Of Rats & Dragons

0:00:04 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 13: Of Rats & Dragons < [Previous Episode] | [Next Episode] > [lo-fi beats to roll to, aka The Unsleeping City theme]

0:00:09 Brennan: Hello, one and all, and welcome to another thrilling episode of Dimension 20, The Unsleeping City. I am your humble dungeon master, Brennan Lee Mulligan. With me as always are our intrepid heroes. Say hi, intrepid heroes!

0:00:21 All: Hi, intrepid heroes!

0:00:25 Brennan: Lovely, lovely lovely. Gang, last we left off, the champions of New York City found themselves on top of a rusty old hot dog cart helping a group of cockroach monks defend their monastery, the Monastery of the Sacred Rat, a temple devoted to the monastic contemplation of the divine mysteries of Rat Jesus, AKA Kugrash, AKA Bruce Kugrich. However, their monastery was beset by legions of ants. Thankfully, the champions of New York City were able to defend the monastery and find the third missing spirit of New York City, Marty the juicy cockroach, who, in addition to Perry the pigeon and the unicorn of the Cloisters, comprise the three spirits whom Kugrash called upon for his druidic powers all the way back in the 90s, after these three spirits were created and set in place to look after the overlooked and forgotten of New York by the Dragon of Bleecker Street, who chose another champion other than these three spirits in a young Kingston Brown back in the 90s. Also, this day, by the way, this day is the Sunday after Thanksgiving, which is how much has happened in the past couple of days. You guys also went into Nod, where Pete the Vox Phantasma named Null, the entity of isolation, erasure, and forgetting that is moving like vast cosmic void upon the sixth borough and New York City itself. Pete named Null, provoking its attack but also giving you guys a way to understand it and fight it, at the same time as Iga took Kingston into her chest and discovered the secret at the heart of her family's mythic castle, the dragon Smoczmatka, who had been imprisoned there for centuries, and Iga chose to free the dragon, ending 1,200 years of this warlock's dominion over this being. In addition, an egg was discovered that was the rambunctious egg who had been changing the surface of the chest in the first place, and this beautiful, gilded, graffiti covered egg was given to Kingston Brown to safeguard. At the end of last session, you guys went up onto one of the old napkin shelves in the top of the hot dog cart, you guys are all still very itty bitty, and communed with the eternal rat himself, and, scintillating in starlight and smelling like pure shit, Kugrash appeared. And that's where we're gonna pick up our game. The six of you look forward and see the constellation of stars comprising a fraction of the infinite essence of Kugrash. What do you do as you behold your infinite old friend?

0:03:43 Sofia: Kug? Can you hear us?

0:03:46 Kugrash: Of course I can hear you, Sof. I would ask you how it's going, but I know how it's going, and, uh, yeah.

0:03:53 Sofia: Okay! Well, I guess I don't know how you're doing. How are you?

0:03:58 Kugrash: I'm, you know, everything. Good, bad, shitty, great, awesome, terrible, just everything at once. It's awesome by the definition of awesome, you know what I mean? So I'm doing awesome, but in, like, the regular way.

0:04:14 Sofia: Some awe, yeah.

0:04:16 Kugrash: Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

0:04:18 Sofia: Well, it's good to hear your voice.

0:04:21 Kugrash: Yeah.

0:04:21 Ricky: We got to go, we're gonna… No. [all laugh]

0:04:25 Kugrash: Yeah, no, it was good catching up, it was good catching up.

0:04:28 Sofia: Kug, we came here because we're trying to, there's a new threat. Obviously you know, it feels stupid to give any sort of exposition to you, but we came here because of that-

0:04:39 Kugrash: No, you know, I know a lot of stuff, but I never know, you know, I don't know the future, I don't know the next thing, you know, that you're gonna say necessarily. I can make educated guesses, but I don't know everything, so you know, you can ask me a question, I'm still Kugrash.

0:04:54 Sofia: Yeah, I mean, I-

0:04:54 Ricky: What are you eating?

0:04:56 Kugrash: I am eating a different bagel, not the- [Brennan laughs]

0:05:04 Sofia: I am glad that you developed a taste for it.

0:05:06 Emily: Yeah, I think I look at Pete and Kingston and just say,

0:05:10 Sofia: I think we're just looking for anything that will help us take on this threat to both the dreaming and the waking world.

0:05:19 Pete: Yeah. What do you know about Null, if anything?

0:05:26 Kugrash: I know a lot of what you guys have come to know, that Null is older than any of the other beings, that it was kind of the first, it's nothing. It existed before gods, it existed before anything, and he's a monarch of the Dreaming, and its ultimate goal is to consume everything, basically consolidate all of time down to just a single moment, just, you know, get back to nothingness. Now, the reason Null wasn't able to get to New York in the past was because of the three spirits, who I kind of at the time I didn't, you know, understand the significance of them, I just thought hey, cool, spicy pigeon, juicy cockroach, unicorn, you know, this'll help me help the people of New York out. But they were quite significant, and that helped, you know, take care of the forgotten people around New York and Null wasn't able to get here, and the only reason that the spirits are alive still after I died is 'cause of Ricky, for taking up the mantle. So thanks for that, Rick.

0:07:01 Ricky: Hey, no problem. It's been fun. It's honestly great. I didn't realize that that would be part of it, and it's been interesting having them connected to me.

0:07:16 Kugrash: Yeah, I sense that you're not loving the aesthetic, but generally you like the vibes, but not the aesthetic.

0:07:25 Ricky: The vibes are amazing.

0:07:26 Kugrash: Right, yeah. Yeah, you'll learn to love this shit. At first when I was living in the sewer, I'm like, ah, I'm a fucking rat, this is fucking weird! I used to live in like a cool-ass condo, and now I live in the sewer. But, you know, the sewer's, you know, there's a lot of cool literal shit in there, so.

0:07:43 Ricky: I guess I'm struggling with why I would have to be in the sewer as much as maybe you were.

0:07:49 Kugrash: Right, no, well that's optional, you don't have to go in the sewer. You might have to go to the sewer. You might have to go to the sewer, you don't have to live in the sewer.

0:07:57 Ricky: Right.

0:07:57 Kugrash: If that makes sense.

0:07:58 Ricky: Okay, that's huge, that's great, that's cool.

0:08:01 Kugrash: Yeah, you don't have to be exactly like me, I was a rat man who would freak people out whenever I came out. You are a very handsome man, you beautiful bastard.

0:08:12 Ricky: Well, I mean, Kugrash, I don't want to jump the gun, but, like, what do I do with this stuff? I mean, it's weird to have, I don't… I would be lying if I said I fully understood it, but I don't know if you had any advice for me on that.

0:08:32 Kugrash: I mean, you're doing all the right things so far. You kind of awakened the spirits again. They were weakened when I died, but now they're back with Perry and the juicy cockroach, and once you bring them all together, I think you'll be able to do a lot of good. Getting back to what I was talking about before, before Ricky and before I kind of protected the city, there was the Dragon of Bleecker Street, and dragons are the antithesis of something like Null, 'cause dragons collect things. Like, those are memories. Those were all powerful things. That is the opposite of Null. So Null could not get in while the Dragon of Bleecker Street was here.

0:09:23 Pete: Did the dragon die naturally, or did Null kill the dragon?

0:09:33 Kugrash: The dragon… Oh, wow, you kind of stumped me here, Pete, in like a weird way, because the answer is both, if that makes sense? Which is, dragons can die if their hoard is incomplete, and the thing about the Dragon of Bleecker Street is that at sort of the beginning of his life, he only cared about kind of the big, like, glorious, you know, heroic, big, magical things about New York, but wasn't as interested in, you know, the smaller, everyday things, and, you know, because of that, he either forgot about or lost or gave away certain items from his hoard that ended up being pretty important, that Null has since—

0:10:33 Sofia: Destroyed?

0:10:34 Kugrash: Erased. Erased, to a certain extent. They're not completely gone, because I still kind of remember that they exist. I know that there's seven things that are missing from the Dragon of Bleecker Street's hoard. Emily and Ally’s jaws drop. Lou and Ally’s eyes go wide.

0:10:51 Kugrash: One of them—

0:10:51 Sofia: And—

0:10:51 Pete: Can— Yeah, can you give us those?

0:10:57 Sofia: Excuse me, let me get a piece of paper and a pencil. Oh wow, this pencil's so big!

0:11:04 Ally: We're all working to use a pencil together.

0:11:07 Brennan: Watching your guys' face when Murph gave you guys a hard number light up like fucking Christmas trees was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. [Emily laughs]

0:11:18 Ally: I mean, in fantasy, when you hear that there's seven anything, you're like, and that’s what we need!

0:11:22 Siobhan: Yeah, baby, we got to collect them.

0:11:24 Zac: At the very least write them down.

0:11:28 Emily: Anyways, yeah, we're all using one big pencil to write it down.

0:11:32 Ally: We're all using one big pencil, we're writing on a napkin.

0:11:34 Siobhan: The Chinese takeout chopsticks of destiny.

0:11:40 Sofia: Okay, Kug, lay it on us.

0:11:43 Kugrash: Right. So, the only one that I can remember fully is Peter Stuyvesant's wooden leg. That was one of them. I remember that one specifically. The other six are more kind of vague, which means that maybe somebody else remembers them in some kind of vague way or something, I'm not entirely sure what it means. But there's a candle, a coin, a bouquet, a scrap of paper, a baseball, and a cymbal, like a musical cymbal, not just, you know, a symbol of something.

0:12:23 Sofia: Yeah, yeah, there's symbolism in the cymbal, yeah yeah.

0:12:26 Kugrash: Exactly, yes. A cymbal that's a symbol, as it were.

0:12:30 Sofia: Kug, do you think it's-

0:12:30 Iga: C Y M B A L?

0:12:34 Kugrash: Yes.

0:12:38 Emily: We're all, again, all spelling this at the same time.

0:12:40 Kingston: How do you spell Stuyvesant? S… T…

0:12:42 Ally: We started to misspell “cymbal” and we just decided fuck it.

0:12:47 Emily: Now we have to like-

0:12:48 Iga: Turn it around, turn it around, turn it around!

0:12:51 Kugrash: Here's the thing, I'm actually not that good at spelling, 'cause I hear, you know, like the bad spellers just as much as I hear the good spellers, so it's just a mess, it's just a mess in here.

0:13:00 Sofia: I mean, I think spelling and language in general is kind of something that you agree upon as a culture.

0:13:03 Kugrash: That’s true.

0:13:05 Ricky: Yeah, words are made up, right?

0:13:08 Kugrash: That's true. Anyway. So the dragon got sick and eventually passed away because of these missing items, and at the end of his life, when Kingston met him, was having regrets about not valuing kind of the smaller things about life in New York, so that is when the Dragon of Bleecker Street created the spicy pigeon, the juicy cockroach, and the unicorn.

0:13:43 Sofia: Aw, I mean, the unicorn's obvious, not appreciating the pigeon and the rat, that makes sense.

0:13:52 Kugrash: Well they, yeah, the unicorn I think is, you know, a representation of the magical things, and then the spicy pigeon and the juicy cockroach are representative of juicy cockroaches and spicy pigeons, of which there are many. So the best way to defeat Null is for you all to hatch a new dragon to recreate the hoard of the Dragon of Bleecker Street and once again protect it from Null.

0:14:38 Sofia: Kug, I have a question. The fact that some of them are more difficult to remember, do you have any idea if these items have been taken deeper into the Dreaming, or if it's just a general erasing effect? Is it like a proximity thing? Like, are they hard to remember because they've been taken so deep?

0:15:04 Kugrash: I'm not exactly sure where they are.

0:15:07 Sofia: Okay.

0:15:07 Kugrash: Null has gotten to them in some way for me to have forgotten them. They may fully be destroyed in the present.

0:15:18 Sofia: Okay.

0:15:18 Kugrash: But there might still be a way to get to them, 'cause the fact that I still remember them means that somebody else does.

0:15:25 Ricky: Do you know if Peter had another leg? Did he replace it, or… I'm just wondering at what point... Is Peter okay?

0:15:35 Kugrash: Is Peter, dude, Peter is—

0:15:36 Iga: Peter Stuyvesant is from really long ago.

0:15:39 Sofia: Yeah.

0:15:40 Kugrash: Ricky, I'm so sorry, Peter is dead. Ricky turns away and lowers his head.

0:15:43 Iga: He is very dead.

0:15:43 Ally: I hug Ricky.

0:15:46 Iga: He is from New Amsterdam, Ricky! He's not even from New York, he's from New Amsterdam.

0:15:51 Kingston: He lived a good life. He did great things.

0:15:54 Ricky: [nods] Okay. Okay.

0:15:55 Sofia: If you want, we can look up a Peter Stuyvesant in the phone book and just go check up on them.

0:16:01 Kugrash: But if you wanted to talk to somebody other than me about all this, the Dragon of Bleecker Street was brought to New York in the late 1800s by the Shen family. They're a family of sorcerers that are still living in Chinatown, so they're still here.

0:16:24 Iga: Wait, the Manhattan Chinatown or the Queens Chinatown?

0:16:29 Kugrash: The Manhattan Chinatown.

0:16:30 Kingston: Yeah.

0:16:30 Iga: Okay.

0:16:32 Lou: Brennan, have I met anyone in the Shen family?

0:16:35 Brennan: I'm gonna say that Kingston absolutely knows the Shen family.

0:16:40 Kingston: I know the Shen family, we got an in. Don't even worry about it. Kug, can we, like, will this struggle with Null be forever, or is Null something we can vanquish or, I don't know. Is this going to be just a new forever, or I don't know, how bad can we beat this thing?

0:17:10 Kugrash: So there's two parts of this, right? Gladiator is very real. Gladiator is an actual company that exists in the waking world. It is not created by Null, it is an actual company that is buying up property and, you know, destroying a lot of neighborhoods, and Null is simply taking advantage of that. There are people who are possessed by Null, but they're only being possessed because they have holes in them. They're, you know, rich people who are trying to collect money when they couldn't possibly need more, they're people who, you know, are vulnerable, who hate their jobs, who feel soulless, and Null is taking advantage of that. So in the waking world, you have to fight Gladiator tooth and nail in any way you can, and on the dream side of it, you need a fucking dragon.

0:18:42 Sofia: Okay, wow, that is descriptive.

0:18:45 Ricky: Do you know the AC of their robots?

0:18:49 Kingston: Thank you, Ricky, thank you. Thank you, Ricky.

0:18:53 Iga: Do they have resistances to any kind of damage, any vulnerabilities?

0:18:57 Kugrash: Of course I know the AC of their robots.

0:18:59 Pete: Kug, I was wondering, do you know who is possessed by Null when it comes to Gladiator?

0:19:06 Kugrash: So it's not an… When you talk to sort of weird dudes in suits and they have static coming out of their mouths, that is them being possessed by Null. They are not necessarily all day every day, you know, zombies of Null, they are ruthless business people who, at times, are having kind of their emotions manipulated to, you know, buy up more ad space, to buy more apartment buildings. So on the Gladiator side of things, it's less about going and just like, you know, there's no wizard who is running Gladiator, if that makes sense.

0:20:01 Ally: Yeah. I have a question, but I don't know if this is an ask Kugrash question, but I'm just wondering, like—

0:20:08 Emily: I have a question for Kugrash, too.

0:20:09 Brennan: Yeah.

0:20:10 Ally: Like, mechanically-wise, like this world that you've set up, is there like any incentive for these people to embrace Null? Is there some sort of like power that they're getting?

0:20:25 Brennan: I think Pete can, in the weird void here, make an arcana check, because you have a connection to Null. So as Kugrash is saying like, yeah, go ahead and have Pete give me, and because of your infinite power right now, go ahead and give me an arcana check with advantage.

0:20:43 Ally: Okay. Ooh, that is a 22.

0:20:49 Brennan: 22, hell yeah. As Kugrash talks about the nature of Null and Gladiator, Pete made contact with this entity. You touched Null, and you haven't really gotten a sense of Gladiator until you reach out from void here, from this like, Kugrash is sort of the other side of the coin, so to speak.

0:21:15 Murph: Hell yes.

0:21:17 Brennan: Of like a positive void.

0:21:18 Zac: Cody's just nodding at Kugrash.

0:21:21 Murph: Yeah, Cody's nodding the whole time.

0:21:25 Brennan: You reach out and realize that Nod was mistaken about the nature of Null and these older siblings out in the deep Dreaming. Nod was like, they stay away from the waking world, and that's true, they don't go to places like the sixth borough that are these kind of coral reefs close to the shore, right? What you realize is that these other beings do have ways of interacting in the waking world. For lack of a better word, Gladiator is the Vox Phantasma of Null, but Null would never choose an individual that could understand it, right? 'Cause that's the thing Null doesn't want. Null doesn't want to be named, doesn't want to be understood, it doesn't want to even be perceived, right?

0:22:29 Emily: It needs mindless workers.

0:22:31 Brennan: Mindless. And it gets more powerful the more people are unaware of it, right? So its perfect champion would never be a person, its perfect champion would be a complex series of relationships. It would be an organization, a structure, a system in which every person could seek to bring it about into the waking world without ever being aware of it. And when Kugrash describes these little bits of static, which, by the way, Kingston saw, you had that vision of someone's eyes going static for a moment, you're realizing that Null wouldn't take people over in this like force of wills like a demonic possession, like, "I'm fighting, but I'm being taken over!" It would take people over in the moments where they went on autopilot. It would take people over like when you're not thinking while you're driving. It would take people over in the moments where you're not in full awareness of the actions you're taking or what they mean or what they signify. Lack of awareness is, of course, the place that this extra-planar entity operates from. So I think-

0:23:48 Ally: So it's not like a possession, it's more like a carbon monoxide leak.

0:23:53 Brennan: [laughs] Yes.

0:23:53 Ally: Or like you know, like yeah.

0:23:57 Brennan: That's the thing is, Pete, you would still describe it as a possession, it is working its terrible influence on the world, but it is the equivalent of a carbon monoxide leak rather than a lethal injection. It's happening in ambient, it's happening in negative space. It doesn't need to possess one person for their whole life and create an evil cultist wizard that you guys could just go behead in one fight and now Gladiator is good. Why possess one person when you could ambiently possess people, each of them a couple minutes a day, in moments where they're not paying attention over an entire global corporation? So it's way scarier than a cabal of seven executives that each consciously want to bring about the end of the world. If you guys went and killed the CEO of Gladiator, Null would find the secret spaces in the mind of whoever got appointed CEO next, and it is rather this organization and all of those empty spaces in the relationships between people that are the puppet Null is wielding in the material world. So it is a very real, magical, extra-planar threat, but it is this weird, I think Pete would probably think of, like, weird, techno, like, hive mind shit. You know, like, for lack of a better word, like the scariest thing about like the agents in "The Matrix" was that any single person could become them at a moment, and that seems to be the way Null is working, of like, oh, I can just become whoever I need to be in the moment, because I'm spread out, you know, in this haze, a lot like the Umbral Arcana. Like, I'm ambiently everywhere all the time.

0:25:54 Ally: With that arcana check, would I know if we have all been touched by Null at some point in our lives? Is it something like that? Like, anyone?

0:26:07 Brennan: With that 22, I think Pete wouldn't know that for certain, but would definitely have cause to fear that. Because Null looks for the empty places not only inside of cities and corporations, but also inside of people, and I think that Pete might very well be like, you know, maybe not to the scale of having your eyes go static and moving to like buy the Central Park Carousel, you know, but like maybe on the scale of, like, momentary lapses in judgment, bad decisions, moments where you lose your connection to something, yeah. You think probably you have been possessed by Null in fractions of a second throughout many different points in your life.

0:26:56 Ally: Wow. Cool.

0:26:57 Sofia: Can I, okay, so this sort of, it doesn't hit close to home, it just makes me think of something. Kug, is there some kind of good version of Null? Because, I mean, I say this as someone who, you know, the Order of the Concrete Fist introduced me to, you know, meditation, and a lot of that is going to a place of nothingness so that you can better grapple with the past and the future, and so I'm curious if there's a good form of Null, or if there's an amount of Null that's okay, or what that means. Because a lot of times, the past and the present encroach, I mean the past and the future encroach on the present, you know?

0:27:42 Kugrash: Right. I mean, Soph, the opposite of nothing is everything,

0:27:49 Murph: And I waft a big stinky thing of shit.

0:27:53 Kingston: God, come on, Kug, damn.

0:27:56 Kugrash: It's everything! Shit is everything! It's everything boiled down, it's perfect!

0:28:00 Sofia: Right, but like if you have too much everything, then your brain starts going crazy, and you can't take a breath, you know? Or if you're living too much in the past or you're living too much in the future, so I guess I'm just trying to understand, like, if it's okay that, you know, when I meditate, there's an emptiness to it. Is that making me vulnerable to Null or is there value to that as well?

0:28:26 Kugrash: No, I mean, yeah, you're meditating. Clearing your mind is not the same as forgetting, if that makes sense.

0:28:39 Sofia: Okay. Yeah, I guess I'm just curious what that is, then.

0:28:44 Pete: 'Cause I know for me, meditating is like mindfulness, or like getting in touch with what I'm feeling and stuff and it does feel different than when I'm just kind of in a haze and not really caring about the week.

0:28:57 Ricky: Mindful versus mindless.

0:28:57 Pete: Yeah.

0:28:58 Sofia: I think that there's, like, a lot of different types of meditation though, and some are, like, some of it is tuning into your present and some of it is finding a nothingness. I know that there's just a lot of, there are people who sort of connect with a nothingness, and that can bring them peace. So I don't know, I guess I just was curious if there was a good nothingness.

0:29:24 Kugrash: Yeah, I mean, the, like, being completely in the present moment and just taking things in is different than mindlessly sitting at your desk and forgetting why you woke up in the morning.

0:29:44 Sofia: Mm-hm, yeah.

0:29:46 Brennan: I would say if Sofia wants to make either a religion or an insight check in this moment, go for it.

0:29:55 Emily: Okay.

0:29:57 Ally: Can I give her the help action?

0:29:59 Brennan: Sure, yeah yeah yeah.

0:30:00 Emily: Okay. Oh god, I rolled poorly. That is going to be an 11.

0:30:07 Brennan: I think Sofia is as confused by this as possible, and I think within all of this, like, I think Sofia, in a weird way, is like feeling sympathy for nothingness right now, or it sounds like, of like this concept-

0:30:24 Emily: It's definitely not sympathy, it's definitely not sympathy. What Sofia's feeling the most is a curiosity if there's a good version of this. You know, like one that appreciates balance, one that doesn't try to consume the present or the past, but tries to live amongst it.

0:30:40 Brennan: I think that, yeah, I mean, you're in this place of kind of void right now that is very warm and welcoming. I think that with sort of that roll, I think Sofia probably is living in confusion in this moment around whether there is a good version of this, and also the interesting thing about when you are concentrating on nothingness, when you are clearing your mind, the relationship between the idea of true nothingness, but then also the ability, when you're meditating on nothing, the idea of unity, because the number that is closest to zero is one, and there is a degree of meditation where you are getting rid of everything, because you're realizing that everything isn't nothing, but it is just one thing, and you're erasing those boundaries between you and your connection to everything else. I think that maybe Sofia is sort of like observing, like, what is the difference between everything and nothing? And like, it's a very like monk-like meditation. That's sort of like, I don't think there's a solution to that. I think there's like a koan for, like, Sofia to meditate on of like, oh shit.

0:32:00 Sofia: Right, okay, I'll stitch it on a pillow and give to the monastery as a peace offering.

0:32:07 Brennan: [laughs] Incredible. So you guys have written down these seven objects with this giant pencil in negative space looking at this star rat. And yes, Kingston, you do know the Shen family. They're old pals, you've been down there a bunch. They're good people in the Unsleeping City and are specifically a force for, like… The Shen family focuses a lot of their efforts on Chinatown in particular, because Chinatown is one of the oldest and most magically powerful neighborhoods. You have probably like helped each other many times throughout the years.

0:32:48 Lou: Great. Is there a name?

0:32:51 Brennan: Oh sure, you would know a couple of them. The main people right now that are doing stuff, because some members of the family kind of are, like, taking care of the family business more than others-

0:33:03 Lou: Which is?

0:33:05 Brennan: The family business is learning profound magic and protecting Chinatown from threats arcane and extradimensional. You would know Li Ji and Jung Wei, are the two people that you know there. You didn't know that they had a connection to the Dragon of Bleecker Street. So that is what you guys know there. Yeah, so I think Sofia, you have that meditation, and Pete you have that recognition of Gladiator's relationship, that like Null moves in extremely hard to combat ways. They're very ambient, they're not gonna make the mistake of like giving you guys one human champion that you can kill and then Null is, like, fucked. But the difficulty of an entity that has chosen as its physical weapon an organization rather than an individual doesn't mean that it's impossible to fight, it's just a different fight than you guys are used to.

0:34:21 Ally: Yeah.

0:34:24 Brennan: So I think you come away with that recognition. What do you guys do within the void with Kugrash?

0:34:38 Sofia: How do we take down Gladiator, then? I know you can't predict the future, it's fine if you don't know. I understand we should probably go toward, you know.

0:34:52 Kugrash: I think you just have to make sure that aspects of the city aren't forgotten and fight to protect the things that are still here.

0:35:10 Pete: It seems like the big, like, if Null is very like isolation, erasure, and forgetting.

0:35:19 Brennan: Mm-hm.

0:35:20 Pete: Then it seems like our way of combating it is just with like the opposite of those things, which seems like connection, history, preservation.

0:35:32 Sofia: And also like if we're able to inspire that, then it will make people less likely to be possessed.

0:35:38 Pete: Yeah. This is almost like “area of effect,” like, what is that, like awareness campaigns or, you know, like what is the real life version, yeah?

0:35:44 Sofia: Yeah, we need to raise consciousness.

0:35:50 Iga: Get people out on the streets.

0:35:55 Brennan: Yeah, Pete said that area of effect thing, and you guys understand that to be true.

0:36:01 Ricky: So we just have to take down— I mean, Pete, do you think that 53\/3N has figured out that hard drive stuff?

0:36:07 Pete: Yeah, I can definitely go check in on that. I've got to [laughs nervously] actually, hm.

0:36:12 Sofia: Maybe we should, before you go, I actually have to do a couple ladies' hair.

0:36:17 Pete: Yeah, do you think we could work on that calendar before I go see 53\/3N?

0:36:20 Sofia: Yeah.

0:36:22 Ricky: Yeah. Pete, do you want to do the photo shoot?

0:36:27 Pete: Yeah, I would love to.

0:36:28 Ricky: Do you want to be the photographer? I need a photographer.

0:36:31 Pete: Yeah, definitely, man. I've got a ring light from an ex-girlfriend, so.

0:36:36 Iga: This reminds me also, Peter, I need to come to your bookshop and buy like a bunch of books, so you should be there. You get commission, right?

0:36:45 Pete: Yes, please.

0:36:47 Iga: Great.

0:36:48 Pete: Come by. I bet I have to work. Let's see, what's today? Oh, it's the day after Thanksgiving. I have a few shifts coming up.

0:36:57 Brennan: And I think, Sofie, the last thing is, I think you do recognize the truth of Kug's words, that Kug is, at the moment, sort of like an opposite to Null in a way, at least like sort of as infinite. But I'm gonna say here that you guys begin to fade out of your meditation and back to the Monastery of the Sacred Rat.

0:37:23 Emily: No, I wanted to do his hair one last time! [Brennan and Murph laugh]

0:37:28 Emily: I know I can't do a constellation's hair.

0:37:29 Pete: One last dance, please!

0:37:31 Lou: One last hairy baby.

0:37:33 Emily: The stars move.

0:37:33 Kugrash: And now I can send you off.

0:37:35 Murph: I do a little like magical stardust to send you back.

0:37:40 Ally: I weep, I just straight-up weep.

0:37:42 Emily: I definitely cry.

0:37:43 Murph: Smells like shit.

0:37:43 Lou: Speaking of weeping. Exactly, it smells awful. Kingston is just trying to brush the stardust off of him.

0:37:54 Brennan: Awesome, you guys arrive back having spoken to Kugrash. Murph, does Kugrash give any last words on the wind of trash as he vanishes?

0:38:08 Kugrash: [fading] Yeah, you know what, be careful out there, guys. It's fucked up. It's all fucked up.

0:38:15 Brennan: [laughs] You guys appear back in the Monastery of the Sacred Rat.

0:38:21 Kingston: So Cody, that was our friend Kugrash.

0:38:23 Sofia: Yeah.

0:38:24 Iga: Cody, you were very quiet and respectful that whole time.

0:38:28 Cody: Yeah, well, umm.

0:38:29 Ricky: You didn't have any questions for him?

0:38:31 Cody: I'm working on that, but also, yeah, I was just kind of blown away in the moment. He seemed really cool.

0:38:36 Sofia: Yeah, he was really cool. He's really cool.

0:38:39 Kingston: He is. He is really cool.

0:38:41 Cody: A lot of cool story there, yeah.

0:38:42 Sofia: Yeah. Really, like, really, yeah.

0:38:47 Ricky: Wow, thanks, Cody.

0:38:51 Cody: Just a rich backstory, and like, you know. Cool guy.

0:38:56 Kingston: I know Sofie, you've got some lady things you need to take care of, I guess we got this calendar in the mix.

0:39:03 Sofia: What are you referring to? Oh, oh, yes! I have some hair I'm gonna do, yeah. I'm trying to raise some cash.

0:39:12 Kingston: Yeah.

0:39:13 Sofia: And I've got a couple ill-advised brunettes trying to go blonde.

0:39:18 Kingston: Well, hey, you know, that's their choice.

0:39:21 Sofia: It's absolutely their choice.

0:39:22 Kingston: But it feels like we got these three pretty hard things to chase down. I mean, we've got the Shen family, and maybe they seem to be helping us maybe with the dragon angle and some of these like artifacts, we got 53\/3N's hard drive, and then I feel like there was one more but now I can't remember.

0:39:46 Iga: Peter Stuyvesant.

0:39:46 Kingston: Oh yeah.

0:39:49 Iga: If we are going to talk to the Shen family, I did some light Googling.

0:39:56 Kingston: Uh-huh.

0:39:57 Iga: And Peter Stuyvesant is buried at Saint Mark's, which is very close to the Chinatown.

0:40:04 Kingston: Look at that.

0:40:04 Pete: Ooh.

0:40:06 Ricky: I'd love to grieve.

0:40:06 Pete: With the power of Google!

0:40:08 Iga: Seems like a place.

0:40:11 Kingston: We're not gonna dig him up, right? That feels ruthless.

0:40:16 Iga: I think it's like a tomb.

0:40:16 Kingston: Okay, great.

0:40:18 Iga: I don't think it's a, I think it's like family tomb, family crypt type situation.

0:40:23 Pete: One of those family tombs. What? I think I can go, also I think I can go see because this wouldn't really be the amount of time it would've taken me to get the full amount anyway, so I can go visit him. Ha, yeah.

0:40:40 Kingston: Pete, why are you-

0:40:40 Pete: I'm a good liar.

0:40:43 Kingston: Why are you giving money to 53\/3N? Why is 53\/3N getting money from you?

0:40:45 Iga: Why are you saying, "I am a good liar," out loud?

0:40:49 Ally: I fully dissociate.

0:40:54 Ricky: Null has Pete!

0:40:59 Pete: It's a long story actually, but it's all taken care of now, and you guys definitely don't have to worry about me.

0:41:09 Iga: This is what my children are saying when they are smashing something.

0:41:15 Pete: I'm gonna be all right.

0:41:15 Sofia: Pete.

0:41:15 Ally: And I just hold Sofia's hand.

0:41:20 Emily: Yeah, I was gonna say, Sofia and Pete just like sweat into each other's palms.

0:41:27 Pete: I'm fine!

0:41:31 Sofia: I got you, Pete, okay? I'm gonna dye some hair for you, okay?

0:41:37 Pete: Thank you. If someone wants a perm and a bleach, what are you gonna do?

0:41:41 Sofia: As long as I can keep anyone in the chair, I will, because it's like the longer you keep them in the chair the more money, so anything they want to try.

0:41:52 Pete: Incredible.

0:41:54 Brennan: Hell yeah, you guys are all here. You guys have all the information you need, so what do you guys do? You're here at the monastery. You guys tell me what you do next.

0:42:06 Ricky: Kingston, it sounds like you and Iga should talk to the sorcerers.

0:42:10 Kingston: Yeah, I mean, I know a couple of the Shen family from back in the day, so it'd be no thing to go on down there and say hi.

0:42:18 Ricky: And I don't know that I need to do that calendar right now. I could knock it out if I had some help, but it also feels like maybe not the time.

0:42:29 Pete: Yeah. Do you need anything from this monastery, Ricky? Or like, do you need help?

0:42:34 Ricky: I might talk to Marty for a second, but, like.

0:42:35 Kingston: Yeah.

0:42:37 Brennan: Hell yeah.

0:42:38 Ricky: I think that I've made the connection that we need to make. Feels okay to leave.

0:42:43 Brennan: Cool.

0:42:43 Zac: Yeah.

0:42:44 Ally: Cool.

0:42:45 Brennan: Yeah, Pete, sorry, Ricky, you feel the connection to the unicorn, to Perry and to Marty. You definitely feel like in a moment of need you could summon all of them if you had to.

0:42:57 Zac: [nods] Cool.

0:42:58 Lou: So that's just now like waiting, like for when we need it. Great.

0:43:03 Emily: Yeah. And is this like transitioning into downtime, or-

0:43:08 Brennan: I think so. It's up to you guys. You guys just went through a long fight. I will say this, it is Sunday night, the weekend after Thanksgiving. Kingston, you've got a lot on your mind in terms of the stuff that you've been saying you need to do since going to David's house on Thursday.

0:43:25 Pete: Oh no, it's Cyber Monday tomorrow. Is that a Gladiator surge in power? [all groan]

0:43:35 Sofia: Okay, you know what we need? We need 53\/3N to hack the website. The Gladiator website.

0:43:43 Kingston: There's also, there's something I can do. It's not something I like to do, but there's something I could do.

0:43:50 Pete: What's that, Kingston?

0:43:52 Kingston: I need to head downtown and make a call. But okay, shit. Shit, shit. Kingston's like, okay, yeah, I don't know, yeah. I've got some, I, okay.

0:44:10 Sofia: Does this relate to Gladiator, or should we ask 53\/3N to hack the website?

0:44:14 Kingston: It's not Gladiator. I think we should still ask 53\/3N. This is me more asking a favor from the city in a big way.

0:44:21 Sofia: Okay. Okay.

0:44:21 Pete: Cool. Okay, cool. I mean, I'm gonna talk to 53\/3N anyway, I can help either Ricky, or-

0:44:26 Sofia: Why don't I come with you to 53\/3N? In case he starts, like, in case he asks about the drugs, I can say I bought them, I'm dealing in Staten Island now.

0:44:36 Iga: Wait, drugs? What the hell? Aren't you, no, hang on, what?

0:44:40 Pete: All right, fine, I'll fucking come, okay, look. A lot of part of interactions with drugs-

0:44:45 Iga: I gave you $2,000 in cash!

0:44:48 Pete: Is an addiction to the lifestyle, okay? What your life looked like at the time, sometimes that includes extra money. I dipped back into dealing briefly, immediately regretted it, flushed thousands of dollars worth of cocaine down a magical toilet who got really high, and I hope she's okay now. She's probably ordering Thai food delivery and watching a bunch of Gordon Ramsay YouTube videos. I'm not gonna say where I got those specifics from. So I'm okay now, I am okay, and Sofia actually, like, really helped me through all of that.

0:45:31 Sofia: Well, oh yeah, Pete helped me though. You know, it goes both ways.

0:45:36 Pete: Yeah, you want me to maybe broadcast that for you? [laughs] I’m just kidding.

0:45:43 Sofia: Okay, you know what? Fine! Fair is fair, I fucking outed you, I'll out myself.

0:45:47 Pete: No no no, it's okay.

0:45:47 Sofia: I'm fucking pregnant.

0:45:48 Kingston: What?

0:45:49 Ricky: What?

0:45:50 Sofia: I'm pregnant with Dale's fucking baby.

0:45:53 Kingston: What?

0:45:54 Sofia: I was gonna wait to tell you all before I told him.

0:45:57 Iga: I don't know who this Dale is.

0:45:58 Sofia: But now, in an act of penitence, I will—

0:46:00 Pete: I’m so sorry!

0:46:01 Ricky: You've been pregnant for four years?

0:46:04 Kingston: Hold on, hold on, hold on, wait.

0:46:05 Sofia: No.

0:46:05 Kingston: Wait, what?

0:46:07 Cody: My god.

0:46:08 Sofia: He was breaking out of heaven, you know, every couple months. It wasn't exactly something you could set your clock to. We didn't use protection because I didn't really think, you know, I guess I didn't think, oh, does heaven have STDs? I don't know, there's a lot of things that didn't go into this, it was all very spur of the moment.

0:46:25 Cody: You had sex with an angel? That's fucking metal as hell. That's awesome.

0:46:29 Sofia: Multiple times, yeah. Very adventurous.

0:46:34 Ricky: Did it look like his Led Zeppelin T-shirt?

0:46:37 Cody: Yeah, did it look like this?

0:46:39 Pete: It's like someone literally… Full reverse cowgirl with an angel.

0:46:48 Brennan: Kingston, I think you remember this moment, the favor Alejandro asked of you back at JFK.

0:46:56 Lou: I think, yeah, that's very present in my mind, but I think also there's this like, we just got out of the infinite, and like, I don't know, there's a lot going on. But I do think Kingston, like, clocks this, and is like,

0:47:14 Kingston: Okay, all right.

0:47:17 Sofia: Anyways, oh, but I did go to Dr. Lugash. You can't hurt this baby, so you don't need to coddle me in battle.

0:47:28 Iga: I got to say, I love Dr. Lugash. He birthed both of my children. He's Russian, we don't hold it against him. He's a good man. He's really good at a lot of different things in a way that you're like, oh, maybe jack of all trades. No, he's a master of like a bunch of stuff. He's a good doctor.

0:47:46 Ricky: Oh, by the way, congratulations.

0:47:48 Pete: He gave me a double mastectomy.

0:47:50 Iga: Congratulations.

0:47:50 Cody: Yeah, congratulations.

0:47:53 Kingston: Yeah, I guess that's the most important part. This is fantastic.

0:47:57 Sofia: Thank you, it's really confusing because of many aspects that I won't go into. Maybe it's just enough that we all sit with this information for a while.

0:48:09 Ricky: I think there's some pretty obvious reasons why it would be confusing.

0:48:11 Iga: No, yeah.

0:48:12 Ricky: So if you need anything from us, we're here.

0:48:15 Sofia: Thank you, you know, I just need you all to not tell Dale that I told you before him.

0:48:23 Ricky: Probably won't come up, probably won't tell him.

0:48:25 Kingston: Yeah, I imagine.

0:48:26 Sofia: Okay.

0:48:29 Brennan: Incredible. You guys, I think it's getting later in the day on Sunday, Pete's just had this realization about Cyber Monday. I think Kingston is feeling like a need to beat feet. You guys head off, and you guys can all be in touch with each other. You guys walk away not only with these revelations about Sofia's pregnancy, but with this incredible communion with Kugrash, Pete's revelation into the nature of Null's relationship to Gladiator. You guys are facing this fight where Pete, you feel the, you know, Null wreaking havoc on the sixth borough, but you know that if Null has a relationship to Gladiator like Nod had to you, you can affect the sixth borough by the things you are doing. Like, Kingston is right. You can affect the sixth borough by the things you do in the waking world, which means that you don't need to go there physically to help save Nod. There are things you can do here in the city that are probably best done over downtime, and yes you guys have stuff to do, but also, like, it's late Sunday, 53\/3N's probably busy right now. It's probably late to, like, the Shen family might not want to meet you guys, like, tonight on the drop of a dime. So I'm gonna say that we're gonna move into a period of downtime where you guys are doing the stuff that you need to be doing that occur over days, et cetera. So I'm gonna say, let's go ahead, if you guys would be so kind, and let's roll initiative.

0:50:14 Lou: If I'm doing something that night—

0:50:15 Brennan: Oh yeah, actually I'll say, for anyone that wants to do something that night, we can go for it. But we'll roll initiative for downtime, remember what you rolled. Kingston, what do you do that night?

0:50:29 Lou: I am headed to the payphone that I spoke to my friend on the moments before I met the Dragon of Bleecker Street.

0:50:41 Brennan: Hell yes. Kingston, you go all the way down to Lafayette, way downtown. Actually, not too far from Chinatown, if we're being honest. You go to the payphone that you spoke to your cousin Janice on all those years ago when you got her that job at Cornell. By the way, she's doing great, kids are growing up, she's still in Ithaca, comes to visit all the time.

0:51:11 Lou: And I take my divine token off my neck, off the string, and I push it into the slot, and I'm gonna try for Divine Intervention.

0:51:23 Brennan: Ooh, that's so fucking cool!

0:51:26 Siobhan: Hell yeah.

0:51:26 Zac: Cool.

0:51:27 Brennan: One of the last working payphones in New York City. The subway token goes into it. You're gonna roll a percentile dice. You are looking for the numbers one through 11 here.

0:51:40 Lou: Yes.

0:51:42 Siobhan: Oof, god, that's so low.

0:51:45 Lou: Okay, here we go. That is 64.

0:51:53 Brennan: Okay, the coin appears back out in the change tray. Looks like the phone's not working.

0:52:03 Lou: Kingston's a little disappointed, hangs the phone up, and just texts the group,

0:52:10 Kingston: I hope 53\/3N can come through.

0:52:14 Brennan: Incredible. Does anyone else do anything that night?

0:52:16 Ally: I guess since Kingston said, "I hope 53\/3N can come through," maybe I just hit up 53\/3N.

0:52:22 Brennan: Cool, yeah, I'd say give me a luck check. Just roll a D20 and we'll say on a 17 through 20,

0:52:33 Ally: Two.

0:52:34 Brennan: All right. You don't get a response back from 53\/3N immediately. We're gonna go into downtime. Did anyone roll above a Did anyone roll above a 15?

0:52:46 Ally: Yes.

0:52:48 Zac: A 15.

0:52:49 Ally: 18.

0:52:50 Brennan: 15 and 18, cool. So we're gonna go into a, I'm gonna say a period of, we're not actually gonna do two week bumps this time, we're gonna go ahead and do one week chunks of downtime, 'cause it's getting close to Christmas. You guys see around the city lights are starting to go up. So Pete, that… Sorry, Pete and Ricky, what did Pete and Ricky roll again? Sorry.

0:53:18 Ally: 18.

0:53:19 Brennan: 18, and Ricky got 15?

0:53:19 Zac: 15.

0:53:22 Brennan: Cool, Pete, so we're gonna go with your downtime first that week. What is Pete taking care of as you begin to go into downtime, learning what you learned from Kugrash about the dragon's hoard and Gladiator?

0:53:42 Ally: Yeah. I think the three things that I would love to are obviously I go to work, I would love to go to a meeting with Lugash.

0:53:53 Brennan: Cool.

0:53:53 Ally: Maybe one or two. And then I need to talk to 53\/3N.

0:53:58 Brennan: Cool, I'm gonna say that because you are prioritizing the meeting with Lugash, prioritizing your sobriety, your die is going to bump back up to a D10. You're doing better.

0:54:17 Ally: I've never been at a D10, honey.

0:54:18 Brennan: Oh yeah—

0:54:19 Ally: I’ve never been back up to anything!

0:54:22 Brennan: Okay, so Pete bumps to a D10, Pete's doing great. So this means that your other downtime activities, how about it? Are going to be rolled with, because you're just trying to get a meeting with 53\/3N, I'm gonna say roll that D20 again, still looking for 17 through 20.

0:54:42 Ally: Okay. 17!

0:54:45 Brennan: Hell yes, baby, way to go.

0:54:49 Ally: Hell yeah.

0:54:50 Brennan: So Pete, 53\/3N hits you up, like, middle of that week, you've been going to meetings, you're so glad you don't have those fucking drugs on you anymore. 53\/3N: Hey, that's a wrap on the hard drive, huge haul, hit me up whenever.

0:55:15 Ally: Yeah, great, I go there as soon as possible.

0:55:19 Brennan: Huge refrigerated thing, he's got his stuff everywhere. You walk into the refrigerated server room, he looks up and goes, 53\/3N: Pete, my man. Where the fuck did you get this? Because this shit is raw as hell.

0:55:37 Pete: Yeah, dude, we really need to take them down. Like, what does it look like? What have you found?

0:55:45 Brennan: He passes it and says, 53\/3N: Info's all on here. Give it to who you need to give it to. I laid everything out, so all the info is there for who you want to give it to.

0:56:00 Ally: Can I ask him,

0:56:00 Pete: Was there any sort of like defense that you had to, like, what was up with that crazy filling the screen thing that happened to us that like ruined our monitor?

0:56:13 Brennan: He looks and says, he says, he says, 53\/3N: Just some basic firewall bullshit. I didn't encounter anything as crazy as what you were describing.

0:56:27 Brennan: Pete, I think you recognize that that happened because someone magic was in the presence of this hard drive. That was more about Kingston and Null reacting to Kingston. You see 53\/3N goes… You rolled a 17, right? What would a 17 plus your arcana be, just out of curiosity?

0:56:50 Ally: That would be a 26.

0:56:58 Brennan: 53\/3N goes, 53\/3N: I got the corporate structures going up through Excelsior, I got the names of CEOs, VPs, CFOs, COOs.

0:57:06 Brennan: He's like, 53\/3N: I got the shit they're trying to bury, I got bribes from the FDA, I got people they're trying to silence, I have lists of employees that are on unionization watch lists. All their fucking dirt, baby, it's all on here. Good looking out. And by the way, dude, thanks for moving that product so fucking quick, way to go.

0:57:31 Pete: Oh, wait, what do you mean?

0:57:34 Brennan: He's like, 53\/3N: Got the cash in the bag, man. You're the best. I missed my plug, dude.

0:57:41 Pete: Tell me more about that. (Brennan laughs)

0:57:47 Pete: Tell me more about that actually, man, yeah, for sure.

0:57:51 Brennan: He looks at you. Pete, make an insight check, make an insight check and a deception check with disadvantage right now.

0:58:03 Ally: Okay, insight is, one moment please. Ooh baby, we're talking a 13 on insight, and then deception with disadvantage?

0:58:17 Brennan: Yeah.

0:58:18 Ally: Oh, interesting, well, my deception is pretty good as a former dealer. Oh bitch, okay. That's a nat 20 but we'll ignore it. But it's still a 17.

0:58:32 Brennan: Cool. I'm gonna roll. On a natural 16, 53\/3N looks at you and goes, 53\/3N: Oh, never mind, I don't know what I'm talking about. Feel free to hit me up with that money when you need to, man.

0:58:51 Pete: No no, you got it. Dude, you got it. I'm just wondering, I'm working with some very interesting people.

0:58:58 Ally: Can I try to do another deception check? I need to make sure that I don't have to pay this money.

0:59:03 Brennan: Roll with disadvantage. You got to beat a 21.

0:59:09 Siobhan: Come on.

0:59:12 Ally: It's a 10.

0:59:14 Brennan: Looks like the calendar's a go, baby. You see 53\/3N says, 53\/3N: I don't know who paid me, but clearly it wasn't you. Take your time, obviously, but I'm gonna get to the bottom of it, I'll let you know what's up.

0:59:29 Ally: I cast Friends on him.

0:59:31 Brennan: Okay, cool, he's not aware of magic, you cast Friends. What's Pete gonna try to do in this moment?

0:59:39 Pete: Dude, come on, level with me, man. We've worked together forever. I've got so many irons in so many fires, I'm just kind of, you know, I haven't had coffee yet today.

0:59:50 Brennan: You've already tried deception, I will let Pete work persuasion. Try to beat that 21 with persuasion to see if you can talk 53\/3N off of this. You're not gonna roll this with disadvantage.

1:00:02 Ally: Okay, great.

1:00:02 Brennan: This is a straight roll.

1:00:04 Ally: We've got good persuasion. Oh baby, that is an 11.

1:00:11 Murph: No! Pete!

1:00:16 Brennan: Okay, I'm gonna bring up one thing here, which is that it is a new day, and so you do have Tides of Chaos. I just want to remind you about your abilities.

1:00:24 Ally: Yes, okay, thank you.

1:00:26 Brennan: This is the last fucking out for our boy Pete Conlan.

1:00:29 Ally: Fucking fucker, this is thousands of dollars. Okay.

1:00:32 Lou: How much do you need?

1:00:35 Ally: That is an 18.

1:00:38 Brennan: 18 is not 21.

1:00:40 Ally: Oh, I had to beat 21? Fucker!

1:00:42 Brennan: Terrible.

1:00:42 Ally: All right.

1:00:44 Brennan: He looks at you and goes, 53\/3N: Cool, so you have no ide where that money came from? So that's great. Here's your hard drive.

1:00:52 Pete: Yeah, weird. Huh. 53\/3N: So you still have my product, go ahead and move that, and we'll be good to go.

1:00:59 Pete: Yeah, we're like two thirds of the way through, so. 53\/3N: Great, good good good.

1:01:04 Brennan: You walk out of there with the hard drive, Pete. You have… Someone tried to settle your debt.

1:01:18 Ally: What the fuck is going on?

1:01:21 Brennan: Make either an investigation or a perception check for me.

1:01:24 Ally: Okay. Rolling like shit today. Eight.

1:01:29 Brennan: Perception, you can't think of it off the top of your head. Go ahead and roll investigation.

1:01:35 Ally: Okay. All right, this needs to turn around. Seven plus one, that's also an eight.

1:01:45 Brennan: Cool. (Ally laughs)

1:01:48 Brennan: You have no fucking idea who could've covered your money. But you do have the hard drive.

1:01:56 Ally: Great.

1:01:59 Brennan: Hell yes. Ricky.

1:02:02 Ally: Can I text the group and be like,

1:02:02 Pete: So, did anyone pay a lot of money for me? Just wondering.

1:02:09 Iga: Yes, $2,000. I guess, I gave.

1:02:13 Brennan: But you, it ended up being $4,500, so you still owe 53\/3N $2,500, Pete.

1:02:19 Ally: Wait, what? Oh no, that was earlier.

1:02:21 Siobhan: I'm talking about the original one.

1:02:25 Ally: Yeah, oh fuck, okay, cool.

1:02:27 Emily: What would I respond to that? 'Cause wasn't that my goal? Or was that not from...

1:02:34 Brennan: You guys—

1:02:34 Ally: I mean, yeah, you could hit me back and be like, “no, but I'm still getting the money for you,” and I would probably be like

1:02:39 Pete: Cool, thank you, yeah, that's still the plan.

1:02:41 Emily: Cool.

1:02:42 Sofia: Yeah, no, but I'm working on it.

1:02:45 Brennan: Cool.

1:02:45 Pete: Thanks again.

1:02:47 Brennan: Ricky, that's gonna be you. So Pete's got the hard drive. Ricky, what are you doing in this first period of downtime?

1:02:56 Zac: I think for this period of downtime, Ricky, still working at Helping Hands and still, I think the main thing he wants to do is like find some time with Cody to see if he can help him figure out his weapon situation.

1:03:11 Brennan: Cool.

1:03:11 Murph: Hell yeah.

1:03:14 Zac: Yeah.

1:03:15 Brennan: I love that. So the main thing you're doing in downtime is giving Cody a help action on what he's doing.

1:03:22 Zac: Yeah, but I think in person. Like I think I was like hoping to try and talk to the Questing Blade.

1:03:28 Brennan: Yes yes yes.

1:03:28 Zac: And, you know.

1:03:30 Brennan: You will be with him in person for sure. But you're not doing the calendar during this first week.

1:03:36 Zac: I mean, we can do, like, some pre-pro meetings for this calendar shoot. I have a feeling, like— Ally and Lou smile.

1:03:41 Brennan: Cool cool cool.

1:03:42 Zac: It's a little beyond Ricky's organizational skills, so maybe he's texting with Pete, seeing whoever's available wants to like work on it.

1:03:49 Brennan: Hell yeah.

1:03:50 Murph: I feel like, yeah, Cody could help do the calendar as well, like sort of a, “you help me with the sword, I help you with the calendar,” we're just like back and forth, taking pictures, and—

1:04:04 Ally: The calendar has the sword in one of the photos.

1:04:07 Murph: Yeah.

1:04:08 Ricky: You know where to get costumes and stuff?

1:04:10 Cody: Umm, yeah.

1:04:10 Murph: I break into the mall, and I—

1:04:14 Brennan: Cool.

1:04:16 Murph: Grab a bunch of Halloween costumes.

1:04:17 Ally: Wait, please, goth Ricky, kind of shirtless, like, thirst trap goth Ricky.

1:04:20 Lou: Wow, too much to imagine.

1:04:24 Ricky: Do you think this kind of calendar would sell?

1:04:25 Siobhan: Oh my goodness, the ultimate health goth.

1:04:28 Cody: I know a lot of people we could sell this to, Ricky.

1:04:31 Brennan: So we're actually gonna cut over to Pete's spot in Queens where Ricky is over helping Cody out. Cody, you're going into your sword stuff, so you guys are here. You have the Peasant's Sword, then there's Thirsting Blade Dark Excalibur Mega Genesis.

1:04:51 Zac: Is the peasant sword still attached to it, or no?

1:04:54 Brennan: No, it hasn't been attached to it.

1:04:55 Murph: No, we never put it on.

1:04:55 Brennan: Never put it on.

1:04:57 Murph: My devil wanted to do that, and Cody is not gonna do that.

1:05:01 Zac: Okay.

1:05:02 Brennan: You guys actually hear a knock on the door. Pete, you're like in the kitchen, you've got the hard drive, you're still trying to figure out this fucking money thing which is weird. Cody and Ricky, you guys are working on some, like, sword stuff together. You guys hear a knock at the door.

1:05:21 Pete: I'll get it.

1:05:23 Cody: People usually just open the door and walk in and do whatever they want in this place.

1:05:28 Ricky: Strangers?

1:05:28 Cody: That's fucking weird.

1:05:29 Ricky: Do strangers usually-

1:05:30 Brennan: You guys see, wearing a hoodie and a backpack, is Nick Lisowski, Iga's 14 year old son. He walks in and is like,

1:05:43 Nick: Uh, hey guys, that was super awesome, I just wanted to thank you guys for the ride on the train yesterday, and, um, Cody, I know that you've got Thirsting Blade Dark Excalibur Mega Genesis now, and Ricky, I know you're fighting with the Questing Blade.

1:06:04 Ricky: It's actually a different ax.

1:06:06 Nick: Oh, sorry, it's just a magic, just an ax? Just like a straight-up ax? Oh.

1:06:10 Ricky: Just a pretty regular ax, yeah.

1:06:12 Nick: Cool. So I kind of was wondering if...

1:06:17 Brennan: You see he's a little bit nervous, he's got like sweaty palms, he goes like—

1:06:20 Cody: Dude, do you want a sword?

1:06:24 Brennan: He looks up and is like,

1:06:26 Nick: Yeah, kind of.

1:06:28 Brennan: And you see that he looks over at the Peasant Sword.

1:06:32 Cody: Whoa.

1:06:34 Ricky: What's going on, Nick? I guess we haven't actually chatted all that much.

1:06:41 Nick: No. Yeah, like, I don't know, I… My mom's always kind of been training my sister, my younger sister, for this like magic stuff, and she invited me on that train, it was kind of the first time that I ever felt, like, kind of included in that sort of thing, and...

1:07:08 Pete: And your dad's non-magic, right?

1:07:11 Nick: Yeah.

1:07:12 Pete: Yeah, that's hard.

1:07:14 Nick: Yeah. I'm just worried about my sister, and I just thought, I'm not magic, but if I had, like, a magic sword, I don't know, if anything ever happened, I'd be able to like maybe take care of stuff.

1:07:30 Pete: Yeah, is there any particular reason you're, like, nervous for, or just in general that, you know, she's in the magic world now?

1:07:38 Brennan: You guys go ahead and make an insight check.

1:07:42 Ally: There's the roll. 20.

1:07:44 Brennan: Yeah, I think you see that Nick is carrying a lot of like you know, it's like weird to be the non-magic sibling when you know magic stuff is going on, but I think that there was always such a weight of tradition behind it, but now that he's seen his mom and his sister kind of challenging and reinventing and exploring those traditions, you see he's nervous 'cause he came to a house of a bunch of like adults that his mom knows that are all magical. He's kind of like doing, he's like wilding out, he's like doing a teenage thing. He like clearly didn't ask permission to come do this, and you see he's nervous to be talking to a bunch of grownups and it's that weird moment when kids are teenagers and they start doing stuff on their own without asking permission, and this is very meaningful to him. And you also realize that like, I don't know, there's probably a lot of sadness in this kid. Like, his family has a magic castle that wasn't supposed to be for him, but he knows that that sword belongs to his family's tradition, and he's like sort of scared of asking for it.

1:08:57 Pete: Yeah. I'm making some popcorn on the stovetop if you want to come in and have lunch.

1:09:05 Nick: Popcorn for lunch?

1:09:07 Pete: Yeah, I put nutritional yeast on it, though. I put nutritional yeast on it.

1:09:11 Ricky: Pete? Hey, Pete?

1:09:11 Pete: Huh?

1:09:13 Ricky: We're gonna need some more calories, we're gonna need some more protein, we're gonna need some-

1:09:16 Pete: No, I do olive oil, I cook a little bit of garlic in olive oil and pour it over nutritional yeast.

1:09:21 Cody: Me and Pete just have popcorn lunch. You don't do-

1:09:23 Ricky: That's not, that's not, that's a snack.

1:09:25 Cody: It has corn in it.

1:09:27 Ricky: That's barely a snack.

1:09:27 Cody: Okay, okay.

1:09:29 Pete: I have some really weird hot dogs.

1:09:30 Ricky: Listen, let's talk to, can I talk to Cody real fast for a sec?

1:09:36 Cody: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So...

1:09:41 Ricky: What do you think of that, Cody? That story.

1:09:45 Cody: I mean, I think that it's, you know, it's… I think he showed up at the right time. Like, I don't know shit about swords, so he can learn with me, maybe? Can we let him into the sword club?

1:10:11 Ricky: Yeah, why don't we do that? That sounds like a great idea.

1:10:14 Cody: Yeah. Are you cool with… Should we give him the peasant sword?

1:10:22 Ricky: It seems like it's his sword. I didn't really think that he would want it, but at the same time, it's definitely not mine. I'm not really a sword guy again, so if you're cool with it.

1:10:34 Cody: But you know, you're like helping me with the Questing Blade, so you know enough not to turn your sword into a giant fork.

1:10:42 Ricky: Yeah.

1:10:42 Cody: Which, like, again, just super important, it turns out.

1:10:46 Ricky: There's sort of of a level of, I would say, and this is not in a disrespectful way.

1:10:51 Cody: Right.

1:10:52 Ricky: But just sort of a level of common sense knowledge that I have.

1:10:55 Cody: Sure.

1:10:58 Ricky: Yeah, but an expertise I do not have.

1:11:02 Ally: I'm off to the side like,

1:11:02 Pete: [eating popcorn lunch] Ooh! Common sense, spicy!

1:11:08 Brennan: Hell yeah.

1:11:10 Murph: And then I think, yeah, I'll, Cody will go over to Nick with Ricky and I think I'll be like,

1:11:23 Cody: Hey dude, yeah, I'm gonna be learning a bunch of stuff about all these weapons and everything, and this is your, like, family sword and stuff, so let's figure it out together, right?

1:11:37 Murph: And give him the peasant sword.

1:11:40 Brennan: You give Nick the peasant sword. He smiles, he's like,

1:11:45 Nick: Thanks, I super appreciate it. You guys are super cool, and, I don't know. Thanks for taking care of my mom.

1:11:56 Brennan: And you see Nick smiles, takes the sword, and heads out. And it feels good. I think Cody, for this downtime activity that you are doing, you're gonna get a help action from Ricky, so you can roll with advantage on this. It sounds like the downtime activity is really like a history check here, to like learn about these swords and weapons and stuff. Go ahead and roll a history check with advantage. As in all things, the DC is gonna be 20.

1:12:29 Murph: Great. Yeah, I think Cody is trying to learn about like actual swords and stuff and specifically why this one doesn't work, and yeah.

1:12:40 Brennan: Cool.

1:12:41 Murph: So I'll go ahead and make a history check.

1:12:47 Zac: You get advantage.

1:12:47 Murph: With advantage. Yeah.

1:12:48 Brennan: With advantage.

1:12:50 Murph: Oh, it's a very good thing I had advantage, 'cause I rolled a nat one on one of them, but I got a 16.

1:12:55 Brennan: 16, cool. So you-

1:12:59 Zac: Can I just Bless Cody?

1:13:01 Brennan: Sure, cast Bless on Cody.

1:13:03 Lou: Let's go 20!

1:13:03 Ally: Incredible.

1:13:05 Brennan: Okay, so you're gonna need to hit a four on that D4.

1:13:09 Siobhan: Come on, come on, come on.

1:13:12 Murph: I did it! [claps] Four! (all cheering)

1:13:16 Brennan: Incredible!

1:13:16 Ally: Hell yeah!

1:13:18 Brennan: Ricky and Cody, you guys spend that week doing a bunch of work together on swordcraft and weaponry. Cody, you realize, like, there's a ton of awesome history and lore. Cody, go ahead and take a free proficiency in the history skill. You just dive into studying history, studying actual, there's like, you find out awesome martial arts stuff from all around the world, there's like HEMA, like historical European martial arts, Eastern martial arts. You study a bunch of different unarmed techniques from all around the world, from Indonesia, South America. You study all kinds of like, the history of early firearms and all this stuff. There's a tremendous amount of weapons history here. Towards the end of that week, you guys perform, and Ricky, this is you actually casting that bless. You guys find a local, like, forge, run by like this old biker dude that used to be part of the Hell's Angels, and then like, and is now like in his old age is part of that thing where they like protect kids that are like going through weird like legal trouble. You know, those like bikers, the protect children bikers, who runs a blacksmith forge in Queens. You guys disassemble Thirsting Blade Dark Excalibur Mega Genesis into three separate weapons. (Siobhan laughs)

1:15:02 Zac: I feel like,

1:15:02 Ricky: Cody. I feel like we've done a lot of good work here, but do you mind if I have just a moment with the Questing Blade? I imagine you have more to talk about with the Questing Blade, but I feel like I should have a conversation, sort of a difficult conversation.

1:15:24 Cody: Sure, I can talk to Mega Genesis over here.

1:15:27 Ricky: Okay, you don't have to, okay. [Murph laughs]

1:15:30 Cody: We will both talk to the swords.

1:15:32 Ricky: You got to take a call too?

1:15:34 Murph: Yeah. Yeah, Cody takes the other two swords and walks off.

1:15:40 Brennan: Mega Genesis, as you're holding it, goes,

1:15:43 Mega Genesis: What's up, you nasty piece of shit? It's Mega Genesis.

1:15:46 Cody: Fuck you, dude.

1:15:46 Mega Genesis: Fuck you. Yeah, you wish.

1:15:49 Cody: Fuck you, you're not a fucking fork sword anymore. I'm gonna fucking sell you on eBay, dude.

1:15:53 Mega Genesis: What the fuck?

1:15:57 Brennan: So yeah, you're holding onto Mega Genesis and Dark Excalibur now.

1:16:06 Lou: Goddammit.

1:16:06 Brennan: And Ricky, you have the Questing Blade.

1:16:13 Ricky: Hey.

1:16:16 Questing Blade: Well, I see that I am being held by a former champion of the Questing Blade, hello. Hello, Ricky Matsui.

1:16:27 Ricky: Hey, Questing Blade, it's good to talk to you, it's good to see you again, you look great.

1:16:34 Questing Blade: I don't have eyes and I can't see, so I assume you look great as well.

1:16:39 Ricky: Thank you. Hey, I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I feel like in the moment it felt right to give you up to Dale, and I still feel that way, but at the time I never really was able to clear the air with you and make sure that that was okay for you, and I can see why your feelings would be hurt by that. So I just, I feel like I owed you that.

1:17:24 Brennan: Go ahead and give me a, go ahead and give me a charisma roll here, just a flat charisma roll.

1:17:35 Murph: Can I Bless Ricky?

1:17:37 Brennan: Yes. You can roll a D4 on that.

1:17:40 Ally: Bros blessing bros.

1:17:42 Zac: I got a four on the Bless.

1:17:44 Murph: Yes!

1:17:44 Siobhan: Hell yeah.

1:17:45 Zac: Charisma would be 15.

1:17:49 Brennan: 15. You feel the Questing Blade goes,

1:17:58 Questing Blade: I sincerely and humbly accept your apology, Ricky.

1:18:05 Ricky: Thank you. I feel like I just want to be clear that I'm happy that our paths crossed where they did, and I'm happy for you to go on your own journey, whichever way you see fit, and I think we shared something beautiful for a little bit there, but it's okay that you're doing your own thing with me, and I hope you understand that.

1:18:36 Brennan: The Questing Blade nods, and—

1:18:39 Lou: It nods?

1:18:40 Brennan: Oh sorry, no. The Questing Blade processes what you have said, and you can tell that there is something that it is meditating on that it is not saying, and the Questing Blade says,

1:19:03 Questing Blade: Ricky, do you know why it is that I chose you?

1:19:12 Ricky: Well, you know, it seemed like you were in a building that was on fire, and maybe, maybe I was just in the right place at the right time.

1:19:29 Brennan: Those words sort of echo, maybe even within, I don't know if Ricky… Ricky does his normal self-effacing thing of being like, right place right time, and kind of that attitude of like, anybody would have done it, and the sword goes,

1:19:52 Questing Blade: Hm. Right place, right time. Ricky, I too am grateful for the memories that we shared. I am glad that this moment of mutual honor will be the last note of our parting. Thank you for your words, Ricky Matsui.

1:20:24 Ricky: I hope you… Yeah, I just, I'm thankful for our time together. I think, you know, at the end of the day, I don't even, I definitely think that someone like, someone else needs the Questing Blade more than me, and, you know, I'm not even sure I need this magical ax. You know, like, it's weird, yeah.

1:21:00 Brennan: The Questing Blade smiles and says,

1:21:03 Questing Blade: I don't think you need me, Ricky. I wonder if you ever did. Thank you.

1:21:09 Ricky: What do you mean by, oh.

1:21:11 Brennan: And you see the Questing Blade goes silent.

1:21:16 Zac: I take the Questing Blade back to Cody.

1:21:19 Ricky: Are you guys fighting?

1:21:21 Cody: Yeah, Mega Genesis is an absolute fuck, which is great 'cause Mega Genesis looks rad as hell and I am going to sell Mega Genesis on Etsy to kind of make rent, and also I'm gonna buy like some cool, you know, goth stuff from, you know, try to find some like fucking local businesses and shit to buy from.

1:21:46 Ricky: Whoa, that's awesome, yeah.

1:21:49 Zac: I hand him back the Questing Blade, kneel deeply.

1:21:57 Brennan: Hell yeah. I'm gonna say, Cody, I'm gonna say that with that 20 on your history check, you can pawn Mega Genesis and Dark Excalibur and still have the Questing Blade and absolutely make rent, get some sick clothes back, and I think you find like local leather workers that are like actually part of a Satanic temple near you that do like good handcrafted work. They're like cool people to support. I will say also in this moment, with that 20 history check, in researching people in your area that you can like get these new materials from, so now you have cool clothes again, you have the sick boots again, the swords pay for all of it, you also find out some stuff about the history of the Queens Center Mall on that 20 history check. You are looking at like the Hot Topic, and now you're looking at like all these dealers that actually like make this stuff handmade and like real Satanists and you're getting into like, oh look at all these actual people that like study, not like Satan as like a logo on a chain wallet, but like actual, you're like looking up this cool demonology stuff I can study. You look at the history of the Queens Center Mall. The Queens Center Mall took over a bunch of area that used to be residential, and there was also an awesome amusement park that used to be there even before the mall called Fairyland. It was a like cool, tiny neighborhood amusement park that was a really accessible place that like kids in the neighborhood could go to. It was like, you know, it was cheap to go there, it brought magic and wonder to that neighborhood, and I think Cody reflects on that bit of Queens history as well.

1:24:11 Murph: Cody just drops whatever he's drinking.

1:24:15 Cody: [broken] Ugh. The fucking mall was Gladiator all along. The fucking mall was Gladiator all along.

1:24:23 Ricky: There's Code Red all over the floor. (all laugh)

1:24:27 Cody: That was there before.

1:24:30 Ally: You know it was Code Red.

1:24:33 Brennan: So Pete, you don't know where that money came from, you have the hard drive. For our other three characters, did anyone roll on their initiative for downtime higher than a 10?

1:24:42 Siobhan: I got a 12.

1:24:43 Brennan: What did Kingston get?

1:24:43 Lou: I got a 13.

1:24:46 Brennan: Kingston, it is Cyber Monday. What do you do as you wake up?

1:24:50 Lou: I get out of bed and I go right back to that payphone.

1:24:55 Brennan: Go ahead and give me another check, and because we're in downtime, you can make these rolls once a day, so you're gonna give me six more rolls. Here's the one for Cyber Monday.

1:25:07 Lou: Cyber Monday is an 87. The one for Tuesday is a 47. The one for Wednesday is a 78. Thursday is a 22. Friday is a 55. Saturday is a 47.

1:25:37 Siobhan: Goddamn.

1:25:37 Brennan: Cool. That's our first week. You go put the token into the payphone every day that week, but you also still have your downtime activity. It only takes an action for you to try to do Divine Intervention. Go ahead and what is Kingston doing in his downtime that week?

1:26:00 Lou: Is the Shen family a downtime activity, or is that a-

1:26:03 Brennan: That's a scene we can just run. So I think you guys round up the troops. I think you guys are on the subway headed towards Chinatown. Awesome. Pete, you have the hard drive there and can absolutely like boot it up on a laptop. Kingston, as you are looking at this, you see all this incredible stuff here. You see… Here's what you find in all of that. The CEO of Gladiator is a man named Russel Blankenship. The VP of operations is a guy named Matthew Cleary. The CEO of Excelsior Dynamic Homes is named Evan Holloway. There is a tremendous amount of dirt on employees they believe are trying to start unions, names of reporters they've filed cease and desist letters for, there are records of FDA bribes on here, which specifically is about the deleterious health effects of Cypher Energy Fluid, proof that they got it passed through. You see there is also, there is also some stuff in here about their training facilities in Connecticut, where Josh Mendoza is going to get trained, specifically it looks like a relationship of stock being given to a local judge and a police department in Connecticut because of a warehouse worker that died from what they said were natural causes, but died in his parked car on the way home from work. And as you look at it, it looks like a worker, you parse through and can see some of the stuff here that 53\/3N underlines, which is, there is weird financial relationships between the police and the judge here, and a timecard that that this worker had worked for 40 hours straight and died, and that the theory might be that the body was picked up off the warehouse floor and moved to his own parked car.

1:28:59 Ally: Oof. Dark.

1:29:01 Cody: Uh, Pete, have you seen, like, Josh around the house?

1:29:04 Pete: No.

1:29:08 Ally: I don't think so, right? Have we seen Josh?

1:29:12 Brennan: This guy was not Josh, but you also have not seen Josh in a long time.

1:29:19 Murph: Yeah, I know this isn't Josh,

1:29:19 Pete: Do you think we should text Josh?

1:29:19 Murph: I'm just like, I want to make sure he's not working 300 hours a week or whatever, yeah, I'm going to, physically impossible, but some amount of hours. Yes, I will text Josh and be like,

1:29:31 Cody: Um, hey, dude. Fuck, how is, uh—

1:29:43 Ally: It says "uh."

1:29:44 Cody: How is working for the enemy, LOL?

1:29:51 Brennan: You get no response back from Josh to that text.

1:29:56 Ally: Okay, I text Josh, and it's like—

1:29:58 Cody: Guys, this is crazy, I totally reached out. The olive branch!

1:30:00 Ally: I text Josh and it's like,

1:30:02 Pete: Hey man, I bet you've been working crazy hours, but I'm gonna maybe make a roommate dinner this week if you're interested.

1:30:10 Brennan: No response back.

1:30:12 Pete: All right, so it wasn't the tone.

1:30:14 Ricky: Should I text him? I don't have his number.

1:30:17 Cody: Yeah, Ricky—

1:30:17 Ricky: “Hey, Josh, Ricky here—”

1:30:17 Cody: If you want to text him from my phone, 'cause whatever, my approach is weird.

1:30:22 Zac: So I'm assuming Cody apologizes for what he said, just—

1:30:28 Cody: I said LOL.

1:30:29 Ricky: Oh, right.

1:30:31 Brennan: You guys text Josh. No response from Josh. You guys are heading down on the train. The last thing you find, Kingston, in that hard drive, is a list of campaign contributions to a lot of city council people in New York and relationships between New York's civic infrastructure and business relationships with Gladiator. Now, this hard drive is stolen and super illegal, but what it gives Kingston is names, names, names, names, names.

1:31:05 Iga: Can we link this to the journalists? Do you have a relationship with some kind of—

1:31:12 Kingston: Yeah.

1:31:12 Lou: Can I call a friend at the Times?

1:31:15 Brennan: Sure, absolutely.

1:31:16 Lou: Great, I call my friend at the Times.

1:31:19 Brennan: Hell yeah. I'm gonna say too, you call your friend at the Times. You have friends at every single newspaper in the city. You can put everybody on this, just like, anonymous tip. Because the thing is, you can't use this hard drive in a court of law, but you can put people onto everything here for them to go hunt it down.

1:31:42 Ally: Yeah, maybe we do like a full court press. I'm gonna hit up my friends from the bookstore who do a lot of like local politics work and give them all the names of these, like, bought city council members and comptrollers, I mean all of them, just.

1:31:58 Brennan: Yeah, I think this is maybe Pete, 'cause Pete, have you done your downtime activity yet or no? What was yours?

1:32:06 Emily: Yeah we started with Pete's.

1:32:06 Zac: Yeah, it was the first one.

1:32:07 Brennan: Yes.

1:32:07 Ally: Yeah.

1:32:08 Brennan: So Kingston, this might be your downtime activity, is like this sort of full court press here.

1:32:13 Lou: I think so, yeah.

1:32:15 Brennan: But you head down to the Shens right now. You guys arrive down on Mott Street in Chinatown. You head past Columbus Park, where you see a group of older women practicing Tai Chi in the early morning sunlight, tons of people moving through the streets talking happily. You see shops on the corner, you pass by Canal Street, you see that there are tons of groups of teens out in these big median strip parks, people on park benches drinking giant bubble teas having a great time. You see the smell of incredible food coming out from this massive restaurant, and across the street you see a little tiny narrow staircase going up to an ancient like diamond patterned glass door that has a couple of Chinese characters up on the front of it. Kingston, you know that this is the Shen family building. Much like the Browns up in Harlem, this family has owned their own building for a while.

1:33:15 Lou: I lead the way.

1:33:18 Brennan: You walk up, and as you approach, you knock on the door. The door opens, and you see that there is a… Hold on one second. There is a beautiful older woman, her hair tied back in a bun. She's got a ton of like fun jewelry, dressed very sharp, like, white, sort of fashion forward button up shirt, black pants, high heels. She looks and you and goes,

1:33:54 Liu Yang: Oh my goodness, Kingston Brown? A visit from the voice of the city?

1:34:01 Brennan: Mwah, mwah, gives you a kiss on each cheek.

1:34:03 Kingston: It's been too long, it's been much too long. I'm sorry I couldn't get down here sooner.

1:34:07 Brennan: She smiles. She's sort of got graying hair tied up in a bun. She looks and says,

1:34:12 Liu Yang: Oh, you have some friends here. Your friends all...

1:34:17 Kingston: Yes, very much so.

1:34:19 Liu Yang: Wonderful, then step right this way.

1:34:21 Brennan: She closes the door, slides the doorknob through the wood like liquid to the other side, opens it back up, and you guys see a beautiful stone bridge extending through mountaintops covered in clouds. Right this way. And she begins to walk down, and goes like,

1:34:45 Liu Yang: Can I get you guys some coffee, tea? I think we have some, like, green tea in bottles, we have some water, we have mineral water, whatever it is you guys would like.

1:34:56 Kingston: You know I love a green tea. I'm never gonna say no to a green tea.

1:35:00 Brennan: A little cloud floats over and she pulls some, like, vapor covered, refrigerated like sort of zero sugar green tea bottles out of this thing, hands them out to people, opens one for herself, takes a sip. She goes,

1:35:14 Liu Yang: Danny? Do you want to come out and say hi?

1:35:19 Brennan: As you guys walk out, the bridge extends to this first sort of mountain. There's a large fountain in it filled with coins. She steps through the fountain and motions for you guys to follow, and you are in a palatial room that has a massive plasma screen, and you see there's this young teenage sorcerer kid who looks up, he's got like scenester kind of BluBlockers, a T-shirt, huge chunky sneakers. There is a wall of like extremely fine sneakers on the wall behind him, going in all directions, like ultimate sneakerhead kid playing video games and just sort of like floating in the air on this puff of cloud. You see he looks up, goes,

1:36:12 Danny: Hey what's up, I'm Danny. Nice to meet you guys.

1:36:20 Brennan: You see that Liu Yang looks over and says,

1:36:23 Liu Yang: Danny, stand up, come here.

1:36:25 Brennan: He floats, and you get the impression that this kid hasn't touched the ground in years, specifically to keep his sneakers in mint condition. (Siobhan and Ally laugh)

1:36:42 Brennan: He comes over and says-

1:36:42 Pete: Yes, dog, dude.

1:36:46 Brennan: He looks and you and says,

1:36:46 Danny: Oh, word.

1:36:47 Brennan: He's like,

1:36:47 Danny: Dude, are you Pete Conlan? You're the Vox Phantasma, right?

1:36:52 Pete: Yeah, hey.

1:36:54 Danny: Hey, I was talking to Ana and Amelia Ortiz. Are you like, here on business right now, or are you like, what's kind of the, what's up?

1:37:03 Pete: Yeah, I mean, if you're talking like, you know, I don't do that anymore, actually.

1:37:10 Danny: Shit, shit. Cool cool cool. Yeah yeah yeah, for sure.

1:37:14 Pete: I'm not, you know, that was just a me choice. I don't judge.

1:37:20 Ally: I just get really awkward, I'm not used to being this fucking person in an interaction.

1:37:25 Brennan: Yes.

1:37:25 Pete: I mean, I don't judge. One day at a time, it works if you work it and you're worth it.

1:37:34 Brennan: You see Danny is like,

1:37:34 Danny: Cool cool, no worries, no worries. Welcome to the House of Shen.

1:37:42 Brennan: You guys see teleporting in are two very kind looking older men. One of them has a bald head and appears to be the sort of like, the patriarch of the family here, and you see that there is an extremely brawny man standing next to him who also looks older, and you see just clearly doesn't have like a family resemblance to the others here, and appears to be this older patriarch's partner. Sofia, you immediately clock from the partner that is, is a like very powerful monk. You can like feel the ki radiating off him. Jung Wei, who is the old patriarch of the family, looks and says,

1:38:34 Jung Wei: Well, as I live and breathe, Kingston Brown from uptown. (laughs)

1:38:44 Kingston: Jung, it's so good to see you. I'm sorry, I was just apologizing earlier. You know, I should be coming down here more often. I mean, this green tea is incredible, and no calories. Not a one.

1:38:53 Jung Wei: Nope, no calories in that. They only sell it in shops down here around the corner. We get it, it's not like you can just buy that at any old place, it's great. You know, why do you need so much sugar in everything? You go to buy a regular tea, it's like, no, I just want to be evened out, a little boost of energy, of clean natural energy.

1:39:10 Kingston: Thank you, thank you.

1:39:13 Jung Wei: It's great, it's excellent.

1:39:14 Pete: I love tea.

1:39:16 Brennan: You see he says,

1:39:17 Jung Wei: I can tell from your ornate teapot there.

1:39:21 Pete: I freaking love tea. Do you think I could get some of this, just to have in my little tea box?

1:39:27 Jung Wei: Sure, yes, of course.

1:39:29 Brennan: You see that Jung Wei looks over to a wall that has this incredible, sick, like, clearly Danny has painted this. It's like a spray paint graffiti dragon covering the wall. Iga, you sense from the Shen family that they are draconic bloodline sorcerers like you. So you see Danny hits this wall. The wall parts, and you see this ancient, spiraling helix of shelves and drawers opening up, kind of spinning into infinity. One of them opens and a small baggie of tea with a beautiful little gilded character on it, and you see there's a small price tag that Jung Wei just rips off and tosses and says,

1:40:25 Jung Wei: For the Vox Phantasma, on the house, please.

1:40:29 Pete: I appreciate it so much, this is so special.

1:40:32 Ally: I put it in my little box.

1:40:35 Brennan: You see he says,

1:40:35 Jung Wei: Yes, very very special.

1:40:38 Brennan: And looks back at the infinite series of drawers spinning off.

1:40:42 Jung Wei: This is very special, of course.

1:40:44 Pete: Rare, rare, cool, beautiful tea.

1:40:46 Jung Wei: Yes, extremely rare, it's...

1:40:49 Brennan: You see that he looks over at Kingston and says,

1:40:54 Jung Wei: To what do we owe the honor of this… Oh, by the way, my partner Li Ji.

1:41:01 Brennan: And you see that the monk sort of nods and says,

1:41:05 Li Ji: Welcome down to Chinatown. It's rare to see so many of the champions of New York City gathered. I hope everything's all right.

1:41:15 Brennan: And raises an eyebrow.

1:41:17 Kingston: Oh, we're here on big business. There's a lot to take care of.

1:41:22 Sofia: Oh, good movie.

1:41:22 Pete: What are we here on?

1:41:24 Sofia: Big business.

1:41:24 Kingston: Big business?

1:41:27 Sofia: Good movie, I love that movie.

1:41:28 Pete: Oh, cool.

1:41:29 Brennan: You see Danny looks up and says,

1:41:30 Danny: Starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin, hell yeah, great film.

1:41:33 Kingston: Oh, you know,

1:41:33 Pete: 1988.

1:41:33 Kingston: I wasn't even talking about that movie. A classic.

1:41:37 Sofia: I was a kid. I was a really young kid.

1:41:41 Pete: I wasn't born yet.

1:41:42 Kingston: I saw that in theaters five times. Five times. Lily Tomlin is a gift! Anyway. I just wanted, we're here for a number of reasons, one of which being this,

1:41:55 Lou: And I don't know where we have the egg, but I think I produce it.

1:41:59 Danny: You've got it, man.

1:42:00 Lou: Yeah, I produce the egg. How big is the egg?

1:42:05 Brennan: [holds his hands about a yard apart] About that big.

1:42:06 Lou: Okay yeah, that's what I thought, yeah.

1:42:09 Siobhan: You've just been carrying it around.

1:42:12 Lou: Yeah, I just-

1:42:13 Brennan: Take it out of an enormous fucking messenger bag.

1:42:17 Lou: Yeah. [laughs]

1:42:21 Brennan: Kingston, you see the entire Shen family looks around. There's a moment where Li Ji is like looking around at everyone else who immediately clocks it. This other monk is like,

1:42:31 Li Ji: What, what's going on?

1:42:34 Brennan: And you see that Jung Wei looks and goes,

1:42:41 Jung Wei: Where on Earth did you get this?

1:42:46 Kingston: May I introduce Iga Lisowski?

1:42:49 Iga: Hi, hello, it's nice to… This is really beautiful, what you've done with this place. I like it, it's like a mix of old and new, it's good.

1:42:59 Jung Wei: Well, some, yes. We try to keep as much old around as possible, don't we, Danny?

1:43:04 Brennan: And you see Danny just goes like,

1:43:04 Danny: What's up?"

1:43:08 Brennan: And says,

1:43:08 Jung Wei: Yes, the traditions of the past. Remember, dragons specifically rooted in the magic of the past, and if you fuck with it too much, it fucks things up, doesn't it?

1:43:19 Brennan: And you see he looks and says,

1:43:19 Jung Wei: Sorry, my grandson is-

1:43:26 Iga: No, no, my children.

1:43:27 Jung Wei: Yes, you understand.

1:43:29 Iga: I get it. They're growing up here, it's different here.

1:43:34 Jung Wei: 100%.

1:43:36 Brennan: You see that Jung Wei goes,

1:43:39 Jung Wei: Well, the Shen family has been blessed for a long time. I take it you're here because of the Dragon of Bleecker Street, yes?

1:43:51 Kingston: Yeah, I mean, of course, I have my own relationship with the dragon, but I don't know what role this egg has to play in the future, and, you know, if there's a possible new Dragon of Bleecker Street.

1:44:14 Brennan: Jung Wei sort of manifests this scroll that he opens and turns it to you, Kingston, and it shows this awesome drawing of the Shen family coming for the first time to New York in the 1870s, settling in Chinatown, and bringing an egg with them. You see that Jung Wei looks up and says,

1:44:46 Jung Wei: Our family keeps in touch with the branches of the family that still remain in China, and truthfully the Shen family keeps in touch with our cousins honestly anywhere that there is a Chinatown. We have cousins is San Francisco, we have cousins in Philadelphia, we have cousins all over the world. Our dragon is still very much alive and well in China, where the mother of the Dragon of Bleecker Street, the original Dragon of Bleecker Street, resided. We brought this egg with us to New York in the 1870s along with a number of treasures, relics, different things to help us defend and protect our family and our people, and we ended up… There was a period in the 1870s, towards the end of the 1870s, where something was attacking the city. We lost a tremendous number of scrolls. They just went blank, and the egg began to resemble this.

1:46:08 Brennan: You see that Jung Wei rolls the scroll down and shows you a portrait of this like dragon's egg that is covered in like beautiful, like, red and gold characters, but also like wood etchings and newspaper, it looks like, and it looks like a fucking 1870s version of the egg you're holding now. You see Jung Wei looks and says,

1:46:42 Jung Wei: The egg hatched here in New York and from the moment it was born, my great grandfather reared the young dragon hatchling with the knowledge that it was a great and mythical creature with the knowledge that it would be a protector of this new city and of our family. And it found its cavern, it started its hoard, and thus was born the Dragon of Bleecker Street. We are well aware that the dragon passed away in 1994, but it seems a new egg has in fact been discovered. This is very portentous.

1:47:39 Brennan: Kingston, give me an insight check.

1:47:42 Lou: I would love to.

1:47:42 Brennan: And actually, anyone can give me an insight check.

1:47:45 Siobhan: Yeah, I'll do that.

1:47:46 Lou: I'm 23.

1:47:48 Emily: Two.

1:47:49 Brennan: Two?

1:47:52 Siobhan: Mmm, 12.

1:47:54 Brennan: Cool. Kingston, with an insight of 23, I think Kingston thinks about how good and glorious and larger than life the Dragon of Bleecker Street was, and there's something about the way Jung Wei is talking about, like, that the dragon was raised, and connects that to the way that the dragon was raised, right? That like Jung Wei's grandfather… That it wasn't raised by another dragon, it was raised by humans, but it was raised by humans who were imparting on it the importance of its mythic station. So you see Jung Wei goes,

1:48:39 Jung Wei: That is quite a treasure you hold in your hand.

1:48:45 Brennan: Jung Wei looks at you, Iga, and says,

1:48:49 Jung Wei: We would be happy to help you with the specifics of what it is that dragons need or how they work, or-

1:48:59 Iga: Oh my goodness, yes, I would love that. Thank you.

1:49:04 Brennan: The Shen family just rolls it on out. Danny like runs upstairs into an extra-dimensional space, comes back with like a whole bunch of awesome, like, bags of medicine, teas to brew, incredible, like, powerful ancient like nuts and berries and bundles of twigs and all this crazy stuff. Scrolls and scrolls. It's basically like Doctor Spock, like, "What to Expect When You're Expecting" but for dragons, hands it off to you. But I think you both notice that there's not a lot of, like, parenting guides in here. Jung Wei says,

1:49:43 Jung Wei: There was a period of time, a long period of time, where the dragon was a child, was not safe to travel out on its own, was, you know, not too dissimilar. It was, I think, 15 or so years before the dragon was powerful enough to fend for itself.

1:50:07 Kingston: So you're saying somebody's just gonna need to, like, take care of and raise this dragon like one of his own, just to make sure that it can be something for the city of New York long off into the future?

1:50:21 Pete: Sounds like a job for me.

1:50:25 Lou: Kingston's heart, like, stops for a second when Pete says this.

1:50:29 Kingston: Oh, we're joking, we're joking, yeah.

1:50:32 Pete: I'm just kidding.

1:50:33 Kingston: “Could be Pete.”

1:50:34 Pete: Dude, that sounds like you, man.

1:50:38 Kingston: Yeah, yeah. You know, but I'm also, I'm old, and Liz is… I mean, we already got a dog in the house, you know, I don't know how she's gonna feel about a dragon in the house.

1:50:51 Brennan: You see that Liu Yang goes like,

1:50:53 Liu Yang: Yeah, you do already have a dog, so that's probably gonna be hard, yeah, for sure.

1:50:58 Sofia: I bet dogs are more work than dragons, though. Dogs seem like a lot of work.

1:51:03 Kingston: Oh, Bruce is a ton of work.

1:51:06 Sofia: Yeah, so if you're already used to it, you might… It might not feel like, they always say, like, oh, you know, if you have two cats versus one cat, it's kind of the same thing.

1:51:16 Ricky: Yeah.

1:51:17 Kingston: Two cats versus one cat.

1:51:20 Iga: Yeah, one dog and one dragon versus just one dog. It's the same. It's either that or Sofia has an angel baby and a dragon baby at the same time.

1:51:29 Kingston: We're not gonna put that on nobody. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:51:33 Ally: I think I like slap, like, Kingston's back, and I'm like,

1:51:37 Pete: You know that this is perfect for you. Like, come on, man.

1:51:42 Kingston: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know. It's just, it almost seems, like, too perfect, you know? It's like one of those situations where it's just like, how did this fall into my lap?

1:51:54 Pete: Because you deserve it, man.

1:51:54 Sofia: Because you deserve it. Let something too perfect happen to you.

1:51:58 Pete: Yeah.

1:51:59 Siobhan: I Minor Illusion a cigar.

1:52:02 Brennan: You see—

1:52:05 Ally: On the egg, like the egg is smoking.

1:52:08 Brennan: You guys load Kingston up with all this like gear from the Shen family. Jung Wei says,

1:52:12 Jung Wei: And we will of course be here to aid you with any magical concerns of the like, but-

1:52:22 Iga: Perhaps you'd like to come to Greenpoint, meet my family, like we could have a big family… Is that asking too much of you? Just, like, dragon family to dragon family?

1:52:31 Kingston: Iga's got her own interdimensional space, much like yours, where you all can go disappear.

1:52:38 Iga: Your place is very beautiful, I think you will like mine as well. Mine does, to be fair, have a dragon in it.

1:52:44 Brennan: You see Jung Wei looks over at you and goes like,

1:52:46 Jung Wei: Oh, you've got to have an extra-dimensional space. I mean, in New York?

1:52:50 Iga: New York is so small!

1:52:52 Jung Wei: It's so small! The square footage! It's about the square footage! Absolutely, yes, of course!

1:52:56 Sofia: I could use one, I live in a studio with my mother.

1:52:59 Brennan: You see Danny just goes,

1:52:59 Danny: Woof.

1:53:04 Brennan: You see Jung Wei goes,

1:53:04 Jung Wei: Don't be an asshole, Danny!

1:53:09 Brennan: You see Danny takes a huge flat brim and puts it on his head and is like,

1:53:15 Danny: All right, I'm gonna go out, later.

1:53:18 Brennan: And just teleports out of here in a flash of runes. You see that Jung Wei looks and says,

1:53:28 Jung Wei: I'm so glad we could be of help. The last piece of advice I will give is, it will take a tremendous, without a dragon present, it's very unlikely that the egg will hatch. The original egg only hatched because it was in the presence of a completed hoard, which the dragon eventually moved into its cavern in Bleecker Street. Without a completed hoard, the dragon will not be able to survive hatching. Moreover, without a mother present that can provide the magical heat necessary for incubation, it will need some connection to, as strange as it is to say, a source of its own magic in order to be able to hatch. This is easier when there's other draconic magic flying around, but you would need access to some other powerful spells of the original Dragon of Bleecker Street in order for this new dragon to hatch.

1:54:48 Lou: So, hold on. Does that mean I need to go find… So you're saying I should… Sorry. I, Lou, I'm confused. So it's like, we need that same kind of… Is the magic of the mother or that connection just draconic in nature or specifically to, like, the Dragon of Bleecker Street draconic? Like, New York draconic?

1:55:17 Brennan: I think Jung Wei clarifies and says,

1:55:22 Jung Wei: The egg as I'm examining it right now would need to have its hatching process begin by exposure to a powerful magic of the previous dragon that called this place home in order to, in the same way of a coronation, to assume the title.

1:55:38 Sofia: [gasps] I know! Wait a second! This is what we call Kugrash's familiars in for.

1:55:48 Cody: The spicy pigeon and the cockroach.

1:55:50 Sofia: This is—

1:55:50 Kingston: That's it.

1:55:51 Sofia: Yeah.

1:55:52 Ricky: To bring back—

1:55:52 Kingston: To bring back… To hatch this dragon.

1:55:55 Sofia: To hatch the egg. We need to get the… We didn't know what we needed them for, because we can only like call them together once. We get the hoard.

1:56:03 Kingston: But we need to complete the hoard, and the hoard is Pete Stuyvesant's leg!

1:56:07 Iga: And those other six things we don't know.

1:56:09 Sofia: And the other six too.

1:56:09 Kingston: And the other stuff!

1:56:10 Sofia: And one of them is a scrap of paper, which is absolutely gonna be hard.

1:56:15 Pete: Absolutely bonkers, yeah.

1:56:17 Iga: Finding a scrap of paper in New York City? How difficult can it be?

1:56:22 Ricky: We can look at the coins in the river like, maybe one of these.

1:56:28 Emily: I'm going through my purse and I have so many scraps of paper in there.

1:56:32 Ally: I lean into Kingston and I'm like,

1:56:32 Pete: It's your coin, right?

1:56:36 Kingston: That was my guess off the top, but it's like right here, I was like, Kug is looking at me. Yeah, yeah, let him go ahead.

1:56:42 Brennan: Cool. So yeah, Sofia, you realize that that, yeah, that that hatching makes perfect sense. So the hatching is actually not a trial. That's something you guys have already figured out how to do. You have the three spirits. Kugrash could be summoned to do specifically that. However, the scary thing Jung Wei said was that thing about the dragon not being able to survive hatching without access to a completed hoard. So that remains the big question mark.

1:57:15 Ally: All right.

1:57:16 Iga: We need to get these seven mysterious artifacts.

1:57:20 Brennan: You see that Liu Yang looks at you and goes,

1:57:23 Liu Yang: Seven mysterious artifacts?

1:57:25 Brennan: And you see she looks over at Li Ji and goes,

1:57:29 Liu Yang: Fun. That's fun.

1:57:31 Brennan: And Li Ji the monk just crosses his huge arms and is like,

1:57:33 Li Ji: God, so fun. You guys are gonna have such a great time.

1:57:36 Ricky: It's a grouping idea, right? It's a grouping idea.

1:57:38 Li Ji: It's great when there's… I feel like you want three things missing, you want seven things missing, or you want nine things missing.

1:57:47 Sofia: Yeah. Those are the magic numbers.

1:57:48 Iga: Maybe 13, I would say 13.

1:57:48 Sofia: I like 13, too.

1:57:51 Iga: At a stretch.

1:57:51 Pete: 12.

1:57:53 Kingston: Just imagine though, for a second, four things missing. [laughs] I mean, come on, what is that?

1:57:58 Iga: That's crazy, what kind of a person loses four things?

1:57:58 Sofia: Disgusting, just too neat. Symmetry, ugh.

1:58:04 Brennan: Jung Wei goes like,

1:58:06 Jung Wei: Listen, eight is clearly the lucky, fun number.

1:58:10 Brennan: And Danny teleports back and is like,

1:58:10 Danny: Boo to eight.

1:58:13 Brennan: You see Jung Wei says,

1:58:13 Jung Wei: I'm a traditionalist, I think, I feel like eight is the luckiest number, but that's just me.

1:58:18 Brennan: You see that the Shen family gives you all this fucking dope-ass gear. Jung Wei gives you a big hug, Kingston, and says,

1:58:27 Jung Wei: I'm so glad that you were able to help. Best of luck. You know that if you need us, you need only call on us. We'll be ready if he city is in danger.

1:58:37 Kingston: Thank you, and again, it's so nice to come down and visit you guys. I'm gonna come by more often, if only to get more tea. If only to get more tea.

1:58:46 Jung Wei: Oh please, of course, we'll get some extra. Send a cloud, send a whole cloud with him.

1:58:50 Brennan: A little cloud full of green teas comes out behind you.

1:58:53 Jung Wei: Take, just take the cloud, you'll get it back to us when you get it back to us.

1:58:57 Kingston: Okay, hey, if you insist, I will take the cloud of green tea.

1:59:03 Brennan: The Shen family happily waves from the door. You guys head out. Hell yes.

1:59:09 Ricky: It's a cool place.

1:59:11 Kingston: Right?

1:59:11 Brennan: Yeah.

1:59:13 Ricky: It's a cool place.

1:59:15 Cody: Cool as hell.

1:59:18 Brennan: Huge revelations abound. Last downtime activities, or I think Kingston, that's just a free scene. What is Kingston's downtime activity that week?

1:59:35 Lou: I'm gonna call Willy and ask to hang out.

1:59:41 Brennan: You don't get an immediate response from Willy.

1:59:46 Siobhan: Oh, shit.

1:59:50 Lou: That's so scary. I text a couple of other friends in Brooklyn. Just, like, fantastical friends in Brooklyn, to see if anyone gets back. Like Buddy, I text Buddy and, you know.

2:00:10 Siobhan: The on off, the green light red light.

2:00:12 Brennan: Green light red light.

2:00:12 Lou: Yeah.

2:00:16 Brennan: Buddy gets back to you and is like,

2:00:19 Buddy: Hey, Kingston, yeah. I've been texting about this Thursday, I was gonna ask if I could bring a friend to the poker game, and I haven't heard back from Willy in a couple days. I was thinking about heading over to his spot to try to check up on him.

2:00:34 Kingston: Yeah, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I might hoof it over there right now. Who are you gonna bring to poker?

2:00:41 Buddy: You know, it's funny, I'm seeing somebody these days.

2:00:45 Kingston: What?

2:00:45 Buddy: Yeah, you know. I know it's like you don't bring your SOs to the poker game, but, I don't know.

2:00:52 Kingston: Who is it, if I may pry? I don't want to pry if it's a secret, but...

2:01:00 Buddy: Her name's Urina, she's a piss elemental, and it's just, I don't know, it's been really special. Siobhan and Zac are visibly trying not to laugh.

2:01:07 Kingston: Okay. Okay, sure, sure. Buddy, I'm so happy for you. I'll let you know if I hear anything from Willy.

2:01:15 Buddy: Yeah, you know, I appreciate it, man. Things are really looking up. It's gonna be a good holidays.

2:01:20 Kingston: Yeah. Yeah, it is, it is.

2:01:23 Buddy: All right.

2:01:23 Kingston: Take care.

2:01:25 Buddy: You too.

2:01:26 Lou: Yeah, I'm going to Brooklyn to see if I can track down any sign of Willy.

2:01:31 Brennan: You head over to Brooklyn ASAP. You knock on the door of Willy's apartment. The door is open. You walk inside and immediately sort of look back. Reaching for the door is a solid brick statue of Willy, completely disanimated.

2:02:02 Siobhan: No!

2:02:06 Lou: Like, disanimated completely?

2:02:09 Brennan: You're looking at a piece of art. You're looking at a brick statue. His face looks scared.

2:02:17 Siobhan: [softly] No!

2:02:19 Lou: Ooh, ooh ooh. Can I make a perception check or an investigation check as to, like, the apartment or the entryway to see if I can glean anything?

2:02:36 Brennan: Yeah, you can go for both. Give me a perception and investigation.

2:02:40 Lou: Perception is gonna be 25. Investigation is gonna be 19.

2:02:48 Brennan: Okay.

2:02:49 Lou: Yeah.

2:02:52 Brennan: Willy is... On a 25 Perception, Willy is scared and you see his mouth is open because he's in the middle of speaking as he's been frozen.

2:03:02 Lou: Mm-hm.

2:03:06 Brennan: There are letters in Hebrew on the roof of his mouth. You see two letters. You see two letters in the roof of his mouth. It's weird because they're off center. They're not centered. There's one letter on the top of the roof of his mouth, and then one other to the right of it.

2:03:37 Siobhan: He should have three.

2:03:41 Lou: Do I know he should have three?

2:03:44 Brennan: Give me a religion check.

2:03:51 Lou: Hey. That's a mod 20.

2:03:55 Brennan: Ooh, that's so good! You've done medicine checks on him before and asked him to open his mouth so that you could put, like, the tongue depressor in there. You've seen three in there before. You don't know what the first of the letters is. You remember what it looked like, but I don't think Kingston… Or does Kingston speak every language? I forget, no.

2:04:19 Lou: I'm a polygot.

2:04:19 Brennan: Polyglot, you do speak… So you do know that he's missing a letter. You read the two letters in his mouth. Hold on one second. The letters are Mem and Tav, which spells the Hebrew word Met, which means death. You don't know what the first one is supposed to be, but you do know who does. You have a friend out in Crown Heights who is a rabbi and an old friend of yours who you think might be able to help you with this.

2:05:08 Lou: Yeah, can I take a bunch of like blurry photos and just, you know, just desperately try to get a good angle with my like cell phone camera inside?

2:05:18 Ally: Your big case that opens like a book, and you're like.

2:05:21 Zac: Drop some credit cards in his mouth.

2:05:24 Lou: Yeah, a bunch of my thumb in the photo. Of course Kingston is dead serious in this moment, but yeah, there's just ton of like photos,

2:05:30 Kingston: Ah damn, I got too much thumb in there, all right.

2:05:33 Lou: Take a bunch of photos and I guess I like put a hand on Willy's shoulder and I'm just like,

2:05:40 Kingston: We gon’ get these bastards.

2:05:42 Lou: And then I head out to Brooklyn.

2:05:45 Brennan: Hell yes. You get these photos. Kingston, you pop up in Crown Heights where an old good friend, this guy was a good friend of yours back in the 90s when you were first starting out, was extremely helpful with Mummy of the Met stuff back in the day. This is Rabbi Mike Salters. You see, young, handsome Black rabbi from Crown Heights. You see he comes out into the street, gives you a big hug, and goes,

2:06:17 Mike: Kingston Brown from way uptown. How's it going, man? You're looking good.

2:06:22 Kingston: Rabbi Mike, good to see you, man. Hey, what's up? I'm sorry to jump right into business, but Willy's in trouble, man. I saw these photos,

2:06:30 Lou: And I show them to him, and I'm like,

2:06:34 Kingston: Yeah, I don't know. I know I've looked in this mouth before doing medical stuff and there's a letter missing and I know that these two letters together spell death, and yeah, man, I'm just out of sorts, so what's going on?

2:06:48 Brennan: He looks at you and says,

2:06:51 Mike: Okay, hold on, let me go get my...

2:06:53 Brennan: He rushes back in, he comes out with what looks like a special set of like chisels and hammers around his belt. He's like,

2:07:04 Mike: Let's not waste any time, man, let's hit it.

2:07:07 Brennan: And heads back with you to Willy's spot. On the train he's just talking to you going like,

2:07:13 Mike: Okay, so basically, you take three letters, Alef Mem Tav. That spells the word Emet, which means truth. On the roof of a golem's mouth, that should give you what you're looking for. That gives you the animation you're, you know… You spell Alef Mem Tav, Emet, truth, God animates the golem.

2:07:42 Brennan: And you see that you walk into Willy's apartment, he goes in and just starts chiseling that first letter that will turn the word death into the word truth, and as he does so, you see he reaches into a divine place, offers a rabbi's blessing on Willy, speaks in Hebrew and ends it with,

2:08:09 Mike: Willy, we need you back, my man.

2:08:12 Brennan: Willy...

2:08:13 Willy: (gasps) Kingston Brown from uptown! Rabbi Mike!

2:08:20 Brennan: And gives you guys a big hug and twirls you around in the air as both of you are like, ugh! And get squeezed.

2:08:26 Kingston: Oh damn, Willy, all right, all right, all right, put us down. Hey, what's going on, man? You know we found you frozen.

2:08:35 Willy: I didn't know. I went out. I was seeing the neighborhood, and I… I walked by a group of people that… Of course they cannot see me, but truly they could not see me. I was hiding in the brick wall, but the roof of my mouth, they read it. These are children from this neighborhood, and they could not read the words. They did not know what they meant. Something from beyond reached out and began to scrub and scratch away the first letter, and I could feel myself dying.

2:09:30 Brennan: Yeah, Rabbi Mike looks at you and goes like,

2:09:34 Mike: That's an easy way to disanimate a golem is to just erase that first letter.

2:09:42 Kingston: We've been dealing with that kind of stuff all over the city.

2:09:45 Lou: And I think I explain, I take some time to explain to them Null and kind of the stuff that we've been dealing with and Gladiator. And I'm like, we got plans with the other champions going down that we're working on, but anything you guys can do here in the neighborhood to be, you know, rectifying Null, would be greatly appreciated.

2:10:11 Brennan: Rabbi Mike nods and says,

2:10:11 Mike: Okay, I can talk to people.

2:10:14 Brennan: And Willy says,

2:10:14 Willy: Are you keeping an eye out for anything around you that is trying to erase and stop them from doing this?

2:10:24 Brennan: Willy looks up at you, Kingston, and says,

2:10:26 Willy: Thank you for finding me.

2:10:28 Brennan: Rabbi Mike nods his head and says,

2:10:29 Mike: This was a good call, Kingston.

2:10:33 Brennan: And Willy goes,

2:10:34 Willy: What brought you here to look for me in the first place?

2:10:38 Kingston: Oh, well, it's not a pressing issue, so maybe we talk about it another time, but I don't know. It hit me a couple of days back, I've never really asked or thought about any of the other Vox Populi that came before me, so, I was just gonna come by and see if you'd ever run around with any of them.

2:10:58 Brennan: You see Willy smiles and says,

2:11:02 Willy: I knew the other Vox Populi.

2:11:09 Brennan: And you see Willy looks back and kind of thinks and remembers, and gets a little bit sad. You see Mike looks up at Willy and nods and goes,

2:11:17 Mike: Yeah.

2:11:25 Brennan: Willy says,

2:11:25 Willy: We should talk sometime about the other Voxes and the history of New York City.

2:11:34 Brennan: He says,

2:11:34 Willy: Right now I am going to make sure that I do not get erased again so easily.

2:11:42 Brennan: Willy heads out to the street. As Mike walks out with you, he goes like,

2:11:53 Mike: I think that would be a good thing for you and Willy to talk about, the history of the Voxes in New York, man. That would be really good.

2:11:59 Kingston: Hey, thank you, Mike. I really appreciate that. Hey, I appreciate you jumping into action, man. I know we're like 30 years out from the Met, but you still got it, man. You still got it.

2:12:09 Mike: Hey, you know, I'm here for you to rely on me, all right? I'm happy to be of service, and Willy… Willy's a good… You know, it's… Do you know Willy's real history? Do you know much about him, talking about his past?

2:12:31 Kingston: I mean like, you know, only what he's wanted to talk about. I ain't no reporter, so I've never gone in on it, but, you know.

2:12:42 Brennan: You see he looks at you and says,

2:12:47 Mike: Willy goes way, way back. You know, speech is an indication of the presence of a soul, and Hashem doesn't afford golems the ability to speak because true golems don't have that power, that ability, because that is an extremely special, divine gift. The word, the spoken word, the written word, is an extremely important gift. Willy is not only a golem, the reason Willy can talk and most golems can't is that Willy was a, or part of Willy was a man at one point. The Golem of Williamsburg that was created for him was created to hold the spirit of a man who gave his life to protect his family and his people. So Willy has a lot of history and has known a lot of Voxes and even knew one back when he was not the Golem of Williamsburg.

2:14:09 Brennan: And you see Mike kind of smiles thinking about it. There's just, you know, a lot of heart to this golem you've known for a long time. He-

2:14:18 Ally: Such a cis male thing to be like, I never asked, I'm not a reporter. (all laugh)

2:14:24 Ally: About your fucking amazing backstory. “We just fucking play poker, look, I don't ask, were you a man?”

2:14:31 Lou: We just talk and hang out, you know?

2:14:34 Brennan: You see he looks at you and says,

2:14:37 Mike: Yeah, he's been around a long time. You know, there's actually this exhibit over at Ellis Island where you can see Willy in the background of one of the photos. There's this crazy wing that has a lot of like Unsleeping City stuff, like, hidden in it. He's been around a long time, man. A long, long time.

2:15:01 Kingston: Hey, damn, Mike, I appreciate you… I don't know, I guess I never really thought about it. About how long he's been here. But yeah, I don't know, we'll have to get into that sometime.

2:15:14 Brennan: Mike smiles. He looks at you and says,

2:15:17 Mike: It's great to see you again, man. The city's a big place. Look, even when I knew you when you were young, you know, knowledge of history is not… You were always a man focused on the present moment of what we can do for people today, and the world needs those people. And, I mean, memorizing ancient histories and knowing all the things that happened before, that's… I feel useful, is what I'm saying. I'm happy I'm around to be that person for you.

2:15:49 Kingston: I'm glad we got brothers like you in the temple holding it down, so.

2:15:52 Mike: That's what I'm trying to do every day, Kingston Brown, give me a break.

2:15:56 Kingston: Yeah, big hug. Hey, go get everybody out there and please, stop shopping with Gladiator, all right? It's bad news.

2:16:04 Mike: From the mouth of the Vox Populi, let it be so.

2:16:06 Brennan: And he gives you another big hug and heads back to Crown Heights. Let's go to Iga. What is Iga doing for her downtime activity?

2:16:17 Siobhan: I think what I would like to do is sort of engage my network, my underground criminal network.

2:16:24 Brennan: Mm-hm.

2:16:26 Siobhan: And even my kids, maybe, and have them be spreading the word about Gladiator.

2:16:35 Brennan: Hell yeah.

2:16:35 Siobhan: Through like posters, through stories, like maybe the kids can create a social media presence. Like, and even just like being in the community as I am in Greenpoint just, like, getting people talking.

2:16:56 Brennan: Hell yeah.

2:16:57 Siobhan: Getting the talking happening.

2:16:59 Brennan: Go ahead and give me a downtime persuasion roll, DC 20.

2:17:08 Siobhan: Mm mm mm, nope. I'm gonna use a luck point.

2:17:13 Brennan: Go for it.

2:17:16 Siobhan: And a different die. [Ally and Brennan laugh]

2:17:20 Siobhan: Oh, so close! 17. I'll use another luck point, and another die.

2:17:26 Brennan: Here we go.

2:17:27 Lou: There we go, keep them going.

2:17:31 Siobhan: 19.

2:17:33 Ally: Ooh!

2:17:33 Brennan: This is your last one! Last one!

2:17:35 Siobhan: I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna use it. Nope, I don't get it.

2:17:40 Brennan: Oof, the dice didn't want it. It's all right.

2:17:41 Siobhan: Dice didn't want it. I have one other thing I want to do as well.

2:17:45 Brennan: Cool, what's the other thing you want to do?

2:17:48 Siobhan: I would just like to see if… So we know the names of all of these CEOs and CFOs of Gladiator, et cetera?

2:17:57 Brennan: Yes.

2:17:58 Siobhan: Can I see if any of their wives are people who take readings from me?

2:18:06 Brennan: [laughs] Go ahead and give me an investigation check.

2:18:09 Siobhan: Great. 12?

2:18:17 Brennan: A lot of their wives are not people that have come to you for readings, and you think that's suspicious because they run in the same circles. So there's a suspicious lack of, like, interaction with you in that way. While you are working this week on like getting your criminal network out, Jess and Nick ask during this week to actually go into the box with you, if that's okay.

2:18:48 Iga: Yes, absolutely.

2:18:50 Brennan: This is Nick's first time traveling into the chest. You go in, the realm is resplendent, stretching in all directions. Mountains, forests, there's like a desert on the horizon now, there's like an ocean somewhere else, it's like this vast, fantastical realm. Jessica takes off immediately to go find Smoczmatka and talk to her and study her. You see the dragon mother down in a forest glade talking to Jessica. You see Nick is wearing his hoodie and sneakers and has the peasant's sword tied to his back, and he looks up at you, and you see he takes off going into the depths of the castle.

2:19:37 Iga: Nick, you know it's not a toy. Where are you going? Don't touch things in here! Some of them are very cursed!

2:19:46 Brennan: You see he goes,

2:19:46 Nick: I'm not gonna touch anything. Not gonna touch anything, mom.

2:19:50 Iga: Where are you going?

2:19:53 Brennan: He looks up at you and says,

2:19:53 Nick: Do you want to come?

2:19:55 Iga: Yeah, I'll come.

2:19:58 Brennan: He walks sort of silently. Nick walks down with you. You see, quivering in the old dragon's hoard, hiding there, are all the ghosts of your family.

2:20:15 Iga: Oh my god, why are you scared? You're hiding behind the cage because the dragon is on the other side of the cage?

2:20:23 Ancestor: The dragon, she breathes fire on us, and we can't die but it still hurt very bad!

2:20:31 Iga: You already have the answer. You say it out loud already. You can't die! You are ghosts!

2:20:37 Ancestor: Yes, but it is very scary!

2:20:41 Iga: You're bad influences!

2:20:45 Brennan: You hear Jessica laughing outside with the dragon. Nick walks up, unsheathes the peasant's sword, and you see he goes,

2:21:00 Nick: Hey grandma and great grandma and great great grandma and all the grandmas. I'm Nick. I was never supposed to come into the chest, really, or do stuff here. I know my mom,

2:21:19 Brennan: And he looks at you and says,

2:21:20 Nick: I know my mom freed the dragon, and I know that that's really upsetting to you guys, and I know that Jess is like becoming a wizard. So I wanted to offer up myself because I don't think it should end here. Like, I don't think, I don't think the chest is gonna end, I think that the dragon rules this space now is good, but also, like, and mom, like, you said it. Like, we're not done.

2:22:08 Siobhan: I'm just bawling.

2:22:09 Brennan: He's like,

2:22:09 Nick: We're not done paying it back. Mom broke the cycle of, like, people in our family not confronting their past and not knowing where their traditions come from, and I think it's awesome that Jess is like free because of that, and I think it's awesome that mom is like connected to the dragon because of that. So what I'm saying is, if all of you are super PO'd that there's not, like, anyone that's gonna like follow the old ways or the traditions, I'm gonna offer myself up on the condition that you guys give me all those secrets and let me be magic, 'cause I want to be magic too, and I'm just, I'm not gonna… I'll protect the chest, but I'm not gonna use all this power just to keep it secret forever. I'm gonna use it to make right what was wrong, and even if this dragon is free, there's a lot of other creatures out there that probably aren't. They're probably trapped like this, and I think you guys should give me your powers so that… So that we can use them to do something instead of do nothing.

2:23:32 Brennan: The ancient witch turns to look at you, Iga, and is like,

2:23:36 Ancestor: Who is this boy? Why he here in the castle?

2:23:42 Iga: He is my son. He's Nicholas. He's your great great grandson. He's a good boy.

2:23:53 Brennan: Iga, Nicholas is holding the sword here and has offered to basically not let this, like, warlock tradition of the chest die out, but you can tell, basically, like, you can tell that he doesn't have the power to like hold these ghosts to this bargain.

2:24:17 Siobhan: Do I have that power?

2:24:19 Brennan: You think you probably do.

2:24:24 Siobhan: Then I use it.

2:24:29 Brennan: Your ancient ancestor goes like,

2:24:31 Ancestor: First of all, a boy to do chest magic? Crazy, would never work. Number two, ah!

2:24:39 Brennan: And you hold your hand aloft and the ghosts swirl around Nicholas's sword. He becomes a first level Hexblade Warlock. (all cheering)

2:24:51 Brennan: Of the chest, and you see that your mother smiles and says,

2:24:58 Iga’s Mother: Nicholas is a good boy.

2:25:00 Iga: He's a good boy.

2:25:04 Brennan: And that-

2:25:05 Iga: Do I wish he'd told me he was going to do this before we did this? Absolutely yes I wish he would've told me, but yes.

2:25:11 Nick: I thought you might say no! I thought it was a good idea!

2:25:17 Brennan: He smiles, gives you a big hug, and is like,

2:25:20 Nick: Hey mom, if there's like some secrets about how the chest works or like warlock stuff, you could always teach me.

2:25:27 Iga: Teach you. I'll teach you. Well, the first rule is don't come down here, so I guess that's that, ugh.

2:25:37 Brennan: Incredible. You guys mosey on out to outside, laugh with the dragon, Smoczmatka smiles at you and your two magic kids, magic brother and sister. Sofia, your downtime. What's Sofia doing during her downtime?

2:25:58 Emily: I guess Sofia's just gonna try to raise money for Pete, go to meetings. She wants to talk to Kingston, but Kingston's been busy, so I think she's just gonna, also at night, just gonna write down stories about Dale to tell the baby.

2:26:15 Lou: Oh my god. (all groaning)

2:26:20 Brennan: Sofia, I'm gonna ask. In terms of your downtime here, are you gonna prioritize, 'cause you could absolutely make a living and do these hair appointments, but are you prioritizing meetings during this period of downtime, or are you prioritizing getting this money?

2:26:43 Emily: I can't do both?

2:26:44 Brennan: You can do both, because I'm gonna say that making money is like a normal activity, but.

2:26:49 Emily: Yeah.

2:26:50 Brennan: But I might make you roll with disadvantage unless you prioritize going to those meetings.

2:26:57 Emily: I mean, I will have to, I think that I was… I think that I was, like… This is hard, because I definitely felt comfortable prioritizing working, 'cause I felt like I actively had endangered everyone because of Tony, so I was cool to prioritize work for that. However, Pete really hooked me up, but I also know that in order to show up for my friends, I don't want to be a liability, so I guess I will prioritize meetings. I'll sell some of my stuff, too. Like, is there any way I can make quick cash? Does my mom, like, have any money? I could borrow it from her.

2:27:43 Brennan: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'll say this. You prioritize meetings, so you… You move up to a D10. I'm gonna say, let's go ahead with that hair appointment stuff. Looking at Sofia's proficiencies, I think she actually does have a hairdressing proficiency, unless I'm mistaken.

2:28:04 Emily: I don't have it on my sheet, but that's funny.

2:28:07 Brennan: It's under tools, it says hairdressing.

2:28:10 Emily: Okay.

2:28:11 Brennan: So that's gonna be a plus nine, so all you have to do is, you can roll with disadvantage, you just need the lower one to be an 11 or higher.

2:28:22 Emily: Okay.

2:28:23 Brennan: And then we can talk about borrowing money, but let's see what happens.

2:28:26 Emily: Okay. 15 and a 16, yes! (all cheer)

2:28:32 Murph: Oh my god!

2:28:34 Brennan: Sofia is prioritizing meetings, there are so many dark brunettes that are desperate to get their hair bleached.

2:28:40 Emily: I talked them all out of it because I was like, it's really really tough on your hair, it's gonna be like a really long process that in the long run you might regret, but now I'm just like,

2:28:49 Sofia: Yeah, let's see you blonde!

2:28:54 Brennan: At the end of that week, Sofia, you are able to hand Pete a stack, 2,500.

2:29:03 Ally: I weep. I'm just bawling. Like,

2:29:05 Pete: No, we'll get this back to you!

2:29:08 Sofia: I don't need it!

2:29:09 Ally: I think I tell her about how someone paid, and I just tell her about all that sketchy stuff, and we're not quite sure what happened, but.

2:29:19 Emily: Can I do an insight check if I think it was secretly Kingston?

2:29:25 Brennan: Do an insight check.

2:29:29 Emily: 13.

2:29:31 Brennan: You don't think it was Kingston.

2:29:32 Emily: Really?

2:29:32 Brennan: As you're there, both of you make a perception check.

2:29:38 Emily: Whoops, hold on, cocked.

2:29:40 Ally: 11. Oh, sorry.

2:29:42 Emily: I got a 18.

2:29:45 Brennan: Sofia, you see Pete on his smartphone has like a zillion notifications on his mail app, his like email of just like unread spam and stuff. You get a sense about his mail.

2:30:04 Pete: What's up?

2:30:06 Sofia: Have you checked your email? Maybe there's like something from Lugash saying, “hey, I hooked you up,” or are you being spied on by Gladiator because of your mail?

2:30:17 Brennan: Pete, you remember how many bumper email addresses you have that you haven't checked 'cause you haven't been dealing in a while.

2:30:25 Pete: Oh yeah, I just have a ton of like, yeah. I mean, yeah, there's never anything in there, right?

2:30:32 Ally: I, like, scroll.

2:30:32 Brennan: On your third bumper email, you see an email from a woman named Maddie Park.

2:30:41 Emily: Oh. It's the PI.

2:30:44 Brennan: The PI. You see she says,

2:30:47 Maddie: Hey Pete, 53\/3N told me it was cool to contact you here. I need to write you an extremely sincere apology. I've been working as a… I've been doing black hat work for a long time and working as a PI. I haven't always taken jobs that I was proud of, but my stomach was turned and my heart completely shattered when I found out that your transphobic family had hired me to find you, something I never, ever, ever would've done if I'd known. I've been fucked up by this knowledge for years, I'm much more careful now than I was when I was in my early 20s and first started doing this work, but I know that apology's not enough. Actions speak louder than words. I settled your debt with 53\/3N. I hope, this is not a huge cost to me, I see it as returning the money and then some that your shitty family paid me for in order to find you and put you in harm's way. If there's ever any other way I can repay the debt, (free work,) happy to help, let me know. I hope all is well with you. From the bottom of my heart, I'm sorry. Maddie.

2:32:18 Ally: I email immediately my actual phone number and say,

2:32:21 Pete: Let's meet up soon.

2:32:22 Pete: We have a black hat hacker that owes me a favor. We need to get all of this Gladiator stuff to her, we need to fucking take them down. Wow! Cool!

2:32:37 Brennan: Hell yes. So you guys contact Maddie. We're running-

2:32:42 Sofia: Maybe she could get my tablet running.

2:32:46 Brennan: [laughs] The last thing, I think, everyone's rolled for downtime stuff, and I'm gonna say Kingston, you did a ton of like going out to these different places and doing this stuff. So you guys reach out to Maddie Park. Pete, you get a text on your phone from Maddie, going,

2:33:05 Maddie: Hey Pete.

2:33:07 Brennan: And you see that it's using, like, some weird signal, like, it comes in like a weird app that like auto-downloads on your phone.

2:33:14 Ally: Love.

2:33:14 Brennan: And it says,

2:33:15 Maddie: Going after Gladiator? I'm in.

2:33:18 Brennan: And that's all for this episode of The Unsleeping City. Tune in text week.

2:33:22 Ally: Sick.

2:33:23 Brennan: For more thrilling adventures. (Brennan hisses)

2:33:28 Ally: Incredible.

2:33:28 Edited by: gluegunshots