Ocean has an untimely vision and wrestles with its consequences. Book meets the source of much of his discomfort.

This one is mostly existentialism and violence.

Welcome to Oops!

All Apocalypses, a show where we explore the collapse of society by playing fun, tabletop role playing games.

Today, I'm joined by two people I know.

Just know now, just know, that's it?

That's all we get these days?

I've met them.

We keep getting demoted, and I'm okay with it.

I know, I know.

Hey everyone, I'm Brady, and I play Book McCready, a sleuth who is just beginning to learn the power that information can hold over people.

And I'm Jacob, and I'm playing Ocean, a gentle giant who, despite getting a special ability that's rationalized by him being well aware of his own size, is clearly not at all aware of his own size.

Because he bumped into Pistachio Jones.

Because I bumped into Pistachio Jones and started this whole mess we're in right now.

Plowed right through him.

Just knocked him right off his feet.

You deserve that shotgun blast to the shin.

I really did deserve that shotgun blast to the shin.

I'm sorry, Book.

I don't know what I was thinking.

Stu was very generous by sending that your way instead of mine.

Yeah, it could have been to you.

You would have taken like three.

I would have said, I think we'd be in a bookless situation.

You'd be halfway dead right now.

Yeah, I'd be more than halfway dead.

So let's quickly jump in so we can get back to the cliffhanger of Ocean.

Falling into another one of his visions.

Let's handle our relationship questions to make you two fall in love.

We're like a sixth of the way through these.

So we really got to pace them out for the rest of this arc.

Canonically, both are in love with Spade.

Spade now?

Yeah, sorry.

Okay, no longer holistic.

I'm off the table.

Yeah, that was quick.

Yep, this is another good one.

I think they're going to keep getting better and better because the whole concept behind this is that they kind of start very surface level.

Like we had those early ones that were like, who would you like as a dinner guest?

That are easy to talk about, but then it dives into your psyche.

But again, we're only like a sixth of the way before we get to those real deep ones.

Well, yeah, you can't kick off like a burnishing relationship with like, what is your biggest fear and your most embarrassing story ever?

Rank your five biggest traumas.

Our question this week is, if you were able to live to the ripe old age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30 year old, peak physical condition 30 year old, that's not true, my back hurts so much, for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?

So this is saying that when you hit the age of 30, for the last 60 years of your life, before you die on your 90th birthday, would you rather have the mind or the body of that 30 year old?

This is the easiest question the book has ever answered.

It's mind.

Hmm.

No, no elaboration.

Interesting.

Well, it's just, like, where would he be without it?

That's really all he's got, like, his body?

It's not like he's freaking stunting on anyone with his abs.

Yeah, but for book, the way you're gonna die is certainly going to be due to your body.

So at least if you can nail down that 30-year-old body, you still have book's brain.

Like, you got that smart brain.

Yeah, it may start deteriorating a little as you get older, but having a 30-year-old body when you're 90 is pretty impressive.

You'd be able to outsmart and outrattle all the people your same age.

Nah, because you know what's gonna happen?

Season two is gonna be we jump forward 50 years, book 75, and he's all like, gristled and old, and he's gonna have like a sharp fucking mind, and it's gonna be super impressive.

Okay.

That checks out.

Ocean, same question.

So Ocean has the opposite, I think, answer that book's gonna have.

Yeah.

I think every time you guys have been complete opposites.

No, neither of us wanted to be famous.

Book just wanted to be answer, semi-remembered.

For Ocean, since his job and everything he does and his livelihood is entirely based on being strong, he's gonna want to be staying tough and fit and spry for as long as he possibly can, because otherwise, he doesn't have anything left.

His mind at 30 is not the sharpest tool in the shed already.

Take away his strength.

He's just kind of a little cripple guy that no longer can fend for himself.

The problem is, Jacob, that you don't actually know how sharp Ocean's mind.

Like he could be a fucking genius, he just doesn't remember it.

Like all the things that he used to know are gone.

Yeah, especially your 30-year-old mind is like two years ago.

So maybe that's before you forgot everything.

That's true.

Maybe he'll wake up one day after a flashback and look the book and say, Book, you are so dumb.

So I'm gonna go with for Stu's answer, which everyone always clamors for.

I'm going to somewhat surprisingly, I guess, go for the body one.

Just because I like your mind isn't gonna deteriorate that much, especially with modern medicine and things like that.

I feel like especially from 30 to 90, for most of those 60 years, I'm gonna still have my mind I'm pretty happy with.

But bodies hurt and ache constantly.

That's all sorts of things.

And especially if you read it very literally, I would not like to be stuck with my 30 year old mind for 60 years.

I want to get smarter.

I want to be better.

I'm taking it I'm going to alienate whoever I was asking who was asking me this question.

And say, well, well, actually, you listen to the direct text of the question.

Are you a literalist for the Bible written by our cool friend Jesus as well?

Our cool friend Jesus meant everything he said in the literal fashion.

No, I'm the opposite.

I think it's literally all figurative.

Literally all of that is figurative in some way.

I don't think he really cursed that tree.

I just think that was his way of telling us that figs are not very good food.

I really like I want to think that's true.

I really want to think that's true.

It's just got just our cool friend Jesus was just like, I really hate figs, and I want it to come off very obvious to whoever's reading it, that I just do not like figs.

Yeah, I can't think of a better way of doing it without being like, all in your face about like, you could have wrote just like, don't eat figs.

But then it's not really an exciting story, though.

Yeah, exactly, I think he nailed it, he knew what he was doing.

So we're, this is our eighth episode, is that right?

Sure.

Any confirmation from my fellow?

But we really recorded like three before that, so this is like a good solid ten-ish.

I'm good at math.

I think we could take a quick retrospective, and I may cut this out, since we definitely want to jump back to the action, but I wanted to ask you guys, how are you like in Apocalypse World?

Because it's both of your first times playing Apocalypse World, I know, Brady, you don't have a big, wide swath of things to compare it to, but you can compare it to the most popular game of tabletop role-playing variety, which is Dungeons and or Dragons.

So, I...

I'm pretty positive on Apocalypse World.

I've always kind of...

I initially, when I first started playing RPGs, was really into like the crunch.

I wanted that crunch, the hard rules, I wanted the Pathfinder first edition levels of Min-Max building my character to the exact degrees that I want with rules for every single thing I could possibly do.

But the more I've played, the more my brain has just become mush and is not able to remember half these rules.

And the more I've kind of enjoyed the storytelling aspect of RPGs.

And I think Apocalypse World, and all powered by Apocalypse games, with some exceptions, of course, are really good at just sticking with a theme and really making you feel like you're in that setting.

Really, any Apocalypse World game, if you took the settings or tried to homebrew anything like away that setting, kind of fall apart.

Like they're built around whatever setting that the systems are adjusted for.

So I really like it.

I like the storytelling opportunities it has.

I like the way that it builds a really clear setting for the GM to use.

And on the GM side of things, I really like the fact that pretty much, you can do pretty much anything with the rules and it lets you do it.

Yeah, I don't even have dice.

I just come up with stuff.

It's way easier than the D&D.

I just sit back here, come up with bullshit and hope it works out.

Yeah, one of the things, so I, to answer your question, I really like Apocalypse World.

I think it's awesome.

One of the things I really like about it is that it's a little bit less math intensive.

And I think that it also has really good mechanisms for judging your success.

Like the D&D, the sliding scale of your DC, I guess it's your dice challenge or whatever the fuck it's called, difficulty challenge.

That sliding scale, I find frustrating because there's stuff that you should absolutely just be able to do that they make you roll for.

And I like that in this realm, this world, this game, that you don't have that limitation.

On the flip side, I do think that that opens up the option to be a lot more improv heavy, which I think is great for us.

I think it's a little bit more difficult.

Like in D&D, you're like, okay, I can, I have moves.

I have very specific moves, very more specific skills, which kind of help you as far as figuring out like how to respond to certain situations.

But somebody who likes to play things in sort of a non-conventional way, Apocalypses World, you know, really allows me to lean into that.

I love it.

I've enjoyed running this.

I think it's much easier.

I guess it depends on your skill set, but it's a much lighter cognitive load on me than something like running a module from Pathfinder, where I'm sitting there and going, this is this monster with the undead wrapper on it that needs all of these additional immunities and things like that.

I just come up with everything you guys fight has three or four attributes that are important and nothing else.

And it's all the sort of thing I can track pretty much in my head, too.

My notes for this game are incredibly light.

Or it's like, okay, I know how the mole monster you guys fought.

I knew how much damn harm you would have to do to kill it.

I knew what armor it had, and I knew a couple different attacks it could do and how much harm they would do to you.

And that was it.

That's all I had to worry about.

And then all my other brain could focus on what creepy things would it do, how would it react in these situations, stuff like that, without having to look at a list of potential stats and skills and things like that.

I was just gonna say, for as much as, because I love the mythical medieval setting that D&D often has, like that is my bread and butter.

I love that shit.

But maintaining like your spell book and having spell slots at different levels, like it really kind of bogs you down.

And I miss that sort of really baked in sort of supernatural element that you have in D&D, that kind of fantasy element with the spells and everything.

I do enjoy that quite a lot, so I miss that here.

But the really cool thing that I've enjoyed playing this game with Stu is that he's been able to bring that in kind of bit by bit, and I can see the world becoming more and more mystical and more mythical.

More fantastical.

Exactly.

I think it's definitely feasible during the infinite run of this podcast we're going to record until we die, that we do switch to a more fantasy system.

You could definitely experience an apocalypse in that way.

The world ended, no one's been around for so long that people have started rebuilding in a much more fantasy-like element.

And there's some moves...

Radiation calls us dwarves.

There's some moves that you can steal from other playbooks that would allow us to be a little bit more...

You could play something like Dungeon World, which is a Powered by the Apocalypse game.

That is just straight up fantasy.

It's a bit like the D&D version of Apocalypse World.

There are other ones that are like that, too.

There's one that's kind of more Lord of the Rings focused.

That's gonna be a while, though.

That's like 40 episodes in the future.

So don't get excited or worried if you like or dislike that idea.

40 episodes in the future, but 50 years in the past.

Yes, exactly.

Or maybe you'll make it to the surface and there's just an elf there.

Someone goes, hello.

He says, ahoy.

Ahoy, I'm Uranus Whisper Whistle.

And you're like, oh, that has to be an elf.

Well, let's get back to the action.

Thank Last time, you all were in a somewhat of a standoff between Pistachio Jones and his men, representing Hickory Fleek.

You guys arrived, a rove, with your battery of exchange that was supposed to level the playing field, make him leave you alone for at least a little bit.

But you decided to potentially call in for some reinforcements and make a dramatic stand here, that the town is done being pushed around by Hickory and his men, and that you need a more equitable exchange of goods and services for the society that you live in.

You made an impassioned plea over Johnny Hertz's radio, and you got nearly a handful of people to show up and back you up.

Your impassioned plea brought out a handful of people from the town.

The only ones you recognize are the two chaos cultists and Calista Furness' boyfriend.

You do see Juniper like a distance away, leaning up against the bar, kind of checking out the situation, looking maybe a little bit worried.

And then there are about three or four more townspeople that you either know or don't know very well, who may just be there to check out what's happening, but look like there's at least some backing behind you.

And I'm assuming that more are going to show up as this continues.

Well, we'll see.

And Book was making his final impassioned plea towards Pistachio Jones, where he finally stood up for the town people, demanded some more equality, and he looked over at Ocean for some backup, and saw a not-too-familiar but somewhat-familiar vision of Ocean's eyes clouding over as he stands there.

And Ocean, we're going to kick off by you experiencing a vision.

Not at the best moment, which is my favorite time to make them happen.

The worst possible moment for a vision.

Let me just check and see here what I checked off.

Because I somewhat forgot.

I chose a green and beautiful garden, tantalizing, somehow denied to me, or out of reach.

And for the person, I chose someone impersonally violent, bearing the tools of their violence.

You're standing there, looking at Pistachio Jones.

You have that shotgun in your hand, not kind of held up or threatening in any way, but you have it ready to go.

You look and see Book walking up with this car battery to exchange, to try to make some sort of gesture of goodwill, and your vision just slowly fades.

And you just can't fight it.

You just kind of...

This darkness starts encroaching on you, and then it just snaps, and you're aware, and you feel wind rushing through you as you're rappelling down this thin, slick tunnel deep into this darkness below you.

You look, and there's this glowing green light just reflecting off of the edges, and you know exactly where you're going.

You're gaining more and more speed as you go down at a very concerning rate.

And a little bit before the bottom comes up to you, you push on some mechanism, and this lock slams into place against this thick chain that you're sliding down, and it grinds you to a halt about two feet above the ground, and you unlatch it, clunk down.

You have these thick metal boots on that you don't remember wearing ever, but they push the dust away into the air, and in this cloud, you look up, and you're in this strange room of this green glowing light.

You see this huge metal door, and there's this loud klaxon just constantly humming, honking, what's the noise?

Klaxoning.

This loud klaxon ringing in your ears.

You can barely hear anything else, and then you see a group of people that are not familiar to you, but they are decked out with very impressive weaponry.

You see several of them have like assault rifles.

The one closest to you has like a very advanced looking submachine gun, nice, well maintained, cool scope on it, all that sort of thing.

He's got a little red dot that you see shine up up against your chest, and you are not expecting these people here.

What do you think Ocean would have done in this situation?

You're not really in control of this vision, but I'd like to know.

From what I remember of Ocean's previous vision, I think Ocean would throw up his hands and ask what's going on.

Okay, you don't throw up your hands.

That's what you think was going to happen.

But you do belt out this, what's going on here, and your voice kind of surprises you.

It's like a little more harsh.

It doesn't seem kind of as friendly as you're used to it being.

You kind of, you know you're a big dude, so a lot of times you think about how that impacts people when you interact with them, except for Pistachio Jones.

Except for Pistachio Jones.

So you kind of present yourself in a much more soft way than you probably would normally have to if you were an average-sized fellow, but none of that is happening right now.

You almost bark this out as an order, and you hear it echoing in your ears that it's jarring to you.

And you see this group of people immediately all pull their weapons on you.

All of them.

You see like three more little red dots appear on your chest, and the one clearly in charge leans this large assault rifle over his shoulder.

And he goes, I wasn't expecting to have company today.

And in that moment, you see him look over his shoulder and kind of laugh a little bit and start to give a signal.

And you grab from behind your shoulder this very tactical shovel and throw it directly into his chest, and it pierces right into him, and you see him fall to the ground right as the guy next to you starts trying to unload his submachine gun on you.

But you're too fast.

You pull out a gun, shoot him right in the arm.

It flinches down.

You put him in a headlock, swing his arm around, and the bullets spray against everyone else.

And you just see this cloud of blood splash against this huge metal door around you.

Book.

What you see is Ocean grab his shovel and hurl it towards one of the men closest to you.

Yikes.

And this shovel, give me a, give me a act under fire roll, Ocean.

Act under fire, okay, this is the worst possible vision to have in this situation.

You chose violence.

Silence.

Oh, god, that's a six.

Six, that is a complete failure.

Okay, so not only do you throw this shovel, you throw this shovel well, it's accurate.

It pierces deep into the sky, book you're like two feet away from him, and you hear his clavicle just break on the side, and he hunkers down to the ground.

The man closest to you, Ocean, again, you don't have your full faculties yet, you're still experiencing this vision, but the man closest to you pulls out a submachine gun and goes to try to take you down, but you wrench his arm, you feel it break, and you spray these bullets towards the collection of Pistachio Jones' men.

What do you do, Book?

This came out of nowhere.

You did not give any signal for this to happen.

That is correct, I did not.

And especially-

This is the opposite of what we were trying to do.

Like, at Johnny Hurts, I had a bit of a-

not a bloodlust, but my blood was pumping, and I was like, we're doing this, and we're doing it right.

And Ocean is the one who actually talked me off of the-

overthrow the regime, and got me down to the level of, let's see how this goes, and let's try to keep it peaceful.

So to see him first bisect a man's chest, and then litter our, what do they call a party, where you're like, where you're all here to like negotiate.

There's a word for that, right?

Parlay.

Yeah, our parlay, littered our parlay with bullets.

A million things are racing through my mind.

First of all, like Ocean, like worry for Ocean, but also like a bit of betrayal, but also a bit of like you kind of just fucked us over.

But it's fine.

Like he's still my buddy.

So I turned to my allegiance is still with Ocean, is the guess what I'm saying.

So I'm not going to move against him, even though I don't agree with what he did.

I think when Ocean comes back to, he will also not agree with what he did.

If it makes you feel any better.

I think that's why like I know like I got man.

So I'm torn between two directions.

I either want to run and try to grab his arm to prevent him from shooting up more people, especially the people who came to help us, or I want to turn to our boxcar boys and just shrug and be like, fuck it.

Do you want me to give you a slow motion Robert Downey Jr.

Sherlock Holmes vision of what's happening right now?

Would that help your decision?

I don't think so.

What I would actually like to do is what I'd like to do, can I read the situation?

Yeah.

Probably a good call.

That's going to be the same result.

But yeah, this is a charged situation, I would say.

I would say yes.

Maybe teetering overcharged into already exploited.

But okay, roll sharp.

That's a 12.

Nice.

You get to ask three of those questions right now.

So first one is what represents the best opportunity for me to deescalate the situation?

And then the next question is, I don't even know if I need all three of these, but what is my best way through to Ocean?

Meaning, how could I best pull him out of this vision?

Ooh, that's a good question.

Thank you.

It took a minute.

And then...

It's a great bending of those words.

What poses the biggest threat to me slash does Ocean pose a threat to me is really what I'm trying to figure out.

You can, just from those questions, you can tell Book is in a very confused headspace.

Yeah, because I turned three questions into six, even though I said I only needed one of them.

Okay, I'm rejecting your reality of this not being a Robert Downey Jr.

I'm fine with that...

.

situation and still presenting it to you that way.

Okay, you look and you see, as he turns and sprays the submachine gun at people, most of them just go diving out of the way.

You see a couple of them, including Pistachio Jones, kind of lean back and start pulling out weapons.

Pistachio Jones seems to be simultaneously pulling out that pistol he wielded before and his radio.

But most of them have jumped around.

So when you're looking at deescalating right now, not many of them are fighting back.

They're just getting out of the way.

You do see, though, behind Ocean, a very excited pair of chaos coltons who are like, yes, this is going down now.

But they seem to be the only ones really looking to move this situation forward.

Everyone else is more in survival mode right now.

At this moment, that can change very quickly.

Your best way to get to Ocean, so in a literal sense, you don't know how in control of his faculties he is right now, so you're probably going to want to approach him from the back.

You're going to want to kind of more sneak up on him if you want to get to him safely.

That will put you in direct fire from anyone who is going to try to shoot towards him now.

That is definitely true.

On a more metaphysical sense to give you more questions for free, like you were trying to fish for.

You don't know how different his visions are from when you opened your mind to the psychic maelstrom, but you knew the only thing that got you back was anchoring yourself back in the material world, and you actually used Ocean to do that previously.

That's true.

So you think, if that's how it works, which you don't know, that would be the sort of thing.

For whether Ocean still poses a threat to you, from everything you know about Ocean, which has been thrown a little bit to the wind when he just recently mentioned he was planning on robbing you the first time he met.

But everything you know about Ocean so far is that he would not do something like this.

This is way out of character for him.

So you know he's either not thinking clearly or the situation is very different than you would expect.

And that does not bode well for him treating you well.

Alright, that's fair.

Are you going to tell me what the actual biggest threat to me is?

It's probably Ocean.

Alright, that's fair.

Remember that you take plus one to any roles you make related to any of those answers.

This got my heart racing.

Oh really?

We forget that very frequently.

Dude, we would have had way more successes last episode.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Anyway, that's fine.

You should probably read the instructions.

Yeah, I probably should.

Okay, so I am going to act on that answer, those answers, specifically, well, specifically all of them.

If I had to choose, I would say all of them.

So I should get plus three, I think.

Just kidding.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to jump, basically jump onto, because I've already handed off the car battery too.

So here, actually, I'm going to be a nitpicky person here.

Like Book.

I don't think that Pistachio Jones can immediately reach for his gun and his radio because he has a car battery in his hands.

So he can drop the car battery.

Yeah, he's dropping that car battery.

I think that takes, will take, maybe he's reaching for them.

Yeah, you can tell he's reaching for them at this time.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to basically jump on top of Ocean's arm, the one that has the submachine gun.

And I'm basically going to try to use my body weight to drag it down towards the ground away from other people.

And while I'm doing that, I'm yelling for Ocean.

But I'm also, actually, I'm not.

I'm not yelling for Ocean.

I'm hoping that that will pull his attention away from the vision and everything else.

Just that action.

I'm hoping that will grab his attention.

And what I'm going to say is to the boxcar boys, my buddies, I'm going to say, get that radio.

OK, that's a lot of stuff in one flash.

It's me jumping and yelling.

People can jump and yell at the same time.

Don't worry about it.

OK, we're going to, for the first time, we'll interrupt someone, which is you use your history with Ocean to do this.

You should have a lot of history with me right now.

A lot or none because it rolls over.

That is true.

What's my history with you?

I have plus one.

OK, I have plus zero, so we must have just rolled over.

But I get another plus one because I'm acting on information, right?

Yes.

So it's plus two total to whatever you roll.

That's an eight.

OK, so you before you see you see this spray of bullets come out and the clip runs dry.

And don't at me with clip versus magazine.

The magazine runs dry.

Ocean, with surprising dexterity, ejects the magazine and goes and rip someone, grips another one off of the man he was using as a human shield and puts it back in there.

But before he can start shooting again, you're there.

You're right on top of him.

You pull his arm down to the ground.

And you're not yelling at him, right?

You're yelling at the other ones.

How this role resolves is, I'm saying, you're there first.

You got there before he was trying to do what he was trying to do.

And he'll have to deal with you instead of doing what he is intending to do.

Which could have bad consequences for me, hence the partial success, I guess.

Ocean, you get plus one history with book from him using that move.

As you're on the ground, Ocean, you come back out of this vision.

You smell gunpowder in the air.

You see book directly on top of you, and you notice there's this submachine gun.

You pulled his arm down to the ground, and yeah, he fell with you.

He rolled good.

So yeah, you were completely there first.

He was not expecting anyone coming from that direction.

In his vision, that didn't happen, right?

That's true.

That was completely out of the expected realm of him.

So you pull him down to the ground, and he snaps out of it.

You smell this gunpowder.

You feel this hot gun in your hand.

You can tell it's just been fired.

You're holding on to it, and Book is on top of you.

What would you do?

So at first, when Book pulls Ocean down, he's going to briefly, like in his eyes, it just looks like a wild animal.

His nostrils are flaring.

He's looking around.

And then you notice in the exact moment that it comes to him what's happening, and he's back to his normal self.

You just see his expression changes to just like one of calm.

And then his face goes white, and he looks up at Book.

Says, Book, what did I do?

You can somewhat tell in his eyes that he knows what he did.

I look at Ocean.

I'm assuming I feel your grip relax on the submachine gun.

Yeah, he relaxes and drops it.

Yeah, so I push that away from us, and I go, run.

You gotta get out of here.

Go.

Like, what's that movie with the Golden Retriever?

Horse Gump.

Harry and the Hendersons?

No, it's like Air Bud, but it's not Air Bud.

You're ruining this moment!

Ocean gets up and runs like Air Bud.

Go, like, I'll handle this.

Just go, get out of here.

And Ocean is gonna stand up and bolt off.

Just gonna bolt off towards the subtropolis.

Oh, okay.

You hear gunfire behind you as you go.

And Book, you see there are some of Hickory's men who are shooting towards Ocean, which is roughly in your direction as well.

Give me an act under fire.

Did the boxcar children react to what I said?

They're working there.

Cool.

Is act under fire aggro or hard?

It's cool, even better.

Oh, fuck yes.

One day you'll be excited to hear that one.

That is a nine.

You can do it, but there will be a cost, and you can decide if you want to go through it with it.

Well, it's getting shot at, so you are, there's a series of bullets coming towards you.

Right.

You're going to have to, you have to make a decision to either run away from Pistachio Jones.

The only cover you have anywhere near you is this, like, collapsed trashcan that does not look like it would provide very well cover, but it's like 10 yards away from, away from Pistachio Jones from where you're at right now.

So it's going to put you at a certain disadvantage for communicating with them, kind of resolving this situation, but you will not take any fire, or you can either stay where you're at or even move towards Pistachio Jones.

It's up to you.

I'm going to move towards Pistachio Jones.

You walk up and you feel one bullet, it was not aimed towards you, but it grazes your trap, and you just feel this hot blood start running down your shoulder.

It doesn't even burn right now, you're kind of too focused, too much adrenaline pumping through you, but you do take three harm.

Three harm?

Oh, shit.

From one bullet?

God damn.

It's a hunting rifle.

Well, that's not ideal.

But I'm not going to make you roll harm move.

I think you're too focused right now on what you're trying to do.

What do you say after that?

This blood starts pooling up around your shoulder.

I'm going to walk up to Pistachio Jones, and I'm going to say, cut your losses, put your fucking guns down, so nobody else gets hurt.

Give me a Sway Someone.

I think that's a Confront Someone actually, sorry.

I think that's a great response, too.

Not my most skilled.

Wait, minus one.

So that's an eight.

An eight?

Yes, another middle of the road partial success for me.

You go and he does falter for just a second, but you see the Chaos Cultists are also still charging towards him, which is putting him in a very perilous situation.

Do you want to say anything to them before I resolve this?

You can tell that that's the thing that's kind of sticking in his mind, as, hey, he can't relax.

There's three to four people trying to kill him.

Well, are they still shooting?

His men are still shooting.

The Chaos Cultists are straight up running at him, but one of them has an armful of grenades.

Right, I remember that.

And has he pulled the pins yet?

Oh, he's pulled all the pins.

He's holding them in his mouth, remember?

Right, to keep the...

No, he's literally removed them all from the grenade, but until the spring gets undone.

Yeah, but he is also just haphazardly holding them like the Too Many Limes guy.

So it's like, how secure are all these springs?

Right, so I'm going to...

How close are we to the precipice?

Like the overlook of Subtropolis?

Pretty far, like if you were like a mile, let's give it a distance and say a mile.

So Ocean can run in there in six minutes because he's a strong boy.

Right.

And a little pumped on adrenaline right now.

Because we got it, I got it.

Okay, so I turn to the boxcar child with all of the grenades.

I turn over my shoulder and I say, stop.

Drop those over the precipice.

He looks very disappointed.

He does stop right now, but he does not move towards the precipice.

He's like, oh.

And I say, I'm sorry.

I know that you love those grenades, but we can't have them going off here with all these people.

Um, since you got to make success, pistachio Jones is going to tell his men.

He's going to say, hold fire.

And he but he will.

He pulls out his pistol and aims one shot at Ocean running away and shoots.

Do I get a reaction?

You can try to do something if you want.

Do you want me to roll or wait until he does his reaction?

Well, I'm going to.

Can I use my armor toward for Ocean?

Like, can I use my cane to try to swap?

You can try to interrupt someone.

Well, yeah, I'm going to try to swap the gun out with them down with my cane.

Okay, give me an interrupt someone roll, which for him is aggro, because you don't have an HX with pistachio Jones yet.

But do I get plus one because I'm using my armor?

Like, we have to have a mechanism for the cane to actually be useful is all I'm saying.

This is how you wouldn't have been able to safely divert of a gun barrel without the cane.

So the cane is being useful.

Yeah, but not in the roll.

If it's useful, it should be useful in the roll.

It's useful by allowing you to make the roll.

So this is an interrupt someone?

Yes.

Fuck me.

You'll be hearing from my lawyers.

Ha.

Ha ha.

Ten.

Four.

That is a full fucking success.

Ten.

Okay.

On a ten, you also take plus one forward against them.

What does that mean?

That means on your next roll against them, you get plus one added to it.

Okay, with that success, you are ready for it.

As he pulls this gun out, you, with just a flick, shoot your cane up and hit the barrel right as he's shooting it.

And you know that that bullet just goes flying somewhere into a cave, into Septropolis.

Hopefully not to hit one of your good friends like Vesuvius.

But, and he looks at you pissed, and you think he may actually react in some very negative way when you hear a car horn start blaring.

And it's just like, It's a custom aftermarket horn.

Ocean, you hear this.

Are you still just running towards Apocalypses?

He is still running.

I think he's in a trance right now, and is just like in a mad panic, and does not really, not really in control of himself.

I think right now he's acting on instinct and trying to rationalize what he's done in his head.

You hear this car horn, and you just ignore it, keep running.

Book, you see this Lincoln Continental come tearing around the corner.

You notice all of Hickory's men stop.

They take a few steps back.

You notice Juniper actually goes back inside.

And as the back door of this opens, you see Hickory fleek step.

Oh, shit, the man himself.

And I'm not here for it.

You see he's wearing these cowboy boots and this big gray suit.

He's not quite ocean size, but he's very, very large.

He's got this not attractive goatee on, but it's very well maintained.

Definitely a big boy.

And he steps out and he immediately says, well, it seems like we have some sort of miscommunication here.

Everyone, everyone puts your guns down.

Put them down, put them down.

Let's just talk this through.

And he walks up directly to you, Buck, and he goes, heard you on the radio.

I don't respond.

He friendly.

But I'm leaning heavily on my cane because I took three fucking harm.

He, oh shit, I actually forgot that.

He friendly clasps your shoulder, which has a bullet wound in it.

And you feel this pain as he kind of gives you a little squeeze on the shoulder.

He goes, been a while since I've seen you there.

Can I try something challenging to stay upright?

To like not show any.

Yeah, I don't want to show any weakness.

That will actually be an act under fire.

That's to keep it cool.

So currently in my head, I'm casting Hickory Fleek as as the big Lebowski era, Jeff Bridges.

No, Jeff Bridges.

I thought you were going to say John Goodman.

John Goodman would be a perfect fit too.

They're very...

He's a John Bridges, Jeff Goodman.

Yeah, like a mix between the two of them.

Because Jeff Bridges is a pretty attractive man.

So I'm imagining John Goodman level kind of awkwardness, but with like Jeff Bridges suave physique.

That was a 12.

A 12.

Okay, yeah, you do not even wince.

I also got an improvement, but I'm not going to tell you what I got yet.

Okay, you're not going to tell me till it's useful.

Yeah, because I've been planning this.

Yeah, he squeezes your shoulder, and this is actually the first time you kind of like feel the sharp pain of the bullet in you, but you're able to just keep your composure entirely.

And he kind of leans back, and he goes, I'm sorry, everyone, for the confusion.

Come around.

Come closer, come closer.

And he waves at the people who are kind of more on the outskirts, and you see everyone kind of start huddling around.

And he goes, What we have here is just a failure to communicate.

And I really apologize for that.

This is on me.

I did not talk to Pistachio very well about the sudden change.

I should have had a town meeting and really laid out why these changes were happening.

I understand all of your anger.

Makes complete sense.

But we can't have this.

We can't have bloodshed in our streets.

And he goes and he looks over, and he starts.

He kind of scopes the situation out.

And Book, this is the first time you get a good look.

And you notice the guy with the shovel in his shoulder is really injured.

And you see there is one person who is dead from one of the submachine gun bullets, but all the other bullets seem to miss.

Someone got like nicked in the neck and fell right behind Pistachio Jones.

He goes, this is just unacceptable.

It is my job to keep the order here, make sure things like this don't happen.

But I do take some responsibility for this situation, so I'll be the one to make it right.

It looks like we had kind of two sides going on here due to this miscommunication, but I think we can make everything fair.

Let's see, we got one person injured and one person dead.

Okay.

And he pulls out this revolver, and he shoots Calista's boyfriend, Din Wallace, in the leg, and then he turns and points the gun at one of the Chaos Cultists and shoots him right in the chest, and he falls down.

Do I not count as someone who's injured?

Nope.

Because I think he should have just...

Oh, that's true.

You just held it in so well.

So my full success really...

He could not even tell.

Okay, that's fair.

And yeah, one of the Chaos Cultists, and it's the one who talks less, falls down, and the other one goes, Tabasko!

And Tabasko's final word is, Crash.

Crash, no.

I'll see you on the other side, Crash.

Which one was holding the grenades?

Did all the grenades just spill out?

No, Crash still has them all.

Hickory is not that dumb, and he opens his revolver, counts the bullets, puts two more back in it, closes it, and re-holsters it.

Actually, Stu, does his revolver have a safety?

Because if it's an Old West revolver, they don't have a safety, so probably he would leave one of the channels, no, he would leave one of the chambers empty so that he would pocket it, basically, with it centered on that chamber so that he couldn't accidentally shoot himself in the leg.

Okay, he has better gun knowledge than I do, so he does that.

And he goes, it seems like, especially, I'd like to apologize to you, Book.

It seems like there was a clerical error, and your power has been really, really wonky lately.

I assure you, we got our best men on it.

We'll make sure you are up and good, and I promise you, there will be no loss of service for this next month.

You'll be completely fine.

Then we're gonna put you back in the normal rotation, and something like this won't happen again.

I don't want your charity, Hickory.

I want you to tell us, if you're gonna take more of our money, what the hell are you gonna do with it?

You set our prices.

You set our taxes.

You control the entire economy, and yet you won't let people make a goddamn living.

It hurts me every day when I see people struggling in this town.

I wish none of you had to go scavenge and collect things from that cursed city.

I wish we had enough here.

I wish we had enough food to survive.

I wish we could set up good trade routes with other neighboring towns and coalesce into one happy, really more of a family is what I wish we were.

But there's been something going on in Subtropolis where we siphon off most of our power and it's been real light lately.

We really had to ration what we can get.

And I'm hoping with some investments from each and every one of you, and especially the ones who are able-bodied enough to go out there, face those challenges, and collect things for us, I'm hoping those investments can let us set up our own renewable source of energy in town, so we don't rely on siphoning from dangerous locations.

How does taking half-dead batteries create a renewable energy source?

I can't get into all the specifics with you.

It's very complicated.

But we're working on, we're trading those.

Those are a resource, just like anything else.

So you see, society is built on the assumption that you can barter goods and services with each other.

We're hoping to be able to barter those goods and services and some of them.

Oh.

Oh, okay.

You've read about that one?

If you're not even reinvesting those batteries back into our community, then you should at least tell us who they're going to.

I will keep everyone in the loop as we get this infrastructure stood up.

I'm gonna need help.

I'm not.

Me and some of my men here aren't gonna be laying all this groundwork, setting up the infrastructure ourselves.

The people are gonna be involved in it.

How about I promise we will have a town hall, the one I should have set up before all this anyway.

Let's have that town hall exactly five days from now.

That kind of appease all of you.

And he looks, and Den Wallace is on the ground in pain, holding onto his leg.

He looks at him, he doesn't give him any sort of sign back.

He turns towards some of the other people, and they kind of shrug their shoulders.

And he looks at you, Book.

I lean in close to Hickory's ear, and I say...

He smells like cheeses.

Cheeses?

Rich cheeses.

Rich cheeses.

Wow, fucking gorgonzola up in this shit.

Which doesn't smell good, by the way.

Most rich cheeses smell like crap, so that actually checks out.

Yeah.

I lean in really close to his ear, and I say...

You might be able to charm your way out of this one, but at the end of the day, you're gonna find out what these people really want is accountability.

And then I break his grasp on my shoulder, and I start walking away towards Dan Wallace to tie basically my belt around his leg as a tourniquet.

I think if you focus on that for the rest of this, then you're gonna be able to at least, like, stabilize him in a good way.

Without a roll.

Is that okay?

If you want to try to do something quicker, then I'm gonna make you do it for it.

No, I think I'm taking my time.

I'm assuming that Hickory is de-escalated, which is like Hickory did what I wanted to do.

He de-escalated.

So I'm letting this happen, but I'm gonna try to treat Dan Wallace.

I'm assuming that Tabasco is dead, unfortunately.

Yes, he is very dead.

Hickory gets back in the Lincoln Continental, backs it up, and rolls away.

And Pistachio is still like super flustered over there.

He's like, what the fuck just happened?

And he's like collecting his men, checking on the guy who's dead, and like taking shit from his pockets.

Eventually, people just slowly start clearing out, and it's left with just you and Dan Wallace.

I'm sorry, I didn't know he was gonna do that.

And I'm talking about Ocean, not Hickory.

Oh man, it's...

Yeah, it's not a problem.

I knew what I was getting into when I came.

Yeah, that was a really...

Oh god, that burns.

That was a really impassioned plea you gave, man.

And I completely, like, I'm with you that whole way.

I take a bolt for you again.

That means a lot.

And I help him to his feet, and I say, let's get you patched up for real.

And I start helping him basically limp towards the broken leg.

Okay, funny.

Well, I figure, for one, poetic irony, the name, but also I figure that Juniper has some medical supplies that other people probably don't.

Okay, back at Ocean, you are sprinting.

Dank air just blowing past you as you sprint, and you reach right to the precipice, and you see this city revealed in front of you.

Right now, the lights are all off on it.

It's dark, ominous.

What do you do?

He's going to stand there for a few seconds.

He's going to put his hands on his knees, and he's just going to start panting.

He's just going to stand out over the edge and look out.

Give me a sharp roll, actually.

Just sharp?

Yep.

OK, that's a nine.

You look over Saptropolis, and it's very foreboding right now.

For some reason, it looks like...

Normally, it's a pretty exciting place for you.

Like, you found a lot of cool shit in there, and you like, even though you hate the danger, you like some of the cool shit that's down there.

But right now, it seems extra foreboding, like just a bad place to go.

And some of the lights start coming on.

It looks like it must be about noon right now.

And some of the lights start flickering on, and you can see just on the edge of your vision that manhole cover that you popped out of before.

The manhole is off.

Huh.

Huh.

That's gonna kinda snap him out of it.

He's gonna kinda look out.

Do I see anything trailing from where the manhole cover is?

Yeah, I'm gonna pull out my binoculars and take a closer look at that.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, you see this smearing of blood, and about up near some of the buildings, kind of further away from it, you see the fully bisected body of that, one of Crandall's men who was following you, that lady with the submachine gun with a giant scope on it.

Oh, shit, so I'm guessing that was probably...

She's there.

Hmm.

Interesting.

You should probably grab that gun.

How far away is that?

It's not far.

It is down all those switchbacks, which is annoying, but it would give you some time to move your way.

He's gonna head that direction.

He's gonna head that way towards where that body is.

Yeah, there and back, leisurely going, will probably take you almost an hour.

It's not a far distance like you can see it, but just going all the way up and down or down and up.

He's gonna do that because he needs time to clear his head.

He wants to, needs something to focus on to kind of clear his head for the state that he was in.

Back at the broken leg.

So I'm assuming Dan Wallace is on a bar table with me and Juniper pouring over his leg.

Is Spade there?

Yes, Spade is there.

Spade is still in their booth.

Juniper is helping tend to this, and he has a radio out, and he's trying to call for help from one of the local doctors, but hasn't gotten a response back yet, actually.

So he's doing his best.

He's taken some alcohol and poured it right on that gun wound.

Did it go straight through?

Is his, not his carotid?

What is the leg vein?

Femoral?

Yeah, the femoral artery.

It is, indeed.

Is his femoral artery hit?

No, his femoral seems fine.

He's got a good femoral.

You check it out, it's hanging on tight.

But the bullet is still in there.

Okay, I'm going to assume, okay, so in a bar, you know those like real skinny mixing spoons?

Yeah, the ones that clink a lot.

I'm going to grab two of those, and while the tourniquet is still on, I'm going to try to extract the bullet.

Okay, this is going to be trying something challenging.

All right, let's do that.

Also, I have a bullet in me or through me.

It's through you.

Yeah, yours isn't in me.

And mine does not.

So a nine in the countdown clock does not heal with time, right?

Yep, you need medical attention as well.

Yeah, that was a five.

Not so hot.

Yep, not so good.

You go and you try to get it out, but he is wincing too much.

He doesn't have any painkillers or anything with him, and the second you touch any of that skin around there, it seems like the shock has started to wear off, and even with Juniper trying to hold him down, you're not able to get into it.

I'm not going to say you make it worse, but he's certainly in bad shape.

Juniper, at this time, as you're hunkered over him, he notices your shoulder bleeding heavily too.

Yeah, I was going to say, I think about this time is when my adrenaline falters, and I maybe just collapse, but I'm still conscious.

Yeah, okay, yeah, you kind of slump down, especially seeing all this blood everywhere.

Not a great sight.

I think Luke is fine with the blood.

I think it's more him trying to use both hands and one of his shoulders, the tendons and the muscle just being shredded is very painful.

I'm going to say you kind of fade out, and when you come to, you're laying on the bar, actually.

You look over, and your vision clears, and you look over, and Din Wallace is still laying on that table, but he's actually kind of up on his elbows, and his leg's getting wrapped by, you see this man with long, long gray hair.

He's like a Willie Nelson type.

I came up with that when I was more than halfway through that sentence.

And he's wrapping it up, and you notice that your shoulder is completely numb.

Your arm, you actually can't move it.

But not in a very concerning way, in more of a, you have some local anesthetic very heavily.

And you hear him, and he looks up, and he goes, Yeah, I got the bullet out, and I think you're gonna start feeling better soon.

I gotta get some stitches on you still.

You should lean back.

Do not use that shoulder.

I'm not gonna fight him.

But I look, do I recognize his face?

Is what I wanna know.

Yeah, you've probably interacted with him on a small amount.

His name is Maple.

Juniper comes up to you, and he goes, Do you want me to try to radio Ocean?

Send someone after him?

I shake my head.

I'm wincing, and I shake my head.

And I say, I'll find him.

I'm the one who needs to do it.

Okay.

If you think so, I don't know how soon you're going to be able to get out of here.

But, well, after you get him, you should come back and talk with me.

I think we got some stuff we got to figure out.

I lock eyes with him, and I say, I think we do.

Am I able to, has he finished stitching me up?

Yeah, well, zoom forward towards after you got your stitches in him.

You're lacking a little mobility in your arm.

You can bring yourself back to 6 o'clock arm.

Okay.

Seeing Spade has rekindled that very deep need to give her something.

Still leaning on my cane, I stumble towards her booth.

They look at you and go, seems like you've had a rough day.

I got something for you.

Oh, well, what is it?

You finally tracked down that information you promised me?

Something like that.

And I lean towards her.

I put, like, basically, I have one arm, my right arm is leaning on my cane, my left arm is leaning on the corner of the table, and I'm, like, hunched over.

Basically, you know, like, when Aragorn comes back after everyone thought he died, and he pushes those doors open?

That's how I'm picturing myself.

Just very sexy.

But more witty than that.

Let me know if I need to roll for that.

But bleeding a lot.

And I use my new improvement, Whispering Truth.

And I say to her, You know the Psychic Maelstrom, right?

More than you could even imagine.

I don't know about that.

I think I might know something about it that you don't.

I find that incredibly hard to believe.

And I lean in.

It was made by humans.

What do you mean?

And we fade to black.

That's a pretty good one.

That's really good.

What whispering truth does is they become fixed upon it or me.

So they either become fixed upon that truth and intend upon pursuing it to its conclusions, abandoning their commitments.

They change their threat type if necessary.

Or they become fixed upon you, your devoted disciple, abandoning other commitments.

They change threat type if necessary.

Interesting.

I don't think you have to tell me which happens, though.

Yeah, they lean back, and they go.

And you believe that?

I don't believe it.

I know it.

I can tell.

Here, have a seat.

And they order a drink.

And they're going to talk to you for a little bit.

Let's jump back over to Ocean.

You've made it back to the top of the switchbacks with your shiny new submachine gun, so you now have a shotgun and a submachine gun.

I'm getting loaded here.

So now that he's had some time to clear his head, he is wanting to go home.

So he's going to go to his house, specifically the spider, and he's going to open it up, sit down in the cockpit, and turn on the mixtape that Crandall gave him.

And as he's doing...

She asks me, son, when I grow old.

As he does that, I imagine that he's got...

And he fucking cries his eyes out.

Somebody stole my car radio, and now I just sit inside.

What I was gonna say is he's gonna pop open his blow compartment, pull out a cigarette, put it in his mouth, light it up, and he's just gonna stare off, listening to the music, and go, What the fuck is going on with me?

And he's gonna confront himself.

He's gonna try to confront, was that him?

Did he do what is his true nature?

Is that how he is?

Is it just this violent thing?

Or is he gonna think that there's maybe something more, that there's something in his past that he just can't quite get a hand on that will explain why he's the way he is?

And maybe was that a memory, or was somebody influencing him?

Yeah.

You light that cigarette, you hear the dulcet tunes of 21 Pilots blaring in.

It switches to one of the sadder songs.

And you look at yourself in the rearview mirror of the spider, and you just make eye contact with someone that you're not sure if you can recognize or not.

I'm gonna have you roll a confront someone.

I'm gonna roll confront.

Confronting yourself.

So I guess what will happen here is on the confront myself, then I'm gonna be like, yeah, I guess this is a part of me that I got to kind of rationalize.

And on fail, he's gonna completely reject it and be like, no, that's false.

That wasn't a real memory.

I don't understand what's happening.

Somebody is messing with my brain.

And that's how he's gonna register this.

And I don't know which one I want to happen now.

I know.

That's how I'm gonna rationalize it.

So on a fail, he refuses to believe that that was him, and he thinks that something is tampering with his brain.

And on a true, he's gonna do some more self-reflection.

And this is my aggro, so I have minus one.

Oh, great.

That's a five, so yep, he does not believe that was him.

He believes that somebody is messing with his brain.

He's in denial.

And with that improvement marked, and with that situation having occurred, I'm gonna get plus one aggro.

Okay, I'm gonna say then, I'm gonna take a little bit out of your hands and say you punched that rear view mirror.

Yeah, knock it right off.

I like that.

Just in frustration.

I like that a lot.

Just clocks it and breaks it.

Knuckles are bleeding a little bit, but he's just gonna ignore it.

Trying to hold on to your more peaceful self, you unleash your aggro.

Okay, Book, you're on your feet.

You've had a couple drinks with Spade.

They've told you a little bit about themselves.

Not much.

It seems like they're opening up a little bit to you, but they say they've come into town, but they're trying to track down some things that came through here at some point.

They are very cagey about any of the additional details of that.

You think you've gotten as far as you could possibly get with them.

In my previous conversation with Spade, after my previous conversation with Spade, I used her in Presence, and I saw that she needed my help.

Did we discuss that at all?

Would you have brought that up specifically?

No, yeah, no, I think I would have let her...

So I guess I'm asking if she brought it up.

You still feel that, though.

I'm saying your stern presence isn't necessarily a flash in the pan type thing.

You still get that feeling even after they've opened up more to you.

They're definitely still hiding stuff.

They are very dismissive on any follow-up questions, but they've said that they're in town for at least a while now, only working at Juniper's to keep money flowing in, and that they're trying to track...

They say something, not even someone, or exactly what it is, that something came through this town in the last couple of years that they're trying to track down.

Interesting.

That certainly sounds like a mystery that I would be interested in.

Given that information, I think I certainly want to heal up, I want to digest that, but I think more than anything, what pulls me away from that conversation is I realize that I've been, you know, that I've been neglecting Ocean when he really needs me.

And so I make my, you know, I make my excuses, and I get up, and as I walk out, I turn to Juniper and I say, I'll be back soon for our talk.

Sounds good.

See you in a few.

And Book, thinking that his friend Ocean ran far and deep into Subtropolis, is going to walk in that same direction.

Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode.

If you would like to hear a special bonus books nook stick around after the outro music, I assure you it is a complete waste of time, as I'm not involved.

Don't touch that dial for the next seven days, or however much time until Wednesday from when you listen to this, because we will be back Wednesday morning for our next episode.

Music and editing is performed by Stu Masterson, Brady McDonough makes the logo and artwork, and Jacob is available for any roadside assistance.

Love you, bye.

Oh, shit, one second.

Oops, I'll be back.

Welcome to Oops!

I'll be back.

I'm your host, Brady McDonough, because Stu Masterson just said, oops.

We're hijacking the podcast.

We're taking over.

This is a new segment called Oops!

I'll be back.

We're going to call it.

It's entirely just books nook, actually.

Now we're just going to talk about esoteric shit like we did in episode five the whole time.

No, I think Oops!

I'll be back should be exclusively Terminator talk, which is another.

Oh, be back.

That is we could tie this into a book snook talk about Terminator and how they all got bad after two.

Yeah, I think that's really all there is to say, unfortunately.

Yeah.