Worlds Beyond Number - WWW #45: Nothing

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

Across the night, with the dawn, this version of her, our gilled mage. Suvirin Kedberiket, amphibious and unalone. In the ice cave abattoir, our survivors, the otter and the otherworldly. The fresh hells of a secret past. And then, the trail, far beyond the broad road, taking them to whatever gifts the past has left. The task at hand. A good feeling. Dark river water. Bodies at the bottom murk, but above us: nothing. Exactly where we want to be.Oh hey, if you'd like to hear more details about Suvi getting new spells from all those wet, wet books, we have a whole behind-the-scenes mini episode about it on our patreon! Don't you wanna know what spells she got? Don't ya? Come on in, fam, the pod is fine.Worlds Beyond Number is:Brennan Lee MulliganErika IshiiAabria IyengarLou Wilsonand is produced, designed, and scored by Taylor Moore at Fortunate Horse with exquisite design and editing help from Jared OlsonSPECIAL THANKS TO: Shannon and Amanda Freberg!Transcript of this episode coming soon! You can find transcripts of all our episodes here, for free, on our Patreon.Our album art is by the great Corey BrickleySome additional ambient sound design comes from Michael Ghelfi Studios. You can get their sounds and music for your home games and VTT as well, which we enthusiastically recommend. 

This is the sound of Worlds Beyond Number. Sputtering lamp overlooking pages spread across a tattered, thin blanket on the dirt floor of a smuggler's cave. Reveals the work of a long night spent in exhaustion tapped from a day of heavy casting. The wizard sky, Suverin-Kedbaricat, is well. once again, sleepless, focused, and bent on achieving great workings of magic. Suvi, throughout the course of the night as the other shape changers have slept, of which I'll remind you there are about 13 within the chamber here, including Yorin, Yorin and a dozen others.

You have poured over the seized spellbooks, partially damaged in the water, but with enough remaining for you. you to transcribe into your own spellbook with tasks, wonderful assistance. Your ink demons, as helpful as they are, leave some things to be desired. But a spider made of mirrors who is very friendly and seems to love you a whole lot, who can record images and project text and, like, literally take calligraphy and transpose it for you to trace onto your own pages is kind of an excellent. exponential magnitude of helpfulness added to your workings here.

And task loves the task set before him. Set before them, him, it, a spider? I default to him for a little guy. Yeah. He's a little guy. He's a little guy. In transposing this text, you have managed to record a handful of spells. two of them immediately under your mastery.

You're familiar with them. You may even have them ready for your copying and study back at the Tower of the Glove, one of which is a spell that allows you to see hidden creatures, creatures such as Ursulon who can vanish from sight, or wizards who can vanish from sight such as yourself. And diving into the spell even further, you realize that it is very much a spell from a divinatory. school, but also very much rooted in the near spirit.

It's allowing you to see things that are present somewhere. And you realize that when creatures hide, much like hiding physically, your form still has to be somewhere. So maybe you're not visible because you're in the near spirit or you're otherwise nearby. You also have managed to transcribe in your long night here some spells that we have seen in the previous episode. Yeah. We picked him on purpose. Well, it seems that this guild has a sort of series of spells that are du rigour, right? That there is a... That are what?

It's the French. De rigour. Derigueur. Derigua. Out of strictness, according to strict etiquette, so like mandated by the glass coronet. That one of them is the spell that we saw cast on Ursulon that produces bolts of fire that are sort of, more powerful than the Arulyan bolts, but as a result of the power,

require more careful aim. They do not automatically strike your target. And you also find a version of the spell that you saw sworn cast in Abyssen, a truly explosive blast of flame. You manage to break past your normal capabilities to transcribe and, you know, In a sense, not prepare but pre-pre-prepare the casting of that spell because you are literally do not have the training to call upon energy that potent yet.

As advanced as you are within the hierarchy of the Citadel, you got your name cloak earlier this year. Yeah. Normally, you get a second to master some of this stuff. And you did have to spend, like, two years getting soft cookies for silence, which slowed you down a little bit. You are halfway through the spell that you recognize as the foundation of zero, reactive counter magic. When the shape changers around you begin to stir,

it is at this moment coming out of deep study that you see them begin to get up. And you see a couple of them walking over in. speaking to urine in Gouth, off in a corner of the room. She still has observant, and she speaks Gouth. What are they talking about? You. Oh, I see. You see that two of the shape changers are looking over at urine.

It's a very simple conversation. You see that one of them who is a kind of like a sheenless platinum blonde, so not shiny or well-kept, but kind of like paper blonde long tresses of hair. You see there's a woman here who is wearing just some dirty slacks and a vest. Looks a little bit gaunt and you can see stays in a position of some transformation. It's not like she's got, it's not like she's all the way at grommors level of having talons, but you can just see some pronounced fangs and her eyes stay a little bit reflective. It looks like she sort of permanently shifted her eyes into kind of a bestial form.

You see her speaking to Yorin going pretty incredible. A kid of your former allies at the Citadel shows up in the cave. If I was going to pick someone. And you see that Yoran goes, if this was a plan, those soldiers arrived chasing her. to Reedport. So this was a opportunity. How would they have set this up to know?

And you see that she shrugs and says, they know we're here. And he goes, this is the empire. If they knew we were here, they would have killed us. They're not, what's the plan to lure us, to know where we are and lure us to somewhere else to kill us there? And you just see it's a conversation about determining, whether this insane coincidence is too good to be true.

Yeah. I think at some point in the lull, Suvie, yeah. She's like mid-working-on-counterspell, but like I think there's a lot of thinking about Zero and Abbasin. That's she can feel her mind, like, wandering away from that. And she's also very tired. It's been like 30-something hours since she's slept. And we'll just look up and say in Gough, like, to the conversation, like, I would have just reported you all in the middle of the night if I was an agent.

So you probably shouldn't have gone to sleep around me. But I didn't, and I'm fine. Uren looks out of the other shape changers. Lana, you want to know my proof? And she turns around and says, what's your proof? And he says, got a good feeling. It's never left me astray before. When you're facing an enemy that relies on information and wields information,

basing your decisions on information, plays each of the enemy's hands. When I play from the gut, I stay one step ahead. Something about that hits in exactly the way that makes Suvie think immediately of Ursula. And Ame, especially Ursulaan and how much his instincts in moments have been exactly borne out. The scarf, like, the scarf that she got from Neif in the castle and his, like, instinctual understanding to go and free Naram exactly when he did. Yeah. And she's just kind of gets a faraway look and nods, even though that hurts as a person who loves information. There's a real, like, DW from Arthur being like, this sign.

can't stop me, I can't read, of Yorin being like, oh, a clever trap of information and the manipulation of data from the Citadel. Well, I don't pay attention to this in any context. You see, he goes, you've been up all night. Is it not night? Look around at the cave that's underwater. It's about to be mourning, and I'd say imperial troops spent yesterday marching their They're probably when sun rises and they start marching again.

If they make good time, they'll make it to report by tonight. Okay. Well, probably should have slept. No regrets. I'm fine. I'm great, actually. I feel great. I feel so good.

So we should go. We should go. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. And Suvie, like, gets up and walks over to, like, the blood sigil that she was using to cast all the identify stuff last night. Okay, okay, people that like information, you leave them things for that. The ring is a snitch.

And Suvie's going to take off her father's ring. If someone was tracking the ring, they could follow it here, and they will see as a smuggler's den. And it might look for enough time to buy time like I was killed down here. and we don't need to be tracked by that. It takes off the ring. You have to put things away. And I think there's something across the night of like this careful study and that realization

that magic is so much bigger than the things that she was taught. And even for a couple hours, just a day ago, where she was a celebrated war hero. She was thanked personally by a prince of the Saraz Empire. And she's never going to go back to that. There's no way back to that. Because she knows too much now.

And I think she just starts to put the version of her that is a Wizard of the Citadel so specifically away. And then she kind of gets to the part where she thinks about silver. And she doesn't want to put that. part away yet. So she's going to tuck a thing that she loves into something else that she loves, which is her magic, especially all the glass things that are coated so strongly to the tower and the empire and the citadel. And she remembers that the word for electroplating, a little bit of metal on the back of glass to turn it into a mirror is called silvering. So she's going to silver all

of her magic that is so glass-coated, the shards of her magic missile and her mage armor and her shatter. And all that happens as she holds her glass staff and it goes over to mirror too. And it's just a little too bright and a little too much. And I think as she looks at it and appreciates that because now she feels more in community with little task the mirror spider. She feels like her magic is something more personal now. But she can't walk around as a Wizard of the Citadel anymore.

And she's going to look over at Lahana. And not with like any, like, there's a thing to prove. But she wants her to see it and anyone else to see it. I'm going to shatter the glass staff on the ground. Shattering the staff and front of her. front of you. You see the other shape changers, behold, this act. Their reactions are their own. Most of them are silent. They've been living for weeks in a strange land, knowing only explosive violence and utmost secrecy. And I think you see, too, that even in their homeland,

they are rebels. And there is an understanding that is not turned to you in warmth, but an understanding of what it means to break a glass staff and what it means to turn away from the broad road. Suvie wipes the dust of her shattered staff, once glass, now mirror. from her hand and looks down at the ground at the pile of it and steps on it more and reduces it from those chunks of broken crystal

and grinds it back into fine white sand. She scoops it up and pours it into an empty vial and takes it with her. We should go. Do you think it'll, if you ever return to the citadel, odds are it'll be in chains. But I should tell you before we head out, did you ever make it back to your parents' apartment? Not in Malacanth.

And they had a place on Catterwall Lane in a small building, not too far from the night market, but when the Akadir was at its height, and they needed to be on mission overseas, but remain at the citadel in secret. They wouldn't stay in their home. They stayed in Catterwall Lane. Thank you.

I didn't know that. I, you know, it'll be, I don't want to be crass. It's your parents. But, you know, they haven't paid rent in over a decade. Yeah, fair. I assume it's been picked clean, but, you know. Look, I didn't know their names until like a month ago, so, you know. You know their names?

Yeah. Amand and Chandrae. Amon and Chandrae. That does feel better. I think at that, Sufi's just going to go over and hug him. No one else gets how much that hurts. He gives you a big bear hug. And as he does,

Wizard, wizard. And you see, he puts, he moves his hand from your shoulder to the back of your head and kind of like, he's almost in that avuncular way of like comforting someone. And you see that he quickly moves from a place

of whatever he was feeling to like, oh, the kid. And like, gives you that comfort. And as he does, he goes, if you ever make it back there, there's probably someone else living there. But they, you know, it was a spies apartment, so maybe kick a floorboard and something will pop up. I don't know.

And you see that he gives you a kiss on the cheek and whisper something in your ear in a language you don't understand. And you feel that the sides of your neck get hot, hot, hot. And you feel something split twice on each side of your neck. And he says, all right, let's go. Water. As grills grow on the side of your neck, he's like, oh yeah, you got to get in the water right now. I can't do air.

I flip him off. I can't do air and water. It's one or the other. Fucking God. Just grabs her shit and like flops into the water. All right. Move out. Deep water report.

And you see that the shape changers hit the water. he leaps forward and as he does he turns into a 35 foot Megalodon shark What? Oh my God! What?

He's the hottest man alive. He's like a full like 15 feet longer. A Jason Statham Megalodon? He's the Don or the Meg? Damn it! I really...

I do really, I appreciate the Megaladon oversharp. Like that is, I really, that was great. Yeah, so a great, like, the biggest great whites are like 22, 25. No, no, no, no, he's a 35 foot. He ain't that. He ain't that. He's a fucking megaladone, baby.

Yeah, see he's screaming in the water. Oh, I get gills, but you're a super shark. Okay. And you begin to be able to speak underwater as you get down there. And you see, he goes like, they got pools at the Citadel these days. Shut up! And I try to grab onto him somewhere. You grab onto a dorsal fin, immediately cut your hand on the sandpaper shucks.

And you see he goes, uh-oh, blood in the water. Shut up, shut up. Jokes on you, I'm on my rag. And then I take that out. Fanged and finned creatures of combat swim in deep dark water down the river towards Reedport, with a guild wizard holding on for dear life. as she finds her friends once more. Pitch black basement, the last of the foxfire,

flickers away from the two segments of the moments ago united body of the wizard Keane. Smell of blood, smoke from the now extinguished candle, Cold air ice blocks lining the wall as meat hangs in the cellar. Limping over to Amé, the fox walks up and nozzles against you. Ursulaan, you stand in the dark with your sword. Amé, you cannot see here in the dark, but you know that Ursulaan is present nearby.

I reach down for my fox. Hey, boss. Are you okay? Big is really hurt. Are you okay? Yeah. He shot you in the chest with lightning. Yeah, that was...

I was fine. I was fine. But I'm so sorry I sent you into danger. I'm so sorry. It was a trap. And I promise that I will do my best to try and find those... I promised you. Mitigate harm.

Yeah. Why did that guy do that to us? I think that that trap was a trap for us, and we were a trap for Ursula. Ursulaan, are you all right? I'm fine. You'll well? Yes. He wanted to trap you. I know. I'm going to walk over and... lay on hands, Amay.

Ami, how many hit points do you have remaining? 13. Out of what? Out of 23. So Amay didn't even go get bloodied by that lightning bolt.

Got it. You go over, are you going to heal Amme for the full? I'll heal Amme. I have 20 total. I'll heal Amet for 15. Ami only needs to be healed for 10. Oh, 10.

Great. Then for 10. So you heal Amme for 10. Hit points. And I think that you feel that lightning bolt that Keene used was a more effective one than the ones you saw silver using in combat. That would instantly kill almost anyone that it touched. And Amé grounded it into the earth reflexively. And I think that you can, with that lay on hands,

Amé is a young witch. Given a hundred years, she will be as otherworldly as those women you saw in that conclave. And the beginnings of that are here. Amé can take a wizard's lightning bolt to the chest and remain unmoved because she is tapped into something old and powerful. And this is a, in lots of vulgar instances of the supernatural,

flashy magic, flying demons, talking foxes, you see a hint of a deep power within Amé that is unseen in this moment, but sensed to you. She wielded a strength here to survive the unsurvivable because she is more than... She is both truly mortal and more than mortal at the same time. I'm sorry.

Thank you for coming to get me. But I almost wish you hadn't. It was my fault. I promise that I'll... I'll be better at finding traps and about protecting my friends. And even to... Lord forbid, listen to Suvie's advice.

It's already clear to me that you are more than what you were earlier today. So I believe you need not promise. You only need to... I fall into his arms in a big hug. I think Ursulaan takes your embrace, but does not embrace you back. Where's Suvie? Taken. Taken?

Yes, she rode with the wizards back to Bracken. What would you like to do? We've been way laid here long enough. We will continue and hope that she can find us. We all agreed when looking at the map earlier as to where we were headed. We should rest until just before dawn and then make our way down the river. Yes. Yes, you're right. Can you see?

No, not in the dark here. Can I find another tallow candle? Yeah, you can't. Can you light this? Put it in your hands. I light it with prestidigitation. As you light it on top of a side of beef, the fox is perched eating into, he goes, oh, I was doing this in the dark. I was eating, I was eating this beef.

I think that's more than all right, fox. Yeah. Got to get that night beef. The fox looks down and goes, whoa, these guys are dead. Dead, dead. Yeah. Dead, dead. Looking around at them, I'm just going to kind of look around the area at the bodies and at the floor.

Is there anything that I can divine about their purposes or where they were headed or what they had planned? Yeah, give me checks and spells. any skill check you want to make, any spell you want to cast, go for it. And Ursulans, seem for you. Ursulans looking over the body of Keen using his divine sense. You put on your divine sense and you sense quickly vanishing spirits of the dead as this is one of the first times that you've used your divine sense immediately after parting people from life. And you can sense the part of these wizards, which was eternal and is now no longer attached to any mortal form quickly departing from this place.

And you sense a nearby demon flickering from the edge of life. Vandal's sort of scattered body is on the ground. Vandal is not an organic creature, but... But his form has been unmade, and he flickers in a state somewhere in limbo between making and unmaking. Can I, what do I know about him? Can I take a little handkerchief and sop him up or try to do what I normally would do to spare the dying? Uh, give me a. So if it were a nature spirit, it would be different.

He is a spirit of the Citadel and the arcane specifically. I will ask for an Arcana check, but I'll also allow you to do medicine, and only one of them needs to beat a 15. So you get two chances. Okay. All right. That's a 15 total for Arcana. Okay, amazing.

You want to roll the medicine check too? Just my... That's another 15 for medicine. Hell yeah. You look where for something to stop him up with. and immediately have the instinct. You're fascinated by spirits. He is a spirit.

And in talking to Suvi back in the Citadel, you know that ink demons naturally form and constitute from the arcane ink that the Citadel Wizards use to inscribe their spellbooks. And you see unclaimed spellbooks of these dead wizards on the ground, which is, to your knowledge, that is where ink demons are born from. Oh, okay. So I open up one of the spellbooks.

I crack the spine and I flip it face down onto his ink blot to sop him up. As you crack the spine, that act of vandalism casts spare the dying. And you press it down. Does Ame say anything or do anything over the spellbook as you press it? You feel magical potency as you put the spellbook down and can cast the spellbook down. and can cast the spare of the dying cantrip. What does that look like? I put it down.

I feel warmth tingling at my fingertips on the spellbook, and I say, come on, you little shit wipe, you can do it. Come on, little buddy. As you flip the book over, Vandall's ink is gone from the ground. And as you look in the book, you see a scattered, faint web of red ink. sinking into the letters and towards the cracked spine of the book. And as the ink starts to pool towards the spine of the book, you see two little eyes open and their little bubbles pop in the ink.

And as it does in a very faint voice, I'm fucking... I love you to you, little. And you see that Vandal, uh, sinks. into an arcane torpor in the spine of the book. You don't know. On those two-fifteenths, I think you would imagine that it will take some either days

at the shortest, more likely weeks, for him to like sleep in this book and like in a deep, almost like a coma, like a magical coma. And, but over time, if no one messes with this book, he will reconstitute. Oh, may you dream of lewd sheep.

Ursulaan, rifling through Keynes effect, you find a number of things. Number one, you find his spellbook. Number two, you find two vials sealed of that white, milky, dispelling agent. You see in his bag on the tape. with his effects that were sort of taken off in this moment. There is correspondence from a place called the carnissary, which is in Cairo and appears to be, if not the major, a major guild hall of the class coronet.

Within this sort of satchel of his, you find a ledger book of, I actually ask for an investigation check here. 18. Let's go! Moving through, I mean, this is it, right? This is what it's about. You're moving through, looking through this place. The same instincts that lets you understand that this was a trap

allow you to understand that you are trying, as you do that divine sense and reach out for a connection, you, much like someone understanding the prey that they seek, go, how do I think like what I'm hunting? And you move into this position. of looking through a ledger book. You know, unfortunately, he doesn't have any letters being like, Wizard Keene, our evil plan, as you're well aware.

But he does have a ledger book. He does have what he needs to keep track of his own guild, and more specifically, his appointments. You see that about two or so months ago, he had a number of meetings with the Scepter's chorus in the city of Cairo. And you see that there looks like a transfer of goods from the Scepter's chorus to the glass coronet. And you see that there are indications therein that other imperial representatives would be at some of these engagements.

One of them that you see is the Lady Irriman Telniquet, who you didn't have any one-woman interactions with, but you saw her very briefly with the prince, with Prince Kamari Olfgang Saraz. Also, I think, in this ledger book of his, you find an address in the city of Cairo for the carnissary, which is it doesn't have a number of but it just says the carnissary at Cavender Court, which you would imagine having been in some larger, or having been in some places like Port Talon, courts are usually like a cul-de-sac onto themselves. It's like that the street is clear. They don't, the city is not such that they have to number buildings there. It's like, oh, Cavender Court is here, right? Yeah. His ledger book really fills up about two months ago.

It looks like around that time, things really start to pick up for him. and, you know, the timeline lines up for you pretty reasonably that the glass coronet has a huge uptick in not only its business, but the people it's speaking to. Meetings with imperial bureaucrats, meetings with delegates of the Citadel, meetings with the Scepter's chorus, meetings with the Azure Battalion, meetings with all different groups, starting in the aftermath of Naram's escape from Port Talon. that it is after those events. But I think what's interesting is there's a gap after that. Like, business starts to go up for him in the pretty immediate aftermath, but it is about halfway between then and now that he has his first meeting with the Scepter's chorus. And that's when everything picks up.

So it's like the glass coronet gets busy right away, but then they start talking to other people about halfway in between then and now. I think Ursulaan's brain spins on all of these thoughts, but is brought back to the present moment when he finds himself gripping the leisure book so hard. He tears the cover and realizes that the information in here is quite precious. and is going to close it and put it with his things. Did I see this? I don't hear this. You would hear a quiet kind of ripping, but apart from that, no. Oh.

See, the fox looks over and goes, are we messing with books? Well, no, no, not in this. He lifts a leg over a book. There's three books. Oh, Suvee would want this one. All right. You see, the last thing you'll find in his effects, by the way, is a, you see there is a small, circular flat piece of like sea glass that has writing in the lingua arcana on it. But you see that there is one piece of gold inlaid on the sea glass that has imperial writing, not writing in the lingua arcana.

that imperial writing has stitched in extremely fine molten gold lettering that just says, that says Cavender Court on it. But you don't, on an 18, you can't understand what the lingua arcana says, but it looks to you to be incredibly fragile. and there is a dotted line of gold points through the center of the sea glass disk that appears to not be, you wouldn't call it lingua archonic, because it's just, it's very much a dotted line. It looks like something. And you notice that the dots perforate into the sea glass pretty pointedly. They're not, they're deeper than the red. writing of Cavender Court is, they're, uh, they puncture the glass a little more deeply.

Understand what this might be. Take a look at it. Give me an archana check. I have never seen anything like this in my life before. In fact, I couldn't remember the word for C glass. Not this with a natural one. The natural one. Yeah.

It's magical for sure. Mm-hmm. Oh. Well, we'll have to ask Sufi what this is. Yes. How do you describe this fragile? I'm desperate not to break it. Ami, do you mind caring?

It seems, you know, I'm clumsy in those ways. Yes, I shall care for this. And Amme takes it gingerly and wraps it up in places it in a pouch. Let's get out of here. And Ame casts ceremony, but as a ritual, which is a shorter time, and she just claps her hands, and Keen's body just explodes, and she turns around without looking at it. Explodes? You heard me? Explodes into flame.

Whoa. Whoa. All right. Don't turn around. Okay. Is this, are you doing a funeral right here? Yes, it's a funeral right. But it's just so much more haphazard versus Captain Emlis and the rituals that she performed for other bodies.

This is just, she needs it gone. What does it explode into just viscera or does it? Yes, it's viscera and it starts to disintegrate in flames, withering into ash. The foxfire ember comes up from the center of his chest, spreads along his veins, and he scatters into gray tumbling ash as his body vanishes from the world. Are you hungry?

Incredible. The fox looks and goes, God's spirits, that the fuck is that. And it says, all right, let's go. He says, you're scared. I think Erzai, you remember a moment of Ame cackling, framed in light as Keen met his gruesome end. And maybe there's even a positive feeling towards, hey, sometimes you got to cackle and let somebody know they should have listened to you when you said, don't cross me.

I told him. He told him. He told him exactly what would happen. Stealth check. You have advantage, and the fox is going to give you a. advantage on a stealth check getting out of here, Ami. 19? 11.

Okay. As you begin to move out from this place, on a group, stealth check will take the 19. Thank you. But because both of you did not pass the difficulty, I'm going to ask, you get up into the courtyard back through the cheese shop where you came. This is nearer to the outskirts of town than the block and a half. half away where the horses are hitched. Are you going back to get the horses?

They will greatly increase your speed, but I will need you to make another stealth check that you will both have to pass. I think in Ursulon's mind, he was headed for the waterfront. Okay. If there is not a more convenient way back, then I think Erslan will lead us that way.

Okay. But I think it's the area where the horses where I think Ursula knew of craft that could take us downriver. Copy that. Either you can give me perception or insight in this moment. As you get through the cheese shot back under the street. 16 perception for Ursula. Okay.

Lots of activity. And this is, frankly, you've gotten out of that cheese. You know, I would say the Wizard Keane was alive less than five minutes ago by the time you get up out of the street. Oh, damn. Ame, what do you get? 12 perception. 12 perception. Okay.

You don't see your frenzy of activity right now. What do you want to do? Let's take the stealth checks. You're going to go further into time. You're not even going for the horse. You're going for the water. I'm going for the water. Okay.

I saw canoes. I saw other sorts of things. I think that's where Ursula's attention lies. Great. I am going to, once again, the fox is going to give Amme advantage. You have advantage from your boots. Okay. Go ahead and.

and give me the stealth checks. The difficulty, I'm going to let you know right now, is a 15. 12. You begin to move through the town. I would say you're within, you're probably like four blocks west of the town center, probably another seven blocks towards the waterfront, little sort of shopping area within Reedport. wagons, imperial soldiers everywhere.

And Ursula, about a block east of you towards the city center, you hear an imperial voice shout out. There she is! We've been here before. What do you do? How far are horses? And how far is waterfront? Waterfront is seven blocks away.

Okay. Horses? Horses are one block. past the voice that just shouted. Ursula, go invisible. I don't know, Amé. I think Ursula, hearing that, is going to walk normally

until he's not close enough to Amé to be associated with her and then go invisible. Okay, copy that. Amet, what are you doing? I see that there's a wagon moving down the alleyway towards the street where the horses are. I missed a step and I appear inside the back of the wagon. In a flash of mist, you and the fox are in the back of a wagon filled with war staves,

magical ammunition, summoning salt, binding things, weaponry of war, trundling along on a horse-drawn wagon. Soundlessly, you appear in there so the driver of the wagon does not hear you and you hear a voice going, She's teleported! As soldiers rush past the wagon towards the intersection you just left. Ursula, you are walking away from this interaction, and no one has any reason to recognize you.

The only interactions you've had in town are tying horses up and asking to help a cheese shop. So I think I'll bank down an alleyway, skip over a street, and then head down to the horses on a less turbulent boulevard. Hell yes. Amay, trundling along on the wagon, you realize that, yes, the Imperial soldiers, you were taken publicly by the Wizard King. The Imperial Army knows your face, knows how you're dressed, knows to look for you. And they know the fox. I would like to stealthily leave the wagon, but as I do, I pass my hand through my hair and I use disguise self at second level. Incredible. What does Amé look like as she changes her appearance?

As I step out, I am the most nondescript person. I'm a kind of unremarkable, unnoticeable person with clothes to match. As you begin to cloak yourself using this witch's magic, you can feel yourself borrowing faces and expressions and articles of clothing from the people around you. Like all which is magic, this is based on communion with the world that is and the world beyond. And so if you need to look like you belong in Reedport, just borrow those things that are of Reedport. And you create some average of the people that populate this place. The fox jumps into your bag.

He looks up, flattens his ears, twitches his nose, and goes, Barry Cunny. And you leap out of the back of the wagon disguised. You look down the alley and see Bear the strongest man in Silbury, untying the horses at the edge of the alley. I stroll over. Good day, sir. Miss, get away from me.

No. That's great. Miss Hands off. Good day, sir. Amé? Yes. See, I can be discreet. Look at that.

I think our plan should be to head out of Reaport and borrow some local's boat down the road. Saddle up and head out of report. No stealth check required because Amé is not. seen in this moment. You head down the road, looking for a friendly farmer, and let me tell you,

it's going to be very easy to buy a boat with three imperial horses. Suvi, early morning light is a sort of faint, muddy brown smudge towards

the surface of the river above you as you swing I am mightily downstream. From in front of you, Yoran speaks back and goes, You're friends. Last I heard, wizard, a guildmage may have them bound.

Get to the water's edge and we'll send up a scout to look. Thank you. You feel yourself in this moment as sort of the shape changers lurk at the bottom of the river. You see that one of the, One of them swims up towards the surface, and as it gets towards the top, just change into a duck that pops out of the water, shakes the water off its feathers,

and flaps into the town or from the port. Before that happens, just, sorry, walking it back. If I can speak underwater, can I cast? I think, yes, with water breathing, you can cast underwater. Yeah, cool. As I see, like, the scout sort of splinter from the group, I'm going to wave my hands underwater and then go, Hey, oh, I could talk. Oh, I could talk. Hold on. Look at me.

And I'm going to cast a series of Preston Digitations to make, like, 3D images of, like, this is what Ame looks like, this is what her fox looks like. This is what Ursulaun looks like. This is what Vandal looks like. And then Keen and as many of the like, as many of the guild mages as I can like reasonably attempt to recreate and just give them one-offs and be like, keep an eye out for all of these people. I just rolled in that 20. That's always fun. Let's go duck. You're lurking in deep water outside of a heap where you see big imperial barges moving overhead, and you see the shape changers all kind of in their monstrous forms look up at the ships that glide over them. And less than 20 minutes later, a duck hits the surface, swims down once more, and you see that a crocodile comes up to urine speaking to him and just goes through the town.

Oh, good for them. There is a search being conducted. Amé. And nothing of bear of Toma? There has been no mention of any bear of Toma. I know where they're headed. Ursula. Ami.

Arrive. at a small sort of like farmer's cottage, like probably like three or four miles down the road from Reedport. You see that there is an older woman here. This farm is largely like citrus orchards. There's like lemon trees and things like that here. And she looks at you and just says, well, for three imperial steeds, I'd be more than happy to give you a rowboat.

And I mean, these horses are worth far more. than that, but where are you attempting to travel to? You know that we are quite near the front lines. Yes, we have a... I have a, well, I'd like to think of him as a lover that is near the front lines. I kind of want to surprise him and see him before any action happens. Give me a persuasion check. I want to surprise my lover on the front lines is crazy.

She looks to you and says, oh, I remember when I was young. Tell me more. Well, my first husband. I'm so sorry, but we have to go. Oh, sorry, yes, I understood. Long story short, I snuck into camp, and I knocked one of the centuries unconscious, and I ended up conceiving my eldest that night. And I was later tried for.

treason, but I was acquitted because my lover at the time had been promoted to captain due to his heroic efforts in the war. And the century did recover. That is so romantic. I understand sometimes, if it might be the last time, I hope that in this embrace, if you wish, that you too become with child. Thank you. Your story will give me strength. Take a lemon. Oh, thank you. Let me take some citrus.

You see, the fox looks up here. Bear has watched the craziest shit happen in the spirit world ever. This human shit, though? This human shit, though? What? Thousands of foxes! Take a lemon, blow his back out. The fox looks up at you, Ursula.

and goes, I'm with you on this. It's quite strange. On this, I'm with you. I mean, I'm amazed we found another person who is also excited sexually by being so close to war. I think

humans associate doing it with death in a way I don't quite get. Me neither. It's like, oh, like. You've done.

it. Yeah. I've done it. I've done it. And if I feel like I'm going to die, I don't do it. Yes, as well. I've never done it with someone who was considering or ill or... I've heard the boss talk and be like, there's something like, oh, if you, like, if you get stepped on. And it's like, no, if I get stepped on, I'm hurt, so I don't want to do it. Amay was speaking about being stepped on and doing it. Well, she mentioned like a, it's that some people like a, you know, there's like a men, I don't fully get it, right? I don't even, it doesn't even like feel good necessarily. It's like you do it because you're, it's like, oh, I'm going to freak out if I don't do it. And then you do it.

And then you're like, okay, we did it. I've done it for doing its sake. Really? So you're like them. You do it. Since when, oh, I am not like them. Okay. I'm not like them.

Okay. I'm going to throw a lemon at you. Good. Just a rift. I am not like them. You are. You do it because it feels good, not because someone's in heat and they're freaking out. Watch it.

Okay. Bring me wrong. Bring me wrong. Amme is nibbling on her lemon. That's weird. You guys get this nice, sturdy robot. I think Ursula. I think Ursula and Amme, you would be aware that you're about a few miles from the front lines.

By the way, getting to the riverbank, there is about 15 feet of drop of just like wet earth and roots of the river receding, the water level dropping as it approaches 12 Brooks. You're probably about 20 miles still from 12 Brooks, but you're probably only two or three miles. miles from the front lines, which there's no universe where the river is not being watched, and there's no universe where, in other words, you're going to have to cross lines to get to the smuggler's cave, which means imperial attention, and then it probably shortly thereafter means goutth attention, means, you know, the houses of the Canterranach, right? So there's an element of the plan here. You have a boat. Getting to the smugglers cave is going to require some cleverness about how do you pass the front lines of combat?

You're trying to get from the imperial side over to the gout side. Are there any thoughts as you begin to, as you're preparing to set out on the river, about how you want to traverse that line, getting through the lines? How far are we from the line? About four miles. Four miles. Can we see the line? The lines will probably sneak up.

When you pass this farm, it'll probably start with either trenches or fortifications. There will be sky ships. Remember when you came out of Hallecker Forest and the Shrike descended almost right away? That feels like that will be the case. That will be the case, yeah. I think as they're kind of looking at the boat, looking forward, Amé, I can traverse the water. I can breathe underwater, thanks to Naram.

In terms of you, perhaps if we were to flip the boat you could maybe even stand on my shoulders and I could propel us through the most dangerous parts of our journey I see. Yes, that seems like it could work. We would want to do it under the cover of night.

Yes. Waiting for the cover of darkness, Amé and Ursulaan move down the muddy river bank, turning the rowboat over on its side. The fox is small enough to actually just rest on the underside of one of the robot's benches, on one of the planks. So he's like, um, comfy. Amay has to hold on with her hands with everything like chest and down in the water,

but your shoulders and arms up on a plank with air under the rowboat to breathe. I can also swim. Partially, yeah, but there's, oh, there's an issue of Ursulon can be fully submerged, under water, and the boat can look like debris, basically. Oh, can we do that with our, whatever time we have? Can we attach other, maybe sticks, perhaps some lemon branches? Give me either a craft check or a deception check, which I'll give you a deception check. I'll give you a deception check.

Okay. I'm going to do some sort of a survival check. Go for it. Let me see it. 17. 17. Getting very crafty and like a fixing mud and branches. So it looks like sort of a...

It looks like a clump of... You can see that the river, as it has descended, has gotten chunkier and muddier as there's less water kind of clearing things away. So the debris is kind of narrowed down. You create a pretty passing facsimile of what looks like river jetsam or river flotsam just kind of moving on its way down. And also like broken and battered boats in a war zone is not also that unusual either. You make your way all the way

lines. I will go ahead. Make some rolls behind the screen here. And I will ask us for a group stealth check with that 17 deception. You can go ahead and add a 84 to your roll here. 18. 18? 16. Ursula, you swim. The water cloaks you, the mud surrounds you.

You move. You're moving in the direction of the river. The swimming couldn't be easier or more pleasant. You look behind you from time to time, fastened by rope to the prowl of an upside-down rowboat. You see Amaze. her robe in the water as she hangs onto the plank with air to breathe Naram's gift moving you further and further down

breathing the water of this muddy river is sort of like breathing smoky air and fills your lungs with a sense of something sort of foul nearby muffled and feed of river water above you viewing the water flaming wreckage hit by fire of some sky vessel ripped apart in mid-air filled the river around you filled with the skeletons of ships there is some creature down here in the depths dead and rotting riverfish picking at it there's some 20-foot-tall giant with an elongated skull and sharp- clawed hands rotting at the bottom of the river an arcane lance pinning it down here with a shattered harpoon chain, some unnamed nightmare of war waiting for you. Perhaps only you will see it before the bones are picked clean, these lines. Something swims by you in the water, but ignores you. For a second, it felt almost like some spirit, perhaps under a bidding.

Not of a wizard, but of something else. Of that watch, undeterred, By its submerging after silence, knowing that you have swam far enough to be past the lines, you will need to confirm where you are on the river to find the smuggler's cave. How long do you wait before poking your head up out of the surface of the water? I think Barcelona is probably starting to feel fatigue, feel tired, but it's going to push as much as he can to when he really feels. silence. Great. You do the right thing, even in the fatigue, and even of the creeping dread of just

having your visibility and the shapes of wreckage and corpse lining the river. You go past that where suddenly those shapes stop. You know, the freshest wrecks are, of course, where the front lines are. But you get past that to where the river calms down again and some instinct. says go much farther than and after what feels like too long you poke your head up no stars no moon clouded skies pitch black and you cannot see trees by the riverbank the riverbanks here are clogged with a thick gray ash and you cannot tell you know that there are no trees near the riverbank, but you're submerged with the lessening of the water level. So you're just looking at ash-covered riverbanks and past it cloudy sky.

And you feel like the lifelessness of this visage you see is some vision of hell or an underworld based in punishment. And you cannot imagine what you will see if you climb out of this riverbank and look at the surrounding landscape. I thought it's going to swim, knock twice on the hull of the rowboat, and then swim under to be with army inside. Do you know where we are yet? Close. Past the lines, for sure. Seems truly terrible. I'm sorry we had to come here.

I'm not. This is exactly where I want to be. Pop back down. Arriving at a courage. of the riverbank. You pop your head out again, a couple more miles of swimming. You've just

had to swim about 18 miles from the length of, you know, it's like swimming from the top of Manhattan to the bottom. You, more than that, actually. It's like swimming from that.

Amme was kicking. She's helping. I helped. I helped. I helped. You arrive. at a bend in the river and you see exposed on that lowered riverbank

the opening of a smuggler's cave. You can see like a hitching post for boats that is now above, like, you know, 10 feet above the river level. As you popped up, you suddenly realized that you were swimming like a foot or two above the bottom. Oh, wow.

And like, and like three feet below the surface. Like the river has dropped now. As you get to the smuggers cave, you look and at the edge of your vision, you also don't know how you're able to see well until you realize that coming up out of the water, the dark clouds are reflecting light. There is a smudge of a hateful orange glow painting the underside of the clouds. something that you can't see in the landscape is creating light that dimly illuminates this riverbed.

You look, the water here is, if you swam another mile in this water, the water would become poison. You can see that the water actually just fades into rubble, maybe another half a mile downstream and vanishes. By the time this gets to 12 brooks, whatever brooks are in 12 brooks are stone dry under these orange clouds. But you see the smugglers cave up above you. Same knocks. Will you? All right. We should check to make sure that it hasn't been discovered yet.

Moving up towards it, do you want to use any of your abilities to sort of sense anything here? I'll open up my divine sense. Any presence is beyond the cave. I'm assuming the landscape is rife with. You anticipate a sort of landscape rife with the spirit, and you sense a landscape devoid of spirit. The same dread that would fill you if you dropped a stone down an open well and never heard a splash fills you as your divine sense reaches out.

to feel nothing. I listen and I smell in the quiet. Do I sense anything in the natural landscape of this place? In the cave, are there little mice, are there water bugs? Are there, is there anything that would lead me to believe that this place has gone to seed? Give me an insight check. That's a natural one. You reach out in this place and do what you have always done, which is you want to feel the vibration of the spirit.

For the first time in your life, you hear silence. It's like if someone lived their whole life. in a building that had busy foot traffic outside or people talking downstairs. There are noises of the spirit that you never knew were noises because they've never not been humming in the background. In the same way that a child raised in a city

will hear deafening silence the first night they sleep in the countryside. in the same way that you will stay awake in maddening silence if the spinning fan above your bed suddenly breaks one night, something whose breath filled the spirit of this land is gone. In a way you have never felt something be gone before. It feels like a pressure. and my eardrums, there's nothing. Moving up into the cave, cave is safe.

There is nothing in here. Quick cursory glance, small table. You see there's a bench that can open and fold. There are some moldy blankets. And off on a side, there's a little silver candle stand and a deck of playing cards. You see that there are some oars, off and aside. And at the back of this cave, you see that there is a sluice, an iron sluice

that leads to a flood offshoot built for if the river floods to save the city of 12 Brooks. And you know that that irrigation channel is made of mortared stone. And it runs deep towards the falls that is about, you know, that is about three quarters of a mile away, that this sewer will run and hit the northwestern outskirts of town in an aqueduct that connects to other smugglers' channels. This is the outer, outer, outmost storm drain of the city to protect itself. It's first line of defense against flooding. You find in this smuggler's cave.

And you can see the smugglers cave has flooded numerous. There's a reason that smugglers use what they can, right? They're like hiding in a place that's meant to fill with water, so on a bad night they can't use it. But Ursulaan and Amme, you see that there is a small table set with a couple candles wax dripping off it. And you see that set on the table is a small flat felt lily pad, a single gold coin resting on its side upright, and you see that there is a small depiction of a black boat. I think Amé looking at that lily pad, feel silence. You look at something and can't help but feel like in the way that if someone handed you a blank card on your birthday, if they gave you something

that was, that you're looking at that lily pad and it should mean something that it can't or doesn't mean anymore. It looks like there's nothing here. Just you, me, and two of the three? Yes. Shall we rest here? Yes. We'll rest and hope Sufi arrives tomorrow.

And if she doesn't, She will. We'll see. As you guys begin to bed down and get ready, it's only a few minutes. And Ursula, with that fading divine sense, looking at that little black boat, you see something move on it. There's a little bug or an insect. Can I, do I recognize the bug? though it is not illuminated as a little firefly

I approach it put my finger out Firefly walks onto your finger lazily flies out of the cave As you watch it go The entrance to the river fills with shapes Monster And suddenly as a man

Comes out and shepherds forward Sufi your true friend. I think Sufi coming out of the water moves through that like ash muck and like wipes it through her so she's covered in gray and then pressidigitates and dries it

and so it like hardens across her and then with just like a crack of her neck it all falls off. Took you long enough. That was Lou Wilson as Ursulon Erica Ishii as Amé Abria Ayangar as Suvi and Brennan Lee Mulligan as everyone and everything else.

Worlds Beyond Number is edited, designed, and scored by Taylor Moore at Fortunate Horse with additional sound designed from Michael Gelfy Studios. For even more like this, join us on our Patreon. We'll see you there.