Stories with Dice
Stories with Dice is an actual-play podcast where a fellowship of everyday gamers explores fantastical worlds, distant futures, and parallel realities through tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) from Free League Publishing, Chaosium, Modiphius Entertainment, and more.
Over the years, we’ve told stories around our virtual table in the worlds of Tales from the Loop, Pendragon, Mutant Year Zero, Star Trek Adventures, The One Ring, The Electric State, Forbidden Lands, Legend of the Five Rings, and Symbaroum. Going forward, we’re focusing on a smaller lineup of games, giving us more opportunities to return to each story sooner. As campaigns reach their natural conclusions, we’ll add new stories from the worlds of Twilight: 2000, Vampire: The Masquerade, The Walking Dead, and more.
We’re not voice actors, professional entertainers, or trained performers—just friends from around the globe sharing virtual dice, stories, and a laugh or two as the game unfolds.
Stories with Dice
Mysteries of the Loop S1 E11: A Tales from the Loop Actual Play Podcast
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In this episode, the kids discover an Artificial Intelligence is the mastermind behind recent strange events in town and must decide whether to trust mysterious agents offering a partnership to take it down.
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Hello and welcome to Stories with Dice. An actual play podcast of some of our favorite tabletop role-playing games.
SPEAKER_04Welcome back to Stories with Dice again. Um, it's me, it's Ed, and I'm joined with my wonderful team. First, we've got my lovely co-host whose I'm pointing, and you can't see what I'm pointing at, is Mark Yo. Hey Marco. Hello, Ed. And my lovely players, Tony. Hello.
Welcome to Stories with Dice
SPEAKER_04Douglas. Hello there. So and Pete. Hi, cool. We're all here. Excellent. As usual, if you're listening to this on some wonderful bit of social media, whether it's YouTube or some kind of podcast, app, whatever, if you give us a thumbs up, a like, a subscribe, a follow, whatever it might be, that'd be great. If you'd like to join us in Discord, please do so. If you would like to go to our website, you can do that too. We have a Facebook group, you can go to that as well. We also have a Patreon. If you like what we're doing and you want to give us some cash, we will never say no. I think last time we mentioned Marco's yacht. I'm looking forward to having some kind of like little helicopter to fly around. So give us some money and we can make that happen. All the links are in the description below. And that's be done with that. Let's get back to the episode this week. I'm gonna ask Marco. You're a bastard. I'll tell you what, how about we do it as a group thing this time? That sounds
Group Dynamics
SPEAKER_04like fun. That's a good idea. Um we can all kind of like work off each other. Okay, someone start.
SPEAKER_01I can start if you want. Go for it. Um What I remember is that we actually went to the house of the doctor that apparently was implicated with these robots. I think she was called Dr. Jonakers. I know that. Yonakers, that's correct. And I think Yonakus? Yeah, and I think Johannes called her first, right? And she was getting he was getting this recorded message or something weird.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you went to the front gate and there was like a little push button to kind of exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_01We went to the ringer and and there were like these weird messages. So at this at the end, we decided, okay, we're gonna go in. And we kind of, you know, we were trying to sneak in, but there were like these crazy robots coming for us, and we had this battle. I mean, for kids, I think was pretty awesome with swords and shields and things like this. Yep. And we defeated them, but barely. I think we had to push and suffer a bit. But then we managed to get inside the house which has this crazy C shape, or kind of very weird shape house. Yeah, yeah. It was a weird odd kind of like exactly. And then we managed to uh, you know, get all the way to the top, and I will let perhaps Anthony say what happened after, or Dagnos, or whoever.
SPEAKER_06Let's see what happened after that.
SPEAKER_07I I don't I don't reach out to the switch to what Anthony was up to and Susie.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah. So Anthony, let's see. Susie came to Anthony's house late in the evening and threw some stones at his window, and Anthony went with Susie back to her house, and she showed him the the very fox molder-esque
The Doctor's House
SPEAKER_06board on on her wall where she was connecting all of the all of the dots into this vast conspiracy. And then I think we went to the hideout, is that right?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so we were trying to find the the rest of them. Obviously, we didn't know that they'd gone elsewhere and were doing what they were doing, so we were heading to the hideout to hopefully try and catch up with them. Where I think we'll find a note as to where they've gone, but we'll we'll find out. Right. Okay.
SPEAKER_06And then I'll hand it off to Douglas and or Pete. I can take it.
SPEAKER_07So you're okay with that. Well, back with team breaking in houses. Breaking in entry. Yeah, thank you. We m went through the very two or three floors of the house. It was pretty abandoned. Lots of empty boxes of like little robots. Well, when we got to the very top floor, we found a very odd site with lots of technology, but a lady who was physically wired into all this technology and was doing stuff on a computer. When Anders decided to cut the power to everything, the lady died, which everyone was a bit upset about. And then when Anders went to call the ambulance, Sven turned the power back on and the lady came back to life. So yeah, didn't need the ambulance in the end. And then eventually we found out they were deleting some information, it looked like, off the computers or something like that.
SPEAKER_02And I don't know if you want to finish off, Pete. Yeah, as far as I remember, yeah, we uh somebody panicked and uh tried to stop the uh deletion going on by cutting a few more wires. Yeah, and uh yeah, so there was a shutdown sequence started or something similar. At which point, yeah, I was again trying to find a phone to make a phone call, but yeah, found the phone, it was cut off, and that was about the extent of my input after that point.
Chaos Unleashed
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So where we ended up with, after you cut all the hardwire lines and pretty much everything, she uh shouted blood curdling No And then you all kind of like jumped out of your skins to see her then look at you and then collapse in her chair. At the same time she collapsed in her chair, you hear from downstairs the door smash open from the front of the house, and then you hear people running up the stairs.
SPEAKER_02What do then add us and Johannes want to do? Do you will do you wanna try and hide in the small room? That would be my instinct to try and hide. I I think we might be in trouble here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, there's a cool sound like a plan.
SPEAKER_07Let's go into the server room and hide in there. Into the little little server room. Maybe we can sneak past when they're like, oh my gosh, dead lady in tech technology.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Yeah, you do that, you hide into the little server room, and as you shut the door, you hear the sound of feet running up the stairs to the same floor that you're on. And you hear one person say, Anders, a woman says, Anders, check her. And then Anders says, Yep, we'll do Regita. And you hear them moving around in the room. Why did they say Anders? I don't understand.
SPEAKER_07Is that Anders? Obviously, not me. I think more than one person can be called Anders. Okay.
SPEAKER_04While we have this little uh conversation, you hear a couple of footsteps come towards the door, and then the door opens, and you can see a woman standing there. She's got Doc, you've seen her before walk into a particular cafe while her friend was in the car yesterday, day before. And she looks at you and she goes, Well, well. Well, well what? She says, You can come out now, it's fine. I will come out first, like standing
The Unexpected Visitor
SPEAKER_04up and straight. She says, Over there, and she kind of points towards the other side of the room, which is not next to Fuller Yonica, but just is just off to the side. And you can see the same guy that was in the car. He's kind of like sort of like faffing around with her and the sort of like wires that are connected to her head and stuff.
SPEAKER_07Okay.
SPEAKER_04Are they pointing to like a different part of the room? Well, no, so so it you've got this little archive, and then it kind of like has the stairs going down, and then you've got the big open rest of the room. So the whole second floor is effectively two rooms.
SPEAKER_07Okay. So is is she actually blocking us from like legging it?
SPEAKER_04She's kind of sort of in the way, but not I mean, you could if you wanted to rush her, all three of you. Maybe she might be able to stop one of you. If we go over there, we definitely will be able to get up the stairs. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01What would you like to do? Just go there. Okay. Because I kind of remember them, right? I remember the guy on the car because I was driving at the and the woman was sitting there. We never I didn't speak with them though. You didn't know you didn't. But I got the feeling that they were special agents or something. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, these are those people.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, exactly. That's exactly them, yeah. She pulls out an ID which says Rick's Energy on it, and she says, We will take it from here. We are investigating uh this lady, and we will make sure she's taken care of. She says, she says to you, can give me your names, please. And she pulls out like a little pocketbook. What do we know about this Rick's Energy apart from the result of the loop? So Rick's Energy is the original company in Sweden that basically deals with all the weird stuff that happens in the loop, but they're also the people who patented all the sort of magnet magnetrine vehicles. And so they are the main power company, the main energy company, the main scientific company, all
Rix Energy Unveiled
SPEAKER_04behind that. So essentially, without Rix Energy, you wouldn't have the loop, wouldn't have all the other stuff. So they are quite a powerful organization. But essentially, they are the equivalent of, for anyone who's listening, they would be like uh an energy company like British Gas or whatever it might be, right?
SPEAKER_07But with way more sway. So they're not the police or anything, they're just literally a company. So we we're under no obligation to do anything, really.
SPEAKER_04They're sort of if you could almost be a federal company, that's something that it would probably be, yeah. So it's it's something like those lines. They've got a lot of sway. So I mean, you know, they wanted to speak to the police, they could get the police here straight away if they wanted to. They would have done that already. But they would have done that already if that's what they wanted to do.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna ask her, so what do you plan to do with all this?
SPEAKER_04Why you Well, we'll sort all this out. We're gonna we're gonna kind of tidy everything up and make sure she's okay. Obviously, we'll take her to an advanced medical center to make sure she's uh she's fine and we'll sort out all the other problems. Don't worry, we'll we'll kind of deal with all the rest of it.
SPEAKER_01You do realize that, you know, there is a big conspiracy going on here.
SPEAKER_04The man turns around and says, Yes, we're well aware of that. Thank you very much. Then you know my name. I know a lot about you. Hey.
SPEAKER_01You say so. But so I don't need to give you my name. You already know me.
SPEAKER_07You can see that she's sort of like rolling her eyes. Classic business power remove from the woman. I can respect that.
SPEAKER_04As she says, Look, go home. I would
A Dangerous Deal
SPEAKER_04don't tell anyone about what's going on. You're just gonna get whoever you tell into a lot of trouble. We understand that you know what's going on, and that's great. But at the moment, you need to make sure you don't tell anyone else, especially any other adults. If you tell them and they try and get involved, you could get them killed. What are you doing about the factory? It's all in hand. We're trying to get it sorted, because uh I appreciate that that you've tried really hard, but you're just a bunch of kids. I'm gonna cut to uh Anthony and Susie as you get to the hideout.
SPEAKER_00Hello, is anybody here? No answer.
SPEAKER_06Anthony's cleaning Anthony's cleaning his glasses and squinting.
SPEAKER_05I can't see anything. Totally not because Marco's doing that. Yes, exactly. Ex exactly. I'm gonna just head on up.
SPEAKER_04You head on up. It's the usual place, except there is the only thing that's now out of place is a large note that's been written, which is on the desk. Yeah, read it. I have not gone over the last episode that we talked about it, so I can't remember what's in it. Uh but it essentially says that they've gone off to this address to go and see what's going on with uh the person who created these things.
SPEAKER_05Let's see. Too late. They've already gone. Look! I pass him the note. We're in a lot of trouble. We how fast do you think we can get there? Can we leave our bikes around here somewhere? Someone better. I'm gonna look around and see if uh any bikes have been left left around.
SPEAKER_04I know the bikes have gone. I think we're gonna have to run. There is a car in there that you know that Johannes know that that Anders uses.
SPEAKER_06Do we know where the keys are? You do. Though you're not supposed to.
SPEAKER_02I thought I hid them well.
SPEAKER_06Susie, do you know how to drive this thing?
SPEAKER_05No. What do you mean no? Oh, I thought I'm sure I could work it out. It can't be that hard. But no, we're not doing that. As very uh as really not sensible. And we've been putting ourselves in as much dangerous danger.
SPEAKER_06Tell me one thing about this whole situation, Susie, that is sensible. I mean, come on, we should be playing Dutch and Dragons by now, not this. I roll my eyes. How far away is uh is where they've said their they've gone.
SPEAKER_04So for you guys, if you were to if you were to run there, it's probably gonna take about half hour to do that.
SPEAKER_05If you drove, you reckon it'll probably take you about five and a half minutes. Imagining a child trying to estimate distances uh incredibly confident that we could run it.
SPEAKER_00It's just around the corner.
SPEAKER_05Anthony try starting up the vehicle. Okay. Um yeah, you put the keys in the ignition. If you get in the car, I'm gonna I'd be I'm like hitting the window. Anthony, get out the car. Get in, Susie. We're going for a ride.
SPEAKER_06Uh uh-uh-uh-uh. I am not letting you do this. I don't know that you have a choice. Get in or I'm leaving, and you can run. Come on, we'll put your mixtape in the in the cassette player. You know you want to blast your mixtape while we drive to the rescue, right? Come on. How cool is that?
SPEAKER_05So tempting. And what I'm going to can I perhaps request like a charm roll? Because I don't like Susie's sensible, right? There is a 10-year-old trying to convince me. It's not I'm not directly being convinced by this, but if if the will of the dice were to allow it, then maybe I'd consider it, you know?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's probably because he has no charm, but I will happily roll I will happily roll the two dice I get in heart. You can't really you can't really charm each other in this, but I mean I'm happy if you want to give it a go.
SPEAKER_05It's more more for the more for the dice result. Like I want I just want a little input from from the the fake gods. Um should I push it?
SPEAKER_04No, this you can't push it. You can't push it. Okay.
SPEAKER_05So I failed. Okay. What is around the car? Like, is there is there anything Susie can see that would basically I like I want to sabotage this. I don't want a ten-year-old driving.
SPEAKER_04There's a top on the back end of the car. There's also it's it's it's not actually uh a car, it's like a little Volvo kind of P Pete, it's it you said it was like a little Volvo kind of like pickup kind of thing, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's an it's an old Volvo, yeah, c converted, but it's it's it is a normal road vehicle, but an old one. I mean it's the only difference is it's got restricted engines, so it can't do more than about 30 miles an hour.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah, there's like there's loads of stuff. There's like loads of boxes and there's loads of poles and various other stuff and mechanical stuff down underneath. All the a lot of the disused stuff for when it was a factory is there.
SPEAKER_05So I think Susie in a panic with with with Anthony sort of like actually starting to drive this thing, considering it might actually do this, she's just gonna attempt to like jam something under the wheels to like stop it. Okay. Make a force roll for me. Yeah, I'm not not good at force.
SPEAKER_04Well, you stick the pole like in between the wheel arch and the wheel, and you jam it in as as as as Anthony basically goes, I can drive this car, puts it into drive, and starts to go forward. And there is this horrendous, nasty crunching noise from that wheel as the as the pole that you put in it goes in, under, rips up the sort of like wheel arch, and then whatever's going on in the inside of that wheel goes, and then there's like a crunch, a bunch of sparks come out, and then the pole goes out through the other side of the wheel and flies down the uh the old factory floor and embeds itself into one of the little concrete pillars. It's quite dangerous to do that. Andrews is gonna be so pissed.
SPEAKER_05Susie, why'd you do that? I'm I'm opening the door and like I'm gonna help Anthony out. You broke his car.
SPEAKER_06I did nothing. We've gotta go. I'm not taking the blame for this. Not not taking the blame for this. Nope.
SPEAKER_04Okay, I'm I'm really thinking you're gonna you're gonna run the sort of like 300 meters before you get tired and then yeah.
SPEAKER_05We're doing that that kids thing where you're like, and then you just sort of have a breather and you're like, are we nearly there? Yeah, it's just like it's a little bit of and then you do sort of uh a little little jog and then a sop.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Just starting to sound like who was that person you were talking about earlier? Like Sodo? Frodo. We're on an adventure, right, Anthony?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, but you got I don't I don't even know where you're just shut up, Susie.
SPEAKER_04You you run on when you get to the house. Which kind of takes us to the back to the the timeline of of you three up on the top floor talking to another woman. What is your plan? Are you planning to Well, what do you want to do?
SPEAKER_07I don't know. I feel like we should probably call the police because, you know, a person's died here. You know. She is quite clearly dead. This is me talking to this woman. Yeah, she's not dead. We checked her pulse. She was very dead when we turned off that power. She says, Anders, is she dead? He says, Nope. She's not dead. She needs some medical attention, but she's not dead. Anders, you were just about to call the hospital, aren't you? The line was cut.
SPEAKER_02I couldn't make the call.
SPEAKER_07Well, I don't I I know the guy who lives next door. I'm sure he would let me use the phone. I'll just know what I'm saying. I think not.
SPEAKER_04Why not? Well, if you tell them and get them involved, then you're pretty much signing their death warrant. Well. Convince me. He says, okay.
SPEAKER_02He pulls out a gun. At this point, I just bolt for the stairs.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'm going to bolt as well when he pulls a gun at us. Okay. Both of you make a move roll. Sven, what's Sven gonna do? Sven's gonna take a while.
SPEAKER_01The man is just staying there, you're looking at you guys like, what's going on? Okay, add on, add on. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Go for it. Oh no, one dice. Nope. Okay, you go to sort of like run, and he's really quick. He basically sidesteps the woman and basically stands in your way. As you he's obviously anticipating what you're gonna do. He says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. He's not pointing the gun at you or anything. He says, back. Okay. You can see that she's just like put her hand in her in a in her head, on her head, and she's like, Yeah.
SPEAKER_07She says, What are we doing? You tell us, why don't we be a bit, you know, maybe we can work together in this sort of thing, as you know, fellow business and people.
SPEAKER_04She she turns to Anders, not your Anders, her Anders, and says, Look, why don't you go and contact the people we need to contact? And then I'll explain to them what's going on. He says, fine, do whatever you need to do. And he turns around and starts down the stairs. He goes all the way down the stairs, you hear the footsteps all the
A Hidden Agenda
SPEAKER_04way down, and she sort of like waits a second for that to happen. And we'll just quickly cut to Susie and Anthony. So you're outside the address, and you can see that there is a sort of like a gate going into the sort of the the garden. There's uh there's also a separate like sort of walk-in gate. So there's a garage called all gates, as it were, and then there's a separate gate. There's a car outside to the vehicle outside the um the address, which you recognize, and as you recognise it when you get there, you see the man that was in the car before walk out of the address and go and sit in the car. As he sits in the car, he pulls out what looks like a phone from the uh from the middle of the car, which lights up and he starts to talk into it. Make sure we're out of the bits and like still see the situation going on. Yep, you can still see it. There's like a big hedgerow and stuff, so it's it's really easy to kind of hide yourself in what you've got no bikes or anything, so you can just like push yourself into sort of like the hedgerow and at least see what's going on.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I joined Susie in the hedgerow.
SPEAKER_04Okay. He looks like he's having a long conversation with someone in the car. Like on the phone.
SPEAKER_06Is there anything pointy, like a broken bottle or something lying around? Roll me a D6. Roll you a D6. I rolled a six. Indeed, there is indeed a broken bottle. I pick it up. I'm gonna sneak toward the back end of that car. Nice. Sneaky.
SPEAKER_05Cece's also gonna sort of head up with Anthony, but like uh a different route. So we're basically sort of sneak up to the building a different route. I don't want to see what Anthony's doing right now. Sure.
SPEAKER_06Okay, so that failed, and I'm gonna push it if I may. You may indeed push that. Or actually, I'll use a luck point. Can I use a lock point? I haven't used one point.
SPEAKER_04You can indeed use your luck point.
SPEAKER_06Okay.
SPEAKER_04That's fine. So you'll try and succeed, that's not a problem. Susie, if you want to do the same for me.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, sure. I would also like to use my one luck point. Okay, sure.
SPEAKER_04So you both sneak up in via different routes. Okay. What's Anthony gonna do when he gets to the car? Can I hear his conversation? You can. Like if you get to sort of like the the the rear wheel uh you can kind of probably hear them while he's talking in the card. Yeah, that's what I'll do. Uh for the for the time. Yeah, you catch him saying, uh, yes, sir, we've uh got five kids who are aware of the situation. We have Ulla Yonica. In fact, he says we have Dr. Dr. Yonica. She's currently unconscious and has suffered a brain trauma. Guess we're gonna need to have a trauma team come down and pick her up. We're also gonna need a cleanup team to her house, and we also would probably need a deeper dive into the following people. And he starts mentioning all of your names, and he sort of, you know, says your full names, your addresses for each one of you, and your parents, and all the rest of it. So he's basically talking about someone coming and cleaning up problems.
SPEAKER_05I am going to let out the air on his tire, that back tire that I'm near. Susie's sort of trying to look for any signs of the rest of them, like any any of their bikes, any of their, you know, any listening out.
SPEAKER_04Actually, yeah, in the in the hedge on the outside, the bikes are sort of like just next to the entrance gate into the property. Okay. I'll get to sneak up to it. I will cut back to uh the other three. So she says, right, we have a problem.
SPEAKER_07With which art? The people being kidnapped and turned into cyborgs, the little robots who are planning on building bigger robots that to kill people? You know, rough. Just take one. I'm trying to impress her with my knowledge of what I know so far.
SPEAKER_04So, what can I tell you? Some artificial intelligence has escaped from our facility. And they took over a factory just on the outside of town, and now they have started to implant people from the town, and they've started to chip them and get them to do what they want them to do.
SPEAKER_07Yes, I believe it's probably that list of people over there, and I will point to that list. She says, quite probably.
SPEAKER_04You guys are have been have been good. Well, so it turns out what they've done is what we think they've done. What we'll need to be able to confirm this is that they've been working to expand their process, and they use the toys as sort of a dry run, if you will, of because they took over the toy factory, it was easy enough to kind of modify things. And I think they're in the process of scaling it up.
SPEAKER_07Yes, I believe that is uh document four over there. Um, Anders, where did you put that one? It's just in the pile. Over there. Yeah. I'll uh walk over to the pile and grab it and be like, I think this is the one you're talking about. Uh yes, that's the one.
SPEAKER_04She's she looks at some of the schematics and says, uh, so we we we have a problem. We we can't do anything about it at the moment because there are various concerns, which is not really for you to worry about. But what it does mean is we need to get into that factory and we need to find a way of stopping the rest of this intelligence from doing it. And we need to shut them down. That's what we need to do. We need to shut them down. But to do that, we need to get into the office and find wherever their main servers are and close those. We could potentially then upgrade a virus to the artificial intelligence where we can then defeat the artificial intelligence.
SPEAKER_07Does that make sense to you kids? The main framework this stuff. Is it probably like a big thing that's like a stack of servers? Looks a bit like the thing in that room. It's the sort of thing, yes. Yeah, that's down there in the basement in the oh, I think it's the which which corner was that in, Sven? I can't remember. It was after the through the broken door. Yeah. Hmm, okay. So you've been there. You haven't? You see what?
SPEAKER_04I know. It it's very difficult to get into the We can show you how to get in. Yeah, it was very easy, you know, if you have the know-how. Very interesting. Susie, you make your way into the property.
SPEAKER_05I really don't want to be spotted. Like I I'm I'm probably overhearing this conversation, but I'm just out of sight.
SPEAKER_04So uh you where where you are, you have to go into the actual building. So if you want to go into the building, that's fine. Yeah, that's what I'm gonna see. Yeah, okay. Susie, you've got this.
SPEAKER_06Just talking talking to us now. Okay. Um what's Anthony gonna do? Uh does this guy notice that I just let the air out of one of his tires?
SPEAKER_04No, he doesn't seem to have noticed yet.
SPEAKER_06Okay, I'm gonna let other the air out of the other back tire out. Okay. You go around the other side. Could you make a sneak roll?
SPEAKER_04How does he get on? I failed. No successes. Okay. Um yes, you kind of like you kind of go to the next wheel and you go to push the the sort of like take the little cap off and and push it to to take the air out. And there's this like whistling noise that comes from the air cap as there's something sort of like caught within the actual air cap itself, which makes a horrendous whistling noise, which basically makes you start, and as you do that, you see the man look up and then the the front door open, and he kind of stands up and starts to walk around the car.
SPEAKER_06Okay, I'll start to walk the opposite way. Like hunch walk, you know, like hunch down low.
SPEAKER_04This will definitely require you to make a sneak roll with a minus one. Failure. Would you would you like to push that, sir, or would you like to get caught? I'm gonna push it. I failed again. Okay. I have taken the upset condition. Yeah. Definitely upset when uh you uh you go and you sneak around and you realize you're not going fast enough. And he's like, Oi!
SPEAKER_06And he looks at you. I hold up the broken bottle out in front of me, and like my hand is shaking. He says, Look, Anthony, your friends are inside.
SPEAKER_04Come with us. Come with me. I'm not going anywhere with you. Jarek pulls the gun out from his waistback. You're not gonna shoot me. You can see he kind of like sighs and puts the gun back in his waistband and takes a couple of steps towards you. Susie, you go into the house and you make your way up the stairs. You make your way up the stairs and you can hear Anders, Johannes, and Sven having a conversation with a woman whose voice you recognize, and she's sort of like explaining and they're having a conversation. I believe the term is negotiation. Yeah, it's well, it appears that Johannes is having a negotiation, but the others don't seem to be negotiating much. And she says, so yes, some help will be really helpful. They don't seem to want to hurt kids very much, but they are willing to harm adults.
SPEAKER_05I'm gonna have a look around. If I if I've got a good spot to like I can overhear them talking with a woman, I'm gonna find a quick spot that I can like hide out the waves in case they come this way. Yeah, there's a bedroom off to the side. Sign to go to the room.
SPEAKER_04Which you can kind of like just just open the door a crack and then you can just hear. Yeah, that's what I'll do. Turn on. Yeah, that's fine. It says, Look, I'm not gonna lie, we're probably gonna need your help. And I've never needed to rely on a lot of people, let alone a bunch of kids. Go on.
SPEAKER_07How would you like to be deputised? How would I like to how about how would I like to be brought as to be brought on as consultant? Sure, we can have him on as consultants. With the fees as well. Sure.
SPEAKER_04I mean we can we can figure out something.
SPEAKER_02I'll uh look at Sven Anders and be like, you happy with that? Yeah, the thought of money and as is nodding his head, yeah, we'll go along with that. We could probably arrange sort of like a couple hundred chronos for you. Make it two hundred.
SPEAKER_07Okay. Okay. Shall we shake on it? What was your name? Sorry, you never said. Risha. Rishita. Yeah. I will shake on it. I assume you already but uh Johannes, Sven, Anders. You already know Anders. Yes, we do. Yes. And um about the uh robots not willing to hurt children, he'll lift up his trousers and show like this cut he got from the robots and be like, they do get quite vicious if provoked. Well, that could be a problem.
SPEAKER_04The man says, Okay, well and he takes a couple of steps forward and says, Look, just give me that. Back off. And he goes he goes to take the uh the thing out of your hands. I push it forward into his hands. Can you please make a uh force roll for movies? Um you're going to require two successes. Yeah. Failure. Yeah, you gotta do your best. Clearly he's an experienced fighter against a ten-year-old boy. He takes the uh the thing out of your hands and grabs your arm behind your back and puts his hand over your mouth. I can I bite his can I Yeah, you can bite his hand. He is like he kind of like bites his grits his teeth, and he basically carries you and manhandles you into the house.
SPEAKER_06I imagine I can't scream out because his hand is over my No, no, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Until you get in the house, and then obviously you start shouting and screaming. And at that point, all of you can hear the sound of Mark Anthony shouting and screaming as he's basically being dragged up the stairs. Because you see the man in question, he's got like blood coming out of his fingers, there's blood all over uh Anthony's face, and uh he's basically being dragged up the stairs, sort of like in the guy's arms, like in a bag, and you lot see Anthony then get unceremoniously ducked in the study where you are on the top floor, but he's covered in bits of blood all over his cheek and his his nose and lip and
The Confrontation
SPEAKER_04stuff. And Rashita's kind of like giving giving the other Anders like a like a what the what the hell kind of stare. And he's like, the little shit bit me. And he's like flicking like his finger around, which is like specks of blood are going everywhere. And Brashita's like, what are you doing, Anders? Just just go back downstairs. He's like, fine, and he walks back downstairs. Yeah, he looks at he looks at Anthony, kind of like puts his points his finger at you, goes, You're a little shit.
SPEAKER_06I want to trip him as he goes down the stairs, kind of like put my foot out. Yeah, you can. You gotta banks and put your feet out. Go on, make a make make a false roll. I hope he breaks his neck. You know, I'm only rolling one die when I do this race. No, okay.
SPEAKER_04I failed. Okay, yeah. You put your feet out, and you can see that he's uh he kind of steps over it and he kind of like pushes your your feet out of the way in that kind of ineffective way that kids sometimes fight with an adult, and he kind of shakes his head and goes back down the stairs. He muttering to himself, there's gotta be a there's gotta there's gotta be a first aid kit in here somewhere. The kid's probably got tetanus. I've got a first aid kit if you need it.
SPEAKER_06And I shout after him, that's what your mom said.
SPEAKER_07Anthony, be nice to our new business partners. We've just shaken on it. What? You traitor. It's just business. Turncoat. What are you doing here anyway? Rescuing you, isn't it obvious? No, we're fine. You're not saying we're just having a discussion with our new business partner. Isn't that right, Rugia?
SPEAKER_04He just says, She has sort of like that kind of expression on her face where her eyes are sort of rolling and goes, that's correct.
SPEAKER_06And then I say, Then why was he outside on the phone saying they needed to bring specialists here to clean us up? Well, Rugia?
SPEAKER_04She says, we need to make sure you and the rest of the family are fine and that there's gonna be no comeback to you or anyone else that's involved you've involved in this, so we have specialist teams to help scrub the records of you being involved in anything.
SPEAKER_06That's a lot we call them we call them cleaners. It's a lie. They're in on it and they know all of our they're gonna go after our parents, they're gonna kill all of us. It's a lie.
SPEAKER_07Unfortunately, Anthony, I think they're the best chance you get. Have a look at this list. This is the list of people the little robots are after. And I will point to that name down there.
SPEAKER_06Is that your dad, I believe? I look at her and I say, You touch my dad and you'll be sorry.
SPEAKER_04She looks at you and says, I don't want to hurt your dad. It's not me. It's the artificial intelligence that's gonna want to do that. I want to stop them from doing that for you.
SPEAKER_07Can we just take him aside and just explain quickly? Because he's not really up to speed. Sure.
SPEAKER_04How about I let you make a decision you have a quick conversation. I'm gonna go downstairs and make sure Anders is fine, and we're gonna wait for the medical team to turn up to pick up Dr. Yollika. And she says, I'll speak to you in a second. She goes down the stairs. As she goes down the stairs, she passes you in the bedroom, Susie, and goes downstairs. Okay, I'm gonna run up. Both of them are downstairs. I'm gonna run upstairs. Susie's here.
SPEAKER_06This is going on, guys. Those those people are gonna kill us. I heard him on this role on his car. And Douglas Douglas is a turncoat. I don't know who Douglas is, but Johannes. Yes. Maybe he is.
SPEAKER_07Johannes is a turncoat. I'm just doing business and whatever that'll help. We want to solve the robot problem. This is the best way to solve the robot problem. Plus, we're getting paid. Isn't that right, guys? He's Lando Calrician. We don't know what that is.
SPEAKER_06What's a Lando Calrician? Anders, Anders, come on, help me out here.
SPEAKER_02No, we're getting paid, Anthony. They're gonna kill you and all your parents. No, we've just got to get them into the factory. They'll they'll take down the servers we found in the basement, and yeah, we'll be alright.
SPEAKER_07Susie, they've all been compromised. Look. Susie, come here. Look at this list. This is a list of all the people that the robots are taking away. Sven's dad's on it. Look at this name here. There's Anthony's dad. That lady there has the same surname as you, right?
SPEAKER_05I'm gonna take I'm gonna can I take the paper and look at it. Your mum's on the list. She's just staring at it for a bit. Sven, what do you what what do you think about all this?
SPEAKER_06I don't trust police much, but this is a special agent. They're not special agents. They work for they work for Rick's Energy. They're not special anything.
SPEAKER_05They don't work for Rick's Energy. Didn't we know that? So does their ID. I I know they they don't work for Rick's Energy. That's that's what the policewoman told me. Well who who do they work for? They're acting on their own. They they can't be good. Well. See, I told you.
SPEAKER_06Well, if we still get paid and we still accomplish our goal, I think that's a win. You can't do anything with money if you're dead, Johannes. We need to get out of here now. Well they already know who we all are.
SPEAKER_05And that's comforting how?
SPEAKER_01We wouldn't be able to
Choices to Make
SPEAKER_01get too far. The way I see this is either we leave or and go our ways, or we held them out to whatever it is. I mean, I for one want to get my dad back. I don't know about you guys, but you know, my dad is a cyborg. Where's the kitchen in relation to where we are?
SPEAKER_04The kitchen is downstairs on the ground floor, and you are on the second floor.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So, lady. I mean, I don't care about the money, Douglas. I just care that my dad stops being a cyborg. Are you gonna do that?
SPEAKER_00I don't know, but I I I I I feel like these are the ones that are causing this in the first place.
SPEAKER_07That's the wee robots are doing it. By the way, that's because if you had a lady plugged into that computer room, is she still over there? She is still over there. Oh my god. Yeah, I'll be like, that lady over there was being held hostage by the little robots. And yeah, that does not look great.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so Anthony and Susie, you both look over and see a woman in a computer chair, sort of like leaning back. There are wires and stuff half in and half out of her. There also looks like tubes going into her, which probably was feeding her or something. There's a bunch of like computer terminal stuff, there's a whole load of things, there's loads of like sheets of paper all over the place. The place is a mess. It's all a bit overwhelming. Yeah, it's horrible. There's a there's a sickly sweet smell in the air as well, which is now just kind of like asylum your nostrils.
SPEAKER_06These these were like borg on Star Trek. I don't know what that means, Anthony. If that helps you, Anthony, yes. They're the most fearsome villains in the known galaxy. Exactly. They're the bad guys. And those two agents are working with them.
SPEAKER_07No, they're they're against it. They're trying to uncur.
SPEAKER_02How do you know that they didn't know where the servers were in the factory?
SPEAKER_07Yeah? And they told us they want to stop that. And to upload um was she saying something about a cold or something like that? Or a flu?
SPEAKER_02I think it's called a virus.
SPEAKER_06I think it's the way they kill the creators. That's what Captain Picard was gonna do to the Borg. He was gonna upload a virus into their collective consciousness or whatever. Yeah, see?
SPEAKER_07So they that's their plan. They're lying to you. And Captain Picard did it, you know, it must be good because he's the hero question mark?
SPEAKER_06He chose not to do it be didn't he? Because it was morally questionable to commit genocide of an entire species.
SPEAKER_05What would that do to what would that do to your your father who's already considered a cyborg?
SPEAKER_01Yes. I wanna get an answer from Regita. How are we supposed to save the people that are cyborgs? Did you want to cool her back up? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I wouldn't go I will just go on after You're gonna go out there.
SPEAKER_04I'm gonna follow Sven downstairs. Cool. As you make your way down the f the stairs, going from the second floor to the first floor, Regita meets you on the stairwell, going from the first floor down to the ground floor, and effectively blocking your way out of the down the stairs. And she says, Yes, Fven.
SPEAKER_01Baby, I really don't care about the money. I just wanna know how you plan to undo what's been done to my dad.
SPEAKER_04Well, we're gonna need to uh find those servers and we're gonna have to put a virus into the servers, which will then effectively destroy the artificial intelligences. Would that hurt my dad? Probably would give him a headache, but I don't really know. In theory, if we cut the data going from the artificial intelligences to everyone who is chipped, that should just stop the data transfer, and then they should be fine. You don't work for Rick's energy, so who do you really work for? He looks up past Sven to Anthony on the side. You work for someone who would like this to all go away. And who would that be?
SPEAKER_06I'm not at liberty to just tell you that's so you lied to my friends, and you're not at liberty to tell us the truth, so why should we trust you? You don't know what's going to happen to Sven's father. Why should we trust you?
SPEAKER_04You can choose not to trust us, and that's fine. Go home, and at some point when the entire town is chipped and turned into a bunch of, what did you call them, zombie cyber zombies or or cyborgs, then you will happily join them and you'll all be working for the artificial intelligence. Or we can try and work together, although according to uh your friends there, what we thought would be really helpful would be that they wouldn't hurt you because you're kids and don't see you as a as a threat. That's obviously not what's happening at the moment. Why do you need a bunch of kids to help you?
SPEAKER_06Because if we go in, then we will Oh, I get it. I understand. We're canon too.
SPEAKER_04Well they won't hurt you. Although now I've found out that that's they're obviously the way they've been dealing with people has changed now. The last information we had is they would not see children as a threat, and therefore they'd be able to, you know, generally walk around and do what needs to be done, but I understand that, you know.
SPEAKER_06See, I think you guys created this thing and it's gotten out of hand. That's what I think. And now you now you're trying to clean up your own mess. I think that maybe makes you guys what?
SPEAKER_04If that will make you feel better, then
Negotiating Trust
SPEAKER_04sure.
SPEAKER_06No, well, it would make you feel better if you got out of the way and let me walk down the fucking stairs, lady. And what are you gonna go and do? None of your business. You said I could go home, right? So get out of the way. She basically looks over at the guy and he's he basically just shrugs.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Gesture of good faith, she says. Off you go. You can all go ahead. And she sort of like takes a couple of steps down the stairs and says, think about it. Don't think it too long, because for every day that we wait, more people will be chipped, and more people are gonna get hurt in the long run. But no, you you you go ahead and think about what what you'd like to do, and that's no problem, Anthony. And she's at this point she's backed off and she's left the stairs open, so you can all kind of like leave if you want.
SPEAKER_06I go down the stairs to the ground floor. Is she still on the stairs? Like, can she see me? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04So she she basically goes down onto the ground floor. So she's now standing in the hallway. I go into the kitchen. Sven, you're next on the stairs, looks at you. And Sven, what would you like to do?
SPEAKER_01No, I'm I'm fine with the answers she gave me. So just gonna go up and get the rest of the boys.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean I think everyone's kinda like moved the way down the stairs.
SPEAKER_01Ah, okay, okay.
SPEAKER_04So uh she then looks at Paul and then sees and sees Anders there. She looks at Anders and says, Well, what would you like to do? Well, we can show you how to get in and where it is. Well, we probably need a distraction and we could probably do that. If I was to give you and she looks over at the guy, the thing you need to upload. I've got a disc that you can upload onto the mainframe or onto the servers, you could deliver the the virus. And I we'll make a distraction on the other side and then they'll come to us.
SPEAKER_02I nudge Johannes and whisper a danger money, more money.
SPEAKER_07Yep. So Okay. So was so what Anthony was saying is is true about um you're not actually with these people. He said you are. Well, you know, I I say that come on. You probably s you've got this you know, some more money then. Let's say double again and you if we could ask you for maybe to provide some stuff from regards to things. You know, just for this. Charm roll. Oh yeah. And I use my pride. Absolutely you can't. Which is I am an excellent businessman. You are an excellent businessman, so please do use your pride. So what so what does that do?
SPEAKER_04Is that a one success or is that uh yeah, so once once what's the mystery, you can check your pride to get one automatic success in a dice roll. That's check your pride after a failed roll, but you could also, if you want, make the roll and then add a success to whatever it is you roll.
SPEAKER_07Okay, I'll take the one success. Can I just take one success? Okay. That's fine. And then I will roll my let me see, what have I got? I have five in heart and three in charm. Yep, okay. So minus one for being injured still, so that's seven dice, and I've got one success so far. Sure, cool, then and that's two additional successes, so that's you got three successes.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and you start kind of like negotiating, she sort of starts to agree, and you think you can push it up a bit more. By the time you've kind of finished your sort of very, very brief, sort of like two or three minute negotiation, you've negotiated thousand krona each and some other bits that you you can have from them to help with whatever it is you need.
SPEAKER_07A couple like some favors or something like that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, some favors as well, or some gear or some whatever. We'll we'll call it how about if you do another mystery, you can call on them to help you with something that's vital to help with whatever that mystery might be.
SPEAKER_07Or they can help us with something specific on this one if we need to pick. Absolutely. If someone comes up with something cool, that's that's fine. Um they can look at that.
SPEAKER_05What is Susie too in the background? Uh Susie is still upstairs, I think. So she's still kind of looking through all of the the the papers and things, like Yep. She doesn't guess, yeah.
SPEAKER_07She never signed the contract yet.
SPEAKER_05She does not care about money. I don't know what you mean. I I I honestly think she's going to probably pocket that piece of paper with the names on to put on the board later. She's yeah. Just just sort of going through things hanging on them, and then is going to find another place to hide.
SPEAKER_04You kind of so there's another room up here, or you can just go back down to the first floor and hide back in the bedroom.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04I'm gonna go to the bedroom again. Yeah. Like that. Okay, you you go and hide. So once you've had the once you've had that conversation, uh what's Anthony doing in the kitchen?
SPEAKER_06He says he doesn't know that the phone lines are cut, it's like he's looking for a telephone. There is there is a telephone. Okay, yeah, so he'll pick it up and try to dial the inspector's number. It's dead. So then he snaps his fingers and he says, The car, and then he runs out into the hallway out the front door.
SPEAKER_04Okay, yeah, you run past the guy, the time just lets you go. You run out the front door, and you run out into
Call for Help
SPEAKER_04the into the street.
SPEAKER_06And the car is indeed there. And I will uh jump into the front seat and use that use that fancy car phone. Cool. Fancy car phone, which you've not seen the like before.
SPEAKER_04Make a tinker ultimately. One success. You look at it, it's really technical it's got a weird sort of like flat screen with no buttons on. And as soon as you sort of like touch the screen, there's like buttons that appear on the screen. But you're like, oh okay. And you sort of like take out the the telephone number that you've got for the or the call that you've got for the um the inspector, and you dial it. The phone rings and you hear Marie pick up the phone.
SPEAKER_06Hello. Hey, hi, it's Anthony. I know you told us not to get in any trouble, but my friends, you know, they didn't listen and they got into trouble. And we're at Ulianikra's house and and there are these bad people here and they have guns, and and you've got to come and help us. What was the address? I give her the address, whatever it is. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yep.
SPEAKER_06Okay. Stay quiet. Don't don't engage with anyone. We'll be right there. Thank you. And so I'll look around outside the car for that broken bottle to see if the guy like dropped it or whatever. Uh yeah, he did. He just dropped on the floor. All right. I'm going to use that broken bottle to puncture the shit out of his tires.