S1:E13 – Turkey, prison, and campfire tales.

Welcome to Theater of the Mind. Theater of the Mind is an unofficial d and D five e actual play podcast. Theater of the Mind is not appropriate for all audiences, and therefore, for listener discretion is advised. Welcome to Theater of the Mind, episode 13. My name is Mike. I'll be your DM today. And this week's question is, name something you have been holding back from the group, hoping for an opportunity to tell them. Why have you waited?

My name's Amanda, and I'm playing Mel Kelly. Mel is absolutely terrified. Like, all the time, pretty much. And it's not even, like, because we're in a weird post apocalyptic thing. Like, she's literally always terrified about something, and she has literally never told anybody in her life this ever. And she's definitely not going to tell the group now because we're in a weird post apocalyptic thing, and every day is a battle, and she doesn't want to bring the group down. I mean, nobody needs that kind of negative energy, right?

We need to find her some anti anxieties.

Yeah, you need some Xanax.

Well, it sure is how I eat the kale chips.

Even she doesn't like it.

Out of character.

Out of character. I have learned kale chips are gross.

I'm Jeremy. I'm playing Elliot. Brandy Bane. I'm having a hard time. Elliot speaks. If he wants to tell him, he just tells people and doesn't really care about what they think about it. So I can't think of anything that Elliot would not tell him for later unless he baked a birthday cake. But I don't think he's got a birthday cake in his saddlebags. I got nothing on that one.

You got a birthday cake? You should tell us soon because it's been, like, a week and a half since we left your ranch, and that's the last time you could have baked it.

Maybe it's a birthday cake mix.

Yeah, that cake's birthday crumble.

I am Bernal. I'm one of three mikes, so we go by last name here. I'm playing Olnack Vaga Johnson, and I've mentioned this a couple of times before the incident, so I have not told anybody about the incident because it caused people to lose their lives. And I find myself personally responsible for this. And I don't know how my current friends are going to take it if I bring it up and, like, reveal that some of the decisions I've made in my past during military service cost people their lives. Whether it's entirely my fault or not, it does feel like my burden and I felt responsible, and I just don't know how to bring it forward to the group in a way that would make sense. Also, I'm almost definitely gonna make horrible jokes about it. Cause that's how I cope.

Tis the military way. The darkest of humans. Yes.

I prefer coffee.

Dark coffee and kale chips. Hi, I'm downs. I'm one of the mics, and I'm playing James O'Brien. James most recently told the group kind of, about his backstory, but something that James hasn't told everyone is he doesn't really know what he's doing. He'll be, like, incredibly confident about something that he's doing, and he has no idea what he's doing at all. Just blind confidence.

Well, considering you wanted to take a wheelbarrow to cold Bren, I think some of us are starting to figure that out.

I'm Casey. I play Emery Lee. And Emery, I think, is not. She's trying not to let on how much all the magic bullshit unsettles her. There's a lot of things that have happened that are truly just kind of upsetting in various ways, and she doesn't know how to process it because it's weird magic bullshit, and she doesn't know how to talk about it. So she's just kind of trying to face things as they come instead of thinking about it.

Fair enough. With that. Let's go ahead and roll for recap. We'll go highest guess.

This is clearly a group of people with the most well rounded coping mechanisms.

Actually, I'm sitting here listening this. I'm going. Congratulations. You've just. Your heroes are a group of completely normal people, which is why you should never meet your heroes.

Did you say highest goes or lowest?

Highest goes.

13.

Also 13.

616.

16. What'd you get?

I know.

16. Oh, okay. Reroll.

Reroll. That happens a weird amount.

1015. We started the episode by killing an elk and butchering it. We brought it back to camp, and there was a weird humanoid shape skulking around the outside of our camp, which turned out to be a man in really ragged clothes who talked like he hadn't seen civilization in several weeks and had been in an ATV accident or something close to the time when everything stopped. And we gave him a leg of the deer in order to get him to leave without hanging around too long and sent him off towards rifle. And then we had a totally unbothered night of rest after that. Slept perfectly sound, knowing we had sent a weird man towards rifle and, uh, who eats raw. Oh, by the way Elliot and Olnock have a point of exhaustion is my note here. So they did not sleep soundly. The rest of us slept fine. And that was that.

Perfect.

He ate the elf rate meat raw, by the way. And I think James was having nightmares about that.

Yeah.

Yeah. He didn't even season it.

Monster. No, they eat sage out here. They come preseasoned.

Gross.

And that was the only thing creepy about that guy.

The only thing. Absolutely.

Was it?

Everything's creepy.

Definitely not as weird, animalistic style sounding voice that had nothing to do with him.

Or the fact that his clothes were all torn up and looked like you.

Or the fact that he was clearly a wearable. But none of us know enough about magic to really confront that yet.

Those aren't real.

Exactly.

But apparently it was the right time of the month.

Wasn't that why Elliot and I couldn't sleep? We werewolf talking or some shit?

You guys were skirted cause he was a werewolf. So you did not sleep well. Cause you rolled poorly on your charisma checks. Which makes sense considering the two of you are not exactly charisma based characters.

I have a plus one in charisma.

Yeah.

Yeah, it just didn't do me any good.

Look at you being all pretty.

I have plus three. I have a plus 40.

Yeah, that's right.

James and I have bonded.

All right. And, uh, yeah, I believe we are starting off that morning of the exhausted. What is this morning? Three? Of hunting, or after your second sleep of hunting?

James is gonna get up and he's gonna pop his back multiple times. Like, whoa, better get to the coffee or else mill's gonna kill me. Did you two not sleep?

Olnok. Elliot.

Y'all look like hell.

Shut up.

Okay.

On the bright side, I had help for my watch. And Olak did yoga.

I did.

Olna, did you take a picture with your fancy phone?

It doesn't do that anymore.

Yeah, what good is it?

It was the point of the phone without taking pictures.

It's perfect in every possible way. But if it can't take pictures of.

Olnack doing yoga, then what's the point?

Just please don't push anybody's buttons. Belle starts looking at the sky like he didn't mean it. We love you.

Is she talking to God?

What is that?

What's his we?

Shh.

It's fine.

Hang on. I gotta go. I think. I gotta go use the bushes. I'll be back.

You gotta roll constitution.

I did.

Oh.

I'll be right back.

I think that's gotta go now.

I think that's roll for constipation. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is this about your demonic entity, who.

Is a fine and wonderful. Probably not demonic, but definitely more powerful than us tiny little minions. She's still looking up at the sky like.

Fair enough. Question answered.

So anyway, Olnack did yoga.

How's that?

Like?

I was nice. It was gentle yoga.

It was calming. I did a lot of breathing and stretching. You still look like hell.

So it didn't do much.

No. Could not sleep. How did y'all sleep so well after what the hell we just witnessed? James, you especially. He ate raw meat with no seasoning. I thought that would bother you.

It did.

It gave me where I heard you having nightmares.

It did. It did.

It gave me plenty of nightmares, but I still slept. You decapitated like, three people.

Yeah, but that's.

That gave me nightmares.

That gave all those nightmares.

I did sleep through that.

You're right.

I slept like a fucking baby.

It was amazing.

So from in the distance, you hear, oh, hot diggity. It's about damn time.

It's a good day for Elliot.

I guess it's a good day to chase down some turkeys, huh?

That's what's. Elliot. Elliot should be feeling nice and frisky.

All right, everybody, I got coffee.

We're gonna just cut that.

Cut past that.

All right?

Coffee for you. No, coffee for Mel. Coffee for Elliot.

Can I have a double?

Sure, you can have Mel.

Well, I. Well, okay, in my defense, I've already had two cups.

Yeah.

That'S where all the coffee's going. Put down coffee like a fucking crackhead. It's amazing.

We probably should be a little less judicious with our coffee.

Maybe we can roast some more before. Before it be possible and stock up on our way out.

God, our ten. We're gonna have like ten pounds of carrying capacity of just coffee beans.

I'm okay with that.

I'm perfectly okay with that.

I don't wanna think about facing a world without coffee.

I could talk to the horses.

I wonder if we can start bartering for tea.

I think we can.

I mean, it smells good coffee, but it's better than nothing.

Yeah, that's true.

Maybe we can go on a tea heist.

Go back to our roots, you know what I'm saying?

Have a tea party. Yeah, that sounds fun. You are going to Boston. Oh, my God, we are.

I bet there won't be any tea left by the time we get there.

Unfortunately, not a lot of people grow these things in America.

I don't know if we can all.

Right, Elliot, you're the resident hunter.

Coffee? Are we going turkey hunting now or.

Elliott comes back out of the bushes?

Kind of.

Okay, everyone, it's gonna be a good day. I got a good feeling about today. I'm a little tired, but we'll be. Who wants to go kill some turkeys?

Woo.

Elliot's gonna fist bump.

How many people do you need to.

Sorry, James. I read his name.

My bad.

James is Elliot would totally know how to hunt turkeys.

Yes, he does.

So he is gonna pick the appropriate method and the appropriate place.

So, you know from Grif. Griff told you a location. Yep.

That's true. Not to go there.

So you'll go roughly in the area he talked about.

Yep.

Say it's about. He said it was like, a fair bit of a walk, but he wasn't exactly a quick walker. So we'll say it's maybe 2030 minutes by horse to get roughly to the area you think he was talking about.

I don't know. Reason? I think. I don't know. I think we could all go.

Okay, sure. And just bring with us kind of thing, like break down and.

Eh, I leave camp where it's at.

Okay.

Unless you guys are worried about people coming through.

You know, I've been camping enough times that people are very concerned about leaving food out. That was the only reason I was.

Wondering, um, did we. Did we get our meat hung up properly up in trees away, do you think?

We have talked to you about it? So the last conversation you guys had had about it, you didn't seem really concerned about the food.

But if we leave camp, I definitely don't. We want to hang all the food. If we all leave camp and leave camp, then you're.

Let's have spend a minute doing that. Yeah.

Spend some time on it.

Yeah.

It won't take all that long. Throw a couple ropes in the tree.

Bundle it up, drag it up. Survival check on it. You normally have advantage because favorite train, but you have exhaustion, so it's just a straight roll.

Ooh, that's gonna be good. 17.

Perfect. Yeah. You get it hung up and you're confident you can leave this for, you know, the better part of the day. You can't take a week away. Yeah.

Do you think it would help if Emery did her cold thing on it to give it a nice chilled layer on top?

I can't.

It's been frosty in the morning.

Right? Yep. It's still cold.

It's cold enough.

Okay.

I mean, you. We won't hurt anything to do it. If you want to. But it's cold enough that it probably doesn't need it.

All right.

Yeah. Outside is basically still a fridge. It's still pretty chilly. It warms up. Okay.

But.

I may as well. It's a canned trip. I may as well. I'll just give it a little extra frost before we leave helping.

All right.

Which way to the turkeys?

Griff told you it was somewhere up northish. So you head somewhere up north ish. It takes about 40 minutes by four sea to get there. You get to the rough area you think he's at. You see evidence of turkey. There's feathers. Because I'd imagine they molt a little bit from the winter into spring. That would make sense. Shed their winter coat as well.

I don't know about turkeys, but I know geese molt their flight feathers in June.

Okay, so we'll say turkeys do that too. I've never hunted a turkey.

We're not at all familiar with how to hunt turkey.

You definitely see they're rather large bird track scattered around. And off in the distance, you can hear the pretty distinct turkey gobble.

What was that?

So all the turkeys would come. I'll power everybody. Elliot, because he is a natural hunter, probably would have known to grab some grain of some kind out of our rations. Like, just a handful in his pocket, and he's gonna get it. He says, okay. He kind of finds a nice little clearing. He says, I'm gonna go out there. I'm gonna spread some of this grain out in this clearing, and we're gonna stay hidden around here. And I wanna be appropriate bow shot away from where we're gonna hide. And then we're gonna get everybody to sit down in the bushes and sit quietly and hide. I want anybody that has a chance to hit one, to hit a turkey, and then I will, literally. Cause I've actually seen this done. When everybody's sat quietly and everything's settled, I'm gonna gobble back to the turkeys to try to call them in. And I'll tell everybody we're going to try to call some in. When they start, you know, let them come in, try to let the whole group come in. And then when they start feeding, then we'll try to take. I think we decided we wanted about six of them. So if each one of us can take one, we'll be pretty close. All right.

And Elliot would also know that, um, turkey hunting follows a lot of how you guys hunted the elk. It's pretty typical to find a blind, a lot of times up in, up in the tree. But ground blinds are not unheard of. Or even just setting up because it's a wait for them to come to you sort of thing. You don't go to them.

Yeah, and I've actually seen guys that they would just go and they'd come running.

So turkeys are not particularly scary.

Hey, Elliot, as much as I would love to keep hearing you make that sound, by the way, is that gonna be an intelligent or a wisdom? Save against giggling, I'd say that's wisdom. Well, let's just assume I failed that. But as much as I'd love to keep listening to you make that sound, I could mimic a turkey sound with magic. That might be more effective.

Okay, little girl, if you could do better, go ahead. Now, wait, before you start, call a couple of times. If they call back, you call to them. Call back and then go quiet. Because then they should start come looking for who made that sound. Don't keep calling to them. Call a few times and then go quiet. And then they should come looking to go, who made this sound?

I will press to digitate turkey couple.

Okay. Um. Sure. Yeah, you do that. That doesn't.

Now it's a cantrip.

So you out in the distance, you hear it come back.

I nominate for inspiration for the Christian.

That's fine.

You can have inspiration. Then you hear it back to you morals.

Could I have used minor illusion to make myself look like a boulder of some sort? Like up near one of the trees?

I would have a duckblind. I 100% thought you were gonna say to make myself look like a turkey.

That's how you die. Yeah, that's how you get shot. Fuck. There's one right there.

I found one. Eldridge, blast.

So you've got it good. Yes, you can have become a boulder. It only lasts 1 minute, if I recall.

I figured out I'd time it so that when the turkeys are coming this way, I could have it up.

Let's go ahead and just for the tracking of time, roll initiative. But you have disadvantage cause of your.

Yep.

So I gotta roll.

I gotta roll again.

I rolled out, so.

Well, you're gonna have disadvantage to basically everything you do today.

Except for attacks.

Except for lay my one good roll, you dick.

Let's go down the order of my piece of paper.

Mel, 18.

Illiot, 25.

Damn. With straight roll. All right. Yeah.

He didn't get advantage. He might have.

Bull knock natty one.

Okay.

I had a 16.

Damn it, Jimmy. Sorry.

That threw me off 17.

That's not at all why I did that.

Emery four. I forgot my name looking at someone else's name.

Go get him, buddy.

All right. And now.

Wait, where is Jacob? Did we leave it?

He's on the back.

No, he came with us.

Yeah, okay.

I assumed he came.

Yes, I just assumed that he couldn't remember.

Okay.

No, you're right. He was at camp when Griff was there. Never mind.

I couldn't remember, so I made him stay. I made him stay in the tent.

Only two of you got out. Rolled by turkeys.

Embarrassing for us.

I'm like, zoned the fuck out, like. Cause I haven't slept for a day.

The coffee got. You're both wired and absolutely dead inside.

That's a great deal.

Just a reminder, with the nat one, he had plus two, so he would be a 3.2. It won't change. Don't we worry about changing it. But he would have a three point.

Okay.

So just in case something else pops in.

Oh, God. Oh, what now?

Don't worry about it.

Don't worry about it.

Yeah.

A wear turkey doesn't go. It goes, gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble.

That's that five foot turkey.

There you go.

Five foot turkey.

All right, Elliot, Mel has started a rapport with the neighboring turkeys.

I am going to use my action to hold very still and very silent to be super stealth.

Perfect. Let's roll a stealth. I'm assuming you normally have advantage, but you're exhausted, so it's straight.

23.

Okay. You feel adequately hidden from tricky. I don't even need look, there's way there. Uh, Mel, you have a rapport going with turkeys. You have called twice, they have answered twice. Call a thrice back.

After I do that, I'm gonna quietly look in the direction of wherever I last recall seeing Elliot. I don't have a bow. Can I fire both them?

Yes.

Be quiet, please.

That's good, Jimmy.

God damn it. Did it again. All right, anyway, James is going to do a stealth check bonus action. Hide.

Okay.

In his rock form.

Perfect. We'll give you advantage. Cause you're.

I now look like a rock.

Yeah, look like Dwayne.

That is a 26 for stealth.

Yeah.

Okay.

You feel extra hidden, adequately hidden.

And I'm gonna use my action to. I'm gonna hold action with my bow. Ready to shoot a turkey.

Okay.

The moment that I see Elliot fire is when I fire.

Perfect.

That's the trigger.

Okay. We'll say you can have it for free for, like, three rounds. After that, you need to strengthen right.

Yeah.

Honestly, even 9th or one of that. 18 seconds. A long time to recurve. You're shaking already. Jacob's up. We're gonna see if he's smart enough to stay shushed.

Al, what are we doing?

Sh.

Be very, very quiet. We're hunting turkeys.

I am being quiet. The quietest I've ever been in my life.

Stop talking.

Then it's turkey's turn.

That's exactly how kids stay quiet. Like they're dying inside.

You can hear him quivering.

Yep.

Can confirm.

He'S just vibrating with silence.

Vibrating with silence.

That's the best way to put that I've ever heard of.

You hear the turkeys approaching, Emory?

I am going to hold a frostbite spell for when I see a turkey.

Okay.

Actually, for when Elliot shoots at turkeys. That way I'm not scaring them off.

Perfect. All right.

I really hope we all pick different turkeys or else one turkey is gonna get fucking annihilated.

Do you think we could get any feathers off that?

I forget, do I have a bow?

I don't believe so.

I don't think I do.

I believe that is why you are trying to procure something. Cause you can use one, but you don't have one. Right? Okay, so without a bow, what would you like to do?

I don't even have like, a hatchet and throw. I got my big great axe.

Yeah.

That I can swing at if they get close enough.

Yeah.

So like a baseball pose.

I'm gon get you.

Right?

Like. But like, quietly out of character.

But from personal experience. Probably work.

The turkeys aren't particularly.

They're not smart.

I'm just hiding in a bush and there's this glinting blade that they can. They could probably see if they were paying any attention. Cause I'm fucking out of it. We might get that turkey and kick his ass.

If anything, the shiny of the axe is gonna draw them in more.

Nice.

So that's unintentional, but it's working.

Elliot. Turkeys are getting closer.

How many do I see in the clearing? Are they moving? Have they started feeding?

They're moving towards the clearing. I made it yet say they're another turn away.

Okay, I'm just going to continue sitting without moving.

Or just run with your last stuff because you haven't moved.

Mel, are they still calling or.

Yeah, they're gurblet. It's, uh. Just for the sake of something roll. Like a. Persuasion.

Animal handling.

No, I think we should go with persuasion.

We should totally go with persuasion.

Oh, that's a ten.

You needed that moment. I did.

Badly.

Uh, you hear the turkeys getting closer? They world worse. Not smart animals. They rolled a negative one on their intelligence check. Oh, my God.

What is their modifier?

Minus four.

Minus four. Okay, that sounds right.

Yeah. There's the dub dub. Uh, James.

James is going to continue sitting in his boulder.

All right, Jacob.

Nice preemptive shift.

He listens this time.

Yep. You can still breathe.

The turkeys enter the clearing. They see everywhere. You have the food. They begin the fooding.

Eating. Eating. Maybe the word you're looking for.

How many?

Seven. Seven turkeys are feasting upon the grain you laid. Is this. You didn't have a health action. You were just hiding. Okay, Emory. There are turkeys eating.

Emory tries to look at Elliot for some signal. Cannot see him, so she continues to hold frostbite until he fires.

Oh, nock. Some turkeys are eating.

I'm getting unusually excited to want to swing at this turkey, but since I am also very zoned out, I'm still just kind of staring at him. I'm almost like Jacob, like, shaking with a anticipation. I'm gonna decapitate the shit out of one of these turkeys.

Are you holding your action again? Holding.

I'm gonna stay.

What is your trigger?

Quietly, Elliot fires.

Okay. Elliot fires. Everyone else does something.

I'm gonna swing at one of them.

Excluding Mel, currently, because she blow up. Speaking of Elliot, it's Elliott. Some turkeys are feasting. Everyone else is super anxious.

Okay, I'm going to draw my bow. Take aim at the farthest away turkey.

Okay.

And take a shot.

All right, let's roll that sweet turkey. Damage. Earth. Turkey attack.

This is an attack.

Normally, you'd have advantage because it's a beast, but you're exhausted.

That's only on checks. Not on attacks. Not on attacks, not on tax, not on sage. Only on checks.

Perfect. So you have advantage then.

Favorite enemy. Oh, yeah. It's like way high, like 28 or something.

Surprisingly, that does hit.

If that bounced off the turkey, I would have. You have problems.

Go ahead and roll that sweet damage and probably describe it.

Yeah, he rolled, Max. His arrow's just gonna leave, and it's just gonna perfectly. The turkey's gonna take one peck, put his head up to do the little jerk to drop the deal, and it's just gonna perfectly cleave his head.

Perfect.

It's just gonna fall to the ground, and it's just gonna flop down. Didn't even realize it happened, and seems.

How he's not a chicken. Princeruda he does die without his head.

I aimed lower.

There you go. All right. With that. That fires off a handful of people.

Say the turkey. One of the turkeys, not the one that Elliot hit, has to roll a constitution safe.

I watch Elliot shoot one, and it dies.

And I shoot a different one.

It's. It's second best stat here. It's only got a 40. Oh, my God. Uh. Fucking makes it. Rolled a 19 on the die.

Wow.

Super to.

I fire, and the frost just kind of, like, hits it and then just kind of rolls off its back on either side.

Shit.

Frosts his feathers, but doesn't get through.

Exactly.

Give him his own personal flurry.

James also had a held. Yes.

James was also prepping an arrow. So he will fire at a random turkey that still has a head and doesn't have snowflakes over it.

Yeah.

That is a 21 day hit.

Yep.

I assume that hits.

I'd roll your damage and probably just describe how you kill it.

Yeah, that's gonna hurt.

All you have to do is exceed three. Okay.

I rolled five on just the short bow. Not the sneak attack.

Perfect.

So that's a total of eight.

Okay. It is dead. How did you pet it?

Probably not as fancy as Elliot's hip. I probably hit him, like, in the chest.

Okay.

I'm not good enough to hit it. Yeah, it was not a pretty kill, but I killed it.

Horrible. Dying turkey sounds.

Ew.

And ulnok, we'll assume that you hid in a spot close enough for your ex to reach them.

Yeah, it's gotta be the closest one to me.

You were hidden, so you get advantage.

Right?

You get advantage because.

Thank Christ. Cause that was a three.

You're welcome.

That would be a nine. I'm not doing much better.

Oh, no, no.

You got all your modifiers. You rolled a nine.

It's gotta be more than a swipe.

At least once.

I think it's just once.

Twice over.

Weapon. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a plus five.

Okay. You hit?

Oh, no, I'm not in a rage.

It's plus three.

Don't hit. You do hit. Well, that's true.

You haven't raised yet.

I'm not raging. I'm just, like, zoned out.

Twelve not angry. Hoop turkeys for those getting whiplash.

Still got it.

Yes.

No. Yes. No.

However, I am still swinging my battle axe, so it's a double. It's a d ten of damage.

Perfect. All you have to do is roll better than three.

I don't think he can roll under three. Cause I think that's his mod six.

Yeah. Cause if he rolls a one. Plus his strength. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Plus straight.

So that's a nine.

You cut it in half.

Describe what you did.

So I'm aiming for its head, but I'm gonna go low. Cause it's a turkey, and I don't really know where to hit a turkey. And we're just gonna assume that I basically cleave this thing in twain. It's not gonna be worth much, but it's dead as shit.

Well, we just needed the feathers.

Yeah, we're just after the feathers.

The rare pre butchered turkey. I think that's everybody's held. Cause Belle did not held she turkey.

And now that everybody, everyone else is shot, I'll go, oh, crap. Right. And I'll shoot a fire bolt at one that somebody else wasn't shooting at.

All. Right.

That'S going to be a 16 to hit with nine damage. I'm really hoping that while I killed the turkey, I'm kind of hoping it's not actively on fire right now because that would make it hard to use the feathers.

It would.

Like, maybe I just smoked it from the inside out.

You microwaved it?

Have you hit it in the. I mean, the feathers aren't gonna catch.

Yeah.

They're not instantly flammable, I'm hope. I'm thinking I was probably aiming for the head, which means even if I didn't quite get the head, then maybe the tail feathers will still be good.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah. This isn't a life or death thing. That worked.

You hit it on the front.

Yeah.

So the back feathers are fine.

I think I should have told everybody we needed the wing feathers. I should have said something.

Oh, I would have assumed tail feather too. All right, with that, it is James's turn. That is four dead turkeys. Last session, you said you. You wanted five or six.

All right, I'm going to move to a different bush bodice action. Hide and shoot another turkey.

Go ahead and hide.

I'm going to do a combat roll to attack a turkey.

Real intense turkey battle.

There's another 26 for stealth.

Jeez. The turkey doesn't know where you went. All right. And here we go to hit.

That's a natural 20.

You are fucking these turkeys up.

Don't roll for damage. Just tell me what you did fairly.

That one I hit square in the eye.

Perfect.

It was a turkey eye.

It manages to walk for a little bit without realizing it's dead. Nothing is damaged except the brain and that one eyeball. The entire turkey is salvageable. Ha ha. And with that, it's Jacob's turn. He doesn't have weaponry.

He.

Whoops.

Yeah, I was gonna say he makes noise.

We're doing it. And it's turkey's turn. There's like, what, two left? They charge.

They go into a rage.

Wait, what?

Barbarian turkeys.

They roll a six on their intelligence check total. So they notice that their comrades are dead and they decide to not eat fat grain anymore.

Turkeys are smart, bro.

They're startled and it's Emery's turn.

Um, I'm gonna do a different spell and I'm gonna cast a chaos bolt.

Because I will battle. Wow.

That escalated quick.

Please not be listening. Please not be.

The frostbite didn't work, so I gotta start.

You roll to attack, right?

I did badly. That was an eight.

What?

No, that was a three plus five. So I just shit. As this, like, whirling ball of energy splashes, like, right next to the remaining turkeys.

It still does eat.

Hang on, I gotta roll it.

I was gonna say.

Nope, we're good.

Oh, God.

Just wait.

Nevermind, I'll ask later.

Okay, old hak, I'm going to attack the closest turkey to me.

You gotta charge in yelling.

You're gonna have to move. Yeah, you gotta go in, go into.

A rage and charge.

No.

Do not waste a rage on a turkey.

God, Emery just does not like turkeys.

She needs turkeys. She's just mad I shouldn't hit them.

I'm the only one that hasn't hit one.

I'm gonna run in like just my ax. Like up.

Like, ah, yeah.

Like just coming at it. We're gonna pray to God I don't roll like garbage.

That'll work.

Nat 20.

Don't even bother rolling damage. What do you do to this turkey?

So I cleaved one entwine horizontally. This one I'm gonna cleave twine vertically because I'm coming down on him.

Perfect.

So we just have two halves of a turkey now.

It totally does that 13 ghost scene where it's still a turkey for a bit and seals apart, splits in half. And now you have two turkeys. With that, there is turkey left. There's Elliott's turkey.

And that one turkey's real nervous.

This guy ran screaming straight at it and killed his bunny.

Elliot's concerned about the condition of a couple of these carcasses.

He's gonna take a shot.

That wasn't funny.

Nat 20.

Don't bother. These terms. Fucking audio.

To be honest, after the last couple episodes, I feel like, we need to have a special disclaimer that maybe vegetarians should not listen.

So we fucked up some animals in.

This one as is making its run for actually, as much as Elliot's been practicing. And it was a Nat 20. Turkeys will fly a little ways. They don't fly very far. But the turkey took off and was flying away. And he not only does he hit it in flight, he knocks it. He's able to shave its head off too. In flight.

Nice.

And it drops.

You have defeated the turkey.

We spoiled your nefarious plot.

I'm glad you guys were able to hit something.

So I'm gonna take a. I assume we all have, like, bandanas or something like that. Cause those are useful things to have around. And I'm gonna press to digitate oat of peppermint oil and wrap it around my head and look at Emory and be like, what?

One, please?

And I'll do the same for her.

Perfect.

Okay.

Cause I'm gonna be helpful today. Dammit.

We really only need the wings off these turkeys. That's what we came for. And they're those flight feathers. Those are the feathers that we're after. However, this is good meat.

I'm gonna say someone's bound to be willing to trade for it in town.

Yeah, but this stuff we've got, we can grab these and take them back to camp. But we need to get them over a fire, start to cook and smoke them. We can start it here. We can go back to camp. It'll make less scent in camp if we do it here. How long did you say we rode to get here?

20.

Like 20 minutes. Yeah, it's still.

Yeah. Let's grab these.

Let's go back to camp.

Yeah, let's take them back to camp. And as soon as we get back, we're gonna clean these and we're gonna start prepping to preserve it because this stuff goes bad fast.

Well, one of them's already smoking.

Yeah, that one will. Hey, good shot on that one.

Cool. Let's just. For the sake of claiming we've done some looting, let's have, like, a survival check to see what is salvageable off of these birds.

Is that a group survival or each of the recipes.

Nice. 20 plus four.

Okay.

It doesn't count Elliott to roll it. Cause he's gonna have the best.

But Elliot for sure knows that the two ulna killed. The meat's gonna be no good. He got into the guts pretty thoroughly.

Yeah. You had to leave those for the. Leave those for the coyotes.

We'll say the second one that Ulnok killed, the wings are fine because he had cleaved it in the hemisphere. But the one that he cut through the equator, some of the wing got damaged. Okay. We'll say fire bolt, because she aimed specifically for the front. Some of the wings got damaged. The meat's probably okay.

Like says, our priority is the feathers, but we'll salvage whatever we can.

So you could probably get, I'd say, five birds of meat. And we'll say five fleets.

Five of each.

Yeah. And wing meats.

Emery rolled a net one on her survival. So I think, despite the peppermint bandana, she does have a moment where she's.

Just kind of gagging to the side still, visually.

Exactly.

And she's remembering the smell from yesterday.

And it's the smoking wild turkey. Wild turkeys are kind of rank anyway.

And then the smoking one would be.

Nope, they don't.

I was gonna say Mel rolled a eight with her negative one. That's a seven. So all she knows is she's holding a dead thing.

There you go.

It's dead. What do I do with it? Only it's muffled because she has a bandana around her face.

Cut its wings off, and. And we'll make a pile of wings right there.

James has a high enough intelligence. He took the birds to Elliott. Cause he knows what you're doing.

You probably learned how to butcher things, though.

I feel like I give one to Jacob. Like, here, hold this. You've absolutely processed birds now, which fits the wing.

Oh, for sure. But you're like an entire cow at your shops. Maybe weird, but, yeah, you've definitely processed birds. Yeah.

Yeah. I can guarantee that is something you learn at culinary school.

All right. But perfect. You guys were able to get that stuff I just said you got, and you're able to get it back to camp. No sled.

So, Elliot, at this point, he's actually in a pretty good mood, even though he's really tired. Y'all can tell he's kind of dragging. But out in the woods, he's got his horses, he's hunting, he's putting up game. He's got a campfire going. Elliot is in hog heaven at this point. He's whistling, and he's ax mapping.

Nice. So you get back to camp. Are you wanting to use your campfire to smoke them, or do you want to start a separate fire? You do need it to be a smokier fire than your campfire would normally be.

Yeah. We'll kind of put it off the edge of camp a little ways so the wind isn't blowing smoke into our eyes, but not far enough that anything, especially coyotes or can sneak in and snag something off the fire. We want it close enough that nothing's going to bother, but we don't want it right in the dead center of the camp.

And you know, enough about fire. You know how to build a fire that would lean more towards smoke and less towards, you know, what we normally want. So you're able to build that up, no problem. And it'll take, I would say you probably got to spend one more night, probably to get them thoroughly, safely.

Yeah. And I'm not sure, but Elliot would.

Turkeys are not a small bird, so I'm gonna say it's probably gonna take all night.

Yeah, it's at least a few hours at minimum.

Cause you split them open, and so you got halves. You're not trying to do the entire, like you do in the oven. We'll make spatchcock.

Turkey.

There we go.

Well, Elliot, is this funny word?

These enough feathers?

I think so. You know what? We can, if we need to, we could supplement, like pick up. We just need. And he holds up the big flight feathers. He says, we just need these. We can literally pick them up off the ground.

Now you tell us.

Well, you know, I'm kind of tired. I didn't sleep real, you know, I think we need 180 feathers.

Yeah, it's exactly. It's like midday at this point, right?

Yeah.

I think that knowing that there were at some point kind of turkeys nearby, Mel might take Jacob out and be like, okay, we're gonna look for turkey feathers. As long as we can stay within sight of the fire. Like, not actually the smoke, but the fire. We'll wander around and look for turkey feathers.

Cool.

Because it's something to do.

James is gonna make lunch.

All right. For the sake of seeing your success roll survival.

Can she have advantage? Cause Jacob's help.

Jacob's help, sure.

Yeah. Well, can Jacob aid me? Because I don't doubt for a second that child's better at this than me.

Sure.

Kids are great at finding shit.

Then I don't have to figure out.

What his stat for that is. So. Yeah, that's awesome.

Oh, sweet. So that's a 14.

Okay. Yeah, you guys are able to find a handful. You find probably some other birds feathers as well, probably some pheasant feather.

And I'll be like, take those two. I don't know. Like, I don't know.

There's absolutely quail in the area, so maybe find some of their feathers.

Those would be really small, though.

We're taking them. I don't know. Yeah.

Make allies.

But, yeah, you guys are able to kill however long you want to kill doing that. Find a. Find a quantity of arrows that plot plus the wings equals more than enough for the arrows you need. There's probably an excess. I honestly, I don't know how many feathers come to a wing, but there's got to be enough. Probably. We'll say there's enough. These are big ass turkeys. We're abnormally small to make this work. Whatever's correct.

Yeah.

Can I finish making lunch in, sneak up on Mel and Jacob and scare the crap out of them with food?

Sure. Cook the food. How well do you do? Well. Yeah.

Let's see if I scare them with the food.

That is a. What is that a performance?

I forgot what we were doing for this check. Yes, sir.

That is a 19.

Good food.

Made questionable sandwiches.

Pretty good sandwiches say, like, grilled turkey out of 20. Yeah, pretty baller sandwich.

It's like a real turkey sandwich with a slab of elk bean on it.

Elk bacon.

Yeah. There you go.

It's like Thanksgiving.

The tblt.

So, what, you're gonna roll a stealth to sneak up on us?

Yep.

Do I roll a perception check?

You are actively looking for things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Who knows? Maybe I perceive something created the ground.

You don't get his aide, James, or Jacob. Jacob is also looking.

Okay.

Independent.

That's a 23 for my stealth check.

That would be a passive of nine.

You adequately sneak up on the both.

Mel screams at karate chops.

I don't think those feathers are gonna be enough.

Yeah, I don't know if I hit him. Do I need to roll to see if I hit?

Yeah, if that's what you want to do.

Roll the hit.

I kind of do, actually. Do I have anything to plus this to an unarmed attack?

Yeah, you'd be proficient. Plus your strength bonus.

Oh, that's a ten to hit.

Oh, that misses.

No, don't do that.

Just keeping you on your toes.

You scare those shit.

I might have died.

He's got tears in his eyes.

You may look what you did.

Oh, okay.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Jacob. Okay.

I thought you were another one of the zombie creatures.

Oh, I'm not. I brought food. I'm gonna hand him a sandwich.

Shakily takes it.

Apology.

Lunch.

Lunch.

You jerk.

As I'm like, petting Jake, patting Jacob on the back. I'm gonna get a hand mellow sandwich. It's like this is yours.

I'll take the sandwich.

Did you guys find any good feathers?

Yeah, yeah, we found all kinds of feathers. We got big ones and little ones and white ones and turkey ones.

I think he wants them to be about that long.

I don't know. I'm helping. He can sort it out later.

Yeah, unless you're making a pillow, I don't think some of these are gonna work.

He can sort it out later. We're helping. All right.

So you head back to camp. You guys are still killing some time looking. Go ahead and roll. A perception, another perception for me.

I'm keeping James in front of me.

James or Jacob?

James. I want James where I can see him. Okay, that's a 16. I'm much more alert now.

Now that your eyes have been opened thoroughly, you get a little bit back in the shrubbery and you do find a couple of turkey carcasses that have just been destroyed.

Oh.

As if out of rage. Not like something you'd expect an animal to do. There is a bit of turkey here, a bit of turkey there, a bit of turkey there.

Ol milk's okay, right?

It's not. It's not fresh. Fresh. It didn't happen today.

A bell would be able to tell.

That you could see that the blood has pretty much been sucked into the ground.

Okay. I don't know if Mel would know how to, like, comprehend what she's looking at, but.

And with that, you see that Jacob also sees this. These turkeys have been destroyed.

If it's not fresh fresh, it probably smells awful.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay, let's keep going. How about how far from camp are we at this point?

Like a five minute walk. You can see it.

So like maybe 3400 yards?

Sure.

Okay.

You have the lung capacity. Probably scream back to camp if that's.

Your goal, but I'm not going to. I've got. I don't want to make Jacob any more nervous since somebody's got him terrified. And I do have James with me who at least has some ability to defend ourselves. So I'm just like, we should mention this when we go back to camp.

You go ahead and roll a perception too. Okay. Sorry, I thought you went back to camp.

Oh, yeah, sorry. That is a passive 14. And I rolled a two.

She points out the turkeys to you.

Yeah. Yeah. That's not. That's not normal, right? Is that normal?

I don't think so. Can I investigate them closer, see if I can see like claw marks of like, what did this?

Yes. Go to roll an investigation.

That's an 18.

You see, you're able to gather that there's probably, like, three or four turkeys here, none of which are even remotely attacked anymore. There are feathers everywhere. And the thing that you start noticing, especially considering you just helped cut these turkeys in half to get them smoking, I'm assuming you helped with that. Yeah. The major organs are gone. There's no liver, there's no heart. There's no. The guts are still there. The gross guts are still there.

Yeah. The viscera is still there, but not the.

Okay. Major organs are gone. There is absolutely deep slash marks into the meat. The meat itself doesn't seem to have been eaten much, just the organs are gone.

All right. And can I tell, like, what kind of, like, how many claw marks there are? Like, are there five digit claw marks.

Or is it, like, less looking close? It's four.

Okay.

Occasionally, maybe it might be five. You see? Definitely some aggressive. What you determine to be, like, bite marks with claws coming away from the bite.

Gotcha. So I'll probably mention that to Mel as quietly so that Jacob can hear.

If you genuinely don't want Jacob to hear. Let's go ahead and roll. Stealth, I guess.

Okay. Hopefully I'm not too stealthy that you can't hear me either.

Her to hear you. We'll say she can hear you.

Okay. That is an 18 for stealth.

Yeah. You're able to do it without Jacob being weird. Okay.

They don't have any of the organ. All of the organs are not, like, the heart delivered.

That's not normal. Right? I don't know.

I'm not a wild animal, like, with.

How torn up these things are. It was methodical and taken the organs, but it didn't really eat a whole heck of a lot of the meat.

I don't like that at all.

Yeah. Did this on purpose, but, like, very angrily.

Hey, Jacob, let's. I've got an idea. Let's do a race. Let's see who can get back to camp the fastest. And I, like, basically throw all the feathers at James and be like, see ya in five. And so then I'm hoping Jacob will fall for it and we'll race back to camp.

I'm basically a ninja. You're gonna lose.

All right, count of three. Ready? Three. And he goes, and I go after him.

I'm gonna start walking back to camp, throwing out the feathers that are useless.

Seems how this is your strong point. I don't think you've got to roll this yet. I'm assuming athletics is one of your best stats.

Otherwise, that's a weird build.

Actually, that would be acrobat.

We could argue leaping over.

I've got. Yeah, it's about the same. I've got a plus three, so go.

Ahead and roll just to see how badly you're ridiculously in shape. Self. Whoops. This kid.

Six. I want Jacob to win. I let him win.

Ironically, he rolled a six, so.

So I.

You let him win and that's the only reason he does? He's surprisingly not swift.

Looking at this kid, I'm like, did you, uh. Do you have asthma, Jacob?

No, I haven't run.

I thought you guys were gonna race. We got back around the same time.

Do you not do. I thought you did sports. Didn't you do sports?

I did t ball the once.

Oh, that doesn't even count.

Mom tried to make me do soccer, but I talked her out of it.

Jacob, my friend, you and I need to start jogging together in the mornings.

Hi. Would we do it on purpose?

It's fun, I promise.

I could taste blood. You can taste blood? Wow.

Saying, Jacob, it's a new world out there and I think it's important that we all have the ability to run in the event that we need to. So we're gonna do a little. You're gonna go on. I think you and I should go on some runs together. I'll go easy on you, I promise.

Oh, God. Okay. Okay. As long as it's not as hard as that just was.

It won't be.

I think. I think Emery and Olmach are playing tic tac toe in the dirt.

Nice.

Has anyone seen Elliot? Is Elliot not currently moving?

Elliott waiting over here.

I'm checking on to me, it's nighttime.

You can see him.

Well, we'll go over to daytime.

I'm right in. Yeah.

James and I will go over to Elliot and tell him what we saw.

We just fed them lunch. It's only daytime.

I thought that with the whole dark vision I couldn't see him at all.

Oh, I assume during the daytime you're not using your dark vision.

Not usually.

So he doesn't disappear.

I didn't know that was something you could turn off.

I'm not gonna lie. If there's any clips right now, Mel will lose her shit. That's just one thing too many.

What?

If there's any clips right now, Mel will lose her shit. That's just one thing too many.

An eclipse.

An eclipse.

Eclipse. An eclipse.

There we go.

Like, she'll go like full on medieval hero and we're all gonna attack.

I was thinking of, like, a chip.

Any, like, a bag. Clips.

Eclipse. Eclipse.

So when Mel and Jacob were out collecting feathers, here they are, by the way.

Hey, that's not as many as I gave you.

What'd you do with them all?

It's fine.

You know what?

He's talking.

Go play with Jacob.

This is important.

So I kindly brought them lunch, you know? Cause it was lunchtime, and we noticed.

He made Jacob cry.

There was a bunch of dead turkeys. Not the ones that we killed. The bunch that were just, like, torn, shredded. And most of the beet wasn't eaten, but the organs were gone.

Do wild animals normally do that? Is that a thing?

No, that's not normal for wild animals to do that. I've heard stories of wolves doing things like that, but I don't know if those stories are true.

This was, like, 400 yards from camp.

I'm gonna try describing the claw marks.

Okay.

Do these sound familiar? I mean, we can just go and look at them.

Okay, I'll go walk over and go look at the things.

Okay. Go ahead and roll it.

Make an investigation on it. I, the player, have a guess, but I don't know what Elliot will come up with. Yeah, Elliot's got no idea.

He's like, ah, that's weird. There are definitely some massacred turkeys over there.

Yep, yep, these are turkeys.

We're gonna have to, if you care.

I wrote three on my investigation, so.

Ow.

Yeah, okay. Huh.

That's weird. I'll go back to camp.

All right. Guess what?

We'll keep an eye out for a turkey. Organ stealing monster.

Yeah, maybe they're selling them on the black market.

Oh, yeah. The organ trade for turkey.

And we're a long way from thanksgiving, so nobody's going for giblet gravy, so. I don't know.

Mel will spend the afternoon teaching Jacob the wonders of interval training.

Oh, my God.

Poor kid.

Oh, God, you are torturing him. Are you doing the pacer?

Oh, putting him through the wringer, dude.

It's good for him.

Poor Jacob's gonna have a point of exhaustion tomorrow.

That's fine.

If he sleeps well, it means that whatever crazy thing happens next, he might sleep through.

Aside from the interval training, is there anything else? Dinner. Which is.

Surprise. More elk.

Yeah.

And all I'm doing is just making. Tending the fire, making sure that everything's the right temperature and smoking well. And I'm spending, and I'm not working hard. I'm just. That's kind of occasionally go over, check on the horses, make sure. They've had water. They're in good shape. Just kind of put. I'm just puttering around camp between intervals.

Mel's going to ask Jacob something she should have thought to ask, like a. Where were you from?

Well, I. We were. We were supposed to be moving to our new town. I was. I was living. I grew up in Orem, Utah. Yeah.

Oh, no wonder this hurts. You've got elevation problems.

Dad had just gotten a new job in Castle Rock, so we were moving there. We were just in our car, and the moving truck was supposed to be behind us. Is that where you're taking me? It's back to Castle Rock. So I could find my mom.

Maybe. We might be going through that area. And if that's the case, then maybe we can and find some family or something. Did you guys have relatives over there besides your parents?

Not in Castle Rock. Grandma lived in Utah.

Oh.

I have an aunt somewhere.

Yeah?

Yeah. I don't know where she lives, so she just comes and visits.

Does she happen to be a nun?

No.

Oh, okay. Just curious.

No, I think she was a counter. I think she did the countering for her company.

Like an accountant, maybe.

That sounds great. She kept saying she was an accountant.

Well, they do refer to themselves as bean counters sometimes.

Yeah, I thought that was weird. But I don't know what she counted. I doubt it was beans.

Perhaps not.

Bye. Yeah. What do you mean, maybe? Like, you might be. Where else am I going?

Well, we don't know exactly where we're going, and so you could take me there? Potentially, yeah.

I miss my mom.

Yeah, my dad. I miss my mom and dad, too. But that's okay. We'll find everybody someday.

My dad's so tough.

I know.

He got away from those bikers.

I hope so.

He's stronger than most dads.

I bet he is. Okay, ready for your next general?

No.

Come on.

Sorry. Sorry I didn't run fast earlier. I'll run faster next time, I promise.

Come on, it's fun. I promise.

I didn't mean anything by it.

Okay, last one. Last one, and we'll call it a day.

Well, you said last time, and this.

Time I made it.

He begrudgingly gets ready. You guys run.

Yeah.

If there's not anything else anybody wants to do today, the day can pass safely and uneventfully. You, uh. You feel confident that you could leave the turkeys on the smoker overnight? They'd be fine. You could take them off the smoker. It gets cold enough. They'll be fine. Okay.

I can also blast. Chill them before we go back.

Yeah, let's do that. Yeah. They've had the day to cook and then to freeze them. That'd be great.

Yeah.

I'll frost bite the hell out of those turkeys.

Perfect.

I give them some extra spice because I couldn't hit them when they were alive.

You succeed this time. They don't nudge. They fail their constitution checks.

Don't worry, you'll get them next time.

I got them this time.

I don't know what I'm talking about.

And with that, we can go for watches if you want. By the way, if there's anything you particularly want to do or this evening could just kind of pass on eventfully.

Yeah, I figured Elliot and Olnock would just spend the entire night sleeping. Don't have to worry about watches.

Yeah, I think the other three of us can manage.

Yeah, I would very much enjoy that.

Perfect. So, yeah, we. You guys, the night passes uneventfully. The people who do take watches, you do hear plenty of sounds of wildlife. You do hear the howls of wolves and coyotes out in the distance. You hear one wolf off by itself fairly frequently. It's a little louder and a little deeper sounding than the other wolves that you're hearing in the area, but it's a fair bit to the south of you. But other than that, the night does pass pretty uneventfully. You're able to wake up, everybody's lost their exhaustion. That had it. And the rest of you get a long rest and get your spell slots and all that fun stuff for the whole two you spent yesterday. Hey there listener, I'm here with a quick ad break. As always, thank you for listening. We are having a blast making this and we appreciate you joining us on this ride. Secondly, we have a new non sponsored ad. As you've heard, at the end of every episode we we use epidemic sound to source almost all of our music and sound effects. If you are a content creator of any kind, epidemic sound is offering you a free seven day trial of their program. After that, plans start at just $9.99 a month. With a paid membership, you gain access to over 40,000 music tracks and over 90,000 sound effects. You have unlimited downloads, publishing rights for anywhere online, and the ability to monetize your channels. As youve heard through our episodes, the content selection is broad and high quality and they couldnt make building a soundtrack any easier. Head on over to our podcast description where you can find our referral code to gain access to epidemic sound and help support our podcast. While youre looking through our podcast description, make sure to check out our Pinecast referral as well. Pinecast is the easy one stop shop platform for hosting a podcast and with our referral code, you get 40% off for four months when you sign up for a paid plan the first time. If you're looking for a different way to support the podcast, please leave us a review on your podcasting app of choice, like follow and subscribe to us on our social media. And of course, word of mouth is the best way to help us spread. Thank you again for joining us on this adventure. And now we're back to the end episode. With that it is morning. You guys are able to, you're headed back, so you're able to break down camp. No problem. Yeah. Elliot, being the ranger that he is, make sure both fires are thoroughly snuffed. I would assume before you leave you're able to do so nice thing having Oak Creek right there is. You do have enough water to drown them thoroughly if burying the dirt around you, all that good stuff, it's pretty soft soil up in that area so you can bury them easily as well.

I also want to take the time to kind of show everybody like, hey, we don't really need to do this, but I can see possibly in the future I'm going to spend some time and kind of show them how to clean up the fire pit to the point where you can't really tell it was a fire pit. Not that we need to do it, but I could see in the future that we might need to. And I kind of want to show everybody and have everybody practice a little bit. So literally take things like picking up some of your fire rocks and scraping, scraping the black off and then putting them down and then trying to clean it up because I just want everybody to go, yeah, we might have, we might need at some point pass without a trace if we can help it. So I just want you guys to see, so I want everybody to practice a little bit. We're not going to push hardcore. And then I'll kind of go, yeah, you missed a spot there and you missed that. But I just want everybody to start that. We might get point. We might need to do that.

So James will be probably throw in his two cent too because probably had experience with hide campfires.

Yeah. Between the two of you, you both teach each other some tricks from different perspectives. Elliot's is definitely far more than nature perspective, but you're able to pitch in a cent or two about how to blend into a more urban environment as well. And yeah, by the time you guys are done, there's not a lot of evidence that anymore anybody was here.

Hey, look at that. We're just like the elves. The grass ain't growing better, but, hey.

The grass is kind of bent down and padded down. But you're confident that as this frost melts, the plants will perk back up and they'll be fine.

It might take a day or two. Good job, everybody. It looks good. Camp looks good.

Mel, you forgot a pole.

Oh, hey. Yeah, I need that. Oops. I'm looking at the square spot where my tent was for two days. Is that gonna be a problem, do.

You think, toward the grass?

Like in the future if we're trying to look like we weren't there? It's a big square tent thing. A problem?

It could be. There's nothing we can do about it today, but it's something to be aware of.

I don't want to sleep outside. It's scary.

Oh, it's beautiful. You can see the stars and everything.

Yeah.

No, and without lights, you see way more stars out here now.

Soft and squishy.

Yeah.

And it's been what, a month? So the skies are clearing up. It's like the nights are getting really gorgeous.

It won't help your back, but next time you can always just harder packed earth, they'll put it on grass. Your tent.

Oh, okay.

Excellent. With that, you guys are able to saddle the horses up, taking the extra care from the things you've learned in the past and speaking with said horses. And you're able to set off back south towards rifle as you're going. The travel's fair, the weather's been nice still this whole time. Really had even so much in clouds. The worst weather is just. It's kind of chilly. But you're heading back down south. You pass random municipal building with a tennis court. You're back on hard on asphalt road again. Traveling south, you're not seeing too much of anything and overly exciting. You get back down to the watering hole that the prison utilized.

I'm gonna keep my bow out the entire time we're passing remotely close to that prison.

Are you wanting to look at the prison?

Not necessarily look at the prison. Just, you know, have my bow out ready just in case.

I think we should look at. I wanna look at the prison. It unsettles me too.

I don't. Nothing good can come of this.

I don't think it's good. And that's why I'm looking 17.

Anybody else who wants to can. You're all there.

That is 830 2018.

All right, all three of you see that. You can't tell if you saw this on the way up. You guys didn't perceive the prison particularly last time. But you do see there's obvious signs of either a break in or out. Lots of broken glass on the. On the main. On one of the bigger buildings. The biggest building there has got very obvious broken glass. There is a door laying next to the hole the door should be on.

I think. Emery pulls up on her reins and stops her. Whoa, hold on. Look at that. Do you guys see that?

Yeah, sure.

El sees that and says, this is why I didn't want to look at it. And keeps going.

Elliot's gonna look over and he's like, huh, that's interesting. Hey, we gotta get this meat back. We gotta start tanning a hide.

Ew. That's gonna be crazy.

Yeah, it's gonna be nasty. I wanna get this job done as quick as I can.

That's a good point. I just didn't notice that on the way out.

Hey, look at it this way. If they were locked in, they've broken out. Everybody's not dead. Win win.

And who breaks into a prison anyway?

Something that's hungry. I mean, I don't know if normal people would bust a door like that.

Hey, Jacob, look at that bird over there in the sky. And she pointedly looks at James like, stop with the scary.

He's right, though. Like someone if. Even if they're just breaking out of prison, they wouldn't destroy it.

Like, I don't think they were really angry about being in prison.

I mean.

Well, yeah, but I'm not gonna hulk out and bust the door down like that.

And Elliot, she's gonna look and he's gonna go, you know what? I'm not gonna go borrow in trouble. I got enough trouble.

My own fair.

I mean, if you guys wanna go, I'll go.

But I never thought I'd say this. I'm with Elliot on this one. We got enough of our own problems.

I don't think you're wrong. I just think that that might be something that we might have to deal with either way.

Yeah.

Cause I got it.

The nearest population area is rifle.

There's no time like tomorrow.

Hey, I like that. Is that one of them new sayings?

It just became one.

What do you think, Olnock?

I don't know.

I feel like we should be on.

Alert something as we continue in the opposite direction.

My point is, I don't think it's the opposite direction. If something broke out, if someone broke out of there, you're heading to rifle one way or another, right?

It could be around us. We don't know where it is. Whatever it might be.

All the more reason why we should keep moving. And maybe we can get to rifle before it does.

All right.

And get our bows and then skedaddle. Oh, God, I can't believe I just said skedaddle.

Oh, look at you, starting to learn some proper English.

Oh.

Aw, look at that.

Oh, that's right, though. Let's, uh, let's be alert. Let's keep our eyes peeled. I don't like this.

All right, you guys continue on past the prison. As I said last time, the road kind of comes to the north side of the prison, and then it shifts a little bit westward, kind of around the front face of the prison, and it continues along the west side of the prison. So as you. As you head further south, I'm assuming those of you who were interested in prison continue to look at Zen prison. That one building looks like it went through Pelemec. You could see evidence of the other buildings have been opened up. Nowhere near with that level of intensity. You see, you rolled the net 20 or the dirty 20, right?

Yeah.

You see a body laying outside.

Your brain in the horse is like body.

And the rest of it, once he points it out, you can find it. It is very obviously dead. It is not moving. It does not appear to have been moving.

Sensing mole's nervousness, I think your horse discovers a trot. I don't know how to make it stop, and I don't think I want to. Let's go.

But that's all you see. There is one building wrecked. There's a couple doors open. There is a body in the field.

I feel like now might be a good time to see what maybe killed it. Maybe it was the same that killed Turkey.

Elliot's gonna reign to a stop, and he's gonna say, if you guys want to go check it out, we can. But the question I've got, if it is a body, and it looks like it, there's nothing we can do about it. Number two, are we gonna gain anything by going over there?

Yeah, we can learn what killed it. Maybe he's got the same claw marks. It could have been that guy that we saw before.

Why do we want to know?

I mean, Mike says if you guys want help, we'll go over there, but I'm curious. Whatever the group decides, I'll go with.

Where this building is situated. Again, this is a minimum security. There is no fence. You can ride directly to the body. You don't have to go through a main entrance and tour this campus to get there. The building that it's outside of is one of the three t shaped buildings I described earlier. And it is kind of standing up by itself. And it's maybe a five minute right from the road. It's not a hard to get to place.

See, look at that. You don't even have to get off the horse.

I'm like 50 yards away. I haven't realized you guys have stopped yet. When I do, I cuss. God damn it.

I'm gonna whisper.

There's a kid on the back of your horse.

Hey, Mal, we're gonna go check this out.

Of course we are. And then I figure out how to turn the horse around.

You do have the boy on your horse?

I do have the boy on my horse. So I'm okay hanging back a bit, but I. Not too far back.

When you come back, he says, do you want me to take Jacob while you get your horse under control?

I'm good. I'm good. I got it. I got it turned around. Frankly, I was good with the trot, but it's okay.

All right. As you guys progress towards the body, you do notice that none of your horses are particularly stoked. They're not, you know, freaking out. But you are having to persuade them in that direction. But you're able to get up to the body. What you see is that this body has been absolutely destroyed. You can see that for free.

We kept Jacob, like, far enough back.

I'm gonna say, what is a horse's rate of movement? I think it's 40 foot, around 40ft. So I'm gonna stay the equivalent of one round behind them.

Okay.

I was gonna say I would be surprised if Mel got close.

Yeah, I'm gonna stay 40ft back. So we probably can't really see, except that it's a dead body from there, I would say.

So is it. Is it like, werewolf destroyed? Like, claw marks and all that? Or is it like zombie apocalypse destroyed where it's like, go to roll investigation. Okay.

Can I assist? Because I am curious as well.

How are you assisting her?

Look, you should just also look poking it.

Yeah, that's true. I will also do an investigation check.

And anybody else who went up there can, if they would like to.

Oh, I got a four.

Can I put on some, like, that.

Corpse that I have a five. Okay. The two of you who rolled poorly, see that this corpse is.

I got a 19.

You see all of the same markings you saw for that turkey? The meat is still there. It is. The gut has been completely ripped open. The liver is missing.

So I don't even have to, like, actually, like, peek, you know, poke and.

Prod to look for.

Okay.

Yeah, you can see there's a big old hole in the chest area that has a chunk missing out of it. You presume to be the heart. You see the throat's been ripped open.

Well, it certainly wasn't done by a surgeon, but all the organs are missing. Just like turkeys.

I don't like this at all.

Is this, like a guard uniform? An inmate uniform?

Inmate.

This one didn't inmate this.

Does he have his brain?

Yeah, the head's more or less intact. Okay, so the head's been definitely crushed, but it wasn't lobotomied.

Okay, lean rule out.

Zombies didn't go after the brain.

I don't.

Zombies. Doesn't happen.

Have you not watched any zombie media ever?

After, like, five minutes. Melz, can we go? Like, how, please?

Can he tell how fresh? I can't tell. Can James tell how fresh it looks? Fresher than the turkeys.

Fresher than the turkeys. The blood has not been completely absorbed in the ground.

So this happened, like, ten relatively recently.

Recently. You would. You would guess.

I mean, you're.

You're not a crime scene inspector. Yeah, right. Not a forensic scientist.

I'm the dude doing the crimes.

You see, not usually. This crime, you're able to make with that good of a roll. You're able to make a ballpark guess that maybe with how cool it is, that's helped preserve it a bit at night, but you're guessing last 24 to 36 hours.

Okay, with the. The amount of blood that this guy lost, are there, like, bloody footprints leading away from this dude? Are there tracks of any sort leading away from him?

Uh, let's have you roll afresh. Either nature or investigation. Okey dokey. This is a specifically different thing you're looking for now.

Investigation.

And you guys, if you would like to, can assist or also roll.

There's a 16.

None of my dice are rolling.

Shit.

I rolled a five on that 115.

Okay, the two of you are able. You in particular, actually, because I don't think you ever found it. See? The same. Not a bear, not a wolf paw. Oh, yeah.

Hey, guys.

Some weird tracks.

That's the same tracks as that last.

Thing that we were looking for.

You think Griff did this?

Possibility. Which direction are there tracks heading? Are they heading towards the rifle.

Yes, we did send them off towards town.

One thing worth noting, because these are fresher track than what you've seen. The distance between strides is fairly impressive, indicating either this thing was gigantic or it was booking. Shit. Oh, my God.

He's Bigfoot.

Big legs.

Bigfoot tracks look like human tracks. That's an entirely different. I think maybe we should get our hustle on.

Yeah, let's pick up the pace. Yeah.

Oh, God.

I'm not comforted by knowing more. But we know more. That's what I'll say about that.

Mel knows nothing. She was 40ft away on the back of a horse doing. Trying to be as perceptive as possible, which is not easy for her.

So to keep it, like, attempt to keep a PG for Jacob, I'm just gonna say, like, he's like, the turkeys. The turkeys that we found. And there's tracks heading the same way we are, so we got a boogie.

Yeah, whatever.

Whatever it is, it's going pretty fast. It looks like.

Oh, and it looks like the tracks that we found around camp the other day.

We found tracks around camp?

Yeah.

Olnack apparently found tracks. I'm just as surprised as you are.

That's news to me.

Right?

I didn't tell anybody.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

Wait, didn't you tell us?

No, no, somebody else.

Soundtracks forgot to tell anyone.

I thought you talked to Elliot about it.

No, I didn't say shit to nobody.

He rolled an intelligence or wisdom check or whatever it was, to see if he remembered and he didn't have to remember.

I did not.

And he did not.

I didn't tell anyone.

That's right.

So he had that conversation with you two, and neither of you know what the fuck he's talking about? Someone else found those tracks.

He apparently saw tracks outside of two days ago and didn't tell us.

Elliot's got to kind of look at him in grimace and consternation and just kind of shake his head.

I meant to tell someone and it didn't happen.

For the record, I don't remember who it was. But one of the four of you also saw those tracks independently.

I think it was James.

Okay.

Who also heard. Neglected to tell anybody.

If it was James, then those tracks indeed look very familiar to you as well.

Cool.

I'm not going to tell the group that.

I also saw some trucks.

Mel's wavering between terror and anger, and so she's just sort of vibrating with a.

Are you trying to be quiet, too?

Yes. Yes, I am. I am trying so hard to be quiet. Right now you look like my mom.

Did after I brought my report card home.

I think Bell's about to unlock some new magic.

I don't know if it's a new thing or not.

All right, well, anything else you want.

To do on prison grounds?

Are we headed south?

We're headed south faster than before.

Why are we moving faster? It's not like this is gonna help.

All right, so you guys continue.

Maybe we can get to the bower before he dies a horrible, painful death.

Well, yeah, that's the purpose of going faster.

Yeah, right. As long as we can agree on our goal.

So you guys pick up the pace a little bit. You know, it's a long enough ride. You're not gonna, like, gallop there. Your horses can't do that, but you can less dilly dally, more intentionally travel there. And as you travel the rest of the trip, it's still, it's a pretty, pretty area. I did remember to look at the map instead. And the order of events, leaving the prison goes to the lake next, where again you see people fishing. It looks pretty unbothered right now.

They all have all their organs.

They.

You would assume so, considering they're peacefully fishing generally.

None of them are wearing medical bracelets. They're all more or less upright.

Are we gonna pass pretty close to anybody on the lake?

If you would like to, we can say yes.

It's not way far out of the way.

I mean the road goes right next to the car.

I want to, when we get up to one, preferably a group, but at least one. And I want to swing over and let them know that to keep on alert. We've seen some tracks. I don't know if there's a pack of wolves or if there's a bear running around, but you and anybody that you see, just keep your eyes open and just be aware that something's hungry out there. So we're headed into town. But you guys, if you're staying out here, just share it. Be on alert.

And I would like to add to that and ask them if they've seen the gentleman with like a very ragged shirt.

Closed.

Describe the not werewolf we've seen.

Well, first off, thank you Mister warnings. Greatly appreciated. We haven't had many folks come from up that way. Not a whole hell of a lot out there, so appreciate that. Why? What? I mean, there's cats and wolves all over this area. What's got you particularly concerned there, sir?

Don't know. There looks like there's been some trouble up at the prison. There so just unusual.

Oof.

So just wanted. Just wanted people to know. It's not like you can listen to the radio and get it out. So we gotta kind of just share information. We're coming from that way, headed this way. That's what we saw.

So we appreciate the warning there, sir. And it's for you there. Yeah, I think I remember seeing somebody match that description coming through. I think it was a fair bit earlier this morning. You look to be, you know, you're describing a feller. I'm assuming you describe the way, the same way I described him to you last time.

Yeah.

Kind of emaciated and tired. Yeah, that'd be the one. Big difference is, I mean, his clothes were beat, all the shit. Looks like you could have bought a new pair of shoes a while ago. But he looked healthy as a horse, walking along pretty confidently. I didn't notice anything too awful sickly about the boy. I actually surprised me because, again, he's the only other guy I've seen come up from that way. He looked fine. Looked like he'd been doing pretty good up there.

He's been quitting so far. Sorry. An acquaintance of ours trying to keep track of him.

Oh, it looks like your friend fared better up there than a lot of folks do in town. Well, good clothes.

We appreciate that. Info.

Unsettled.

Absolutely. You have yourself a good rest of your day. Good luck with your fishing.

Like a last puppy.

Glad to see you ain't casting a line in here. This year's our fishing spot. Been fishing here for 43 years.

All right, good luck. I never caught shit out of that lake. I hope you do better than I did.

I caught a whopper last year. I'm hoping to. He had to be about 7ft long. Big old pike monster.

It's like a whopper.

I hate to interrupt with what is the riveting fishing story, but we gotta head on.

Well, you have a good day.

You as well.

Get my virtual hat. You continue on south after the lake. Headed back towards rifle is when you encounter the golf course. It would have come before the lake on your trip up. And again, pretty similar scene there. You see golfers golfing.

Nothing stops those people.

You see lightning, you'll get their attention.

You see another, maybe the same, maybe a different young man. He's out trimming whole a different hole this time, out there trimming the green. And as you continue forward, you end up by the bowling alley and it spits you right back out into downtown rifle. And you're headed straight back to Pate. Pete. Pete. Not Pat.

Pete Rodriguez.

Pete's place. So you're able to get there no problem. Town looks. Town looks as good as it did when you left it.

Okay, we get to the driveway. I'm gonna car down the driveway. Pete, it's out of brandy bank. We're coming up.

Don't shoot. A couple minutes later, Pete opens up the door, comes out to you like, ah, you guys made it. You came back. It looks like you had a pretty darn successful trip there.

That went pretty good.

Martin's a fickle game on a good day. And you folks ain't exactly from around here, so it was a gamble as to whether you were gonna come back.

Okay.

Yeah. Fair.

Oh, yeah. We need those bows. We definitely do. All right, well, here's your feathers. And we're gonna get started out here in the yard on this hide.

Perfect. If you don't mind asking you a favor, if you wouldn't mind doing that on the other side of the fence, at least, so the scent's as far from the house as possible. I've got a rack back there. That's where I do my tannin.

Oh, you do have a rack. Oh, that'll make a lotta. I need your scrapers. I don't have. I did not have hide scrapers. Can I borrow yours?

Absolutely. I got some. I can even show you how to make some out of bone for future, if you want. Bone scrapers are still the best tannin scrapers they got.

Oh, I'm gonna call bullshit. I know about obsidian's better.

Well, that may be.

They're just hard to find.

Big enough, but, yeah, if he goes inside, he grabs his scraper springs.

Oh, thank God. This is so hard to do with a knife.

And. Yeah. So you go on the other side of the fence. You see, he's got himself his tanner rack set up. It's decent. It's not. It's not like the cadillac. A tannerx, but it'll get the job done.

It's a hoop. It worked.

Yep.

So. Thank you. So I'll have. All right. And I'm gonna take Jacob especially. But I'm gonna show everybody. We're gonna get the hide unrolled out. I'm gonna show him how to lace it up on the rack. We're gonna get the fire going. Cause we gotta start making the tanning solution, and we're gonna start boiling the brains and we're gonna start.

Okay. That's what we're gonna do.

Yep. Like, yeah, I don't have tanninsaults. I don't. I don't know if he does, but this is the way they used to do it. It smells worse, but it works. And I'll get that fire. Going to get that, and then I'm going to just take everybody and I'm going to show them. Okay. See all this on the inside? We're scraping this off, but we don't want to scrape through the leather. We're not trying to thin it. It's not hard to do. It's just smelly and nasty and awful, and it just takes a long time. So I start. I show Asia and everybody how to do it. And then, like, just take turns when your arms are too tired, pass it to the next guy, and we'll get this done quicker.

Mel pressed today to taste some more peppermint scarves.

Hey, give me one of them damn scarves. This is nasty.

No problem.

It does. It smells way worse. Way worse. You're trying to use mage hand. It's going to have an arcana roll.

If you poke them home as high, very delicately attempt.

Because I understand after Elliot told me that it's very, very delicate.

I don't know if ten pounds of pressure will do much of anything, honestly.

Check it.

That's a natural one.

Yeah. You tear a good spot, this high elf.

Okay, well, my bad.

My bad.

God damn it. Quit fucking around. I'm not going back up here to get another elk.

Well, I mean, he really only needed it for the hand pieces, right? I mean, we don't need that much elk, right?

Maybe it's the principle of it.

And you do know this part is payment.

Would you. Would you like a prestidigitated scarf so you can touch it?

Yes.

Hey, wait. Somebody said they could fix the elves.

Didn'T they fix something right? Can we mend it?

I can try mending on it.

See if you can fix that hole.

Uh, just for fun. Rolling Arcana.

Okay, I'm gonna try, like, holding the pieces together to.

You know, my Arcana is not good, and I've been rolling like trash.

Well, we're helping. He's holding it together to help her.

We need all the help we can get.

There's a nat 20 in the.

You undo the damage his net one did.

Okay, thanks. Now quit. Just do it the way I showed.

You to do it.

The Mae chan's gonna hand me the.

Perfect. If there's not anything else in particular you wanna do today that can kill.

Your day, I'm gonna take a bath at the end of the day.

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

I also think that we should set watches even though we're in theory in town and it quote unquote safe place.

Yeah, yeah. And I definitely want to spend this evening. I mean, we gotta get things started. When Pete comes out, I definitely wanna give him a pretty in depth what we saw. We wanna tell him about Griff, tell him what we suspect and that, hey, we need. You need to keep an eye. Anybody that you know, talk to them.

Gonna think we're crazy.

Just keep an eye about. Yeah, I don't know if I'm gonna try to tell him about thinking he's a werewolf, but we ran into a weird guy and there's something bad happened at the. Something bad happened at the jail or prison. And just keep your eye open because we don't know what's going on. But we have suspicions, but no proof on anything.

We'll play that conversation through then. So Pete comes out, we'll say after you guys fed your supper, you ate, got a campfire going, and you're kind of just doing the end of the night. The hide's. You're pretty much done with the hide.

It's got a cure, but.

So you can't even really see well enough to do anything anyway. If you tried, you risk damage. It's a pretty adequately done job considering five, six or four fifths of ya have never done it before. It's still a pretty, pretty adequate job. It's not gonna make the best coat you've ever worn or anything, but it's a solid leather. Once it finishes curing, you're confident that it'll be adequate payment for the quality of bows, you know, this man could produce. And so he comes out, brings a bottle out with him, sits down and like. Well, after that long out there in the cold, I'm sure you guys won't mind a little bit of whiskey to warm your cockles back up. Oh, that'd be much like a little Jim bean. You know, the good stuff here. Or Johnny Walker. That's what he drinks. He's a Johnny Walker.

Basic Jim beams, like the cheap one.

Jim Beam's terrible.

I'm not picky.

It's not.

I saved the good stuff for when my friends come around. So here's the good stuff.

Hell, yeah.

Thanks.

The jacks, the daily drinking. This is the fancy stuff.

I warmed the belly anyway. I'll take a. I'll take a healthy swig and then pass it.

So the hunting good up in that area still pretty fair.

Pretty fair. I'll tell for. Yeah, I'll tell him where we were and what we got. Things that we saw that, you know, to help him if he were to go again, kind of share the info that we discovered.

Ah, perfect. I always figure he used to be the meanest codger that owned that chunk of land with them corrals on it. So you never actually got to set up camp there. He was a mean old codger. All he did, I swear, all he did is ride around on his atv looking for people on his property. I don't think he ever actually ranched anything up there, but, ah. So I never actually got a hunt exactly that area. But I always, always saw a healthy head of. Healthy head of Elk.

His name wasn't Griff, was it?

No. No, it wasn't Griff. Okay, Frank. Frank Elhart.

Griff was young.

Made old cod. You got it. Swear he was old when I was a kid.

Did he have a.

Did he have a grandson named Chris, by chance?

I can't say that I got too far familiar with the man. He wasn't. He didn't come to town often. Uh, and when he did, he again. He wasn't exactly anybody's best buddy here.

We didn't see any. Any sign of him at all.

Yeah, without old shit, he may well be Dave. Ah. Would I be surprised if that old fart had a pacemaker. Oh.

Oh, God.

Oh, God.

I've never. Oh, lord, that's hard. Horrible.

All of us sitting. Have an existential nurse.

All of us are going, grandma.

They got Pastor Dan down at the local congregation.

Shit.

That's what did him in. Although everybody's frankly amazed it wasn't the sheer volume of bacon that man ate every day. I guess at a roundabout way, it's.

I was gonna say. I mean, I think that's.

I mean, that did get. Lend itself to the pacemaker. See, Jacob, this is why it's very important to have balanced meals. Lots of intervals and kale chips.

But you lost him on the left and doing your cardio, I guess, and.

That was the intervals. How's Jacob doing after yesterday?

And then riding on a little horse.

Oh, God, that's. He's poor. His legs are hurting, that's for sure.

Yeah, I bet that poor kid's a little slow.

He's just laying on the ground with his legs splayed. Oh, yeah.

He cracked out the moment that the tent was put back up.

I feel like that might be the quietest I've ever seen him, and he's just sprawled out in the backyard.

We gotta find this kid some comic books.

Or something, right?

Yeah, the boredest. Boredest seven year old.

We don't do a good job of entertaining him.

Hey, sports are fun.

Sure.

I bought a karate last week.

The karate's fun.

Hey, Jacob, do you want to do some karate tonight?

No.

Okay.

I should maybe coerce him into some stretching.

We'll consider this your rest day. But tomorrow morning it's yoga with me bright and early.

My rest day was riding a horse all day and scraping deer guts off a blanket.

I hear tell this is what the country life is like. I don't know. It sucks. I'm not gonna lie, Jacob being the country life sucks.

Yeah.

Elliot, what was your childhood like?

I was digging in the dirt.

I was a farmer.

So you didn't do yoga and karate and riding a horse? Disemboweling things?

No. Well, no, we. We butchered a lot of chickens. Yeah.

We need to find this kid.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

I can just see it now as we're traveling across the mountains. There's Jacob on the back of the horse with a comic book stuck to Mel's back.

Oh, we found some tape.

Yeah, just tape to Mel's back.

Pete, how's those bows coming along?

We're good. I got them pretty well. Pretty well shaped. Shaped out. Got them doing the thing now.

Excellent.

That has to happen to them.

I think that height will turn out okay. It's not. I wouldn't go trying to make a suit out of it.

It smells about right, unfortunately. Oh, God. Thank you again for doing it on the other side of the fence. At least the Mississippi got it. I ain't got to hear her complaining about it all day.

I don't blame you. Yeah. Oh, God. The old ways work, but, yeah, there's.

A reason we've moved on from a lot of them. Tell you what I do miss. Cutting them down with something other than just a file. And other things that I use today to shape them out. Um, the coop and saw.

You didn't tell me your band saw went down.

Yeah, it's out. Yeah. Miss that thing? I didn't think I was gonna mess with how often you break blades on those suckers, but, man. Yeah.

Got one hand tools from here on out, how maybe we can fix this problem.

Hand sanding.

Um, in your experience traveling out among these mountains, did you ever see any weird, like, cat, dog, bear claws? Don't look at me. I didn't see them. Ask them.

I've seen each of them individually. I've not seen a cat, bear, dog. I think there was a stupid show my kids watched once a week.

I'll describe the tracks and the claw marks as best I can.

Are those like cougar tracks? Sorry, mountain lion.

That ain't cougar. Cougar don't do that to an animal. Humans, that's a different word for cougar. I know they still don't do that. Nor do mountain lions, for that matter. Also cougars. Black bears don't tend to leave a whole lot of beat behind after they make it kill. Most of your. Most of your predatory animals, if they're gonna go through the effort of killing something, they're gonna eat it. They're usually living one meal to the.

Next, or they'll drag them off and stash them and come back to the kill tones.

Gone. I've never met one with a culinary preference, period, let alone only for organs. They're gonna make a kill. They're gonna make a kill, and they're gonna get there.

Oh, we got a new predator in town.

Yeah, these are strange times, man.

You say you saw it at the prison.

We saw what was left of an inmate that had his internal organs removed.

Jacob, go to bed.

Oh, he's out. Oh, yeah.

I say, Jacob, go to bed. What you hear is.

He'S asleep next to you. He just laid out, like splayed.

He's dead.

Okay.

The only bite marks in the meat, I guess you can call it, was just to get it out of the way, to get the organs. There's a gigantic hole in his chest with heart.

Was that ain't. That ain't. That ain't a critter I ever heard of. I've heard stories of that back from, you know, the books I used to read with when I was a younger, younger man.

You remember the story?

I do, but I don't really see much how it could possibly pertain to anything of substance.

Was it werewolves?

Yeah, it was a wolf man from old Europe. There's tales of, they called it a curse. You get, uh, again, this is all obviously fake nonsense. You guys are look like you're taking this serious, but, uh, we're just rattled. Yeah, we've seen some shit. The legend story, there's a couple different ways you could become a werewolf. One was to get bit and survive that path. That. That makes you a wolfman, a werewolf. Um, there's tale that there was some cursed child from back in the deep, deep old world, like Mesopotamia area. The boy was an orphan raised in the wild by himself and turned into a feral, feral critter. And his bite could curciate into being a werewolf. Or allegedly sleeping in the hide of a wolf surrounded by the wolfsbane flower could do it. We ain't got a whole lot of wolfsbane out in this area. No, mostly just sage up where you were. A little bit of wildflower. But we ain't got a lot of that in this area. Not this early, especially.

You think if we burn sage, it would purify everything?

It's a different kind of sage.

Oh, you might commit. I mean, you'll. You might purify some stuff through eradication.

It's all better. Cause there's nothing there.

That fire we had about two years back did its damnedest to burn this place down.

Suddenly, I'm not sorry I don't read like I thought reading was fun. This sounds scary as hell.

Yeah. And that. That story was more of a religious parable, a tale of the folly of man. More than it was, I think, ever meant to be taken serious as a monster story. More about the arrogance of man and the arrogance of science versus God's will, really. More what that story was intended for. Just happened to use it. A horrifying wolf man monster to deliver the penance through.

Well, there's a possibility that we met him.

You met a 400 year old wolf man from Europe?

No, I mean, I wouldn't say it like that.

That sounds ridiculous.

Yeah, you ain't wrong there, miss. In fact, I tell you this story, and y'all look like you're learning some stuff.

Oh, I learned things. Yeah.

Concerned here.

Is that why you were trying to go for a trivia night?

Yes. I wanted to learn new things. And me.

Okay. Okay, that's.

That makes long.

Long. It's that important?

Pete, you have more of a mind for literary analysis.

I was in the before times.

I like it.

I mean that as a compliment.

I hope so not. You know, you only get about seven, eight bo orders a year, and I charge enough to make a living off it, so I got some time on my hands.

Fair enough.

But, I mean, they. You've heard the term the mark of the beast, right? Yeah, it's that old. The christian thing. Mark of the beast, yada, yada, yada. They. They took it literal in that story. You get marked by the beast, you get bit by the beast, you get marked by it, you become the beast, and then you are a near unstoppable force that's unleashed upon the population of the area you live near.

God, that was awfully specific.

But there's one big issue with what y'all are telling me and that story. It ain't the full moon.

It that looks up.

Yeah.

What are the full moon phases it taint?

No, we're getting there. The full moon's, I think, the end of next week.

Oh, see, so whatever we think is clearly wrong, and we're overly imaginative because we've been through trauma and we're just terrified at life. See, this is fine.

That inmate in the turkeys that don't have their internal organs would like to.

Disagree with you, but they can't because they're dead. So this is fine.

Well, just saying that those guys were disemboweled.

But what a full moon.

I think we'll be on extra alert tonight at the very least.

It's interesting, though, that you guys mentioned there being this kind of carnage up on the north side of town. I went down to town today. I wanted to hit that coffee shop. Now that I know that they got their roaster up back and working, which. Thank you, folks. I've been missing my morning cuppa. I have any drinks? Drank the Folgers again. And God, it ain't good no more. Place done spoiled me. Add a little bit of salt to that Folger's grounds.

It makes it tolerable.

I've heard cinnamon, too.

That is interesting.

Add a pinch of salt.

I wish somebody would have figured that out while I was in the military on a boat instead of just adding more coffee grounds.

Yeah, no, a pinch of salt on the grounds and then pour the coffee. I don't know.

It cuts the ass. But anyway, thank you, folks, for getting that back up. But I heard an interesting story. Dial it was down there. A couple folks comment from the southwest of town said that there was several young men found slaughtered out on the Richardson ranch. Yeah.

That's.

What could possibly have done that. Their organs from the story? Or was it something more akin to their heads?

Yeah. I'll be honest with you, I didn't think to ask about the organs at the time. Wasn't at the forefront of my mind, but missing ahead. Several of our missing heads.

That's crazy. Like, three of them.

Yeah, they're poor.

Emery kicks Olmo.

Yeah.

Let's go ahead and have horrifying, actually.

What the hell did you roll for that?

That's a deception.

And we're just glad that he's not at disadvantage anymore.

Well, and I just rolled a wisdom save to see if Mel has the sense to not say anything. And she absolutely does not. She's. Can we give him an advantage?

Because we're I'm trying to keep the conversation moving and just slide on by that.

I don't think so. On that one, you say something that weirdly specific. What did you get?

13 plus 114.

All right. He looks at you kind of funny. It's like, yeah, yeah, there were. There were three of them. Boys without a head.

That does match with the turkeys, because a couple of the turkeys were missing their heads.

And then Mel says, boy, it's a good thing that your ranch, Elliot, is to the southeast of rifle, right?

Isn't there something, you know, like mark of the beast? You know, like three heads trapped off something like that.

It's a trinity thing, right?

Yeah, no, I.

Right.

Hey, how's that? More to bond. I got another snort of that whiskey there.

He passes the bottle on over and he's like, yeah, thanks. There are three of them boys, but you know, they're. Poor mama, she. Oh, I got. Sounds like she passed. She, uh, ran out of meds sometime back. And what them boys were doing instead of getting her meds, I don't quite understand, but. Sorry. They were kind of. Their pappy was a. Their pappy was a dickhead. He was. He was just as bad as that feller on up by the hunting area I was telling you about. He burned just about every bridge in this town he could.

Well, yeah, cuz there's a. There's a pharmacy in town. Why wouldn't they come into town? I don't. I gotta believe the pharmacy's probably giving out important meds to like. Yeah, they come and get them, so take them. You. Don't be funny.

They're doing their best. I mean, they're trying to keep some. Some control. So that way, you know.

Oh, sure.

They don't give all the insulin out tomorrow, and then a week from now, all. Everybody's passing.

Well, the thing is that it be refrigerated. It's not gonna last a long time. So.

Yep, they got the coolers out spac, that they're holding it in.

That's good, because they're not. The problem is they're not going to get any. But I figure, you know, when grandma cattle comes in to get her high pressure, high pressure medication, I'm sure they like, you know, here, go ahead and.

Oh, yeah, and Nathan down at the pharmacy, he knows all like 15 people who need the insulin in town. If we're not a big community, it's the pharmacy in town. But, uh. Yeah, I don't know what. Them boys. Them boys were always built a little different, especially. They got around their cousins. But, uh, you know, it's a particularly brutal scene down that way. Hear the sheriff's kind of looking around, asking some questions, but.

Well, if we hear anything, we'll. We'll look to sheriff up.

Can I do an insight check to see whether or not he got caught wind of anything that just happened?

Sure.

He's any more suspicious than normal?

Mel, would like you to pass the whiskey, please.

14.

He's. There's something confusing him. He's not suspicious, but between the comment of the three. He's done business with Elliot before, and.

We'Ve been entirely normal before that.

Yeah, normal. And his ranch now being to the southeast is sitting a little funny with him, but he's not like he was best buddies with Elliot, so he's not willing to call him out and be like, aren't you from the southwest?

It was Mel who said it. She doesn't look like somebody who would be an authority on directions. Let's face it, that's part of why.

He ain't calling y'all out on it.

But it's a little funny with him.

Ha ha.

We have confused him.

Well, we need to do a little bit more work. We'll check that high tomorrow. I think it'll be done tomorrow. We'll stay the night. We'll make sure that's done. If you need, we'd be happy to help. Fletch, arrows.

All right. All takes about. I still need the metal for the marrow heads.

Oh. Oh, crap. Forgot about that.

We'll run that errand tomorrow.

Yeah, we'll run down the scrap yard tomorrow.

I can help shape those kind of.

Honestly, kicking myself a little bit. I meant to grab it while I was down there getting coffee, but the story of the Richardson boys kind of derailed me a little bit there. Coming on back. They're dickheads, but they were. They had the potential to be good boys. I think the right hand could have guided him a little better. Unfortunately, they had their pappy.

Everybody's got the potential, but they don't always have the intention.

It's like, late evening now, right?

Yeah, it's after dark. Cool. That's what I thought. It's a proper campfire story.

So we have, like, a silver dagger.

So what did we decide was the check against nightmares?

It was charisma.

Ah, okay.

So I think hearing a story about a book written in the the 18 hundreds is a bit different than talking to maybe a werewolf.

Like, actual maybe the combination of the two is making Mel a little.

Knowing that he came towards town.

Yeah.

And that he's healing. According to old dude by the lake. He looks not sickly anymore.

I think he probably fed well.

Yeah.

Good news is Mel's apparently too stupid to get nightmares.

I think she's probably complaining. Compartmentalizing.

That's a werewolf thing, though. Eating some stories. Danny. Who again? That's all just. That's all just nonsense talk. It's not. It's not real.

You're right.

Have you met elves?

Never met elves.

Oh, my.

Give me the whiskey.

You're drinking.

You've had too much. You've had too much.

I've never spoken to an elk. I just shoot him. All right, that's.

Oh, not. Go to bed.

That's probably a good idea.

Did you talk to the elk you killed? It's a weird question.

I screamed at a turkey.

I'll dock that.

We go.

The shit out of that turkey.

You know, you're right. I'm gonna go different than I do.

You know what?

I had to kill it.

We don't all have foes. And that's why we came a lot different.

I see on the back of them.

Two man, I lit one on fire.

I didn't have a bow.

So you lit a turkey on fire.

You know what?

I think maybe we all need to go to.

I think it's time for you to hand me those key. And I'm gonna put this on top shelf. Top shelf thing.

After this admittedly confusing conversation, you are reminded me me why I live on the outskirts of town. And I appreciate that. Yeah.

And, you know, we might be crazy, we might be overly suspicious, but make sure you lock your door tight tonight.

I will absolutely do that.

Not because of us. I want to make that part clear.

I think Belle has a little nervous laughing fit over.

As long as you do that, buddy.

That's.

We're looking out for you, dude.

You better take that whiskey bottle back inside. We don't want anybody to get hurt.

Yeah, I. Yeah. Well, let me know when you guys get that medal and I'll just be seeing y'all.

Yep, we'll get it tomorrow.

Not tomorrow with that. You guys said you wanted to do watches.

Yes.

I think Olnock's not on first watch.

No, Olnach needs to sober up a little bit.

Olnach is on last watch.

Yay. On the overwatch.

I usually prefer to do first watch, but I can do an earlier one if you want.

Elliot'll take third.

Earlier than first.

I think she meant last, but yeah, last watch.

I think you can still take last. We have enough of us. You and Olnot can double up. Okay, I'll take second.

I'll take first.

Then James Emery.

At least I take two.

Third, I take morning. Yeah. And now we're at fourth. Watch the duo.

Morning calisthenics group. It's the yoga.

We're doing yoga.

You two and James, not James.

Joining us for yoga in the morning. That poor child needs to stretch.

All right, all right.

You did this to him.

I did. And it's good for him. You can. Would you like me to wake you up early so we can stretch?

No, thanks.

Okay.

Nope. If I try to do anything before coffee, I will probably stab someone.

Okay, so I make morning coffee not for Mel, but for Emory.

Got it.

Yes.

To both.

Theater of the mind is Jeremy Arfston as Elliot Brandybain, Amanda Arfston as Melanie Kelly, Michael Burnell as Olnock Farger Johnson, Michael Downs as James O'Brien, Casey Weingarten as Emery Lee, and myself, Mike Schalk as your dungeon master. We release episodes every two weeks, so our next episode will release on April 28. If you want to follow us, our social media and website can be found on our link tree, which can be found in the podcast description. Also in the podcast description, you can find a link to Pinecast, as well as our referral code to get you 40% off your first four months of a paid membership, as well as our referral link to Epidemic Sound, which gets you a one week trial period to their excellent program. The music this week was sourced from epidemic Sounds, who we are not sponsored by under the Creative Commons license. The songs used in order Meadow Lake Morning by Will Harrison Appalachian Spring by Roy Edwin Williams Red Hook by Roy Edwin Williams View of the park by roots in recognition Skyward Bound by Victor Lundberg to Wonderland by Headland Desert whispers by tell sonic work on done by Pierce Roswell stay true by Lars Erikson. We are in this together now by loving caliber and demon knight by Farrell Wooten. The Theater of the mind theme adbreak and outro were written by Mike Schalk. Theater of the Mind is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental. No animals were harmed in the recording of this episode. Yeah.