The Adventure Zone - The Adventure Zone: Ethersea — Prologue V: The Weight of History

Episode Date: June 24, 2021

Winter arrives. The shoreside community begins the arduous process of migrating to their new undersea home. A suspiciously dormant kingdom plays its final, cataclysmic hand. Our Prologue draws to a close.  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. presence. The importance of our mission was clear from the start. From the very first nail, driven into the very first shit house, first housing in the settlement, we knew that what we were doing would shape the future of civilization itself. However, during those last few weeks above the surface, the gravity of that responsibility became nearly unbearable. We understood, I believe, that future generations would examine our priorities,

our work ethic, our decision-making skills, all in excruciating critical detail. And for good reason. The end, when it came, it caught us by surprise. Projects were left unfinished that could have altered the course of history dramatically. What if we'd had time to bolster our defenses? What if we'd uncovered the fate of the vanguard? How much heartache could we have avoided? I do not know how kind history will be to us,

but imagine, if you will, those final frigid days. Imagine the back-breaking labor, the uncertainty of our departure the terror of the storm, and imagine shouldering those burdens, knowing full well that history was watching and judging intently. I will not make excuses.

Mistakes were made, but on this subject I shall remain resolute. Considering the pressures our community faced, it is a wonder that we were able to stand, upright, take tools in hand, and get to work at all. And the loom begins to spin. A tapestry almost complete. Sit on down, listening, you are in for a treat.

The world is formed around you, spun into reel with just our words sit let us astound you it's ether C and E begins that's great

I actually I am running out of space on my computer I don't know that I'll have enough for this episode juice so if you can just keep going while I do a little spring cleaning that would be Sure Griff's cleaning up his hard drive A lot of glossy JPEGs

He's heading for the grave. I think my license expired to Daisy disk. That's okay. All right, we'll figure this out later. All right, let's finish this thing. Renewing his license to Daisy disk. I'll get as specific as you want. Don't interrupt his channeling of Harry Chapin.

Clearing his cash. So looking at the map, two things. One, I fucked up. Such as it is. I had to redo the water side of the map. but it looks hopefully more sort of spatially legible on the land side of the map or as I call it the fucking the turbo zone

the chaos cube it's more and more starting to look like just a collection of every doodle ever drawn in a textbook ever I feel like you know what this image is at the parent teacher conference the parents sit down and the teacher doesn't say a word. They just bring out this image like,

uh, okay, okay, all right. You're sitting your child to a special school. Right. You know where the failings are, just looking at this.

Okay, so to recap the current projects, uh, the biggest baby is nearly finished. One week left in the cradle. Um, we got the dive suit project that, uh,

Justin started, uh, last episode and the bathosphere, uh, in which a comatose, Phineas call, and a dead vanguard arrived, along with some water, with some cool sort of super oxygenated spirochetes or whatever the fuck. They are researching that. That also has one week left.

So we're going to finish that and hopefully finish this game today. And I'm going to go ahead and flip the next card. It is 7 of Autumn. Travis, it's your turn. 7 of Autumn. A project just isn't working out as expected. radically change the nature of this product, doesn't modify the project die,

when it resolves you'll be responsible for telling the community how it went, or something goes afoul and supplies are ruined, add a new scarcity. Hmm. Huh. I have just outlined the three projects that you could chop and screw, or you could go with the second option there. Okay. The Bathosphere project, right, is that meant to study those spyrheets, those little phytoplankton?

Phytoplankton? Yeah. That's what the project is, right? Studying the phytoplankton? Uh-huh. Okay, great. Yeah. That is just not going. They don't have the technology. They aren't able to like understand this microscopic level. They understand how. it works, but they can't scientifically seem to utilize what the Spirochet's ability is. Phytoplankton, I'm so sorry. I said Spirokeets is like a joke, but now I feel like I've poisoned the well a little bit. It is phyto plankton. They can't seem to scientifically capitalize on the phytoplankton. And so the Church of Hominiin steps in and offers to magically manipulate it.

Oh, okay. So they're saying, we don't know why these weird bugs make this good, this good air, but we sure do like breathing it. Yep. And hominine's like,

the church is like, don't worry, we'll, they roll up their sleeves. We'll scare these little bugs and farting out all that good air that we love to breathe down there. Indeed.

Okay. I dig it. Let's do, and in fact, that's great. Trave, why don't you just go ahead and tell me what happens

with that project? Because now that countdown clock has done. So they are, are able to cast enlarge, they do enlarge on the phytoplankton. And it multiplies their ability to filter air like tenfold, right? So it's, uh, big plankton. Yeah, it's at this point like, um, phytoplankton, like the size of like, uh, dolphins, right?

And sharks. Fuck off. That's so scary. Yeah, it's very scary. Pretty scary little image. It's West Craven's new nightmare. Yeah. It's the newest nightmare.

And so they are able to basically create this filter system using these large phytoplankton and containers of seawater to create an oxygen filtration system. Magical. That's sick. Yeah, that's fully radical and totally upsetting and tremendous. Cool. So, I mean, does this solve the breathable air problem then for the... If we can get air down there to start off with, this filtration system will be able to keep it fresh and usable. Yes. Okay, cool. Just a reminder in the last episode, we basically, our settlement here, received an arc from the arc fleet. And that is that, you know, they have solved. Those are submersible vehicles. They have solved for. you know, to some degrees air there, but these big, these big plankton now are going to sort of

keep the, keep the engine running. The other project that finishes this week is the building of the biggest baby, which pushes off from the cradle with, you know, it's been, God, what, it took 10 weeks to make this thing. And so I believe there was a lot of deliberation about who was going to be in charge of, you know, actually sailing it. And so I think an all-star team of boat masters was put together to drive this thing. But what they discover is that it has a will of its own. This ship, this ship, because it was made out of coat, Codite entirely, you know, bow to stern, there is some trace of will that still exists within the ship.

And it's not like a talking, a talking ship. It is nothing like that. But it is the steering sort of instruments that they built into this thing do not work for just to everybody. there are only a I think maybe, you know, a petty officer on the ship, like one, ended up being the one who could steer this thing because he was able to have like a conversation with it. So there's only a few people in the community who can actually pilot this enormous battleship because they are able to somehow interface with the will that is built into the metal of this thing. And so that kind of shakes up the the naval defense program that they had spent the last 10 weeks creating, but now the community has this enormous battleship that blink sharks are already gone,

but knowing that, you know, hominine has naval forces out in the water, this is a big relief. And yeah, that's it, Travis, taking action. I am going to make a discovery. Okay. So as we have been building down here under the water, we've sunk the crystal ascension. We have brought down this arc from that was given to us by the archipelago people.

I've figured out, by the way, we're just going to call them the arc fleet. And arc is, it works both ways there. It's perfect. Like archipelago, archaic. But as we've been placing more and more of these, like, man-made artificial material structures in there. I mean, even though, granted, the ark is made from natural things in the crystal of synonyzo,

but you know what I mean? Like, as we have been, it has attracted starfish. It has attracted these, like, magically infused bioluminescent starfish to the area. Okay. They don't seem to be doing any, like, they're not hurting anything. They're not, like, dangerous in any way,

but they do give off, like, different levels of light, different like shades of light. And it provides some lighting down there, but it could be fairly eerie in the dark by yourself. Okay, why don't you draw some beautiful stars here? Or I also learned how to drag in clip art. You can do that.

I don't want you to drag in clip art of the stars, Griffin. You're right, that's a little weird. Okay. Oh, and the bioluminescent. It seems that it forms in the face, like face shapes as a defense so that something swimming to attack and see what looks like a large face on top of it and veer away. And that's part of the reason that it is quite eerie to see floating around in the dark because it can look like just a spectral face staring up at you. Creepy. Yeah.

I hate it. Dad, next card. The four of autumn. The four of autumn. How come dad always gets the someone dies? The death ones. Yeah. I'm a harbinger.

I'm like a flying Dutchman. The strongest among you dies. What? Guys. Oh, no, Justin. Oh, no. What caused the death? Or the weakest.

Too many muscles. Or the weakest among you dies. Who's to blame for their... Griffith. Griffin, what's wrong? Answer me. Oh, no. Griffin, IBSed himself to death.

Griffin, Griffin. Your precious bones. Very good. Yeah, I like it. Well, he did it to himself. All those hot sauces he consumed when he was a child. If only I'd known. Oh, lozzy.

Permanent lasting damage. Strongest amongst you dies. What caused the death? Oh, I see. Oh, now. What Griffin is done here, he's cheated. He's made a plankton into plankton from Spongevoff. And I didn't think our little map could get worse.

Yeah, it's worse. It looks, don't know. This one piece of competent art makes it worse. Suddenly now we're decorating our skateboard in 1998. These are starfish. We blow it down into like a half a sentence. What is plankton there for? A big plankton.

Yeah, they enlarge the phytoplankton to create a match. To do what? To make a magical. oxygen filtration system. Yeah. Dad, who dies? The weakest among you dies, and that's going to be Phineas call. Oh, shit.

He's in a coma. So, I mean, I think that probably- He just doesn't come out of it? Relegates himself to death, yeah. Sorry about all your Finney's call merch. Wow. I'm super. No, I mean.

If there's one thing I know about Phineas call, so you don't count that guy out. You don't ever count out Phineas Call. Except now that Phineas Call, it sounds like, has died. Yeah, because we haven't introduced spirits in this game at all, Griffin. Yeah, that's fair. Okay, how does the community react to this? Well, his... Happy.

His immediate... The marketing people are bombed. Right. The branding people are bombed. Right. But I think that the ecological... By the way, I've decided to call them... the deep thinkers.

Deep think. Deep, deep, well, that's getting very close to deep, deep thought. Isn't that an AI? It's a deep blue. Oh, shit. Okay.

Deep thinkers is what it's called. Everybody stops kibbiting my dad. Deep thinkers, got you. Justin. Appreciate it. Yeah. The, the deep thinkers have decided

they are going to see if there's any way possible to use the soul of Phineas Call and put it into one of the Oh put it into one of the

Coral robots Okay sick I mean this card doesn't is not a prompt for a project or anything like that

Well I get to make a project don't I Yeah I guess so at the end of your turn Okay well I'll just hold on to that Yeah hold on to that I wonder what Dad's going to do with his turn Justin's project finishes with the dive suits. How does that go, Justin? This was a sort of, this was a project to sort of bolster underwater construction because, you know, most folks just can't really go down there.

Yeah, and also to give us the ability to basically do, like, be able to, uh, be able to, uh, journey undersea without the use of a bathosphere like on an individual level or a ship yeah this is like a distance thing i'm thinking more like space suit type deal where you're like doing a outside the vehicle um so what what not big daddy looking thing does this look like they're actually it's actually really cool they look like um it this this the uh the uh the suit itself looks like uh it's sort of a collar that um

uh blow that makes sort of artificial gills so it blows like a stream of air up around you almost like shielding the face but there's like a curtain of bubbles uh that you can uh inhale from and the the but there's also these like lines and then they're like

really hard and like sort of like an exoskeleton that uh protect you from the the uh deep pressures of the sea A vector art style. Exactly, exactly. That's radical. Hard lines that are basically making a sort of exoskeleton, I guess, but like pretty literally where it's just like these rails that protect your body from contraction underneath the sea. This, I mean, this represents.

Hard angular lines. I'm thinking like res sort of like that sort of vibe for the suits. I mean, this sounds like a sort of broader technological. thing of the of I love the idea of like hard lines being a a a you know but like it not a material but like how would you describe like a force that you can use to you know do something like this yeah and I think it's it's it's specifically I like the idea aesthetically of it being a way to signify like we're protecting some sort of flesh right with these like hard angles rather than something that necessarily will like contour to the to the human body like

Yeah. That is a sort of signifier that like fleshiness is being. Sure. I'm fully, fully fucking into that. Is this a new technology? Is this, because I have to,

is this something that one of the kingdoms brought to the table? Or is this something that, you know, this? No, it's a collaboration with, uh, with the fleet that was there,

lent their technology. Um, and, you know, there's, there's a little, I don't know if there's magic in it or not. Yeah,

there's probably magic in it. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, cool. That's awesome. Okay. Uh,

dad. Now you, Wait, wait. They call them vapor suits. Vapersuits. Cool. Yeah. Into it.

So if you were going to go into the wire, you say, like, I'm going to go vape, right? I need a vape. No, I need a vape. I need a vape. Oh, no, my vapor. And there's all kinds of different scents and aroma of rubbles. I need a rig. Yeah, my vape, my vape rig has busted and now I have the bins.

Actually, the different, there's actually different tanks you can outfit them with. Uh-huh. where the supply of tanks, the tank has actually been magically imbued. So you can take like a different tank out with you that can like enhance your strength or your defense or whatever.

It's like a buff. It's like a buff thing. Now does it have to be a collar adjustment or can it be a sort of tubular object that is really big and you can hold it with two hands and ride it almost like a broomstick or something like that? No, no, no. It's nothing like what you just said.

No. Can we make it that everybody else has this dope vector art hardline shit, except for old Joshi, who has a broomstick vaporic that he flies. Okay, that's great. Okay, dad. Yeah, I'm going to start a project. Okay. I know this comes as a surprise to you all, but the deep thinkers are going to try to grow another coral robot. Tesolation has proved to be a pretty decent success, you know, prototype.

They're still having some trouble incorporating all the different facets of it, but they're going to try to grow another coral body, the coral robot for Phineas Call's spirit. Cool. It sounds like, I mean, it sounds like the coral growing of the coral bodies is not the issue as much as it is the melding. Yeah. That's been the tough part. Right. Yeah. With tessellation.

I mean, that's, that's kind of what, what they're doing. So they're experimenting with that. Okay. I'd say four weeks. Four weeks. Let's hope we have four weeks? Have that long? We don't know how many weeks we've got.

But I'm going to put a four right there. Cool. Next card, Justin. A project finishes early. Which one? Why? This is the Jack of Autumn. The Jack of Autumn.

It looks like we only have one project going right now. Is that correct? Yeah, that's right. So that's the, How would you sort of describe that if it was just sort of a picture? The thing that just, oh, that's tessellation there. This is the project that dad just initiated to put Phineas call inside of one of these bodies. Holy shit.

Okay. Why does the project finish early? It's late at night and everyone's asleep. And you hear, except for the guards, horse snatch. and then someone nearby here is hello

is anyone there I can't seem to move and the spirit of Phineas call has been absorbed in one of these machines and he is now haunting it and

his sheer force of will his unwillingness to die has reanimated this project and finished it early. Okay. So now that Phineas Call is sort of back in the land of the pseudo-living, we should probably figure out what it was that he saw during his sort of journey

to find the vanguard and get the bathysphere back. Because when he resurfaced, he was in the bathysphere with the water, with the plankton and another dead vanguard. and there was no, we had like no idea how he got in there and how he made his way back and what he found down there. So what, what did, dad, I guess, what did, what did Phineas call? What does he remember of his, his journey? I tell you, I think Phineas has always dedicated himself to life. I think he's always been all about, you know, sustaining life and, you know, ecology and, you know, the seas and everything else. And I think whatever happened down there has just left him so traumatized.

I don't think he really can focus in. I think he can't remember. I think, you know, he'll have, maybe he has dreams of flashes of stuff, but he can't remember the things in the morning. But I don't think he knows. I don't think he can remember what happened. Okay. So he is now inside of one. We need a name for these frames. And let's do a quick brainstorming session because we've talked around. We call them coral bodies a lot when they are like. May I pitch husk? A husk is kind of less cool.

Maybe what about proxy? Like it's a thing. That's a little bit like, oh, what was the Bruce Willis movie? Oh, got surrogates? Surrogate. Yeah, I'm not going to use, that's literally the Bruce, that's literally the pro, I mean, shell, because it's underwater, a shell. Yeah, but.

Reifer, reifer would be sick. Is there reef? I think reef born is a destiny thing. I suggested Reefer in the last episode and was shouted down. I don't remember that. Yeah. I think you call, you said the Coral Reefer band. That's exactly what you said, though.

Yeah. The reef turn. I like reifers. I'm looking at different types of shells. How do you guys feel about strombus? Strombus? I feel like I'm never going to be able to say it without giggling. Yeah.

I was like, I was just thinking like reef, reff turned because they've returned, and it's made, they are made out of a quigling. Coral. No. Because even as you're saying it, Griffin, listen to your voice when your voice went. There's so many types of coral. Did you guys know that?

All right, we're going to keep calling coral bodies for a little bit. The inspiration will strike us, I'm sure. Okay. Okay. So he's inside of one of these now, is what you're saying. Barriers. Barriers? Like barrier reef?

That could be something. It's not quite there. I'll find it. Okay. What about just seaborne? We're not going to be able to move on from. You can keep teasing yourself, but we're not going to be able to move on. All right.

The technical, wait a minute. The technical name for coral is C-N-I-D-A-R-I-A. Can-N-E- What? No, that's impossible to say out loud. What about brine-borne? Is it okay, here's what we should figure out first. Are we coming up with a cool name for these inhabited bodies? Right.

Or are we coming up with like a name to refer to collectively to the population? Brynar. Brynar is not bad. I like Brynar. Yeah, I mean, they are still Aynar, right? Briner is excellent. Yes. The briner.

The briner it is. Uh, okay. Now, I'm glad we've, we've moved on. So, uh, I'm not. I had a great time. I, it brought me closer to you, my brothers and dead. Yeah. So dead ass finney's call is now inside, is, is, is now a briner, essentially. There we go. Okay. It seems like if tessalation can help with that, this, uh, issue they've been having with putting Iinar inside of brine our bodies is now, uh, going to be a thing of the past. Uh, but let's continue on. We're close to the end of autumn. Okay. So that wait, did I do a project? Yes, you do. Oh, did you not? Oh, I'm sorry.

No, I just started the- You're right, you're right, you're right. Yeah, juice project time, or discover something or hold a conversation. How about a, the big baby's done. Yeah. What about, but is it project worthy to like, is taking the big baby out to see?

I'm sorry, the big. Oh, it's out to see. I couldn't, this map is so fuck. that I couldn't drag and click and grab the big baby without moving everything. But the big baby is done and out to see and is patrolling the waters. Like, big baby's good to go.

The biggest baby. What do we do? Guys, we spent a whole project. You're right, it's the biggest baby. Is the plan with the biggest baby, and I feel like we've talked about this. Once we're out where we're going, is the plan with biggest baby to sink it and live in it?

No, I mean, that's never been the conversation. The conversation is our city will need to be defended. And right now, biggest baby is this like bonkers thing that is the hardest anyone has ever worked on anything here made out of God metal. So it is a, it is a absolute beast out there. And, you know, even though it is sort of the sole line of naval defense for the city, it's a fucking good line. So that's that's where you're at now. Do we have a plan? I mean, here's, like, biggest baby is going to get us out there. Where are we living when we get there? Right now we have the arc, which is probably not enough for everybody in this settlement to, you know, live in. But it is sort of the, you know, a place, a pretty good starting point. Okay. I have an idea for you guys.

Okay. I actually, but it's a big enough thing that I want to know how you feel about it. then we should hold a conversation. Okay. I submit that when we, we need to develop a technology that basically lets us adapt bathispheres into dwellings, single family dwellings, basically mobile homes that will that will comprise our new settlement. can like lock into place and lock into port. We're having a conversation. There's rules.

I'm imagining that they could lock into place and lock into port. And be able to connect with each other temporarily to, you know, allow gatherings and stuff like that and transportation between the two. But basically, Bath is fear homes, mobile homes, floating homes. I am a fancy art man, and I think this will look like grapes, and I find that aesthetically interesting. I'm in. You have my paintbrush. Me and art man. Art man. I believe that this will solve a lot of questions about how to move everyone down to the civilization and how to move belongings down there in a quick and orderly fashion.

and allow us to rearrange as necessary. I think that this is an excellent idea. I believe that it is a terrific idea. My only concern is what are we going to build these bathospheres out of since we didn't build the first one to start with? We need to do a little research. And that's something that this community so far has been extremely good at. Yeah, researching stuff.

We're great. Okay. All right. Justin wrap it up? No, because he started with an assertion. Yeah, you can drop it up. It's a question. Okay. Nine of autumn, the community works constantly, and as a result, a project finishes early.

Or a group goes out to explore the map more thoroughly and finds something that had been previously overlooked. Oh boy. I mean, we don't have any projects going. We finish that four is from Phineas Call. Yeah. Oh, you're right. There are no projects to finish. There are no projects going right now.

We need to do something about that. Okay. In the ocean, in Phineas Call's expeditions, he had sort of taken note of these weird sort of of visual phenomena, these just sort of anomalies that he cited underneath the water, where different sort of weird shit was happening around each one. Like one, the water would boil just around this anomaly, and you couldn't get too, you couldn't get too close to any of them because they seemed to just be these very active

spots where arcane energy had condensed into these really, really powerful effects. And so he had not really had time to categorize those or do any kind of further study on, you know, what each anomaly had been. But there's a kid is playing in the trash hole because kids are kids. And the trash hole is largely dormant now. And kids love trash, man. Yes. I've learned. I'll spend all kinds of money buying my kids, the newest Pokemon's toys.

and all then once the box it came in. Yeah. And by digging down in the trash hole, this kid finds one of these anomalies where space folds in on itself. And that is what was powering the trash hole in the first place. Ah. Yeah. It's your classic quantum trash hole. It's your classic quantum trash hole.

The kid isn't hurt. This anomaly has been thoroughly weakened by, I think it was an earthquake that like tore through here. And so, you know, if folks are able to get close to it and study it, and people are now taking the kind of time to do that. That is what is discovered. And the clock finishes. This clock is the last world clock. So there is no more world clock. Now it's bedtime.

Now it is bedtime for the world. Um, so after weeks of taking safe harbor in, in the community, the rest of the arc fleet that was a way sort of holding off the hominy naval forces has regrouped with the, the ships and the waters offshore. Um, and those, those ships, their numbers have dwindled, but the, the ships that came back, uh, are in fairly good shape. And the news that they carry brings relief and concern in equal measure. homineine has recalled all of its ships. So the seas are safe for the Arkfleet to begin their journey, but hominine wouldn't pull back their forces like that without a reason. So whatever they're planning, whatever their Exodus entails, it's going to happen and soon. But yeah, the Ark Fleet departs. It's, I think, painful for people on both sides of the community. they've been together for such a long time now. And they have ultimately kind of similar goals, right?

The Arkfleet is going to be in this fleet of large submersible vehicles and this settlement is building an underwater city. But there's sort of this underlying ideological difference that separates the two groups where the settlers are heeding this call and following destiny. And that has sort of fueled their efforts from the moment they arrived on the beach, while the Ark Fleet. while the Arkfleet composed of folks from the Southern Archipelago, they do not sort of acknowledge a calling like that and have no direction save for the one that they will determine on their own. So they're just going to lead like a nomadic existence? Yep. So in the shadow of this growing storm, these two communities have forged these individual paths forward

and this is the day where those paths diverge. And so they forge this meaningful bond and make agreements to help one another, you know, after the surface world's end. But for right now, the Arkfleet casts off. And once they do, the settlement grows quieter. The fleet's ships no longer break up the horizon. The majority of actual, like, work that is taking place right now is taking place at sea. And the silence is joined by an encroaching chill. the air. The fall is over. It is time for the very scary winter deck. Before we get to that, though,

I do need to take an action. And I am going to start a project to, I think the project has to be this new sort of bathysphere lodging plan, sort of to mass produce these things. And I think the cradle is the place that makes the most sense for it. The question is like, what resources do we still have. Let me open up the setup notes. Let's see. Can't build them out of seaweed flakes. Says you. No, I mean, I think it's the way that they kind of learned this natural construction method with the salt glass and the clay. I think that that is what they are able to make these things out of. So they are, you know, this thick, extremely strong glass, like light green, light brown natural glass

sea glass sort of colors I see natural sea glass is not natural you guys know that it's just fucking glass it's like broken bottles and stuff yeah yeah but this is not that just remind you if you look at the bottom right corner of the land there's also a giant skull thing there is a giant skull thing but it's we also establish that that's a cave so I don't know how one

how one sort of moves a cave yeah I think that's what the project is and I think here's the thing these things are easy to make. They know how to make something that looks like the bathysphere that can have sort of life support, enough life support to like use these as escape pods to launch them with people in it down into the water.

I would also, to support how easy it is, you're not just building them with science, right? Because at this point, they can be magically propelled so we don't have to worry about like. Yeah, this is all hands on deck. I'm going to say five weeks. Oh, are you sure? And there's no privacy, obviously, in these homes if they're made out of glass.

Maybe there's a magical means for doing so. You can paint the inside of them. Are you sure five weeks, Griffin? Because I was thinking like three. Nope, to make enough of these things for everyone. Five is so risky. Five is quite risky, but that's the number I have decided on. Oh, boy.

We have yet to have a project go full term. It's always either canceled. Oh, boy. That's not true. We've had a few. Okay. Is there a five up next to that boat still? That's where, that's what he just did.

That's, yeah, I'm going to put the cradle here and I'll, uh, I'm just going to move plankton out of the way and I'm going to sort of move the bathosphere up here to designate that we are building a bunch of these boys. A lot of them. A whole lot of them. Okay. Uh, goodbye autumn deck. Hello, winter. Here is how winter works. We mentioned this, I believe, in the first episode.

and have alluded to it a few times here, but if anybody draws the king of winter, the game immediately ends. And we resolve what needs resolved and tie up our loose ends, but... And you definitely did pick five weeks for the bathhouses. There's 13, there's 13 cards in this deck. The bathhouse is great, yeah.

Yeah. Okay, I have shuffled the deck. Travis. Yep. Flip it. Okay. Okay. Two of winter.

A headstrong community member takes charge of a community's work effort. A project fails and then a different project finishes early. Or a headstrong community member tries to take control of the community. How were they prevented from doing this due to the conflict? Project Dice are not reduced this. Oh, God. A ton of a... Oh, that's dope.

We only have the one project. Yeah, I think to give you the narrative leeway that you need, I think you can do the first one. It's just the first... It will just fail the bathhouse project. I don't want that. Okay. Okay, here's what it is. The...

Not bareness. What's her name? The Boiard Hermine. The Boliar Hermian says five weeks, we could do this faster with the right leadership. Right. She thinks that this is being mishandled. So the Belyar Hermine attempts to take charge of this project just by sheer force of will. Right.

And is backed by Phineas. Oh, I imagine there are a lot of people who would back her on this. basically saying that if we if we were to rush it and take this seriously we could finish it faster but the uh and this is i have no idea how this is going to end up who being the um council the the four leaders from each area yeah decide that even though there's definitely risk to taking their time that doing it right we only get one shot at this so we need to spend our time to do this right instead of rush it i just to just to refuse her help to draw a through line here i think this is i think people after this decision have had fucking enough of the council because i think

at this point the council has made a few unpopular decisions yeah very much at the at this point uh so okay um all right i think that that's that this causes so much disgruntled, like this causes such a funk in the community as it's kind of split down the line of basically the people who wanna get the party started right versus the people who wanna get the party started quickly, that the tension basically draws work to a standstill

as like they're, both sides are trying to rest control from each other. Woof, okay. Yep. So that is the only clock on the board, It's not going to go down. So, Travis, take your action. I am going to start an action, a project.

Yes. Using the existing bathosphere, tessellation, Phineas call, the suits. We are going to start moving the resources we've built to the Ark. Okay. And the children first. Oh, okay. So we're going to take the filler fish down. We're taking the seaweed processing down.

We're taking the children. And I'm going to say the children's horseshoe crab pets. Okay. We're moving the documents that the curator, all of that stuff. Basically everything that while we're building these things, there's stuff we can go ahead and start moving down there. Okay, absolutely. And like the plankton filtration systems, everything, right?

We're moving that down to the arc and preparing it for installation. All right. How long is it taking? I'm going to say because, okay, you can disagree with me. But I think because we have built all of these different ways to access the underwater, I'm going to say one week to transport this stuff down and load it up. Is this, is that, are they using biggest baby to move things down? Yes. Is that? Okay. I mean, basically, yeah, they're loading it on and then like tessellation in the suits.

Basically, they drop everything down, loaded in. I mean, you're talking about how long does it take to load up a bunch of shit onto an enormous ship? And I think one week is a fine answer for that. Yeah, because they're using the bathyspheres to move the children, right? So they're safe. And I'm going to say the teachers from the school are going to like oversee the children, right? So we're keeping the workers up here and moving all of our. resources down. Okay. That's a good plan. Let's see if that one can even get done. Flipping it now. Pretty close there. Clint, Ace of Winter.

All right, let's see. Ace Winter now is the time to conserve energy and resources. A project fails, but gain in abundance. Now is the time for hurried labor and final efforts, project finishes early. Yes, yes, yes. But gain a scarcity. I'm going to set.

Yeah, we only have two projects, the bathosphere and the, you know, the moving project. But at this point, I want to keep something in mind is that once things go under, like I'm pretty certain that the underwater city is going to inherit whatever abundances and scarcity. sort of exist now. So this is, you know, even though we're nearing the end of this game, this is not an empty decision. So does the scarcity have to be something that's already on the abundance list? No.

And what are we making the bathospheres out of? Salt glass and clay. Kind of the things that, the same stuff that the arc is made out of the people of the Southern Archipelago Arc Fleet kind of just showed you how to use that. And what is Grotto? Drugs. delicious delicious drugs yeah but again you don't have to move an abundance over into the scarcity pile well i the only logical move would be to um to finish the baths the bathhouses i think the

bath houses okay i mean just in case yeah um so i would say the bath houses finish early and one of those two abundance Obviously, we've used the materials to make the bathhouses when you say that the glass or the clay would now become a scarcity. The thing about the arc is that it was made out of salt from the water and clay from the sand. So I'm not, I don't think that a resource is going to become the scarcity here because the resources are so hugely, you know, abundant. Okay. And can the scarcity be something like an emotional? It can be whatever you want?

Yeah, I mean, we have culture and shelter and unity. And we need to update this list quite a bit. But yeah. Well, I would say that there's a, if we finish the bathhouses early, I think that there will be a scarcity of fear. Okay. My problem is I care too much. I mean, people have been wondering, where are we going to live? Am I going to be able to keep my family together?

Can I, would you mind, Dad, would you mind if I, I feel like scarcity of fear is kind of cheating. Okay. Right? Because it's like, that's like saying scarcity of hunger. Like, well, okay. What would you think about this? I was thinking about it with the bathhouses. And because of the way we've decided to do this, this project with the housing,

maybe a scarcity of community. because these are isolated housing. You can't just walk over to your neighbor's house. Like it's a big thing. It's almost like you're quarantined. Oh, it sounds. And that it works too because in the previous card, it was the council saying, no, we need to work on this together.

And everybody got kind of frustrated with the council. And the council kind of represented the four heads of the four communities working together. Okay. That's, that's, I feel like it's clear. now is the community that there's a scarcity of is the community that has lived on this beach and sort of been getting everything done. And it was the fear to bring it back to dead thing. The fear was the thing that connected everybody.

We established that in like week two, right? Right. Is that everybody had this shared fear and that's why they were driven to work together. And by having this project complete, it does alleviate that where they're no longer driven to depend on each other as much. Uh, yeah. I think that's good. I think, I mean, unity, unity is still in the scarcity pile, but I think, I think that we probably should have removed that a long time ago. Uh, and I, I think the thing that is scarce now is just a sense of community. Yeah. I'll go along with that. That's awesome. That's cool. That's cool. Okay. Uh, so the Bathisphere project finishes then. Uh, and it's, I mean, And miraculously, this beach, this like horrid map of a apocalypse evading construction site that we've put together here is kind of perfect.

The cradle was just mass producing these bathospheres and floating them down the river and just lining them up on the beach. And so now like wave breakers, they are positioned. on the beach ready to launch at a at a moment's notice. And there are, I mean, I would say, I mean, a hundred of them. Just to, and each one being kind of like a household, essentially, each one being roughly, you know, a small family could live kind of comfortably within a balance of sphere. Like a bunker. Right.

Okay. That project finishes and so does the. relocation project, Travis. How does that go? Yeah, so they move their resources down to this main arc, kind of a central arc, if you will. And just in the settling in and moving those things, I think it begins to make sense to the leaders of the school

that as a centralized hub, they will continue to do lessons there. Sure. And they have continued. So that centralized hub also becomes like partially used for the school because none of these bathispheres are going to be big enough to hold all the students at once. Right. Of course. So this is same with like, you know, meetings. This is the quad.

This is like this is the community center is the arc right now. Okay. Cool. The town center is this is this main arc here. Right now I have the arc. I didn't, I don't think I mentioned this in the last episode. So the arc is kind of sitting at the top of the crystal ascension in this ravine. Because I was thinking of like a diving bell where, you know, it could keep the air in as it circulates with these big ass plankton.

And then any sort of expansion that this, you know, civilization is going to do in the future would be way easier to do downward than it would be to build upward. If that makes any sense. I could be talking completely garbage nonsense there. But, okay. So do we want to take a minute to kind of, I mean, let's move big, let's move big plankton. He's going to, he's going to, he's going to, he's going to, he's going to, he's going to, he's going to, he's going to, he's going to, he's going to, I mean, what else? What else is going? Uh, the school and the kids. I've been trying to grab the school. I can't grab the school without grabbing the fucking river, too. All right, we're just not going to be able to do that. We'll have to draw shit in later. Uh, the filler fish.

The curator and all his great works are down there. The filler fish. Where is that? Oh, these red tables. Clearly. Yeah, we lost one filler fish, but that's okay. I think we can go ahead and put the tessellation down underwater. Hey, here's something we haven't really talked about.

Can the... But not the tessalation, the brinar. The briner, yeah. Well, the tessalation is that specific brinear, right? Right, yeah, their name is tessalation. is is can they move around freely underwater? Yeah. Okay.

Cool. I mean, I assume so much. I think what we said early on, if I remember correctly, Dad, what you said was that they moved better underwater. And if they spent too long outside of the water,

they would dry out. Yeah. Yeah. You know, everybody agreed. The council agreed. Yes, school is important. So we are going to make sure that school makes it to the arc early.

And I think old. Joshi probably shows up on the day that it's time to leave. He was like, oh, I thought you said schools because I run a very respected educational facility. Indeed. Yep, yep, yep, yep. And I'm also going to say the benevolence, the church of benevolence, or the parish of benevolence, rather. Yeah, absolutely. To what extent it, you know, exists there.

Okay. Oh, the stagecoach. I mean, that is one of the cultural works. I got to delete this river. We'll redraw another river. but it's really harsh in my mellow. Well, I just made a discovery, Griffin, the river dried out. Oh, no.

Yeah, it was a big discovery. So big, I didn't even need my turn to do it. Crazy. Okay. God, who's turn is it even? Dad's, I think Dad's turn still. Griffin, did you start a project? Oh, Dad, yeah, Dad needs to start a project.

That's who's turn it was. Or hold a discussion or what's the other thing? Yeah. During discovery. During the relocation. Phineas call in his new coral body, it was really, really difficult. It was a terrific strain on him. And he has come to the conclusion that he really needs,

he can't just run one of these forms by himself. So he's going to infuse additional INR. souls, giving more home to Inar Souls. Wow. In his form. It's too difficult for him to manage. It's causing him to, there was an incident in placing one of those bathes spheres where he almost lost it. And it could have been disaster.

And so Phineas has decided he is going to infuse more Einar into his. Okay. into his. Just so, just so I'm clear on these brine our bodies, right? They can be run by one, but it's incredibly difficult, right? Easier with multiple. Well, and Phineas is an exemplary. I mean, obviously you're running on mental, you know, power, you know, for the most part.

Right. But to coordinate this, it's extremely difficult for one person. Right. One soul to run. Yeah, I think, I think that, I think that this project establishes the rule, trav that it is so hard to be piloted by one thing. And so that is why the I-N-R, that's why Tesolation became this new persona with, you know, the power of six Ein-R spirits. Okay, cool. How long? I think only a week. I think he only needs a week to do that, because

they've established the ground rules. They know how to do it. The protocols are all in place. I'm going to copy and paste Tesolation here, and I'm just going to stick Phineas Call's logo on his head. Yeah. That'll teach him. And I'm gonna put a one next to that. Oh, and I don't want to forget to move the horseshoe crab dogs down there. Oh, yeah. Well, Trabb, why don't you work on that while we keep...

I don't know how to move them. I don't know how to move things. Okay. Okay, next card. Cross your fingers. Please. Okay. Juice three of winter. Let's see here.

I mean enhance. Someone comes up with an ingenious solution to a big problem, and as a result, a project finishes is early. What was their idea? Are we done with projects? We have one right now and it's the one week one to get finney's call and fused with other iron. Or someone comes up with a plan to ensure safety and comfort during the coldest months. Start a project related to this. Just so everyone is also aware there's there's some terminology that the quiet year uses that we don't necessarily and have not been following to the letter. Sort of metaphorically the coldest months.

I guess it is pretty cold under the water, but you don't have to plan. You said there was a chill. Yeah, I guess that's true. I mean, there's a chill on the land, but, you know. It's like Griffin, the players are. Instead of coldest months,

uh, when your ass is deep, deep underwater. Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Um, yeah, those are your two options. Well, uh, uh,

I, uh, I, uh, I have an announcement to make. I am repurposing, uh, Uncle Joshy's, uh, uh, blink,

shark fighting academy into a new business that's going to help you turn your bath house into a bath home. That's right. I'm offering customizations on bathhouses. Make sure you have the prettiest one underneath the sea. And

the grass is always greener when it's back on land. But you can have fake asterisk covering your bathsphere. Turn your bathhouse into a bath home with Uncle Josh She's custom bath homes. So what this is is a business that's going to let or Uncle Joshy before you set into the sea. And this is a limited time offer because we actually don't fucking know what everything's going to end.

But it is a limited time offer. Uncle Joshy is going to repurpose his expertise into bath house personalization and customization. Okay. How long? One week. It's basically the same facility. Yeah. I know someone dunked it into the ocean, but that was against, I don't think he needs.

I think that was probably more the metaphorical building than a school we pushed into the sea. So he's going to repurpose it. There it is. It's back on land now. So he's going to be repurposing that into a bath home customization and showroom. He's got some of the latest. Yeah. Yeah, I love it.

What I love about that is he says, welcome to Uncle Josh. She's bath home refurbishments, customization warehouse, and also is a going out of business sale. Yeah. Because the apocalypse is a promise. And soon closed. Right. And right now, all the powers that be at HGTV are saying,

why didn't we think of that? Yeah, it's so good. Okay. Cool. So the project to, for Phineas to sort of undergo, you know, ego death voluntarily concludes. Why don't you paint a picture of like what that is like? I don't want to, you know, it's your thing. Maybe it's not as dire and dark as that. But what's it like? I think he has taken five other souls into the operation of this, into this being. And in keeping

with the whole philosophy that these were to provide new homes to these disembodied spirits. And it's not a punishment. It's to free them up. Phineas and has decided that he's going to timeshare with the other souls. He calls, he renames himself, um, ampersand, Amper Sand. Amper Sand. He's now ampersand five because it's him and the other five souls. Yes. And they are going to have to work out a way to coordinate, work together. With his best friend in Terrobang Jones.

Okay. And who's that? It's Brackett Steve. So we established that tessellation is like a single personality that is had been born from these six. souls fusing. This sounds more like he is maybe not able to fuse with the Iinar like that because he's not like

that ain't, he didn't get sent the same way. He died and was his ghost was brought into this body. And I don't think we ever said that Phineas was Iinar. No. I don't think so either. That's what I'm saying. So maybe that has been the difference then.

Yeah. This is something else, right? The other shit is, hey, the Iinar got spirited away without their consent. and now they have these new bodies to come back to. This was, this dude died and we put him in this new body, but he's not strong enough to do it. So he tried to blend with, he tried to fuse the same way that Tesolation did, but it didn't necessarily go so well. He tried to drift is the problem. Amper sand five.

Okay. Rad. What is, I mean, what's the takeaway from this? Does it, is it, is it, what I want to be careful about is like to not, unless we're going to be very thoughtful about it, talk about, dissociative, you know, personality. I don't know. No, I think this is a melding. I think this is going to be.

It seems like roommates to me, but it seems more like, yeah, it seems, yeah. I think that's what they have to work out. I definitely do not know what you said, no, I don't want to do that. These are distinct individuals, right, and not like one person sharing six personalities, right? Like, right? He's good. They've got to form a gestalt. They've got to, they've got to take qualities from all these different. Like firestorm. Yes. Okay. It's good. I got you. I hadn't even thought of that. Right. Do the five Iinar have fused though, right? So essentially we're talking about two things in here. One is Phineas Call and the other is these five Iinar that have fused into one. Right? Well, I don't know. I think that to me that was part of the part of the, part of the. quest and part of the whole thing. Yeah, I don't think that's something that needs to be figured out right.

Okay, fine, yeah, that's right. So he tried fusing and it wasn't right, but there are more spirits there now, and that's his thing to figure out. Cool. Okay. Oh, and it's still Justin's turn. Yes, Justin. I like to have a discussion. Okay.

I just wanted to say to everyone that I think, it's going to be extremely difficult to tell our bathhouses apart from one another once we're underneath the sea. And I hope that some local entrepreneur can cook up some way to solve this problem for us. If this is our last action, if this is our last action before the fucking meteor hits, that would be beautiful and poetic. Yeah, I think, I think they're on the right track. Let me make a discovery. No, no, no, no. I'm going to change.

No, no, I'm changing. If you discover that a local entrepreneur has started a business, I'm burning you. I'm changing it. Okay. You do you. Changing it. Be quiet. Everybody, I'm making a discovery.

Okay. Hi, everybody, I'd like to make an announcement. I have discovered loads of overstock bathistphere customization materials. I have these must go. I am losing my shirt on these just on the storage. Folks, you could have them at cost. Just come on down to Uncle Joshy's Bath House Customization Depot, and we're going to get you fitted right up.

Oh, my God. That is the discovery that I made, and it has huge ramifications for my bottom line and your bottom dwelling. Oh, that's good, though. Okay, you were deemed it with that last line for me. Okay. Next card.

Let's see. Ten of winter. Still going. In preparation for the coming year, the community begins a huge undertaking, start a project that will take at least five weeks to complete. Okay. Oh my God.

Yeah, cool. Great. How many weeks do we have left, Dad? You're doing the math. Don't count cards. This is our fourth winter card. That you have like five left. Nine.

Exactly five weeks left. Okay. Okay. A huge undertaking. The... We actually have eight cards left. Okay. Okay, I got it.

The sailing crew, the like naval officers who were ousted, right? because they did not have this sympathetic link with the codite ship with the biggest baby. They are, you know, kind of sore about that, kind of miffed about that. And so they begin decrying the biggest baby saying that it's not enough. It's not going to defend the city. There needs to be more. And so they think back to that very first week when the, The community just walked out onto the beach and found this cave that nobody could seem to go inside.

And then we later learned was the skull of this dead god Coda. They want to haul that entire skull down to the city to use whatever warding powers it possesses to keep things away from the underwater city. Yes, please. And that is a, that is a big project. I think it is also contentious because people are like, we are trying to move the kids down into the water right now. But these disgruntled naval officers are like, no, this is more important. I mean, not only that, but you got both Aynar and Homonine have a certain amount of respect for these gods. Yeah, for sure.

Okay. That's it. clock counts down to fucking go ahead justin what happens uh in preparation what uncle joshy's school uncle uncle joshy's psychic sharp fighting school and interior design firm has completed the project to oh yeah yeah yeah um the sign above above it said uh mission accomplished it has that scribbled out and now it says Huge deals. So it just says HD, huge deals. What was the outcome of this?

I feel like is that... The outcome of this project is that when we encounter bath the spheres in our game later that we play, they won't need to be one size fits all generic like just gun metal spheres.

They're going to have personality and flare. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and comfort. And comfort. I got you. I love it. Okay. I'm going in a higher resale. Yeah, higher resale value.

I love this. S-A-I-L. Especially connected with all the work we did preserving culture, but I think you will also have like Aynar-specific and Delmer-specific and Homini-in-E-S-Sacific looks. Make it feel like home. Right, right, right, right. It's your, you know what? This is the slogan.

because these people came from their lands to the settlement and now they're going underwater. It's your home away from home, away from home. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. That's great. Okay. Hmm. I'm going to start a project.

And also, Griffin, you can reduce the skull one, right? No, you do not reduce the clock on the same turn that you got a card prompt. I'm going to start a project. And the project is Boliathar Hermine is going to restructure the entire government. I think that the council has been, I think, you know, the city is split up effectively right now, right? There's the people in the arc that have already been evacuated. And then there's the people on the beach still, like, doing the work there. And I think with the divide here, she sees an opportunity to finally say, this era of having four representatives from our four kingdoms is now done because we are no longer.

inhabitants of four kingdoms. We are the, we are the builders of a new society. So this is now defunct. So I, that is, it's not a war thing. It is a literal, uh,

like let's get, let's get a lot of members of the community together in a room and like, figure out how we are going to have, you know, representation and stuff like that. Yeah. Um, and I'm going to say this takes two weeks.

Yeah. Okay. We'll see. Next card. Oh, nine of winter. Woo! Nine of winter. This is fun.

Someone goes missing. They're alone in the winter elements. Choose one. The community organizes constant search parties and eventually the person is found. Project dice are not reduced this week. Or no one ever hears from them again. Sue, you have a license to kill, Travis.

Well, I'm trying to remember. all the different individuals we have here. So, right. Let's, I mean, so NPCs, there's been brothers seldom who has been doing intro monologues from the future. So I, it, not them. That might be tough. There's ampersand five. There's tessellation.

There is the Boiart Hermine, who is leading this sort of government thing, the curator. Am I forgetting anybody? I mean, there's even more unnamed people, right? There was the artist and the architect who designed the thing. Right, there's the vanguard. There's the vanguard who went out to try to make a new home that nobody ever heard from. There's Uncle Joshy. There's old Uncle Joshy.

There's also Enos. You've got the four members of the council, too. Enis too? Wait, who was Enis? Enis Clackleroy. Knit Clackleroy's son. This was already stupid. It didn't even start yet.

Yeah. Yeah. And he was a, he was a, he was a boat, a boat captain. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's all I can think of. It could be also somebody that we've, like, hinted at in the periphery that you could sort of explain why they, their departure is, you know, important. Okay.

Oh, this feels like such a big one, you know? Yeah, they all are. The representative from hominine, that was the member of the council from hominine. You got to give this fucking person a name because it feels like they're about to be persona non grata. His name is Declan. Declan C-E-R-N. Declan C-E-R-N. Declan Cern of the four members, right, was the youngest, the most charismatic.

He is the one that people like most listen to. As the council made these difficult proclamations, he was the one that everybody looked to to smooth things over. Okay. And so they're expecting that to happen again with this issue. But as all of this is. transitioning down and everything's being taken down, his eldest son goes missing. And he attempts to drum up the help of getting people to help search to do the search parties.

But unfortunately, everything is so stretched thin, getting everything set up that there is no search party. arranged and he loses faith in the community and withdraws his support for the council and it leaves the space for boya-hermin and her kind of supporters to take over nice oh I like it for sure okay and I imagine that's going to be a tough pill to swallow for Declan yeah and Declan Declan has two other sons two younger sons named um named Cabas and Austin. So what's going on? Declan makes the decision to withdraw

more or less from public life. Got you. The Justin, the public representative from... This is not just for Justin. This is for the listener. I feel like sometimes when we're talking in circles for a while trying to find out what the news is. It helps to like recondense exactly what's happening into...

Okay. The member of the council that represented hominine named Declan Cern, the young charismatic representative, His son is lost in this transition period. And the community doesn't rise up to help in the search and the search fails. And so Declan withdraws from the council and kind of withdraws from public life. And that means the council fails to defend itself against the bojahar means kind of coup.

Reorganization attempt. Yeah. Cool. Could I add something? Just a suggestion? Yeah. Just a suggestion, perhaps instead of, wandering out into the winter and vanishing, we've already made the connection between the cold,

deep blue sea. Oh, yeah, no, he's lost in that process. Like, there's an accident. In the relocation process. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like his suit malfunctions or something like that where they just lose track of him in all the chaos of trying to rush people down there. Don't say the vapor rigs.

It's not the paper. No, I think we have to leave it that nobody knows. Like, nobody knows what happened to them. They lose track of him. and perhaps a search could have yielded something, but it's unsure. Okay. And I think this is going to have an emotional impact on the entire community.

Yeah. It's a bonner. It's an absolute boner. Everyone agrees. So I reduce clocks, but nothing hit zero. Travis, you get to take an action. I would like to hold a discussion. Okay.

So the leader of the parish of benevolence, her title, is the hand of guidance. Okay. And every, the, like, high up leaders get hand of something. And she chose hand of guidance because they are representative of the will of benevolence. Okay. So she is, benevolence is hand of guidance, right, is the idea of it. So she is a, is this a fairly high up position in the church?

Yes, she's like a leader. She would be like a cardinal kind of deal. You know what I mean? So it's wild that it's wild that she's here in the first place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And not in hominine. Okay. Yeah.

Especially considering she sees her role as guidance within the parish. Right. She's the hand of guidance, but she ain't guiding hominine right now. Yeah. Right, right. She's here. The hand of guidance comes forward and says, um, though we of the parish and the ordo spiritus disagree on many, many things,

we agree on this. There needs to be certain rules. and restrictions in place of which spirits are contained within the brinar because the soul is sacred and we cannot play God with who remains dead and who is resurrected. Tessalation speaks up and they say the spirit is sacred and that is why it is a crime that the spirits were torn from the ainar without their consent. Anything that follows after that is a step toward reconciliation. That may be true. All I know is that this afternoon, I was able to speak with my son, my little boy, and I don't care whose body it is. I was able to speak with

my son. And one of the deep thinkers pipes up and says, our research has shown that this is a unique situation. Because of the way that the I-NAR were wiped out, this makes it a very unusual situation. This doesn't mean that souls are going to be able to constantly, you know, be recycled. It just means in this case, it was able to happen. Okay. Next card for Dad. Oh my God. This is unbelievable.

We're getting there. We're doing it. We're doing this. Six of winter, Dad. Six of winter. All right. The time has come to consolidate your efforts and your borders. Projects located outside the settlement fail.

And all remaining projects are reduced by two this week. Hmm. Or someone finds a curious opportunity on the edge of the map, start a project related to this discovery. Now, are we considering the settlement? Settlements the land, right? Like, that's our setup. That's where we've been settlement. Or is it the underwater.

That's the way I would take it. Yeah. You could also, I think you could also interpret this as the beach skull exhuming of the skull to use for defense is not necessarily in the settlement center. So I think if you did want to use the first option, I think that that would qualify for cancellation, but yeah. Okay, I'm going to, no, I'm, here's, I'm going with finding a curious opportunity in the edge of the map.

In the process of relocating and still scouting, you know, the area, discursing. at the bottom of the sea this hideous mound of bodies and it's what's left of the vanguard and they've been slaughtered in incredibly brutal

ways. Whoa, fuck. Oh shit. So what's the project? Forgetting it. To investigate this slaughter, find out what happened and determine if there's some kind of threat under the sea

that we didn't know about. Because it doesn't look like Blink Shark work. Okay. This is no bling shark attack. This is a boating accident. So a bunch of Vanguard dead bodies and how long is this investigation going to take? Four weeks.

No, I don't think there's four cards left in the deck, but if that's what it, if that's the number you like, I'm going to put it. There are things included in the deck that say the project finishes. Oh, see, we got to re-earned. that dead body. What a score. Thanks for leaving that there. I think this is a vanguard because we said the collectors have cool hair.

So that is that's that's the body. Okay, cool. Project clocks countdown. Okay. Now I have to come up with a system of government. I'll be honest. I did not think we were going to make it to the end of this project. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, yeah. Can you just say there is one? Yeah. And we can figure it out later. A new system of.

We've been recording for so. long already. If I have to sit here and listen to you come up with a government. Okay. The, the, uh, rather than, uh, establishing this, uh, system where people with certain skills are forced into, uh, filling roles, filling jobs for those skills, uh, ooh, maybe, no, maybe that's it. Maybe it's just each of those sort of specializations now have a representative. So there's like a, you know, for the folks who, you know, make their life out of finding resources under the sea, they have a, they have a representative. And the folks who are spending their energies trying to preserve the past and preserve the ecology of the former world have a representative. And the ones who are studying the ecology of the underwater world have a representative.

Instead of it being tied to the four kingdoms, it is tied to the main like pillars of this community in terms of like what they are trying to protect and what they are trying to build toward. And all of these positions, all of these representatives are called balusters and the seat of government is the ballast. Yep. Yep. Yep, yep. That's, oh, Travis, you get an action. No, that was dad. It was dad.

Oh, you're right. Sorry, dad. You get to take an action. I think the thing you got to ask yourself is, are you feeling lucky? Yeah. A discovery. Okay. Okay.

We discover that the storm is getting closer, rapidly closer. It's amazing. And that those forms inside the storm that we saw before, the giant flying whale size, creatures are gone. Uh-oh. All right. Justin? Oh, my God.

Unbelievable. Jack of winter. We're going to play through this whole deck. An infected outsider arrives, seeking amnesty. They have some much needed resources with them. Choose one. Welcome them into the community. Remove a scarcity, but also introduce an infection into the community.

bar them from entry what scarcity could they have addressed sorry I somehow click the print button that's not going to help how does it what scarcity could they have addressed how does its need become more dire

this week check out our scarcities here and I would also add infection doesn't like if you want to interpret that also in a different way just because of

pandemic feels it could be the infection of troubling ideas yeah or you know the disease turned into catfish whiskers like there's ways of I feel like talking about this without having to you know have fucking fantasy COVID

and if they're seeking amnesty just tell them they got the wrong art yeah there you go uh an old man an old old man how old he's If you could believe it, and this is going to sound basically kind of disgusting. Like, this could even be really 65 years.

Oh, gross. And I know. And it's 65-year-old man. And he loves Steely Dan. No, it's not dad. Oh, not every old man is dad. Okay. An old man shows up at the gates of the settlement that exists, and he says,

it's me old Mitchell and they say I'm sorry bud we are actually wrapping these up right now and cannot open a new this is my old Mitchell the storyteller

I have a wide collection of stories that I have occurred with me some 65 odd years and I long to share them with a new community I've collected a tale from all across the

Ina Plains and the Southern Archipelio and the homine grand tales that I would love to share with you if you could just permit me I am so hungry and extremely, extremely old.

And they say Ah bud, that sounds so cool and I actually love your voice. It's very cool. But we are just kind of wrapping We're in sort of like a buttoning down sort of period right now, so actually I can't let you in. And also, you are caught.

Oh, the coughing. Yes, you've noticed. I'm coughing a great deal, I believe. It's just a bit of, I'm out of breath from running. I'm just a amount of breath from running. Yeah, absolutely. But you can hear it. You see.

You get it. I get it. I do. It's fine. I'll take my, I'll take my fantastic stories. Yeah, I heard there's another settlement where over there. It's sort of more away from here than here. It's sort of more away. Okay. Sort of a northern, yeah, northerly direction. If you could just head north, you should, you'll run smack dab into it. I find this story remarkably compelling. Yeah. So Old Mitchell sets off into

Maybe old Mitchell can complete the trek all the way across the fucking continent to make it to the Delmer Wilds and maybe seek shelter with the Delmer there, but ooh, not with his 65-year-old ill frame. I don't know. I don't know. Okay. Yeah, nothing hit zero. So, Justin, you get to take an action. I'd like to make a discovery.

Oh, boy. Yeah. Don't love it. Hello, everyone. As you all know, my name is Mitchell, and I heard that you denied my father access. And I didn't even know I had a dad until now. I've discovered that I, too, am a storykeeper as my father, old Mitchell, before me. From now on, I would be referred to as young Mitchell. And I've discovered my true destiny as storykeeper. And Young Mitchell has named himself storykeeper and he'll be collecting tales from all throughout the world and making them available for everybody in his work. Now, I want you to know exactly why I'm angry, Justin. Okay, I'd love to hear it. It's not that you've introduced a character named Young Mitchell into our campaign that is about to begin really in earnest.

It's that the framing device for this entire sort of set up series has been a story being told by a character named Brother Seldom. Okay. If only I had known that Young Mitchell was going to exist. If only I had known that Young Mitchell... No, no, no, no. Okay, I should make it clear. Young Mitchell traffics in fables. Yeah.

They're metaphorical. I see. And not necessarily good, Griff. There's no guarantee that they're good. He was supposed to... He could have apprenticed under his dad, old Mitchell, and he would have learned how to do it right. But instead, young Mitchell is a purveyor of terrible fables that sometimes have a lesson, but more often don't. And they are a huge way.

Yeah. Okay. He's also, he's immortal. So that's important. No. I have, can't just say things. Can we call him Mitchell the younger? No, it's young Mitchell and his terrible fables has been added to the abundance list.

Thank you, Mitchell. Okay, next card. The king of winter. The frost shepherds arrive. The game is over. It's the middle of an unseasonably warm day, giving a much-needed reprieve from the constant driving snow

that the settlers still working on the surface have suffered. The community's leaders have gathered in the small chamber where the formerly the Council of Four and now the balusters have conducted their work. They are having sort of the rough equivalent of a town hall meeting here on the surface. And several issues are raised at this meeting.

There are concerns about mounting exhaustion over eating filler fish and seaweed flakes for every meal. There are requests for relocating larger personal belongings down into the city. Some noise complaints directed at old Joshi's interior design firm and psychic school for battling sharks. just because I think some kids have just started using that building for illicit rock shows and stuff. Sitting quietly throughout this whole meeting is the, well, now the baluster, Hermene. And she stands interrupting the proceedings. And she asks the attendees here a question. For nearly a year, we've been building a city beneath the waves to escape the encroaching storm.

And now we're well on our way to accomplishing that goal. but a city is just a bunch of buildings. We've not decided what that city will mean. Is this our civilization's permanent new environment or just a temporary shelter from a storm that we will one day learn to contain? Is it a shelter or a chrysalis in which we will become something new? It is not enough for us to have a place to merely be alive. It has to mean something more.

I think that we have to approach it as if it was permanent. Because we don't know anything about the storm. We don't know how long the storm is going to be here. We don't know what it's going to leave in its wake. I think we have to look at it as being there for a while. I think along those same lines, waiting means tension. We need to decide instead of waiting for it to be decided for us. We need to decide that this is our home.

And then if something changes, something changes. But we shouldn't wait for something to change. You know, According to the legends, our ancestors, ancestors, ancestors climbed out of the seas and found a way to live on land. They grew legs to live on the land. Maybe it's just a legend, I don't know. I know I've doubted. I've stood in the way, but I've watched you all do.

amazing things this last year. I think it seems like there's nothing you can't do. And me, if you'll still have me. Our ancestors grew legs. So now we return to the sea, but their blood still beats in us, huh? They grew legs. We'll grow gills. Ballister Hermaine opens her mouth to speak and she's smiling, but she is interrupted as light floods in through the windows of the room. It's as if a switch has been flipped outside.

Just a light has been turned on. And from these chambers, you can hear a variety of responses from the people working on the beach. Terror, wonder, confusion, joy. and this meeting quickly disperses as everyone runs outside and turns their faces toward the heavens to discern the cause of this uproar and for the first time in years, the settlers here feel the warm glow of sunlight on their skin.

And then their eyes adjust and they realize that the source of this radiance pouring down from the sky is not the sun. It is the capital city of Hong. hominine, and it is floating through the air. The settlers on that beach were the last among us to breathe surface air. I had already submerged. Subsequently, I must rely on second-hand eyewitness accounts to explain what happened next.

It was as if the earth below hominine had been scooped with a great spoon and emblazoned with thousands of intricate glowing sigils. It sailed over the beach slowly, casting a suffocating shadow over the settlement, and those present they watched in a breathless stupor. They were not quick to act, not at first, not until they saw the four figures flying alongside the city as it hovered toward the storm at sea. They were something new.

We'd called them cloud whales for shorthand, back when we could only see their silhouettes, but these were not whales. They had wings, for one thing, four conjoined wings that flapped arrhythmically. Short, vestigial appendages hung from their bellies, waving lazily in the wind, which had grown more and more furious with each passing second. I did not see these beasts, but they were apparently terrifying enough to send the settlers off in a sprint for the bathesheres, ready to begin their emergency evacuation. They had just minutes to do so. For as the city and its companions approached the storm, the cloud whales broke formation and began flying into the vortex against the wind. Their shadows gained speed, slowing the rotation. of the storm in exchange, and for a moment our community held out hope that hominine had

discovered a way to undo the damage our magic had reeked upon the world. But it was not so. The sea began to accumulate around the vortex, pulled into its form like it was being sucked through an enormous straw. And then, when the cyclone had nearer, slowly slowed to a halt, hominine floated into the wall of the vortex and vanished into this column of water and fury that stretched between the sea and the heavens. And then, all the water that had accumulated fell, and a wave taller than the Ainar Plateau itself began, screaming. toward the shore. That was the last thing any of us saw of the surface.

The final few bathes spheres deployed as the tidal wave took form, and they sank into the ether sea. It was quiet as they watched an unfathomably large line of rolling sediment pass overhead, and then it was gone. Their vessels reached the city and locked into their assigned spots across its hull. The doors opened And the final passengers disembarked Rarely do chapters of our history end so distinctly

Addendum A Generation at Sea In the days that followed we sent a handful of ships Toward the surface to survey the storm's behavior But those ships would not reach the shore The storm's fury is incomprehensible now. The wind and waves have shattered the land, remnants of our civilization now royal overhead,

forming an unnavigable shelf of debris. That shelf is held aloft by an ethereally enriched halocline, which, for all intents and purposes, remains the ceiling for safe undersea exploration. We grieved tremendously those first few days, and then we got back to doing what we'd been doing for the past year. We began to build. The ballast arc perched atop the crystal ascension kept us alive that first year, but it was far too small to support our entire civilization for much longer. So we expanded downward, building a sprawling shell around the ascension to host our

our many, many bathosphere dwellings. We called this new structure the cradle, in honor of the shipyard, that delivered our stalwart protector, the biggest baby. We had troubles those early days, but defense was not one of them. The biggest baby saw to that. Its pilots developed their sympathetic link with the remnants of Coda built into the ship's very framework. They called themselves chaperones,

and harnessing Coda's storied martial prowess, They protected us from dangers within and without. Those naval officers who were ineligible to serve aboard the biggest baby formed their own outfit, the Iron Welks, and they helped out too, I guess. While most of us looked to the future, several influential parties were concerned with preserving the past, and so to the bottom of the ballast we affixed a new structure, the Conservatory. With its scenic viewports, greeneries, and menageries, it's our city's crowning aesthetic achievement. The curator and his agency maintain the conservatory, while the benevolent parish, with all its influence, is the main benefactor of said beauty. Not all were in favor of the conservatory's prioritization.

Several balusters, including the high baluster Hermine, decried the decision, arguing for residential improvements first. She would get her wish as we constructed an even larger shell around the ascension, called the forecastle. Thousands of bathes spheres of wildly varying designs now nestle neatly across its outermost wall. The cradle, in turn, became home to the city's maintenance facilities, processing our valuable resources and maintaining the health of our precious, enormous phytoplankton. We also realized that cultivating those resources would require more space than our our cliffside city could ever provide. And so we looked just above the ravine in which we'd settled

to a sprawling undersea plateau that we call the gunwale. There we could appropriately scale our fisheries, farms, and salt refineries, though errant chunks of debris do occasionally fall among these facilities. At the bottom of the ravine, the coral spire continued to thrive, and our production and infusion of the brine our bodies escalated rapidly. Shepherded by tessellation, any Einar spirit seeking to reenter our plane can do so, though more often than not, those spirits must first combine with others, obtaining the necessary strength to inhabit their new shells. Built into the base of this spire is a laboratory, operated by Amper Sand 5 and the rest of his deep thinkers. Together they seek to discover and study the ether sees many, many secrets. There was a time when the thinkers took residence in the city proper, in a ring-like compartment at the forecastle's base.

However, disruption from the Ordo Spiritus caused their separation, and, in the void they left, old Uncle Joshi and his misanthropic disciples found a new home. On the subject of Joshy, I will say this. He is, perhaps, the most proficient opportunist currently living. The needs of our people are seen to. The balusters have ensured that. But the wants of our people? The seasoning of our rations, the comforts of our homes.

Old Joshi can provide these luxuries, provided you possess enough of the currency he's devised. Lux, the only coin that matters under the sea. Those who began squatting in this compartment named it Joshy's knuckle. And there you can find psychic shark-fighting practitioner interior designers, and far more illicit. Look, if you wanted to hear all about Joshy's knuckle, you should tune your tone wheel to a different frequency.

And that brings us to our city's final, newest district. At the bottom of the Crystal Ascension, we built a wide dome filled with docks reaching out from the cliff face and long radials. Ships returning to the city can drift beneath the dome and surface alongside these docks. From below, this structure resembles the underside of a mushroom cap. That's why we named this district the Gills, thus fulfilling a declaration made during our final meeting on the shoreline. In the 25 years that have passed since our submersion,

our city's needs have evolved. Now, nearly every facet of our civilization has need of ships and crews to voyage out into the ethersea. For exploration or reclamation or transportation, you get it. Few were the clients who looked out for these voyagers' well-being, and so the seafarers of our society formed the Blue Span brokerage. All work that goes beyond the city's borders goes through them, as must any contractor seeking said seafaring labor. This is the work that we have done, not only to survive within the ether sea, but to make something better than the world we escaped. I hope with wholehearted sincerity that knowing more of our history will in some way temper the anger that you might feel for the state of the world you were born into.

However, and let this be my final most imperative lesson, do not let that anger go completely. The avarice of our world's founders, their hubris, their militarism, these are blights beyond any of our individual, control. They have eroded the very ground we once walked upon, dragging us down to the bottom of the ocean. That word, founder, has another meaning. To founder is to sink, to drown. We live in the aftermath of Armageddon, but we were not the only thing purged by the storm. In building something new. We celebrate the death of a paradigm that led to our ruination. We celebrate

the burial of the architects of our unjust world. That is how our city earned its name. That is why we live in the city of Founders Wake. Class dismissed.

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