S1:E61 – The Trip to Notre Dame

Theater of the Mind podcasts are intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Content warnings can be found in the podcast. Description. Welcome to Theater of the Mind presents Retribution, episode 61. My name is Mike. I'm your dungeon master. And this week's question from the Ultimate RPG campfire card deck by James Motto is what is the worst insult you have ever suffered? What did you do in response to it?

My name is Amanda and I'm playing Mel Kelly.

I think

it would have been in high school, probably like freshman year. That transition from middle school to high school, the last time Mel had a really, really close for middle school was part of that transition and they were very much opposite in many ways, specifically economically. And when they changed schools, Mel was having some struggles adapting. But in the end she always got what she want because she just asked her dad and he threw money at it and. And her then really close friend called her an entitled bitch and that was the last friend she ever had.

Until now.

Until now.

You can't get rid of these ones.

I wouldn't say we're healthy friends, but neither's Mel.

I'm Jeremy. I'm playing Elliot Brandybane. And the worst insult that Elliot Brandy Bain ever received was was he had brought some cattle into town for the sale. There was also a rodeo happening at that same weekend. So after the sale he was in the the cafe getting something to eat on it before he headed home and some of the rodeo cowboys had come in to get something to eat and they. Elliot doesn't clearly recall the exact words that were said, but. But it was basically make way for a real cowboy and Elliot took quite offense to that. There may or may not have been a little bit of a scuffle and he showed him that. Yeah, just because you're old doesn't mean you're not tough. And they were calling him sir as he left the cafe and they dust themselves off the ground.

Hi, I'm Brunel. I'm playing Olnak Vaga Johnson Olnock. We all know our boy Onox, quick to anger. So picking what was the worst insult is difficult because a lot of things make him angry. But the raging barbarian gets angry, right?

Weird. Crazy.

He knows he's not the smartest guy on earth, but he doesn't like to be told he's dumb. It really pisses him off. Kind of a trigger, which isn't really that different from myself. But Ulnock's not as smart as I am. But somebody called him something in a way. It was a pretty creative way of Calling him dumb. But he caught onto it and it pissed him off and he choked him out.

Wow.

I just stopped talking to my friend.

Yeah, I fucking heard him.

I heard him bad.

I didn't kill him. Like, you know, I didn't have a hammer at the time.

But there were still repercussions to your actions.

I didn't put him in a sleeper hold either. I mean, I grabbed him with one hand and pinned him against the wall and choked him the out. Because I'm a very large man and I can do that.

Yeah.

Fair.

Hello, I'm Downs and I'm playing James o'. Brien. And I think James was before the whole Elliot thing.

That's not an insult.

That was just accurate.

Yeah, that was.

We refer to that.

That was a recap of events.

Yeah.

Anyway, somebody insulted James food to his face and like, threw it at James and. Yeah, so James stole his car.

That was not where I thought you were gonna go.

Way to respond, like, with like.

Was that one of his professors in culinary school?

No, actually it was one of the first restaurants after culinary school. So James was already like annoyed and pissed off about shit.

Yeah. Yeah.

So when I was in culinary school, our professors would have to taste test everything, everyone. And there were like certain baking projects where you had to make like four. Four flavors of a certain thing. And it is the most demoralizing thing to spend like two solid weeks of four hour class periods crafting these beautiful, perfect desserts to watch your professor take one bite, chew it for a moment, and then spit it in the trash. And like, he has to, because he has to taste everything. All 16 students, four flavors each.

Yeah. It's a fucking feast. Several times a day.

Yeah, that's true. You can't swallow everything. I am going to die.

That's fair.

Take smaller bites at least.

Yeah, I know, right?

At least give me the.

Give me something. This tastes so good.

Perfect.

It's so strange. Anyway, I'm Casey. I play Emory Lee. And outside of her sister. Because sisters are absolutely, absolutely horrible to each other. The worst insult that Emory ever faced was in middle school from a kid named Preston who spat directly on her shoe. How dare they was on the walk home. So no one could prove that the black eye he had in school the next week came from her. But she was not happy about that incident.

Fell into my shoes.

What is it about Preston's. I remember having a Preston in middle school. He was a dick.

I'm sorry. To any Prestons that are currently listening

to your typecast unless you're A damn sure you Preston.

No, sorry, sorry.

There's just something about a parent that's willing to name their child Preston that produces a bad kid.

I hope not. I bet there's some really nice Prestons out there.

I don't know if I've ever met an actual Preston.

Prove us wrong.

If you're a nice Preston, you're on thin ice.

And I'm sorry you like the chance of the world do not have to follow your name. That is. Yeah.

Yeah.

There's a yeah. I've met a few Chads.

You have the opportunity to do do better. Yeah.

You met a really cool Kyle. It's possible to overcome your name.

You can do it. Stay positive. Believe in yourself.

I thought. I thought about changing his name and I was just like, there just is no name.

Preston Fitzgerald.

That's exactly right in your reaction. Told me all I needed about that that was the right name I needed for that.

Perry is a good Preston placement.

I don't know how.

See, I think of Perry. I think of Perry the Platypus.

A platypus? Parry the platypus.

Yes, I think of that.

So let me guess. Amoritar. Somebody called him an evil overlord and he killed him.

Oh, he's a realist.

No, that's lame. Yeah, that's an accurate description.

It's been a very, very, very, very, very long time since someone has been brave enough to insult.

Does he even remember?

Just wait until we show up.

We're gonna mispronounce his name on purpose.

Yes.

Take that.

So, yeah, he doesn't. He honestly. He knows that the person who did it suffered a horrific fate has been many a moon. And with that, we're gonna go ahead and roll for recap.

We're not even gonna learn what it is.

So we six.

We don't get. We don't get ammunition.

19.

God damn it.

Wait.

19. Good thing you're 19.

What am I rolling to compete? Okay, it's a six. Who's got a six?

I got a nat 20. So good luck.

Wow. 20.

19. 19.

19 and a six.

Yep.

The dice have decided.

Nailed that bitch.

All right.

Would you like my notes?

Let's. Yes, let's. Recap. Because the only part I truly remember,

they may not be legible.

I remember the creepy little girl when we were leaving town. As usual, I'm in a Tarantino. We're going to go from the end and I'm going to finish. So the little girl sang in nursery rhymes. I remember some of it, but the big part Was Amora Tar will win the war.

The lords have come. There will be done. Amor will win the war.

Can you say that again so I don't interrupt?

Could you do it in little girl creepy voice for us?

No. Maeve Pale. All is well and Carson is no more. The lords have come. Their will.

And then she snapped out of it and we were like, get the out of here. So we bolted. I remember that part.

Yeah.

We hit the horses and we were like, let's go. I don't want to be here anymore. I don't like it here. The beginning of that, though. The beginning of the episode. So anyway, before eludes me.

It was kind of a vague segue because it's not 100% sure.

I remember all the dreams again. We all had separate dreams. I don't know what happened in all of them because I wasn't allowed to be here for all of them, but I do remember what happened in my dream. Olnox dream. So my daughter's in Ohio.

Cincinnati.

Thank you.

I remembered Ohio. And that was close enough for me. So, yeah, Cincinnati. I did not expect to hear from her ever again. I was of high hopes that she was still alive, but not sure. Big giant citadel. She talked of the people coming in and they like, run the show and she's got to, like, follow all the rules or whatever. It was emotional. We talked about things. Some things she didn't know, but I didn't dwell on them too much because I didn't want her to just not talk to her father that she thinks abandoned her five years ago. Which isn't true, but that's what she thinks. So, yeah, we were talking and then big, scary wraith looking things in my head anyway. I don't know if that's what they were, but that's what they were in my head because we all know I see differently than everybody else. Cloaked black figures were running at her. She freaked out and. And ran away. And I was like, oh, no, something bad's about to happen. Then I got yanked into this alternate dimension or alternate timeline where there's a giant, big, massive fire, and the biggest demon I have ever seen, ever, is killing and burning everything. I remember that.

Anything else of importance with that demon?

He's got a big yellow eye that matched the eye that was in the seal from the thingy for Math Pelt.

Anything else of importance of that big double demon guy, Jacob? There's one key factor that you would know.

He had Jacob.

Oh, yeah, he did have Jacob. And I ran after him in a Panic. Because now two people that I care about are in immediate and extreme danger. But I could not catch him no matter how hard I tried. And I freaked out and I woke up and I was like, panic. That's my dream. From what I remember, at least the important bits.

We all had the demon with Jacob. That's the common denominator.

We all saw.

And we all snuck to Mel's door and cracked it open.

And apparently it is now canon that Mel is a chaos creature.

Made sure Jacob was okay. So I think Mel woke up with everybody, like, near her bed. I don't remember.

No, it was like, why the hell were you guys continually opening? Why is my door opening?

He's fine. God, leave me alone.

I checked already. He's fine.

Yeah, it almost just for me. There was a bunch of flanging and then the door opened.

Yeah.

I cannot read these.

We all.

We all had a middle of the night pow wow.

Yeah.

Before deciding that it was time to go.

I think it's just impossible for us to sleep in separate rooms.

Apparently, we're all codependent.

Yeah. Did you guys see something? I saw something.

That's all.

That's all I could gather from your.

Y' all are the impersonate or the embodiment of a trump.

So how we started off, though, I don't remember. I think they. Was it the feast?

We did.

We'll have the feast here.

Okay. So that was technically the episode before.

Yeah.

Because we had a cutoff.

I was gonna say. You can be fuzzy about the starting point.

So it was.

Cause I am, too. I'm not sure when that transition goes.

That was basically it. I have session 60 marked. We had the dreams. We got that. There were the lords mentioned by your daughter in Cincinnati. We woke up and decided that we were leaving. And then there was the creepy girl. We talked to Edna Mae. She's heading to Notre Dame in Indiana. The school. Notre Dame.

Yes. Notre Dame.

Notre Dame.

So we concluded that we would drop her off at Notre Dame. Notre Dame and then head on to Cincinnati.

Yep.

Notre Dame.

Notre Dame.

Because apparently that's town of Notre Dame. Because apparently that's on the way. I don't know. My east coast gets.

It's a little.

It's a little upwards.

You're basically going to go due east to Notre Dame and then hard south to Cincinnati.

Which makes sense because you have to avoid the Great Lakes.

Yeah. Well, actually, you're going to see the Great Lake. If you were to go, as the road says, you would see the very bottom of The Great Lake as you go due east, they had a hard south. We have this road a lot. And the bottom or the very.

It's in southern, damn near Kentucky. Yeah, I know that much about Cincinnati.

So we're basically following i70 or i76.

You are now firmly on i80, I believe.

Yeah. That's the way my family always takes to New York. And we did make it to Lake Michigan once on accident because my dad made a wrong turn and it was. Suddenly we were at the lake. All right. We're walking the beach for a minute.

And from experience, if you land in the Cincinnati airport, you land in the state of Kentucky.

Interesting.

Yes.

So I've seen it from inside the airport, but it's. Yeah, the. The Cincinnati. Whatever the airport is in Cincinnati is in fact in Kentucky.

So.

Yeah, it's right on the border.

I didn't realize you're that southern fucking right there.

Yeah. I literally. It looks. It's. It's a lot like Portland.

Okay.

Where Portland cannot go any further north because of the. Well, it'll become Columbia. Yeah. And then it's the same thing. You have the Ohio. That is the board. The Ohio river is the border.

Got it.

And Cincinnati is on that river. Sorry, that was probably. That was.

Or like Kansas City, which is in Kansas and Missouri.

Yeah, exactly. And then you've got two different time zones immediately on the other side that. It looks to me like they're different towns because the state.

Okay.

Apparently Kansas City is also in two different time zones.

That's annoying.

Yeah.

Oh, that's because Kansas.

Kansas is in central and. Or Kansas. The state of Kansas is in central and the state of Missouri is in eastern.

At least that makes sense.

And the city splits the border, doesn't it?

Yeah, but the city. But you can live in the same city and it be in two different states in two different time zones.

I've heard of Indiana and I could be wrong. It don't give a. If I am. I've heard that they go county by county with the time zone thing. A nightmare.

I don't know the name of it, but there's a town in Kansas that the time zone splits the town in Kansas. And it's not a big town and it's all in Kansas.

It's one of those where, like, you really couldn't just kind of. Oops. That portal.

Yeah.

You couldn't have just picked up one side or another. I'm guessing there's an interesting town.

Probably has like a municipal code. It's like we follow this time because otherwise none of us are on the same page about anything.

What do you mean I'm late? I'm not late. It's.

That's where. It's like we just meet when the sun is this high in the sky.

The whole thing where your phone automatically switches and your computers automatically switch to. So even if you're, like, driving like, awful.

Yeah.

I would never know what time it is.

As ever. I would be infested.

I never know what time it is now. I'd be screwed.

But yes. So you are on the road again.

Can't wait to get on the road again.

East, I assume.

Weird it we'll go west.

The odds. But you are technically in a really rather large sandbox. But please go east.

You know. Yeah.

We have more respect for the narrative than that.

We're gonna have to pause.

We have so many choices.

I've never been to. I've never been to Wisconsin before. What do you think about going to Wisconsin, guys? I like cheese.

We can just follow the whole coast of the Great Lakes, right?

Yeah.

Then we can see all the Great Lakes. Oh, I know. We can get on. We can get on a boat and sail the Great Lakes up into Canada and then cross over.

Yep.

Yeah. Yeah.

But there be sea monsters now.

Oh, my God. I never thought of that.

Or lake monsters.

Because it's a lake throwing champ at you.

Oh, you'd have to.

You would have to throw a champ at you. Absolutely.

Okay. Anyway, we're heading east

and we are going to go back to our fun little campfire rules.

Yeah. Roll for initiation.

You're not supposed to start the campfire with a fireball.

I didn't ask how you wanted your meat cooked. I cast fireball.

The nice thing is this is still the best time of year to be walking through this area. It's the most wonderful time. It's not incredibly cold. It's the apocalypse. But this is gonna be. This is quite a few days travel.

James, if you get that song stuck in my head, I swear to God. Bill chucks a rock at him.

There are a couple of Christmas songs that will earn you a strong elbow, so be careful.

Oh, yeah.

That's not one of them.

Oh, really?

I'm assuming it's. It's the. It's sung by the person.

Yeah.

It's a really complicated Spanish.

Oh, yeah. That is really.

I will throw something at you.

What is it?

Do not. I said it the way I said it for a reason.

I would never. He's so mean.

You're lying. You're an Older brother. You absolutely would.

What?

Really?

Clay's over there going to you.

Yeah, he totally would.

I don't listen to him. You know what I'm talking about.

I am a satire.

So, thankfully, again, you guys are able to travel. This is all easy terrain. And for those of us at home following along, there is a travel DC set based upon the terrain difficulty. You're on a highway, that is. And you're in the flat. That's about as easy of terrain as it gets.

That's good.

Then you add a weather modifier,

which it is June.

Do we find out whether or not that's going to affect us?

Could be interesting weather this time of year.

Humid.

Yeah. Yeah.

This is chigger season.

I guess it's really July that you start to hit, like, the afternoon storms. But we've already done.

As long as we don't have to go through another.

I know, but it's a thing. Like, on the plains, we would get. We would get like, day. Daily storms at about 3 or 4 in the afternoon. And the hail was huge from, like, July through August. It wasn't every single day, but it was a lot of the days.

I can't remember. Do we have the spell of Winnebago?

No.

Nope.

That's bonus content.

That's bonus content.

Okay.

We do have. We do have a little extra dimensional.

What, are we sleeping in the hole now?

Rope. We can climb up and snap for an hour. Oh, yeah. But when it goes off, it goes off hard.

Yeah. There ain't snoozing that rope train.

There's a certain point in all of this travel that Emerie is, like, messing, like one of those times where we're, like, stopped somewhere and just, like, messing around and playing. And Emery accidentally turns somebody into a toad. Nice. Now I have this spell, Polymorph.

So I did not like that one. Ribbit.

Boo. And then there is. Once you have that, it's Jacob.

Jacob gets turned off. And then everyone panics for a little bit.

And then where did Jacob go?

I'm just holding him.

I'm like. And then Emery realizes, like, the energy drop and cuts concentration. He turns back into a boy.

In Mel's hand.

Yeah.

Mal's holding Jacob a.

So Mel goes down with Jacob in her hand.

They take those factors into account to create your DC, which. This is a DC12.

Okay.

And then your score that you have to beat is predicated on how far you're traveling. You're traveling like. Like really don't wait like a long mage. And this is one of the longer stretches you've done at awac. So you're going to have to beat an eight, meaning you have to beat it eight times. Eight victories before eight defeats. This is gotcha.

Because I was like, I thought the DC was 12. I'm very confused.

This is gonna be slightly more difficult.

So the DC is our endpoint. Notre Dame for this stretch?

Yes.

Okay.

One more time for that.

Our end point is noted. Up.

Okay.

Notre Dame.

There we go. I gotta say, it's a really fucking

long trip to note it on Notre Dami.

Notre Dami.

I think that travel score would be a little. That's a whole different thing.

I took French in high school and so French words have an accent in my brain.

I was. I struggle with that myself.

I watched some movie that took place there. That's the only reason Rudy. Probably the totally incredibly fake story of Rudy.

Is it.

Almost nothing about that movie is accurate. Still cool though. It's a good movie. Very heartwarming movie. And so this is basically functions as a slow motion skill check. You tell me the skill you're using and how you're using it to do what you're doing to try to get through. We can just go around the table. Unless you guys would like to roll initiative.

I don't know why I care.

Yeah, you're in the same.

Regardless.

Great.

I under pressure.

Isn't that ice? Ice, baby.

That's got an action done in it. That's what makes it different.

See, I love the video of him trying to defend.

It's so funny.

It's totally different. We can go. They go.

I mean, you have to get so specific about it in music because there is.

Oh, yeah.

To the combos and chords and everything.

The problem is totally ripped it up.

There was no. They didn't change the tune. They didn't change pitch. They didn't change rhythm. They change nothing.

Yeah, there's all the, like different chord progressions and stuff that so many songs use. I don't have a lot of good, like travel skills. So what I'm going to do. Emery, I want to use my. Because we just had a lot of downtime, but we had a very busy downtime in town. So it's actually kind of like almost more relaxing to be out on the road and be able to like.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

You know, we've gotten some new clothes and stuff and new gear, but just going through, doing some minor repairs, keeping everything in good shape. So if you would allow me, I would love to do a sleight of hands to Just keep all of our stuff in good shape and kind of the small maintenance things you have to

do when you're slightly hand feeding your mending trick.

Yeah.

Emery, I got a hole in my southern duds. Help.

Cool.

Oh, your new snazzy suit.

Yeah.

Yeah. And in combination with the mending cantrip too, that does help. But there is some, like, actual mending. Those. That's a nine.

All right.

That's your first. Your first L for the day.

Now we can use starting off hot. We can have multiple of us use the same skill, but yes.

Each of us individually, we can't use the same skill.

Correct. The ranger doesn't get to sit there and just spam survival checks.

Aw.

Like,

yeah.

You said this is gonna be a multiple day trip, right?

Probably like a couple weeks.

You're on the road for a minute.

Can I do a performance check to make like a. A really hearty, like, starting meal for this track? Like, like one breakfast and just make like baller breakfast to get.

While we've got fresh ingredients.

I was going to say not the first breakfast. We're still gorged from the banquet, but

maybe the next day.

Oh, for like the first few meals on the road where we still have access to the fresh ingredients before we have to dip. Dip into our stuff.

Guys, we have fresh ingredients and corn exclusively. Performance is.

Although it is June, we're going through farming communities. We could probably pick up some more fresh stuff.

Yeah, I probably picked a couple of things without people noticing. Yeah, I said performance. There's performance.

Yes.

That is a 22.

That just wins.

Okay.

Just barely got it.

Dude, that. That breakfast was amazing.

So good.

These eggs are really tiny though. Where did you get them?

I think it might have been from a pigeon. I don't know. But they worked. It took a shit ton of them, though.

There's a lot of quail in the plains.

Yes.

You guys probably saw me over here, like,

maybe pheasants.

You know what be awesome though, is I use the mage hand to like filter the stuff through.

Oh, yeah.

That's not the worst idea in the world.

Something.

Yeah, it's from. It's from Casper.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Casper.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. My mind went to Danny Phantom and that wasn't right. Where is Danny Phantom cooking?

You had to find a way.

He was using. He was pouring orange juice through his hand for the orange.

That's what it was. Yeah.

I don't know if I can just like, wrangle horses again. Like I did Indiana Jones style. That doesn't make sense.

Moving stuff out of the way when the roads covered or like, would the road be covered?

Well, yeah. I can't throw a car, though. That'd be pretty cool.

You can take it out of here and push them off.

Yeah, I like that we're doing that.

Okay, let's see how pushing off the car as you go. I dropped it. Where'd it go?

Oh, it's gone forever.

And frankly, some of the best terrain to have to push cars out of the way yet.

The Barbarian just lost it. D20.

I lost one of my D20s.

I think that's a loss. No.

Yeah. If it hits the ground, it's an auto net one.

You find it.

I've heard of some people do that.

I think it's over there.

Oh, it's like right in the middle.

It rolled, so it's so far ahead.

I think I can get it.

Roll something out. Okay, we're working on your dice.

14.

Okay.

That's so close.

Yeah.

If I didn't have a plus seven, athletics would have failed.

You're absolutely. There's not very many electrics that you have to figure out how to get out of the way. They're all gas out here.

The electric ones are cinders.

Yeah, yeah, they're there.

They eventually burn.

Are you sure there's a way to put them in neutral? I don't know what it is. I don't know. I mean, is it a true neutral or that stupid shit cleaning equipment has.

Dude. Yeah.

Where you're just like. Like, this is not neutral. Liar. Yeah, there's a couple of them I run into. I gotta like really yank on them

to get them into neutral. Yeah.

All right. So I am going to go against my better judgment because I described that we've got horses with multiple days of rest and they've got new shoes, they've been eating, so they're feeling frisky. And Elliot describes. So this is story, not my best possibility, but we left town at a dead run. Now, one of them is. That girl was scary as shit. But also Elliot knew from experience that there's a good chance that there might be a little buck in these horses. So. And the idea was to get ahead of that. So we started out at a dead run just to get the blowout so they didn't decide to get frisky and try to buck him off. I'm going to attempt to roll to see if this was successful or not.

All right.

I would like to petition the dm. May I get advantage on the role because I don't have proficiency in animal handling, but because of the horses that he has raised.

Yeah, they're yours. I could see that. We're not trying to handle a random animal.

It's not random. They're his horses. He's. So that was why I'm petitioning for advantage.

Elliot was a cavalryman.

That's fine.

I needed that. So dirty. 20.

There you go. We are at three dubs.

Ls.

Yeah.

One L. One L. I remember this

happening last time, too, where I was. All of our failures.

Makes you feel any better? Your moderator was that way for something you were saying, go back to your own little.

That's okay, buddy. You just sleep over there and watch that screen real good.

Very much not sleeping.

That happens.

Mostly sleeping. So I think, I don't know, maybe a couple days travel. There's a good chance that we'll come across a small town and we might feel brave enough to actually pass through it instead of go around. And I think that Mel, having mostly healed now, I suspect at least, because I know we were doing some magic to try to make the jaw slightly less visible in the facial deforming scars. She, in a fit of less frequent perkiness, decides that she can convince the townspeople that we are completely harmless and to trade with us.

Okay.

And I think that Mel's going to try to persuade them that.

All right,

Ten.

That's a fail.

I love to think that, like, the one with the gnarly facial scars, like, we're totally fine.

Yeah.

Hi, guys.

We're completely harmless.

We.

Ah, yeah.

I forgot about the stitching.

Anyway, you want to trade, you know,

how many ice to send Leatherface at him?

You know what I mean? Jesus.

And, like, you know that we're all still black and blue all along.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

It's now a couple days. Or, like, having been a couple days since the battle. Like, I'm sure Mel's bruises are trying to turn that really gross shade of green. Oh, yeah. But she's absolutely determined that she's still got it. She is wrong.

Your bruises are the same shade as my face.

The swelling's starting to go down, though.

That's good.

You're fine.

Space is returning to the right shape.

I feel like we're about to have an existential, like, question of our own usefulness here.

Back to the start.

Okay. I was gonna go on a similar track. So I think maybe at that point, Emery kind of steps in to control this social situation and throws in some creative storytelling to explain what the fuck happened that we got so beat to shit and that we are harmless. We truly are. We mean this town no harm. But everything, all the story is like a complete fabrication of, like, why we're traveling and all the things.

If we were dangerous, we wouldn't be this bruised.

Sure.

That's just the other guy. They're perfectly fine.

Clearly, we lost.

We're not a throat. We get our asses kicked on a daily.

Yeah. So pulling on some threads of truth, but, like, also just trying to, like, smooth things over so we can get some fresh stuff, you know, make some trades and move on without leaving too much of an impression on people.

That's the best ladies do because they're

absolutely gonna remember the perky girl with half a face.

So that is a 16 total for that one.

Beautiful halfway on the Ws.

Emery, I think you might have to do the talking from now on.

Yeah, unfortunately, Phantom of the Prom isn't gonna

mel. Absolutely pouts on the horseback for a solid hour after that one. It's still healing.

Everything looks awful when it's healing. It'll start to fade sometime.

Yeah.

At least your skin is gonna go back to what it used to be. I'm green always.

Now we'll pick up some vitamin E serum at one of these abandoned pharmacies somewhere. Stuff's really good for scars.

I shouldn't say anything nice to you since you called me Phantom of the Prom, but it's a nice shade of green.

The jolly green average guy.

He's kind of mint ice cream green.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right. Minty.

Minty. Appropriate that you're wearing an elf hat smell.

That's the entire reason I'm wearing the Santa hat with the elf ears.

I love that. It's an elf cowboy hat.

I saw that the store and I'm like, fuck, yeah, I'm getting a hat. Ain't no way I'm passing up that hat.

Gonna go saddle up his reindeer.

Yee haw.

Brass lipstick yak.

I had a thought and it just.

The elf that just wanted to be a chef.

Yeah. Oh, I knew the elf that wanted to be a dentist, but not the one that wanted to be a chef.

Second time this week come up in the wild. Oh, the dentist elf.

Yeah.

Hermes the elf bbs.

Ah, fuck.

How about a medicine check on Mel

since immediately the consensus keep us all in good shape but also restock and stuff too.

Yeah, no, go for it.

I think that's a good idea.

I still have some Icy Hot James way.

Yep.

It's okay. I'll get over it.

Well, that makes one of us.

That's another 19.

So that's a 25.

Yeah. All right. That is barely five and two.

What is this? Marco's game?

No pressure. Genuinely.

Yeah. Yeah. We're doing good.

It's still second quarter but since the

last time we did this we were at like max failures too.

So I'm going to say we've moved on from trading. We've done our right. Like we're moving on to the next like another town. I want to use performance some way.

Okay.

So let's say we're running into another town and you know, people are feeling kind of suspicious. So I'm going to put on like a. Some sort of full knock style performance that would make them feel a little more comfortable with us being around their area.

I would love.

I'm not.

Oh no.

Okay.

I'm thinking.

Okay. I'm incredibly curious. So what Olnok would come up with?

Yeah.

So like to relax these people.

I don't know.

Like he's. I don't know. Hello, random town.

Would you like axe. Would you like axe throwing lessons?

Maybe we've caught a town that is having some kind of like fair or festival.

Yes, we're doing that. And I'm using my hammer to fucking break all the carnival games. Cuz that sounds fun to me. Now how that benefits us, I haven't really worked out in my brain. But that's what I'm going to do.

Fair so that we.

I'm going to win all the stuffed animals for the tiny children's. That's what I want to do.

You can donate them to the children's hospital.

Appreciating yourself to all fair who happens to also kill people.

And I feel like all the kids just use you like a giant juggler jam.

Absolutely.

All right, little guys.

Yeah, yeah.

We got Santa Olnock over here.

That's going to be a 15 plus 4.

There you go. Just making. See, I started out thinking you were going to do like some juggling with some battle axes and some heads.

Oh.

Oh.

Hey, Bullnok Performance. Dark directions very fast.

That's true.

Yeah. You guys might want to rain. I am losing control. I don't know where I'm going with this. This worked out so far. Just please make me stop.

You are at 6 dubs.

Woohoo. We just need two more.

This lap could kill the game. Finish it off.

Ow.

No pressure.

All done.

Yep.

Yeah.

We just end the episode cut and

then the episode just suddenly start fucking failing.

Wow, that one was really short.

Next episode we're gonna try this because though these kids really enjoy the hobnobbing with the city folk. But we still have to get between cities. And one night during his watch, Elliot detected somebody that he feels that had come in to camp and check us out. So Elliot, without waking anybody up, stealth into the darkness, which he's exceptionally good to go find this individual. And he did catch them. And he knew he was a scout from a group of thugs, eyewaymen that were preying on innocent folks. So we're gonna see if Elliot stealthed up to him and took him out before he could report on their position or not.

Remember that whole thing about you're probably not gonna see combat?

Oh, this is narrative combat. It's not like it's a real challenge for Elliot to kill some random guy

or sneak up on them.

Well, is it 11?

Oh, no.

So he did not sneak up on him. It started a fight. He still killed him.

But he didn't get a sneak up.

Woke us up. Because you didn't let him get too far.

Yeah.

Hey, Ellen, what you doing?

Oh, God, pajamas.

Oh, man, you're gonna start some. Not let me.

Yeah, he was hoping to sneak up in the dark and, you know, knife in the air and then get back and not even have to wake anybody up. But unfortunately just wake up with help.

Oh, this would be so much easier

if you just stay quiet.

And that failed to progress us nicely through our storyline.

Yep.

Which means I have to think of another one.

Oh, no pressure.

I think one morning on Mel's watch, because Mel always takes morning watch, she's over here kind of just a little bit away from the main camp, doing her morning, tied in a knot, stretching, going through her movements and all of that. And by some miracle, she actually hears something outside of what she's doing and immediately goes on like, high alert. The camp's getting raided. Like, we're going to get killed. Like, she's about ready to start screaming for help. And what she instead finds is she's like, no, I can do this. So she decides to go up to wherever she hears the sound, and she's gonna scare whatever it is away. So she's gonna try to intimidate it.

Okay.

So she's gonna go up. It's something like rummaging around through the storage and the packs and things like that. Yeah, that's it. Mel's absolutely convinced she's finally gonna get the snipe. And she didn't even have to call, so she's super excited. But she's gonna scare it away because she doesn't want anything rummaging around in their packs, so she's going to try to intimidate it. For a 14, Mel successfully scares off the raccoon. There is an unfortunate amount of yelling, which then wakes everybody else up.

It was close enough to time it.

Yes.

Yeah.

I think it started out like a he yaw. And then she said it was a raccoon. Like, he yaw.

Do you hear?

Like, she. No, she thinks. She thinks. Well, first she thinks she's being stealthy, which she's okay at, but not good. So she's, like, stealthing through so anyone who was sort of awake would hear crunch, crunch. Shh.

Crunch, crunch, crunch, snap.

And then all of a sudden, you hear. And she realizes it's a raccoon. And then both she and the raccoon scre. And everybody runs their separate ways.

It's unsettling, though, how, like, old raccoons are, Especially when you start. Cause I have had to chase raccoons out of sheds before, and they run straight at you. Oh. Ready to mess you up.

You know, that raccoon looked her dead in the eye before deciding whether or not it wanted to take her.

Yeah. And it barely decided to run away instead.

Yeah.

Belle almost had to punch a raccoon. I would have kicked it, you know. Okay. Interesting fact I learned in the last year, Raccoons can get up to be, like, £50.

Oh, no.

They can get huge.

I have seen some absolutely monstrous ones out in palisade because they gorge themselves on all the fruit, too.

Oh. You know, actually.

Yeah.

Seeing the ones over at the city, the ones that, you know, eat all

the cat food, I thought they maxed out at, like, 15, 20 pounds. I had no idea they got that.

Yeah, they can produce.

Yeah. Big boys.

So anyway, Mal successfully intimidated the raccoon.

Possibly starting and ending with you.

Yeah, apparently so.

Possibly.

Possibly. Great. I'm going for athletics, but I think I want to do it in, like,

a

climbing and maneuvering kind of way. Like, there's maybe a couple points where the. One of the bridges the road normally crosses has, like, collapsed, and we have to make our way across and get everything. All of our stuff across and stuff like that. Or, you know, someone falls down one of the. There are, like, ravines and, like, creeks and stuff that cut across the plains, too. So, like, there's just. Yeah. So something like that where it's, like, pulling things out of where it's fallen down into a ravine or, like, helping to get across one where, like, a bridge would normally get across. Getting all of our stuff to the other side, Things like that.

Awesome.

So I would like to go for an athletics on that.

Gearford

landed solidly on a 17 plus 5 for a 23.

That is a W. You guys got 8 and 3 losses only.

So that is a pretty dominant, Nice, good job, team.

So I will need somebody, one individual to roll a D20.

Okay, I'll do it. Would you like to know what the number is?

19.

19 again. That's the third 19 I've rolled in a row.

Wow.

I was gonna joke, like, roll another 19. And then I was like, if I say that you're gonna roll a one, kill it two.

So this will come into play at the end of the descriptive bit. This will be as you're rolling into Notre Dame.

I thought you're gonna say rolling into combat, like rolling initiative.

The magically inclined feel a rush of energy in their body. Each spellcaster in the party may cast their next level appropriate spell spell without using a spell slot.

Ooh.

Get a freebie.

Nice.

I feel like that would still set some of us on edge though. Cause after the last time that we walked into a place that made our magic go wibbly, wobbly.

Emery gets set on edge strongly.

It's okay. It's okay. Your hair's not sticks anymore. It's nice.

Fantastic job of hand. You're frankly darn good at this. You've traveled quite some ways as a group now.

Yeah.

It's so much easier than the mountains.

Oh, hell yeah.

The biggest obstacle you're finding on your travel is you just keep running into cities.

Yes.

There's so many people everywhere.

But you leave Carson by the end of the day, you're in a. Probably it looks like about a junction sized town called Atlantic. Might be a little small line. Kind of hard to tell from satellite imagery. Fair. I don't know. Yeah. But you make your way and the first big town you find yourself is you got to get through Des Moines or around Des Moines. Yeah. Which. Des Moines is very Denver. It's sprawled out. It's even got its own. I think I saw a Lakewood. Oh. Somewhere in here. Got a Highland park instead of a Highland Ranch.

Weird.

They didn't handle animal here. They just hung out. So you gotta get around that. And that's a. That's a pretty time consuming detour because it's sprawling. You cut around south to avoid it. And it's not crazy long after that. Couple, maybe a couple days travel before you are running into the next town named the next city. That's a weird name for a town of East Moline. East Moline which is very again Portland meets Vancouver where it's right on the Iowa Illinois border. There's a river runs through it cutting it right in half. But that's the biggest obstacle you guys keep running into is you just keep running into densely populated areas. The perk is you can see him coming. There ain't a whole hell of a lot farms and flat stuff. This road that you're following does tend to kind of stay near the rivers. So there is a fair amount of tree growth and larger vegetation right on you. But you can easily. Yeah, you do. You run into a handful of bandits. You know some more of the Richardson boys trying to pull stuff kind of vibe. But they're not even kind of worth your effort anymore. You just.

We keep coming across like telephone poles blocking the road. Like God damn it, not again. Come out.

Why are the same strategy.

Y' all ain't slick. We know y'. All.

You're there. We will win.

There's not even bushes. You're just crouching at the corner.

How about we just don't fight and pretend we did for the ones that

still try to fight us. We have learned to do non lethal damage.

Yes.

There you go.

Mel can pull punches now.

You guys roll in too much.

We can throw my hammer softer. That's what we'll say.

What we've learned is like the consequences of dealing with rifle. We're not killing people right outside of town.

It's so annoying because you kill them once, then they come back. Then you have to kill. It's so much easier just to knock their asses out.

Yes.

So Google has decided that you don't get to take the interstate for reasons.

That's okay.

It must be constructive.

Interstate's overrated.

But you pass this really pretty area called Lake Ponderosa. It's got very what's that big Lake Tahoe vibes like this was. I don't know if this is or not. It looks to me like this is is probably a man made reservoir. Okay. Very Lake Tahoe. Where there was just this like valley that they fill with water. So it's a long skinny lake with a lot of weird fingers coming off of it. As opposed to a more natural rounded. And right off of it is the town of Montezuma. We'll say that's where you guys had your little training attempt. It looks to be about a Delta esque sized town.

Okay.

It's got a dollar general manufacturing plant and super value which I'm guessing is like a little tiny convenience store.

Is that like a small grocery store?

Yeah, possibly one of those Midwestern. Probably got some weirdly baller fried chicken or something.

Yeah, they always have like one thing

they're really good at and that's where you guys are able to take care of your trading. You know, after the surprise from Mel's attempt of scarfacing her way say hello to the rose action, Emory does come in for the W. This place does have a fair amount of farming around it. A lot of soybeans, a lot of corn, a lot of wheat. But enough of the folks, you know the thing you're picking up. The Cajuns did a pretty terrible job of explaining this because they frankly didn't give a fuck. But a lot of the farmers were already locked in for this season's grow. They already procured their seed. They'd already set set themselves up assuming it's going to be just another corn soybean wheat season. So unfortunately they're trying to pivot and they're doing an okay job. They it's not like the other seeds didn't exist in the area, but they

are still quantities that you need for that kind of growing.

Exactly.

If you think about it, they're also not able to use their farming equipment

so they cannot plant nearly the amount of the land they would otherwise.

They're out there plowing by hand.

And a lot of them, you know, they were running on automated irrigation systems like they're struggling.

There's some poor guy that the short straw that's like out there pumping water.

And the downside to corn is it's not really nutritious. It can be filling but it doesn't got a lot going for it. So you're passing a lot of hungry. But these are good, you know, these are good community minded Midwestern folk. They have learned, if they didn't already know this lesson, they have learned the incredibly hard way recently that they have to be community minded. And a lot of them are willing to just trade information right now because they're so isolated. And you do hear a fair few people asking about Carson when they hear that that's where you're coming from because you know, it was quite literally a beacon of hope just to the left of that.

Not so much unfortunately.

Nightmares, that's all we found.

Yeah, we don't go into like super detail. I just tell them that like unfortunately a lot of the rumors were unfounded. Unfortunately. I mean it was a good thing

the rumors were not true. They're great People, but they're not any better off than anybody else.

Probably tied to some of the deception in what Emery rolled is like, you know, spinning Carson in such a way.

Like, no, they don't have electricity.

Yeah. Oh, no, we did stop there because we heard the same thing, but it was as kind of a fabrication. Just an excuse to get people to go there and whatever.

A city with power in this day and age is a myth.

You're definitely. You see kind of a weird mixture of emotion. You anticipate the disappointment.

Yeah.

Because, I mean, again, it was a literal beacon of hope. The only place with light. Oh, if they have it, maybe we can too. Or frankly, if things get too bad, we at least have somewhere we can go that may be better. So you definitely see a lot of disappointment, a lot of slumping shoulders. But you also see a fair amount of people almost. Almost relieved, like, all right, we're not doing that poorly then.

Yeah. And there's that kind of like, okay, well, now we can just kind of get on with our new normal and not worry that there's something we're not doing that we should be.

Yeah. A lot of people's resolve seems to be hardening around you as you're telling these stories isn't. All right, well, then this is where we're at. This is what we're gonna solve. Kind of energy. So you do. It's an interesting. It's not necessarily fun conversation, but you guys have information. You've traveled a lot.

Yeah. And, like, in the interest of, like, trade and stuff, too. I mean, you say that a lot of people are willing to trade in information too. Are there people who are, like, trying to get in contact with other people or hoping to hear, like, send word to other play? Is there ways in which we can do this because we are heading east, you know, perform any of these kinds of services for people. So because we have limited capacity for, like, carrying stuff to trade with, and we're not really picking things up that are useless, like, we can, like, show up and do work or, you know, trade in other ways.

But, yeah, I would say it'd be reasonable for you guys to create a very, very inefficient pony express.

Yeah, well, it's one way communication. Like, we'll take it east with us, but we're not bringing new replies back.

And it's kind of. Kind of, you know, people are understanding. They know. They don't necessarily know why. I'm assuming you're not telling everybody, hey, we're gonna go kill him or no,

and right now we're using Edna Mae as an excuse because she has to get to Notre Dame.

Oh, fuck, I forgot about her.

Because I'm guessing that we probably could run into a lot of, hey, my mom lives in the next town.

Can you go find her and let

her know that we're okay?

Yeah, those smaller trips, you're getting a lot of that.

Of like, please tell my. And you're also getting a fair amount of how are things?

Yeah, what's going on from that?

So there's absolutely a lot of that they do. You know, people weren't exactly anticipating the once a year mail card to show up today, but you know, you are getting some people like, please wait, I've got something for you, but I got something I need you to carry.

Sure. And I'm guessing as we show up, we're like, hey, we're looking for these people because that town sent us with these.

Yeah, we got like a one way

communique going and we're mostly trafficking in, like, paper because we do have limited space.

Yes, right. Yes.

Letter. Literally letters. Messages.

Yep.

Preferably short ones.

And so, yeah, you're definitely. You're definitely getting a lot of that.

No, I'm not gonna send spam. That's stupid.

No, I will not send your chain letter. And no, nothing terrible will happen if they don't pass it on.

What do you mean? Jury duty. We're taking jury.

Come get me

coupons. You understand Coupons.

So, yeah, no, absolutely. And people that trust that they know. It's a weird mix of like, I don't know when I'm gonna hear back, but at least my insert here.

Yeah, they will know.

Yes.

Oh, no, I haven't talked to my insert here in months. Whatever shall I do?

That's really unfortunate, ma', am, but this doesn't have a stamp on it.

Why don't I go ahead and get a round of perception checks from the table?

No.

Yes.

That's not terrible. But not good enough, I don't think.

Oh, I beat my passive 11, 15, 18.

You know, you guys have a couple nights where people absolutely insist that you stay or you come grab a drink at the XYZ Tavern or the whatever. These are people notorious for hospitality. Right, that's true. So despite your earnestness, you are. You are forced to hang out, just do the social graces every now and again.

I don't like it.

Emery doesn't mind because we're not carrying much in the way of drinks with us. Like, I think it is fun to stop and have some alcohol.

They are figuring out corn mash liquors real quick. You're getting some. There is some fucking strong shit starting to fill these shelves.

Some of this stuff could probably jumpstart a car. Even the apocalypse, the first day on

the road is sometimes a little bit rougher.

After heading a town, does it feel brighter to everybody else, just me?

No, it does, it does.

You're right. My everything burns.

I honestly think though, especially as a result of trying to be that outgoing and continuing to fail miserably at it as time has gone on. Mel's actually not as forthcoming in those as she would have been previously.

Yeah, I think too, like, it's almost in partnership with the other character growth that Mel has done already that she's starting to lose some of the ability to do some of these charismatic things. Because she's so used to being able to just kind of play. Play on who she is and make nice with people in her bubbly, fake, people pleasing way. Not that it's always fake, but like

it's not working anymore.

I don't.

She's like deeply unsettled by this. Like, this is my one thing I can do and I can't do the thing.

More and more people know who I am and I don't like it.

So I'll honestly think increasingly is a really result of that too. When everybody else is over here. Like, the world is entirely too bright. Mel's like, well, maybe you should have gone to bed earlier.

That passive aggressive shit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because she apparently can't play on being bubbly. She can now move into her know it all phase.

So the thing that Mel especially is noticing is some of her hardness. She could see it in effect where people come up interested. These are a lot of small towns and now you can't travel. So if nothing else, ooh, new girl plays in pretty naturely. You're seeing for the first time whether it's intentional or not. Interests actually change through the conversation of like, oh, oh, you're kind of prickly.

Ooh.

Instead of the just pure bubble that you were in college.

It's fine. I mean, she got turned up by a vampire. How much worse can it get?

I think at some point on these traps, one of the towns, another. It's kind of a rough group that kind of gets kind of gets watching Mel and Elliot's gonna watch and kind of see what she's going through a little bit and just kind of stand up and just go, yeah, this is my daughter. Back off.

There might also be a Point where Mel absolutely just decks someone who gets handsy. Like, there is absolutely a moment of like, everyone else is way too, way too far into their cups and someone gets a little handy and Mel just backhands him and lays about Elliot just

kind of like, mellow.

You good?

I'm going to bed.

All right.

That was this fucking killer right hook. You should train that more better. That was awesome.

I actually punched a guy with that hand.

Probably you are at one of those, like, cliche like, roadhouse biker road houses. And it was definitely like a biker club, and now it's a biker home.

And I honestly, there's also probably that moment too, where after Mel just like, just solid right hook and lays him out and she's like, oh, that was

the first one I ever killed.

And it goes to bed.

Yeah. Because the first guy she killed was the hiker.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

They're like, whoa, I wonder what happened to that pocket knife.

So with your guys perception checks. The one thing you are picking up on is, you know, you're at these taverns, you're getting a couple drinks, and you guys have had a genuinely interesting travel. You have got a lot of fucking cool stories. Especially people in the Midwest can't compare with. Right. Like, their story is. Woke up and tried to grow some more food today. Probably gonna do that again tomorrow. Might go to church on Sunday. Like, that's their world.

Yeah, yeah. They're probably not getting a bunch of, like, wandering zombies out here.

I can assure you, farming is far more interesting. The worst possible ways.

Like, you're starting to, like, people are starting to be able to finish your stories. Like, I heard rifle. You guys, you're the ones that killed the werewolf. And rifle.

Yeah, I got bit. I'm not. I'm not a werewolf anymore. Let me stress that. That was a weird spot to start that. Yep, that's. Hold on, hold on.

Wait, wait. We fixed it. But who told you about.

How'd y' all know that?

How do you hear about rifle? People in the same state barely know about rifle.

There's word of these travelers traveling travelingly. Dylan, can you tell these?

There are so many words in the English language, bud.

Like, you know, we hear about some things. You know, people travel through here a lot. People don't stay here, but people are traveling. You got folks trying to find their families every. There's a lot of little interesting side quests that folk are.

Yeah, but like, specifically who?

Yeah, I don't know their name, but they said that they'd been in rifle. And they heard about these folks that killed a werewolf. There can't be that many rifles, I mean, that had werewolves killed by a pack of travelers.

A pack of travelers.

I mean, there's a group of.

We are another gaggle of travelers. Yeah, we are a pack of travelers.

A flock of travelers have been referred

to as a murderer.

Yeah, I was gonna say, I believe we are, in fact, a murderer of travelers.

Or you'll hear, you know, in a different town, you hear somebody, like, recognize the story of. You hear a tale of a small town that had a horrific zombie outbreak. Something hit their pen and it blew the wall open. People are using it as like a precautionary tale of like. Like, this is why we stopped corralling them. We heard about this town that had them corralled.

And I literally feel like when people tell us that, I just look at

James,

why don't you tell him about the fungus? Tell them about that Ulnock Ix.

Nay, all the Unger. Fire Ungerfey.

And you notice one of the roadhouses. You see a familiar patch. Literally, the guy you knock out is from the same club as the first group. Then later, you know, you get a fair amount of grudging respect from the rest of the bar. Just like, he's a dick. Yeah, unfortunately, he's good at what he does, but he's a dick. He deserved that. Good job. And you know, they. Through conversation, you end up finding out about the. The crew that was at the truck stop and how they're tangentially. I mean, it's not. This is like the Hell's Angels. They don't all know each other.

Right.

It's a big group. But they do ask about the crew in Junction. Cause they're like sister organization.

They're all fine. Everybody's fine. This is fine.

Mel goes to bed early right after.

Yeah, night, guys. I'm out.

You guys have. It's weird. You're almost developing a folklore about yourself that people aren't realizing is all you. As you're traveling, the stories are. You could tell. The stories are traveling.

It's weird.

And some of them, you know, some of them definitely, definitely downplay your achievements to something that people find way more reasonable, which is fair. But the story about the zombie outbreak has just blown just goofy proportion. It is. You guys apparently walked on water and created absolute acts of God.

I mean, if you think about it, these.

I mean, it was pretty goofy to be there.

If you think about it, the. The. The things that happened with the beans is already hard enough to Believe. And that actually happened. So people telling other stories from whence he was standing.

Right.

And the tree was walking around, lifted

him up and seeing him. You do hear people talking about Johnny Appleseed again, as if. As if he's real again. And you're hearing about apparently a modern John Henry going around solving problems with his hammers to hear about modern Pecos Bill. You're hearing American folklore blending into your own stories as you're kind of generating your own myth just through your actions as you're traveling.

That won't go to Olnok's head at all.

Guys, I feel like we need a

name now while we're traveling. So there's nobody around. I'm just gonna approach like, hey, I heard this last night and it sounds familiar.

Who is ahead of us?

That's what I'm trying to figure out.

Yeah. Who the heck got ahead of us?

As far as I know, we're going as fast as we can go to get here. Who in the world is at? I mean, how are they at?

To be fair, we did detour to Carson. Yeah.

They may have just skipped Carson.

And we did stay in Fort Morgan for. For a good chunk of time.

Have we started hearing stories that was

the zombie hell of a detour through the mountains. Yeah, yeah. So the rifle story had all sorts of time to.

Oh, that's true. That's true.

The most about is the rifle story.

If people are just following the interstates like, and that's the easiest way to get across the country. That's why they built them.

I guess that is the question. Are we running onto a fair amount of other people? People traveling? Like, maybe not this epic cross country, but a. Like I was over on the Front Range and now I'm going back to my family in Missouri or whatever.

Absolutely. The times where you're in the. Where you're talked into the taverns or the roadhouses. Absolutely.

Okay.

There is obviously a fair amount of locals, but you are far from the only travelers.

It is.

It's all.

There's probably a lot of like college age people doing that where it's just like, shit. I went to school across the country. I want nothing more than to be back with my family right now. So I'm gonna group together with this band of other people from the East Coast. We gotta get there.

Kinda like the exact opposite. Amel, who's actively moving away from her father.

We've talked about this. He never once helped me when I asked for help. But he doesn't get the right to do it now.

Yeah, it's definitely. And it's a fun mix because there are absolutely college bros having their own little cross country camping adventure. Everybody is facing some shit.

I absolutely feel like there's a moment where we pass some people who have already set up camp alongside the road and Belle is looking at me like, no, no, no, no. The pole goes on the other side of the tent. Trust me on this.

Shortly thereafter, you hear Jacob say, just don't trust her. Cassie's still having to build the tent

as he's actively building the tent.

Yeah, Jacob is the. Jacob's the tent builder. If we're gonna put up. Take the time to put up a tent. Jacob's the one who owns that.

You can hear his eye roll.

Mel, that's not how you do. That is totally. No, don't listen to her. Don't listen to her.

The tent has fallen apart so many times.

Yep.

It's fun to watch everything but we have a mending spell.

We can fix it. Yeah.

Which is why in a lot of our downtime, Emery spends time fixing.

Every time Mel gets pissed off and just starts poking things through the tent, Emery comes over

after. Mel eventually gives up and storms off. Emerie comes over and helps Jacob and Emery fixes shit while he builds the tent.

I'd love to think that at some

point that little side conversation sounds like it'd be so entertaining. Like, it's okay, buddy. She'll figure it out one of these days. It's been almost a year.

It's only been like two months.

I know. It hasn't been that long.

Mel has totally tensioned one of those poles and it's cutting loose and just across Canada.

Oh, yeah, totally. Belle has pole vaulted off one of those things accidentally.

I think Emery and Jacob are making a game of it to like, make bets on like how many holes, what breaks first.

Like, he does get legit excited one night when you absolutely demolish your distance record.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like an arrow bile bell's over here. Half a mile away. I hate this fucking tent. Why do we put this thing up? This is stupid.

But also, as you're traveling, you see you're clearly passing through quite a few. Few adventures. Right? You see what used to be clearly a oil refinery just leveled. Something horrible happened there, right? Burned out all around it. You're seeing a fair number of now abandoned and barricaded off buildings with handwritten signage just saying, don't bother, don't go in there. But for the most part, I mean, you guys, you guys rolled rather well, the travel isn't bad. Even the most crazy hilly area here is not much, frankly.

Oh my God, guys. A mountain steps over it.

Like hey, these folks are proud of them. They put signs on those.

I know. I love the fact that there's some places that proudly elevation 400ft.

Highest point Mexico.

There are so many of those goofy ass road attractions too. And because we're moving slowly enough on horseback as it is too, I think for a few of those we definitely. As long as it's not too far off of our path.

Do we want to go see the world's largest palo?

Yes.

Oh my God. Yes. I was just thinking about that guys.

The largest frying pan. I want to see all knocked out. Yes.

I want to see all the roadside attractions. All of them.

All of them.

1. One town that does have some chaos pretty obviously had occurred is again, it's that town that was right on the border. Well, the town that was around the border of East Moline. That's at least the Illinois name, what they've got. It has the Rock island arsenal right off the river. And you can tell there was some serious fighting for power over there. Like to the extent of. As you're starting to approach the two military guys are recognizing like pretty sure this is damage from mortars and artillery out here. It's old now. It's not burning anymore. But it's that distinct cratering and distinct building damage that only artillery and mortars can really cause.

We need to stay away from this place.

Yeah. Even if like we bring about the people. The dead ones probably came back. That probably created a lot of undead.

Yeah.

Are we running across any other suspicious cults being overly generous? I mean like we ran across in the outskirts of Denver and stuff.

You see, you definitely see some of that. You recognize some of the symbology. They're definitely out here. But you do, as you're traveling, you see the flail becoming less prominent on their wardrobe iconography. Yeah. Thank you. On their iconography. The scales starting to become more dominant. Okay. It has a different county now.

New cult leader.

Yay.

Well, one of them mysteriously went missing.

I can't wait to mispronounce this guy's name.

I didn't remember what the fuck it was, to be honest.

It's Arpentrix.

You were faster than my afraid that's

too easy to say. Lord Ashflow, whatever the fuck.

We have Ashrafel, our petro.

That one was so easy to mess up.

And in C2 they're all going to start with B.

I wasn't even intentional. Oh, we got a long show ahead of us. If that's the case. This is the a season 26 seasons later. I don't even know if I could make that interesting.

Not with the same group of characters. Season B is different group of.

It's the B team, obviously.

If you want to hear about the real B team, you should find us on Patreon, where the sidequest is.

B team.

I don't know that I'd call them the B team.

I have been in all of our drops.

Yeah.

Have you?

Yeah, we're the B team.

I think we should be lower on the list.

I thought you were about to talk us up. But no.

For barely B.

For barely A team.

Yeah, we're doing great.

So about the time you guys are died yet.

Doing okay.

Pass the near Joliet, which is not a notoriously well off area. You start hearing the. The. The. The scale and the scale iconography is now the dominant. Like fully dominant. Obviously behind all of it. The scythe is dominant. Right. But the flails are absolutely background noise. You are fully in scaling, scaling.

And you hear it's been scaled up a notch.

You hear people talking about the taxi.

So it begins. I wish I'd paid attention and kept.

I guess it's time for the revolution cartoon.

All right. And Joliet is. You can. I don't know if you could literally see the Great Lake from Joliet, but you are close, so you definitely can feel the Great Lake.

I.

The air here, it's been humid. The air here is not unlike the ocean at this point. Not unlike being near the ocean. It's not as salty, obviously, but it is. You guys start doing much of anything and you are just sweating. It's getting pretty stinking warm during the day. Yeah, it is. It is not a lot of fun.

I probably switch outfits at some point back to my other clothes. So that's why I'm not sweating through my nice southern duds.

Wool chaps.

Yeah, I took those out.

He hasn't been wearing those for a while. You traded those at some point, right?

He destroyed them.

Yeah, he put them in the washing machine.

It took a lot of coaxing to get you to amend them so I

could wear them at some point.

Yeah. I think as we get into hides,

you had to bribe me pretty good.

Winter will return. Yeah.

Winter will be coming again. I will need these at some point. I will not wear them now.

You ought to carry them that long. That's up to you, my friend.

I think as we get into high humid summer. Belle has broken out all of the tiniest of her workout garments. Like whatever, the bare minimum you can ride on, you can wear on horseback without uncomfortable chafing us.

But unfortunately you're finding a lot of like, well, fuck, I guess I'm stuck in denim. Your yoga pants versus the grinding on the leather saddle is just not.

We have someone with mending. It's fine. This is fine. I just owe. I owe em a lot of favor favors.

When the fibers stop existing, it gets a lot harder to mend. It's fine.

What have been meant? There's nothing left.

I've definitely.

I think your leggings have gotten shorter.

I've definitely been start taking material from

the ends to patch.

Yeah.

They wear yoga pants. They're yoga capris.

Yes.

Soon they'll be biker shorts.

Yes, that'll. Exactly. That's exactly what's going to happen to those.

James has absolutely switched back into a chef outfit because he was used to sweating in that.

I mean, honestly, they're not bad. They make like.

Oh yeah. The one that I have is great. Actually.

I think we're finding the same issue with the pants. I mean they're just not meant for that kind of.

Yeah.

Denim became the standard for a reason. It's a very hearty fiber. Or a hearty sew.

Weave.

Whatever.

Make you weave. That's the word. Fabric.

Yep.

But. But yeah, no, this, this sucks. It's getting hot. It's getting moist. The cars, even though you're athletically removing them, you're entering rust territory. Pretty heavy here. They're getting hard to move and some of them been sitting on the road.

But why?

For months now.

Yeah.

I mean all of them have been for. I was gonna say they all stopped

moving at the same time. For narrative's sake. What time are we in yet? Are we in June? July. July.

It was June 5th when we left Carson.

Okay. So we're hitting end of June now.

June. But I think realistically this is. It claims this is an eight day walk with the amount of detouring you're doing to try to avoid cities. And it's not like you're just grinding. Right. You're stopping in towns. You're being.

Yeah.

And we're hunting for food and delivering care of ourselves.

We'll say this is a full two weeks to get from Carson to Notre Dame.

Up with s. June, what?

2 plus 14. 16.

It was 5.

14, 19th, 19th.

Just in time for the soul.

This math. Right. I just can't remember math and memory. Two different skills.

Yeah.

I'll find some numbers and I'll put them together. Well, I'll do some math over here.

Math the out of stuff I'll mess the out of.

Now before we get into, like, the next thing, we're still. Are we still carrying the spell book from Carson? It's still in my pocket.

Yep, it's in the hole. The scary stuff belongs in the hole.

Always.

Okay.

I wasn't sure if we wanted to, like, figure out a plan for that or, like, what we want to do.

Do we want to just burn it at some point?

I mean, did anybody ever cast detect magic on it?

I think I had it up for a while. I had it up for a while because I. Wild magic surge, and it gave me detect magic.

Oh, yeah.

I think that was while it was firmly in the hole.

Yeah, I think so. So I don't know that I actually

took a look at it because, yes, it was you. Wild magic searched at the end of your time in the hole.

Yep.

I feel like when we're well away from Carson and probably well away from anybody else, there might be a night where we take it out and we look at it to try to get a better idea of what it's really capable of.

We all stand back, and I open it with mage hand.

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah.

And Mel and I have looked at a couple of spellbluffs, and I think

the two of us are trying to understand it. Mel less successfully because. Because her knowledge of magic was brief

and limited and whether or not we need to, like, destroy it or if

we can destroy it.

If we can destroy it.

So, yeah, you guys can give me. No, not perception. Arcana rolls.

Okay,

That's an eight.

That's a four.

So this book.

Five is magic. Yeah.

Could I assist with this? Since I'm helping with mage hand and

whatnot, and he's put work into learning magic. Yeah.

He's at least as good as magic as Melis.

It comes to Emery naturally, too. So, like, arcana's not necessarily my strong suit. Fair as a skill.

Another 19.

Not up.

Show up.

You need to go buy a lottery.

It's a different dice.

You need to go buy a lottery ticket, man.

Oh, yeah. It's a plus three. So I got it at 22 total.

So. Yeah. Now, so this is. This. We're gonna say you, with your incredible arcana role, are assisting the people who have some basis to read this. You haven't read a spell book yet.

Right.

So they're able to point at symbols and be like, that one has change vibes. That's similar to what we saw with Captain Spicy Pants.

And there's a lot of. I love it, you know, with spellbooks too, because they have the somatic stuff as well. Because what he has done is a lot of observing of how people perform magic and the shapes of the words and the somatic things with how you move your hands to do certain spells and things like that. So I think because it's a spellbook and you have to have some way to describe these motions and things too. You know, there's a lot of like doing the pieces separately, all three of

you are able to bring some of your real world into this.

Right.

Because there's the sematic. It wouldn't be in my imagining. It wouldn't be that different from trying to learn forms on paper.

Yeah.

Like, I know that they have manuscripts for like Tai chi and stuff where you're moving from pose to pose. They have something that clearly functions that way that Mel is starting to get a grasp on. And there's an inherent recipe like quality.

Aha. The materials.

Right.

Magic music. But magic is the word I meant

to say,

guys, we need three cups of guano for this.

We're not actually doing the spells. We're just trying to learn what's in

here and hopefully not become. Because we're not trying to cast any snared by demons.

And in spite of these, very clearly it's a science you guys don't understand.

Right.

But this is very clearly science. Science. There's also this obvious element of art to it that Emery is just tuning in on. A lot of drawing sigils in the air. Part of the somatic element. But the picturing of what the outcome is supposed to look like is honing in. So the three of you are almost becoming an apprentice wizard.

All three of us together combine which

grasp on what is in this book.

And again, this was. This book, unlike old man McGruber's book, was very clearly a single author spell book. Just page after page of magic. This one has got a multi authority in warfield. So it's. You got a page studying a spell. It's not just here's the spell, do it. It's all right. Because of my knowledge of this part of this spell and this part of this spell, I can make this spell.

Yeah. To have like research dissertation and half like actual.

Then a random tangent in a language that you. You guys just can't read.

There's a lot of notes in the

margins and then pictures of useful herbs. Both of our world and stuff that none y' all recognize.

Yeah, I don't.

Not to mention the footnotes. The footnotes are insane.

I don't recognize this herb. It has eyeballs on it.

Ew.

The one thing that's helping the most.

It's seaweed.

Wow.

Tango units.

Good setup. I gotta get. Son of a bitch.

I'll give you a tip.

I enjoy that one.

That's fucking good.

You can hear Mel's eyes roll into the back of her head. Stick there for a solid 30 seconds before.

Don't do that.

You're reading a magic book. You look possessed now. But the one nice thing, honestly, the one thing that's genuinely helping you is Mortarouge had started to understand the book. You can read his notes throughout now. He had a pretty thick, singular focus.

Right.

So the herbs are annotated. There's information in there. Some of it is like, I don't know what the hell this is. I have never even heard of it. Plant kind of like this. But some of it is like. I'm pretty sure yarrow would be a good supplement for that.

When we realized that, I think we might actually try to get Elliot in because he's got some of that herbalism.

Yeah. Especially a lot of the, like, plant identification stuff and all those things.

So you're definitely. I'm not going to say that you guys are even in the ballpark of speaking, like, reading, like, chicken draconic, yet pigeon pigeon draconic. But you're getting to the point where you're able to. You're able to vibes through this. All right, like, this is. This is very obviously a spell. What I'm reading is very obviously a magic. I can do the motions. I can see the end circle. I have no idea what I'm supposed to say, so. But you're definitely making progress. The one thing that you're feeling just the slightest hints of is there's a remnant of something pretty dark.

Yeah.

It's a good thing that we can't actually read some of these words because I don't want to be saying any of this out loud.

Same.

Yeah.

One evil overlord is enough to deal with at a time. I don't want to accidentally summon another one especially tall, dark, and goat legged,

probably.

That definitely triggers a memory.

We all kind of involuntarily.

I'm sure, like, Will LaRouge has a lot of notes on some of these darker aspects of stuff too, because he was dipping pretty hard into that territory.

Oh, absolutely. So you could tell you know, you can tell the section where Cambion was talking to him. That is obvious. The one thing that you do get is you're not feeling any of what he was describing feeling as he was working through this.

That's good.

I think that's one of the other reasons that we're all looking through it together is because we were a little bit concerned about the fact that one of us could end up getting his ass by the bug.

Yeah. And we're not like actively touching these pages. My mage hand is going to be totally up. My mage hand is going to have horns.

Poor Candy possesses a five minute hand.

It's like ubi. It's got the little eyes and it's got horns. Like, oh, dispel that.

Holy callback.

Holy.

I haven't thought about that forever. O, that's pbs that.

Yeah, you're welcome to that callback. Yeah. Every time it starts, like the mage hand starts getting unconscious, I dispel it immediately and then call a new one. It's like, stop it.

Okay, that page is evil. How can you tell? Look at the mage hand. It's going all yucky.

Yeah. It's starting to grow.

It's grew an attitude and it's flipping us all off.

No, they're not only turning the page

with the middle finger.

Yeah.

Fuck you. But yeah, so we'll say that, you know, you guys decide to do this between. Probably between Joliet and. What is this town? There's a lot of Chicago. You see Chicago.

We do not go into Chicago.

We do not Chicago.

The one part that you see that's kind of unfortunate. Unfortunate is there's not really a detouring anymore. Like, you're not going to go into Chicago. You would hit the very, very, very southern edges, but you've got basically a solid population mass all the way through to Notre Dame, which I was wrong. Notre Dame is in South Bend. Maybe that is a fairly big. Maybe there's a big international airport. It looks like there. Oh, that'd be fun.

We had so much fun at the last one.

So, as someone who grew up in California, I just want to point out there are way too many fucking people on the East Coast. They're like everywhere.

Yeah. That's why every time I fucked up, I moved further west. So that's.

People knew me. Fair. Fair. Like, I'm. I'm not gonna lie, I. I missed the woods.

Yeah, I kind of missed them. I kind of missed the mountains. To close things off.

They were so much less humid and I didn't feel Like I was off your horse.

And you don't have a concussion this time, right?

I don't know. I don't know, do I? I start looking up at the sky. Like that's gonna help you.

The shape of the. Her like this condition of her skull.

Absolutely. She may be coming more retrospective, but she's still Mel. Yeah.

She saw you saw the inside of your.

Yeah. So, I mean, there is definitely.

I don't have a headache.

Undeniably.

Wow.

Just a shitload of people. Like, because you've got. You've got a lot of the known towns right through here. You got Chicago, you got East Chicago, you've got the other one. You've got Munster. You've got a lot of. Just dense with weird little. Not. Not unlike Denver, honestly, where it's just suddenly boom. Farms. Yeah. And then boom people. Not a lot of. Not a lot of transition period. Based off of this satellite map that I. That is exactly what I was in. Elbows deep in traffic. And now that's a farm.

Yep.

Yep.

Opens up just to close right back up.

But you guys will say we end this episode. You're firmly in order to get to Notre Dame. It is in town. In fact, you kind of get based off of this, Matt, Notre Dame's flipped huge. You get a feeling that town is around Notre Dame more than Notre Dame is in town.

Why are we here again?

Because Edna May needs to visit her grandson.

I didn't know college really that big. I didn't know.

She's delivering a letter from one of the Companions patriots that died in the Right.

Yeah. We're delivering a prison so they can build a prison.

It looks like it's about. About six bases.

So I guess the question is, aside from the age of Notre Dame itself, are there any weirdly out of place buildings in this.

Oh, yeah.

Any.

Any big ass cathedrals.

I mean, big ass cathedral specifically. Go ahead and give me some fresh receptions.

Oh, also looking for that. I know we were talking about like transitions between like nothing to farm to peak to.

Like, are they all like appropriate to the types of cities you expect to see?

Yeah.

Do we see any?

Or are they like weird medieval Y stuff? Yay.

I don't know.

11. I beat my first twice in a row.

Passive.

10.

I'm gonna say my passive, but I rolled a 3.

Yeah.

Total of 19.

Okay.

A lot of 19s today.

Yeah, you were.

You're fucking hot, dude.

Yeah. Seriously, you need to go buy a lottery ticket.

Just all 19.

Buy a lottery ticket for 19.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I feel fully kind You're a food cat.

Yep. What gave it away?

Cooking. I cannot see a reality in which you travel from New York to Colorado and yet didn't stop at Chicago. Right, Right. Cause Chicago is food land. Right. So baller food. Yeah. So I feel confident in assuming you've been to Tri Town in the past.

James definitely has. Yet. Yeah.

Neither of us have.

I was gonna say I think I got shafted. Some of the worst food I've ever eaten consistently was in Chicago.

I've heard that New Yorkers hate their pizza.

Yeah. Cause it's like deep dish and upside like they put the sauce on top of the cheese and it's all fucked up.

Where's the cheese? It's under the sauce.

Not as weird as that shit they cook in Detroit, but it is.

You serve a New Yorker deep dish pizza and they will yell at you.

Yeah, they're drop palms.

I mean I'm not saying all food in Chicago is bad. I think I just got shafted.

Time I was there, I only was in Chicago for like a couple of days. Outside of the like it was like boot camp break. Everything was amazing. But I think it was because I just came from a naval base.

Boot camp food.

That's fair. That's fair.

So I was like, I like this.

That'll reset your standards.

Be a regular person for a couple.

Last time I was in Chicago I was 3, so I don't really remember.

I got stuck in the airport like six hours.

The thing that's really hard in this area is the humidity is really high. So you don't really get even. Though it's relatively flat, there's not a lot of obstruction and the horizon goes to haze quick. So you're not able to really see deep into the city much. Unlike if you were traveling up the Denver. On a day where smog's under control. You could see a long freaking ways into Denver. Right. You can't hear. It's so hazy. It fogs out pretty. It's not fog, but it. You just can't see through it.

There's more particles.

Same thing we saw up in Portland. You just can't. Even if it's clear sky, you just can't see very far. Clear days are almost worse because it evaporates so much friggin water into the air.

Wait, is this in Chicago or Notre Dame?

Down Chicago and the same, I mean same environment.

Sorry.

So you got the bottom bowl of the Great Lake Chicago. Notre Dame.

Oh, okay. Did not realize they were that close.

Yeah, yeah, me either. Chicago is quite Literally on the lake. Notre Dame is like. It looks like maybe 20 miles from the lake. It's close enough. The lake is a dominating factor still. So as far as huge buildings in the city, you can't see far enough to see that. You see hints of hard cuts in weird ways. Like, you're traveling down, very obviously, a road, and for a while, it's cobblestone, and then it transitions back to pink, and it's this weird. Almost looks like the asphalt is coming loose and revealing.

Oh, it's, like, patchy.

Yeah. As if they had paved over cobbled stone.

Funky. The worlds are bleeding together.

Yes, it's very much. You got a high enough perception check, you're fairly confident that these weren't cobblestoned roads, and the roads knew enough that it shouldn't be that worse. Disintegrating already.

This is definitely like in the dream.

And, you know, you're seeing a hint of wildlife that maybe isn't familiar. You're not a nature guy. And we're well outside of Elliot's sphere of influence, where you're seeing birds that are, like, believable.

Guys. Look at the ears on that hawk.

My God, don't be silly. Hawks don't have ears. Wait, do they? Well, you can't see them,

but when you get to Notre Dame, again, this is a pretty. Pretty hearty campus. In fact, you would actually go within direct sight of their stadium, which is just a monster. It is by far the biggest building on campus. You do see. Almost kind of farmer's market vibes, folks. Kind of a flea market kind of vibes, folks, with stalls using the fantastic grounds and the ample open space of Notre Dame to full advantage. And you do see a group with. They look like they're homemade T shirts. Like something maybe a frat group would put together with a set of scales.

I think the school has a new

mascot throw down in the Fighting Irish town.

I think that's where we're gonna cut the episode.

Ah, great.

I don't like this.

Hey there, listener. I thought the combined outro and ad break style worked well last episode. And again, this episode is just one long scene, so we're gonna combine them again with that in mind. Theater of the Mind presents Retribution Is Amanda Arston as Mel Kelly, Jeremy Arston as Elliot Brandybane. Michael Burnell as Ulnock Vargar Johnson. Michael Downs as James o'. Brien. Casey Weingarten as Emory Lee. And myself, Mike Schock as your dungeon master. Last time we spoke, I told you that we were nearly finished with our Wizards and Wines series at Restoration Vineyard. Well, thanks in no small part to our loyal patrons, that has changed by popular demand, we will be continuing the series throughout the summer. We we will have to shut down a bit during their grape harvest as there simply will not be anywhere for us to be. But aside from that, it is a relatively permanent event. That said, due to nothing other than available room, we did have to cut tickets back to 18 heads. So if you want to join, don't wait. Tickets sell fast. On the other side of the valley are barbarians and brews of event is going strong. So strong in fact that we are adding a dm. Tickets there just like it was in wine are first come first serve. So don't wait. And we look forward to seeing you there. We release episodes every two weeks, so our next episode will drop on March 29th. Between now and then, please have a happy and safe St Patrick's Day. As always, we have a promo code for both Pinecast, who we use to host our podcast, and Epidemic Sounds, where we get most of our music. The songs used today, in order Crawling by Hannah Ekstrom and Anna Dager, I Think I Was Meant to Be Alone by Rebecca Mardal, Atelier Pour La Vie by American Legion and Tango Tres by Rune Dale. The Theatre of the Mind intro and outro were written by Mike Schock. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of our collective imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events, places or people, living or dead, is entirely coincident.

Hey, Brunel.

Can you talk louder?

What do you want from me? How much louder? Decapitation. Yeah, something like that.

No mas.

Oh, we're getting levels for max volume. Decapitation.

You're the top. Another one.

Decapitation.

Who the hell is out there?

I was requested to do.

We were level testing.