The crew finds themselves in a tight spot.
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Find more about Stillfleet at https://stillfleet.com
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@funcityventures is the show on twitter
@funcityventures is the show on instagram
@bijanstephen is Remy, the Sleeper (human) Blooder
@randwiches is Merkis, the Jalasti Banshee
@nicholasguercio is Vynos, the Conscript (human) Tremulant
and @shodell is Beta, the Shoodtha Pir
@taylordotbiz is Oat
@mikerugnetta is everything else
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This episode of Float City was recorded in various locations across Brooklyn New York and Cape Cod, MA. It was produced, edited and sound designed by Mike Rugnetta.
All powerful and his looks flourish like the brows of morning:
He is the Spirit of Prophecy, the ever apparent Pixlriffs.
Our music is by Sam Tyndall - https://arpline.bandcamp.com/
Remy's flute playing is by Jake Fridkis - https://instagram.com/flutebros
Our art is by Tess Stone - http://notdrunkenough.com/
Our Discord mods are Olivia Gulin, Kit Pulliam and Kestrel
The voice of Artemis is Molly Templeton
Transcribed by Kodiak Sanders (@kodiakjs)
[ Transcription note: IC denotes in character speech, OOC denotes out of character. ]
[00:00:00] [ Intro Theme begins ]
> Molly Templeton / "Artemis": [ IC ] In the far future, faster-than-light travel is possible via portals called Stiffworks. Human and alien civilizations travel this way for millenia. Trade, war, and technology proliferate. Countless societies rise, thrive, fall, and vanish. Eventually almost everyone forgets the secrets of the Stiffworks. Almost.
Three hundred years ago the Worshipful Company of Stillfleeters is formed on Spindle, a space station of unknown origin. They send fleeters into the void using Stiffworks in search of profit. It is one hundred million years in the future. Welcome to Float City.
[ Intro Theme concludes ] [ Main Theme begins ]
> Mike Rugnetta / G.M.: Previously on Float City, the crew road trips across the single continent of the planet Kakudun in search of Zeshdano Navelle, a company archivist apparently holding up some trade deal concerning the powerful extradimensional trade-lord, the Saffron Anax, whomst the crew met while retrieving a strange and ever-shifting object from the Lovers, a pair of planets he controls in more ways than one. On their journey, they learned that Kakudun is a powderkeg; the borders are tightly controlled and a number of difficulties centered around a region in the Southeast has everyone picking sides or, if you’re the Co., remaining conspicuously neutral. They’re warned several times that their final destination, Nolaster, the city on the bayou in the central swamp called the Jash, is a dangerous place. Case in point, when the crew finally arrives at Zeshdano’s apartment they find her dead. We join them now, having just busted through the front door of her second floor flat, surveying the scene, and plotting their next move.
[ Main Theme concludes ]
> Jenn de la Vega / "Merkis Imeldar": [ IC ] Oh, oh no, oh no, oh no. > Bijan Stephen / "Remy Tester": [ IC ] You alright there bud?
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] I- oh...do you see this?
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Yeah, I mean yeah-
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] It doesn’t smell very good.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Yeah okay, so here’s what I think we should do, I’ve been in situations sort of like this - it’s been a very long time. It’s been a very long time. What I want to emphasise is that this looks suspicious: we made a lot of noise and there’s a dead body in here.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] Oh! [Mike laughs]
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] So grab that letter, let’s get the fuck out of here, and uhh- wait around
the corner and see what happens. [Jenn laughs]
> Taylor Moore / “Oat”: [ IC ] I can’t go to jail again. I can’t go!
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] You’re not gonna go to jail look - I mean c’mon, we’re not gonna go to jail, but also we don’t need to cause any more trouble than we need to, and right now? We’re standing in a lot of trouble.
> Taylor / “Oat”: [ IC ] Eat the dead body! [Shannon laughs]
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] No! What? Why would I destroy evidence that isn’t even linked to us,
it’s like, no one can trace us back to- wait, we didn’t tell anyone we were coming here, right? > Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] No we didn’t.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Yeah I think we’re good.
> Taylor / “Oat”: [ IC ] Uhh, we did ask around?
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] We did ask around, OK well maybe what we should do is- > Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] I want to look around in here first, before we go.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Oh you’re just fine with this dead body now? Interesting. > Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] I’m not fine with it. [Mike laughs]
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] I like that you’re adapting very quickly though. > Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] Not fine. Not fine.
> Taylor / “Oat”: [ IC ] Okay, you stay in here and look around, I’m gonna go watch in the hallway, and I’ll bark if someone is, y’know, umm, coming. Bye! [ OOC ] And Oat runs out into the hallway to keep guard.
> Mike / G.M.: So just to describe, if you want it, if it’s helpful to describe the scene once more, like the room that you’re in, the door is in the front right-hand corner of this single-room apartment. The room is relatively small, it’s not a very huge flat, directly in front of the door when you get in there’s a writing desk, the writing desk has you can see a ton of stuff on it, there’s a bunch of binders, there’s papers, there’s handwritten letters and notes, there’s Zeshdano’s- what looks like the communicator which you recognize from having seen Ourndrim Saspareen use it; on the other side of that there is a set of bookshelves and some clothes hanging in what looks like a sort of open closet hanging unit thing that’s to the side of it; in the middle of
the room of the apartment towards the back, up against the wall is a bed that is made, it’s very neat; just to the left of that is a small jeweler’s bench - so you can see like it’s dimly lit, there’s like a very very small study lamp that’s on that is lighting up some of the tools and some of the jewelry that’s over there; moving now closer to the front of the apartment there is a small kitchen table and then a kitchen that is in the bottom left-hand corner (so when walking in it’s all the way to your left), and then between you and the kitchen is a small seating area with like a couch and a table, and as you sort of move the torch around you can see the dark outline of some of these things.
[00:05:25] > Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] What does the communicator look like? Is it a in-wall thing, is it a heavy thing, or is it a portable thing?
> Mike / G.M.: Yeah it’s a portable thing, it’s like a heavy plastic almost like the size of a textbook, like a dark green plastic form with these big chunky keys on it and a small like green readout screen.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Hmm.
> Shannon Odell / "Beta Commbot": [ OOC ] Beta upon seeing the scene, and seeing this dead body, her kind of healer sense comes in and she’s like okay, this is a situation where one person is dead, I need to make sure my team is safe, so she pulls out of her bag that big heavy helmet that she has, and she hands it to Vynos, and she goes [ IC ] You have- you have a nose. Do you think you could use this?
> Nick Guercio / "Vynos Lysumptuara": [ IC ] Yes. Yes, more information would be helpful. [ OOC ] Vynos is stroking his beard, he has a very concerned look on his face. By the way Mike have we positively identified this as Zeshdano?
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Not yet.
> Nick / "Vynos": [ OOC ] Okay.
> Mike / G.M.: You have not.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] I mean- okay again I will say, Remy did speak with the whatever, powers that be, and got nothing back, and this is their apartment-
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] You mean they’re not wearing a shirt that says “I am Zeshdano Navelle?” [Jenn and Shannon laugh]
> Mike / G.M.: You probably feel very confident, but you do not have certitude, let’s put it that way.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] Okay. Do we have access to some sort of picture of Zeshdano so we can do that or is that beyond us right now?
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Or I think Merkis was heading toward the desk to look. > Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] Okay yeah.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] If there was anything. Like an ID card, or something.
> Mike / G.M.: Sure, yeah, I mean When you get over there there is a bunch of piles of letters that have been opened, that are unfolded and sitting there - do you like look at stuff or are you just giving like a broad overview? How much detail do you want to look at each thing with?
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Just wants to look, doesn’t want to touch anything.
> Mike / G.M.: Okay yeah, so you see a bunch of piles of letters that are handwritten, none of them are signed Zeshdano, they’re all from other people; you see the communicator, which is on but it has a lock on its screen, you also see a bunch of paperwork including very official-looking Company paperwork, so things from the Worshipful Co.; some of those things are addressed to Zeshdano Navelle. You also see the corner of what looks like a large leather journal sticking out from the piles of some of those papers - has this nice like brass protector on the two corners, the top and bottom corners that you can see. There’s, towards the back, a small wooden box with a flip lid, looks like it’s made of just some nice light little wood, and then the desk itself also has some drawers in it - there’s one long drawer underneath or- over the top of the part where you sit, and then there’s three drawers on either side.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Merkis pulls his uniform sleeve over his wet hand, [Jenn laughs] and tries to grab for that notebook, the leatherbound- the nice notebook.
> Mike / G.M.: Yeah you sort of brush aside from papers and you pick it up, it’s got this nice, kind of faded fleur de lis pattern on the front of it, it’s very nice, it’s very well-loved, you know it’s clearly been used a lot, and you also notice that it has a brass lock on it, like it’s got a clasp that’s on the front of it. You could probably break it off with like, a screwdriver. It’s not super beefy or anything like that.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] Hmm...maybe this will help us figure out who she was talking to. Should I take this communicator too? [ OOC ] And he’s just pointing at it.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Uhh...in my professional opinion I feel like we should not disturb this too much, so I’d say no on the communicator, but yeah fuck up that lock, whatever. [Jenn and Mike laugh]
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] I’ll just take it with me if we’re going soon.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] Well I’m afraid that, while I share all of Remy’s instincts here, to move without a trace, that we may have taken one step forward and two steps back going into this apartment. The step forward of course is regarding our current side-employer, the Saffron Anax. All he wanted was information on Zeshdano. That we have, if we could positively identify her, we have the information that she’s dead. But, there are people from the Company who know that
we are here: the man at the desk assisted us by giving us access to the address through the reflection in his glasses. Furthermore, we shouldn’t even be here right now. We were supposed to help close gates. All the company knows is that we’ve gone off to a different world to end up here. And if they find the link between us and the Saffron Anax, how do they not suspect that he sent us here to kill her? I’m afraid that we’re wrapped up in this now.
[0:10:19] > Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Vynos, you make a- you make a very good point my dude, it looks like we’re being set up, because maybe we’re being set up, however: we might be able to get out of this. I feel like...a thing we should probably do is, we should- hmm. We have to cover our tracks somehow.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] It’s too early, it’s too early, I can’t do it yet, I can’t do it now, I can’t do it now-
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Okay okay, calm down, calm down buddy.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] I can’t do it now, I’ll-
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Remy’s patting Vynos on the back [ IC ] It’s all good buddy.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] I can’t- to re-weave this time- the moon isn’t even full- [Jenn, Mike and Shannon laugh]
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Just let it out, let it out, just let it all out.
> Mike / G.M.: I’m picturing Vynos like doing math on his fingers. [Jenn and Shannon laugh]
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] We need to find out if this is Zeshdano, if it is...then I must go back and see who committed this crime.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] Oh!
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Ooh! Hah, well, I guess we know it’s not us, and I am not going to eat
this body, but I think, okay. Here’s what I think: I think we go back to the embassy. > Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] Okay.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] We say-
> Mike / G.M.: Well here hold on, we have a couple open threads, let’s talk about what our open threads are. We have a helmet, we have a re-weave, and we have a Remy just wanting to peace out.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] My idea with getting out the helmet is that - what the helmet does is it smells where sapients are, within a certain meter radius, so my idea was similar to Oat, let’s
find out if there’s anyone here in this area that we need to be afraid of, since there is a dead body right here. Are we being watched, are we about to walk into a trap.
> Mike / G.M.: We can do all of these things. So, the Olfactory Sonar Helm can tell you - through smell - the location of every non-weird, non-informatic sapient within a 2d10 meter radius. So like, it could tell you if there’s someone hiding in the apartment, it could tell you if there are neighbors next door or above you, it will probably show you where Oat is. Or, “show,” whatever show is when it’s through smell. It will olfactor Oat.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] It reminds me- I’m conceptualizing this as like the hearing mechanic from The Last of Us.
> Mike / G.M.: Oh yeah right sure, very- yeah, except you can’t- there’s no visualization for it. > Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Right. It’s just smellulization. [Shannon and Jenn laugh]
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] And I’m mostly just taking it out because I want to see how it works. [Shannon and Nick laugh]
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] Vynos sees Merkis over at the desk, and he says [ IC ] Yes yes very good, see if there you can find any information to identify who this may be, I do believe I should use the Hell to see if the perpetrator is still in our midst.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Wait, but you can go back in time right? You can actually see what happened? Give me the helmet, I’ll do that, you just- do you want to do your thing? Do we have to look at you or not look at you, I don’t know what your deal- I don’t know how this works.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] You can look at me, it’s fine. [Mike, Shannon and Jenn laugh] Well, I think we should see if this is Zeshdano; re-weaving is very dangerous.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Alright well give me the helmet. > Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] Yes.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Sick.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] And Merkis is gonna use the corner of the notebook to open one of the drawers. He’s like trying not to touch anything, get wet fingerprints everywhere, he doesn’t want to do that.
> Mike / G.M.: Yeah you don’t want to be leaving Jello smears on a crime scene.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] They’ll know it was me! They’ll know it was me, opening a
drawer!
> Mike / G.M.: Yeah. Tell me which drawer you open.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Uhh...the top right. [Jenn laughs]
> Mike / G.M.: It’s just packed full of stuff. It’s a drawer that is heavy to pull open, there are lots of little notebooks in here, there is a bunch of pens and writing utensils, you hear a bunch of things clink and clatter as you open it, there’s a bunch of paper that’s been crumpled up and shoved in it, and in- just sticking out of one of those little notebooks that’s in the top, almost like a Moleskine, you see the corner of an ID card.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] Merkis plucks it from out the notebook.
> Mike / G.M.: It is a picture, a woman, who has slightly dark skin, she’s maybe in her like early 50s, late 40s, she’s got dark straight hair, with these wide bands of gray in it, and yeah it says Zeshdano Navelle, Subcommittee for Kakudun, and a bunch of sort of, y’know, bunch of just stuff from the Company; ID number, all of the committees that she’s on, all this other stuff.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] With his puppet hand of his sleeve Merkis holds it up [ IC ] “found an ID!” [ OOC ] and shows it to the rest of the group.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] Vynos takes it and, y’know, crowds around the body to see if he can ID, he also asks Beta if she can come lend a hand in taking a look at some of the details of the murder itself.
[00:14:58] > Mike / G.M.: She’s got a lot of hair, and it’s very long, and it’s all sort of mound around her head, so to look at her face you’re going to have to move some of her hair. But the hair matches.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] I think meanwhile, Remy’s walking over to the communicator. > Mike / G.M.: Yeah.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Do we know anything about how this works?
> Mike / G.M.: Probably not, I don’t think any of you would have used this. Beta maybe got to touch one once or twice in her studies, Merkis maybe saw like some drawings of them and like maybe got a crash course on it but never actually got to touch one in Banshee training. I think for you and I, like we- you can basically think of it as if like- if an Apple Newton came- was made in the fallout universe.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Okay cool, yeah so I think Remy’s just gonna put the helmet on and try to use it.
> Mike / G.M.: Here let me tell you what happens to you. > Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Oh-oh.
> Mike / G.M.: If I remember correctly it’s not pleasant. [Nick and Jenn laugh] Okay, roll 1d10. > Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] I do want to say, not-pleasant things are like par for the course for
Remy.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Yeah. [Mike laughs]
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Four.
> Mike / G.M.: Okay, please charge yourself that much grit.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Oh okay.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Not bad, yet.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Could be worse, could be worse.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] About average.
> Mike / G.M.: You are going to need- so it’s going to work-
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Oh shit, alright well I’m- yeah your boy’s basically out of grit, but that’s cool.
> Mike / G.M.: To give you a heads up: it’s gonna work no matter what the result of the next test is, but you will understand it better the higher your result, so roll reason and you want to get a nine if you can. Things will still happen if you don’t get a nine, but at nine is where things are clear.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Yeah I don’t have enough grit to like- well I mean yeah I have five grit, I’m not gonna like, spend. [Bijan laughs]
> Mike / G.M.: Yeah okay don’t mess, yeah. > Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Nine!
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] Nice.
> Mike / G.M.: Great. Okay, here’s what happens, you put on this big heavy helmet, it’s bulbous and it’s kind of dented, and it’s rusted- it’s got this very strangely shaped viewport that’s not rectangular, it’s like several circles joined together, it’s very heavy, but it’s comfortable when you put it on, it’s padded, it y’know fits your head, and when you seat it into place and stop moving for a second, you hear it beep as if it sort of confirms that it knows that it has been placed on top of a noggin, and then you start to hear this whirring sound and you start to feel a little tickle on your top lip, and then you start to feel a little tickle inside your nostrils, and then the tickle goes deeper into your nostrils, and it is now no longer a tickle, it is now just a probe that is going deep
into your nasal cavity. And it keeps going into your nasal cavity until it’s like basically touching the back of your throat.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Oh so it’s just- it’s just snorting drugs, that’s the experience of snorting cocaine. [Taylor laughs]
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] It’s a covid test?
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] Yeah.
> Taylor / “Oat”: [ OOC ] Mike I am rooting for- I am rooting for this description like watching a friend bowl, I’m like using my whole body to move the ball as it goes down the lane. [everyone laughs] Deeper, deeper!
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Again this is just the experience of snorting cocaine, or any other drugs you insufflate.
> Mike / G.M.: Yeah, you start to feel like you’re going to gag a little bit. It’s unpleasant but you sort of power through it. [Taylor laughs] It stings, it kind of hurts, and the viewport just shuts. It’s like a piece of metal or an opaque piece of glass just kind of closes over what’s- the opening in front of you in a very awkward way, so that you can’t see anything. It’s now just completely dark inside this helmet, save for some lightly blinking lights and some readouts by your chin. It’s almost impossible for me to explain what it is that you experience. You know through one smell that’s kind of like a cross between grapefruits, sawdust, and wet leather that Oat is just outside, and that he’s looking out over the balcony that is out in front of Zeshdano’s front door and is sort of staying still. You know from a combination of scents that is kind of like Play-Doh, wet gravel, and a big handful of salt that there is a neighbor upstairs, and they are motionless. You can’t really tell why but like, it’s late, probably they’re sleeping. You can tell from a scent of ozone, daisies, fresh-cut grass and the inside of a tire that there is a couple who are together watching some sort of piece of televised- what we would call televised entertainment, two apartments down on the same level, further into the complex from where you are. And then there’s a bunch of very distant scents. Like there’s light smells from other directions but you can’t tell anything from them. You know that they are presences but you don’t know much about them, and it seems like pretty much everything that you can sense is staying in roughly the same place.
[00:20:33] > Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] So, can I tell how long that body has been there by the smell, from this helmet?
> Mike / G.M.: Ooh. That’s a very good question. Hold on let me read the description that I wrote of this thing. Roll another reason and let me know what you get, and we’ll see.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Got a three.
> Mike / G.M.: Nah. It’s kind of hard to tell. It’s not really what this thing is meant to do. But there’s no one surprising in this apartment and there is, it seems like there’s no one nearby who’s
rushing to come and get you. Let me see if there’s anything else that I can give you from what you rolled, since you did roll well.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] At least what the neighbor had for dinner, come on. [Mike, Bijan and Jenn laugh]
> Mike / G.M.: Thick leaf.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Thick leaf.
> Mike / G.M.: Say it right.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Thick leaf. [Mike laughs]
> Taylor / “Oat”: [ OOC ] Thiqqqqqqq leaf! [Shannon and Bijan laugh]
> Mike / G.M.: The Discord-approved spelling of like T-H-I-Q-Q-Q-Q-Q-Q-Q. [Shannon, Mike and Bijan laugh] This thing has no way of telling time, it doesn’t know time, but the way that it works, the way that it identifies things is through a combination of sensors related to the organic matter that make up sapients, which is why it doesn’t work on weird and informatic beings; it operates on a very particular stripe of biological material. So it determines that there is a presence of a dead body that is nearby, y’know you can smell- it sort of smells like a root cellar almost, that there’s a body here. But then you also smell something that smells like...it smells a lot like the swamp that you just came through, it’s very damp, and kind of like heavy, musty kind of smell there’s a little hint of almost like lily to it, and then the smell of just damp metal, sort of like the city, and you realize this is- this is not like a person that’s in the room, but it is organic matter that a person must have left behind, and there is a fair amount of it, and it is mixed in with the pool of blood that seems to be coming from Zeshdano’s body.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Got it. Okay. [Bijan gags]
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] Yeah.
> Mike / G.M.: You can push a little button on the outside, and it will retract the probes. > Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Ugh. Whew!
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] That looked not so fun.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] You know, it feels like doing drugs, I actually did not hate that. [Jenn and Shannon laugh] I did not like it. It could have been worse, the payoff was definitely worse, but now I do know that there’s nobody- [Bijan coughs] there’s nobody around, it’s just us.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Good, good.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] It seems like the neighbors didn’t wake up from the explosion getting in here, so that’s good news. Some new information, via my nostrils...
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] What, what is it?
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Smells like there was somebody here. They smelled like the swamp and the city. And they left some- it seems like- it smelled like, aside from the smell of like iron in blood or whatever, seems like they left some stuff down there. [ OOC ] So Remy bends down and looks at the pool of blood, does he see any like footprints or any sort of thing down there?
> Mike / G.M.: So. Yeah, you see a couple things. You haven’t looked at the cause of death yet, you haven’t determined what it is that killed Zeshdano, so you can’t know sort of what an appropriate injury would be because- what an appropriate bodily state for the injury is, because you don’t know what the injury is, but it does look like, just from first glance, that this is a lot of blood. This is like a pretty big amount of blood. And you can see that there is a- it’s not really like footprints, no one tracked blood out of the room in these big, neat prints leading out the door, but you can see that there are these almost like drips or splatters that go from the large pool to the door and then who knows where from there. You would never see them unless you looked for them, these small droplets of blood.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Remy follows them.
> Mike / G.M.: They go out the door, you open the door again-
[00:24:59] > Taylor / “Oat”: [ OOC ] Oat barks. [ IC ] Bark! Bark! Oh. Did you eat it? [Nick laughs]
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Oat, I will eat you. [Nick and Shannon laugh] > Taylor / “Oat”: [ IC ] ...did you eat the body?
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] No! We’re not hiding anything yet. Also it’s dead, I like live shit. It’s better when they have fresh blood.
> Mike / G.M.: Yeah the droplets turn right out of the door, in the direction that you came from, and they go a couple feet past where Oat is currently standing, and then they just kind of stop. They don’t stop in front of a door or anything, they just kind of...dry up, it looks like.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Interesting.
> Mike / G.M.: Back in the room, we have Vynos who was looking at the body, and Beta who was helping him look, and Merkis, holding both the handwritten letter and the locked leather journal.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Starting with the easy thing, I think Merkis just wants to try to read the letter.
> Mike / G.M.: You just want to open the letter?
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Yeah.
> Mike / G.M.: Sure. You open the letter. Hold on. You open up the envelope, tear it open, and there is a heavy like rough-border paper that is folded into thirds on the inside, there is nothing else in it other than that piece of paper. Do you pull the piece of paper out and unfold it?
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Mmm-hmm.
> Mike / G.M.: It’s a handwritten letter, when you unfold it you see handwriting, there’s no lines on the paper, it’s blank, it’s pure white, and yes: it’s a letter to Zeshdano. Do you want to read the letter?
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Yes.
> Mike / G.M.: Okay. The letter says in very neat, almost geometric handwriting: [ Piano score begins ]
Zed, we’re almost wrapped, in the Unwinter, for this quarter at least. It is so cold and bleak up here. Though I do have to admit that the way that the ash mixes with the snow occasionally is very striking and very beautiful, but all the same: I cannot wait to return home, and I cannot wait to be in your arms again. I look forward to your next letter, and I know that when we started this we thought it would be silly and old-fashioned, but it is nice to have something show up from you every week. It gives me something to look forward to while I’m shuffling through rogue automaton carcasses, trying to build this map of this goddamn folded city. I love you to the end, and to the beginning again. I’ll be back in four days, around 692 Nolaster time, and I’m gonna head right to your place. X-O, Millen, M-I-L-L-E-N.
[ Piano score concludes ]
And then a date that was two days ago- three days ago. So in theory, whoever Millen is will be at this location tomorrow, mid-afternoon.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Oh no!
> Taylor / “Oat”: [ OOC ] How much money do you think Ashokan Farewell costs? Oh that’s
too deep a reference, I’m sorry. [Jenn laughs]
> Mike / G.M.: Yeah what is that? I don’t know what that is.
> Taylor / “Oat”: [ OOC ] That’s the name of the fiddle music behind the Civil War letters.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Ashokan Farewell, it’s Ashokan Farwell, it’s not Ash-o-kan, cause it’s-
> Taylor / “Oat”: [ OOC ] Oh thank you.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Merkis starts whimpering, [ IC ] I want to write a letter to Deep
River! [Shannon and Mike laugh]
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Okay we have a- I guess Remy runs back in. [Jenn wails] And sees this scene.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] And hands the note to Beta, [ IC ] Beta look!
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] Beta grabs the letter and begins reading it. [ IC ] Oh- oh, oh.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] I know!
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Oh! Oh.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] What’s going on?
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Oh. [ OOC ] And she just hands the letter, she doesn’t explain it she just hands the letter to Remy.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] It’s so sad!
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] I’ll see you...692 Nolaster...
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Oh!
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Oh. [Mike laughs]
> Mike / G.M.: I love the reading murmuring, it’s very good.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] He- he’s- gonna be here tomorrow!
[ Ad break ]
[00:30:07] > Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Merkis is crying after reading that letter, and [ IC ] Beta! Read this!
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Oh...
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Alright, well, it’s definitely a murder. > Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] Why do you say that?
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Well I found a blood trail, leading outside of the apartment, and this person is clearly dead so they didn’t make it.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] Yes...
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Compelling evidence, in that regard. > Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] Yes. What about the smellevision?
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Oh that, yeah, that was the thing that the smellevision pointed me to, cause it was like- you know blood has a smell, it smells kind of good but very bad, cause it smells like it’s somewhere it’s not supposed to be. Do you know what I mean, am I making sense?
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] Yes I- yes you are.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] So if there’s two blood, maybe there was some kind of fight?
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Well I mean- there’s a lot of blood on this ground, so yeah, definitely.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] Well first I think we should identify the remains. [ OOC ] Vynos bends down and moves the hair slightly away from the body’s face, to see if we can identify this as Zeshdano.
> Mike / G.M.: The color of her skin is drained, but otherwise this is the same face on the ID card that Merkis is holding.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] Yeah so Vynos looks at everybody, he meets their eye, I think it’s understood that we can all see that this is Zeshdano, and I, Vynos says [ IC ] I was afraid of this.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Wait wait, you mean afraid of Zeshdano getting murdered, or?
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] No, I had no idea she was-
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Just of seeing a dead body?
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] No that’s not a fear of mine, no I was afraid that it would be her body and she wasn’t the one who left the room.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Right, right, cause it’d be one thing if she left the room and it was just a different dead body in her apartment.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] Yes, one that we weren’t inextricably tied up in.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Yeah, that would be better. Okay well as I see it, we have some options- the blood trail ends - I don’t know maybe they jumped off the balcony or went up the roof or a different floor, I have no idea. We could leave, that’s option number one, we could leave, that’s also option number two, and option number three is we could leave. What do you guys think?
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Merkis holds up the letter and says [ IC ] We could also come back and talk to this person that’s arriving tomorrow!
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] Yes. Well, there is also a fourth option. Or a fifth, or a second, or third, depending on whether or not you’re counting yours as separate ones, or, if we’re-
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Yeah, alright, I was making light of a situation because, you know, I’m coping.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] Yes. Well, I can go back and see who committed this heinous crime, and clear our names of any possible guilt or wrongdoing. The only thing I would need would be an accurate time of death, within a few hours, or less than 24 would be doable. Beta, could you help me with that?
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] I think I could- I can definitely try. [ OOC ] And with that Beta wants to use find clue. No, I don’t want to find clue. And with that, Beta wants to use auger. Which is: she can answer- she can ask any answerable short question to the universe.
> Mike / G.M.: Oh neat, oh right. This is, in the past you have spoken to your sword.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] Yes.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Oh yeah!
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] Let me ask a question, could you ask who killed her? [Bijan laughs]
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] Well, wouldn’t this be more fun? [Nick and Shannon laugh] [ IC ] Hmm, yeah, I feel like I’ve done something like this in training back on Spin. [ OOC ] And then Beta is kind of digging down into her pockets, and looking for something, she pulls out a couple tic-tacs, found some loose gunch, but like tries to hide it from Remy- [Mike and Nick laugh]
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Remy sniffs. He doesn’t know he’s sniffing but he’s subconsciously smelling the gunch.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] She shoves it back in her pocket, and she goes “you know what, let me just try this,” and then she goes into her other pocket- not her pocket, what’s the thing that holds the sword?
> Mike / G.M.: A Scabbard.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] She goes into her scabbard, pulls out-
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] Her other scabbard. [Shannon laughs]
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] Her other scabbard. [Mike laughs]
> Mike / G.M.: Not the pills-and-tic-tacs scabbard, but the sword scabbard.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] ...or the one filled with drugs. [Mike, Shannon and Jenn laugh]
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] ...pulls out her sword, which is kind of all, it’s kind of a messed-up sword, because it got all messed up in previous battles and she never fixed it, and she looks at-
> Mike / G.M.: It got crushed at the Aanverder’s estate, right? You got like smushed by a wall.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] Yeah. It got crushed, it was very sad, and she never got to take care of it. And she kind of looks at everyone and then kind of faces the corner so no one can see her with her sword, and she just starts whispering “hey, can you help me out here, hey.”
[00:35:09] > Mike / G.M.: Hey what’s up?
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Hey.
> Mike / G.M.: You got stuff going on?
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Yup. I’m trying-
> Mike / G.M.: I’m in the middle of something, you’ve got to make it fast.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Oh, oh! I mean if you’re busy I can just- actually it doesn’t matter if you’re busy, I really need you right now.
> Mike / G.M.: Yeah, yeah, what do you need, what do you need?
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] I’m trying to remember or think about- I need to find out when this
woman died, and I just-
> Mike / G.M.: This one, this lady right behind you, yeah?
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Yeah the one behind. The one that’s bleeding, on the ground? > Mike / G.M.: Yeah, I mean I think she’s done bleeding.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Well she’s bled out, yeah.
> Mike / G.M.: Yeah. Listen, as a sword I’d know. I know what it looks like when they’re done. > Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Oh, you would.
> Mike / G.M.: You need to know when she died?
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] When she died.
> Mike / G.M.: Can you- okay- can you just, can you show me the body real quick? > Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Okay but everyone’s gonna look.
> Mike / G.M.: That’s fine.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] She lifts it over, she’s still facing the other way.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] Beta what are you doing?
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Nothing!
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] You’re just whispering to that broken sword, I- I mean go for it-
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] Does she do this Remy, is this what she does?
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Look, I thought I smelled gunch. [Shannon laughs]
> Mike / G.M.: When you pull the sword back down in front of you to whisper to it again it goes “sike, I don’t have eyes, what the hell are you doing?”
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Oh, you have gotten me so many times with that one! [Mike laughs]
> Mike / G.M.: And the sword goes “alright yeah, okay I see what you’re after, hold on let me check.” And you have no idea what that means. [Jenn laughs] You have no clue- what does it mean when a previously inanimate object that you can summon a voice and personality from says “let me check,” what is the sword going to go look at? What like universal ledger does the soul of the sword have access to that’s going to say in some cell like “time of death, Zeshdano Navelle, this?” A couple seconds go by and the sword sort of feels, in a moment, sort of heavier again, and it says “woah, this lady, looks like she wrote a lot of stuff down.”
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Hmm!
> Mike / G.M.: “Like there’s a- looks like there’s a- you’ve got a lot of posters, got a lot of books and stuff-” and like yeah if you look up Shannon, Beta, the corner that you’re standing in is a big bookshelf with a lot of things in it, you can see a lot of books of- there’s atlases, there’s histories of Kakudun and the various states within it, there are photography books for a bunch of
the countries, there’s collected performance works for Kakudunai arts, you can see that there is an entire shelf of notebooks and journals that you know conceivably belong to either Zeshdano Navelle or her partner, and the sword says “it looks like there’s- from here I can tell there’s a lot of stuff on the desk, seems like she took a lot of notes and she wrote a lot of things down, she’s got a lot of notes over there she’s got of like- y’know, looks like there’s a communicator and I think that other guy that you know, what’s that guy’s name with the glasses, the guy you can see his brain through his skull?”
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Vynos?
> Mike / G.M.: Ourndrim.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Ourndrim.
> Taylor / “Oat”: [ OOC ] Can Vynos hear that? Did Vynos hear that exchange?
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] Yeah, Vynos is hearing all of this and is waiting patiently.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Oh yeah I guess- if you look really hard maybe you could see his brain. Oh, Ourndrim.
> Mike / G.M.: Maybe if you go and check some of the things that she used, you’d be able to tell roughly what happened when she stopped using them, maybe there would be a clue over there somewhere, just it seems like there’s a lot of documents and you might be able to infer something, I don’t know.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Alright so you’re saying I should go over to the desk and investigate.
> Mike / G.M.: Y’know, I don’t know, I don’t think it could hurt. Hey tell you what, why don’t you bring me over there and I’ll take a look.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Oh! Oh sure. > Mike / G.M.: Beta! I don’t have eyes!
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Ahh you got me again! You are too good! [ OOC ] And then she puts the sword back in her scabbard, and-
> Mike / G.M.: Good luck!
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] ...and she turns around, she goes [ IC ] You know, instead of me using my medical prowess to figure this out, why don’t we just take a look at this desk over here? [Mike laughs]
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] That was weird as hell, Beta.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] What’s up?
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] I don’t- I don’t know what you’re doing, I’m gonna try to open this
notebook.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] Vynos says to Beta, [ IC ] Beta, it is fine for you to do whatever the sword is telling you, but I did ask you because most medical professionals can tell you the time of death within a few hours.
[00:40:00] > Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] That is very nice of you to say. [ OOC ] And then she walks over to the desk. [Mike and Jenn laugh]
> Mike / G.M.: I love- one of my favorite things in role-playing is when someone can easily roll a dice to solve a problem, but their character just won’t. [Jenn and Mike laugh]
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] It’s so funny.
> Mike / G.M.: Uh yeah, so, on the desk there are a number of contracts, there’s a lot of paperwork, there are a bunch of letters both opened and unopened, and I think the biggest thing, the biggest feature there is the- is Zeshdano’s communicator, which is on but has like a lock icon on its tiny square screen. Sort of looks like a big, chunky calculator with mechanical keyboard buttons on it, and this small maybe like two-inch by two-inch readout on it.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Let me take a look at that, I have technology skill, let me see. > Mike / G.M.: Merkis, let me know if there’s something that you want to do with the-
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Oh yeah he’s struggling with it, and looks at the desk to see if there’s a letter opener or anything sharp..?
> Mike / G.M.: Absolutely yes, there’s a gold letter opener with like a leather handle.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] Let me see, let me see, let me see, let me see. [ OOC ] Grabs for the
letter opener and starts jamming on this lock on the journal.
> Mike / G.M.: Yeah, I mean, roll combat and don’t get a one.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Okay.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Or do. [Mike laughs]
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] It’d be funny if I did. Cool, I’ve gotta roll...an eight!
> Mike / G.M.: Uh yeah, you very expertly pop the lock right off, you are pretty sure that you have not even caused any damage to the mechanism.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] Mmm-hmm, I have opened it! [ OOC ] And maybe he glances at the first page.
> Mike / G.M.: It would appear as though Zeshdano has laid out this journal to have a table of contents in the front, you see columns of very neatly blocked-out and labeled text, all handwritten, what is confusing though is that you can’t read any of it, because it would appear to be written in a cipher of some kind, there are a lot of half-moon shapes, you see weird crosses in various orientations, upside-down and sideways, there are what look like shaded cubes - it is not something that you recognize, and if you flip through the book you can see that yeah it’s very full, there’s a lot of information in here, but it is all in a kind of code.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Hmm. Can he still flip to the last page to look at it? Or the last page with any writing on it?
> Mike / G.M.: Yeah absolutely, yeah you go to the last page with writing on it and it’s more of the same. Is there anything specific that you’re looking for?
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Hmm. No, Merkis is just straining, not understanding what it says.
> Mike / G.M.: Yeah, if you’re looking for like a date or a time, you don’t know that it’s there or not there just because of this bizarre script that you’re looking at. The writing in it does not look particularly old or faded. There’s nothing about the journal that would lead you to believe that it hadn’t been used in a while, it looks like something that’s currently in use.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] Hmm, a key, a key, this needs a key.
> Mike / G.M.: Remy, you are holding the communicator, what would you like to do with it?
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Well, Remy’s looking at it, he’s flipping it upside-down and looking for anything- he realizes the problem is he’s too tired to try and do anything with it. In game terms he just doesn’t have enough grit to make it do what he wants it to do, so he’s just sort of-
> Mike / G.M.: Got it.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] He’s just sort of spinning his hands and y’know, popping open the
keypad. Okay, I’ll burn 18 health to get nine grit. That is- okay, I have four health. > Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] I can also- yeah, cause I can heal you after.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Remy’s flipping this thing around in his hands, he suddenly like looks a little ill. [Mike and Jenn laugh]
> Mike / G.M.: Cannibalizing his own innards?
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Just a little pale, you can see like-
> Taylor / “Oat”: [ OOC ] You mean like cool?
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] No.
> Mike / G.M.: He looks sick.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] He looks pale and sweaty. > Taylor / “Oat”: [ OOC ] So, cool!
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Like he’s in withdrawal from something. And you can see his face sort of moving. You can see the nanites in his face sort of moving a little bit. And I think he’ll burn eight of those nine grit and use repro to unlock this communicator.
> Mike / G.M.: And I think repro says you can just make it do what you want, is that correct? > Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Yes, so Remy’s just trying to unlock it.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] Unlock iPhone.
> Mike / G.M.: Unlock iPhone. Your nanites go into the little crevices between the keys and the chassy, and there’s a light little buzz, you can feel the electricity feeding back, and the screen blinks on and the lock disappears, and you can see there’s a little file browser that you can move around with the arrow keys that are on the keypad. There’s all kinds of stuff in here - hold on let me get a list of things that you see.
[00:45:05] > Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] Is there one file that says “the time of...” > Mike / G.M.: “The time that I died.”
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] Yeah. [Shannon laughs]
> Mike / G.M.: Alright so the main things that you see: there is a calendar, there is a communicator app (so you would assume that those are what we would call emails), and there is a voice memo recorder, and you can tell from the layout of the items that the most recent thing that has been used is the voice memo recorder.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Ooh! Oh guys, you mind if I- here-
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] Are you okay?
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] You do not look good.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Yeah I just need some gunch, I just need to gunch up, I’ll be fine.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] You know I can maybe help - I could help you.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] Fine? Fine?
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] I don’t know Beta, please please help him, he doesn’t look well at all.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] I just need gunch, it’s fine, this is normal. [ OOC ] Remy opens up the voice memos thing.
> Mike / G.M.: There are a bunch in here. It looks like this is a feature that Zeshdano Navelle used a lot, there are maybe dozens of voice memos that are on here, and the most recent one is timestamped from roughly around this time, two days ago.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Yeah, Remy hits play.
> Mike / G.M.: Okay. You hear the rustle of a plastic case, you hear the audio click on, you hear the rub of a hand against a microphone that says “Wolfskin 302, late evening, I think Boo is knocking on my door.” Then you hear footsteps, and you hear the front door unlock and then slide open and you hear the same voice go “I told you, I told you that I would find you at Crude when we have payment for this quarter. I’m sorry that it’s been slower than normal, but shipments have cut back which is good news. You know that. It’s good news. So we don’t need as much storage. This was all part of the deal.” And then you hear another voice go “I don’t give a shit about the deal, Zeshdano, you shouldn't be so sure about what counts as good news.” And then you hear a thud as the door is shoved open, and you hear a loud scuffle, and you hear the female voice go again, “what the fuck are you doing?” You hear another crash and more scuffling; you hear a rumble as the communicator, the device that you’re listening on is picked up and moved, and you hear that the voices are now louder and much clearer, and you hear the second voice go, “I’m done with this deal, I’m done delaying the inevitable, you shouldn’t have meddled with what’s yours, playing such a big shot, coming down here from the void like some sort of savior, you were wrong, you were wrong about more than you know, you thought you could stop the collapse and you can’t. You made it come even sooner.” “What are you- what are you doing? You are making a big, big mistake, Steady Hand Dealer is going to kill you when he hears about this.” “Maybe. But he’s next.” And then there’s the sound of bodies moving quickly, there’s a thud and a crash, the voices are now sort of distinct and muffled; you hear a struggle. And then after the struggle slows down, you hear a couple like grasps or whiffs of air as, presumably, people are just trying to get a hold of one another, at one point there’s a clatter, you hear the sound of a clatter of metal on the ground, and then you hear it scrape as it gets picked up, and you actually hear the surprisingly distinct sound - like this happened right next to the communicator - of metal sliding into hard leather. And then you hear dragging footsteps, you hear the blinds close, you hear the door open and shut, and then there’s just hours and hours of silence after that.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] Uhh...
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Well. Y’all mind if I gunch up? [Shannon laughs]
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] Remy what time was that recorded?
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Oh, it was two days ago, like right now.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] Hmm.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Uh-oh.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Actually, uh, actually- I would take your help instead of gunch. > Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Yes.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] That’s great, Remy. That’s really good. Now. All of you.
> Mike / G.M.: I’m on the fuckin’ edge of my seat. [Mike laughs]
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] I know, I’m like, what?
[00:49:54] > Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] Now we know when she was murdered. It is my opinion that we are here against the will of the Worshipful Company - we have not been upfront or honest about our purpose or means here - and that this very crime could be placed on us. Does everyone else here agree?
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Yeah.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Yeah. [ OOC ] Remy also walks up, over to the body and kneels down, and he looks at the team and says [ IC ] I think we’ve got to get rid of the evidence. It’ll buy us a couple days. They’ll think that Zeshdano ran after her partner reports it- reports that she’s not here. We could be long gone.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] Remy, what you’re talking about is a life on the run. From the Company.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] No what I’m talking about-
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] ...if we destroy this evidence. What I’m saying to you is that if it’s worth the risk, I could find out who did this heinous crime. We have the evidence, and I will have first-hand account. The people who did this are probably very powerful, I don’t even know if I could trust that recording, what I can trust is my eyes. They will trust that we are innocent if we can say who did it and give them evidence of that fact.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Well, Vynos, if you’re going to do this, is there anything we can do to help prepare you for that?
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] No, I’m afraid there’s not. Time travel is complicated. Luckily for you it won’t be, but for me it could be very very complicated, if I change anything in the past.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Merkis is clutching the notebook to his chest and his eyes are very wide. [ IC ] You’re going to time-travel?
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] Yes Merkis, I’m going to time-travel.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] Cool...travel faster than me in a different direction? I love it!
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] It doesn’t work like that but, anyway. [Mike laughs] I mean to hide in this very apartment and see if I can see who committed the crime. All of you, help me find the best place. Be that behind a wall, behind a grate, behind an air filter, anything.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Oh, but, you won’t be corporeal?
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] I will be corporeal when I get there.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Oh I see. Well you should probably hide in that big wardrobe, in this room, right? [ OOC ] Isn’t there a big-
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] Well, we need to look around the room. See what the room says! > Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] But isn’t there like a big chest of drawers sort of thing we talked
about?
> Mike / G.M.: There’s a- in the back corner, directly forward from when you walk in through the front door, there’s a large shelving sort of thing, with a bunch of books and stuff on it, and the leftmost part of it, yeah, has some clothes hanging in it, so there’s like some long coats, and some dresses and some pantsuits...
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Does it have a door?
> Mike / G.M.: No it does not have a door, it is probably about as wide as Vynos is, though, it’s
just a question of whether or not you’re wearing very flashy shoes or not.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] I’m not, but Vynos goes [ IC ] okay, now, this is going to be the lamest part of this: tell me if you can see me. [Taylor laughs] [ OOC ] He skitters over to the closet, gets behind the closet, and asks everyone [ IC ] Do you guys see me?
> Mike / G.M.: Please everyone roll will.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] Oh my god. [Jenn laughs] > Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Oh my god.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] Oh no.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Merkis got a one.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] I got a five.
> Mike / G.M.: Vynos, can you roll reason?
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] Sure. I got a nine.
> Mike / G.M.: This is hilarious. Merkis rolled a one, Beta? > Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] I rolled a...five.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] I rolled a two.
> Mike / G.M.: A two. To the other three of you, you have no- Vynos weirdly, somehow, steps
into this closet without a door and completely vanishes.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Holy shit, how did he do that?
> Mike / G.M.: Merkis, to you, you think that he has maybe used magic to do this. [Nick laughs]
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ IC ] Oh...my...goodness. I was already like mystified by Vynos, but this is just next-level.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] Okay Vynos hears Merkis and Remy being way too impressed by the type of hiding that a third-grader does in hide-and-seek and so he asks Beta, [ IC ] Beta, Beta, can you see me?
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] Uh...I, can I see him?
> Mike / G.M.: No. You can’t.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] No! I think it’s pretty good.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] Okay. My shoes, for you, will disappear, for only a second, and then I’ll be back. Does that make sense? [ OOC ] They’re talking to the coats at this point, cause I’m still behind them. [Taylor laughs]
> Mike / G.M.: Or is Vynos actually talking to the coats? [Nick laughs]
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] I could be. I’m talking to everyone in the room including the coats.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Is there anything we should do to prepare for potential changes in time, which has ripples all the way to the current...time?
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] No, the rippling would have happened through a course of events that would make your current events, no matter how changed they are, make perfect sense to you. There’s nothing that would change for you, basically, according to your memory.
[00:55:02] > Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Got it.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Merkis tries to track that conversation by putting a finger in the air,
[ IC ] it makes sense...to me...it’s...okay Vynos!
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] Right. Okay, it could be really complicated for me, that’s why I can’t
save this woman, does that make sense?
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ IC ] Yes.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ IC ] Yeah, I- I don’t know the difference.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ IC ] Okay. I understand. Everyone: see you in a moment. [ OOC ] And Vynos re-weaves time and space. To...maybe only a couple minutes before this recording because we hear her actually answering the door.
> Mike / G.M.: What does this look like from Vynos’ perspective, and also what does it look like from the rest of the crew’s perspective? Is this like a flash, does this just happen?
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] So from their perspective, they’re literally going to see my shoes disappear-
> Mike / G.M.: ...and then pop back into existence.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] ...and then they’re going to reappear. If I was in the middle of the room, basically it is a little bit like a kind of- everything’s clear, kind of implosion, where it’s kind of a little bit of a gasoline fume kind of ripple but it’s very tiny. One second I’m there and then there’s a tiny ripple like that of that ‘is the air water’ ripple-y thing that’s happening within the size of a dime, and then nothing.
> Mike / G.M.: Got it.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] From an internal perspective your senses stop working immediately, you still have some form of consciousness, and if you’re- to put this metaphorically, if your consciousness normally is like a potato in shape, it turns into more of a tube. A non-local tube that’s sucking itself. [Taylor laughs hysterically] Wrapping around itself. [Taylor, Jenn, and Shannon laugh] Folding itself, spinning itself. [Mike and Shannon laugh] And then, re-doing that, again, and then I’m in the new time.
> Taylor / “Oat”: [ OOC ] How many ribs did you have to remove so that you could re-weave time?
> Mike / G.M.: Taylor. [Jenn laughs]
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] ...so that your consciousness can suck itself?
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] This is not happening to my body at all, my body doesn’t feel anything, this is just the feeling of the shape of your consciousness when time-traveling.
> Taylor / “Oat”: [ OOC ] A self-suck potato. [Shannon laughs]
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] From potato to cylinder doing very strange movements that it
shouldn’t be able to do in three-dimensional space. > Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] I love it.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] Okay, I do have some rolls here. One of them is that I have to roll- I have to take d6 damage, because even though my body doesn’t feel it, it can do some damage.
> Mike / G.M.: I mean it does momentarily stop existing, so I would imagine that that takes a toll.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] It can, yeah. Got a four, so I take four damage. Oof, okay, so I’m at eight, I’m at eight health now. And I’ve got to take d20 in grit. So this is a big range here, hoping for a lowball. 13, average-ish, I do have 13 grit, I have 32 actually.
> Mike / G.M.: Nice.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] So I am okay.
> Mike / G.M.: You pop into existence in Zeshdano Navelle’s dresser, two days earlier. It is silent, there’s maybe a small gust of wind as you displace some air in the location, but you do not alert the person who is sitting at the desk in this room. You see, very clearly now, the body that you have just previously left dead on the floor is now a living woman in her apartment. She is bent over her desk, there are a couple lights on, she’s writing some notes and yeah, you see everything that you just saw in almost the same arrangement. You see the communicator out on her desk, you see the various piles of letters, you see the contract that she’s currently working on, all of it. You stand for maybe ten minutes, you watch her work, you watch her take out the communicator, push a few buttons, say some things into it about some of the contracts she’s working on. She says some things about needing to delay further shipments, she says some things about having to find new trade routes to the East, she works and works. After about ten minutes you hear a knock on the door. She stops working, she waits, she doesn’t do anything. You hear another knock on the door. She’s completely motionless. You hear a third, much louder knock on the door and a muffled voice on the other side, and the muffled voice says “Zeshdano, I know you’re in there, open up,” and then you see her grab the communicator, push a button on it, and say what you heard two days from now. “Wolfskin 302, late evening, I think Boo is knocking on my door. And then she stands up, walks over to the door, and opens it.
[01:00:00] She says then exactly what you heard: “I told you, I told you that I would find you at Crude when we have payment for this quarter. I’m sorry that it’s been slower than normal, but shipments have cut back which is good news. You know that. It’s good news. So we don’t need as much storage. This was all part of the deal.” And as she says this, she kind of shifts her weight a little bit and you can see the...it’s hard to describe, the head of the person who has been knocking on her door. It is a mulruk; it is a frog person. And you can see the top of his wide rounded head, you can see his large eyes set into the slope of the top of his forehead, and you hear him say exactly what you have heard and will hear him say in two days: “I don’t give a shit about the deal, Zeshdano, you shouldn't be so sure about what counts as good news.” And then you see him just shove her into the apartment. He shoves her back towards the writing desk. When she’s on the writing desk, when she gets next to it, she grabs the communicator and she positions it very carefully, quickly, on the corner of the desk so that it’s between them, knowing that it’s recording. And you hear the entire conversation that they have, and at a certain point when the person who has come into the room - this large, like...the last mulruk you saw was the guy who you fought, the raider, right?
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] The cannonballs.
> Mike / G.M.: The cannonball guy, yeah.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] Yeah, I shot him in the brain.
> Mike / G.M.: Yeah, right right right; this mulruk is not as muscular as the last one you saw with the cannon strapped to his arm, he’s also older, he’s wearing like very dirty black hard-fabric pants with reinforced patches over the knees and the thighs. They look very heavily worn, they’re very weathered. He’s wearing very old-looking dusty worn boots that are really thick. He’s got a thick canvas shirt on over his wide frog body, and over that he’s got almost this welder’s vest - do you guys know what a welder’s vest looks like?
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] We could just take a second to google it.
> Taylor / “Oat”: [ OOC ] Imagine the specific needs of a welder.
> Mike / G.M.: Fireproof...yeah, there you go.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Oh. I went to welding outfitter dot com.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] It’s like a half shirt. It’s basically like a crop top for when you’re passing the dutchie on the left-hand side and you want it to be made of leather.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Okay. [Bijan laughs] > Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] I want to wear these.
> Mike / G.M.: Yeah, so he’s wearing this pretty serious-looking welder’s vest, and he’s got a belt that’s got a bunch of tools on it, and he pushes Zeshdano into the apartment, he starts talking
to her, he starts telling her that he’s done with the deal, that she shouldn’t have come here thinking that she was some kind of savior, that she was going to stop the inevitable, and she mentions again Steady Hand Dealer and he says “maybe, but he’s next,” and then he advances on her and he rushes over to her, and he grabs her by the throat, and he pushes her up against the bookcase that you are hiding inside of, Vynos; they are maybe six inches from you. You can smell them. You can smell this mulruk. He smells like rust and salt and fish and liquor. And they are struggling, and at one point he- his arms are tiny, and he’s not a muscular guy, but he’s stronger than her, he basically picks her up and throws her on the ground, and he’s standing over her and he pulls out a knife from the long leather sheath that’s on his belt, and it’s got a skinny cord-wrapped handle, and it’s long and straight, and shaped like a star. And I mean, I don’t want to describe this in detail, but you watch-
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] But you might not need to, Mike. Because.. > Mike / G.M.: Oh, okay.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] ...Vynos had every intention to stay out of this. He knew that he could watch this person die when they were just ten feet away, but with her just six inches away - he could smell the fear, he could smell this mulruk, and he is yelling at himself to stay put, that I cannot meddle in this. This has already happened. This has already happened. And Vynos leaps from the closet with his shotgun drawn, pointed at the mulruk’s head.
[01:05:19] > Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] Oh my gosh!
> Mike / G.M.: His back is to you, and he is leaning - he is standing over Zeshdano, about to stab her. She is looking at him, she looks past him at you, is terrified for her life, is now maybe...more terrified, like does not understand what’s happening...if you want to shoot him, please just roll combat.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] I...have made this decision. And I am going to roll. > Taylor / “Oat”: [ OOC ] YES!
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] Oh my god oh my god.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] Yes yes yes yes!
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Oh my god I’m so excited! > Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] Me too!
> Mike / G.M.: This fucking rules.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Nick, I’m sweating.
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] And this is just gonna happen in our memories!
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Nick, I’m sweating in my apartment!
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] I think I’m going to have to spend at least six here to get my roll up.
> Jenn / “Merkis”: [ OOC ] Do it, do it.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] Do I want to do six or nine, six or nine, six or nine...I think I have to do nine. I think I have to do nine. Okay, I have to do nine.
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] Don’t get a one.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] I rolled a nat three so that puts me at thirteen. > Mike / G.M.: You tell me what happens.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] I have sufficiently surprised everyone in this room enough. I have killed two people in recent past, both of them have been frogmen that I’ve stuck a shotgun in their face. [Shannon laughs]
> Shannon / “Beta”: [ OOC ] Jesus!
> Bijan / “Remy”: [ OOC ] You know if you didn’t mention that, nobody would think anything
about it. [Shannon and Jenn laugh]
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] Yeah. It’s- it’s something that I didn’t not think about as I leap from the closet with a shotgun in his face, barely registered anything, I pulled the trigger and he falls to the ground, knife in hand.
> Mike / G.M.: He topples over, a giant hole in his back and chest, entirely atop Zeshdano Navelle, who screams at the top of her lungs.
> Nick / “Vynos”: [ OOC ] And Vynos says [ IC ] it’s okay, calm down, calm down, calm down [ OOC ] as he’s pulling this mulruk off of her. He finally kind of rolls him off and says [ IC ] it’s fine...I’m from the future.
[ Main Theme begins ]
> Mike / G.M.: You are now leaving Float City. Thanks for listening, if you like the show and want to help us keep making it, head on over to patreon.com/funcityventures, five dollars a month gets you access to a whole other show we do called Fun Chatty; it gets you access to our rad-as-heck Discord full of very weird, very nice, very smart nerds; it gets you access to music playlists, and more. It’s a wild deal - you know you gotta - patreon.com/funcityventures. And of course, thanks to all of our current patrons for helping keep this ship afloat.
[ Main Theme concludes ]
[ End Theme begins ]
> Bijan: Hi. I’m Bijan Stephen, and I play Remy Tester on Float City. You can find me online on Twitter @bijanstephen, B-I-J-A-N-S-T-E-P-H-E-N, on Twitch at the same name, and on Instagram @bijancakes, B-I-J-A-N cakes.
> Jenn: I’m Jenn De La Vega. I play Merkis Imeldar. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @randwiches, that’s the word sandwiches but replace the S with an R.
> Shannon: This is Shannon Odell, I play Beta Commbot, you can find me on social @shodell.
> Nick: Hello, this is Nick Guercio, and I play Luxe on Fun City and Vynos on Float City. You can find me @nicholasguercio on Twitter and @nguercio on Instagram. You spell Guercio G-U-E-R-C-I-O.
> Taylor: I’m Taylor Moore and I play all the cool, interesting characters. You can follow me @taylordotbiz. [Taylor laughs]
> Mike: My name is Mike Rugnetta, I am your G.M. and you can find me on Twitter and Instagram @mikerugnetta. You can find the show on Twitter and Instagram @funcityventures. Float City is played in a soon-to-be-released system called Stillfleet which you can find on Twitter, Instagram and Patreon @Stillfleet. This episode was recorded at various locations around Brooklyn, New York, and Cape Cod, Massachusetts; apologies for the variance in sound quality. It was produced, edited and sound-designed by me, Mike Rugnetta. All powerful and his looks flourish, like the brows of morning. He is the spirit of prophecy, the ever apparent, Pixlriffs. Fun City’s music is by Sam Tyndall, Remy’s flute playing is by Jake Fridkis, our art is by Tess Stone, our Discord mods are Olivia Gulin, Kit Pulliam, and Kestrel, and as always the voice of Artemis is Molly Templeton.
[ End Theme concludes ]