Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Episode 6: Into the Mines | We're Alive: Frontier | Season 1

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

In order to fulfill their agreement with New Haven, the survivors venture off the rail line and into the mountains. 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

It took 10 years to push 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 to the UA live out their meager day self-policing. What is the West hiding? Nobody really knows for sure. But we're alive.

And this is the new frontier. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to West. We're alive frontier. We are back on track, so to speak. Except you're not, really. You're coming off of the rail line in order to go venture into a salt mine with a bunch of new Havenites

in the hopes that you might find something in order to deal with the dam, so to speak. Well, yeah, am I missing anything there? A quick question with that then. Does this count as like a side mission so we don't get competency points? Yes, you're off mission officially. So you won't get any bonus competence.

No bonus, but we still get our two. You'll still get your standard two. And did anyone have any left over from the, I did. I had two left over. I had one left over. And I'll give you three survival points. I always use up all four, you guys. What do you keep burning them?

We need them. Because you're so competent. I obviously need them. Yeah. But I'll happily give you your 115 now. We're at 112. Give us three. Math is great.

Fundamental. Fundamental. I learned math from my toddler. So 115 is what your global pool is at the moment. You also have 137 left in the rail driver. When we last left our troop, they were venturing into New Haven, establishing good relationships with the locals, although some are a little wary about having the UA come

into their perfect little New Haven. And yeah, but they're willing to strike a deal if you could work out a favor for them, which involves an incident that they're dealing with as far as some creatures. Marion had agreed in order to bring a couple of her men in order to travel with you up to some salt mines that are across the river into the mountains in the north,

which is, to be fair, a good 10 mile hike. It's not right across the river. Before we walk in, before we head out, I should say. I want to go check on Sarah just real quick before we go, because we're probably gonna take off early in the morning and I don't think we're gonna have to- try and get a few medical supplies while we're here also. We have some cigarettes and other stuff we can trade.

If there's anything else, anyone doesn't need, yeah, if you guys wanna go and head to the doctor's office and see if you can get anything, I'm gonna head over to the fisherman to see if I can barter for some dinner. Ray and Kent, you head into the doctor's office, which is actually still one of the, It's one of the wings of the community center

in this old kind of pre-outbreak scenario. It's been one of the few parts that have done extremely well in trying to refurbish it and keep it up. So while it's not as clean as you would imagine a hospital before the outbreak had occurred, it done a relatively great job. It doesn't have dirt floors.

It has worn but clean walls. And you can see that a lot of the orderlies that are keeping track of it. There's not many, one or two, but you find Sarah in one of the small kind of patient rooms, and she's hooked up to an IV, and you can actually hear the beep of a monitor that's keeping track of her pulse and her vitals.

And it is just, it's kind of impressive. They have this out here. That they have this kind of stuff. And you meet the tall, tall, kind of burly man who looks like he hasn't had much sleep, but at this point he's just talking to one of the nurses. Here you seem to be back, not father. Yeah, not father and non-mother are here

to check on our not daughter. Right, not father, not daughter. Well, we've got her fluid, she's hydrated up, and at this point I feel like she's probably gonna make a fine recovery. It was mostly just malnutrition and the dehydration we're worried about, but despite the fact that she's

Smells like she's been living in a pile of trash for weeks. She doesn't have any disease, and she doesn't seem to be carrying any infection with her. Is she awake? Uh, no, she's been sleeping literally for the last 12 hours. Thanks for looking after her. Hey, it's what I do.

It's a tough job, but it's a tough world. And I have to say, saving the little ones' lives feel that much better than some of these other assholes that are sitting around the community. So I'll look after her, okay? Thanks. Let's head back to the real driver. Yeah, so Band-Aid.

Yeah. You're gonna go over to some of the fishermen. Yep. Yeah. So you see a couple of them just scaling it. And God, it's just like a whiz, how quick he is with that skin and knife. It's just like it does it every day. As he's just whittling away the scales,

peeling the bones out and kind of getting it ready for fillets just to make it so that most of the, the people who are doing the home care can actually just cook it pretty easily. So. Hey, that's pretty amazing. Yeah. Any way that we could maybe barter for some of that?

I know that we're not part of the community per se, but we're just as hungry as everybody else. Hold on a sec. Hey, Jimmy? You watch as like a kind of a tall, bald man with a wife beater. and just fish all over the front of him. Kind of like comes up to the front and goes,

yeah, what's up, Johnson? Hey Jimmy, you caught one of those big catfish out today, didn't you? Like one of those big noodling? Did you get some of that done last weekend? Oh yeah, I caught me a big noodle. What you're looking for? You want a piece? You want a dice for it?

No, no, no, no, no. But this UA folk here, yeah, he's looking for some fresh fish tonight. So you wanna trade some of that out? Like, uh, well, you want me to feed a, feed at Easter night with my catfish or my big old fishing-ish. What you got, big guy?

I heard mention of dice, are you a gambling man? Yeah, you and the liar's dice? Yep. Let's pop out some dice. You watch as he's like, it's almost like it just appeared out of nowhere as he just pulls to there a folding card table and stuff. slaps it down, kind of like wipes some of the fish grime off it

as he pulls out like a leather cup that he starts shaking it as you can hear the sound of dice inside of it as he pops it down in front of you. Lucky Jenny wanders. It's just the sound of dice. She's like, yes. I can smell it.

Yeah, Lucky Jenny wanders over and immediately, She is into this. Oh, this is my crack engineer from Stern Industries. Yeah, how are you doing, Lucky Jenny? Great, you mind if I step in? It's been a while. It's kind of an agreement, but if that's okay with you.

Is she playing for you? Yeah. You scared? Oh, she's already starting with the talk. All right, girly girl. You got your own dice? Sure do. Hey, why don't we make this more interesting?

Oh, I like interesting. We see your noodle and we're gonna add in a ration slip as well. Ration slip? My ration slip. You want my fish and you want my dinner. What are you offering up? Well, I've got scavenge cards.

You basically pull out a bunch of scavenge that you found during the day and he kind of looks at some of it. It's like, oh, looks like a lot of plastic junk. And what about some cigarettes? That, that I will definitely keep you. Dinner for a pack, let's do this. All right.

Supermodel diet. Four fives. Ooh, I can see that brain working in there. What do you think? One. One. Three fives. Oh, three fives?

Shit, you got one, five. I take away a dice. Ah. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Five twos. Liar. We have three twos. And I have one.

Four. So five twos, I lose. Duh. Close. Oh wait, five twos. You call me a liar. Yes. So, wait, did I do that?

I did that wrong. Yes. I think you just weren't paying attention. Oh, God, yeah. All right. Dyes have been ruled. Dice have been rolled. No backsees.

Two fours. Three fours. Three fours, huh? Mm-hmm. You think there's three-fours in here? Yeah, there's definitely three-fours in here. Huh. That's an interesting thing to say.

Hey, what's your name? It's Jimmy. You got anything to drink? Why don't you pour us out? Oh, yeah. Now we're drinking and gambling. Yes, we are drinking and gambling. He pulls out a, like,

comically sized Viking flask that looks into it that actually has like a weird looking deer head on it that's been like brushed into it as he pulls it out and claps it down on the table. Swig goes to the next dice loser. All right, liar. One four. Two fours.

Three fours, we win. Ah, yeah. Take a swag. Better rule! I already had a half of this thing today. I couldn't tell. Hey, you know what? It helps drown out the smell of the fish.

All right. Two-toes. Two-toes. Hey, y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder, what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair.

With Wayfair, there's no what-efer. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. Three twos. Four twos. Liar. Shit!

This game is fun! I'm not even there! Okay, let's do this. Three-threes. Three sixes. Gotcha, Jenny! There's only two sixes. Shit!

Jimmy, you have me there for me. All right, he's gonna pass out before the game's over. I did you take a, no, nope, I'm got, let me just finish it. You watch it's like, it's just going, it's just going, it's just going, it's just going, it's just going. No, Jimmy. Yeah. Three twos. What?

Three twos. Three twos. Do you think I'm a liar? I'm a liar. Yeah, I think you're a liar. Well, I do. What? No way! Well, you got a lot of dice, so it's just...

Why, yeah? One, two, three. Fuck. All right. Oh, come here, sissy. And it goes and grabs the fish. It like slaps it down. You know what?

I haven't had anyone new to play lyre's dice within in like five or six months. So here. and he watches he sloppily just starts skinning it. Just butchering this thing. He's not doing a good job because he's so drunk. Be careful with the knife. So he's just kind of lemur around and just it's, oh yeah, I should probably put the glove on.

He watches he puts the chain mail glove on a little bit as he starts hacking at the fishkin. Now that he's got it on, he watches it like clanks against his hands and he ties before he gets it together. Any cigarette ash, Any card. Yep. Oh no, you didn't get the cigarettes.

You didn't get the cigarettes. You know what? Yeah. I take one cigarette up. That's a good sport. And I pass it to just. That's a good sport. I believe we're looking for a little slip-up paper too.

Yep. And you watch us, he just throws a giant fillet down on there. And then puts the ration ticket right on top of the fish. So. I'm gonna take the ticket and give it back to the other guy. All right, well, you watch as the fishmonger kind of like looks at Jimmy and he's like, that wasn't fair. Jimmy sucks at Liar's Dice.

It was his call. I get it. Jimmy, you're a fucking dick. I can't believe you keep playing after a little bit. What, it's fun? What else we're supposed to do around here besides drinking fuck? I like Jimmy. So he watches, he just like,

all right, well here, and he cuts up another portion. It's like, here's Jimmy's portion. And he kind of throws down another fillet for you of some trout or other riverfish. And you guys walk away with two giant fillets for tonight. Jimmy, it's been a pleasure. If you wanna polish this off tonight, I'm right there.

Good to know. Was that to either? Just like, Either. Boat, yeah. I'm gonna get going. Good fish. You guys all meet back up.

Raith, have you wanted to wander around at all in this place? Well, actually, Wraith has been at the rail driver. Yeah. This time. His foot. Well, actually, even we're even

weirder than that. They've all been gone for a while, and they're all coming back to the rail driver now, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you approach the rail driver, driver and you can see that there are a few like sort of safety candles like arranged in like a row like a path is demarked. Yeah. And then there's a camping stove that's lit that's on like a few like

crates like stacked up. And then Raith is standing behind those crates with what looks like a carved like wooden bowl in his hands and he's just sort of like chanting and sort of gurgling. And then there's an arch made of like bracken like sort of sticks and other things like that. They've been lashed together with paracord. He's made this sort of like arch that goes over him is at the head of this path. And he's just standing there like chanting

and his face is like illuminated from below. And he's like his hood is up and he's just sort of chanting. He's got this sort of weird bowl of stuff. The door like slams open and light pours through just into his makeshift ritual space. Yeah. Oh, Jesus.

I wanna whisper to Stingray. What the fuck? Dude. You have returned. Did we disturb you or? No. Your coming was prophesized. What's in the bowl?

Blood. Who's? Animals. Oh. To bless us on our journey tomorrow. I appreciate that. I brought fish. Just come.

We must share our stories. Hey, whatever works, you guys. I don't care if we have to swing a dead chicken over and throw a pumpkin in the river. If it works, it works. Let's do it. Don't give them ideas. All right, so people just sort of line up or whatever? What do I do? Can I put it on the camping stove? Yes.

We'll start cooking this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or will that disturb the ritual? No. In fact, you should give some as an offering to the gods. Okay. Do they want us to cook it first? They will accept it in whatever way you present it, as long as it is with a kind spirit. Kent's gonna walk over and just kind of touch the railing. Strange, like. You see it's got like little animal bones and stuff tied to it.

And then there's also like, looks like a plastic model plane, you know, of like a 747 or something like that is like hanging from it. Let's just remember never to leave him alone again. There's also, there's a symbol worked into the head of the arch made out of twigs, which is this sort of symbol that you've seen painted on walls and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. Ah. You know, it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You've seen it painted like, it seems like a graffiti that you've seen before, right? Especially in like urban areas. Yeah, like a protective symbol. A protective figure. Cool. Or in tattoos. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Word. So you all sit down to kind of like, ritualistically cook this fish and enjoy it together. And I very comfortably sit closest to you. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, he does some chanting stuff, and then, and then towards the, like, the end of the ritual, there's a sort of pregnant

pause, and you know, and he says, now we must share our tales. We must trade something, a secret we've never told anyone, from our pasts. I'm gonna take a bite of catfish. I thought you didn't like catfish. I don't. You got trout too, didn't he?

Yeah. If we eat this shit first, the trial tastes better. Do not violate the space. Ray must share her story. Uh, uh, I, uh, I wasn't always a sharpshooter. And something I learned along the way. Uh, survival skill, you could call it. Career path change.

Made a lot more sense than what I used to do. And what was that? Something I discovered I wasn't as good at. But I discovered it in the wrong way. The gods are honored by your sacrifice. You know, I haven't been with you folks for very long. But from what I've seen, you people are ready to die in a good way. And I'm ready to die with you.

We're here together. So we'll eat this meal together. And when we collect water, we'll drink it together. And when we walk, we'll walk together. Yes, we will. Jenny? I'm deaf in my left ear. That's it. I don't want to get into that.

I'm gonna share something with you guys that I haven't told anybody else out here. I used to be very, very good at video games, and I miss it a lot. I'm gonna punch you. Sorry, I'm telling the truth. Very, very good at video games. We'll tell you very vulnerable things and-

That was vulnerable. I got a question. Video games can be very important. I enjoyed them too before the fall. Can we ask something? Yes. You know, I know a lot of traditions, a lot of traditions from all over the world. This one is an amalgam I've never seen before.

Is this of your own creation? In a way, but don't all traditions start that way? Yeah, they do. They absolutely do. That's why I'm asking. I've not done this before. I've thought of it, but this is the first time. So thanks for honoring us with that.

Grace, what about you? What's your secret? I let my brother die. I could have helped him. And when our plane crashed, I could have done more to help him. And I didn't. And now I must carry his name as well as my home. How about you have some of this fish with us since we all've got something to mourn right now?

Yes. It is an excellent dinner of fish. In fact, it kind of pales into comparison to what Band-Aid and Ray brought out. Duh. I put the love into it. This is just. And I overcooked it.

I was dealing with Sarah. Oh, okay. But this is fine. In fact, if anything, with a lot of the rations, some of the extra spices and elements that come with Jimmy's part of his dinner, it's kind of almost like a home-cooked dinner. which is nice in your little sleeper quarter that is this part of the rail driver.

And it has a homey feeling to it. Your pleasant night leaves into a beautiful dawn as the beginning of the new day occurs, which I believe at this point is day five of the journey. I think that sounds about accurate. And just so that we're aware, We've made some really good time opposing the schedule that was supposed to happen, right?

Yeah, I mean, if you had ran this thing hard pretty much with no stops, you would essentially have, you could have made it in four and a half days. Oh, so just like a half day above that. Yeah, and at this point, and with as much as you've been dealing with, I think it's fair.

You've also originally, before the Raiders got to it, you originally requisitioned at least two weeks, worth of food. And you've made some of your own meals in the meantime. So, yeah, not bad. But we're on the morning of day five of the Missouri River Runner route.

And you come out in order to see Marion and her two guard, or her two militia, who one seems to be a spry man with bright eyes, cut short hair, and a little bit of, a sleeveless tank top that he's wearing loose

over a pair of jeans that seem to have like high, knee-high kind of boots. So you could tell he's used to the warm weather, the warm, humid weather. The other one seems to be a little more built as far as climbing a mountain goes. He's got a rugged jacket as well as an overshirt, and he's carrying a hunting rifle, as well as a backpack with most of their climbing gear.

And they seem to be with Marion, who also has her backpack, you could see she's carrying a shotgun, as well as a large combat knife on the side. And she's just, she's got boots and straps for days. Everything's completely affixed on her in such a way that it just cuts a striking figure as she stands there tall and lean against the wooden posts of New Haven.

I think we are gonna take this moment to kind of kit up as well. Yeah. Disclose what we're gonna. We're gonna grab, I'm gonna be searching the rail driver for a pickaxe to take down into the mine. All right, you can absolutely purchase that. That'll be 15.

Okay. Can I search for another combat knife? Is there another combat knife on the rail drive? There is absolutely more knives. You can get that for short, piercing and slashing room. It's another 15. It'll take you to 108. And I'd like just an empty pack.

A backpack? Any dynamite we find, I just see. Stuff it. Good looking out. Do you have a pickax card? I do, yes. Would you also just load up because we gotta get this thing move?

And Marian's looking very anxious to get on the road. Okay. Thank you. Well played. You're welcome. And then just to clarify, I'm bringing my times one medical kit. Okay, so your simple survival kit.

Your simple first aid, great. And this is the sat phone or the ham radio? I have the sat phone, that's the hem radio in the rail driver. So which one is the one that we need? We're not bringing either. I'm leaving the binoculars. I got mine.

Yeah, we'll leave mine. I'm leaving my bow, one of my medium survival kits, the axe that we got, and a small bug out kit. I'm still bringing my pistol and my knife and sword. Great. I'm bringing the AK-47, my machete, and then the most empty backpack. Got it, great.

She's flying. Right, yeah, you're a light. Do you want to take some shit from me? So as Marion, Philmore and Johnson, who she introduces, this is Fillmore, this Johnson. Which one is which? Yeah. Philmore is tank top.

Okay. Johnson is the more well decorated. Lumberjack. Yes, lumberjack. They're all surprisingly clean though. As far as like Frontier goes, they're not rocking any grizzly beards. and a lot of their hair is actually trimmed back pretty well.

They're not, they actually favor a lot of them, especially the guys favor like really tight kind of military style cuts, almost buzz cuts a little bit. Practical. Very practical, yes. So too practical looking gentlemen. All right, so first thing we have to determine is getting over the water.

There's a bridge about a couple miles up that we sometimes used to go over from where gas canate is. Or you can take one of our boats across the river. But there's always a chance that we could have a couple of these river runners around. And it's, we usually don't like doing it unless we have to. But the times of the essence, I'm totally willing to try.

Listen, my team is in a bit of unfamiliar territory out here and we're counting on you to bring us safely over there. Well, I'm in the mood to get in and get out. So at this point, I say we take one of the rafts. You're okay. All right. So you guys walk around. the large part of New Haven

so that you're on the outer part of the walls. And near kind of where the rising bank is, you can see that there's a couple of Tom Sawyer-style just rafts, lift together, just, you know, hitched logs that have been put in with some kind of steering pole that kind of take them down. Are they large enough to fit eight of us? You can take two of them to fit all eight of you,

but yeah, it's gonna require two. And you guys walk about half a mile upstream so that you can write it down enough to be able to make it over. So I'll load up. Johnson, why don't you take three and I'll take three? Okay. Who's on which raft?

On the one raft with Johnson, it's gonna be Ray and Wraith and I, I think. With Johnson. And so Jenny, Kent and Marion are with Fillmore. And I'm definitely sitting down. Yeah. Last time we were on a raft together didn't go so well. Very much in the center of the raft.

Yeah. Although I still brought the same paracord. Oh, good. As Johnson basically pushes out Ray, Band-Aid, and Ray out into it, he does it, but his kind of cups into a spin a little bit because he's not as practicing to this as you guys are holding down.

But it stops pretty quickly, and as you can see Johnson kind of pulling out, he actually turns to you, Band-Aid, goes, so Asher, what's it like over in the Eastern States? Any word from like St. Louis or Chicago? Well, it's a thriving community, and we're so happy to be able to bring

much needed supplies out here to the frontier. God, that's, man, I have a sister in Chicago, so is everything all right over there? Like, no infected? Is it really true that the whole place is infected free? Well, that's what we're here to find out. We want to connect to the Livingston community and... Well, no, no, I mean Chicago,

on the eastern side of the river. Sure. Like, is there no infected over there at all? at all? We'll have to see. I'm here to see for myself. That's weird. I thought Chicago's on the eastern side of the river. Oh, that's Chicago. Yes. Is there another Chicago I should be aware of? Just a small hamlet out there near Kansas City. New Chicago. New Chicago. Right, okay. It's just been on the map and so we were going for it. Okay. Yeah, yeah. But you know what? I love this. I love that we're communicating, we just want to keep an eye on the river, maybe.

Right, right. So at that point, Ray and Rayth, make a spot, listen check. One degree of failure. One degree of failure for me too. Okay. At this point, you two are watching like nervously. Yeah. Not nervous, I'm just like, are you fucking kidding me?

Right. I'm holding back every, I'm biting my tongue so hard, it's bleeding. And as you guys kind of continue to wane down the river, you actually feel a bump against the rap. and it lifts up just ever so slightly. As you hear Mary and go, River Brother! Shit, and you watch as she pulls out, while holding onto the pole,

you watch as she pulls out her shotgun, which at this point you can see is actually shot off, and she just pops around straight into the water, and you watch as it just splashes right next to you. Water cascades down on top of you, as she yells over, Johnson, what the fuck are you doing? Pay attention! Yeah, Johnson!

What? Marion? I'm sorry, I'm sorry. He continues to try to push with more vigor down along. It's like, I'm sorry, it's all right, it's fine. Did you get it? Yeah, I fucking got it. All right? Just get over, across the side.

And you watch as they just, you basically continue to push along and you make it across to the other side of the river. It's not a terribly, this part of it's pretty thin. It was only about 20 or 25 or so feet. But it, banks along the side of the northern side of the Missouri as you all unloading. You can see Johnson is kind of like still shaking a little bit,

mostly from being yelled at by Marion more than just having a river runner bump against the raft. Keep it together. You need you sharp. Yeah, you know, that's right. I just, God fuck, I don't know why he did that. I've just started to get in good with her, you know? It's like every single time I make something happen

and I feel like I'm on the right track, I just fuck it up, I always fuck it up, man. I know how you feel. I'm just gonna turn to this guy and stare at him. Your life is more important than your reputation. Right, right, right, okay. Thanks. Creepy, gray-haired guy.

All right, let's get this thing unloaded. And Marion comes and just like whaps him on the back of the head as she continues to just kind of trek off, just trailblazing this thing forward. All right, well, all right, so here's the thing. I haven't been to these minds. We have some old maps that show where they're at, and I'm guessing they're about 10 miles up north.

Now we can cut through some of the smaller towns and get cover as we go from building the building, but of course, there could always be infected there, or we can just go and rough it and just chop our way through all of the brush and the trees leading up into the mines. We've experienced so far, towns are generally a bad idea. And you're forested, right?

Well, it depends on what you've been running into. They are hit and miss, but in fact it can be inside of the forest just as easily as towns are. It's just sometimes they're easier to spots. But we've got the day, and they don't like usually coming out in the day so much. So we've got hours to burn. I say we use them and make as much trail as we can.

Agreed. All right, great. Cool. Well, keep up. I'm gonna call for the Falcon. Yeah. Because we're headed into the forest. Oh yeah, we have a drone.

Comes down, usual. I pull my canvas over my head. Key. I inspect its claws. We watch this like Fillmore just kind of almost jumps in a seat. Holy shit, man, you've got a bird? Yeah, it's a falcon actually. Yeah, falcons a bird.

Cool, huh? Names Max? He likes liver. Hopefully not my liver. I'm gonna throw Max off to make sure, because we're in a forest area, there's trees. He's gonna flutter up to one of the taller ones and kind of disappear in the brush, but he's there. Okay, so just for my purposes of time versus distance covered,

Are you guys steady pace? Marian's going nearly double time. We'll just keep up with her. We'll let her set the pace, yeah. So she's setting the pace at nearly double time, giving you guys quite a bit of coverage. You walk for about three hours or so as you continue to just brush through.

And the front tier is pretty thick at this part. She seems to know what she's doing, right? She knows what she's doing, she's pulled out on top of just her shotgun, she just kind of pulls out a non-serrated machete, just kind of like a black tactical machete, and she's just chipping, just cutting pieces out. And she's only making enough room for her, really,

to make like a single line. So she's not doing any extra work to make it easier for anyone to come through. She's just slicing and dicing through. And you can tell as she's just cutting through, she's putting a lot of effort and exertion into this. She occasionally looked back towards where Asher is, and you'll see that as she comes back

She kind of like, takes an extra heavy swing against items. And she just continues to just blaze through this. So, she likes you. I like me. Yeah, like I said, you make about, you make about three hours of travel time covering about four miles of the 10 mile journey at this point.

So she kind of sits around. You can see that Johnson and Fillmore starting to, like it's starting to exert on them a little bit, they're getting very winded. And you see as Marion kind of like turns around and notices then, goes, okay, stick five. Cause band-aids too. He's not built for this.

You're all, you're all getting winded. In fact, after the five-minute break of kind of like water and getting things back out. I'm exhilarated. Yeah, you're fine. I love this. Right, which is why we're now gonna represent that. Everyone's gonna make endurance checks

to kind of see how you're holding this. Oh, yeah. That's not good. No, that's great. That's a 10's digit. That's a 10's digit, so you're an eight. Oh, an eight. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I have two degrees of failure. One failure. Three degrees of failure. All right, anyone who has failures? Four degrees of success. Holy crap. Okay, great. Can we buy some of our failure?

I had three degrees of success as well. Excellent. You can keep pace with everyone, but this is all kind of your personal endurance. So for everyone who got a degree of failure, and in your case with three, I'm gonna take a difficulty dice for you two because you're getting winded at this point. I'm gonna give two to Band-Aid because he is just, his chest is hurting at this point.

He's not an outdoor boy. So keep it, it's for all future checks until you guys basically take a very long rest. Five minutes are up, let's get moving. Ah, ha. All right. I go over to Ray and say, kind of almost confused because I don't know that your name is Band-Aid.

To me, you're just Asher. I've never known that he's anything else. So I'm gonna say to him, be like, it's gotta out of shape for like an officer, you know. I've worked many missions with him. All right. He's capable. Not gonna be a big deal, I'm just gonna make a side little comment.

Like, it's out of shape. All right. I'm just tired. So you guys. And we're both, you know, half person sized. Yeah. Half person. Half, side.

Side, side. We're twice the man, but half the person. But you guys continue to trek, keeping up this rugged, just grueling pace. So another three hours will take you to close to noon at this point, maybe like 11, 11.30 or so. Where's, there's that, there's the time. And you guys will cover another,

another four miles at this point. But now you're starting to get to where you're at the foothills of the mountains. You can actually see as you're clearing through. The brush is not getting any thinner. Like occasionally you'll get a break as you have to cross a road or something, but as you go back into the underbrush,

it's just ferns and grass and either saplings of trees that you have to come through as you're winding around some of the bigger trunks of the wood that's in just this part of the Mississippi. Hey, Ray, can you ask her if we can some Stop for lunch. If I ask, she's gonna kill me, but she seems to like you.

I have a better plan. How about you start being a little bit less of an asshole, so she actually listens to any of us. I didn't said anything this whole time, just tired. Just stop talking in general. All right. All right, so she continues to walk through, and you basically may cover this three hours

before she starts looking up at the sun at some point and she goes, all right, well. You can kinda see she's breathing a little bit as she kind of look towards the foothills, goes, well, looks like we made it to the foothills. It's gonna be climbing time now. So let's just get some lunch, break out, and we'll all get our climbing gear out,

because looks like we've got a mountain to climb. So you break for food, you partions out rations, you all kind of eat as anyone who has climbing gear can start fixing it onto their legs. Raith has a lot of it already, just as kind of part of his costume. Right. So he just clicks,

a few carabiners and it kind of like falls into climbing position. Awesome. I'm gonna put two, to equip my shoes with spikes, like small little spikes that are like ice pick shoes almost that'll take into the concrete a little bit. Yeah, crampons. Yeah, you know what they're called? Crampons. Crampons.

Yeah. Cram off. I'm gonna get my cramp on, cramp off. Okay, and I'm going to call for the Falcon again. God damn, that's cool every single time he does it. Right? I know, right? Yeah.

I'm gonna take the Falcon by itself and kind of have a little pep talk. with it real quick, away from everyone, give it another piece of terrible gangrous meat from my pocket, which I'm going to then empty out because I am out of falcon meat currently. We'll have one last piece, you know, so. Oh, Phil Moore is kind of looking a little anxious,

like, carving off a piece of his MRE as he's in like, can I feed it? Yeah. He kind of looks over and kind of looks at Marion who like looks and doesn't say no. Basically, as she comes back over and he, he kind of like, kind of takes an opportunity to kind of like, you do, man, I had a bird

before all this, man, thanks for that. No problem, brother. Oh, you got a pretty fucking cool best friend. So. Hey, Ray. Ray stumbles in on it right at the end of this. And he goes, again? Say, miss it.

Ray, listen. I thought we were going into the the mountain and not over it. Do you have any extra climbing supplies? I have some like I can share. Okay, cool. But I mean, we're going to group together and create a line, which everyone will follow.

We'll help you clip in and clip out. Thanks. Yep, we need to get up this thing, but we also need to get back down it. So we're gonna do our best to walk along the path most travel. Cool. At least to get up here,

because they would take trucks up and down here to get into the salt mines anyway, but we have to find the entrance first, and I have no idea where these things are at. So, actually, Johnson, Fillmore, would you guys go and climb up some of these trees and see if you can spot a cave entrance here or anywhere? 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. Johnson's like, yeah, no, no, I got it, Marion, got this.

Watch if he pulls his belt on, he like flips kind of like a jean hoodie that he has on there and kind of pulls it tight as he gets like a pair of, he actually look like it's like a repurposed rebar that he holds onto it, kind of like a police baton, but it's also got pieces of metal that have been welded onto the top of it,

so that he can just, and then like use his core strength in order to lift himself up with his crampons. And he just spider monkeys up one of the trees as he just kind of clips up there. Well, that's how you do it. You need to get some of those. Philmore is a lot slower about it. He's like, all right, mine.

As he puts his boot on and he walks about another 500 so feet into before he starts climbing up and they're gone, leaving you with just Marion. who is sitting there kind of making eye contact, giving you all a brief look, not giving you anything at this point. She's just sitting there kind of not making eye contact, but keeping focused on around her,

just situational awareness as much as she can. Marin, have you been running security out here for New Haven since you guys been out here? Conversation, is it? Okay, yes. I've been keeping New Haven safe ever since I was appointed. I fainted it when my husband died.

Sorry. Well, everyone's got someone who's dead. Yeah, we do. Mm-hmm. And hopefully we'll have less today. Do you really think dynamite is something we're gonna find up inside of these salt mines? Well, we're hoping to find dynamite,

and maybe something to make more explosives if we're lucky. Jolfer's been known to lurk in salt mines around these parts. If we can get a handful of that, we've got an engineer and might be able to whip something up. And if it's this difficult for us to get to, then it's difficult for anyone else to. for anyone else to steal. That's a good point.

No, the farther areas tend to be less rated. No one's been out here for years. So we've covered most of these, but we never even thought about the salt mines. Who's going to, well, no, actually it's a lie. We brought down salt from parts of it, but most of it's just deposits, but we just use it to cure the meat.

So never really thought about sulfur being in there. Huh. Isn't that what part of gunpowder is? Mm-hmm. Huh. All right. Mental note. Did you find anything?

You hear as Johnson wakes up. I think I see something. It's a little overgrown, but it looks like it's some kind of hole in the mountain. There's a road leading up to it, and it's overgrown, but it looks like it was laid out at one point with a tractor. All right, come on down. Let's go take a look at it.

Watch as he just kind of puts his climbing gear back into his rope and then just takes around a well-worn braid, like a cable and then just kind of like slides down as he just kind of cracks a couple of branches but makes it down with relative ease. As by the time Philmore, he looks like he was just about ready to climb a tree when he was like, oh good, okay, good, great, great, great.

As it turns around and comes back. Meeting up with Marion. All right, we're at, Johnson. This way, here, let me take you up. And you begin to kind of cut through and follow Johnson. Who is now taking point to this? And where's Marion? Marion is taking up the rear.

Basically walk along for another half hour, 45 minutes or so, and you find the trail that Johnson was describing as it seems mostly to just be a little bit of grass that has taken over because it's a good sign because even after 15 years of this, it seems to be relatively unsprouded from, and you can clearly see where the dirt is been carved in order to make it part of this,

like natural foundation. It still takes a while to chug through it all, but eventually you do see what seems to be a fairly open plain of dirt that's been leveled that has a cut into the mountain. And you can see that it's, it would look like what you would expect like a bear cave to look like, but just much bigger.

Like it's a good 20 foot clearance up the top and then maybe 30 feet wide as it just looks big enough to drive very large trucks through if need be. So. Promising. Yeah. I got an idea. Okay.

Why don't we send the Falcon in for a little bit, see if there's anything in the first 20 feet of this fog that we can't see? Making Max a canary in a coal mine? Well, you gotta do what you gotta do. Not gonna say no. I'm gonna take a piece of meat. I'm gonna throw the last piece I have.

I'm gonna throw it into the cave. I'm a whip. Falcon's gonna come down, and as he's swooping down, I'm throwing it in the cave. I'm gonna watch him go in. Okay. The Falcon just kind of swoops in, and you hear a thud,

as it seems to have slipped in for a moment, and then you hear a small cry like, ah. Shit. I'm gonna walk a little bit closer to the cave and take a step by step and wait. And wait. I wanna roll a hold right here.

You can roll hold. What would you like to hold for? to hold for to see when I'm gonna get close to the entrance. And if he's gonna come out and I'll see if I could hear. You just wanna wait, just wanna wait. Yeah, make a composure check. Okay. Let's just kind of see, because I would like to know

what you're holding for, so. 67. 67, oh, that's one degree of failure. Okay. Your desire? I have 58 composure, so it's right under. That's fine. Okay.

You're fighting a will battle between wanting to check to see if your falcons okay and the practical safety of rushing right into something. after hearing a sound like that. And you're veering more on the like, you wanna go see what's wrong with the Falcon right now because it's been a second or two since you heard the thud and nothing's happened.

I'm gonna whistle for it again. Man sucks. The Falcon kind of like starts stumbling out as it's coming out into the light and you can see it's holding its wing and like a very kind of pattern. That's just kind of like it's dragging it a little bit is trying to hold it, but it is definitely walking back

towards you, but it's holding its wing in a really nasty way. I'm gonna kneel down and look to see if it's been scratched. No, it looks like it hits something. It hit something? Yeah. Well, you're not flying anymore, little buddy. I'm gonna shine my flashlight to see what I could see

in the cave. As you shine your flashlight into the cave, you can see about 10 or 15 feet. into the cave, a large metal kind of gate doorway that, you know, is supposed to just protect the mine from animals and things getting inside of it. It seems to be like a locked down. Yeah, entrance into the mine.

Well, woulda help to know that before we sent him in there. Bendy. Shit, I know you work on people, do you work on birds? I can take a look at him. It's got a broken wing. Mm-hmm. You can set it.

Set it? Yeah, you can set it. While he's doing that, lucky Jenny walks in and takes a look at this lock. Yeah, it's, oh great, like it has probably a similar fence pattern that's like this, so it's not like a steel door, but you can see going into it that it's pretty open,

but this great is just kind of right there. It's just a key lock, you know, at this point. It doesn't even look like it's a padlock or anything like that, it just looks like it has a, pretty simple, you know, iron key tumbler that's inside of it, that's used to open it. So it's a pretty old mine. You've got lock-picking tools.

You're welcome to just take some time with it. Now again, this is a time thing. So you can roll against, I believe the check for that would be, definitely an advanced skill. But you could use your tools absolutely as a gear bonus. But I would allow you to do probably your engineering for this, construction engineering, in order to make this.

And you can use the tool bonus. Just her. And then since we're rolling, can I roll with her for the first aid check? You can do it simultaneously. While she's doing that, you can do that. Absolutely. Does anyone else want to do anything while they're working on stuff? I'm going to hold the bird in my arm then and back out of the tunnel.

So I'm not in the entrance anymore. All right, so let's do the first aid check and then let's do the construction engineering check. And I add the difficulty dice as well? Yeah, you're exhausted. Yeah. And you're exhausted. Oh, exploding. So five, six.

11 is 54, 65. So two degrees of success. Two degrees of success. Okay, great. You're not gonna fix the broken wing, like as far as it still will be broken, but you've set it, you splinted it, you've wrapped it, and you've basically taken it

so that it's, it'll heal. Also, this is kind of in my wheelhouse. Yeah, yeah, this is your wheelhouse. Thank you. And you watch this like, Marion kind of like looks at you, and you can see. she's watching you work on this bird. So as I'm doing, like making the motion

and making a splint and booppa. It's way cooler than that. Standard was started. That's fine. And so I just take care of this. He might be better left outside. He's not gonna be flying anytime soon. I had a pet bird too and you know just comes from handling it.

I'm gonna place them off to the side of the tunnel momentarily. And I'm gonna put him in a small little area by a little gathering of rocks and just kind of lay him there and kind of move another rock here and there. The Falcon kind of like realizes what's happening and just kind of sits there. It cushions itself to a little mess. Yeah, there you go.

How'd you do? Well, I would have done well, but I got an exploding. Another exploits, yeah, you're up to 10. 15. Wow. 18. Oh. Your heads a little swimming from all the exertion from the 10 miles you've walked this day so far.

And you're actually feeling a little lightheaded as you're trying to do this fine dexterous work. And it's taking you a lot longer than what you thought it was going to. So at this point, we're well past one, one o'clock. It would have been one degree of failure with all of that. One degree of failure. So you jam it in there, but you're actually having a hard time trying to find a purchase on it, because it's got a pretty flush piece.

And you watch us like Marion, it's kind of like, she's just getting us like, why didn't I bring fucking bulk cutters? That would have been useful. And heavy. I pull out my machete, and I'm gonna take a whack at it. Take a whack at it? Yep. All right.

Well, you can have both go at it if you'd like. I'm not gonna blunt my sweet Viking sword. No, your crowbar. You know, the crowbar. That seems dangerous. To have her hack at it, well he's... Well, they're on different parts. One can be doing the...

I did it. That's how, I mean, that's... I got much better, too. Yeah. I got, uh... I got, well, again, if I'm adding bonus for the crowbar, I think I got two successes. Two successes? Yeah.

And how about you, Jenny? Um, I get four successes. All right. I'm bolstering the weapon as they do this, you know. Yeah, so it starts to make, clang, clang, clang, kind of sounds as you're slapping against it. Jenny, you basically cleared enough

of the chain link fence, that's kind of putting this all up in order for Wraith to get the crowbar there, that he could basically use the crowbar to pry and pop and pull the rest of the chain link out. So after basically making enough of a cut, you're able to pull it enough that you can make a big enough hole for both of you to crawl into it, basically going around the door.

Okay, going through the chain link. After we've made all that noise, can I do a spot lesson to see if there's any... Silence. In fact, it echoed into the salt mine a little bit. Any weird smells? Yeah, there is a weird smell. It smells like shit.

Okay. It actually smells like human excrement. Oh, okay. Guns out. Guns out. Is everyone like guns and stuff out? Actually, I'm gonna, oh well, yes, but also, I'm gonna give you my pistol.

And then if you wanna have the flashlight up too. Okay, yeah, I'll have the flashlight, the little beacon flashlight out. Remember, you guys don't gotta go too far. All we need is sulfur or dynamite, A or B, whichever comes first. The hard part is, if there's any dynamite that's left, it would be used by miners at the end of tunnels to clear more.

That is correct. Right. So, but... Damn you in your logic. This whole, doesn't seem to have a lot of twists and turns into this. It seems to actually be going straight into the mountain pretty clear. And you walk for quite a while. like 15, 20 minutes as you go into the mountain,

it is pitch black. You can see a door that's to the side of you, like a standard steel door that has an electronic key card lock that is now dead and gone. But at the same time, you can feel the humidity and the air just gone. You can start to feel kind of your skin crack a little bit as like your lips get dry,

and you walk deeper and deeper into the mountain. occasionally passing by these large doors. Do you have scavenging? Me? Yes, Band-Aid. Does he have scavenging? Like in the forest, not necessarily in the rocks. Say we could take the electronics of the keypad.

That seems that's normal to have electronic doors in a salt three? We don't want to burn a gestalt dice to get some gestalt knowledge? That makes sense? I have no just salt to burn. I can, I can. All right, so Band-Aid. Is it one?

Asher, yeah, just one. Asher, Fandthade. As Marian's looking around, she's looking, and she's like, what in the hell is this? And you recall for a moment, pre-war, you were young, but you remember hearing stories about how people before the war used to store things that they didn't want to get human,

didn't wear away like paper, precious documents, like things they wanted to dry out, they would just shove it in a salt mine. You know, in order to make sure that none of it kept dry and safe. And so like a lot of magnetic tape documents, not really so much electronics, but just things that they wanted to keep dry,

they would just shove in the mountain. Yeah, I don't know why this didn't occur to me before, but I think people kept things in salt mines. Huh, really? Why would they do that? Well, it's naturally dehumidifying. Well, I get that, But like, what would you want to keep dry besides food?

Well, records, civilization. Whoa. Yeah. And you watch it's like, this is Fillmore, kind of and he's like, whoa, holy. You think there's documents of like the old war that might be sitting inside of here? It could be.

Oh, crap, he goes over to the door and just start to jiggling one of the handles. Okay, okay, okay, sorry, I just got excited. Now listen, yeah. This stuff has probably been untouched, but there's nobody here and it hasn't been come back to for a reason. Right, right, okay.

If you remember back, the infected started from underground and we're underground. Oh, God, okay, you're right. Ground zero, brother. Well. Close enough. Well. So as you kind of get into the mountain,

you begin to explore, and again, it cuts through and you can see this is very deliberately cut, and you can do see there is definitely salt all around you and you can start to smell the sulfur. as you go through more and more doors, you start to get the area where there isn't anything anymore, and you can start to see the raw rock. That's kind of coming up.

And your eyes have adjusted to the dark at this point a little bit, plus the flashlights, you're able to kind of see around. And make us- Just real quick before we go in, anyone who's got a scar for anything they can wrap around their mouth, wrap it around the moisture,

as you breathe into the moisture, it's just like the cold. Any moisture you breathe out, you'll be able to keep trapped in there. That might help you stay a little more. more hydrated than your breath and keep you from coughing. And I've got my mask, your mask, your mask. Great, so you've all got some respirators on at this point.

As you're shining the flashlight across, you can start to see some of the raw rock, and you can see kind of a makeshift frame door, you know, like one of the wooden ones that look like the temporary door to go into a new part of the mind, right? And you can see that area seems to be relatively new as far as the space goes.

Ray, you kind of peer around and kind of see that there does seem to be some boxes, but let's see if you can tell, what's on the box. What am I? Listen. One degree of success. So one degree of success.

So you can see a lot of the boxes are not labeled. They're broken, they don't have anything on it, but you can see one of them does say danger, high explosives, literally on the bottom of it. And it's discreet, it's sitting on top of a couple of other boxes. So would you like to check it out? Yeah.

Okay. Hey guys, I think we just hit the jackpot, or at least a tiny little jackpot. It's a small box, but Dynamite's not big. It's a good size, I mean, it's a good sign. I rush over and I gently look at it just in case. Just in case? Yeah, just being cautious.

All right, do you wanna open it? We got a winner? Yes, I do wanna open it. Okay, so it's in that top box right there. Go ahead and grab it. You hear the door break open as you start to see it. You see arms just coming through on every side, and you can start to hear the crowds,

as you start to see, in fact, they are banging on this door as loud as they possibly can. As they pull items through, I'm going to spend 15 risks right now. Oh, God me, he's gonna spend all his risked. All my risk, and you have come across a hive at this stage inside of this run. Dude. So you can see, that's twice for you, Jenny.

I'm shit his pants. So mad at myself. I knew that was coming. I knew it. You could see the arms bursting through, and it's starting, they're just starting to peel it away as they're watching as these creatures are coming across. And you can see Marion and Johnson just start unloading their weapons into the door

as much as they possibly can. Can we speed roll? Can we do things? Can we shoot? Yes, it's an encounter. Let's do this. It's a small encounter, but we're in this at the moment. That's your size. All right.

We need speed? Do we need speed? Yes, intense. Ray. I need one because I'm Marksman and a sharpshooter. It's pretty more like a girl, you or me, I don't know. How much speed do I need? If you're running, if you're running back with the gear? I want to throw, I mean, but I also want to shoot.

I want to do all things. Well, you've got the dynamite in your hand now. Throw it in my backpack so quick. Do we get it? Go. And with my hand, grab my AK, yeah, it's over there. Three speed dice, putting it away, running, and shooting the end. A.K. Three speed dice plus your firing check. Band-Aid.

I don't know. Uh, okay. So I mean, back away from the door. Yeah. And go, and like, scream like a girl and run backwards. Okay. That scared me. One speed dice. Cool. To cry. To cry. Ray.

Ray. Uh, question. I had, how close are these guys? Like right next to us? Well, right next to Jenny. That was about accurate distance at that point before she came away. But you're about 10 feet back because you were shining your flashlight. I had the flashlight and the long gun is what I had.

Right, spin and shoot. Spin and shoot, two speed dice. I have marksman and Sharper. So reduce it to one. Thank you. Can I do an adrenaline boost to get really one of the exhaustion dice? Absolutely.

Both of them? Yes. Cool, good. All right. And then how about Kent? I'm gonna open fire also with the empty. Unloading into the store. Unloading into the thing. All right, kids.

Oh, okay. And you actually got to roll that difficulty, Nice too. That's huge. All right, I'm pulling out my knife and my pistol and backing up and firing into the door. All right, two speed dice for the pistol shot. Someone passed me two speedy.

Oh, sorry, you didn't roll that. All right, roll. Oh, team. You too, right in here, roll, yeah. Oh, fuck. Oh, but this is dope. What were you doing, Kent? I'm sorry, you were backing.

I was just backing up firing. Okay, then you need two speed dice. Okay, seven. Okay. Because if you're firing, it's when you go in this order. So remember that number. All right. So we can resolve your speed dice first, Kent.

So you got a 43. Against your MP5. My MP5, which is long run, which is neither failure nor success. So one degree of success, always a minimum, as long as you got over it. So you would have, for the long gun, it's two damage dice base,

did you want to spend another one in order to get another damage? Sure. So roll three damage dice then. And then what's the depletion on that? One. When you're a mid-sized business, you need every competitive advantage you can get. Like an AI solution that works for you, not against you.

SAP Grow is built with AI embedded at its core, working across every system. And it's ready to go from day one so you can hit the ground running. Bring it with SAP Grow. AI Cloud ERP for any size business. This explodes. Roll it. All right, roll again. 23, great.

Well done. You just unload into the doorway. You can hear screaming as the infector is just kind of caught off guard. Browl! That comes across. So, Band-Aid. You resolve, you basically start backing out through

as you're lining up with Marion Johnson and Fillmore at the moment. So, and then, Rayth is back, and how's your pistol shot? I have four degrees of failure. Four degrees of failure. How would you like to resolve your failures, sir? I have a suggestion that's not too bad. Okay.

For three, I can have your gun jam. Yeah, I was going to say that's probably one of them. There's still one left. How about he doesn't, you don't have, I don't have a ton of experience with pistols. So let me just say, when the gun jams, I don't realize it. Yeah, so you keep pulling the trigger.

So I keep pulling the trigger and maybe I take an extra speed die next round or something? Extra speed dice next round's perfect. Okay. So, yeah, guns jammed. You're basically gonna have to take a speed dice just to clear it. To unjam it.

Yeah. Or I can put it away and do something else. Put it away. We'll decide then. Alright. Right. I had five degrees of success. All right.

And, uh. Got them down. How big is this opening at this point? So it's like single file essentially at this point? Great. I'm gonna unload my rifle directly into that hole with my sharpshooter and Mercksmann ability. Great.

Straight through one. right into the one behind it. All right, so put a heavy caliber bullet right through that door. You just wanna lay out all the damage. I'll have a count for any targets that are behind it. So how many damage? So it's two to start with,

if you've got four degrees of success. I got five degrees of success. You can burn all of them for eight if you want. Let's do it. You can't do a headshot, can't do a called headshot because you can't see the target there behind the cover. Right, but I also can't, I can't do an additional action.

You could, yeah. If you wanted to burn one of those out of intent in order to move or do anything else, I would allow it. You gotta decide quickly because they're coming. Let me just get them. All right, eight. Two exploding.

Three, six, seven, nine, fourteen, fifteen, fifteen, 25, 30. 30. All right. So as you watch as a bunch of more hands come out and you can see as they pull their hands out, you can see they actually all have webbed fingers at this stage as they're kind of pulling, trying to pull pieces of the brick and the,

the board's out, you watch this bolt action 30-0.6 just echoes, it's just like a boom inside of this cave. As the sound bounces everywhere, as you watch, it's just as the bullet goes through and it splinters some of the wood that's alongside of it. As you see, the body's just pushed back against the side of the wall. So on top of just the small arms fire

that you were laying into on the MP5, you can see that it's the holes pretty clear at this moment. Let's go back down to Jenny. All right, so I had one degree of failure. Okay. Two over, that's still a failure. Yeah.

So I- Oh, no, two over, that's one, if it's not 12 over, it's, is it 12? No, it's two. Two, then it's zero degrees of failure. Okay. Yeah, so you don't have to resolve. Okay. All right. So at this point, you ran back,

but I'm not saying you put in your shooting. Right, exactly, yeah, I just trying to get out of it. It's cool, it's cool. Yeah. Marion just says, run! Just go, just leave them! As her Johnson and Fillmore just start booking it, just turntail and fly.

As you can start to hear that more of the cries you're coming from down the hall as the door is at this point clear, but you can hear more just echoing. As you just continue to watch as the salt mine just makes it sound like it's all around you at one point. The sound is coming into your bones, it feels like, as you run all the way through the salt mine. And you start to come through endurance checks

if you're full bore going into this. Let's get into it. Damage, you're people who are adrenaline boost. You're fine for the moment. Anyone who didn't just keep your damage, your difficulty died. How do you use an adrenaline boost? Is that just something everybody has,

or only specific people? I just was very scared. So I said, I got it. There is a thing called adrenaline boost. It will just mean that after this time is done, you're going to take a shit ton more speed dice. So you're negating speed or difficulty in speed now and training it off for having more of it later.

Yeah, I think I'll do that. You don't have any difficulty dice right now, though. No, I don't. Oh, I don't need it then. Yes. Okay, gotcha. And he's going to suffer. He's going to suffer for it later.

But now endurance checks, because we need to kind of hook this at this point, and you may get more at this stage. Oh, wait, this is mine too, because I had the world. Yeah. Scared Band-Aids, a fast band-aid. So I have two degrees of success. I have three degrees of failure. All right.

I have one degree of failure. Then one and two for you, difficulty dice. So as you're continuing, basically all checks now require that. That adds into your percentage, okay. And then for the people who had success as you're fine, and you had three. So I will 100%, I don't know if you wanna take advantage of it now, but I will tell you that one of

the doors is cracked open for those degrees of success. One of the doors going into the archive rooms. Archive rooms. Yes. You know what, I'm just gonna take a peek. Okay. As you run in and you run through and you open the door real quick,

you can see film reels everywhere. Just like can't. As you put your flash rat around, you can see literally a film archive. I'm gonna grab two, with the two closest things. Okay, you got some valuable salvage sun, all right? So just we're gonna grab it.

You're gonna just basically grab two, name two movies. Oh, Gone with the Wind and Citizen Kane. Done, all right, so you grab two of those film reels and you just are holding them now as you're just booking it. But also, I'm gonna set a lighter off and light the rest of it. Holy dick nuts. Okay, sure, yeah.

So you set a lighter in and- I have a Molotov if you wanna wait, we can really blow it up. The issue is that it's mostly cans, but you're just throwing, It's mostly just steel, so it's like the whole, it's not gonna, it's not gonna, it's probably not gonna catch anyway.

Yeah, I mean, if there was just a pile of film, sure, maybe. Or papers I was picturing like, it's all film cans. Okay, in there. So you turn around and you just keep running as you keep going, but now Marian and or actually Philmore, as he's running with, he was like, what is that?

I don't know. Okay, all right. And as he's looking at you, something, Just comes out from the side and just tackles, Fillmore Down as he comes down and you watch as it in effect that just tears his whole throat out. Oh my God. As he just falls down into the ground

and you can hear him screaming as you continue to run all the way down through into the salt might and you can see the small halo of light continuing to get bigger and bigger and bigger. As Marion looking behind you just doesn't even stop for a beat and just keeps moving as everyone is just running and you can hear this.

Oh, yeah, just continuing to echo behind you as you come out into the open midday air. So, Ray, looks like you have some degrees of success to still resolve out of this. How would you like to do so? Yeah, as I was running, I was able to spin around and keep an eye

on whether they're still in pursuit past the daylight area. Right, okay. So as you turn around to see if they're still coming from the salt mine? Yeah. All right, as you're basically moving around, checking your six to make sure that there's still nothing coming around.

You can still see the pale kind of translucent skin of the river runners that seem to be behind you and they do seem to be moving, not at a breakneck speed, but they are definitely moving forward in pursuit at this stage. Gotcha. Jenny, get your gun ready. I pull this out.

Okay. Pull out the AK-47. All right, you pull out the AK-47. And I'm still. And you guys get to the chain link great. That is essentially the entrance into the salt mine, as you can see the sun ahead of you. All five of you, six, seven of you,

yeah, crawl through the piece of the chain link fence at this point. Marion turns to someone, goes, can we button that up? Can we close that? Yeah, I'm gonna use the pickaxe, because it has a crowbar end. Yeah? Try to bend it into place.

Okay. Is there anything that we can avalanche down with a shot? Marion looks around and goes, no, I don't, Fuck, no, I don't see anything to overhang. Are you sure that's gonna hold? I mean, we just bent that open. Well, it depends on how strong they are.

I don't know, I guess we're gonna find out. So shut that in there. All right, let's get down this mountain. I'm gonna grab my falcon. The minute I run out, sitting there, swoop them into my jacket. No more. Fuck, fuck, why does it always have to be someone?

As she watches, as she came, like basically comes around and she seems to be walking a bit in circles as she's waiting for you to just kind of jam thing in there and she just grabs Johnson and goes, let's just, let's go Johnson. All right, we're taking off. And you start walking down the trail as you can kind of hear the infected.

Jenny and I will bring up the rear. Yeah, with our guns. I'm gonna toss a Molotov cocktail in there to slow him down. Oh, yeah, did you bring one with you? I did. Yeah, okay, great. So you should pull out a bottle.

Before you close it up. Yeah, before you close it up, you know what I'm saying? Well, you can go over the face. Yeah, through it. He's gonna seal it up, and I'm gonna throw it over after. Great, make the throw check. All right.

Only you can prevent forest fires. Those are forest fires. This is a mine fire. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In the pit, please. Ooh, well, tough. 32 plus eight, so you're at 40. 40, and my throw is at 53, so that's one degree.

One degree of success. All right, tell me the story. My hands are fiddling, because I only have one arm and I kind of hold the Molotov there, and I light the top of it. I tuck Max in, I say, you wanna see a fire. and I throw it, the bottle hits the top of the fence and then, peek, pink, pink, pink, it kind of tink, tink, tink,

tis. Huge, big pile of flame, you hear the- Yeah, the tree, you actually watch as like the fire illuminates the river runners a second, and you watch as they kind of throw their arms up, and the smoke kind of mushrooms up and then peels out through the top of the cave. Okay, as that's happening, I'm still at the gate,

And like that took me by surprise. Yeah. And I turn around and I grab them and like, cool people don't look at explosions. And you got to go, go, go. Do you ever watch a TV show set in a historical time period and think, how accurate is this really? But also, does it matter if it's accurate or not? Nefer TV is a new podcast about shows set in ancient times. This season, we're recapping every episode of the show, Spartacus, Blood and Sand.

I'm Anne Foster, and I have never seen this show. before. And I'm Gina Barry and I have watched this show maybe too many times. Join us every other Monday on the Nefer TV podcast as we discuss the real history behind Spartacus, Blood and Sand. Follow Nefer

TV. That's N-E-F-E-R-TV, wherever you get your podcasts. There's something wrong with Beck's End. The locals know it. The visitors feel it. And when the floodwaters rise, there's nowhere left to run from it.

When journalist Meyer arrives in the isolated town, she finds herself trapped by a flash flood and a community increasingly consumed by fear, fanaticism, and the voices that seem to float through the floodwaters. Beck's End is a new folk horror audio drama series about isolation, radicalization, and asks the question if redemption is ever possible, once all. hell has broken loose. Now funding on Kickstarter. Help bring the town of Beck's End to life at

becksend.com. 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 clue they can fight. 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. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.

When the chaotic are on the case