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.
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Stories with Dice
Dark Blue Sea S1 E4: A Mutant Year Zero Actual Play Podcast
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A screeching swarm of zone rats interrupts the search for supplies atop a submerged skyscraper.
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Welcome to Stories
Welcome to Stories with Dice
SPEAKER_00with Dice. 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 never miss an episode. Don't forget to rate and review us. It really helps others discover
The Return to Mutant Year Zero
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SPEAKER_04Hi, it's back to Mutiny Zero and our fourth episode. Amazing, I can't believe we're here already. Somehow it seems to have just swum along. So uh welcome back to my wonderful players. We have Pete. Hi, Pete. Hi yeah. Douglas, hello. Hello. And Chris again. Nice to see you. Hello. We're lucky. We're also loss of one Marco who's still a wall. I'm sure we'll find him at some point. He's had enough to podcast life. Or he's got on that yacht that we keep uh we keep promising he would get him with all the with all the Patreon money. We'll never see him again. Unfortunately he can't make us tonight, so uh it's just us. Let's get on with it, shall we? Let's not bother with all the kind of catch-up. Hopefully you've you've listened to episode one to three. If not, this is a stupid place to start. Go back to the beginning, catch us up, and then you'll understand where we are. So, Broach, Moss, Cochran. Two of you thought it was a good idea to stand on the tables at the top of this very large skyscraper sticking out of the water of the ocean. You found a very nice viewing platform on which to uh have a look at the various areas. Unfortunately, you couldn't see a house from here, so you couldn't see the arc, but you did see not a lot of anything around the various zones that that are around you. It's mostly open ocean. There's a bit of an island off to the to the to the west and the headland to the sub-south. And as you were all doing that, you kind of got together thinking, well, it's about time maybe we should start making tracks back down towards the moored boat where your companion is waiting, when a lot of large noises kind of like came out from the floor, followed by a bunch of rats. Well, the noises turned into a bunch of rats, this large swarm of rats, and um they started to kind of look tentatively as probably the first time they've seen a proper meal for a very long time. And so this leads us to uh you all kind of deciding what
The Swarm Appears
SPEAKER_04you're going to do. What are you going to do? Whacker. Whacker. I like I like that. So, well, we shall uh we shall we shall begin combat, shall we, in that case?
SPEAKER_01Unless anybody else has a smarter idea.
SPEAKER_02Whacking is my forte first. Whacking is just my default as well.
SPEAKER_01So rats on a stick's gonna be delicious, right? Rat yeah.
SPEAKER_04How hard can it be? Well, you'd at least know that it's you first, Moss.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. So I get out my bicycle chain and just sort of swing at them whenever they're in arm range.
SPEAKER_04They kind of like start sort of like swarming towards you and you swing out with your bicycle chain and you whack like some of these these rats and you kind of hit a couple. To be fair, there's more coming up. It doesn't seem to be making that much difference to the size of the swarm. You sort of start smacking them away. No role for that, it's fine.
SPEAKER_03Next we've got Cochrane. I guess I'll just pull my scrap knife and start kicking them off my table.
SPEAKER_04Okay, you start kicking and yeah. You slash out a few of them, you catch a couple, you cut them, they squeal and scream and shout. It just doesn't seem to make a dent into the into the swarm. Okay. Next we have yourself, Roach. What do you want to do?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm gonna try my hand, step forward and swing the uh the axe through the swarms of them initially.
SPEAKER_04Excellent. Yeah, you start sort of like swinging the axe and you sort of like catch a couple of them, you squash a few. Again, they just seem to keep coming out of nowhere. You do not seem to be making any dent in any way, shape, or form to the to the swarm. They're still coming towards you and they're still coming to attack you. And in fact, who's right at the front? It's in fact, no, you you've stepped forward, haven't you, to attack them. So that makes sense. Alright, in that case, we'll put you to the forefront of uh of the swarm, shall we? And uh they're gonna attack you. So they're gonna do that. You gonna particularly do anything, or you're just gonna wait to see what happens?
SPEAKER_02I'll try and shift my feet around so that nothing gets a particular grip on me.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Right. Well, they uh they go to attack you. Indeed, they kind of like sort of like swarm all over your legs and sort of like rushing past you, they're sort of like nibbling and scratching at you, they're biting at you. Do you have any armor by any chance, Roach?
SPEAKER_02No official armour, no. I I've got some fairly tough skin that can help, but it's not proper armor. Are you going to did you want to activate that with your any mutation points? Do you want to or are you I'm if it seems that I have to use it, yeah, I I think depends if you want to get bitten by a bunch of rats. I've got to try and avoid it. Right, so first of all, tell me um does uh Yeah, it's hardened skin reduces damage taken from external attacks. Every mutant point spent reduces the damage taken by one. Okay. So if I chuck a couple of mutant points into that. Sure, that's not a problem.
SPEAKER_04That's fine. So you're gonna spend a couple of mutant points. Yeah, they kind of like scratch and bite. How does this look like? What what what what does it actually do? Does it does it sort of like what do you what do you do with your body? Because it says that it's insectoid, right?
SPEAKER_02So does it so what appears to be soft skin kind of like tightens and gets slightly shidier and becomes more brittle and harder.
SPEAKER_04Nice. So yes, definitely. The bat the rats kind of like bite at your um at your body and they swarm around your your feet and you're sort of like some of them are sort of big, they're sort of like a mixture between normal rat size and cat-sized rats. Yeah, they you reckon that they probably make a particularly nasty bite. What you do notice is that where they've been biting at you, they're leaving the sort of like horrible yellowish-y kind of like icker on your on your on your thing, which doesn't sting or anything, it just doesn't smell very good. Right. It appears that normal normal combat doesn't seem to do very much
Combat Engaged
SPEAKER_04to the swarm of rats. We'll go back to the top. What would you like to do, boss?
SPEAKER_01And you know, as I swing the bicycle chain around my feet so so that they can't bite me, except for you know the the very occasional one that does get through. And I realize this doesn't help very much and it just doesn't stop. And first thing that comes to mind is fire. That's gonna deter pretty much anything, but I sort of need to free myself up to be able to make one and I'm gonna be open to to you know to attacks
Fire as a Solution
SPEAKER_01as that happens. So what what I'll do is I'll see if I can get closer, I guess, to Cochrane, and then we can uh sort of mooch over Roach in the hopes of you know like us huddling together so that one can defend while the other two make the fire or you know two defenders and one makes the fire. Um I'll jump off my table and towards Cochrane's.
SPEAKER_04Yep. Okay. Yeah, you you do that. Can you please make roll to sort of like not trip over or fall on rats? Move would help very much. Excellent. Fine. That's two successes. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, you kind of like jump off, avoiding sort of like standing on any rats or anything like that. In fact, you kick a couple of them out of the way and make your way over to Cockery. Okay.
SPEAKER_01And as you know, as I as I do this, I you know, I shout, We we are to make a fire to deter them. Now do I do I see anything on this floor that looks particularly flammable? Like the the chairs that we've been sorry, the tables that we've been jumping on, are they wooden? Yep. They are a mix of wood and plastic. Now, if if maybe if Roach's axe could be used to chop off a table leg or something, that would be awesome.
SPEAKER_04I mean, yeah, you could you could potentially do that. I mean you'd still be being bitten by by rats.
SPEAKER_01Get over here so we can work together to get a fire going.
SPEAKER_03How would you start the fire? I'm gonna ask uh as we go to uh cocking. Well, I have nothing that can start a fire, so what would you like to do? I am going to offer words of inspiration to Roach who's having a grand old time fighting away from being like, go on Roach, repel borders. You could do this, and I will inspire him.
SPEAKER_04You don't have to make a roll, it won't have any effect whatsoever. Okay. Because Roach is not making a dent in hurting them. These things cannot be hurt by normal combat. There's just too many of them. But is he able to keep them off us as we go? No, no, no, no. They'll they'll they're swarming all over you.
SPEAKER_03He can't like them off you. Animals don't like loud noises. It keeps singing. Well, I would I was thinking more at bang. So Cochrane, what are you gonna do? There's not much really I can do because let's have a thing. Uh I'm on a table, Moss is yelling at me about fire or something.
SPEAKER_04Come across, but the rats are also on the table with you, they're all over your legs.
SPEAKER_03So are they so it's now instead of the rats being split, it's like double rats now because they're all converging on the single table.
SPEAKER_04Essentially, if I did this would make more sense.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so now they're all concentrated on us.
SPEAKER_04All over all of you, they're just like and there's more sort of like coming.
SPEAKER_03It's like where do they end? You know, it's just Okay, can I jump to another table to try and split off so there's like less overall concentration?
SPEAKER_04You can you can do that'll be a move, and I'd need two successes from you, sir. So feel free. Did you want to push that? See you've got no successes.
SPEAKER_03No what? I'll push it, why not? Yeah. I'm falling off that table.
SPEAKER_04You you basically go to run and jump off that table. You manage to clear the rats, and then you land on the table, which unbeknownst to you, doesn't have the right number of legs, and you go straight down on your ankle, and you hear a twang or a snap or something. Yep, you sprained or done something horrendous to your ankle, that caused two lots of damage to agility. Oh, your sort, yeah. Yeah, I was taking it down to one.
SPEAKER_03So you've down to one agility to your wife, okay. I am on a different area now from where everyone is. Lying, yeah, so I'm lying over there.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so you basically fall and you've kind of like fallen onto the ground.
SPEAKER_01Don't fall over that swarm, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Right. What's Reg doing? I'm gonna hand moss my revolver, basically say, if you can start a fire with that, and then I'm just gonna keep swinging my axe to try and keep as much away as possible. They keep they keep you keep swinging and they keep keep whacking at them.
SPEAKER_04How long do you swing?
SPEAKER_01Can you swing at a table for me so that it that I get some some smaller woody bits?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'll do it. Yeah, some lift if I do that, I'll do a side swipe and try and chip some key.
SPEAKER_04Sure. So does that last just for the turn, your um your armor, or is it sort of last for like the combat?
SPEAKER_01I think it might not say. It doesn't say in my mutation. It doesn't in this.
SPEAKER_04I'm happy for it to be sort of like for the rest of the scene. That seems to make sense, right? I quite like that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Right, that's fine. Okay. You do that, you start smacking some of the the the the damage to the table that the cochran is on, you kind of break off a couple of the legs as you're sort of like swinging it around wildly. The rats seem to sort of like split up and swarm between all of you. Okay, well, it's their turn now. So let's um let's see what happens. They scratch and bite and doesn't seem to do anything. They swarm all over all over Cochrane who's on the floor. Again, they kind of like in there, they sort of like scratch and bite at your clothing and pull everything off, and then some of them sort of like swarm over over over you, moss. And they can they're like all over you, they're kind of like hanging on, they're squealing and scratching, and but they just seem to sort of like be biting at the wrong parts of you. So you can definitely feel like their little claws and their teeth sort of like nipping at you, but they don't seem to be getting through your clothing or anything like that. It's horrendous. It's like they're on near so in fact, if you've got hair, they're probably clanging onto some of your hair or some of your mossy hide, which is they're pulling out. It's horrible, they're everywhere. Right. Back to you, moss. What do you want to do?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I'll I'll collect some of that chopped off splintered wood and hope that this is this is fine and splintery enough to catch fire. As I So I guess I guess I've been hit that this this revolver. Do I think it's realistic this that this will spark or like that the whatever bar barrel heat or something will work?
SPEAKER_04No, not at all. If you want to make a fire with the revolver, something that's useful, you're going to have to pop open the bullets, and you're gonna need a certain number of bullets to make a an an explosive combustion. Oh nice. Okay. But that's gonna require you to have so Roach, what did you give her? What revolver was that? Is that the one you found that was corroded and stuff?
SPEAKER_02No, no, this was the one I got previously. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Okay. That's fine. How many bullets do you want to use to basically put on top of the uh table and if effectively the rats and stuff like that?
SPEAKER_01I do actually have bullets, but I don't have a revolver of my own, so I don't need to waste yours necessarily.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So how many bullets would you like to use to do that?
SPEAKER_01Out of character, I have no idea how much would be necessary or effective three maybe?
SPEAKER_04So yeah, three. Three sounds good. I don't think we need to kind of worry about the real world explosive would be. Yeah, because we still technically don't have anything to actually ignite it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, so that's fine. Although you do have because you've got jewelry rig, I have no problem with you using like a bit of a bit of metal on something else to sort of like create a spark. For the for the we're not gonna worry about too much in the world roll what real world things of that. So
Aftermath of Battle
SPEAKER_04yeah, feel free. If you want to make a jewelry rig roll for me, please.
SPEAKER_01I'm jury getting away. Oh no.
SPEAKER_04So no successes there, I see. You're gonna push that?
SPEAKER_01I am absolutely going to push that.
SPEAKER_04So that's a success. That's also damage. It also means you get to damage the rats. Okay, if you could please roll me 3d6. That doesn't look great. Is that three ones? Okay, that's fine. Right. Well, you basically ignite this the the the the the the gunpowder that you're throwing out on the floor and you ignite it. Some of the gunpowder is actually on some of the rats, and it sets off this large kind of like flash, and some of the bits of the table kind of like catch a light. Indeed, three of the rats, or a few of the rats, catch a light and they start squealing and shouting, and all of a sudden, where you're standing and where where where Roach is standing, they kind of swarm outwards away from you, as this brief explosion from uh the the gunpowder ignites, and you can see a bunch of rats just laying dead at your feet. Nice. That seems to have done the trick.
SPEAKER_01Alright. I start creating burning bits of table leg to pass them out at the others.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Well we'll we'll give you we'll give you the the explosion to start with before we go further.
SPEAKER_01I just like stating my intentions on what I'll be doing.
SPEAKER_03Cool. Cool. Cochrane, what about you? Right in the face. Or like, I don't know. Being on the tables don't seem to make much of a difference. No not at all. Like they don't have to like make any checks to jump or anything. So it's limited sort of mobility. I'll just have to try and keep them off me.
SPEAKER_04It makes you feel good. But other than that, and then when they start jumping around, you're like, oh son of a not quite what you were hoping for. Okay. Yeah, you uh you try and keep them away from you. It's very difficult for them to do that. But you kind of like feel good that you kind of kick and push some push some aside. But yeah, they they they don't seem to sort of doesn't seem to make much of a dent in their in their swarm. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Guess that that leaves you, Roach.
SPEAKER_04What are you doing?
SPEAKER_02If the fire's worked, I'm probably gonna take my opportunity to start hacking up more of the wooden tables.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_02Try and gain some more fuel.
SPEAKER_04Okay, cool. You start smashing
The Plan for the Night
SPEAKER_04up some of the tables. That's fine. Oh yeah, and they're kind of like, you know, what you'd have to you smash the table and you kind of kick them in the same sort of direction as as the others. And it starts to smolder and start to make a proper sort of like fire kind of starts to go. You reckon it'll probably be in game terms, probably another sort of like three to six turns before there's a a fire of big enough importance to kind of keep the rats away, as it were. Okay. And it's uh it's their turn. So indeed, they uh they go to attack. They kind of all split up because they're just all around you, and they continue. Cochrane, you got unfortunately the majority of them. And again, they're on top of you and biting your grabbing your sort of like bits of sort of skin and fur and stuff. They don't seem to actually be sinking their teeth in at this present moment. Again, it appears that no one goes for moss. They kind of have learned their lessons the hard way, and they kind of like bite into your skin, Roach, but your hard chitness armor that you've kind of like created sort of like seems to stop all their sort of like teeth and and nails from scratching you. Right, back up to the top again. Amoss. What's your plan now? I mean you've got you've got more bullets, you can do it again, but you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but I wanted to give Roach a torch so that you can keep them off him.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01I'm sure that's gonna, you know, be a good deterrent while he's still lying there immobile.
SPEAKER_04Yep. That's that's cool. Yeah, uh you can do that. Are you happy to take the torch instead of your large axe? Right? Yeah, I'll stow the axe and you've got like a bit of a burning bit of table leg. It doesn't feel like it's any banner uh well, you know, it's a small burning table leg rather than your big massive axe, but you know, at least you can keep them out of space that way. Yeah. Okay. Anything else you want to do, Moss?
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, I'll I'll set out and do it again.
SPEAKER_04I've got some more bullets. How many more bullets do you want to use? Basically determine the number of bullets will determine the number of damage you're going to end up doing.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01Or potential damage. I mean, so we've or we're already sort of one person down. This needs to end fast. So I'll I'll actually spend the rest of my bullets on this, and that would be five.
SPEAKER_04Five bullets, okay. Can you make a a move roll? I just want to see whether you'd be able to do all of them. Let me know if you get any successes. That's one success. That's fine, okay. If you want to roll me five D6, that'd be great. That's one oh so that's five D6 just now. Okay. Cool. Excellent. Okay, right. You set off a bunch of them. It turns out that a couple of your bullets were duds.
SPEAKER_01I mean they get wet easily.
SPEAKER_04But the ones you kind of put together, you kind of like skip it all up as they're kind of like biting yourself, and you throw the uh the gunpowder again into sort of like the fire and around where the um where the rats are, and it sets off the sludge noise, and again it kind of catches some of the rats. Um and they definitely seem to sort of like run off, they sort of thin out. And so you don't see you don't think that you're killing them, but you're kind of like scaring them off to kind of get away from you. I mean, that's good enough, right?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04And uh yeah, so uh they kind of scatter. So you you are relatively now alone, and the rest of them mostly head, unfortunately, over to where Cochrane is. Sorry, on the plus side, they're staying well away from you. Cochrane, the rats are coming towards you more.
SPEAKER_03So there's just so in this room, all there is is sort of tables, the balconies, the stuff on the the tilt binocular things. Yeah, there's any little light fittings or anything like that? Any light fittings. You look up, yeah, there's some light fittings. Or like Is it just like is there like is it I forgot what they're called? The sort of like the panel sort of roof where there's like a cavity. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's that yeah, that seems like a good thing. Yeah, there's a kind of sort of thing.
SPEAKER_03I I I will uh attempt to like jump up and hang off that so the rats are just nipping at my toes.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, do you have any way of kind of like jumping straight up a couple of meters? Isn't do you have any sort of like mutations or anything that allow you to do that sort of thing?
SPEAKER_03I have a table.
SPEAKER_04Uh you can run to the well, you can hobble to the next table and climb up it if you want.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, like with that can be half a meter or so up. Make make a move roll for me. This will probably end badly because my children. Absolutely. With a really sore ankle. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Or two. Do you know what? Making um a lot of rats trying to rip your legs off gives you a lot of impetus to just basically just use all your what's left of your your your agility to jump up. You kind of go through the sort of like the fake ceiling and grab on to some of the struts, and you've got like a couple of rats still hanging onto your boot, which you kind of knock off. They're not going to be attacked, be able to actually get an attack on you this round.
SPEAKER_03I think you've done what you need to do. Right. I'll just leave it to everyone else to actually solve the problem. I'll just beat them here. Roach. I'm just gonna be flaming briot.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, wafting that wafting that around in the uh traditional warding them off kind of it it will give you an extra one gear dice to snap them with it.
SPEAKER_04So just use your normal close combat, but you get a plus one for the using unarmed combat. How about these dastardly rats? Well, three successes? Okay. Well, turns out with the right implement and the right amount of anger, you could do a fairly good job. It does one damage, and I think you got three successes, so you can essentially do three damage if you want. Or alternatively, you can perform some stunts. But I mean most of the stunts aren't really gonna help you. You've really got the initiative, you've you know it's a swarm of them, so it's very difficult to kind of if it was a if it was uh an individual, it'd be a lot easier, but probably just whacking them away is probably your best bet. Which you do very successfully. You seem to thin them out. They are absolutely they don't have Cochrane to kind of like get at. So they've kind of swarmed back to you between you and Moss, creating the explosive reaction with the gunpowder, and you smacking them with this flaming brand. You can see they've kind of like thought slightly different about it, and you're not as easy a meal as they were hoping to, and they all start to scatter to the um far sides of the room, back down the holes they came into, and the skittering eventually just disappears. Okay. We'll call that the end of combat. Right. There's various rats laying around you, some of them sort of like trying to wander into the holes with like singed fur and burnt ores and stuff like that. Okay.
SPEAKER_03Is it safe to come down now? They seem to be backing
Morning Reflections
SPEAKER_03off for now anyway. Attempt to gently let myself down with off my with my sore ankle.
SPEAKER_01I'll I'll go to Sandonese so it doesn't hurt his ankle if you come into Sound Hard.
SPEAKER_03That's cool. Yeah. I will have a look at my ankle as well, see if it's broken or sprayed or Do you have any kind of medicine? I have one second, I think I've got healing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, make it heel.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Make your heel roll. You you you think you probably Oh my god, it's hanging off. No. Yeah. Um required. It's it's difficult to tell, but you don't think it's broken, but you probably hold some stuff going on there. Uh the best way to do that is to put your foot up for for about a week or so and you should be fine.
SPEAKER_03So do we want to stay here now that it's clear for the night or I've got the feeling the uh their hunger might overcome their fear after a certain amount of time.
SPEAKER_02But while we're thinking, if we can uh keep feeding this this fire and keep that going so we've got that handy while we think about what our next move is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean I the thing is now that it's dark, I'm not sure how how far we can make it safely. Although I guess now we do have torches.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you technically you've got torches now, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So that I I'm I'm I'm really I'm really disappointed that the plan of like, you know, spending the night here up in the safe height didn't pan out. But now we've got to rethink that, I guess.
SPEAKER_03I don't know. I still think it's safer with the thing that we know about than just wandering around on a boat in the dark.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, maybe we'll do do we think there's enough tables here to to keep the fire going for the night?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you could probably keep the fire going for the night. There's quite a lot of tables and chairs kind of like stacked up, so. I mean, some of them's plastic, so that's gonna not burn well. But yeah. You reckon you could probably get away with that. That might be the
Exploring New Options
SPEAKER_04solution then.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and we might have uh damaged and killed enough rats to uh keep keep their uh hunger sighted for a while as well.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they might eat some of the charred rats.
SPEAKER_01I may get um, you know, irritated by the yellow iker that you mentioned. Um, is there any way to investigate that?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, if you want to um make a make a know the zone role, if you if anyone has know the zone. My god, you guys are terrible.
SPEAKER_03Um It's almost like we had a dedicated character to do all this stuff. You haven't come across anyone for me to talk to, so a lot of my stuff is not relevant.
SPEAKER_04To be fair, you pretty much lived on a very large ship. So while you had rats, they were not these kind of rats. Yeah. And they never really attacked you or swarmed you in any way, and they didn't have like weird, yellowy kind of hussy saliva, so you're not really sure about that. Yeah, I'm I'm not gonna be.
SPEAKER_03I guess we'll stay here then.
SPEAKER_04I mean, how hard can it be, right? Yeah, you can stay here if you wish. Not a problem. Okay. Yes. Cool. If you're gonna stay here overnight, uh well, you need to you need to have one ration of water and one ration of grub. So you can take one of those off.
SPEAKER_03Plenty if anyone needs any, so but I assume everyone else has got at least one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm alright for now.
SPEAKER_04Cool. That's if you want to get your food. Do you do any of you want to eat the rats?
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_04Okay. No? Okay.
SPEAKER_01What could be in store there? More more mutations, maybe? Who knows? I'll start I'll start roasting one and I'll see how it smells then. Okay.
SPEAKER_04It doesn't smell great. I mean I I mean, you probably had worse, or at least you s you smelt worse and eaten worse. But yeah, I mean, do you want to eat one? That um that's fine.
SPEAKER_01Have a very tentative nibble, yeah. Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_04It's a very kind of irony kind of taste. It's a bit gamey, but also a little bit off.
SPEAKER_01I mean, can't recommend but it it's just out of spite, you know. Sure.
SPEAKER_04Just gonna eat it out of spite, damn you. Cool. Well you uh by the time you've kind of set up and you're kind of like feeding the fire, you've all been here for pretty much a day. So you can all gain one level of rot. Yay! And because you ate one of the rats, Moss can have an extra rot. Woo! Okay, so congratulations, you've got your first rot in the zone. So every time you suffer a rot point, you must immediately roll a number of base dynes equal to the total amount of rot points. So for every failure you roll, you suffer one point of damage trauma to your strength. So what I want you to do is, so for all of you apart from Chris, you've all got one point of rot. Because you've now taken that rot, I need you to all make a make a roll on rot. So you should just be able to click on, I think you should be able to click on rot. And as long as you don't get a bad symbol, you'd be fine. So who was that? So if you both do that, that's fine. Now, Chris, can you roll when you get your first rot, roll that? So just make sure there's one in there only and roll that. So if we take away you, because you've got two in there, I'm just gonna give you one. I'm just gonna give you one rot, so that's fine. Now I'm giving you another rot, so you can make another rot roll for me, please, at two. Right? Of course. Ray! So you take one lot to your strength, that's fine. When you get back to the art and you take refuge, you can leave your body every day. If you wash your body in clean water, half your rot points round it up, go away immediately. When you are deep when you're contaminated by the rot, there is a risk that it will stay in your body forever. Every time you're about to lose one rot point, you roll one base dice, like you've just done, and the rot point stays and becomes permanent. Obviously, when you get to ten points, that's not a good permanent rot points stay with you for the rest of your life, no matter how hard you scrub yourself. Permanent rot points cannot be used by the rot eating mutation. So, yes, obviously, when you get to ten, well, you're gonna keep recurring your rot, and you're just gonna take damage, eventually you're gonna die of it. So, welcome to the wonderful world of mutant year zero. Okay, you're not feeling well, and clearly the the rat disagreed with you, so you immediately after you've eaten the rat, you're like, haha, that'll serve you right. And then you immediately throw it back, throw it back up, and the rat or an eyeball kind of like laughs at it or looks at you as if it's laughing, you're like, God damn you. Yeah, it's not a very comfortable evening, but you don't hear them come back. And then in the morning, what do you plan to do?
SPEAKER_01Do we do we get to rest a bit? Do we recuperate any of our lost um skills?
SPEAKER_04Uh you're all suffering raw, aren't you? So no. That facts. Well, I don't know. So two of you aren't suffering. You no two of you didn't take any damage, did you? So yeah, you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna rest the night. That's fine. Yes, why not? What kind of damage have you taken? Cochrane?
SPEAKER_03Well, I've taken the agility.
SPEAKER_04Sure, agility. You've eaten and you've drunk, haven't you? That's fine. And then what about you, Roach? I hadn't lost anything so far. Fair enough. Nice. In that case, that seems pretty good. Yeah, you rest overnight and you've had a ration of water. So if you want to heal more of it, so a ration of water per point of agility to be restored, so you just take extra water on, and that will help you take your agility back up.
SPEAKER_03Okay. So I've taken one water, so I get one agility back so far.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So if you take another one, you'll take your other agility back by the morning. If you want to recover strength overnight, then absolutely it's another ration of food per point of strength that you want to be restored for wits. At least four hours of sleep, restore all lost wits, so yeah, you can get that back. And if you've got any empathy damage, then a moment of closeness with other mutants restores that lost empathy.
SPEAKER_03So, morning. Morning happens. Do we want to explore more buildings?
Decisions to Make
SPEAKER_03Because this one seems a bit of a bust, but there is plenty of others around here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that was not my favorite building.
SPEAKER_02There's plenty of floors we still didn't get into if we wanted to break some of the doors in. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But the rats are still there somewhere in here. Rats are still here. But like if we go to a completely different building, there might not be any rats there. This is also true. There also might be something worse, but you know, that's pessimistic. Yeah. I would say maybe maybe see go check if there's an easier building that won't require like bashing down doors and fighting rats, swarms of rats. Also check if Caspian survived tonight and to get eaten by rats.
SPEAKER_04That's also helpful. Be unfortunate. So you're gonna make your way back down the ten flights of floors to go and check on Caspian?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, before leaving, yeah, I suppose. Do you want me to drag this look far tube thing? Yeah, I'll give you a hand for that.
unknownCool.
SPEAKER_04You take a couple of hours to like wander down. Well, it takes you less than that. It's actually a lot less. When you're not checking all the doors and you're not doing all the rest of it, it takes you a lot less. You eventually make your way down, and you can see uh that Caspian is sitting in the boat waiting for you. In fact, he's he's got his fishing rod out and he's fishing over the side of the boat. And he looks at you and asks what happened. You realise that the boat is moored at a slightly different spot, and he tells you that a bunch of rats came running down this way, so he had to sort of like unmoor the boat, and they weren't in any hurry to jump in the water, and then he re-moored again when they disappeared. He could see a flash of light up at the top on the top floor, and he asked if that was you. You recount your stories, and he he seems quite like shocked and sort of, oh my goodness, when you tell him what they are. Let's see if uh if Caspian knows exactly what they are. He sort of knows the zone, it's like he create that character for that. Yeah, so he tells you that they're zone rats, and they are mutated rats that uh carry the rot. If you get bitten by them wonderful, if you get bitten by them, they'll they'll give you rot. And it says fire, explosives, the best way to deal with them.
SPEAKER_03Um and I probably wouldn't want to eat them.
SPEAKER_01Oh well. Now you say that.
SPEAKER_03We took it all that out ourselves about you, Caspian. So Good job. What do you need me for? He starts to unfire the boat. Just to drive the boat. He wants to he wants to know what your plans are. Well, guess. Do we wanna do you want to just go to another building and check it out?
SPEAKER_01I'd like to be able to get back home tonight. I wouldn't want to sleep here another night, but now that the boats are nice and fixed up, we will be able to spend the morning exploring and then make back home, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, fair. I will pick a building at random and be like that one. Okay, you pick a building at random and go to that one.
SPEAKER_01I mean, does the Caspian see a building that looks particularly promising from the knowing the zone?
SPEAKER_04Caspian says I'm an NPC and I can point you towards the plot line, but that's all.
SPEAKER_01That's useful, I'll take it.
SPEAKER_04Uh no, he says whichever one you seem quite happy with, he's happy to go with as well. I've got a good feeling about that one. Okay. You head towards one, as you head towards one, on the horizon, you just make out a vessel. Just just past the actual, almost on the edge of the next zone, you see a vessel sort of grace the horizon very briefly, and then disappear over the horizon.
SPEAKER_03Can I get get the big versions of the look far cylinders and see if I can find it again? You can? You kind of stare and look through them.
SPEAKER_04You can still over the horizon, so you can't actually see where it you know it's going north or northwest, probably. So you're trying to figure out which is the right way, and that's where they're going. But it definitely means you'd have to leave this zone and go into the next zone, potentially into the next zone, which takes you into open sea.
SPEAKER_01How rare is that for us to see other boats actually.
SPEAKER_04So where you're from, which isn't this area, you would have you would have regularly seen traders and that kind of thing, but you would have traded with. There were a couple of uh like places that were sort of a conglomerate of ships that all tied together, mini sort of like almost mini towns that were just floating on the actual open ocean. And so you would have seen people like that. There were also the various gangs that kind of rove the wasteland on the on the water. You probably wouldn't want to see them, so you don't know whether they're they're good or bad. So you would have seen them. I mean, it's it's it's not super rare, but you don't know these waters, you you don't even know where you are because you've never seen this, never seen this land mass before. You've never come this direction, so you can't orientate yourself as to where you are.
SPEAKER_01So this is
The Open Ocean
SPEAKER_01this is the first other vessel that we've seen since we arrived here?
SPEAKER_04Correct. Tell you what you can do for me. So I mean you wanna do you want to go and chase them up, or do you want to just continue to check the area around here?
SPEAKER_03I feel like heading out into deep water on the sort of chance of we might have seen something is like asking for like us getting like washed away and never finding home again. There is a potential.
SPEAKER_01And then that was a much bigger vessel than ours, too. So even if we met them we'd be outnumbered and they might be just be having us for dinner.
SPEAKER_03This is also true.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I don't want it, I I don't want to go after. We will make a note that we have seen it, but I mean the last time the people like uh a couple of people that we met weren't nice, so yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean they seemed they seem perfectly friendly. So I guess we'll we'll we'll we'll use this since you're in a sail. Can someone roll me a D6 to determine the direction of the wind? Ooh, knowing to get technical now that you're sort of like to the point where you're near the open ocean. Yeah, someone roll me a d6 and let me know what you get. Oh well I do that. Eight. Five. It starts to pick up a bit of a bit of wind, and so this kind of the wind sort of like seems to catch you from from from the south. So if you were going north, then it would be fairly straightforward to sort of go in that direction. And could you please roll me another D6 to tell him what your weather is doing? One. One. Okay. A couple of hours in, or or maybe an hour or so in, you realise the reason for the sort of like increase in in weather in in in wind is the weather starts to come in. A couple of schools start to to come off the um the island and clouds start to sort of go overhead with this new information. Did you want to do anything different to then than going to another one of these outlying buildings?
SPEAKER_03So it's a very strong sort of like wind to that as well. Northerly wind.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. But you can I mean, absolutely, you as long as you're not going dead south. So if you were to go west or east or north, you'd be fine.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so long as we can still safely get home and I'll be fine to go.
SPEAKER_04Unless the wind changes. If the wind sort of changes, if you get a westerly, then you know, it's going to be harder. It just takes longer to get somewhere. So currently, if you were to go north, it would take you three hours to cover the zone without pretty much a problem. South, if you were to go due south, it would take you double that amount of time. So it would take you 12 hours to go due south into the next zone, which is essentially a whole day's worth of travel.
SPEAKER_03Maybe like a couple hours exploring and then head back, what are you going to say, think? Like not spend a huge amount of time because you want to spend as much daylight time travelling. Sure.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Yeah, you kind of like make your way around the buildings. There's definitely a lot of them, absolutely for sure. A lot of them are in the same sort of state. In fact, you probably pick the best two that you've been to so far. Can you spend the rest of the sort of like the rest of the morning, you know, digging in around the thing? Let's give Marco a a chance, seeing as a new day, to just see if he can find anything. I was about to say can inspire him to work harder, but I mean, if you want to give it a go, I mean, at some point someone's gonna slap you, right?
SPEAKER_03But yeah, go ahead. Only if only if I fail. Go on then, make an inspiration roll.
SPEAKER_04That is not today. That is not today, but uh it turns out that this is now what he was he was he's doing. So yeah, he basically sort of like follows the thing. He says that the area that you're in uh has because he's also taking one level of rot. Has got a low level of rot in the area, so for every day you stay in the zone, you will accrue another level of rot. So obviously to get out here is probably a good plan, as long as we don't spend more than a few more hours exploring the ruins. And he also, and I'm gonna give this open to you, he can he's got one stunt, so you can fish for one ration of rot damaged fish. You can check to see if there's something going on in the um in the thing, so you can find either some bullets or look for an artifact, or you can avoid any uh creatures or things or threats in the zone. So you get to pick one of those. What would you like to do?
SPEAKER_02Do you want to try and recoup some resources?
SPEAKER_03Maybe get moss at least one bullet. Yeah. Okay. You're good for bullets? Yep. Bullets seem to be the thing to try and go for.
SPEAKER_04Um if anyone if you're listening to this podcast, which hopefully you are, otherwise I don't know why we're doing this, a large cat has appeared in Chris's screen, which looks very sweet. It's not a rock cat. It's not a rot cat, you're fine. But the rats are about that to the size. Okay, yeah, you kind of have a bit of a look around, and yes, you find five bullets, which I guess you did you want to give to Tomos for the for recovery of the bullets that she's already used.
SPEAKER_03She did kind of save our skin, so we can share 'em.
SPEAKER_01I at least I didn't twist my ankle.
SPEAKER_03That's correct.
SPEAKER_04You did not twist your ankle. Okay. Yes, you find you find five five five bullets, which you can share however you want between yourselves. And then you want to head off back to the back to the arc or back to the ship. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I think that's a good idea.
SPEAKER_04What do you guys think? So back the way you came? Or did you want to go through the zone that you haven't explored in between?
SPEAKER_03So director scenic route. Yes. What would you like to do? Team? I I would say maybe scenic, because then we get a bit more information just in case. Okay.
SPEAKER_01So this would be sort of along the north edge of the channel.
SPEAKER_04Essentially, yeah, you would you would go upwards slightly and go into essentially the other side of that northern island that's above where your ship is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that I think that sounds like like a calculated risk, you know, like we're not gonna get swept out at sea or something because there's that island to keep all of it from harm, ideally.
SPEAKER_04Still a potential, but you never know which way the winds of fate will take you, or in this case the ocean. Okay, right. I guess you're gonna I'll tell you what, why don't you you've kind of got the hang of this kind of like sailing malarkey to a degree. Can can one of you please make a false roll now that you've got to hang with it, and the other person make a witch roll?
SPEAKER_02Well, I can do the force roll if you like.
SPEAKER_03Uh can I just sing she santies and be helpful? Yeah, you can be sing she santies and be helpful. Yeah, that's right. Why don't you inspire? Oh, nope, I still succeeded, so not today.
Navigating the Storm
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, Pete, you're starting to get the hang of the sun sailing, Malaki. The rip's going in the right place, and you know.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I don't know which direction we're going. I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_03Oh no, I did actually roll a failure according to this. I think it I think the visualization was different from the rules, yes. Okay, right. So I repeated a song from yesterday, terrible, how annoying.
SPEAKER_04It's uh it was oh come on. Right, well, so here's the thing. You manage to make your way through and navigate, so you're not gonna get lost. That's the first thing. Caspian knows which way he's going and is and and is aware of how to get in that direction, so you're not gonna get lost. But I'll just change the map so you can see the two in-between zones. Right then. All right, you um head into the zone. It's completely open. There's nothing. There's just open ocean and the island on the far western, I'm sorry, eastern end of that zone. As you sort of like make your way in and you're sort of like starting to traverse away from the wind, the wind's picking up some more. A torrential rain starts to pour down and scrawl all over the all over the boat. Yeah, it it sort of starts to like and then and you pick up with sheets of like ice that kind of like come in, so it starts to sort of sleet on top of you, the temperature starts to drop, and it becomes very hard going while you're uh sailing the vessel. It's not ideal. The wind howls, waves crash over the deck, uh, visibility is bad, and it becomes just really difficult to to deal with. You're kind of like finding it difficult to sort of like go through the the the the there's a proper howl and proper sores hitting. The boat's starting to rock. It's not as bad as some of the storms you've been in, but you you know, you're in a smaller vessel, so the waves obviously look a lot bigger to them when you're in the old the old ship. And so it takes every ounce of your strength to kind of hold everything together. And as the wind and the rain starts crashing down, lightning shatters into the sky, and you're pretty sure that it's gonna be a really bad day for you.