The Adventure Zone - The Adventure Zone: Ethersea – Prologue I: Our Wasted World

Episode Date: May 6, 2021

Travelers from four war-torn kingdoms congregate at the edge of a fearsome storm, following a divine invitation emanating from deep within the Ethersea.Join us as we build our next campaign while playing The Quiet Year, a brilliant mapmaking game designed and written by Avery Alder. Learn more about The Quiet Year and purchase it for yourself here: https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-quiet-yearSee the end-of-episode map here: https://bit.ly/EtherseaMap1 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

A Brief History of Our Wasted World. A Primmer by Brother Seldom. I have witnessed firsthand the deep and restful slumbers that my sermons have induced amongst our congregation, so I will attempt to keep this succinct. Should you find yourself dozing off during this lesson? Well, I wouldn't worry too much. By the time you hear this, the world I'm about to describe will have long since been scoured from the map. Let us begin with the vestiges.

One could accurately describe them as gods, though they'd certainly prefer not to be called as such. When they crossed over into our world eons ago, some of our ancient ancestors considered them patrons. Others found them to be merciless oppressors. Civilizations sprouted around these beings' feet and immediately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, they began vying for superiority. For all their differences, though, the vestiges that claimed our world agreed upon one thing, an oath foresworn that their power, their magic,

would never be shared with mortal kind. The vestige named Benevolence so furiously coveted the adoration of all living creatures that, well, he broke that oath. He shared with his people the secretes. of magic, founding a new kingdom, Hamanine, and building an army of sorcerers powerful enough to challenge even the gods. Benevolence's army swept the land like wildfire, purging the rival vestiges who stood in his way. His war campaign was devastating and spectacular, and after the dust settled, it split our world into four quarters. The kingdom of Hamanine occupied most of the

realm, stretching from the western coastline well into the fertile heartlands. Its citizens lived prosperously, devoting themselves to the study of the arcane gifts bestowed upon them by the vestige benevolence. Their dominion, however, halted at the sheer face of the Aynar Plateau. There in the highlands overlooking the realm, the few surviving other vestiges lived amongst their mortal followers, not as spiritual rulers, but rather as collaborators. Though some zealous practitioners of the old ways dissented, the Aynar forged a new pact between the vestiges and mortal kind. There were also those who denied the vestiges and all of their other-worldly gifts.

A war-wary sect of hominians defected to the resource-rich Delmer Wilds to the north. They shunned magic in exchange for industry, building, an acropolis of lumber and steel to rival hominine's great citadels. And then there were those who, tired of the mainland's petty squabbles entirely, they found a home in the southern archipelago. With war, merely a distant memory, the island's inhabitants worked to make remarkable strides in trade, art, fashion, leisure, the fun stuff, not to put too fine a point on it.

For about a century, this world settled into a quiet, comfortable stalemate. The war had ended, but while its people may have recovered from this conflict, our planet, we've learned, never will. You see, magic has a cost, and when it goes unpaid as it so often has, even the simplest of spells can produce a kind of volatile exhaust. This raw and dangerous arcane energy suffused the soil of every battleground, the sky over every citadel, the banks of every river until convening, as all things do, in the sea. Our oceans turned against us. Great, glowing waves heaved onto the land, swallowing everything in their path, and hanging over the waters, a male-shunded.

from far beyond measure and visible from our shores grew wider and stronger with every passing day. And so the four kingdoms scrambled to find their own means of evading extinction. But over the din of their toil, over the storm's ceaseless reports of thunder, a voice called out from the sea. And with a simple stanza, it offered a. salvation. When kingdoms fall, the sea provides a home for all beneath the tides. Hundreds of us, hailing from all corners of the realm would heed this call. We abandoned our respective kingdoms, putting aside generations of differences, all for the promise of a new life. A better life. A better life.

Leagues below the gnashing fangs of apocalypse here in a home of our own creation, deep within the ether sea. Own that adventures. And welcome for a brand new voyage. I am the Wizard's Valfaar. Take my orb and walk with us on a new journey. Wait, why did we have to take the orb to walk with you? It's so funny that you say that, because if you'd read the preparation notes I read, wrote for you. I told you that you could not walk on the spectral sidewalk if you weren't holding the orb you'd fall right through.

Into the demon crabblesol's infinite mouth. Dead. My character's dead. And Travis has gone off the show at Juice and Dad. Hopefully you'll have a bit more staying power.

Well, thanks for tuning in to the Adventure Zone, fam. We're doing something kind of different with this episode as we sort of build out the world for our new season.

This one's a cooking show. This is a cooking show. We got hot recipes. I hope you guys like stew because that's what you're getting. It's all stew. So you got all the rowdy Macroy boys here and we're going to play a different game to build the world that we're going to be playing in next season where we will be returning to Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. And that game is The Quiet Year. It's designed by Avery Alder and you can find a link to where you can purchase it in the episode description for this episode and all of our.

our setup episodes here. I would thoroughly recommend it to virtually anybody. I think it's an amazing game. And I hope you feel the same way after you hear us do a bad job playing it here. So that's what we're playing. It's great. I should mention that I essentially got this idea from Friends at the Table who did this with, if you've not listened to Friends at the Table, their Marielda arc takes place in a city that was built in the quiet year. So we're going to do something similar here. Can you give a a quick like 30 second rundown on how a quiet year works? I mean, we'll definitely have 30 seconds.

We will go in rounds basically playing through a year. And on each of our turns, we will sort of introduce complications and discoveries and things that are taking place inside of this settlement that we are going to be playing in. And by doing so, we're basically with a bird's eye view going to be fleshing out. a town. We are going to be doing that on a map that we are going to be drawing on in Roll 20. So this will have an inherently kind of visual element to it. We will be sharing these maps. I assume sort of as we draw them, as you hear these episodes, I should also mention I don't know how many episodes is going to take to get us through a whole year. At the current pace we are

operating at, it'll be 60 episodes of just this world building art. Yeah. So we are going to be making stuff. What you just heard at the beginning of this is essentially the like macro level world history and of where this settlement is. And I've outlawn sort of the broad goal of what it is we're doing here, which is making an underwater city. That was sort of like the initial design that I had for the season. I liked the idea of doing a space opera, but like what if we could do that inside of a magical ocean.

And like I didn't really come up with a whole lot beyond what you have heard. And so everything else, we are essentially going to play out and figure out through the lens of the quiet year. But I just wanted to say, I guess, at the top sort of tonally, and as a sort of guiding light, I really don't want to make like a bi-shock, God, what's the city in Baja? Yeah, I don't want to make a Rhapshack.

Yeah, I don't want to make a Rhapshack. I don't want to make an Atlantis. But Griffin, is a man not entitled to the sweat off his brown? No, unfortunately not. And I don't know if you're doing a Bioshock thing or an Einrand thing there, but both are equally unwelcome in this house. Okay, got it, got it, cool, cool. Yeah, I want us to try and lean away from, from...

Do you know that the guy you played Andrew Ryan is also quark? I did not know that. Yeah, but I don't know why... I don't know why I would know that. I don't know why I know it. I basically just want us to not lean on. sort of underwater fiction tropes if we can. I also don't want us to go like too hot and heavy serious high fantasy with it

because I've sort of envisioned it as, hey, this is an ocean that is irradiated with magic and chaos and there's weird shit to be discovered everywhere. So let's let's go have fun in the deadly ocean in our ships or whatever. I have one question before we begin. Please. So looking at the map that you have here, it's about 50% land and 50% sea. Yes. So what do you envision is like the primary service?

Because it seems like from the intro and what you've told us that this is a city kind of transitioning to a safer, like is the safer option under the sea? Yes. We are the goal of this. Maybe this is a we are using the quiet year not in the exact manner it was intended, right? Because we are essentially going to be building this cell. where all of these nomads and travelers from these four different kingdoms have come together to make this underwater city. So there is a land map where basically these, you know, several hundred

people are going to have to sort of make a place where they can live while they build this underwater city in and they have a, you know, a year to do it. Eventually, once we've, I don't know, discovered how to explore underwater and find a place to build the city and how to actually like make a city underwater where people can live and all that stuff, we will start drawing on the seaside of the map. But yes, the goal will be essentially in a year, the land half of the map is going to be swept away. And so it is just sort of a launch pad. Let's get started.

We are doing this in Roll 20, where all of us are going to have access to drawing tools. And everything that we add to the map, every sort of narrative element and everything that we outline, we are going to represent visually. We are going to draw on the map. You're encouraged not to use words when you write on the map. And before we get started, everybody is supposed to add sort of one topographical feature. I went ahead and drew the coastline of this beach that essentially the settlement is going to be on, where out in the water is, on this side of the map is the water, and over here is the sand. So that's all I've drawn is, the coastline.

So who wants to go next, drawing a sort of broad topographical feature? This can be things like in the rules of the game it's outlined as like there is a mountain range over here or over here is we're going to get more granular and say like here is the, you know, ant lion nest or whatever the hell. But first we should be sort of establishing the topography. So, Griffin, sorry, one more question before we go. Please. Technologically speaking.

Yeah. How advanced, like if you were going to compare this to a time period in our actual real world history, where would we be at? I mean, that's one of the things that I have left a little bit blank. What I can say is that the hominine, that that kingdom is like very magically advanced while the Delmer folk are more engineering advanced. So like, I don't know, not steampunk, not sort of, you know, I would say more weird magic technology than actual industrial revolution style stuff. Okay, great. So the idea of like having to build a habitable undersea world is not like, let's cross our fingers. Yeah, yeah.

But we're like, we have some building blocks to work from, right? We're not completely inventing it, right? Right. I mean, we will be completely inventing it, but we should assume that. that, you know, there is some level of like engineering expertise here that we can use, but we are going, they are also going to be figuring it out because nobody has built an underwater city before. Got it.

Or else that would make this game very easy, I think. I, okay, then I am going to, just to start off with up here in the, oh, I got to remember my cardinal directions, northeast, I am going to say there is, let me do the right color. Oh, yeah. Please don't use a off white on the white. white map. Yeah, right. There is this color. There is a little magical spring thing. Okay. Like a little lake with maybe some magic to it. We're not making our game world, right? This is not where we will play the game, the next game. Correct. This is the settlement where everybody has sort of followed this voice to the shores of the ocean.

where they have been brought to kind of build an underwater city. Right now, that is the land side of the map, yes. And I'm just for clarity's sake, it is a magical lake, but the kind of magic and properties and everything we do not know. We've just arrived here. Is it freshwater? Yes. Okay.

That's why I said it inland from the ocean side. This is not like a spring that ran over there, you know. Okay, cool. I mean, that's weird in and of itself because the ocean being irradiated with magic has made it like really volatile and dangerous. So the idea that there is also a another version of that that is maybe not as wild is something to, for sure, explore. I'm worth noting, I think it's probably

a different kind of magic than has irradiated the thing. Okay, okay, sure. Juice, you wanna draw something? Tell you what I think would be cool. Yeah, baby. I'm gonna draw something cool, let me do it. Yeah, it did, like a big skull. I'm going to draw.

I'm going to draw. A fucking skull, dude. Yeah. Big skull. This is also just emerged. And it's a black spiral staircase that goes down into the ocean. Okay. It's never been there before.

And then it's made out of rock. And nobody knows where it came from. And nobody knows why it's there. And it's this beautiful spiral staircase. It does kind of look like a snake. It's like a spooky snake that is under the- I'll keep working on it, but you get the idea. It's like a cool black spiral staircase.

Is it reachable from the shore, or is it something you would need to, like, swim to or take a boat to? No, no, no, you need to take a problem. I mean, like, it depends on how to go swimmer. You are right. I would say it's probably, like, maybe 200 yards out. Okay. I think that is rad,

and I also think draw something on the land side of the map, and maybe we'll also draw something. something on the sea side of the map because it seems like what happens over here is going to be like the first what happens over in the land what happens over in the land until we can figure out how like people actually explore the sea to start building shit down there like this will be the thing that maybe we should flesh out a little bit first but leave your leave your black spiral staircase okay because that's tasty well then that was my cool one dad you'd make something yeah i've got an idea. I'm going to

construct a giant sinkhole. Okay. That... This is going to look like an anus, and I want Justin and Travis to be ready for that. No, no, no, no. Griffin, I was already there. I'm

already there. This sinkhole is huge. A dead daddy long legs. Sorry, go on. And people for centuries have been using it. as like a landfill. They just been throwing garbage in it,

throwing junk in it, that they, you know, it's like a giant junkyard, but they throw it in and it's gone. And nobody quite knows where it's gone. Oh, interesting. Oh, okay. So it's not like there's a pile of junk there that you can see. No.

It goes down to a point where we can't say. There. And, yep, and in this giant hole. You're making it look more like a butthole dead. Yeah. That was my intent. I thought that's what we all wanted. I'm going to stretch out this map real quick.

It is a little bit blurry. Ah, there we go. Can you all see that? Yeah. So you can see where we are building is essentially where these two kingdoms kind of intersect here. Hamanine, which has basically conquered the world and the Ainar Plateau where sort of more naturalist society has been built. So this sinkhole is essentially like right flat in between the two of those things. So I like leaving it so that we don't know who used that.

that sinkhole to make things disappear. I'll draw, I mean, I drew the coast, but as long as we're all kind of drawn, bullshit, I'm gonna draw like a. I mean, it's all bullshit, Griffin, we're scribbling on the map. Yes, I'm gonna draw like a tide pool. Okay.

Hereish that is, you know, just crags and rocks and shallow water with like a, you know, weird diverse array of, wildlife in it, as is the case with tide pools. I'll just kind of flesh that out. Got that up in the upper northwest. Yeah, the northwest quadrant of the shore. It's a sizable thing.

Can I add something to the seaside now? Sure. I am going to say that here, slightly west of the spiral staircase, there is a patch of water that you could sea from the surface that doesn't have the same like wave structure as the rest of the sea. So like as the waves move over it, they decrease. Okay.

The waves around it are higher. So you're drawing something on the surface of the water? Correct. Maybe draw that on the land side then so that we can kind of keep these two things distinct. If it's something that you can see from the, from the land. Black spire you can see. It's coming out of the sea. Oh, it's coming out of the sea.

That's why it's so cool. Why are their stairs going into the sea? Okay, okay. I dig it. All right. Then, yeah, let's just keep that there then. It's just a section where waves don't happen. Yeah, where the water seems calmer.

Do waves, like, hit it and then just vanish? Yeah, like, they like break around up. Interesting. Okay. And that's next, and that's near the spiral staircase? Yeah, the spiral staircase is between the land and that patch. Okay. Dad, you want to draw one more thing?

And then that's probably enough for us to start out. Travis, this is a, you build a pool. Yeah, it's, uh, I would say, it's not a pool as much as it is a plot, a section of the surface of the ocean that is, no, so on land. Do you mean on land or on sea? No, on land.

Yeah, on land, it's, uh, like, uh, bigger than a pool. I would say it's like, uh, kind of like large pond size. Okay. And these are only, natural things we're putting on the map right now? Yes. Right?

That's right. Okay. A river. I think there should be a river that leads to the sea. So a nice river that actually runs from the west coast and runs in a curve up to the north. Whoa. Okay. Now wait, water is flowing into the ocean, yes?

Or is it? Correct. Okay. Because if it was doing the opposite, that would be fucking bonkers. What a magical world. Yeah. I guess so. Okay.

I guess one more thing that we should sort of figure out, generally speaking. We have this thing here. Is this all beach, all the stuff that we have not outlined as water? Is it just all, is it all sand and beach? Or do you think there's other sort of biomes? I don't think there would be that much beach, do you? I mean, No,

and allow me to pause it, Griffin, yeah, or P-O-S-I-T, that perhaps it is not sand beach, but more like a pebble, pebbly kind of beach. Okay.

Okay. Maybe it's fat beach. Maybe it's fat beach. That's possible. Okay. So that's kind of a pebbly thing. So like there's a reason that people were not settling here before.

This is not like a come here to relax kind of thing. One thing about the sort of world map I drew is that this area is fairly secluded because, you know, while all the world powers are sort of trying to formulate their own way to not die in the apocalypse, you know, they are still these, these contentious world powers. So they may not be wild about the idea of just this like construction happening here. And we're not doing this to scale, right? No, I think that that would be a lot to ask of us. Yeah. And we're all dummies. Yeah, so we could not make that work. So Why don't you do some kind of grayish, beachy thing?

Yeah, I'm drawing a very faint line here to illustrate like that is, that's just the beach. And then beyond that, you know, there's, I would imagine there's some green around the, around the pond. So we don't have to fill in every single sort of. Okay. And we'll fill it in more as we go. That's true. That's the whole point. Okay.

So the next thing I have to do before we really get started is decide what resources are important to our city. And again, I think this is a thing that we can have two lists of. For the seaside, I think it's probably just a static, like, list of questions we have to answer, right? Like, what are we breathing? How is, how are we getting water? Yeah, food. How are we staying? What's the shelter situation?

Energy. Light and power. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's the things that you need to sort of make a city underwater. So maybe we can just keep track of that ourselves. Yeah, I think it's just, we can just label it as like kind of survival. is like the primary thing and then like thriving is the secondary, you know?

Well, yes, yeah. I mean, just as far as categories of resources. Categories to the seaside, right? But for the land side, I mean, it's, we're essentially playing the game, right? So we have to decide things that are important for our society here to build a city underwater. So, and these things will be,

start out in scarcity, save for one of them. So we all decide something. I would like to make a pitch. Yeah, please. For the abundance one. Well, let's do all the important resources first, and then we'll all decide on what the abundance is. Well, the number one is knowledge, right? We're trying to figure out how to do this.

There's a D in knowledge. That's embarrassing. It's like no ledge. That's fucking embarrassing. You got a no ledge, you know? Knowledge. Yeah, sure. Because that's the thing, right?

If we're trying to figure out how to do it, then it seems like, that's a lot. the number one resource is knowledge. I would like, I think maybe, because I don't, it's so broad. It's so broad. And it's also something that like, how would that become a scarcity? Knowledge isn't exactly fluid, right? We are getting sort of, you know, ostensibly the best and brightest from the four kingdoms who like are able to bring their various shit.

So maybe instead of knowledge, maybe it's like the cooperation to like use that knowledge. Because that is, that is something that could be dynamic. Like, oh, yeah. Okay, I like that. Diplomacy, maybe, is a way of putting it, like, the ability to, for these different groups to cooperate. Maybe we just say, like, unity as like a bucket thing. Unity, yeah. Unity works for me because if we're saying inherently the knowledge that everyone is bringing is not necessarily a resource,

that we might be able to find new information later. Sure. But people are coming in with their own knowledge. But it's whether or not they want to work together to use it. That makes a lot of sense to me. I'd like to suggest something that I think could be interesting, something that I've been thinking a lot about, is the idea of culture. Like, we are, we are, like, trying to get a whole society, in fact, four societies down under the sea and basically, like, abandoned the land. Right.

And I like the idea of, like, cultural, like, the amount of our cultural history. that we're able to bring with us because it seems like that could be something that would be interesting to balance against survival. Let's go ahead, let's cheat and just make that, like, diversity of culture, like,

an abundance, because, again, like, I don't see how that is something that then becomes scarce unless, you know, something genuinely horrible happens. Like, a diversity of culture. Is that what you're talking about? Are you talking about, like, a...

I'm talking about cultural works. Artifacts. Artifacts. Art, right? Artifacts. Okay, yes. Like the culture of our people, like that we're preserving not just like, you know, you send up a space shuttle and you put like records in it and stuff, like, so the aliens can like lay out some tracks.

Like, what are you, like, what are we saving from society? So there will be no access to the land after we, right? Yeah, I mean, the season that we're going to be playing when we actually start the season in earnest is going to be entirely. underwater. Above the surface of the land will be like an extremely... The quiet air has four seasons. Sorry, yes. The season of the adventure zone, tentatively called Ethersea, is going to be purely

underwater. If you, the, everything above the water will be like unsurvivable, essentially. I'm going to just add, like, building resources, which I could, like, because I could put, like, metal or wood or whatever, but we could do a ton of those. Right now, like, we don't know what the fuck the city's going to be made out of. It could be made out of any of that stuff. What about structural resources? Structural material, right?

Because it's not just like, you know, food or cloth that we would use for like, you know, those kind of resources. Literally, like, things you could build with. Dad, you have not done. What about air? I mean, are we going to need to figure out the key to live in underwater is how we're going to breathe? Let's add, okay, so if we do those, we can do like air underwater. It seems like the starting point for... Yeah, water.

Underwater. Food, underwater. Also, food above water, right? Like, food is important. We are building a mini-city essentially, and so there are things like food shelter that, like, when you come here on a mission from a voice in the sea that you don't necessarily like prioritize. Sorry, just one last one that just kind of click to me that might be interesting to play with as a fluctuating resource leadership. because you have these four different groups, right, who aren't necessarily going to agree

with any one person. It feels closer to unity. Yeah, it feels like a pushing pull thing. Like if you had a strong leader that everybody was down with, like, that's a unity. I want to pitch a concept that I had for this arc and might play into this resource conversation.

We know that magic here has a cost and basically like a... A material cost. A material cost, right? It, like, is creating something that is basically analogous to a pollutant that has been seeping into the sea. I wanted to pitch you all on the idea of

what if the ocean or the sea is purifying or somehow condensing that sort of magic. byproduct into a source of energy, like a physical, maybe it's like cubes, maybe it's like crystals, something like that that we are like finding. Like the way you could boil salt water to get the salt out of it? What if it's just salt? Like magic salt.

And like that is a go-to, like... It's basically, it's called prestige. And I think that it's like an energy source. You could use it to, like, you need a certain amount of this stuff to get down. We find that we can use it for energy. The question that I think we don't have an answer to right now that I think is very interesting is, like, the sea has been taking our magical pollutants and basically recycling them into prestige. Like, what happens when we burn it? Yeah.

Like, what happens when we use it? Is it bad? Is it good? Is it pissing the sea off more? Is it dangerous? Is it renewable? How much is there? like all the uses of it, whatever.

Right. Like that seems like an interesting idea to me. One thing to note about the game and sort of how it is meant to be played is to not sort of give yourself easy answers to questions. And that's, I don't think that's what this is. I think there's a version of this where it's just like a mysterious thing. You know, we have discovered a somewhat sustainable way to do magic without having to go out and hunt for a fucking eye of newt or whatever, right?

There's this prestige that we. we can use to do magic responsibly. And as far as we know, we're the only ones who have discovered it. But maybe it's not a gift from a sentient ocean that loves us and wants to take care of us, as much as it is just like some weird shit. And so therefore, like the answers we can find for how to make a city underwater, like now we have magical energy four days to kind of do that with. But I would also, I would, I love this idea. And I think that's very cool. I would not make it quite, I, I would. I would. I, wouldn't make it too accessible. I think that there needs to be some kind of difficulty to obtain it, whether it's something like coral,

it forms coral or something like that. So we're kind of getting into the game accidentally a little bit in sort of the pre-pro phase. Like this is the kind of thing that we are going to be doing in the game. I think just leaving it at without going into where it came from or what we know about it, just there is this, there we have found.

Salt. Magic salt. Yes. All right. Prestige. Magic salt. Okay, great. And then we can go from there.

And then we'll figure out like what the fuck that means later. I think that that's the thing in abundance though, right? That's the thing that. Yeah, right. Like it's a, yeah. I don't think unity inherently like these are four formerly warring cultures who are here because they heard the same voice. But like I feel like you got to earn that a little bit.

Yeah. And culture is something that maybe they need to get more people to come and join this project. I also think that that is a very contentious thing. Right, where there will be people like, you're worried about art where we're trying to figure out food. Yeah, I also like super want to, in terms of tone, like I don't want to make things, you know, I don't want bigotry or anything like that. Like, because they used to be, right. Like, we have a chance. I think it's more about prioritizing, like, their own things, right?

Where you're going to get the people who, like, magic has always been their, like, go-to answer for things. Right. And then you have people who are like, no, we're going to craft it with. our hands and it's more reliable that way. I don't think it has to do with bigotry so much as it's just like the way we do things. That's no, you can't trust magic. You can trust, you know, wood and stone and metal and stuff. And I think it all plays back into the things we were saying, you know, unity, culture, these things where they're going to have to figure out how all this stuff overlaps in a successful way. I am going to, you're supposed to draw this stuff as you do it. So like

prestige might I might just draw these magic sort of silvery waves well that's confusing because it's the fucking ocean I would I would Griffin shade it in around the edge like maybe it was discovered like coated on the rocks that are like near like that's where it's dried oh like maybe near the tide pools like that because of the way that the water kind of comes up into the rocks there that's like where we right and then as the water has like you know evaporated it's left this like crystalline coding on it. Okay. Yeah, I'll draw that up near here.

And then we're also supposed to draw the scarcities, but some of these are so sort of high-minded. Like, I don't know how to draw a scarcity of cult shaking. Handshaking and like a statue. A copy of Brat on DVD. Yeah. Okay, so we got our basic starting map here. We have our resources, and now we're going to get into the game.

So let's now go over what we're actually going to be doing as we play through the game. Rounds are basically separated into weeks. That is the basic unit of play. And each week is a turn taken by, I'm just going to read straight from the thing here. Each week is a turn taken by one player with play proceeding clockwise around the table. We don't have that, so maybe we just go left to right based on our little icons here. Weeks should take an average of two to three minutes to complete. We'll see about that.

So during each week, three things happen. The first thing is that we draw a card. from this deck. The Quiet Year provides basically 52 prompts, you know, 52 weeks in year, 52 cards and a deck of cards. And we will read the prompts. The prompts will give us two options, essentially. And we get to choose the option that we want off of that card, or rather the player whose turn it is, gets to choose the option. And it's usually a question that needs to be answered or a direction that needs to be sort of followed. We'll explain that as we go. But again, And those cards are sort of separated into four seasons.

We start in spring. We end in winter. One of the cards in winter is the called the Frost Shepherds, I believe is what it's called. And when the Frost Shepherds arrive, the game immediately ends. So it probably won't go 52 weeks. We will get into winter. And then once we're in winter, at any point during a player's turn, it's done. And the game is over.

And that's we have what we have. Just something to be aware of. But also, in spring, things are kind of okay. we will figure out what things look like and in summer we'll shore up our resources and then things will get harder from there. So you draw a card, you resolve it. You then will take down, there's a countdown essentially on projects that we start, which is maybe I should read that step of the thing first. The last thing you do is the active player gets to do one of three things. They can discover something, which then they just, you know, get to add to the map, hold a discussion

or start a project. For hold a discussion, what we did starting out talking about like, what would be cool to do with magic or what resources are important or what's our priority here? We can't do that once we start playing.

We are meant to be sort of omnipotent in, what's the word I'm looking for? Entities? Uninvolved sort of entities that are like, we can't be rooting necessarily for the thing to succeed and for us to like, give ourselves softballs like we are and the other way around too you're not necessarily trying to punish

them no we're not trying to screw ourselves over so like if we start going in different directions it may behoove an active player to say like let's talk about this but when we talk about it we are going to talk about it from the perspective of members of the community and there's a very specific way that you have to talk about it like you're holding a town hall right um start a project is a you know represents a concerted effort amongst the community to achieve something. And it's very important that you don't discover something that should be a project, right? Like, oh, we need food. Oh, I just discovered a fucking McDonald's up on the, like, no, like we would need to start a project

to, you know, build a farm or go out on hunting parties. Yeah, don't be like your friend Debbie who's like, oh, I discovered the cutest. I found the cutest little restaurant the other day. Like, you didn't find it. It wasn't hidden in the woods, Debbie. It was on the help. So those are the three things. right? We will draw a card, resolve it, count down the project dice, and then either discover

something new, hold a discussion, or start a project. And we can go over the rules of those as we like, as we get to them. That's more or less it. We will cross the roads on like what else we will be doing. But that is the basic round is the week. Let's do it. Let's do it. If you guys would like, I can go first to kind of illustrate. Oh, yeah. I'm horny for these cards, Griffin. Yes, I'm drawing the first card. I got the... Families listen to this. Yeah, I got the Queen of Spring.

What's the most beautiful thing in this area? Or what's the most hideous thing in this area? Well, we have both a magical lake and a butthole already, so... Right, but these prompts are not things that you answer with shit that's already out there. Oh, I know. It is something that you need to figure out. What if there is a cave down the shore, sort of like right at the foot of the Ainar Plateau? where the land kind of runs into.

So like right here is a cave that nobody can go inside. And it's not like a, it's barred up. It's that like when people try to go into it, whether it's fear or whatever, they are physically incapable of going into this cave. Is there some kind of like barrier you can see? That is the most hideous thing I should. That is the most hideous thing I should say.

Is there like a barrier you can see? No, no barrier. It's a, mental barrier. It's like, oh, let's, I think kids will go down there to dare themselves. Like, oh, let's go. But, you know, they never do because nobody actually is able to go inside. Okay, so now you get to choose to discover something, start a project, or have a discussion, right?

Well, the first thing I do is I need to count down on the clocks. And you'll see I have a special little clock up here at the very top. I did see that one. Yes. And so I'm just going to, first of all, delete this little dot I accidentally made. Oh, geez. Oh, geez. Oh, geez, there we go.

I'm going to count this down. So this is now going to be a seven. This is a special event clock that I got going. Okay. And when that counts down, something in the world is going to happen to the other four kingdoms. Everybody gets a Toyota Camry. Yes. Okay.

Hell yeah. So, yes, now the last part of my week, I get to discover something new, hold a discussion, or start a project. I think just like a good project would be like shelter. Yeah. I think that there's enough like camping supplies here for folks to, for folks to, you know, not die, but especially if they are going to try and if more people, you know, heeding the call start coming down here,

then we're going to need some, we're going to need some more housing. So maybe like just long houses, just like super efficient. bunk houses, nothing like super fancy, but just to save us from the elements. Makes sense.

Okay. So I'm going to draw this right here. And this is really going to be something, just to clarify, this should really be something that is as ephemeral and as possible. We're talking about like survival. Yes, we're not building.

This is so temporary. This is going to last. I think everybody here knows that they are building a construction site and nothing else. Can we call it the shit house? The shit house? because it's going to be bad.

Like, nobody likes it, and we didn't work very hard. Maybe that's not what it was called right away, but it's what everyone just keeps referring to it as. Yeah. Over at the shit house, you know. Yeah, so the thing that you have to do whenever you start a project is decide how many weeks it takes to complete it all the way up to six. Six weeks is the most,

it's something to take one week is the least. I think for the number of people that are already here, I think this one shithouse represents a lot of shit house. represents a lot of shit houses where hundreds and hundreds of people can go. Because I think everybody here is banking on many, many, many more folks actually being here when they start to head underground. I'm going to say a month. I'm going to say four weeks to actually get it going.

So I'm going to put the four here. And that is the end of my turn. Dad, you are on my screen next in the order. So why don't you go next? You will, oh, that's right. I will draw a card for you. Okay, that is the 10 of hearts. There's another community somewhere, correct?

Yeah, 10 of Heart Spring. There's another community somewhere on the map. Where are they? What sets them apart from you? Or what belief or practice helps to unify your community? I think I'll go with the belief or practice helps to unify the community. I think that's great. Yeah.

Seems to me that everybody can see this descending layer of death coming, correct? Yeah. There is an enormous storm that everybody can just see, sort of hanging over the ocean some, you know, number of miles away. Right. So we know, this society knows that devastation is coming. Right. I think the belief is that they realize they all, the only place they can go is under the sea.

Right. The only place they can go is to build something that allows them to live underwater. They don't know how long this storm's going to last, if it's permanent. Right. They can tell it's coming. And so that's going to alleviate a whole lot of argument and a whole lot. Everybody knows that's the goal. It is a fear-based unity that everybody has right now.

Yeah. Okay, I'm going to move unity over to abundance then, right? Okay. Because, you know, maybe it's not long-lasting unity, but, you know, I think every- At least at first, it's like post-9-11, right? Yeah, well, this is, this is the, you got to remember, this is the second week that this group of sort of nomads have been here. And by week two, I think they've all been like, okay, we're going to die if we don't start really working together.

I think post 9-11 too is a great analogy. Yeah, this is a fun topic for the podcast, too, is what the feedback we get a lot. It's history. I should have thought about this, though. I was not being particularly a good steward of the rules. I said we're building these houses, but building material is something that is in scarcity. So, like, I don't know. I should have thought about these are going to be shitty houses then.

Like we're essentially making sand castles is what they are. Well, maybe this is something that could be interesting where, I mean, that's very human to start a project. Without knowing. Yeah. Of how you're going to finish it. Like, that becomes like something we have to solve very quickly. Yeah.

Okay. So next, Dad, do you want to draw? I feel like the storm is so huge. Well, the storm would be it, right? Like, that's the thing they're afraid of. All right, let me see what I can make it, make it maybe in the corner here because we don't want the storm to occupy like the entirety of this, this side of the map. I'm going to add a little bit of nauseating green. Oh, boy.

Whoa. So it's like an iridescent storm. Like an aurora borealis? I'm into that. I've been thinking a lot about like it's magic water. Like it doesn't have to be, you know, gray or blue ocean water or whatever. Like it can be that kind of. oily, like, iridescent sheen

that could, you know, when it gets sucked up into this big storm just turns into a beautiful... We like brightly colored deadly things on this show. We really do. Brightly colored forces of apocalyptic destruction. I think we also like multi-syllabic words that describe like, a shiny thing. Yeah, that's true.

You know, it's iridescent. It's obelessing. Okay, there's your storm. Okay. There's your storm of evil nauseatingness. We reduce Project Clocks, which I will do right now. And then, Dad, you get to choose

whether to discover something, hold a discussion, or start a project. Hold the discussion. Okay. This discussion will take place from the perspective of members of the community. When you hold a discussion,

you choose to open with a question or a declaration, Clint. Starting with you and going clockwise, everyone gets to weigh in once, sharing a single argument comprised of one to two sentences. If you opened with a question, you get to weigh in last. If you opened with a declaration, that's it for you.

Discussion never results in a decision or a summation process. Everyone weighs in, and then it's over. This is how conversations work in communities. They are untidy and inconclusive affairs. And this has to be associated with what I just created. It has to be associated. No, it has to, I just shared the rules for hold a discussion with you. It has to be shared with something on the map, right?

And then we mark it with a little dot, just to note that a discussion was had about the thing. So you could have a discussion about anything right now that's on the map. My question is, how do we know that this storm is dangerous to us? How do we know that it's not something that's going to be beneficial that it's going to, you know, give us superpowers or do something like that? How do we know it's bad? Do you have an inkling based on just the intro, like of which of the four sort of world powers, like the person? who held this discussion would have come from, like this essentially climate change denier.

Like it just sort of whipped into existence. Well, give me a second, because I actually made notes. Nerd. I think it would come from hominine. Okay. That makes sense. I mean, they have magic in there. Like, magic is their whole shit.

Yeah. Yeah, they've studied magic. Okay. But this thing has mystified them. Right. How do we know this is going to kill everybody? You heard the call just like I did or you wouldn't be here Clearly there's something wrong and there's nothing your benevolence is doing to fix it

We got the call so you came so you must have your doubts already The people of the southern archipelago have already lost quite a bit to this storm And it has only grown more intense in the passing months. So the writing is on the wall. Yeah. That's cool, dude. Is that the Fear Bowl?

We're not supposed to make characters in the quiet year, but I'm really curious about that, dude. I'm busy. There's no time to talk. We have to get back to work. And, Dad, you get to close out with a statement. Excellent points. and and I especially the last guy

we got work to do thank you Delmer I was going to be from the Southern Archipelago and Griffin messed me up because he picked Southern Archipelago and then I didn't know anything about the other ones

I think that was very Delmer sort of sensibility It felt Delmer in the moment We felt Delmer That was Delmer's hell That dude's name was Delmer and they're his wife You know I came from my wilds

Remember we don't come to a A tidy conclusion in the discussion Yeah I appreciate everybody's viewpoint and I think there's some valid points in there. All right. Oh, dad was there too.

Cool. Let's not do that in the fucking setup for the new season. We'll figure out how to get Janitor Clay in there. Because he would be dead by the time the game began. Travis. Yes, draw for me, Griffin. Yes.

Travis is drawn. The King of Spring. Oh, yeah. So that is King of Spring. Once I was the King of Spring. The King of Spring. A young boy starts digging in the ground and discover some of spring.

something unexpected, what is it? Or an old man confesses to past crimes and atrocities, what has he done? I think I'm going to go with the young boy, starts digging in the ground and discover something unexpected. What is it? I'm going to say he is digging in the ground. He is digging in the ground along the kind of pebbled shore. and starts finding metallic stones mixed around in the regular pebbles.

When you say metallic stones, are you talking about sort of natural-looking rocks that just happen to be manned out of metal? Are you talking about like fragments of a thing? More like hunks of ore. Okay. Are they corroded? Are they rusted in any way? Or are they... They're not processed.

These are just like naturally occurring hunks of ore. You're right. We shouldn't, this is a, that's like the kind of thing that a project would be. Right. What do we do? He's just discovered some hunks of ore and not just like one or two. I mean, like once you find them under the first layer of pebbles.

Okay. There appears to be many of them. Just doodle that on the map for me while I count down the clocks. We're at two on the shit houses. And five for the world clock. Okay. And now you get to, after you've drawn your things, are they concentrated in any way on a certain part of the beach?

You've drawn them close to the scary cave. I mean, they're, yeah, they're definitely along the south coast, probably. Okay. Gotcha. Now you get to discover something, start a conversation, or start a project. I'm going to start a project. I think that there needs to be some elections. Whoa.

We need to organize like one representative from each of the four land masses, each of the four kind of peoples, so that we can smooth out the decision making process. I'm going to do something that I haven't talked about yet called contempt. And that is because sort of each of our turns, we are a fully individual thing. If you ever disagree with something that somebody else is doing, you take a point of contempt. And it is mostly a sort of social signifier. It's not like at the end of the year we add up our contempt points and that many people die or whatever. It is just a thing that is sort of a tracker for, you know, player, player unity in the thing. You don't like my elections, gruffer?

I don't like the idea of, wait, I don't get to say. We would have to hold a discussion to talk about that. It is so hard to fight against your instincts. to like. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to say, because it's mostly just discussion and not construction, I'm going to say two weeks. Okay, go ahead and draw it.

You've got to draw it on the map, so I don't know how you draw an election. X is or O's. X is or O's. Okay, that's fine. And I'll add a date. How long did you say it would take? Two weeks. Two weeks.

Okay. I mean, how long does an election really take? Yeah. juice your turn yep the jack of spring you see a good omen what is it or you see a bad omen what is it there's a um a peer that had been there's a there's a sorry i should probably use stuff that's already on the map i can't just like make something out no you can yeah okay yeah that is the thing but again I would encourage you not to make it a solution for a thing. Like add complications and fascinations and mysteries to the map, but it is, it is.

There is a pier that has been used for fishing off of the, um, the coast, uh, right on the coastline. And, um, the, everyone just goes out and takes their turns and, um, cast the lines in. They keep the fishing poles there. Uh, and the, The lines are all cut with the bait, the floaters, everything is the bobbers specifically cut for the fishing. And they go out and they, everybody casts in and they realize that their lines don't reach. And the water is lower.

Hmm. Right around the pier. And they think it's their mind playing tricks on that at first, but they check again and they realize like, no, it's right. there's something something is changing the water is is um being dragged away from right here but then they realize it's it's low tide and they're being silly get silly gis that fuck wait hold on it's it um oh wait is it six oh okay oh shit that's it actually makes perfect sense so that's a bad omen then i mean i think it's a bad on the south coast or the west especially combined with the the storm our um our our drawing here is absolutely well sorry just just is just

That's drew an incredible purple line. Our map is kind of, I'm still trying to wrap my head around. It's beautiful. It's really cool. It's coming to go. Well, it's just that we have a coast. There's a line between the land. Okay, for people listening at home that maybe aren't directly looking at this,

there's a line between the ocean and the land, and it is perfectly straight. And then there's another line farther back from that line. Oh, juice. This, these are two different maps. This is not, oh, no. Okay. That makes sense. Okay.

Yes. These are two different maps. That wasn't the ocean on the other side. That's two different maps. Right. Yeah. In a classic style, it's just two maps set next to each other. Okay.

And not indicated as separate maps. It seems like everybody else got it, though, which is weird. Classic cartography. Classic stuff. Classic. All right. Okay, that makes sense now. All right, let me put a little dinky pier out here then.

Now it all is adding up. Probably would have been good to flip these, you know what I mean? Oh my God, I get it now. Yeah. If we're going to put the ocean over here, it would have been good to put the ocean map. There's a pier here, a tiny pier and their lines don't reach anymore. I'm guessing this is not going to do much to help our food scarcity. Nope.

Nope. There should be a super... Unless you guys know where to get longer lines. I also think that if you... Whoa. If you eat fish from the ether sea, you have to cook... There's like a very, very specific... But it's already salted, which is nice.

All fish is fugu fish, essentially. Like, you fuck up eating ether fish and you're dunzo. Okay. And that's a bad omen, I assume. Yes. There's a bad omen. Okay, now you... I have counted down the clocks, and now you get to make your choice.

And those actions again are remind the listeners. Discover something new. Hold a discussion or start a project. I feel like I just discovered the pier. Yeah. So I'm just going to go with that. No, no, no. You do a different thing also.

Oh, okay. All right. I want to hold a discussion there, but. Okay. You can start with a statement. I have to make a declaration. Okay. Our lines are too long.

All of us fishing guys. we're pretty fucked up about it and I want to do it out to here in front of everybody our lines were too short to reach to the ocean and we're all kind of fucked up

so we're gonna need some time if you see me or Doug or flip Tim Bean any of us we're gonna be pretty fucked up for a while because I don't know why our lines

are so short and also this is the longest single statement I've ever Kevin if anybody would like to come forward and admit to sort of fuck it around with our string, our line and the parlance efficient, I would appreciate it because we are all so fucked up right now. We can't figure it out of what exactly is happening.

But that is the announcement for everybody today. I think if you remember, I said something about, why don't we build some boats? You remember that? Remember me saying, why don't we build some boats? I'm not allowed to respond for the rules. Listen, we can't lose focus worrying about the fish and the boats or any of that. That seems like we're trying to find a permanent solution to an impermanent living situation. If the lines are too short, let's just find food on the land.

It will be far too unsafe for us to continue eating ethersea fish when we are living under the wall. So it's high time that we find a different food source anyways. The end. Okay, now we're back to the top of the order. It's my turn. I will draw a card. Eight of spring, an old piece of machinery is discovered, broken but perhaps repairable. What is it?

What would it be useful for? Or an old piece of machinery is discovered, cursed and dangerous. How does the community destroy it? As interesting as that second prompt is, I feel like we've been taking the nasty option with every card. So maybe... I discovered old. Or what are you talking about? I guess that's true.

I'm going to say an old piece of machinery is discovered, broken, but perhaps repairable, what is it? What would it be useful for? Because this is sort of on a coastline at this junction between these two kingdoms, maybe during the war there were some sort of naval combat experiments that were taking place here. And so the community finds it just washes up on the shore one day in probably a bathosphere, which was like, I will admit that is a Bioshock thing, but it is also the very, very first way that deep sea explorers were able to do their shit. It's a dangerous metal ball with windows that you plonk down into the ocean in. And it is not usable in the state that it's in, but it is sort of a, you know, a ancient piece of deep sea technology that is probably hominine in origin.

And that washed up. I'm just going to plonk it down. I'm going to plonk it down near the pier, I guess. And then we will. do our countdown timers. That little inner tube looking thing is the bathosphere. Yeah, I know.

We got the donut of power there. So with this round, two projects have completed. And when a project completes during somebody's turn, the player that started that project is the one that decides sort of what happens with it.

And I think with, as was sort of suggested, like, the longhouses here are just like in, really poor shape. I think there's probably some people who are like, let's use this ore to make something that is more habitable. This is leaky. It rains a lot. Nobody hears happy. Like, there are people who come and are like, oh, yeah, I heard the voice too. And then they see the houses and they're like, actually fuck off. I'm done. So we're not like bringing in a lot

of heat with this. But there's also people who are like, no, we need that ore for, you know, underwater stuff. So that is what is up with the longhouses. The election, how does that go, Travis. So it goes well, but what we end up with is a council four and nobody really like landslided in. And so you have a council of four that everyone is kind of begrudgingly willing to listen to. Okay. So it has improved the idea of unity, but definitely not solved it. It's not like, yeah, whatever you guys want, it's more like, okay.

I would actually argue, I mean, it sounds like more stuff is getting done, but unity is maybe not in abundance anymore if it was that sort of contentious. Yeah, that's the thing, is it's maybe going to make, maybe streamline project time. Yeah, maybe we just keep that in mind whenever you decide project times in the future. It's like, we're getting shit done now. Yeah. Oh, and I'm going to add in abundance. I should have done this when you first brought it up, like weird or.

Yeah. Okay. Got it. All right. So, and then we wrap up, oh, my turn. So I get to discover something, start a project, or, hmm. I think there is a sect of like hominine scholars who can't stop thinking about the cave and are just trying to figure out a way to, trick their their brains or whatever sort of magic that is keeping people out,

uh, trying to like figure out the source of that and going in. Uh, because I think that they are convinced that that this cave is the reason why they were brought here. I don't think it's a large contingent of people. I think there are a lot of people who are like, yeah, go waste your time with that shit. You know, magic friends, but we're going to be over here doing, doing the real work.

Um, so I'm going to draw a little, I don't know, know, like magnifying glass towards the cave. It looks like a sperm, and so I've fucked up. Happens. I'm going to say, you know, I would say longer, but I think, well, no, they wouldn't really benefit from, like, the streamlining of shit. I think this is probably thoroughly against the orders of the community. So I'm going to say this is going to take five weeks.

And it's on to Dad. Okay. Four of Hearts, Spring. What important and basic? tools does the community lack? Where are you, or are, where are you storing your food? Why is this a risky place to store things? Okay, I'm going to go with what important and basic tools does the community, but haven't we

already dealt with that? Well, this is more on the specific end, right? This isn't just like scarcity, but it could be like, what we don't have is this tool and this tool, you know, get a little more granular with it. Yeah, or you could answer the other one. which is maybe more straightforward. I'm going to, no,

I'm going to stick with the basic tools that we lack. I think we're, I think we don't have a lot of weapons. We don't have a lot of like, like, I mean, I think there are basic blades and clubs and everything else, but I don't think we have a lot of range weapons,

that we don't have a lot of, projectile weapons. These mainly for hunting? Or for defense from something. We haven't really talked about like the environment. I don't know what the threat would be. I can see that for hunting.

What would the, like, in your, are you saying for, for like hunting for food or for defense? Like siege weapons? Because if they're all flamed. Marshal, martial weapons. Yeah, if they, well, yeah, I'm thinking like cannons and, and things like that.

If they've all had to evacuate in, fairly short order, I would think, one of the things that I would think would be left behind were cannons and, you know, anything big like that. I think that they still have... That's interesting, too, because we don't know what the fuck is in the sea. So, like, we certainly did not bring any sort of, like, I don't think we've spent much time inventing, like, cannon. Yeah, right. Let me pitch this then. Let's have a scarcity of defense weapons. I think it's a good way of putting this. And, you know, just to keep things equal, maybe on abundance side, like hunting, hunting gear, like,

we have an abundance. Like, we got that. We are hunting. We can do that if, you know, if we're swimming in the water and there's a, you know, a barracuda or something coming at us, we got a spear or a harpoon or whatever. But like, anything bigger than that. And, uh-oh. That makes sense.

I don't know. Do you think we need to draw that on the map? Well, if I can, now I can't. How much can I amend this? because I was thinking that maybe they dissembled all of those big weapons that they wouldn't, you know, and then packed up as much of the pieces because they knew that they were going to need, they were going to need items to work with. They were going to need materials and stuff.

So, you know, maybe they've hauled all the pieces of these larger weapons. I like that. Yeah, I don't think it has to change anything that we have on the, on the board right now, though. Like, we don't, we don't have defense weapons because we dismantled them to make the shithouse. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So while you're in the shit house, you're, like, maybe going to sleep on the top bunk, and you look up and there's just like, you know, a, uh, a, uh, a, uh, a, a, a, a sword that's just like right there. A catapult. You're sleeping in the bowl of a catapult. Yeah. Yeah, that's fun. Yeah, you're sleeping in that.

Uh, okay. I'll take the numbers down. If dad, do you want to decide what your action is now? I'll start a project of, uh, uh, of cataloging all of these pieces of the broken down weaponry in anticipation of reusing them for a rebuild on the bottom of the ocean. Are you saying that like when that project is done, we will then have dismantled the Longhouse and have big weapons?

Or are you saying like... No, to figure out how to use them, okay, to start using those pieces to build things that will be used under the sea. Okay. How's that? Yeah. Is that? That's good.

I'm going to take contempt for that because I don't want you to dismantle my shithouse. No, I'm assuming the shit house was already built out of stuff. But we love it. And you want to use pieces of it to make big underwater cannons and shit. No, I don't want to build underwater cannons, but we're going to have to have structures. Dad, every time you say underwater cannons, I get so much worse. Yeah. And I think, if I may, I think we're discussing this all too much.

I think that the project has started, right? And it might not work. Right? That's a good point. How long does this take, Dad? Three. Got it. Some good scientists.

Well, you have the unity. The council is leading. This is probably Delmer shit. Like, the Delmar are probably like, this is great. We don't need to be comfortable. They think the shit houses are already like palatial. Cool. Okay.

Travis, you're up. Flip my cord. Flip your cord. 7 of spring Where does everyone sleep? Who is unhappy with the arrangement And why? Oh my God

There's also what natural predators roam the area, are you safe? Which is also a good one and something we've talked about, but the first one just seems so applicable. But didn't we also just... Yeah, right. Okay, I'm going to do the natural predators roam this area. Are you safe? And while my first inclination is to do land,

I think I'm going to go see. Okay. I'm going to say with the pollution, that there are sharks, kind of more along the lines of like a hammerhead kind of thing, but they definitely have a little bit of like kind of natural magic mutations. I think everything in the, all sea life, and I think I hinted at that in the intro, or maybe not, but like, when we take place in this, when we actually do the seas and exploring underwater, like, animals are going to be fucked up down there.

So, like, a little teaser of that of something that is, like, actively harassing us on land is, is, I think that with, uh, so I think with these, um, these sharks, uh, it is, uh, manifesting as, like, super heightened senses and the ability to, like, uh, almost like seemingly teleport forward in short bursts. So when they strike, it's like, and then they're just kind of there. I've written blink sharks. Blink sharks, that's great. Hell yes. On the, on abundance of blink sharks, we should do something about that. And now everybody is all about team.

Let's take the shit house apart for underwater cannons. Yeah. People flip right around on that. Now that we've discovered bling sharks, my priorities have shifted. Yeah. Okay, let's count down. We are getting close on some of these. All right.

And Travis, get to make your turn. I am going to begin a project. Cool. I think the council pulls a representative from each of the four, each of the four from hominine, Delmer, INar, and the Southern archipelago specialists to study the ore that was found. Okay. And attempt to discover, like, its properties, how to work with it.

if there's any value to it, all the kind of specialties of the different locations. I would suggest because of the sort of unity, or not unity, but the way that everybody is working right now of just like full bore, not prioritizing discomfort, that maybe this wouldn't take as long as you might think.

Yeah, like I think maybe, I mean, really, if you're just kind of, this is not like actually molding it or shaping it or anything. It's just kind of like, well, let's check it out. What do we use this for? Right. Yeah, I think like a week.

Okay. Especially like I said, we're pulling specialists. Like the people who have been elected at the council are like, oh yeah, we're going to get Danny on this. Danny knows rocks, right? Danny, you know rocks, right? Like I'm just going to add one down here. We've drawn the ore. Okay. Justin. Five of spring. There is a disquieting legend about this place. What is it? Alarming weather patterns destroy something. How and what? This is my favorite thing. by the way, about quiet year, is like, the cards stay the same no matter what, but there will be cards where it's like, this feels perfectly suited to the situation where you're right. Yeah. I feel like it's alarming weather patterns destroy something, how and what. I think that there was a earthquake.

That's commute weather, right? Earthwarks basically weather. Yeah. There was an earthquake and it split the, uh, the trash hole right in Twain. Wow. And the stuff from the trash hole started coming up back out of the trash hole. Oh, fuck.

What kind of stuff? I don't fucking know. Nobody's been over there yet where there was one boy. Little Peter. Mm-hmm. And Little Peter, that's his full name. Little Peter saw the stuff starting to emerge after the quake. He saw the refuse starting to emerge back out of the trash hole.

just being blasted out. Fuck. That rules. Just he blasts it out of the trash hole. Yeah. Okay. So the trash hole is now like a trash hill. Cannon.

Trash cannon. Yeah. Is the trash cannon? Okay. Uh, is it safe to, is it something that like people can just walk over to and like say, oh, a toaster oven? Or is it like... They're counting on their stuff there, right?

But they don't know when it's going to blast again. And they don't know how heavy the object. So it's a trash geyser. It's a trash geyser. It is. It is a trash geyser. activated the trash geyser it's a trash geyser that you can't there are goods and there's some good quality stuff but you might like be in there scavenging and then all of a sudden like a fucking

television cut like blasts you apart a fucking an old can of soup just like launches through your torso and it's not even the coming up that's such a big problem but the coming down yeah it's really rough okay uh I mean, is it spraying stuff into, is this a danger for, I mean, you can see we have the shit house. I think it's not close enough to like, okay, it's not close enough, it's very worrying. Right.

Because, and there's like, and there's at least a few people in the society think, I think they're like, uh-oh. I have there, there's some stuff down there I put there. I kind of want to stay down there. Okay, please draw that and have a fun time doing that because that sounds like a real, a real hoot.

We are going to count down. Travis, the Orr Project finishes. What do they discover? So I don't want to like make too many solves, but. No, but I mean, we got to move the game forward. Yeah, I think. So there are two things. I think that they discover.

I think the... That anus with the trash shooting out of it sure has... I'm trying not to look at it, you know? It's different now. I think the hominine expert and the the Delmer one is the one that works with their hands, right? Right. So I think each of the experts discover something, right? I think that the Delmer expert finds that it is fairly malleable.

Okay. Like when it is hot, right, it is malleable. The Aynar finds that it is also like then once it's tempered, very durable. And the Southern archipelago has never seen anything like it before in their trading. So they surmise it'll be pretty valuable. But the winner, the one that is most interesting

is the hominine found that because this seems to be sourced from the sea, it seems to be kind of pitted a little bit. And it seems to be that there is prestige like in it. Okay. Like there are veins of prestige in the rock. The ore itself is not magical, but it does make it very resilient. Well, it's susceptible to magic.

Okay, that tracks. You can magic it good. Okay, I have changed weird ore to magic ore in the abundance stack. Now, who's the juice? You get to actually take your turn now that you have finished drawing this horrible. Oh my God. This horrible thing. I am going to start a shipyard.

Okay. Yeah, probably a good idea for us to get that going. Yeah. I'm going to build it on the sort of like tributary that's like cutting through the land here. I feel like that makes the most sense. This guy up here, the tide pools? No, the blue. The river.

Oh, the river, river. I forgot what a tributary was. Okay. That's right. Okay. I don't know, like, I just don't think it makes sense to, like, start the boats. Like, uh, like, I feel like if we don't, I'm looking at this map. I don't see a place to build boats.

And it's going to need to be a big boat. And I don't even think we know exactly if it's going to be like an undersea vessel or what exactly. Yeah. How we're going to get down there. But I think, like, a facility for building boats. I mean, it could be related to the bathysphere, right? Like, you can't just kick the bathysphere into the ocean. You got to launch it all.

of a ship. So maybe it is a surface thing to drop this or whatever. Yeah. Okay. How long is that? That's gonna be a lot? I mean, I feel like six weeks.

So that's not right? I mean, five weeks? I would argue five just because we, I think we're still sort of pushing the pedal to the metal in terms of like. Okay, it's not a good shipyard. I think five weeks is a pretty fucking good shipyard. That's a good shipyard.

I think also, it's the biggest project that we've done now that we have magic ore, right? Like, we can make shit now. I'm actually going to get rid of building material as a scarcity because we, you know, this doesn't have to be what we make everything out of, but finally we like can start making shit in earnest. Okay. The world clock has ticked down to zero, which means something in the world is about to happen.

and that thing is related to sort of an exodus plot that has been hatched by one of these kingdoms. From your position down here on the shore, I don't necessarily think, I think your settlement is too close to the Inar Plateau to actually see sort of what happens to it. I think the community is more like out in the heartland that have the Inar Plateau on their vista, saw it very, very, very. clearly the basically the top of the INR plateau disappears and it's not there's not a flash of light or like a cataclysmic explosion it was just their one moment and then it was gone the next and all of the INR and everything living on the plateau disappears with it now Griffin as a result did we get more sunlight yeah sure there's probably more sunlight And the INAR among you, I think there's a handful who kind of know what happened.

Because they are sort of a nomadic group of people, like there's a diversity amongst the INAR. Like none of them have the exact same beliefs about, you know, which vestiges are, you know, good or what their roles are in the world. But there's a handful of INAR among you who know that there were sort of a group of very, very zealous devotees to the vestiges that managed to just spirit the entire plateau back into the plane that the vestiges first came into our world through. They basically went back to where the vestiges went. And they also know that living mortal beings can't maintain a physical form over there. So when the INR people, you know, passed through the veil, the plateau disappeared, they became sort of intangible, like, echoes of themselves.

And the ramifications on that for you all is a couple days later, the people living in this settlement experience a few odd phenomena, items, you know, moving on their own around camp or whispers heard in the dark. And soon they pile up so much that they become undeniable. These echoes of the disembodied Einar, who were spirited away, have found their way back into our world and have begun haunting, essentially, the area around the camp. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned. Audience-supported.