The Adventure Zone - The Adventure Zone: Steeplechase - Episode 33

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

Danger awaits the arcade employees as they fight strange beasts and a hostile environment to try and navigate back home. Beef hangs ten. Montrose walks the line. Emerich acquires a hefty asset.Opening monologue performed by Autumn Seavey Hicks: https://www.instagram.com/autumnseaveyhicks/?hl=enAdditional music in this episode: "Is Lost" by Marc Ferry: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/ferry-beat/; "Hold the Ace" by Mr. Smith: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/mr-smith/; "Sundown" by AJ Stewart: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/slambience-1/;  and "Six" by Lex Villena: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2iwj2SqGnplhDIadeJ5bmy?si=N8WYSKIPR7WUy8z4ajNSog; 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

Hello, Steepie's. Crystal with the Kay here, this is literally the worst news I have ever had to report here at Steepie Watch. Please take a seat. Steeplechase has, as of today, stopped offering chaka at any of its thousands of eateries. The powdered chocolate drink has been a mainstay of the park for over 30 years, but due to a very slight lead contamination,

the park has disposed of all of its existing chaka and sold its majority stake in its producer, Chemicorp Global Plastics. Frankly, it's unthinkable to watch Denton bow to this kind of public pressure. So in protest, we are canceling Wednesday's second mid-afternoon episode of Steepy Watch. Nope, our minds are made up. We have to draw the line somewhere. If you expect us to take this news lying down, we hope you never know when to stop dreaming. Hello and welcome back to Ethersea.

Is he okay? He's dead. He's dead. Hello and welcome back to ETHC. Who are you guys talking about? Krusty man. An incredible, Mr. Crest. The creaky man, I believe, is what you all agreed on.

Who? Welcome back to Ether C. What? No. We had just been talking about Ether C for reasons that the... Definitely not related to news. It's just sort of modern. No, no.

This is a weird thing. to start our episode with, huh? Weird energy. Now, this is Steeble Chase, baby, and you all, you three brave adventures had just found yourself in the jungle. You have just been confronted by a giraffe with the head of a dinosaur.

Like you do? In that split second, things kind of slow down. And you see, This is the jungle. It is a place where discarded gym equipment has been left to rot, basically, as largely overgrown. You can still see some things that look like they could still be fun, though. There's a few pieces of equipment that are not broken down. And then over to your right, to the right as time is slowed here, you see some games that have

made that have not completely disintegrated with the ravages of time. So, welcome to the jungle. They have fun and games. Okay, great. Yeah. But there's also the giraffe with the head of a dinosaur. Yeah, sure.

It's headed right for you. Justin, can I know, and I think this is something we'd be able to see right away, right? This, this, uh, dino giraffe. Sorry, giraffeosaur Deraffosaur, thank you You Sorry, giraffeosaurus Rex Can we go with T-Raf?

This T-Raff No, if you're friend If you're fucking If you're fucking If you're fucking Is the head to body Size ratio Like, is it a T-Rex-sized head

On a giraffe-sized body Or does it all like Proportionally make sense? No, it does not proportionally make sense at all. Excellent. It is a

Tyrannosaurus wreck-sized head on a giraffe body. Awkward. Here's what I want to say in the efforts of not slowing things down more.

Montrose, something about this exact thing, not this exact thing, but something about this thing is tickling your memory. There is something

about this that you, that is familiar to you. Can I attempt to study it? as I am caught deer in the headlights style at this charging monstrosity coming right at me. Oh, no, I shouldn't do that. I'm going to, I'm going to kiss. Oh, wait, you don't want to take a roll that could go bad with the giraffe.

While you're just standing in front of it. I'm going to wait until the last possible second, and I'm going to try to, I'm going to try to. Oh, actually, wait. Real quick, just remind people, you guys. You guys grab weapons. from Gizbrook who helped you at the time that you were retrieving them. Do you guys, can you guys

recall what weapons that you brought with you? Yeah, I have a shovelhead axe. Shovelhead axe. I've got a rebar, blackjack and either a small bow or a large slingshot. And Dad, you rebuilt the... Emmerich has a rebuilt

lightning hook out of a cemetery. Okay, cool. A prop cemetery, which was made very clear. I am going to try to wait until the very last second and then try to, as this thing sort of brings its head down on me, I want to try to jump out of the way and get up on its neck. I'm Justin. Just for, I want to jump as soon as I can. I don't know why Griffin's waiting. As soon as I see it, I want to move out of the way. Okay. I'm just, I'm just, just, I'm,

Since you guys have gone this route, I'm going to gin up a quick clock for you. Just in case there is a confrontation that needs to be, okay? Listen, at this point, we came into the Dravosaurus Rex's house. Yeah, no, we are in the wrong here. You're in this house. Okay. So you are attempting to leap out of the way? Is that the idea here?

As soon as I can. Oh, okay. Beef, you're going to leap out of the way as soon as you can. Let's see beef does not fall prey to this thing. Give me a, I guess, finesse. Or prow? Let me see. Thanks, finesse.

Finesse. It's rare that you have a defensive role in this game, so it's always kind of a crapshoot. I mean, normally you're taking the initiative, but that simply does not make sense here. Yeah, I would say, well, no, no, hold on. I'm looking. Actually, it could be prowl because prowl is like tumbling also.

It says prowl about unseen and traverse obstacles, climb, swim, jump, and tumble. I feel like you've already been spotted. I think it's probably finesse, right? But prowl is also like prowl about unseen and traverse obstacles, climb, swim, run, jump, and tumble. I would also say, Travis, if you want to, I would be fine with a sort of defensive brawl maneuver. Like, if you want to go that route and use some, like, the idea of, like, judo, redirecting momentum sort of thing you could go that route too.

It's up to you. It's getting really close though now I do need you to pick. Okay, yeah, I'm gonna go with skirmish where I'm attempting to like as it comes in you know what I'm gonna do and this is wild, but I'm going to attempt

to like jump at it and bounce off because I'm trying to get past wherever it could chaunt me and instead just take the impact of the charge in a way that I'm embraced against. You know, like a linebacker kind of deal where I'm going to bounce off it, but not get chomped. Okay. So a dumb-ass skirmish roll. All right.

Let's see that dumb-ass skirmish role. What position? Feels a little desperate. It feels kind of desperate, doesn't it? Yeah. I don't think I'd get a second try at this. I don't feel like you would. What are you trying to do?

I'm trying to bounce off the body without getting chomped by the head. Standard. Okay. Standard. Here we go. Oh my gosh. One, six, three. You lucky duckie.

I feel like a lucky duckie, Justin. All right, you at the last second sort of do a impossibly athletic, I think, for you beef. Not one normally known for acrobatics, but you see the momentum. coming, you know fighting well enough to know. I played high school ball. You played high school ball and you are out of the way. And I think with a six, uh,

it has moved on to other, other, uh, other people or you could keep its attention on you. I think it was enough of a stunt that I'll let you sort of, uh, have the option there. That's how I'll roll with six.

I think like if I can, if I grabbed its attention, I mean, I feel like I flung my body at its body. It would probably notice. Right. Yeah, exactly. I'm fine with,

drawing its attention. Okay. So beef, it is bearing down on you, but as it pivots its large, terrible body. I have a picture, actually, that I found these amazing, this is just to give you an aesthetic idea. It's these amazing artists in France that make these giant mechanical animals that I saw. Check this out. Oh, wow.

You see that? It's like a 40-foot-tall robotic elephant that people are riding, and it's like Sprint. Go look up there. It is on YouTube, man. It's a little bit of like, if like, uh, the ancient like Greeks built, uh, this is what it was like five, doesn't it? Like, yeah, how you imagine the Trojan horse would look. But it's that separation. I want you guys to have an idea. I mentioned the size of this thing and how the head and neck relative, but you also have to understand that this is not in good working condition. So this is an animatron. I mean, like I was assumed that, but yes. It's an animal. Yes. This is not some horrible, uh, animal hybrid thing. Okay. No, no. This is a, uh, this is a, this is a, uh, this is an animatron. This is a, this is a, this is a, this is a, And you can tell that the connection between the head and the body is like rudimentary. It is obviously like aftermarket. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I am going to change my sort of action now that Beef has sort of distracted this thing. I still want to get up on it. But I want to use my bow and kind of try to get it around its like around its. around its neck or maybe like its jaw to try to like create a kind of um handlebar situation okay cool I can kind of hang on to and then uses uh you know a bit sort of um I would argue this is finesse since that is uh handling a vehicle or amount which is kind of what I'm trying to do here are you going to try to straddle it or you're just creating a handle.

No, I mean, I'm going to be holding on to the handle, to the bow. So, you know, I guess I'm straddling it. Pizzish. I will actually say this is risky instead of desperate because of the attention beef is drawn. Got you. An effect standard. Okay. Okay.

No bonus dice. Let's see. 6-13. Oh, wow. Wow. What are the arrows again, Griff? What's that? What are these projectiles you're shooting?

What are you shooting? So I'm not shooting anything at it. I'm like jumping up on it and trying to use the bow string to like, you know, get the bowstring in its mouth and then kind of pull back. So I'm like creating a kind of. Okay, all right, a little bit of a heart. Okay, good. Yeah. Okay, you see this thing like turn and pivot right in front of you and back towards beef.

And in the moment that it's turning its body, you can tell this is not a natural action for this thing. And it does not move this quickly. And you see a large gap open up in the plates between its back. You use that opportunity to sort of scramble up. It's not beautiful, but you do it. You get up to the head of this thing and manage to, with a little bit of effort, loop your bowstring in through the mouth of this thing and feel some tension there. And you realize as you pull back a little bit, that, that it is not the powerful sort of like beast that you sort of expected.

You don't feel the tension pulling against you, fighting you that you sort of expected. Whoa, go. Whoa, go. Easy now. Shish, shh, shh, shh, shh. It's okay. All right. Wait, I want to know if, I want to know if him talking to it to calm it down work.

Well, he doesn't get two turns in a row. That's fair. Emmerich, what do you see this unthinkable series of events for your two compatriots? What's your, what's your step here? I think Amrik's going to hide in some of the nearby equipment. I think he's going to like dive under the, dive through the jungle gym. Yeah, man. See any feel the need.

I think that's one of the best decisions Emmerks ever made. Yeah, I think so, Sam. In retrospect, I don't know why the other two of us were like, you know what? Yeah, I should have let Eric lead. Okay, Eric, give me a, let's say prowl roll. You've got a perfect amount of time to get out. Okay. Would you say it's risky?

I would say it is risky standard. Okay. That's six. Oh, my Lord. Hot hands tonight, boys. Dad. I need to describe this then. Okay, yeah.

He puts one hand on the top of the. of his bowler so it doesn't fly off his head. Oh, right. And sprints like a madman towards the semi-dodecahedron jungle gem dome. And lively dives through it with his waspish frame and takes cover, mostly because it's all grown over with weeds and shit. Weaves and shit. And then he says, I can't believe that word.

Neither can we, says the audience. All right, let's see. Beef, beef, it's back at you. Okay, so now Montrose is on its neck, right? Or back or something? Yeah, I wouldn't say he's in like full control yet, but he definitely, yeah, that's what's happening. And how is the creature responding to this?

So the creature is fighting him a lot. But it doesn't seem to have much power behind it. This is not the power and the strength of a wild animal that you're trying to capture. Which is not me like, this is not a hint to something. It is me doing expectation setting here. This is still an animatronic robot, right? Does it look like it's handling the strain of carrying mantros all right? It is.

Oh, good question, Dad. You definitely see a bowing of the... I'm assuming you're like on its back area, right? Griff, that's how we're established. Yeah, so I'm definitely seeing like a bowing there in the middle of the back where he is seated. It is not meant for that kind of weight. Okay, I am going to, in this jam equipment, Justin, do I see jump ropes?

Let me look around, Travis. Yes, there are some. Excellent. I'm going to grab two of those. They disintegrate in your hands. You scramble wildly until you find another pair, and somehow miraculously, they're fine. Hell yeah.

And I'm going to attempt to, like, kind of get those, like whip them around one of the legs of said giraffe. Ooh, nice, a sort of whip. Yeah, okay, great. I love it. I think we call this finesse, if it's like a whip. Yeah, a bow whip.

Anything like that is like finessey? And to like control. I'm trying to bring the animal to. It's a knees. No, no, the knees, knees. Because you said in the junk, because you were... Yeah, oh, no, no, no, no, no. Because you referenced the song earlier.

Extremely sweaty intro to the program. Okay. Risky or desperate? Or controlled? Certainly not that. Okay. I'm gonna say it's, but I will say because of Montrose's actions and, in a way, because of Emmericks,

it is, uh, it is not, it is sort of lost interest in you a little bit. So we're gonna call this, uh, risky, uh, standard. 6-1-2, baby. Wow, you guys. This is wild. Okay. So here's what happens.

Beef, you grab a jump rope and whip it out, and just like in the fucking movies, man, it whips around the leg of this creature, and you kind of expected it to lose its balance. But what did happen is that the leg just kind of ripped clean off. Oh, no. Oh, boy. And the thing sort of stumbles back. Let me adjust my clock here. I'm going to say it's at this point here. So we don't, okay, there we do. This clock is filling up. So this is, you bring it down. It has lost that leg and it sort of stumbles back and forth. On it manages, you can see some like servos and gears inside of it recalibrating. And then it seems to have found its balance again on three legs. These are not powerful creatures, but you can tell that they have become very good at adaptation.

Griff. I mean, is this thing down now that it is missing a leg? Can you see the clock? Yes, okay, now I can see it. A good amount. Five of the eight leg wedges I have have filled in. So,

I want to try to maneuver it just to sort of fucking crash it into, uh, into a big tree or perhaps a pond of some sort. Okay. Um, yeah,

a pond sounds good. Let me look. I want to just sort of use this makeshift locus of control that I've, uh, created here. I don't see a pond, um, but what we do have is a roughly,

uh, if you had to guess 12 foot by 12 foot sandbox, that has become, I'm filled with clumps of mud and dirt and debris and probably some litter. Yeah, I'm going to crash it. I'm going to crash it on down into that. Okay. I need you to give me a, how are you just kind of like pulling its momentum down into the,

into the muck where it'll get fucked up? Yeah, I'm just trying to steer it as it tries to correct itself. I think, what do we just say mounts or prowl? Finesse. Finesse. Finesse, okay. Fingness. So give me a, I'll just keep calling this risky standard.

I feel like you're in a good position here. There we are. Our first non-full success. 335. 335. Okay, that's fine. So you pull this thing sort of jerk its momentum into this big sort of like wet, marshy sandbox

and it immediately is thrown the new terrain has thrown it and it manages to sort of lose its balance and crash down to the ground. to the ground, knocking off a couple more plates of its armor.

But you, in the effort, mantras are thrown from its back and also squish into the dirty, gross ground. Ew. It doesn't hurt you, but it is gross, and you feel kind of squishy and bad. That's okay. Anyone, oh, who brought the wet wipes?

God, did we forget the wet wipes? Every heist, I say, bring a wet wife. I bet there were some back in the junk pile, then we just didn't pick them up. Nobody throws away wet wipes. Come on, Emmerich. Well, the last one is always kind of goopy. You still use it. You still got to use it.

If anything, it's the wettest wipe. It's the only world we get. We can't just go around wasting the wettest wipe. You throw them away if the package dries out. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, giraffeosaurus Rex. No, it wasn't him.

Oh. It came from somewhere. in the woods, probably about 10 yards away from where you're currently fighting this thing. I mean, are we still fighting it, Justin? Well, let me look at this clock. Yep, you are. Hey, uh, you're seven-eighth's done fighting it, but you are fighting it. Uh, voice in the woods, are you controlling this giraffeosaurus, Rex?

Be honest. I am not. I am Torgas. Okay. Torgas, will you be upset if we destroyed this giraffe? Rhetosaurus Rex? I cannot upset. Okay.

Cool. Amrik summons up Hard Doug out of his Giv-a-Gost projector. Okay. And sends Hard-Dug running towards the

giraffeosaurus Rex. Okay. So this is, what we call? A-tune? A-tune. And I'm going to call it risky standard. Or no, you know what? I'll say it's controlled.

If this doesn't work, there's no harm to you. So controlled standard. Two, five, six. Nice. So you raise your wrists out from underneath your incredible camouflage. That should have made it doubly controlled out of your camouflage. And the silhouette of hard dug, the sort of original Sticky Fingers Paul Pantry character, is running at this thing.

What do you shout out with a six? I mean, he's there. He's doing your bidding. What do you want him to do? I want him to run where he's in a position close to the broken off leg where the servers and all the other things are. And do what? Just we got one more wedge in this thing. What do you want him to do?

I think I want him to stick his hard light hands up inside the mechanics of it. Whoa, cool. And just, just mess it up. Inside the giraffe? Well, where the open part is, where the leg had gotten torn. I thought you meant the place where the leg was now. You meant the place where the leg formally resided. Right, where you said we could see into it and see all the...

So Hard Doug comes running out of the, through the forest. First, it's an outline, and then the silhouette starts to, like, fill in. Polygons just, like, pop in as it's going. as he's running through, he's sort of forming, and as his hand forms, you see him punch up through the guts of this thing. Do the voice. Do the voice. Do the voice. Wait, what was? I don't remember. It was Paul Pantry's voice, except it was just a little harder. Okay, yeah. Take this, you a punk. And then he punched the draft. Finally, the draft source wrecks.

Relents. All right, you guys. Okay. I'll go. Ha. You drive a hard bargain. Excellent. You really stock your necks out. Was that a giraffe pun voice in the trees? Yes, I am programmed for maximum punability, but cannot recognize levity. That's great.

Torgas, was it? That's me. Okay. Could you, I don't know, come out and talk to us? It's weird. I cannot. Oh. Can we come in and talk to you? There's no come in. This is from like you would guess about 10 yards to your east.

But like in the trees. I'm going to walk over to it. Yeah, me voice. Yeah. Yeah, me too. Okay. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I have to clamber. Yeah, you clamber to get out. I'm Jordan Morris. And I'm Jesse Thorne. On Jordan Jesse Go, we make pure, delightful. nonsense. We were open awesome guests and bring them down to our level. We got stupid with Judy Greer. My friend Molly and I call it having the space weirds. Pat Nosswald. Can I get a

Balrog Burger and some Erigorn fries? Thank you. And Kumail Nogiani. I've come back with cat toothbrushes, which is impossible to use. Come get stupider with us at maximum fun.org. Look, your podcast app's already open. Just pull it out. Give Jordan Jesse go a try. Being smart

is hard. Be dumb instead. Okay. Zebras. orangutans. Oh. Yes, sorry. Hi. Not used to the animals talking. Who are you?

Yes, my name's Carrie Poppy. I co-host a podcast called Ona Ross and Carrie. This is my co-host Ross right here. Okay. We investigate spirituality, claims of the paranormal. And we were wondering if we could get on the arc. You did come two by two. I appreciate that.

Though most of the things I'm letting on the ark, don't talk. I'm going to be talking all up on this boat. Do you mind both? I prefer arc or barge. I'm not listening. But if you let me on, then I will make my really good podcast on your boat. Can you at least help clean up all the poop?

I guess I don't see why not. Well, I'll check out the podcast. Where do I find it? It's on maximum fun.org. As you are making your way through, you see through a pile of like mud and leaves what you appears to be metallic about maybe toaster shaped in the ground.

I've been down and I clean a weight the mud and leaves. Okay, and you try to pick it up. I just want to see what we're looking at. It's a little bit bigger than you initially understood it to be. In fact, you would estimate it to be two toasters. But they're extremely... So like a four, you're saying like a four slicer?

Yeah, this is a four slicer, baby. This is like a toaster of them. I mean, this is nice. Oh, okay. But it is extremely heavy and dense. On the outside is fairly simple. Uh, it is a, uh, metal base that you can tell at one point have been painted a sort of like khaki color, um, but most of that is chipped away. And you can just barely make out a name tag that says Torgas. Um, I'm gonna, uh, Emric does a study role. Okay. Um, Montrose, can you assist with that? Um, for narrative reasons? Sure. Because you have been, uh,

about to do a similar study role. Yeah, I mean, I was going to study the, um, the, uh, the, the, the giraffeosaurus. Um, but does, I mean, it's, let's say a similar, uh, similar result from either one. So you two should work together. So I can honor that thing you wanted to do, but it will be. Sure, yeah. No, I will, I will assist. And I will, I, I, I, I say, uh, I, I know my way around

some historical animatronics. So let me, let me see what it is we're working with here. Um, And you bring it over. Sorry, go ahead, Emirk, you're about to say something. Control? Standard. Yes, controlled standard. With one bonus, right? Yes, and I'll mark's dress.

Five, six, three. Okay, excellent. You two start talking. This definitely tickled something in your memory mantras. And then you also brought it over to Emmerk, who wanted to check it out. What you have realized is that the, were originally created for Jungle Island,

which was an attraction across from Knott's Berry Farm in the 60s and 70s. It was purchased by Dentonic. You remember hearing something about that, but this was never a major attraction. It was just something that Dentonick decided to collect once Nottsbury Farm was done with it. These animals, these animatronic animals sort of littered the area. They were sort of the main draw of this secondary attraction. attraction that you could walk over to.

Torgas, you, you recognize, Emmerk, from your work, was one of the, like, early attempts to make an AI animatronic that would be able to populate this revamped jungle island. So Torgas was an attempt at a guide. These were never in production. You know that from your work, Emmerich. These were collected and they attempted to adapt these animals with AI to create some sort of island, recreation of Jungle Island, with artificial intelligence. That effort was quite literally scrapped.

Torgas is the torso of one of those guides. Just the torso. Just the torso. This is a remarkable find. This is living history. This is, I remember Jungle Island very fondly. There was a time where this was, this was the cutting edge. I can't believe we just stumbled upon this in a big trash heap kindergarten prison island.

This is, this is incredible. I believe my neck and waist were the cutting edges. Oh, I get it. Oh, I see, because you have been decapitated and delegated, and that's unfortunate. I think bisected. Maybe. Trisected. I mean,

Yeah, I guess cut it in three parts. Well, be headed. Hey, why are we splitting hairs? Oh, that kind of worth. Do you know where your other sections are? Are you in contact with them? Hold on. Let me look for them.

Effort has failed. All right. Hold on. Lack of head, pro-hit at search. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is an issue. One moment, please. I reach in my pocket and I pull out a,

Sharpie and I draw a face on the torso. Okay, great. Aw. I'll realize that this is not. Give me a straight, uh, D20. D20 roll. Okay. Let's try, let's try it. 12.

That's the least funny thing you could have gotten. Yeah. It's fine. No, 11. 11 is the least funny. No, I think 12 is less funny. You think? Yeah, 12's less funny.

11 is like one more than half, so it's just barely, you know. I got, yeah. I realized that this. does not provide you with any kind of optical. But why did he roll, wait, hold on, Griffin,

you rolled a 12 and then Justin didn't tell you what that meant. It means it's fine. No, I mean, the face he drew is fine. Oh, okay. Like, if he had got a really good roll,

it would have been, like, sick. Okay, great. With, like, flames and shit. Yeah, like, cool shit. Well, I'll keep adding to it. I'll keep rolling. Do I'm more of the Martian.

Adding more features to Torgas. This is for all benefit, just so we can have sort of a thing to talk at. Um, have you set him down, by the way? No, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, it's extremely heavy. Like, you, you would guess about 100 pounds, beef.

Um, did I pick him up? I thought you said you did. When you cleaned him off, I, I'll assume you'd pick him up. I'll pick him up. But, okay. Can we, can we take him with us? I mean, that's up to beef. Neither of us are equipped to carry a hundred pounds.

Yeah, hold on. The jungle. Uh, Uh, yeah, okay. And Beef gets some more jump ropes and makes like a bat, like ties him up so that he can like put his arms through and carry him on his back. Like Chewbacca does with C3PO. Okay. Beef, you, if you are making the choice to bring Torgas with you, at least for now, it will impact your ability to do certain things. I just wanted you to know that. And this rig that you've made is not something you could instantly discard. Oh, okay. Well, wait, hold on.

Before we decided to take you with us, Torgas, we can. Do you know, we're looking for, like, a case of, like, chaco drink mix stuff that, like, fell down from, you know, one of the recycling trash dump things. And then we can use that to, like, basically trade for help escaping. Do you know anything about this chaco drink mix or where if there's like, I don't know, people here who would have taken it somewhere? What I gathered about this land before I found myself in this state is that most of the recycling that made its way to the jungle ended up in the crazy river. Oh. Okay. Then it would have been swept southward.

And do you know how to get to the crazy river from here? I do. All right. It's to the east. See, this is great. This is good. This is working. Yeah, you're coming with us.

Come on, Big Guy. One more thing. And I look at Torgas in the face, and I say, this is a long shot. But you remind me of someone. Does the name the creaky man register with you at all, Torgia? I can't believe. No. Okay, not at all.

Hold on, hold on, it took, there was a thing you were doing there for a second. It was a joke. Okay. All right, worth a shot. Let's go. You're not going to use your truth-telling powers here? I mean, a robot can't lie, dad. That's like, that's like world number two.

Yeah, I mean, I can ask Justin, it would be a waste of all of our time. Justin was the robot lying? What? Was the robot lying about knowing the creaky man? Okay, if you tell me how you in, how you, how you, use your truth's liability to tell me if a torso is lying, then I'll tell you if it's lying. He checks the heartbeat, Justin. Come on. I'm pretty sure your thing applies to people. I'm not sure about torsos, but...

You can always tell when someone is lying to you. Is this someone? Is it a robot someone? Answer, Justin. No, he's not lying. Okay, great. Does a robot tell electric lies? Okay, you start to head towards the east. As we do, Amrik gently raced, rests a hand on beef's back,

you know, like pat's him on the back and says, thank you for bringing that. I, I, I appreciate it. I appreciate you bringing that for me. Well, I brought it. Thank you. I brought it for us. I mean, it's a resource, and we're short on those.

I appreciate it. Thank you. I think I can do some wonderful things. Thank you. Okay, you should ask him. You are my friend. I appreciate that. Thank you, Emery.

Don't do anything weird with him, okay? Define weird. No, I would never. Okay. After a few minutes of discussion and a couple of hours walking. What? You strike, yeah, it was a long way. Oh my God, you didn't tell me that.

You're fucking exhausted. You hear the water before you're close and you arrive at what a dilapidated sign pointing you in this direction calls the crazy river. This river is a massive, gigantic loop. Probably if you had to guess 15 feet wide. Oh, boy. And this is the eternal dream of all children, a lazy river where they can ruin everything and be totally goofy. Every kid has wanted to ruin a lazy river for other adults, and now they can. There are, the river is absolutely chocka block with detritus.

Mainly, the main thing you notice is like foam pool noodles. Oh, my God. Those don't belong here. They've been sliced up. This is for inner tubes. There is are there several inner tubes of course none are like inflated they're all just sort of like floating through Oh god Some animal carcasses is robotic, thank you

That's fine Now Justin is it the kind of thing where the inner tubes there's some where they're like Those double inner tubes that are clearly way too big for the river and like those are for the side So those aren't for the lazy river what are those doing here? Yes, there's some of that too Anything that would irritate you as an adult is in this beautiful crazy river. Diarrhea. This is

the proper direction. But this is a loop, right? So like, if anything was in here, we could hypothetically just wait. No. It empties out at the basin. And the way this is shaped, you can see that there is definitely like an onloading and offloading point.

It is directly to your west. There is a large basin, but you could see it. If you had to guess, it's probably a good mile off. It is a great distance. If you were to follow the crazy river all the way there, you know that it would take quite some time. So you realize that you are going to have to cross the crazy river. Is it still flowing and stuff? Yeah, it's flowing fast. It's kind of terrifying. But when you say cross. How far? Cross. Yeah. 15 feet. Okay. So when you say cross,

Do you mean like we have to get from one side to the other or we have to like get in and get down to the basin? No. I mean, that's kind of up to you. If you decide you want to build a water-fearing craft that can help you navigate this crazy river, you could do that or you could cross it. I will leave that choice to you all. I mean, it's more fun if we do build a boat.

But I feel like narratively, it doesn't make much sense for us to stop for a long time. so that we can build a boat out of pool noodles and inner tubes and the like. As you get a little closer and you start to weigh your options, you notice that there is something else in the waters. Now, and acondas. No, actually, I don't know. What I'm going to ask, who do you think would be the most logical choice?

to head up there to check things out. Oh, I think Emreck. Emmerick. Dad, I want you to roll a D-100. There is precedent for that. 35. 35. Okay.

There is precedent. Okay. Let's see. Let's get another one. Give me another D-100 roll. Okay. Oh, that's a good one. 91.

Or a bad one. I do not know what these numbers mean. You, uh, as you get closer, Emrick, you see a cloud in the water. And then you realize as you get a little bit closer, it's not a cloud. It's a school of some sort of aquatic creature. One leaps out of the water when you get your face. face too close and almost gets you, you realize that it has the head of a chihuahua and the body of an owl. It's a chihuahua.

No! And it has absolutely infested these waters. An aquatic chihuahua? Yes, it's using the same mechanics that you would use to navigate the air flow and has just adapted those to a water. I've heard about this. to so these are a whole massive school of Chihuahuas, aquatic Chihuahuas, thank you, Griffin. I'm sure there's an airborne Chihuahua, too, and that's where we really got to start to think about starting over as a species. And Justin, when it's, in this scenario, it's actually called the Festival of Aquata Chihuahua Wiles.

Oh, it's a festival of aquatic Chihuahua. Yeah. Okay. Okay, I have some at least passing familiarity with the jungle island sort of attraction. This is, these hybrids, these chimera sort of things, that wasn't the original design, right? No, it was not. Horribly, horribly awry here. Well, you don't know what's happened here, but I will say this.

There's very little uniformity to these. It's the same pattern, right, of Chihuahua and an owl. but they've all come together. This is not manufactured. You know what I mean? This is something that has been, again, aftermarket. Okay, so that is the situation you find yourselves in. Looking at the other side of the crazy river, what do we see?

Are there any structures, trees? You see a tree, like a line of trees, and then sticking out is an animal that you, for the life of. You cannot place. You just see a head poking out a gigantic white eye on brown. You can't tell skin or hair in a head shape that is absolutely baffling to you. Cool. That's, hey, Jayman, that's horrifying what you just described. I don't like that.

Like, I want to go. Not my character. Me. I want to leave. It's your job. Oh, man. Torgas, are you familiar with whatever that creature is that is looking at us the eyeball creature? Oh, yes, it's a woodable.

A woodable? A woodable. Can you tell me anything about it? I would be happy to tell you about woodables, but my programming is geolocated. I can only access that information when I am near. them. That makes perfect narrative sense. We're going to throw you across the river and then we need you to yell super duper loud.

There were. You've sort of reached what you could tell was a clearing. There's small sprigs, but nothing like the sort of like forest that have sprung up elsewhere. You could tell that this is probably a well-trafficked area for robots that need to clean dust or other grime out of their... their joints. Is the water still flowing? Yes.

Yes. Okay. You know what? Okay, so there's Chihuahuas in the water. It is flowing 15 feet across. We need a way to get across that will not get us attacked by a festival of Chihuahuas. I'm going to start the noodles. You said they'd been chopped up, right?

or sliced up. Sliced up, are they still lengthwise or are they like sliced up into chunks? I'm sorry, I don't exactly understand what you're asking me. Pool noodles. Are they long? They're all, they're just sort of dilapidated and cut up ribbons.

I mean, it's, all right, I got it. So, I'm going to take my rebar, blackjack. I'm going to tie one of the cables that I brought with me onto it. I brought these long cables with me. Yeah. And then I'm going to use my bow sling, my sling bow, and shoot it across the river into a tree. And then we can use that as a sort of slack line.

Easy. Easy. Figured it out, solved it. Wow, you just solved it like that? Yeah, I think that's what, I think that's the solution to this one. Yeah. Oh. So you're just solving it.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. Let's go ahead and call that. What would we call that? What would you call that? It's finesse, right? Phenness again, right?

If you are using a ranged weapon? Sadly, hunt is the correct answer. Okay. A attack with precision shooting from a distance. This is just to get the thing on the other side, right? This is not even to cross it. Correct. That I imagine it's going to be its own sort of kettle of fish.

Chihuahuahuas. That's not what I said, but position. What do you think? I mean, if this fails, I can just pull the cable back, right, and get my thing back. Yeah. So, controlled? What do you have in Hunt? Two?

Yeah, I'm going to say it's controlled. Yeah, controlled standard. Cool. And control great, because that would be a hell of a thing if you pull this off. Oh, okay, great. Control. And I'm going to help by, like, holding the cable up so that the weight is lessened. So it's not pulling against the cable.

Yeah, I mean, I'll need someone to hold on to the other end of the cable. Yeah, I'll hold on to the cable and help hold it up to get the angle right. Then here it goes. Emmerc will watch. Great. Yikes. 4. 412.

4. That's a mixed success. That's a mixed success. Okay. You fire, then you had like a rope attached, yes? Yeah, a cable. A cable. Okay.

You fire it across and it's hurtling towards those trees but stops about eight feet short and buries itself in the ground. Great. But your cable has buried itself in the ground and is stretched across with you holding the other end. That is the situation that you now find yourself in. Awesome. And now, you hold that end. I'll just slack line across. Well, it's ground level, so you'll tight rope across.

Yeah, sure. I mean, we're splitting hairs. But this will be, this is, that was the hard part. This is the easy part. It is? You just hold that rope real, real, real good, because I don't know what a Chihuahua does when it is sort of presented with fresh meat, but I have to imagine it's not good for the meat.

Yeah. All right. So I hop up on there and I, just like I'm back in college, I just, you know, slack line across. Like I'm at the park with my buddies. We just finished sacking and now I'm going to slacken. Okay. So are you going across it like a tightrope? Yeah, sure. Wow.

Okay. I'm going to help. Okay. I am. How do you help him get across the other side? I'm going to help him by. projecting Scott Bolflex farther down the crazy river

and sticking a toe in the water to see if he can distract the Chihuahuas in his direction. It occurs to me and we don't have to go back and do this, but it does occur to me that Emmer could probably create a hard light bridge. Okay, let's do this. Uh, what you do notice, as you pull the,

the rope taut, the trash, the detritus, and indeed some of the chihuahuas are starting to get, like, caught. What you've made is sort of a, um, a rudimentary dam here. Uh, okay, where the pieces of junk are starting to, like, catch on it. Uh, and that is happening with, with increased frequency. Okay. Well, that'll just make it easier to cross. There's more stuff. Okay. For my feet to go on. Okay. So here we go.

All right. Let me see that roll, please. This is probably desperate, yeah? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Standard effect. Mm-hmm. And I'm going to take the one bonus dice from Emmerich's help. Yep.

And we're just going to roll it. Oh, fuck. 452-4-5. Fuck. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. On a desperate roll, I get plus one. Really? Oh, on a desperate action, you get plus one.

to your role if you also take minus 1 D to any resistance rolls against consequences from your action. I forgot about that. Can I roll one more dice, please? Yes. But that means the consequences will be worse, right? If I... Yeah. Okay.

I have to use... I am a reckless guy. Yeah, it's your reckless guy. And so I have to use my daredevil action. Here we go. Six, four, fuck. What just happened? What was that?

Oh, I see. Okay. It was a four. You wanted a six. He wanted a six. A four should... triple four should be something. Because that should be three of the same number.

If this was Yatzi, that would definitely be something. But five is your highest. So with a five, you, it's going actually really well. And as you're walking and you're continuing seeing some of the junk pile up here and you're walking across it,

you actually have a mode of like serenity. And you think, I could have done this. I mean, I know that I, you know, I'm not the perfect at it right now, but like this could have been my life. You're starting to have thoughts like that. And then you're about three quarters of the way over when a can of squirp makes its way over the dam and just sort of accidentally rolls under your feet, this empty soda can you step on and slip

directly into the water. Your fall is buoyed by trash and you manage to hold on to the line. so you're still being pushed along, but you have not made it all the way across. You are now stuck in the water on the opposite side of the like rudimentary

trash dam. Okay. Well, I get out. Oh, you get it. Would anybody else like, okay, B, if you're kind of stuck, Emmer, anything you want to, you're trying to help with Scott Bulbflex.

Does anybody want to try to assist him? So this isn't just a do-over roll or what? Yeah, you know what? I'm going to assist him, Justin. Okay. As I'm holding the rope, I'm going to start walking downstream. So now the rope is going to angle closer and closer to the side of the bank. That's just, that's just physics.

That's just physics. All right, travelers, that would just be like a feet of strength, right? Yes. Okay. So you want to call it skirmish? No, I don't know. What? So what would it be?

REC? I guess it's, proud? REC. I'll say wreck, wreck, because you're- In what? I mean, I think it's finesse. Fennesse, okay, finesse. Okay, finesse.

I mean, I got, it's equal in both. I think it's a feat of strength, but I don't think there's a great- Yeah, I don't know what that would be then, you know? What is my position? I'm gonna call it risky standard again. Let's do it. One, two, four, it's a mixed. Success.

Okay, you managed to angle it downstream. You were perfectly successful in that. Excellent. In the jostling of it, you managed to dislodge Montrose. What? Montrose is now being sucked down the river as a fleet of the Chihuahuas

start to head towards him. And that is where you now find yourselves. with mantras being sucked down the lazy river. Crazy river, pardon. This is no longer lazy for any of us. Hey, Justin. Yeah. Are there any big flat chunks of debris?

A sign, perhaps, or... You said there was a dilapidated sign that said, Crazy River? I did. I did. I did. I'm going to grab that sign. And I'm going to do a little, like, skim... I'm going to run, jump onto it.

Fuck yeah. Yes. Try to skim across the top of the water. Skim across the top of the water. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I've seen people do it on TikTok.

Absolutely, dude. Roll it. For sure. Dad, you can finish this campaign by yourself, right? You know, try to get it's fucking dead. Yeah. Drown their asses. Unforced error.

Here, okay. I'll just make copies of you guys and finish the lines. I love that. I love that. I have less idea of what this role would be classified. by, Dads. This is Prowl, I think. I mean, right?

Or finesse. I mean, I don't want to keep doing, everything feels like a Ness. Prowl. It's like sick acrobatics, I feel like. What do you say is desperate? No, I mean, no, it's risky, but you're not, I mean, it will start to be desperate towards the invention.

What's the effect? Trave, I'm sorry, man, but I gotta make it great. I don't think you've done a lot of this. It'll be a great effect. You'll be a great effect if I do it. Okay. I'm going to push myself. Limited.

That is not actually, sorry, limited effect is what I should say. So great is like when it's something that will definitely, like, will have a huge effect. I would say limited. Limited, got it. Uh-huh. And I'm going to push myself. It's one of my super, I'm, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

I'm going to use foresight to help you. Yeah. Oh, I don't think you need foresight to know how this is going to shake out now. But I love that. Forsy. Forsyte. Forsyte. Okay.

And what I'm going to do is have a flashback that's where Emrich says, A beef. Have you ever seen this film called Point Break? Of course. It has surfing in it. I think you would really enjoy it. And I think that you could. could learn from it.

Okay. So that's how Emrick helps him. It's time to skimboard, baby. Let's do it. So add another die. Okay. Real quick, I'm looking up an instructable's ad or article, how to skimboard. Okay.

Okay, cool. That's actually a huge point. Beef is doing that on his phone as he's switching towards the water. I don't know why no one ever thinks to check Wiki Howe. I got a mixed success. I got five, baby. How to skimboard? Seven one, the board.

Uh-huh. A mixed success. Okay. The beach? Beef? Uh-huh. With a mixed success. you run

you jump you grab this sign and it's like hangton you are skimming skimming across and you make it two Montrose fuck yeah

and then you lose your footing right there and you tumble into the water the two of you are now in the water cool dab what you got bud

Emery creates a pair of hard-like stilts and makes his way across the river towards his friends. Just one normal thing with you guys. Just do one thing normal. Hey, we're not going to do that. All right, you're going to. Stilts is full-proof. Everyone is coming up. Can I just say, I want to be super impressive to you guys.

The number of ways of conveyance you guys have found to join Griffin in his terrible situation are really good. You guys are great at getting into the same danger that Griffin has found in something. All I know, Justin, I can't help him from over here. Right? You definitely could. This is fucking. No, no, no, no. When you said, do I have a long plank, the reality of which you were like, now I'm going to skimboard on it?

Yeah, I'm going to use it to rescue much. Your assumption, Justin, is that if I try his macro is in this scenario, I'd make a good choice. That's ridiculous. You're role playing! Yeah, make a good one! We are recreated the end of Toy Story 3 here, just sort of voluntarily. Just all of us are going down in this river

12 miles together. Too real. May I take my turn now? Yes, Dad. Please, you must. Okay, I start still walking across the water. You just do it? Well, let's see, that's definitely what you?

Are you, what is your attempt to literally just get to them? What is your, like, end goal? Well, I thought if I could still... stilt walk over to them, they could each grab a stilt and we could keep on going. Okay, that would require Herculean feet of strength from you, but we'll see how it goes. Oh, it's a place of physics. A finesse roll. It's not my best.

You don't want to chose stilt walking. Risky standard. Now, to be fair, Joseph, Dad didn't choose the still walking life. The still walking life chose him, okay? So, like, that's just being true to himself here. Okay? So why don't you back the fuck off? I'm, uh, I'm going to push myself.

Yeah, with stilts. I don't guess you guys could help. You're not, I can't think of how, Clinton. All right. Is this risky or desperate? You said risky. Yeah. And standard?

Yeah. It's not going to go well, is it? Finesse! Yeah. Oh my God. How did it only roll one? Because you had zero in finesse and you pushed yourself to get one die. Okay.

So how did it fail? I want to know how it failed. Oh, that's... Can it just mean that the stilts weren't long enough? Dad got a one. Hey, everybody at home? Dad got a one. One, one.

Oh, fuck. I mean, Emrich, I actually love Griffin's Impulse. You get your stilts and you take like a couple seconds to just get your footing and you're like, okay, nice. I've got this. I've got this. And you stilt walk until you realize like your first step, like, okay, this is working out pretty good. And then you get about halfway to where they are and you realize that you're up to your knees.

and the stilts stop right about, they managed to get you just to a point where, yes, you are about six feet away from Montrose and beef and their position being swept down the river. And as the waters whisk you away, you see a silhouette in the horizon. And it's getting close,

to you, it's wing like a teradactyl, but the center mass is just too massive. And eventually you realize what you are seeing is an armored

gorilla dactyl? The armor is made with prints from other animals. And the gorilla dactal calmly, patiently, flies about six feet above your head

and tilts his own with this sort of grinding and maybe just a spark or two. And he says, my days, I assume perfect. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture.

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