D&D is For Nerds - BONUS Beyond the Map: The Spirit of Lonely Places Chapter One

Episode Date: November 9, 2021

We are at the fringes of the map and there's more than just dragons. Join us in a tale of unspeakable horror set in the remote wilderness of Canada. Search for Beyond the Map on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey everyone, here's a bonus look into something we've been working on in the background for a while now that was previously a SansPants Plus exclusive, but is now being released on iTunes, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts from. Adam, sick and tired of our bullshit, sent us into three separate corners and ran a more serious and a little scary spooky adventure using the World of Darkness ruleset. From there, it's blown up into several more adventures that are currently available to listen to on SansPants+, so have a listen to Chapter 1 of The Spirit of Lonely Places, and if you like what you heard and wanting to know what happens next, just search for Beyond the Map on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts from, and slam that subscribe

button to never miss an episode. What if I told you everything you know about the world is wrong? What if I told you that all the things you believe to be impossible are in fact very much possible? Reality is not what you think it is. It's so much more complicated, fascinating, and, above all,

terrifying. We are at the fringes of the map, and there's more than just dragons. Inspector Warren Birch, correct? Yes. The officer at the Yukon State Police Department here in Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon. Whitehorse, all right, yep. He hands you the entire file that you have requested.

The file contains a single piece of paper. This is it? Yes. This was the only piece of evidence we have from the investigation you've requested. The year is 2019. About a year ago, a company called Bismarck Oil & Co. collapsed.

Collapsed under mounting financial costs. When it collapsed, several documents became unsealed. It would appear that Bismarck Oil & Co. had powerful friends within the federal government who had been concealing a series of incidents around the city of New Carthage and the Bismarck oil and coal drilling site nearby. The drilling site hasn't been used for a long time. It's been abandoned for maybe a decade, maybe more. You're not 100% sure because Bismarck oil and coal, when they liquidated about a year ago,

they started rapidly going through all of their documentation and destroying everything they could. And I guess my office took note of that and was quickly... Well, actually, the tax department took note of that. And then when the tax department started investigating, they found issues and then they brought you in. You are a member of the Canadian Mounted Police, otherwise known as, colloquially, the Mounties.

You are a federal agent with all the power and responsibility that comes with that. You lead a team, a special investigation group, called North Star. North Star has been formed specifically to investigate Bismarck oil and coal. So what do I know apart from what I'm currently getting? Do I know anything? Before I go in there, I'm like, all right, what do I basically know? When everything came unsealed, you found out, or the government found out, that Bismarck oil and coal had been kind of destroying incident

report forms as they were coming in and you have requested anyone any incident report forms that have potentially slipped through bismarck oil and calls grasp as it were this is the only one that has it would appear right this is. This is all I'm getting. Okay. It was filled out by an officer, Lenny McBride. Leonard McBride. In 1991. Okay.

So we're, okay. This is the only one that survived. The officer nods his head, yes. And you will need to make a empathy composure check. So your empathy is three three your composure is three you have a specialty for victims but this officer is not a victim no successes unfortunately so do you know how willpower works uh i think if i can spend it for uh bonuses is that right you spend willpower to get on any role you can get plus three extra dice willpower is also spent to resist physical things

so for example if you were about to be knocked out you could spend your willpower to stay conscious does that make sense you can also expend willpower to keep yourself basically composed in a situation where you might not normally be composed. I'll often let you know when willpower becomes important. In this specific instance, you have failed a roll, so you can spend a point. You have in total five points of willpower. You can spend a point to get an extra three dice on this roll. I will let you know willpower comes back at one point a day or you can indulge in your virtue or vice to get it back as well uh using your virtue you get all of your willpower back but you need to indulge in your virtue at your own detriment so your virtue

is honesty you need to be honest at your own detriment with vice, it doesn't have to be at your own detriment because it's kind of assumed when you're indulging in your vice, it's kind of fucking you. So your vice is ambitious. Okay, but I would have no reason to believe this person will be hiding anything from me or... You don't have any reason to believe, but that doesn't mean you can't spend willpower.

Okay, whatever. We'll spend the willpower. Why not? Sure. You can tell that this officer, it's so imperceptible you wouldn't have noticed it otherwise, but he shifts uncomfortably in his seat. You okay there, kid? Yeah, yeah, I am. I would say, though, that there were two forms.

Oh, okay. would say though that uh the there were two forms oh okay it's the same form he just the officer clearly misfilled it the first time okay you have you have that one as well okay so he gives you that one he'd hidden it underneath a pile of documents on his desk all right let me just do you have a place i can sit down and read this? Yes, please. He gestures to a waiting room outside of his office. You go out there and sit down with the rest of investigation group Northstar. You are, Inspector,

you are in charge of the following people. Inspector Roland Erickson, who is maybe someone you've had a lot of... Roland Erickson, who is maybe someone you've had a lot of. Roland Erickson is a very respected officer within the Canadian Mounted Police. He's what some people would call a lifer. He's here for the rest of his life and by choice.

He willingly is ready to die an officer of the Canadian Mounties. There is also Sergeant Ira Sosa. There's Sergeant Samuel White, Corporal Malcolm Runstrom, Corporal Iris Masters, and Corporal Lara McNaughton. Okay, team, so we've got two reports from the same incident. One seems to be a bit more hasted. Okay, so this is Constable Leonard McBride.

Can someone try and trace this Mr. McBride down, this Constable McBride down? Can we get someone on that? Ira Sosa looks at you and says, I'll do it. Thank you, Ira. So, yeah, it's Constable Leonard McBride, B-R-Y-D-E. Give him the information about who that person was. He was an officer with the Yukon State Police, retired in 99. He retired in 99, okay.

Yeah. Where is he now? I'm not sure. It doesn't say. So he was apparently the a prisoner, Wade Price. All right, you guys, I'm going to list off some names. Let's get some fact checks on who these might be. A prisoner of Wade Price.

Iris Masters pipes up. She says, yes, I've got it here. It was. Yes, I've got it here. It was... Okay, so we have a... We're escorting a Wade Price. Wade Price, wanted for murder and manslaughter. Okay. It was supposedly a crime of passion.

He killed his wife and her lover. Some passion. He fled across state lines into, not state lines, he fled across the border into Alaska. And the officer was part of a team bringing him back for trial. Right. And this Sergeant Michael Hill, was he ever found? Sergeant Michael Hill, his body was not recovered, no. So we don't know if they were dead.

According to the police report there, I believe he, does it say? It says he could not be found. There's a Sergeant Rebecca Shore. They might know a bit more about this, potentially. Here's the incident report here. Ira? Ira takes the phone back. Okay, I'm just going to...

The second incident report, McBride is saying something about monsters, some kind of mutation. Okay, there was a blizzard, so that could have been impending with their vision. It's a transferring wave when we hit a snowdrift. Okay. Michael Hill disappeared. Wade went all wrong.

What does all wrong mean? I mean, he's a violent man. Eat him. I have information on Rebecca Shaw. Eat him? I have information on Rebecca Shaw. She traveled up after the, in 91 still, after the incident report filed by Constable McBride. She apparently tried to follow up in person, headed out to New Carthage, the city near Bismarck Oil and Co. Drill. Then she starts going through some papers.

We have a missing persons person's report for sergeant rebecca shaw okay so we have uh shaw and michael hill both missing yes interesting okay if you want to i'm just gonna like like uh get uh a couple of them looking at this the other report as well that I'm currently kind of going through. So they're saying that Wade, he tried to apparently eat Lenny McBride, and Wade's dead, correct? Wade is... Yeah, the prisoner. The prisoner was not delivered. It just says not delivered.

All right, so that's three missing people. Leonard McBride is the only survivor of the four people that are mentioned here, or at least the one that isn't missing. Lara McNaughton chimes in. I have Leonard McBride here. It's an obituary from two years ago. Two years ago. Two years ago.

Okay, that lead is dead in the water. Okay, so we have four people, one dead, three missing. And an interesting report here. So Wade apparently went wrong, tried to potentially eat lenny mcbride do we know what kind of how did he kill his uh wife and lover it was a stabbing uh any teeth marks on the victims no no teeth marks she she being iris masters passes you some photos of the crime scene it's uh it's messy but you don't see any evidence of bite marks like a steroid like stereotypical kind of like stabbing yeah just nothing out of nothing out

of the ordinary no one's like putting you know writing things in blood and it was a crime of passion and opportunity everyone turned to freaking monsters or something huge mouths wrong legs wolves did did uh mcbride any what happened after he retired did he did he do anything did he try and follow this up was samuel white shakes his head i'm doing a google search for now i can't find anything of interest wife kids family his wife and kids yeah should we go go and follow that up? Someone else seems to have followed it up with the disappearance of his sergeant. I have some testimonies here. He passes you some witness testimonies.

It talks about his family. It was like a great strain on his life after that but it kind of evened out and then he retired willingly from the police force because they were tired they don't seem to know anything okay so he seemed to be on edge here and then someone did they make him write a new one what i think of it is in do i think this is a ravings of a madman or potentially something else is going on here? Well, whether or not you believe in the supernatural is up to you. But I would argue that any reasonable human being would say that the first one was maybe done under a great deal of stress by someone who was maybe experiencing psychological issues. But in 91, they were maybe not

as equipped to handle that as they are today clearly it was a blizzard it was a snowy you have the weather conditions for that time of that particular date if there was a uh blizzard i'm looking back now malcolm runstrom says i'm looking back now and there does not appear to be any no yes here it is he turns his laptop around to show you there was a blizzard reported at on that day okay so i would assume here it was colder than normal he says normal okay he shows you like a weather map or whatever not a weather map but a weather timeline and you can see that around that day or starting on that day there was like a freak cold snap okay so we have two officers uh transporting a rather dangerous individual who took advantage

of the cold snap and the snow drift that they hit. There was a scuffle. I'm guessing McBride was a little bit in shock. They weighed Price escaped. And we don't know where Michael Hill went. Okay. Constable McBride shot to kill. Doesn't say if he did. did in fact doesn't say anything about

that maybe it's worth going down to new carthage roland erickson says essentially and then the body of wade was never found no okay doesn't say anything about a body recovered here i mean mcbride hasn't given us a lot to go on here. It's not very detailed. You can see why they've got to do it again. I guess he shot to kill Wade, but he doesn't say if he actually killed... Okay, so Wade is potentially shot by McBride here. And Shaw's missing. Hill's missing.

The body of Wade Price is missing. Okay. Well, I guess where were you suggesting we head off to, sorry? Inspector Roland Erickson says well, if we head down to New Carthage, there might be some

information that we could speak with the local police there. And maybe... Is this the Whitehorse State Police? No. Yes. You're in Whitehorse right now, the capital of Yukon. Whitehorse is quite south compared

to the rest of Yukon. Yukon is basically the northmost and the westmost that you can get in Canada, basically. Okay. And New Carthage is about as north and west as you can get in Yukon.

You are, Whitehorse is kind of down south, basically. What's the residence of B.O.C.? What's B. of BOC? Bismarck Oil and Coal. When did Bismarck Oil and Coal shut down? A year ago. So that was still up and running back in 91.

Let's head down and see if we can ask some questions. See if we can follow up and see what happened to Michael Hill and Rebecca Shaw. The oil drill has been shut down for quite some time now, but we might be able to glean some information, speak to the locals, something like that. Okay. Well, was anyone else in charge? So Sergeant Rebecca Shaw, who was her superior.

Can we have a chat to this particular police station? It was 30 years ago. Are there any other files that we have on McBride or Michael Hill or even Rebecca Shaw? Do you have any information on them? McBride? Was he prone to anxiety attacks? Was he prone to... No, exemplary record.

And Michael Hill. What do we know about Michael Hill? Also a fine officer, by all accounts. No reason for him to abandon his post. I have some interviews here. It would appear that no one had anything bad to say about him and uh same with uh i guess rebecca shore as well uh no yeah they all seem clean and sparkly all right well let's go head down to the uh see if we can have some questions uh all seven of you

pile into we'll say like three suvs yeah I'll give the reports also to Erickson so he can even gleam any information there. He starts going over them. You drive out towards New Carthage. It's a, I would say, maybe four, five-hour trip. It's down the interstate, or not the interstate but intercontinental highway it travels through canada into the alaska it's maybe the only man-made structure at a certain point that you will be able to see there's a lot of just snowy grassland in all directions some mountains and maybe occasionally hills but it takes you i would say actually longer than four hours it maybe takes

you five hours to eventually hit the turn off to get off and head towards even further north than the northernmost man-made object right eventually driving down a dark and somewhat dusty for considering how far north you are dusty road you see ahead of you a gas station there's a big sign a big neon sign that looks like it was made in maybe the 80s that kind of half-heartedly says, Lost Gas Station. Do we need to fill up at all? Well, several people would just like to get out and stretch their legs. You've been driving for five, six hours.

Yeah, look, fair. Eight, ten, twelve. Three days you've been driving. You've been driving for quite a while now straight. Do we get much reception while we're traveling like anything like that or is it all a bit spotty as you're traveling further and further and further north you're looking at your phone watching as five bars becomes four becomes three becomes two becomes one becomes that little emergency e sign that is the reception level you have right now

yeah during the the trip i'd want to be kind of chatting to whoever's in the SUV and be like, so we hear the incident report he wrote under duress about these wolves. What do we know about the wolves in this area? Will they attack? Bismarck Oil & Coal used to employ a hunter and trapper even up until, even into the 90s to keep wolves at bay. Okay, so we know that wolves were a problem here. So maybe someone just, he's talking about monsters. I mean, if it was snowing, if it was dark, perhaps he was just like a wolf attack.

But, I mean, we don't really really know much we just know that there are several people missing what the hell are they doing you're on a lonely freeway in yukon in canada there is a single freeway that makes its way down from the southern end of canada all the way up through yukon and into the north it doesn't end at the sea north of Canada, but a smaller road does. And you are almost on that smaller road. Who are you? My name is Lenny McBride.

I'm a state police. Yes. That's who I am. I got one girl at home. I got a daughter and a wife, but, uh, she's looking after the daughter at the moment. And, um, yeah, that's who I am. Land, land to my friends. You're in your car, in your state trooper car, you're driving up and you've got the wind screen wipers going because it's snowing just lightly enough for it to be annoying,

but not heavily enough for you to want to do anything other than occasionally bump up on the control stick to cause the windscreen wipers to go. Is it just me? Yeah, it's just you and the car. You're on your way to New Carthage, which is a city basically as far away from human civilization as you can possibly be here in Yukon. And that is quite definitely saying something. New Carthage is a city with a population of about a thousand. So it's not like nothing.

It is a town. There'll be proper services and such there. But a thousand people does not a proper city make. No, fair. So you're expecting it to be quite country territory. There's a police officer you're meant to meet up there. Sergeant Michael Hill. You'll meet him at the police station in New Carthage. And then you're heading westward towards the Alaskan border

where you're going to meet with some local police there who have picked up a dangerous criminal Wade Price. Great name. Wade Price just screams dangerous criminal. He's wanted for murder and

manslaughter. He came home one day to find his wife cheating on him with another man and flew into a rage. Manslaughter, murder. Okay. All right. He fled and was managed. Police in Alaska picked him up as he was basically crossing the border. Okay.

They're holding him and the state are going to take him back down to the capital of Yukon. Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon, is where the Yukon freeway basically ends. It was a big project around the turn of the century. Mm-hmm. And it connected Whitehorse to the rest of Canada properly. to the rest of Canada properly. The freeway got extended a little bit past Whitehorse, but government didn't really see the purpose of making it go all the way to the north end.

There was nothing important there. And New Carthage is nothing important. By definition, nothing important. It's an old whaling village. You probably might know that. Maybe before you left, the other cops in the precinct chuckled laughed at you and maybe maybe someone left a pamphlet on it you know what

absolutely someone left a pamphlet on your desk welcome to new carthage land of new beginnings oh that's great it's an information booklet sponsored by bismarck oil and coal right in big bold letters right beneath can i have it uh kind of on my steering wheel sort of open in one hand um to it was i'm eating a chocolate bar and i reading uh just kind of pouring over it seeing what it's got to say you know kind of paying attention to the road as well but also obviously looking at the pamphlet that i get in my hand there there's a big map on it of north carthage new carthage sorry well it is also a very north of the original carthage but yeah so it's a small ish settlement a lot of the houses are quite close together because the only thing there, there's no farming to do up there, so there's no reason for people to spread out that far heat. You kind of want everyone closer for the heat. For sure. There's still a lot of whaling that

goes up here, even today. It's basically the only thing keeping the town alive. Or maybe you think that, but the pamphlet does not say that. The only thing that kept the town alive was whaling. However, recently, a new deal with Bismarck Oil and Coal is reopening the oil well nearby. There's an oil well about a couple hours' drive from the town. And when it reopens, it's going to be with about a thousand new jobs. So, kind of really a bit of a shot in the arm for New Carthage. Yeah, yeah, a really great New Carthage, for sure. From the pamphlet, I'll get you.

I'm going to make a politics intelligence role, which for you is a chance, darling. I don't pay much attention to. It's certainly not about, you know, places that small. I don't know. And I. It's certainly not about places that small. I don't know. And I suppose also about just the actual politics. So the way it works is I take your intelligence stat of two and I take your politics stat of zero and I add them together, which is two in total.

But because you have no politics, you get a negative three to this roll, which puts you into negatives. So a chance die is I roll a single dice and you only succeed on a ten. You got a one, which is a critical failure. All right. Only possible on a chance die. So you think it's very funny that Bismarck oil and coal is here despite the fact that Bismarck oil and coal has

nothing to do with the proud and only profession of this local village, whaling you're not sure you're not sure what, you don't make the connection in your brain that Bismarck oil and coal is what is keeping this village alive.

I guess I know about whale oil is a thing. Maybe. Maybe that's what they're doing. Maybe that's the kind of oil in Bismarck oil and coal. That's strange, though. You just get genuinely very confused. I don't quite understand what that means. Maybe out of confusion and stress, I'll put that pamphlet in the seat next to me.

Stop reading it. You're dividing your attention. It's not good. I'll put that pamphlet in the seat next to me. Stop reading it. You're dividing your attention. It's not good. I'm already in danger of crashing. Yeah, all right. I'll put the pamphlet in the seat next to me. Heck, I don't know what that's about. There's a little alarm.

It's in all of the state cars. There's a little red light alarm that goes off when the fuel's getting up when the fuel is getting a bit dangerously low what can often happen in these extreme temperatures is that the fuel gauge can get stuck on the dashboard the needle can get stuck there or there can be the extreme temperature can cause issues with the sensor gauge actually in the tank itself and so there's a separate electronic backup notification cool that goes off at you. You realize you've been driving with nearly an empty tank for some time now. Oh boy.

Can I like flick the gauge to see if I can get that needle to wake up to see? I'm going to make that. I'll pull over as well. Oh, you pull. All right. Yeah. I'm not going to do a wild drive and to be like, maybe the car's wrong. I'm going to make that a Witzcraft craft roll which is once again a chance die but i'll give

you a plus one to this role because it's quite easy to do so i'm gonna call it two dice then cool all right there's no sound happening so give it a little yeah you give it you give the boy a little flick, and the needle drops until it's nearly halfway down the letter E. You've been running on fumes. Oh, heck, okay then. I will pull over. Do I have a map of the area or anything? Yeah, you've got the pamphlet.

Phew. All right, I'll get out of the car. I'll check on my gloves, I guess, because it's cold, and then I'll... It is freezing. I'll head to the bonnet and I'll put the map on the top there. And I'll just spread it out to see if I can see where the heck the nearest service station is to try and get some... Do you have glasses? I'm imagining you with basically the glasses that you're wearing right now.

Oh, yeah. Glasses. I got a big mustache as well. glasses that you're wearing right now glasses i got like a big mustache as well that if i like to imagine i got one of those kind of not quite a balaclava but like it comes up around my face but my mustache goes over the top of it you know that kind of thing yeah like it comes up to keep my eye yeah i got that on and i gotta pull it down if i want to talk to somebody um yeah i got glasses and i got also gloves on my hand that kind of can come off and hang down you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Get attached to the wrist. But yeah, so I put on my glasses, put on my gloves, and I'll go out and spread that map on the bonnet there and see what I see. That's a survival wits with a plus two for your little map. So that's your survival is two, your wits is three, and then another plus two makes seven dice total. That's a good roll for you. I'll be fine. You see that there's a little, it's just denoted on this map as gas station.

It's not far from you. You think you have a pretty good chance of getting there. Even on a nearly empty tank, even in this frigid, cold worst case scenario if the car stops i can just walk and walk all right it's not that far do i think it's maybe worthwhile walking getting it in a tank and then bringing it back here that might not be a bad idea just in case i don't want to risk the car basically well actually no you should keep driving yeah you would probably know to keep driving as well because if you leave the car idle for too long in these conditions, it can actually you can kill your car. No worries.

All right. I'll get back in kind of quick, quick, smart so that, you know. Yeah. It doesn't get too cold. And then I'll do a U-turn and head back to the gas station. Oh, no, no. It's straight ahead. All right.

Yeah. Fantastic. All right. Keep heading on. ¶¶ We hope you enjoyed Chapter 1 of The Spirit of Lonely Places. To find out what happens next, search for Beyond the Map on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts from. The first three episodes are available right now, and don't forget to subscribe to never miss an episode.

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