Speaker 1: You are listening to this. Hello, and welcome back to
the NIXT Archive. I am your host and game master C. D.
Corrigan with me as always, my lovely wife, Mattie Hammont Hello,
and Marie Montera, the other sister wife. Oh my god, I.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I couldn't help myself.
Speaker 1: I never introduce you as my wife on the show.
Speaker 2: I know, I know.
Speaker 1: I feel like Marissa has had that fucking locked and loaded.
Who Welcome back to the mixed Archive. This is ostensibly
a show about playing a game, and games all RPG
shows are mind games against the game master. That is
the true game. But in order to move that along
and further Marissa's machinations, we do have to move the
story along, so we will get back into that. Last
time on the Archive, our heroes had just finished up
a fight where the long haul exploded, Roland the orchesh
Barkeep was injured and Jat Brunskal, Aurelia and mystery assailant
prisoner Uh disappeared. Remember all that that happened, So we
picked up from there. They went final with the quest
hook that I gave them an episode one the Mysterious
Elvin Lady Sive and since the venue that I had
built for them to have. That whole interaction was now
exploded out of my spite and hubers. They went to
Lady Sive's mansion and got to see her workshop of
various archaeological digs and expeditions, some old ruins. We learned
some stories about one how Lady Sive became aware of
these two and two what she was looking into up
here in the Frozen North. Our characters also did level
up to level two. Little note on that. We realized
after the show that Mattie's character already had the spell
that she chose as her perk there, so she's chosen
something else now, So there's an inconsistency there. I know,
update the wiki or whatever. It's fine, not not a
big deal. So we resumed. Just after we have been
having a conversation between Lady Syve, Skink and Farah about
what happened to Chester and also why Lady Sive doesn't
necessarily go on all these expeditions herself. Lady Sive had
just asked Skink what she had learned from Chester's corpse
via necromancy, and upon learning that his murderers were seeking
the same thing that she had dispatched Chester and his
group to go find was quite upset about it. Well, fuck,
that's not ideal. Lady Sive turns around, whisks her hands
back and forth. The chalkboard that had been displaying a
running list of all of the different mercenaries and groups
that she has tasked go on various expeditions throughout the
Frozen North wipes itself clean, and a recreation of the
map you guys had just been looking over on the
table draws itself on there. She is, okay, I mean
you're I've already written it down there. The map recreates
itself on the wall. She turns and says, okay, so here,
by the way, I have put in our drive. I
don't know if you guys saw the message an updated map,
because she had updated yours. So let's you notice immediately
most of the detail is the parts that are clear
on this map here, not the drawn portions of it.
And I think pretty intuitive together that Sive doesn't have
a lot of data except very general massive land masses
like beyond the Bulwark Mountains, like it's pretty uncharted territory.
Even for her. It's like, yeah, people go up there
on expeditions and stuff, but it hasn't really been a
comprehensive cartographical study of the region.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean she thinks a little bit of the map,
but not the whole map.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, everything south of the Bulwarks is these days
relatively known territory. Everything north of kind of the line
they make there is like the Great White North, like
it's unknown territory. People have certainly been up there and
done things and come back, but not all of them
have or are capable of producing good maps. They don't
always bring back great data. Sometimes things get lost, sometimes
information comes back, and it's conflicting, so you know, once
you get up there kind of who knows. And she
explains all this as it's going up on the board,
and she also points to the portion that is circled
and she's circled on your map there, because that is
where I was sending Chester. It's the site that I
believe Chester's group rather, that's the site I believe that
this divination pool was being established at the outset of
this long lost Great War, and it's where the prophecy
scrolls should be, these ever scrolls, these permanent, perpetual scrolls.
The fact that someone is interested in that is weirdly
kind of a bad thing for Chester, but like kind
of a good sign. You had been asking why I
don't just go do these things myself, and the answer
is you saw how many different things I have happening here.
I don't want to be blunt or rude, but I
can't waste my time even now. There's every chance I
send you up there and you find out that the
cave caved in a million years a thousand years ago
and there's nothing worthwhile there, and then I've wasted a month,
And the things that I would lose or lose track
of or not be able to stay on top of
in a month if I go out there myself and
it's worth nothing, are significantly worse than me just paying
you whatever it takes to get you to go do it.
That's where I'm at. I do have other obligations here,
as I mentioned, and several of these other groups that
I have dispatched right now are working on things that
are equally or more important to me, and I can't
be in communicando for that amount of time. So I
take on this role as something of a taskmaster, a
dispatcher as it were, and hopefully all of the pieces
come together. Some of these things are not time critical,
but this one, as it turns out, is so here
is where we find ourselves. A couple of things that
site up in the mountains, no delays, good weather in
the summer. It takes you about a week to get there.
First portion of the journey pretty easy, open tundra, as
long as you're prepared for a track like that, it's
not too complicated. Second half you start climbing up into
the mountains in the foothills. The point you're looking for
is it's not quite at the highest point in the
Bulwark Mountains, but it's pretty close. Gonna get dicey up there.
You can't go in there kind of half cocked with
whatever you got. This is going to be something we
need to outfit you for, or you're just I'm just
sending you out there to freeze to death and die.
I can speak well, I don't really want to poke
at the bereaved too much, but I can speak to
Orlo the centaur. I can talk to him about possibly
securing secondhand some of the goods that they had acquired
for this trip themselves. I don't really want to bother
miss Cassie too much with that, but a lot of
it would be redundant if they planned to head south
and never use it again. And frankly, we'll pay them
better up here to reuse it. Then they'll get trying
to sell it in a city that doesn't need it.
So I'll send out a message and start working on that,
assuming you too want to take this on. Sorry, I
sound quite urgent right now, and it's because I've just
learned that somebody is trying to scoop this out from
under me, and I'm quite upset about it.
Speaker 3: Yes, maybe we have some time to concert amongst ourselves.
Speaker 1: That's fair, Actually, I respect that. No. I was going
to suggest I open up a line of credit over
at Gallio's Thin Winter Outfitters for you. I can provide
some guidance on what kind of gear you would need,
lodging rations, fire making, warm clothing, et cetera. You will
also probably want to secure amount or two. Whether you
decide to hire on extra help or whatever is up
to you. You decide kind of how you prefer to work.
Speaker 4: If Orlow, if I was going to say, if Orlow
came with us, can we ride him.
Speaker 1: She kind of just goes that is entirely between you
and the centaur, whichever way you want to go, whether
that's she's like, some centaurs find that rather offensive, and
then some I've known don't seem to care. So that's
really I think it's it comes down to your rapport. Yeah,
it's I'm just gonna tell you that's gonna come down
to your personal rapport with him. I don't know, great
you would know. So basically you count mechanically as like
a large creature. So the answer to that is not
a small horse, but certainly like a big or stronger one. Yeah. Yeah,
like a war horse or you know, some equivalent beast
of burden type deal. We wouldn't get you like a pony. Yeah. Well,
and she actually says, in point of fact, horses not
the thing to be taking out onto the tundra. I
don't expect Orlo did much better than you know, people
walking bipeds, as it were. There's a number of different
kinds of animals that people use to get around out here.
Dog sleds are popular. Something similar to that.
Speaker 5: Something to pull us, something to pull us that seems
like the best way to go.
Speaker 1: That's a good option. Sleds and a pulling animal that's
good in the ice and snow works well, especially if
you're hauling like heavier cargo for sure, and the ice
you can just skid. The downside you're gonna find is
that it's going to be really efficient in the open
ground and basically useless when you get in the mountains.
So that's the trade off. Something like a barreth you
could ride, which is a I don't know if you
guys would have encountered one or not. You can actually
roll for it if you'd like. That'll be knowledge we're
gonna say, And I sold eight on that. It's a
little bit like heavy heard of zebras?
Speaker 6: Like, it's not, Yeah, I only rolled the four So
Skink's never heard of zebras.
Speaker 1: Okay, once again, Farah like ah, yes, the cow goes move,
the barreth goes right, Uh, so Skink never heard of
these things. This is a weird Arctic animal, Farah. A
beareth is like a walrus polar bear thing. They're weird.
It's a big, shaggy, low slung animal, built white fur,
heavy set like a bear, has tusks, a big old tail,
and is particularly well adapted at scooting and scampering over
frozen graft. She goes, Yeah, I've seen people rig them
up to sleds. I've seen people put saddles on them.
Gallio can probably hook you guys up with somewhere to
rent them from. As I said, I'll provide a lot
of credit. They climb all right, especially if you can
get saddles that are made with that kind of thing
in mind. You do maybe need a good rapport with
them to do that sort of thing, but it's not
the hardest thing in the world. They're trained animals. Also,
not a terrible thing to have on your side in
a fight. If it likes you. If it doesn't like you,
it'll let you get eaten. They're not you know, they're carnivorous.
They're not gonna go out on a limb for things
that are mean to them. So just keep that in mind. Okay.
So I will give you however long you need to speak,
full disclosure. You're gonna be trusting me a little bit
if you speak here, because I am not in tending
to listen in on you, but very little goes on
here that I couldn't and I just want to be
transparent about that possibility. So if you would like to
leave and come back, If you would prefer that, I
will give you a promise of privacy and leave you
to I can leave you the room here and go.
I have many things to do and messages to send
and whatnot, but I just want to be clear that
you would be trusting me, so I won't take offense
if you choose not to. All right, decide amongst yourselves.
I'm gonna go down. I have to go to the workshop. Goodbye,
and she leaves.
Speaker 4: Okay, right right, right right?
Speaker 1: Hi cat, Okay, so.
Speaker 7: Oh there she is.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: Sure, are you having any are you having any like
gut reactions to this?
Speaker 8: H m hmm, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean
I'm going I just I'm wondering.
Speaker 9: Exactly. It sounds pretty bad, sounds pretty dangerous.
Speaker 3: M Do you think we can find him though, I
mean they all just disappeared. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yep,
he OSAs, But I think that Sive is much more
reliable for payment.
Speaker 1: Yeah. As you guys are talking, skank Pip is returned
to his nest on top of your head with his
shiny disco ball on a string, and he's just like
swinging it around in his beak in the candlelight and
like watching all the sparkles shine around the room, just.
Speaker 10: Like cute skink is also like, I mean, it is
pretty cool. I see I see why.
Speaker 9: I see why.
Speaker 2: I see why you liked it.
Speaker 1: She called it a fidget toy. Mother, No, not.
Speaker 7: A fidget door h mm hm m m.
Speaker 5: I I just I look up in the vicinity at
the top of my head and go, what do you think?
Speaker 1: Pip kind of like ruffles up, sits on his haunches
for a second and a and a gesture you guys
are familiar with, like the crow is deep in thought. Raven. Sorry,
just she smells funny, but she does business. She said shiny,
I got shiny. It likes shiny.
Speaker 8: I mean it's it seems it seems good enough, good
enough for me.
Speaker 9: Uh are we are?
Speaker 11: Do we need more weapons?
Speaker 9: Is that something that we should ask for or is
that something that we should buy on our way? Yeah,
let's talk to her about gear.
Speaker 1: But I think let's go ahead and.
Speaker 11: Say, Okay, also, Sarah, this stuff about her her sister
seems kind of shady, right, Okay.
Speaker 2: I just I just needed to get that out there.
Speaker 9: I just need to get that yeah, m hm.
Speaker 4: Yes, all right, Well, as long as listen, I've got
your back.
Speaker 2: We've got a skeleton jar now.
Speaker 8: Yeah, okay, all right, so we trounced back.
Speaker 1: How does she react to that? Right? Neutrallly? Uh? Well,
I was like, hi, crazy, low, bad, middle just good.
Come on down and you see the doorway to the
basement opens back up by itself.
Speaker 2: Oh all her stuff is so cool? Yes?
Speaker 1: Uh what do you say? As you come in? You
see her she's back over the workbench. The giant guy
construction arrangement is up on the wall, and she's like
working on something in front of her. There. M glad
to hear it. I've decided I was trying to rack
my brain. Skank got the skeleton jar. Love that seemed fitting.
Notice you seem enamored with my enchanting work. Fellow practitioner
of the arts thought it was only fair. It gets
you something to work with in that realm as well,
until we can get together and I can show you
how to make your own jars and such. And she
hands you what looks to be a small about a
foot by a foot square piece of it feels almost
like chalkboard, like a piece of slate. She goes, watch
this and then taps a little investment of either touches it,
and these fractal runic lines just sort of spread and
are traced through and you see they're like embedded in
the substance of this thing, kind of in between the
layers of its more than just slate there. And she goes,
that is an enchanter slate. And Chris is going to
send you the item description right now. Yeah, I think,
go ahead and read it for the show. M So
it lets you have a little portable, semi permanent room
slot that doesn't eat up your other resources. It is
a little deployable, like pre prepared thing. Describing takes like
a minute per slot. Typically. She kind of nods to
herself and like, yeah, I thought I had that one pegged.
Go ahead and roll a precision check for me. She
rolled pretty low on this. Uh you hear as you
are like looking down at this thing. She gotta go, p.
Speaker 9: What is Pip doing in his mind up there? Wow?
Speaker 1: That's my thought. So to reiterate once more, my chief
objective is a couple of things. While you guys were talking,
I put some feelers out for I know, the movers
and shakers, in the area. Traveling that far into the
tundra is not a simple task, even for two people
going about your business. We don't know who killed Chester yet. Vexingly,
I might have to talk to Estell Moore about that,
because it's become very relevant to my interests. We don't
know who killed Chester, presuming they are trying to mount
an expedition to get to this divining pool before us
that takes resources. As of yet, it doesn't look like
anyone's departed us heading in that direction, equipped with anything
that would get them up those mountains. So I think
we have a little bit of time. My suspicion is,
like you, they didn't know where they were trying to
get to until today. So I think we're roughly on
the same time scale here, because if they just went
running out of town, they're going to freeze to death.
That's it. Yes, m hm h m hm m. Well,
so I have two thoughts on that. One, we can
be discreet, There might be some ways to do that.
Two may but we don't want to be discreet. If
you know the assassin's coming. I was going to say,
I could watch your back discreetly. Keep using that word
and see if someone paints a target on you, but
obviously I mean to be fair, it is more of
a risk, So that might be the kind of thing
either option. We can coordinate with some of my allies
in town to make either option more viable. I think
getting things discreetly will take longer. Getting things overtly or
as if you don't know there's a target painted on
your back, might give us some more information, but it
is right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what if we just say we're going to go
get flakes because they didn't kill him for getting the flakes.
Nobody stole a single one of the flakes. What if
we just say we're going on a flake hunting expedition,
just like everybody else out here, and pretend like all
we care about is money, which you know is an
easy story for us.
Speaker 9: A lot of people will believe that.
Speaker 1: You see, Lady Sive is kind of like leaning in
doing this conspiratorial talk, and you say that and she
kind of just goes. I occasionally get really focused on
my own stuff, and I feel a little silly that
I didn't think of that. Yeah, you guys got a
lot more going on that meets the eye, and I
respect that, So that works.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, we really lead into our reputations sometimes
and it works works in our favor.
Speaker 1: Okay, so yeah, you could mount a flake expedition. That
makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 9: I think that's that's what we're going to say we're doing.
Speaker 4: We've decided we would also like to be rich, so
we're gonna go look for flakes.
Speaker 1: It is a good motivation and I have to remember
that for people.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, not everyone's outlooking for scrolls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really makes me wonder more about why these guys.
Speaker 2: Are But anyway, cool, Well that's decided.
Speaker 1: Lovely, So kay, got you or down payment? Stuff goes
without saying so nitty gritty of the deal here, I
absolutely must have the perpetual scroll of divination that may
or may not be at this site. Anything else you
find along the way, I will give you premium, top
dollar if you give me first pick of anything interesting archaeological.
You've seen what I collect in terms of these old constructs,
anything archaeo tech kind of of that nature's of strong
interest to me. I won't say I have a claim
on it. I will say that I will outbid people
on it. Anything else you find along the way is
totally up to you to whether or not you want
to haul it back or not, as long as it
doesn'tjeopardize getting the scroll back in a relatively safe and
timely manner. I don't care what you do. Please don't
get distracted by the first vein of raw flakes you
see and abandoned the mission and come back and get murdered.
That was not ideal for anybody, including the dead, but
particularly because we're under somewhat of a time crunch. Now,
that'd be bad. So I'll say this. I can give
you two hundred gold up front right now, just as
pocket change for both of you too, hundergold a piece,
and you hear Pip gos and she goes, and a
silver for Pip, they're his favorite. Pip settles back down.
So I can give you two hundred gold a piece
right now as a down payment pocket change for taking
on this task. I've sent a message to Gallio at
Thin Winter Outfitters with a line of credit. That's where
you can probably secure mounts or transportation and most of
your winter year related If and she fishes around in
her infinite pocket and pulls out hands you both a
black coin. She goes, that's my marker if you need
to procure anything else in town, any of the merchants here,
most of the reputable well, I'll put it this way.
The reputable ones know it. If you give that to them,
I will pay your tab up to a point for
things you need to go on this expedition. If you
go on a spending spree, I'm not going to make
the payments and they're going to come after you for
nonsense crap. But you know anything related. You know she's
handing you a credit card. Yeah, she's got the side black.
She's like, anything you think you need within reason to
go on an expedition like this, weapons, armor, gear, potions,
whatever you have, my blessing.
Speaker 2: I need a ball cash.
Speaker 1: She's like, I would get a message about that. We'd
have to have a conversation. But warm gear, all that
kind of stuff. So Gallio's is covered. Leave that with
anyone else that you need to place an order in
with and they will fill it over the next day
or two and get the marker back to me or
you and we can kind of proceed that way. If
you run into any complications other than that, let me know. Cool.
So Gallia would be the guy to talk to about
what it takes to hike out into the frozen tundra.
It's kind of his whole jam. He's actually from north
of Europe, in the bulwarks. I think he well, he
had mentioned that too.
Speaker 9: He's my boy.
Speaker 1: He had mentioned the running into you two the other night.
He seems to have really become enamored with a certain
type of smoking weed. Now I don't really understand why.
I mean, he's Guyans have an amount of biological matter
to their corpus, but not.
Speaker 9: It's obvious why.
Speaker 1: I don't think he can get high, is my point.
Speaker 9: It looks cool. It just looks cool.
Speaker 1: He does look slightly cooler. I will say that.
Speaker 9: It's all about the optic side.
Speaker 2: Optics.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, gotta have something do while you're standing around.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be really honest with you. I wasn't prepared
to have this conversation anyway.
Speaker 9: That's Gallio's gunner back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Gallio's a good guy to start with. I would
also you can also talk to the former crew, possibly
salvaging some of their gear they don't want it. I
think that's still a good route to take. They can
maybe tell you something about the journey they didn't go
the whole way, but they made it up into the foothills.
Might be a good place to start if you're on
good terms with them. Beyond that, I don't think there's
anything else I can do for you at this moment.
Is there anything you need from me?
Speaker 2: I think we've got everything we could possibly think of.
Speaker 1: Okay, right, Oh, let's see, so you guys had gone
to the long haul in kind of the early to
late mid afternoon. Fight happened, travel happened, conversation happened. It's
probably past dinner time, getting towards like later evening at
this point, like eight o'clock, nine o'clock at night. She
would tell you, like, realistically, arranging everything you need for
this expedition is going to take more than a day. There.
I'm not even sure what. There's only so many like
mounts and transportation options available in town. At a given time.
You may want to visit a number of different shops, locations, vendors, etc.
So I would plan to stock up for an expedition.
If you need to store anything, like get your goods together,
Gallio has spaces where you can do that, or you
can arrange to like set off from here. That's fine,
And if you need to get a message to me,
you can either return here and speak to the gate
or Roland can always get me a message. In fact,
I need to check in on him. He should be
over at Pulk's getting patched up. Now that's a good play, okay.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I think we also might not go flashing the
black coin all that much.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, keep that specifically to like the proprietors of establishments. Yeah,
that's who I've made those arrangements with, reputable ones. If
you go scoping around the back alleys and making shady deals,
it's not gonna do any good.
Speaker 3: All right, All right, well, Sive, this has been a
most auspicious meeting.
Speaker 1: Gotta love that auspiciousness. Okay, yeah, right, I have some
things to do and arrangements to make of my own,
So I will see you out now, if that's all right,
and will be speaking again soon.
Speaker 9: We'll be off.
Speaker 4: Kate trots up in her little sock feet and.
Speaker 9: Puts on her boots again and is ready to go. Yeah,
where do we want to go first? Are we going to?
Are we just going to go back to our room first?
Speaker 12: Because Orlo is staying at the same place as us,
do we wonder if we might run into him?
Speaker 9: Yeah, oh yeah, let's let's go home. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: So gm point of order, you will remain rattled until you,
guys choose to take a long rest. So that is
there's a number of options here, and RELIC is kind
of this is to speak a little meta right now.
Relic is kind of built around these situations where it's like,
do we want to press on in less than optimal
conditions or do we want to take time and approach
things fresh but potentially you know, lose time or other things.
So the easiest way to get rid of an affliction
like rattled, which Ferris sustained in your fight, the easiest
way to get rid of an affliction is to take
a full rest. For each week spent during a full rest,
you remove one D four afflictions without consuming any other
resources or material or whatever. There are magic items, potions, healers,
other things in the world that can circumvent that. Some
class ability is also allowed to do it to a
limited extent. So the question I think Farrah and Skink
would be grappling with right now is like you could
prep for an expedition, make arrangements, whatever, and still count
that as a rest as long as you're not adventuring
during that time. And we'll kind of skip through that
a little bit. And Farah only has one affliction, she
would go into that fresh, but it would take you
at least a week before you set off, or you
can press on potentially get the road ahead of whoever
these people are who murdered Chester, and get to your
destination in advance of them. But Pharaoh's going in with
an affliction, which is doubly bad, not only for the
affliction's penalties that it inflicts by itself, but every subsequent
affliction is worse. The more you have, the more dangerous
they become. Like you can't roll an instant death affliction
if you only have a couple, but if you stack
up a bunch every time you roll, there's a risk
of just like being permanently incapacitated or majorly afflicted or dead.
Speaker 13: Okay, so well.
Speaker 14: Yeah, take a week of rest during the time in town.
Speaker 1: Here, I will say, you could also try and seek
out other ways.
Speaker 6: I was just gonna say, we have two hundred gold,
let's go buy a doctor, let's go buy a potion.
Speaker 1: You guys are like on her doorstep now if you
want to, like, knock again. Okay, after a moment.
Speaker 5: You're like, you asked if we needed anything else, and
I just thought of something.
Speaker 1: Yes, the door just opens up again. Go ahead and
actually either one of you can make a precision check
for me.
Speaker 2: Or did you say either one of you or.
Speaker 1: Yeah it take a pick if you want to do
it or not, which actually brings me to a good point.
The other thing that happens when you take a full
rest is all your fate points go away. Six six
and eleven, So six skank you just oh, yeah, we
forgot something. Knock and nae knock eleven farah as she
opens the door. You see, Sy was like getting ready
to head out right after you. Guys, Yeah, what's uh?
What's up right? That does make sense? Okay. Best options
for healing in town are Polk's hut. He's an old
healer alchemist type person who's been in Usk for a
very long time. He might be able to tell you
something that can help you out. Or you can always
head over to the Temple of the Thaw and seek
some divine intervention. Temple of the Thaw, yes, uh, you
guys would actually know that is the Institute that Estelle
Quick was associated with the paladin slash sheriff. Okay, yeah,
that's a good plan for sure. I was actually going
to go check in on Roland. I think he he
should have been over to see Polk himself by now.
But if I know the big lummocks, he's probably tending
to somebody else and ignoring internal injury. So I'm gonna
go drag him over there, and maybe we might we
might cross paths, so anything else fantastic. All right, Well,
I'm walking out the door pass to you at this point,
so good good, Right, So she does.
Speaker 5: This person who's like three to i'ms taller than us
just like just like walks right through the middle of
us past.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, he could probably like step over you if
she needed to, like a railing, you know. She walks
out into the snow, and the door closes behind just
by itself behind.
Speaker 15: Her, Pops, I don't know if you would know that,
m I think late.
Speaker 1: So just intuitively pretty safe. Bet you can always find
someone at a temple, private business who knows. Also, you
don't really know what kind of place Polks is. It
sounds like he might just live there.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I think that makes the most sense.
Speaker 2: Let's go, we go, Yeah beautiful at two one hundred
gold heavier each a piece?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, is it?
Speaker 2: I don't know. They're small, they're small.
Speaker 1: Yes, one ounce coin of fifty dollars face value, uh
weighs one gold troy ounce, So a gold piece in
Relict is a little less than half of that. So
they're about half an ounce apiece. So let's say, I'm not.
Speaker 2: Gonna bother with what what's one hundred hours?
Speaker 1: I don't know what the hell a troy ounces and
I'm not going to look into it is Just engaged
with the content and leave me an angry comment if
you want. So two hundred yeah, two hundred times point
five five by sixteen. Yeah, yeah, it's like six and
a half pounds worth of gold. That's not that So
that's that's a relatively easy workout. But I think you
start to realize, like, oh yeah, so if you were
playing around with like making thousands of gold on transactions,
I think I understand why people use platinum. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
for sure. A gold coin in Relict is worth about
twenty real life US dollars as of the time of
this recording. By the way, do I have that conversion
in the rule book. Yes, yes, I do. Yeah, two
hundred golds a lot she gave you.
Speaker 2: You don't know how much gear costs. We don't know
how much.
Speaker 1: First of all, First of all, she gave you four
thousand dollars a piece for walking around money. No, two
hundred gold times twenty dollars is four thousand dollars. Yeah,
I used a calculator, so yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys
just got eight grand to go stock up and a
line of credit. You should be fine. Okay, Well, actually,
for an Arctic expedition, you definitely would die in the snow.
But that's all right. We're gonna we're gonna handwave that.
Speaker 2: This is fantasy.
Speaker 1: There's less inflation. You're not buying a Toyota highloxten.
Speaker 2: Listen, I'm a goblin. Okay, let's let's argue about money
with the goblins. Okay, where are we? What is happening?
Speaker 5: Yeah, people sleep on the side of Mount Rainier.
Speaker 2: Come on, we can go.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people die, It's yeah,
they do.
Speaker 2: They do die, yeah, and they leave the body there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, most of them survive.
Speaker 2: Honestly.
Speaker 5: The thing that skink is most excited about is finding
dead bodies in the mountains.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I've been trying to like genuinely think of like
weird frozen necromancy stuff to do throughout this story because
I just I know, not only do I know that
you guys are going to search for it, but things
will come up anyways.
Speaker 2: It's just a matter of time. It's just a matter
of time.
Speaker 1: Yes, we'll say that the course of this conversation on
currency conversions with somehow knows us dollar can come out
as taken the course of time it takes. Yeah, Pip
is a transmensional being, is really what we're learning. He's
a cat in our reality. Hey there, this is your
friendly neighborhood game Master cd Corgan dropping in midway through
the episode to say a very heartfelt thank you for myself, Mattie,
and Marissa for your support and listenership of the Next Archive.
One of the things I am most proud of on
this show has been the incredible music and sound effects
that we've been able to pull together to bring our
episodes to life. Nearly every single sound effect and all
of these awesome musical tracks that you have heard in
the Next Archive thus far have come from Monument Studios,
and we are so happy to announce them as our
first official sponsor. If you want to bring your TTRPG
experience to life for your home games or your own productions,
head on over to Monument studios dot net and use
code nix n y x to get ten percent off
any order. I was so happy to get the sponsorship
opportuny because this is truly a product that I was
one hundred percent sold on and actively using on the
show before I ever spoke to the creators. So please
go forward, tell me sent you and enjoy. So you
guys arrive at Midwinter sun and the mayor barkeep is
once again, I believe Maria what's her name is once
again working at the front. She's welcome back in. We
be staying another night. We've kept your room open on
the presumption. Fantastic. Would you like me to just start
a tab for you at this point or would you
like to pay ahead of time?
Speaker 2: We definitely want to tap great.
Speaker 1: Great, well, that's splendid. I believe it is another silver
a night for as long as you would like to
stay here. We do have some complimentary food and other meals.
It's sale for a discount tonight, we also have our
Harlequin troupe is performing for the next hour. They've been
here since dinner, and we'll be returning several more nights
the week.
Speaker 2: Please tell me they have a certain genre.
Speaker 5: What is the genre of Harlequin music that we will
be listening to this evening?
Speaker 1: I found a random music genre generator and it came
up with cy prog. I don't know for the next
one is, Oh, there's a good one. Sung poetry.
Speaker 2: Sung poetry.
Speaker 5: That is that is absolutely that is one hundred percent
what Harlequin troops will be singing in Osk.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, absolutely excellent. Yes, there's not really a stage in
the midwinter sun. I think you've kind of gathered this
is from your first impression of the midwinter sun. This
is an older building. It's one of probably the oldest
buildings in Osk, and I think you might have a
sense that this was once like a communal hall of
some kind, like in the earliest settlement. Way more efficient
to build one big long haul or dugout or something
and heat a bunch of rooms where people are staying
all than it is to have a bunch of free
standing homes out here in the middle of the ice,
so never really a stage built. What there is right
now is a troop of performers on the lowest tier,
closest to the bonfire that warms the entire central room,
and they are performing sung poetry as they march in circles,
performing to all quadrants of the room and casting dancing
shadow puppets on the wall with various props and fans
and trinkets and such to go along with deep performances.
The one they're performing right now is a somewhat saucy
limerick called a Girl from Springs End who sprung and
sprung from end to end with all the boys in town.
But that is it's a dirty limerick. It's like the
Girl from Nantucket type deal. And they're performing it with
some shockingly allied abate shadow puppets that are projecting themselves
over a number of patrons, about ninety percent of whom
seem into it, and the other ten percent seemed deeply offended,
which I feel is what they were going for. Other
things to know about this troop of performers as they
wrap up this saucy number, all of them appear to
be in their later years, a lot of gray hair,
and frizzled beards as they're kind of marching around and
just having a grand old time. They're definitely a group
like playing bagpipes and moomoos like that kind of vibe.
These are your entertainers this evening. As they wrap up
their performance and they take a bow to mostly applause
and a couple of jeers that they seem more excited
about than anything else, they stand back up and say,
all right, thank you, won it all for your indulgence
this evening. We've got time for a couple more numbers.
Any requests. We've got it epic of daring do and
heroism or a little fun one? Any takers? Any numbers?
What do we got?
Speaker 5: I think I look at you hoping that we're both
gonna say a different one at the same time.
Speaker 2: The little fun one. Okay, okay, great, because I was
going to say the little fun one.
Speaker 16: Yeah, yeah, the fun one.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, oh boy. Let's do a little role. How
about this?
Speaker 2: Oh let's roll for it. Let's roll for all for you.
Speaker 1: Roll a D twenty and whoever wins, we'll say the
crowd is more on that side.
Speaker 2: Okay, Roll eighty eighteen.
Speaker 1: The funny one, The performer looks to you and goes
the boy from Basa it is, and he goes into
like it's more of like Marissa helped me out here,
what's the fast paced marengue marenga?
Speaker 5: I just think I think it's it's gonna be like
a like a banjo kind of holedown sound.
Speaker 1: That's better. Yeah, it's kind of like a hoe down style.
And it's a story about a boy from the flying
City of Basa and the lads and lasses he had
in every port along the way, and what a lovely
day he was having until he realized that the city
had returned back to its point of origin and they
were all waiting for him. That's the gist of the story.
So he goes through this whole thing, and the rest
of it is him trying to flee as the Flying
City of Basa hunts him down and he gets his
comeuppance in the end. That is this lovely number. I
wish I had the skill to do a live hodown,
but I absolutely do not, And that's a favor to
all of you, But feel free to make one. You
guys are welcome to retire to your rooms or hang
out in the common hall for a while. These guys
will be going for at least another hour or two.
Speaker 2: It seems like I think we need to eat.
Speaker 1: Okay, lovely, how hard you'll roll for it?
Speaker 2: Is?
Speaker 1: She? Do you know what I mean? Sarah can handle herself. Like,
it's up to you if Sarah wants to get that drunk.
It's just a matter of probably three silver cool Yeah,
what were you gonna say, Skink?
Speaker 5: I was like, I first I was gonna ask, can
you drink this the rattle away? Or do you drink?
Can you drink to such an extent that you don't
notice how rattled you are, like because of how the
drunkness and the rattledness interact.
Speaker 2: I'm just I'm ass it.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm gonna say that, even in our fantasy world's
alcohol does not improve the prognosis of head injuries. So no,
but it's certainly a thing Farah can try. Skin are
getting up to as Farah is getting blitzed.
Speaker 5: So this is one of my favorite versions of Farah
because it comes out probably so infrequently, and Skink is
overjoyed and delighted that this is the turn of events today, Like,
not only is there now six pounds of gold on
her person. Now her bff is gonna get salot and
and it's like that this is this is the best,
This is absolutely wonderful. And I will be drinking also,
but I think I probably drink more often than Sarah
does usually, so Skin's gonna like hold back a little bit, like, oh,
it's my turn to be moderately responsible today.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Pip is standing in your hair and doing that like
bird dance you ever see like the cockatoons, just doing this, and.
Speaker 2: He's just the.
Speaker 1: Occasionally like as Parah gets more and more unhinged, just
swinging his little rastler around, party Pip Pip. So you
guys tuck into it, Farah. As the performers are getting
towards the end of their set, they're getting a little looser,
a little more, you know, just ridiculous and unhinged. Yeah,
they was. They were literally just about to stand up
and be like any requests from the crowd. And you
approach this guy, skink.
Speaker 2: Stands up on her chair and is like.
Speaker 17: Wow, like you haven't even gotten like anything out yet,
And I'm already like cheering for you to convince them
that this is absolutely the thing that they must do.
Speaker 2: This is, this is what.
Speaker 16: Yeah, yeah, Oh we're so ready.
Speaker 1: Go ahead and bull for me. And here's what we're
gonna do. Go do Because you're you're acting as the
hype man, effectively, you also roll the cleverness and we're
going to add half of whatever you get to Pharah's result.
Ten skank would you get.
Speaker 2: I'm rolling, I'm rolling, I'm rolling. You wanted me to
roll one D twelve?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I rolled the twelve.
Speaker 1: Do you want the fade point or do you want
to explode it?
Speaker 2: Oh, let's explode it A one?
Speaker 1: So what's your cleverness? Mike is three, so thirteen sixteen,
So another eight to Farah's role is gonna put you
at a solid eighteen because I said we'll have we'll
add half a skinks, so a solid eighteen. Farah, I
think you get a significant round of a plus for
like a lot of people just being like.
Speaker 2: Done, all right, all right done.
Speaker 1: You're like there was a big energy of like, oh,
this drunk gnome is climbing on the stage and then
she just nails it and they're like oh okay, and
like Pip like takes a lap around the fire and
everything like oh she has a bird. Okay, cool. This
is like maybe this is part of the show. Cool. Uh,
so you get a great performance the harlequin that you
came up to. This old guy, he's got these two tiny,
little like super thick lensed glasses. This human dude with
his scraggly gray hair. And if you have do you
remember that old meme of like the guy with like
I've got a windmill in my beard. Uh? He looks
like that with just this huge, wispy, voluminous beard and
this really thick, like not even handlebar mustache, just giant, thick,
puffy mustache. And he just goes, I was pretty good.
You should showing come on the road with us. Oh,
it was good stuff. And as he's saying that to you,
you do hear from the back of the room, boom.
I don't mind that old asshole. We've been getting hackled
by him all night. We're competing to see who can
piss him off the most. It's been a lot of fun.
Out of the girl from springs End really got his
panties in a holler. Get what I'm saying. But you
were wonderful. We're gonna be here all week. We're the
Bitter Road belligerents. That's what I said. Half of the
group didn't like it. They went somewhere else and we
kept going. Yup, Yeah, Now get the puke bucket, Cheryl
and Cheryl the other girl, the woman with him looks
like his female carbon copy, just holds a bucket up
in front of you. Get it all. That's two points
and they put it down. Just go. We've been coming
up and down the bitter road for years. We stop
here in Osk, we turn around, head it all all
the way back down to tumble Free. I'm here to
tell you Oskar is always the craziest and it's always
the fanciest hotel too. It's lack of accommodation options what
it is. But we've been coming here since the very beginning.
That was our set. Everybody. Let's give it up for
our volunteer from the audience, Missus Parah and the bird
just again from the bag. Fuck you too, Jerry.
Speaker 7: Uh huh, it's a real poum.
Speaker 2: Wow, it is a fantastic poem.
Speaker 1: You did.
Speaker 2: I mean truly, I'm part of the audience that's just
like astounded. Also, uh, Skink is going to take an action.
Speaker 18: Uh in the middle of all this skik is so
mad that someone is booing. I am going to take
one of my little chipmunk skeletons out of my bag
and send a zombie chipmunk to harass the mean man
in the audience.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy going ahead. Well, we'll see what happens here.
That's totally fair, okay, zombie chipmunk.
Speaker 2: Zombie chipmunk, just gonna sleep, so stealthy.
Speaker 1: Okay, oh yeah, oh yeah, a precision check from you.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's gonna be a seven.
Speaker 1: Seven okay, uh, Maddie, evens or odds, it's excellent. Okay.
I've rolled two dice and I was deciding who in
the room beat the seven there because one of them
wasn't at twelve when the other one was a three.
You said okay, he said odds. Thanks, you did say odds.
Uh So the twelve was I gotta be fair with it.
The twelve was the guy you were talking to, who
is now introduced to. That's Cheryl, that's Jerry, I'm Jerome.
That over there is Susie Hugh A well, Susie Q
is that a thing? I don't remember, but he's just
going around. He's introducing you to all the players. They're
pretty happy with how that went. People are like giving
them tips and like putting coins in there in their collection.
The person who clocked it was actually Maria, the mayor bartender,
who sees skink scamper off under the table or you know,
kind of crouch over dump a rodent skeleton out, and
she just goes, ma'am. And then the rodent skeleton gets
up and scampers off, and drunk Pharah sees from down
by the bonfire, the guy who was booing shoots up.
What uh and it's actually a minotaur. He stands up
and is just like ah, like flips over a table
and is trying to stomp on something that is scampering
around and like crawling up his bag and get it off.
This is the scene, and we find ourselves in what
do we do.
Speaker 2: I'm just quietly sitting at my seat, sipping my drink.
Speaker 1: YEP, I need one of you. This is not your
characters making a roll. I just want to offload it
to someone else because it's fun. Someone needs to roll
a DP one hundred for me.
Speaker 2: Oh I want you and Maddie, that's gonna be so
fun for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, why not. I'll tell you before you tell
me the result. What I'm doing here is breaking up
the percentages in my head in terms of, like, how's
the crowd feel about this situation right now? So we
rolled a ninety one. I might got all of that
and just put it in the after show.
Speaker 16: Yeah, do it.
Speaker 1: We rolled a ninety one. That's very good. Nobody was
happy with this minotaur, just this pruish minotaur booing all
of the dirty stuff in the show the whole night.
And I'm gonna say, because it's funnier, this guy stands
up and you see he's actually like very well dressed,
like he's one of the ones who's here because this
is the fanciest hotel in town. Very well dressed minotaur
in like the equivalent of like a three piece suit
and a waist vest or a you know, like a
waist I'm gonna try to waistcoat. He's got like tails,
you know, like on his dapper little snowsuit and everything,
and he's like and the squirrel is like crawling around
and like trying to get into his coat and everything.
Problem is, he's also a minotaur, so he like launches
one of the tables over it hits an orc. The
orc stands up and chucks a tankard at him. Maria
is just like, great, buddy, stop and chaos is erupting here.
But with a ninety one, the crowd is more against
the minotaur than they are whatever's bothering him. Yeah, so
that's good. Your problem, immediately, skink, is you feel a
hand clamp over your shoulder. Look up to see Maria
standing next to an Erson, which is like a big
bear person who looks to be her bouncer.
Speaker 8: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: It's like, ma'am, I really must insist that you not
summon dead rodents in the hotel premises.
Speaker 2: I'm going he didn't summon it. It was mine.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna say, just for the sake of setting
up what's happening here, she's about to ask you forcefully
to leave. So if you want to make an argument
against that, this is your opportunity to do so. Try
and go for a check, or do something else, or
say what you want to say.
Speaker 2: Listen, if it just got loose, do you just want
me to call it back?
Speaker 1: If you could stop the situation, that would be swell.
Speaker 2: Fine. And I just snapped my fingers to recall my little,
my little dark, my darling, little chipmunk.
Speaker 1: You're darling, little Chipmunk's right, Camper's back over and crawls
up onto your table, we'll say.
Speaker 2: And I just look at Maria with this little look
on my face and was like, I'm sorry you got out.
Speaker 1: You can make a we'll call it a cleverness check.
It's gonna be a hard one. I'm gonna say you
need at least a fourteen.
Speaker 2: I got a six, right, She.
Speaker 1: Goes, man, I've sent the porters up to your room.
They're gathering your belongings, and I need you to to leave.
Speaker 2: And Sigist huh no, And I'm like, I is it
really necessary?
Speaker 1: I'm afraid so your creature is attacking the other guests
and has caused quite a bit of damage. You can
leave now or after we've tallied up the damage to
the property. Yeah, totally, you could approach the bench. The bitch.
Maria is going like she's not even like a Karen
in the situation because technically it is smashing up her
common room and like she's the proprietor. It's totally fair,
but she's got that energy of like, ma'am, I'm the
manager and you've got to go. That was the key
phrase here, that's the key phrase that's going to let
you also get a crack at this cleverness check. I
will say Maria is not a cold hearted person. I
said you had to beat to fourteen before. Marissa, all right,
I'm going to subtract. I just rolled up a thing
for it. I've subtracted three from that. You've got to
clear an eleven. I see, she just kind of goes
be that as it may. I think you understood. Yeah,
how many bold coins? Ten? Yeah? What's this worth to you? Yeah? Totally.
There's a really good chance. Yeah, there's a really good
chance you can buy your way out of the situation. Okay,
all right, I just rolled a dice, so I know
what it takes to buy you your way out of
this situation. So you're you're you're putting up eleven against
that mystery number right now? Okay, is eleven your final number?
Stone just twelve gold, which is the equivalent of what
one hundred and twenty nights? Stay great in your room?
Speaker 2: Three months?
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, four months. Yeah, the room is kind of
settled down now. The creature has been recalled back. This
minotaur is fuming and cursing and spitting and yelling at
the performers and yelling at the people who laughed at him.
The crowd is definitely on not his side. So Maria,
absolutely stone faced, holds out her hand. She puts it
all into a pocket. He looks at the bear, the Ersen.
Mister Wallaby has been a terrible nuisance for this entire performance.
We pay good money to have these performers here and
give our guests a good time, and I will not
stand for this amount of heckling and belligerence during the activities.
You too, I would take it as a kindness if
you spent the rest of the evening in your rooms,
which you have now paid for, we'll save for the week.
Speaker 5: The week.
Speaker 1: And she just sort of points to the bouncer who
goes over the Ersen, probably the only person in here
who is close to the size of a full sized minotaur,
who grabs this guy and just zero fox given just
as this guy by the collar and starts dragging him
out the door. As he's still like doing that, like
got something got me? You're all animals. This is this
is ridiculous, Just like the just storming out of this establishment,
causing a ruckus.
Speaker 14: Uh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it turns out paying for three months free economy
room is more than enough for Maria to be like,
all right, all right, she's not gonna give anything.
Speaker 5: We hate him too. Again, I also know we have
two hundred each. This doesn't feel like that much of
a problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Maria, just doing the calculation of like they
are immediately my most lucrative guests since I.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. And this gink blows Maria a kiss.
Speaker 1: Absolutely stonefaced, as this is this poor aquatic marror woman
who has made her life up here on the ice
and is just like, what, I run a nice business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh incredible.
Speaker 1: You guys head up to your room. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I have a I have a game mechanic question.
Speaker 5: So, now that I have animated this little zombie chipmunk,
can I deanimate it or does it.
Speaker 2: Just stay like that?
Speaker 1: So until you get rid of it?
Speaker 18: Uh?
Speaker 1: The problem is now you have an undead chipmunk crawling around,
which is not, as you can see, necessity. It's better
than having an undead person walking around with you because
you can like stuff a chipmunk in a pocket, But
this thing is animated until you decide otherwise or it
is destroyed. But once used in that way, you can't
reuse the same skeleton. So you've you've spent that skeleton
and what you want?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, well I think so we all go up
to our room, and Skink is just like, I hate
to just I hate to just put this candle out.
You know, it's such a nice little candle.
Speaker 1: Sure, if you have pulled it out, Pip is absolutely
standing on its head and just riding it around the
room like a room b.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's still drunk. And I was like, Pharah, do
do you want to keep it? Should we keep it
in the room? I know we can't let it out
again here? Should I put it outside?
Speaker 13: I know, I know.
Speaker 2: I usually like these things to have a goal. I
just it doesn't have a goal right now.
Speaker 1: So the nature of necromancy, these undead thralls do not
do anything. Skink does not will them to do so
right now. If you've commanded it to be like marching
around the room, it's doing that and like acting like
a chipmunk to the best of its abilities. But if
you have not given it instructions, it is just sitting
there like taxidermy.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's that's hilarious.
Speaker 5: I was just gonna say, if it only does things
that I want to do, maybe I'm just gonna I
like the rooma suggest it like, maybe I'm just gonna
have it like do lapse.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna have it do lapse around the corner
so that nothing comes in at night without it alerting me.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah for the.
Speaker 1: Before the entirety of the night. You guys just here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is like not that it doesn't feel unnatural, briskake.
I think to be in a place where there's crawling sounds.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2: But yeah yeah, so all right, and with that, I
guess we all pass out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you guys pass out for the evening. It is
a new day. You know what we have to do now?
Roll for pip. Okay, so we've done evens and odds
a couple of times. I think the fun way to
do it today is gonna be roll off, roll off,
and if you tie, we're going up to D twenties,
and if you tie again, we're going to do one hundreds.
Speaker 2: Okay, you said roll D twelve right, Yeah, Okay, I
got a four.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, hey, he's alternated every day so far. Uh pipes.
You guys wake up to find Pip nestled down nice
and snug in his perch inside of Fara's hood yay
drinking bath mother.
Speaker 2: And then I just roll over.
Speaker 5: I'm still my eyes aren't even open yet, but I
was like, you were incredible.
Speaker 2: You did your poem and it was amazing.
Speaker 1: I have slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch
the face of God's.
Speaker 2: Parah. They loved it. They loved it. Yeah, and still rattled.
Now you're rattled with a hangover.
Speaker 1: Rough morning.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, well you say that every time.
Speaker 1: Oh, and that's why you see it march past your headboard.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And then Skink goes like, yeah, it should still be here,
Chippy should still be there, Pharah. We already apologized. We
apologized with money. You apologized with so much money.
Speaker 2: We don't need to say anything.
Speaker 7: She loves us.
Speaker 2: I don't know. You grabbed a fistful of gold. That's
why we're still here. It's okay, We're gonna tell everybody
we're flake hunters. We're flake hunters. We're flake hunters. It's fine.
Do you do you want me to come with you?
Speaker 5: Or you go?
Speaker 2: Okay, it's Polk you gotta go to Polk's.
Speaker 13: I want to.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love to go see my buddy Gallio.
You're sure you don't want to come.
Speaker 6: Okay, okay, okay, yeah, Pip will take care of you.
Just don't don't apologize with any more money. Okay, okay,
you you apologized with enough money, I think.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm mm hmmm. A matt dull dull metal.
Speaker 1: Oh, Maria does not work the morning shifts. But I'll say,
as you come down, you see the I believe it
was a copper Gnome was the morning barkeeper this week.
And you do see the large erson bouncer standing over
by the door from last night. Yeah, he's a huge
again bear person, right, massive dude. He's got kind of
that like Eurasian bear of like black and white, striped
and ringed in different places. Yeah, like a sunbear exactly.
So he's just this big, like not a polar bear
like kind of like a sunbaar coloration and huge, hulking build.
Another just large, massive guy. And he kind of he's
standing there just leaning up against the wall, was probably
getting towards the end of his night shift. Just speak
menotaur was a dicky mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, uh, did
you guys sleep in do you think?
Speaker 2: Probably?
Speaker 1: Sure? For sure.
Speaker 2: It's like, so.
Speaker 1: I've been ask this time of year, still dark out,
like not even approaching dawn yet. But you do see,
for probably the first time since you've been up here,
clear skies. So Faris steps out and sees overhead hanging
the borealis, wavy, wispy strands of light of different colors,
a little bit different the borealis of Rubica compared to
those of real world Earth. At times, I'm gonna say,
in fact, go ahead and roll a precision check for me, Skink.
You can roll two if you've gone outside with Farah.
If you've stayed inside, then don't worry about it.
Speaker 2: I think I'm in the room.
Speaker 5: Just watch, yeah, I think now I'm having my Chipmun's
doing summersaults. Now I'm away, gonna need to watch.
Speaker 1: Just doing a little chipmunk circus hips with Farah today.
But I've got my friend Chippy. That's right, dirty twelve beautiful.
You do see that in Rubica, the borealis. It's a
little bit different in that. Occasionally it's like, how do
I want weird analogy? Have you ever seen those experiments?
Those demonstrations where they put like fine grains of sand
on top of like subwifers. Yeah, it's like the different
radial type patterns. Borealis of rubica react in a similar
way transiently, like as they hit the atmosphere and kind
of ripple across. It's not so much that they're they're
within a rigid pattern. It's that there are distinct bands
and paths and channels where they flare brighter as they
kind of wave across them. And this is just a
fun visual effect that you see as you're out here,
and like the coloration kind of blooms and brightens a
little bit as it kind of passes across these different huge,
enormous like you're not seeing this crazy intricate little pattern,
but you do see these kind of like greater uh
what am I trying to say, These greater patterns, these
greater convalescence points, these greater points of reaction.
Speaker 15: M m hmm.
Speaker 1: I'm actually gonna say. As you're standing out there, it
takes you a moment, but you realize that there's actually
a person kind of off to one side standing there
as well. You look over and you see Maria standing
there with what smells like a mug of warm cider
looking up same as you. That's why I stayed up here.
I get it. I do heard your uh, I heard
your pass and the message along to uh uh to
trout back there. But you're fine. I get it. Guy
was being an ass. I just can't and I want
to put too fine a point on it. Uh. It's
hard up here. It is, and you know, we do
a lot to try and keep things comfortable. It takes
a lot of work and it's very frustrating when people
take that for granted. I know you. You were just
enjoying yourself, and I think I can see your friend
was sticking up for you. That's nice. I I don't
hate it. I get it. If the dude hadn't been
smashing up half of my furniture, I probably would have
laughed at it. But yeah, yeah, I don't know him.
He's new. Mm she uh, She passes over the mug. Yeah,
there's just a little little bite of whiskey in it. Yeah, yeah,
I thought it might help. I try. I try. Yeah, yeah,
it's uh, And she gives you directions kind of. It's
it's a little ways across town, but not crazy. I
mean nothing here is super far. It's just everything's a
pain in the butt to walk to. Yeah, you know,
it's it's over. There is the rolling doing okay mm hmmm. Yeah,
if you when you come back this evening or whatever,
if you, if I'm not here, leave a message I'd
like to know. Yeah, he's uh, I don't know him
super well, but same business. See him around a long time. Yeah,
him and that that Sid I've been here a couple
of years now. Yeah, I don't know her. They came
in together. I thought she, uh she owned the long
Haul for a while because her and Roland showed up
together at the same time, but learned later, No, that's
it was actually Rolland's place, and she just I don't know,
hangs out anyways. Uh. Yeah. I was just curious how
he was doing a little on edge people, you know,
exploding ends. Yeah, well, I don't know none of my business,
but yeah, I hope he's okay, appreciate it. I'm not
working tonight. You won't won't be here, but someone will
be on staff. You head off the pulks, Skink, what
are you up to this morning?
Speaker 5: Skink is wondering if she's going to run into orlow
in the midwinter sun. So skink is going to linger
at breakfast for a little while.
Speaker 1: Did we establish that he was staying there?
Speaker 19: I think we must at some point, because everybody got
moved over there, right, a criminal investigation, right and then.
Speaker 5: And then the long hall blew up, So he's definitely
not staying there. I don't know how many other inns
there are. Everybody got moved over there temporarily the first night.
I don't know how long they decided to stay.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, Okay, So you hang out in the common
room for a while, and I think you realize as
you're kind of like piling on your plate and you're
a little I'm assuming your chipmunk is just like stuffed
in a pocket or something. He's basically an animate unless
you him to be.
Speaker 5: So yeah, yeah, I'm like, so, once I decided to
go down for breakfast, I just, you know, let him
breast in taxidermy pose and keep it keep it in
a concealed pocket, not like a sticking out pocket, because I.
Speaker 2: Don't want to embarrass farah, right, right, I promised not
to get as kicked out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as you're hanging out and enjoying your breakfast, I'm
gonna say that there are kind of a big set
of double doors off on one side of the midwinter sun.
And you see as the morning staff are kind of
like moving around and carrying platters and carrying trays of
food and whatever, they're also bringing it into there, and
you glimpse after a while, like as these doors open up, Oh,
there's a whole other like grand ballroom effectively, and like
a second common room that's a little less stairway platform
intensive than the old like ir pit room, and that
seems to be where most of the quadriplegic Nope, where
most of the quadruped guests are staying. Listen, maybe I'm not,
you know, it's it's an eighty eight compliant building, but.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, I love it.
Speaker 1: We normally record on Monday nights, and we've shifted to
Friday for a while, and we're all a little punchy.
Speaker 2: Everyone's been yawning so much. This whole episode is so funny.
Speaker 1: We're getting there, We're getting there, We're almost there. You
gather that this other room is a dining and banquet
area favored by more of the quadruped quadrupedal guests because
there's no stairs. It's all flat. So you I'm gonna
just narrate peek into there, and you do see Orlow
piling up a plate of just eggs and bacon and
bacon and toast and eggs and muffin and bake, and
he's just loading up like a whole situation.
Speaker 16: All right.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna make my move. I'm going to go
in there and say hey, Orlow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you walk in here, and immediately notice you are
the smallest creature in this room by more than usual.
This is a room full of a number of different wilderkin,
who are you know, kind of larger, different body types whatever.
Wilder Kin are like the minotaurs of the arthen They
have like animalistic features. There's a number of other centaurs
kind of milling around in here. All of them are
quite big. There's a couple of like larger orcs and everything.
This is just a bigger opener space that's easier.
Speaker 2: It's like I went to the barn. It's like I've
wondered it to the barn front.
Speaker 1: I mean kind of like a nice like ski villa
Descorp barn, Like that's that's where you're at right now.
You wind your way over to Orlow managed to not
get stepped done, and he looks down at miss Skink.
Pleasure to see you this morning. How are you? I
do it all right?
Speaker 2: Can I have my breakfast with you?
Speaker 1: I don't see why not? And he goes over and
there's a you realize pretty quickly a lot of the
tables in here don't have benches. They're just like for
them bar height surface and he goes, do you mind?
And he reaches down and just scoops you and put
stands you on the end of the table easier on
my neck.
Speaker 2: I love it. Skik is a delighted.
Speaker 1: I'm going to remind everybody Orlo is canonically shirt open
to the navel kind of guy and built like Hemsworth
playing thor Uh is the hot center. We've ended an
episode over his Hot Sun tournus before. Uh, Maddie and
Marissa's Around Literature podcast will be coming.
Speaker 5: So now I'm just like, oh absolutely, Now I'm just
like sitting on the table with my like I'm gonna say,
like sitting cross.
Speaker 2: Like with my like my plate in my lap.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that's that's exactly what he was going for.
Speaker 2: Great.
Speaker 1: Uh what uh? What can I do for you just
shoveling food.
Speaker 5: Well, Sarah and I have decided that we would like
to mount a flake hunting expedition, and since you have
have done this, I was just gonna, you know, talk
to you a little bit about the particulars of what
it would take to.
Speaker 2: Go out there.
Speaker 1: Uh, well, the the salient points. If you're bringing back flakes. Uh,
you're gonna want to pick axe. You're gonna want as
has to think about something very quickly, pickaxe. Make sure
you get a couple of tools they make. Gallio has
a few tools that are a little less prone to
like sparks, especially made you different alloys and such that
are a little.
Speaker 2: Bit less reactive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so working with big piece is not too big
a deal, but you saw what happened to the long
haul once you break them into smaller pieces. If you
still need to keep chipping away there's a lot of
dust or anything like that. You don't want to just
be swinging at that with raw steel. You hit a spark,
it's gonna flash, it's gonna burn your eyebrows off. It's
gonna be a whole thing. It won't be as it's
not nearly as dangerous as what happened at the hall.
That was a whole confluence of events. But you can
still hurt yourself a little bit. So proper tools. Gallio
or someone in that trade can tell you more about
that when you acquire them. Getting out there, really just
having a comfortable place to sleep is really important. Make
sure you're pack a big enough tent. I would say,
get a sled and make sure you have backups of
everything because stuff breaks. That's crucial. Sled really the way
to go across tundra for sure, and then if you
have the means to secure a base camp heading into
the mountains, I think that's probably the best of both worlds.
You're not gonna be able to take a sled up
up into the rocks, but if yeah, if you want
to be able to haul, like our problem was, we
got we loaded up everything we could in our personal
packs and just made an arduous trek back out of
the mountains and across the tundra. But as soon as
Chester got hurt, we had to drop a bunch of
stuff to get him home. So that was kind of
the situation we found ourselves in. So what I would
have done differently is basically pack for two expeditions. Expedition
one is get to the mountains. Expedition two is climb
the mountains and then pack the sleds come back that way,
and then we could have just thrown Chester on a sled.
It would have been way easier. Unfortunately, but lessons lurked.
So that's my advice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks, that's worth a lot.
Speaker 1: Thanks or low Yeah, no, happy to help, Happy to help.
You're gonna find the best flakes up in the mountains,
and on a clear night they phosphorescent moonlight. So that's
the easiest way to spot them, you know, because they'll
be under some ice and some snow and some tunder
a little bit. But when you get direct moonlight on them,
for whatever reason, that tends to make them glow. So
when it's dark enough out, you can just sort of
find a vantage point and find the biggest veins. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, now that your little expedition's done, what are you
up to or low? Well planned?
Speaker 1: I want to go south with Cassie. I've known her
for a long time, but it looks like her in
print are heading out tonight. Well tonight, I say, they're
heading out as soon as the sunrises, and they're gonna
get as far as I can and just sort of
go that way. Sheen'sy at home and there I'm here
making arrangements waiting for Chester to ship out, and then
I'm going to stick around here and osk for a
little while. Unfortunately, I came up here looking for work
because my family has some expenses that need to be covered.
So as much as I'd like to go home with
my friend right now, I really need to put in.
I need a couple more jobs behind me before we're done.
Oh you'll like it for work, I am.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you know of anything, I'll keep my ear
to the ground. Here to the ground to you usually
usually do as a centaur.
Speaker 1: It'd be amazed the number of hauling deliveries courier and like, listen,
I get it. It's efficient, I understand, but it's like
I'm more than that. You know. I'm also an incredibly
brutal great axe fighter, and I appreciate being a It's
a little frustrating to just be seen as the strongest
person in the room and you hear a couple of
people grumble around it, like shut up, shut up. We
had an arm wrestling competition the other night. I'm teasing
a little bit here, But yeah, no, I wound up
getting hired very easily for labor, but I enjoy more
of the exploratory expeditions. And you know, I've done a
lot of caravan guarding in the past, so I think
that might be when I leave here, as I'll pick
up a shift as someone going down the bitter road
as like a caravan guard. Pretty efficient at it. Don't
need to ride in a wagon that kind of deal.
But yeah, no, that's u It's kind of my whole shtick.
Speaker 2: Would you be up for another expedition or was the
last one a little.
Speaker 1: Scarring a I mean, listen, I've been in this business
for a long time before I met Cassie and Jester.
It's a shame what happened to him. But also we
did find on the actual expedition itself, if you are
looking for a guard for your flakes, I think we
have a little bit of rapport here. I'm not going
to rob you or anything. My rates twenty gold a
day if we're going out into the tundra, or ten
gold if we're doing something in town. All right, it's
a dangerous I know it's expensive, but it's a dangerous
line of work, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll keep it in mind, keep you in mind.
Speaker 1: I might be willing to negotiate for a cut of
the returns, but we can talk about that. But that's
kind of the ballpark complaining right now.
Speaker 5: Sure you know, I got to run the budget by
my bye bye bye buddy, my partner, Pharah, she's really.
Speaker 2: I can't do anything without.
Speaker 1: Her, no, of course, of course, Yeah, I understand. Well,
I'll be standing here the next couple of nights. I've
got some deliveries to make around town this evening, but
i'll be around if you want to circle back and wrapping.
Speaker 7: That up today, all right, I'll let you know.
Speaker 1: Fantastic, good seeing again, miss Kink. Do you need a
Do you need help then.
Speaker 2: If you mind?
Speaker 1: Of course, of course. And he just holds out an
arm and I.
Speaker 2: Just scramble onto it.
Speaker 1: He doesn't myself.
Speaker 2: I just missle sit in the elbow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't even deflect like as you get on,
he just sort of like, there you go, all right,
and let's se down off the table.
Speaker 2: Pleasure, pleasure, making your acquaintance again.
Speaker 1: You might want to walk under the table. It's a
little bit safer until you get back to the door.
Speaker 5: The cakes are just gonna like hug hug the bench
as she she goes all the way back to the door.
Speaker 1: We're gonna cut over to Farah heading over to Pulks. Okay, don't, don't,
don't mother, where are we going? It's code mm hmm mhm. Yes,
uh pit miscles in there. And you head off in
the directions that Marie gave you heading for Pulks. Uh,
there's no sign. But she did point out that the
landmark people used to find Polks is the five smoke
stacks that are coming out of the haphazard roof of
this little hut. And you see that there's a door
that is like slightly a jar and like swinging in
the wind a little bit at the front of this place.
Give me, come in, give me give me okay, yes, clip, yes,
what can pulko for you? And you see this frazzled
bearded like tufted old rat man. He is a rattling
there's a name for them. They're actually a new lineage
that is being introduced into Relict as a result of
feedback from our Kickstarter and Discord fans. So this was
a request. So we have we have rat people coming
to the system now, so I canna do for you? Yeah?
Two one the one. Explosion yes, yes, Roland, Roland, yes, yes, yes,
many explosion damage significant, significant, shreadnel damage, burning damage, Roland.
Bruise kidney very bad. He's fine, he's fine. Hangover cure free, free,
hangover easy. Injuries, various alchemical procedures. We have to do.
But hangover here, I can handle right now. Are you ready? Hold?
It's very steel. He reaches down. He grabs a scoop
full of snow off the ground, spits in it, and
slaps you across the face, not thinking about hangover anymore.
We talk about your injuries. Now come come, and he
just scampers back off into his house. Yeah. Adrenaline very
good for hangover. Fix. Yes, hangover comes back, you come back,
I slap, oh breakfast. He grabs a just series of
small vials off the shelf. Some of them are glowing
and have various particulates in them, cracks all of them open,
just like, knocks all the corks out of them, pours
them into a bowl and starts linking it. No temple thought,
very bad, stupid, stoopid people. You have combat todri Yes, good, good.
Come come here, come here, come here, I test, I
eat breakfast, I test no breaks, no no union, Sit
you sit.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: He grabs a like head rig off of a shelf,
brings it down and you see it's got an array
of like lenses and mirrors, and he just lights a
little wick on a tiny candle right next to his eyeball. Uh.
And it's just he starts like ratcheting these little things. Right.
It's like going to the optometrist where they've got all
those little whizbang things. But these are all going in
front of him, and you see he's just kind of
running you through a number of like reflex tests and
like follow finger follow, finger follow, finger follow, finger follow
tail tail you miss tail uh. And like he just
keeps going around like shining mirrors into various places. Some
of them make sense to you, like you could tell
he's testing for like dilation. Some of them he's like
open your mouth and then he just like sticks his
finger up your nose. No bad, bad bad Uh. Pit
pops out. At one point he's like, ah, you have
a bird, I fix no fix good bird. Bird is fixed? Okay, yes,
but bird is fixed. Now you have a bird problem.
I have things. No bird problem. He grabs a net
off the wall and throws it through the window. No
bird problem. Good, Okay, let's see injury injury, injury. I
can brew special potion, fix you. Special potion very important,
rare ingredients cannot just do not have expensive. Yeah. I'm
very trusted. You can get whether you can get the
recommendation from other people. You trust me. Everyone in Usk
trust Polk except Temple of Thought. Stupid people. M h.
I make healing potion very simple, will not fix, will
not fix you. I make healing potion with flake two
hundred gold. I fix you. You'll drink potion very strong,
poop all better. Mmm much good, much more much. You'll
provide flake. You'll provide flake seventy gold. I provide flake
two hundred gold. Mm hmmm mmm yes, good, good, thank you.
He puts his hand on your on your cheek, and
just thank you. Delicious. You're try. No, I miss you.
H as Farah and a traumatized Pip leave Polk's hut.
We are going to end episode six of The Knicks
archive and we will pick it up there next time.
It was good