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 E8: A Mutant Year Zero Actual Play Podcast
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Caspian, Cochran, and their companions must mend their fractured community as they venture into the zone to find vital supplies.
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Welcome to Stories with
Welcome to Stories with Dice
SPEAKER_01Dice. 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 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_02Welcome back to episode eight of our uh Years Zero campaign. Right. It was a very tense ending the last episode. We found out the elder was dead. Caspian and Cochrane managed to hopefully talk their way out of being fingered for it. But before we do that, I'd like to say hi to Marco. Hello.
SPEAKER_01Hello, playing Caspian, who definitely did not, but did kill one of the bosses. No, did not, no, no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00Never. We've got Pete. Hey Pete, how are you? Uh not too bad, thanks.
Meet the Cast
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Hey. Went to see what uh unfolds next. God knows. Chris. Hello.
SPEAKER_03Hello. I'll be playing Mossus outraged that the elder's been dead all this time. How dare they?
SPEAKER_02Shocker and Douglas. Why?
SPEAKER_01Oh hello. I'll be I'm playing Cochrane as usual, who managed to identify someone who'd been dead for multiple days.
SPEAKER_02Yay, heel skill. Yes, so we're kind of like gonna fast forward from where we left off. Pretty much after a lot of sort of uming and r'ing, a lot of shouting and swearing and trying to figure out what's actually happened. It's fairly easy to convince them that the elder has been dead for a few days. Others will kind of like verify that she is not fresh, and that clearly Anwin has been hiding some things from the rest of the people. It incenses everyone, everyone wants to know what's going on. There's only one person that's actually on the ship that is part or was part of Anwin's gang, and she can't really say very much because she's been slapped around quite a bit by the the mob to find out what's happened to the elder. You've all pretty much been taken to see essentially the only surviving boss on the on the ship, which is Elson, who has kind of sort of said, right, we just need to take some time out. We need to figure out what's been going on, we need to actually look at what's happened, we need to uh see what we're gonna do next. Anwin is on the island to the north, and she can stay there, she's not going anywhere else. We're here. The rugged gang is kind of trying to figure out who is gonna lead them. Currently, it seems to be either Nafta or it's Monja, the fixer. So NAFTA's the gearhead, and Monja's the fixer. So, yes, they kind of figure out what's happening. So everyone's kind of said, actually, what we'll do is we'll just let Elson kind of take the reins for a bit. He seems quite happy with that, but he always seems happy with his very large skull and his permanent grin that he has on his face. So he's basically said what they need to do is hunker down, fix the fix the repairs, and just kind of take stock of anything. And during that those few days of them taking stock, you can all heal your any damage you've taken from the last session. And can someone run me a D6 plus one to tell me how many people actually after a few days just didn't make it?
SPEAKER_01I did it last session, so I'll let somebody else do it. Even though I feel free I enjoy doing it in tremendously.
The Elder's Death
SPEAKER_02Do we have to worry about you, Marco?
SPEAKER_01No, it's good fun. Tall and good fun. I I only like to kill people fictionally.
SPEAKER_02That's fine. I'm not really should do. Yeah, of course. Go on, Chris.
SPEAKER_03Three! Three people die.
SPEAKER_02So unfortunately, you lost a number of them. Okay. And while we're here, you have some projects that are outstanding. One, there's some watchtowers and some cropland. Now, the cropland, you will put on the island. And Anwin is more than happy to continue doing that. Does anyone want to help with the watchtowers? Does anyone want to secretively go over to the island and help with the cropland? Or did you want to start with some cropland around this area as well? Here's a question.
SPEAKER_01We weren't planning on putting the watchtower on the chimney by any chance. Oh, you were not. That's good, because that might have just wiped out all of our progress. Why don't we all work on the watchtowers so we can and we'll deal with the cropland and the island later. Right? So it's here, so we're fine.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so feel free. If uh if you want to make an endure or scout role, please do so. And I'm looking for four four successes. We've got has two successors.
SPEAKER_00That's my pet project.
SPEAKER_01Uh Caffian has nothing. Douglas has one.
SPEAKER_02Douglas really puts some work in there as well?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'm just not that effective at enduring.
SPEAKER_02So close. So close. You have the fives. How many did we need? You needed four and you got three. Which isn't too bad. So close. But that's alright. We're getting there. We're getting there. Okay. So you put in a lot of work, kind of, I guess part and parcel is fixing the smokestack. In fact, now you've suddenly got a lot more material to work with. It actually turns out to be a lot easier. Everyone's kind of a bit more united at the moment. And so, yeah, definitely they start to sort of work out. But it's a few days later, and you guys are, in fact, you as a group are called to Elson's quarters for a conversation.
SPEAKER_01Okay. We have to. Well, you can choose not to go if you don't want to. You know what? I don't really like Elson. I sort of like thumb my nose at them at the best times, so I'm just gonna stay back in my bunk and they can tell me. If if if Elson wants to come speak to me, he can come find me. He knows where he is. Well, nothing he says is of much interest. Last time I got involved in politics, I kind of like fucked up the entirety of the boat three days ago. This is why I don't get involved in politics. Cochrane, I really I really think you should go.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, come on, please.
SPEAKER_01Don't be like, Cochrane, make an exception. He's asked for all of us. He's one of the bosses, one of the two remaining bosses left. Well, it's technically he's the only boss on the boat left. I mean technically. I really think you should go. You we don't need to put a spotlight on any of us at the moment.
SPEAKER_00Cochrane, you don't need to like him to be able to work with him.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we don't want to stand out. Do you know what I'm saying, Cochrane? Well, you don't need to stand out. Buddy O'Pal. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm sure we have discussed this at some point over the last few days. Not sure what you not sure what you're in what you're referring to. Let's go. Get out of your bunk. I'll tie you up and drag you by your heels if I have to. Right. Well, in that case, you all
Planning the Next Move
SPEAKER_01go. Ed just made a private role, the bastard. Fine. Okay. But uh Cochrane will be grumpy and moody and like a teenager about this entire thing. Wouldn't want it any other way.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you make your way to uh to Elson's quarters, and Elson is so he again, he's sort of like his quarters are down deep in the in the ship, and sort of it's covered sort of like grease and sort of like in there's lots of gears and engines and lots of things happening. It's got a weird, kind of like very sort of like peculiar smell that that kind of you get as soon as you sort of like go into the bowels of the ship. And he has kind of got in his own his own quarters, he's got sort of this very spartan but very sort of mechanical looking room. All the floor is made of like grating, there's gears and various other things sort of like kicking around in in in the place. There's lots of tools as well. And he is he's in the room and he's speaking to a couple of birds uh his people you can see and Lambda, who as soon as they they see you kind of like wander off, uh leaving you with uh with Elson. Elson asks you to sit down and he says, Thank you for coming. As you can imagine, the last few days have been uh very trying, and clearly we have a lot to do here. We've got the repairs to make, we've lost how to we've lost the um the water purifier. But thankfully you have all found that other uh pipe, didn't you? Uh back in the in the zone. So uh I'm really grateful of you for for doing that. So uh we need to see if we can find more resources in the zone. So I'm asking if you, seeing as you did a very good job last time, uh, would mind uh taking out one remaining uh ship and and and and and going out and looking, either on the island that we're on or further afield would be would be great. You seem to know how to handle yourselves and you seem to be involved in a lot of things around here.
SPEAKER_01I'm not really sure what that refers to.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you seem very capable, you know, with with everything that's around and you kind of helped out. Uh yes.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I would agree, I would I would agree with that. Yes.
SPEAKER_02And you're not really part of any of the gangs, so it makes sense that as being sort of independent, you could do that for us.
SPEAKER_01I'm up for it. I can't speak for the rest of the my my fellows. Yes. And I make a sense emotion roll on this guy to get a read on him. Right. Comment is two successes.
SPEAKER_02Nice. So let's do his. So he has four empathy. Yeah, he seems quite genuine. He appears to have the best interest of the ship at heart. He clearly just wants to kind of build up his resources as much as he can, and he figures that you're the best lot to do that. So what he's saying is pretty much what he seems to be thinking, he doesn't seem to be hiding anything. Operative word seems that's quite an honour.
SPEAKER_03I mean, we could just I'm not saying this out loud, but we could just bugger off with the little ship and like leave them to it. So I, you know, that's that's just a compliment, even if he doesn't mean it honestly.
SPEAKER_01Or, you know, there is the other factor of whenever we spend any time around on the ship recently, things just go up really, really, really badly. Yeah, but I don't think he knows enough about us to have noticed.
SPEAKER_02He says that that Roach has been really helpful, that Roach has kind of, you know, been quite quite involved in sort of helping, as has Moss, you know, being able to actually get people away from the damage that happened was really, really instrumental. That Cochrane has managed to sort of, you know, do the best he can, and that he is as good as a chronicler can be.
SPEAKER_01This is a very absolutely candidate that it's like you're great at things. What things? Uh things that you're good at and you offer a unique perspective to the team.
SPEAKER_02You can tell that maybe it's sort of slightly reciprocated. He doesn't particularly like it. Or even know who I am. Or even know who you are. And or worse, he does know who you are, enough to diss you a little. And then of course, Caspian, you're you're a great navigator, so it makes sense to have you out there. The only other thing we need to figure out is what do we want to do with Anwin and her people? Because clearly she's a boss and she needs to be able to make decisions. I mean, I was thinking, and I guess I just really thought of it now, if we were to leave her on the island, she can get on with the cropland and and basically making that livable there. And then she's not gonna be we keep them and the rugged gang a apart from each other. I mean, it's gonna take some doing to get from here to the island. And if you've got the other ship, or they can't really get across the island.
SPEAKER_01It's not a long-term solution, I don't think, but for now, I think that works, Mr. Elson.
SPEAKER_02That'd be great, Caspian. Well, I suppose the first thing you could do is you can go and tell them that if you were to go when you when you leave to go and do your explorations, if you're gonna be using the the ship, then you can just go to the island. Anwin and her team and her game, that they can just stay there.
SPEAKER_01Anwin Anwin fled. She abdicated her authority on the day that Rhett was brutally murdered, and she lied to us about the elder. So I think that Anwin can go fuck off.
SPEAKER_03I I feel almost sorry now that that you know we we told them where where the arable land was. Now that I know that that they've been just playing us and and using the elder poor dead body to to gain authority over us. That is just all kinds of wrong.
SPEAKER_02So you think we should just leave them at
The Island Strategy
SPEAKER_02the island for the most.
SPEAKER_01Well, I I think that we should watch them carefully. Of course. But for now I think we should leave them, yes. But we should definitely have people we should definitely have eyes on them.
SPEAKER_02We do have eyes on them. We've got some small boats just sort of like on just keeping an eye on them. But I mean, we're not gonna be able to outrun the the ship they've got. But that's okay, because at least we know where they're going. I guess what did you want to do? Did you want to head out through the island or did you want to take to the water? Either one is fine.
SPEAKER_03Well, we did find those spiders there on that shore. I'd rather sail past them than walk past them. Well, I'll leave that up to you.
SPEAKER_02I I uh you you're the experts in that sort of thing. We'll just keep everything going here, make sure everything's fine. We we know we know where the uh the pipe is, so we'll start looking at uh transferring water across to to the ship and or leave you to do the thing that you do.
SPEAKER_03Listen, I know we're short of almost everything, but is there any way we could take supplies, maybe? We found out that meeting those those rush rats is really bullet intense.
SPEAKER_02Ah, yes. Well he says, um I'm sure we can do something. We can kind of like scratch together some bits. I mean that's how I fur he says, Well, just have a look at the uh what have we got? So we have uh food of fourteen. Okay, so you can each take with a food of fourteen, you can each take one. He'll be able to give you one ration and one water, which you can take out. So whatever you've got already, you can take one water and one one one ration when you leave. As far as bullets and stuff are concerned, you have what you can find. There isn't anything to spare.
SPEAKER_03Alright, alright.
SPEAKER_02Makes sense.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Right then. Yeah, so that's the gear you can have. You obviously have your good old-fashioned catamaran again. So is is this the island that I'm? That's the island that one so just above you there's a smaller island, literally between two zones, which covers both zones, and that's the uh that's the island that I went. Have we been to this island yet? You have not been to the island. Uh the island far to the sort of west of the main island, which is the other side of the city that's um surrounding water. You have not been to that island. I'm wondering what do you guys think if we should go this way?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I think that's a good way to go. Okay. Let us let us sail along the side. But I think I should we should go to the island first, see the lore keepers. Because I want to make sure the my main victim is fine. Like you guys don't have to come. You can just like drop me off and I'll go in and check on him. I'll wait in the catamaran. Yeah. You guys make me go speak to this guy. The least you can do is like hang around while I go speak to someone I actually want to talk, mate.
SPEAKER_00Maybe pass on the Elson's message to her while you're there.
SPEAKER_03I'm just mad that these people still hold her in such high regards when clearly she was a liar all this time. She her boss privileges should be rescinded.
SPEAKER_02That's down to the other bosses, and there's only one of them.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And he he didn't he didn't heed my message, did he now?
SPEAKER_01He did not, no. And uh yes. There is also the fact that um they weren't originally planning to run away until uh Cochrane made that suggestion. So once again, he is being intrinsically important to all the shenanigans. Oops. Did Cochrane make a suggestion? Did uh did Caspian make a suggestion? They weren't going to evacuate, and he said, Hey, why don't you go north to the island? And it was a great idea. Who said this? It was Cochrane, I think. Yep. Oh, I thought it was Caspian.
SPEAKER_02No, no, no, no, it was Cochrane. Cochrane basically.
SPEAKER_01It wasn't Caspian's idea, okay.
SPEAKER_02No, no. So yeah. Technically Anwin didn't run away, you told her to run away. Yep.
SPEAKER_01She took our suggestion really easily. You see, you see, Cochrane, we make a good team. We're on the same wavelength, except, you know, when people do things that somehow involve chimneys falling on top of our war supply. Marco, could you please roll me a D6?
SPEAKER_02I rolled a one. Okay. Yes, it is a light breeze on the wind, which will not affect your roles for navigator at all, and you will travel at a normal speed. Okay.
Setting Sail
SPEAKER_02Right, you uh you leave the um the large ship, head north to the island. Yep. It doesn't take long, it's literally about a fifteen minute sail. You get to the the main island, there is a jetty where the like the other boat is. Um there appears to be uh two guards by the um jetty and uh as you kind of get closer, they um wave at you and bid you to come in. As you get there, Victon is is on the is it looks like seems to be uh on guard, or at least is one of the guards, so you don't really have to even go very far, Cochrane. He's like, Hey, how are you?
SPEAKER_01Things are not great on the
Arrival at the Island
SPEAKER_01ship. Our things on the island here.
SPEAKER_02It's okay. Uh we we heard that there was uh a lot of uh a lot of crashing and then we saw the the stack fall down.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What was that about? Right. Do we want to go somewhere maybe a bit private victim? I will shoot Cochran an evil look. Like you do not tell him what just happened. You lie, you make something up, you do not tell him the truth. I don't care how much you uh you trust this guy. Well, I don't know how much he all of them know about what happened.
SPEAKER_02He says, uh Ooze, do you want to just leave us? And we'll kind of Yeah. Ooze basically wanders off. He goes, Okay. Well, there we go.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So I will fill them in about Rhett did something which caused like the tower to blow herself up. Like God. I will not mention anything about Caspia. Okay. Like that caused the tower to crash. No one was hurt, unfortunately. She has to come back. No. Okay. Elson's kind of got things stubborn. However, we did go and uh what was the name of the woman who was in charge of the guard? It was Asrina. She was Asrina. She was yeah, she was on guard. Yeah, we went to see Asrina to check on the Was she right? Is she there? So I'm gonna say check on the elder, right? And I wanted to sense emotion on him to see if mentioning check on the elder causes him to be like, you went and did what? Okay. Go on then. Make a sense emotion roll. Because I wanna hopefully hopefully he's not involved. I have no idea. Oh, that's a bad role. Okay. Uh yeah, he's like, and how is she? She was fine. However, she asked us to um look after the elder while she like because they were they were all accusing you of like bringing down the tap the chimney. And killing and killing Rhett. Yeah. Because you weren't there, you'd run out you'd departed about that point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We managed to get out. However, me and uh Caspian heard a noise from inside the uh cabin, so we thought we'd go check on the elder. Oh right, okay. I wish everything alright? The elder's dead. Yeah. I I I will turn to Caspian and be like, yeah, he's right. What do you mean she's dead? She's been dead for days. Anwin has been lying to
Confronting the Truth
SPEAKER_01us. That's kind of why I asked you to send the other guys away.
SPEAKER_02Well Well that's not but I saw her a couple of days ago. She was alive.
SPEAKER_01Nope. She was I feel once over and she was cold as ice. No, no, she's she's been like in and out of conscious for like weeks. Have you seen her, or is that just what someone told you? No, no, no, I saw her. Victim, you were very much mistaken.
SPEAKER_02I'm no healer was his boyish red hair and sort of like that really kind of like young, fresh face, there's like big wide eyes.
SPEAKER_01That person in that bed, who was the elder, had been dead for had she is at the amount of do I think she was probably dead like since like the attack? Or like because that's not what she she was probably she probably was alive at the point where there was the attack. Okay, so she had she had been alive at some point recently. Yeah, yeah. So it'd be like she may have been alive a wee while ago. But she had been dead for days when we found her. He just looks really shocked. And the machines weren't actually helping her stay alive, they were just making it look like she was alive. No.
SPEAKER_03And they put her on fucking ice packs, right? I mean you you keep an old lady warm, you don't cool her down. You only cool her down if you don't want her to start smelling. They they knew what they were doing wherever they were.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and you guys are law keepers. You guys know how this stuff works. And that stuff was not that was specifically made set up for a different reason than keep it alive.
SPEAKER_02So do you think Anwin knows about this?
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_03Who else? Who else could have got up to all that? The respirator, the cool package.
SPEAKER_01Someone in the Law Makers has to it has to be Anwin. She was the leader. Now look, Victon. Yes. The thing you really need to understand is that Anwin left, you guys left. Just as someone attacked the ship and Rhett and Rhett and some of her underbosses were killed. So the rest of Rhett's gang think it's think that it's suspicious that the moment that an attack happens, you guys left shortly before.
SPEAKER_02You see the penny drop, as it were, and he's like, they think it's us. So it's best that you stay on the island for a bit. Okay. Well, at least let Anwin know about Up to the Elder.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But she'll be really upset.
SPEAKER_01Well, in fact, you should probably go tell Alman now. We'll hang around for like another 30 minutes if she wants to come chat to us herself. If not, we're heading east.
Anwen's Reaction
SPEAKER_01Okay. And as I say, it's probably best that you don't make any attempts to sort of leave the island because you are being watched. And I can point out. Can we see like the little boats and stuff?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, you can see some like a couple of the rowboats, as it were. So we're bottoming.
SPEAKER_01I'll point to those ones and be like, they're specifically waiting for you to leave.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I'll go speak to Anwin, and if she wants to speak to you, I'll be back within the next half hour. And he runs off, leaving no one to guard the boat. Because he's also wanted off.
SPEAKER_01So take shall we take the boat and skidaddle? Why? Because Caspian is a jerk. Yes. Hey, you agreed with me a little too quickly there. Well, I you you're the one who suddenly made up on stuff about attack when I said she blew herself up. Yeah, oops. Yeah. Oops. Plus, you know, I'm I'm saving stuff for that. So I think I think Victim didn't know anything about what was going on. Like I've known that guy for like years. And I think he's telling the truth. So I don't think all the lore keepers were necessarily in on whatever was happening. As Moss said, maybe it was just our win. Or at least maybe like they were just limiting the amount of people who knew about it. Because, you know, secrets harder to keep the more people you tell.
SPEAKER_03That's true.
SPEAKER_01So sometimes the easiest way to keep a secret is just only two or three people know what's going on, you just restrict anyone who can go in, which they were doing. Hey, you know, as a friend of mine once said, it's it's not a secret if you tell someone. But she must have had there must have been some plan, because like I'm no expert, but they couldn't have kept that up forever. Like they chilled that body, but it was bodies eventually go off no matter how cold they are. They had a plan, and that plan was obviously been set in motion, don't you think? Rhett's gone and they're on the island. I think that they're exactly where they want to be. This is not the plan they would have had to make. They were saying she had weeks left to live. And I don't think also, we kind of suggested she go to the island. They were just sort of like gonna run off. Yeah, but they I don't think this was part of their plan. They agree. This was their plan. I've lost a lot of respect for the lawmakers because this is a terrible
The Lawmakers' Dilemma
SPEAKER_01plan. They agreed to.
SPEAKER_03How are they profiting from this? Now now they're no longer the lawmakers, they're just becoming the farmers real quickly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Like they've lost most of the supplies that they couldn't take on that little boat. They had to leave behind most of the artifacts. First, first of all, Caspian was kidding. Second, he's just yeah, he's just being Caspian. You're just you're just shitting the shit while we wait for them to turn up. Just winding us up.
SPEAKER_00Maybe the law keepers are changing their their profession. Maybe they want to uh elect themselves a different leader. I think possibly we should uh leave them to sort that out on the island with amongst themselves. Might be an idea to uh take that boat with us. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I've I can't remember.
SPEAKER_02Do the lawmakers have a lot of like techie people who can fix things? They do. So the majority of the the ones for them are chroniclers and a couple of gearheads.
SPEAKER_01And so there's no way we can really disable the boat in a way that they wouldn't be able to like fix it eventually. I mean you could sink it. Well, yes, we could sink the boat. But then But yeah.
SPEAKER_02No, no, in reality, no.
SPEAKER_01I don't want to do that to my main victim. Like Is there a way to do something to their boat that doesn't damage it but makes it so that they can't use it to leave the island?
SPEAKER_02No. No. I'm just I was just thinking, no, there isn't a particular way to do that. Like take the oars, take the sail. I don't know. I mean, yeah, I mean you you could you could make it difficult. Yeah, I mean you could take the sail, you could you I mean it'll take a little bit of time to do that.
SPEAKER_01We'll see what happens if if if Anwin shows up or not. Yeah. If she doesn't show up in 30 minutes, then you fair enough. We'll they obviously don't rate us high enough to even To be fair, they might be going into fool like revolution up there on the in the graveyard on the moment, if Victon is not very smart and just blurts out everything we said to everyone. Yeah. Which he might do. He's a bit like that sometimes. He is very free-spirited and he is a bit like that. So that might very well be actually happening.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I s I suggest if they uh there is sounds of violence and a reassessment of their uh management structure, I think we should uh leave them to it.
SPEAKER_01I agree, but I think I think we leave them to it, but we strand them. I mean you could quite easily just take the boat I was thinking instead. Just take it on tow. I was I was thinking destroy it, but okay. I was yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03This is this is too valuable a commodity.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I mean, if if anything uh we might leave it back with uh with Elson. Yeah, we we would pass that way on our way east anyway, right?
SPEAKER_01We don't want to give Retzgang a way to get to the island. That's true.
SPEAKER_00So we either Yeah, so maybe we should take control of all the boats.
SPEAKER_01We either tow it with us, which might become a liability, or we destroy it.
SPEAKER_03I mean we'd just hide it in the next whatever promising looking inlet or something that would fail past.
SPEAKER_00Well, the weather's good, we can tow it. If the weather changes, we can find some ideas.
SPEAKER_01We could hide in the city, because we had a good look through there.
SPEAKER_03That is true. Yeah, and that that didn't look like like there's people around there on a regular.
SPEAKER_01And there's no way to get to the city without a boat.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's an idea.
SPEAKER_01Like like if an inlet, someone might walk across it. Was the city the thing. You can't get there without a boat. It's in the middle of the city.
SPEAKER_03And it's not like it's not like the boat is gonna get corrupted with rot and not be usable any longer, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, it's not. We could also just like dismantle it to take it into the building or something like that. But we'll give them their 30 minutes, you know, and then Yeah, they don't come back in 30
The Mysterious Island
SPEAKER_01minutes. Fuck it, we're taking the boat. And I'm gonna leave a note. I'm gonna I'm gonna make a note in stone on the beach that says S U. Okay. And um I will add specifically. Yes, F-U-R-N. When I'm like, don't be mad all of them.
SPEAKER_02Okay. You're gonna take the boat. That's fine. So who is going in the catamaran and who is going in the scrap boat?
SPEAKER_01Well, can we just tie the scrap boat to the catamaran?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you could do, yeah, I suppose so. Yeah, that makes sense. Like tow it behind us. Yeah, it just means it's gonna take, you know, half the time to kind of like travel wherever you want to travel. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. But you're already kind of like if you're going to take it to the the city under the waves, then you've already been that way. So it's only gonna take you three hours to go across the after the fair. So that's fine. All right. Would you like to make me a navigate role as you head west? And that's find the path, right? There, yeses. So yeah, find the path. One success. Okay. So you come into the it's not a new sector, but you've been through here before. So it's it's gonna take you sort of three hours to kind of make your way through. Yeah, that's just fine. You got the one success, so you just make your way through it quite quickly, and then presumably you're gonna go down, follow the path around the island, and then into the city beneath. Or do you want to go into so the the sector directly west of you? You have never actually been in, you've only seen it. So just the way you've the way the way you've been before. Yes. So so so essentially going down south one and then across west one. That's peace. Okay. That's fine. If you can make another navigate roll for me, please, or another find the path roll.
SPEAKER_01I keep on forgetting, I should be inspiring. C shanties. Hang on, let me just inspire first, because you might give you some extra dice to play with.
SPEAKER_03This is gonna be the one about the rats again, right? Come on, I love that one.
SPEAKER_01Okay. That's two successes on the inspire, so inspiring our navigator to navigate. So how many dice does that give me? So you just roll your dice, and if you get any successes, you get to add two to it. Okay.
SPEAKER_02So I have one success, so that's a total of three. So three successes. So you get to choose what you'd like to do. So, first of all, as you kind of come into this um zone, you can see the the sort of like crumbled, broken down beach, and beyond the beach, you can see sort of a lot of flat, squared old buildings, and then it kind of raises up into the land, and on the land you can see this large post that kind of raises itself up really high. There's loads of like wires and stuff that come from the post, and you can see that sort of like down the center of sort of like the southern part of that zone, there is some kind of like large creek that's flowing through a very odd creek because it's got very slanted sides, and it looks like it's material from the time before. But you can see you can ask a number of questions. So you've got three successors, so you can ask two things. Okay. You've got you can either read the rot level for the sector, you can fish one ration of rot damaged fish, you can explore the sector taking half the normal time, so it'll take the two hours. You can rush through the sector in a quarter of the time if you just from like zip through, so it'll only take an hour to get through. Or you can look around for artifacts, bullets, that kind of thing. And this is the city beneath. No, you're not the city beneath. So if I lift the map, you're on this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think I'm here. Marco, we know nothing about this area. We've only got the round.
SPEAKER_02So you've not been in the rot or anything in.
SPEAKER_01Well, I definitely want to know the rot.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Right. So it has a very strong rot level. So for every hour you're there, you're going to be taking rot.
SPEAKER_01Every hour we're here, we're going to take rot. Now I have rot finder talent. Excellent. So when using find a path, you have access to a new stunt that you can choose when you roll extra successes. Okay. To find the most rot-free route through the sector. The rot level counts as one step lower during this visit to the sector.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so it would be rot level two, so that means it'll go down to rot level one. Excellent. As you wander through. So as long as you don't spend a number of hours here, you should be okay. And we're in the boat, so we're just like hugging the coast, right? You're hugging the coast, so I'm not gonna you're not gonna get any rot. That's basically what you're doing. It's basically going around the coast, so you're not gonna get any rot. Okay. But you haven't really explored the rest of the zone because it's just there, so you're just kind of like finding three. Yep. So that's two of your stunts, which is both of them. So that's fine. Okay. Which then takes you into the next zone, which is the city beneath, which you can make another another never get roll fin, please.
SPEAKER_01Draw me to inspire again. I'll just keep singing things. In another life, you might have been uh some sort of lounge singer or something. Yeah. That's amazing. I have two more because my sea sound shanties are still that good, and I've not hit re You've not reached repeat on the shuffle of the sea shanties yet?
SPEAKER_02Not yet. So, Marco, if you want to make your role. Okay, another two successes. So one success, and then you get two extras. Right, so three again. So not after the first, it's for everyone after the first. Okay. So you get two more to do. Same thing. What would you like to pick? I think we know there's raw here.
SPEAKER_01You do know there's rot here. And we did. Thanks. For bullets last time, I think, wasn't it? Because Mossage expended a lot of them. Can you give me the page in the supplement? Yes.
SPEAKER_02It is a page uh page eleven. The rest of you obviously you see the building that had the have the rats in. You try and stay away from that. And then further on you can just make out the island across into the next zone. I think the description of the island was bleak. It was bleak.
SPEAKER_01So yeah. That's the only thing we know about the island is it looked up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so uh it was at this the island had a large, single, large building on, and the sky was a sort of like yellowy, kind of greenish colour. There's sort of like like a mist or haze that hung over the island. So I'm gonna ex- I'm gonna explore the sector.
SPEAKER_04Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01Because we're looking for a really good place to hide this extra boat. Yeah, I like that. That makes sense.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you find one of the one of the buildings that you kind of probably didn't get to before has got like a large, just at the sea level, it's got like a large, sort of like almost like a hangar, as it were. A load of the side of the building had crushed through. And so you could potentially drop off the boat in there. And it would be relatively hidden unless someone came in looking at for it indirectly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and we'll we'll tie it up. That makes sense. Yeah, and if there's I don't know, if there's something we can cover it with, we'll do that. But if not, we'll just tie it up and leave it as it is.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean it just yeah, you just kind of have a look around and it and it seems to be the most ideal place. You can kind of move some of the sort of like bits of metal to sort of like cover some of the sort of entrance, as it were. It's not ideal, but it's the best thing you're gonna do. Okay. Good. Unless you unless you're really looking for something, you probably wouldn't necessarily notice it's there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's great. Yeah. I mean this this only took us half the morning, right? So like this this is.
SPEAKER_02It's taken you three, four, five, six hours so far. So it's taken you, yeah, most of the morning is taken. So do we want to head east?
SPEAKER_01Well Or do we want to go There is an island. We want to go to the island. Yeah, do we want to go to this island here? Like, I'm not hugely sure about the red mist or anything like sorry, yellow clouds. It turns it it turns out Cochrane's colourblind. It was a green and yellow mist. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And I promise we'll get we'll get to go east eventually. Sometime. Maybe even nine.
SPEAKER_01But you know. To be fair, he's he feels a bit bad about stranding Victon at the moment. But you know. They kind of they need to sort out their own stuff, and you know, people, the ability to like leave the island and not face the consequences of their actions might be a bit so so hopefully we'll leave them there for like a few days or a couple of weeks and they'll sort it out something. Victon. Victor needs to to choose what side he's on. Yeah. Well, well, hopefully he's on the side that wins amongst the law keepers. Oh, shall we go to this island here that's to the west of the city beneath? What we do have is our multiple pairs of seafaraway cylinders.
SPEAKER_03Oh, the the sea far away things. Yeah, you saw us.
SPEAKER_01Because we've got your portable ones and then my not very portable ones.
SPEAKER_03They're portable if you're strong enough. They're they're fine.
SPEAKER_01Takes like two people to haul that thing. My portable ones are out. I think they stay on the boat most of the time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, maybe Moss could uh set it up on the bow of the boat.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like they they were fixed on things when we were up there, so maybe I don't know, could you like fix it to the boat? You could do that. That wouldn't be a good thing.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I love that. Do I give you a tinker roll for that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, go on then. Why don't you? Yeah, like that. Plus side, Caspian doesn't have to share his ones. Everyone could just use the canal one.
SPEAKER_03So this is this is probably is this building something new rather than repairing?
SPEAKER_02I'm not sure if it applies. Yeah, it's building something new. Okay. You just well, yeah, that's fine.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, it's not fine. I I'm gonna push this because I really want this to happen now.
SPEAKER_01Okay. If not, you're gonna drop in the war and they're like, oh well, there they go. You might well do that.
SPEAKER_03Oh no, I gosh no. Oh bio has it.
SPEAKER_02So you have taken all of your um stat in damage, so you've pushed yourself to the fact that you're now broken.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think I've I've proven the po I've proven the point that this was not in fact portable. I could just not hold that thing.
SPEAKER_02So your jury rig uses your agility or your strength? Or what you what was the based on her character she gets her strength. Yeah, yeah. Strength. Okay. Yeah, so you kind of like affix the thing, you're spending ages trying to sort it out. You just exhaust yourself. You kind of just keep going at this thing until you just can't do any more. And you kind of get to the point where you you forget to eat and you know, it it's relatively warm, it's it's not overcast skies or anything like that. It's relatively breezy but calm, and you just realise that you've probably just I've been out in the sun too long doing it. The rest of you are sort of like sitting under sort of like the under the shade, but that moss basically essentially dries up a little bit.
SPEAKER_03And when you're in a phibion, you don't want to do that.
SPEAKER_02No. And all of a sudden you feel really lightheaded and you hit the floor. Two what? Roll me D6. You can get a one, you fall overboard.
SPEAKER_03Alright, okay.
SPEAKER_02Roll the two. Yep. Yeah. So yes, you almost go overboard, but you hit the floor, and then the rest of you are like, oh my god. And yeah, I mean, who who's who wants to heal?
SPEAKER_01Good old uh, I can give her the once over. Let's see. Heal, is it? Nope. Because I got something.
SPEAKER_02No one. Um don't, don't. You can choose to push it if you want.
SPEAKER_01Would that I don't think lest I get really bad, I should it shouldn't kill me swell. Okay, there we go. Two successes, and I took one damage.
SPEAKER_02Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you kind of like look her over and sort of like, yeah, she's definitely suffered some serious dehydration and she has she just collapsed, basically. You need to rehydrate her and give her some food, and that's that's pretty much the best thing you can do. And she'll need to sort of rest for a bit.
SPEAKER_01And then we'll be okay. But she she gets back because he has two successes on his push, she gets two points of her strength back.
SPEAKER_02If I can um yeah, so if I can remember about when you basically knock yourself out from pushing, there is a thing, I can't remember if it's in this one, or it could be Coriolis, I can't remember. Where you heal. I'm just reading from the heal skill on page 53. That's fine. Yeah, that's fine. Take two back.
SPEAKER_03Then Coriolis, you're knocked back to mine points, don't you?
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah, I'll I'll I'll I'll be I'll be generous to you. Yeah, absolutely. You look after you, you can have two points of your strength back.
SPEAKER_03Awesome. Thank you so much. I really just needed that water.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so the water and food, and I mean it's a good time for all of you to use up one of your grub and water, and then you make your way towards the island, correct?
SPEAKER_01Correct. You know what? I'm gonna be a bit jammy and I'm going to spend one of my mutant points instead of eating and uh just do some photosymphasis since we're just sitting around like trees. I'm literally sunbathing for nutrients. So I'll spend one because I'm happy our tree, our plant, as I think I will spend a mutant point.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm sitting around not doing anything anyway, so I might as well just, you know, feed myself.
SPEAKER_02That's true. Well, as you start to sort of like make your foot way further west, the wind starts to pick up, and the nice light, gentle breeze that you had starts to kind of come in from behind you, which starts to m make you go faster, but within sort of, you know, half hour, forty-five minutes, visibility starts to get bad, a haze kind of goes over the uh over the sea, and you kind of lose that sort of island to the west. Can you make a navigate through to the zone uh at minus one, please, Marco?
SPEAKER_01Wait, I are sea shanties. Sea shanties first. Except that I'm doing one less. It still has two successes again. So Okay, Marco. Three successes. Oh my gosh, really? Cinema got to one success.
SPEAKER_02Excellent. So you actually have Yeah, so you've got four successes, so you can do three things. Look at us go. You guys uh it it I mean it's it's quite quick, but as you're kind of getting towards the island, the the sort of like haze kind of drops down, and uh as you're kind of navigating through the sort of leftover wreckage of the buildings, yeah, you kind of Get to the island. Whereabouts in the island would you like to uh post up?
SPEAKER_01So I can re- I need to do my stunts, right? Yeah, you need to do your stunts. Okay, so can I read the rot of the island before we step foot on it? You can indeed. And can I use my talent again? Is that the rot finder? Yes. Yeah, you can, yeah. So basically I want to read the rot level of the of the sector. And then I want to find on the island the most rot-free route to make landfall.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Right. So it has got a strong rot, so you're going to take rot every hour. You can find your way around, which means that you'll be walking through or landing at a place of weak rot, which means you'll take one rot every day that you stay here. That's not a problem. And you've still got one more. Okay.
SPEAKER_01And then I want to Do I see a ruin?
SPEAKER_02Yes. There's a tall building sort of like almost in the centre of the um of the island. Which which you can see through the haze of the yellow the yellowy sort of sky. Even though the wind is sort of like quite strong, that sort of haze seems to just hang about the island. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I'm with Cochrane. I don't like that piss colored sky. We should check out that building. And I know the best path through this rot, infested island. Follow me.
SPEAKER_03I don't know what causes this.
SPEAKER_01Could just be that innate. Could just be that one of the ancients took a piss on this island. I don't know. We don't understand it, it's probably worth just blaming an artifact and leaving it at that.
SPEAKER_02As you get off onto the island, as your feet touch the the ground, there's this crunching, clinking noise that underfoot everywhere. You see that there's lots of little splinters of glass everywhere. They're kind of like jutting in and out the rocks in the sort of like broken up, I say rocks, broken up concrete and plaque tops. There are buildings that are sort of low and demolished and broken. And in between that there's sort of like other shards of sort of glass sort of sticking up and down. Loads of little bits of glass as well, so as you walk, you crunch on everything. And the island kind of is slightly raised, so you have to kind of go up. This large well, you think it's a big, massive building, now you've actually got closer to it. You can't actually see it through the sort of like yellow haze and stuff.
SPEAKER_01Careful of all this sharp glass beneath our feet. Have I seen something like this before? Yeah, no, no, you have. Quite strange. The land itself is made of glass. Then again, uh, we saw those entire towers in the city that looked like they had been made of glass. Maybe it's just I don't know. Maybe they maybe they just put glass on the ground here instead of just on the buildings. Maybe they made everything out of glass in this area.
SPEAKER_03Maybe this this is made out of one of those towers that fell or something.
SPEAKER_01Why would one make a building out of glass? It seems inefficient, unsafe, and and there's no privacy. None whatsoever.
SPEAKER_03Maybe the ancients were just perfect.
SPEAKER_02That's where we're gonna end. No. You make your well, you say that as you make your way sort of up into sort of like the up towards the building. As you get closer to the building, you hear the sort of like noise, sort of like the wind, but then more wind. And then you hear something rustling above your heads. As you hear something rustling above your heads, you can make out things drifting down from the building. What do you mean drifting? What do you mean drifting? As if they're sort of like float they through the through the haze, they look like these dark shapes.
SPEAKER_03Any second now.
SPEAKER_02Well, funny she mention that. As you sort of like look up and go, huh, rot gulls and these floating dark images suddenly dive bomb towards you. Well, at least they didn't poop in our face. These um these these there's probably a good handful of them dive bomb you as you all look up. You realize there isn't any really place to hide or go. And I think that seems like a good place to end the session tonight. Thank you very much for listening to us yet again. You seem to have managed to get it through away to episode eight. There's more to come. Stick around.
SPEAKER_01Tune in next week to see if these flying things poop on our faces.
SPEAKER_02We're taking bets.
A Shocking Encounter
SPEAKER_02Are they gonna poop on their faces or are they just gonna rip them off?