Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Chapter Zero: One Last Trip (International Tabletop Day) | Sagas of Sundry: Dread

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Let’s go back to where it all started. Back in the 1980s, a close-knit group of friends decided to go on one last summer camping trip together before their lives took them in different directions. Little did they know what lay in store…   Sagas of Sundry: Dread is an original macabre tale hosted by Ivan Van Norman where cast members Matthew Mercer, Satine Phoenix, Amy Vorpahl, Taliesin Jaffe, and Amy Dallen play a giant puzzle game to build the tension. You don't want to know what happens if the tower collapses!    This game of Dread was played during the Geek & Sundry International Tabletop Day 2017 stream to support Extra Life. Video versions are available at https://www.youtube.com/geekandsundry Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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garden deals. Find savings on hanging baskets and flowers to brighten your backyard or any space that needs instant color. Then get everything you need to plant and protect them with low prices guaranteed on soil and mulch. Dig into spring garden deals for four days at the Home Depot. Now through May 10th. Exclusion supply see home depot.com slash price match for details. Well hello friends. Welcome to our little game of dread. Now, before we get started, I actually really want to have a brief conversation because before we get into our little campfire adventure, I'd like to talk with you and everyone else briefly about extra life and why we're actually helping the Children's Miracle Network of Hospitals. Because it's easy to say, oh, we're supporting charity. But this is really, in my opinion, one of the best whys that you can possibly think of. Now, CM&H is a group of hospitals that help promote funding and equities. for local hospitals in need.

And when I was at the Extra Life United event in Florida, playing board games to raise money for kids, the silliest thing of my life, there was a really special kid that Igo was introduced to down there, and his name was Hayden. And Hayden was a little boy from Oregon, and he was, I think he was 10 years old,

and in 10 years of his life, he had 11 operations. throughout the course of his time. He has a unique disorder and he had countless procedures under deep sedation and other various diagnostic testing. He's born with a series of health defects and Hayden's parents didn't even get to hold him before he was immediately transported to another facility two hours away for specialized care. So the specialized care that kids like Hayden get are all because of charities like Extra Life

who provide that kind of support and this unique type of equipment for these very special cases for these unique children. So if you have time, you're welcome to join us at Team Geek and Sundry or just donate directly to Team Geek and Sundry or if you're at a game group at home, if you're running games with your friends, just make a quick profile real quick and ask your friends, hey, do you have five bucks and try to help us get to an amazing goal that we hope to achieve today on the behalf of kids everywhere. So in the meantime, let's play some games.

I know, super giant, but we're playing a dark game. Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah. No, it is nice. And honestly, the extra life event was so, so great because they were putting these kids on a stage, and they were running them across a catwalk, and just celebrating them, cheering them,

and just making them really feel special, because you know that most of the time, they're seeing in a hospital bed somewhere. So, anyway, We're playing an RPG named Dread. Now Dread is a game of horror and hope, and those who play will participate in an ongoing original Maccabre Tale. The goal of Dread is to sustain the delicate atmosphere between, well, horror and hope.

And there's a delicate atmosphere that is represented through the hand-quivering motion of pulling a block from the tower. And what we're going to be doing today is instead of doing standard dice rolls like you expect in an RPG, when you have a challenging action, I may call for you to do a pull. And in those circumstances, I'm going to ask you to pull a block from the Djanga Tower. Now our little tale is short. We have a limited amount of time to tell something that is not only mind-bendingly courageous for all of you, but also tantifying, tantalizingly terror-rific.

as well too. So in those circumstances, I'm going to ask all of you to do what they call in the game a pre-pull, which is in this circumstance. Before we even start our adventure, I'm going to ask you all to pull a block from the tower. So in the meantime, I would like you to introduce your characters while making said pull. Just names or just a little info too. Tell us all about Caden, Caden. You know, you either know Caden or you don't. I don't care.

Yeah, no, he's kind of got his own thing going on. I'm going to die in character creation right now, by the way. Let me pull the worst block possible. You are terrible. You are terrible. You know, we all got to take care of ourselves in this world. I'm sure you can figure that shit out. You're a smart guy.

Put it on the top, Kay. Oh, that's right. You were. Yeah, you're not really doing. You are not on us. He was only half the battle. Yeah, I'm pulling me. I love you.

It's true. It's true. Sat? I'm set. I am accidentally the leader of the group. And she's kind of, she likes gathering her friends together and doing fun things with them. And you guys, she's grown up with you guys and she loves doing those things. So yeah, she's kind of a bold chick.

Oh, man. I don't know how. Keep poking at it. I don't. Yeah, see? Physics are not on our side on this one. I'm just too excited. Oh, I don't know.

I don't know about that one. I'm going to leave that one there. Okay. But just know that I believe in you. I got a lot of practice watching last night. My friends had a 40-minute game. since last tabletop day for that balloon to come down. That was from our King of Tokyo game earlier,

but now it's Tanner's balloon. Okay, this is not easy. We all float down here. Boom, bum, boom, boom, boom. I actually, that, speaking music started when you were telling us the Hayden story, and I was like, oh, I don't know about this. That child is going to have something terrible happen. Yeah!

Thankfully, unfortunately, unfortunately, unfortunately, Unfortunately, not thankfully, his story is real, while ours is thankfully just make believe. Oh, good. Too much anxiety. This is just the pre-poles, y'all. I know. Yeah, this is going to take two hours.

I'm so glad that I'm sitting on this end of this circle. All right, so it's my turn. I'm Darby Trellis. I'm 20 years old. I've got a good head on my shoulders. I'm, I've already got an internship as a geo-engineer with an oil company. With the Bureau of Land Management. With the Bureau of Land Management.

And, but, but so, so yeah, I'm like kind of a vanilla person, but I hang out with the, you know, people who make me do things that I wouldn't otherwise do. That was awesome. But, hey, they make you happy, right? Oh my God, I wouldn't trade them for the world. They make me feel like I belong. I don't really get along with a whole lot of people. Kind of a nervous Nancy.

Flew through that pretty sweet. Yeah. Yeah. So you just have to talk about your character while you're doing it. It gives you magic. All right. I'm Raina Fuller. I am a just graduated senior.

I am an artist. So it feels weird to say out loud, but like that's what I've always done. I sketch all over everything. But I love to get out here with you guys and see lots of beautiful scenery and can be influenced to go places that would be a little outside my comfort zone. Because it's usually a pace off in these wonderful experiences we have, and I have to actually pull, don't I? But the hint is if you're saying something about your character when you do it, it helps.

Uh. No, I should tell you the thrill of dread actually lies in the tension between both desire and loss. This being the desire to pull and make it successful with the opportunity that you could lose by making the tower fall. The opportunity of losing, the best opportunity of all. It is an opportunity. Every day is a new opportunity to lose. It's mean. It begins. What's your name? Raina. Go slow. Oh, Raina. Oh, Raina. Oh, Raina. Oh, Raina. No. That's running my phone on the fire.

Right, our lovely campfire. I'm so pleased I've been looking forward to this all week. Who built this? I'm not going. I've got words to speak with. Oh, okay. Yes. Oh, low.

This camping trip is going to be really special. A weekend to remember. I guarantee it. Is this the last pull then? We have Tanner left. Let's go on Tanner. Pull the thing, Tanner. All right. I'm Tanner Sills. Um, you know, don't have a lot of friends, but stats dragged me and Raina as well,

when we've had chances to go out and, uh, yeah, you know, I don't talk much about my home life and don't talk really a lot at all, tend to just be around and jump in when it's necessary. What I do find is, you know, you guys give me an excuse to go out and do things and I may not involve myself as well but I like the idea of at least keeping the memories I'm kind of worried that we're all gonna scatter to the four winds over the next summer or so and I remember as much as I can about this time we got so speaking of time we've got now in dread you will all take on the role of someone trapped in a story that is not always compelling as

it is hostile someone who will find themselves making decisions that we hope never to face in real life. Dread is the ultimate challenge of what do you want versus what are you willing to sacrifice? And so... Wait, I just have a quick question. Is this a ploy to hide me from the game? When it gets to a point I'll either... I'm sure...

I'll make the most of it and just peek through or... There will be a... But touching, be mindful, Darby. Whoever last touch the tower, if it falls, owns the falls. So that little session you just did right there, if that led to a tower falling, it would be Darby's loss, not whoever just did the pool, not Tanner. Oh, really?

So keep that in mind moving forward. And it's windy in L.A. these days. It's windy. Thankfully, we have nice shrubbery as a windbreak behind us. Okay, well, good to know that role. Well, all right then. Our little tale starts with five friends. But some outsiders looking in could call this group a family.

They grew up together, and they have gone through much over the years. And they have always found adventure in one form or another. Working on projects, getting caught in thunderstorms, drinking, even acquiring a set of traffic cones that they now all call their friendship cones. It is the 1980s and they are in the prime of their life. However, the summer is nearly over and the first term of college is coming. This means that the group is moving to a sudden crossroads and not all will be walking down the same road. But for the moment none of that matters, there is only time to make more memories and this weekend couldn't be more perfect for doing so.

Your story begins with a red and white sign that is fixed firmly to the wire fence that shields the majestic peaks of Black Mountain, which stands on the southwestern part of the Rocky Mountains in New Mexico. The sign reads, government property. No camping, no alcoholic beverages, open fires, off-road vehicles, firearms, untrained animals dumping or commercial activity. That means no you, Kaden, no untrained animals. That's mine. I pay my taxes. Somebody pays taxes. This is an interesting moment because Darby, while telling you about this area, did not mention that it was a barbed wire fence, nor did she mention that it's a good six feet tall.

How are you going to cross this thing? Well, we have all of our packs. I've got my knife. We can dig. Wait, you guys all have your camping gear? Yeah. Right? I've got like a utility clamp. I'm going to try and see if I can just cut. You just want to cut the wire?

Yeah, it's just go. Oh, but they well know we were here. Well, I know that since I work for the Department of the Nature Land Bureau, I probably have a key to a gate. This isn't a gate, however. A gate would be easy. A gate, unfortunately, is farther or several miles down the road. There are a destination that you're going to,

which is an abandoned research cabin. This is the closest mark from the land to the walk. Okay. Well, we have no help here. If we put all of our sleeping bags on top of the bar, wire, it's not going to cut through, right? That's a good idea. We could do it.

Just layer them. Or just put one on top of one barb and one on the other and squeeze through. Oh, you mean like pull them apart? Yeah, like pull them apart, yeah. You're super smart. I'm not on the bottom, it's fine. I'm a light see, okay. All right, well, Tanner, make a pull.

Oh. I just want to get for being helpful. So as you both un-roll, unravel all of all of you. of your backpacks and taking your sleeping bags out, you slowly hear the sounds of the animals tweeting and the rustling of the winds. As something ominous seems to fill the air, maybe it's just the ozone in the air

because you're so high up and there seems to be dark clouds on the horizon. But you checked the Rother Report before coming in. It was meant for clear skies, but these are no clear skies. This is gonna be awesome. Look at the clouds. Oh my god. You were right.

It's gorgeous. All right, I got the fence set up, guys. Oh my God, thank you. Awesome. So you all managed to clamor up, making minimal damage to all of your sleeping bags as you tumble over one by one by one. Some head first as you flop down onto the soft, cool grass on the other side of the fence. Is it okay? This is filthy.

It's fine. Sat. You suddenly have a feeling. have a feeling. Is it satisfaction or is it regrets? Satisfaction? This is going to be great. You put the set. Great. So are you, it sounds like you're satisfied that Darby, who has an internship at the BLM, told you about this place. And this is a perfect situation.

Guys, I can get in so much trouble. I know, right? We're really quiet, but, you know. This is pretty cool. This is pretty cool. This is pretty cool. Beautiful. As long as nobody keeps any trace of it, we'll be really, keeps any trace of it will be okay.

Tanner. Now your camping backpacks are filled brimming with gear. And as you start to make your own path into the sparse to a periol ecology, the smell of pine and the sound of birds as well as the crunch of dry wood underneath you are comforting. No one is going, no one is going to bother you out this far. This is about as out of the trees is

you can get. Hey guys, hey guys. Yay! Come on, we can you do it? Come on, give a little, oh. It's not really my thing. No, just a little one. Meow.

Yeah, I'm fine. Yeah, you do it. Take one of those pictures where you hold it and you look at yourself while you're taking it. You know? That's weird photography. That's never going to catch on. I just think that we should do something like that.

All right. Yeah, yeah. There we go. Got it. Awesome. So Raina, you seem to be the first one over. Who should be leading this trailblaze? I don't know where we're going. Have you been here? I mean, I've surveyed a little bit through this area,

but I don't even know if I've been in this part of the park. Well, you are good survivalist. This is not your first time camping, so you did mark a trail on your map. And you have a nice topographical map that essentially lays out where you expect the cabin. to be and where your entry point was. I've got some topographical expectations, but as you know, nature can do what it will. You have about a half day walk leading up into, I'm sorry, I missed that.

It was too good. It was too good. I'm so sorry. I've got some topographical expectations too, too, and then gave a look at Seteens. I mean, sad. They seem busy. Yeah. Maybe we'll just figure it out. Okay, yeah. What time of day is it?

It took all day to walk up to where the fence was, so it's getting close to early afternoon. Let's say about four to five o'clock. And you still have several hours before you can lead to the cabin itself. So honestly, at this stage, you've got one real honest choice. You can either press on and... and make it through into the night and make it to the cabin before dawn, or you can camp for the night and pick it up early in the morning. But no matter what, you should probably get away from the fence.

Yeah, we should go now. Yeah, let's go. All right. And we'll go really fast. If you guys take a look at that Northwest Mountain, that is where we're heading. But once we find the path, we'll actually be veering a little bit more toward the east. All right. All right, let's go.

Great. So, as you press on and move on through the forest, It begins to get darker. It is several hours and night is coming. So it's near dusk twilight by the time you start to see a small light that seems to be gleaming somewhere far off into the distance. Is that it? I don't know. That was not on my map.

At that point, you feel the air start to thicken. As if there were just more trees around you, than before. The weight of it presses down on you just as if you entered a swamp. What the actual heaven should take us? You are overcome by a strange smell. Metallic, almost coppery. Like the taste of after you get a nosebleed and you accidentally swallow some of your own blood. Flashlight. Oh, I've got a mag light out.

Is anybody else smell that? Yeah. What is that? Yeah, it's weird. And the air got thicker, which can only, and it's not the time of day for that to happen. Are you sure there's nothing else on this land? I mean, I just know that they were talking about drilling here. That's all I know.

Not from there with the smell of oil. I don't know. The mag lights begin to dissipate the distant light that you saw far off. And suddenly, it begins to get quiet, but the smell is still there. Is the air still thick? The air is still thick. In fact, if anything, it is almost in your palate, like on the roof of your mouth, as if someone was boiling water with copper pots.

How far away are we from the cabin? Do you want to check with your map? Yeah. On the maglight, you look down without getting your bearings too much, and unfortunately, the trees are hiding a lot of the stars for your navigation at this point. You've been going a strong northwesternly rate for a while. You shouldn't be too far off, maybe less than an hour.

We've got some time. We've got some time. Suddenly a great set out of nowhere. You hear a loud branch crack. and bush as you've watched movement go on and cross the forests. This is my knife. This is my flashlight. So it's okay.

We're in the forests. There are animals that live in the forest. Darby make a poll. And what's the rule? Just not the top three, right? Can't be the top three. Well, they do. Like it was my job.

That's my topographical expectation. Boom. You watch as a large body leaps out among the brush and scamper's right by you, nearly knocking you to the ground as all of you turn around to see a brown heart dance off into the forest. Oh, it was actually kind of cool. That was cool. See, that was what I meant. That was like what I was talking about.

It was just a deer. Suddenly, as quickly as the smell appears, it disappears, leaving a cool night breeze washing over your mildly silken bodies. Is there like a superstition about heart crossing you or something, like in a book? I thought I read something somewhere and it's like, good luck. I think they have to be white, but I think it's a thing. Nice. Oh, okay. Sure.

All right. I'm awake. All right, let's go. Doodling him. Did you get a picture of it? I'll get a picture of it next time. It kind of caught me off guard. But you're right, I should be ready.

If we see one standing so low, tell me, guys. I want to draw a second. As you continue to walk forward, just several paces away, you see the light start to glisten again. And it seems to be odd because there shouldn't be any light out here. But without too much distance trot, you see the research cabin not too far in front of you. And that's where the light's coming from? No. It seems to be there constantly.

But at the same time, there isn't any distinct light source coming from any one particular place. But at some point, the cabin does come into view in a small clearing that you actually are first made aware of by several burnt trees that are kind of cusping around the edge of the forest. They're dark and blackened limbs pushing into the ground as most of them have fallen and seem to be eternally jutted into the ground, like, well, morose skeletons of a distant fire pass. I'm not too worried about that.

seems like a fire protection strategy to, in case there were a forest fire, it wouldn't attack the... Like a controlled burn. Exactly. Yeah. And to be fair, Darby, you actually were told there was a fire here about five or six decades ago that has still, since then, still been recovering. It's one of the reasons that this research cabin is abandoned because it was so wracked by the

fire that it was deemed inaccessible for use anymore. How long has this been abandoned? Probably 30, I guess since the fire, 30 years ago. It was built first in the 20s. It was built first in the 20s. I tell them everything that comes out of your mouth. I bet there's a basement. Let's go inside.

So as you get closer to the cabin, you realize that it's in the Oh, wait, wait, wait. We should take some before. Oh, yeah, no, I know. Yeah. Okay. Because, you know, timing. Absolutely.

I've got it in the bag. All right, let's cool. We go off and for a little bit. We're like, take some stuff, you want to take some stuff. I definitely do not want to talk. Are you sure? Yeah, it'll be really, it's fine. No, it's the same type as last one.

You can go ahead, you can go ahead. I'm not. We go. Yeah, yeah, I'm not gonna do it. Come on. Come on. It'll be fun. So I have like 20 minutes to get your shit together too.

It'll be great. Maybe tomorrow. I'll test it for you tonight. No, you do your own things. Don't wander off too far, okay? We just, we just, we just, we just. We just turn around. Okay.

So as Caden and sat move off to the tree line a little bit, you three start to get a breast of the cabin a little bit. And you notice that it's actually in a lot worse condition than you ever really supposed it could be. The fire did a real number on the old girl, and she's got mostly blackened beams and partially exposed walls on either end. The cabin, as I mentioned earlier, was originally built in the 1920s, so it's been a long minutes since things were really active in here. Now the cabin itself sits on the

foothills, leaning up to a steep slope on the side of the mountain. It's great for blocking wind, the foothills of course, but not very good for visibility all around. Do you want to go inside? Yeah. Oh yeah. Great. You two are still off taking care of things. It didn't take long. Okay, yeah, fair enough. We'll go in last, but... You're going second last. I'm still after taking pictures of the trees. Oh, yes. we have left the kind of large skeletal-looking burnt trees. Inside, you see burnt beams laid across the floor. That was clearly two rooms at one point.

But the inner wall had been burnt away from the inside, leaving one large, gigantic room now instead. You also hear the, or here, you suddenly can faintly pick up the smell again. It's mild, it's small this time. but it's in the air amongst the inside of this room for sure. Is it stronger at one point of the room or another? No, it just seems it's almost like a break wall as soon as you walk in and it takes a few minutes for you even to really realize it's there.

But once you realize it, once you smell it the first time you never forget it. I don't want to sound like too much of a city boy, is this what deer smell like? Oh my god, Kaden. What? Come on, no, I don't, this is this is a... I don't, this is, I mean, I guess it smells natural. It smells organic, but I don't think this is... I was thinking, I read a book on this,

what's called the Roswell event that happened in like the 50s. People said it to UFOs. No, no, no, I don't believe. But the whole, the government explanation dealt with, like, this sort of swamp gas rising up and light catching it. So, like, maybe what we saw outside, and the smell could be, like, just a natural phenomenon that happens in wooded areas.

I mean, we're not too far from Roswell, are we? This book wouldn't have been in, like, the mystery of the unknown series, would it, by any chance? Yeah, okay, cool. All right. I might want to sleep outside, though. I mean, I don't know, I don't know what this, if this is a gas is. Super cool. Was the wall a load-bearing wall? The wall was originally a load-bearing walls, but it was-

This house is insane. It was originally a log cabin, so what I mean, load-bearing walls, I mean, they were giant logs of wood that were put together that are still being held up by poles that are now still wood. I walk around like this. At 19, I would not know what any of that means, so that's okay. I'm like, I'm jumping up around, I'm listening for like a hollow thing. I'm like, knocking everything. Now you, uh, make a pull.

This is amazing. Oh, geez. Oh, geez. As you were, stop stopping. As you were stomping around, you feel the motion in the beams. As it continues to move around. And every once in a while, you'll hear the, dark creak of wood as it's almost like the building is crying out in pain as if you're

taking its burnt body and rubbing it in a vigorous way agitating its wounds. So, and at the same time, the topographical map. You can also hear amongst the six of you, you can hear a bubbling creek not far by. Oh. Yep. Is that? Is there a carpet on the floor? No, it's wooded.

Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. And then I fell through and I died. Is that how that works? Now, Sotene sat. As you are stomping around, you not only hear the sounds of bubbling creeks nearby, but your foot distinctly taps upon the sound of hollow wood as several beams that were laid out on the floor beforehand

shine directly, almost if it was making a perfect little space for you to see a dark hole. I really wish I was listening to what you're saying. That was really intense. You see amongst fallen beams that the floor itself has actually broken through, and more importantly, through to a dark exposed cavern that is down below and underneath. See, see, see, see. Wait, wait. Wait. I pull out a like basics.

Lantern. Yeah. Whiskey, Southern Comfort. What else are we going to need? Pocket knife. A flashlight. I feel like we've got, yeah, I'm just unpacking everything. We need lights.

We need a light. I'm going to turn on like a little electric. We literally just got here. Can we at least like settle for a moment before we go ahead and start diving into underground death traps? We have like 50 minutes of sanity. Sure. 15. Easily.

Yeah. Yeah, we can set up for a 15 minutes. Stop, just have a snack, and we can really contemplate if it's something we want to do. I mean, there is that light outside, too, that we haven't. I mean, whoever's there is here illegally. Well, well, I just want to poke around. Are there like, is there a kitchen here? Like, what's in the...

It's a log cabin. It's one room. And any furniture that may have been there is either long rotted away or has been stripped from the room. Is it iron stone? Exce... Mm. Make a pull. Oh, my God.

Okay, this is gonna be funny. It's really wobbling this way. Funny's a fun attitude. Don't go that way. Okay. Tellson, you can't see, but there's a little gap right here. You can walk around. Just walk around.

Yeah, three dimensions. See that thing right there? Oh, wow. Who did that? That's really terrible. What? I didn't mean to. I helped with that. Oh, God.

It was leaning towards you. I couldn't see over there. Wow, okay. Oh yeah, you didn't even... What, so is it, oh my God. Oh yeah, no, there's no, I'm gonna die. There's nothing I can do about. Wait, wait, wait.

So there's got to be... Wait, wait. Now, something to keep in mind, because dread is all about hope and sacrifice, if at some point you feel the tower is too much for you, you can make a heroic fall, which means you can purposefully knock down the tower in order to save your friends from Emma of death. Would you like to die for an iron stone? No.

No. Be careful, be careful. Be careful! No, there's no saving this. I don't know that's done it there. This is really uncool, dude. You said maybe do this. There is an iron stove.

But not only is there an iron stove. You also can hear the sound of creaking iron coming from outside, and that light that I was telling you about earlier seems to now be brighter and closer to the cabin than once it was before. I think there's someone out there. I don't think that's what guess. I don't think it's a lot of person. Okay, you know what? Are there windows or? There is. There's burnt out holes because the whole thing is holy. Are you going to get in trouble if we get found? Like this? No, I don't want to get found yet probably. So maybe hide the lights? All right. Okay. Whoever that is, though, can we peek through the wall, holes? Are you dousing the light and looking around? Yeah, yeah.

Put the lights out, staying quiet and just seeing if whatever is coming our way passes by. Keeping a hole in the magalite, but yeah. Especially if it's any sort of rangers or anybody from the BALA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, you, as you sit quietly waiting amongst the creaking wood and the burnt out interior of the cabin, you watch as the creaking of iron becomes louder and more rhythmic. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. As the light becomes slowly, getting closer, and you see a swinging lantern just hopping along and mixed the middle of the darkness. As you slowly see a figure dark coming out from the tree line, and you watch as he, this figure, illuminated by his own lantern, is covered in black soot and oil, and you see a long white beard coming down from the bottom of him. as you see a man holding a lantern on a stick over his shoulder, illuminating his silhouette

as he walks into the clearing. It's Rick Van Winkle. He's, oh. Is there something like about his gait or the way he's walking? He seems to be trudging along, and as you get closer, you can start to hear the clanging sound of metal pans

as they start to clack along the side of his, body as well, too, as he continues to walk forward. And the six of you began to stare out at him and look at this figure walking from point A to point B. I'm subtly taking whatever pictures I can with whatever lights available. Six, I thought there were just five of us. Well, you've forgotten my ghost. But then you look around and notice that there is five of you. But there was six, not too long ago. Aw. Who was the sixth one? There was six bodies here. There were?

You're sure of it. You're aware of it. You saw them, Darby. Who? Who? I did. They were there. There was clearly six of you when you were looking at them before, but now there's five. I don't... My brain is exploding. It must be just your brain exploding. Maybe it's a guess. Maybe it's the...

Because there were... Wait, was... I think you... ... I counted us a million times there were six. What's it? Right? There's only five of us. Did you take some stuff too?

I'm influenced by... The copper smell is now stronger than it's ever been. I think I'm... nothing. I think I might be having something and anxiety attack. Oh, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. Now you watch as this old man continues to walk past the cabin, giving it a wide breath as he continues to move forward, as you see him set down in the cabin.

into an area not far from the cabin's entrance. And you watched, and you didn't notice it before, but he starts to set up a small campfire. Guys, it's just a dude. It's Ritt Van Winkle. We should just go and talk to him. Why is he covered? Why is he whispering? Is his beard covered in sit too?

Everything is covered in soot. Let's just go talk to him. It's just a dude. I get up, but I'm like, you guys are being totally chickens right now. And I go up. And you walk out. And you walk out, like, hello, friends. Hello, friend.

Oh, God. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I'm so sorry. Young lady, what are you doing out here? So we're going on like a friend adventure. As you get closer to him, you realize that it's an old man who has been setting up camp gear and you clearly give him the shock of his life.

As you look around and see that the pans that he's been carrying around are gold panning pans, as he clearly seems to be the classic old prospector, who was stuck up here in the hills. Oh, young lady, you should be up here in government territory like this. What are you doing here? Well, that's my own business. Well, we are on an adventure. Adventures, adventures, I'm looking for gold. What are you looking for?

Uh, we want to, we're looking around. We're just here for an experience, so... Do you know anything about this facility? Oh, yeah, well... here. I don't have much, but you can sit down and enjoy my fire for a bed. Thanks, man. Hey, guys, come on out, you chickens. It's been a long time since. Oh, you have friends.

Yeah. Yeah. Get on out of you. You're going to get out. You better to get out of that place. It's about collapse any minute. Oh. See, I told you guys, load-bearing walls are very important.

They bear loads. There's a load. The roof is a load. All right, young, and, well, I have to say. Hi. Hi. Sorry. Sorry.

Oh. Hey. Hello, young lady. Well, uh, you, I'm sorry, what were you saying before? Oh, you know, we're just here on an adventure, exploring a little bit. Adventure, adventure, adventure. What's that smell in the air? Oh, why? I don't smell nothing, what you? It's like a coppery, coppery, metaly,

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I don't, well, could be my parents. I'm carrying a lot of copper with me. Good for pan and gold. Actually, that makes a lot of sense. How did you get so so city? Or the coal mines. Except they thought they was originally coal, but they tell you that back then after they stripped the coal mine clean, they found gold in some of their coal mines. gold in some of that old veins.

And when they're pulling all that dirt out, there's flakes for miles if you can go and get down there deep enough. Wait, we could go get gold. We could get gold. We could pay for college with gold. Now you wait up, missy. This is my claim. And this is my claim, and any gold you find,

that I at least want a percentage of it. Okay, why do you want? Like 20%. You find gold and we'll talk about it. If you're willing to go down there, deep, I wouldn't go down into the coal mines. There's about as unstable as that silly little cabin that's over there. I just stick to the river.

You don't happen to know anything about this cabin, right? Like who built this thing? Well, it was an old research cabin that they used when they start bringing coal up down, over, down river for a long bit. But I have to say, more than that, I don't really know, nor do I care to know. All I know is there's gold in them there hills. Wait, have you ever been through this certain cave that this, you know, a cave?

What? A cave? Are you telling me there's a cave in there? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, damn. How long have you been up here? Fifteen years. You never thought of a...

Look inside of a... I'm not judging you. No, that's fine. I wouldn't go in that cabin even if you paid me. Oh. Oh. I see. There's bad rumors in there. So whole, something around the fire, people say that it wasn't no accident.

You know, they say it was a brush fire, but you've been inside of there? Yeah. Yeah. That cabin didn't light up as part of the fire. That was the start of the fire. You see inside those blackened beams away that whole area's burnt out? They tell you, they tell all the people out here that a fire started because of campers. I'll tell you, you look at that.

And even I'm not no investigative miscarry. investigative mystery man can tell you that that cabin was the start of some blades. What's your name? Jim. Nice to meet you. He puts his hand out, and when you shake it and it comes out, you see your hand is covered in black and coal. Nice to meet you, too. Darby. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to make me some dinner here, and you're welcome to all join me, but I don't recommend. you go any deeper into that hills or into that mind. Now you do what you want and uh don't say I didn't warn you but well you do your own business as long as you do mine and I'll tell you if you tell

the Rangers I'll tell on all y'all as well too. Oh we don't nobody knows we're here so. No need to know it. And let's just keep it that way so I'll make your promise I stick to my business you stick to your business and if the other person finds some gold they'll tell the other. That's Great. So you all settle down for a long campfire as well as a nice meal, telling swapping stories with Jim, the old mine prospector as he sits around telling you about his 15 years painting gold up here in Black Mountain. I passed out bologna cheese sandwiches that I made before the trip.

Make sure, because I knew all you guys are probably going to forget food. Bottle of Southern Comfort makes around. Bottle Southern Comfort makes the rounds. This time you're getting a little deep into it as well too. There's an old, there's an old-timey minor yelling at me about my life decisions. This is, this is doing a thing. Yeah, I think, I think I need to cleanse the, the... She's just gone, like, we should just go that way.

We're gonna... We'll be back, we'll be right back. We need babysitters. I specifically said, Donoko wandering too far from us. We need babysitters. Yeah, no, it would... This is why we're going to enact the body system. Okay.

Yeah, you guys are our buddies. so you should babysit us while we go wandering in the forest. Yeah. I don't understand what that means. Do we follow you? Yeah, there's like an adventure happening in my face right now. That way, you don't have to have to wander into the forest. You can just make sure that we're okay while we're doing it.

Wouldn't that, we, we, do you want us to come with you? Yeah! Okay, all right? There's moonlight, right? Is there moonlight? There's, there's brush and bright moonlight. There's moonlight. There's moonlight.

I know, there's moonlight and also, I want to go into the forest. and I don't want to go along and he also needs to go. I look at her eyes. Can I tell what substance she's on? She is deep in another world of hallucinogens and she probably had some organic matter if you catch my drift. No more, no making out with trees. The tree, you can't, no making out with trees, okay? There's some very slutty trees. That's all I'm going to tell you. Here's the thing, right?

So who's going with who into the forest? We do this. We do this every time we go camping. You guys are totally used. are totally used to this. Some, yeah. And you did make out with a tree that one time. I did. If we don't go, they'll probably get lost.

I was a good bad. Just if we're used to it doesn't mean that we appreciate it. Yeah, but we always end up having a good time. All right, we'll come on. Okay. So is everyone going along? Jimmy, are you going to be here a while? Yeah, I know.

I'm just going to roll me up my bed and say I can't hit the hay. So don't you worry about me. Although, don't be wandering off too long. It's, that's dark out there. dark out there. I'll keep the fire warm for y'all. Thanks Jim. So Jim throws another log on the fire. He's a nice, friendly old man, you know. It's probably because he doesn't get a lot of visitors out here up in the old mining hills. I've been drawing him by the light of the fire. It's not much, but it's going. Oh my God. That's beautiful. Up on the walls later. So everyone's going. This is what I want.

Okay, guys. All right. So here's the thing. Here's the thing. The thing is that I love you guys. and also I just want there to be a place in the woods that has all of us on it. So I have my knife, and I'm going to carve our names into one of the trees. It's like a totem type thing, and then we can go back and go to bed. But that's what I want to do.

It's actually pretty sweet. Just don't swing that around. Just be careful. Be careful. That's the actual blade. All right. Pink, pink. So I'll ask again, who is all going on this little adventure?

Okay, everybody. All right. So we're up and moving. As you make your way into the woods, you tend to do what you can to keep the light as much of a distance looking for the perfect tree. You venture out farther. Don't hurt the tree too much. Yes. That's fine. It's got the hard skin stuff. Bark? Yeah. I mean, I like that you guys think I'm so smart, but I really, I just am. I really smart. I just like. I just like. I mean, not for like knowing what bark. That looks like a really good tree. No, no, that wasn't. That was... Over there.

And you point out, and it's a much larger tree than all the rest. It stands out perfectly among some of the other smaller ones. Just gonna climb it. And then, so here's the thing. If I climb this tree, then bears won't be able to claw the bark off where I carve it, so it'll always be there. Maybe no tree. I think you might be overthinking this.

I think you're over-engineering this project. Yeah, I don't see any bear marks on any of these trees. So as you get closer to the tree and you start looking at it, sizing up deciding what the best place it is to look at. Tanner, you look over to Caden and you see him. He starts to double over. But you look at him closer. Tanner, this is mostly just for Tanner and maybe Raina at the moment. But he starts laughing.

but he's laughing with no sound coming out. He just seems to be doubling over. In fact, there's nothing coming out of his vocal cords. He just seems to be doubling over, holding onto his sides as he bips up, lifts down, lifts up, and points at all six of you at the moment. Wait, what, all six of us again? You look around and turn around,

and Caden comes back from around the other side of the tree, and addresses all of you. Well, I was taking pictures of the one that was doubling over. Yeah. It was Caden. Now, Caden's behind you. What the f- Well, you just- I was just thinking that we should have you figure out

where to put it on this. Did you just see? What? Did you just- What? I'm mumbling about it. I'm everywhere tonight. I push her in her back and I get right up in front of you, Kate.

I'm like, did you put anything in our food? No. No. Did you put anything in our food? Calm down. Why are you so mad? I don't know what's happening. This is...

I imagined it. Look, I'm just... Even if I had, I wouldn't have fed it to a hobo who might go nuts on us. No. Tanner's like wigging out guys. Are you doing it? I could have sworn. I saw him right there and now it was right over that way.

We have never forced anything on you guys and we would never do that because you love you and that's just mean. You wouldn't. Yeah, I would, but I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I'm so, it's- Can't do that. I didn't.

I know. Tanner, you may need to make a pull to contain this a little bit. Oh, shit! In fact, you can hear the laughing. You can see that creature, whatever it was, Caden or not, laughing at you. In fact, you even heard at some point, now you were calling into it, that it was talking to you,

even if it wasn't laughing. It had a voice directly inside of it. inside of your head. This is the word. The reality of the fact that you had a camera lens on Caden, and you were taking photos of him. And the moment you turned to hear Caden's voice as he came around the corner, the fact

that he was just right there in front of you makes it even more infuriating that he would do something in order to mess with your mental state. It's so insulting that he's that he's, he would break such an honest and true bond that is your friendship in order to do something like a stupid joke. Why you gotta be so fucking easy to fuck with, dude?

I'm concerned. In fact, you're pretty sure that, that Caden, and it was Caden, no doubt about it. He was laughing at you. He was laughing at you to the point where he just, if you wanna come around this way, Panor, that's okay. You can let it, if you can't, if you want.

Let it go, let it go. This is an oversized jingo. The jango rules don't apply up to the one hand touch. But the laughter, it's just, there was no coming out there, but the mocking smile on his face was, he's just being a dick. Oh, my God. Whoa.

Oh my God. I jerk. Do I still see this entity before me? No, it's more than anything. It's it's Caden, but you, whatever it was, it must have just been something that you saw beforehand. And Raina was right there. Tanner never does this.

I must have been. I put my hand on her shoulder and say, and just, that I've been looking at you, just like, I'm watching you, Caden, all right? I have no idea what's happening right now. You didn't know, right? You didn't put anything. So you go and carve your names.

We're tired. It was a long day. It's fine. It's fine. You guys need to sleep for like babies. It's like a baby. It's like a babies. I love my babies.

Just leave your friends. What they are. And after a successful, beautiful carving, you chisel your name into each part of a tree, each one of you taking a turn with Sat's knife, locking your friendship in stone forever at this tree, at this point in your life. I love you guys. I don't care what happens later. Let me to take a picture. You guys are like the best friends all ever have.

friends I'll ever have and I'm never gonna forgets I'm never gonna let you go and this is just how it is gonna be forever Even if we go in a camera In a camera it's gonna be forever inside of the camera. Yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah take more pictures I'm Sorry It's fine Yeah, you know, okay, I'm tired now, let's go So you guys walk back to the campsite and you see that old Jim is passed out asleep

Just unconscious and the fire, which was roaring and bright beforehand, has now drizzled down to a more sustainable crackle. Kick some dirt on it. Cook some dirt on it, put it out. He's asleep. We have a gold miner. We don't have him, he's old. He's right here in the front porch. He's on person. We don't like... I'm not saying he's not, but he's here. He's Ritt Van Miner. Rit Van Miner. Is Rit Van Winkle Minor.

Great up people pan for cold out here? That's crazy. That, no, I didn't know of that. There's at least one like that. That seems really crazy to me. Like, that actually seems genuinely weird. Like, I didn't know if that was just me, but that, does that just seem weird? That there's a...

It's just some guy. I think it sounded cool. He's, like, off the grid, and he's, like, doing what he wants to do. Darby, do you want to go and investigate the inside of this cabin a little better to see if that is something you'd still want to do or not? Or do you want to call, try to encourage encourage everyone to call it a night?

No, it's, I mean, we're here. And I love, I love topography and underography. So, I- Underography, that's the best. Underography, I wanna figure out what's below the surface. So as they're all talking about the glory. Hey, Raina. The glory.

Go ahead. Do you wanna, I don't know, I think I left something in the cabin. I hope. Okay. So, Rayna, I agree. So Raina, you and Tanner, you're still watching the kids at the moment, but they seem to be in the fire without any real problem. Darby and Raina, you walk in and when you go into the cabin and you see it is still dark and you grab Cadence lantern that he had left there and start putting it on and looking around.

And you see Tanner sitting at the edge of the gold mine, well not the gold mine, I'm sorry, the edge of the shaft, the three bar. shaft that was made and Tanner is down there taking photos. It's not even safe, Tanner, what are you doing? Tanner, he looks up to you and he smiles with the widest smile you've ever seen on his face. Oh my god, Tanner looks happy. Oh my god, Tanner, what are you doing? You're not supposed to know. And you watch as he slowly with one arm lits himself down and drops into the whole.

No! I scream. You scream, you three, all of you hear screaming as the... as the someone comes around the side screaming something's happening I don't know other Tanner and Reader what this is amazing

oh my god I'm having so much fun is a man you hear Darby screaming inside of the middle Darby and Raina both screaming in the midst of the cabin yeah we're running up to where he drops yeah and you're peering in and you can see blackness and front of you and it goes down deep and you actually see there's a small pivot that comes in. We're getting up and we go. Yeah. I'm holding on to her right you watch is Caden sat and Tanner all run into here at the moment and come up. You can't okay go! Darabee make a pull.

That right there that's a danger that's no no no you can be careful. A wait for danger just be careful. You can smell as the sense of copper is burning into the air. Oh my God. You can feel the weight and the heat of the muggy air pulling at you from all different directions. No. As the smell of the dark, brooding metal

is just sitting in your palate. You just want to fit it out. Oh. You want to just take it out. No. No, tell. Bring it. But you clear your senses.

You shake your head and you look. That is right in front of me. I put my whole. What the... What the... What the... What the... You're near the hole.

That's what she said. Yeah, that was there for that one. You were in here and you jumped in the hole. What is happening? What did you see? What did you see? It was you. You looked at us and you smiled.

You saw a second me. That wasn't acting like me, right? Yes. You had the camera. Okay, something's going on. Something's something really wrong. It's a swung guess. What are you talking about?

He was just like you. Chill. What? There's not a lot of coming up. He smiled. The other you, he smiled. And remember that one time there was six of us. There were six.

I don't remember who the other one was, but I remember going one, two, three, four, five, six. And there were six. And I'm not, I'm like smart. I can count. What? Yeah. I believe you. Yeah.

But I'm really high. Yeah. That's also true. Guys, guys, it's okay. It's okay. If you guys just stay next to the campfire, you wouldn't be so scared. Really not okay. Is that, there's no way to look at the film.

I want to go. I want to go. I have to get this done the old-fashioned way in the 80s. I mean, like, at least we're going to know. We know that we're going to know. No, guys, let's just go home. Do I have my things over here? The chemicals must be making us see things.

Do I have that piece of gear that we talked about before my camera? With your camera? Yeah. You just remind me again, I can't remember. Your Polaroid. Your Polaroid? Yes, you do. Maybe you do.

Maybe you do have your Polaroid with you. I can take a picture. And we imagined it. I can take pictures too. For me, but what would we feel guilty about? Right. Watch. Maybe we should all sit in a circle.

And then we'll take a picture and then we'll count how many people are on the picture. That strangely makes a lot of sense. I'm down. Yeah. For whatever weirdness is happening at this point, whatever. Sure. Anything to chill everybody out.

Maybe we can wake I want to wait. Joe, Jim. Jim. Oh, excuse me, I'm so sorry to wake you up. Oh. Can you please take a picture of us? Do you please?

Okay. Let's just take another one of those pictures that you take by yourself, looking at yourself. Okay, I'll try to get it. I'll try to get it. Like a self-pick. A self-portrait, like with a picture. Right, so you lift up the polar-o-o-

I had to stick it with it. And you take it with all. all six of you in there, and you watch as the bright, flashing light, fizzles into your eyes for just a moment. Dz-hm- As it comes out. Well, I can't see anything.

I can't, I'm done. All right, I got you guys. As you waft it and wave it and waft it. And Caden, I should tell you, it's probably the drugs, but in that flash of moment, you saw something really, really wild, and it's a little bit edging you on the nasty part of your brain sign,

because there is, you distinctly saw in that flash, it wasn't in front of you, but you could have swore you saw a shape behind you with a set of horns. I don't like the woods. And it wasn't, it wasn't like an animal because it was standing up. but it was clearly something that was off in the side, but it was a flash and it happened in the flash

and you're obviously sprayed in your brain now as things come together. As you continue to shake the Polaroid, where are you, are you all gonna stay inside of the cabin? I'm crawling over to that hole. I'm not even standing up by them, just scooting over to that hole. Okay, that cavern's not worth it.

As soon as anybody gets near the hole, I put my hand on them and just make sure they don't get too close. Fair enough, great. You stay away. Are you chint it down there with the maglight? I'm going to do a couple things. I'm going to shine down there with a maglite. I'm not like getting close, I'm just sort of flashing,

and then I'm going to flash the mag light in my eyes to see if it does anything. Frigg. Okay. So when you hit the hole, you can clearly see that it's actually not that deep. It's about maybe two feet, but then it steps down to another two feet, kind of like as if there's just dirt steps, like small partitions that move down.

that move down and it curves and it just curves it almost starts right where you're at but then it immediately bends straight towards where the mountainside is as if something burrowed from underneath and came up from this cabin area into this cabin area you flick it flick it flick it flick it flick it flick it flick it Darby make a pull. Wait, I hand it to someone. You know, actually, I think Caden. Caden's in, by the whole, I mean, not. We're actually on the tripping. Raina, what do you see? Can I trust your eyes.

You are. Do not get away with it that easy. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. You need to own your Polaroid right now. I'll take a look. I'll take a look.

Wait. Oh, okay. She's already committed, Raina. She's in there. Do you want to stand up to do this? Oh, no, never. Oh. Nice.

I'm the best one. You keep forgetting. Oh. Darby, you flip the Polaroid over and over and over, and you see. see in the frame, all five of you, looking not as happy as some of your other photos that you've taken in the past. And very, very distinctly, in the light flash in the back, you can see something standing, a dark figure that's illuminated from the flash but blends in with the trees. And it could have been a tree if it wasn't so.

much shorter than a tree and you saw wild outlandish horns curving back in on itself. I drop it. I dropped the picture. Is that me? Do you guys, is that? The picture's on the ground now. I drop it. It's dark. Oh my god. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton.

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Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline.com and book your next trip today. Go to your happy price, price line. You suddenly... Is there something if I turn and look? You see nothing? Nothing. There's nothing behind you.

In fact, you could only see it because it was barely through one of the holes in the cabin. In fact, you're still surrounding. inside the cabin at the moment. A man with horns. What? So in his... We should go in there.

Huh? What? We should go in there. I don't stop it. What was that? It sounds a little bit... It sounds a little bit like Tanner, but you all hear it.

It's coming out. It's bursting through the woods. It sounds a little bit like Tanner's voice, but with the wrong cadence. We should go in there. Tanner, that's not funny. Who's doing? Quit. Quit it.

She doesn't like it. It's not funny. How big is that hole in the floor? Okay. Perfectly body side. What'd you say? I said nothing. I've been with him by the whole the whole time. There's a man with horns. She's scared. Look at this picture.

And also stop talking and then pretending not to talk. That's not funny. What's up, Kayden? Yeah, Kayden, it's happening. What's going on? Do you hear that though? Do I know any, I mean... What is up with Kayden?

He'd ever tripping? He's tripping. Well, he's not, but he's not doing it. But he's not doing it right. Can I see the same feature of the... I'm crawling over and I'm grabbing the polaroid. Oh, you have it? I have it.

Yeah. All right, that's... Guys? What is that? It's... The same thing. Fuck, no. No.

I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I...I... I...I... I... I... ...I... ...I... ...we... ...I... ...I... ...I... ...w our stuff, we need to go back. Like in real life? I'm not going to stay here over the night. Walking through the woods is way more dangerous. I don't know. If we just stay by the fire,

where the light is, we should be okay. We just kick the fire out. We kick the fire out. We should block up this hole. What? This is a hole everywhere. How? What time of day?

If you turn around and in the light of the doorway, in the midst of old Jim's lantern light, you see something standing in the midst of the doorframe. It's long and it's and it sounds like Sotene, but it doesn't have the cadence of Sotene's voice. In fact, it doesn't have any rhythm to it at all, but it says, We hit him in there. I don't like it on me hands, let me on me on a roof!

Oh no. As this appears, I should I can pull my camera up and try and get a photo of it. Oh, God damn it. If you're gonna make, yes, with baby hands after this, Tanner, then you get to make a pull. Yes. Why did I do that? Yes, you do. You see, and this is all spanning in a single moment, but you watch as you look into it,

and maybe it was old man Jim, you did wake him up. Maybe that was his voice. You don't realize it, but you realize that whatever said it was is not, it's not making human speech, it's mimicking human speech. In the same way that like dogs who are pretending to talk in those videos that you've seen, and they just kind of mimic the sounds that sound like words. But really, it's mostly just... mostly just a set of animal noises,

as you see this weird bipedal creature peer through the top of the doorframe standing onto you. The smell, oh God, the copper, it is distinctly piercing into your nose. And just as soon as you saw it, it disappears. Fucking visions. Did you still want to get a photo of it, Tanner?

Take the freaking picture. You can opt not to pull and just have a failure. Oh. Your lens cracks. Your camera, you hear the shutter and the motor pull. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh my God. As film starts to push out from the side of the

on its own, put it down, put it down. Put it down. as it bursts into flames. Whoa! Oh my gosh! Okay, time to go outside. Let's go outside. Let's go outside.

Come on. Kaden kicks it into the hole quickly, and it falls down into the darkness of it as you all scamper out and see the small amount of smoke still culling out from the top of the cabin above. Okay, we make this fire bigger. We cannot go into the darkness of the forest. Definitely starting to get the fire going again.

Yeah. I have to go to the bathroom. So when do you guys keep your eye peeled on me? Take a friend. I'll go with you. Okay. I really do need to go the bathroom now. Okay.

You're actually need it. We'll take Tanner. Oh my gosh! Walk around this way if you want. This is the most stressful. Bathroom break. You all so careful. Yeah, you guys.

That's important. I don't know how to bring this off. As the three of you, are you, so you settling down in months the fire? Okay. I don't know what's going to happen tonight, but I think now is as good as good as you. time as any to tell you that I love you and and I even if we choose to go to different college I still want to be have some part of your life said yes I'm

going back east to college I love you too but we'll be so far away I'll make it work I will I if you want to yeah awesome okay okay I didn't I didn't want to try to tell you in front of the hole but then everything happened and Tanner was there but I guess Kaden's here but he doesn't matter oh thank you champagne or a 40 Southern comfort you're just all the time yeah and I know that I mean all to call long distance I'll call long distance no matter how expensive it is This is going to make tonight a lot better. I'm not going to go expressly too deep on the meta of this,

but just exactly how much did you go into deep with sateen with the partitions, with the cuts? I was trying to be gentle. She took more than I did. And you're probably recovering from it quite a bit more. I'm going to be heightened for a while, but I definitely, normally, Normally this wouldn't I could drive in this situation normally. Yeah, but I feel okay. I feel like me driving in this state but not right now. Don't drink a drive everyone at 21 and older you have to be used to drink and yeah let's keep real- Not that I not that I can

don't any of these things. Kayden you distinctly hear the sounds of sat in your mind as as part of it. It's just it's something that you recall her saying at some point about how You are truly the outsider in this situation. We all may be a motley crew of outsiders, but you're, of all of us, you're the one that truly does not belong. And this is something to show for that, you know? This has been happening under your eye for a very long time. In fact, as you look over next to you,

you can see while in the midst of they're talking, sad is there, just telling you exactly how stupid you were for missing something as. important like this and why that really means that you shouldn't why are you still hanging out dude like why are you still amongst this they're making there they've made a pledge to stick around and be together and you're running off I mean okayed yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah how high are you yeah you're fine I'm fine. Sorry, sorry that we did that right in front of you.

Don't don't be, don't be sorry. That's, that's great. No, that's great. I'm, it is, it's great. I mean, are you okay? Are you? Is okay? Yeah. I've ever been. That was awesome. You miss. The bathroom? Things. Yeah. And I, yeah. What happened? She's always been there, Katie. She's always been there for you. She's always been next to you, but at the same time, you can't get those words out of your mind. As if she was literally penetrating your mind with what it was. I think Kada needs a friend hug.

I'm not right now. Yeah! I think so. And then I do too. Come on. Yeah. Because they're right here. I am staying.

I see that. Um, well, I think we're all settling down for an evening into it. The night passes without too much difficulty, except for one part of the night sat, you, um, you wake up as you often do in the midst of the night since you're a restless sleeper. And you distinctly were probably woken up by the rustling of one of your team members getting up, potentially to use the restroom and you watch them, you kind of sleepily watch them rise from the sleeping forms that are there and get up. And they double over in laughter again as if they're issuing no noise,

but still sitting there almost holding their sides and just laughing with no noise coming out of it. But then sleep takes you again as the morning comes with a new light. We shared a sleeping bag. We've never actually done that on one of these trips before, but... Yeah. We did it under the guys that Tanner kind of ripped his sleeping bag in the parked wire. And he needed to borrow yours, and so she just slept in mine. That's a spectacular justification.

It's very solid. So it is a new day, is it a new dawn? And when all of you wake up, you see that old miner Jim has already packed. and left, leaving the five of you alone. There are signs that he was real, though. Oh, absolutely. You could see that things were taken out, that his pots had moved out.

My hand is still covered in so, because I actually never watched it up. That's true as well. It's the second day of your camping trip. Thank you, John. Make breakfast and make some coffee. As soon as you guys start waking up, which I was probably, I'd say I was probably the first one up, because I didn't sleep well at all.

I'm a light sleeper anyway, especially on this trip. I was like up and down up and down. So when you guys wake up, I'm still kind of awake and waiting for you get consciousness. And as soon as you come to him, like, all right, so we need to pack up and get back. We're not staying here. We're not staying here at all.

It's daytime now, so it's not as scary. We should just go check out that hole now that it's daytime. I feel like we can do both these things. Yeah. I fall straight up now. Check out the hole and leave. We're all really tired. Okay, no, no, how about that?

It's a good compromise. You know, the sunlight actually gives me, like, a lot of courage. I feel really good. I feel good, too. I want to, I'm sorry about your camera, man. Yeah. Yeah. I guess we didn't imagine that.

We find some gold. But have you seen, but cameras do that. Yeah. It just not functioned or something, right? No, that was weird. We can all agree that was weird. Was it a Samsung? Camera?

I think it was actually, Darwin. I think it was actually, Darwin. So you make some coffee, you have some breakfast, and the sunshine is more encouraging. I mean, last night was absolutely not normal. But at the same time, today is a new day. And more importantly, this is potentially the last chance you'll all have to be able to hang out and do stuff like this again. So if the goal is to go and peek inside of this immersion hole a little bit, just to see what's in there, because it does look like it could have just been easily made by some kind of tunneling.

What do you think about looking into the immersion hall? What direction? What direction was that light in, that was in the distance? It's daytime now, it's impossible to tell which direction it was coming. Yeah, we're pretty sure that might have been. Pretty sure it was Jim. Gotcha. So we camped halfway from the cabin about, like.

Oh, not far. Just right outside. Yeah. So as people start walking into the cabin, into the cabin to start to figure out what to do, I grabbed Caden's arm and pulled back. And I pull you real close up in my face and say, listen, I know what the freak happened last night.

But it wasn't normal, when we all saw some serious shit. Yeah. So there's only one person I know who brought the kind of things that can make that happen. Whatever happened last night was not me. That was not me. I had nothing to do with that. How the fuck would I make your camera do whatever that? How? Please.

I don't know. We're going to get it back. I'm going to take a look at the thing. This happens again. That's all I said. What? What? This happens again.

What? I strategically place the bags after we pack everything up in an orderly fashion. So in case we need to run screaming, we can just grab our bags and go. Great. In the cabin? Outside of the cabin. Outside of the cabin. But also I'm looking for the Polaroid. It's gone.

Okay, I keep my... You swore it was there in the cabin on the floor when you first saw it and when Darby grabbed it and dropped it and let go and then both Tanner and Kaden looked at it, but it's not there anymore. Here's my Polaroid. I feel like you should be responsible for like taking more pictures. I'm grabbing a few things I think on the end and I'm heading

into the cabin. You can see it's almost like a safety blank Yeah. Like as soon as I have it my hands, I can get a little more comfortable and kind of stick out. Thanks. I'm really sorry about your camera. Sorry. Crazy malfunction. All right. So as you all stare in the triangle that designates this unearthed hole that's in the middle of this cabin, you look down and see that again it bends pretty dramatically off into the foothed hill's leading. into the mountains as you don't get to see very deep before it becomes out of sight, out of mind. But very easily, not two people at a time, but at least one person could comfortably,

not getting too claustrophobic, crawl into it, either feet first or head first, and chimmy their way down the hole. I got it, I'll do it. I've got probably a geo-engineer hard hat with the light on it. Beautiful, all right. So Sat goes first, Darby goes second.

Who's next? I'll go next. I'll go left. Tanner's last. Great. Let me just change the mood here for moments. Disco starts playing. I'm going to be so pleased. We found the disco tunnel. It's the 70s. The BG's Gio has been discovered. It's a rock lobster. I scream. As the five of you descend deeper and deeper and deeper, you realize that you're going pretty far down into the actual hole itself. And while it's not a steep decline, it does seem to go down at a pretty steady angle, 15, 25 degrees-ish or so, to the point to where you could easily climb back up and if you so choose.

is not a slide, but it is definitely a descending tunnel into the hillside. Now, you emerge first into what appears to be a five, six foot, tall cavern, and it exits suddenly. And you dip down and you can feel your body slide into the bottom of a dirt floor as Darby, Raina, Kaden, Tanner, all follow you down to the bottom. And you see yourself in the midst of a mind shaft.

We found the camera yet? You're looking around for it? Yeah. I mean, like I kicked it in there, but like. This is like that game those kids play, like on the tabletops with the dice, and there's like, like, like, dungeons. Like when they go in the dungeons, they quite monsters.

Oh, that's a stupid game. I hate kids who play that game. It's actually pretty satanic from what I hear. Yeah. You shine around. You look confused about fantasy and reality. Vampire? That game?

No, no, with the dragons and stuff. Yeah, giant land. I am not showing them the back of my sketchbook. Yeah, it's a dumb game. Kaden, you shine the light everywhere around the bottom of the floor. And you can see there's actually a pretty sturdy iron track. And you can see strong load-bearing beams. Lod-bearing!

Oh, look how LB they are! As you scan up and down along the shaft, you can fine, nor height, nor hair of the camera anywhere. Fuck. Are you sure? It was a long shaft. I mean, it could have gotten lodged.

Is it load bearing? What's it doing? It's fine. Logged, load bearing shack. All right, anyway. So, as we progress further, Are we certain that we actually happened and not something that we made up in our brains like the horn people?

Really thinking it may be the latter as I stare at darkly. at Caden darkly, however, we should still be careful. Okay. Yeah. Tanner, did you imagine me setting fire to your camera and throwing it in this hole? Because apparently there's no camera. So, yeah, you saw a lot of crazy things last night. Guys, guys, it's fine.

Yeah, don't, don't, we don't need, it's the morning, we're all in a good mood, we don't need a whole lot of sass right now. It's morning, but it's very dark in the mines. In fact, the only light that's really working is Caden's lantern, as well as the mag lights that you're flashing from here and there. So the couple that you have shines a good, strong beam

up and down the various shafts and the long tunnel that you're inside of right now. And the lantern gives you a good aura that sees the wet walls that seem to have moisture dripping down from them as roots, since you're still not terribly far from the surface, occasionally poke out from the top of the ceiling above. I heard it.

Flick. Flick. Sit and make a pull. Gosh, darn it. Shit. Oh my gosh. It's not yet for touching things. As you slap the root and you feel it,

you start to watch as dirt begins to crumble and fall from that heart of the ceiling. And at first, it's just one or two small pieces of dirt. but slowly you start to hear the shifting of earth above you. This is how I went. No, no, no, no. Oh my God. Is she ahead of us or is she falling behind? She's first, right?

Yeah, we're at the end. Okay, well at least the fish won't be real of eggs. The earth begins to rumble above you. as you see more roots slowly begin to be exposed above you, and you can start to hear the crumbling. I'm just gonna crawl on you. That's okay.

Of Earth, as things begin to move and shake and rumble. You can pull from up here, you can pull from up here. Oh yeah, the fourth. Actually, technically, this is, yeah, you can pull from here. I don't know if anything here will help, but like that's the top of where you can pull from, right? right now. You don't have to go from the bottom. Yeah, but this one actually wants to come out.

Okay, if you think you can, if you think so. The rumbling begins to get louder as more dirt begins to fall ever steadily, ever frequently onto parts right above you. And you see as slowly a small mound of dirt starts to fall around you as Why? Things just begin to rumble. No. I don't think we can hear it, but it is in here.

It's where the wood imperfections start really messing with you. And the earth begins to rumble. Maybe you should push on the... Oh my God. Oh my God. Why? The roots start to show you as if the life-giving force of the tree itself has damned you to a dirt-filled grave.

As your body begins to tremble, as mountains of dirt pile upon your shoulders and trickle down your body, making a pool at your feet outside. I know. The rumbling deepensat. Jeez. It deepens.

I can hear it. As you can see the tree above you, slowly begin to hold as the earth stops shaking and the dirt stops falling on top of you. Oh my gosh, are you okay? You'd like pull her out from under the tree. Oh yeah, yeah. Drag her back a little bit.

You notice that the once empty tunnel now has quite a significant amount of dirt, loose dirt that now is sitting in front of you, of you and Sotene was nearly buried up to her waist before all three of you were able to pull her out of the dirt in time. Come on. You still want to go deeper? You still want to go in a tunnel? Mom no one wants to go back home now. Are we happy? Are we happy? Well, you know. Don't be sarcastic. Good sleep is everything. That's why Ali's science back support is made with a blend of melatonin and L-Dienine for both kiddos and grown-ups. So when your mind

won't switch off, you've got something that can help. You're racing thoughts, and restless nights won't stand a chance. Find Ollie sleep solutions for the whole family at ollie.com. That's OLLLY.com. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking. Maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them.

But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, When you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. I know that actually is like making it weirdly worse, which I kind of like. What are you going to do, guys?

I know that was a fluke. My perception is. It was a fluke. Guys, these are load bearing. Just maybe don't touch anything. Fine. This is just not. This was a fluke.

It won't happen again. This was kind of. This was kind of one of our things where it's like, once you, like, lightning never strikes twice. That's all I'll say. It's the 80s. We're in a forest. What could go wrong? Thank you.

Finally, someone said it. So, as you continue deeper down into the mines, you start to see the veins. You start to see the veins of coal that these miners were tackling and putting a part of it. I have to look over you now because this tower is getting so high. And I just had a cramp on my leg. Oh no, no. Stretch it out, Ivan. Don't do it.

Don't do it. Otherwise, it's going to hurt. Now you have to pull out. Oh, okay. No, it's not done. Sorry, guys. If it falls, we win. Oh, yeah, that's a good idea.

I was Charlie horsed it hard there. Yeah, you need one of these. You need one of these logs. Charlie horse. I can give you my luck. I'm good, good. Don't get touch it. Don't see it.

Don't see it. Put the candle back. As you begin to descend down the tunnel farther, you start to see the veins of coal exposing on the wet walls of where these miners lived probably day after day after day, to bring the earth's rich mineral up to be burnt for fuel or heat or whatever it is that man desires the most. And slowly, you start, you start to start,

to see that the tunnel winds down and down. In fact, the standard shafts that you would normally expect seem to be boarded up, seemed to be closed, and you can actually see many of the tracks that would lead you back up to the surface appear to be boarded over, nailed, iron barred, even chained to prevent entry into where you are now. So they're barred from the other side?

They're barred from the other side. This is weird. Oh, okay. Do we need like a bird or something to the perfumes? To like detect- Yeah, there's like a canary coal mine thing. Like the birds and then they die and then you're like, oh, it's time to leave. I told it back.

You might be right. This might not be safe. I take it back. Nothing gets boarded up like this. As you turn around a corner, you see a small alcove that has the flicker of candlelight at the very end of it. It's burning all our oxygen. Yeah, that's not cool.

I head towards it. As you go down the hallway, you hear nothing, but you can smell the copper again. It's thick, as if someone is heating copper pans and then boiling water in it. No, not water, blood. Thick, rich, musky blood. As you look down deeper into the hallways,

you start to see the small talisman, of animal skulls. And you can see as ropes dangling down, as small bones and items in white paint start to streak, as symbols start to etch the side of the walls before it opens into a small alcove. Holy shit, guys. That holds, well, sorry.

Do you want to motion them all in? I'm, I've got... Is it empty? it's empty. And really, the alcove that moves you in is really only deep enough for one. So you get the full breadth of everything that's inside of it.

You can see a small dirt shelf was carved out of this small place, and you can see a small hay pile covered and littered with leather and bones and small etches of fur. As you see etchings of airings of animals just painted with what appears to be long, articulate fingers all across the sides of the wall.

Don't you see, Kaden. Don't really know how to explain this. I think you just kind of have to see it. I see, she was, you were touching a skull, weren't you? I, I, I, don't touch it. And I, grab her hand.

Don't, don't, please don't. I'm giving a very close watch. Don't focus on this, I'm looking at everything else. I'm just moving the flashlight around just so that everybody can see if much of it is possible. You see the long articulate paintings are showing diagrams of animals painted deer, goats, horses. I'm fascinated, right, I'm just looking at all this. It looks new. Okay, we Polaroid and we get nothing to do.

This has nothing to do with the 20s. You see a leather-bound journal sitting on a small pillar next to a set of bones and other finery. In fact, you see a couple of shiny things there as well, too. I'm just examining, I'm not touching yet, but I'm just looking. You look closer, and you see it's a large leather-bound journal about portfolio size, and it seems to be wrapped crudely

with leather and bound with. catgut and you see next to it are several small gemstones in fact you see a nugget of gold the size of your fist right next to it oh shit what how much can the rest of us see yeah can we you can't see he's only one is fully in there he's too small for anybody looking looming over it in the corner of this small and are any more bigger than five-by-five or is it just inside the thing there was a lot of the dangling items and talismans as you were coming into the hallway, but the space he's in is about five by five feet. No less, no more.

I grab my handkerchief, and I very gently with the handkerchief, start opening the book with the flashlight. The leather creaks as you open it, and you can hear the paper unfurl, but it doesn't sound like paper. It feels like old paper, like papyrus. but even but it has a stench to it. It has a musky odor to it that feels like almost if someone chewed on the pulp

and spat it out before they pressed it into pages. And there's writing on it. Guys. What? What? I found a book. Caden, make a pull. God.

Yeah. Oh my God. It's been a pleasure, guys. Yeah. I want to let you know. Okay. Whatever space you need, my friend. Okay.

Oh, goodness. I might just head buck this thing, really. Wait, what happens if it falls? Go find out. Kaden, as you begin to read the words inside of the journal, you start to read the entry. The crudely drawn letters seem to come out at you. as if a voice itself is speaking to you as you're reading it.

The actual calligraphy of the letters itself seems to be delicate, yet dangerously crude, as if someone taught an animal how to write, and they use their long fingers in order to etch every single letter with their own small. In fact, you can start to see that at first, the entries were laid in an ink. And ink was used plenty in order to pull each one of the words straight out of whatever

wrote this creature's mouth. But the journal entry start to get messier. Smudging starts to become apparent as the writing becomes getting frantic. And you start to read about something, something that picked up the knowledge of man and studied him for his own devices, who loved and toyed in the joy of observing other creatures

and playing tricks on it, about how important it was for that thing to know who you are. Come on, Caden. And despite all of it, you're able to read it with a clean head on your shoulder. Oh my God. With an understanding that did not drive you to madness.

Oh, man. I don't feel good. Oh, my God. I don't feel good. Good job, man. Caden. It's in another language. It's, this is...

I have no idea what Ivan said. I have no fucking... Of anything you've said in the last five minutes. He did say... I've been reading a book. Reading a book. It's another language. It kind of made sense.

It made sense, but the art and the calligraphy on it was fine, and yet it was crude as if an animal had taught someone how to write. Okay, it's coming back. Long spindly fingers. But it's writing in such... in such a splotchy overuse of ink that slowly the black turns to blue, which turns to red, which turns to blue again.

As if it used several different types of ink over the courses, and the binder is full of it. But most importantly, Caden, this is what you notice as you start to put the book down, as you look at the last page. You see the roughly drawn out whine of your own face. And on the next page, you see Sat and Darby's face

sketched out in ink. And these words do have something that you can understand. And it's just as a crudely drawn laughter is en etched inside of this last pages of the journal. What are the faces doing that are sketched? You can barely tell that they would even be your faces because it looks like someone just scratched it in with a pen.

As if this is not an artist's rendition of your face. This is line work in the most crude fashion. Yet something has shown known that it knows you. I'm gonna take the book. What was it? I'm showing, not open, but. What is that?

I don't feel good. You need to. Leave? I don't know. Yeah, let's end there. Tanner was right the whole time. Why don't you take a picture? We can give it to the authorities.

Is there anything else in this room? Yeah, because this is kind of, yeah, yeah, I definitely good. And the gems? I don't. And this animal skins, just paintings similar in sketch and drawn of what is in the journal. What's in there? I don't.

I'm just going to like step out so that they can go in, and I'm just going to sit with the book and watch. After you step, Satt, I go and just kind of dip in with the Polaroid and take a shot of the room. A couple shots, and as they come out, kind of hand them off to Sat. Do you guys remember the man with antlers last night? Yeah. I mean, I... I can probably get it all of two, too. So Tanner, as you take the last Polaroid,

the flash of it bounces off the side of the wall, illuminating the room, showing you every eccentricity of the space. And it bounces, because the light is so bright, it bounces enough that it actually hits out to the side of the hall. away and Caden right in front of you is an eight-foot tall creature with giant horns and it has its hand out as it's reached to your face in the midst of the flash as its claws start to climb down upon your head make a pull oh no Caden god damn it okay oh my god

no way I sacrifice myself no no you're not there I thought we're all right there no it's only your pull that you can make the sacrifice. Oh, really? If it was your pull, you could do this. Oh. This is Caden's pull. Buddy. Oh boy. You can see the creature standing right in front of you. It's tall frame. We're not going to lose them. Not to do it. Yeah, you are. Horns barely touching the top of it. It stooped down below you, and you can see its eyes glistening into you. The only reason that you even saw it was there is because Tanner's Polaroid flash bounced it against its frame and you can hear its voice in your head mimicking the sounds of Sat's voice. It's okay, friends. It's okay.

I take a swing with my fucking maglite and you back across the side of the head and it slaps to the side, hitting across the side of the side of the mountainous cavern across the edge of the mine shaft. It doubles over in pain holding onto its head as it looks up to you. We all hear this? You all hear the loud scream. Run! Immediately pull out of the tunnel and turn around, we all, as you come around. You go to Kaden. It was the same, it was in the same edge of the way that he's

basically blocking the direction that you first came from leading towards where the mine shaft was. Is there any other pack to run down? It's a T section. So you have the left to wear deeper into the mines or right back out but across the creature. Is there is there a pickax or anything around? It is an empty mine. Okay. I have my great. Do you want a pickax if you want to pickax to swing of the thing make a pull? I want to swing it at the thing I want to make a like make the tunnel collapse on it. Well you have to find a pickaxe right? Yeah. If you want to pickaxe make a pull. I think I Darby. As the creature is knocked over and it sticks its head up holding its arms out, you can hear a rending screech as it rakes its claw across the dirt floor and it stares up at you.

Darby, you start looking to and from as your friends start to find some sort of path around this creature. You move everywhere, darting side of the side looking to any convenient place that it may be a mind cart, something anywhere. But the stunned creatures' movements are haunting your vision as you start to hear the sound of it in your brain. But in the midst of hearing it, you managed to see along the side covered in cobwebs is an old axe, an old rusty pickaxe. Take this, you load-bearing... And I hack it, I hack it, yeah, a beam right.

Everyone's behind or has run. They're at least in the process of getting behind you. Okay, run past me, you guys. What are you doing? Yeah, go, go, go. What are you doing? You're gonna collapse the tunnel. That's what I want.

Yeah. You're not in it. No, we can make it. I know we can. You all grabbing Tanner. Run past Tarbys. Run, run. Kaden, grabbing Tanner as they pull forward.

I'm right next to you. Okay. Keep in mind. this is important because are you running past the creature to go back to where you came or are you going deeper into the mines wait the creature was in our feature is walking the place or we go deeper and then we find another way out uh well no you're doing where are you striking the ceiling flip a way out we're having i was like we're going we're not crossing the thing we are not crossing the thing we're going she's already attacked the ceiling at this point exactly

Exactly. You have started attacking you, but you can stop and take it with you. Um, um, we are not crossing that. Okay, I think I just misunderstood, but since I've already said I did it, I'm going to do, what am I going to do? Is there, okay, I'll throw this, I'll throw my phone and heads. It's, um, don't throw anything to this. No, no, no, no, I'm telling you, we're, I'm going to make a decision.

Okay. We're going to go down because none of us are going to go across that monster. Yeah, fuck that. Okay, great. better to find another way out. I listen to my leader and I yeah. One or two hits and you feel it rumble above you and you watch his rocks start clasping down a little bit before you sat grabs your arm. What do you tell us that?

Let's go run now. Okay, sorry, I thought I was doing the right thing. You were, that's good. No, it's good. No, keep going. Hold on to that axe. We are booking. Okay, now I have a pickax.

As you go. Yeah, you got to pick it. As you book it deeper, deeper into the mind, you are flashing. Start moving wildly as you... Swinging the lantern that was Cadence. Right. I've got the maglite out. You can hear the ground start to rumble more...

And you can see as you flash behind the vague sense of the creature slowly getting up from his moved position. And he, Caden, looks at you. And you only know this because a pair of red eyes stands out very distinct. in the darkness and you hear it way. Oh. So. Looking around for other ways out. I know.

Thank you. That's what I want. Thank you. You're awesome. I was a fan. Looking around for another way out, for another fork in the road type of thing. So you start moving.

Boarded up side tunnels, gated side tunnels, doesn't matter. All of it. Anything. You run down. We have a pickax. We can break things down. You, you have a pickax. I have some shit too. Travel.

50, maybe 100 feet or so before a room opens up. It's a much larger room. It's not a shaft. It's a collection zone. And essentially, a large open space, about 30 by 20 feet laid out in front of you. You can see small, rusted, broken steel desks

laid out with mine carts that seem to be set for processing and sorting through ore before it's taken back up the direction that you came from. You go into that area and you notice that the whole area seems to just be filled with cobwebs and misuse. And this is an area that hasn't been visited in decades. Are there any exits?

At this point you walk into it, it's so dark. The lantern only gives you a small breath of what is in front of you at the moment. Oh man, guys. I'm trying to get as much as I can get out. I can get out. It's light. All right, you push, that's right, because the mag light is such a direct light. As you shine it forward and forward again, you actually see another tunnel coming up through

the other side of the hallway leading straight on through the building, the building, the room. All right, let's go. All right, drag my knife out. I'm just going to show the book really quickly to everybody, just that it's, that I got it. This is what I took. I'm just pulling the last pages. Not opening. That's us.

Burn it. Burn it. Maybe it's trying to get it. Let's burn it. I don't know. Maybe not burning it here. They saw us yesterday. It hasn't seen us yesterday.

There's no way that this is some sort of... And only three of the faces? Well, that was the three that he saw in the few couple pages. It has Tanner's face and your face in it too on the very last page with... what seems to be markings or writing or one could even call it notes next to each one of your portraits. Can we read them? No, it's in another language. Come on guys, let's go. Just in case I want to make sure Everyone knew that I found this. Things are getting weird. Maybe it's trying to get it. Maybe why don't we just leave it behind?

Maybe it'll leave us alone. Maybe we can use it as a bargaining chip. I don't know I'm putting it in my backpack. I'm making sure everyone sees me put it in my backpack great as you put it into your backpack you can see the creature stalking through the tunnel it's chasing you in fact of anything your men go go run all right as you run through the main hallway you can feel the flex of its long spindly nails reach out and at this point it's closest to you rey now you can actually feel the small as if someone is taking a small needle and running it down your back

and you can feel your clothing slowly start to pull onto you. Does it get a hold of you? Make a pull. The creature is not of this world. That much is clear. In fact, it would be hard to say that it belongs in any world. The writing that you saw

saw Raina was not something done by human hands. And that is not any more clear to you that it is now as its long nails are breaking down your back. Not much of a runner. As you feel a bit foolish for letting all of your friends argue this out as you stood in the back of the room, just waiting to see what everyone is going to do.

And this part of you hopes, hopes that maybe you'll live to make it to not just school, but even the next day. And what about Darby? Are you gonna be able to be there for her? Yes, you are. Because this small scrapes of your bat are just that. They're just scrapes.

You feel a bit of your cloth rip, but its nails are so sharp. It tears right through the back of your shirt as it makes lines and you are out of there before it has an opportunity to get a second grasp on top of you. As soon as she emerges four, we grab her by the arm and pull her head. Just going, go, go, go! We just keep running. Yeah. Throw.

Great. Now as you keep barreling forward, you see suddenly a dead end at the side, but with a single left T-section, a single left-hand turn leading across and doubling around through the back. Like a U-turn? Like a U-turn. As you move forward, you see... Is it still going up? No, you're actually just going just alongside at this stage.

Parallel, yeah. You have not inclined or declined at this stage. But you move forward and you double back with a U-turn, making a long turn, and as you turn around with the Maglite seeing you, watches the creature, scurries up the side of the wall, jumps from one side of the wall to another, and crasms down with both of its hands

raking in front of it as its large goat horns curl up on front of it, and it stares at you and you watch its jaw just drop down to the floor. Its long glistening teeth, white as both. bone. As you move around the side of the corner and see that another long hallway stretches in front of you and you continue to run. Run as if your life depends on it because it does. We're running. We're running. As this tunnel starts to become straighter, it watches. It slowly starts to become an incline coming up.

At the same time, it feels like you've managed to gain a little bit of the lead on it. More importantly, the smell goes away. Keep running, keep running, keep running, keep running. You keep running, and out of nowhere, you see a gate. No. In front of you, it's an elevator shaft. Good climate. We go, we go.

Can it open? It's locked. Shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shi. You see, as the long shaft seems to be going up a long partition of the time. Oh, that's a pick-ass move. Done. Yeah. Pickaxe. You want to pickax it? Yes.

Make a pull. Oh. And we're done here, so this. Yeah, any of those three. These are still. Oh, God. This one's fine. Oh, God, no, don't say that.

As you start to shake it, chung-chun-chun-chun-chun-chun-chun. You can feel the weight of the chains below you, and you take your pickaxe and you swing it down in a certain motion, breaking the lock all along the side of it as you pull it open. Holding the lantern out towards the back just in case we start seeing a gain on us at all Seeing a gain on you yeah see nothing okay in fact as you start to look and assess around you and you start to peer into what is The darkness in front of you it's not there Seems to be gone shh

And listen as soon as we get quiet from a moment anything? Nothing Get inside, get inside inside So are we in the elevator? Is there an actual platform or is it just an empty shaft? An empty shaft. Are there still cables? Are cables? A ladder?

Is it above us? It is difficult to tell because the lantern again only gives you so much of a width. Maglight, maglight. Maglight. As you lift it up, you look on top of it and you see it's not above you. That's good. That is good. Is there a ladder? There's no ladder.

How far down? There is a ladder. Wait. It's above you. There was a ladder in front of you, but it seems that the iron is so rusted and so old. It broke off. That it snapped and broke off. And, Kaden, you shine your light down and you actually see where that piece of ladder has clattered and fallen across two of the metal beams laying below you. But it starts up again further up? eight or nine feet up. So we gotta help each other. If that ladder snap, you don't even know how strong it is. That was my thoughts.

Because we stay here. Yeah, I mean, we can't stay. So we climb the cables up to that part of the ladder? We can boost each other up. Oh, yeah, true. I should have done more P.E. Well, I'm probably the strongest of all of us, so you guys can climb up my back and, you know,

you push each other up, and then smallest go first. Let's... Smallest first. Let's try... I'm gonna try and see what happens if I take that broken piece of ladder and at least... Oh, it's several feet down.

Oh, it's all the way down. It's down there. Yeah. All right. Let's go. We gotta do something now. We do this and I'm like, okay, let's... Start with the first. Okay. All right.

So you're boosting her up? Yep. I'm gonna probably go, like, last because I could probably climb the ropes myself. True. I'm pretty gangly, though. I'm like... I'm not gonna get you up there. All right.

I'm actually, on my character, I'm like a larger woman. Oh, so you're like, I can be foundations. Pretty, yeah. Yeah. What I'm more interested in instead of who is boosting is who's being boosted. Yeah.

You go. Yeah. Right. Because we could catch her. Not much in the arm strength department. Sorry. You, all three of you, lift her. And with a one, a two, a three, fling her up.

Raina, you grab. the third or fourth rung, at least up on top of it, without any problems. You lift yourself up, getting a foothold on your very first rung as you start to climb up to the top of the ladder. Oh, my God. How's it feel?

So far. So far, so good. I don't know. Just get out of here with me. Okay. Who's next? Tanner, probably. Yeah.

What, me? Yeah. That way there's, you know, a bunch of us, if you fall or anything, you'll catch you. Take the ladder. Or the lantern. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

All right. Tanner, you brace yourself. You get a hand on the side. Like the S-2, Ginger. Right. And you position yourself. You put a hand on the side of the grate, and you feel as all of your friends behind you, you look, it's eight feet in front of you. And you, and you grab the second rung.

And you feel, e-h-h-h-oh, God. As you lift your hand up and grab a hold of the third, the fourth, and now you're just about five feet behind. All right. How far up on you, Doreena? We may have to not get too many people on this ladder at once. Right. Let me see if there's anything up here.

Raina, you go up a little bit and you see that there's some more support brackets that are connecting to the side of the elevator shaft as you continue to climb higher and higher and higher. There's some, it's still connected to the support brackets up here. But there's no platform yet or anything. next the platform the elevator still about 10 or 15 feet up at this point why don't you guys go yeah get you guys go and then we'll put you know send the next people up all right tell us when you're up there rana yeah maybe you'll to send the elevator platform down yeah maybe you're next now I'll go with you okay I guess

it's me but I I I'm yeah I'm not like a right a small person so you move we got you're here to help okay lift and you one you get in there and you put both of your hands hoping to maybe you can use some of your your upper arm strength to watch yourself. While at the same time, they're giving you a boost up from the top and you, one, two, three, you grab a hold of it, grab that second wrong, grab that third wrong, make a pull.

No, no. Are you coming? Can you tell from the creeks of the iron? Yes, it's me. I... Oh, no. I'm sorry, guys. The memories are flashing in front of you.

I knew it. As this moment kind of comes to your pass. Oh my God. You start to hear the sound of Raina's voice asking you, will you still be with me even if I'm going out of state? And it's the only

anything that you can hold onto as you're making this moment where potentially life could escape you. In fact, death is so close at this moment that it's not just her voice, but the sound of all of your friends. These people who brought you in, who asked you to be their friend to not judge you based on your looks and your brain and more importantly to accept you oh oh oh oh no over next up as you look at the support the supports is weak but it does not give away how was in there really really well to Tanner you can feel his ankle right there as a part of a comfort as if there's

nothing. As soon as you touch my ankle I go, oh, okay. I knew it's the letter is like a little. Who's next? Does anybody have anything that they can send now? Yeah, maybe at this point, I mean, I mean, I don't think they should be on the ladder with me at the same time. I can't leave you behind. This is like part of it's like our thing. We're best friends, we have to do it together. Raina, you've reached the top of the elevator, where the bottom is shining right there. You're gonna need your help to know what to do.

Can I, like, if there's not a locked door up there, is there? No, you can open the hatch, emergency hatch right above you. Oh, above us. It's, there's like a solid piece of metal that's there, and you could probably climb around and then up to the platform. Okay.

Easily. Yeah, yeah. I'll scampers so my weight is off the ladder. And as you start to get up to that top of that ladder, or up to the top of that platform a little bit, you can distinctly see light. There's light up here, guys. Okay, so this is what we're going to do.

You're going to go figure out how to get me. No, I got this. Give me your backpack, dude. Okay. So I grab a backpack. And I had the lantern. The lanterns. The backpack has handles.

The lantern still with us. He has the lantern. I was just going to tie the lantern onto my jacket, just so that no matter what, we can bring it with us. Yeah, so I've got the backpack in my hand. I put it on my shoulder. I'm like, okay, you launch me up. I'm going to grab the thing,

and then I'm going to latch myself onto the ladder and then pull you up. Whoa. Yeah, you grab on to the backpack with one hand, and then on the shaft, the pulley, just things. I get you. I will not leave you behind. No, I just figured you'd figured out.

That's right. Okay. All right. So I just start climbing on you. Climbing on him. Yeah, and I grab the thing and I like, I'm going to push her up. As you reach, reach, reach, and you grab the rung. And you grab the rung.

You hold onto it with one hand, and it feels wobbly, but, It holds with your weight at the moment as you take Caden, his arm underneath yours, and you push him up on top, and you latch him onto the top of ring above you. Climb it. And he begins to climb up a rung, up a rung in front of you. I'm trying not to disturb it. Right. As you reach rung over wrong, you begin to grab things. and sat you continuing to climb white below him.

You cusp ahead, you cusp ahead. You get about three, four rungs. You can see him right above you. You can even see Raina above you, starting to maneuver above to the top of the platform. And that's when a long clawed hand comes out amongst the side of the elevator shaft and grabs you around the throat.

Roots and holds onto it, you can feel its long fingers digging into your trachea. No. Make a pole. Come on set. Mm. And you can hear it begin to talk to you. You can't say them ever good. Again, it seems to mimic human talk, but more importantly, it's using its talk.

to completely make you something of a humiliating toy to it. And you can start to see its dark red eyes begin to pull into your own as you watch its soul connect with yours. And you can see, Sat, that it understands you. understands what you are but that doesn't matter who you do you do dagger like my knife and you cut along the side of its arm and you look just blue blood splashes as it makes its unearthly sound are you okay as you begin to lift all of you up one by one By one, you climb up the rung of the ladder and you move yourself up into its space, the top space being the exit cart mine.

And you can see just in front of you, there is light. And it's only stopped by just a few boards. Just a few. If you can get right through it, if you can sprint all the way down there. I got the laser jacket. I just get the maglite. Go, go, go. Pickax, pick, X, pick X.

There's no way I kept the pickax with me. No, no way. It's okay, that's what the maglites for. Yeah. As you all just rushed down the side of this cavern, you can hear its cry right behind you, just mad as hell. As you can see, a clawed hand grasp up,

lift itself up, pull, breaking and bending the metal. As it doesn't even bother, to move itself around, it just caverns above it as it crawls like a creature from the nine hells moving in front of you. Uh. What is that thing? You go ahead.

I'm gonna try and buy us some time. Because we can see light and we see where the outpoint is here. Right. Lantern isn't as useful right now. While it's making its way onto, I stay back a little bit and throw the lantern towards it. Make a pole! Yeah.

God damn it. Oh my God. It's tough. No. Do a little, little magic here. As you look behind you, you can see your four friends, the people who you've spent the entire part of your conscious young life with, and you know that there is one opportunity to be able to protect them.

And this is something more than photography. It's heroism as the lantern splashes and flashes and flasks. As leaps of flames, and you watch as the oil ignites as leaps of flame come up right above it, and you can hear it as it's being bathed in the fire, and all five of you crash into the midst of the board and push on it and push on it with more of the fight. Breaking through it, you watch as the creature, unable to cross the flames, continues to sit there as it screams. each one of your names in its terrifying animal mimicry voice. Push through those boundaries, knock off those boards, someone make this final pull, and take you all home. Okay.

I see how it's going. I'm going to grab the last bottle of whiskey out of your backpack. Yeah! They'll have a fucking charge at the thing. Breaking it on the rock and I'm charging the thing so they have time to break it. Go for it. Come on. Come on Whiskey Man.

I should make this clear. This is the last pull before you're out free. All right. This pull is for everyone. This pull is for everybody. Cut you, motherfucker. Carve my goddamn name into your face. Oh!

Fucking end you. Stop it! Oh! Whoo! Oh! Caden, this creature is yours. Make it.

Yours. I break the bottle and just start stabbing it in its ugly, long face. I try and go into the throat. As you take the bottle and the sharp edges of the glass just punctured, as you feel it underneath it, and you can feel its claws raking onto the back with the fire just barely burnt out, but the heat still licking up the side of your ankles

as you push through and you push it, and you stab it, and you stab it, and you stab it, and in the midst of it, your backpack falls out, and the journal splays in midst everywhere, and you watch it, cast up into fire, as the leather starts to curl,

and the smoke from the pressed pulp begins to billow into smoke. All four of you pound shoulder after shoulder after shoulder into it until it finally breaks free, and you see the blue sky in front of you. The moment it breaks, free. I agree.

You feel a hand to grab the back of your shirt. I run. And just drag you along. Come on! It's a good hand. You book it and you crass out into the middle and all you hear is the wailing screams of a dying animal behind you. Run, run, run, run, run, run, run. You run to get our backpacks and leave?

Not my backpack. We just run home. We just run. As you run into the forest, as you run, because who knows where you are at this exit on this side of the mountain with nothing left except for, well, nothing since Katie's backpack is still back inside of it. The question we have to ask ourselves is, did you, you may have survived a goat man inside of the caves of Black Mountain. but will you survive the mountain itself and thank you for this wonderful wonderful in which the tower has not fallen at least once

dm's poll or or ms p.m's pull yeah i don't even have to make a pull The pull, as far as I'm concerned, I lost. I lost. He was great. Oh. That was an awesome game. I was so far.

Oh, my goodness. I was so good. I was so much. We're going to hit this. Let's get it. All right, guys. We have more marathoning over at the ad, at the,

the Twilight Imperium 3rd edition table, and I'm pretty sure you want to see how their games going on. 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.

The world of Sonic the Hedgehog has been thrust into a not-so-dark, not-so-stormy, hard-boiled detective story that probably nobody saw coming. Follow Sonic and the Intrepid Chaotic's detective agency as they take on their biggest case yet. This high-flying action-packed adventure will take them across the world, fighting for every clodig and fire. It's one heck of a tale, which is good, because this story might be the only thing that can save their lives. Well, if that's all, I can just dispose of you. Wait, what? All will be revealed in. Sonic the Hedgehog presents The Chaotic's Case Files.

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