Shownotes
The Agents wake something up.
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Transcripts
Hello?
Speaker B:What time is it?
Speaker C:Who is it?
Speaker D:I don't know. Situation green. True darkness.
Speaker A:Sorry, love, I have to take this. Shields. You go ahead and open up this iron door, which it does with an excruciating squeal. The iron hinges are very basic. Inset and more iron.
And no one's greased this thing in a while. No matter how slow you go. It is just extremely loud. And you go ahead and lay it.
Speaker C:Down into the debris.
Speaker A:Next to the opening which descends below the building.
Speaker C:Behind the door lies a narrow staircase.
Speaker A:These are wooden stops. They are covered in moss and mold. Fairly slimy. You can see that it's going to make for treacherous footing.
Speaker E:Are we dealing with people under the stairs situation here? Can we see through the wood slats?
Speaker A:You're gonna turn on your lights again?
Speaker E:I guess we wouldn't from above. No, from above we wouldn't be able to see.
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly. And just tell me when those lights.
Speaker E:Come back on, there's no light emanating from within.
Speaker C:I'll tell you, if you see anything spooky or anything that would give you.
Speaker A:A little, a little start, anything at all that's relevant, I will tell you. But right now it's just dark.
Speaker E:Yeah, we're gonna need a light, says Shields and gestures to Paris.
Speaker D:Paris flips on his the latinus phone.
Speaker C:Cool.
Speaker D:Holds it over.
Speaker A:Yeah, this moss is extremely moist.
Speaker C:The steps look very slick, but they lead down. It's about 11 steps. They lead down to what looks like a dirt floored cellar.
Speaker E:Shields gestures to Bennett to go next. He draws his gun and takes up the rear.
Speaker B:All right, gentlemen, you got my back. You've got the light. I've got the soft feet. And I start making my way down the stairs.
Speaker A:So my understanding is Bennett is going point.
Speaker C:We've got the light emanating from Paris.
Speaker A:In the middle and Shields is taking up the rear.
Speaker C:Is that correct? Okay, Bennet, you start walking down these again. Treacherous, treacherous steps. Very carefully.
Speaker A:And you get to the bottom of the room here and it's fairly large.
Speaker C:Fairly large space below the smoke house above and the pit. The walls are made of stone. You can see that they're quite damp. There's patinas of mold draped across them.
You also see that there are rusted meat hooks that sway down here. Great shadows. Paris light bounces against them. Many are hung by chains from the floorboards above.
Speaker A:The floor itself is uneven. It's covered in a layer of filth. You see pools of stagnant water that reflect the light.
Speaker C:And in the corner There's a large antique butcher's table. It's weathered.
Speaker A:Looks like it's been in the elements for a while.
Speaker C:Its surface is scarred and stained, and.
Speaker A:There are shelves behind it that are.
Speaker C:Lined with dusty, unmarked jars.
Speaker A:The air down here is thick with the stench of rot and something else.
Speaker C:Something metallic and coppery. Finally, beyond the butcher's table, is another iron door, this one set into the stone. You can see a dim red light shining from under the door.
It serves as a faint beacon in.
Speaker A:The darkness, but it is very, very.
Speaker C:Dim in comparison to your flashlight.
Speaker B:Shields. Paris. Yeah, there's a light.
Speaker D:Yeah, I see it.
Speaker E:Shields turns off his phone light to see it.
Speaker C:Very dim red light. It's a silent stripe in the darkness.
Speaker E:Okay, let's adjust. And he gestures at Paris. Hey, cut your light.
Speaker D:Paris cuts his light.
Speaker B:Bennet moves her hand, her left hand to her hip where her holster is for her pistol.
Speaker E:There's no way. If someone's in there, they didn't hear us open that door above us.
Speaker D:Oh, yeah, they know we're coming.
Speaker B:Well, should we announce ourselves and give him a chance?
Speaker E:We'll announce ourselves with a flashbang. And then we go in. Let's preserve the tear gas. We don't know if there's any way for that tear gas to get out other than the way we're throwing it in.
So flash bangs only.
Speaker D:I'll get the door, you throw the flash.
Speaker E:Sounds good.
So as we position ourselves and wait for our eyes to adjust to the dim light, Shields will holster his gun again and take out that flashbang and prepare to lob it in there.
Speaker D:Okay, so Paris is just gonna open it up enough so he can throw it in and then basically push the door closed again if he can.
Speaker C:After 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. You hear that incredibly loud crack.
Speaker A:You see the red light transform to a bright lightning flash.
Speaker C:And then you hear it. Absolute rage.
Speaker A:Absolute rage from something. Something that doesn't sound right.
Speaker C:And you hear more than one.
Speaker A:The screaming continues. Continues. You hear loud dragging, stomping as multiple feet begin making their way towards the door.
Speaker C:The screaming gets louder and louder.
Speaker A:You hear everybody roll your sanity, please.
Speaker E:Yes, please.
Speaker C:Oh, God.
Speaker A:Would anybody like to project any potential sanity loss?
Speaker D:Wait, Marconi, why did you roll your sanity?
Speaker F:He said to everybody.
Speaker D:Ferris is gonna check his bonds and. Yep, still don't have any, so he will not project.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah, that's right.
Speaker D:Still have none.
Speaker E:I'm gonna again project on Tannis.
Speaker C:All right, you know what to do.
Speaker E:Yep.
Speaker A:Lose two willpower.
Speaker C:Lose two from Tannis, I am going.
Speaker B:To project on my close knit community group of woodworking carpenty classmates.
Speaker A:Wow, those classmates are going to miss you. Go ahead and roll a 1D4.
Speaker F:Wait, you got woodworking? I have carpentry. Let's. Let's start a business.
Speaker B:Well, it's woodworking carpentry. We. We're so in this. Oh, my God.
Speaker D:I thought you were going to be like, oh, carpentry. That's nice.
Speaker E:Some of us are really so plebeian.
Speaker C:All right, you lose four willpower and.
Speaker A:Four from the bond. That's rough.
Speaker C:You guys really play it fast and loose with your willpower.
Speaker D:Yeah. Hell yeah, dude.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay, you both all instinctively stagger back from this chorus of. Of screams. I'll let the person in front who threw in the flashbang make the first move.
Speaker E:That would be Nicholas Shields. Yeah. He's going to draw his gun immediately point it at the door, and begin walking backwards. Focused on the door.
He's going to say, let's get out of here. Back it up.
Speaker D:Ferris looks at him and says, tear gas.
Speaker B:Tear gas, Paris, tear gas. Throw it.
Speaker D:Paris pulls tear gas, cracks the door, tosses tear gas.
Speaker E:Back it up.
Speaker A:Come on. All right, go ahead and roll your strength, please.
Speaker C:Uh.
Speaker D:Oh. Uh.
Speaker A:Oh, fuck.
Speaker D:Uh. For our listeners at home, that is a critical failure.
Speaker B:Oh, my God.
Speaker D:100.
Speaker A:Not just a critical failure, that's a fun one.
Speaker D:Ultimate. So my fingers slip off the door. No big deal. No big deal, right? It's fine.
Speaker A:As you open the door, the door slams open.
Speaker D:Oh, no.
Speaker A:Onto your armparce and it hits you in the side of the temple. You fly backwards, reeling from the pain as your vision suddenly goes black, blacker than even this musty old cellar, and.
Speaker C:You fall into the dirt floor.
Speaker E:You gotta roll crushing damage on his skull from that door.
Speaker A:Knock off some hit points here. You watch Paris as he opens the door. He just gets thrown backwards from it.
You hear a clanging sound, which you realize is metal against skull, and he falls into the dirt right next to you.
As you both look up at the now open door, which is spilling this dim red light that is partially obscured by smoke, still sort of wisping up from what you assume was a flashbang.
And a terrible musty rot smell now truly buffets against your senses as large figures begin rolling through the door at an impressive speed towards you and Paris, who is now prone on the ground. The first figure is a large, corpulent man or woman.
There's an angry neon carnival of mushrooms that sprout around what were once facial features, neck and shoulders, their eyes, their mouth. Other bodily crevices are just full of these clusters of brightly luminescent mushrooms. Fungi.
There's a halo of spores that float lazily above this hideous fungal creature. They glow a pallid pinkish color in the dark. The dark cellar. This fungus mound nearest to you emits a loud gurgling sound.
Speaker C:It's filled with rage.
Speaker A:Its one remaining eye fixes upon you. It glares with a singular intensity in its gurgling and fluid filled, raspy voice.
Speaker C:It loudly wails.
Speaker A:And runs towards you with flailing, corpulent, mushroom covered arms.
Speaker F:Aw man. I bet you if you just open the door, they'd just be asleep the entire time.
Speaker E:I bet you're right.
Speaker A:Correct.
Speaker D:Man.
Speaker A:This mound of fungus screaming windmills its way forward at a break night pace.
Out of this red row, you see an incredible amount of these pink spores begin exploding out of all crevices of the creature as it wails and careens towards you. I assume since you said you have a gun, you'd like to fire it.
Speaker E:Yeah, please, go ahead.
Speaker A:It's going to be a minus 20%.
Speaker E:So that hits.
Speaker A:All right, go ahead and roll your damage.
Speaker E:6 of 80 and then damage of 1.
Speaker D:Oh, good start, good start.
Speaker A:All right, go ahead and roll your sanity, please. Would you like to project any potential loss?
Speaker E:I'm gonna say no because getting pretty low on willpower.
Speaker A:All right. Okay, you go ahead and fire. As it careens towards you, it lights up the entire cellar and you hear it continue to scream and scream.
You hear screams from behind it as others join its course. Next up we have Felix.
Speaker C:What would you like to do?
Speaker F:Felix will point the rifle down the stairs and yell down get the hell out of there.
Speaker A:Everyone hears get the hell out of there.
Speaker C:From Felix at the top of the cellar stairs. Paris, it's your turn.
Speaker D:Am I conscious?
Speaker A:Yeah, you are conscious.
Speaker D:Cool. I'm gonna stand up and move towards the stairs.
Speaker A:You begin to pull yourself up off the ground and a large trampling, mushroom covered corpulent foot slams against your back and you splash back down into a stagnant pool. You look up just in time to see this fungus covered creature screaming and windmilling its arms towards you.
Assume shields and Bennett trampling your prone form.
Speaker D:Can I do something or no? Is that it?
Speaker A:That was what you did? Okay, we're carrying over your 100. That's what I rolled for before shields went.
Speaker B:Okay, Bennett, I am going to shoot at that creature that just stepped on paras.
Speaker A:Okay, go ahead and roll so minus 20%.
Speaker B:Failure.
Speaker A:You fire. And again. Extremely loud report shatters everyone's eardrums, lights up the small room.
For a brief moment you can see these multicolored, vibrantly neon beings shuffling, careening, flying through the doorway towards all of you.
The amount of them is still unknown, but the fact that there is more than one and they all have their own unique branching shelves of fungus covering their fat, muddled bodies, fills you with a terrible terror. All right, let's party, y'all.
Speaker E:Jesus christ, dude.
Speaker F:Okay. D6.
Speaker A:The first one that you shot at shields. It's horrible. Screams get louder and louder as you try to back up, firing at this thing again and again. Its arms wrap around you.
You can smell this horrible must. And it sinks something into your shoulder. You're not sure if it's from an arm, but you feel barbs enter your flesh deeply.
You grit your teeth as now this thing has wrapped its limbs around you. It continues to scream.
Speaker D:Sleep.
Speaker A:Sleep. Sleep. It's trying to breathe. It's almost hyperventilating to make this horrible gurgling scream right next to your ear.
Another one from behind, covered with long vibrant neon green shelves of flat fungus and plate growths.
Staggers out, looks around, doesn't appear to have any eyes as its head is split open with vertical long blue ponderous mushrooms exploding out of the neck hole. They sway and bob and turn towards Bennett. It begins shuffling towards her, dragging its mushroom covered feet behind it.
The final one has very long, strange looking arms. They're very skinny, with elongated fingers that are covered at the knuckles with clusters of orange fungus.
Its entire torso looks to be a hardened resin of more bright neon orange. It has a rictus of a smile etched upon what looks like an otherwise featureless face.
And you can see that it's just a rip in what appears to be a large fungal stem that just happens to be frozen in this terrifying smile. Okay, shields. You are being hugged by this thing. Something extremely sharp has dug into to your left shoulder. You feel intense pain.
Your gun is still in your hand. You haven't dropped it. It's basically pointed at the bulk of this thing's torso.
Speaker E:Yeah, he's gonna try to shoot it to break free.
Speaker A:Sure. You don't even need to roll to hit it, right? Well, I'm still gonna have you roll to see if you do a crit, so just roll. Okay. No, pl.
All right, go ahead and roll your damage.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker A:You fire and fire into this thing's stomach and it begins to squeeze harder and harder and you Feel something entering you deeper and deeper in your left shoulder.
Speaker E:Ew.
Speaker A:It is like very long daggers just digging past. Now, your shoulder, you can feel it kind of poking against the upper part of your ribcage.
Speaker F:All right, Felix, can I see anything from up here?
Speaker A:You can see lots of gun flashes that are lighting up the entire cellar. But you can only see the bottom of the cellar from your vantage point. It's like there's a light show going on down there.
You see hints of green, pink, orange. That seems for a moment fairly bright. And then they go dim again. It's confusing to you.
Speaker F:I'm gonna walk down the stairs until I can get a vantage point.
Speaker A:And that doesn't take you long, so roll your sanity.
Speaker F:Woo. I will not be doing any Bond stuff.
Speaker A:All right, no problem. You see these three horrific creatures emerging from this red doorway. And they are just tearing into the team.
You can see Shields, who is only taller by a couple of inches. This corpulent thing that has taken hold of him. It has begun gnawing and biting into his left shoulder.
He's grunting and firing his gun over and over again into its gut and stumbling backwards. You can see at any moment he could fall to the ground and the thing would be on top of him.
You also see the one that appears to have a cluster of blue fronds for a head heading towards Bennett, who is firing at it. And finally, you see the long armed, sort of spindly one lastly emerging from this red room. This giant smile over its featureless face.
Speaker F:Does that one also have mushrooms on it?
Speaker A:That's covered with mushrooms? Yeah, yeah. Okay, orange ones.
Speaker F:Chantelly, I'm going to blast the blue mushroom guy that's going towards Bennett, whenever that's possible.
Speaker A:Yeah. So you're walking down here with your gun raised and you see this. Your mind crystallizes and focuses and you fire. It's only a minus 20%.
Speaker F:I failed. 20 out of 40.
Speaker A:All right, go ahead and roll your damage.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker F:I thought I failed.
Speaker C:I know you did.
Speaker E:You shot somebody.
Speaker F:Oh, no. Oh, I don't. I don't. I don't. What's the damage of this gun? I have no idea.
Speaker E:Yeah, let me tell you that. That's 1d12. There's a lethality.
Speaker F:That's a good one. It's a big, strong gun. One damage.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker F:That's pretty good.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's pretty good. You fire. This is a very loud rifle. It makes your pistols sound like little pop toys. And these things continue to tear into the team.
It is Now Bennett's turn. You're gonna start with a sanity roll, please. Would you like to project any potential loss?
Speaker B:I am not going to project this time.
Speaker A:All right. Okay. The one with the blue fronds is definitely zeroing in on you as you back up and fire. What would you like to do next?
Speaker B:I lock eyes with Felix and it's sort of a very slow motion moment despite the speed of things happening around us. And I attempt to shoot once more at this creature coming at me.
Speaker A:Fire. It is no longer a minus 20.
Speaker B:Oh boy. Failure. 98 out of 20.
Speaker A:Yeah, you go ahead and fire. Go ahead and roll your damage.
Speaker B:6.
Speaker A:You fire and the thing begins quivering and moving towards you faster. You hear from within its cavernous neck. Hol.
Speaker B:That'S very scary.
Speaker A:Let's have a party, y'all.
Speaker F:I wanna go home now.
Speaker D:I didn't get to. I didn't get to go that time. Am I just that? Am I out of out? Am I done?
Speaker A:You're being stood on by a corpulent fungus beast. And you rolled a 100. And I rolled for how many turns that took you out? And you're still out. Dang.
Shields, the syringes, the rebar, the claws, the teeth, whatever is digging deeper and deeper into your shoulder continues to do so, grating against bone and sinew. Bennett, you continue to back up. This thing begins swinging its blue mushroom covered arms towards you.
These pink spores filling the air in front of your eyes. Finally, the Smiler falls to the ground on all fours, moving like a spider. You hear kind of a snorting sound between deep intonations of sleep. Sleep.
As it begins sniffing and snuffling across Paris legs. Okay, top of the round. Shields.
Speaker E:Shields wants to break out of this thing's grip as soon as he can. Like that's. That's his next move.
Speaker A:Awesome. Unarmed or strength. Whichever you would prefer.
Speaker E:Man. He's good at both. Yeah, we're gonna go with strength. Whoa.
Speaker A:I got a one.
Speaker E:All right. Yay.
Speaker C:Some.
Speaker E:Some good.
Speaker D:To counterbalance the bats balance to the universe.
Speaker A:Narrate away. And you're going to cause harm as well. So please feel free to include that into your narration.
Speaker E:Sure. Yeah. So gritting his teeth through the fucking pain in his shoulder, he raises his. His forearms up in between this creature's hug and him.
And then slams his arms down to break free. And then gouges his thumb into the one good eye that this creature has.
Speaker A:It screams.
Speaker E:And he's gonna try to run now.
Speaker A:Yeah. Nice. Felix, you watch this happen. You see Bennett's eyes meet yours and then return back to the horrific creature moving towards her.
What would you like to do?
Speaker F:I'll shoot it again.
Speaker A:Okay, it is now a plus. 20% all.
Speaker F:Success.
Speaker A:Roll your damage, please.
Speaker F:Boom.
Speaker D:Wow.
Speaker E:Fucking dope.
Speaker F:A nine.
Speaker D:That is tasty. Some tasty damage.
Speaker C:Delicious.
Speaker A:You watch as this thing's arm explodes in a smattering of blue confetti that fills the air and begins to puff out into large clouds of spores. There's a mangled, dangling mess that now hangs off of its torso. It leans back as if recovering from this huge blow.
Using just whatever musculature is left within its torso, it goes ahead and lifts itself back up to upright and continues towards Bennett.
Speaker F:Y'all remember to take as many deep breaths during this opportunity as you can.
Speaker A:Paris, you have this large thing trampling over you. You're trying to move between its legs. You're trying to get out from underneath its bulk. The smell is.
Well, let's not speak more of that, but what would you like to do, man?
Speaker D:There's a couple things I would like to do.
Speaker E:Let's talk about that smell.
Speaker D:I got two ideas. Each one is more fantastical than the second. All right, let's do this. Let's. Okay, I'm hurting on the ground. Been trampled.
I got another weird spider mushroom on top of me.
Speaker F:And the smell.
Speaker D:And the smell. Yeah, and the smell. Let's. All right, first question. Are there any.
Any openings on this creature into its body that would, say, fit a grenade if I was to, say, shove one in there?
Speaker A:It has pretty deep crevasses clustered with fungus, maybe?
Speaker D:Well, let me ask this one. So let's say I wanted to use the ritual I picked up. Would I be able to do that in this situation? Or am I, too.
Speaker A:I mean, there's a role for everything, buddy.
Speaker D:All right, I think in my panic, I am going to attempt to claw my way out from under this thing. And to do so, I am going to attempt to tear the reality around it. Let's try that.
Speaker C:No problem.
Speaker D:Let's fucking do that before I don't have a chance to do this at all.
Speaker A:Okay, go ahead and. Go ahead and roll your ritual roll, please.
Speaker D:Oh, sure.
Speaker A:You feel, Paris, that all of this pain has taken your focus away. You can see the crackling around your fingers as you rip and tear at what you know is a fabric in front of you. Your mind twitches for a moment.
Some muscle that you can barely place somewhere in the middle of your brain. You know, you're about to.
Just because of this bullshit pain that's hanging like a red cloud over what is your true knowledge of what really makes up this world. You think to yourself, you could force it, but it would cost you.
Speaker D:Force it.
Speaker E:All right.
Speaker A:You're gonna lose a pow permanently.
Speaker D:Oh, shit. Okay. Yeah, well, zither I get real intimate with this creature. We already have the Ryan arc. That's already happened. Do that again.
Speaker A:Ryan ar's not over.
Speaker D:I know.
Speaker C:While we're.
Speaker A:While we're doing this. Sorry, it's gonna take me just a sec. Everybody just who's here watching needs to roll their sanity. Let's just get that out of the way.
Speaker D:Does that include myself or if I just watch?
Speaker A:Uh, no.
Speaker F:Like those dice. Pretty cool, right?
Speaker B:Look at all those pretty dice.
Speaker A:Okay, cool. Does anybody want to go ahead and project?
Speaker F:No, I'm good.
Speaker B:Yep, I'll project once again on my woodworking carpentry group.
Speaker C:All right.
Speaker A:Roll a 1D4.
Speaker E:She's like fucking arts and crafts. I should have spent more time at the gun range.
Speaker B:My firearms need help.
Speaker A:Parrish, you go ahead and grit your teeth. You force the red haze to disperse. And you feel a piece of yourself turn into a jet black shard of ice.
And you let that form in your hand and become a dagger. And you cut open time and space and you see beyond it.
It makes everything around this rip in the fabric of reality just look like fluttering cloth, ragged fabric.
And you look through it, and you can see all the way to the center of the galaxy, to what must be some sort of white or like the opposite of a black hole.
Your mind's trying to wrap around it as light and time bend around it, come back around, and there's some force that pulls you in and along its curvature. And you're suddenly back in that room beneath this thing. And your hands, they look like. They look like the sky because they're.
They're poking through and ripping this thing into shreds. And you're screaming and screaming, but it's laughter, it's glee, it's joy. And then suddenly you hear yourself screaming because of pain.
But it's not your pain. It's. It's everyone's pain in this room. As you look around, your eyes wide as this noise coming out of your mouth just won't stop. Bennett stares.
And she's screaming. Shields is looking. He's screaming.
Speaker C:Their eyes are bloodshot and wide.
Speaker A:They're holding the sides of their heads, and you don't know why, because you're ripping this thing into pieces and throwing the chunks into space. Can't they see you? Look behind you Suddenly your mouth open at Tiberius. His wide open eyes behind those glasses. Just staring. Staring in disbelief.
And everything goes black for you as the laughter continues into dreams.
Speaker D:Awesome. You're welcome. I clearly have saved the day. Cool.
Speaker F:Aha.
Speaker A:There's more.
Speaker D:Oh good. There's more. Everybody, did you hear that?
Speaker A:I want Tiberius and Shields and Corporal Amelia. Bennett, I want you to go ahead and roll Lux for me, please.
Speaker F:I was about to say another sanity. Come on.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker F:I rolled a 19 out of 50. Success.
Speaker B:27 out of 50. Success.
Speaker E:Okay. 43. 50. Success.
Speaker A:Okay. Shields. You look up as you see the room tear in half.
And you watch it spin away behind you as you are thrust forward at some incredible speed against a buffeting sucking vacuum towards some cosmic body at a again a speed that is your mind cannot even interpret. And suddenly you're back in your body. And you see these strands of darkness exploding out of Paris arms and ripping through this thing above him.
These mushroom creatures as parts of them are shunted off into these deep dark missing voids in the air. And you turn and you run. You see Felix there, perched on the stairs.
He sees you running towards him and he scrambles up and begins running up the stairs ahead of you.
Speaker C:Bennett.
Speaker A:You watch this as well.
Stepping backwards as the thing that just had its arm blown off in front of you gets rent the air, just sucking it through these void like spaces in the air. And you begin running as well. All three of you running out of this cellar as fast as you can.
You're not sure how much time has passed, but you're all panting. The air is humid and your burning lungs barely want to take it in.
Speaker C:Felix.
Speaker A:You're leaned against the vehicle, still clutching the rifle shields. Your hands are on your knees as you're trying to slow your breath now, trying to focus on just your body. You're not even sure it's yours.
Is it still yours? Bennett? You're almost in a kneeling a prayer position on the ground as you clutch.
Speaker C:Your pistol and both hands pointed at the dirt, slowly breathing in and out.
Speaker A:All three of you look at each other, your eyes slowly refocusing on one another.
Speaker E:What the fuck was that?
Speaker B:Is that the alien?
Speaker F:I told you something wasn't right.
Speaker E:Where the fuck were you?
Speaker F:I push the rifle into his chest.
Speaker E:Shields, clutches it to his chest and readjusts his handgun into its holster. And he says thanks. What the fuck just happened?
Speaker F:I don't know. But we probably should take A look. See if. See if he. He survived.
Speaker B:Shields, call him. Call him.
Speaker E:He. He says into the mic. Paris, do you read?
Speaker A:There's no indication that anyone can hear your message.
Speaker E:Paris, are you there? No response.
Speaker B:We have to go. That's what he would do.
Speaker E:Okay. Shields steels himself for a moment and then makes his way back down.
Speaker A:You're all the way at the vehicle, so you start tromping back towards the building, round the side to the smoke house. Your heart already starts quickening.
Speaker C:You're afraid.
Speaker A:You make your way to the open iron door to the cellar, and you can hear a rhythmic, insectile clicking emerging from the darkness below.
Speaker F:You want to go down there? If there's something in there, he's done. We got to lock this up and I'll start pushing the door.
Speaker E:Shields stands there, frozen for a moment. And as you're grabbing the door, he helps and looks around for any kind of chains or anything in this smokehouse. Is there anything we can use to.
Speaker A:There were some down in the cellar, but you didn't see any up here in the dilapidated building?
Speaker E:Any kind of like rebar or metal that we can put through the doors to lock it? Anything like that?
Speaker A:You don't see anything like that up here? No.
Speaker E:Anything heavy we can place on top of the cellar?
Speaker A:Yeah, you could grab. I mean, you'd have to break it down, but you could. You could grab some pieces of the wall, some of the collapsed stone.
This would all take quite a while. Maybe there's something inside the building you could drag over. Like an old range.
Both of y'all would need to drag that through and throw that on top of the door. But there's nothing like an easy. It was made to go on top of this thing.
Speaker E:Okay.
Speaker A:Present.
Speaker F:Yeah, I guess we'll just grab the heavy shit that we see around rocks, whatever, and just start piling them on top.
Speaker A:Yeah, you can grab some crumbled bricks and start piling that on. Yeah. As you're doing this, you realize that whatever is down there with Paris, if he's still alive, well, he won't be for long.
And both of you kind of try to avoid each other's eyes as you go through this difficult task. Bennett, you hear over the radio. Shields. Grunting as if he's performing some sort of physical labor.
Speaker B:Shields, what's going on?
Speaker E:There's something in there with him. Some bug like sounds. We're covering it.
Speaker B:Chris, how far is the car from there where they are? And am I capable of getting the car over there to them?
Speaker C:No, because the woods are so close.
Speaker A:To the sides of the building, we've established that it's basically nestled up to the walls of the building. And you're on the dirt road on the other side of the parking lot. So it's road, parking lot, restaurant, smokehouse. So you're far away.
Speaker B:Shields, you gotta come back. Grab Felix. Come back. Get in the car. Let's get out of here.
Speaker E:We're covering this cellar door and then we're reporting in and we're getting this cleared out.
Speaker B:How can I help?
Speaker E:Call it in.
Speaker B:And Bennett will call it in to their superiors.
Speaker A:So you're going to call regional director Tanis McIntyre.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker A:He is not currently available, but you call the number and get to his voicemail.
Speaker B:Tanis, Bennett, we've got a situation. Call back.
Speaker C:Bye. Tiberius. Shields.
Speaker A:You get as much of this old brick and mortar on top of this iron door that you can. It's sweaty, hard work.
But you can barely again meet each other's eyes because you realize that you're dooming your colleague to whatever fate awaits him below. You both roll your sanities.
Speaker F:I'd like to point out that I came here to possibly shoot him in the head. So.
Speaker A:Yeah, because you believe he had an alien in him, right?
Speaker F:Yeah, I don't think that that's still out of the question.
Speaker B:I mean, that sound could be him for sure.
Speaker A:You still get to roll your sanity.
Speaker F:Dang.
Speaker A:Same question for everybody every time.
Speaker F:Nah, I'm gonna take hit to Philip Montgomery, my supervisor and friend.
Speaker A:Not for long. One D. Four.
Speaker F:Four? You weren't kidding.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker A:Go ahead and take four off your willpower. And four from Montgomery.
Speaker F:Hey. Still got one.
Speaker A:Okay, cool. You both make your way back to the vehicle where Bennett is tightly gripping the steering wheel.
She looks up and you find it very hard to meet her eyes as well.
Speaker E:Did you get him? Did you get Tanis?
Speaker B:No answer.
Speaker E:Okay, let's get back to the hotel.
Speaker B:Felix, do you have anyone?
Speaker F:Nah. Before we go, should we check the van to see what's on that gps?
Speaker E:Fuck. After everything. You're right. Shields gets up, goes to the van, tries the handle.
Speaker A:It's open.
Speaker E:And he looks inside the van for a gps.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's got a GPS built into its dash.
Speaker E:He's just gonna tear it the fuck off and bring it back to the car.
Speaker A:That's gonna take a crowbar and a lot of work. Dude. It's built into the dash. It's not just built into the dash shaft.
Speaker E:Okay, he's gonna sit in the seat. Well, he's gonna check in the back, make sure there's nothing in there.
Speaker A:The back is sealed off from the cabin.
Speaker E:Okay.
Speaker A:So you're not able to really see in there. You could go to the back and try to.
Speaker E:No, no, no, no, we're good. If it's sealed, probably, who knows? So he's gonna. He's gonna check the gps.
Speaker A:Okay. How are you gonna turn on the vehicle?
Speaker E:Oh, it's okay. Well, he does have craft mechanics he might be able to hotwire.
Speaker A:Yeah, let's see if you can figure it out. Man.
Speaker C:Roll it.
Speaker F:According to every movie, everyone puts their keys.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker E:You check in the upper visor. He got a 20 of 50, which is a success.
Speaker A:Yeah.
You go ahead and pop open the hood and you know how to go ahead and kind of bypass any alarm system on something like this that's like a fleet vehicle. It's pretty common how all of these are set up, and lo and behold, it's right in your wheelhouse. You go ahead and you bypass a couple of things.
You go ahead and trick the machine into thinking that it's been on for a while. And it starts back up with an old safety loophole you're aware of. And you've got the engine running.
Speaker E:All right.
Speaker A:You pop back into the cabin, and as the electrical system fires up, the GPS does the same. And it only takes you a few index finger swipes to see all of the places this particular van has visited in the last week, month, or year.
Speaker E:He's just going to have his phone out taking a picture of each one or each different frame of the history on this thing.
Speaker A:Yeah. You get those logs? Yep. You turn off the car and you return back to your vehicle.
Speaker E:Hell, while we're at it, I'm gonna check, he says to them into the car. I'm gonna check the back of that van, too. And he checks the back of the van. Gun ready?
Speaker A:Sure. How are we gonna open the locked.
Speaker E:Oh, so it's separate. It's not like auto locked or anything from.
Speaker A:It's smarter enough that it'll unlock for you. So, yeah, you go ahead and unlock it.
Speaker E:Okay.
Speaker A:It is empty.
Speaker E:Okay. He closes it up and shuts everything off and returns it to the way it was. He comes back to the car and says, I's dotted T's crossed.
Let's get back to the hotel. And he's going to review on his phone all the locations visited by this vehicle and share it with the group.
Speaker A:Yeah. You three leave Smokey Rich Barbecue and make your way back into town.
The long trip back into town, and you throw yourselves into examining these logs. You don't sleep. A few of the addresses correspond with that spreadsheet that Paris Frankfurt had procured from the Biotech Pharmaceuticals warehouse.
A few corresponded with several points of.
Speaker C:Interest that you visited.
Speaker A:Hog City Biotech itself, the barbecue restaurant.
Speaker C:But there's another point, one that you.
Speaker A:Cross reference because it's so often visited.
Speaker F:The White House. Gasp.
Speaker A:The defunct Razorback Slaughterhouse in Hinesville. Hinesville, Arkansas.
Speaker E:Okay, we've got our next location.
Speaker A:That must be the place.
Speaker C:Nah, nah, nah. Paris is not gonna go out. Off screen Paris. When your eyes finally open, they're met with darkness. Thick black velvet occludes your eyes.
It's almost tangible. The air is musty, thick, humid. You're covered with sweat.
The first thing that registers beyond the inky cloud before your eyes is the acute pain running up and down both of your forearms. You're awkwardly splayed against the trash strewn ground, and as you try to push yourself up to some sort of semblance of being seated, you wince.
As the pain grows. It's like fire running up and down your arms. You shakily run your left index finger down your right arm and you feel a deep groove. Something missing.
It's as if the flesh, the skin, was winnowed away down the middle of your arm, starting at where your fingers were once connected at the top, ending at your elbow. Somehow you're still able to move your fingers. There's no indication of telltale wetness of blood that confuses you.
Use your right index finger to discover the same mutilation on your left forearm. You swallow hard.
Speaker A:You're glad you can't see.
Speaker C:There's a faint chittering sound from the other side of this musty room that you're now seated in.
Speaker A:Sounds like something's caught in the throat.
Speaker C:Of a very injured human being. The more you listen to it, you hear a slow wheezing. Afterwards, something's in this room with you.
You remember the things, those glowing, bizarre amalgamations of fungus and human flesh roaring in rage, lurching towards you and the others out of that red room. That's right. You look up, searching for that red light, and your eyes fix upon that thin horizontal line, very dim but very present.
Now that you've remembered its existence, you begin crawling towards it, the pain in your arms refusing to subside.
Speaker A:But you grit your teeth through it.
Speaker C:And then you stop, because the wheezing becomes louder. It makes you think something's alerted to your presence.
Speaker D:Do I. I can't quite recall. I think I have a knife on me, right?
Speaker A:I think I still have my concealable knife.
Speaker D:Yeah. Okay, let's get that out. Let's get that no longer concealed knife.
Speaker C:You reach into your boot and remove the small concealable knife. You hold it between your thumb, your index finger and your middle finger.
You can't quite grasp it with a complete fist because of the split down your hand all the way to your elbow.
Speaker D:Oh, it's like that. Yikes. Gotcha. So Paris is going to carefully work his way towards the door and do his best to avoid this breathing creature.
Speaker C:Roll your stealth, please.
Speaker D:39 out of 56 success.
Speaker C:You very slowly and cautiously make your way across the ground. You hear this thing wheezing to your left as you slowly pass it by.
The breathing sounds measured, almost like it's sleeping, but it's obviously injured. Before long, you are crouched before this door.
This dim red horizontal line is now so much brighter now that you're up to it, made even brighter by the surrounding darkness.
Speaker D:I would like to go through that door.
Speaker C:You slowly reach your hand up, searching for a handle. You place your hand upon it, finally making purchase. Very carefully and slowly turn it and open it towards you.
Mercifully, it only creaks a little bit. You hear the wheezing start for a moment, that kind of alerted snort. You stop.
You wait for the breathing to become measured again and then continue opening it. Flooding the dirt strewn room with red light. Inside, you see several holes in a otherwise flawless concrete floor.
They look to have been recently dug out. There are piles and chunks of concrete next to them, lining the holes rims.
They're full of stagnant stench filled water, opaque and black under the red light. The smell here is much, much worse. It's the source of what's been filling your nostrils since you came into consciousness.
And you begin slowly making your way inside the room. Looking around from side to side.
The first thing that catches your eye against the right wall, hanging on what look like two wooden pegs that have been driven into it, are wicked looking silver sickles that gleam under the light. Gleaming red, they look extremely familiar to you. Next to that, you also see a chalk outline of a door, scribbled with some care but unmistakable.
You turn around for a moment, looking into the room that you just emerged from.
Now that red light spills forth and you can see chunks of bloodless limbs, torso, head fungus scattered across the room like, like a tornado's gone through it. You recognize the things that you just crawled over were parts of the bodies of the creatures that attacked you and your colleagues.
You swallow that knowledge as you are adapted to such things. You shake it out of your head and accept it for what it is.
Speaker A:The bodies of enemies rightfully destroyed.
Speaker C:You also see part of another one of those things crumpled against the far wall, the wall that must have been opposite of you when you awoke. It's the one that started out without a head. Now it's missing both of its legs and most of the bottom part of its torso.
Speaker A:We're not sure which parts strewn about.
Speaker C:The room belong to it. It slowly wheezes, its strange chests rising and falling rhythmically. It doesn't seem to be aware of you.
In fact, again, it seems like it's resting or it's on death's door, which makes more sense based off of the condition of the body.
Speaker D:Now that I'm in the light, I'd like to take a second look at my hands.
Speaker C:You look down and it baffles you because, again, there is no blood, just like you intuited from the lack of wetness in the dark. It's as if this has been the state of your arms since you were born. They're twisted and mutilated in a way that looks like a congenital defect.
Completely healed over. No scars, just a split between your ring finger and middle finger on both arms that goes all the way down to your elbow.
Speaker D:Do I have control over my pinky and ring finger as well?
Speaker C:They are both quite numb, unfortunately, and they tend to flap a bit like vestigial limbs. Your best dexterity seems to unfortunately be limited to your index middle finger and thumb.
Speaker D:All right, I think what Paris is gonna do is go with me on this.
He is going to remove the shoelaces from his shoes and wrap them around his wrists, basically, in a sense, tie his hand back together, sort of, so at least it will hold in place.
Speaker C:Yeah, you go ahead and unlace your boots and perform this with some difficulty. By the end of it, you feel much better about your condition.
Speaker D:Are there any other doors? So once. Once I got my shoelaces wrapped, I'm gonna kick my boots off so I don't trip on them, and then I'm gonna look around the room.
Are there any other doors, any other entrances or exits? Or is it. Is this the whole room that you. Everything you described?
Speaker C:It's the whole room.
Speaker D:Okay?
Speaker C:Now, you don't know how deep these black pools are.
There's three of them, but you don't imagine they're very deep since you can literally see chunks of concrete that have been recently dug out in order to make way for them.
Speaker D:So I think my next order of business is Frankfurt's going to grab one of those sickles if he can wield it. So he's going to grab it and have to get a feel for how well he can potentially wield it.
Speaker C:It's much lighter than you expect, based off of its size and the apparent heft of the handle. Again, it gleams silver and red under the light above. You look up, and you see a single. A single light fixture there with a red bulb.
And you feel like it's extremely sharp as you run your thumb across it slightly.
Speaker D:I will take that sickle and make my way back over to this last panting creature and hack at it until it stops.
Speaker C:As you drive the sickle into its sickly, fungus, mottled flesh, it gasps and wheezes, its arms moving up to grab you, but you fin them back quite easily with this incredibly sharp blade.
It chokes, and it makes a horrible, horrible groan as you very deftly rip this thing into more and more chunks, smaller and smaller, until they turn into pulp. You're a little bit upset looking over your handiwork, seeing that there are no teeth to be found in the leavings.
Speaker D:All right, okay. So my arms tied back together, taking care of this creature thing.
The red light that's coming through, Am I able to see the stairwell that we came down?
Speaker C:Yes. You see the shadowed beginnings of the stops, although the dim light doesn't reach much farther than that.
Speaker D:Okay, I'm gonna take a shot at going up the stairs and opening that, seeing if I can open the door.
Speaker C:You make your way over to the.
Speaker A:Stairs, and the moment you place your.
Speaker C:Hand upon the inside of the large iron door, your heart sinks because there's some great weight or chain that's been placed on the other side. It's incredibly heavy, whatever it is. Or it's just lashed very tightly. You use all your strength. You grunt, you press against it.
Your leverage is just poor coming from below like this, but you press and heave and grunt, scream and roar with all of the might left in your battered, destroyed body. And it doesn't move. It doesn't budge.
Speaker E:Fuck.
Speaker D:Yeah, I get it, guys. All right. Surveying the room. Room again. He. He's gonna walk back to the room with the red light, Examine the chalk outline of a door. Of the door.
Speaker C:Again, you stare at this door.
Speaker D:No, there's no way. He's gonna get, like, some sort of cosmic inspiration. How to suddenly Utilize those doors.
Speaker F:Oh, yeah.
Speaker C:Remember, Back to New York, to the man that you made a deal with. You gave him that statue. He said he would teach you the pattern of the world in return and give you a sort of blessing.
You recall those words and you see his gleaming white teeth in your mind's eye now, gnashing in the dark. You think you might be able to ask him if you can reach him from your subterranean prison. You think you can ask him how to get out of here?
Speaker D:Hey, I could. If you could hear me, I could. I could use a bit of that blessing right about now. I am in a bad way.
I've got one of these doors in front of me, and I think this is my only way out.
Speaker C:You look from side to side.
Speaker A:You look at the sickle in your hand.
Speaker C:You scan back over at the chunks of creature strewn across the floor, what must be below the smokehouse above. And as you intone this plea, your hands, your destroyed hands seem to move of their own accord.
You walk back out to the main room, repeating these phrases, and you begin arranging the chunks of human being or fungoid creature into shapes and swirls, patterns on the floor.
Speaker A:Nothing in particular, just things that occur.
Speaker C:To you in the moment. You throw the sickles down as well, on top of this menagerie of flesh.
And then you scoop a few handfuls of this black, dirty, stinking water and complete the tableau, bathed in red light. All right, you're going to now roll. A ritual roll.
Speaker D:All right.
Speaker C:You realize that your voice is too weak to reach on, but you could. You could force it if you just pushed through.
Speaker D:I am not dying down in this fucking cellar. Hear me. Hear what I'm asking. Help me get out of here.
Speaker C:Go ahead and roll a 1D6 for me, please.
Speaker D:All right, that's a 4.
Speaker C:You say this again and again, getting louder and louder, feeling this anger and rage well up within you until it's all encompassing, like a fire going through your mind's eye.
Speaker A:And you scream and scream, fall to.
Speaker C:Your knees, and you yell again. Pain and desperation. The unfairness of it all. And you know, some part of you goes unconscious, that part of you in that room.
But another part of you touches something. Something familiar and altogether alien. Something far away. And you can feel and see those white, gleaming teeth next to your ear.
Speaker D:What do you need, boy?
Speaker C:They say to you. You can feel the spittle across the side of your face.
Speaker D:I need to open this door or I'm gonna die in here. That door is not for you. It will take from you. It could take what it wants. It's either I die in here or I get through this fucking door.
Speaker C:After a brief hesitation, the flashing white teeth smile.
Speaker D:So be it. But I cannot protect you on the other side.
Speaker C:For a brief moment, you see what looks like an outline of the door in front of you. But there are. There are more angles.
There are more angles to it, as if you can see beyond it onto the other side of it while still staring at it from the front, as well as every possible permutation of where it could end up, of where it is now. And you watch what must be millions of images of this door cascade before your mind's eye like some sort of multiple afterimage of possibility.
You reach out with your physical hand, whatever, whatever your mind thinks your hand is.
Speaker A:You look down and you can see it's not your body because it's whole.
Speaker C:It looks fine. You know that's no longer the case. And you grasp this shifting cluster of images, all these probabilities that line up.
Speaker A:To one chalk doorknob, and it feels as firm as a real brass doorknob in your hand. You turn it and it opens.
Speaker C:You step through, and then you fall into true darkness.