S1:E11 – Rodriguez Bowyery, golf, and tennis

Welcome to Theater of the Mind. Theater of the Mind is an unofficial d in the by 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'm your dungeon master, and we're going to change things up a little bit for our questions. Casey, playing Emory Lee, had the idea of bringing in a alternate card game we'll be using for our questions moving forward. So all of these questions are coming from the ultimate rpg campfire card deck created by James D'Amato. And so the first question from this box of goodies is going to be, if you could be remembered long after your death, what would you like to be remembered for?

My name is Amanda, and I'm playing Kelly. Mel's a fitness girl. She doesn't go in for remembering or long terms or frankly, getting like that's not a thing she's figured out how to deal with yet. But given the current circumstances, I think that she would like to be remembered for having done something that's helpful, for at least making things a little bit better. Whatever those things are, wherever she ends up.

I'm Jeremy, and I'm playing Elliot. Brandy Bane. And this one's an easy one. Elliot wants to be remembered for the one that kicked Mordar right in the balls. Fuck, yeah.

It's metal.

I like it. That's helpful.

It is. Especially if we actually do some damage.

You know what I mean?

I've never known one of those kicks not to.

That's very fair point. I am Brunel. I am playing Olnak Vaga Johnson. And Olnok is a bit of the classic soldier boy. He wants to be known for going out fighting. If he's going to die, he wants to go out gloriously, like a fucking spartan.

Not for Superman, that female. No, not that soldier boy.

He hates that song with a fiery, burning passion, just like.

Yeah, I'm downs. I'm playing James O'Brien. And James likes to be in the shadows a lot. So I don't know if James really wants to be remembered for anything. If he had to choose, though, you'd want to be remembered for making a difference of some sort. It's like fixing a system of some sort. He hasn't figured that out yet.

I'm Casey. I play Emory Lee. And Emory's an artist. She's always wanted to create a piece that has some kind of recognition, something that lasts beyond her, and people would know that she made it. I think now that she's involved in something that is very much not her art. She's really thinking, know, the people that we've interacted with, the elves, I think, are someone that's on her mind. They're fleeing from any possible chance of combat with this. They're standing by while this guy takes over yet another place. And so she just wants to. Now I think she would want to be remembered for not just standing by, for actually trying to make a difference.

All right, let's go ahead and roll for recap. We'll go lowest goes this time. You got a one. Okay. All you have to do is not get a one. I'm good.

I'm great.

I am fantastic.

I hit a twelve.

All right.

What happened?

Well, I believe that it is probably my turn by now. So we left Elliot's ranch and headed through the mountains, places he was familiar with. After we dropped over the top, dropped into the back of Olnock, discovered that he could speak with animals accidentally and is now getting along much better with his horse than he was before. So they dropped down into the back of rifle and got ambushed by some inbred redneck waysider. Really bad at ambushing. But they had gained magic powers. So that made that a bit interesting. We got into rifle and did some work for coffee and a fruit biscuit.

Scones.

Scones. Yeah.

Those are scones.

I like. And after that, we made our way to Pete Rodriguez's place and have done some negotiations to get two bows and think three bows, three sets of arrows, two bows, three sets of barrels. And that I find us here. I think we were supposed to bring some turkeys in and we needed to acquire and tan Levin Alkyde. I remember correctly what we agreed to do.

Turkeys.

I did say yes.

And we also needed to acquire Arrowhead material. Oh, yeah.

Which we determined, like hot metal. Sheet metal would be fine for that.

Perfect. You guys are in Pete Rodriguez's backyard. He's got a decent sized backyard. He's living on the edge of the suburb. So he doesn't have another house right behind him. His backyard's fenced. He's got a nice little gate that accesses to the greater expanse beyond. He's kind of on the edge of rifle. Up the hill on top. For those who aren't from the area, Rafel is a fairly small town. There's not a whole lot of housing area, period. There's not a lot of people. So he's not very far from downtown, but he is the edge of town. And he offered up the backyard to you guys. The wife did not want any guests inside considering the unusual circumstances the world is currently in. And I believe he was seeking out some maps of the area so he could help show some decent hunting turf. So he is inside currently looking for those maps. You guys are free to set up camp in his backyard if you should.

Slot a into tapi. Hey, look at this.

I'm getting better.

Melanie, you got that tent figured out yet, or do you need some help today?

You hear a whole lot of rustling and some cussing. It's fine. Stupid fucking.

Mel, you sound like you're having a lot of fun over there.

It's fine. It's standing. It's standing. And it's supposed to be a dome tent, but it has angles for some reason. This is fine. I'm going to get this.

Hey, all nut $50 says the window of those tent poles. Wax me in the face.

You're on.

I got it.

It do.

It goes silent for a minute, but the whole thing just collapses. You hear this squeak? Which was.

Mel, you good in there?

I'm fine.

That one's actually kind of sad. I feel bad about that one.

We can give you some pointers, maybe.

Just get me out of here. I'm stuck.

Abe's gonna make his way over and kind of, like, wade through the tent.

Why is this so hard?

I mean. No, never mind. Never mind thinking better of it if.

You don't have anything nice to say.

That's why I'm clamming up.

Tell it to us later.

Raise a hand.

Mel, where are you?

I'm over here laying perfectly still, waiting.

For someone to drag her out.

Just defeated.

I just see a hand pop up, and I tried pulling her out of it.

Hey, Jacob, go help Mel put her tent up.

Okay, Mr. Elliot.

Why is he better at this than me?

They got pictures on this. I can follow it real good.

I don't need no stupid. I do.

I totally do.

Just tell me what it says.

Defeated instantly.

About that time, Pete comes out from his house. He's got older map. It's all rolled up. He's got a decent outdoor furniture set up, nice grill, all that kind of stuff. He goes over to his outside table and rolls the map out, picks up a couple rocks, uses him to anchor it flat, kind of looks over at Elliot, gestures for you to come on over. You get over there. And he starts pointing out. He's like, all right, so here's rifle right here, up in this corner of the map. It's a whole area here. If it were me, with how everything is right now, I'd want to hunt a little closer to town than further from town. You could ride three or four days to get to my preferred hunting spot. That's a hell of a trip. Just up north here, we got the rifle gap area. Just a hair north of that is a nice creek that I know local elk and deer population have used in years past. It's got a nice little valley. This time of year, they're liking to bed down in the valley. They're not up in the hills quite yet. It's not quite warm enough up there for them to go back up yet. So they're nestling down in this valley usually, and it's not unheard of to see a turkey out there. Turkey hunting in this area is not great, but you might be able to find a pheasant or. It doesn't have to be a turkey. I just need feathers. Decent sized feathers. Let's go shoot some pillows. What?

They're not going to be decent sized feathers in a pillow.

I've never tried a microfiber arrow before.

Memory foam. Memory foam.

But if it were me, that's where I'd go. It's typically a fairly safe area. There is a prison up there, minimum security prison. Who knows what that's like?

Safe.

It's such a small facility, they don't even bother putting a fence around it. These folks are about as gentle as prison folk tend to be. They take them to the community college to get their hair cut. Ladies aren't. This ain't no Jeffrey Dahmer land.

We threaten to people who weren't even in prison that were violent.

I imagine these times there's a lot of folks a little stressed out, but there's a good chance that when that power went out, them cells don't open no more. So I imagine, if anything, they're just the most secure prisoners they've ever been.

That's horrifying.

That is beyond horrifying. There's no failsafe, I would have thought, humanitarian disaster. Yeah, I would have thought it would have automatically unlocked.

I'm a boyer.

You don't work there.

Yeah, I'm concerned now. I don't think he works at prison principle. That sounds like a whole hell of a house of horrors.

Handful of the fellers I do know work up there. I don't tend to interact with too much. They're not my kind of folk, but just a guess. It's either the most secure facility or it's the emptiest prison in America right now.

Oh, I doubt it's the emptiest.

But if it were me, that's where I'd go. It's about a half day ride to get out there.

The hunting location, not the prison.

Yeah, if I had to go to prison, I'd go to that one too. Again, they don't have a fence. It's pretty low security prison up there. That's true. Fact, I applied for a job there. There is no fence.

If I remember right, you said that the fear of the wildlife mostly kept them in.

Yes, they did have a mountain lion take down a baby deer in the middle of their camp.

Oh, shit.

And most of them folks are from Denver. They were not leaving.

Yeah, that would keep me and myself.

That's what I think. There's a couple other areas, but we got a lot of oil out here. The rig activity changed. Where a lot of the wildlife live. They don't much care for the rigs. They make the ground vibrate in a weird way that elk don't understand. So they tend to just kind of avoid those regions. So if I was going hunting, that's where I'd be going right now. Unless you want to have one heck of a trip.

Might as well start at the first place. And if we don't find anything, head up further.

Yeah, if we don't get anything, I guess we can start riding towards Meeker. But hopefully we can get them closer.

Yeah, as far as nettle. Shit. We got Fred's. Fred's hardware shop downtown might have what you're looking for there. That one's probably going to be the easiest. Yeah, just going to put that out there. That's going to be the easy one. If not Fred's. We got a couple of scrap yards in the area. There's plenty of opportunities to find metal. I don't know if Fred's is still open. Most of the town seems to be staying open. Fred's is more likely to be open than the scrap yards are. Currently. Not a whole lot of tow truck service going on right now. Nobody's needing to buy car parts anymore. So I'd start with Fred's personally, but I figure if you guys can't get it at Fred's, y'all seem more than capable of thinking around the box a little bit. You might find your own sheet metal procurement, but that'd be my tip. He's a good guy. He's been in business for a long time.

What kind of quantity are you looking for on metal?

For 30 arrowheads, I'll need an amount of metal that he tells you, cool. The DM doesn't.

Fair enough.

No, that's probably not that much. Honestly. I'd imagine probably a sheet sighting. Metal or something.

Aluminium or arrowhead is about this big and about that wide.

You need 30 of them or 60.

Like a couple of square feet of delivery.

Yeah, it's not going to take them much.

And worst case scenario, if you don't buy enough or procure enough, still just down at Freddy's, we can go back down if we need more, but, yeah, this amount should be enough. Cool.

This one.

This many feet by this many feet equals enough arrowheads for 60 eras.

Do you believe that's a qubit?

Qubit at 1000 qubits.

I have no idea what a qubit is.

I think a qubit is like size of your knuckle. It's like a fraction of an Inch or something.

I thought a qubit was pretty good because it's like what a yard came from.

No, a yard is from fingertip to.

Nose or from fingertip to ear.

If you're short like me.

I need either five yards or 6 million qubits cubic centimeters, or only three of them.

Yes, I'll get you exactly the amount you need.

Yeah. Like I say, it's about a half day's ride out to that hunting area. It's close enough. You guys could ride out, fuck crack at dawn and have some time to hunt. But my guesstimate is if you were going to leave at the start of the day, you're probably going to have to camp out overnight out there. You have enough time to actually hunt, skin it, gut it, do all that shit, hoarder it, and then pack it on the horse and bring it back. You're either going to have one hell of a long day.

Let's plan on staying here tonight. We'll ride out to the area tomorrow, scout around a little bit, camp, and then we'll start hunting the next morning. We'll be able to put a game plan together.

Sounds good to me.

We all plan on heading out.

You said skinning and gutting.

Yeah, and the more hands, the quicker that goes. I think that we all should go put out a base camp in the area.

Oh, I want to see this so bad now. I want to watch Belle just gut a deer. You've already stabbed a guy.

I know.

What was that?

I know.

Self defense.

It's fine. Don't worry about it. We'll head out tomorrow morning and we'll get what you need.

I would like to just reiterate, houses off limits.

No problem?

Mrs. Won't take too kind to seeing you folks inside, especially now that I know at least one of y'all committed an act of violence against a folk.

You make bows?

Yeah, and I don't shoot people.

Because you never had to, probably.

Dang skippy. I protect my castle.

Well, if you don't have a castle to protect, people want to play a game?

Argument to get in.

We're not going to cause any problems.

No interest in causing any problems whatsoever. But I would like to know which shrubs are okay to be behind.

Whatever. I ain't going to be looking.

Okay.

Thank you. Wherever you choose there, ma'am.

All right.

On that note, like I said, I've already got the wood, so I'll get started on shaping. Worst case scenario, I'm going to be able to sell these to somebody else. I'm going to get started shaping some nose, and I guess when you guys come back with a successful mission, just knock on the door and we'll go from there.

All right, well, we'll try to do you right. Mike says, don't forget, they don't need to be pretty. They just need to be strong and true.

If we're going to be in town this evening, do we want to do metal procurement first and get that out of the way and then.

That does sound like a solid plan.

Head out tomorrow.

Well, it's not super late, is it?

No, it's about, I don't know, two maybe in the afternoon. Roasting the coffee earlier today took a minute.

One thing I was thinking, though, on that on our way back, he wants the feathers and the leather we need to hide, but we might be able to actually use some of the meat to trade for the. That we don't currently have. Maybe some fresh meat or something we might be able to trade for on the way back, maybe.

That's a good point. We don't have a lot else to trade.

Let's still take a credit card. I don't think that probably works anymore.

No, I think there's a very short window in which that would have worked.

All right, well, I think that's a good plan for just bring back me to trade for metal in case they do have it at the hardware store.

In the meantime, what's our plan till nightfall?

That's a good question.

I'm going to go check out the horses, make sure everything's traveling well. They got worked pretty hard through the cabin season, but they haven't done this just kind of straight travel, so I just want to go check them out.

Really good.

Make sure their shoes are still on tight. And I'm going to relax a little bit and study this map. It's a good topo map. So we can kind of pick some areas. It'll have water holes and stuff. And I'm going to do some time studying, studying on that. Try to make maybe a game plan. And when we get out there tomorrow, we can look at the land and make a better plan.

How detailed that. Wow. How detailed is that map? Is that going to have like mines and stuff on it?

If it's Us geological survey topo map, then it would.

Sure.

We can scout out some of those silver mines that we need to get.

It's just local. This map is just local?

Yeah. And you see like old coal mines. Handful of them. But you don't see silver. Yeah.

Bummer.

Maybe we could go back into town. There's got to be another kind of wilderness store. We can see if there is a topographical map of Colorado as a crater.

Yeah.

Maybe there's a visitor center.

Most outdoor shops sell.

Knock.

Do you think?

I got to thinking. Do you think you can do that? Talk to animals again?

Yeah, I can give that a shot.

You know what would be really handy is if you come with me and we talk to the horses, we can ask them if anything hurts. Okay. Normally I pick up their feet and fill for hotspots, but if you can ask them what hurts, that would sure make it a lot easier to make adjustments to them.

That's sure.

Like direct feedback.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, that'd be helpful for hunting, too.

You don't mind if we stab an arrow in you, do you? Hold real still and it won't hurt as bad.

This is for the greater good, right?

Do you want to listen to these.

Animals die, but we could stumble into.

That sounds traumatic.

No, I just thought of that.

Yeah.

If you could talk to animals. Come with me. Let's go talk to the horses.

I was thinking of suggesting that, but you beat me to it.

I've got to sit back and watch. This looks like fun.

I got to do my weird if.

You don't want to, but I know Aveli had had option to do that. That's totally how he'd go check the horses.

Doing your thing.

I don't have like a chant.

No. Yeah.

Zone out, right?

Yeah, for ten minutes. You figured that out the last time, so you're able to do it again. Just sit down or whatever. How do you get in the zone?

Well, so like, last time we were riding the horse, right? And I just like, zoned the hell out. I just, like, stared off into the distance or whatever and zoned out ADHD style. But, like, this time I'm trying, right? Like. So I was thinking I would sit down, crisscross applesauce, and just kind of hold up your hands and help pretend that I know how to meditate. Speaking for experience, Olnock does not know how I do.

You'll think of anything, but that's got to, like, rock.

Do some deep back and forth like a traumatized child.

Concentrate on your breathing.

Try not to breathe too fast.

Exhale through your mouth.

Mel, I don't.

I feel like Mel's done this before.

Do you listen to any of her advice or does it irritate you?

I'm rocking like a child.

Rocking like a child. We'll say it takes a little longer to get in the zone.

You should have listened to my advice.

But after, I don't know, 15 minutes or so, you finally you hit the sweet spot. There ain't no crows or ravens nearby feasting, maybe a magpie or two.

Something.

To let me know I'm in.

Yeah. Yeah. You can hear the chipmunks in the squirrels in the know nut store food. Eat now, quick. Mine. Back off.

Hey, Elliot, I think we got it.

Sweet. All right. We don't know how this long lasts, so we're going to go kind of quick. Fair. Okay. We're going to talk to yours. You know your horse? This is Bert.

Bert.

We're asking if his arm, his feet, his legs or anything where the saddle rides. We're asking if it's like making a sore spot.

Okay.

Hey, Bert, we need to make sure. Are you having any soreness around where the saddle is? Your feet, your legs, anything kind of bothering you that seems out of the ordinary? Buddy?

I've got a spot near my shoulder. Near shoulder where? Rib. Rib. Shoulder?

Rib shoulder?

Sore. Hurts. Sore, hurts. Rib shoulder. Sore.

Hurts, he says, okay, so we would have unsattled. So I'm going to check the spot, and I've got Jacob. I'm showing Jacob how to do all this and I'm going to go, oh, yeah, right here. And I show Jacob. So you have to be careful. If you get a fold in your blanket, see how it made a spot right here. So we'll make sure we've got that cleared up. And that was the only spot he said hurt.

That was the only thing that's bothering you there, Bert?

That's about it.

Okay.

That's about it, he says.

All right, so I'll check. Is I'll make sure it's not as blank in the morning. Okay. And then we'll go to each one of them and quickly ask them.

You're able to find basic stuff, a couple of sore spots where the leather is right in, a little rough.

And then I'll make note and make adjustments to the saddle so that it doesn't happen.

Next time. We'll say Ernie maybe picked up some walking near the creek. He got mud and rocks up in his hoof and stuff. Nothing major, but irritants that you're able to solve. Pretty so.

And then I'll show all knock Dan Jacob how to fix that. This is way easier when you can just ask them.

Yeah, that went pretty quick. I think.

They, you know, they all tell Bulnoc. Thanks. You know, they.

They.

Again, they were pretty mild irritants. So nothing. There's no open blister in or anything? Just tender bits. But, yeah, you've got a little bit of time on that spell if you want to use it for anything else.

I don't know. What should I ask the animals about where the turkeys hide out?

Ask the birds if they've seen any turkeys.

So just shout, hey, birds, have you seen any turkeys? Surrounds reluctant for turkeys.

Meanwhile, what we hear.

Unnerving when those noises come out of his mouth.

I'm like bubbles for powerpuffer talking.

We got sergeant do it a little.

It is, chief.

Thank you. All right, go ahead and have you roll animal handling just to see if you get their attention enough.

That's 17.

Yes.

So we'll say a magpie kind of fly near you, doesn't come to you. Not known for being incredibly trusted creatures. Yeah, but it comes kind of near you, kind of cocks its head at you. That fast jerking motion. Kind of pecks at the ground a little bit. Bird big. North. North.

Nice. Thank you, Mackie.

Friends, looking on the map, north.

North.

We were told. Is that, like, in the direction that we were given?

Like the.

Okay, cool.

Perfect.

So we have some slight confirmation that turkeys are in that northern area.

West.

West as well.

Then it flies off northwest.

Probably. I'm not 100% that I understood what this bird said. It speaks in just words, just like one word at a time.

Was that northwest or north?

It's like north. And then it paused, and I was.

Like, looking around at a time.

Then it was west. But it didn't say northwest. Like, northwest.

It's over.

Northwest.

It said northwest. I had to recreate it. All right.

They need to understand such an intense pause. Thought you were turning into a bird.

I knew that was going to be exciting.

Wait for it. Wait for it.

There it about this time, the birds start sounding like birds to you again.

I think we timed out.

Thanks, Omar. That was very useful.

We did what we could.

Thank you.

I feel kind of bird like now. I kind of want to look around at stuff. I don't know why.

Distract them with something they're rubbing off on you.

And now it's going to get his camp set up and start to relax.

Weird.

Butch, is it starting to cool off? Yeah, I sort of have this envisioning that in his lovely little suburban backyard. He has a small fire pit. Look at that. And gather up some sticks and then firebolt it.

This guy would absolutely have a fire pit. He's got a nice grill. He's got a nice fire pit. You can tell this is man's backyard, his area.

I'm absolutely going to look around before I fireball.

I'm going to start in on dinner. If you're done blasting things to bits.

I made fire very quickly. I'm better at that than pitching his head.

Congratulations. You are a better arsonist than a camper.

Well, what do you put it that way? It sounds awful.

You also notice, as you've been setting up camp, all of the blinds and curtains have been drawn in the house facing the backyard. They are possibly giving you privacy. They are absolutely securing their own.

They're just suspicious of us. Or do you think we should be suspicious of them?

Yes, I think mostly they're just suspicious of us. But on that note, we probably shouldn't mention the fact that we've stabbed people.

Yeah, James.

In front of normal people.

I mean, he's not wrong. I probably shouldn't have tried to argue with him and say that. You didn't have to shoot people with arrows. And he doesn't need to know that I sang while I decapitated a dude. That's probably.

You probably shouldn't say that out loud.

Like you just did.

Are they close?

They live in this house right next to us.

It could be pretty well soundproof.

I don't know.

I mean, it's not like a double wider nothing, probably.

Let's just not talk about the unfortunate things that we've had to do in.

The last while we're near civilization, you.

Know, I think we'd all be happier if we just didn't talk about it at all personally. But that's me.

I like Mel's style.

Yeah.

Sounds like something I can get on board with.

Yeah, if we could avoid being chased out of town because that takes a lot of energy.

Boy, that sounds like the voice of experience.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Instead of an angry mob, Chase James out.

I think that's a bad plan. It's not our fault we run into awful people and end bad things.

Yeah, we probably shouldn't talk about the zombies and stuff that freaked the fuck out.

I bet the ghost thing. What was that?

We're not talking about that.

If you think about it though, it's probably going to happen again, right?

Let's talk about the weather.

Boy, this is some nice weather to kill some zombies.

That took a turn. Jacob, tell us about you. What have you done in your life.

Other than get kidnapped by bikers?

What do you want to be remembered for, child?

I'm going to be the very best.

At what?

That no one ever was. To catch them as your real quest to train them. As my college?

Hell yes.

I like this kid. I went to school.

What did you learn in school?

I don't know. We read. We watched this really old tv show. So old they had to pull in a big tv. It was fat. Never seen a tv like it. Came on a cart. Had these weird gray boxes under it. It's called the Reading rainbow.

Boring.

Reading Rainbow.

Here's the funny thing. Is that me personally, I go, aw, fond memories. Mel would have no idea what the hell this kid's talking about. And that hurts a lot.

I was expecting him to pull out like Bill Nye the science guy or something again.

Oh, we watch him.

Young enough, she wouldn't know.

But Bill.

Nye the science guy?

Yeah, they're really old movies from when.

Like we can watch the old comments there. Jacob, pull back on those a little bit.

Did you ever get to watch. Is it a good idea to microwave this?

That's a new one.

I feel like it was a YouTube thing.

I feel like unless it's.

That's. That one that my mom uses is the YouTube? Yeah, I go in there to watch people play video games. Sometimes that checks out. At least I used to.

Yeah, it's back to that whole microwaving.

What?

I feel like that if it's not food, it shouldn't go in it. That's just the end of conversation.

Well, if you want to be all linear and stuff, but they did some cool things and they blew up a lot of microwaves.

It's far easier to do than it should be.

There's a reason Mel's an arsonist and not a camper.

They like the slow mo bros. What slow mo bros?

Mel totally knows what he's talking about.

I haven't the fuck dude set film shit. Super slow mo.

I know the slow mo bros. Yeah, they just like anything that you can kind of slow down and do, like explosions or running something over, getting. Fall into the super, super slow motion.

Hitting somebody in the head with a.

Soccer ball full of water.

Yeah, water balloons. One of them was a british army dude, so he gets access to fun guns.

Thank you for that. I'm going to have to check that out.

They do some cool shit.

Well, that's cool. What age did you do when you were. Did you play sports or something?

Mom made me play t ball.

That doesn't sound like you liked it.

No, you just hit the ball and then you have to run in a circle, and then people get excited. It's really.

Do you want to know a secret? I think t ball's really boring. Too.

Easy. They always put me in the outfield. So I'd just sit out there and I'd pick some clovers.

Yes.

Stare at the clouds. Because I don't even know why they have people out there. Nobody can hit that far.

Jacob.

Really long.

I think you might be my long lost brother. Because that's literally how I spit every t ball game.

Yeah.

You hear James off in the distance cooking food again, brother.

I played a lot of five night. Five.

That is odly. Okay.

Three nights at Bobby's.

Oh, my lord.

I bet that was a lot of fun. Absolutely. Not a gamer. So she has no idea what you're talking about, right?

I didn't know.

I bet you didn't.

Did you have nightmares from that one, buddy?

Spooky. A little bit. Yeah, it's scary. But I'm tough.

That's good.

Nowhere near as scary as the stuff I saw at Mr. Elliot's house.

That's right.

You did.

See.

You.

That was scary.

Jacob, have you ever tried martial arts.

I don't like?

No. No. It's like karate and kickboxing.

I'm a total ninja.

Yes. Okay, here, let's you and I, we're going to practice some karate. So Jacob and I are going to do some karate. Kickboxing.

Yes.

She's going to tie in the knot himself.

Jacob and I are going to tie in the knot.

You're not supposed to marry children.

That's creepy.

That took a second.

I was thinking it should be to it.

I feel like we're probably going to regret this. But it'll make him feel useful.

Yeah.

Mel's going to totally teach him how to throw a proper punch. And one of these days, he's totally going to end up accidentally punching Mel. But it's fine.

It's good. He does surprisingly well. I mean, he's got the limberness of a kid, so it works in his favor pretty good. And he's. Honestly, he seems kind of glad to have any amount of distraction working for him while they practice their martial arts. What are the rest of yellow?

I'm fixing supper.

You're cooking? What's tonight's menu?

That is an excellent question. I have the slightest idea what we still have. Again, for food.

You're only a day away from the ranch. We'll say you can have what you want to have.

Yeah, okay.

Within reason. You don't have Filet mignon.

Okay, everybody's getting a tomahawk steak.

Perfect.

No, that's two nights from now when we have fresh meat.

Yes.

In the meantime, we're getting guilt. Guilt? Whatever it is, it's still laced with guilt, I suspect.

You know what?

We had apologies due. Now we're going to have guilt soup.

Now we're going to have breakfast.

Breakfast for dinner?

Yes.

Eggs are starting to go off.

Sad. Pancakes.

Pancakes with depression.

They got little blueberry teardrops.

Bacon, frowns.

Bad pancakes might give us a.

Um. I think one of the things Emory managed to salvage from her apartment in her really quick run through was her sketchbook.

So she's just kind of soft drawn.

Yeah.

Nice scribbling around in there.

What's old octo you're good at? Hurry up and wait.

Yeah.

Being navy boy. What's your go to? I have to wait for a while before I can do the next thing.

I tend to zone out.

Honestly, just sit down and blink.

I might take a nap. Basically, standing up. Wherever I am, I will immediately try to fall asleep.

You should try mastering that beast vision thingy that you did on Hexton.

That's true.

That's a good one.

Yeah.

I've spoken with the ammonia.

You should commune with nature.

Be at one with my inner beast.

Want a spirit?

Yes.

Basically a vision.

You know what? If I was going to zone out, that would be exactly what would end up happening. I would just fall into animal communication or whatever.

Damn it.

I can hear the fucking birds again.

We just look over and his eyes are fully rolled back in his head.

And all of a sudden he starts doing these od bird motions.

He's got some drool.

Just slowly.

He's like, slack jaw, just off on the side.

I hope he's okay, but I'm not.

Going to try to wake him.

I don't know what's going to awaken.

Right. So while you are zoning out, is there anything in particular you're thinking about?

No, not really. Thoughts just kind of go where they go. A lot of times it's unnecessary. Music and song lyrics.

Music and song lyrics. So as you're kind of stuck, you got the radio playing in the back of your head like most of this ADHD foop do.

Yes.

You mean that's not normal, right? It's evidently not.

No, it's not, actually.

Yeah.

It's just like top 40. It's everything I've ever heard in my life.

Nonstop, all the time. All the time.

I've got theme music sometimes. Depends.

So as you're zoning out, listening into that, got some kill switch engage playing in the back of your brain. Initially, this doesn't seem too weird because you're focusing in on the music, but the conversation around you starts to die out. And then the conversation rod really dies out and you just kind of hear. And then slowly, after about ten minutes, the conversation starts to kind of come back as if the faders, the music comes back, the wind dies out, and you're back hearing James chopping away at the onions and carats. Whatever he puts in his pancakes that I just remembered, he's cooking.

Savory pancakes.

That'S going into the omelets.

There we go.

There we go.

Savory pancakes. I forgot it was breakfast.

Yeah, three outfits.

Breakfast doesn't take much. Yeah. And while he's having a nice little nappy nap. What's Jeremy Elliot up to now?

You're Jeremy. Well, after taking care of the horses and just making sure they're put up, I've done the adjustments to the tack that I learned from Olnock. From there, he's just going to sit around and wait, but he's going to do a little practice with his mo. And y'all would notice that he's getting exceptionally far away with his shots. He's setting up a long way. And after he does a little bit of that, he's going to sit down, but he's going to be thinking and going over in the fight with the undead, how creepy they were. It seems to be that experience at his ranch seems to be weighing heavily on him and he spends a lot of his time thinking about that.

If there's not anything pressing you guys want to do, we can kind of fast forward through dinner and through the night. You're in town, you'll have a safe night. If there's any specific conversations anybody wants to have tonight, you can. Otherwise, we'll just 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 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 999 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 you've heard through our episodes, the content selection is broad and high quality, and they couldn't 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 you're 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 episode.

Yay.

More breakfast crushade.

Oh, this time we're having dinner for breakfast.

There you go. We're going to mix things up with.

This being a hunting trip. Specifically, what time does Elliot force everyone out of bed?

It's not going to be early because we're not going to be hunting today. We're just getting to location normal morning, normal travel. He's not going to push today. He will in the morning, but this morning, no.

So you're just breaking camp back down.

Making sure everything's very appropriately and squared away perfect. And teaching it, showing everybody, especially packing the horses. He's very careful and goes through with everybody and making them do their own packing. If he catches things wrong, he's like, hey, you need to do this or watch out for these problems.

With this being specifically a hunting mission, are you taking the whole camp with you, or are you leaving anything behind? You traveling light or you travel in normal?

We're not trying to cover big ground, and we may possibly continue further north if it doesn't work. So I think we take the whole camp, everything we have.

Excellent. So, yeah, you guys are able to pack up. You have your lovely steak and potato breakfast.

Bowl of clam chowda.

God, that's horrifying.

Actually, that's a gross start for the.

Day, especially with coffee, because they're not coming between me and my coffee. I don't care what you're serving for breakfast. I'm having a cup of coffee.

Hey. Mel's tent stayed up. Good job, Jacob.

Thank you.

Yeah, the pictures help real good. Bending the poles is a little hard, but we got it.

You gotta take it back down again.

I could build it. You can take it.

Yeah.

You're good at that.

Yeah, kid.

You're a little too smart for your own good. You know what?

My mama says? We got to share the chores.

I bet she did that slipped in.

Louisiana there for a second. Sorry, but cool. Yeah. I assume you guys just tell Pete that you'll be back. You're not leaving. You're just off for the hunt. So you begin your journey up north. To get up there, you got to go back down into the heart of town. There's not a direct shot out of his subdivision up north. Really. There's only really two roads that get you up into that area, and they both end up converging just on the outskirts of rifle anyway. So you're taking the highway up north for just a short drive ride. It's a figure of speech that's hard to kick. You guys pass a decent sized Ford dealership. That's the first Ford Dealership you've seen that's dirty possibly ever. Because ain't nobody gone back to that job. And then about a half mile, I think, up from the Ford dealership, you see a bowling alley, and there's signs pointing to the rifle gap, which, based off the map you had, you know, is where you're headed. So you branch off. It's just a two lane country road, paved, but two lane country road that you take drops you down into a pretty valley. You ride it for. I've only driven this road once, and that was a while ago. So you ride it for about, I guess. And there's a branch, you see. The branch says, you can continue on to the rifle gap falls, or you can branch north and head up towards the prison map, specifically the area that Pete was telling you is up north of the prison. So I presume you guys branch up that way. Up north. This road, it's decently paved. You ride it for quite a while. It's a fair bit. Rifle gap itself is a decent sized reservoir. And you're kind of taking the westernmost bank of this lake headed north, kind of curve around it a little bit, but then the road branches away from the lake. You do see a fair amount of activity around the lake. It's a very popular fishing spot. You see a lot of folk fishing. Fair amount of horse up near there. But you guys continue on past them and it's probably another. It was about a half day's ride to get up there. So you kill the rest of your morning just traveling through. Again. It's not too different from what you rode from Colburn. A lot of shrub. There's a little bit more tree down here. There's a decent creek that feeds into that reservoir that you're following along. Sort of. So there's a fair bit more tree down here. But it's by no means a forest again. It's more of the same kind of high country ranches. A lot of sage about. Somewhere along the way there you pass a decent golf course. This might be before the rifle gap again. I've only driven this road once, but there's a decent sized golf course. So there's a good chunk of well maintained grass. And surprisingly you actually see a fair number of people playing golf along there.

The world ends and people are golfing.

They will. Yeah. That wouldn't stop them.

Do you think they missed the memo?

They're probably excited that everything stops, that they actually have time to play golf. Honestly, I know.

All they have to deal with is like, no golf carts.

Yeah, no golf carts.

No lawn mowers either. So eventually it's going to get real hard.

After what it's been a month.

Roll a perception if you're interested.

It's extreme.

It would be very trash. That was a four before I knocked. Did you miss? I gave you tray, got you like. I did everything I could to sit up for success now.

You did a good job. I'm really good at fucking it up. Yeah, I rolled a four.

Oh yeah.

I can't write nine.

Passive nine.

I got 19.

What Elliot get?

He doesn't care about golfers. He's not looking.

They don't give a shit.

James is able to see you. See as you're looking across there, you do see one big old boy doubled over. Know he's been having to carry his clubs for possibly the first time ever. And golf without a cart is a fair bit of exercise. As you're looking, you actually see a boy out there on the green. And he's got one of the old school push mowers.

Oh, my God. With like the rotary blades.

Oh, my God. You see him out there and he's huffing and puffing and working his butt off. You see him doubling back a bunch. There's a reason those went out of fashion. They ain't exactly easy. But he's out there. He's mowing the greens.

Inefficient.

How much would they have to be paying him in?

You couldn't pay me to mow a lawn in the apocalypse.

No. Me neither.

You do notice dude's maybe 1314.

He's got to be related to somebody.

He's got to be. Wow.

But you continue on north of there, you pass again a couple more ranches. There's a fair bit of cattle out here. You see if Elliot in particular would be looking, you start to see a little bit more natural track out here. There's evidence of fox in the area. There's evidence of raccoons in the area. If you want to go ahead and roll a nature check.

So Al, it's in his favorite terrain, so he should have advantage.

Yeah. You could tell this doesn't surprise you a whole heck of a lot. But they are moving perpendicular a lot to the creek, going down, getting water, moving away. You do see some sign of deer hoof, some elk hoof. You also see a decent size cat print. There's evidence of mountain lion in the area. So you're picking up on those signs. You see plenty of feathers. There's all the evidence of everything you'd want in the area. Nothing that shows any signs of bedding down anywhere near here yet. And you're not seeing any huge drinking holes or anything. But you're also passing by plenty of houses, so you're not surprised by the raccoon. They're probably raiding people's trash, especially now that trash ain't getting picked up all the way the hell out here in particular. Ain't no trash guy that dedicated. But you're seeing all the signs that you would want to see. So you're thinking that Pete was pretty spot on. There's going to be good hunting up in here. And about hour and a half, 2 hours after you pass that golf course you do see up on, you'd be up on your guys'right, decent sized collection of buildings. There's no fence surrounding them or nothing. But they have got that distinct government gray that looks like they were built efficiently, not aesthetically. Down on the southern border, there's two t shaped buildings. T's laying down, not t's standing up. So three halls, essentially, that converge in the center. And then there's eight rectangular buildings surrounding it. Four pert near identical buildings with walking paths leading up to them, paved walking paths leading up to them. Two pretty good sized buildings that the road quite obviously leads you toward. Weirdly, if there not being a fence, there is one of them lower and arm gate thingies that goes across the road with a silver box sitting next to it, like a talk box. Again, no offense, but that is blocking access to the road, also a true fact that exists there. And they warn you, if you do not stop at the talk box, they will chase you down and assume you are helping an inmate escape from your job interview. Again, it was a weird job interview.

Do you think they're still locked in there? That seems exceptionally.

I feel like we've gotten into enough trouble doing weird things that I don't want to check.

I'm scared to check, but I'm also scared. They're, like, starving to death in there, dad.

They're probably fine. I've got to believe these guys are pretty. Anybody that was put in here is, like, petty theft. These are not violent people. I'm sure if they got. I'm sure they just. If nothing else came and let them go.

So, James, do you think that they would have figured out how to escape by, you know.

Why are you asking me this?

Because you're a resident escapee expert and petty theft person.

It's kind of your wheelhouse.

So you understand the criminal mind, if you will.

I feel like I should take offense to this, but I really don't.

I already said there's no fence.

Yeah.

Probably wouldn't be that hard. Just swipe a badge. Voila.

But none of the scanners work.

I'm still used to technology.

Yeah.

So we're all agreed that they're probably fine and we should butt out.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the hunting around here is not very good. We should probably get further away from this place.

Yeah, no problem.

So, on that general consensus, you keep riding north a little ways. You do see, as you progress north, directly north of the prison. So the road kind of bends around the prison a little bit. So you see the prison from two sides, I guess, is the easiest way to put it. You see it from the west side of the prison, and then from the north side of the prison, as you kind of wrap around it, then the road bends back to the north again. And directly across the road is a good sized watering hole. You do see a little bit of prints through here. There is some traffic, but the creek continues forward. You could tell this is maybe like a backup reservoir for the jail prison, just in case kind of a thing. And if you choose to continue north from this watering hole again, it's more of the same. The valley starts to tighten a little bit. Instead of having a good probably mile from hill to hill, you're getting into the hundreds of yards from hill to hill. Less ranch through here, there's still some evidence of people bending the landscape to their will. The road very quickly becomes dirt and the properties do start to dissipate. A fair clip north of there you see some weird facility with a tennis court. What is this place? It looks like. Looks like a municipal building, but it's got a tennis court in it. Just weird. But that's about the last building you see. And again, as you go, the land, the. The valley just keeps tightening up. It's starting to become. It's not difficult to travel yet by any means, but it is tightening up a fair bit. As you travel north for a fair while, you see just the crick. You don't run into any kind of other watering hole if you choose to continue. By about midday you do hit the end of the road. The road stops, the crick continues onwards. You can choose to follow it if you want to.

I think the end of the road is a good place to set up camp. We've got water. We haven't seen any buildings. I think this is a good spot to stay and then scout out from here.

Well, you're the resident hunter.

Yeah. So we should go ahead and set up camp. Let's set up. We'll do just a normal night camp, just tonight. Let's go and get camp set up now. And then while you guys are setting up camp, I'm just going to take one of the horses and I'm just going to go scout. And I'm trying to move quickly and I'm just trying to look for a few likely places to actually go hunt for in the morning. So I want to move quickly. So I just want to grab the horse and dump stuff off and then we'll travel real light. I'll, of course, take my bow with me because you never know if you might jump something while you're looking. I'll be ready for that, but I just want to scout some likely areas to go check out first thing in the morning.

So just to paint a picture of where your camp is, calling this a road, pretty darn generous. It's really two ruts that a handful of trucks have managed to dig into the ground. You get to the very end of it. You do find an ancient corral. Perfect. You get the feeling it ain't been used in quite some time, but you have a logical place to set up camp, some degree of boundary. Despite its age, it's not completely fallen over. It's not something I would trust cattle to by any means, but it's a clear delineation. The ground inside of it's relatively flat. It's got a lot of natural grass. There's not too much in the way of shrubbery to have to work around.

Perfect. We want to set up camp in there.

We'll put the horses in the corral and we'll just sit up next to it.

That'll work.

Okay, Jacob, go work your magic.

I'm just fixing the glasses.

I'll just hand you.

Okay. I need pole a.

Pole A?

Yep. And it goes here. Then I'm going to need pole C next.

Pole D. C is in the puppy doggy. What?

Charlie.

Okay, sorry. Pole C, check. This goes on for an embarrassingly long time.

45 minutes later.

As in Doc. Oh, sorry. I thought you said e. It takes.

A lot of willpower for James not to swipe one of the poles.

Make it longer.

That's awesome.

So while you guys are doing that, Elliot heads out on the prowl to scout out the land. What does Elliot do? What does that look like?

Because he stopped long enough to pull his pack off his horse and you would just think he's riding but not on trails and he's just moving. He's just trying to cover a lot of ground quickly and he's not spending anywhere that he might stop for a moment and look at for a rub or something and then just keep going. He's just trying to see a lot of acreage very quickly and then from there he'll think about it tonight and figure out where he thinks would be one of the best places to start early in the morning.

Go ahead and give me another nature survival 1616. All right. You're able to find a fair amount of scat. You're able to tell it's rabbit scat. You do see fairly obvious fox prints alongside that chasing the rabbits. As you're moving through, you start getting into the more of the shrub. And about this time of year, the deer and elk are going to start shedding a little bit. Shedding their winter coat, not their antlers, but their winter coats are going to start to shed. So you do find a fair amount of tufts of hair. So you can tell that there's at least some amount of herd moving through here. It is the darker brown of an elk, not the lighter brown of the deer. After you ride for a bit, you're getting a little further away from camp at this point. You do find some feathers indicative of probably more pheasant up in this area, I would think. I don't know if there's a lot of turkey. Is there a lot of turkey?

There actually is, yeah.

Birds were never my hunting. I've always hunted elks. I know dick about turkey.

No, not a bad area for turkey.

So then, yeah, you find some turkey feather up in that area with a 16. You don't stumble across their den by any means or their den, but their nesting area. But as you're looking, you do see, you can tell that there's been a cat in the area. It looks like the cat's a little on the older side. The print's not fresh. Fresh. You do see some prints that you're having a hard time placing. This print don't look familiar.

I will take a moment and I'd like to do an investigation check of that OD print.

Okay. No, it's clearly in the cat canine family. It ain't bear. You know, bear, it ain't that big, it ain't coyote. It ain't that small, it ain't wolf. It ain't that small.

Got it. So with his information I've gathered, I'm going to get back. Mike says I'm going to just kind of do a long semicircle sweep away from the civilization. And I want to get back to the camp by hour before it gets dark. But I was moving pretty fast, so I did want to cover a lot of ground. So I did make a pretty wide swath. And now I've got a pretty good lay of the land in my head. And Elliot would have good ideas on where to go Hunt this land.

Perfect.

Yeah.

And you do know based off of the spread, they're all moving again to and from the watering hole or the creek. Closest thing to a watering hole out here. It's by no means dense. Travel to the best, as you can tell. I mean, elk and deer tend to follow game trails. They're not moving in a 70 foot wide line. They tend to follow each other through the terrain so there's clearly activity, but it's been frequent enough. You can't quite tell how many head. You just know there's very obviously worn paths leading to the cricket way. They're not sleeping up high in the hills. It's still pretty cold at night, so they tend to stay a little lower in the valley. But you also know that the turkey ain't. You're probably not going to catch a turkey and an elk in the same area. You're able to tell that pretty easy. Perfect. That gets you back about right around, like you said, an hour before nightfall. So right around supper time. Which meal are we eating for dinner tonight?

Not breakfast. Got to shake it up a bit. Probably meatloaf.

Interesting. Okay.

Just kind of use some of the leftovers that are going to start going bad at some point to make some meatloaf.

And Elliot will tell everybody kind of about what he saw. He said, I've seen some evidence of some big cats, probably mount Lion. I wouldn't expect them to bother us. They tend to stay away from people. And I tell them about the tracks that I saw that I couldn't identify. I have no idea what that was. So just kind of keep your eyes open. Way things have been weird anymore, those od tracks kind of concern me a little bit that I don't know what they match.

A bigger cat, maybe a cat dog.

I'm not sure. Yeah. I've never seen anything like that. No idea what it was. Bear on the campfire tonight.

Anything anyone else wants to do before you all head off to sleepy times?

Meat olive is delicious, by the way. I rolled a natural 20 on that.

Oh, it's freaking bomb.

Yeah, I feel like you must have cooked it in a dutch oven over the campfire.

Yeah.

I'm thoroughly intrigued. What a Nat 20 campfire meatloaf tastes like.

It is juicy and it melts in your mouth.

Don't even need ketchup.

Don't ask what's in it.

What do you use for the binder? Are you a rice guy, a crackers guy, a bread guy?

We probably had some saltines, so I probably used, like, a shit ton of saltines.

Somehow it worked.

I've heard people use it. It sounds like a soggy ass meatloaf to me, but I've heard people use it.

It works.

The best meatloaf on 20, so it's phenomenal.

So it's the best example of meatloaf.

The salt of the salt teens paired well with the smoke of the campfire.

Perfect.

All food tastes better when cooked over a campfire. It's just a fact of life.

That's true. We are devastating low on road snacks now, though.

Yes, they're all in it.

Those were just making you thirsty anyway.

I bet I got a bag of chickale chips down here somewhere.

I'm sure that'll be just as edible as anything.

I move those out of the way to get to the actual crackers.

Just saying. They're good for you. I think I have one or two cliff bars I'm hiding in case of emergency, too.

Perfect. So you guys enjoy a nice meal. You clean up afterwards. Elliot, have any words of wisdom for cleaning up after this meal?

That was a damn fine meatloaf. Thank you.

You're welcome, sir.

It's a lot better without Crisco in it. I didn't cook with Walt. Had an unhealthy. Unhealthy.

How in the hell are you two alive?

Do we need to worry about all this food? Smells right next to sleepy.

Drinking bear skin pumps. Wow. It's kind of the wrong seat.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No. I wanted to not get eaten by a bear.

Don't let him eat you.

You know, you're right. I shouldn't worry about it. Problem solved.

Just eat some of your kale.

That would probably deter the bear.

Yeah, deter the bear.

You know what? I've seen you shoot fire out of your fingers and make screams that make people's heads explode. I don't think you need to worry about it.

Don't tell me about my shortcomings, okay?

I didn't call you short. You don't even listen. Guys, the only thing around here is black bear. They're not going to bother us anyway. If they get into camp, just shoosh them out.

Shoot them out.

Got it. If you shoot him, you better be ready for a fight, because if you wound him, then that gets ugly.

Gotcha.

I feel like Mel really wants to storm off and slam the door, but you can't slam a tent, so she's just.

Probably get some of the fabric so the zipper gets stuck halfway through.

She's even more pissed off than when she started.

Do you need help, Miss Mel?

I don't know.

The instructions say to go slow.

Thanks. I appreciate that, Jacob.

I love that.

Jacob is just. Jacob's fantastic in the impromptu, like, terror for Mel.

He's like, jiminy Cricket, Mel's conscience.

So Elliot tells everybody I'm going to go to bed early. I would probably take one with me.

I was going to say, are all of us going to be useful on hunting? I have never hunted in my life.

Absolutely not. You hear from the tent.

Unless we try to do a drive hunt, then you all would be useful. But I don't think we want to go to that yet.

I can talk to animals. That's the thing I can do.

I want to get going really early.

That's nothing new.

Way before dark. Well, that would be helpful.

That would be, like, an hour ago.

If you don't come along, I would like everybody to be awake and ready in the morning. It's possible there's turkey in this area. You might be able to catch them going to or coming from water. And we're right here by the creek, so if everybody's really quiet and sits still, they could just accidentally walk through. So everybody should be ready in case that happens. So I'm going to wake everybody up when I go, but I don't know who wants. This is hard, because to go hunting, he would go by himself, but that's not a fun game to play, so I'm kind of at a loss here.

I think that makes sense, though. Have one person go with you. We don't want a huge crowd going.

I got some fancy magical stuff that might help out a little bit.

He's going to be a better arrow shot than I am, too.

Yeah. We're hoping we're not down to trying to axe.

Him out of the trees.

And we can stay here with Snow White and see if he can talk some turkeys into jumping into our.

Yes. Yes.

Okay.

I'll sing to him in the morning.

Chief. Snow white. Sorry.

Tiptoe through the tulips. Good times.

So from the tent, you hear, are we setting watches?

I'm going to take last watch. Don't work. I'm going to take last because I'm going to get ready to go, and I'm going to wake everybody up right before I leave, but I'm going to do it on last watch, so I'll already be up.

I'll take first watch.

I will take second.

All right. First is Emery.

Yeah.

Second is James. Yes.

I took last section off, so I got to take a watch.

Oh.

I get to sleep all night. You hear the sound of somebody, like, getting cozy in their sleep.

Really?

Yeah.

That's not for your benefit. That's for ours. A well rested Melanie is a quiet, happy Melanie.

I don't think that's ever worked for Melanie in her life.

I'm still awake, you know, and you're.

Still louder than most people I know.

And I can still.

I'm not saying that it's a bad thing. I'm just saying, if you're going to.

Talk about me behind my back, wait until I fall asleep.

All right.

I kind of wanted you to hear that.

Good night.

All right, so, watches are going great.

So you guys bed down. Emory's up first. Anything in particular you want to do to pass time on your watch?

Not really. I think she does sketch a little bit more. Not really drawing anything in particular, just kind of noodling around. She's thinking a lot of stuff, mostly. Like, she thinks about hunting and applicable, like, apocalypse skills, which she is realizing she doesn't have a lot of. And she's thinking about the fact that we murdered some kids. She's had trouble getting that off of her mind, but she's trying not to get stuck.

Youth. They were youth. And they were smart asses.

They were. We still killed people they attacked first.

Murdering some kids just sounds exceptionally worse.

Yeah, but, yeah, that's just kind of how she spends that wash. There's not a lot of idle things that she can do anymore because there's no electricity. She misses having headphones and listening to music.

Excellent. So let's have you roll a reception check. Poor favor. 1818. So you're able to settle down by this point. You've maybe learned from the others that sitting right next to the campfire while you're on watch isn't best.

Yeah, that's why she gives up sketching pretty quick, because she's like, oh, yeah, I need the light to see, but I need to not have the light so I can see the things I'm.

Actually supposed to pay attention to.

So you move a little ways away and you're observing. You do hear plenty. Surprisingly, it's not dead out here. You hear the skittering of critters. You watch for a while and you do see off in the distance, low of some eyes, about eye level. Kind of pause and look over in your direction. And then you see him scare away real quick.

Like.

Off in the distance, you hear some. The Kala coyote. Often, the further distance, you hear a little bit of. It's a pretty awful sound. Sounds like it's not unlike a lady screaming. So that's maybe not the most comforting thing you've ever heard. Yeah.

Unsettling. But she's not going to investigate.

So you hear a lot of those sounds. You see plenty of signs of activity, and you don't have dark vision, so you're only able to see the things that respond to the light you have, but nothing dangerous by any means. After your watch, is James all right.

Emory will go and wake him up quietly. And not much going on. Lots of animals.

All right, that's about it. Nice.

Cool.

Good night.

So James will probably spend his watch practicing a spell that he'll be using tomorrow. Just a cantrip. He'll be essentially using it to make like a camouflage. So he'll duck down and he'll make it look like he becomes a boulder, essentially like a decent sized boulder around himself.

Okay. That's what you're doing for your whole watch?

For a little bit of it. Definitely keeping an eye out, whatnot around.

So if you have a different intent, let's have you roll a perception at disadvantage.

Okay? Not terrible. 16 with a disadvantage.

Yeah. You hear a lot of the same noises that Emery was hearing.

Okay.

You don't hear the creepy woman screaming ish sound.

That's good.

You do. You hear the wolves, you hear some coyote, but you don't hear the scary, screechy sound. Other than that, the rest of your watch goes pretty unbelievable. You turn into a real good boulder. I like that boulder.

All right, I'm going to use the same minor illusions cantrip to cast my voice over to unlock.

Okay.

Because I'm not crazy enough.

Just to mess with him a little bit. So you hear, like, some whispers in your ear.

What the fuck?

James. Good morning.

James, where the hell are you?

Over here. The tree waves ate.

Okay.

That's one of the weirdest things I'll probably see tonight.

Hopefully.

Hopefully. We've seen some weird shit.

Not wrong.

Nothing of note. Definitely some active wildlife in the area.

Okay.

But other than that, nothing major.

All right.

I'll get some sleep, buddy.

We'll do.

How's Olmon pass his watch?

So I'm going to sit kind of far enough from the fire that it's not bothering my eyesight and making things too bright or whatever, but to where I still can kind of feel that warmth. Want to kind of just sit and just be on alert, working on sharpening my axe just in case.

Okay. So go ahead and give me a perception.

That's a five.

All right. Yeah. You don't hear much. You're at your passive, and your passive sucks. So you don't hear nine, but I'm assuming never sharpen an x.

No.

Not a lot of call for that.

In the don't know how to do it, but I've seen it in samurai movies.

So you're doing go? Yes.

It's probably not helping.

So here's another good question. What should sharpen it with.

The only thing I've seen is a wet rock.

You got a rock wet? Yeah.

Hey, he doesn't know stuff, but he's trying have your role of survival, God damn it. Don't make me roll. That was a bad roll. Another five.

Well, you don't hurt the axe. You don't break it. You do accomplish putting some nifty scratches best. As you can tell, at best, it's where it was. It might be duller. Okay, you definitely did not sharpen it. Didn't get better, but you have feel.

That's all I was really going for. Now, I was hoping it would work, but I don't know what the hell I'm doing. And there's no YouTube for me to look it up.

Unfortunately, with you only rolling a five, you don't even get the good shing send. You just get a.

Everybody's like, what the fuck is going on?

Oh, my.

All James hears is, oh, shit.

Damn it.

This looks easier in the movie.

I'll show you how to sharpen it properly tomorrow.

Did you have a metal worker?

I should have asked.

We also have a knives guy who sharpens knives every night.

With that, the rest of your watch goes completely uneventful. And that leaves us to Elliot.

Hey, Elliot.

Yeah?

It's your turn, buddy. You got to get up and do the hunting or whatever after your thing.

Mean.

Okay.

All right.

Anything happened?

I think I dulled my axe because I'm terrible at sharpening it.

Yeah, you should talk to Emory.

Yeah, that's a good point.

I figure if she can make it, she probably knows how to sharpen.

That's a good point.

All right.

But, yeah, uneventful. I didn't hear anything weird.

I'm glad. Okay, bud's going to get up. He's going to hold it open for Charlie to jump in the sleeping bag. He's like, Charlie, you need to stay around. You can't come with me today. You'll be fine. Just stay in the sleeping bag. I'm going to flip it over. I mean, he's going to be completely buried. He just moves just enough to get his nose out. I'm going to walk around camp, do a headcount, make sure all the heads are here and they're all breathing. You succeed, and I'm going to go look on. Go check the horses. I'm going to take a different horse than the one I've been riding, Pawnee. But because I rode him pretty hard on that scout, I want him to rest today. So I'm going to grab one of the other one. I've got the list, by the way, I'm going to take Percy today. She's fast and she's still resting. But I'm going to start getting my stuff ready. So I'm going to go light so I can go far. I'm going to need any kind of rope in case I put something down to drag. Make sure my knife's good. But I'm going to pack pretty light for in the morning. I'm keeping an eye out. But I'm also preparing to get ready to head out. It's pretty early this morning.

Perfect. Take any rations with you?

Like maybe just one for the day. Some to snack on.

Perfect.

Did you were going with me?

I believe so, yeah.

Okay. I'll get your horse saddle, too, just for fun.

What's he taking?

Dan.

Dan. So we have Pawnee, Percy, Dan, Burt and Ernie.

Yep. We have Rita and Rocket. Rita, Pawnee and Rocket. I have all seven of them. I'll give them to you later.

Perfect. There you go.

I've known a lot of horses in my life. It's easy to come up with horse names.

And Bert and Ernie.

Best guess. Well, we did have a Bert. I've never had an Ernie, but we did have horse names.

Bert and Ernie happened organically.

So once I've got both horses ready, I'm going to go wake James back up. Just as a reminder to the DM on what we're doing right now, Elliot is in his favorite terrain, going after his favorite foe. Which is favorite. He's favorite terrain, favorite beast. He's completely in his element.

Perfect. So unless things go terribly well, he's.

Got advantage on most of his roles and he's got extra proficiencies because of both of those things.

Excellent. So it seems like you're pretty preoccupied packing up. Focus.

Yeah, my mind is completely on the hunt today.

Perfect. And we're not even going to have you roll a perception so you're able to wake him up. It's still dark. I'm assuming you're wanting to write on the dark.

Yeah, it should be way dark.

When I knew we were going to wake up early.

Oh, my God. I've got your horse saddled.

Perfect.

Bring your bow. Bring one ration. And it's cold this morning. So you want to be wearing something. We're going to ride to a place I saw and we're going to go hide. And I'm hoping we can catch something that comes out on the morning feed. But we've got a couple of miles to cover in the dark. So we're going to move quick.

I was working on a new spell. Should help us out a little bit for active camouflage. I'm going to do the spell and I'm going to create a tree.

Hey, how you make a tree or do you become a tree?

I create like the miter illusion of a tree.

Can you make us a blind to get in?

Yes.

Oh, that's awesome. Going to be a little cramped.

I can only make it up to like 5ft.

Okay, we'll get friendly. How long does it last?

As far as I know, through some testing. It only lasts about a minute, but I could recast it before it falls.

Okay.

It's not verbal, though.

That's good.

I don't need you to be talking.

Yeah.

Okay. Well, when you're ready, we need to get on the road.

All right.

I'll grab my bow and my rational whatnot.

And luckily we can both see in the dark.

Yes.

So we can move fast.

You guys can move pretty good.

We can move fast and quiet. So because we're in my favorite terrain, we can stealth and move at normal speed because we're in our and my entire party can. So him and I can make stealth checks and travel.

Nice.

There you go. So yeah, it's chilly. It's right around the freeze point, so it's frosty. Especially down by the creek. It's plenty frosty.

Nice.

So with your night vision, it's clear. That's part of why it's so darn cold. It's clear tonight. So you can see by moonlight as well? Some. So as long as Elliot's moving, you see him perfectly fine. That weird shit's not happening too much right now. That's good.

Nothing else? You can see the horse I'm on.

But with the glisten, it's actually kind of pretty. It's almost got a glisten to everything. The ground's crystallized with the frost, so the little bit of light there is. Is shining up pretty nice. It's pretty. I don't know if you've seen that, but it's pretty in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night when it's frosted over. Yeah, but, yeah, you guys are able to settle up and you're able to head on. Towards where? What are you going to for first? Turkey or elk? What's your preference? If it matters, we'll say you saw elk closer.

Elk will take the most time. Turkey. I was just thinking we'd take as opportunity presents. They're not stealthy. Creatures. You can usually listen and hear them and go run them down.

Yeah. They are loud and they're surprisingly big. Yes.

And they're not very.

No. Perfect. So you go to where you saw the near where you saw the game trail that the elk were using. What's your prep? Are you going to hunker down along the trail? You want to be closer to the water in area where you want to be close to where you think they'll be sleeping?

They'll be asleep. I probably want to be between where they're asleep and where I suspect them to water or possibly to forge for food. I want to kind of ambush them in that spot.

Perfect. So there's a spot where as you get closer to the river, not at the river, we'll say you're probably 200, 300 yards from the river or creek. It's not a river. There is a spot where it's got a little bit of a cliff, nothing huge. We're talking maybe like five, six foot tall little cliff. It's just enough that you can tell that the game trail had to shoot off, kind of go angle down it. They're not hopping off this. It's big enough. They're not hopping down it. They're walking down it off at angle and near it, there's a decent amount of shrubbery you could hunker yourself down into.

That's what we'll set up.

It's definitely big enough for you guys. The hide and the horse might be a little tricky.

We'll leave the horse back here where we are. We'll leave the horses back here and then we'll sneak down into our hide.

Gotcha.

Perfect. With you being you're well far enough away, you ain't got to worry about stealth. This is your terrain for now. We won't have you roll. So you get hunkered down in there. Got all your supplies ready for it?

I cast my minor illusion blind.

Okay.

Yeah, if it's every minute, we're going to be here for hours. I wouldn't worry about it. We've got this good push to hide in.

What I will have you guys do. Let's go ahead and roll. Perceptions. Yeah. Just the two of them.

1416 is almost perfect.

So we'll say, you see the sky starting to brighten up a little bit right around the same time the sky starts to brighten, James, you hear twig.

Snapping, kind of prick up, kind of look around and go phantom mime or.

Just tap me on the shoulder and point.

Yeah, I'll do that. I'll tap on them on the shoulder and point from where I heard the snapping.

So now with there being something worth hiding from, let's have stealth. Okay.

At this point.

Sure. We get advantage anyway, don't you?

Could I use the time to also put up the minor illusion? Kind of just like to help add to the bushes a little bit.

Sure. This is your first time actually accounting and needing to happen. Just give me an arcana seahawk.

Okay.

Could I do that at advantage because I was practicing it during my watch?

No.

Okay.

Where's the shot?

I got 15 on.

That is a dirty 20 for an arcana check.

Perfect. You get a roll with advantage on your stealth then.

Perfect.

That is a 23.

Yeah. Okay. And you got a 1515. Perfect. So James hunkers down. So good, you kind of forget he is sayer.

Perfect.

I turned into the bush and that's what I did for the minor illusion, I just increased the size of the bush bushes.

Beef it up a little bit. Yeah.

So it's not like a weird non bush entity. Just looks like more bushes.

Look like one of those trees that they have where they're trying to pretend.

Oh, yeah, the satellite, the cell towers. Yeah. Does not look like that. Does not look like a fake tree.

So about, they're not in a hurry. So about ten minutes after you heard that twig break, you can hear the actual footfalls of them coming through. Elk ain't small. There's a lot of shrub they're bumping in, kind of. They're not broadening their way through here. They're not bowling a china closet, but they aren't also trying to necessarily be quiet. They're rubbing up against stuff. They're breaking sticks out the way they're kicking rocks. So you hear a decent number coming. It's by no means like a know, but based off of your experience, there's probably a good five, six of them coming through.

So when we were on the way up there, I was going to tell James that we're going to try to take a young bull. We can take a cow to get what we need, but we want to make sure that she doesn't have calf because I'm guessing the hunting pressure is going to get really hard on these animals here shortly. So we want to make sure that we don't take any of the breed stock. So we want to get a young bull out. We're not looking for the big old guys. We want one of the young little.

Spikes is what we want.

That'll get what we need. And it's the least hit.

Perfect. So another five minutes pass and they start down that little cliff walking. They get down it and they start walking. Not directly in front of you. I'm assuming you guys didn't park on the trail.

Oh, God, no.

I've heard of people who would do that. But I'm assuming you're not them.

No, I'm hoping about 20 yards, 30 yards off.

Perfect. You're about 2030 yards off then. And you do see a big old. There's a big boy kind of leading the path. There's a couple of cow.

I'm going to appreciate how big he is, and in my head I'm going to tell myself, that's not what we're going for today.

He's a gorgeous. He's not quite trophy. He ain't up in that area, but he ain't nothing to scoff at. You see a couple of cow, you do see one pretty young and recent newborn, and we'll say, there's one spike.

Okay, that's the one I want.

So do you want to hit now?

Yes, I do. All right.

I'm going to let him shoot, but I'm still going to prep my bow just in case things go wrong.

Elliot probably would have told you on the way up. We can't talk about it now, but on the trip up that you let me, the second you see my arrow fly, you shoot right behind it. We're not in this sporting. We want to put them down now and as fast as we can. So as soon as you see my arrow go, you shoot just immediately.

Gotcha.

Let's roll for initiative. Theater of the mind is Jeremy Arston as Elliot Brandybane, Amanda Arston as Melanie Kelly, Michael Burnell as Olnock, Vargar Johnson, Michael Downes as James O'Brien, Casey Weingarten as Emery Lee and myself, Mike shock as your dungeon master. We release episodes every two weeks, so our next episode will release on March 31. 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 are grass in the wind by wanderer's Trove poor man's life by headland Forever yours by Constellate. What I can't recall by Constellate is that all by Eric Feinberg fire trails by Stefan Carlane Dandelion Kid by River Foxcroft Little prince by headland we fall down by Eric Feinberg. For someone like me instrumental version by Victor Lundberg Marble Falls by Chris Shards on the Bayou by Chris Shards and the Bayou by Tiger Blood Jewel the Theater of the Mind theme intermission and outro were written by Mike Schalck. 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. Closer.