Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Chapter Seven: The Machine | Sagas of Sundry: Madness

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

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Ah! The elevator lurches and stops. As you see a ghastly face, lift its head straight into the great. It gets frustrated and then just bleats right off. What are you doing? I mean, you know, if you can't beat him, join him at home. And as you walk through the door, you can see him. Him.

Your father. You know, I told him... I told the dumb bitch that if she ever walked into this house again, I would knock her senseless. Your father's not here. The voice isn't real. That's not real. So you find some few items of interest inside of this building. That looks like the sketch of what Fenley pulled out of his wall. This is the plans for the building.

Emmett, you were 403. Your bathroom. It's labeled. There's something in your bathroom. And you hear a voice. I know they came down here. Make sure they don't turn the machine back on. I grab them up and we have to make a run for it. We have to go. You guys go, we'll cover.

As bullets are ricocheting around you, you can hear the... And it leaps straight for Emmett as he takes his crowbar and whacked right across the side of its face. And all of you pull yourself towards the elevator and hit the button to feel the ascending staircase of safety. You feel the lurch of the elevator stop. And you can still see your elevator. the out-of-service elevator, but there's also a cultist. I've had it with these fucking cultists. Ascanaska.

Shut the fuck up! It's been a really, really long day, buddy. You will... As you come up to the body and look across him, you can see the gun that he has discarded is there. You can see the police officers from earlier. God damn it, Erickson. The lights weren't supposed to come back on.

They weren't supposed to come back on. And I thought they took care of those kids. As you lean up, you hit him across the side of the face with the crowbar as Selena with the last man takes a giant sledgehammer into the back of the head. You all run up to Fenley's fourth floor room and you can see the hole that started it all. It makes a satisfying click as you put it into place. And it is enough for now.

Let's all come back to the lobby and complete our story. Hello everybody. Welcome back to madness. You've managed to fight off the watchers' influence, Selena, and have put the fuse back into the place where it once was. And because of that, you can feel it's completed. At the same time, that iridescent hum that you felt, that underlying sense that you now know has an absence is not yet there.

The machine's not on. Yes, you've prevented the power from blowing again. Yes, the power is still back on the building, but there's something deep inside of you. Almost as if when you walk into a room and you can distinctly smell the ozone in the air when turning on a humidifier. That's a terrible analogy. In any case, that feeling of safety and comfort that you would associate with the machine being on

and closing the rift that is in this place is not there. But the question is what to do from here. Well, we talked about all of our apartments. Yeah, maybe we should start checking out some of our rooms. checking out some of our rooms. The bathroom. The bathroom. You want to investigate which of your apartments first?

Mine. Yours. He's next door, right? He's 4.03. If you are indeed going to Emmett's bathroom, you are close at hand. And so far, the cultists that you've run into, they don't seem to be apparent on this floor,

but you can hear footsteps moving across. They are definitely looking for you at this point. So, let's go to the bathroom, shall we? Before we go, when I met you guys today, I already thought I was losing it. I go on those walks all the time, just to help with my writing. And a few months ago, I met a woman who worked on the streets.

Sam? Yeah. After a while, living here, she was the only friend I had. And she died. She OD'd, except I saw her today in my bathroom. So doesn't seem too fucking crazy after everything else today, but I just thought it was worth noting.

I saw my dad who I took a fire stick to a year and a half ago. So yeah, not too crazy, I guess. Emmett, one of the most difficult things that has happened to you is going to be revisited by coming back into this space. There was a lot of emotion, and you remember the words that she said to you when you were in there. Do you really think you're brave enough to go back in there? What if you saw her again? When I see things that aren't real, I just repeat to myself the things that are real. And we're real, and we'll go there with you.

Are you all ready to journey to Emmett's bathroom? I'm ready. Let's get it over with it. Make a pull, Emmett. Get out of your head. Selena's hand is warm and comforting. But there's more than just a comforting hand that you have to fight here. It is your own will.

It is your own guilt that you need to make peace with. This is your battle, and though Selina may provide comforting words, this is still your fight. I am your personal darkness. I am the watcher who sees all. You can tell that the presence known as the watcher seems to be weaker than what you've had to contend with before. We're real.

But his influence is still there like a mindless echo. But isn't it great to have friends, people you care about, who are truly real? And that small bit of flesh is all that you need to ground you into the reality of here and now. Let's go. As you creep down through the hallway, you hear the sound and movement of the cultus below you continuing to creep as doors slam every moment or so as you quietly tiptoe into Emmett's bathroom. Now Emmett, this should feel very familiar to you. It was here that you saw Samantha laid out in the bathtub. But she's not here now.

In fact, the moment that you were so dreading, that painstaking, piercing intonation of the watcher coming into your mind to remind you just who she was is not here. It's quiet. disgustingly quiet. It's almost as if he's waiting to see what happens next. Yeah, all right. Same.

As you gaze around, it's not much of anything. It's a bathroom. There's tiles. There's a sink. There's a toilet. It's very sparse. Yet there's something not right about it.

It looks just the way it did when I moved in. I still have the map if you want to look through it. Okay. Let's put that. Better on the toilet. So if we're out in the hall, there's something in the corner. So you renovate bathroom. That's the front of the apartment.

That's the hallway. It came in. It should be in the corner. Abigail, as you peel some of the apartment. peel some of the old wallpaper, you start to see stonework. In fact, if anything, there doesn't seem to be stone back there. It feels more like plaster. As you knock along parts of the wall,

it's starting to have areas where it feels hollow. One side is certainly and you can hear the very firm piece of concrete. But then over here, starts to feel more like something you would expect inside of a real building, and not some prison in which one world and another are colliding into each other.

What about here? This is definitely different than here. All right, stand back. you can see. There's something. There's something glowing. Keep going. Something's down.

Damn, girl. Oh my god. You had some pinned up shit in there. Holy shit. I say the workshop. A soft green light pierces into the bathroom. There's a whole another area. And the only reason you even knew about it

or could even conceive it was there is to see the blueprints. All right. Usually I'm confined to just doing sit-ups in my room so that's good. Damn it? You're a bathroom buddy. You know I don't want a face plan after all this so hold on. Get away from that for a second. Oh nice. A piece of shit. Kick something down. Fuck it.

Sludge hammer. What the fuck? He looks like he's been here a long time. Uh, yeah. Jude, as you unfold each one of the maps, you can see one is a different version of the blueprints that you've been looking at. There seems to be hundreds of versions

of this building, countless and countless versions with different equations all over them. Each one slightly different than the other. I found something in his pocket. The relic is the last remaining token of his essence on this plane. Several of the Magi's writings point to a complete cleansing of all the watchers' essence on the material plane to be rid of his machinations. All attempts at destroying the Amalitum regnum has failed.

Fire, pressure, electricity. None of man's most powerful tools can affect it. During the war, I managed to get the relic onto an atomic test site, which only succeeded in irradiating the damned thing for years. It appears indestructible. And yet we've discussed appearances, haven't we? Objects on one plane appear far different from another dimension. I believe that the amulet can be destroyed on its own plane of existence. The immense tower I've seen through the mirrors of this building is the most likely. The war is over and both sides lost.

Kingdoms were reduced to cinders, an army scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness. always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises

to finish the job. This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the

shadow dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on YouTube.com slash the Glass Cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark. Look, there are a lot of celebrity interview podcasts out there, but there's only one happy, sad, confused. I'm Josh Horowitz, and yeah, I'm the host of the show, so I'm a little biased, but truly happy, sad, confused is the place

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And what about Unsolved Mysteries, the show that jumped started all of our love of true crime? I'm Ellen Marsh. And I'm Joey Taranto. And we host I Think Not, a true crime comedy podcast covering some of the wildest stories from your favorite true crime can't be TV shows all the way to unsolved mysteries. Baby, you will laugh, you will cry, you'll think about true crime in a whole new way, and you'll also ask yourself, who gave these people mics? New episodes of I Think Not are released every Wednesday with bonus episodes out every Thursday on Patreon. And every Monday you can listen to our True Crime Rundown, where we go over the top True Crime. headlines of the week.

So come and join us, wherever you listen to your podcast. That's the relic. More. I was holding this. Good luck, dear nephew. In your hands lies the fate of not just mankind, but possibly every living thing on this realm. Keep this infernal machine running until you can find a way to shatter the amulet. May your life find the peace that mine never did.

Your uncle, Malik Abdelah Maseen. P.S. Garbage pickup days are Thursday now. Good to know. What? We were... We were there. The immense tower. It's through the mirrors of this building.

Through the mirrors of this building. As you continue to look through this very, very old part of the building, you realize the one thing you have, The one thing you haven't found yet are the means in which to open the machine. Well, actually you did just find it. There it is. Gamer.

All right. Jude, you open up the briefcase and you see large sets of old tubes. Tubes shaped like cubes. These are the representations to turn the machine. machine back on. This is our next challenge. After all this time, you've restored the power, you've kept the current moving and flowing, and now this is the last thing that will reboot the machine and turn it back into what it was before the circuit had shorted and left you in the current

state that you are. And you can start to hear the sounds of people coming up the stairs. The Sledgehammer that you took to the wall has caused attention and it's now or never to turn the machine back on. I'm going to do this and we will begin this adventure. All right, here is how this is going to work. Each one of these cards represent some kind of mechanism that you must fix in order for the machine to be fully operational. Now you have your set of tools over there which are those multi-guided. colored dice. Now, each one of these cards has very specific parameters denoted by their color and numbers. For example, the simplest one here is just

yellow, green, red, and any color dye that has the number one on it. This is blue and red or blue and green. Three different dice. This represents a tower starting with blue, black, and then red, and then red, red on top. Black and red cannot be placed before blue does. That final one over there represents a tower in which a green dice, any dice with the number three, and a black dice for the final crowning piece. And whatever I have left in my hand after you've completed them will be a pull from the tower. Now under the circumstances in which I place the last one down and I have have none left in my hand, you will have completed it.

And if there's any time left over, any more that you are able to clear off of the board, I will give you one help block for each one that you share. So, are you ready? Ready. Ready. Ready. Begin.

For numbers first, one. One and green. Three. Three. The green's more important for building on right. Yeah. One. Five, two, three, five, two, three.

All right, have a three. Blue for the tower. Three, five, six, three, five, six, six, green. We still need a black and black over here. Clear, clear. Okay. Black two and one.

And we're aiming for 15 to. Oh, black and red, we can finish this out. Yeah, yeah, right, up, right. Done. Okay, perfect. Okay. Let's put this right. Six and five, and this works.

Let's do this, 11, and this can go here. No, no, no, this is 15. This is 15, we got it? 10, 15, got it. Clear. Clear. So two or four, or four. One or a three.

Okay, that's good. This one's clear. We can go here. We can put anything here. Let's put a five here because it's big for adding up. Green, clear. Okay, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, five. Five, one.

Ten, one, one, two, three, four, five, clear. Okay. Clear. Here's some. Perfect. Okay. Here's the green. Here's the green.

And then here's the green for this and then. Okay, and then we need a yellow or a one. I got it. All right, so green again. Red, clear. Or a yellow or a yellow or a yellow. Clear, clear. I was like, got them.

Oh, okay, this number has to be less than this number, less than this number, so these have to go numerically. Well, here's one. Perfect. Okay, two. Great. So, one, two, three, four, this one, this one completes that, five, six.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Clear. Is that all four numbers? Yeah. Correct. Everyone, you have completed it. Oh, how much do we have left? Okay.

What's time? Another black here? Did we have a four? Oh, damn it, sorry. No, so black and black and that one, clear. Keep going. And then three. Three.

Clear. And then. Okay, we need two blacks and one. Two blacks. That does not have a legal placement, so I will be taking this one away. That's shit. Okay, so all we got is this. These are gone.

Just dropping them. Blue. Does anything equal to? Six minus four equals two. Clear. Okay. Blue and yellow. We need a blue and a yellow, so those are all done.

So one, two, three. This is all brainy though. Who? We just got to go for speed. It's all about color. Yeah. Blacks and red. This one is possible.

That's a dud, so one of these goes away, right? Game Master. Guys, because of the configuration of this, I don't think there is any way this one's going to be completed. That's fair. You are already three up. So you have turned the machine on, you filled the switches, you put things together.

You can feel it whizzing and moving and humming to life as you can hear footsteps. And the sound of someone banged. And yet there's one more thing to do. You can see it, Judith, standing right there in the corner. You can feel it. That's my babe. Yeah.

As lights, the lights flicker. And you feel this warm pulse of energy fly through you this warm waking atmosphere, just humming to life as it crackles and pops and sizzles into being. And then you hear a gun click. As someone through the doorframe is pointing a gun right at you. I draw on point back.

You think you've won. You think that the watcher isn't already here. You're too late. He's made his time. And he- Click, click, click. You shoot into this person as they are walking towards you. They have taken more than bullets, my dear.

I have lived centuries to see this moment pass, and I will not be thwarted by a bunch of nobodies. And you hear as the building as it ruffles and shakes, and you can feel as the The building is beginning to waver and tumble and move, and she hands her hand out. And this time you can tell that an elderly woman holding her face pulls the mask back as a long, languid tongue, the lull comes back out. I will be taking my journal back now.

You watch as one of the walls rip and peel open as stone begins to fall. away and you can see the barren wasteland all around you as the building begins to crumble and you can see as pieces of rubble fall and things are crushing onto the floor you can hear her continue to cackle all you have done is trapped yourself here with him welcome to the full Brothers and sisters. You watch as she unceremoniously floats out through the entrance and out the door as the building begins to settle. Enjoy your time with him.

He's not very forgiving. Son of a bitch. What dimension are we in? We're in the dimension where we can get rid of that thing. fuck his shit up. Hey y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder, what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up?

That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. The world is ending. You just don't know it yet.

Deep down in your bones. Don't you? Some call it the great undoing as it seeps in at the edges of forgotten places where crumbling abandoned ruins slowly fade away and in their fading these places wear thin the fabric of reality they're wrought creeping outward

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