The Delivery Truck for a Massacre

Pip —no, but see, that's my whole thing, why did he reach for the sword? Like immediately, first instinct—

Bram because there's a devil running the boat, Pip, that's a perfectly reasonable—

Pip a devil he just met! Met him for like five minutes and Argyle's already—

Maeve He didn't draw it.

Pip He reached.

Maeve He reached. He put it back.

Bram He put it back, yeah, see, that's the — okay so what actually happened, right, so we get home from the restaurant, everybody's rattled, and Argyle's like, no, we have to get them on the road, we jump the other orgs before they even arrive, we hit 'em on the highway—

Pip On the highway.

Bram —and Benny's going, no no no, we wait until Amber Call's heart gets fat, and then we kill them for the energy, and it's—

Pip That's worse! That's so much worse than the sword guy!

Bram It's calculated! It's patient!

Maeve They talked him down.

Bram They talked him down, eventually, yeah, it was Anzu and — hang on, was it Anzu and Johnny or—

Maeve Anzu and Benny.

Bram Anzu and Benny, right, even though Benny was the one wanting to wait for the fat heart, so he—

Pip So Benny argues himself down. That's—

Bram That tracks for this group honestly.

Pip Just us. Not justice. Just us.

Bram Ha. Yeah.

Maeve The GM said it best. He goes, I said I expect there to be violence, and you jumped to, clearly we should start killing people on the road before they even get here.

Bram And the thing is the man — the MC, the Master of Ceremonies — he wants that. That's the trap. He's bored, he said he gets bored, he goes it would be boring if you all hung out in a circle and sang together—

Pip Hold on, I love and fear that man.

Bram Which — Josh or the devil—

Pip Yes.

Bram Fair.

Maeve Mug's empty, by the way.

Bram I'll flag him down. Hey — when he comes back round.

Pip Okay but can we — the face. Can we do the face. He takes off the mask—

Bram Oh the face is incredible.

Pip —and it's just burned. Like, all the way burned.

Bram Like it had been dunked into a bonfire, that was the GM's words, dunked into a bonfire, and then — this is the part — Argyle does a medicine check, and the burn was healed on purpose. To stay scarred.

Maeve Which means he died.

Pip Right, you don't heal-to-stay-ruined unless you got brought back, so—

Bram He died and somebody hauled him back and made a point of keeping the face.

Pip That's a guy with a relationship to dying I do not want to think about over burgers.

Bram Speaking of burgers—

Pip Don't.

Bram The cookout!

Maeve The cookout was the day before.

Bram I know it was the day before, I'm just — the swimwear, Maeve, you have to talk about the swimwear, because Johnny shows up in like nineteen-seventies trunks, with a belt—

Pip A belt on swim trunks.

Bram —a belt, and cowboy boots, and Argyle's got the cop glasses, the aviators—

Maeve Cop glasses.

Bram —and there's no pool. There's no pool! Argyle told Chuck to tell everyone bring your swim trunks and then Argyle has to summon a hot tub with a spell.

Pip Soothing Spring. As a hot tub.

Maeve Twenty feet.

Bram Twenty foot hot tub, grilling burgers in his little swimsuit, it was — you had to be there, honestly.

Pip See and this is what kills me, because while the boys are out here in their little outfits doing the belt-trunks—

Bram It was Johnny with the belt—

Pip —Anzu is alone in a corner doing actual work. Crit on his occultism, what, a thirty-eight—

Maeve Natural thirty-eight.

Pip Natural thirty-eight, on the void paper, finds out the rings reverse the pull or whatever—

Bram The gyroscope rings! When they spin the void pull goes the other way, toward the rings, and it's stronger on the Strider than it ever was on the Sin and Tonic, which is a big deal, that's like—

Pip —and nobody's looking because they're picking swimsuits.

Maeve He banks it quiet. Every time.

Pip Every single session that guy finds the actual plot in a corner while everyone else is—

Bram To be fair the swimsuits were load-bearing for vibes.

Pip Load-bearing for vibes.

Maeve The dwarf was good though.

Bram Oh, Salvado! Salvado Targona, Solari Sub-surface—

Pip The little shipping guy. The small fish.

Bram —thinks it's a networking event. Just fully thinks it's a mixer. And he latches onto Johnny and goes, you and I are gonna be good friends, because I've got no idea what's happening—

Maeve No fucking idea what's happening.

Bram No fucking idea what's happening, yeah, and I respect that, that's an honest man.

Pip And he thinks Benny's a what—

Maeve A punished child super-soldier in training.

Pip A punished child super-soldier. Which — I mean — he's not wrong, is the thing.

Bram He's not even wrong! Benny's nine and carries a permission slip that turns heads.

Pip Speaking of which — the father line. At the end. The MC looks at the permission slip—

Bram Oh that's the chilling one, save that, save that, because we gotta do the gym first—

Pip Why do we gotta do the gym—

Bram Because the gym is where Benny screws up Johnny's whole plan and he doesn't even know it yet.

Maeve He hadn't made the plan yet either.

Bram Right, that's the tragedy, the plan didn't exist! So — Benny goes to the fancy Strider gym, the luxury one, and he spars with Bishop—

Pip The lizard guy. Gold. One eye.

Bram Ralph Bishop, scarred to hell, one eye, gold scales, ornate rapier, waistcoat too tight—

Maeve Slightly too tight.

Bram —and he's been fighting for, what was the line, multiple lifetimes of many—

Maeve Lifetimes of many. Yeah.

Pip What does that even mean, lifetimes of many—

Bram It means he's old and scary, Pip, that's what it means.

Pip It means nothing! It's a cool nothing.

Maeve It's a lot of lifetimes.

Bram And Benny does this nanite surge on an athletics check to read the guy's prowess, and he won't reroll—

Maeve Took the flat twenty-seven.

Bram Took the flat twenty-seven, and his actual quote was, it's so much of a risk with these fucking stupid points—

Pip A seven knows everything, a thirty-four knows nothing.

Bram Don't — don't start the dice curse thing—

Pip I'm just saying! The mythic points are the same energy! Aut thinks your arm's fine!

Maeve Different game.

Pip It's the same energy, Maeve.

Bram Anyway he reads Bishop, raiment three or four steps above his, way out of his league, and he clocks this thing where Bishop subtly pulls his attention back mid-spar—

Maeve A tell.

Bram —a tell that there's hidden ability there, and also there's this nearly invisible person on the treadmill that Benny's eye keeps sliding off of—

Pip Okay that's creepy, an average guy you can't look at—

Bram An average guy. Just dead average. And the eye won't stick.

Pip And Bishop sits in chairs backwards.

Maeve Turns the chair around. Sits backward.

Bram So cool. Argyle's quote later, like four times, they're so fucking cool, god damn it, I hope they're not evil—

Pip That. That right there. That's the flashing red light.

Bram Why's it a red light—

Pip Because Argyle is a fickle little man! He's a fan of whoever did the last cool thing! Backwards chair guy, instant loyalty—

Bram He vetted them though! He called home from the cookout, phoned home, did the religion check, thirty-four—

Maeve They're in good standing.

Bram In good standing, relatively senior Scale members, operating on their own, chose to come on their own, not blacklisted, not evil—

Pip "Not evil yet."

Bram —their heart's named Asteris Lux, which, you know, judgey-guy naming, expensive sounding—

Maeve Caelum scriptor energy.

Bram Exactly. And Bishop says to Argyle, it's good to see another member of the Scale, even if you're waving another flag right now—

Pip See and that's the thing, Argyle's waving the Iconoclasm flag but the lizard clocks him as Scale, and Argyle just — eats it up.

Bram Because he is Scale. Sort of. It's complicated.

Pip It's the two Argyles thing.

Bram The angel stuffed in the demon, who was already named Argyle—

Maeve Lazy and incredible.

Bram Lazy and incredible, yeah.

Pip The self-litigating lawyer. Finds the loophole in his own oath, wins the case against himself—

Bram Faced with a handshake, considers suicide—

Pip Never reads the room. Ever.

Maeve He read the giant thing wrong too.

Bram Oh — oh, the giant. We have to do the giant.

Pip What giant.

Bram So at the bunker — the Scale's forward base, the concrete bunker with the sonar dish, camouflaged, they ride one of Chuck's floating discs over—

Maeve Gun barrel through the porthole.

Bram —yeah, gun poked through the door's little window, just in case, very friendly — and Argyle's trying to ask them to look into his classified giant intel, and he keeps botching the scale of it, like he goes, look out for a ten-thousand-foot-tall red giant—

Maeve And the GM keeps correcting him.

Bram The GM has to feed him the real number mid-question, and Benny just deadpans, I don't think we'd have to look out for something that's ten thousand feet tall, it's pretty noticeable.

Pip It's pretty noticeable. Ha.

Maeve It'd be over the horizon.

Pip And who'd they meet there — the sick kid—

Bram Lance! Lance Vesper, the rifleman's Cassian, and Bishop, and Lance is — he looks awful, rheumy eyes, pale, and he goes, I am twenty-two—

Maeve You wouldn't believe it from my countenance.

Bram —you wouldn't believe it from my countenance, and then he offers Argyle a refund if he can't cure him—

Pip A refund. On the sickness.

Bram And the sickness might be a curse, that's the hook, nobody knows, which is why Argyle later swaps a feat to Break Curse just in case—

Pip Wait but Lance is the one who said the clown thing—

Bram Yes! Lance, blunt, goes, these clowns clearly have an ulterior motive or twelve—

Maeve Or twelve.

Pip Smart kid. Sick, but smart.

Bram I've been this size since I was zero days old.

Pip That's not — that's a different—

Bram I know, I just like saying it.

Maeve Food coming?

Pip I ordered the thing. The board thing.

Bram Okay but back to Johnny because this is the part that breaks my heart a little—

Pip Johnny and the Jets.

Bram —so Johnny's whole plan, eventually, is to make the party look like harmless lucky bumblers, right, burns a performance check at the cookout to sell it, we're just idiots who got lucky—

Maeve Too late.

Bram Way too late! Because Benny already went and flexed in the gym in front of two of the same orgs that are at the cookout! Bishop watched him read a fight! Paavo watched!

Pip So the bumbler plan's dead on arrival.

Bram Dead before he casts it.

Maeve They saw the kid take a flat twenty-seven to scout a swordsman.

Pip That's not bumbling, that's casing the joint.

Bram And then on top of that Johnny burns Lie to Me on the MC—

Pip Oh no.

Bram —the one guy at the table who rolls a forty-three crit on deception—

Maeve Crit. Against the feat.

Bram Crit against Lie to Me, learns absolutely nothing, the man is a sealed box, completely unreadable—

Pip Okay so what is the point of Lie to Me, genuinely—

Bram It works most of the time!

Pip Does it though—

Maeve It works on people who aren't fiends.

Pip So, not the important ones.

Bram That's — okay that's a little harsh but—

Pip And — here, here's my note, and I will die on this—

Bram Oh here we go.

Pip Johnny is in a room with a being tied to a devil, who resonates with the Voidsong, the literal song his whole life is about—

Bram Mm.

Pip —and what's the question Johnny doesn't ask. Same as always. He'll prod a fiend with a feat but he won't ask anybody why his own god stopped picking up the phone.

Bram That's not — that's not the same situation, Pip.

Pip It's exactly the same situation! There's a being right there that resonates with the song—

Maeve The MC denied being Illmari, though.

Pip I'm not saying ask about Illmari—

Bram Wait, he denied being Illmari? I thought—

Maeve Confirmed Illmari's alive. Said it's not my story to tell.

Bram Right, right, not my story to tell, that was — okay yeah.

Pip I'm saying there's a guy who hears the song and Johnny's instinct is to lie-detector him, not ask him anything real. It's the totaled car all over again—

Bram The car was a tactical loss—

Pip THERE it is.

Maeve It was not.

Bram It bought us time!

Pip It bought you a wreck. You bet on the bet and the bet was bad.

Bram We're hot rod people now, that's just who we are—

Pip Build me a hood out of a box of scraps in a cave.

Bram Exactly! That's the spirit!

Maeve You'll defend anything that's on fire.

Bram I — okay that one's fair.

Pip I'm telling you, Johnny's gonna take Aut's deal eventually. The oath's got a price, we just haven't hit it, and the day he can't ask his own god, Aut's gonna be right there with the toothy grin—

Bram You keep saying that—

Pip And I'll be right.

Bram You bet on that the way I bet on the car.

Pip That's — okay that's actually a good one, I'll allow it.

Maeve Recap, though. We skipped Benny's recap.

Bram Oh god, the recap. Benny — wait, Benny did the recap? For the hero point?

Maeve Mike did. Benny's player.

Bram Right, Mike did it, and the whole thing is supposedly just the facts, no embellishment, he arrives at the Strider, meets the orts—

Pip The orts—

Bram —the little — the orts, parks near Hildebrandt, plants the seed of inspiration, grows the heart, beats up monsters to power it, names the butler Chuck, names the heart—

Maeve Ear That Hears the Truth.

Bram Ear That Hears the Truth, and then the GM goes, oh, funny thing, that's actually the name of a real mythic feat. Half the party has it.

Pip And Benny doesn't.

Bram Benny named the heart, and Benny's the one guy who doesn't have the feat, so he gets none of the benefits—

Maeve You don't get the benefits even if they share the same name.

Bram Even if they share the same name, direct quote, brutal.

Pip Chuck the butler though. Offered any name in the world—

Bram —picks Chuck.

Pip Most boring possible. And the heart's named Eerie?

Maeve Eerie's the heart. Ear That Hears the Truth's the name.

Bram Wait so it's both—

Maeve Eerie. That's the body. The name is the long one.

Bram Okay. Sure. And Chuck's a cat.

Pip Chuck's a cat?

Bram Big, brown, just a cat. And he very passively accepted the name. Didn't want one. The figurine crumbles to dust, way more dust than a little figurine should have, and then Chuck hands you a replacement figurine—

Pip I called it. Months ago. The eldritch hand-monster thing — I said whatever they drag out of the void's gonna get named Chuck.

Bram That was a different Chuck.

Pip It's always Chuck! That's my point!

Maeve The barber's fake, though.

Bram The — okay, see, this is the fight. Mike swears, no embellishment, just facts, and somewhere in the recap there's a barber on the Strider who only knows one haircut—

Pip The flat top.

Bram —only does flat tops, and the whole table goes, you made that up, that wasn't in the session, and Mike insists it's real—

Maeve It wasn't real.

Bram —and Argyle, Argyle defends him, not because he remembers the barber, just on principle—

Pip On principle alone—

Bram —he goes, if Benny says there's a barber, there's a barber, and that's — that's so Argyle, good for the sake of good, even when the good thing is a haircut that doesn't exist.

Pip The self-litigating lawyer takes the barber case pro bono.

Bram Ha. Yeah.

Maeve There's no barber.

Pip We hear you, Maeve.

Bram And the eight legs! Eight legs on each side of the Strider—

Maeve That part's real.

Pip How is THAT the real part and the barber's fake—

Maeve The ship has legs. It doesn't have a one-haircut barber.

Pip This world's broken.

Bram Oh — and the name, the group name, they finally landed on it. Chronicle.

Pip Chronicle. Hm.

Bram Before the GM even asked! He'd flagged he wants an in-world group name eventually, and they just settled on it on their own, which never happens with this group—

Maeve Anzu suggested it last session.

Bram Did he? I thought it was Argyle—

Maeve Anzu. Last session.

Bram Anzu, okay. And the alternatives got shot down, the Voice of the Few—

Pip Voice of the Few sounds like a cult.

Bram The GM said it makes you sound like tyrants at best—

Maeve You're everything Bernie Sanders would hate.

Pip He said that? In a fantasy game?

Maeve He said that.

Bram I love and fear that man.

Pip And Argyle's still pushing his name that puns on some character nobody met—

Bram Right, half the party never even met the guy, and the GM keeps vetoing it, confusing and tyrant-coded—

Pip Everything Argyle likes is tyrant-coded, have you noticed—

Bram He just wants good for the sake of good, the tyranny's incidental—

Pip That's — yeah that's a sentence.

Maeve Board's here.

Pip Oh thank god.

Bram Don't eat the — wait, is anything on there a war hero—

Pip It's a cheese board, Bram.

Bram I'm just saying, last time—

Pip Don't eat the gingerbread house, it's a war hero.

Bram That was one time and Johnny was the one who—

Maeve Johnny ate it.

Bram Johnny ate the war hero, yeah, not me.

Pip Okay but the father line. We keep dodging it. The MC inspects Benny's permission slip—

Bram Right, the chilling one.

Pip —and goes, give my regards to your father when you next speak to him.

Bram And Benny's father's Atum, which Anzu half-remembers, something archival at Belvedere—

Maeve Doesn't quite resolve into a face.

Pip So the read is — and tell me I'm wrong — the read is one of these new organized devils might be Benny's other half.

Bram There's four of them, the new ones, the Harlequin's the one the MC's tied to, and then the Shackle—

Maeve Sigzilheit.

Bram —Sig— that one, the Hooded, and the Loam.

Pip And the devil knows Benny's dad. Personally enough to send regards.

Bram A nine-year-old with a permission slip and a devil who knows his father.

Maeve Hand the baby a revolver. It's tradition.

Pip A bowl of children's guns. As a treat.

Bram And the worst part, the part that actually got the table quiet, is Anzu's whole theory going in, right—

Maeve The cry for help.

Bram —the Voidsong's a cry for help, the source is the vocalist, somebody singing, somebody we're maybe supposed to rescue—

Pip And now—

Bram —and now we find out we're on a boat the devil's steering toward the void on purpose, and he wants everybody aboard to kill each other on the way, and whoever's left fights for it at the wall—

Maeve Nineteen orgs.

Bram Nineteen-plus, and he says I'll be encouraging it, I'll get bored, I make a habit of not entering any kind of circle—

Pip That's the devil tell, right, the circle thing—

Bram That's the tell. Won't sing in a circle. And I have favorites, you don't want to be my favorite, but you might end up there anyway.

Pip So Anzu thought they were going to save a singer—

Bram —and instead they're the delivery truck for a massacre.

Maeve They confirmed the heart's not subservient to him, at least.

Bram Right, the consult-the-spirits ritual, their own heart's not on his leash, small mercy—

Pip Which Argyle then trades AWAY—

Bram He swaps Consult the Spirits for Break Curse, because of Lance, the sickness thing—

Maeve And the code word.

Pip Oh the code word's the best part. Because they're scared of a devil-double—

Bram A devil swapping in for Argyle, right, so they need a code word to tell which Argyle's the real Argyle—

Pip Two Argyles AGAIN—

Bram —and the word they land on is guac.

Maeve Or "what would you eat with what's on his shoulder."

Pip What's on his shoulder—

Bram Don't ask, it's an Argyle thing, but if you can answer what you'd eat with it, you're the real one.

Pip This is how people get radicalized.

Bram I love and — yeah.

Maeve Red string board too.

Bram The board! Argyle builds the whole It's Always Sunny red-string board, pins everything up—

Pip Of course he does. The one guy who can't read a room builds the conspiracy wall.

Bram And orders Blast Boots. Moderate Blast Boots. On the cowboy boots.

Pip We're hot rod people now.

Bram We're hot rod people now! See, that one fits!

Pip ...anyway.

Maeve Eat your cheese.

Bram Okay but the door-to-door, real quick, the networking, because there's a whole bit where Benny keeps eyeing the biggest guy on the yard—

Pip The yard. It's a prison yard to Benny.

Bram —to jump first, prison-yard logic, find the biggest guy day one, and Anzu and the GM both going, no, allies beat corpses—

Maeve Tas Millet did open math at them.

Bram Oh, Prime Meridian, the bean-counter, Tas Millet, does the cost-benefit out loud, to your face, and lands on, I'll do a two-way info link, not an alliance—

Pip Dry. The road guys are always dry.

Maeve Transit nexus energy.

Bram And the dhampir just slams the door—

Pip Necrolog guy. Smells like formaldehyde.

Bram Gaspar, slams it, sends them to the Pale Lantern Society, very curt—

Maeve The radio people warning was Stoke, sort of.

Bram The blind reverend, Walter Stoke, glass robes, practiced in politics, friendly but won't commit to anything—

Pip Everyone fancy's a radio person eventually and the radio people are always evil. Write it down.

Bram He's a priest, not a radio—

Pip Write it down.

Maeve He's not on the radio.

Pip Yet.

Bram And Tamara, the Protectorate one, the tile armor, she goes, we're friends so long as we're friends—

Maeve Don't do anything too shysty.

Bram —don't do anything too shysty, yeah, which, coming from the people who wanted to wait for the heart to get fat before murdering it—

Pip A little rich. Yeah.

Maeve They didn't tell anyone about Berth Four.

Bram Right, Aut told them to unlock Berth Four's door and they just — kept that one to themselves—

Pip See, NOW you're listening to Aut—

Bram That's Argyle, not Johnny—

Pip It's gonna be Johnny in the end. I'm telling you.

Bram You bet the car money on that—

Pip It's not the car, it's a read, I read people—

Maeve You read people. You don't read facts.

Pip ...that's fair, actually.

Bram She got you.

Pip She gets one. There's no barber, fine, but she gets one wrong eventually—

Maeve Not tonight.

Bram Anyway the gala's on departure day, the welcoming one, they've got a week, Argyle got them moved physically next to Hildebrandt on the clock thing—

Pip The plot clock. Wait, who's at twelve—

Bram I don't — that I actually don't know—

Maeve We weren't told.

Pip So we're going into a death-game cruise and we don't know who's at twelve o'clock.

Bram We know there's eight legs a side.

Pip Great. Eight legs a side. That'll save us.

Bram ...You really had to be there for the hot tub, though.