Feasts & Families

0:00:00 The Unsleeping City: Chapter II Lou Wilson as Kingston Brown; Ally Beardsley as Pete Conlan; Zac Oyama as Ricky Matsui; Siobhan Thompson as “Anastasia” Iga Lisowski; Emily Axford as Sofia Lee; and Brian “Murph” Murphy as Cody “Night Angel” Walsh Episode 8: Feasts & Families < [Previous Episode] | [Next Episode] > (upbeat music)

0:00:08 Brennan: Hello, one and all, and welcome back to another exciting episode of "The Unsleeping City". I'm your humble dungeon monster Brennan Lee Mulligan. With me as always are our intrepid heroes. Say hi, intrepid heroes.

0:00:17 All: Hi, intrepid heroes.

0:00:20 Brennan: Last we left off, the champions of New York City, they were high atop a number of Macy's Day Parade floats and balloons soaring high into the skyline of Manhattan. An incredible aerial battle ensued with some true clowns from the deep dreaming, but our heroes who had gathered there in the midst of preparations, sort of humming in the background were the collaboration between the Order of the Concrete Fist and the Gramercy Occult Society talking about an expedition into Nod to uncover what was behind the strange events unfolding here. However, just that morning, we had some insights into these strange events. Number one, Pete contacting Nod, the grey orphan, monarch of the sixth borough and seeing that they had left, Nod for a time to venture and find one of their siblings, named Nuria, and spoke of a third sibling as well. Pete awoke to go find his friends at the parade. After Sofia Lee had a tense showdown with Tony Simos, former first fist of the Monastery of the Midnight Sun. You all had finished your combat. These true clowns showed up. Kingston recognized them as the clowns of the Central Park Carousel, which, Kingston, you've not been to in some time. However, you saved Wally Claus, who has tied these floats, had tied these balloons, these parade balloons, to the top of the building but Sofia and Kingston in a daring rescue by Sofia Lee, saved Kingston Brown. They smashed through some plate glass to arrive in a darkened office, as a lot of the offices are, as the parade goes right by them. Darkened office for Excelsior Dynamic Homes, which is where we begin our story. On the top of the roof, Wally Claus beckons Iga, Pete, Cody and Ricky, going,

0:02:31 Wally: Hi everybody, come on down to the roof! It's so good to see you, guys. Ricky Matsui, how are you doing, buddy?

0:02:38 Ricky: Hey, Wally! Santa Claus, I mean.

0:02:43 Wally: It's okay, it's both I think.

0:02:45 Brennan: And you see, gives you a big hug. He goes,

0:02:48 Wally: Ah, you're the best, Ricky!

0:02:51 Brennan: And he smiles looks over to Pete and he goes,

0:02:58 Wally: Hey, Pete! It's Pete the Plug, how's it going?

0:03:02 Pete: Oh, it's great, yeah, hey Santa. I'm not quite the plug anymore, but yeah definitely.

0:03:09 Wally: Oh, okay you make your money through something else, that's okay. Your name is still on the good list, so good job, Peter.

0:03:20 Pete: [gasps] Cool, thanks.

0:03:22 Wally: [two thumbs up] Yeah!

0:03:24 Zac: Well I think Ricky, I mean, after Wally is done saying hi to everybody would love to try to pull Wally aside for a second.

0:03:31 Brennan: Cool, Wally looks over at, Iga looks at you real quick and he goes,

0:03:36 Wally: You're Jess and Nick's mom!

0:03:39 Iga: That's right, I'm Jess and Nick's mom. They're two good kids.

0:03:43 Wally: They're two really good kids, it's great and thank you to you and your husband because you guys know magic is real. So I don't have to do an enchantment on your brain to make you think you bought the presents that I delivered.

0:03:59 Iga: You give such good presents every year. You do, you do great work. I'm a fan. (Emily laughs)

0:04:08 Wally: Oh, that makes me so happy. And a hi, what, what's your name buddy?

0:04:14 Cody: I'm the Night Angel, Cody Walsh, ambassador of darkness and the Jersey Devil. I assume, I'm on the naughty list because I am evil incarnate. Zac is laughing so hard he drops out of frame.

0:04:27 Brennan: You see, he looks at you and says,

0:04:30 Wally: [unconvincingly] Sure, you're on the naughty list, that's right. So naughty, you got a tattoo? Wow. Ally, who is drinking a mug of coffee, just barely prevents a spit-take and has to hold their nose.

0:04:37 Brennan: You see— Ally’s losing it.

0:04:44 Cody: There's a devil in there.

0:04:46 Ally: So - full mouth full of coffee. (cast laughs)

0:04:50 Ally: "You got a tattoo!"

0:04:53 Wally: Wow, that's so naughty!

0:04:56 Brennan: Ricky, you successfully pull, pull Wally Claus aside.

0:05:00 Ricky: Thanks Wally Claus. Hey, I know we don't have a ton of time to discuss. It seems like Kingston and Sofia flew through a window or something, I don't know what happened but... just real quickly like, I'm kind of in an interesting spot where basically what I'm wondering is how do you tell if someone is good?

0:05:24 Wally: Oh boy, well there's kind of two schools of thought on this question. The first school of thought is you add up all the good things they done and you subtract all the bad things. That's one and the other. (murmurs) Yeah, the other one is that really good and evil are relative abstract concepts and so it's harder to determine what they are. It's not so much an analytical process as it is one of creative choices because we're waking up every day and trying to decide what is right and wrong based on what we are choosing to value. And if we value human flourishing and love, we will have a different moral code than if we value dominance and cruelty. So really when it comes down to it, it's a struggle each and every day to try and make the world the way you wish for it to be in which case good and evil vary from person to person. [pauses] But for the list we do the first one.

0:06:29 Ricky: Gotcha, it's awesome. Cool, thanks Wally, just curious what your thoughts were on.

0:06:32 Wally: Okay!

0:06:35 Ally: Can I talk to Wally really quick?

0:06:37 Brennan: [laughing] Sure.

0:06:38 Ally: Can I show him a picture of Priya's stupid fiance and be like,

0:06:42 Pete: Is this, is this fucking guy on the good list or the bad list?

0:06:48 Wally: Oh, he's extremely on the bad list for sure.

0:06:52 Pete: [shocked] Really?

0:06:53 Wally: Yeah. 100—

0:06:55 Pete: Wait, what's this guy's name?

0:06:57 Wally: It says, he says yeah, his name is, his name's Calvin Thomas.

0:07:01 Brennan: He says,

0:07:01 Wally: Yeah, Calvin, Calvin let me just tell you, without getting too much into it the, the amount of people they, he has been unfaithful with is truly staggering. Just, just wild, that's not nice.

0:07:22 Pete: Wow, wow, yeah, yeah, yeah, he deserves a bunch of coal. He deserves a fuckin' bunch of coal to the mouth.

0:07:30 Wally: Hey, are you all right?

0:07:31 Pete: Pete just starts cracking his knuckles. Even though he's already cracked them. It's just like.

0:07:35 Pete: [pained] Ah! [cracks]

0:07:38 Zac: He realized how much...

0:07:38 Cody: Do you wanna go? Do you wanna go throw Big Gulps at this dude's house?

0:07:43 Pete: Yes, I fucking do, Cody! That's a great idea, that sounds really cathartic.

0:07:49 Cody: I'm in, we'll do that after we find out what happened to our friends who smashed through the window.

0:07:53 Pete: Oh, right, right, okay, cool.

0:07:55 Brennan: You guys get to head downstairs. Sofia and Kingston… You both stand within this sort of, and again, it's broad daylight outside. It's like, looks like mid-morning. So there's plenty of light in here but if that's still the eerie somberness of an office with none of the fluorescent lights on, so it's like shadows everywhere, very dim lighting... what do you as you bust in?

0:08:18 Emily: First two things I do. I have two ki points left. I'm gonna cast Pass Without Trace on me and Kingston and then I'm gonna look for a security cam footage or security cameras just to make sure to get rid of any evidence we were here.

0:08:34 Brennan: Hell, yes. I'm gonna say, give me a Perception check for the cameras.

0:08:43 Emily: 14 plus 7, 21.

0:08:45 Brennan: Kingston, you… as you are like getting up and brushing the glass off you, Sofia is already up. Shadows have whipped around her and you just watch a like hazy nimbus of shadow sprint across the room and yank a full camera out of the ceiling in a very practiced manner.

0:09:07 Kingston: Oh, okay Sofie, all right, all right.

0:09:11 Sofia: I'm just saying, if you wanna look around, we now have free access to do so without anyone peeping on us.

0:09:18 Kingston: Well, I mean that's, I mean, hell yeah. I mean, this is the place that's been buying up all the property around my neighborhood, so.

0:09:25 Sofia: Yeah, you brought it up.

0:09:26 Kingston: Yeah, I'd love to have a look, can I—

0:09:30 Emily: Can I watch the door while Kingston… I'll like give him the help action but I wanna like guard the door so that he can have as much time.

0:09:37 Brennan: Yes, absolutely.

0:09:39 Zac: Picturing a 60 year old man using a computer. (cast laughs)

0:09:44 Lou: Slow clicks. Murph mimes “hunt and peck” typing with just his index fingers.

0:09:47 Ally: So close to the computer.

0:09:49 Lou: Yeah, just all the way up in here. [getting very close to the camera] All right, let's see, okay. What, what check would you like?

0:10:01 Brennan: I will say if you're not using magic, go ahead and give me a, an Investigation check with advantage.

0:10:12 Lou: I mean, I guess I don't, I don't think I have, I don't think I could use magic. So I guess I'll.

0:10:18 Brennan: Are you, are you out of slots? Is that what's going on, right now?

0:10:20 Lou: No, I got plenty of slots. I've got slots all day! But I don't have, I don't have like Detect Magic or anything like that.

0:10:27 Emily: What about that remote control thing, maybe you can...

0:10:31 Brennan: You do have Remote Access.

0:10:33 Lou: Oh, okay, great I'll put Remote Access to work. I mean, that's still, it's still Kingston on a computer. It's just, can I do, can I use remote access to be going, looking at a computer while I'm also going through files, like physically… are there physical files in here? What level of office, is this like a full modern office or? Okay, I'm just gonna make that Investigate check. That is going to be a 19.

0:11:01 Brennan: Incredible, 19 investigation. I'm gonna say Kingston, first of all, you walk towards the computers and the computers all (zappy noise) turn on at your approach.

0:11:18 Kingston: Is this normal? Sofie, do we - this is what computers do now?

0:11:22 Sofia: I have a tablet and I, I cannot get that thing to turn on.

0:11:26 Kingston: Okay, well, we'll just assume this is normal then, all right.

0:11:31 Brennan: After the computer turns on at your approach, Kingston, at that point, I'm gonna say, 19 Investigation. You find some paper stuff here, you have a feeling, none of the paper stuff will be important. You are not gonna know what the individual security things passwords, yada, yada, other stuff like that, is. But you do see a way on the computer you have right now to just copy this entire hard drive, the main hard drive of this computer and you could put it onto a flash drive or something… You think there's a utility desk that has like portable hard drives on it. You know enough to be like, I can just take everything here, download it to this thing and walk out the door.

0:12:22 Kingston: [slowly] Command A, command C and click on the flash drive.

0:12:29 Siobhan: Just copy and pasting it.

0:12:31 Kingston: Command V.

0:12:33 Sofia: Kingston, you are a pro.

0:12:34 Siobhan: Document copy and paste.

0:12:36 Kingston: One of my, one of my little nieces showed me how to do this the other day, 'cause I was having, you know, cause I was switching, I got a new computer that I haven't opened yet.

0:12:44 Sofia: Oh, okay. I gotta show you my tablet. Maybe you can figure out what's going with it.

0:12:48 Kingston: Okay, yeah, that honestly, yeah, I could probably figure that out, all right. It's going to be two minutes, but.

0:12:54 Ally: There are so many young people in our party.

0:12:57 Brennan: Incredible, if there are any, so you download a tremendous amount of info on a 19, you know, you have a lot of good stuff. You just don't know what the answers are in it. You can give me a further check if you want. If you have any specific questions, here, if you have any.

0:13:21 Lou: Can I look for, in terms of like CEOs, CFOs, like names and then can I also search with regard to Gladiator? I think those are my two questions.

0:13:27 Ally: Ooooh.

0:13:33 Siobhan: Nice.

0:13:34 Brennan: Hell, yes.

0:13:34 Lou: I mean, one more thing. Can I look for JJs name or whatever his real name is, in anything?

0:13:42 Sofia: Oh, do me a favor and look for Tony also.

0:13:45 Kingston: Oh, you got it, hold on, hold on, command F… "T"..."O"..."N"...

0:13:53 Sofia: Honestly, watching you work is inspiring.

0:13:53 Kingston: "Y"...Space bar..."S"... I'm a "Hunt 'n Pecker", that's what my kids call me. They say I do a hunt and peck. I don't know what that means.

0:14:02 Sofia: Emphasis on the hunt because you are a hunter.

0:14:05 Kingston: Here we go. Now we are in. You ever see that movie "Hackers"?

0:14:09 Sofia: Yeah.

0:14:09 Kingston: I feel like that right now.

0:14:11 Sofia: Oh yeah, I minor illusion an Angelina Jolie wetsuit on myself.

0:14:20 Sofia: She wears them just as clothing. It's so cool. I feel really attractive—

0:14:25 Brennan: Go ahead call out… so those are four questions.

0:14:28 Lou: Yes.

0:14:29 Brennan: Call out, so this first one is gonna be for like executives' names, give me an investigation.

0:14:36 Lou: Okay. [bass music]

0:14:37 Brennan: Still with advantage, right?

0:14:40 Lou: Okay.

0:14:40 Brennan: These are actually all going to be straight rolls.

0:14:43 Lou: Okay, you got it. [loses his die] Okay, it jumped out so it doesn't want to be rolled. Straight investigation, oh, all jumping out. They don't wanna be rolled.

0:14:52 Murph: Can you Bless yourself or anything?

0:14:53 Emily: Ooh, Guidance?

0:14:54 Lou: Oh yeah, I'll Bless myself. So the first one will be a 14.

0:15:04 Brennan: Okay.

0:15:07 Lou: The second one, which is for what?

0:15:12 Brennan: This one is going to be for Gladiator stuff.

0:15:16 Lou: That is gonna be a 16.

0:15:21 Brennan: Okay, this next one is for JJ.

0:15:28 Lou: That's gonna be a 13.

0:15:30 Zac: Who is JJ again?

0:15:33 Emily: JJ is the grad student.

0:15:35 Zac: All right.

0:15:36 Lou: And what's the last one?

0:15:38 Emily: Tony.

0:15:39 Lou: Tony?

0:15:40 Brennan: Tony.

0:15:41 Lou: Tony we're going 21. [Emily laughs, impressed]

0:15:44 Siobhan: Nice, fucking nice.

0:15:45 Emily: That fucker.

0:15:48 Brennan: You pull up nothing on JJ. I will say with JJ, it looks like his application was denied. Like they did not accept him into the internship program, but they do have his like stuff on file. Executives-the corporate structure of this is bizarre. For, for Tony stuff, you do find Tony's stuff here.

0:16:16 Kingston: [way too close to the camera] Sofie, Sofie get over here. I found Tony.

0:16:20 Sofia: Oh, I'm kind of doing like a German shepherd at the door thing right now. Can you read it out loud to me?

0:16:27 Ally: German shepherd in a wetsuit? (Emily laughs)

0:16:32 Siobhan: It's such a sexy wetsuit...

0:16:33 Ally: Listen, I pictured it sexy.

0:16:34 Zac: Do you ever see those pictures of a dog wearing like pantyhose that are horrible?

0:16:39 Emily: Okay, okay I come over. I wanna see what's going on with Tony. [beat] In a wetsuit.

0:16:44 Brennan: Tony stuff, Tony Simos filed a lawsuit that you see is not against Excelsior Dynamic Homes, it's all tied up in the Gladiator stuff. Tony was the owner of a property in San Francisco and you see that Gladiator was trying to buy him out and he refused and, and specifically like fought Gladiator, and there was a lot of like legal stuff. Gladiator was threatening legal action against him. They wanted the property that his property in San Francisco was on. And then at a certain point very recently...

0:17:27 Emily: It gets dismissed?

0:17:29 Brennan: At a certain point, very recently, it looks like a settlement was reached and Tony was awarded a sum of money.

0:17:38 Emily: [knowingly] Hmm. Mm. Can I, do I recognize if the address is a personal residence or if it's the address of the monastery?

0:17:46 Brennan: You think it's the address of the monastery.

0:17:49 Emily: Interesting.

0:17:49 Siobhan: Son of a bitch.

0:17:51 Brennan: The other thing you find is there's a lot of Gladiator stuff here because Excelsior Dynamic Homes is owned by Gladiator Industries. You see Gladiator has been buying a bunch of shit here that you find sort of right away. You see that they have bought recently, obviously huge purchase of the Queens Center Mall. They have an enormous Cypher Energy Fluid plant that they are building down in the Pine Barrens in New Jersey.

0:18:31 Emily: [laughs] No, don't make us go to New Jersey.

0:18:34 Brennan: They, they also have recently been buying up, You see a ton of stuff, they've been buying ads, all along the A/C/E, like A trains are filled with Gladiator ads now, they also just bought two New York icons. They have managed - Excelsior Dynamic Homes has bought the Cloisters, which is an incredible museum way uptown in Inwood. They, it looks like the Cloisters has already been shut down and they made a deal with the city of New York and bought the Central Park carousel earlier this month and are converting it into Cypher Energy Fluid presents the Gladiator Industries Recreational Rotating Horse Area.

0:19:25 Lou: It's the, are the files downloaded?

0:19:28 Brennan: They are downloaded.

0:19:30 Lou: I cast Sacred Flame straight through the monitor. (Brennan and Emily laugh)

0:19:37 Ally: Incredible.

0:19:39 Zac: On the cloud but-

0:19:40 Sofia: I kind of wish I had a security camera for that, just to rewatch it.

0:19:45 Brennan: You guys in the stairwell, Sofia and Kingston, you guys meet up with your companions coming down from the roof.

0:19:49 Kingston: It’s bad.

0:19:54 Sofia: Yeah, we found everything.

0:19:55 Kingston: It’s real bad.

0:19:57 Zac: Did Pete ever tell us about what happened, what Nod's conversation, with us?

0:20:01 Siobhan: Yeah, I was just thinking that.

0:20:02 Zac: Yeah.

0:20:03 Brennan: I think you got, Wally Claus is with, is with you guys and basically says,

0:20:08 Wally: Hey, I'd be happy to help, it sounds like you guys got some big problems. Do you want to come to dinner with my brother David and his family?

0:20:20 Ricky: I'm so hungry.

0:20:21 Sofia: Yeah.

0:20:21 Iga: Will David be okay with seven other people showing up to...?

0:20:26 Wally: Oh yeah, we're probably gonna go to Denny's.

0:20:30 Iga: For Thanksgiving you're going to Denny's?

0:20:33 Brennan: You see, he says, says,

0:20:33 Wally: What? Oh.

0:20:35 Iga: It's Thanksgiving.

0:20:36 Wally: Yeah, now that you mentioned it, Denny's is probably closed.

0:20:41 Pete: Yeah, that's the issue.

0:20:44 Cody: The sad thing is it might not be.

0:20:46 Iga: Yeah, I know it might be opened.

0:20:49 Sofia: It's probably open.

0:20:51 Ally: I have a feeling I would have told everyone right when I got to the thing, 'cause that's like a pretty big deal with all the Nod stuff.

0:20:58 Emily: So let's just all fill each other in, and I'll fill everyone in that I fucked up with Tony but I say like, I think it could be good because it'll get his attention off of Pete and maybe he'll just go on a little crusade against me, which is less dangerous.

0:21:16 Iga: [crosstalk] So I think maybe the—

0:21:16 Pete: [crosstalk] So do you think, oh sorry.

0:21:18 Iga: The sibling, the sibling of Nod who was West.

0:21:24 Ricky: So like Chicago, Austin. I'm just naming cities that are west of...

0:21:28 Iga: San Francisco, San Francisco, maybe San Francisco, San Francisco.

0:21:30 Ricky: Could be San Francisco!

0:21:36 Sofia: Yeah, I'm thinking that Nod’s sibling was...

0:21:41 Iga: Something that worries me is the Cloisters. The Cloisters is where the unicorn of New York lives, I believe.

0:21:47 Pete: Ohhh.

0:21:53 Sofia: Yeah, I think no matter what, we're gonna have to check out the Cloisters because if they already bought it, they had the carousel for a couple of days and already did some weird, magical shit with it. The Cloisters is already a potently magical place. They're absolutely up to some shit there.

0:22:08 Iga: I always enjoy a trip to the Cloisters. They have that medicine garden, which is beautiful, a lot of stolen European art, which I feel ambivalent about but. [shrugs]

0:22:21 Pete: I've been getting pretty into herbs.

0:22:23 Cody: The Pine Barrens is also the ancestral home of the Jersey Devil, if we [takes a drag] wanted to go to Jersey.

0:22:30 Sofia: We want it.

0:22:31 Ricky: You shouldn't smoke in a staircase.

0:22:33 Iga: I mean, I guess you can smoke in this stairwell.

0:22:34 Sofia: Yeah, you can smoke in here.

0:22:35 Kingston: Honestly, it's fine. Let him smoke.

0:22:35 Cody: Yeah! Fuck these people, right?

0:22:36 Kingston: Smoke all you damn want.

0:22:38 Cody: Thank you.

0:22:39 Pete: Wow, brand new Kingston.

0:22:42 Kingston: Honestly let me have one, give me one.

0:22:46 Pete: Kingston, why are you in a wetsuit?

0:22:48 Sofia: Yeah, I’ll have one too. Cody does hand some cigarettes over.

0:22:49 Ricky: [in consternation] Kingston! What— Kingston!

0:22:50 Brennan: Oh man!

0:22:50 Iga: I mean, if we’re smoking I’ll have a cigarette.

0:22:50 Cody: I did find these on the street.

0:22:52 Kingston: What do you do next? These calm you down, right?

0:22:56 Zac: I’m using five Lay on Hands points to Cure Disease on Kingston every time he takes a puff. [cast laughing] Kingston coughs.

0:23:02 Ally: Brennan, do you think, do I have an like an idea of, since the, I banished that like presence, will I have more access if I go to the Metropolitan Museum of Memories to these like Vox Phantasma that were gone because those memories were being taken away. But do you think they flooded back for a moment?

0:23:25 Brennan: I think Pete would definitely feel that he would have a stronger connection to the Metropolitan Museum of Memories, if you went there in Nod, 100%.

0:23:34 Ally: Okay, oh, that's in Nod, right?

0:23:37 Brennan: Yes, Metropolitan Museum of Memories. But you could also go to, ‘cause the Metropolitan Museum of Memories is coterminous in that other dimension with the Met in New York City. So you could go to one and kind of be in the other. It depends on whether you're in the waking world or in Nod while you're going there, right, 'cause they're mirrors of each other.

0:23:57 Ally: I kind of want to run to that.

0:24:00 Ricky: Should we go eat with Wally first and just hash out a plan?

0:24:04 Sofia: Yeah.

0:24:05 Kingston: Yeah, I think...

0:24:07 Sofia: Although Pete, if you, if you feel the call to Nod, I mean, I will also respect that.

0:24:11 Pete: I don't really want to go to Nod but I would love to go to the Met and try to get these memories before whatever that presence that was like, deleting them comes back.

0:24:20 Sofia: Yeah, that's great do you want me to escort you?

0:24:24 Pete: Yeah, I mean, that would be cool.

0:24:26 Ricky: Do you think there's some sort of museum pass you can get like where all the museums, you get one price?

0:24:31 Pete: Oh man, I've been wanting them to do something like that forever and they just...

0:24:35 Ricky: Cause if you go to Cloisters...

0:24:36 Iga: They have that, you can do I think a New York pass. Cause the Cloisters… oh, but with Gladiator I don't know, but Cloisters & Metropolitan Museum, they're the same museum

0:24:46 Ricky: Oh, the Cloisters is just closed, never mind.

0:24:48 Pete: Oh yeah, Priya actually taught at MoMA over the summer and so I still have her ID card. So we can get in half price to like a lot of the museum.

0:24:57 Iga: MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum are not...

0:25:00 Pete: Yeah, no, I know they're not the same but they just it's so nepotistic, if you have an in at any museum, you can go anywhere for free, your access jumps through the roof. Meanwhile, the rest of us are paying $25 to see a herb garden. Livid. Don't get me started.

0:25:22 Sofia: You were when you came to Staten Island, you guys did see the Staten Island herb garden, right?

0:25:28 Pete: What's up? [Brennan laughs]

0:25:28 Kingston: Yeah, over at Snug Harbor?

0:25:29 Ricky: You are talking about the weeds?

0:25:31 Sofia: Well, yeah, it hasn't been weeded, but yeah, we have a really great herb garden there.

0:25:36 Iga: Like overgrown rosemary bush that was on the way?

0:25:38 Sofia: Yeah, yeah.

0:25:40 Pete: It was that one rosemary bush.

0:25:42 Sofia: Yeah, that's it.

0:25:46 Brennan: You see that you guys begin to head off to Forest Hills in Queens, to go to the house of David Kugrich. It's getting later on sort of close to sunset for you guys here, traveling by train out to this, to Forest Hills. Yeah, Kingston is, what is Kingston feeling right now with his hard drive in his hands?

0:26:18 Lou: Pretty like, angry, which is not his normal. Like, he's like, mad and he doesn't, I don't know, it's just like, it's like just, isn't like being able to like clear his head and like think things through but is just like upset and I don't know, hoping that like they are, you know Pete can get answers or maybe, I don't know, maybe David can take a look at like... you know, and do like, law stuff but yeah, he's just like kind of like hurt in that way that doesn't lead to being productive or like working through it, just kind of feeling it.

0:26:59 Brennan: Yeah, you all arrive at the Kugrich's home. You all haven't seen in a little while. Iga and Cody, this is your first time coming here.

0:27:15 Emily: I stop Cody and I say,

0:27:15 Sofia: Be the most respectful you have ever been.

0:27:21 Cody: So I'll just be like a little less respectful than your average person, okay.

0:27:29 Murph: I walk on the grass instead of the sidewalk but I'm otherwise respectful. (cast laughs)

0:27:36 Brennan: Incredible, you all journey out here...

0:27:41 Ricky: Get off the grass, get off the grass.

0:27:44 Cody: Ricky, you're trembling, you're trembling, dude.

0:27:46 Ricky: [eyes closed] Just get off the grass.

0:27:48 Cody: All right. (cast laughs for a not-insignificant amount of time)

0:27:59 Brennan: You arrive at David Kugrich's home, as you do so, you see his beautiful wife Diane opens the door and goes,

0:28:12 Diane: Wally!

0:28:12 Brennan: Runs up, gives Santa Claus a big hug. He goes,

0:28:15 Wally: Hey, how's it going? I know it's a holiday but I brought a bunch of the champions of New York City and these two new people that I don't know very well, but I do love them with all my heart. [gentle, warm music]

0:28:29 Brennan: You see that Diane looks up, introduces herself warmly. I think probably some of you have reached out every once in a while over the years, she smiles. Matt and Delia, their two children are much older now, you know like the youngest of them is now 12 and Matt is in high school. You guys walk into their lovely little home, see David's workstation stuff. All those years ago, Kugrash turned into an eagle and walked across the carpet in there to confront his son. Murph puts his hands up to his chin, grinning.

0:29:09 Brennan: An image I will remember forever, a little walking eagle. Murph mimes carefully stepping across a carpet like a bird.

0:29:18 Brennan: [laughing] You see Diane says,

0:29:18 Diane: Welcome, come on in. We'd be happy for you to come and stay and have a bite. Wally, sent us a message ahead saying that there's some stuff you needed to talk about. Feel free to conduct your business. We know that when all you get together, something important is happening.

0:29:38 Brennan: You guys see a giant coffin in the living room, sort of behind the sofa and you see that as the sun sets outside, Matt knocks on the coffin and goes,

0:29:54 Matt: Dad, sun's down!

0:29:54 Brennan: The coffin lid flies open and full Dracula, [crossing his arms over his chest] David like floats out like,

0:29:58 David: [startled] Oh!

0:30:01 Brennan: You see he's wearing boxers and an undershirt and goes like,

0:30:06 David: [raspy] Ugh, all right. [normal] Oh gee, I'm sorry I didn’t know we had company. Yeah, hello, hello. Kingston, Sofie, Rick, Pete, good to see you. Hello, I'm David. Hon?

0:30:15 Brennan: You see some pants are thrown in from the other room, and he puts some pants on.

0:30:23 David: How's it going, everyone, everyone doing all right? [brief moment of silence, Iga sighs]

0:30:28 Ricky: Doing great.

0:30:30 Sofia: Yeah, I mean, we've got, there's some stuff going on in the city that we could probably use some perspective on.

0:30:38 Brennan: Heck, yeah, you see that Wally comes through in the other room and goes,

0:30:41 Wally: My brother David! Santa Claus' brother is a vampire!

0:30:43 Brennan: [miming hug] And you see he gives him a big—

0:30:45 Emily: It's just a beautiful family portrait.

0:30:49 Brennan: Give’s a big hug and David says,

0:30:49 David: Hey, Wally, good to see you, bud oh, you look great. This jolly old elf, come here big guy.

0:30:56 Brennan: And he goes,

0:30:59 David: Oh man, our dad's a magic rat who's everywhere!

0:31:02 Emily: Oh, I was just thinking, I wish I could fill out this picture with a tiny rat.

0:31:07 Ally: If there is a family portrait anywhere, can I have a wallet size of it? (laughs)

0:31:13 Emily: Rat, Santa Claus, and a vampire.

0:31:17 Brennan: Just a rat being like, “my two boys, vampire and Santa Claus.”

0:31:21 Ally: And little rat, little eagle.

0:31:24 Brennan: Oh, a little eagle being like, I look like an eagle, but really I'm a rat.

0:31:28 Zac: Like a Father’s Day picture.

0:31:32 Brennan: You, you see that, yeah, David says like,

0:31:36 David: Yeah, take us, let's take a seat at the kitchen table.

0:31:39 Brennan: He says,

0:31:39 David: I know you guys got business.

0:31:39 Brennan: Wally says,

0:31:41 Wally: Yeah, I could only be here for one night because we're, it's, it's game time back at the North Pole, but if you want our help, we'd be happy to give it to you.

0:31:49 Brennan: David takes a solid plastic medical bag of blood out of the freezer, throws it in the microwave, hits reheat.

0:31:56 Kingston: You like it hot, David?

0:31:59 David: Oh, you got...

0:32:00 Kingston: Is it better hot?

0:32:01 David: Yeah, it's like, it's already a battle of wills to be like, well, it's actually not that hard to be a vampire that doesn't eat people but this is already like, sort of, you know, like it being warm makes it easier to like stay on the straight and narrow, you know what I mean?

0:32:21 Ricky: It's like a regular body temperature.

0:32:23 David: Regular body temp, exactly.

0:32:24 Sofia: Yeah.

0:32:25 Cody: You gotta, you still gotta cook your impossible burger. I get it, I worked at Hot Topic, so I'm vampire-adjacent.

0:32:34 Brennan: [laughs] You see David goes,

0:32:34 David: Right, what is that, what, what is Hot Topic? There’s a beat. Cody looks confused and shakes his head a little.

0:32:42 Cody: You're sure, you're 100% sure, you're a vampire???

0:32:45 David: All right, hey, take a seat, okay.

0:32:48 Brennan: So you see a moment later, David's got like a little fleece on, like he's the most like, he's wearing like slacks and like house shoes and like a fleece and then is like a vampire. It looks like the most like dad-looking vampire and Wally's seated there. PS - you guys have filled each other in on everything. Now, as everyone knows the interaction Pete had with Nod. You know what Sofia knows, but I guess you guys fill David in on that.

0:33:21 Siobhan: I have a question about David.

0:33:23 Brennan: Yeah, go for it.

0:33:24 Siobhan: So he's a DA? Do I—

0:33:27 Brennan: He’s actually—

0:33:28 Siobhan: Or is he not a DA anymore?

0:33:29 Brennan: He's working with Liz who is DA, he was actually a civil litigator.

0:33:35 Siobhan: Okay.

0:33:36 Brennan: David, David actually can tell you, you see David answers Iga's question about what he's doing and he's like,

0:33:42 David: I'm working on the pixie mob stuff with Kingston's partner, Liz, who's a whiz, man, and it's, and by the way, congrats to you and her, cause I, you know, she...

0:33:55 Kingston: She's something, you know.

0:33:57 David: That woman is brilliant and, good for you, my friend.

0:34:01 Siobhan: So have I in my, my shadier dealings in underground New York come across David or Liz?

0:34:08 Brennan: Yeah, I think so probably yes, yes. [Siobhan makes a nervous noise]

0:34:12 Brennan: David looks at you a little knowingly and is like,

0:34:19 David: All right, anyway before—

0:34:21 Iga: It is nice to meet you for the first time.

0:34:23 David: Yeah, what's, what's your name again?

0:34:26 Iga: It's Iga, I don't go by any other name. Let's say, it's just Iga.

0:34:31 David: Okay, Iga. Nice to meet you. Yeah, so mostly I've been doing a lot of vampire hunting, which, you know there's a lot of vampires in the city that it kind of, these old school assholes where it's like manipulate, you know, have an evil domain and, you know, "children of the night, oh, what sweet music they make." So basically what I do is I hunt those vampires through civil courts. Most of them have committed some crazy amount of tax fraud 'cause they're all like hundreds of years old. So we just get the city or whatever to repossess their homes and then we bulldoze it during broad daylight and it's a much easier way to hunt vampires. (cast laughs)

0:35:07 Sofia: Oh, wow.

0:35:09 David: Yeah, so that's mostly what I do. I'm kind of like a Van Helsing with like a legal brief but.

0:35:16 Sofia: That's really, that's really cool.

0:35:17 Emily: I look at Cody to see if he's impressed by that.

0:35:20 Murph: Cody is impre— so confused. He knows he should be pumped, so he's just nodding.

0:35:29 Brennan: You see that.

0:35:30 Murph: He heard "Van Helsing" and just started nodding.

0:35:33 Siobhan: [Cody voice] Love that movie, man.

0:35:35 Brennan: David looks over, you guys also have stuff to discuss about Tony and Nod and you also Kingston have this, this drive of—

0:35:47 Lou: I think I'm just waiting for like the right time to like pull it out.

0:35:51 Brennan: Cool.

0:35:53 Emily: I think it's now.

0:35:55 Kingston: Hey Dave, you got a computer?

0:35:58 David: Yeah, my man, I got one in the, in the, in the, the office. What do you need?

0:36:03 Lou: I hold it up and I'm like,

0:36:03 Kingston: I don't know what you do with, I think you jam this in somewhere.

0:36:09 David: [holding out a hand to stop him] Let me, you want me to walk through this with you real quick?

0:36:14 Kingston: Yeah.

0:36:15 Brennan: He walks through it with you, takes it. He says,

0:36:21 David: All right, I'm gonna go be with Kingston for a second,

0:36:22 Brennan: Walk in, Kingston and David are going into the office. The rest of you are out here with Wally Claus and you see Wally goes,

0:36:28 Wally: So I'm pretty busy until Christmas comes around but is there anything you guys are scared of or you're working on?

0:36:34 Ricky: Is there anything that we're scared of?

0:36:36 Wally: Yeah, you need help with?

0:36:38 Cody: If you could destroy Gladiator and reinstate the Queensville Mall, that'd be cool.

0:36:47 Ricky: Hey Wally, can you see if Tony's on the naughty list?

0:36:53 Wally: Oh, Tony Simos?

0:36:55 Ricky: Yeah, that's his name, right?

0:36:56 Sofia: Yeah.

0:36:58 Wally: Oh, Tony Simos is on the bad list.

0:37:02 Sofia: Okay, can, can I ask you a question, Wally?

0:37:06 Wally: Yeah.

0:37:06 Sofia: What's the most powerful or impressive thing you've ever gotten someone for Christmas? What's the biggest thing someone's ever asked for and you were able to deliver on?

0:37:16 Wally: For me, not that much because I only been Santa Claus for three years.

0:37:21 Sofia: Right, I was assuming that you would have the knowledge of all previous Santa Clauses, but-

0:37:27 Wally: I have some of it. I think the biggest thing that ever came as a Christmas gift to somebody was the birth of Christ to the Virgin Mary. (Emily laughs)

0:37:40 Sofia: Okay, I guess I walked into that, yeah.

0:37:44 Ricky: Wow. That is pretty—

0:37:45 Wally: But I'm not responsible for that, that wasn't me.

0:37:49 Pete: That's a pretty big gift.

0:37:51 Iga: Santa made that happen? (cast laughs) Wally just shakes his head.

0:37:55 Emily: So canonically, in our world—

0:37:59 Iga: What is the mathematics on this time-traveling Santa?

0:38:01 Ally: I'm just picturing the manger scene but Santa's in there too.

0:38:05 Zac: I lean over to Cody and say,

0:38:05 Ricky: Jesus Christ is real by the way. (cast laughs)

0:38:11 Pete: Hey Wally, I mean.

0:38:12 Cody: And so is the Anti-Christ.

0:38:14 Pete: You know, no one, I'm sure no one cares, especially not me, but it's Priya on the good list or the bad list, Priya?

0:38:22 Ally: And I show a picture of Priya.

0:38:25 Brennan: Oh, you see.

0:38:26 Emily: I'm kind of curious, I'll be honest.

0:38:29 Brennan: You see, he looks and says, says,

0:38:29 Wally: Hey Pete, do you think this line of questioning is good for you, like on an emotional level?

0:38:37 Pete: [quietly] Dammit. You got so wise when you became Santa. You're like a, you're right. I let go of my need to know, you know, it's unhealthy. It feels like a need, but it's not.

0:38:52 Cody: Well, Wally Claus, I have a question. So like if you're… [defensively] I'm not gonna ask a fuckin’ dumb question, I'm not gonna ask a fuckin’ dumb question, all right? Look. Ricky shakes his head disapprovingly.

0:39:03 Cody: If you can like see all kinds of different stuff and everything do you know like what happened with this like Tony guy and the San Francisco place, did he just like give it away or something?

0:39:15 Wally: Oh, I don't know, every piece of whatever happened. I know it in a way to make the list out of it but I, you know, people still have free will. I saw I'm not omniscient like that but I do-- I just see people when they're sleeping and know when they're awake and I know if they'd been bad or good. So again, I can visually see them when they're sleeping.

0:39:43 Iga: But you can't see them when they're awake. You just know whether they are awake?

0:39:46 Wally: No, I KNOW when they are awake.

0:39:48 Iga: Cause you can't see them.

0:39:50 Sofia: Has New York been sleeping more?

0:39:55 Wally: You know what's interesting is... people have been sleeping like maybe a little bit more but they're not doing the, um… [taps his temple] the dream time part of sleep where your eyes are Googling.

0:40:09 Pete: REM?

0:40:11 Iga: Weird.

0:40:12 Wally: REM! That’s right, yeah, they're not doing so much REM.

0:40:16 Sofia: Interesting.

0:40:18 Ricky: You think they're not exercising, what do you think?

0:40:21 Wally: I don't know.

0:40:23 Pete: Energy drinks.

0:40:24 Sofia: Energy drinks, that's what I was thinking.

0:40:26 Iga: Could be the energy drinks are not healthy.

0:40:29 Cody: Do you guys think that, yeah, I’m sorry, just this whole Gladiator thing just seems sort of like a conspiracy against me, the chosen one 'cause it's like they go after the mall…

0:40:33 Iga: Chosen by who?

0:40:36 Sofia: [crosstalk] I was agreeing with you and then you said “me”.

0:40:38 Cody: And then they go to the Pine Barrens, when I'm the Jersey Devil. Grr, energy drinks, coincidence?

0:40:41 Iga: What?

0:40:44 Pete: [without confidence] Yeah, maybe.

0:40:46 Cody: Coincidence?

0:40:47 Iga: You just say "energy drinks, coincidence?" No, that is not a sentence. What?

0:40:54 Murph: I keep instinctively going for a cigarette but like try and be respectful so I'm just smoking the air, like in my hand.

0:41:01 Cody: It's just my hand, just doing this.

0:41:03 Sofia: This is a very important family, you will treat them with respect.

0:41:07 Brennan: We cut into the office, where David is sitting with Kingston Brown looking at this Gladiator stuff. You see David opens it up and begins to like crack into a lot of the files here, looking at them he goes,

0:41:22 David: Jesus Christ. This is a fucking web, where did you get this stuff?

0:41:31 Kingston: [stammers] You're a lawyer, so should I say yes? Should I tell you?

0:41:37 David: [waving his hand to cut Kingston off] The less I know, the better, that's all right.

0:41:42 Brennan: He looks up and goes,

0:41:42 David: Excelsior Dynamic Homes. This is a shell company.

0:41:50 Brennan: You see he opens up a kind of like professional sort of legal search browser on his computer and begins to start like requisitioning public documents like, like LLC business filings and you see that as just going to his computer, he's like,

0:42:09 David: Okay, well, Excelsior is, is owned by Gladiator but it looks like there is this something. It says something's going on with the taxes here. Is there something that's like a nonprofit, this is a weird relationship,

0:42:22 Brennan: He's opened up a spreadsheet. He's like,

0:42:24 David: That's a weird relationship with, that's a for-profit company partnered with a nonprofit. [rising tense music]

0:42:30 Brennan: Opens something else up. He's like,

0:42:31 David: Oh my God.

0:42:31 Brennan: He's like,

0:42:31 David: Excelsior is not even the only real estate company they own. These people are trying to buy up everything.

0:42:39 Brennan: He finds other stuff, he says,

0:42:39 David: Who, who actually owns…

0:42:46 Brennan: He goes in, opens a PDF, and you see that it's it looks like official corporate filings for Gladiator and the computer opens for him to get information related to Gladiator itself and the PDF opens, opens another one and [error noises] PDFs open kind of like shrinking into infinity, the computer snaps, fries, and goes out. [zap noise]

0:43:24 Kingston: Is that a normal thing? Does that often happen to computers?

0:43:28 David: Shit, what the fuck, did the surge go out?

0:43:31 Brennan: You see that, he looks at like the, where his computer's plugged into the wall but Kingston, go ahead and give me an Insight check.

0:43:46 Lou: That'd be a 31.

0:43:53 Brennan: You saw as the PDFs were opening, opening, opening, opening, you saw a hole open into the other side, into Nod and you saw bright indigo and lavender but you saw Nod from way outside. Like, like almost like from orbit and just saw like the little dream version of New York, which just floats there because it's not surrounded by like Long Island or Westchester or New Jersey. It's just Nod floating there. You saw it from way away and you see a wash of colorlessness that renders everything behind it into gray scale and in that shape coalescing, the last thing you saw was in the hole before the computer just gave out what looked like a hand vaster than the city itself reaching towards the hole straight towards you.

0:44:32 Siobhan: Mm-mm.

0:45:12 Lou: I stride into the other room and I'm just like,

0:45:16 Kingston: Cody is right, Gladiator DIES! (roaring echoes)

0:45:19 Cody: Yeah! Yeah! [sword tricks] (cast laughs)

0:45:22 Brennan: As Kingston says that...

0:45:24 Ricky: Hey, put the sword down, put the sword down inside. Cody does not.

0:45:27 Brennan: As Kingston says that, you guys, to put it...Kingston's voice echoes out and there is a moment where you guys recognize that the title of Vox is not a figurative one. Kingston's voice roars as though there were a hundred lions behind him repeating the same exact sentiment and sentence and you guys feel a reverberation, boom! head out into the city with Kingston as its locus.

0:46:06 Zac: Can we, if you like hearing what happened in there like, do you think that they're safe here in this house? Like, do they know where that, that happened from?

0:46:19 Lou: Do I have a sense of that? If it felt, if it felt like a local, like, I don't know.

0:46:25 Brennan: I think on a 31, you...

0:46:29 Lou: Yeah, on a 31, what's the vibe?

0:46:31 Brennan: I think a 31, on the vibe is, 31 Insight. That thing wasn't seeing this place, it was seeing you, you think that you're the target, not David or this house.

0:46:44 Kingston: Great, yeah, I think it's, I think it wants me and even more than that it wants this city and whatever it is, Gladiator is its instrument and they got to go in a big way.

0:47:01 Cody: [whispered] Fuck yeah. [Brennan cracks up]

0:47:03 Pete: Do we still have that that drive or did it get fried?

0:47:08 Kingston: Dave, is it, can we still use that?

0:47:14 Brennan: David: Yeah he says, he says, I don't think anything's fried my monitor can't come back on but it's just, it's just a monitor, I can go get another screen. The coDave takes the drive, the drive seems okay. He says, he says, mputer is fine.

0:47:23 Ricky: We'll pay for the monitor.

0:47:23 Kingston: Don't worry about that. We'll get you a monitor, I got a guy.

0:47:27 Sofia: Yeah.

0:47:28 David: All right.

0:47:29 Kingston: Okay.

0:47:30 Brennan: You see David looks at you and sees what Kingston said the whole fucking city heard what Kingston said even if they don't know it but David looks and says,

0:47:40 David: Hey, Kingston, I'm on this, I'm gonna talk to Liz and I'm gonna let you know right now that I'm on this  All right, I'll be in touch. You're gonna hear from me once a day.

0:47:51 Kingston: Hey, I appreciate that but hey, we already took Thanksgiving away from you, all right, please don't give any more than you're comfortable with, all right? But it means a lot.

0:48:02 Brennan: He smiles, and you see that he actually, he smiles and even like, distends his fangs a little bit and he's like,

0:48:10 David: When it's time to hunt, it's time to hunt. You know what I mean, let's get to work.

0:48:16 Brennan: He says,

0:48:16 David: I always said lawyers were bloodsuckers. Oh! (laughs)

0:48:21 Iga: It's nice to have a sense of humor about that.

0:48:23 David: Well, like, I, what are you gonna do? ...it is what it is.

0:48:29 Brennan: As he says, it is what it is, Sofia, you get a little text on your phone saying,

0:48:35 Cindy: Take Thanksgiving off, but we need to see you at the monastery tomorrow morning.

0:48:40 Brennan: It's from Cindy.

0:48:44 Sofia: Absolutely Cindy, please enjoy the, enjoy the afternoon, I'm thinking of you.

0:48:52 Ricky: Is Cindy, on the...naughty or nice?

0:48:57 Sofia: Cindy's got to be, I think, I think Cindy's good. Cindy's the reason that I've been trying to handle Tony with a certain amount of aplomb; it's out of respect for Cindy. However, is she being manipulated by Tony? That I don't know.

0:49:10 Ricky: Pete, were you talking about the hard drive earlier?

0:49:13 Pete: Yeah, like just trying to save it, so that maybe we can see some more of this info. It sounded really interesting.

0:49:19 Ricky: Do you think your… your old friend?

0:49:20 Siobhan: Oh, 5E\/3N?

0:49:21 Pete: I was thinking about asking 53\/3N.

0:49:24 Kingston: Yeah.

0:49:26 Pete: Was thinking about asking 53\/3N...

0:49:29 Brennan: Rad, so you guys all head out, I will say some of y'all have plans maybe some of y'all don't, I'll just go around real quick. Cody, do you head back to Jersey with your family for today or no, not at all?

0:49:48 Murph: Not at all. I think Cody goes to the gas station, gets some hotdogs—

0:49:52 Siobhan: Oh no, Cody.

0:49:54 Ally: [high-pitched] Multiple!

0:49:56 Murph: —and like a Monster energy drink—

0:49:58 Zac: No!

0:49:58 Ally: Multiple hot dogs!

0:49:59 Murph: —and goes back to Queens.

0:50:02 Lou: I definitely...

0:50:02 Emily: I think that I, Sofie doesn't have anything going on, so that's too sad.

0:50:04 Lou: Kingston invites anyone without something to do to his house for Thanksgiving, his mother's cooking too much food as it is.

0:50:13 Brennan: It's a huge, the entire Brown family is gonna be there. It's gonna be like Christmas. It's gonna be the, it's gonna be Claude's apartment downstairs, stretched out, tons of tables.

0:50:23 Lou: I'm not trying to take Monster energy drinks away. Just before we park, Kingston says that anyone who wants to, he's headed back home and they're more than welcome.

0:50:31 Sofia: Can I invite my mother?

0:50:31 Murph: Cody will go to Kingston's.

0:50:32 Brennan: Hell yeah.

0:50:33 Sofia: Can I invite my mother?

0:50:35 Brennan: Yes—

0:50:35 Kingston: Sofie…

0:50:35 Brennan: Oh, sorry.

0:50:35 Kingston: [pointedly] Sofie, do you think you could, do you think you can invite your mother? Do you think you can invite your mother? : I can, I can, okay, I'm texting her.

0:50:45 Kingston: Of course you can, good, good.

0:50:50 Brennan: Awesome.

0:50:52 Emily: And I send, I send an Unseen Servant to escort her 'cause she's not good at taking the ferry.

0:50:58 Brennan: Cool, you send an Unseen Servant to escort her there.

0:51:01 Murph: Would I know if my roommate Josh, is, would he have family nearby or is he probably just at the house?

0:51:14 Brennan: He, he doesn't have, his family is way out west and he's too broke to get home this year. He was, he's saving his money to go for Christmas.

0:51:25 Murph: Cool, so then I guess I'll ask Kingston if I can bring,

0:51:27 Cody: Um, so like, my boy Josh, he's like, we were gonna eat hot dogs tonight, but like, if I'm going there, then like Josh, isn't gonna have any hot dogs is like the problem. Kingston takes this news with a truly baffled expression.

0:51:38 Cody: So I don't know, it's dumb, but… [rubs his head]

0:51:41 Kingston: Do you wanna bring Josh?

0:51:44 Cody: Can Josh come, is that cool?

0:51:47 Kingston: You think Josh can come? Do you think Josh can come? Josh can come.

0:51:52 Cody: I do, thank you, thank you.

0:51:54 Kingston: Josh can come, yeah, yeah, yeah. It just, none of y'all is allowed to smoke in my mama's house, all right? There’s a roof—

0:52:00 Cody: All right. Josh doesn’t, Josh—

0:52:01 Kingston: Oh Josh, doesn't smoke? Okay, good.

0:52:04 Cody: Josh, doesn't smoke, no. Thank you.

0:52:05 Emily: Can I real quick try to pickpocket any cigarette butts out of Cody's pockets just to make sure it's fully empty.

0:52:13 Brennan: Give me a Sleight of Hand for sure.

0:52:15 Emily: Okay.

0:52:15 Ally: What a gross thing to pickpocket.

0:52:19 Emily: I got a nat 20! [laughing]

0:52:22 Brennan: Incredible, it's gone, they're gone. Sofia and Maria are headed there, Cody and Josh are headed there. Pete, you not only, I assume have been invited by Kingston.

0:52:36 Lou: You think he's been invited, Brennan? You think he's been invited? (laughs)

0:52:40 Brennan: You also specifically get a number of texts, oh sorry, not texts. You get a number of enormous font emails from Victoria, specifically asking, from Kingston's mom, specifically asking what your favorite dish is, what you used to get made when you were a kid, where she can find a recipe for it and you get one extremely menacing text message from Winston of a table full of dominoes and just his face in the selfie pointing at the dominoes going,

0:53:14 Winston: Ready when you are, champ.

0:53:18 Ally: Incredible, incredible. I'm of course gonna go to Kingston's house but I think I might actually try to hit a meeting on the way.

0:53:30 Brennan: Cool, I can dig that. Hell, yeah and if any of these are our triggers, by the way, feel free to go ahead and roll cause Thanksgiving is, it like can be an intense family time.

0:53:40 Ally: We're good.

0:53:42 Brennan: Ricky, what would you and Esther be doing tonight?

0:53:46 Zac: I feel like I wonder if they would not go to a, I think this is two things: one is probably Ricky not wanting to be around Cody. [cast laughs]

0:53:59 Zac: And going like really hard in a different direction but like trying to do, it's kind of seems like there's a lot of people there maybe, maybe it's maybe not super safe to have even more people in a small apartment situation. So maybe we should do our own thing, also like maybe, you know, JJ wants to do something else, maybe he's not super into Thanksgiving, I don't know, maybe we could do like something at the Gramercy Occult Society.

0:54:25 Brennan: Yeah, you see that Esther says that would be really, really nice. JJ obviously is Native American. Not really into Thanksgiving. He doesn't really celebrate it. You see… Ricky, we'll run a scene between you and JJ. That's actually very sweet for Ricky to reach out to JJ. And Iga, you and your family, what are you guys up to?

0:54:52 Siobhan: I think I've been this whole time, like cooking a big feast in the big ovens inside the castle 'cause like she uses the regular kitchen in the house for like regular meals, but when you want to do like a bunch of stuff at once, and then you can leave the house with it, 'cause it's not gonna burn down, you know.

0:55:15 Brennan: Hell yeah.

0:55:16 Siobhan: So she has like, she in Greenpoint has like her like extended group of people that traditionally come over to their place for Thanksgiving.

0:55:30 Brennan: Marta is coming over, Yagdash is coming over.

0:55:34 Iga: Fantastic, Yagdash, you dumb little boy.

0:55:39 Brennan: Lugash comes from the meeting that he goes to with Pete real quick. You see Lugash, he says to you, Pete as you're heading out, like,

0:55:48 Lugash: Please give my love to Kingston Brown. Tell him that, you know, I'm still pulling bullets out of gangsters... Pulled him out of Yagdash, your old roommate the other day but you know, please give him,

0:55:54 Pete: Oh, that fuckin’ guy.

0:56:00 Brennan: He says,

0:56:00 Lugash: He's a beautiful man and I hope that he and Liz, they're very happy.

0:56:05 Pete: Aww, I'll let him know, I'll definitely let him know.

0:56:09 Brennan: Awesome, we'll we'll run these. So yeah Ricky, you...

0:56:18 Ricky: I also had a thing, another thing I would just realize that I should do but like probably, maybe we would actually do it at Helping Hands and I could do I actually I have Create Food & Water and use that to make like a giant spread. [gentle piano music]

0:56:33 Brennan: Rick, you head off for the evening create a huge spread at Helping Hands. Go ahead and give me a persuasion check with advantage. Zac makes his roll, then looks up with a sheepish expression, twisting his mouth to the side.

0:56:49 Zac: 12?

0:56:51 Ally: That face.

0:56:53 Brennan: Yeah, you know, the, the food, well, you make, create a huge feast. Helping Hands is very grateful. You see Rust there and some of the other regulars, they smile and wave and you see Esther basically says like,

0:57:11 Esther: Hey, I'm gonna swing by my mom & grandma, we missed a lot of Thanksgivings together but if you wanna swing by the Gramercy Occult Society, I would happily I'll come meet you in a little bit.

0:57:29 Zac: Cool, yeah I text a selfie with the food and Ox on my shoulder.

0:57:36 Brennan: Hell yeah, cool. You're at the Gramercy Occult Society. Orlando and Rovias look down and smile as,

0:57:43 Lions: Well, Mr. Matsui, the, the partner of the chairwoman of the society! As always, right this way.

0:57:56 Ricky: Thank you, good to see you.

0:57:57 Zac: I give them both turkey legs.

0:57:59 Lions: We have, neither stomachs nor digestive tracts but we will chew on these and spit the bones out into Bryant Park. [weird chomping]

0:58:10 Ricky: Exactly what I thought, yeah.

0:58:15 Brennan: Hell yeah, you, you head inside and you see JJ down there who you see, is… Would you, would you like go to his room to check up on him or would you like, what do you think Ricky would do?

0:58:33 Zac: I think I would, yeah, yeah, I'll knock on his door.

0:58:36 Brennan: You knock on his door, he opens it up, takes his headphones off - did you text him ahead of time that you were coming or no?

0:58:45 Zac: Yeah, I probably would have let him know I was coming by.

0:58:47 Brennan: You see, he comes out and he's like

0:58:47 JJ: Rick, what's up, man? Good to see you.

0:58:52 Ricky: Hey dude. [gentle, cosmic-sounding music]

0:58:53 Brennan: He's like,

0:58:53 JJ: Dude, I, I took the liberty of grabbing some, we got, we got wontons, we got wonton soup. We got egg rolls, I got some sesame chicken and I got a bunch of great stuff. So we like got a full spread. The, are you like a PS4 dude, XBOX, or...?

0:59:12 Ricky: Yeah, all kinds, I do I play the, uh….

0:59:16 Brennan: Ricky doesn't play video games, but yeah.

0:59:19 Ricky: You know, I think I, I play like whatever games are, are maybe sports related or maybe, you know what, I'm gonna be honest I don't really know much about them but I'll give it a shot.

0:59:34 JJ: We'll start on something super easy, dude that sounds great.

0:59:37 Ricky: Okay.

0:59:38 Brennan: Give me an Insight check if you'd be so kind. And do so with advantage, I think. Zac rolls, then makes the same face as last time in silence. Ally and Emily laugh at him.

0:59:50 Zac: So 10.

0:59:51 Brennan: 10, cool, yeah, you see, JJ has got a new spot here. He's been here for about like a month. It looks sparse, you know you see there's a lot of nerd shit in here, posters there's cool video game systems, tons of laptops and electronic stuff that he's experimenting with. You also see like a beautiful family portrait of his family back in Florida, dressed in Seminole regalia. You see there's an awes- He has like a cool little bedside table and there's a little like hunting knife that has like a gator skin. Sheath around it, looks beautiful and handmade. There are some like small wrappings of like beads around the sort of belt that goes with it and you see that he looks up and is like,

1:00:35 JJ: Dude, thanks so much for, for hollering. It's nice to have someone to like chill with on a day where like everyone is super busy.

1:00:49 Ricky: Totally, yeah I mean, my family is not like super into the holiday or whatever, so I'm just like, you know, doing some other stuff, pretty sick knife over there. Just couldn't help but notice.

1:01:03 JJ: Hell, yeah, my dad actually made that for me when I was heading out to New York.

1:01:10 Ricky: Whoa.

1:01:12 JJ: Yeah, man.

1:01:14 Ricky: That's awesome, do you get to go back home very much ever or do you...?

1:01:20 JJ: No super, not super a lot. Like I got a pretty big scholarship, which was rad I, cause I, I nailed all my tests when I was in high school and I had a perfect GPA and...

1:01:32 Ricky: Wow.

1:01:33 JJ: But like I don't, in other words, like, like it's very cool that I'm even here to be here at all but like all the cash that I have kind of goes into just like surviving in a very expensive city. So, I FaceTimed with the folks and with my bros who are still back in Florida. Yeah, man I don't know. It… city's really lonely, man. [laughs a little, shakily]

1:02:02 Ricky: Yeah.

1:02:04 Brennan: I think, Ricky's Divine Sense tingles a little bit here as, as JJ says that.

1:02:13 Zac: Can I make some kind of check with that or is that?

1:02:17 Brennan: Yeah, I think go ahead and give me Perception.

1:02:23 Zac: That's much better, 19.

1:02:29 Brennan: You see JJ, who is this, like, incredibly brilliant, very sweet guy is really struggling. He's like very lonely. And you know that his whole family is way far away and that you, you sort of smell this like feeling of... clearly he moved into the Gramercy Occult Society. So it's not like he, whatever living situation he had as a grad student at Columbia was like, he was clearly happy to like, not do it anymore. So you can't imagine, you never, you never heard him talk about a partner. You haven't really, really like, you saw how quickly he became attached to Cody. It seems like this is not a dude that necessarily felt like he had a lot of friends here and I think Ricky looks at him and you see... Umbra. You see that this emptiness isn't just existing in these spaces of like the large-scale, vulgar things, of like the empty storefronts, the empty apartments, the empty things. But it, it mirrors and is a fractal of itself in individuals as well and you see that, I don't know. I think that, that you see for a moment like JJ took this incredible opportunity to seize this thing and is struggling with feeling totally isolated in New York. And I think Ricky probably feels like the power of loneliness in New York City. Maybe something that Ricky has never had to struggle with, but JJ has no family here and if you had not come here, he would have spent this, this night, like gaming with whoever was on XBOX Live on Thanksgiving night— [Ally sighs explosively, laughing sadly offscreen]

1:04:27 Brennan: —in a city where he works all day and is overworked and isn't surrounded, like that little knife on his bedside table and this picture of his family, you kind of go like you have that like Divine Sense. You're like, oh, that's, that's the thread he's holding on by, to not feel like nobody in the world here knows him or cares about him and even Esther, Ana, & Amelia who are great and very kind to him, are still busy working themselves and have their own attachments. I think Ricky feels the power of loneliness and sees that JJ has been having a hard, hard time.

1:05:05 Zac: Ricky really quickly like tries to get a video game going 'cause he's crying. (cast laughs)

1:05:10 Brennan: You see, JJ looks at you and says,

1:05:10 JJ: Dude, are you okay? What's up, man?

1:05:16 Ricky: I just haven't played a game in a long time. And I'm just ready to— it's good to hang out.

1:05:20 Ally: [laughs] What a psycho.

1:05:24 Brennan: He goes, he goes,

1:05:24 JJ: Dude, dude, you're full on weeping. It's, what's up?

1:05:31 Ricky: Oh yeah, sometimes like my magic, I'm, well, like I, you know, I'm a former firefighter here and I have the ability to create water and that's… happening.

1:05:41 Zac: I give him a hug.

1:05:45 Brennan: Oh, go ahead, go ahead and roll Persuasion with advantage if you'd be so kind.

1:05:53 Zac: That's, was an 18 but cocked, okay. Oh, that's only, that's an 18. [gentle, warm music]

1:06:01 Brennan: You give him a hug and warm light starts to just flow out from you and this is like, you realize more than anything maybe a magic hug is what Ricky, Ricky was put on this earth to do. JJ starts openly crying too and just goes like,

1:06:17 JJ: [sniffs, wipes a tear] Thanks man, thanks man.

1:06:21 Zac: I like, I think, try to like mentally make Ox come too.

1:06:27 Brennan: [barks] Ox bounds through the thing he's like,

1:06:28 JJ: Oh, what's up your magic dog! [wiping his eyes] Fuuuck, man. [rough voice] Fuck.

1:06:32 Ricky: He's pretty...

1:06:33 JJ: [through tears] Yeah, man, so righteous. [sniffs]

1:06:36 Ricky: Watch this.

1:06:36 Zac: And I throw a frisbee in the air and make him bound off my shoulder to catch it in his tiny room.

1:06:42 Brennan: Bounds off your shoulder. You and JJ have a fucking great time. You eat Chinese food until you're fuckin' sick. It's so good, it's the, it's just the perfect food for a warm stomach. You, you see that he eventually turns, he starts playing the video games and like, basically he's just, just like talking with you through the levels and ends up like putting the controller in your hands and walking you through like easy mode.

1:06:55 Ricky: What am I doing? Yeah.

1:07:09 JJ: Just gonna go, I'm just gonna go straight here. So this is basically the tutorial. So like there's nothing that can go super wrong in this part of the game.

1:07:15 Ricky: What are these doors, do I go through them?

1:07:16 JJ: You, you can, it's very super up to you.

1:07:19 Ricky: I'm gonna give you the controller back. (cast laughs)

1:07:23 Brennan: He smiles, you guys get into it, JJ talks about like, you know, he's just like, man,

1:07:27 JJ: I just fuckin’ miss my family, man. It's just hard to find friends and know who to trust.

1:07:33 Brennan: Give me Insight and Perception real quick.

1:07:36 Zac: Insight and Perception?

1:07:39 Brennan: Yeah, two different checks.

1:07:40 Zac: So this is my Perception.

1:07:42 Brennan: And go ahead and do them, and Insight do with advantage.

1:07:45 Zac: Okay, Perception I got a 22.

1:07:48 Brennan: Hell yeah.

1:07:48 Zac: Insight...natural 20.

1:07:53 Brennan: Ooooh, baby.

1:07:54 Murph: Yes!

1:07:55 Siobhan: Noice.

1:07:55 Ally: Yes!

1:07:56 Zac: [attempting to lift his d20 to the camera] I knocked it over.

1:07:59 Brennan: You're at 22 for Perception. First of all, you notice stuff on JJ's computer about the Met, about the Metropolitan Museum. There's, you see this stuff for the first time. About the Metropolitan Museum of Art there, and you see his insight is he suddenly feels like there's a secret he wants to share and you immediately on a 20, you just get it. Something in your heart opens up. You, Ricky is on this emotional wavelength and I think too, that Ricky, again, like you are growing, you are not the guy you were three years ago and you had this moment where you just tap into him and you're like, JJ is very scared. He's very alone, Ana and Amelia are awesome but they don't have their, their personal life is very different than JJ’s. They're not interested in the same stuff and Esther is so busy and stressed. Any free time she gets, she devotes to making sure your guys' relationship is succeeding and okay. That you see JJ feeling very frightened of something and on a Nat 20, you know that he is thinking about Tony Simos, you can just tell.

1:09:17 Zac: Well, first off, he sighs very deeply and says,

1:09:22 Ricky: I guess we should do a boys' night, you know with me, you and Pete and… uh… [strained] Cody— [Murph laughs]

1:09:30 Ricky: And besides that, is there someone, can I ask about, is someone bothering you right now?

1:09:42 JJ: No, um… I s— look, I owe everything to Esther, right? Like Esther… [a little shaky] it's just a lot of fucking pressure to like, make this all worth it, right? Like I fuckin’ know that Gladiator is an evil fuckin’ company. Like I know that, but like if I can't make the sacrifice to get me here to New York worth it, like then like it's fucked up. Like I need to be able to do that for my family. People are counting on me, [quick breath] you know.

1:10:18 Zac: I'm gonna cast Calm Emotions on him, just to like help him chill out, just a…

1:10:23 Brennan: A shoulder— [mimes JJ’s shoulder going down from a panic position] Yeah, he relaxes, he goes,

1:10:25 JJ: Thanks, man. I feel a little bit brave around you, around you.

1:10:32 Ricky: It's my aura, yeah.

1:10:34 JJ: Shit, I thought you were just like that chill of a per— well, I guess magically you are that chill of a person.

1:10:39 Ricky: Magically I am that, yeah.

1:10:40 Brennan: You see he says,

1:10:42 JJ: So basically like, look I've been scrambling for a little while like I'm almost done with grad school. I made like virtually no friends here. I didn't have dick in common with any of the fuckin’ people in my program, who are all like Ivy League kids, which I am too, like I said, I have to own that, right. Like that's also me. But the main thing was like, I owe everything to Esther for inducting me into the society but, nobody said the stuff that Pete said to us at the meeting, right? Like that was weird. Remember Pete on the, on the Staten Island ferry was kind of like, and I know the Esther super trusts Sofia and Sofia super trusts Pete but that guy, Tony, he was really, he was really super nice to me at first, but he's been kind of pushy recently over text messages. [quicker, more panicked] I feel like I fucked up, I fucked up with the Gladiator thing, like I shouldn't have sent that research into them. I just thought that I didn't even get the fucking internship and I just thought like, it's one of the few paying internships and if you get that on your resume, you can get hired anywhere and like, I ended up talking to Tony at the monastery, I don't know if you, do you super trust Sofia and Pete because I had a Detect Magic spell on and I looked at Tony, both of them cast magic on Tony and it was magic like, like battle magic, like and, and I, I, I just think it wasn't sure, like maybe they were lying to Esther or something and Tony kind of asked me to, and then he, I got him, I gave him my number and I just was like, Tony seemed like, I don't know if I did I fuck up? I truly don't—

1:12:30 Ricky: Yeah, yeah, it's… I don't think you fucked up, it's really... I've been told I'm a very simple guy, but the situation is honestly pretty complicated. And there's a lot of factors going on that I clearly don't fully understand but yeah, I think from your perspective, that's a confusing moment but I trust Pete and Sofia implicitly and I think we kind of... Just to be honest? 'Cause I don't want you to be caught up too much in this stuff, that we don't really trust that Tony guy very much.

1:13:10 JJ: I feel really dumb, man. He, he got way pushier over text. Like at first he was so chill, he was like, if you ever need any help, I'm here to help you. He was just one of the first people that was like, talking to me?

1:13:25 Brennan: And you see that, that loneliness, that like magical loneliness, seep back into JJ for a second [static-y background noise, like wind rushing in your ears] and, and your aura like repels it away from him, but it's there for a moment as he talks about being lonely. And he goes,

1:13:44 JJ: And like I just told him at first he was just like, “hey, what's up?” He's like, “what do you think about those people?” And I was so freaked out cause I was like, does Esther know that like Sofia and Pete are like casting battle magic on their allies? I couldn't tell if she knew and like but then I didn't want to ruin a friendship and I didn't want to get like Sofia or Pete mad at me. Frankly, Sofia seems like, super scary to me. [laughs nervously] She seems like, really, really powerful.

1:14:07 Brennan: And he's like,

1:14:11 JJ: And Pete seems like a really chill dude but also like, I straight up know how powerful that dude is. Like I read about Vox Phantasma in the past. Those dudes are not always super chill! And you know, like I basically looked at Tony and, and told him about those spells and then he was like, look, he's like, “it's all good and he was like, you're clearly a good guy. Esther's a good person but Esther just doesn't have the judgment around people like a monk would have” and I was like, that makes sense. Like, like academic people, he was like super nice about Esther and he was super nice about you. He was like, “Ricky's clearly a good guy” and I was like, okay, that kind of makes sense. And then he was like, “hey, we need to be on our lookout because we don't wanna, we don't wanna bum Esther out with this stuff, but we need to be ready in case anyone tries to make a go for the, for the Society or the Order.” You know, what are the defenses that the Gramercy Occult Society has? Like what, like how does the Umbral Engine really kind of work? And at first I was like, oh, here's loosely what I know and then he started being like, “well, can you look up more?” And it just, [runs his hand through his hair] and now he's been like kind of angrily sort of texting me for the past, like, couple of days. Being like, “hey, like why, like why the radio silence” but I just didn't know who to talk about it to.

1:15:34 Ricky: Well, you know, I, I honestly have been taking it for my friend's word that this guy sucked as much as he did, but now I know he sucks. What a weird shithead, I usually don't say stuff like that.

1:15:44 Ally: [high-pitched] A shithead!

1:15:54 Brennan: [laughing] It's a day, it's a day for us, this is Ricky's version of Kingston's proclamation that Gladiator dies, Ricky saying.

1:16:03 Ricky: [whispering] Shhh, real shithead. Wow, yeah it's it's I, I kind of forget that we really threw you into it, well, that's, that's really messed up.

1:16:22 JJ: I haven't, I didn't say like, I can show you my texts. I showed him some basic stuff.

1:16:26 Brennan: He goes over to his computer, moves the stuff about the Met to the side.

1:16:30 Zac: Can we look at that by the way, real fast?

1:16:33 Brennan: Yeah, you look at it real quick. He goes, oh, he's like,

1:16:34 JJ: This is not, this is just, I'm fuckin around with, I read this whole thing about the Cloisters shutting down. They, they ended up taking all the stuff out of the Cloisters and moving it to the main Met, and also after everything else I found out, they're actually displaying all this stolen Native art and items there. And you know, it's just like, there are so many tribes and families that created and cherish that art who had it stolen from them and they deserve to have it returned. So I was kind of planning on doing like a solo expedition 'cause now that I can like turn invisible and teleport and do other shit, I was sort of planning on going into the Met at night both because that would be fucking rad. And second to just straight up steal a whole bunch of Native American art and then return it.

1:17:25 Ricky: Hell yeah.

1:17:26 JJ: So that was sort of my game plan. If you... would be down. t Nat 20 Insight, I think you can see that, that the Cloisters closing down was big news and this might be unrelated in terms of, of the Cloisters closing, that was very big news. So there's an element to the stuff with JJ where like, everyone's kind of been talking about the Cloisters closing but it does look wild to you, because you know, those unicorn tapestries are very important and if they're all at the Met now, that's huge.

1:18:18 Zac: It's a reflection of the… dreamworld.

1:18:19 Brennan: It's a reflection of the dream world, exactly.

1:18:22 Ricky: Whoa, um, yeah, I mean I'm down for whatever dude. Let's, I would say down to clown but I had a bad experience with some clowns today.

1:18:35 Brennan: JJ, JJ looks at you and goes like,

1:18:38 JJ: Hell yeah, man, I'm super down to clown. And I, I really appreciate you being a good friend, man. I,

1:18:52 Brennan: You see, he starts crying a little bit again and just goes like,

1:18:55 JJ: This city, it's like the city of dreams, right, like, people move here to make their dreams come true but that's so fuckin lonely so much of the time, man. And I feel like you always hear the stories of the people who made it and the people that didn't make it. So many of them just like fall off, and I don't know man. I felt pretty frazzled and I feel better now and I, and I'm sorry if I fucked anything up and I'll make it right.

1:19:25 Ricky: Hey, no worries, just make sure you take care of yourself and let's keep hanging.

1:19:32 JJ: Hell yeah, man, I love it.

1:19:32 Brennan: Awesome, Cool, that's yours, for everyone else that was, I wasn't expecting anyone to go talk to JJ!

1:19:40 Ally: Hell yeah.

1:19:48 Brennan: That was a cool, that was a cool important thing that Ricky discovered there, awesome. Everyone else real quick, Iga, your, your Thanksgiving is a delightful, huge Polish celebration. Pierogies abound, and you see Jess and Nick are having a great time and you, you look at your daughter and see a sort of glimmer of magic around her and feel your own sort of connection to, to the chest. Give me an Arcana check, if you'd be so kind.

1:20:35 Siobhan: Mm-hm. It's a 10. [gentle jazz]

1:20:37 Brennan: You hear faint whispering and on a 10, give me an Insight check as well.

1:20:47 Siobhan: Maybe I'll use my last luck point. Still not great, an 11.

1:20:56 Brennan: You hear faint whispering coming from your mothers and your mother's mothers. And for a moment you think they're talking about Jessica but on a 10 and an 11, you push those whisperings away because your daughter's having a wonderful time. You're here with family and life is good. Real quick at the Brown family Thanksgiving, Kingston, what is, what's Kingston up to that night at Thanksgiving, obviously a huge momentous day for Kingston but now he's surrounded by family on all sides.

1:21:39 Lou: I think it's like, I think there's almost, there's almost like a stealing of self for like, let's enjoy this moment because as of tomorrow… I'm hellbent. And there's only one thing that will satisfy me. So I think like tonight is I think like Kingston, even like undoes one more button on his collared shirt and like starts the night off with like a glass of wine.

1:22:08 Brennan: Incredible, a glass of wine, Liz has her arm around you, Liz and your mom are talking so happily together.

1:22:17 Lou: I think I introduce Cody to some of my younger cousins and I'm like,

1:22:20 Kingston: Boys, this one, he loves the, the games y'all always talking about. I think he plays them too. Ain't that right, Cody?

1:22:32 Cody: Yeah, mostly I'm PC gamer but I also do PS4 and stuff. I don't know if you guys do that.

1:22:41 Brennan: Go ahead and give me a Persuasion check, Cody.

1:22:44 Lou: Can I give Cody the help action?

1:22:46 Brennan: Yes you can.

1:22:47 Murph: Cody has okay Persuasion I think, let me see...

1:22:50 Emily: Oh yeah, charismatic paladin.

1:22:53 Siobhan: All those years in retail.

1:22:56 Murph: Yeah, he's just intense. Oh my God, a nat 1 and a 7, so 11.

1:23:04 Brennan: Kingston, there is...you are magically gifted with the ability to speak for the city. You look at your cool young cousins, gather around at Thanksgiving and walk over with Cody, say your piece and immediately go like, this is a hard sell. (cast laughs)

1:23:30 Cody: I guess to say, I play video games is a little bit of an understatement.

1:23:35 Brennan: Kingston, you get a look from your, from your cousins being like out of respect for you, we will make your friend feel comfortable here at Thanksgiving.

1:23:44 Lou: I give them a nod back like, thank you. I will repay you in kind, and I move on to another part.

1:23:51 Ally: Can I?

1:23:52 Brennan: Yeah, Pete, go for it.

1:23:54 Ally: Oh, can I just show up with a bunch of like, really funky potentially like unpalatable natural wine that I'm trying to get Kingston to drink?

1:24:07 Brennan: [laughs] Yes, absolutely, Pete shows up with natural wine.

1:24:11 Ally: Just the hippest, fucking like, kombucha-like wine that I'm like,

1:24:13 Kingston: What is this?

1:24:15 Pete: Oh, this one is incredible.

1:24:18 Kingston: Yeah, but I don't know. What's all the stuff floating around in it?

1:24:23 Pete: Yeah, put that red one down, you got to try this one. It's incredible, see this brand new 20 year old just took over a winery, a whole vineyard and he has this whole new way of doing it.

1:24:35 Kingston: What’s a 20-year-old know about wine? I drink wine that is older than that child on a regular basis.

1:24:38 Pete: He is completely disrupting the wine industry, okay, Kingston you gotta try it.

1:24:41 Kingston: Is that a good thing? Does is need to be disrupted?

1:24:43 Pete: [making a cheers] Happy Thanksgiving.

1:24:45 Lou: Okay, sure, happy Thanksgiving.

1:24:47 Zac: A brand new 20 year old. : Incredible, let me get, you see that Pete you are immediately pulled into, you are immediately pulled into the party, Victoria just grabs you, pinches the hell out of your cheeks gives you a big kiss. She is like an absolute ninja with helpings of food. Every time a plate is clean, a new plate flies into your hand, just smiling. And you see as the night winds on, Winston appears, Kingston's father goes,

1:25:27 Winston: All right, young blood, how are you feeling tonight my friend?

1:25:32 Pete: I'm feeling like whipping some ass, let's go

1:25:36 Winston: Oh, whippin some— okay. (laughs) Let's get some ass whipped!

1:25:40 Pete: I've just gotten way too comfortable as though this is my own grandfather.

1:25:44 Brennan: Incredible. You, okay, Winston is gonna roll with advantage due to being on home court.

1:25:55 Zac: Are we going to Roll20? Are we gonna...?

1:25:57 Brennan: We are gonna— [laughs]

1:25:58 Ally: Oh, I don’t have Roll20 open. God.

1:25:59 Lou: You guys got a battlemap for this, right?

1:26:02 Brennan: Winston's gonna roll, he has double proficiency in dominoes. So he's gonna roll with a plus 12 to this roll. He hit a Nat 20, I'm not kidding. Go ahead and make your roll, Pete. You gotta hit a Nat 20 to, to survive.

1:26:20 Ally: A 19! (cast laughs)

1:26:22 Siobhan: Oh no.

1:26:24 Brennan: You're playing so well, you get so far, you decide— Winston will clean you out for truly any amount of money you are willing to put down.

1:26:37 Ally: I think I put down like, like a- I think we're up to like $80, like stupid where I'm just like ruining my, the rest of the month for myself.

1:26:47 Brennan: It's like the end of the month, December rent. It's gonna come through on the first, yeah.

1:26:53 Pete: It’s fine, like, I'll make it back, one more, man so much respect. Pete takes a drink.

1:26:57 Brennan: Kingston, you see your dad out on the stoop and towards the end of the night with the other old timers, smoking a cigar, waving a stack, very small stack of bills in the air.

1:27:07 Kingston: Dad, you got to give that money back to Pete.

1:27:10 Winston: Why, why, why? Based on what?

1:27:11 Kingston: Why are we doing this again this year? All we doing this every year, either I chase him down and make him give you money back or I chase you down and make you give money back, right either way, Pete needs that for rent!

1:27:23 Brennan: As you say that, your dad gives you a death glare. As you bring up the one year that Pete won in front of his friends, his old friends out on the stoop. Ally laughs smugly.

1:27:33 Kingston: What you don't, you don't tell your friends about the year a white boy beat you? You don’t tell, you don’t tell ‘em about—

1:27:39 Winston: Okay, you wanna go inside, let's go inside, you wanna have business out in front of my friends, make a fool of me out on the stoop! Thanksgiving!

1:27:45 Brennan: You see that he gets up, walks in with you and, and literally hands you the $80, says,

1:27:49 Winston: [subdued] I don't want, I know that Pete is on the straight and narrow and he's working, he's working an honest job, so that's fine. Please don't bring up the time he beat me in front of my friends.

1:28:04 Kingston: All right, hey, I only do what I have to and if you don't make me go there, I won't go there. I understand what that means, all right. I understand the depth of pain that, that creates in you, all right. Just don't make me go there, all right pop?

1:28:21 Brennan: [clapping] He shakes his head, ruefully smiles. Pats you on the arm, gives you the money. At a certain point in the night Sofia you're also here. This is like a great place for Sofia to be on a holiday, surrounded by loving people and—

1:28:36 Emily: I think I'm just like, I think I'm like lingering to see, to try to talk to Kingston but he's like very busy. So then I think I just busy myself with like doing all the dishes.

1:28:47 Brennan: Oh.

1:28:49 Ally: Oh, I think with the wine, I brought like a really great like elderberry seltzer or something, knowing that you would be here so that you would have like a non-alcoholic version at the party.

1:29:01 Emily: I take it from Pete.

1:29:03 Ally: Just being like,

1:29:03 Pete: This is so good.

1:29:05 Emily: Very gratefully.

1:29:08 Brennan: Incredible, as you start washing dishes, you feel an iron grip on your arm and look down and see Kingston's mother, who looks up, who has, I think in the course of a season and a half of the show has only ever been all sunshine. She looks up at you with a look that Kingston got maybe twice in his entire childhood and goes,

1:29:37 Victoria: [piercing stare] Sweetheart, what are you doing in my kitchen?

1:29:41 Sofia: Victoria, please tell me what I can do to help. I am trying to keep my hands busy. Can I help in any way?

1:29:49 Victoria: Sure thing sweetheart, there's a half a pecan pie left, three quarters of a pumpkin, it looks like a slice of apple.

1:29:55 Sofia: Oh, you want me to put it in Tupperware?

1:29:58 Victoria: [staring terrifyingly] Sweetheart, you know I love you. This is not a game. This is real. And you need to go and enjoy yourself. You understand?

1:30:10 Emily: I respectfully go finish off the pecan pie. (cast laughs)

1:30:13 Zac: You eat half a pie?

1:30:15 Victoria: Thanks!

1:30:15 Brennan: She gives a little kiss.

1:30:17 Victoria: Oh, sweetheart, wonderful, thank you so much.

1:30:19 Lou: Do I just find Sofie eating like what is essentially a quarter of a pecan pie?

1:30:25 Brennan: Yes, near the kitchen you find Sofie there.

1:30:29 Kingston: I mean, it's good pie, right?

1:30:31 Sofia: It's really good, yeah, I love pecan pie, especially your mother’s.

1:30:37 Kingston: She does, she does do it right.

1:30:40 Brennan: Sofie, you see that your mom is well into some glasses and is just talking with Kingston's mom being like, just talking to Kingston's mom about life and having kids in the city and yada, yada. Sofia go ahead and make a Medicine check for me, if you'd be so kind, call it a DC 15 medicine check.

1:31:02 Emily: 17 plus, hold on, I mean, I got a 17, so whatever it adds to Medicine is fine.

1:31:14 Brennan: Hell yeah.

1:31:15 Zac: Negative 8?

1:31:18 Emily: Dirty 20.

1:31:20 Brennan: Dirty 20, hell yeah. Sofia you look at your mom and your mom is talking about she's like,

1:31:30 Maria: 9 and a half months, I was carrying Sofia. She did not want to come out, I'm telling you the truth.

1:31:38 Brennan: You, your mom talking about that, I think Sofia realizes what you and I were talking about over text prior to the session beginning. Sofia recognized this, something about her timeline over the past month and a half since the campaign started, a month since the campaign started.

1:32:13 Emily: Uhhh… hmm. I think, I think, I think my first thought is probably, oh my God, I'm going through menopause. (cast laughs)

1:32:31 Brennan: So yeah, well, Sofia, Sofia realizes that she's like about two weeks late, behind schedule.

1:32:41 Emily: Wow, that is a blow, if I'm... okay, I guess I, yeah, I'm trying to think. I think Sofia. Yeah, okay.

1:33:02 Emily: Yeah. I think she does not say anything out loud or act upon it in any way.

1:33:09 Brennan: Cool, chill, you enjoy the rest of your evening.

1:33:16 Ally: Can I go, I go to Sofia with like a seltzer water with bitters and a lime squirt and be like,

1:33:23 Pete: This is the move. If you haven't tried this, it is the most herbal and refreshing beverage, here you go.

1:33:33 Sofia: Bitters has a little bit of alcohol in it.

1:33:36 Pete: Oh, you know what, you're totally right.

1:33:38 Sofia: Can I get one without the bitters?

1:33:40 Pete: Oh, yeah yeah yeah, here's a seltzer with some lime.

1:33:40 Ally: And I like, I start drinking the bitters one,

1:33:43 Pete: Here you go.

1:33:45 Sofia: Thank you so much, thank you.

1:33:49 Pete: Yeah, for sure.

1:33:50 Sofia: Do I look old to you, do I look of menopausal age to you?

1:33:54 Pete: What? No, not at all. ...Wait, I'm sorry. Are you coming on to me?

1:34:04 Emily: Okay, I chug the seltzer— (cast laughs)

1:34:08 Pete: Cause, I had an issue with Rowan. Make sure you're comfortable.

1:34:13 Sofia: You're right, that was so inappropriate of me just now… I’m sorry. The holidays just make me so horny. (cast laughs) Pete’s jaw drops.

1:34:19 Sofia: I’m so sorry, Pete.

1:34:26 Brennan: Thanksgiving dinner is getting wild. People are enjoying, lots of music playing, people are laughing, dancing. The Brown family holidays are unparalleled in New York City. Just people all in all the levels of the stairwell up through Claude's apartment into Victoria and Winston's, Liz is so happy. Liz comes over and says hi to Sofia. Cody, you're there, Josh is there as well. Cody, yeah you see Josh is here too. I don't think you've had a chance to confront yet about Gladiator stuff. You see, he says,

1:35:05 Josh: Hey, dude I'm, I heard you were asking for like a house meeting and stuff. Look, I just wanted to say like...

1:35:13 Cody: Yeah.

1:35:15 Josh: I'm super sorry, it's just that, like, I was working at PacSun for way less. I know that you, you still have like a month or two of unemployment, right?

1:35:28 Cody: Yeah.

1:35:29 Josh: I don't like I'm, I'm gonna run out. Gladiator's one of the only places that’s hiring, it's not a lot of money but it's just like, I don't know what else to do, man. Like my resume's, like PacSun, and that's pretty much it.

1:35:48 Cody: I get it, Josh, but like, the mall's gonna come back and when it does PacSun's gonna be like the second or third place to open after Hot Topic and I think it's important in these… Just, Gladiator's fucked up, man. It's, it's gonna take over the whole city in like ways that I can't totally explain 'cause you're gonna think that I'm making a bunch of it up 'cause I say fuckin wild shit, awesome stuff all the time. But even on just like the regular level of just like buying up all these places and everything, it's just gonna like fuck everything up. So I get that you're in like a fucked up place and stuff and that we live in like a weird room with a sheet and it sucks ass, but like, if, if you could just if you just like chill for like a little while longer, I think, I think we'll be able to figure it out. I think Gladiator's not gonna be around forever.

1:37:06 Brennan: Give me a very high DC Persuasion check. You're trying to persuade someone to not make rent.

1:37:16 Murph: 16.

1:37:18 Brennan: Josh looks at you and says,

1:37:19 Josh: Man, if you can find me another job, I'll take it.

1:37:24 Cody: I can definitely find you another job.

1:37:27 Josh: Okay, yeah, man, I'll quit. I'll quit the Gladiator job, if you find me something else, dude.

1:37:33 Cody: You already got the job. I saw the application, dude.

1:37:36 Josh: They hired me, man. I'm gonna be working in the new warehouse. I got to go out to training and Connecticut tomorrow. I gotta like, you see.

1:37:45 Cody: Josh they fucking, they killed the mall, dude!

1:37:49 Josh: Dude, I don't, I don't wanna work at PacSun forever and you just didn't want to work at Hot Topic forever, dude.

1:37:56 Cody: I don't know who you are right now. You're like fucking, like a fucking antelope that's turning into a lion or you are joining your families were antelopes and the lions ate them and now you're on the lion side, dude. You're a fucking Lannister. That's what you are, dude.

1:38:17 Brennan: Josh excuses himself and leaves.

1:38:20 Cody: FUCK!!! Sorry. I'm sorry everyone. [puts his hands on his head, leans back in frustration, then runs his hands down his face]

1:38:28 Brennan: We are gonna end that evening and go—

1:38:32 Emily: Actually, can I have one thing to do at the end of the evening?

1:38:36 Brennan: Yes, absolutely.

1:38:37 Emily: Okay, I think that I go home with my mother and then once she goes to bed, I wanna like Shadow Step into a empty drug store, steal a pregnancy test but replace it with money, and then Shadow Step back home. I'm not gonna use it though, I just bought it.

1:38:57 Brennan: Cool, you bought it, you come back. Your mom is smiling, she was like,

1:39:00 Maria: You know, sweetheart.

1:39:03 Emily: I Minor Illusion it to be Sour Patch Kids.

1:39:06 Brennan: Great, she goes,

1:39:06 Maria: Sweetheart, a lot of, there were a lot of young men at that Thanksgiving party, shoulda said hi. I know your friend Kingston would have introduced you to somebody.

1:39:16 Sofia: I know.

1:39:16 Maria: [woozily] You're so beautiful.

1:39:17 Sofia: Honestly, I made a pretty hard pass at Pete and it didn't work out. Ally is shaking their head.

1:39:21 Maria: You know, Pete's nice, you two…

1:39:21 Sofia: He’s very handsome.

1:39:21 Maria: Very handsome.

1:39:25 Sofia: Very handsome, young for me.

1:39:28 Brennan: Your mom, your mom is asleep.

1:39:30 Ally: Pete has no idea why, but he just [mimes jerking awake] shot up in bed. (laughs)

1:39:38 Brennan: The next, the next morning comes, Sofia, you have an early appointment at the Monastery of the Midnight Sun.

1:39:49 Emily: Okay, I go to it. I grab my little bag and go to it.

1:39:59 Brennan: You walk into a central chamber. There is an enormous statue of a seated New Yorker, holding a Concrete Fist in their hand. You see that the mantra written beneath them in the stone "Fuhgeddaboutit" as this person sits in, contemplation. Seated in front of the statue is Cindy, to either side is Nadia and Solomon. Monks are seated up on the walls because the gravity affects the walls, You see that they're seated, they're leaning back to view beneath them down to you and you see, not seated but kneeling off of the carpet because he does not have a position at the monastery currently, but still not with the other monks, is Tony, as you walk into this room.

1:41:07 Emily: I think the first thing I wanna do is I just wanna do an Insight check on Cindy because I have really done, I have really trusted her and I want to continue to trust her and I want to make sure I'm not misguided. And I got a, oh no, it's a 7, I got 10.

1:41:34 Brennan: You got a 10 on your insight. Cindy has an expression you've never seen on her face before. She is stone-faced right now. She is the abbess of this monastery charged with its upkeep, protection, the, the sanctity of the Order itself.

1:41:54 Emily: Okay.

1:41:54 Sofia: [subdued] Hey, I'm here to talk.

1:42:03 Brennan: She gestures to a place of honor in the center of a circle before the statue but also a place where you are the focal point for the room, far away from everybody else. You are, you know, it's kind of like a witness stand a little bit.

1:42:22 Emily: Yeah, I got that vibe, I take it. [somber music]

1:42:30 Brennan: Cindy, looks up at you and says,

1:42:36 Cindy: First Fist of the Monastery of the Midnight Sun, chosen one, Sofia Lee, did you place a curse on a member of this order?

1:42:57 Sofia: I did.

1:43:02 Cindy: Were guests of yours also guilty of placing magic on members of this order?

1:43:11 Sofia: Yeah, they were.

1:43:15 Brennan: She nods and says,

1:43:24 Cindy: It has come to our attention that in the grand sharing of resources that occurred between the Gramercy Occult Society and the Order of the Concrete Fist that an extremely relevant piece of information was shared on the Staten Island ferry approaching the monastery but was not shared at the actual meeting that the Vox Phantasma withheld information about the presence of dangerous dream entities from the Order. Do you understand this to be true?

1:44:02 Sofia: At the time, I was unaware because I was not on the ferry, but I have since learned it to be true.

1:44:12 Brennan: You see, she looks over at Tony. Tony stands up, takes out his phone, plays the recording.

1:44:30 Sofia: The order has fuckin' lot to learn from, it is what it could be.

1:44:39 Brennan: Cindy looks at you and says,

1:44:47 Cindy: In my position, Sofia… what would you do?

1:44:59 Sofia: [a little roughly] I would encourage me to step down from the First Fist, and if you chose to take more extreme action, I would respect that.

1:45:20 Brennan: Cindy looks over at Tony, Tony looks back at Cindy, give me an Insight check.

1:45:34 Emily: 15.

1:45:36 Brennan: Tony's holding it down, but he's mad and you know why he's mad. You are comporting yourself perfectly right now. [Emily grins happily]

1:45:49 Brennan: He wanted you to come in here and step in it and you're doing anything but that. Cindy looks up and says,

1:46:06 Cindy: You are one of the most gifted monks and heroes I have ever had the pleasure to know.

1:46:19 Sofia: Thank you. I... I have your direction to thank for that.

1:46:30 Brennan: You see, she, she says,

1:46:34 Cindy: You are relieved of your position. As—

1:46:39 Sofia: I understand.

1:46:44 Brennan: As she nods, Tony speaks up, looks at Cindy and just goes,

1:46:51 Tony: And the cat?

1:46:55 Brennan: You see that Cindy looks over and goes,

1:47:08 Cindy: Discussions amongst the leadership of the monastery have been held. You are relieved of your position as First Fist. The presence of the great cat within the monastery, some believe to be a breach of the security of this place. If you wish to remain as, if you wish to retain access to the monastery and remain as a junior member. We would require your renunciation of your pact with La Gran Gata. [somber music]

1:48:00 Sofia: I think part of me… [sighs] I think part of me stepping down is me saying, I'm not gonna come around. I think that I've, I've hopefully made clear what I see as a possible future in relations between the dreaming and the waking and I think, I think if you ever start to see some wisdom in that, you can reach out to me but I will… I have...

1:48:35 Emily: I turn to Nadia.

1:48:37 Sofia: I've learned so much from your libraries and Cindy, I've learned so much from you. And if, if I have to choose between you and magic, I will choose the magic and perhaps that is a validation of the fact that you asked me to step down.

1:49:06 Brennan: La Gran Gata swirls around your shoulders and the eyes peer out slitted and narrow, gazing right at Tony, baby. La Gran Gata does not make any mysteries about it, vanishes. Nadia is fully crying. Go ahead, Sofia, make a Persuasion check with advantage, if you'd be so kind. There's no, there's no, no bad roll here can hurt what's going on.

1:49:42 Emily: 16.

1:49:43 Brennan: 16, the way you have comported yourself here, your honesty in this moment, the fact that you didn't shirk from any of the things that were presented, you watch the monks here. They, you do not see stern looks of condemnation from everybody. You see the monks here, all look like they're deep in their own heads. Some people here probably really agree with Tony. Some people here probably really agree with you. It looks like Nadia does. Nadia is looking messed up by this and it looks like a lot of the other monks are really confused, because they've heard what Tony has to say and now looking at you, the portrait that has been painted of you clearly does not stack up with the woman who just stood bravely in front of the entire Order and said what she felt to be true. You… prepare to leave this place. It's, you don't have much here. With that 16 though, Nadia meets you at the front gate. Inside, you can hear a noise go up. (chimes resound) You hear a ringing of chimes that you understand to mean a new First Fist of the monastery has been chosen, by which we mean an old First Fist of the monastery has been chosen. [Lou groans]

1:51:21 Brennan: Nadia rushes out to the gate. It's like bright, midday. She says,

1:51:26 Nadia: [wipes tears] We're gonna figure something out. I know we will.

1:51:34 Sofia: [a little shaky] Yeah, I'm serious, don't worry about me, okay. You can just keep an, you keep an eye on the Order. Don't talk to me because I could spoil your position in there, and right now we need someone making sure that he can't do whatever it is he wants, and I don't even fully understand what he wants.

1:51:51 Brennan: She looks, hearing this advice from you, she says,

1:51:54 Nadia: Starting... after right now.

1:51:59 Brennan: And she takes Forms of the Greater Dreaming, stolen from the library, puts it in your hands and says,

1:52:05 Nadia: He shouldn't have this, go.

1:52:08 Emily: I think that's a real, this feels really disrespectful. However, Forms of the Greater Dreaming is how to kill Nod, right?

1:52:18 Brennan: Yeah.

1:52:22 Sofia: I'm so sorry. If anyone finds out, I'll say I stole it myself.

1:52:24 Emily: And I put it in my bag and I go.

1:52:31 Brennan: Sofia Lee leaves the Monastery of the Midnight Sun, hoo!

1:52:38 Lou: [sighs] Damn.

1:52:44 Brennan: Sofia, you, you get a text from Esther, probably like an hour later saying,

1:52:53 Esther: Please give me a call as soon as possible, are you okay?

1:53:02 Emily: Yeah, I give her a call.

1:53:03 Brennan: She goes,

1:53:03 Esther: Sofie, we just heard from Cindy that you're no longer with the Order, what happened?

1:53:10 Sofia: Yeah, so you know how Pete and I went a little aggro on Tony but probably for good reasons but we probably could have done it above the table in a better way? Well, that's just like directly in violation of a lot of Order policies. So they asked me to step down, and I believe they installed Tony as the First Fist but...

1:53:36 Esther: Jesus.

1:53:38 Sofia: Yeah, I mean, it's all my fault. I played exactly into exactly what he needed. So I did everything he needed to do. He needed me to do so if anything, I was the best part of his fucking plan.

1:53:51 Esther: Sofie... name what you want me to do. There, they're at, they sent us this thing, like it was a whatever email. They sent it to us like, “hey staff change. Sofia is no longer with us. See you literally tomorrow for working on the expedition, like.”

1:54:11 Sofia: They still want in on the expedition? I thought that literally they would be like, oh, we're not investigating Dreaming. I thought they didn't give a shit about Dreaming.

1:54:21 Esther: That's not what they seem to be saying.

1:54:23 Sofia: Oh, they're gonna go in with bad intentions. I think that we need to just start. We need to fucking send a fake expedition with them, or something. We, they, I mean, they can't be involved.

1:54:35 Esther: Sof, if you want me to set up a decoy, I'm on it. I am loyal to you.

1:54:44 Emily: Can I just do an Insight to make sure this is absolutely Esther on the phone?

1:54:47 Brennan: Yeah, go for it give me an Insight check.

1:54:48 Emily: [laughing] I feel paranoid right now, 18.

1:54:50 Brennan: 18, yeah, I mean, it's Esther's phone. You're on the phone with her, she says, she says, look, she's like,

1:54:54 Esther: Let's, let's round up the troops. This is a big deal.

1:54:58 Sofia: Yeah, I know, I fucked up, I'm really sorry.

1:55:01 Esther: No, you didn't fuck up, this is not a fuck up. This is… This is fucked up.

1:55:10 Brennan: Cool, Esther is basically asking you to come talk in person with her.

1:55:13 Emily: Yeah, yeah.

1:55:15 Brennan: Would anybody else have done anything that morning in particular?

1:55:23 Ally: I mean, I would love to go to the Met but I don't know if that's like a bigger trip to try to look at those memories.

1:55:31 Brennan: Hell yeah.

1:55:32 Zac: Yeah.

1:55:34 Brennan: Cool, do you want to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Memories in Nod? Or... so, yeah. I'll go ahead and say. You start to head out. Esther looks at you, Ricky, and is like, just like in, in your apartment that morning, she's like,

1:55:49 Esther: Sofia's out of the Order. They like, she like left, or stepped down but it was sort of like asked to step down.

1:55:57 Ricky: Okay, I forget exactly how much we've talked about this but that Tony guy is… [pauses and checks behind him] a weird piece of shit.

1:56:07 Brennan: She full drops her teacup, shatters on the ground, goes, Esther gasps dramatically.

1:56:13 Ricky: I'm sorry, I'm sorry I said that.

1:56:14 Esther: It's that bad, oh my God.

1:56:16 Ricky: You know, it's just how I feel and...

1:56:18 Brennan: She's like, Mends the teacup back into her hand,

1:56:18 Esther: Okay.

1:56:21 Ricky: Look, he was, he's really given JJ a weird time. He's coming, like we also got to like, hang out with JJ.

1:56:31 Esther: He's giving JJ a weird time, why? Isn't JJ busy with classes and stuff?

1:56:36 Ricky: JJ, I think, was…

1:56:36 Zac: I just like tell her about all the...

1:56:42 Brennan: Cool, she, you can see that she takes it hard, man 'cause it's like the, the, she is an incredible wizard, but this is the kind of thing of like running an organization and being like, it's that thing of like, she protected her heart for a very long time against becoming the fury of sorrow and then this moment of like, oh, “JJ was having a hard time and Esther kind of didn't notice”, she takes it hard, man. She, you can see it it's sort of rocks her.

1:57:13 Ricky: Hey, you are dealing with-- we're all juggling a lot right now, it's we can just, you know. Esther sighs.

1:57:20 Ricky: We'll all do better going forward, it's not your fault.

1:57:23 Esther: [shortly] Okay. [more genuine] Thank God for you, Ricky.

1:57:27 Brennan: And she sort of like, leans her head into your shoulders. She's like,

1:57:29 Esther: Thank God, you're such a good guy. I hope you know how much just being a good guy helps.

1:57:37 Ricky: You know, it is an interesting query for me.

1:57:42 Brennan: [laughs] Cool, she hollers, Kingston, Pete, you both get a heads up from Esther that this has gone down. Pete, I assume you're in the same house with Cody. So he knows pretty much immediately. Iga, you wake up that morning after lovely food and everything, a lot of cleaning left to do, going back to clean up like the kitchen of the castle, you run into the portraits on the wall that are all you see there's a little bit of like fading to them and for a moment you're terrified because all of the women are gone from them.

1:58:27 Iga: What?

1:58:30 Brennan: You look in the kitchen and see, stirring cups and making things are like more than probably like two dozen or so witches stretching back through history, looking out at you from the kitchen. Your mother looks at all of them who give a sour look and goes,

1:58:56 Iga’s Mother: [Polish grandma] Iga, we have been talking to each other. There's a big problem.

1:59:14 Iga: Hi, hello hi, it's good to see you. You've been dead for a while, hi.

1:59:20 Brennan: You see, she says,

1:59:20 Iga’s Mother: I know, I've been dead. It is, what else is new? Listen, we don't have time for sentiment about who has been dead for a long time.

1:59:29 Iga: Okay, okay.

1:59:31 Brennan: You see, she looks at you and says,

1:59:38 Iga’s Mother: Some of the mothers are complaining because, Jessica...

1:59:46 Brennan: You see this ancient woman. Your like great, great, great, great, great grandmother. Someone from, like, the middle ages goes,

1:59:55 Ancestor: [bluntly] Your daughter, she's a bad witch.

2:00:00 Iga: What, how dare you, what?

2:00:03 Brennan: You see, she says,

2:00:03 Ancestor: I am allowed, I outrank 12 of you.

2:00:09 Brennan: She says,

2:00:09 Ancestor: I, I can tell my daughter's, daughter's daughter's, daughter's, daughter's, daughter's, what she is and is not doing right. Your daughter, Jessica, she is a bad witch.

2:00:23 Brennan: You see that another ancient sort of ghost goes,

2:00:27 Ancestor: We don't ask questions about the castle. We don't ask questions about how it work. We don't go into doors in the dark. The family keeps it alive.

2:00:37 Brennan: Your mother sort of plaintively looks and goes,

2:00:40 Iga’s Mother: Iga, the chest that is going out of the house all the time, so many people know about the chest. Maybe, maybe we leave this place. Something bad is happening to New York, maybe you leave New York.

2:00:58 Iga: No, I know something bad is happening to the chest. That's why it is leaving and taking it to see, there are people here… It's not like Poland, it's not like Poland, mother. It's not like that.

2:01:12 Brennan: The whole chorus—

2:01:12 Iga: The Nazis are not gonna come along and steal the chest.

2:01:15 Brennan: You see that your grandmother says,

2:01:15 Iga’s Grandmother: You don't know that.

2:01:19 Iga: I do, they're not going to!

2:01:21 Brennan: You see that all of them just start muttering. There's this chorus of voices. You see that, the oldest one, a witch from like the literal Dark Ages looks and says,

2:01:41 Dark Ages Ancestor: [very old voice] All of you are wrong, all of you are wrong. It is not Jessica who is the bad witch.

2:01:52 Iga: [dismissively] Boy. Here we go.

2:01:55 Dark Ages Ancestor: It is Iga!

2:01:57 Iga: Yes, okay I'm bad, I hear it, I'm bad, I’m so bad.

2:02:00 Dark Ages Ancestor: Of course your daughter, of course your daughter would do these crazy spells to look in the doors, explore the castle, go wake up whatever is sleeping in the dungeons, like a crazy person! Of course she would do this because she grows up...

2:02:17 Iga: Did she wake anything up, did she wake anything up, did she?

2:02:22 Dark Ages Ancestor: You'll know that she wants to and that's bad enough, Iga Lisowski!

2:02:26 Iga: No, she does not want to wake anything up. She just wants to know.

2:02:30 Brennan: You see all of them in unison say,

2:02:32 Iga’s Ancestors: And that is the problem!

2:02:34 Brennan: You see, your mother says,

2:02:37 Iga’s Mother: Iga, look, it is not wrong to know but it is dangerous to find out, we just, Jessica has grown up in this crazy place where she is meeting young vampires and wizards who are filling her all these sorts of things. The chest was not protected for centuries by running around and showing the chest to everybody. You dragged the chest from Poland where it was safe. You bring it to New York where you raise your family here and now they are playing on their XBOXes and they are—

2:03:14 Iga: They don't have an XBOX, where are you coming, where are you hearing of this XBOX?

2:03:20 Iga’s Mother: One of the imps in the belfry said that Jessica had an XBOX.

2:03:25 Iga: Why would, no, I— no, my children do not have an XBOX.

2:03:31 Brennan: You see that again, the ancient, ancient...

2:03:34 Iga: What, tell me what an XBOX is? Tell me what you think an XBOX is?

2:03:38 Brennan: You see the ancient witch goes,

2:03:41 Dark Ages Ancestor: Dangerous magic. That is what an Xbox is.

2:03:45 Iga: Okay, you're right, you're right, that is what an XBOX is. That's why they don't have one.

2:03:51 Brennan: You see that... Iga, what's Iga feeling in this moment facing this scorn and derision from all of these ghosts?

2:04:08 Siobhan: Sort of, like, in that way that you always do when you're around your family, like kind of regressing a little bit and remembering all of the moments when she was young, when she was like, why do we have to hide this? Why does it have to be a secret? Like those like moments of frustration and also like, you don't get to tell me how to raise my daughter.

2:04:39 Brennan: Yeah, give me.

2:04:42 Iga: You think you did such a good job, you can tell me—

2:04:45 Brennan: Yeah, give me an Insight check, Iga. Give me one with advantage.

2:04:54 Siobhan: [sucks in a breath] This one is...

2:04:56 Zac: Do you got any luck points?

2:04:57 Siobhan: I do have a luck point, I'm gonna use a luck point.

2:05:00 Brennan: Go for it.

2:05:01 Siobhan: I rolled a 1 and a 7. I'm gonna use a luck point. Okay, there we go, there we go, 25.

2:05:10 Brennan: 25, Iga… They're right. Jessica's not the weird one, and their criticism of Jessica is making you pissed, not only because “who the fuck are you to tell me how I'm raising my kid?” Jessica is fucking beautiful and perfect and she's great and… she's not the outlier because she was the first one in the line that got raised in a giant technological metropolis during the information age, speaking, learning Polish at home and speaking English out with her friends. You're the different one, you are the one that came here, and I think that there's a question in Iga's mind of how she relates to these women and also by the way, after the clown fight, everybody leveled up. Iga, you multi-classed into your first level of sorcerer and I think that you realize that you've been getting these warlock powers for so long by observing this relationship to this chest and the chest is separate. The chest is magical and is a source of magic and it's a source of magic that your family has used for a long, long, long time. If you wanted to do something risky you could reach out into what this chest is holding and get that magic as well.

2:06:51 Siobhan: How risky? Ally lets out a breath and a little laugh off camera.

2:06:55 Brennan: You have dozens of ghosts telling you to be cautious in the nastiest most scoldy way possible.

2:07:05 Siobhan: Can I ask them if any of them have ever reached out to the power?

2:07:12 Brennan: You see all of them go,

2:07:12 Ancestors: No, what do you think we are crazy?

2:07:17 Iga: So who is telling you not to do it?

2:07:20 Ancestors: She told me, well, she told me, well, she told me, well she told me, she told me, well, she was the one who told me.

2:07:25 Brennan: And it goes all the way back into the most ancient one who goes,

2:07:30 Dark Age Ancestor: I thought probably it was a bad idea.

2:07:33 Iga: Oh boy, I reach into the power. I'm absolutely going to do it, you ladies, what're you doing?

2:07:41 Brennan: Boom. Iga, you connect to something ancient and powerful, slumbering. You feel fire and power, you feel mystery and legend. You feel story and deep knowledge. Most of all, you feel magic. Does Iga, go deeper to the castle? You feel that connection and feel the surge of that power but you also know some, a little thing blips on your phone and you see a message from your other allies saying that something bad has happened. Iga, can either go to explore this right now or you can, you feel this connection and as you feel it, vwoom, the rafters ring out with deep shuddering of the castle and the ghosts all [snaps] vanish and reappear static in their portraits.

2:08:42 Siobhan: Do I get an impression that the power is malevolent?

2:08:47 Brennan: Give me an Insight— what'd you get, did you just get 25 on an Insight check?

2:08:53 Siobhan: I got a 25 on an Insight check, yeah.

2:08:54 Brennan: You don't feel it's malevolent. In fact, as you feel the, the roots of the castle move, you see that raw Umbra flit out of your kitchen, hit the sky, burst apart, vaporize and get dispelled by this new gleaming power you're holding in your hands, you reached out to the thing this chest has kept captured for centuries. It doesn't feel like it's unhappy to finally have someone say hello.

2:09:37 Iga: Hello? Something lets out a growling snore.

2:09:48 Brennan: What type of sorcerer are you, Siobhan?

2:09:50 Siobhan: Draconic bloodline.

2:09:52 Brennan: Draconic bloodline, cool. We are gonna cut out to—

2:09:58 Zac: It's a clown! (cast laughs)

2:10:01 Brennan: It's a fucking clown.

2:10:05 Siobhan: Growly the clown.

2:10:07 Brennan: Okay, everybody else gathers together. I would say they keep it, keep it fucking secret and Esther is like,

2:10:15 Esther: Come to me and Ricky's spot, come to the clock tower.

2:10:22 Brennan: Sofia, Cody, Pete...Kingston, what are you doing the next day? I mean, you probably get this text early in the morning.

2:10:29 Lou: Yeah, can I call Tony?

2:10:32 Brennan: Oh, sure, yeah. You have Tony's number.

2:10:35 Lou: Yeah, I call Tony.

2:10:37 Brennan: You see he says,

2:10:39 Tony: Hey Mr. Brown, how's it going my friend, good to hear from you.

2:10:42 Kingston: Hey, what's up, man, I just wanted to talk about some of the changes that I've heard are going on at the Order.

2:10:50 Brennan: He says,

2:10:50 Tony: Yeah, yeah, that was, that was hard. I don't know if you were aware that the Vox Phantasma or that Sofia cast combat magic on me or that they kept those secrets. You, you traveled on the ferry with everybody, right?

2:11:14 Kingston: I did.

2:11:16 Tony: Yeah, so what do you think about not sort of volunteering that information the Vox Phantasma had?

2:11:23 Kingston: I mean, I think that the Vox Phantasma speaks for the dreams and if the dreams choose not to speak, that's their choice.

2:11:32 Tony: All right, I understand that. Well, yeah, just put it this way that it, you know, it doesn't make the Order feel very secure, you know, we're putting all of our ancient texts on the line, our scrolls. We're putting our bodies on the line to defend the city and the people in it and you know, to not share that kind of thing. It does come across as a choice, comes across as a strong choice.

2:12:00 Kingston: Yeah, but you also made it incredibly clear to me, how much distaste you had for Pete is that...we can agree to that as well?

2:12:11 Tony: Distaste, I don't have control over. It is what it is. But my actions are what speaks for me.

2:12:18 Kingston: Well, that's why I called you because actions are important, but the thing you need to understand is that I am the voice of the people of New York. As far as I'm concerned, Sofia is family, Pete is family. So I want you to know that if you have a problem with them, you have a problem with me, and that needs to be handled. Ally smiles.

2:12:43 Brennan: Go ahead and give me an Intimidate check, and I think Kingston does roll these with advantage. It's a very soft, it's a soft one but.

2:12:52 Lou: “It's a soft one.” Okay, first one is a 16. Second one is less than 16.

2:13:05 Brennan: You see Tony nods or no, you don't see anything on the phone but, Tony goes,

2:13:17 Tony: I understand. If I got a problem with them, I got a problem with you, and I appreciate your honesty. I don't like sneaking around behind people's backs. It's good to know where we stand. I know that you speak for New York. I hope you know that I defend New York and occasionally those two missions aren't always the same thing.

2:13:55 Kingston: [nodding] What is it, yeah… Yeah, well, I guess I'll see you around.

2:14:03 Tony: I'll see you around.

2:14:05 Brennan: Two very old-school guys, hang up the phone.

2:14:13 Lou: Kingston puts on his best sweater and heads to this meetup.

2:14:20 Brennan: Yeah, Liz is looking... Liz looks at you and it's like,

2:14:27 Liz: Kingston, you look like you’re standing kind of tall right now, I like it, is everything all right?

2:14:33 Kingston: No, but, I don't know. Don't get me wrong, I like, I like it when things are easy, when things are fun... but it's also nice to get dirty. (cast laughs)

2:14:48 Brennan: Hell yeah, cool. Kingston, Pete, Cody, Ricky, you guys all arrive at Esther's, at Esther's place. Iga, oh, sorry you get a message from Esther being like, while you're in the castle before you get a chance to go deeper being like,

2:15:08 Esther: We should meet up right away. Tony Simos is not to necessarily be trusted, worried about him and his fascination with you and your chest. Might be safe for you to come to this address that the Order doesn't know about at your nearest convenience. Just wanna make sure that you and yours are safe. So sorry for this inconvenience.

2:15:32 Siobhan: What address is this?

2:15:34 Brennan: It's the Clinton Hill Chantry and the top apartment of it is where...

2:15:37 Siobhan: Okay, great.

2:15:37 Brennan: ...Ricky and Esther live.

2:15:43 Siobhan: Yeah, can I, my family's all there right, the day after Thanksgiving, everybody's just like lounging around eating sandwiches.

2:15:56 Brennan: You know it.

2:16:01 Siobhan: Yeah, I think I want to put, get them all into the chest.

2:16:11 Brennan: Whoa, hell yeah.

2:16:12 Siobhan: And then cast a Greater Invisibility on myself, to go to... or actually, I can do Galder's Speedy Courier again.

2:16:24 Brennan: Hell yeah.

2:16:25 Siobhan: I'll just do Galder's Speedy Courier to go to Esther's.

2:16:28 Brennan: You, you put yourself in your castle. Your box flies off to Esther's place, boom. You are all there, your family says, you're all, Oskar is like,

2:16:36 Oskar: Should we stay in the castle and just have a snack while you're dealing with business or?

2:16:41 Iga: Whatever you want, whatever you wanna do.

2:16:43 Oskar: Cool.

2:16:45 Iga: Jessica?

2:16:46 Jessica: Yes.

2:16:47 Iga: No, I, there is, we got to do the sneaking around the castle together, okay.

2:16:53 Jessica: Yeah.

2:16:54 Iga: I love you, I trust you. No, no investigations without me, okay.

2:16:59 Brennan: Hell yes, oh, you see, Jessica says,

2:16:59 Jessica: Yeah, you got it, mom I'll be safe, yeah, absolutely. The camera has been focused on only Siobhan and Brennan for quite some time; Zac and Ally are not onscreen.

2:17:05 Brennan: You see, is this a Zac-Ally bit? Is this a classic Zac-Ally bit? Zac does an over-exaggerated stretch yawn.

2:17:13 Ally: Just the most audible yawn that has ever come out of me and I didn't know how to stop it.

2:17:16 Zac: [coughing] Excuse me.

2:17:19 Brennan: Amazing, you guys meet up at Ricky and Esther's spot, beautiful loft apartment. You step out, Jessica is super excited. Iga, as you're walking out of this place, again, feeling a deeper connection to the magic than you have in a long time. You walk past, when you tap into that new magic, you dispelled that Umbral Arcana pretty effortlessly. The fading has vanished from the portraits. They are crisp and vibrant and full of color, like they had been painted just the year before.

2:17:56 Iga: Can I look out the window and see what, what's going on with the forest?

2:18:00 Brennan: Got about 1,500 acres extended on all sides as the forest has moved out.

2:18:06 Siobhan: Great.

2:18:09 Brennan: You guys are in the apartment, as you guys meet up together.

2:18:16 Sofia: I have one thing, Esther, I need a really good illusion. I need a really good illusion that we can make a video of so we can have it, okay. I need an illusion of me burning the scroll in case someone starts looking for it but I'm not actually gonna burn it, can you do that?

2:18:38 Brennan: She nods and says,

2:18:38 Esther: Yeah. I don't have that spell prepared right now but if you give me eight hours, I'm on it. I can get that done.

2:18:43 Emily: Okay, and then I think I hand the scroll to Pete and I say,

2:18:46 Sofia: I didn't know whether or not to destroy this but... I, it felt wrong to destroy but I think that they'll look for it on me and it feels like something that may be it be okay if you had access to.

2:19:03 Ally: Do I know what this is? I can just tell that it's like how to kill Nod.

2:19:07 Emily: Yeah.

2:19:09 Zac: I think that there's something to be said about, is it how to kill Nod or how to kill a dream… person?

2:19:20 Emily: Is it, is it specifically Nod, or is it a dream monarch?

2:19:25 Brennan: Dream monarchs, monarchs of dreaming.

2:19:27 Emily: Okay.

2:19:28 Brennan: Nod is the one that is referenced specifically but this is the one that had that thing that it had, it had Nod’s anatomy but then said “if encountering a monarch of dreaming.”

2:19:39 Emily: So I think like I definitely have studied it but I think that it should be, I want Pete to be able to decide what he wants to do with it.

2:19:47 Pete: Cool, thank you, yeah.

2:19:50 Zac: Also, also I've made 30 eggs for people because I just had a bunch of eggs and.

2:19:55 Lou: Hard boiled or?

2:19:56 Zac: No, no, it's a big pot of scrambled.

2:19:58 Lou: Oh.

2:19:59 Pete: Delicious.

2:20:00 Kingston: Hey, let's give, give it a little Sriracha, let's go to town.

2:20:01 Sofia: That’s kind of gross, actually, I don’t think I want it. That’s—

2:20:03 Pete: Yeah.

2:20:04 Ricky: I usually…

2:20:05 Kingston: I'm all the way in.

2:20:06 Zac: Yeah.

2:20:07 Sofia: I'm not in, no.

2:20:08 Zac: Little Tupperwares of eggs.

2:20:09 Ally: I'm just elbow deep into some eggs. [mimes shoveling food into their mouth]

2:20:11 Kingston: This is good, Ricky.

2:20:13 Ricky: Thank you, it's eggs and Sriracha.

2:20:17 Brennan: Incredible, you guys are all gathered here. You see, hold on one second. Oh, so Esther looks out and says,

2:20:28 Esther: Okay, we are gonna try to have the Order think we're continuing to work on the expedition, for everyone else here do we still feel like we need a real expedition? It's not like all these things with the raw Umbra, aren't still also happening. Do we try to run a dummy expedition or, or is it something as simple as I know a lot of you have been to Nod before, should we try to beat the Order to the punch and get there ahead of time?

2:21:03 Kingston: I don't know. If you ask me, that feels like a great goal. If you can stall them or hold them somehow but we, cause I mean, based on the experience with Dave, it feels like Gladiator and whatever this is are intimately tied. [tense background music]

2:21:17 Sofia: Yeah, I feel like, I feel like if, if you could maybe get in touch with the Order and say like, oh, we're gonna do a weekend retreat to strategize, you know.

2:21:28 Kingston: I like that. Y’all do a spa thing.

2:21:31 Ricky: Maybe we get an AirBNB upstate?

2:21:32 Sofia: Act like the wizards really need a lot, like the wizarding side needs a lot more research and really play up how much research needs to go into this.

2:21:42 Brennan: You see that she, she looks and says,

2:21:45 Esther: Okay, so that's it, I'm gonna contact—

2:21:49 Brennan: Oh, sorry yeah, go for it, Lou.

2:21:51 Cody: Were you gonna say something, Kingston?

2:21:54 Kingston: Yeah, but it's, it's more, it's maybe a different, different topics so if anyone wants to speak on this, I'd encourage them to do so.

2:22:03 Cody: I just wanted to say that like, that Tony dude was like, like figured out all of our shit. Even though we were like super fuckin stealthy about it. So like, are they gonna like fuck up the wizards while we're like in the nightmare realm?

2:22:10 Kingston: That’s what I’m worried about.

2:22:17 Cody: To like, is, are we just screwing people over?

2:22:20 Sofia: I think if I'm being, I mean, my instinct is that Tony, I just was sloppy and I don't think Tony would have figured nearly as much out if I had kept it together better.

2:22:34 Iga: There are ways for us to be sneakier than we have been. I have a spell that can disguise all of us.

2:22:45 Ricky: Do you but, were you, Cody, were you saying like while we're gone are you worried about the wizards?

2:22:50 Cody: I was saying that like, they're gonna like fuck up, like, like this place, right because—

2:22:57 Brennan: Esther goes, Esther goes,

2:23:00 Esther: If they made an honest attempt at that, we have a lot of ways of defending ourselves. That said, that's not a terrible concern. Right now, we haven't responded to the Order. There they are acting like everything's hunky dory and that we are gonna be so dependent on their scrolls and their knowledge that we will keep working with them. I see no, I see a lot of utility in keeping them believing that, that we'll just keep working with them and not give them any, yeah.

2:23:32 Sofia: Esther, can you make a dummy version of the scroll that Nadia gave me?

2:23:36 Brennan: She looks over.

2:23:38 Sofia: So that if they think it goes missing, that they think that you accidentally brought it.

2:23:42 Brennan: She looks at the scrollin Pete's hands and says,

2:23:44 Esther: Vox Phantasma, do you mind if I do a little scan of that?

2:23:47 Pete: Not at all, yeah.

2:23:47 Ally: I hold it up for her.

2:23:49 Sofia: But make it wrong.

2:23:50 Brennan: She smiles, pulls all the text off in runes, fabricates a new scroll with Conjuration, does a time spell to age the parchment several hundred years. Just like [magical sounds] put the things and says,

2:24:07 Esther: Okay, gibberish, nonsense, gobbledygook. Great, great, great. This will help nobody do anything. (Siobhan laughs)

2:24:13 Sofia: This is a good option.

2:24:18 Zac: Is JJ here?

2:24:20 Brennan: JJ is not there.

2:24:22 Zac: Okay.

2:24:24 Brennan: But you can shoot him a text if you want to.

2:24:25 Ricky: Well, I was just thinking, JJ is not a bad person to look at that hard drive if there's any more information on it. We should let him know that it might do some weird stuff.

2:24:35 Kingston: Yeah.

2:24:37 Brennan: Esther looks at all of you, she says,

2:24:37 Esther: Cool. We're gonna hold the Order at arm's length. We're gonna feed them garbage and we're gonna keep them chasing a fool's errand. It's time for all of you to head to Nod, to figure out what's actually happening with this city. Got your back.

2:24:56 Brennan: And that's all for this week on "The Unsleeping City." Tune in next week!

2:25:04 All: [overlapping] Got your back.

2:25:08 Lou: Damn, that was real.

2:25:11 Siobhan: It was so hard not to say it.

2:25:13 Brennan: What was real, what was real?

2:25:15 Lou: That fucking courtroom scene, holy shit.

2:25:19 Zac: That was awesome.

2:25:21 Murph: That was so good. [NEXT EPISODE - Episode 9: Fight at the Museum]

2:25:21 Captions extracted by: Kyber Bonsai

2:25:21 Edited by: Tillie the Paladin, rowan solsys