(tense yet whimsical music)
(stoats squeaking)
(tense music continues)
(tense music continues)
- Hello and welcome to
Dimension 20: Burrow's End.
I'm your warren warden and
dungeon master, Aabria Iyengar,
and with me, unraveling the mystery
of the First Stoats at
Last Bast, are my...
Hey, I'm out of them. Little guys.
Say hi, little guys!
- Hi, little guys!
- I don't have any more words.
- It was so valiant. It was so valiant.
- I love being just the little guys!
- I really like the little guys.
- It's just the little
guys, at the end of the day.
- Small bodies, big hearts, can't lose.
- Can die.
- [Siobhan] Can die.
- Wednesday night lights, let's go.
- You're Coach Taylor, I love it.
- So amidst the wreckage, after
defeating the First Stoats
in the temple known as Phoebe's Heart
deep in Reactor Charlie, our
stoats debated next moves
as Sybil returned with Bennett.
Things nearly came to
blows before the family
managed to win him over to their side.
He asked for an hour to gather
some of the remaining
leadership of Last Bast
and left for the lab.
In the interlude, the
family licked their wounds
while finally addressing
their deepest fears
and insecurities around grief, fear,
and the pressure of raising children
ready to survive in a
harsh and dangerous world.
Healed and healing, they
made their way to the lab
where the mystery of
Dr. Wenabocker's tapes
opened up questions
about who really caused
the catastrophe that created all of this.
Now they're on the hunt for
the lair of the First Stoats,
and more answers.
My little guys, you stand in the lab.
You've been given a mission.
What do you do?
- Well, we're going to go get Lukas.
- All right.
- All right, sweeties. Go grab
Lukas and find what you can.
- Is Lukas like our First Beacon?
We're just like you, Uncle Thorn!
- Oh my goodness, yes.
- To have Beacons, you
need to be Conduits.
Are you ready to be Conduits?
- I don't know what that is, so yes.
- It means you get to
tell everyone what to do.
- Oh no.
- And they never talk
back to you. It's great.
- Oh, then yes.
- It's really fun.
- We have that with Lukas.
- Oh yeah, that's true. But
it is a little bit annoying.
- But I will say that as you're getting...
Excuse me. (clears throat)
(in Viola voice) Viola.
- Yo, respect.
- We had a day off.
- (in Viola voice) Viola.
- You're going to be
rallying people to your side.
You can't always lead with
your fist. You've got to-
- Yeah, Lila's the leader,
and I'm the First Beacon,
and Lukas is the Second Beacon.
- Notice how your aunt and your uncle
are always on the same team together.
Perhaps you and your sister could learn
a little something from
them about being...
Conductors.
- Sure thing.
- Do we have to get married?
- I don't think so, no.
- No, no.
You could also make your own
thing. You know, it's fine.
- That seems hard, too.
- The kids go, take off.
- I would like to speak to the masses,
or speak specifically to the coppers,
since they weren't at our
head of state meeting,
to see if I could sit down with someone
to communicate what is happening.
- Okay, I will let you know that I'm sure
Thorn told you at some point
that he sent Teedles off
specifically to become one of,
to join Population Support.
So you know you have
someone in the pocket there.
- Then I guess I speak to Teedles,
just to get the temperature
before I speak to everyone.
- Cool, cool, cool. Viola takes off.
- It's Quentin that's
in charge of Technology?
- Yes.
- I'll probably have a
little aside with Quentin
and just would love to
establish, you know,
what we have at our disposal
that could be useful,
and then if we can gather any information
about what the humans might be using
so that we can best prepare ourselves.
- You stay here. What about Ava and Tula?
- I'd like to suss out where
those First Stoats stayed.
- Oh yeah, Grandma, you
want to come with us?
- Oh, (stammers) was there
something you wanted-
- You're going to love Lukas.
- I think that makes sense. I had no plan.
I guess if everyone was running off
to go take care of things,
I trust that Viola and Thorn
are going to be able to handle
the stoats of Last Bast.
- Maybe you should stay here with Bennett.
- I could use a hand talking
to the different heads
and coming up with a plan.
- He seems really nice.
- You go with Lila and Jaysohn, Mama,
and then I'll stay with Thorn
and deal with these leaders
and keep an eye on our sweet MeatWolf.
(Aabria imitates animal panting)
- [Aabria] Paws on the table. (sniffing)
- [Brennan] That's a good boy.
- I think it would be useful
to have two sides of the coin
represented in these discussions.
- When you say two sides of
the coin, I'll smile and say,
I'd be interested to know what
you feel our difference is.
- Well, I have a tendency to be
a little rash and headstrong,
and I think some tempered caution
would be useful for me in this moment.
- That's very meaningful to hear.
I will do my best not to
let caution obscure opportunity.
- And I will do my best
not to let rashness obscure our safety.
And starts bleeding from the
nose. He thinks, what's a coin?
- Amazing, so let's start with
the ones that stayed here.
Thorn, you kind of sidle over to Quentin,
who is sort of the most
generically brown stoat,
medium brown fur, white bib,
but you see from the back,
tip of his tail growing upward,
that winter white coming in,
a little bit of a reminder
that you are approaching winter
and the time of white coats.
Hi.
- Hello, Quentin. It's
a pleasure to meet you.
I was just interested,
after having that discussion with Bennett
and trying to formulate
some strategy and plan,
I'd just love to know
what you have worked on,
and if you can illuminate anything
that the humans might use against us.
Anything that you've seen in
the past that might be useful.
- Most of our understanding
of what the humans are
capable of comes from...
We've got footage.
They have whole systems
of recording themselves
and broadcasting it out.
- Like the recording we heard?
- Right.
- Like that.
- But they have ones with visuals, too.
So we have some idea
that there are just...
There might be as many humans in the world
as there are stoats here.
- Okay, so I think eradication
is probably off the table.
That's good.
- But as far as what we've got right now,
we have a range of ballistic weapons
that we see that they use,
but we also know that they
use biological components.
They work with fire and lightning
and poison and smoke.
- I must ask, you may know
this, you speak about poison.
When I saw the humans first,
they had this sort of
yellow skin, no eyes.
They didn't look organic
in the way that we do.
- Hold that thought one second!
He kind of takes off down the lab
and returns back minutes later
with several folded up
pieces of paper in his mouth
and takes time to fold them out
more like a picnic blanket
than anything else.
- That corner, there,
okay, yep, there we go.
- What you're looking
at is sort of a diagram
for how to put on a hazmat suit,
and then a couple photos
of just what people...
This was a photo of some of
the researchers in the lab
that they all took together where you see
that these people are mostly hairless,
a little bit on the top of their head
and around their mouths
and over their eyes.
- Oh god, worse than I imagined.
- They're smaller. You can see
that they have distinct eyes.
It looks like a couple
of them are mid-blink.
They look like they are
a little more stoat-like.
- Hm, okay.
- I think it takes a bit of
the monster edge off of them.
- Could I make an insight
check into the photo?
- Yeah, what are you
trying to insight check?
- See if any of them are single?
- Yeah, are you trying
to be hornt up for them?
- No, I think this is, like you said,
there's a jarring-ness where
they go from being monsters
to being something like stoats,
and I think in this moment,
Tula's trying to be truly
as open as possible.
Be like, what do I actually
see here when I look at this?
- Okay, yeah. That is absolutely insight.
- 31.
(players gasping and cheering)
- Incredible.
- [Jasper] We're strong now.
- Seeing the person next
to the roll's reaction,
Siobhan just going...
- There's a little EMP of, f*ck yeah.
Looking down at this photo,
you see a group of people.
It's hard trying to reverse
the concept of humanizing.
Stoat-alizing.
But you see sexual dimorphism
and people clearly,
they're baring their
teeth, but it's in play.
This seems relaxed and joyful,
and if it weren't for all the strangeness
of the idea of a photograph at all
or the fact that they're
all wearing clothes
and that one of them has
something burning in his fingers,
raising it towards his mouth,
and the scale of it is wrong,
and yet you see the same sort
of interpersonal dynamics
that you've known amongst your family
and amongst the other
stoats of the warren.
- I think that I'm looking at it.
Hairless or otherwise, you know,
yeah, they don't have hair.
Deer have bones growing out
of the top of their head.
Animals can be weird,
but I'm looking at them,
and do I get the sensation on a 31
that with all of the dynamics
I'm seeing in this captured image,
that they seem to have social
groups more like stoats
than any of the other
animals we've encountered?
- Absolutely.
- I think seeing a softness
in Tula, I'll just...
Do you think there's a universe,
a world in which stoats and humans are
not adversarial?
I'm sort of saying that very carefully.
- You see Quentin... (coughs skeptically)
Go ahead. No, you're good,
everyone gets there on their own.
- Trying to be as open
to every possibility.
- Are these pictures true?
Did this happen, or is this just shapes?
- By my best understanding,
they had some way of capturing
a moment and rendering it
in the same way that reading,
writing tells you a thing
that you know in your head.
As far as I know, it's true.
- If badgers are not monsters,
and if bears are not monsters,
and if wolves are not monsters,
these are not monsters.
These are more like us
than any of the other animals
that we've come across.
They're more like us than MeatWolf is,
and MeatWolf is MeatWolf.
(Aabria imitating animal panting)
- Still can't believe we're doing that.
- Just a bunch of slob
that's also full of blood
and a new bone that he was growing.
- These monsters...
I have to stop saying
monsters. These humans...
So they have read and write,
and read and write doesn't
work if you can't talk.
If they have writing here,
it means they had talking.
Did the First...
Was there ever an attempt
to speak to humans?
- On the tape, Dr. Wenabocker said,
I don't know how they're doing this,
something to that effect.
- We were hearing squeaking on the tape.
- Yes.
- If the tape is what happened,
they weren't talking yet.
- So in other words,
we understand Wenabocker on the tape.
- Yes.
- Hmm.
- But the stoats were squeaking
like other animals squeak.
- So what if we weren't yet at a point
where we had that ability?
- We don't speak Stoat. We speak Human.
- Oh sh*t, I'm going to need a minute.
You just see Quentin kind of
ducks down onto all fours.
(Aabria retching repeatedly)
- If they were squeaking
and we understand Wenabocker,
(Aabria sighs)
it means they didn't start
with it, Wenabocker did.
Which means this is Human. We speak Human.
- And that means that Wenabocker
and none of the humans
think that we can speak human, either.
- Unless maybe some contact-
- [Jasper] Perhaps
there's been some contact.
- But it doesn't seem
like that's happened.
- This is such bad things. Why are you...
No, it's good. I hate this, sorry.
- It's okay, it's okay. I'm just going to-
- We speak in... (shaking, sighing)
We speak human.
- We're good.
- We speak human.
- This is good, this is good.
This gives us options.
This gives us "avoiding total
annihilation" kind of options.
This is positive.
It is a lot, I know.
- We're good, we're good.
- [Aabria] You can't be
good and I'm not good,
so we're all good at the same amount.
- Absolutely, yeah.
(Aabria sighs)
Where you are right now
is where I've been for the last few days.
- [Aabria] It's wild
that you guys have been here
for a few days. - I'm sort
of making an active decision
to not be there right now.
- Okay, wow, wow wow wow.
- Tula is really keyed up.
- Sensing this within Tula, I will say,
I think, to present the
other side of the coin,
we also have to be extremely
prepared for the eventuality
that that's not on their agenda,
and something they haven't considered.
- If they're like stoats, then yes,
some of them might be
like the First Stoats.
Some of them might want to hurt us,
even if they can speak and talk
and reason like stoats can.
- Absolutely, so if
that's even on the table,
we need to be in a position
where we have some security
in that negotiation.
I think if we just meet face to face,
I think we put ourselves
at a huge disadvantage.
What we have is, we have
the element of surprise.
If they're going to go aggressive,
they're not going to expect
us to be as organized
and have access to what we have access to.
That's the advantage we
have, and we lose that
the second we go out saying,
"Hey buddy, want to talk?"
- You are right, it's too
dangerous to just assume
they will see us and care for us.
- Exactly.
- You also can't meet them
anticipating that they
will hurt you, because...
This is very hard. It all
has to be done exactly right.
You can't approach
somebody letting them know
that you are fine hurting them.
They'll be ready to hurt you back.
But we have to be ready to
defend ourselves. (sighs)
Let's just run. Let's run, let's run.
- I think Bennett's going to come over,
kind of just pat you on the shoulder.
Hey, are you okay?
- No.
- No, yeah. Want some water?
- [Brennan] Yeah.
- Gives you a little thimble. It's hard.
- I understand, and I think
that perhaps what we're doing
in the moment is we're trying
to game out a situation
where we don't have all the facts.
I think once Lila and Jaysohn return,
and see what they have
gathered, it might give us
more of an understanding of
where the humans are coming from
and perhaps what the First Stoats
knew about the human
dynamic and whether there is
some means of contacting
them without being
face to face in a dire
sort of standoff situation.
- I think we will be able
to talk to them if we can
just get close enough without
them using the thunder.
If we can get close enough to speak,
because if we understand their talking
and we hear squeaking, then that means
we aren't squeaking to
each other right now,
because squeaking sounds
like squeaking to us.
- Yes, I think we find one on their own,
tie them to a chair,
and we say, hey, listen.
We can talk. Let's just talk about this.
- Well, if they...
I don't...
I think...
(Cast stifling laughter)
Thorn.
- What?
- I appreciate...
Listen, there's a lot you know
about interacting with
people that I don't know.
- Yes.
- So I just know, you know,
let's say that I wanted to ask
Jaysohn or Lila for some behavior.
- You tie Jaysohn to a chair.
- Yeah, but I don't do that.
- But how are you going
to catch him otherwise?
He'll just run away.
- No!
- I've seen him run away
from you so many times.
- Yeah, but you shouldn't
focus on the running away part.
You should focus on the
always coming back part.
- Right, okay, so we train
the human to always come back.
- You're operating from a
place of a love of control
that is not how life,
I think, works.
Respect for you.
- Hey, I don't want to interrupt.
I do feel like this became a
parenting thing, and I just...
We're kind of in a, oh
god, existential crisis-
- We need to be able to do both.
- No no no, you're both doing
such a good job, but what?
- I was working out how to
be a father in this moment.
- Yeah, it became a
different thing, and then-
- He's about to become the
father of my sister's children,
and it's very hard.
- No, we understand.
- Don't tie your children up.
That would be what I would say.
- I'm worried they're going
to run away like Jaysohn.
- Quentin gives you a look like...
(Aabria and Jasper muttering agreeably)
Crazy. I have all boys, it's crazy.
- Put them on a leash or something.
(Aabria gasps)
- You see Quentin, the
Technology guy, is like, leash!
- Definitely a pulse of
Blue inside of Thorn's mind.
Leash!
- I'm sure Quentin loves that idea.
Reminder that Quentin, while way nicer
than the First Stoats, (aside)
still a little bit of a fascist.
- Whoa!
- You should be thankful
you know that word.
- (mimics magic pulse) Fascist.
- Fascist.
- Thorn Whip works one time!
And that one time has informed
your entire parenting experience.
- I'm going to-
- My kits don't talk to me anymore.
- Look over at Quentin, Quentin's smoking.
How does a stoat have stubble?
Details aside, I think we do
need to be ready to do both.
We need to be ready to defend.
We need to be ready to seize
an opportunity to talk,
because if that plan works,
in the best case scenario of defending,
many stoats die.
That's the best case scenario.
If we're successful, many, many
stoats and many humans die.
If there's a world where
none of that has to happen,
that's obviously something
we are required to try for.
- Of course.
- I'm going to send a
allocation squad out,
and we're just going to see
how far away the humans are.
- That would be fantastic.
- [Aabria] We'll let you
know how much time we have.
- That would be a really good idea.
- Okay, you know what?
Good job.
Quentin, you just see, is now drawing
over the diagrams of how
to put on hazmat suits
with a little modeling of,
now if I had a leash but
it went eight ways...
- Tula looks at it and is like, actually,
I don't really mind those little
daycare ropes where they all..
- Daycare ropes!
- [Brennan] Those are
kind of cute, actually.
- Everyone holds a little
donut, yeah yeah yeah.
- So if we call it a daycare
rope and not a leash,
it's fine, I see the way it is.
- They hang onto the daycare rope-
I'm not in this conversation.
They choose to hold it!
- Siobhan the Human leans in.
- Not always, sometimes
there's a vest attached.
- Like a little monkey backpack.
- [Izzy] In New York.
- We move away from the
lab and follow Viola.
Viola, I want to know what your
game plan is in this moment.
You are moving amongst hundreds
and hundreds of stoats.
You see, every now and
then, an occasional copper.
No one you recognize quite yet.
But what's your plan as far as
organizing the masses or
reaching out or explaining?
What do you say, and how
do you want to go about it?
- I think Viola is a bit
of a universal quarterback
at this point,
- Yeah.
- And kind of drifting through
and trying to speak to a pocket of people,
because I know information will travel.
- So you just rock up
to a bunch of strangers?
- As I'm making my way through the masses,
I guess I want to see if I can
sense where Teedles may be.
I just want to get a
lay of the land first,
before I speak to strangers.
- Sure, sure, sure.
You've worked with Teedles,
obviously not as long as your husband,
but how do you summon Teedles?
Because you know you can, quite easily.
- But I'm going to go,
kind of leaning into my
First Lady sort of thing,
I am going to rock up to
their sleeping quarters area
and just, on the most cordial thing,
maybe bringing some sort
of bite to eat or something
so we can break bread and talk about
what needs to be done.
- Sure, then yeah,
if you're just sort of like,
one of them will be home,
you make your way down
to the yellow corridor.
Teedles is just kind of sitting,
sort of fluffing the nest and
tidying up as you get there.
- Teedles.
- (gasps) (coughs) Hi.
I'm so sorry.
- I didn't mean to-
- She adjusts her belt.
- You're fine, you look great.
- Thank you, so do you. Hi.
- Thank you. There's a
lot going on right now.
I know that I don't normally come
and speak to you one on one
and I first want to say,
you're doing an excellent job.
I'm talking to you.
- Oh.
- Yeah.
- Thanks.
- From the burrow to here,
you've followed orders,
but you did your own
thing at the same time,
and I appreciate that.
- Thank you, ma'am.
Give me a persuasion check.
- Oh, okay.
Gladly.
- Okay.
- Okay, okay.
15.
- With a 15, yeah.
Thank you.
Look, I know that maybe
it's been a little tense
between us at times, but
I've always respected you.
I think you bring out the
best in my best friend.
Second best friend. Husband.
- He's my best friend. He can be-
- Yeah, you can have lots of friends.
- It's a level, not
necessarily a tier system.
- Yeah.
I would like to be your...
I don't know how to make adult friends.
- Oh!
- So I'm... (groans) I feel
like I'm doing a bad job.
- I spend so much time with
my family, it's hard to know-
- Yeah, it's really hard to get in there,
because when you're all kind
of there, you're very in it.
That's not a blame thing.
- No, no, no.
It's a thing that, you know-
- Sure, priorities.
- Totally, but knowing
that you're on our level
and you understand and you're,
might I say, a mean b*tch like me,
and I say that with the utmost respect-
- No, I got it, thank you! (sniffs)
- I take out a kerchief
that I've made from a sash.
- What is that?
- It's embroidered, yeah it is.
- [Aabria] What does it say?
- Teedles.
- What? This has my name on it!
I just learned to read!
- This is beautiful.
- This is really nice.
- And it's been an emotional
time for all of us,
but now is the time, more than ever.
We need to lean into our skills and help
all of these lost stoats.
- You're right.
- They've been lied to.
They've been deceived.
They've been set to mindless tasks,
not knowing the eventuality,
and the thing that's coming
is bigger, further than
all of our understanding.
- What do you mean?
Bigger than humans coming
back and k*lling everyone?
Oh f*ck, what's worse than humans?
- I really don't want to know.
But the thing is,
you've spent time with
the coppers, correct?
- Yep.
- I need to know who's in charge.
I need to know what's going on there.
I want to speak to everyone,
but they will form-
but I believe that they are going to
be the most resistant to our cause.
- The coppers or the people?
- The coppers.
- Oh, huh, okay.
Well, as far as I know,
there's not any single leader.
- Talia's not running the show?
- No, I think Talia's
just sort of one of them.
But honestly, I've only
been doing this job for...
Huh, I just learned how to
tell time. Two or thee hours.
And I have so much responsibility.
I literally thought they
were going to be like,
little training day!
Nope.
- They're just giving you
no training whatsoever?
- Just full Population Support-
- That's crazy.
- They were like, hey,
if you have to deal out
lethal justice, we understand.
There's a lot of stoats.
- With no license?
Have you been trained
at all on any of that?
- Nope, not at all. They were like,
do you want a weapon?
- There should be legislation
at the end of this. I cannot believe it.
- It's pretty wild.
- How young is the youngest copper?
- God, I don't know.
I hope just maybe a little
bit bigger than Jaysohn.
- Oh my god.
- But probably not.
- Do a lot of them have to go to education
before they do that?
- Not really.
- Goddammit, Teedles!
- Look, I've been talking to
Ellen. Simon really isn't getting-
People just walk out of
Education all the time.
This place is a sh*t show.
- We're going to restructure all of this.
- It's kind of wild.
- Terrible.
So what we're going to do,
you and I, hand in hand,
we're going to speak to the
masses and let them know-
- What are we letting them know?
- Do I know what we are letting them know?
- No, you're making a big
choice. This is all you, baby.
- All right, Rashawn. You're here, okay.
- Just, yeah, you know I'll
follow you into any fire.
I followed you into this,
and maybe we all die here in
a little bit, but that's okay.
- But at least we put up a fight.
Wouldn't you rather that we
try to do something about it
instead of it all happening to us?
- We have spent a lot of our lives
with things happening to us.
I'd rather die in action.
Sure, anyone that wears the
kind of copper sash gets...
People listen to them,
so we can go into the
middle of that main hall
and make some announcements.
Yeah, hold on.
We can switch. She starts
taking off her sash.
If you put this on, they'll listen.
No one knows who all the coppers are.
No, you've got to put it down low.
You're making a new and
fanciful choice in the space,
and it's kind of a uniform.
- It's cute.
- It is cute. You made
it cute, I liked it.
Just for the sake of efficacy-
- [Rashawn] Sure, sure, sure.
- Maybe not dazzle in this moment.
- I would just redo the
whole entire design.
- Cool, this seems like a secondary thing
to the obliteration.
- I'm just thinking about
a lot of things right now.
Great, well, I'm glad that we could speak,
and that you know that
you are valued, okay?
- You're a good one, and
you're going to be a great mom.
- Don't talk about that stuff right now!
- What? I'm sorry, god, I'm sorry!
Oh, I f*cked it up.
- Dammit all to hell. Okay.
- You made me cry.
- She slowly backs out of the room. Bye!
- Okay, you're going. I'm
following, I'm following!
- Okay, come with, but
don't talk about that.
- Yeah, and then as you guys
take off for that main center,
she will just, as she's running,
oh, by the way, Walmer's here!
- What?
- Runs into the big room.
Huh, what? Look, we found all the stoats!
- Is he-
- [Aabria] He's alive.
- He's alive?
- [Aabria] Yeah.
- And well?
- I think recovering,
but made it here safely
with a couple of the Lukura
and a couple of the Red Warren.
- You have just made my day.
- Aw.
Adult friendship is easy. This is nice.
Then we'll come back around.
- The first thing that's made me go,
I need to go lock down Bennett right now.
- Gotta get that choice locked in.
- Amazing, let's follow Ava and the kids.
So you guys are headed to go find Lukas.
- [Izzy] Yeah.
- [Aabria] Yeah.
- Shuffling down the hall with them.
- It's the middle of the day,
roughly the same amount
of time the previous day
where you went to Education.
I think that's your best
guess for where to find him.
- Grandma, education is so
stupid. You're going to hate it.
- Oh?
- But Lukas is so cool.
You're going to love him.
- Oh yes, is Lukas your little boyfriend?
- No, Grandma!
Ew, no!
Lila's so much better than Lukas.
Lukas sucks, but you're
going to really like him.
- Okay, well, we'll see about that.
- I've literally been stunned into silence
for the first time in my entire life.
Can I also, is there
anything on Sybil's map
that would indicate clues
to where the First Stoats are at all?
- So I'm going to have you
make an investigation check.
No no no, we're going to
make it history specifically,
because you've been moving through
all of the tunnels and pipes
and vents of this place.
- 17.
- That'll do it.
Your mind kind of goes back
as you're looking at this map,
and you're like, I was moving
through a lot of these spaces,
and yet it feels like
the map is incomplete.
There was something that
you guys were running past
on your straight shot
towards Reactor Charlie
that is a whole wing of this facility
that doesn't seem to be
rendered onto the map.
- Hmmm.
- There's nothing that you see here
that would be, that's
where the Stoats are!
But a place that your mental understanding
of this location isn't being covered here.
- Okay, after we get Lukas,
I think I know where we need to look.
- Okay, great.
- I'm going to get into cartography.
- The word cartography
is new and interesting.
Yeah, blehp.
- Nose bleed.
- I'd like to look at map and see
if there's something about communications.
- Comms. Go ahead and make an
investigation check for me.
- Can I help?
- I will say that you
were so focused on...
You were doing your own
sort of calculations,
and this was happening simultaneously.
- That's just a 10.
- Jaysohn does not help. Jaysohn
look down and goes, nope!
- You're learning, and hey,
I want to reward academic curiosity
because it's episode nine
and you finally want to know a thing,
and that's a growth arc from
you specifically, I love it.
- That is the highest
intelligence check you've done.
- Truly!
- [Erika] True.
In that I- (stammers)
- You read "mom".
- I did not actively refuse.
- The Heisman shaking
off of understanding.
You are still getting sort of a lay
for what some of these
signals mean, but you see
what might be, if you go and investigate
their analogs in these physical spaces,
what could be either vents
that run to different rooms
or something that could be communications.
You see, room to room,
lines connecting things,
but you're still struggling
to put it together right now.
- It's nothing.
- The beginning of something!
- What are you thinking about, Grandma?
- Oh, well, I know that the First Stoats
chewed through all of
the communication wires.
Dr. Winnebago must have
been in some sort of room
trying to get a message out, right?
- My gosh, you're so smart.
- That means a lot coming from you, dear.
- Oh, it's the real one!
- Actual strawberries!
- I had gone and raided the
storeroom of all strawberries,
and now it's like, this is the good sh*t,
not like, last winter stores stuff.
This is real good stuff. Fresh.
- [Aabria] Nice.
- There's a little bit of
gumminess in the strawberries.
- Ooh!
- I'm glad that smart is
a compliment to you now.
- Yes, well, I've seen what smart and read
and pre-read and post-read can do for you.
- Post-read?
- That's math.
- Thinking?
(Brennan guffaws)
- Post-read is math.
- [Jasper] Post-read is maths.
- You make your way towards Education.
- Let's go find your friend.
- Sweet, as you get to
the door, you open it up,
and it is pandemonium.
- I think I like Education.
- Okay, well, it wasn't like this
the last time we were here.
- What you see are 25 kits
the same age as Jaysohn
and Lila and younger,
and they have gone full Lord of the Flies.
The only adult in the room is tied up
with a bunch of brightly colored
rainbow yarn in the corner
with, you know those
little craft pom-poms?
Just jammed into his mouth.
And on top of him, Lukas is screaming,
(players laughing)
(congested) I am the lord of this place!
- [Siobhan] Yes, Lukas!
- [Aabria] And the only
boss of me is here! Hello!
- [Siobhan] Hello! This is my grandma!
- Hi, Grandma! Do you have mint?
- Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.
- I thought my mom cured your nose.
How did it get stuffed up again?
- Here's the thing about
whatever's going on.
It always comes back.
My mom says I have allergies,
and I'm allergic to pet dander.
(Erika guffaws)
- Pet dander?
- Dander.
- Nander.
- Dander!
I'm saying it normal.
- Dormal.
- You need a prescription or something.
- What's a prescription?
- Yeah. Come with us.
- Come with us!
- Why? I'm in charge of here.
- We have a mission.
(Aabria gasps)
- It's, like, super secret and special.
Bennett asked us to do it.
- Bennett's very cool.
- Bennett's so cool.
- My mom likes Bennett.
- Is there a-
- My mum likes Bennett!
- Now where's your mom?
- I'm sorry, what did you say?
- My mom, her name is
Meredith, she likes Bennett.
- Like, like likes?
- [Aabria] She likes him likes him.
- We'll see about that.
- Actually, speaking of your mom-
- Are you making fun of my voice?
- Yes.
- Okay.
- Has she sort of talked to
you about our family at all?
- She told me not to
spend any time with you
because you're a bad influence.
- Mm-hm. How do you feel about that?
- Well, on a sort of personal level,
I feel like you guys are
the most exciting people,
and you're very nice, you keep helping me.
Sometimes you're a little
bit mean, but that's okay.
But I know my mom is very stressed
because she doesn't want everyone to die.
- Mm-hm.
- I love my mom, is the
thing, so she can be-
- That's cool. I love my mom too.
- I mean, our mum is also
so scared and stressed
all the time.
- Yeah!
- She thinks everybody's
going to die, which is fair,
because she did die, and so did
Grandma, and so did our dad.
- Oh, I'm so sorry.
- For some reason, our mum is
still alive but she's dead,
and our grandma is still
alive but she's dead,
but our dad is, like, dead dead.
- Dead dead.
- I'm sorry your dad
didn't come back also.
- Your mother is doing-
- Simon, shut up!
He just hops on Simon.
Simon's fine, because he's very light.
- Your mother is doing
the best that she can
with the tools that she has,
and that doesn't always translate
into the best of actions
or liking the person that's
really right for you, but-
- That's fair.
So, Simon was telling us
when he was explaining
how to understand our feelings
that her reactions of
fear turn into anger.
- Wow.
- Education's actually pretty good.
It's like emotional
education, and how to read.
- I guess that's good. Let's go.
- Let's go!
- Okay!
Do you want anyone else to come?
- No.
- Yes! What?
- Oh.
- I don't know.
Is there anybody else that's cool?
- No.
- Then no!
- Okay.
- Okay, everybody line up before I go,
and I need to see all of
you kids do a forward roll.
- [Aabria] Make a intimidation check.
- [Jasper] Can we get 30 dexterity rolls?
- [Erika] Can I assist?
- [Brennan] The world is about to end.
I need everyone gathered
here to do a somersault.
- [Erika] Show me your moves!
- An eight.
- Okay.
- I have a zero to intimidation.
Can I use Grandma's-
- I was going to say, my
grandson told you all to do-
- Hold on, I got this, Grandma.
- Oh.
- [Rashawn] Aw!
- Then Lukas is going
to come forward and say,
he's the boss of me, and
she's the boss of him,
and their grandma's here too,
so you all have to do it.
And Lukas runs forward
and has a little half of a pipe cleaner
that he's turned into a little stick,
and he smashes it on the ground,
and all it does is crumple.
But the kids get the idea.
Go ahead and make one more...
Make it a persuasion check now.
- Okay, great.
That's also a plus zero, and I got a five.
- Sweet.
- You kids suck! Let's go!
- Let's go.
- Okay, well, they're not
listening to you or me,
so you guys all do f*cking suck, goodbye.
I'm sorry I did a cuss!
- Oh, you can say all of the
swear words that you can.
(Izzy gasps)
Yes, I'm a cool grandma.
- f*ck!
- sh*t!
- Shut up!
- Pants!
- Hell!
- Pants!
- Pants?
- I panicked!
- Pants.
Little Lukas walks out the door,
and he kicks the door shut behind him.
Pants yeah. Let's roll.
Oh! Thank you.
- You pants with me again,
and I'll pants you right in your pants.
- Don't pants with me, man!
- So yeah, can you give
me a survival check
to try to navigate?
If you want someone to help
that would like to provide that,
or you can all roll on your own.
- I have a plus nine to survival. 18.
- [Aabria] Sweet.
- That's an eight.
- 13.
- You're sort of doing
the map-to-memory thing,
so it's a little harder to take the point,
but there's something in
the way you two operate
that you can kind of nudge Jaysohn,
and he's making sure you're
getting in the right direction
as you lead and talk off down the halls.
- So we have to go to
where there's nowhere.
- Yes.
- Do you see?
- No.
- How up here, there's nowhere?
But I think there's somewhere.
- But if there's nothing
there, then that's nothing.
- But maybe no one knows it's something.
- I don't understand
anything you're saying.
- This is why she's the boss of you.
- What are your skills?
I'm trying to figure
out how we can use you.
- Yeah, what do you do? What's your deal?
- [Aabria] My deal is-
- Are you clever?
- Maybe.
- You were pretty good at that
forward roll the other day.
- Thank you.
- You're welcome.
- I'm very good at eating.
- I respect it.
- Oh, I love him.
- I can go to sleep right when I lay down.
- These are just the things his
mom has complimented him on.
You're such a good eater!
You go right to sleep when I put you down!
- Okay, we'll figure it out.
- I have no concept of
Dungeons and Dragons classes,
so I'm just a little guy.
- Yeah. Dungeons and Dragons.
- I think we brought along Lukas
so you can have a little playdate.
- I'm a very good sidekick.
- (whisper) He's sort
of like another body.
- Wow!
- I can also hear you.
I'm a body, I will stand between you
and anything that will hurt you.
We could be friends. Oh!
Thank you, Lila.
- Jaysohn, you do it too.
- Can I have a kiss?
Thank you.
- Pants!
- Pants!
And he just hangs out with you
until there's a good thing for him to do.
You got him. You got Lukas.
- I'm trying to think how to ask Lukas,
Lukas, can you give the help action?
- So I think Lila's sort of looking for,
you know, a door or a hallway
or an offshoot of the map
that isn't accounted for.
- Yep, roll...
We're going to use it, because
you talked sh*t about it
before we started filming.
I need you to make a d100 roll for me.
- What?
- 10 and 1.
- Wow.
- That could've been much worse,
but after only 11 minutes
of searching around-
- Oh!
(Players expressing surprise
at this use of a d100 roll)
- We were going to absolutely sink time
into you guys trying to find this.
- [Siobhan] We wanted a low roll!
- Yes, you did.
It really only takes 11
minutes for you to hit
the part of the hallway where you feel air
coming through one of the vents,
and as you open the
grate and move toward it,
you realize you are sort of running
over a hallway that no one has been in.
But there's air conditioning in here,
and the lights are barely working,
and as you follow it
through and to its origin,
you reach a room you've never seen before.
It seems like a little lab, private,
but it has some equipment
like the bigger lab
that you were in, a lot of desks.
It all looks unkempt, and
it's covered with big, large,
slightly decaying blankets and jackets.
You have found-
- Kiran's bedroom.
- It's actually the lair
of all of the First Stoats.
- [Siobhan] It stinks in here.
- And it's gross as f*ck?
- I mean, yeah, it's kind of gross.
- It's like that weird apartment
Chuck Schumer and those other senators
all hang out in.
- Oh yes, ew.
- The idea that this place
is clean and organized
because everyone is working on it,
Refit's always working on it.
For this to stay hidden,
it had to not be worked on,
so it's truly the nest-iest
thing you've seen here.
- Grandma, it smells
like old people in here.
- Listen, when you get to be my age,
you try smelling like
dandelions all the time.
- I found it, I found my gift.
I can't smell any of this.
I'm impervious to the funk of this room.
- Ugh, I'm jealous!
- Cool.
- I think it smells quite nice, actually!
- Can I do a perception check
to look for clues and
get a vibe of this place?
- [Izzy] Yeah, I want to
look through everything.
- I crit.
- [Erika] Hey!
- Amazing.
- Jaysohn backflips into a clue.
- [Aabria] Thank goodness you did.
- Hey, look at this!
Oh, it's the story! I found
a book called Exposition!
- You absolutely do that, but first,
to even get in the room, you
see a cut out bit of metal
that was false in the side
of this grate to get in.
As you touch it,
you feel something gives
a little strangely.
- I broke something
I broke something. I broke something.
- You are touching it with your claw,
and you feel just a little
buzzing under your claw,
and you understand exactly what you felt.
It was an electrical
current moving through this,
that the door is trapped.
- It feels like the weapon.
Can I karate kick it?
- Yeah, go ahead and make an attack roll.
- Wait, no no no no no
no no! Don't touch it!
You said it's like weapon?
No, let Grandma handle it.
I, yeah, poke it with my baculum.
I, yeah, poke it with my baculum.
- Yeah, go ahead and give
me a big old attack roll.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah!
- Can I give my grandma the help action?
- Hell yeah.
- Great.
It was right here, Grandma!
It was right here where it was buzzing!
- Grandma, kick it real hard!
Lukas is going to give you
a d6 of bardic inspiration.
- Yes!
- [Rashawn] Yay!
- Unreal.
- He's a little stoat bard!
- A 23 to hit.
- [Aabria] Yep.
- And then,
oh my goodness-
- Lukas has Jack of All Trades?
- One of those trades is eating, yes!
- 30. 30 points of damage.
- Yeah, yes,
30 points of damage to a
false door is absolutely...
You line this up like a
golf swing and absolutely,
you can feel just a little
bit of that buzzing energy
even conducted through
the bone into your hands,
but you're able to shake it off,
and you knock the entire little
false door off of its frame,
and you have easy access into the lair.
- All right, come on in, kids. Come on in.
- That was cool.
- That was very cool.
- So when we go through,
we go through the hatch?
- Yeah, you go through this
kicked open part of the hatch,
and you can see on the other
side of it, in this room,
some little cables and a
battery taped up to the wall
where it was rigged to
have an electrical current.
But now that all that's been disconnected,
the wires are floating free,
and you are looking into
this small lab-office combo.
You see two desks, a bunch of bric-a-brac
and papers and dials and
keyboards and monitors
and two doors, one sort of opposite
where you were coming in and coming down,
and then one on the side.
- We'll look through all
of the office lab stuff.
- Are we looking for read?
- Yeah, we're looking for pre-read.
- Oh, pre-read.
- And read.
- Okay.
- Isn't that how it works?
- Every single thing, every single paper,
I hold up and I'm like, is it this one?
- Do they say anything interesting?
- Is it this one?
- Is it math?
- Some of it is math.
- [Izzy] Post-read?
- Hold this one, Lukas!
- [Aabria] Okay.
(Board breaking)
No roll required.
You punch through it and
punch Lukas in the face.
- Sorry, sorry, sorry! I
thought it would be harder.
I'm so sorry, I thought
it would be harder.
- Ow, my face!
Is it okay? Am I doing a good job?
- You're doing such a good job.
- [Aabria] Okay. Can I
put the paper down now?
- Please do, I'm sorry.
- Cool.
He just is in the corner,
sort of daubing up his nose,
which is somehow stuffier than before.
- I'm sorry, Lukas!
- It's okay.
I'm a little boy. I bounce back.
- I think Lila's looking for anything
that could look sort of like plans.
- Okay.
- Or like secrets the First Stoats-
- I think that some of this
looks like human pre-read
- I think that some of this
looks like human pre-read
and some of this looks
like stoat pre-read.
- There you go. You see lots
of pages at human scale.
A lot of math, a lot of numbers,
and sort of looking through them,
because you're reading
everything that comes across
and everyone here can read,
you see a lot of thin paper
with short bits of
phrases asking for backup,
asking for support, time
logs that line up perfectly
with the bits of recording
that you heard that have
a little bit of human chicken
scratch in the corner.
If we can't get this in the next 48 hours,
grab sand from the river.
Evacuation timelines.
Below that, you see bits that
are torn away very cleanly.
It takes you a little bit longer to look,
but in these nested piles,
you see four discrete nesting areas,
and deep within each of them,
there are little packets of paper,
and you've found the personal logs
of each of the First Stoats.
- Okay, well, this is
Dr. Robert Wenabocker.
This is him with the sounds, yeah.
- Oh, his pre-read?
- Yes.
- Do you understand this?
Because I can just about get
words, and this is like...
I don't know what these
number things are doing,
and the numbers have
letters in it as well.
I don't like it.
- No, I don't know anything about that.
- Which was the one...
I think, was it the Stoat Pope or the...
Well, I can see which ones it was.
Which was the one that was talking
and said, "She'll be back"?
- Oh yeah, which one was that?
Maybe we all go to each one of their cots.
- Perfect. Initiative. (snickers)
- Oh sh*t.
- Oh okay.
- No, we're just resolving this in order.
- She's here!
- [Jasper] She's back!
- [Rashawn] No!
- Oh my god!
- It's okay, it doesn't matter.
- That's a nine for initiative.
- Plus 13, and I got a 5.
- It's okay, that's still-
- Still an 18.
- Well, you're getting it out now.
- [Brennan] Give me that 30.
- Yeah, get it out of the way
now. You'll need it later.
- 12.
- Okay, you're still up first.
So out of the four, who do
you wind up in front of?
- Maybe Kiran.
- Okay, you find the
Dictator's pile, Kiran.
They write their name at the top.
Sort of glancing over
it, for whatever reason,
the Dictator's is the smallest pile,
and it's less of a record
of things from before
and more of a to-do list
of things to get done,
and everything has timelines,
and you see years right up
to the current year, 1982,
and plans to get the
trucks up and running,
to find more animals in the
forest and trap them here.
They're keeping a list
of all of the animals
that can take higher doses
of the Light and survive,
which ones evolve, which ones fail,
and all of it sort of
underlined and around
that if she comes back, we'll be ready.
- Okay.
- Who is she?
- Ava.
- I'd like to look at
Speaker's pile, please.
- [Aabria] Nice, you go to Speaker's pile,
and you see that their name is Jomei.
- [Erika] Jomei?
- Yep, and Speaker's pile is
all about maintaining order
- Yep, and Speaker's pile is
all about maintaining order
within Last Bastion itself,
and about getting intel
to and from the stoats that
live here, population numbers.
It looks like as of just a few days ago,
the current population was 21,730 stoats,
and that roughly 400 stoats
had been lost in the previous week.
- [Siobhan] In the previous week?
- Do I know why they were lost?
That seems like an awful
lot to lose at once.
- You see that there's
breakdowns and abbreviations
next to the different factions,
and that the biggest number of these,
it's about 320 of them,
were lost on different
Resource Allocation runs.
But there's also another 30
that are Population Support.
If there are dissidents,
Population Support is authorized
to keep the public calm at all costs.
- Well, back in my warren,
we never had to deal with
that kind of hullabaloo.
All right, is that all?
- I'll ask you a question.
What would Ava be looking for
specifically in these notes?
You can just read them
and see a general swath,
but there is a story
you're trying to divine
from someone's personal history.
- I want to know about this
mysterious Fifth Stoat,
so I look to any
references to other stoats
that are not currently in the piles.
- Give me an investigation check.
- Oh boy.
- Do you still have your
inspiration from Lukas?
- I do. Nine, and then...
That's a nine,
but then I'm also going to
use Tactical Assessment.
14.
- With a 14, I think
you're able to, over time,
put it together that any
references to the Fifth
sort of coincide with
references to whoever Phoebe is.
- Phoebe's Heart.
- But very specifically, Speaker,
for all of this population understanding
and the in-flow and
out-flow of names and data,
doesn't talk much about the past, either.
- What can you expect from a society
that doesn't speak the
names of their dead, even?
All right.
- Jaysohn, who do you go for?
- I think about going for Stoat Pope,
but then I remember how
afraid I was in that fight
of the other one, and I'm
like, you can't scare me!
You're dead and I'm
looking through your stuff!
And I'll go for Silence.
- You go to Silence's journal,
and this thing is hefty.
It is by far the biggest pile.
- Oh no.
- I think even with your little
boy mind, it makes sense.
"If I can't talk, then I'll write,"
makes sense in the same way that if people
are focused too much on each
other, I'll do something.
It's that sort of, this
is where I can lean in,
and this is my sort of last resort.
- Does Jaysohn need help reading?
- I'm just panicking,
picking up pieces of paper.
- My pile was really...
Kiran's pile was really short.
- Sure.
- So maybe I go help Jaysohn.
- Okay, then sort of reading
together and reading aloud-
- I'm fine, I don't need your help!
I immediately give you half.
- You realize, first and foremost,
that Silence's name was,
at some point, Hester,
and this is a running dialogue
from the first day that
everything changed.
- Oh boy.
- They began speaking sort of prosaically
about living and growing up
in the shadow of Peace Plant
and only knowing the name Peace Plant
before it was just the
mountain that covered the sun,
and remembering that first
day, feeling a rumble,
hearing klaxons, and feeling a wind
move through this little
corner of the woods
that they called home that made them itchy
and then terribly sick,
and the fever that overcame
both Hester and their sister Phoebe.
But they woke up. And
not everyone woke up.
Most of the animals
around here stayed asleep.
But they found three others that survived,
and as they were moving around Peace Plant
trying to figure out what was going on,
they realized they could read the name.
They realized they understood intuitively
how to get in and where to go,
and felt the first calling of the Light,
and the five of them formed
a plan quite quickly.
If a little accident could do this,
what could a bigger accident do?
And Hester constantly writes
in nervous, if glowing, terms
And Hester constantly writes
in nervous, if glowing, terms
of a younger sibling that follows
the bigger sibling's lead,
quite fine that you found it,
that Phoebe pushed to get in there.
Phoebe was the one that
figured out how to read.
Phoebe figured out that the meltdown
that the humans had started
could and would get
worse if they intervened,
if they prevented
anything from being fixed.
And even when the others,
Jomei and Uri and Kiran,
said that the risk was too
high, that they didn't know
if they would survive another bout of it,
Phoebe was the one that drew them forward.
And you read about the day, the night,
when they broke into this room,
found one human remaining,
and chased him into the
closet, and in their victory,
celebrated that all they had to do
was wait until the meltdown hit,
and then whatever was going
to happen was going to happen.
But Phoebe wanted to get into the room.
Phoebe wanted to go speak to the human,
wanted to understand more, and
the rest of the First Stoats,
in their fear, argued with her,
and Hester eventually was
the last line of defense
between the room and the
human who they did not think
that they could topple,
and their sister.
And then they fought, and Phoebe,
in her rage at being held back
from any lick of power,
any bit of understanding,
defeated her sister, her sibling,
ripped off the bottom of
Hester's jaw and tongue,
and left them to die,
and moved into the room.
And here, Hester remembers nothing else.
They lost a lot of blood and blacked out
and woke up days later,
but all they had heard
was that Phoebe was never seen again.
Somehow, Dr. Wenabocker fled,
and the story of what happened to her,
their friend, their
Fifth, was lost to them.
Maybe it was Uri's hopes,
Pope,
that the Blue would reunite them someday.
The Light would bring them back together,
and after years and years, you
see Hester sort of writing,
hoping, almost like a prayer,
that she would return
and they would be whole,
because if the humans come back,
of course they will come back!
At some point, this place,
the radiation will die down,
and they will come to
reclaim what's theirs.
It's their warren, and they know
that if they are anything like the humans
because of what they've done,
they know what to expect
and they must prepare.
The humans will return, but then again,
maybe somehow, if they've
survived 20 long years,
she will, too.
- I promise you right now,
and you have to promise me,
I'm never going to rip your jaw off.
That was so nasty.
But also, if this is read,
this is a good story,
and maybe I could get into read.
If it's all like this.
I thought it was just
boring signs and stuff.
- Yeah, it can be pretty cool.
- Wow.
- Dr. Wenabocker's still alive!
- Yeah, that's crazy!
- Or wasn't k*lled by the stoats.
- And then Phoebe went with him, maybe?
- What did the tape say?
The tape said sneaky. His voice changed.
- Mm-hm, sneaky.
- We still have to look at Stoat Pope.
- Yes, let's look at Stoat Pope, but also,
is the closet nearby?
Is it here? You kids do your read.
- Oh, there are two doors.
- There are two doors.
- I'm going to look at the one that's...
Which was the one, you said there was one-
(Izzy stammering nervously)
- Yeah, Grandma, that sounds really scary.
- Maybe we should go with you.
- [Siobhan] Yeah.
- Grandma, you can't go by yourself!
- You've got to have us
protect you, Grandma.
- What if she's in there? What
if there's a human in there?
(Siobhan wheezing fearfully)
- Oh, well, I'll just
tell them to knock it off!
- What?
- I mean, she is actually
really good at that.
- She's really good at that.
- Okay.
- Maybe we should read this,
and maybe it'll tell us
more information about what's in there.
- Okay.
- And then we go in there.
- Oh, well, I suppose. Sure, why not?
Let's look through Stoat Pope.
- Sweet, Stoat Pope's notes
are by far the most decorous.
Stoat Pope gets a font.
- Illuminated manuscript.
- Yeah, 100%. Just small stoats
cavorting in a field.
- The Book of Kells.
- Uri, now known as Stoat Pope,
writes first and foremost about,
the position that we find
ourselves in is unique.
They write about the transformation
that the Light was able to bring to them,
that they can see how
they are growing bigger,
how they're becoming different.
The desire to replicate clothing
and the things that they saw on TV.
Uri speaks very specifically
of watching the coronation
of what the humans call a
pope, a spiritual leader,
and you see little doodlings
and drawings dated back to 1963
and you see little doodlings
and drawings dated back to 1963
copying the style of Pope Paul VI.
Uri was the one that convinced them
that they should speak in the royal "We"
and understand themselves
in terms of "they",
that they were distancing themselves
from the idea of what stoats
are so they could be more,
so they could lead their people in a way
that was a step towards
humanity without claiming it.
There's very little good information,
and just a lot of propaganda
about how to explain the Light
to the stoats that come here,
of treating it with religious reverence,
of creating a temple in the reactor,
of naming it after Phoebe,
the one that they lost,
of making ceremony and ritual
and religion out of this gift
of making ceremony and ritual
and religion out of this gift
that they didn't cause,
but that they claimed.
- Is there anything in any of the notes
about how they became...
Did they sort of cross, not contaminate,
but do you know what I'm saying?
How did they-
- They are our ancestors.
- Yeah, but didn't they sort of
give themselves wolfy features?
- Yeah, don't they have wolfy-human bits?
- Spliced together other,
stronger animals with themselves.
- That's just sort of,
as they rapidly evolved,
their teeth grew a
little more canine-like.
- Okay.
- And they developed molars.
That's just transformation,
but not necessarily
genetic splicing or dovetailing
with other creatures.
- Do we know if they, like Grandma,
submerged themselves in the Light,
and that's why they've lived for so long?
- You don't see any written record
of them fully submerging
themselves in the Light.
You can see in the pope's notes
that any sort of high ranking official,
the leaders of all five
and several of the coppers,
come in when they are selected
to receive more knowledge
and be brought into the
fold to have a baptism,
but it never involves actually touching.
It's just being in proximity
to that hot, central
corium in Phoebe's Heart,
and just the proximity
causes rapid change.
All of that lines up with the fact
that you guys were down there hours ago,
and you feel radically
different and more powerful.
- I have Fireball now.
- [Jasper] Whoa. - Maybe we shouldn't
have left their bodies down there.
Those bodies are really close to the Blue.
- m*therf*cking hell!
- So we're going to move from that moment
and jump back to the lab really quick
before I cut back to you, Viola.
As you guys have been
putting together pieces,
you see Bennett sprints back in.
- Hello.
- Hi.
- [Jasper] Tula, come.
- You need to see something.
- Mm-hm?
- Right now, we've got to go. We gonna go?
- Okay, let's go.
- [Aabria] It's bad.
- We're going.
- And is going to lead you out
and sprint out and away,
and I wanted that moment,
because coming back to Viola,
coppers and people who
weren't in a big rush
are beginning to gather around you
as a little box has been
provided for you as a platform.
You can begin to share your information.
You are now ringed by other
Population Support individuals
who don't know
that you're not actually
in Population Support,
but they respect a little copper wire.
As you begin to do or say
whatever you're going to
do or say, up and away,
you see, running across that
open metal grate walkway,
you see Bennett sprint
by, followed by Thorn,
followed by Tula, and they disappear
through the hole you first
came through that you know
leads to the rabbit pens
and out into the open air.
So in this moment, where
is Viola's priority?
- Looking out at the
masses of all these people
who are about to listen to
whatever she has to say,
thinking back to the conversation of,
when we run, we go together,
so having not got back any word
or message that I should go,
so having not got back any word
or message that I should go,
I go with my family.
I know that's horrible,
after I've just done
all of this work to get
all these people together,
but I need to be with them.
- Yeah, what does it look like?
You're standing there
and you see that Teedles
is kind of moving around like, okay,
we've got a little announcement.
I'm going to need all
of Population Support.
Ooh, I'm speaking as though I have...
Pretend I have the right
sash. I left mine at home.
This one's wrong. I'm on your side.
Just, eyes up! Ears up!
- Teedles.
- Hm?
- I take off the sash.
- Hm?
- I put it over Teedles.
- Oh!
- You are my friend,
and you have power in you
beyond the Blue.
Even before it, you knew
what you were supposed to do
and how you were meant to lead and direct,
and since you are my
friend, what you say, I say.
- [Aabria] This is a really-
- I'm looking up.
I don't want to freak her out any more.
If I could lay a Bless on you.
- Yeah.
- Just so that you can calm
down and get on this level
and know that you're about to do the
damn thing. - Feeling really good.
(whisper) What am I doing?
What do you want me to tell them?
- I want you to tell them-
- I'll do it, but I
don't know what to say.
- I want you to tell them
that now is the time.
The thing that they've been preparing for,
it's good that they've had preparation,
but the intentions were false,
and I want everyone to know
that the department heads
are now the ones running
this organization.
We are not being held to the rules
and the intimidation of the First Stoats.
This is now a stoat-ocracy.
- I don't know what that last one was.
- The power is in the
stoats, not just those four.
It's in all of us.
- Okay.
Go?
- Okay, I'm going to go.
- Where are you going?
- I'm going to check in with the others.
- Oh.
- And then I will come
back and let you know
what the marching orders are.
- Okay. Good luck.
- Good luck. I nuzzle.
- Oh, a little moment. This is nice.
That was nice! I love a hug.
Hi! I bet you're wondering
why I called you in today.
- Per my email.
- I would do anything to
see that entire speech.
- We simply don't have the time.
- Fascinating. Call a
meeting, but I can't make it.
- You're just going to explain to them
that their dictator is dead.
- I'm just going to hop off
the Zoom call real quick.
But you can handle this.
- I gotta go.
- It's giving making Greg fire people.
- That's what I was thinking!
- Exactly, yeah!
- So, the god emperors we
worship, now what if they were...
Let's imagine if they were terrible.
But let's imagine that
everything they said
still needed to happen.
- They had some points.
- There's nuance here.
Everyone, let us celebrate nuance!
- While you're cheering...
- A little smash cut up and
away, out of the burrow,
through the rabbit pen and
out into the open grass,
and you immediately see
what the commotion was.
You see aboveground warrens being set up,
camps out on the fringes, away.
Yellow domes, large vehicles,
trucks but something bigger and worse,
and you feel the rumble in the earth
as countless humans arrive.
They are out and away on the fringes.
It looks like they're not quite ready
to move in on Last Bast,
but you can see from
your high vantage point,
they're here.
So I just wanted to throw this
past you, because they're...
Yeah, I guess they don't
have to really explain it.
Bennett is just sort of
stammering like, okay,
so everything that we've ever done,
and then we thought we
didn't have to do it
because maybe they were lying,
but they weren't lying, they're here.
What do you...
What are we going to...
How do you want to...
- Okay, so I think very
quickly, we need to reassemble,
find out all of the information.
Hopefully the children and Ava
have some more information for us.
The one thing that is sticking
in my mind is, "She'll be back."
That's a concern.
That is a factor we don't
yet fully understand.
- "She'll be back"? What does that mean?
- That's what I'm saying,
we don't know that yet.
- [Aabria] Okay, sure.
- We need to figure that out.
- "She'll be back" refers to
a possible fifth First Stoat,
and the other leaders
need to be made aware
that there may be another First Stoat.
I don't know any more about
what is important about that,
but something may happen
soon that will let me!
- There's a meeting happening downstairs.
- Whoa, hi!
- Hi.
- Hi, hello.
- Hello.
- Vi, we ran by and saw
you talking to everybody.
- The masses are on our side.
I put our top person on it, Teedles.
- [Jasper] Teedles? Yes,
Teedles, obviously Teedles.
- We're friends now.
- [Jasper] Oh, okay, that's good.
- We're going to go shop for stuff.
- Oh wow, okay, shopping.
- You put Teedles in charge of...
- I mean, you're mad about that,
but you'll be even more mad about this.
- No, no, no. I'm not even-
- Walmer is alive.
(whisper) The Lukura is with us.
- Bennett.
- Yeah?
- Marry me.
- I hear that Walmer is
alive, and I turn to Bennett
and I go, you are a leader of this place.
You know it, and I know
that you have turned to us
in this time because we have
thrown everything into chaos.
Chaos is good from time
to time, but so is order.
There's a balance.
You have to be able to embrace change,
but you have to be able to know
when there is structure needed.
You know your community here.
You know the stoats who live here.
You know who amongst Population
Support has been cruel
and delighted in the
deaths they have caused.
I'm sure you do.
Those people, when they are
told that there has been chaos,
will make their own move.
- You're right.
- That move has to be stopped.
- You're right.
You were gathering them
to explain all of this.
Please understand, I didn't
mean to bottleneck information.
It's simply my fear that
not everyone that chooses
avenues of power have good intentions
with how to wield it.
- Not all stoat folk are kinfolk.
- Yeah, rolls off the tongue.
- That's my wife. That's my wife.
- [Aabria] Okay, I'll deal
with that and speak with...
- Teedles.
- Teedles.
- Tall, gorgeous, my best friend.
- Aw, nice. I'm sure she's pretty.
- Yeah, I'll just look
at Bennett too and say,
I know this is a heavy
responsibility to give you,
but if those humans are
making those camps right now,
we need to find out what
my children have discovered
that may give us some secret knowledge.
We need to find that right away.
But in the fear of the humans coming
and in the chaos of the
First Stoats being dead,
I know that there are
elements within Last Bast
that will move against what is right.
Power exists. Power should
make you sad and tired.
Anyone who seems to like power is suspect.
- Agreed.
- I'm going to look at you and say,
you had a chance to give a big speech
in front of everybody,
and you ran after us?
- I know, it's so not like me.
But I realized, you know,
I don't have to be the head of
everything to be influential,
and you don't have to be
big and brash all the time.
There are moments of stillness and silence
that are still just as effective.
- Thank you for coming after me.
- I can't leave you alone.
- I want to spend the rest
of my life listening to you,
not because you're as
intimidating as Mama sometimes.
not because you're as
intimidating as Mama sometimes.
I want to listen to you because I believe
that you know what's right.
- And I'm going to listen to you
because you're always right
and I am always wrong.
- This is the best little
sandwich I could be in.
I love it so much.
Let's find the children.
- Just real quick, whilst we're outside,
can I look, because I'm just recalling
when I was Beast Sense inside the bird
and there was almost a second sun.
Do I know where that
might have emanated from?
- The second sun?
- Yeah, is it a hole in
the roof or something
where the light might
be spilling out from?
I've got a little bit
of an idea for something
and I want to see if it would
kind of make sense logically.
- Sweet, I'm going to ask for a check,
not because I'm not
going to give you this,
but we'll see if we can
stack something on top of it.
- Yeah.
- I'll have you tell me.
Do you want to roll arcana or survival?
- I think survival,
because in this moment,
I have a pretty good grasp
of what I would use to create this.
It's more about whether
this is going to appear
to the humans the way I
want it to appear to humans,
so I think it's more of a
tactic in this moment. - Sure.
- Okay.
- Can I help?
- Sure.
- Guidance.
- Thank you. Let's try that again.
- Yes! Much better.
25.
- Something happens in
this moment as you lean
into your own understanding
and through the Blue.
You feel a pulse of energy emanating
not from the other sun, but from you.
It spreads out and away.
First things first, I want you to add
Last Bastion as a favored terrain.
(players gasping and cheering)
(Brennan whooping merrily)
To answer your question,
you feel that second sun under your feet.
You know that it comes
from deep within the heart
of Last Bast, and then
you turn your face to it,
and the way you couldn't look
directly at it is different
now that you've already been
in such proximity to it.
You were in Phoebe's Heart.
You stood over the corium.
You felt the most intense,
most concentrated version
of the Light, of the Blue,
that any stoat has
experienced and survived,
and even without thinking,
you feel your body realigning,
moving a little bit west
and a little bit south
until you're standing, and you are sure
you're standing over exactly
where Reactor Charlie is,
hundreds of feet below you.
- Okay, cool.
- You are a ranger.
This is your favored terrain now,
and you have a favored enemy,
and you can feel them
out on the periphery,
making your skin crawl, your hackles rise,
and your awareness pulls behind you,
because there is one closer.
200 meters directly behind Last Bast,
you feel a singular human moving.
- Okay, oof. Do I get a
sense they're moving quickly?
- Okay, oof. Do I get a
sense they're moving quickly?
No. Do I get a sense
they're moving at all?
- They are moving.
- Okay, I think I have
the ability to assess
tracks and things like that
within my favored terrain,
and so I'll turn to the two
of you and relay what I felt
and say, it feels like a bad idea
to not have eyes on this human,
to not know where it's
going, where it's headed.
I don't like the idea of going
back inside and losing this,
but I want to be with the family.
I want to assess and come up with a plan.
I have an idea, but I
don't feel comfortable
sending anyone else to keep an eye on it.
Do we perhaps set up a
perimeter where we can-
- If you want to go
investigate this human,
me and MeatWolf can go and
get the kids and Grandma
and meet you there as fast as possible.
- Should we all go?
- I think we should all go.
I think we should stay
together. Bennett needs time.
There is a lot to do with the
entire community of Last Bast,
dealing with this change
and knowing that the humans are here.
It's like you said, Thorn.
We need to be prepared to defend ourself
if the humans won't listen to reason,
but if there's a human approaching,
we need to buy Bennett
and the rest some time.
- Because humans can't get inside at all,
because there's not a lot of exits,
and everyone will panic,
and it'll just be chaos.
- Absolutely, if they
get inside Last Bast.
The last thing is, I have an idea.
I feel that if I concentrated hard enough,
I could almost generate my own Light,
my own Blue, if you
will, and I'm wondering,
I've used a similar technique before,
I feel Reactor Charlie
underneath us right now.
If I was to summon this Blue, this Light,
almost coming from the
earth, I might be able
to convince the humans that
there is some other reaction,
some other accident incurring,
give us a bit of time
before they approach.
But that's, I think, this
is not the right moment.
If these camps, if they start to-
- Could you direct that,
the Blue, at the humans?
- It's not sort of to damage any of them,
it's more to shed this
light and to give them the-
- It kept them away for 20 winters.
- Exactly, that's what I'm thinking.
If these camps start to
move in, I think one human,
potentially we can handle if it's hostile,
but if they all start to move
in, I think we are in trouble.
That might be a way to buy us some time.
- We should move now.
One human is a huge opportunity
to try and talk without hundreds of them.
- Absolutely, I will stay
above ground and I'll ask,
would you mind staying with me?
- Yeah.
- MeatWolf, we need to go find the babies!
(Aabria panting happily)
I'm going to jump up.
- Sweet. Bennett takes
off in one direction.
Tula and MeatWolf take off in another.
- Meanwhile!
- Yeah, meanwhile,
we jump cut back on over inside
the lair of the First Stoats
in front of the door in the old lab.
- Well, I'd like to see,
one of these doors is
a storage burrow door.
- Like where we keep our
jerky under the glass.
- Yes, that's right, and it
might have human jerky in there.
- Ugh! Ooh!
Mm! Ew!
- You said there was one door
that was opposite of where we came in
and one door that was sort of to the side?
- [Aabria] Yep.
- All right, if it looks like...
Go to the one that looks
like it's more on the side.
Stay behind me, kids.
- Can we hear anything?
- Yeah, if you go up and listen,
give me a perception check.
- 21.
- 23.
- 11.
Eh?
- Speak up!
- Once your grandmother
stops yelling, "Eh?"
you hear nothing from the
other side of the door.
- I would like to figure out how to,
can I jump up and open door?
- How high can Ava jump?
Ava is eight inches tall.
- I can jump, from
standing, nine feet high.
- I can jump 14 feet high.
- For what it's worth,
just going back to playing
with the scale of this again,
you're about eight inches tall,
you're six, maybe five inches,
so to be able to jump seven feet
is a little bit more
than double your height.
- Sure.
- And even with someone who
could double that up again,
you're still far short of the door handle.
- Okay, well, can we do a
little fastball special?
- Can I boost Grandma?
- All right, give me an athletics check.
- Inspiration.
Giving her my inspiration from the hats.
- From the hats!
- Golly!
- [Aabria] Hat-spiration.
- Goddammit, Siobhan! (Players
lamenting another low Siobhan roll)
- I'm sorry, I'm sorry!
- I got a 21 for athletics.
- Cool, you feel your grandson
trying to lift you up,
and I think in short order,
you're like, oh, interesting choice!
And you just grab him
and single arm raise him over your head.
You are still less than
halfway to the door handle.
- All right, well-
- If I climb on top of them-
- Lukas!
- You know what we're doing.
You know the game we're playing here.
Acrobatics check, athletics, athletics.
- I also hand you the baculum.
- We're making a stoat stack.
- 25.
- 25! You scramble up your
grandmother and brother easily.
- 14.
- 14. You hold.
- I have 23.
- 23. You're fine now.
- And we're putting Lukas at the top.
- Lukas is like, oh no.
- Lukas, you can do it!
- There's so many of you.
I don't feel super
comfortable. I apologize.
- But you're so good
at sleeping and eating
and climbing, right?
- Yeah, I'm good at everything!
I feel like a jack of all trades.
He just rolled a natural 20!
(players cheering)
- Yes, Lukas! Lukas!
- [Rashawn] Lukas, Lukas!
- At the same moment that you've given him
a flavored speech impediment.
- Everything's kind of going away
in the face of obliteration.
- He was in speech therapy.
- Oh no! - But at soon as he
got panicked, the Rs went away.
- [Aabria] Exactly!
- Oh no! - It's regressing.
Rs are hard to pronounce.
Children don't learn how to do that.
Getting gassed up and getting
some inspiration from Jaysohn,
the boss of him, he's like, I can do this!
And scrambles up you all and
takes sort of a running leap.
It's very Ninja Warrior going up the wall.
- Yes!
- And just runs up,
grabs on the door handle,
and you see the door handle
pulls a little bit, and Lila,
at the very tippy top of this,
you see Jaysohn's tail just hanging
a couple inches over your head.
I need you to make an athletics
check to reach up, grab,
and then all of you have to pull down.
- I have to make an athletics check?
- You do.
Congratulations, you are rolling
something other than investigation.
(players laughing)
- What is it?
- It landed on the edge of the dice box.
- The edge of the tray!
That landed like this!
- Oh my god, amazing.
- That's wild.
- But I only got a 14.
- That's okay.
You jump up and grab him,
and you know that the structural integrity
of the little stoat-al
pyramid you've built
will go away in this
moment, but that's okay.
You grab the tip of
his tail and pull down,
and everyone below you
pulls down with you,
and you all kind of tumble
away as the latch gives
and the door swings open.
(door creaking spookily)
Who goes in first?
- We poke our heads all on top of-
- You're right, you're
right. We're doing a thing.
You all do a little
peek around the corner.
- Can MeatWolf come in?
The last head.
(Siobhan shrieking)
- I love that, we'll do
that. I love a pitch.
- What are we all looking at, g*ng?
- And all of you-
- We could have stood on
MeatWolf, for f*ck's sake!
- You went through all of that,
and you could've just stood on MeatWolf!
- No, this is perfect.
- You all see a room that
is covered in dried blood.
- You all see a room that
is covered in dried blood.
It looks like it held
big poles and buckets
It looks like it held
big poles and buckets
and things you don't
understand, but all of those
have been knocked over and
things are fallen away.
But there is no sign of a human
or anything living in here,
But there is no sign of a human
or anything living in here,
nor has there been in some time.
- [Erika] Is this stoat blood?
- Do you know the difference?
- Well, I know if
something's not stoat blood.
- Give me a perception check.
- [Erika] Oh.
- With advantage, because you're a k*ller.
- That's an 11.
- Damn, talk to your dice.
With an 11, this is 20 year old blood.
There's no way to know.
- But there's a lot of it?
- There's more than you've seen
come out of- - More than one stoat.
- Yeah, okay, I can give you that.
This looks like the
dried blood of 15 stoats.
- That's so many stoats!
- Grandma, I think we found
where the smell was coming from.
- Ugh, yes.
- Yeah, we all can smell
it. (snorts loudly)
- Do I see any paw prints?
Are there prints in the blood?
- The way the blood
has dried over 20 years
would sort of defy the ability.
It doesn't freeze like a fossil record.
A lot of this blood has-
- [Siobhan] Crunchy.
- Yeah, has puddled up
and flaked up and away.
- [Erika] All right,
- Parmesan chips.
- Lila, Jaysohn, and Lukas, I suppose-
- What, Grandma?
- Is there anything interesting here?
- Lukas looks up at a giant monster
and begins to scream.
- MeatWolf.
- [Aabria] He doesn't know MeatWolf.
(Aabria shrieking)
- It's okay, it's okay!
It's just MeatWolf!
- That's just MeatWolf.
- What?
- He's our dog.
- That does not make it any better.
- I have so many questions.
- Hi, Mom!
- Hi, sweetie. Did you
guys find anything out?
- We found so much stuff.
- So much blood.
- And stuff, but mostly blood.
- It is an absolute sty in here.
This looks like a windstorm
came through, it's disgusting.
- [Siobhan] Even I think it's disgusting.
This is worse than our bedroom.
- Who lived here?
- The First Stoats.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, narsty.
- They were bad.
- 20 years is a long enough time to learn
not to live like this, this is horrible.
- Yeah.
- [Brennan] I'm going to
look at Lukas and say-
- Good morning!
- Good morning.
(Brennan exhales forcefully)
- Thank you! Ugh!
Oh, it smells so bad. I wish
it back, I wish it back.
- Oh, I'm so sorry, Lukas.
- It smells bad in here.
- I'm going to look at my family and go,
we all speak Human.
- What?
- The reason we could understand
Dr. Wenabocker on the tape
is that the First Stoats,
we heard the recording,
the squeaking that we heard
in the recording of Dr.
Wenabocker, the last one,
those were the First Stoats,
and it was before they could speak.
So they were alive before the Blue
gave them the power to speak,
and the reason we can
understand Dr. Wenabocker
is because we're speaking Stoat,
and Stoat is probably actually Human.
It's why we can read their old signs.
Did you find anything out
about the First Stoats?
- Yes.
- A lot.
- There was a Fifth Stoat named Phoebe,
and she was a very bad sister.
- She messed up Silence.
- Yeah, that's why Silence
didn't have a tongue.
- And Dr. Wenabocker got
away, and Phoebe got away.
- Oh no.
- But maybe together?
- Oh no, oh no, oh no!
We need to get on MeatWolf!
Everyone on MeatWolf right now!
- We have another door.
- Another door through here?
- [Izzy] Yeah.
- Am I going or do I-
- Yeah, sure.
- Yeah, come with us.
- I don't know.
I could go either way.
- It's pretty scary.
- Am I going to die if I go with you?
- Maybe.
- You should probably
go back to your mother
and not tell her that we
brought you to the First Stoats.
- She's already as mad
as she's going to be.
- All right.
- MeatWolf, can you help
open this next door?
- Give me an animal handling check.
- I'd like to, also.
- With that tail.
- I'll give Guidance to my-
- Nine.
- 12 for me.
- Can I give my mum the help action?
Because I'm a little boy who loves-
- [Aabria] Yeah.
- Jesus Christ.
- 12.
- He just rolled exactly the same.
- Thank you, MeatWolf. I'll
get up and open this door.
- You fully just start scratching the dog.
- [Brennan] Thanks, MeatWolf.
- And in short order, no rolls required,
you're able to open up that
door, and you see a hallway
that hasn't been moved through in 20
years. (fluorescent lights buzzing)
The lights overhead are
flickering and barely on.
Everything is dusty and incredibly cold,
(wind howling)
and you're able to move through.
Just give me a survival check.
I'm going to have the kids roll it.
This is advantage, but
you're working together
to navigate with what you know of the map
and what you know of just
moving through spaces.
- We each have advantage,
or it's just that-
- You're going to roll, and
it's you guys working together.
- That's a 26.
- I don't know why I thought
you were going to say a normal number.
- I have a plus nine to survival.
- Yeah, so with a 26 on
your combined efforts,
you're able to effectively
move through these hallways
where no stoats have been.
MeatWolf can run at a full sprint,
and you're able to follow the light
that isn't overhead light
towards a set of double doors
and get out, back into the open air.
As you guys make your way
back to Thorn and Viola,
let's cut back to them.
- The only thing I really want to do is,
I'd love to try and get a sense
of whether the humans in these camps
are making any kind of
movements towards us yet.
I'm basically wondering whether,
to try and do something
to ward them off coming
whilst we go and handle this one human,
to try and buy us some time.
Or if they don't appear to be
moving, then I'll hold off.
- Give me just a general
intelligence check
to try to divine the
machinations of humans.
- Sure.
- [Aabria] Especially at a distance
while you're moving to do something else.
- Yeah.
- The DC would be easier
if you spent time to go closer,
but you might lose track of the human.
- Terrible. Okay, four.
- The best you can tell, they
seem to be setting up a camp,
so I don't think that gives you
really much of an
understanding of how temporary
or how permanent or what
the plans are there.
- And there is Blue in
the soil, I'm presuming,
kind of in the earth, around.
I'm thinking of trying to pull
some of the Blue up from the root
as a trap or something for them.
They won't push in further if they see
this radiation or
whatever has reached out.
- That's what I'm planning.
I have a way, I think,
of creating something.
It'll only last for about an hour or so,
but enough of a show that if
they're watching the facility,
they might think twice
about getting in closer.
But it's sort of, I don't want to-
- Do too much too soon.
- Yes, I don't want to draw
attention if it's not necessary.
But if they're coming,
then I feel like it
would buy us enough time.
- Also, maybe something
that would be good,
that elk creature, those big creatures
that were being experimented on,
if somehow they could be let loose.
- Scare the sh*t out of them.
- Yes.
- My question is, do you spend
time setting up traps, going,
figuring out how to free the
elk, or do you go to the human?
Because right now, the crunch is time.
- To the human.
- You guys make your way around and back.
Give me stealth checks.
- If it makes a difference,
we can move at a normal
pace whilst being stealthy.
- Perf.
- 16.
- 13. Well, okay.
- You're able to make your
way around the building,
and you follow that sense.
There is a human coming.
There is a human close.
And you feel yourself stiffen
in little waves and fits of panic,
and you tamp them down
and continue to move,
and eventually you get around and see
that there is a solitary human
wearing a dingy yellow hazmat suit,
the difference being, the
sort of headpiece on this one,
instead of just more shapeless yellow
with two eyes reflecting
and a giant gas mask,
you see they're wearing
a full visibility visor,
and you can actually see a face inside.
Dark skin, dark hair, sort
of fine, feminine features,
though you wonder in that moment
how you would know the
difference, but you do.
She's sort of looking
around, looking at the ground
and holding up some small
box that you can hear
makes a crackling sound,
and occasionally stops
and puts down the box,
pulls out something,
does some pre-reading
into a little notebook,
and continues to move.
It is an unhurried gait
and seems more curious-
- Seemingly kind of observing the area.
I'm worried about MeatWolf
alerting this human.
- Would MeatWolf appear
behind them or before them?
- You have no idea where
MeatWolf's going to come from.
- Horrifying sentence.
- Shouldn't be working
at a freaking radiation
place if you didn't think
some crazy sh*t was going to happen.
That's too bad for her, Thorn.
- No, I'm saying-
(all laughing)
That's fine, I'm not worried
about hurting the human.
I'm saying about this human
noticing us and then being
all like, oh, I'm going
to go and tell everyone.
- She's going to be startled by MeatWolf,
just hang on a second.
20,000 talking stoats are about to come.
- This human doesn't appear to be-
- [Rashawn] Threatening.
- Threatening.
They seem to be kind of pre-reading.
- Yeah, in the sense
that you don't observe
any predator behavior,
there seems to be no stalking or skulking.
- I mean-
- And I will add,
you have time to observe and watch.
Quentin showed you a range of
what he called human weapons.
You see none of those on her person.
- I think if we were going
to attempt to reason,
this might be the best time to do so.
(tense music starts playing)
This human's getting closer and
closer to the camp as it is.
- All right, then Viola
reaches out and will cast-
(Jasper gasps)
What?
- Do we-
(Aabria laughs)
Last time we did the-
- Just speak with them, okay.
(tense music crescendos then stops)
Hey, girl, hey!
(Brennan cackling)
We have to talk to them, don't we?
- [Brennan] If that's not advantage...
- Oh my god.
- We have to talk to them, right?
- I think Thorn's soul leaves his body.
Viola just walks forward
and goes, "Hey, girl, hey!"
My children! My wife!
- There's no way for us to
approach a human and it be chill.
- Agreed!
- You might as well just
f*cking say anything!
- Hey, girl, hey!
- You see this human suddenly
looks up, looks around.
- Down here.
- Spins in a circle, eye
line at people height.
- Down here!
- Hello.
(Aabria yelps)
- We're in the Looney Tunes.
- And you see this poor
woman, who is standing
on the edge of a little rocky outcrop,
goes, shut up!
And goes a*s over teakettle
and falls down this thing.
Give her a little damage,
because that's terrifying.
"Hey, girl, hey."
- She hit her head on
a rock and she's dead.
- I want to go on the
record, not as a bit,
"Hey, girl, hey," is the
opener I would design in a lab
to get the job done of,
how do we immediately humanize stoats
and make ourselves not
look like freaky monsters?
- It's 1982.
- This predates that
being common parlance.
And you see as she slowly reappears
over this little outcrop where she fell,
the entire front part of her visor,
that glass is shattered away,
and she's got a couple
little cuts on her face.
She's like, what said that?
- Please, don't panic,
because I know that if it
was me in your position,
I would probably be panicking.
- We'd all be freaking out.
- Oh, okay. I've got radiation sickness.
I'm dead, I'm dead.
- No, you're not dead.
- Thank you. What are
you, weasels talking?
Great, I've died. I knew I
shouldn't have come on this.
She slams her Geiger counter
on the ground and shatters it.
Great, cool.
- I'm going to tap my own forehead
and be like, make this good.
I'm going to cast Enhance
Ability on myself.
Eagle's Splendor, so I have
advantage on charisma checks.
- Amazing.
- I'm going to walk up.
My name is Thorn.
- Of course it is.
- This is my wife.
- Hi, Viola.
- [Aabria] Yes, weasels with names.
- I was the one who was reaching out-
- There's flowers in your hair. What?
- Thank you.
- We love your hair, too.
(Erika cackles)
- So good. What kind of creams...
- Cream?
- Hey, girl, hey! What cream do you use?
- So interesting.
A stoat just asked me
about my curl pattern.
- I think you're a 4C, maybe a-
- So you're not going crazy.
- Oh no yeah, I'm already there.
"Going" would imply that
there's a road back.
I fell down, I bashed my head open.
- Yes.
- And I am dead.
- No, you're not. You're not dead.
I will use bonus action Healing
Word for the first time,
and I will reach out and say,
you're not dead, I promise you.
I'm really, hands where she can see them,
just lay them down sort of near her face.
- Oh, are you close, in melee with her?
What a dangerous set of words.
- Actually, hold on, let me
just double check Healing Word.
- It's not touch, it's 30 feet.
- Oh, it's not touch? Okay, yeah, fine.
In which case, I'll sort
of hold my hands up,
and I think the thorns
and vines start to grow.
A little almost puff of Blue appears,
and I (exhales) towards her.
It sort of settles on the injury
that she sustained to her
face, and I think that's a d4.
- [Brennan] Plus spellcasting modifier.
- Plus modifier, which is
four. That's seven points back.
- She sees you reach out
and feels the wind of it
hit her face as the glass
pushes out from the cuts
on her skin, and she feels
herself stitched together.
Oh, I want to scream.
- Please, please, please,
please, please don't.
- I'm not going to. This is...
Okay.
- I think the-
- You're a stoat and you're talking to me.
- Yes, so I think the things that you're-
- You're a stoat, right?
- Yes, we're stoats.
- Weasels?
- No, stoats.
- No, not weasels. We are stoats.
- [Aabria] Which mustelid?
- We're not weasels, thank you.
Sorry, we don't have
time to get indignant.
- Sure, and you know the difference.
You understand the
difference between those.
- Yes.
- And you can hear what I'm
saying and you can understand.
- I can, indeed.
- And you have...
Okay, okay.
And you said, "Hey, girl, hey."
- A lot has gone on.
(Aabria groans)
Please listen.
- Yeah, I'm gonna.
- Very simple, top level, basically,
I think the thing that you're pre-reading-
- Writing?
- Is what made us
able to talk and, you know,
have more complicated thoughts
than just your average bear.
Or stoat, or whatever.
- Smarter than your average bear!
- It's the 80s, they had-
- A stoat just made a joke.
Okay.
Okay.
How long have you been able to speak?
- I think stoats in general,
it would appear about
20 years or so, I think.
- Winters, if that conversion
is not the same for you.
- How do you know the word years?
- There's a lot of charts.
- [Jasper] I think what's probably best-
- You've read charts? Holy sh*t!
- Stop asking me stuff!
- We really don't want to
alert the other humans.
Look, we're really quite worried.
- Watch out, watch out,
watch out, watch out!
- For what?
- MeatWolf!
- She looks over your shoulder,
sees MeatWolf coming in.
- I know what it is!
- Hurry, hurry, hurry! There's a monster!
- It's okay!
(Aabria stammers in a panic)
- No, that's MeatWolf!
(Erika screams)
(Aabria screams)
(everyone screaming)
- Okay, everybody!
- MeatWolf is a friend!
He can't talk, though!
- Calm down, everybody!
Ava, please!
I never want to tell you what to do,
but please, this is not
the time to go full scary.
Calm. Everyone, calm, please.
Jaysohn!
Arms down!
Or so help me god, I
will put a leash on you!
- You have a concept of a god, okay.
I would love to pre-write...
Pre-read? What do you call it?
The word is "write". Oh my god.
- The word is "write". Oh, okay.
- No, Grandma said it wasn't.
- Jaysohn! Jaysohn! Jaysohn!
- (whisper) Are you a child?
- No, I'm basically a grownup!
And I'm the man of the
house, so I have to be big.
- Oh.
- He's a big boy.
- Did you k*ll my dad?
- Oof, okay. I think there's a lot-
- [Aabria] What?
- I don't think so!
- Hey, so, family?
Just really quickly, we found one human.
They don't appear to have any weapons.
We're just trying the
method that we've discussed.
We want to try and see if
perhaps we can talk to this human
and come to an understanding.
- Cursory insight on human, just as a-
- Sure.
- I'm talking to a monster.
- Sure.
- 15. Sorry, 17.
- It's unopposed, because
she's not trying to lie.
You look into her eyes and you see
just unmitigated, unalloyed fear.
This is truly insane,
and she is scrambling through, am I safe?
What do I do? What could this mean?
She's beginning to play
the permutation game
of everything that this stacks
on top of the craziest
interaction that she has ever had.
- [Brennan] Are you-
(Aabria groans)
Hello. Tula, nice to meet you.
- Everyone's got a name?
- [Jasper] Yes, we all have names.
- Okay, my name is-
- [Erika] Do you have one?
- [Siobhan] Do humans have names?
- Yes, yeah.
My name is Dr. Tara Steel.
- [Siobhan] I don't
think they're that scary.
You guys have been
saying they're so scary.
- [Rashawn] She's just startled.
She's kind of flummoxed.
- That's the most beautiful name
I've ever heard in my entire life.
- [Siobhan] It's really pretty.
- Thank you. What's your name?
- Lila.
- Oh, Lila's really pretty.
- Wait, you're a doctor?
- You know what a doctor is?
- Do you know Robert... (stammering)
- Wenabocker.
- [Siobhan] Wabanaba?
- Wenabocker?
- [Erika] I assumed
that that was the name.
- Dr. Robert Wenabocker.
- Are you someone who can
deal with a lot of information
all at once, or do you want
us to slow it down for you?
- I'm being condescended to by a stoat!
- Well, it's not condescending.
You seem like you're having a hard day.
- Yeah, is this not weird for you?
- [Jasper] I think we're all
having a hard day, honestly.
- No, it's weird.
- Okay, as long as we're all sort of-
- But we, I guess, have
been preparing for this
for like a couple of days,
and some other stoats
for, like, a lot of time.
- Two days of preparation.
So we're, like, prepared.
- Would you mind if I-
- She pulls a little inhaler
out and goes to lift,
and you see now, yeah,
she's lifting the hood over
and goes, I don't really have to,
and just puts her hand
through her broken visor.
(imitates sound of inhaler puffing)
- May I, Dr. Tara Steel?
- [Aabria] Steel, Dr. Steel.
- Dr. Steel, before we go into
lots of sharing of information,
because I'm sure there's
lots of conversation
that could happen, we need your help.
There is more of us.
- She slowly gets into
criss-cross applesauce.
- Get yourself comfortable.
Why don't we all sit?
- You can stand, you're
very short. It's okay.
- We are quite small. Okay.
- MeatWolf can sit.
- MeatWolf, sit.
- Give me an animal handling check.
- [Brennan] I'll give Guidance here.
- Add a d4.
- 16.
- With a 16, you say, "MeatWolf can sit,"
and MeatWolf immediately
plunks his big ol' booty down
and wraps that massive
vertebrae tail around himself.
He's just panting. (panting)
- Auntie cut MeatWolf's head off,
and then it grew back like this.
Isn't that cool? We've had
a crazy couple of days.
- Sure.
- [Erika] Do you use Blue?
- Blue?
- I think Thorn needs to speak
because some of what we
have to say is very urgent.
- I'm just trying to establish
whether you would be willing to help us.
We are trying to present
a non-threatening...
We don't wish to have
conflict with the humans,
but there has been conflict
between us and humans
in the past, and we don't want
to repeat the same mistakes.
So before we go any further
sharing any information
that we have and expecting
anything from you,
if we agree that at least
between us stoats here and you,
we will be amicable and
seek to help each other.
- Sure, I gain nothing
in hurting any of you.
This is truly the most mind-blowing
scientific discovery of ever.
f*cking ever. Sorry.
Sorry?
- We say pants.
- Grandma's okay with it.
- We say, oh pants.
- Grandma's okay with cursing now.
- [Aabria] Okay.
- So you all didn't come
here to k*ll all of us?
- Why else would they come to a burrow?
- Difficult. I'm...
Okay, I'm not going to condescend.
You let me know if I
lose you at any point.
I am a scientist.
I came here with the military
that is reclaiming this power plant.
That building is "power plant,"
and it had a big meltdown 20 years ago.
20 winters ago, if that's easier.
And now the radiation has
hit a level, we thought,
that would allow us to come
back and reclaim the plant.
We've lost some soldiers along the way.
They're setting up a camp
to officially come in and investigate,
and they're prepping all
of their safety protocols,
and I like quiet,
so I thought I would just go out
and take a preliminary
scan, and then I fell down,
and I think I bashed my brains
out, and now I'm in heaven,
or bleeding out on the ground,
and my brain is thinking
that I'm talking to stoats.
So that's all of my deal.
- When is this due to happen,
this investigation of the power plant?
- Oh, they are setting up camp now,
and will probably begin
to move in the morning.
Are there more of you inside?
- A lot.
- Many thousand.
- Don't reveal our numbers!
- How are there...
You as a species don't live in that-
- Two more, two more.
- You don't have to...
I'm not going to hurt you.
Okay, you don't have to lie. It's okay.
- Listen, you said soldier.
That's something I know.
Do they wear hat?
- In the plural, yes. They wear helmets.
- I don't know what plural means, but hat.
They don't like dust,
Blue dust, yes?
- (muttering) Blue dust, what
is blue dust? (gasps) Oh, oh!
Our trucks, when they
were coming up the road,
there was a dusty patch that we hit.
We kicked up a lot of dust.
We actually lost 14 soldiers.
The radiation levels
were sufficiently high
that they began to bleed out,
and apparently that's happened
a couple times when soldiers have come in,
which is why we've moved so
slowly and masked this time.
You call that Blue?
- Yes.
- Okay.
- While Tara's talking,
she took her mask off and
put it on the ground, right?
- No, she went to take it off,
so you know that it separates
away, and then she realized
she could just use her inhaler
through the broken glass.
- [Brennan] I'm looking at that,
and that's broken glass, right?
- Yeah.
- Have we had a long rest?
- Don't think so.
- That's okay.
As Tara's talking to other people
and we're establishing
that we have until morning
before the investigation
happens, there's some stuff,
I'm going to just look
over at Thorn and Viola
and quietly say, while Ava's leaning in
and going, "Did you..."
- Soldier...
- Did Dr. Steel break
her mask in front of you?
- Just when-
- When you came and saw her-
- We startled her, yes.
She fell back and it broke.
- When you saw her,
you're certain that the
mask wasn't already broken?
- Yes, very certain.
- Okay.
- Why do you-
- Broken glass. We heard it on the tape.
I'm just going to hang back and begin
to ritual cast Detect Magic.
(Crackling thunder)
- Several more minutes
of conversation happen,
and I'll come back to you.
Okay, okay!
- When I was your age-
- [Aabria] My age?
- I spent an entire winter-
- How old are you?
- I am 4 1/2 years old, young lady.
- Oh.
- How old are you?
- I'm 38.
- You're what?
- Okay, that felt mean.
You sound like my parents.
- You're ancient!
- I didn't mean any offense.
- I'm not ancient!
- And you say you have
no kits of your own?
- I'm very busy with my career!
Oh my goodness, this is uncanny!
- Mama, please.
- Viola, this could've been you!
- Wow.
- And it wouldn't be so bad,
Mama! They're a scientist!
- Yeah! I'm being defended by a stoat!
- It's okay.
- Oh my god, thank you, thank you.
- If she's that much older
than the First Stoats,
maybe she's had the Blue for a long time.
- The what?
- The Blue!
- What made us what we are.
You must have had it for a long time,
if you have been alive so long.
- I think it's what
exploded, or the meltdown.
- Yeah.
- You're very smart.
- Do you know what happened to the doctor
that was here before?
- You mentioned Dr.
Wenabocker. He's here with us.
- That's impossible.
- Wait, what?
- Yes.
- He's with you?
- I mean, yes, he's in the camp.
- That's impossible.
He had 15 stoats' worth
of blood in that closet.
He had 15 stoats' worth
of blood in that closet.
- We heard him get attacked.
- Did he ever say anything
about recording a tape,
or the events that led
up to the evacuation?
- Or getting attacked by stoats?
- No, and as you talk, you
actually hear a box on her hip
begins to squawk with
distorted human voices.
Oh god, I'm so sorry, hold on.
I've got to turn this
off. She cuts the feed.
- You have a tape recorder!
- No, that was someone
talking at the moment.
A tape recorder records voices for later.
This is communication,
and I think maybe we
don't say anything yet.
- It's like pre-read here.
- Pre-read here? Yeah, honestly,
that made perfect sense.
- Pre-read here.
- Okay, you heard a recording
of Dr. Wenabocker being attacked?
- Yes.
- Yes.
- By who?
- By stoats. But not us,
different stoats. Really old.
- We couldn't understand them.
- We k*lled them, so it's fine.
- Dr. Wenabocker told us
that there were agents
that came in that sabotaged the plant,
and that he was attacked by people.
- Well, that was a lie.
- Oh, okay.
- Well, we are people. We're
just not people people.
- You're just short people.
I mean, let's be fair, I
think without any evidence-
- I'm really tall for my age.
Lila's short. I'm really tall for my age.
- Cannot begin to know what that means.
- You're going to have
to go back to this camp.
- Very soon.
- Yes.
I don't want to be in a position
where you would tell anyone
what we're telling you,
if there's people at these
camps who mean us ill.
Please, I need you to
promise me something.
That you will not repeat this.
- Make a persuasion check.
- I have advantage.
- Can I cast Zone of Truth on them, too?
- [Aabria] You can certainly try.
- To make sure we know for sure.
- Sure.
She rolled a 14.
- My spell save is 14.
- Okay, meets it beats it,
and she feels a little pulse come.
Turns to you. What was that?
- I wasn't trying to...
Yes, I was kind of being intrusive, but-
- With what?
- With the Blue! The Blue!
- Okay, you're saying it like
I don't understand. That's...
Okay, no.
- I am about to be a mother,
and I just was laying
some intuition on you.
I just wanted to check out and see
if you would be honorable and truthful.
This is my whole family.
Without them, I have nothing.
And you have the power to
make sure that we live on,
and it would be really great
if you could help us out.
- I'm so sorry. She's going
to kind of reach towards you.
I'm sorry.
- Ah!
- I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
The urge to comfort is a human urge.
- Really?
- It's actually a stoat urge,
but that's fine, we can
talk about it later.
- Honestly, I think it was
human before it was stoat.
- That's semantics. We
don't need to get into it.
- Okay. All right, you, okay.
- In my mind, I'm just
like, Thorn, it's okay.
She's pissing you off, I can
totally tell. Babe, it's okay.
- Getting a little defensive.
- Ritual casting Detect Magic,
I want to turn to look at Dr. Steel
and scan as deeply for magic as I can.
Tula does not know schools of magic,
but I'll just put my cards on the table.
- Sure.
- Glass shattered in the
tape of Dr. Wenabocker
before he was taken over.
He also was saying, "I have been..."
And Viola turned to me
and said, "Exposed,"
during that thing where he's
like, I have been something.
- And we saw in his notes that he had
severe radiation poisoning.
- Severe radiation.
So there's a world where I'm like,
would Phoebe stay in
Dr. Wenabocker forever?
The reason I asked, did
you see the mask break?
Was, did Tara roll up here
with a f*cking First Stoat
slamming through her glass
mask and taking over her mind?
So that's what Detect
Magic is on right now.
- Sure, the only thing that
glows with any sort of magic
is just the area of her face
that is a scattering
of this air across her.
that is a scattering
of this air across her.
There is nothing magic coming off of her.
It doesn't look like she can use it,
and the only traces of Blue
are what has contaminated her
since the breaking of her visor.
- Amazing, so yeah, I'll
look at that and smile.
There's no glowing chipmunk
tendrils in her f*cking mouth?
- Yeah, you're looking for
something buck wild on her,
and this is just a confused person.
- You guys see a level of mom grilling,
of magical, "Mm-hm, mm-hm,
and your friends..."
- She's getting grounded.
- Now see here, old lady.
My daughters seem to think
that you're on the up and up,
so I'm going to give you
the benefit of the doubt.
Other humans have taken
a lot from this family,
and we stand to lose quite a lot more.
But if my daughters say that
you're part of the burrow,
then we have no choice but to accept you
into the community.
So just you mind that you do your best,
and that you take care of the other ones
that are in your warren.
Yes, here.
Yes, just do your best.
- [Brennan] I'm going
to turn and I'll say-
- Thank you.
- Thanks so much for talking to us.
- I've just got one more thing to say.
- No, no, no.
- You're very welcome.
- Thorn?
- Go ahead and make your persuasion check.
Make it with advantage.
- Plus...
So, 19.
- You see her cycling through thoughts
and putting things away,
and I think she clouds over
in a way that might be
suspicious before resolving.
I have no reason
to cause you any sort of strife,
and whatever you tell me next,
as long as it does not threaten the lives
of the people I care about,
will happily keep your secret.
- How long has Dr. Wenabocker
been helping to mobilize...
You called them soldiers or military?
How long has he been
helping organize the humans
who wanted to come back and
investigate the power plant?
- As far as I know,
after recovering from the attack,
Dr. Wenabocker has worked
with a special program
that's always had its eyes on reclamation.
Every couple years, we do
our best to remotely test
and see if the radiation, "Blue", levels,
are sufficient that we can
return without a problem,
and it's only been in the last year or so
that he has led the effort to return.
- We have a recorded
message of Dr. Wenabocker
saying that he was
attacked by five stoats.
- Maybe the best thing is for
us to circle up for a moment.
- Would you mind if we took-
- I have to go back.
They know I am missing from
the camp, and my concern is,
if I don't go back soon, others
will come looking for me.
- We have reason to believe
that Dr. Wenabocker is lying
about the circumstances of
which he left the plant. - Sure.
- He's probably dead, just like me.
- Can I ask you something?
Sorry, what is that?
- I'm sorry, your grandmother just said-
- Grandma's dead, and so is our mum.
And our dad, but he's dead.
- I'm not dead like my mom is dead.
We're dead in very different ways.
- And dad is, like, really really dead.
- And my husband is also dead dead.
- Oh yeah.
- I don't think that we need to put
anything of Dr. Wenabocker's on Dr. Steel.
That feels like something
that we might want
to talk about ourselves, and I
think if we're in more danger
with you staying, then that makes sense.
What would be wonderful, if you know
that they're not planning
to come here until morning,
would be a way for us
to contact you or talk.
We know that wires let people
talk to each other, and we know-
- But ours are all broken.
- Ours are all broken.
- That's what Dr. Wenabocker said.
- Here's what's going to happen.
And she unhooks her big walkie-talkie
and goes over to a rock and
sort of bashes the corner of it
so it looks a little damaged.
I fell, broke my visor, and in my fear,
I left my walkie-talkie.
You can find me on channel six.
Everyone else is on channel three,
so stay off of channel three,
and if I need you or if you need me
or if I learn anything, I
will reach out to you, okay?
Okay.
- You're my best friend.
- You're really cool.
You're kind of like Sybil.
- You would love Sybil!
- So many more people to meet, oh god!
- You would hate Lukas.
Oh, he's right here.
- Lukas is just, please like me!
- God, that came back right away.
- Please be really
careful of Dr. Wenabocker.
- Is that weapon? I point
to the Geiger counter.
- No, f*ck. This is...
It tracks how much Blue there is.
- Oh.
- There's a lot.
- There's a lot.
- In the normal course of your
day, just your normal day,
would you have a lot of
interactions with Dr. Wenabocker?
- Not normally, but I do make-
- You should keep it that way.
We will talk about Dr. Wenabocker.
- You should use the Blue tracker on him.
- I don't think you should do that.
- I think you should do it.
- I don't think-
- You can't always listen to my mum.
She's a big scaredy cat.
- I will be careful.
- True, dear. You are a
bit of a stick in the mud.
But in this case, I think she's correct.
- I don't think that we
should take our one human ally
and send her to the very
dangerous place to do something-
- Very loud, very loud, very loud.
Sounds like people. Shh, shh, shh.
Go home, and if you need anything,
channel six.
Stay safe.
I'll let you know when I can, if I can,
if I learn anything, okay?
- I think we're very lucky
that we met her and not anybody else.
- Stay safe, stay secret.
- Yeah. Wow, oh my gosh.
I got a piece of strawberry.
This is the weirdest day.
And Dr. Steel pushes up and
sort of reorients herself,
turning in a circle, and one
little bark from MeatWolf
sends her sprinting in another direction.
That's where we're going
to end episode nine.
- Woo!
- And we'll be back
for the finale of Burrow's End next week.
(Jasper and Erika shrieking)
- How did it go?
- I told them the entire
system that was driving
their day to day life
was a totalitarian lie,
and now everyone's very sad and scared.
We did it!
- I would feel awful
harming any of these humans.
- They harmed us!
- How?
- They k*lled Dad!
- They will wipe us off
of the face of the earth
before we even have a chance to talk.
- You figured out how to
communicate with them?
- We've all been able
to communicate with them
the whole time.
You are speaking Human at this moment.
- Last time, all of the people left
because there was a core meltdown.
If we make them think that
that's happening again-
- They'll scatter.
- I don't mind being misunderstood.
- Well, help us understand, then.
- Understand this!
- Babe!
- It's been a pleasure,
everyone. Been a pleasure.
(somber music)
(somber music continues)
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20x09 - Human
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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.