Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Episode 2: On the Rails | We're Alive: Frontier | Season 1

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

Our band of survivors find themselves in a desperate situation while acquiring the necessary supplies for the trek ahead. Based on the hit We’re Alive podcast, Ivan Van Norman leads a game of survival for a group of players on a mission through the infected undead-ridden midwest. Want to go deeper into the world of We’re Alive? Check out the complete We’re Alive saga here: www.werealive.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We pushed them back, but we did. What was once a prosperous river trade, the Mississippi is now the front line. The eastern states supply the river states. And what's left with the UA live out their meager day, of policing. What is the West hiding? Nobody really knows for sure. But we're alive. And this is the new frontier.

Hello everybody and welcome back to We're Alive Frontier. We have quite an adventure ahead of us, so let's get right down to it, shall we? How you feeling everybody? Nervous. Great. Yeah. Feeling risky. Asher's got a little bit of some superficial puncture wounds. I'm okay.

Sitting on his forearms. I'm fine. But hey, you took a baseball bat like a champ. Thank you, thank you. Right. Right at this. At the same time, it seems like you either have bleeding out, dying or dead raiders in your hands.

And unfortunately, they have managed to move the hand cart that was carrying your vital supplies from the rail driver. Just some of them. Some of them. Taking them down the rail a little bit. So farther away from the rail cart than one of one. cart than what it was, but because of much of your efforts, they didn't get terribly far, 15 to 20 feet, yes.

All you. So clearly you. You rattle that cage so loud. That too scary. Rattled their cage. That the cat came coming. Oh no. This is not my fault.

No, no. It was a team member. When we last left you, you had finished off the Raiders who were unloading the rail driver, claiming your goods for their own, pushing the cart about 15, 20 feet down the line, you heard the large scream of one of the infected, who is standing as a century, looking to see where all of the commotion came from.

And right now, she seems to be the only one peering with an aura of the morning sun kind of pushing behind her. So she is essentially standing there on the top of the second box car next to the service station. And at this point, I have to ask you a very important question. What do you want to do? Spin and shoot, I'm on top of the thing. Let me get at her.

Well, I believe we have to have two unresolved roles here. Oh, that's right, your degrees of success still into there. So we can do this a few ways. If you would like, since essentially this encounter is all for all on purposes with the Raiders, done, but we're beginning a new one. It will allow you to spend degrees of success to do things outside of her actions.

Or if you'd like, we can simply turn those into survival points that I can then take from you, it will add to your pool, if you wish, and you can spend that in the form of gear, like maybe some stuff that the Raiders had on them, or however you wish. Can I suggest something? Two turns. I think that I should get the rail driver going.

Like start fueling it up, get it going, and then start getting our shit back in there, and then you guys can take care of this infected so we can get the hell out. So, you know? Can you use your degrees of success to kind of speed run to get over there? You know what?

In fact, since you have, how many did you have, one or two? Two, resolved. I will start contributing towards the rail driver getting up and running. Thank you. Jenny basically hears this thing and her first instinct is what?

Get that boiler going. Let's get this train moving. All right, two, two, two. Yeah. So she's running over to the rail driver and start to get that, yeah? Yeah. Yeah, I'm getting this going.

There's no point in being quiet anymore. Yeah, yeah. How about you, Raythe? Is there any good thing you'd like to resolve your leftover degrees of success with? Yeah, I mean, I'd like to add them to be able to dash towards the hand cart. And try to get on it and survey to see what the most,

is there anything that I think is just super critical on that cart. So then I will 100 allow you to spend that last degree of success in order to reposition yourself. Well, I actually had two. You had two. I had two. I had two.

All right, then even better. I will just take that last degree of success off of you to tell you that if you want to purchase enough survival points in order to loot something from one of the raiders that are bleeding out from the rail cart. Okay, I was actually most interested in what was on the hand card itself. So that's fair. You don't need a degree of success in order to look at a bunch of boxes.

Okay. But this is just something that you can do as you're on. I basically rewarding you with some extra gear. All right. Also, one other question. When I saw these guys starting to pump the hand cart, did it seem faster than I could run, or if I was carrying something?

Oh, if you were carrying something? No, I mean, it takes time to get those things up and moving. Okay. You got to build momentum with a rail cart. Yeah. You know? All right. I may just be doing like a, you know,

when you go, was it supermarket sweeps or when you go shopping or whatever? It might just be one of those. I can tell you for sure, since you ran and repositioned yourself over there, that undoubtedly the lot of what they grabbed was food, water, ammunition, and clearly medical supplies. So there's a large amount of crates, and based on what you're seeing in there, they got a lot on there. You could estimate, presumably, that about a quarter of the total rail driver's capacity is sitting on this hand cart at the moment. Okay. You know?

So you can hear the moans of the two bleeding men as they are basically attempting to sustain anything and you can hear the muttering curses under their breath as they're basically questioning what line of action led them to this result of their life. Where did I go wrong? Okay. They don't look capable of... They don't pose any threat to me. They don't pose any threat to you.

And if anything, the guns that they were holding onto have probably fallen out of their hands. And then any melee weapons they would have been holding on to, they barely have the strength to stand, let him get up and swing a bat at you. So you said I could use a degree of success to try to get some new piece of gear off of them? Yeah, I mean.

Is there anything great that I can look for? So there is a- Medioka. Modified baseball bat, the same way as the one that Asher got hit with, not the exact same one. No, sword beats bat. Sorry. For your one degree of success, I will posit that you can purchase essentially one of them immediately if you want.

I'll grab the gun. Yeah, I mean, no matter who uses it, that's just better. So, uh, narrate it for me, would you? Okay, so I look at the slumped over raider, and he's gurgling on his blood and stuff like that, and I go, don't worry, you're coming with us, but you won't survive. Right.

And you won't need this. And I pull the gun out. So as you're grabbing this gun, you can hear the last the last gasping howl of the creature that is sitting on the top, as you can start to see that it is leaping onto a boxcar that's in front of it. And all of you can see the rail driver in front of you. Now, you could tell that it was unloaded from a non-descript box car earlier. So it's much, much smaller, or only a little bit smaller than one of these larger containers,

as you can see. Now, the rail driver is a custom piece of engineering done by Stern Industries. It is essentially a large armored car that has been modified to burn coal and wood in order to heat steam and drive forward like the locomotives of old. Now, behind that, it is pulling essentially a modified armored motorhome. Really? Yeah. It's one of the ones that's a camper that has two tiers onto it, which even has a small hatch in which you could see it has a killbox up at the very top to be able. to provide a scout advantage point. So as a result, it's fairly top-heavy

as far as the second rail goes. Now, this single armored car has been adjusted. And you know this, Jenny, because it's one of the one things that you asked about. In Asher, this is one of the most difficult things the company has ever done. But the rail driver is an all-terrain vehicle,

which essentially means that with the proper time, effort, and energy, it can be taken off of the tracks in order to be driven on regular terrain. Good. Chee-choo, yeah, that's awesome. All right, but, you know, this all requires new wheels, putting it up, jacking it up, putting it back down. It's not a quick thing.

Sure. Go-go gadget, rail track. Yeah, only. Let's do that when they're not being attacked. Yeah. And everything that you've managed to ask for is loaded in on this, except for, of course, in the motorhome part, you can see that the back door, which is, it looks a lot like a ramp that would come down,

has been opened, and now it's laying on the tracks as the stuff is being unloaded. So Jenny. All right. How are you feeling about taking point on this? I feel great about it. All right. Well, why don't you get everybody's intent for me, and I will shut up.

Unless something happens. Okay, all right. So Jenny, me, I am getting the rail driver up and Running. Ah, okay, who's next? I'm gonna be heading over to the railroad driver and the crow's nest on the top to shoot out of. And reloading on the way.

Okay, great. Oh, Asher, I should probably tell you as well too that you can start to feel your hands beginning to get wet. Yeah. As blood is beginning to pool inside of your very, very new gloves. Nails do that. I'm gonna spin around and shoot at this evil lady.

There we go. All right. All right, a Band-Aid's gonna like tuck and roll and book it. Just run! To the rail driver. To the rail driver. All right, who's nice? A lot of railing that deal right now.

I am going to grab some of the climbing, like, rope and stuff that I have around my waist. Yeah. And I want to try to loop it through what I think look like the most important ammo boxes. I mean, I'm pretty strong. Is it something now I could reasonably move at a decent rate with one crate?

You can move at half speed. That's what I'm gonna do, so cover me. Grabbing a crate. Okay. That's my plan. Great's running with a box. Yeah. Great.

Let's get this going. So I should probably allocate speed dice, because that's important. Jenny, you are rolling three dice to speed. Okay. Asher, you are rolling three dice to reposition, reload, and do shooting. You're Lord.

Ray, you are shooting and you're not out at all, right? Nope. So you're at one speed dice. Band-aid. You're booking it to the rail D. Hardcore, park-core. Hardcore, park-core. If it's just movement, it's just two speed.

Because you're moving a lot. You're moving a lot. And then, unless you want to do something else with it. Like if you want to run all the way to the rail driver, just full speed, then it's two speed dice. Cool, okay, that's fine. That's fair. Ray. Yeah, box time.

Yeah, I'm gonna be giving you three as well. Actually, no, what I'm gonna probably do is, no, you haven't challenged your endurance yet because this was the first box. So. Rees knows a thing or july. Rieces knows a thing or two about great combinations. Chocolate and peanut butter, obviously,

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nothing else is Rises. This is going to be the only box, I'm telling you that right now. You got this, I believe you, man. You can get the next box. Three speed. No, I'm bleeding. All right, everybody. While doing this?

Go for it. And here we go. Okay. Oh, okay, great. So, Ray, go ahead. I spin around to shoot this chick. I have an exploding damage die as well. But I got, like I said, a gazillion degrees of success.

Is that five or gazillion? It's five. Okay. It's five since that's the cap. If he's gonna ask, say gazillion equals the same as five. He gave you the option. All right, so here's your degree of success. How many degrees of success would it take for me to get off that and run either to the rail driver?

You could blow your last one in order to also hop down after this shot. But just hop down, not get anywhere. No, just hop down. His head shot is three damage dice and ignores all defense. So you've been doing it. You'd have your two dice, plus you're exploding. So plus that four would be another three damage dice to roll. And ignore defense, which is don't.

We'll see. Let's just do it. Let's just get rid of her. You're legendary at telling yourself you get bad goals. Yes, no, I can't stand this. This is showing your two powers. I can't stand this chick. So we also have this exploding guy,

so let's add that. So right now it's six, plus five is 11. 11 plus eight is 19. Explain to me it's grizzled fate. Yeah. I turn around and to continue my, yes, to continue my long litany of expletives, I scream out really loud,

not now, motherfucker! And shoot her as she's screaming through the air and get eyes on her right in the head. And she tumbles backwards right off of the second story of that box car. You can actually hear the bones crunch from this far away. Now that's what I'm talking about. That was a 180 nose go.

Yeah? That was awesome. Excellent. And then... I'm still pissed, so I'm jumping off his box. Right. Keep running. Shut up.

Well, then you spend that last one and you can hop down at least down. down, at least down to the bottom of the box car, because you have about two little crates, you can jump down from there. Boing, point, point. My man. Bounce, bounce, too! All right, great.

Bambi, you're up next. I'm hoffin it. Hoofin it. All right, so let's get you right over to where Stingray is. Oh, I would definitely go this way. Oh, okay. Stingray for cover.

Yeah, I didn't realize if, I didn't know if you're gonna go in front of that box car or behind it. In between the cover. All right, well, you can definitely make it to the rail driver with Hazzah! We made it!

High five! Yay! Asher. All right, well yeah, I huff it to the rail driver. Set myself up in the top. It has like the viewing area, right? Yeah. So you drop a clip and pop a new one in.

All right, great. And then you're up in the crow's nest. It is, by the way, a very well-built armored mobile home. Thank you. And the ladder leading up into it was to get to the crow's nest, the kill box, kind of just like the inside of a submarine, there's sleeping quarters on top and sleeping quarters on bottom. So just like a parrot, just kind of like inside of a submarine, there's just a single ladder that kind of takes you up

to the second level, which is where you're going to be in. We stern don't mess around. Right. Rayth, you're up with six next. Okay, now I have one degree of failure. Okay. All right. So you want to tell me what happened? I didn't make it all the way back to the rail driver. That's for sure. And I didn't want to strain myself. Yeah. So I put down the box, the crate that I'm carrying, and I get down behind it, and I sort of crouched so I can see over it and still see what's happening, but I didn't make it as far as I wanted. So let's say you got, you got halfway there. Okay. Instead. All right. Can I move it? Yeah. You want to make it over there?

But you did pick up a gun. I did. So I'm right here. The box is down with you. Can I grab one of these bars? Oh, these already glued down. Okay. You knock down the potty's. Yeah, are bleeding bandits. So, all right. The real drivers. And as, as you can. And as you can. And as by the way, like here? Yeah, so, Raith, as you're leaving, you can actually hear one of the men who is alive, but barely thus, is actually,

with every ounce of his strength, is yelling to you like, don't leave me here, don't let them take me. No. That's gonna be a hard no for me, dog. Because of my sentry getting knocked away, I'm gonna actually spend another risk point to keep this encounter moving. And normally I'd have to die roll.

Actually, I still get to make a die roll. I forget I always get to make a die roll. Nope. Okay. So I'll spend some risk. May I ask how many risks you have pooled right now? 19. 19.

19 risk. Okay. 19 on the board. I see. So I'm going to, that's a lot of risk. Yeah, no kidding. Bye, Band-Aid. Oh boy, she's back.

Oh yeah, I'm in the railroad. I just wanted to get you. I'm sorry, I love you. You're my favorite. I made it worse. You don't want the medic? All right. No, trust me, I need him right now.

I'm dripping. Why don't you just lick your own wounds? All right. So you can start to hear them. As they start just coming out through various places all around box cars from different parts of the railway. And yeah, we're at the top of the next round. We're not getting that stuff. Intense.

Intent. From my little crow's nest here, I can see Rath having put down the box. Yes. And I'm calling on to Martinle, pick up the fucking box! But he's near Stingray now. Yeah, I can grab the box. Both of you pick up the fucking box! And I left the ramp down on purpose, hoping you guys would get a box in here. So my intent is to stay where I am and wait until the infested gift here. How incredibly noble of you? Excellent. Thank you. So one speed dice for that. I'm fortified. This guy, 12 years old, already giving orders.

Stingray. And I'm right by race. Yeah, you're actually next to where the boxes. You jumped down as he was setting it down. And we're about halfway. Hi, Hen. About halfway. All right.

Yeah, I'm going to pick it up and get going. Okay, Band-Aid. So I've made it into the rail driver. Yeah, you're in. I want to call Top Bunk. Oh, Band-Dade. Priorities. No, I want to help prepping it, because I'm with Jenny.

Jenny, both of you will basically contribute towards the engineering check that you're both looking for. You can use his degree of success. Wait, what is engineering? It's expert. With her help though. A morally assist. You've got this.

Yay! To be fair, it's when he's assisting, when you're assisting, especially since this kind of basic action for helping Gary Wood and things like that, I'll allow you to roll and I, It won't count the degrees of failure against you. Just the degrees of success. Unless you get a catastrophe, then that's different.

So that's what, perception and willpower together. Yeah. Oh, perception bonus and empathy. So remember, it would probably be a pretty low number. Yeah. So then Jenny, you're rolling, but you're still on that three speed. I already rolled labor from your last roll as well too. So I just did it now, so that was fun.

So you're starting to basically do the systems check. Yeah. That is necessary. Yeah. And you're starting to heat. We're throwing fuel in the firebox. Throwing fuel in the firebox. Yeah, so we're getting it moving. So, and you are, and you're having Band-Aid, grab fire,

firewood, put it inside of there as you're starting to light it and get heated up. Can I do like a lift pole roll instead? Yeah, if you're just loading firewood. I'm not really engineering anything. I'm just doing whatever she tells me. Then actually that's a better thing. Thank you for providing a great alternative. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Teamwork. Oh, speaking of which, this is probably a great time for me to introduce a new rule that will help you if you want to get into it. Okay, fine. We explained a little bit of some of the basics in the last episode, but this episode, I'm introducing competence points.

And everybody starts with two competence points in order for the beginning of this session. And it's essentially, if you feel you are competent in this thing, you may spend the competence points to basically just get a free degree of success or negate a degree of failure. All right, you're essentially saying, hey, I'm sticking to the plan,

I'm very competent in what I'm doing, you're not necessarily taking any risky action. So something like this could be a good use of a competent point because you're, like you said, you're not engineering anything, you're just doing what she tells you too. So, great. You have to declare that before you,

no, I'd have to be after to negate failure. Yeah, you can spend a competence point after your role if you wish. When do we get those points back? At the beginning of every session. Oh, okay. And if you don't use them by the end of the session, I will instead give you survival points

for not using them. Okay, roll over a minute. Yep, roll. So if you do not use competence points, they don't just go away, they turn into survival points by the end of the session. Cool, all right. And so we're on one speed roll.

Might as well, yeah, let's get you both on three because it's still a complicated action what you're doing. Oh, we just get a three. Three speed dice. And then skill as well. Yep, your skill, especially. Great, does everyone have got their speed and their dice? Yeah. Let's roll it.

Oh, okay. I got a one. I got a one. I got a four. You gotta start that train. Fire it up. What? I'm actually good at engineering.

I'm so proud of me! All right. Holy crap, did you roll under your engineering? I did. Oh my god. Amazing. I'm an engineer now. I'm an engineer now.

All right. Let's start the speed. Asher, what's your speed? I got three. Three. All right. Oh, what did we? I got one or ten. We are a five. You're a five.

Could be a lot worse. All right. And then how about the engineering duo? Speed. Ten. Ten. Band-aid plus Jenny. Pretty solid.

So Asher, you sit in your warlords box yelling orders. Okay. That's me. That's so you. Yeah. As a wraith and stingray, how did you do? Not, well. That is, let's see.

How many? What was it? Lift pull. Lift pole. Four degrees of failure. So can I use my competency points to put those away? Yeah, you can. But that's my check, he didn't.

I have a 49 lift pole and I rolled a 50. So it's zero failure. So you just have to resolve hers then. But can I use my confidence? You can burn two competence points to just negate the failure on two of those. Yeah, because four is way too much. Something horrible is about to happen.

Right. So let's get rid of those. So you're fairly competent and carrying boxes. Yes. Yes. This is one of those things like when you move a couch. No, no, no, but I'll tell what happened. And you have to decide who walks backwards. Yeah, yeah, no.

I jumped down, I jumped down with my rifle. We had a weird, like, dancey, dancing moment. He put it down, I kind of, we just fumbled and we did an, I Love Lucy, We said it did a Lucille ball mess. Yes. So I finally end up grabbing the box, but I'm way slow, and by the time I get it up, I...

It's also way heavier than both of you really imagined, even with both of you kind of getting into it. So we're gonna say with those, and you didn't make it to the rail driver. Oh, hell no. I told you it's heavy, that's why I put it down. That's quite all right. And the 98-pounder is coming to help me. You wanted to help.

I did want to help. I'm right here. Why are there? So you make it about another quarter of a way to the house. the rail driver putting you to the last quarter right before you're about to load the box. Thank you. Thanks for fixing us from on high. At this point.

You're welcome. Jenny and Band-Aid. How well did you do as far as rolls go? Very well. Yes, same. Well, then grab your degrees of success and degrees of failure. I'm going to move our infected. Yep.

And these infected minis are courtesy of Kuhmini or not from Zombicide. Oh, there's infected on there. Oh my god. I can't see much from the... I can't see much from the box. What's in the box? They are so fast. Oh, they're very fast.

Oh my goodness, that's too much. Holy cow. You watch as you can hear the boilers start to turn and you can start to feel the heat as the steam is starting to rise from the main spout in the front of this converted armor car through the small whispering parts of the smoke you can actually see. It's one of the creatures just leaps up and you can... and you can hear metal screech as it rakes its claws across the bottom of the box car.

And you can see it just for a moment as it lands right onto the top. You maybe had a shot for a brief glimpse of a moment, but just as quickly it's gone as it finishes its arc down onto the bottom of the box car. We can begin this intent round again. Do you guys have three and then three respectively? Yeah. All right, I'm going to roll. How would you like to spend these? Would you want to contribute it all towards getting it?

all towards getting the rail driver running. Just clarifying. I appreciate that. I appreciate it. Yeah. So that is. We have one job. Correct.

I wouldn't mind, yeah. Jenny, it's almost like if you were trained for this explicitly. So in the same way that you, you, it's almost like a second home to you as you start twisting all of the knobs, throwing the fire in, and that thing just starts burning as if someone tossed kerosene on it,

which maybe you did. in order to get that thing up and moving. But no matter what, you can actually start to feel the engine start to pull against its own brakes a little bit as the momentum is starting to build up and the steam is starting to gain purchase to where the point of, at some point, you feel like you could probably get a little bit of movement

if you started to adjust the speed on the rail driver. I do. Okay, so you're going slow or you're going full? We're going slow. I want to roll out slow and you guys just get in. Just get in. So she pulls the main speed lever in order to break it into a slow crawl,

and you guys start to feel, Asher, you start to feel as this thing, chung chung chung, chung, as it starts to feel as the large connecting pinions start to move the wheels as it begins making a slow crawl along the rails. You guys are so close with the box, you're so close with the box.

All right, yeah, intent. finish in this box situation. All right. Yeah. Can we have a quick word before we declare intent? Yeah, yeah, bring her. I can be like, do you want to carry a knife fight, or we both carry, or we both fight?

Woof, we're stronger. I look and see you don't have any melee weapons, like, maybe not both fights. I do. I have my cookery. I look impressed. Let's just get on this thing. All right.

All right. All right, so you're both booking it for the rail driver. Oh, you don't want to try to carry this box? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, with the box. I think we're gonna give it another shot of carrying the box. I'm up here just freaking out. Dude, no, no, we're just running with the box. Running with the box.

You two can do something else or you want, but the rail driver's up and moving at this point. I'm gonna move back towards the ramp. I'm gonna take out my pistol and I'm gonna aim it for backup. Because I see them coming. I see. If anything comes close to them, I'm gonna try. Do you want to hold with a trigger? Do you want to hold with a trigger with composure?

Sure, yeah. All right, roll composure now. There's a reaction. Oh, all right, so you pull, oh, four degrees. Okay, so you pull your pistol out to kind of look at it, but you are finding yourself not, you're just kind of like watching them, and you're not watching around you. Sure, sure, sure. At all.

I'm just like, come on, come on, come on, come on. Yeah, you're more excited in the outcome of this than you are looking for potential targets. Technically, I don't see the infected anyway, so I don't know that they are, where the infected. So because I broke my composure, I don't roll. No, am I? It's basically just means you don't get the benefit of being able to hold on the next round.

Oh, okay. Since it wasn't an absolute catastrophe, I'm not necessarily penalizing. It's very close. Cool. But at this case, essentially, your actions lost for this round, all right. But you had your gun out, so great.

Good. So roll, roll, but then Jenny, how about you? I'm just slowly open. opening that throttle, we're just like increasing our speed. I'm giving you guys enough time to hop on, but like as soon as you're on. Exha-on. Got it.

All right, great. Then let's go. Speeds what's gonna be the most important here. Oh my god, yes. Great, well then let's resolve this relatively quick round. Asher, how'd you do? Four degrees up. Four degrees up.

Thank God. All right, so at this point, yeah, you're tall enough that you can definitely get a shot off on it. So, barely, right in there. Cool. So yeah, I want to put a lot of focus down into that guy. Okay. Which one? The red shirt or the orange shirt? Orange shirt is my target, yeah, cool. So right now, we're gonna burn two

to roll two more damage die. It's five, that's six so far. Yes, thank you. Are they both exploding? No, just one. Just one. So that's two, so that was what, six, seven, eight? Thirteen.

Thirteen. 16 damage total to orange. 16? To orange, yeah. All right, so you pop a couple rounds into it, and you watch as it like stumbles and drops, you dropped it, you didn't kill it, but you watches it kind of like stumbles down

and picks itself up a little bit, enough to just give you the dirtiest look on the planet before you watch as the rail driver continues to push off. But it is not dead, but it is not all. operable at this moment. Oh, I made the infected mad. You heard his feelings. I think it's down, is it down off the bus card?

It didn't fall off. He shot and just kind of scrambled forward into the car. So you definitely, you definitely did something to it. Now, the rest are going to, so you've made it, since of the slow crawl, you probably cleared about five, maybe 10 feet at this stage. And these guys are, ah. They got leap?

Yeah, they're leaping. They're leaping, so this one will come around this way. Easy how nature do that. This one will come around this way. And you'll wisely watch us. So, Mandi, as you're watching both Stingray and Ray kind of picking up the box, you watch as two of them just around the corner, or I should probably do it

from your perspective, it's just, around the corner of the box car and you can see them as they almost look like they're in a full sprint. As you can see some of their rag and clothes. Towards them or as us. Straight towards these two. As you can see, some of their ragged cloth

is whipping right behind them in like a full breeze. As you can see, they're like cloudy, milk white eyes. And some of their long, especially on the female, they're this long, ragged, dirty hair is they're just, as they just start running straight towards Raith and Stingray. So, Raith and Stingray, how'd you do? Two degrees of failure?

Oh no. I have, let's see, I think it's one degree of success here. Okay. Yeah. All right, so how would you like to resolve your degree of success? And how would you like to resolve your degrees of failure, Stingray? Are you out of competence? I used them on the last one.

You're fighting, right? And he's lifty? You know what? I'm gonna, but they're both lifting right now. How about I spend one point in my own competence, and then with my successes it'll cancel out yours, and we'll basically just say, because I'm probably taller than you, right?

That's probably been another reason we've had this problem carrying this box, right? You just grab it on your own. So I just kind of lean into it. Right. And she's still attached. You know, just dangling on it. Right.

And you know. So as this thing is starting to move, you're basically cursing Jenny under your breath because this thing's getting farther away as you are running towards it. As you pick up this box and just with a, just a howl of adrenaline and just partial rage. You're just, just baked this box and then heft it

straight into the back of the rail driver. And you hear, kum, kukum, kukum, kum, into the back, almost knocking over. In the process, as now both you and Stingray basically just need to get on the boat, as they say. We're not sightseeing here, we're done. So this next role determines that? This, essentially, I'm just gonna ask for it,

endurance check for both you and Stingray's. You guys are going full board in order to make it in there, all right? You got this. No, you got this. You're good, you're good. So as Stingray and Wraiths start barreling down the side of the rail line that continue to run. Do you need to re-roll that one? No, no. You're good.

You're good. You did it, then. All right. And you run. How well did you run, you two? We ran great. Yay! You made a track to you. I run with my arms out like this. Oh my god.

Into the rail driver. Just right up the rail. So you got one degree. One degree of success. One degree of success. I got four degrees of success. All right. They're running just as fast.

It's not faster than the rail driver at this stage. So, but that thing's gaining speed. We have a close call and I want to hear how it happened. Okay. So after I've hucked the box, I actually end up running faster than you and I get on first. Clearly. So I run up the ramp in my ninja run. And then I skid to a stop and I turn around

and you're almost on the ramp too. I'm almost on the ramp. I go, see you're not the best at everything. Never said I was. Give me a fucking hand. And you pull her up as she lines up and I shut the door. Bandit pulls the lever up as you watch it. Kukum! Kukum!

As the rail driver is completely locked and secured. And you can hear the poohm of a couple of the creatures just jumping onto the side of the road. of the rail driver and then bouncing off and skittling along the side. It's a new pay job. As this thing just continues to gain more and more speed, shish-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-shon, shush-shu-sh-sh-sh-.

Now, you cleared the St. Louis train station. You're basically taking this thing at what speed, Jenny? How far is this thing coming up? Man, how fast can we go? So, a little information about the rail driver. It has a max speed of 55 miles per hour. Oh, okay. But it requires coal to get to that level.

That's max on wood is about 35. Okay, so we're going about 35. Yes, 35 is about the max that you can get onto this thing without burning any additional coal. Gotcha. But that's gonna get the thing up to a pretty reasonable speed on rails at this stage. So, Jenny, as you're barreling this rail driver

along a 35 miles an hour, you are clearly outpacing the infected who are running behind you. you at this stage. And your brain reminds you that, yes, well, this thing absolutely has a top speed of 35 miles an hour when running on wood, does not mean it as a safe speed. So you're going pretty fast in this thing and you can already start to feel the improvised armored car starting to rattle a little bit. Okay. I slow down. Nice. Speed. To any particular speed?

Let's take it to like 28. Okay. Yeah. 28. All right. So that's a very specific number. Also divisible by seven, I appreciate the math. Wow. Fair enough. She's a train expert, not you. Let her decide what speed reduce it. And Asher, I believe you're recalling to me a little earlier that you wanted to come down.

Yes, I want to have a moment. Well, take it away. So as we exit the station, I come down from the little crow's nest here. As you come down immediately, sit down. I push you aside, physically. I get in Jenny's face and say, what the fuck was that? This is supposed to be a crack team. We almost got steamrolled in there. As I pull off my gloves, which sop to the floor.

Blood pools out from them. Oh, God. All right, I start taking out bandages. All right, we had no idea how many infected there were, and they kept coming, okay? Not to mention, asshole, who was the one who let on that we were there when he walked around and cleared his fucking throat.

Was that, did I teach you that in Stove 101? Don't get on her. You've got me there. I disinfect your wounds without any ceremony. You were also the first to start shooting. Yeah, maybe don't do that. How do you think they heard us? How do you think he's infected or attracted?

What do you think was our alternative? Maybe talk to them. They could have been, we're all smugglers here. It could have been reached with. We spoke to them. We spoke to them. We spoke to them. We spoke to them.

We spoke to them. We spoke to them. I sneak up and shoot them with my arrow, which is quiet. You want to kill them all with your bow? Was that gonna? Is that how you had that planned out? You got a problem with this team. You're welcome to do this all by yourself. This is who you got.

You want the money. Come on. I can get money plenty of ways, pretty boy. I overheard your conversation back in town. You're about the money, too, friend. I'm about a lot more than money. This whole mission is about a lot more than money. I'm not listening to this.

I'm going up to the crow's nest. You don't know what you're doing out here. We do, all right, so sit down, get bandaged up, and let's just drive this thing, okay? Do you want to do a inventory of what is still on the rail driver and what isn't? Let me fix you up first. I mean, someone else can.

I got an 80, so, but I still got, it's zero failure, zero success. So can I like take a 10 and do it again? So what's probably gonna happen at this stage it's just going to take time. Sure. Like at this point, you're- That's fine. I'm probably not putting effort into healing quickly anyway,

because you're an ashball. Or maybe he's leaving around too much and chewing people out. Do you want to describe to me how you get him going? Initially, I was just haphazardly disinfecting the wounds and kind of wrapping them and letting it kind of bleed through the bandages. And as time has passed it let it kind of clot a bit

and then reapply the bandages. And that's all that it needed. But you didn't have to be a jerk. everything no how long has it been now that we've been working on this uh it's been about 45 minutes or so okay you're right if we're all here I'm sorry that was a very tense situation for me obviously you're hilarious obviously this is my first time in the frontier what I'm trying here man okay sorry sorry I respect the experience you all have and obviously you were

hired for a reason. I want to make sure that we do keep our coordination tight going forward and I recognize my part in this so I'm sorry let's keep the mission going and hopefully not have any more bumps in the road and now's speaking of bumps in the road don't get that as you begin to consistently keep this thing at a constant 28 miles an hour maybe 25 Maybe 20. As you keep this thing at an average 25 miles an hour, you start to see, without a lot of difficulty ahead,

at least about half a mile, maybe a mile down. You can actually see, what's the best way to describe this. In the rural parts of St. Louis, there are a couple of areas in which it demanded a bridge go over the rail line versus make a traditional crossroad, probably in order to keep congestion down. At this point though, you're far enough away

from the major city limits of St. Louis, where a huge part of nature has started to come in and take over. In fact, a large portion of this 45-minute drive while Asher was getting patched up. Slowly, the rubble and gray and brown that is part of the kill zone of St. Louis is starting to slowly transition into a large green, fertile, overgrown area.

While this is going on, can I borrow your gloves? Sure, why? Cool. Can I spend some survival points to see if we have any glass flasks in supplies? You can cash that out if you want. In fact, this is probably a great opportunity to kind of tell you what you have. They already been off, you're pulling on the floor. I put it back on after the bandaging. Don't do that. I did the whole motion.

You did not do that. Bad patience. Bad patience. I took them out. Gross. I'll say I can get about three. free flasks. Great.

Because it's with stoppers. Yeah. So I want to take the gloves and kind of ring them out into the flasks and then dilute it with some of the water from my own personal canteen and stopper them. Oh, great. Well played. Stinky sticks. Stink bombs.

Yep. Yep, yep. I don't have to explain anything to you. Here's your stinky stick. Thank you. Very single-minded. Great. All right, well, that's been pulled out. And getting back to the landscape at hand, you can

You can see these large overgrown ferns, as well as these young saplings who are beginning to burst out from various parts of residential area. What biome would you call this? We're definitely still in the plainslands. Like it's still flat, it's still urban, it still has a lot, because you're passing by

old residential houses. And you can see these burnt out or overgrown or moss-ridden buildings. A lot of them look like they've had literally moss painted on them. So there's partly any wooded old finish left. And if not, some of them are so crumpled and dry that you can see that maybe part of a brush fire or something else, they've just been burnt down years and years ago.

Rath is in the crow's nest with you, and you can see that he looks much more relaxed. He's chewing on a piece of rabbit jerky and just sort of inhaling the fresh nature. Oh, I almost forgot. I found this on one of our friends. friends. Oh. Oh, the gun, the pistol. I pull out this pistol. Excellent. So for inventory-wise, how are we doing on fuel? Did they take anything? Yeah, curious about fuel, water. No one was taken. Okay. Food and water, some was taken. Absolutely. So you originally had enough to take care of you for three weeks, all three of you for three weeks. Now there's a little less than that. Having recovered the box, you need one? We didn't end up losing a lot. You lost only a little

You lost a little less than a third. Of mostly food and water? Of just supplies inside of the rail driver. All of your kind of more elite items that you requested, like the mountain bikes, the ham radio, and the satellite phone batteries, those are still in there. You can still pay to get them out. Sure.

So if you want to... I remember that. I was proud of that way. Right. That was her idea. We're totally doing BMX Bandits at some point. Bam! But at this point, I will tell you that you've definitely gone through the St. Louis Station,

and it's the only main point of interest you can actually see from the rail line is there is the Washington University Tyson Research Area, which is very much part of taken over by the woodlands in that area. And you can actually see a theme park, an old rusted theme park on the right side of the road. And it's amazing that they're still standing after decades, but you can actually see a large portion of them have that old man's beard that's coming down of the moss. And so a lot of the old parts of the roller coaster sometimes look like large frowning faces

with long beards dangling down from it. So it's the one thing that does break the skyline up in a vast waff of flat. flat with high, almost waist-high grass being punctuated by the occasional young sapling, which the ones that are close enough to the rail driver are just summarily getting ripped out of their roots or branches snapped even at the modest 25 miles an hour that you're traveling. I look at Asher as we're going by the amusement park and I say, don't get excited, kid, we're not stopping.

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a large plywood sheet laid up along the entire front of the tunnel. And you can see that has been made up of large pieces of plywood reinforced by a couple of two by fours. And it just seems to be a wooden wall that's been tacked on to the old stone archer way that is in the middle of your rail line. That's not an obstacle. Someone or something is living in there.

Yeah, may I suggest we stop ahead, well ahead? Absolutely. Because if we can take that down, we'll need to get going through there at speed. Yeah. And also, we should probably do a spot listen just to see if we can hear anything that's going on there. We can pop out and get closer to it and have a listen, right? Right. So as you stop the rail driver, how far away from the structure would you like to do so?

I try and stop as safely and as quickly as possible. As soon as we see it. Yeah. All right. So as you start to slow the engine down, it coasts pretty close. Yeah, giving yourself like a tchun-dun lurch. As you guys stop, I'm gonna guess about 250,

maybe 300 feet. Oh, okay, that's not bad at all. Before, I mean, you had a pretty straight shot as far as looking at it goes. And as soon as you see the bridge and into, it only takes about 50 or 60 or so feet to slow. down at that speed. Do we all want to go have a look at this? Yeah. I'm going for sure. All right, so who's staying in the rail driver? Who's going? I want to go and be sneaky.

You go be sneaky. I'll be in the crows nest. I'm gonna walk him first. Okay. Keeping an eye out. Great. Keep an eye on this guy. All right, so the four of you and Stingray staying in the tower. I'm bringing like we have like axes and stuff or like clearing brush. All right, well that's another 15 survival points to pull from the rail driver. Would you like to get the axe? Yes, I Go grab it. It's a big one, right? It's a big one.

Yeah. Here's an air. Oh my goodness. Awesome. Now that's an axe. So that'll help here. And here's the card for it. So Band-Aid on your way back, you're welcome to take that.

As Rayth and Band-Aid approach with a... I'm up there to Asher. And Asher, but Rayth and Band-Aid are carrying with crowbars and axes along the way as you're walking forward. You can start to see this plywood wall has a little bit of splash of color on it. You can start to see that they may be actually done a little bit in order to try to make it blend with the countryside and matching parts of the arched,

which is also covered in vinery and greenery as well. And as you start walking closer and closer to it, you hear the large, ka-c-c-cow of a rifle shot, as dust, phew! as dust and rocks kind of exploded right next to you. Yes. All of you hit the deck. As soon as I hear that, I'm locked and loaded.

So you're looking through it. And watching, trying to see what's happening, I see my scope. A couple of slits, but here's the thing, the scoped rifle that you have. A lot of the hunting rifle that you have actually doesn't have a full-blown, like sniper rifle scope on it.

So you're mostly using the naked eye with a little bit of a magnification in order to go through there. You can see the black slits, and you can actually see a small rifle barrel pointing out through, but that's about as much as you can see. So right now, how close are we to the actual wooden wall itself? So you stopped at about 300 feet, if I said correctly. You'd walk about 50 to maybe another

hundred feet before that went down, so let's call it 200 feet from the opening. It's a long, it's a long rifle. And we have like some tree cover, are there the plants? No, you're literally right in the middle of the rails. You're walking down the track. We have the rails to either side. Do we have trees, what's the topography? It's mostly waist-high, up to waste-high amount of grass and shrubbery with a couple of young saplings, but most of it's just grass cover. Okay, yeah, I'm just going to take a dive with long grass. It's pretty like parts of it are really tall.

Yeah, I'm just diving straight into that. Me too. Let's dive. All right, diving, I'm just going down. All right. On the rails? No, in the grass. Oh, okay.

Yeah, diving. Dive, okay. Oh, hey Jenny. You're here also. So that's all four. All four of you dive into the grass, you can hear amongst the sides, because at that point after the crack went off,

you heard, you just saw birds, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-d-d-d-d as they kind of like came out from all different parts of the high grass and silence kind of permeates after that single rifle shot went off. Did we all dive into the same grass? I think so. Where are we on either side maybe? Do we have to, you want to roll for that?

We were like, to see like how fanatic we were? How coordinated were we in a- Oh, and actually at this point, let's just make a single will save for all of you. Yeah, all of you make a will. Just a will check, check against your will, this essentially. For everyone?

Oh, right, yikes. For everyone. Just see how coercive you were on this. Oh, damn. Six to one. Yeah, I had a third. We don't have to worry about degrees of success. This is just a success or failure kind of situation.

Failure. Failure. So you all found different places. Sure. Great. You scattered. You scattered like roaches. And I'm too far away to really,

communicate with y'all, but I can shoot. Yeah, you can see the barrel pointing out, but you, at this point, after the birds, it's just silence this moment. No, was it anybody, I had one point over, I mean, I didn't have any degrees of failure, but I was just at zero. Yeah, just at zero.

You're good, okay. Still fine, still clear, nothing bad happened. All right. You did, you're all, it's clear where you, I will say it is very clear where you disturb the grass. So even though you have cover, it's not like you disappeared into the bruce.

It's very clear where you flatten the grass. Real quick too, I want to assess, from what I remember where the shot landed, it seemed like a warning shot, not like I tried to kill you, but I missed shot. Do you want to call that out? I sure do. What do you want to say?

There is something like, I guess Spock listen. Are you just wanting to yell at him? No, no, I want to determine from where the shot was. Oh, I see. Let me, um, it, Band-Aid. Bandit. Yeah. It's abundantly clear that with a shot that far away and that wide and how close he was, but

still missed you, that was clearly a warning shot. Yeah. Yeah. Now, no one's said anything yet, but. So I'd like to begin inching to where I believe Raith had landed. Okay. Yeah. And work my way over to him.

All right, so you kind of army crawl, and you can watch us the grass. Yeah. Yeah. Like switches around. Can I roll for stealth? Can I have my, I just want my gun trained on that one? Absolutely. You tell me when you want to shoot if you want to shoot ever.

May I roll for Sneaky to disturb less grass? Be less obvious? I think at this point, yes you can. So by all means, go for it. Yours, I always allow you. Well. Are these yours? Those are mine you.

I want lots of room. Yeah, enjoy it. Oh, sneaky, sneaky. Yeah, wow, actually. Super sneaky. I got three degrees of success. Okay, yeah. So how would you like to tell your story?

Okay, so I'm gonna say I did not disturb the grass. I'm inching along. Yeah. And I find ways to weave between stalks. Yes. To where the grass is not too dense, that you're going to make a mess of it wherever you go. Right.

I carve a path through it without making too much disturbance. Right. I tracked down wraith. Right. And I meet up with him. Yeah. And should I spend one more to say that I found him successfully?

Yeah. Okay. Great. One more. Okay. You can hold onto it. We found each other now. Yeah. Aw.

What's up, buddy? I know. Oh, hi, Asher. Yeah. We're just laying in the grass. I'm just sitting there. I'm just kind of sitting there on my back, just kind of waiting.

Right. And Asher comes upon you. Yeah. Laying in the grass with your arms folded. I'm looking relaxed. Yeah. Okay, so together, I'm asking you now. Quietly, I'm not going to call. What did you see?

All I know is that it's completely boarded up from top to bottom, this is wood. Did you see any other way inside besides that? No friend. That's not. And that is all we spotted, right? It's a bridge and- Yeah, it's still about 200 feet away.

The fine details of the patched-up tunnel are still pretty vague at this point. Okay. I think we should try and just regroup at the very least. We don't have to storm the palace, but we should find our up. other teammates here. I want to do a listen check for no reason.

For no reason. As long as you're specified, it's for no reason. I also have very high survival, so can I imitate a specific bird call that these two would recognize? Oh, they've done missions. Yeah, they won't work together. Okay, I will allow you to do that if you spend one justalt point in order to make a justalt skill out of it.

Justalt is the thing that you guys have in order to bring practical experience. So you're justalt. is a practical experience that you bring into the world. So I'll actually really think that's awesome. So we're gonna make a gestalt skill out of it. You now have a bird call between your friends. The call of the raven.

And the cool thing is, if I can hear that from the crow's nest, I know they're fine. Or at least he's fine. Mostly fine. At least he's fine. So, and you probably can. It's a pretty distinct sound. It's not a super uncommon bird,

but like you guys have heard me do it a specific way. You're not that good at it that I think you're a bird. You all know it. Yeah, it's an agreed upon signal. Can I run downstairs and grab binoculars to get a better sense of what's going on? Oh, absolutely. Would you like to basically spend 10 survival points out here

to get binoculars? Okay, we're going to spend 10. So now you've got binocs. So I got that and my scope. So Ray, everybody knows you're there. No problems. So we're hoping for a response so we can pinpoint where they are.

My response is to sneak over to where the call came from. Okay, great. So, what is that? Stealth. Yeah, this is still stealth. If you want to undisturbed the grass. If you just want to go for it, you can go for it. Try, at least to be sneaky.

Yeah, I'd rather not give us away. Oh, nice try. You have to get up and run across the rails. Oh, yeah, because I went to the other side. Right, how many degrees of failure was it? Three. Mm-hmm. Okay, so as you're running, you hear aloud,

Kakao! As you see more in front of you, it's than anything, you just watch as more dirt spray. And you actually hear at this point someone yelling from very, very far off. It's like, go home. I'm just gonna stand there and raise my hands. In the middle?

In the middle of the railway? Well, yeah. Okay. As soon as the shot hits. All right, and that's, you're there, hands up. So you guys all hear this as well too. I'd like to call out to this guy. Okay.

All right. So from my position, because at this distance, sound will not totally give me away in terms of where I am. But I'd like to yell out, we're just trying to get through the rail. We don't care about your stuff. The rail is in the middle of our stuff. Could you move it?

What are you doing out here? And you can still through your binoculars, Ray. You can clearly see that this man has not poked his head out. Right, right, it's just the rifle. You can clearly still see the right. rifle barrel is through the peephole and that sit at this stage. We have no reason to move.

This is our home. We're willing to trade. I'd like to do a command diplomacy check. Sounds like you're bartering, you're wanting to command. So it's about the same time. So who's, you're both going to yell at somebody. We're willing to trade and then what do you want to say? I'd like to make the case that we are,

you want me to tell them? Yeah. Okay. We're establishing a new supply line to Livingston. It's very important that we get through. Please, we don't care about your stuff. We don't want to hurt you. Just let us go.

Let us go through. We will leave you guys alone. So, Asher, you drop off your handgun with Wraith as you walk over to the front and you can actually see as you get closer. Hands are up. Hands are up. And you watch is like there is actually a, because this thing is, is several stories tall, right?

So about eight feet-ish up or so, you can actually watch as like a wooden plank, like kind of, one of the ones that's part of the boarded up, just kind of like comes down on chains and kind of like a perch, and you watch as like a spry-looking Asian man kind of like stips some stuff up and kind of crawls up to the corner of the pork and goes,

What's your name? Asher Emerson Stern III. All right, Asher Emerson Stern the Third. That's a fucking Yankee. Go. You're not coming through the home. Like, do you see that we've built a little place here? I do. It's quite nice.

I'd like to make you guys an offer. Do you want to talk to the boss, huh? Yeah, I'd like to. All right. Hey, why don't you have your friends come over here? Because I really don't think Jimmy wants to put any holes in anybody today. That would be nice. Could they wait in the rail driver instead?

No. Why don't you have them all come inside? I think we'll all be much, much happier if we can see all of you. Okay, fine. And there is five of you, right? We okay with that? Yeah.

Okay. Shut your mouth, Asher. We're all coming. Yeah, shut your mouth, Asher. I like him. Probability, okay? Yeah, it sounds great. All right, great.

So as the four of you kind of come out from various parts of the bushes. I've just been the whole time. And walking down the rail line, you see is this, this guy kind of like hops down onto the side of the ledges in like a single motion and like drops down as the plywoods, boom, as he like drops down the six or so feet to the bottom to where he ran.

And like, all right, you watch this, he checks his keys a little bit, rustles and grabs a large kind of a simple padlock key. And he goes over and starts unlocking various parts of the doors from the outside. With the same key? No, with different keys. On a ring. On a ring.

So he starts taking a bunch of individual keys and starts unlocking all the various padlocks as he drops it and swings the metal door. Open. You can see that the hinges are pretty reinforced against the concrete and stonework that is inside of the archway that it's on top of. But on the other side of it, it's just pitch black, except for like a small. orange glow kind of permeating from it. And he goes, welcome to Archtown. Thank you. And I'm gonna turn around.

Are you still at the crows nest? I'm up there and I got eyes on you guys and I got. I'm just gonna be like. Oh, he. Yeah, so he, if you haven't been coming out, it goes, wait, wait, wait. Your girl in the tower too. Yeah, they know you're in there.

All right. All right. Here I come. All right. So by the time Ray gets up to this door into Archtown, so to speak, you can see a large, burly mountain man kind of a guy with a plaid lumberjack kind of tone and just a kilt with long boots that come up to his knees.

As well as simply a couple of like, you can see that he just took metal and just like wrapped it around his arms and then just laced it with a bunch of leather. I like this guy. And you can actually see that he's got a metal quaff around his neck as well too as he comes and goes, All right, so who do I talk to here?

That would be me. Yeah, just get it out. That's great. All right, so who am I really talking to here? Yeah, I know, this is my mission. This is my expedition. All right, all right, well, look, no guns inside. So Terry here will take all of your side arms and your

Don't worry, no one's gonna shoot you here, all right? But we don't allow any projectile weapons inside of the town. It's a infrastructure's bad. It's also dark, really dark. I'm liking this place more and more. He checks out, yeah. So, leave your stuff with Terry, then you can come and suck. I'm already out, I don't have anything, so.

Right, right. So as this bear of a man escorts you, essentially inside this town, you can see that it is a very, pretty small community for what is called Archtown. So as you all kind of come into this dark, ominous abode, it looks a lot like if you had an upper class version of some kind of underground shanty, like where homeless people would have lived

on the side of the freeways during the old era, but it has been plused up a lot. And it's made to look as homey and decorative as something like that can be. A lot of the more fixed structures seem to just be two by fours that have been pulled up, not even posted into the ground, but they're just leaning up. And the most fixed structures are actually ones that are pinned into the wall of the arch. And since it's not a huge amount of space, you can see that the community probably houses 10, 15 people tops. So it's really sparse.

And you can kind of get it all pretty much in a glance. But, again, this giant bear of a dude comes in. Yeah, this is just where we all collect for the night. We've got a few other people up and around. But, all right, boss man. Why don't you step into my office, and let's talk about your deal? Sure. All right.

So this guy kind of escorts you up into the main room, leaving you four essentially to go explore Archtown a little bit. Okay. Also, I want to take a look around and see if there's any way we can actually get a train through without destroying stuff. Like maybe there's a compromise. Maybe I could help design a new door that opens up for the supply line or something. Yeah, well we can, as you're looking across and kind of gathering all of this assessment,

you can see that a lot of the structures that are on the rail line, I mean it's not very comfortable. So even there's actually some shanties or some parts of the town that are just as wide as the rail. So there's like a wall on one side and one on the other side, and they've used it a little bit to prep it up. But the one thing that does bother you a little bit is you can actually see where the crossbeams have been pulled out, and it's just now rail. And you can see where they clearly dug out

some of the underlying kind of loose gravel that's usually laid out for when rail track is put down, has been dug out so they can pull these pieces of wood out and reuse them to build their structure. So are most of the structures wood or is it? Most of the structures are wood and or tin or aluminum. So either sheet metal or pieces of strong wood. And you can actually see some where they've used,

like they've repurposed camping hatches that would be on the top of trucks. Or there's even an old mobile home in there. That seems to be actually the source of most of the power because you can hear the generator and the back turning. And can we see, sorry, can we see through it to the other side? Or is that bottom? You can definitely see the top of the end,

which is essentially a mirror of the door that you came through. So they've blocked up the other side as well too, pretty well. So you're saying we could, in theory, get the train through, we just need to put the rail back together. You'd have to put the crossbeams back together and you'd have to move some structures. Some structure. Not all of them, but it's definitely a through line.

And you can also see that they have their own hand cart. seems to be parked towards the rear entrance. If you're gonna go to talk to Terry, I just wanna pull you aside real quick in Wraith II. And keeping an eye out to see who else is listening, and I'm relatively private. Yeah. If shit hits the fan, we can always smoke them out.

It's the least amount of casualties with the people being removed from the tunnel. Just something to keep in mind. So as you four are kind of assessing and looking looking around, you can see that a couple of people are showing interests in you. And Terry's like, yeah, man, we haven't seen anyone over from the eastern states in a long time.

Mostly we would just see the copters fly by. I don't know, man. I, yeah, no, I mean, I definitely would, I've heard pretty good things about the UA. And I mean, this is, this is a shit show out here, man. This is like, it is infected every single night when we come across, we hear them literally packing around the doors almost every night.

It is terrifying out here. But if you've seen that little rail card of ours, it doesn't go very far before it gets nighttime. If we manage to get over here, it means we can probably get back. The only problem is we need to get through. Well, I mean. This episode is brought to you by L'Oreal Group.

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I don't know how the boss is going to feel about making a big old arc in the doorway, just a big old welcome inside kind of a situation. I'm curious how the boss is going to feel. Well, we'll get to that. So, we got some skills. Yeah, not only that, you said that you saw the helicopters coming by, right? Right. What if we had access to those helicopters and could get you safely?

No shit. Making a lot of fucking promises. I could get a ride in a fucking helicopter? Yeah, buddy. That's awesome! Oh man! You can watch his excitement is palpable. Like he's been living inside of this dark hole for how, for no, who knows how long.

And this smirk that he's got across the face, suddenly becomes very serious. Wait, do you guys have medicine? Maybe. Sarah! Sarah! And you watch as he starts just barreling out towards over there, and you watch as he grabs a woman who is about maybe 35 or so. Get ready to be popular. And he comes back and goes,

do you have any antibiotics, any penicillin, anything? Listen, I'm unfortunately not in charge of this mission. You're going to have to talk to the big guy. Oh, yeah, now. Okay. Make sure you go and bug him. Oh, okay. Mr. I respect that completely, but I've got it.

I've got, well, Sarah, you tell him, and you watch as she just has, like, you can tell that there is just grief in this woman's face as she turns, soon goes, my son is sick. And we've, well, I don't know what he has. And if any of you are a doctor or any of you have anything on hand to maybe help my boy, He's just five, okay?

I didn't mean to have him, but he's here, and he's with us, and he's just vomiting all of the time. Now, he's not infected, I promise you, he hasn't been in contact with anything, but I don't know, I think he just had some bad water, and it's just going through him every day. Do you have anything? Band-aid.

Yeah? Let's just take a look. All right, I'll take a look. I'll come with you. So Sarah escort you over to lean to, that is, it's modest, but it's definitely insulated. And you can tell that it is, while it's extremely warm, there is a young boy of about 10 years old on the floor.

He is shivering, shivering. And if you want, you can make a first aid check to kind of just check the severity of what his situation is. I hit my number. Yeah. We've been rolling so high. It's fine, you hit the number. And you look at him and you can, he's, he's a

He'll be fine, just run around a bit, it's a kid, he'll go back, walk it off. Okay, so it's viral, it's probably, because he just looks like he's got stupid amount of dehydration, he's clearly dehydrated, and he's just dripping in sweat and has a raging fever, so. You know what we need to get him. We don't need to get him antibiotics if he's viral.

We need to get this kid hydrated. Yeah, I think, you know what, thank you for bringing me to him. Does he seem... Yes, what's wrong with him? It seems like he's just severely dehydrated. Okay. At this point, back in our machine, I might have an IV drip that I'd be able to... Oh my God, he can't hold down any water.

Like, it's like, it just goes right through him. Right, right. That's priority number one is to get him hydrated. Okay. Is there anything I can do? Or can I help you or to bring it over here? You know what? Let's bring him to our machine.

Okay, all right, here. And you watch as she kind of like grabs the boy, wraps him up in the cloak. I don't wanna cause a scene. The best thing that we can do is keep this under wraps. She like, I'm a doctor. Kind of hands the bundle over to you, cautiously goes, just anything you can do.

And she just passes you the child as he is just bundled up and you can tell he's, In and out of consciousness. He's feebri out. He's, we gotta get him hooked up to sailing right away. So in the meantime, you can kind of see Terry who's just now like he's watching this go down. But like that previous excitement now,

he kind of has like anxiety a little bit in his mind. He's looking up towards the boss's office where Asher is presumably meeting up with him. Terry, we're gonna need you to help us get this get out and then back in. Okay. Okay, yeah, no, no, no. This is important, so absolutely.

Hey, hey, inside voice. Okay, okay, okay, okay, all right, all right. I'll stay at the door. If anyone comes, I'll just knock a bunch of times and I'll just do what I can to hold them, okay? I have to ask you one more favor, Terry, and you've gotta trust us really hardcore this time. We're going out there and we're going out there

without any firearms. Can you give us back one? You're going outside of the building? Okay, yeah, all right. He hands at least probably Jenny's rifle and her stuff. at least while he has the small arms. Are they coming too?

Are you coming, Ray? I was gonna remain. Yeah, you guys stay put. We'll handle this. Then just give band-aid his handgun back. Okay, not my record. No, because you're carrying the kid. Fair point.

All right, so as you leave, you can kind of see Terry just nervously hanging by the door, checking himself every once in a while as we go up into the top with all the Bear Man and the Asher speak. So what are you doing in my little arch town? Well, actually, first let me introduce myself. I'm Asher Emerson Stern. All right, Asher Emerson Stern, the third. Nice to meet you. Likewise. And I didn't catch your name.

You can call me Bear. Bear. Bear. Fantastic. Well, Bear. We're setting up a supply line here. Right. To the Livingston community. They just had the line from Chicago get knocked down. Who the hell is the Livingston community? You guys have been out here for a while, I take it.

Yeah. Fantastic. All right. Well, here's what we need. We need to ideally get through here on the train. Through here? To where? Out in the middle of butt fucking nowhere?

Out toward Kansas City. Shit. You know that place is unreclaimable, right? I do, yeah. I don't get why you want to go to Kansas City, but you can't go through my town. We're ending just shy of Kansas City before things get bad. and we're looking to carve a path out west to make this area more safe.

If, if there is a functioning supply line through this area, however we end up doing it, that does mean your town and your people will have access to medical supplies, food, water, better infrastructure that you would never get any other way. So I'd be open to allowing you partial ownership of this leg of the rail, allow you to collect tolls and have some autonomy. Well, here's the reality of the situation. One, I don't give a shit about your UA laws of reacclamation. This is my town.

This is my part. But I am interested in food and medicine and a trade route. So here's what we're going to do. Yeah, sure. You're going to barter and bribe with this guy a little bit. I still got one success. To see if you got your deal a little bit. So he's essentially going to ask you for first right of refusal.

on the first leg of goods as part as this town goes, which means that he's going to want to get the best stuff first since he's essentially the first leg of this trip. And you'll be able to negotiate, for all intents of purposes, how much of that he has access to as far as barter and trade goes. And it's actually we're opposing, so I'm gonna roll his stuff and essentially mine will cancel out yours. And we're just gonna do this in one roll.

All right. All right. 46. My bar is 45. 45. And I have this to great success that I've banked. Yep, that you banked it from the round. So I think you guys struck a very favorable deal in your side of matters. So you basically are going to be able to get access to this line of the road. He will make the appropriate changes necessary to Arch Town in order to have the

the train go through. And even though he's getting first pick, it's of only limited quantity of items. So he can't over buy and hoard and resell essentially, so to speak. So you gave him first rider for Fusal on items, but only to a limited quantity. This is a total win on your circumstances. All right, well, we'll make it happen. Thank you for your time. Asher Emerson Sterner. So what can we think about for a friend? What can we think about for a down payment. Town payment. I'm just fucking with you.

You have you going there. All right. Let's get you and your team through this. We got a lot of moving to do. All right. So you guys take... Oh yeah, absolutely, Jenny and Wraith, you can actually see there's a lot of people who are roaming around and part of this.

Again, a couple of limited families, but you can see that there is definitely a couple of rag and bone men kind of barter trader types that have a couple of random items that I can make available in a resource catalog if you wanna spend survival points for them. But they all essentially seem to be either like Terry here, who is a little bit of a gather

in his own right, but even more interesting, there's an old woman who, Raith, you probably immediately gravitate towards. And she- Of age and wisdom. of age, but she mostly gets your attention because she turns to you from her rocking chair that she kind of propped on the porch of her lean to

and she goes, you there boy, you are the mock of the devil, it appears. What are you doing? Maybe devil stuff, old lady. Our little charmer. Well, you've got the mouth of the serpent as well too. You're going to bring death to this place. I can see it, I can feel it in my bones.

I don't need to bring it, it's already here. You stink of it. There's something about you I don't like. You can sense it. I can. I can feel it as if there's some kind of weight upon you that you carry a lot with you, as if you sold your soul to something more devious than anyone else has to deal with.

That was long ago. I've made many amends since then. A man like you doesn't make amends. He just creates more. That's what you do when you deal with Satan. He doesn't give the deal back. He just makes the contract longer. And she watches, she gets out of her chair

and slams the door behind her. I look disturbed. My God. So Asher, you come down from Bears' hovel, so to speak. and you meet up with Jenny and Wraith, who are still kind of hanging around. Rath looks like he just had an awkward encounter with a local.

Bear, the burly fellow who runs this place, agreed to let us bring the rail through in return for first pick of goods. And yeah, we simply make the modifications necessary to the town and the rail itself, and we will be on our way. It's gonna take about about a day.

To modify? To modify in order to get the rail driver through. Can we get the rail driver closer to the door? Absolutely. Okay. Because we don't know what you just said. Where are Band-Aid and... Yeah, you know, look, there was this kid who was really sick.

And you know, they took them back to the rail driver and they're just, they're hydrating him. We're using medical supplies on the locals. Yes. Yes, we are, we are. I thought it would be, you know, an act of charity, something to get them on our side. But you did that, so good job. What did the kid have?

I'm not sure, a viral infection. I'd like to go out to the rail driver and have a lot. So Asher kind of comes into the rail driver. Oh, well, okay. As he kind of pumps up, per his, what he suggested and sees, you know, the boy laid out and he's now. Yeah. Actually, I wanted to have a quick moment with that too.

Oh, please, yes. When we brought him in, I wanted to have you set him down, and then I want to spend survival points to get an IV drip. Absolutely. And then I'm actually going to hand you the drip. I'm like, can you set this up? And I'm going to start examining the kid.

But I'm keeping an eye on Ray. Okay, yeah. Is the kid conscious? Barely. In and out? Yeah, in and out. The fever is, he's moaning. He has, he's essentially dealing with an immense amount

of pain and fever at the moment. I'm gonna talk to him while we're going. Just keeping away. So if you set up the IV, then I'll administer the procedure of putting it in. Right. Cool. So sweetie, what's your name?

Tim. Tim, that's a good name. It's a good strong name. Tim, we're just gonna do some tests here and give you some medicine to make you feel better. Is that okay, sweetie? I'm not supposed to get hell from strangers. Uh-huh, but we're not strange.

We talk to your mom. I'm band-aid. With a name like that, he can probably fix you up, don't you think? I like that name. Thanks. I'm Ray. You're pretty, Ray. Thank you.

What am I? Chop liver? You're funny. You got the same in here? It's a great personality. It's in. It hurts. I know it hurts, sweetie.

Hey, do you think that we can give you a little medicine by your mouth? Don't need any aspirin. Get this fever down? It might be a little too acidic for his stomach who doesn't have. Isn't anything to eat ibuprofen? Yeah, there should be abel in there too, or some kind of. I'm gonna see if I can find acidaminophen.

Yeah, or ibuprofen, yeah, for the fever. So, yeah, he takes the medicine, you can tell. You can like crush it up. Okay, cool, yeah. So you maybe mix it in water and let him drink it. At this point then, that's the moment. Yeah, so he's taking the ivy, it's dripping, you can drink, you can actually see

even in just a few minutes while Asher is coming in that the- that it's helping the fever a lot. Like this kid has had nothing. Is anyone wanting to help clear? Because someone's gonna be watching Tim here in the center, but is anyone gonna be helping speed along the process? Can we also just get the rail driver closer to the team?

Absolutely. Can we do that? That's without any issue. The heater's been running. So you can move it without any real problems. So once I've got the thing closer up to the door, I'll pop out and help them inside. All right, so let's have you three all make.

In best case, engineering checks, and for you two who are just, yeah, go ahead. One thing too, before we get into that, I wanna go to Jenny and say, we're gonna start clearing all this, yes? It's better if you do the clearing for this woman's house and that I not do it. She won't trust me.

If I change things on her house, she'll think I'm trying to wreck it. Okay. I'll do two other houses if you do this time. Oh, deal, I like that. for manual labor, lift, and pull, and for engineering engineering. Let's check on this, because this is just going to help modify the time level a little bit. So, 13?

I rolled six. Degrees of success, degrees of failure? That's going to be three. Where are you at here? Yeah, three success. Okay, and Jenny and Rafe? Three success. I've got one degree of failure.

Okay. If you wanted to help, I could watch the kid. I want to leave a sign. Okay. Never mind. So between six degrees minus one for a degree of failure, I actually am happy to report that between your three help, you can actually get this thing done in half a day.

You could be out by tomorrow morning. Fantastic. Training this thing from a 24-hour job into an 18-hour job. To kind of tidy this mission up a little bit, you essentially do a modification to a stronghold, which in this circumstances I'm going to give you a bonus 25 survival points for to get into it. So we'll modify that here.

That's 25, so you now have 50. Minus any you've spent, yeah? Minus any that may have been spent, and you still have 405 inside of the rail driver at this stage. You also helped a kid, and he, at this point, even 24 hours, his fever broke through the middle of the night with the medicine and the hydration, and by the next morning, you were able to deliver her back to Sarah,

with a huge amount of improvement as far as ability goes. And she can't even begin to thank you. Sarah? So now you can pick the rail driver up in the morning to be able to take it towards Eureka, which will begin in the next episode. 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, broken world praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring and 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. Earl 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.

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