Dice Shame - 2-30 | 'Below the Belt'

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

Imagine your best game of D&D. The shocks, the twists and turns, the moments that can’t be caught because you just had to be there. That’s Dice Shame.Join our DM Jo, her husband Harlan, their brother Alex & their best friends Rob and Alex as they experience those unmissable, gut-wrenching, heart-aching, joy-filled moments.This legendary AP releases a brand new episode every Thursday morning at 1:20 am!Content Warning: swearing, violence.Part of the Rusty Quill Network Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Inert Visera is my favorite heavy metal band. I never even thought about it, actually. Oh, you did that 23 and me type thing, eh? What's the puzzle? Don't make me do a strength check. I'm extremely proud that you only lost five times. I feel so beautiful wearing it. Where's that wall? It's coming down.

The baby's got a gun. Oh, yeah, absolutely. What? Oh, God, I might take 10 minutes to read these. I might need some help. You know, I don't get your tabaxi humor sometimes. Oh, I'm a Taurus. He's that meme with the numbers flying around his head in the little geometry and all of that stuff.

you were doing what I asked you to do, so it was my, it was my fault. No, no, no, no, there's nobody's fault. This one's on Harlan. This one's on me. Welcome back to Dice Shame. This is Season 2, Episode 30, Below the Belt. MVP this week is Scotty from our Discord. Scotty's making their way through the backlog and live blogging their blogging their

Listen, thanks so much for hanging out with us, Scotty. Yeah, thanks, Scotty. InvictusConn, 20203 is this weekend. Here in the Guthrie household, we are gearing up for an exciting weekend of RPGs, social events, panels, art, and more. If you haven't checked with the details yet, visit our website at www.com and follow the Invictuscon link at the top of the page. Join us all weekend long for all of the fun of a gaming convention without having to do crappy things like leaving your house or spend. spending literally any money. It's going to be a blast.

Don't leave your house. Join us online. All right. Should we play some D&D? Yeah, let's do it. Yeah. I was listening to a podcast today about Napster. Oh, yeah.

Who listens to podcasts? Wow. Talking about that. A thing that. I never really realized was around for an incredibly short time. In my head, I was like, Napster ran from like 99 to 2005 wrong. It ran for like eight months. And then it was shut down.

Yeah. It was like when I found out, I was like, oh, my God. It feels like it went for so long. It was just in a really formative moment. Yeah. Yeah. And then because after that, it was Kazah. And then you had lime wire.

So many versions of Lincoln Park underscore bootylicious. Dot EXE on your computer. So true. Weird Al. So many. awful corrupted versions of a song you just desperate to find. With one glitch in it that you just couldn't find the version that didn't have the stupid glitch in it. When you hear it, you're like, well, there's something weird about this.

Yo, for real, though. There are songs that are like burnt in my head that I'm like expecting a glitch because of the version I downloaded. Still by Elvis Costello is one that every time the verse leads to the chorus, I'm always expecting it to loop back because the version I had did it. Wow. I listened to Elvis Costello when I was. I mean, I have a version of a great big C song that I think it's buying time

and there's a glitch in the version that I always had that like cuts off like half a line and it goes straight into the chorus and to this day when I hear the full song I'm like, well, what the fuck? Why is it just like think? And the quality of music just went up drastically now. Like I remember listening to like, you know, 17 bit versions of songs with like

sounds like a midi file. And now it's just like you don't rarely do you hear a song that's like nothing but pristine. Yeah. I mean, I was just thinking about the fact that like we were all of the age that we grew up with the internet, but remember a time before it. And also we're there for when the internet was like a thing that you had to go to do on your computer in your like separate computer room. Yes. With the family around or the family room. Yeah. And there's and there's so much of that internet that's lost now. It's all does it's like it's so much internet ephemera

of those times. And I'm always, like, very curious to hear what people, the, the decayed parts of the internet that they think about and they, like, think about, or that they remember and they miss because there was, like, blogs that I loved when I was younger. And I'm like, the people who wrote them don't know who they were. They were just, like, other teenagers in, like, Chicago and, like, all this stuff, all these, like, lost forums, like flash games. I could think of one.

Harlan might remember this. Liquid Generation. What the fuck is that? Oh, fuck. I remember friends, it was like this website and they kind of did sort of a jackass sort of thing. They had, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This was pre- YouTube. They had videos, though, of their pranks.

Like a generation, sabotage. It was so, so cool. The fuck is that. And I remember, like, websites. Yeah, I remember that. Remember going to like. Back up. Your family computer was in the family room, you said.

Oh, yeah. And was this a PC? Yeah, of course. We had an Apple. Oh, right. We had a Mac too. Yeah, we were a Mac family all the way. Oh, no.

Always a PC. We didn't get a PC until my mom absolutely had to have one. Well, podcast is over. The Skid on the division. Didn't get around. I had a buddy that bounced around. So we got to try it all. I was like, oh, this is weird.

And then he's like, he had one of those, one of those Macs that came with the, it was just the monitor. Yeah, so did Tommy. Yeah, yeah. I remember playing bungee's, oh my God. I think it was called Marathon. It was like an old bungee game pre-Halo, obviously. And it was like Apple's answer to Doom. I think it was called Marathon.

And it was really weird. I didn't like it. Have more RPG elements. Man, I hadn't thought about that in years. But yeah, I remember liquid generation. I remember rate my poo.com. I remember back when the internet was like really, um, juvenile-say, but like, just way more dangerous.

Wild West, man. Yeah. For real. where it was like, I can't remember the name of the site, but were you just like rate people, like attractive or not attractive? Hot or not? Hot or not. Yeah, that's probably it.

Like, just stuff like that, just like on mass, just like websites that existed. Hurt my feeling. Orment one person or multiple people. Yeah. Learn out of bullypeople.com. For real. Yeah, it was a very weird, weird time.

I remember looking for nudie pictures and like, yeah. And where our computer was, you had to be like, you know, you weren't sitting looking at it. The TV was the opposite of it. Alex, what are you looking at? And I remember this like nudie picture downloading and it was just like, one picture. Oh, God. Every pixel took 10 minutes.

A nipple, I better close it, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Quick, dad's going to turn around. He's in the room. Yeah, I don't really, of course. Yeah, you have to watch a TV. It's not going to be in the middle of the night. Yeah, this is what you got to do.

But I don't think I, like, miss any particular site. There was one that it was a cartoonist. Trogdor, the Bernanator. I still exist. Home Star Runner was, I think, was really big when I was in university because they were touring and they came to the University of Saskatchewan and they put on the show in a bar

and all they did is had a plate of fries and they drew Strongbad's face and ketchup on the fries and had the plate of fries talk to us all night and show us clips of stuff that hadn't been released on the internet yet. It was just, it was a wild night to be all. That's pretty cool experience. That'd be like seeing the South Park guys put on a show.

Yeah, it was super interesting. That's crazy. And what's interesting about this is that we're sort of in the age of we're looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses. We are currently at the age of Ghostbusters afterlife. And, you know, this movie that you haven't seen in, I mean, the flash trailer just dropped. And it's literally like Michael Keaton turns around as Batman and he's like, I'm Batman again. and you can hear people like just salivating

and the Danny Elfman score comes and it's like I've become cynical to it because it's a little bit it's gone from like nostalgic to me to be like obvious and to me I've seen that drip over to the internet sites that used to be like oh I hadn't seen this in years

they're just back now like I remember years ago trying to find that skiing game there was a skiing game on PC and I remember what was called there's like a little monster with his hands up and you just like go back and forth. Or Chip's Challenge. Remember Chips Challenge where you push a little key

and it was like these little mini MindSweeper-esque games? I remember trying to find that. And it was like trying to find gold, you know, trying to find this file, you know, and this was years ago now. Now you can just Google it and there's 10 sites that will play it for free. And I'm not necessarily sad about that.

But I think everyone our age has started to dive into the past and just make it more accessible, which has its kind of double-edged swords. I wonder how true that is or how true people with money think, I'm going to try and squeeze a few add dollars out of this other person and marking you your past because that works a lot.

Sorry, don't get me wrong. I'm definitely saying people doing it are trying to make money if they're not. The motivations behind it are totally questionable. All I mean to say is it's difficult for me to feel like I've missed something because right now I feel like all those sites came back in one form or another. You know what I mean?

I wish they didn't to a degree. Nostalgia is way, way overplayed. It's like an easy, it's an easy buck, and so it's just everywhere, and we've got to quit buying it because it's done. I remember the site? You remember doing prank phone calls, and you load up one of these sites? I had a whole bunch of buttons on the sound things. Yes.

Again, those all, yeah. You can't find that. That's not easy to find. It's because Flash is dead. They're really easy to find. I was showing Henry them. I do them on my phone. They're so easy.

Oh, on the phone, that's probably right. Well, the death of Flash really changed things. I agree. Yes. Joe, I don't know if you, I'm going to, if you were into this stuff, but I used to love the, like, the dresser, like the drag and drop dress up dolls. Cute. No, I wasn't into that. I was more of a neopets. Also a neopets person. I loved it. And I'm, again, with the death of Flash really changes, like, everything's an app now because you can't just, like, play browser games anymore. So. I also had kind of, um, like a, a big version of Tamagotchi. I don't really remember what the name of the game was, but the vibe. was that you, like, hatch pets on the computer game and you have to feed them and, you know, potty train them, educate them, whatever, like, play with them and stuff.

Read this book. But then I didn't realize it, but it tracked based on the time on your computer and, like, the date, how long you'd been gone. Oh, we've got to find the computer. So when I came back, it was, like, sick and dying because I didn't realize that. You were supposed to check on them, like, I don't know, every couple of hours. It was terrible for a young kid's brain because I started fretting about my little digital, like, computer pets. And we had to uninstall it because it became bad for my brain.

You got stressed out. Oh, my gosh. This is how they get you, eh? This is how they started us off. That's cool. I remember my brother and I would hang out by the computer, and we had encyclopedia CD-ROMs. and so Devin and I would put in different CD-ROM discs and look for like scientific names for rude body parts

and we would just be like, you were so innocent. We'd be like memories, memories all alone in the moon life. Have the computers say the bad words for us and laugh and stuff. It's like looking up swears in the dictionary. Yeah, exactly. But like, and again, just to just to frame my point, Alex,

Do you remember, or anybody, do you remember word rescue or math rescue? No, there's like, DC games that you'd play at. Sort of, yeah. You'd troggle trouble. Yeah, there were like little,

you play a little boy or girl, and there's this worm and you could pour slime on things. So Henry's learning to spell and read, and he's doing a fantastic job. And I thought, what a great little game that he could play. You know what I mean? I was like, okay, I'll download an emulator,

I'll find it, because this was an obscure PC game that three out of the five people here don't even know. I was like, whatever, I'll do a little bit of research. I'll get it. it's on fucking steam. No way.

It was like, I found it in seconds. Download it in seconds. I don't even need an emulator. It launches right on the thing exactly how it is. It works with my controller. Like, again, people were like, or even Treasure Mountain,

like all of those things, they're just on Steam now. They're so easy to get now. They're just there. Okay, so everyone, I assume everyone here did like computer classes in elementary school and had to like learn how to type and stuff.

Mavis being all the way. Okay, but like, okay, I don't think, I don't, the typing program we used, I think only we had it because when you were learning it it would teach you the letters

like going down the keyboards you go key let's learn QA's so but like there is like mnemonics that went with it so to this day my brain always remembers like quiet aunt Zelda Willie sits exam every dad cares you're doing a wrong one though

every dad cares run from Vicky to get Betty young Harry never uses Joe's money I'm King comma Lloyd stop please sounds like the music teacher was teaching you how to type This was the program, and I feel like I'm losing my mind. It's quick ask Zoe, what stops x-rays?

That's much better. Kind of client Ed Zelda, Willie Sitz exams. Please tell me that you all. Which isn't even no word. You both have that, but different words? Yeah, quick, ask Zoe, what stops x-rays? Even dogs can't. I have no relation between the keyboard.

And then we go to a different thought. redfish vanish then grow bigger next thought yaks hear noises under jack's mattress what was the purpose of this something something something and then the last one was just peanuts it sounds like d and the adventure design run from vicky to get betty and then young harry never uses joe's money no that doesn't make any but what was the purpose of knowing the layer of the keyboard so that you could think about it and pick where your finger was supposed to go without looking. The point was that you were going to be able to use it. They have little nubbies on it. It was elementary school. To poison the brain of millennials. I was going to say it's just interesting because I, I mean,

if I was taught that, I genuinely absolutely forgot any correlation. Yeah, I don't have that memory somewhere. None whatsoever. I wonder who's the fastest typer between all of us. Obviously, it's probably me. Alex. Yeah. Yeah. You've got a good, you know, 20, like, Alex is a pretty good bet just because you don't have to be specific. Yeah, there you go. Guthrie, there's three of us. I think it would be Alex because he would be least worried about making the most mistakes. Because you didn't say accurate typing.

Fair. Well, no, I'm just thinking, I don't know, I don't know, like, I don't know, like, I don't know how much the computer you guys use every day. I feel like I'm typing emails constantly. I'm just like all day long. I mean, I think we're all in front of a computer pretty much constantly all day. Yeah, but I wouldn't argue that I was being bold when I said to be honest. I will say this. And this is a very cursory thinking, but I'd probably be the best out of mouse aiming

between games and cutting clips, which I do all day between those two things. I think I'd probably be the best. Your aim is pretty great. I don't know, but that's, you know, what I win every. buddy I win I've got your medal is in the mail do you guys remember Microsoft comics chat I think it's where like the comic sans font comes from no that's a gift from gone but it was this like old chat program where you where you were chatting but they like displayed a comic character that you were picking as your avatar was like way ahead of its time in that sense no that sounds

oh man I I never we never had it on our computer at home but at my friend will's house he had it so we'd go over there and chat with random people on the internet and will random comic people Yeah, that reminds me of some really good times when you just said going over to your buddy's house to do that. I remember I had this friend Shane and we were in scouts together and we were just buddies and I would, I would go over to his place and we'd watch, you know, he had one of these really comfortable basements. It was like all carpeted and like a big cushy L-shaped couch and like he had a computer down there and I remember we played Heroes of Might and Magic. Oh, that's a good one. My brother and I sat in front of a computer and played that a lot. It was that and it was Dungeons and Dragons.

Like we'd play him and me and Drew. Man, those are good days when you used to play Dungeons and Dragons. Speaking of which, let's play some. Let's do it. Let's do it. Sure. Sure. Sure or whatever.

Having vanquished the giant ooze, you stand in an underground garden, centuries old and almost dry beyond recognition. The partially digested body of one of the Zantarim bandits lies in a puddle of slime, where it fell out of the ooze's body, along with a curiously large metal belt. All around the room lie broken crates, piles of rubble, and bones. Ah, well, that was not pleasant. No, mm. No, that was gross.

That was disgusting. and very acidy Ow My lips are chapped now Do you feel that I don't really I don't really feel the acid stuff What's going on

Are you resistant to it or something Some mechanical advantage Hang on Let me check my character sheet Let's see what it says Oh my god Oh god what are you peeling off Where's that wall?

It's coming down I have all the information From my family All of my background My history everything It's like a scroll Oh you did that 23 and me type thing

Yeah yeah Yeah. It's like fantasy DNA test. 23 runes. How many chromosomes does a water genasee have? Everyone, every single one of them. All of the waves of them. Just genetic soup, really, is there.

Is there an obvious way that light got down here to grow these crops? Oh, right. Do crops need light? Yeah. How do you grow things, Doran? Don't you just grow mushrooms? Doran's like walks over to one of the plots of soil that has some, I don't know, some rotting cabbage that's been there for, and he kind of kicks it, he's like, I don't know, I've never really, uh, never really grown anything. I didn't, I never really thought about it actually. Well, I mean, what did you eat when you were on the ground? It's tools.

Oh, lots of stuff like this. I just never grew it. I don't know. Somebody grew it. I just ate it. Tush. I imagine a lot of it went into the bland stew. Hey, maybe that's why it's also bland. It's underground. Oh, yeah. Good thinking. Hey, uh, what's up with this guy? Red walks over to the Zantorum with the heavy metal belt. He's so rock and roll.

He's into maiden, iron maiden. To be clear, this belt, if it were cut and laid out, would probably be about 20 feet long. It's really big. Whoa. This is a big-ass belt. It's like 20 feet long. Is it a big guy? It's...

Not anymore. When I say belt, I mean, like, it's a circular thing. Oh, does it look like the kind of belt that would have come off the gears in the other room? Very much like it. So, okay. Oh, wait a minute. This isn't a belt. It's a different kind of, it was not a human belt.

It's a belt from the other room, the gears that went on it. Oh. And Red lifts it up. I see what you're saying. Yeah. Hey, look at that. Well, why the heck did he take it off? And Red wraps it around himself like a sad.

for a Miss Universe contest. I assume it's still covered in like goo though and like, in like viscera. Yeah, but it's like inert now. But I feel so beautiful wearing it. Inert viscera is my favorite heavy metal thing. We are inert viscera. Your favorite heavy metal belt. Is there a reason that we want to put the belt back?

You know what? That's a conversation for a minute. Jack, why don't you roll whatever you want to roll? Well, I would, no, I was just going to look around for the rest of it. I am really interested in the light source, but that might not be a thing. Is there anything else interesting in here that's catching my eye as far as stuff that's not just, you know, produce that have sit here and rotted for a while? Yeah, there are broken crates, piles of rubble bones.

It's kind of a mess down here. You can imagine that with this probably being the layer of an ooze, everything's been a little bit, like, mildly digested over the course of the years, potentially that this creature has been here. All of a sudden, veranda comes running down the corridor towards you in a pool of lantern light.

Her face is flushed and she's grinning and Kieran is galloping beside her, his tongue lolling out of their mouth. I figured out the puzzle. Oh. There was a puzzle? We were kind of busy. Yeah, we killed people.

Yeah, look, I've got splashes of acid all over me. I think it's doing something to my skin. What's the puzzle? Well, so after the fifth time that I lost against Kieran at Wizard Chess, I decided to take a closer look at the statues, and I realized that each of them has a piece that moved. Mari found one of the hands closes into a fist, so I just found the other three, and the gate opened. Nice. And then I came here.

Awesome. Let's go see what's over there. Aren't you proud of me, Red? Yeah. I'm extremely proud that you only lost five times. Yeah, I don't think Doran's ever won. Kieran is canonically smarter than Doran. I just want to step outside of character and apologize in advance for all the burp

I'm going to do. Because I generally burp off and Harlan is requesting me last time to burp into the mic so that he can pick it up and put it into character. Let me, let me clarify this for everyone's sake. If thematically you're mid-talking in Doran's speech, you don't need to stop and burp. What I meant was because last time you were like, and then I'm going to the whole. on, and then I'm going to, which would make sense, but if you're just burping into the

mic randomly out of, he's not going to be like, ooh, that's gold. Isolate that. I'm thinking, what if you're like going through editing and you're like, oh, that was a really good burp? I can cut that one. I don't know. I don't need that personally. If I really need it, I'll just message you. Well, I'm glad I said something about it, so I'm not just burping the entire time because, you know. But listen, to your credit. Now, we've got a couple. Well, I was going to say, to your credit, you were doing what I asked you to do. So it was my, it was my fault. No, no, no, no. There's nobody's, it's all good. This one's on me.

Yeah, let's go. Actually, quick question. Is there any vegetation here that's kind of abnormal? It's all pretty standard stuff, like carrots and... I mean, it's nothing that you would recognize directly because it's like... Pumpkin, man. The hell is he doing it? Hey, guys.

Yeah, but if there's anything that's kind of unique and quirky, I would love to take a look at it or take some of it. There is some kind of like a corn analog. It's on a stalk and there are like pods. Supercorn? Sticky purple grass? Yeah, it is purple, like the kernels to it, but it's in like a sheaf almost. It's kind of like a mix between wheat and corn. Yeah, Red walks over and takes some of that just to kind of peek at it and say,

oh, this looks interesting. Look, Jack, and he holds up a purple ear of corn. That's amazing. I wonder if it kept growing after the gnomes were sealed down here, or if it's really, like, preserved that well over, like, almost however long, a thousand years? Like, it's crazy good. Is it dry? Super dry.

I think it would just be fun. Maybe it'll make good potpourri. Popperi. Potperi. I mean, can you imagine being able to grow something from that? If it was that hardy to last that long, that would be awesome. It's going to be a fucking invasive species. Well, aren't they all seeds?

I mean, we could take them with us and see if they'll grow into something. You never know. Well, I'm definitely going to take some of them. If not, we can use it for anything. nice pretty cornucopia during a nice celebratory meal. Yeah. Cool. Can I just quietly heal in the background?

You want to heal in the background? Yeah. You can off-camera use some spell slots. I'm going to do some off-camera healing. Excuse me. Great. Red goes around and just says, you know what? I'll grab a few of these seeds, Jack.

These could be interesting. And he'll just spend five to ten minutes while you all move on or hang out. I don't care. Collecting various seeds and putting them in, uh, a little, you know, cloth satchel in the bag of holding. Sure. Yeah, you get some from, like, a weird gourd and, uh, some other grain type thing. Then I'm, like, fissing around in the remains of the human being like, this?

Uh, you're not going to find any seeds in that guy. What? Oh, God. Oh. But I did. That's the weird thing. These are guy seeds. If I plant it, will a guy spread out?

No. Yeah, it's just a kidney. Yeah. Oh, cool. Fucking brain. It's delicious either way. All right, let's go. Let's go and see what Veranda's done with the puzzle.

Yeah. Yeah, you guys head back over to the statue room, as I've been calling it, where veranda stands triumphantly in front of a raised portculeous. Portcule. I'm saying it weird. I will not. Port cutlass. What else moved?

Yeah. Oh, check this out. And she goes over to one of the statues and its ear, like, moves down. and one of them, the spectacles come, like, way down the nose versus up near the eyes. And then the fourth one, she's just like, you don't want to know this one. But looking at it, though, I can kind of guess. Well, where's the lead? Through there.

I didn't go in. I wasn't sure if there was going to be. Good call. Does somebody else want to lead? It didn't work very well for me last time. Let's go take a look. Jack's taking the lead. Good luck, Jack.

Jack moves in by himself. Gravely, ready to catch the brunt of any trap. Doran follows directly behind. I'll take up the rear. So you move into this large room. Its rear wall is festooned with brass pipes and valves that stretch from floor to ceiling. Set into the floor, much like in the previous room, you see a metal grate, and beneath that, there are these gold-colored gears. As you move deeper inside of the room,

you can see that along the near wall, there appear to be spare loose gears stacked in piles. And on the far south of the room, there's a wheel set parallel to the floor on an axle. It has long handles jutting out from all sides, like a captain's wheel. Beside it is another set of brass pipes. Is there any sound in the room?

No, everything's stationary. Mary walks over and picks up one of the, are the gears small or they big? They're pretty big. All right, never mind. She walks over and she looks at one of the gears. She's not that strong. Don't make me do a strength check.

Is there anything written on them? Not that you can read. I think your hour is probably up from your comprehend languages at this point. Sure. I mean, we had 10 minutes picking flowers. You wanted to pick the flowers. You guys also spent like 90 minutes talking

about the coffins earlier. Yeah, we did spend a whole lot of time there. Yeah. We've been down here for six days. We're all starving to death and getting rinkets. Hey. Doran kind of walks over and inspects the great looking for any holes like we found in the other room. Any holes in the steel great floor?

Oh, now hold on, before you answer that. In the last room, was it missing a belt? It was. It was. Correct. So this is... Okay. Well, I could put the belt on in the other room if we want eventually.

Obviously, we don't want to jump the gun. Someone took it off for a reason. Also, why would this room be locked? What's the logic there? Well... Well, probably at one point it was running, and Mari walks over to the wheel, the captain's wheel thing. And takes a look at it and puts a hand on it and just sort of pushes very, very gently to see if it moves at all.

How are you pushing it like you're pushing the stroller of a sleeping baby? Are you pushing it like you're pushing a kid onto the tracks? A supermarket cart that has a rusty wheel. How hard are you pushing it? I'm pushing it like I'm pushing a. She's varying degrees of baby. Baby who you're angry with. A baby, a baby that won't shut the fuck up.

No, I'm pushing it like I would push a baby out a window. A well. What level of baby pushing are you pushing this thing is what we need to know? Is it like your baby? I'm pushing it like like as if like a like a baby came up to you with the knife and they were like Give me your wallet and I had to push that. Ah, yes, yes. The defensive baby push move.

The defensive baby. Yeah, everyone knows that. The British baby. Naturally. Yeah, the baby, the baby's got a gun. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Baby from Liverpool. Babies got a gun.

The baby from London. Mari. This captain's wheel moves a portion of these gears. So as you push in like a circular motion clockwise, the gears underneath the metal grate that are adjacent to this captain's wheel, you can see them click and start to turn. And the teeth interlocked with each other up to a certain point. And then the movement stops further on.

Seems like there's something missing. Yeah. Hey, guys, if this moves. That's incredible. I mean, part of it starts, but the rest of it doesn't seem to go. So it probably relates to that, to that, and she gestures over to Red, who's, again, wearing the weird sloppy belt. He's picking his nose.

Yeah. Wow. Does it look like any of the gears in this room could fill in gaps that would move the rest of this? There are a couple of gears that are piled up just on the eastern side of the room that look like they would definitely fit the bill. Yeah, I think Mari was looking at them earlier. I wonder if those fit in here. Doren, maybe you could help me haul one over just to see.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Duran waddles over and lifts one clear over his head. Jack manages. Dorn, why are you waddling? Are you okay? Do you have a boopy? Pick the balls again. No, that's just how I walk, Red. Perhaps you've never noticed. I've got a bit of a waddle.

It's that extra Dwarven mobility he got trained in. You don't think it's going to be a spry, but that waddle will get you out of danger in no time. He's got too many muscles for his legs. It's like a comic book character. Well, when I'm not in a rush, I tend to waddle. It's quite comfortable. Doren.

Are you sure you don't mean dawdle? Are you confusing the word? Cheeks are just clapping as he tries to run away, alerting all the guards. His stealth is shit, but... Doran, it is, it's an easy feat for you to lift this heavy metal gear over your head. And as you do, several pieces of paper. flutter to the floor. Paper.

Watch it. That metal gear is solid. Stupid paper. Burn that shit for Jack gets it. No. I use my mind to scoop up the paper and bring it quickly to my hands. Grubby little pause. I might take ten minutes to read these.

You can figure out those gears. You might have to, Jack. The paper is full of gnomish script. Well, I better puzzle that out. That's my plan. Any drawings on the paper? Yeah, one's really rude. I could see Jack spending like an hour reading what it says

and there's like a clear diagram, like with gears on it. You're like, oh, it goes there. But you need to figure out which one says this side up, right? And that's the real... Is that an arrow? What would do it? I like to imagine it's all just like horoscopes or something. He finally reads it and he's like, oh, this is a good...

Oh, I'm a torus. Jack, what's that paper say? It's going to take me a minute to decipher it. I sort of lost concentration there between the... Zantaram sticking a knife to my back in the ooze and stuff. Oh, fair enough. But give me a second, I'll figure it out.

Look, if you're going to put the gear in the hole, presumably we want to move this thing. So why don't I go put the belt on in the other one? I was just going to say, why don't I come help you put the belt on another room? That way... Dorn and I would love that. Let's get out of you.

And then, we can come back, and hopefully by then Jack will have figured out what that says, and maybe he knows exactly which gear to put where. Yeah, bye, Dorn and I, I go into the other room. Have fun. Be safe. Oh, darn. It's so stuffy in there. All these gears and dust and reading and learn. I know. Where's the battles? Where's the action? Where's the battle and the booze and all the fun? Literally 30 seconds ago. Yeah, it's been like eight minutes. Can we hear? Are they talking in the other room? I hear the muttering. That's what I was going to ask,

actually. Can we hear? She's yelling through the great. Can we hear? If you do yell. Okay. You can hear each other, yes, because the gears are shared underneath these two rooms. Doran yells over and he's like, Hey, Mari, why do you spin that wheel just for a second? See if it does anything over here. Yeah, we'll stretch this thing on. Take that in, Doran. Take it, stretching around the thing.

Yeah, I'm holding and stretching. Why don't I use this? And then Red lets go so it slaps you. Yow! Boi, yo, yo, yo. You ever done that before? It's called a rubber band. We have them in Mazdica.

To be clear, this thing is made out of like sheets of interlocking plates of metal. Not only more, it's rubber band. So instead of it springing back, you just kind of throw the metal thing at it. He's just hit with a whole bunch of like baking sheets basically. Gotcha, buddy. You know, I don't get your tobacco humor sometimes, but hey, I'll go with it. I did fall Well, I don't know, I'm bored

I liked it when you blew that whistle That was real interesting Yeah Maybe we should play a prank on them I don't, I don't think it does anything though Well Yeah, let's do a prank I'll be honest with your red

I'm kind of afraid that That whistle's gonna summon a dragon or something I mean It had a Right Had an emblem of a dragon on the side of it And I'm Oh right

That's what you meant by the whole dog whistle Yeah, and then, you know, admittedly, uh, the last thing I want to do is summon a dragon. Those, those things scare the crap out of me. Well, I speak draconic. So, you know what? Blow it again and let me see if I hear it. No. Because if I speak draconic, then maybe it'll work.

Look, I'll do a quick, too. Doren pulls it out and does it quick. Yeah. I don't know if I had that. Do one more time. Nope, not doing it anymore. Definitely, I didn't hear it. I'm just going to put my head right up next to it.

Red, you're playing with fire. I tell you, friend. You're playing with fire. I do not want a dragon to be coming up from the deep here. We're already underground. I'm not doing it. And Doren shoves it back in his pocket. Keep that thing safe then.

If you're worried, it could be that. I am. All right, let's put this thing on. Between the two of you, you managed to fit this metal belt on the space between two gears. Takes us like 10 tries, though, because it's like clearly meant to go one way and we keep putting it on the other way. What does it call? Like a drop. Look a USB key.

where every time we turn it, it's, like, wrong? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it called a drive belt, I think? There are such things as drive belt. It's a belt between two. I don't know. I'm not a gnome. It's a drive belt.

Well, a drive belt, yeah, I mean, a drive belt is really a belt that goes between drive shafts. Okay, okay. To turn the main. Hi, I'm a car guy. To turn the car jeanier. Excellent. um back in the other cog room back in the other room i love the idea that jacks would stay there quietly and marie's like kind of doing something there's just no conversation between the two

concentrating yeah jacks like marie like looks over at jack and he's just like sitting on the ground like staring intently so you're a wizard yeah he's that he's that meme with the numbers flying around his head and the little geometry and all of that stuff it's just completely Completely focused on what's happening at this moment. She's fighting every instinct in her body to just walk over and to clap him on the shoulder and be like, what are you doing here, buddy? But magic users respect other magic users, even if they don't understand what that magic is. Cool. You just hear Red and Doran laughing in the other room or Red laughing.

You're like, oh. Yeah. I stayed in the wrong room. Don't stay on my account. I'm perfectly comfortable here. I'll just curl up next to these gears and read the instruction manual. Well, I might need some help with pushing this wheel if those guys ever finished doing whatever they're doing in there.

I hear a lot of clanging and yelling and yelping and shouting. So I assume, I don't know, can you pants a dwarf? I feel like that's something Red would do. It's challenging in full-plate armor, but I wouldn't put it past Red sleight of hand. That's for sure. He would find a way. He would find a way. I think I got this now.

It's right about the time that Red and Doran return to the room when your spell ritual is completely And his Bob wasn't even read. Oh, Maurer, you have to hear what I did. I pulled his pants down. Well, you tried.

Okay. You don't really go that far, but... Yeah, there's a little leg. Did you get the belt back on? Yeah. Oh, crap. I don't know. Doran, did you even have a belt? I just pulled them down.

They just came pretty easily. I don't even. know what you wear. Well, I do wear a belt, but it's also just a drawstring, you know, and look, I've got these nice suspenders that go up and under my armor. Yeah, we got his belt back on. Oh, good. You wear a belt and suspenders? Well, it's a drawster. Wait, you're just the GM. What the hell? Oh, a voice just came down from. I don't have to talk to you. Oh, my God, the gods are real. And they're telling you to wear suspenders.

They're in fashion this season. These notes are not great news, I'm sorry to say. The first one here, It says Zozenbafel is doomed. Perhaps our ambition was too keenly felt. Our final travail turned fatal. Regret and consequence be damned. The lives lost here were easy payment for knowledge. If you seek the jewels of the workshop, you will instead find our ruin. Leave now.

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