The Adventure Zone - The Adventure Zone: Ethersea — Prologue IV: The Hierarchy of Terror

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

New dangers loom over the shoreside community as the rest of the mortal world retreats from the storm.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 maps and their alt-text here: http://bit.ly/EtherseaMaps 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

Hey folks, quick pre-programming announcement. Thanks for listening in to our setup episodes for the Ethersea. We're playing The Quiet Year, a game by Avery Alder that's all about map making and making wild choices to help build a community. You can find a link to where you can find and purchase and learn more about the game on the episode description. And also, if you want to follow along visually, we are uploading all the maps at the end of each of these sessions at bit.ly. EtherC Maps. And I think you need to capitalize Ethercy and Maps in order for that link to work, because that's how Bitley works. We heard some folks say they were having some trouble following along sort of visually. And if you need a little help with that, go to that link. I also think that if you

go to our Twitter page, we will be uploading those maps alongside the episodes there as well. That's it. Here's the episode. While the divine invitation is what brought our community to the shoreline so many years ago, it was our fear of the storm itself that fueled our every endeavor. Each morning we woke to find the waters receded further and further from the land, and the maelstrom growing in size and intensity. We were not ashamed of our fear. It is, after all, our most powerful, most primal,

instinct. Fear is built into the foundation of this city, just as much as any glass, clay, or codite. But the autumn preceding our evacuation shook the single-minded focus that came of that fear by showing us, or rather reminding us, of the dangers, great and small that loomed just in the periphery. We were mortals, the lot of us. And while our mortal passions may be responsible for building this new home, it was not without suffering the wages of mortal kinds less enviable characteristics. Some amongst our number were quick to distrust, while in lockstep others were quick to deceive. There was no shortage of ideas on how to help our community, but those ideas became principles, and those principles became orthodoxy,

which I can personally attest, is capable of becoming something far rowdier still. Our mortal bodies suffered as well, but you'll find few among those original builders who would deign to seek pity over that. Because of the magic we wielded, many of you listening to this very lesson will never see sunlight.

If the tribulations we faced on that beach were, in any measure, a kind of atonement? Well, then we got off. very, very easy. This is what it would be like if we played Dungeons and Dragons together, like in one room. And I want to bring more of this energy to the show of, like, talking about going to get snacks. You know what I mean? Or talking about drinking or drinking or eating snacks.

It's just that we haven't played in, like, two weeks, and I'm really excited to play. No, I'm excited, too. I'm excited. But you know what? When you say that, the other thing you're saying is we haven't talked in two weeks and you're excited. That is not true, though. That is not how this works. We don't just talk.

I haven't talked to you. I haven't talked to anybody. I haven't heard from anybody. Yeah. Me neither. I was, I was frozen solid. My home was frozen solid. I begged Daddy to come help me.

And he would. Well, Dad has those old brittle bones. And there were wolves. I mean, the wolves were probably. Wolves. There were actually a huge problem. But you know where, you know, a place where everything is great and everybody knows your name. And there's definitely no sort of cataclysmic weather related.

Cheers. Disasters happening right now, and it is the Cheers Bar. Thank you. No, there's that, yeah, there actually is a huge cataclysm. They don't talk about it on the show. Yeah. But the underlying theme of every season of Cheers is that the earthquake is coming. There's a meteor circling the Earth.

If you had talked about you were gonna move the sea over to the land, the seaside of the map. And that's not happened yet. Yeah. In my defense. I can't wait until when people see this map, they're gonna lose their fucking minds. Yeah. It's so insane. The reason I didn't actually do that since our last session, Justin, is that I moved the sea into my bathroom, floors and my bedroom and my ceiling and all the drywall and everything.

So I apologize. You're right. I should have prioritized that over. Well, as long as I agreed, you should have prioritized it. So where were we? Yes. Yes. Let's pick up where we left off.

It is the beginning of fall. There's a crispness in the air. and everything smells of cider. So ongoing projects, there's just a, there's just a couple. There is the ongoing sort of labor organization project that has one week left. As does the moving. As does, we did that joke every episode. The moving of the Crystal Ascension.

One week. Okay. Into the water. And yeah, I mean, a ton of stuff happened in the last episode. the coral robots concept sort of came about. The old Joshy school for fighting sharks with psychic powers is here. That's a great. Whoever came up with that as a genius.

You know, a nice spain that would be to fight sharks that had psychic powers. That is, I mean, you know what's really fun and I thought about this sense is that we all laughed at that, maybe some of us more than others. But then in the, in the time sense,

I've thought about the fact that there is psychic magic in D&D. It's not like... It's not out of the question. It's not like it's so... It's not like we haven't done something like that before. It should be noted, though. I just want to color in a little... If I could pick up my charcoal

and just sketch in a little bit here, these... Uncle Joshi does not obsess this. It's absolutely not. It's aspirational. There's still cranks in D&D. Okay. All right, well, I'm going to flip the first card of Autumn.

Whose turn is? It is mine. A natural disaster strikes the area. Great. Choose one. You focus on getting everyone to safety, remove an abundance, and a project fails. Geez, you focus on protecting your supplies and hard work at any cost.

Several people die as a result. Having fun here on the adventure zone. So it's harder as we go on. Is that what's happening? Yeah, I think this is a really nice little amuse-boosh for autumn, because it's going to be tough. Oh, man. Remind me, what's the project over at the Crystal Tower thing?

They are moving that into the water to utilize it as some. sort of infrastructure for the actual underwater city. Oh, gosh. I mean, we don't have that many projects to fail. I can't, we can't, I don't want to cancel one of Travis's projects again. I shouldn't met a game like this. I think sacrifices are made. Um, as sort of sad as that is, I think that it's just a wave, and it emanates off of the storm in the distance. And it's just like a freak, rogue wave that everybody living on the land managed to sort of get safe from. I think most of the losses came from the ships that had started to sort of organize around this build site out on the water. a ship was capsized and some people drowned.

And now I think the people, you know, this Phineas call, Boiart Hermine sort of faction is getting increasingly frustrated with how long people are dragging their feet. Because now they have, you know, kind of the first countable fatalities due to this storm. And they're eager to get going. that is what happens. And let's count down the clocks. Travis, the labor organization finishes. Can you sort of remind everybody what that project was all about and how it ended up?

Yeah, so basically they were categorizing people's skill sets so that both in the process of setting up this new underwater settlement and staffing the underwater settlement. They could kind of take people's very specific expertise and generalize. them a little bit more. So, you know, if you, you know, maybe we're like a botanist, right, you're probably going to work in some kind of like underwater agriculture or if you had anything whatsoever to do with any kind of like, you know, dentistry or doctoring or nursing, you're probably going to be on a shift to staff the med bay or whatever. So we're trying to get people a little bit more.

what's the word I'm looking for? Organized. Yeah, sure. So we can do like some shifts. It is a prescription by the state to fill the, what they have outlined as the essential needs of this city. Right. By sort of coordinating the capabilities of the people here. But like, is there any force behind that prescription?

Do you know what I mean? Like if there's probably people who are like, I don't want to farm, you know, see, weed or whatever it is. That is kind of, it is frankly frustrating for some, but elevating for others. You know, there were people who were kind of pushing towards the mean a little bit more because we need people to, you know, like maybe you were a four-star chef at, you know, a fancy restaurant. Maybe you worked the equivalent of like a roadside, like, you know, food truck. everybody is going to be the same job title taking shifts in like the cafeteria, right? So some people are getting elevated.

Some people are maybe going to lose a little bit of status. Gotcha. As these jobs are filled because we won't have at least to start off with, there won't be as much specialization in the workforce because we need to make sure basic needs are met first. I feel you. Okay. The Crystal Ascension Project finishes. and they managed to move it out to the water. And using a system of like basically super big buoys,

they were trying to float it out to the build site. But when it was there, that's when the wave hit. And it fell off of the buoys and fell down into the water. and people were understandably pretty bummed about that, but it fell in such a way that it kind of turned out to be the first step, the first sort of flag planting, the first sort of survey of where this city should be built. And I'm going to now begin drawing on the sea side of things.

So immediately under the build site with the column patch of sea and where the coral staircase comes up out of the water, there is a very wide but not especially deep ravine. And the ascension falls down into this ravine and kind of gets, it falls against one of the sheer walls of the ravine. And in fact, there's a crack, a huge crack in the wall that the ascension. just kind of perfectly gets wedged into when it reaches the bottom. So basically what we're talking about is in this shallow ravine,

very close to where the coral staircase and the sort of robot bodies are being grown, is this, you know, big wall, big shelf of one side of this ravine. And the ascension is now up against that wall and it's more or less like it could be thought of very easily as scaffolding that the settlers who go down there, not that really anybody's doing that yet, can move around in. So that is what I am drawing.

Okay, I'm almost certainly going to have to cut out a great deal of drawing time. I need to take an action. I'm going to start a project and it is simply to build a fucking boat in the cradle. You must build a boat. We must build a boat. I think that a lot of resources have been sort of hauled out into the water to begin city prep. And the people who want to build this boat claim the rest of the codite to build essentially a big, big, big battleship to defend, you. you know, the settlers going underwater from blink sharks defend them against, you know,

whatever other threats they may face, because right now they are completely defenseless. But this is a pretty huge project in scope. So I'm going to say this is going to take five weeks. And that is my turn. I will draw that. But first, here's a card. The Ace of Autumn. The community.

becomes obsessed with a single project. Which one? Why? Choose one. They decide to take more time to ensure that it is perfect. Add three weeks to the project. I, they drop everything else to work on it. All other projects fail.

This is perfect time. I can't believe how good the timing is on this. Yeah. If there are no projects underway, the community becomes obsessed with a grandiose, vision, hold a discussion about this vision in addition to your regular action for the week. I think the only project right now is the big boat, right? It's the big boat.

So that is, so it's the last one there. No. If there are no projects, I'd wait. So it has to be adding three weeks. Or it fails. Well, they drop everything else to work on this. All other projects fail. I love the idea that as a nation,

the work begins on Big Baby and we all just decide as a nation we're like we love Big Baby, we're obsessed with Big Baby We love Big Baby on T-shirts Like Big Baby Fever is sweeping Yeah I think everybody gets really particular

About how it comes together I think that that's it Is because Big Baby is going to require So many resources Everybody's like We cannot let this get fucked up If we are using the rest of the codite Then this is going to be a two

month endeavor. Yeah. So everyone is like, we're working on this is going to be perfect because we don't want you guys to fuck with the resources. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Countdown.

And World Clock is at one. So Travis. So here's, I'm going to start a project. Which of these kingdoms, peoples, would you say, are the most agrarian, have the most kind of farming expertise? Um, I think that, I mean, if you want to talk about more like, uh, hydroponic, uh, you know, growing stuff and maybe not the natural climate in which it's supposed to be grown, the Delmer probably take that. But I also think the, uh, the INA are probably the most, um, yeah, the most agricultural. I'm going to say, uh, that the Iinar then, um, is. In this big wave, a bunch of seaweed, a seaweed-like plant washed up on shore, you know, big clumps of it like you would expect when there's like a big storm.

And it's, of course, poisoned from being polluted from being in this, you know, prestige magic polluted ocean. Okay. And their pitch is that the filler fish are great, but we should not live on like protein alone. Yeah. And so they're going to start a problem. to see if they can figure out a way to like purify a process to purify this seaweed. So we can then use it as like underwater or vegetation. Okay.

When we move to to the underwater city. Uh, cool. Well, draw that. How long do you think that that takes? Uh, I'm going to say three weeks. Does that feel maybe that's a little long? It doesn't feel long to me to figure out how to grow things. I guess Matt Damon did it in like a few hours in a Martian.

He's just like all... Well, it's not to grow it. It's already growing. They want to see if there's something they can do to like neutralize the poison. Okay. To use the seaweed that's already there and make it edible and digestible. Okay. Yeah, I think three weeks feels right to me.

I will give you a three on the map. Here's a big pile of seaweed. No, it's over here. By the... There you go. Big... All right. Right next to the anus.

Next card for... for Clant. Autumn three. Someone leaves the community after issuing a dire warning. Ooh. What is the warning? Or someone issues a dire warning and the community leaps into action to avoid disaster. What is the warning?

Start a contentious project that relates to it. Now, what is that? Ooh. That means in the way that old Joshy school for psychic shark fighting, was a foolish project, a contentious project would simply be one that maybe not everybody agrees on. You could argue that the building of Big Baby, which is not going to be the name of the ship, it was a contentious project just based on the resources. Maybe I feel like it's catching on, though. Yes, so, but that's your choice.

Okay, I got, all right, I've got an idea. The first part of this, I'm going to do the first part of this. Someone leaves the community after issuing a dire warning. Who? What is the warning? Phineas Call leaves the community. Whoa. Because he doesn't think they're going to be able to survive without the bathosphere.

And he sets out to find the bathosphere. Is that dire enough? Yeah, I mean, that's fairly dire. I don't know that the, is the warning just we, there is some. that we, there is something special about that thing that we need to get it back from the people who stole it? I've got, well, I've got a rough idea of the problem that I think Phineas would want to address that I don't know if anybody else would have come up with.

And that would be oxygen, how, what they're going to breathe. And I think he has an idea. Okay. About using the bathysphere. Okay. Well, what about the Bhoerhameen? because they were sort of thick as thieves leading the construction of things. I don't want to take her away from...

Maybe he leaves her instead, like in his stead. Leaves her in charge. Yeah. He leaves her in charge because this is, this is, he's going to set out on his own to try and find the bathysphere because he really thinks they need it. I mean, since they don't have any other kind of craft quite yet. And the resource collectors, his name, the Vanguard, stole them, right?

Right. Yeah, so he is essentially saying, I'm going to find the Vanguard. He's going to track down the Vanguard, yeah. At the end of the last episode, one of their sort of sonic pickaxes washed up ashore. So there is, you know, proper catalyst for this excursion. Cool. Okay. He's gone.

World clock So do I do a project now? No, not until we do the clocks. Oh, yeah, okay. Which is good because the world clock just hit zero and another big thing is going to happen. The storm clears up. The end.

Thanks for listening to everybody. No, actually the storm has grown louder. There's just a constant wind now that is just ripping through the camp pretty much constantly. It has made things, you know, pretty unpleasant. I think people are very appreciative of the, you know, crappy, of the shit houses because it provides some protection from the wind. But like everything that's not weighed down, like tents have flown off and clothes

and anything sort of lightweight. But there are just constant peals of thunder and lightning that tear through this this swirling cloud form out in the distance. And every time that, you know, there is a flash, it illuminates these massive flying shapes that are, you know, flying around inside of there that nobody really has seemed to figure out what it is yet. There are, you know, bigger waves now

that are beating against the stones where the shoreline has retreated to, none big enough to threaten you in the same way that the one rogue wave did. But enough to make a really, just a clamidous noise. And as the fall continues, a new sound joins the discord. In the distance, the people living in this settlement can hear the sound of battle. Far off across the water, there's just this occasional unnatural flash that illuminates the sky. And then a few moments later,

you hear the sound of a high-pitched explosion. And a couple days after the signs of that battle appear, the settlement makes contact with the survivors of the Southern Archipelago, which the occasional trader, I think, from the islands has probably swung by to, you know, take a trading opportunity here and there and provide you all with some level of support. But now, like, this is the Exodus plan for the Southern Archipelago is a fleet of ships. There's a lot of them. There are three, sort of massive flagships that are wrought from this like thick light green glass and what looks like bright white ceramic. And then surrounding these three flagships, there are dozens of these smaller ships that are filling various purposes for the flagships, mostly defense. The assembly of

battleships here puts, you know, the settlements to shame, obviously. And very slowly the fleet accumulates in the bay just offshore and makes contacts with the settlement. And several of their smaller ships and one of their flagships is in desperate need of repairs because they were ambushed by the naval forces of hominine. And far out at sea at this moment, nearly half of their naval fleet continues to hold off hominine while the rest of the fleet seeks repairs, which is what brought them here. So basically, the fleet that has, you know, left. to the southern archipelago to try and make a life as underwater nomads is seeking safe haven in this bay while they get repairs and they offer sort of their naval expertise and defense

in exchange. Sorry, wait. So just to be clear, they are planning to live underwater as well? Yes, in a, not in a stationary city, but in a convoy in a fleet of moving ships. so let me draw them out on the map and set the world clock for an ominous 10 weeks. Dad, you need to take an action still. As interesting as I find this fleet and all that stuff, I think I don't want to leave Phineas hanging. Okay.

I think Phineas is going to set out on a quest to find the bathysphere. Finney's call, Oceanic Detective, and he's going to start where the pickaxe was found and go looking for the bathysphere. Okay. Which we've never established where it came from, right? It was an... He didn't build it. It was just this ancient...

Yeah, it washed up. That was the discovery. Yeah. I think he feels very strongly that the bathysphere is really important. So he's going to set out on this mission. and what I'd like to do is see if he can work out a deal with old Joshy's school and see if they would provide a crew for him, you know, like white squall where they high school kids set out on the sailing mission.

Sure, we can make that true, right? We can say that when he left some graduates of old Joshy's. school for shark fighting went went with them because they knew it was going to be a potentially i mean the vanguard didn't come back so something's out there and well i know this isn't the way the game is played i know you just make your decision to do it but would that i want to ask justin what he thinks of that because i don't i mean old joshy's his baby well no let's you my son we're we're that is i i feel like going against the game too much yeah that's that's let's not whatever you Whatever.

Okay. There are no feeling. Griffin knocked my beautiful tower into the ravine. Everybody's taking their swings. All right. He's going to set out with this ship crewed by old Joshy school students. They're getting on-the-job training, shadowing. Yeah.

Okay. And it will define the bathysphere. How long do you think this will take? To find the ancient bathysphere. Well, I would say four weeks. Okay. Because it's a big ocean. It is.

It is. The ocean? It's big. Quite big. Okay. He's down here to indicate that he's going far away. Okay. Next card, Justin.

Uh-oh. This is a lot of knows. Disease spread through your community. Choose one. You spend the week quarantining and treating the disease. A week. Project dice are not reduced this week. Nobody knows what.

what to do about it, add health and fertility as a scarcity. I feel like we've got to take this seriously. We can't bring, we're about to go into an enclosed space. We can't bring this disease down there. So I think that we're probably just gonna quarantine for a week to get it under control. What, we're laughing because you probably, you folks listening to this,

probably don't remember. Right. But back in February of, or sorry, March of 2021, we were still in the midst of sort of like a, I guess a pandemic. Yeah, like a yucky. It's, it's, it's, it was, everybody was quarantining.

It was wild, but you, I'm sure it's wrapped up by now. Yeah. But, um, what is the disease? Like, what is it, what does it look like? Oh, um,

it is called, uh, the, man, is a slippery slope. Because there's lots of different. Oh man, you got a bad case of slippery slugs. Go ask Sidney.

Go as Sydney to generate a disease with her mind. Just come up with a disease. I don't know where. It's called mumps two. No. It's called a mumps to a new age. No. It's the people call it the sallow.

And you look very sunken and a low energy and then sometimes you be fit and other times you don't. Okay. I don't know how to draw that on that. We already have a ghost on the map. Just some stink lines. Stink lines coming off of the babies. I'll try some, yeah, I'll draw if you want to the stink lines.

The curator is up here if you want to stink. Yeah, we'll make the curator sick. Okay. So no project clocks go down this week, but the world clock does go down to nine. And Justin, you get to start a project, discover something new or hold a discussion. I guess we don't permanently need to remember about the people were sick for a while. Those look like money sons. I'm going to start a project.

Okay. It is a marketing and branding brainstorm for the boat. People have noticed that some people are calling it Big Baby, and people think that that's not inspirational or particularly good. Yeah. And it's going to be weird to live inside the Big Baby if we ever are stuck on there for a while. So, like, it is a conference of some of the... of our like bait thinkers, probably a lot of folks from the Southern Isles.

I feel like marketing would be sort of in their wheelhouse. But there's representatives from all the communities. And they just want to, it's called brand the boat. Okay. And this is to come up with a great name for the boat. Not just a great name for the boat, but like iconography, slogans, marketing materials to really sell the boat. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, for sure.

How long? About three weeks. That's a long time. So two weeks, about two weeks to really market the boat. Okay, great. I love that they're doing that, and it will still be a whole full-ass month before the boat is finished. Well, you want to have to figure it before launch. People are obsessed with it.

Right. Right. They have to get out in front of this because people are obsessed with the boat. Okay. Next card. Eight of autumn. Someone sabotages a project, and the project fails as a result. Who did this?

Why? Or someone is caught trying to sabotage the efforts of the community. How does the community respond? Ooh. Hmm. Wow. Okay. So what projects do we have? We have named the boat, build the boat, purify the seaweed, and call investigates. Oh, man. Okay. Well, we can't not brand the boat. So other than that. No, that's not what happens. One of the crew members, on Phineas Call's expedition.

He had the sallow? He was Vanguard. He was one of the vanguard, and he came back to sort of spy on the rest of the community to see how they were living. And we lose contact with Phineas. And it is assumed that his show, has gone down because of this

saboteur or perhaps he has been taken to where the vanguard is but Phineas is no longer in control of this ship that he has been using this whole time and is now in captivity. So to be specific, are you going with the A option or the B option? The A option. Okay. So it's sabotaged. It's not just that somebody got caught trying to sabotage.

Okay. Right. So we're going to take Finney's call off the map. Finius Rip. Okay. Sorry about your son, dad. I mean Griffin. Clocks go down.

I feel like I am the executioner of everybody else's projects. I always get the car that's like, destroy a concept, destroy a dream. And this one gets to say no. Say no. Say no, but. Okay, nothing completed, so... Did we ever, like, the robot body is made of coral? Is that something that is done or still needs to be done?

It's done. We have not sort of circled back to it to talk about, like, how that is going. But, I mean, that's... We've discovered how to do it. It's just, like, what we don't know necessarily is how... you know, how many of these coral bots are being produced and what life is like for them. Okay, I'm going to start a project under the sea. Did I hear where the fish is happy?

I wouldn't say the fish is happy as much as they are sort of magically mutated. basically the boiart hermein strikes a deal now that she is essentially the leader of this community strikes a deal with the visiting ships of this fleet and basically says like you can kick it here we will help you with repairs you know maybe they siphon some of the codite away to like help them out but you are going to essentially recreate one of your arcs under the water to be sort of the the first of our undersea buildings at the very least

that we can begin to have a footprint down there that we can start expanding from and so that's what they set out to do and they are able to do it because these ships are made out of natural things the glass is made out of like salt it is salt glass

the ceramic is made out of this clay found in the sand. So they have the ability to kind of utilize nature to fix up their ships. And that is basically the material makeup that they are providing for this underwater facility. And that's going to take also a long time, I think. Five weeks, maybe? I feel pretty good about five weeks. Well, they've already been here for a while. I'm going to say four weeks.

I feel pretty good about four weeks. Okay. And on to the next. Give me a card. The Five of Autumn. The parish arrives. Who are they? Why have they chosen your community?

And for what? Or a small gang of marauders is making its way through the local terrain. How many are there? What weapons do they carry? Oh. You know I like a good church storyline. Right. No, I'm going to go with the parish.

Hell yeah. I like the parish. The parish arrives. You can cut this if you want to, do you think that that means it has to be an entirely new thing or like an organization of pre-existing people? I mean, you talk about the parish. Homonine is a kingdom built around the worship

of this magical god. Okay. Brother Seldom is Brother Seldom because he was definitely in this parish, right? It's just that he didn't necessarily want to abandon everybody. Okay. So the parish arrives. It is a faction of the main church of hominine. And they come and they offer to help this organization to help this. this community, right, with the use of the magic that they have harnessed through hominine's guidance on the condition that they swear that there will be a presence of religion and worship of hominine in this new settlement. Worship of benevolence. Benevolence, yes.

Okay. That there will be, it's not that everybody has to convert. It's not that they expect everyone to worship. but that some of the old ways of the worship of benevolence will be included. Basically, they're coming as missionaries of benevolence and saying, you know, we have all these powerful magics that have been gifted to us by benevolence

that we will offer in assistance if you are willing to allow us to establish a church. Right, yeah. Foothold is a crass way of putting it probably for them, but... Yes, but that's exactly what it is. Okay. I want you to draw that on the map because I think that's an important sort of faction. Is there like a symbol of benevolence? Hmm. No, not that I've sort of generated yet. Maybe like an open hand like offering something is probably the most sort of iconic thing that benevolence did. Or a key maybe, like a key that has or scale. Or scale.

Ooh, scales is good. Hey, Griffin, I'm not that good at a draw. Draw scales, scales is good. Scales are easy. Okay, well, I already drew that. How do I erase the... Let's see. Did he Google scales?

No, I'm just remembering. Okay, clocks tick down. Travis, seaweed. Yeah, so they are able through a process of basically like a repetition of dehydration and compression to, like, squeeze the liquid out of it. They're able to get sort of like a dried, like seaweed flake kind of thing that is edible.

It's bitter. It is not, it does not taste good. Yeah. But it provides a lot of like key nutrients, including vitamin C. And this. Yeah, to avoid the scurvy. And the, the byproduct that is created, that is removed, this poison and that it is removed is a, a, powerful and dangerous

narcotic that causes euphoria so everybody commits to keeping that in control and making sure nobody uses it for illicit reasons fun what's that called what's that street

that street name it's called sandman the seaweed juice that gets you fucked up is called sandman I like it. I'm into it. Wait, let me think real quick.

It's called grotto. Grotto. Yeah. Ooh, I like it. All right. Grotto. Cool. But everyone agrees.

We're definitely not going to use this for recreational purposes. Um, okay, cool. Uh, Justin, the, the boat PR project has finished. Yeah. You're not going to like it. Big baby was the best option? No, biggest baby. Oh.

They went back and forth. All right. They went back and forth. And a lot of people liked big babies so much. And other people thought it didn't sound big enough. Yeah. And so they fought and fought and fought and, you know, if they had had four weeks to figure it out, they probably would have come up with something way better.

But because some people were rushing the timetable. It ended up at biggest baby. And the baby is like the logo for it. It's like a regular baby. And he's carrying a bunch of small babies in his arms. Now, wait, does the boat have other smaller boats on it? No, it has people. The people are the big babies.

And biggest baby carries the other babies. This is a battleship. Just so everybody remembers, this is a fucking, okay. The battling big baby, yeah, for sure. Okay. It's a battleship made out of the rarest God body metal. Yeah. Yeah.

Which is why other people didn't want to call it big baby, but there were so many people that were so into it. They just settled on Biggest Baby. And they had a chance to overturn the results of the populace, basically. But you know what? They said, we voted, and the vote was Biggest Baby? That's where we are. That's great. No, I didn't have a rad name that I thought of.

And this is, I've earned this, I think. Everybody needs a chance to poop on everybody else's dreams. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, but you have had lots of those. We've discussed it that way. Right, exactly, right. This is, this is, it's my term.

Okay. So that is it, Travis? I would, you know that I did just use the game mechanics to get myself an excuse to, I basically bought naming rights to the boat. To the big baby. Now you can undo this. Right, yeah. I would like it if we just started having a bunch of contrasting marketing projects.

I would like to have a discussion. Okay. And I'm going to lead it off with a question. Okay. The hominine no powerful magic that could assist us in the build, should we allow it? For the price that they have outlined? Yes. all they're asking

they want a church to be able to build a church to benevolence in this and nobody even has to go to it we're using a lot of just for future you know reference we're using a lot of sort of language like real

world language here but I think that's just because we haven't really talked about the church of hominine like whether they call it a church what what the terminology I guess is but that is the question. It could be temple.

It could be whatever. But they want to have a place that observes the, you know, the rights of benevolence. Right. And they offer us great magic to help. Should we take them up on it? Um, we stand against the idea of, of putting the, the church in there. it seems that would give a cultural toehold to just one phase of our community. And we're trying to blend and we're trying to put it all together and be something brand new.

We have the Southern Archipelago feel that I may just be a country lawyer. I felt a little matlock coming on there. Yeah. We don't think it's a great idea. Anybody who throws their lot in with us is a part of this project and nobody here is in any position to turn away help Meadow, Ron, Wood

These are the things that make a boat This fucking guy again Is how my Pat build boats Is how he's pat before him don't reckon we need magic coming up to works the biggest baby will arrive the same way we've always made them

without magic sir we're not even talking about the big baby sir this has nothing new with big baby sir it's okay if that's what you want to say sir but you're in the wrong I thought they wanted to use magic to speed the big baby building No, no, no. This is just like we will use magic to help you build this underwater city.

Yeah. Of which, okay, so the big baby won't be a part of that. Okay, let me try again. Okay. I stand by what I said before. You get to talk class travel, yeah. I don't think we can afford to turn down help. They aren't forcing us to do anything.

No one has to go to the church. and the power that they could offer could be literally life-saving. Okay. Next card, Clint. Oh. You're fucking kidding me. Kismet.

Are you kidding me? Enjoy, Clint. Clint? Second of Auden, someone returns to the community. Wait, the or would also apply. Yeah, wait a minute. Someone returns the community who, where were they?

Or you find a body. Do people recognize who it is? What happened? Wow. This is a fucking big, bud. This is a huge choice, dad. Don't fuck it up. We got, I got a bunch of t-shirts I made just hanging over the shredder Mac.

Just let me know which way they're going, baby. Yeah, it's like, it's like when they make the t-shirts before the Super Bowl. Exactly. I got a bunch of Phineas-Call t-shirts. I just need no, I'm going to be shipping these babies out of them from turning them into denim. To be fair, I've made a lot of, I hate Phineas-Cull T-shirts. So just let me know who's shredding who. Okay.

The ancient bathysphere washes up on shore, much like it did ages ago when they first discovered it. Over five weeks ago. Right. And inside they find a comatose phineas call. Yes. And an unidentified body. And they have obviously been struggling. Ooh.

Wait, they like fought inside of the bathysphere? Fought inside the freaking bathysphere. Does anybody recognize the other body, right? Because it's either somebody who defected and joined the vanguard, or it is somebody who went out from old Joshi's school. I'm going to say that it is the vanguard spy. Oh, the one who sank the ship. Okay.

The one that sabotaged the ship. We don't know exactly what happened. Sure. Okay, Phineas Call is going to have a fun story for us someday. But right now... Assuming he wakes up. A seepy boy. Can you redraw the bathysphere, Dad?

It was, if I remember correctly, a donut. Yes, it was very donut-like. I cannot believe you got that fucking card. That is unbelievable. None of the clocks hit zero. So, Dad, once you're done drawing your bathysphere, you can take an action. All right, I'll draw the bathysphere.

What are the three choices? Discover something new, start a project, or hold the discussion. Okay. In, okay, the bathysphere, when they opened it, was partially full of water. And this big struggle they had had had been in water. And in this water, along the bottom of the bathysphere, they find, an enormous amount of oxygen in the water. And they discover that it has a very mysterious kind of phytoplankton in the water that obviously has been,

like the coral was infused with the prestige salt, that this phytoplankton is as well. Can't make my ask Google, phytoplankton? Phytoplankton are tiny microorganisms that create oxygen. Okay. Is this, so are these different from, you know, the kind of creatures that have been observed in the tide pool? Is this like a different, you know, deep sea mystery type thing? Or does this resemble what they had in the tide pools? I kind of thought in the tide pools.

Okay, tell me again what was in the tide pools. I'm sorry. I mean, tide pools is just a very biodiverse. Phytoplankton like. Right. Yeah, they're microorganisms and they're all through the ocean. They are in all the water. Okay.

Phytoplankton basically serves as the oxygen creating part of the oceanographic world, like trees and plants do on land. Phytoplankton served basically the same purpose in the water. And these are like hyperactive magic. Super, super phytoplankton. Okay. So are you starting a project to study them? Or is this a discovery?

Yeah. The coalition that was working on, I'll come up with a name for the coalition at some point. But the coalition that was working on the coral robots. decide to study this phytoplankton in the water, they are becoming like the custo of our reality. The ecology of what is going on under here. That's great. I feel like there's a, by this point,

there's probably a push to, you know, full-on Noah's Ark style, like try and preserve some of the natural world, but there's this contingent of people now who are like, fuck that. Yeah, I mean, at this point, we had people studying the seaweed, the filler fish, the now the phytoplankton. And I feel like we have this like ecological. Yeah? Yes.

Yeah. I think it's actually, I believe it is ecomological. Ecomological, oceanographical, like a coalition. They are studying this. Is this a project then? It's a project to see how best to utilize this super. oxygenating phytoplankton for their life under the sea. Okay. How long do you think this is going to take?

Three weeks. Okay. Fully expecting it to get screwed over at some point in the next deal of the card. I'm going to leave this here and you can put it by the bathosphere whenever it has been redrawn. All right. Justin. Ten autumn. Mm-hmm. Harvest is here and plentiful.

Add an abundance. cold autumn winds drive out, or cold autumn winds drive out your enemies, remove a threatening force from the map in the area. I feel like we haven't, if I'm going to be honest, I feel like we haven't been paying as close attention to. Abundances and scarcities?

Abundances and scarcities, yeah. But that doesn't, I mean, there's no time like the present. That is under... Yeah, I guess the abundance could be any thing, right? So right now to recap, we have an abundance of prestige, hunting gear, blink sharks, filler fish, horseshoe dogs, Delmer, historical documents, hominine performance, psychic shark warriors. We're going to add a couple things to that. Yeah, the seaweed. And grotto. Well, good news.

Okay. The word goes out from Uncle Joshi That his soldiers Their mission that they launched with Renowned hero Phineas Call is a huge success And psychic sharks are Have been banished from the waters Using their psychic powers

Psychic sharks have been banished The waters are once again Relatively safe from psychic sharks. They were teleporting sharks, but if they also had psychic powers, too, that would not surprise me. These guys were rascals.

Yeah, no, I forgot. We joked about them being psychic. No, the blink sharks. Got you. We got them. What does that look like? Here's what it looks like. Outside of Uncle Joshy's school

for Psychic Warriors against Quank Sharks. He's just... He's old Joshy. Old Joshy and uncle. He said he's an uncle. He said he's an uncle. But his brother just had a kid and he's stoked. Yeah.

He's got a big, we've been making this for so long. He's got a huge handwritten banner that reads Mission Accomplished. So the abundance that you're adding is safety and the one. No start. Read the second part. Oh, yeah. Remove a threatening force from the map and the area. So let's delete.

We don't have any representation of blank sharks in here except for the desiccated course. We do. We do. On Uncle Joshies, there is a. blink sharks with a no sign not just put a check mark next to it

yeah no we're just going to put I'm just going to write in free hand I'll just write Mission accomplished on there Mission yeah mission Accomplished All right That's fantastic

How do people think about Old Joshy now Because everybody hated Old Joshi and his bad idea But it seems like he just did the damn thing. Oh, nobody, no, no, but everyone knows. Everyone knows the weather drove out the blank sharks.

No one gives the credit to Uncle Joshy. Oh, okay. Old Joshy, excuse me. We have an Uncle Josh. We do. Old Joshy. He can be Uncle Joshy, too. Okay, I counted down the clocks, and we're very close on some of these projects, but not quite there yet.

So you get to take an action, Justin. Um, I, what about, do we have any options for like, um, like deep sea diving? I mean, we have the bathosphere that, uh, but like individual, like, is that something that's with in our realm of possibility right now? Uh, certainly with the southern archipelago ships here and them sort of sharing their watercraft is leagues ahead of where we are. And with the magic of the parish. There's, yeah, I mean, there's a, there are a lot of reasons why that could be a thing to prioritize right now.

Yeah, I, I want to, I want to create, I want to prioritize, I want a dive suit lab. Okay. That'll be, I'll build it, uh, I'll say it takes place. like around the Southern Archipelago ships. Okay. And they're going to work with the parish to develop

these like Magitec dive suits. Okay. Are they like astronaut suits size suits or are they like They haven't made them up yet. All right. And how long do you think that's going to take? Like five days we could round up.

Wee. Probably. Let's call it three weeks. Okay. I'll draw that, some representation of that. Okay. Griffin, give us one more week, baby. Come on.

Okay, I'll do one more week. Okay, Giff, there's a dive helmet there. Beautiful. Okay, I'm going to put the three right there then. Introduce a dark mystery. This is the sixth, the bottom. Introduce a dark mystery among the members of the community, or conflict flares up

among community members, and as a result, a project fails. Again, I am the one who gets his card. Uh-huh. It's completely outrageous. But you don't have to choose the failure. I don't. I don't. And in fact, I won't. Introduce a dark mystery among the members of the community.

Okay. The people who became sallow and recovered, right? they took action, swift, precautionary action to save the whole community and nurse back to health the people who were affected by this strange disease that they had never, they had not really understood. All of the people who recovered from the sallow begin to grow barbels. Excuse. And what are barbels? Those are the whiskers that like catfish and carp have. Okay.

They grow. I think there are maybe slight sort of fish-like features that these people grow, but the most sort of defining trait, and all of them have it, all of them. are these barbels. And they don't hurt. And in fact, they feel much better now. Any lingering symptoms from the sallow is gone. It's just that they've grown catfish whiskers.

And, yeah. Countdown clocks. The project finishes. And sorry. Which project? So the project that the Southern Archipelago fleet was basically going to build essentially one of their arcs,

but like as a building installed here. What they do is, one of their flagships was like pretty heavily damaged. They just move everybody off of it and give that flagship to this community, right? And I think that there are, It is a pact. It is a treaty between them saying like, you know, we are, we are now buds for life.

We are going to be able to rely on each other. When we roll up, when our fleet rolls up and needs something from this undersea city in the future, remember that we gave you an arc and we put it below the sea and attached it to the, the, ascension and that's where it is now and you can use that to to build off of right if that once if you want to use that as the central hub or whatever go for it but that is that is the arrangement uh so that is how that project finishes um and god i have to take an action too the bath the bath is fair not finished it just came to one it just came to one that's right Mm-hmm.

Okay. The coral robot bodies that were discovered, basically invented in our last session, that can house the Einar spirits, they've been growing down here for a while. And the first one of them basically comes off of the reef, detaches from the reef, and is taken to the this this uh what have you been calling them dad this uh ecological federation just a coalition

the coalition we haven't named them yet yes um i'm going to call them the coral reefers no let's jimmy buff its backup band we should come up with something else uh sort of takes takes the this this this this body uh ashore and after a little bit

it is inhabited. And the being that inhabits it is not like an I-NAR that comes back and remembers stuff about, you know, their life and what happened to them. It's not like, it's not like they're talking to a single person. What has inhabited this body is a almost hive mind. of souls, if you want to call them that, of the Einar that all have sort of merged into this one entity.

Gestalt. Yes. Is there just one spirit or is every spirit? It is, no, it's not every spirit. This is the first of these sort of projects to succeed, right? Of putting an Einar spirit inside of one of these bodies they've been growing. Only it's not just one spirit that came in here.

was, it was, uh, it was six spirits. All came in at the same time and sort of melded into someone new. And the name of this being, they call themselves, um, tessellation. And they have joined the community. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience, audience supported.