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
Dark Blue Sea S1 E3: A Mutant Year Zero Actual Play Podcast
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The mutants search for vital resources, hoping to restore their crippled vessel.
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Welcome to Stories with
Welcome to Stories with Dice
SPEAKER_00Dice. This is the Dark Blue Sea, a Mutant Year Zero Actual Play Podcast. If you're enjoying our actual plays, please subscribe to Stories with Dice so you'll never miss an episode. Don't forget to rate and review us. It really helps others discover the podcast. Follow us on social media to stay updated, share your thoughts, and join the conversation. You'll find the relevant links in the description of each episode.
SPEAKER_04Hi, welcome to our third episode of Mutinyer Zero. Just like to say hi to my lovely players. Hi, lovely players. Pete. Hi. Uh we're joined by Douglas. Hi Chris. And Chris.
SPEAKER_02Hello.
SPEAKER_04Um you may have noticed that there is no Marco. Marco's off swanning around somewhere enjoying whatever he happens to be doing. He couldn't join us tonight, so I'm afraid you've got me recording everything. Well, wonder how that well that goes. So yes, thank you for joining us again for this third episode. We have done some stuff offline prior to the game. We had done some stuff for the project for the arcs, and you'd be pleased to know that they have managed to succeed in their very first project, which means that they have shored up the defenses around the ship that has been stranded on the shore. And because of that, I'm going to ask Pete to roll me 2D6, and you're going to add that to your warfare and development level for your thing. Right, we got eight all together. Excellent.
SPEAKER_05Pretty good.
SPEAKER_04That is that is brilliant. So that actually means that you've managed to increase your warfare to a very respectable
The Arc's First Project
SPEAKER_04nine. No. That's not right. It'll be it'll be twelve to a respectable twelve, which is great. Also, considering it's the beginning of the first session uh or the next session, you need to make a d6 roll to tell me how many people in the arc perish.
SPEAKER_03Am I in charge of the deaths again then?
SPEAKER_05No, no, no. We'll let we'll let Douglas be in charge of the deaths. As long as it's in charge and not responsible, I can live with that. 50-50 there, mate. I'm not really sure. Quite a bit. D6, was it?
SPEAKER_04Yes, please. Three. Excellent. We're down to 191 people from in the arc. And I'd also Chris, I'd also like you for me to please roll me um a D6. If it's a one or a six, one of the main NPCs croaks.
SPEAKER_02We don't want that to happen.
SPEAKER_04Of course, it's a one. Excellent. We like that. Because it's a one, this is where we'll see whether or not any of you have got any uh any friends or enemies that pick it up. Because I'll roll me another D6.
SPEAKER_02And another one.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Well, that that's from the lawkeepers. So it turns out that one morning you find one of the uh the lawkeepers' enforces has uh come to a grisly end. They found Scooter face down in the water. Scooter is no more.
SPEAKER_05Oh, not Scooter. He was my third favorite lawkeeper. So yes, he was found dead in the floor.
SPEAKER_04No one knows what happened to him.
SPEAKER_05Looks like he's drowned, but no one knows how. If we were still afloat, that would be a bit less mysterious than now that we're on land. Exactly.
SPEAKER_04So we'll um we'll start, right? Time to do some exploration. Now I believe
Exploring Underwater Ruins
SPEAKER_04that Chris's character, remind me again what is your character's name, Chris.
SPEAKER_01I Moss the Reptilian guy.
SPEAKER_04That is the one. Excellent. So Moss has been doing some exploration under and around the the shore where the ship is um beached, using some or trying to use some diving equipment that that that they found, and unfortunately has not been successful and ended up hurting themselves in the process. But while down there, you did see that apparently there is parts of a ruin which is under the water. So that could potentially be something to explore. And the ruin itself seems to head westward through and past the island on the map. So if I was to kind of if I ping on the map, you'll see that it is to the next square along past the island. It potentially goes into further ruins under the water. How you get to those ruins under the water, I don't know. But that's something you find. Other than that, after last session, you kind of went south and decided to leave the very large woods, dead woods full of spider webs, well alone, but you can still explore eastwards, southeast, or you can try and scout around to the southwest, but that means you're going to have to go through the wonderful spider.
SPEAKER_02Will the spiders extend all the way to the coast? Or could we skirt around if we stayed very close to the water?
SPEAKER_04You could try and skirt around and hope for the best. I guess I'm gonna ask you, what do you want to do with Marco? Not we we have to ask that very question very much. So, what is Caspian gonna be doing? Are you gonna be taking Caspian with you, considering that, you know, he's probably still not quite not completely well, or are you going to leave Caspian
The Decision to Venture Out
SPEAKER_04behind? Because Caspian is the one that can actually get you through these things, and you'll just have to rely on yourselves.
SPEAKER_05Are any of the small boats like available at the moment? Because we could maybe he could take us across and stay with the boat while we explore uh it's west, isn't it?
SPEAKER_04We could do that. I'm sure you can have a look. Let's see. Caspian is going to speak to he is going to attempt to speak to someone, and he does. He um he ends up speaking to the mechanics who are more than happy to provide you with Mark would be very upset there because I've I've rolled the public role instead of a private role. And uh yeah, so you do actually have access to one of the small boats. Who can sail this this boat? What's your what's your ability to see it's to sail like that?
SPEAKER_05I was hoping Marco.
SPEAKER_04Well, I let him do everything, right? That seems a bit harsh, right? Is this no the zone then? Yeah, this is this is this is this is a long zone, so you can just kind of navigate across to the side. That is not a problem.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't necessarily Is this one of the ones that I have to have, or would I just be okay rolling widths? Although, of course, now that I've uh got the bins, that's not great either.
SPEAKER_04Yes, please. If you if you'd like to give that a go, that would be that'd be great. So uh I would like for you someone to roll widths, whoever that might be, but because it's actually a sale, I'm going to actually I'm going to someone needs to use agility. Cool. Between the two of you, you can kind of figure that out. It's not exactly the rules for the game, but I quite like the idea of someone trying to navigate and the other person actually doing the sort of like rope work for the sales, seems to make more sense to me. And it becomes like a joint thing. Attempt to inspire someone to make their role better. That seems like a good idea. So one of the singership shanty. Okay.
SPEAKER_03So Yeah, my agility didn't go very well.
SPEAKER_02All the failures.
SPEAKER_04Well, Douglas, if you want to roll for your inspire.
SPEAKER_02We really do need Cochran.
SPEAKER_05No, that is not I got nothing on the Inspire, and I think nobody else got anything either.
SPEAKER_04No, you will kind of like work really hard to try and get us. No, no, we can do this, it's not a problem. You kind of like sort of, no, no, you want to do that, and having no clue how to actually sail, which kind of confuses things more. Cassian kind of watches for a short while and then sort of like takes the lead a little bit. You know, he he believes that you need to understand how you do this first before before doing anything else. And he helps you to sail the ship. Although it turns out that most of you are not what you will call sailors, because presumably that you would leave to the other gangs to do that. That's not been your forte. But yeah, you um managed to sort of like follow along the coastline, and I'm going to just clear the path here for you to give you an idea. Hopefully you can kind of see this happening. So if everyone else listening, I'm just revealing the next bit on the map for them. You should hopefully see that I've uh cleared the path for you into the next zone. Excellent. So, um, let us see what we see. Right then. As you kind of make your way into the zone, I have made a role for uh for Margot's character. And yeah, you you head towards this craggy rock
Setting Sail
SPEAKER_04line. You can see just in the distance to the north of the island that separates between this area of land. It's probably about five or six kilometers just onto the horizon, but you can see the um the island to the north. Yeah, and it's quite craggy and rocky, much like the rest of the island. There are ruins spattered around all over the front of the island as they kind of like make their way up. There isn't sort of like a beach like there is in the previous zone. It's just more sort of like this really craggy, kind of broken rocked landing, I guess, as you kind of bring the boat towards it. You can see probably just in the distance, you can see a large stick sticking out of the out of the earth. It looks like some large you've probably seen something similar on other ships, but this is a much bigger version. It's this huge metal construction that kind of has structures leading up to sort of like about a quarter of the way up to it, and then it just keeps reaching up into the sky. That's what you can see
Arrival at the Craggy Island
SPEAKER_04in the distance. Close to where you are, you can see all these broken rocks, and you can see all the sort of like ruins that are kind of around. It looks like the ruins are much like the ruins you saw in the previous zone, big, large square ruins. There's not sort of like the ruins that you might have of very small sort of buildings, they're quite large buildings, separated by large open tracts of broken land. I take it you want to land here, or do you want to continue on along the coast? It's up to you.
SPEAKER_02Do I think that the ruins look like the stuff I saw underwater? Do I think these are the same structures?
SPEAKER_04No, they are ruins, but they are they're a different kind of structure than the ones you saw.
SPEAKER_02So it's not like maybe there was a change of sea level and they continue just below the borderline. Probably, but they're different looking ruins.
SPEAKER_04There's more of a mix match of different sizes of ruins. This is a very uniformly large square, low but wide ruins. What they were for you don't know, but and you'd need to really kind of explore them to have some kind of idea. But definitely from the boat, looking at the ruins, you can't really see what they are.
SPEAKER_05Okay, so we we could land or we could land keep keep keep keep like map, fill out the map. Keep fill out the coast until we see something even more interesting. You can do that.
SPEAKER_02That's considering how we're at sailing, I'm not sure we want to go on.
SPEAKER_05I mean, that is also a thing. Well then, but then again, it is right next to spiders, like their spiders might have wandered over as well. So do we want to be as far as possible from the chance of spiders
The Discovery of Structures
SPEAKER_05before we land? Like put a decent distance between us.
SPEAKER_04I mean, if you were to land on the far end of that zone, you know, right towards just on the borderline of the next zone, you know, you're far enough away from the spiders to at least you hope so, unless they've invaded this sort of section. But from what you can see, where you can see from the boat, you cannot see any other spider webs.
SPEAKER_05May maybe put a zone between us and them. And then maybe there's something more recognizable of use that we see that because we don't know what that thing is. It could just be a fancy pillar.
SPEAKER_04Okay, see you want to go through to the next zone. Is that it has to it's a consensus? Uh you have to do that?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that that's that's my vote.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. I'm along for the ride. Rich. Cool. Excellent. Well, in that case, you go onto the next onto the next map. Excellent. Well, so uh who wants to uh I think I'll do it just because I've done it already. Let's roll for Margot's character to find the path.
SPEAKER_05He is no longer letting us help anymore.
SPEAKER_04I mean, Marco's gonna be very upset that I keep failing his roles.
SPEAKER_05Well, we know nothing, so as far as we're concerned, he knows what he's doing.
SPEAKER_04He he knows exactly what he's doing. Yeah, exactly. So um you kind of continue on following the shore. Can I have another wits and another agility role from you because you guys are using the boat?
SPEAKER_03Doing well on the agility today.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, um, I forget.
SPEAKER_05Can I can I inspire like multiple times in a session?
Unearthing Secrets
SPEAKER_04Uh you can I think if you're in a different zone, so you have to wait for another scene. So essentially it's taking you six hours to go from one zone to the next zone, so like as you kind of make your way through.
SPEAKER_05Because if I can, I'll try and inspire again to hopefully do a bit better. You know, I'll just sing there and sing sea songs. Okay, yeah. Yeah, go on then. I'm being helpful. Okay.
SPEAKER_04I mean it cheers everyone up, absolutely. It doesn't successful help. Well, ideally, you need to inspire, and then you'd roll yours. Yeah, you sing everyone's in good spirits. You kind of you start off on the morning, you kind of make your way around of land, you think, oh actually, I'm not gonna do that, I'm gonna continue further around on land. And you do, as you kind of make your way further into the next zone, you're all in high spirits as it sort of starts to get towards midday, and uh you can see in the far distance another island. But what's really interesting is as you kind of kind of make your way into the zone, you can see sticking out of the water the tops of some buildings of some runes sticking out, runes sticking out of the water, the water's lapping around. You can see that the land kind of goes into a bay towards the southern part of the zone, and you can definitely see that there's another island further westwards from where you are. A moss, are those the sort of buildings you were seeing underwater over there?
SPEAKER_02I wonder. Are they?
SPEAKER_05They are a similar kind. This is exciting. Well, they seem a bit easier to get access to than all do my breath.
SPEAKER_02Could we I don't know how how pointy they are, could we moor the boat to them and explore?
SPEAKER_04Absolutely you could. There's no reason why you couldn't do that.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I'd love to do that.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So you uh make your way towards the buildings. So they're probably a good three or four kilometres offshore. So as you make your way through the through through the zone, you kind of like think, oh I see, we'll look we'll look at those uh those buildings over there, that's where we're gonna go. And uh you do indeed. You make your way towards these buildings sticking out of the uh out of the water. Again, it's sort of like an ocean, so there's currents and and and waves and stuff, and as you make your way towards the um buildings, someone is gonna have to bring the sh the boat in for some kind of mooring, which is going to require someone to make a an agility roll, why not? So who would like to do that?
SPEAKER_05My record isn't so good so far, but I'm will I give the agility a guru go just so the cycle. Sure. Alright. It's only a three I've got an agility, so it's not great, but so let's go.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So as you kind of like make your way towards the thing to moor up, you kind of like catch the bottom of the boat and you hear this horrendous like ripping noise, and you're like, oh what? And you kind of hear like a crunching noise, and then you kind of slam hard into sort of like one of the upright buildings where there's a large gap in the side of the building. Well, you think you can probably moor up. You reckon you've probably done some kind of damage to your um Oh.
SPEAKER_02Well that that really is no good at all. I I mean I'm I'm I'm sort of already seeing a stick here and it went with far to call for help from home. I I'm super excited about exploring this wood, but I really think I need to try fix the boat first. Can you guys like go and I don't know, like don't know, find me a sheet of metal or a wooden plank or something?
SPEAKER_03Sure, we'll see if we can wrestle something up.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. I assume we can can we just hop off onto the building and go have a look inside.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely, you can do. The building is sort of like this large deal and shiny, sort of like mirrored surface in some places, other places all sort of like broken and and snapped and and shattered. It looks quite dark inside the building, so um hopefully you've got some kind of way of illuminating
Investigating the Ruined Building
SPEAKER_04that.
SPEAKER_05That would be hopeful, wouldn't it? Um I don't think we do. I don't think I have to do that.
SPEAKER_03No, I'm lacking anything to uh Okay.
SPEAKER_05Oh well, I guess we'll There's probably some light inside. Yeah. You know? Or we can at least like go a couple of steps in through the hall and see if we can see anything immediately right next to us that is wood or metal that we can drag out.
SPEAKER_04This is true. Okay. So I'm going to uh you're gonna go to have a look around. So who wants to step off first onto sort of this this um this large building that's sort of dominating this bit of the water? I guess I'll go first. Take a step off. You like dry land, that's nice. It's um it's kind of like there's probably about a half inch of water that's sort of like flapping around in the building itself. So everything's obviously seems to be sort of like uh full of water. But inside you can see dark walls, there's a lot of staining that's happened. Over the years the sea's kind of risen a little bit and dropped a bit, and so you've kind of clearly can see that a lot of the stuff that's in there has been swept back out to sea. But you can see multiple doors and corridors going in deeper into the um into the into the building. You can see that through the corridors there are clearly open doors, and it looks like some of the light is coming through either breaks in the roof or sort of like breaks in the sides of the building. So actually it's dim light, but you can actually see inside. It just requires you to go for a bit of a a wander in there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'll uh initially gingerly start walking in there until my eyes get adjusted to the low levels of light. Uh-huh. And then probably move around with a bit more confidence and see if I can find any materials for patching the boat. Okay. Would you please like a scalp roll from yourself?
SPEAKER_04Yep. Success. One success. Okay. Yeah, you start sort of like rummaging around, you're kind of looking at things. Cochrane, what are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_05Uh I guess I'll hop off the boat and if he's going in one direction, I guess I will pick another one and go from that way, you know, cover more ground.
SPEAKER_04Sure. If you would like to have a uh look around as well, I mean why not? Can you also make a scout roll for me?
SPEAKER_05I don't have scout, so is that can't make the role or just a pure wit? No, no, no. You just appear witch roll will be fine.
SPEAKER_04Uh that is one. Success each. Okay. So you kind of like wander in and you're kind of looking around, and you still like as you as you go through the building, you can clearly see there is a very little left. It looks like the wave action has made its way through the building through one side or another, and whatever's whatever was in there has pretty much gone. But as you kind of make your way through, you kind of come across what looks like a a bolted to the ground box made of some like tough metal. There is a large wheel on the front of the door of this large box, and there is also a smaller wheel off to the side of that. The box itself is probably about a metre and a half long by about a metre and a half wide, and it's solidly shut. It looks like it's weird. You put stuff in it, but there's a big wheel and a small wheel. The small wheel has loads of like numbers and stuff around, loads of symbols and stuff around.
SPEAKER_05That's what you've got. Okay. Does does the big wheel by any chance look a bit like the ship's wheel, kind of? It doesn't a little bit. Yeah. Like a like a very small version of the ship's wheel. I'll give that, you know, see if it anything move changes direction if I spin that wheel. It doesn't spin at all.
SPEAKER_04It goes clump straight away. You're like clunk.
SPEAKER_05I guess I will go to the other one and whatchamacallit, give that a little twiddle. It doesn't move at all. The what the one of the numbers?
SPEAKER_04Yes, it doesn't move at all in the slightest.
SPEAKER_05Can I just try and like pull it open?
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah. You and you and you and Roach basically just hold the door open and the door opens, and a bunch of water comes out. But also out come a bunch of plastic things. You've seen plastic in the in in in the zone before, that have got little square pieces of plastic with little square bits of metal sort of like in the middle of it all. It's a weird looking thing. There's a whole bunch of them. There's they look like they they were originally in a box, but they've kind of been swept in here. There is also in here a couple of what looks like bars of sort of like dull like golden looking metal. And there is also what looks like a revolver that's all rusted and broken.
SPEAKER_05Well, I don't think these bars of metal are gonna be much. Use for repairing the boat. These bits of plastic? I don't know if mostly.
SPEAKER_04The bits of plastic are probably about an inch and a half by an inch and a half with a little kind of metal thing that slides or probably did at one point slide across the bottom of it, open and closed.
SPEAKER_05So not much for use unless it's a very small thing. I'll take the plastic things, because you know, if it's a small hole, we could just plug that in. The big heavy things, they seem heavy. They are quite heavy. Yep. They don't seem to be like iron or anything that have seem like people using it's very shiny.
SPEAKER_03Maybe I should drag one out and see what Moss thinks of it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But in the meantime, I think I'll grab that rusty revolver. You never know when they might come in handy. Okay. Yeah, you grab the rusty revolver.
SPEAKER_04It's definitely not working. It's all kind of corroded and broken and but yeah, that there's there's that rusty revolver. The two bars of metal and the we'll call it I don't know, eight disc things. Like flat disc things that are made of plastic.
SPEAKER_05Now that we have the door open, do we have access to the actual hinges? You probably do, yes. Could we like knock out the hinges and then grab the door? Because that's a nice flat bit of metal.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you could you could probably do that if you want to make a jewelry rig roll. If you don't have jewelry rig, you can't do it.
SPEAKER_02I might want to I don't know. Yeah, for me to come over and have a look.
SPEAKER_05I do not have jewelry rig, so I certainly have that idea, but I have no idea how to accomplish it. I'm like, I would like this door, but I don't know how to get off. I will go ask Moss. Yep, cool.
Finding the Door
SPEAKER_02So I'm saying in the meantime, I've just been, you know, sort of getting out of the boat and like examining it from the outside, seeing what kind of nature of the damage is and what I think I might need to do to fix it.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Yes. So if you'd like to make a juror roll for me just to kind of examine it, that'd be great. I in fact, instead of using your your instead of making it strength, you make wits for it. Sorry, I have to tell you. Just to kind of have an understanding of what you need to do for it. So that was a straight width. Wits. So that's fine. You don't need any more than that. Yeah, you can see the sort of like it it's lightly damaged, it's not as bad as you thought. You probably caught the bottom of another building or the top of the building on the bottom of your boat. You reckon, yeah, a piece of metal or some wood or something like that will probably be enough to do that. But to do that, you'd have to get in the water and repair the the thing on underwater, which is fine. You can you can swim and stuff, so that's not a problem. Yeah, you just need the right tools. Now, do you have any of your jewelry rig tools to help you?
SPEAKER_02I mean I I don't actually think I've got them set up with my gear.
SPEAKER_04Okay, that's fine. So you can jury jury rig.
SPEAKER_02But I suppose I I should actually have them have gear for that, shouldn't I?
SPEAKER_04I'll tell you what, it makes sense that you would have that on board the boat anyway, like a repair kit, as it were, like the basics of the repair kit. So yeah, you can step aboard the sh uh the shore and go and help do that. I mean I'm guessing Cochrane, you'd go out and and tell Moss that oops, we need someone to help take this thing apart.
SPEAKER_02And I'll I'll stick a repair kit or a tool belt or something into my gear for for safekeeping.
SPEAKER_04Okay. I mean you're more than happy to steal this one until you find another repair kit.
SPEAKER_02Awesome.
SPEAKER_04Okay, cool. Right.
SPEAKER_05What's the plan? So, Moss, I think we found a bit of metal that we do, but it's stuck to like a box and I can't get it off. We also found these bits of plastic and some big bars of metal and the rusty row which has got a revolver, but I don't think it works.
SPEAKER_02That is a nice sheet of metal. I th I think that might just work. How does one get this off the hinges?
SPEAKER_04Let me see. So you can make a good old-fashioned jewelry rig using your strength. So you just need to hit jury rig, and that'll automatically give you the roll.
SPEAKER_02Um yeah, I think that's broken in the sheet because it's using just MYZ for the stats. I can I can just roll width with the bonus.
SPEAKER_04It's gonna be so it's gonna be strength, not widths. I think it's strength without not widths.
SPEAKER_02It's it's it's the same right now, certainly as well.
SPEAKER_04Let me just let me just go into your character sheets.
SPEAKER_02Wait, no, hang on. That was that didn't all work. Right. It should have come down five dice. Why did that not work?
SPEAKER_03What happened lot what was the thing we did last time, Douglas? To edit the skill, you right click on it, change the attributes. Great, thank you.
SPEAKER_04There you go. Now you should be able to roll and then it'll there we go. Yes, so you um process Yeah, you basically work out how the the hinges work, you pull off the um inside sheeting of the of the door, which is seems quite sturdy and stuff, and you you will drag it across back to the um the boat. Cool. You then you need to repair the boat if you would very much like to uh repair it. Um I'm gonna ask you to uh make a repair with two successes, because you have to do that while the boat is in the water, so you have to do it from underneath.
SPEAKER_02If I'm successful repair, I'll be able to use my tinkering talent, right?
SPEAKER_05Absolutely, you can do that.
SPEAKER_02That's brilliant.
SPEAKER_05Can I just assist? Because I'm not doing anything at the moment. You can? Also, I'm I'm part wood, I float.
SPEAKER_02I like that.
SPEAKER_05Sure.
SPEAKER_04I'll tell you what, can you make an inspiration roll first? I will inspire confidence in this thing. You do indeed. So if you succeed, Chris, you'll get two extra subserfits. Wonderful. Um, when you go in to make your role, you just need to add the extra plus two. Yeah. Well, it's nice. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So that's um you that's six successes. You've got six successes. You're like, this is a doddle.
SPEAKER_02I might not be able to sail, but this is more like it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so you can do other things. So you can make it more durable. In fact, one, two, three, four, five. Yeah. So essentially, you've got the most amount of stunts you can possibly have for this. So not only do you fix it, you make the hole a little bit more durable, you give it a bit more protection. So actually, the where where the keel is, you kind of like fix it so it makes it easier to sort of if it does scrape against the um the floor again, uh, or or or any other buildings or anything under the under the water, it'll make it uh a little bit faster. And inadvertently, you've kind of like smoothed the hull out a little bit in doing it, just to give it that little bit of extra speed. So cool.
Repairing the Boat
SPEAKER_04Um well done.
SPEAKER_02What a great little boat this is.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so that kind of takes you a bit of a bit of time, and as you kind of do that, it takes some some time to get that sorted, and you realize that it's kind of like mid-afternoon now.
SPEAKER_02Oh man, we might not make it back in the daylight. I wonder if we should sleep here.
SPEAKER_05Like, yeah, like this. We found at least one interesting thing, and we didn't even go that far into the building. Like, there's look all the buildings around here, and I'm sure there's interesting stuff in all of them. Uh yeah, like it's gonna take us like half of the day to get back to the ship anyway. Or, you know.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, if you if you bomb it, it's gonna probably if you left now, you'd probably get back to your arc or the ship. Half the darkfall.
SPEAKER_05Well, what does Caspian say about like traveling it in the dark? Is he like, yeah, it's probably not a great idea?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, he says traveling in the dark is probably not great because we don't really know the waters that well yet. So he said he's probably got a good idea that he'll be able to get you back on time, but it's just a bit more difficult.
SPEAKER_05Well, it seems safe enough and quiet enough. Like, I we haven't seen anything here since the uh we've been here for hours. We haven't been particularly quiet because we've been doing buying hammers of metal and screwdrivers and yeah, it's it's it there's this you haven't seen anyone else at all. Like if someone was here, but I'm pretty sure they would have turned up at some point in the last couple hours with us, you know, yeah making all noise.
SPEAKER_04You've you've definitely not seen anyone pass this way. You I mean, you've literally been either on the boat or in the building. There's nothing in the building. There are definitely sort of like stairs going down and up, but you haven't really kind of gone either direction. And what you've also got is other buildings. So there's probably, if you were to count them, Douglas, you could probably count maybe twenty or so other buildings at different heights sticking out of the water. You've not looked underneath the water, so you don't know how deep down it goes. Um, a bit you're in an open ocean, so is there like a tallest building that would be like the highest above the water level? There's pro yeah, there's probably one about four or five buildings away. And it's probably not more than sort of like maybe 800 meters from where you
Planning for the Night
SPEAKER_04are.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Well, we're less likely to get aware by going into the tallest one. If we go all the way up to like the deck of that ship building thing, we would probably be a good place to camp out. And you'd also probably get a very good view of what's going on.
SPEAKER_02I'd like a good view. Let's try that.
SPEAKER_04Let's see if we can make it over there. All right. So, you know what I'm gonna ask for? Can I please get a just an agility roll? Feel free if you want to plug together. Two of you can do it if you want. And um, if you want to, I think with the inspiral, I mean I'm just gonna double check your skill.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, whether or not it's a limitation on it. I went and looked at the in the forge and it didn't say like session.
SPEAKER_04So it says you can, it doesn't say that you that you only have to use it once per session or anything like that.
SPEAKER_05I can literally just sit here and not participate, but just tell everyone how great they're doing. Yeah, I'm healthy. Yeah, I will I will I'll roll my inspiration now to see what they get. There we go. So there's a couple of successes there.
SPEAKER_04So you've kind of got the you you've seen you've seen that sort of the way you've kind of had the boat and sort of how everyone's working together, and you kind of like impart that knowledge and kind of keep them going and stuff like that. So who wants to make the uh roles? I guess I say who. It's gonna be Chris Pete. So if you both want to make a role, either or wits and or agility of your choice.
SPEAKER_02Is there a bonus from the inspiration?
SPEAKER_04There is. You'll think I'm getting the hang of this. It just means if you get a success, then his inspired successes also work. So look at that.
SPEAKER_02We're so inspired.
SPEAKER_04I mean, yeah, uh you you guys have got the hang of this now. Or it might be just due to the wind direction. It could well be that too, but you know.
SPEAKER_05Also the boat's almost indestructible, so even if we bounce off things, it doesn't back.
SPEAKER_04All right. So yeah, you make your way very briefly and very quickly across to the larger building. It's the biggest of all of them. It does have I mean, it's probably sticking out of the water, you've probably got at least another ten levels to go, you reckon, if you were to sort of like judge how far up it would be. You find a decent place to moor the ship, and you can get in through one of the large open windows that's on the side.
SPEAKER_02This is amazing.
SPEAKER_05Guess uh look for a stairwell or a stairway or something.
SPEAKER_04Yep. You kind of get in, much the same that you saw in the other one. This whole floor has been kind of like cleared out by by wave action, everything's wet and dank, and there's bits of seaweed sticking in, and you find a couple of like small crabs sort of like clustering around in the in some pots in either corners. Uh but you do indeed come to a set of stairs heading up.
SPEAKER_02Well, let's then I guess if if the ground floor looks looks like it's picked over already.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Is it like a fire escape surface? Or we can like look up and can I can I just like glance down into the murky depths?
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah, you glance down into the murky depths. It doesn't go it probably goes no more than three or four foot, maybe hot maybe a metre or so, and then it just goes into darkness, you can't see. If you look up, yeah, you can you can look up and you can see it goes up further. There you can see lights of shaft coming coming through the bits where there's either old windows or cracks in the um building. So you kind of illuminates that as well. So even though you don't have any actual torches or anything like that, you reckon the low light means you you'd be able to see enough to go up the stairs and look around. Onwards and upwards.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it would be good if we could, you know, explore this place while it's still daylight out and then maybe we can scrounge something to make a nice campfire for overnight.
SPEAKER_05Oh, that's a pun, yes, wood and stuff.
SPEAKER_02I presume down here there's no point looking because everything's too wet?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, there's just there's there's nothing there's nothing that'll be and you'd probably where you are down here, even if you were to like try and set up camp, you probably if there's any like large wave action, if there's a storm or anything.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, let's not let's find somewhere safer higher up.
SPEAKER_04Not ideal. Okay. Cool. Can one of you please make the scout roll? Just the one of you.
SPEAKER_05Who wants to do it? I don't particularly I'd be a tree. I don't have scouts.
SPEAKER_02No, I don't I don't either.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I've just got to go.
SPEAKER_04Um are you gonna take Caspian with you or are you gonna leave Casen in the boat? Caspie's gonna stay in the boat. That makes more sense. Well, I guess I'd better lead.
The Mysterious Noises
SPEAKER_03I guess I'd better lead. My scouting isn't great, but I can hit things if anything drops up.
SPEAKER_04Okay. As you start to make your way up the stairs, you kind of like go up the first floor, but the the this floor seems to be locked, you can't seem to get through the door, so you go up to the next floor, and as you get up to the next floor, you can hear movement coming from a couple of floors above you. What's that? Do you have no the zone by some chance as a skill? No. Okay.
SPEAKER_05Well We are the worst explorers.
SPEAKER_02Well we thought we had Caspian, right? I mean, yeah. You do. Okay.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. You there's something there.
SPEAKER_04Uh something you can you can hear noise coming. You can't kind of work out exactly what the role what what kind of what what it is, but there's definitely something going on. I think know the zone is actually a skill that you can use your regular skill with, I think. So I it's wit space. So it's oh yeah, it's so one of you please make a wits roll. Shall I do it as I'm in the lead again? Sure.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Okay. It's actually now next for dice. So just roll one roll one of those dice again. And push it, just roll dice. So just hit one of the D6s in the dice tray at the bottom. No idea.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03There's noise coming from above you.
SPEAKER_04You don't know what it is, but you can hear it.
SPEAKER_03Well, I guess I'd better creep up and then investigate again.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, surely it's nothing to worry about. It's probably gulls or something.
SPEAKER_04I'm sure it'll be fine.
SPEAKER_02I mean, best case scenario is something we can have for dinner.
SPEAKER_04This is very true. I I like the positivity that's going on here.
SPEAKER_03I'll I'll take out my scrap axe just in case and try creeping up the stairs.
SPEAKER_04That makes sense. Okay. You um you uh creep up the stairs. Be a sneak roll, will it? Um yeah, make a sneak roll, why not? That's a success for you, sir. Let me make a roll too. Okay then. And you start sneaking up further. You keep going and you get to see one of these these large doors, so you can see every every single floor has one of these doors, which has a large, sort of heavy door component, and there's a strip of of like little windows in each one of them. Most of them are sort of like cracked or broken. This one itself is actually completely shut. Uh it's completely sort of like boarded up from the other side, but there's definitely noise coming from the other side of this this door. You can hear the scratching and pittering and pattering on the other side of the door.
SPEAKER_02Does that sound big?
SPEAKER_04It's difficult to tell. Does it does the door look pretty secure to this level? Uh yeah, it appears to be quite secure. There's there's obviously just this is the only way that you can see to get in. There is like a large sort of like handle on the other side. On this side, you know, it looks like you push the handle and then you pull, and that will open the door. You've tried some of the others, but they all seem to be locked on the from the other side, but you haven't tried this one, but you can hear the noise coming from the other side of the door.
SPEAKER_03Wheel party, should we do we want to investigate this or should we push further on up the stairwell?
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, if we don't know what's in there, then we won't be able to have a quiet night here, right? This this might be this might come back and bite us. I wonder if there's any way to lock the door from the outside so that we know they couldn't come for us? Whatever it is.
SPEAKER_04I mean you could jam it from this side and sort of like put a jam in it, and that would mean that they wouldn't be able to come this way or the thing couldn't come this
The Swarm of Rats
SPEAKER_04way.
SPEAKER_02That would be good enough for me.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. You yeah, you can you look around and you can find sort of like a a piece of metal or something to just jam into the bottom of the door. No problem, you can do that.
SPEAKER_02I like that. Yeah, that this is this is much better than, you know, contracting a room full of something. A noisy room full of something too. Ugh.
SPEAKER_05I guess we'll continue up to the top and then see if there's anything there, and then if it's good enough, we can start looking on the upper floors for things to burn.
SPEAKER_04Okay. You um you make your way towards the rest of the building. You keep going up, and yeah, you come across yet more doors as you try them as you're making your way through. Yeah, you you realize that a lot of the doors themselves either seem to be jammed shut or locked shut for whatever reason. So you're finding it obviously that you're not really getting the places that you want to get to.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that this sounds a bit lame. What is everywhere locked? I mean, I'm still I'm still hoping to get that nice view from the top. So if the top floors also lock, then I'm like, we need to break one of these doors. But just right now, I'm like, well, as long as we can get one floor open.
SPEAKER_05Well, the light's coming from somewhere, so hopefully it's there's a crack or something up there we can.
SPEAKER_04It appears that you're in like the corner of one of these of the building. So every now and then you kind of like come across a bit where the where the building itself is broken, and you catch a sliver of light and you the sea and the building's beyond as you go up the staircase. So clearly it's in the if you were if you were to kind of orientate yourself on the building, you're on the bottom left of the of the building, and that's the lift shaft. Presumably there'll be another lift shaft. In fact, you know there is, on the other side, diagonally opposite from where you were going. So you could go all the way back down again and go all the way back up on the other side if you want to try another way in. But yeah, you keep going. Uh you're gonna as you as you keep going, as you keep going, you keep going up the stairs, you're sort of like starting to get, you know, you haven't done this kind of like you're going up and down stairs for a while. So it's so your thighs are starting to ache a little bit, and you reckon you've gone up ten flights of stairs and you come to the door. The door is open. It's just partially open and slightly slightly swinging. Okay. I guess, Roach, you're up ahead. Yeah, I'll gingerly open the door and peer through. You open the door and you see a lot more light coming in. You appear to be on the top floor of this building. You can see as soon as you open the door directly ahead of you, you can see glass or what was once glass in some of the panes, and it's this whole panoramic view, and you can see straight out into the um open ocean, and you can see that this is was some kind of like viewing platform or or something like that as you come out of the door into the building or into the rooms. You can see there are lots of smaller tables kicking around that have just been randomly collected here, and lots of like chairs, that kind of thing. You can see there's a balcony to the northern part of the building, and a balcony to the sort of eastern part of the building. Yeah. It's it's this big open expanse.
SPEAKER_03Well, I'll turn back to the stairwell and hey Moss, I think we've found your view.
SPEAKER_02Wonderful. Yeah, I would love to explore if you know, like those if those balconies are safe, we could maybe I don't know. I I presume this is something that Cochran's kind of interested in also. Maybe maybe you can map things. Are you good with a pen like that?
SPEAKER_05Not really, but I usually, you know, more oral history than just remembering things, so I've got quite a good men memory.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I mean now that we've you know made made it all the way up here, I feel like this is this is a great vantage point from which to plan out where we can go over the next couple days.
SPEAKER_04Can we actually see the arc from here? Well, you need to kind of make your way through the room to sort of one of the balconies to have a look. Probably. I mean you can go and have a look. Yeah, I'll try and do that. Try and go and see if I can see who kind of head over to the room. I can see my house from here. It's it's a bit like that, right? So you kind of go over there. If you want to make a well, as you make your way towards the um balcony, you can see there's some doors. Yeah, and as you kind of sort of make your way across, you can see sort of on the balcony itself, there's sort of like these little pillars with these large In fact, make a comprehend roll to me.
SPEAKER_05I do not have comprehend, so can I comprehend this at all? No.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, make it make a witch roll. Yeah. So so attached to a bunch of these large sticks is the same sort of thing that you saw um Caspian have. The cylinder, two cylinders. Which look like two cylinders combined with each other, which look into different directions. Um, but there's about eight of them and they're all on sticks, looking in different directions.
SPEAKER_05We did two, it was Caspian who got those. Yeah, Caspian who had them. Did he explain what they were? Did he figure out what they were?
SPEAKER_04Uh did he figure out what they were? Destroyed them, didn't he? Destroyed. Yeah, he tried them. Yes. And so he basically explained that they have some kind of optical thing going on in them which makes you which makes you see things further away than they actually are.
SPEAKER_05Then I will attempt the same process I've seen him use them with and be like, oh, you put your eye to one deep some end and then you look through it.
SPEAKER_04Pretty much. You kind of you do that and the world kind of is a bit blurry, but then as you kind of concentrate, you can see the large column thing in the distance on the island. You can also make out the sort of like beginnings of where the spiders were, but you can't see far enough to see where your home is from here, I'm afraid. But but you know, this goes all the way around the building, so you can do all do that all the way across. So what that essentially means is you can scout the next zone ahead of you without actually going into the zone.
SPEAKER_05How handy. Man, I would love to have one of these on the arc. Do you think we'd like take this off the sticks?
SPEAKER_02I'd love to explore for that. Yeah. I mean there's there's so many of them here. They wouldn't miss two or three, right? I know. I I take my rend to the things and to see if I can pry one loose. Make it your rig roll.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely you can. You realize it's simply just held by bolts to the floor until you kind of like find the best tool and you start undoing it. And I mean it's heavy, but yeah, you can pull it out.
SPEAKER_02But I've got the thing on the stick now rather than it's like. You can whack somebody over the head with it, too.
SPEAKER_04I mean, it takes two of you to sort of like move it around, it's quite thick and heavy. But yeah, yeah, you can't.
SPEAKER_02Actually, probably Pete can whack somebody over the head with it. It has to be strong like that.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, Casmins can be so jealous because mine is bigger than his. Therefore, is superior.
SPEAKER_04So I'm gonna ask, none of you actually have scout, which is hilarious. But I'm gonna be quite generous. There's three of you, and there's three directions you can look that you haven't been to yet. So, Chris, do you want to look north, south, or west?
SPEAKER_02I'd like to look north.
SPEAKER_04Look north. Can you make a scout roll for me looking north? Oh, it's horribly dark in the north. Take it you failed. Okay, right. Well. So you look to the north. It's open ocean. As far as the eye can see, it's just open ocean. There's nothing else there, and you can't see anything of any interest whatsoever. Who wants to look a west or south? Damn us, which way do you want to look?
SPEAKER_05I guess I already started looking. No, we was looking east, I was looking up previously. So I will look I will look south. Okay. Pure wits, is it? Since we all suck a scouting. Uh yes, it is. Suck a wits. So let's see with my two dice.
SPEAKER_04Nope. No. So yeah, you look south. So what you can see, looking south, you've got more open ocean, and you can see where the headland juts out of the island, and it continues on southward, and it looks like the island itself then tends to go southeast. So clearly you've kind of come around the the the uh about the most western edge of this island, and then it continues on south. You don't see anything else of anything. It looks pretty plain, and the edge of that island just looks very barren. It doesn't appear to look like there's anything there.
SPEAKER_03I guess I'll better peer out to the west. Indeed. And I also love it. I tried looking through the large inn just in case.
SPEAKER_04You kind of look out, you can see there's an island, and from beyond the island it looks like yet more open ocean. It doesn't appear to go anywhere else. Yeah, you can you can see that there is sort of like a another large building, like a tall building. The island itself is is sort of covered in this yellowy kind of haze that sort of like seems to surround the island, which means you can't really see anything further along past the water. So, yeah, from where you are, that's pretty much what you can see. Again, you can't really tell if there's anything else there or any sort of like of anything of any note. But yeah. Uh so excellent. So that's what you do. That's that kind of takes you sort of like you reckon that's kind of taking you a bit of time. It's sort of like the light starts to fade. And as the light starts to fade, you can hear that noise again coming from the floor. The sort of like scratching noise. And just as you're sort of like kind of like, okay, well, what do we do? Where do we go from here? You start to see things starting to come up from the floor, which is not what you were expecting. We're just gonna like throw you around the building. Uh yeah, it appears that there's a bunch of small sort of cat-shaped or cat-sized, I suppose. Standard cat size rats, which seem to have been now pouring out of the hole. You realise that the flooring and stuff is all sort of queued through, which you just thought was sort of like floor damage, and you can make out these rats starting to sort of like come up out of the floor. They're chittering and they're making the scratchy noise of their long little talons, and they kind of seem to be sniffing the air looking towards you three. A couple of them are sort of like make some chittering noises, and a bunch of smaller ones come up behind them. Before you know it, there is a swarm of rats coming up and their mouths starting to slather and sort of foam up, and with a uh a tentative sort of like couple of steps forward, they sort of like make their way towards you all. Right, what is it you like to do? I just jump on a table. You can indeed jump on a table, which you do. You jump on a table. What does Moss want to do?
SPEAKER_02Jumping on a table seems like a brilliant idea, and I hope I can achieve that in order to from a safe spot where they're not gonna gnaw my toes. Hit them with my lovely bicycle chain.
SPEAKER_03Cool. And wrench, what about yourself? I'll probably try and back into a corner so they can't come at me from multiple directions and so I can swing my axe at them if needs be. Seems like a plan.
SPEAKER_04Alright. Yeah, you kind of back yourself into corner. You can then see that the um the the swarm starts to make their way towards the nearest table. And a good sort of like ten or fifteen of them jump onto the table from a standing trap. That was how it's work. You're like, ah, okay, that's not quite great. And they start to swarm out from from there, around there. After their tentative sniffs, they make a lot of chittering noises and they rush towards you in this large swarm.