The Esoteric Order of Roleplayers

[Monsterhearts] The Next Generation: Season Two, Episode 11

PENULTIMATE SERIES EPISODE. Lucien transforms. Cora sinks deeper. Riley eviscerates. Autumn stabilizes. And Henry is working at Qwik Bite on another holiday weekend. BUCKLE UP AND LISTEN NOW! Back us on Patreon for lots of bonus content and an opportunity to game with members of the Order! https://www.patreon.com/esotericrp

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Featuring:David as "Autumn the Cerberus"Kenny as "Lucien the Vampire"Rainy as "Cora the Fae"Santiago as "Riley the Werewolf"

Duration:: 2h 58m
Broadcast on:: 21 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

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Featuring:
David as "Autumn the Cerberus"
Kenny as "Lucien the Vampire"
Rainy as "Cora the Fae"
Santiago as "Riley the Werewolf"

This episode of the Esoteric Order of Role Players is brought to you by the generosity of our backers on Patreon. Go to patreon.com/EsotericRP to find out how you can become a backer too. We create and broadcast these episodes live on native lands. We acknowledge these are unceded lands, with diverse communities maintaining connections to these places, and recognize their ancestors, their elders both past and present, and future generations. Learn more by visiting the Native American Rights Fund website at naf.org. [MUSIC] [SINGING] [MUSIC] [SINGING] [MUSIC] [SINGING] [MUSIC] [SINGING] [MUSIC] [SINGING] [MUSIC] [SINGING] [MUSIC] [SINGING] [MUSIC] [SINGING] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Featuring David, Rainey, Santiago, and Kenny as players with devs of the MC. Episode 11 Love is Miles Away. While I still wait here, my heart is yours to take. But I'll still wait here for you. Content Warning. Our season of Monster Hearts may include depictions and discussion of sexual assault, domestic violence, stalking, physical violence, and identity-based discrimination and harassment, as well as other activating topics. We encourage you to care for your safety and well-being while listening. Welcome, everybody, to our... this is Monster Hearts, again, I don't know why I'm saying that, but I'm just... it's why we're here. It's Monster Hearts, again. Again. So before we get started today, the last episode was full of a lot of things. There was cliffhangers, there were emotions, there were MC saying, "Fuck no, don't do that, you're not allowed to do that." There was other... and the rest, I'm wondering, I wanted to talk with the group about how this feels and what y'all think. And so, David, we're going to start with you. We're going to talk to David about a little bit about your skin stuff and certain decisions you wanted. And then Kenny, we're going to talk about the cliffhanger-y decision-making process that you've been in the process of doing since we last met up and what you're thinking, what you're hoping for. And I'm curious what the rest of the group thinks if you're open to that. So David, last session, you had wanted to do some things in terms of inflicting harm on yourself in order to do some Cerberus moves, correct? There was trying to leverage some other moves, and the wording on the moves is either way too specific or way too vague. And so it required judgment calls on your part as an MC that left me feeling frustrated. We'll just say. Yeah, you were frustrated because you felt I was negating the things that you wanted to do. Ah! I mean, literally, yes, you were, but it was more because of the way the skin is written. Okay. So what's the right? What about it? I was hoping maybe that I could talk you into, you know, like some of these moves I wanted to do. I could kind of rules lawyer my way into these things and we were saying no, which of course, we've all been on the receiving end of that at one time or another in one game or another, and it never feels good. No, it does. I've told plenty of times. Oh, me, all the time. Many of our games. Yeah. So sometimes the whole yes and thing, it's been really overly abused, I think, in RPG circles. This idea that the GM should always say yes is bullshit. Sometimes the GM does have to say no. And I think I just, I kind of summed it up at the time very quickly because otherwise, I had to make it quick or else I was going to fucking rage out. But it just felt really irritating that the moves on my sheet weren't allowing me to do the things I thought the skin wants me to do. It's not so much about me wanting to do things, but it's what is the skin even wanting me to do because I'm trying to do these things and then it's oh yeah, no, that doesn't work or whatever. It doesn't work in the context of what we're doing in the moment or yeah, I'm trying to leverage the I'm leveraging the fiction to try and direct it in what I perceive a server is supposed to do. And so I even went back because when I reread the server's description during the session, it was think of jughood in season one of Riverdale, normally I'm like, yeah, you should go and watch some media that's related to your skin and I'm, oh, I guess I'm a hypocrite because I never did that. I never went and watched season one of Riverdale. So I found some clip compilations and actually I'm fucking killing it because if you didn't know that I'd never watched season one of Riverdale, you'd be like, oh, this guy's totally done that, right? Because it's totally how I'm playing autumn to almost to a tee edgy and on the outskirts of everyone, but also being like, I'm going to get to the bottom of this. And there's even this whole thing about how he's trying to preserve the true spirit of Riverdale. I mean, they can't tear down the drive in theater and all this kind of stuff, right? So yeah, the Cerberus was a skin that was written after the game was published. It's not a course. Second edition. Yeah, it's not. It's not even yeah, it's not even core to the second edition. It's a free download. And I don't know who wrote it, but they need to log off. No, I'm kidding. That's not true. It definitely, no, absolutely not, absolutely not, but it definitely needed a couple extra passes. Yeah, because it is a great skin. I agree. And my point of reference was actually Bonnie, the character Bonnie and vampire diaries, which spoilers, she's a perfect exemplar of switching skin, right? Because she starts out with a witch skin. She's 100% a witch. And then she dies and then she gets to come back, but she's this guardian between the material world in hell, essentially, and she is a Cerberus. Great. Yeah. Justice for Bonnie. So that, yeah, I know she also gets, yeah, every possible bad twist heaped upon her. But anyway, so that was kind of where I was coming from. And in that show, she can do kind of ghost busting shit, right? She can kind of grab rogue ghosts or demons or whatever that have gotten out of hell and she drags him back. And even on the skin, it's one of the origins wrong side of the river sticks. It's not like a Nancy Drew skin per se. I had a different set of expectations. And then the moves I selected maybe aren't as that's on me because they're not synergized enough. There are different builds of the Cerberus. One of them's all about slapping conditions on people and then leveraging that. And I didn't go that direction, but then I'm not sure I went all in on the other direction I could have gone in. True. Okay. That's just getting that off my chest, I guess. Yeah. So don't be surprised at the end of the season when I choose a new skin. That's my end of season move. I would hope that you absolutely would. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's what's kind of fun about the game and that's sort of the spirit. And so just that and that's for everyone to know so that if we see narrative opportunities to set autumn up to choose a new skin, I'm all in. Let's go. Let's do it. Yeah. I'll just do my best. You are doing your best. Actually, I think you're doing a really good job and I think it's a challenging skin to take on and I think you're doing a great job and I don't always like saying no, that's not true. So there's a lot of different reasons I might say no to something. Some of it might be because of the type of game I'm running regarding information, disinformation, misinformation. I don't like to perpetuate stigma in my games. I like to keep it honest in certain ways and also just not perpetuate the typical stereotypes. So that's usually why if I'm saying no, you're probably hitting a pretty hard stereotype or cliche that I want to avoid. Sure. And as as the MC, I feel like I have the right to say nah, no. Absolutely. Yeah. And just I guess for a point of clarity there in terms of causing the harm through drug use or whatever that is based on some personal family history that I was sort of. Pulling up and not me specifically, but other people in my family. But I understand how that could come across differently in the game. And so yeah, I mean, it's your game and it's your right to be like, I don't want to, I don't want to spotlight that. I don't want to platform that. That's totally. Yeah. Makes sense. Okay. Cool. Well, speaking of skin shifting, let's move on. Wait, so does anyone have anything to say about David's skin struggles and or me saying no to things that you're getting annoyed by? Not the you part, but skin struggle in general, I think is really relatable. I mean, I see my skin struggles this season too. So I totally get that and also I think it was last session. Yeah, it was last session David was like, maybe I built it wrong, but their abilities I've never even used. I'm like, yep, the last really got never used to it. I've never had a chance to. It's just never come up. If you hope that something is relevant, but you never know if how it works and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I feel that too. Yeah, look at all of my moon based stuff. Yeah, I should have picked stuff that's not moon based because every time I'm like, what's the moon like? There doesn't exist. It doesn't. It doesn't exist. It blew up. It blew up. It's daytime or it's daytime, it's high fucking noon. I mean, it might be visible, but you're not basked in moon at that sort of situation. Yeah, there should be a random moon table or something just to make it completely objective on the table. Instead of spirit armor, I should have taken primal dominance, but this is before we instituted a thing that was making your moves that you pick more narrative, which is brilliant and perfect and I love it and I think that never changes because that just makes it way more sense. And I think it's great because that'll kind of not force you, but set you up to pick moves that make sense within the context of the game as it is coalescing and I think that is fucking awesome. So let's love that idea brilliant. Let us please enshrine that somehow. Yeah. We will. I think that's definitely a house rule. Yeah. It reminds me of the captain's log. Kenny, I don't think you've listened to those, but there's a mechanic in Star Trek Adventures where you have values and there's statements about your character. I don't know, never give up, never surrender or something, right? And you can challenge the value to get a bonus on a dice roll or to get a little benefit. But once you do, you cross it off your character sheet. You can never use it again and then you have to write in a new value that's based on what happened that adventure. Oh, that's cool. That's what causes your character to row as a person over time. That's awesome. It's really cool. Yeah. And this reminds me of that as well, where it's, yeah, you have to, Kenny, you did that last session where Lucy took what was it, the invited in move, right? Because Cora had just invited him in and I was like, yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. So yeah, I think, I think we'll continue with that particular house rule is that this, the leveling up, the, the things you choose, once the stories underway need to be part of the narrative, which makes the most sense. And I don't know who thought of that idea. That's very smart. I thought that was you. You're going to give that one to you. Yeah. That's how I deal with it. Deal with it. You are. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. So moving into skin stuff. All right, Kenny. So. Yes. So the first player are faced with the opportunity and challenge to either skirt death, die, skirt death, remain in a vampire skin, choose a new skin. These are these options that are afforded to you with this turn of events because Autumn succeeded in her role to basically slap the vampire out on the scene. Who said that? I did. It's on David. David was okay. Yeah. It was close. Okay. High of mind. But I'm just saying. So these are these opportunities afforded to you, which can feel very, I think, overwhelming and intense. So I'm curious how you have you made sense of this and we're going to play out your decision. And I'm just curious how you want to go and we'll make it happen in a fun way for you. And whatever you choose is fine. We'll make it happen. How are you feeling about all this? It's funny because where everybody else has been having skin issues. I've been flourishing at the vampire. Why I am rolling but I struggled with being a vampire up until mid second season or whatever. The darkest self has always eluded me the just how to play the vampire. I think there were some parts that I was really comfortable with, some parts that I really struggled with. And then especially as the narrative kept progressing and Lucian became a big boy and all this stuff. Yeah. It's just a weird like balancing act, I think, all of this kind of thing. It is. It definitely is a tough, it's tough for sure to get to feel comfortable in that whatever you choose. Yes. So yeah, I was doing pretty good, I think, with a vampire. And then when everything went down, I really, I like the idea of Lucian getting the vampire slapped out of him purely because it makes autumn more dangerous. That's really the only reason I'm into it. Because Lucian is, his identity is being a vampire. But I like the power that it gives autumn. Which is why I want to move forward with that path of Lucian no longer being a vampire. And I've talked to you and David a couple of times about, because I really just did not know where to go with it. Not because there were no good ideas, but because I could narratively see anything happening and it making sense. I could see Lucian being in a hospital for an episode or whatever. Or I could see Lucian dying, probably the least satisfying right there. Just because that's not how I envisioned Lucian dying and it seems weird. I don't think that would be the satisfying moment to be Lucian's demise. And then the mortal I think is a really interesting choice, which I just, and again, it doesn't have really anything to do with the skin. I think I could make the mortal skin work. Oh yeah, confident in that. But the idea of taking the mortal skin doesn't do anything. It doesn't excite me at all. The reason that I like it is because, again, it's this cycle of Lucian making autumn a monster and then autumn making Lucian a mortal. I like that kind of contrast. So just taking the skin based off that alone is exciting to me. And then the moves, I'll make the moves, but I never roll dice and when I do, I always succeed. So the moves don't mean anything to me. Jesus Christ. And then the other one that I was really considering was the ghost and the way that I kind of envisioned it was that in reality, autumn had killed Lucian, he just doesn't know it yet. And the way that I envision that is almost like a get off the white kind of deal where he's just looming around until the deal with Marcel is closed. That whole thing happens and whether we lose or succeed or fail. And then Lucian is just, all right, my time's done and many pieces out and Lenore takes them by the hand or something that. So I don't know, I think mortal or ghost, I would love to hear your guys' thoughts. Yeah, I'm curious what the group thinks as well. Because I mean, as much as it's Kenny's choice and narratively how things shake out and how it feels. I mean, I still have to set the stage for what's going to happen because we're picking up right where we left off. And so I'm curious, yeah, what Kenny said, you're open to feedback, Kenny, so what do you all think? Yeah, feedback or even ideas? I'm not the smartest person on the planet. So you guys might have cool ideas or you might just be, I don't know, but Lucian, I don't care. Play the Cerberus. It's great. Yeah. Oh my God. Please take it away from me. Well, I mean, the mortal is good. I like the mortal because you have to have a lover. And so it would kind of cement Lucian and Autumn's thing, in that sense, but it's not necessarily reciprocal. So in fact, it could be just a thing where Lucian's completely mooning over Autumn and she's just like, I've got time for you, but normal, normal, normal, even more so. And also, I mean, there have been some hints throughout the season in next times and what not that it might be going in that direction. So it would kind of be narratively fulfilling that, I think. Wait, what would it be fulfilling? There was a next time where Lucian, or maybe it was an abyss gaze where Lucian's vision was Ottoman Lucian getting married, and it was just like full-on, like me kind of norm core kind of stuff. So exactly, exactly, plus yeah, just the whole Pinocchio kind of vibes that we've been getting a lot. So that's cool. I'm into that ghost. I mean, it'd be great to see the return of a ghost, ghosts are I so weird to me. I feel like, don't play the ghost, it sucks, ghosts are awesome, they're great. So I don't know what you're talking about, but it would be interesting to see it for both of the skins since we've had both. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Other flavor of them. Oh, yeah. I would have seen that one flavor of each of those. Right. Well, because, I mean, infamously, Kenny chose not just the vampire skin, but the very name that I chose when I played a vampire, and so it's Lucian 2, and his Lucian is completely different from the one I played. So I think we would see the same thing. Well, don't pick a new name like Autumn or something. Oh, it won't be Autumn the Ghost. Damn. Oh my God. I agree with Rainy that it would be interesting to see, because everybody can interpret those skins the way that they will based on their own view of things. So I'm all for it. Santiago, do you have anything to add? Yeah. I'm on Team Ghost just because I feel like the vampire or other monster being returned to mortality is something that has been explored in a lot of fiction. And I can't think of any the vampire ghost, you know, being explored at all. So that just-- It does add the complication of if Autumn literally kills Lucian at the barbecue. You know, it's not like we can just like go run away to the beach after that. A bunch of people decide to do a murder and sell that. Maybe he's in the hospital, maybe, I mean, the idea that succumb to the injuries later or whatever, or not just come back different. Yeah, because, yeah, because the ghost is, I mean, is at times definitely corporeal another times not. So it could be done. But yeah, it'd be like, and he's fine, but it's just loud. So it's just sort of something that's up for debate, which I think is helpful to think about. Yeah. That said, the vampire stepping into the chamber and losing their Superman powers and then having the cope with the world as the role is also a great story, which is why I think it's going frequently. Yeah. Because it's fantastic. We also have, what's his face, Ted Danson from The Good Place, having a figure out eating food and stuff, being a demon, having never been human, eating with at least have some experience of used to be human. So that's also kind of cool. Right. Shit is tough. It is. So we can always, I mean, we're taking a little extra time to talk through it before we get into the story itself. So and Lucy, we're going to start with you because I just think we need to address it. We can do some things to set the stage so that you can make your decision. I think what are you frozen? No. I hope not. You think you're ready. I think, I think I've made my decision. Okay. So we're going to, we are going to, my palms are sweating. Are there's a weapon. I'm forgetting. Oh, my God. No. That's linguine. Oh, my God. Okay. All right. Loud enough. Louder. Loudest. Louder most far, that's good. Okay. It's the slow build. Yeah. Okay. So where we last left our monsters, we were at the barbecue gone, pear shaped. This is in the, in the sort of living space where living space where Riley autumn and Riley's family live and there was a bonfire. There was a Memorial Day barbecue taking place when autumn had essentially become her darkest self, which is to basically putt the things that do not belong in their proper places, either in the physical realm, spiritual realm, she's there to move the people to where they need to be. And she was essentially outraged. She was incredibly upset and taking, taking, I don't know, deciding to hold Lucy in accountable for what he had done to her, essentially what he had done in the last season was complicit in her death and in fact killed her. And that is why she is the Cerberus now. Just like to apologize for that. Okay, that's too little, too late and that she died, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And that's it. That's it. Okay. That's all. That's all you want to do is add really quick. Okay. So. Autumn, as you are, so what you did to Lucy and describe what you did to him and, and will describe where Lucy and is at right now. I think it's one of those things where if you ever witnessed a fight or seen the phone footage of a fight and someone gets seriously injured, what you see isn't like the movies where it's like whoop out, you know, blood flies out and then the person drops and then it's like really that that that was it. That's what it took to put them in the hospital. And so I think there's a little bit of that because she basically just charged at him yelling at him. You did this. You did this. Grab kind of put her hands on him, knocked him off his chair or whatever he was sitting on. They both went down hot that goes flying, hot that goes flying. And then she was looking in his eyes and he saw that image of her lying dead and everyone else who witnessed it would be like, Oh, he must have just taken a bad fall. And that's why he's not getting up. But in fact, it was seeing that image in her iris did the harm technically. Okay, so it's the accountability and the reality is so stark. It's unflinching. It's like a candy man. It's a candy man situation, but it's a look into my eyes kind of thing or whatever, right? And it's just funny. And having a moment. Yes. Yeah, go on. I was gonna say it's funny that it all went down like that because the whole time last episode, I was like, I even mentioned it. I was going to go up to Riley and like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like the bro, you know, and like going up to autumn and being like, Hey, I'm sorry. Which I love. I love that because in so many ways, you just do not know when your time is up and you are living your life and normal everyday life. And then suddenly something happens and that's it, right? Which is so scary and yet so much a part of our experiences as human beings on this planet. So I love that because you have your things that you want to do and then it's cut short. So what I like the idea of is that there's the very typical aerial shot zooming down to see Lucy in eyes closed, hair strewn about him beautifully looking just totally unconscious after autumn has shoved and pushed and interacted with him in that way. And then Cora takes autumn and they're off, they're going to go walk off and we're going to do what they're going to do. Riley and uncle Isaac are standing there with the flames flickering and they're seeing Lucian's body there Lucy and we're zooming in on you on close up onto your face. And I would say if you want to do some abyss gazing, you can or we can decide what you want to do. So what is up? I think, okay, I'm going to skip on the abyss gazing for now. Okay, that's fine. That's fine. But yeah, I think the view just slowly zooms in to Lucy and he's out cold, not moving. Yeah. Very still. Yeah, super crazy still. And then, yeah, the view just gets more and more close and then there's a very subtle breathing in from Lissiams. Okay. So your nostrils flare with a breath that he's breathing and maybe your lips part. Yeah. So you're breathing air, you're breathing human air and breathing air. And I think Lissian's face just kind of his expression kind of scrunches up a little bit. Oh, okay. And he just whimpers out, I'm sorry. And a tear falls from his eye. It is not a blood tear. It's not a blood tear. Canning. It's saline. It is saline, salty, salty, mortal tear. Yes. Oh my gosh. Okay. Yeah. Boy. So you can feel your body. Oh my God. Okay. Sorry. I just have to take a moment. Okay. You are feeling your body in a way that you have not felt in a long time. Even though the ground is, the ground feels really hard. The fire is very warm and comforting that you're feeling. It doesn't feel a little dangerous to you. The tear down your cheek is watery. It is not viscous in a blood sense. You can feel stones against your back and they're jutting into your back. It's in a very uncomfortable way and you just can feel the wind was knocked out at you. And so taking those breaths in is a relief and the world smells more muted. There's not as much of a sharpness to everything and in fact, it's very dull. Your eyes are open and you can see the stars but they just look so far away. And at the same time, you're feeling this vibration against your ribs and it is your heartbeat and it is, oh my God. Let me have this moment. It is, please, this is not about you right now. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But you're feeling your heartbeat against your ribs in a very steady, steady pace. And your stomach is growling, your lungs are filling with air. You're taking breaths that are so deep that you can feel it like in your back. And you are laying there, crying, a tear running down your cheek. And are you moving? What do you want to do next? Yeah, I think I probably pushed myself up so I'm sitting on the ground and I probably have a little bit of blood coming from my nose or something. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Wipe it away and look at it. And I obviously, that's strange and I don't sense blood in the same way. Yeah. And then I guess I look up and I imagine I see Riley. Yeah, you see Riley and Uncle Isaac kind of looking at you. So Riley, you're seeing Lucian, something has changed. Something has shifted and there's something about him that is you're not sensing the jasmine, the copper, any of that. You are seeing him in his very much immortal being. He's not a monster in that sense anymore. So what do you do? Who? Pierre. The idea that before Lucian was preternaturally perfect all the time, almost kind of, and now it has that error of where there's someone perfectly done up, right? And then they take a spill or something like that and they get up and the hairs all fucked up and there's twigs in it and stuff like that. Manatee is exposed. So seeing that it's because of the stark difference that it is so apparent, especially to Riley because the vampire sin is gone, you said. And in its place there is everything mortal right now about Lucian. So I'm going to not run up but cross the intervening space in a couple of large steps to help him up. Okay. I want to say, Lucian, you're seeing Riley for the first time as with mortal eyes and we're going to get into the mortal skin with the description, all your moves, all that. We're going to get into that in just a little bit, but you're seeing Riley for the first time as the monster that he is. What do you make of that? I think he's even a little more terrifying because now I know, obviously, Lucian doesn't have amnesia or anything. So we've tussled before and he's always come out on top anyways, but I think Lucian looks at Riley and then looks inward and is like, oh, it really is just like, Lucian's power is gone. He has to understand how to find power again. Yeah. Yeah. Because you're seeing power right in front of you, Riley is powerful, more so. So what do you say or do? Riley, did you say anything? Did you say something to him? Or you just walked up? That kind of offering, but surprisingly gentle, given the charged nature of the situation that has been ongoing and I feel with Autumn and everything that's happened just now that was kind of that tension break, and somehow there's this, it's all fun in games until someone falls down and gets a bloody nose, right? Right, right, right. Yeah. So now it's, oh, are you okay? Type of thing. Yeah. Are you all right, man? You can be okay, are you like better or something? Yeah. Yeah. I think Lucian kind of pulls on you, accepting the help up and then tries to dust himself off from all the dirt. Yeah. Yeah. And he just looks around. It's just Riley and Isaac, right? Yeah, everyone else is gone. I mean, Cora and Autumn are walking, you don't see them anymore. Yeah. And where they are and yeah, so you're, you're very much alone and, and yeah, very much alone with these two werewolves. Yeah. I'm like, so let's get into what playing the mortal is, how they describe it, what skills are there, what mortal moves you have, your darkest self, and we will do that because I feel like, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, the heart that is beating is also suddenly pining for Autumn, maybe, but we'll get into it. Okay. We'll get into it. Do you have the mortal skin pulled up? You see, it might just imprint like a little baby bird. Oh, Riley. We don't know. Exactly. But I was just like, we'll leave it up. Well, it's open. Maybe it's Autumn. Maybe it's Riley. Maybe it's Cora. We don't know. Maybe it's uncle Isaac. Maybe it's uncle Isaac. Oh, no. We don't know. You might see him some weekend and he says, happy new year to you and you're like, Oh my God. You're talking to me. You're not walking to your dog. Yeah. So you never know, but saying a lot to say that you are playing the mortal now. So if you would be kind enough to read your skin, yeah, see here, you have it up. I do. Okay. Um, I'll read the playing the mortal. Yeah. Playing the mortal and the mortal skin. Well, we're going to do the whole treatment here. This is this is a big deal. Master hearts to page 69. Nice. I don't know. It's 68. Damn it. Oh God. The mortal. None of them would understand what you have here in this dark and secret place. It's beautiful. They'd warn you that this sort of beauty is dangerous, like a raging fire. Well, some things are worth getting burned for love has eclipsed all hope and the dark has left you feeling beautiful. Pretty on brand. It is. So let's read the playing the mortal on the left side of the page. Yes. Yeah. Vulnerable magnetic and beautiful for anybody else. True. Always forever. I worry about it. Giving away a string would represent a loss of control. For you, it's more symbiotic. You get powered by giving it away. The mortal explores codependency, power imbalances and wide eyed eagerness, which I think is a natural step for Lucille. I agree. Yeah. Most of that choices for the mortal both have hot too, so expect that because the mortal is desirable and special. They differ depending on whether the mortal is more impulsive and panicky, which is volatile one, or brooding and lonely, which is dark one. I'm not sure which way to go on that. True love is about who you've currently placed at the center of your universe. So give a guess. You don't necessarily need to be in a relationship with someone to declare them your lover. Your sex move might seem like a major drawback because you lose all your strings on them or whatever. Yeah. But remember that the mortal can gain a lot of leverage from victimhood, which is perfect. Having lovers suddenly get weird, scary, or hostile after a moment of intimacy gives you a perfect opportunity to take advantage of both sympathy as my weapon, excuses are my armor and down the rabbit hole. Fun. What's your look up skin? I know. So fucked up. So we'll get into this. Your name is still Lucian. Name is still Lucian. Okay. What is your look now? There's a couple of options, quiet, desperate, awkward, beautiful, or displaced. Yeah. So previously my look was smoldering and pained eyes. I think my look is going to be, I mean, beautiful is a given, but I actually think given his nature on how he became a mortal. I think displaced is a really interesting one. Son of a minute. Nice. Santi's into it. Yes. That is a good one. Very good. So displaced. And then eyes, you can pick dough eyes, sad eyes, darting eyes, nervous eyes, or human eyes. Human eyes, for sure. Human eyes, which are, I think they've solidified in their color. So what color are they now? That's a good question. I think Lucian's eyes were always really pale blue. I think now they're going to be a hazel brown. Ooh, nice. And then the origin for you, we have new kid in town, kid next door, your barista, someone's girlfriend, someone's boyfriend, and a nobody, but we can, we can create something that's on par with that. So what would be a good origin, just like sum up for Lucian? Yeah. Something. I know Sate's got something cooking here. I'm just, I'm just, I'm going to put out, I'm going to put out, and this isn't good. This isn't good, but this is to get the juices flowing, just former monster, former monster. I was going to say recovering bad boy or something like that. I was sinking back from rehab. Okay. Back from rehab. Yeah. Yeah. Rainy, do you have a thought on this? No. Okay. Great. All right. All right. Now I do. I almost think, yeah, I mean, just going off of what the book suggests, new kid in town, I think is, is right there, like it's a new version of Lucian. I knew you knew me. New year, new me. Yeah. That might be my origin. I think that's a good one. Or depending on how Lucian feels about the situation, nobody could be it because your identity was so wrapped around being a vampire and it's not. So you could pull that card too. Yeah. I think that's, that's been the whole behind the skin switch. There's so many good options. I think nobody did stand out to me, Rainy. I'm glad you, I'm glad you said that. I might do a nobody and just really kind of milk that like it was Lucian was at the, at the top of the power dynamic. You know, everybody would go to Lucian's house and yeah, you can fail a role. Everything else. Yeah. Prepare to fail. Lots of roles. No. The way for me to power game this. Yeah. Right. Well, it would also bring it full circle because that was Autumn's origin originally was as a nobody. Oh no. Lucian kind of lifted her up out of that. So you're welcome. So well, yeah, let's, I've cast you back down. You demon. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I'll, I'll do, I'll do nobody. I think nobody's interesting enough. Okay. So, so your backstory, we kind of know your backstory at this point. But I'm sure there's going to be more things to come up as you are experiencing this mortal skin in terms of who Lucian was before he was a vampire. So I don't know if you want to share a little bit about that now or let it unfold as it comes through. Hmm. I think let's wait on that one. Okay. Sure. Okay. We have your choose one person to be your lover. Give them three strings on you. Take one string on them. Autumn. Autumn. Okay. And then you have one string on on autumn. So read to us your darkest self. Nobody understands you. Nobody even tries. You do so much for the people you love. Right? Okay. And they walk over you. All right. Sound familiar. Oh, enough. Enough is enough. Wow. Show them what it's like to be uncared for revel in their monstrosity and reveal their monstrosity and yours only seeing the pain that you're causing your lover will let you escape your darkest self. Mmm. Just get it's a good dark self. It's really good. Yes. Okay. And then otherwise you lose all your existing strings. So right. That is the downside there. Mm-hmm. What stats are you going to go with? That's a great question. So I think the easy choice, it's either dark or volatile that Lucian's going to be. Lucian was never a very volatile person, but I think now that he's going to be trying to claw his way back to the top, I think volatile is a good one to have. I'm sure there will still be plenty of emotional manipulation, but now I think Lucian knows that he's probably going to have to get his hands dirty. Okay. So, hot tube, cold minus one, volatile one, and dark minus one. Okay. So it says on the previous page that, that volatile is more impulsive and panicky, though just giving you some guidance there on just doing these things, just, I'm going to just do this. And there might be some panic kind of involved in that too. Oh yeah. So, I love it. I don't see him as the brooding and moody though, or brooding and lonely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Great idea to pick that. And so, for mortal moves, so you have true love already, so do you want to read that? And then, I'm going to have you choose three mortal moves. Plus, it also says that you can bring over any previous skin moves that make sense to have. I'm not sure if there would be any, but that's, that's the guideline for any skin. That makes sense to have. I might take a grownup move or something with me. I think that would. Oh sure. I think you can pick. You can pick one. Yeah. So, I would say three mortal moves and one grownup move. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, because all my vampire moves don't particularly make sense for a mortal to have. No, no, not anymore. hypnotizing people. Why? Unfortunately. Okay. So, mortal moves, true love. You always have exactly one lover. The first is chosen during your backstory. If you ever fall in love with someone else instead, give them a string and they become your new lover. Just carry one forward to earning your lover's heart or fancy. Okay. It's good. And then mess with me, mess with him or, well, I don't want to read them all. I guess. No, no, no. So, which one do you? Yeah. Should I? Let me just take some time to take some time to read it and I quill, I quill. If you want to switch scenes, go for it while I build my character or whatever. Okay. Cool. And just to remind her of your sex move, when you have sex with someone and awaken something sinister within the next time you take your eyes off of them, they become their darkest self. Yes. So, all of the monsters keep that in mind if you tangle with Lucy and the mortal. Right. Okay. Let's see the mortal. So, we're going to let Kenny delve into that part of the mortal moves and we're going to move into what's happening. And Riley, we'll connect you back with the action there too. Autumn and Cora. Cora, your intention, the last time we saw you during the app, you essentially challenged Autumn to stop what she was doing and come with you to some other location. Where are we going? I think the primary goal was just a way. I feel if it is okay with you and with Lucian, especially considering the loss of previous strings and abilities, that I feel Cora felt Lucian die because the promises are gone. Yeah. I don't feel them anymore. How does that feel when that happens? It's sort of in Beauty and the Beast, how the rose petals fall. The power because that's a sustaining forest are these promises, especially here. And so I feel that fall away from me. And I don't know if Autumn knows, so I'm trying to keep her walking. Okay. But in my mind, Lucian's gone. Yeah. And I'm oh shit. Got one. Yeah, yeah. I'm just slicking on my nose. So, how many promises did Lucian have? Two. Ooh. Okay. And then what's the current promise tally here? Do you want me to go through them? Or do you want me to go through them? Yeah, yeah. Please. Oh, I would love it. Yeah. Well, I guess one of them is technically an Autumn promise that she kept. Autumn will make sure I'm there to see when she hashes it up with Lucian. Hey. Hey. What do we get? What do we win? So, yeah. Well, that's a great question. I think a fulfilled promise actually, I think that sustains you, right? I mean, on some level, Cora, what do you think? Yeah. And I think for better or worse, for Autumn, I think there might be something there where it does have a warm feeling, but it ties her closer to Fairy, which is going to be an issue for her later. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Adrian will not keep secrets for me. He's been very good about that so far. Yeah, he has been. I promise. I promise to help Autumn find her father and we're getting there. Dylan promises that he believes me and everything's going to be okay. I also had to promise the Fairy King to erase the files, which I'm making very good progress on. Yes. It'll owes me a promise, apparently, that has not been identified at this point. Oh, I just made it. I just gave you a blank check, basically. Yeah. You said, Oh, yeah. And I promise you. Yup. Oh. Yeah. So there you go. Yeah. It's mostly Autumn at this point. All right. It's a lot of all the time. Oh, great. Lovely. It's Autumn in the Fairy King. Are my two biggest things? Yeah. So which makes sense for how my character is going right now. So yeah. So I felt that. So yeah. Cora is certainly going to be surprised later, but. Yeah. So you're thinking, Oh, Lucian's gone. Yeah. Ooh. And so Cora, you're feeling this. You're feeling the shift of your power source a little bit shifting, but also fulfilled as well. So as much as you might feel that way. That's the way of crashing and then surging back into the ocean. So it's a strange feeling. And so Autumn, you're following Cora. And so Cora, where are you taking Autumn? There's a clay. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Yeah. Once we break the tree line, cause I'm using my central coast vibes when you break out of the redwoods and stuff that, especially being higher up in the distance, you see the ocean. Yeah. If I see it, I would stop and turn to Autumn. Say you're obviously on a mission right now. Where do we need to go next? Good question. All right. Cool. Good question. Autumn, when justice has been served and you have been successful in your task of separating the wheat from the chaff? I think so. I mean, I don't know if I catch sight of my boss and he's given me a thumbs up and this little cocky grin. Well, also I can't take you seriously in that shirt, so. Yeah. That's right. So remind us what your shirt says again. It's the menu panel image of the Costco hotdog for $1.50 and it says I got that dog in me on it. With the Pepsi. Yeah. And the Pepsi. Yeah. Okay. So I can't take you seriously in that shirt. I think there is probably some sense of satisfaction for sure. Yeah. So you feel as though that the justice has been carried out and that there's been a separation of that because your feeling there is this, it's almost this, this feeling is following you of this cold, thirsty thing. So you have to make kind of figure out a place, where are you taking this? Where are you putting this? What's the other part of that exchange? You have this cold, thirsty thing. It's almost a shadow following you. What do you do to it? To ensure that it is, it goes where it needs to go. I mean, yeah, part of me just wants to metaphorically grind it into the dirt. The other part of me just wants to find Marcel and give it back to him. Yeah. Again, we kind of, I was kind of using the analogy of Peter Pan with his shadow. Yeah. Yeah. So it's almost like you have this Lucy in shadow following you, but it's cold, thirsty and without any of the charm of Lucy and actually just let me see and know that. So you are still charming. So I think, yeah, what do you want to do with that? So it's really three of you that are there, but Autumn, you have control over this being. It's just a fix to you. Okay. Okay. So that would give me some indication that something happened there broke loose, which honestly, maybe I had to do that first before I confronted Marcel because now I can confront Marcel without any fear of harming Lucy and Lucy and is free from Marcel at this point. But whether or not she's willing or dead, you don't know. No, I don't. But he's free of it regardless. So, okay. The other question I had is for Rainy, Rainy, do you remember? Did we establish that Cora was Autumn's new master because of the strings? I have two strings on you right now. Yeah. Okay. Well, and was that that was before I became dark itself. No, that was during that process. That's how I got you out of there, but you still took your action first. Okay. All right. Right. Yeah. Well, you were successful on that, then Cora was successful and then has those two strings. Okay. Because I just noticed it says, under loyal, it says, when you become your darkest self, your current master loses all strings on you, but you were darker self before this happened before the strings. Yeah. I wasn't your master when you became darkest. Yeah. No. Okay. That was my question. Yeah. Okay. It happened afters. And we didn't have a master established because we didn't. No. Because you had a tie between Riley and Lucian. Perfect. Okay. That's all I need to know. So in that case, I will look at Cora and I say, I have something I need to give back to Marcel. Something that's following us right now. Cora, you can see this shadow. You can see the shadow. And it is a cold and thirsty thing. It's certainly nothing that I want, but is it something that Marcel would need back? Or do you have somewhere you're supposed to put those things? I don't know. I've never done this before. I kind of want to give it back to him though, because I feel he would want it and he deserves it. I'd be part of him that gave to Lucian to begin with. Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, it's one of the most reasonable things you've said that you're going to do to Marcel. So... I'm okay with it. Oh my God. All right. Yeah. I'm definitely looking at you for approval on that. Yeah. So, yeah, I give kind of a proving nod like, "Well, back into town then, he's going to be somewhere around the new foe or at the Nuevo." Mm-hmm. So confusing. I blame you guys. Oh, yeah. No, we did it on purpose. All right. So, you're heading back into town and how do you, I mean, I would say, I mean, Cora, you were there, you were on bike with Lucian and Autumn, you have a vehicle, right? Mm-hmm. So true. So, what do you want to do? Yeah. We can just drive straight out to the Nuevo. So, you're going to get your car. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I mean, I'm sure it's parked near my, well, wherever I normally park it, I guess. Mm-hmm. Get to your car. Mm-hmm. Like, Cora, so how are you feeling being in the car with Autumn and driving into the town? I think I'm still reeling a bit from all the things that have shifted at once. Yes. But also the fact that there's this weird remnant, like, you know, function, like, pile of evil fingernails. It's not really Lucian, it's all the weird, dark stuff. That was part of what made him a vampire, I guess, but it's, I don't really know what to make of it because that's not of my world or this world. Right. That's very alien to me, which I'm not used to things being so outside of my experience or understanding. So right now I'm kind of seeing where it goes and hoping because of my trust in Marcel, that he will know what's going on. Mm-hmm. I think that's why I'm kind of just rolling with it right now. Yeah. Is that I have, I do have this underlying faith that he kind of would know what to do next. And also you have this power over Autumn at scenes, she's looking to you for approval and that's. Well, it's just, I mean, it seems for the first time since I have met her, she seems to be, make more sense and be in her right mind since she's actually listening to me. So that there's that. I don't know that I had to tribute it to anything super natural at this point. Yeah. Okay. Something bad happened and she needs someone to look to her. Yeah. Okay. I think it'll get suspicious and weird later, but right now, okay. I'm just the one that she's leaning on in this time of weirdness. Yes. Yeah. So Riley, I would say, and you and Autumn can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you guys might have trackers on your phone for each other to know where each other are. And it would give you a little ping saying Autumn is left home and it's out of the radius of where you're at. So, being your name, how do you feel about this, David? That's fine. I'm a former mortal after all. I'm into that kind of thing. So this would surprise Riley because Autumn set all this up. Yeah. Yeah. I feel Riley more or less knows where Autumn is, regardless, normal circumstances just between being able to track their scent and their tracks and stuff like that, and also the spirit bond between those two things. Mm-hmm. And I think the phone's suddenly like interrupting this moment. Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that's even augmented by that it's a surprise to him, because I didn't necessarily know that it was set up, you know, Autumn has left the compound type of alert. What the fuck? Yeah. I'm sure. So that's interrupting this moment where Lucy and standing there, and you're looking at Riley and Uncle Isaac, they are werewolves very much so you are standing there and you are trying to understand who you are now. And so have you picked your moves? I have. Okay. So what moves do you have as the mortal? So we covered True Love, which I get auto, and then I picked Miss With Me, Miss With Her when using your lover's name as a threat, add two to your role to shut someone down or keep your cool and your lover gave a string on you. So yeah, now I can be like, you saw what Autumn did to me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then I took the dual combo of sympathy as my weapon and excuses are my armor. So sympathy as my weapon says every time you forgive someone for hurting you, which everyone does a lot, and excuse their base nature, which they all needed excuse to gain a string on them. And then excuses are my armor. When you ignore some blatant problem with your lover, which she has a lot so or or on how they treat you, which is like trash. Yeah. Yeah. I get to mark it. It's to be fair. You used to be trash. Yeah. That's true. One's trash always. That's right. Oh my God. All right. So great. So you are standing there. You're hearing Riley's phone go off. You are just there and Uncle Isaac kind of looks at you and says, do you want some water or something? Are you okay? Yeah. I would like some water. Okay. So there's something that's shifted here, right? There's this difference that you're how you're being treated. Yeah. And he goes and he gets you some water and he's sort of just looking at you, just really scrutinizing you because he has also detected the change here that you aren't who you used to be. You're a little different. So you have the water and you are taking it I assume? Yeah. Okay. And so Riley, you're watching, oh what? Yeah. I was going to ask, did I skirt deaf? Mmm. I guess. What does everyone think because I'm going to say that skirting deaf is if you were dead dead, but I feel there was something that was taken, your skin was removed. I do think it was established though that it was because autumn was doing that much damage. And so the option was skirt death and change skin, skirt death and stay a vampire or die. Those were the ones that I recall from the session. Got it. Okay. I could feel that. Yeah. So yeah, you just skirt death. Okay. So I lose all my strings. Yes. Okay. You have one string on autumn. Yes. Yep. Okay. That string. Oh, don't worry. So, so Riley, you are looking at Lucy and drink this water. What do you do? I'm feeling a great deal of sympathy all of a sudden for some reason. I see this babe in the woods type of situation. I imagine we've seen holding the Dixie cup of water, but in both hands. Yeah, totally. And there's no, we don't have the gray blanket around them as though standing. He probably could use one. He probably could use a blanket. He might go into shock. We don't know. Yeah. Yeah. But he's also beautiful in this vulnerability. There's something really beautiful about that vulnerability and also feeling very displaced the first time dealing with the, I'm roasting on this side from this fire. I'm freezing on this side because of the cold mountain air and that's not normal to me. There's just this stuff about him that just seems if he needs care and comfort. Yeah. I think so. Do you do anything? So what do you do? Yeah. I'll ask if instead of getting a blanket, I want to invite Lucy in, do you want to come inside? Do you see it on the couch? Warm up. I don't know what just happened, but you just got fucked up, man. So I think it could make you some soup. I don't know. I'm like, don't worry about the soup. But then, yeah, I. Your stomach's growling. Yeah. Then I stand up and my stomach starts growling. I'm on second thought. I lost my hot dog earlier. I didn't even get to. I'm literally emasculated. Oh, no, how frightening can you get? I know, right? So Isaac says, we still have a lot of food. Viola, you take them over to my trailer and I'll fix them up a plate and so you guys go. All right. Yeah. I'll walk Lucy into Uncle Isaac's trailer. Yes, indeed. Wow, we're walking. It's nice. The old one's out front. Don't sit on that one. Yeah. Classic. The trailer with the deck built in front of the front door. Oh, yeah. Steps going down. So right next to the steps, there's the old couch, the steps, cinder blocks. Yeah. I want to say they're cinder blocks and two by 10s. There you go. Yeah. Built together. I think as we're walking, I think, Lucy, it just kind of looks at you as he's drinking his water. Hey, man, I was trying to find you earlier. And I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for everything I've done. Yeah. There's a lot of that going around right now, you know, every day is this new opportunity to feel that way and decide what direction you're going to take it in. So that's tough shit, man. I feel you. Me too. Pat, Pat. Me too. Yeah. Just so Lucy that. Patting you is just, it's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. It's more so because he's touched you in the past. So it's, but this is, whoa, there's some serious power behind his. Yeah. I definitely flinch when he's patting me or whatever. Okay. Yeah. And then I kind of shake my head. What the hell even happened? Good question. Well, let's see. You guys showed up at our barbecue and then I found out that you were making out with my girl. I got pissed off about that. I asked you what the deal was with that. We had a whole confrontation. Autumn couldn't handle that. So she fucked off to the woods. I noticed some other people going in there, that fucking Dylan guy going in there and I don't know. Not Dylan. Devin. Devin. Going in there. And I don't know what happened with that and me and you kind of kind of squashed it. I feel I told you fucking back off and that seemed to land okay. And so I considered that in the past at that point, handled, right? Yeah. And, and then out of the woods, Autumn came out of fucking nowhere and just bowled you over. Lipped right into your chest and got in your face. When you got up, man, you're not the same. I don't even know that I'm a hundred percent who I'm talking to right now. They kind of lean around and look looking into some eye contact and stuff. His eyes are a different color. You noticed that, Riley. His eyes look different. They're not icy. Yeah, baby. You're the hair out of the face thing. Your eyes are a different color. Your sense completely changed, you're drinking fucking water. I don't know who I'm talking to right now, but all I know is you need help and you're here in my home. So I have to help you. So you're a good dude, Riley. Well, no, no, I know. I just can't always control myself. Yeah, I get it, I get it. And so you're seeing this, and so Lucy, you can understand this. Yeah, I kind of just nod, I get what he's talking about, but Lucy isn't the role model of self-control either. He just expresses it differently. So yeah, I think when he says that, there's definitely that kind of, I get it, man. You know, Lucy squeezes his arm and nods. And then I think once we're inside, I think Lucy sits down on the couch or whatever and he's drinking his water and he says, where's Autumn now? This thing she put on my phone said that she left and put on my phone. They're just lying on Riley's futon. Just give me your phone. Why? Just give me it. Then his hands are backed. Yeah, I don't give a shit. Yeah. And so yeah, this thing says she left. I saw her leave with Cora and they're kind of headed into town, I feel. Just my guts telling me that together, I am curious how, if at all, with my dark minus one, if I have any idea of the third entity with them or if that's just a complete. I don't think based on the dark minus one, I don't know if you would necessarily, you might be able to see or sense it in person, but from this distance, it's not really something that's in your circle. If I was closer, it might be kind of avoid the way that Lenore was, but it's given it's so far removed and stuff, yeah, there would have to be some serious searching and what not. Yeah, so Lucy, and as you're sitting there, so Uncle Isaac comes in with a plate of food and hands it to you, goes here, just eat some of this sunny and as you're shifting in the couch, the heel of your shoe hits something hard under the couch. Just letting you know that feels weird and the food smells amazing, it smells so good, it's everything you could possibly want, you're just like famished, so you're free to dig in. Yeah, I definitely do, yeah, it's definitely a quick eating. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, so once you've finished your food, what do you want to do next? Your bike is still there. Yeah, yeah, I don't know, I feel like Lucy doesn't quite know what's going on, so he might want to go somewhere private and see what the hell he can and can't do, it doesn't feel like it can pass through the walls anymore, but we should check that out. Yeah, it's just, you feel very, very grounded, this is the most grounded that you felt ever. So yeah, so do you decide to leave and you want to be alone or do you want to take Riley with you for protection or what? Yeah, I might just be like, well what are you going to do the rest of the night? Well, I was going to clean up, I guess, then, I thought I maybe just kind of going and getting in the woods, I haven't really been there in a while since the whole autumn thing. She can require a lot of attention. So Lucy, and when you hear that, what do you think because she is, I mean, she is your center of your world. Yeah, I probably say something well, man, yeah, she does, and not everybody's made to keep up with that. I love that now that he has some calories in his belly, he has the ability to be that kind of impulsive, some impulsive things. And it's like, it's not a dig it Riley, it's like a skeezy way to be like, you should break up with her dad. Yeah, exactly. So Riley, when you hear that, what do you think? The first thing I think is that that's true, just last session, I was thinking, man, I might have to cut her loose. Exactly. So there's a real truth to that. The other thing that he thinks is, I know what you're doing, yeah, I get it. Oh, all right, all right, I think it's your dander up a little. Well, because we're also from last session, just coming off of, we just squashed you moving in on my girl and messiveness, I think, that is involved with the whole werewolf skin energy. I mean, it explores that. So as much as Lucian's vulnerable, he may be a rival, and that might kind of get your dander up a bit, so he seems to have regained his strength since whatever the hell happened to him happens. And so do you want to keep your cool or what do we want to do, shut him down? What do we want to do? Yeah. Let's go for a shutdown. Okay. I have a question. Yeah. Yes. Did I ignore some blatant problem with my lover? Or? That's a good question, no, it sounded you embraced a problem. Yeah. Exactly. You're into the fact that you're hard to handle. I get to experience. No, you like the fact that she's hard to handle? I do. But I don't, well, maybe you are ignoring it because she's not here. Yeah, it is. I'll give it to you. I'll give it to you. Yeah. I mean, she is hard to handle. She's hard to handle. That's a condition coming up. That's a great condition. Yeah. It's ready. Yeah. Get ready for that. All right, so Riley, you're going to try to shut Lucian down. Yes. Okay. And this is one where we kind of decide how it plays out afterwards based on the role. That's right. So let's do that. Okay. But we went over this. Autumn, so Lucian's already ignoring your difficult relationship. Oh, I heard. Okay. Oh, I heard. Nice. Okay. And hard to handle does sound like a good one. I don't think I have any modifiers because I had four strings on Lucian before. Oh my God. I was before everything. Those are so I can change my string tracker to zero on Lucian. Yes. Yes. I thought so. I'm just a baby. He is just a baby of a baby who's trying to get your girlfriend. Yeah. He was trying to steal my girl. That's right. No, I'm trying to get you to break up with her. It's totally different. Oh my God. There are other there are other relationship arrangements. There are other relationship arrangements that can be made, but anyway, moving on. All right. For now, it is a competition. Let's see what happens. Okay. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh, a fail. Okay. That's five. I fail to shut Lucian down in my attempt. Oh God. All right. Come across poorly. Now, does the fail, does that where you tell us where how to use out? Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. Oh, yes. And you buckle up and see where it takes you. So what? You mark your XP and wait for it. Yeah. That's right. So you're hearing this. It's this reminder of Alexis's words echoing in your ear. They were making out or they were kissing on the boardwalk and like, didn't you know that? And it's just kind of bringing into this stark relief all the stuff that you don't know about autumn. You don't know where she is right now. You don't know what she's been doing with Lucian. You don't know who else she's she's with Cora right now. And so everything is kind of crashing down where everything is built on a whole load of bullshit and whether or not it's true, it doesn't matter. It feels true right now. And you feel the change coming on, not in a menopausal way, but you feel as though your body is getting bigger and Lucian, you start to detect there's a major change and shift in the energy in the room where you feel as though you are near a wild animal. It's incredibly scary, but Riley, you are very focused on you're just feeling it percolating up, up, up. And until I sick. Yeah. Yeah. And so just try them. Right. So exactly. So, so Lucian, you are detecting that and Riley, you're going to you're going to get into your darkest self, but I want to give Lucy in a bit of a head start here. So Lucy, and you feel like you're in the room with a wild animal. And Riley's just suddenly not present and he's taking his shoes off, Uncle Isaac comes from his back bedroom and he's walking in and he sees what's happening. And he yells at you, Lucy, and he's like, get out of here, get his rasping voice. Yeah, I think I will run away. Okay. Nice. Let's run away. Good call. Don't run into something worse. Well, see about that. Yeah. I just don't tell him what to do. I do get a convenient plus one. Yes, you do. So that's nice. Yes, it is. Oh my God. Nice. Oh, I believe so. Success. Okay. Good. All right. Okay. Good. All right. I never fail. So you are I mean somehow so run so you run to your bike. You're doing your best, but it almost feels like you're kind of running through. I don't know. It's just like your legs are not propelling you as well as they have in the past. Maybe that's just because you got knocked out. Maybe I definitely I definitely slammed into the door. That's crazy. Yeah. Just walk through. Yeah, exactly. Rebound. Oh, better. So much better. Commering in into a glass door. That's right. That's right. You do. And and then you open it. The screen door. Yeah. Exactly. And then field field the results of 60 60 years of skipping leg day. Yeah. All right. No, my legs are like toothpicks. Oh, my God. It's not that bad. Big legs. Oh, my God. So you make your way to your bike, it starts and you don't have a helmet and you are that's not good. No, that's not good. And you are taking the roads out and your bike is a little harder to control than you remember, but you are able to to get out of the woods and where do you head? I think I want to think about it because I have stuff for Riley. I think I will go to I think I should go home. Well, I'll let you all know that the town is having their own Memorial Day barbecue celebration in the plaza. And anybody who's anybody is is there, they're going to have music and a little concert there. So that's what's happening Memorial Day evening. In the plaza, Marcel is there, everyone is there. Just telling you, just letting you know. So you want to go home. Okay. So Marcel is at the Memorial Day. And so Riley, as you suddenly start to transform Uncle Isaac standing there in the room, he's just watching, observing, you hear your wolf pack in the forest and they are calling you. Yeah, they want you to join them. Well, one of the last thoughts before I have to kind of hand the reins over and then maintain the motor come of control that I've managed to develop that I'm still struggling with is that I want to get out of Uncle's living room because he just got this couch. Right. All right. That's nice of you to do, I think. So yeah, you definitely do. You push through the door and just fall onto all fours on the deck. And then that's where it kind of starts to really come out and they're calling for you. They're just howling wanting to you to run with them. So you are with your wolf pack, you're with your gang. Charged off into the woods, into woods, hunt down evil with ruthless, brutal efficiency. That may. I'm good. Well, he's a baby on a motorcycle, so maybe now. So all right. So you are headed, listening to home at the Nuvo. Yeah, I think once I get there, or unless you have a thing, I was just going to go straight to my room, head down, I don't want to talk to anybody, I don't want to see anybody. So you walk into the penthouse suite and Nina is sitting in the kitchen, reading something. She looks up at you and you see her. And it really dawns on you how she is not, I mean, she's your mother, how you remember her way, way, way back when. And there's no aging, nothing has changed. It's very disorienting, and unsettling. And you have this sudden adrenaline rush, you suddenly feel very cold as she's staring at you and her eyes are glowing, this weird icy blue glow. She's so pale. I think. Does she say anything to me? She hasn't yet. She's looking you up and down. I think I just look at her and I kind of run my fingers through my hair. And part of me wants to go to her and have her be mom. But the other part is that I look at her and I see her now as a monster, something unnatural. Yeah, absolutely. So I think I start to say something, but then I just, I run to my room and I start just grabbing clothes and shoving him into a bag. Okay. So you can hear her voice and it's very clear and very eerie sounding where she's like, listen, where are you going? I just say, I have to go. I can't be here. So you hear what sounds like this really loud crack. It sounds like something breaking in the kitchen and you're trying to gather up all your things. Right. What do you do next? I think as soon as I get all my stuff, I'm just going to try to leave. Okay. So you're making your way down the hall. You're hearing more snapping and cracking and for the second time, you hear her voice and she says, never come back here again. And it makes your internal organs just shake vibrate, it's very eerie. And you see in the corner of your eye, you're seeing something be still. You're seeing something scaly and black and winged as you're attempting to, your hands are sweating. Yeah. And it's slipping on the handle of the door to get the hell out of that house or the apartment. So what do you do? Yeah, I'm grabbing the handle. It's not working. I can't walk through the damn wall anymore. I'm wiping my hand down on my pants, just like trying to be calm. I guess I need to keep my cool. Keep your cool. Let's do it. Let's do it. If I can, I've never done this before. So, okay. I remember with cold, which is now punishing minus one. Ooh. I've worked for two years for this. Worked for two years. Oh my God. All right. Fail. Fail. Oh no, don't kill me, mom. Okay. So what are you afraid of? I'm afraid I've lost my whole family. I mean, I've lost everything now. Okay. See here? Afraid. You failed. Oh my God. Okay. So there's something in the back of your mind reminding you. These are the things that keep vampires away, the cross, the holy water, the steak, garlic, many of these things. And you remember that you have some pencils in your, in your bag. This is all you have to defend yourself against this, this thing that is rounding the island in this penthouse that's kissing at you and has these long fangs and these whiteed out eyes and it is getting closer to you. What do you do? Yeah. I just, I pull those pencils out, I form the shape of a cross and I think it just comes out that I know someone who can take you down. I know someone who can fucking pull you down to hell. Oh. Nice. So is that mess with me, mess with her? Yes. All right. I'm going to try to shut mom down, aging them all. Okay. I'm trying. Okay. I got to stay alive. It wasn't for my life. What's that like? Oh. So it's hard. So yeah, so she's rounding on you and she's, she's listening to you and it's absolutely terrifying. The way that her ragged breaths are, yeah, coming out of her mouth, her fangs are, yeah, she's just salivating uncontrollably. What do you do? And I succeed. I got a 12. 12. Okay. Oh, okay. Tell Autumn. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I didn't say that. But I get a, I get a string on you though. You did get a string on me. Okay. Here we go. It begins. All right. So this was, so this was, you're trying to shut mom down basically. Yes. Okay. Shutting down. So you were successful and so what we are going to do is choose one from below. So do you want to take one forward in terms of your next move? Yeah. I think one forward is probably the safest bet here. Okay. She's listening to you and she kind of does this crazy laugh. Like, I don't believe you. You're nothing now. You're a nobody. What, what happened to you? She's actually curious. No. Lucy would tell the truth. He's too scared to lie. Yeah. I think he would just be like, I don't know. I didn't, I don't know what happened. Okay. And she said, I always knew you were weak now. Get out of here. Leave now. Yeah. I think I reached behind me and grabbed the door handle and just make my escape. Okay. So you're running to the elevator, you're, you, you make it, it's, it's so surreal to be in the salivator after what you just saw and you are outside of the new vote now. And you see above you, there's a black form heading right for you flying out of the air toward you as you're attempting to get on your bike. What do you do? I think I don't have any, I mean, I'll know that I have any other choice. I just have to get on my bike and get it started. Okay. You're going to run away again? Yeah. I don't think I can out run her on foot or it or whatever the hell it is. Yeah. Okay. So let's roll a volatile. I will. And I'll toss plus one. And you have a take one forward with your move. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Oh my God, I'm going to, I'm going to level up here in a second. Okay. Stop it. Okay. Can I, can I suggest something? Yes. On the fail. If I recall correctly, uh, one of the moves on a fail is bring them together. Yes. Could, could we have a hero moment for Autumn where she's like, you're reading my mind. You're reading my mind because as you're like driving toward town, it's taking a while to get out of the woods. You and Cora are in the car and you're at the novo or at the novo. Yeah. Yeah. Cora, you see Lucian standing by his bike and he's looking up at the sky. And so I think that's when, and yeah, and Autumn, you feel this weird pulling from the shadow thing. And so you both notice this. So Cora, you see Lucian, you're the one to spot Lucian first because you're on the passenger side and it's on the right side of the. And I think still not knowing the weird power that I have, at least for now over Adam, I'd be like, stop. Uh huh. Uh huh. Who's like. Yeah. Like right in the middle of the, like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like when your dog's lunging at a chicken bone and you make a sound and it just kind of frees in there. Yeah. Yeah. Dark. Dark. So, so the tires screech, Lucian, you hear these tires screech and you see Autumn's car and you see Cora's face staring at you from the, from the passenger side door. Um, Cora, do you say anything? Um, I wouldn't do because I have, I do have a little bit of a human obsession. Yeah. So I'd be like, who is that? Like your beautiful is she? Yeah. Who is she? Yeah. Who is she though? Yeah. What's her? Because I think for Cora, this is the most beautiful that Lucian would ever have seemed. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. For sure. And so vulnerable, so human and Autumn, you see that it's Lucian because you're looking at what Cora is looking at suddenly and so what do you do? And I would add that you've never seen Lucian like this. No. Genuinely afraid. Careful. Hair kind of sticking to his forehead with sweat. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The flesh of life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. There's things happening. Blush colored. Yes. Body chemicals. Yes. Yes. It's pretty neat. It's bad right now. The funk. The funk. The scared. The bare bones. The bare bones as well. Yeah. Right. Sure. Sure. So what do you do? You see him, Autumn, you see him standing there and you are transfixed because he is so beautiful and vulnerable in a way that you've never seen before. Do I see what he's looking up at? Not yet. No, because you're in a vehicle. But you see that he's looking up and then he suddenly sees you. And you're hearing something screeching. You're hearing something coming from the sky. So yeah. Not great. Not great. All right. So I'll just, I'll just, you know, get in today. Oh my God. All right. So, Lucene, what do you do? I think I just tossed my bike so it just kind of falls over and I've got my duffel bag around my shoulder. Mm-hmm. And I just run and dive into the car. So you're running toward the car and you're hearing the flapping of leathery wings flapping behind you. You're running running. Your hand is on the handle and you feel the scraping across your back. It feels like knives. And then suddenly you're in the car, the door slams. And there's Cora in front of you in the passenger seat, Autumn, you're in the driver seat. You look behind and you see Lucene and he's radiating this beautiful vulnerability for lack of a better word. Yeah. I'll find new ways to describe you, Lucene, but that's the best way to describe me now. No. That's, yeah. Just keep doing that. And so what? Spam the vulnerability button. Yeah, please. So, so, Autumn, you're hearing a scrape of, it sounds like metal against metal on the top of your car. What do you do? That's my car is already a piece of shit. Yeah. I just, you know, I say wait here and I just throw the door open and step out and face down whatever this is. It's like landed on top of my car. We are going to pause there, take a break with Autumn just being like, that's it, getting out of the car and staring up at this hideous monster bat creature. It's older. I mean. Overing in the air. Yes. Yeah. The monster sure did. So, let's take a 10 minute break and we will get into it. Ooh. All right. All right. Rightly, you are running with your pack, your gang and everyone is there and you feel a sense of cohesion and wholeness that you haven't felt in a while. All the feelings that you were expressing to Lucy in just an hour ago, 40 minutes or whatever or just being left behind as you're moving with them and roaming and just patrolling your lands. And because your lands butt up against the sea cliffs, you're able to, as you mentioned earlier, you have a snoot on Autumn at all times. And you also have a sense of something being off. And so as you shift your direction, the pack follows you and you are roving down to this place where it meets the road heading to the Nuevo, proper, but also not before going by the Nuevo. And you sense a big old snoot full of something truly evil. And as you are getting that snoot full, you can finally see as you get through the trees and you get to like a trail that's adjoining the road. You see the Nuevo, you see Autumn's car and you see Autumn standing there looking up at a winged bat humanoid thing that is flying in the air and screeching at Autumn. And you can also detect that Cora and Lucy are with her. What do you do? I become a missile, a firm missile, literally, you know, but all efforts are redoubled because my darkest self evil must be hunted down with ruthless, brutal efficiency. And so by becoming a missile, I just mean throw myself through it because it has put a giant target on itself, whatever this thing is. So you're rushing across, yeah, it's offensive, yes. So you're rushing across the road, your gang is following you. And Autumn, you suddenly feel a presence of all of these wolves kind of circling around. Cora, you're seeing this, Lucy and you are also seeing this. Cora, what do you make of this? I lack any natural ability to fit myself, so it's always very exciting. Yes, yes indeed. Start throwing hands, let's see it, come on. But this is a great time for me to put myself in danger just in case I get to use one of my new moves from last time. Find us, remind us what those are. So last time that I had an advance, I took the hollow move, strange impressions. Yes. To be fair, it says when a main character harms me or allows me to heal, so I can really only get hurt accidentally and have it be helpful at this point, because we're not fighting each other for once, but if I do get hurt or helped healed by somebody, then I can temporarily gain one of their skin moves and add it to my character sheet until I use it, but yeah. So it's like time to fling myself into it, plus on a personal egg character level, we all have to defend this poor, little pink, naked, loosey, she is like a little, a little naked, oh, rat, oh my God, it's true. So we just saved this hairless guinea pig from the lab. That's right. Got to put extra extra sunscreen, a little sweater on it, oh, I didn't see what the thing was, but Autumn's getting out of the car now. And I kind of have business with Autumn. If I lose another promise generator at this point, it's going to be a problem. It's a promise generator! I think I totally see it again, Lucy and Shadda, like, stay in here where it's safe until she's taking care of it, and then I like pop out of the car to see what's going on. Yeah, okay. So you pop out and you see Autumn staring up at this beast. Riley, you're coming around and you see Cora and you see Autumn standing there, looking up at this thing, that's flapping and looking down at them. Autumn, a solution you are in the car, okay, and there is a presence next to you that is very uncanny and unsettling, and it feels very strange to you, but also familiar. Is that Cora? No, it's Cora's out of the car, you see, so Cora's out of the car, that is very rude. Cora's out of the car. There's something in the back seat, sitting next to you, and it's a dark, cold presence, and it's just sitting there very calmly, hovering. So, Autumn. Okay, well, I'm going to lash out physically at this thing. At this beast. Mm-hmm. Oh, also, can I get rid of my in trouble condition? I think I've sort of... Yeah. I think you're past that, definitely. Yeah. Okay. At that one, since I was immortal... You did. There you go. It's true. Yeah. Also, that's called growth. Again. It is. It is called growth. Oh, let's see here. I can escape the car. Yep. Just seeing what I can stack up here. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, I am protecting my master, so that is good. I get a plus one, and Cora, you get a string on me for doing that. Oh. Excellent. My power grows. Yeah. So, Cora, when you come around and you're looking at this thing, it was focused on Autumn, but now it's focused on you, and it's staring at you, and there's something about you that it's very, very much drawn to. Oh. All right. Yeah. All right. Because her husband likes me better. I don't know. Oh, maybe it's the blood, and we don't know. That's it. Babe blood. All right. So, we're using Lashout physically, but I kind of view this as a... Maybe it's Lashout metaphysically, because I'm basically, like, basing her down. I'm picturing her sort of crouched on top of my car, denting the shit out of the roof. Sure. Yeah. So, like, take your unholy seed and leave this town. Wait, Lucian, or meet you, meet him, meet him, meet him, meet him. Meet you. I'm talking about the thing that's sitting next to Lucian right now. And so, and with that, I kind of give this, this sort of, be gone kind of move as if I'm throwing this thing back up to her, even though I'm not holding it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Symbolic, right. Got it. Got it. So, here we go. All right, let's try it. I'm attempting to cause harm. Partial? Oh, partial. Nice. Okay. That ends up happening when you say that. With that movement, it's almost as though you've pulled a layer off of her. It's hard to describe, but it's like you have this, you have a piece of her, somehow spiritually, metaphysically, as you did this, like, be gone. It's this thing that kind of like, I don't know, it caught on your hand. I'm sorry if I'm not explaining things very well today. No, I got it. It makes total sense. Okay. Yeah. And so, so thank you. So, so it's, it's hovering there on your hand. And so, with that, once you've done that, you are feeling the feeling that you had from when you were coming out of the woods and you did this thing to Lucian. You are suddenly smoldering. You are glowing red. Your eyes are white. Your hair is just billowing behind you. And you are in this strange, ashen form, in addition to the world shifting in terms of it feeling it's all a negative. And so, she is this very strange beast and you look at your hand and you see there's a piece of her that's there with you. You can see into the car and you see that the shadow seems to be screaming. It suddenly has a face and it looks similar to this being that's on top of the car. It has a similar vampiric fangs and eyes and it's starting to crawl out of the car toward you. So that's what happened so far. So, she learned something about my true nature, I guess. You harmed them, but choose one. Yeah. So, what do you want to do? That's, that's when I'd go with. That's when she learned something about your true nature and gains a string on you. Yeah. Okay. So, she gains a string on you for whatever that's worth. So, you said, like, take your seat with you. Yeah. Take, take, take your, take your demon seed and leave this town for good. Okay. And she says, "You must be new with this. I'm not going anywhere." Well, yes, I am actually. All right. Okay. She doesn't belong to me and so then she lunges towards you. Riley, you see this being, you see Autumn standing there making some movements and this thing's starting to lunge at Autumn, what do you do? I like from the top of her car, yeah. The road kind of curves around as you were saying earlier, I'm coming around on that road and just making that Terge's throat of gouts of asphalt because they're just clawing out of the pavement, gaining more speed and more speed to, as soon as I get close enough, launch into the side of this thing with faying and claw all at once. And if things can go that far, it's the theory, you see the, you know, the wolf or the dog would leap up and just make that impossible height. You see the videos of the Belgian mals that get just serious altitude and they're looking at you. Oh, yeah. It's that serious altitude latching onto it location to be determined and then, but because it's the werewolf, not just quote, unquote, the wolf, there's also the claws sinking in and out to think of the rear be coming up and kicking savagely at it. Going ass over a tea kettle and tumbling forward. Okay. So let's let's lash out physically. All right. This back those bonuses up, baby. It's a core. You are seeing this happen in front of you where autumn is having this exchange and you're hearing the asphalt getting kicked up, hearing the grinding, churning energy of this werewolf coming around. There is still a little pinky in the car and also this weird shadow being. So what do you do? I stare right back at the shadow being stared at me and I get into the abyss. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I want to know what we need to do to get rid of this horrible thing. Yeah. Please. God. So, so we will do that. So we will do that. We'll see you in all of this now. Welcome to the mortal life of seeing all these monsters shake your head off. Awful. You monster. How dare you so you are seeing all of the you're seeing all of this commotion all around you and it is really weird and being in this car with this very strange thing is getting really unsettling. So I'm just giving you that a little bit Riley. We're going to go into your damage. We're going to go into Cora's abyss gazing and then Lucy will get to you autumn. We will also get back to you, but so I'm just I'm just spending the lazy season here. Yes. Yes. All right. So, so we have our werewolf. So what did you do? Okay. With the last show physically here I have my normal role. I have plus one to all roles made to defend autumn as well. Yes. At least. Let's see here like how you're preparing us for some inevitable stuff. Got your gang with you and got your gang with you plus once your roles and harm as applicable. Yeah. There's just a bunch of wolves on the street down to no other. Absolutely. Right. Yeah. We probably have bitter wind right on my heels because he's a large enforcer of the table and the ripple and hopper and dabble right behind them and then bringing up the rear would probably be rain and moon shadow. Yeah. Whiskey kind of slinking off in the shadows to the side. It's like a plus two. I think. Yeah. Let's see where we end up. What we do. Ten. Oh. Oh. So close. Okay. So that is a, yeah, sort of not a bed of pain, baby. All right. You deal them harm. Okay. So you come around and you do exactly what you describe in terms of getting her into your claws. You are getting this, this beast on the ground and autumn is happening right in front of you. Autumn, we will get into how you react to that in just a second. So I'm going to go to Cora and Lucy and then we'll go from there. So Cora, what is this shadow? Why is it still here? What do we need to do? Okay. Okay. Time of day wise. Where are we right now? The sun is down at this point. It's early evening. It's probably based on the fact that it's going towards summer. The sky is pretty much all dark, but at this point it's probably around, I don't know, eight o'clock at night or so. Okay. Yeah. All right. So we'll see if I succeed before I try to, you know, write me looking cool or anything. Yeah. Yeah. Dive back in the car. Yeah. All right. Sorry. Let's see. So you're looking for how to get rid of this shadow, this whole thirsty, vampiric shadow. And let's see, um, yeah, I don't have anything to help me with this, because this, this is a whole new entity to me. It is. It is. Um, so yeah. We're just going to go for it. Oh, no. Well, there's an experience. Okay. We're getting there everybody. Okay. Damn. I feel like I'm falling behind. I only have two more XD before we trigger the end of the campaign. And yeah. We are. No. Oh, really? Oh, wow. Oh, okay. Here we go. You are desperate to find out what this thing is. And the second you're trying to turn your gaze inward or outward, trying to understand it. And it very much suddenly starts coming towards you. It's crawling out of the car and walking toward you, getting close to you similar to how Lucian was earlier in the day where he was grabbing you and nuzzling up against you. So this thing is doing that to you. And I would say that this is a reminder of all of the nasty promises Lucian never fulfilled. It's true. It's a reminder that he did not fulfill his promises to you. And this thing contains the promises that you were given and you do not have them. And you suddenly feel the ocean closer than ever. You're hearing your sisters calling to you from the ocean. They're crying and asking you, "Where are you? Why haven't you come back yet?" And you are in your darkest self. Okay. Yeah. That's fine. What do you do? I'm feeling like my legs not really wanting to support me all the way. Yeah. I kind of catch myself on the car and look inside and see new Lucian. Yeah. And I just reach the window and I start pulling at the car and I'm tending to. I don't have a lot of volatility, so it probably won't go very well. But you're trying to grasp at him. I'm grabbing at him. You're grabbing at him. I'm becoming monstrous to others' points of view. Well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, Lucian, you're seeing Cora now again for the first time in this utterly oceanic fish person body. Yeah. It's my opirculum straining and sweat air trying to breathe at the surface level. They are kind of grasping at you with these beautiful slime covered hands that the slime is usually very protective. It has a point in the ocean, but really it's just slimy on the surface of and it's unsettling for a human. Your warm hazel eyes are taking all of this in and what do you do? I scream help on him. Do you even want to try to keep your cool or you're just screaming for help? Yeah, I'm just screaming for help in his blood. Please, I'm so soft and vulnerable now. Oh my God. This is such an utterly experienced. I'm trying to think of anything to reference and I have nothing to reference and I love that. That makes me so happy. This is utterly original to me. All right. Oh my God. So you're screaming for autumn, autumn, autumn. You are seeing Riley tear into this beast. I would say pretty leafily, if not fatally, there's us, but there's an extra layer to this that you are seeing that you need to help with. And so what does that look like? Well, there's going to be this banishment or tearing away portion of it. Yeah. So how do we want to do that? Is it another lash out or? I would say another lash out physically. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So Riley, it does feel very satisfying to rip into this thing that is just so unequivocally evil. There's very little to redeem here. And you're tearing into the physical form and it's definitely suffering and screeching in your ears, but that makes you want to even go in more, I think. Correct? Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Okay. There's all gas, no breaks at this phase. Yeah. And you're not also feeling there's a, there's this other like, there's this core that's almost impossible for you to reach and that's what autumn, I think, is tapping into. So autumn. You have to stack this up. You have any bonuses? I did take, unlike Santi, unfortunately, I do have primal dominance and, and so because I harmed Mina, I got a string on her. So I'll immediately spend that to just add one to the roll and I think time to finish the job. Okay. As I jump up on the car, so now there's a fucking werewolf, a demon vampire and a little girl, all tussling up on the top of a poor fire inside as the roof is just rushing down. Yeah. Yeah. The glass, the windows are just hopping out, you know, like, oh my, I know it's total chaos. Unreal. All right. All right. Here we go. Roll it up. Success. Okay. Okay. All right. All right. All right. Here, sundown time, you're stripping away this shadow again. You're stripping away this vampiric presence and it is dark and it is stuck. It is tar. Lucian's was almost like it almost wanted to be removed weirdly. This one is more tar-like. It's harder to remove, but you're doing it and it's thick viscous unlike this other shadow. So this thing is more like a blob. The other thing is more shadow-like and when you're considering this, you turn to look and you see that the shadow is embracing or, yeah, it's embracing chora. So you have this blob on the side of this, on the, on the ground of this tarry black, all consuming presence in addition to this very strange shadow that is closing on chora, your master. And then you also hear Lucian screaming in the car, for you. I mean, people defending on me. Oh, I know what a concept. Riley, as Autumn has removed this, this viscous thing. You can't really see this. This is happening in the spiritual plane, but you see Autumn doing her weird stuff. As she's doing that, the flesh that you're tearing into is suddenly turning into dust in your hands and blowing away the sea breeze. Okay. And there's nothing left. Oh, yeah. In the frenzy of the moment still tearing up the roof of the car because this is where it's taking place. Right, right, right. So there's just chunks of steel and a pulsory fly in everywhere, pour, leave some calmering in the back seat as a clause or a clunk and come back out again. Yeah. Probably just turn to the, the nearest, I don't know, probably Autumn is in line of sight and stuff like that. Just look at her and let out just the loudest of frustration, but also heat of the moment type of thing with just slavering spittle ropes and drool everywhere. Yeah. And your gang surrounds you too, and just kind of curious and sniffing and wondering and sniffing the places where Mina used to be. The one whiskey, I think you said was kind of lurking toward the back. They're actually looking quizzively sniffing near where Cora is because there's the shadow that's still here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Autumn, your car gets totaled once again. So one of the gang members whiskey is more sniffing at Cora more curious. What is this thing? And also this thing is struggling and, and there's the shadow that's embracing Cora. So Autumn, what do you do when you see this and Lucy and you're in the car. You're screaming at this point, the car is starting to essentially fall apart. What do you do? We'll just ask what Lucy is going to do really quick. I think as, yeah, as things are kind of happening, I'm basically looking for an opportunity to get out of the car. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah. Do you want to keep your cool? No. That ship has sailed. Oh. So you're just terrified at this point. You're going to run away. You're going to run away? I think I'm about it. Well, yeah. You're impulsive. I mean, yeah, I guess I do need to keep my cool because I don't want to, I don't want to leave the scene. Okay. Okay. So I'm going to do it. You just don't have very good chances of it. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So let's have you keep your cool and then we're getting to the Cora, because Cora is clamoring at you. Cora is trying to grab at you. They're grabbing at you and you are in this car that's falling apart. Autumn, you're seeing, again, you're seeing Cora being attacked by this shadow. I'm trying to think of the order in which to do this. I'm thinking that Lucy and I are still kind of paralyzed because Cora is grabbing at you. Okay. And that's kind of weird and kind of paralyzing Cora. And Cora hasn't identified themselves to me. No. No. It's just a weird monster clawing at me. It is. Yeah. Yeah. Creature from the Black Lagoon kind of hanging out. Yeah. So, and then, but very poignant, but the same time. So. Poignon creature. Oh. That is the creature of the black. The creature of the black. It is a poignant. A poignant deep one. It is. A poignant deep one. It is. It is. It is. It is. Okay. Thank you, Kenny, for backing up on that. Okay. So. So, Autumn, you see the shadow. You see Cora in their true form. Mm-hmm. What do you do? And Lucy is still in the car and Cora is trying to get out. Yes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay. I'll hop down and see if I can just help get Lucy in out, basically. Oh, get Lucy in out. Uh-huh. Cora is your master and the one struggling with this shadow. Right. Oh, okay. So, there's a... Okay. Okay. Sorry. So, just to rewind. The shadow scene is glummed on me and I'm reaching it for new... Shadow Lucy in. Okay. Got you. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Fine. I'll hop down and try and get that thing taken care of. Okay. So, what are you gonna do? Your master's gonna tap. Just try and pull it off. Yeah. Try and pull it off, Cora. Uh-huh. Yeah. Let's do it. And I get a plus one and Cora gets another string on me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sweet, delicious strings. Sweet, delicious strings. Sweet, delicious strings. Sweet, delicious strings. Sweet, delicious strings. Sweet, delicious strings. Sweet, delicious strings. Sweet, delicious strings. All right. So, I get the one is the... You guys were talking about spaghetti earlier, so... Aw, man, I could go for some spaghetti. All right. All right. All right. Not tonight. Not tonight. All right. So, that is a partial. So, I do... Partial success. Get it off. Give me that. Okay. So, yeah. So, the shadow. And I'll say, since it's a partial, that you get to decide how bad the harm turns out. On to you. Okay. So, when you, when you're pulling this thing off of Cora, and you do, you do so successfully, this thing has a hand and it slashes at your cheek. Oh, nice. Okay. Let's put some harm back. Well, you have these three scratches on your cheek. Cool. And they're pretty painful and black. Seven. Yes. And, but you do successfully have it. So, you have this black tari blob, and you have this weird shadow thing, and then Cora, you are relieved of this being, but you are still in your darkest self. And there's a really terrified Lucian. Are you continuing to grab at Lucian, or what do you want to? Oh, I feel with the shadow thing off of me, or feeling it pull away from me, I snap my head around to see it. And I think I would recognize that's the thing that isn't, that didn't keep its promises. Not the screaming cry, like sot gripping thing. Not bubbles. Yeah. Oh, my God. It's true, but you don't have to illustrate it. Beautifully vulnerable snob bubbles. Thank you. In a sense. In a sense, not bubbles. Yes. Yes. Very charming. Charming snob bubbles. Yes. Sexy Blair Witch. Yes. Exactly. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Blair Witch 2, not Blair Witch 1. Yeah. Arne. So you recognize the difference. Yes. Okay. And I think there are no strings that exist. Everything is new and exciting. It is. I don't necessarily want to make a bunch of rolls of them in a fail, but, okay, my goal in Darkest Cell is to rebalance the skills of justice for this thing that didn't keep its promises. That's right. And I don't think I can do that physically, not that I could anyway, because I'm not a very physical creature. So I'm going to attempt once more to, yeah, hear beyond the veil. Yes. Because I want to know how to package this little piece of shit up so I can drag it into the water. All right. That's what I want to know. Nice. Okay. Yeah. I love it. We're doing some of this skisng. Mm-hmm. I have nothing to cut me out because everything is great. Cool. Great. Okay. I have too dark. I cannot roll this to save my life. Why? Why? Oh, my God. I did worse this time than last time. You were stupid. Oh, my God. Well, okay, let me just think, there's so many fails I need to, all right. I feel stymied. Just give me, give me two seconds. Yeah. No, I mean, I just feel like this has been going so wrong. It has. I need this moment to be where like Dylan shows up. So I just like skitter into the darkness and run away or something. Yeah. Yeah. It's not going. It's getting to that level. Yeah. Because I was trying to think about all the kids, all your NPCs, yeah. I mean, because of course Henry was working at the quick bite on Memorial Day at the new Vogue. Right. Because of course he was. Yeah. Apparently. So of course he's working there and we're right outside the apartment because you are right outside the apartment. You are right outside the apartment. You are right outside the apartment and it's all like super well lit because it's a new build and everything. So, so yeah, I'm going to say that that suddenly, oh my God, sorry, this is just, I'm just, I'm totally staggered here. How bad do I make this pretty bad? I mean, one of them is when one of the main characters is after something and they're obstacles in the way that you can make it clear what price they'll need to pay to get what they want. So she could still succeed with the abyss gaze, but it's like, Oh shit. I'm going to have to pay this really high price to get rid of this thing. Where are you reading that? The MC reactions, I'm always stuck on the player sheet. Yeah, I know. Well, these are reactions, but yeah, when there's a failed role. Yeah. What? Okay. Sorry. I don't mean to suddenly stop all the action you guys. No, that's fine. The dice did it. Not you. Exactly. I know. But the dice always do all the things. And I'm trying really hard to like, yeah, maintain. Okay. Okay. Because we've already had other things, so I'm just thinking a lot of things. We've already had like police come and we've done that series one. There's herald the abyss. That might be. Well, that was what the attempt was and that was not that's well, but this is when the abyss looks back into you, basically, well, I don't view it that way. I view it as though someone is, if you're going to get an abyss case, whether you like it or not, basically, so, but turn the move back on them would be the abyss gazing into you. Sure, sure. Yeah. But I feel I've already kind of done that a little bit here. Okay, so Cora, you are attempting to understand the shadow in order to get rid of it. And it's just, this is just not clear. It's so confusing. It's so strange. And for the first time, so you came upon the shore, you're feeling compelled to go back home. You're sure your sister's screaming and crying and wanting you to come back. All of your siblings are saying, where are you, Cora? We want you here with us. And the siren call is so compelling and familiar and feel so comfortable and safe for the first time since you've come ashore. So you are feeling compelled to go to the ocean. What do you do? Okay. Can I, even though it would mean that this is our penultimate episode, if I do this, oh Lord, with this happening, one of the things Marcel promised me was a place of safety. That was our exchange of promises. And I am not safe right now. No. If I say that this promise is broken, which also kind of messes with my Marcel relationship, that would give me an advance. And I could take, belong to a jury of Fay, where my sisters come to take me back basically. And that triggers the end of our game. I could do that. That's true. Does Marcel know that you're not safe? I don't think that he does. But in my darkest self, I honestly don't also think that I care if it's meant or not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely not. Yeah. Because the whole promise piece. Okay. So I just wanted to clarify that before moving forward. What do you all think? That's great. Yeah. I think that sounds crazy. Because I think it kind of triggers the countdown to the Fay collecting and then Autumn's boss collecting and so it's the final stand up. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. So we get a true shadow over Innsmouth ending with all the details coming up on the question. They're not there. See, Fay, can we just come on and that U.S. government bombs. Nuclear. Okay. Go at it. Different. You're going to hit different. Yeah. I agree. I think that, yeah, it seems to make a lot of sense really just because of the way that the promise dynamic has been building and building and building hasn't broken. Yeah. Until now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's all that build up intention to burst in a big, bad way makes sense. Okay. So I just want to make sure everybody is understanding this. Okay. Okay. Great idea. Great idea, Renee. Okay. So I think, and I don't mind if other people hear it too, like kind of, to them it probably sounds like the siren song though, coming from different places along the beach, but I'm hearing what they're saying. And I think in a very Lenore fashion, because we're on the street right now, and I'm in my true form. I am going to crawl Slink into a drain at the side of the road to get back to the ocean and to return. Yeah. But it's the most horrible timing for everybody, of course. You all are all hearing this cacophony. It's not the screeching that Mina was doing. It is this very strange, arresting, piercing sounds. And you see Cora responding to this and slithering toward a metal covering a grate and pulling the grate up, and then just crawling into this drain. Autumn, what do you do? This is your master. Yeah. I'm not too happy about that. Where's Lucian right now? Yeah. So then I was going to get to Lucian. Sleeping in the car. Lucian, you're still streaming in the car. You're still in the car upset, but thread of Cora has walked away. And so what do you do? I think once Cora leaves, and is my shadow self still in there with me? No. They're gone. Well, no, they're not gone. I mean, Autumn is keeping tabs on the shadow and the tar blob. Right. Okay, good. Yeah. I think at that point, I probably dip out of the car because it's still collapsing. Yeah. It's still not great. It's a great place to be. It's not at. Yeah. The wolves are approaching you. They're huge. Lucian, so they are big and sniffing and inquisitive. Riley, you're seeing Cora leave. And I would say that this, the fact that Mina has sort of vanished, that you're suddenly feeling you're shrinking back into your usual mortal or your human form. I'll say not mortal, human form. I'm picturing all this taking place on kind of a sort of a, what was that street called in San Francisco that just runs along the ocean side along the beach? Yeah. It's Ocean Boulevard. Ocean Avenue, I think. Ocean Avenue. Okay. The one, the one that runs north to south. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like that. I'll double check. Yeah. Yes. That's what I visual, that's what I vision as well. Highway one, whatever. Highway, it is highway one ultimately, but I think it's closer to Ocean Avenue, but it's highway one. So I see Cora go through this great or whatever, and it's obvious where she's going. So I'm going to turn the Lucy in and I'm going to say, stay with Riley and the wolves, they'll protect you. I'm going to just run out towards the beach and actually try and bring a next time on Monster Hearts to fruition in a session. No way. The first time ever. As I, as I. Yeah. As I. The only thing that would make this better for Dez is if we went to school right now. Hey, let's go to class, but yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to just start waiting out into the ocean, looking around for Cora and pause and look back towards the new, though, thinking what's more important. Whoa. Okay. So you're in the water. I mean, do you know how to swim on him? Oh, yeah, definitely. Okay. So you're waiting in the water, Riley. You hear what Autumn says to Lucy and Lucy, and how do you respond to that when Autumn is, is walking away and tells you to stay with Riley? Jogging, really. Jogging. Okay. I think Autumn has already turned away at this point, but I think I just reached my hand out to her because I just want to say something. I want to ask her. I want to talk to her, but yeah, once she's gone, I turn around and see these wolves and I mean, I believe Autumn, that they'll protect me. So, yeah, I just, I think I steal my nerves and put my hand out for them to sniff me, I guess. Mm-hmm. So Riley, which wolves would be the most friendly to Lucy and? So the one that would come up to you engage with Lucy and first to be Moonshadow. Moonshadow was a runt of their litter, and they've grown into their role as a stealthy wisdom of the pack. They're the most spiritual. Mm-hmm. Is that they have a wavelength open to interface with humans because they're more in tune with the whole canon history that is shared with humans. Mm-hmm. So, and in a lot of ways, Moonshadows kind of on par with Hopper as an elder of the pack. Mm-hmm. Okay. So the way that they direct the rest of the pack is going to fall in line with that. Love that. Okay. It's important. So they're approaching Lucy and so Lucy and this beautiful wolf is sniffing you and kind of it's almost doglike in terms of it trying to get close to you. And so you see Autumn jogging away down to the beach. Riley, you're seeing Autumn leave as well. What do you do? The idea that Riley having come back into the man form is now standing under this street light in front of this high-rise luxury apartment building with a convenience store in the lobby. Uh-huh. There's a car that is just completely boobar there. There's maybe some droplets of the tar blob here and there doing a familiar steamy, effervescing and I'm just standing there looking after Autumn completely almost unaware of my nakedness because I'm bare-assed standing there looking after it and you were looking back towards the town, not necessarily toward us or where we are. So I think Autumn was looking up at the apartment, the building. Got it. From the ocean. Yeah. Yeah. Up there and everything. And I hear those words echoing of stay with Riley and his pack, they'll protect you. So I'm going to look at Autumn and I want to say maybe we have a brief moment of eye contact. Definitely. Yeah. There's definitely a look back, I think. Yeah. What's it? Grizzly Adams nods. Oh, Jeremiah Johnson. Jeremiah Johnson. There you go. I'm your expert. Of JJ nods. Yes. JJ nods. There you go. Nice. There it is. There it is. All right. I'm intending that it conveys that defending you and protecting you Autumn isn't just beating this shit out of whatever gets in your way. It's also clearing the path so that you can do what you need to do. It's kind of like, yeah, go. I got this. If that's what you need me to do, that's what I'm going to do. So Riley, what conditions do you have right now? I still have juvenile delinquents. I have tough guy, the ironic one that's scary and controlling. What do you all think about removing either tough guy or scary? Which of those two do you think? Because I think this deserves a condition removal. What do you all think? Well, if tough guy was ironic, then definitely take it out. Get it out of here. Get it out of here. Get it out of here. Get it out of here. Get it out of here. Get it out of here. Get it out of here. Get it out of here. Get it out of here. Get it out of here. Get it out of here. Get it out of here. Get it out of here. Get it out of here. Also, I know it's the one that he got most recently. It's not controlling at all, actually. Yeah. So I would remove controlling as well, based on that. So, Otto, he looks at you, Lucy, and sort of grasping, and you're in the water. Cora. Yes. You have made your way through the drain that you can hear the ocean thundering through the pipes. Yeah. What are you doing? I think after all of this business, it's such a relief. At this point, I've been met with failure after failure, and my promises aren't going well. And the king of the fey is up my little cloaca about it, you know? And like, I am just, like, it's been a bad time. Yeah. And so finally, hearing the song, like, of, like, you know, my brethren out here, I'm just sort of falling into a trusted person's arms to cry it out. Yeah. That's what it feels like going back into the water. And I know I'm not done. I can't get home yet, but it is a salve to me. Am I still in darkest self-expletive? I think it's not darkest self, but it is your fey form. Yeah. Okay. So, so the darkest self-expletive. Yeah, I'm not feeling as, yeah, vindictive. Right, right. Right. Angry. Right. So the foam is caressing you, the bubbles, the waves, the currents are embracing you. And you feel very much held and you feel very safe and comfortable here. Yeah. And you are in your fey form and you sense, because you are the master of chora, you sense another presence off the coast. So the pipe is leading one part. And then there's autumn just waiting through the water, sort of looking for you. So you sense that there's a presence, a splishy splashy physical presence of this autumn. So what do you do? I'm going to swim over for sure. Okay. Okay. All right. So autumn, as you are waiting in the water and sort of looking desperately for chora, suddenly their head pops up with these fishy eyes, like a little seal, I'm like, yeah, and is looking at you. Even though it's dark, you can see them clearly. So what do you do? I will reach into my pockets where I always carry my father's zippo lighter and I'll take it out and I'll look at it and then I'll offer it to chora and say, I'm ready to meet my dad. You need to wrap up any loose ends you have. But yeah, I think it's time to go home. Indeed. Yeah. One last look back and I'm just like, I'm ready. Okay. Really quick. I'm going to cut to Riley and Lucian. So you two are standing there looking after autumn, where you suddenly hear the click of loafers on the asphalt and it gets your attention and it is a very tan man with white hair, blue eyes, brilliantly white smile in this very sharp, sharp skin suit with a red collage button down shirt, and he's looking at you guys smiling in this the strangest way. It's very uncanny. And he says, oh, I believe autumn left these here for me. Well, just just be a minute. So he takes out this briefcase and you see him pushing the shadow weirdly, pushing the shadow into this briefcase, pushing this tar blob into the briefcase. And he does it with this very quick movement as though it's like he's just wrestling papers around and he then closes the briefcase. He gives you to a wink and he walks off into the shadows and those presences are no longer there. It's very uncanny and he does it so quickly and so charmingly, charmingly full of charm that there's really nothing, there's really nothing else to say except what the fuck was that? So yeah, so Riley, what did you think of that? I didn't like that because it doesn't say so in my darkest skin that evil must be hunted down and destroyed, but I feel that's there between the letters, right? Yeah. So for you to destroy something and someone would come up, oh, that's where I left that scoop, scoop, scoop, like what, like it has not been destroyed, the quest continues. I always suspected that Marcel was my ultimate target, but this just reaffirms it and confirms it, that I have to destroy this thing because it's the puppet master. Lucy and you just saw some weird guy shuffle some stuff into a briefcase and leave. And you also saw a fish sea fake creature. You've seen a man more from a wolf, werewolf into a man and you saw your one true love head out into the ocean, possibly that we see again. What's going on in this mortal brain of yours? You also saw your mom get destroyed by this werewolf, so I'm just saying, well, he died a long time ago. So how are you feeling right now? What's going on? Shit, I forgot. Yeah, Adam was going to say sorry about your mom, but I didn't really have a chance to do that. I think Lucy and is just at this point, like why not? Okay, it's been a while today, but also again, he's seen all this stuff before most of it, but like just almost fills him with like, like now he sees how wrong it is. Okay, unnatural? Okay, but autumn, how do you make sense of autumn? No, no, no, sorry, Lucy. How do you make sense of autumn though? I don't think I can. I think I look at Riley and I'm just like, where did she go? Great question. That is a great question and Riley says, I don't know, all I know is she went where she had to and she needed me to handle things here so that she could do that. That's exactly what I'm going to do. Come on, I need to get some clothes, man. Once again, to the quick bite in the lobby, oh, not this guy again. Yeah, Henry's there, Henry's there and so Henry's at the cash register just like almost falling asleep and his binder with his books are there because he's studying for the SATs or whatever the hell. I mean, actually, no, he's probably doing that on his phone. So he has his phone and he's just staring at it. He's dosing and Riley, you walk in there, bing-bong and you're naked and Lucy and you're holding the bag that you have, the rest of your belongings and you're just standing there and you're realizing how thirsty you are, you could really use a drink of something, I don't know, something that might appeal to you. So you might be perusing the rose to see if you can get something to drink. So Riley, you're looking around, so what are you doing? I'm pulling the t-shirts off and putting one on, pulling the swim board shorts off, you know, with a stack on the shelf, pulling them on, tying the drawstring, grabbing the pack of flip-flops and holding them to the bottom of my foot, putting them on. And so Henry's just staring at you and he's like, you're going to pay for that, right? You said something sarcastically like, can I get you anything else, and I say, take it at face value, but yeah, man, we need a ride, can you hook that up? Lucy, and so are you, what are you doing in the store while Riley's getting dressed? I think before we would have walked in here, I probably would have looked back one more time at autumn, and then I see that she's gone. And then yeah, I think I just solemnly follow Riley, and yeah, he's doing his whole thing, and I'm just kind of looking through the shelves and all this stuff. I think there's this kind of busyness of, oh, I need to drink something or eat something. You're feeling hungry again, thirsty again, I need to eat again. And I'm looking at all this stuff, and I think Lucy and just kind of, he picks up a bag of something, chips or something, and just turns it around to look at it, and he's like, what is this shit? Yeah. Look, grab me a terrible gummy bears bag off and off. Yeah, and I was like, give me the chips, dude, this is great. These are the full sugar, this is the good shit. Yeah. Yeah, because he's over in Afghanistan, swears by these. Quick energy carries them everywhere, they're light, they don't spoil, here you go. Oh, hidden. Maybe try one of these grabbing Canada dry. Yeah. Yeah. Classic combo. So, yeah, I think Lucy just takes that stuff and yeah, really, he's just like, dude, where do we, now what do we do? Yeah. So, Henry, so Henry says, I know Adrian has a car, so he's on his way. He can take you guys wherever you want to go. Right. Just get out of the store, just get out of here, because I got to figure out a way to make this make sense. Get out of here. Just go. Fair enough. It sounds like I'm taking these. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you won. So, he just nods and he's just like, all right, so you're waiting outside for your ride. So, yeah, so Lucy, you're asking Riley, what do we do? Yeah. So, Riley, how do you respond to that? One step at a time, and we need to get the fuck out of here. First thing. First thing is first. Where do we go? Well, I mean, whenever I need to get my shit sorted out there, it's one place I always go. So, I think we should go there first, regroup, and then about our next move, and I'll tell them about my fortress of solitude of stones. Mm-hmm. Go to the den. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, Lucy, what do you think of that? He describes it, and I'm like, and is Autumn going to be there? Nice. I love it. That's so good. I hope so. Look towards the ocean. I really hope so. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, Adrian pulls up in his really nice, I don't know. Who? Adrian. Oh, God. He pulls up. He has one of those emotional support trucks, it's a giant buck off truck, and he rolls down his window, and he's like, "I heard you guys need a ride." And Adrian's just kind of looking at Riley, and doesn't really look at Lucy at all. It says, "Get in, the doors are unlocked." So, pop in, and he takes you, oh, yeah. I think I grab the door handle, and I open the door, but then I say, "Is this cool?" To Adrian? Yeah. Wow. What do you mean? Just get in the car. All right, get in. So Riley, you're in the passenger side, front, next to Adrian, and Lucy, and you're in the back, and he pulls out, and so he turns to Riley and says, "Hey, I heard there was a bit of a commotion at your party, your uncle's party, what the heck was that all about?" Yeah, man, it always gets crazy out there. I mean, you're always invited, you've been to everyone, a friendly nudge. Yeah. Well, I mean, I was there, but then I got a board of Dylan's constant Elvis covers. So I was like, "I got to get out of here." He was thrown in some Johnny Burnett, too, to be fair. All right. So, Adrian, I cut out of there, but right after I did, I heard all hell broke loose. What the hell happened up there? Well, me and Otto men, Lucy and Jester to the backseat, we had some shit to work out, Autumn got pissed off. I mean, you know, she's been lately, she's had a lot of shit going on, and she came by it honestly, but got a little bit out of hand, so, you know, fight broke out, everyone cleared out. Now we're just kind of dealing with the aftermath. I tried texting Cora, but she's not returning my text, so where is she? Yeah, Cora and Autumn might have had to make a trip, bro. I don't know. You think you could let people know to maybe give them some space? I think whatever Autumn was figuring out tonight, Cora's helping her with that. Sure, whatever, I mean, it's summer, so I think we don't really have to worry until anything until August, so. Adrian is looking at you in the rear view, Lucy, and I'm not really saying anything to you directly, just talking to Riley. Yeah. But you notice there's a shift, yeah. I was just going to say, I probably catch his glance every now and again, but I'm mostly just looking out the window. Yeah. So before you know it, you're at the main road to your property, Riley. And Adrian's like, this is as far as you guys want to go. Yeah, we can walk from here, man. Okay. All right. All right. Well, I'll see you guys later. Thanks, man. I won't forget it. Hold on my hand. Yeah. He gives him a bro. He gives you a bro class, for sure. No, he's not comfortable with that, but still is willing to do it, so he's like sure. Call me. Right. Where do you go? Sure. And he kind of, again, Adrian's kind of looking at you weirdly, Lucy, and it's almost like he doesn't even know you. Yeah. You're just a nobody. So it's dark. There's no lights and you're walking down this dirt road toward the fortress of solitude. With your snacks and bag in tow. And you get there and the moon is rising it is a full moon up over the pines and it's illuminating the fortress and it is no longer as dark as it was a couple hours ago. So Lucy and you are seeing this formation of rocks that Riley, would you like to describe for us again? It's fantastic slabs of rock that had been pushed up by geologic forces over the millennia. And they rose up and then broke, shattered, and fell back down, such as it looks almost a giant campfire. You would arrange the lengths of wood, supporting each other, leaning on each other. And inside there's numerous ways that you could get into the hollow inside. And inside this structure, there's a bowl, a new hollow, and the energy here is very palpable. It's almost gravity is kind of weird here and it's strangely warm once you get in inside here it shouldn't be as comfy as it is. And you can tell it's very, it's got a lived-in feel to it as well with a fire ring in the center and a natural smoke hole at the top. So you're inside of this den and Riley you noticed that the back of Lucy and shirt and it's bloody and there's large scratches across his back. Lucy and all the adrenaline is wearing off and you're feeling like your back is incredibly painful. Yeah. You don't know how you're going to sleep. And so that is a wound. Those are some wounds that are there. So Riley, it's obvious to you that those are there. Yeah. What do you do? We're going to tend to those and I know that we have Willow bark and we've got lots of stuff here. Okay. As dead as it is feral as the name might suggest and like I said, it's very lived-in. So we've got firewood, we've got tea kettles. We're going out to Listero. Okay. All right. Okay. Yeah, I think Lucy, it takes us shirt off and then obvious wounds. Okay. So Riley, you're tending to Lucian's wounds delicately and intimately or no? Yeah. Definitely as delicately as I can and I mean it gets intimate because your back is ripped open. And when I'm palpating it to see how deep it is, kind of, is this something we can take care of here? Or we need to get you some serious medical attention, it stings, they're looking back over their shoulder. Is it bad? How bad is it? Is it bad? Yeah. So yeah, Lucy and yeah, how are you responding to this? Yeah, definitely a stinging pain. Even, yeah, and then there's something to it, even though it hurts, it's nice to feel again. Yeah. It's a reminder that you are very, very much mortal. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we'll quite lick his wounds, right? But I do like the idea of maybe making, and if this is too tropey, you can dip it here, but I like the idea of putting the kettle on the boil up some water and tearing up some different roots. But in the meantime, taking a bite of some bark and chewing them up while doing that thing and then coming back over to it and Lucy and be like, what are you, what, like a spitting out that you got chewed up and packing it. Why is everything so wet? Yeah. Why is everything so wet? Okay. This mouth is cleaner than yours now. Yeah, exactly. Nothing cleaner. You're fine. So yeah, so this, so this takes place eventually you settle into eating some snacks, some food and maybe passing out in the den. And I mean, Riley, there's something about Lucy and that is just so captivating. Not in the same compelling way as a monster, but something really delicate and sweet and just so tempting, I will say. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, we'd probably end up curling up by the fire together because you got to stay warm. That's right. I mean, I mean, if, if you're cool with that, we'll see. Yeah. I need to get some enthusiastic consent for a call. [laughter] enthusiastic consent. True. So even though it's not autumn, Lucy, and there is this very protective presence in Riley and you're able to sleep comfortably knowing that that's what autumn wanted you to do is to trust Riley, right? That's true. Okay. So we will cut to the ocean, waves, and the moonlight that's bouncing off of the top of the water, filtering down to where Cora and Autumn are. So Cora, what are you two doing? What's going on? Meta knowledge. I know we have a session after this one. Oh, yeah. So I know. I can't just like be like, and blue, but there you go. [laughter] Right. But I think I would try. I would call for all of the other fae that are in this area and we'd start to move down. And then it's, it's something's not working. And so it turned to Autumn's. I can try to see what this is, but it hasn't been going well for me today. Every time I try to look into this, but what's still holding you here? Hmm. Autumn, what do you say? What do you do? Let's see here. Dark minus one, et cetera, et cetera. Can I do? I mean, I could try my own abyss gaze. Yeah. And we could say part of this not working is maybe our little protective magical bubble that transports you so delicately into the fae realm pops and you begin to drown. So I'm going to have to drag you up out of the surface, but I feel like that's harm that you can use. It is. It's a good job. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you're like, uh oh. Taking it. Yeah. Okay. I've had a lot. That's great. I can add two there. Am I protecting? I'm helping my master. Yes. It's protect or help your master. Yeah. I get to add one and you get another string on me. One by one. Yes, I think I look at you in a panic when the bubble pops and like it's holding you here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're attempting to travel down, down, down and Cora, you're just thinking about all of the fucking things that happens. Oh my god. Now what? Now what? And then suddenly this another thing going wrong to it. It's suddenly this bubble that you were able to construct just gets breached and I want to say it's an errant jellyfish just causing problems as usual and just kind of breaks that surface tension and then autumn is flailing trying to get up to the surface. So but before I do that, I'm going to gaze into the abyss. I got a plus one forward refining my father that I've been sitting on this whole time. Yeah. I've got plus two for downward spiral causing myself one harm to add to and I get to add one because I'm helping my master. That's a plus four. Let's see. Yes. Success. Daddy. Do I look? Okay. Do I look? Yeah. All right. So you are you were getting transported in this bubble down to where where Cora was taking you when suddenly it just ruptures and you're flailing in the water autumn, right? Mm hmm. Yeah. And you're finding yourself trying to grasp at anything and trying to get to the surface again and you feel something pulling down on your leg. It's not Cora, it's something else and then you feel something push you. First it's pulling you down and then something it pushes it takes both your feet and pushes you up toward the surface and before you know it, you're bobbing up on the surface again in the dark with the moonlight in the waves, you're spitting coughing water out of your mouth. Okay. So. Yeah. And you're just looking around. And I get a did I get a good of good vision there? A lucid vision, I think is what it says. Yes, because you rolled with dark. Pardon me. Yes. There's a lot going on. It's okay. So in the moment where I would say the lucid vision is that it felt like your father's hands helping you. Mm hmm. That he's nearby. He is there. Mm hmm. Alright. I'm sorry, that should probably give you way more information. Can we wait until next time? Yeah, I got it. I'm sorry. There's, there's so much, I'm kind of overwhelmed honestly right now with all of these things going on. It's been running this for four hours. So. It's been a lot. Yeah. It's been a lot. So anyway, it's confirmed that it's your papa and you are in the ocean in the dark. Laura is not nearby and we'll know more next time. And what? Yes, we will know more. Yes, we will know more next time. Yes. So we will fade to black. Maybe core is your sister from another mister. Could be. Mm hmm. Could be. Alright. I'm going to take a new skin. So. Yes. I'm on monsters. Next time on monster hearts, you see the whole gang in a crowd. We're talking about the whole game, my pack. The snakes. Game. Oh. We said poor Autumn. Everybody. They're in this nondescript plane and they're all just around something that the wolf biting and the punches and the stomp kicks and stuff like that. All of a sudden there's a supernatural shriek and you see claws flail out from the inside of it everywhere, throw in everyone in every direction and you see a figure rise up and start to kind of levitate with that as enormous blood wings spread out behind them. And the booming voice comes out from this man creature. You see the remnants of its dapper shark skinned suit and you can't tell if it's the red tie or maybe a spill of blood and the booming voice says you have to see that there is no possible way you can attain victory as everyone's kind of rolling groaning stuff. Riley makes his way to his feet and stands up. He's completely torn up blood pouring out of him. He says, "I don't think you will seem to understand. I didn't come here to win. I came here to kill you" and begins the transformation into the terrifying lupine form. Holy cow. That was a biggie. A penultimate episode we got to pull out all the stuff. That's true. But I don't know what this is. I mean, our next one maybe penultimate. I don't know. No, no. Cora triggered it. Oh, is it? Oh, it's official. Yeah. Cora got the final advance. Where have I been? Oh, my God. You guys. So our next episode is the last one. It is indeed. Wow. Hey. What? That's why I did my thing into the sea and whatnot. Obviously, I have no idea what's going on anymore. You're running the game. You're not me. I'm obviously not running shit. That's just retired. I'm sorry. Okay. Who wants to go next? Take me to the hospital. Hi. Yeah. Next time I'm Jerry D.D. tomorrow. What the fuck you guys? Alright. Next time I'm on Monster Hearts. Who's next? Holy fuck. Oh, man. Yeah. Oh my God. Rainy, do you have something? I do. Go. Yes, because every time we play Monster Hearts, I have a new character. Oh. We just have piano scammers. OMG. Let's do it. Next time I'm on Monster Hearts, Devin tears running down his face, burst through the door into his house. His mom, of course, cooking in the kitchen. It doesn't matter what time it is. Yeah. She's always cooking. Yeah. And that's really cool. That doesn't, and she's like, "Oh, Devin, is that you come on in here?" And so he's like, "I'm busy." Mom, there's stuff going on right now, and he has his hand kind of digging into the flesh of his arm, and he's crying, and she's like, "It's that girl again, isn't it? I told you to stay away from her. She's no good for you." And he's like, "She could have been the one, Mom. I'm so sick of you and everyone in this family telling me how to do this all the time." I was the perfect boyfriend, and it still didn't work. And he runs to his room, and camera pans down to the floor, where the large shed a piece of snake skin from his arm has dropped into the kitchen tile. Oh. Yes! That's awesome. Yes. What? Oh, you all wanted a twist. Oh, my God. You know, I'm going to concede mine and have Rainy do another one. Rainy, what happens next? Next time? Next time? Next time? Oh, my God. All right, he wants to follow that. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. All right. He wants to follow that. Oh, God. Jesus. I'm honing in on wine. It's, you know, I'm going to be pathetic. No, come on. It's, yeah, next time on the house. It's just Lucy and eating a drink. I know, yeah. Literally. He's lined up all the food he hasn't been able to taste for like hundreds of years. Like, where's the sausage rolls? Like, you're also in a perfection, just like in a half-row, you know. Yeah. I like it. I like it. I don't even know. I don't even know where Lucy goes. He doesn't have a home anymore. I know. He doesn't. Oh, you should go to Cora's house. That no one's there. Except for my weird parents. The Hall of Parents. Yeah. But then I'm, but I'm right below Marcel, yeah. Yeah. All right. And who knows, your parents have probably, Marcel just walks in there and does whatever that all he wants probably. Mm. It's not going there. God. I don't even know. Next time on Monster Hearts. Oh. Oh, Lucy is still rich. Yeah. It's horrible, but he's been alive for a few hundred years or a hundred years at least. So yeah, next time on Monster Hearts, it's a, it's like a Marriott or some nice-ish hotel. Lucy and is there. The TV is on and he's laying down on the bed with a pizza next to him. [laughter] Have him to call us to style, okay? Totally. Yeah. Exactly. [laughter] Um, he's on his phone and he pulls up his text messages and clicks on Autumn. And it's three or four text messages that are just, "Hey, you know, like not red." Um, "Hey, again, like what's up?" And then she's like, "Yeah." Don't laugh. I laugh 'cause it hurts. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're laughing with the deliciousness of it. All right. And I laugh 'cause I've been there and yeah, it's just, it's him refreshing Instagram looking for any sign of Autumn. And then finally he texts Riley and he's like, "Hey, do you want to go out somewhere?" And, and then there's a bubble of a response and Riley's like, "Yeah, come on over." Oh, good old Riley. All righty. Last time on Monster Hearts, we're back in the Flores house. We haven't really been there all season. We're looking in the kitchen. It's obviously a little late at, later at night after dinner and Autumn's mom's just doing the washing up. It's just her and, and Autumn's little bro, who's, I don't even know if we ever establish his name or not. But, uh- You did. I forget. Yeah. It's just the two of them living there, but, but he's gone off to bed or whatever and she's, she's doing the washing up. And then from our POV, which is a little low, looking into the kitchen, we see a leg and a foot kind of step into the shot. And it's a nice boot with a heel on it and fishnet stockings is all we can see, but we hear Autumn's voice and she says, "Hey mom, I'm home." And a really expensive Gucci handbag drops onto the ground and her mom turns around still holding a, a bowl. The look on her face is one of just absolute shock and she drops the bowl and it shatters. Interesting. Good one. Hmm. Wow. My dad's taken us to school. Yeah. I know. No. Prash. God. I'm log jamming because there's so many cool things here. So next time on Monster Hearts, one of you is looking at like a, like there's a, there's a, there's not one of you, but somebody, um, it's the diner in town, jars of clay, obviously coffee house and they have the, the most recent weeklies and newspapers there. And you see there's somebody who's filling up the newspaper rack with the newest edition of the new Chrysantebae bugle. What do you want to call it? New Chrysantebae conch. The bugle is great. I don't know. All right. The bugle is great. Yeah. Okay. So the person's just, the hoisting them into the newspaper feeder and they move away and you see the headline and it says, "Newvosel finalized change of ownership. Big changes." That's it. Mm-hmm. So that's all I could do. You guys. Oh my God. Yeah. She's all done donated. Clearly. I mean, you're talking to somebody who didn't even realize that we were endgame. So obviously, I'm obviously very, not on it, but thank you for sticking with me. And yeah. Just like it all. Yeah. Um, and so our next episode will be our last, I feel like this is ending on a less obvious cliffhanger than the last one. I'm sure. So I'm, I'm very curious what will happen next. Yeah. I'm not even sure when I'm going to implement the new scan. It might be at the end of the next episode. I don't know. It better not be during the first one because I feel like we're not even remotely done with these stories. So don't get too far ahead of yourself. I won't. I shouldn't. I can't. There's a lot still that I feel are very, very loose ends still that need to be tied up. Definitely agree. Okay. Okay. Let's, let's, let's just enjoy the moment, excellent job, and we will again reconvene next time. I'm on. Yeah. Got to see. I don't. I'd like to take a moment to thank all of our patrons, both past and present. And thanks as always to those of you backing us at priest level and above. That includes Jonathan Morgantini, Marley Griffin, Alexander Lanwett, Hunt Cal, James Gilbreth, Jathar 132, Max Wraith, Mika Tertiannon, N.J. Colton, and Tim Leonard. Thank you so much for your support.