The Adventure Zone - The Adventure Zone: Amnesty - Episode 17

Episode Date: October 18, 2018

The Pine Guard welcomes and interrogates their new companion, and has another brush with the intangible, unlucky forces that seem to be conspiring against them. Duck teaches talking. Aubrey throws a drink. Ned threatens a book. 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. So I went out and I tried to find Thacker. He left years ago. He kept records of his studies in his journals. The van is empty. All of these supplies and all of these tools are gone. They are not in the van. We got to get this thing back to the lodge or this person.

I know, I know, I know, but look at it, man. It's going to die if we don't do something. I would like to speak to this creature. You see this faint sort of orange light pulsate out of where Aubrey touches this goat man. And the goat man stands up from the table and sort of gets yanked back by the handcuffed attached to its wrist and looks at you, Duck, and he smiles. And he says, so the go-man just said Duck's name. Begin. Yes.

Creates. We'll take it. Let's just hop right back in. That's like we're right in that moment where this goat man has just said your name, Duck, while staring at you with just right in the peepers. He's got some like yellow eyes with sort of vertical slits as sort of goat. I mean, they're goat eyes. He has the features of a guy, but bipedal sort of humanoid form.

A bit taller than you. And he has said, Doug. I guess I should check with you, Griffin. This is the first time that any of us ever heard a goat man talk. Are there any sort of erotic awakenings that we need to be aware of? Just want to check in. Technically, it's the second time because you all have met Vincent, the goat man, in Sylvain. And I guess my follow-up question is, did that have any erotic awakenings?

I will admit, I've been pretty unplugged from social media as of yet, so I don't know what the erotic fan art of Vincent situation is. but I don't have my finger on that pulse anymore. Pretty hot. To be fair, Griffin, Justin, I think, if I may, is both asking about our characters, but also us, the players, within us, has that caused any awaken? Sure, let's all roll to act under pressure, I guess.

Okay. And I don't know. As Justin, Dad, and Travis. Yeah, if you roll poorly, you're going to make a hard move. I got an eight. I love that. No, this is nothing.

I roll a six. Okay, you're... You're into it. You rolled a sex. And, and unpause. Doc. Holy shit. Duck?

Duck. Yeah. It's me. Hey, little partner, how you feeling? It sort of looks at the wound in its shoulder and, like, touches it. Have you, I'm guessing you've, like, dressed it, I'm imagining with, like, bandages at some point, or is it sort of just exposed stitches? It's almost certainly bandages, right? It would be, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It would be, he's a good job. Yeah, he touches his shoulder and kind of just nods a little bit and gives what you sort of detect as like a faint smile. Can you understand us? Yeah? It nods and says, duck. Cool. My name is duck. I am duck.

Welcome to English. 101. I, yo, me, Amo, duck. Hey, what are you,

uh, what are you doing here? Like, broadly speaking. It starts to gesture with both hands and, uh, one of its hands is sort of restrained to the, to the table still with the handcuffs.

And so it, uh, kind of gets pulled back and it looks down at the handcuffs and sort of tries pulling it a few more times. It looks like confused about the concept of handcuffs. Uh, and it just kind of looks up at you confused and says, Doc.

We could probably dispense with those, couldn't we, Doc? Um, yeah. Yeah, let's kind of go ahead and get him untied. Just as a gesture of goodwill. Sure. You pop off the handcuffs and the goat man kind of rubs its, uh, rubs his wrist and then, uh, gives another smile this time to all three of you and says, uh, Doc.

Should I hug him? Like, I don't know what I'm to do here. Yeah, you know, I think if I may, just kind of first things first, and this, if I may be a little blunt new friend, are you all making the bad stuff happen? He looks sort of, he looks nervous. He looks nervous when you ask him this question. He looks, what's the right word? He looks sort of conflicted, and he sort of looks, and then he looks down at the ground. He looks almost embarrassed now, and he nods his head up and down.

Are you making the bad bad? stuff happen accidentally? Now he just looks fucking confused, because that's a very confusing question. Do you have a good reason? The goat man looks up at you and says,

uh, duck, and then clears his throat a few times, and then says, grow. Uh, it says grow if you don't speak Griffin goat English. Grow. What does he mean

grow? Grow. Is that why you took d' animals tools to help something grow? He looks excited and he nods his head up and down. Yes, yes, yes. And he actually kind of like grabs you by the arms. Like, uh, I think he's like, this is so new to him. Like, who can being able to converse with human beings and the fact that he's just had like a thought that he tried to get across and then he succeeded in that and somebody got it.

He's like, he's totally stoked. If, if you show us what you're growing, will that help us understand why you're doing what you're doing? All of a sudden, like a, he remembers himself and he lets go of Ned and he looks sort of defeated. And now he just like hops back up on the table and sits down and shakes his head, no. It's a pot form. He's growing pot. Goat pot.

The strongest pot known to man. Goat weed. It's horny goat weed. I thought we were getting somewhere. Um, Duck, he seems to like you, so... Hey, partner, let's clarify something. Do you mean us any harm? Uh, he is thinking very, very hard. Um, and then he looks up at you and

just kind of very slowly shakes his head now. Okay. All right. You know what? I can believe you, duck. No, sorry. Goat. That's not your name, is it? That'd be weird. What a coincidence. He kind of tilts his head to the side. Like, huh? Can we call you Jeff? He shrugs his shoulders.

If that's really what you... Is that sort of first thought, what you want to name this character? I feel like maybe... I think Billy would be our first choice, right? Billy is good. Billy's better. Billy is good. Let's go with Billy.

Yeah, Billy I like. Because you know what? Maybe during those more serious times, he can be William. He nods in approval. Okay. I am now Billy. I am Billy now. You hear the cellar door open and...

Oh, oh, no. Mom's home. Barclay is actually the one who comes down the stairs, and he looks sort of... He looks a little hairyed, and he... Well, yeah, he's Bigfoot. Well, he's not right now. He runs into the room and sees the now conscious goat man,

and he looks kind of nervous, but then sort of surmises that you guys don't seem nervous, so that everything's okay, and he says, oh, okay, so we just, like, we just, like, have a goat man now? Well, we don't have him. Yeah, we don't own it. He's a friend.

He's a dear friend. He's here. Come on. It doesn't mean us any harm. I meant, like, on the team, a gang, I am not entirely sure this is the best idea. If you want to go along with it, what's like the plan with our new pal here?

Yeah, so we brought him in for, I'm about to say we brought him for questioning and I'm feeling dumb as I'm saying it. But that is about as close to a plan as I got. He got injured, see? And I'm, uh, brought him back here to save his life. And then Barclay was there for that. Oh, right. So you remember that. And then Ari gave him a magic spell to make him talk. And then you can, you can do that? I mean, one word. Apparently, yeah. And then the gumman says, Doc. Yeah. More, I gave him a spell to help him understand.

He can hear, he can understand us now. Grow. Yeah, we got, two words, two words, right. Duck and grow. It's about as far as we got. Pizza. Okay, hold on. Wait, hold on.

The pizza sign. Is that something? Pizza. I didn't even think about that. I was making a joke, but sure, yeah, the pizza sign was there. You can't make jokes, Griffin. I take this very seriously. No, yeah, no.

You did a good job of connecting it to Canon. Barclay says, how transparent are we going to be about our, I guess, not captive, but new pal? Is there anybody upstairs who is a goat person in real life or in... I think you would know, like you've lived in Amnesty Lodge for a long time now? you know there is no. Wait a minute. Wait a one.

What about Vincent? Could we not call him in? He can't come over. He can't come over, yeah. And you get the idea that maybe bringing this thing over into Sylvain is also not an awesome idea. You all hear the phone ring upstairs, actually, and you hear Danny answer it. I mean, you hear it like through the floor. You hear it.

Danny shout for duck. She's duck phone. We'll cover the goat man. We'll hang out with the goat man with Billy. Yes, with Billy. I have an idea. Could Ned check out Thacker's archives and see if there's anything in them about goat men? There's really just the one book.

But if you want to do that, you are more than welcome. I think I would be interested in doing that because I thought maybe I could also do like investigate a mystery and see if if ned could get a couple of questions answered that way by checking out the archive sure so you're going to do that uh, Aubrey you're just keeping an eye on Billy. Yeah, I'm going to talk. I'm going to keep up with the gentle interrogation. Okay, Doug, are you going up to the, up to the phone? Yeah. Okay. Okay, let's start with Aubrey. What do you, what do you ask Billy? Huh. So there are three. of you, right?

He nods his head, yes. And you're from Sylvain? He cocks his head to the side. He looks kind of confused. You're not from Sylvain. Doc. Is that yes? He shakes his head now.

Okay. Uh, uh. So he can shake his head no and say duck. If only there was another nod that could communicate. more information. Any head movement at all. This is some real I am Groot shit going on here. Very much so.

Ned, the only sort of surviving text, the only one that Mama brought back when she was over sort of trapped on the dark side in Sylvain is just a single book. And it was the book that kind of revealed like the only information that we knew was in that book is that he couldn't find the source of the abominations.

while sort of out exploring in Sylvain. But as you flip through it, why don't you investigate a mystery and we'll see what we glean? Investigate a mystery that is seven plus two for Sharp. So that's a nine. A nine. Okay. So on a seven to nine, you get how many? You get one question here.

What happened here? What sort of creature is it? What can it do? What can hurt it? Where did it go? What was it going to do? what is being concealed here. And keep in mind that, like, it has to be in context with, like, what could be in this, this book of

notes from Thacker. Then I think the only one that, that would be in there would be what sort of creature is it? Yeah, I think that's for sure. There is a, the first, like, third of the book is just sort of drawings and notes on the physiology of certain, like, types of beings over in Sylvain. there are some notes about the spectral sort of beings that are over there, which you know are sort of born when one of the Silvans die, sort of in the presence of the crystal in the center of town. They sort of get to live on in these sort of spectral forms. There are some notes about the what are just called Silvans that are sort of the more vampiric, sort of more humanoid.

sort of magically imbued beings over there, folks like Danny and like Janelle. And then there are notes about the beast folk. And these are creatures that, according to the notes, just like used to be animals over on earth and then found their way into the various gates that opened up across the world throughout the history of time. and as they sort of spent time in Sylvain in this alien world, they were slowly, actually not slowly, sort of compared to like evolution on earth, like actually very, very quickly transformed into these new forms.

The origin of like goat men is like a goat wandered through a portal one day and then, you know, maybe a couple of generations later is a bipedal sort of humanoid goat creature. But it's not just goat creatures, like there's entries on, you know, bear, folk and fish folk and bird folk and all kinds of of beast folk. And so like goat, goat people are definitely like a type of being over in Sylvain. And by like all measure like this thing looks a lot like it. Not exactly like you've met Vincent. It's certainly like a bit bigger than Vincent, a bit more sort of.

imposing than Vincent, you would say. There are some like subtle differences, but like, yeah, this thing looks a lot like, a lot like Vincent. Duck, you head upstairs to answer the phone. I think Barclay heads back up to the lobby with you. And as you get to the lobby, you see some of the, some of the folks that you know from the lodge up there. You see Jake Kulai sort of polish in a board. You see Agent Stern on reading a lamp lighter. This is sort of like something he does every morning cracks open the new lamplighter

and looks for leads and Danny Hansy the phone as you come up and as you put it to your ear, you hear a voice say, hello there, nice work with the train, duck zero fatalities. I think that's pretty laudable. Hey, thanks. I appreciate it.

We do what we can. You hear Indrid say, I thought you would like to know that all of my vision have changed, Duck, every single one of them. In the blink of an eye, all of the futures that I saw disappeared and were replaced by others. And as far as I could tell, Duck, this happened when you saved that goat man. Oh, my impulse is to say I'm sorry?

I don't know if that's applicable. He laughs on the other end of the phone and you hear him say, I'm not certain it was all bad This goat man is going to be in A lot of the futures that I see He is as far as I can tell quite important A beloved character He says you are going to need to keep him safe

And you're going to need to keep him undiscovered And you're going to need my help to do so Bring him to me Are you gonna hurt him Because I'm kind of put a lot of work in to keeping him alive I have no intent on hurting him. Although he may get hurt, yes. Yeah, you're going to go ahead and need to save him and your friends downstairs.

Look outside. And through the window next to sort of the table where the phone is, you see these big, fat, fluffy flakes falling from the sky. And Indrid says, I can't see the exact shape of it, duck. It's pretty dark, but they are in danger right now. And sure enough, Ned and Aubrey, you hear a sound that sounds like, that sounds like, well, like a pin drop, like a small piece of metal falling to the floor. And you all turn towards the sound and see that the net that was hanging up over the kitchen area where Thacker has been sort of imprisoned. And one of the hooks, like, holding it up has just, like, fallen out of the wall.

And now a corner of the net is just hanging loose. And in a flash, Thacker, who was just, like, sitting on the floor, looking down at the ground, like, almost unconscious. He just springs straight upward and scrambles across the ceiling through that gap in the net. He is crawling above you towards you, and he, like, cranes his neck almost completely around. and you see his face that was just calm a moment ago. Now it's just like slobbering black slime into this long, unkempt beard and grinning this abnormally wide grin. He is crawling across the ceiling towards you. What do you do?

I'm probably already back down there. Okay. I mean, I just, in the time, as soon as he said that, I would have come down there, I think. Okay. Yeah, you are, I'll give you like, you are on the stairs as, as you see. see Thacker on the ceiling. He like quickly like cranes his almost backwards head toward you, and then looks back down at Ned and Aubrey and just like hisses. Ned makes a beeline with the book to the safe room. Okay. All right. I don't even think you need to roll for that. If that's what,

if that's your plan, then go for it. You grab the book, you head to the safe room. Are you shutting the door? Well, as he's as Ned's running, and him taking the book is not necessarily a conscious move. It's just that he has it with him. He's not doing any of this to, you know, protect the book or anything. He's doing it to protect himself. But he calls back over his shoulder and says, last one to the safe room is a rotten egg. Okay. You run into the safe room. This is very Ned. This is peak Ned. This is. This is peak Ned. This is, this is, This is the aesthetic ideal of Ned Chicane, and I'm very, very into it. Aubrey your duck, what do you do? I'm going to say, Billy don't hurt him, I think. Right? Billy doesn't even look concerned.

Like, Billy doesn't know, like, that's not what a human being is supposed to look like. Or rather, that's not what a human being is supposed to look like. So he just, like, kind of nods and says, Beats out. Okay, cool. Go follow Ned. He very quickly sort of canters over to over to the safe room Here Billy, here Billy, come on Billy!

He has some trouble fitting in to the, well, fitting in, you know, in general, he's a big goat man, but he also has trouble fit in. Oh, but not just like socially. Yeah, sure. Well, his language skills kind of hold him back a little bit. Sure. Duck, what do you do? I'm probably going to tackle Thacker and try to bring him down. He is up on the ceiling.

Yeah, I'm gonna like jump in. It's a seller, it's a seller, so it's totally like not a very high ceiling. Right. But like tackle might not be the right verb because you have. Like, you know, not punch him in the face, but try to like get him, get him on down. Taryn, tear him, tear him, give him down. As one might do when trying to catch a bat flying around the room. Sure. There's actually, there's a move actually in the playbook called game on down.

And it's G.E. Phosphi E.M. on down. Get on down for now. Yeah. Thank you. So this would probably be, are you trying to, are you trying to, like, do harm? I mean, I'm not trying to do harm, I guess, though.

It's more like, it may be closer to act under pressure because I'm just trying to, like, get him and restrain him. Like, I'm not trying to, like, beat him up. I think it's definitely act under pressure. I definitely, if you're not trying to hurt him, then it's not kicks him ass, right? When you get into, the kicks him ass literally says, when you get into a fight and kicks a ass, roll plus tough.

You're not getting into a fight, although like it definitely you can sense uh ill intent it could definitely become a fight very quickly you sense that this thing wants to hurt everybody in the room very very badly um i am currently doing the like friend grabbing his drunk friend and trying to pull him off before an actual fight can't occur that is my to be verb currently okay what do you uh so you're just running game on get him on down trying to just like grab them off the ceiling go ahead and roll uh plus cool for act under pressure. How cool is duck? Uh, so cool. Oh, you're wanting me to numerically quantify. This is a two plus, that is that, that is cool. Oh, there's an unrecognized command. What did you

wrong? Oh, roll, roll two D. Uh, six plus two is eight. Okay, uh, on a seven and nine, the keeper is going to give you a worse outcome, hard choice or price to pay. Um, I think I might just do price to pay. You grab him, you just sort of wrap your arms around his waist as he is hanging off the ceiling and pull him down. And as he does, his fingernails have grown sort of long and gruesome. They sort of have sort of this same kind of black like plaque that is on various parts of his body. Just this sort of just tar like substance that is sort of all over. him and dripping from his mouth right now, he scratches you pretty hard across the,

across the neck. And that scratch feels like, it feels awful. It feels very, very bad. Not in like a, like, you've been gored kind of way, but in a, like, unnatural, like, it burns. So take one harm, ignore armor from this scratch. Okay. Ned, Aubrey? I'm going to look in my laboratory. So one. of the parts of big magic is to require ingredients. Yeah. I'm gonna look for like a potion in the laboratory, so I think it would be like probably an act under pressure and then also maybe a use magic role.

I want him to go to sleep. Okay, yeah, I think this would be, we can say that like this conflict is happening, like he jumped down on you inside the laboratory, so this is you literally like, you're back up against a cabinet, like reaching for one. whatever the fuck you can get your hands on to like throw it. He's like on duck. He's like on duck right now. And so like I throw that like I'm,

so I think it was maybe, maybe it's an act under pressure to find the right battle and then an act under pressure to aim and not hit duck. I don't like the idea of doing two roles in a row. I want to definitely just do it with one. Is the, is the, I mean, let's, uh, let's make this like fair. Is that, is that, uh, is that, is this reasonable? Is this logical? Like, is your magical library, have you been doing fucking Snape's potion class homework, like, in your laboratory?

Yeah. Is that really what you've been doing in here? Or? I would say that that I can make a strong argument for the fact that with all the abominations and stuff, one of the first things we'd be working on is, like, tranks. Right? Like, that to me. Yeah, but then I would have to, like, give you that, right? And then you could use tranks on any, like, you know what I mean?

Like, that's just sort of adding an arrow in your computer. I think that that at least. gives you the possibility of the action whether or not he is successful in that different question. It's like you, but you do have the narrative framing for logistically why he wouldn't just be like randomly grabbing bottles. What I love, what I love this way, the role is not for you to throw a bottle at this guy. You're right up against him. You can do it. It is whatever the contents of the bottle are going to be. Maybe you have been trying to alchemize some sort of like potion or toxin or something that can help you in your hunts. It is not final. You have not...

Has not been tested. Has not been beta tested. So like you can roll act under pressure and that is going to determine what this, what this thing does. Okay. Okay, Ned is going to do help out. You are in the safe room. My door's open. Okay, I roll the seven. Plus. And I, I don't have any plus. So mixed success. Help out would not help out because that only adds one to the rule, which would get them to eight. Mix success is fine. Okay. Here is the...

Now I'm trying to figure out, like, I don't think I can offer you a hard choice on what the contents of the potion is. I think you already kind of rolled the hard six on this, and it's kind of up to me to decide what happens. What's the potion look like? You actually describe the action to me. I'm going to say, like, grabs the...

Starts to reach for the purple vial, but then reaches for the more purple. vial and can't remember shit and grabs the more purple vial and kind of flings it at their feet and it like spreads into like a gas okay uh it it gets scared actually it's a tacker gets scared as you throw this bottle and he uh recoils and he recoils like right into the gas um and the gas very very quickly sort of dissipates uh and for like a second he looks like he's getting kind of kind of sleepy, but he also looks like he is in an effort to try to stay conscious, getting like angrier. Now his eyes are like completely pitch black, like he's wearing like

those cool pitch black eye contacts that like, you know, bassists wore in the early aughts for all their cool music videos. And he looks like he is actually whipped into a frenzy. So the mixed. Aubrey just real quick, just grabs a clip more. where she's been keeping nice of the rights. C minus. Okay. Lash per hole. Close.

Duck, I think you are up. This thing is off you now, but looks like super, super pissed off. I keep saying this thing. So I did succeed in getting it off of Duck. Like, so now it's just like... You succeeded in that Thacker was, has been tranquilized, right? Thacker may go down very, very soon, but before he does, he is going to, he's going to fucking rage.

So... He will not go. quietly. He will not go quietly into that good night. Duck, what do you do? Hey, man, I'm, I'm real sorry about this and I punch him in the face. Okay. Now, this is, this is going to be a kicks of ass. Yes, it is. It is, Griffin, it is going to be that. But I also, I'm trying to knock him out. So, get him a little brain duster. All right, go ahead and roll that beautiful bean footage. All right. We got a...

there we go. Oh, there it is. It's a nine plus, uh, tough. It's 11. Uh, all right. On a 10 plus, you deal harm and they deal harm to you. Uh, you choose an extra effect.

You gain the advantage, gain plus one forward or plus one to another hunter. You inflict terrible harm. You suffer less harm. You force them where you want them. I'm going to, um, I'm going to toss them into the safe room. Yikes. With Ned and the goat man? Yeah.

And I'm going to yell, y'all get out of there. I'm trying to think of, I'm trying to figure out, like, what's going to be best here. You definitely, like, punch him, and he is loopy, but I don't know that you can, I don't know that you can just, like, chuck him, like a ball. But you can definitely toss him into the, toss him in the direction of the safe room. And then I guess it's up to Ned and Billy to get out of there, to gion on out of there. to geon out of there. Yeah. Gio on out.

Okay. Gion down. Gion out. You just like, I guess, grab him by the scruff of the sort of tattered garments he's wearing and push him towards the safe room. Ned, what's your plan? Okay. We've got to get past him. He's sort of in the safe room with us, right?

Yeah, he's definitely between you and the exit to the safe room. Okay. I put an arm around Billy and kind of pull him in to. my side and then I fan open Thacker's archive. Okay. And hold it in front of Billy. Okay. And I tell Thacker, stand down and we're slowly backing out as I'm saying this. Okay. Or I'm going to have the goat eat your book and just slowly back, using the book as a hostage. Okay. Back out of the safe room. Hopefully that Thacker on some level will recognize his book and not want harm to come to. Whether he understands my threat to have Billy eat it.

Absolutely. No, I like this. So, I mean, you're going to roll here, and the role is not to, like, it's going to be manipulate someone, right? But it's not going to be, like, how good an offer is this to Thacker? It is how much of Thacker can you, like, pull to the surface of this, like, feral, like, beast. go ahead and roll manipulate someone plus charm 10 plus 1 which is 11 Woo zinga wow

Okay something interesting Something cool happens you you you pull this gambit and put your backup against like one of the sidewalls Trying to like sidestep past Thacker And for like a split second Thacker stands upright It is not like the curse has been lifted. Hooray. But for like a second,

definitely that like black sheen that was across his eyes is just like gone. And he has stopped sort of just like wildly like slobbering and is now just kind of like breathing deeply and puts his back against the wall. And you, you're very close to him, right? Like as you sidestep out of the room, you are like really, really close to him. but he doesn't attack. He keeps his distance. And as you step out of the room, what do you do?

And Aubrey slams the door. Okay. Right as Ned and Billy clear the door, you slam it. And as soon as the door slams, this, like, this spell that was cast over Thacker, fades, and he just charges the door. I'm envisioning kind of like a little circular glass, like a porthole window, or maybe not.

I don't know. Duck, you envisioned this room. Is there a window on the door inside? Oh, this is Ned's room. Yeah. Is it? Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right.

You had the infirmary. Ned, is there a window? There's a TV monitor. Okay. Oh, I like that. It's very high tech, but I like that. Look in through there and see him break all the Ned's Hummel figurines or whatever he's going to go. All of his bobbleheads.

Yeah, he is. Yeah. He slams against the door. He just like charges and throws his body at the door a few times and nothing happens. And then he just does the same. same thing that you've seen from Thacker this whole time. He just sits down on the floor and starts staring at the ground. Saving the bobbleheads.

Well, your snow globes made it. The bobbleheads may never bobble. As long as he didn't get the PlayStation. Bad news, Dad. Your PlayStation 2. You'll never be able to play, I don't know, Crash Bandy Koot. Was that on PlayStation 2? You never finish Blasto.

That's a very good pull. God, can our next campaign be Blasto-inspired? Yes. Hey, everybody. This is Griffin McRoy, your dungeon master, your best friend, and your IT specialist. Looks like your files got broken. I'll deal with it later. Gosh.

Thanks for listening to Episode 17, I think, of the Adventure Zone Amnesty. I hope you are enjoying it. And I apologize for interrupting. It's very, very rude of me. But I got to read you some messages from our sponsors. Antonio and Gianna. It's from Miranda, who says, to my wonderful brother and sister-in-law, we miss you so much here in Albuquerque. Oops, Albuquerque. Sorry, Albuquerqueans. And hope that you are living the best life in Michigan. Thanks for introducing me to this wonderful podcast. And I can't wait to play more D&D together when we have the time. Sincerely, your favorite cleric and littlest sister. That was a sweet message. And again, apologies for saying the name of that town poorly. I was thinking of the one line in the Titanic musical. And I'm really narrow casting right now. where somebody calls it Albuquerque, Q, Q, and that's always like the first thing I go to when looking at the name of that city.

I'll try to get better. Here is another message. This one's for Olivia, and it's from Aden, who says, hi, Olivia. Well, none of our friends will explore the magical realms of our imaginations with us. They're lost, because I can't wait to take the journey with you. That sounds like drugs, but I meant wizard games. Love Aiden. You know, wizard games are a kind of drug if you think about it, which is to say every time we were recording an episode of Adventure Zone Balance,

we were we were all just like super high on fantasy and mescaline. Hey, thank you for tweeting about the Adventure Zone using the Zonecast hashtag. If you do that, you might end up as a character in the show. We, I pull names from our Twitter mentions all the time. Probably not again for this arc, but once we hit the next story arc for Amnesty, I'm sure there will be new faces showing up and you could be one of them, just tweet using the Zonecast hashtag. We also just appreciate it.

you spreading the word about our show. It's how we have gotten the listenership that we have now for the most part. And we are so, so grateful for those of you who have told a friend who you think might be interested in our show. Also, thankful for Maximum Fun. You can go to Maximum Fun.org. Check out all the great shows that they have. Shows like One Bad Mother and Switchblade Sisters and Story Break and so many more at Maximum Fun.org. If you want to check out other stuff we do, you can go to Macquaryshows.com. I think that's it. I'm going to let you get back to the rest of the So thank you again for listening. We will be back with a new episode in two Thursdays, which is going to be November the 1st.

Wow, 2018. It's really flying by. And thank God. It kind of sucks. So anyway, enjoy the rest of the show. Bye. We're getting dad into Destiny. Yes.

It's going to go great. Speaking of, Ditto, how come you're never on when I'm on? When do you play? I play late at night. Like a creepy creep. Like a creep when you lock in the shadows, there I'll be playing a little bit of destiny. I got all of the coins. I got all of the jewels, but you'll never see me, you pesky fools.

I'm hiding out. Don't you scream and shout. Hold my controller. Look, here comes a roller. That's what I call the bad guys in this game. And if you see me, it'll be a shame. All right. So we're back.

We're in act two of this episode that was definitely. Definitely how we started it. You heard us talk about Destiny for a while, which is regrettable, but then when you got to hear Justin's great song, so I think it's all sort of a neutral net song. And just like that, we're taking the show in a different direction. It's going to be much more about freestyle. First half is all storytelling. Second half is all freestyle singing game reviews. We've just missed being in the games industry so much.

Okay, we're back at it. Let's, I, if it's cool with you all, unless You had like business you wanted to do at Amnesty Lodge. I wanted to hop forward to sort of your encounter at Indrid. He has requested that you bring the goat man to him so he can help you keep him safe. I want to assume just to say that we have like had Barclay like, hey, go tell Mama. Like, well, how much? He broke out.

We tried him in the safe room, but he needs to move back into there. And he should be tranked at this point. You're talking about Thacker. Correct. Yes. Yeah, Mama definitely was not home during all of this encounter. And Barclay, I mean, before we hop forward, I guess we're still in that first scene, Barclay says like, are we going to tell Mama about old Billy?

See, here's the thing. This is a fun moment, people at home listening, because me, Travis, hates when people in any kind of media, like, just don't tell the people on their team the truth because it always is more trouble that it's worth. Yes. But I also know that in this position, I definitely wouldn't tell an authority figure what was happening. Sure. Like, just to set the, to sort of set the stakes of this decision up, I don't think any of you necessarily know how Mama would react to this news. You do know that Mama has been hunting monsters like Billy, or rather beings like Billy, I guess, for 30 years now and has lost a lot of friends.

them and, you know, lost her adult life, like doing anything else but, but hunting them. So, like, she might not be stoked about the fact that you let one into her home. That's like, that's your gut feeling. And I'm not saying you shouldn't, you absolutely shouldn't. I'm just saying, like, that is, that's sort of the weight of this, this decision. Were we all just simultaneously there waiting for the other ones to make the decision? I say we don't tell her. Yeah, I'm going to go with that too. not yet.

I hate that, but I think you all are. I do too. I mean, yeah, I hate it too. They do it on Arrow all the time. All the time. True, they do do it on Arrow all the time. They do. Yeah, they do do it on Arrow.

You're right, Ned. How come we haven't all talked about our Arrow fandom yet? Like, yeah, in the fiction of this show, Arrow is the biggest most popular show in the whole world. And I assume every Thursday, I don't know when it airs. In the dystopian future, Arrow has become something of a religion. Arrow is truth Freedom is error

Kill the flash 2 plus 2 equals arrow The afterlife is divided into heaven And the speed force Okay Barclay kind of like Shuffles his feet And looks down for a second

He says She has been more Driven than usual since she got back from her time in Sylvain, I think that's the right call. I'll do my best. I don't really know how long we'll be able to hide him down here, though, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess.

Well, we're taking him with us, so that's off the plate. You don't have to worry about him being here. And as someone who's always honest with everyone in his life, I think it makes me uncomfortable. Where are you taking him? We're going to go patrol and see if we can get some more answers. out of him by showing him around, right, Ned? Abs so fucking ludely.

Okay. And then just like jump cut to you all standing in front of Indrid's Winnebago in the Eastwood RV Park. On your second listen to this program, just imagine Duck standing completely motionless and silent throughout all of that lying. Just like, he's like, it was like, Duck, are you, is there something wrong with the lamp? because you're like just staring at that lamp and not doing anything else. Like, are you okay?

So it's mid-afternoon. The RV park is still like completely abandoned except for Indrid's Winnebaco at like the back lot of the park. It is, it's getting like, I think like mid to late December at this point. And it is, it's like getting very kind of, it's getting very cold outside, like painfully cold. It's still not like snowing at least. you know, not naturally snowing, but it is, uh, it's, you know, in the 20s and you feel it like on your face. It is, it is very, very cold. And, uh, Indrid opens the door, uh, to his, uh, to his trailer and you feel that like blast of heat from inside from the, uh, several,

uh, um, oh shit, what are those things called? Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, meat, Hot makers. Space heaters. Space heaters, yes. And the, Billy kind of like recoils at the blast of heat. Kind of catches him by surprise. And also, just to fill out the world here a little bit, to help get Billy around the world, I think that we've maybe, like, gotten like a big, like, vampire like cape from like Neds, like, from the kryptonomica as part of like the Halloween, you know, movie kind of show that he does. Okay. And so we put this, like, vampire, you know, hooded cloak on him and maybe some kind of mask. Maybe, like, you know, I don't know. What? But the mask, the mask, the mask is a crampus mask.

So it's kind of just like that. Because we're promoting the upcoming crampus festival on Saturday Night Dead. I like that. Right. Right. Then in Barclays, in Barclays, like, truck or rather Mama's truck, like, there, you definitely pass a car with, like, with Billy in the best. seat and they see Billy dressed up as the as the as the uh the crampus and they look like really scared for a second then they remember oh right this is ned's show and they wave at you ned uh and now we're

back and now we're back in the RV park uh I think as time has gone on we have made Billy more and more like Harry from Harry and yeah I figured that would take maybe a quarter of an episode and I was right um he injured motions you all inside he says hurry hurry inside you you won't be able to prevent the of the innocent masses, if you all catch a cold, and he motions you, his winnie. Billy, Indrid, Indrid, Billy. He smiles and he says, I know about Billy. I know about pretty much everything as soon as it happens, Aubrey.

And he says, sorry, no, that sounded dushy. I'm really sorry. I forget sometimes that can come off that way. Come on, man manners, you know? Sure. It's the only thing that separates us from the beast, offense, Billy. He lets you all inside and as you all

sort of shed your, your, like, heavy winter wear in this very, very sort of sticky, hot environment, he goes to the fridge and he says, could I warm you up with a cup of hot nog? Pretty hot already, fairly warm. I think we're good.

He offers hot nog to you, Ned and Duck. Any takers? Do you think, do I want dog? I mean, you should. I should know if I'm going to have a dog or not. Okay, fine. Hold on, wait.

Yep, no no g, no g, nogs all around. I love gnaug. Although you've changed, you've changed the timeline. Oh, no, I destroyed Earth. He pours you a nog and hands it to you and he says, it's funny. Duck, that is actually a great example of what's been going on lately. Before we get to business. Yes, I'll have a nog.

Oh, okay. He pours you a nog. Aubrey, it seems like everyone's having, everyone's nogging out. Are you? No, thank you. He puts the, oh, he offers Billy a nog, uh, and Billy definitely takes the nog, but Billy doesn't know what to do with it. Billy, I think try, pours it on his hands and starts washing his hands and going to

same with the same with the dog. Billy's definitely consumed a beverage before, right? He could laugh at it, you know, like a cat. I mean, hey, it doesn't seem like it. It certainly doesn't seem like it. A clue. So Billy just sprung, fully formed onto this earth this morning. I mean, you tell me.

You don't know. There's still many things you don't know about Billy. But he's poured nog on his hands and he's washing his hands with it. And watching this with like just immeasurable amusement, Indrid says, there are new futures. Aubrey and Ned, I've already told Duck about this. But there are new futures that were all born the moment that you saved this fascinating creature. I see him present in several timelines, absent in some others, but it seems like you will all need to keep him close until his true purpose is divine.

But obviously you can't have a large goat man wandering around with you, despite how clever a costume you have whipped up for him, Ned. I was spooked. I've not personally met the crampus myself, but I thought maybe he had come to visit me with his wintertime malice. Can I just say, listen, you've been. been helpful and all, but can we, like, cut through some mystery bullshit? Thank you. And could you just, like, answer this question directly? There's one question.

Snow falls, right, and bad shit happens. But, like, Billy's not, it doesn't seem like Billy's making, like, bad fates happen. What the fuck is going on? Hmm. I'm trying to decide, like, what he would be able to tell you about this, but you've made basically asked me, Griffin, the keeper, to solve the entire mystery of this arc for you in one question, which definitely isn't going to happen.

But there has to be something he can tell us beyond like vague, like, there's things in the future. And if you, like, okay, cool. So like. That's fair. He'll definitely front things up. Okay, he sets down his nog and the amusement that was on his face as he watched Billy fuck up is kind of gone.

Which also, can I just say? say is very like, he knew Billy was going to pour it on his hands and washed his hands with that. Endred, you jerk. Indrid, just to clear things up, like, as he explained in the last episode, like, it's not like he sees, it's not like he is living constantly 15 seconds ahead of you. He sees, like, lots of different possible futures, not all of them, but lots of possible ones. So, like, the way he described it's, like, watching, like, 120 television shows all at the same time and trying to, like, keep track of what's, it's hard to do that. So, like, I think he boasts, but I don't think he knows everything.

So he looks serious for a moment, and he says, I think it's probably time that we took stock of what we know about the thing that's changing the future. He says, while I'm doing that, and he walks over to like this small wooden chest at the foot of his bed, and he opens it. And inside are a bunch of sort of, are a bunch of garments, like loose articles of clothing,

a lot of like accessories, like watches and bracelets. and you also see just some junk in there, just a random assortment of items. And he says, Billy, why don't you root through here and find something that speaks to you and I'll whip you up a charm that will give you a human-like disguise that you can use to navigate the world? And he gestures Billy over to this chest and he starts rooting around. And he says, that was the main purpose of this visit. Hopefully with that you all will be able to walk around with Billy in public without him having to dress. up as the crampus. I imagine after Christmas, that disguise isn't going to make much sense anymore.

You can't have an April crampus. April crampus brings May Shrampus. You know what really might lend itself to that would be, we can disguise a lot of him. We can disguise his body and, you know, put a hat on him, but it's those goat eyes. The goat eyes. Would you happen to have a spare pair of your spectacles, your sunglasses that you wear, those teeth? tinted glasses, would you have an extra pair of those that perhaps Billy could wear that would, you know, obviously disguise his goadish eyes? Aubrey mentally high-fives Ned. I mean, if that's what, if that's what Billy picks, if that's what Billy thinks fits his sort of persona.

Billy pretty much listens to me. We're pretty much, maybe he could just, you know, try it out and see if it works. Can we get back to the part where you were going to answer me? Yes, of course. Sorry. So, something is changing events at specific places to specific people and placing them on disastrous paths. The fact that you were all just targeted just now, moments ago, is in a way a boon. It means that these accidents aren't random. They are happening with intent.

you were getting closer in your investigation to what is causing these accidents you turned one of the enemy to your side you had to be stopped you were targeted that means that there is a motive behind these attacks if we can learn what the motive is we can learn about who is perpetrating them wait hold on so billy and his two friends they're not actually doing this right like they're not the ones changing the time You have spent more time with your new friend than I have. Does he seem capable of changing time? Honestly, he just seems like a real smart goat. Wait, wait, wait. What if Billy and the other two, they're just like the foot soldiers? I don't... Maybe they work for whatever is making, changing the timelines? That could be possible. Let's break things down. Let's go event by event. The first accident. Your friend,

Rick, Rick Danon. The Danimal. The animal. The Danimal. The Danimal. Yes. You say it in a way that makes me so angry. You say it like it's a joke? You say it like it's spoiled in your mouth and turned to ash.

It's calling Rick Danin then, if you're going to be like that. Shit. Or just like Richard. Richard is fine. Mr. Dannon. I can hang. Danimle. That's better.

Honestly, I will give it up to you for trying. Thank you for that. Objects were taken from d'animal's truck. Yes. The tools of his trade. Leo's general store, the Pizza Hut sign fell into it. What could be the cause of that? Why was the finicular attacked? We know why you were attacked, because you're getting close to solving the mystery.

Something happened at the general store that furthered their purpose. Something happened at the finicular that furthered their purpose. Here's what I don't understand. because it seems like I almost want to connect it that the Danmole was an employee of the park service and then at the funicular your friend was there and she's an employee of the park service but what does that have to deal with the general store there was somebody else at the general store we didn't identify I remember that he was nobody I'm sorry I included an MPC that I didn't even call with a fucking name for he is not the he's not the secret

Voldemort of this campaign he got I'm erasing no I'm Thanos they hit from the timeline. There was nobody in the bathroom. There's a voice, Shazam. Snap your fingers. There's a voice in my head that says that guy wasn't important. I feel that too.

But then there's this other voice in my head that's like, it all turns on that guy. Yeah, we can't trust that first. Or gal or non-binary individual. I don't know, there's so many unanswered questions about this person. We should spend three episodes investigating this person.

That's it. Many series. I love it. Was anything taken from the general store? That's a good question. I'm going to go back there and look. We didn't ask. Several hours later.

Jump cut. I went back and looked and then I came back with editing. Okay. Now, he says there are some mysteries, but has your new friend told you anything? He said grow? Growing something? Yeah, you know what? One thing that was missing was some tools, some gardening tools.

they stole some of those from the d'animal. Yeah, and he said that they, he told us in his own weird way that they took those tools to help something grow. Then it seems like that might be the culprit for what is changing the future. And I think you all are sort of all caught up and trying to like summarize this mystery that you don't see Billy sort of standing now, sort of filling up the entire frame, the entire doorframe into Indrid's bedroom where he is gone and he has pulled out a watch, a nice big sort of metal band watch for the metal face on it. It is not operating. It is not ticking,

but he has it and maybe he just picked it because it was shiny and nice, but he bleats a few times and hands it to Indrid. And Indrid says, oh, thank you, friend. And he places it on a table. he like swipes some like hot pocket wrappers off the table and starts sort of tinkering with it. And you see like little flashes of light as he tinkers with it. And he says, so I will be honest with you. I am not much help right now. There are so many different ways that this can end up. Some are disastrous.

Some are triumphant. And I don't know which way it's going to go. But what do you all think the next step is? that's gonna be up to Billy here. Because if he's been making something grow, I wonder if he take us. Billy, will you take us to what you've been growing? Billy looks kind of nervous.

And I don't know, I think you will have to roll and manipulate someone if you want him to do it, which means you'll have to give him a reason, a reason to do it. But right now, he just like, he shakes his head. He shakes his head, no. Without any kind of, like, effort, he just shakes his head. No, he is like adamant, no way.

Hey, Billy, let me try it. It's me, your pal, duck. Remember how you almost beefed it? And then I was like, not on my watch. I threw you over my shoulder and I spent several hours bringing you back from the brink of death. Just say duck, if you remember? Thank you. Well, listen, I didn't ask anything in return.

In fact, you're kind of trying to kill me. Which is fine. I get it. But I'm asking you for this. You do this and we're square. You no longer have, I don't know if your people have any sort of life debt. You have to pledge me until the debts are paid or anything. But you do this. You help me out. We're square. He sort of nervously nods. And he just kind of stands there. He looks very like, again, like he looks super. He looks. He looks. looks super conflicted. You get the sense that he is sort of weighing his loyalties right now and trying to figure out where exactly they land. And you see like one last sort of bright flash as Indrid sort of waves his hands over this watch on the table. And he walks over and hands it to Billy. And he says, I hope you like what I whipped up for you. And Billy takes the watch and he puts it it in his mouth because he's a goat.

Billy. He says, pizza? No, Billy, not pizza. It's a watch, Billy. Put it on your wrist. He spits it out and it lands in his hand and he says, Doc. And he kind of like holds it, he like offers it to you,

Doc, like he's like giving it to you. No, listen, I don't need that. I appreciate it. Here, let me help. I'll take it out of his mouth and I slip it onto his wrist. Or he's like, not wrist forehand

his wrist and wouldn't he have hooves instead of hands no he's got hooves on the bottom okay I'd slip on his beautiful

party at party up top Fetlock I just googled goat anatomy oh no you'll never recover from this delete your computer

um he he transforms like instant Like instantly, you've seen this when like, I think you've mostly seen this from Barclay when he has taken the bracelet that he wears off and turned into Bigfoot and tossed it back on. And he transforms into a human man. He, I can leave this up to juice. Like you basically are the one who brought this character into the campaign.

Do you want to decide what he looks like? Yeah, he looks exactly like Ryan Gosling. Yeah. Um, okay, so much so that people are gonna see him on the street and be like Ryan Gosling and then he'll be like pizza. They'll be like, probably not Ryan Gosling. Did you know, at what point in that sentence did you realize that it's fucking great? Was it four words in, five words in us?

Was it, excuse the exact word at which my brilliance dawned on you. And maybe Griffin in this universe, there hasn't been a Ryan Gosling till now. Yes. Yes. And moving forward, Billy will become what we know as Ryan Gosling. Half goat. And in the notebook, it'll be like, what do you want? It's a half goat, half goose.

Half goat, half goose. Okay, I'm into it. Sure, he looks pretty much exactly like Ryan Gosling. There it is. He is a very, like, Indrid actually takes a step back and he's like, whoa, damn. I guess I had your Earth's Ryan Gosling on the old brain when I was a, whipping that up. Sorry about that. That might end up being a little confusing. I love when we just go ahead and cast the Adventure Zone movie for the directors. Like, don't even worry about it. Get me Ryan Gosling.

It's canon. And Ryan Gosling, Billy, like, looks at his like now flesh hands and looks at like the nice button down that he is wearing under like a denim jacket. And he's like looking, looking at his body and he just says pizza. No, I think he definitely still sounds like a goat. He definitely says, he definitely says, duck, duck, duck, duck. Duck, gosling is what we'll call this arc. Yowsers.

Ba-ba-land. The goat book. Oh, man, there's so many. There's so many excellent things. First goat, first goat on the moon. First goat man, dad. First goat man. A goat.

Or a first pan. We also would have accepted the first pan. We also accepted the first pan. Goat drive. Hey, everybody, goat drive. You're just putting them a bunch of... Only goat forgives. Blade eater 2049. Like grass?

Like grays of grass. I got it. Yes. Goatster squad. Yes. The big goat. You're looking at his IMDB page now. The knock-around goats.

Look around goats is excellent. That's really excellent. The comedy rule of 39s has now applied, and we are. Lars and the real goat. Okay. I'm done. It's just that they're all so good. Yeah, I know.

Usually in these episodes on a cliffhanger, like a little button, but like... Just fade out. Well, we need, like, a last thing to say after it goes, like, bong. So, Justin, why don't you just, like, say one last really good one? Crazy stupid goat. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned. Listener supported.

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