S1:E10 – Trust, heists, and coffee

Welcome to Theater of the Mind.

Theater of the Mind is an unofficial d in the buy. The actual played podcast. Theater of the mind is not appropriate for all audiences, and therefore, listener discretion is advised. Welcome to Theater of the mind. My name is Mike. I'll be your dungeon master today. And for episode ten, our question is a little more broad, a little less specified to your recent events. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life thus far for the character? Right? Yes. Okay.

My name is Amanda, and I'm playing Mel Kelly. Mel's young, embarrassingly so. There hasn't been a ton of time to have any really cool, interesting accomplishments, but she was very proud of something that she did, like late, late childhood, early teens, what do they call it? Tweens or something. Now, she had been allowed to join a martial arts class and everything, and she was super excited because after, like, six months or something, she made it up, like three belt levels, and she was very, very proud of that. That was probably the root of all of her weird kickboxing, taekwondo type classes. Neither of her parents showed up for it, but she was super proud of it.

That's depressing.

That's a lot about wicked sad.

And I'm Jeremy. I'm playing Elliot. Brandy bane. And the accomplishment that Elliot was most proud of is he was a mechanic in the motor pool during desert shield, and he kept his shop running and his vehicles moving during the time that he was required to gotten almost no sleep. And the crew that was working under him, he kept them together and kept them motivated. And for about a three week period of time, they had almost no sleep, but they had very high efficiency and very good efficiency ratings. And Elliot was very proud of that accomplishment.

I am Brunel. I'm playing Olnak Vaga Johnson. Olnak's proudest accomplishment is a military accomplishment, but it did cost him quite a bit in his personal life. He's pretty proud of making his rank and getting to the point where he's at in his career, even though it's basically over, because it's not super common to make that rank in the enlisted ranks. Senior chief, I think I said he was. That's an e eight. It's doable. Like, a lot of people can get there. But once you make chief, you go to board. It's not about your evaluations and your test scores anymore. You go to a board of other chiefs, and they have to approve whether they're going to promote you or not. And he had a lot of pretty significant sense of pride over it. It did kind of cost him his family life, as military life often does. And he made some mistakes along the way in the military as well, but didn't derail his potential to get where he wanted to get.

Hello, I'm downs. I played James O'Brien, and James'greatest accomplishment was probably getting into a culinary school without any kind of family interference. Not that they probably would have assisted, but he was able to get into a somewhat prestigious culinary school with zero assistance, which he was quite proud of at the time.

I'm Casey. I play Emory. Lee Emery. As an artist. I think she probably has a sculpture that she made that she was extremely proud of. I don't think she has it anymore. I think it's, like, one of the few pieces, like, larger pieces that she was actually able to sell to someone, just private person who saw this piece and wanted it. I think she was really proud of building something like that and being able to sell it.

Excellent.

Let's go ahead and roll for recap.

Done.

High or low?

We'll go high.

Nine.

Also nine.

Five, six.

That would be me. I rolled an 18.

Not even close.

No.

Okay, that makes sense. It was a fairly eucentric episode anyway.

So we learned that if I go into a trance for about ten minutes, I can talk to animals. That was pretty cool. Also that no one else hears what I hear and that I speak to animals like animals talk. But I don't hear me sounding like animals. I hear me sounding like me. So that was a little. I'm sure I looked insane to all of you.

Can't confirm.

We gathered everything up from Elliot's farm. Then we needed to get and started moving down the road. That's where we found out. After packing up the horses for everything for the journey, we found out that I can talk to animals. I guess I found out, and everybody kind of found out by association. We did test if it was something I can do, instead of me just having, like, tripping out on whatever was in the coffee. It is a thing that I can do. I have to go into a ritual for about ten minutes, and then I can talk to animals for a little bit. Then it goes away. Birds are annoying. We also learned that we got on our journey, things were going pretty smooth until we got just outside a rifle coming down the backside, ran into some miscreants, if you want to call them that. And I overjoyingly destroyed three of them. That made me very happy. So three decapitations. We got the hat trick of the decapitations. Everybody thinks I'm a psycho as well as insane. They're not wrong. So we did find that out and we got through. And it wasn't a rough and tough. Holy crap, we all almost died battle we handled pretty soundly this time.

Are there any other little events that we need to go think? I think that's good.

Because Mel didn't talk to her little creature thing. James went and hid behind Elliot, and then Elliot fucking bailed on him. That happened.

I had Jacob on the horse.

That's fair.

That's fair. We're protecting the child. You're right. Kid's fine, by the way. We also.

How much of that do you think you saw?

There was three blood felts.

Yeah, for 1 second. Think about that. I saw us getting attacked, and I wasn't going to let what happened last time where I literally take all the damage and then feel worthless happen again. So I kind of went a little crazy. Little Jacob might be scared of me for a while. All you had to see was one of those. And if it was the one where I was singing after decapitating a man, the first one. Yeah, which is likely the one he saw.

We just got to hope he had.

Its face buried, homie. Scarred for life.

I did tell him to hold on tight.

Well, tell him to keep his eyes closed until we get out of here.

It all depends on what he holds for his perception.

He's not going to want to see any of this.

The thing worth noting is one member of your party is currently sawing logs pretty hard. That's right.

James is sleeping.

Does that stay even after the guy who cast it died?

That's a good question.

I would be the only one who knows he's asleep because I was right next to him when it happened, and I can hear him snoring.

It would only last a minute.

Something that magic does.

It only lasts a minute. So he's probably waking up about now.

Okay.

But it is not concentration.

You're laying on the ground staring at the dead guy's head next.

So how'd it go? Why am I in the ground?

That part I don't know, but fucking nailed it, bud. Nailed it. They're all gone. We did it.

Good.

All right.

You're safe.

He's going to look at the shirt and his pants, completely covered in blood and viscera. From a man.

Oh, sure. Stabby boy gets to faint, but the rest of us have to clean up the mess.

I did not faint. That dude looked at me. His eyes rolled up in the back of his head, and then my eyes got all blurry. And then I passed out and I'm staring at that dude's head.

It looks like he fainted. Mel's looking at him with a similar stink eye to see if she could make him.

And James is going to glare back with similar intensity.

So Elliot, he on purpose was a ways away from where all this was happening, mostly to keep Jacob out of the fight. I'm going to tell Jacob, hey, Jacob, I think I dropped my pocket knife while we were over here. I'm going to swing you off the horse and you look around in this grass over here and help me find my pocket knife, and I'll be right back. I got to go check and make sure everybody's okay. And we're just right over there. So don't be scared, but keep looking. It's my favorite pocket knife. And keep looking for that and I'll come get you in a couple of minutes.

Okay, sir. I'll hang out here and I will find your knife, sir.

All right. So he's going to grab his hand and swing him off to the ground. And he's like, I was here a minute ago. You just keep looking in the grass. It probably fell down in there. You'll have to get on your hands and knees.

What color is it?

It's brown.

Brown?

Yeah.

Okay.

Any pocket knife you find in that grass, it's mine.

All of them?

Every one of them. Okay, but I'm sure you only find one.

I'll find all the knives I can, sir.

Okay. This should be only a couple of minutes, but I'll be right back. So then I'm going to ride the horse over to where the incident happened.

James and Mel are having a very intense staring. Yeah.

And I'm going to look and I'm going to munner his breath. I can't believe that stole my shirt.

Do I hear that?

Perception?

Yeah, real perception.

I'm going to do it at disadvantage imposed on myself because I am distracted, very into this steering competition right here.

Are you trying to keep him from hearing?

Not particularly. I'm not loud. It was something I just muttered to myself.

That's whatever. Passive is a disadvantage.

Five minus whatever. You're passive, so you probably didn't hear it. So I'm going to go over, I'm going to hop off the horse, and I'm going to dig around looking for the three arrows that I missed with.

And then that was perception.

Ooh, 19 plus.

Now you find all three.

Sweet.

Find the three missed arose no problem there at all.

I think at this point, Mel's firmly in the anger stage of the grief of life, completely turning on its ear. And so, after a few minutes of staring at James in this rather intense stare down, she's going to telepathically tell him, like, you don't want to push me right now.

Oh, I think I do. I'm going to respond in my head.

You also get that eldritch screening?

Oh, yeah. My eyes definitely. I don't close them, but I definitely.

You twitch.

Yes.

I'm going to have people saying that I pass out in the metal of combat.

I think Emory's going to kind of sidle up to Elliot and say, what do you do with the bodies after? It feels wrong just to leave them here. Is that what you do? You just leave them? You just leave bodies?

Unless you want to take the time to bury them. And it'll take about a half a day to do that.

Yeah.

Like a wise man once said, buzzards got to eat, same as worms.

Who said that?

The outlaw Josie Wales.

I don't know who that is. I don't know why I asked. Okay. That's all I wanted to know. Thanks. I guess I'm not comforted, but that answered my question.

So Elliot's going to do a really quick over, see if they've got any arrows, specifically if they've got arrows. I didn't know if any of them happen to have bows on them. I don't know. I'm pretty set. I didn't know if anybody needed any more knives or anything.

But there's no arrows, if that's specifically what you're looking for. There's none of that. They got their wallets on them.

I'm going to do a quick look at the wallet, just to see if it's there, if it was his, and if his name matched, and if it's.

Anybody that I knew, you wouldn't know him.

Is his address. Is he a local?

Yeah, he would be living in the area. Okay, so three of them lived in the area. Three of them were. You can tell they were brothers?

They were. Okay.

And then there's two. Not from the area. Same last name, though. Okay, so they're related, but they're not from here.

Those were the brother cousins.

The brother cousins. Wow. Well, something that. I don't know if we were, wondered. But now we know we're not the only ones that got magic.

Yeah.

Do you think there actually was a mom back at home?

I don't believe a word this asshole said.

You're probably right.

He could have just let us go.

They could have turned around at any point.

And I know for a fact there's a pharmacy and rifle. If he needed medicine, I would have headed to a pharmacy.

Yeah, I know they could have. They should have. And better them than us, right?

It's not good, but it's better.

I don't know what Jacob's looking for. I'm going to go help him, though.

Oh, and I'm going to pull my pocket knife. He's looking for that. And help him find that.

Okay, I'll go do that.

Okay, so you wander off to go.

Help the boy out, and then I will attempt to drop the pocket knife accidentally at some point when we look like we're about to head out so that he can fight into the pocket knife.

Go ahead and have a sleight of hand.

I knew you were going to say that.

He's not looking. Can she get advantage on that sleight of hand? Because he's busy digging around in the surety 20.

Okay.

Yeah.

He doesn't see it happen. Do you find it or do you let him find it?

I let him find it, but I do drop it then, kind of like, oh, have you checked over there? You should try over there.

So after you do that, a couple more minutes of looking, and Mr. Elliot, I found your pocket knife.

Good, Jacob. And I'm going to do the cool jump, hop up around on the horse and ride over to him and reach down and help him up on the horse. Thanks, Jacob. I'd have sure hated if I'd have lost that pocket knife.

I told you I'd find it, and.

So I found it.

Yes, sir, you sure did. Boy. I appreciate it.

So you guys are going to move.

On out wide berth around the dead people so that Jacob doesn't see him.

Get back on the road?

Yeah, we'll get as far away from.

Them as we think late in the day by now.

Yeah, we're probably getting close to like five, six in the afternoon.

Yeah, we're probably going to need to make camp. I don't know if we want to push into rifle in the dark.

Probably better to hit that during the day.

Yeah, ride another mile or two. That's pretty big field out here.

We've not been in the city since first day. They're hospitable people in rifle, right?

I don't trust anybody.

Takes one to no one.

I'm just saying take away their creature comforts.

That's a nice shirt you got there.

Thank you.

I will point out that no matter how hospitable, two of us are covered.

In blood, head to toe, drenched.

Well, put on your b suit and fix it.

Not going to fix my face. I mean, it's covered. You saw what I did.

I have some water.

All right. We could hit Mam Creek. I know if we go just a little bit further west from here, we'll hit Mam Creek. It's not very big, but at Least there's running water.

And give us a chance to clean up a little bit.

I bet it will be cold. Yeah, it's still melting.

Oh, it's going to be cold.

Yeah.

It should get it right out though.

Yeah.

I mean, we're still going to be hitting town tomorrow even if we do camp, so you should probably wash before it's too dry.

Yeah.

So let's do that. Let's go hit the creek and then I think it's best. You can be as hospitable as you want. People coming up at night is still alarming.

Yes, everything's alarming.

Yeah.

Besides, I know if we drop down in the creek bottom over there, we should be able to run a fire. As long as it's not smoky. You won't see it unless you're in the bottom itself. It won't show up out here. This is a pretty big field. We could be seen a long ways. But if we're down there by the creek, they won't be able to see. As long as we keep it a clean fire.

I think that's a good idea.

Agreed.

So you guys start heading out towards Mam Creek. It is thankfully on the same side of the river that you're on, which I just learned existed. And yeah, you guys are able to, I would assume you guys want to put a little bit of distance between here and where you're camping. Not wanting to camp on the dead man's land. Yeah, it's a few miles, so you're able to get over there. We're now, no need to make that more difficult than it is. You get over there, you're able to find a decent camping spot for the night. So you're able to set up camp. And anybody who wishes to bathe in possibly the coldest water you've ever bathed in is more than welcome to. It is early April runoff, as you mentioned. It's flipping cold and it's getting dark, so it ain't exactly warm outside either.

I have an idea what we can do for that cold water. We got the cooking pot. We can fill that with water and heat it up a little bit. At least make it a little bit more bearable, right?

As long as we can get a fire going.

Yeah.

I am planning on loosening some fingers over cleaning up blood.

That's fair.

Hypothermia would be a bitch right now. At night. That would suck.

Yes.

Afterwards, I will get clean water and we can make some soup.

I don't know why, but it scares me that you emphasize that you were getting clean water as if maybe there was a chance that you wouldn't.

I'm just specifying because I knew there was going to be a snide comment about making soup with dirty, bloody water, so I decided to emphasize the fact that I was going to get clean water.

Well, thank you for allaying any fears I didn't know I had.

Unfortunately, it was for not because I still got the snide comment.

You could.

Add to your iron intake, though.

No, we're not even close to being that.

Cannibalism is a bad idea on so many levels.

How do we even know they were people? Look, they had magic.

I have magic. Am I not a people?

You go a little magicky around here. Last I checked, we were all still mostly people.

Mostly.

Mostly.

I see. Probably can't take full credit for being people at this point.

To be totally fair, though, most people, normal people that I used to know, wouldn't break into song as they decapitated a man.

That's also fair. I'm going to give you that one. That's a win. Good job.

Can we not talk about the battle in front of the little.

Oh, yeah.

Thank you.

That time I sang a song with the Koolaid.

You should go get some water.

Yes. That'll come out for me, not you.

Yeah. I think the rest of us just kind of work on setting up camp while they go.

No, still sucks at putting up a tent.

Elliot's gonna watch her for a little bit. Just shake his head. She'll figure it out eventually.

I'm going to try finding the driest wood that I can for fire. Try minimizing smoke as much as possible. Not even going to worry about, like, fire starters or anything. I'm just going to fire bolt as close to the ground as possible to light it.

Yeah. Yep, that works. You have got a proper fire.

So while you're getting that fire ready, Alex, Elliot's going to say, hey, when you get a minute, we need to go over here and have a conversation.

All right. We got to have somebody watching this fire, though.

Okay?

I got it covered.

Damn it.

Jacob in the air and I will sit here and poke the fire for you.

All right. Just watch it until it boils the water.

Got it.

Thanks. Maybe stop it before then. Yeah.

Boiling is going to be a little hot.

Probably once it starts.

I wanted to warm the water and not burn our skin off.

James is flustered. He's not ready for this conversation yet.

Pur boiled Olnock for dinner.

We just had the cannibalism conversation, so he's going to take James little ways out.

Where are you?

I can't see you.

Is it dark now?

I just said it was like five, six. It may take you an hour to get there, so. Six, seven. I guess early April it would be dark.

Yeah. So he's going to say I'm right here.

There you are.

Yeah. Hey. I don't like to accuse someone of something that I don't know for sure, so I'm going to give you an opportunity. Where exactly do you get that shirt?

From a backpack.

From a backpack. Where exactly did you find that backpack?

Your place. We were setting up inventory and whatnot.

See, I don't. I have a problem. I don't mind defending yourself if you need be. So you don't have anything else you could do, but thievery really bothers me, and it concerns me a little bit that you took something from me that would have been freely given had you asked for it. And I know we just met not very long ago. We've been through a lot.

Life and death, multiple times.

Multiple times. And I appreciate what you've done, but I do know from past experience, especially when you're working with a crew of people, especially when it's dangerous, that you have to be able to trust each other. And I'm not going to lie right at the moment, my trust level in you is a little bit low. So I guess I got to ask, why did you steal?

To be fully honest. Fully honest? Hard to explain. It's kind of a nervous tick at this point.

Well, you know, I actually believe that. But I guess the question that I need to answer, and I'm going to need you to help me answer it, is where am I going to find my trust in you?

That is an excellent question. One that I don't think I have an appropriate response for. I will say I won't shoot you in the back. That is an honest answer. I may borrow a shirt now and then.

Wow.

Whether you're being persuasive or deceptive, don't tell us. Roll and do an insight against it.

Insight. 17 has 17 meters beat. So I incited correctly.

Were you being honest or are you lying?

That was persuasion. I was being totally honest.

You know that he's being honest. He does not believe that he would ever be in a situation where he would shoot you.

I may not.

My concern is he specifically said, the back.

I'll put it to you another way. I don't fully trust you and you don't fully trust me. We've been through life and death together. I am far above backstabbing. I am totally above board when it comes to life or death situations. I've been in enough situations where the people that I trusted, people I relied on, literally closed a door in my face.

Well, I can see how that would make fellow distressful. I really do. And then do a perception. What was your perception?

Oh, I'm doing a perception. Yeah, sorry. It's a 19.

Perfect. So you were facing me, you couldn't see me. And then all of a sudden, from behind you, like your left shoulder, you did not see or hear me move. You hear, I want to trust you.

James is going to visibly, like, Jolt.

But do know that if you double cross me or my people, I will get you.

Damn. Is that an intimidation check? Damn.

Wasn't meant to be. That's just what's going to happen.

Noted.

And then you look around and I'm not there.

Elliot. Elliot.

And then you see as I step into the campfire light back at the freaking Batman.

It's exactly what I was thinking.

So after that conversation, you're thinking about the last time you had a serious conversation like this? Somebody you trusted in the past. How are you doing?

Definitely bringing back unfortunate memories of broken trust. I know that I'm. I fully understand that I'm the one essentially breaking trust, but the last time that I was backstabbed by somebody I thought was a friend, definitely bringing back fresh memories.

Is this something you're going to share with the party?

Probably would be a good time to do it. It's fresh.

So you want her back over to the party? Olnox. A good portion of the way. Through cleansing his flesh from the gore.

You missed a spot.

It cleanses its flesh.

That was a disturbing description of washing up.

You got a little bit of viscera on your lip.

Right there. Right here?

No other side. I'm going to help.

You could have led with that.

I only recently realized I can use it to clean stuff.

She has a point.

So it seems how you're willing to share with the group that would assume you're not trying to hide. You guys can tell that James is in a bit of a different headspace than he normally is.

James is probably going to walk towards the campfire, like, swinging his arms, like, I don't want to have this conversation now. I'm singing like Olnak. I know I'm not the most forthcoming with everybody, with everything all the time. Emery can attest to this. I have a slight fevery problem. It's kind of like I said to Elliot, it's a nervous tick at this point. It's going to be one of those very cliche stories about stealing things to get your parents'attention, yada, yada, yada. As I would love to trust everybody. The last time I trusted somebody, though, fully, without any doubt about the person that I trusted, it blew up on my face. So I just like to make it clear that I don't fully trust anybody. I don't fully even trust myself half the time, which is an amazing headspace. But I would just like to put it out there that I will not backstab anybody. If there's a possibility of going against any of you to get ahead and staying alive, I will not do it. That is 100% honesty.

Yes.

This is Elliot's shirt. Yes. The booze came from Sven. Yes. I threw away most of your kale chips.

I'm actually for that one.

It's nutritious.

It killed the plants it landed on, so I'm just putting that out there.

A day might come where we wish we had kale chips. Did you ever think of that?

That's going to be a very dark day.

Almost positive that won't happen.

It could. You don't know.

It could.

Potentially. I'm going to give it that conceded fair, highly improbable.

If that day comes, I will say I told you so.

I wouldn't expect anything less.

Thank you.

If I'm at the point where I have to eat kale chips and Papayardi dead, but who knows?

Not that bad.

It's kale chips and then betrayal. That's the bottom of your tier.

But he has to think about it when he's presented with the galeship.

Well, yeah. Thank you. That's nice to hear. I think, and I think it goes same. We've kind of found ourselves together in this group, and I'm committed to this group as well. And I would never intentionally betray any of you.

Also being, if I'm being totally honest, when I first met y'all, I was just using you guys to get at a junction, really. There was a plan of going to Elliot's ranch, and at the time, I was planning on going with you guys, stealing a bunch of stuff and then booking it, but then we met Jacob and we had that life or death situation. And honestly thought that when I went down, I was going to wake up completely alone and y'all were still here. So that changed my mind pretty quick.

Well, James, the way that I look at it is. Past is in the past. And especially with what has happened. Except for my shirt. Your slate's clean with me.

Clean this.

Maybe you can keep it. It looks better on you anyway.

Now covered in blood, it looks better on me.

Well, yeah, I'm not going to want to wear that nasty thing. Mosquitoes will eat me alive. But you know what? From here on out, you've got a clean slate with me. And as long as you're honest and straightforward. You know what? I'm not even say you got to be honest. Just don't lie to me.

That's an OD sentence, but I think I follow.

I think.

Noted.

Well, I'm going to go and get ready for bed.

Does anyone else have issues seeing Elliot? Am I the only one? Like, he stops moving and he's just gone?

Yeah, because it's dark out.

Yeah, I can't see.

I can see perfectly fine. The sun's still. Where's the sun?

Elliot, open your eyes.

Sun is not out. It is. The only reason I can see is because of this campfire.

I can see pretty far out that way. I see like, the field where we unalived people.

What do you mean?

He's not thick?

No, it's slide out. I can see 50, 60ft out there.

Yeah, but what color is it?

Well, I mean, when the moon's up, it's hard to see. Color looks black and white.

What do you mean?

Is Mel starts looking at the sky for now, the second time in.

Well, why is it so lit up like this?

See, that's what I'm wanting to know. And I can't barely see you unless you move.

Yeah, it's actually pretty dark there, Elliot.

Like really dark.

Like I said, I can only see what's around the campfire.

So Elliot's going to stand up and he's going to start backing away from the campfire. And can you see me now?

Yeah.

Okay. Then he goes a little bit further. Can you see me now? Yeah, he's going to go another 1020ft and he's gone. Okay, Elliot, I can see you guys. I mean, you're in the.

I'm in the campfire.

Go that way. Go the other direction.

Okay. All right.

Then back into the water.

Parallel.

Emory moves away from the campfire. You hear her trip over her rock.

Can you all see Emory?

No.

Yeah, I just watched her trip over.

Almost trip.

I was gonna say, I heard.

I can see her fight. Can you see her?

Like I said, I watched her almost eat shit on that rock.

Okay, cool.

We can see in the dark.

That's cool.

Me neither. Don't feel.

Huh?

Hey, Jacob, can you see in the.

No.

No.

Well, everybody else is acquiring weird magic y talent. Maybe you got lucky, too.

Yeah, go like this.

I'm going to do like the Spider man's. Spider man's happens.

Maybe you have to hit puberty or something.

I don't know.

What's a puberty?

No worries. You're thinking of a cum quotch. That's a fruit.

I'm so glad you chose that one to describe puberty.

So Elliot's going to come back at camp and just go. I'll be damned. I don't need my night vision goggles after all.

That's kind of cool. That's going to make thieving so much. Not from you.

No. But if we can find that damn memoratar, we'll thieve that son of a bitch.

Yeah.

You steal everything from that guy thing, whatever it is.

Creature? The creature.

I don't know, whatever.

I think it was human once.

Humanoid creature.

I think guy covers it.

Yeah, let's do guy.

Guy is pretty expansive.

We'll call him the BBG. The big bad guy.

All right.

He's evil, too, though. Don't forget that.

The evil BBG ebb.

All right. The name is still pending.

Yeah, we'll go back to the drawing board on that copyright pending big evil bad guy Pebga.

Well, that'll keep us entertained around the campfire for a good 20 minutes.

All right. After that time, probably have soup ready. Do you want me to roll a performance for soup?

Sure. Same pot? Different pot.

How many pots did you bring?

Just the one. That's why I specified that I cleaned it out after the blood and rinsed it out really well and made non bloody.

We have Dr. Bronner's, so you can clean it really good.

It's what?

Sorry.

17 for the.

Yeah. This shit's baller. You can almost taste the guilt. It's almost good enough for you guys to just fall asleep, be okay to forgive them. Almost brought you this close, man.

I call this apology soup.

Apology soup. Perfect. So, yeah, you guys enjoy your soup. What's the watch order for tonight?

I will take second.

I'll take third.

Who's on first?

I can take first.

I'll take last watch.

I get to sleep this time. Sweet.

You had a rough day, buddy. You had a rough day.

You carried the weight in that battle.

Yeah, sure.

You know, alnock, I was thinking, since you decapitated three people, why is it that when somebody says heads up, you're supposed to duck your head down?

You know, I've thought about that, and it doesn't make much sense. Probably some sort of entomology thing.

Probably because your head's up in the way.

Okay, well, actually, it's from when you wore a helmet, and if something was falling from the air, you would yell heads up for you to stand up straight and get under your helmet for whatever's falling out of the air. So the term heads up is to stand up really straight and tall so that it hits the helmet instead of you're something that's soft.

We should think about armor.

Okay.

If we're going to be living in a fantasy type of world.

Maybe we can raid a cosplayer's house.

There you go.

Aren't you a metal worker?

Full armor.

I have my miniature blacksmithing kit with me. It would take me probably a month to craft some armor out of this.

All right.

Is there a medieval museum and rifle?

Doubt it.

It'd be weird. Can maybe find some really rusty Winchester rifles?

Yeah, hard pass.

Yeah, those probably ain't going to work.

If we find ourselves with a few weeks stuck somewhere, I might be able to make something work.

We don't have a few weeks.

That's why I didn't try.

It was just a thought because, I mean, I don't know about y'all, but we're kind of wandering. We're planning on going to Boston in essentially these outfits. I can only borrow so many outfits.

We can surely figure something, come up.

With something between there and here.

All right, well, with that unloaded, I'm going to get some sleep until my watch.

So. First watch, is Emery, is there anything in particular you want to do to pass the.

Hmm, that's a good question. I don't think so. I think she's just kind of pensive. I think she's watching the stars a lot, too, because it's not getting old how bright the stars are now.

Oh, yeah. You cannot over exaggerate how just crystal clear and beautiful the night sky is. This is a fairly chilly night because there is no cloud cover. But that does translate to just a beautiful, almost completely undisturbed view. Campfire does nothing compared to artificial light when it comes to light pollution. Yeah. Contemplating your life and all that good stuff.

Yeah.

Lot of thinking, processing through the glee with which all not a little disturbing.

Still sleeping like a baby.

Yeah.

Just sleeping, like, just not moving. Just like I might as well be dead.

Cuddling his axe like a teddy bear.

Oh, my God.

Every now and then you hear me go.

I think part of Emory is wishing she had picked up on. She had internalized the religion she had been raised in. She was raised in a christian family. Mostly because it feels wrong to leave bodies. It feels wrong to leave people just dead. And having something that you can say, something you could believe in, that would put that energy out there of like, oh, hopefully their next life is good, but she's kind of just thinking about that a little bit.

Yeah, it's a fair amount of weight. It's a pretty heavy topic, but thankfully you're near enough civilization that there's no real risk to you. So your watch passes uneventfully. It is time to wake up James.

She does not poke James awake because she is pretty sure he'll stab her. So she just kind of goes, listen, you have an unhealthy obsession with your knives. You don't get to get offended about that. She's going to go over and just kind of, James, James, wake up.

Knives everywhere. No, James wakes up like a normal human being. He does clutch a knife, but he's not going to immediately stab you with it. Yeah, well, he knows you're better than that.

It's your watch.

All right, thanks. Anything eventful?

No, it's quiet out here.

Enjoy your shutter.

Yeah.

Good night.

All right. What is James doing?

He can't stand in one place for too long, so he'll probably circle around camp, kind of like swinging his arms around. Very ADHD. Like, I can't sleep, so I got to do something kind of act also looking up at the stars but keeping his eyes on the surrounding whatnot. Just swinging his arms back and forth. Kind of like just meandering around camp.

As you're meandering around camp. Mentioned it a couple of times in your explanational apology speech thing that you'd been backstabbed a couple of times with having drugged that memory up. Sure. That's one you usually try to keep under lock and key.

Definitely.

You find yourself contemplating and rehashing that old memory in extreme detail. As you're thinking back on it, you think back to your college back in Trenton, New Jersey. Flashback to that.

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So, James, you are a student at a culinary program in Trenton, New Jersey. You moved down to Jersey in the years following your leaving home and settled into the capital city, if for no other reason than no one from your home went to Trenton. New Yorkers don't go down to Jersey.

Let alone Trenton, right?

It is your second year at the school, and you and your buddy Kyle are both working at the Student run cafe. So you're working there, and your budy Kyle comes up. He's like, hey, Jimmy, man.

Yo, what up?

Freaking chef Lannister's supervision and hospitality class is killing me, bro. I don't know if I'm gonna pull this off, man. Yeah, kind of a hard ass. It just doesn't make any sense. I'm not looking to run a hotel, man. I don't care about that.

Right? We want to be chefs. We don't want to run hotels. Someone else's job. I don't know, man.

If I can't get that grade up, Dad's going to pull the money.

Yeah.

I'll have to go back to the city. Which means I won't be able to be your roommate, man. I'll be gone, buddy.

Kind of that.

What's your grade?

Do you think you can pick up some extra credit or something?

Atlantis is going to give me extra credit.

True.

What am I saying?

I've already getting as much extra credit as I can working every weekend at this freaking joint.

Right.

For all four students that come out to the culinary building for lunch on a Saturday.

Yeah. You know, I have an idea. Not a whole heck of a lot of people are here on the weekend. We could always, hypothetically, of course, change your grade.

He is one of the only guys who still uses a paper grade book.

True, but I know his handwriting pretty well. And I know where he keeps the book. To this desk.

That makes sense.

I know which drawer it's. The upper right.

It's where I keep my books. I don't know, Jimmy.

Trust me. He's a hard ass. There's no other way.

Yeah, well, yeah.

Unless, of course, you want to flunk out of culinary school. God, that'd be embarrassing, right?

My folks would never give me the end of it, man. My dad would make me end up joining this point. I have to go out, fight an army, man.

Just a whole honor and duty, right? Are you in?

If you think we can pull. I don't know, Jimmy. I ain't never done nothing like this.

Perfectly fine. We're in out like nothing.

Well, if we're going to do it, we got to do tonight. Obviously, I ain't doing it. That's too risky. Lannister is always here, right? This Saturday?

Yeah. Right before grades go out. Be perfect time.

All right. Jimmy, if you think we could pull this off, man, I don't.

Doesn't even.

He doesn't even look at the names.

He'll just post them.

I'll be all right. Well, so fast forward over to Saturday night. So your college is really. It's kind of one really weird shaped building. You've got your center building with thin hallways that lead off to other halls. They're all treated as though they're separate buildings. They're all referred to as separate buildings. Confusingly, you have main building, a building, b building, and then g building.

Because that's totally helpful.

That's the map I found. And even weirder, g is spelled G-E-E.

They must have been from around here.

It's an actual college somewhere. I'm not going to name where, but it's a weird layout weird. All right, the culinary building is in the main building. So if you picture it, you've got the main building. In the southwest corner. There's a hall that runs up to G building up north. And then the rest of the building, you follow a hallway east, and then there's a northeast section, kind of a really funky horseshoe, if you want to think of it that way.

Got you.

But it is after hours, and you are standing outside, far enough away from any of the windows right now that it's just two guys meeting up on campus. Nothing suspicious as of yet. Gotcha, man. Jimmy, I don't know, man. I never done nothing like this. What do we do, man?

What we do is we don't lose our heads, first off. Second of all, this ain't my first time breaking into a building. All right, I'm going to pull out an extensive toolkit to unlock the door.

So let's go ahead and have you roll before you break into a door, go ahead and roll to see an investigation so you can see what doors.

Are around, so you can make an informed decision. That is a 17.

All right, so you know what you're doing. You know how to scout out a building. You take your time, you do a full walk around of the building, the entire building, and you see that the main building, where the culinary lab would be, is currently unoccupied. All the lights are out. There's nobody in it.

Perfect.

In that area, you do find a couple of different kinds of doors. You find a door with the simplex locks, the physical. There is a mechanical number code you can enter to get in through that door. And it's a solid steel door for aluminum or whatever. It's metal. No windows, no nothing. You are able to find a couple of key lock doors that do have windows. You find a bucket load of just normal windows.

Right?

And then there is the other two area. So directly north of the up in G building, that area is currently occupied. You can see that there is a custodian working in there. And then over in a building, a building is where they got like the tech lab, the actual computer tech lab, and some of the 3d printers, things of that nature. It's a little more money over there. You do see that they have a security guard in there. And there is also a custodian working through that area. And then up in b building, there's another guard just kind of patrolling up there.

We stick to our building, we'll be perfectly fine. No one's going to be guarding a bunch of culinary equipment. At least not here.

Perfect. So pick your type of door. Simplex with no window.

Probably the key.

One that has an actual key with a window.

Yeah. A door that actually has a lock core.

How do you want to get through it?

Lock pick.

Lock pick. Just pick the top. Pick the. Pick the door.

Yes.

Perfect. Go ahead and roll me a set of hand, please.

Roll the guy to roll high. That is not high.

Twelve.

Yeah. You're rusty. You haven't done it in a while. You're not able to get to that door.

Can I find another one that has an actual key mechanism core? Try it on. That one?

Sure. You could go to one of the simplexes. They usually have a key over it.

Yeah, okay, I'll do that. Then go to one of those. Tempted for this one? It's been a minute. It's been a minute. Give me a sec. Crack my knuckles.

Jimmy, man, you sure you got this?

Yeah, it's perfectly fine.

I know the first part of a break in is get in.

Yeah, I know. It's a newer lock. It's got a new core, I guess. Trust me, I got plenty of plans. Like I said, this ain't my first time breaking into a building. Key is level head and perfect. That's a 22. You're able to force this as I'm having this conversation? I'm lock picking it as I'm looking at him. Just click.

You have unlocked the door.

All right, I'm going to check around, make sure. Look inside, see if I can see any kind of security panel or anything. There'd be something you would punch in.

You open the door?

No, I'm just looking through the window just to double check.

Simplex. Simplex is unwinded.

Damn. I'm going to slowly open the door.

All right. You do hear an alarm beep, the countdown for an alarm go off.

Okay. I'm going to attempt to kind of do a history check to see if I can remember the code. If I'd seen somebody in the process of putting in the code. Because I probably would have done some scoping out. Right.

Let's have you roll first. Evens. You had the foresight. Ods.

Okay.

You didn't have the foresight. You did not think the script that I'd had. That said, they do tend to keep these alarm panels near doors. You can see where the alarm panel is?

Yeah.

And it's showing about 15 seconds left before the alarm goes off. Okay.

Poking it. Shit.

That's not going to help. Yeah, you haven't met him.

We're going to tell Kyle. All right, hurry up. We got to do this quick. Going to tell him to come in as quickly as possible.

Just going to try to book it?

Yeah. I'm going to reclose the door from the inside. So we're going to come in, we're going to treat it as a false alarm.

Okay. So you are in the building with an alarm going. Getting ready to go. You close the door. You're standing in a hallway near an alarm panel that's about to go off.

Yes. We're going to book it as quickly as possible to the culinary section. And we're going to hide until the security comes in, checks it and goes away.

Okay. Go ahead and give me a stealth roll for you.

17.

Okay. So you're tucked away, you do your best to touch Kyle, and 15 seconds, you duck down. And as the alarm building alarm go off, they are. Yeah, they are way louder than any business. It is unnecessary because, you know, it's also calling the police. And at best, it's just going to maybe make the bad guy poop himself a little bit. But shortly thereafter, you hear, we're fine. You see the custodian. There's a branch that goes straight up north from the culinary lab up into g building. And there's another main hallway that goes straight off into culinary lab. Sits in the corner of those two hallways. So you're able to see this college. It takes a good amount of pride in its culinary program. Good culinary program. Right with it. They do treat their culinary lab as.

Kind of a show lab, too.

So it's a solid wall of windows. Any prospective students walking past can see the program in action. What that translates to is where you're hiding in there. You can see out into the hallway with the flashing lights. You do see one of the night shift custodians looking it to the alarm panel to see what's going on. And from Adel, you see the security guy coming. First thing they do is they get to the alarm panel. They disable it because nobody can function with that thing going off, them included.

Yeah.

So it's suddenly dead quiet. And you can hear from outside as they're formulating their plan, where you're hiding. You can see the door to the professor's office or the chef's office where you know, the book is located. So you could stay hidden, or you can try getting in there.

Probably stay hidden until they start moving away. This way they don't look over and potentially spot us.

Perfect. Okay. So you can tell they are systematically sweeping the building. They clearly have a protocol for this. They are going through office by office, opening the door, turning on the lights, making sure there's nobody in there, closing the door, killing the lights in opposite order, because physics.

Yeah.

And then moving on to the next building, they. They hit the culinary lab. And you hear, you see the lights turn on. And what you fail to take into account in the shadows is that it's a stainless steel kitchen. Everything's polished nicely. They kick those lights on and they can't see you, but they sure shit could see your reflection in the fridge.

Shit.

They rolled a 17, and Kyle rolled like dog shit. They see the both of you.

Yeah.

And the guard shouts, hey, what are.

You doing in here? I'm probably not going to move, Jamie. Probably actually, at this point, probably just going to freeze up.

Kyle.

Yeah? I don't move.

Starts panicking. He just stands up and he says, hey, whoa, hey, sorry, guys. He brought me in here. He said that he needs to have his grade changed. I didn't want to do this. I'm sorry. I haven't done anything. I just want to go. And he starts backing out. And the security guard, he's just a mall cop security guard. He's unarmed or nothing, but he does have cuffs. However, he's also the knight security guard at a community college, so he's not used them in quite some time. So he's fumbling with the holster, I.

Guess you'd call the cuff holder thingy on their belt.

Cuff holster. He's fumbling with it a little bit. While he's fumbling, Kyle bolts and pulls the door closed behind him.

Like, right as I was about to.

Get up and do this, Kyle's close the door. You're in there with the custodian and the nightguard.

So I'll probably stand up and. Okay. Okay. He got me. And I assume he's going to start coming around towards me.

He does start moving towards you. He finally gets his cuffs freed.

Okay. As he gets the cuffs free, I'm going to attempt to book it a different direction towards a different door, okay? To attempt to get out that way.

Athletics or acrobatics?

Probably acrobatics. Definitely acrobatics. That is a twelve.

Well, he rolled a 13. Jesus Christ. So he's already had one kid bolt on him. He ain't letting that happen twice. He may only be the nightguard of a Jersey community college, but he does have some bread in his job. He ain't letting that happen twice. He lunges across the cooktop and just barely manages to catch you by your shirt pulling you back. So he's trying to get the cuffs on you.

I'm going to attempt to break away from him.

Okay.

If possible.

Let's go athletics. To break away.

Natural 20.

Okay.

You're able to break away from his grip and you start bolting out of there. You're able to get through the door and let's treat this kind of like we did at the end of the last heist. Sort of a skill check. Skill challenge. How are you getting away from him?

But how far am I from the main doors?

From the very main doors you're probably, I don't know. We'll say you're 60ft. But you do know that they're not the type with an actual crash bar. They're either unlocked and opened or they are locked and closed. Yeah.

Okay. Can I do a history check to see if I can remember any emergency exits? That is an 18.

Okay. You know that there is, it's in another alarmed door. But at this point you don't care.

Right.

So you crash through that alarmed door, you're outside.

Probably just book it to off campus as quickly as possible.

Perfect. You're able to book it. You're young, you're healthy, you're in pretty good shape. The only thing left is let's just have you roll some sort of like a stealth to see if you're able to stay hidden.

Yeah, probably duck down, try using the bushes and whatnot as cover as much as possible. That is a 21.

Yeah. Okay. So you get away pretty clean. They look for you for a bit, but they're not able to find you. So you tell me what happens in the aftermath.

James fully, he's come to the realization that he's not going to be able to go to school there ever again. So he's probably going to have to. His car is in the parking lot so he's probably going to have to sneak back to get his car probably like an hour or two later. Probably going to sit and cry up against a bench or something at some point.

So that's what's playing through your mind, through your watch. Unless there's anything else you want to do. It is Elliot's watch.

I'm going to continue meandering over, going to lightly tap you, my foot in the side. It's like, yo, Elliot, wake up.

I'm awake.

It's your watch.

Anything happened?

Nope, nope.

Nothing happened.

Nothing happened at all.

Okay. So he gets up and Charlie immediately crawls in his sleeping bag in the warm spot.

Fine.

Don't help me tonight. Rotten dog. He goes in and curls up. Just his little nose is sticking outside of sleeping. And he'll go sit over. I'm guessing the campfire is probably burnt quite a ways down by this point. I'm not trying to make the campfire flare up, but I want to add just enough fuel to keep it going so we don't have to restart it in the morning. Just like says, I'm not trying to make it get up. And he's going to go off outside of any light from it, try to find a safe place to put his back so nothing can get behind him. And he's just going to sit there and watch and sit very quietly. And while he's doing this, he's thinking back, not so much to today, but how creepy those skeletons and the zombies and the ghost were. And he's going to spend his watch thinking and reviewing what he saw and the way the skeletons moved and the way the zombies moved and just kind of mulling back in his own mind about the things that he couldn't believe that he saw. But apparently this is just the world now, so he needs to get as many clues about them as he can. And right now, that's all he's got to work with is his.

That's a. That's a good use of your watch. And it's a pretty uneventful night. Unless there's something else you want to do.

Mel's watch comes up, so he's going to go up. Now, unbeknownst to him, he succeeded in casting a spell on himself. Okay, so he's going to go up and lightly just scratch on Mel's half fallen down tent and just scratch to make the little nylon sound on the. Mel, it's your turn. And when you open your eyes, you see this zombie face looking at you.

Yeah.

Quiet. And you hear, Elliot, what is wrong with you?

Why, you look dead.

What do you mean, look dead? I'm not old. I'm old. I'm not dead.

You look dead.

And he kind of looks down at his hands, and his hands look all zombified. What in the world? And he shakes his hand, and then the disguise self dispels and he. Holy crap. What was that?

You did it. Are you trying to scare me? Old?

No. But now that I know it works, it's been quiet tonight. Nothing's been going on.

Thanks. Sure.

I gotta go get that dog out of my sleeping bag so I can get some sleep.

Good luck.

He might bite me. You want to go get Charlie out.

No, he'll definitely bite me.

Okay, you're right. He probably will. All right, well, I hope you slept well and enjoy your yoga chips, kale.

Thanks.

Sure. Charlie, get out of the sleeping bank. Bury your teeth at me, I don't care. Get out. Getting cold, rough.

Disgruntled wolf. Perfect. So with that smell. Swatches. What is Mel doing?

Mel slept but had really bizarre and unpleasant dreams. She's definitely got a good amount of adrenaline going when the zombie tried to wake her up. So I think she's probably going to pace around the camp until first light actually hits. She might even be doing some stargazing. I doubt she's really paying a lot of attention, though. Malusby has been rather introspective since James came out with this whole, like, yeah, I'm kind of a messed up dude, but I promise I won't try to kill you thing. Because she realized that now that she no longer owns all of her soul and probably some of her mind, that she honestly can't promise that she wouldn't do that because something else could be asking her of things that she would have to do. And she's trying to figure out how to come to grips with the fact that she only has some control over her, what she chooses to do, it's.

Not safe to say. All in all, this is a pretty.

Heavy night for everybody, I think, except Olnock. Olnak is sleeping soundly.

Super hoping that Jacob didn't really notice quite all of the blood and maybe he thinks we killed a deer or something. I don't know. He didn't ask. We weren't telling. And he seems to be asleep so we're going to go with it.

Perfect. Yeah, you do notice, I mean, he tosses and turns a fair bit throughout the night.

I'll periodically pull a sleeping bag back up to try to tuck them in because it's cold.

It is. And it is definitely cold. It's cold enough. There's frost forming near the especially near the river. It's not a warm night by any means.

She'll probably still try to do some morning yoga for old time's sake. But her balance sucks right now. Probably one of those internal external things.

I don't know. Your chakras aren't aligned.

Yeah, there we go. That's it. My chakras are out of alignment.

There we go. Perfect. So yeah, the rest of your watch goes uneventfully. Boy tosses and turns a fair bit throughout the night. Olnox sleeps like a baby. Everyone else everyone else is definitely out, but it's probably more exhaustion than comfortable sleep.

Yeah.

With that, the sun starts to crest. Day starts.

Sully gets up and gets stressed. He says, okay, we're going to go try it again. And off into the bushes. And after a little bit, you hear some. Well, fine, goddamn it. Be that way. Hell, I didn't want you to work anyway. Cup's stomping back and he's just.

A simple thing.

It ain't been that long since I rode a horse all day. He starts just jamming stuff into his packs and just.

Emery is extremely like. She rolls out of her sleeping bag and stands up and groans. Because riding a horse all day and then sleeping on the ground, you get stiff.

Yoga helps.

You know, I might actually take you up on that.

It does. It really does. Be careful of the hamstring stretch, though. Those things are burning like a bitch.

Those in your inner thigh would be.

Yeah.

Those two hugging the horse all day with your legs. The dudes are all walking like old school cowboys.

Elliot's going to go. Yeah, it's not an affectation. That's how they really walk.

Emory does some half assed yoga with Mel. Just enough to get the blood flowing, to feel human.

James will start on breakfast.

As you're eating breakfast, as the sun continues to rise, you can see now the town of Rifle. It's just on the other side of the river from you, probably an hour's ride. You did see a fair amount of. There's a fair amount of folks moving around. From what you can tell, there's plenty of motion and commotion over there. It's not a dead ghost town by any means, but yeah. I feel comfortable assuming that the individual Elliot knows who makes primitive style bows is not a man who lives in the heart of.

No, no, he's on the other side of the. That would be the north side of town.

Like you're headed up towards maker up your rifle gap.

Yeah, it's further north. It's between rifle and silk.

Okay. Yeah.

So we're going to have to cross the river, but there's a couple of bridges and then we're going to go through rifle. And then there's a road that goes from rifle to silt east. Correct. And we'll go up that road and we're actually going to go up into the sub where there's houses and stuff. It's places back there, so you can't see it from the road. It's on the. See that hill right there? It's on the other side of that hill. But if we. As the crow flies, it's straight that way.

So you guys have a nice breakfast. Probably a little bit of that guilt from last night still pouring on in. So James takes his time and cooks it up proper.

Yep.

Guys, remount your horses. And Jacob, right in with Elliot. Or is he right?

Melte, how you feeling about taking the boy?

Jacob? Do you want an adventurous.

Honestly, I don't care if. Honestly, the horse just kind of sky just hurt from yesterday.

Yeah, we all do. I'm sorry.

It does get easier, though. A couple of three more days, you won't notice.

I hope so.

You can go ahead and ride with me for a little while and maybe you'll have a calming effect on the horse. They seem to like you better than me anyway.

We can have the horseper talk to him.

Maybe. If it'll help.

I'm going to need to do that zenny thing I did last time. I got about ten minutes before we jump.

It's not worth the effort.

Yeah, I mean, it's going to take a while for me to break down.

Ernie didn't bite me at all yesterday, so that's an improvement.

Orange stick. Good.

We're burning through carrots at an alarming rate.

Sorry.

That's my fault. I'll stop eating them.

I thought you were going to say that. You're fed too many to the horses we were sharing.

I'd eat half. I'd give them the other half.

Okay, good. It's not like you take a bite. I'd take a bite thing seriously. Question your message.

That's what the hell horses eat. Thickest. Their lips. All perfect. So you guys start riding into town. Now, the nice thing about rifle is it's another town with a fair amount of rounds near it. So you can tell you see the remnants of other folk having ridden horse through town. This is by no means. It may not necessarily be commonplace yet, but it's not abnormal. Folks are kind of looking, mostly looking because they don't recognize you more than, hey, there's folks on horses. Especially if you're still in your big green jumpsuit. You're catching some attention. But just in the holy cow, that's a big boy sort of way not.

Hey, Olna, we got to get you a different outfit.

These are comfortable, bud.

Yeah, I'd feel a hell of a lot more comfortable if people weren't staring at us all the time.

They're going to stare at me anyway. They always do.

He has so many pockets, though.

Very useful.

See?

So many.

Told you.

Do you think they make those in my place?

I got a blue one I can change into if you want. Let me change in a blue one instead of a green one.

I don't think that's going to help.

We're already in the middle of town.

It's too late. At least this way, if you're up against some trees, you kind of blend in.

I have the bdus.

That means it's got pants and jacket. They're hot shit, though, which isn't the best.

Yeah, we're in April.

We'Re in the middle of town.

Maybe change later. I think if you start stripping in.

The middle of town.

Please don't. Unwanted attention.

You assume it's unwanted attention.

All I'm saying is that the military attire might draw unwanted attention at some point.

You saw that I have my seabag, right? That's all I have in here. I don't have, like, normal people clothes. I don't got normie clothes.

We can appropriate some for you in his size. We can appropriate some materials to make him an outfit.

We can get a sheet or something, probably.

Yeah, we can make you look like one of those ghost things.

Let's not just wrap up in a.

Toga with the undead actually coming back to life. Maybe looking like a ghost is a bad idea.

Yeah, well, somebody over here can look like zombies.

See what? I saw you this morning. You looked like a zombie.

That was rude.

Jacob. James.

Hey. Whose side are you on, buddy?

Yes.

Hey, I said yesterday I was going to be honest with you all.

There's such a thing as too honest.

Haven't found that yet. I'm still learning.

The line is difficult to tell, James. I'm not great at it either.

Is there anything we need from the town of rifle itself, or do we just want to move through?

Think there's any more coffee?

Me being the guy in charge of the food supplies and whatnot? How are our food supplies looking? After I was done making breakfast, it's been a day. I just wanted to make sure that the carrot muncher over here hadn't gone through other supplies yet.

Jokingly, you are almost out of carrots. Yeah, you all ain't about to starve for a while. Cool.

Unless you all need other supplies. Like if you all forgot some socks.

No, I think we're okay.

I mean, Elliot might want new.

How? Like, what are we going to trade for these bows?

That, I don't know. We're just going to have to talk to the guy and see. I don't think he's going to be dumb enough to take my credit card.

Yeah, you left that back injunction.

No, I brought my credit card with me.

You just left the number you brought.

Your credit card with. Really? Even I didn't bring my credit card with me.

I'm going to pull out my wallet.

I'm going to use this as long as people will take it. I'm not going to lie. But I don't know. I guess we'll just go talk to him and see what he needs or wants or what he would take.

Are you sure that your budy is even still here?

Oh, I'm not going to even say we're just as. I've done some shopping here in the past. That's where I got these bows from that guy.

More important question. Hey, Jacob, look over there. Isn't that really interesting? He's not going to shoot us, is he?

Well, we're not going to go.

What?

Sneaking in.

There was a squirrel.

Did you see the squirrel? Look, there's a bird. Look at the bird. It's a big bird. Keep looking at over there. Over there.

Big bird.

Yeah, it's totally big bird. Seriously, though, you don't think he's going to shoot on site or something, do you?

I sure hope not. But we're not going to go sneaking in. We're not going to be pretending, we're not going to be stealing from him. No, we're going to go just like we're normal human beings and say, I.

Haven'T seen another normal human being in, like, four weeks.

Well, that's why we're going to go, then. He'll at least be curious.

So, your past dealings, he wasn't like one of those preppers, right? Like super bad prepper. Like, itchy, trigger finger prepper?

I don't think he was an itchy, trigger finger prepper, but I don't know people that make bows for a living. He was a craftsman. He made gorgeous work. So we're going to ride right up the road like we belong there. And if he shoots, we'll run away, I guess.

Yeah, and if I get shot and killed, I'm going to come back and I'm going to haunt your ass.

Who's going to shot and killed us?

It's a figure of speech.

If you're worried, you guys can stay down the road and I'll ride up by myself.

No, I think we're better as a group. Yeah, probably just.

In the back of my mind saying that breaking up the party is probably a bad idea. Don't know where that's coming from?

I don't know, but I say we just ride up there and say, hey, used to make bows. We need some bows. What do you want for some of your bows? Because you might be a hell of a bower, but I don't know if maybe he's a terrible cook. Maybe if you just cook for him.

One thing that does kind of stand out to you guys is there's a fair bit of a fair amount of business as usual kind of vibe here. People are going in and out of stores. People are leaving with bagged items. Nobody's getting into cars, obviously. There's no electrical light on anywhere, but the buildings that are facing the sun just have their blinds completely open so all the light that can get in does. You do see folks have rigged up rudimentary torches and there's some degree of oil lamps. This is an area where antiques are still somewhat just used in people's homes. So there's some old hurricane lamps that had oil in them that are being used. Things of that nature.

And you've got the oil and gas fields right outside, so they can get all the oil they.

Yeah, it's relatively business as usual. You say there's folks working behind the counters at some of these stores, and you see folks going in empty handed and coming out with stuff. Melanie, in particular, smells some fresh roasted coffee and sees somebody leaving with a couple fresh pastries.

Oh, God. Can we go to the cafe? Doesn't that just smell amazing?

Oh, hell, yeah. Let's go to the cafe.

Do we have any actual money? In case that's what they're taking?

I've got probably just a handful of cash. Not probably a lot, like a little bit.

I have an amount of currency in my wallet.

Yeah, I have some form of currency. I'm not entirely sure it's american at this point. Just in case I travel somewhere. You never know where you're going to go. You know what I mean?

Just carrying in.

Yeah.

In one couple of pesos, both philippine pesos and mexican pesos.

That's like 30 pesos.

Yeah, right.

It's like $0.50 maybe.

Let's all go get a cup of coffee at a pastry.

So you guys enter the coffee shop, the bidy ding the door overhead, and it's a pretty light, jovial kind of nature in there. Very typical coffee shop vibes. The baristas are far happier than they should be this time of morning. Good morning. Welcome in.

If you really must know, that is totally an act. Just saying.

Nobody's that happy that early in the.

Morning, nobody that happy, period.

That is also a fair point.

Okay, before we get started, what form of payment you all taking?

Well, since the event currency is just about useless out here. So we trade in barter or favors.

We're kind of just passing through. I mean, we could owe you a favor, but it could be a very long time before we could repay it.

We could wash some dishes.

Yeah, we can totally wash dishes.

We could.

Absolutely.

With the favor system, if at all possible. We do prefer to have the favor first.

Some folks, especially from outside of town, aren't necessarily the most reputable. And we would hate to give up some of this precious coffee. Because we don't know when our next shipment's coming in and have you leave without helping us out some.

Elliot says, well, hell, I'll wash some dishes for coffee. I've washed dishes for Walt's cooking and roll his sleeves up.

How many hours of dishwashing for a pound of coffee?

A pound of our coffee.

You know what? I think we might have something else we can use your help with.

What?

The feller who was running our roaster was up in Denver.

Oh, God.

Learning from the master roasters up in Denver. The notorious dazbog. He was working for Dazbog's coffee roasters up in Boulder. And I hope he's still there. Hope he made it and didn't try to come back. We need someone who can help run the roaster for a bit. You guys do a decent job roasting some coffee, we'll let you take some. How's that sound? Does that sound fair trade?

Can I do a check to see if I did that in culinary school?

Yes.

No, I don't know how to run.

A roaster for sure.

I don't know how to run a roaster, but I'm good at lighting fires.

That's something we don't either know how to.

Can we English, apparently figure it out and then go from there?

That's fair. Like I say, you'll get payment after the job's done. So if you decide you can't do the job, ain't nobody out nothing.

All right, let's take a look.

You go back there, and.

It'S a coffee roaster would probably be just like a big drum, basically, that spins. And then there's got to be some heat source either on the outside or, like, the middle.

And if the heat source would have been originally electric. So at this point, you basically would take the drum that you were roasting it in and just roast it over a fire and do it spit style and hope for the best.

Almost like a chili roaster.

Yeah, kind of.

That's a pretty good description. What you do see is it's a big old stainless steel machine.

Baristas fair.

Yeah. See a big old. This particular unit is mostly stainless steel. You can see off on one side, there's an opening with a little bit of a downslide that presumably the roasted coffee would come out of. And on the other side, you can see a bit of a hopper system that the unroasted coffee would go into. And the drum is all entirely enclosed within this machine. But there are cabinet doors on the bottom that you can open up. This was an electric unit, so that ain't going to work.

You think you could hold some fire underneath it in this cabinet here? I think we could make where this heat element is.

I think we could make it work.

All right.

There's got to be. Maybe I can kind of just connect something to it so I can spin it manually. Some kind of gear system. There's got to be some sort of belt or gear somewhere in it that spins this thing.

Yeah.

Can kind of take it apart a little bit. Just enough to get something so I can spin it by hand.

Absolutely, yeah. It's all stainless steel sheeting around it. Easily accessible screws, so you're able to get it. You can see to the belt. It is a rubber belt attached to an electric motor down below. But with it being rubber, it wouldn't take a whole heck of a lot to get it pulled off the machine.

Yeah.

Exposing the gear. With it being a solid stainless steel drum, it ain't the easiest thing to get started. It's pretty hefty, especially once you get the coffee in it. It weighs a fair bit.

Feel like when we get it going, though, it'll kind of keep itself in motion.

Yeah. Just need some real big oven mitts to.

Hey, Olmock.

Yeah?

You're going to come here. You're going to spin this thing where you're going to put these oven mitts on.

Okay, let's do it.

You're just gonna push it like this and spin it.

Think like a hamster, but in reverse.

Okay. Outside hamster.

Let's get it to the outside.

Get it spinning.

I mean, like a reverse hamster wheel.

And if you'll run the heat with your fire, and I'll kind of keep an eye on the coffee beans and get the hopper rolling and stuff.

One thing presta digitation can do is also create fire.

Oh, it can?

Yeah. Okay, so I'm not firebolting it.

Can't you hold a firebolt in your hand?

No.

That's produced flame.

Yeah.

So I'm just prestigating flame over and over again.

All right, just so there's something here, let's have arcana check. See how a consistently. And we'll have you ol knock do a strength check just to see how much control you're able to have over this. That way, as you get feedback, you need to slow down or you need to speed up or burning them. We can see how quick you're able to adapt.

17 on the arcana.

Perfect.

Nat.

20. Okay. Yeah.

You guys are roasting the shit out of.

James. We like to do a perception check to find a chair and sit and watch.

Shockingly so. The coffee roaster had done a good job of hiding this. There's a lazy boy back here.

Yes.

He may have oversold how difficult his job was. You're starting to think after about 1520 minutes, you guys have got a good amount of fresh coffee beans. Freshly roasted coffee beans, I should say.

And I think probably we'll take one of like, to show the barista is kind of like, listen, this is kind of how this machine works. If you can get some kind of heat going underneath it here, you could probably run this pretty consistently yourself.

Oh, man. Thank you. That is hugely helpful. While a lot of you folks are working, they bring you guys a little cup of espresso and a scone, freshly baked scone. And by the time you're done, they're like, yeah, I would say that meets our agreement there. You guys can happily take a pound of these coffee beans.

Hey, just so you know, those fruit biscuits you made are pretty good.

Yeah. We pride ourselves in our scones, sir.

Scones? That's what those are called?

Yes, sir.

Okay.

I'm going to say I like fruit biscuits. I like that one.

I feel like we come out of the roastery, and Jacob's sitting in a corner with this giant mug of hot cocoa and just has whipped cream all over his. Absolutely.

Has a large cookie, too. That's like. Yes.

He definitely rolled a 20 on his persuasion.

Yes.

He's charming as all hell.

Oh, boy.

She's able to cast charm person innately. Oh, my God.

That's his one magical thing. Everyone thinks he's the cutest little boy ever.

Beautiful. So, yeah, you guys got yourself some coffee, some scones, and as you're working there, you see a lot of folks coming in. See some. You see very obviously a farmer type come in with a fresh couple of heads of lettuce. Hands off. The baristas immediately take it back, and they got themselves bucket of water in the bags. They used to wash it off and start processing it for some sandwiches they're going to use later or make later. You see, the barter seems to be the way to go, primarily folks bringing stuff in and passing it off. But there are a handful of folks that are working on the favor system. You hear one rugged looking feller promise the barista. Yes. You know what? I'll be by, say, around 05:00 tonight. We'll get that front porch ears fixed back up. I'd say full front porch. Gives me, what, a month's worth of coffee, which barista agrees to hear a whole lot of that kind of transaction taking place here. But with that, you step back out on the main street. You see that it's downtown rifle. There's restaurants. There's a couple of fancy ish looking boutiques for clothing and the like.

We all smell really good right now. Fresh roasted coffee.

You got yourself your bag of fresh beans.

Well, that does give me some hope. So that there are people that are acting not so damn crazy as they could.

Yeah, no kidding.

That is rather reassuring.

I don't know what this guy's going to need, but something that we could do. I know that they use quite a lot of leather, and especially if they're doing natural stuff. So something we could offer when we get there, if it would interest him, we could go hunting for him and try to get him a couple of.

Deer, a couple of elk.

And there's a lot that make the leather and use the sinew for the wraps and stuff. And there's a lot of pieces that they could use from that. So that's something we could offer to try to get for them in exchange for some bows.

I'd be down for a little bit of honey.

I don't know that I'd be much use, but I think I'd be completely useless. It's a good idea for sure.

For some yoga classes.

I don't think he's going to take those.

Probably not.

Perfect. So if that's all the downtown and you guys want to do, you make your way up the hill. Elliot leading the way, of course, another, I don't know, 2030 minutes or so. And you find yourself kind of on the edge of the subdivision up there, but not an unimpressive house, but by no means a mcMansion or anything. And out front you see Rodriguez Boyeri as the sign just kind of attached to the guy's mailbox. Rodriguez. Yep.

So as we get to the bottom, I'll yell up at the house, Pete. Pete, are you still up there?

After a little bit, you see of blinds getting flipped open and I'm going.

To smile and wave.

The blinds close back shut again. You hear the front door open and feller, kind of a fairly well built individual, comes out. He's a little on the older side, but by no means old. Still in pretty good health. Full beard. Good full head of hair. Definitely salt and peppered all the heck, though.

I don't know if you remember me, but it's Elliot Brandybane. I bought a couple bows from you a while back. It's been a while. I don't know if you remember me.

I remember just about every customer I served. And looks like you're carrying my bows on your backs right now.

They've served me quite well. In fact, that's what I'm here for. I need some more.

Needs more bows.

Two. What did we fear? We needed two or three?

I think it was two.

Two? I can't use a Bow, okay, I need two more. And I need some more arrows.

I'm capable of not shooting myself in.

The foot, but I don't know what you need for that. So we've come here to do some dealing with you and find out what you need. What we could trade for two bows.

And at least two full sets of eras.

I need some more for mine, too. So I'll go three sets there.

Three sets of eras, 60 eras.

Two bows.

Man, Elliot, that order would have been a lot easier about a month and a half ago.

Yeah, boy, sure. Wouldn't it have been? And had I had any idea that this kind of was going to happen, I'd have put that order in farther than a month and a half ago.

I guess what we need to be figuring out here is what kind of bows you're looking for. Compounds out. I ain't making compounds. My CNC machine's down.

Oh, yeah.

No, I can do primitive long bow.

I can do primitive short bow.

Or I can do a recurve type of bow you want is going to largely dictate the favor. I'm a need.

Well, we need to make one for. Who's got one? Right now I've got one. So we need to make one for her and one for him.

So short and along, it looks like to me. I don't know, little miss. You're pretty strong there. But 90 pound draw weight on long bows, that's a heavy bow. That's about half of you.

Like, I don't know. Was that when you had me shooting, like 35?

How about I transfer you the short bow and then I get a log bow that works?

What was the draw at that?

The short bow?

I have no idea. 35.

35, sure.

That's all I can do.

They don't need to be pretty. They just need to be functional.

Okay.

Now, if you want to make them pretty, I won't stop you. But we just need them that work, and quickly, please.

Now, see, that there's going to be the problem. I had part of my whole shebang was that I made my bows to order.

Yes.

I ain't got backstock, man. Two long bows then, is what you're asking for. Two long bows and 30. Fucking Jesus. Yeah, that's the math.

Three sets of 20.

Thank you, Harris. In order for me to do it in a way that makes me feel okay with getting anything out of you, it's going to take me about a day. About? Sure. We'll probably say another two, maybe three days for the heiress.

Sure. I know we probably need to go do some turkey hunting for you because you'll need more feathers. Because I'm sure we'll use up about what you have. We can go try to get you some turkeys for those wing feathers.

What I ain't got much of is arrowhead material. Air ahead is going to be the trick. I had a shipment coming from Florida with my new arrowheads. Something tells me it ain't going to make it.

Yeah, that's fair.

Yeah, I'm going to need some feathers, and that's just to get the material to make this for you.

If we helped, could we get it down to a day per bow and one day for the arrows?

You could. Having somebody cutting arrowheads out for me would help a fair bit.

I can definitely work on that.

Okay. I could tell you got the calloused hands of somebody who knows a thing or two about.

Yeah, I do some metal work myself. Well suited for that task.

That would help. Day per bow and then a day for Aris. Three days.

And anybody can fletch arrows. It's having the stuff to do it.

But that's just to get you guys supply to make your order. What are you willing to offer me in terms of payment for this?

The meat from the turkeys?

Well, that's kind of the question we've got. We don't have a whole lot that we can trade you currently with. But our question to you is, what do you need. What can we get for you? We'll have to go get it. I don't think we've got much of anything in our pocket that you want. And most of what we've got we're going to need to travel with. But is there anything that. What do you need? What do you want us to go to? We might to go get you ten turkeys, maybe a cow elk or something. You'll need the leather for all your wraps and everything that you're working on. So that's our question is you've got the talent to make the bows.

Do you know much about making leather there, Elliot?

Elliot does, yes.

Then I can hunt real good. You don't get into this line of work if you can't shoot stuff. I hate tanning hide.

That's fair. I hate tan and hide, too. It stinks.

If you folks was willing to take down a bull elk or a cow elk, I don't care. An elk and tan that hide. Share the meat. Whatever. Share the meat from the turkeys.

Cool.

Like I say, I can procure food, let you guys set up in my backyard. House is kind of off limits. Mrs. Isn't too keen on visitors right now, but I got a good sized backyard. You guys could sit up in for camp for a bit. Somewhat secure. I got a fence. At minimum, if you guys are able to get me the material you need for your eras and you guys are able and willing to tan me some hide off of a fresh kill, I think we could make that square.

Okay. I think we could do that. Because I know we're going to be taking up a bunch of your time. So we got to make up for it. So I think we can do that.

Fantastic. It's a little late in the day to get started on the hunt. You guys are welcome to be comfortable. You can start scouting out some areas. I know a couple of areas you're more likely to find than others. I can point them out to you.

Okay.

But, yeah, I'll get started on them bows.

Okay. Yeah. You let us know where to go. Look, I'm used to the other side of the river.

Perfect. So with that, he pulls out maps and you guys sit down. And that's where we're going to cut this episode.

All right, cool.

Leader of the mind is Jeremy Arston as Elliot Brandy Bane. Amanda Arston as Melanie Kelly. Michael Burnell as Olnock Varger Johnson. Michael Downes as James O'Brien. Casey Weingarten as Emery Lee. And myself, Mike shock as your dungeon master. We release new episodes every two weeks, so our next episode will release on March 17. 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 excellence 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 are Light years in no time by Kim Aspen small Town feeling by Eric Feinberg from Dusk by Andre Kontu Lonely Charades by Andre Kondu this too shall pass by peace reels the heist by White Bones diamond heist by Christopher Moat that Levson Heist music by Nightcap Escape Plan activated by Grant Newman Thread the needle by Kevin Luke stepping on glass by a need Deep Blue City by Eric Fernholm Sunnyside down by Will Harrison Serene highlands by Daniel Cade Unbounded horizons by Victor Lundberg Blank stare happy by American Legion and reluctant soldier by Will Harrison the theater of the mind theme, intermission, and outro were written by Mike Schalke. 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.