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Happy Halloween!
64 Plays1 year ago
In this mostly sort-of probably non-canon episode, the coterie go to the carnival, and encounter a being unlike any they've encountered before. Warning, there may be clowns. For those curious, I was running a modified version of Tasha's Kiss, which you can find on DMs Guild.
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Transcript
Disclaimer and Introduction
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello mortals, just a quick disclaimer before we begin. This is a vampire podcast and as such we'll be dealing with issues like drugs, alcohol, mental issues, violence, adult situations, death, and of course blood. So enjoy the show.
Halloween Role-play Setup
00:00:34
Speaker
welcome mortals to a spooky edition of integrated dice management presents houston after dark i am your devilish storyteller for the evening and with brombie ork and with me tonight we have the lovable lovable little ghoul bill hey everybody it's bill the boogeyman over here i'm gonna be playing
00:00:55
Speaker
I'm assuming I'm going to be playing Jerry, but if I'm not playing Jerry, I'm sure it's going to be some other spooky person on a Halloween night. It should mostly be Jerry, yes. Yeah. I am 6'1". I am a Gorgog. I am Mary, and I have three terrible dogs. It's like four terrible dogs. Y'all? Very nice. And for anyone that needs to hear it, I love it. We also have Frank, the friendly ghost.
00:01:24
Speaker
Hi, I'm Frank, the frilly ghost, apparently. I am Aries and currently on the on the market for companionship. I don't have to rip off me. Do you have a sign that you would like, you know, that you prefer? Oh, that's oh, you know, I
00:01:54
Speaker
all I know is I'm an Aries okay and I feel like this important to some people oh I will say I went to the doctor and they told me that my testosterone is low so that's a thing so if you're looking for a beta male with low testosterone
00:02:22
Speaker
That was, that was good Frank. Don't you make that noise because this isn't Frank climbing an alpha. This is someone else claiming someone else is an alpha. That's perfectly okay. You're a good looking man that is able to do a lot of things other people cannot do. Be proud of yourself, god damn it. I was prescribed some testosterone boost
00:02:48
Speaker
naturally natural body testosterone boosting supplements recently. So if you're looking for a guy with low testosterone, I might not be your guy for very long.
Meta Discussion on Timeline
00:03:00
Speaker
And then we have the, uh, I mean, maybe I should have applied this to Frank with his, his pitch out there, but, uh, horny little incubus Hayden.
00:03:11
Speaker
Hey, yep, I'm playing Max tonight. I am not on the market. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I don't believe in all that astrology stuff. But yeah. And then our fourth member was not going to be is not probably not going to be here tonight. I'd give it a like 99% chance that he will not appear. But that would
00:03:39
Speaker
would have been known as the sleep deprived sleep paralysis demon jayden all right uh so tonight we'll be doing something a little different uh this is probably a mostly non-canon but maybe not um we'll see halloween episode and for those of you listening at home the last episode you listened to was probably recorded sometime in 2020 or maybe 2021
00:04:03
Speaker
This one was recorded on the day before Halloween in 2023. So there may be some characters you don't recognize. Maybe the players will have some extra abilities that they don't have in the main timeline. But don't worry. We'll try not to get into major spoiler territory. It's only been like a couple of weeks in game time anyway. In World. Was it really 2020 last time we recorded? No, the last episode.
00:04:33
Speaker
Oh, canonically. Okay. If all goes well, I'm releasing this episode on October 31st, 2023. Um, that's tomorrow. Yes. But if minor spoilers are concerned for you, it might be best to skip this episode and listen to it once you're caught up on season two of vampire, which will be out 16 years from now. Um, but assuming you're ready for this thrilling edition of Houston after dark, then come join us and enter the madhouse with me.
00:05:04
Speaker
We're going to skip the usual rundown of the date and trending on Twitter for this session. Other than to say it
Character and Plot Development
00:05:10
Speaker
is Halloween. The night sky is clear and the moon above is full. If we were somewhere other than Houston, you might even see some stars up there. So wait, I'm confused. Is it 2023? In real life, it's 2023.
00:05:30
Speaker
In the game, we're still playing as if it was 2020. In the game, it's 2020, and we recorded our original episodes in 2020. No, we recorded them in 2021, so whatever. So I still have this monetistical at this point, so sorry for my joke, guys. Well, that's a spoiler that they just got, so... You have to cut out its testicles again. This time from the podcast. Cut the testicles.
00:05:58
Speaker
All right, and I'll have to go back through previous episodes and make sure to cut out all mention of your testicles just in case. All right, the camera pans over to a large townhome in the depths of Houston through the front door and up the stairs under a closed door and up into the air to hover over the slumbering form of coal stone.
00:06:20
Speaker
Oh shit, that's me. Yep. Your slumber has been a peaceful one, and surprisingly, when you wake, it is not to the sound of strange whispering, nor to the sight of shadows on the wall, nor is it to the sound of some ghost pleading with you. You wake in peace, and, well, it's nice. When you wake up, you find yourself only the usual amount of peckish, but as usual, there's a bottle of wine-infused blood waiting for you at the door.
00:06:47
Speaker
You hear Dina downstairs, presumably cleaning or doing whatever it is she does. People are going to think I'm an alcoholic. Do you taste the wine? I would probably drink. It's yeah. Is it all nice? Do what? Is it all nice? It's chilled. It's sure it's chilled. Is it is it currently opened?
00:07:11
Speaker
Uh, I would say that you're probably provided with the cork has been popped out so that you can easily pour. Okay. I take it and I swirl it and I give it one of them like stiffy wave things. And I'm like, and I see if it's ready to drink the smells of blackberry and joy. I take a sip. The wine tastes good. It's mostly blood. Well, actually the way blood wine works.
00:07:40
Speaker
is the blood of a person who drank the wine, basically. It's not actually wine, because vampires can't get any nutrition from actual wine. So it's someone who got extremely drunk on this blackberry-flavored wine, and the sense of joy you taste, they must have been very happy while doing it. How drunk would they have to be for the blood? It tastes like blackberries. Well, a vampire has a very sensitive palate.
00:08:10
Speaker
That is true. Yeah. I don't think bliddles smell like vampires, though. I mean, shit. Well, to other vampires, it might not taste much like Blackberry, but you did take the thing to where you can eat stuff. So, yeah. Yeah. So do you want to do anything while you're up in your room? I would probably like.
00:08:39
Speaker
You know, since this is the first time I've woken up in a while without hearing the whispers and shit, I would probably kind of just glance around, maybe go to the window and peer out a little bit and then like check underneath the table. Do you see those spirits? At this point, they're like close friends, I feel like.
00:09:00
Speaker
Yeah, you see no spirits in the room, but when you peek out the window, you see the figure of Lauren, the witch, walking up to your door, and you are reminded, not that you could have forgotten, that you have a date with her tonight. I have a date! She chose the spot, and apparently wants to take you to her favorite pizzeria, and the doorbell rings.
00:09:25
Speaker
to all those listening along at home. I haven't had a date in ages, so this is good for me.
Personal Conflicts and Revelations
00:09:32
Speaker
I probably call down to, oh crap, Dina, Debbie, Dina, Dina. I call down to Dina, I'm like, hey, Dina, answer the door, letter in please. I'm going to freshen up and then I'm gonna run to the bathroom and I brush my fangs or something.
00:09:53
Speaker
I mean, you probably still need to brush your teeth. The bacteria and stuff can still grow in there. You probably cannot get cavities or gum disease or anything, but you can definitely have bad breath. Okay. Brush my teeth. I understand that, you know, certain things never change when people who are vampire and stuff. If you have endovitis and active cavities and stuff, are you just in pain for the rest of your afterlife?
00:10:18
Speaker
um no i think stuff like that heals but i'm not 100% sure i think all general ailments heal yeah like like minor you don't have cancer anymore or yeah more minor stuff like that heals like if you were missing an arm your arm i don't think grows back i'd have to check the rules but i don't think it does
00:10:40
Speaker
unless maybe you recently lost the arm and it was still bleeding when you got turned into a vampire, you know, then you could, you could heal it. But all right, skip Jaden. Jaden's family does something for Halloween. Now leaving that happy family, the camera jumps over to the headquarters of IO all in one organic health. And by headquarters, I mean the weird counseling place slash
00:11:09
Speaker
house upstairs apartment that Jerry lives in, where Jerry is already awake and in his bedroom getting dressed. He's a bit nervous this night. Yesterday, he was contacted by an old friend and they wanted to meet with him. They said they had something they wanted to talk to him about and want to meet him at Monticello Pizzeria. Bill, since you never answered the questions that I sent you, who was this old friend and how does Jerry feel about this meeting?
00:11:39
Speaker
Okay. So this old friend, what, uh, just, this is somebody I used to know. Okay. Wow. Seriously. Like we embody, we embody multiple people sharing the same brain cell. Um, so he, well, we do all share one brain cell as often as we share one bed. I imagine you have to have brain cell.
00:12:09
Speaker
Who has this Thursday, by the way? It's like I could really. Well, it's actually really annoying because it takes forever for it to get to me on my turn. But.
00:12:22
Speaker
No, so this person is actually one of my one of my first investors, like out of college, I knew him in college. He was one of my very first people that gave that money in for me to, you know, start my start my trade to try to, you know, help people and try to, you know, just try to be the best person I can be and try to help others do the same. And is he also the person that we discussed in our phone call?
00:12:54
Speaker
um you so you said that he is the first person that you came out to because he's a childhood friend oh yeah that's right that's right he is and he is the he's the very first person that uh that jerry came out to now did jerry come out to him because he had feelings for him or because you know it was just a friend that he trusted he was just a friend that he trusted uh i had never actually given him a name but uh i had always pictured that he wasn't that
00:13:24
Speaker
I just came out to him because I trusted him, but that he's not. He's straight. The name that comes to mind is Zach, short for Zachariah. And Zachariah. Oh my god. If we were talking about Jerry's first boyfriend, I would 100% do that. I would 100% be all down for that. Okay, it can just be Zachary.
00:13:57
Speaker
Oh, man. So beautiful. All right. So as Jerry, does do you do anything special to prepare for this meetup? Yeah. I'm going to put on a nice suit and everything. I'm going out and going out in the public, meeting a normal, everyday person who is having a normal, everyday conversation.
00:14:27
Speaker
Yeah, all right. So, Jerry gets ready and he heads out the door. Then the camera zips out the hall and up into the ceiling where Max is just waking up. Unlike everyone else, Max doesn't have a date tonight or an old friend that's contacted him. Jerry's busy.
00:14:50
Speaker
Cole's going on a date. Basically everyone he knows in his own life is busy and everyone he knew before becoming a vampire thinks he's dead. How does Max feel about that? Did he have anything he wants to do by himself tonight? Max? You can also interact with Jerry before he leaves if you want.
00:15:15
Speaker
I think Jerry's are in some alone time for me. I sleep in his damn false ceiling half the time. Well, just so you know, before he does go out, he is going to tap on the false ceiling and be like, Max, I'm heading out. You need to be able to do anything on the way home. I say just bring home a hot girl, I guess.
00:15:44
Speaker
you this all of a sudden you're gonna be like I can do hot or cold no but I max
00:16:03
Speaker
Max has been thinking a lot about Tiv. He's been very occupied with her whole court thing coming up. So he's been thinking a lot about that. And that's pretty much what has been eaten up his time. Well, a few minutes after Jerry leaves, there's a knock at the door. I look through the people.
00:16:27
Speaker
Okay, um, outside the people, you are surprised to see your ex-wife who beats on the door again and says, Max, damn it, Max, I know you're in there, you bastard. Open the fucking door. I need your help. It's about Max Junior. I opened the door and go. Holy shit, what happened?
00:16:51
Speaker
When you open the door, she says, I fucking knew it. I knew you weren't dead, you son of a bitch. You just wanted to get out of your child support, didn't you? Well, guess what? Your child needs you now. So real quick, OK, who who who the fuck names their kid, their name and junior. OK, I don't know. Frank Jr. I fucking do. All right. He's the pride and joy of my entire life. And this bitch took her took him from me. The joke is, I'm Frank Jr.
00:17:21
Speaker
Oh. Oh, I didn't know you were a junior. I didn't know you were a junior. Yeah. It would have been a better joke if we had known that. Yeah, Frank. Sorry, I should have delivered it better. I was the only one who got it. And I go, doesn't count. You're the brother in law. No one ever calls you Frank Junior. They call you Frankie. Thank you. Oh, my God. Your family calls you Frankie. Yep.
00:17:51
Speaker
I'm sorry, I just revealed this. Oh my god, that's so cute! I love it! I'm not even joking, I really do love that.
00:18:08
Speaker
Okay, where is my thing? Okay, so Brenda Explains that They were at this carnival downtown having a good time She stopped to get max some cotton candy and when she turned back around She saw him walking away with a man and dark clothes and bright red hair She didn't see
Carnival Investigation Begins
00:18:26
Speaker
the guy's face. Just saw him from from behind. She ran to catch up with them
00:18:29
Speaker
but they got on the roller coaster and it took off before she could get to it. When it came back around, both of them were missing. She's already tried to call the cops, but they just ignore her, so she came to you. First of all, Brenda, when the fuck did you get into Houston? Listen, none of that matters. Oh, bullshit, none of that matters. It never matters when it... You know what? You've always been like this. Where is Brenda supposed to have been from? Her living? Las Vegas.
00:18:58
Speaker
So she moved back to Vegas after she cheated on me and divorced me. I forgot you had a kid. Look, I didn't. We we came here to fit when you when you she she does the air quotes died to to because Max wanted to go to your funeral.
00:19:29
Speaker
Did the guy with red hair look anything like this? And I start describing the. Didn't that one guy who got turned into a vampire through like the crazy thing? Or the sacrifice guy have red hair. Sacrifice guy. Yeah, the guy who's the person Frank played. Yeah.
00:19:58
Speaker
I mean, the fact that I don't automatically know the answer to this gives you some information, but I don't remember if he had Lawrence Bloodbane Williams. Did I make a picture? He's got a picture. He's got black hair. Oh, he has a picture, all right. I think I have blonde hair. That's right. I was thinking of Dexter. Blonde hair. Dexter has red hair, yes.
00:20:28
Speaker
of a
00:20:56
Speaker
I mean, maybe it was a clown. Maybe that's why Max was comfortable going with him. But nobody at the carnival will help me. OK, I guess the cops are ignoring me. OK, I guess we're going to the carnival then. So you said her name was Brenda. Yeah. Great parenting, Brenda. It's an it's an awkward drive to the carnival.
00:21:19
Speaker
She's got her car outside. She dodges any questions you have about how did she find you, those sort of things, if you ask those kind of questions. She dodges them and keeps saying, none of that matters right now, we've got to find Max.
00:21:36
Speaker
The scene settles back onto Cole and Lauren, who are both enjoying a pizza. They ordered a medium, half of which has mushrooms, pineapple, pepperoni, cilantro, and bacon. And the other half is Cole's. Cole's, what's your pizza got on it? It's a meat lovers with mushrooms.
00:22:04
Speaker
That's it. It's just meat lovers with mushrooms. Meat lovers with mushrooms. Oh, meat lovers with mushrooms. OK, I was like, you just got a mushroom pizza. You're almost you're both on your last slice of pizza. And Lauren says, after this, we should have head over to that carnival we saw. What do you think? Oh, that would be awesome. I haven't been to a carnival in ages. Neither have I.
00:22:33
Speaker
Yeah, so you guys eat the pizza and you know chow down on your pizza as you get up to leave Cole give me a Let's see. I need to pull up a character sheet so I can see what stats are been a while since we've played Somebody's got some sound in the background
00:22:55
Speaker
TV. That might be me. I have something to play in the background. Sorry. Of course you do. Awareness plus wits. Is that better? Yes. Awareness plus wits submit.
00:23:20
Speaker
two successes, that's enough. And I'm going a little fast just so that we can actually get to the thing and finish all of this in one night. But as you get up, you spot Jerry sitting at a table with someone on the other side of the restaurants. Do you go over to him or leave him be? I think I'm gonna do the dude nud.
00:23:48
Speaker
Okay, so as your head tilts down in the form of a nod, we flash back to, you know, probably like 10 minutes earlier when Jerry and his friend Zach, not Zachariah, arrive at the Monticello's Pizzeria. Jerry, you're probably overdressed. You probably weren't expecting it to just be a pizza place.
00:24:13
Speaker
Um, it had a fancy name, but, uh, um, he is, uh, he's, when you go in, you see your friend, your old friend waiting for you, um, there at the, uh, at the table. Okay. Yeah. He's fully dressed in the suit. Yeah.
00:24:36
Speaker
Yeah, oh, yeah, it's it's just this thing that it's actually something I used to do back when I was back when I was in college just to kind of throw everyone's night off a little bit. Do you head over to him? Yeah, of course. Yeah, so he, he, you know, he gets up and it's like, Jerry, you know, and, you know, gives you a friendly, you know, a friend hug.
00:25:02
Speaker
Um, and, uh, it's like, it's, it's been a while since you've seen him. Like he was definitely an investor, but you know, he, he hasn't been around. Plus, you know, you being dead and all probably have tried to avoid people you're, you're more close to. Um, yeah, after you let's go, let's go, man. I'm going to be like, Oh, you're not doing the workouts. I've been telling you to do. I've been spending too much time as someone at, uh, helping people spend their money.
00:25:28
Speaker
well well yeah that and and i've just i've just been really busy um uh actually one of the one of the reasons i i wanted to meet with you um uh well uh margaret and i we're we're getting married what yeah yeah we we you and margaret yeah you you've just this this one clear we're talking about the same margaret
00:25:58
Speaker
Yes, the same Margaret from back in, you know, back in college. We met up again a few months ago and well, things just, you know, one thing led to another and yeah, we're getting married and we were, well, I was wondering if you would maybe be the officiant at our wedding. Oh.
00:26:27
Speaker
There is nothing in this world I would rather do than to officiate your wedding. I do have one quick follow up though. Okay. Um, before I agree fully, if I remember correctly back in college when y'all dated, she was, um, she was not nice. She was not nice to you. And this is your friend. I kind of have to be concerned.
00:26:55
Speaker
Is, is, is she treating you right? Well, you know, she's really mean, dude. You probably, she made you cry a bunch of times. And by the way, Jerry says that fully out loud, right in the middle of it. Damn. Yeah. And in the corner, you hear this guy go, damn, and turn around and start watching.
00:27:17
Speaker
Yeah. And at this point, you also catch the, the nod from Frank over the guy's shoulder, like from across the, or from Cole from across the restaurant.
Encounter with Happy Jack
00:27:28
Speaker
And, and he starts stammering. It's like, well, yeah, she could, she could be a bit of a handful sometimes, but well, with the baby on the way and everything, like we, we just thought we needed to hurry up and get married and, and I mean. Okay. Okay.
00:27:49
Speaker
Pardon me. I'm sorry. I'm not going to talk. I'm not going to talk to you like you're one of the guys that comes into the group, okay? If I remember correctly in college, things ended because she sucker punched you in the face one night because I, what was it? You were, you had to stay for work and couldn't make it to y'all's date. Like you were 20 minutes late for a date.
00:28:20
Speaker
Well, yeah, but I kind of I kind of I kind of deserved it. And then we switch scenes over to Max and Brenda arriving at the carnival. And Brenda shows you the where she bought the cotton candy and then points over to the
00:28:42
Speaker
the roller coaster. So the Carnival, it's got all the usual stuff, games, food, Ferris wheel. Weirdly, it has a decent sized roller coaster. There are a lot of clowns wandering around. You spot one woman who looks kind of like Harley Quinn. She's in a Harlequin costume. There's something called a fun house.
00:29:10
Speaker
one of those test your strength hammer things and you know various other stuff. Is that a fun house with quotation marks? It just says fun house in big letters. Is it spelled fun with a p-h? No f-u-n. Is it wait me? Well this is max right now.
00:29:36
Speaker
okay max right now oh this is max okay yeah she shows you where i mean that was a general carnival description but she shows you like i bought the cotton candy over here there's the roller coaster and when it came back around they weren't on it but it never stopped moving so they they must have like bailed out at a slow section or something anyways what direction do you see them going they got on the roller coaster and that was the last i saw them
00:30:06
Speaker
that when the roller coaster circled back around, they weren't there anymore. Yeah. OK. Yeah, so the roller coaster kind of like, you know, it was loopies and stuff like that. And then it goes around behind the fun house for, you know, and circles around. And and then and then, you know, eventually comes back to where it starts.
00:30:31
Speaker
So there's like probably two or three areas where like from where she would have been standing waiting for it to come back. There's a few areas that she wouldn't have been able to see from that vantage point. Okay, if I was kidnapping clown. Is there a house of mirrors? I guess it's the fun house.
00:30:59
Speaker
Yeah, it might be the fun house that I mean, I guess that's where something like that would be. That's yeah. I don't like the sound of the word fun house either since our kids been kidnapped. Anyways, I'm going to go check out the fun house. All right. Well, as you're walking, isn't you said there was a cop here that wasn't paying attention to you? Well, no, I called the police and they just dismissed everything I said. Great.
00:31:31
Speaker
Um, as you're walking, walking by, like you, you head towards the fun house and the Harlequin ladies outside, she's like doing flips and juggling and fun stuff. And she's got a crowd of kids around her. Um, and, uh, and every now and then she'll like, um, like,
00:31:49
Speaker
Tulsa, like a little coin thingy to some of the kids, I would say, go inside the wagon to collect your prize. And they run in and she's like near the fun house. Damn, who was I thinking of?
00:32:21
Speaker
I was thinking about, I don't see his name. My, my grand, my grand sire. That would be under vampires. He was. Oh, there he is. Mikel. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I pull out my phone real quick and give him a call while I'm like looking around and trying to look for red haired or my son.
00:32:48
Speaker
Um, after a few rings, he answers the phone. Um, at the same time that he answers, you notice like painted on the side of the fun house is the picture of like a laughing clown with bright red hair. Now he's not dressed in dark clothes. He's dressed in normal clown clothes, but he has bright red hair that sticks out in all directions. And I say, and I get Brenda's attention and I go, Brenda, was that the hair? And as you're saying that Michael's like, hello. And Brenda's like,
00:33:18
Speaker
That that definitely looks like the hair. And I say, hey, hey, grandpa. Can you meet me down at the carnival? What what carnival? I give him the address. I I'm not I don't really feel like going to a carnival.
00:33:42
Speaker
Long story short, apparently my ex-wife and kid ended up in Houston and my kid has been supposedly kidnapped. Oh, kidnapped at this carnival. Yes. I'll be right there and you know he hangs up. We'll switch over to Cole and Lauren who are walking down the street towards this carnival. You hear the like
00:34:11
Speaker
carnival music playing in the distance and it's lit up you see the roller coaster going around you know in the loops and stuff and Lauren's like it's she's like it's been a long time since I've done anything like this most of my most of my halloween's are spent you know praying to the moon or something well I'm sorry you had you've missed this but I mean I
00:34:40
Speaker
You know, it is Halloween. The spooky things can happen. She laughs and is like, well, hopefully not too spooky. I mean, I may be a witch, but I was never into scary movies or anything like that. Believe it or not, I haven't always been a vampire. And so I've never been a big fan of spooky either, but it's the season. She she's like says the guy who who sees dead people. Hey, it's only most days.
00:35:10
Speaker
Now I need to do a roll. And Frank, let me actually, let me look at one of your powers. Cold stone. It would be under this. Okay, that's what it's called. Let me look it up.
00:35:42
Speaker
Ooh, can I? Handouts, disappointments. It's the level two power, I think. No, it's level one. Just want to see if there's a role associated to this one power. Okay.
00:36:06
Speaker
There's not, but it's one that you have to activate. So give me a wits plus, or an occult plus wits, and she's rolling the same thing. Whenever I find the America sheet, there it is. And then...
00:36:34
Speaker
Where is a colt? There it is. A colt plus what's... You got two... Or you got three and she got one. Okay, even together it wasn't enough for this. So you guys walk into the carnival. What do you think you would do first when you first get there? I wouldn't mind checking out the funnel cake.
00:37:04
Speaker
OK as that is the first thing I always like to check out whenever I enter a carnival. And you are capable of eating them and you don't have to purge until the end of the night. So. Yay. So, yeah, she's like, hold on, let me let me give her a roll because there are some weird people out there who have not had funnel cake. Oh, Nat 10, she's she's had a lot. She's had it and she loves it.
00:37:31
Speaker
Yeah, she she's into funnel cake. So yeah, she she. She gets her own funnel cake. She fucks that shit up. Everybody, I think everybody remembers their very first funnel cake. Bro, I remember my funnel cake. Oh my God. I don't remember my first funnel cake, but I'm so sorry for you. Yeah, I remember my last funnel cake and it was fucking terrible.
00:37:58
Speaker
It was it was homemade Oil temperature probably no, it was just old funnel cake mix. So you fucked up? No, I I met the one who made it. Oh Somebody okay It was Nina's you made it okay, I'm just rolling something for you just
00:38:25
Speaker
Oh, wow. Okay. Well, you got a lot on that. Um, so you guys are munching on your funnel cake and stuff and you spot, um, someone you recognize with a woman you don't recognize standing outside of, uh, a big building called the fun house. Um, and he's on the phone and the woman looks frantic.
The Fun House Search
00:38:47
Speaker
What's this girl's name? Max, you spot max and Brenda, his ex wife. You've never met. No, my, my girl's name, Lauren, Lauren.
00:38:55
Speaker
Um, I, I, while we're both just face first in this funnel cake, look over and see that. And I kind of tap on her shoulder with my, my funnel cakey hands. And I point and I'm like, Hey, is that max? I'm pretty sure that's max. She kind of squints in his direction. He's like, Oh yeah, that is, that is him. Do you want to say hi or something? What's the chances that we both come here at the same time? Like.
00:39:23
Speaker
that seems so odd we should totally go say hello it's a carnival it's a kind of a big carnival i mean there's a roller coaster yeah let's let's go say hello okay
00:39:39
Speaker
So y'all can you can go say hello. But as you're doing that, Jerry, we're back to the diner, you guys or the pizzeria. You guys have been talking for a while, catching up on old stuff. You know, he reveals that, well, he did get back with Margaret and it was, you know.
00:40:01
Speaker
maybe some crazy night of passion. Um, but now there's a kid involved and, and he, you know, she's pregnant and he feels like it's his duty to marry her. Well, on the way out, Jerry is going to say, listen, dude, you, you were a rock for me in a hard and hard times. I'm absolutely going to do this for you, but only after I get to have that combo with her, dude, she's not going to leave you hung up like that again. I don't care. I do not care.
00:40:31
Speaker
So I'm going to be, I'm going to be groom's best dad. And I'm just going to warn her that she better not hurt you again. Like she did last time, physically or emotionally, dude, because I don't like talking about, I don't like bringing that, bringing this back up. That took weeks, weeks. You were messed up afterwards and you are bet you don't deserve that.
00:40:59
Speaker
Yeah, I know, but it's different this time. I think it's going to be different. And then he's like, oh, look, a carnival. Let's stop talking about my bad decisions and go get some cotton candy or something. You're my best friend. I'm never going to let you forget your bad decisions, but OK. And so he goes and leads you to the carnival. And yeah, he's like,
00:41:25
Speaker
Um, he gets some cotton candy, you know, and it's like, man, it's been a long time. Yeah. I remember when we used to go to this, uh, and then he kind of looks around and, and like, looks at some of the like signs and stuff. And he's like, actually, I think this is exactly the carnival we went to as kids. Like, look, you, you remember that freaky looking clown? And he points to the clown on the side of the fun house. Yeah. Didn't the kid go missing here back then?
00:41:55
Speaker
You know, I like not not the year not the year we came here the year after when they came back. Yeah, I think I remember that. Something about that. Yeah, that was weird. They they never found him either. You think you think it's the same carnival? Or do you think they just recycle build crops? I mean, it's been a while like whoever that clown was, he's he'd be old now. But I guess you know, Ronald McDonald.
00:42:23
Speaker
Yeah, I guess they recycle Ronald McDonald with different actors. So, I mean, I have no idea but he showed up at my in real life elementary school and I have trouble believing it was the real Ronald McDonald. There's a real Ronald McDonald? I have no idea. There was an original Ronald McDonald. The Ronald McDonald that showed up to my elementary was the first magician I'd ever seen and I was
00:42:51
Speaker
You know, this was like third grade or something. I could not believe what I was seeing. Since when could he do magic? This Ronald McDonald could do magic. Frank, I don't know if you know this, but clowns are all collectively from hell and they can cast the worst, most evil kind of magic that there is. Well, he put his like stick wand thing into a TV and then like made it reappear in his hand and then made it reappear in his hands later.
00:43:23
Speaker
it wasn't as an adult it wouldn't have been an impressive trick but as a you know however old you are in third grade i was very impressed by the things he was doing but jerry's gonna turn back to zach and be like you know that face that we're looking at right now that's what gave me nightmares that we were kids yeah yeah especially i mean after
00:43:48
Speaker
After we heard what happened and stuff, I did have weird dreams for a while. And you hear the shouting of a frantic woman, and she says, Max, that's definitely the crazy hair. Let's go inside. He's got to be in there. There's no change.
00:44:11
Speaker
I'm going to turn, I'm going to turn to the direction of the boys. Just like, uh, like entirely not thinking like there's no fucking way. Yeah. You peek around the side of the building. You see max with a woman that you've never seen before. And in the background, you see Cole and Lauren approaching. Um, Hey Zach. With their faces, with face deep and funnel cake. And Jerry is going to sit there, sit there silently and be like,
00:44:42
Speaker
It would be bad of me to say this directly to them. God, all that bread and sugar. Hey, Zach. Sorry about that. I actually just saw some people from a branch office I work with. Looks like they might be having some trouble. Let's rain check this, but should be the date, I'll get my license. I will absolutely appreciate it for you.
00:45:07
Speaker
Well, hang on, hang on. You know, you got some friends in trouble. Let me at least see if I can help out. I don't know. This is probably going to be us going through a location and dealing with some private security types.
00:45:23
Speaker
I mean, you do know, I'm sure you remember I used to be a security guard while in college. I got this. Dude, the other kind of security. One of those guys is my IT guy. I might need to be going to a server. Well, let me, you know, just introduce me to your friends, man. Okay, okay, okay. I got it. You know, you're talking about Margaret. I got to make sure you're hanging out with the right people.
00:45:52
Speaker
Um, excuse me. I always choose the best people to hang out with. Thank you very much. Jerry. Jerry. Your last boyfriend left you in ruins. It's in your backseat. Okay. I said, I said, I always hang out. I always hang out with the best people. I said nothing about my dating preferences. Okay. And by the way. He peeks over your shoulder and he's like, I mean, that's a good looking guy over there. I'm going to turn around. Wait, what?
00:46:36
Speaker
you all accidentally made a vampire risque joke just just you know introduce me and you know if it turns out it's something that's none of my business and then you know I'll head on but I'm not ready to leave the carnival yet you know
00:46:51
Speaker
By the way, just so you know, I choose to hang out with the best people. I said nothing about who I date and I have always had the respect for myself that if someone was to physically put their hands on me or make me feel small, they are not working in a relationship with people. I was broken up into pieces because I thought what we had was something special and it wasn't.
00:47:17
Speaker
He puts his arm around you in that friend way. And he's like, yeah, yeah. He's like, sure, sure. Now, let's go meet your other friends. And push leads you in their direction. And Max, as you hang up on the phone, you hear Jerry say that. And if you look, you'll also see Cole walking over with Lauren.
00:47:45
Speaker
I look at him and go, like, there's that slight like, oh, God, this is all happening. And I look at my wife, my ex-wife and I go, Brenda, some of my friends are walking up. I guess it's it's a party now. And I guess in that moment, Max is like freaking out. And I guess he will do the eyes of the beast.
00:48:12
Speaker
OK. Well, good thing she turns around to look at your friend, Jerry, who's approaching and her eyes widen for a second and she's like, wait a minute, I know this guy. You I've got your app and she pulls it up on on her phone. And you see, like, if you see me do like Max does like a giant grimace like, oh, fuck me.
00:48:34
Speaker
I look back at him and be like, Oh, yeah. So eyes of the beast, your eyes turn red and you can see perfectly in the dark. And I believe you have to do a, you might even have to do a hunger check. No, it's a, it's a free. Okay. No rules are required to activate this eyes of the beast while actively user ignores any site penalties imposed by darkness, including supernatural. Um,
00:49:03
Speaker
Yeah, that doesn't really reveal anything special to you. But I think what I'm gonna need is for both, because you did that, and then also, this is gonna be a role for Lauren. I don't think it would trigger for Mac, for Cole on this, but doing a Colt plus wits role. Or no, for you, awareness plus wits.
00:49:32
Speaker
Awareness plus wits. Holy crap, okay. Okay, eyes of the beast don't reveal anything. As Cole, as you and Lauren are walking up, she start like stutters in her step and slows to a halt.
00:50:01
Speaker
And you trail a few feet up in front of her before you notice that she stopped dead in her tracks. In front of me? Yes. You two were walking together. And then she stops dead in her tracks. And it takes you half a second to notice. So you're a couple of steps in front of her as she stops dead in her tracks. OK. What's up?
00:50:32
Speaker
She like, well, this is Lauren. She looks around nervously for a minute. And she's like, there's something weird about this place. Do you see anything? And then she takes a step towards you and she's like, do you see anything?
00:50:57
Speaker
Um, I look around Do I see anything do you activate do you activate your ghost site or do you um, just look around? Well, oh she said see she's putting emphasis. Yeah, I think the ghost site Um, so when you look around there are a lot of um Spirits wandering around this, you know carnival which you know is just set up in a parking lot, you know there are
00:51:26
Speaker
lot of spirits that like they're portraying themselves as having been maimed you know severely damaged like you know ghosts portray themselves in certain ways and that these these things have been like brutally murdered basically there's several of them just milling around aimlessly throughout the carnival I don't think I've seen that
00:51:54
Speaker
Everybody Google it now. What's up? 13 ghosts. Um, well, I'm more mean ghosts. No, I'm more. Yeah. Like have like stab wounds and, um, you know, like obvious, like been chopped up type stuff.
00:52:29
Speaker
Like some of them might be like bleeding out of their slit throats, you know, or walking around missing an arm that's spurting blood out. Ghost blood, of course, that dissipates before it hits the ground, but things like that. Like a lot of ghosts that look like they've been murdered. Okay.
00:52:56
Speaker
Uh, yeah, I, I, there's definitely, uh, something going on here. Um, there's a lot of, have you seen the 13th ghost movie? Uh, well, they don't look like those ghosts from the, they look vaguely, they look vaguely like the 13 ghosts movie. Very, very vague, like missing arms and legs and things. Yeah.
00:53:25
Speaker
I've seen it. If that's what's going on that, yeah, I'm feeling some freaky shit here. Like something bad's here. But I don't think it's ghost. I've been around. I've been around ghosts before and they don't feel this way. And she she kind of folks, she got a crit, so she kind of focuses a little more and she's like, yeah, yeah, I can feel I can feel the spirits.
00:53:55
Speaker
But no, there's something else here, something more powerful. Maybe we should leave. At this point, Jerry is now conversing with Max. And she says, should we warn your friends? That's not a bad idea.
00:54:22
Speaker
Jerry, what do you say to Max when you get to him? Or Max, what do you say to Jerry? Jerry, keep in mind that Max's eyes are currently red because he activated his eyes of the Beast Power. Yeah, but you saw his eyes turn red and start to glow. Yeah. So I'm going to say, hey, this is an old friend of mine.
00:54:54
Speaker
I mean, I just let me roll some dice real quick to see if old friend knows glowing red eyes. And at that point, real fast, I'm going to give a look to them like what the fuck is going on every time we're together is something related to us. When something happens, why is it always you three? Trust me, I want to know the same.
00:55:23
Speaker
You feel like you have main character energy, but I have something to tell you. He doesn't notice with with I think that's only one success, so. He doesn't notice the glowing eyes at the moment anyway. The Jerry's friend. All right, I go. So.
00:55:52
Speaker
Long story short, Brenda showed up. My kid got taken by probably the clown into the hall of mirrors. And Frank, you hear this as you're walking up behind them. I quickly do a U-turn and pretend like I didn't know what was going on and leave. I mean, OK. Jerry's going to reach back and grab him by the collar of his shirt. No, no, no, no.
00:56:18
Speaker
This is a problem. I can't do clowns. Lauren steps forward and says, what do you mean? What do you mean? You can't do clowns and look at yourself in the mirror, point taken. Lauren steps forward and says, what do you mean your kid was taken by a clown? Hey, Lauren, you're here too?
00:56:40
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm here with Cole. Yeah. So if you remember correctly, when he sent us the list of things to answer, one of my things I'm scared of is clowns. Ah, yeah, I do remember that. There's there's a woman. There's a woman nearby doing stunts and juggling and stuff dressed as in a Harlequin outfit. Um,
00:57:10
Speaker
If you don't know what that is. Is she a sexy Harlequin? Yes, certainly. Or creepy. She's a sexy one. Wait, it's Halloween, isn't it? Yeah. Yes. And we're at a carnival. Oh, hell no. I've been to a carnival on Halloween. Ain't none of those sexy clowns before. They're all scary.
00:57:32
Speaker
And I go, yeah, my supposedly kid got taken, and cops are refusing to do anything about it. So I'm going to go look for him. And with that, Lauren glances at Brenda and then steps close to you and grabs your arm for a second and says, there's something
00:57:59
Speaker
She's like, there's something more going on here. Not normal. Well, and then she says back, not that your kid getting taken is normal, but there's something more going on. I can feel it. I also want to grab Max's arm real fast. Just to ask him real fast, be like, Max, didn't you fake your test for your wife?
00:58:29
Speaker
I forget about that. I rolled a four to see if I would have understand what she was implying like if that was between Lauren and Frank's character. So you're assuming that she means something supernatural is going on here. OK, and I look and go.
00:58:53
Speaker
Well, yeah, probably. We're your witch. We're vampire. And I'm saying it's very hushed. I'm like, you're a witch. We're vampires. It's always something fucked up. And Brenda's like, OK, OK, can we stop with the the friend huddle? We need to find we need to find Max Junior. Let's he's probably in there. And she points to the fun house. And I I look at I look at Lauren and I say,
00:59:21
Speaker
I noticed the way you looked at her, is there something off too? Lauren, um, shakes her head, uh, and says, no, no, she's fine. Um, but you know, doesn't like, she's not trying to get into details with two regular people here.
00:59:44
Speaker
So on also asking max that question very sick actually gonna I'm gonna walk up to one of the clown performers Okay, and did they? Hate and did y'all give the union Lord? No wasn't born Brenda. Did you and Brenda give give a description of the clown that she saw taken Was it a clown
01:00:10
Speaker
It was someone with the red curly hair that's up on that saw the wall and in dark clothes anyways We should really be getting inside Inside we have Brenda's Brenda's already going inside I'm gonna grab that nearby that nearby clown one of the performers would be like hey Y'all got a clown here. That looks like that horrid looking giant clown there and I'm actually going to use
01:00:37
Speaker
I am going to use mesmerize. Okay. Let me double check exactly what all that does. I can issue complex commands. So basically I'm demanding an answer, a true answer to my question. Well, normally the clown would have tried to do some sort of, you know,
01:01:01
Speaker
like make a joke or make you laugh or whatever. But because he's now mesmerized, he glances over at the clown on the wall and says, oh, well, that's, that there's, he's actually, he's not alive anymore. That, he was around for a long time as kind of the,
01:01:28
Speaker
the mascot of this carnival, but he died a couple of decades ago, probably. But that's Happy Jack there. Happy Jack the clown. Happy Jack's back. Oh, I knew it. I suspect. And this is when I text McHale and I tell him that we're going inside the house nears or the fun house. OK.
01:01:59
Speaker
Frank, are you playing with a fidget spinner or something? No. Someone's playing with something clicky. That's not me. Oh, okay. I just blame strange noises on Frank. It usually is me. This time it was not me. Now I'm going to actually walk back up to the group after letting the clown go be like, have a great night. And I'm going to walk up back to everyone else and just say,
01:02:36
Speaker
And I turn around and say, well, from what I understood between Lauren and Cole, that's probably what's going on. Alright, let's go to the front house.
01:02:58
Speaker
And then I say, Brenda, slow the hell down and wait for me. So Bill and Cole, go ahead and give me awareness plus wits rolls. Or Bill and Frank, Jerry and Cole. Awareness plus wits, yeah. That's a four.
01:03:30
Speaker
and a two. I'll say Cole, Jerry, you probably don't notice this. You're focused on Max chasing after Brenda. Max is focused on chasing after Brenda. But you kind of notice the Harlequin girl has a crowd of children around her watching her performance. And periodically, she gives them a coin and tells them to go into the wagon to get their prize.
01:03:59
Speaker
with four successes, role, willpower. So under willpower, you know, click the one that says willpower, not WP reroll. Willpower. Willpower. It's in the same bar as. Plus not. Plus not, yeah, no. Hmm. Oh, one success. Do you notice that?
01:04:28
Speaker
but then your focus shifts to chasing after Max and Jerry. You notice that, but then your focus shifts to chasing after Max and Jerry and it kind of slips your mind and you run inside after them.
01:04:48
Speaker
So inside the fun house we find it's um it's a large thing it's uh it's got um well max the first thing you notice is um you see Brenda heading into the into a door that says ball pit.
01:05:03
Speaker
And that's where she's running to first. There's also like, there's like an arcade area. There's like an area where you like have those water guns that you shoot into the thing to fill up the balloons. There is a concession stand with food and like an attendant and stuff. And Brenda has gone into the ball pit. And there's a house of mirrors room as well.
01:05:32
Speaker
I don't really like those. She's looking for a kid, you know, kids like ball pits. And I go up to the attendant and I say, have you seen a little boy that looks like this lady over here? About this tall blonde hair, blue eyes?
01:05:55
Speaker
Uh, so this, this, uh, tendent, he's like this teenager with like pimples all over his face. And he's, he's got like, his mouth is kind of hanging open and he like glances you and it's like, dude, I, there's, do you know how many little boys I see in here all day? It's, it's a carnival. No, Abraham.
01:06:19
Speaker
I'm going to try to persuade him to be more honest with me. And I'm like, please, man, really, we can't find. I can't find my son. Any model. Well, since I'm. Whatever my charisma modifier is, I get a plus two or one, right? Yes, because you're my handsome, handsomeness. What is that a plus one? I should say on your. Over here, I'm trying to find it.
01:06:51
Speaker
I'm trying to find the two. Oh, it's here. So you've got beautiful. Let me just double check. Beautiful. Beautiful. It costs two points, but it might give you more than two or might only give you one. One extra dice to social roles. Yeah. Because you're a good looking man.
01:07:20
Speaker
Oh, messy, critical. So you like reach over the counter, grab this guy, you know, by the throat and pull him to and he's like, Where the fuck is my son? And the guy's like, he's like, Ah, don't hurt me, man. You he glances at you glances over, you know, well, Brenda's inside the ball pit now. But it's like, you said he kind of looks like you. Looks like her dumb ass. Wouldn't he look like you too?
01:07:51
Speaker
Well, he looks pretty much like his mom. He's like, uh, I haven't seen him, but I know that, uh, that Tasha outside, uh, she, she's always got kids around her that they're always going for the prizes in the wagon. Any type of clown with giant curly hair, walk around in dark suits.
01:08:18
Speaker
in a dark suit. No, no clowns in dark suits. They all wear those stupid, you know, normal clown costumes. Okay, cool. Thank you. And I like, let his throat go and like, kind of like, not rudely shove him away, but like, drop him basically. Well, you would, because of the messy critical, you probably rudely shove him away. Oh, yeah, drop him works too.
01:08:40
Speaker
he stumbles back and and like he's like puts up a back in five minutes sign and and like disappears into the back and I
01:09:00
Speaker
At this point Brenda comes back out of the ball pit and sees you and comes over and he's like boys He's like I thought I thought he might he always loved loves going in the ball pits, but he wasn't in there Yeah, well, so did you anyways? And I and I say And I say
01:09:30
Speaker
Kids said, apparently there's some lady out there that always has kids around her. If he's not in here, they might as well check that out. OK. And Frank, if Cole is nearby, this would trigger his memory of the lady outside. Mentioning curve would trigger your memory of what you saw.
01:09:55
Speaker
Oh, I saw children go inside the the prize trailer. The prize trailer that sounds so M wordy. I it. There's clowns. I can't help. Hey, we're good. Jerry, can you like do your therapy thing and make him like stop being afraid of clowns?
01:10:27
Speaker
And while you're saying this, he's doing like the hand talking thing while like walking out. I like the idea of remaining being afraid of clouds. You can be, yeah, you can be afraid of whatever you want. Is the Harlequin technically a clown? Technically it's not a clown. They're kind of like a jester, I guess. Either way, for shits and giggles, their whole profession is be a clown. Do what clown do. Yeah, yeah.
01:10:56
Speaker
So comic servant later became a faithful valet involved in Amherst Exploits and ultimately involved in clown-like figure. It's clown-like. Yeah. So I'm going back out. Come back with me. Oh, okay. I'll go with you to go to the prize trailer. Okay. So, um, I mean, Lauren's going to follow. Um, Zach has also been following. He's just like looking around, you know, like trying to help. Yeah.
01:11:27
Speaker
Hi. How are you? Well, not how I was expecting to spend my night, but there's a missing child. So I'm all in. All right. Well, let's hope we can get to the bottom of this quickly to the prize trailer. So you guys start heading towards the prize trailer. Which one of you is going to be the first to get there?
01:11:55
Speaker
Uh, probably me since I was the first one to head out. So like, as you approach, do you approach the lady or the trailer? I approached the trailer. Okay. As you approach the late, the trailer, the lady like flips over the children and lands in front of you. And she's like, she's like, where are you going little, little boy? You can't, you can't enter the trailer without a prize token. I scream quietly when I see her start flipping children. No, she flips over the children. Yeah. She flipped the children over.
01:12:25
Speaker
She jumps over the children and lands in front of you. Like an acrobat. I guess I'm gonna do a... Was that like an unhuman jump? It was impressive. It was impressive, alright. So, doable by someone who's in the circus.
01:12:49
Speaker
Okay. Um, nice. Once again, I'm gonna roll Persuasion plus Charisma to be like my, uh, my chirp to say my, my child's missing. I'm just trying to find him. Um, if he's anything like his mom, he has sticky fingers. Again, Jerry.
01:13:20
Speaker
Um, the, the Harlequin lady looks over all of you. Um, and she says, well, well, the, the prize trailer. Well, yeah. Okay. Um, you can, you can check for your kids, but you'll need a token and she hands you a token. Um, and she passes out tokens to anyone who wants to go on the prize trailer. Did we leave Brenda back in the house? Yeah. Brenda's coming.
01:13:46
Speaker
OK, she's there. And this is when I'm. Oh, OK. Has Mike, has Michael got here yet? Um, let me see. Who is Michael? My grandfather. Why is he coming? No, because I called him. He's not there. Oh. Oh, your sire. Gotcha. Not my sire. My grandson. Grand sire. Yeah, he's not there yet now. OK.
01:14:16
Speaker
I text him once again and say, not in the fun house. Was it just a ball pit in the balloon thing in the fun house? There was a ball pit, the balloon water gun game, a house of mirrors, a arcade, and the concession area. Jerry's actually going to, before she leaves, Jerry's going to turn to Brenda and be like, Brenda,
01:14:45
Speaker
What ride did you say they were getting on just before they disappeared? It was the roller coaster. They got on the roller coaster. It went around and when it came back around, they weren't there. Everybody else was there, but they weren't. Can I look at the roller coaster and see if I think I could see where they would get off at? Give me an investigation plus intelligence role.
01:15:20
Speaker
You are too distracted by the clowns to really investigate, yeah. This makes too much sense. I'm going to go over and do this. I've kind of been staying near coal ever since I realized that, oh no, this is not the time or place. I look up at the roller coaster and then a clown walks past and I'm like, hey.
01:15:47
Speaker
Well, maybe it's more that she offers you one of the prize tokens. That works. Yeah. I kind of, like, hesitantly reach out and, like, grab it. Once you have a prize token, anyone who has a prize token, she gets out of their way. So Max, if you take the prize token, she will stop blocking you and you can run right in. Yeah, I take the token, but I wait for Brenda. Brenda also grabs the token. Yeah, she grabs it as well.
01:16:19
Speaker
And so will Lauren and Zach. As Jerry's grabbing the token, he's also going to turn to the lady and be like, does that roller coaster make any stops and just loop around? Stops? Well, no. Roller coaster, I mean, unless you count like when it slows down at the top of the like right before the big drop. How long does it slow down for?
01:16:43
Speaker
I don't think it actually comes to a stop. Did you guys want your prize or not? Or did you want to look in there or not? Yes, I'm taking it. God damn it. Max, I'm right behind you.
01:16:56
Speaker
All right, so when you enter the trailer, the trailer itself, most of it is pretty nondescript.
Mystical Choices and Discoveries
01:17:04
Speaker
It's got some clown props and makeup and stuff like that in the mirror with a chair in front of it with a bunch of clown makeup scattered out. And then in the back of the trailer, there's a door that says prizes downstairs.
01:17:26
Speaker
It's a trailer. How's our downstairs? That's just what the door says. It's a closed door. And this is this is when you see Max go for his back and pull out, you know, his his piece and look to see if it's chambered and then continues to walk towards the door. OK.
01:17:50
Speaker
Um, Lauren, uh, as she enters the, uh, trailer, um, you know, her eyes focus on the door and she says, that's not, there's something up with that door. That's not a normal door. And that's when I hold up the gun and go, I know. All right. Um, is everyone else getting in the trailer? Um, is the.
01:18:16
Speaker
Ladies still there or she walk away. She went back to entertaining for the kids if no one else is interacting with her. I, yes, then I go inside. Okay. And Zach is like, Zach sees the gun is like, whoa, whoa, hey, man, look, we don't know what's going on here. You shouldn't, you should probably put that thing away. Someone might call the police. Hey, Jerry's gonna turn to me like, it's okay, Zach. Then Jerry's gonna turn back to, back to Max and gonna be like, are those hollow points?
01:18:46
Speaker
You know it. Well done. All right. You reached the door. I and like right before then, I'm like. Lauren, how did you mean something's off like teleportation off or like it just feels wrong? I like magic wrong. My powers aren't that descriptive, specific without doing like rituals, but it feels wrong. Yeah, yes, magic wrong.
01:19:17
Speaker
And that's when I do like a sarcastic chuckle. And I say, I thought you were supposed to be our hot girl. Cole's hot witch girlfriend who just knew everything. Listen, you've seen Stranger Things, assuming it was out during this year. Their witch girl couldn't just know things all of a sudden. She was always vague. Magic is vague most of the time.
01:19:42
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, I mean, I guess I opened up the door. So you opened the door, and there is a stairwell, and possibly descending down into the ground. From what you saw outside of the trailer,
01:20:02
Speaker
There were no stairs coming out of the trailer or anything like that. And the trailer was raised off the ground. So already this is odd. The stairs go down about 60 feet and then level off. Yeah. And it's it is it's dark, but it's lit by like
01:20:25
Speaker
just like dim, but like fun colored lights, I guess, like greens and blues and reds and stuff like that that are kind of like flickering. What do you do? I start descending. Sorry, I was reading one of my abilities. OK, you start descending. Does anyone else go down the stairs or what's everyone else doing? Jerry goes, Jerry's going down the stairs. OK.
01:20:55
Speaker
You get to the bottom of the stairwell, it levels off. All right. Cole, do you resist or anything? Or resist? Probably not. Okay. Yeah, Jerry, you go down a few steps, you're dragging Cole. You hear whoever's behind Cole, take a few steps and then stop and kind of gasp.
01:21:29
Speaker
Me? Both of you hear that. Uh, uh, Max is probably too far down. He's, he's in a hurry, you know, and Brenda's right behind you. So. Okay. But, but Bill and Cole, you would hear, um, whoever was behind you take a few steps, stop and gasp. Hey, um, I would probably peek around the corner or whatever.
01:21:54
Speaker
So when you peek, you're peeking back to who's behind you or down the corner, like downstairs. To see if I can figure out where the, who, what, gasp, why. The gasp. So you turn around and you see Lauren facing away from you looking back up the stairs. It's never ending going back up. Yes.
01:22:17
Speaker
Oh, that's not good. And Zach is there, and he's like, what? He turns around and then like stumbles back in fear. Stumbles, falls into Lauren. Lauren falls into Cole. Cole, you can roll to try and catch her. Catch them both. I guess athletics plus dexterity or strength, whichever one's better for you.
01:22:49
Speaker
Thanks. Yeah, you catch you catch Lauren and then, you know, there's also you kind of like grunt as also Zach falls into Lauren, you know, and the way to both of them hit you, but you managed to catch them and steady yourself enough to where you don't also fall down.
01:23:11
Speaker
He just stumbled out a surprise of seeing an endless stairway above him. That wasn't there two seconds ago. What is happening? Where's the door? I took one step. What's going on? I don't understand. This is Zach saying all that. OK, Zach, I'm not 100% sure what's going on. But as far as we know, this is the last direction we saw where the kid went. We'll figure everything else out later.
01:23:42
Speaker
And it's like, but the, he starts running up the stairs and he runs for a little while before he stops. And it's like, this is impossible. Now, what do we see when he does that? Is it like Mario 64? No, he gets further away from you. Like he runs enough. Like the time that he spent running, that's how far he gets away from you. Like he is going up.
01:24:11
Speaker
I'm gonna shot behind him. Zach, I don't think it's gonna work like that. Yeah, he doesn't go for long. He stops. It's probably gonna be best if we just move forward and don't think about it too much. He turns around. It's like, what the hell is in that cotton candy? Mess. Nothing that you should put into your body. Let's go. He...
01:24:40
Speaker
starts walking down the stairs and Lauren, Lauren pulls out a, she actually pulls out a dagger and starts whispering something over it as she's following you guys down the stairs. I guess I should roll. Okay.
01:25:08
Speaker
All right, so Max and Brenda, you guys get to the bottom of the stairs and the stairway levels out into a hallway that travels a short distance ending in a large set of brass double doors. With the words, Tasha's madhouse expertly engraved across the door. Bill, is your wife doing weed shit again?
01:25:38
Speaker
To be fair I I'll say you know to be fair I kept the name because it's funny but this was a D&D thing so I mean Tasha's yeah this this was a converted D&D dungeon I mean you don't know what she gets up to you when you're at work
01:26:05
Speaker
And so I read that out. And I say, hey, Lauren, do you know anything about Tasha? Let's see. You can also I will. Yeah, I'm going to roll a call a call with intelligence. Dammit.
01:26:31
Speaker
Uh, no, neither one of you, um, rolled high enough. I'll say that even with your two successes, you've heard another name. Um, and it, you think about it and you do recall, um, well, Max is from Houston, right? No, Max is from Vegas. Oh, they're both from Vegas. Hmm.
01:26:56
Speaker
never mind then you wouldn't recall ancient Houston folklore so yeah but uh uh yeah with three successes she's like uh nothing by that name specifically i mean considering we're in a weird magical place i mean there's lots of fey demonic you know different things that steal children there's all sorts of legends
01:27:25
Speaker
But this one I know, I don't know specifically. And this is when I pull out my phone again and just check it. Do I have cell reception? You do not have cell reception. You do see the last, well, what kind of phone do you have? It's a burner flip phone. Oh, right. Okay. It wouldn't show you any of the delivered or anything like that. Yeah, he didn't respond. Okay. But yeah, no reception.
01:28:01
Speaker
What was I about to say? Yeah. I put my hand on the doorknob and began to pull it open. Yeah. You open the door. Let me get to the description. I'm on the fly changing these descriptions to match modern time. So like I read through this, but I started typing it out. I'm like, I don't know what direction they're going to go. I mean, yes, I'm railroading you, but
01:28:26
Speaker
The door opens easily, swinging inward, and quietly opening to a room with three small tables in the center. A wooden chair rests on either side of each table. Two of the tables are currently occupied. There's a
01:28:46
Speaker
It's like a normal looking human. There's a man sitting across from a androgynous person wearing a, basically a solid, like a mask that is just like a solid white disc. No eye holes or anything. Just like a,
01:29:09
Speaker
almost like a bowl over their face, a white mask, oval mask over their face. And his eyes are closed, and an expression of joy fills his face. The hands and fingers of the masked person
01:29:31
Speaker
chaotically dance through the air as if they were weaving the air itself, although you don't see air being weaved. The other chair is occupied by an older woman who is not in the same state of rapture that the guy is, but the person sitting across from them is also waving their hands about. A short woman walks up to you wearing the same kind of mask, a featureless white mask,
01:30:00
Speaker
And she holds up a book and a writing implement. And you see in the book like a list of basically just names. And it's like a sign-in book. And she's like, please sign in and we'll get you processed and figure out which experience is gonna be best for you.
01:30:30
Speaker
I'm gonna try once again for persuasion and charisma. I'm saying, I'm just looking for my son while trying to not have it obvious that I have my gun out. I'm like, well, considering where I am, I don't give a shit anymore. I say, I'm just trying to find my son. Do you know where he is?
01:30:59
Speaker
Oh, your son, he would have gone through. Hold on, let me double check.
01:31:12
Speaker
Um, uh, all the, all the kids go through, uh, uh, uh, door, the door on, on the left over there. And she points, you know, she points to that there's basically a door on the left side of the room and a door on the right side of the room. Um, and she's like, uh, but all the doors lead to the same place eventually. Um, it's just the experience, uh, along the way. Um, and if they were led by some weird. Crazy clown person.
01:31:42
Speaker
weird, crazy clown person. Well, no, your son definitely came through here. He went through that door. But we've got to see if you can go through that door if you need to go through the other door. What's this book and what does it do? Oh, this is just a sign in sheet so we know who goes in here, goes through here. And you do see your son's name. If you like, you know, look. Yeah, I'm looking through it. Yeah, he's like a page back.
01:32:14
Speaker
And it's just his name. And then like in her handwriting, it's like the time that he entered and I don't have the time, you know, like an hour ago. And it says door A. What is this place? This, well, this is Tasha's Kiss.
01:32:42
Speaker
It's a wonderful place. Your son's having an amazing time. What are you doing to children? Well, he's enjoying the wonders of Tasha's kit. Yeah, it's a weird name. I get it. She doesn't kiss them. I mean, Tasha's the girl outside. But it's just a fun,
01:33:08
Speaker
Okay, Jiri's gonna get right up in front of her and use mesmerize again. Okay, I'm gonna need you to roll this time. So, you will roll manipulation plus your points and dominate, so that would be, or did you have the mesmerize roll prepped? Oh no, that's Maxwell. Oh no, I've got mesmerize prepped.
01:33:37
Speaker
Oh, okay. And you also need to do a rouse check to see if it makes you hungry. I showed you how to do that last time, but that's your rouse. Okay. So mesmerize should be manipulation plus the however many points and dominate you have. That's weird. But I may have pre set up the role for you, Jerry. It would be under dominates.
01:34:08
Speaker
Yeah, if you click the second dice next to where it says manipulation and discipline, it'd be the one to the right of that. That'll roll for you. Yeah, I rolled that dice way wrong the first time then. Well, the first one just did a rouse check for you. I don't know why they put that on there, because there's another place on the sheet where you can do that. Okay, and then she has to roll to resist.
01:34:43
Speaker
What do you say as part of this When did you see him come through and you're going to let us in that door She looks glances at the book and says oh he was here at we'll say 535
01:35:03
Speaker
And, and yeah, well, look, if you don't want to, like, I've got to, I've got to see which door you can go through. Like there's, there's, there's a process here. Like it's my job. I think that we can go through whatever door this man's kid went through. Well, no, if you don't want to go through the process, you go through that door over there and she points to the door to the right. Door B. So I, what do I got to roll to see if I hold it together enough to not just go screaming through the door she was pointing to?
01:35:33
Speaker
Well, these people don't look like clowns. OK, then I just go screaming through the door she's pointing to. OK. We'll say what happens after we figure out what everyone's door is. So you run through that door. No one stops you since you're going through the one she pointed to, door B. That's if you don't want to take the test. You go through door B. Wait, there was a test? Yes, you had to sign the book.
01:36:01
Speaker
Well, you sign the book and then and then and then the next. Yeah, after you sign the book, you sit down and and and we do a quick little like it's it's like a it's it's like a it's a test. And and we figure out if you go to door A or door B and that's what tailors your experience. But I always go to door A. And then go screaming through the notion point to. OK, well, yeah, she doesn't stop you. Screaming.
01:36:32
Speaker
Yes, screaming through door B. And then I look at Lauren go by by pointed to you mean the door that she said she's not going to stop you to go through, right? Yes. OK, yeah. So you go through that door and we'll describe after we figure out what everyone else is doing. I look at Lauren, I'm like. That's your boy. And I like I like calmly like signed my name and then went screaming through the door.
01:37:02
Speaker
And I signed my name and sit down ready to take a test. OK. OK. The two people who are in front of you, the man who looked happy goes to door A. The older woman goes to door B. The three of you sit down. Lauren looks at door B, but then signs her name. And Zach is like, I guess, except for that guy, I guess if everyone else is doing it, I'll sign my name too.
01:37:31
Speaker
I look at Brenda. Oh Brenda. She's like what I'm I'll go I'll go to the no, she she signs her name. She's like, this is bullshit, but I'll she signs her name And and then yeah, so that you max and Or max Jerry and I guess Lauren were the first three to sign cuz or after Frank after Cole so
01:38:01
Speaker
I'm gonna do so each of you will need to roll on just roll willpower so willpower it's it's oh it's a skill yeah it's the green ones next to where health is oh any modifiers
01:38:27
Speaker
no modifiers i've just modified the difficulty based on the fact that your vampires damn it why am i rolling like shit um let me go ahead and roll for for zac as well why is lauren rolling so good all the time well that was actually that was actually zac um
01:38:52
Speaker
So Zach rolled really good. Lauren only got two successes. Huh. All three of you got this. OK. The three of you by that, I mean, Lauren and then Jerry and Max. You guys, let me find the description for this one.
01:39:24
Speaker
So the three of you are actually overcome with a feeling of joy, love, and happiness. Your worries about Max Jr fade away. Oh, I didn't roll for Brenda. Let me see what Brenda gets. Brenda has a character she, Zach, doesn't. So humans, Brenda, I'm gonna laugh if she rolls good too.
01:39:53
Speaker
She's not going to. Unless she gets a crit, she actually can't input value. The value's right there, whatever. Wait, I think I might have messed her roll up. Okay, no, okay. Zero successes. All right, then.
01:40:17
Speaker
The three, so Lauren, Jerry, Max, and Brenda are all overcome with joy, love, and happiness. Your worries about Max fade, and you do not resist as you go into door A. They're like, and right this way, Zach, however, succeeded the willpower roll and goes through door B. So we're gonna start with door B.
01:40:49
Speaker
So Cole, you run through this door first. As soon as you step through the door, you start falling. And you are falling for several minutes. I just continue to scream. Yeah, you scream, you fall. When you hit the ground, you don't hit as hard as you think you should. You only take one superficial damage when you hit the ground.
01:41:18
Speaker
So on your health, just one slash. Turn one of the boxes into a slash. All right. As you get up and look around, you find yourself, let me find the description of this room. It was here.
01:41:43
Speaker
You find yourself in what appears to be a house of mirrors. A winding maze of mirrors along the room creates an uneasy feeling. Your reflections looking back at you matching your movement.
01:41:57
Speaker
And there's just mirrors. So you see thousands of yourself reflected throughout this place for a while. And then like a minute, a few seconds later, another person studs into the ground and Zach hits the ground next to you. And now you also see his reflections in the mirrors. Hey, Zach.
01:42:25
Speaker
What the fuck just happened? I have no idea. You told me I was falling and screaming. He like looks up, looking for the door that you fell through, but above is just a dark void.
01:42:44
Speaker
There is no visible light source in this room, and yet it's as if the light comes, like it's not bright, but it's bright enough that you can see your reflections and stuff, and the light seems to be coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Okay. Do you do anything in this room?
01:43:14
Speaker
I admire myself in the mirrors. So you walk up to one of the mirrors and you see yourself and for a moment it looks like you and then the mirror starts to shift and it shows the image of you the same age as you are now but like dressed kind of how you used to dress when you hung out with your gang.
01:43:37
Speaker
And you look a little bit like you've got a scar over your eye and like a cool slash down your eye, like a cool, like you got cut across the eye or whatever. And like, you've got a cool scar and you're wearing like a motorcycle jacket and stuff. But your reflection is the same age as, like appears to be the same age as you are now.
01:44:05
Speaker
if you were alive, that the reflection is, no, this reflection is you alive, yeah. It's a living me? Well, it's, yeah, it's matching your movements and everything, but it's you dressed in your biker outfit and alive.
01:44:30
Speaker
That's true. And you also hear Zach muttering like, what the hell is happening in here? As out of the corner of your eye, you see him staring at a picture of himself in the mirror. Hey, Zach, what are you seeing? I see myself, but I've got, but I'm dressed as a security guard
01:45:01
Speaker
God, I'm fat and I'm a security guard. No, wait. Does that say the Galleria? Oh my God, I'm a mall cop. What the heck? Did you ever have aspirations to be a mall cop? No, but I used to be a security guard at the college
01:45:29
Speaker
And Zach gets flashbacks to when he would always slack off in his studies. And Jerry would always be like, if you're not careful, you're going to end up working security at a mall. He like stumbles back from it. He's like, this is just weird. And turns to another mirror and like lets out a gasp and goes and moves close to the mirror. And he's like, what the heck? And he's just studying himself the mirror.
01:46:05
Speaker
Okay, maybe we should try to get out of here. It's a bit odd. I see myself in an interesting light, but let's keep going.
01:46:21
Speaker
You see, as you move through, every mirror shows a different version of yourself, a version that could have been, as you're going along, another version of like a gangster, you go through the maze, another version of gangster, you is like, it's the reflection of you walking towards that mirror. And then before you stop walking, it stops.
01:46:47
Speaker
and ends up in the same position that you stopped in, but it stopped like a split second before you did. I punched the mirror. All right, give me a willpower roll. Willpower.
Confronting the Supernatural
01:47:09
Speaker
Will. There's way too many of these fucking things. You just rolled one of those, I think.
01:47:17
Speaker
Probably. Um, I am two drinks in. So it's, where's the green bar, the green bar, the green things that are similar to health. Oh, yeah. Press the WP reroll or will tell the other one, the one that's just willpower. Okay. Okay. Um, you feel a, so first you take one point of willpower damage. So turn one of those screens into a slash.
01:47:49
Speaker
Yep. Okay, you feel this like lurch as if you're being yanked forward into the mirror and for a moment you see yourself vampire you standing in a room of mirrors as if you were looking out at him from within the mirror. But then the mirror around you the world around you shatters and then you're back in your own body as your fist collides with the mirror.
01:48:15
Speaker
But for a moment, you saw as if you were seeing from within the mirror looking back out at you. So I watched the fist come and punch me in the face? Yeah, you watched the fist punch you in the face and shadow the mirror. Trippy. And then we switch over to the others who are going through door A. That leads to area two.
01:48:42
Speaker
Okay, so as you guys are led into the next room through door A, you see a
01:48:53
Speaker
The, hmm, would it? No, you all failed. So, um, you don't feel this smart. I mean, if my, if my son is missing, I think there might be like something in the back of my brain h-ing. Yeah, you can make another, you can make another willpower roll, and I'm gonna do it for Lauren as well, cause she's magical. And Jerry, same. Any modifiers? Um, I'll give you a plus one. And that was rolling a what again? Nope, just willpower again. Just very, okay.
01:49:27
Speaker
much better on Jerry and okay Jerry you're still happy Brenda I'm gonna say is Brenda and Zach are both still happy max you come out of it and from what you can see out of the corner of your eye it looks like maybe Lauren is coming out of the two humor and hate
01:49:50
Speaker
Both humor, as in funny, and hate clash in your head as a stench of dry barren rot fills this stone room. Several crates lie stacked in a corner. Glass jars rest on top of them. A man is laughing in the distance. Going back and forth between laughing and weeping. Jerry, you just enter this room. Everything's good. You're happy. So are the other two.
01:50:21
Speaker
In the far side of the room, you see a bald man with a Neanderthal-like face working at a series of chains. He's covered in hooks and spikes, self-inflicted wounds leaking an unnatural green miasma that dissipates into the air. The chains which are attached to pulleys are latched onto a ghostly figure. The figure shrieks as it's pulled out of an identical human,
01:50:46
Speaker
Oh, the figure, the ghostly figure is weeping. The human sitting in the chair is laughing. Okay, so basically it looks like a ghost is being pulled out of this man by chains. The ghost is weeping, the man is laughing. A few lifeless bodies lie stacked in the nearby pile. Crates and tables covered in glass jars and rusty tools lay in the corner. The man does not appear to have
01:51:15
Speaker
If he if he did notice you guys enter, he didn't acknowledge you. Do I realize that Lauren is snapping out of it? Yeah, you hear Lauren mutter. What what the fuck? All right, I look around and go, this is wild. Jerry, you think this looks kind of fun. It kind of looks like fun.
01:51:44
Speaker
What's going on over here? And Brenda's like, yeah, let me let me get. Oh, I got next. And she like pushes past you to. Oh, asshole. And when Brenda, when she's trying to push past me, I like try to grab her. She doesn't struggle much. She's like, oh, party pooper. I know I started like drunk laughing because she said pooper. Jerry also said of course.
01:52:19
Speaker
I'm going to go up to the man who was having this thing happen to him. And I'm going to taste a little bit of blood.
01:52:35
Speaker
And I'm doing the taste for blood by tasting a drop of blood. When you lean down to taste the blood, the guy who is pulling the soul ghost out of the guy says, Oh, excuse me. I'm working here. Hey, I'm working here. I'm working here. Yeah. And when I look at him and I go, fine, can I do it to you then?
01:53:07
Speaker
Do what? What are you trying to do? I just want a taste. A taste? A taste of what? Your blood. My oh, okay. And he like jabs a finger into one of the bleeding holes and pulls out this gooey green substance. And I look at Lauren and like holding in my hand like Lauren's mouth is just like dropped. And she's like, I
01:53:39
Speaker
Yeah, this doesn't look like something I would get anything from. So if you don't mind, I'm gonna taste from him real quick. Alright.
01:54:04
Speaker
I'm going to see if I can screenshot this image. It's not quite the image I was picturing, but it works. Draw a shape to create a screen snip. Since when is that a thing? Well, I got to redo it because I didn't know it was going to be a square. OK, try again. Do that. But now I have to save it.
01:54:31
Speaker
Let me, uh, the, the person whose blood you're tasting, uh, his blood tastes normal. Um, yeah, but I'm, I'm doing one of my spells basically. What does it do? It's a, uh, taste for blood by tasting one drop of blood. The user can discern a certain basic trait from the one who belongs. And then the system says.
01:54:56
Speaker
The user dabs the blood on the tongue, makes resolve plus blood sorcery roll to 23. With a win, the user can determine the resonance and intensity of the blood if human. They can also identify whether the blood belongs to a mortal ghoul, vampire, or other supernatural creature. Let me grab my quick reference sheet real quick, since it tells you resonance. Or I guess you need to do that roll first. Yeah.
01:55:28
Speaker
So it's all blood sorcery. So I rolled blood sorcery, I don't see how to add them together. What you can do is roll, it was intelligence. Just do intelligence with a plus one modifier. It was...
01:55:53
Speaker
or whatever. Resolve plus blood sorcery. Because you've got one point in blood sorcery. So click resolve and then add a modifier of one. All right. So I'm thinking this probably looks a little more human-like, but he's got the stuff poking out of him. But this is the picture that the book provides. Did that pop up for y'all? Yeah. OK. That looks good. How did my resolve go?
01:56:23
Speaker
It's under the mental traits. Oh, there it is. Seriously, Ron, these seriously. What's this? No secondary attribute. How many points of blood sorcery do you have? I was looking at Lauren's sheep, which I called her magic blood sorcery. Just for that. I have two points in blood sorcery. So it'd be resolve plus two. Any secondary attribute? No.
01:56:58
Speaker
It's vaguely similar to 13 ghosts, but look at this is actually pretty goddamn similar to yeah, well, he's not a ghost though. Oh my god
01:57:09
Speaker
Okay, so this guy is a human. Nothing special about him. The person whose blood you're tasting, obviously, the weird guy is obviously not entirely human. And the resonance of his... So actually, I need my book. Because of the experience he's having, his blood is special.
01:57:40
Speaker
Okay, got it. I dropped a bunch of papers getting it, but I got it. So his blood would be of the, um, where are the resonances? It's been a while since I've looked at this cheat sheet. Okay, it would be the
01:58:00
Speaker
Phlegmatic, I think, is the one that is where joy and happiness is from. So if you have skills in all specs or dominate from tasting this blood, you get a plus one to those skills going forward. But more than that, it is a intense resonance and that gives it a special thingy.
01:58:25
Speaker
which we've encountered this once before when someone got blood that gave them a bonus to checks specifically involving the 50s or something like that. On the back here. Nope, those are victims. Let's see. It would be what's called a dyscrasia, which basically is specialty blood or special blood that has special bonuses. Let's have to find it in the book real quick.
01:58:56
Speaker
because he is experiencing something very intense at the moment. So it'll be Sanguine, which will give you a plus one bonus to future blood sorcery rolls. But also it... Okay, I like this. You also get Manic High. The drinker adds one dice to all rolls until they fail a roll, and then after that they subtract two dice from all rolls.
01:59:25
Speaker
damn so you get a plus one until you fail and then you get a minus two for for a while basically until you taste new blood alright until you taste new blood or or sleep so for the rest of the night unless you drink someone else's blood tonight it does that and how much blood do I have to drink just a point worth and if you were at more than one point you get a point
01:59:54
Speaker
point back. Although you realize you could probably just take this guy's life with no penalty if you really want to. He's not really fighting, but... Yeah, I'm at 300. Yeah, so subtract one from your hunger at the very least. Okay. Um... I'm not gonna kill him. Okay.
02:00:23
Speaker
Well, News Flash, unless you guys stop the soul ripping, he dies after that happens. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Right now, Jerry is high as a cow, so I can't really do much other than laugh. Lauren. I look at Lauren. I'm like, damn, that was intense. Yeah, she doesn't stop him. She just watches.
02:00:52
Speaker
with morbid curiosity. And yeah, he pulls the soul out and then he puts it into a jar and it kind of compresses down into this jar. And he's got several jars already on the counter. There are- Can I have one of those? There are nine jars on the counter with glowing green.
02:01:21
Speaker
soul and him. He's like, oh, no, no, no, these these are for Tasha. I knew it. Which one of you is next? None of us. What? Yeah, no, none of us. But Tasha is hungry. So am I.
02:01:48
Speaker
Well, didn't you, didn't you wait, wait, he, he squints at you. Like, wait a minute. You're, you're already dead. I don't have one. I don't have one. No, no, you're no good. You're no good. And oh, him over there and he snaps his finger and Jerry, you, you come out of your, your stupor. He's like, he's no good either. Uh, but you, you two, and he points at, um, Lauren and, uh, Brenda, he's like, you, which, which one of you is first? And Brenda says me first, me first.
02:02:18
Speaker
And that's when I say I'd rather not get into. Dramatics with you, so just don't touch them. But but that's my job. Yeah, well, you can ignore your job for now. I have to go find someone. And they're all coming with me with their souls.
02:02:50
Speaker
Well, but Tasha's not going to like that. Yeah, well, Tasha can suck this. Tasha can suck this dick. I don't give a shit. Max, what the fuck are you talking about right now? This guy's been ripping out souls, all those souls on the jar. Yeah, he's been doing this for his job because Tasha, the flippy lady out there, has been eating them. Max. What the fuck? You do recall that the lady told you that Max Junior would have gone through this door.
02:03:21
Speaker
Yeah. Wait, is this the door the kid went? Hey, did you just do that recently to a kid? Oh, no, no, no. No kids. We don't do that to kids. The kids go to Jack. Where the fuck is he? Jack, I don't know where he is right now. You'd have to ask Tasha.
02:03:48
Speaker
She might know. I just I just I just doing my job down here. She sent us down here. Where do you send the kids? Oh, Tasha didn't send you down here. That was Tasha. Is there like anything else besides this room? There's a door. And I say, OK, Mr. Ghouli man, we're going to go beyond we're going to walk by that door.
02:04:17
Speaker
and you're not gonna touch anyone, got it? Give me either some sort of persuasion or intimidation check. Okay, I'm gonna do persuasion plus two because of one plus one. Okay, well, similar to with the boy, the teenager,
02:04:52
Speaker
and a
02:05:12
Speaker
You definitely persuade him.
02:05:17
Speaker
like while he's not looking yeah um give me a larceny plus dexterity or yeah it'd be larceny i guess or stealth is there's i think pickpocketing is usually larceny yeah that sort of stuff any modifiers so wait yeah i get one for now until i fail yeah that's enough he his back was to you
02:05:42
Speaker
So you steal the jar. Um, it's w it's like cool to the touch. All right. And I open up the door and I assure everyone through making sure Brenda is definitely following. All right. You guys go through the door. We go back to Frank, uh, to Cole and then while we're walking through, I go a Lauren and I hand out the charter. You hand what?
02:06:06
Speaker
I hand the jar. Yeah. And Lauren's like, ooh, and pops the cork and starts trying, lifting it towards her mouth. Like, Lauren, don't drink it. What? Why not? Do you drink souls? She looks down. Oh my god, you've drank and show souls before. She looks down and it's like it looks looks looks delicious.
02:06:31
Speaker
Lauren, I'm a vampire. I understand, but you're good. Oh, Lauren. Oh, sorry. You gave to Lauren. I was thinking. Wait, who did you think I gave it to? Oh, no. Sorry. Oh, Lauren. Good Lord. Of course. Of course. That soulless bitch knows what a soul tastes like. Yeah, she ate so many. She is still is still mesmerized.
02:06:56
Speaker
Yeah, Brenda's still memorized. Yeah, Laura. OK, so sorry, Lauren takes the jar and holds it up in front of her, kind of shakes it, and she's like, could this really be a soul? And she's just studying it now as you guys walk. Yeah, and I say, don't ever think I never did anything nice for you. She glances over at the bodies, and I wonder which one it was.
02:07:30
Speaker
You say that while you tried murdering a vampire. It's always different when it comes to you. But it definitely would have kept the quote world from ending end quote.
02:07:52
Speaker
Well, I mean, the moon's still red. And everybody. Anyways. And look where we are. I don't know about you, but I've never gone down an impossible staircase into a weird soul man's room. What if we could figure out if I said I have before? I mean, you're a vampire, so I wouldn't be surprised if you had.
02:08:28
Speaker
You know, this, this sadly does not describe what would happen if you drank a soul. I'm gonna go to the bathroom real quick. Alright, so Frank here, Cole, you are- Well, I guess as a DM you can just make that up.
02:08:48
Speaker
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, obviously, I'm just like surprised I didn't put that in here. I feel like that's something some of my some D&D player would try to do. But Cole, you're in the mirror room still. You've been in here for a little bit. So go ahead and give me another willpower roll. I think we'll try and speed this up because I just noticed what time it is. So
02:09:14
Speaker
Two successes, all right. You do not begin to go mad. I grab, what's his name? Brendan? Barley? Zach, okay. I grab Zach by the arm and attempt to make my way out of there. Well, the last thing we, oh yeah, you punched that one thing. Okay. All right.
02:09:41
Speaker
So go ahead and give me, I'm trying to see where the, give me a intelligence, an investigation plus intelligence role to see if you can find your way out. It didn't roll. There it goes. Oh, there it goes.
02:10:11
Speaker
Well, yeah, you're gonna find your way out. I'm just trying to figure out where the next door leads. Okay. All right, so you managed to make your way out. Occasionally you have to stop Zach from reaching out to touch the mirrors when he sees one that looks particularly enticing or weird or something. Every now and then one of your mirrors will do the same thing that one did before or it'll like,
02:10:41
Speaker
Motion to try and get you to come over to it and stuff like that like it wants you to touch the mirror I am like head down staring at fear so you Eventually after a while find your way through the maze of mirrors find a a door That's like hidden from you know between mirrors or something like that and open the door And it is a long hallway which you see
02:11:09
Speaker
through another door, Max and the and the gang stepping out of their door into the same hallway. Hey, guys, or your door. Well, what do you see me seeing giving your girlfriend a jar? Yeah, yeah. Max, it better not be another jar of pee. Don't tell me how to live my life.
02:11:35
Speaker
I'm still confused as to what happened in that room right there. All I remember was sitting down at a table and all of a sudden I'm in a room with you guys and some dude and a bunch of bodies. And you tell me you got sold at a jar. That's literally what happened. So there are three doors in this hallway. There's the two you guys just came out of and then one more. I walked down. What was behind your door?
02:12:03
Speaker
Oh, it was a Hall of Mirrors. It was very Hall of Mirrors. Yeah, it like. Did not show me, it showed like an alternate version of me and all the mirrors had alternate versions. Blake had one that looked like a mall cop. Zach, Zach, Zach. Is that what? Is that what Zach wanted to be when he was a kid?
02:12:30
Speaker
Apparently no. No, not at all. No, specifically no. Wait, aren't you just like some security? I overheard that you're like some security dude. Aren't you basically? I was a security guard when I was in in college to to help pay my way through school. Oh, yeah. If I stayed in security, I wouldn't have been a mall cop. I don't know. Mall cop's kind of fun. Are you saying that because you like riding segues?
02:13:00
Speaker
and a lot more in writing. I punched one of the mirrors and I feel like I took willpower damage. I felt like a headache and you saw through the eyes of the mirror for a moment. It felt like that. Did you kill a possible you? How moral is that? I thought it was just a mirror. It turned out to be a
02:13:28
Speaker
shadow clone jutsu motherfucker of some kind i don't know oh i got your girlfriend a gift for your date oh cool what oh it's the jar of pee it's the jar of soul oh it's the soul my wife tried drinking it by the more my ex-wife well you're the one that tried to give it to her i didn't try to give it to her i tried giving it to your girlfriend she's like you called me your wife you're an idiot
02:13:55
Speaker
Yeah, I know I was an idiot for marrying you in the first place. The only thing good came for our son. We were stupid for doing that. Why did we do that? Yeah, anyone that'd be willing to do that with Max, complete idiot. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, have you seen this penis? No. Very small minuscule, you might say. I mean, I thought it was rather large, but.
02:14:22
Speaker
Thank you. The only one who might have seen Max's penis is Jerry because you did find him in the morgue. He felt like I'm like Jerry. If I was your lover, would you be pleased? Although I think you were still wearing your clothes. He fell out of the ceiling naked one time. Oh, OK. OK. I did as a fail raccoon would. So, yeah, there's another door. I was going to say, Max, if I could, if I could.
02:14:51
Speaker
It's those lips that draw me in. Oh, that's a nice way of saying my penis is small. So Lauren, I am not gay. I promise there's nothing wrong with that, but you know, there you go. This is just how we interact. Sometimes I do apologize. I think we've got things to worry about tonight. Oh yeah. Aren't we looking for a missing child?
02:15:20
Speaker
Yeah, we're looking for my missing son, but, you know, humor is the best way to cope with this shit. Is this true? All right. Brenda, try to stop drinking souls. Hey, Lauren, Max. Put that away. Can I steal y'all for just a minute? Sure. Sure. Have you guys noticed stealing? You just don't really care about the humans in your lives as much as you used to.
02:15:50
Speaker
Like it seems superfluous. I mean, like Lauren is like barely holding me in this realm of sanity. So as much as I hate my ex wife, I have to remind myself that at one point I did love that something within me loved her. God, I have a question. Yes.
02:16:34
Speaker
Like if you wanted to ask something like outside like of of cannon like to be like Hey God because you know, he's the god of them
02:16:51
Speaker
Yeah, because they get to decide. I mean, you are a registered priest or whatever it is.
02:17:03
Speaker
Okay, but back to my question. Is there something that happens to vampires, other than losing their humanity, to make them be less caring of the human? Less human? Yeah, when you kill people, you lose your humanity. It's the losing of their humanity. Yeah. I thought that was the only thing that would... You have a humanity score, and the lower that gets, the less human you become.
02:17:32
Speaker
And so you care less about humans as that humanity score goes down. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Once it hits zero, you basically just turn into a complete psychopath and murder everything. Yeah. You become the beast when it hits zero. Okay. And you try to, you try to murder other vampires too, right? Yeah. You become an animal. So yeah, you are in constant fight or flight mode. Okay. Thank you. God. I was just double checking. Yeah.
02:17:59
Speaker
All right, back to, yeah. No, I'm like, Lauren's really helping hold me like stable, honestly. Does she count though? She's fairly human at this point. Hey, that's a girl I like. Don't be disparaging. She's right there. Come on, guys. I'm disparaging. That's genuine.
02:18:27
Speaker
She's a witch. She's a part of our world. You know what I mean when I'm saying look at her. She's like the most human a human can get. Look at the squishy little blood filled face. That's a weird description. Please don't sorry. I I got hungry. I'm sorry. I have bag of bag. Do I have bag blood on me? You know, gross.
02:18:57
Speaker
What does Lauren say to all this? Well, I assume we stepped away. Are you a happy person? Or are you a sad person or an angry person? Oh, OK. What's going on, Frank or Bill? I was asking Lauren if she was a happy person, a sad person, or an angry person. Well, we get out of this huddle. You turn around and be like, Lauren, are you happy or sad? Yeah. Like, no, that's a legit question I'm asking her.
02:19:25
Speaker
She says right now I'm just afraid as she's staring towards the last door. Yeah, we should probably move this along a little bit. We're looking for a missing child, Max's missing child. Yeah, yeah. We can talk about existential crises later. All right, to the door. And I go to the door. All right, do you open it?
02:19:53
Speaker
Yes, I put my hand over as if to check to see if it's hot like you should do every time there's a fire I Was about to say like you should do every time you open the door. I'm like God Frank Frank's always on edge the door feels normal Okay, I don't there's any clouds in here. Let's go Open the door
02:20:23
Speaker
You open your clown statues paintings
02:20:28
Speaker
You open the door, and yeah, I think we're going to skip this one to speed things up. You open the door and enter a room. The floors and ceiling writhe. They pulse. They gurgle. They breathe. A closer inspection reveals the floor is a mass of tentacles dominating the center of the room is a tentacle, tentacled mass sitting between two large cages.
02:20:51
Speaker
Uh, those slowly closed the door. Those two. Well, let me finish telling me what you saw those two people that were in the room before you, the happy man and the old woman. Um, they're each in a cage, um, that the mass is between, um, uh, one of them is screaming in terror while the other one is mumbling incoherently. Um,
02:21:18
Speaker
A mass of tentacle stoops? Wow, now you close the door. I turn back around and be like, nope, that's the wrong way. Definitely the wrong way. That's the only way. It's gonna suck, but we're gonna do it. No, this is when I go to Brenda and I go, how do I get her out of the stupor? Oh, I know. And I like flicker on the nose.
02:21:48
Speaker
I could also just compel her to snap out of it. You can try that next. No. I'm going to give her a plus one for the nose flick. God damn, bitch. Oh, maybe she's she's three successes is what it takes. Why isn't hers doing the fancy? OK. Yeah, she she the nose flick does it. She snaps out of it and is like the what? She where where are we? Did we find Max?
02:22:21
Speaker
No, Brenda, but we're past a lot of shit and we're about to see a lot more shit. OK, so we found a room of writing tentacles, both. And I like this is when I look at Brenda deep in the eyes and I say, Brenda, don't lose your shit. It's going to be OK. OK, I won't lose my shit.
02:22:47
Speaker
Lauren, you're doing awesome. I don't have to tell you shit because you're awesome. Lauren nods. Zach? Oh, my eyes are still glowing red, by the way. Zach's saying he's saving the left hand. I mean, that's the least frightening thing, so. Yeah. What's Zach doing? He's still being the best Dan Labrador that he can be. I mean, Zach is holding it together.
02:23:16
Speaker
The gold retriever. This is when I open the door and I get scooped by a tentacle by you soon. You open the door, you see what I described? The massive tentacle stoops over one of the cages. It has just popped the arm off of a screaming woman and shoved one of its own dislocated tentacles into the socket where her arm used to be. Oh, that's awesome.
02:23:47
Speaker
I told you it's the wrong way. A hole is a hole. I'm going to slap Max. I shove Max into the room. Yep, I go in the room. Jerry shows Cole into the room.
02:24:10
Speaker
I turn around and tell, as I'm being shoved, Brenda and... Zephyr? Where the hell did you get Zephyr from? Did you not hear the last one? You guys should probably stay here and fall into the room. Oh, okay. Both of you give me athletics plus dexterity rolls.
02:24:40
Speaker
Athletics or anyone very athletic You said like plus dexterity. Yeah, I Have a success I am supposed to be good at this
02:25:00
Speaker
I was not. So, Cole, because you basically described yourself as falling into the room, you fall and touch one of the tentacles. Jerry, you're just not able to dodge the riding tentacles. Max, you're fine. You definitely dodged the tentacles. So, Cole, when you touch a tentacle... I'll just roll for both of you real quick. Oh, does it help that I have rapid reflexes and cat sprays?
02:25:29
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I mean, you if you have OK, I forgot about those. If you've got those, you succeed automatically. So if you have those things, it's a success. Do Cole or Jerry have those? I don't think they do. I do not. Yeah. All right. So Cole, 13. OK, 13 and seven. So Cole, when you touch a tentacle, you get a flash of a memory.
02:25:58
Speaker
It's kind of the inner monologue of you know that you're a woman, but you see yourself. You did consider yourself beautiful, but at this point of memory, you are not. And the memory, it's an inner monologue kind of saying, the kiss keeps giving me legs, arms, and eyes, but they don't work. They don't work.
02:26:23
Speaker
And Jerry, you get the memory of same woman. Give me my body back and take me home, you demon. Just quick flashes when you touch the tentacles. Awesome. OK. Jerry's not happy.
02:26:54
Speaker
So I'm just definitely making my way. If the door still open, I look at Brenda and I say, Brenda, stay there. OK. She's mesmerized or whatever, so she's not she stays. Oh, no, she's not memorized. I thought you flipped her nose. Oh, that's right. You did flick her nose. Well, I thought you mesmerized her to keep her shit together. No, no, no, no, I can't do that. Oh, I was just like pure like. Yeah. All right.
02:27:29
Speaker
So how's Brenda doing? Oh, actually, Brenda and... I'll just roll for... Zach will have... No, I gave him good willpower in the last roll he did, so... Brenda is not the most willpower. Why do I keep closing her sheet? Brenda... Two successes. Okay, she does not take willpower damage.
02:27:59
Speaker
What the heck is that? You're just rolling shit cold. There it is. I was trying to figure out how to display something so I could read it better. There's a lot of different buttons there and I was trying to figure out what the power does. One, two, three. Oh, shit. So they both keep their shit together. Yeah, Zach has a lot of willpower because I gave him the willpower of Lauren by accident and now he keeps that. So. Nice.
02:28:28
Speaker
He's a security guard. What else do you expect? Yeah, I don't even know what his current job is, but he's like private security. And the rest of you don't have to roll that because you're supernatural. Frank, your cloak of shadowing. No, I was just reading it. OK.
02:28:55
Speaker
Oh, so as you guys enter the room, are you trying to be stealthy about it or what are you trying to do? Yeah, I'm trying to be stealthy. Okay, give me stealth plus decks to anyone who wants to be stealthy. I'm back, sorry. Stealth plus decks, if you want to be stealthy, of course you can just cloak of shadows. What happened? Do I have cloak of shadows? Am I able to make a stealth check since I got got
02:29:26
Speaker
Wait, I have Unseen Passage. You just touched it, so you weren't grabbed by it, you just touched it. So you need to make stealth checks. I need to make a rouse check if I want to use Unseen Passage. And as long as these are mitts and overpowering odors, or no sounds louder than a whisper, your power automatically works, only if the observer has their attention drawn.
02:29:57
Speaker
Okay, so I need to make a rouse check. And that's all. I mean, you definitely, yeah, once you go invisible, you're pretty good because you also, why does Brenda have hunger? She's not hungry.
02:30:22
Speaker
You also have your cat's grace and all that so you can easily dodge any tentacles. Yeah. Frank, are you doing anything? I'm just a stealthy cat going through there. Is there anything else going on in this room or is it just two people in cages and the tentacles? There is a door on the far side.
02:30:47
Speaker
So there's no other people other than the people in the cages? Yes. And the tentacles? And the central mass that seems to be the main body of the tentacle. I mean, I guess I could activate all of my shadow cloak and... Yeah, so you basically also go invisible.
02:31:15
Speaker
Um, and my cloak of shadows. And my unseen passage. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You're invisible, Frank. You've got all the powers. Effectively invisible. Yes. Yeah. I mean, cloak of shadows only works if you're staying in state. I do need to do a rouse check for the unseen passage. Um, is that the button? Yeah. You got hungry. It only rolled one.
02:31:45
Speaker
Yeah, that's what Rouse does. It's a D10 to see if you get hungry or not. The power always works. You just get hungry or you don't. Unfortunately, Jerry, Brenda, and Zack were not stealthy enough. And after a moment, the- I told Brenda to stay there. Oh, well, then Jerry wasn't stealthy enough. And neither was Zack. And the creature turns, actually,
02:32:16
Speaker
That's good. The creature turns and looks at you. And you hear like a voice from within the mask saying, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. These are no good. These are not what I need. They won't work. Why? Why does she keep sending me these parts?
02:32:45
Speaker
She's just tormenting me. So I'm effectively invisible. Yes. Yes. All right. What do I got to roll and what kind of pluses do I get to try to sneak over and just like rip the students head off? It doesn't really have a lot of roles so much. It's like a writhing mass of tentacles. Don't I don't have any weapons like a lump.
02:33:15
Speaker
Okay. What would have to roll to try to let the things out of the cages? Well, one of the cages are suspended in the air hanging from the ceiling. You know what, I just touched another tentacle. You touch another tentacle, okay. Roll me a d20 roll, or here, I'll do it.
02:33:52
Speaker
It is a, okay, you had a 13 last time, so we'll go with my 18. You, the muttering voice of the same woman, have you ever loved, have you ever lost your love? Can you spare a heartbeat? Do you hold on to the tentacle or just touch it like briefly? Oh, I'll hold on to it.
02:34:19
Speaker
You start seeing more memories. Most of them for a while are of a similar desperate thing. Have you seen what floor 222 does to people? Can you see what it did to me? I am a rose, forgotten, rotten, decayed the garden. There was a garden of, I need to see what they call themselves.
02:34:47
Speaker
a garden in the dreaming, it may still be there. And eventually the memories, you start seeing memories of a beautiful
02:35:03
Speaker
sort of an otherworldly beauty similar to the uh the the vampires who have like who are using all and stuff like that but this person looks she looks very much well sure she's looking at herself in a in a silvery the surface of a silvery pond um she uh she
02:35:25
Speaker
looks beautiful. She looks, you know, I guess Frank is a or Cole is a D&D player. She looks vaguely, you know, of a fae or elven nature. Oh, gotcha. Another worldly beauty. Gotcha. Yeah.
02:35:46
Speaker
um and uh the memories like depending on how long will you hold on uh they're going by pretty quickly but you see um this the the the jester lady the harlequin lady um uh there standing in front of her in the woods putting on a show and and this this person um who uh
02:36:08
Speaker
you realize has a name, and the name is Afavara. I do a rouse check to see if I become a rouse. A rouse check to see if you become a rouse would rule eight. It's a success. So you interpret that how you want.
02:36:36
Speaker
You're sort of seeing this through your own eyes, though, as if you were her, though. So it's kind of like these are currently you're living her memory. So, you know, she's not aroused by the thought of herself at the moment. She is some sort of fave being so and the Jester lady appears in this
02:36:58
Speaker
performing tricks and this fae thing is into it and then the jester lures her to her wagon and down these stairs and then
02:37:12
Speaker
You see her soul trying to, the weird dude trying to rip her soul out. And then, tentacle person notices what you're doing and flails that tentacle that you're touching. And- How does he notice I'm invisible? She feels your hand on her. Oh. I'm just like, no, no, not those memories, not again.
02:37:43
Speaker
What do I got to roll to continue to hold on to it? The tentacles in the room are starting to writhe wildly. And they're just wildly writhing about, making it harder and harder to dodge. And the creature in the center of the room is wailing miserably. You can make a dex, it'd just be athletics plus dex to try to, you know, or strength, whichever is better to try and keep your hand on it.
02:38:15
Speaker
I want to like bear hug this shit. All right. Athletics plus something. You can also do athletics for success solve. You could do it. OK, that's good. Yeah, you jump onto this tentacle and you're sucked back in. What's everyone else doing? The tentacles have started going crazy and the creature in the center is wailing in misery. I yell, I'm providing a distraction. Do something.
02:38:44
Speaker
I'm gonna dart forward and try to knock it out. Okay. So that'd be a... Now remember, you guys can always do rouse checks for a plus two bonus to your rolls. Yeah. Actually, you know what? I'm gonna go ahead and rouse before I make that punch.
02:39:11
Speaker
Now, when it says I gain a hunger, I still get the plus two, right? Yes. Yeah. Yes. Okay. So for this one, would this be brawl or athletics? Punching is a brawl. And then a plus two modifier.
02:39:32
Speaker
three successes. I mean, yeah, your fist collides with this thing and kind of like sinks in. It's kind of mushy. The creature is still wailing in misery and screaming about, no, not those memories, you know, things like that. One of the tentacles like smacks the cage of the person who hasn't had his arm removed yet. And the cage like smashes into the ground.
Empathy and Moral Dilemmas
02:40:05
Speaker
Max are you doing anything? I'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on. I could just shoot the dang thing. He's gonna roll for himself to figure out how bad that might turn out to be if he shoots it. So that would be
02:40:34
Speaker
Insight plus intelligence? Yeah, that would work. Because it's a messy, critical, and this is not the type of role that you can, like, would cause an effect, but that just means you get hungrier. But with six successes,
02:41:03
Speaker
Whatever Frank is doing, or Cole is doing, is what is causing it to ride all crazy like this. It doesn't seem to have noticed Bill punching it. You're not sure if it would even notice you shooting it. What really seems to be causing it pain is whatever Cole is doing.
02:41:25
Speaker
of the tentacles. Speaking of which, Cole, you are experiencing, as if you were experiencing it yourself, the chain dude attempting to pull your soul out of your body, however it fails. And so Tasha's kiss, as the memory refers to her, enters the room.
02:41:51
Speaker
And no longer looking like the friendly harlequin, but more of a creepy, demonic harlequin. I will copy in the picture in a minute. I should guess I should have had this ready, because I was going to reveal it at some point. But let me go ahead and screenshot that. She's got horns peeking out under her,
02:42:20
Speaker
her like jester hat, her makeup looks like blood. She has fangs, scales on her chin. And she says, I should have known such a beautiful creature such as yourself would not succumb so easily. Instead, since you cannot be food, you will be punished. And she starts like, you know,
02:42:50
Speaker
summons up these black tendrils and shoots them into her and starts transforming her into this tentacle creature that you see before you. And if you're holding on, I'm gonna say you're going to take a right off the bat two points of willpower damage. I only have two willpower left.
02:43:17
Speaker
just do the slashes and those are gonna be, currently it's superficial willpower damage, so it's not like killing you, but once it gets to X's, that's bad. I mean, you don't die from willpower, but you basically will pass out if you get down to lethal willpower damage. All right, from all the memories I'm absorbing, do I see, like, is there a way to fix her?
02:43:46
Speaker
She doesn't know how to fix herself. Right, but can I gleam in any way from the memories of how to reverse what was done to her? I would say a cult plus intelligence. All right. I don't think I'm very a cultie. Nope. I am kind of smart, though. For successes. Hmm. Way to go, Frank.
02:44:17
Speaker
Honestly, so from what you think, you think that her, she was damaged from having her soul, you know, attempted to be ripped out. Here's a picture of Jester Lady in demon form that Frank, technically only Frank has seen this, but, or Cole. Oh, sweet baby Jesus. But- Damn.
02:44:44
Speaker
So her soul has been damaged, so you know that much. Repairing the soul, there'd need to be some way to do that.
02:44:57
Speaker
probably from what you can tell the Tasha person put the the tentacles into her you would imagine that she would be the one to to get to take them out of her either having her physically take them out killing her you're not sure getting her to do it convincing her it's hard to say um i i let go of the tentacle okay and i stand up
02:45:23
Speaker
And I go like walking up to the tentacle lady and I give her a hug. And I'm like, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize. Do you say her name? Yes. It's hard to say. So I won't make you say it, but off for Avara. I say that. I say her name. I am sorry for what you went through. And we will do what we can to change you back. When you say her name,
02:45:52
Speaker
all the tentacles freeze, like they stop flailing. And then they start to droop and you hear weeping coming from within the big mess. Does she accept my hug? She does not stop you from hugging her, yeah. And you just hear kind of weeping. I pack what I think would be the back of her head area. Yeah.
02:46:21
Speaker
And she's just weeping. Guys, it's not an enemy. We can keep going. Yeah, I could have told you that. Fucking nobody told me. As I whisper. I mean, you were going to shoot it. I mean, I was trying to figure out, like, if the room would collapse or something like that. I swear to sucker punches saying so. Thank you. Thank you for finding the path of this layout. Way to go, Frank.
02:46:49
Speaker
I let her go and I'm like, Aphrodite, we'll, sure, call her Aphrodite, that's, sure. Aphrodite, we will find a way to reverse this or I will do my best. And I guess I go back and click Brenda and help her through the room. Come on guys, let's go. And I go to the next door.
02:47:27
Speaker
So through the door, it leads into another hallway with two doors. Do I have anything in my pockets? Whatever you would normally have in your pockets. Would I have some funnel cake left?
02:47:46
Speaker
no stick funnel cake in your pocket i mean well that's right i mean i would not you know we were munching down then this whole thing started and you know i might pull the plate over and like tuck it under my arm or something we never discussed it why not i offer her my funnel cake before i leave she doesn't have a mouth that you can see i i still offer her the funnel cake
02:48:14
Speaker
okay she doesn't really do anything she just she's weeping okay then we leave you're not even sure if she has eyes although she did somehow notice um uh jerry at first but okay so there's a hallway with two doors one on the left one on the right he said there's a door on the left and door on the right
02:48:44
Speaker
I opened the last door. Somebody else opened this one. Yeah, I opened up the other one. Which one? Rosham Bowyu for left and right. Yeah, I'll Rosham Bowyu for left and right. I don't know how you guys are going to do this. Okay. Here's what we're going to do on rock. We're going to do rock, paper, scissors, and then instead of saying shoot,
02:49:12
Speaker
We're going to say what we what we pull. OK, all right. Rock, paper, scissors, rock, paper. That was so bad, but. All right, Bill, you lose which door. Right. I want the right one.
02:49:32
Speaker
Okay. You open the right door. A banquet hall stretches out before you. A nearby table is strewn with platters of cakes, pies, fruits, and smoked meats. Eight people, dressed in fine attire, sit with their plates full. They're in the middle of saying grace. Okay. Do we see the child? You don't see any children.
02:49:59
Speaker
I look across the way, is there another door leading out of this room? Yes. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and... Did us opening the door cause them to become distracted? No, they're saying grace and then they'll start eating. I closed the door. Well, Bill went in, yeah. Okay, I closed the door. Okay.
02:50:27
Speaker
What the fuck, Frank? So, Jerry, behind you the door closes, but are you going to continue heading to the door across the room? Yeah. I'm going to keep on heading that way. I open the left door.
02:50:43
Speaker
Okay, on the left door, well, I was trying to decide who would get to their door first, but you would because it's closer. The left door, in this room, a large round bed made with satin sheets of black and red checkered board is in the middle of this room, resting on the tables are a vast collection of miniature model towns littering the room. These towns seem to date from, you know,
02:51:11
Speaker
long, long ago like the medieval times all the way up to modern looking towns and entire miniature cities. One of them looks like the beginnings of the city of Houston though it's not yet complete. There is also a large oval mirror with scintillating colors behind the glass and a a teacup resting on a pedestal. There is a
02:51:42
Speaker
curtain on the wall um yeah and then the bed so we don't have magical inventory so i can't steal the miniature towns no um and they do appear like if you inspect them closely they appear to be like made out of like plastic models and stuff
02:52:11
Speaker
But very nice, very intricately made. OK. I don't honestly know. I'm going to go in there and I'm going to look at a model. Whichever model you pick up, if you're picking up a house or something, looks like a house. Let me just double check.
02:52:37
Speaker
I go to the mirror. Yeah, okay. They're not like moving or anything weird like that. Okay. The mirror. When viewed as you're approaching the mirror. So when viewed indirectly, you see scintillating dim lights of green, red and yellow dancing along the mirrors glass. Lauren, look at this head. When you look at a head on, it'll look different. So if you're going to look at a head on, let me know.
02:53:04
Speaker
Lauren, come look at this. It's a shiny light mirror. Lauren enters the room, stops for a minute, and says, oh, great. Magic mirror. What the hell was that? I don't know what that was. It's like, oh, great. A magic mirror. Wonder if it'll show us who the fairest of them all is. All right. I step up and look directly into the mirror.
02:53:27
Speaker
Um, you see, uh, yourself, but you are, uh, large and thick with dangling warts coming off your body. It just definitely doesn't do the thing you just said, Lauren, it does not do that thing. And I step away. Yeah. Lauren goes over to the mirror and she's like, Oh, and steps away. Um, I take the bed sheet.
02:53:56
Speaker
You take the bed sheet. It comes off the bed. It feels like it's a high threat count. I drape it across my back as if it were a cape. It looks good on you. Awesome. All right, let's go. All right, so Bill, you open the door to the next room.
02:54:19
Speaker
Inside the room, a massive contraption dominates the center of this room. Above you, obese people, futilely wriggling from hooks as they are hoisted into a chute atop the contraption. Are, that's a poor, oh, weird, okay, humanoid pigs. Yeah, and then you went to the next door.
02:54:49
Speaker
Okay, so above you obese people futilely wriggling from hooks as they are hoisted into a shoot atop the contraption humanoid pigs goats cows and chickens are preparing sweets around the machine humanoid pigs goats and sheep are
02:55:15
Speaker
preparing treats around me, around the machine? Around the machine, yeah. The machine is like oozing out like this cookie dough looking stuff. And they're shaping it into like gingerbread men and stuff like that. And you recall gingerbread men and other cookies being served at the carnival. And they're loading large obese people into the top of this thing. Indeed.
02:55:45
Speaker
Everyone's being a cannibal whether they like it or not Jerry is gonna whisper to himself. Oh my god. I wonder what the funnel cake is made of Thank God I didn't eat any of that shit never put that stuff in my body You know what you will put in your body
02:56:10
Speaker
Alright, so as you're seeing all this, Cole, as you exit the room, you hear a voice saying, excuse me, but that's my blanket. Whenever I'm leaving the room. Yeah, when you're leaving the room, the bedroom. From behind you hear someone say, excuse me, but that's my blanket. I turn around and look into the room. And you see the Harlequin. Harlequin.
02:56:38
Speaker
in non-demonic looking form. Oh, I'm sorry. I just thought it was really nice blanket, but it didn't realize it was anybody's. Here you go. And I like ball it up and I throw it back in. She catches it and in a flourish sweeps it back over the bed and it settles onto the bed and says, you too, you. As she does that, I grab Lauren by the hand and pull her out the door and close the door. Okay.
02:57:10
Speaker
Nothing happens. I turned to Max, I'm like, the harlequins in the room. Where are Zach and the other one? They're with the group. You're alone. That's right. Here is the only one that ended up going this way. Max, the harlequin's in the room. I mean, isn't she the big bad? Aren't we supposed to get her?
02:57:37
Speaker
I don't know anymore. It's a fucking clown. Is there another door in this hallway? The door to that Jerry went through. I go through that door. You see people feasting and did you see into the room before?
02:58:05
Speaker
I probably glanced. Yeah. The people are looking a bit more pudgy than they were before. They've gained some weight. If I feed on them, will my willpower go up? Your willpower would not go up now. Okay, then I... I restore from sleep. I, holding Lauren's hand, quickly shuffle through the room to the door that Jerry went through.
02:58:32
Speaker
You open the door into the weird room with strange humanoid pig goats and cows shoveling people into a shoot and making them into treats. And then Jerry is going to turn around and be like, Oh, hey, guys, I think I found a thing. I did, too. I found the harlequin. She's the clown. She's over there. She's also a demon. I found out that the funnel cake is made out of people. No.
02:59:02
Speaker
You see one of them forming up a funnel cake and then sending it through a pneumatic tube. I turn a little green and I look at Lauren. I'm like, I know I drink blood, but this is disgusting. Lauren's like, hold on. Where's Lauren's sheet? Oh yeah, she barfs.
02:59:31
Speaker
She barks barfs barfs. Okay. I don't know that it's starting. Yeah. Cause Frank, if you barf, you won't be able to stop until you purged everything in your stomach. You've eaten a lot of human food. Yep. I turned green and I'm like, Oh no. Is there another door? I've been eating people, regular people food tonight, haven't you?
02:59:59
Speaker
I have an ability. Yeah, he's able to do that better than everyone else, but he still has. Yeah, I don't see it. I don't see it on my list, though. I could have sworn I had an experience on the last time. I know I did. I just don't see it. It would be over here. No. Oh. Iron gullet. Eat food. It's just called eat food.
03:00:28
Speaker
I mean, let me see what the actual rules on it, just out of curiosity. Eat food. That's the best name for an ability that's ever existed. Eat food. What does it let you do? Eat food. I'm adding a flaw of dislike clowns and giving it a two.
03:00:49
Speaker
You can stay food without effort and might even enjoy it, though it gives no nourishment and must be expelled before resting for the day. So yeah. However, it doesn't say if you have to vomit it or poop it, but yeah. But it all must be expelled. So you still can't digest. That's fun. Yeah. We left Max back in the hallway with Brendan and Zanthelan. Yeah.
03:01:22
Speaker
Where do you keep getting these crazy ass names from? So Max, do you follow Cole into the food room or check out the bedroom where the clown is supposed to be? Yeah, check out the room where the clown is supposed to be. You open the door, Cole has a hard time remembering people's names. You open the door and she is bent over the bed, um, straightening the sheets and stuff.
03:01:52
Speaker
She also looks more like a sexy clown lady. She does currently look more like a sexy clown lady, yes. If I roll a cult plus intelligence, can I tell if this is like not really her? You can roll.
Max's Desperate Quest
03:02:29
Speaker
This is the same Harlequin you saw outside. Like the one that was jumping all over the kids?
03:02:50
Speaker
For the life of me, I cannot remember the name of the song or how it goes, but the one that was like always used in like movies and by your parents when they were getting down. Anybody remember what song that was? No. Oh, God. Anyways, I jazz. I say.
03:03:21
Speaker
It's an interesting place you got here. She turns calmly towards you and says, yes. And you're not supposed to be in here. Why is that? I didn't realize what you were.
03:03:42
Speaker
That's rude, I'm just as much of a person as you are probably. She points at Brenda and says, she's welcome here, but you, you're no good to me. That's hurtful. She walks over to a curtain and pulls it aside and you see the view of the carnival as if you were looking out the door to the trailer.
03:04:12
Speaker
It's like you're free to go. And the other one's like... I say... I say, I'm looking for my son. Your son's not here. Not anymore. Where is he? He's with Jack. Can you show us where Jack is? She bites her lip and says, I don't think Tasha would allow that.
03:04:47
Speaker
Look, I really understand everyone here has a job to do, whatever messed up crazy thing. But, and I'm a vampire. I know you gotta play by certain rules, but he's my son. He's the one thing keeping me, one of the very few things keeping me from going full vampire. I could bring you to,
03:05:18
Speaker
to Tasha and you could appeal to her directly. Would that be a, I imagine that would be a bad idea for everyone involved. If you want to see her son, I, look, it's complicated, but I, in this, like this, I don't have the ability to help you.
03:05:48
Speaker
And the only reason I'm even talking to you is because we're here in this room, where I get to be myself. I can try to help you. I mean... No, I don't... You don't have... I don't need your help. You need mine. That's not... And if... And the only help that I can give you is either letting you go or taking you... I found it!
03:06:17
Speaker
It's Let It Go on by Marvin Gaye. I look out the window. Do I see my grandsire out there? Let's find out. Let's see. Wham, wham, wham, wham. I've been feeling, baby. Yes, you see him.
03:06:48
Speaker
If I call out, I guess I say his name. McHale. He turns, sees you. She starts to drop the curtain. And let's see. Let me look at his powers. I ignored it. Oh, OK. I mean, if you played the actual music, it didn't come through. And it shouldn't, because that's probably copyrighted. True.
03:07:17
Speaker
I am going to make him roll for this because while the power is good, it's not like he was expecting to have to do this. So it's a Dex plus athletics with. I've been really trying, baby. Trying to hold back this feeling for so long.
03:07:43
Speaker
Is that what your parents really got down to? I don't know, but it's... It's always in the movies. Yeah. Like older movies. But you know what? He'll do a willpower re-roll. Look it up and you'll, once you hear it, you'll recognize it. Oh yeah, that's the stereotypical, these people are about to have sex in that room.
03:08:05
Speaker
As seen on King of the Hill, I have successes. Oh, and I need to see if it gets hungrier. King of the Hill? No. He does not get hungrier. And so he uses blink. And before the curtain, you know, closes, he blinks into the room. Tasha is actually quite surprised and stumbles back
03:08:32
Speaker
And he says, um, and you know, Michaela ignores her and looks at you and he's like, what is this place? Some effed up crap is what this place is. Uh, they eat people's souls. They kill people. They do a lot of janked up stuff here. This lady, wonderful woman she is, is willing to help us out. He turns to her. But the other, but the other morons went the other way.
03:09:05
Speaker
I see. Yeah, I know, Bill. Maybe Bill. So Bill, I'll go ahead and say there's nothing really like if you interact with the animal people, they kind of ignore you. They're just like mindlessly doing their work. There are no doors out of that room. So eventually, you would end up back in this room with, I mean, I don't know if Cole is going to go back in here. Lauren, I think, would want to go and find out what's happening.
03:09:36
Speaker
So party can come together. Is there anything else in this room? I'm sorry about that. I accidentally muted myself. So what I was asking was, um, is there like, uh, off switch or like a panel, uh, the machine that's turning people into baked goods? Yes, there's a big lever. Okay. I grab a funnel cake before he turns it off. I slap it out of his hands.
03:10:05
Speaker
I grab another funnel cake. I slap that out of your hand. I grab a cupcake. I slap that out of your hand and then I slap you in the face. We're trying to get to the conclusion. No. No, Cole. No, Cole. Have respect for yourself. Cole. I turn around. Have respect for yourself. Your date is watering you.
03:10:32
Speaker
I turned around and looked down objectively and be like, Hey, where'd Max go? Oh, by the way, the Harlequin lady, the evil lady is back in that room that was on the opposite side of this door. And I think Max might be back there. Okay. Let's get a, let's go deal with that. Give me this one moment real fast. And then, uh, Jerry's gonna, uh, take the grab the lever and he's going to flip it into the other direction.
03:11:02
Speaker
So when you do that, the machine turns off, the animals immediately stop working, curl up and go to sleep. Oh, thank you, God. I was hoping like the ship would just go in reverse and the pastries started turning back into people. That would be funny, but no. I look up at the obese people that have been being turned into funnel cakes and other such goodies. Are they still there?
03:11:29
Speaker
they are i guess they're dangling in whatever contraption is lifting them up yeah they're gonna sit there be like but they all seem to be in a daze like that they all look happy they're like are you hungry i'm i mean i'm a little hungry i could i could use i could use a bite hey lauren um did you turn around for like two seconds i don't want you to watch this
03:11:59
Speaker
Agreed. Okay, I'll go see what Max is doing. And she leaves to go check on Max. I want to nibble. Just a little nibble. I want more than a nibble. I want to take two points. Yeah. Take as much blood as you want, knowing that in order to get down to zero, you have to kill. Yeah. And if we kill, we lose our humanity. If you kill, you'll have to roll to see if you lose humanity.
03:12:27
Speaker
Okay, I'm down to one hunger again. Just a little nibble. Yeah. I just need the real. Their blood tastes heavy with cholesterol. Diabetes. Jerry, definitely not your preferred. No, no, I'm thinking of cholesterol. You're pretty like low key gagging drinks.
03:12:50
Speaker
Like I bottle actually kind of like thinking about this and I'm like, ah, I bet I bet it tastes like less for all that it feels greasy. Yeah, I have my flask on me. I would like to refill my flask. I do that. It's lovely, thickly oozes into your flask. I have to seriously imagine that it tastes like the greasy is like Reese ball fries and like
03:13:18
Speaker
and like oil that hasn't been changed in three weeks. You've got to shake it a couple of times because of the clots and stuff. It's like a dude in the back, he's unshaded, doesn't look like he washes and he smells everywhere he goes.
03:13:33
Speaker
So you guys join the rest of the group. Yes. And there's another vampire there. Some of you have seen him before. I think Jerry might be the only one who's actually seen him because he picked up Max a few times from the apartment or whatever. But it's Jerry's or it's Max's sire. And they are talking to the Harlequin lady. And she's like, look. She's like, look.
03:14:04
Speaker
Like I told them, I can either take you straight to Tasha herself, and you can try and see if she'll let you speak with Happy Jack, or I can let you go. I pull my flask out and shake it at Max like a drunk person at a funeral would. Oh god.
03:14:28
Speaker
but not like actually drunk, just, you know, how a person that would bring a flask to a funeral, which then shake up. Yeah, I do that to Max. Got some stuff there, don't you? It's fresh, if you want it. And from the look on Bill's, the look on Jerry's face, it ain't looking too hot.
03:14:54
Speaker
It's a little, it's a little spicy. Because of what time of night it is. You start to hear a low laughter permeating the air around you, starting slow and building. And then just, just goes on and on for a while. And then, and the,
03:15:19
Speaker
the world around you fades to black and you find yourself standing briefly in a black plane of nothingness, which then fades into a field.
The Deal with Happy Jack
03:15:31
Speaker
Out in this field, you see lots of children running and playing and seeming happy and running around and laughing with each other. And standing nearby, you see,
03:15:47
Speaker
a clown and he's wearing black clothes, but he has the crazy red hair and a demonic clown face. And standing next to him, he's got his hand on the shoulder of a large clawed hand draped over the shoulder of your son, Max Jr. I hide behind Lauren.
03:16:15
Speaker
Fearless. I say, hey, buddy. It's a clown. It's a clown. It's a clown. It's a clown. It's a clown. Give me my son. It's a clown. It's a clown. It's a clown. It's a clown. You've been causing trouble for my, for my little, for, for dear Tasha. Yeah. And you've been causing me a lot of trouble tonight too.
03:16:44
Speaker
I've had to be reintroduced to this lovely woman over here. He um uh like what is it you know where you drum your fingers he drums his long clawed fingers on on Max's shoulder um and says uh I said yes I could tell there was something special about this one but I didn't know that
03:17:12
Speaker
One such as you was his father. Oh, don't try to flatter me. Whatever you're trying to do, he should give me back my son. He says you can have your son for a price. Oh, yeah, I'm going to buy my own son back when I had to pay for him for 18 years because this girl over here left me with nothing.
03:17:41
Speaker
Um, we're gonna, we can, we can talk about, uh, you know, dealing with dealing with grief, you know, emotions.
03:17:54
Speaker
He waves his hand and everyone in the room except for Max and Brenda are launched back into the Tasha's bedroom where she was, she's just kind of like standing there and is like, oh, you're back. But Max and Brenda, it's just you two and happy Jack. And he says, enough with your jokes.
03:18:19
Speaker
The only reason I'm offering you this this deal is because you're going to be around for a long time and that's useful to me. I'll give you your son back and promise for what is it your kind call it a boon to be delivered to be named and delivered at a time and place of my choosing.
03:18:51
Speaker
Maybe tomorrow, maybe a hundred years from now, maybe a thousand. You're not here. You're with Tasha. And what would you do bring another disaster to the world? I don't care about your world.
03:19:18
Speaker
Obviously they're eating children from this world Yeah, but it's here I don't hurt the children they're happy here they stay children forever They live and play and never grow old and never die You'll be taking your son back where he'll grow and he'll die and he'll live a pointless life like all of you mortals Well, you're not mortal anymore
03:19:47
Speaker
Yeah, and you and your minions, you let your minions just, you know, kill everyone else. It doesn't look like a good deal. I don't don't worry. What my minions do is not my problem. They bring me the children. Well, either way, in the end, either I take the deal and my son gets to
03:20:11
Speaker
come back with me or I don't take the deal. You try to kill me, whatever happens happens. Either way, a bunch of shit's gonna happen. And it looks like it's not really a win-win for anyone. So how about you just keep with the children that you have and let me just walk away with my son and let's act like this has never happened. He laughed some more. Child, you've been a vampire for what, two months?
03:20:41
Speaker
I've been around since this world was created. I'm not afraid of you. You want your son, you'll take the deal. Or I'll send you back to Tasha and she can do what she pleases with you. Yeah, I guess I'll roll a Colt to see what Happy Jack is.
03:21:12
Speaker
that was that was straight-up intimidating is he I'm what I started to wonder if he's like an elder horror or something from like before so You've read of such things creatures that you know depending on what you know what legends what religions
03:21:35
Speaker
are out there. There are things that are believed to have existed before the universe as we know it exists. In some religions, there's only one such thing. In other religions, there are many such things that were there at the dawn of time. And that is what he's claiming to be. The common, like, I guess,
03:22:07
Speaker
that these beings are said to be unknowable, but also they often will, what's the word, embody or like have purview over a certain like force, or if you're talking like gods, like the god of the wind or the god of the earth and things like that. But sometimes they represent an idea or things like that as well.
03:22:35
Speaker
Or if you're an avid D&D player, basically Avalos. Wow, Avalos are weird fish monsters. Yeah, but they still do. They still are technically an elder, or that. He would be the thing that a D&D warlock makes a pact with. Yeah. That's fucking creepy.
03:23:10
Speaker
So, you're telling me that you want to make a pact with me, but nobody else? You'll owe none of the others. The mother here is useless to me. She's a mere mortal. The others don't have a son that I have.
03:23:38
Speaker
So using them as a bargain ship got it So if I try to fight you you just banish me But if I take the deal you get to take back the Sun And if I don't do the favor something super bad awful happens to me I
03:24:00
Speaker
I'll come back for your son, and I'll come in person this time. Well, I guess he did come in person this time. I'll come back for your son. Or if your son is dead, I'll find something else you care about. I look at Brenda. Brenda, Brenda's just like, she's like, do it, Max. He doesn't want anything from me, but if you can save him,
03:24:30
Speaker
I don't know what's going on here, but you're the only one of us he's interested in.
03:24:48
Speaker
You can attack him too. Or try to try and grab your son. Like, you don't have to take this deal. Yeah, no, I'm trying to think of like. Meanwhile, Tasha over there, Lauren, I'm going to make a roll for her. While you guys have been doing your thing, Lauren, initially they were trying to convince Tasha to send them back. Tasha is like, I can't do that. So Lauren is now going to attempt to send them back herself.
03:25:20
Speaker
Um, Lauren, uh, walks over to, um, Jerry and who else is there? Jerry Cole. Uh, she basically all of them. And she's like, I need some of all of your blood. Like that ritual. Just, just, just quickly cut your wrist. Do y'all do it? Does anyone not do it? Yeah, I'll do it. Um, why?
03:25:48
Speaker
Look, I'm trying to get us back there so we can take this thing down. Oh, Lauren's asking. Okay, I thought the Harlequin was. Yeah, I totally did it. Okay. Zach, after seeing the other two do it, he's gonna go. He'll do it. I cut it deep. I cut it so deep. Okay, you didn't have to do that much, Jerry. That wasn't Jerry. Critical hits.
03:26:14
Speaker
Uh, well, okay. Yeah. Lauren teleports you guys back in after, you know, basically whatever I said last, um, suddenly everyone appears around, around you, uh, max and they're all your, all your friends are back. Yeah. It was funny because right at that moment, I was just going to shoot him. That's what everybody knows. I mean, if you want the trigger, that was not me. That was not Jerry that this is a creep.
03:26:43
Speaker
I mean, I don't know who it would have been then, but. Frank. It was Frank. Oh, I don't know who that was. All right. Anyway, so do you want to fire a gun? Yeah. Two. God damn. You can rouse to get two more dice. To get hungrier, but go ahead and roll two to ten.
03:27:15
Speaker
just like a regular 2D gun and you can also spend a point of willpower that's another option to reroll the two non-hunger failures that's one more success that bumps you up to three what else can I do
03:27:42
Speaker
If you want, you can spin the point of willpower. So put a slash on one of your green willpower boxes and then click the willpower reroll and then change the first number that pops up to two. Oh, wow, a critical. So that means four there plus one plus your original two. So that's really good.
Battle Against Darkness
03:28:08
Speaker
I'm gonna say you you pop you you pull that trigger shoot him in the head. He stumbles back. What's his face? Um, McHale, he's gonna blink over to your kid and blink him back. So he blinks the kid over to you. Lauren's gonna do something. She's gonna, you know, throw a fireball at the guy. Fireball
03:28:38
Speaker
That's a four success fireball she throws at him. Do any of the rest of you try to do anything? I wasn't here for that whole Elder Torah thing. All I know is that I'm here. I see a town that everybody is attacking. So I'm going to run forward. I'm going to punch him. OK. You can rouse for two extra dice. Yes, I will.
03:29:08
Speaker
Don't you have corrosive vitae to yeah, it's not it can't be used for combat really Yeah, it's in the description. That's dumb Let's like have the reason I got it. It can only be used on like Inanimate matter
03:29:39
Speaker
I would also like to attempt to punch one of the clowns. OK, there's only one clown. She didn't bring Tasha with her. Three success punch on that clown. Yeah. Three successful. So I hit the side. I kind of broadside the clown's face just a little bit. I only think so. Cole, I will say, I'm going to say in this world that you're currently in,
03:30:10
Speaker
you feel your connection to the spirit world is way more powerful and if you want to just do like some sort of power that you shouldn't be able to have there's uh some higher level oblivion powers like i would say you could probably access some on this side of the veil uh
03:30:34
Speaker
And there's one where you can use shadows to form a tentacle, a shadow whip, and things like that. If you want to do that instead of a punch. I haven't read too much of the things, so I'm reading something real quick. I'm not seeing the... Just don't worry about it then. I'd have to find the power later, but...
03:31:02
Speaker
I feel like there's- I'm gonna tell you what I wanna do and you tell me how to do it. Okay. All right, so I'm back here cowering behind Lauren. She stepped forward and threw the fireball. And then I realized that everybody is attempting to do a thing. And so I dig deep.
03:31:29
Speaker
into the oblivion. And I want to pull forth the souls, or at least the shadow of the souls of the people that they have murdered. OK. Yeah. You can definitely do that in this instance. Give me a resolve.
03:31:53
Speaker
And then being in the spirit plane, resolve plus three, basically I'm giving your oblivion a two point bonus, so. Second attribute, anything? No, just that it's technically oblivion, but it doesn't let you add that, so.
03:32:12
Speaker
three success you get the gut you get some some uh you know the shadows of the spirits like they don't they're not able to fully manifest because you don't know what you're doing but you get them to start attacking them as well um and then uh i pull their souls forward and like i reach out and i'm like fuck you clocko the clown and like i like hit put my hand forward and like point at him
03:32:40
Speaker
And you can clearly, like, you know that I know that this is not the name of this guy, but using, you know, context clues, you can kind of understand that maybe I've got an issue with a clown in my past. Happy Jack is, you know, writhing in pain. And then you hear him start to laugh. He starts to grow in size and become more,
03:33:08
Speaker
clown from It's like and get bigger and his claws extend and he starts to laugh. And Lauren is trying to recast the spell to teleport you guys back to the real world.
03:33:27
Speaker
And then Bill, I'm sending you a message, which I would like you to say something along the lines of these words. As a shining light appears in the center of all the attack on Happy Jack as well. And I sent you a message in there. Why no, Happy Jack? Not this world. You let them go.
03:33:55
Speaker
And this glowing and golden light pig appears hovering in the air. He's back! He's back! The pig!
03:34:09
Speaker
There we go attack and then and Lauren finishes her spell and all of a sudden Actually, we'll start with Jerry um You wake up in your bed
03:34:39
Speaker
And there's sand in your pants you have it you make up in your bed you remember this this Whatever it was. Was it a dream? Was it a non-canon event or did it actually happen? You don't know but uh, you do have a text message from your friend Thanking you for agreeing to Like help with with um
03:35:07
Speaker
with uh uh the the marriage stuff and um and then it's like man i had some like did we did we there must have been something wrong with that that pizza i had some weird dreams last night did we go to a carnival
03:35:22
Speaker
it was the mushrooms we flash over to Cole who you wake up sadly to the sounds of the whispering spirits as usual shadows dancing around I guess you're more used to them now but uh you you do remember everything that happened Lauren um
03:35:45
Speaker
Lauren you you see that like shortly before you woke up because she doesn't know exactly when you wake up But you have a couple of texts from Lauren saying are
Surreal Conclusion and Reflections
03:35:53
Speaker
you awake yet? Was that real? And max you wake up and You Oh God I had a horrible dream about my fucking ex-wife. Yeah
03:36:10
Speaker
up you had that horrible dream but you've got a photo of your your son standing next to Lauren or sorry Brenda posing in a picture between with a crazy red-haired clown in a regular looking clown costume and they're at a carnival and you've got a picture on your phone somehow of that
03:36:39
Speaker
I don't remember anything else. You do remember the dream, but for all of you, it's vague like dreams get. Yeah. And quickly fading. But you're like, how did I get this? What? And you wake up next to your ex-wife, Brenda. No. No, Brenda's not there. Don't worry. She's not there in the ceiling with you.
03:37:01
Speaker
But your phone is like open my kinky shit phones open to this picture and like maybe you just don't remember Taking this picture and you were just looking through old pictures, but that doesn't make any sense because you're on a new phone. You don't know but uh yeah, and We will call it a night because it's super late for you guys all in a day late for me as well
03:37:24
Speaker
Awesome. Cause it's like midnight and I know I'm sorry guys, but, uh, this was our Halloween special. Um, none of you listening will have heard the first appearance of happy Jack, but, uh, he's returned now. And so it has a sentient pig. He's we saved him in a previous campaign and he's come back to save us again. This is going to be in every single one of our campaigns from now
03:37:55
Speaker
He's gonna find his oh god and stranded. He's gonna be the the other deity besides the fucking Oh god, what are those things? It's the goats versus the pegs It's literally just gonna turn into what's it called a Lord of the fluff is
03:38:21
Speaker
He's a pig, he's immortal, every day any damage done to him is fully regenerated and he has the voice of Morgan Freeman. And the wisdom of age is don't look directly into his eyes otherwise your mind could break. His bacon's very good though. His bacon is very good though and also if prepared right, which the whole process takes like a year, it permanently increases the wisdom staff by one.
03:38:52
Speaker
Yeah, okay All right. Well, I was your storyteller Ron Bjork Hope you guys enjoyed this Halloween themed episode and if I have time I'm gonna post this tomorrow if I don't it'll be posted soon. So and With me tonight was Hayden
03:39:13
Speaker
Hey, it was good playing with you guys. Unfortunately, Max had to go through a lot of trauma with his exploits. You were the only one with a son and Happy Jack steals children. I know. I mean, Jayden wouldn't have survived to the end of this anyway. He would be asleep in his hair. No, we were off being around night.
03:39:34
Speaker
We would have let we would have let Jayden's kids been lost. We would have been like, sorry. It would have been a better life for them than getting fed on every day by Jayden. So, yeah. And we had Frank. Hi, everyone. I was Frank. I'm not currently any more of that person. No, I played Cold Stone, not to be confused with Cold Stone Creamery's.
03:40:03
Speaker
This is not an advertisement for Cold Stone Creameries, but if you're listening Cold Stone Creameries, please feel free to advertise using our services. You can find me on social media if you look hard enough. You all have my full legal name now, so it should be a lot easier. Frank, how about giving them your actual socials so that if somebody is about that, they don't contact us?
03:40:33
Speaker
is about what? Don't worry about it. I'm going to bleep that out. Oh, cool. Awesome. Well, you might not have my full legal name then. But it's bleep. And last was Bill. Hey, everybody. I was Bill. I played Jerry. I played Jerry, trying to help his friend find his kid. Yeah.
03:41:00
Speaker
And you can find me on Twitter at billsabove. I mostly repost other artists' work. So please, if you're in the market to commission some artists, please trust them. Don't go to AI, please. And I love you all. Have a great one.
Outro and Promotions
03:42:22
Speaker
Hello everybody, Point Matt the Pig. Here to tell you that if you would like to follow your favorite cluster of chuckle fucks, please feel free to follow us at idmroleplay at tmail.com if you want to talk to us, or find our socials on YouTube. And we're also streaming on Twitch at idmroleplay. This has been The Voice of God, Point Matt the Pig.
03:42:52
Speaker
Have a great day all you humans out there.
03:43:18
Speaker
Hi, everybody. I don't know if anyone else is here with me. I know Frank and Ron definitely left, but is anybody out there? Does anybody actually listen to these? I'd love to know. Actually, I'd love to know where y'all are from. What's it like there? What's the weather? What's the current geopolitical situation where you are? I just kind of want to know. Who's out there? Are y'all having a great day? I'm doing my best.
03:43:49
Speaker
This is Bill, by the way. Business loves a lot of Bill. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so...