S1 Ep4: Way Down We Go

[00:00:30] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Legacy, and I play Rosie. Brandon. [00:00:34] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Scott, and I play Arthur. [00:00:36] Speaker C: Hi. [00:00:37] Speaker D: My name is Elijah, and I play Zephyr. [00:00:40] Speaker E: Hello, I'm Zoe. Trooper. And I will be playing Victoria. [00:00:44] Speaker C: And I'm bloody porcelain. I will be your storyteller for the evening. Death and tragedy are as much a part of life as birth and joy. For every cherished child passed into the arms of a waiting and loving family, there is a death that rips another family apart. For every first cry of a newborn baby, someone dies alone. Each death a tragedy. Each loss. Each death a loss to someone, somewhere, even if it's just the person who did the leaving. There are those who look at tragedy and see the pain in the eyes of those who have lost. They see the horror in the death and destruction. They see the twisted metal and exposed bone, smell the blackened, burnt flesh and the flush of awful that comes with a quick and brutal end. Then there are those who look past the tragedy, who stare into the depths of that horror and look for the hand that guided it. Those who fight death incarnate where it stalks the land. Hunters are not forged in books and training. Hunters are forged in tragedies and bound by them, never to escape. Where others look and feel their bile rising, hunters are the ones who cannot look away. No matter how long the abyss stares back, the madmen cannot turn their gaze. The madmen cannot stop thinking about the images that they have witnessed. The mad men cannot run. Let's tell a story about the mad men. Good evening, players. In our last episode, there were several things that were different than what you have become accustomed to on this short time on the road. For one, Victoria was not with you. It was OD having to operate without her. You've gotten accustomed to her steady presence and her occasionally brutal way of dealing with the problem. You've gotten accustomed to the anger and surety with which she approaches every situation she's thrown into, no matter how uncertain she may actually feel. You also had, along with you, someone who was new to this life, someone who may have grown up steeped in many of the superstitions and wider views of the world, but who had never really hunted before meeting you. Strangely, her presence may have been what saved your life. You traveled to the bend from which Gila bend gets its name, and you faced off against a spirit that once belonged to a woman who was drowned during a witch trial. A woman who took one look at Arthur's mark of faith and of the clergy and attempted to drag him under with her. Somehow, though, that very same faith is what saved his life once he was out of the water. A little bit of faith and a whole lot of help from a friend that you may not have actually met had circumstances been even a little bit different? Wet and exhausted, but grateful for the lives which you walked away with, you returned back to town, dropped Julia off at her car, bought Arthur another pack of cigarettes and parked at the lodge, expecting that Victoria would show up at some point. Rosanna and Arthur got a drink. They went to the single hole in the wall bar in this teeny tiny little town and sat and got a little sloppy. Zephyr, I would like to know what you were doing while they were gone and Victoria wasn't back yet. [00:05:50] Speaker D: While while they were gone. I'm not too sure how long they were away, but a couple hours at least. A couple hours. Okay. So we most definitely left the ring in the room and took a walk up to the grocery store just to see if it would pop back on his hand in the meantime. And if not, just kind of wanders the town a little bit, just going over what happened with the ghost and it's just running in his head like he fucked up. He did something that potentially could get all of them killed and just came to the conclusion that once everybody's back together again, he's going to tell them what he did. [00:06:55] Speaker C: So where did you leave the ring? [00:07:00] Speaker D: It was a hotel that we were staying in, correct? [00:07:02] Speaker C: At the lodge? Yeah. Okay. Yes. So you leave the ring in the lodge and you go for your walk. It does not show back up on your finger while you are outd. [00:07:24] Speaker D: A weird feeling, not having it on? [00:07:30] Speaker C: No, not at the moment. [00:07:34] Speaker D: Okay. [00:07:35] Speaker C: I mean, it's one of those things where you've only been dealing with the ring for the day, so it's not like you feel like you're. [00:07:54] Speaker E: Not like. [00:07:54] Speaker C: You feel like you're naked without it yet. Although, I mean, you do definitely notice that it's not there. Like that weight isn't there. That pressure from it isn't there, but it doesn't show back up and you don't feel like bad about it. [00:08:14] Speaker D: Okay. Yeah. So I head back to actually, no, in the meantime, if it's not too late, I do want to go visit Gloria. The old lady. [00:08:35] Speaker C: Getting to Gloria's would require taking the camper. But you could do that. Oh, you have to remember, it's a bit of a haul. That's not an easy walk. [00:08:47] Speaker D: The distance between everything. In that case, I think I'll just use the hotel phone to call the flower shop, if it's still open. [00:09:04] Speaker C: Okay, so you head back to the lodge and you're in the room and you call Gloria's flower shop. And at first you don't think anyone is going to answer, but eventually, eventually. [00:09:32] Speaker E: You. [00:09:35] Speaker C: Somebody picks up and it's this little old shaky voice. Hello? [00:09:48] Speaker D: Hi. Is this Gloria? [00:09:53] Speaker C: Yeah, but we're closed. You want flowers, call back in the morning. [00:10:01] Speaker D: I was with the group that was with your granddaughter earlier. Sorry to call you at a bad time. I don't know what you said to me. Just I feel like I need someone to talk to that actually has their head on straight, their shit together. Yes. If you want to use that. Yeah. [00:10:30] Speaker C: So what did I say to you? [00:10:34] Speaker D: Basically said to make sure to keep my envy in check. Or it could cause a lot of problems, but it could also be used for good. And I feel as though I'm in a headspace where it's causing nothing but trouble. [00:10:59] Speaker C: So you haven't been doing what I told you to do? [00:11:03] Speaker D: Pretty much. [00:11:07] Speaker C: What are you going to do about it? [00:11:11] Speaker D: That's the thing. I don't know. I truly don't know anymore. Anyway, sorry to sorry to call you at a bad time. And then he hangs up. [00:11:34] Speaker C: Well, she doesn't really get to say much. You kind of hear her start to speak, and then you hang up. You slam the phone down into the cradle. [00:11:47] Speaker D: Yeah. And I just kind of sit there on the you do that a lot with phone calls. [00:11:53] Speaker C: Zephyr doesn't know how to talk on the phone, apparently. [00:12:00] Speaker D: Yeah, he's real bad at it. [00:12:02] Speaker B: I was nervous when he said you were going to make a phone call. [00:12:04] Speaker C: I was like, no, not again. [00:12:11] Speaker D: No, he's trying to make it right. But yeah, after that, then he just kind of paced around the room a little bit, going over in his head, like what he wants to say. Kind of packing up some of his things because he's like, oh, after I tell them, they're definitely going to kick me out. So he's kind of just preparing himself for that. [00:12:36] Speaker C: That's great. Make me a wits and awareness. Okay. [00:12:50] Speaker D: It think it with how many times I have to do it. I'd have it memorized. [00:12:57] Speaker B: Are you a role player? [00:13:02] Speaker C: Are you even a role player? [00:13:08] Speaker B: Self burn. [00:13:11] Speaker E: I'm playing victoria. I'm not one for. [00:13:16] Speaker D: Um I got two successes. [00:13:23] Speaker C: Nope. You don't notice anything. Okay. It's about this time that there is a knock on the door. Victoria, you got back to the lodge, found nobody in the RV. The RV was dark. So you headed inside to see if anybody is in the room. [00:13:49] Speaker E: Okay. If it's me knocking on the door, it is. Yeah. There's the tentative, like, tap, tap, tap. Do I have Gozer with me now? You do. Excellent. If that's the case, he does actually have a little harness now. Not that he has a lead or anything like that. He looks dapper in a harness. I don't even give Sephir time to really answer, just followed by suddenly I'm coming in. And then my boot hitting the door. And it kind of like buckling a little bit and opening. I may have done damage. It doesn't matter. What the fuck is everyone. [00:14:37] Speaker D: Knocking? Would have been fine. Rosanna and Arthur are gone. I think they're at, like I don't know, probably taking a trip somewhere. Probably kissing who knows? [00:14:55] Speaker A: You know what? [00:14:57] Speaker E: Not the first man of cloth cheating on his wife. Not going to touch that. This is Gozer. And I'll gesture towards the massive wolf dog to my left. [00:15:12] Speaker D: And Zephyr tries to hide it, but he's like a big animal person. So he immediately looks and it's kind of like I really want to pet him, but that'd be rude. But he's just like, oh, the harness is cute. Yeah, it matches your outfit. That's nice. [00:15:36] Speaker E: I thought it made him look pretty tough. I'm also told that I've never owned a dog before. Like, my parents won't let me have one, but I'm told they look less suspicious if they have harnesses on. So we're going to have this happen. He's a little skittish, but hopefully he'll adjust. [00:15:59] Speaker C: He is licking your fingers while you're talking, Victoria. Like he could taste the breakfast burritos you made in the morning. [00:16:12] Speaker E: Think of ghosts are kind of like me. Real quick to anger, but just don't react with fear. And you should be. [00:16:28] Speaker D: Know I'd much I'd prefer not to have another finger missing. So. [00:16:39] Speaker C: Victoria, will you roll me with awareness, please? [00:16:43] Speaker E: Oh, goodness. [00:16:44] Speaker C: I will do this. [00:16:51] Speaker E: Oh, I actually have a decent pool for this. Nope. [00:17:07] Speaker C: You don't notice nothing. Everything seems totally normal to you. [00:17:10] Speaker E: Can I willpower. [00:17:12] Speaker C: You can. Yeah, absolutely. [00:17:16] Speaker E: Two successes. [00:17:18] Speaker C: Still don't notice anything. [00:17:19] Speaker A: All right. [00:17:20] Speaker E: Everything's fine. [00:17:21] Speaker C: Everything's fine. This is fine. [00:17:24] Speaker E: So really they're hooking up. Did I hear you right? [00:17:29] Speaker D: Oh, I was joking. [00:17:32] Speaker C: Okay. [00:17:34] Speaker F: Sorry. [00:17:34] Speaker E: Been weird lately. Anyways, what did you guys do while I was bonding? [00:17:44] Speaker D: Well, we went to Goldil with the drownings. It was a river. Correct? [00:17:52] Speaker C: It was a river, yes. [00:17:53] Speaker D: So we went to go deal with the drownings at the river. [00:17:57] Speaker C: It was the kids, right? [00:18:00] Speaker D: Yes. I wouldn't say ghost because we could physically touch her, but yeah, pretty much almost died. So that's kind of cool, I guess. But yeah, we handled it. It should be safe now. Julia really helped. [00:18:27] Speaker E: Oh, shit. You okay? Do you want me to help with anything? Actually make those brownies you like. [00:18:44] Speaker D: Yeah, I could go for a brownie. Oh, I also went grocery shopping and I take out the little crumpled list that you made. [00:18:58] Speaker E: Awesome. [00:19:00] Speaker D: So that way we don't have to hassle the diner. [00:19:08] Speaker C: Victoria as you look at the list, you notice that everything except for one line has been crossed out. And that one line has a circle around it. Rosanna at some point added the line strawberry creams to the shopping list, but it is circled and Zephyr has written hastily above it. I don't think these exist. With just a little arrow pointing to them. [00:19:38] Speaker E: That girl's getting desperate. Yeah, this town haunted as heck. [00:19:46] Speaker D: It's interesting, but I'm not surprised. It seems fairly old. It's probably just those two that have been causing very noticeable problems. This lounge could be could be haunted. [00:20:12] Speaker E: Could be hopefully whatever's haunting the place doesn't bother us, hopefully. And I kind of look out the door a little bit before making sure it's shut. Hopefully there's no biters in this town. [00:20:33] Speaker D: Well, we've only been here a few nights, so who knows? Maybe it's also very hot. [00:20:43] Speaker E: It's hot. It's small. Ghosts. Ghosts. [00:20:52] Speaker C: They have their functions. [00:20:53] Speaker E: They do their thing. Fighters. Unpredictable sometimes. [00:21:00] Speaker D: Yeah. Do you need help making those brownies, or do you prefer me to just kind of, like, loom over you while you do it? [00:21:16] Speaker E: You want to hang out with Gozer? I want him to get to know everyone just with caution. [00:21:25] Speaker D: I would appreciate that, yes. [00:21:28] Speaker E: Okay. Because he's part of the pack now. I don't know how I pulled that off, but he seems to really like me, so hopefully he really likes all of us. [00:21:43] Speaker D: I mean, you're a pretty likable person, so it's only natural. [00:21:49] Speaker E: Zephyr, you're a bad liar. [00:21:52] Speaker D: Jeez not lying. Am I? I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, so he's going to slowly approach the Gozer without making eye contact and just kind of, like, sticks a hand out a little. [00:22:14] Speaker C: Okay, make me. Let's go. Composure in animal ken. [00:22:23] Speaker D: Okay. [00:22:25] Speaker E: I want to say that for Victoria's part, she's learned that body language is probably the most important communication with him. And so when Zephyr approaches, she does not really react. She seems totally relaxed and just starts going about her business. [00:22:40] Speaker D: Got one. [00:22:43] Speaker C: Um, Gozer seems a little standoffish, but doesn't seem, like, bothered by you. Does that make sense? Like, he just sort of sits there as you get closer and just sort of watches. Seems very laid back about the whole thing. In fact, as you look at them, you realize that considering that Victoria is purposefully looking really laid back and not bothered, he has almost mimicked her stance, where he's just like, all right, I'm here. Here we are. This is a thing that's happening. Cool. [00:23:27] Speaker D: Yeah. And if he'll allow it, I'll try to give him just a little head scratch. [00:23:32] Speaker E: Little reward for good behavior. Yeah. [00:23:36] Speaker D: Okay. [00:23:38] Speaker C: He gives Victoria this almost side eye look like he's like, Is this okay? Is this okay? We're good. Okay. And then he'll kind of nudge his head forward and allow for Scritches and Victoria. It takes a couple of minutes for them to settle and for Gozer to see more than just I'm just going to sit here and be accepting. But after a couple of minutes, when it becomes clear that this is normal and you're approving and everything's good and he's allowed to move, he walks over to the bed where Zephyr is sitting and proceeds to just sort of, like, flop his head in Zephyr's lap, like, all cool. You're a friend, so now you're going. [00:24:24] Speaker E: To pet me part of the pack. That's exactly what. [00:24:31] Speaker C: Like, just as soon. [00:24:32] Speaker D: As he does, Zephyr is like, this is probably, like, the hardest you've ever seen him smile. He's just, like, crying a little. [00:24:45] Speaker C: While he's petting. And the funny part is that Gozer doesn't seem like hugely it's not, oh, we're best of buds now. But it's you are a hand that is safe and I expect pets. It is. I'm going to demand what I want from you. [00:25:07] Speaker E: As Victoria's cooking, she kind of turns to look at this happening and just know I had that moment at the shelter with him too. Healed my heart a little bit. [00:25:25] Speaker D: Yeah, he's very comforting and I'm just like so bad. [00:25:33] Speaker C: And as Gozer lets out a kind of huff, that noise that dogs make where it's just a huff through their nose, we will pivot to the sloppy drunks and you guys have hit the point where you've gotten sloppy. You're quickly honing in on, maybe we should get home. [00:26:03] Speaker A: It can't be that far of a walk in it. [00:26:09] Speaker B: I don't remember actually how far this place was from the lodge, but I think if we go is there more than one road in this town? I can't remember. I think if we just go down the road, like 50 50, we're going in the right direction, right? [00:26:26] Speaker A: Okay, here's what we'll do. We'll flip a coin and whatever we got. Tails this way, heads this way. This way, this way. Okay. [00:26:41] Speaker B: Arthur goes to flip a coin and just loses track of where the coin went. I don't know. I think it was heads. So we'll go that way. [00:26:52] Speaker A: Let's go. [00:26:55] Speaker C: I love it. Okay. [00:26:57] Speaker B: The big UFO thing, right? That's what it was. We got to head toward that, right? [00:27:01] Speaker A: Wasn't it there? [00:27:02] Speaker B: Wasn't it a UFO thing of the lodge? Arthur's going to grab some random personal street. Hey, where's the UFO place? Just trying to get back. [00:27:14] Speaker C: You grab a local who is almost as sloppy drunk as you are. It seems like there aren't too many people who go to the bar in this small town, but those who do are regulars. They're there every day. And you grab this guy and you give him just this littlest shake and he sort of wobbles on his feet and his eyes are rolling in his head and he's like, what? UFO? No, not again. They can't take me again. No. [00:27:49] Speaker E: Let me go. [00:27:51] Speaker A: You're the UFO people. Did you oh, fuck. Did you just happen to you? Did it happen? [00:28:05] Speaker B: This guy this person is traumatized. We're going to let him go to sleep. [00:28:09] Speaker C: Go to sleep. [00:28:14] Speaker A: I'm going to just lean in and rest my hand on this guy's shoulder and just give him a little pet and be like, it's okay. [00:28:26] Speaker C: Wow, you're real pretty. [00:28:32] Speaker B: So are you, buddy. [00:28:35] Speaker C: Sure. [00:28:39] Speaker B: Hey, we should probably get back though, because Bet Zephyr's probably tried to figure out where we are. We didn't tell him where we're going. We just kind of left. I just realized that I'm going to have to apologize to him. [00:28:54] Speaker C: I'm sure it's sounds like an alien name. [00:29:02] Speaker B: Go to sleep. [00:29:03] Speaker A: And then she's going to put her finger to his lips and be like, goodbye, goodbye, stranger. [00:29:15] Speaker B: Wait, did we just say heaven that way or that way? [00:29:18] Speaker A: Oh, fuck, I don't know. [00:29:19] Speaker C: Hey, let's just go this way because. [00:29:22] Speaker B: There'S a stoplight over there. Maybe that's the right direction. [00:29:26] Speaker A: Did we pass a stoplight on the way here? I barely remember what we talked about. None. I kind of stumble over a little bit. [00:29:40] Speaker B: Arthur will catch you so you don't fall. And then okay, let's hold on. This ground is a little uneven, so just be careful. Okay? [00:29:49] Speaker A: Just be careful. [00:29:50] Speaker C: We can do the flattest ground ever. [00:29:53] Speaker B: 1Ft in front of the other, but not so they touch because then you fall over. So don't do that. [00:30:01] Speaker A: Okay. And then she's actually I'm going to almost sloppily wrap my arm around his to kind of keep my foot in. [00:30:14] Speaker B: Secret. [00:30:15] Speaker C: Arthur. [00:30:15] Speaker B: Arthur is using that same balance to keep himself not from falling. [00:30:20] Speaker C: I fucking love it. Okay, so it takes a bit. It's not a long walk to get back to the lodge, but you guys managed to go in the wrong direction three times before you figure out where you're supposed to go. Or you went in the right direction the first time, but you didn't go far enough and so you thought that you were going the wrong way and you turned around and went back. But eventually you get there and Victoria and Zephyr and Gozer all hear them coming because they are giggling and talking at an inordinately loud volume considering the hour Gozer's head pops up before the rest of you guys hear it. And he gives this little wine and his ears kind of tilt forward like he's honing in on the sound. And then a few seconds later, sephiroth Victoria, you can hear it too. [00:31:16] Speaker B: God, this town is just amazed. Jeez, how many roads does the town that need? [00:31:23] Speaker A: One too many. [00:31:26] Speaker B: Oh man. [00:31:27] Speaker A: I think when they land like not when they land, when they get of course when they get to where the motel is. I think at that point Rosanna is just going to plop on her ass and kind of like look up at the sky. I think I'm fine here for. [00:31:55] Speaker B: No, you can't stay outside. You know better than that. There's like stuff in the dark and we kill it. And we've already killed something today. We shouldn't kill two things today. [00:32:07] Speaker A: We shouldn't kill two things today. But I haven't seen the stars in forever. California sucks. [00:32:16] Speaker E: I am going like since I hear this probably quite clearly at this point. [00:32:22] Speaker C: I'm going to oh yeah. [00:32:23] Speaker E: Peek my head outside of our lodge door and I go, shut the fuck up. [00:32:29] Speaker B: Oh, victoria's back. Hey, victoria's back. [00:32:34] Speaker C: Um, Victoria at your annoyed voice, Gozer is on his feet at the door. His head is out the door under yours. And he's growling. And it's this low, menacing growl. [00:32:52] Speaker E: See, I don't want to mad at those two because they're part of the pack as well. But I'm just kind of giving, like, the firm. Like, you guys know better than to say these things. Middle of the street, get in here. [00:33:10] Speaker D: I also stick my head out, and if they need help, try to it's. [00:33:14] Speaker C: Like in a cartoon where it's just the stack of heads coming around the corner. [00:33:18] Speaker D: What's going on? [00:33:21] Speaker B: Okay, come on. [00:33:22] Speaker C: Come on. [00:33:23] Speaker B: Get up. Get up. We got to go in. [00:33:28] Speaker A: And then she's literally just going to use him as, like a I'm going to use him as kind of, like, a way to kind of get up. She just kind of clings tries to not fall over. Kind of grips him with as much strength as the drunken beanstalk hand, I guess. And then kind of get up. And once I get my foot and I'm just going to kind of grab back onto him. And is there, like, stairs that we need to climb, or is it, like, flat? [00:34:03] Speaker C: No, there's no stairs. This is all one floor. [00:34:07] Speaker A: Perfect. And then she's just going to kind of, like, guide him back to the motel room. [00:34:18] Speaker C: Goes. Are Prances kind of under beside you, Victoria, where he's like he doesn't know how to react to the stumbling. Loud don't. He doesn't seem to mark them as threats, but also, you seemed angry, and he has been mimicking your behavior a lot, so he looks a little uncertain as to how he is supposed to react. [00:34:52] Speaker E: Yeah, I'm very aware of this, and I do not make any motions to touch them because I don't want him to construe that as me being violent and he should attack. So I'm just kind of like, giving them their space, letting them move in. Once we head into the lodge, the four of us, and Gozer close the door and go, sorry, don't mean to be a Debbie Downer. You two look like you had fun, but maybe not talking about murdering people in the middle of the street in the middle of the night. [00:35:32] Speaker B: Victor, we don't talk about murdering people. [00:35:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that's against the wall. [00:35:40] Speaker D: It's a good way to get water. [00:35:45] Speaker A: Who dared do they nobody talk about the murdering people. I'm looking at you, and she's pointedly pointing at absolutely nothing. [00:36:00] Speaker B: Arthur's gonna slump down in the chair. Oh, I had a little too much drink. I think. [00:36:07] Speaker E: Zephyr water a good also, maybe maybe a brownie or something to soak up the Buddhas. [00:36:15] Speaker B: Hey, you got the dog? [00:36:19] Speaker E: Yeah, I did. This is Gozer. You're going to interact with him more when you're. [00:36:30] Speaker B: That is he wearing clothes? [00:36:33] Speaker E: It's a harness. [00:36:35] Speaker C: Because he looks tough in it. [00:36:38] Speaker B: Harness. Hey, we could get one of those things from City Hall. That makes him a service animal, right? Like harness. I don't know what I'm thinking. I need to go to sleep. [00:36:48] Speaker E: Do you really want to be those people? [00:36:53] Speaker B: What people? [00:36:56] Speaker E: The fake service dog. [00:36:57] Speaker C: People. [00:36:59] Speaker B: Is that a thing? [00:37:00] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:37:01] Speaker D: Yes. [00:37:05] Speaker A: Who would do that? [00:37:09] Speaker E: Hopefully not. [00:37:10] Speaker B: Anyway. [00:37:18] Speaker A: I'm going to go to bed now and just kind of stand up, wall before a little bit and walk off to one of the beds and just collapses. [00:37:34] Speaker C: So the night before, Rosanna and Victoria were asleep in the RV. I guess Rosanna has claimed one of the beds in the lodge tonight because she's not sober enough to get much further than that. So I guess my question is, after Rosanna kind of collapses into bed fully clothed, still, with her shoes on and everything, what are the sleeping arrangements going to look like? [00:38:05] Speaker B: Arthur is going to go to sleep in the chair unless someone forces him out. Then he'll go to the RV, probably because a bed's been claimed and the other one doesn't belong to him. [00:38:17] Speaker D: I'll go sleep in the RV. [00:38:21] Speaker E: I was also kind of thinking of sleeping in the RV, but the drunks have passed out, so it's not as much of a loud drunk issue anymore. [00:38:31] Speaker C: Well, Victoria and Zephyr sleeping in the RV is totally fine. You guys did two and two before. Question is, do you guys just leave Arthur in the chair with his head all hanging off to one side, or are you going to attempt to nudge him into a bed? [00:38:48] Speaker E: He's lucky I don't draw mustache on him. [00:38:54] Speaker C: Oh, no? Really? [00:38:56] Speaker D: Yeah, I'll draw a little mustache on him and then take a cigarette while he's passed out. Okay, but I won't take the whole pack. [00:39:04] Speaker C: Do me a favor. Roll me, Dex. And stealth. I just want to see if you manage to draw this without waking him up. You're going to get the cigarette regardless. [00:39:16] Speaker D: Okay. Three. [00:39:31] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Easy fucking peasy. I was only really going to let him roll if he'd only rolled, like, a one. You pull out a little magic marker that you found in the RV and draw this obnoxious handlebar mustache on Arthur's face, and it's the kind that stretches from directly under his nose, like, all the way almost halfway to his ear before it curls, which is hilarious considering that he also has, like, a goatee. [00:40:14] Speaker D: I'm just filling it in, giving you a little extra work of art. [00:40:23] Speaker C: But you guys grab your brownies and head for the RV and leave the drunks to sleep it off. Arthur in the chair, and Rosanna passed out fully clothed on top of the blankets on the bed. [00:40:37] Speaker E: I would like to say I will remove Rosanna's shoes. I'm not gonna UnCloth her, but I will tuck her in, and I will put a little pan beside her bed just in. [00:40:46] Speaker C: Oh, so Arthur just gets fucked. You're not taking care of Arthur at all. [00:40:55] Speaker E: I take his arm and I wrap it around a bucket. [00:41:02] Speaker C: Oh, I love everything about this. Okay, so you guys head off for the night. I'm going to need a couple of roles from a couple of people. Zephyr, I need you to make your haunted role. Rosanna, I need you to make your nightmares roll. Let me know what you rolled. [00:41:45] Speaker D: One success. [00:41:50] Speaker A: Three successes. [00:41:53] Speaker C: Okay. Zephyr, did I give you a threshold that you had to meet? [00:42:02] Speaker D: No, because I think I've passed. Like, most of the roles I've done, it's been at least three or more for that one. [00:42:09] Speaker C: Let me scroll up then. Okay. Right. That's the one where if you roll high, you're less likely to get screwed over by it. [00:42:31] Speaker A: Okay. [00:42:32] Speaker C: Rosanna, you are so incredibly drunk that even if you had a nightmare, you're not going to remember it. Zephyr, you toss and turn a lot at night. Maybe it's the ring, and that weirdness. Maybe it's the fact that you nearly died today, but you are unsettled, to say the least and not entirely sure why. In the morning, I'm going to make a judgment call and say that Rosanna is not the first one up for once, because that bitch hung over. Instead, I'm going to assume that Zephyr and Victoria probably wake up at about the same time because Gozer is the first one up, and he wakes you all up with this little yip and a whine, and he is standing by the door of the RV like, I need to I need I need to go. And he's doing, like, the potty prance. [00:43:42] Speaker E: Yeah. Victoria, with her complete lack of shame, gets out of bed in her tank top and boy short underwear. And just we're going we're going outside. And she will open the door and. [00:43:57] Speaker C: Head out like this without the door is open. He bolts like he's just gone. And by the time you get to the bottom of the steps, he has already found, like, a patch of dirt and is sniffing and looking for the place where he's going to do his business. Zephyr, you got woken up by the same thing, the yip and then the impatient wine, like, please wake the fuck up, you stupid humans. What are you going to. [00:44:32] Speaker D: Like just as soon as I get up, it's a little bit of panic, mostly because of the bad dreams. Is he okay? [00:44:43] Speaker C: Are you okay? [00:44:45] Speaker E: He has to pee. Do his good. I'm just, you know, waking up. Don't have my coffee yet. [00:44:54] Speaker C: Zephyr, it's worth noting that you woke up and opened your eyes just in time to see Victoria's almost bare ass. She's got her little boy shorts underwear on, but that's it. [00:45:09] Speaker D: He doesn't really react. He's seen plenty of naked before. It's just a body. [00:45:17] Speaker C: That's fair. He was part of the cult with the many marriages. [00:45:24] Speaker D: Honestly, if it was possible, he'd probably live in a nudist colony. [00:45:29] Speaker C: Damn. All right, then. I learned something new about Zephyr every session. Okay, so it takes a while. Victoria and Zephyr, you guys have plenty of time to get yourselves together, make breakfast, enjoy some quiet before one of you, probably Victoria, realizes. That you're not going to get on the road and get going if somebody doesn't go in and wake up the sloppy drunks. [00:46:01] Speaker E: I will note that after we've eaten, I've made meals for Rosanna and Arthur as well. So it's like, okay, we got to get them up, get food in them, get going. [00:46:14] Speaker D: Do you want me to wake them up? [00:46:17] Speaker E: Sure, yeah. Tell them food is ready. A shower might do them. Well afterwards, just remind them of showers. Speaking of smell like dog, we're all going to smell like dog eventually, but would be nice. [00:46:33] Speaker D: Yeah, I'm going to go back in and wake them up. I'm assuming the door because Victoria kicked it and that it's like that too. But I'm assuming that the door is a little jacked up. [00:46:49] Speaker C: Before, it worked fine, but now you. [00:46:51] Speaker E: Got to lift it a little bit. [00:46:52] Speaker C: When you're opening it. [00:46:54] Speaker D: Kind of shove your body against it, almost fall while you're going. [00:46:59] Speaker B: If that's how you come in, you certainly would wake up a hungover arthur's just oh. [00:47:06] Speaker F: Why the noise? [00:47:09] Speaker D: Victoria broke the. [00:47:15] Speaker B: All right. [00:47:18] Speaker A: How the fuck did we get here last night? [00:47:22] Speaker D: Well, you both came in very loudly talking about killing things. So then we had to help you in, and then we put you in the beds. [00:47:38] Speaker C: Well, you put Roseanne victoria put Roseanne. [00:47:41] Speaker A: In the, like, looks at the chair. [00:47:44] Speaker B: And just goes, oh, you huh? [00:47:47] Speaker D: I did what could. [00:47:50] Speaker A: Oh, well, thank you for making sure that I at least gone to bed. Sorry about last night. I don't remember how much we had to drink. [00:48:06] Speaker B: I do remember one thing. Nobody cut us off. So this town slicker laws. [00:48:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I'm going to go and shower the alcohol off of my body now. [00:48:23] Speaker C: There is a knock at the door, and it's loud. [00:48:30] Speaker B: I got this, I got this, I got this. And Arthur will open door first and, like, with his game face on. Can I help you? [00:48:44] Speaker C: You see the owner of the coffee shop and the lodge standing there with a drink holder with three cups of coffee in it. I got a call last night, and I thought you could use this. [00:49:05] Speaker B: Hey, thank you. [00:49:14] Speaker C: Well, please tell me you didn't throw up on my carpet. [00:49:19] Speaker B: Arthur honestly not remembering. We'll look around to see if he sees anything. [00:49:24] Speaker C: You didn't. It's fine. [00:49:26] Speaker B: Upon seeing nothing, he goes, Nope, did not do that, sir. We took good care of your room. And then, like, notices the door handle and just kind of covers it with his body. [00:49:36] Speaker A: When Arthur turns around. Do I see the mustache on his. [00:49:42] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, the guy in front of you looks non plused, but also a little bit like he's trying not to laugh. But yes, when Arthur turns around, rosanna, you see the mustache? It's a little bit smudged on one side where it looks like Arthur, like, rubbed at his face or something. [00:50:02] Speaker A: Arthur, darlin. Come here. We got to clean you up. You got a little messy last night. [00:50:09] Speaker B: Take the coffin. Thank you very much for this. It's really appreciated. [00:50:13] Speaker C: I mean, you're getting billed for so and then he'll turn and walk away. [00:50:20] Speaker B: I expect as much. I expect as much. [00:50:23] Speaker C: Victoria, you also got a cup of coffee, but he stopped at the RV to give it to you. When he noticed that you were outside with Gozer, he stopped to hand you a cup hey, thanks, man. And seemed far less annoyed with you. [00:50:38] Speaker E: Well, I'm taking one of the wolf dogs off of the town's hands, so I imagine I'm kind of a hero at this point. [00:50:47] Speaker C: He also didn't get a call that you were sloppy drunk and wandering the streets last night. [00:50:52] Speaker E: You know what? That's fair. And the less he knows about me kicking. [00:51:07] Speaker A: Gonna run in and grab a face cloth and just kind of spin Arthur around slowly because he has hot coffee in his hands, I assume. [00:51:16] Speaker B: Whoa, slow it down. [00:51:17] Speaker C: He does. [00:51:18] Speaker A: And then she's just going to take the washcloth and just kind of gently start to scrub off, I imagine. [00:51:29] Speaker C: Pen no, magic marker. [00:51:32] Speaker A: Magic marker off of his face. I guess you and I had a little bit too much fun last night. [00:51:37] Speaker B: Awkwardly going to look at Zephyr while this is happening and going like, hi, budy. [00:51:43] Speaker D: Don't look at me. I didn't do anything. [00:51:46] Speaker C: So the thing about magic marker on skin is that there's only a couple of ways to truly get rid of it. So while the mustache is less obvious, it's really only less obvious because there's no defined shape. Now it's just this weird black smudge across Arthur's face. It's going to take some proper soap and water and maybe some rubbing alcohol or nail polish remover to really get it off. But, you know, now it just looks like he's got grease on his face instead of a silly handlebar mustache drawing lots and lots of grease all across his upper lip and cheeks. [00:52:39] Speaker A: I'm sure that you'll be fine after a shower. Speaking of which, and then Rosanna's going to take off and duck in and try to get the first one. [00:52:54] Speaker C: Okay. So for the sake of brevity, because I didn't expect this to be an hour long endeavor, not that I'm complaining, because this was hilarious, and I feel like you guys could use the pressure release. We're going to skip ahead a little bit. Everybody gets an opportunity to take a shower. The owner, in fact, is so eager to get you guys out by checkout time that he opens up a second room so that you guys have two showers that you can use. Because he realizes that the hungover people are going to take a little while, and he's like, look, my maid's only here for a couple of hours. I've got to get you guys out of here so that she could actually do her job um, so and because I know you guys are not necessarily looking, danger just went up to four. Good. [00:53:59] Speaker B: Well, damn. [00:54:03] Speaker C: You didn't think that just because we were having a silly, funny ha ha scene that nothing bad was happening in the background, did you? So it's almost noon by the time you guys all get your showers. You all get cleaned up and changed and get all your shit together, and you head out to the RV. Where what's y'all's plan? Oh, no, wait, hold on. I have another you. So Victoria brought you a change of clothes while you were showering, but she really just grabbed, like, jeans and a T shirt. She didn't really care. She just wanted you to have clean clothes that didn't smell like booze. You're not pleased with what she brought you. You have this intensive desire to put on white today, so you throw on the clothes that she brought you because it's what you have available. But the second you get to the RV and somebody else goes into probably Victoria goes into the shower to take over and clean herself up. You go digging through all of your clothes to find the white dress that everybody can see you wearing on camera right now. You feel very pretty. [00:55:39] Speaker A: It's been forever since I've gone to wear something like this without much fear. And to make things even prettier, she throws on she's got, like, a small collection of different types of jewelry depending on the circumstance that she needs it for. And she pulls out a little watt choker with a little gold ring around it and just kind of very gently puts it on and does up her hair a little bit, throws on a little something for color and just kind of, like, looks in the mirror for a good second. [00:56:16] Speaker C: You are quite pleased with what you see. Once everybody is collected in the RV and Gozer is settled, who's going to be driving? Are we making the hungover Arthur drive? [00:56:37] Speaker E: I would like to drive. [00:56:39] Speaker C: Okay. [00:56:39] Speaker E: I also like for Gozer to be in the passenger seat when dogs sit in vehicles and they're just kind of. [00:56:45] Speaker C: Like so Victoria's going to drive and Gozer's going to be riding shotgun. Perfect. [00:56:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Arthur would have gone to sit in the passenger seat to navigate and then. [00:56:57] Speaker C: Sees the growled at slightly by Gozer, like, this is my. [00:57:05] Speaker B: That'S that's he's. [00:57:09] Speaker E: He'S hanging out with me. You're kind of hungover, right? So maybe take it easy. [00:57:15] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's a good point. Hey, I know we're not going to get to Florida in, like, a day, but can we just make as much progress as possible to get there? [00:57:26] Speaker E: Sure. What do you think for tunes today? Heavy metal, please. [00:57:31] Speaker A: No. [00:57:32] Speaker E: Please? [00:57:32] Speaker A: No heavy metal. [00:57:35] Speaker B: Silence would be great. [00:57:36] Speaker A: How about some loud jazz if we're going to throw on music or something? Not. [00:57:44] Speaker E: I was kidding. Mostly. [00:57:46] Speaker B: Yes. [00:57:49] Speaker D: I kind of never mind. [00:57:53] Speaker B: And then going to sit back down. Arthur, seeing the way that Roseanne is dressed, he will sort of try to remove his phone and incognito as much as possible, remove something and be messing with his phone for a minute before putting it back in his bucket. [00:58:11] Speaker C: Okay. [00:58:14] Speaker A: Does he look suspicious at all? [00:58:16] Speaker C: He does look very suspicious. Don't be suspicious. [00:58:23] Speaker B: If somebody's like, looking at him, he'll just kind of set his phone down for a second, and then when people aren't really looking at him, he'll go back to what he was doing. [00:58:30] Speaker C: Hold on. I would like you to make a manipulation and subterfuge role. Absolutely. Anybody who would like to notice this should go with we'll say, what's an insight. [00:58:45] Speaker D: He said, what's an insight. [00:58:47] Speaker E: I'll pass because I'm in the driver's seat, and I'm probably doing checks and pulling out. [00:58:53] Speaker C: Makes sense. [00:58:54] Speaker A: I'll do it. [00:58:59] Speaker C: Hmm. Yeah, you can you can have your your specialization. [00:59:09] Speaker D: I got one. [00:59:10] Speaker B: Get three. [00:59:12] Speaker A: Okay. I've got a roll too. I got two. [00:59:23] Speaker C: Okay. You all don't notice anything. Arthur's, despite being very hungover, is somehow being incredibly subtle, which is a nice change, frankly. [00:59:43] Speaker B: He plays the not subtle so that when he is subtle, no one notices. [00:59:48] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm sure that that screaming about killing things late at night in the middle of the street was you purposefully being not subtle. [00:59:58] Speaker B: We don't talk about killing people. [01:00:03] Speaker C: Okay. Victoria, are you actually going to be turning on the radio? [01:00:08] Speaker E: Yeah, but I will kind of find something that's, like, either news or just kind of the droning voice that we become accustomed to on most long trips. Jazz would also be nice, or even just classical, because Victoria has a soft spot for classical music. [01:00:25] Speaker C: Okay. You find a local classical station. It's one of those weird Am stations that's, like, half classical and half, like, talk radio, but half of the talk radio is in Spanish instead of English, so you don't even really know what's going on most of the time. You just know that occasionally there's good music, and it's subtle enough that it doesn't hurt anybody's ears or brains. Does anybody have anything that they would like to do while y'all are on the first leg of the. [01:01:09] Speaker A: Like to I would like to go to where Rosanna keeps all of her stuff, and I'm going to grab so those who know Rosanna know that she has two laptops. She has one that is bright purple case, and then she's got one that's kind of a black case. I want to take out the one with the black case. I'm going to kind of bring it back out into the area, which we're all sitting for the first time, maybe in forever. I didn't show up at 08:00. [01:01:51] Speaker C: Oh, that's true. You did not. You're going to pop into your chat room and check on your people? [01:02:00] Speaker A: I'm going to check on my people. [01:02:02] Speaker C: Okay. It takes a little bit to get a decent enough signal because you're in the middle of nowhere and you're moving, but eventually the drive actually takes you a little bit closer to Phoenix and that helps a lot. And kind of gives you the boost that you need to actually jump through your VPN and all the stuff that you have to do to do this safely. But, yeah, you managed to get on and get into your chat room with all your people. [01:02:35] Speaker A: Beautiful. All right, is sorry I didn't show up yesterday without warning. Hope everybody is having a solid day. What is going on? Somebody tell me a story. [01:02:57] Speaker C: Okay, let's see. Can you do me a favor and make me roll me two dice? [01:03:09] Speaker A: Okay. [01:03:14] Speaker C: And at the same time, I'm going to need a roll from seven and a four. Okay. Seven and a four. I have to look at something. Sorry. I'm referencing old notes, and they're hiding from me. They know. They know what's about to happen to you people. They're attempting to stop me, but it won't work. Arthur. [01:04:08] Speaker B: Yes? [01:04:09] Speaker C: Roll me a stamina and resolve check, please. [01:04:19] Speaker B: Okay. Is this something I could willpower or no. [01:04:34] Speaker C: I got no. [01:04:36] Speaker B: Okay, two. [01:04:37] Speaker C: Okay. Zephyr? [01:04:42] Speaker D: Oh, God, yes. [01:04:45] Speaker C: Roll me a stamina and wits check, please. Okay. [01:04:54] Speaker E: All these interesting roles happening. [01:05:01] Speaker A: Roll cuteness, please. [01:05:04] Speaker B: Quick bookkeeping note. Did we gain back any willpower? [01:05:08] Speaker C: You did you did you got your willpower up to your composure or your resolve? [01:05:14] Speaker B: Cool. Just checking. [01:05:15] Speaker C: Sorry. [01:05:16] Speaker D: I got two. [01:05:19] Speaker C: Excellent. Arthur? [01:05:28] Speaker B: Yes. [01:05:30] Speaker C: You take one. Superficial damage. [01:05:35] Speaker B: Physical damage. [01:05:36] Speaker C: Yep. Zephyr, you are going to get an extra health box, but it should be at superficial to start with. So you essentially have an extra health, but it's already got superficial damage in it. Makes sense. [01:06:03] Speaker D: Interesting. Yes. [01:06:10] Speaker C: Okay. Rosanna, you ask for people to tell you a story. A lot of it is kind of the same old, same old. You know, there's the pretty standard. You know, the Vatican is doing this and the government's behind that and Gladius day this. And just all of these names that you hear every time you log in are getting thrown around. There is a comment that one of the regular people, he's not really one of yours, but he is somebody that you interacted with on a regular basis called the hidden King has not been around for like, a week. Nobody's heard from him, which is incredibly unusual. He's here every day just like you are. In fact, they were worried that something had happened to you when you didn't show up after he'd been gone for a week. [01:07:16] Speaker A: The way that this room works is it like profiles? Is it kind of like discord? Can I dive in and see if I can check in on what's his name? [01:07:34] Speaker C: Hidden king. [01:07:35] Speaker A: Hidden king. [01:07:38] Speaker C: It does not work quite the same way. There are logs, but the logs really mostly just show coming and going. [01:07:51] Speaker A: Okay, I want to see if I can access a private room and add him in. [01:08:04] Speaker C: Yeah, you can. He's not online right now. [01:08:07] Speaker A: That's fine. She'll send a message. [01:08:18] Speaker C: Okay. [01:08:19] Speaker A: Where have you been the last couple of days? It's not like you to be without contact. Where's your story? [01:08:34] Speaker C: All right, obviously, you don't get an answer back because he's not online, but the message has been left, and if and when he comes online, he will see it, presumably. [01:08:57] Speaker A: Okay. [01:09:02] Speaker C: Someone talks about there was a newbie who came in yesterday and was talking about that they think their local diocese is covering up hauntings in their town, that they contacted the Church because a number of people have complained about weird things happening in their homes. And they've sent out priests to bless the homes, but they insist that they don't do exorcisms anymore. And the priests insist that everything is good and cool and groovy, and they've done the blessing, and everything should be fine, but people are still dealing with weird shit going on. [01:09:51] Speaker A: Hmm. [01:09:57] Speaker C: But they were somebody totally new, and they haven't really they haven't been back on since last night. [01:10:06] Speaker A: I like to get their name as well. [01:10:09] Speaker C: Yeah, that's easy enough. Their name was Strawberry Shortcake. [01:10:31] Speaker A: I see. All right, well, Strawberry Shortcake and my Hidden King, they are now on my radar. Perfect. [01:10:49] Speaker C: Okay, so you have a couple of leads, a couple of couple of things that have been brought to your attention that you were not expecting. [01:11:02] Speaker E: You. [01:11:06] Speaker C: Kind of chill out, chat with your people. It's fairly laid back. There isn't usually a lot that goes on during the day. Most of your people have jobs. Even though most of them are probably, like, freelancers who work from home, they still have things that they have to do throughout the day. They're happy to sit here and have conversations with you and report in the couple of things that they have found and whatever, but there isn't a whole lot going on except that there has been, like, an uptick in there's just been, like, a weird number of local legends and ghost stories that have been popping up online. They're more predominant than usual, which is weird. That being said, you guys pass to where you're about an hour and a half, 2 hours outside of Phoenix in Victoria, the radio starts to lose signal on that very cool channel that you were listening to that station. And as you go to start scanning and looking for a new station, will you please make me a wits and awareness? [01:12:19] Speaker E: All right. Is this a listening role? [01:12:36] Speaker C: It is, yes. [01:12:37] Speaker E: That means I can actually depends on how rowdy the van is or the RV is. [01:12:44] Speaker C: Well, you're fine. They're not being very loud because two of them are still pretty hungover. [01:12:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Arthur is as silent as humanly possible. Scribbling in his journal at best. [01:12:54] Speaker C: Yep. You hear, you know, Arthur Scribbling in his journal and Rosanna tapping away on her keyboard and I don't know what Zephyr is doing, but none of them are being all that loud, probably. Okay. It doesn't take long at all. I knew you were going to hear something. It was just a matter of how long it was going to take you to pick up on it. As you are scanning through the channels, the static sounds weird. And at first you think that it's like another talk radio station because you are on the Am band, and that's about all there is. It is Arthur's favorite band for a reason. But after a moment, you realize that you're actually hearing you are hearing talking, but it is not like the flow of conversation that you would expect from a talk radio station. It's kind of abrupt and sounds a little frustrated. [01:14:11] Speaker E: Call for help. Actually, given that I'm worried that it's someone actually radioing for help. I'm going to pull over. If the highway is not busy. [01:14:27] Speaker C: It's not. [01:14:28] Speaker E: Okay. And I'm going to see if I can try and clean this up. Like, wiggle the antenna a little bit. See what I can do to have this come in a little clearer. [01:14:40] Speaker B: Everything all right there, Victoria? [01:14:42] Speaker E: I hear something weird. [01:14:46] Speaker C: Make me an intelligence and technology role. [01:15:00] Speaker E: Oh, goodness. I want to make this role because I think it would be really amusing. But if someone wants to fly in and help Victoria, it's probably going to be needed. [01:15:13] Speaker B: Yeah, Arthur was going to because as soon as Victoria starts doing something and since we didn't have her last time, he's certainly like, whoa, hold on. If she's doing something, we should I. [01:15:22] Speaker E: Would like someone else to make this role. But basically you all are watching her tinker for a bit, and then she. [01:15:27] Speaker C: Just kind of slams her hand on. [01:15:29] Speaker E: The radio a whole bunch of time trying to get it to work. [01:15:33] Speaker C: Whoever is taking lead can get an additional die for each other. Person who has technology, I can take. [01:15:40] Speaker A: The lead because I probably have more dots in technology. [01:15:44] Speaker C: Does anybody else have dots in? No. So it's just you. Okay. [01:15:53] Speaker A: Wow. [01:15:54] Speaker C: I won't put you at a disadvantage because Victoria's smacking the radio. [01:16:01] Speaker A: Victoria, stop. Get your hand off of it. [01:16:04] Speaker C: I'm fixing it. [01:16:05] Speaker E: This is how you fix things. [01:16:07] Speaker A: No, it's not how you fix things. By just hitting. [01:16:15] Speaker E: Like I back away. All right. [01:16:21] Speaker F: Please stop hitting the fucking radio. It's his voice. Kind of like six. [01:16:28] Speaker A: Success is critical. [01:16:30] Speaker C: Yeah. It comes in very loud and very crisp all of a sudden. And it's that voice that you just heard. [01:16:38] Speaker F: Yeah. It was like somebody speaking through a window or through a pool of water. Crackly static at first, but it's this sound of this very discontented man. And he would say in a pause after the radio stopped being abused, and he would say, can you hear me? [01:17:03] Speaker A: Yes. [01:17:07] Speaker B: Can radios hear us? What is going on right now? [01:17:11] Speaker E: If you fucking bugged my RV. I'm going to find where you are, and I'm going to kick your ass. [01:17:19] Speaker F: Fucking finally. Okay. God, where do I even begin? [01:17:29] Speaker B: Maybe explain how you can talk to us through a radio spirit. [01:17:34] Speaker D: Do I recognize his voice? [01:17:38] Speaker C: You do not. [01:17:39] Speaker D: Okay. [01:17:45] Speaker F: Well, it's you know, I you know, I've been thinking so much about what I would say when I actually was able to talk to somebody. Now I'm here, and fuck, I don't actually know what to do. My name is Max. I've been trying to get in touch with you for a very long time. You're in danger, but I guess you already knew that, right? And things are getting a little more complicated. Um I'm I'm dead. I I have been for about two months now. But I'm really glad that we can talk. [01:18:47] Speaker E: I halt my search for the bug in the van. At this point, it's like, okay, I haven't. [01:18:55] Speaker C: Victoria? Not Victoria. Rosanna. Will you do me a favor and make me a Wits awareness check, please? [01:19:04] Speaker A: Do I get any bonuses to this? [01:19:08] Speaker C: No. [01:19:09] Speaker A: Okay. I'm going to reroll those two failures, two successes. [01:19:26] Speaker C: Okay. Max, you are concentrating very, very hard on Rosanna, as you have been every time you have attempted to make contact, because she's the one that, you know, you can interact with without quite so much effort. Eventually, as this is going on, as you are explaining that you are dead and that you've been trying to make contact for forever, you realize that she may be able to see you again because she's seen you before, just never in any sort of clarity, and she's never been able to hear you at the same time. You are essentially standing behind her right now. [01:20:27] Speaker F: Well, he would definitely reach out and place a hand on her shoulder, but I think he's probably exhausted from trying to speak through the radio. [01:20:43] Speaker C: Yeah. So your hand passes directly through her shoulder. But, Rosanna, you do feel something somehow, both hot and cold all at the same time on your shoulder, and you just know instinctively that there's something behind you. [01:21:03] Speaker A: Turn around to get a good look at him. [01:21:09] Speaker C: You see a tall, broad, dark figure that looks shadowy and staticy at the edges all at once. You've seen this figure before? Multiple times, and his hand is out like he was just touching your shoulder. [01:21:30] Speaker A: I reach my hand out to touch his. [01:21:37] Speaker C: It passes through, but again, it feels hot and cold all at the same time. [01:21:47] Speaker F: So I think this goes without saying, but maybe it's not a good idea to have the RV pulled over while we're all running. [01:21:56] Speaker E: Do I hear this? Since you've stopped using the no, you. [01:22:01] Speaker C: Still hear through the radio. [01:22:02] Speaker F: Yeah. [01:22:02] Speaker C: You just can't see them. [01:22:04] Speaker A: Okay, victoria, start driving. [01:22:06] Speaker E: It sounds good. And I will start driving away. [01:22:12] Speaker B: Arthur will try to move to the passenger seat again and be like. [01:22:18] Speaker C: Can. [01:22:19] Speaker B: We move the dog. Thank you. [01:22:20] Speaker C: Goes or whines and looks at Victoria like, mom, my seat. And his ears kind of lay back. And he goes to lay down. Although he prances nervously around the space where Max is Rosanna, you can see him pointedly avoid getting too closer to Max than he absolutely has to. And he goes all the way to the back of the RV, jumps up on the bed in the back, and lays down. [01:22:55] Speaker F: So if it hasn't become abundantly clear yet, I don't have anything against the four of you. I kind of hoping maybe a really informal radio talk might be a little less shocking than the two women you met. Right. [01:23:21] Speaker C: Right. [01:23:21] Speaker A: Right. Who are you? I think I know what you are. [01:23:43] Speaker F: So my name is Max Kaplan. Special Agent Max Kaplan. I was a field operative for the Orpheus group. And I guess it kind of goes without saying that you all have kind of started to notice what I've noticed and the fact that there are quite a few upticks in the hauntings down here in the south. Right. That was my work when I was alive, kind of. And I think maybe naively, that's one of the reasons I'm able to talk to you now. I've been trying to get in touch with you well, with Rosanna, to make things a little less complicated. It's less exhausting trying to talk to her than the rest of you. But I've been running just like you have because there's something that is not quite right going on. And I don't know exactly how to say it in a way that you'd understand, but these women, it's not their fault, right? [01:25:37] Speaker E: What are they doing? [01:25:39] Speaker B: Is this about the fact that there was no haunting for a long time and then suddenly there were two? [01:25:46] Speaker F: There's more than two. You're going to find more. You keep heading east, you're going to find a lot more. Right. There's a lot of blood in the earth down here. There's a lot of restless dead I wish I could show you. Right. But I can't. There's. [01:26:16] Speaker B: What are you running from, Max? [01:26:26] Speaker F: I don't know how to say it in a way that you would explain, but something is broken. Right. I figured it out while I was alive, and they killed me for it. Right. And there's something in the how do I even put it? There's something in the there's a boundary between us. [01:27:04] Speaker C: Right? [01:27:04] Speaker F: You can't see me. I can't really see you. Right. I'm not supposed to be here. Right. But I am. And I feel really angry, and I feel really guilty, and it's not my fault, but it was. And, um I don't know. I don't know what to do. You have to fix it. I can't. You're alive. I'm not. [01:27:44] Speaker D: Is it like a veil kind of sure. [01:27:48] Speaker F: Right. I think we called it the shroud when I was alive. [01:27:58] Speaker D: And then you mentioned that they killed you was it the people you were working for that killed you? [01:28:06] Speaker F: No. Yes and no. It's something deeper. We're at the upper level right now, right? You guys are alive. I'm a little one step away from that, and then maybe ten steps further on, that's where something's broken. But when people die, the Shroud kind of thins, right? It's like the river where the woman drowned at. She came back because she died there. And then she kept dying there over and over and over and over again. And then she killed, what was it, three people? And then it thinned even more. Right? It's a lot easier to it's a lot easier to reach across when there's a lot of death in the world, right? At least for me, and then for them. And am I making sense? I'm sorry. I haven't talked to anybody in about two months, and I'm trying to get it all out at once, and it's not working. [01:29:36] Speaker A: Hey, don't wear yourself, then. [01:29:43] Speaker E: Given my interest in secret societies, have I heard of the Orpheus group? Let me see. [01:29:55] Speaker C: Do you have the prerequisite skills to be able to even make a check for that? [01:30:01] Speaker E: Well, if it's technology, I can't it is not technology. [01:30:09] Speaker C: Yeah, I will allow for you're not going to be thrilled with me. Intelligence or occult or politics? [01:30:27] Speaker E: Just straight, like intelligence plus occult or intelligence plus politics. [01:30:32] Speaker C: No plus I'm sorry, that's your dipole. You can pick either politics or, uh. [01:30:39] Speaker E: Did you want to help me, Rosanna? [01:30:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Given what I know about, if I can. [01:30:48] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:30:48] Speaker E: So stream of consciousness, I'll start mumbling about the Orpheus group, because I actually know something called the Orion Group, but I'm trying to starting to string those together. [01:30:59] Speaker C: Not only can Rosanna help you, but Rosanna can give you two dice instead of just the normal one. [01:31:16] Speaker E: Successes. [01:31:18] Speaker C: Very nice. That's solid. So between the two of you, rosanna, you didn't realize that you knew who the Orpheus Group was. That's not a name for them that you had ever heard. But going back and forth with Victoria, you realize that you've actually encountered an awful lot about this group because of your specialization in wraiths and ghosts. Victoria, you had heard because of your underground connections mostly. You had heard that there was a corporation, effectively, that utilized ghosts and the ability to interact with them and connect to them. You don't know how they do it, but they have found a way to interact with and connect with ghosts on the other side of the shroud in order to use them to glean information. So they effectively have, like, an impenetrable spy network because they use ghosts to spy on people. Rosanna, you knew about this. You knew parts of that. You weren't aware of the specific spying. You knew that it was a group that had figured out how to interact with the dead. You had kind of always assumed that they had just a. Lot of mediums and psychics on the payroll that they were going up and finding freelancers and scooping them up. And you knew that they are that they they have messed with enough, like, supposed hauntings and long standing long standing haunting stories that they had kind of popped up on the radar of a lot of people in your circle because these people would kind of breeze into town and their dark SUVs with their cheap dark suits would breeze in, seem to do a lot of tests and browse, go through a lot, tour a lot of these old haunted locations, and then would never leave things the way that they found them. [01:33:54] Speaker A: Is it safe to say that Rosanna does not like the orpheus group all that much? [01:33:59] Speaker C: I mean, that's up to you if you think that she wouldn't like them based on what she knows. I'm totally fine with that. You know that a lot of people in your circle don't because the orpheus group doesn't seem to have the level of respect for the supernatural that the people in your circle do. [01:34:18] Speaker E: As I'm driving and we stop having this conversation, it all comes together in my brain. I just start laughing and I'm like, oh, that makes so much sense. Oh my god. Okay. For you that don't know, back when I was in the Linnaeus society, we were told about the orpheus group who use ghosts to spy on people. They can utilize the veil, the shroud, whatever this Max guy is talking about. They can use it for information gathering. This makes a great deal of sense. [01:34:55] Speaker A: Fucking orpheus group. Oh my god. You know, your people never had an ounce of respect for anything that they ever came across as the nerve on that fucking group. [01:35:09] Speaker B: So they spy on people. Do they keep notes and stuff on people? Is there like files? Is this like a bureaucratic agency or. [01:35:17] Speaker F: Is it like typical corporate espionage? Right? It's everything you think it is literally. [01:35:26] Speaker A: Turns ghosts into capitalism. [01:35:30] Speaker E: The funny thing is I thought this was a joke. [01:35:34] Speaker A: Nope, far from it. [01:35:40] Speaker B: So, Max, if you kept files and you're having a hard time explaining stuff to us, is there a backup of your files anywhere maybe that would help us understand what you're trying to say? [01:35:58] Speaker F: I don't remember. [01:36:03] Speaker B: Mean fair. I assume that when you die, certain things just kind of slip your mind. I can only hope, actually. [01:36:17] Speaker F: I don't know if what's going on is natural or not. I don't know if I don't I feel so guilty about it. But also I don't right. It's like there's this thing and it's looming over this whole inner state, right? And I don't know if it's supposed to be there or if it's just this it's like there's this giant I don't even know how to say it. There's this giant shadow and it's and it's feeding these it happened what was her name? And the outline that is max would kind of begin, like, pacing just a little bit for Rosanna, as if he's trying to rack his mind, and he would say, the woman in the car crash, and then the woman in the river maybe you didn't see it. It's not their fault, but they were forced to go through it again. The car crash, and then another car crash, and then another car crash, and she drowned again and again and again, and they were both just kept happening, and I don't want to go through that. Okay. You need to do something about this. [01:38:11] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. You, um the shroud, as you call it, thins. Can more of them get through? [01:38:45] Speaker F: I don't know. Right? I think so. That's the working theory. Right. But we would only do it in these contained we would have these contained experiments back when I was alive, and it wouldn't you know, we wouldn't let we wouldn't let it get out. We wouldn't let normal people get involved. Right. But whatever's happening, it doesn't care about that. Right. And it's spreading, and it's trying, and it doesn't care, and I don't know what it wants. [01:39:33] Speaker A: We'll look into it. [01:39:36] Speaker F: You have to look into it, because if it can happen to me, then it can happen to Jillian. [01:39:45] Speaker D: How do you know that name? [01:39:48] Speaker F: I've been following you a long time. [01:39:52] Speaker E: How long have you been dead? Two months. [01:39:54] Speaker F: You said two months. [01:39:59] Speaker B: Where were you when you were last live? Where did you die? [01:40:05] Speaker F: I don't remember. We were everything is up until up until when I die, I don't know what was happening to me, but everything in the weeks before I before I crossed over, they are fragmented. It's fading in and out, in and out. I have glimpses of things that I remember. I think I was in New York. I don't know. I don't know. [01:40:59] Speaker B: You've been following us for two months. Then the whole time you've been dead longer. [01:41:10] Speaker C: Max, you first figured out where to start looking for Rosanna about a month, month and a half ago. And you tried her home, but she wasn't there. And then you had to keep looking, and you finally tracked her down in California. [01:41:30] Speaker F: In about a month, I think. A month and a half. It's complicated. [01:41:40] Speaker A: His figure looks familiar to Rosanna. [01:41:46] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. No, this is more than, like I'm not even going to make you roll for this. You saw this guy, this figure on your security camera at your house the day that you went to go meet Victoria, which was about a month, month and a half ago, give or take. [01:42:02] Speaker A: Oh, my God. [01:42:04] Speaker C: He's been following you since before the cell was a cell. [01:42:11] Speaker A: You're him. I saw you in my home. I saw you outside in the RV. Outside when we were when I was doing dishes, and oh, my God. How did you find me? [01:42:36] Speaker F: It's a feeling thing. You're you're less grounded than your friends here, you. [01:42:51] Speaker C: Feel almost like a magnet to you. [01:42:53] Speaker F: You're easier to talk to. I can't I can't touch anything. No one can hear me. And so I you know. [01:43:12] Speaker C: For what it's worth, Max, the old lady in Hila Bend was also somebody that you felt really drawn to and like, you could maybe talk to, but you couldn't get past her property border. There was something that almost physically stopped you from stepping onto her property. Like it was warded or something. [01:43:29] Speaker F: Right? [01:43:35] Speaker B: So just in the spirit world, then, the other side of the shroud, you just kind of were attracted to Rosanna in general. I'm just trying to figure out if you died and then your spirit was like, I got to find this person because maybe Max, maybe all this stuff you're talking about, maybe you're actually accidentally working for whatever it. [01:44:03] Speaker F: Don'T say. [01:44:06] Speaker B: Sorry. I'm not trying to certify. I'm just trying to figure out if you can't remember how things happened. [01:44:18] Speaker F: I am very aware of a couple of things, and it's all feeling okay. [01:44:27] Speaker B: Okay. [01:44:30] Speaker F: I wish I could write it down. I'm running out of time. Something's wrong, and you have to fix. [01:44:41] Speaker C: It. [01:44:44] Speaker F: Or else I'm fucked. And I've been running from everything orpheus has its we have field agents in the Shroud. I think they can see me. And there's all these other people who are stuck here, right? And I don't want them to find me because I feel like if they find me, then I won't be able to fix what's broken now. [01:45:23] Speaker A: I'll help you. [01:45:26] Speaker F: Thank you. [01:45:31] Speaker A: Um whatever. You can remember? Anything? Anything? Maybe maybe a journal that you kept or maybe, like, a tape, video? Anything where we could possibly find one? [01:46:01] Speaker F: It's one of these things that I feel. I worked with a woman named Kate Denison, and I did something really bad to her. [01:46:21] Speaker A: What did you do? [01:46:22] Speaker F: I don't know. [01:46:25] Speaker A: Is it that feeling? [01:46:29] Speaker F: I wasn't myself up until I died. There was something else. It's like I was taking a backseat, right? Like I could see everything that was happening, but I wasn't exactly there in it. And I think this is my fault. But I know that I can fix it. Or maybe that I can't. But I have to. [01:47:05] Speaker D: Have you have you told anyone else? [01:47:09] Speaker F: I can't talk to anybody else is fucked up. But I think the only reason I've been able to is because things are getting worse. [01:47:28] Speaker C: Arthur, your knuckle dusters. Your brass knuckles are glowing faintly. You, at the very least now know that whoever this voice is, whoever this Max guy is, he's supernatural. It's not someone with a radio just fucking with you. [01:47:56] Speaker F: Surprise. [01:47:59] Speaker C: I need scrolling up, scrolling up, scrolling up. I need Zephyr to roll me four. Dice and Scott to roll me six. [01:48:16] Speaker B: Okay. [01:48:23] Speaker C: Just four. Okay, just four. [01:48:30] Speaker D: I got just one. [01:48:32] Speaker B: I got four. [01:48:35] Speaker D: Can I burn a willpower to reroll that or it's not absolutely you can't two okay. [01:49:01] Speaker C: Arthur, you're sleepy. You're just tired. Maybe it's the hangover, but you're just feeling a little drained right now. You're just like, oh, God. Zephyr, you feel good. Like, exceptionally well rested. You can take that superficial damage off that extra box that you got. [01:49:32] Speaker D: Question answer. Is the ring back on my oh, yeah. [01:49:39] Speaker C: Yeah. You don't know when it got back on your finger, but it's back on your finger. [01:49:46] Speaker D: And is Arthur wearing his ring? [01:49:50] Speaker C: Yeah, unless he took it off, which. [01:49:54] Speaker B: I assume he yeah, no, he's always wearing his wedding ring. [01:50:05] Speaker D: Can I'll wait until after this interaction with Max? [01:50:10] Speaker C: Okay, continue. [01:50:16] Speaker F: Sure. [01:50:16] Speaker C: People have questions. Max has things he wants to. [01:50:23] Speaker F: Look, I know that I'm not exactly trustworthy. Believe me, I do this for a living, right? Once upon a time. So I'll just do you a favor, okay? Journey a little bit of goodwill. So you know who you should be talking to and who you shouldn't. Rosanna. [01:50:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:50:56] Speaker F: You're not alone. There's somebody intermingling with you. She's got a long wedding dress on. She's connected to Zephyr, and I don't know why, but I can see it. And you two and then the staticy kind of outline that is Max that only Rosanna could see would point at Arthur and Zephyr. He would say, there's something wrong with you too. You're tangled. He would say, that probably is about the best word he could it sounds like he kind of stumbled into that word, but it kind of is about as accurate as he's going to get. [01:52:18] Speaker A: He's pointing to you, Arthur and Zephyr. [01:52:28] Speaker D: What do you mean, tangled? [01:52:30] Speaker F: There's a line, and he would this for Rosanna's benefit, this outline is kind of stretching its arms out like it's pulling thread. He would say, you can see it when someone has a someone dead. Sorry. Has a has a deep connection to something we I it's emotions and and feeling. I keep going back to that, but that's the only way I could think to say it. It's just a feeling. [01:53:21] Speaker D: Gonna look at Arthur. Do you think it's Jillian? [01:53:31] Speaker B: I could be. I mean, it could be. It could be just the speaker still trying to get us. But Max, you're saying it's someone dead that ties us that tangles. No. [01:53:54] Speaker C: No. [01:53:54] Speaker F: You two are alive. I don't know. I've never seen it before. I don't know what I'm looking at. There is one other dead person here, and she is he would kind of square himself in front of Rosanna. He would say, it's like looking at two people at once. [01:54:25] Speaker A: Do I feel anything? Now that he points it out? [01:54:32] Speaker C: Make me wits and awareness. [01:54:45] Speaker A: No successes. [01:54:47] Speaker C: You don't feel shit unless you want to reroll. You don't feel anything. [01:54:57] Speaker B: So there's someone else here and must be no. [01:55:07] Speaker F: No, it's not Jillian. [01:55:10] Speaker A: Long wind dress. Last I checked, Jillian never got married. [01:55:17] Speaker C: Arthur, you would know. She did not. [01:55:23] Speaker F: It's like out of the 50s. It's one of those really old frilly poofy ones that your grandma would wear. [01:55:30] Speaker B: The girl we saved, the spirit we released. And I look at Rosanna. Did we not release it? Rosanna? [01:55:41] Speaker A: I haven't been able to tell. I can try connecting and seeing, and maybe I can see her. Maybe. And Rosanna begins to very it does that thing that she does when she starts to get nervous. Her hands start to start to squeeze and tense, and it looks like she's trying to grasp for literally anything. And she kind of turns around, and it's like one spin, two spins, and she's like she's looking around. And I close my eyes. I take a deep breath. Okay. And I'm going to try to see if I can again. I want to try to feel her. Maybe I was just a little bit stressed or something. Maybe it's the weirdness of Max and them actually getting to talk to him, but only I can see him. I want to try to see if I can see this woman after taking a moment to breathe. [01:56:59] Speaker C: Okay. And your pool is four dice for what's? In awareness. [01:57:05] Speaker A: Four? Yeah. [01:57:09] Speaker C: Let'S go with composure and awareness because you're actively fighting your anxiety. [01:57:32] Speaker A: I'm going to reroll that. Three successes. [01:57:39] Speaker C: Okay. So at first, you don't get anything. You're so freaked out. And Max is, for better or worse, kind of a big presence to try and see through or to see with him present. It's like he's he's pulling all of your attention. In fact, as you forcibly open up that inner part of yourself that makes it so that you can tap into stuff like this, you realize that ghosts feel a little bit like magnets. A lot like how he described the way that you felt to him. Like you feel drawn to that presence, but after a minute or two, you manage to kind of like it's almost like have you ever seen those weird 3d posters where you have to stare at them and cross your eyes and look at them at the corner of your eye in order to actually see the picture? It's a little bit like that. And you realize as you're doing it that you look down and you can see this wedding gown on your body. And when you move your hands, it's like there's another hand that is also moving with yours, but it's got, like this split second delay. [01:59:05] Speaker A: Oh, my God. [01:59:10] Speaker C: For what it's worth, Max also comes into slightly sharper definition. He's still a little blurry, still a little dark, but you can make out that he is wearing, like, an Oxford shirt, like, button up with a tie, with dark hair. He looks a little bit more like a man and a little less like a weird, shadow, static person. [01:59:41] Speaker A: You know, I've pushed my limits. You look really nice, Max. What the hell is going on? [01:59:53] Speaker D: Can I look at her? Reflection to see if I see it, because I remember seeing, like, a flash of her with curly hair and a dress and see if I see that again. [02:00:09] Speaker C: You go to try and look at her reflection, and she looks like her in the white dress that Legacy is currently wearing. You do remember, though, that every time it looked weird to you, every time her reflection or her shadow showed up a little weird to you, it was always out of the corner of your eye. And by the time you turned to look, it looked normal. So it's like when you're focused on it, when you're actively looking for it, you can't see it all. [02:00:46] Speaker E: I got to say, you all are weird. [02:00:52] Speaker B: You're weird. [02:00:54] Speaker E: How do I get to be the normal one? [02:00:56] Speaker C: Shut up. [02:00:56] Speaker E: Zephyr not weird. [02:01:02] Speaker A: You're a little weird, but it's a good weird. [02:01:06] Speaker B: Hey, Victoria. Don't worry about it. You're right. We're all weird. So you're the most normal out of us. Four weird. Five. Six weird, apparently, yeah. [02:01:18] Speaker E: I'm not haunted half dead people, if I'm understanding this right. [02:01:23] Speaker B: Yeah, apparently not. Apparently, you're fine. Apparently. You're safe. [02:01:29] Speaker F: For now. [02:01:30] Speaker A: Why? [02:01:30] Speaker E: I'm driving. I just. [02:01:42] Speaker A: Rest my hand on top of the figure's hand that is also resting on my hand. If that makes, like, Rosanna just kind of like I assume that they just see her resting her kind of like this, but she's trying to you guys. [02:02:10] Speaker C: See Rosanna, like, put one hand over the other, and it looks it looks like she's mimicking Gozer because Gozer is laying on the bed in the back with, like, one paw crossed over the other. And just watching all of this. He seems very attentive to what's happening. [02:02:39] Speaker A: Can I, like, try to pull her off? I don't know if, like, you can't. [02:02:43] Speaker C: Make physical contact with her. She seems like air to you. Just air that you can somehow see. [02:02:55] Speaker F: Needless to say, I'm not exactly interested in riding as a passenger for anyone in this RV, unlike some of the other ghosts in the room. So I hope we kind of have an understanding in that. But I will tell you one more thing, because I think it's important. I'm being followed by something I've been running for a really long time. I've been hiding. I've been like a rat. And now that I've talked to you, I'm sure I've put you in some manner of danger. So, you know, don't really fuck around when you try to get in touch with Kate, if she even is still alive. [02:04:20] Speaker A: What is what is happening? What see, this this is why I don't fucking leave my house. Hey, Arthur? [02:04:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:04:38] Speaker A: Out of curiosity, how holy are you feeling right now? [02:04:44] Speaker B: Holy enough. [02:04:46] Speaker A: Punch me. [02:04:49] Speaker E: Why? We're punching each other. [02:04:53] Speaker C: Okay. [02:04:54] Speaker E: Can we pull over so I can get in on it? [02:04:56] Speaker A: No, you can't. No, you keep driving with. [02:05:04] Speaker B: Jillian's knuckles or with the book. [02:05:14] Speaker C: This merits desperation going up to four. [02:05:29] Speaker B: Gonna have to answer quick. Rosanna? [02:05:34] Speaker A: Deal. Troy, you fucking pick. I don't know. Get her off of me. [02:05:39] Speaker B: And with one backhanded swing, he's going to hit with the book. [02:05:45] Speaker C: All right, roll your appropriate dipole. I don't remember what the book is, but I know it's a fairly large dipole for you. [02:05:58] Speaker B: Yes, it is. And he's going to start saying one of the Latin prayers inside of it as he does it, because that's how he does it. All right, then there's the desperation. Yes, you said you mentioned it. [02:06:14] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Your desperation is at four. [02:06:18] Speaker F: Cool. [02:06:22] Speaker B: Seven dice there, plus desperation. [02:06:26] Speaker A: Four. [02:06:30] Speaker B: No. Why did this? [02:06:38] Speaker C: For those at home who can't see this, arthur rolled a botch on one of his desperation dice, which means that he has to choose either overreach, at which point he succeeds, but the danger goes up, or despair, where he doesn't get to use his desperation again until he redeems himself. [02:07:01] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm going to have to choose despair on this. Okay, so I choose that I am now in despair. [02:07:13] Speaker C: You are in despair. [02:07:17] Speaker B: But it is three successes. [02:07:20] Speaker C: You don't want to do what you're about to do. You don't like the idea that you're probably going to hurt Rosanna at the same time you take a swing at this ghost. It's unavoidable that you were going to hit both of them if you manage to hit it all. This isn't what you signed up for. This isn't what you set out to do. You set out to help people and to redeem yourself for inadvertently being part of a monster's scheme. And now you realize that there is another monster who has manipulated the situation in such a way that you are kind of serving their ends to a certain degree because you are doing harm to someone that you care about, but there's no other way that you can think of in the moment. And you swing as hard as you possibly can with this book. Rosanna, you are going to take two superficial damage from just the epic bitch slap that you get with this journal. However, as you stumble back and fall onto the bench seat where the table is that's pulled up to the table in the RV, you see this female figure, the same female figure that you saw at the crash site standing in the middle of the RV where you were just a moment ago. And she looks pained somehow. Seems a little less pained than you are, which is weird. Arthur, Zephyr, I am going to need you both to roll some dice. Arthur, I need resolve and stamina. Zephyr, I need composure and stamina. Remember that if you have taken damage, you cannot roll that particular thing. [02:10:00] Speaker D: Three. [02:10:02] Speaker C: Oh, he both got three. Okay, cool. Zephyr, you gain another health box. No superficial damage in it. Arthur, you take a superficial damage and you really feel this like the first one you didn't feel as much. It was a little bit like, I don't know, like your head hurt and you had a hangover, so it didn't seem like a big deal at the time. This one, it feels like you just hit yourself almost max. You can see this thread connecting Zephyr and the woman gets a little bit brighter. And the thread between Arthur and Zephyr also gets a little bit, like more gets a little bit brighter. [02:11:05] Speaker F: Well, that was rather inelegant. [02:11:14] Speaker B: So, feeling this now, Arthur will lose his balance a little because this all happened all at the same time, I assume. Swinging of the book. [02:11:24] Speaker C: Yes. Well, there was maybe, like a second delay between you hitting her and taking the damage, but it was very quick. [02:11:38] Speaker B: But Arthur can't see the woman, right? The only Rosanna can see her. [02:11:42] Speaker C: Correct. [02:11:43] Speaker B: Got it. Okay. [02:11:47] Speaker A: Can I see her changing at all? I guess. Do I also see a brat lat or anything? [02:11:54] Speaker C: Or do I just you don't see the tethers. You do see her. You do see. She looks panicked and angry all at once. And as you are trying to kind of figure out what she's doing, rosanna, she turns towards you and starts moving in your direction again. [02:12:21] Speaker A: This time, I'm going to actually take out my pen, and I'm going to kind of press it up against my head. I want to activate my thwart, the Unnatural. [02:12:33] Speaker C: Okay. [02:12:34] Speaker A: And I have a specialty in ghost. Make your prerequisite role believe that is resolve and occult. [02:12:46] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:12:47] Speaker A: Resolve and occult. Do I add my do I add my. [02:12:57] Speaker C: Skill specialty? [02:12:58] Speaker A: Yes. [02:12:59] Speaker C: Cool. [02:13:12] Speaker A: Five successes. [02:13:13] Speaker C: Five successes. Not bad. She stops in her tracks about two steps from you, and you see her kind of glance around again, panicked. Victoria, I need you to make a willpower check, please. Okay. [02:13:38] Speaker E: That's just the remaining willpower, correct? [02:13:41] Speaker C: Yes. Unspent willpower. [02:13:54] Speaker E: Two successes. [02:13:57] Speaker C: Rosanna, you manage to stop this ghost from going for you, and she realizes when she can't get closer to you, that she's got to go somewhere. And she turns and dives through the back of the driver's seat and directly into Victoria. And you can't see her. Once she's in Victoria, you have a flash of feeling hot and cold all at once, and then you feel fine. Totally normal. Maybe it was just a weird trick of the AC. [02:14:26] Speaker A: Jesus fucking Christ. Stupid. Remember how I said that we were going to resolve things with peace last night, Arthur? [02:14:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:14:36] Speaker A: No, that is far over. Victoria, pull over the car right now. [02:14:41] Speaker E: All right. Pulling over. [02:14:43] Speaker C: Except, Victoria, you're not alone in your body, and you're essentially possessed right now. You are aware of what is happening, but you have no control over what is happening. [02:14:56] Speaker E: I am aware that I'm possessed. [02:14:59] Speaker C: You're aware that your body is doing things that you don't want it to do, and you don't know how to stop it. You are watching the speedometer as it gets faster and faster like you are laying on the gas. You can hear Gozer going ballistic. [02:15:17] Speaker E: Ring my bells. [02:15:21] Speaker C: At the same time Victoria says, ring my bells. You also hear her voice say, touch anything and I'll take us off the road. I just want what I need. Give me what I need, and the rest of you can go. [02:15:46] Speaker B: Cool. And since Arthur is feeling right now that he has to save everyone, he's gonna have to do something. The only things he knows how to do are to hit things with his book. The only thing that works so far against these ghost things, that's true. [02:16:13] Speaker C: Just as a reminder, you're in an RV going about 80. You can feel it swaying and shuddering because it is old and it was not meant to go this fast. And you are flying down an open highway. And unfortunately, you guys are going through the southwest on an interstate. There isn't a whole lot out here. There aren't a whole lot of people out here. [02:16:39] Speaker E: Through gritted teeth, I'm like, listen, lady, we have to slow down or you. [02:16:48] Speaker C: Get stop hitting me. I need what I need. Get me what I need and I'll leave you guys alone. I've been waiting for somebody to get me off that fucking highway for 70 years, and I was finally getting somewhere, and then you people showed up and screwed it up for me. Well, I'm not going to let you screw it up anymore. I want my husband and I want my life. It's not fair. [02:17:22] Speaker A: Can we hear this? [02:17:25] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. No, this is Victoria's body is talking, so it sounds like Victoria is yelling at herself and then Turtlegraded yelling at herself again. [02:17:37] Speaker D: Max, you're a ghost. How do we fix this without crashing the car? [02:17:50] Speaker F: It's not her fault. [02:17:57] Speaker E: I know I'm being possessed right now. Can I expend Willpower and try to ring my bells to try and thwart the unnatural? [02:18:04] Speaker C: You can certainly try. [02:18:06] Speaker E: Okay, I'm going to try. [02:18:08] Speaker C: You are going to be at a negative one die disadvantage because you are struggling for control of your own body. [02:18:27] Speaker E: Getting dangerous. But I mean, like, I got to do something. [02:18:30] Speaker B: So do I. [02:18:33] Speaker E: Three successes. [02:18:36] Speaker C: Okay. [02:18:41] Speaker B: So I also have a question. [02:18:43] Speaker C: But we'll I am rolling behind the scenes so you guys can ask questions and whatnot. Just give me a minute to make my rolls and I'll give everybody the answers that they need. So what's your question? [02:18:51] Speaker B: My question revolves around the use of the ward that I have that keeps the thing from being able to move, and the creature cannot move closer to anyone. Like, it creates this ward that keeps them out, but it also doesn't allow them to engage in melee or brawl things. I'm wondering how far that extends. If I were to do this now, would it stop the thing from being able to control Victoria's hands? Would she just freeze up? [02:19:23] Speaker C: Essentially, you don't know. To be fair, you've never tried. [02:19:29] Speaker B: Exactly. [02:19:31] Speaker C: You are aware that you are and I'm just going to give you this part for free because you are a reasonably intelligent person. You are in a very dangerous standoff where if you try something and it goes really poorly, it could legitimately kill one of you or all of you. You're in an RV. Maybe one of you is in a seatbelt right now. [02:19:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I know I'm standing, so that's not good for me. But I also recognize that this ghost wants to get back her dead ass husband, and there's no way that that's going to be possible. So either way, we're all going to die. [02:20:12] Speaker F: Max will say something more of an answer to Zephyr's question, say, you know, she she's a person. You can talk to her. [02:20:35] Speaker D: Okay, I'm gonna. [02:20:38] Speaker C: Dread that because, like. [02:20:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I kind of. [02:20:43] Speaker D: She mentioned husband and I suddenly got this wedding ring after we encountered this ghost, right? [02:20:53] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:20:54] Speaker D: So I'm going to slowly make my way up there and say, we can help you. You just need to slow down. If we all die, then there's nothing we can do. [02:21:13] Speaker C: I'll slow down if the asshole with the book sits down and stops trying to hit me with it. [02:21:18] Speaker A: Arthur. [02:21:22] Speaker D: Arthur, Arthur, can you put the book down? [02:21:28] Speaker A: We can still handle this peacefully. [02:21:32] Speaker B: We tried that. [02:21:35] Speaker A: Trust me, please. [02:21:40] Speaker C: I wasn't hurting anybody. And then you hit me with a book. [02:21:48] Speaker B: Just nowhere. But we handled it peacefully two days ago and she was still here. Are you sure this is the best way to handle it? [02:22:05] Speaker C: Please. [02:22:09] Speaker A: Remember our talk yesterday. You trust me and I reach out my hand for him. [02:22:25] Speaker B: Fine, but he's going to acquiesce. But he does firmly believe she's going to kill us all. [02:22:40] Speaker C: So you back off and sit down. [02:22:43] Speaker B: I back off and I go to the back of the RV, where Gozer is freaking the hell out. [02:22:51] Speaker C: Gozer is freaking the hell out. He is barking and growling. He is not happy with what is happening to Victoria. [02:22:59] Speaker B: I'm just going to look at him and just go. Yeah, you and me both, budy. [02:23:07] Speaker C: Victoria, your three successes. Your three successes, you manage to win just enough control to forcibly slow down the RV to a safer point. And she, when Arthur backs off, doesn't fight you on it. [02:23:27] Speaker E: Okay? [02:23:30] Speaker C: You do have the sense anytime you try to move your arms to take over driving, that if he feels like you're reaching for your bell, she's going to reassert control and it's going to be harder next time because now she's aware that you are, like, fighting with her. [02:23:46] Speaker E: Okay, we're chill. We're chill. [02:23:53] Speaker C: Um, Gozer is going to jump off of the bed and come up to the cab and sit next to you and he whines like he's worried and noses at your elbow. [02:24:17] Speaker E: It's okay, Gozer. We'll solve this. [02:24:27] Speaker A: Where is it that you. Want to go. [02:24:32] Speaker C: You're going to help me find out how to fix what happened. I want my husband. I can't find him. [02:25:01] Speaker A: We pull over the car. [02:25:05] Speaker C: How would we do that? We're in the middle of nowhere. [02:25:08] Speaker A: Just pull over. [02:25:09] Speaker C: Why? [02:25:13] Speaker A: You wrote on me. The least you can do is hear me out. [02:25:18] Speaker C: I am. I'm listening. Tell me what you want. [02:25:21] Speaker A: Pull over the car. [02:25:23] Speaker C: Why? [02:25:28] Speaker A: Because we are going to figure out what happened to your husband and then you are going to move on. [02:25:37] Speaker C: In the middle of nowhere? You're going to magically find the fucking answers that I've been looking for for 70 years. [02:25:44] Speaker E: Lady, you've been dead for 70 years. Things have changed. [02:25:51] Speaker A: Pull over. [02:25:57] Speaker C: She will slow and pull over. [02:26:08] Speaker A: Okay. [02:26:10] Speaker E: Also, if you could kindly get the fuck out of me. [02:26:13] Speaker C: That's not about to happen. You're the only insurance I've got. Sorry, Vic. I went for the person who had it easier, who could do this without even knowing I was there. [02:26:32] Speaker A: You can come back. [02:26:36] Speaker B: Absolutely not. [02:26:38] Speaker A: I might need her anyway. [02:26:42] Speaker C: I'll stay where I'm at. For now. [02:26:45] Speaker E: Presenta. Can you look at your computer and see if her husband died somewhere or something? [02:26:51] Speaker A: Let me look into it. I want to look up if there's any articles about what happened to this couple in particular. I believe their names are her name is Mrs. David Carter. [02:27:23] Speaker C: So make me an intelligence and investigation check. [02:27:28] Speaker A: Okay. [02:27:29] Speaker C: Or intelligence technology, depending on which is higher. [02:27:32] Speaker A: All right. Can I add my desperation to this? [02:27:36] Speaker C: Absolutely. [02:27:50] Speaker A: Five successes. [02:27:51] Speaker C: Successes. Pretty good. So it takes a bit. And at first you're not even sure that you found the right article because, again, it's 70 years old. This was pre Internet. You are looking back through old microfacial archives that have been put up online and you find an article in the Gila Bend Chronicle, which is the teeny tiny little local paper where you first saw the stories about the accidents that this particular ghost was causing, whether she meant to or not. And you find a story about a couple who on their wedding night, left their reception, got into their newlywed vehicle, which was borrowed from a family member, and they were going down the highway. And they apparently went off the road. And nobody knows exactly how long they were on the side of the road, but they were found at about noon the next day. She was already dead when they found them. And her husband was barely holding on and died on the way to the hospital. [02:29:47] Speaker A: I found your answer. [02:29:53] Speaker C: Figured out how to make it so that I can get to him. [02:30:04] Speaker A: Was the last thing that you remembered? [02:30:10] Speaker C: Lights. And an engine on the highway and a car driving by. And blood. So much blood. I could hear him breathing, barely. And I knew we were going to die because nobody was stopping. I think I screamed. I remember screaming, but nobody stopped. Nobody saw us. I guess because the car died. Lights went out. We were just another rock on the side of a lonely road in the middle of the desert. And then it happened again. And then it happened again. And again. And again. And again and again. Over and over and over. [02:31:42] Speaker A: I'm sorry that that happened. That treatment was not good of them to not stop you. [02:31:59] Speaker C: It. [02:32:03] Speaker A: Your husband. He passed away on the way to the hospital. He might be waiting for you there. [02:32:24] Speaker C: No. He would have come to me. His ring was there with me. [02:32:34] Speaker A: His ring? [02:32:39] Speaker C: You see Victoria's hand gesture towards Zephyr. Someone had to carry it. It would have fallen off your finger. [02:33:07] Speaker D: I'm going to take it off again. [02:33:10] Speaker C: Put it back. [02:33:13] Speaker D: Why? [02:33:15] Speaker C: Because every time you put it in your pocket, I'm afraid it's going to fall out. [02:33:23] Speaker D: That's understandable. But if you needed help we were in town for almost two days. Why now? [02:33:36] Speaker C: You heard your friend. Fucking nosy bastard. Really hard to talk to you guys, especially when you're busy with 5 million other things. Figured I'd grab a ride, wait until you guys stopped in another town, find a way to hop off, find somebody who would help me. [02:34:12] Speaker D: So all you need is just for us to return it? Is that what you want us to do? Just return it to his grave, or. [02:34:21] Speaker C: No, I want you to get me. To where? To a place where I can find some fucking answers. God, why doesn't anybody listen? [02:34:28] Speaker D: Because you hijacked two of my friends. [02:34:32] Speaker C: That's why. [02:34:32] Speaker D: We're not listening. [02:34:34] Speaker C: Wasn't hijacking. It was just tagging along. This is hijacking. And you'll see gesture like you'll see Victoria gesture at herself. [02:34:50] Speaker A: Super fun. [02:34:51] Speaker C: By the way. [02:34:51] Speaker D: You. [02:34:54] Speaker B: I'm Arthur's in the back. So let me understand this. Someone's got to wear the ring until, what? You're happy with them forever being your fake husband? Is that what I'm understanding? [02:35:06] Speaker C: I just wanted him to keep the damn ring on so that it wouldn't get lost. [02:35:10] Speaker B: Where does it go? [02:35:14] Speaker C: With me. [02:35:17] Speaker F: The rings? Keeping her here's. I feel that way about my about my notebook. I remember now. [02:35:42] Speaker A: Where's your notebook? [02:35:45] Speaker F: New York, maybe. I'm sure they've burned it by now. Or maybe I would still maybe I'd be gone if they did. Maybe not. Maybe Kate has it. [02:36:06] Speaker A: If she can follow hers, why can't you follow yours? [02:36:10] Speaker F: More drawn to you more. It's about it's about feeling. She wants to she's connected to her husband. She she can she's connected to the ring. She wants to know what happened to him. All I know more than anything is that I did something bad and it's happening here. And it's my fault that she died a thousand times since the car crash, I don't know what I did, but I know that I did something or and it maybe you have to be compassionate to a woman that's been dead for 70 years, but I think you can maybe do something about it. That's what I wrote in the notebook, after all. [02:37:23] Speaker A: Need to show a little compassion. [02:37:30] Speaker C: You it. [02:37:40] Speaker A: Fined. They don't have to help you. But I will. I'll find your husband. I'll find information about him. But you don't torment my friends no more. [02:38:13] Speaker C: I'll just ride along. [02:38:17] Speaker A: You stick with me. [02:38:23] Speaker C: I don't trust that one. He won't hurt you. You'll see, Victoria's eyes look up in an Arthur in the rear view mirror. [02:38:33] Speaker A: He won't hurt you because hurting you means that he has to hurt me. [02:38:51] Speaker C: Make me a persuasion and manipulation role because you were asking her to act against her own best interest. Her best interest is to hold on to the person with the car keys. [02:39:39] Speaker A: Four successes. [02:39:40] Speaker C: Okay, she you can see hesitation on Victoria's features for a split moment before you also see angry determination. That is the quintessential victoria. You don't see her step out of Victoria's body right away, but you can almost sense and Victoria can definitely feel the way she kind of takes her hands off the reins. And there's a long pregnant pause before you watch this figure stand up and out of Victoria's body. Gozer goes ballistic again and backs up very quickly to give her a very wide not like does not like the way ghosts feel. It's okay. Come here. [02:40:45] Speaker E: I'll call him to my side, and. [02:40:49] Speaker C: He looks like he really wants to go to Victoria, but he doesn't move past her until she passes to Rosanna, and their hands touch. And, Rosanna, your hand feels warm, like, pleasantly so. There's none of that cold discomfort that you felt when she was leaving you. It's almost like she's easing the way, and she touches your hand and then kind of turns and sits. And you can watch and feel her, like, settle into you. And it's like a warm blanket has wrapped itself around you. Gozer hurries to his mistress's side and shoves his nose forcibly into your stomach and is, like, whining and doing that half panicked prance that dogs do when they're upset, but also kind of excited and just hyper hyperemotional. And he doesn't settle for at least a few minutes until you've been minutes very firm, like petting and screeching and calm talking. [02:42:21] Speaker E: I'm hugging him and trying to just get him to calm down. [02:42:29] Speaker A: Rosanna begins to think, to, um can you hear my thoughts? [02:42:39] Speaker C: I try not to listen. Not trying to be rude, but yes. [02:42:49] Speaker A: She looks at Arthur, then it's her. Then at Victoria. We have a deal? Don't hurt them. [02:43:08] Speaker C: Okay. So where are we, anyway? [02:43:14] Speaker A: I think we're still in Arizona. [02:43:27] Speaker C: It's been a hot minute since you guys left me. I'm on Google Maps. Play nice, please. [02:43:41] Speaker A: No. [02:43:43] Speaker C: The maps are like, Fuck you. You are a little bit past the border into New Mexico. In fact, assuming that Victoria gets back on the road, it doesn't take long before you see a sign for Lordsburg. It'll take a while to get there, but at least a few hours away. [02:44:38] Speaker A: If you kind of close her of and begins to think to herself. That way they don't have to hear the conversation that's going on between the two of them. There's one person in this van that I have a very high interest in keeping safety. Help me keep that person safe. [02:45:28] Speaker C: I don't know. Is it the guy who hit me? [02:45:33] Speaker A: She just smirks. [02:45:36] Speaker C: We'll see if he behaves himself. [02:45:40] Speaker B: Actually. So since everything seems to have calmed down and it appears as though something has happened in Victorious herself again, arthur's going to get up and go to Zephyr and go, Zephyr, give me the ring. [02:46:02] Speaker D: He's here. [02:46:03] Speaker B: Yeah. So Arthur will put it on and look right at Rosanna, but he's trying not to look at Rosanna. He's trying to look at the person in Rosanna as where he assumes it went, since Zephyr doesn't seem to be affected. And he's going to say, listen, I don't trust you, you don't trust me. But now I'm going to carry this and I'm not going to lose it. Does that make sense? Because if anything happens to her, I will do something about it. [02:46:31] Speaker C: Rosanna, there's a moment where you don't fully have control of your body. Your whole form stiffens like you're on alert, and your hands kind of go into fists. And then you hear this voice, and you're here to go, oh, no, I'm sorry. And you relax. Sorry. Not on purpose. [02:47:03] Speaker A: I know. It's okay. I know. But he's good. Trust me. [02:47:16] Speaker C: His instinct is violence. You know that. [02:47:21] Speaker A: His instinct is protection. There's a difference. [02:47:31] Speaker C: Saw what he did to the woman at the river, what he would have done to me if he'd had a chance. [02:47:39] Speaker A: And I protected you, didn't I? [02:47:44] Speaker C: Yeah. For now. [02:47:51] Speaker A: Promise this will go peacefully, but you need to work with me. [02:47:56] Speaker C: I'm trying. [02:47:57] Speaker A: I know. [02:47:59] Speaker C: I didn't mean to. [02:48:01] Speaker A: I know it's hard. I know. [02:48:09] Speaker C: I don't think you do. It's like I was alive yesterday. I had a body yesterday. Not because I was tagging along with you. I remember my wedding like it was yesterday. I didn't do it on purpose. It's instinct. I'm in a body. I want the to move. I want to do things. I want to touch things. I don't remember what food tastes like. Well, except wedding cake. I remember wedding cake. [02:48:44] Speaker A: You stick around and you behave, and I'll let you touch things, and I'll let you eat things, and I'll let you experience things. And when we find your husband and what happened to him, you go be with him. [02:49:05] Speaker C: Okay? That's all I want. [02:49:08] Speaker A: That you shall receive. But have a little bit of faith in us. [02:49:18] Speaker C: Wouldn't have tagged along if I didn't. I would have stayed out there and waited. I don't know what you guys did, by the way, knocking down the boundary, but it worked. [02:49:35] Speaker A: May I say that you look very pretty in your wedding dress? [02:49:39] Speaker C: Thanks. [02:49:40] Speaker E: You see, Victoria, as she's driving, just kind of bites her bottom link and goes, fuck. Was it me? Did I knock down the barrier? [02:49:53] Speaker A: Is it me? Am I the drama? [02:49:55] Speaker E: Am I the drama? [02:50:02] Speaker B: But, you know, Arthur was peacefully waiting, getting angrier and angrier, but he's like, do we have a deal? [02:50:14] Speaker A: We have a deal? [02:50:17] Speaker B: Okay. [02:50:19] Speaker A: You better keep that ring tight, Arthur. [02:50:23] Speaker B: Of course. [02:50:28] Speaker A: And Rosanna's gonna reach out her hand and just rest it on his arm, take off her glasses, and just kind of lean in and whisper, thank you. [02:50:49] Speaker C: I don't mean to disrupt this very tender moment, but could you figure out where the next town is? [02:50:57] Speaker A: Yeah, where the fuck are we going, by the way? [02:51:02] Speaker E: Honestly, after being possessed, I've kind of lost track of what enderstand I'm on. I've been waiting for a road sign. Where do you all want to go? [02:51:12] Speaker C: You are still on I Ten, which is where you were meant to be. It's kind of just one long ass road that has very few turnoffs. It's hard to not be on the interstate. Okay, you did see a sign for Lordsburg is the next town. It's going to take about an hour to get there, but it's the closest place. [02:51:41] Speaker E: There's someplace called Lordsburg coming up, but it's going to be a bit does. [02:51:47] Speaker A: That sound familiar at all to you, Ma'am? [02:51:53] Speaker C: Teeny, tiny little podock town. But yeah, no, I know where it is. [02:51:57] Speaker A: Okay, then that's where we're going to start looking first. [02:52:02] Speaker C: Okay. [02:52:03] Speaker F: Whatever's happening down here is happening. [02:52:05] Speaker B: Oh, shit. Max is still here. [02:52:12] Speaker F: I know this is rich coming from the corporate goon, but I hope this little interaction you've had is kind of clarified that we're all kind of the victims here. It took dying for me to figure it out, but everybody dies. But what I was saying, whatever's happening down here is happening everywhere at the same time. It doesn't matter where you. [02:53:02] Speaker C: Rosanna? [02:53:04] Speaker A: Yes. [02:53:06] Speaker C: You know how to use this thing, right? Just for a moment, your head will tilt down just slightly and look at your laptop, and then you will feel control come back. Sorry. [02:53:21] Speaker A: I know how to use it. Don't worry. [02:53:24] Speaker C: Can we look up Lordsburg, see what's there? It's been 70 years. I don't know what's there anymore. [02:53:31] Speaker A: And your wish, ma'am. And she start looking up, typing up Lordsburg, see what they got going on. [02:53:43] Speaker C: Okay, so there's not a lot in Lordsburg. There's day in suites. There's a border patrol station. There's several historical landmarks. There's a Shakespeare ghost town just outside of town. It's an old former mining town that's empty now as you are looking through the list. And it is bigger than Gila Bend was. Not by a lot, but it is bigger. And as you are looking through, there is a you. You see mention of an old historical it's marked as a historical site, but it's a bookstore, you know, and it says family owned since 1935. She goes, well, that was there last time I was there, and they've always got weird stuff. Wonder still the same family. They might still have stuff. Maybe something first. [02:55:03] Speaker A: We could try there first. [02:55:07] Speaker C: I'd like that. [02:55:09] Speaker A: Now that you're in my body and you can probably feel the things that I can feel. [02:55:19] Speaker C: You're asking if I can fix the hangover. I can't. I tried. It sucks. [02:55:24] Speaker A: I trust me. No, but I'm going to introduce you. [02:55:27] Speaker C: When? [02:55:27] Speaker A: The moment that I find them. They're called strawberry creams. They're absolutely delicious. Sorry, I'm going off on tangent. It's been a while. [02:55:36] Speaker C: I've had strawberries and cream before. [02:55:40] Speaker A: Oh, no, honey, these are these really delectable hard candies, and they taste all sweet, and they make me feel warm inside. [02:55:50] Speaker C: Okay. [02:55:53] Speaker A: We'Re going to find them, and I'm going to make you try them with me. Oh. I'm going to reintroduce you to the world while you're still here. Why am I doing this? Okay, nevermind, you know, this will be a good thing. But like I said, you and I, we have a deal. You don't touch him. [02:56:09] Speaker C: You don't touch her. [02:56:10] Speaker A: You don't touch him. You can touch me. [02:56:12] Speaker C: As much curiosity. Rosanna, are you talking out loud and. [02:56:16] Speaker A: Gesturing while doing she's she's not talking out loud, but she's gesturing. [02:56:24] Speaker C: So it looks like Roseanne is having a mild breakdown in the back of the RV. She looks happy and excited, but also determined. [02:56:35] Speaker A: And then I'll look up, and you'll. [02:56:39] Speaker C: Hear, you know, you're not making any noise, right? It just looks like you're. Well, I hesitate to say possessed. [02:56:50] Speaker A: Don't worry. They're used to me being crazy. It's a whole thing. It's a whole thing, yes. So your connection, by the way, is with that ring, right? [02:57:03] Speaker C: I have a connection to it, sure. That's my husband's ring. I'm hoping that he's the one with a connection to it and that I can, I don't know, use it to get him back, at least pull his spirit. Is that what we are? I don't know. [02:57:28] Speaker A: There's something like that. Let me know if this brings you comfort. She's going to get up again without making any noise, and she's just gonna go sit right next to Arthur, first of all, wait for a reaction from her, and then look at him and look down at the uh, arthur, this is gonna be a bit of a weird question, but can I hold your hand for a minute? [02:57:59] Speaker C: Sure. You. [02:58:02] Speaker A: Say, EW. That's mean. That one. She does say out loud. [02:58:08] Speaker C: Sorry. He's a very nice looking man. I just let's try let's see what happens. [02:58:18] Speaker B: I was hoping to have been conversing with Zephyr before that about the weirdness of this whole situation. [02:58:23] Speaker C: Pause, and you two can have a conversation. [02:58:26] Speaker B: I was just going to be talking with Zephyr about the weirdness of this whole situation and be know, I don't know why she gave you the ring and I'm not trying to steal your thumb. And then that's when she walks up and goes, can I hold your hand? He's just like. [02:58:43] Speaker C: How to say, the. [02:58:45] Speaker E: Possession is really distracting me. Go ahead, Zephyr. I'm sorry. [02:58:52] Speaker D: Oh, no, you're good. I was just going to say, admittedly, he's a little sad that he doesn't have the ring anymore, but he doesn't say anything. [02:59:01] Speaker A: I mean, Zephyr, I can hold your hand too. You don't need the no. [02:59:13] Speaker C: I appreciate it, but. [02:59:17] Speaker B: I want to keep Rosanna safe, and I feel like this spirit's going to latch onto this whole thing, and so it's just my way of trying to guarantee her safety. Right. We're a team here. We got to keep each other alive. [02:59:35] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:59:35] Speaker B: And then handhold. [02:59:40] Speaker A: She takes the hand that has the ring on it and kind of interlocks her fingers with his, close her eyes and waits to see if there's a reaction. [03:00:00] Speaker C: So at first you don't get any response, and then you feel your thumb just your thumb shift and it rubs along the band and you feel a little wave of contentment. [03:00:31] Speaker A: Hold you over for now, I guess. [03:00:35] Speaker C: I liked it better when that one was wearing it. [03:00:39] Speaker A: Oh, you don't get that one again. And I'm sorry. [03:00:45] Speaker C: Reminded me of my husband. They're quiet and I don't know. My husband was quiet and saw the world differently than a lot of people. [03:01:21] Speaker A: I think you might like this one, though. He's loud but. [03:01:30] Speaker C: Quick to violence. [03:01:34] Speaker A: He's open. [03:01:37] Speaker C: We'll see. So it takes about an hour, hour and a half to pull into this town. It is still relatively it's still early enough that you guys manage to make it to this bookstore before it closes. It's due to close at like six and you guys pull in at like five. So you don't have a whole lot of time, but you do get there. Lights are on inside. Not too many cars in the parking lot. Maybe one or two. Rosanna, you can feel her kind of restless. Oh, before we do this big skip ahead. I'm sorry, max, was there anything else that you wanted to talk to them about? I keep forgetting that you're here because you're not on my screen. [03:02:31] Speaker F: I'm so to not that I can think of, unless anybody has any questions for him, I think he'll quietly go back to stalking the cell like he was before. [03:02:43] Speaker C: Okay. Perfect picked. Thank you for being here. [03:02:47] Speaker F: Of course. [03:02:52] Speaker C: At some point, Victoria music comes back on the radio and Rosanna can confirm that she doesn't sense or see Max anymore. Probably safe to assume that if he's been following you guys as long as he has, he's probably still around. But he has made himself scarce. He did mention that it is exhausting to try and hold up a conversation at a connection. So you guys pull in in front of this little bookstore. And it is the called Jameson Books, family owned since 1935. From just outside, looking through the windows, you can see that this is one of those places where half of the books that are in here have been here almost as long as the place has been open. Or at least have been in existence as long as the place has been open. It's as much an antique store as it is a bookstore. The antiques just all happen to have pages. Rosanna, you can feel a sense of both excitement and restlessness. She is ready to go. She's not taking over. She's not controlling you. But she wants out of the fucking RV. She wants to go inside. She wants to touch things. She wants to look for answers. [03:04:41] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. No. The moment that we park the RV and get to the bookstore, she almost instinctively looks back and just keeps her eye on the ring, but not the spirit. Rosanna. Just to send her new passenger confirmation that it's still there, even if we step ahead. But the moment that they walk out, rosanna is going to feeling a little bit empathetic and kind of like feeling bad that this woman is stuck in kind of a crappy situation that nobody literally none of us want to be in. Right. None of us want this. She's going to go around. She's going to start feeling things like touching grass and the wood paneling that protects the bookstore and kind of like reaching for the door and allowing her to just kind of feel the world around her. Again. [03:06:02] Speaker C: Just because that is so incredibly thoughtful and sweet and so very much appreciated by your passenger, I'm going to give you you're going to regain one of your superficial willpower that you've spent. You feel this little bolstering rush of emotion and you feel just a little bit less like the world is on your shoulders. Like maybe there is somebody here to help you carry it. [03:06:36] Speaker A: I hope this is helping you. [03:06:40] Speaker C: It's certainly making the intervening time a lot less awful. Thank you. [03:06:49] Speaker A: You like to read when you were younger? [03:06:52] Speaker C: I did. That's how I met my husband. I was a librarian. [03:06:59] Speaker A: You know, it's funny. I went to school for librarian studies. [03:07:06] Speaker C: I admit I may have seen some of that. I wasn't trying to look, you think about things and I can't help but overhear it. [03:07:15] Speaker A: I'm sorry. [03:07:16] Speaker C: No, it's not your fault. I felt bad for seeing anything without permission, but I couldn't stop it from happening. [03:07:26] Speaker A: Well, you and I are going to be connected. You have access to my memories. Whatever you need to learn, I guess, make you more comfortable. [03:07:35] Speaker C: Would you tell your friend I'm sorry I only jumped into her because jumping into a man seems like it would feel weird and really inappropriate. [03:07:52] Speaker A: I'm sure your husband finds that very respectful. I look back to Victoria and hey, yeah, she's sorry. [03:08:07] Speaker E: I give Rosanna this deadpan look for a moment before slowly raising up both hands and giving Rosanna the middle fingers. You get the feeling that those aren't directed at you, but the ghost passenger inside of you. And I just hold it like that. [03:08:25] Speaker C: That's fair. [03:08:31] Speaker A: Kind of deserved it. [03:08:33] Speaker C: I know. [03:08:37] Speaker A: Well, let's go inside. Books. Yeah, let's go find some books, right? Yeah. [03:08:45] Speaker C: Okay. Inside of this bookstore, you are all going to be welcome to make at least one individual search to find what you're looking for. You do not have to look for stuff for this ghost. I, as the GM, am not going to punish you if you decide to pursue your own interests. Obviously, if you do help her, she goes away faster, but it is not a requirement. I know some of you have slightly more selfish impulses, so I just want to be clear that as the storyteller, I'm not going to punish anybody who doesn't want to fall in line. [03:09:31] Speaker E: No. [03:09:35] Speaker B: But you gave me the option, and now I have to debate it. [03:09:42] Speaker C: Okay. [03:09:42] Speaker E: Here's Victoria's thoughts. She's mad that this ghost took her over, and she's like, I don't care about your destination. I'm going to kill you before you see agreeing. We're telepathic. We're on the same wavelength. [03:10:04] Speaker C: What kills me, what I find funniest about that, is the fact that I thought very long and hard about that possibility, about the possibility of her getting shoved out of Rosanna's body. And the one person at the table that I felt or the two people at the table that I felt were likely to pull the same stunt she did were Zephyr and Victoria. Like, if you guys were the ghost, would you have jumped into somebody else's body and been like, look, bitches, until you agree to help me and stop fucking trying to hurt me, I'm going to take over. [03:10:35] Speaker E: Listen. Ghost. Victoria theoretical ghost. Victoria would be righteous in her actions. Not this. [03:10:46] Speaker A: Pretty lady. [03:10:48] Speaker C: How. [03:10:48] Speaker A: Do me some more. [03:10:52] Speaker C: Yeah. [03:10:53] Speaker D: If we're all going into the bookstore, probably going to look because you said a lot of the books are, like, super old, right? [03:11:08] Speaker C: Yeah, quite a few of them are old. There are also newer ones that are obviously, like, recent publications. [03:11:20] Speaker D: We could be helping the ghost, but realistically, he's like, no, I want to see what weird books they have. [03:11:28] Speaker A: To. [03:11:29] Speaker D: See if he can find anything that's, like, odd or interesting. [03:11:33] Speaker B: Arthur wants to do the same thing. If there's books in here that are weird and interesting, that may help. The end goal of his know to stop the speaker. That business. He totally wants to do that, but unfortunately, he's now very worried about Rosanna and the thing inside of her. And I think that while he has the same feelings as Zephyr, he is actually going to try to find something that will help Rosanna because she's the more immediate issue, and he'll deal with the fact that he won't have time to look for himself. [03:12:20] Speaker C: So Arthur is going to attempt to help Rosanna look for ghost things. Zephyr is going to look for books on weird esoteric shit. [03:12:30] Speaker D: Yeah. More so, like, if there's anything physical that I can do since I don't really have magical items. See if there's anything I can pick up on. [03:12:44] Speaker E: Okay. Victoria the impulse to look into books on the Linnaeus Society is very strong, but I'm also not happy with the fact that our RV is super haunted. So my thought would actually be, like, if I could do both, I'd do both. But the haunting is a more pressing issue, and I'm going to look into that. [03:13:17] Speaker C: Okay. All right, we're going to start with Rosanna, Victoria, and Arthur. Are you guys working as a unit, or are you doing individual searches? [03:13:32] Speaker E: I'm sorry, Rosanna, I'm not anywhere near you right now. [03:13:37] Speaker B: Arthur will be standing right next to Rosanna and, like, eyeing her to see if the ghost ever gets outside of her and he can notice it. He's going to try something, but right now, he's keeping just being peaceful because he doesn't want to hurt his friend. [03:13:58] Speaker C: Rosanna, you can feel how uneasy she is about how close he is and the way he's staring at you, but she is behaving herself because she made a deal. Or now you have the sneaking suspicion that if Arthur tries something, this ghost is going to fucking snap. [03:14:23] Speaker B: Funny, Arthur feels the same way. [03:14:28] Speaker C: That being said, ridiculous. Okay. I love the standoff between Arthur and all of my SPCs. [03:14:41] Speaker D: Constantly choosing violence. [03:14:45] Speaker A: I love that it's the standoff between the SPC and Arthur, but Rosanna is just sitting here like I'm directly in the middle of this and not by choice. [03:14:58] Speaker C: Right. Okay. So the two of you are going to work together. I'm going to call this an intelligence and academics for assuming that Rosanna's taking the lead on the role because she's probably got the higher dice. Uh, for her, it would be intelligence and academics because she is what do you call it? Because you're a librarian. Like, you've literally trained to be able to research incredibly well and find things quickly. [03:15:37] Speaker A: Do I get to add my specialty? [03:15:39] Speaker C: Absolutely. And you get an extra die because Arthur is helping you. He's helping you more from an investigation perspective than an academics perspective, because his academics are in biblical stuff, which isn't super helpful. [03:16:00] Speaker A: Okay. [03:16:16] Speaker C: You, whoo. Very nice. Oh, you could have had your what do you call, desperation because you're looking for information. [03:16:27] Speaker A: Can I roll? [03:16:29] Speaker C: You can absolutely roll. Desperation. [03:16:32] Speaker A: Cool. [03:16:34] Speaker C: Just in all desperation. [03:16:36] Speaker D: All right. [03:16:36] Speaker F: Yeah. [03:16:37] Speaker A: And that's four. [03:16:38] Speaker C: Yes, ma'am. [03:16:39] Speaker A: All right. It's going to roll as a pool because I can't just do, like, a desperation. [03:16:43] Speaker C: We'll just ignore the one die is fined. [03:17:04] Speaker A: Two extra successes on top of that. [03:17:06] Speaker C: Excellent. Okay. Yeah. You find a metric fuck ton on ghosts. And hauntings and the afterlife and all of that. By the time the two of you finish with Rosanna, kind of like as this weird sort of maestro, like pointing you in directions. And Arthur using the power of tall to pull shit off of high shelves and get things and whatever, by the time you're done, you've got a stack, like a healthy, healthy, healthy stack that's probably going to cost a pretty penny. But there's a lot of books in your arms right now, Victoria. [03:17:59] Speaker E: I'm excited for this role. [03:18:01] Speaker C: So what, Chris, are you looking at, like hauntings and things like that? [03:18:06] Speaker E: Yeah, hauntings. How to Get Rid of Ghosts potentially. [03:18:11] Speaker B: The book how to Get Rid of Ghosts. [03:18:15] Speaker C: For Dummies. No, not exorcisms. [03:18:19] Speaker E: I don't want to put Rosanna through. [03:18:25] Speaker C: Okay, let me look at your feet. [03:18:28] Speaker E: But also I was thinking something else that could help. Is anything that's like a town. Like, I know it's a bookshop, but something that says where this fellow is buried might help. [03:18:46] Speaker C: So I'll just give this to you for free up front because you've helped Rosanna with some of her research before you want something like a town census, you need to go to town hall for stuff like that. Bookshop's, not going to have that. But you can look for how the fuck do we deal with ghosts? [03:19:05] Speaker E: All right, roll that one dice. [03:19:12] Speaker C: Well, I see three dice. That's intelligence and investigation. Okay. [03:19:16] Speaker E: All right. [03:19:20] Speaker C: Still not an amazing pool, but it's something. [03:19:25] Speaker E: Listen, head full of rocks. [03:19:34] Speaker C: One success, one failure, one success. Yeah, that's actually for the size of your dice pool. That's actually semi impressive. [03:19:50] Speaker E: Does it have the best pop up pictures in it? [03:19:55] Speaker C: You find a book that is in the new agey section. It's like this pitiful new agey section. The one thing that you are aware of as you get like the singular book on ghosts in the afterlife, that's in this section is that this is depressing compared to the books that were on offer at the Linnaeus Society. This is such a teeny, tiny little section. Like, this is a relatively large store by most measures for a bookstore these days. And it's just this teeny, tiny little, like three shelf nothing. And even the borderline initiates who had only been around the Linnaeus Society for a day had access to more books than fucking this. And you're so annoyed. Of course, what you don't realize is that you are looking in the tail end of an actually rather hefty section that you just didn't notice the rest of it. [03:21:03] Speaker E: Books don't sing my language. [03:21:06] Speaker C: They do not. But then you rather rapidly get distracted by sheet music up near the checkout counter. That's for bells, specifically. And you're like, OOH, would also be. [03:21:23] Speaker E: Interested in violin stuff. [03:21:25] Speaker C: Violin and handbells. Yeah, you start browsing through the rather hefty selection of sheet music books. Okay, zephyr boy, oh boy, do I have something fun for you. [03:21:45] Speaker D: Oh, God. [03:21:49] Speaker C: Oh, my God. Okay, I need you. [03:21:54] Speaker D: Oh, no. [03:21:55] Speaker C: You're going to find something regardless, but I want to see how much you get. Make me an intelligence investigation role. Okay? Actually, no, make that intelligence awareness. I don't know that it changes your die number, but I got three. Would you like to burn a willpower? Yes. [03:22:24] Speaker D: Just let's see. [03:22:25] Speaker C: I mean, we're coming up on the end of the session, so you might as well yeah. [03:22:40] Speaker D: Come on. [03:22:46] Speaker C: That's fine. So you find a number of books. Some are on cryptids, some are on supernatural stuff. You find, like, a wicca book that looks mildly interesting, that's got some stuff in it that you haven't seen before. You find a sort of, like, pseudo Christianity thing. Like, it's not the Christianity that you've ever encountered, but it's got some flavors of Christianity outlined in it, but also some really weird views, not terribly unlike the kind of shit that you heard at The Rising Star. That being said, what actually stands out in the middle of all of this is you are shuffling through these through all of these books up on this shelf, and you're looking and you're looking and you're looking. Um. [03:23:51] Speaker E: You. [03:23:55] Speaker C: Spot a thick, leather bound black book with a silver embossed sun on the spine. And it stands out to you because while all of these others a lot of these others look older and a little bit beat up, but some of them are obviously secondhand. This looks much older somehow, but is still in remarkably good condition. And you don't remember spotting it when you first came over here, but it was like you turned to look at another shelf, and then you turned back to grab something that at first you weren't sure you were going to take. And it was just there. And you're, like, must have missed it. [03:24:54] Speaker D: I'm gonna grab it and, like, flip through a few pages just to see what's in it. [03:25:08] Speaker C: You flip through it and the first thing you notice is these incredibly ornate, detailed illustrations that look like they were done by hand. They look like anatomy drawings, but not of anything human that you've ever seen. [03:25:44] Speaker D: I'm going to well, if I end up grabbing it no, I'll take it. I'll take it. But I'm gonna, if I have time, immediately try to look for anything that looks similar to the speaker. [03:26:04] Speaker C: That's fine. I wasn't quite finished. [03:26:09] Speaker D: I'm sorry. [03:26:11] Speaker C: You just got very excited. I understand. I kind of had the feeling you would when this popped up in front of you. You flip through and there are these incredibly detailed and honestly, a little gruesome anatomy drawings. This is not like the kind of anatomy drawing that you see in, like, a medical textbook, which you've had access to despite not having ever gone to school for any of that. You find that there are notes on notes on what these anatomy drawings are for. Some of them are labeled as plant folk. There's one that it's hard to tell because it's an anatomy drawing, and it's obvious that whatever this thing that's being drawn was literally, like, fillet open and was being dissected when the pictures were drawn of it. But it's in this shape that suggests that it might have been, like, a fish from the waist down, but a person from the waist up. There is a diagram of what look like very distinctly look like vampire fangs to you. And if you look at the title page just inside of the COVID if you look at it, it says, is the title is The Darksome Anatomies. But Anatomies is spelled A-N-A-T-O-M-Y-E-S. Um, and you're reasonably certain that a book like this should not be in a bookshop, let alone on the shelf. This is not the kind of information that is supposed to fall into the hands of, like, typical bookgoers like shoppers. This should not be somewhere where normal people can find it. And when you kind of flip it over and you're looking for a barcode, there is no barcode. There is nothing to suggest how much this might cost, whether it was even in the right section. [03:29:10] Speaker D: I'm like contemplating stealing it, but it's a small bookstore, so that'd be wrong. [03:29:18] Speaker C: Well, that's up to you. [03:29:24] Speaker D: Yeah, I'll steal it. [03:29:28] Speaker C: Okay. [03:29:28] Speaker D: But I'll buy another book just so I feel a little bit better about it. [03:29:33] Speaker C: Make me a make me a Dex. No. Make me a Resolve Larceny check, and I will give you an extra die. Man that saved you. Hot you slip it into your bag. As far as you can tell, nobody has seen you. And then you continue to shop. You find some other stuff, some other books on various supernatural stories and hauntings and local legends. Lots of stuff on legends and myths. Nothing specifically on the speaker or the cult, but you kind of didn't expect that. They're relatively newish phenomenon. They've only been around for a couple of you know by the time you're finished, you've got a small stack of books. And as you go to meet your friends up at the counter, victoria has a single proper book and several books of sheet music. [03:31:17] Speaker E: Good. [03:31:19] Speaker D: Yeah, I found some pretty interesting books on urban legends and stuff, something that may be able to help. [03:31:30] Speaker E: Nice. I got this, and I waived the book. That the new age ghost book that I found. [03:31:41] Speaker C: And it's about that time that Arthur and Rosanna walk up and both are carrying just, like, stacks of books in their arms. And Rosanna looks fucking thrilled. [03:31:53] Speaker A: I would like to point out that at some point while they were walking towards every now and again, she would do the little bit of a selfish thing and go down, like, a book aisle to get some pleasure reading. And, yes, it's exactly what you think. And she was just like. [03:32:20] Speaker C: Pleasure reading. [03:32:22] Speaker A: Yep, yep. Reading. Reading. [03:32:26] Speaker B: That doesn't make Arthur feel awkward at all. [03:32:30] Speaker D: Do we also see it? Can we see the title of it? [03:32:35] Speaker B: You probably see, like, the half naked man on the covers. So absolutely, I would imagine I'm just. [03:32:40] Speaker A: Like in that would and yes, she would make Arthur carry at least two of those books. [03:32:49] Speaker C: That's amazing. [03:32:55] Speaker A: Needless to say. [03:32:57] Speaker E: Needless to say. [03:32:59] Speaker A: Looks like a kid in a candy store right now. [03:33:03] Speaker D: Stephanie probably has at least one of those really shitty fantasy romance novels, like, tucked under his arm, but you guys can't see it, but it's just like a small, little soft cover book under his arm. [03:33:19] Speaker C: I love it. I love it. You guys are on a road trip and bringing pleasure reading with you, which is exactly what I'm going to call anything that's not academic from now on is pleasure reading. And I'm just going to assume and imply heavily that it's always romance plot. You guys get up to the book, to the to the counter, and this kind of 30 something young woman, she's early thirty, s at the most, walks up and looks a little surprised that there's anybody here at this hour and then sees the stacks of books that everybody wants and looks thrilled. You have the sneaky suspicion that she probably is about to make more in sales, like in this single thing from you than she makes in like a week, easy. [03:34:20] Speaker B: Arthur starts peeling out money out of one of his rolls of cash he's got squirreled away in a pocket. [03:34:27] Speaker A: That you put that thing back or so help me, ga boy. [03:34:33] Speaker C: What? [03:34:38] Speaker B: He hands some money to Zephyr and Victoria and go, there fine, there, take care of it. [03:34:45] Speaker D: Thanks. But I like, pull out some cash out of my boot and just like, oh, I also arthur. [03:34:56] Speaker C: Welcome. Welcome to Jameson Books. I see you found a lot. Was there anything you couldn't find? Anything I could help you with? Bags maybe to carry all this in? [03:35:11] Speaker A: Yes, please. [03:35:15] Speaker C: And she starts pulling out brown paper bags with the thick kind of ropey handles because they're gonna hold up a lot better to the books than simple plastic shopping bags that you could see behind her. And she starts kind of loading things up and kind of as she's ringing them up, she's loading it up and she's just like, got some interest in ghosts, are you? What? [03:35:51] Speaker E: And smut, apparently. [03:35:53] Speaker C: Oh, well, I wasn't going to comment on that. What you do in the privacy of your bedroom is your own business. [03:36:03] Speaker A: I majored in occultism, so I'm hoping to get my master's material. [03:36:13] Speaker C: Yeah, I get that. That's interesting. I didn't know that occultism was a major, but that's cool. [03:36:23] Speaker A: It's a less known, lesser known one, but it's still a major. Kind of feeds into my other degrees, but yeah. So this is just to kind of my dear friends here are helping me with my thesis and obviously picking up some side material. [03:36:47] Speaker C: Obviously. Well, thank you for your business. This is incredible. So she finishes ringing you up, tucks everything into the bags. If you guys need anything, I'll be here. But I think you may have bought, like, half the books I have on most of this stuff. Going to have to buy replacements, order replacements, price tag run. [03:37:18] Speaker E: I'm all told. [03:37:22] Speaker C: You'Re in the like, a few hundred dollars worth of worth of books. Most of it is Rosanna's purchases. Her selection got up into the two to 300s on her own. But as she whips out a card, you have sneaking suspicion that's not really going to be a problem. [03:37:54] Speaker A: Mental note to myself, I might need to go online and replenish later. [03:38:10] Speaker C: Okay. Your tag along is like, oh. [03:38:21] Speaker A: Yeah, don't worry, it's not you, it's me. [03:38:29] Speaker C: But I'm present for I guess I could just close my eyes. [03:38:34] Speaker A: Wouldn't that close my eyes? [03:38:37] Speaker C: I don't know. I have to try it out. [03:38:39] Speaker E: Okay. [03:38:43] Speaker C: So you gather up your books because we are over the line on our time. You all gather up your books and you go to climb into the RV and you get back on the road. I'm going to assume that you guys are going to continue to drive to make up as much time as you can considering all of the delays and the late start and everything. Maybe pull over at some point so that Victoria can cook and Arthur can drive, can take over driving for her. Rosanna spends all of her time with her nose buried in a book until it is time for her to hop into her chat room at 08:00 like she normally does. All right, thank you, everybody for listening in, for being a part of this. Thank you, Matthew, for dropping in as a guest star. Thank you guys for listening.