We're Hot Rod People Now

Bram —no but the thing that gets me, the thing I keep coming back to, is they're sitting in the back room, whiskey all round, except Benny's got his little glass of milk because he's nine, and that's when Argyle just goes "right, confession time, I'm actually a celestial."

Pip was it whiskey though, or—

Bram it was whiskey, Pip.

Maeve Milk for Benny.

Pip see that's the part. Why does the android need milk. Like he's pretending, right, but who's he pretending for, it's four guys who all just told each other their darkest secret—

Bram because the bit's the bit, that's why—

Pip anyway.

Maeve He's been that size since he was zero days old.

Bram that's the line! That's the line, "I am nine years old but I've been this size since I was zero days old," and the whole table just— you had to be there.

Pip which is it though. Nine, or zero.

Maeve Both.

Pip that's not—

Bram so anyway Argyle drops the celestial thing, he's like, I was a celestial, I worked for the Judge, I failed, this is my second chance, except now he's bound into the body of a demon-spawn who's ALSO named Argyle—

Maeve Grandson of the Judge.

Bram the demon one's the grandson, right.

Maeve Right.

Pip hold on, two Argyles.

Bram well no, it's one body—

Pip but two Argyles. The angel got stuffed in the demon and the demon's name was already Argyle.

Maeve Yes.

Pip that's incredible, that's lazy and incredible.

Bram and then Johnny goes — Johnny's the one with the god, the Watcher, and every time he dies he gets to chat with the Watcher, like, mano a mano—

Maeve Last two deaths, no Watcher.

Bram right, last two deaths he hears the Voidsong instead and gets nothing, no contact, just the song.

Pip okay but that's the actual scary one. Everyone's like "ooh android, ooh celestial," but Johnny's god stopped picking up the phone. That's the one I'd be losing my mind over.

Bram he is losing his mind over it, that's the whole—

Pip is he though? Or is he just buying bombs.

Bram well—

Maeve Both.

Pip ha.

Bram okay but the bomb thing, the bomb thing is so good, because they blew up — what was it, Teller's Run, the whole district basically, mushroom cloud, the works—

Maeve Part of the district.

Bram part of it, fine, but big enough that everyone they know calls them after going "was that you?"

Pip every single person.

Bram every single contact, phone going off the hook, "did you do the bomb," and Johnny's like, the first thing he does, FIRST thing, he picks up the chess piece and calls Smiler for another one.

Maeve Through the chess-piece communicator.

Pip see this is — okay the GM had a line about this.

Bram "this is how people get radicalized."

Pip "this is how people get radicalized," yeah. Used the terrorist connection, used the bomb, immediately called the terrorist connection back. Love that man.

Bram and it was a rush job so it cost them, what, like a hundred and—

Maeve Hundred and ten gold. Rush fee.

Bram hundred and ten, with the rush, yeah.

Pip was Smiler the centaur? The big jewellery guy?

Maeve That's Smiler.

Pip I keep picturing him just covered in — like, gauges, the whole arms, and a t-shirt with a stain on it. Why's there always a stain.

Bram because he's nine feet tall and he does not care, that's why there's a stain.

Pip anyway.

Bram hang on, hang on, I have to do the recap stuff first, because the session opened with two whole recaps for the guy who wasn't there—

Pip oh god the spider one.

Bram the SPIDER one. So Argyle's catching the absent guy up on the one-shot, and it's — okay it's a warship, but it's a reverse-engineered Sundom warship, and the ship is a crescent moon with a captive star inside it—

Pip with the fishing line.

Bram they control the star with magic fishing line, that's a real thing he said, and they get loaded into this thing and fired out of a cannon—

Pip in spacesuits.

Bram in spacesuits, out of a cannon, onto a dead planet—

Maeve Tithe. A dead Thessian.

Bram Tithe, the dead Thessian, which is the size of a planet, and while they're down there doing puzzles, the big thing — Harrow? — is eating it.

Maeve Harrow. Tithe's the tenth.

Pip the tenth one it's eaten?

Maeve Tenth Thessian.

Pip cool cool cool. Nothing alarming about that.

Bram and Argyle described getting fired out of the cannon as doing, his words, "anime alpha formations, dodging rocks."

Pip hah.

Bram which is just — that's not a mechanic, that's a guy describing a feeling.

Maeve It's a feeling.

Pip okay but here's what I want to know, why are you in spacesuits doing space-time puzzles if you can just — didn't they say the resurrection thing works? The thing where if you die they make a new you?

Maeve Sedecium.

Pip Sedecium, yeah. "If you die we make new ones."

Bram at worst you lose a day of memories!

Pip so why's anyone scared. Throw bodies at it.

Bram that's literally the strategy! That's the cosmology! They throw disposable bodies at problems because death's just — Tuesday—

Maeve Loses a day.

Pip that's grim actually. Like when you really sit on it.

Bram and Argyle's whole thing is, his team was the best team, they were the only ones who planted the — the beacon—

Maeve Cognitive beacon. First and only team to land one.

Bram first and only, to harvest a third of Tithe, and the GM just goes, well, Sedecium only needed one team to succeed and didn't care about any of the rest.

Pip oh that's so good. That's so deflating. "You're the best!" "We needed one. We don't care."

Bram completely took the wind out of him.

Pip he does that to himself though, doesn't he, Argyle. Always reaching for the gold star.

Bram he reaches, yeah.

Pip which — okay this is the jacket thing then.

Bram the JACKETS, oh—

Maeve Denim. Four of them.

Bram four denim jackets, Johnny retcons a downtime purchase, suddenly there's four jackets and on the back in big gold letters it says Iconoclasm—

Pip and Argyle won't wear it.

Bram Argyle will NOT wear it, because he's got a moral oath—

Maeve Never wear another group's uniform.

Pip which is so specific. Who swears that. Of all the oaths.

Bram and he says — this killed me — he says "it's morally binding."

Pip about a denim jacket.

Bram about a denim jacket! And then they argue him out of it, because they go, well, Iconoclasm isn't a faction in this context, it's just a noun, so the jacket's not a uniform—

Maeve It's just a noun.

Pip oh that's such lawyer brain.

Bram that's what the table said! They said he's going to become a lawyer after he finishes finding all the loopholes in his own agreements—

Pip in his OWN oaths, that's the part. He's litigating against himself and winning.

Bram and Benny's the one who lands it, Benny goes "oof, worse. It's merch."

Pip ha! Because a uniform's at least honest. Merch is—

Maeve Worse.

Pip worse, yeah.

Bram and the thing is, the reason it even matters, is their old disguise was the ponchos, and now the ponchos are blown because everyone's looking for the — what did they call them, the poncho boys—

Pip they're looking for the poncho boys.

Bram so the jacket's the new identity but it's also a — it's a target now, kind of, isn't it.

Maeve It's louder.

Pip way louder. Gold letters. After you've just bombed a city.

Bram subtle.

Pip wait, before the road stuff — the god. The dream god. We have to do the god.

Bram Aut! Yes. Okay so they all go to sleep and three of the four fail their saves—

Maeve Mental fortitude.

Bram mental fortitude saves, and they get yanked into the Black and White, and there's Aut, who is — describe Aut, I can't do Aut—

Maeve Tall. White. Gangly. Big hands and feet, little arms. Round head, all grin.

Pip the grin goes all the way round, right?

Maeve One side of the sphere to the other.

Pip that's a nightmare. That's a proper nightmare.

Bram and he's standing under the Faris, the big brutalist — the big tower thing—

Maeve The Faris.

Bram and he's grinning, and he wants to shake hands, and Argyle — Argyle's response to a god offering a handshake is to stand there contemplating suicide.

Pip no—

Bram genuinely, he's going "do I need to kill myself to honor the Judge," because shaking Aut's hand is, like, against his whole deal—

Maeve He stood there working it out.

Pip that's the most Argyle thing I've ever heard. Faced with a handshake, considers death.

Bram and Aut's whole pitch is, "I know everything—"

Maeve "Except specifically the Voidsong."

Bram except the Voidsong, right, that's the one thing he can't see, and that's why he's so — invested, he's been peering over their shoulders this whole time through some prior arrangement—

Pip the Voidsong jams his signal basically.

Bram kind of, yeah.

Pip that's why he's grumpy. God can't see the one thing. Has to use the little guys to peek.

Maeve He calls them his friends.

Pip ominous.

Bram and there's this thing on the horizon, the tall thing, and Aut confirms it's the Giant—

Maeve Stuck behind the firmament.

Bram stuck behind the wall, the firmament, and he's been banging on it for years, like, three million coordinates away—

Pip three million what?

Maeve Coordinates. Starward.

Pip I don't know what that means but okay.

Bram and the kicker, the thing Aut says, is the Giant's stuck the same way your little gods are stuck. Same wall.

Pip oh.

Bram same firmament trapping everyone's gods is the thing trapping this Giant.

Pip so Johnny's Watcher — same wall?

Maeve Same wall.

Pip huh. So maybe the Watcher's not ignoring him, maybe the Watcher just can't—

Bram maybe! We don't know!

Pip I'm just saying, that reframes the whole—

Maeve We don't know yet.

Pip fine.

Bram and Argyle, this whole conversation, Argyle is trying to get the Giant's exact coordinates—

Pip of course he is.

Bram he's fishing, he's going, so what you're saying is the Judge could have struck this Giant down, and the GM just keeps going "that's not what I said," "that's not what I said—"

Maeve "That's not what I said."

Pip three times?

Maeve At least.

Pip he's trying to launder a god's words into permission to commit violence.

Bram that IS his whole character, yeah.

Pip I respect the consistency.

Bram and then Aut offers them deals, this is the good part — two deals. Deal one, on the strider, there's a bedroom, "birth four," and at some future stop they just have to turn the lock—

Maeve Just turn the lock. Nobody'll be in their bedrooms, they'll be busy.

Pip that's so sinister. "Nobody will be there." Why won't anybody be there—

Bram he doesn't say!

Pip that's the point, he doesn't say, and you're meant to just go "okay" and turn the lock—

Maeve For any information they want.

Bram and deal two is you draw three dots at the Voidsong site, close to his symbol, and again, anything you want to know.

Pip and they said no.

Bram they said no to both.

Pip to an all-knowing god. Offering anything. For drawing three dots.

Bram Argyle on principle, the oath, can't make deals, and everyone else just — didn't have a question worth it.

Pip see THAT I don't buy. Nobody had a question? Johnny didn't want to ask "hey why has my god stopped talking to me"?

Maeve He didn't ask.

Pip that's mad to me. That's the question. That's right there.

Bram but here's the thing, Aut gives them a free one anyway, a teaser, he goes — I'd ask the twins where they were before your prime minister got assassinated.

Pip oof.

Maeve Anouk and Anaïs.

Pip the twins. The healing potion twins.

Bram the twins, yeah, and remember earlier when the party walked in on them mid-cast and they cancelled the spell really fast—

Pip oh that's the seed. That's the seed right there.

Bram that's the seed, and now Aut's basically going, your friends had something to do with the assassination, which is the thing that got Raelion bombed—

Maeve Little of Raelion remains.

Pip ominous reading, Maeve, thank you.

Maeve It's the whole wiki entry.

Pip it's a good entry.

Bram and the free hint is FREE, that's what I love, the deal would've cost them a lock-turn and they walked, but the suspicion seed he just hands over for nothing because he wants them paranoid—

Pip he wants them to take the deal eventually.

Bram right.

Pip did they get anything off him? Like a read?

Maeve One perception check. Twenty-nine.

Bram and all it read was that Aut thinks Anzu's arm is fine as it is.

Pip what?

Bram that's it. That's all the twenty-nine got them. Aut thinks Anzu's arm is fine as it is.

Pip is something wrong with Anzu's arm—

Maeve Apparently not. It's fine as it is.

Pip that's the most useless successful check I've ever heard.

Bram completely useless, and yet it's clearly a thread now, isn't it, why's a god got an opinion on the arm—

Pip oh it's absolutely a thread, everything's a thread with this GM—

Bram everything's a thread.

Pip okay but I want to litigate the no. Walking away from the god. Was that—

Bram principled or stupid.

Pip principled or stupid.

Bram I think principled. You don't make deals with the grinning—

Pip you say that, but Argyle himself said, later, he'd have signed in a heartbeat—

Maeve For the power to kill the fat one.

Bram "that fat fuck that killed us," yeah.

Pip right! So it's not principle, it's that the price was a lock and nobody had a question hungry enough. If Aut had dangled the right thing, that oath's gone—

Bram well—

Pip the oath that's "morally binding" about a jacket—

Bram okay, fair.

Pip I'm just saying the oath has a price, we just haven't found it.

Maeve Aut told him no anyway. The smiting. "That's not your lot in life."

Pip oh he asked for the smite power directly?

Bram he begged, he begged for the power to smite the Giant out of existence, and Aut just goes, that's not your lot in life.

Pip a god told you no. Read the room.

Bram he does not read the room, that's the joy of him.

Bram hang on, mug's empty — can we get another round, is the — there he is, yeah, three more when you get a sec, ta.

Pip get the — do they still do the little pies?

Bram I think it's just the one kind now.

Pip the one kind's fine.

Maeve It's fine.

Bram okay so they wake up, and now it's prep, gear-up montage basically, and Anzu buys a raven—

Pip Othello.

Bram Othello, and turns it into his familiar, and this is where Benny loses it—

Maeve Forty-nine HP.

Bram the raven has forty-nine hit points—

Pip a raven.

Bram a normal raven, Anzu rewires its little neurons, there's psychic tethers, you can see the tethers, and the GM gives it forty-nine HP off tough familiar—

Pip that's more than some PCs.

Bram and Benny is appalled, Benny's whole thing is "that's two crits' worth of HP, why are you hiding that much health in a bird"—

Maeve "Why's it in the bird and not in front of the party."

Pip ha, that's a good point actually—

Bram it's a great point—

Pip no but morally — Benny's the one going "you brainwashed a raven," right? The android. The one who got brainwashed into being a person basically, or built into one—

Maeve Made. By a heart. Atum.

Pip made by a heart, right, so Benny of all people going "you can't just rewire a bird's brain"—

Bram oh that's—

Pip that's the irony, isn't it, the made thing objecting to the made thing—

Bram I didn't even clock that.

Pip it's right there.

Maeve He's right though. The bird didn't consent.

Pip did Benny consent? Did any made thing—

Bram okay this is getting—

Pip it's getting heavy, yeah, anyway—

Bram anyway, gear, they get the wrist grapplers, the clockwork ones, snap leaves, earplugs—

Pip why earplugs.

Bram I don't — Voidsong? Probably Voidsong.

Maeve Probably.

Bram a Time Pocket scroll, a repair kit, and then they go pick up the twins who are mid-packing a rocket-tipped hammer into a bag of holding—

Pip a rocket-tipped hammer.

Maeve Into a bag of holding.

Pip these are the healing potion girls.

Bram these are the sweet healing twins, yeah, packing a rocket hammer, and meanwhile outside it's been raining ash since the bomb—

Maeve Snow sweepers clearing it.

Bram snow sweepers but for ash, the whole city's panicking, and five different groups have claimed credit for the explosion—

Pip five! Five fake confessions.

Bram five groups going "yeah that was us," and it was the party, and they're just driving out through it—

Pip that's so funny, everyone wants the bombing on their CV except the people who did it—

Bram and the cordon just lets them through. Mysteriously.

Pip mysteriously?

Maeve The twins cast Hallowed Ground on the car.

Bram oh right, the car thing—

Maeve Teleport-proof. Fear-immune.

Pip when did they—

Bram secretly, while packing, and Anzu detects it, he goes, this thing twists minds, it's got the mental trait—

Maeve Before the reveal.

Pip so the twins are casting secret spells on the car AND they maybe helped assassinate a prime minister AND they pack rocket hammers. And the party's just... vibing with them.

Bram well the suspicion's seeded now—

Pip the suspicion's seeded but they're still in the car together driving into the wilderness—

Maeve It's a long drive.

Pip it's going to be a tense drive is what I'm saying.

Bram okay the drive, the drive's great, because hours in, Argyle notices the car's slowing down—

Maeve Speedometer steady.

Bram speedometer says they're fine but they're decelerating, and Anzu IDs it — what was the roll—

Maeve Thirty-one.

Bram thirty-one, identifies a rank-five abjuration, long-range caltrops—

Pip long-range caltrops?

Bram it's latched onto the hood, magically, it's chewing up the hood and the engine—

Pip so somebody's tracking them already.

Bram somebody's tracking them, and Argyle tries to Dispel it—

Maeve Failed. Sixteen.

Bram rolls a sixteen, and the thing is his Dispel was rank three trying to counteract a rank five so he needed a crit anyway—

Maeve Needed a crit.

Bram so it was never happening, and instead of fighting it they just— take the hood off.

Pip take the—

Bram they take the whole hood off, Benny writes "dangerous do not touch" on a bit of paper and sticks it to the hood, and they leave it and drive on—

Pip as a—

Bram as a hoodless hot rod, engine fully out in the open, and Argyle's horrified, he's going "we're hot rod people now, we're a fucking hot rod"—

Pip ha, that's the second thing Argyle's been morally wounded by, the jacket and now the hot rod—

Bram and Anzu, deadpan, Anzu goes, "you expect me to build a hood out of a box of scraps in a cave?"

Pip ha! That's — okay that's a reference, that's—

Maeve It's a reference.

Pip I'm not going to say to what.

Bram and the beautiful thing, which they don't know yet, is that taking the hood off accidentally ruins the ambushers' whole plan, because they were going to detonate the caltrops—

Pip and the caltrops are on the hood—

Bram which is now sitting in a ditch a mile back going "dangerous do not touch"—

Pip that's so good. They solved a fight they didn't know they were in by being too poor to keep a hood on.

Bram and then the actual ambush, the roadblock—

Maeve Three cars across the road.

Bram three cars, a merc with a rocket launcher, a single-shot, and a caster—

Pip and Johnny does the dragon.

Bram Johnny does the DRAGON—

Maeve Illusory. Huge. Black.

Bram a huge black dragon, illusion, except he voices it like Fozzie Bear—

Pip no he didn't—

Bram he voices the terrifying black dragon like Fozzie Bear, and the dragon screams "I'm hungry for lunch"—

Pip in the Fozzie voice—

Bram in the Fozzie voice, performance check—

Maeve Twenty-five.

Bram twenty-five, and two of the cars just leave, they nope out—

Pip scared off by a Muppet dragon.

Bram and then the rocket, the big one, the one-shot, this thing's worth ten thousand eight hundred gold—

Maeve Twelve d-six.

Bram twelve d six of damage, single use, that expensive, and it whiffs—

Pip it misses?

Bram it misses completely, because Anzu's got a vector screen up and Benny's giving it a wide berth, the positioning just— the most expensive thing on the board does nothing.

Pip ten thousand gold to miss. That's—

Maeve A wide berth.

Pip that's a whole character's gear, fired once, into a hedge.

Bram and then Anzu finishes it, he crits a telekinetic projectile at the pursuing car's tire—

Maeve Thirty-four. Plus five piercing weakness.

Bram pops the tire outright, and the car overcorrects and flips—

Maeve On a d-twenty.

Pip they rolled for whether it flipped?

Maeve Flipped on the d-twenty.

Bram and then they figure out who these guys even were, retroactive perception—

Maeve Thirty-five.

Bram thirty-five reads them as cheap, not real soldiers, hired hands, and it's — Yamamoto Aerospace—

Pip Yamamoto Aerospace.

Bram which is a competitor, a Hildebrandt competitor, they lost their own keystone and they're trying to steal another one—

Pip hang on, didn't Argyle—

Bram oh, Argyle, yeah, Argyle's first guess at the name—

Maeve "Yamamoto Airfield."

Bram he guesses "Yamamoto Airfield" and then immediately goes, "that sounds racist"—

Pip he flags his own—

Bram he flags his own guess as racist, and the GM just gleefully goes, great, it's canon now, both things, the company AND your racism—

Pip canonized the racism on the spot.

Maeve On the spot.

Pip that's the same GM energy as "this is how people get radicalized."

Bram it's the exact same energy.

Pip I love and fear that man.

Bram and the thing the table kept saying about the whole ambush is, these guys got the best possible outcome—

Maeve They lived.

Bram they all lived, that's best case, because the party left them alive, whereas — what was the bit, the Protectorate—

Pip oh the Protectorate—

Bram the Protectorate's coming down the same road later and they'll just floor a battering ram straight through them—

Pip which, the Protectorate, those are the battle freaks, the trance guys—

Maeve Slayers. Battletrance.

Pip right, the ones who tear through camps single-handed—

Bram so these poor Yamamoto guys ambushed the nice party who let them live, and the next people down the road are going to be the worst people alive—

Pip wrong week to set up a roadblock.

Bram wrong week entirely.

Bram and then it just ends, basically, they outrun all that, hour later they roll into Ragnroost—

Pip the ragged roost.

Maeve Ragnroost.

Bram and they're a week early, so early that some of the companies haven't even set up their stalls yet, and in the middle of the whole city is the strider—

Maeve Complete. Now.

Bram it's finished, this colossal strider just standing in the middle of the city, waiting—

Pip waiting for its pilgrims.

Bram awaiting its pilgrims, yeah, and that's the image they end on, that's the last beat, the strider on the horizon—

Pip and that's the longest they've ever stayed in one place, right, Hallia—

Maeve Longest single location.

Pip two years in one city and now they just— leave.

Bram now it's a pilgrimage, now it's the road.

Pip see, but I'm still stuck on Johnny not asking the god about his god—

Bram oh, here we go—

Pip no but it's the one real question at the table and he sat on it, and I think it's because if Aut answered it, it might be a bad answer, and you can't un-hear a bad answer—

Bram that's— actually that's not bad.

Pip better to have a god who might be busy than a god who definitely isn't coming—

Maeve Same wall, though.

Pip yeah but Johnny doesn't know it's the same wall, does he—

Maeve He was there.

Pip was he conscious for the wall part or—

Bram he was there, Pip—

Pip I'm just saying, you can be in the room and not hear the thing, that's the whole Voidsong, isn't it, you can't recall the notes—

Bram now you're—

Pip anyway.