
00:18:47
Speaker
You get one or two of them off, not terribly far away. And honestly, most of your effort is making sure that they don't inchworm their way up the branch because they're very sticky. And you manage to keep it off of your fingers, but it's in your thing. With two of the three or four memory worms off of her brutes, she blinks at you. Are you really here? Well, that's a complicated question.
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah, I'm pretty sure the answer is yes, but only pretty sure. Pretty sure. Okay. Pretty sure. I'm gonna say that I'm definitely sure that all of us are here. Otherwise, those little disgusting creepy crawlies wouldn't be quite so well fed.
00:19:37
Speaker
She has incredible difficulty moving in the slightest. And when you mention creepy crawlies, like her glance is tilted down enough that she can see one or two of the memory worms mucking across her roots and the branches overhead shake with trepidation. I feel you. That is pure nightmare fuel. How fast do the worms seem to be?
00:20:01
Speaker
Slowly, very slowly. They're just inch-worming. They have no legs. They are just tubers making their way. Since you guys have shoes on, like a well-timed kick might be able to unseat them. Beyond that, it's just the stick as a means of safely removing them. Can I try again with my stick? Absolutely. Same roll. Coordination plus two for the stick. That's a one and a five for a 12.
00:20:30
Speaker
Since it's your second one in a row, you get another one off, fling a little too hard, and some of the goop flies up and lands on your hand. What were you doing? Oh, this is, this is, how did you get in the forest, Maeve? Why? What are we doing? When did we get here?
00:20:51
Speaker
Oh sorry, we don't know. There are memory worms and they got some on you. Sorry. But you didn't forget much, it's fine, really. We were talking about it anyway. Am I caught up now? I mean, sort of. This is a tree person? Oh, you're not a tree person. Fixer, give us an awareness roll with Time Lord Training versus 12. Throw on two for knowledge.
00:21:14
Speaker
I'll take that extra two. Okay, got a 12 with a three and a two on the dice. That is a pass. In your time at the Time Lord Academy, you studied other alien species. And there aren't many that look like plants or flowers or trees or anything like that. And one of the only ones are a species called the Cheam. And if it weren't for the fact that she was rooted to the spot and had like
00:21:48
Speaker
I hope this isn't a rude question. It comes from the best of places. Are you actually a chain? I've always wanted to meet one. Oh fantastic! It might have actually been worth forgetting however long we forgot.
00:22:04
Speaker
God, forgot what? Oh, the worms. The worms, you know. So I'm just gonna sort of lie down by the two that are left on the roots and just sort of put my legs near them and be like, think about the past. Are you trying to kick them off? Are you trying to draw them to you instead?
00:22:29
Speaker
Yes, I'm trying to get them up onto my legs, which do, you know, have jumpsuits, so they're not completely unprotected, but also she doesn't super care. Yeah, that's great. Give us a coordination rule versus 14, because it's gross. These things are unpleasant, and now two of them are like, oh, oh, a new person. Let's add intuition on there to know the right moment to shake them off. Maeve is patting her pockets, and then goes, somebody's stolen my note taker.
00:23:00
Speaker
Not quite. I got a 13 with nothing special, but I am happy to spend a story point to bump that up. Yeah, spending a story point manages to lure them onto the tips of your shoes and you rock hat from the ground, kick them off onto, and they go flying into nearby bushes. Sorry! That's fantastic.
00:23:20
Speaker
the tree woman with the worms removed from her roots. You can see that the muck starts to vanish off her roots a bit, not all of it, but a bit. She clears for a moment of like, yes, yes, yes, I'm Daphne, I'm Daphne, where's Nigel? Nigel! Nigel! Where did he go?
00:23:49
Speaker
Where are you? Daphne, we will help you find Nigel. But a moment ago, you mentioned someone called the gardener. Yes, that's him. I couldn't remember his name. It was on the tip of my tongue. Nigel! No answer. What does Nigel look like? Is he a chime? Oh, he's so handsome and
00:24:14
Speaker
He's your height, and fair-haired, and he has such a nice smile, and the greenest thumb. He's such an attentive gardener, but I haven't... I don't know where he is, and I don't... I don't know why I'm stuck here, and I don't... I don't understand... NIGEL! Daphne, how might we get you unstuck? Nigel knows. He has the... I can't... The word, it won't come.
00:24:43
Speaker
but you won't need words. And there's another rattling and a bounce of something falling and sifting through the branches as a rolled up piece of paper bounces out of the bow's overhead and lands at the fixer's feet. Pick it up and open it, but with a clear eye to make sure that if any of these worms are hanging off it, I don't touch them. That's very fair. The memory worms are terrible climbers.
00:25:10
Speaker
So the muck never clears six inches off the ground. However, you unroll the piece of parchment and discover this. Can you all see this lovely map? Yes. Indeed. Yes. You unroll this thing. It's not very big and it's fairly simplistic, but you can
00:25:31
Speaker
quickly figure out your general location on the map, given a hole that has been drawn onto it and the tree with a face nearby. You have to save him, but he's not the only one. The girl needs our help. I can't help her like this.
00:25:57
Speaker
Sure. Don't worry Daphne. We will rescue Nigel. We'll bring him back to you. He can help with this problem and then you'll be able to help the girl. Do you remember the girl's name? And below you can see that the memory worms that were kicked off about five minutes ago have slowly been inching their way closer back to her roots. The name is on the tip of her tongue and there's that little
00:26:25
Speaker
below as one of them graces over her roots like my much is so hard to make sense of it find the wizard the wizard could help the wizard's helpful that's what they that's what they do isn't it they can they can help calamity is looking at other people i don't know what the wizard is it's like a magic guy
00:26:55
Speaker
Ah, well, I guess we have to find this magic guy to find the gardener. This is cool. We've got a team, you called her, and a wizard, and this map says there's a castle I'm fully in. So I am fascinated by the team, but I don't know the first thing about wizards. What planet do they come from?
00:27:14
Speaker
Uh, they're mostly, like, story on Earth, like, um, King Arthur and the Wizard Merlin, you know, they're just people who can do magic or change other people into things. I think Merlin has something to do with trees? Oh, they're- they're prophets.
00:27:32
Speaker
He's always been here. He's been here the whole time. I don't know his name, but he's south of here. You can hear the groan of roots trying desperately to reach out under the soil. And she says, yes, nice and south downhill from here.
00:27:58
Speaker
nice and downhill, and she starts to drift off against fine night, as the memory worms continue to regain their circuit around the tree. So, since I was able to recognize memory worms, can I know some things about them? I have various questions. Like, A, is the ooze, like, also bad and separately bad, or just together? And, like, is there anything they don't like?
00:28:26
Speaker
You do have two points in knowledge. So give us an ingenuity role. You are at advantage because this is the clear-headedest you've been in months. So give us an ingenuity and knowledge role. You're at advantage versus a score of 12. Can I add experience traveler to that?
00:28:44
Speaker
You can add experienced traveler to that. Fixer. You may have also heard of memory worms before, so please also give us the ingenuity and knowledge rule. You may have been asleep during that class. You may have forgotten it. Who knows? I have a 17 with nothing special.
00:29:00
Speaker
Memory worms can be quite dangerous, unchecked. There's secretion that slime wipes out memory. Even topical contact with it can wipe an entire day or 24 hours. A bite from one of these things can remove whole years, if not decades, of a person's life and personality.
00:29:23
Speaker
Fortunately, the worms at your feet don't appear to have any kind of interest in biting down. They are simply secreting as they go around the roots. You know that people have fashioned gloves to safely handle them before, and you think
00:29:44
Speaker
There might have been some kind of preventative or antidote, but you do not know the recipe, you wouldn't know how to make it, and you don't know if it would restore lost memories or simply prevent the loss of further ones.
00:29:59
Speaker
Alright, well, yeah, I think we're gonna have to find somebody who knows more about cleaning the bad yogurt juice. It's not going to do any good, it's still there, but it's, you know, it's dangerous and complicated and all that. And maybe the gardener knows, if it's like a common thing with worms to be on, chimp feet,
00:30:19
Speaker
I would like to ask if any articles about the team have crossed my path at all. Without the actual pocket reporter on your person, you are going to be at disadvantage to try and remember if any tree people articles hit your top 10 list in the past couple of weeks. Okay, I've been rolling terribly, so I'm going to switch my dice roller here at home. There you go. This is going to be ingenuity and knowledge.
00:30:47
Speaker
Okay, so that is gonna be a four and a two, a 13. Bully, yeah, you loosely remember that the Cheamer gifted healers, a lot of their planetary resources go towards medicine and healing, and they have opened envoys with other planets as a olive branch, ha ha, of
00:31:14
Speaker
peaceful intent to try and share the material wealth of medicine, but that's about all you can recall. Okay. Well everyone, keep an eye out for a basket. My kingdom for a basket in this moment. I would love to just collect these little guys up and take them away so they wouldn't continue to bother the locals. Onward to the Wizardswell? Sadly a basket does not fall out of the trees overhead. Maybe we could, um, do any of us have a jacket on? Fixer's outfit and your outfit could have a jacket if it's part of your casual wear, sure.
00:31:43
Speaker
Sure, I'll take off my jacket and if we want to put them like in the middle of the jacket, we could gather it up like a sack. I actually really like this plan. I would like to help Maeve doing this. I want to make sure we collect as many of these dangerous little guys as possible. Outstanding. I'm gonna watch. So if you forget what you're doing halfway through, I'll remind you. Somebody should remember things.
00:32:07
Speaker
Maeve, give us a coordination roll of wrangling. This is going to be a 14 because they are slippery buggers. Throw subterfuge on here because this is like tricky work. You're trying to convince something to go someplace it doesn't want to go. That feels subterfuge to me. You're at a plus two because you're using your jacket and have two points of assistance from the fixer.
00:32:32
Speaker
Okay, so that's a 3 and a 2. That's a 14 total.
00:32:38
Speaker
Okay, yeah, 14 is enough to haphazardly get these memory worms into your jacket. Did you turn it inside out first? Or did you use the back of the jacket as like the interior of the jacket as the scooping catcher? If the outside has any degree of waterproofness or like maybe mucus-proofness, I would have turned it inside out so that that is the part that is hopefully not leaking memory goo out the bottom.
00:33:08
Speaker
Smart, that's great, yeah. So after about five minutes of awkward, you manage to sling the memory worms and start to, and let go of one sleeve and the memory worms rocket off into the trees and bounce harmlessly into the bushes several feet away. Maeve, add one story point, we're creatively finding a way of getting rid of the memory worms
00:33:40
Speaker
and only soiling the outside of your jacket. I don't think that I can use this until the memory goo is gone. I'd recommend rolling it up and saving it for later.
00:33:50
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, you should, uh, you should, uh, use the stylus to add to the map memory worm hole. Cause it's not, it's not labeled. Maybe that's good idea for in the future. Right. Cause, cause you could forget and then right in the memory hole, we should make sure we're writing things down in case there are more memory worms, because be pretty bad. If we forgot everything, maybe two, as we walk, we could leave a bit of a trail behind us. That's a very good idea too.
00:34:19
Speaker
As we're making our way and leaving a trail, I'd like to start notating at each place on the map that we get to, saying how long it took us to get from place to place, and saying who was together there. So it's very clear if we look at the map, we'll know exactly how far we came. We started in this hole, we think someone mugged us, could be worms.
00:34:37
Speaker
All three of you, please give us an awareness and intuition roll. And sixer, throw on a plus two for timelord, please. And you're at an advantage because you're consciously trying to leave a trail behind you. Well, that's good, then it won't be super bad. Right. Sixteen with a six and a nine on the dice. I'm sorry, a six and a three on the dice. Nine total on the dice. Fifteen, nothing special on the dice.
00:35:04
Speaker
I've got a nine with a one and a two. It would have been two ones, but then you gave us advantage. Calamity is going great. Very exciting. Things are going beautifully. Fixer, things are not going great. You and Maeve and Calamity have been deliberately kicking up leaves as you go and a little benign snap of a branch here and there on your way and you got your nose in the map and you're moving forward and you hear
00:35:33
Speaker
rustling behind you, you notice as you turn around that the trail that you've tried to blaze settles out and renews itself back into undisturbed forest floor, probably about 10 feet behind you. It's not a question of proximity, it's a question of time. And after about 30 seconds or so, the disturbed earth and the snap branch reset.
00:36:00
Speaker
Now, is this a terraforming technology I'm familiar with, or some form of plant rejuvenation or fast-growing technique the team use that I'm aware of that might do this? You don't know. You've never seen anything like this. The same difficulty that the Sonic had trying to make sense of the worms that were in the pit extends to this. You've never seen leaves just settle themselves again.
00:36:25
Speaker
on the ground any more than you've seen a branch just mend itself again as you pass. Calamity's having a great time though, so that's good. Do I see this happening as well? You scored well. You rolled well enough to notice that the trail behind you vanishes roughly half a minute after you made progress. This is really weird, right? That the trail is just gone the second we make it. It's not like a normal thing. It doesn't happen on Earth.
00:36:54
Speaker
I have never been to a place where this happens. Okay. Maybe the whole forest is forgetting that we were here. That's as good an explanation as any. Do I... I know that my note-taker's gone, but do I have like a traditional pen and pencil with me?
00:37:11
Speaker
You pad your pockets and manage to find a pencil and a small notepad. Pad is blank. If there was any writing on pages, those pages have been torn out, but the pad and the pencil are normal. Does it look as if pages have been torn out? All right. I'm just going to keep some notes on the directions that we're heading and like on what's going on, just in case.
00:37:37
Speaker
Calamity, I would like to test your hypothesis. So far, it's the best one we've got going. Walk over to a section of trail nearby, pick up a twig, break it, drop it on the ground, step back from it, see how long it takes to repair itself. About 30 seconds pass, and there's just the shifting of the disturbed leaves, and they go back to where they were, and the twig simply rights itself like it was never broken in the first place.
00:38:04
Speaker
What happens if we try to take part of the forest with us? Like, if we just picked something up and walked away with it, what would happen? Well, then we would be rhombus, wouldn't we? Turnabout is fair play. Turnabout is fair play. We don't know that the forest took it. We'll give it back eventually. Maeve finds an experimental twig and tucks it behind her ear.
00:38:28
Speaker
Oh no, I don't do that, not after Joyvalent. I just carry it. You just carry it. You clear the forest, you step out of the forest proper and the twig stays in your hand. Maybe because you're actually holding onto it, you don't know. But the twig at least feels real enough in your hand and does not try to vanish out of your fingers. I'm gonna set it down outside the forest.
00:38:56
Speaker
About 30 seconds later, it disappears. Like it was never there. Fixer, give me an awareness and intuition plus two for Time Lord, please. Versus a difficulty of 12. Before I make this roll, my theory right now is that we are in a simulation of some sort and it's just resetting into the state that the world's supposed to look like.
Wizard's Hut and Time Anomaly
00:39:15
Speaker
Let's see what this roll tells us. Oh my, oh my. Should I even bother with doing the math? I got two ones on this one.
00:39:22
Speaker
Okay. Man, it is right out. Yeah, like you're trying to think your way through this and rolling double ones, you lose another point of resolve. You are not sure at all. Like the disorientation just sets in a little more.
00:39:41
Speaker
Yeah, the Fixer is kind of lost. Like there's no sign of the TARDIS, there's no sign of the Auditor. The forest behind you seems hell-bent on contributing to getting you lost. Looking up and around when you reach Open Sky does nothing in this moment to clarify things. A plain dirt road leads you to a small hut, a crackling fire under a cauldron, and a well of simple wood and stone nearby.
00:40:11
Speaker
Is the bird in the picture also sitting on the well? Sure. Walk right up to the bird and say, hello, are you the wizard? That didn't sound yessy. Yeah, that might have been a no. I don't think so. The three of you have your attention on the bird and you say, are you the wizard? And then without any opportunity to actually get behind you, a voice from behind you says, no, I am.
00:40:53
Speaker
old man. He has long white hair trailing down his back. He has a long white beard trailing down his front obscuring most of some multi some kind of scarf and rather than a staff he supports himself on a very long spoon. It looks like a quarter staff that the bottom has a spoon roughly the size of a coffee cup.
00:41:04
Speaker
Oh hello. That would be me.
00:41:18
Speaker
Well, hello. Sorry, we're new. What religion are you a prophet of? And do you have any taboos or anathema we should be aware of? I just want to be polite. He looks at you, blinks, and says, you know, I've never ever been asked that before. I hear that a lot. What a fascinating question. I don't adhere to strictures of a higher power, certainly not the power that's higher here.
00:41:48
Speaker
Can I get, please, a presence and convinced roll from all three of you versus a difficulty of 10? Would this count as getting an interview? I'll allow it. That's an extra two, a three and a six for a 17. I've got a 16 with nothing special. Got a nine with a two and a two.
00:42:14
Speaker
Oh, bully, thank goodness Fixer didn't fail with ones. That would have gone worse. So the wizard turns to Maeve and introduces himself like, hello, I'm the wizard. How may I help you? Nice to meet you. We're lost. We found ourselves here. There were worms that steal memories all around us. Apparently, I don't remember that part because I got more memory worms on me after that.
00:42:42
Speaker
And a tree lady told us to find you? Yes. Are you Merlin? Are you like from the books? Lady Daphne, charming woman, wonderful ochre to her skin. No, no, I am not Merlin nor any of his order. His kind and mine are easily mistaken for one another.
00:43:11
Speaker
But as for being lost, many start that way. It's up to you to turn things round. So do you have a name? He opens his mouth and he says, the wizard of the will will do as well as any wizard. Nah, nah. Well, I think that we're looking for someone named Nigel. Hmm, helpful fellow. Do you know where he might be?
00:43:37
Speaker
He opens his mouth to answer again, and there's a skip, and he, his mouth, like you blink, and his mouth is still shut. And he says, yes and no. I can assist you, but only so far. My own powers here are bound by the laws of this place.
00:44:00
Speaker
and he limps past you and makes his way to the cauldron and by the cauldron is a little folding workshop of different pots and jars and things and he starts sprinkling bits of ingredients into the cauldron that bubbles and smokes and churns as he stirs it with his very very very long spoon.
00:44:25
Speaker
lean into Maeve and say, is this normally how wizards do? I mean, I knew there was some like potions involved. I think Merlin made potions in the book I read growing up, but I don't know that this is all. Sometimes they do other things too, like maybe like spells or something.
00:44:44
Speaker
He chuckles with his attention on the cauldron, trying to get a straight answer out of a wizard as a fool's errand. You'd have better luck straightening a corkscrew. And at that, he produces a corkscrew, pulls out a little flask, and drains the bottle into the cauldron, and then just drops the bottle, the corkscrew, and the cork into it as well, and there's a, and it changed his color.
00:45:14
Speaker
Sonic Stylus up starts scanning this concoction. This is going to be ingenuity and science plus two for the Sonic. You are still at a disadvantage for this because you are confused, you are turned around and now you are poking a wizard's cauldron with a Sonic Stylus. Okay, I got a 14 with a three and a two on the dice.
00:45:37
Speaker
The bemusedly as heck the wizard smirks at the fixer as he tries to scan the cauldron and chuckling says, if you wanted to know the ingredients you could have just asked. What you were able to tell from a 14 without anything special on the dice, the cauldron holds broth
00:45:59
Speaker
of some potency. It is concentrated. It is roiling. It is constantly shifting makeup while it is in the cauldron. And very carefully, the wizard scoops in the spoon and produces a flask. And without the need of a funnel, just expertly drains the thing right in and fills it up to the top. And he puts a cork in it and sets it aside.
00:46:29
Speaker
You said that the laws of this place bound you. Are you from here or were you brought here like we were? He says to Maeve, ah question about time. Now we're on the right track, aren't we just?
00:46:47
Speaker
You'll find that I have always been here since the start of the land at 10.30 in the morning until its inevitable end at 10.30 in the morning.
00:47:03
Speaker
the same warning. Maeve, you've been walking around in the forest and walking out of it for the better part of an hour. And having memories of growing up in a place with similar foliage in your backyard, you realize the sun has not moved.
00:47:25
Speaker
at all, as far back as you can remember from getting tapped with goop. The sun has not moved at all across the sky in the time that you've been walking around. So time here is standing still, or it works differently? Oh, on the contrary, there's an abundance of it. It's just all 1030.
00:47:45
Speaker
I look at the fixer. Well, this sounds like one of two things. Some sort of temporal offshoot or we might be stuck in a minute. Does that happen often? Do you get stuck in a minute often? Stuck in a minute. That's very good.
00:48:04
Speaker
The wizard turns to Maeve and says, well, it seems we're all stuck in the same minute, and it's hardly minute. Fortunately for you, you're not without advantages. And he taps the map. Maeve, give us an awareness roll, please. Well, that's a six and a four for a 14.
00:48:25
Speaker
The wizard taps the map. All of a sudden, three little points of light swell into being next to the spot you occupy on the map. So you have three little dots independent of the map, hovering next to the well. Next to those three dots is a dot drawn on the map with a little W.
00:48:50
Speaker
over it. The space Daphne occupies on the map is obfuscated. It's unclear because kind of like it was drawn onto the map, but it's also a floating dot. It's very difficult to make out, but there are other spots on the map which have active little dots wandering around in their little circuits, including a silver one slowly marking time down.
00:49:18
Speaker
The road in your direction. Well, somebody's coming this way. Yes, but you'll find he's lacking for conversation. All of a sudden, behind you, a humanoid in a red jacket with tails marches up closer and closer. He appears to be carrying a courier's satchel over one shoulder.
00:49:44
Speaker
Instead of a face, he has a porcelain smiling mask that looks very charming, and a powdered wig that the coils bounce as he walks very stiffly towards the wizard. He comes to a stop, bows at the shoulder, salutes, and then holds out the satchel.
00:50:07
Speaker
flips it open, pulls out empty flasks, and the wizard collects them and says, oh, thank you very much. We've been expecting you. And hands him the flask that he's most recently filled, and the stiffly moving person with the ceramic face nods again at the shoulders.
00:50:30
Speaker
flaps the satchel shut and returns it to his shoulder strap, ignoring all three of you the entire time, and turns on his heel like clockwork and starts marching back the other way.
00:50:42
Speaker
Now he's clearly an automaton, right? I was gonna ask because now it's like, this guy is cooking things, and he's got robots working for him, so kind of smells like snackums, but... Oh, I'm... I'm no servant, per se, but I suppose I do work for the same person. It is her queendom, after all.
00:51:07
Speaker
And the man's jacket, as he turns around, has a crest emblazoned on it with a nice big M on a coat of arms as he walks back up the... as he starts to walk back up the trail. Looking at the map? Whose Queendom is it? Ah, Her Majesty, the Queen, Makana. You're in her land now. Do you think this Queen Makana might be who Daphne was telling us we needed to look for?
00:51:36
Speaker
Didn't she say a princess? Well, she said a girl. She did. Oh, the girl. She just said a girl. Queens and princesses frequently go hand in hand. You look like you could use a little courage. And he scoops into the cauldron again and pours out a completely different colored liquid than the previous while adding no new ingredients in the meantime and hands over a frothing, steaming, smoking cup to the fixer.
00:52:09
Speaker
Thank you for the beverage, but I do like to know a little more about what I'm drinking before I drink it. Oh, just a little liquid courage. And he winks and claps you on the shoulder. Well, I'm definitely not going to drink it, but I will also not pour it out. I will just stand there and hold it. Give like a little toast gesture and just stand back. Fixer, give us an awareness and an intuition role.
00:52:32
Speaker
So we're looking at an 11 with a 5 and a 1 on the dice. This person seems pretty benign, like a friendly grandpa. You would almost swear you've seen him before? Not someone you know, someone whose picture you've seen, and they've gotten a lot older since that picture was taken. Well, the minute you describe it that way, my first thought is, does he look anything like Victor?
00:52:59
Speaker
No. Oh, okay. Not at all. That's good. That's a relief. Well, thank you for turning on the map. You're quite welcome. Right, I guess. Is there anything we can do for you or are you all right?
00:53:16
Speaker
I am as much a part of this place as the trees. So asking me what you can do for me is a bit moot. However, there may be something I can do for you.
00:53:32
Speaker
Well, we could really use the help if there is anything you could do to help. Of course. And he starts stirring the cauldron again. The liquid changes color again. And he scoops some up, pours it into a traveling vial and a little stopper in the bottle. And he says, when you find your strength, fails you. And he hands over a little bottle of liquid strength.
00:53:58
Speaker
Since the fixer has not drunk the liquid, he says, I'll take that and takes it back and dumps it back into the cauldron. And there's another of smoke. And he starts stirring again and he starts pouring up another liquid that looks nothing like the first two. By the end of his time, he has filled up little bottles to go and leaves you with a bottle of liquid strength.
00:54:25
Speaker
for Maeve and pours the cup's contents into another little traveling bottle and tucks it into the fixer's pocket in case you change your mind. Thank you for your generosity. Oh, of course. Hard to get the ingredients, you know, especially clean ones. It's hard to remember where they can be found, especially with
00:54:55
Speaker
Have you had any success in keeping these slippery, slimy things off you? Oh, yes. The worms stay in the woods and well away from the wizard.
00:55:07
Speaker
He takes out a old-timey medieval-style spritzer and hoars some green liquid into it and screws into place a spritzer. Materializing on the face of the receptacle is a little circle with a line drawn through it across a memory worm. Take that, bow very low to him, very respectfully, and say, I appreciate your wizarding, wizard.
00:55:36
Speaker
You're quite welcome. So yes, the wizard has made you guys some potions. Before I ask a question of him, I would like to ask a question regarding the map and the lights that just have bloomed on the map. Are they all the same color other than that one automaton we saw on the map, or are there other ones that are of different colors on the map?
00:55:54
Speaker
The three of yours appear to be a polished silver. There are two more. So you've got three silver dots over here. You have a town full of drawn on dots moving in a clockwise fashion. There are a pair of silver dots currently occupying the castle and a little green dot circling the pond.
00:56:24
Speaker
I wonder if the green dot is Nigel. Daphne's tree is represented by a brown dot in the woods. Calamity, give us an awareness role, please. Just because you weren't familiar with the word wizard doesn't mean you've never read or been told a fairy tale before.
00:56:40
Speaker
Uh, so that's a 10 with nothing special. You are like craning your neck to look over their shoulders as the drawn on gear representing the man with the porcelain face marching its way back up. Calamity notices that the mouth of the cave, there is a black spot on top of the black opening to the cave and it is very large.
00:57:10
Speaker
and stationary. Oh, right. There's another dot about where it says Ogres Keep. It's just, you know, it's just sort of blending in with the cave drawing. So I guess that's the ogre. Oh yes, you want to keep away from the Ogres Keep. He's quite grouchy when he hasn't had his sleep.
00:57:34
Speaker
I mean, can you make liquid sleep? And in his hands is a tiny, tiny bottle with a series of Z's on it to imply a sleeping potion. You tell me, Calamity. I mean, good job, I guess. No, it's all right. Can we have that or was it just a demonstration?
00:58:00
Speaker
Wouldn't be very good if I left it here, now would it? And he drops it in your hand. Well, thank you. Okay, so maybe this will help. Since we're closer to the ogre's keep and we now have a solution to the ogre problem, should we go handle that? Well... I'd be very wary if I were you. The ogre's can be quite a troubling customer.
00:58:21
Speaker
I mean, we might just wanna, you know, avoid, like if he's trying to sleep, right? We should just, just let him do that. This is just like, just in case we make too much noise. But what if we can just offer him the potion and say we will gift you sleep? The ogre cannot be reasoned with. The ogre will not listen. The ogre will not heed you. Has his head in the clouds, don't you know? And that's not an exaggeration. He's just very, very tall.
00:58:49
Speaker
Plus, it's kind of like walking into someone's house while they're sleeping and, you know, waking them up and say, hey, would you like to buy a really nice pillow? Like, it's just sort of, you could just not, not, not in the first place, right? That's fair. How like a knight in search of dragons and ogres to thwart what you have bigger fish to fry. I actually am a bit peckish. Do you think they have food in the town?
00:59:18
Speaker
One way to find out. Goodness gracious, what's that? Any points over your shoulders? I mean, I've heard this one before, but it's all right. You look back, the wizard is gone. All right. Maeve, you mentioned earlier that it might be a good idea to hit one of the specific spots on the map. Yes, the green dot. Didn't Daphne say that Nigel had a green thumb? Maybe that's him. I love that logic. Let's head towards the green dot. You said the green dot was near the pond?
00:59:43
Speaker
With the wizard's well behind you, you see a fork in the road. Keep heading west and you head straight for a massive cave just visible through the trees. You can make out a figure in a red coat marching stiffly up the road. The sun shines almost overhead. If you had to guess,
01:00:03
Speaker
It's about half past 10 in the morning. 10.30 is pretty much exactly. Always half past 10. I didn't think it's going to change anytime soon. In addition to the two floating metallic silver dots in Castle Makana, there is a third dot the same color as yours in Castle Makana. Oh. Oh. Do you think that might be the auditor?
01:00:26
Speaker
I think we should. Luckily, it's on the way. Let's check the green spot and then head onward to the castle because Maeve, I think you're right. That's probably our good friend, the auditor. As you continue from here, it's very faint, but you can hear a dreadful roar in the distance. And the noise, while not deafening, is even from this distance, something you can slightly feel in your bones.
01:00:54
Speaker
It occurs to you that that is the sound of the ogre smoring. Well, at least he wants to sleep. Sleep for now. We should try not to wake him. Hopefully his nice calm dreams. Hopefully you approach high walls. Extremely high. They have to be at least two stories tall.
01:01:14
Speaker
Wide, heavy gates that look like telephone poles lashed together in terms of diameter and height are ready to swing shut atop the gates and standing to either side at ground level. Guards in painted ceramic masks, powdered wigs, and medieval attire sit on either side.
01:01:36
Speaker
You enter the cobblestone square of Clockton. Wherever you look, there are these rustic medieval buildings in a circle around a well with a fountain.
01:01:51
Speaker
And wherever you look, there are clockwork peasants going about their day. There's the baker with his tray and he's got the ceramic face and the powdered wig and he's carrying a tray of what looks like freshly baked loaves of bread.
Clockton Exploration & Discoveries
01:02:08
Speaker
While nearby in an open window is the butchers and there's a clockwork man with a ceramic face and a powdered wig.
01:02:16
Speaker
working with a large knife in either hand, bringing it down ineffectually on either side of a large shank of meat. Can I have from the three of you, please, an awareness and intuition? Is this deeply off-putting to anyone else? It is very strange. I mean, it seems like the butcher needs reprogramming, but otherwise it's normal wine. I have a 12 for the wine on one of the dice.
01:02:46
Speaker
I got a 12, nothing special on the dice. Got a 10 with a four and one on the dice. Fixer. There is a lot going on and the locals look friendly. It's really hard to tell from the unmoving, unshifting smiles painted on their faces. You are in the center of town and are able to get your bearings with the map, but the locals don't.
01:03:14
Speaker
look happy to see you. They don't look anything. They ignore you completely and continue to go around their day. But Maeve, you don't smell freshly baked bread. You don't smell meat being carved up. What you do smell is motor grease, sawdust, a lot of sawdust, and
01:03:37
Speaker
They pass on a routine circuit, but the baker that walks by, you'd swear the bread is made of wood and has been painted to resemble ordinary bread. Can I poke it? You can. See if it is wood. It knocks, and the baker stops, turns to you. Give me a presence and convince roll, please. Fixer, give us an ingenuity and tech roll with your sonic, please. Absolutely.
01:04:07
Speaker
That's a four and a two, four twelve. And I just say, oh, I just wanted to see how fresh it was. It looks delicious. Carry on. With a twelve that is neither terrible nor great, the baker cannot so sharply his powder wig lands on the tray in his hands. The mask is staying in place.
01:04:29
Speaker
but the wig that's fallen off from the bow reveals a clear plexiglass or possibly glass dome where a skull should be and inside it are just a glittering masterpiece of cogs and moving bits and gears.
01:04:47
Speaker
Very interesting. I have a question. Are these things like imitating something like a book or something that I might have seen before? Are they like putting on like some kind of a play? I'm just asking if any of this looks familiar I guess to anything Maeve has seen or read about before. It reeks of pantomime fairy tale.
01:05:08
Speaker
Huh, something, someone has put a lot of effort into making this look like a cozy little provincial town full of clockwork people, but as far as you can tell from just knocking on the bread, it looks almost entirely surface.
01:05:26
Speaker
When you mention, is this out of a particular book? The baker stops in his tracks, holds the tray with one hand, puts the wig back on, and in stiff robotic movements puts the tray on a convenient counter and says, if books are what you look for, may I suggest the library?
01:05:52
Speaker
and points to a rather nice looking library smack dab in the middle of town between the butchers the bakers the candlestick makers and an open path to some kind of arena you can hear loud shouting off in the distance and a
01:06:12
Speaker
Well, thank you so much for suggesting that. That is just wonderful. Quick question. What is that noise? The joust! There is a joust here, Fixer. That sounds exciting. Yes, the next joust begins at 1030, and he returns to his circuit. Sounds like we're going to be right on time for it. Good thing it is now 1030.
01:06:40
Speaker
You're always on time when it's 10.30 all the time. Could we make? Since I do think we have some time until 10.30. I'll stop in the library just to see what's there. I mean, we can check. I'm a little disappointed about the bread. So, you know, the books might just sort of be blocks of wood painted like books, which would also be disappointing, but maybe not.
01:06:59
Speaker
But although I do take back what I said about the butcher needing reprogramming because if their processing is based on mechanical computers, I am extremely impressed. It is a miracle they are working at all. Like, this is amazing. All three of you add one story point. It is a small quarter of town. It only takes a couple of steps to reach the library where the doors are fastly locked. There is something very often in this provincial town.
01:07:29
Speaker
Maybe, I mean, could we unlock these doors and have a look? Sure, you can try. Give us coordination and plus two for your Sonic and throw a subterfuge on there, Fixer, since you're trying to pick a lock. By the standards of the game, picking a lock is a difficulty of 18.
01:07:46
Speaker
We are at 11 with a 3 and a 1 on the dice. That is a no dice on the opening of the library. Your Sonic shuts off and will not restart for at least 30 minutes. Like, you try it, and it's like, bad news, it's deadlocked. And then it just shuts off. Well, that's unpleasant. Awkward too, because like, if they're closed at 10.30, then there's not much point in waiting. I know. Of any windows.
01:08:14
Speaker
There are, but they are medieval, so it's not stained glass, but that crossed X diamondy thatch of glass that is too thick to actually see through. You can vaguely make out bookshelves inside, and knocking on the window reveals the dink, dink of glass that is not a painting. So it appears that there is legit a library in there of some kind, but you do not have access. Well, maybe we'll figure out a way inside later.
01:08:44
Speaker
Are there any other places of interest in this town as we pass by? Actually, I would like to go and ask the baker. He's still around. Ah, excuse me. We were trying to get to the library. Unfortunately, it's closed. Do you know if it will be open anytime now before 1031? The library is for the royal family and will be unlocked.
01:09:11
Speaker
Five! Royal Decree! Royal Decree, got it! Okay, that's very helpful, thank you! You are welcome! I'll go back to fix it. So I think we're going to have to wait. Apparently Royal Decree can unlock the library, so we may have to find this queen first. Well, luckily it looks like on this map that the corresponding dot that we hope is the auditor is still by the queen, so we might as well head in that direction.
01:09:38
Speaker
But there is a joust. And a joust is good? I mean. The joust isn't going anywhere. Odds are there will be, I mean, it's 1030 all the time. So the joust is not going anywhere. I mean, you put two guys on horses and charge them straight at each other. That's pretty cool. Those poor horses.
01:10:01
Speaker
They don't hit each other, they like pass by each other. And then the guys try to knock each other off. So it's just the guys on the back of the horses who get hurt.
01:10:09
Speaker
Yes, the horses are fine. Oh, but let them sound like fun. Even from here, I'd say you're about half a football field's length away from the jousting tourney proper, but one of the knights on a massive black horse to the cheers of the crowd prides off their helmet and reveals a rhinoceros head of salt and pepper hair.
01:10:55
Speaker
We're looking at a 17 with a 6 and a 2 on the dice.
01:10:59
Speaker
Okay, with a 6 on the dice, you absolutely recognize that a judoon has just trounced the other night. It does seem oddly fitting that a clockwork town with a wizard outside and an odor down the road might as well have their own set of jousting judoon.
01:11:19
Speaker
Looking at the map, I'd like to compare the positioning of the jousting judoon with the markings on the map to see if they have a different color than the automata. Using the map in your hands, you are able to see that none of the moving characters on the map have the same dimension as you three. They are as flat as the clockwork people. Great question, add a story point.
01:11:45
Speaker
Maeve, I understand that you want to see the joust, and it definitely would be a lot of fun, but I suspect these might just be more of the scenery, if you know what I mean. And we really should go collect the auditor, just to make sure he's okay. Yeah, you're right, of course. But maybe we could come back and see the joust before we, you know, leave, because it's a joust.
01:12:06
Speaker
with those guys, and that's really cool. Your enthusiasm is infectious. I'm gonna take out the stylus and use just the pen portion of it, click out the pen, and start making notes near there to say, we need to return here so that Maeve can enjoy the joust. The Baker automaton says, the joust will resume at half, half, half, ten. The winner receives a key to the city. A key to the city? The whole city?
01:12:34
Speaker
Sometimes that's symbolic, but here, maybe... I think it might be more literal. Maybe not, right. Though, about leaving. So, this place, it's a little familiar, actually. It kind of feels like home, which means that leaving is awkward. Right.
01:12:55
Speaker
In what way does this feel like home? The fact that there's, like, that time is cyclic just in a much smaller circle. At least back home there was night and day. For sure, for sure, yes. Bigger circle was more comfy. No, this is a much weirder version of that, but yes. So it took a lot of technology to get out. Anyway, just wanted to put that out there that maybe we should temper our expectations about leaving trivially.
01:13:24
Speaker
That's very sharp. Calamity, how many story points are you at right now? Six. Six? Well, now you're at seven. Calamity, you bring up an excellent point. And unfortunately, my Sonic is out of commission at the moment, so I won't be able to scan for power sources. But we may have to cobble something together to escape here through less traditional means. Maybe the auditor... I mean, we don't know that they were infected by memory worms. Maybe they have a better idea what's going on.
01:13:51
Speaker
Sure, knowing how we got here would certainly help, I would think, to reversing that process. Well, maybe if we're lucky, we just have to go back to the hole we crawled out of and dig a little deeper. Let's head towards the castle. The Fixer and his companions make their way out of the city as they leave the town proper and head on the road towards the pond and the castle. Behind you, every single clockwork person stops and turns their head
01:14:21
Speaker
and waves goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. We'll be back probably. Are you visiting the pond? Are you visiting the castle? Is the green dot still between us and the castle? Yes, a green dot is bouncing around within the limitations of the pond on the map. Head towards the green dot? Okay. May, if I wonder, I don't think I could pull it off.
01:14:50
Speaker
But do you think one of us could pull off actually jousting against those, Jadoon? I mean, maybe. I think it would be pretty tough. They were like big looking guys. Hmm.
01:15:02
Speaker
You did say it's more of like a game, it's not to the death, right? Right. You might get knocked off a horse. Okay. I would try jousting. Yeah? Yes. Often if you try something enough, you're bound to get close at some point. I might break a bone falling off a horse, but we also might get the key to the city, and I think it's worth a shot.
01:15:25
Speaker
So I just sort of assumed before but um so Calamity is like actually checking like does she in fact feel hungry or thirsty? Your stomach has not rumbled at all while you've been in here. You are not tired at all. You are feeling normal. Well maybe that's good for broken bones and maybe it's really bad. We'll find out. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
01:15:50
Speaker
A simple pond outside the castle with a gardener shed nearby. There are dragonflies skating across the top of the water. You can see the castle from here. You can see the jousting tourney. And on the nearby road is the courier with his satchel. He's walking at a steady pace, robotically, if you will. Does he have like flasks with him or?
01:16:20
Speaker
He has his satchel, yeah, he has his satchel. Can I get an awareness roll with intuition please from our lovely players? I got a 1 and a 4 for 12. Sure is pretty here. Lovely pawns. I got a 15 with a 6. 15 with a 6 and a 4 on the dice. As Maeve is... Oh no, I am fully seeing visions of myself in armor winning a joust.
01:16:49
Speaker
Fair dreaming of future glories and distracted from noticing anything specific. Calamity. Fixer. You hear a faint ruffle under the grass. Ruffle, ruffle. And a little frog hops into the pond and frog paddles its way across the pond and ruffle, ruffle, ruffle, ruffle, and hops on its way just around the pond. Does it seem to be tracking the dot on the map?
01:17:19
Speaker
Yes, yes it does. Calamity holds up the map and positions herself as like, okay, so if the clockwork weirdos are behind me and the joust is over there, the green dot represents the frog and it is every bit as solid and real as the three of you. Maeve, you know a lot about this, about these wizards and these merlins. Is there any stories about frogs? Yes.
01:17:47
Speaker
There's a story about a prince that's turned into a frog by an evil witch, and he has to get a kiss from a princess to turn back into his human form. So if that is Nigel, we're going to need to get him a kiss.
01:18:03
Speaker
Wow, can the frog talk in the story? Sometimes, but usually, usually yes, I think. Nigel. Well, that's good then. Presence and convince on a frog. A two and a four for a 12. You call out Nigel, Nigel, and the frog hops closer and then
01:18:30
Speaker
Maybe it ignored you. Maybe it didn't. You don't speak frog. Maybe this one doesn't talk. But the auditor, he can talk to birds, right? So maybe he can talk to frogs too? Maybe. It's going to be difficult to get consent otherwise. We should at least scoop him up and bring him along until we can ascertain if this is... Alright, let's catch a frog.
01:18:53
Speaker
Are we just presuming for the moment that him being a frog is not what he wants? No, no, I'm presuming for a moment that whatever that is, whether it be frog or prince, it is just as real as we are, at least as represented on that map. And if that's the case, then when we escape from here, we're going to obviously have to rescue them too, be they frog or bricks.
01:19:15
Speaker
maybe i mean assuming they want to go that's what i mean but it's fine i mean we'll ask but i mean we'll have to talk to him first so we've got to figure that out give us a coordination and athletics role versus 18 so there's no way i can hit an 18 mathematically but i will spend story points if i roll high enough
01:19:40
Speaker
You can spend story points, you can average just average, you never know. I did not roll high enough because I rolled a three and a one for a seven. You miss and lunge anyway and twist a wrist. You are going to be at a minus one to strength for 30 minutes because you lunge and you land and break your fall badly on your wrist like, ow, oh, man.
01:20:07
Speaker
and your hand goes right into the water. Does the water feel wet? Yes. Like does it feel like a pond?
01:20:17
Speaker
It feels like water at the same temperature as the air. It is not cool, it is not warm, it is air temperature water. And you pull your hand free and the water ripples out and then flattens like the ripples were never there. And the frog. Interesting. All right, well, I can't catch frogs very well.
01:20:46
Speaker
most people can't as far as I know you know what all right does he like the frog seemed to be making a regular circuit with the pond like because we were seeing on the map we don't want to use the we don't want to use the forgetting jacket um uh can we just sort of uh can i just sort of like sit in the path that he's you know been taking and just sort of wait like with my hands like this that's beautiful so calamity takes the passive route and
01:21:15
Speaker
deliberately sits with the map on her lap and waits for... It's not like we don't have time. And it should...
01:21:29
Speaker
lands in your lap on the map for a second. At advantage, try to catch the frog when it's in your lap. This is going to be coordination and let's say subterfuge since you're trying to do sneaky stuff. So coordination and subterfuge versus an 18. Fixer, give us an awareness and intuition roll, please. You got it. Got a 14 with a four and a five on the dice.
01:21:57
Speaker
You know, maybe with the right tool, catching the frog might be easier. You look around, you see the gardener shed at the edge of the lake facing the pond and a padlock. Calamity, what did you get? Even with advantage, I contrived to get an eight with a one on the die. Since you are sitting and not having to lunge or anything, like you,
01:22:26
Speaker
Try to clap your hands around the frog and miss. The timing is not on your side. Also, it is slippery. Not memory worm slippery, just, you know, frog sweat slippery. The frog hops off. I will, however, reward your ingenuity with a story point. No one has ever tried to simply wait for the frog to come to them before. So kudos.
01:22:49
Speaker
point over at the shack and say, we at least found the gardener's shack due to its proximity to the frog. I guess we have at least one point in favor of it being Nigel. Head over to the gardener's shack and see if we can get that lock off. Your Sonic does not work. So the lock is just a padlock. It is closed. It does not appear to be made of wood. It has not been painted onto the door. It is as real as the shack and shed it's attached to.
01:23:19
Speaker
Are the hinges on the door on the inside or the outside of the door? Inside. This is gonna suck. Okay, run it at full speed slamming into it with my shoulder. This is going to be, do you have any points in athletics? I do, I have two in athletics. So I would like to use a couple of story points on this if possible. If you spend one story point, it will impact your role. If you spend two, you can just break down the door.
01:23:45
Speaker
with a shove let's use those two yes absolutely let's get in this place and figure out what we can figure out that's fantastic so yeah the fixer takes off his jacket like hold this for a second rolls up his sleeves and like
01:24:00
Speaker
smite smart and charges into the door cut to the interior of the shed as the door smacks off his hinges and still hangs from the completely intact padlock as the fixer lands crashing falling to his hands and knees
01:24:19
Speaker
in front of some kind of large device the size of a riding lawnmower but made of ye olde medieval implements and not made to cut grass. Light pours into the shed and there's a small net on a stick hanging nearby against the wall. Are you okay? Grab the net and say here this might help.
01:24:43
Speaker
I mean, thank you. Sure, you're fine. I'm a little shook up, but yeah, no, I feel good. I feel good. All right. All right, well, maybe you should do the jousting then. Okay, well, I'll take that net. Right, let's see if we can do the frog thing now. Also, though, I do want to ask, what's that? Yeah, that is a very good question. What is it? Ingenuity and technology, guys. Oh, heck yeah. Versus a difficulty of 12.
01:25:13
Speaker
I got a nine with two words. I got a five and a three for a 12. I got a 15 with a five and a three on the dice. Calamity, stub your toe. You are going to be at a minus one to speed related strength rolls for 30 minutes because you rushed in there looking around with that double ones. Maeve, it is cluttered as heck in here.
01:25:37
Speaker
um maybe the gardener has a system for keeping kids organized. Fixer you find the medieval riding mower and as close like it's not the most lit in here and without any sixes on the dice the closest you can figure out like maybe it's for uprooting
01:26:00
Speaker
Look on it for any containment vessels, even if they're medieval style, something that one might put those memory worms that we intercountered earlier in. You find a burlap sack and you also find an old tiny manual sitting in the seat of this thing. It is of the plainest of paper, a manual written by someone named Nigel on the operation of a tree uprooting device.
01:26:26
Speaker
but like just looking through the instructions this thing has so many levers and switches operating it even with the manual will be difficult as heck but at least you have found it and know what it is supposed to do we have all these gardening implements we have something to uproot trees but nothing here everything we change changes back immediately so what's the point of a gardener?
01:26:51
Speaker
That's an excellent counter question. What's the point of anything? So if we take a leaf from somewhere, it goes back. So if you mow the lawn, wait 30 seconds and the grass will go back to the way it was before you mow it. If you dig a hole, wait 30 seconds and the dirt will fill in the hole. So why garden if everything just goes back immediately? But the hole that we arrived in didn't refill itself. It was part of the terrain already. That's a good point. Just kind of weird.
01:27:19
Speaker
how many story points would it take to figure out how this thing works and ride around on it? Maybe we could use it to joust. Spending one story point lets you know this is not the most important thing right now and it is likewise not going anywhere. Okay, you got it. All right. Maeve is flipping through the manual looking for things and on a page it says this object has been restricted from being used as a jousting mount that has been banned from the joust.
01:27:49
Speaker
Well, that is disappointing. If that's what happens, you try to find exploits, you're gonna get banned. You do not know how right you are. But that implies that sometime, that implies that sometime between 1030 and 1030, somebody already tried this exploit and got it banned. That's true. I do think it would be pretty fun to try to ride this into a joust.
01:28:13
Speaker
Fixer says maybe someone already tried this once and the frog hops past the door and continues on its circuit. All right, so we need to get the frog and then we need to go find the auditor. All right, let's try the net thing. Maybe I can try to like hurt it and you can try to like net it. Sure.
01:28:36
Speaker
I feel like waiting was marginally successful if I just put the net in the right place and that your plan is not unlikely to get us wet and or injured, but that is also fine. We can do the right idea, that's fine. No, no, let's do yours. We tried mine. Let's go back and forth at least. Gotta be fair. So I'll try and herd the frog.
01:28:59
Speaker
I'm explicitly bad at being fast right now. This is going to be coordination and athletics plus two with the net. And I'll say you are at advantage because you've tried once already and you've seen Calamity pull something off that appeared to almost work. The difficulty has not changed, but at least you have the net now. So what I'm suggesting might be that like I help Calamity make the roll. So I would just be trying to like push it towards her net.
01:29:29
Speaker
I mean, let's be fair, you have just as much chances on it. Not much. But better, probably. Calamity is the one physically trying to catch the frog with the net. It is going to be you rolling for coordination, rolling coordination and athletics plus two for the net. You are at advantage and Maeve is contributing two points to the roll. Well, okay, so maybe there is a shot. We'll see. Can I have a 16 with nothing special? Can I give a story point?
01:29:57
Speaker
You add a story point using Calamity's patent-peneted wait-and-do-nothing approach, the zen approach of frog catching. The frog neatly is chased into the net. We got the frog! So I'm gonna, like, pinch-close the net with my hand. That's smart. That's smart. Because I'm, like, he's just gonna jump out. We've done this already. All right. So onward to the castle.
01:30:26
Speaker
Seems like a plan.
01:30:28
Speaker
You start to leave the pond and the frog fidgets and tries to get out of the net, trying desperately to get back to the pond. It's okay, Nigel. We're trying to help you. Does it seem in physical distress? He's physically moving around. He's struggling to try. I mean, is he like in physiological distress, like mead of water? He does look a little dry.
01:30:58
Speaker
Okay. I mean, how far is the castle? Like I could dunk him and then we could just run, but I don't think that that is going to work. We have something we can collect the water in. It's already bucket in the shed.
01:31:12
Speaker
There is an easier solution to this. Calamity, would you like to spend one of your hard-won story points? By all means. I'm invested in this. Having caught the frog with the net, catching him again the same way will be very easy now that you've done it, now that you've seen it done, but taking the frog away from the pond does not seem to be what the frog wants.
01:31:37
Speaker
Yes, it does seem to be not consenting to being rescued at this time. Well, we should maybe let him go back to his pawn then, and then we'll just come back and visit. Yes, we'll try that, I guess. Maybe we can... But wouldn't we eventually have to bring him back to Daphne? Maybe we could bring Daphne with us? We just need to get them. Maybe one of us could try kissing the frog. The wizard referred to Daphne as Lady Daphne, not Princess Daphne.
01:32:05
Speaker
Oh, I see. Well, yes. We'll see who's actually allowed to leave anywhere, and then see what we can build on from that. Okay. Right. Okay. This is going great, you guys. Because there seems to be a lot of rules here that are very restrictive, so... I mean, the wizard did say that there were rules, so... They're probably written down in the library, so awkward. So it is really bad that we couldn't get in there.
01:32:29
Speaker
No, it's all right. Well, this is fine. You couldn't get in there yet. If we break a rule, then we'll just hopefully not be a frog. Right. Hopefully. Maybe
Castle Encounter & Queen's Wrath
01:32:41
Speaker
not. You know, if we do get the key to the city, I have a potion for when my strength fails me to help us get the key. Fascinating. I mean, that does sort of imply you're going to have to go in and lose first.
01:32:53
Speaker
Not necessarily. We'll find some bandages first. But anyway, let's go to the castle, see if the auditor is there, and if not, who's allowed to do anything. Right. Maybe they'll have a library there. Nigel, and or whatever your name is, Frog, by all means please go, I will open the net. Let it proceed back to the pond. He leaps out in a graceful arc.
01:33:18
Speaker
and back into the pond. Wow, nice jump. That was beautiful. You approach the castle proper, a pair of guards with the matching porcelain faces and wigs. These are not dressed as couriers. These are dressed as guards. They are slightly broader across the shoulder. They both have pike stabs, and they stand at attention when you guys approach the pike stabs cross
01:33:45
Speaker
but at the same time the courier is marching his way back up to the castle and the clockwork guards pull the staves apart for the clockwork courier to pass. Can we attempt to speed up so we can pass through as they have it open for the clockwork courier? Absolutely. Yeah, let's do that.
01:34:05
Speaker
You can always try. You can always try. I continue to be explicitly bad at moving fast. As do I. Only for a couple more minutes. You enter into a wide open throne room. You feel like you might be in a church just in terms of the aura of awe of this place.
01:34:28
Speaker
At its heart are two thrones side by side. One in the center occupying the larger amount of space and a smaller one to its side. It is cool in here without a trace of warmth. You feel a gravity in the air. There is power in this castle.
01:34:53
Speaker
When you were on the museum ship and were in the reactor room, at the far end of the room where the actual generators were just thrumming away power behind the protective force fields and everything, even there, you could feel the gravity, the intensity in the air of all that power. And you feel a similar weight in the atmosphere in this room as you approach the throne and the queen sitting atop it.
01:35:24
Speaker
A classically dressed queen in Regalia waits you on the throne as next to her on the smaller throne, a princess. It cannot be anything else. She's got the little crown and the little purple dress and her feet and shoes that don't quite touch the floor. She sits up more brightly when she sees the three of you. She tugs on the queen's sleeves like, mother, mother, new people, new people.
01:36:01
Speaker
Would you like us to order that list in any particular priority or just sort of start rattling them off? A variety of wants currently.
01:36:11
Speaker
She narrows her eyes at you in distaste. Do any of you make sense? In those extra moments that Calamity has bought me, I would like to compare the layout of the room to the way the dots on the map are set up. Is the dot that we thought was the auditor in here, or is he elsewhere in the castle, or is it actually representing the queen or the princess?
01:36:31
Speaker
You have the map rather close to your chest and you glance at it. You see two dots sitting side by side that you gather are the queen and the princess. A third dot is somewhere geographically lower in the positioning of the castle. Most honored queen. We apologize for taking your time up, but we are here to rescue the person in your dungeon.
01:36:59
Speaker
Chuck! Roll me a presence and convince at disadvantage, because that was your opening line. Absolutely. See, worst case scenario, I'm hoping we end up where the auditor is.
01:37:13
Speaker
I can think of Wist. I can only think of Wist scenarios in that, but sure. Right. We're looking at a 13 on the dice with a five and a three. I have a six and a one on the dice. The queen is at advantage. She does roll higher guards, march closer towards you with pike stabs when the prince is second. Mother, no. Mother, please. Let me keep...
01:37:45
Speaker
The queen stiffens and raises to her full height. She seems physically larger than life in this place. And that is why you are a slip of a fool of a girl. And I am your mother. And there is a crumble of thunder. When you saw very few clouds in the sky, she looks at the fixer and points a dagger of a finger
01:38:07
Speaker
They could be interested.
01:38:15
Speaker
at him and says, we know what to do with interlopers. Save them! The guards come up and take you roughly by the arms. Does anyone want to try and talk your way out of this before you are dragged off? The guards, despite being clockwork and rather stiff with their movements, are quite strong. I just wanted to know, the queen is clearly not a clockwork being like these other people, right? She and her daughter are both, they both appear to be humanoid.
01:38:45
Speaker
Ah, Your Majesty, I am very sorry. We do have a friend in the dungeon, but we don't know where we are or how we got here and we're not here to cause any trouble, we're just here trying to find our way home.
01:38:57
Speaker
The queen turns her empty hand upwards and the map that the Fixer is holding rips out of his hands and flies to her hand where it just rolls up in her fist and says, no, no, you don't. And no, you won't. And she crumbles the map up in her fingers and it just
01:39:23
Speaker
Fixer, give me an ingenuity and technology role, plus Time Lord. They've definitely grabbed me. Have they grabbed Maeve yet? They have guards that are coming for all three of you. I'm going to ask you out of character first to make sure that you're cool with this, Maeve. I have such an urge to have the Fixer yell towards you, throw the jacket on her. Yeah, I would absolutely do that.
01:39:48
Speaker
Trying to throw the jacket at the queen from here would be difficult. You are not within five feet of her. You are at least 10 feet away from her and she is on a slightly raised day. So you can try to chuck the jacket. That's an idea no one has ever had. It's still got memory goo on the inside. Throw it and it'll open back up as it goes. And just spray some goo on her. Yeah, I'll try it. I'll just throw the jacket as hard as I can.
01:40:13
Speaker
Maeve, it's time. Throw the jacket. I do that. As the guards are marching towards you, you hurl the jacket at the queen. And give us, please, this is going to be contested that she is going to try to do something at the same time. You hurl the jacket.
01:40:36
Speaker
Like you successfully like curl it in her general direction. The queen rises to her feet and stomps and points with the same withered scroll in her hands and your jacket explodes in midair like a firework.
01:40:53
Speaker
and smokes and falls in leathery tatters. There's another rattle of thunder, and this time the castle walls tremble. Fixer, you are at an advantage on your ingenuity, technology, and time-lord role. It is going to be against a difficulty of 15.
01:41:10
Speaker
We're looking at a 12 with a three and a two on the dice. And I'm happy to toss in some extra story points. This will do for now. You notice when the queen stomps to her feet and the castle shakes, she is wearing a like 14th century or so, one of those single piece dresses with a sash around the waist, not quite a belt, but serving similar functions. And on that belt,
01:41:37
Speaker
when she stomps to her feet, jangles a small ring of keys that are fixed to the sash at her waist. The jacket explodes, falls, and tatters. The princess gasps and says, I'm sorry, Mother. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to suggest. The queen looks pained. Enough!
01:42:00
Speaker
It's not clear, but it might have taken something out of her to do what she just did, let alone twice in a matter of heartbeats. But she leans back down into the throne and says, We have waves of dealing with interlopers and thrones like you. God!
01:42:24
Speaker
Before you can blink, you hear the slam of gates slamming shut behind you. In the blink of an eye, you have been transported from the throne room into the dungeon below.
Dungeon Dilemma & Reflection
01:42:41
Speaker
Well, that went really well. Also, you owe me a new jacket. I do owe you a new jacket.
01:42:49
Speaker
I really liked that one too. So I just want to ask when I didn't really I didn't really dig into this a lot but you know when we were when we were back there and then you know we were dealing with the with the with the Darnax and all that stuff and you know I had a I had a little had a little moment and you know got my brain working properly again didn't by any chance you know take it from you two did it?
01:43:17
Speaker
Like everything, everything working okay up there. Calamity, you know how everybody we've been interacting with has been implying that we're sort of stuck between 1030 and 1030? Sure. That is so painfully close to one of the most traumatic experiences I've ever had in my entire life that no actually I'm not holding together very well. I'm trying to do the best I can and I'm sorry.
01:43:37
Speaker
Oh, and I'm sorry. So there's a thing, right? Iron gates squeal shut behind you. You are shoved hard into a drab gray cell. It smells of mildew and worse, and torchlight does nothing to impact the glue. A figure lies prone on the ground under a threadbare sheet, and it groans at the noise of a gate slamming shut. The guards stomp stomp
01:44:05
Speaker
and clack their pike stabs on the ground and turn their backs and stand on either side of the shut gates. It smells bad down here. There is a groaning figure under a threadbare blanket, and you've gotten your map destroyed, so trying to consult to see if the dot is real or not is now a moot point. But even in this low light, you can see that it is the auditor.
01:44:32
Speaker
Run over, lift them up into a giant hug. You roll the auditor over and he stares up at you in shock as you grab him into a hug. But the first thing you notice about him is that his mouth is gone. Below the nose is just skin. The auditor stares up at you in alarm and fright.
01:45:20
Speaker
And that is where we are going to end part one of The Keys to Fairyland. All right. Well, this is fine. Kind of a downer. It's a cliffhanger. It's a cliffhanger. Skin for mouth, yes. I would like to go around the room and thank our wonderful players for all of their excellent work and deal out.
Player Reflections & Game Wrap-up
01:45:46
Speaker
some precious tasty experience points. You have reached the halfway point of the Keys to Fairyland, one of the oldest mods that I have in our Doctor Who collection. It is a personal favorite for reasons you can probably guess so far.
01:46:04
Speaker
And there have been some firsts. I would like to congratulate the three of you. No one has ever had the map stolen before. No one has angered the queen in her throne room to the point where you were thrown into the dungeon immediately. Well done. Everyone here please take two
01:46:27
Speaker
Lovely, lovely experience points. Not story points, experience points. And add on a story point for making it this far and being your usual cells of trailblazers. You're saying these really bad things and making them sound very good. That's Legien's job, part of it. That is serendipity, guys. That is serendipity. Well done. Welcome to the faith. Kate.
01:46:56
Speaker
How in the world would Maeve report on today's Topsy Turvy events? Well, I would report on what's going on at the Joust because becoming a Joust sports writer is Maeve's new ambition, but we didn't get to go. The Joust is still there and it's still 1030. You can make it by the next 1030, Jousting. I am pretty convinced that this Potion of Strength I have is meant to be used so that I can become the Jousting champ of the world.
01:47:23
Speaker
That makes a lot of sense. Dora, what does Calamity make of today's bizarre turns and twists? Well, you know, she's rolling with it, obviously, because that's what she does. And it's very interesting. There's a lot going on. She is sort of like she's having a minor attack of perspective about, you know, how people behave and how they make decisions.
01:47:50
Speaker
And how her own decision making may have come off to other people in the past. She's like, maybe I should get them something. But other than that, she's still fine because this is all fascinating and interesting and nothing
01:48:09
Speaker
Nothing unredeemably bad has happened yet. So yes, she's delighted to see where it goes. She just, you know, hopes it doesn't involve having to spend several hundred years developing the technology. Hopefully, hopefully. Brand, welcome. What surprised you most about today's mod?
01:48:33
Speaker
Ooh, that's a great question. I think the thing that surprised me the most was that we weren't able to bring the frog away from the pond. I feel like that's going to come back to bite us in the butt later that we didn't get that frog with us. The frog is not much use outside of the pond in his current state, and given how
01:48:54
Speaker
your introduction to Queen Makana went, I doubt the frog would have made a difference. So I think leaving him behind at the pond, at least for his own sake, in the short term, was for the best. I mean, it depends on how strong the rules are. Like, you know, if we let him go in the dungeon and he just bashed a hole straight out of the castle in the direction of the pond, that'd be a time-saver. This mod is a fun exploration of Magic A.
01:49:21
Speaker
is Magic A. And figuring out the rules of this place is part of the puzzle, especially with the Queen, who is not playing fair and should not be mistaken as such.
01:49:39
Speaker
but yeah the three of you kudos my imaginary hat is off to you no one has angered her to that point no one has actually seen the interior of the dungeon before out of the half dozen or more times i've run this mod over the years you guys are the first to actually get caught bravo bravo such nice art
01:50:01
Speaker
I would love to talk about highlights if there were moments that resonated with you or stuck out, whether it was in gameplay with each other, if it was something in the story. Share, let's spread the love around. Well, I would like to jump in first and give Kate mad props. Being able to play off the idea of Maeve's enthusiasm about this era of fantasy and this type of fantasy was just so much fun.
01:50:30
Speaker
Yeah, I think Nave is very excited to be transported to the middle of a story, like, even if it's going horribly at the moment. Mm-hmm. That's wonderful. I actually, similarly, wanted to compliment Brand because of the, like, the Fixers' very usual attitude of, like, literally everything is a person and deserves respect, like, happens to work really well in a magical world, right, where that's generally true.
01:50:58
Speaker
Like it's legitimately true, you know, everything can be talked to and reasoned with. Thank you very much. I mean, if the trees are talking, you might as well try to talk to the frog as well.
01:51:13
Speaker
from the bottom of my hearts, I want to thank you guys for taking part. This is one of my favorite mods to run if for no other reason than the chance to play around inside of a fairy tale. It's not just the magic of Doctor Who, but there are ingredients and elements of other fairy tales that feel
01:51:37
Speaker
familiar just being nearby, from the small provincial town to the ogre off in the cave in the woods, the wizard down south by the well. It's a grab bag of chosen pieces and like, oh, we're gonna make this over here and oh, it's gonna come up later there and so forth. You are also the first ones to smash your way into the shed. So kudos for that brand, I mean.
01:52:07
Speaker
I actually also wanted to give Pandora some mad props because I loved the initial take on dealing with the myth of Princess and the Frog with the immediate action of like, no, no, no, we're getting this animals consent first.
01:52:20
Speaker
Yeah, also just watching Dora play with the idea of somebody who has gotten their wits about them more and having to now navigate with two people who are not necessarily acting logically all the time. Yeah, I've trained you guys well, and now it's coming home to roost.
01:52:43
Speaker
Oh, marvelous. Last checks if you guys have any questions or theories or anything like that you want to share in the short term.
01:52:51
Speaker
I have two. First question. So when you were doing the wizard, it sounded like you were talking like Yoda, but without doing the voice. Is that accurate? Yoda's banter. Just some of the language choices were like, they seemed familiar. Wizards by their very nature are not straightforward. They'd get dizzy walking in a straight line. Oh sure, sure.
01:53:17
Speaker
Talking in circles seemed appropriate to the medium, but also The Wizard is inspired by Tom Baker in Old Man Makeup from one of the episodes.
01:53:31
Speaker
I was attempting to make his gravitas. Very nice. So the second question I had was that in the art for the throne room, there was a crown hanging off of the chandelier. Was that a spare crown just in case it comes up later? No, not necessarily. I was definitely making plans. You were the first person to notice the crown dangling from the scenery above. I was like, hey, free crown.
01:53:59
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I am not an artist and I have stepped away from using artificial intelligence created art for a number of reasons and gone back. I noticed that all of the art has been great. Thank you.
01:54:10
Speaker
Since we're not charging for this, I have sampled photos and art and character portraits and character photographs. The Queen is a still from an episode of Doctor Who from Classic Who featuring a queen. It all fits, so to speak. I drew the map myself, the actual map, but beyond that, the art has been taken from the interwebs.
01:54:35
Speaker
I think I need to think of in what classic fairy tale do people get stuck in a dungeon and how do they get out within that story? I am looking forward to seeing how you guys get out of the dungeon and into part two of the keys to Fairyland.
01:54:57
Speaker
And finally, to our listeners, another great big thank you for sharing your precious time with us. If you feel it's been well spent, please share anywhere but now with your friends who are looking to enjoy themselves. If you like what you hear, leave a review, rate the show, and follow us on Blue Sky as well as Twitter at anywhere but now and wherever you get your podcasts.
01:55:22
Speaker
Send your questions, fan art, and theories, if you got them, to anywhere but now, podcast at gmail.com, or share them with us on our Discord. We'd love to hear from you. And don't forget, if you'd like me to run a game of your very own, find me on startplaying.games. I'll be putting up more games soon, including spooky D&D. Links to everything in the doobly-doo.
01:55:47
Speaker
From all of us, I'm Casey Jones. There are exciting things to come, my friends. I am truly glad you're along for the ride. Thanks so much, and have a great day.