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Dead world. Ocean planet. One island wrapped in fog where everyone smiles too wide, the beer pours free from a Skitarii's mouth, and the administrator has two hundred years of tithe stockpiled in a basement that shouldn't exist. Somewhere beneath the waves, a missing Magos went looking for xenos ruins in a crater — and the only clue is a catatonic old woman in a rocking chair who keeps pointing at the sea, whispering about "the big fish."
Website: https://www.narrativedeclaration.com
System: WH40K Wrath & Glory
Creators and Guests
Host
Guest
Guest
Guest
What is WarHams - Narrative Declaration?
WarHams! The TTRPG live play show set in the grim dark world of Warhammer 40,000. Follow us @NarrativeDeclaration on all social media!
Three, two, one, go!
Excellent, sexy!
Welcome back to another episode of Warhorns!
The eternal screams of the damned have returned for another episode of Warhorns.
Warhams, welcome back, everybody!
And we're currently, this episode is currently being recorded, or being streamed live on the 3rd of October.
But it's not October, it's October!
And that means, unfortunately, we all didn't convert to orcs yet, or anything.
Sorry about that, but...
Can I get a smirk in chat?
Yeah, get some smirks in chat.
Bring out your orca boats, all that fun stuff.
Tell everybody in the entire world that we are live.
And thank you, everybody, for returning back to another episode of Warhams.
We're super excited to have you all.
We're super excited for you all to be here.
And we have some things to go over, as we usually do at the beginning of it.
First of all, as I grab my super-duper handy notes here.
Well, y'all, we want to thank everybody on Patreon, by the way.
Who have been kicking ass and helping us out with a lot of things.
We're nearing our goal.
Of about, I think, around, like, 2k a month or so, something like that.
And I've already talked to a couple people to basically edit the audio versions of the podcast to be a lot better.
So they could add some nice music and sound effects.
So you're listening to it as you're painting your models, which I'm pretty sure a lot of you probably are right now.
And everything else.
And you've gone jogs, things like that.
You're stuck at work washing dishes or something else like that.
You will be able to have a better audio experience, hopefully, in the future.
We're going to figure out the logistics of that.
So thank you.
Everyone on Patreon for kicking ass and supporting Warhams.
You guys have been absolutely awesome on that front.
And just as a quick reminder for people who may not remember at all, that all the VODs have been changed.
Instead of releasing every two weeks after we go live, it's not going to be one week.
And we put that practice in thanks to all the patrons basically saying, yep, it's okay if it goes earlier.
So thank you to the Rogue Traders Guild.
I guess we can call them that.
I don't know what name we can name the patrons.
The Trade Rogues.
The Trade Rugs?
Yeah, they trade rugs.
It's like the Rug Traders?
Yeah.
Let's workshop on some names.
I have the finest wares this side of the sector, Nihilus.
Trust me, my rugs are beautiful.
You'll never find them on more dead worlds.
We've got to find a name.
We've got to find a name for the Patreon.
I'm liking Rug Traders so far.
We'll figure it out.
But yeah, so after this goes live, this goes up on the YouTube channel basically a week after.
So if you are subbed to the Twitch, you basically see the sub only VODs like instantly.
But if you get the Patreon, if you're on Patreon for the $5 tier, then you basically get the YouTube VOD and the MP3 version as early as possible.
So that is the differences on those.
So thank you to everybody who's been supporting us on that as well.
Additionally, we also have merch.
And stuff right now, currently on screen, people are seeing the Warham stickers.
But we now have T-shirts.
You have T-shirts and mugs and stuff like that.
And some other bits and bobs.
And you can always go to designbyhumans.com, 4SizeShop, 4SizeZoneTheBear, or in chat.
You should be able to do exclamation point Warhams and get a link to all of the fancy stuff that allows you to actually let me enable that.
You should be able to get that now.
If you do exclamation point Warhams, it should now work.
The bot should now be active.
Nope, bot's not active.
Got to fix that.
I'm glad everyone did it for the break on stream day.
All right, thanks for showing up, folks.
We got to fix the bot now.
I'm fixing it.
I'm fixing it.
All right, try now.
Maybe it'll work this time.
Hopefully, it'll work this time.
But yeah, there's merch stuff for shirts and stuff like that.
And there it goes, finally.
And you can also, through that link tree, you'll find the links and stuff to where you can donate to the show.
Dignation's basically influenced a bit of the game.
And one of the things that we said at the beginning, and oh, God, now it's being spammed.
You did it too much.
You gave it too much juice.
It's too powerful.
It's way too much for us to handle.
Turn it down.
Shut it down.
But yeah, so everybody can do that link.
It should also auto do itself.
So whenever you're like, hey, I want to contribute to the show.
I really like what everything's going on here.
And you want to donate for dice and stuff like that.
Then that's one.
One way in which you can do it.
Now, hopefully I said I was going to do this fast and we can just get straight to the show.
But I took way too long.
Unless we have anything else.
Also, there's the podcast version, which you can get to the link tree link there.
We're on Spotify and SoundCloud.
Currently, we'll get an RSS feed sometime in the future for everybody.
So they can just put it on their podcasting apps and thirsty.
Hello.
You have any special announcements or any heads ups you would like to give people?
Well,
to two quick things.
First of all,
just a heads up from last episode.
I maybe had a space Marine out of time.
Say some things about heretics and God emperors.
Apologies.
That was incorrect.
Sometimes we get caught up in the ha ha funnies.
And when we're faking one fake universe and then putting another fake universe in that fake universe,
that's also part of a spinoff.
My head gets a little bit out there.
So apologies for that.
But we'll we'll we'll try to keep things nice and nothing straight.
In the head as we go forward into my second announcement,
which is welcome to Spoopy month.
Oh,
yeah.
Yeah.
October.
We don't we maybe not have works,
but we got spoop.
So hope hope you're all in for some spoopy stories.
Yeah,
that's that's all I got.
Spoopy.
Awesome.
So for everyone who does who is brand new here,
I'd like to introduce you to who all is playing.
You'll see the when people talk,
you can light up.
So we don't really do webcams here because we like being lazy.
And so I would like to introduce everybody to who is currently playing what starting off with our last
shreds.
It's good tie ranger sword master extraordinaire pie brain played by yes pies played by me.
Speaker D.
I am one of the two lead writers of if the emperor had a text to speech device and pie would not watch that show if it were
real because he doesn't watch television and next up,
we have our amazing medical experts are inquisitorial acolyte re Van Horn played by I am also a lead writer on if the emperor had a text to
speech device and re Ben horns favorite show on TV is mash and I'm currently playing lawn the sanction cycle in which you should all know
my garbage by this point.
Next up,
we have the amazing.
Writer of the top seller of Zedekit Captain Zedek our rogue trader who is played by he is played by me.
Hulky Crow.
I am not a lead writer on TTS.
I may on again off again voice actor.
I play cave on strike and a couple other minor characters here and there.
I have captains that I had to have a favorite TV show.
If you remember to watch TV,
it would probably be top gear and and the evil warp forces who have been
continuously trying to destroy us.
The game master is.
Oh,
Papa.
No girl.
I mean,
hi,
I'm Thurston,
Elman,
Uncle GM and I am looking forward to what is about to happen here.
And with that,
if you've ever been new to the show or you're listening to this on audio form and we'll lose absolutely all context because you're not watching this live,
which always you're watching our podcast or YouTube version always at twitch.tv for size.
So in the barrier,
you can always.
Catch us live.
Don't worry about catching up on the other pods.
You don't really need to.
We like to structure these types of shows to where everybody who comes in the live show will have a super duper fun time.
It won't lose themselves.
So don't worry about that.
You might lose a little bit,
but it's like it's an overarching thing.
So one of the things that we do is that we allow players to help influence the game or help us out.
Give us a helping hand.
And for those of you watching live on stream,
we have a lot of dice kind of like displayed on our overlay all this.
I have to do manually by the way,
like you'll see these glory.
Die,
which at the bottom left,
which are these golden dice at the press of button for like each one to pop up and they disappear.
So for these these glory die,
which are now going to be flickering as I continue to press my awesome like LED button here that these allow us to like add more damage help roll additional more dice to help succeed on a certain role because we're using the wrath and Glory system on this and these you guys are able to help contribute to really help us out and we use these a lot and we start with zero.
Of them at the beginning of every session.
So we definitely need help on those.
Additionally,
you could see under my portrait with the Lauren one,
which is highlighting when the blue circle you'll see these guys below me.
This is called wrath.
Dine.
If you ever played like normal Warhammer 40k tabletop say,
for example,
if you rolled a bunch of dice and you failed a bunch of hits or something wrath die,
I'm able to spin one and then reroll those failed dice or if I'm like,
I really really want to like,
you know,
do a narrative.
Declaration or really make something in the world happen.
I can use that rough die to really kind of push that agenda.
Additionally to help balance out all this in which some people which I know some criticism was going around going like hey,
like the room points or just or the game Masters letting them do all this crazy stupid stuff.
We're really powerful.
Like our characters are like pretty good at what they do.
So the help balance stuff are the ruin dice.
So if chat feels that we're doing.
Really good and really wants us to suffer our game Master by his discretion can use these ruined eyes.
We're at the bottom right here and he starts out with four which he's uses those the buff.
The enemies do special attacks for them does everything in his power to really mess us up.
So if you really want us to die and you really want to encourage that you tell him how you make sure you can to contribute to tell him to destroy us and he also gets those if we horribly,
horribly,
horribly.
We're at the bottom right here and he starts out with four which he's uses those the buff.
The enemies do special attacks for them does everything in his power to really mess us up in his eyes.
So with that everybody I think it's finally time for us to war our hands.
So Thurston,
how are you going to kill us today?
I'm going to kill you by having our sessions start with a black screen and they a white text pops up on that screen with roughly 10,000 years ago and we and we cut
to this idyllic scene of this hive world
replete with oceans and verdant forests.
And we're clearly really up high
on the side of an immense hive spire
looking over this sprawl of civilization.
And on it, two brothers, an angel and a king,
look over the landscape they have just conquered together
in the name of their father.
And that's when the angel speaks and says,
well, brother, we have done well here.
I do hope that this dream of unification endures
for the next 10,000 years at least.
And then we cut 10,000 years later
to our band of intrepid adventurers
who have just finished ransacking, burning,
psychically destroyed,
burying the throne room of the hive Zarkanan nobility
where the place is on fire.
Both psychic and regular flamers have been blasted out.
Corpses are strewn across the floor,
adding this red pastiche
all throughout this otherwise marbled chamber.
A slightly round woman in sea green
cowers behind a throne
with one Reeb Van Horn
very, very much in her face
asking, who exactly are the Bloodwolves?
And we cut to this scene with our players
right at the end of last session
because I have to spit in the face of Zoran
who just explained that there's no continuity,
but we're starting right off of last episode.
So apologies.
Well, there's some,
it's like an overarching story.
But I'm trying to tell people that like,
look, you're gonna like,
you'll be able to hop in any of them.
It's true.
Because it hurts my feelings
when someone tells me,
oh, I'm 10 minutes late.
Fuck y'all.
The clarification that the person's GMing style
will make it seem like there is no continuity
and you can come in at any time,
which is not in of itself,
not having any continuity.
He's just really good at it or something.
My tears.
Okay.
So we cut to Reeb having,
ended our last session asking Amalfi of Rubania,
the head of the Marble Compact nobility,
who exactly are the Blood Wolves?
And through her sobbing,
whimpering as Reeb has approached
with the menacing flamer.
Well, they were the conquerors of this here planet.
I do say, oh, please, please.
The agents of the Slymporium,
you have to let me go.
Just let me go.
I have had enough of you mispronouncing things
with your bizarre, insane accent.
It is the Imperium,
the Imperium of Man,
not the Slymporium,
not the Bimporium,
not the Vampire,
the Imperium of Man.
And I am a member of the Inquisition.
Get it right.
I've had enough of this wretched bus building
and the bus beings within it.
Reeb is shaking with anger.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And as you shouted,
and your words resonate through this immense marble hallway,
and you finish,
there's a silence followed by the click-clack of footsteps.
And each of you instinctively takes a slight turn to see
entering the room is Katja Van Noord,
the Minister Moderatum,
who is your superior in the Crusade.
Katja Van Noord is escorted by a host of her elite stormtroopers,
as well as two other groups,
the first of all,
first one you recognize is a member of a local gang
that you had run into previously.
Just re-show this piece of artwork to you.
The member of the Lower Toads gang
who had previously been looking after your shuttle.
And along with that,
another group of figures is,
is being escorted.
And you,
you recognize them as the blood-backed.
A group of three of them are being escorted by the stormtroopers.
Oh no, get them out of here.
Yeah, we forgot to purge those.
And Katja Van Noord,
like,
claps her mechadendrite hands together as you finish Reeb.
Very well-spoken, Reeb.
Van Horn,
this planet is now officially re-conquered
in the name of the glorious Emperor of Mankind.
Woo! Yeah.
Excellent, right, yeah, it's going-
Better material than what they built it out of?
Please.
Can I, can I start going
through the row of stormtroopers she has,
like that kinda like baseball game thing like that.
For once. Can I- Bundesweissen?
thing like yeah good game good game good game then i like get to the prisoners and they're all
shackled so i like grab their head yeah good game good game good game yeah pie is just standing here
by all the lower toes he's going whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa you know just start hyping them up
like have you ever like try to hype people up one one one trick you could always do is come up to
people and it gets everyone hyped and they're all like and i join in with pie brain and i'm like
oh yeah yeah toads for life and this is like one of the lower toads like leans in it's like
this is the day when the lower and upper toads fight together and there's like clearly like
strong emotions as your head bangs you and oh yeah um and as this like celebration is going on
catch a van or racist right ah ah there is one final item that must be addressed before we can
allocate points
points
of course points more points
as the physio ambassadorian aged here
you have been tasked with the time for this planet and the fate of this planet
scar garris prime i then must request what is the fate of this planet's government
what shall be done to administer this world
after our departure i placed the decision in your hands
this sounds like a lot of stuff that i don't remember from that session you guys could take
care of this i sit down dream's gonna huddle over next to pie and just kind of think with him
okay all right here's my big plan you want to hear it
yes okay so here's the big idea we have this um space marine
he's very angry he knows how things were like three thousand years ago so here's my recommendation
we're gonna get that guy we're gonna put him in charge maybe we could
he found a new space marine chapter and and with the moon with all of that ancient technology
we could give the moon to the mechanicum
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
oh
hi i do not wish to speak ill of our good friend the captain but i do believe he would
rather not be an administrator he he has a bit of a quick temper
what's that got to do with anything everything it has everything to do with it pie would you
like to sit on a chair constantly dictating to lesser menials about what they need to do
or would you rather be out here waving your sword around and make you feel like you're
making things not alive anymore
hmm
hmm
i do like yelling at people
i play australic waving my sword this is a hard decision i i don't want to comment all right fine but
we don't have very many other substantial people that could take over the role
uh what do we have we have the gangers we're not letting the weird blood people
in charge they're crazy we need someone who is not tainted by superstition
little pooky pooky it's just little pook pook
no yep
i'm just gonna push him
away
no my little pook later
he has like weird grease like
it's just my hand like compresses into their fucking soft fluidist heads
okay oh don't worry
he's freaking me out
well okay what if we sanction this place as a forge world
you know
they don't forge anything here
well they could no no no but they have access to ancient technology the reason is that it haszkid
doves
the resources here could be
bulldozed over. Maybe we
could create a
manufacturing...
Pie.
The resources you would get from bulldozing
the hive would be calcified
pus. That is not
usable for lasguns, though I probably
would... I might want one for my collection, actually.
After this, you're for another time.
Okay. Fine.
Well, this...
Give it to the toads, why don't we? They're the only ones
around who have been remotely helpful
and know the place.
Boys, boys, we're here
to acquire resources.
Let's say that
this planet should be used
pretty much as a natural
resource manufacturing area.
It has a lot of salt that has
been left over that can be
processed and sent to the Imperium
fleet, and we can
recruit, entrain,
or conscript the vast
majority of the bodies here to become
additional arms for the Crusade
that we are currently hopping
on upon, and we can
flag this planet as a place for
natural resource
produce,
and so on and so forth.
Basically, we're here to turn this into a resource
hub.
Captain Zedek, what are you
doing during all of this, as
everyone else is talking?
Captain Zedek's mulling over
the turn of events, because he did not expect
the...
the Lady Minestrone to actually show up.
He's like, man, I thought we were
totally going to waste this lady
out here, but now I guess we just can't.
Now we have to be nice and
humane. I thought there was going to be some cinematic
ending to this.
How can we? We can get rid of her
still. I'm still good with that.
He's more perplexed
of the immediacy of it.
I was totally going to write that in my fanfiction
about myself.
Captain Zedek will saunter over.
You look a bit consternated.
You look a bit consternated, Captain. Are you well?
Yes, I'm not
consternated at all. I've been eating plenty of fiber.
Consternate?
Forget it.
Look, I...
If I may chime in,
this world really doesn't have a lot
to offer, but I think
I have to agree with Lorne. There's plenty
of able-bodied people here. Not the...
Not the bulbous ones.
I don't want them conscripted into the crusade.
Just a little book booker.
No, no!
I'll turn you...
into a fucking meatball poker.
Get the fuck away from me.
He really did it before.
Get the fuck away from me.
Shoo! Be gone!
Just get his sanguineous
lungs out of here!
I kick one.
Man, they have lots of salt.
We could probably de-ice the entirety
of Valhalla with all the salt that's here.
Well, okay, but we need to do something
with all of the mechanicum outposts.
I think that the lower toads
would be fine conscription.
Well, the great armies, but
I worry. What is to
stop them in a couple hundred years from
becoming a bunch of weird gangsters
with another stupid gimmick?
I mean, have you looked at the...
Anyway, I think all of our suggestions
are correct. It's just
in different stages in which they go on.
I think we should first
put the first stage of turning this into a natural
resource until it's all gone,
and then when the mass of the planet is still
there, I think we could turn it into your
mechanicum hell, but still...
Conquer the moon, and then
reinforce it for the mechanicus,
and to send a team in there
to clear it all out, and
acquire the technology to be used for the
Crusade.
I really... Sorry,
I just want to say, I really appreciate that
Zoran's commentary there was
basically, all of our plans are awful,
but let's put them together to make
the most awful plan.
All the bad will eventually
cancel itself out and become a good plan.
Yes, yes, Pybrain.
What is the closest Forgeworld
to here?
Lumeria.
No!
I mean,
I mean, like, Forgeworld
placement is
strange, as is
anything. Sorry, I'm desperately
bringing up a map right now.
I don't suppose it would be out of
the function for Forgeworld Lumeria!
Just
Lumeria 2.0.
I break out the ruler and stretch it between
Grya and Lumeria, and I
fold the map
so they're closer.
Congratulations, you just figured out
warp travel.
It was that easy. It only took me
like three different attempts.
I don't
know. Anvilus.
Anvilus is the closest.
Anvilus. Alright,
Anvilus. Well, I
think we should send our word
to the tech priests of
Forgeworld, Anvilus.
And we must have them reclaim this
outpost. First and foremost, they are
the most non-stupid
option we
have. And then from there, I say
we make the lower toads in charge
and give them a mechanicum advisor, and
just nothing could go wrong, so let's just see what happens.
I want to also
suggest that maybe we possibly get
some superior inquisitors
in here to clean
house a little bit more than we could.
I don't have the time, and I am of
wrong stripe for that, I'm afraid.
As much as these individuals
are still
very vaguely human, that does not fall
under my purview, unfortunately.
Ah, yes, yes, yes.
That sounds most,
most agreeable.
Reeb Van Horn and the
pie-brained servant of the machine god
Catcher Van Nord says as she
kind of approaches.
I have overheard your plan, and I do think
there is quite a bit of merit to having
a Forgeworld delegation
and an inquisitorial delegation.
And you would trust the immediate
law enforcement and pacification
to these fine
imperial citizens. And she waves her
mechadendrite towards the, like, lower
toads who are still, like, I don't know, head-butting
each other in celebration.
Football hooligans.
Yes, this is excellent.
But first we must do something to
civilize these toads. I'm going to
crawl over to the lower toads.
Like, do
my weird, like, fucking General Grievous
backflip to get back to them.
All right.
I need to speak to the leader. Where is
Dimitria?
Hi! Hi, uh,
right here. I grab
her by the jacket. Listen!
You!
You!
You are very nice. And I pet her
slightly. And then I put rest of holding her.
But you! You!
You are going to be in charge of some things.
And I do not
know how to talk to people very well.
Who does that again?
But! But!
But!
I can get you something that can teach
you what you need to know.
And I take out my signed copy
of Zetiket.
And I hand it to her.
I just want to point out
there's like a giant asterisk
here in my notes that is
see this planet X years
later now.
As you add to this book.
Just, I can imagine
Zetik as Brain is doing this with dollar
signs in his eyes realizing he may end up
cashing out on this entire planet.
I'm finally going to sell
over the entire cargo hold
full of those books that are totally
in back order. You totally have
just a section of your cargo hold
that's filled with Zetiket.
We're going to swap the books with salt.
I'm imagining
we're going to do some fucking time
warpy bullshit episode.
We come back to this planet and it's just like
statues of like Zetik
and we come into some weird arcane
shit that only Zetik can
navigate through. Instead of
blood, it's just a very, it's a person
with a quite literal meter long
afro. I'm sorry, not a pompadour,
a pompadour.
I don't even know my own hair.
Every doorway is like a double door
but it has like that one slit
just for the hat to go through.
It's like you get there and it's like
the entire salt fields are like scorched
with just Zetik's face on it.
There's a salt statue of Zetik
like Mount Rushmore but it's Zetik's.
It tastes like my malice.
Alright, this
sounds like a most amenable
resolution
to this planet. This is good
as an emergency
astropathic
transmission has been received and
it is urgent
that it be responded to
right away and I do believe you
are the most
available.
That is
available.
The most
points adequate
to handle this.
Yeah, but what points do we currently get
though? We gotta get that done, Mike.
Ah, yes! That is correct.
And she kind of like claps her
her mechadendroids.
It's a meaty clap.
Yeah.
Bring out
the board and
and like you see these
you see these stormtroopers who
bring out this immense like hololithic
board that they're holding like, you know,
movers with a glass
pane and on it you see
the same screen from the ship.
Yes, yes. Can it be like an
overly done like, you know how
like Warhammer 40k usually has like
like insane like borders
to things like it's all metal
have it like
like it takes like two servitors
just like hating their life to drag
up an overly metal
border chalkboard.
Oh, yeah, yeah. And so there
there are on top of it
the screaming faces
of several servitors that
relay the data all in this
like cacophony as it
spills onto the screen. I would
like to thank
servitors
D-Lit. You used a
pound signed and a bunch of
weird eyes, but congratulations.
There's servitor
Cisale. There's servitor
MakoGT. There's servitor Grim.
There's servitor
Zaydenay.
All of which their faces are
on top of this board.
Pies, pies, pies, pies,
pies, pies. I like what
these guys are all about.
As
we found prior to this
you and your team had earned a
grand total of 99,000
points.
I don't think they've ever rounded up.
of this world
and
for your many accomplishments here
I will
award you
1,000 points and it goes up to
even 100,000 points.
I leave. I'm just mad.
And she like puts her
mechadendrites together. You have done
very well and should be honored
and privileged with your
gains here.
I thought
we would get more.
Oh, no.
No. And she leans.
There were no cooks on this
planet.
There is only salt on this
planet. Purple salt.
And that's used for all sorts of cooking.
No, wait. No. But we found
the armor and the weapons.
They have access to rare long
lost technology.
Oh, did you believe
that? The lower toad's chief
pops in. They just have like
12 sets of those that they put on for
people who come to the planet.
Ah.
Yes.
As to be expected, no doubt.
Is there like a POW they got somewhere?
Is there a plume of smoke
coming out of my brain's head?
Do they have like a
POW somewhere in a corner?
I'd go to chokehold
ward. Is there?
No. I mean, there's like
probably like a few
half-survivors from your
terrifying assault. I begin to lift
my hand to cast crush until Reeb
grabs me.
I'm trying to be a war criminal.
I'm not a war criminal.
I'm part of the Imperium. There's a difference.
Now is not the time for war criminals.
If I may, if I may,
though you may believe
your success is here not to be
what you would expect,
I will say your next assignment
bears much interest.
A remote
xeno-archaeological
outpost on the
desert world designated as
Shady Rock has sent
an emergency communique indicating
they have found something of significance
and they require
a team to assist them.
Oh.
A xeno-study
facility, then, I say, continuing to
try and restrain the war.
Yes, yes. The base
had a local
staff brought in from various
forge worlds and areas. However,
there was a junior xeno-archaeologist
who had been studying.
a set of xenos ruins on the planet.
One Megos
Ro Hector from
Forgeworld Lemuria.
What?
Yes. We are going.
We're going now.
Let's get to it.
Let's go. We have to go.
As you all turn
to leave, you just hear this
Oh, thank the stars
behind the throne.
Wait, hold on.
I assume all of you,
pause.
I assume all of you, pause.
We stop. I look at Pybrain
and I go,
I'll let you have this one. I press play
on his chest to continue the Doom soundtrack.
Yeah, I'm just gonna
fucking walk up to this lady.
I go in
and very quickly grab her by the neck,
grab her by the leg,
and then just split her in two.
Yes!
Yes!
Oh my god.
and we're doing war crimes
and we are monsters
we are criminals
going war crimes
captain zedek is just looking
at her
first of all for you to split
this woman would require some kind of
check second of all reeb you were asking me
a question phrasing
yeah about it first and
foremost watch yourself second
god damn it
i'm
not gonna be fast enough to catch up to
brain but i'm going
to be shouting while i'm running towards
him no no no you don't
no you don't we all get equal shots at her
get back here
zedek realizing this
wait wait wait
i'm gonna come in for this i'm not missing this one
hold up boys
i'll hold her i cast crush on her
but it's mostly like a light crushing so
i'm like holding her up going all right boys
take your shots
all right all right nothing we describe
here is going to do this injustice
so we cut to several days
later as your ship is in the
war as we fade away
from all of you menacingly
approaching this woman behind
the throne like oh no
masters as you're
all approaching like a group
yeah
before we extricate i did want
to i did want to see
if we could find our space marine captain
i wanted to extend to an offer to
come aboard the ship
um so as we as we cut
a little bit ahead um captain
caldeus has uh been been
remitted to the custody of
catch a van nord who is
going to rejoin the large uh
crusade fleet and bring this
this relic of a bygone age
uh to the attention
of the primarchs directly
uh and so what you learn is that
the magnum orum victorium is
departing to join the greater
crusade fleet while you have
been tasked with traveling to
the remote dead world
of shady rock
uh
thanks for cutting fate in the black because we
became rabid dogs
yes
yes you did
like well i like to imagine like while we're
doing like all these like horrible things
to this lady it's just like you know
i have never felt closer to you all
than i have right now
yeah recreating the scene
from metalocalypse give him
the boots medium style
yeah that's really people
like we don't have to describe
this because it is literally
everyone out there will just be like
i can come up with what they did in my head
yeah nothing helps people come together
as brothers like a horrific murder they
all partake in correct
correct um we're
terrible people moving on
yeah
get streamer and and so
so you've entered the warp
um the the ship has
made its way you've been in the
warp for several days at this
point um unless
anyone has anything very very pressing
i'm just going to kind of jump ahead
to you reaching your destination unless there's
something like very important you were doing
during this i assume that the um
the pie brain murder spree is
continuing in these few days
stopped
well is that fine
it is the pie brain murder spree
has stopped but
only because pie brain
has been shut up in his
room nervously tinkering
with tech
okay just like been preparing
to meet with the lemurian magos
um lauren
uh are you still trying to be a detective
in this this little no i'm in my
closet painting my uh my war
mallet miniatures oh okay
metal base 42
million my friend i'm
i mean i mine mine's
the uh lemuria knockoff
oh
damn
yeah we do have a lot of like bootleg shit
just everywhere
it's not bootleg we're just
being cost effective
exactly
all right um so
all of you assemble on
the bridge as the vessel exits from the warp
and comes into
this this
this star system that has a very
very light uh
blue white star
and the debt collector
makes its way towards
this single orb that's
floating this small planetoid
captain
we are performing all your
readings on the world as instructed
is there anything we should be looking for
sir we're
looking for our mechanicus
envoy particularly particularly
the captain said it's been drinking
early today uh
a magos from lemuria
um
captain captain
one of the augur officers reports
i'm getting
some strange readings
strange
as in cool for a story
or strange as in danger
well
you said that this planet
was um a
dead world right
yes
yes one would hope so
i i it it appears
to be an ocean world
oceans can
also be dead in
theory that's imperial intelligence
for you
moron all right well the
augur readings have come back sir
and and and the
planet is is covered in water
except for what appears to be
one one
small land mass
this is just like a home
i missed it
oh we just arrived at lemuria
lemuria two
is there
two
is there like bacteria
life in the ocean
uh i'm
i'm detecting some
some readings life
in the ocean yes
i'm also detecting
several biosigns
several biosigns
biosigns
bio signs
on that landmass
it seems to be the only
settled location.
It's covered in a
very thick fog. It's
interfering with some of our precision
scans.
Your technology is bad.
Theirs is very good.
It's probably fine. Don't worry
about it. Should I
prepare a shuttle, sir?
Yes, Reeb.
Would it be possible for me to go down
a manifest of the people?
The important hierarchy
there. I know we have the Magos there. I want to
see if there's anyone else
of note.
I'm just kind of
scrolling down the list, I presume.
Yeah, this is something I'm
going to need. Let's say
a
scholar check is probably going
to be the check
I'm going to want to let you know what you can
figure out about. A scholar check, you say.
I shall roll and I shall get a
four with
no complication.
Okay.
It's enough to give you the
basic gist of
the facility. The specific
names are difficult
for you to obtain, though you find
some names as you're
going through this. You
particularly find
that there is a
senior
skitari officer
associated with it.
There is a
administrator. There's a small
preacher congregation from
the Adeptus Ministorum. All of
these are designated by
serial numbers that
are just random skews of numbers.
There's no actual names associated with them.
And the legend to
find out the name seems to be alluding
here. But you can tell that
this small outpost was primarily
made up of research staff, a
small, like, administratum
detachment to oversee
the outpost, a small
skitari force for security,
and then a, um, a small,
like, ministorum
group to keep up the spirits.
Mm-hmm.
No, I'm not seeing a Kevin Costner.
I believe we're good.
I'm sure that the
fog is just part of the name.
It is shady rock after all.
Shade and fog are similar.
It's fine. I'm sure it'll be fine.
No.
I can guarantee you this.
Mm-hmm.
That the fog
appears natural to you is
no doubt part of the clever
stratagems of our glorious
megos.
Elaborate?
Ah, no.
But what I can say is this.
Lemuria
is one of the greatest
fort worlds of all of the
galaxy. Our legends
are incorrect.
Correct! There's just a, like,
shout through the speaker.
Unit.
Ah, if it
isn't my favorite
person,
what do you want,
Gemro?
There's no response.
Good evening, Engine Seer.
How are things down there?
There's no response.
Engine Seer, it appears
that your, um, comm is broken. I smash
it.
Brain, we need that
to talk to the ship.
We'll, we'll get another one.
We have-
Sir!
Yes?
I'll send someone down to relay
communications to Engineerium
manually.
And then he ransom turns to, like,
one of the Deku.
All right.
It's going to take you four days
of jogging to reach the
Engineerium.
Get at it.
And like, this one, like,
like, one boy stands up
and tops his uniform
and gives a salute.
For the Imperium!
And he starts jogging.
Reba's kind of stroking his chin
for a brief moment.
Four days?
Ransom, that's more than double
the usual- Captain, did you happen
to have the elevators fixed?
Yes.
Are you sure?
It is a strict fitness regiment
put forth by the Biologus
on the ship.
You're just lying to us, aren't you?
I'm not lying. Am I lying to them?
I'm trying to see. I'm trying to see.
You're like, oh, the elevators aren't working.
No, it's my new fitness regime.
I would like to roll Deception.
Absolutely.
Roll it.
See if you can convince me otherwise,
you rat.
I'm waiting for it.
It's coming.
I'm sure it's coming.
When it comes, I will believe it.
It is on the screen.
It's happening.
It's rolling.
For content, we use Roll20 for this
and sometimes on the weekends.
Oh, you complicated.
I don't believe you worth a fucking lot.
That's one success and a complication.
The complication.
Let's see.
What do we got for our complications here?
We've got some good options, I think.
Thank you everyone for submitting complications
on the Patreon side, by the way.
We got everything all updated now.
Yeah, this is a great one
that I'm going to use right here.
As you're trying to deceive,
I'm going to use this one from
Lord Surrailgun Dishwasher.
That is just entitled,
Ill-Timed Birthday.
The phone is when the PCs are addicted
to getting in contact with the tech collector.
I'm going to use it here.
And as you're lying your face off about this
and failing to convince Reeb,
there's suddenly this,
Happy birthday to you.
As the staff all join in
and one of them comes up
with a big birthday cake
that has Captain Zedek's face on it.
Happy birthday.
Sir, I'd like to present to you
the post-warp birthday cake.
It's your birthday, Zedek?
Pies seems genuinely excited.
Oh no, no, you don't understand.
Standing orders are that we're to provide
a birthday cake every time
we successfully leave the warp.
Happy birthday.
The fuck is this campaign anymore?
But I never get a birthday cake.
You don't get a birthday cake.
Well, but it's the fact that counts.
Well, Pie, you can feast your face
on this one.
Okay.
You can feast your face
on the Captain's face, as it were.
Reeb has a disturbed glance
at the cake with Zedek's face on it.
It's like one of those,
like a child did a sketch of Zedek's face.
Captain Zedek Day.
I knew it.
Captain Zedek Day
was several months ago in Canada.
We have not been on Far Them Forward
some time.
Who says there's only one
Captain Zedek Day?
Apparently Captain Zedek does
because he doesn't remember
the holidays he keeps making.
That's right.
Oh my God.
I don't have a problem.
I could stop any time
I'm not stressed.
There's just like a bunch
of just random holidays
Zedek has like offhandedly made
to get out of doing
like basic management.
Well, sir,
with the cake finished,
would you like to take
the shuttle down to the surface?
Yes, I'd like to take
the shuttle down
to the surface, Ransom.
Please.
All right.
Can we get a move on?
Please depart.
And so like we just cut
to like this small clip
of you exiting the Strategeum
and then going on
one of those horizontal escalators
that they have in airports.
Which just has this lovely
like tag on it that says,
you know, important people only
and you all get on it
and it starts like carting you along.
And after maybe like a minute or two,
you come by the running crew member
as you just zip past him.
Hello, goodbye.
Good luck.
Be careful of the slug mites.
That one was slightly higher
on the list, Captain.
How did you not get that done?
And of course, as you go by him,
he salutes you just because.
All right.
So then we cut to the shuttle area
where the Arvises are all docked.
Before we go on the shuttle.
Yes.
I'd like to do something.
Oh, that's never worrying.
Well, good luck, boys.
This was a good campaign.
Yeah, good campaign.
We had a good run.
This is the final episode.
I'm actually going to take Reeb
at a moment where he's maybe
a little bit further away
from everybody else.
Reeb, I need to talk to you.
Yes, what is it?
What is it, Pi?
What do you need?
Okay, all right.
Can I look around
and make sure no one's listening?
Okay.
Well, Reeb, you may not know this.
And this is just my opinion.
If yours is different, that's okay.
But I think...
You are smarter than me.
Reeb's going to cock one of his bushy-ass eyebrows.
Why don't you talk this along?
Well, I am a tech priest.
And yes, in time,
I will monolithically dominate your intellect
because it is bound by the precepts of flesh.
But for now,
I am designed for combat
more than introspection.
And I have been upgrading
my cognitive abilities.
But it is a process.
And you are an inquisitor
of the Xenos.
We are going to go
and speak to a Xenos worshiper.
A researcher.
And, well,
I know you will probably
have more interesting things
to say to them than me.
So to that end,
can you make me look really smart?
I will clap a hand
on Pi's shoulder
and say,
Pi,
my friend,
I have been a wingman
for a great many things.
Of course.
Oh, thank you!
And I give him a big robo-hug
that's probably...
And as you give him this hug
and he starts shouting,
we hear this,
from behind you,
emerging from the shadows
is this immense bulky form.
Greetings!
This servitor
in like a teal shirt
emerges from a wall door.
And on this shirt
you just see written
in low Gothic
is Gentle Ben.
Have you come
to investigate
the child?
Is it Servitor Daddy?
Like, what the fuck?
Is he in like khakis
and like a button-up T-shirt?
So wait,
are we still on the escalator?
Yes!
This is a very bad servitor.
But he basically pulls you aside
into like this,
like basically,
he's pulled you aside
as the rest of the group
has gone on to have this talk with you.
And from the wall emerges
this servitor.
And behind the servitor
you see the child's daycare area
of the ship
in which Tater Tot
is currently playing
with blocks
and a group of servitors
standing around.
All of them wearing shirts.
The shirts,
the first one reading
Infected Otter 43
or Maxwell Folar
or
Klin Adinger
and Eino.
And they all just started
like standing in a circle
as he's smashing blocks together.
Glory, glory!
And then he looks up
and sees you
and is like,
Hi!
I can imagine.
I can imagine
people who like watch our show
and they're like,
it's like, man,
fucking hate Warhams.
They hardcore enough.
But the result
that Tater Tot's here,
there were actually
pretty terrible fucking people.
Hello, Tater Tot.
Have you killed
your first man?
He did?
Yeah, we saw it.
He did?
Right, yes.
Your first crewmate,
I meant.
Why?
What?
How do you encourage him?
Why would I?
Why would I hurt someone?
You won't.
I could give you
a couple of reasons.
I?
I only hurt the servitors
if they get in the way
of my trike.
Good.
You are learning.
Next time I see you,
little Tater Tot,
I will teach you
how to graft a gun
to a servitor.
Right.
Okay.
This exchange
has ended.
And then gentle Ben
steps back
and the door closes.
I will remember
your visit.
Memory deleted.
Our drive limit
exceeded.
That's our monthly
visitation quote of the minute.
Let's get a move on,
shall we?
We are such good parents.
Yes, certainly.
Yeah, so you reach
the shovel
in which there is
another servitor waiting,
turning to all of you
as you come.
First of all,
Zedek and Lorne,
you would be the first two
to arrive.
Zedek, you see the servitor
waiting in sort of
the back hatch
of the Arbis.
You okay, Thurston?
You okay?
Yeah, I'm sorry.
Back hatch of the Arbis.
He's just so emotional.
I am!
I'm so Tater Tot!
You got onto
the Arbis Liner!
This is the same
as all the other
students!
Oh my god!
Greetings!
I am Servitor
Spar Lightning Cut,
and I will be
taking you
down to the
surface.
Yes!
Good!
Thank you!
I mean, I wonder
if all the
servitors on
Lemuria have
stupid names
still.
I look at
the branding
on the
servitor.
It's just
part of the
Eid
of the year.
I think
I'm the
only one
that's
going to
get a
D3.
I'm going
to make
you roll
a D3
for me.
I think
I got it.
There it
goes.
Two.
It's
Gryer.
I wonder
if the
name
is
dumb.
I shall
begin
the takeoff
sequence.
Please fill
the
aud これ
段
R
G
I
get
a
D3
already.
Sorry.
I'll
just
give
a
D3
Wait, it's not more than one message, so maybe
it's not the list of complaints again.
Time to get to your house, Zach.
Why do you want it out?
Message begins.
And there's like the static, and then
Alright.
I've been performing my
investigation on the
senior staff of this vessel.
How dare you mess
in this servitor to deliver
an update on what's
been going on with the senior staff of
the debt collector?
Alright, Belba.
Oh wow, I wonder what could have happened in this.
Like, you just hear the
servitor relaying Belba Creepfoot's
voice.
Okay, let's listen.
This is gonna be some good shit.
There's a conspiracy.
They're all afraid
of someone that they call
the Lower Deck Strangler.
For goodness sake.
Uh-huh.
And?
There's a Lower Deck Strangler?
I'm looking into it,
but it appears at least three different
gangs have formed to try to
defend themselves against the Lower
Deck Strangler.
These gangs are spreading throughout
the Lower Decks of the ship,
but the senior staff seem to be
encouraging their development.
What are the, uh,
the fuck are the gangs called?
That's all I've got for now.
I have to go back to my box.
You are doing the oddest.
Oh, Messiah's work, Belba.
And then the recording ends.
Hmm.
I don't remember authorizing an investigation.
Brain, did you have something to do with this?
No, of course I didn't.
I cannot investigate the senior staff.
Tee hee hee hee.
I don't know what's more disturbing.
I can just imagine, like,
the shitty smiley face that comes
underneath your eyes.
I don't know what's more disturbing.
The fact that he's bald-faced lying to me,
or the giggle that he just did.
Right.
At this point, the shuttle descends
towards this oceanic world,
and you see the dark blue,
almost black waves of the planet
moving from orbit.
There don't appear to be any clouds here,
though you see this dense fog
that surrounds this tiny speck of an island
that grows as you approach it.
Each of you are sort of looking
through the primary viewport
of the Arvest,
getting a sense of what you're approaching.
And you can see this rocky island
that rises out like a plateau out of the sea.
And as you approach,
the fog has become dense,
and the servitor,
unable to find suitable landing position,
dangerous ahead.
Would you like for me to continue piloting,
or would you like to,
to establish manual control?
Uh, give me a second.
I'm going to-
Brain, just establish manual override.
I'll put on my night vision aviators.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
I might be able to clear out this disturbance.
It hit me.
Sorry.
It's just-
How fucking stupid that was.
Sorry.
That was awesome.
Continue on.
Okay.
So I-
I am going to assume
that some of this disruption
is intentional.
And I'm going to attempt to
input Lemurian procedures
enchanted
in order to perhaps guide a way through the disruption.
All right, sure.
Here's how I'm going to allow this.
I'm going to let you make a tech check to do-
to do all that,
and I'm going to have Zedek make me a piloting check
as he takes over and does manual control.
Pray to God neither of you complicate.
That's a five.
I'm going to, uh, spend two glory days.
I'm going to, uh, spend two glory days.
I agree on this.
Okay, okay, good.
Good, good, good.
There we go, that's the complication that we needed.
Excellent.
Four successes and a complication,
lovely way of looking for it, right?
Yeah, yeah.
This is perfect.
All right, so
the- the shuttle comes in and Zedek,
you're trying to get a sense because you don't wanna go
into the fog directly because you might impact something.
You're trying to skirt around finding an opening,
finding where patches of the fog are- are least dense.
Uh, meanwhile,
behind you, you have Pybrain, who is giving Lemurian chance and sort of describing how
Forgeworld Lemuria obfuscates some of its settlements on more ocean-based worlds. Would
you like to explain some of that to me right now, Py? Yes. By interfacing on a molecular level with
some of the contaminants within an ocean, you can find a way to pre-program tiny nanomachines
within the Ethereum. By creating these buoys, you can then further project out the noosphere in such
a way to where you can create larger-scale disruptions in a technique that is reminiscent
of the Shroud Psalm. Lemuria is an expert in this technology.
Yeah, yeah. And you're going on and explaining this, and what you eventually see is there is
this shining light of a comms tower, this sort of like beacon light amidst the fog as you're
heading towards it. And as you're heading towards it, like Zedek, you've got a really good handle
on your flying. But for a moment, Py, as you're looking at this tower, which you would see like
this looks to be...
Almost a standard Lemurian-make comms tower.
For some flash of a moment, as you're providing this information to Captain Zedek,
the tower comes to life. And where this hand is coming out of the ground in the form of a comms
tower, these metal tendrils coming towards the Arvis as though to pluck it out of the sky.
And this is...
This would be the animated confusion complication brought to you by A to Z from our Patreon.
So you, for like this split moment, think that the comms tower is alive and reaching towards you,
and Zedek hasn't noticed this.
Hey, Zedek, watch out! It's coming!
I have seen this before!
And there's this sudden jerk, and you perform a landing. But what happens is you push out of the
way, which actually causes you to clip something.
And there's this sudden alert sound in the back.
Lauren, how do you react? Because I know you love starship endangerment scenes.
How are you reacting?
You see, I'm prepared for this. I have my noise-canceling headphones on. I got my pillow.
I got my first-class seats. And I just feel... I think it's turbulence. And I'm just chilling
out reading my magazine. I turn over my white dwarf magazine. I'm just... I'm still just
looking through. I'm like, ah, yeah. It's a shame that Terranage haven't got a model update since
like fucking...
2000-whatever. So, uh...
Neat.
That's my book!
And read. You're just like, my white dwarf?
Yeah. And so, Zedek, you can feel that the tail of the vessel is spinning out of control.
And you manage to stabilize it with your piloting check. But you perform this sudden, like,
just shock landing, where you come down and you can hear this scraping of metal on rock or
something like that for a moment.
And you notice a...
hairline crack start to form on the front view screen as well.
Brain, what did you do?
Why did you scare me like that?
I'm sorry. It seems as though...
Ah, yes. They've updated the code since last I left.
I've kept in some nasty countermeasures for those attempting to...
read your defenses.
This is merely the genius of Lemuria and my personal error.
My apologies.
The back hatch opens, admitting this swirling fog.
And then...
If you do that again, we may not survive. And if we do, I will kill you personally.
Pine, is there a particular reason every time you take over the hell that we crash?
Um, I'm sure there's no connection.
And I'm going to begin walking out of the hatch.
Yeah, you walk into this wall of thick fog.
And you see just underneath, there seems to be a small, big, big, big wall.
small cobblestone path
that winds out
from this rocky sort of
outcropping you've landed
in.
Indeed.
Up ahead, you can see
some lights, like sort of
dull, like brighter
patches of white or even some
yellowish-orange lights
further, further ahead.
I was going to take it on
myself and walk out and
I assume, obviously, for help with descriptions
though, it's awfully foggy, correct?
Yes.
Do I see any, like,
see through any hills or anything?
No.
What you mostly see is this cobblestone
sort of path right underneath your
feet. Okay, that joke's ruined.
As I walk through, I'm like,
well, I
say there's a lot of water here, this is a dead world.
I didn't think we'd
have a
established area
like this, though. I figured it'd just be
like a metal hut somewhere.
Well,
obviously,
the genius of Lemuria
has restored life!
Now, I'm going to
access the noosphere and see if we could find
a way towards these
central locations of civilization.
This little earthen
mound sure is quiet.
Admittedly, I didn't think that they would
have named the entire planet...
after the
only piece of land of the
entire planet.
It kind of hits the nail on the head, though.
What does the name of this planet again?
Shady Rock.
We are on the rock,
and it does happen to be shady.
Yes.
Yes, it is.
I'm very, uh, I'm clever.
Okay.
Well, normally...
Can I attempt to...
Sorry, can you attempt to what?
Uh,
can I attempt to make a tech check
and see if I can trace, you know, find our path
throughout here to, uh...
That would not be really a tech check.
There's no records.
This would be more of a survival.
Okay.
I probably shouldn't be the person making...
No, I'm still fine.
Yes.
Mine's not really the better.
We all have an equal chance to complicate.
Well, it's just that
mine is, like, four.
Yeah. Now, I never
complicate.
I love the pointing out that, like,
I put you in front of Fog.
Ha-ha!
Okay.
I got a glory. Oh, shit.
And I got a seven. All right.
Nice. There you go.
Like, Lord, you walk into this, like,
you're not afraid.
You're confident.
You're able, like, there's a cobblestone road to follow.
You start making your way through it,
and you just have swagger as you do it.
I'm assuming the rest of you
are just gonna follow,
like, Lorne's lead.
Yeah.
Yeah, California boys.
Yeah. And you carry on through
for maybe about
15 minutes or so of walking
before you...
before there's this immense
sign up ahead.
It's kind of this rusted
metal sign
that's been painted in green
with white text on it,
and it just reads
New Prosperity.
Ah, fuck.
And then the path continues
on further.
Well, normally, boys, there would be some
central thing, since
this has some semblance of civilization,
and we're
able to basically land here.
They should have known we're here, and there's
no welcoming party, so we have to find
a central base of government that's on
this rock, so I believe
it's somewhere in this direction
we can go. Use my
survival instincts to kind of think of, like, a layout
of, like, a village back in my
Fenrisian days, and basically go, like, normally
people would structure it in the middle
here for me to go.
Yeah, yeah, and you kind of take that
as you start walking
past the sign and into what is
clearly some form of settlement.
There are buildings
many stories tall, mostly made out of,
like, stone and bricks
that have this appearance as
though they've existed
for centuries.
If you have
a... Actually, y'all can
give me a scholar check. Like,
sure thing.
I'd be happy to.
In theory, I'm good at those.
Give me a three and a glory.
Nice.
I'm gonna spend...
Pinezetic, don't really figure out
anything. Reeb, you get a glory.
You also recognize, like,
this outpost from your research
hasn't existed for
that long. Like, it's only been
out here for maybe a
century.
These rocks, like, the stonework
here is incredibly old.
It's not that old. Only a
century.
Well, the outpost, yeah. I mean, Imperium,
right?
It's a little bizarre.
By my record, my...
Records are showing that this
outpost is
only about a
century old.
Why is it?
Why is it like this?
This fog feels like it would be very difficult to work with.
Well,
in Lemuria, most
of our high industry
exists beneath the waves.
We are masters
of subnautical operationals.
It's
possible that these are simply highly advanced
prefabs. I'm not privy to all
of the secrets of our
entire orders of tech priests,
but
I...
I could imagine, basically,
anything is possible.
Uh, Lorne, as you're kind of leading the group and they're having this discussion,
you see a sign with a sort of dull yellow lumen under it.
Again, that kind of green background sign with faded white text on it in front of one of these buildings, and it just reads
bar.
Bar.
I look at it.
I squint at the sign.
I'm like, what the...
Did...
I...
What the fuck does that say?
I look at Reeb.
Well, Lorne...
What is this?
I point at the B.
That is the letter B. This is a
bar. Presumably a place
for the
lower individuals to come
and drown their woes in cheap liquor.
Ah, I see.
It's a townhouse. Got it!
And I begin to walk in
to the bar.
You push your way
into the bar, and immediately
you get this, like, warm
sensation as you pass
out of this oppressive fog
and into this... I assume the lights are on, like, to the windows.
The lights are on inside it, yeah.
You come in and there's this warm
inviting light. You can see groups
of people. There's about nine people,
each in groups of three, scattered
around, sitting
at tables with
flagons of some kind of, like,
what you would guess would be an alcoholist.
Alcoholic beverage.
Taking sips and putting down.
And then behind the bar
is this figure that immediately
catches your attention
as you enter, because
it bears similarities, too,
to other people, maybe even some people
who have been in your group or are in your
group. This immense
red-robed figure with
sort of metallic armor
and, like, glowing
eyes that's
utilizing one of its metal
arms to clean a
cup and, like,
looks up as you enter.
Ah, good.
Someone who could possibly speak my language
makes me start walking
up there, and obviously I see his
amazing attire, and
is there any other more details to him
when I walk up?
I mean, he has, like, a red robe
all over him. Like I say,
these sort of, like, glassy
eyes. You get the exact
same vibe that you get from
Pybrain. He looks like this
almost larger version of
Pybrain with an immense backpack, like
this clear Skitarii look,
but has, like, an apron
over him, and is just
cleaning glasses behind this
bar desk.
Right. All right. I come
in and slam my
hand down. All right.
What are you selling, barkeep?
What you got for me?
My greetings, there.
We are selling lots of
stuff. Would you
like beer
or wine
or beer?
Try the beer,
Lorne, the beer.
I'll take a beer.
All right, then.
And he,
like, takes the glass he's finished cleaning,
slams it down on the desk,
leans over it, takes his
other hand, pulls the, like, face
mask down, and his mouth opens
to dispense this bubbling
brown liquid that fills
up the glass, and then he just
puts the mask back on. Does it make, like,
a disgusting, like, you know, how, like,
it just sounds like diarrhea coming out of
a faucet sound? No, it's not a soda tap.
No, it sounds like a soda tap, and in fact, this
looks really appealing-looking. Like,
it's got this, like, perfect amount
of foam. You can hear the
fizzing over everything. The only
other sounds you're hearing are, like, the
up and down of cups
being put on table from the other people
in here, but he
passes it over to you with
this mechanical hand, and then
looks at your eyes, Reeb, and just says,
No charge.
Oh.
He's like, I immediately down it.
After every other,
after the captain, the psycher,
and the scotari enter, the acolyte
shall enter and say, This feels like the beginning
to a really bad joke.
A beginning to dread the bad joke.
A punchline.
And, yeah, Lauren, you throw this drink
back, and it's perfect.
Like, it's that
just excellent ratio of
alcohol, but still something you
can drink without feeling, like, any
bad aftertaste. This is something
you could slam back multiples of.
This is something you could just sip on
one for a while. It's just
unerringly perfect.
I basically just
slam it down. I look up
dead in the eyes, and it's now
psychic energy eye time, and I
look at the server
bartender, dead in the eyes, and I'm like,
Give me more.
Give me more of every single
beer you got. I want
all of it!
And I'm starting to, like, psychic pull
everything off the shelf to put
glasses down.
Yeah, and he just, like,
reaches up to grab the glass.
I want more.
He grabs and grabs the
cup that you just finished, brings it back,
starts polishing it.
Why, sure, friend.
No problem. And then
clears it up, opens his mouth,
and more of this, like,
foamy goodness comes in and puts it forward.
Because Lawrence is
backing everything. He hasn't had
beer since he's left, like,
no, like, Fenris. So he's just
like...
Kevin's actually going to
see this and kind of pipe
up. Lauren,
I'm sure that beer is
delicious, and it looks kind of
tantalizing to me, too, but nevertheless,
there's no such thing as
a free beer.
Trust me, I know.
I'll get my collar and show a couple
of scars.
You're paying for it, though, right?
He said no charge.
Going back to chugging them down.
No, don't worry.
Everything here is
free, friends.
Reeb is going to see all this crap
unfolding, and, like, everyone's just
coming up to the bar and is like,
Lauren is drinking, Zedek is
questioning whether or not it costs money. Reeb's going to
ask this guy for his name because we were here
on a job not to drink beer.
Yeah, yeah, so you go up.
How do you phrase that to
this?
Good evening!
Greetings.
Oh, no. I am
not a tech priest. I am
but a humble bartender.
Very good.
What is your designation?
Oh, I am
Operator 34R.
34R.
Interesting.
Could you tell us, we were
sent down here because there was a bit
of a, there was a bit
of a message that went out indicating
there was some trouble going on.
I can see that a fog
has set in, but that may be common around here.
And you are passing out
free alcohol.
Is there no trouble?
Oh, there is
no trouble at all. Are you
referring to the astropathic
communication we sent?
Okay, before we continue,
chat, it's not fucking rule 34
for his name. It's bar.
It's bar and leads me. It's 3
for the B, 4 for the A, and R
for the bar, you sick bastards.
Stop being horny.
For Connor, Don, everyone,
it's like, oh, rule 34, right? I'm like, there's
other shit in this world.
No!
Hot brisketari.
Stop being horny on me.
For God's sakes.
It's like carrying singles in your
area.
We had to learn to get rid of an entire
binary thing because it was too long for the
image section, and you fuckers
ruined it.
I'm yelling at
Chad.
I'm carrying on.
Yeah, there's 34 R. He looks like a friend.
Yes, the
astropathic communications.
I was responsible for sending
that.
Indeed. So
you requested
aid.
Why, yes, everything is
going great here, but
I realized that
we could use
a
little assistance.
With?
I might have
a rat in the
basement. It may be a
dire problem.
Are you fucking me?
Did you literally bring us through
the entire fucking? This is just not in character.
Did you really bring us through the entire fucking galaxy
to do a level one rat killing
tavern quest, you fuck?
It could be a rodent of unusual size.
Something's killing the rats in my
basement. Stop it.
You seem like talented
adventurous folk who can help
a humble keep like me.
Okay, back in character.
Did you just bring us to the entire
fucking galaxy to take
care of our fucking rat problem?
Would you like another drink?
Yes, please.
She opens this bottle,
pumps down this beautiful foam,
Here you are.
I drink it.
34R, I need to ask.
Because it has been likely
so long since this poor fellow has had any
alcohol, do you have anything strong?
This is a naval town. Surely you have
you can see a very slight
grin crack on Reap's face. Surely
you have some port?
Yes, we do
have port. Let me broke your
some. He
like pulls down the cover. Vomits.
out this beautiful delectable
port into a cup that he has
just miraculously finished
polishing. Hands it off to you.
There you are. No charge.
Everything here is
free.
Excellent.
Well, you will go ahead and enjoy
all of the free things
that 34R
have furnished to you.
I will be ordering something
myself.
What would
you like, friend? I can
make all sorts of beverages.
Greetings, operator
345. I am designate high
brain of the Sketari Manipold.
Currently status explorator
tech priest.
Oh, Sketari,
eh? I hear they are
mighty fine warrior
folk. We could sure use
that kind of help around here.
Continues polishing one of the cups.
I'm
going to kind of lean in. I'm trying
to keep this a little distant from
everybody else.
I trust my forge world,
but I have been
informed that there are Sketari Manipolds
upon this world,
34R.
Oh, no. We are
but humble townsfolk here
who live our peaceful
lives. Continues
polishing.
All right. Well,
I don't really
believe it.
Can I roll some
insight? Absolutely.
All right. I'm going to pop
all of our glory into this because I have one
insight. Yeah.
Just like, are you
for real?
Get it.
Let's go for it.
Do it. All right. I've rolled
it. Let's see when the
algorithm and the
buttons work. And, like, you could see
that this, like, 34R is just
continuing to polish this
cup in his hand while looking
over all of you. Kind of looks over
to Lorne. Would you like another
drink, sir? They're free.
More liquid comes out.
Ooh!
I mean, four and you get one
glory back. Wait, no. Didn't he
roll that insight above?
It wasn't registering.
The first one was five.
Oh, okay. Okay. Okay.
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
So, five,
no glory, and then you included
the glories in that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, perfect. Yeah, with a five,
you're able to tell that 34R
is being entirely
honest as you're trying to, like,
suss out. They're just
a humble barkeep who's
handling the bar here.
Polishing that flag
into a mirror shine. Oh, yeah, and
like, it's almost dead-on
perfect by the time he finishes with one.
He's refilling Lorne.
Are all of the barkeepers and Lemuria
like this?
Uh, Lemuria doesn't
really have barkeepers.
Fair enough, but I mean, like, for, like, uh,
you know, like, for the, uh,
horrible shitty workers I don't care about.
Fuck no.
This, um, to quote Chat,
like, in, like, whilst he
may believe this, 34R
is kinda sus.
Oh, fuck off.
Well, everybody
seems like it's going on okay over here.
Right, right, right,
right, I grab Brent. Wait, wait,
wait. We have a rat
problem. We have to help them.
Of course we will, for the
glory of Lemuria. Don't
kill the rat. I will.
Kill him.
He's already kind of across the bar looking
for the basement door with his gun drawn.
Do you have any information on
this rat operator?
I think there may have
been one. A patron
had told me that there may be
one down there.
And, uh, where is the location
of the local magos?
Local magos?
Oh, I don't know.
I am but a simple barkeep.
But if you go out, there
is a list of important
town locations on
the sign outside.
Thank you. You are very helpful.
I'm getting off the bar
guard. I keep failing on my
drink-a-blater. I go immediately to the
basement. Yeah, I'm
in the basement at this point. Now I am
emboldened! Not only am I
on a mission with the
official ambassadorium,
I am on a mission for Lemuria!
Yeah, uh,
you make your way to
the, like, open door that leads to the
basement. Um,
Lorne, my good friend,
you've had a fair amount to imbibe,
it sounds like.
Uh, could you give me an agility test?
Sure can,
boss! Thank you.
Is there even, like,
there has to be agility? It's one of your attributes,
it's not a skill, so. Ah,
and pie yous up all the fucking glory,
because I only have an agility of one. Sure did.
I thought it would make a big difference.
Sure did. I got nothing.
I got a zero. Oh, yeah, you
tumble down the stairs.
Oh!
How many wounds
do I take? Uh, you just take
one wound as you, like, collapse,
hit your head down the side of the
stairs.
Um, blood is sort of
trickling down your face going
into your ear.
And, like, you all,
like, the rest of your party follows
you down into what is this
absolutely perfectly arranged
basement with
rows of, like,
casks that have been set up. The entire
area is perfectly
lit. Uh, there are
just rat traps that have been set
all around. None of them look like they've
been sprung. They've actually accumulated
dust on them.
That's deeply concerning.
That's simply because
of the incredible maintenance
and hygiene of all
members of Fort Redlam Yoria.
Yes.
For certain.
Uh-huh. I do agree.
This is a basement.
Yes.
I'm going to
call out, RAT! SHOW YOURSELF!
RAT!
RAT! RAT!
RAT!
I slept
real quick. Can I do a Medicaid to slap a bandaid on
Lauren's fucking forehead? Absolutely.
You can give me a Medicaid check.
Sorry.
Okay, so guys, I'm gonna use all of our
glory to Medicaid.
One check.
One wound.
I'm just gonna load.
I believe. Did you say you used all
the glory for Medicaid? No, I'm not using
any glory. I have a
ten in Medicaid. I'm not using glory
for that, ever.
While Reeve is patching for Lauren.
I sad cry at you.
He takes out a small
voice recorder from his jacket and just says,
reminder, get Lauren life
alert back on ship.
Oh!
I'm complicated
and I can't get up.
Oh, I'm making
that a thing.
That's a t-shirt
now. That is.
That's a fucking t-shirt.
Oh, Jesus.
So as this is going on, Zedek and Pi,
as the
ridiculous eight Medicaid
roll happens and
Reeve patches up all the wounds on Lauren,
Pi and Zedek, you take
the, like, literal thirty
second walk to go through this basement
area, and it's perfectly
clean.
So I'm not thinking there's a rat
down here, at least one that's dumb enough
to fall into a trap. What about you, Brain?
Well, I
don't think that Lemuria would lie.
Or if they did, they would have a
very good reason. So,
we should double our satch and then return
upstairs and inform our
good operator that we could not find him.
I have a sneaking
suspicion that there's more to this
basement than the thirty seconds it took
to walk around it once.
Oh, almost certainly.
The question is, are you qualified
to understand those
secrets? I don't think
any of us are objectively qualified
if there's some spooky shit going on.
What? No, I'm qualified!
Now, Brain, forgive me if I'm being ignorant
of your own culture, but is there
a qualification for
things that are just too spooky to understand?
Yes!
Generally, there may go seas to learn about them.
I am close on my way to becoming
one.
I've thought a lot about what my specialization
should be. I've thought that I would make
a very good Dominus, but then again
I wonder if I am leaning too hard into
my role as a combatant. Perhaps
my genius may one day
be expanded upon in another direction?
So many possibilities await me.
Captain Zedek puts a
reaffirming hand on Brain's
shoulder and just taps it. Yes, you are,
buddy. Yes, you are.
Oh, thank you, Zedek. I've always
known that you were chosen by the
Omnissiah. Someday we'll have to do
something about your hands, though.
What? No, you aren't.
No, no. Full stop.
Gentlemen, I hate to
break it to you, as I'm applying a
medicated bandage to Lorne's boo-boo.
We came down here
for a reason. Not to
pat each other on the back on our futures.
Yes, you may- You finished this
second pass now, as you've been
having this bro-talk, Pi and
Zedek. And still, there's like,
there's no possible even egress point
for a rat in here.
I'm going to head back up the stairs.
Yeah.
Oh,
howdy there. Did
you find the rat?
We have done a thorough
investigation upon your basement
unit, and we have been unable to
find any rats.
It may be that it scurried off.
Oh, chucks.
Isn't that a shame?
Well, I'm
sorry for making you come all
this way for nothing, but
please take a
look around our beautiful
settlement. And if you
ever need a drink, come here.
The drinks are free.
Yes, I have come to
understand this. Of course,
I have no need for such drinks.
Well, it has been a
pleasure meeting you, 3-4-R.
I will go and grab my companions.
I'm opening
the door. Guys, you gotta get out!
There's no rats! It's fine!
There's no rats? Gah!
No rats.
This is bullshit.
It's not a rat.
Excuse me, 3-4-R.
Yes?
Who was the individual
who reported a rat in your basement?
Oh, that would
be Tom over there.
Yes.
Wait, where's
Tom? Just points to one of the people
that's, like, sitting in the tables here.
Wait, there were people here? I thought we were
alone. Oh, no, no, no.
Yeah, there's been people here
the whole time. Oh, my God.
We're selling alcoholics.
Oh,
I thought we were in a completely
empty bar. No!
No, they're good people. And remember,
like, as you've been talking, the only punctuating
sounds, they haven't been talking, they're just,
you've just heard the, like, the flagons
that they're drinking from hit the tables, and that's
been the only other sound.
I'm going to approach Tom.
Tom is drinking.
He looks like a,
he, no, no, Tom just looks like the
absolute most average imperial
citizen, wearing, like, an
administratum clerk's robes
and is just, like, drinking
from this, uh, this stein.
Greetings, citizen Tom.
He turns to you,
looks up. Times are
great.
I guess they are. Indeed.
Did you see a rat in the basement?
Times are great.
Ahhh.
Next dialogue
choice.
You need to try phrasing it a different way.
Oh, yes.
Is, have you seen,
do you, do you,
do you know what a rat is?
Times are great.
Times are bad. Ah, fuck.
Ah, shit, he's an NPC.
I know. I have an idea.
I take, wait, wait, wait.
I take some dice,
which are, like, bone dice from
Van Renskingen times, and I roll them and go,
Hey! How are you doing?
I roll. I
Do I?
Fuck your paper sweep.
Times are great. Fuck!
I want to try something now. All right, go ahead. Go ahead.
I walk up to Tom,
and I say,
If you say times are great, that means
they're not.
Times are great. We're in trouble.
I am
going to, at this point, I'm going to,
And, like, as, as he finishes taking
his next sip, like, one of the other two
people at his table puts it down their flag and
takes a brief, brief repose
and then picks it up and starts drinking as well.
I'm
going to take out my combi tool.
And I'm going to attempt
to, um, can I,
utilizing tech,
find if there are any, like,
ongoing transmissions
or activities within the noosphere
in this general area?
Absolutely. You can give me a tech check
for that. Pull out a little
little Auspex unit and check
that shiz out. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
We're just gonna get some readings.
That's six successes!
With six, you're able
to tell there's some, like, low
band, um, data traffic
here. Some, like, routine
compulses that you would expect to see from a
research outpost. I can't pinpoint
where exactly where it is, but
you can detect that there's something
that's transmitting. Is it
possible for me to tap into it and listen in?
Hmm.
Uh,
you would need, like, a seven
for that. Hmm.
Uh, I'm not gonna waste
a glory on that. Or a wrath, I should say.
I got a, I got a question, actually.
Can
I go back to 3-4-R
and ask him a question?
Yeah. Yeah, he's still just shining up
cups. 3-4-R?
Yes. He directed
us, he directed me to Tom, who was the one
who reported the rat in your
basement. We've talked with him
and he says times are great
and nothing else. They
sure are.
Yes, he's not told us anything about the rat.
I'm trying to find out about this rat that he
supposedly saw and he's not saying anything.
Oh, that Tom. He's a
trickster, that Tom.
Going back over to Tom, I'm gonna
GM, can I roll a Medicaid check on
Tom? Yeah, sure.
Alright, cool. Cool. I will
check to see if
Tom has some kind of
blood parasite in his
brain. Well,
I'll let you know when that goes through.
It appears that Khan was here.
Oh, no. Oh, wow.
There's no, there's no blood
parasite, but like, you get
the impression, like,
of heavy narcotics.
Like, this is,
you don't detect any and you do
like a quick biosweep. You don't detect
any, but this is what you would expect for someone
who's, like, drugged out
or programmed in some
way that, like, would
involve heavy amounts of
drugs that are often used in, like,
torture or
other things? I have a question.
Yes, Lorne?
This is an out of thing question.
Was this your idea
or Alpha's?
I'll answer
that later.
Did Alpha fucking bring us to a
goddamn Oblivion NPC episode?
I will fucking strangle
him where he stands.
It's a little bit We Happy Few,
a little bit Oblivion. I run up to
Tom, have you heard of the High Elves?
Can I?
He's heard of them!
It's Oblivion, fuck!
Again, my Medicaid check to the
liquor that Arth, er, excuse me,
34R is serving.
Yeah, you can apply that, you don't
even have to roll. Like, he's providing
booze that's really high quality.
You're not detecting any kind of drugs or anything,
are you?
Wait, hang on.
If these guys have been, like, sitting here drinking
for fucking ever, I'm not surprised that they've
got a narcotic effect in them.
They might not have even left this bar.
Friends,
I present to you
a possibility.
Yes?
You have the floor.
We are wasting our fucking time,
there's weird things going on,
and if this is
some sort of alien
assault, we must
liberate my people.
I agree. Let's
leave and look elsewhere.
We need to...
Okay, 34R?
Yes?
Let me think, actually.
What is it? We're at Town Hall?
Are we having a...
Where is the Town Hall?
Oh.
Why, you'll want to check the sign
right outside. It has all the
important locations in town.
Very good.
Thank you very much, 34R. You can stop pouring
beers for us now. We're probably not going to
ingest any further.
Lorne, would you like one
for the road?
I agree.
Not right now.
You didn't tell me your name, did you?
No.
I didn't.
I leave.
Yeah. You walk out.
You're back in the fog, but up ahead, like,
the fog seems to have parted just a bit by
a big sign.
And on that sign, you see several
locations listed.
There's Town Hall,
Church of the Divine Emperor,
Docks,
and
Shady Rock Retirement
Home.
Bro, we're two
steps away from some fucking, like,
itch.io horror shit. We're, like,
Bloodborne is about to start happening
any second. There's, like, six Omigdals
on every tower. I shit you not.
Dude, don't worry. I've got the music box for
Father Grumblegoo.
Oh, good. I want to try the docks. And on that note,
let's take our break.
Let's take our break.
And we will come back.
Let's take a chill pill.
Alright, chat, we'll be right back.
Be right back.
Sephiroth, speaker.
Sephiroth?
Yeah, why is he your favorite one?
Why did you get him on the pillow this time?
Okay, this bit is horseshit cat shit.
It's my favorite one.
This is horseshit.
Good man. Good man.
Slut. I fucking love
the let motif. Good man.
Fantasy 6 is the best Final Fantasy.
Clown boys represent.
You just want to fuck clowns.
That's it. You only just want to
fuck a clown. You have big feet like a clown.
But I know you love that broth.
I have big feet for clowns.
Kefka's the winner. He won for, like,
a solid two years with a death laser.
And, yes, the chair
recognizes Zora.
They were only able to beat him with the
single largest Final. You'll get it. You'll get it.
Sure.
Oh, yeah, that's right. We're doing high.
We're hearing about your clown fetish.
Okay, fine. I'll write all about that on my
blog. Sad honking.
Welcome back.
Welcome back to Walhams.
As we're continuing on,
I think we all decided
to go to the docks.
Yes.
So, departing from
the town square,
the sign by the bar,
you make your way towards the docks,
which are as depressing
as the rest of the exterior
of this city, with
deep rolling walls
of fog moving around.
The docks themselves appear
to be mostly wooden
planks that
extend out for quite some
ways, and you begin traversing.
You see lumen bulbs that
aren't even turned on
that sort of mark the
pass as you carry
your way forward.
Really quickly,
I would like
to get a
what's going to be a good check
here...
You know, I'm going to accept a
survival test
for this.
Anyone who wants to
provide me a survival test.
And if you want to spend some glory on this,
it is about the docks themselves and
knowledge you might have.
I will spend three
additional glory.
Well, I turned it off.
I'm not going to even roll.
I don't want to have the threat of complication.
I clicked the thing, but
it's taking a while.
It's been really slow today.
Ooh, and a complication.
Excellent.
Oh, that's the glory on the docks.
I got a glory with my roll
of a four of success,
but no successes with the glory I put in.
The Lord Empire
just like weirdly knowledgeable about
docks?
Well, Captain Zedek apparently.
Damn.
Got some of our glory back.
All right.
So really quick.
All of you as you're walking,
you've been thinking about the planet that you're on
and like this is a
dead world. There shouldn't be trees.
Why is the dock made out of wood?
Why is there
a dock on a planet that only has one
landmass?
Because it's funny.
And as you're like all thinking of the
trees, you're carrying on down
this long dock towards
the open ocean. And you start
hearing this
creaking sound
up ahead. And further, at the
very edge of your vision,
you see this
figure that seems to be rocking
in place.
In a chair.
Yeah.
I was about to say, rocking in what?
He's rocking
in the free world.
I am going to approach this fucking
rocking bitch.
Oh my god.
So you make your way up and you see a
figure who is in
a rocking chair
facing out at the edge of the dock
towards the open
ocean.
And she's
sitting there with a teacup in her
hands, wearing
an administrator's
robes, this sort of older
woman with a almost like rictus
grin on her face,
staring out with one
like bionic
eye towards the
open fog ocean.
And you just hear this
as she's rocking
and holding her tea.
Hey,
Reap's gonna walk up actually, cause
he feels a weird twinge in the back of his
head.
Sure. Excuse me, ma'am?
She reacts
by like placing
the back of her left
hand on the
teacup plate and holding the teacup and
raises her right hand and just
shakily turns
it into a single pointing
digit and points out at the
sea.
I'm going to follow the finger and
look out towards the sea for anything of particular
note. You just see a wall
of utter fog.
And then the
as she's moving her chair
back and forth.
Ma'am, I get
the distinct feeling we may have met
somewhere before.
She keeps looking out
and she kind of
shakes her head slightly
but like her face seems contorted
somehow, like the
smile is overtaking her.
Hmm.
Can I uh...
What would be a good thing to check for memory?
Um, like you
would know you do not recognize
this person at all. I could have
sworn
very similar to someone that I think
we have seen before.
While she is crazy,
I begin to leave the docks.
Okay, so you turn. Are any other
of you like interacting with her? I'm going to
walk off the docks in the direction she pointed.
Oh, okay.
You can't swim. You can't swim.
You are made of metal. Don't do this.
I'm from an ocean planet.
You have points in swimming and poison
resistance. The ultimate deus ex character.
That's right.
I put all my points into swimming.
Okay. Are you just
walking off the dock? Yeah, I'm going to
test it and see if there's a solid surface.
How do you
test? I'm like
going off a dock and I'm putting my foot down
as far as it can go until I touch the water.
Um, it
is entirely water. You don't feel
any surface below it.
Hmm.
I'm going to
Yeah, Brain, I'll help you
out. I tap her on the shoulder,
point my hand, and I cast Molten Beam
at the fog in the direction
she pointed. Okay.
Yeah, give me
a second test, please.
I just go
Don't complicate, please.
Well, thank you,
Janksted. Yeah, that's
way to go.
No, I did not, but I succeeded.
Don't let me predict nothing, mister.
There's still a couple wrath
that are not supposed to be in there, but you get it.
Okay. Yeah.
You produce into
being this manifest
light that shoots out from your hand
and goes straight into the fog.
And the fog does this thing where it kind of
creates this sort of
circle around it as it's all
like burned away.
But just as quickly, the
beam fades and the fog
just re-encompasses it.
See? There's nothing there.
And this lady obviously isn't going to talk to us.
So let's go
back to the board and see what's going on.
I...
What?
Tell us your wisdom.
I sent
the message.
I sent
the message.
What? You sent
the message? You called us here?
You...
You need...
You need to...
You need to
find...
You need to find...
And her
smiling face is still pointing.
You need to
find...
the big fish.
The big fish.
The big fish?
The fish. It's the fish in the water.
The fish. It's the fish in the water.
The fish. It's the fish in the water.
Oh...
Oh...
I see.
I want to do...
I want to do...
I want to do...
science science.
Or whatever.
Yeah, yeah. Science science.
Yeah, it's so weird to say it.
I wish we
do that to detect any... I gotta
I wish we do that to detect any... I gotta
predict the
that are
Okay.
Okay.
Okay?
Okay.
I'm
not
a
blankness but even around like you can feel there's psychic emanations from um from the
people here but they're they're dulled and pacified compared to the your fellow party
members who are acting well sab was fucking with him and i suspect it's the big fish
isn't that right rock faster if yes
she consistently rocks and like her her hand kind of unsteadily comes down and grabs the tea cup
and make two loud sips if yes no she can't she she reaches up with the cup and takes like a
a sip her hands shaking and then puts it down back on her lap and turns to you
lorne and again with that rictus look in her eyes
times times are great
ah shit all right let's get back to the middle boys let's go check out their retirement home
jim got a crazy question i know she's in her i know she's in her rocking chair yeah
would it be possible to push the rocking not off the edge of the pier i'm talking like
the other direction like take her with us i was yeah you could easily you could
easily drag the chair with you i mean
i know that's a good idea please give us a moment we're going to take you with us
i'm sorry because the way we do shit they're like i can't solve this puzzle throws her off
the way you do things i appreciate the other video game i can't solve this puzzle now but
i will later so i'm bringing her with me i'm putting the old lady in a chair in my inventory
oh lady you're acquired she just sits there in your taskbar it's a pocket dimension i have
the distinct bad feeling if we leave her out here something bad will happen so that's why i'm like
you know what yeah you you sent the message apparently and now you are trapped so i'm going
to be nice and help someone said the kidnappings continue um so so like yeah i'm gonna say the
camera cuts to a view much like we have on screen so i'm going to say the camera cuts to a view
but for those of you on the podcast it's kind of this aerial view of our party members on the
docks except it's like the three zetic lauren and pie brain like advancing away and then cut like
several more party members lengths behind his reeb dragging this rocking chair that's just
making this like grinding wood on wood sound as he's dragging it down the docks um but yeah we're
do you want to drop her off somewhere or are you going to take her with you the
entire way to the retirement home i think reeb's getting a bad premonition by reeb i mean me
about this and reeb is all about helping people as you as you know he's such he's such a warm
and inviting individual uh i'm going to drag her back to the armistice later reeb i want
i want you to know that you are thinking exactly what i'm thinking because if she just
i mean to be honest we're gonna end up kidnapping her if she survives the end of this so she's
gonna have a grandma at the end of the day so do you remember
the start of resident evil 4 with the policemen i'm getting a very
also i had an additional thought
if we're supposed to find the big fish and it's not some aphorism for a life well lived
or a literal giant fish yes could the rat in the basement be this woman because she called us here
and she's the rat
i love the conspiracy wall you have going right now this is great
headstrong and buzz we go to the we go to like the retirement home i guess
okay so we cut like we cut ahead we cut ahead to to reeb puts the old lady in the back of the
arfis which she continues rocking uh also unerringly pointing towards whatever direction
the ocean is i was pointing at the ocean i was gonna point at the servitor yeah um and then the
like the four of you um head back into new prosperity and then make your way towards
what's listed as the shady rock retirement home which is this this flat squat white building like
it's still stone but the outer stones have been painted white and it has this again green sign
with white text on it uh that just reads you know shady rock retirement home
wow
yes somewhere that smells more like old people than the bridge of the debt collector
hey not you lauren i'm not even sure how old you are i forgot
i always thought like lauren was just like 24 but he just
is like horribly old and a big beard right yeah i'm 18 it's just been ritzy and aging
i'm 18 years old
34 years old so thanks hans so yeah the uh the door here like the the door to it is closed you
can see there's bright lights on inside of it i enter inside yeah uh you enter into like what
is clearly a foyer off to the left hand side there's some kind of public room to the right
there's some kind of office there's a set of stairs that go up presumably to like personal
the the door to the public room is slightly ajar so you can peer in and see like there's a bookshelf
and a communal table and then there's there's this this nurse who's sitting behind a desk
uh sort of medicaid nurse who perks up as you enter and looks at you
hi i'm uh well we're here to visit granddad and uh is he in today
oh are you
are you here for to see to see melky or uh yeah good on melky
all right come this way she stands up and walks away from the desk and towards the door which
she pushes open melky or you have guests uh do all of you enter the room yes so as you do
there's there's an old man in in like this kind of striped uh vestment shirt with an inquisitorial
rosette dangling down um down his his chest uh held on a long string this impressive metal rosette
and he has this like bionic eye that's built in and he's sort of squinting as he looks up
and the the
nurses move behind him and look there he is they're here to see you
i don't hear anymore hello there
why are you here are you here to take me out of this place
do you want to leave it's so comfy here i sit on the couch going i could like this place
i don't think so i i used to be an inquisitor lord i used to declare
the fate of planets i used to i used to i oh do you want a primark pudding pop here let me get
you one no i don't want a primark pudding pop he sort of like raises his hands and shakes them up
and down
i don't know what nonsense is going on in this
miserable pile of rocks and geriatrics but i'll tell you this if this is a lemurian scheme then
i haven't been informed properly if this is not then i am a lemurian tech priest and i've had
enough with goofs and rats and kind words i take out my power sword and i pointed at the nurse
you're going to give me some answers you're going to give me some answers and i'm going to give you
some answers and i'm going to give you some answers and i'm going to give you some answers
show me what you did to make this guy into an idiot and if you don't well then i'll get rather
angry hey i come out going like brain brain what happened i'm very tired and i haven't had my
pudding pop yet let's just wait let's just calm down don't eat the pudding pop i'm gonna grab one
put it at your brain or turn you into a nematode or whatever but it's so comfy here
does that exceed the opportunity looks at brain brain please put lauren down we need to
have him be at ease i should awake awake we're in we are introducing him to his new roommate
i can't put it on well
i take out my sword i'm sorry lauren
lauren i regret to tell you man
i regret to tell you man
i regret to tell you man
i regret to tell you man
i regret to tell you lauren that this mission was relayed to everybody under
false pretenses we are uh we have decided that your psychic gifts are too much for the party and
we are simply retiring those gifts
well all right
but they have pudding pops
see retirement is a good thing melchior
i don't want to retire
while you all have been determining whether or not you want to euthanize lauren
we're not euthanizing him we're just putting him in jail
no we're just putting him in a hole
as if he's in hospice
he's trying to put to put um lauren down
rita is coming over to this old man and he's going to he's going to like put his hands on his own knees and just kind of stare like bend down and stare into the man's eyes with a very stern look on his face
now you i've seen before
oh oh yeah i recognize that joke
i have seen before oh yeah i recognize that joke
i have seen before oh yeah i recognize that joke
i'd recognize that look anywhere you know you know secrets you know the truth you know primark
pudding pop and he turns boom moves towards the nurse who's produced this pudding pop
hey where's mine
oh silly you don't need to be retired here
let's just sit down angrily sir are we killing him or what no we're gonna take him
back we need a grandpa for the grandma all right i need to inform you of something if
you threaten to kill this man i will likely burn you no no no no no no i don't want to kill him
you
he is a victim of this place i would i would not want to harm him he has information
yes more than you have any idea of do you recognize this melchior individual
can i look over at the nurse is she busy dispensing pudding to this man yes okay so
i'm gonna here comes the exterminatus cannon get ready mighty this is unpleasant
i'm sorry i'm getting i'm getting big jb's
jb27 vibes from this god i wish that for me yeah
uh i'm gonna sequester the party a little bit further away
gentlemen that is inquisitor lord melchior of the auto xenos you may not know him but he
kind of looking over at the sad old man who is busily being
given pudding by a bright and cheery freaky nurse yes what do i what else do i know about him
no inquisitor lord melchior he is responsible for monitoring xenos activities across multiple
sub-sectors gentlemen this fellow is very important for xeno security across multiple
sectors how he is here why he is here and why he is being fed pudding
are reasons i cannot hope to fathom at this very moment but this is a very
serious problem well it is no doubt that whatever forces have been able to counteract this station
have silenced him no doubt alongside my may ghosts undoubtedly were we to meet them then
they might be in a similar state we must assume whatever we are dealing with is hostile no more
softball i agree oh you did so good you exterminatus the whole planet
she says as she 279 00,922 distributions held and that has left some cursed
times Trustee
can keep don't talk about that
on and on with me
the metro patient is about to pass into ph skr
ace
you're so silly he he's he's horribly demented i want to i miss medical proxy
how much glory do you want to spend it all spend it all spend it all the glory
oh yes he he's my dad and the kidnapping spree continues
i don't think i added all the dye into that because i'm supposed to have a rat
spin around get the rest of your stuff but i i did i spent all that i just didn't
it was a two so let me actually physically roll it hold on yeah roll five roll five dice
two two quick successes so that's good so four more so six uh i will i will spend a uh
wrath yeah yeah yeah yeah let me uh let's no he spent all the glory he's also throwing his
wrath on now
oh because we keep we called them wrath dice god damn it no no you're good okay um so that'd be
five four more so nine yeah yeah okay that's that's gonna be good um he's like um all right
then we can get him out of here in just a few days no no i i just have them up over my shoulder
just take him i'm taking him with me
i don't like you
whoops here
no he's walking around on his own there's no wheelchair he's just doing that kind of like
old man shuffle so yeah you you lift him like right up and toss it he's like super frail and
tiny and she just oh are you sure i'm going to grab her by the neck and then smash her against
the wall jesus christ
i mean we're trying to hover at a fucking four here look you don't know what's going on here
we're trying to hover at a fucking four here look you don't know what's going on here
I'm 11 right now.
One sec, one sec.
I want to say this.
Please make a weapon skill test
to attack the retirement home nurse.
Oh my god.
You are
six.
The retirement home nurse
goes bodily partway
into the shitty drywall
that this establishment has.
And she has the smile
as you throw her into the wall.
She's like...
No, I'm holding her there.
And she's just looking at you with a smile.
Okay.
Okay.
If you want to go, I guess that's okay.
Listen here, you witness wet nurse.
I want to know on whose authority
you are keeping an inquisitorial lord
and a lock and key.
I'm gonna fucking...
I'm gonna club you in the back of the head.
No, no.
He's helping you.
He's helping you.
No, he sure as shit ain't.
They're infested
by some kind of psychic.
Clong!
I'd bash him in the back of the head
with the bottom of my left right hand.
No.
You are going to get us
in very much trouble, Pi.
Trouble with who?
The nurse association?
I have a bad feeling
about this.
This place and slamming people into walls
will get a good amount of attention on us.
I just want to frame that like
the scene right now is Pi has like
shoved this nurse through the drywall
holding her there.
Reeb has come up,
clucked him on the back of the head
with the butt of the blast rifle.
I'm assuming Pi Brain's head
does a 180 to meet Reeb
while he's still holding.
But in the background of our camera,
the nurse is still in the wall
with a giant smile on her face.
Just why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Does she give me an answer?
She responded to you.
Oh, what'd she say?
Oh no, to the thing. My bad.
Why?
Because he
went into retirement.
Who authorized the retirement?
Who is the big fish?
Oh.
You've heard of the big fish.
He's a wily one.
Fishers from everywhere here
have tried to catch him.
I put my hand on Reeb's shoulder
and I kind of tug him back a little bit
going, Reeb, Reeb,
I agree with you
in a lot of ways.
Pi Brain hit her again.
Jesus!
Make another hole.
I am actually...
Wait, don't kill her. Don't kill her yet.
You have grandpa.
Pi doesn't think this person's acting
of her own volition,
so he wouldn't actually
kill this lady unless he had to.
But he will assault her.
He will insult anybody.
He'll just cripple her. It's fine.
He's not crippling her.
You smashed her head into the wall!
Look, Erndo, we have to make a distinction.
We have not gone full murder hobo.
We are merely at assault hobo,
which sounds much cooler.
Assault hobo is a class of
interstellar frigate.
Pi hasn't begun
systematically
ripping off her limbs.
What?
Wait, wait, wait.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Time out.
Okay, there was a lot of laughing,
and then all I heard was systematic
removing of limbs.
Pi Brain, can you clarify your specific actions right now?
Pi has not.
He has not begun...
Okay, that's where my concern was.
Good, good.
He's concerned. He's just...
You have no limiter!
You have no limiter!
Your game is on what is
controlled and what is not.
Would you like to...
Would you like to roll Intimidate
against the retirement nurse?
I get any bonuses
for my violence.
Ripping someone's limbs off is not Intimidation.
I'm Intimidate.
Trust me.
I'm gonna spend two glory on this.
Roll to augment.
That's the worst.
Let's see what Pi does.
Oh, that should have been...
That should have had more with it.
So that's two successes thus far,
and I'm just gonna roll an extra 2d10.
You can kill people, but
you sure can't scare them.
Why d10?
Because I've been playing World of Darkness.
Yeah, wrong!
Get those d10s out of here.
Alright, so it's gonna be
four successes.
Okay.
You continue Intimidating, at which point
the drywall gives.
And she falls
through the wall, and as she does
you see her tumbling backwards, and then
she lands perfectly on a
mattress. Fun.
Oh! That was fun.
I don't like it.
Let's leave. Let's just go.
Is she gonna say anything?
I'm dragging Bray. Let's just go.
Let's just leave.
I'm dragging the Lord Inquisitor
out of the building.
I'm moving at my own pace, okay?
No, you're not.
He's on my shoulder.
You will not speak down to him in such a manner.
I'm not speaking down to him. He's above me.
Yeah, you know what I mean,
you smarmy dip.
Yeah, so you, as you're, like,
running out,
be sure to give Shadyrock
Retirement Home a good review.
Will do.
Sorry about the damage.
I get on Zelp.
No stocks.
Is that Zedekio?
Yes.
Zedek's own review app
on our Vox thingy.
Yeah.
Listen, we're just upset because
good retirement homes are hard to come by,
and pie throwing a
good nurse through the wall is
very bad. I don't approve. I will cry.
Good nurse is a bit
of a stretch.
Who would think you're putting
me to feed you pudding, huh?
I can't eat pudding anymore.
You're back out in the fog.
You notice now, though,
as you've come out, the fog has started to
slightly dissipate.
Like, it's still intense and around,
but, like, it's not as overbearing
as when you first came in.
Uh-huh.
To your harvest. Come on, boys.
And the prize.
We're gonna go bring the Inquisitor back to the lander.
Yeah.
I don't want the Inquisitor out here.
I don't want him or the fucking weird old lady rocking chair out here.
Yeah. So you return, and, like,
the old lady in the rocking chair is still there
pointing out in a seemingly random
direction.
You bring the Inquisitor
with you, who sort of
like, kind of gets down off of
Zedek once you reach the Arvis.
Oh!
Let's put him
in there, close the
Arvis, and after we
close it, I take out the keys and go,
boop! And it's like, alright, no one's getting through that.
Lord, why didn't you
get my car keys?
Don't worry about it.
Before we leave, can I, I'm gonna try to do
something real quick.
I'd like to, is there, like, a
communications anything
on the ship? On the Arvis, yes.
We've established that if you lose your Arvis,
you lose communications, yes.
Okay. I'm going to set a
pre-recorded
communication
about as far
as I could
on Lemurian channels. I'm going to try
Lemurian encryption.
Okay.
With that, do I need to roll for that, or can I just do that?
Nope, you can just send off messages.
You're not getting anything in response.
Okay, I'm just going to send out,
I'm just going to kind of leave this to keep playing.
This is
Tech Priest Explorata
Pied Brain.
I hope no one gets mad at me.
And of
the officio ambasadorium
to all Lemurian
resistance channels, me and a
delegation of my elite kill
squad have begun
Ten minutes ago with the retirement
nerds, yes.
Have begun an infiltration
of the shady
rock
island. We have
become aware that
virtually all personnel upon
this island are compromised.
We are seeking out any and all
Lemurian holdouts that still remain
with their sanity intact.
Please,
contact me at
this is my phone number.
Whatever.
I guess it wouldn't be my aspects, but frequency.
Contact us at 235
also fine.
Yeah, 235-1555-5555.
Uh,
and I'm just going to kind of
broadband Lemurian
security message. Try to get
any holdout in contact with me.
For sure.
Okay.
Yeah, that's what I want to do.
And then you head out back
with the group who is now outside the closed,
the locked, the locked
harvest with the grandparents inside.
Okay.
We gotta find this
big fish.
Well,
where else can we go?
Well, I would imagine if the big fish
is anywhere, it might be that town hall.
Yeah. Go to the town hall
then, boys.
Alright. Let's go.
And I take out my plasma gun.
And then
I put it back in my back and grab my power sword.
Uh,
yeah, so you make your way towards the
town hall, which is clearly marked. And it is
this immensely tall edifice.
Um,
probably 30 stories tall.
Um, which is
really difficult for you to tell because the fog,
but the fog seems to have dissipated enough
that you get, like, right when you're at the base of it,
you can look up and get a sense of scale.
Um, it's an immense stone building
with arched entryways that you just
walk into. There's no doors.
But that's when you realize the
entire interior of the first floor
isn't furnished.
And all there is is a single stone
staircase that ascends
up. And all of
the, like, surrounding, or the
upper level floors
seem to have nothing.
It just seems to be a staircase that goes
up to the top.
I guess they weren't
kidding when they called it the town hall.
It really is probably the biggest
hall in the entire town.
That's it.
You think so, Zedek?
I know so.
I know from my experience of single.
Well, well, Loren,
after all, I've seen a number of towns and
a number of halls in my day.
Whatever, nerd. I keep going up.
Yeah. Um, so all of you
start, like, climbing up these stairs.
Uh, can all of you give me a toughness test?
Oh, for fuck's sake.
Yay.
You know I'm not tough.
I do know that.
Alright, well, I pressed the button. We'll see how many
years it takes. Yeah, it'll be several years
before I resign. Thanks, thanks, rule
20 in the climbing stairs.
Okay, so, I want to take a pause here
I don't know if, as we wait for rule 20
to bring our rules up, if anyone
likes Foundry VTT
and knows how to do HTML code,
we're waiting for someone to do Wrath and Glory
on that thing. If someone knows that, we would
greatly appreciate it.
We want to go to Foundry really bad.
So we don't
have to wait for rules all the time.
Yeah, it's getting ridiculous.
We want a new, like, VTT
system really bad.
It would be nice,
but, uh...
...
I can try
something really quick. One second.
Holy cow. It is not taking...
I am going to
do a thing and try to restart
a thing because...
If anyone's confused of what Foundry is, just look up
Foundry VTT on Google and then you'll
find it.
It's always Google. Whenever you got a question, just
Google search.
Yeah, real quick, I want to say, someone in the chat
just said, I'm not tough. He says
after bludgeoning his guitar in the head. I have good
strength, not toughness.
Really?
VTT is virtual tabletop.
Like, Roll20
is what we're using right now.
Like, you see the little chat thing on the right and it's all like
that's what that is.
And the thing that we use in this, the person
who's updated this has done an amazing job for Wrath
and Glory, it's just like
sometimes it doesn't
want to work and we don't know what the problem
is. Okay, can I get all of you quickly
to refresh
Roll20? I just tried
restarting the
API sandbox that we use, so
that might help. Okay, sure.
Tech!
Try to send in those rolls again
and we will see what happens. Brains.
Psychic.
Slaughter. If not, we'll make it work
some other way. Otherwise, you will
head up the stairs and I will tell you what happens.
Sorry for all of the
listeners who are listening to us
have to restart tech things because
tech is great. Yeah, I mean, concern the fact that we've already got
like six successes in a glory.
Like, because we got
this far without like major
tech issues is pretty surprising.
Alright, let me do my toughness
now. Oh, see, there we go.
Now it's better. Okay.
Can I snag two of them
glories?
Glory, or excuse me, Wrath.
Three to Glory.
I'm gonna roll two Wrath.
Or two Glory. And I'll get to mine.
And
whoop! Nice, I got one additional.
I got a one with my
two toughness. Would you like
to spend one...
Oh wait, no, Erindel used those, so the
glory's all gone. Haha, wrecked!
Uh, okay.
So all of you, um, climb up
and generally
speaking are okay, except
for Loren, who is completely winded by going
up these stairs, as is appropriate
for Old Man.
Uh, so Loren, you can barely talk.
And as you come up... Wait, someone told me I could
levitate. Can I levitate instead and
skip the toughness?
Uh, you can certainly
try that, yes.
Fuck yeah. I'm gonna use stack
of powers to fuck everybody else over.
I love how you're like, I will risk
rending the materium apart because
fuck stairs. And got a twelve!
Cool. Yeah, okay. I fly.
So as everyone's like, running up the
stairs or slight jogging, you just
float, float, float, float.
Just composing up the stairs.
Uh, yeah. I did Gmod
Your animation's
broken. I did Gmod noclip through it.
Oh gosh.
Alright, so you reach the top.
Um, and all the top
of the top of the stairs is, is it leads to
a balcony that overlooks the
foggy distance. And you see a
woman who is standing
there, who turns to you
with this immense
smile. And she
turns and like
sort of waves her hands out
at you.
Hello there!
Ah, shit. Are you another
fuckfreak?
What?
What do you mean? No.
It's a glorious day today, isn't it?
I'm Administrator, I'm Administrator
Linea.
I'm the administrator of this
settlement. Gee, you don't say.
I like to imagine I'm still
floating around, but I'm like just doing
flips and shit.
Whooping her out, just going like,
It's a glorious day today, isn't it? Woo!
And I got one
question for you, Linea.
How good are the times?
Well,
they're really good. Um,
we know that, that we took it upon ourselves
to make our own settlement, which is why
we have all the requisite tithe
ready for the next, um,
200 years, and a little
bonus, because every Imperial
citizen should provide more to the Emperor
than he asks of them.
Now you're talking our language.
Right. Zedek.
Zedek. Yes. If you're an Administrator
type person, organize
this, I float off.
Woo! Okay, I guess
Laurence is gonna go to space, that's fine.
While all well and good that
you have tithe for the next, how do you,
what is, what are you tithing currently?
Precious resources. We have
adamantine
and various components
and some throne gelt
that we managed to find. Everything.
Tell me,
where did you acquire adamantine?
You're the solitary landmass
on an entire ocean
world, which, mind you, is- There's
landmass under the ocean!
Dude, I have seen
no sort of materials around
to suggest that they have an underwater
mining operation going on. You could just
take a boat and go to it!
Oh, you know,
some people here and there had stuff in their
basement. What?
I float down?
Now that doesn't make a fucking
sense, watch it!
Oh, you know, people just sometimes have
several thousand metric tons of
adamantine just lying in their basements!
You know, just ready
to give to the imperial cause.
I'm gonna be straightforward.
No, we're not gonna kidnap this one, too. We can't keep killing people.
Everyone's suspicious!
Well,
it's, it's, I
can understand why you might be confused.
Just because times are so great
here, but
I'm glad you came, because
I sent the message.
I had our astropath
send out the message to bring
people here, because
well, gosh darn it, I
think I've found the best citizens in the
Imperium, and everyone needs
to know about us.
That's a stupid fucking reason!
Where's the resources?
No, hold on.
You said you
had your astropath send it.
Why, yes!
Uh, turn my head to Lorne.
Lorne?
What? The old woman in the rocking
chair is an astropath.
You couldn't detect that?
No.
I did, I did
a whole psychic sweep, and I got
nothing from her.
We're just gonna close his eyes and then open them
and then just, like, roll his jaw a little bit. Oh, silly!
We don't have any psychers here.
How did
you send a message to an
astropath?
Um, you know,
someone had one in their basement.
Ah!
Lania, can you please
blink twice if you're being
compelled by some otherworldly
force to say what you're saying?
No.
There's no compulsion
here. There's
only great times here in New Prosperity.
Show me your basement.
I land.
Wow, very forward, Lorne, very forward.
I'm no more levitating. Show me the fuckin' basement.
Oh!
Okay! Come on! And she turns
and starts walking towards the stairs.
I resume the levitation and just
float down.
Yeah, and she does this kind of, like, hop
skip jumping as she's going down.
Do you have, like, an
elevator? No, whatever.
I do.
Oh, you probably
didn't see it on the way in.
That makes sense. Have to keep it
from no good, Nyx. She comes up to
one of the walls and presses one of the
stones, and the doorway kind of goes
and opens, and
another staircase leading down into
darkness. Come on!
And she goes down. Oh.
I follow her. But as we
get in, I wanna say something. Presumably
as we begin descending. Yeah.
You said your name
was Lania.
That's right.
You must understand how
doomed you are.
No.
You have
contacted us,
an elite kill team
from the Crusade.
We have come here to evaluate
your condition. We have found
nothing but suspicious material
and the blatant fact that
you are, if not being
manipulated,
quite unwell.
I'm passing this message
in part to you, and on the
chance that whatever this big
fish is, it might understand
the severity of its
misstep. Oh!
You heard about the big fish.
Fishermen from all over have been trying to catch
that one. He's a bit
of a sly one.
Uh-huh.
Oh! Here we are! And like, she's come to
the bottom of the stairs, which is just this
like, immense dark room.
Um, and she walks over to
a small switch on the wall, which she
goes to and pulls down. Like, there's
this grinding metal sound.
And then you hear the ka-chunk, ka-chunk,
ka-chunk, ka-chunk,
as lumen lights start
coming online, and
all the way down, for
perhaps, like,
a mile or more,
is a storage
depot, replete
with all sorts
of natural goods,
precious metals.
Uh-huh.
Um,
you see several, um,
several shuttlecraft, too.
Like, more modern
style Imperial aircraft.
Some that put even the
tried-and-true Arvis lighter.
Like, you see some, um,
some Aquila landers
and some, um, more
traditional Imperial aircraft
that are sort of
strewn about
down here. We really
hope that this'll be enough.
I do science science again.
Yeah, sure.
It takes
forever to do.
Oh, no. Is it
forever? Is it
any more after I click the thing?
Okay, we'll do this. Uh, like,
I'll just write five of these,
and then five of these,
and then two of those. Okay.
So that's, like, one, two, three,
four, five, six,
seven successes.
There's nothing
psychic here. All of this is real.
Uh-huh.
Everything here is real
and in perfect order. How?
And tagged and noted.
I'm still levitating. So I, like, fly up,
and I'm starting to look around. I'm like,
how the fuck do you
get this out of here?
Oh!
There's a connecting port
at the end. We can use that to
send up shuttles if we need to.
Where
is the Mekos?
...
Oh, we don't have any Mekoses here.
She kind of chuckles.
But we do have a lot of goods!
I sure hope that that'll be
enough to keep the Imperium happy.
...
...
...
Okay. Okay.
This is fun. This is excellent.
Oh, we don't have this thing you're looking for,
but we do have beer.
Float down.
Yes.
Look.
...
Why the fuck are you all so happy?
...
Shit ain't normal.
Well, because times are great.
Why?
What made them great?
...
You know, one day, we just decided
it would be
good for us to become a settlement.
And, well,
Emperor had our backs,
and I think we've done a pretty stellar job.
You didn't answer shit.
What the fuck does the big fish look like?
...
Oh. Well, I hear
he's a scaly one who
is a bit wily
with the fishermen.
Wily as in
murder kill?
Or wily as in playfully give them pillows?
...
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
It's just a bit of a trickster.
None of the other fishermen have been able
to get the big fish, you know.
...
Uh-huh. Have you ever
talked to it?
Talk to a fish? You're silly.
...
Have you ever seen it?
Oh, no.
I'm not a fisher. You might want to talk
to the old lady out by the docks.
She smiles pearly teeth.
...
Can I mountain beam
this one?
No, don't kill this one yet.
Okay. All right.
Okay, then. The Imperium
is happy to take your tithe.
We're here to receive it. Begin
to send all of it into orbit.
All of it.
All right. We'll get on that
right away.
Now, let's go.
Time's a-wastin'. I'm tappin' my wrist
like it's a watch.
You're not seriously going to leave it
like this, Lon.
No. We're just gonna get all this stuff
out in orbit. Just to see
what happens. Let's go back up,
everybody. I want to see where it comes from.
Yes.
Let's take a look.
So, at this
view, you all head back up. Oh, sorry.
Go ahead. Do you have any underwater facilities
throughout this planet?
Underwater facilities?
No. That'd be silly.
All right. Fuck yourself. I float up.
Okay. Yeah. Sure.
All of you quickly
exit, and you find yourselves back outside.
At this point, the fog has
peeled back again.
And what you
notice is there's
a building off in the dist-
Oh, there's the sign of science rule.
There's a
building off in the distance
that you can see up on, like,
an escarpment of
rocks and hills, maybe
like a mile
or so away, and somehow it's visible
from its heightened position.
And it appears to be- where everything
here is stone, this appears to be
more of, like, a
squat
metal building, more
in line with imperial standards
that's briefly visible atop the
um, atop
the rocky outcroppings in the distance.
I'm very
sorry for interrupting, but for some reason Roll20
thought it would be pertinent for me to roll a
psychic mastery check for Reed.
Hey, it's important. Sometimes you gotta know.
It's cursed like this session.
Yeah. Roll20 is making this hard.
Ooh, spooky!
Alright then, well,
um,
it's-
The path forward is apparent.
We go to this structure.
Yeah, it's
following on. I would like us to
like, reconvene on the Arvis and figure
out what the fuck we're going to do after this.
Let's get all the
puzzle pieces first, and then combine
them. Yeah. Okay. So you head
towards the- head towards this, like,
metal building? Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. So yeah, you make your way
up, uh, where there's this, like,
vegetation surrounding it,
and then this sort of
squat metal bunker with
mechanicum symbols all over it.
Um, there seems to be, like,
calm, uh,
calm units and auger arrays
on top of it. Uh, it looks
to be fairly expansive.
Like, there seem to be several buildings.
Like, you'd guess maybe, like, a hundred
people could live in this thing, but
no one's- no one's here.
...
Hmm.
I'm going for the door.
Okay.
Sure.
Walk up to the door?
Yes.
It opens
with a pneumatic hiss.
Inside, you
see, uh, Pie, you would recognize
this immediately. Like, you see the common
style interior
of, um,
a mechan- an Adeptus Mechanicus
like, prefab research outpost.
Though, it looks incredibly
old. Everything is covered
in dust, and there's
vegetation that's sort of spurted out of
the ground in various
different areas, and
it, like, there's holes in the wall, which
normally should be, like, air
pro- like, sealed.
Uh, because this should be, like, in a
void.
What on earth happened
here? Are there any machineries?
Any logs?
I mean, there's, there's, like, cogitator units
on the walls. Sure, yeah, I'll
access one of those, try to get a record of what's happened.
Sure, give me a tech check.
I would love to give you a tech check, yeah.
Tech check! Tech check!
If it will work, maybe, oh
god, making you roll dice in a dice game
where you can't roll dice is
hashtag super effective.
Bro, did you just tech check in my TTRPG?
Uh-huh.
I'm gonna use three glory, if that's alright with the lads.
I am okay. Yeah, go ahead.
Yep.
Surely we won't complicate every single roll here on out.
That is going to be
six successes.
Yeah, um, so you're able to
to get this cogitator
unit running and be able to
access the data logs of
this, um,
of this facility.
It comes up, and you can see
there's various log entries
here that seem to talk
about, um, just
like, ongoing research
into local archaeological
ruin sites.
Uh, they seem to
reference various
exploration missions into
the crater.
The crater.
Uh, do they mention any other details
like the location of this crater?
It looks to be something very
close, like within a few miles
of the complex. Like the edge
of the crater, I should say.
Yes.
Any information on the results?
What in particular they were researching?
Uh, yeah, you start to
to dig in a bit more, and
that's where you come up
with, um,
you come
up with the name
of Junior Xenoarchaeologist
Magos Rohecta,
uh, who seems to have
presented several notations
on exploring these
these strange, um,
these strange structures.
Found at the base
of a crater.
Uh, the structures he
continually, like, reinforces
uh, have been jutting
out of the ground at odd
angles. Uh,
further exploration and
um, basically excavation
of these indicates they might be
the top of some larger compound?
And it's presumed to be of Xenos make.
Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely.
Yes.
Yes. We have a
location. It seems as though
there's some sort of Xenos archaeology
in the midst of something called
a crater. Apparently it's
close by, if anything.
There's a picture
of, um, of, like,
a picture that's been kept on the Cogitator
unit of, for one of the most
the, one of the more recent logs, though they
don't have dates on them. Looks like the date
um, data has all been corrupted.
But one of them appears to
be this, um,
this blackened
dirt spire
that comes out of the ground at, like,
45 degrees. And you can
see some vehicles that are parked around it.
The vehicles look like
insects compared to the size
of this, this spire that's
arced, um, coming out
of the ground. But as you sort of zoom
in on different points, you see one of the
figures in
the, in the image is
familiar. Um,
you see leading
a contingent of
Scutari patrol troops
is 3-4-R.
I see.
Can I, can I grab the, uh,
the Cogitator or whatever
and just yell at it with warp energy?
And hats! So we can
get more details.
And use psychic mastery to help
them out. If you wanna, if you wanna roll me a psychic
mastery test, I'm sure that the
that could go great. I sure
do, and I'm gonna spend our two
glory to do it.
To make sure it is super
fun. Yeah, do
it! Do it! Alright,
I'm going to roll
this. Don't press the
button. For some
reason... How's your day going, guys?
I was, I was about to say it worked
okay. And I complicated and rolled
terribly. Oh,
boy. Oh, I like this.
I got a four and I complicated. Four?
Four is gonna
get you something interesting,
but it's also gonna cause,
it's also gonna cause a problem,
I think, because you know what?
We need more problems in our...
We sure do.
Wrath? Yeah, let me,
let me spend a wrath. I will spend
a wrath point
to, uh, to go
and I got a seven
total. Nice! Okay, that's gonna get
you, yeah, that's, um,
that's definitely gonna,
gonna help. Uh,
hmm. I am
going to...
Uh, let's
go with this one. Um,
you are, like, enhance!
Enhance! Enhance!
Uh, I'm going to use this one from,
uh, one Jarl
Merrick Pysucks, uh,
complication called Crushed Glory
on a psychic complication.
Instead of using the intended psychic
power or psychic mastery,
uh, Crush is used instead.
Um...
Oh, boy. On any
of the actor's groin,
stunning them for a
number of rounds.
Um, I assume
you just crushed this machine,
which has some sympathetic thing
to Pi Brain's equivalent of a groin
who screams out in pain
as you crush the, crush the
cogitator unit, though there are several other
others to access. But, as you,
you have this, like, enhance! Enhance!
Enhance! moment,
some pictures
start flooding through, and
Pi, you're able to record them even in the
throes of pain. You see
several
images, um, you see
Administrator Linea come
by. Um,
and, like, it's
coming with a septic report
that the, the
station's septic unit has
backed up again, and that
um, lesser
tech adept
Linea had been dispatched
to clean it again.
And then
you find a picture of the
staff of the outpost basically doing
like a group photo for
Prosperity, and at the front of it,
though untitled,
the old woman from the docks is
clearly in the Administrator's position
smiling.
Hmm.
Um, do I recognize
the designation of this squad?
Like, presumably,
my Skitarii squad was PiSquad.
Um,
do I, can I recognize the
actual name of
R34R?
No, no, no,
it doesn't look like, like, a lot of that's been scrambled.
Like, the data, you're just getting some pictures,
some little, some little nuggets
of information, but a lot of it's just been
scrubbed. Hmm.
But you see that this, like,
the data logs all seem to be
routine, um, excavations
and surveying until they found something
in the crater. Uh, when you
start putting together the data, though, you would
realize the crater's edge
lines up with the docks.
Lines in the docks.
But, but if
Linea knew of this, and
knew that we would be led here,
then perhaps this is
a trap. Uh,
normally I would imagine my superior
mechanizations would protect me from
mind-altering influences, but that seemed
not to be the case. I'm
concerned. Well, we did
just kind of believe her, didn't we?
Well, yes.
But now,
data reflects this,
and it may be that
our actions are still being puppeteered.
I doubt they were expecting
the wrath of Lemuria.
And you all do.
Yes.
Of course.
Let's take a...
I suppose we'll have to get started
looking around here, won't we?
Indeed.
So would you like to return to the docks
and take a look around there again?
I think that's what we're going to do.
As I'm walking out, no one goes
stop, and I'll take one last
look at the screen.
Go, well...
Well, I tried, and then
off we go back to the docks.
Yeah.
You make your way to the docks, and the
fog here has really started to lift.
And as you reach
the docks, you notice something
not necessarily
out of place, but
almost like it was always here, but
you didn't notice it.
At the beach
before the docks,
just at the edge
where the thinned fog has pulled back
enough, you see a large
enclosed altar
terrain vehicle.
And it's
pointing towards the sea.
What sort of vehicle
is this? Any that I would recognize?
It looks like,
and your training in tech would give
you enough knowledge, it looks like a
and most of you, in fact all of you would know this,
this looks like a
void-sealed
all-terrain vehicle.
Yes.
Hmm.
But on the ground?
Yeah, so meant for like
planets without an atmosphere.
Hmm.
Well,
Brang, go check it out. You're the tech expert
after all.
Of course. This should be useful for
plumbing within the depths of the ocean.
Either this creature
wants us to find it,
or perhaps
the Lemurians are eating
out of his stints.
I'm going to
take a look at this machine.
Yeah.
Any funky bullshit going on?
Nope. In fact, what we'll get
to is you go to the back, like you go
to the back door and open it.
It's clearly been used.
You can't tell how recently.
The interior is all set
up. It looks like it's fully charged.
But you notice a
data pad,
a data slate that's on one of
the, um, sorry,
in the back of one of the chairs
here. Like, you know how when you're on an airplane
they have those little holders in front of you?
There's one of those, and there's a data slate
in there.
I will examine this data slate for the
glory!
We begin skimming the first lines
of it, and it reads,
After
receiving the
request for aid from this planet,
we have arrived and found the
outpost
staff
unwilling or unable to assist.
We are taking one of the
all-terrain vehicles
down into the crater to examine
the ruin site and find the
status of
the Magos. And once we
find the Magos and his discovery,
let it be known that I
slab ergo de facto
de fuckerbeets,
twenty-fourth of my name,
shall bless
the Imperium with the knowledge
of what I find.
And that is where we are going to
end today's session.
Oh, thank God!
We get to kill him, too!
Hooray!
Thank you so much, Thurston,
and thank you, everybody, for playing
with me. Everything else, I thank
you, everyone, for watching.
I super greatly
appreciate it if you want to switch to the, uh,
the other screen thing there.
Thank you all so much for watching this
episode of Warhams.
Your ambassadors
have been,
first off, our
last-ish Katari warrior,
Pybraim, played by...
Speaker D, yes! Hello!
You can follow me on Twitter at
at SuperSnakeKick,
or you can follow me on YouTube at
Speaker D.
And our
amazing Inquisitorial Acolyte,
played by Reeve, or,
is named Reeve Van Horn,
as I messed it up, played by...
Erndil. I am
reachable at
on Twitter, and nowhere else.
Don't even try. I definitely don't exist.
I have
been playing Lorne, the Sanctioned
Psyker, and our illustrious
Rogue Trader, Captain of the Debt Collector,
Rider of Zetiket, Captain
Zetik, played by...
Me, HulkyCrow.
You can find me on Twitter, at HulkyCrow.
You'll be hard-pressed to
find me on other socials, but maybe you'll see me on
Steam with a humorous username. I just changed it
to something wonderful today.
And our illustrious Game Master,
Thurston Hillman. Thank you
so much, sir, for making another
intense conspiracy
theorist field episode
during spoopy month.
Thank you guys so much for being here.
We greatly appreciate it.
Thanks.
Thank you guys.
We'll see you all next time.
Times are great.
So long.
Farewell.
Goodbye.