0:00

Hello space monkeys! Olivia here

0:02

of OZ9. I've been

0:04

listening to a show called The Sprouting recently,

0:06

an actual play podcast that launched January of

0:09

2024, and frankly, I'm annoyed. I'm

0:12

annoyed that the characters on this show are

0:14

not only fun and interesting but they generally

0:16

make quite good decisions. Even

0:19

if you don't normally listen to actual

0:21

play you really should check out The

0:23

Sprouting. It has amazing music, fabulous immersive

0:26

sound effects, delightful characters and some really

0:28

great storytelling. The Sprouting releases

0:30

new episodes at the end of every month so

0:32

get used to crossing off the days on your

0:34

calendar to the next one. Oh

0:37

yeah, they're fighting plants which might seem familiar

0:39

if you listen to OZ9 but they're clever

0:41

about it. Which won't? Stay

0:44

tuned for example of the show, then search

0:46

for and subscribe to The Sprouting any way

0:48

you listen to podcasts. Welcome

0:50

to The Sprouting, a cola Cthulhu

0:52

actual play set in an eldritch-infused

0:54

plant post-apocalypse. I'm the storykeeper of

0:57

Londar and this is just to let you know that

0:59

this is a supercut of the first two episodes. Enough

1:01

to give you a taste of the world that we're

1:03

surviving in. I mean building. The

1:06

full versions are available wherever you get your

1:08

podcasts. Enjoy! This

1:13

world used to be like your world. In

1:15

fact, it was your world until a couple of hundred years

1:17

ago. Sorry about that. Some

1:20

similarities but mostly differences. The

1:22

lads, the technology, the people, the politics,

1:25

the language. The eldritch plants. The

1:29

people of our tale are attempting to survive

1:31

in a world where mystical plants have taken

1:33

over, where eldritch bargains twist the fabric of

1:35

reality, where each has a goal

1:37

beyond just surviving. But when

1:39

the eldritch come to mortal dwellings, it

1:42

distorts the mind with its inability to

1:44

be perceived. So can

1:46

they trust their senses or must they learn to trust

1:48

each other? I guess you're

1:50

about to find out. This is

1:52

The Sprouting. llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

2:32

in the vine strangled graveyard of

2:34

humanity's scarification of the world we

2:36

find few survivors some banding

2:38

together for safety and comfort others

2:40

braving the unpredictable wilds alone I

2:44

start this story within a region known locally as

2:46

the cradle generally speaking the

2:48

vast outs to the north and west the

2:50

ocean to the east and the dangerous mountains

2:53

hills and provinces to the south have

2:55

managed to isolate this expats of land

2:58

small fetishes of civilization are dotted

3:00

around providing small havens for the

3:02

living one type

3:04

of haven is difficult to get into burrow

3:07

small bunkers dwellings underground shelters that

3:09

were quoted before the sprouting to

3:11

protect the important people items and

3:13

knowledge of humanity before it's downfall

3:16

and it is in pursuit of one such burrow

3:18

that our story really begins with

3:20

the meeting of four souls we find

3:22

ourselves at a gas station it's

3:24

broken decrepit there was no roof

3:26

to start with

3:29

but all the fuel pumps are broken or covered in vines or

3:31

plants or just simply removed nobody knows how nobody knows why but

3:33

it's not relevant

3:38

right now inside the gas station itself part of

3:40

the roof has collapsed and it's

3:45

not doing too well but it does provide shelter for the people

3:47

who are in the water shelter

3:51

for a young this

3:54

young man wakes and stretches and looks

3:57

out the window Amongst

4:00

all the rubble and ruin, the rusted

4:02

cars and the concrete that are broken,

4:05

he sees an older man. Aethor,

4:09

who are you and what do you look like? Hello,

4:11

my name is Aethor and I'm going to be

4:13

playing Sully. So,

4:16

Sully is standing there in the middle of the road, looking

4:18

kind of uncamped, because it's been a while

4:20

since he's had a safe place to stay. He

4:22

stands kind of average height, but you

4:25

can tell by just looking at him that he is

4:27

quite old, and that his skin

4:30

has taken on that kind of orange

4:32

leathery look that like farmers get in

4:34

their old age. Yeah,

4:39

make me a listen check for me,

4:41

please. Oh

4:44

no, I'm bad at listening. Why am I bad at listening? All

4:48

right, that's a 37 on a 20

4:50

roll, so fail. Okay.

4:55

You arrived

4:57

maybe an hour or so ago. You

5:00

actually found the young man who's now looking at you. You

5:03

found him asleep, surrounded by some gear. You had

5:05

a rifle with him, but young

5:08

kids, probably not worth interfering with,

5:10

and you might as well just get

5:12

on with what you need to be here for. Scanning

5:14

and looking around, you

5:17

see that there is... You

5:21

can see that you're on a hill, sort of, and you can

5:23

see that as you look down the hill, there is a very

5:25

large still lake ahead of you. It's

5:28

not rippling, it's not moving, it's not

5:30

affected. It's

5:32

a quite clear day, that kind of like

5:35

really cold spring day, where kind of nothing

5:37

is moving, it's kind of

5:39

cold, but if you're in the right part

5:41

of the sun, it's just

5:43

kind of warm. It's an okay day. Looking

5:46

off to the side of the still lake that

5:48

is ahead of you, you can see there is kind of this

5:50

large, like this face is kind of large mountain off to one

5:52

side. It's a little far off, and you can see that there

5:54

are trees all around. Everything

5:57

is genuinely calm. and

6:00

peaceful. As you kind

6:02

of look around you don't really hear anything,

6:04

you don't hear the guy who is in

6:07

the gas station moving around. You did pick

6:09

that up. Maybe old ears, maybe you're

6:11

distracted by. Sometimes the

6:13

genuine beauty that can be this world. As

6:16

you are looking around and you look up, you

6:18

see what looks like this very

6:22

small electrical

6:24

device that seems to be flying

6:26

in the air. As you look at it, you

6:28

can almost make out the sound of the swimming, but maybe

6:31

that's just imaginations, associations. You've seen

6:34

drones here and there before, but not many. You

6:37

see that it flies high and travels off,

6:41

circles round and heads off in a different

6:43

direction. We're

6:46

going to stick with the drone. As

6:48

the drone flies back

6:51

to where it came from, it

6:54

slowly descends on a road, not

6:57

too far from where the gas station is. It

7:00

lands very close to Neil. Do you

7:03

want to tell us who you are and what you look

7:05

like? I'm Ralph.

7:08

In contrast to your very

7:11

weathered complexion, he does not

7:13

have a very

7:15

weathered complexion. He

7:17

has a very sheltered

7:20

skin look, vaguely tanned but not

7:22

to the extreme. He has

7:25

short auburn hair that's stuck up,

7:27

partially due to the VR headset

7:30

that's currently on his eyes. When

7:33

he pulls it up, it sticks his hair up

7:35

a little bit. It naturally

7:37

always is lifted. I love that. I

7:39

love that. The

7:41

VR headset in this world,

7:43

they're more akin to goggles

7:46

for snow stuff than a

7:49

broky VR headset. If

7:51

you imagine a

7:53

snow goggle lifted up, that's what it

7:55

looks like most of the time. There

8:01

is a connected to all this connected

8:03

to the backpack is

8:05

a small little wrist device

8:07

that looks to be some kind

8:09

of computer interface on

8:12

his left wrist. Behind

8:15

that are a couple strange tattoo

8:17

looking things. The

8:20

drone, which I believe you have

8:23

called OTI. Yes,

8:25

it has feathers

8:27

tucked underneath the solar panels. It's kind

8:29

of decorated a little bit. Along

8:35

with a bird butt real sticker. It

8:39

also has for the astute among

8:41

you, it also has Apple

8:43

sin like stamps on the underside which

8:46

in this world is a very well known

8:49

electronics company, at least before the spare thing.

8:53

The drone hovers

8:55

nearby and catches up with you. You can

8:57

actually see the gas station a little bit

8:59

further along the road between some rusted out

9:01

cars and you think you make out the

9:03

shape of a gentleman

9:06

in that clearing area. The

9:09

drone hovers next to you and OTI

9:11

says. The lake

9:15

is a road that leads to a chain

9:17

link fence with a small building. Perhaps

9:19

30 needs from the gas station.

9:23

The old man is waiting at the gas

9:25

station. Are you sure we

9:27

can trust him? He

9:31

shrugs and how

9:33

does he grab his, how does

9:35

he gather his drone? It

9:37

could very easily just like hook to your backpack

9:39

when it's not in flight. Yeah,

9:42

he does that and snaps

9:45

it to his backpack. As

9:47

you continue walking down the road, yeah, you see the

9:49

kind of older gentleman. Could you

9:51

roll a spot hidden for me please? Ralph.

9:55

I'm going to see you. 65

9:59

versus 50. So that's

10:02

a nope. Cool.

10:04

Yeah. You see a slightly older man head of you. You

10:09

too, do not spot the young man who's looking out

10:11

the window as you approach. Oh

10:16

yeah. I forgot to mention, I do

10:18

believe, uh, you agreed to

10:21

this V. Sully has two guns

10:23

on him. Uh, one,

10:27

uh, I genuinely forgot to mention my

10:29

weapon. I do think you agreed

10:31

to me. I have five guns. I

10:36

don't think that's true. Yeah.

10:40

Uh, so like kind of tucked away, like

10:42

in like attached to his backpack as a

10:44

rifle, but more like ready to

10:46

be grabbed as a shotgun that he has got a

10:48

slung across the shoulders. Uh,

10:51

so yeah, but once Sully like makes eye

10:53

contact with you, we just waves a little

10:55

bit and you see he's like kind of

10:57

stiffens up. Uh, and

11:00

if you've had any human experience, you know, this is

11:02

a sign of like, all right, do

11:05

yourself like he's quite

11:07

nervous or like unsure of the interaction

11:10

about the gun. Yeah.

11:13

Um, perhaps a bit,

11:15

a bit the same. He always has his

11:18

like gun very visible in his open jacket,

11:20

but his, his hand is nowhere near it

11:22

at the moment. Uh,

11:25

he just kind of waves. How are you pal?

11:29

Ah, what's your name? Hey,

11:31

uh, I'm Sully. I'm assuming

11:33

you're Ralph. You

11:36

are who I was looking for then. You

11:40

are Ralph, right? You're not somebody looking

11:43

for me. Are you? We've

11:46

worked before, uh, on a couple of things, eh?

11:48

But I think we were, uh, doing kind of

11:50

distance things, right? Yeah.

11:54

Uh, there we go. It's

11:57

actually very nice. It's very nice

11:59

to put a face. to the name. You

12:01

can see that suddenly clearly like

12:03

is relaxing knowing that you are

12:05

who he was expecting. Yeah, he

12:08

he's lightens up a bit and walks closer

12:11

and reaches out a hand for handshake. Could

12:13

I get you posted? Please roll a listen check. Oh,

12:16

man. Are

12:19

you better than those two. So

12:21

I needed to roll under

12:23

20 and I rolled a 74. So yeah, I was I feel I've

12:32

got my AirPods in

12:35

copyright. I've got Apple's

12:37

in pods. Yeah, Apple's in pods.

12:40

Yeah. Yeah. Any electrical device if

12:42

we're not sure it belongs to Apple's in.

12:46

Okay, I'm gonna freeze you to right there

12:48

because you don't hear any of the lead up to the

12:50

big thing that's about to happen. It's

12:53

fluent in a bear moles. We're

13:01

further up the hill away

13:03

from this gas

13:06

station experience. There

13:10

are two people who

13:12

are moving at speed. They

13:15

are dodging through the trees, they are weaving their

13:17

way through rusted old wrecks

13:19

of cars and bikes. One

13:23

of them is an older gentleman who

13:25

looks to be wearing some sort of cowboy

13:27

shirt and a long leather jacket. He

13:30

definitely looks old, not

13:32

young, but he's moving as if he's a very

13:35

young spare man. Traveling

13:37

next to this older gentleman, trying

13:40

to get away from whatever it

13:42

is they're getting away from. Cassie,

13:44

do you want to describe what your name

13:46

is and who you are? The

13:50

name of my character is Mark, and

13:52

they are an early to mid

13:55

teenage kid with bronze tan skin,

13:57

short dark hair, with no

13:59

apparent gender. and Asian facial features. They

14:02

are of medium height and lanky looking

14:04

and thin as if from

14:07

minimal malnourishment, just enough to keep them

14:09

going. The older

14:11

gentleman you know to be someone that you've

14:13

known for a very long time actually, you

14:15

know, this gentleman's name is Roland. And

14:19

currently, as you are both kind of

14:21

like dodging and making your way down

14:23

through these wrecks of

14:25

cars and through the forest, you kind of like

14:27

look down the hill and you can see that

14:29

on the right hand side there is this, you

14:32

would know it to be a gas station, people have

14:35

told you what that is, but you may not necessarily

14:37

know what that is. You just know that that's what

14:39

it's called. And dead ahead, you can see this very

14:41

large, still lake. And do you think

14:43

maybe in your running down that you can

14:45

maybe spot that there are two people, but

14:49

there's some distance off as you're kind

14:51

of like running down, you

14:53

hear the very tell tell signs

14:56

of creatures that are following you

14:58

plants that you are very well aware of as you

15:00

hear this. As

15:03

you also hear the slithering of roots

15:05

and branches across the ground. Roland

15:10

turns to you as you're

15:12

running. All

15:15

right. I have a plan. What's

15:17

the plan? You, you

15:20

keep going. There's people down

15:22

there at the gas station and I think

15:24

I recognize one of them. Just tell them,

15:26

just tell them, you know, Roland. Ah, there's

15:29

one. And he points at this

15:32

kind of much more shiny, small looking

15:34

vehicle that has like two

15:36

wheels, has like a very big like handlebar

15:39

and he runs towards it and he says, I'm going

15:41

to take this and draw as many of them as

15:43

I can away from you. Hopefully

15:45

they'll follow me and not you. I'll

15:47

meet up with you in the dreamscape

15:50

or fate will mean we meet up again. Just

15:53

go where safety is. If

15:56

that man is who I think it is, you'll

15:58

be fine. luck

16:01

doesn't say anything just nods and

16:04

looks forward towards the people and like

16:07

keeps running and like it keeps

16:09

a listen back to here

16:11

if Roland manages to get

16:13

the thing if there's another noise coming from

16:15

the back they will

16:17

look behind to see if

16:20

they are if the things

16:22

are following him. Yeah like you've

16:24

probably run like 10 to 15 seconds

16:27

when you hear whatever engine it is

16:30

beginning to kick into gear and you

16:32

hear it begin to shoot away and

16:34

you begin to hear him shouting definitely

16:37

trying to get as much attention as he

16:39

can like he's hitting whenever cars he's passing

16:41

literally making as much noise as he can

16:43

which if you are someone

16:45

who is vague listening skills you probably would

16:47

have heard but alas I always think you're

16:49

a bit more gifted in certain listening skills

16:52

and you begin to pelt your way down

16:54

towards where this kind of gas station is

16:56

and you can see these two people are kind

16:58

of a little bit ahead of you that they are kind of

17:01

like reaching out and shaking hands or

17:03

at least they're about to and as you run down

17:05

I'd like you to make a spot hidden check please.

17:13

I think that's a success. Fantastic.

17:18

As you become like running down you

17:21

hear like most of the ticking begin to fade but

17:23

as you kind of like towards the

17:25

edge of where this gas station is where this kind of

17:27

building that has mostly collapses you

17:29

hear the ticking look off to the right

17:31

hand side in the tree line and you spot

17:34

this person,

17:36

their face at the window. You

17:39

see them lift a rifle in the

17:41

direction of where you're running and

17:44

all three of you hear this massive

17:46

loud gunshots for the two of you who are

17:48

shaking hands you hear it from behind you. Like you see

17:51

this kind of flash in the window as it shifts and

17:53

breaks and you hear this kind of noise

17:55

coming as you look back and you see

17:58

that this hollow crest, this large red

18:01

bulbous looking plant that's running

18:03

on many many roots

18:06

and vines, it runs towards you, you see this

18:08

explosion, you see a big portion of its middle

18:10

section just blow out and you see it be

18:12

kind of a scuffle backwards into the forest itself

18:14

and you lose it from sight. What

18:17

are the three of you? Why not? Well, I'm

18:19

assuming as soon as the explosion goes off, Sully

18:22

is within a half

18:25

a second, he has

18:27

this shotgun in his hand, it sprays against his

18:29

shoulder and he's aiming it at wherever the sound

18:31

came from. It's

18:34

coming from the other side of

18:36

the gas station and

18:38

you see this young Filipino-Asia person

18:43

just running down the road in your

18:45

general direction. You

18:48

say young, how

18:50

young are we talking? Probably

18:53

mid-teenager. Yeah, early to mid-teenagers.

18:56

I think Sully is just training a

18:58

shotgun straight at the person. At me?

19:01

Yeah, straight at you, through the giant loud

19:03

bang and then you're running at him. He's

19:07

got his gun up and he's just aiming it at

19:09

you, just staring at you, seeing what you're going to

19:11

do next. They're

19:15

running and they're

19:17

looking behind them because they also just heard

19:19

the explosion and they look

19:21

back forwards to see the gun aimed

19:23

at them. They're

19:25

just jumping behind whatever the fuck they

19:27

can find, like some kind of obstacle

19:31

that can hide them. Like a gas pump

19:33

or something? Yeah, something. Yeah,

19:35

like a gas pump or like a

19:37

broken piece of cement that was making

19:39

up the foundations is like cracked, broken

19:42

up. There's definitely many places that you

19:44

could be like, oh god, shotgun, jump. Like

19:46

there's definitely places for that to hide. Because

19:49

they don't know if what

19:52

happened behind them just hit the crest. So

19:54

they're trying to gain their bearings and

19:57

make sure like, okay, shotgun avoided.

19:59

What's happening? Yeah,

20:02

I think you jump to cover

20:05

and like, I'm assuming

20:07

like blood rushing to your ears, your heart's

20:09

pumping and like into you just hear a

20:11

shout. Identify yourself. They

20:15

continue like they look behind like in

20:18

the direction of where the crests were just to make sure

20:20

that there's no crest because... Bigger danger?

20:25

Yeah. You look back and

20:27

you see that the crest definitely has like a

20:29

big hole in it and it is like scuttling

20:31

off into the forest. It's like, hold up! And

20:34

like, kneading itself back through the forest. You

20:37

see other plants that it's heading

20:39

towards and you hear the ticking like really, really

20:41

loudly but it's definitely scuttling away

20:43

and some of the other plants that literally move out

20:45

of its way and then fall back into like whatever

20:47

bushy mess they went to. Looking

20:51

back you also notice and Ralph

20:53

and Sally also would notice if you're kind of looking in any

20:55

sort of general direction. You

20:58

see a young man appear

21:00

from behind the building and head in like your

21:02

general direction having seen someone just run past

21:05

them and knowing that at least someone is,

21:07

some other people are there. You see that

21:09

they have a rifle and hear the cuck

21:11

cuck as they came for another round. But

21:15

they don't have it aimed up at you. They have it

21:17

like pointed at the ground and they just like walk

21:19

around the corner. Oh boy. Oh

21:22

boy. Do I hear the... I

21:24

was about to come out but back there two people

21:26

were trying to run through different directions.

21:31

Sally had seen the person in the station

21:34

previously. Yep. This

21:37

is them. You definitely recognise them. Like the

21:39

guns that they had like next to

21:41

them is what they have in their

21:43

hands. They're wearing exactly the same stuff.

21:46

It's like this really like loose shirt

21:48

and like they're kind of

21:50

like wearing sleeping underwear. Like they don't have

21:52

any trousers on. They don't have any shoes

21:55

on. Anything like that.

21:57

They literally just had woken up, wandered

21:59

around. someone was in trouble and fired a

22:01

bullet and then came around the edge when you yelled

22:03

at someone to identify themselves. Yeah, they have

22:05

the gun pointed at the ground. They're

22:08

not hostile in any way, shape or form. Yeah.

22:13

Lark is going to peek out and make

22:15

a point of looking around back and forth

22:18

to make sure that there's no – they're

22:21

not going to catch a bullet any time soon

22:23

and they're going to put up their hands. Make

22:27

sure that the people around

22:29

the corner with a trained gun are going

22:31

to see them. Once

22:37

Sully sees that people are de-escalating, he's

22:39

more than happy to lower

22:41

the shotgun, but he's

22:43

seen this tactic before. Somebody seemingly innocent

22:45

runs at them asking for help and

22:47

then the guns just start flying. So

22:52

happy to de-escalate, at least for now. You

22:55

can see that he flicks the safety on and puts

22:58

their gun – he tries to

23:00

put it in a holder on his back, but

23:02

he's not wearing anything of any real value. He

23:05

realizes he's in his underwear, puts

23:08

the gun back and just holds it

23:10

all quickly at his side and he says, it's

23:13

okay, friend. Name's Aster.

23:16

You? I'm Sully. Was

23:22

that you who shot the gun earlier? You

23:25

know, yeah, one of

23:27

them anyway. Ticky boys that was

23:30

following your friend. You

23:32

alright, kiddo? They're

23:35

not good. They're

23:38

visibly a little bit like still

23:41

processing everything. Yeah.

23:44

Ralph, I need you to

23:46

make a spot hidden for me, please. This

23:49

is going to be a hard check, so it's not just

23:51

a normal success you need, you need a hard success. Oh,

23:53

okay. That's

23:55

not happening. Why

23:58

not? I couldn't

24:00

have done well. Oh

24:04

boy! Oh boy! I

24:07

rolled a 99. So

24:13

you see like the

24:16

young person who's like hiding like

24:19

behind like let's say a gas pump. You

24:22

can see them hiding behind the gas pump and just

24:24

kind of like hands vaguely up just processing what's going

24:26

on. You see that Sully

24:28

is kind of like de-escalating where he's

24:30

aiming his gun. It's no longer like opt-in ready

24:33

to short. You can see that it's kind of

24:35

aiming it down. You can

24:37

see that he's you can hear that he's talking and

24:39

you can see that Lark is nodding in response to

24:41

something. But

24:45

looking in the area where they're looking, it's

24:47

kind of a blur. You can't really see

24:50

a person. It's like a heat haze.

24:53

It's just you're having real troubles

24:56

realizing that somebody is there. You can

24:58

tell there's something weird but

25:00

you can't see them right

25:03

now. Okay,

25:05

he's just taking it slow and

25:08

trying to figure out what's going on. He's

25:10

still trying to figure out what

25:13

was shot I think. But

25:17

guns are being put away. So

25:20

it's a bit of confusion.

25:22

Yeah, he looks confused.

25:26

And I think at that point Sully spots where you ran off

25:28

to and he's like, I

25:31

think it's okay. And

25:33

he's going to move towards Lark. Did you

25:36

identify yourself earlier with name? No. Okay,

25:38

yeah. Yeah, he's just going to move up to

25:40

the gas pump and kind of lean on it

25:42

like, are you okay? Lark

25:47

nods and then says, Roland,

25:53

do you know him? Sully

25:57

looks up to the other guy and then back down to

25:59

you. Are

26:02

you asking if I know a man by the name

26:04

Roland? They nod. Yes,

26:07

I know Roland. How do you know him? I

26:11

was up there with him. He

26:14

created a distraction. He

26:18

said he told me to run down here.

26:20

He said he knew one of you. Okay.

26:25

And? I'm

26:27

going to go put some trousers on. And

26:31

he just kind of like turns and like

26:33

makes his way back into... You

26:37

can't. But you definitely

26:39

know that there's something going on. You see, yeah, you see

26:41

like a bird sensitive. And

26:44

you see the door open and

26:47

you see it close again, but you're really

26:50

struggling right now to see him. Like

26:52

you're aware that someone's going on and

26:54

like you hear a little bit of

26:56

a muffle like someone's talking on the

26:58

other end of the house and you're

27:00

like, but you can't focus

27:02

on it right now. If

27:04

I also weren't a coward, I would storm

27:06

in this building and interrogate this blur

27:08

band, but I don't. I

27:11

have a coward. I'm scared of it. Take

27:14

off your Google lenses. They're

27:17

answering naked people. That's true.

27:21

Yeah, so he's going to shoulder the shotgun and he's

27:23

going to lean down. Rolling

27:26

up in the hills. Yeah,

27:29

we took... We

27:32

were running from the crest

27:36

and he said he was going to create a

27:39

distraction. He took one of... And

27:41

I'm going to assume that at the gas

27:43

station, there's more of the motorcycle thingies. Yeah.

27:46

He points at one of them and they say

27:49

he took one of those and moved

27:53

it and it made a lot of noise. Yes.

27:58

Yes. Yes. An

28:02

operational motorcycle. I don't know how he

28:04

does it. But I think

28:06

there may be... I

28:08

think it's not exactly mechanical experience. I

28:10

think there's more to it. But that's inside the point.

28:13

Like, just has... gets a thousand yards there.

28:15

That's no idea what he's talking about. That's

28:21

called a motorcycle. Oh.

28:24

Motorcycle. Okay. Like,

28:27

motorboat. Very

28:30

similar. Actually,

28:32

almost exactly the same. Except one

28:34

is on two wheels and the other one's in the water. You

28:37

see motorboats? I'm

28:40

gonna assume I have. One

28:42

hundred percent. You've seen a motorboat. Yeah. I

28:45

just remember boats, but I don't remember if

28:47

it was a robot or a motorboat. Probably

28:52

with your history you would have known both,

28:54

for sure. Okay. Yeah. Yes. I...

28:58

I know motorboats. You

29:01

can see Sullis, like, scrunching his face a little

29:03

bit. Thank you to himself. Like, those motorboats

29:06

never heard of a motorcycle. I know. Very,

29:09

very specific. Okay.

29:15

At that point, the door

29:17

to the

29:19

gas station opens once again. And I

29:22

would like Ralph to take another spot

29:24

hidden or a listen check. It's

29:27

your choice. Spot hidden. Yep.

29:30

Go for it. You don't need to hide this time.

29:32

You're very aware that there is something there. It's

29:36

a 53, B. No.

29:38

A 53. Or whatever the fuck. Yeah.

29:41

We're already... Already?

29:44

Already. Yep. How do

29:46

I do that? So, you can use your luck to

29:48

turn a failure into a success. So,

29:50

you would only need to use three. So,

29:54

for each luck point you use,

29:56

you lower your roll by one.

30:00

To. Make a skill check You have to.

30:03

Sit. Your number You don't have to go underneath

30:05

it. Removed three

30:07

point from lox. Yep!

30:09

And then you can send your spot hidden

30:12

saida into a success. Occur, I'm gonna

30:14

do that. Okay,

30:16

I'm now that you've succeeded on your

30:18

spot hidden. As.

30:21

The door opens. You kind of

30:23

look very intently. And. It's like having

30:25

to squint a lot, but suddenly all of

30:27

the. Orders

30:30

that blurriness all of the censoring

30:32

or the everything is seen simply

30:34

begins to clarify and to see

30:36

this young. This man with dark

30:38

hair. He's wearing

30:40

what looks like her a kind of

30:42

a sports jackets I was has a

30:44

lot of movement and you consult he's

30:46

wearing prefer trousers. He's wearing shoes which.

30:50

Is only with not even a surprise to you

30:52

but everyone else he and Alex trust and he

30:54

has a rifle on his back and he has

30:56

a like aside back on on a piss, be

30:58

clutching what looks like a small. Small

31:01

piece a card in his hands. He can't really

31:03

see what's on it, but he's he's at least

31:05

totaling. It comes out season was he.

31:09

Is it normal? The.

31:13

Or. Do the seems strange that I

31:15

did. the man was blurry V. You.

31:17

Know and and mean. Just.

31:20

For some say out about. About. Yes,

31:23

you have never experienced this, are better off

31:25

spam. And seeing like social, open and close

31:28

knit sorry like care to be the wins

31:30

may be maybe just having a moment,

31:32

but seeing a man solidify out of this

31:34

kind of blurriness. Stephanie a little bit of

31:36

a shock to the system, something to need

31:39

you to make a sanity role place. Of

31:42

good repair. I

31:44

wrote a sixty nine. Madrassas

31:47

Fifty Five vs Marxism from

31:50

South Side and Bloomberg nice

31:52

but. Still have failed. I'm you

31:54

take three points the sanity damage as you see

31:56

someone just. A pure out of nowhere. How

32:00

much. Three. She

32:02

says. Wrong

32:05

broth is just squinting kind

32:07

of feast frozen. He's no

32:09

longer moving towards every once

32:12

and assess assess still holding

32:14

his confused look. How

32:17

many keep watching? Everyone

32:21

or T A's did I

32:23

see some. Said. I'm

32:28

assuming you are the one who lot

32:30

of the guns on earlier. Did you

32:32

hit the crest? Oh

32:35

yes. Yes ah blue the chilcot

32:37

that thing out sourcing wrong into

32:39

forest and and a puts a

32:41

think it's who is a hip

32:43

come here it's. I hope let's

32:46

hope that you did not. Fatal

32:49

shot. Last map

32:51

of the not. Are scared

32:54

also least sad. I figure you

32:56

to know each other and he

32:58

points. Between Ross and selling. I'm.

33:02

We've known off each other. What's

33:08

it to you? Just.

33:10

Wandering around. Any

33:13

chance in the Us Review Local to this area

33:15

deep known as a Bow At. A

33:19

solicitor said. I

33:21

wouldn't consider myself local.

33:24

Two Sear. Is

33:27

that accurate? Correct.

33:29

Okay, yeah, I mean. I

33:32

figured as much, but when things

33:34

are kind of neuner I travel

33:36

some nearby things and this has

33:38

all been spared by yeah it's

33:40

it's own most nearby as a

33:42

specific a sunny day at a

33:45

bit of cattle feed here for

33:47

good at asks gender. he shakes

33:49

his head nurse. A

33:53

sort of thing captioning kids.

33:56

Oh. Lark. A

33:59

lot. Are you uh, slave

34:02

or slave around here? I,

34:07

um, had a friend. I'll

34:10

meet up with him again later. Alright.

34:15

Oh. And he kind of like looks

34:17

down at the card that he has. When

34:20

you say card, what do you mean? Can it

34:22

be a little bit more descriptive? So

34:24

I think during like your rummaging

34:26

and all of you would have seen something roughly

34:29

like this. It's kind of like we would know

34:31

it's postcard size. Um, and it has like this

34:33

kind of very, very faded picture

34:35

on the front of like a picture

34:37

of a lake and like a, um,

34:40

like a picnic bench and like someone

34:42

just like looking overly happy on

34:44

the front. But it's super, super faded. Um, and

34:46

on the back it has like, um, has like

34:49

something that looks like it's been handwritten, but you

34:51

can't really see it very well because it's kind

34:53

of like moving it and twisting it about

34:55

on his hands. And it looks like it's been well-worn as well.

34:57

Like it's like it's gone through a lot. Are

35:02

you looking for a guide? Sort

35:05

of. I'll call these instructions to

35:07

go to a place. Yeah,

35:09

yeah. Uh, gas station. View of

35:12

the lake. He points at the lake. As

35:15

soon as he says gas station with a view of

35:17

a lake, like, so he throws his head over his

35:19

shoulder and looks back. Road

35:24

East leading to Chainlink fence. Points

35:27

at a road that looks like it's probably heading East. Um,

35:29

for those of you that would roughly

35:31

always know where Northeast Southwest is, I look at

35:33

the sun, um, where it runs in the

35:35

sun. Don't look at the sun. It's

35:39

bad. Don't look at the sun where that sunglasses focus. Like,

35:41

looks directly into the sun. Slap.

35:46

Roadhead and East. Some sort of

35:48

mountain over there and, well, it says mountain complex, but

35:50

obviously I'm not close enough to the mountain. Not yet.

35:54

Um, yeah, I was just, I've

35:57

been told there's a safe place at the end of this,

35:59

the directions that... might have what I'm looking for. I

36:04

think there's like, yeah, it suddenly

36:06

looks over to Ralph and says that, does

36:09

that sound like the place we're going to? Safe

36:15

place, eh? That's

36:17

what he said. You

36:20

would hope I think, but by

36:23

the sound of it, no. They're

36:26

looking for security help. And

36:31

considering they've been there for a while and are just

36:33

now looking for it, I'm kind

36:35

of wondering why they're reaching

36:38

out just now, but. Oh,

36:41

a person that gave me this

36:43

information, they, I

36:46

got it three or four days ago, said that these

36:48

people were just setting up. Maybe there'd be a place

36:50

for me. Wait.

36:55

There are people in the borough, it

36:57

suddenly looks like, kind of like annoyed

36:59

at Ralph. He's

37:02

just, he squints at you like, he's

37:05

confused that you're a surprise. I

37:10

did not bring a lot to trade. I

37:14

did not realize we were meeting with

37:16

people. I

37:18

think while you're all having that discussion, like, Lark

37:20

is just looking for

37:23

a place to sit and just taking

37:25

random fruit out of their backpacks and

37:27

just eating it. Yeah.

37:31

Wait, what did you want from this?

37:35

What were you out to get? I'm

37:38

hoping to find things to recover to,

37:42

like, I

37:45

would like to take things out of the

37:47

borough and bring them to the people around. Yes,

37:54

yes. Okay. I'm

37:58

a very, you work with a, group?

38:02

No, not anymore. I

38:04

work by myself and I try to help people. That's

38:08

really it. I didn't realize there were people

38:10

there. If there are people

38:12

that live there, I can't scavenge. I have to

38:14

trade. And then I have to have things to

38:17

trade for. So I'm a little bit blindsided. I'm

38:19

sorry. Didn't mean to come

38:22

off. Oh no,

38:24

you're fine. I'm grateful. What

38:27

do you, where did you, where

38:29

did you hear about this place? It's

38:32

not from, where did you hear about

38:35

this?

38:39

Hold on. We believe in you. Hey,

38:41

hey. And what did you hear about

38:43

this place? It's

38:46

not from the people inside it. I

38:50

didn't even know there was a burrow here until

38:52

very recently. I, the

38:54

information I got was just an

38:56

un, like an unspoiled burrow.

39:00

I thought we were going to discover

39:03

it. I guess is the word I would

39:05

use. Oh, okay. No. Oh,

39:08

probably not. It sounded like from

39:10

the person who gave me the information that they

39:12

had only just set up, like they'd

39:15

only just arrived. But you're saying that they've

39:17

been there a while. I

39:19

haven't been there. I just know from rumors

39:23

and communications and such, you

39:25

know, the usual trade. It's

39:29

no problem. A new burrow is a

39:31

hopeful new chance to find things that

39:33

are useful to us. Things

39:35

that I can bring to the farms to

39:37

help them grow better. You

39:42

see like the guy kind of like has

39:44

a very like visible like look

39:47

to his face. He says, yeah,

39:50

I was told there was some kind of

39:54

magical stuff in there. So

39:57

he crosses his arms. So

40:01

you're looking for fertilizers and magic.

40:05

Well, just the magic stuff really. No,

40:07

you're looking for... it points it slowly. Yeah, I

40:09

am. I'm

40:12

looking for untainted seeds,

40:14

really. Of course, like,

40:16

high quality fertilizer from before the sprouting

40:18

would be great, but... untainted

40:21

seeds would be the best. And

40:24

you're going to take the seeds that are safe

40:26

in the vault, outside of the vault, to try

40:28

to grow where they

40:30

can be tainted? Yes.

40:34

Because inside the vault they do nobody any good.

40:38

The skeletons of humans are not going to

40:40

be thankful for the unspoiled seeds. Hmm.

40:45

There's sometimes ways of protecting plants.

40:48

My people used to do that. Yeah,

40:52

with magic, you say? He...

40:56

roll a psychology for me. Yes, please.

41:01

Wait, no, that sounds like you have more than the basic.

41:03

I've already rolled it. He

41:06

lied. Come

41:10

on, don't do me like this. Alright, alright, that's a 30 on

41:12

a 65 check. So that's a hard success.

41:18

Oh, yeah, this guy was like 100% into

41:20

magics, and not only was it him and his

41:23

people into magics, they were clearly shady magics, because

41:25

he feels obviously very

41:27

uncomfortable thinking about

41:29

it, like just the thought of kind

41:31

of like... Some

41:34

of the stuff that he's done is obviously like he kind

41:36

of gets a bit of a bead of a sweat. He

41:38

doesn't look anybody in the eye, because his eyes are kind

41:41

of squinting, like his shoulders suddenly become quite stiff. He's

41:44

like, yeah, he is uncomfortable with the

41:46

subject, and he doesn't like

41:48

whatever he's done in the past. Look,

41:53

it's just going to be hard to convince

41:55

the people that have it in the vault

41:57

that it's going to be better used outside

41:59

of the forest. There are, you

42:02

know, they're scavengers too, most likely. They're

42:04

trying to take

42:07

what they found and make

42:09

a living themselves from it. However,

42:12

they might

42:14

also recognize that if

42:17

you don't take it today, it'll be here for the people

42:19

tomorrow. Do

42:21

you need it now? Is

42:24

it the time for that? You're

42:27

taking something from a vault. Look,

42:30

we don't even know what's there. We

42:33

don't know who's there or how long they've been there.

42:35

We've all got conflict and info. And

42:38

what do you have to trade? Do you have

42:40

anything to trade them for magic? Me? No,

42:43

I, I, I, no.

42:49

I, I've got knowledge and skills that

42:51

apparently would have lined up with the things that they do. Oh,

42:57

there's definitely like, it's not like,

42:59

it's not like Sully takes like a, like a half

43:01

a step back. It's just like, he seems to be

43:03

readjusting himself, but when he's done, he's like, move back

43:05

a little bit. You

43:10

can see the Aster kind of like turns and looks at you and

43:12

he says, look, I

43:15

don't practice that anymore. Right.

43:18

That was, that was a long time ago. You

43:21

do what you have to do to survive. That's

43:23

what we're all doing out here. Yeah.

43:30

Talking about surviving, uh, Lark,

43:34

you were running away things. Roland was with

43:36

you. Are

43:39

you going to be okay? Um,

43:44

Roland just told me to talk

43:47

to the two of you because he knew one of you,

43:50

you and like, like they

43:52

pointed you and

43:57

that's all, that's all I know. Okay.

44:02

Alright, well here's where I'm at. Sully,

44:05

it sounds like there's more than just seeds at

44:07

the vault. That's very unfortunate for all of us.

44:11

It sounds like I'll help

44:13

you get your seeds or whatever, but just try

44:15

to take some unstainted seeds back to the vault

44:17

if you can from whatever grows. Of

44:20

course, Mike. Locke

44:22

pulls out a few seeds out of their apple and

44:25

like walks up to you and holds it up in one

44:27

hand. Great, there we go. And

44:29

now we can go home. You don't even have to go to the

44:31

vault you get all you need. Sully

44:34

genuinely gives you like a... I

44:37

don't even know what the crap is. The look

44:39

of like, fuck are you talking about dude? Oh,

44:43

the, oh come the fuck

44:45

on. There you go. I've

44:47

never traded for magic before, so I don't

44:50

exactly know how it works, eh? So,

44:52

just uh... So you're

44:54

aware? I might not be able to help so

44:56

much with the magic trade thing. I, that's... I'll,

45:01

you know, do my best, but... Let's

45:05

hope... Let's

45:07

hope that everything is there. Maybe

45:09

it's one of them really big borrels we keep hearing

45:11

about, you know? One that has

45:13

the magics and food and seeds and

45:15

technology. I mean, isn't

45:17

that some of the excitement? That we

45:19

don't know what's there? I mean, also

45:21

some of the terrifying fear, that, some of that terrifying

45:23

fear that we're all being led into a trap somehow.

45:27

Or you're uncovering something that's safe without

45:29

your involvement. And

45:32

putting it at risk. Maybe.

45:37

So at least go see them. There's no problem with

45:39

any of this. Uh,

45:42

suddenly like, Neo's down and takes

45:44

the apple core, I guess, that

45:46

the lark gave him. He's

45:48

like, um, yes, uh, these

45:51

are good to be scattered around,

45:53

but... Farmers need

45:56

something more actionable. Uh,

45:59

corn, potatoes... salad

46:02

heads and stuff like that, something that grows in

46:05

cyclical year cycle that they can work with. But

46:08

these are good. Always be sure to throw them

46:10

somewhere where they might actually get to grow in

46:12

peace from the tamed, from the

46:15

sprouting. Lark's

46:17

gonna pull out a tiny little potato out of the

46:19

bag and hold it up to you. Yeah,

46:24

it looks like all the potatoes that are around. Yeah.

46:29

It's not talking to you. It's not a type of

46:31

colour. It's definitely a potato. While

46:33

it has not been affected heavily,

46:35

I believe that it

46:38

is changing, or

46:40

has been changed a little bit. I

46:42

believe it's growing slower, or

46:45

giving us less, or

46:47

giving us more of something we

46:49

don't want. There's something wrong with a lot of

46:51

the crops. They don't grow like the books

46:53

say they should grow. I

46:57

would like to get some untainted seeds to

46:59

people again. You

47:01

can see that Astor is beginning to walk

47:03

away and he turns around and you can see

47:06

that he's very carefully lifting his leg over. He

47:08

obviously knows there's cracks in the ground and stuff

47:10

like that and he's being careful to walk over

47:12

them. He points both his fingers

47:14

towards you, like finger gun styles. How

47:17

about we walk and talk? We're burning daylight here.

47:21

Fine by me. Um, Lark.

47:26

Do you want to come with us? It

47:29

sounds like you were running away from something and

47:32

if Roland was coming you... Lark points over

47:34

to probably some remains

47:37

of the crests that are still

47:39

laying around. Yeah, as you kind of

47:41

walk onto the street a little bit, you can look

47:43

up and see the obvious silver

47:46

birch and red bulbishness that's kind of blown out

47:48

the back a little bit up the road. Yeah,

47:51

um, no. If

47:54

you don't want to be alone, I understand

47:56

that. And I'm sure

47:58

Roland has ways to find me again. if he saw me.

48:01

I think so. Can

48:04

I come with you? Of course. Any friend

48:06

of Roland is a friend of mine. He

48:10

seems to say that a little bit

48:12

bitterly. After the comments earlier we're talking

48:23

about the potato, they like rub some of the soil

48:25

of the potato and put it back into

48:27

the tank. I'll feed you potatoes, they're

48:29

just not the potatoes our ancestors grew

48:31

up with.

48:34

They have these huge potatoes,

48:36

they call them... Melons!

48:38

Yeah, as you begin to make

48:45

your way along this road that heads

48:48

in the easterly direction which leads towards that kind

48:50

of large mountainous cliff end at

48:52

the end of the still lake. It

48:56

probably is like a 20 minute

48:59

walk. Oti probably wasn't too far from

49:01

accurately gauging how far this was. As

49:03

you are walking

49:07

and as you're coming to the end of

49:09

your walk, I

49:11

would like for three of you to either

49:14

make a spot hidden or a listen check.

49:16

I'm gonna do a spot

49:19

hidden. We're all in 85 so that's a no. 36,

49:24

success! We'll

49:26

say that I have my drone out.

49:28

I've pulled my goggles down and

49:31

the drone disconnects from the backpack

49:33

and flies up and he's looking

49:35

for radio signals and such to

49:38

guide us somewhere. That's

49:42

why I don't notice things. Yeah,

49:45

that's a really good thing. You start travelling

49:48

on the road and as you send Oti up

49:50

into the air, they direct you to go down

49:52

this slightly narrower lane

49:55

that comes off of the main road.

49:57

If you continue down the main road, it

49:59

would be like... much bigger buildings coming

50:01

into view like multi-story buildings

50:03

like offices and old homes and such like

50:06

in apartment blocks. But he oaty

50:08

guys you down to one side and you're kind of

50:10

busy listening to the signals that you are being given

50:12

and paying attention to that little overhead display of where

50:15

you should be going but you completely miss what's

50:18

obviously right in front of Lark. Sully

50:23

you don't spot this really at

50:25

all until it is basically

50:29

in it but I think that

50:31

maybe Lark may notice this and put this out

50:33

before who knows it's up to Lark. Ahead

50:38

of you at the end of

50:40

this kind of narrow road that twists and turns through

50:42

the forest you don't hear anything approaching

50:44

through the forest. You see like bits

50:47

of the Lark's grace everywhere the

50:49

kind of like blue vines and

50:52

purple leaves often denote that there is

50:54

something weird or magical eldritch happening in

50:56

the area. It's kind

50:59

of everywhere actually the further you walk the

51:01

kind of more intense that it becomes. You

51:03

can definitely see that some of those three

51:05

pailted flowers just closed

51:07

but kind of maybe getting

51:09

closer to you the closer that you kind of

51:12

get to your destination.

51:14

Ahead of you you

51:16

see that there is this chain link fence and

51:19

a gate. The chain

51:21

link fence is covered in all sorts

51:23

of ivies and climbing vines and you can

51:25

see that it has fallen down in areas

51:28

where trees have been knocked down. You

51:30

can see that the gate looks like

51:32

it's been torn open. And

51:35

Lark the first thing that you spot

51:38

as you kind of all turn around this corner is

51:40

that the road that leads

51:42

that you're on that leads through the

51:44

gate and straight forward into this large

51:46

like mountain that has like

51:48

this tunnel this entranceway that has been

51:50

like put into it and

51:52

you can see that there is like a

51:55

couple of very big heavy like iron looking

51:57

doors that are slightly ajar. Although that pathway

51:59

is completely different. you notice

52:01

that amongst some of

52:03

the high-grown grasses and amongst some of the

52:06

rusted out cars and the small building that's

52:08

there that kind of looks like a very

52:10

small hut where only a person could maybe

52:12

stand, it's right close to the gate. You

52:16

notice that there's a lot of red

52:19

amongst the greens and the yellows and

52:21

the greys. You

52:23

notice that there's a lot of humanoid

52:26

shapes, yet

52:28

definitely humans that are

52:30

lying in the ground, partially hidden by

52:33

paws and

52:35

bolting palm up and some

52:37

ments and hidden by bushes. You

52:40

can see and you can probably count very

52:42

very quickly maybe six

52:45

people that are lying outside this

52:47

complex. When

52:50

you say there's red did you mean in the grass?

52:53

Yep, as if splashes of blood are everywhere.

52:56

So it's like fairly fresh. There's

53:02

something over there. I think

53:04

that's blood. As

53:09

you will look at the nearest body that Locke is

53:11

pointing to, you see that foot

53:13

twitch. You

53:17

said one of the corpses or stretching? Yes.

53:22

Locke is going to take steps back,

53:24

trying to get behind the tall loots.

53:29

You notice that Asta kind of immediately takes

53:31

a step as he notices that you're coming back

53:33

towards him. He kind of

53:35

instinctively falls over his head and says there's a

53:37

step in front of you just to begin to

53:40

shield you from whatever ahead because he

53:42

notices that you're backing up like okay

53:44

all right well I guess I'll step

53:47

in. From where

53:49

Sully is standing,

53:53

do they just look like corpses

53:55

or do they look like something? Are

54:00

you guys getting any closer? If

54:02

the foot is only twitching and there's no

54:04

actual real movement or shuffling going on, then

54:07

I think Sully with a raised

54:09

shotgun is gonna like move

54:12

to get a better angle at

54:14

the bodies. But

54:17

Sully is not a dumb man. He looks around

54:19

before he starts moving, making sure he doesn't step

54:21

on or into something that would kill him. Sure.

54:24

Take a spot, Hen. So

54:27

I got a 28 and a

54:29

50, so that's a success. I

54:32

just succeeded in a skill check. Do

54:34

I mark it as progressable

54:37

or whatever it's called? Yes. So

54:39

if you ever get any successes, you are supposed

54:41

to be marking them for improvement, which we would

54:43

do during the improvement phase. All

54:48

right. So, Sully, with your

54:50

spot hidden success, you

54:52

begin to make your way up towards where the gates are.

54:55

And you begin to spot that there

54:58

are kind of six people that are laying hidden

55:01

amongst all the stuff. The pathway is quite clear.

55:03

And you focus in on the

55:06

body that seems to have twitched. And

55:10

there is definitely something different about

55:12

them compared to the rest. The

55:14

rest are clearly very obviously dead.

55:16

They've been torn to pieces. You can

55:19

see that like one of them is missing a leg. You

55:21

can see that some of them have weapons that they

55:24

are holding on to, but obviously

55:26

was not successful. The

55:29

body that you end up seeing has begun to

55:31

twitch as you kind of get to the

55:33

gate itself. You

55:35

notice that it is this

55:38

younger woman. She has very shortly cropped

55:40

blonde hair. You can see

55:42

that there's like blood splashes all over her body.

55:44

She's wearing very tight fitting clothes. And

55:47

she has also a very big wisht-y in

55:49

one of her hands. And it looks like

55:52

she has been torn to shreds across

55:54

her chest, across her stomach, across her

55:56

legs. But, yeah,

55:58

she looks a mess. You'll

56:04

notice that this person is be breeding,

56:06

he just see the rise in the

56:08

for the test. Even not quite shall.

56:11

aren't you notice that use a notice

56:13

that the other bodies are definitely not

56:15

moving. There doesn't seem to be any

56:17

signs of life about the middle and

56:19

you can see that's the two large

56:21

I endorse that are kind of any

56:24

kind of like how know within the

56:26

mountainside so he could see that the

56:28

Hr and she can you think you

56:30

see objects moving in the darkness beyond

56:32

that. It's. Like. Maybe.

56:35

A person may be a creature even

56:37

though you had a extreme six about

56:39

the can see this anything meeting in

56:41

there at all be called of distances.

56:44

You know that there's something. About

56:47

are not going to. Pull. Out

56:49

of their have signal from

56:51

effect as at just for

56:54

clarification was the the. Woman

56:56

who was still breathing was at the same

56:58

person that was awful weather foot was twitter

57:00

yes. Yes, it's the one

57:02

that like she's the owner pointed out from. The

57:06

owners to success. I'm

57:09

Ralph. Is there anything that you're doing?

57:13

Or wants to figure out what

57:15

sold them basically. or if I

57:17

seen anything like this before her.

57:21

Because. This seems. Very

57:25

extreme. Offers

57:28

this is clearly an animal

57:30

attacks. These are not machete

57:32

slices or. Disease.

57:36

Are clearly freak show. Cannot

57:40

tell whether it's biological, adam,

57:43

more biological clock or master.

57:45

Was it on our floor?

57:52

Yeah, I'd say Ralph's It's either end

57:54

of the and natural world or of

57:56

the. and

57:59

medicine to or a mythos joke?

58:02

Library use. I'm sorry, mythos

58:04

joke? Yeah,

58:07

so we have a yemel mythos,

58:09

which is our equivalent of um,

58:11

eldritch. Ah, okay, yes. You

58:15

said library use, yemel

58:17

mythos? It's

58:20

mythos, medicine, or natural medicine. It's

58:26

gonna sound really stupid, but it's the higher of

58:28

the three. Oh

58:31

yeah, yeah, you want a high skill, a skill with a higher

58:33

point. Yeah, I know. But

58:35

I don't know what you're rolling. Um,

58:37

it's a 59 versus 15, so it's a

58:39

failure. Yeah,

58:41

but what's your... A mythos roll. Okay,

58:46

um, nothing is coming tonight at all. Yeah,

58:48

like, you

58:50

probably could guess that it is some

58:53

sort of plant attack. Um,

58:56

these don't look massively like... bears,

59:01

which aren't massively coming in the area, which

59:03

would be you're like, oh, it's a bear

59:05

attack. I'm gonna have bears there. Oh, I

59:07

love it. They're like, isn't it odd? Yeah.

59:13

Um, yeah, like, you don't think this

59:15

area is renowned for its bears, so this is

59:17

probably some sort of plant attack, but anything beyond

59:19

that, you've got nothing, don't you? Uh,

59:24

the body's still breathing. She's

59:26

alive? Oh.

59:32

Uh, Sully, like, starts moving closer to

59:34

the lady. He's

59:36

scanning around with his gun and

59:38

looks back at the party. So, yeah,

59:40

he looks over at the crew and just like, all

59:43

right, um, cover me, please. And

59:45

he's gonna throw his shotgun to the ground

59:48

to his side, takes off his backpack, and

59:50

he goes into like one of the easier

59:52

access... No, yeah, he throws off his backpack

59:54

and just goes into a pocket and grabs

59:56

out some bandages. And he's

59:58

gonna start tending to the lady. Didn't

1:00:01

you say that she looked like she

1:00:03

was ripped apart or something? Yeah, it

1:00:05

looks like she has really deep cuts and gashes

1:00:07

in her that are not clean in any way,

1:00:09

shape or form. Okay.

1:00:12

I guess as soon as Larke

1:00:14

sees that Sully

1:00:16

is attempting to assist

1:00:19

the person, Larke puts the

1:00:23

hand sickle back in the slot

1:00:25

where it goes and approaches

1:00:27

from behind and looks over

1:00:29

its shoulder. Asta

1:00:33

will definitely come with and

1:00:35

Asta is kind of aiming

1:00:38

and pointing the gun and just doing a really

1:00:40

good visual check of the area to make sure

1:00:42

that you two are safe. I

1:00:45

think that's probably what Asta is up to. As

1:00:49

you approach the girl, you can see her eyes are

1:00:51

beginning to look... She

1:00:53

is focusing. You can see that there

1:00:55

are tears streaming down her face and

1:00:57

she occasionally just coughs and

1:01:00

she's trying to speak. You

1:01:02

can see that she's trying to move, but that's

1:01:04

just making everything so much worse. I

1:01:08

think Sully gets out probably

1:01:10

some kind of pocket knife and cuts

1:01:13

away the cloth that's like covering up

1:01:15

the wounds and he starts

1:01:17

assessing the damage and doing his best to keep the

1:01:19

bleeding. I'm

1:01:22

pretty sure he would also say something along the lines

1:01:24

of like, stop trying to talk,

1:01:27

focus on your breathing, focus on your breathing. That's

1:01:29

all you need to do right now. Take

1:01:32

a first aid check for me. Don't

1:01:35

fuck me, don't fuck me, don't fuck me. Can this be

1:01:37

assisted? Yes, if you assist,

1:01:39

then that gives him a bonus die, which

1:01:42

in the system basically lets you reroll

1:01:44

or lets you roll the tens dice

1:01:46

twice and you take the higher result.

1:01:49

Yeah, alright. Lower results.

1:01:51

Better results. Yeah, alright. I

1:01:53

rolled an 82, so I really do appreciate it.

1:01:55

So I rolled an 82 and a 2. Damn,

1:02:01

she was an extreme success, so you

1:02:03

can mark that as a to

1:02:05

improve. On an extreme success

1:02:07

with the help of Lark, who kind of like helps

1:02:10

tip the head back a little bit, make sure that

1:02:12

the kind of whatever blood is in the chest is

1:02:14

in the throat has been like taken out. And like,

1:02:16

yeah, you begin to like, wrap some of these things,

1:02:18

you remember that, oh, crap, I actually have some sort

1:02:20

of disinfectant and you kind of like, begin to take

1:02:22

care and wrap and bind some of these wounds up.

1:02:25

Between the two of you, you roll her onto her side, and

1:02:27

she doesn't seem to be letting go of her machete

1:02:29

at all, it's like her knuckles are like bone

1:02:32

white clasped on it. And

1:02:34

she's still like breathing exceptionally ragged, but

1:02:36

she's doing much better. I

1:02:39

won't have you roll a d4 for healing

1:02:41

at this point, because health is kind of irrelevant.

1:02:45

So yeah, she just begins to take some very

1:02:47

like ragged breaths, and she says, Oh,

1:02:52

no, she's

1:02:55

alone. Where

1:02:57

is she? You

1:02:59

see the woman like lifts her head and she

1:03:01

kind of like nods in the direction of the

1:03:04

complex inside the mountain. What

1:03:08

attacked you? There

1:03:16

were things that came

1:03:18

out the vents. We

1:03:22

had been here a little while and we

1:03:25

thought it was safe. It

1:03:31

came out the vents and

1:03:34

it started attacking us. Some

1:03:38

of us ran out, came

1:03:41

after us. It

1:03:44

went back in after Selena. You

1:03:47

have to help her. We're

1:03:50

gonna help her. We're gonna help her. I

1:03:53

just have to ask you a couple more questions.

1:03:58

So I'm just gonna look around. Does it look like the people? people were moved

1:04:00

or dragged here or does it look like this is

1:04:02

where they made their stand? It

1:04:06

looks like some of them tried a

1:04:08

last stand. You can see that the way

1:04:10

that some of them have been thrown backwards,

1:04:12

they have guns pointed roughly in the direction,

1:04:14

you can see that there are clearly spent

1:04:16

cases all around, you can see that there's

1:04:18

impacts on the wall and on the door

1:04:20

and on the floor from weapon shots that

1:04:22

were fired at that kind of entrance way.

1:04:25

So yes, some of them at least tried to make a last stand here.

1:04:30

Okay, but nobody was dragged or

1:04:32

moved around, like this creature was not trying to

1:04:34

hide them. Not as

1:04:36

far as you can tell, no. You

1:04:39

said there was like a little guard outpost kind of thing?

1:04:42

Yeah, it's just like big enough for a

1:04:44

person to sit or stand in. Yeah, Sully's

1:04:46

gonna point to that thing and say, we

1:04:49

should probably move her over there away from

1:04:51

the grass and the plants, it

1:04:53

will give her a better place to recover.

1:04:57

She's just to give her a place to sit so

1:05:00

that she can defend herself if something comes. When

1:05:04

was this? When did this happen? Maybe...

1:05:12

15-20 minutes. Yeah,

1:05:15

Sully looks back over the group and

1:05:19

he kind of like... without...

1:05:23

She's asking but with like a kind of a

1:05:25

commanding tone. Alright, so does

1:05:27

somebody wanna stay here with

1:05:30

her or are we all intending

1:05:32

to go in together? The

1:05:35

door was slightly open and it

1:05:37

looked like there were things moving, I think.

1:05:40

I don't

1:05:42

think I want to go in there. I

1:05:45

think I would stay here. I

1:05:47

understand, I understand. I don't

1:05:49

wanna put you in any danger. Are

1:05:52

you handy with that? He looks at

1:05:54

your blade and sickle. Well,

1:06:00

I survived until now. Alright, Ralph.

1:06:02

Asta? Do

1:06:05

you wanna cover the rear or are

1:06:07

you coming in? I...

1:06:12

Will be right behind you, eh? Fantastic.

1:06:18

Sully's gonna take up his backpack and

1:06:21

he's gonna put it in the little

1:06:23

room that the lady's in. I'm assuming

1:06:25

there's space for it. If not, you

1:06:27

just... I think so. It really is

1:06:29

only big enough for someone to stand or maybe sit in

1:06:31

and her legs are poking up there. If you put the bag in

1:06:33

there, it's gonna take up half the room. He

1:06:35

basically takes off his backpack and leans it against the shed

1:06:38

and... Oh, is it like

1:06:40

a night guard thingy? Little

1:06:42

hat? Yeah. Yeah,

1:06:44

he leans it against the shed and night

1:06:46

guard thingy. And he

1:06:48

looks over at Lark. Please

1:06:50

keep that very, very safe, but I do not

1:06:52

want this on my back if something's attacking us.

1:06:56

Lark nods, yeah. He

1:06:59

has a lot of stuff in his pockets and he does

1:07:01

a pat down just making sure like, Yeah, I've got

1:07:03

extra shells, I take a rifle with me in

1:07:06

case that becomes important. He's doing a little bit

1:07:08

of inventory before he starts heading out. You

1:07:12

see Asta, he looks at what

1:07:14

you've done and just shrugs and rolls his eyes.

1:07:17

He has a feeling. He takes the side

1:07:19

bag he has off and he puts it

1:07:21

next to yours. And he

1:07:23

says to Lark, Lark,

1:07:25

if anything happens to me, there's

1:07:28

a place not far from here, it's called Diablera. It's

1:07:30

one of them collective places. I've

1:07:33

got a friend there, can you make sure to get there? Did

1:07:37

he say a name to give it to him,

1:07:39

Diablera? Yeah,

1:07:42

his name's Henry, he came from the same

1:07:44

place that I came from. Just

1:07:48

taking notes, because I'm imagining Salir

1:07:50

has a much better memory than

1:07:52

I do. Salir,

1:07:56

with his shotgun ready, starts moving forward.

1:08:01

Do you not need to leave anything off? No,

1:08:06

I'm going to put my VR headset

1:08:08

down and begin recording. It's

1:08:12

coming with me. It's coming with me. I'm

1:08:15

assuming Sully you're in the lead? Unfortunately

1:08:18

yes. I'm more

1:08:20

beside you than behind you. I

1:08:23

am hoping to have some... Astor will take the rear

1:08:25

then Astor will take the rear. I'm

1:08:27

hoping you have some VR night vision bullshit

1:08:29

in your goggles. So

1:08:35

yes, kind of. But not

1:08:37

in extreme amount like you're thinking. It's

1:08:40

not like military night vision. This is

1:08:42

like, you know how VR headsets can

1:08:44

see infrared light? It's just basically a

1:08:46

flashlight that no one else can see

1:08:48

except the goggles. Yeah. So

1:08:52

the pair of you make your way up to the doors. Astor

1:08:54

is behind you with a rifle which he obviously

1:08:56

has aimed a little bit high. He's

1:08:59

quite tall himself but like he

1:09:02

still needs to aim over your head. And

1:09:04

he's definitely ready. As

1:09:08

you get to the doors I'd like you to

1:09:10

either make a listen check or a spot hidden

1:09:12

check. Ralph you may do the

1:09:14

spot hidden with advantage because you do have... Sorry with

1:09:16

a bonus die because you do have that little extra

1:09:19

something in your VRs. Ooh!

1:09:22

Ooh paper! Now you can

1:09:25

mark it off too. Yay! Extreme

1:09:27

success. That's your first success! Yay!

1:09:29

Yay! I did it. Yeah,

1:09:32

don't forget to mark off your spot hidden. So

1:09:35

Sully you got a... What kind of success?

1:09:37

I got a hard success. And

1:09:40

Ralph got an extreme. As

1:09:43

you look into the darkness you

1:09:46

can see what looks like a very long corridor

1:09:48

that like begins to dip

1:09:51

down. You can see

1:09:53

that there are pipes and electrical

1:09:55

conduits that he'd be running the length of

1:09:57

this. You can see that... to

1:10:00

the right hand side there seems to be this room

1:10:02

which was not evident at all from where you

1:10:04

were originally standing but now you're here you can

1:10:06

look right and as you're looking around you

1:10:09

can see that there is just what looks like blood

1:10:12

is smeared along the walls and along the ground.

1:10:14

You can see lots of footprints in the blood

1:10:16

people have obviously been running through. On the

1:10:19

right hand side in that room that you saw

1:10:21

you see this kind

1:10:24

of older looking lady she has

1:10:27

lots and lots of grey hair that's

1:10:29

tied back into a braid that's

1:10:32

tucked into her shirt and you can see it

1:10:34

because if you're extreme and really good successes she's

1:10:38

wearing what looks like a very tight shirt. As

1:10:40

you can see that she is holding two

1:10:43

machete like one very defensively and one kind of

1:10:45

over on to her. You can see that she

1:10:47

obviously has a style for somebody who knows what

1:10:49

the fuck she's doing. You can tell that she's

1:10:51

obviously spotted and heard you come in because her

1:10:53

hearing isn't trash. She had the

1:10:55

sounds behind her she kind of tips her head a little bit

1:10:57

but begins to focus again on the vent that's right in front

1:10:59

of her and

1:11:02

then as you kind of take a few

1:11:04

steps in look down the corridor and see

1:11:06

literally nothing there and you look into this room that

1:11:08

has a table and a couple of chairs and what

1:11:10

looks like a couple of lockers with like clothes hanging

1:11:13

there. You see movement in that

1:11:15

vent the vent cover itself has fallen off

1:11:17

long since and you can see that there

1:11:19

is this creature

1:11:22

that is long and

1:11:24

tendril like it's very pale. You

1:11:27

can see that it has this big

1:11:29

flower on it that is kind of

1:11:31

a dark pinkish kind of colour and

1:11:34

you can see that it has like a globbing blue

1:11:36

veins all across it. You can see that

1:11:39

it kind of like begins to slowly make

1:11:41

its way out and you see the woman

1:11:43

kind of jump up and slash forward with

1:11:45

her machete. You

1:11:48

can see that it kind of as she jumps up and

1:11:50

slashes forward it kind of like knocks against the side of

1:11:52

the venting and you can see the vent kind of bent

1:11:54

a little bit but she kind of drops down

1:11:56

and that is

1:11:59

perfect. well on her feet. And

1:12:02

she kind of like, you see the

1:12:04

plant kind of like fall back a little bit, but

1:12:06

then begin to like again, like creep its way forward.

1:12:09

What do you want to do? Um, if

1:12:12

I, Sully has a much

1:12:14

better experience with shotguns than Aether does,

1:12:19

do I feel like it would be safe

1:12:21

to shoot one of my, um, we

1:12:24

had a conversation about this, I don't know how much

1:12:26

you remember about it, his improvised shotgun shells? Yeah.

1:12:29

Yeah. Uh, would he feel safe shooting that above her head

1:12:32

through the wood? You

1:12:34

would probably want to ask her to duck and get much

1:12:36

closer. Yeah. Alright, uh,

1:12:38

then like, Sully,

1:12:40

uh, okay, let's then first just say

1:12:42

Sully looks to what the other two

1:12:44

are doing. Um, uh, Aster

1:12:47

is behind you. He probably hasn't even seen what you're doing.

1:12:51

I don't have any game

1:12:53

saving ideas at the moment, so. I

1:12:55

just wanted to make sure I wasn't, um, yeah,

1:12:57

go ahead. He

1:13:04

moves like shockingly quickly and surely like

1:13:06

the gun trained up the vent. He

1:13:08

starts moving forward and he just, uh,

1:13:11

quickly says just miss duck

1:13:13

as he like, uh, starts moving into

1:13:15

the room. Uh,

1:13:18

she kind of crouches down and rolls to the

1:13:20

side and still ends up in like a fighter

1:13:22

stance. Yeah. He's like, as soon as he's like,

1:13:24

he feels like she's out of the way, he's

1:13:26

just gotta blast a single shotgun shell at the

1:13:29

vent and rack

1:13:31

another one as soon as he's done. Okay.

1:13:34

Yep. Go ahead and make your attack roll. All

1:13:36

right. That would be a firearms rifle or

1:13:38

shotgun. And

1:13:40

that is, uh, an

1:13:42

extreme success. All

1:13:45

right. All right. Who did you pay? Um,

1:13:48

so. Why are you getting all these successes?

1:13:51

Who did you pay? So I

1:13:53

have to know the guys who

1:13:56

made a question. So,

1:14:00

you answered and start here. Oh

1:14:02

God, no. Save

1:14:05

it for the end, save it for the end. No,

1:14:07

no, I rolled a 15 on our 75, so that's

1:14:09

an extreme success. Okay,

1:14:11

yeah, absolutely you blap the shit out

1:14:13

of it. It kind

1:14:15

of like, as you kind of like lift and aim and

1:14:18

get it like kind of as it was like really the

1:14:20

whole petal face, sorry, the whole face of the flower was

1:14:22

kind of like beginning to make its way out of the

1:14:24

vent, you kind of put your shotgun up, one

1:14:26

good shop. And then you like the

1:14:28

whole thing just like shefts her into pieces as like these

1:14:31

small pieces of shell, sorry, of

1:14:33

your shots just going to kind of spray out

1:14:35

and you see it kind of like being pushed

1:14:37

back, you see that there's a lot of like

1:14:39

dinks and tinks as it kind of bounces off

1:14:41

the metal of the vent. And you hear this

1:14:43

kind of like, and

1:14:46

you see this kind of dark yellow

1:14:48

pollen that begins to just like, eep

1:14:51

out, sorry, like begin to like seep out

1:14:53

of the flower that you have just destroyed.

1:14:56

The woman grabs you by the shoulder and runs out

1:14:58

of the room and throws closed the door. Yeah,

1:15:01

she kind of like closes the door behind her and

1:15:03

like she kind of like leans forward like her hands

1:15:05

on her knees like just kind of like trying to

1:15:08

breathe, both machete still clutched in her hands.

1:15:11

Oh, fuck. Sikes.

1:15:16

I'm assuming

1:15:19

you're Selena. Your

1:15:21

tea is charged. Pleasure

1:15:23

to meet you. Unfortunate

1:15:27

circumstances. Do you believe there

1:15:29

are anybody else inside the burrow? She

1:15:33

shakes her head and she says, no. Then

1:15:36

that's already retreating out of the door when she says

1:15:38

no. No reason

1:15:40

to stay here any longer. Where

1:15:43

are you going? I'm

1:15:45

getting away from this plant thing. Do

1:15:49

you know how much shit is in here? There's

1:15:51

so much stuff we need to rescue. We can't just leave

1:15:54

it. Yes, but

1:15:56

your friend is outside. You might want to... Give

1:16:00

them a pep talk. They are very

1:16:02

hurt All

1:16:09

right, all right as she comes

1:16:11

like follow she goes outside What's

1:16:16

where outside like Sully like rewax the shotgun

1:16:18

he's like already in like

1:16:22

Shadow mode as they start walking. So

1:16:24

what's the shit? Yeah,

1:16:27

you see that she kind of like I'm gonna

1:16:29

stay behind like a hand over her mouth as

1:16:31

she sees like the carnage in

1:16:33

like full daylight out here You

1:16:36

can see that she just like is taking in but she

1:16:38

sees her her friend who's in the guardhouse and she just

1:16:40

kind of like bolts her way across Moving

1:16:43

at surprising speeds for one who's quite

1:16:45

old And she kind of like

1:16:47

drops to one knee next to the girl and they

1:16:49

begin to like speak very quietly As

1:16:52

soon as the girl tries to speak she just kind of like

1:16:54

the older woman like shakes her head like no,

1:16:56

no It's okay. You

1:16:59

did the one thing you needed to do You

1:17:02

survived. It's okay Just

1:17:04

breathe and she comes like She

1:17:07

kind of like it takes off like whatever jacket she's wearing.

1:17:09

She lays it over the girl You can

1:17:11

see that her hair is like definitely quite long

1:17:13

and quite thick As

1:17:15

you come back to terms to look at you all and she looks

1:17:17

at the lock and she's like Thank

1:17:21

you for taking care of my friend like

1:17:24

just not and Then

1:17:26

leave them be then after we'll stay

1:17:28

with you He doesn't

1:17:30

think we got splitting up at the smite Alright

1:17:35

Once he has had her like a little like

1:17:38

reunion with a girl Sully

1:17:40

like All right. You

1:17:43

say there's a lot of things to rescue from this place Of

1:17:47

course It's why we're here

1:17:51

How long have you guys been here before we arrived

1:17:54

and so this is as they start going back to

1:17:56

the group Assuming the

1:17:58

rest of the group can hear it Yeah,

1:18:01

yeah. I won't make you roll a list and

1:18:03

check for this, everyone can hear. Yeah,

1:18:06

we've been in this three or

1:18:08

four weeks now, I think. Which

1:18:11

kind of does tie up with what Ralph, or what

1:18:13

you know. Yeah. Did

1:18:16

you guys see any

1:18:21

seed storages while you were looking around?

1:18:25

Yeah, there wasn't much.

1:18:29

A few basics, a couple of

1:18:31

different types of potatoes, carrots, sort

1:18:35

of root vegetables really. Did

1:18:37

it look like somebody had taken, or was it

1:18:40

just a small storage? She

1:18:42

shakes her head and she says, when

1:18:44

we got here it was... well,

1:18:48

kind of accidentally busted the lot getting in, but

1:18:51

it was perfect. No

1:18:54

one had set foot in here for however long this place has been.

1:19:02

Sully is definitely thinking to himself, like, and

1:19:04

that in three weeks something's already in there.

1:19:06

You guys fucked up. But

1:19:09

yeah, he does not say that out loud. Yeah,

1:19:13

once the group is together again, Sully,

1:19:18

like, gets in front

1:19:21

again, I guess. Fucking

1:19:23

shotgun's there. They are the breach of weapon. Asta

1:19:29

says, one of your scouts

1:19:31

found me. I was working at a local farm. They

1:19:34

said, you have magics here? And

1:19:36

she nods and she says, yeah.

1:19:40

This place, it's

1:19:42

been on our radar for a little while. Someone

1:19:46

had a feeling, an inclination. Some

1:19:49

of us have blessings,

1:19:52

and like

1:19:54

an ancestral memory is how they described it. They

1:19:59

knew this place was here. and

1:20:02

we looked around and yeah

1:20:05

this place used to belong to a

1:20:07

group they

1:20:10

were called Vale Lake and they were

1:20:12

preparing for the sprouting apparently

1:20:15

they knew it was coming. There's

1:20:19

season here, there's magical

1:20:21

tomes and books, there's relics

1:20:23

that can hold

1:20:25

back some of the plants and we

1:20:29

were studying it and then

1:20:33

everything went wrong. But

1:20:36

maybe that's a story for another day we can

1:20:38

just get in. There's

1:20:41

some very specific things in here that

1:20:43

we need and once we have

1:20:45

them we can

1:20:47

abandon this place to the plants. Do

1:20:50

you have any idea what that

1:20:52

thing in the vat is? Would

1:20:54

Sully have recognised it in any

1:20:56

way? You can take a history check

1:20:58

or you can take a natural world check and

1:21:01

Ralph you can do the same. Seriously

1:21:07

dude! I got an 8 at the hard request. 91

1:21:09

versus 30, fail.

1:21:15

Unfortunately Ralph this is nothing that you've ever

1:21:18

come across or anything you've really heard

1:21:21

of. Sully, yeah this

1:21:23

is a pollen

1:21:26

cloud devourer. It's known to

1:21:29

hide in small confined spaces

1:21:32

like pipes or vents. You

1:21:35

know that usually they're kind

1:21:38

of like pink or blue. They'll either

1:21:40

have pink petals with blue veins that

1:21:42

glow or they'll have blue petals with

1:21:44

pink veins that glow. But

1:21:47

either way you know often when they are destroyed

1:21:49

or when they have like a perfect face

1:21:52

on view at somebody's face they would just

1:21:54

and spray them down with pollen which will

1:21:56

eventually just give the person

1:21:58

breathing problems and end up killing them

1:22:00

and slowing them down. So yeah, it's

1:22:03

a pretty bad plant to tangle with.

1:22:06

On your extreme success,

1:22:08

sorry, on your hard success,

1:22:13

you would know that the

1:22:16

wounds sustained by the people on the outside

1:22:19

don't match with the MO of

1:22:21

this plant. I know, I

1:22:24

know. Like when you were describing the vents, I'm like,

1:22:26

that does not sound like something that would chase them

1:22:28

out of the place. And

1:22:31

rip open the doors, the

1:22:33

bar doors. Yeah. Yeah,

1:22:37

yeah. Yeah, as we

1:22:39

start like advancing into the burrow,

1:22:44

so let's just get a real quick ass link. So

1:22:47

Luna, the things that

1:22:50

advance, it doesn't really chase

1:22:52

people outside. Do you know what we've

1:22:55

lost that got outside? She

1:22:58

shakes her head and she says,

1:23:00

nope, I managed to

1:23:02

take down most of these vent

1:23:05

creatures. I

1:23:08

saw lots of people running outside and had gunshots,

1:23:11

but I was a little too

1:23:13

busy not being killed by that other

1:23:15

thing. All

1:23:19

right. What would

1:23:21

you choose, eh? If you could choose to

1:23:23

preserve anything in here, what

1:23:25

would you prioritize? There's

1:23:29

a book. It's called,

1:23:33

it was written by a woman in the

1:23:35

early 1800s. It

1:23:39

came from a place called Leanne. Her

1:23:41

name is Theraphine. She

1:23:47

seemed to know about all

1:23:49

the weird stuff that was coming before it happened.

1:23:53

Yeah, it happened 80 years ago, but she was alive

1:23:55

more than 200 years ago, 300

1:23:57

years ago almost, to blame me. She

1:23:59

has my a magical knowledge that's bred

1:24:02

the globe. If

1:24:05

there's anything in here, anything

1:24:08

at all, that could maybe

1:24:10

save our world, maybe

1:24:13

even get it slightly back so that we don't have to

1:24:15

fear for the life of our kids. Yeah,

1:24:18

it's that book I wanna see. All

1:24:21

right, let's find it then, I guess. Aster

1:24:25

nods as he's like following you

1:24:27

all in, and he says, that's

1:24:30

good. That's the first thing I

1:24:32

hoped you would have like your scout said. And

1:24:35

as you're walking down this corridor, as

1:24:37

you kind of make that steep dissension down, you

1:24:40

see that there is a door ahead of you and

1:24:42

it's open and it leads to kind of like this

1:24:44

big empty kind of chamber ahead of you. It

1:24:47

seems to have like a series of doors right in

1:24:49

front of these massive like metal doors that look like

1:24:51

a very difficult to open. You can see buttons everywhere.

1:24:53

Strangely enough, the lights are all still on. You can

1:24:56

tell that there's still power going on and the further

1:24:58

in and the further down you go, it seems to

1:25:00

be getting like much, much, much colder. There's

1:25:03

like a giant door ahead of you. There's a giant door

1:25:05

off to your left-hand side and another one off to the

1:25:07

right. You can see that the

1:25:09

one to the left is open, but

1:25:11

the other two aren't. I'm gonna hold

1:25:13

you guys here. All right. Locke,

1:25:19

what are you doing outside? I

1:25:21

think Locke is mostly like, definitely

1:25:25

like the first thing they did

1:25:27

was like, look around the little hut stay,

1:25:30

like for spots where they can hide,

1:25:33

that isn't necessarily a bush. You

1:25:36

notice that

1:25:39

coming through the gate is

1:25:42

what looks like a vine of

1:25:44

Zalata's grace. It's

1:25:47

blue kind of vine is like

1:25:49

quite thin and then rapidly gets thicker and thicker

1:25:51

until it's about the thickness of a human arm. It's

1:25:54

probably much bigger than you've seen one actually. And

1:25:57

just the gate is that the entrance

1:25:59

to... the premise or the gate that

1:26:02

the guys went into the borough? So

1:26:04

into the premise itself,

1:26:07

because the entrance to the

1:26:09

mounting complex are just definitely

1:26:11

doors. They're like solid doors.

1:26:14

Yeah, like you see the

1:26:16

vine just kind of making its way through. You can see

1:26:19

that the leaves get thicker and thicker and you can suddenly

1:26:21

see that there is all this like a

1:26:23

really big flower

1:26:25

on top of it and it seems to be

1:26:28

snaking its way through the gate and then

1:26:30

abruptly turns and starts heading towards you. Oh,

1:26:34

they're definitely trying to like back

1:26:37

away in like in a way that they can

1:26:39

get out of the way from of the thing

1:26:41

like either

1:26:44

behind the the little hut. You

1:26:46

could definitely roll a climb check

1:26:48

to get on top of this

1:26:50

like tiny little like security hut

1:26:53

thingy like to get yourself

1:26:55

off the ground. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead and roll a

1:26:57

climb for me. It's fairly easy. 64 bit,

1:27:00

hang on. Nope, I failed. As

1:27:04

you like think about climbing up, you

1:27:06

kind of do a precursory like climb and just

1:27:09

like decide that it's

1:27:11

just not worth like it's a little bit unstable.

1:27:13

You're worried about maybe falling through the roof itself

1:27:15

and you just come down and

1:27:18

Salata's Grace kind

1:27:20

of stops and curls up

1:27:22

very, very close to you until the

1:27:24

plant is very, very, very close. And

1:27:27

then it does something that you've never seen before. You

1:27:30

see the leaves pop open until

1:27:33

you can see that very, very center of

1:27:35

the plant what looks like half

1:27:39

a sphere that has lots

1:27:41

and lots and lots and lots and lots of little

1:27:43

holes in it. And

1:27:45

it starts to make noise. Every time

1:27:48

that kind of basic noise comes in, you can see

1:27:50

this kind of half

1:27:52

sphere kind of like vibrate and shift and point

1:27:55

out and come back in again. For those of

1:27:57

us in the real world, this looks a lot

1:27:59

like like a speaker. And

1:28:02

you hear noise come out? And

1:28:05

you hear? I'll

1:28:08

be sure there isn't coming here. I can't feel

1:28:10

my feet, man. If the

1:28:12

plant says they sent ask for this way, then they'll

1:28:14

be here. You could get yourself a

1:28:16

pop or you can sit on the last process. That

1:28:19

is my pop. If

1:28:21

a pop process is programmed cell-based,

1:28:24

hoping the body of parts aren't

1:28:26

needed anymore. What the fuck

1:28:28

is going on? Pop? Take

1:28:32

coke? Man, I can understand why

1:28:34

we're doing what we're doing. Oh,

1:28:36

fuck it. Yeah, that's right. If

1:28:39

you trust that you planted the root, then

1:28:41

it's time. Mizzere,

1:28:48

I call upon you hear

1:28:50

nothing but static. And then

1:28:52

suddenly, it cuts back. So

1:28:55

what's next? It's

1:28:57

just one more diablera, and then

1:28:59

the abage of light can begin. And

1:29:02

then the petals close around the

1:29:04

speaker. And you suddenly see

1:29:06

that the whole limb that came out to

1:29:09

reach you slowly begins to

1:29:11

turn brown and black, and

1:29:14

disappear into like this fine

1:29:16

dust. Could I have you

1:29:18

make a sanity roll, please? Don't

1:29:20

stare straight at the anomalies. Success.

1:29:26

Success. Then you only take one point of

1:29:28

sanity damage. Lark

1:29:33

isn't sure what what exactly that

1:29:35

was, but they heard the name

1:29:37

of Aster. And

1:29:41

so they're going to look

1:29:43

into the like, look around

1:29:45

like to the gate. Like is the entire vine

1:29:47

completely gone? Like disintegrated? Yeah, like you kind of

1:29:50

look you can't see where it reach came from.

1:29:52

You just noticed that was coming through the gate.

1:29:54

But yeah, there's this kind of like fine black

1:29:56

powder that is beginning to be like blown away

1:29:58

in the cold wind. Yeah, so

1:30:03

Lark is going to take their sickle and

1:30:06

look into the hut and tell

1:30:09

the woman inside,

1:30:11

I need to go inside.

1:30:15

She knows, like she's trying to

1:30:17

save her energy, but she knows. Yeah, and

1:30:20

I think Lark is going to close the

1:30:22

door and

1:30:24

go inside as

1:30:27

quietly as they can and try to sneak after the

1:30:29

people. No, not sneak, but they

1:30:33

don't know why that requires a stuff check, my friend.

1:30:37

Just be quiet and make sure

1:30:39

that their own noises don't overshadow

1:30:41

the noises of the people that

1:30:43

are in front of them, so

1:30:46

they can find them in case this is splitting

1:30:48

up or whatever. They don't know what they're expecting something to look

1:30:50

like. Yeah, I'll

1:30:52

still make you make a stealth check. It's

1:30:55

just a difference between how well you've managed to

1:30:57

hide your sounds so that you don't alert

1:30:59

and can still hear, versus them just absolutely

1:31:01

not knowing here. 90,

1:31:04

that's a fail. God

1:31:06

damn it, I'm trying to help you all get

1:31:08

improvement roles that aren't based on that one.

1:31:14

Yeah, absolutely. You

1:31:17

managed to make your way down there. It's not

1:31:19

quite as stealthy as you'd want it to be,

1:31:21

but you can definitely still hear

1:31:23

the four of them ahead.

1:31:26

You can basically see

1:31:28

as you creep up, you

1:31:31

definitely see Asta turn around to look at

1:31:33

you, sees that you're coming and has

1:31:36

returned his attention to what's happening

1:31:38

in front of him. So

1:31:40

yeah, the five

1:31:43

of you are very,

1:31:45

very close to this big open area where

1:31:47

there's a giant metal door off to the

1:31:49

left, which seems to be open and a

1:31:51

jar. You can see there is a

1:31:53

giant metal door in front of you, which is still closed, and the

1:31:55

same to the one to the right. You

1:31:58

can see in this area that there is

1:32:00

a giant metal door. evidence of very, very,

1:32:02

very, very dead plant

1:32:04

devourer creatures that have obviously like

1:32:06

some of the leaning out of vents, some of them are just

1:32:08

laying dead on the floor. Can y'all

1:32:12

take a listen check for me please? Oh,

1:32:16

a success. Woohoo!

1:32:19

You can mark an improvement. So

1:32:22

the young amongst us manages to

1:32:24

pass the listen check. How about

1:32:26

the two slightly older ones? Nah,

1:32:29

my ears are full of sweat. Yeah,

1:32:34

you hear the sound of like

1:32:36

something big like moving,

1:32:38

kind of like

1:32:41

scraping or like sliding across

1:32:43

like metal or floor. You

1:32:46

hear the sound of what looks what sounds like

1:32:50

kind of like scraping screeching

1:32:52

noises as if someone has like pushed a table

1:32:54

and it hasn't got like proper protection on the

1:32:57

floor and it's just like noise. You

1:32:59

hear a little bit of that is a

1:33:01

little distance off, but it feels

1:33:03

like it's directly ahead of you.

1:33:08

Lark is going to hurriedly

1:33:11

run up to the group and

1:33:14

they're going to poke Sally

1:33:16

and they're going

1:33:21

to signal them if they can

1:33:23

talk like for a second off

1:33:25

to the side. Yeah,

1:33:28

Sally looks at you like

1:33:32

a hint of surprise like it's

1:33:34

not like a but it's

1:33:36

just like a small

1:33:39

scrunch of the eyebrows and then he like

1:33:41

just kind of leans in

1:33:44

and like. Yeah, off to the

1:33:46

side and then Lark is going to say.

1:33:49

I saw one of the purple

1:33:52

plants outside and it I

1:33:57

don't know what it made us sound like. You know,

1:33:59

those little machines make that the

1:34:01

littles whatever it

1:34:03

made a sound and it sounded like I heard

1:34:06

voices on it and the voices

1:34:08

were twinkling that Astor

1:34:12

was leading people here and

1:34:14

it was a plan that

1:34:18

he was planning to bring them here I think

1:34:21

something is wrong plant

1:34:24

told you this yes

1:34:28

one of the purple ones the ones that

1:34:30

are harmless Oh

1:34:32

so not this grace yeah well

1:34:36

I think this is I think this is a trap

1:34:42

and like they're trying to repeat as best as

1:34:44

they can what they heard I do

1:34:46

not have it with a baby to their beta we're

1:34:48

gonna go on the assumption and we're gonna put this out now

1:34:51

that if you hear recordings from Solata's

1:34:53

grace that you are able to

1:34:55

repeat them perfectly it might be magic

1:34:58

third beta every goddamn word it might

1:35:01

be magic it might

1:35:03

be that you all have extremely good memories or

1:35:06

it might be this is how we're gonna cope with

1:35:08

sharing information hey this is how we're gonna cope welcome

1:35:11

I appreciate so in world you all

1:35:13

have fantastic memories when it comes to the latter

1:35:15

grace recordings it sounds

1:35:19

to me like somebody

1:35:23

was trying to ambush us this if

1:35:27

I'm understanding correctly it

1:35:31

might even be it says

1:35:34

and there were voices

1:35:36

that not that they were

1:35:50

just said before I came here there were noises

1:35:53

behind that door there's definitely something

1:35:55

behind it that chairs

1:35:57

being moved backwards I'm

1:36:00

gonna say that Asta and

1:36:04

Saloona, that

1:36:06

the pair of them have gone to that

1:36:08

open door and

1:36:11

kind of like as you

1:36:14

two are talking, Saloona just kind of

1:36:16

turns to her office and says, maybe

1:36:19

you guys want to try and check out some of the other doors. We'll

1:36:22

clear this out as soon as we can and

1:36:24

once you're in... Yeah,

1:36:27

whatever. And the pair of them

1:36:29

kind of like begin to make their way to

1:36:31

try and like open this door a bit wider

1:36:33

and like go in search what's inside that part.

1:36:36

Quick, Neil, the NPCs are distracted. Get in here. That's

1:36:39

all I'm doing here. Yeah,

1:36:44

and Lark is going to repeat the

1:36:46

same thing to Arold as well.

1:36:50

Or maybe he joined earlier, who knows? Maybe

1:36:52

we said this before we had

1:36:54

our conversation. Yeah. Okay,

1:36:57

so you're thinking something strange is going

1:36:59

on with Asta then. I

1:37:02

think so. I

1:37:04

couldn't see him when we first showed up.

1:37:07

I just I couldn't tell something was really

1:37:09

weird about it. You couldn't see him? Was

1:37:13

he around a corner? Just

1:37:15

couldn't focus on him. Couldn't see

1:37:17

him even. Time to

1:37:19

explain. Of course. It didn't seem

1:37:21

right. He did

1:37:23

say that he used to practice magic.

1:37:27

Could be that he was doing something, but I

1:37:29

don't know why that would affect you, but not

1:37:31

the rest of us. Very

1:37:34

delicious. Be really careful. I I

1:37:36

don't. I

1:37:38

don't know who to trust. This

1:37:43

seems weird. So I've

1:37:47

heard of Salada's Grace. Whispering

1:37:51

to people talking to people before and. People

1:37:57

tell me that it tells you the truth.

1:38:00

truth. But

1:38:02

it is a plot. And

1:38:05

it is part of the whole

1:38:07

weird world. So

1:38:10

let's not put too much stock in it. But

1:38:14

if we were to give

1:38:16

it the benefit

1:38:19

of the doubt, it sounds to me like

1:38:21

what is ever is going on here is

1:38:23

to do with Astra.

1:38:26

Or this thing you heard was

1:38:28

way back in the day. And

1:38:30

Astra is in Astra anymore. He's

1:38:32

just as he is. Here's where my

1:38:34

here's where

1:38:37

my stance on this whole thing is. I

1:38:40

have heard there's books down here that are

1:38:42

very I

1:38:45

wouldn't say valuable, but you know, important,

1:38:48

right? A catalog

1:38:50

information. I'm not saying that I

1:38:53

want this book, whoever can have it can have

1:38:55

it. But if it's

1:38:57

important, I

1:38:59

just think we should focus

1:39:02

on getting whatever's in here that's

1:39:04

important away from whoever may

1:39:06

or may not be named

1:39:10

by plants at us, you

1:39:12

know. Can

1:39:15

I have the three of you please make a spot hidden check?

1:39:20

That's a fail. Oh,

1:39:25

Neil. Man, if nine is

1:39:27

worth it. I'm

1:39:31

coming in strong once again. Sully

1:39:35

and Ralph, as you're kind of like

1:39:37

really getting into this conversation, you fail

1:39:39

to notice, but luck does, that

1:39:42

it appears this Astra has been standing at

1:39:44

the door for a while listening to you

1:39:46

guys. Luck's

1:39:50

gonna look over over

1:39:53

to Astra and like,

1:39:56

I guess in the middle of the conversation that they're

1:39:58

doing this thing where they're like, oh, I've been

1:40:00

over her. Stop

1:40:02

talking. And thank you.

1:40:04

Good. Does like intensive eye

1:40:07

contact with a person until the others like turn

1:40:09

her on to notice it. Uh,

1:40:11

speaking of the foul plants. Uh, unless

1:40:15

he has some kind of issue with

1:40:18

us cataloging the information. Uh,

1:40:20

yeah, I think Sal is looking over at Aster

1:40:22

at this point. I

1:40:25

like the idea that like Ralph has his back to him. He

1:40:27

doesn't understand what's going on. No,

1:40:30

no, he says that after he notices

1:40:32

that he says that to Aster

1:40:34

like, Oh yeah, good point. Good

1:40:36

point. Oh, nice. He notices,

1:40:38

you know, he's saying that to

1:40:40

the person he's talking about at this point. Like

1:40:43

unless he notices or unless he doesn't want it,

1:40:45

whatever it ever said, whatever he said, unless he

1:40:47

doesn't want us cataloging cataloging

1:40:49

that information. Yeah.

1:40:54

Um, as to takes a few

1:40:56

steps forward and he definitely still has

1:40:58

his rifle in hands. He hasn't like

1:41:01

become untense. Um, and

1:41:03

he, he, he definitely takes a few steps

1:41:06

towards you all. Um, he

1:41:08

doesn't seem to be raising his gun. For those of you

1:41:10

who are stupidly aware of how guns work, he still has

1:41:12

the safety on. Um, you

1:41:16

can see, um, Saluna who is like

1:41:18

rapidly like gathering things together that seem to

1:41:20

be important to her. Um, and like

1:41:23

you see weird little trinkets. You see like an

1:41:25

old horseshoe. Um, you see like what

1:41:27

looks like a small bracelet with a little bell on

1:41:29

it. Like you see lots of weird little things going

1:41:31

in here. Um, so she's kind

1:41:33

of like busy packing what she thinks are like

1:41:35

essential, weird things from this place. Um,

1:41:38

but Asta like takes a few steps forward and

1:41:40

he says, so

1:41:43

Salah as Grace mentioned me. Like,

1:41:48

it's not going to say anything. Are

1:41:51

you surprised by that? He

1:41:54

looks down. He shakes his head. Looks

1:41:59

back up. No. Who

1:42:05

told you about this place? She

1:42:08

tells me she just skilts for places like this. She

1:42:11

could tell her something weird about me. She had an awful

1:42:13

lot of trouble seeing me to start with. I'll

1:42:15

put it down to the way I'm in this situation, you know. What

1:42:20

did the latter's grace say about me? It

1:42:24

said you were being set up. He

1:42:29

like closes his eyes and just mouths the

1:42:31

word fuck. Did

1:42:36

a woman really tell you to come here?

1:42:40

He nods. Fuck.

1:42:46

I've got a friend. It's based in

1:42:49

Deablara. We escaped from this

1:42:51

court when we were younger. There were weird things that

1:42:53

had been haunting us for a really long time. What

1:42:57

did the plant see? They're

1:43:01

coming after you and

1:43:05

name, god damn it. You

1:43:08

seemed to be the trigger to whatever

1:43:11

they were. They

1:43:14

did something, but

1:43:16

they were waiting for you. That's

1:43:20

a voodoo we know. And

1:43:23

then they were going to go after Deablara. After

1:43:29

my friend. Do

1:43:31

you think this whole situation is because they were trying to

1:43:33

ambush you? Yeah.

1:43:37

And let's get everything out of here as soon as we can

1:43:39

so no more people have to get hurt. And

1:43:42

you can go into details when we're done. Because

1:43:44

whatever killed those people out there is

1:43:46

probably still in here. Right,

1:43:50

but I'm not leaving until we find that book, though. Help

1:43:52

me open this. And

1:43:55

he puts the gun on his back, he rushes

1:43:57

over and tries to open the door and is like don't

1:43:59

let it clear ahead. where you came in, where

1:44:01

you heard the chairs and everything being moved.

1:44:05

And yeah, like he kind of like smashed the button and it

1:44:07

kind of like, big

1:44:09

flashy lights, lots of noise. And

1:44:12

the door kind of like very

1:44:14

loudly and slowly begins to

1:44:16

open. Gun

1:44:19

trained on the doorway. You

1:44:22

train your gun on the doorway and

1:44:24

after also like re- gets

1:44:27

his gun ready, so he takes it off of the

1:44:30

safety very quickly. You

1:44:32

hear that Saluna has kind of like

1:44:34

rushed in, like both machetes ready

1:44:36

to go. Just kind of like, what the hell are

1:44:39

you doing? And

1:44:41

you see before you what looks

1:44:43

like a very large containment room.

1:44:46

You can see that there is kind

1:44:49

of like tables directly ahead of you and then

1:44:51

looks like to be like light

1:44:53

shades and like little lamps that are on them.

1:44:55

You can see there are books and you can

1:44:57

see that there are papers and writing implements and

1:44:59

you can see that directly ahead of you, there

1:45:01

seems to be this large cage area that has

1:45:04

the door that has been opened to it. And

1:45:06

there are stacks and stacks of shelves that go

1:45:08

all the way back so far that you can't

1:45:10

see and there's a couple of blinking lights that

1:45:12

coming on. You can see that there are these

1:45:14

boxes and weird items. But the thing that really

1:45:16

quickly draws your attention is that almost directly

1:45:19

ahead of you, there is

1:45:21

this small lector. And

1:45:24

on top of this lector, there is this small green

1:45:26

very, very old looking book. But

1:45:29

you can see that there is some words

1:45:31

written on the front. Could I

1:45:33

have Sally and Ralph roll a language own,

1:45:36

please? In this situation, like I'm

1:45:38

sorry. Written

1:45:40

language is not. OK,

1:45:44

how did we do chaps? Oh,

1:45:47

boy, I got a 90 on the set. I

1:45:49

did nicely. I wrote a 69. Nice.

1:45:53

Oh, nice. Alas,

1:46:02

you failed nicely, alas. You

1:46:05

can tell that there is something written

1:46:07

on the front in a very, very

1:46:09

old, like, cursive handwriting, but

1:46:12

you don't really get enough time to absorb it. And

1:46:16

the reason you don't have time to absorb

1:46:18

it is because you notice that kind of

1:46:20

just behind it, that you can see that there

1:46:22

are some of the shells that have been pushed and

1:46:24

slid around. It's as if someone has

1:46:26

been walking in here in the

1:46:28

dark, just accidentally pushing and knocking things over.

1:46:32

And what you see before you, about

1:46:34

twenty-seven times, is

1:46:36

a creature that is kind

1:46:39

of made from this grey, wood-looking

1:46:41

thing. Its arms and

1:46:43

legs are both the sicknesses of tree

1:46:46

trunks. Its head is

1:46:48

huge and has like this very

1:46:50

restrictive mirror-looking space. And

1:46:54

as the lights come on and the door

1:46:56

opens, this creature has its arms

1:46:58

on top of two of these stacks and

1:47:01

lifts itself up to its own wall

1:47:03

of three and its entire head only

1:47:06

turns around and looks at everyone on

1:47:08

the other side. Thank

1:47:16

you for giving The Sprouthing a try. You

1:47:18

can find the story of Mark, Ralph and Sully

1:47:20

by searching The Sprouthing into your podcast of choice.

1:47:23

This has been a Blackhouse Studio Production. Thank

1:47:25

you for listening.