(lo-fi beats to roll to, aka
The Unsleeping City theme)
- Hello, one and all, and welcome
to another thrilling
episode of Dimension 20,
The Unsleeping City.
I am your humble dungeon
master, Brennan Lee Mulligan.
With me as always are our intrepid heroes.
Say hi, intrepid heroes!
- [Intrepid Heroes] Hi, intrepid heroes!
- Lovely, lovely lovely.
g*ng, last we left off, the
champions of New York City
found themselves on top of
a rusty old hot dog cart
helping a group of c*ck
monks defend their monastery,
the Monastery of the Sacred Rat,
a temple devoted to the
monastic contemplation
of the divine mysteries of Rat Jesus,
AKA Kugrash, AKA Bruce Kugrich.
However, their monastery was
beset by legions of ants.
Thankfully, the champions of New York City
were able to defend the monastery and find
the third missing spirit of New York City,
Marty the juicy c*ck, who,
in addition to Perry the
pigeon and the unicorn
of the Cloisters,
comprise the three spirits
whom Kugrash called upon
for his druidic powers
all the way back in the 90s,
after these three spirits
were created and set in place
to look after the overlooked
and forgotten of New York
by the Dragon of Bleecker Street,
who chose another champion
other than these three spirits
in a young Kingston Brown back in the 90s.
Also, this day, by the way,
this day is the Sunday after Thanksgiving,
which is how much has happened
in the past couple of days.
You guys also went into Nod,
where Pete the Vox Phantasma named Null,
the entity of isolation,
erasure, and forgetting
that is moving like vast cosmic void
upon the sixth borough
and New York City itself.
Pete named Null, provoking its attack
but also giving you guys
a way to understand it and fight it,
at the same time as Iga
took Kingston into her chest
and discovered the secret at the heart
of her family's mythic
castle, the dragon Smoczmatka,
who had been imprisoned
there for centuries,
and Iga chose to free the dragon,
ending 1.200 years of
this warlock's dominion
over this being.
In addition, an egg was discovered
that was the rambunctious egg
who had been changing
the surface of the chest
in the first place, and
this beautiful, gilded,
graffiti covered egg was given
to Kingston Brown to safeguard.
At the end of last session,
you guys went up onto one
of the old napkin shelves
in the top of the hot dog cart,
you guys are all still very itty bitty,
and communed with the eternal rat himself,
and, scintillating in
starlight and smelling
like pure sh*t, Kugrash appeared.
And that's where we're
gonna pick up our game.
The six of you look forward and see
the constellation of stars
comprising a fraction
of the infinite essence of Kugrash.
What do you do as you behold
your infinite old friend?
- Kug? Can you hear us?
- Of course I can hear you, Sof.
I would ask you how it's going,
but I know how it's going,
and, uh, yeah.
- Okay! Well, I guess I
don't know how you're doing.
How are you?
- I'm, you know, everything.
Good, bad, shitty,
great, awesome, terrible,
just everything at once.
It's awesome by the definition of awesome,
you know what I mean?
So I'm doing awesome, but
in, like, the regular way.
- Some awe, yeah.
- Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
- Well, it's good to hear your voice.
- Yeah.
- We got to go, we're gonna...
No.
(all laugh)
- Yeah, no, it was good catching up,
it was good catching up.
- Kug, we came here
because we're trying to,
there's a new threat, obviously you know.
It feels stupid to give any
sort of exposition to you,
but we came here because of that-
- No, you know, I know a lot
of stuff, but I never know,
you know, I don't know the future,
I don't know the next thing, you know,
that you're gonna say necessarily.
I can make educated guesses,
but I don't know everything,
so you know, you can ask me a
question, I'm still Kugrash.
- Yeah, I mean, I-
- What are you eating?
- It's already, I am eating
a different bagel, not the-
(Brennan laughs)
- I am glad that you
developed a taste for it.
Yeah, I think I look at Pete
and Kingston and just say,
I think we're just looking for anything
that will help us take on this threat
to both the dreaming and the waking world.
- What do you know
about Null? If anything?
- I know a lot of what you
guys have come to know,
that Null is older than
any of the other beings,
that it was kind of the
first, it's nothing.
It existed before gods, it
existed before anything,
and he's a monarch of the Dreaming,
and its ultimate goal
is to consume everything,
basically consolidate all of time
down to just a single
moment, just, you know,
get back to nothingness.
Now, the reason Null
wasn't able to get to New York in the past
was because of the three spirits,
who I kind of at the
time I didn't, you know,
understand the significance of them,
I just thought hey, cool,
spicy pigeon, juicy c*ck,
unicorn, you know, this'll help me
help the people of New York out.
But they were quite significant,
and that helped, you know,
take care of the forgotten
people around New York
and Null wasn't able to get here,
and the only reason that
the spirits are alive still after I died
is 'cause of Ricky, for
taking up the mantle.
So thanks for that, Rick.
- Hey, no problem. It's been fun.
It's honestly great.
I didn't realize that
that would be part of it,
and it's been interesting
having them connected to me.
- Yeah, I sense that you're
not loving the aesthetic,
but generally you like the
vibes, but not the aesthetic.
- The vibes are amazing.
- Right, yeah.
Yeah, you'll learn to love this sh*t.
At first when I was living
in the sewer, I'm like,
ah, I'm a f*cking rat,
this is f*cking weird!
I used to live in like a cool-a*s condo,
and now I live in the sewer.
But, you know, the sewer's, you know,
there's a lot of cool
literal sh*t in there, so.
- I guess I'm struggling
with why I would have to be
in the sewer as much as maybe you were.
- Right, no, well that's optional,
you don't have to go in the sewer.
You might have to go to the sewer.
You might have to go to the sewer,
you don't have to live in the sewer.
- Right.
- If that makes sense.
- Okay, that's huge,
that's great, that's cool.
- Yeah, you don't have
to be exactly like me,
I was a rat man who would freak people out
whenever I came out.
You are a very handsome
man, you beautiful b*stard.
- Well, I mean, Kugrash, I
don't want to jump the g*n,
but, like,
what do I do with this stuff?
I mean, it's weird to have, I don't...
I would be lying if I said
I fully understood it,
but I don't know if you had
any advice for me on that.
- I mean, you're doing all
the right things so far.
You kind of awakened the spirits again.
They were weakened when I
died, but now they're back
with Perry and the juicy c*ck,
and once you bring them all together,
I think you'll be able
to do a lot of good.
Getting back to what I
was talking about before,
before Ricky and before I
kind of protected the city,
there was the Dragon of Bleecker Street,
and dragons are the antithesis
of something like Null,
'cause dragons collect things.
Like, those are memories.
Those were all powerful things.
That is the opposite of Null.
So Null could not get in
while the Dragon of
Bleecker Street was here.
- Did the dragon die naturally,
or did Null k*ll the dragon?
- The dragon...
Oh, wow, you kind of
stumped me here, Pete,
in like a weird way,
because the answer is both,
if that makes sense?
Which is,
dragons can die
if their hoard is incomplete,
and the thing about the
Dragon of Bleecker Street
is that at sort of the
beginning of his life,
he only cared about kind
of the big, like, glorious,
you know, heroic, big,
magical things about New York,
but wasn't as interested in, you know,
the smaller, everyday
things, and, you know,
because of that,
he either forgot about or lost
or gave away certain items from his hoard
that ended up being pretty important,
that Null has since-
- Destroyed?
- Erased. Erased, to a certain extent.
They're not completely gone,
because I still kind of
remember that they exist.
I know that there's seven
things that are missing
from the Dragon of
Bleecker Street's hoard.
One of them-
- And can-
- Yeah, can you give us those?
- Excuse me, let me get a
piece of paper and a pencil.
Oh wow, this pencil's so big!
- We're all working to
use a pencil together.
- Watching your guys' face
when Murph gave you guys
a hard number light up like
f*cking Christmas trees
was one of the most beautiful
things I've ever seen.
- I mean, in fantasy,
when you hear that there's
seven anything, you're like, and...
- Yeah, baby, we got to collect them.
- At the very least write them down.
- Anyways, yeah, we're
all using one big pencil
to write it down.
- We're all using one big pencil,
we're writing on a napkin.
- The Chinese takeout
chopsticks of destiny.
- Okay, Kug, lay it on us.
- Right.
So, the only one that I can remember fully
is Peter Stuyvesant's wooden leg.
That was one of them. I
remember that one specifically.
The other six are more kind of vague,
which means that maybe
somebody else remembers them
in some kind of vague way or something,
I'm not entirely sure what it means.
But there's a candle, a coin,
a bouquet, a scrap of paper,
a baseball, and a cymbal,
like a musical cymbal,
not just, you know, a symbol of something.
- Yeah, yeah, there's symbolism
in the cymbal, yeah yeah.
- Exactly, yes. A cymbal
that's a symbol, as it were.
- Kug, do you think it's-
- C Y M B A L?
- Yes.
- We're all, again, all
spelling this at the same time.
- We started to misspell cymbal
and we just decided f*ck it.
- Now we have to like-
- Turn it around, turn it
around, turn it around!
- Here's the thing, I'm actually
not that good at spelling,
'cause I hear, you know,
like the bad spellers
just as much as I hear the good spellers,
so it's just a mess,
it's just a mess in here.
- I mean, I think spelling
and language in general
is kind of something that
you agree upon as a culture.
- Yeah, words are made up, right?
- That's true. Anyway.
So the dragon
got sick and eventually passed away
because of these missing items,
and at the end of his life,
when Kingston met him, was having regrets
about not valuing kind
of the smaller things
about life in New York,
so that is when the Dragon
of Bleecker Street created
the spicy pigeon, the juicy
c*ck, and the unicorn.
- Aw, I mean, the unicorn's obvious,
not appreciating the pigeon
and the rat, that makes sense.
- Well they, yeah, the
unicorn I think is, you know,
a representation of the magical things,
and then the spicy pigeon
and the juicy c*ck
are representative of juicy
c*ck and spicy pigeons,
of which there are many.
So the best way
to defeat Null
is for you all to
hatch a new dragon
to recreate the hoard
of the Dragon of Bleecker Street
and once again protect it from Null.
- Kug, I have a question.
The fact that some of them are
more difficult to remember,
do you have any idea if these items
have been taken deeper into the Dreaming,
or if it's just a general erasing effect?
Is it like a proximity thing?
Like, are they hard to remember
because they've been taken so deep?
- I'm not exactly sure where they are.
- Okay.
- Null has gotten to them
in some way for me to have forgotten them.
They may fully be
destroyed in the present.
- Okay.
- But there might still be
a way to get to them, 'cause the fact
that I still remember them
means that somebody else does.
- Do you know if Peter had another leg?
Did he replace it, or...
I'm just wondering at
what point, is Peter okay?
- Is Peter, dude, Peter is-
- Peter Stuyvesant is
from really long ago.
- Yeah.
- Ricky, I'm so sorry, Peter is dead.
- He is very dead.
- I hug Ricky.
- He is from New Amsterdam, Ricky!
He's not even from New York,
he's from New Amsterdam.
- He lived a good life.
He did great things.
- Okay.
- If you want, we can
look up a Peter Stuyvesant
in the phone book and
just go check up on them.
- But if you wanted to talk to somebody
other than me about all this,
the Dragon of Bleecker Street was brought
to New York in the late 1800s
by the Shen family.
They're a family of sorcerers
that are still living
in Chinatown, so they're still here.
- Wait, the Manhattan Chinatown
or the Queens Chinatown?
- The Manhattan Chinatown.
- Yeah.
- Okay.
- Brennan, have I met
anyone in the Shen family?
- I'm gonna say that
Kingston absolutely knows
the Shen family.
- I know the Shen family, we got an in.
Don't even worry about it.
Kug, can we, like,
will this struggle with Null be forever,
or is Null something we can vanquish
or, I don't know.
Is this going to be just a new forever,
or I don't know, how bad
can we beat this thing?
- So there's
two parts of this, right?
Gladiator is very real.
Gladiator is an actual company
that exists in the waking world.
It is not created by Null,
it is an actual company
that is buying up property
and, you know,
destroying a lot of neighborhoods,
and Null is simply
taking advantage of that.
There are people who
are possessed by Null,
but they're only being possessed
because they have holes in them.
They're, you know, rich people who are
trying to collect money
when they couldn't possibly
need more, they're people who, you know,
are vulnerable, who hate their jobs,
who feel soulless,
and Null is taking advantage of that.
So in the waking world,
you have to fight Gladiator
tooth and nail in any way you can,
and on the dream side of it,
you need a f*cking dragon.
- Okay, wow, that is descriptive.
- Do you know the AC of their robots?
- Thank you, Ricky, thank
you. Thank you, Ricky.
- Do they have resistances
to any kind of damage,
any vulnerabilities?
- Of course I know the AC of their robots.
- Kug, I was wondering, do you
know who is possessed by Null
when it comes to Gladiator?
- So it's not an...
When you talk to sort of weird dudes
in suits and they have static
coming out of their mouths,
that is them being possessed by Null.
They are not necessarily
all day every day,
you know, zombies of Null,
they are ruthless business people
who, at times,
are having kind of their
emotions manipulated
to, you know, buy up more ad space,
to buy more apartment buildings.
So on the Gladiator side of things,
it's less about going
and just like, you know,
there's no wizard who
is running Gladiator,
if that makes sense.
- I have a question, but I don't know
if this is an ask Kugrash question,
but I'm just wondering, like-
- I have a question for Kugrash, too.
- Like, mechanically-wise, like this world
that you've set up, is
there like any incentive
for these people to embrace Null?
Is there some sort of like
power that they're getting?
- I think Pete can, in
the weird void here,
make an arcana check, because
you have a connection to Null.
So as Kugrash is saying like, yeah,
go ahead and have Pete give me,
and because of your
infinite power right now,
go ahead and give me an
arcana check with advantage.
- Okay.
Ooh, that is a 22.
- 22, hell yeah.
As Kugrash talks about the
nature of Null and Gladiator,
Pete made contact with this entity.
You touched Null, and
you haven't really gotten
a sense of Gladiator until
you reach out from void here,
from this like, Kugrash
is sort of the other side
of the coin, so to speak.
- Hell yes.
- Of like a positive void.
- Cody's just nodding at Kugrash.
- Yeah, Cody's nodding the whole time.
- You reach out and realize that
Nod was mistaken
about the nature of Null
and these older siblings
out in the deep Dreaming.
Nod was like, they stay
away from the waking world,
and that's true, they don't go to places
like the sixth borough that
are these kind of coral reefs
close to the shore, right?
What you realize is that
these other beings
do have ways of interacting
in the waking world.
For lack of a better word,
Gladiator is the Vox Phantasma of Null,
but Null would never choose
an individual that could
understand it, right?
'Cause that's the thing Null doesn't want.
Null doesn't want to be named,
doesn't want to be understood,
it doesn't want to even
be perceived, right?
- It needs mindless workers.
- Mindless.
And it gets more powerful
the more people are unaware of it, right?
So its perfect champion
would never be a person,
its perfect champion would be
a complex series of relationships.
It would be an organization,
a structure, a system
in which every person could
seek to bring it about
into the waking world without
ever being aware of it.
And when Kugrash describes
these little bits of static,
which, by the way, Kingston
saw, you had that vision
of someone's eyes going
static for a moment,
you're realizing that Null
wouldn't take people over
in this like force of wills
like a demonic possession,
like, "I'm fighting, but
I'm being taken over!"
It would take people over in the moments
where they went on autopilot.
It would take people over
like when you're not thinking
while you're driving.
It would take people over in the moments
where you're not in full awareness
of the actions you're
taking or what they mean
or what they signify.
Lack of awareness is, of course,
the place that this extra-planar
entity operates from.
So I think-
- So it's not like a possession,
it's more like a carbon monoxide leak.
- Yes.
- Or like you know, like yeah.
- That's the thing is, Pete,
you would still describe it
as a possession, it is
working its terrible influence
on the world, but it is the equivalent
of a carbon monoxide leak
rather than a lethal injection.
It's happening in ambient, it's
happening in negative space.
It doesn't need to possess one
person for their whole life
and create an evil cultist
wizard that you guys
could just go behead in one
fight and now Gladiator is good.
Why possess one person
when you could ambiently
possess people, each of
them a couple minutes a day,
in moments where they're
not paying attention
over an entire global corporation?
So it's way scarier than
a cabal of seven executives
that each consciously want to bring about
the end of the world.
If you guys went and k*lled
the CEO of Gladiator,
Null would find the secret spaces
in the mind of whoever
got appointed CEO next,
and it is rather this organization
and all of those empty
spaces in the relationships
between people that are the puppet
Null is wielding in the material world.
So it is a very real,
magical, extra-planar threat,
but it is this weird,
I think Pete would
probably think of, like,
weird, techno, like, hive mind sh*t.
You know, like, for lack of a better word,
like the scariest thing
about like the agents
in "The Matrix" was that any
single person could become them
at a moment, and that seems
to be the way Null is working,
of like, oh, I can just
become whoever I need to be
in the moment, because
I'm spread out, you know,
in this haze, a lot
like the Umbral Arcana.
Like, I'm ambiently
everywhere all the time.
- With that arcana check,
would I know if we have all
been touched by Null at
some point in our lives?
Is it something like that? Like, anyone?
- With that 22, I think Pete
wouldn't know that for certain,
but would definitely
have cause to fear that.
Because Null looks for the empty places
not only inside of
cities and corporations,
but also inside of people,
and I think that Pete
might very well be like, you know,
maybe not to the scale of
having your eyes go static
and moving to like buy
the Central Park Carousel, you know,
but like maybe on the scale of, like,
momentary lapses in
judgment, bad decisions,
moments where you lose your
connection to something, yeah.
You think probably you
have been possessed by Null
in fractions of a second
throughout many different points
in your life.
- Wow. Cool.
- Can I, okay, so this sort of,
it doesn't hit close to home,
it just makes me think of something.
Kug, is there some kind
of good version of Null?
Because, I mean, I say this
as someone who, you know,
the Order of the Concrete
Fist introduced me to,
you know, meditation,
and a lot of that is going
to a place of nothingness
so that you can better grapple
with the past and the future,
and so I'm curious if
there's a good form of Null,
or if there's an amount
of Null that's okay,
or what that means.
Because a lot of times, the
past and the present encroach,
I mean the past and the future encroach
on the present, you know?
- Right.
I mean, Soph, the opposite
of nothing is everything,
and I waft a big stinky thing of sh*t.
- God, come on, Kug, damn.
- It's everything! sh*t is everything!
It's everything boiled down, it's perfect!
- Right, but like if you
have too much everything,
then your brain starts going crazy,
and you can't take a breath, you know?
Or if you're living too much in the past
or you're living too much in the future,
so I guess I'm just trying
to understand, like,
if it's okay that, you
know, when I meditate,
there's an emptiness to it.
Is that making me vulnerable to Null
or is there value to that as well?
- No, I mean, yeah, you're meditating.
Clearing your mind is not
the same as forgetting,
if that makes sense.
- Okay.
Yeah, I guess I'm just
curious what that is, then.
- 'Cause I know for me,
meditating is like mindfulness,
or like getting in touch with
what I'm feeling and stuff
and it does feel different
than when I'm just kind of
in a haze and not really
caring about the week.
- Mindful versus mindless.
- Yeah.
- I think that there's, like,
a lot of different types
of meditation though,
and some are, like, some of
it is tuning into your present
and some of it is finding a nothingness.
I know that there's just a lot of,
there are people who sort of
connect with a nothingness,
and that can bring them peace.
So I don't know, I
guess I just was curious
if there was a good nothingness.
- Yeah, I mean, the, like,
being completely in the present moment
and just taking things in
is different than mindlessly
sitting at your desk and forgetting
why you woke up in the morning.
- Mm-hm, yeah.
- I would say if Sofia wants
to make either a religion
or an insight check in
this moment, go for it.
- Okay.
- Can I give her the help action?
- Sure, yeah yeah yeah.
- Okay.
Oh god, I rolled poorly.
That is going to be an 11.
- I think Sofia is as
confused by this as possible,
and I think within all of this, like,
I think Sofia, in a weird way,
is like feeling sympathy
for nothingness right now,
or it sounds like, of like this concept-
- It's definitely not sympathy,
it's definitely not sympathy.
What Sofia's feeling
the most is a curiosity
if there's a good version of this.
You know, like one that
appreciates balance,
one that doesn't try to consume
the present or the past,
but tries to live amongst it.
- I think that, yeah, I mean,
you're in this place of
kind of void right now
that is very warm and welcoming.
I think that with sort of that roll,
I think Sofia probably is living
in confusion in this moment
around whether there is
a good version of this,
and also the interesting thing
about when you are
concentrating on nothingness,
when you are clearing your mind,
the relationship between the
idea of true nothingness,
but then also the ability,
when you're meditating on nothing,
the idea of unity,
because the number that
is closest to zero is one,
and there is a degree of meditation
where you are getting rid of everything,
because you're realizing that
everything isn't nothing,
but it is just one thing,
and you're erasing those boundaries
between you and your
connection to everything else.
I think that maybe Sofia
is sort of like observing,
like, what is the difference
between everything and nothing?
And like, it's a very
like monk-like meditation.
That's sort of like,
I don't think there's a solution to that.
I think there's like a koan for, like,
Sofia to meditate on of like, oh sh*t.
- Right, okay, I'll stitch it on a pillow
and give to the monastery
as a peace offering.
(Brennan laughs)
- Incredible.
So you guys have written
down these seven objects
with this giant pencil in negative space
looking at this star rat.
And yes, Kingston, you
do know the Shen family.
They're old pals, you've
been down there a bunch.
They're good people in the Unsleeping City
and are specifically a force for, like...
The Shen family focuses
a lot of their efforts
on Chinatown in particular,
because Chinatown is one of the oldest
and most magically powerful neighborhoods.
You have probably like helped each other
many times throughout the years.
- Great. Is there a name?
- Oh sure, you would
know a couple of them.
The main people right
now that are doing stuff,
because some members of the
family kind of are, like,
taking care of the family
business more than others-
- Which is?
- The family business is
learning profound magic
and protecting Chinatown from threats
arcane and extradimensional.
You would know Li Ji and Jung Wei,
are the two people that you know there.
You didn't know that they had a connection
to the Dragon of Bleecker Street.
So that is
what you guys know there.
Yeah, so I think Sofia,
you have that meditation,
and Pete you have that recognition
of Gladiator's relationship,
that like Null moves in
extremely hard to combat ways.
They're very ambient,
they're not gonna make the
mistake of like giving you guys
one human champion that you can k*ll
and then Null is, like, f*cked.
But the difficulty of an
entity that has chosen
as its physical weapon an organization
rather than an individual
doesn't mean that it's
impossible to fight,
it's just a different fight
than you guys are used to.
- Yeah.
- So I think you come away
with that recognition.
What do you guys do within
the void with Kugrash?
- How do we take down Gladiator, then?
I know you can't predict the future,
it's fine if you don't know.
I understand we should
probably go toward, you know.
- I think you just have to
make sure that
aspects of the city aren't forgotten
and fight to protect the
things that are still here.
- It seem like the big, like,
if Null is very like isolation,
erasure, and forgetting.
- Mm-hm.
- Then it seems like
our way of combating it
is just with like the
opposite of those things,
which seems like connection,
history, preservation.
- And also like if we're
able to inspire that,
then it will make people
less likely to be possessed.
- Yeah.
This is almost like area of effect, like,
what is that, like awareness
campaigns or, you know,
like what is the real life version, yeah?
- Get people out on the streets.
- Yeah, Pete says that
area of effect thing,
and you guys understand that to be true.
- So we just have to take down,
I mean, Pete, do you think 53\/3N
has figured out that hard drive stuff?
- Yeah, I can definitely
go check in on that.
I've got to (laughs) actually, hm.
- Maybe we should, before you go,
I actually have to do
a couple ladies' hair.
- Yeah, do you think we
could work on that calendar
before I go see 53\/3N?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
Pete, do you want to do the photo sh**t?
- I would love to.
- Do you want to be the
photographer? I need a photographer.
- Yeah, definitely, man.
I've got a ring light
from an ex girlfriend, so.
- This reminds me also, Peter,
I need to come to your bookshop
and buy like a bunch of
books, so you should be there.
You get commission, right?
- Yes, please.
- Great.
- Come by. I bet I have to work.
Let's see, what's today?
Oh, it's the day after Thanksgiving.
I have a few shifts coming up.
- And I think, Sofie, the last thing is,
I think you do recognize
the truth of Kug's words,
that Kug is, at the moment,
sort of like an opposite to Null in a way,
at least like sort of as infinite.
But I'm gonna say here
that you guys begin to fade
out of your meditation and back
to the Monastery of the Sacred Rat.
- Oh, I wanted to do
his hair one last time!
(all laugh)
- I know I can't do a
constellation's hair.
- One last dance, please!
- One last hairy baby.
- The stars move.
- And now I can send you off.
I do a little like magical
stardust to send you back.
- I weep, I just straight-up weep.
- I definitely cry.
- Smells like sh*t.
- Speaking of weeping.
Exactly, it smells awful.
Kingston is just trying to
brush the stardust off of him.
- Awesome, you guys arrive
back having spoken to Kugrash.
Murph, does Kugrash give any last words
on the wind of trash as he vanishes?
- Yeah, you know, be
careful out there, guys.
It's f*cked up. It's all f*cked up.
- You guys appear back in the
Monastery of the Sacred Rat.
- So Cody, that was our friend Kugrash.
- Yeah.
- Cody, you were very quiet
and respectful that whole time.
- Yeah, well.
- You didn't have any questions for him?
- I'm working on that, but also, yeah,
I was just kind of blown
away in the moment.
He seemed really cool.
- Yeah, he was really cool.
He's really cool.
- He is. He is really cool.
- A lot of cool story there, yeah.
- Yeah. Really, like, really, yeah.
- Wow, thanks, Cody.
- Just a rich backstory, and
like, you know. Cool guy.
- I know Sofie, you've
got some lady things
you need to take care of, I
guess we got this calendar
in the mix.
- What are you referring to?
Oh, oh, yes! I have some
hair I'm gonna do, yeah.
I'm trying to raise some cash.
- Yeah.
- And I've got a couple
ill-advised brunettes
trying to go blonde.
- Well, hey, you know,
that's their choice.
- It's absolutely their choice.
- But it feels like we got these three
pretty hard things to chase down.
I mean, we've got the Shen family,
and maybe they seem to be helping us maybe
with the dragon angle and
some of these like artifacts,
we got 53\/3N's hard drive,
and then I feel like there was one more
but now I can't remember.
- Peter Stuyvesant.
- Oh yeah.
- If we are going to
talk to the Shen family,
I did some light Googling.
- Uh-huh.
- And Peter Stuyvesant is
buried at Saint Mark's,
which is very close to the Chinatown.
- Look at that.
- Ooh.
- I'd love to grieve.
- With the power of Google!
- Seems like a place.
- We're not gonna dig him up, right?
That feels ruthless.
- I think it's like a tomb.
- Okay, great.
- I don't think it's a, I
think it's like family tomb,
family crypt type situation.
- One of those family tombs.
What?
I think I can go,
also I think I can go see
53\/3N without the money,
because this wouldn't
really be the amount of time
it would've taken me to
get the full amount anyway,
so I can go visit him.
Ha, yeah.
- Pete, why are you-
- I'm a good liar.
- Why are you giving money to 53\/3N?
Why is 53\/3N getting money from you?
- Why are you saying, "I
am a good liar," out loud?
- I fully dissociate.
- Null has Pete!
- It's a long story actually,
but it's all taken care of now,
and you guys definitely
don't have to worry about me.
- This is what my children are saying
when they are smashing something.
- I'm gonna be all right,
and I just hold Sofia's hand.
- Yeah, I was gonna say,
Sofia and Pete just like
sweat into each other's palms.
- I'm fine!
- I got you, Pete, okay?
I'm gonna dye some hair for you, okay?
- Thank you.
If someone wants a perm and a
bleach, what are you gonna do?
- As long as I can keep
anyone in the chair, I will,
because it's like the longer
you keep them in the chair
the more money, so
anything they want to try.
- Incredible.
- Hell yeah, you guys are all here.
You guys have all the
information you need,
so what do you guys do?
You're here at the monastery.
You guys tell me what you do next.
- Kingston, it sounds like you and Iga
should talk to the sorcerers.
- Yeah, I mean, I know a
couple of the Shen family
from back in the day, so it'd be no thing
to go on down there and say hi.
- And I don't know that I
need to do that calendar
right now.
I could knock it out if I had some help,
but it also feels like maybe not the time.
- Do you need anything
from this monastery, Ricky?
Or like, do you need help?
- I might talk to Marty
for a second, but, like.
- Yeah.
- I think that I've made the connection
that we need to make.
Feels okay to leave.
- Cool.
- Yeah.
- Cool.
- Yeah, Pete, sorry, Ricky,
you feel the connection to the unicorn,
to Perry and to Marty.
You definitely feel
like in a moment of need
you could summon all
of them if you had to.
- Cool.
- So that's just now like
waiting, like for when we need it.
Great.
- Yeah.
And is this like transitioning
into downtime, or-
- I think so. It's up to you guys.
You guys just went through a long fight.
I will say this, it is Sunday night,
the weekend after Thanksgiving.
Kingston, you've got a lot on your mind
in terms of the stuff that
you've been saying you need to do
since going to David's house on Thursday.
- Oh no, it's Cyber Monday tomorrow.
Is that a Gladiator surge in power?
(all groaning)
- Okay, you know what we need?
We need 53\/3N to hack the
website. The Gladiator website.
- There's also, there's
something I can do.
It's not something I like to do,
but there's something I could do.
- What's that, Kingston?
- I need to head downtown and make a call.
But okay, sh*t. sh*t, sh*t.
Kingston's like, okay,
yeah, I don't know, yeah.
I've got some, I, okay.
- Does this relate to Gladiator,
or should we ask 53\/3N
to hack the website?
- It's not Gladiator. I think
we should still ask 53\/3N.
This is me more asking a favor
from the city in a big way.
- Okay. Okay.
- Cool. Okay, cool.
I mean, I'm gonna talk to 53\/3N anyway,
I can help either Ricky, or-
- Why don't I come with you to 53\/3N?
In case he starts, like, in
case he asks about the drugs,
I can say I bought them, I'm
dealing in Staten Island now.
- Wait, drugs? What the hell?
Aren't you, no, hang on, what?
- All right, fine, I'll
f*cking come, okay, look.
A lot of part of interactions with drugs-
- I gave you $2.000 in cash!
- Is an addiction to the lifestyle, okay?
What your life looked like at the time,
sometimes that includes extra money.
I dipped back into dealing briefly,
immediately regretted it,
flushed thousands of
dollars worth of cocaine
down a magical toilet who got really high,
and I hope she's okay now.
She's probably ordering Thai food delivery
and watching a bunch of
Gordon Ramsay YouTube videos.
I'm not gonna say where I
got those specifics from.
So I'm okay now, I am okay,
and Sofia actually, like,
really helped me through all of that.
- Well, oh yeah, Pete helped me though.
You know, it goes both ways.
- Yeah, you want me to maybe
broadcast that for you?
(Ally laughs)
- Okay, you know what? Fine!
Fair is fair, I f*cking
outed you, I'll out myself.
- No no no, it's okay.
- I'm f*cking pregnant.
- What?
- I'm pregnant with Dale's f*cking baby.
- What?
- I was gonna wait to tell
you all before I told him.
- I don't know who this Dale is.
- But now, in an act of penitence, I will-
- You've been pregnant for four years?
- Hold on, hold on, hold on, wait.
- No.
- Wait, what?
- My god.
- He was breaking out of heaven,
you know, every couple months.
It wasn't exactly something
you could set your clock to.
We didn't use protection
because I didn't really think,
you know, I guess I didn't
think, oh, does heaven have STDs?
I don't know, there's a lot of things
that didn't go into this,
it was all very spur of the moment.
- You had sex with an angel?
That's f*cking metal as hell.
That's awesome.
- Multiple times, yeah.
Very adventurous.
- Did it look like his
Led Zeppelin T-shirt?
- Yeah, did it look like this?
- It's like someone literally...
Full reverse cowgirl with an angel.
- Kingston, I think you
remember this moment,
the favor Alejandro
asked of you back at JFK.
- I think, yeah, that's
very present in my mind,
but I think also there's this like,
we just got out of the infinite, and like,
I don't know, there's a lot going on.
But I do think Kingston, like,
clocks this, and is like,
okay, all right.
- Anyways, oh, but I did go to Dr. Lugash.
You can't hurt this baby,
so you don't need to coddle me in battle.
- I got to say, I love Dr. Lugash,
he birthed both of my children.
He's Russian, we don't hold it
against him. He's a good man.
He's really good at a
lot of different things
in a way that you're like,
oh, maybe jack of all trades.
No, he's a master of
like a bunch of stuff.
He's a good doctor.
- Congratulations.
- He gave me a double mastectomy.
- Congratulations.
- Yeah, congratulations.
- Yeah, I guess that's
the most important part.
This is fantastic.
- Thank you, it's really confusing
because of many aspects
that I won't go into.
Maybe it's just enough that we all sit
with this information for a while.
- I think there's some
pretty obvious reasons
why it would be confusing.
- No, yeah.
- So if you need anything
from us, we're here.
- Thank you, you know, I just need you all
to not tell Dale that
I told you before him.
- Probably won't come up,
probably won't tell him.
- Yeah, I imagine.
- Okay.
- Incredible.
You guys, I think it's getting
later in the day on Sunday,
Pete's just had this
realization about Cyber Monday.
I think Kingston is feeling
like a need to beat feet.
You guys head off,
and you guys can all be
in touch with each other.
You guys walk away not
only with these revelations
about Sofia's pregnancy, but
with this incredible communion
with Kugrash, Pete's
revelation into the nature
of Null's relationship to Gladiator.
You guys are facing this fight where Pete,
you feel the, you know,
Null wreaking havoc on the sixth borough,
but you know that if Null has
a relationship to Gladiator
like Nod had to you, you
can affect the sixth borough
by the things you are doing.
Like, Kingston is right.
You can affect the sixth
borough by the things you do
in the waking world, which
means that you don't need
to go there physically to help save Nod.
There are things you
can do here in the city
that are probably best done over downtime,
and yes you guys have stuff
to do, but also, like,
it's late Sunday, 53\/3N's
probably busy right now.
It's probably late to, like,
the Shen family might not
want to meet you guys, like,
tonight on the drop of a dime.
So I'm gonna say that we're gonna move
into a period of downtime where
you guys are doing the stuff
that you need to be doing that
occur over days, et cetera.
So I'm gonna say, let's go ahead,
if you guys would be so kind,
and let's roll initiative.
- If I'm doing something that night-
- Oh yeah, actually I'll say,
for anyone that wants to
do something that night,
we can go for it.
But we'll roll initiative for downtime,
remember what you rolled.
Kingston, what do you do that night?
- I am headed to the payphone
that I spoke to my friend
on the moments before I met
the Dragon of Bleecker Street.
- Hell yes.
Kingston, you go all the
way down to Lafayette,
way downtown.
Actually, not too far from
Chinatown, if we're being honest.
You go to the payphone that
you spoke to your cousin Janice
on all those years ago when you
got her that job at Cornell.
By the way, she's doing
great, kids are growing up,
she's still in Ithaca,
comes to visit all the time.
- And I take my divine token
off my neck, off the string,
and I push it into the slot,
and I'm gonna try for Divine Intervention.
- Ooh, that's so f*cking cool!
- Hell yeah.
- Cool.
- One of the last working
payphones in New York City.
The subway token goes into it.
You're gonna roll a percentile dice.
You are looking for the
numbers one through 11 here.
- Yes.
- Oof, god, that's so low.
- Okay, here we go.
That is 64.
- Okay, the coin appears
back out in the change tray.
Looks like the phone's not working.
- Kingston's a little
disappointed, hangs the phone up,
and just texts the group,
I hope 53\/3N can come through.
- Incredible. Does anyone
else do anything that night?
- I guess since Kingston said,
"I hope 53\/3N can come through,"
maybe I just hit up 53\/3N.
- Cool, yeah, I'd say
give me a luck check.
Just roll a D20 and we'll
say on a 17 through 20,
53\/3N's available that night.
- Two.
- All right.
You don't get a response
back from 53\/3N immediately.
We're gonna go into downtime.
Did anyone roll above a
20 on their initiative?
Did anyone roll above a 15?
- Yes.
- At 15.
- 18.
- 15 and 18, cool.
So we're gonna go into a,
I'm gonna say a period of,
we're not actually gonna do
two week bumps this time,
we're gonna go ahead and do
one week chunks of downtime,
'cause it's getting close to Christmas.
You guys see around the city
lights are starting to go up.
So Pete, that...
Sorry, Pete and Ricky, what
did Pete and Ricky roll again?
Sorry.
- 18.
- 18, and Ricky got 15?
- 15.
- Cool, Pete, so we're
gonna go with your downtime
first that week.
What is Pete taking care of
as you begin to go into downtime,
learning what you learned from Kugrash
about the dragon's hoard and Gladiator?
- Yeah.
I think the three things
that I would love to are
obviously I go to work,
I would love to go to
a meeting with Lugash.
- Cool.
- Maybe one or two.
And then I need to talk to 53\/3N.
- Cool, I'm gonna say that
because you are prioritizing
the meeting with Lugash,
prioritizing your sobriety,
your die is going to
bump back up to a D10.
You're doing better.
- I've never been at a D10, honey.
Back up to anything!
- Okay, so Pete bumps to
a D10, Pete's doing great.
So this means that your
other downtime activities,
how about it?
Are going to be rolled with,
because you're just trying
to get a meeting with 53\/3N,
I'm gonna say roll that D20 again,
still looking for 17 through 20.
- Okay.
17!
- Hell yes, baby, way to go.
- Hell yeah.
- So Pete, 53\/3N hits you
up, like, middle of that week,
you've been going to meetings,
you're so glad you don't have
those f*cking drugs on you anymore.
53\/3N hits you up, goes,
"Hey, that's a wrap on
the hard drive, huge haul,
hit me up whenever."
- Yeah, great, I go there
as soon as possible.
- [Brennan] Huge refrigerated thing,
he's got his stuff everywhere.
You walk into the
refrigerated server room,
he looks up and goes, "Pete, my man.
Where the f*ck did you get this?
Because this sh*t is raw as hell."
- Yeah, dude, we really
need to take them down.
Like, what does it look
like? What have you found?
- He passes it and says,
"Info's all on here.
Give it to who you need to give it to.
I laid everything out,
so all the info is there
for who you want to give it to."
- Can I ask him, was there
any sort of like defense
that you had to, like,
what was up with that
crazy filling the screen
thing that happened to us
that like ruined our monitor?
- He looks and says, he says,
he says, "Just some
basic firewall bullshit.
I didn't encounter anything
as crazy as what you were describing."
Pete, I think you recognize
that that happened because
someone magic was in the
presence of this hard drive.
That was more about Kingston
and Null reacting to Kingston.
You see 53\/3N goes...
You rolled a 17, right?
What would a 17 plus your arcana
be, just out of curiosity?
- That would be a 26.
- 53\/3N goes, "I got
the corporate structures
going up through Excelsior,
I got the names of CEOs, VPs, CFOs, COOs."
He's like, "I got the sh*t
they're trying to bury,
I got bribes from the FDA,
I got people they're trying to silence,
I have lists of employees
that are on unionization watch lists.
All their f*cking dirt,
baby, it's all on here.
Good looking out.
And by the way, dude,
thanks for moving that product
so f*cking quick, way to go."
- Oh, wait, what do you mean?
- He's like, "Got the cash in
the bag, man. You're the best.
I missed my plug, dude."
- Tell me more about that.
(Brennan laughs)
Tell me more about that
actually, man, yeah, for sure.
- He looks at you.
Pete, make an insight check,
make an insight check
and a deception check
with disadvantage right now.
- Okay, insight is, one moment please.
Ooh baby, we're talking a 13 on insight,
and then deception with disadvantage?
- Yeah.
- Oh, interesting, well,
my deception is pretty
good as a former dealer.
Oh b*tch, okay.
That's a nat 20 but we'll ignore it.
But it's still a 17.
- Cool. I'm gonna roll.
On a natural 16, 53\/3N
looks at you and goes,
"Oh, never mind, I don't
know what I'm talking about.
Feel free to hit me up with that money
when you need to, man."
- No no, you got it. Dude, you got it.
I'm just wondering,
I'm working with some
very interesting people.
Can I try to do another deception check?
I need to make sure that I
don't have to pay this money.
- Roll with disadvantage.
You got to beat a 21.
- [Siobhan] Come on.
- It's a 10.
- Looks like the calendar's a go, baby.
You see 53\/3N says,
"I don't know who paid me,
but clearly it wasn't you.
Take your time, obviously,
but I'm gonna get to the bottom of it,
I'll let you know what's up."
- I cast Friends on him.
- Okay, cool, he's not aware
of magic, you cast Friends.
What's Pete gonna try
to do in this moment?
- Dude, come on, level with me, man.
We've worked together forever.
I've got so many irons in so
many fires, I'm just kind of,
you know, I haven't had coffee yet today.
- You've already tried deception,
I will let Pete work persuasion.
Try to beat that 21 with persuasion
to see if you can talk 53\/3N off of this.
You're not gonna roll
this with disadvantage.
- Okay, great.
- This is a straight roll.
- We've got good persuasion.
Oh baby, that is an 11.
- No!
Pete!
- Okay, I'm gonna bring up one thing here,
which is that it is a new day,
and so you do have Tides of Chaos.
I just want to remind
you about your abilities.
- Yes, okay, thank you.
- This is the last f*cking
out for our boy Pete Conlan.
- f*cking f*ck, this is
thousands of dollars. Okay.
- How much do you need?
- That is an 18.
- 18 is not 21.
- Oh, I had to beat 21? f*ck!
- Terrible.
- All right.
- He looks at you and goes,
"Cool, so you have no idea
where that money came from?
So that's great.
Here's your hard drive."
- Yeah, weird. Huh.
- So you still have my product,
go ahead and move that,
and we'll be good to go.
- Yeah, we're like two thirds
of the way through, so.
- Great, good good good.
You walk out of there
with the hard drive, Pete.
You have...
Someone tried to settle your debt.
- What the f*ck is going on?
- Make either an investigation
or a perception check for me.
- Okay.
Rolling like sh*t today. Eight.
- Perception, you can't think of it
off the top of your head.
Go ahead and roll investigation.
- Okay.
All right, this needs to turn around.
Seven plus one, that's also an eight.
- Cool.
(Ally laughs)
- You have no f*cking idea who
could've covered your money.
But you do have the hard drive.
- Great.
- Hell yes. Ricky.
- Can I text the group and be like, so,
did anyone pay a lot of money for me?
Just wondering.
- Yes, $2.000, I guess I gave.
- But you, it ended up being 4.500,
so you still owe 53\/3N 2.500, Pete.
- Wait, what?
Oh no, that was earlier.
- I'm talking about
the original one.
- Yeah, oh f*ck, okay, cool.
- What would I respond to that?
'Cause wasn't that my goal?
Or was that not from...
- You guys-
- I mean, yeah,
you could hit me back and be like, no,
but I'm still getting the money for you,
and I would probably be
like cool, thank you,
yeah, that's still the plan.
- Cool.
- Yeah, no, but I'm working on it.
- Cool.
- Thanks again.
- Ricky, that's gonna be you.
So Pete's got the hard drive.
Ricky, what are you doing in
this first period of downtime?
- I think for this period
of downtime, Ricky,
still working at Helping Hands and still,
I think the main thing
he wants to do is like
find some time with Cody
to see if he can help him
figure out his weapon situation.
- Cool.
- Hell yeah.
- Yeah.
- I love that.
So the main thing you're doing in downtime
is giving Cody a help
action on what he's doing.
- Yeah, but I think in person.
Like I think I was like hoping
to try and talk to the Questing Blade.
- Yes yes yes.
- And, you know.
- You will be with him in person for sure.
But you're not doing the
calendar during this first week.
- I mean, we can do, like,
some pre-pro meetings
for this calendar sh**t.
I have a feeling, like-
- Cool cool cool.
- It's a little beyond
Ricky's organizational skills,
so maybe he's texting with Pete,
seeing whoever's available
wants to like work on it.
- Hell yeah.
- I feel like, yeah,
Cody could help do the calendar as well,
like sort of a, you
help me with the sword,
I help you with the calendar,
we're just like back and
forth, taking pictures, and-
- The calendar has the
sword in one of the photos.
- Yeah.
- You know where to
get costumes and stuff?
- Yeah, I break into the mall, and-
- Cool.
- Grab a bunch of Halloween costumes.
- Wait, please, goth Ricky,
kind of shirtless, like,
thirst trap goth Ricky.
- Wow, too much to imagine.
- Do you think this kind
of calendar would sell?
- Oh my goodness, the
ultimate health goth.
- I know a lot of people we
could sell this to, Ricky.
- So we're actually gonna cut
over to Pete's spot in Queens
where Ricky is over helping Cody out.
Cody, you're going into your sword stuff,
so you guys are here.
You have the Peasant's Sword,
then there's Thirsting Blade
Dark Excalibur Mega Genesis.
- Is the peasant sword
still attached to it, or no?
- No, it hasn't been attached to it.
- No, we never put it on.
- Never put it on.
- My devil wanted to do that,
and Cody is not gonna do that.
- Okay.
- You guys actually hear
a knock on the door.
Pete, you're like in the kitchen,
you've got the hard drive,
you're still trying to figure
out this f*cking money thing
which is weird.
Cody and Ricky, you guys
are working on some, like,
sword stuff together.
You guys hear a knock at the door.
- I'll get it.
- People usually just
open the door and walk in
and do whatever they want in this place.
- Strangers?
- That's f*cking weird.
- Do strangers usually-
- You guys see, wearing
a hoodie and a backpack,
is Nick Lisowski, Iga's 14 year old son.
He walks in and is like,
"Uh, hey guys,
that was super awesome, I
just wanted to thank you guys
for the ride on the train
yesterday, and, um, Cody,
I know that you've got
Thirsting Blade Dark Excalibur
Mega Genesis now, and Ricky,
I know you're fighting
with the Questing Blade.
- It's actually a different ax.
- Oh, sorry, it's just
a magic, just an ax?
Just like a straight-up ax? Oh.
- Just a pretty regular ax, yeah.
- Cool.
So I kind of was wondering if...
You see he's a little bit nervous,
he's got like sweaty palms, he goes like-
- Dude, do you want a sword?
- He looks up and is like,
"Yeah, kind of."
And you see that he looks
over at the peasant sword.
- [Murph] Whoa.
- What's going on, Nick?
I guess we haven't actually
chatted all that much.
- No.
Yeah, like, I don't know, I...
My mom's always kind of
been training my sister,
my younger sister, for
this like magic stuff,
and she invited me on that train,
it was kind of the first
time that I ever felt, like,
kind of included in that
sort of thing, and...
- And your dad's non-magic, right?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, that's hard.
- Yeah.
I'm just worried about my sister,
and I just thought,
I'm not magic, but if I
had, like, a magic sword,
I don't know, if anything ever happened,
I'd be able to like
maybe take care of stuff.
- Yeah, is there any
particular reason you're, like,
nervous for, or just in
general that, you know,
she's in the magic world now?
- You guys go ahead and
make an insight check.
- There's the roll. 20.
- Yeah, I think you see that
Nick is carrying a lot of like
you know, it's like weird to be
the non-magic sibling when you
know magic stuff is going on,
but I think that there was
always such a weight of tradition
behind it, but now that he's
seen his mom and his sister
kind of challenging and
reinventing and exploring
those traditions, you see he's nervous
'cause he came to a house
of a bunch of like adults
that his mom knows that are all magical.
He's kind of like doing,
he's like wilding out,
he's like doing a teenage thing.
He like clearly didn't ask
permission to come do this,
and you see he's nervous to be talking
to a bunch of grownups
and it's that weird moment
when kids are teenagers
and they start doing stuff
on their own without asking permission,
and this is very meaningful to him.
And you also realize
that like, I don't know,
there's probably a lot
of sadness in this kid.
Like, his family has a magic castle
that wasn't supposed to be for him,
but he knows that that sword belongs
to his family's tradition,
and he's like sort of
scared of asking for it.
- Yeah.
I'm making some popcorn on the stovetop
if you want to come in and have lunch.
- Popcorn for lunch?
- Yeah, I put nutritional
yeast on it, though.
I put nutritional yeast on it.
- Pete? Hey, Pete?
- Huh?
- We're gonna need some more calories,
we're gonna need some more
protein, we're gonna need some-
- No, I do olive oil, I
cook a little bit of garlic
in olive oil and pour it
over nutritional yeast.
- Me and Pete just have popcorn lunch.
You don't do-
- That's not, that's not,
that's a snack.
- It has corn in it.
- That's barely a snack.
- Okay, okay.
- I have some really weird hot dogs.
- Listen, let's talk to,
can I talk to Cody real fast for a sec?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So...
- What do you think of
that, Cody? That story.
- I mean, I think that
it's, you know, it's...
I think he showed up at the right time.
Like, I don't know sh*t about swords,
so he can learn with me, maybe?
Can we let him into the sword club?
- Yeah, why don't we do that?
That sounds like a great idea.
- Yeah.
Are you cool with...
Should we give him the peasant sword?
- It seems like it's his sword.
I didn't really think
that he would want it,
but at the same time,
it's definitely not mine.
I'm not really a sword guy
again, so if you're cool with it.
- But you know, you're like helping me
with the Questing Blade,
so you know enough
not to turn your sword into a giant fork.
- Yeah.
- Which, like, again,
just super important, it turns out.
- There's sort of of a
level of, I would say,
and this is not in a disrespectful way.
- Right.
- But just sort of a level
of common sense knowledge
that I have.
- Sure.
- Yeah, but an expertise I do not have.
- I'm off to the side like,
ooh! Common sense, spicy!
- Hell yeah.
- And then I think, yeah, I'll,
Cody will go over to Nick
with Ricky and I think I'll be like,
hey dude, yeah, I'm gonna
be learning a bunch of stuff
about all these weapons and everything,
and this is your, like,
family sword and stuff,
so let's figure it out together, right?
And give him the peasant sword.
- You give Nick the peasant sword.
He smiles, he's like,
"Thanks, I super appreciate it.
You guys are super
cool, and, I don't know.
Thanks for taking care of my mom."
And you see Nick smiles, takes the sword,
and heads out.
And it feels good.
I think Cody, for this downtime
activity that you are doing,
you're gonna get a help action from Ricky,
so you can roll with advantage on this.
It sounds like the downtime activity
is really like a history check here,
to like learn about these
swords and weapons and stuff.
Go ahead and roll a history
check with advantage.
As in all things, the DC is gonna be 20.
- Great.
Yeah, I think Cody is
trying to learn about like
actual swords and stuff and specifically
why this one doesn't work, and yeah.
- Cool.
- So I'll go ahead and
make a history check.
- You get advantage.
- With advantage.
Yeah.
- With advantage.
- Oh, it's a very good
thing I had advantage,
'cause I rolled a nat one on one of them,
but I got a 16.
- 16, cool. So you-
- Can I just bless Cody?
- Sure, cast bless on Cody.
- Let's go 20!
- Incredible.
- Okay, so you're gonna need
to hit a four on that D4.
- Come on, come on, come on.
- I did it! Four!
(all cheering)
- Incredible!
- Hell yeah!
- Ricky and Cody, you guys spend that week
doing a bunch of work together
on swordcraft and weaponry.
Cody, you realize, like,
there's a ton of awesome history and lore.
Cody, go ahead and take a free proficiency
in the history skill.
You just dive into studying
history, studying actual,
there's like, you find out
awesome martial arts stuff
from all around the
world, there's like HEMA,
like historical European martial
arts, Eastern martial arts.
You study a bunch of
different unarmed techniques
from all around the world,
from Indonesia, South America.
You study all kinds of like,
the history of early
firearms and all this stuff.
There's a tremendous amount
of weapons history here.
Towards the end of that week,
you guys perform, and Ricky,
this is you actually casting that bless.
You guys find a local, like, forge,
run by like this old biker
dude that used to be part
of the Hell's Angels, and then like,
and is now like in his old
age is part of that thing
where they like protect kids that are like
going through weird like legal trouble.
You know, those like bikers,
the protect children bikers,
who runs a blacksmith forge in Queens.
You guys disassemble Thirsting Blade
Dark Excalibur Mega Genesis
into three separate weapons.
(Siobhan laughs)
- I feel like, Cody.
I feel like we've done
a lot of good work here,
but do you mind if I have just a moment
with the Questing Blade?
I imagine you have more to talk about
with the Questing Blade,
but I feel like I should
have a conversation,
sort of a difficult conversation.
- Sure, I can talk to
Mega Genesis over here.
- Okay, you don't have to, okay.
- We will both talk to the swords.
- You got to take a call too?
- Yeah.
Yeah, Cody takes the other
two swords and walks off.
- Mega Genesis, as
you're holding it, goes,
"What's up, you nasty piece
of sh*t? It's Mega Genesis."
- f*ck you, dude.
- f*ck you.
Yeah, you wish.
- f*ck you, you're not a
f*cking fork sword anymore.
I'm gonna f*cking sell you on eBay, dude.
- What the f*ck?
So yeah, you're holding onto
Mega Genesis and Dark Excalibur now.
- Goddammit.
- And Ricky,
you have the Questing Blade.
- Hey.
- Well, I see that I am being held
by a former champion of
the Questing Blade, hello.
Hello, Ricky Matsui.
- Hey, Questing Blade,
it's good to talk to you,
it's good to see you
again, you look great.
- [Brennan] I don't have
eyes and I can't see,
so I assume you look great as well.
- Thank you.
Hey, I just wanted to say I'm sorry.
I feel like in the moment it felt right
to give you up to Dale,
and I still feel that way,
but at the time I never really
was able to clear the air with you
and make sure that that was okay for you,
and I can see why your
feelings would be hurt by that.
So I just, I feel like I owed you that.
- Go ahead and give me a,
go ahead and give me a charisma roll here,
just a flat charisma roll.
- Can I bless Ricky?
- Yes. You can roll a D4 on that.
- Bros blessing bros.
- I got a four on the bless.
- Yes!
- Hell yeah.
- Charisma would be 15.
- 15.
You feel the Questing Blade goes,
"I sincerely and humbly
accept your apology, Ricky."
- Thank you.
I feel like I just want to be clear that
I'm happy that our paths
crossed where they did,
and I'm happy for you to
go on your own journey,
whichever way you see fit,
and I think we shared something beautiful
for a little bit there, but it's okay
that you're doing your own thing with me,
and I hope you understand that.
- The Questing Blade nods, and-
- It nods?
- Oh sorry, no.
The Questing Blade processes
what you have said,
and you can tell that there is something
that it is meditating on
that it is not saying,
and the Questing Blade says,
"Ricky, do you know why
it is that I chose you?"
- Well, you know,
it seemed like you were in
a building that was on fire,
and maybe,
maybe I was just in the right
place at the right time.
- Those words sort of echo,
maybe even within, I
don't know if Ricky...
Ricky does his normal
self-effacing thing of being like,
right place right time, and
kind of that attitude of like,
anybody would have done it,
and the sword goes,
"Hm. Right place, right time.
Ricky, I too am grateful for
the memories that we shared.
I am glad that this moment of mutual honor
will be the last note of our parting.
Thank you for your words, Ricky Matsui."
- I hope you...
Yeah, I just, I'm thankful
for our time together.
I think, you know, at the end of the day,
I don't even, I definitely
think that someone like,
someone else needs the
Questing Blade more than me,
and, you know, I'm not even
sure I need this magical ax.
You know, like, it's weird, yeah.
- The Questing Blade smiles and says,
"I don't think you need me, Ricky.
I wonder if you ever did. Thank you."
- What do you mean by, oh.
- And you see the Questing
Blade goes silent.
- I take the Questing Blade back to Cody.
Are you guys fighting?
- Yeah, Mega Genesis is an absolute f*ck,
which is great 'cause Mega
Genesis looks rad as hell
and I am going to sell
Mega Genesis on Etsy
to kind of make rent, and also
I'm gonna buy like some cool,
you know, goth stuff from, you know,
try to find some like f*cking
local businesses and sh*t
to buy from.
- Whoa, that's awesome, yeah.
I hand him back the Questing
Blade, kneel deeply.
- Hell yeah.
I'm gonna say, Cody, I'm gonna say
that with that 20 on your history check,
you can pawn Mega Genesis
and Dark Excalibur
and still have the Questing Blade
and absolutely make rent,
get some sick clothes back,
and I think you find like
local leather workers
that are like actually part
of a Satanic temple near you
that do like good handcrafted work.
They're like cool people to support.
I will say also in this moment,
with that 20 history check,
in researching people in your area
that you can like get
these new materials from,
so now you have cool clothes again,
you have the sick boots again,
the swords pay for all of it,
you also
find out some stuff about the history
of the Queens Center Mall
on that 20 history check.
You are looking at like the Hot Topic,
and now you're looking
at like all these dealers
that actually like make
this stuff handmade
and like real Satanists and
you're getting into like,
oh look at all these actual
people that like study,
not like Satan as like a
logo on a chain wallet,
but like actual, you're like looking up
this cool demonology stuff I can study.
You look at the history
of the Queens Center Mall.
The Queens Center Mall
took over a bunch of area
that used to be residential,
and there was also an
awesome amusement park
that used to be there even
before the mall called Fairyland.
It was a like cool, tiny
neighborhood amusement park
that was a really accessible place
that like kids in the
neighborhood could go to.
It was like, you know,
it was cheap to go there,
it brought magic and wonder
to that neighborhood,
and I think Cody reflects
on that bit of Queens history as well.
- Cody just drops whatever he's drinking.
Ugh. The f*cking mall
was Gladiator all along.
The f*cking mall was Gladiator all along.
- There's Code Red all over the floor.
(all laugh)
- That was there before.
- You know it was Code Red.
- So Pete, you don't know
where that money came from,
you have the hard drive.
For our other three characters,
did anyone roll on their
initiative for downtime
higher than a 10?
- I got a 12.
- What did Kingston get?
- I got a 13.
- Kingston, it is Cyber Monday.
What do you do as you wake up?
- I get out of bed and I go
right back to that payphone.
- Go ahead and give me another check,
and because we're in downtime,
you can make these rolls once a day,
so you're gonna give me six more rolls.
Here's the one for Cyber Monday.
- Cyber Monday
is an 87.
- The one for Tuesday
is a 47.
The one for Wednesday
is a 78.
Thursday is a 22.
Friday
is a 55.
Saturday is a 47.
- g*dd*mn.
- Cool. That's our first week.
You go put the token into the
payphone every day that week,
but you also still have
your downtime activity.
It only takes an action
for you to try to do Divine Intervention.
Go ahead and what is Kingston doing
in his downtime that week?
- Is the Shen family a downtime
activity, or is that a-
- That's a scene we can just run.
So I think you guys round up the troops.
I think you guys are on the
subway headed towards Chinatown.
Awesome.
Pete, you have the hard drive
there and can absolutely
like boot it up on a laptop.
Kingston, as you are looking at this,
you see all this incredible stuff here.
You see...
Here's what you find in all of that.
The CEO of Gladiator is a
man named Russel Blankenship.
The VP of operations is a
guy named Matthew Cleary.
The CEO of Excelsior Dynamic
Homes is named Evan Holloway.
There is a tremendous amount of dirt
on employees they believe
are trying to start unions,
names of reporters they've filed
cease and desist letters for,
there are records of FDA bribes on here,
which specifically is about
the deleterious health effects
of Cypher Energy Fluid,
proof that they got it passed through.
You see there is also,
there is also
some stuff in here about
their training facilities
in Connecticut, where Josh
Mendoza is going to get trained,
specifically it looks like
a relationship of stock
being given to a local judge
and a police department
in Connecticut because
of a warehouse worker
that died from what they
said were natural causes,
but died in his parked car
on the way home from work.
And as you look at it,
it looks like a worker,
you parse through and can
see some of the stuff here
that 53\/3N underlines, which is,
there is weird financial relationships
between the police and the judge here,
and a timecard that
53\/3N was able to dig up
that this worker had worked
for 40 hours straight and died,
and that the theory might be
that the body was picked up
off the warehouse floor and
moved to his own parked car.
- Oof.
- Uh, Pete, have you seen,
like, Josh around the house?
- I don't think so,
right? Have we seen Josh?
- This guy was not Josh,
but you also have not
seen Josh in a long time.
- Yeah, I know this isn't
Josh, I'm just like,
I want to make sure he's not working
300 hours a week or whatever.
Yeah, I'm going to, physically impossible,
but some amount of hours.
Yes, I will text Josh and
be like, um, hey, dude.
f*ck, how is, uh.
- It says "uh."
- How is working for the enemy, LOL?
- You get no response back
from Josh to that text.
- Okay, I text Josh, and it's like-
- Guys this is crazy,
I totally reached out.
- The olive branch!
- I text Josh and it's like,
hey man, I bet you've
been working crazy hours,
but I'm gonna maybe make a
roommate dinner this week
if you're interested.
- No response back.
- All right, so it wasn't the tone.
- Should I text him? I
don't have his number.
- Yeah, Ricky, if you want
to text him from my phone,
'cause whatever, my approach is weird.
- So I'm assuming Cody apologizes
for what he said, just-
- I said LOL.
- Oh, right.
- You guys text Josh.
No response from Josh.
You guys are heading down on the train.
The last thing you find,
Kingston, in that hard drive,
is a list of campaign contributions
to a lot of city council
people in New York
and relationships between New
York's civic infrastructure
and business relationships with Gladiator.
Now, this hard drive is
stolen and super ill*gal,
but what it gives Kingston
is names, names, names, names, names.
- Can we link this to the journalists?
Do you have a relationship
with some kind of-
- Yeah, can I call a friend at the Times?
- Sure, absolutely.
- Great, I call my friend at the Times.
- Hell yeah.
I'm gonna say too, you call
your friend at the Times.
You have friends at every
single newspaper in the city.
You can put everybody on
this, just like anonymous tip.
Because the thing is, you
can't use this hard drive
in a court of law, but you can put people
onto everything here for
them to go hunt it down.
- Yeah, maybe we do
like a full court press.
I'm gonna hit up my
friends from the bookstore
who do a lot of like local politics work
and give them all the
names of these, like,
bought city council
members and comptrollers,
I mean all of them, just.
- Yeah, I think this is
maybe Pete, 'cause Pete,
have you done your downtime
activity yet or no?
What was yours?
- Yeah we started with Pete's.
- Yeah, it was the first one.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- So Kingston, this might
be your downtime activity,
is like this sort of
full court press here.
- I think so, yeah.
- But you head down to
the Shens right now.
You guys arrive down on
Mott Street in Chinatown.
You head past Columbus Park,
where you see a group of
older women practicing Tai Chi
in the early morning sunlight,
tons of people moving through
the streets talking happily.
You see shops on the corner,
you pass by Canal Street,
you see that there are
tons of groups of teens
out in these big median strip parks,
people on park benches
drinking giant bubble teas
having a great time.
You see the smell of incredible food
coming out from this massive restaurant,
and across the street you see
a little tiny narrow staircase
going up to an ancient like
diamond patterned glass door
that has a couple of Chinese characters
up on the front of it.
Kingston, you know that this
is the Shen family building.
Much like the Browns up in Harlem,
this family has owned their
own building for a while.
- I lead the way.
- You walk up,
and as you approach,
you knock on the door.
The door opens, and you
see that there is a...
Hold on one second.
There is a beautiful older woman,
her hair tied back in a bun.
She's got a ton of like fun
jewelry, dressed very sharp,
like, white, sort of fashion
forward button up shirt,
black pants, high heels.
She looks and you and goes,
"Oh my goodness, Kingston Brown?
A visit from the voice of the city?"
Mwah, mwah, gives you
a kiss on each cheek.
- It's been too long,
it's been much too long.
I'm sorry I couldn't get down here sooner.
- She smiles.
She's sort of got graying
hair tied up in a bun.
She looks and says, "Oh,
you have some friends here.
Your friends all..."
- Yes, very much so.
- Wonderful, then step right this way.
She closes the door, slides the doorknob
through the wood like
liquid to the other side,
opens it back up, and you guys
see a beautiful stone bridge
extending through mountaintops
covered in clouds.
Right this way.
And she begins to walk
down, and goes like,
"Can I get you guys some coffee, tea?
I think we have some,
like, green tea in bottles,
we have some water, we have mineral water,
whatever it is you guys would like."
- You know I love a green tea.
I'm never gonna say no to a green tea.
- A little cloud floats over
and she pulls some, like,
vapor covered, refrigerated
like sort of zero sugar
green tea bottles out of this thing,
hands them out to people,
opens one for herself, takes a sip.
She goes, "Danny? Do you
want to come out and say hi?"
As you guys walk out, the bridge extends
to this first sort of mountain.
There's a large fountain
in it filled with coins.
She steps through the fountain
and motions for you guys to follow,
and you are in a palatial room
that has a massive plasma screen,
and you see there's this
young teenage sorcerer kid
who looks up, he's got like
scenester kind of BluBlockers,
a T-shirt, huge chunky sneakers.
There is a wall of like
extremely fine sneakers
on the wall behind him,
going in all directions,
like ultimate sneakerhead
kid playing video games
and just sort of like floating in the air
on this puff of cloud.
You see he looks up, goes,
"Hey what's up, I'm Danny.
Nice to meet you guys."
You see that Liu Yang looks over and says,
"Danny, stand up, come here."
He floats, and you get the
impression that this kid
hasn't touched the ground in years,
specifically to keep his
sneakers in mint condition.
(Siobhan and Ally laugh)
- He comes over and says-
- Yes, dog, dude.
- He looks and you and says, "Oh, word."
He's like, "Dude, are you Pete Conlan?
You're the Vox Phantasma, right?"
- Yeah, hey.
- Hey, I was talking to
Ana and Amelia Ortiz.
Are you like, here on business
right now, or are you like,
what's kind of the, what's up?
- Yeah, I mean, if you're
talking like, you know,
I don't do that anymore, actually.
- sh*t, sh*t. Cool cool cool.
Yeah yeah yeah, for sure.
- I'm not, you know, that
was just a me choice.
I don't judge.
I just get really awkward,
I'm not used to being this
f*cking person in an interaction.
- Yes.
- I mean, I don't judge.
One day at a time,
it works if you work
it and you're worth it.
- You see Danny is like, "Cool
cool, no worries no worries.
Welcome to the house of Shen."
You guys see teleporting in
are two very kind looking older men.
One of them has a bald head and appears
to be the sort of like, the
patriarch of the family here,
and you see that there is
an extremely brawny man
standing next to him who also looks older,
and you see just clearly doesn't have
like a family resemblance
to the others here,
and appears to be this
older patriarch's partner.
Sofia, you immediately
clock from the partner
that is is a like very powerful monk.
You can like feel the
ki radiating off him.
Jung Wei, who is the old
patriarch of the family,
looks and says,
"Well, as I live and breathe,
Kingston Brown from uptown."
(Brennan laughs)
- Jung, it's so good to see you.
I'm sorry, I was just apologizing earlier.
You know, I should be
coming down here more often.
I mean, this green tea is
incredible, and no calories.
Not a one.
- Nope, no calories in that.
They only sell it in shops
down here around the corner.
We get it, it's not like
you can just buy that
at any old place, it's great.
You know, why do you need
so much sugar in everything?
You go to buy a regular tea, it's like,
no, I just want to be evened
out, a little boost of energy,
of clean natural energy.
- Thank you, thank you.
- It's great, it's excellent.
- I love tea.
- You see he says,
"I can tell from your
ornate teapot there."
- I freaking love tea.
Do you think I could get some of this,
just to have in my little tea box?
- Sure, yes, of course.
You see that Jung Wei
looks over to a wall that has
this incredible, sick, like,
clearly Danny has painted this.
It's like a spray paint graffiti
dragon covering the wall.
Iga, you sense from the
Shen family that they are
draconic bloodline sorcerers like you.
So you see Danny hits this wall.
The wall parts, and you see
this ancient, spiraling helix
of shelves and drawers opening up,
kind of spinning into infinity.
One of them opens and
a small baggie of tea
with a beautiful little
gilded character on it,
and you see there's a small price tag
that Jung Wei just rips
off and tosses and says,
"For the Vox Phantasma,
on the house, please."
- I appreciate it so
much, this is so special.
I put it in my little box.
- You see he says, "Yes,
very very special,"
and looks back at the
infinite series of drawers
spinning off.
This is very special, of course.
- Rare, rare, cool, beautiful tea.
- Yes, extremely rare, it's...
You see that he looks
over at Kingston and says,
"To what do we owe the honor of this...
Oh, by the way, my partner Li Ji."
And you see that the monk
sort of nods and says,
"Welcome down to Chinatown.
It's rare to see so many
of the champions of
New York City gathered.
I hope everything's all right."
And raises an eyebrow.
- Oh, we're here on big business.
There's a lot to take care of.
- Oh, good movie.
- What are we here on?
- Big business.
- Big business?
- Good movie, I love that movie.
- Oh, cool.
- You see Danny looks up and says,
"Starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin,
hell yeah, great film."
- Oh, you know, I wasn't even
talking about that movie.
A classic.
- I was a kid.
I was a really young kid.
- I wasn't born yet.
- I saw that in theaters
five times. Five times.
Lily Tomlin is a gift! Anyway.
I just wanted, we're here
for a number of reasons,
one of which being this,
and I don't know where we have the egg,
but I think I produce it.
- You've got it, man.
- Yeah, I produce the egg.
How big is the egg?
- About that big.
- Okay yeah, that's what I thought, yeah.
- You've just been carrying it around.
- Yeah, I just-
- Take it out of an enormous
f*cking messenger bag.
Kingston, you see the entire
Shen family looks around.
There's a moment where Li
Ji is like looking around
at everyone else who
immediately clocks it.
This other monk is like,
"What, what's going on?"
And you see that Jung Wei looks and goes,
"Where on Earth did you get this?"
- My I introduce Iga Lisowski?
- Hi, hello, it's nice to...
This is really beautiful, what
you've done with this place.
I like it, it's like a mix
of old and new, it's good.
- Well, some, yes.
We try to keep as much
old around as possible,
don't we, Danny?
And you see Danny just
goes like, "What's up?"
And says, "Yes, the
traditions of the past.
Remember, dragons specifically rooted
in the magic of the past, and
if you f*ck with it too much,
it f*ck things up, doesn't it?"
And you see he looks and
says, "Sorry, my grandson is-"
- No, no, my children.
- Yes, you understand.
- I get it.
They're growing up here,
it's different here.
- 100%.
You see that Jung Wei goes,
"Well, the Shen family has
been blessed for a long time.
I take it you're here
because of the Dragon of
Bleecker Street, yes?"
- Yeah, I mean, of course,
I have my own relationship
with the dragon,
but I don't know what
role this egg has to play
in the future, and, you know,
if there's a possible new
Dragon of Bleecker Street.
- Jung Wei sort of manifests
this scroll that he opens
and turns it to you, Kingston,
and it shows this awesome
drawing of the Shen family
coming for the first time
to New York in the 1870s,
settling in Chinatown,
and bringing an egg with them.
You see that Jung Wei looks up and says,
"Our family keeps in touch
with the branches of the family
that still remain in China,
and truthfully the Shen family
keeps in touch with our cousins honestly
anywhere that there is a Chinatown.
We have cousins is San Francisco,
we have cousins in Philadelphia,
we have cousins all over the world.
Our dragon is still very
much alive and well in China,
where the mother of the
Dragon of Bleecker Street,
the original Dragon of
Bleecker Street, resided.
We brought this egg with
us to New York in the 1870s
along with a number of treasures, relics,
different things to help
us defend and protect
our family and our
people, and we ended up...
There was a period in the 1870s,
towards the end of the 1870s,
where something was attacking the city.
We lost a tremendous number of scrolls.
They just went blank,
and the egg
began to resemble this."
You see that Jung Wei rolls
the scroll down and shows you
a portrait of this like
dragon's egg that is covered
in like beautiful, like,
red and gold characters,
but also like wood etchings
and newspaper, it looks like,
and it looks like a f*cking 1870s version
of the egg you're holding now.
You see Jung Wei looks and says,
"The egg hatched here in New York
and from the moment it was born,
my great grandfather
reared the young dragon hatchling
with the knowledge that it was
a great and mythical creature
with the knowledge that
it would be a protector
of this new city and of our family.
And it found its cavern,
it started its hoard,
and thus was born the
Dragon of Bleecker Street.
We are well aware that the
dragon passed away in 1994,
but it seems a new egg has
in fact been discovered.
This is very portentous."
Kingston, give me an insight check.
- [Lou] I would love to.
- And actually, anyone can
give me an insight check.
- Yeah, I'll do that.
- I'm 23.
- Two.
- Two?
- 12.
- Cool.
Kingston, with an insight of 23,
I think Kingston thinks about
how good and glorious and larger than life
the Dragon of Bleecker Street was,
and there's something about the way
Jung Wei is talking about, like,
that the dragon was raised,
and connects that to the way
that the dragon was raised, right?
That like Jung Wei's grandfather...
That it wasn't raised by another dragon,
it was raised by humans,
but it was raised by humans
who were imparting on it
the importance of its mythic station.
So you see Jung Wei goes,
"That is quite a treasure
you hold in your hand."
Jung Wei looks at you, Iga, and says,
"We would be happy to help
you with the specifics
of what it is that dragons
need or how they work, or-"
- Oh my goodness, yes, I
would love that. Thank you.
- The Shen family just rolls it on out.
Danny like runs upstairs into
an extra-dimensional space,
comes back with like a whole
bunch of awesome, like,
bags of medicine, teas to
brew, incredible, like,
powerful ancient like nuts and
berries and bundles of twigs
and all this crazy stuff.
Scrolls and scrolls.
It's basically like Doctor Spock, like,
"What to Expect When You're Expecting"
but for dragons, hands it off to you.
But I think you both notice
that there's not a lot of, like,
parenting guides in here.
Jung Wei says, "There
was a period of time,
a long period of time, where
the dragon was a child,
was not safe to travel out on its own,
was, you know, not too dissimilar.
It was, I think, 15 or so
years before the dragon
was powerful enough to fend for itself."
- So you're saying somebody's
just gonna need to, like,
take care of and raise this
dragon like one of his own,
just to make sure that it can be something
for the city of New York
long off into the future?
- Sounds like a job for me.
- Kingston's heart,
like, stops for a second
when Pete says this.
Oh, we're joking, we're joking, yeah.
- I'm just kidding.
Dude, that sounds like you, man.
- Yeah, yeah.
You know, but I'm also,
I'm old, and Liz is...
I mean, we already got a
dog in the house, you know,
I don't know how she's gonna feel about
a dragon in the house.
- You see that Liu Yang goes like,
"Yeah, you do already have a dog,
so that's probably gonna
be hard, yeah, for sure."
- I bet dogs are more
work than dragons, though.
Dogs seem like a lot of work.
- Oh, Bruce is a ton of work.
- Yeah, so if you're already
used to it, you might...
It might not feel like,
they always say, like,
oh, you know, if you have
two cats versus one cat,
it's kind of the same thing.
- Yeah.
- Two cats versus one cat.
- Yeah, one dog and one
dragon versus just one dog.
It's the same.
- It's either that or Sofia has
an angel baby and a dragon
baby at the same time.
- We're not gonna put that on nobody.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- I think I like slap,
like, Kingston's back,
and I'm like, you know that
this is perfect for you.
Like, come on, man.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know.
It's just, it almost seems, like,
too perfect, you know?
It's like one of those
situations where it's just like,
how did this fall into my lap?
- Because you deserve it, man.
- Because you deserve it.
Let something too perfect happen to you.
- Yeah.
- I minor illusion a cigar.
- You see-
- On the egg, like the egg is smoking.
- You guys load Kingston
up with all this like gear
from the Shen family.
Jung Wei says, "And we
will of course be here
to aid you with any magical
concerns of the like, but-"
- Perhaps you'd like
to come to Greenpoint,
meet my family, like we
could have a big family...
Is that asking too much of you?
Just, like, dragon
family to dragon family?
- Iga's got her own interdimensional
space, much like yours,
where you all can go disappear.
- Your place is very beautiful,
I think you will like mine as well.
Mine does, to be fair,
have a dragon in it.
- You see Jung Wei looks
over at you and goes like,
"Oh, you've got to have an
extra-dimensional space.
I mean, in New York?"
- New York is so small!
- It's so small! The square footage!
It's about the square footage!
Absolutely, yes, of course!
- I could use one, I live
in a studio with my mother.
- You see Danny just goes, "Woof."
You see Jung Wei goes,
"Don't be an as*h*le, Danny!"
You see Danny takes a huge flat
brim and puts it on his head
and is like, "All right,
I'm gonna go out, later."
And just teleports out of
here in a flash of runes.
You see that
Jung Wei looks and says,
"I'm so glad we could be of help.
The last piece of advice I will give is,
it will take a tremendous,
without a dragon present,
it's very unlikely that
the egg will hatch.
The original egg only hatched
because it was in the presence
of a completed hoard,
which the dragon eventually moved
into its cavern in Bleecker Street.
Without a completed hoard,
the dragon will not be
able to survive hatching.
Moreover, without a mother
present that can provide
the magical heat necessary for incubation,
it will need some connection to,
as strange as it is to say,
a source of its own magic
in order to be able to hatch.
This is easier when there's
other draconic magic
flying around, but you would need access
to some other powerful spells
of the original Dragon of Bleecker Street
in order for this new dragon to hatch."
- So, hold on.
Does that mean I need to go find...
So you're saying I should...
Sorry. I, Lou, I'm confused.
So it's like, we need that same kind of...
Is the magic of the
mother or that connection
just draconic in nature
or specifically to, like,
the Dragon of Bleecker Street draconic?
Like, New York draconic?
- I think Jung Wei clarifies and says,
"The egg as I'm examining it right now
would need to have its
hatching process begin
by exposure to a powerful
magic of the previous dragon
that called this place home in order to,
in the same way of a coronation,
to assume the title."
- I know! Wait a second!
This is what we call
Kugrash's familiars in for.
- The spicy pigeon and the c*ck.
- This is-
- That's it.
- Yeah.
- To bring back-
- To bring back...
To hatch this dragon.
- To hatch the egg.
We need to get the...
We didn't know what we needed them for,
because we can only like
call them together once.
We get the hoard.
- But we need to complete the hoard,
and the hoard is Pete Stuyvesant's leg!
- And those other six
things we don't know.
- And the other six too.
- And the other stuff!
- And one of them is a scrap of paper,
which is absolutely gonna be hard.
- Absolutely bonkers, yeah.
- Finding a scrap of
paper in New York City?
How difficult can it be?
- We can look at the
coins in the river like,
maybe one of these.
- I'm going through my purse and I have
so many scraps of paper in there.
- I lean into Kingston and I'm
like, it's your coin, right?
- That was my guess off the
top, but it's like right here,
I was like, Kug is looking at me.
Yeah, yeah, let him go ahead.
- Cool.
So yeah, Sofia, you
realize that that, yeah,
that that hatching makes perfect sense.
So the hatching is actually not a trial.
That's something you guys
have already figured out how to do.
You have the three spirits.
Kugrash could be summoned
to do specifically that.
However, the scary thing Jung
Wei said was that thing about
the dragon not being
able to survive hatching
without access to a completed hoard.
So that remains the big question mark.
- All right.
- We need to get these
seven mysterious artifacts.
- You see that Liu Yang
looks at you and goes,
"Seven mysterious artifacts?"
And you see she looks
over at Li Ji and goes,
"Fun. That's fun."
And Li Ji the monk just crosses
his huge arms and is like,
"God, so fun. You guys are
gonna have such a great time."
- It's a grouping idea,
right? It's a grouping idea.
- It's great when there's...
I feel like you want three things missing,
you want seven things missing,
or you want nine things missing.
- Those are the magic numbers.
- Maybe 13, I would say 13.
- I like 13, too.
- At a stretch.
- 12.
- Just imagine though, for a
second, four things missing.
I mean, come on, what is that?
- That's crazy, what kind of
a person loses four things?
- Disgusting, just too
neat. Symmetry, ugh.
- Jung Wei goes like,
"Listen, eight is clearly
the lucky, fun number."
And Danny teleports back
and is like, "Boo to eight."
You see Jung Wei says,
"I'm a traditionalist,
I feel like eight is the luckiest number,
but that's just me."
You see that the Shen family
gives you all this f*cking dope-a*s gear.
Jung Wei gives you a big
hug, Kingston, and says,
"I'm so glad that you were
able to help. Best of luck.
You know that if you need
us, you need only call on us.
We'll be ready if he city is in danger."
- Thank you, and again,
it's so nice to come
down and visit you guys.
I'm gonna come by more often,
if only to get more tea.
If only to get more tea.
- Oh please, of course,
we'll get some extra.
Send a cloud, send a whole cloud with him.
A little cloud full of green
teas comes out behind you.
Just take the cloud,
you'll get it back to us
when you get it back to us.
- Okay, hey, if you insist,
I will take the cloud of green tea.
- The Shen family happily
waves from the door.
You guys head out, hell yes.
- It's a cool place.
- Right?
- Yeah.
- It's a cool place.
- Huge revelations abound.
Last downtime activities,
or I think Kingston,
that's just a free scene.
What is Kingston's downtime
activity that week?
- I'm gonna call Willy
and ask to hang out.
- You don't get an immediate
response from Willy.
- Oh, sh*t.
- That's so scary.
I text a couple of other
friends in Brooklyn.
Just, like, fantastical
friends in Brooklyn,
to see if anyone gets back.
Like Buddy, I text Buddy and, you know.
- The on off, the green light red light.
- Green light red light.
- Yeah.
- Buddy gets back to you and is like,
"Hey, Kingston, yeah.
I've been texting about this Thursday,
I was gonna ask if I could bring
a friend to the poker game,
and I haven't heard back
from Willy in a couple days.
I was thinking about
heading over to his spot
to try to check up on him."
- Yeah, yeah, that
sounds like a good idea.
I might hoof it over there right now.
Who are you gonna bring to poker?
- You know, it's funny, I'm
seeing somebody these days.
- What?
- Yeah, you know.
I know it's like you don't bring
your SOs to the poker game,
but, I don't know.
- Who is it, if I may pry?
I don't want to pry if
it's a secret, but...
- Her name's Urina,
she's a piss elemental,
and it's just, I don't know,
it's been really special.
- Okay. Okay, sure, sure.
Buddy, I'm so happy for you.
I'll let you know if I
hear anything from Willy.
- Yeah, you know, I appreciate it, man.
Things are really looking up.
It's gonna be a good holidays.
- Yeah. Yeah, it is, it is.
- All right.
- Take care.
- You too.
- Yeah, I'm going to Brooklyn
to see if I can track
down any sign of Willy.
- You head over to Brooklyn ASAP.
You knock on the door
of Willy's apartment.
The door is open.
You walk inside and
immediately sort of look back.
Reaching for the door is
a solid brick statue of Willy,
completely disanimated.
- [Siobhan] No!
- Like, disanimated completely?
- You're looking at a piece of art.
You're looking at a brick statue.
His face looks scared.
- No!
- Ooh, ooh ooh.
Can I make a perception check
or an investigation check
as to, like, the apartment or the entryway
to see if I can glean anything?
- Yeah, you can go for both.
Give me a perception and investigation.
- Perception is gonna be 25.
Investigation is gonna be 19.
- Okay.
- Yeah.
- Willy is, a 25 perception.
Willy is scared and you
see his mouth is open
because he's in the middle of
speaking as he's been frozen.
- Mm-hm.
- There are letters in Hebrew
on the roof of his mouth.
You see two letters.
You see two letters in
the roof of his mouth.
It's weird because they're off center.
They're not centered.
There's one letter on the
top of the roof of his mouth,
and then one other to the right of it.
- He should have three.
- Do I know he should have three?
- Give me a religion check.
- Hey.
That's a mod 20.
- Ooh, that's so good!
You've done medicine checks on him before
and asked him to open his mouth
so that you could put, like,
the tongue depressor in there.
You've seen three in there before.
You don't know
what the first of the letters is.
You remember what it looked like,
but I don't think Kingston...
Or does Kingston speak every
language? I forget, no.
- I'm a polygot.
- Polyglot, you do speak...
So you do know that he's missing a letter.
You read the two letters in his mouth.
Hold on one second.
The letters are Mem and Tav,
which spells the Hebrew
word Met, which means death.
You don't know what the
first one is supposed to be,
but you do know who does.
You have a friend out in Crown Heights
who is a rabbi and an old friend of yours
who you think might be
able to help you with this.
- Yeah, can I take a bunch of
like blurry photos and just,
you know, just desperately
trying to get a good angle
with my like cell phone camera inside?
- Your big case that opens
like a book, and you're like.
- Drop some credit cards in his mouth.
- Yeah, a bunch of my thumb in the photo.
Of course Kingston is dead
serious in this moment,
but yeah, there's just ton of like photos,
ah damn, I got too much
thumb in there, all right.
Take a bunch of photos and I guess I like
put a hand on Willy's
shoulder and I'm just like,
we gonna get these b*stards.
And then I head out to Brooklyn.
- [Brennan] Hell yes.
You get these photos.
Kingston, you pop up in Crown Heights
where an old good friend,
this guy was a good friend
of yours back in the 90s
when you were first starting out,
was extremely helpful with
Mummy of the Met stuff
back in the day.
This is Rabbi Mike Salters.
You see, young, handsome black
rabbi from Crown Heights.
You see he comes out into the
street, gives you a big hug,
and goes, "Kingston Brown from way uptown.
How's it going, man? You're looking good."
- Rabbi Mike, good to see
you, man. Hey, what's up?
I'm sorry to jump right into business,
but Willy's in trouble, man.
I saw these photos,
and I show them to him,
and I'm like, yeah, I don't know.
I know I've looked in this
mouth before doing medical stuff
and there's a letter
missing and I know that
these two letters together
spell death, and yeah, man,
I'm just out of sorts, so what's going on?
- He looks at you and says,
"Okay, hold on, let me go get my..."
He rushes back in, he comes
out with what looks like
a special set of like chisels
and hammers around his belt.
He's like, "Let's not waste
any time, man, let's hit it,"
and heads back with you to Willy's spot.
On the train he's just
talking to you going like,
"Okay, so basically,
you take three letters, Alef Mem Tav.
That spells the word
Emet, which means truth.
On the roof of a golem's mouth,
that should give you
what you're looking for.
That gives you the animation
you're, you know...
You spell Alef Mem Tav, Emet, truth,
God animates the golem."
And you see that you walk
into Willy's apartment,
he goes in and just starts
chiseling that first letter
that will turn the word
death into the word truth,
and as he does so,
you see he reaches into a divine place,
offers a rabbi's blessing on Willy,
speaks in Hebrew and ends it with,
"Willy, we need you back, my man."
Willy...
(Brennan gasps)
Kingston Brown from uptown! Rabbi Mike!
And gives you guys a big
hug and twirls you around
in the air as both of you are like, ugh!
And get squeezed.
- Oh damn, Willy, all
right, all right, all right,
put us down.
Hey, what's going on, man?
You know we found you frozen.
- I didn't know. I went out.
I was seeing the neighborhood, and I...
I walked by a group of people that...
Of course they cannot see me,
but truly they could not see me.
I was hiding in the brick wall,
but the roof of my mouth,
they read it.
These are children from this neighborhood,
and they could not read the words.
They did not know what they meant.
Something from beyond reached out
and began to scrub and scratch away
the first letter,
and I could feel myself dying.
Yeah, Rabbi Mike looks
at you and goes like,
"That's an easy way to disanimate a golem
is to just erase that first letter."
- We've been dealing
with that kind of stuff
all over the city.
And I think I explain, I take
some time to explain to them
Null and kind of the stuff
that we've been dealing
with and Gladiator.
And I'm like, we got plans
with the other champions
going down that we're working on,
but anything you guys can do
here in the neighborhood to be,
you know, rectifying Null,
would be greatly appreciated.
- Rabbi Mike nods and says,
"Okay, I can talk to people."
And Willy says, "Are
you keeping an eye out
for anything around you
that is trying to erase and
stop them from doing this?"
Willy looks up at you, Kingston, and says,
"Thank you for finding me."
Rabbi Mike nods his head and says,
"This was a good call, Kingston."
And Willy goes,
"What brought you here to look
for me in the first place?"
- Oh, well, it's not a pressing issue,
so maybe we talk about it
another time, but I don't know.
It hit me a couple of days back,
I've never really asked or thought
about any of the other Vox
Populi that came before me, so,
I was just gonna come
by and see if you'd ever
run around with any of them.
- You see Willy smiles and says,
"I knew the other Vox Populi."
And you see Willy looks back
and kind of thinks and remembers,
and gets a little bit sad.
You see Mike looks up at Willy
and nods and goes, "Yeah."
Willy says, "We should talk sometime
about the other Voxes and the
history of New York City."
He says, "Right now I
am going to make sure
that I do not get erased again so easily."
Willy heads out to the street.
As Mike walks out with you,
he goes like,
"I think that would be a good thing
for you and Willy to talk about,
the history of the Voxes in New York, man.
That would be really good."
- Hey, thank you, Mike.
I really appreciate that.
Hey, I appreciate you
jumping into action, man.
I know we're like 30
years out from the Met,
but you still got it, man.
You still got it.
- Hey, you know, I'm here for
you to rely on me, all right?
I'm happy to be of service, and Willy...
Willy's a good...
You know, it's...
Do you know Willy's real history?
Do you know much about him,
talking about his past?
- I mean like, you know,
only what he's wanted to talk about.
I ain't no reporter, so
I've never gone in on it,
but, you know.
- You see he looks at you and says,
"Willy goes way, way back.
You know, speech is an indication
of the presence of a soul,
and Hashem doesn't
afford golems the ability to speak
because true golems don't
have that power, that ability,
because that is an extremely
special, divine gift.
The word, the spoken
word, the written word,
is an extremely important gift.
Willy is not only a golem,
the reason Willy can talk
and most golems can't
is that Willy was a,
or part of Willy was a man at one point.
The Golem of Williamsburg
that was created for him
was created to hold the spirit of a man
who gave his life to protect
his family and his people.
So Willy has a lot of
history and has known
a lot of Voxes and even knew one
back when he was not the
Golem of Williamsburg."
And you see Mike kind of
smiles thinking about it.
There's just, you know, a lot of heart
to this golem you've
known for a long time.
He-
- Such a cis male thing to be like,
I never asked, I'm not a reporter.
(all laugh)
Nah, your f*cking amazing backstory.
We just f*cking play poker, look,
I don't ask, were you a man?
- We just talk and hang out, you know?
- You see he looks at you and says,
"Yeah, he's been around a long time.
You know, there's actually this
exhibit over at Ellis Island
where you can see Willy
in the background of one of the photos.
There's this crazy wing
that has a lot of like
Unsleeping City stuff, like, hidden in it.
He's been around a long time,
man. A long, long time."
- Hey, damn, Mike, I appreciate you...
I don't know, I guess I never
really thought about it.
About how long he's been here.
But yeah, I don't know,
we'll have to get into that sometime.
- Mike smiles.
He looks at you and says,
"It's great to see you again,
man. The city's a big place.
Look, even when I knew you
when you were young, you know,
knowledge of history is not...
You were always a man
focused on the present moment
of what we can do for people today,
and the world needs those people.
And, I mean, memorizing ancient histories
and knowing all the things
that happened before, that's...
I feel useful, is what I'm saying.
I'm happy I'm around to
be that person for you."
- I'm glad we got brothers
like you in the temple
holding it down, so.
- That's what I'm trying to
do every day, Kingston Brown,
give me a break.
- Yeah, big hug.
Hey, go get everybody
out there and please,
stop shopping with Gladiator, all right?
It's bad news.
- From the mouth of the
Vox Populi, let it be so.
And he gives you another big hug
and heads back to Crown Heights.
Let's go to Iga.
What is Iga doing for
her downtime activity?
- I think what I would like
to do is sort of engage
my network, my underground
criminal network.
- Mm-hm.
- And even my kids, maybe,
and have them be spreading
the word about Gladiator.
- Hell yeah.
- Through like posters,
through stories, like
maybe the kids can create
a social media presence.
Like, and even just like
being in the community
as I am in Greenpoint just, like,
getting people talking.
- Hell yeah.
- Getting the talking happening.
- Go ahead and give me a
downtime persuasion roll, DC 20.
- Mm mm mm, nope.
I'm gonna use a luck point.
- Go for it.
- And a different die.
Oh, so close! 17.
I'll use another luck
point, and another die.
- Here we go.
- Here we go, keep them going.
- 19.
- Ooh!
- This is your last one!
Last one!
- I'm gonna do it,
I'm gonna use it.
Nope, I don't get it.
- Oof, the dice didn't want it.
It's all right.
- Dice didn't want it.
I have one other thing
I want to do as well.
- Cool, what's the other
thing you want to do?
- I would just like to see if...
So we know the names of
all of these CEOs and CFOs
of Gladiator, et cetera?
- Yes.
- Can I see if any of their wives
are people who take readings from me?
(Brennan laughs)
- Go ahead and give me
an investigation check.
- Great.
12.
- A lot of their wives are not
people that have come to you
for readings, and you
think that's suspicious
because they run in the same circles.
So there's a suspicious lack of, like,
interaction with you in that way.
While you are working this week
on like getting your criminal network out,
Jess and Nick ask during
this week to actually go
into the box with you, if that's okay.
- Yes, absolutely.
- This is Nick's first time
traveling into the chest.
You go in, the realm is resplendent,
stretching in all directions.
Mountains, forests, there's like a desert
on the horizon now, there's
like an ocean somewhere else,
it's like this vast, fantastical realm.
Jessica takes off immediately
to go find Smoczmatka
and talk to her and study her.
You see the dragon mother
down in a forest glade
talking to Jessica.
You see Nick is wearing
his hoodie and sneakers
and has the peasant's
sword tied to his back,
and he looks up at you,
and you see he takes off
going into the depths of the castle.
- Nick, you know it's not
a toy. Where are you going?
Don't touch things in here!
Some of them are very cursed!
- You see he goes, "I'm
not gonna touch anything.
Not gonna touch anything, mom."
- Where are you going?
- He looks up at you and
says, "Do you want to come?"
- Yeah, I'll come.
- He walks sort of silently.
Nick walks down with you.
You see, quivering in the old
dragon's hoard, hiding there,
are all the ghosts of your family.
- Oh my god, why are you scared?
You're hiding behind the cage
because the dragon is on
the other side of the cage?
- The dragon, she breathes fire on us,
and we can't die but
it still hurt very bad!
- You already have the answer.
You say it out loud already.
You can't die! You are ghosts!
- Yes, but it is very scary!
- You're bad influences!
- You hear Jessica laughing
outside with the dragon.
Nick walks up, unsheathes
the peasant's sword,
and you see he goes,
"Hey grandma and great grandma
and great great grandma
and all the grandmas.
I'm Nick.
I was never supposed to
come into the chest, really,
or do stuff here.
I know my mom," and he
looks at you and says,
"I know my mom freed the dragon,
and I know that that's really upsetting
to you guys,
and I know that Jess is
like becoming a wizard.
So I wanted to offer up myself
because I don't think
it should end here.
Like, I don't think, I don't
think the chest is gonna end,
I think that the dragon
rules this space now is good,
but also, like,
and mom, like, you said it.
Like, we're not done."
- I'm just bawling.
- He's like, "We're not
done paying it back.
Mom broke the cycle of, like,
people in our family not
confronting their past
and not knowing where
their traditions come from,
and I think it's awesome that Jess
is like free because of that,
and I think it's awesome that mom
is like connected to the
dragon because of that.
So what I'm saying is,
if all of you are super
PO'd that there's not, like,
anyone that's gonna like
follow the old ways or the traditions,
I'm gonna offer myself up on the condition
that you guys give me all those secrets
and let me be magic, 'cause
I want to be magic too,
and I'm just, I'm not gonna...
I'll protect the chest, but I'm
not gonna use all this power
just to keep it secret forever.
I'm gonna use it to make
right what was wrong,
and even if this dragon is free,
there's a lot of other creatures out there
that probably aren't.
They're probably trapped like this,
and I think you guys
should give me your powers
so that...
So that we can use them to do something
instead of do nothing."
The ancient witch turns
to look at you, Iga,
and is like,
"Who is this boy? Why
he here in the castle?"
- He is my son. He's Nicholas.
He's your great great
grandson. He's a good boy.
- Iga, Nicholas is holding the sword here
and has offered to basically
not let this, like,
warlock tradition of the chest die out,
but you can tell, basically, like,
you can tell that he
doesn't have the power
to like hold these ghosts to this bargain.
- Do I have that power?
- You think you probably do.
- Then I use it.
- Your ancient ancestor goes like,
"First of all, a boy to do chest magic?
Crazy, would never work.
Number two, ah!"
And you hold your hand aloft
and the ghosts swirl
around Nicholas's sword.
He becomes a first level Hexblade warlock
(all cheering)
of the chest,
and you see that your
mother smiles and says,
"Nicholas is a good boy."
- He's a good boy.
- And that-
- Do I wish he'd told me
he was going to do this
before we did this?
Absolutely yes I wish he
would've told me, but yes.
- I thought you might say no!
I thought it was a good idea!
He smiles, gives you a
big hug, and is like,
"Hey mom, if there's like some secrets
about how the chest works
or like warlock stuff,
you could always teach me."
- Teach you. I'll teach you.
Well, the first rule is
don't come down here,
so I guess that's that, ugh.
- Incredible.
You guys mosey on out to outside,
laugh with the dragon,
Smoczmatka smiles at you
and your two magic kids,
magic brother and sister.
Sofia, your downtime.
What's Sofia doing during her downtime?
- I guess Sofia's just gonna
try to raise money for Pete,
go to meetings.
She wants to talk to Kingston,
but Kingston's been busy,
so I think she's just gonna,
also at night, just gonna
write down stories about Dale
to tell the baby.
- Oh my god.
(all groaning)
- Sofia, I'm gonna ask.
In terms of your downtime here,
are you gonna prioritize,
'cause you could absolutely make a living
and do these hair appointments,
but are you prioritizing meetings
during this period of downtime,
or are you prioritizing
getting this money?
- I can't do both?
- You can do both, because I'm gonna say
that making money is like
a normal activity, but.
- Yeah.
- But I might make you
roll with disadvantage
unless you prioritize
going to those meetings.
- I mean, I will have
to, I think that I was...
I think that I was, like...
This is hard, because I
definitely felt comfortable
prioritizing working, 'cause I felt like
I actively had endangered
everyone because of Tony,
so I was cool to prioritize work for that.
However, Pete really hooked me up,
but I also know that in order
to show up for my friends,
I don't want to be a liability,
so I guess I will prioritize meetings.
I'll sell some of my stuff, too.
Like, is there any way
I can make quick cash?
Does my mom, like, have any money?
I could borrow it from her.
- Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I'll say this.
You prioritize meetings, so you...
You move up to a D10.
I'm gonna say,
let's go ahead with that
hair appointment stuff.
Looking at Sofia's proficiencies,
I think she actually does have
a hairdressing proficiency,
unless I'm mistaken.
- I don't have it on my
sheet, but that's funny.
- It's under tools, it says hairdressing.
- Okay.
- So that's gonna be a plus nine,
so all you have to do is,
you can roll with disadvantage,
you just need the lower
one to be an 11 or higher.
- Okay.
- And then we can talk
about borrowing money,
but let's see what happens.
- Okay.
15 and a 16! Yes!
(all cheer)
- Oh my god!
- Sofia is prioritizing meetings,
there are so many dark brunettes
that are desperate to
get their hair bleached.
- I talked them all out
of it because I was like,
it's really really tough on your hair,
it's gonna be like a really long process
that in the long run you might regret,
but now I'm just like,
yeah, let's see you blonde!
- At the end of that week, Sofia,
you are able to hand Pete a stack, 2.500.
- I weep. I'm just bawling.
Like, no, we'll get this back to you!
- I don't need it!
- I think I tell her
about how someone paid,
and I just tell her about
all that sketchy stuff,
and we're not quite
sure what happened, but.
- Can I do an insight check
if I think it was secretly Kingston?
- Do an insight check.
- 13.
- You don't think it was Kingston.
- Really?
- As you're there,
both of you make a perception check.
- Whoops, hold on, c*ck.
- 11.
Oh, sorry.
- I got a 18.
- Sofia, you see Pete on his smartphone
has like a zillion
notifications on his mail app,
his like email
of just like unread spam and stuff.
You get a sense about his mail.
- What's up?
- Have you checked your email?
Maybe there's like something from Lugash
saying hey, I hooked you up,
or are you being spied on by
Gladiator because of your mail?
- Pete, you remember how
many bumper email addresses
you have that you haven't checked
'cause you haven't been
dealing in a while.
- Oh yeah, I just have
a ton of like, yeah.
I mean, yeah, there's never
anything in there, right?
I, like, scroll.
- On your third bumper email,
you see an email from a
woman named Maddie Park.
- Oh.
It's the PI.
- The PI.
You see she says,
"Hey Pete, 53\/3N told me it
was cool to contact you here.
I need to write you an
extremely sincere apology.
I've been working as a...
I've been doing black
hat work for a long time
and working as a PI.
I haven't always taken
jobs that I was proud of,
but my stomach was turned and
my heart completely shattered
when I found out that
your transphobic family
had hired me to find you,
something I never, ever, ever
would've done if I'd known.
I've been f*cked up by
this knowledge for years,
I'm much more careful now
than I was when I was in my early 20s
and first started doing this work,
but I know that apology's not enough.
Actions speak louder than words.
I settled your debt with 53\/3N.
I hope, this is not a huge cost to me,
I see it as returning
the money and then some
that your shitty family paid me for
in order to find you and
put you in harm's way.
If there's ever any other
way I can repay the debt,"
in parentheses, "free work,
happy to help, let me know.
I hope all is well with you.
From the bottom of my heart, I'm sorry.
Maddie."
- I email immediately my
actual phone number and say,
let's meet up soon.
We have a black hat hacker
that owes me a favor.
We need to get all of this
Gladiator stuff to her,
we need to f*cking take them down.
Wow! Cool!
- Hell yes.
So you guys contact Maddie. We're running-
- Maybe she could get my tablet running.
(Brennan laughs)
- The last thing, I think,
everyone's rolled for downtime stuff,
and I'm gonna say Kingston,
you did a ton of like going out
to these different places
and doing this stuff.
So you guys reach out to Maddie Park.
Pete, you get a text on your
phone from Maddie, going,
"Hey Pete."
And you see that it's using, like,
some weird Signal, like,
it comes in like a weird app
that like auto-downloads on your phone.
- Love.
- And it says,
"Going after Gladiator? I'm in."
And that's all for this
episode of The Unsleeping City.
Tune in text week.
- Sick.
- For more thrilling adventures.
(Brennan hisses)
- Incredible.
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08x13 - Of Rats & Dragons
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A tabletop role-playing game show produced by and broadcast on Dropout and created and generally hosted by Brennan Lee Mulligan as the show's regular Dungeon Master.
A tabletop role-playing game show produced by and broadcast on Dropout and created and generally hosted by Brennan Lee Mulligan as the show's regular Dungeon Master.