The Adventure Zone - Ep. 48. The Eleventh Hour - Chapter Eight

Episode Date: September 8, 2016

Could you resist the power to go back and change your very worst mistake? What if it meant unraveling some of the non-mistakes you've made since? Also: Imagine, for the sake of this hypothetical, that you're a complete goober. Merle runs out for smokes. Taako takes the show on the road. Magnus goes home. Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointaz

Previously on the Adventure Zone, you've been able to withstand the thrall of each of the relics that you've faced so far, and that is commendable, but there's no power and no treasure more seductive than that which the temporal chalice presents. It will tempt you in ways that you've never been tempted before, and I have no way to aid you except to warn you that the power to fix your mistakes is a power that is nearly impossible. to resist. But I truly believe that together, we can fix the wrongs of the past and we can make this world better in the process. I just want you to hear me out, and then I'll release the girl, and then I'll go with you in peace. So you're the cup. Let me do some quick calculations. According to my math, there's a zero percent chance the boys don't wang this one up. It's the adventure zone. Merle. Hey. Hey. It's just the two of us.

You don't have to use your character voice. You need to talk to me like Clint for now. Okay. So Merle, you are standing in a space that feels kind of similar to the white space that you've found yourself in so many times whenever the loop resets. But as you look around, it dawns on you that Taco and Magnus aren't here anymore. It's just you. And standing immediately in front of you is June, who is holding the temporal chalice and already she actually looks a bit more vital than when you spoke to her just moments ago.

Instead of this like, you know, 90-year-old woman, she looks like she's in her 60s or so. Nice. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. She is deep in concentration. And you realize it's because she is scanning through your memories.

And those memories are being represented in a very real way, everywhere around you. It's almost like you're standing kind of in the holodeck, if you will, and your life is flashing before your eyes as June kind of goes through your memories, and you

find yourselves in all of these different scenes as she rewinds the span of your life. So you see the past few loops as she's scanning slowly at first, and then you see your entrance, your cannonball entrance into refuge, and then you see your time in Lucas's laboratory.

and she slows down a bit there and she nods. And then she rewinds a bit faster and you're in Rockport. And then you're in Fandolin. And then you're in the years preceding Fandlin and preceding the adventure that has been covered in this show. And this brings us to our first of a few questions that I want to ask all of you guys to kind of flesh out your characters a little bit. And that is, how did Merle come to be an adventurer? I want to get into how he became a man of the cloth a little bit later, but how did you decide to sort of become an adventure?

Is this like your first real quest? Were you a priest of fortune before that? How did Merle get into this adventuring life? No, this was not the first. No. Really had a terrible home life. Okay. He was in a loveless marriage.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. All right. I mean, it was, it was ugly. The, uh, what was, what was his husband or wife's name? Uh, Hecuba. It was, uh, you know, dwarves marriages are usually arranged marriages, you know, because we're really into this whole, you know, keeping the gene pool, you know,

dwarf pure, were you sort of secluded mountain dwarves or like hill, hill dwarves? More like, you know, civilized human-like. We were beach dwarves. We lived on the beach. We had a, we had a, you would call it a cottage, but to us, it was home. All right. That is unconventional, but so are so many things. Yeah.

And here I came up this great beach property. Yeah. And it still wasn't enough. How did this loveless marriage to Hekaba result in you becoming an adventure? I, uh, I ran down to the, the dwarf store. I said, I'm going out for smokes. Right. She said, what do I care?

And she said it just like that. And get my lotto tickets. She said that. Okay. So is Merle still legally married? With my religious poll, in my mind, I had it annulled. But not on paper. Legally, Hecuba is still floating around.

Okay, this is interesting. Because if she ever found me, she would cut me. Okay, so you're kind of a man on, you're kind of a dwarf on, Dwarf on the run. I'm a running, a little bit, okay, yeah. All right, interesting. So, yeah, then while June is scanning past, past Fandolin, past sort of your meeting, the other boys, she sort of finds a few years of your nomadic lifestyle.

She scans to your humble but a cozy beach cottage that you shared with Hecuba. She rewinds even further to, oh, you're there on your arranged wedding day, and it was a pretty horrible event, I'm imagining. The catering was horrible. Yeah, sure. The deviled eggs went bad. And so you rewind past that. And she's scanning a bit faster now. and these memories, these like this holodeck chamber of memories that you are standing in,

sometimes like the picture gets a little bit blurrier where your, your memories falter a bit. Some bits that like you just can't remember at all are just complete static, right? Okay. And as she rewinds past your wedding day and a few of the years before that, she actually hits a point where there's a lot of static. like a really, really long unbroken period that June is just scanning through more and more quickly. And she's frowning. And she seems like she's unsure whether this error is on your side or hers, but there's like a long span of time that's just not there. But then all of a sudden, your memories do pop back into view as she rewinds beyond that static.

And you see yourself as a younger man. and you see the time where you first sort of join the cloth, which brings me to my next question. Dwarf, by the way, Dwarf, not man, dwarf. Oh, sorry, a young dwarf. And you join the cloth. That leads me to my next question, which is, how did you convert to become a follower of Pan? Well, my dad was a Panite. Interesting, okay.

Yeah. And always, I mean, it was, wow, every Sunday morning, every Sunday night, every Wednesday night, going to Pan service, going to Payn service, you know. I've always kind of envisioned Pan followers and like Druids being, I mean, they're basically the same thing, just kind of being buds and like living in like a hippie commune or something like that. That's exactly what it was. All the nature crap. And, you know, oh, the trees, animals, birds, oh, God.

And, you know. So you didn't like growing up in the comments. Well, no. I mean, I had to go. And, you know, I didn't want to get grounded. So, yeah, I went along and I went to, you know, every summer pan camp, you know, going along on the pan retreats. But it was really, it was really, you know, really forced down my.

my throat. I didn't, I didn't dig it. But I had to, you know, it had to, it's your old man. You got to act like, you know, you want to be there. So it seems, it seems like Merle is strong in his faith in Pan now. Was there something that happened that sort of awoke that in him? Or is it, has it always been sort of just like second, second nature? Like, it's just sort of a thing that he, he does without feeling especially strongly about it. Well, the thing is, uh, when things are going good, it's easy to be, you know, know, a panist. Okay. You know, oh, yeah, oh, this is good.

Yeah, I got away, you know, oh, yeah, I'm living my life. And then, you know, all of a sudden I was in the middle of it. And it's easy to be a panist when life is good because, sure, you know, let's face it, if you're going to worship a nature god and everything around you is trees and rocks and animals and shit, I mean, it's, it's, what else you're going to think? It's not like, you know, I was walking through cities or any of that kind of stuff. Yeah. And when you're, you know.

So this, this related, I think this is super duper interesting because it seems like this you following Pan was inherited and not so much came as like a moment of divine inspiration. So like, oh, no, no, no, no, Lord, no. It was a good way to meet girls, to be honest with you. Okay. Because all the girls in the Pan Choir and, you know. Sure, sure, with their Pan flutes. It sort of paints the rest of the adventure that's happened in like a really interesting light of you're not this super hardcore devout dude as much as you are like kind of still exploring what it means to be advanced.

Well, I tried to switch to, you know, isthmusism, but my damn finger fell off. Okay. Yeah. Then you rewind your time sort of growing up as a moody, uh, 20 something and a moody teen in this commune. And you sort of hit the end of the, end of the track. And June, fast forwards back through that early adulthood period, back through that long, long, long static. And fast forwards back into the past year. And in fact, you know exactly the day that she stops at because this projection stops,

and you find yourself in the middle of a familiar and, disturbing scene. And I should point out at this point that what you're seeing here is in third person, for lack of a better term, like you see yourself. You are sort of standing there, ghost of Christmas past style alongside June and the chalice. As you look at this scene, and she, June finally speaks up after scanning through your life for a really long time. And she says, you've lived a fairly charmed life, Muriel High Church. And we currently stand. And we currently stand at the exact moment of your worst and most fixable mistake. And you realize you're standing in Lucas's lab during the Crystal Kingdom mark and you see yourself in your null suit

and you look dumbstruck. You're kind of facing yourself. And across the room is Noel and Taco and Magnus who are chipping away at a frozen door and floating immediately in front of you is a crystal shard, which has emerged from a rift in space time. And, And you realize when you see that crystal, you look at yourself, you look at the projected version of yourself, you've still got both your arms. And you hear the voice of Pan, which you know to be the false voice of Pan. And it's beseeching you to grab the crystal and save your friends. And this scene is just frozen in front of you. And she says, you shouldn't have grabbed that crystal, Merle.

No shit. If you claim me, Merle, and you use me, you can stop yourself from grabbing it. You can be whole again, Merle. That is my offer to you. So Taco, you are with June and the temporal chalice in the white space. And I've kind of described what the scene is, so our radio audience didn't have to listen to it a second time. But you're in this white space, and you are sort of scanning through the memories of your life. and at first the scan is kind of going back day by day and then week by week and then month by month

and you're seeing sort of recent history play out all around you. So like you're standing in the Crystal Kingdom Lab in the Cosmoscope, you're looking into the different planar mirrors and then all of a sudden you're standing in front of a cherry blossom tree in the middle of Gold Cliff and your arm is on Magnus's shoulder and then you rewind a bit faster and you're taking a job in a tavern in Fandolin and you're just sort of scrolling back through the history of your life and where the memories are a little less memorable, things get a little bit blurrier. When it's things that you've just kind of forgotten, there's just static.

And while June is scrolling back through your life and through the years preceding the adventure that this podcast has sort of contained, she hits a long, long, long period of static. that she seems to just sort of look around kind of quizzically during, and she's just like fast-forwarding, or I should say, rewinding faster and faster and faster. And then once she gets past this long static, the picture returns, and you find yourself standing in your early adulthood and adolescence. And this brings you to my first question of like stuff I want to dive into with Taco, and that is, how did Taco first get into magic? because you've talked about how it was sort of a modifier for your cooking. So I guess I should also ask how like that came, how cooking came to be an interest of tacos as well. Like what the relationship is between those two, what he got into first, how he got into them.

Taco had to have been on his own for quite some time. He, from the time he was about 12 years old on, he had to sort of fend for himself. And the way he would sort of make his living was by traveling, you know, with troops, sometimes performers, sometimes mercenaries, whatever, different groups of people. Anybody who was traveling because he never felt like he had any one place that he specifically belonged. Okay. He didn't have any marketable skills. He did not fight. He did not, he was not.

He didn't fly, didn't crow. Didn't fly, didn't crow. Didn't have a lot of marketable. skills. So the way that he sort of learned to make himself useful was he would he would serve as as like the chef of the of the crew. So that that would be the role that he would play and that would be sort of how he paid his way with these traveling crews. And, and, you know, the fact that he's so hesitant to get into danger is just sort of instinct from those days when he didn't have anybody sort of watching his back. So he had to kind of fin for himself. Okay.

And how did, like, how did magic get into it? Like, was there, was there, did he have some sort of teacher of the culinary arts? Did he go to cooking school? Did he go to, like, where did taco, that's how Taco, like, started cooking. Where did he get like? It's when, it was when the, uh, when he started doing the cooking show, when that, when that opportunity came up. Um, and he would go from town to town, keeping with that traveling spirit, he would, you know,

go to town to town. He had his own sort of production going, but he noticed the audiences were flagging. And so he was looking for some way to sort of like elevate his cooking and make it seem like something really special. So he started sort of messing with magic, but he obviously had no concrete training in it. And that's how things sort of broke bad. Is he self-taught, both in magic and cooking? Did he go to any sort of cooking school or magic school or anything like that? He learned cooking from an aunt of his that he was very close to and she taught him cooking. The magic he just picked up out of whatever books and stuff he'd strung along. When you're on the road like that, you know, you pick up little things here and there.

He had traveled with wizards a couple of times and learned very small things, but he basically knew just enough to be dangerous when we got started. Okay. Interesting. All right. So, all right. So while while June is sort of scrolling through your early adulthood, she got past this long period of static where you just couldn't see anything, right? She's going through this period where you're traveling with these different caravans and making yourself useful while cooking.

And while like those days were probably hard, those were probably really difficult days of, you know, just scraping by and doing everything in your power to like stay on board these caravans where you had, any, you know, small amount of safety that you could grasp on to. While you're looking through these memories and, like, seeing yourself, like, inside of a caravan and, like, doing some, doing some cooking in there, there's some, there is something about the memory that's, like, a little bit off. Like, there's something, it's almost like there's parts of it that are a little

bit staticy. Like, as you look around, you can't see the whole picture. And when June sees that, sees this like distortion of this memory, she kind of sighs and then fast, fast forwards back through your life, back through that long period of static, and into the years preceding this, this adventure, somewhere within like a, I want to say about, I forget the timeline that we established in an earlier episode. I think it was six years ago before this, this, the current episode that we're on now, at the the fateful final

episode of sizzle it up with Taco and here she stops fast forwarding and the scene stops and you see you see the town of Glamour Springs and you see your stage coach

and it's been kind of deployed like there's a little window where you are doing all of your cooking the stage coach is nice and big and it's got all the cooking instruments you could possibly need. There's like a little oven in there that sort of pops out of the back of the stage coach for ventilation. There's a stove top where you're doing some stuff. There's a big long counter for prep and where you do all

your magic. And the first question I want to ask about this scene is how many people were in attendance at this final show in the town of Glamour Springs? I have I may have given the only thing that's fucking me up, Griffith, is I don't, I don't remember if I've given these details before. I don't think you have. And if you have, that's fine. Like, listeners, you'll have to forgive us. We've been doing this podcast over the course of two years. So if we go against Canon, whatever. But I think, I don't know that we've ever talked about your past. Pretend I'm like a new, a new writer taking over on the talk of story. But not only that, like, we've done such a bad job of diving into our character's backstories. I see no reason why we can't sort of more firmly establish them now. So how many people were in attendance at this show? there were 40. 40 people, okay.

Just sort of a mix of, of folks. There was always, there's always a few sort of, a few teens that had nothing better to do. Okay. Usually the older people in the village were usually the biggest audience. A lot of, you know, housewives and house husbands that looked after the home and we're looking to elevate their cooking. I see, I got you. For their special someone. And then of course, always, you.

you know, if you looky-lose, that just we're looking for a free show. And free food. Like, I'm imagining Glamour Springs as being kind of a frontier town. And I think the people there really love you, like, you've probably been through here a couple times. Yeah. And 40s are probably a pretty big crowd. And so, like, you got a decent-sized turnout here. And I think a lot of people maybe just show up for the free samples because they're one of the better off.

Frontier towns, but I mean, there's still a lot of poverty. So a lot of people just are like, oh, hey, free free food and also a great show. What's the show like? What's sizzle it up like? It's a lot of talking, honestly. As the years went on, there was a lot more sort of bloviating. Taco does a lot of things to show off his cooking prowess. Like he'll pour, like, he'll say this recipe calls for like a teaspoon of horseshire.

And then he'll pour some worcestershire in his hand. and he'll be like, you know, a lot of people say, yeah, a lot of people wonder how I can do that and be so inaccurate, but look, and then he'll pour some wish or she in his hand and then pour it into a teaspoon. It's like, exact. That's really gross, though. It's just poured worship, you're on your hand.

No, the hand, wish or she, I mean, his hands are clean. Like, that's how chefs work. I guess so. No, no, I don't think chefs pour liquid ingredients into their hands before they add them to the... Well, yeah, but like, if they're making meatballs or something, they'll use their hands. worked with clean hands

he's not a savage So I want to ask another question And this is something We've definitely never talked about Was this a one-man operation Was it just you and a traveling stage coach Or did you have

Help With sizzle it up Or was it just you? No, I had a driver Well sort of a driver slash stage manager. Like a roadie. Roady.

What was their name? I got to remember their name because it, I knew him, it was weird. I knew him like, the back of my hand, C-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z. C-Z-A-Z. Yeah, S-A-Z-E-D. C-Z-Z. C-Z. Is C-Z- What is C-Z-Z?

Say-Zed is, he was a, uh, sort of my right-hand man. Okay. He, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he was, like, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, so you've been traveling with Sez Ed for a long time, performing, sizzle it up for, for, for varying-sized crowds. Obviously, you've, you played the underdark. That was probably a weird show, but that's where Wren sort of first encountered you.

You've traveled all around the land, both, you know, playing bigger shows in towns like, you know, big citadels like Neverwinter and then these smaller sort of villages on the frontier. And your relationship with Cézhen has been pretty well. You've been teaching them how to, you've been teaching them how to cook. and he in turn has done a good good job, you know, keeping the trains running on time. But your show's been growing in popularity and it's grown a lot actually in the last year. And Seizade has wanted a little bit more responsibility and a little bit more sort of featured placement. Cezat has asked to do like a spot on the show in the last, a couple months or so

says that comes to you before each show and it's like so you think I could do my stuff on this one just like a little a little spot I mean I'll let you do you can get the meson ploss together and stuff you know measure things out in the little cups and makes everything run smoothly that's fine

okay while they're getting the mezon plus together during those shows though and I think it probably only happened a couple times they would like turn around and hand you the thing and then like dish out a little catchphrase to the audience like shop some stuff out like test it out yeah yeah they're kind of floating trying to build their brand they're trying to build their brand and then like i think after a couple shows say z says like look

listen i've i've really enjoyed working with you and i think i think what would be great is if we could co-host this thing just like shared credit put your name's up on the stage coach and it looks awesome but what do you think about sizzle it up with taco and say z just like shared credit 50-50 split and you know we share the workload and it we share the share the glory you know know, and we just, what do you think? Well, that is so groovy. I love that. It trips off the tongue, you know, but I got all these t-shirts that already say

sizzle up with Taco. I can get new T-shirts. I printed those T-shirts for you. So I can print out new T-shirts. That's a bad business, say Z. I would love to help you out, but it's just bad business. Sizzle it up with Taco is the brand. I mean, we'd have to throw all these in the junk pile, and you can't write on them.

There's not enough puffy paint in the world for all these t-shirts to add Sazad on there. Sorry. It's mainly a merch thing, a license, a merch, and the brand. You know, I've got the logo painted on the side of the wagon already. So, I don't know. I have my brand established. I just don't think it, it jives. Cezad's like, okay, all right, I get it.

I get it. Okay. Do you get it? Because I don't want to keep having this conversation. No, it's locked in, definitely. I got it, Taco. Excellent. Seizette's kind of dejected and,

goes back to cleaning up the stage coach after a particularly rambunctious show that you did. So I think Seizade's kind of moody over the, over the, you know, the next couple months, not as, not as talkative between shows. And this brings us to the final show at, at Glamour Springs. What are you cooking? Meatballs. Always meatballs. My famous meatballs.

Okay. No way. No, I can't cook meatballs because that has ground. It's ground beef in them and that would not be great. I am making my 30 garlic clove chicken. That's a lot of garlic cloves. You know, you would think so, but you cook it so long. Sure.

That you really, you lose a lot of the like the most pungents and the most heat, but you definitely get that flavor deep down in. It's a long cook. It's a long cook. And you, I shouldn't doubt you because I bet Taco remembers this, like, recipe, like the back of his hand, like over the next, you know, until today. Probably every, every day Taco thinks about this recipe and thinks about the measurements and thinks about what they could have possibly screwed up so very, very badly. So you're doing this flashy production. You're making your 30 garlic clove chicken, which, like all of your productions is sort of a combination of,

an equal measure of advanced cooking techniques and transmutation magic. And I think some of the latter is probably like unnecessary, like transmitting sugar into salt when you had a big tub of salt just like right there. Yes, absolutely. Like taking the skin off the chicken and then transmuting the chicken into chicken with skin on it. Like just pointless. Just pointless shit. Pointless magic.

And so you finish the meal and the audience has been wrapped this whole time. and you go to offer samples and the audience starts to walk towards your stage coach and time freezes. And you remember what happens next. Everybody dies who eats that chicken. You're lucky that you didn't eat the chicken to taste it, which is weird because normally you would sample the food

while you're cooking it, which I think could be leveraged as evidence against you, for whatever repercussions you face for this, this horrible event that happens. And that's the last time that sizzle up with Taco ever, ever, uh, takes place. But it hasn't happened yet in this scene. Time has been frozen. And June sort of grabs you by the wrist, still holding the cup in her other hand.

And she says, come with me. And she walks you behind the stagecoach to another smaller wagon that you towed. alongside the stagecoach and used for storage. It's also where Sezad hung out most of the time. And she, you sort of passed through the wall of that smaller wagon. Sitting inside on a small crate and sort of looking extremely nervous, like gripping his hair and staring intently down at the floor is Seiz Ed. And they're holding a bottle.

And there's an apothecary's note scrawled on its lid. and you can see that this was a bottle full of arsenic. And June says, well, I guess this must come as some small relief, right? Like all this time you thought your transmutation, your reckless magic is what killed the town of Glamour Springs. In actuality, it was, you know, plain old jealousy, but still all those people die. And then she snaps her fingers and you're back at the stage and you see yourself about to hand out these sand. The people of this town died all the same and you fed them their death. And before I posed this question to you, what was the aftermath to this?

Like, how did you, how are you not in prison right now? Did you escape? Were you tried? Were you, what happened? We ran. As soon as the first person got sick, I, I knew what was up. I thought I knew what had happened. I thought I'd confused.

I used to use the elder berry garnish, and I thought I had confused elder berries that I had transmuted them basically into deadly nightshade, because the berries look very familiar. Sure. And I wouldn't have noticed. That's what I always assumed, because anything else I would have seen. But we ran. As soon as the first person got sick, I told him he had to get in the driver's seat, and we just drove. We drove for two days straight before we stopped to look back. And I think at the first chance that he got, like the first settlement you got to after that.

He abandoned me. Absolutely. Yeah. I assume because he didn't want to be associated with somebody who could do something like that. But in actuality, it was something else. But we're not there yet. We're still at the wagon. You're still about to hand out these samples.

She says, this is the. worst thing that ever happened, Taco, in your life, and you can fix it. If you claim me, none of this ever happened. Glamour Springs lives, although not everybody in Glamour Springs died, right? Like, it wasn't a town of 40, but still, that's a big, big chunk of people. And you can keep doing your cooking show, and you won't have this, you won't have this horrible black mark on what is otherwise a heroic legacy. Take me, Taco. Take the cup and you can fix it all. And finally we come to Magnus.

Magnus, you're in this same white space with June and the temporal chalice and June is scanning back through your own memories. And you're sort of seeing them appear in the white space around you. And she starts out kind of scanning slowly and picks up the pace a little bit faster. So you see recent events like Roswell's sort of, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, it. rapid expansion in the bank that just happened. And then she rewinds a bit faster, and you're standing in the core of Lucas's lab facing off against Legion. And then she rewinds a bit faster.

And you're using a rail splitter to chop Trent the tree ant in half in the lobby of the Goldcliff Trust. I don't remember any of this. Oh, it's definitely real. And then you're diving out of a glass walkway to an attack an ogre in the test of initiation. and then you're in the years preceding the adventure, which June is watching intently and kind of taking mental notes as she goes. And then she rewinds a bit faster through the years preceding this adventure. And then she hits this long period of static that, like, you've seen it kind of pop up a couple of times,

where your memories are actually a little bit blurry. They become literally blurry around you, and you can't quite see. them quite as well. And the things that you've just forgotten are, they just disappear and are sort of this static. And she hits this huge, huge period of static. And while she's rewinding quickly through it, she says, what, what happened to you guys? You're all missing time, like a lot of time. Where are, where would this, what period is that? This is about, this would be about about 12 years before the adventure started, or about 12 years before where we are now,

somewhere in that time frame. She's rewining it. There's just like a lot of static. Like a lot of it. She says, I guess it's not really important to what we're doing here. It's just like, it's weird, man. And then she gets past the static

and you see your sort of early adult life, and then she rewinds back, your adolescence. And this brings us to our first question that I want to ask you to kind of flesh out Magnus, which is how did Magnus become a rough boy? Like, do you remember when you first became kind of a burly man? Was there like a first time that you ever protected somebody maybe and sort of led you down the career path that you ended up on?

Not the carpentry path necessarily, but just sort of the nature of Magnus. To the hero thing? Yeah, end up being like, not a hero, but just like a protector of people. I mean, there was a big event. Is that what you're talking about in the Magnus Backslore? No, I think before that, like when you're like a kid. There was a time in which I think probably the first thing Magnus couldn't remember as far as like being a protector who was seeing some bullies picking on a mongrel dog and, you know, pulling its tail,

throwing rocks at it, and he stood between the bullies and the dog. And, I mean, they outnumbered him three to one. The dog was able to get away, but he got beaten up pretty bad. Oh, no. But he protected the dog, and the dog was able to, you know, run away and get away into the woods. Did Magnus get his ass kick? Oh, so bad. So bad.

I mean, he was like 10, and all the boys were like 13 to 14 around him. Did Magnus ever see the dog again? No, I mean, it was too afraid of humans at that point. He never saw the dog again, but he knew it was the right thing to do. And so after that, he started, you know, toughening up and he didn't he didn't like seeing someone weaker than him get hurt i'm going to choke out through this whole thing by the way no yeah we're gonna get i'm deeply connected to magnus and we're gonna have some some big emojis Travis by the way did a really great Q&A session on on twitter the

other day talking about some some Magnus story stuff that was really good um so uh she she sees that scene and she goes oh that's really sweet and keeps rewinding and uh sort of hits the end of the tape and then fast forward really quickly past that scene past you know the rest of your early early adolescence past the long period of static and then uh into the years preceding uh your your adventure um and this scene that we're going to stop at is about um uh it's about five or six years before the adventure began and you're standing you know where you're standing You're standing in a building that housed basically the happiest years of your life. You are standing in your woodworking shop.

You're in the hammer and tongs. The pride of the craftsman corridor in the town of Ravens Roost. By the way, I'm repurposing a lot of backstory stuff that Travis has actually that you wrote before we, did you write it before we even started playing? Yeah, I think I wrote it before we recorded episode one. It's a shame that it's taken 48 fucking episodes to get here. But here we are. And you see yourself.

You're watching the scene in third person. Your side burns are a couple inches shorter and better kimped than your current facial hair configuration. But you see yourself, you're polishing a beautiful black oak rocking chair that you fondly remember to this day. It's a beautiful chair, beautiful grain in this wood. And sitting at a desk behind you, pouring over some order forms with a reading glass is your mentor. the tongs to your hammer. What was his name? Oh, shit.

Did I give him a name? Because I can't remember now. No. Okay. Stephen Waxman. Okay. Stephen Waxman. Steve?

Just Stephen. Stephen. I named my fish after him. That's very, very sweet. He is an older man. Can you think of any other sort of descriptors for Steve? He has a small, you know, It was a well-tinted to, so it healed well, but a small kind of sea-shaped crescent scar next to his right eye.

You know, a little goatee, kind of scraggly, like he wasn't fully grown out, but he wears it well. Okay. I wouldn't say portly, but, like, you know, he's up there in years. He's, but underneath, you can tell there's tons of muscle. Okay. He's got kind of like a blacksmith build to him. Like, you look at him, you're like, yeah, that's a dude who could, like, swing a hammer. That's a guy who could, like, carry some logs.

That's a guy who could do some work. So he's sort of a general craftsman, then it sounds like, who took you into his shop, and you showed such a, like, proficiency for carpentry while serving as an apprentice to him that he took you on as a partner and sort of built this brand. I mean, more than anything, he was really more of a dad. I mean, let's be not, like, partner, yes, but, like, taught Magnus everything he knew. Father figure, yeah. And your shop has been especially busy in the past few months, as have a lot of shops here in the craftsman corridor of Ravens Roost, which you named it. And now I'm envisioning it as a town that is named Ravens Roos because it's literally built on these natural rock formations, like almost like stone pillars somewhere with these long, really sturdy bridges that I think the craftsmen of the city are like, it's like they're, they're.

pride and joy that they built connecting the different columns of of that that hold raven's roof roost aloft in the sky um and the columns is pretty much designated for different things yeah it's like there's the crafts the craftsman corridor the redmore residential district yeah so um you're the the craftsman quarter like all the shops have been so busy because since since the blockade broke and the mad governor kalan was ousted and we've touched on this a little bit before before. And you know all about that rebellion against the mad governor Kalin because you at one point kind of led it. Yeah. And I'm wondering if you can sort of give me sort of a brief summary of like why Governor Kalin was such a shithead, how you became involved with that rebellion and how you

became its leader. Well, I mean, it's it's an old story. I think that most people are familiar with the convention of, you know, the despot who everybody kind of like just accepts for a while is the way that they are, but then their desire for power and, you know, the lack of limitations and their perceived lack of limitations starts to grow to a point where you can no longer stand it. And, you know, for Magnus, it wasn't about power, glory. It was his duty. It was just a thing that needed to happen. It was lit it to put a nice little bow on it. The big fucking bully. Yeah, he was just, he was a bully.

And he was picking on the week. And Magnus just can't stand that. And so he did what he needed to do because he needed to do it. And then it was all done. He was happy to return to a quiet life. It was all that he ever wanted. He didn't want to be a hero. It wasn't his desire.

It's fucking so easy to draw a line from point A to point B here of how, just of the way that like your character, the build, the like in-game mechanics of Magnus. Like, I could see Magnus sort of forming this rebellion of other sort of craftsmen, right? Because soldiers would be on, on Kalen's side, I imagine. Using his fucking rustic hospitality.

Like, using his folksy charm. We're talking like basically the way that America fought the British in the revolution, you know, fighting from the trees. On a smaller scale, I mean, we're talking about a city, but like a big, a big city, like a decent-sized city. Okay. And we also had the height advantage. You know, Ravens Roost, we have the lay of the land.

We know the areas, and we were able to drive him back. So you deposed the governor, but the mad governor, Kalin lived. How did that happen? Did he escape? Did you show, did you grant clemency to Kalin? And then they disappeared because no matter what, no matter what, what happened, we've sort of established that this guy's still out there somewhere, so you didn't kill him. Basically, what happened was, I mean, it reached a point where the victory, like, it was clear who had won, and his forces

stood down, and, you know, it wasn't, we weren't doing it because we wanted to kill everybody. We were doing it because we wanted to defend the country. So, like, once the battle was won, the fight was over, and we thought that that was it, you know, like, he had clearly lost. He, like, his forces were, you know, were demolished and you you routed him yeah yeah and so we were like okay we proved our point we made it clear you know everything's done now that was it and it for for three months three very successful very happy months for you that seemed to be the case like you nobody nobody even talked about this fucking guy anymore it was like you you so completely routed him that like

his very legacy was was gone um so like so fruitful and happy was the city of Ravens Roost because of what you did. And so it's been three months. Things have calmed down. Your shop is super busy. Your renowned as a carpenter has grown because I think it probably got pretty conflated with folk hero Magnus Burnsides that people were like, well, that dude fucking saved our town, so I've got to get a coffee table from him.

Yeah. I mean, and also the coffee tables are damn fine. No, they're really, really good. That's the other thing. Like, you're fucking super good at carpentry. And in fact, today you are submitting this beautiful, Black Oak rocking chair at the Continental Craftsman Showcase, which is an interdisciplinary competition held in Neverwinter, which is about a 10 days ride from Ravens Roost.

And with this chair, like, it's a shoe and you're going to win the woodworking small projects category pretty handily. Well, if I do, like, and Magnus is very excited because this is his chance to earn the title master carpenter, you know what I mean? Like up till now, everyone has known, but it hasn't been official. Like with this award, it's pretty cemented, you know? And as you're looking, as you're working on this chair, Stephen is just like blown away. He like looks up occasionally from the desk like, give me a carpentry term that you would use for a chair.

Like he compliments something about the chair. What is it? He compliments the spindle, he compliments, you know, he just compliments how all the joints are formed and fashion. And then I think he says, that's, the chair smells good. How did you do that? Well, I worked in a lavender polish before the final lacquer to give it a nice kind of aromatic when you're trying to put a baby to sleep. Sure. You want it to be pleasant for all the senses.

Rocking a child, singing to the child, and also a pleasant lavender smell. You're describing the smell of your chair to your teacher. And it's the afternoon of your departure to this Continental Craftsman Showcase. and just as you put the finishing touches on this chair, the bell hanging over the entryway into the hammer and tongs rings and enter Julia. And can you tell me like, tell me about Julia? Like Julia is, we've talked about, or I don't know if you've talked about,

but in your backstory, she is the daughter of Stephen. And the two of you are married or just together? We are married very recently. You wanted to wait until after the rebellion. Okay. Yeah, shortly after the rebellion. We got married in a gazebo that Magnus built himself. Jesus, dude.

And she's the most beautiful woman, Magnus has ever seen. Griffin, let me ask too. All this is playing back is present-day Magnus watching this in third person? Oh, yeah. But in third person, not first person. You are not this Magnus making this chair looking at your wife as she comes into my view third person like when Magnus sees julia present day magnus it just wrecks him okay it is a gut punch um june holding the cop doesn't like make a move to

help you out she is she is watching the scene intently i'm kind of curious to see what happens next so she she walks in and um she plops down a few orders on the desk that stephen's working on like a lot of orders um like so much so that they were kind of kind of cumbersome for her to carry into the room. And she plops down in the rocking chair and is sort of admiring your handywork. And she says, this chair smells like grandma's kind of like also making fun of you, like kind of antagonizing you kind of playfully. And the two of you just like have a regular conversation.

Like it is not, this scene is not, it is memorable to you now. But in the moment, like, you weren't thinking, like, I'm going to remember everything about this moment while it was happening because that's just the way that things go sometimes. And she motions you towards the door. And outside on the street, she is ready to cart for your departure. And you give Stephen a hearty handshake and you give Julia a hug and kiss goodbye. Do you remember the last thing you said? I said, I love you, Jules. and you sling this chair carefully. It's wrapped, but you put the chair over your back and you put your hand on the doorknob. And the scene freezes. And finally, June talks. And she says, two days after your departure, Kaelin returned to Ravens Roost.

And operating from a mindset of, if I can't have this city, nobody came. He bombs the support column for the Craftsman Corridor. And 76 people died. Julia and your mentor included. Hammer and Tongs is quite literally shattered. And after the two 10 days it takes to get to never winter and back, most of the towns just kind of evacuated, sort of afraid of similar attacks on their columns.

And today, Ravens Roost is just a ghost. Magnus, you earned this happy ending. You worked so hard for it. It should have been yours. She says, but it hasn't happened yet. Not here, not yet, not now. If you claim me, you can still stop Kalin. You can save Julia.

You can save Stephen. You can save Ravens Roos. You can save this life that you earned. Take me, and we can do it together. Hey, everybody. This is Griffin McRoy. You're a dungeon master, your best friend. and your secondhand news.

Thanks for listening to Episode 48 of the Adventure Zone. We are... The next episode of The Adventure Zone is going to be the final episode of the 11th Hour's Ark. This is our post-penultimate. Is that right? Post-Penultimate, I think. Episode. And I'm really, really proud of how this arc turned out and really proud of my boys for how

they played it. And I hope you've enjoyed it. We're going to be moving on to a new arc soon and probably into the end game really soon. So I'm very excited about that. I talked about that a bit. I think maybe in the last episode and people got worried that we were going to end the podcast. We defo have plans to keep this podcast going after this campaign ends that we have talked about. And there's some really exciting stuff that each of us have pitched.

So the end of this campaign is not going to be the end of the podcast. Please don't worry about that. This podcast is too much fun and way too rewarding. And the listeners are way too cool for us to just bail on it. So yeah, that's kind of a short. brief on the future of the show and nothing but good stuff in store. I want to thank everybody who's been tweeting about the show using the Zonecast hashtag. If you do that, you may end up as a character in an arc and we're about to start up a new one soon. So around about now over the next month or so

is probably the time, well, not over the next month or so because I'm going to be traveling and shooting a TV show in Huntington with my brothers making them a Bibbam show. But soonish, I will be picking names for the next arc. So get in those tweets. We also just really appreciate you spreading the word about the show, we don't pay to advertise. So word of mouth is the only way that we have of spreading the show. So if you really like the show, you can really help us out just by telling a friend, even if they're not a big D&D person, just tell them, hey, I got this cool podcast I listened to, maybe burn them a CD or just send him a link. We really, really appreciate it. Got a personal message here for Leon, and it's from, let me make sure to read this correctly.

Yes, it does in fact say hosehead, which says, hello, Leon, I am paying 10,000, thousand pennies to have Griffin command you to stop trolling me by saying Taco dies or kills someone every two weeks. I hate you, but not really. Thanks for telling me about this amazing podcast, Hart, your sister, who is apparently named Hosehead. You know, that's a really funny goof, until it actually happens. Uh-oh. Uh, thanks, thanks for listening. And Hosehead, I guess I hear by command you to stop, stop doing that. I got another message here for Connor, and it's from Hannah who says, Connor, Griffin and I wanted to say happy belated birthday, and we love you.

It's true, Connor. You're my best friend, the love of my life, and the only one I would ever agree to be player two with. Thank you for everything you do for me, and I hope your day is amazing as you are. Love Hannah. P.S. You're too cute to put. I agree with everything in this message, Connor. Hannah and I actually got together. This was a collabo project, and I'm really proud of how it turned out.

I want to thank the Max Fun Network for letting us be a part of it. We just got back from doing a live show at Max FunConn East and the Poconos, and it was super fun. The show went well. We had lots of surprises, at least two surprises during the show that turned out being really, really fun. You will get to hear that episode when we post it this winter after Travis and I have our babies and we need some stuff to fill out the feed. I think we'll have like three or so episodes that will be kind of like holiday break specials that will be going up at our regular intervals, and I'm really, really excited for those to go up. I'm especially super excited about the Boston show. I keep thinking about the fact that, like, most of y'all haven't

heard it yet. It is maybe one of my favorite episodes ever. So look forward to that. If you like our show, you can find all the shows we do at Macroyshows.com. We can do, like, a gaggle of podcasts and video projects, and you can find our Twitter and our PO boxes and stuff there. I'll plug mine. It's P.O. Box 66639, Austin, Texas, 78766. If you've ever wanted to send us something, then that's That's my P-O-Box. That's how you get in touch with me. Also, I just want to remind you one more time to go to theadventurezine.com and check out the adventure zine, the crowdfunding page that's happening there.

You all have been completely amazing. You've raised $95,000 at the time that I'm recording this. It'll probably be even higher, maybe over $100,000 by the time. The episode goes up. And those crowdfunding efforts are going to create a fan art book of the Adventure Zone. and the profits for the book are going to go to Facing Hunger, which is a hunger relief charity in our hometown of Huntington, West Virginia. It is such a cool cause, and everybody who's chipped in is so great.

Thanks, again, to Megan and Carrie for organizing this project and spearheading it, and to all the artists for putting together an incredible book. And for everybody who's donated, if you want to lock down a copy of the book, make sure that you go to theadventurezine.com and secure a copy now. and donate to a really great cause. One last thing, like I mentioned before, we are going to be shooting our TV show for My Brother, My Brother, Me, and Huntington

all month, basically. And that shouldn't affect things, although we're going to have to record an episode altogether while we're in town. And it may go up late. We're going to try really, really hard to stay on schedule and get it up on the 22nd, but we don't really know how much shooting

we're going to be doing around then, how much time it's all going to be taken up. So if we miss our targeted date of the 22nd by a day or two, I hope you will forgive us. But I will try really hard to get the trains running on time. So that being said, the next episode should be up on September 22nd. And we will talk to you then. Bye. The three of you are back in the Davy Lamp Saloon version of the White Space with sort of the shadowy figures. occupying the bar.

And sitting in front of you is June, who by this point, I think just looks like a little girl again. Like she has reverted almost completely back to the age that she was when she first got trapped in the bubble. And June says to all three of you, I need to lay out the rules for you, because I feel like That's only fair. If you take the chalice, I keep saying chalice, if you take the chalice, there are three rules that you have to follow. The first is that you cannot walk the path that you walked in this timeline. Specifically, there's going to be no joining the Bureau of Balance, because the further you stay away from creating a paradox, the easier your new timeline is going to be to maintain. And the second rule is that you forfeit your place in this timeline completely.

There is no coming back if you take the chalice and cross over. And the third rule is the hardest rule, and it's the reason I've never successfully been able to change the past like this before. I'm going to create a new timeline for you, but you have to sustain it. And all that entails is that every single thing that happens in this new world we create, good and bad, you have to want it to happen, or else the timeline won't hold and you'll be lost. And with that, she picks up the temporal chalice and places it in the middle of the table that all of you are sitting at.

What's in it? Magic. Beer. No, there is nothing in it. it is it is just a very magic chalice that will let you fulfill the offer that June made to you uh taco Merle I assume that we all kind of just had similar but different experiences I had an apostrophe yeah I thought that might be the case of things that we might be able to change if we were to pick up this cup.

Yeah. Merle, same deal. You want to talk about it? Not really. Soon. I'll tell y'all about it when this is done. But I know my answer. I have a question.

Are we, like, can just one of us take it? Only one of you. Only one of you can take it. Okay. Okay. Okay. You might have included that in the rules. I'm just saying. Yeah, next time you do this. Whenever, whoever takes it is going to rewrite this timeline completely. And that's a trip only one person gets to make. Ooh, I'm ready to give my answer, but I don't. Listen, boys, I know what my offer was, and I can only assume that yours was as powerful.

So I'm not going to judge either one of you for whatever you say. But my offer, the ability to go back and change that thing, it was everything I've wanted for a really long time. And it would mean that I wouldn't be there to help people who really needed help and save many, many, many lives, and I don't care because it's what I want. But it's not what Julia would want, and I'm going to have to pass. Okay, so that's a pass from you. So would you say, we have, so we have two options.

Is this correct? Yeah, it's a yes or no answer. I know how I'm going to vote. How are you voting? I'm not a big one for regrets. I figure you'd make your best choices with the information at hand, and you live with the consequences. That's kind of a mural pearl to throw out to everybody.

So I'm going to say thanks, but no thanks, little strange girl with a shallace. Taco. Hmm. I mean, here's the thing for me. Here's where I'm at. The vision revealed to me was chill as hell. Here's how it shook out for a taco. And we can get into this a bit more if you guys want.

But as it turns out, remember the thing that I've spent so long, feeling kind of bad about not super bad, but like pretty darn bad? Get this? Not my fault. Like, I have nothing to change. I didn't do anything wrong. This is, it was a very chill vision for me.

I'm feeling like amazing. And I feel no obligation to go back and change anything because it was like, I'm in the best possible timeline for Taco personally. Just from my vantage point, it is very good for Taco. So it kind of sounds like it's a no all around cup, lady. I would be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. I'm sorry. I have to make one more offer.

She stands up from the table that you're sitting at. and grabs the cup, and suddenly the table disappears, and the bar disappears in like a wisp of smoke. Oh, I just put it in an order for chicken wings. And then sort of that same holodeck effect starts happening to all three of you, and it's going back to a memory that all three of you share, and the scene starts to sort of put itself together, and you're standing in a grassy plane, And there are a couple bodies.

And we could see a motorcade coming up over here. Yeah. No, there's a, there's a few bodies on the ground. And there are a couple of burned out wagons. And there is one wagon that has fared a little bit better that has a cage in the back of it. And inside of that cage is. Kurtz the orc boy and you realize you're back at the very beginning of your adventure uh gundron rock seeker has claimed the the phoenix fire gauntlet and is blazing a path towards phandolin uh at this very

moment killian is with you uh and you've just taken care of these uh of these uh slavers uh who took over this, who burned down this orc caravan and imprisoned, uh, Kurtz, the orc boy, who you freed and ended up shooting Gundron and setting him off, destroying Fandolin, but you haven't let Kurtz out yet. And you're, you're standing in front of the cage and, uh, and June says, this is the last offer I have to make. It's the last thing I can think of that the three of you could fix. You free Kurtz, and Kurtz in an act of vengeance sets off a series of events that destroys Fandlin. You can stop this from happening if you just don't let him out of the cage. It's my last offer, and will any of you reconsider?

Um, well, this one's tougher, right? Because this was, this was our fault. This is our bad 100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Kind of hard to shift the blame on this one. But we didn't know. We could shift it on to Kurtz, like, F that dude, right?

Yeah. Kurtz, I mean, we rode the check and Kurt cashed it. Yeah, that's true. You know, blowing up Fandolin was kind of our signature move, though. Right, it was a very explosive beginning. Yeah, I mean, really. It did kind of establish. a pattern.

Elevated the drama. She says, it sounds like it was kind of maybe a cool moment for you. Let me just show you something really quick. And then she walks you, she doesn't, you don't walk, you're just all of a sudden inside of the,

the big tavern in Fandolin. And you're, you see Gundren in this tavern and he's, this scene is frozen and he's got these like uh whips of flame coming off of him um and then all of a sudden you're in the store room of this tavern in phandolin um and you see some people like huddled for you know hiding in fear from gundron and you see uh a halfling woman with red hair uh who is uh she's holding a barrel of uh of of of of of of of of booze from red cheek farms and you realize it's Noel.

Oh, who. Yeah, but at the same time, can you show us Rockport if we didn't stop the train? Can you show us the world if we didn't stop the pink tourmaline from taking over? Can you show us all of that?

This is the only offer I can make to you. Yeah, but like you're showing us the one thing we can change and not the stuff that we did change. Is Barry? Is Barry Blue Jeans one of the people huddled in there with us? Barry Blue Jeans is actually out in the bar trying to calm Gondren down.

That's so Barry. But you see Barry Blue Jeans, Tom Arnold looking ass, and his blue, and his blue, blue denim pants before he was incinerated. Is there any reason to think that, is there any reason to think that we wouldn't do all that other stuff if we save Fandling? Well, yeah, she said the rules. We got to stay away from the Bureau of Browns. We'd never know about all that stuff. The Void Fish would knock us out. We wouldn't be able to join the Bureau.

We would have to stay away from everything. We forfeit our place in the timeline. We'd save these people, but we wouldn't save any of the others. Yeah, but certainly they have some competent people they could send, right? Apparently not. We were the first people to bring any item in. You know, fellas, I know this is big, and I know there's been a lot of death and destruction and other crap, but, you know, we've had some laughs. We've had some good times, crashing trains and getting arms chopped off and, you know, poisoning a lot of folks.

And, you know, I'd hate to lose the good times that we had. I'm still not tempted. I'm still happy with the Merle life. Like Merle said, I spent a lot of time living my life and regret, and I don't do that anymore. We got to keep moving forward towards good, not looking back at the bad.

Listen, if I wasn't going to use this to clean up a best that was half my fault, I'm certainly not going to use it to clean up a mess that's one third my fault. At best. Plus, I can't see. say is I was much better off before. I mean, we've certainly helped some people. There's some people

that have been, I would, let's call it unhelped. I think there's certainly along the way. We've unhelp some folks. And you know what? Noel ended up with a new shiny robot body. An unkillable robot. I think that's an upgrade. Yeah, that could be significantly worse, really. Barry stings. Yeah, that very one hurts. If we, if we. We can get him into a robot eventually down the line. That would be super cool. They can't hear us, right? I mean, we're just like spectral.

No, but June can hear you, and she looks really, she looks really glum because she, like, is starting to realize that you not only are not going to take this offer, but that, like, you are so unsuade by the offer that it doesn't seem like you're taking it seriously. And she says, like, okay, well, I did my best. I have one question. What? If we pass on this, what happens to June? I told you, if you, I just wanted you to give you my offer, and if you listened, I'd let her go.

And I'll let her go, because you've listened to my offer and you have abstained. And since you're apparently so okay with the living with the consequences of your actions, then I guess, well, I guess I'll leave you with this. and June and the cup disappear and time starts to start back up again, but it's moving painfully slowly. And you watch as a wall of fire consumes the stockroom of this tavern and everything and everyone inside of it. And then the scene changes and you're standing in the home of a young couple and you see a man cooking a stew in the kitchen and his partner.

She's reading a book in bed. And the wave of fire consumes this home as well. And then you see a woman playing with her dog in a garden. And you see a kind-looking blacksmith cleaning his shop after closing. And you see a young hedge wizard practicing his spells. And you see all of these scenes of fans. Fandilin citizens, which maybe out of spite, the chalice is forcing you to witness all of their destruction. And then you're standing at the epicent right in front of Gondren's blackened bones, his arm with the gauntlet on it, held up to the sky,

in the center of this roaring, expanding pillar of fire. And you are forced to watch Fandiland's end as you didn't see it before. And it is absolute and vicious and quick as it reduces the city to a perfect circle of black glass. And you're back at the top of shaft B. And you see June in front of you and she's young again. And she falls to her hands and knees and the cup rolls away from her and falls off the platform and bounces once with a heavy clunk and lands perfectly at your. your feet.

Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. I'm Jesse Thorne, and I'm curious about Jonathan Van Ness and his show, getting curious. What were you most excited

to learn something about? I was really excited about the Romanoffs. I was really excited. Why were you so excited about the Romano? Well, because I've been obsessed. Thanks for listening to the episode. I'm just kidding. Because I've been obsessed with them

since I was 11 from the movie Anastasia. Jonathan, what's a baby brain? It's a brain that's finally ready to expect. Explore. Getting curious, a show for your baby brain. Download it wherever you get a podcast. Attention, you're up. This fall maximum fun is bringing a bunch of your favorite podcasters to London. Catch Judge John Hodgman, International Waters, and Bullseye, all recording live episodes at the London Podcast Festival. We'll have fan meetups and will be joined on stage by a glittering array of celebrity guests. The London Podcast Festival runs September 22nd through 26th, and you can buy your tickets right now.

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