- [Brennan] A list of the topics,
themes, and subject matter
featured in this episode
has been included in
the video description.
(spooky scary music)
(spooky music continues)
(spooky music continues)
(spooky music continues)
Hello, one and all!
Welcome back to another thrilling episode
of Dimension 20: Neverafter.
I'm your humble Dungeon
Master, Brennan Lee Mulligan.
With me, as always, are
our intrepid heroes.
Say hi, intrepid heroes.
- [All] Hi, intrepid heroes.
- Now, last we left off, whew!
Whew! We got a little scary!
- Spicy.
- [Lou] Got a little scary.
- A little spicy, a little scary.
Our intrepid heroes,
traveling through the
realms of the Neverafter
on the sort of second
incarnation in a new edition
of the tales of these fabled
fairy tale characters,
traveled all the way to
the village of Tuffeton,
there to fight a massive monstrosity,
a spider with the torso and head
of none other than young
Miss Muffet herself.
Saving Miss Muffet, though
now kind of transposed
with a spider head, saving
the young Miss Muffet
and rescuing the adults of Tuffeton
from an adult sleepover gone wrong.
- Non-sexual.
- From a non-sexual, fully
platonic, adult sleepover.
- Civic!
- Civic sleepover.
- [Zac] The full town.
- The full town, who had been sealed
in the walls and ceilings
of the buildings of the town
by a massive spider, were released,
and a wonderful party was
thrown at the Golden Chair.
This after, through Mother
Goose's magical book,
that sort of horrifying spider form
that had captured Miss Muffet
was sent through to
Scheherazade and her companions
on the other side of the book,
communicating in a book of her very own.
That seemed to unlock whatever
puzzle that had stymied her,
and she said to hold tight,
as she believed that
she was going to reach
perhaps some kind of entrance
from the Land of Birds
and Beasts, a new realm.
You guys are accumulating
realms pretty fast over here.
- Want a realm?
- [Brennan] Want a realm, anybody?
- Another realm!
- Having a lovely time
at the Golden Chair,
Pib slinked upstairs
to discover two creeps
talking to a woman in one
of the rooms of the inn.
The creeps were quickly dispatched
and revealed to be strange and horrifying
brambly, thorny demons
or spirits of some kind.
Taken apart, clear fairy magic.
And upon entering the room,
you found a single candle,
and young Pinocchio thought
to call out to his patron.
- Everyone wanted to meet my mom.
- Everyone wanted to meet Mom.
- Yeah, we're so glad we did.
- She was hot.
- Oh!
- And using a fairy candle to contact
a different entity
entirely, Pinocchio turned,
and we watched one of the
fairies of fairy tale legend
rend her eyes from her skull
as the Stepmother was exposed
in light for the first time,
and the horror was witnessed
by Little Red Riding Hood and Pinocchio.
- The two youngest members of the group.
- [Brennan] The two youngest
members of the group.
- The most impressionable.
- [Emily] The most curious.
- Exactly!
- Honestly,
the most fairy tale
thing we've done thus far
is subject kids to sh*t they
absolutely do not deserve.
- Yes.
- [Brennan] That's how
you know we're getting-
- They're both the ones whose moral
is listen to your elders.
- Yes.
- Listen to your elders.
You were shunted out of
that reality, seemingly,
as a colossal paper, parchment,
text Stepmother was screaming
through burning scraps of pages
in an endless, falling sea of
tattered pages and parchment.
Racing after you, a door opened,
and you were pulled out through
the door by Scheherazade
at the last possible moment,
and that is where we left off.
- [Ally] Wow.
- [Siobhan] Wow.
- Are we dead?
(Ally laughs)
- Tumbling through the doorway,
in a moment, you understand yourself
no longer to be falling.
You tumble harmlessly
onto a pretty soft floor
that is itself composed of
parchment, and on standing on it,
you realize immediately that
it is the type of parchment
that is resting on other parchment.
It has the very subtle give
of the thick pages of a book,
but it is, of course, the floor
of a large chamber that you are in.
You immediately realize that in addition
to not only you all,
but various and sundry
helpers such as Pinocchi-Crow,
the Itsy Bitsy Spider, Little Miss Muffet,
there are many other
figures standing in here.
You see the woman that you saw
in the book, producing
an illusion of herself.
You see Scheherazade.
She stands here wearing traveler's garb
and has a sword at her side
and a beautiful azure and gold book
and a sort of very heroic scar
over the side of her face.
And next to her, you see a
broad-shouldered, muscular man
who appears to be the
captain of a crew of sailors
that also now stand in this chamber.
- We're just kind of surrounded
by a really buff guy
and a bunch of sailors?
- Timothy, this is a different expression
than I'm used to seeing on you.
- I'm just really happy
to meet new people.
- Just a second ago, you were saying
that you really missed your husband.
- I do really miss my husband,
and I hope that he's having a great time.
- How are those apples doing, by the way?
- Oh god! They're just
leaking clear water.
- I think they're turning into cider.
- We see that the chamber you now stand in
appears to be almost a landing,
almost a place in a castle
that if you were going through ramparts,
you might get to a tower
that then split off into multiple walls,
kind of traveling in different directions.
And the walls,
the arched ceiling, are composed,
much like this screen before you,
of books and parchment intermingling.
Some of the books are as large
themselves as if for a giant.
One of the walls is just a
massive tome, 20 or 30 feet tall,
and then some of the archways
are sort of higgledy-piggledy
stacks of books
that just sort of come up,
that you could probably pick one out
and you don't know if you'd
collapse the arch or not.
Doesn't even look like
it's that secured in there.
Some of the window frames have pages
that you can see some text to,
and you look down on the floor
and see that there's even text
written on the parchment
here, incredibly fine,
but you do see the phrase
"once upon a time,"
beginning a fairy tale that
I don't know in this moment
you would take the full
time to begin to read.
Behind you, what was so clearly
a door as you were falling
you see is still a door, it
has sort of a knob in it,
but the knob itself is almost
like the handle of, actually,
a scroll, almost like this sort
of little wooden thing here,
and it's sort of the
bound covers of books,
and it looks of a bizarre geometry.
It looks almost like if a number of doors
had been sort of lined up in a row,
and then somehow melted
and kind of come together.
The angles of the door are not right.
The materials of the books
look somewhat different.
You see that there is another
door partially touching it
that's kind of starting to meld into it,
a bizarre, surreal gateway
whose arches have kind of formed together.
As you land in this moment,
you see that the travelers
who are here with you
all kind of look stunned,
and you see from their expression
that Scheherazade and Sinbad and the rest
have clearly seen, in opening the door,
did not miss what was
traveling swiftly after you.
- Scheherazade, hi, um...
- Mother Goose.
- It's great to meet you.
You have your book, as well.
- [Brennan] I have my book, as well.
- What just happened?
- The guardian got us back to our rock,
and we found there in the
tomb the directions to get us
to this place based on the
recommendation of someone
that I was able to contact in
my book, a man named Aesop.
- Oh.
- Pinocchio, what happened?
- I don't...
I guess...
I guess that's my mom.
- Pinocchio, that's your mom?
- Well, I had never really seen her
until that moment.
She's usually behind a door,
and I kind of talk to her shadow.
- Is your dad always back there, too?
- I don't know where he is now.
- Oh no.
- I just know that that thing
is where I've been getting my powers from.
- Oh.
- And who I've been (sighs) talking to.
- Yeah.
- Can I get some of my
little forest creatures
to go give Pinocchio a hug?
A little raccoon and a vole.
- Oh no, no, I don't need, I don't want-
- They're as big as him. Jesus!
- [Emily] Be careful,
don't send the woodpecker.
- You seemed really sad.
- Did you say Pinocchi-Crow is here?
- Literally the sound of
that die in my dice tray,
none of you can see Pinocchi-Crow,
and Pinocchi-Crow was
just here a second ago.
- Can I make a perception
check for Pinocchi-Crow?
- Yes.
- Can I give him the help
action by sniffing the air?
- [Brennan] Yes, absolutely.
- Perception?
That's a 16.
- On a 16, you cannot see Pinocchi-Crow,
but you also know that Pinocchi-Crow
can move unseen if he wishes.
- Is anything going on
you want to talk about?
- If he's invisible, maybe you could throw
Faerie Fire and it would reveal him.
- I mean, this place is full of books,
and we just got here, and
we just met these guys.
It feels kind of rude to just
start throwing fire around,
but I'm down.
- I'm overstimulated.
- It's been a real day.
- It's been a real day.
- [Lou] It's been a real day.
- Thank you for saving us.
- Yeah.
- My pleasure.
Pleasure to meet the rest
of you, pleased to meet you.
You see that the captain
says, Captain Sinbad.
It's a pleasure to meet all of you.
I understand that you, like us,
have been awakened
to the nature of the villainy
that has befallen our
various lands and seas.
- Yes.
- [Ally] Interesting.
- Captain Pib.
- Give me a deception check real quick.
- 24.
- Captain! I can tell.
Let me, ooh.
Fuzzy little guy. Got your little beans.
(Ally cackling)
He goes, I like you. What's
the name of your ship?
- Oh, my ship?
The Pinocchio.
- Oh.
- He's Pinocchio.
- [Lou] I'm Pinocchio.
- Are you made from the wood of the ship?
- Mm-hm.
- Yep.
- Cool, I didn't know that. You guys!
- We just don't talk enough.
- Well, it seems like we have
some very magical people around.
You have a missing bird?
- It's a bad bird, I think.
- [Lou] It's a pretty powerful bird.
- It's probably invisible and spying.
- We're a little bit
worried. What you saw before-
- So that's kind of where I
wanted to move the conversation.
- That person, before we
knew how scary they were,
gifted Pinocchio a bird
that has just one second
ago gone invisible.
- Yeah, and it kills for fun.
- All right, so evil bird
loose in this new realm.
- What is this place?
- As you ask that,
Scheherazade opens her mouth
kind of like this, and you hear,
The Lines Between.
And a figure emerges from the door
which opens in an opposite direction,
and the knob has shifted on it,
and stepping out of the door,
you see blinding light
coming from a beautiful field
of yellow grass and cypress trees.
And walking out, you see,
surrounded by animals,
not small forest creatures like yours,
but you see that there
is an old, white-bearded,
white-haired, sort of
pot-bellied, older black man,
wearing a white toga with sandals,
and he has a tiny mouse
riding on his shoulder,
and walking in beside him
are a lion and a mule.
The lion (snarls) walks out.
You see this older man says,
that is the name of this realm.
It is a pleasure to meet you all here.
I have been in communication
with Scheherazade,
to some degree, but I
understand there are some other
collectors of tales amongst us.
- Yeah. My name's Mother Goose.
It's great to meet you. Are you Aesop?
- Aesop.
It's spelled with the A at the top,
but it's actually pronounced Eee-sop.
- Oh, it's Aesop.
- Yeah.
- That's great.
- I don't like to correct people
right out of the gate, but you brought up-
- No, that's okay. I'm Mother Goose.
- [Zac] It's good to
get it out of the way.
- Good to get it out of the way up top.
I am the collector of tales
from the Land of Birds and Beasts.
These are some beasts.
- Wow. No birds?
- [Brennan] No birds at the moment.
- And you haven't seen any mean crows?
- Are there mean crows out here?
- Yeah, there's just one.
- [Murph] Just the one.
- Pinocchi-Crow.
- I clue him in on who Pinocchi-Crow is.
- You're named after your crow?
- No, it's the other, I got-
- The crow's named after my boat.
- His boat, the Pinocchio,
from which I was carved.
- The ship is older than the bird,
but the bird is older than Pinocchio.
- And we lost the ship a while ago.
- Do you have a ram?
- There are some rams
back there, absolutely.
- I might want to just cuddle with one
for a second down the road.
- You see the lion looks at you and says,
would you like to cuddle with an animal?
- Not just any animal.
- Pinocchio!
- Is that rude?
- The lion looks over
and is like, it's fine.
Everyone make an insight check.
(laughing)
- I got an eight.
- A natural 20.
- Natural 20. The lion, beyond hurt.
Beyond hurt. 100% devastated.
It's fine, no one has to
cuddle me if they don't want.
- I got you.
- [Brennan] It's all right.
- [Ally] Aw, wait! Wait, that's so cute!
- The lion flops down and is
like, I just like little guys.
You see that the mouse
sort of crawls down.
He really does like little guys.
I pulled a thorn out of his paw one time.
We've been best friends ever since.
- Oh my god, you're so small.
- I really don't want to hurt you.
- [Siobhan] I scoop up the mouse.
- You scoop up the mouse, he says,
I'm not in any danger
because the whole, you know-
- I think your master
might know of a story
about a scorpion and a frog.
(Brennan laughs)
- You see Aesop goes oh, that's right.
Mouse, stay away from him.
Actually, as you're looking
over at these beasts,
give me an insight check.
- Okay.
Natural 20.
- [Siobhan] Nice.
- Woo!
- You look up, and
you're immediately like,
something here is avoiding
eye contact with me.
And you look up, and there's
a sheen of golden light
as the door slowly closes.
Three animals came in here with Aesop,
a lion, a mouse, and a mule.
You look at the mule,
and you see Alphonse,
who is trying not to make
eye contact with you.
- [Siobhan] Son of a b*tch.
- Oh my god.
Hey.
- Oh, it's nice to meet you.
- Oh, is it nice to meet me?
We've never met before, huh?
- Well, you know, I'm the mule from Aesop-
- I take his little
mule head with my paws.
Where'd you go, buddy?
Where did you go when we
needed you most, my friend?
We were there in the
blood and sh*t together.
- Shut the f*ck up.
- And then you ran!
- Shut the f*ck up, man.
- You're the only one who lived!
We all f*cking died!
- I don't f*cking know.
I'll tell you everything.
I'll do whatever you want.
Please, just don't. I've got a good-
- Whatever we want? What
do we want from a mule?
- I got a good thing going
now, okay? Things are nice.
- How did you get here?
- I don't know! I ran.
I just kept running. I was so scared.
I'll tell you later, just be cool!
- Okay.
Tell me.
Tell me.
- Alphonse looks shaken.
Scheherazade and Sinbad
look, in the same way
that a lot of you guys look,
very magically capable.
They don't look weak by any means,
but they look like they've
been through some sh*t.
You look at Aesop and the lion
and the mouse and the mule.
They look healthy and fine.
It looks like whatever the
Neverafter is going through,
it's possible that the
Lands of Birds and Beasts
has not gone through.
Aesop looks at all of you and says,
this land here, The
Lines Between, is an area
(Brennan sighs)
I guess you could say beyond
our worlds, our realms,
but perhaps more to the
point, it is correct to say
that in some ways, these lands
are realer than our realms.
It's been, I'm sure, a long
journey for all of you here.
You will not tire in this place,
nor will you know thirst or hunger.
It is a strange land,
but as you can see, if
you care to look around...
You see he walks over,
and you see he goes up
and moves a book and turns
a book to some characters
in an alphabet you don't even recognize,
but just starts to look through,
and you see illustrations
of animals, rabbits,
tortoises, lions, mice.
And he turns around and says,
I discovered this place
some time ago, and there are some
beings here
that may be friendly to your cause.
I understand that the times of shadow
have come to the Neverafter.
- Yes, definitely.
- Mm-hm.
- Do you know what that is?
Do you have times of shadow where you are?
- There are resiliencies with
the Lands of Birds and Beasts
that some other realms do not share.
In fact, the Neverafter has
begun to grow and absorb
other realms, it is a peculiarity.
- Hm.
- Aesop looks at you,
and you see there's something, this-
you're talking to someone that almost has
an enlightened feeling or vibe.
He really has sort of
the bearing of a saint
or a bodhisattva or some kind of elevated,
there's something about him
that seems very above the level.
Looks at you and says,
in point of fact, I
believe that the Neverafter
may have even started as
more than just one realm.
He points to the weird
fusing doorways behind you.
Now that I've read the books here,
and you see that he says,
if you wish to follow me,
we may go and speak to some of
the custodians of this place.
There is much to learn here,
if there are questions that you have.
- Yeah, I have a lot of questions.
- Scheherazade nods her head
and says, myself as well.
- Do I see, does he have his own book?
Does Aesop have his own
book that he's carrying?
- He has an enormous
scroll slung over his back.
- Cool, okay.
- You see that he walks from this place.
The crow situation, at this
point a lot of time has passed.
You don't know where Pinocchi-Crow is.
- I mean, if I can't see him...
So much has happened.
I guess I would've been
politely scanning the room
to see in the dark.
- [Ally] Can you do a luck check?
- Tell me what kind of
check you want to make.
I can give you just a
straight investigation
or something like that,
if there's something
you want to try to do.
Arcana?
- They're both a minus one.
- Maybe performance.
- [Zac] Can I help?
- I'll do an arcana check,
and I'll take help from Puss in Boots.
- Cool, go for it.
- I mean, it just feels
like before we leave,
if we walk out of here,
Pinocchi-Crow is just loose, you know?
That's an 11.
- Okay, walking up out of
the room, looking around,
the bird clearly had the
ability to go invisible.
Walking through here,
through this hallway,
you find a downy, sort of oily feather
on the ground from Pinocchi-Crow,
so clearly Pinocchi-Crow
did not stay in the room.
Pinocchi-Crow flew away.
- You mind if I pick up this feather?
- [Lou] Go ahead.
- Cute!
- Gerard, do you have any
of those spiders left over?
He really enjoyed k*lling those.
- I may have saved a
few, if you'd like some.
Pull out a a little bag of spiders. Ah!
- [Siobhan] Oh god.
- Ugh!
- You see Aesop begins to
lead you out of this place
and says, indeed, the times of shadow
attempted to come to the
Lands of Birds and Beasts.
We were able to repel them, but
not all realms are the same.
I'm not sure how things
work in your realms,
but for example, your highness,
what's your story about?
- It's about-
- Can I do an insight check
to see if he's trying
to put her in his book?
- Yeah, go for it.
- Just double checking.
That is a 20, not nat.
- This guy has a vibe that you see,
he seems like a very good person,
but there's also a part of him that seems
maybe like someone who's been
doing good for a long time,
a little bit tired, a
little bit of fatigue
associated with heroic activities.
- Okay, cool cool cool.
- I don't know if my
story is about anything.
It just sort of happens to me.
I mean, it's about one fairy
being annoyed that she doesn't
get invited to a christening,
and then really overreacting, honestly.
- See, there's your problem right there.
Lion and the mouse, two of
my best right here, right?
Lion and mouse. Lion eats small creatures.
Gets a thorn in his paw.
Doesn't have respect for small creatures.
Mouse comes along, gets the thorn out.
Small creatures are good.
That's the point of the story.
- Are our stories more
susceptible to being corrupted?
- Is it because it's human wants and ego?
- I do think it's the
human civilization aspect
that makes us susceptible to collapse.
- You see Aesop looks and says,
I think that might've had
something to do with it.
As you walk down the hallway,
you begin to pass archways
coming from your hall that
go off into other archways.
You see that there's another landing
that has doors similar to
the ones from your place.
You see they also appear to lead
to other realms or go to other places.
- Is there anything that
we can make out from them?
- Yeah, you can take a detour
to go down that hallway if you want to.
- Yeah, Aesop, where do these lead?
- I've done my level best to do
as little exploring as possible here.
There are problems within
this land, as well.
Nothing as bad as the
times of shadow, but-
- Are we by far the most corrupted
by times of shadow, the Neverafter?
- You see Scheherazade looks over at you,
and she has the same question.
You see Aesop goes,
I don't want to make you feel bad.
- We feel bad.
- No, it's all right. Yeah.
- We already feel very bad.
- Yeah, it's far and away
you guys. It's really-
- It's the Neverafter, and then,
Scheherazade, where are you from?
What is your land?
- Scheherazade says, we
have referred to the land
that we come from as the Endless Nights,
but the truth is that many of...
We found some tapestries in a
palace that seemed to depict
people that, looking at
the manner of all of you-
- You said there was a gold sphere.
- A gold sphere.
A woman in golden armor astride a horse
with beautiful, long, red hair.
- Elody, is she in your
world? Have you heard of-
- I have not seen this woman, but I...
And here, Pib, you see
Alphonse just, again,
sort of tensing up and walking along.
You see that Scheherazade says,
I did not meet this woman, but
I saw her in this tapestry.
- All right, so why would-
- Hey, psst!
Trying to, like...
- Yeah?
- Hey, Mr. Mule!
- [Brennan] You see Alphonse goes, ah.
Actually, as part of
the moral of my story,
my story was about,
you - Go scout ahead.
- Scout ahead. Okay, I'll follow you.
I'm going to scout ahead, too.
- The mule sort of goes ahead with Pib
as you sort of walk off.
As you do, give me either
investigation or perception.
- I will do perception.
(die clatters)
That's 18.
- You go up this little sort of staircase,
and you see a huge pair of double doors
wide open into a massive library.
On that perception check,
you look in and see
some books quite nearby
on some of the shelves,
and just recognize some
of the names very quickly.
I think you see, written
in gold on a book,
The Tale of the Frog Prince,
and realizing that you're
in this kind of area
that led to your doors, your realms,
you're looking at a library,
and I think on that 18,
you're like, ooh.
This is sort of containing information
about your world outside of your world.
- Okay.
- Alphonse turns around and says, look,
the realms are all blending together.
Aesop, I don't know if he's
going to say it right away,
but he told us the Lands of Lullaby
didn't even used to be
part of the Neverafter.
- What?
- The Lands of Lullaby got
swallowed up. The Neverafter is-
- Got sucked into where we were?
- Yes, already.
- Huh? Okay.
- There's something really bad,
really, really bad going on,
and I'm a f*cking mule,
I don't have hands.
- Yeah.
- I don't have f*cking hands.
I'm a mule, okay? I can talk.
- That didn't stop you from betraying me.
- Look, what would you have done, okay?
Clearly things were not working out.
What was I going to do?
- I don't know, but you still owe me.
- Fine, f*ck it. I'll
do whatever you want.
I'll tell you what happened, okay?
I saw that things were
going south in a bad way.
The miller's second son was dead.
The kingdom of Marienne had fallen.
There were f*cking giants.
I got out of there.
When I saw that the
battle was going south,
I thought you, hey, by the way,
what happened to you?
You used to k*ll ogres.
You used to run around-
Something about living in that palace
and eating a bunch of mice
and drinking a bunch of milk-
- Whoa, I am not on trial here!
I will admit, I was not as
strong as I wish I was, okay?
I can admit that, and my sort of trickery
that I sometimes rely on
did not serve me well in that moment.
- Okay.
Look, no one's on trial here.
I, in that fight, saw that
things were going south,
and I ran.
I ran as fast as I could,
and I just
kept going,
and after a while, the road
went through this forest,
and I felt this shadow
fall over me from far away,
like light spilling through a doorway,
but in the middle of the
woods, and I panicked.
I was lathering.
I was running so fast that I thought
I was going to break my
hooves, and all of a sudden,
the road gave out, and
it was like I was falling
through paper or parchment or something,
and I stumbled through,
and all of a sudden,
I was in the place you found me.
And suddenly, there weren't
storm clouds everywhere.
It was nice. The sun was shining.
There was good grass to eat, and...
I don't know, it just felt
like things were different,
in a way, and I started
talking to animals there.
There's a lot of animals.
You know, look at all these bad animals.
Bad stuff keeps happening to them.
Look at all these good animals.
Good stuff keeps happening to them.
Things feel pretty okay
here. I should just be good.
And then I met Aesop, and then he said
we got to go help some other people,
and I was like, things are
honestly pretty good here.
Then he walks through
the door, and I see you!
But a little meaner, and no
offense, a little mangier.
- I mean, I am. That is true.
- So I thought I'd keep quiet,
because he had talked about,
you know, there's a lot
of once upon a times,
there's a lot of versions of people.
You know, there's more than
one world, if that makes sense.
So I said, maybe in the world
this Puss in Boots is from,
maybe he doesn't know about
old Alphonse the mule.
And then you looked right at me,
and you almost blew my spot up.
- Well,
it does sound nice compared
to what you were doing,
and I see that you don't have hands.
But, you know,
I guess I can't be too mad at you
for wanting just a better situation.
- As you say that,
give me one more perception
or investigation.
- Yeah, let's see.
(die clatters)
- [Lou] 17.
- [Siobhan] Nice.
- 22.
- You guys have scuttled
off into sort of a side area
near this big old library
with these sort of fairy tale books in it.
You see that there's a small
table with a seat next to it,
and there is a small
key placed on the table.
- I'm grabbing the key.
- You, boop, sh**t right in.
- Does it look like it goes
to anything in this room?
- You see that this is effectively, like,
you think it's the key for this room.
(Ally laughing)
- Does it seem like I could grab books
that were our fairy tales in here?
- Give me an investigation check.
- I might not, just because, I don't know,
if I have the key, I
could come back, maybe.
12.
- 12.
You see The Frog Prince.
I think on a 12, you don't
find any of your other friends.
You do find a book that
says Cinderella on it,
which you recognize as a name,
which you absolutely could take.
- I would grab it.
- You would grab Cinderella? Go ahead.
You begin to hear footsteps
coming from the hallway,
and not the noise of
your friends approaching.
- I will hide.
- Go and give me a stealth check.
- 18.
- You hide real quick.
Alphonse, at the door,
looks around and goes, Pib!
Pib, there's someone coming!
- You know, what would
you do in this situation?
Are you just going to run?
- Pew! Alphonse just
dips out and runs back.
You hear light footsteps
and a pair of crutches,
and you see a beautiful librarian
in a crisp white shirt and a black vest
with a tall, very dramatic
sort of hairstyle walks up,
a little sort of orbiting pulse of light
on a weird sort of halo
going around their head,
and you see that they walk
with a pair of forearm crutches
and have a big ring of keys
hanging off of one of their belt loops.
You see they look up and go, oh.
That's not supposed to be open. All right.
And looks over at the table,
checks their ring of keys,
and you see another voice,
footsteps coming up behind them,
and another librarian
who's sort of wearing a
similar kind of uniform
of the black vest, the
white shirt, approaches.
You see that she looks
very prim and proper, very put together.
She addresses the first librarian, says,
do you have the...
You see that the first looks back over,
resting their hand on
one of their crutches,
looking through the keys
with the other, goes,
we'll just have to use
the master key again.
You see that the second librarian says,
all right, just use that again.
I don't know why these doors keep opening.
Closes the doors, and hears a key,
and you are locked into this room.
- Oh, good.
(Brennan laughing)
- We go back to everybody
else who's going down the hall
towards this sort of other section.
These doors are quite large.
They're pretty massive.
You see that one of them
is a big, kind of beautiful
red and gold door,
and then there's another
one that just straight-up
looks like a barn door,
like a huge barn door.
But again, it's made of
all book materials, right?
You see Aesop says, never been
in either of these places.
I don't know what they're called.
And you hear a voice behind you
from the approach of the two librarians
who appear as described before.
It's a pleasure to meet all of you.
Aesop, I see you've brought
a lot, a lot of friends, all at once!
It's always lovely to
have characters, people,
characters, people, in-
- Yes, characters and
people. I'm Mother Goose, hi.
- Hi, I'm Key, and this
is my partner, Legend.
- Oh, great. Great to meet you two.
- [Siobhan] Pleasure.
- Welcome to The Lines Between.
- I'll be honest with you guys,
I have a couple burning
questions about our world,
and I don't know if you
or Aesop or Scheherazade
honestly even could answer them, but-
- Scheherazade says, I
actually have plenty to ask.
I also come from a place
that's just so ravaged by problems.
A lot of violence.
Key speaks up and says, well,
we'd be so happy to help you.
- Key, do you know
why certain doors are
sort of better maintained than the others?
Because ours seems quite warped.
- Key nods, and they look at you and go,
come with us to the
central Tower of Tales.
There are many resources
there to help you.
The people I would most recommend
that you speak to would
be Glossary and Index.
Index is very adept at managing
sort of the geography of information,
where things are, what things might be
on what lists and how to find them,
and if you have any questions
about sort of more
specifically what a thing is
or how it works, then I
would recommend Glossary.
I should let you know
that The Lines Between
isn't used to interacting with, sort of,
there was a long period of time...
You see Legend speaks up and says,
a long period of time where
we were managing the stories
without so much direct interaction,
and then things have gone a little
catawampus.
- So this is a space where you can access
all the different lands of story.
So it seems like we're really experiencing
some sort of, like,
corrupted file, corrupted story.
I tell them all about Miss Muffet
and how she was also the spider.
- Yeah.
- Did something get into all the stories
using these hallways?
- Yeah, is this, like, your fault
in some kind of bigger picture way?
- Key's like, not our fault.
There's no reason to
believe it's our fault.
There's no reason.
- There's no one called, like,
Compass or something that
broke bad and became evil?
- Maybe somebody got some
jam on a piece of paper?
- You say jam, and you see Key and Legend
both look at each other and say, jam?
Could it have been jam?
And then there's a long
pause, and you see Key says,
it probably wasn't jam.
- Honey?
- You walk on a rampart
approaching this big central tower
and see all the nexuses
out from this place,
and you look out and see that
this place, The Lines Between,
is sort of this incredible,
book-made, spinning citadel
in the center of not a void,
but kind of endless aurora borealis,
just moving cosmic lights
out in all directions.
Anyone here can give
me a perception check.
- I'll give you a perception check,
but I'm looking for Pinocchi-Crow.
- [Brennan] Copy that.
- 21.
- 18.
- I'll say, actually, anyone above a 15,
you can hear
voices,
almost like listening to a
massive crowd from very far away,
but the quality of the
voices is not shouting.
It's beautiful, it's enrapturing,
even though it's a little
bit of glossolalia,
it's not something you
can fully understand.
You see Legend stops and
looks back at you and says,
it is very serene out
here on the ramparts.
You're admiring the Auroratory.
- Hm?
- Auroratory.
- So it's oratory.
These are like the tales
that aren't written down,
but they're spoken?
- (sighs) Yes, they are...
They are...
Just admiring your ability to
catch my jokes immediately.
f*cking immediately. I was truly stunned.
I was like, that was
zero seconds. Incredible.
Red, on that, I think that you hear
a strain of voices coming to you,
and actually hear one
voice kind of break out,
and you hear a soft old woman's voice say,
once upon a time, there was a little girl
named Little Red Riding Hood.
- Do I recognize the voice?
- Give me a perception check.
(die clatters)
- Okay. 17.
- Yeah, I think it is. I
think it is your grandma.
- Excuse me, my grandma's
trapped out there.
I try to swim into the sky.
(Brennan laughs)
- You all watch Ylfa start
to swim out into space.
It's completely possible, and-
- Okay.
- Way too trusting.
- You see Key and Legend kind
of standing next to each other
and Key puts their head
on Legend's shoulder,
and they're like, it's completely safe.
- Grandma, I'm coming! Grandma!
- Ylfa, did you know
that was going to happen?
- No!
- Okay.
- Yeah, 100% safe. We do it
a lot, it's fun out there.
- Wow. Okay, well, huh.
- Key looks at all of you and says,
from our studies and what we understand,
the Auroratory is completely safe.
It's much older
than The Lines Between,
than our citadel here.
The voices of the
Auroratory, they come and go.
Stories get told, and sometimes
they leave if they are told.
But here in The Lines
Between, they can stay.
That's the power of ink,
which is what we should talk about next
as we get to the Tower of Tales.
- Ooh, okay.
- I like this tour.
- I'm trying to tip them.
I'm trying to press some
gold into their hands.
- No, no, no, no.
- You're doing such a great,
you're doing a lovely job.
- I know you said
we don't need to eat or anything,
but is there a tasting room at the end?
- You guys see Ylfa stops
swimming suspiciously.
(Murph laughs)
- Ylfa, are you peeing?
Ylfa!
- [Murph] It's not the ocean!
- There's no water!
- Ylfa!
- Oh my goodness!
We can see you!
- You all arrive at the Tower of Tales.
You're in this grand central dome.
You see there's a large staircase
leading up to a huge set of double doors.
In the archway above it,
you see there's a symbol
of an inkwell and a quill,
and you see that giant set
of double doors is locked.
There's a huge thing on the outside of it.
You see-
- Is this locked for our protection?
- Oh. (laughs) That's for
everybody's protection.
- Yeah.
- That's got to stay locked up.
We don't ever go in the Canonade.
That's where that is supposed to stay.
That's the source of the ink.
That's where that needs to stay.
- Can I inspect the locks and see if-
if it's been broken into in the near-
- Scheherazade looks at you and is like...
(Brennan mumbling conspiratorially)
And as you both step,
you and Scheherazade put one
foot on the steps up there
and your books start to hum.
You hear a little bit of fiddle music
and a little bit of light
coming out from the seams of the pages,
and the same happens for Scheherazade.
- Whoa. Open it.
- Key looks over and says, excuse me?
- Mm-hm?
- Excuse me?
- Mm-hm?
- That area of the-
- I press a coin into their hand.
- They look at it and go,
this is a completely
perfect post-money society
of a handful of sort of
spirits, if we're being honest.
- Okay, yeah.
Okay.
- So I'm going to give you this back,
because this might be useful
when you go back to your stories.
- This is just very
valuable where I come from.
It's kind of a big deal.
- I'm sure, and I would love,
if I were a collector, I
would love a collection
of fictional currency, but
nope, actually, thank you.
- Timothy, go do your thing.
I actually want to talk to Key and Legend.
And I'd like to try to distract them.
- Definitely.
- I guess I want to distract them.
I'll just talk about my forms.
This book that I have.
- [Ally] Interesting!
- That is full of forms. I
was wondering if you had more.
- I have seen him do many of
these forms. Very impressive.
- Go ahead and give me-
- This one hasn't come up yet.
Long Sniff of a Rose.
- I'm looking for, so,
Long Sniff of a Rose.
It's sort of a lean forward-
- You're going to have to
give me a deception check.
Give me a deception check.
- Can I give him advantage?
- Yeah, I'm helping.
- [Brennan] You're helping.
- I'm helping.
- Rosamund's helping.
- [Ally] Come on. Come on, Murph.
- I have a minus one to charisma.
I'm a frog trying to talk to somebody.
Okay, 15.
- Okay, we'll roll some
insight checks here.
- I'm really selling it.
Long Sniff of a Rose.
- I just want you to know, on these,
I rolled a three and a one.
(Ally gasps)
- Destiny.
- So you see Key's like,
actually, your highness...
And you see Legend goes,
darling, this rules.
We need to listen to these.
- [Murph] Yes!
- So wait, what do you do
with the Long Sniff of a Rose?
- Okay, so the way the
Long Sniff of a Rose works-
- I've always thought that we might need
to defend The Lines Between at some point,
so I've always thought it would be cool-
- So the Long Sniff of a
Rose is sort of a... (sniffs)
Sort of a sniff in as we-
- And you really do the
sniff? It's not a metaphor?
You really do it while it's happening?
- I mean, it looks like
the guy in the book
is doing the sniff, so I don't know
if he's actually sniffing, but I sniff.
Then there's Plight of
the Honeybee, not flight,
which is sort of,
I think it's like a stinger
that you sort of go out, but
you die at the end of it.
Sort of a sacrificial move.
- [Siobhan] So sad!
- But you only would die
if they counter-stroked
or something, right?
- This is a bad move.
It's so dangerous, unfortunately,
that you will break
your neck if you try it.
- Why would they put that in the book?
- Key looks and says, well,
just because information
is not immediately useful doesn't mean
that it shouldn't be cataloged,
indexed, filed, and sorted.
This move exists-
- Exactly, and the reason
it is Plight of the Honeybee
is because it is their plight to die.
- So you have all the cover you need.
- Oh my god. Incredible.
- All the cover you need.
- [Ally] Incredible.
- Furious that my friends
are questioning me on this.
Beet red.
- [Siobhan] Wow, the red
is really coming through-
- Yeah. Uh-huh.
It's a sort of sacrificial move!
- I don't understand.
- What don't you understand,
Pinocchio? It's in the book!
- I think it's beautiful.
- [Murph] Thank you!
- To sacrifice yourself for your friends.
- Thank you.
- So, Mother Goose,
you see Scheherazade winks at you,
reaches into a pouch along her belt,
and blows a little thing of dust,
and you both turn invisible
as she casts Invisibility Circle.
- Awesome!
- Both of you can alight
up the staircase together.
- Okay.
- Pib, we're going to go back to you.
So you're locked in this library.
(Zac meows)
What is Pib thinking right now?
Is there an amount of time
that you're willing to wait it out?
Is there, like...
- I bet Pib would take a
cursory glance at the book,
the Cinderella book.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [Zac] Actually, I'm
going to jump to the end.
- (gasps) So smart.
- You jump to the end.
You see there's nothing at the end.
Not only are pages blank,
but pages have been violently
torn out of this book.
- Huh.
- Give me an insight check.
- 11.
- You're feeling something watching you.
Looking at the book, a lot
of pages have been torn out.
There's a lot of things blank.
- Are they torn out
like talons?
- As you wonder if they
were torn out by talons,
flipping through it,
looking for any text at all,
you get to the front
and there's some text.
You see the text reads,
"Once upon a time,
"there was a lovely young
girl named Cinderella.
"She lived in a house. Her
father had passed away."
And it ends there, and it's blank.
I'm going to need you
actually to roll initiative.
- [Lou] You're about to
get your a*s kicked, man.
- 18.
- On that earlier perception
check, you hear (caws)
and feel something flying straight at you.
- If I have the ability to turn around,
I want to try to bonus
action dive behind something
and hide for a second, and then
try to throw a dagger at it.
- Okay, give me the stealth check.
- Okay.
- [Lou] Good luck, dude.
It's Pinocchi-Crow, dude.
Legendary.
- That is a 13.
- You will not be
attacking with advantage.
- Okay, I'm just going to
throw the dagger at it.
- Yeah, go for it.
- That is definitely going
to hit. 16 on the die.
- Hell yeah, go ahead and roll damage.
- Seven.
- You hear a (caws) shriek of this crow,
and you spring it from invisibility
as it flies towards you.
It's going to come, and on its turn,
it's going to make an
opposed athletics roll.
Go ahead and give me an athletics check.
This thing is not very strong either.
The number you're trying to...
Go ahead and roll.
- [Murph] Cat versus bird!
- [Players] Cat versus
bird! Cat versus bird!
- 19 on the die becomes 18.
- Pinocchi-Crow grabs the book.
I'm going to say on the
nat one that I rolled,
it grabs the book, and you
can see its eyes going wild.
In those glossy, black eyes,
you see part of the light reflected
is the rectangular outline of a door
with light seeping through it,
and you hear a voice of something
on the other side of that
door rattling a knob.
- I'm going to try to stab
Pinocchi-Crow's eyes.
- Yeah, go for it.
(Emily laughs)
- 16 on the die, that definitely-
- Go ahead and roll damage.
- [Ally] Eyes have different stats.
- No sneak attack, but
go ahead and roll damage.
- [Lou] Tear up Pinocchi-Crow, dude.
- Six damage.
- As it goes to grab the book,
you hear rattling and you
hear a voice say, get it!
Get it now! Get it now!
- Oh, I'll get it all right.
- Bam, bam. Both eyes of Pinocchi-Crow.
You slash through with your dagger,
and Pinocchi-Crow falls to the floor
and, in venomous green smoke,
turns into tattered
pieces of burnt parchment
and just tumbles to the floor.
- Kicked that crow's a*s.
- Feeling the magic in this room,
and feeling that you have
also defended yourself
from something pretty magically foul
that was about to happen, I
think the last little sort of,
call it a feline intuition,
is just this strange sense of,
you don't know that as
these pages were torn out,
they stayed in The Lines Between.
You feel the presence
of magic in this space,
and you look at the book,
and you wonder if the thing
that tore these pages
out didn't just tear them
into nothingness as it ripped them out.
- Just because it's the only
other book I know where it is,
I take The Frog Prince and I
unlock the door and try to run.
- You take The Frog Prince,
unlock the door with the key you have.
Do you do anything as you
run away from the door?
- Can I just make one
last perception check?
- [Brennan] Mm-hm.
- Yeah.
Nat one.
- Okay, no.
You grab the book,
unlock the door, open it,
and just head straight
towards your friends.
- Okay.
- [Brennan] Cool.
We move from this space,
however, into a new space,
a beautiful, spinning aurora
as Ylfa-
- I'm pretending that I drowned.
- Oh no, someone help her!
Moving your hands.
- Drat, Timothy knows I'm playing.
- There's very few tides out
here. There's no undertow.
I mean, it's a little bit like,
as you swim farther away
from The Lines Between,
the citadel does become a
little smaller as you go away.
It gets a little further
away, and it does feel,
but you move through it.
- Okay, stay on focus, Ylfa.
Grandma! Grandma?
- Once upon a time,
there was a little girl
who lived in a cottage in the woods.
Little Red Riding Hood, they called her.
You begin to move through the space
searching for your grandmother.
The Auroratory seems to be taking sound,
and the light that it creates
is almost like the sound taking form,
and you see at first
a grandmother, not your grandmother,
and then you see some more
and some more and some more,
and all of them are telling your story.
They're not talking to you.
- Telling my story?
- It looks like they're
talking to someone.
- Wow.
- As you are out here in this
space listening to your story,
go ahead and give me a perception,
and you can roll with advantage here.
- Thank you, because I...
Okay, thank you for the advantage. 19.
- Ylfa, you hear the story
of Little Red Riding Hood,
and you're out here in the Auroratory
listening to all these voices,
and they keep telling
this story of a little girl
who needed to bring food to
her grandmother in the wood,
who was instructed to stay on the path,
and didn't, and met a wolf.
And then they tell a story
about how the little girl
talked to the wolf, and
that the wolf ran ahead
to the grandmother's
cottage, ate the grandmother,
and the little girl arrived and said,
my, what big eyes you have.
My, what big ears you have.
And you hear all these stories,
and it begins to go
exactly as you remember.
- Yeah, I was wondering.
- And they say,
my, what big teeth you have.
And the wolf says, in all these stories
that all begin to harmonize
in the same moment,
the wolf reacts,
but in a different way than you remember.
In all these stories you hear,
my, grandma, what big teeth you have.
And the wolf goes,
the better to eat you with!
And the door flies open,
and the door flies open,
and the door flies open,
and the woodsman came
in and chopped the wolf
and cut the grandmother
out of the wolf's stomach,
and all was well, and all
was well, and all was well.
And Little Red and her grandmother,
the woodsman saved them.
(echoing)
- I think I just stop swimming
and I just try to sink,
because this is a better ending.
It feels nice and warm,
and I think I probably
try and close my eyes
and pretend like this is the real story.
- You sink further and
further into the Auroratory.
You start moving down.
This is the version of your story
that has been told the most,
and to that degree,
it's almost like it makes it
the correct version of your story.
- Yeah.
Yeah, so if it's correct out here,
then maybe it's incorrect in the books.
And if we can just get
what's happening out here,
which is a much nicer story,
and no one does anything
that they're ashamed of,
if we could make this happen in the books,
then I
will be
the correct version of myself.
And I begin swimming again,
and I'm going to swim
back down to the books.
- Go ahead and give me
a wisdom saving throw.
- Wisdom saving throw, okay.
Five.
- The shame builds up,
and you look.
In the Auroratory, there's
a little trail phasing,
almost like the tail of a comet
as you move your hands to try to swim,
something red, like blood, or maybe ink.
As you try to move-
- I can't stay here. I
will corrupt this story.
This is the story that's
supposed to be happening.
I am the corrupting force.
I'm the problem.
I try to swim even faster
just to get out of there
so that I can just not ruin this.
What is happening is good,
and I got to get out of here.
- Give me an athletics
check to attempt to swim,
and do so with disadvantage.
Call it a DC 15.
(Emily sighs)
- That's a nat 20, with
disadvantage, becomes a 10.
- These dice.
- As soon as you think of
corrupting the stories,
you suddenly hear a... (snorts)
And you hear a voice say,
a little girl went on the
path and went in the woods.
She talked to the wolf,
and the wolf ate her.
But of course, that's
not your story either.
- No. In fact, that one I don't even mind.
I don't even mind that one.
Then she's a sweet little victim.
How nice! Everyone loves
a f*cking underdog!
But I'm a f*cking actual dog!
- You begin to sink lower,
and the books are moving
farther away at this point.
You even think of the librarian
saying how safe it was.
If it was safe for them,
why isn't it safe for you?
- What I have done is not that different
than what the Stepmother did.
So maybe the library's
protecting itself from me.
- In this moment, certain and terrified
that you are corrupting
this space, and you can hear
the tenor of the stories
around you changing-
- Oh god, this is not
how I want to be known.
Know me like you were
talking about me before.
- I will ask for a choice in this moment.
Does Ylfa reach out
for help,
reach out to something
as she continues to sink
further and further, or
does she reach within?
- I mean, I don't want to stay here,
because I don't want to
keep changing these stories.
I don't think there's any
chance that I reach within.
I think that I would probably just...
I probably would just be like, Timothy!
- Cool, we're going to cut back
to the grand staircase
in front of the Canonade.
Invisibly, you and Scheherazade approach
as Pinocchio, Rosamund, and Gerard...
Your party is rapidly dwindling! (laughs)
- And he has another one
that's about two salmons,
and that's really good!
- Two salmons?
- Two eels. Two Eels
for Supper, it's called.
- [Siobhan] Two eels!
- Even better!
Mother Goose, you and Scheherazade
get to the top of the staircase.
You sort of see each
other in faint outline,
almost translucent like ghosts, right?
- Cool.
- Invisibly to everyone else,
as you get close to the door,
your books glow brighter and brighter
and you can feel them humming with power.
What do you do as you approach the door?
- Can I check and see if any
of the stories are changing,
or if they're just as they are?
- Looking into the pages,
you open to Jack Be Nimble,
and blinding light comes out.
It is the ink that is glowing.
That is where the source of
the light is within the book.
Casts light out.
You feel like your book
is drawn to this chamber.
- Can I try to hold the book up to it,
but still hold onto it
and see how it reacts?
- The book does not
appear to open the door,
as you push it through, but on
putting light up to the door,
you do expose a little glint
over the keyhole at the
center of this large lock.
- Can I investigate the door and see
if it has been opened recently,
or been messed with?
- Give me an investigate check,
and Scheherazade will
give you the help action.
And she'll throw a d8
bardic inspiration on there.
- Okay!
- [Siobhan] All right, okay.
- This door is getting investigated.
- You've got to be f*cking kidding me.
- [Siobhan] There it is.
- Don't need it,
but thanks babe, and I
kiss her on both cheeks.
You're a cutie!
- Incredible. You lean down.
You look through the
keyhole. I can't believe-!
- This one has been rolling
like sh*t the whole season, too.
- It was waiting. It was waiting.
- It was waiting.
- It knew.
- Five and a 20.
- Mother Goose, you look
through the keyhole,
seeing if anyone has
opened this door recently.
You see some scratches from use.
This chamber can be accessed.
There are people that
can come through here.
You even see, inside of
the tumblers of the lock,
a little glitter, maybe some fairy dust.
Looking through the keyhole, though,
you see, brightly illuminated,
the chamber within,
which you can actually get on a knee
and look through the keyhole
into the chamber within here.
A vast shrine,
enormous, sweeping staircases, platforms,
all composed of glorious pillars
of text and parchment
and books and scrolls.
And at a tall pedestal
at the very top,
swirling and hovering in
space as though weightless,
is a perfect glass inkwell,
and ink flows and spirals out of it,
covered in light.
Something profound...
As you gaze at it,
almost awestruck
by what you behold,
you see something
within the ink.
And on a nat 20,
I will ask here
if you want to divert away from the ink
to continue to look for signs of damage
on the lock or signs of
entry or anything like that,
or on that nat 20, if you want to peer
deeper into the ink at
the center of the shrine.
- Deeper into the ink at
the center of the shrine.
- Ally, I know you so
well. I know you so well.
- There's this major clue,
but if you want to look
for, like, scratches?
(Ally and Brennan laugh)
- Look, there's two kinds of people.
There's scratches people,
and there's deeper into the ink people.
- I look at the lock.
- I roll for damn scratches.
- Damn, I wanted to
know the scratch thing.
- I'm going to need
a wisdom saving throw and
a charisma saving throw.
- He's got that bardic left over.
- [Emily] Yeah, you do
have the bardic left over.
- Okay!
Wisdom first.
That's a seven. I'm going
to throw the bardic on that.
Okay, that's a 13- That's a 12.
Charisma is...
17.
- You succeed on your
charisma saving throw,
but not on your wisdom saving throw.
You stare into the ink,
and you think about how often
you've been able to write
these sort of perfect poems,
these things that just feel so right,
exactly as they should
be, going into your book.
Where has that been coming from?
You've been a witch your whole life,
but you never felt a magic
like that, like the universe
was confirming something
while you were doing it.
You didn't have to wait until after
to know that you did the right thing.
How amazing,
how incredible,
to know that you were
doing the right thing
in the moment of doing it.
What a gift and what a rare thing
in lands as troubled as the Neverafter.
You stare in that ink, and really quickly,
it's your whole field of vision.
You don't need to see the
keyhole, the peripheral light.
You don't even need to see the
rest of the shrine in there,
just that ink fills your whole vision.
You start to feel so good about
the things you've done right
that it's hard to notice at
first that you're trembling.
Suddenly, you start to feel a little flat,
a little bit like...
maybe the most important things about you
(tense music)
are things that have nothing to do
with who you think you are.
And you feel a sort of
thundering emptiness,
a deep, profound shadow,
and you wonder if perhaps
you and everything that's
ever happened to you
and everything you've ever
cared about is pretty frivolous.
There are things looking
at you, and they're real.
They're real, and you now
understand how terrifying that is.
They're real and you're
not, and you were a fool
to come here, because
now they can see you.
And if they can see you, there's
nothing that can stop them
from doing whatever they want to you.
And now you know your
whole body is shaking,
but what the hell is a body?
That's not anything. That's an idea.
It's a joke, and you're nothing
more than scratches of ink
on someone else's piece of paper.
At the moment where you realize
that eyes vaster and more powerful
than your entire universe
are beholding you,
that's when you hear, Timothy!
And you snap back.
(resonant ringing)
- I...
take a second to kind
of gather my thoughts.
- Scheherazade looks at
you and goes, Mother Goose.
Are you okay?
- That was very bad, um-
- Looking at your hands, they are flat.
You're a piece of parchment.
You're just a piece of
paper, and you're looking
at an illustration of
yourself, and that's your body.
She is going to reach out...
(die clatters)
I swear to god, I just rolled a nat 20.
She reaches out and is
going to cast Dispel Magic.
And you see there is a
moment where Scheherazade
looks into your eyes and goes,
Mother Goose.
I know that something has
done something to you.
It's okay.
She touches your hand
and sees her hand start
to go two-dimensional.
- No, no, no, no! What are you doing?
- She holds tight and goes,
real?
I don't give a sh*t.
I don't come from a nice story.
I believe in you, and I believe in me,
and I think we're just real enough.
You see she casts Dispel Magic,
and you slowly come back into your body,
but feel the reverberations
of that thundering emptiness
as she breathes with you in this moment.
- Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Did someone scream your name super loud?
- Yeah, we got-
- [Murph] Do we all hear-
- Yeah. You all hear, Timothy!
- Timothy! I'm stuck!
Please, I need to get
out of this! Someone!
Excuse me, librarians?
Your Auroratory is, I can't be in here!
- It's perfectly safe!
There's never a problem!
- I'm the problem, and you
need to get me out of here!
Throw me a raft!
- Can I send my swarm down to help her?
- I throw a raft.
- Yeah, do they have any life preservers?
- Am I back yet?
- [Brennan] Yeah, yeah,
yeah. Pib, you arrive.
- I throw Pinocchio in and hop on him.
(laughter)
- You start rowing Pinocchio.
- I send my birds to help you.
- Yeah, Rosamund's birds-
- Some ducks with really good swimming.
- See, Sinbad?
- You see Sinbad goes, fine
mariner if ever there was one.
Incredible.
- Aye aye, captain.
- You've got your sea legs under you
with that long, fuzzy tummy.
(audible tummy pat)
- [Ally] Long, fuzzy tummy!
- You guys roll out with
Rosamund's flock of birds
and both of you going out there.
What state do they find Little Red in
when they get out in
there, into the Auroratory?
- I think I'm like when
you rescue someone at sea.
I'm just shaking. Get me out
of here, get me out of here!
I need to get out of here. I
need to talk to the librarians.
But most importantly,
get me out of here so they stop saying-
- You're going to have
to help me a little bit,
because getting out of
the water into a boat,
it's always a little bit
of a difficult maneuver.
- Okay, I switch places
with him and carry him.
(laughter)
- Incredible, so you two also see
this kind of weird little red phase
coming after the movements of your body.
As you move, I'm actually going to ask
for wisdom saves from both of you as well.
- Okay.
- You're trying to be a hero.
15.
- Nat one.
- Pib, you come out here
and begin to hear
versions of your story,
and as you begin to hear
them repeated as well,
tales of your cleverness and heroism,
as you begin to sink,
you're exchanging places with Red,
and you see that as the
last of Red's stories
almost start to fade
away from the Auroratory,
before you can start sinking,
you see, made of light,
you just hear a voice say,
once there was a wolf.
And you see an image in light
of this beautiful wolf appears,
and you can see it nudges Pinocchio,
who's sort of horizontal
as this craft, nudges.
Everyone up on the ramparts,
you can actually see this.
You don't necessarily see
the shape of the wolf,
but you see the wolf
goes... (inhales sharply)
(flames whooshing)
It is consumed by fire,
there is a snarl of pain,
and it vanishes. (growls)
- So it pushed me to safety?
- [Brennan] Yeah.
(gentle music)
- I...
I look to Red and Pinocchio.
I don't think I really understand
what happened, but I'm sorry.
- To me? It's fine.
No no no, you guys came to save me,
and we're getting out of here,
and then things can go back as normal
and we can fix what's going on down there,
and what is below will
reflect what is above, right?
- I think so.
- [Emily] Yeah.
- That makes sense to me.
I k*lled Pinocchi-Crow.
- Oh, good.
That was the first thing I was going to do
when I saw it as well.
I mean, he kills for fun!
- He tried to k*ll me.
- [Lou] Well, yeah! And
he would've enjoyed it!
- I saw a door in his
eyes, the little, the knob?
- The knob? Yeah.
- [Zac] That's horrible.
- I was kind of wondering,
do you still have that knob?
There are so many doors around here.
- Are you okay? You looked at the door.
- Did you see what I saw?
- If you saw what I saw, I would be like,
I didn't know you knew
what my grandma looks like.
- I saw this kind of monstrous thing
with people crawling under its skin.
- Yeah.
- At one point, I think
somebody tried to get
out of the mouth, and they
got eaten again violently.
- Yeah.
- It was bad news.
- Okay, so maybe you did
see her eat my grandma.
I wasn't sure if that was a reflection.
- Did I see the grandma get eaten?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, I saw that.
- I saw a wolf get burned
up just a second ago.
I don't know if that was your friend.
- I have a very complicated
relationship with wolves.
I don't know if that's been
written all over my face.
- Yeah, I think it has.
- I know I wear it on my sleeve.
- I have a complicated
relationship with wolves as well.
- Yeah.
- I've got a complicated
relationship with moms.
Oh, we're talking about
wolves. Never mind.
I thought we were doing an empathy thing-
- No, I mean, that's valuable.
- I have a complicated relationship
with giants, if we're just sharing.
- I'll be honest, your
stepmother sort of behaves
like a wolf, because she consumes people.
- Hey, you know what?
- [Ally] Down on all fours.
- That was very kind.
- So, I get it.
- [Ally] We don't know that.
Thank you for saving me. Where's Timothy?
- I don't know, I haven't seen him.
- I probably rushed there, right?
- Yeah, you rush down to the ramparts.
So all of you are on the
ramparts watching as-
- It's me. I'm invisible.
- As you approach,
you see Sinbad looks at you
and says, incredible craft.
I can tell you're made from a ship.
- Sinbad, I'm going to be
straight with you. Nope.
I'm not made from a ship. We lied.
- I lied to you.
- We lied.
- You're my best friend,
and I lied to you,
and I know how f*cked up that is.
- Ha ha ha. Well, I lied to you.
- Are you not a captain?
- No, I'm a captain.
- [Zac] Did you tell me anything else?
- Is your name not Sinbad?
- Is it Badsin?
- I don't know, I just wanted to be-
- I just think you're cool,
and I wanted to impress you
by also being a captain.
- You think I'm cool?
- Yeah, you have a very cool
vibe. (Brennan chuckles)
- You guys should arm wrestle.
- He'd kick my a*s.
(laughter)
- Little beans! Let me
get the little beans!
As you arrive back up,
you see Red, Pib,
Pinocchio all arrive back.
By the way, I will say this.
Pinocchio, as you tell Sinbad the truth,
you hear a little singing
as if from the ringing
of a fine chime from
the sword at your side.
- I think there's just
the slightest bit of dread
that washes over Pinocchio of just knowing
that telling the truth and hearing,
just the idea that there was a good chime
that came with being good is annoying.
(laughter)
- Ooh...
The honesty in that
honestly deserves a chime.
- You see that the first chime
was a little bit metallic,
but the second chime is sort of,
it has a tinge of voice to it, a little...
♪ Ah ♪
- Wow, that was beautiful.
- Does everyone hear that?
- Yes, I think everyone does hear that.
- Wow.
- What a beautiful chime.
- Wow, my sword is super cool.
- I think Gerard's sword sang!
- That's awesome. You can
keep borrowing it for a while.
- Are you sure you don't want it back?
- No, it's cool.
- [Ally] Borrow! Oh, borrow!
- You might need it to do Bee's Plight,
or Plight of the Bumblebee.
- No, that's more of sort
of a longsword situation.
♪ To tell the truth ♪
Oh.
(Emily laughing)
(Siobhan singing angelically)
You know what, I'd like to
give you a gift, Pinocchio.
- You see the sword, the moment Rosamund
sings the tiniest bit, the sword goes...
♪ To tell the truth ♪
- Oh goddammit, are we
an acapella group now?
- I swear to god.
♪ Bum bum bum ♪
- My little birds start twittering.
- Pinocchio looks for
whatever mouth the sword has
so that he can immediately muffle it
in whatever way we possibly could.
♪ Though I may be wrapped in fabric ♪
♪ I can tell you plain ♪
♪ To tell the truth is life's great joy ♪
♪ I say again, again ♪
Gerard, what the hell is this?
- [Murph] I found it in a spiderweb.
I threw it to you while I turned away.
Honestly, you've had it
longer than I ever did.
- Well I think it seems charming.
(Brennan mumbling)
- I unwrap it.
- Yes, candor, honesty, forthrightness,
and all manner of
truth-telling are my domain.
Veritas I am called, the Sword of Truth!
- I think this makes me
want to disobey my
elders when I hear this.
- Right?
- You honestly should.
- It's not fun to tell the truth.
- No!
- In fact, it's fun to lie.
- It was much funner to lie!
- It's occurring to me right now.
- Veritas?
- Ha ha!
- God.
- I like him!
I don't know why you're
reacting like this.
- [Zac] Maybe she should hold the sword.
- You want to hold Veritas?
- I would love to!
- Okay, there you go.
- Well hello, Mr. Sword.
- Hello!
A princess pure and true
holdeth now the Sword of Truth!
As you hold this,
you feel a sudden, deep,
profound connection.
All of you guys watch as a
corner of a tower near you
All of you guys watch as a
corner of a tower near you
vanishes in a slice of
cracked mirror electricity,
folds in on itself, and
that wing is just smaller.
- [Murph] Ope!
- Uh-oh.
- Okay.
- What'd you do?
♪ I don't know, I don't know ♪
♪ If I sing it, maybe it'll be better ♪
- The sort of long, almost cathedral hall
has now just folded in and
become kind of just a barracks,
and there's a seam that you
see does crackle with a weird,
it's not electricity, like
big special effects lightning,
but there's just a little
sort of static ripple
along an edge, a weird,
dimensional sort of seam.
- Can I do a perception check on it?
- [Brennan] Yeah, go ahead and give me
a perception check on it.
- [Ally] Investigation?
- That's a nat one.
- You look at it.
I'll say on a nat one,
I'll give you the opposite
information, which is,
you feel
strongly like your husband,
your prince, your true prince,
that that's supposed to be his sword.
- I knew I had a true prince!
Why did I even listen to anybody else?
I do need to take the sword,
because I need to give it to
my prince when he comes along.
- Okay.
- You hold it again.
Give me a little wisdom saving throw.
- [Ally] Oh, a little one?
- [Lou] Just a tiny one.
- That's a nat 20.
- Yes!
- Nat 20, okay. The librarians
confer with each other.
You see that Key and Legend start talking
and look up and say, (laughs) yeah,
that's sadly not the first
time that's happened.
We've been having some cutbacks.
And gestures at that.
- Where things disappear?
- It's like something
sort of cuts them out.
- Okay.
- Something weird happened
when you guys were out there, right?
- Yes, I was waiting to find a good moment
to interrupt the adults to say
I need to see my book,
because I went out there.
My story's correct out there,
and I think that it's incorrect here,
and so I think that if
I could see my book-
- Oh, so actually there's a
policy of The Lines Between,
we don't really let,
because seeing your book,
it's not good for people to see their-
- Okay.
- Actually, two of the pages
were stuck together.
There's actually more
forms. Boulder in the Chute.
- Now I have this sword,
maybe you can teach me some.
- Oh my gosh, that's so interesting.
- By the way, I just want you to know
that I destroyed an
evil crow that was here
that was, I think, trying to
attack your books and stuff.
So whatever, you know,
I guess in some ways
you might say that, you
know, you owe me, so.
- Oh, well.
- Whatever makes sense
for you to give to me.
- No, of course.
You see, so a couple things
happen in this moment, right?
You see clearly they get cagey
with Red wanting to talk about their book.
You saying the crow thing freaks them out.
You see Scheherazade leaning over.
You actually see
Scheherazade is explaining
what happened at the top of the stairs
to Aesop very quietly,
just over in a corner.
- Does he look concerned,
or does he look...
- Give me an insight check.
- Okay.
That is an 18.
- I think on an 18, it's hard to read,
because you see
Scheherazade's explaining it
like something's going on here, right?
Something wild happened
to me and Mother Goose.
And I think you see on Aesop's
face that he is understanding
that what Scheherazade is saying is true,
but also that Aesop is a very moral dude,
and so you guys disrespecting the hosts,
making yourself invisible,
and going to the top of the stairs,
you see a conflicted expression
where he's just trying to
parse something, right?
So that's happening.
As all of that is going on, Red's book,
the Pinocchi-Crow thing,
the unresolved fact
that you still have that
Cinderella book hidden.
- And the frog book!
- And you've got The Frog Prince, right?
Rosamund's holding the Sword of Truth.
This weird cutback just happened.
You've got this thing in
your hand now that, again,
feels in this bizarre way, you're like,
this connects to my story,
I think, in some way.
While all that happens,
you see that Key and Legend
look and say, there's
been a lot of excitement!
I know you have questions
about the Canonade, reading your book.
There's much we can explain.
Your original question, Mother Goose,
and to the other storytellers,
which obviously we respect
because though you are
of stories yourselves,
you also tell stories, and
that's complicated. (laughs)
But perhaps here is as good a place as any
to just tell you that...
the times of shadow, yes, yes,
your section of The Lines Between,
your realms, your home realms,
not only the version of the Neverafter
that these bodies of yours,
these versions of you are from,
but indeed all the versions of your tales
are in dire jeopardy.
We wanted to bring you to
the Canonade to show you,
and there are indeed other beings
within The Lines Between that
can potentially help you.
But the long and short of it
is, a corruption has started,
and we don't know if it originated here.
We don't know if it
originated in the Neverafter.
We know that the realms
closest to the Neverafter
have started to become affected as well.
Due to Aesop's judgment of
reaching out to Scheherazade,
we've sort of had a fighting chance
to explain this to you, but essentially,
lands of story move through phases,
and it's complicated.
Ink is permanent,
asterisk.
Anyone here can give me an insight check.
(dice rolling)
- [Murph] 15.
- 23.
- Nice.
- You see a little flicker
on Key as they speak,
when they talk about
the ink being permanent,
and you see a little
palpitation of a kind of dread
that you recognize from
yourself not too long ago.
- Like what just happened
to me at the door?
- What just happened to you at the door.
Key doesn't go two dimensional,
doesn't turn into an
illustration, but you just see,
you almost feel from them
that thundering emptiness,
that feeling of something
vast and profound.
- I grab them by the shoulder and I go,
it doesn't matter if we're not real.
- What do you mean?
- I don't know, Scheherazade said it to me
and I think she's so f*cking eloquent.
Brought me back to life.
- Scheherazade goes, oh my, thank you.
- You're really inspiring.
- Likewise, we're all trying.
You see Aesop looks over at you and says,
Scheherazade spoke to me a moment ago,
and I think honesty is
called for in this moment.
You're exactly right! The sword screams.
- It's the first authority
figure I don't like.
- I'll tell ya, you start
hanging out with me,
we'll get into some stuff.
- This is sword is the
first person that we've met
that actually knows
what it's talking about,
and I will take it.
- Sorry, the first sword we've met?
- Person! It's a person, he's talking!
- You see the Sword of Truth says,
the best part about telling the truth
is the feeling of having
done the right thing!
- Amen, brother!
- I want to lie. I want to lie.
- As all this is happening,
can I Message Pib and be like,
how far away was that room
that you were in with all the books?
- Just a couple hallways.
(Brennan laughs)
- You see Aesop goes,
a little more honesty.
I believe Mother Goose and Scheherazade
may have seen something at
the door of the Canonade.
You see Scheherazade kind of makes a, oop,
you told the people who work here
the thing that could've
been a cool secret.
And Aesop goes, what, if anything,
did you see in that room?
- I saw the fountain
of all of our being.
I saw a giant glass...
inkwell,
and I saw,
or I was seen by, something in the ink.
- Key and Legend both look horrified.
Something in the ink saw you?
- Potentially multiple things.
- Scheherazade looks up and says,
what manner of being might
have seen Mother Goose there?
Legend speaks up and
says, whether that ink is
our origin or not
is a topic of potential debate.
But certainly these versions here
that walk in such known forms so crisply,
preserved against the
ravages of all the onces
upon all of the times,
originates from them.
You saw something or felt
something perceive you.
- Does that ink have the
power to rewrite things,
or cross out things?
- We mustn't tamper with the ink.
We mustn't interfere with it. The...
Let's go inside.
You walk indoors, and Key sort of looks up
and comforts Legend,
sort of rubbing her back.
Key moves forward into this chamber,
and this time doesn't take you
in the direction of the Canonade,
seems to want to stay away from there.
I heard you speak a moment
ago about things being real.
Obviously we are real. We
are here speaking, talking.
But some things are real,
and some things are realer
in a way that it's hard to understand
without starting to
lose your sense of self.
We call them...
There's different names for them,
some a little more
frightening than others.
We don't like to...
And here, you see Legend writes
a name on a piece of paper
and says, this is the name
we refer to them by,
but we try not to even do that too often
unless it's very necessary.
But we know that there
is something vast enough
and powerful enough that it was able to,
the origin of The Lines
Between, all of the staff,
all of us who work here,
we have worked here
for time immemorial, eternity
or something like that.
But it has not felt
like forever would feel,
not within the realms of
time, not within stories
with their beginnings and
middles and ends, you understand,
where time is felt presently.
But something, we know, was
at the beginning of this,
and made The Lines Between.
They and they alone
wield the power you saw
within that room, which you
should not have looked in
and should not have gone.
We call them this,
but we dare not think
of them for too long.
The power they exert over our world
is indescribable.
But we also know that they don't
care.
They are not gods.
They're bigger than that.
You see Scheherazade
speaks up, and she's got
a long, faraway look in
her eyes as she says,
they're fine with all the bad things
that have ever happened to us.
Key goes, we think that there are
perhaps many of them,
but there are some truly great ones,
ones responsible for
vast sections of the halls from
which you originate, and...
You see Legend looks over at Key and says,
but of course, it's not-
There are different schools of thought.
Some of the things in
those books and pages
might not have come
from the ink originally.
They might have come from out there.
You see she gestures to the Auroratory.
- Yeah, the Auroratory's
good. It's really good stuff.
It's really good. It's
right, it's correct.
- I'm just worried that,
we're worried that bad things
are happening to good
people, but I'm worried
that the reason that bad
things happen to good people
is because it's a good story.
- This is what we should
talk to Glossary about.
You see Legend nods and says,
so, ink is permanent,
asterisk.
In the case of the Neverafter,
and to finally after long
last answer your question,
in these realms, the power of the ink
can sometimes be accessed in proxy.
The many beings of these
worlds wield magic,
which, to our understanding,
magic is the ability
for the characters of these
stories to move their stories
in the desirable
direction of the Canonade,
to make a curse where
a curse needs to happen
for whatever they might want,
or to come and make a blessing happen
so that some great
obstacle might be removed.
That magic flows through
many creatures naturally
who have a closeness,
therefore, to that power.
But sometimes, in our recordings,
there's been some indication
that there have been,
overseen partially by
the staff, revisions.
We don't have any record of that,
and there are forces
that move through.
Anyone that wants to, give
me a perception check.
(dice rolling)
- Natural 20.
- Thank god, thank god.
- Pib, Aesop's scroll and
the books of Scheherazade
and Mother Goose all glimmer
at the word 'revision.'
Legend speaks up and says,
the realms of your stories change,
and often, depending on the realm,
there will be heralds of these changes.
I believe that there was,
there's a time of shadow
moving upon the Neverafter,
which we read in the books
and we clocked and we filed that away.
But of course times of shadow,
times of plenty, cyclical.
Stories begin and end and begin again.
You know, the...
To sort of say what we plainly know,
the gander flies, the storm clouds come.
The gander flies away, the goose comes,
and times of light prevail,
and on and on things go.
The gander has been
ascendant for far too long,
and we don't know why, and it's
bad, and it's leaking here,
and something terrible is happening.
- Yeah.
- There's something-
You see that cutback glimmers again
over in the corner of The Lines Between.
You see Key goes,
there's something...
We think there might be
something in The Lines Between
that's not a member of the
staff, and we can't find it.
- Oh no.
- I k*lled a crow.
- That makes this really sad,
because that feels like, yep.
- Do you think that it's disguised
as one of the staff, because...
- We also brought the crow.
- Can I do an insight
check on Key and Legend
and see if they responded to
what if it's one of the staff
and it's disguised as one of the staff?
- Give me an insight check.
Is that a nat-
- It's a nat 20.
- What is happening this episode?
- But I don't know if it's anything.
- On a nat 20, they look at Red saying,
do you think it might be
disguised as one of the staff?
It looks like that has
not occurred to them
that that could be possible,
and that that's really alarming to them.
But you think it's more that,
and I'm just going to make
a reference even though your
characters wouldn't know this,
but just for you the
players to understand,
you suddenly realize the
entire time you've been here,
that while this place is a huge trove
of information and clarity,
suddenly you feel a vibe
that I will just describe to you as people
as like the ship from Alien.
Of like, these people are here
working and doing something,
but there's something here with them,
and they know there's
something here with them.
- Is it a wolf?
Is it animal, the thing that's here?
- Vegetable? Mineral?
- You see the lion says, I
don't think it's an animal.
Animals are all nice,
especially the small ones.
You see he looks over at the mouse.
- What do you eat?
- I don't know! Blood
gushing from the lion's nose.
I don't know! I don't know!
- Is it, like, soybeans, or?
- I'm okay if you eat salads.
- [Brennan] I don't think I eat anymore!
- Hemp seeds?
- I just don't think I eat anymore.
- Okay, okay.
- Now you see why I didn't
want to cuddle with him, right?
- Everyone needs to-
- Get it?
- [Brennan] Yes, make biscuits, please.
- Be nice to the lion.
- You're fine, you're fine.
- Can we help them just search the place?
Try to find a crack, or-
- Tell you what, we'll do a quick loop.
- Yeah, let's do a
quick loop all together.
- Key and Legend look and say,
that would honestly be a huge help.
We're not really supposed to have
the characters-
- According to who?
- It's an old rule, but the
person who made the rule
studied them, and is gone
now, so it's been rough.
We're kind of understaffed.
- Can I be real?
Every library I've ever been
to has been understaffed.
I do get that. We would love to help.
It's like if every person just
did one shift at the library
that they go to all the
time, you know, it would be-
- Some of us applied
to work at the library
when we were in high school
and didn't get the job.
- No way!
- What an origin story.
- When I was 15.
- So you see that Key
looks at you, and they say,
if you can help us just
do a quick inspection
of The Lines Between, that
would be enormously helpful.
And again, if there's
any help we can give.
Truthfully, we had been
even thinking about trying
to reach out to somebody in
the Neverafter, because we knew
that that wing was a source
of a lot of the chaos.
But you're here, and it
seems that your realm
does have heroes and does have the ability
to address what's going on.
You have already achieved some sort of...
Index, who also works here, refers to it
as Twice Upon a Time, which is all of you.
- Yeah, we are on our Twice Upon a Time.
- 2.0.
- Not all of us.
- Twice or more?
- Well, not all of us (murmuring)
- [Ally] What's that?
- Excuse me?
- Not all of us are on Twice Upon-
- [Murph] Do we need
to take out the sword?
- [Ally] Are you singing?
- I think Pinocchio's casting Message.
- You see the sword says, give
me back to the wooden boy!
He speaks the truth!
- No, it's not, I'm not on my-
♪ Wonderful wooden boy of truth ♪
- You're not on your second time?
- No, I'm not on my second
time. I am on my first time.
- What?
- What?
- I'm on my first time.
- How? Why?
- I'm still on my first time. I got...
My mom,
now revealed to be scary parchment mom
with people crawling under her skin-
- [Murph] Excuse me?
- I was just-
- [Murph] Keep going.
- Yeah, well, anyway, my mom didn't,
I guess some of you guys
came into a new story
and have memories and stuff like that.
- Yeah, we got new memories. Bad ones.
- Yeah, I didn't do that. She-
She took another boy,
and wow,
I'm having, you turned
into parchment, right?
- Uh-huh.
- Yeah, so when I came back,
my mom pushed me into another story,
and I just took his place,
and then she sucked him up
and turned him into
parchment and sucked him back
into something.
- [Emily] In her mouth?
- No, it was just kind of black oblivion.
- You must feel terrible.
- I mean, I wasn't...
There was an adult figure there
who was in charge of the situation.
- I was going to say, Pinocchio,
if I were in your situation, I
would've done the same thing.
- [Lou] Exactly.
- And I probably wouldn't
have thought twice about it.
- But no, I'm still on my first time,
and there's some other Pinocchio
who's been sucked away
and turned into parchment,
I think similarly to how you
were turned into parchment.
- Okay...
She definitely has something
to do with all this.
- Can we talk just without the-
- You see Key and Legend look and say,
well, perhaps we can split up to look,
to see if there's anything
unusual, but the point is this.
The times of shadow have
remained for too long there.
Glossary would know more than we would.
You should speak to him at
some point, hopefully soon.
- Well, let's go find him
as we go off to where-
- Yes, would you mind
if we split up first,
just to do a quick investigation?
Everything, young Little Red
Riding Hood being trapped
in the Auroratory, the
strangeness at the stairs,
all of you coming out at the same time,
so if we could just split up.
- Yeah.
- When we reconvene, let us
reconvene back in your hall,
and when we do, we can
take you to see Index.
We can take you to see Glossary.
They can explain more
about the Canonade and everything else,
the cutbacks we've been
having and all of that.
Aesop and Scheherazade come
over, and you see Aesop,
for the first time you've seen him,
he touches the scroll on
his back and just speaks.
You hear this moment where he
speaks in his mind and says,
I'm not a fan of secret keeping
unless the occasion permits.
Would it behoove us
for one party to take Key,
the other party to take Legend,
and a third party to go off independently?
- Yes.
- Otherwise those guys are
going to get got quick.
- Yeah.
- All right.
Aesop looks over at you and says,
as the ones from the Neverafter,
do you want to take Key on your own,
or would you like some privacy?
- I think we'd like some privacy, right?
- Yeah, okay.
- Yeah, I guess so.
- Aesop looks over and nods and says,
Key, you're standing near
this cat's vomit, and that's-
- That's for you, if you
want it. That's up for grabs.
- As you say that, you
see the mouse goes, wow!
That's kind of like a moral
in itself, like the cat-
- Oh? How so?
- Like the thing you thought
was bad was actually a gift.
Right, Aesop? Isn't
that sort of the moral?
Leave that to me.
- Write it down!
- [Brennan] I'll write it down.
- Before Aesop walks away,
I just want to be like,
because is he walking away?
- Yeah, he's going to take Key off
to give you guys some privacy.
- I just want to ask him real quick,
I'll just shout it down
the hall, hey, Aesop!
Do you have any stories about a wolf?
Any morals about a wolf?
- The wolf I know very, very well.
- What's the moral about it?
Does he learn to respect small animals?
Does he get stung by a scorpion?
- There's a lot of stories about the wolf,
but most of the stories about the wolf
aren't really about the wolf, you know.
It's about what you do
when the wolf comes.
The one I remember off the top of my head
is about a little boy.
You see he looks over at Pinocchio here.
Who liked to have fun, play little tricks.
Wolf would come by.
He was set to guard the
sheep and guard the town
while they were sleeping,
but he thought it was funny to lie.
And he said, there's a wolf
coming! There's a wolf coming!
And everyone said, you'd
better not lie again.
And he laughed and laughed,
and he did it the next day.
There's a wolf coming!
There's a wolf coming!
And he laughed and laughed,
and he tricked everyone.
And the next day, the wolf really came.
And he said, there's a
wolf! There's a wolf!
And nobody believed him,
and the wolf k*lled and ate everybody.
All the sheep and all the people,
and the little boy cried because
he knew it was his fault!
And the moral of the story is, don't lie!
- I kind of physically put my body
between him and Pinocchio.
From man to man, you need to chill.
- Why?
You keep the stories short and sweet,
and there's a good lesson at the end.
- You need to chill.
- [Brennan] Oh yeah?
- [Zac] I know a story.
- [Brennan] Yeah, what's the story?
- About a real creep who had a scroll,
and he was too good to write
a story about some cat vomit.
- Seems to me like that little boy
was maybe just really imaginative.
- All right, y'all.
- If he had something to do,
maybe he shouldn't have
been a shepherd at all.
- We're going to take off,
and we're going to let you-
- [Emily] What does that all mean?
- ...stew a little bit.
- What did you learn?
- I learned not to ask
you in the future, maybe.
Timothy, I like your stories better.
- Yeah, we've got a lot
of humanity in there.
- Some fun rhyme schemes.
- Yeah.
- [Brennan] Here in this place, Pib,
you know the way back to
the library of your books.
- [Zac] Follow me, fellow stories.
- [Ally] I go with him.
- As you go, just understanding,
so everything that's
happened in The Lines Between
thus far to any of you is
now known by all of you.
- Yes.
- You arrive back at the room.
Go ahead and give me
a group stealth check.
- Oh boy.
- Can I ask, is the door
open, or is it locked?
- So, this is very-
- Only an 11 for Pib.
- 13.
- [Siobhan] I got an 18.
- That's a 10!
- Anyone get a 15 or higher?
So just an 18, but no other 15s or higher?
- I rolled a three and a five,
and then I have a six, so 11.
- Gotcha. You guys get back here.
You do see, Pib, that as
you booked it out of there,
the door to the library is cracked ajar.
You left it open as you ran off.
- Guys, I have the key to this room,
but I clearly, you know, I was,
the Pinocchi-Crow
situation got pretty wild,
and I forgot to lock the door, so-
- You must feel pretty guilty.
- Gerard? My guy.
- He shouldn't, he shouldn't.
He was a violent animal.
- I let him know, by the
way, this is for you.
- Oh my god, thank you so much.
- Do you feel kind of guilty now?
- [Ally] Yeah, wow.
- It's the only one I saw.
- Yes, I feel guilty, okay?
- How guilty? Dance.
- How do you feel now?
- I was hopping.
- Maybe think before
you say sh*t like that.
And then I have, I don't know if this is
basically just the shell
of the Cinderella book.
- Pinocchio, you look
at that Cinderella book
and see
in the illustration
a face you recognize.
On the cover, in gilded ink,
you see that there are
some of the characters,
and there's a face of
a man that you last saw
in an etching on a bedside table.
- That's my...
I got to stop calling her my mom,
but we don't have a better name yet,
so that's my mom's
ex-husband that she had.
I found that when we were in the room
in the house with the mice.
We were partying downstairs.
I found this etching in the bedroom.
- You don't still have the etching.
- No, when we died or whatever,
I told my mom that we had found her room,
and she made me give all her stuff back.
- Did the etching seem like it could fit
in this book, physically?
Like a page from this book?
- It did.
- It did!
- Would that mean that she's the one
who tore this out, then?
- Yes!
- I mean, oh! Oh!
- Don't do this to me! f*ck!
- You feel a click
as the door closes behind you,
and as the door of your
own library chamber
closes behind you, you
see that the quality
of the light from behind the door changes.
- Don't look at it. Don't look at it.
- And as the quality of the
light changes, you hear,
shouldn't be leaving doors open.
Not while I'm around, little cat.
Time to finish what we started.
And you feel
something so vast.
And Timothy,
the thing that's approaching you,
it's not as vast as what
you perceived in the ink,
but it's closer to that than it is to you,
and the problem with this thing
is that unlike the things in the ink,
it's getting bigger, and
it's getting angrier,
and it knows you.
You feel space stretching.
Your books, all of your stories behind you
tumbling off the shelves
as the doorknob begins to turn.
And that's all for this
episode of Dimension 20.
- So you want us all to go
back to the way things were.
How do you think we could do that?
- The morals are f*cking
wrong. The adults are wrong.
- So often!
- So f*cking often.
- Literally can't believe what
you kids have been through.
- Don't learn lessons from my torment!
- It's kind of what we do! I'm sorry!
- We'll all be together?
- Kid's got the right idea.
This idea is gonna work.
(Murph gasps)
(Siobhan gasps)
You've seen them. You've seen them.
- We're moving forward!
- Maybe have agency
within our own stories.
- (gasps) Oh my god!
- The power to choose
what it is that we want.
- By rebelling, we alert
them to what we are doing.
- What?
- Wait! Ugh!
- I just did it. I just did it.
- It's not safe.
- I don't know how to
explain it, I'm sorry.
- No way.
- You've got to be f*cking kidding.
- What you did was brave.
- Don't touch me, ugh!
- I'm not!
- Makes sense to me.
- [Brennan] The way my
story's supposed to go,
I don't agree with.
- [Murph] Suddenly feeling very emotional.
- What if we don't want to be
in the stories that the authors want?
- To get it back to how
the stories are written.
- But we have no control over that.
- No.
- They're on the other side
of that keyhole, they don't care about us.
(ominous music)
(ominous music continues)
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16x08 - The Lines Between
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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.