Nulla Dies Umquam Memori Vos Eximet Aevo

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 10: Nulla Dies Umquam Memori Vos Eximet Aevo < [Previous Episode] | [Next Episode] > (music plays indicating you should begin vibing, TUC-style)

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

0:00:20 Brennan: Last we left off, in a flurry of dispelling and some quick history checks, our champions of New York City dispatched the animated armors at the Arms and Armor wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Memories in the sixth borough of Nod. Having tracked down the unicorn, one of the three spirits of our dearly departed friend, Kugrash, the dumpster druid. Lou kisses his fingers and points up.

0:00:50 Brennan: Shout out to Kugrash. We discovered the unicorn being menaced and attacked by various forms of armor here in Nod. Our champions, of course, in Nod to survey the threat to the city and finally get firsthand eyes on what has been washing ashore in the waking world from the Dreaming beyond. Having discovered a dreaming version of the sword Excalibur that has now been fused with the Questing Blade to become the new Thirsting Blade, Dark Excalibur, a 275 pound, basically an I-beam, that Cody has to have a point of contact with the floor to kind of be able to wield here. We now see that this new incredible [mild Cody impression] twisted nightmare double weapon now exists. And Ricky went and helped himself to a fireman's ax from an emergency case at the stairwell.

0:02:00 Ally: Wait, did you take the ax or the… [mimes… spraying something?] That thing.

0:02:06 Siobhan: The fire extinguisher?

0:02:07 Emily: [incredulously] The fire extinguisher?

0:02:09 Murph: The fire extinguisher? That thing?

0:02:10 Ally: You know, the like… [does a cool dance] Did you take that?

0:02:15 Zac: No, I took the ax.

0:02:16 Ally: Oh damn.

0:02:17 Emily: I took that.

0:02:18 Brennan: Sofia took that.

0:02:19 Ally: I wrote down the wrong thing. Oh right, I forgot.

0:02:20 Siobhan: The sexy fire extinguisher.

0:02:21 Zac: On your list of all the weapons people have?

0:02:24 Ally: I just keep a master list. I like to keep inventory.

0:02:29 Brennan: All of you begin to exit from the Arms and Armor exhibit. You now walk, Pete, with the unicorn by your side. You see that the unicorn heals itself and is also gonna go ahead and heal everybody else here. [soft, heavenly-sounding music]

0:02:47 Emily: Oh.

0:02:48 Brennan: This sparkling creature again is not like, is very much one of those Elven-looking unicorns where its legs and face almost looks like a mixture between a deer and a horse. It's not powerful and broadly built, but much like the unicorn from the tapestries of the Cloisters looks like a creature from some enchanted other world. This unicorn is not only sparkling with divine and celestial light, but also appears to have just run through a cloud of regular glitter which, so it's sort of doubled up here. And JJ looks around. You guys walk back out to the main entrance hall where you can once again walk out into Nod. JJ points a finger over at you, Ricky, and goes,

0:03:42 JJ: Hey man, I might dip over to the Native wing to liberate some of that stuff right now if you want to come check it out with me?

0:03:50 Ricky: Yeah, sounds cool.

0:03:53 JJ: Cool!

0:03:54 Brennan: You see JJ create this, like, 2D kind of 8-bit portal and minutes later comes back with Ricky. He has a bag of holding next to him that even from the outside is visibly stuffed with belongings.

0:04:09 Zac: Nice.

0:04:11 Brennan: And he gives Ricky a high five. JJ also defeated one of the monsters.

0:04:14 Zac: Yeah.

0:04:16 Brennan: You see your friend here is probably like a fourth level wizard now and is feeling chuffed, man.

0:04:21 Lou: I’m sorry, what—

0:04:26 Ricky: JJ, normally I'm not a huge fan of fire, but that was pretty cool.

0:04:30 JJ: Hey, you know, I feel like it's the dream realm and it's about being, but you know what you are right, my man. Safety first, I'll be more careful next time. But that was awesome.

0:04:41 Siobhan: What wizard school is JJ?

0:04:43 Brennan: JJ is actually Conjuration.

0:04:46 Siobhan: Oh, okay, cool.

0:04:49 Brennan: But his focus in Conjuration is not as a summoner. It is as a teleporter. So, he's all about, like, Conjuration as teleportation, movement through planes, and also like kind of communication magic as well.

0:05:03 Siobhan: Cool.

0:05:04 Zac: I was just gonna ask JJ, like,

0:05:05 Ricky: Was there anything you were particularly excited about grabbing or was it just making sure you got all the stuff that felt right to take back?

0:05:16 JJ: Just making sure I got all the stuff that felt right to take for the most part.

0:05:19 Iga: You know, here's the trick with museums. It's like an iceberg. Only like 1% of the stuff is in the galleries. You gotta go down.

0:05:30 Brennan: JJ opens up and goes,

0:05:30 JJ: Chill as hell. I'm gonna be super right back.

0:05:36 Brennan: [blooping] Teleports downstairs. And you guys hear reverberating through the Met on the dream side.

0:05:41 JJ: [faintly] Oh my fucking god! [cast laughs]

0:05:46 Brennan: Cool, the rest of you are assembled out in the great hall with the unicorn. The unicorn looks and says,

0:05:55 Unicorn: [sighs] Yeah, listen. You know, of the three totems of New York, I am the only one that is a mythical creature. So, I've been able to move freely in Nod for a long time, but I haven't seen the spicy pigeon or the juicy cockroach in probably a couple of years.

0:06:18 Sofia: A couple years? Did they get dispelled when Kugrash ate the bagel? [soft, somber music]

0:06:29 Brennan: You see that the unicorn says,

0:06:33 Unicorn: It's hard to say. We… the first time I remember meeting them, we all were kind of called to each other back in the mid 90s. And it was around that time that shortly after, we kind of came to be. We were found by Kugrash who was able to communicate with us. And that's actually, prior to that, Kugrash had been living just as a rat in the sewers trying to survive, but he came into contact with us and dedicated his life to helpin' the, you know, the people that New York kind of overlooks or forgets, I suppose. And through his devotion to them and then to us, he discovered his magic and his powers. Couple of years ago though, yeah, when Kugrash left, our connection weakened somewhat but there was always sort of a thread I guess that was still connecting us to the city. I never knew where it went 'cause I wasn't feeling as strong as I used to be, but.

0:07:49 Brennan: The unicorn concentrates, and a little silvery thread goes from the unicorn's heart and faintly travels out towards one of the members of your group and lands on Ricky's heart. And the unicorn looks up and sees a connection to you. Anyone here who wants to can make an Insight check.

0:08:03 Lou: Why not?

0:08:16 Emily: [shrugging] I mean, in case I crit. I crit!

0:08:18 Siobhan: I got a nat 1. [cast laughs]

0:08:20 Murph: Oh my god!

0:08:23 Brennan: Sofia, you look at it connecting to Ricky's heart but also connecting to his Helping Hands Homeless Outreach Center T-shirt.

0:08:37 Sofia: Oh. Ricky, the unicorn is connected to you now. You've kept the unicorn around.

0:08:50 Brennan: And with that nat 20 Insight, Sofia, you feel that there's something else coming from Ricky's aura. You could probably match it by, like, by spending a point of ki to, like, illuminate something around Ricky's aura that you can see now that you're here in dreaming.

0:09:07 Emily: Yeah. I think I real quick do a bunch of pressure points on him to illuminate his aura. [Zac makes sounds of pain] Emily pretends to quickly poke him.

0:09:14 Brennan: You see two other cords of light spring out from Ricky's heart, traveling in other directions and fading as they move out into the material world. So, the other two spirits that are in the waking world, you can see cords of light connecting Ricky to them as well.

0:09:38 Sofia: Ricky, I know that this is not what you expected to discover about yourself today, but I think you're connected to the juicy cockroach and the spicy pigeon as well.

0:09:51 Ricky: [nods] Okay. [cast laughs]

0:09:53 Pete: So, Cody is the Jersey devil, and you're kind of the leader of the spicy pigeon and the juicy cockroach. Ricky closes his eyes in exasperation for a moment.

0:10:02 Sofia: Okay, okay. Just really focus on—

0:10:03 Murph: Cody tries to lift his sword to put on his shoulder. [cast laughs]

0:10:06 Sofia: Just really focus on the fact that you are representing Kugrash.

0:10:11 Ricky: Yeah.

0:10:12 Sofia: Like, you're almost, you took on something from Kugrash that he couldn't do anymore, and that's beautiful. Even if it is a juicy cockroach and a spicy pigeon.

0:10:24 Ricky: I'll admit when I wanted to sort of honor Kugrash by taking up this mantle, I did not assume that I would also take upon his aesthetic. [cast laughs]

0:10:37 Ricky: And that is something I have to think about a little bit, but overall, I feel like this is a net positive.

0:10:40 Sofia: Well, aesthetic is overrated.

0:10:41 Emily: And I look directly at Cody.

0:10:42 Ally: I give Cody the help action so that he can dance with the new sword. [cast laughs] [Cody groans]

0:10:51 Pete: Come on, man. Come on, man. I'm spotting you.

0:10:53 Cody: You have to lift more, Pete!

0:10:59 Brennan: You see the unicorn goes,

0:10:59 Unicorn: Oh my God. That's why we've been able to hang on without Kugrash here. That's really miraculous, Ricky, I have to say.

0:11:13 Brennan: The unicorn looks out and says,

0:11:13 Unicorn: We became very weakened. I wasn't really able to leave the tapestries into the waking world anymore. But again, I've always had a very different relationship to the city because of my mythical nature. The spicy pigeon and the juicy cockroach both, [muffled giggling from Murph, Emily, and Siobhan]

0:11:31 Unicorn: Everyone always laughs when I say spicy pigeon.

0:11:35 Sofia: It's honestly the, it's the combination of both. It's just knowing that they're part of Ricky now. Yeah.

0:11:43 Pete: It's the perfect word for a pigeon that I didn't know I needed. [Emily laughs]

0:11:50 Brennan: You see that the unicorn says,

0:11:53 Unicorn: Basically, those creatures faded into the waking world. And I believe right now they're kind of hanging on for dear life and that they've embedded themselves in mortal beings that they felt the strongest connection with. Similar to how, you know, Pete or Kingston were chosen as Vox Phantasma or Vox Populi. I believe that two other beings out there in the world have been chosen as the spicy pigeon and the juicy cockroach.

0:12:26 Emily: With my nat 20, do I know if Perry the Pigeon is the [laughs] pigeon that—

0:12:28 Siobhan: Spicy pigeon?

0:12:32 Brennan: I think Sofia has thought a lot. Sofia, the year after your bender you went on after Kugrash died.

0:12:40 Emily: Oh yeah, I hung out with rats and pigeons.

0:12:43 Brennan: Yeah. Even in your bender, Perry went to such a dark place that you were worried about Perry the Pigeon for a while after Kugrash passed. [Emily sighs]

0:12:57 Emily: All right.

0:12:59 Zac: So does that mean is that it could be Perry or not?

0:13:03 Brennan: I think that you have a hunch that it might be Perry the Pigeon.

0:13:09 Sofia: I think that if this spirit was weakened and it entered the body of another pigeon that that pigeon would take on sort of this burden. Also Perry was really attracted to Kugrash. And I think that also made him take it hard.

0:13:29 Ricky: Gotcha. Well, I guess we'll have to figure that out. We'll have to talk to that pigeon and— [Emily and Murph laugh]

0:13:37 Ricky: I don't know. I don't know. Maybe, maybe then it's, I guess I hang out with that pigeon now or...? Yeah, okay.

0:13:48 Iga: Maybe it is like a Captain Planet type situation. You and the pigeon and the whatever the cockroach thing is you put in your hands and then you have, like, extra flying powers or some shit. I don't know.

0:14:02 Ricky: Here's hoping, here's hoping. [cast laughs]

0:14:10 Brennan: JJ comes back from downstairs with a bag of holding that is now truly, like bursting at the seams, going like,

0:14:17 JJ: Woo! Man, this— [shaking his head]

0:14:22 Ricky: We got it.

0:14:24 JJ: We got it.

0:14:24 Brennan: He opens up his laptop. [beeping, typing] And looks around at stuff and goes,

0:14:28 JJ: Okay, I don't know what else you guys wanted to do here, but I'm super down to, I'm getting some measurements and readings on stuff that Esther asked me to look for. But I also know that Pete, you have business here in the dream realm of your own.

0:14:40 Pete: Mm-hm.

0:14:51 JJ: But I'm getting some pretty fascinating readings myself on some of the stuff that I'm looking for, like trying to track raw Umbra.

0:14:58 Brennan: And you see that he turns his laptop around in his hand and shows a kind of, like, orbital version of Nod that he sort of mapped out on his laptop screen. He uses a cantrip to fling the screen out into three dimensional space in front of you and hits a little clock icon in the upper right. Boom, boom, boom. And the clock transforms into an hourglass that sand is coming down, and he makes a swirl sort of like, spiral pattern of the sand that then begins to show the kind of celestial movements become more, like, organic. And you begin to see as it slows down almost to, like, a slowed down heartbeat rate, like boom, boom. Boom boom. You see all the raw Umbra, and you also see these little tiny flashes of what you can only describe as, like, pure rainbow light. Almost like a firework that has multiple incandescent colors of sparks in it, just like. And they are not evenly spread out. They are clustering in like some places more than others. Looks like they're clustering a lot near Bryant Park and the New York Public Library. You see them kind of clustered as well way out in Queens near the Queens Center Mall. Does anyone want to make any Investigation checks or ask JJ anything in this moment as he kind of spreads the screen out?

0:16:40 Emily: I'll just do an investigation.

0:16:41 Brennan: Cool.

0:16:43 Ally: Can I do an Insight check on JJ who's now dipped and gotten, like, a bag full of stuff from this museum?

0:16:51 Brennan: Yeah, give me an Insight check.

0:16:53 Ally: That's 16.

0:16:55 Brennan: JJ looks very excited. He's just liberated a tremendous amount of cultural artifacts from a museum where they were just, and now that Iga pointed out that the truth that museums only display a tiny fraction of what they have. Things that were just sitting in cold vaults are now gonna be returned to the communities and peoples that actually created and cherish those artifacts. So, JJ's looking psyched.

0:17:20 Ally: Incredible. Okay, great.

0:17:22 Emily: I got a 16 on my Investigate.

0:17:25 Brennan: 16 on Investigate. Sofia, you are looking at this, and you see yeah, clustering around the Gramercy Occult Society. You see some around Queens Center Mall. You see another where you recognize the Central Park Carousel would be.

0:17:46 Emily: And the Cloisters?

0:17:47 Brennan: Cloisters as well.

0:17:49 Iga: Why is it at the Gramercy Occult Society?

0:17:52 Sofia: Yeah, that is what I'm wondering.

0:17:55 Pete: Would that just be the Umbral Engine?

0:17:58 Brennan: JJ points at Pete and says,

0:17:59 JJ: I think that's right, Pete. These flashes. So, you can see raw Umbra moving throughout here, and you can see that the raw Umbra is carrying some of these particles that we talked about before or as Ricky said, a New York minute. These particles are 60 second increments of time that on a quantum level create a sort of fractal image of themselves that is faster than the speed of light. That has a lot of different effects to it. But the raw Umbra moving it, there's always been some amount of raw Umbra in Nod, but you can see that it tends to flow to the Gramercy Occult Society because the Umbral engine is grabbing that raw Umbra and spinning it into the Umbral Arcana to protect the Unsleeping City and the people of New York.

0:18:50 Sofia: But now other people are taking it.

0:18:53 JJ: Right. Well, it looks like… I don't know how these other sites are managing to create this effect.

0:19:04 Brennan: And then you see JJ thinks for a second about having sent a portion of his research with his application into Gladiator.

0:19:16 Sofia: What about the Pine Barrens? Pine Barrens in New Jersey? Can you see that?

0:19:20 Brennan: He's gonna make a check to try and go see that. He goes down to the Pine Barrens in New Jersey. It does not appear on the map. And he looks and goes,

0:19:38 JJ: The other side, the spectral realm above the Pine Barrens, which dream — there was very little dream realm in Pine Barrens.

0:19:49 Brennan: And he lays another filter to show an infernal layer over the Pine Barrens which has also been collapsed into something like two-dimensional and maybe even less than that.

0:20:04 Pete: So, something pushed this Umbral out, and something maybe also pushed those devils out like we were seeing overflow?

0:20:13 Brennan: Everyone give me a Perception check real quick.

0:20:18 Siobhan: 21.

0:20:19 Murph: 17.

0:20:20 Ally: 13.

0:20:20 Lou: 31.

0:20:22 Brennan: 31 from Kingston.

0:20:23 Emily: Dirty 20.

0:20:25 Murph: Why do we even roll?

0:20:26 Brennan: Kingston—

0:20:28 Lou: I do two things, baby. I look and see around and within. [cast laughs]

0:20:34 Brennan: Kingston, you know where you're gonna find another infernal level, like the one in the Pine Barrens. You scoot over back to New York. Just like. Now that you're on the infernal layer, you see a collapsed infernal layer, just a tiny, tiny bit. And as you zoom in, Cody, the Hot Topic at the Queens Center Mall, like every Hot Topic, was an infernal gateway.

0:21:11 Cody: Of course. Of course.

0:21:12 Brennan: As you look here, Kingston, you— (laughs)

0:21:17 Cody: This adds up.

0:21:20 Kingston: I guess so.

0:21:21 Sofia: The world just keeps validating you, Cody.

0:21:23 Murph: Just like an absolute moron, just, rubbing his chin and just being like,

0:21:25 Cody: Yes.

0:21:27 Ricky: You crack it wide open, Cody? [cast laughs]

0:21:31 Brennan: On a 31, I'm not even gonna make you guys travel out to Queens in Nod to, like, investigate this yourself. You zoom in on JJ's thing, and you look and see where this pressure being applied from the deeper dreaming, where the tide came in. Also Kingston, you remember from three years ago the lesson you guys learned from Nod which is that all these other realms, the reason, like, is Dreaming as powerful as like Heaven or Hell or Faerie? Arguable, probably in some ways, yeah, the devil is stronger or the archfey or whatever, but these places all started as paragons, right? Like, Faerie became such a potent dream that it came out. So, Dream does, whether or not it's the strongest, it is the oldest and things originated here which means that powerful magics can find the genesis of places like this. So, when you attack from Dreaming, you have a way to sever or attack hell-gates and other things like that. And especially in a place that you still see the highway hex is active, right? Even three years later there's still these highways that fuck up the ley lines and prevent other things from coming in. Weirdly in this case, the highway hex seems to be obfuscating some of this so that you guys couldn't have discovered it sooner, right? You look at that image and see that this force was coming in to choke and suffocate this hell-gate like it is doing across the city everywhere to everything. And as you look, you just recognize that that force is kind of a powerful tidal force, and some fractional amount of what it was suffocating and pushing down would have been extruded to other places. You're like maybe 80% of what was in that hell-gate got pushed back into Hell. The 20% would have gotten pushed somewhere else.

0:23:43 Lou: Yeah.

0:23:46 Murph: Bazathrax just got squeezed out like toothpaste or something.

0:23:52 Ally: Bazathrax got shit out of hell into your chest.

0:23:56 Siobhan: [rock singer voice] Like a shit outta hell! [cast laughs]

0:23:59 Brennan: Bazathrax in your chest goes,

0:24:00 Bazathrax: What's up, dude? Are you talkin' about me up there? What's going on?

0:24:03 Cody: Yeah, you just got, you just got squeezed out of Hell? Is that what happened?

0:24:09 Bazathrax: What, dude? No, I got, well, yeah, kinda. I don't know. It was like, I was hanging out near this hell gate and there was this like and I was talking to this. There this infernal codex that I found that had my name in it. And then dude, this frickin' stuff came in. I didn't get squeezed out. The book got squeezed out. I was like, you know, your codex got fuckin', and I got squeezed back into Hell, dude. And I was like, I gotta get that codex that has a way to summon me in it! And then it was like, I dunno, like a month or two. I was trying to find a way to get out. But these highways and shit. [points] And then you said my name, dude. I don't know how you got your hands on that book but I'm glad ya did.

0:24:52 Cody: So, you're just like the me of Hell pretty much? [cast laughs]

0:24:58 Bazathrax: Hey, but you're pretty cool, man. That sword looks frickin' awesome, dude.

0:25:04 Murph: Cody swings his sword.

0:25:07 Ally: I give you the help action.

0:25:08 Brennan: Go ahead and give me that Athletics check and try to swing your sword.

0:25:12 Murph: Okay, with Pete assisting. [cast laughs]

0:25:18 Murph: That's an 11. Even with help.

0:25:22 Brennan: You scratch up the floor pretty bad, but you cannot get the blade up off the ground in this swing.

0:25:27 Pete: Dude, don't worry, man. We'll work out together.

0:25:30 Ricky: What I'm wondering is — is this like, is this like a natural disaster or is this intentional?

0:25:40 Sofia: Or is it an entity that is not, doesn't have intention but has power enough?

0:25:48 Pete: I mean, I think we need to figure out what is in that beyond that is pushing against all these things. It seems like something that is grasping for power but —

0:25:58 Sofia: Yeah, something's coming in with the tide.

0:26:01 Ally: Oh, can we get to Nod? I would really love to talk to Nod.

0:26:05 Brennan: Yeah, it might be time for you guys to split up. With that 31, Kingston, I'm also gonna say that you perceive in JJ's thing, in JJ's sort of read out, a measurement of time that is sort of, it doesn't look right. Like, the amount of time that JJ is measuring doesn't look right to you. And on that 31, I think that Kingston's not the most versed in, like, advanced physics, but you remember JJ saying that he was studying these time particles, and you watch, as everyone else is talking, you watch the scale of JJ's map, not of space but of time, diminish by a unit. It looks like JJ doesn't notice it either. But you just watch. It goes from like, you know, negative 50,000 to positive 50,000 to like negative 48,000 to positive 47,000. [mysterious, slightly ominous music]

0:27:15 Kingston: JJ, what is that?

0:27:18 JJ: What's what?

0:27:19 Kingston: What's that? The number went down. I don't know what the number means. Why would it go down?

0:27:28 Brennan: JJ looks at it for a second.

0:27:31 JJ: That's not, that's really not good. [puts his hand on his forehead] So, I didn't know about raw Umbra when I was first studying New York minutes, but basically… So I don't know how much, like, pop science you guys have read, but like one of-

0:27:58 Kingston: None.

0:27:59 JJ: [sighs] Okay.

0:28:00 Ricky: I don't think I've really read any either.

0:28:02 Pete: I've read a little bit, yeah, for sure.

0:28:04 Kingston: You were reading "Mind Breaker," right? Did they talk about it in "Mind Breaker?"

0:28:08 Ricky: No, I mean. [laughs] They're alluding to some stuff. It's mostly kind of went over my head to be honest. I think there were big chunks of paragraphs that it felt like I could skip, but yeah.

0:28:20 Pete: Oh cool.

0:28:21 Ricky: It's my favorite book though. [Emily laughs]

0:28:24 Pete: Sick.

0:28:25 Kingston: Sick.

0:28:27 Brennan: You see, JJ goes,

0:28:29 JJ: One of the biggest sort of axioms of quantum mechanics is that we actually have seen that observation can change the fundamental behavior of atomic particles, of cosmos, of nature. You know, for a thing being able to exist in two places at the same time. And I sort of haven't put this together before, but raw Umbra and the Umbral Arcana as well literally prevents people from seeing magic which would of course affect the nature of magic. Now, in our case, it's good because, like you've seen, without the Umbral Arcana if regular people were seeing magical things either they would all discover the magical world and that would shake the earth to its very foundations, or possibly they could observe the magical world and destroy it by not believing in it. There's a very real chance that if a bunch of people that didn't believe in something were able to see it that they would actually change the magical nature of that.

0:29:46 Pete: Whoa.

0:29:49 JJ: This belief is a powerful, toxic substance in some cases.

0:29:55 Iga: That happened with my daughter, I think.

0:29:58 Pete: I was thinking about that with the borscht bites that you were talking about.

0:30:02 Iga: She stopped believing, even though we had grown up, like she knows. She knows that magic is real, but for a moment she just did not believe it. I had-- It was very strange and very upsetting.

0:30:18 Brennan: Iga, you remember that Umbra coming out of her eyes, and JJ looks and says,

0:30:25 JJ: I suppose it's possible that with enough of this Umbra present in the city even people that had been invited into the Unsleeping City could be so... for lack of a better word, poisoned by it that they would stop believing. You know, depending on dosages, you know some amount of this stuff is very helpful, but in the amount that it's congregating in now and this time disappearing, it's almost like the Umbra is not just erasing the things but also it's not just occurring in space and preventing people from seeing things in the space around them, but it's also occurring in time.

0:31:23 Brennan: Pete, give me an Arcana check.

0:31:29 Ally: Ooh! 23.

0:31:34 Brennan: You have that same realization that Kingston had about the nature of time and the fact that so much of the dream realm is tied to potential. And those Gladiator signs disappearing. You see a mirroring in JJ's screen, almost like as something erases the past it is also mirroring that erasure in the future. And the far ends of those numbers in JJ's scale are time. And it's a pushing in in both directions of like, as possibilities disappear people forget the myths and legends and stories of the past. And as people lose their stories, they forget what is possible in their future.

0:32:32 Ally: Is that why, with Josefina we don't know what happened to her?

0:32:37 Brennan: You connect that erasing force to what deprived the museum of those two Vox Phantasma and their final memories.

0:32:47 Ally: Wow.

0:32:48 Siobhan: Can I have a look at my chest and see if it's changed at all with us being in Nod?

0:32:57 Brennan: You take the chest out. In Nod it is glowing with resplendent magic. As you take the chest out, all of you see in JJ's screen all of the raw Umbra is pushed out of the Metropolitan Museum of Memories. And you see that a bunch of the New York minutes that have been carried on the raw Umbra, congregate, and you see JJ's screen flickers out. And you guys see actual little floating helixing particles of light and energy that look almost like time helixes. They become visible only at the last second of their approach. And, for lack of a better word, gleefully explode into sparkles on the surface of the chest. It's the first time you've seen that the the New York minutes are doing something differently than just being passively carried by raw Umbra. Like, pew pew. As they do, the wood on the chest animates, and you see the wood of the chest shifts. There is a sudden bodega. You see the wooden figure of Sofia releasing a cat from a cocoon. You look back, and you see Pete like flying through the air over Times Square. You see Kingston Turning Undead on the subway cart and the zombies collapsing. You look back and see Ricky jumping through a burning building with a young girl and a teddy bear in her hand. And as these particles — pew pew — hit and then stop.

0:34:46 Ricky: So, the New York minutes it feels like they are, like, potential. They want to be stories.

0:34:52 Sofia: Yeah.

0:34:54 Pete: Yeah. Do you think, Iga, that we could take your chest to the memories section of, here in the Met and maybe use it to protect us and try to see more memories than we would if there was a lot of Umbra there, like, congesting it?

0:35:10 Iga: Yeah, let's see if it works.

0:35:12 Pete: 'Cause I would love to see maybe the final moments of Josefina or Hans Fischer or maybe see if Tony's memories are in here anywhere.

0:35:23 Iga: Yes. Yeah, let's do it.

0:35:24 Brennan: Hell yeah.

0:35:26 Ally: I remember when I encountered that shadowy figure, the vision that it gave me was of Nod being pulled away from me almost as a tide. So, was that maybe the threat of me losing my belief in Nod?

0:35:40 Brennan: Give me an Insight check.

0:35:44 Ally: Ooh. Insight, 15.

0:35:48 Brennan: Either you, yeah. I mean, you think it's both. You think it's you losing your connection to Nod and whatever's out there. And Pete, I think you have a feeling that whatever is out there physically in Nod in the same way that you are able to go to Nod in your dreams with your dream self, things that exist physically in the dreaming still can appear mentally in your dreams. And when you think, like, losing my connection to Nod, you just feel the horrifying power of losing your connection to things and look through one of the windows and see the stars in the sky ripple. And a few fade out.

0:36:42 Ally: Wow, fuck.

0:36:44 Brennan: But you and Iga do have the chest, and you can go to the museum to look specifically for those memories. You also know that Nod is still somewhere off here sick in the dreaming.

0:36:56 Ally: Yeah, fuck.

0:36:57 Brennan: But for anyone else, I guess if the whole party wants to go move and do that that's totally fine as well.

0:37:03 Zac: I'm just feeling like Ricky's gears are turning faster than they ever have. [laughs] He is thinking in ways that he's never thought of.

0:37:13 Ricky: It feels to me like if the particles are behaving differently when they're viewed that Gladiator is viewing it on a massive scale and I'm curious to see, like, what is beyond the research, like, is there any other nefarious, like, who is making that happen? You know?

0:37:40 Pete: Oh god. Do they have a streaming service? [cast laughs]

0:37:45 Kingston: Yeah. Gladiator Prime.

0:37:46 Pete: That they're gonna use to like...

0:37:47 Kingston: It's got great shows.

0:37:49 Pete: Gladiator Prime.

0:37:51 Cody: Is it the energy drinks too? Can people get in your brain?

0:37:52 Kingston: It keeps people from dreaming.

0:37:54 Ricky: It keeps people from dreaming?

0:37:56 Sofia: Yes, it keeps people from dreaming. But I also think if Gladiator is observing magic not as magic but as something that's useful to them, that might be a form of disbelief. If they're using it not to dream but to serve their own purposes in a different way. That could be a form of observation that is disbelief.

0:38:23 Ricky: Well, like, if people dream, then they can, then it's not Gladiator's. Right?

0:38:31 Iga: They want to steal the dreams.

0:38:32 Ricky: Like, if they take people's dreams but use the potential source of it.

0:38:36 Sofia: To do something else. Like, to treat it almost like science or a resource.

0:38:42 Kingston: Yeah.

0:38:42 Pete: Yeah, a resource for sure.

0:38:44 Iga: Yes, so they can sell the dreams because dreams are free. Dreams have always been free, but if they can sell it, then you can monetize the dreams. God, what a nightmare.

0:38:51 Pete: Should we split up?

0:38:58 Sofia: [dejectedly] I mean, Cody, you were right all along.

0:39:02 Pete: Yeah. And honestly. (Murph laughs)

0:39:07 Pete: I'm just gonna say, Ricky, that was really smart.

0:39:11 Sofia: Yeah, Ricky.

0:39:12 Pete: Ricky made some cool, you know. Hey man.

0:39:15 Ally: I put my hand on Ricky's back and I give him the help action to wave his ax. [cast laughs] Ricky nods and sort of wiggles his wrist.

0:39:24 Pete: Your heart's not in it, man.

0:39:25 Ally: I give you the help action to have your heart be in it.

0:39:29 Ricky: It doesn't feel like a good idea to wave this thing. This is really sharp, and this part's definitely sharp.

0:39:34 Sofia: That's true. Be true to yourself.

0:39:35 Pete: Yeah, for sure, man. [cast laughs]

0:39:39 Pete: Should we split up and some people go to the memories, and I go with Nod with some people? Or should we stay together?

0:39:47 Kingston: I need to head out to JFK. I have a date at a Cinnabon with Alejandro. He said that he had something to tell me. So, people are more than welcome to come, I'm sure. But I think I do need to make a stop there.

0:40:01 Sofia: I'll be honest. I probably shouldn't go to JFK, but I mean if I say I'm not going to, I'm gonna stop there anyway.

0:40:09 Pete: Do you wanna go with me to the memories and look at the Tony memories? Maybe you would recognize some stuff as the ex-Fist?

0:40:19 Sofia: Oh yeah, I could do that. I mean...

0:40:23 Ricky: You seem like you wanna go to the airport.

0:40:25 Pete: Sounds like you wanna stealth to the airport like two steps behind Kingston the whole way.

0:40:30 Kingston: You can just walk alongside me if you want.

0:40:33 Pete: Just in Kingston's shadow.

0:40:36 Sofia: I just feel like you can probably tell me what the memories say of Tony's.

0:40:41 Pete: Yeah, definitely.

0:40:44 Zac: So that's decided. They go to the—

0:40:49 Sofia: Pete, I do have something that I need you to ask for Nod. Does everyone mind if I just have a private moment with Pete?

0:40:56 Kingston: Yeah, of course.

0:40:56 Iga: No, sure.

0:40:58 Sofia: Pete, I was wondering if when you talk to Nod if you could ask them something personal for me?

0:41:11 Pete: Yeah, definitely.

0:41:13 Sofia: I was just wondering if you could ask them if in this place of potentiality and becoming and dreams if there's any way to bring someone back?

0:41:32 Pete: Dale?

0:41:34 Sofia: I was thinking Kugrash. No, obviously Dale.

0:41:36 Pete: Oh cool.

0:41:37 Sofia: Obviously Dale. [cast laughs]

0:41:42 Pete: Yeah, definitely.

0:41:43 Sofia: Just, you know, maybe ask. That's all.

0:41:47 Pete: I get it. It's hard to talk about your ex in front of your new crush. [Emily laughs]

0:41:54 Sofia: You know, I just, I figure you owe me one since you turned me down so hard.

0:42:01 Pete: No, yeah, I will definitely ask Nod that.

0:42:03 Sofia: Thank you.

0:42:05 Kingston: Pete, did you say that Nod needs medical help?

0:42:11 Pete: Oh fuck, right! You should be there, Kingston.

0:42:15 Lou: Can I hit Nod on the way to JFK?

0:42:19 Brennan: Yeah, I think that probably, like, Pete would probably have to fly you guys up to where Nod is. So, looks like the three big tasks ahead of you are, like, going to snoop around in the Museum of Memories, heading to go deal with Nod, and then heading to JFK.

0:42:39 Iga: What about you guys go to JFK, we do the Metropolitan Museum of Memory, and then we meet to the point where Pete has to fly us where to Nod is?

0:42:48 Kingston: Yes, Iga, yes!

0:42:49 Ally: Can I do some sort of Arcana link with Nod and see if it's pressing that I get to them immediately?

0:42:56 Brennan: You already can feel that they are in recovery and doing okay. You saved them from the bad situation, and Nod, while being a sweet little child, they are also a powerful monarch of dreaming. And you know, they can take some licks.

0:43:15 Ally: Great.

0:43:16 Brennan: Cool. Pete, Iga, Ricky, Cody, and JJ are all going to head deeper into the Metropolitan Museum of Memory.

0:43:24 Emily: Actually at the last minute, I think that after asking her selfish thing of Pete, Sofia is gonna do what she thinks is the right thing and stick around here and not go to JFK.

0:43:42 Brennan: Copy that. What's going on in Sofia's heart as she thinks about going to JFK or thinks about not going to JFK?

0:43:57 Emily: I think that she feels like… She feels like she just heard Alejandro talking about paradise and the whole conversation with Dale was kind of like, I don't want you to be living for breaking out of heaven all the time. I think she also knows she has this box of Sour Patch Kids that she needs to attend to, but she's also like not sure if she finds out the results of that, if it would just be more hurtful to tell Dale.

0:44:51 Brennan: Kingston, give me an Insight check.

0:44:58 Lou: It's only a 15.

0:45:01 Brennan: Cool. I think Kingston maybe notices that Sofie is deep in thought. And I mean, he certainly notices that she changes her mind. But cool. Kingston takes off at the front door. I will say this though. JJ actually says,

0:45:23 JJ: Should somebody go with Kingston just to make sure he's okay? I can go with Kingston.

0:45:29 Sofia: Okay, fine. I'll go with Kingston, okay? [cast laughs]

0:45:31 Sofia: Kingston! If anyone's gonna fucking go it's gonna be me!

0:45:35 Brennan: You see JJ goes,

0:45:35 JJ: Whoa! I am sorry.

0:45:39 Murph: Cody was starting to go.

0:45:40 Sofia: Sorry, I know you're scared of me, JJ. I'm not a scary person.

0:45:43 Brennan: You see that JJ looks over at you, Ricky, who's the only person that he's told that he finds Sofia scary and he goes,

0:45:48 JJ: What the fuck, dude? [Emily laughs]

0:45:51 Ricky: I didn’t—

0:45:52 JJ: God! You told—

0:45:53 Ally: Can I talk to Sofia really quick?

0:45:55 Brennan: Yeah, go for it, Pete. [gentle piano music]

0:45:56 Ally: So I'm like,

0:45:56 Pete: Hey, you should go to JFK if you want. But also as somebody who is working through some stuff with some kind of unhealthy fallout from stuff like that we could like, you know, keep each other accountable.

0:46:17 Sofia: [strained, about to cry] I appreciate that, Pete. I'll just be straight. I might be pregnant. And I feel like if I am, I probably have to tell him. And I don't. So I'm just kind of, you know, figuring out. It's maybe more complicated, right?

0:46:32 Pete: I have three bricks of cocaine in my bag right now. [cast laughs]

0:46:37 Sofia: [wiping tears] Okay, okay.

0:46:38 Pete: Just bricks on bricks, and I'm supposed to sell it. And I should honestly just flush it. We need to go to a bathroom right now and I just need to fuckin' flush it.

0:46:48 Sofia: Is that why you tried to-? Yeah, no, let's do it. Let's go to a bathroom and you flush the cocaine, and I take the pregnancy test. [cast laughs]

0:46:58 Pete: Wait, you’re gonna pi— Okay, let's do it. Let's go.

0:47:01 Brennan: So, right before you guys are about to split up, Pete and Sofia have this tearful thing. Both—

0:47:08 Zac: Ricky's like, they have to go to the bathroom right now? [cast laughs]

0:47:13 Lou: I was described as having left. So I'm just like wandering away.

0:47:17 Emily: I think it's fine. I'm really fast and can catch up if I need to.

0:47:20 Brennan: Kingston's just wandering away towards the subway.

0:47:24 Cody: Kingston, they just went to the bathroom real quick. They just had to stop.

0:47:28 Kingston: Oh.

0:47:29 Pete: Just a second!

0:47:32 Iga: You've been in there like 20 minutes. What's going on?

0:47:36 Brennan: Yeah, Pete and Sofia-

0:47:38 Iga: If you need some prune juice I have some in my bag.

0:47:40 Brennan: So, Sofia you're in a stall next to Pete who's on his knees flushing cocaine.

0:47:46 Ally: I take out a knife and I just rip both bricks open, and it's the most counterintuitive thing I've ever done in my life. I'm just flipping them inside out into the toilet.

0:47:56 Brennan: You're also in Nod. So this toilet sprouts two eyes and goes,

0:48:00 Toilet: [Goofy-esque voice] Yum yum yum. I'm always hungry.

0:48:03 Pete: Oh shit! I'm sorry! I don't wanna get you high!

0:48:07 Toilet: [flushing] Woo! Holy shit! Oh my God! Oh my God!

0:48:15 Sofia: Don't make it look fun, toilet. Whatever you do, don't make it look fun.

0:48:17 Pete: Don’t do this to me, toilet!

0:48:18 Toilet: No, no, I'm not having a good time! I don't feel like I'm having fun. I just feel very productive. You guys wanna write a screenplay?

0:48:27 Pete: Yes.

0:48:28 Murph: Toilet usually eats shit. You don't have to feel bad. It's fine.

0:48:32 Ally: Okay, you're right. Okay, I like, I dump everything in there which is absolutely an insane amount of drugs. And then I wash my hands really quick, so I don't lick them. And then I just stand there like this. [holds their hands up in the air uncomfortably] (Zac laughs) (Emily and Siobhan laugh)

0:48:47 Brennan: Cool. Pete, awesome.

0:48:51 Ally: I should absolutely roll for whatever the fuck that was. We're good.

0:48:56 Brennan: Cool. [cast laughs]

0:49:00 Brennan: And Sofia.

0:49:04 Lou: Oh.

0:49:06 Brennan: One second.

0:49:08 Lou: Gotta roll for pregnancy?

0:49:11 Sofia: I just want to say, Pete, I just want to say thank you for doing this because I think the thing I was dreading the most was taking it alone because, you know, there was a time when Dale and I were trying and the idea of finding it out by myself was really, really-

0:49:29 Pete: Yeah, that's really major.

0:49:31 Emily: But I'm still gonna Minor Illusion it just to be, like, Sour Patch Kids, just a stick of Sour Patch Kids.

0:49:37 Ally: You're just peeing into Sour Patch Kids.

0:49:40 Emily: I'm still not fully there with this experience. So I need a little bit of—

0:49:47 Pete: So if it's a purple Sour Patch Kid, it's a positive. And if it's a yellow one, it's negative.

0:49:53 Sofia: I figured if like one at the top smiles, it's positive. (Lou laughs)

0:49:59 Brennan: Hey, Pete, as you're done flushing the cocaine, Sofia steps out of her stall with a smiling purple Sour Patch Kid popping out of the top of the box.

0:50:14 Pete: Okay.

0:50:16 Sofia: [sighs] Do you think that, do you think that, you know,

0:50:21 Emily: I fill him in on what me and Dale's last interaction was.

0:50:26 Sofia: Do you think that it is in his interest to know? Or is that me wanting him to know? Is it for me, me telling him, or is it for him? Is it good for him? Or is it bad for him?

0:50:42 Pete: I think you need to prioritize yourself in this moment maybe, so.

0:50:50 Sofia: I mean I'll tell him eventually.

0:50:51 Pete: You have me and other support if you want. Or if, I'm just saying it doesn't sound like he's necessarily in a place to provide consistent support for you right now.

0:51:06 Sofia: Yeah.

0:51:08 Pete: Also, sorry. I kept like being like, are we flirting? I just don't have very many like female friends and especially not in recovery. I'm just kind of in like a weird free fall. I’m sorry.

0:51:16 Sofia: I can't tell you how convenient it was because my mother keeps trying to set me up with people. And when we went home from Kingston's party, she was pointing out attractive men. And I was able to just say, hey I took a hard pass for Pete. It didn't work out. I got rejected. And so now she's gonna cling to that for a little bit.

0:51:35 Pete: Great, great. We can really play that up, but you know, I yeah. Okay, cool. We're just homies.

0:51:41 Sofia: Yeah. [cast laughs]

0:51:44 Sofia: We are.

0:51:45 Pete: Just me trying on new, like, friend language with my cool female friends. I don't have a lot of female friends which is kinda crazy 'cause I do have that POV in there somewhere.

0:51:54 Sofia: Yeah. I guess I'm sorry if this was really intense to experience such a female moment.

0:52:01 Pete: No, no, it was cool that we went into the men's room for all of this. [cast laughs]

0:52:06 Sofia: I did do it in a urinal, which felt-

0:52:08 Pete: It was cool, yeah.

0:52:08 Sofia: It feels like, you know, it feels like when you take an unexpected pregnancy test, it should be in the stupidest, most depressing way possible.

0:52:17 Pete: Absolutely. One leg up on a urinal just rocketing in.

0:52:20 Sofia: Peeing on a box of Sour Patch Kids.

0:52:23 Brennan: Two eyes sprout up on the urinal and go,

0:52:25 Urinal: [low, gravelly voice] I just want to say congratulations. That’s all I wanna say.

0:52:28 Sofia: Thank you so much.

0:52:30 Emily: I shake its hand by flushing it. [cast laughs]

0:52:33 Pete: Fuck! Um...

0:52:36 Sofia: Okay, all right. Then I'm gonna go with Kingston, but I'm gonna go with Kingston, but I'm not gonna try to find Dale. Pete gives Sofia a look.

0:52:48 Sofia: I'm not! I'm not! I'm serious!

0:52:51 Pete: So, you're just gonna go to hang out at the airport?

0:52:53 Sofia: Well, Kingston needs detail.

0:52:56 Pete: [unconvinced] Mm-hm. Yeah. [cast laughs]

0:53:00 Pete: I just think you're gonna have to roll the dice a little on that choice, but it's up to you, Sofia.

0:53:11 Sofia: Okay, I'll stay here. And I will process the many, many emotions I am feeling from this result. Thank you.

0:53:22 Pete: That's a lot though. That's really major. That's really fuckin' major. I've never been through something like that.

0:53:27 Sofia: Yeah, I didn't expect it to be this way.

0:53:32 Pete: Yeah, fuck.

0:53:35 Sofia: Anyway, so yeah, JJ, if you want to go with—

0:53:40 Ally: JJ's just in the bathroom peeing.

0:53:42 Emily: Can I cast Jump on JJ to try and give him a head start so he can catch up with Kingston?

0:53:48 Brennan: He goes,

0:53:48 JJ: Woo!

0:53:48 Brennan: And begins bounding down the streets, like,

0:53:51 JJ: Moon bounce!

0:53:57 Brennan: Cool.

0:54:00 Pete: I'm a dead man. But yeah, cool. (Emily laughs)

0:54:04 Brennan: Kingston.

0:54:05 Lou: Yeah.

0:54:06 Brennan: You're like halfway to the subway right now. And JJ comes bounding after you and just goes,

0:54:13 JJ: Hey, what's up, man? I just wanted to make sure that you had some company on your expedish, unless you don't feel like you-?

0:54:22 Kingston: Oh, JJ, you're more than welcome, man. Yeah, come along. You ever wanted to see what Heaven's like?

0:54:30 JJ: What?

0:54:32 Brennan: He said,

0:54:32 JJ: I thought you were going to JFK.

0:54:35 Kingston: Here JFK is Heaven. It's pretty, come on, man. It's the Unsleeping City. It only gets crazier.

0:54:43 Brennan: Kingston, as you say that train pulls into the station and takes off like a rollercoaster over the Manhattan skyline, just rails floating in sky. And you take off. We're gonna scoot on down to those of you in the Metropolitan Museum of Memories. Everybody who's in the Metropolitan Museum of Memories, go ahead and give me either Investigation, Perception, or Arcana based on, like, what you're looking for.

0:55:17 Zac: What are we looking for?

0:55:20 Murph: Yeah.

0:55:21 Zac: I'm not sure what we're...? Like what specifically.

0:55:22 Emily: I mean, I'll look for memories of Tony.

0:55:27 Ally: Cool, I'm gonna look for memories of the Vox that disappeared.

0:55:32 Brennan: Hell yeah.

0:55:33 Ally: On an expedition past Nod.

0:55:36 Zac: I'll look for the pigeon.

0:55:39 Brennan: Cool.

0:55:40 Siobhan: Yeah, I want to look for memories of, is this just stuff in New York?

0:55:46 Brennan: This is just stuff in New York, but you could look for other types of memories if you want. I think I would like to look for the other, like, other stories of Polish people coming to New York.

0:56:05 Brennan: Hell yeah.

0:56:06 Siobhan: And I rolled a nat 1, so I'm gonna use a luck point.

0:56:08 Murph: Oh my God.

0:56:09 Emily: Can I also keep an eye out for the thing that I asked Pete about to ask Nod about? If there are any memories like that?

0:56:18 Brennan: Yeah.

0:56:20 Emily: I rolled a 2.

0:56:21 Murph: Oh my god. [cast laughs]

0:56:22 Siobhan: Yeah, I rolled a 3.

0:56:24 Ally: I rolled a 19 arcana.

0:56:24 Brennan: Cool.

0:56:26 Emily: It's technically a 9.

0:56:27 Murph: I think that Cody is now, I think the only way with which he has any kind of Insight or anything is in, like, sort of like a conspiracy type way. And so I think, like, it's starting to hit him like what JJ's doing with like getting back cultural artifacts, the things that like Ricky was saying to him, all of this stuff, and then all of the stuff with Gladiator. I think Cody is like realizing a little bit that he doesn't actually know anything about any of the things he's using. So I think, I don't know if it's a memory thing or I think Cody is going to kind of self-consciously go to the exhibit and just like read the things.

0:57:11 Brennan: Incredible. Incredible.

0:57:15 Murph: 'Cause he's like

0:57:15 Cody: I'm a fuckin' cultural Gladiator dude. Fuck! [cast laughs]

0:57:21 Murph: Like, he's like realizing it a little bit. And so like still with his cool sword is just, like, dragging it just like,

0:57:26 Cody: Yeah, I think there's some fuckin' memories over here or whatever.

0:57:29 Murph: And then just gonna go try to read stuff.

0:57:32 Brennan: Yeah. Well, you know, your weapon is basically only now these like mythical magical blades. You begin putting back all of the historical weapons in their spot and sitting down and actually looking at the time periods and places that all this stuff came from and begin to see the artistry of all these different weapons, materials. Cody, go ahead and give me a History check with advantage.

0:58:06 Murph: 17.

0:58:09 Brennan: I think Cody walks away with a lot of appreciation for all these different time periods and the historical reasons that shaped the artistry and the styles and why things were this way. And you begin to see the stories around all of these different kind of like warrior traditions through the past. And I think have a long moment of reckoning with, like, you have been, like, absorbing all of this stuff second and third hand through media, you know what I mean? And you have this giant, like, double weapon on your back. Yeah, I think you probably look at, like, the swords, like all the history of the swords and then being like, yeah, like, these sorts were made to be effective and like a lot of the, you know, like here's some like peasant’s weapons from the time and here's the advance that brought this around and the status and culture afforded to different weapons. A lot of these were like, a lot of the heavy armors were just for aristocrats who were the only people that could afford them. And others are like, oh, like, the reason that this intense steel process had to happen this way was because of the type of iron that was available in this land. And you're seeing too that like, the plethora of different cultures that have these weapons. It's like, oh look at Damascus steel, look at this other kinds of like from all over the world in different places. And I think Cody probably feels like a more centered place with a lot more appreciation for this stuff rather than just like scanning Etsy for whichever weapon has like the most spikes on it.

0:59:53 Murph: I think this is such like a short amount of time that I think Cody is just like, all this does is make him realize that he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. So, he's just like furiously taking pictures of things to Google later to like read about.

1:00:12 Brennan: Hell yeah. Did anyone else get above a 15 on their check?

1:00:17 Zac: I got a 19.

1:00:19 Brennan: And Ricky's looking for Perry the Pigeon, right?

1:00:21 Zac: Yeah, just curious if there's any info there.

1:00:25 Brennan: Yeah. You see Perry and see more recent memories. Perry is living in a wonderful coop in Brooklyn. You see that it's like a kind of like Brooklyn-y food co-op, there's like a garden and stuff. But you see that Perry is living in a lovely little home that is protected by the Umbral Arcana, so it looks like a sort of multi-animal. There is a pigeon coop with some like pet pigeons that are being kept. There's a rabbit coop. But around that you see that there's actually, like, a small little village and there's a little wooden hutch where Perry is happily living with a rabbit together. And you see that he's got a little two year sobriety chip next to him. And you see he's got tiny little like acorn mugs. And he and this rabbit are sitting on a little love seat made out of, like, dollhouse material together each reading a newspaper and kind of leaning their heads against each other. The Tiny Animal Gazette.

1:01:39 Ally: Did you say Brooklyn co-op pigeon village?

1:01:44 Brennan: Yeah, Brooklyn co-op pigeon village.

1:01:46 Ally: Cool cool.

1:01:48 Emily: [laughs] True clowns. Brooklyn co-op pigeon village.

1:01:54 Brennan: Awesome.

1:01:55 Siobhan: Can I do an investigation check to see if there's, like, a cute little magnet or a bookmark or something that I can bring back to my kids?

1:02:03 Brennan: Yes, absolutely. Go for it.

1:02:05 Siobhan: Great. That I also rolled a nat 1. Boy.

1:02:08 Brennan: Oh no!

1:02:09 Ally: Get ‘em out here.

1:02:11 Lou: Get ‘em out.

1:02:13 Siobhan: My rolling today.

1:02:14 Zac: Can I help you guys?

1:02:17 Brennan: I will say Pete, you're looking for Vox stuff, right? Iga and Sofie. Sofie got a 9. And what did Iga get?

1:02:28 Siobhan: I also got a 9.

1:02:30 Brennan: Cool. You're looking for memories of Polish people. You're having a hard time looking at memories because your chest is super charging this wing of the Met. You see that memories are flooding out of the chest into this wing, and you can feel, again whatever is inside the chest is powerfully connected to memory. And you see, actually, I'm gonna let everyone that didn't roll with advantage roll with advantage because of the presence of the chest here. [Ally whistles] Siobhan looks up and shakes her head.

1:03:20 Emily: I rolled another 2.

1:03:21 Siobhan: I'm gonna fuckin' use my last luck point. I rolled a 4. I don't know what is happening to me today.

1:03:26 Brennan: Terrible, terrible.

1:03:27 Emily: I rolled the same exact thing that I did.

1:03:29 Siobhan: Oh there we go. I rolled a 20. There we go.

1:03:32 Brennan: Is that a nat 20 for real?

1:03:33 Siobhan: It is finally a fuckin' nat 20.

1:03:35 Ally: Hell yeah.

1:03:36 Siobhan: Two luck points and advantage.

1:03:39 Murph: Oh my god.

1:03:40 Brennan: Iga, a bunch of memories are flooding out of the chest. You can see that, like, once again the magic of the chest. You also see that the chest now is existing in two layers. You see the old Polish forest is underneath the city. It's not gone. It looks like the city is molding around it to protect it. That there is like this… It's like developing a double layer of, like, exoskeleton to protect against something that is trying to erase the city and the forest. Something is coming for both. You look, and you can tell that the time is approaching. Like, the secrets in the castle are waiting for Iga. In terms of Polish people in New York, you see tons of them. You see Greenpoint neighborhood, Polish bakeries opening up. I think you also see a powerful magical connection from here to a place. You see that your chest is protecting not only itself but this wing of the museum and a number of other places out there. And as you specifically look for other Polish people that came to New York, you see it's protecting Greenpoint in a very real way, but also you see farther out through window of the Met. You see a couple of museums, a couple of memorials, and places throughout the city that it's protecting. And you see that there is a source of tremendous friction where it looks like the chest is most actively fighting something. You see Ellis Island. And as you think about, like, the Polish people that have come to the city throughout the centuries, you see that something is that the biggest, like, battle front of your chest is over at Ellis Island. For Sofia on that nine, the memories you most want to find of other memories of things that happened like this in the city, you find none. You do find memories of Tony. You do find some memories of young Tony. Tony, young guy. It's the 1980s. He's in his early twenties. See he's got a wedding band on his finger.

1:06:38 Emily: Did he have one when I met him?

1:06:41 Brennan: No, he did not. You see him showing up looking bleary-eyed, intense, angry, violent. You see him getting arrested for public brawling. And you finally see him. He can't sleep. He's like an intense insomniac. Every time he goes to sleep, he can't find any rest. And he gets to a point of insomnia where he's been awake for so many days that after about three days of being awake he begins to see the Unsleeping City. And you see him find the fire escape above Spaghetti's Bakery and climb up and find the Monastery of the Midnight Sun. You see he quickly becomes obsessed. He burns a house down in Staten Island. And you see crazy pushups, up all night studying the scrolls, quickly becomes the First Fist of the Order. And you see he gets into a screaming fight with Jackson Wei as he's First Fist. Jackson Wei is like two or three years younger than him. But Jackson Wei joins, like, late 80s. Like, late 80s, early 90s around there after Tony's already been at the Order for a couple of years. Jackson is yelling at him about going too far, about like, it's like, “for you it's a vendetta, it's personal, your judgment is blinded.” And around like 1991 or so, Tony gets into a big fight with the then-abbess of the Concrete Fist, with Jackson, with a young Solomon at that point. And there's clearly a lot of camaraderie here. You're seeing the negative moments that you're kind of looking for. But basically, you know, Tony goes like, you know,

1:08:45 Tony: You should all fuckin' think about it, all right? You should do this!

1:08:48 Brennan: And they go like, you see Jackson going like,

1:08:51 Jackson: Tony, what the fuck is the matter with you? Look, we have a job to protect the city. You don't give a shit about the city anymore. Look what you fuckin' did to yourself.

1:09:00 Brennan: And he points at Tony who is shirtless, and you see that there is a big scar over Tony's heart. And you see that Tony has this confrontation where he says he's gonna move out and start his own order somewhere. It's actually gonna look to get the job done and finish what they started.

1:09:23 Emily: Do I get a sense of what "get the job done" means?

1:09:26 Brennan: You see Cindy having a very tearful thing. And after that confrontation, Tony comes and apologizes to everyone and makes amends and is like, "I'm gonna step down as the First Fist. It's clear that, you know, Jackson is the superior monk to me, and we had this disagreement and it became too quarrelsome." But basically it's this thing where you see Jackson and Cindy having kind of a tearful conversation where Cindy's like,

1:09:59 Cindy: Tony's a good, like, isn't Tony a good guy?

1:10:04 Brennan: And Jackson goes,

1:10:05 Jackson: I don't know what the fuck 'a good guy' is. Look, we have to be pragmatic. We have to stay rooted in what is real. We all know that Tony has a lot of pain. Pain makes people do some things sometimes that are ill-advised. We protect New York City from beings of the dreaming. That doesn't mean you should go in and change your own body, your own soul, so that you don't dream anymore.

1:10:43 Brennan: And you see that what Tony did to himself is found something in a scroll somewhere in the monastery, did something some ritual involving a pressure point or some sort of like ritualistic scarring of his own heart tissue. And you see him go out and you remember the name he gave to his order in San Francisco was the Order of the Iron Heart. You—

1:11:10 Emily: Does it seem as though he chose not to dream because he saw the dreaming as the source of his pain?

1:11:22 Brennan: Pete, you rolled a 19, right?

1:11:27 Ally: Oh no, I re-rolled with advantage. I have a 26.

1:11:33 Brennan: [blows out an impressed breath] There's a third Vox Phantasma.

1:11:36 Ally: I knew it! [gentle, rolling dream music]

1:11:38 Brennan: There's a third Vox-

1:11:40 Ally: Is that the wedding ring?

1:11:43 Brennan: Heather Simos. [cast gasps]

1:11:46 Emily: What? What!?

1:11:50 Ally: Yeah, exactly.

1:11:51 Brennan: Heather Simos was Vox Phantasma for three days in the 1980s. [Siobhan gasps]

1:12:01 Brennan: Nod chose her. She was a Cindy Lauper, Staten Island, 1980’s, out at the club every night. And Sofia and Pete, you meet up where her and Tony's memories meet. And Tony was not awakened to the Unsleeping City. He was head over heels in love with Heather. Heather was chosen by Nod, and you can see Nod trying to warn her, but Vox Phantasma throughout history have all had problems with chaos and recklessness. Heather was immediately like, "Who the fuck are you? What the fuck is this?" And when she looked out to the greater dreaming, she had a spirit of wild impulsive curiosity. Did not, like Pete saw before with Josefina Gatsby, did not have a Kingston Brown, did not have a Ricky Matsui, did not have a Sofia Lee. And she ventured out into the deep, deep dreaming past the shores of the Sixth Borough.

1:13:18 Ally: Can I see the moment that she got? Can I see what happened to her?

1:13:23 Brennan: Iga, you come through. Pete, the only reason these memories are being returned is because Iga's chest is here. Iga's chest is a more powerful attachment to the past and memory and story than even this museum in the land of dreams. And it is replenishing everything that is here. The three of you now stand and look out and see Heather flying in this 1980s, like, disco light ball, high hair, crazy like purple eyeshadow. The huge bangles. Like,

1:14:02 Heather: This is fuckin' awesome! [synth-heavy 80s music]

1:14:05 Sofia: She's beautiful.

1:14:06 Iga: I used to look like that. I can still do it.

1:14:11 Siobhan: I cast- [Ally laughs]

1:14:15 Siobhan: Disguise Self on myself? So I look like what I looked like in the 80s?

1:14:21 Sofia: Beautiful as well.

1:14:22 Pete: [appreciatively] Iga, wow.

1:14:24 Iga: You know.

1:14:26 Brennan: Heather Simos flies out. And Nod, the Gray Orphan, is reaching their hand out to them being like,

1:14:31 Nod: Heather, stay within the Sixth Borough! You still have much to learn!

1:14:36 Brennan: And you see Heather goes like,

1:14:36 Heather: It's dreams! Anything's possible! Let's make more!

1:14:43 Brennan: And starts creating more city out in the deep, goes deeper and deeper, creates a sky of even more stars and purple. Pete, you see very small in the nighttime sky some of the purple begins to fade as a spot grows. A gray spot. And as it approaches and enlarges, it is a silhouette of a figure wearing a suit that approaches. It extends a hand to Heather. Heather goes,

1:15:22 Heather: Hi, nice to meet you. I'm the Vox Phantasma. My name's Heather.

1:15:28 Brennan: Reaches a hand out. The hand extends. Does Pete know what an anglerfish is?

1:15:36 Ally: Yeah, definitely. He's seen "Finding Nemo." [cast laughs]

1:15:41 Emily: So, that's the little lantern.

1:15:43 Brennan: What you thought of, Pete, as being this entity, the little silhouette human shape that bleaches out the color behind it. That's just a little lantern of something you cannot see. Heather reaches out a hand and vanishes. She turns around to look at Nod as she's being erased from the feet up, tears bursting and running her mascara. And she says,

1:16:17 Heather: Nod, I don't understand! Tell To-

1:16:21 Brennan: And is gone. Lou laughs a little and shakes his head.

1:16:26 Iga: So, we're saying that Tony killed the Nod of San Francisco, right? That seems like it's probably a thing that happened? He's out for revenge, and he's out to kill the monarchs of dream?

1:16:43 Sofia: I think it could be possible.

1:16:45 Pete: That could be possible.

1:16:47 Sofia: I think that there's a part of me that holds on to a hope that we might find Heather still.

1:16:58 Iga: Yeah, possibly. But that doesn't stop Tony from being broken by this, you know?

1:17:04 Ally: And that's what almost happened to me with the Banishment run in, with the anglerfish.

1:17:11 Brennan: If you had rolled a 19.

1:17:13 Ally: Yeah, yeah.

1:17:14 Brennan: [seriously] For sure.

1:17:15 Zac: So, does that mean that we can assume that's exactly what happened to the other two Vox Phantasmas that disappeared?

1:17:23 Brennan: Yeah, Pete, on that 26, you see the lives of Josefina and Hans from their time periods. Hans was just the Vox Phantasma for a lot longer before he eventually was like, I want to go on an expedition into the deeper dreaming. I just want to see for myself. He was not reckless about it. Josefina was a little bit sadder. In 1929 she just resigned herself and was like, there is something out there. And it was almost a sense of vertigo from her. She was like, "I know this thing is out there. Isn't it going to get me eventually?" And there was just a deep despair, and she had nothing anchoring her anymore. Pete, you see, what led Josefina there was the fact that whatever this thing is, it's outside of Nod, but it is also somehow in the waking world as well. Like, this thing works on people in the same way that dreams work on people even when they're just asleep. And it hit Josefina with isolation, loneliness, a severing from real people and real things, a sense of being adrift in a world she did not understand. Until eventually she just physically came here and left into the deeper dreaming until she was found by this thing.

1:18:57 Ally: I have a question because I know some people believe that dreams are your brain filtering short-term memory into long-term. Is that something that might be like grounding to people and like combat this sense of like rootlessness and depression and despair? Are they like, do dreams combat this horrible, like, yeah, I don't know.

1:19:25 Brennan: I think, Pete, give me an Arcana check.

1:19:33 Ally: Baby, that is a 28.

1:19:37 Brennan: Pete, I think cracks this. I think Pete goes like, yes, dreams do help fight this but it's almost like people need an attachment to three different things at the same time in order to be able to fight this feeling of isolation. They need the ability to dream and hope and imagine a better future, which is a magic that Pete is intimately familiar with. They need an attachment to the real and, like, the people and communities and the beating heart of the real world, the moment that they are in and a sense of belonging. And you think of Kingston. And you look at Iga's chest and think about memory and think about the past and an idea of reckoning with, but also understanding and knowing the story of where you came from or where the people that you love came from and what has happened in the past.

1:20:49 Ally: Whoa.

1:20:52 Brennan: And I think Pete knows that there is a Kingston, that there's a Vox Populi and a Vox Phantasma, but I don't know that, you know that there's not another Vox. You know, that sort of duality.

1:21:05 Ally: There's just a box.

1:21:07 Brennan: Hey, a box and two Voxes. A Vox on box.

1:21:11 Ally: The box Phantasma.

1:21:12 Brennan: The box Phantasma, yeah. Yeah, I think Pete feels that other thing though.

1:21:16 Ally: Whoa.

1:21:17 Brennan: We're gonna cut from here and your guys' awesome moving through the Hall of Memories. Kingston, you take a long ride out with JJ. You get to the sky train which is the little heavenly train that connects this line to JFK. And you get to a kiosk. JJ's looking around. And you see that there is an angelic attendant looking and being like,

1:21:51 Attendant: Oh, hello, Mr. Brown. Are you here to claim your ticket today?

1:21:59 Kingston: Oh, no, no, no, no. Me and my friend here are just visiting Alejandro. Meeting him at the Cinnabon.

1:22:06 Attendant: Oh, understood. Okay, well we will...

1:22:11 Brennan: You see that she looks down and goes,

1:22:12 Attendant: There's actually, there are two tickets waiting for you here. We, obviously you need a ticket to be able to proceed into the terminal.

1:22:19 Kingston: Yes.

1:22:20 Attendant: Huh? It's a very short flight. Are you and your companion taking a flight from JFK to LaGuardia?

1:22:27 Kingston: [with slight disapproval] I guess so.

1:22:29 Attendant: Okay, that's a seven minute flight. [cast laughs]

1:22:34 Brennan: It's like the cheapest ticket Alejandro could buy to like let you get into the terminal.

1:22:40 Attendant: A direct flight, JFK to LaGuardia.

1:22:44 Kingston: Didn't even know it existed, but here we are.

1:22:46 Attendant: Honestly, sir, I did not either.

1:22:50 Brennan: You and JJ move to the terminal. And so, this is like the airport, and you see up like the pearly gates up above in the clouds and the planes going up there. So, you're kind of in this, like you're on the doorway of Heaven here in the airport. You see tons of people looking around excitedly to fly off to their final resting place. People, you know, meeting other people and saying, hello and hi. And you go to a Cinnabon and you see, waiting there with a big cinnamon bun in front of him and two others waiting is your old friend, Alejandro Ortiz. He gets up. A pair of wings sort of flash off his back. Both angelic but also kind of wizardly. There's sort of abjurative runes that surround them. He goes,

1:23:37 Alejandro: Kingston Brown. I knew you would think of me to summon me to help you, my good friend. [goes for a hug]

1:23:45 Kingston: Hey, had to bring you out of retirement. I know you still can shake it, all right.

1:23:48 Alejandro: Right before you summon me, I look at Maria and I say, I'm getting too old for this shit. And it was so cool.

1:23:56 Kingston: There you go! There you go! I hope you're ready to say it again. You know, that's something I can do on the regular now. So, you probably gonna be back in action sometime soon.

1:24:07 Alejandro: Kingston, I cannot wait. This will be a true honor to come back. You know it, You look, you look great. Can I say something to you, Kingston? You have a little pep in your step. And I mean that in an arcane way. There's like a little bit of levitation around you.

1:24:25 Kingston: Oh, well, you know, I'm spending a lot more time with Liz now and things are going well, you know. And I don't know. I'm taking a little bit more time for me. And I think it's paying off in a big way. Also by the way, this is JJ. JJ, this is Alejandro Ortiz. He was the old head of the Gramercy Occult Society before he died.

1:24:47 Brennan: You see JJ goes,

1:24:47 JJ: Oh my God. Alejandro Ortiz, you're legendary. It's an honor. It's an honor to meet you.

1:24:55 Brennan: Alejandro smiles and goes,

1:24:57 Alejandro: Oh, this is young JJ. A pleasure to meet you, JJ. Esther is of course a master wizard. You're in great hands. And I am very glad that she is reaching out to promising young wizards such as yourself. Where is your spellbook?

1:25:14 Brennan: JJ sort of waggles his laptop. Alejandro gives Kingston a very knowing look. And he's like,

1:25:18 Alejandro: Kids these days.

1:25:21 Kingston: These kids these days, right? I don't know what to say, you know.

1:25:25 Brennan: He's like,

1:25:25 Alejandro: For me, I like the must of an old grimoire. You know a tome that has the smell of, but you know that's—

1:25:33 Kingston: It's the same reason I'll never buy an iPad, you know. iPod? Is that what they call it? JJ, is that what they call it? Is it an iPod?

1:25:40 JJ: Two different products actually. You can get an iPod or an iPad.

1:25:44 Kingston: See, it's something about holding it, you know? It's just like knowing that the music is right there in your hands, you know?

1:25:51 Brennan: Alejandro has JJ take a seat and says,

1:25:53 Alejandro: But it is an honest pleasure. And I'm glad to know that the society is in good hands.

1:25:58 Brennan: Alejandro looks at you, Kingston, and goes,

1:26:01 Alejandro: Yes, it has been a busy three years since I was unfortunately, my passing. But also I was 92 years old. That's a great run.

1:26:12 Kingston: You did it well. You did it well.

1:26:14 Alejandro: That's wild. The amount of dangerous situations I found myself in. The occult world I was ensconced in for 70 years. I mean, that's wild. That's a long time.

1:26:27 Brennan: JJ smiles, and Alejandro looks at you and says,

1:26:33 Alejandro: You are growing even more powerful, Kingston. To be able to ask for aid from paradise and to have me appear is quite a feat, my friend.

1:26:44 Kingston: Yeah. I don't know. It seems like the city is in real trouble right now. And I don't know. I think there's part of me that, I think the city recognizes it. I think we're up against something tremendous. You know, speaking of which, you know, I think there's a lot that we need to be doing. So, you know, as I am so excited to be here and catch up with you, is there something you wanted to talk about?

1:27:10 Brennan: Alejandro nods and says,

1:27:14 Alejandro: Well, I want, I have a request from a friend who no longer is able to travel in other places as I am to please check in on Sofia. There is much love sent from the other side. He specifically asked not to mention his name for fear of upsetting her, but just for you to look after her and ask after her. Also I wanted to check in with you to ask, I know that you will handle business in the side of the waking world. You of course are speaking on behalf always of the people of New York. However even in paradise were the reverberations of your declaration of war heard. And I want you to know that if there's anything we can do from paradise to aid you, I am still a resource in that way. My eye.

1:28:21 Brennan: Pew. His golden eye appears.

1:28:24 Alejandro: Sees much.

1:28:28 Brennan: He says,

1:28:28 Alejandro: What is it you are planning on doing? And maybe there's some way I can help.

1:28:34 Kingston: Well, I mean, we've come to understand that Gladiator is in some way aware, and it is interacting with this greater force in dream. And I mean, at this point, I think we have a lot of questions with regard to what that thing is, what that entity is. I mean, if there's any illumination you can provide with regard to that, this thing, this deeper dream, I mean is there? Yeah, that would be.

1:29:08 Brennan: Alejandro looks and says,

1:29:11 Alejandro: There is much that the Gray Orphan will know that I do not about the nature of this deeper entity.

1:29:20 Brennan: Alejandro taps his head, pulls out his Juul.

1:29:23 Alejandro: [takes a drag] That’s—

1:29:26 Kingston: You know I hate that.

1:29:28 Alejandro: My lungs are made of light! I cannot get popcorn lung!

1:29:33 Kingston: It just says something though. It's just a choice that you're making. You know, meditate.

1:29:40 Alejandro: You want me to meditate?

1:29:42 Kingston: Yes, I want you to meditate.

1:29:43 Alejandro: I'm going to go to paradise where everything is literally perfect and I'm going to meditate.

1:29:48 Kingston: You know how many gurus are up there that you could be working with? I mean, you could work with the greatest.

1:29:52 Alejandro: JJ, can you believe this? Can you believe this man to speak to his elders so disrespectfully?

1:29:56 Kingston: You can probably actually talk to Buddha. You could go find Buddha and learn from him. You have that opportunity.

1:30:02 Alejandro: I talk to Buddha all the time. Buddha is everywhere! Buddha is completely, we are. Okay, listen.

1:30:10 Kingston: You know.

1:30:11 Alejandro: I hope you know, okay. Kingston, for you I will put the Juul away, but I will say this, your young friend Pete and Sofia as well and the rest of your companions have their work cut out for them. In the history of New York City it has always been the waking world marching forward and the dream world in this relationship of encroaching, approaching, infesting, et cetera. And not really until we encounter Pete. And he is so heroic to save Nod and join with you. And we have the Vox Populi and Vox Phantasma at the same time. Do we see, no. The denizens of the dreaming are New Yorkers themselves as well. The Concrete Fist was too aggressive. The Gramercy Occult Society we were, I wish when I was still alive I had known more about the Sixth Borough to know, hey, this is not merely a chaotic place of danger. This is a realm. We learned that the gray baby was themselves an ally that helped us defeat the American Dream and reseal it back behind the golden door. We learned all these things three years ago. The dream pushes always on the waking world but now we know better. My advice to you, Kingston Brown, my old friend, from a wizard— Alejandro’s golden eye shines.

1:31:40 Alejandro: —is this: Dream can push on the waking world. Maybe it is time for the waking world to push on the dream. The things you do with the real people of New York can push back the tide just as strong as this tide coming from here. This I know.

1:32:07 Kingston: That's not bad. That's pretty good. That's pretty good.

1:32:10 Alejandro: This is why you keep a guy like me around.

1:32:12 Kingston: I mean, a hundred percent, a hundred percent.

1:32:15 Lou: I give him a big hug. And then I think we just enjoy Cinnabons for a little bit.

1:32:22 Brennan: [laughs] Hell yes!

1:32:25 Lou: And yeah. Can I get a bunch of little, can I get a big old bag of bits? [cast laughs]

1:32:31 Lou: They travel better, you know?

1:32:33 Brennan: These are, by the way, in this sort of sixth borough version of JFK, you know these Cinnabons are next level.

1:32:41 Lou: I'm assuming it's just like the top, but like three times in a row. [cast laughs]

1:32:47 Lou: Rather than a full bun.

1:32:50 Siobhan: It's mostly cream cheese frosting. [cast laughs]

1:32:54 Brennan: Yeah, you see you, JJ, and Alejandro just load up. Alejandro has big bags. He goes back to his flight with a big arm full of Cinnabons and goes,

1:33:02 Alejandro: Kingston, good luck out there. And you know if you ever need me, you need only say my name three times and also cast that spell. That's also necessary.

1:33:17 Kingston: Of course, of course. Yeah, I'm on it. And hey, thank you for your words, Alejandro. I think you're gonna feel us.

1:33:24 Brennan: He kind of goes,

1:33:24 Alejandro: Ooh! So ominous in a cool way! Okay.

1:33:28 Kingston: Yeah, right. Okay.

1:33:31 Brennan: He walks off. JJ, kind of, as you say that JJ kind of like bobs with a little bit of a strut just being next to you. Like

1:33:39 JJ: Yeah, that sounded badass.

1:33:41 Kingston: Yeah, they gonna feel us. They gonna feel us.

1:33:43 JJ: "hey are gonna feel us, yeah.

1:33:47 Brennan: You guys head out. The group meets back up in Brooklyn underneath this giant cloud, and Pete flies all of you up to Nod's bedside. You see Pizza Rat is still there. He goes,

1:34:02 Pizza Rat: Hi everybody. Good to see ya. How are y'all doin'?

1:34:05 Kingston: Hey, pizza rat.

1:34:07 Iga: My son showed me your video. It's very good. Very funny.

1:34:11 Pizza Rat: Yeah, it's like hey, only in New York. [laughs]

1:34:14 Iga: Only in New York.

1:34:15 Pizza Rat: Yeah, a rat with a slice of pizza. Anyways, so.

1:34:21 Brennan: And Kingston, you see the Gray Orphan getting bedrest. They have one of those old, like, Victorian, like, you know, like, hot water bags or I guess cold water bags with like a little screw cap on it, kind of on their head. Go ahead and give me a Medicine check.

1:34:40 Lou: Oh, what if I did just so poorly.

1:34:42 Ally: Can I give you the help action?

1:34:43 Zac: Yeah, can I help?

1:34:44 Brennan: Yeah, go for it.

1:34:45 Lou: Yeah, everyone get in here. That'll be a 23. [gentle, soft piano]

1:34:55 Brennan: Hell yes. Kingston, you walk up. And Pete, as you give the help action, Pete just conjures up a table of glittering like some plastic gloves, some swabs, a little thing of like different medicine.

1:35:15 Ally: Some PPE.

1:35:16 Brennan: A little PPE. And you— I'm going to say too, that Iga, you see that, you watch a little like swiff of magic puff out of the chest as Pete is collecting this dream material and become a little IV bag that Kingston is able to put to work right away. And Pete, that shit you said about memories you realize is true. Like, about dream's relationship to memories because you go like, experiences, AKA the present, become memories and stories, AKA the past, which is the raw material you need to imagine the future. And there's this thing of sweeping up Iga's box becomes this like sort of jiggling colorful bag of dream phantasmagoria material. But there is a thing that Pete goes like, yeah, like legends and stories and myths and things like that are kind of the raw grist we use to create the phantasms of dreaming. Like, all of these things exist in this cohesive ecosystem. And as Kingston gets this IV bag as basically like liquid food for Nod, you see Kingston, as you touch Nod's arm they sort of open their jet black eyes and look up and smile at you, and you see reflected in their eyes the dream you had that made you levitate earlier. And it feels purely good to you. Your coat whips up. And Kingston, you feel that you could fly right now.

1:37:14 Lou: I mean, I think I choose not to 'cause I'm actively inserting things into a child, but I do, like, I hold onto that very tightly and will take it with me probably from this place.

1:37:31 Brennan: I love that. Nod looks up at all of you and says,

1:37:32 Nod: Thank you. Thank you for coming here. Thanks, Pete. Good to see ya. Sorry I got got like that. Thank goodness you came and rescued me, huh? I'm back now.

1:37:56 Brennan: You see Nod looks down. You see Times Square in the distance. There are now two more Gladiator billboards down there amongst the others. Nod looks up and says,

1:38:09 Nod: Well I'm finally back and awake. Looks like y'all could use an explanation.

1:38:21 Pete: Please.

1:38:22 Nod: Okay. There's a lot of other monarchs kind of like me out there. And they're really powerful, but we're kind of the small ones, you know? Because like, so Nuria, they were the the Monarch of the Bay of Slumber and...

1:38:58 Ricky: Bay?

1:38:59 Sofia: What is that called in the waking world?

1:39:01 Ricky: The Bay Area? [Brennan laughs]

1:39:03 Sofia: Was it called San Francisco?

1:39:08 Brennan: Nod, uh… [laughs] Nod nods. Yeah. And they say,

1:39:13 Nod: I'm really not gonna try to brag, but of my siblings that, we kind of like people and we kind of like dreamers and we're not really like afraid of the waking world that much. We kind of want to be as close to it as possible. And of my siblings like that, there's sort of a, well, I don't want to brag, but because New Yorkers don't really sleep that much and the city's sort of awake all the time, it's really easy to have our dream realm be very powerful here. And other places are really, really magical but some places are more tied to like a Faerie realm or other places are more tied to Heaven or Hell or other places of myth and legend. But every place still has people that go to sleep. So, there is like a dream version in every place, but some people say that I'm the greatest of them but you know, that's, I don't.

1:40:22 Pete: Brag it up.

1:40:23 Nod: No.

1:40:23 Kingston: Go ahead, Nod. Go ahead, Nod.

1:40:26 Pete: Brag it up!

1:40:26 Kingston: Go ahead, Nod!

1:40:28 Nod: Okay well, yeah. But New York has a unique relationship to the Dreaming. So, a lot of times I try to send help to my other siblings like Nuria in the Bay of Slumber or others that are around when they're in trouble. We also have older siblings that are way bigger than us. And they don't really depend on dreamers. They're big, and they don't come near the waking world most of the time which is really a good thing. One of our older ones is out there right now. And basically, I went out to help Nuria in person. And I left the sixth borough for a little while and I went out there because the Bay of Slumber was kind of falling apart. It was sort of in a bad way out there but also because there was someone out there that really, really hates me that I feel like I owed something to.

1:41:58 Sofia: Was his name Tony?

1:42:00 Pete: And it was because of Heather?

1:42:03 Brennan: Nod looks up and weeps and weeps and weeps. Jet black tears streaming down their face.

1:42:08 Ally: I hold Nod. I put Nod in the Babybjorn that I brought.

1:42:11 Brennan: You get a Babybjorn for Nod. Nod goes like,

1:42:12 Nod: Heather was—

1:42:14 Emily: The Noddle, the Nod swaddle.

1:42:17 Ally: Yeah, I noddle swad.

1:42:19 Brennan: Nod goes,

1:42:23 Nod: Heather was so beautiful and strong and wild. And I knew that she… I knew that it was, I just thought with a little more time, I thought if we could get over, get over that first rocky period where she was gonna be learning that she would have been a really wonderful Vox Phantasma. I guess I wasn't fast enough to give all those lessons. And I feel so awful. She wasn't even here long enough for any of her memories to make it into the museum.

1:43:11 Pete: Maybe we saw some of her memories in the museum actually.

1:43:14 Nod: Really, how?

1:43:16 Ally: We explain the chest and its power and how Umbra's pushed away.

1:43:21 Brennan: Nod looks at it and goes,

1:43:21 Nod: That's what started it.

1:43:24 Brennan: Nod looks up and says,

1:43:25 Nod: So what happened was I went to the Bay of Slumber to help Nuria, which means that I had to travel through the deep dreaming. That's always dangerous to do because some of our older siblings and brothers and sisters, they can find us that way. But I was being really careful. But when I got out there, I saw that the Bay of Slumber has been in a lot of trouble. There had been these monks from the Iron Heart that had really been destroying a lot of the connections to this place. And there was something else that was like working there to help that happen. There were like.

1:44:02 Brennan: And you see that Nod creates this vision of this like-

1:44:08 Emily: Gladiator headquarters?

1:44:10 Brennan: Gladiator headquarters in Silicon Valley. And a tremendous population of, you see that the unicorn who's with you goes,

1:44:21 Unicorn: Oh my goodness. There are so many people that everyone's just ignoring.

1:44:27 Brennan: You see, like, a bad homelessness crisis. And you see that feeling of like pain and isolation, a problem of people just ignoring their neighbors and suffering. And I think Kingston, you see that too, of like people looking, and you see incredibly like rising rent costs. And you see Tony and his monks in the midst of all this fucking Gladiator encroachment, like, fighting the dream realm and like turning their attention to this other thing.

1:45:07 Emily: But at that point, he's fighting the dream world because of his personal vendetta. Not because he's actively working with Gladiator yet?

1:45:15 Brennan: Yeah, looks like it. As the unicorn mentions, like, look at all those people being ignored. Pete, you put it together in your head. This entity out here that Nod was able to keep away for so long, one of the older siblings, was during a time that Kugrash was alive. And while Kugrash was alive, these people were specifically not being, the force that is menacing this place is a force of isolation, erasure, and people feeling unseen, invisible, forgotten. And you realize that this thing has like, whatever was keeping it from seeing the Sixth Borough out there, as these three spirits that Kugrash was tending to and his particular, like, ministry to these people, his particular like helping of these people, was helping to defend the city from this extraplanar threat.

1:46:19 Pete: Because people were feeling seen kind of en masse and... yeah. Whoa.

1:46:25 Brennan: Yeah, there is a, and Kingston, I think you see that as Pete remarks on it and see that part that Alejandro said about the relationship of the waking world to Dreaming. That the more these people are forgotten, the more that these entities of isolation and separation enter in. You see a fight at Tony's monastery in San Francisco where there are shadows everywhere like Tony said. You see the shadows are Nod and Nuria trying to save the monastery even though it's devoted to destroying them. And Nod says,

1:47:07 Nod: We knew it was dangerous to try and help, but even a monastery like Tony's is still magic. And even if they're trying to… Even if Tony hates me it was still in a way his dream.

1:47:27 Brennan: And you see the thing that cracks Tony's monastery in half and kills the last monks that are there and Tony crawling out of the rubble. You see that as something unseen eroding the very foundations of the monastery, and you just see pure pockets of emptiness. The shadows don't do anything to destroy the building. The shadows are trying to stop it, and pure emptiness and vacuum appears at the heart of the monastery, cracks it open, and it is destroyed. As that happens, Nod flings back, watches every light in the Bay of Slumber go out and escapes, rushing back to the Sixth Borough. And you feel whatever it was that devoured the Bay of Slumber starting at the center of Tony's monastery notice Nod fleeing through deep dreaming and begin to move after them.

1:48:37 Ally: And when this like nothingness cracked the monastery did it look like things were losing their color?

1:48:45 Brennan: It did, yup.

1:48:46 Ally: Okay.

1:48:47 Emily: And is this nothingness a sibling of Nod?

1:48:49 Brennan: Yeah.

1:48:51 Emily: They've referred to like the older siblings. Is this a sibling that would go after their own sibling?

1:49:01 Brennan: Nod looks up and goes,

1:49:05 Nod: [quietly] I don't want to say a name. They don't like it when you give them names. The older ones.

1:49:19 Brennan: Pete, give me an Arcana check.

1:49:26 Ally: Nat 1. [puts their head in their hands]

1:49:29 Emily: Can I give a help action?

1:49:29 Ally: Tides of Chaos! Tides of Chaos!

1:49:32 Brennan: Yeah, you can. I think you can give a help action here, Sofia. We can roll with advantage.

1:49:35 Ally: Oh great. There we go. 22.

1:49:39 Brennan: Hell yeah. Pete, you look at Nod. They say,

1:49:49 Nod: I'm afraid I know which one found me. It's the oldest one. It's so big because it used to be everything. It existed before time, and time is an insult to it because it doesn't want anything.

1:50:26 Pete: Is it just a void?

1:50:30 Brennan: On that Arcana, Pete, Nod says that they don't want to give a name to this thing. And you immediately are like, I need to go find a name for this thing. Because a name for this thing is what's gonna help us be able to fight it.

1:50:44 Ally: Totally.

1:50:46 Iga: What if there was a way to turn back? To reach into the past and change some of these moments?

1:51:00 Brennan: Nod looks at you and says,

1:51:05 Nod: Well, the city hasn't had a connection to its past in a long, long time. The last keeper of the past hasn't been around since 1994.

1:51:27 Iga: What happened in 1994?

1:51:31 Ricky: Oh.

1:51:32 Kingston: He passed.

1:51:34 Pete: What happened in 1994?

1:51:38 Kingston: The dragon of Bleecker Street died.

1:51:46 Brennan: The unicorn looks up and says,

1:51:49 Unicorn: Are y'all talking about the dragon of Bleecker Street?

1:51:51 Kingston: Yeah.

1:51:53 Unicorn: That's the spirit that called forth me and the other two. He said he was gonna be gone. But while the dragon is alive, everything is remembered. That's the dragon's purpose in the city, to be the city's living memory, to cherish all the stories of everyone and everything that's come before. And the dragon had to set things up. The dragon created the three of us and said tend to those that are overlooked, tend to those that are forgotten, tend to the people that have no one else to tend to them. And then said there was one more person. They needed a mortal. They needed a human being to look after the city and its people.

1:52:47 Pete: Did they ever find that person?

1:52:48 Kingston: That's me. That's me. It's me.

1:52:53 Pete: I wonder if they ever found someone.

1:52:56 Kingston: Pete, it's me. It's me.

1:52:59 Pete: Oh, got it.

1:53:00 Sofia: It could be Cody. Cody, when were you born?

1:53:02 Kingston: Okay. (Emily laughs)

1:53:05 Ricky: Were you born in 1994?

1:53:06 Kingston: Honestly, Cody, when were you born?

1:53:09 Emily: I think you were born in 1994. [Emily and Ally laugh]

1:53:16 Cody: It's all adding up.

1:53:17 Iga: It's 2021 right now. You were born in 1994. [cast laughs]

1:53:23 Lou: I like pull the eternal token from like, you know, underneath my sweater. And I'm like,

1:53:29 Kingston: Cody, I'm sorry, but unless you have this it's not you.

1:53:35 Ricky: Are you giving it to Cody? [cast laughs]

1:53:39 Kingston: No, I'm not making that mistake.

1:53:40 Sofia: Be careful. It might choose Cody.

1:53:42 Kingston: Exactly.

1:53:44 Zac: Ricky just kind of looks away.

1:53:46 Lou: I'm like, it's pretty tense. My grip on it is real tight. It's not getting away. I don't want any Questing Blade kind of choosing action. Yeah, I tuck it back away.

1:53:51 Zac: That’s very fair.

1:53:57 Sofia: But if we found another keeper of the past—

1:54:00 Iga: I mean, I do, I don't know about stories. I don't know about keepers of the past, but there's a potential way that I have, that I could maybe turn back one element of time. But it is dangerous and it is risky, and it is a risk for all of us that we would, I don't know.

1:54:19 Siobhan: And I pull out of my coat a different tarot deck than the one that Sofia knows. [mysterious, tense music]

1:54:31 Murph: Yes.

1:54:32 Siobhan: And I just sort of shuffle it a bit.

1:54:34 Brennan: Hell yeah. You feel a tremendous power around this tarot deck. Nod looks at it and says,

1:54:46 Nod: Yeah, that makes sense. My oldest sibling is out there and is strengthened every time anything anywhere is isolated or alone or forgotten. Be it people like the people that Kugrash was looking after and the three spirits or whether it's the memories and stories of a place like the dragon of Bleecker Street was looking after. But we don't have Kugrash and we don't have a dragon.

1:55:22 Brennan: Iga, you're holding the deck there. The chest is glimmering with light, and Nod looks like wide-eyed with understanding of, you know, all of the threat that is now posed there. And Pete, you're holding on to that thing of like, you look out into the Dreaming and feel like you could find a, if you went looking, you could find a name.

1:55:53 Ally: I have a second question for Nod really quickly.

1:55:58 Pete: Do you, I, okay. So I have kind of a crazy idea, but I've been, I have this, you know, magical teapot with like this, like, it just seems like I have this like herbal tea that very much seems like the antithesis to Cypher energy drink. Is there some way for me to do some sort of thing in Nod, like adding this to like the water supply of New York or somehow start to like combat and get people dreaming again to help?

1:56:31 Brennan: I think so. I think that could be a good downtime activity for Pete. That would be a thing that would have to be done probably over a process of, you'd have to figure out some powerful magic to do to make that work.

1:56:41 Ally: Okay, okay. I'll just stick that in my pipe and smoke it. ...No I won't. Not anymore. [cast laughs]

1:56:51 Zac: Ricky's probably gonna talk to the unicorn and ask,

1:56:58 Ricky: Does it make sense? Should I track down the other two spirits?

1:57:05 Brennan: You see that yeah, the unicorn says,

1:57:07 Unicorn: We were a lot more powerful when Kugrash was here. I think if all three of us were together we might even be able to, I don't know, reach out to him in some way.

1:57:24 Ricky: To Kugrash?

1:57:26 Unicorn: He's so... he's everywhere now but he's still out there in a way. Yeah, I think all three of us might be able to.

1:57:38 Ricky: Whoa. Okay.

1:57:41 Brennan: Awesome. What do the rest of you do in this moment?

1:57:45 Ally: I'd love to talk to Nod privately if that's possible? And go on a little Babybjorn walk.

1:57:51 Brennan: Cool. Do you take everyone else back down to the ground?

1:57:54 Ally: Yeah, well what does anyone else want to do? I just want to do that eventually.

1:57:58 Zac: Yeah, I guess I just track down these other spirits. Feels correct to me.

1:58:04 Brennan: And you would know that those spirits are back in the waking world.

1:58:06 Zac: Yeah. I mean, does the tarot deck, like, does that feel like something that we would use now or after we figured that other stuff out or in conjunction with that?

1:58:15 Murph: What does the deck do?

1:58:16 Iga: So, each of these cards in the Major Arcana is a gift or a curse, and we don't know which. There are a couple of cards in here I think we could help us. But you draw without knowing.

1:58:31 Sofia: Does this sometimes go by the deck of many things?

1:58:34 Iga: It is similar to a deck of many things, but [stiltedly] some say it was re-skinned. [cast laughs]

1:58:42 Sofia: Oh.

1:58:43 Cody: Sounds super rad.

1:58:44 Sofia: Interesting.

1:58:45 Pete: Oh, interesting. I guess I've heard that word before.

1:58:52 Murph: Cody's hands are trembling. [Siobhan laughs]

1:58:55 Brennan: Iga, you have the cards in your hand.

1:59:04 Ricky: Cody, are you okay?

1:59:06 Iga: Would you like to take a reading?

1:59:12 Cody: I’m gonna- I have to do it. I'm sorry. I'm gonna do it. I have to do it. I have to.

1:59:17 Emily: Someone has to do it, and I do not feel emotionally there to do it. So yeah, I'm gonna shove Cody forward. [cast laughs]

1:59:25 Ally: Yeah. I give Cody the help action to hold the sword in one hand, so that he can pull with the other. Cody, trembling a little, shifts the sword to one hand and groans in pain.

1:59:36 Iga: How many cards would you like to draw, Cody?

1:59:39 Murph: Oh, don't make me do this. Umm. Oh my God. Oh, we'll just do... (Murph groans)

1:59:53 Murph: I'm gonna— should I roll a d4? [cast laughs]

1:59:58 Ally: Yes.

1:59:59 Emily: I think you should, Cody.

2:00:02 Murph: Okay. I would like— I would like—

2:00:13 Cody: I would like three cards please.

2:00:15 Emily: Oh no! Oh! Zac has his hands over his mouth.

2:00:25 Iga: The first card I want you to think very strongly, Cody, about what it is you're wanting.

2:00:33 Ally: Oh, no!

2:00:34 Iga: The first card is The Lovers. You may cast the Warding Bond spell on a target of your choice without expending a spell slot once during the course of the following year. It's pretty good.

2:00:49 Sofia: Okay.

2:00:49 Cody: Okay, cool.

2:00:51 Iga: It's pretty good. Not particularly useful for what we're doing right now, but pretty useful.

2:00:57 Murph: I'm sweating.

2:00:58 Brennan: I'm sweating bullets right now.

2:00:59 Murph: Oh my God. There's just like, no, like as Murph I want to draw one card, but as, like, you throw a magic deck at Cody unless someone tackles him and says only get one card he has to take a few. [sighs]

2:01:19 Lou: Nobody tackles Cody. Cody keeps going.

2:01:22 Iga: I'm very annoyed that you have pulled this card. This card is The Sun. You gain 50,000 hit points, eh, experience points and a wondrous item appears randomly in your hands.

2:01:37 Murph: [pained] Oh my god.

2:01:40 Ricky: What? [cast laughs]

2:01:42 Ally: Could've been Kingston.

2:01:45 Brennan: Cody gains 50.000 XP and a wondrous item, which the DM determines randomly, appears in your hands.

2:01:51 Ally: Does it add to the sword?

2:01:53 Brennan: Yeah, a third blade erupts out of the middle of the sword. [cast laughs] Cody clutches his shoulder and groans.

2:01:58 Ally: It's essentially, like, what do you use in the kitchen?

2:02:02 Siobhan: Like a mandoline?

2:02:04 Murph: It just looks like a giant, it's just a giant sword fork. [cast laughs]

2:02:08 Ally: Katamari.

2:02:13 Emily: Would 50,000 XP have taken Kingston up to level 17?

2:02:17 Zac: I think it's like 80,000.

2:02:20 Emily: Okay.

2:02:21 Murph: Yeah, I don't even know if it'll get me a level.

2:02:23 Emily: Okay,

2:02:24 Zac: 100,000 til we're 12.

2:02:27 Iga: Card number three, Cody.

2:02:30 Ally: [whispered] Oh my fucking god. [Murph laughs]

2:02:34 Iga: This is the second time I've drawn this in this campaign, is The Tower.

2:02:41 Emily: That's gonna be a bad one.

2:02:42 Iga: And it's not a good one.

2:02:45 Brennan: I'll read this one, Siobhan. All forms of wealth that you carry or own other than magic items are lost to you. Murph, his mouth hanging open, slaps his hands onto his head.

2:02:54 Brennan: Portable property vanishes. Businesses, buildings, and land you own are lost in a way that alters reality the least. Any documentation that proves you should own something lost to this card also disappears. Now it says other than magic items. So, the truth is Cody's life was structured in such a way that this is not too big of a hit.

2:03:15 Iga: You lost the $235 that was in your checking account. Cody, I'm sorry.

2:03:21 Cody: Oh my god, and my duster and all of my cool stuff.

2:03:25 Brennan: I will say Cody is-

2:03:27 Murph: It is personally devastating to Cody because all of his like sword— all of his cosplay stuff and everything, all of his video games! Just all of his stuff is gone. I mean, he's just left with his big stupid sword.

2:03:45 Cody: Oh!

2:03:47 Iga: Cody, I think this is maybe good for you.

2:03:48 Cody: Fuck!

2:03:49 Iga: I think it's gonna hurt for a little bit,

2:03:50 Cody: Oh my god!

2:03:52 Iga: But maybe it's time for a rebranding of Cody.

2:03:56 Sofia: Yeah, I mean the idea of The Tower, 'cause you know I've pulled it before so I've looked it up. The idea of the Tower is actually a time to re-examine the beliefs that you built your life around. So, it might actually be really nice for you.

2:04:13 Pete: Your foundation isn't sturdy. And so it gives out underneath you.

2:04:19 Iga: Maybe it is a poetic moment for you, Cody.

2:04:22 Murph: Is Cody just nude? [cast laughs]

2:04:27 Brennan: He is full, butt naked.

2:04:28 Siobhan: It's okay 'cause his sword is so big, it's covering everything.

2:04:35 Lou: Is Cody actually naked?

2:04:37 Brennan: Cody is fully naked.

2:04:38 Ally: Naked with a three pronged sword.

2:04:40 Siobhan: I Minor Illusion him just like a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.

2:04:46 Lou: I give him like an actual coat.

2:04:48 Cody: Thank you. Thank you, Kingston.

2:04:52 Brennan: So Cody, you are completely without any belongings. Luckily you're renting an apartment, so you still have a place to live, but you don't have a bed there anymore. All your stuff is gone. [cast laughs]

2:05:05 Brennan: Moped is magically summoned, so you have a moped still. But you're naked. And you look at the three prongs of Thirsting Blade Dark Excalibur Mega Genesis, which is your, um—  [laughs and claps]

2:05:14 Zac: Mega Genesis!

2:05:23 Murph: Mega Genesis!

2:05:27 Brennan: But you can cast Warding Bond and you do have a lot of XP. So, that's good. [cast laughs]

2:05:33 Murph: Cody deserves all of this, and I'm so glad he didn't get another good card. [cast laughs]

2:05:40 Brennan: Iga, all that stuff gets sucked into the chest. Like, Cody's belongings all disappear into the chest. And Kingston, give me a Perception check.

2:05:57 Lou: That is a 19.

2:06:00 Brennan: You observe the chest. All the glittering stuff that went in there, Cody's money, a bunch of posters, video game cartridges, belongings, all got sucked in there. And the magic happens in a way. The last time you saw things carried away on the wind just like that, you were standing on the uptown-bound 4/5 platform, Brooklyn Bridge.

2:06:34 Lou: Okay. Can I, so is that Perception check, does this magic that's coming from within Iga's box resemble the magic of the dragon of Bleecker Street?

2:06:49 Brennan: 100%.

2:06:52 Lou: Okay. I think as like a naked Cody is, like, is, you know, is being tended to, I think I like make contact with Iga or make eye contact with Iga, and I'm like,

2:07:08 Kingston: Can we step away for a second?

2:07:10 Iga: Yeah.

2:07:15 Kingston: Now I understand, you know, this box has come into greater play with regard to everything going on than you had ever wanted it to be. But do you truly know what's in the box? Like, in the box?

2:07:36 Iga: No, I… For all of the generations of my family, we've always said it's too dangerous. We don't question it. And I think I'm the first one, I mean, I know I'm the first one of them to be questioning it at all. But no, I don't know what it is.

2:07:57 Kingston: Back in '94, when I, you know, first met and came into what I am now, you know, I met the dragon of Bleecker Street and I dunno something about that moment, your box… I think he's inside of there.

2:08:20 Iga: That is kind of the time that I did come to the city. But you said he died?

2:08:30 Kingston: I mean, hey, you know, I'm just a guy. I don't know. I just went and hung out with my dead, I just ate a bunch of Cinnabons with my dead friend. So, I mean, death is just a word I use to describe a state. I mean, I don't know if he's not, maybe dead's the wrong word. Gone is maybe a better word. But where he went—

2:08:57 Iga: Maybe then it is time. It's time for us. I can't go in there until I've had a sleep. I'm old, I need my rest.

2:09:05 Kingston: Great. Well then let's get you a sleep, and then I don't know. Let's take a trip.

2:09:10 Iga: Let's take a trip. And I would like, we should maybe take my daughter as well. It's important for her to see. And she's very curious about it.

2:09:20 Kingston: Cool. Let's do it.

2:09:23 Brennan: Awesome. Kingston and Iga, you feel a profound sense of, like, the significance of this decision. For the rest of you, you've come here and you've ticked off all your boxes. Pete wants to go have a private walk with Nod. For the rest of you, this was probably the best version of this mission that you guys could have gone on here. You got the information that you need. So, for the rest of you, is there anything left or is it return to the waking world?

2:09:55 Emily: I mean, I think the question is, like, do Kingston or Iga tell us about this or?

2:10:00 Lou: Oh, 100%. I just didn't want to put pressure on Iga, like, in a group setting to, like, do the box thing. So yeah, I think when we come back, I think I like kind of communicate the, like, that essence and that moment of associating it with the dragon and then a possible plan to go and find him.

2:10:20 Sofia: Yeah. I mean, I'm down with that because it seems like this, and it also seems like, it seems like Alejandro implied that work we do in the waking world can have an effect on the dreaming world. So, even going up and maybe, you know, obviously doing wonderful things like Helping Hands, but also fucking up Gladiator a little bit.

2:10:45 Kingston: I think that sounds about right.

2:10:51 Ally: Can I do an Arcana check to see if there's something in Iga's deck that would bring someone back to life?

2:10:59 Brennan: Go for it.

2:11:04 Ally: So, 21. (Lou laughs)

2:11:07 Brennan: I think on a 21, you don't think there's anything within Iga's deck that could bring someone back from the dead.

2:11:12 Ally: Okay, cool.

2:11:14 Brennan: Cool. So you guys, are you guys going to wait for Pete or head back yourselves while Pete's finishing up business in the dreaming?

2:11:21 Emily: I think we'll wait for Pete. We'll give Pete his space, but I think it would be better to all, you know, in case anything went wrong.

2:11:30 Brennan: Cool. Pete, you're going on a little swaddling walk. You've got Nod in the Noddy swaddy.

2:11:38 Emily: The Noddle.

2:11:39 Ally: Excuse me. The Noddy swaddy?

2:11:41 Lou: The Noddy swaddy.

2:11:42 Ally: I've got Nod in a sex swing. ...Just kidding. [Emily laughs]

2:11:47 Brennan: Pete, you're walking along with Nod. Nod is leaning their head into your shoulder.

2:11:52 Nod: Thanks so much, Pete. You're the best.

2:11:55 Pete: Of course. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about the possibilities of bringing someone back to life.

2:12:06 Nod: People come back to life all the time in dreams.

2:12:08 Pete: Yeah, definitely.

2:12:11 Nod: Are you asking about dreams or the waking world?

2:12:14 Pete: The waking world.

2:12:16 Nod: Oh. That's pretty hard I think. I could ask about it. I could try to find out. I mean, if you're talking about bringing someone back to the waking world, I feel like Kingston's probably the best person to ask about what magic's possible there.

2:12:38 Pete: True. Yeah. [sighs] Okay.

2:12:45 Brennan: Give me an Investigation and an Arcana check.

2:12:52 Ally: Investigation. Arcana is 28. Investigation is 17.

2:13:03 Brennan: Holy shit. Your Arcana was 28?

2:13:06 Ally: Yeah, it was a 19.

2:13:08 Brennan: You find yourself way downtown in Manhattan near where, like, the courthouse is and a lot of the sort of civic marble buildings swirling around. Snow kicking up. You feel a whisper. Something nearby. With that 28 Arcana, the thing out there past the stars in the deeper dreaming hates names. This thing is trying to erase everything, right? You think finding a name for it will give you, it's very dangerous proposition. Pete feels an opportunity nearby to maybe find a name of what this thing is. But you also know that doing so will be a risk. It will be a provocation. So Pete feels a potential for access to an incredible resource but with a chance of danger.

2:14:29 Ally: Okay. Can I take the Babybjorn off and ask Nod to just go back to their bed? Like, get some rest.

2:14:43 Brennan: Nod smiles and says,

2:14:44 Nod: Okay, hey, I'm feeling better now. Kingston really healed me. So, I'm pretty tough. You don't have to worry about me. (Ally laughs)

2:14:51 Ally: That's great. Now get out of here. [cast laughs]

2:14:58 Brennan: Nod does their little - bwwzzt - glides off in the mist. You look up and see a bunch of Latin written on one of the civic buildings. The words you see inscribed there are "Nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo."

2:15:33 Siobhan: "Nobody dies if you remember them?"

2:15:37 Brennan: Holy shit, Siobhan. [laughs]

2:15:41 Ally: Siobhan, what's up, dude? What's up? You're a fucking archaelogist.

2:15:46 Siobhan: How often do I get to use the fact that I took five years of Latin?

2:15:49 Brennan: Nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo. No day shall erase you from the memory of time.

2:16:01 Zac: What was the thing that the guy said on the train?

2:16:04 Ally: Yeah, I was thinking about that.

2:16:07 Siobhan: Oh, I have it written down. “What if anything stays?” No.

2:16:10 Lou: Yes. Like, “what, if anything, remains.”

2:16:14 Ally: “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.” Yeah.

2:16:17 Brennan: Pete, go ahead and give me a History check.

2:16:22 Ally: Okay. Okay. That is an 18.

2:16:30 Brennan: Cool. You, actually using memory of some of the Voxes before you that spoke Latin, know what this means. “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.” I'm going to need a Charisma saving throw.

2:16:50 Zac: Is Pete near us or no?

2:16:54 Brennan: Pete's gone on a little bit of a walk.

2:16:58 Ally: Okay, that is a 24.

2:17:03 Brennan: Pete, you begin to see the words fade and the stone goes smooth. Going from the back towards the front. So, "aevo" disappears, "eximet," "vos," "memori." Moving along. You watched these words being erased. What is Pete thinking about watching this act of erasure as this sentence just starts to go away?

2:17:40 Ally: Can I cast True Sight?

2:17:42 Brennan: You cast True Sight. Right as it's almost done erasing the last word. It has erased the fifth letter of the first word. Only the first four letters remain.

2:18:02 Pete: Null, nothing. [Brennan yells, imitating an explosion]

2:18:04 Ally: [startled] Fuck! Jesus Christ.

2:18:05 Brennan: The stone erupts. Pure void. Cities gone. You see buildings flying up into the sky. Nod turns around, a tentacle of pure invisibility around their throat rips them into the deeper dreaming. You, on a 24, succeed. Off in the distance the rest of you watch the neighborhood that Pete was walking into begin to disappear into the sky.

2:18:31 Siobhan: Fuck.

2:18:34 Emily: I guess we run to try to find Pete.

2:18:35 Murph: Yeah, I guess we’ll run towards it.

2:18:37 Sofia: Pete, is this normal? Is this normal?

2:18:40 Brennan: Pete, what are you, you watch Nod's face look at you, tears streaming, disappear into the darkness just like you saw in your vision. Give me an Arcana check.

2:18:57 Ally: Ah, Jesus fucking Christ. Okay, that is a 16.

2:19:04 Brennan: On a 16, you don't see a thing to fight. You do not see—

2:19:13 Ally: Okay, can, Tides of Chaos? Since actually, since I haven't used that yet?

2:19:18 Brennan: Sure, go ahead and reroll.

2:19:21 Zac: Gotta get out of here.

2:19:22 Ally: Ah no! Even less. Okay, 16.

2:19:26 Brennan: Pete, you are looking around. There is no enemy here, but that word rings in your head. "Null." And you feel the provocation. Your True Sight stopped the erasing of this thing. You have a name.

2:19:48 Ally: Yeah.

2:19:51 Brennan: But you do not see what to fight. This thing, this is like, you're like the most proficient scuba diver in the world, but you're in the water with a fucking Megalodon prehistoric shark, right?

2:20:07 Ally: I run to my friends.

2:20:10 Brennan: You guys all are running. You see Pete running away. As he's running, street and building is sailing up behind him into a tear. As emptiness begins to rip open like a giant monster ripping open like using its claws to peel open the walls of a building it's entering. You see it before you, Pete, as you're running. The rest of your friends go here. Right before you, all of you see a little flash of something. There is a moment of like blue light, pink light, a skull, a fragment of spine, blood, musculature. Suddenly two broadswords. Stephen Sondheim appears in front of you. You see, he looks at you, Pete, and says,

2:21:05 Sondheim: Not much time left, my friend.

2:21:09 Brennan: Cuts a hole in reality to the waking world and says,

2:21:13 Sondheim: Follow me!

2:21:13 Brennan: And leaps through the hole into the waking world, waving to the rest of you.

2:21:19 Iga: Stephen Sondheim? I'm a big fan. [cast laughs]

2:21:22 Sofia: I love "Into the Woods."

2:21:24 Brennan: All of you leap through the portal after Stephen Sondheim. You flash into the waking world, and that's all for this episode of The Unsleeping City.

2:21:34 Ally: Jeez.

2:21:36 Siobhan: Sondheim's back, baby!

2:21:37 Lou: Sondheim's back!

2:21:39 Zac: I knew he'd be back. [cast laughs]

2:21:39 Edited by: gluegunshots, solsys