Book confronts Frida while Ocean struggles with recently remembered events from his past. The Bean Bois also send out others to do their dirty work and figure out their next target.

This one is mostly a conveyer belt of past mistakes pouring garbage onto the laps of our lovely players.

Listen to Stu on GG: Level Up! Their most recent episode (May 28th) has Stu talking about PbtA systems and competing in a PbtA quiz against the lovely hosts.

Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/show/0VFnq5L9bjjHNgEKZGJInl?si=0ba24e1948b6444f

Welcome to Oops!

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

I'm your host, Stu Masterson, and I'm joined by two road warriors.

Hey, everybody.

And car crash.

Clink.

Hey, everybody, I'm Brady, and I play Book McCready, the curious cosmologist who has been investigating the moon.

Moon.

And I'm Jacob.

I play Ocean, a gentle giant, and maybe possible, fuck, what is it called?

Patricidal maniac.

Patricidal maniac.

That is exactly what I was about to say.

Patricide's only when you kill your own dad, though.

You can kill as many other dads as you want without getting a special name.

That's true.

I'm just a fucking cold-wicked killer.

You're just a murderer.

But didn't kill the little girl and her mom.

That's good.

Would have, but didn't.

Shot the sheriff, but didn't kill his wife and children.

I did almost name that episode, I shot the sheriff before the one that would have been.

Down with the, down with the hickness.

Down with the hickness.

I felt like it was a little too much of a spoiler.

This week, like always, we are going to dive deep into our giant textbook of BuzzFeed Presents Apocalypses.

To come up with a fun series of questions about ourselves, to give a little background into the characters Book and Ocean and for some reason me.

This week, the question comes from our very own Jacob.

Who I've been stalling for.

Yeah, and I got it.

I figured it out actually.

Nice.

I figured it out pretty quickly after looking at our group chat that we have for our podcast.

And I love this one.

This is, if it was the Modern Times.

Okay, I'm there.

And?

My eyes are closed.

I'm picturing it.

I got a cell phone.

We're going to say this is not apocalyptic at all, even though it says apocalypse lists, but I just like these kind of questions.

If you had to pick one car to drive for the rest of your life, what car would you pick?

Cause your choice of car tells a lot about you.

I want to know what Stu thinks my answer is.

Stu will be wrong.

It's wrong, but it's got to be in character.

That might be what Brady wants to drive.

Also, that's not what I want to drive.

Brady would want like a 1969 Ford Bronco.

You're not allowed to answer the question.

Also, you know what I realized though?

Last week, both Brady and Book McCready would have wanted Q-tips just to keep those ears clean.

Cosmetic, yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, that's a good answer.

That is a great answer.

Good answer, good answer.

Mine's a pretty easy answer.

Ocean would drive a two-door 2012 Jeep Renegade JK model.

Like an older...

Not a gladiator, so you can put stuff in the bed?

I fucking hate the gladiators.

But Ocean would not hate the gladiators.

As Ocean is an extension of me, I am adding that trait to his character that he fucking hates gladiators.

I should have made the yellow Humvee people just drive gladiators.

It would be easier to hate them.

That would be.

And you could mount a machine gun turret in the bed.

But it's a car he can easily tinker with.

It's off-road.

It's fairly reliable.

The older Jeeps were a little bit more reliable than the modern ones.

I've got a JK.

Yeah, the JK's the best model.

Yeah, it's a good one.

I think that would be a great choice for Ocean to fulfill his needs.

I've still spent too much money fixing it.

Yeah.

But who hasn't?

It's part of the fun of having a Jeep.

It's fucking throwing your money at it when it inevitably does something stupid.

And you're like, why, why?

Not a ton of storage though, especially the two door model.

I really, I like the two door model just because of how more compact it is and better.

It's better off, it's lighter.

So you're going to have a little bit of boom.

So that's Ocean.

Oh, and I'm going to say the color, olive green.

I think Ocean's an olive green kind of guy.

No, it'd be a dark blue.

Ocean would be a dark blue.

Nevermind.

What am I thinking?

Like the Ocean.

Yeah, actually, I didn't even think about that.

Book McCready would be driving.

Let me look up a specific model, actually.

57 Chevy.

Absolutely not.

Tinted windows.

1971 Ford Woody Wagon, which is a station wagon with the wood paneling size.

Oh, that is a...

And it's nice because it's kind of under the radar for his detective-ing for his stakeouts, but it's got a lot of trunk space, or it's got a lot of cabin space.

That is the perfect detective car.

I'm looking at it right now.

And if I had to think of a car that an 80s detective would drive, it would be that.

What color would it be?

I think it would be a nice, like a nice dark blue.

Both dark blue.

We're both dark blue.

Yeah, I guess so.

It is a cool car though.

Before I get my answer, I'm gonna give what your answer should have been real quick.

Ocean should have got like a really old, kind of busted Toyota Tundra.

Because it's just so reliable.

And nice small pickup.

Oh, that would have been a great choice too.

Like it's cramped just like the Spider, but it's still got what you need to be able to haul stuff around.

That would have been a great choice.

Book should have chosen a Mini Cooper because he would think they're cool.

I think they're cool also.

They are.

Exactly.

Roasted.

But fine.

Stu doesn't care about cars like at all, like 0%.

So my real answer is probably the most recent Honda collection that is available.

But I would like, I'd get some cool aftermarket stuff on it.

Some nice like purple underglow.

I'd get some nice like light sky blue trim on some things, just paint like just the side mirrors, nothing else.

Things I could probably do today with a couple hundred bucks.

But mostly black.

I like black cars.

Most of my, probably the rest of my cars for the rest of my life will be black.

If it was possible to charge electric cars for with the type of traveling I do and not be miserable, I would probably get like one of the like newest Audi mostly self-driving electric cars.

Apparently they've gotten pretty good.

I'm not smart enough to know what the best one is.

I Googled one and there's a Audi GT Prestige Quattro that looks pretty nice.

I do love Audi.

They're cool.

I'll take that for the rest of my life.

That's the big problem I have with electrical cars right now is that it's just not feasible with the cross-country traveling I do every three months.

So I would love one though.

I frequently have to drive suddenly a thousand miles with an electric car that is not feasible.

One day we'll get there.

It is impressive how fast they charge already, but it's just not impressive enough to be.

Yeah.

Thank you for listening to Car Talk.

Now let's get back to our real podcast and then get right back to the action.

Last episode, you guys plunked around Hamlet Opening, did some research, learned some mysterious truths, talked to some people, but right now, you're in two different locations where Ocean just finished a conversation with Kara, where they dove into a little bit of their shared memories, while Book is back at his place, cooperating and doing some moon research, but you're now feeling good enough that you certainly can walk around and talk to anyone you want to, research anything you feel like, or just plan for the future.

Is Vesuvius' RC carhead still in Book's Nook of Booktakes?

He went with Ocean that time, but he can come back with you afterwards if you want.

I was going to send him on a little errand.

Can we say this little walkie talkie strapped to the back of the RC car?

Yeah, of course.

Creep!

Hey, Vesuvius.

Quick favor, if you don't mind.

Yes.

He can't talk while I'm talking.

It's a walkie talkie.

Yes.

Hello, can you hear me?

No, I can't.

Hello.

Ocean just licks at Vesuvius and says, Vesuvius, just, I'm okay.

Just go to Book.

Just go to Book.

Could you?

I'll head back there so he can hear me.

I think this is a one-way connection.

I'm having a vision of you thinking I can hear you right now, and I definitely can.

Before we come back, could you stop at Dan Wallace's place and just see how the fortifications are going?

I love a status on that.

And then while you're wheeling around there, could you ask Frida to stop by?

Sure thing.

Could you hear that one?

I don't hear anything.

Well.

Ocean hits the button and says, all right, repeat it Vesuvius.

Sure thing.

I will be right there.

Book, over and out.

Actually we could make it so that Vesuvius can back into a wall to activate it.

Can you reposition this so I can actually use the important button on the walkie talkie so people aren't just yelling at me all day?

Ocean's going to twist the walkie talkie and he's going to take like a little metal rod that he has, like a tiny little metal thing, attach it to the button.

So that Vesuvius just has to twist his head to push the button down.

Thank you.

I like the has to run into a wall idea.

Good engineer.

That's way funnier.

It is really funny.

That's a much funnier idea.

About 15 minutes later, you hear Vesuvius' car roar into your cave and spews gravel, apparently.

Yes, spews gravel.

He always powerslides from outside the front entrance and pushes it in.

I mean, your cave probably has gravel on the floor.

Yeah, it's a cave.

Of course it does.

And Frida walks in behind him a little bit after.

She seems to be in her in control mode where she's walking with purpose and eyes lit and not her sneak mode.

Hot.

Hey, Vesuvius.

How is before Frida gets there?

Hey, Vesuvius.

How are the fortifications going?

Did you get it?

Fortifications are looking quite all right.

Crandall has set up a patrol of men to look over the edge into Subtropolis.

And the the gate is on the switchbacks on the switchback.

We don't have a gate gate per se, but we have put a whole bunch of garbage in the way for now.

And we're working on a good way of being able to move the garbage easily so people can actually use it when they need it.

All right, we'll take that for now.

That's step two.

I talked to Crandall and he says that he has had some of his patrols see some of the yellow home V people, aka the silent, but they've mostly just been moving around in that area.

He's seen them from a distance.

We haven't seen anyone trying to scout us out or coming in this direction.

No violence?

No violence.

That's good.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Over and out.

You're in front of me.

He zooms away.

Frida heard most of that.

I love this.

This is the best idea I've ever had.

You still promised him a real body at some point.

He won't forget, but he does seem to be enjoying this a lot, so he's definitely bought some time.

It's so good.

I still want to put the Suvius in that giant robot that we saw the diagrams for.

I mean, what a beautiful scouting mechanism.

He could be our vanguard.

He's so fast and slippery.

He's so fast.

I'm good.

Heard most of that conversation.

She goes, Hey, Book, how's it going?

Christmas.

I didn't hear you come in, even though you said she wasn't in sneak mode.

I always move like the night.

If I don't have those heels on the heels, you can hear anything else.

Like I'm wading through Jell-O.

Like Batman.

Like wading through Jell-O like Batman.

Like Batman does.

You know Batman?

Yeah.

No, Batman's cool as shit.

No way.

I literally thought I was the only person who knew about Batman here.

No, I love Batman.

I like, I think my second favorite is George Clooney.

My first favorite is Edward from Twilight.

Yeah, Edward from Twilight's pretty good.

I like the part where-

He was way better than I thought he would be.

I like the part where he was in the hallway and was just illuminated by gunshots and he fucking kicked ass.

Yeah, that was cool as shit.

Anyway, the reason that I asked Vesuvius to ask you if you could come here.

Thank you for coming here, by the way.

I'm worried about something and I think you might have information that will be helpful in determining how close this threat is on Stu's threat map.

Sure thing.

I'll do my best.

Specifically, I wanted to talk to you about Spade.

I know that you made a mural of Spade as a gift to them.

But I also know that in your mural, you said, why praise the Queen of Spades?

That lead led me to believe that you were affected by Spade's influence over people, but you also felt suspicious of them like I did.

Is that all accurate?

Now, that definitely checks out.

I liked Spade, but that was kind of the problem.

I don't know why I liked Spade.

I don't know why I felt like I had to waste all that fucking paint on that gaudy-ass mural.

I mean, it was beautiful, but it was pretty gaudy.

No, it was technically incredibly impressive.

It was as perfect as Spade was.

See?

And I agree, and I hate that, and it's stupid.

But yeah, I don't know much more about like, I have no idea why Spade was in town.

I was definitely trying to keep track of that.

But I do know Spade did leave like 99% sure.

Spade tried to blow up the fucking tower, which is probably why all these guys came here anyway.

Maybe a bit of column A, a bit of column B.

Yeah, you don't think that's true.

At least the second part of that.

Did you by any chance see Spade?

What was the color of the car?

It was like a little sports car, right?

Was it blue?

The one you saw leave, are you asking?

The one that passed us in the long dark.

I do not remember the color.

I don't think it was blue, but it could have been.

I said I described it as like a nice kind of muscle car, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Nothing that would be like, whoa, what is that doing here?

But definitely, oh, that's a good car.

Frida, have you ever seen Spade drive a car or when they left in particular?

No, I'm pretty sure they had a motorcycle.

Is that how they left?

I think so.

It's not here anymore.

I didn't actually see them leave, but pretty sure it was a motorcycle.

It was like really badass.

Okay.

And why praise the Queen of Spades?

Was that just your, I guess, protest against their influence?

I don't like to comment on my own work because I really, I'm a big proponent of Death of the Artist, where once I put it out there, it's for you to really ingest and get your own feelings from it.

But I think it's a reasonable interpretation to say that it's a commentary on Spade's impact in the community, at least.

Spade did influence a lot of people.

Very quickly.

Yeah.

Much quicker than, like, me.

Much quicker than even Hickory.

Very fast.

I need to tell you something.

Um, Spade left because of me.

I, my gift to Spade was knowledge.

And, um, that knowledge changed them.

Maybe broke them.

They became obsessed with what I told them.

And for that reason, I'm afraid to tell you what I told them.

But suffice it to say that it involved the tower that Spade tried to blow up.

Blow up?

Blow up.

Blown up.

Blown up.

Done blown up.

I learned that from Vesuvius.

Yeah, Vesuvius taught us all a lot, too.

It's really been a benefit to our lexicon.

He's an expert at done blown up.

Once, at least one time.

Hopefully only one time I just said at least one time.

Shit, there was something really important I wanted to ask Frida, and I don't remember what it was at all.

Was it related to Hickory?

Maybe seems like an important question.

It almost certainly was important.

Oh, this wasn't the main thing, but this was one thing that I wanted to ask.

What did Spade tell you that made you want to give them something?

Like, what would can you describe your interaction with them?

So as you know, or may not know, I don't really hang out at the Broken Leg much.

I've literally never seen you there.

Yeah, I've been there, but usually not when people can see me.

That's fucking cool as shit.

You got to teach me that sometime.

I actually met Spade in the courthouse.

Spade came to talk to Hickory.

I don't know exactly what they talked about.

Hickory is the only person I know who didn't seem swayed by them.

He was actually pretty upset, and he was trying to get people to kind of keep an eye on Spade.

But that did not work well, because anyone who kept an eye on Spade immediately became a huge fan.

And gave them their guns and cards.

Things like that.

Yeah.

Have you ever played Old Maid?

Sorry.

No, no, continue.

Before you answer that question.

Don't worry, I'll get to that.

That seems important.

But yeah, Hickory seemed unaffected.

Like, I don't know why, but I met Spade as they were leaving from talking to Hickory.

And we had a very short conversation, and I felt it quickly.

And then I immediately talked to Hickory, and he was upset.

He was, like, piping mad about whatever Spade asked him about.

I tried to dig in, tried to figure out what it was, but he said that they're just a threat.

They're filled with lies, and that we got to keep an eye on them.

In Cartomancy, the Queen of Spades means distrust and prejudice.

I don't like those things.

It represents a jealous or malicious woman.

It might also represent an intelligent woman who is creative and a well-planned leader.

I like that one better.

Agreed, which is why I didn't...

When I told Spade what I told them, I didn't mean to break their brain, but I was trying to use it to unbalance them and get a better idea of what their goals were.

And unfortunately, I changed their goals in the process.

But it can mean different things, depending on if it's upright or reversed.

I don't know if you're familiar with Cartomancy, but it can either be someone who's fair and honest and direct, or someone who's manipulative, distrustful and prejudiced.

What Spade did to people was pretty manipulative, even if it was coming from a good place.

I don't know what their motivation was.

Yeah, it could have not been coming from a good place.

Agreed.

Before this, I would have definitely liked Spade both upright and reversed, but now I'm not so sure.

I appreciate you coming by.

Would you do me a favor?

Maybe.

Will you ask around about Spade and see what kind of gifts people were giving them and see what kind of questions they were asking?

Yeah, I can definitely do that.

I'll let you know if anything abnormal comes up or I guess anything that I think you would think is abnormal.

I'll also point that in your direction.

Quick update.

Hickory is alive.

Got him out.

He's actually given me a pure luck roll.

Just give me two.

Both of you, actually.

I want both of you to give me just 2d6.

That is...

But he doesn't know how to roll on the table.

He's choosing the Bowser dice on Google.

He just doesn't know how to roll real dice.

It keeps landing on even, and in the past, I've always re-rolled that.

What kind of dice are you using?

It's not the dice.

My desk is a mess right now.

He's rolling on gravel.

That is an eight.

You have the exact same number.

Okay, perfect.

That's easy.

That's the second time that's happened.

Did you roll a two and a six?

I rolled a four and a four.

Fuck that.

The better eight.

You got doubles.

I got a cooler eight.

That is a cooler eight.

Frida goes, he's alive.

He's really fucked up.

I think he's in like a coma for now.

So you don't have to worry about him.

But we he is being watched and he is handcuffed to a metal bed.

Right now we're keeping them in the barracks with all those robot dead bodies.

It's that cool with you and Ocean.

I'm fine with that.

I kind of feel bad that he's with all the dead bodies in spite of everything.

They're dead robots.

They're not as gross as you'd think.

Yeah, that's fair.

Listen, Frida, I know I said some pretty harsh things, but I am sorry.

No, he is objectively a dick.

I get it.

I'm sure he would have killed you if he had the chance.

He has tried to at least twice.

He really did think he was doing the best for the town.

Obviously he was also exploiting the town and getting his own shit from it, his own power.

But I don't know if you know this, but that server room had really important stuff in it before it blew up.

And he was trying to manage that appropriately and he just didn't have the skill set to it.

He just had Randy Candy, who's good, but based on the stories I've heard, he's nothing like your mom was.

And to tell you the truth, Frida, we were in that room because of the information.

And I didn't know that Vesuvius was going to blow up, but we were trying to figure out what was in there.

And in the process, the thing that was controlling Vesuvius blew him up in order to take that away from us.

So that wasn't our intent.

Well, you know that.

You saw the video.

You did more than see it.

I saw that way too many times.

You don't know how fucking annoying it is to edit shit.

Oh, my God.

I had to hear your voice like 30,000 times to get that right.

Especially when I was changing the words you were saying.

It was so hard because like you will have these weird, breathy pauses before what you're saying.

It was really hard to like tie that together.

You're not an easy person to do.

I think the breathy pauses are a character choice.

You've been editing out for 45 episodes.

Yeah, we've been missing core book character lore by editing out those pauses.

Agreed.

Bring back the breathy pause cut.

I have a cut that's just breathy pauses.

That's very good.

I'll let you know as soon as he's up and conscious, but he's definitely...

I don't think you have to worry about him.

I got pretty much all of Hickory's men understand the situation we're in, and are all focused on trying to keep the town safe right now.

I don't think he has a lot of sympathizers, can't speak for Pistachio Jones.

He's hobbling around now.

But I guess he didn't do anything wrong, so we can't really arrest him for no reason.

Yeah, he was just following orders.

No one's ever gotten in trouble for that.

He was a dick about it, but he was just following orders.

No, that's called the Nuremberg defense.

That's what all the Nazis said.

The way I understand it is he was just trying to get you guys to go with him to Hickory, and then you broke his back.

We didn't, when you say we broke his, Ocean.

Yeah, I know you didn't break anyone's back.

Ocean broke his back.

Not to point fingers, but...

I wasn't trying to break his back.

I was just trying to get him stuck under the table.

Listen, that's a weak back, and that's coming from me.

Yeah, he has an objectively weak back.

I say leaning on my cane.

Yeah, how's your leg doing?

Um, I don't foresee it getting any better.

That sucks.

It's not ideal, but we'll make it work.

You shouldn't jump out of second-story balconies.

You shouldn't tell people to jump out of second-story balconies.

Let me know if you need anything else.

I appreciate it.

Thank you for your help.

No problem.

And she spins on her heel and walks out.

Book bites his lip as she leaves.

He's like...

Book's suddenly being like, hmm, maybe I gave the wrong one attention when I was in middle school.

Because she likes Batman?

Yeah!

Because she likes Batman?

Who do you guys want to send out to do some scouting on that little whatever weird light you guys found?

And for any of our confused listeners, all of this was set up in our Dekuuma episode, session zero, before all of this happened.

So you guys didn't miss something that happened.

This was one little beat during that.

I tried to give a little brief overview when I was talking about Kara to remind everybody who may have forgotten, but that is a thing that we established about Book and Ocean's backstory that I guess has never really had to come up until now.

This could be emergent storytelling, but it's not.

It's something we created.

It is somewhat emergent.

We didn't know when this was going to become relevant.

So yeah, it's been a whole year.

Who do you want to send to go check it out for you while you're getting better, getting ready?

Well, actually I have a question.

Well, I think Cow Tools is probably a safe bet.

I think we should send Cow Tools and Kara.

Ooh, Cow Tools and Kara.

I was going to say Cow Tools and Vesuvius.

I don't think Vesuvius would make it.

Because they can both turn into cars because one of them is a transformer and the other one is a head on a car.

I think Kara would be a better choice just because she's, you know, partially trained and can protect and fighting is pretty strong.

So, oh, she's going to come with us too.

But I figured maybe her going to strut my head so she can at least tell us how to get there.

That's at least my logic.

I don't know if that's...

Before they leave, can I talk to Cow Tools for like 30 seconds?

Is it for a joke?

No.

Okay, because he can talk to you when he gets back also.

I want to know what's going on with his butt.

Okay, ask him that when he gets back.

I want to know what's going on with his butt.

Book is an obsessive...

He obsesses over the mysteries.

If Cow Tools rocks up, there's no chance that he doesn't ask him at the soonest opportunity.

I'm sorry.

Cow Tools doesn't show up to you.

He pokes his head out of a trunk in Ocean's scrap yard and goes, I heard you needed me.

Oh, Cow Tools.

Yes.

How did you hear about that?

I'm always tracking the radio traffic, you know.

Okay.

I was coming back with all this stuff for trade.

Oh, shit.

And the unfurls, a big rug he's been carrying, and there's just a bunch of random little sundries from the stew.

Oh, hell yeah.

Well, thank you.

We'll take a look and who would be a good person to manage trade for the town that we know?

I think Juniper.

Barman, right?

Juniper's a good idea.

I think that's good because he gets a lot of information.

That's what I thought, but also Captain Noodle's.

Captain Noodle's was poisonous all by accident.

I talked to Juniper about that, about the trading stuff.

I think he can probably be a pretty good resource for, and I'll talk to him about it too, to see if he can kind of serve as the back and forth guy.

A-okay.

But we're working on trying to find a new power system for the town.

About a year or two ago, we found this light, I think.

Have you ever heard of the Moonwell?

Moonwell, Moonwell.

I think I've heard tales.

Yeah.

Well, I think we're pretty close to a tunnel that might connect to it.

So I was wanting to see.

Book and I would obviously, you know, prefer to go on the expedition ourselves, but we're pretty weak right now.

Yeah, I can smell your bones are broken.

There's a lot more than just broke bones.

You can smell your bones are broken.

Yeah.

But we would like to maybe send a couple people to scout ahead and see if they can find a good route to get to it for us.

Is that be something you'd be interested in?

You know, I am one of the best scouts.

I don't want to go into somewhere that's particularly dangerous, but I can at least get to the outskirts.

This is just for scouting.

You don't have to put yourself in danger.

When I mentioned the tales I've heard, they were usually unfathomable horrors related to it.

What tales have you heard about the moon well?

Yeah, that's most of it, that it contains unfathomable horrors and that you should always stay away.

That's good to know.

But untold treasure.

Well, how about I send somebody with you that can help protect you?

Yeah, that would be great.

This RC car?

No, I don't think he could help protect you, but he can go with you if you're interested, Vesuvius.

Absolutely not.

Okay.

I'm still getting my feet under me.

But there's a woman named Kara that I think would be fair, that she's pretty formidable, and she's been on all kinds of scouting expeditions like this before.

I've worked with her, and she's pretty capable.

So I think she would be a good fit to keep you protected.

And like I said, you're not going into any danger.

It's just a scout route for Book and I to take.

Literally the moment Caltools and Kara disappear into the tunnels, Book runs up.

He's like, Ocean, I saw Caltools.

Is he still here?

I have a question to ask him.

It's about his butt.

I'm sorry, Book, but you just missed him.

They just drove off.

Book hasn't...

Listen, listen to me.

This is important.

In the entire history of your relationship with Book, he has never looked so crestfallen.

Think about all of the stupid, crazy shit that has happened to us.

This is worse.

Now that Book and Ocean are together, Book sees how crestfallen he looks right now, not being able to ask about Caltool's ass, turns to Book and is like, Hey, Book, I have to tell you something.

It's something I learned a little bit ago.

Some of my memories came back and I met your parents.

Oh, man.

I mean, I always thought that there might be a connection there, but I didn't realize you'd actually Yeah, it interacted with them.

It was as I was the silent and it doesn't, from what I remember, I wasn't exactly on good terms with them.

It was a pretty tense, pretty tense discussion that I was having.

You see Book's knuckles turn the palest white as he grips the handle of his cane slash sword.

I don't know what happens, but I'm pretty sure it was in the Moonwell.

Ocean, did you kill my fucking parents?

No, I think I would remember if I killed your parents.

You don't, you literally, the one thing, okay, Ocean, if there's one thing that we can count on, it's that you don't remember stuff.

I don't, but you know me, you know my nature.

I wouldn't just kill them.

I don't even like killing people who are attacking me, Book.

Why would I just shoot your parents?

When I was taught from what I remember, it wasn't that I was wanting to kill them or hurt them.

I never said you shot them.

Book, I don't know.

I don't think I did.

I know for sure that you're your mom.

Sorry, I was laughing because I think it's really funny.

If you're like, hey, I know your mom and sister.

I don't remember much about what happened with your dad, but I do know that your mom and sister were safe.

They're not hurt.

I know that much.

You saw my sister.

Yeah, she looked about seven.

Seven?

Yeah, she didn't look, she looked sickly, but she was alive.

So my parents were within traveling distance of me.

Maybe, I don't know.

Within the last three years, and they never came back.

As far as I'm aware, I just figured if they really were in the Moonwell, there might be something in there that we can find some evidence of where they've gone.

Book kind of strains up, and he eyes you suspiciously.

And then he says, well, we better get ready then.

Meanwhile, or I guess probably like five days later, not actually meanwhile.

Yeah, they got to go travel to it.

About five days later, you guys are going to be able to do some more getting prep time, anything else you want to wrap up before you leave Hamlet Opening, no problem.

But we're going to do a quick little vignette of the exciting adventures of Kara and Caltools.

Oh, I'm excited.

Which I think we could just make as a spinoff series anyway.

I would love to do that.

They've clearly been trudging through the long dark for quite a while now.

They've gotten to a point where they've left their vehicle behind, and they are walking.

And we join them right as Caltools is trying to explain to Kara how she is a bit of a t-shirt bleachers type girl versus a short skirt cheerleader type girl.

And Kara looks completely confused.

As they're going along, Kara holds up her hand and goes, Hey, hold on a second.

I think I see something.

This is my time to shine.

And he skitters towards this very dim light.

They can only see it because they're in pretty much pitch black right now.

They're just had their little flashlights out and they see this kind of glow almost coming through these rocks.

They find this completely collapsed tunnel that there is pretty much no room around.

Kara turns to Caltools and says, based on their description, I'm pretty sure this is where they fucked this up with the spider.

He goes, Yeah, I think we're right about that.

Let me see if I can get through here.

And he starts kind of pawing around, trying to move some of the loose, some of the loose rocks.

Kara realizes this is completely impossible.

This is like probably feet of just collapsed in tunnel.

And she starts looking through her bag for tools to be able to grab something out, kind of chip away from it.

We see her dramatically look at different objects that may help.

There's like a crowbar, a shovel, a grenade.

She's pondering which one to choose.

When she looks back up, she shines her light up and Caltools is gone.

She kind of stands up, Caltools, where did you go?

And you hear a very muffled, I'm over here.

It's OK.

I made it through.

She goes up against the gravel, the rocks, and it is still just basically solid.

She tries to find a little air gap to look through, and he goes, look, like, like, two thirty o'clock.

There's a little gap.

You should be able to see me.

And she goes and crawls up to the corner and sees his eye just peering on the other side of it.

And he waves at her and goes, I promise I'll be back quickly.

If anything's dangerous, I will turn around ASAP.

She goes, yeah, just stay safe.

If you just do you have a gun or anything?

He's like, no, I'm fine.

And he's already walking away.

He's gone for a little bit and she's just in the darkness and it's just silent.

There's this kind of very dim warm glow coming from these rocks.

But besides that, nothing seems to be in this tunnel that she retraced your steps down.

Probably about 30 minutes later, she's jumps with a start as Caltools is pulling himself out from that same top corner.

And he tumbles to the ground, leaving a little bit of a kind of gap behind him.

And she goes up to and shines a light and sees mostly a just warmly glowing tunnel.

On the other side, it looks like it's almost painted white, but there's just not enough light to prove that.

It's like everything's just kind of this gray, dark gray color.

And even when she shines her flashlight on it, it just seems to almost absorb some of the light.

And you can't get a good grasp of what this material is.

But luckily, Kowtools pulls up out of his bag a chunk of it.

I really couldn't go too far in each direction.

It started getting like really skinny in some areas.

And then a little bit up there, it's kind of collapsed off.

And then as I was going in that direction and he points kind of deeper in towards the tunnel, it started getting really, really steep.

And I was worried about falling.

So I turned around.

There wasn't anything in there I saw.

It kind of smelled really funny.

It was like glowing everywhere though.

And I brought back this.

And she looks at it and she goes, what the fuck is this?

And we'll go back to you guys for the next couple weeks or 10 days, I guess.

I said it took five days to get there.

What are you guys going to do for that amount of time?

When we cut back to Book, he has his encyclopedia open to the word battery.

Babbary?

What is a babbary?

Battery.

What the fuck are you guys talking about?

Oh, I swear you said babbary.

All right, I'll retake that.

No, that's fine.

It's just your accent.

No, fuck you.

We'll keep it.

Hold on, let me ask the ref.

He's reading about batteries.

OK, what's a babbary?

Oh, my God.

A book has before him from Hickory's stockpile.

I'm assuming Hickory had like a vault full of batteries and shit.

Yes, from Hickory's stockpile.

Book has basically taken all of his batteries and he's testing.

I'm assuming there's like hundreds.

He's testing each one to see if they can still hold the charge.

And he's sorting them into a pile of batteries that can hold a charge and batteries that can't.

Yeah, it's about 50-50.

I'm guessing you just tried to sneak in there that you have his entire collection of wealth.

I'm guessing this is something you agreed upon with the rest of the town that you would be performing this activity, or are you taking these batteries for goodsees?

No, no, no.

Yeah, so this is, I've told the town that basically everybody's aware of the issue that we are low on electricity.

We are not getting the power that we used to because the AI that we developed that was protecting against the AI that tried to kill us just a couple days ago, or weeks ago at this point.

So what I am saying, or what I came to the town and I said, we have batteries.

That was our form of...

currency.

That was our currency.

What I would like is for everybody to donate any...

basically bring all of your batteries to me so that I can test if they hold a charge or not.

If they don't, you keep them.

If they do, I will trade you the same type of battery, but one that doesn't hold a charge.

So I'm basically trying to swap out everything from Hickory's Hoard so that all were left is batteries that hold charges.

And what we're going to do with those is we are going to use whatever excess electricity we can muster to start using those batteries as a backup in case we need any essential services while we're gone.

That sounds good.

I think that's reasonable enough.

I was going to give you disadvantage because of your guys' barter role.

The downside was that everyone's more closed off and doesn't want to help each other right now.

But I think that's reasonable enough.

I'll just say a straightforward Sway-Some-One role to see how the town likes this idea.

That's a straight seven, baby.

Oh, baby.

All of your friends, your followers, and most of the people that you know well around town definitely come through.

I would say it's probably only like 20% of the town actually partakes in this, but you are able to swap out all those.

It's pretty easy to tell which ones are charged and which aren't.

From Hickory's stash, it was about 50-50.

So you got a pretty hearty chunk of charged batteries right now.

All right.

So then starting with the big boys, the car batteries.

Also, I don't give away any car batteries because I think we should be able to get those back to a state where they can hold a charge.

Most of them charge somewhat.

But what I want to do is because I have battery open in the encyclopedia, I want to see if I can swap out the chemicals in the car batteries and make them better, make them good again.

I think that's going to take a while to try to figure out.

Because I don't even know if that's possible, but you'll be able to figure something out probably.

It may require some outside help.

Oh, Brady's flapping like a chicken.

I'm so sorry, Jacob.

I promise I'll stop hogging the air.

There's one other thing that we absolutely have to do, and that is we got to cut the heads off of the robots that were sent to attack us and see if they also have blue glowy brain chips like Vesuvius' head did, because those are massive power sources that we can tap into, and Ocean already figured out how to wire them up.

Yes.

Each of those can at least power one RC car.

No, this is a good idea.

Yeah, because we said we wanted to investigate the robots, so yeah.

Maybe while I'm working on the battery, the conventional battery, Ocean is dismantling and trying to harvest.

Ocean is tinkering with the robots and trying to get to see if they have the little chips that they can harvest and reutilize in other ways.

Okay, you say tinkering, smash cut, half of a shovel comes down on the neck of one of the silents and a shower of sparks as the head rolls downward, and you just decapitate all of the ones that you guys had already determined were robots, and you have them laid out on your workbench.

I'm guessing you have like an outside workbench.

Yeah, yeah.

He's got like a...

I imagine it to be like a carport kind of thing, where it's mostly like a shed that's attached to the house that he does most of his work in.

So these robots are a little dangerous.

You guys have known some of them have exploded before.

So give me a read a sitch roll.

Read a sitch.

Yeah.

It's the one thing I have absolutely no improvements in and can never get an improvement in from the rest of my days, though I do have plus one for my psi.

So let's see what happens.

Hey, you can bump your psi up somehow.

Don't know how, but if you can bump that psi up, you'll get better at reading sitches.

That is true.

That's a seven.

Just ask me a question.

I'm going to give you more information, but you can also ask me any of those questions.

What is my best way to harvest these chips without damaging them?

When you say them, you mean the chips themselves.

You don't care about the integrity of the rabbit.

No, I think right now, the focus is trying to get power sources.

You like to save it if you can, but his priority is the chip.

You go through this head chopping maneuver so you can safely move the torsos away.

You only have a sample size of one, but you know, at least in Vesuvius' case, it was this torso that exploded, and the head was completely fine.

So you feel safe-ish separating those heads and spending more time working on it, as long as you can get the rest of the bodies kind of away from you.

And you can store them wherever you want.

I'll assume it's a safe enough distance away.

I'm not going to kill anyone for it.

Throws them down in the crevice of the...

Yeah.

In a crevice on the side, off the wall, into the precipice.

Yeah, it doesn't mean they won't explode sometime, but I won't make someone die because of it.

Since you've taken care of this, since you've rolled them out.

Oh, I just had an idea.

It's probably going to be another roll.

But Ocean actually is going to save the torsos that he thinks that exploded and put them somewhere he can access them for later purposes to see if he can manufacture explosives from them.

Okay, that's a good idea.

You can put them in a safe spot in your scrap heap somewhere.

Away from your good treasures and near more of the ones that you're okay getting.

Put them in a lead-lined refrigerator.

Yes, there's those all over the place in the Apocalypse.

It's how everyone survives.

So you decapitate all of these robot bodies and you're poking around their heads.

And you, especially through your work with Vesuvius, you know at least how it was hooked up for when it's a predominantly human body.

You know the connections were just towards the brain stem.

So you feel pretty safe coming in basically from the back top side and sawing down on it with some of your angle grinders till you get a good view of it.

So you can more safely disconnect it without messing anything up.

You take the time to do that appropriately.

Through all of this, you are able to...

You determine that all four of them do have this strange glowing light.

You're able to successfully remove it from three of them without damaging it.

One of them, you seem to nick the wrong thing as you're grinding down the first one you're working on.

And it just suddenly loses all of its glow right away.

It's very strange.

That's not how you have any understanding of batteries work.

And you don't notice nothing oozes out.

There wasn't a liquid or anything like that.

So you at least learn something there destructively.

You break it, and it just seems like it almost emptied itself magically because you just cut this in a little bit of a wrong way.

So you take more time with the rest, and you get three solid ones that work.

From your previous learnings, you know they don't put out a ton of voltage, but it seems like they never lose any power.

You've not been able to detect them getting any weaker over any amount of time that you've been working with them.

So you don't think it could just magically plug these three things in and charge all of the town.

But it is a renewable source of energy.

Could we use them to charge up all of the batteries that Book is stockpiling?

I was just about to ask, is there a way he could set up a charging station?

Because what I want to do, I would like to use two of the working energy chips to make a charging booth or something, so we can charge up batteries, any rechargeable battery or car battery, so we can use for later, if they run out, it will be slower than manually charging it.

I think we've been peddling.

I think it will be taking longer than that, but it will be less manpower and it's infinite.

And I want to take one of the chips, and I want to see if I can connect it to the battery in the spider, to make the spider a renewable energy source.

So that way I don't have to use gas.

I think that's also something that's going to take a little bit more time to fully figure out, but I think that's definitely something that's feasible.

It should at least be able to help in some way.

I think right now you could probably use it to almost replace the need for a battery, but getting it to fully replace your fuel sources a little extra, if that makes sense.

While you're chopping these heads, you feel a little tap on your shoulder, you couldn't hear it over the angle grinder, and you turn around and see Randy Candy.

Oh, Randy, what are you doing here?

Oh, most people call me Randall, but...

Oh, Randall, I'm sorry, I only know you as Randy Candy, I'll be honest with you.

That's cool, I used to really like that name, it's pretty funny.

I don't hate it, it's cool.

You can call me Randy, because I just wanted to come by and thank you for saving my life there.

That was some wild shit that went down.

But the parts I do remember is, I'm pretty sure I was dead.

Like, I felt something hot in my neck, and then I was out.

And then you did something to me, and I was pretty much fine.

Yeah, I've got some training, some military training, and part of that, of course, is first aid and trauma response.

So you got shot in the neck, and I did everything I could.

So I'm glad to see that you're doing well.

You seem to have recovered really well, honestly.

Most people, like, get shot in the neck or paralyzed.

So I don't even have, like, a scar or anything.

He's like, oh, I mean, he's like touching where you know he was shot.

He's like, it doesn't even hurt.

It's wild.

That's very just just thank you.

And sorry, I kind of ditched you guys back there, but I was still not convinced you weren't going to like then kill me.

I thought I was like a bargaining chip, but it seems like you really were trying to kill those guys.

So, yeah, no, we just want what's best for the town.

We've known about these guys for a while.

We were concerned they're going to possibly pull a maneuver like this.

So we've been trying to tell Hickory about this for a while, but nobody seemed to be listening.

And when we caught that they're heading that way, we just needed to come in and help.

No, I really appreciate it.

And I like what you and Book are trying to do, like get everyone working together to get the power back up, maybe be a little less reliant on the Subtropolis power.

I don't know if you know this, but I was like pretty involved in that effort.

Yeah, actually, I was wanting to ask.

I wasn't quite sure who to ask, but I suspect you're probably the most knowledgeable about the subject.

What can you tell me about the power grid that you were siphoning from?

To my knowledge, it powers all of Subtropolis.

I could be wrong, but that's what it seemed like.

And it certainly powers Hamlet Opening or is intended to power Hamlet Opening.

But I used to work on it with Book's mom, and honestly, she was way better than me at this.

I was kind of just an extra set of hands, someone to bounce ideas off of.

But what it seems like is whatever is controlling that power grid, it's run through some sort of artificial intelligence or some machine learning algorithm, something like that.

I don't know what it is, but that algorithm had decided that we didn't need as much power.

I don't know why, but it started cutting more and more power off.

And that's what me and Zine were working on to try to undo, kind of trick it a little bit.

Think that there may be more people here than it expects, or there may be more vital services here.

It was mostly things like that.

And it used to be very just lying to the computer.

We would feedback data that made it think that was true, that, oh, yeah, there's a new hospital here that needs a lot of energy.

So make sure you don't cut it down.

And that worked for a little bit, but it just seems like it just kept getting smarter and smarter and would figure out when those things weren't true.

So we actually developed our own AI against it.

Wait, so you're saying we have our own AI here in Hamlet opening?

Yeah, it's nothing like that one.

But it was to try to make it so it's not as much of a manual process of like, oh, they figured that out.

Let's come up with a new lie to kind of learn from that one and fight back.

But it was it was always like a little bit ahead of us no matter what we did.

And especially after Zine left, like it was it took all my effort to just maintain it by myself.

There was no one else here who knew anything about computers.

And I was really just trying to help us not lose more and more power by the day.

So, yeah, that was actually in the production code was in that server room that Vesuvius exploded with his torso.

So I take it that took out the AI you were working on as well.

Pretty much.

I had like a weekly backup on my personal computer, but that got blown up when those guys came in through the window.

But I do have this and he holds up like an old spinny boy hard drive.

And he's like, this is from like a couple years ago.

It's kind of outdated at this point, but it's at least where we were then.

So if we had to start back on it, we would have a good kicking off point.

And I figured you and Book are probably who should have this.

Obviously, I'll help out if you need anything, but it probably belongs with you guys.

I don't know anything about computers, so your help would be greatly appreciated.

You know a lot about computers.

He doesn't know.

He doesn't remember anything about how to use the computers.

This is a damn problem.

My washer just dinged.

Can I go swap it out?

Yes, I'll allow it.

Thank you.

Let's go make fun of Book while he's not here.

Randy Candy says, Yeah, I just don't know why Book tried to threaten me.

Such a butthole.

Well, it was a very stressful situation.

I don't think it was anything personal.

I think it was just we were, we knew this threat was about to fall upon us.

And I think he was just trying to get through as fast as possible to get out.

But I think you're just...

Yeah, I'm surprised he even knew who I was.

Most people don't really.

Book actually has recently been trying to find his mom.

And we've unearthed some stuff that tied her back to us.

I bet he probably would want to talk to you about her.

Oh, yeah, I could bring this to him if you think that makes more sense.

He said you don't know much about computers.

I don't know if he has a computer.

Well, at the very least, I think even if you just hand that to Book, I think he would very much appreciate hearing from you about his mother.

We've been looking for her.

Do you know why she left?

Did she tell you?

Did she talk to you about anything about what was going on?

Yeah, I think it was mostly Charlie.

They wanted to go to the surface.

They thought it was safer there.

I don't know why they think that.

That seems crazy to me to think the surface could possibly be safer than down here.

But that was what they were convinced of.

So she went to go figure that out.

It seems like they weren't very successful.

I imagine they would have came back for Book by now if they were successful.

Do you happen to know what kind of information they have about the surface?

Did she ever talk to you about it or anything like that?

No, I honestly felt like she wasn't as sold on it being true as Charlie was.

She didn't come to me one day all excited like, Oh, look, it's going to be safe.

We're all going to go.

It was pretty sudden when they left.

And she was like, We're going to do it.

We're going to get to the surface.

Like she seemed convinced, but it wasn't.

There wasn't much excitement in her.

So she never told me why she was convinced.

OK, well, thanks for coming over here.

I appreciate you stopping by.

Yeah, no problem.

Thank you for saving my life.

Don't think we're even yet.

Don't mention it.

It's OK.

It's my job, I feel.

It seems like Randy Candy conveniently forgot that Book had him at gunpoint for a minute there.

Oh, no, we talked about that while you're gone.

We should try to cover for you.

Hell yeah, my boy.

So, Stu, as you know, my character has an observatory in the workspace of cosmology.

And if you look into what the intent is in art, it says in an observatory, workspace cosmology, you can research and study the inner workings of the world and the principles upon which it really operates.

So one of the things that we have tried to do several times over is get a hint of that by opening our minds to the psychic maelstrom.

What I would like to do with my tinkering is to try to develop a way to study the psychic maelstrom without having to open my brain to the psychic maelstrom.

Undercovering the source of the psychic maelstrom would be interesting, too.

Like, where did it originate from?

Because we know it's human-made, but we don't know why or what caused it to be created.

Right.

We know that the AI lives in the psychic maelstrom, but we don't know if the AI is the psychic maelstrom, you know, or vice versa.

I think you could work on something.

This is going to be another thing.

It'll take a while.

That will take quite a while.

But I think what you can do, you can combine some of the stuff that you have some experience with already to learn more about the psychic maelstrom.

I think specifically because Ocean was chopping up those robots, maybe there are components.

You could use my broken chip to see if there's any information you can glean from it.

Ocean will gladly let you take that broken chip to use for research purposes.

Well, not just the chip.

I want the whole robot.

The whole robot?

Sure.

I have no need for it.

When you're done with it, I would like the torso back.

But I think it's something I would need your help with.

Yeah, I can try to help.

I don't know what I can provide, but I'll do everything I can.

I don't think you're going to be able to create some magic psychic maelstrom goggles that you just flip a switch on and it goes, now I can see psychic stuff without any of the risk.

But what I think you can definitely do is learn more about the psychic maelstrom, maybe the scope of it, maybe some of the originating information on it, stuff like that.

Well, my thought is clearly those robots are communicating on the psychic maelstrom, via the psychic maelstrom.

So there's got to be a receiver and a transmitter.

I was also thinking like a spy satellite.

Like if we get a receiver going on the spiking maelstrom, we could spy on what the AI and the silent are doing.

Okay, I think what you can come, the knowledge you can combine for this is the parts of these robots, as we've mentioned, that you're scrambling together.

You guys have some pretty in-depth knowledge of how the TTE worked, which you know at least had some sort of interference from the psychic maelstrom at some point.

You learned more about how the mappy thing worked, the official name of it, the mappy thing.

You learned how that worked, which is basically ways of interacting with the world to get information back and presenting it in a useful way, which is kind of exactly what you want to do, but maybe not rock more psychic maelstrom stuff.

The one thing you're missing, so one of the things I can do when you do a tinker roll is tell you what you have to get, some other things to bring into the equation to be able to solve this problem.

And you know there is some organic component to this as well.

You've seen the wolves, you've seen Ocean, you've seen how the Suvius, and for some reason, humanity seems to be involved in it.

For some reason, it impacts all of you guys, when all these other things are just nice little mechanical things.

I think to really pull all of this together, you're going to have to capture a wolf of the Maelstrom alive.

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

A few quick announcements.

One, last like Friday or something, I released a bonus episode of me deep diving into one of our early episodes and kind of explaining my thought process.

Really good to listen to if you're considering running PBTA games or Apocalypse World games, or you're a super TTRPG nerd.

Today or yesterday, there's an episode released by GG Level Up, who was on a few months ago.

There's a new episode out, where I talk about PBTA systems and why they're so cool and different than other TTRPGs and a very fun quiz on PBTA.

Stu does the music and editing, Brady does the logo and art, and Jacob tells us that the purple Yoshi's best.

Love you, bye.

Bye.

I made a not quite appropriate joke during this episode and cut it out.

I just wanted to keep Brady and Jacob's laughter for 30 seconds right here.

Oh my god, yeah, that was funny.

That is pretty amazing.

That's pretty amazing.