MIKE: Hi, everybody! Before we get into the episode, I just wanted to address that we had some technical issues during recording, and all of Christine’s dialogue had to be re-recorded, but she is a champion hero, and she re-recorded everything. So, thank you so much to her, and enjoy the episode.
[INTRO MUSIC]
Certain places in the world are deemed Accorded Neutral Ground from something called the Unseelie Accords. In Accorded Neutral Ground, anyone from any supernatural faction is basically safe and can meet there and converse there and can’t touch each other. It’s kind of like that diner scene in Heat, between Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, if that’s a good sort of cultural touchstone for y’all.
DARIUS: Yeah, that works.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, that kind of works.
MIKE: Except it’s enforced by a set of rules that’s backed up by literally anything with magic. So, in Burlington specifically, the Accorded Neutral Ground you’re directed to is called the Four Corners of the Earth. How many people that live in and around Burlington think that they would actually have been there before?
THOM: Albion definitely.
MIKE: Okay, so you know how to direct the group to that location.
THOM: Yeah, I know how to get there.
MIKE: Great.
CHRISTINE: I think that Desdemona would have been there before as well, being a Burlington native.
MIKE: Makes perfect sense, and you’re probably the one driving, because that’s just kind of how this goes. It’s either you or Albion driving, I would imagine.
CHRISTINE: I don’t have a car.
THOM: Yeah, she’s just got a bike.
MIKE: Oh, that’s right.
CHRISTINE: Everyone on the handlebars. Ding ding ding ding.
MIKE: Yeah.
DARIUS: It’s a tandem bike.
MIKE: On a bicycle built for four. So, you’ll be meeting the werewolves that live on a farm in Monkton, and are not trying to bother nobody, and a Warden of the White Council. Now, the White Council of Wizards is a long and storied institution that keeps itself secret from the world, and the Wardens act as a sort of security force that police the sort of internal affairs of the council itself, as well as being the sort of primary foot soldiers in any sort of major supernatural conflict, including the Vampire War, which recently ended a few years back, but definitely incurred heavy losses on the Warden’s ranks, which they’ve been bolstering again since, and you know that you’re going to be meeting Warden Beaumont at this particular location. When you arrive at the Four Corners of the Earth, those of you that haven’t been there before may be somewhat surprised to see what actually greets you.
[MUSIC]
First of all, when you enter the building, it seems to be behind you already, somehow. When you finally turn and walk down in, you find a small establishment with almost more art than wall. There are religious statues from various religions that seem to just be around the place, behind the counter, painting of a Virgin Mary over a door into a back room, the contents of that room are unknown. The benches and tables are covered in fur and seem to have books of various kinds stuffed in them. There is an ATM, as this place is cash only, and behind the counter, making a variety of sandwiches with just a plethora of fascinating smells is a man of somewhat indeterminate national origin who sort of greets you and says “Take a look at the menu and then I’ll be right with you for whatever you like.” Over in the corner, most of you recognize the werewolves that you met on a previous adventure a few months back where you encountered some hags in a different restaurant establishment that is currently closed for somewhat obvious reasons, and you see a person that none of you have encountered before. He’s a somewhat tall fellow with sort of sandy hair and a youngish face, but he carries himself with a certain air of confidence that you can only assume means that he’s the Warden in question. Not only is he a Wizard, but he is a wizard who is capable of holding himself against a variety of supernatural foes, and with that comes a certain amount of confidence, even if his face doesn’t totally read it. What do you do?
THOM: “Howdy.”
MIKE: “Ah, hi Albion. I’m glad you guys could arrive. I’m glad you guys showed back up,” says John.
THOM: “Yeah, how’s it going there, brother? You doing alright?”
MIKE: “Things are a little quiet on the farm right now on account of the snow, but beyond that, things have been quiet.”
THOM: “Alright.”
MIKE: You all know that if any of you are paying attention, it’s currently a couple of weeks away—actually, I think it’s one week away from it being a proper full moon. So, at the moment, there’s one member of the group that you don’t necessarily need to worry too bad about.
THOM: Yeah, no, he’s fine. Yeah, no, and I know the reason for that. Albion is going to kind of just eye up the Warden a bit, try to kind of get a bit of a—I’m trying to think of the word here—get a bit of a read on the guy.
MIKE: You notice that he’s doing the same to you, though he is very obviously avoiding eye contact with you.
THOM: Oh yeah, no that’s fine. I assumed he would. Albion’s also kind of just nakedly wearing symbols around his neck. He’s got a necklace with the Valknut, the crucifix, the Star of David.
MIKE: He finally catches those details and you see him raise his eyebrows slightly and then sort of confirm something in his head and make a little nod. He steps over and says “Ah, hello, you must be the friends that they were referring to, I presume, and you must be Albion.
THOM: “Well, I am disturbed to find my reputation precedes me.”
MIKE: “Oh no, they mentioned you.”
THOM: “I am disturbed to find my reputation precedes me.”
MIKE: “You might as well order some food, this may take some time, I don’t know, but in the meantime, it’s no point in not having something. The food here is delicious and Ladislav will take it right to your table.”
THOM: “Well, sounds good. I mean, I’ve been itching for some Babylonian Beef.”
MIKE: “It is quite good. I’m thinking the Hungarian Chalamada myself.”
THOM: “I’m afraid you had me at a disadvantage before this continues.”
MIKE: “Ah, my name is Warden Beaumont. I’m with the White Council.”
THOM: “Yeah, that part I gathered.”
MIKE: He looks around and notices that at this particular point in the day there is nobody else that’s actually really in the restaurant yet, but to which he says “If people start coming in here, we may want to keep this conversation a bit on the down low.”
THOM: “Yep.”
MIKE: “I mean, Ladislav over here, he’s fine, but anyone else who comes in—“
THOM: “Yeah, that’s some risks we don’t particularly need.”
MIKE: The proprietor looks up and he looks at you and just says “Oh yeah, don’t worry about me, no problems here, but if you do want some food, I have—go right ahead.”
THOM: Right, Albion’s going to go on and order and leave the other three with the Warden for a sec.
MIKE: Yeah, if you all want to order food, there is just all kinds of different food on there, vegetarian options and just—it’s all sandwiches of different kinds based on different cuisine from around the world, and it smells amazing.
DARIUS: Oh, cheesesteak.
MIKE: There isn’t a Philly Cheesesteak on there, but—
DARIUS: This is bullshit, fuck this restaurant.
GWEN: Can you please list all of the things that are not on the menu so we know what not to order?
DARIUS: I fucking hate this place. I fucking hate this goddamn family.
MIKE: Let’s just skip to you guys all finding something that is actually going to taste good and you will enjoy.
DARIUS: Agreed.
THOM: Yeah, that’s wise.
MIKE: We can talk about the menu of this place later, because it’s kind of a—it’s actually fantastic. So, yeah everyone grabs what sort of refreshment they desire and everyone puts in their food order, and Ladislav starts cooking that up for you. You can see he’s got a panini press where he’s pressing sandwiches and just at a little counter where he’s just chopping up and mixing ingredients together, and you take up the back half of the restaurant together, all of you, because there are four of you, one Warden, and there are four people that most of you have dealt with before. Ro, you actually have not met these people before, and fortunately for you, neither have the listening audience, so you get some description!
GWEN: Perfect.
THOM: Yay!
MIKE: There appear to be two male and two female folk there who were identified as being werewolves. One of them seems sort of just kind of tired at this point. Sort of the weight of being in charge of things and keeping things afloat seems to be sort of wearing on this fellow, but there’s a certain nobility about this guy. The fellow to his left however seems a little more nervous and a little more twitchy. He’s got short, curly, somewhat thin hair, and sort of a sunkenness under his eyes as well. It looks like he’s very much uncomfortable in the situation. One of the young women is sort of quiet, and just you notice sort of observing everyone. She has long, sort of unkempt hair. Long brown hair that doesn’t look like much necessary maintenance has been done to and she’s just dressed in some simple—not plaid, I’m trying to think of the word. What’s the word for that cloth fabric that’s usually plaid?
DARIUS: Tartan?
GWEN: Flannel.
MIKE: Ah, flannel, yes, that’s it.
CHRISTINE: I’m revoking your Mainer card.
MIKE: Oh god, now I’ll have to go back to New Hampshire where I was born.
GWEN: Stay there.
MIKE: I mean, I never had a Mainer card, apparently, and the last one is a young woman who just sort of sits with her arms crossed. Her quietness isn’t from her observing and sort of taking stock of everybody, it seems like there’s a different sense about her, there’s something—have you ever just looked at a person and just sort of observed the subtleties of their body language and realize “I should not mess with this person.”
DARIUS: Yes.
GWEN: Yep.
CHRISTINE: Okie dokie.
MIKE: That’s this last woman.
GWEN: Alright.
MIKE: Her hair is just sort of up in a ponytail and she is just sitting and watching and if you take the time to look, you can tell that there’s a certain tenseness, as if she’s preparing to defend herself against a threat that has not yet been seen, so—
GWEN: And everyone else at this point has met these people, correct?
MIKE: Correct.
THOM: Yeah, no, we had a run in with them a while back.
MIKE: Yeah, in fact, John looks at you and says “Now, I kind of was expecting someone else.”
GWEN: Oh no.
THOM: “He’s out of town for a bit.”
MIKE: “Ah, I see. Okay. Well, who do I have the pleasure of making the acquaintance of, exactly?”
GWEN: “Hi, my name is Ro. I met these lovely people not too long ago, and now I’m just kind of with them.”
THOM: “That’s how it goes.”
MIKE: “I suppose that’s fair. It seemed like that’s kind of the case with the last fellow too, so alright. Let me just be blunt, he didn’t die, did he?”
THOM: “Oh no, like I said, he’s just out of town. It’s an odd circumstance. I don’t really know all the details.”
MIKE: “Okay, I was just trying to make sure you weren’t just covering for that.”
THOM: “No, as far as I know, he ain’t dead.”
MIKE: The Warden clears his throat. “In any case, we have food coming, but we have something a little more substantial perhaps to deal with at the moment than introductions.”
THOM: “Yeah, perhaps.”
MIKE: “Yeah, bear attacks. Real big scare quotes around those bear attacks. Look, we’ve been hearing some things. We’ve been hearing some chatter. I’ve been talking to Philippa in the sort of local Paranet organization, and she seems to have some reason to suspect that you might be the cause of these things, given that the hags were apparently driven away. Which, by the way, there were hags and you dealt with hags?”
DARIUS: “Yeah.”
THOM: “Yeah. Sylvester here kicked them to death.”
DARIUS: “Yes I did.”
MIKE: Okay, you notice that he is looking at you, but he is not making eye contact with you whatsoever. If you could make a quick Empathy, the target is two.
DARIUS: Okay.
MIKE: Look at that.
CHRISTINE: Hey.
MIKE: Okay. It looks like he’s basically staring at a point sort of on the bridge of your nose, and it looks like he’s definitely deliberately avoiding eye contact with you, but it doesn’t look like it’s necessarily that he doesn’t want to look at you and see you, so you’re not totally sure what his motivations are. He gives you as hard a stare as somebody can who is not making direct eye contact with you and says “Well, congratulations are in order. May I shake your hand?” And I’ll give you off that last Empathy roll that you know that there’s something else he’s trying to do with this.
DARIUS: “Nah.”
MIKE: “Oh, I’d really like to.”
DARIUS: “I mean, I just washed them. I don’t want to wash them again.”
MIKE: “Okay, I—“
DARIUS: “I’m a doctor, I kind of get all weird about germs and shit.”
MIKE: “Wait, you’re a doctor?”
DARIUS: “Yeah.”
MIKE: “That’s not what I was expecting.”
DARIUS: “Few people do.”
MIKE: “Okay.” He looks at the other ones. “Did he kick a hag to death? Really?”
CHRISTINE: “He really did, yes.”
GWEN: “I wasn’t there, so—“
THOM: “I mean, we kind of did beat the shit out of her and I may have fired a flare gun directly into her face, and he—I mean, it was the kick that broke the hag’s back, I guess, is one way of putting it.”
DARIUS: “It was a team effort. It was a team effort”
THOM: “We also kind of--
CHRISTINE: “Are you wearing the shoes right now, Sylvester?”
DARIUS: “Yes.”
THOM: “Yeah, no. He’s got the iron kickers on.”
DARIUS: “Yeah. Wait, is that what we’re calling them?”
THOM: My voice is inconsistent as hell tonight.
CHRISTINE: “Yes, don’t mess with those feet.”
MIKE: “Oh, okay, that I guess explains some of the discrepancies between—never mind.”
DARIUS: “Look, I like primarily using my feet, so I don’t like using my hands unless I actually need to for medical purposes and stuff. It’s weird.”
THOM: “Yeah, he doesn’t want to pull a Doctor Strange on us.”
DARIUS: “There you go.”
MIKE: Okay. Alright, Sylvester, I feel like given how much you don’t like Wizards in general and how it seems like this guy not only is sort of playing around with not expecting—he’s like at every turn “Oh, you’re that really? Okay, I guess.” And just he won’t even meet your eye, so I’m going to offer you a Fate Point to turn kind of hostile with this individual. I’m going to tag your Trouble, which is Heavy is the Head That Wears the Crown.
DARIUS: Yeah.
MIKE: You’re better than this. You’ve worked hard to be who you are, and this guy won’t even meet your eyes. This is insulting. So, I am offering you a Fate Point to be actively belligerent with this person to sort of stall the actual relationship and good investigation that you could get out of this.
DARIUS: Okay.
MIKE: And I’ll say that it might result in something called a soulgaze where he actually meets your eyes and then a crazy thing happens.
DARIUS: Alright, cool.
MIKE: Alright, so at the start of the session, everyone does get their refresh of fate points, so add your refresh adjustment to your Fate Points from last time.
THOM: Yeah, I don’t think I used any last time, so I believe I’m at four. Sweet.
MIKE: How many do you have, Des?
CHRISTINE: One.
MIKE: Amazing. Ro, how many Fate Points do you have now?
GWEN: I used both mine last time, so I’m back to two.
MIKE: Okay, and Sylvester, how many does this make, including the one that I just gave you for tagging your Trouble Aspect?
DARIUS: I think I have six by default, five or six.
MIKE: Okay.
DARIUS: So, I’ve got seven now.
MIKE: Yeah, that sounds good. You are the Pure Mortal in the group, and I am compelling your Trouble Aspect.
DARIUS: Okie doke.
MIKE: Okay, alright.
DARIUS: “Hey, so quick question, buddy, if that’s cool with you.”
MIKE: “Oh yeah, of course.”
DARIUS: “What the fuck is your deal with me?”
MIKE: “Excuse you?”
DARIUS: “Yeah, you’re like trying to stare at me, but with your peripheral fucking vision? What the shit is that about? You can’t bother to turn your head 90 fucking degrees and look me in the goddamn eye? Are you fucking real right now, or are you that big of a shit lord that your head is so far up your ass that you’re doing your own colonoscopy?”
MIKE: “Oh, no, you don’t understand, there’s a—“
DARIUS: “Oh I don’t, do I? So, fucking enlighten me. Enlighten me! Please, bestow your infinite fucking wisdom and—“
THOM: “Jesus goddamn Christ and Odin preserve us.”
MIKE: “Alright, look, okay I’m telling you I would very much like to look you in the eyes right now, except I don’t think I actually got your name yet.”
DARIUS: “Dr. Sylvester Coopersmith, M fucking D.”
MIKE: “Okay, okay Dr.—” his hands are up sort of defensively, as people do to sort of show they’re trying to be nonaggressive in conversation. “Look I promise you, I would love to look you in the eyes, but I have a very good reason that—I honestly thought that you were a Wizard for a minute, but I guess—“
DARIUS: “God fucking damn it, I knew this was some fucking magic bullshit.”
MIKE: “Okay, alright, do you want to understand?”
DARIUS: “You know what? Sure, why not. Fuck it. Hit me with your best goddamn shot.”
THOM: Albion is about to step forward and stop it, but he’s like “Nah, I’m going to let this happen.”
MIKE: Alright.
THOM: It’s time for Sylvester to learn an object lesson.
MIKE: “Alright then, doctor.” And he meets your gaze, and all of a sudden, you are falling into his eyes. You become locked—
THOM: [Thom imitating the tune of Careless Whispers]
MIKE: Oh my god.
CHRISTINE: Why would you do that when I don’t have my Kazoo with me, Thom?
MIKE: Oh, that would have been—
DARIUS: If I could strangle you through the fucking internet, I would.
MIKE: That would have been amazing audio just then.
CHRISTINE: It’s in my purse.
MIKE: You are not entering something called a soulgaze, in which you both get to see into the other person’s soul and learn something pretty significant about them.
DARIUS: Ah shit, he we go—well, I can’t say ‘again’ because this is the first time this has happened. Shit.
MIKE: Oh boy, oh boy. This is going to be a kind of mental contest, because this is a very intense thing that’s occurring, and it could cause mental stress.
DARIUS: Yay.
MIKE: So, the first is a mutual psychic attack. So, if you could roll Conviction right now.
DARIUS: Ouch.
MIKE: Oh, oh, okay.
DARIUS: Okay.
GWEN: Oh.
CHRISTINE: Sylvester killed him.
DARIUS: He dead.
MIKE: Unfortunately, you rolled against his Discipline score, and because he is a Warden he actually has a pretty good Discipline, so even with rolling minus three, your minus one Conviction does not manage to land a hit.
DARIUS: Aw raspberries.
MIKE: So, now if you could roll Discipline as a defense, please.
DARIUS: Hey.
MIKE: What is your native Discipline score?
DARIUS: I don’t know, because I can’t find the sheet again, because I’m terrible.
THOM: I got it right here, and your Discipline is three.
DARIUS: Yay.
MIKE: Woah, hey, that’s actually really good. So, overall you rolled a five. It’s too bad that his attack total was a six.
DARIUS: Fucking...
THOM: You could attack something with that Fate Point you got.
DARIUS: Yeah, I have Fate Points, let me use them.
MIKE: So, the thing is, he’s not going to be dealing you mental stress with this, he’s actually going to be placing a maneuver on you instead if that’s okay. You can still choose to tag a Fate Point to avoid this, or you can just go with it.
DARIUS: I’ll avoid it.
MIKE: Okay. What Fate Point are you going to—What Aspect are you going to tag with your Fate Point?
DARIUS: Nobody Likes Wizards.
MIKE: I thought so. Alright, so you bump your defense up to a seven, which is enough to prevent any damage from the mutual psychic attack that happens. The second component is information. Each soulgazer gets an involved metaphorical glimpse of the other’s soul, which is described by the GM. So, I have a question for you.
DARIUS: Yes?
MIKE: I’m going to do a more flowery description of this, but if someone were to look into Sylvester’s soul and look at sort of the core of what they were, based on one of your Aspects, what would that look like?
DARIUS: Probably Goro Majima from Yakuza.
MIKE: Cool, thank you. So, you lock eyes with this guy and you suddenly are seeing something that makes no literal sense. You are looking at a sort of version of this person that seems to be like the figure of Atlas, holding up the weight of the world. Enshrined within that figure of Atlas is the actual shape of the person that you see in front of you, and he’s sort of in there mimicking the motions in pantomime of Atlas struggling under the weight of the world, standing within this sort of hulking muscle-bound figure that’s able to support this giant just unbelievable weight, but inside it looks like somebody who’s just playing pantomime, as if he doesn’t know what he’s actually doing, but is trying to pretend anyway.
DARIUS: Oh.
MIKE: And all of this just seems to be floating in a void of stars, and the world seems unbelievably heavy as though if he were to drop it, you would be destroyed under its weight before you could realize what was even happening, and just as quickly, you are jumped back out into the real world. You don’t necessarily know one of his Aspects, but you get a clear picture of something in his central character from that, but because you decided to avoid taking damage, he doesn’t necessarily get knowledge of one of your Aspects, but he does get an idea of who you are, and I think it’s going to be much on the Three Legged Horse Aspect, but it’s going to be sort of a picture of that. You as this sort of person who’s been sort of battered and broken over the years, but is carrying on through the will of your own determination. Is that accurate?
DARIUS: Yeah, pretty much.
MIKE: Sweet. So, you’re now back in the real world and you realize that despite looking up at this sort of evocative image for what felt like at least a minute, no time has passed whatsoever. Everyone is exactly where they were previously, and how do you react?
DARIUS: “Oh, that was weird.”
THOM: Albion just kind of rubs the bridge of his nose, disappointed that that’s the only response, but somehow not surprised.
MIKE: “Ah. You are an interesting one, Dr. Sylvester Coopersmith M.D., but I think I get you a little better now, and I think you get something a little bit about me. So, let’s just cut to the chase and let’s talk about what is going on here, alright?”
DARIUS: “Yeah, sure.”
THOM: “Yeah, look, I don’t want to sound biased, but this whole situation with the hags would not have been resolved if not for the timely assistance and cooperation of my friends here, so I’m inclined to believe that they’re probably not the cause of these attacks. Now, I understand the inclination to immediately jump to some conclusions, however—and I know you don’t know me, so my word doesn’t count for much beyond the fact that I’m one of the men that took down that hag, but I’m fairly certain that we’re looking for another party.
CHRISTINE: “I mean, what sort of evidence do you even have?”
MIKE: “That’s kind of the issue. We don’t have a lot of evidence except these folks that were supposedly attacked by bears are turning up with injuries that are rather forceful, you might say.”
DARIUS: “What kind of bears?”
MIKE: “Okay, like bears, but more so than bears. Bears aren’t this—bears don’t eat people like this. Bears don’t behave the way that these injuries would necessarily require a bear to behave.”
DARIUS: “Right.”
MIKE: “It’s got the force of a thing that is bear-like, sure. But there’s a certain—I don’t know if it’s methodical, I don’t know if it’s that people got sort of eat alive from the inside, but it just doesn’t match up with bears, but it does line up with a particular kind of werewolf that yeah, we do know about, Annie.” And she gives a hard stare.
THOM: “Shit.”
MIKE: Des, make me a Lore roll, right now. Target is three.
CHRISTINE: Okay.
THOM: Should I make one as well, since I actually have a Lore score?
MIKE: Yeah, you can do that.
CHRISTINE: Four.
THOM: Alright, that is a three for me.
MIKE: Okay. You both know this, but Des, you definitely know it more being somebody who trades in being a psychic medium and some of the trappings that go with that, you would be more acutely aware of the phases of the moon. It is not the full moon yet. It’s not even a few days out from the full moon, so you had sort of explained to you what a loup-garou is, and Ro, you don’t know what a loup-garou is, but it’s the kind of werewolf that turns only at the full moon and in and around there and is just completely unstoppable and completely unthinking and just utterly destructive.
GWEN: Okay. So, like movie werewolf.
MIKE: Yeah, pretty much movie werewolf.
GWEN: Okay.
MIKE: So, Des, you know for sure that it’s not the right phase of the moon for this to be a thing.
CHRISTINE: “Alright, okay I know it’s not exactly the season for bear attacks unless the bear was desperate. I mean, they should all be hibernating right now, but I also know that as of last week, it’s not that time of the month for that kind of werewolf.”
MIKE: “Yeah, dipshit, that’s what I said.” Annie looks strongly at the Warden. “Were you just waiting for somebody else to confirm it for you, or what? Did you not look up in the sky at all?” “Okay, look, we don’t have much in the way of better leads right now, so all I know is that there’s a group of werewolves with a farm out in Monkton and they are harboring a loup-garou, something that is traditionally looked upon unfavorably by most other people in the magical community.” He’s sort of withering under a very intense glare from Annie and her werewolf friends.
THOM: And Albion, Albion is glaring too right now.
CHRISTINE: And I’m glaring too right now, you called her dipshit.
MIKE: No, no. She called him dipshit.
CHRISTINE: Oh.
DARIUS: And rightfully so.
THOM: Albion just kind of “So, I say this with all due respect as a Warden of the White Council, your cunning evidence is that there’s a loup-garou that is in the area when these bear attacks are happening at a time when there ain’t no goddamn loup-garou.”
MIKE: “I don’t know what kind of people these are that they would be willingly hanging around with somebody who they know is a loup-garou—“ “Hey, guilt by association. That’s a fallacy, I’m pretty sure,” yells Wesley.
THOM: “I mean, I did take an ethics class or two, that is a logical fallacy.”
CHRISTINE: “Let me ask you a question, Warden.”
MIKE: “Yes, what?”
CHRISTINE: “I would like to know what happened last night. Do you have any idea what happened last night here in town?"
MIKE: “Oh boy, okay, well—“
CHRISTINE: “I mean, if you have any answers, I may be a medium psychic, but even I don’t have all of the answers for all of that amount of activity that there was last night.”
MIKE: “Oh Jesus Christ, you’re one of those, huh?”
CHRISTINE: “One of what.”
THOM: “Yeah, you mind elaborating on what ‘one of those’ is? You’re not exactly doing a great job of making friends here, Warden.”
CHRISTINE: “If you know so much, where were you last night when we were dealing with zombies and skeletons and—“
MIKE: “Hold on, hold on, hold on.”
DARIUS: “The whole Scooby-Doo shit.”
MIKE: “Can I get your name, ma’am?”
CHRISTINE: “Desdemona Brown, medium psychic.”
MIKE: “Thank you, Desdemona. I want to be able to address you appropriately when I ask Ectomancer or cold read?”
CHRISTINE: “Ectomancer.”
THOM: “Yeah, she’s legit, my dude.”
MIKE: “Okay, thank god. I thought you were one of those charlatans that just give magic a bad name.”
GWEN: “No, that’s what I do.”
MIKE: “Okay.”
CHRISTINE: She bristles a little at that.
MIKE: “Hey, you’re doing it for real, okay? I don’t have an issue with you. This has been the worst day. We’ve all gotten off to a very bad start here. I’m terribly sorry.”
THOM: “Mhm. Can confirm there hombre, this is not the best foot forward for most parties involved.”
MIKE: Look, I personally don’t really think it’s your guys’ fault, okay? I don’t understand why you would be—look, as far as I was told, loup-garou are just kind of evil by nature.” “Oh, that is just so inconsiderate. You’re just going to judge me before you even get to know me.” “I’m trying to tell you that’s what I was told, okay? Oh this does not look good.”
THOM: “Listen, I’m going to quote a wise man dragon thing and—“
MIKE: “Oh god, is this the Paarthurnax thing?”
THOM: “I see you too have played Skyrim.”
MIKE: “Well, I’ve watched someone else play. If I try to play Skyrim the Xbox kind of melts.”
DARIUS: “Well, that’s your first mistake.”
THOM: “But just for the sake of those of us here who might not be as game savvy, ‘is it better for one to be born good, or to overcome an evil nature?’”
DARIUS: “Yes.”
MIKE: “Well, okay.” He’s just sort of at a bit of a loss.
THOM: “Look, my point is I understand the context might seem a bit threatening, but I mean thus far, how many other bear attacks have there been around here for the entire time these folks have been around? How many other folks have turned up dead and ate from the inside around the time of the full moon? Because I’ve done my research and my math, and I’m pretty sure there ain’t no loup-garou related fatalities to speak of. At least, not that I’ve been able to track down, so I think these folks might not be a threat, and I think your initial assessment that you don’t think it’s their fault is probably the right one.”
MIKE: Annie sort of looks at him hard and says, “Look, I’ve dealt with these people already. If that one there—if southern drawl over here thought that I was a real threat, either he’d be dead, or I’d be dead. Probably him, but either way.”
THOM: Albion just kind of shrugs because he’s not going to argue that point.
MIKE: “So, if you’re not going to take our word for it, maybe his.”
THOM: Albion just kind of raises his eyebrows and looks at the Warden expectantly.
MIKE: “Alright, okay. Do you have any possible other leads that we can work off of here, because—“
THOM: “I mean, I’d have to investigate the scene, see if I can work something out, but I ain’t been around.”
MIKE: Well, Sylvester.
DARIUS: Yeah?
MIKE: You recall from your previous adventure with Albion and Desdemona and Marcus, that you got tangled up in it when your friend at the crematorium, Ms. Berhow, showed you a quote-unquote, “weird one,” and this seemed to fit the bill of what people are talking about right now. Somebody that got mauled pretty heavily. They thought it might be wild animals because they couldn’t explain it otherwise and seem to be eaten very much in the manner that seems to be talked about here.
DARIUS: “Ah, is the morgue open right now? Why am I even saying this? Just checking.”
MIKE: [laughter] The Warden just “The wait—the what?”
DARIUS: “A while back there was a—look, this has happened before, and I’m pretty sure at the crematorium—not the crematorium, the morgue—“
MIKE: It is a crematorium.
DARIUS: Oh, shit. I hope she hasn’t burned the fucking body yet.
MIKE: Yeah.
DARIUS: “But she showed me the body that had similar wounds to this fucking thing.”
MIKE: “Oh. This was, you said, a few months back?”
DARIUS: “Yeah.”
MIKE: “Does it coincide with the hags that I understand you encountered?”
DARIUS: “Yeah.”
MIKE: “Huh. Okay. That’s an interesting connection.” John pipes up. “Yeah, I don’t think you told us about that, did you?”
THOM: “Well nah, when we met, he was kind of not too fond of y’all.”
DARIUS: “Still not.”
THOM: “Luckily, opinions have changed.”
MIKE: “Yeah, we remember.”
DARIUS: Anyway, I’m going to pull up the pictures on my phone to show the Warden.
MIKE: “Oh, these are the pictures you took a few months back and they’re still on your phone. Okay, great. Don’t hold that too close to me, just a heads up. I don’t want to ruin your phone.”
DARIUS: “Cool.”
MIKE: “Look, we got off on the wrong foot, but I’m not going to be a dick.”
DARIUS: “I’m trying to be civil, for me”
MIKE: “You know what, I appreciate this.” So, he takes a look and just sort of eww. “Eww, yeah, have you four seen that?”
THOM: “I have not.”
MIKE: He was referring to the wolves.
THOM: Okay.
MIKE: They all kind of take a look at it and there’s a consensus reached, and Phoebe this time pipes up. “No, this is not the work of one of us, or even anything we’d be really truly capable of. In fact, I think this is also not the work of Patrick, the troll that we had to sadly put down.”
DARIUS: “Oh yeah.”
THOM: “Yeah, you mind if I take a gander at that?”
DARIUS: “Yeah, sure.” I’ll slide the phone over to Albion.
THOM: Alright, I’m going to make a Lore roll on this to see if I can kind of recognize this and narrow it down to certain candidates based on things that I’ve hunted or been taught about by the Noctis.
MIKE: Okay. Alright, go for it. The target is four.
THOM: Alright, that is a neutral, so that is a Lore of two, but I’m going to tag I Saw What Was Behind The Curtain, Now I Hunt It to bring it up to a four.
MIKE: Okay. You recall during your previous investigation with the hags that you had narrowed it down to a couple of possibilities for what could have done such a thing, and amongst those possibilities were werewolf maybe, maybe not. Bridge Troll, possibly. That sort of level of strength and that sort of—all the wounds wound up with the idea of that, but there was a third option and—
THOM: Ah shit, I remember this. Albion’s just kind of—his eyes are going to widen and take a sharp inhale. “We might be dealing with a wendigo.”
GWEN: “Oh.”
DARIUS: “Like the Marvel character?”
THOM: “And that is not—no, not that Wendigo, the actual kind.”
DARIUS: “Oh shit, that’s even worse.”
MIKE: Wesley looks up and goes “It wasn’t Dead by Daylight, it was the other one. Until Dawn?”
THOM: “Similar, yeah. I mean, that’s not the most accurate representation of them, but it’s actually somewhat on point. They are that fucking nasty.”
MIKE: “Oh, Jesus.”
THOM: “Cannibalism changing them and they hunt, they kill, they eat, and are never satisfied, and occasionally, they run until their goddamn feet fall off, and in that case, they start flying, so yeah, that’s bad if it’s a wendigo, and I suspect it might well goddamn be, so fuck.”
GWEN: Pictures?
MIKE: At the moment that you all have been looking at a corpse, plates start hitting the table in front of you.
GWEN: Oh god.
THOM: “I mean, I’m starved, so here’s your phone back, Sylvester.” I sit down and start eating.
DARIUS: “I put my phone away, shrug, and then stuff my face.”
MIKE: Ro, did you actually take a look at that at all?
GWEN: Yes, I did.
MIKE: Great, so now there’s a plate of food in front of you, enjoy.
[MUSIC; EPISODE BREAK]
MIKE: Hey, it’s Michael here again, your GM. I hope you are enjoying the episode, I know I had fun recording it. That sounds conceited, it’s not. Anyway, thank you so much again to everybody for listening to the episode, and thank you to everybody who has been tweeting about the show using the GMMCast hashtag on Twitter, and anybody who's been telling their friends to listen, I cannot thank you enough so much. We don’t pay to advertise the show, so that is how we get our audience is word of mouth. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your enemies. Give them something good, you know? Maybe you can build some bridges that you thought were burned, tell people you hate that this show is great, and now you’re best friends again. We fixed the universe, and it’s only episode two. Thank you so much for sticking with the very long pilot episode. This episode is a little bit shorter and they are going to get more and more concise from here. Our goal is for between an hour and an hour a half per episode, but at the start of recording we weren’t super consistent. Well, that is more than enough for me, so we’ll get back to the episode.
[MUSIC; AD FOR STEAMPUNKS]
EMILY: Hi, I’m Emily.
ZACH: And I’m Zach.
EMILY: And we’re the hosts of STEAMpunks, a podcast about badass women and the history of STEAM.
ZACH: Steam? So like old trains and boats and stuff?
EMILY: No! Well, I mean yes, but no. STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, arts, and math.
ZACH: Oh, like Ada Lovelace was the first computer programmer ever?
EMILY: Exactly.
ZACH: Awesome, I want to learn more about STEAMpunks.
EMILY: And you will. And so will anybody who tunes in every other Wednesday on iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify.
ZACH: Join me and Emily on STEAMpunks every other Wednesday on the Pocket Podcast Network.
EMILY: And keep flying you beautiful, majestic steam powered horses.
ZACH: Neigh!
[END OF BREAK]
MIKE: Albion, you pull into a parking lot in the University of Vermont campus, and you’re able to secure parking because you have an appointment with one Cagney Moriarty. You're trying to work through some things with this psychiatry student who needs the credits.
DARIUS: “You’re welcome.”
MIKE: I have a question.
THOM: Yes? “Also, thank you, Sly.”
MIKE: Yes, this is absolutely a connection that you made.
THOM: “You know what, Sly, I deeply appreciate you getting me therapy.”
MIKE: Yes, this is absolutely something that you were able to secure by way of knowing Sylvester and Sylvester knowing some of the students. So, he used his connections to hook you up with this. My question is—“
THOM: He probably fixed their but.
MIKE: I mean, it’s possible, but I have a more important question, which is how—
DARIUS: A gentleman never asks a lady the details.
MIKE: How much details of the supernatural are you actually telling this person?
THOM: I mean, we have doctor-patient confidentiality, right?
MIKE: I mean, yes.
DARIUS: You should probably edit it.
THOM: Yeah, I’ve edited out a lot of the details, I’m mostly phrasing it as something that happened in a nightmare I can’t shake.
MIKE: Okay, so you’re using nightmare to cover the fact that you are specifically referring to the supernatural.
THOM: I’m finding ways around it, yeah. I’m not a very good liar though. I’m pretty sure that they can tell at some point that I’m just bullshitting.
MIKE: Okay, okay. I’m going to say that given it’s been a few months and you’re still working on clearing a severe Consequence, that with appropriate therapy with the appropriate justification would have gone away by now that the deliberate obfuscation element is what’s taking it longer to clear that Consequence, because you have to kind of talk around stuff, and also this is a student, and not yet a licensed psychiatrist. So, you arrive at your appointment at a little later than your scheduled time and you find your way through—
THOM: “Sorry I’m late, I got caught up with some new acquaintances.”
MIKE: “Oh, well okay. Come on in, have a seat, Mr. Graves.”
THOM: “I thank you, doc Moriarty.”
MIKE: “Oh, not doctor yet, but I appreciate it. You know I don’t have my license yet, but I really do appreciate your willingness to come in and help me get some hours on the books.
THOM: “Well, I appreciate you. As I’ve said several times, I do appreciate you talking through my weird crazy ass imagination dream shit that I can’t—you know what I’m talking about. We’ve been talking about this for a while now.”
MIKE: “Yeah, it’s okay, I get it. I understand. No worries, I’m pretty sure everybody’s probably running a little off kilter today, let’s say. I mean, it’s the start of a new year, a whole bunch of possibility in the future, and also last night was—well, it was last night.”
THOM: “Yeah, those northern lights were sure crazy, huh?”
MIKE: “Yeah, I don’t totally know what happened, because I was—well, I may have partied a little hard, because I was pretty—“
THOM: “Cagney, I never took you for a partier. You always seemed so goddamned straight laced to me.”
MIKE: “Well, okay, look, I talk with people like you all the time—no offense.”
THOM: “I mean, that’s fair. None taken.”
MIKE: “I work on helping people through their issues, so every once in a while, it’s healthy to get a little reckless here and there.”
THOM: “I mean, yeah, granted.”
MIKE: “I was in a safe environment with friends, so I’m sure everything was okay, and I know it was. I knew that they had my backs, and I could trust them. So, I just kind of let loose a little, de-stressed a little bit with some self-medication, which by the way, don’t advise that. That is not an official medical recommendation.”
THOM: “That’s fine, this is not medical advice or opinion. It’s just for fun.”
MIKE: “Well, for me it’s a little more than just for fun, I am trying to have a career here.”
THOM: “Oh no, I meant the self-medication.”
MIKE: “Oh, okay yeah. God, sorry. We’re not here to talk about—“
THOM: “You alright, Cagney?”
MIKE: “Look, I’m a little hung over, I apologize, and everyone’s a little on edge today. I guess there was something that happened that—you know the lake there has been used for all sorts of stuff throughout history, a lot of shipping boats, and even the various wars. The Civil War, the Revolutionary War, Champlain was kind of important in both of those.”
THOM: “Yeah, I’ve been doing some research since I came to the area, yeah.”
MIKE: “And so you know as well as much as I do that there are ships that got sunk in that lake at one point or another.”
THOM: “I mean, ships do do that on occasion.”
MIKE: “Well, apparently, something happened last night that seemed to dredge up one of those wrecks from the bottom.”
THOM: “You don’t say?”
MIKE: “Yeah, I know. It was unusual, but given how weather conditions are and the lake kind of cuts through the mountains that block the Canadian air coming down, sometimes we get a sudden low pressure system bursting across. You know how we get those random cold snaps and just sudden snow squalls.”
THOM: “Yeah, I’ve been trying to adjust to that. You may have realized they don’t get a lot of that where I’m from.”
MIKE: “Oh no, of course not. Fortunately for us, we don’t get a lot of the extreme weather that you’ve dealt with. Tornadoes and the like.”
THOM: “Oh yeah, that ain’t fun. I mean, you all talk about your Nor’easters and shit, but I don’t know how—I mean, I don’t want to get into a weather waving contest with you, but there are days where I’ve been expecting Judy Garland to come sprinting down the street, so.”
MIKE: “I’m glad you could keep some good humor about all of that. That’s actually something I’ve noticed about you. No matter what difficulty you seem to go through, you do seem to have a strong humor as a coping mechanism.”
THOM: “I mean, if you don’t laugh, you’re crying. So, yeah, but weird weather, boat might’ve got dredged up, and it’s something, but it’s not a big deal.”
MIKE: “Well, I mean the sort of gruesome thing is that it seems to sort of have some of the sailors went down with the ship in the day and they may have kind of floated up with the boat, I guess.”
THOM: “Well that’s nasty.”
MIKE: “Yeah, but that’s not our problem, that’s kind of a problem for the police and the emergency services—someone else to deal with. Right now, we’re here to talk about you. We’re here to help you.”
THOM: “Yeah, we are. With these dreams I’ve been having.”
MIKE: “Yeah, so about these dreams that you’ve been having, there’s—I’ve got the notes here from our previous sessions. There’s something that you saw, and every time that you think about it, it is painful for you.”
THOM: “Yeah, I still can’t quite make sense of it. I know we’ve been going over this, but when I think about it, I don’t even see a shape in my mind or nothing, it just—I feel like I’m about to have a panic attack every time I think of it. I feel my heart leap into my throat and I just can’t sit the hell still, and my brain feels like it’s clawing at my skull from the inside. It sucks.”
MIKE: “Okay. Are you okay right now?”
THOM: “Yeah no, the fact that I can describe that feeling is a vast improvement over me kind of not talking about it, which is what I was doing.”
MIKE: They nod. “That’s true. You are making some significant progress in that department and I’m very proud of you for being able to work yourself to this point.”
THOM: “Yeah, and I appreciate that.”
MIKE: “Now, something struck me there. You say that it doesn’t seem to have a shape. So, it doesn’t seem to be person-shaped, perhaps?”
THOM: “I mean, I don’t—I’m not sure.” Albion is going to try and think real hard about that and try and coalesce that in his mind. I think he’s actually going to try and muscle through it this time. He’s going to try and force his brain not to shut it down this time.”
MIKE: Okay. I’m going to have you make a Discipline roll, and the Discipline roll is going to be given that I’m tagging against you a moderate Aspect—a moderate Consequence, which is four.
THOM: Yep.
MIKE: I’m setting the difficulty at four natively, so it is an eight, and roll Discipline against it.
THOM: Alright. That is three and my Discipline is one, so that’s four. Can I tag two Aspects?
MIKE: Yeah, if you want to use Fate Points on that, you can. What Aspects are you going to tag?
THOM: Yeah, I’m going to tag my High Concept, Hard Traveling, Magic Dabbling, Gun Slinging Monster Hunter, because I deal with this kind of shit, I fight this kind of shit, I can try and—I need to know what I’m dealing with, and I Saw What’s Behind the Curtain, Now I Hunt It because I need to know what I’m dealing with to see if I can actually fricking kill it.
MIKE: I’m actually going to allow the specifically I’ve Seen What’s Behind the Curtain, I’m going to let you spend that Fate Point specifically, I think the Hard Travelling, Magic Dabbling is—there’s a good justification for it, but I think that in the circumstance, you should still probably take some mental damage from this.
THOM: Yep.
MIKE: So, instead of the Fate Point, I’m going to cost you a two stress mental hit.
THOM: Okay, yeah, I can— I’ll take that.
MIKE: Okay. So, you are able to force yourself to recall the image of whatever the hell you were looking at under that bridge there. You flash back to that moment where you and Desdemona and Sylvester and Marcus were encountering a Bridge Troll and trying to acquire information from it, and you realize that something peculiar was happening with Desdemona. She wasn’t quite acting right. Something seemed off about her behavior. So much so that it concerned you that you used one of the gifts you have, the Sight, which is a powerful and terrible gift. It lets you see things for what they truly are, and what you saw for what it truly was was so mentally scarring that it’s taken you months to be able to recollect it this much, and it still hurts to look at this image, but you are trying as hard as you possibly can, and you are determined that you’re going to figure out this mystery one way or another, and you are finally able to get a better look at this thing. It’s not humanoid. It’s something more formless. It’s something that seems to have limbs. They don’t seem to conform to the correct shape of human limbs. The joints just don’t seem to be in the right places and perhaps they seem multi-jointed, segmented, you can’t quite tell. You aren’t able to recall it for too long before your mind eventually sort of shuts down this look yet again from the strain of it, but the details you particularly make out are some of these limbs seemed to be wrapped directly around Desdemona’s neck, as if choking her, and some of them seem to be just—it seems like the limbs don’t end where they ought to, and you realize with a sort of horror that they are reaching inside of Desdemona’s head, and that is the look that you can get at this thing. You can’t determine necessarily where a face is or any other major anatomical features.
THOM: First of all, there’s a line of blood running down Albion’s nose, second of all he’s shaking, and third of all he pulls out a little notebook from his pocket and immediately starts scribbling it down and starts saying out loud what he saw and before he forgets and kind of describing it so that Cagney can hear it.
MIKE: “Uh, um, uh, um, uh okay.”
THOM: “Yeah, Cag, what’s up?”
MIKE: “You’re bleeding?”
THOM: “Shit, am I?”
MIKE: “Yeah. Nosebleed. I’ve got tissues.”
THOM: “Thanks, sorry. Must be that dry winter air.”
MIKE: “Yeah, I usually have these for something else, but here you go. That’s blood.”
THOM: “Yeah, sorry, I was just trying to think about—“
MIKE: You look down at the tissue that you’ve used to wipe your nose away and you realize that it is just covered in blood.
THOM: “Oh, yeah. No, that’s really dry air I guess.” I try to wipe it off my notebook.
MIKE: You look up at Cagney and make eye contact with them and realize that his nose is bleeding too.
THOM: Their nose. Their nose.
MIKE: Their nose is also bleeding.
THOM: “Cagney?”
MIKE: “Um, well okay, I think this was a great session, we had a fantastic breakthrough. I’m afraid I do have another appointment I need to get to. I was—“
THOM: “Now hold on a sec—“
MIKE: “I’m afraid our time is up right now. I do need you to leave, Albion.”
THOM: “Are you okay, Cagney?”
MIKE: “Are you?”
THOM: “That’s what I’m talking to you for, right?”
MIKE: “Uh huh. Yes, that’s right. I really can’t miss this appointment, so I do need you to, over your own power, please leave.”
THOM: “Alright, listen, I don’t normally do this—“
MIKE: “Albion! I’m on a schedule, I have to go.”
THOM: Albion just puts a card with his number down. “If there’s something wrong, you let me know.”
MIKE: “I have your number already, thank you very much for your consideration, but I really must ask you to leave.”
THOM: He is leaving. He was heading towards the door as he was doing this. He wasn’t being belligerent.
MIKE: “Okay, well, next week, same time. Thank you.”
THOM: I don’t have a great Empathy or Rapport, but can I try and see if I can figure what the hell that was about?
MIKE: Yeah, make an Empathy roll, target four.
THOM: I don’t have an Empathy score, but that is four plusses, baby.
MIKE: Oh wow. Are you for sure? Are you for real?
THOM: I’m for real.
MIKE: Okay. As you exit their office, your eyes catch their reflection in the mirrored glass of their door, and you notice just how extremely dilated your pupils are in that moment, and what’s striking about this is that in that moment, you realize Cagney’s eyes were exactly as dilated as yours. Darius.
DARIUS: Yep.
MIKE: You definitely know the address that you’re heading to. It’s pretty easy to recall. You’ve been there a few times now. In this particular instance, you’re once again hopefully going to look at a dead mutilated body.
DARIUS: Yay.
MIKE: How exciting is your day?
DARIUS: Pretty groovy.
MIKE: Yeah, considering that you’re pretty much the only one in your group that got any sleep at all last night.
DARIUS: That’s because I’m great.
MIKE: Yeah, heavy is the head that wears the crown, after all. You arrive in your rideshare at Ms. Berhow’s crematorium and knock on the door. Ms. Berhow comes over and when she realizes it’s you, she perks up excitedly. “Oh hey! Hey Dr. Coopersmith. How did you know I was just about to call you?”
DARIUS: “Lucky guess.”
MIKE: “Well, your timing could not be better, because we got a weird one.”
DARIUS: “Oh.”
MIKE: “I think you want to take a look, don’t you?”
DARIUS: “You know me so well.”
MIKE: “I really do. I treasure our interactions.”
DARIUS: “Alright, let’s see the body.”
MIKE: “You’re pretty much the only person in town that is that interested in seeing dead bodies that hasn’t tried to date me. So, you know, this is kind of great.”
DARIUS: “Yeah, I can see how that would be awkward.”
MIKE: “Yeah, I hate being pigeonholed by these weirdos. You know, I have a rich inner life, I have a lot of other interests. Anyway—“ She pulls a tarp off of a person as you realize that you’ve walked into the morgue area. “Anyway, this is a lot like that one from a few months ago. So, you notice—oh oops. Ah, wow that was weird.”
DARIUS: “Dropping like flies, ma’am.”
MIKE: “I know.” Good thing we’ll edit around that. You’ll notice how there was a lot of the same sort of force in the wounds from the last one, and a lot of the same kind of missing internal organs. Which presents a real mystery to me. Trying to figure out how that works.” You also notice in this particular case, this is worse than the last one. An entire limb is just missing.
DARIUS: “What in the f—how?”
MIKE: “Yeah, I know, right? That’s what I was thinking. It’s pretty hard work to remove a limb, and if you look over here, you can see it’s all ragged edges. Definitely not clean work, certainly not with any sort of surgical precision or cutting implement.”
DARIUS: “Right.”
MIKE: “At least, from the way that this looks, you’d think it was pulled.”
DARIUS: “Yeah, I was kind of guessing that’s where you were going with this.”
MIKE: “Well, glad I’ve got an actual medical doctor man to agree with my assessment on that one. You always flatter me. So, any insights on this one, doc?”
DARIUS: I guess, let me see.
MIKE: I believe a Scholarship roll would be in order.
DARIUS: Yeah, would that be with the Forensic Medicine thing?
MIKE: Yeah, bud.
DARIUS: Alright.
MIKE: Okay, your target is a five. So, what is that overall that you got?
DARIUS: Well, I guess my Scholarship is a four, and my Forensic Medicine thing gives me a plus two, so that gives me six, and then minus the one makes five anyway.
MIKE: Hey, you hit the target!
DARIUS: Yay!
MIKE: So, you don’t get more than sort of basic information, you don’t get deeper insight, but you can definitely know for sure that the leg that was removed—that was removed by force. You can sort of see the bone on bone action in the wound, and all that other sort of gross stuff that I don't feel like describing, but yeah. You also notice that the actual sort of bite marks around are less organized and coordinated than last time, but still to just absolutely dreadful effect. Yeah, this John Doe got the worst of it, and even worse than the last one.
DARIUS: I totally forgot the mortician’s name.
MIKE: Ms. Berhow.
DARIUS: “Ms. Berhow, would you mind if I took some pictures of this so I can look at it later? For research purposes, obviously.”
MIKE: “Yeah, same as last time, no problem.”
DARIUS: “Alright, thanks.” So, I’m going to take a bunch of pictures, different angles, and—you know, so I can show the others later.
MIKE: “You are into the weirdest memento moris, my dude.”
DARIUS: Yeah. I mean, it could be worse.
MIKE: Make me an Alertness roll at target four.
DARIUS: Yay!
MIKE: Woah, that’s a plus three.
DARIUS: That’s four.
MIKE: On the nose! Okay. You notice on one of the arms is very damaged from a lot of biting, but you are still able to notice track marks in there that would have been very hard to spot otherwise.
DARIUS: And I take a picture of that.
MIKE: “What’s that you spotted?”
DARIUS: “I don’t want to jump to conclusions or anything, but it looks like this vic was a junkie.”
MIKE: “Huh. Well, I mean, I’ll see if I can pull a toxicology report, if there was one done.”
DARIUS: “Yeah. This is going to be a weird curveball question, but you wouldn’t happen to know of any places where drug addicts or meth labs would be? Not implying anything about you, obviously, but I mean if you heard around.”
MIKE: “Oh, obviously it’s not implying anything about me. Look, doc, I get it. I know that a lot of people might have assumed that because just look at me, but also, no. I know the context of your question.”
DARIUS: “Alright, cool, that’d be really weird.”
MIKE: “No, I haven’t done that since high school, eww. Got out of that, but I mean everyone tried that stuff in high school, right?”
DARIUS: “Oh of course, absolutely.”
MIKE: “Yeah, that’s not weird.”
DARIUS: “No, not at all.”
MIKE: “No, but you know, it just wasn’t for me, and it definitely wouldn’t have let me become the amazing, respected person that I am today, with a job that I love.”
DARIUS: “Got me there.”
MIKE: “But no.”
DARIUS: “Okay.”
MIKE: “You know, what I could do is I could try to look through a little bit of record digging. I think I know a person here and there that can get me some answers, but yeah, see if I can find out anything about these guys.”
DARIUS: “Okay. Contact me when you do, I’d really appreciate it, and thanks again.”
MIKE: “Anything for you, man. You make my boring day so much more interesting when you show up.”
DARIUS: “Well, I’m glad I’m doing that at least.”
MIKE: “Absolutely.” Sylvester, you remember something. When you had burned down all of the mandragora in the garden that the hags were growing and foiled whatever nasty schemes they had afoot, you’ll remember that one of you did notice something out of the ordinary in—as you were leaving the field. You noticed some paraphernalia, and you realize that there’s maybe a connection there that maybe hadn’t occurred to anyone yet.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
DARIUS: I’ve got to go back. We’ve got to go back there, don’t we?
[MUSIC]
MIKE: So, after securing a lift back to your house there, Desdemona. You and Ro and the Warden enter granny’s house. You were able to convince the Warden to meet you there to try to find out anything you can from each other to assist each other. You may not terribly like each other at the moment, but it’s better than nothing, and Ro, you’ve tagged along as well. Of the group, you don’t know this necessarily, but you’re the most in the dark as to the supernatural, and it seems like it might be good to try to get some answers about what’s going on from somebody who does seem at the very least to understand it more than you. So, you view this guy as probably more of an asset for information than anything else. I don’t think you’d view him as a friend at this point.
GWEN: Yeah, no.
MIKE: So, after your delicious lunch—by the way, how did you make out on that sandwich you ordered there, Ro, after seeing a particularly nasty corpse?
GWEN: I probably had two bites and then got a to-go box because Ro is nauseous as hell now.
MIKE: Okay, it’s two of the best bites you’ve ever had. Alright, and how about you, Des, how did you fare with lunch?
CHRISTINE: I actually averted my eyes away from the pictures, so my Jamaican Avocado sandwich was delicious.
MIKE: Beautiful. Alright, great. So, as you arrive the Warden sort of looks around and says, “Yeah, you’re really leaning into that whole thing.”
CHRISTINE: “Into what whole thing?”
MIKE: “The business end of it.”
CHRISTINE: “I do what I can, you know? It’s all I do.”
MIKE: “Well, people got to get by, I suppose.”
CHRISTINE: “Yes. My grammy also had the gift.”
MIKE: “Oh, so kind of an inherited thing then I guess.”
CHRISTINE: “Yeah, you could say so.”
MIKE: “Great.”
CHRISTINE: “Come on in, I’m going to make some tea, and then let’s talk.”
MIKE: “Oh, perfect. Earl Grey, hot, if you could.”
CHRISTINE: “Okay, three Earl Greys.”
MIKE: “Oh, wow, that was convenient then.” He sort of sits down awkwardly and clearly unable to make small talk at this moment. He’s just not quite sure how. Ro, how are you in this whole scene?
GWEN: I’ve made myself comfortable on a chair and I’m sort of staring at the Warden, expecting him to say something of use.
MIKE: As the kettle is—you do tea in a kettle, right?
GWEN: You can, yeah.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, why not?
MIKE: You’re not a barbarian. I feel like kettle just makes perfect sense because there’s a certain time element to it, there’s a preparation, it seems like the sort of thing that somebody who’s into talking with the dead might be more into than just dropping some Salada bags in hot water.
CHRISTINE: Oh yeah, we get kettled tea.
MIKE: There you go. So, as that’s brewing up in the kitchen, the Warden looks over in your direction and just asks “So, what’s your connection to all of this, I guess?”
GWEN: “I don’t have a connection with the supernatural stuff, but I’ve had a few, I guess run-ins with some interesting stuff, so I’m here along for the ride, I guess.”
MIKE: “Huh. Okay. So, you just kind of ran into some supernatural things and then you, a not-Wizard, have been brought into this whole world, huh?”
GWEN: “Yep, I’m just here. There’s nothing to question there.”
MIKE: “No, it’s just everyone at the Council works so hard to try to keep everyone else from finding out that the world is radically different from the world that they think they’re in.”
GWEN: “Well, I’m not racist or anything, so you guys are fine.”
MIKE: “What?! No! It’s not about that at all! I mean, imagine if you told all of the eleven year olds that, I don’t know, Harry Potter was real. It’d be chaos.”
GWEN: “Is Harry Potter real?”
MIKE: “Well, no, not exactly. No, okay, no. It’s not like that. I mean, there are good and bad Wizards and whatever, and there are all kinds of—okay. There’s a lot of overlap, but there isn’t some castle in England where they teach people how to do magic. That doesn’t do that. It’s not like that. I don’t call you Muggles, you’re just Mundanes. You just don’t have magic.”
GWEN: “That’s pretty damn close though, huh?”
MIKE: “Well, I mean look, in the Harry Potter series, they have all kinds of different terms for it. I mean, No-maj, Muggle, what were the other ones that they called the Americans in that—anyway, they can’t stick to a consistent nomenclature. That’s just really frustrating to me.”
GWEN: “Seems like that’s a sore spot for you, huh bud?”
THOM: Sounds like someone’s a fucking nerd.
GWEN: “We’re going to hit a couple nerves, buddy.”
MIKE: “I grew up reading these books by Rowling, and I thought ‘oh man, I wish my eleventh birthday rolls around and I get a letter from a wizarding school,’ and then one day I accidentally set the kitchen on fire, and now I find out ‘oops, I actually do have magic, but it isn’t like that at all.’ It’s not nearly as whimsical, and it’s not all waving wands and magic words. It’s watching people die when vampires swarm, okay? I had to fight in a war. That sucked. Is that tea ready yet?”
CHRISTINE: Alright, she comes back with tea.
MIKE: “Ah, thank you.”
GWEN: “Welcome back.”
CHRISTINE: Then she goes over to the coffee table and brings over a boom box and just puts it down. “I tracked it as far as the lake.”
MIKE: “Oh. Uh huh. Okay. You tracked it?”
CHRISTINE: “So, as a Warden of the White Council, that’s what they refer to you as, right? I was wondering if you knew what happened last night, because I have not slept a wink.”
MIKE: “Oh. Oh gosh.”
CHRISTINE: “So, if I was a little rude earlier, I apologize. I have not slept.”
MIKE: “Oh, okay, I see. Well, information’s a little hazy at the moment because it’s still developing, but clearly there was some kind of incident last night happening in Lake Champlain and it kind of crawled onto the mainland.”
CHRISTINE: “The zombies all stopped and the ghosts all stopped once the boom box stopped and the drummer ghosts stopped, which kind of indicates to me that it kind of sounds like a necromancer, and I’m a little concerned about a necromancer being in Burlington.”
MIKE: “Yeah, I thought that the corpses turning up in Waterfront Park might have been necromantic somehow. It didn’t seem like—and hearing bodies went and bloated and appearing in the streets further up where absolutely they could not have been. Yeah, there’s no way to explain that one. They couldn’t have washed ashore uphill half a mile. So, yeah. It seemed like necromancy was a good possibility there, and I’m glad that you just confirmed that with this.”
CHRISTINE: “Yeah, there were skeletons fighting zombies and Revolutionary War ghosts, and a giant ghost boat. We witnessed it all. Ro was there, we saw it firsthand, and I’m just wondering what the White Council intends to do regarding this potential necromancer in town. I would think that would be a little more high priority than any bear attacks.”
MIKE: “Oh, well, I mean, we’ve got a lot going on. There’s not as many of us as we’d like still, so we’ve got our hands in a lot of pies, but this is—“
GWEN: “But with that being said, there were a lot of zombies and ghosts last night. It’s more than normal I assume.”
CHRISTINE: “There were witnesses everywhere. Dr. Coopersmith had to help an injured bystander.”
MIKE: “Oh yeah, this is going to be a whole mess to cover up, isn’t it?”
CHRISTINE: “It’s a real shit show, what happened last night.”
MIKE: “Yeah, no kidding. So, yeah, it sounds like we’ve got a Warlock. Great. Okay. We’re going to have to figure this one out, how to hunt down this Warlock.”
CHRISTINE: “Well, you might want to start at the lake, and I suggest you go deep. That’s the furthest I could track it from this boombox before dawn hit.”
MIKE: “Tracking spell, tracking spell. Hey, I definitely felt some wards as I walked through the threshold here, you can do wards and tracking spells?”
CHRISTINE: “It’s something that I’ve been developing over time.”
MIKE: “And you say that you’re an Ectomancer?”
CHRISTINE: “Yes.”
MIKE: “But you’re not on the White Council?”
CHRISTINE: “No.”
MIKE: “You haven’t been approached at all?”
CHRISTINE: “No, the only person who ever approached me was one Marcus Wahlbrook from the Paranet.”
MIKE: “Wahlbrook? The guy who fell off the face of the map a few months ago?”
CHRISTINE: “You know him?”
MIKE: “You’re associated with Marcus Wahlbrook?”
CHRISTINE: “Yeah, he helped me with a situation with a trunk in my attic, and he’s been working a bit of the Paranet angle ever since. He disappeared a few months ago.”
[MUSIC FADES IN]
“He actually can vouch for those werewolves you met today, if that helps at all.”
MIKE: “I don’t think it does. So, what you’re telling me is that you’ve been palling around with suspected Warlock Marcus Wahlbrook?”
CHRISTINE: “What?!”
[OUTRO MUSIC]
[MUSIC] Pocket Podcast Network. Quality programming, right to your pocket.
Transcribed by Nicholas Johnson (https://draconick.com/)
Twitter: @DraconickGaming