Worlds Beyond Number - Interlude: Twelve Brooks

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

Behold! A generous teaser of our first "Interlude," an in-world canon one-shot where the cast gathers to create, expand, and play hitherto unseen people and places within the world of Umora. It is a profound pleasure to welcome you to the modest, but beloved, amphibious hamlet of Twelve Brooks, on the very cusp of its (regionally) famous midsummer revel. You are not going to BELIEVE who they named Great Bullfrog this year. For the full Interlude, join us by the fireside at patreon.com/worldsbeyondnumberStarring Lou Wilson, Aabria Iyengar, Erika Ishii, and Brennan Lee MulliganProduced by Taylor MooreEdited and Designed by Jared OlsonAnd featuring an original score and live saxophone performance from our first guest composer (!) Joseph David SpenceEpisode art by Britt Anderson

This is the sound of Worlds Beyond Number. Hello and welcome to our first expanded world of Umora One Shot. I am your game master, Brennan, who is welcoming once again to the table the members of Worlds Beyond Number. Yeah. I didn't know if we were going to be quiet and let Brennan talk. We're going to be doing a little fun thing today, which is, this will be part of a series where we expand the world of Umura out in some great

little bits of bone cone. Thank you to everyone who's listening to this. If you're listening to this, it means that you are a patron of the World's Beyond Number Patreon. Thanks for coming by the fireside with us. And without further ado, I would like to paint a little bit of a picture. And I'm going to lean on my players for a couple of prompts in a moment. So get your thinking caps on.

White puffy clouds floating by slowly and serenely. In an old and ponderous march across a powder blue sky, wisps of pollen and dandelion puffs sail through the air. Nearby we hear the chirping of birds. in the early hours, but not too terribly early, as the morning is well underway, of a bright and sunny town in the world of Umura. This town evokes a feeling. But for the specifics of that feeling, I'm going to turn to my players.

To each just tell me one thing about this town. And the thing I would like you to tell me about this town, is a quality or feature the town has that if you were just spending a day here, it would be the thing in the town that would make you wonder for a moment of, what if I just lived here? Because that thing is so great. If I just lived here, maybe my life would be perfect. And within this town, you can describe anything that leaps to your heart as the kind of thing

that would make a stranger fall in love with a place for the very first time. For me, it has to be the winding rivers and streams that cascade throughout the entire village. There's canals and tiny brooks and waterfalls skipping merrily down the main streets and into the alleyways and little ponds that. ponds that are home to tiny ecosystems, all of themselves. You can hear at dusk, especially, the bullfrogs and the reeds next to the library. Sometimes kids will shush. And you can see little minnows flitting about in the dappled streams near the parks. And you can see little minnows flitting about in the dappled streams near the parks. I just love the sounds of the water. Just like it's laughing.

The town of 12 Brooks, so named for the many streams cascading down it, sits in the cradle where a tall stone sort of plateau originates a waterfall. So the very top of the city has a big waterfall where a larger river comes down, and it hits in a large pool up at the top. So a little bit of mist and vapor comes out in a little column you can see at the top of the town, and the streams race down throughout. And up at that top, it then has the city sitting in kind of a cradle that begins a ravine wending its way through hills,

beautiful grass-covered hills with wooden fences, some pastures with sheep, others with little windmills and cottages, things like that. But the town itself is old stone. Lots of lichen and moss. The mist and the vapor means that green growing things. The gray stone is almost always green wherever it gets enough sunlight. And it'll either be green ivy leaves on one side or if it's a cool side, they'll get a lichen or maybe even some fungus. And the noise of bullfrogs and peepers abounds throughout a city made of bridges and running waterfalls. And it is also covered in frog-like gargoyles, most of which have open croaking stone mouths, which water pours

out of to help direct the flow of water away from many libraries that no one works harder in 12 brooks than librarians who have to use fans and sheets and cantrips and little spells to keep these goddamn parchments dry. Who would build a library in a town made of waterfalls? Is the normal cry of librarians to get transferred to this very pastoral but also scholarly town. What's something else you can fall in love with in 12 Brooks? I think with all of that stone and all of that sound, not like the center of the town, but there is at one of the edges this big, beautiful, like stone outdoor stage amphitheater where they found a little place that amplifies noise a lot.

And I think it is just sort of the vibe of this place is that everyone that grows up kind of picks up an instrument or sings and then quite often in the evenings. There's a fun mocking battle between the nature sounds and the musicians of 12 Brooks as they just sort of play music to welcome in the evening. So it just always sounds really nice here as everyone. gets off work and settles down and transitions to who they are when they're not at work and when they're at rest. Painted wagons, caravans, troops of troubadours and mummers all fill the otherwise

play. Normally when you're walking in 12 Brooks, it's the music of the streams and lovely little conversations outside the library and you'll hear the plinking of music and often at night when the lights come on. there are so many fireflies because of all the water around here, just the natural sort of ecosystem. So there are these big glass globes that have a little bit of sugar water poured in the base of them. And the fireflies are not captured. They just come into the globes and light the town by coming to get a little drink.

And you see that now, however, there is a huge cream banner with fuchsia and purple and bright red lettering. that says midsummer revel over the gate of the amphitheater, and you see a couple of traveling musicians kind of jockeying for position to sign up with a magister that has a small ledger of parchment as people attempt to sign up for what will be the largest amphitheater concert of the summer. Does it step on the streams if they all collect in some kind of small lake? Not at all. Great. then I think south of the town is a, the streams all collect in a kind of channel or thoroughfare

that moves out further and, you know, toward the horizon. And along it are boats, boats of many colors and different sizes. It's traditional for families in 12 Brooks to each have their own family boat, which they decorate and occasionally parade on major holidays. 12 brooks splits into many rivulets and streams, the river Lydwin, which begins at the large mist-producing waterfall at the top of the city, cascades and splits into many rivulets and streams. Up near that top, you see the ruins of an old castle. Why would you ever want to build in a place this topographically ill-advised?

Well, originally, the river could be flooded and create a moat that would be. would protect a castle in this center so that the water would create a sort of protection around it. But over time, as the sort of realities of the political feudal system back in earlier ages, of course, people know that knights no longer travel the world of Umura. But when they did, this place was a very strong castle that could be protected by the rising of the waters as it nestled into the crook of this valley where the river came. that castle is now a moss-covered,

mostly dilapidated paradise for errant bullfrogs and where fireflies meet to briefly join and create new fireflies. The 12 brooks of the town congregate at the southern base, where the valley

begins, on Lake Padstone, which is a gorgeous lake that nestles and begins and the river lies when collects in that lake and then sort of continues on. You see that there is a large dam, which creates that lake, and huge family boats are out. Many of them have decorated parasols and gondolas, the sort of wealthier families of the town, have more ostentatious canopies and things of that nature as they go out. And you see that there are a number of coracles,

which are perfectly circular boats that can be a little bit daunting to paddle, that has, a uniformed apron wearing servers who have small, like, libations and decanters of lemonade that are paddling to and fro from the family boats trying to sell and get some business on this midsummer's day to like make a book, imperial mark as they sell libations to families that maybe got on the lake too quick in the morning to get a good spot and didn't carefully pack all of the provisions they would need for a long. day out on the lake. Lake padstone so named as well because of course many bullfrogs that are around on massive moss-covered stones along the lake and there are many lily pads. You see that as you

get closer to the shore, boats actually cut through just a skirt of green all over the water and there are bright flowers blooming amongst the pads out here. You described why someone might fall in love with this town nestled in the water, balls, moss-covered stone, the singing of bullfrogs, and a beautiful sunlit lake of families gathering on the water below. And you see where the good spots are is, of course, facing the amphitheater, which turns out to face the lake. So all the people that, for whatever reason, maybe they're visiting, maybe they're librarians, maybe they're young and single and don't have the means or funds to get a boat, they'll go sit in the act.

seats of the amphitheater while in sort of that a corner of the stage will be visible to all the people in their boats out on the water. Knowing a little bit more about the character of this town, upon visiting this town for the very first time and you've already had the feeling of falling in love with it, if you were to witness a stranger going about their business in this town, perhaps a mortal stranger, perhaps a, a, a stranger. perhaps a stranger in some animal form, perhaps even some form of spirit making its home in this place. What is it that that creature would be doing that would immediately endear you to that person? What bit of business could they be upon that would make you go, I relate to this person in the middle of the day they are now having? And this seems very indicative of the type of life one would lead in 12 brooks. I think that because of all of the like water and there's probably like a lot of, there's a bunch of mills that are built in and around these like brooks and streams to like kind of generate and keep power.

There's a lot of like fabric dyeing that happens here. So it's quite frequent that you see someone spending a living living. time apprenticing with the like master dyers of this place who have learned like cool methods to create like hyper vibrant fabrics that like fade over time but beautifully. So there's always a stranger running around with like a giant like amphora probably full of dye. So they're kind of you give them a wide berth if you don't know them and they're holding something big and important and probably a little steaming or with like giant piles of bolts of fabric of varying levels of soddenness to and fro across the town incredible abria could you please describe your

character as she carries a massive amphora of dye across the town across the town And what mood we see her in on this the day of the Midsummer Rebel? Yeah, you see Leah. She is the size of... If you'd like to hear more about the village of 12 Brooks, the characters within, or just what happens at this year's Midsummer Rebel, come find us by the fireside at patreon.com slash worlds beyond number, where the fullness of this little adventure,

and so, so much more, lie eagerly waited just for you. See you there.