The Canary in the Ballroom

Pip —no but go back, because that thing with the whiskey and the milk, like, why does that always work? You sit four traumatized weirdos in a back room with a glass of milk—

Bram With whiskey! Whiskey AND milk, that's the —

Pip With whiskey and milk and suddenly everyone's confessing their whole tragic origin, it's —

Maeve It's the milk that does it.

Bram It's the milk! No, but this was the big one though, right, this was the — after, what, two years? Three years of these guys not telling each other a damn thing, they all just crack open at once, all four of them, Johnny goes first I think and he's like, my god ghosted me—

Pip The Watcher.

Bram The Watcher, yeah, the thousand-eyes guy, and Johnny's whole thing is he used to die and go chat with him, like, mano a mano—

Maeve Last two deaths he got nothing.

Bram Right, last two deaths he dies and instead of his buddy upstairs it's just the song, just the Voidsong in his ears and no Watcher, which, that's bleak, that's actually—

Pip See but that's the part I can't get past, okay, because the man's god has STOPPED PICKING UP, his god has him on read—

Bram On read, yeah —

Pip —and he still, this whole session, he's sitting at a table with a god who knows everything, and he will not ask the one question. He won't do it!

Maeve We'll get to Aut.

Pip I'm just SAYING.

Bram Then Benny does his whole thing, which, the line, the line was so good, he goes "I'm nine years old" —

Pip "—but I've been this size since I was zero days old."

Bram Since he was zero days old! Because he's not a kid, he's an android, this whole time he's a little robot made by a heart, what was it—

Maeve Atum.

Bram Atum, made by a heart called Atum, and the whole time we thought — what did we think he was?

Pip We thought he was a tiefling kid, didn't we? Or — no, we thought the devil dad thing was already on the table, but —

Maeve We didn't know he was made.

Bram And he was so MAD about it, that was the best part, he's been sitting on this backstory for — what did he say —

Pip "Better have been worth it." Grumbling it. Like the others dragged it out of him.

Bram Which they kind of did, right, that's the —

Pip That's my whole question though, was that bonding or was that just, like, peer pressure? Three guys spill their guts and now Benny's gotta go, it's, what's it called, it's emotional FOMO—

Maeve He didn't have to.

Pip He kind of had to.

Bram Eh, I think he wanted to, I think the milk got him.

Pip The milk got him.

Bram And then Argyle, oh, Argyle's is the best one, Argyle goes, "I was a celestial for the judge. I failed. Second chance." Which, that's it, that's the whole thing, he's an ANGEL—

Pip Stuffed in a demon.

Bram Stuffed in a demon body as a punishment, and the demon was already named Argyle—

Pip So there's two of them. There's two Argyles in there.

Maeve Grandson of the Judge.

Bram Grandson of the Judge, which makes him, what, related to the lizard guys, the Scale—

Maeve Eventually that matters.

Pip It's so lazy and so incredible at the same time, like, the laziest possible — you took the angel and you just shoved him in a guy that was already wearing the nametag.

Bram And then they go to SLEEP, right, that's the —

Pip No wait, hold on, before sleep, did anyone — the whiskey and milk thing, I'm circling back, when did THAT start, the milk thing, was that—

Maeve Doesn't matter.

Pip Doesn't matter. Fine.

Bram So they go to sleep and three of them flunk the save, all four get yanked into the — the black and white place, and there's the god, there's Aut, who is — okay how do I describe Aut, he's like, all white, tall, gangly, little stick arms, big round head—

Pip Like a balloon.

Bram Like a balloon head, and the grin, the grin goes all the way around, like from one side of the sphere to the—

Maeve "From one side of the sphere to the other."

Bram Yeah! It's the Roger Rabbit guy, it's the — the dip guy, Christopher Lloyd—

Pip Judge Doom!

Bram Judge Doom, yes, that's exactly the vibe, awful, awful grin.

Pip And this is the all-knowing one, right, this is the radio god — well, not radio, but he's the one who knows—

Maeve He knows everything except the Voidsong.

Pip Except the one thing. Of course. The one thing.

Bram And he offers them two deals, like, ask me anything you want — anything — for a price, and the prices are weird, one was like, flip a switch on a bedroom on the Strider—

Maeve "Birth four."

Bram Birth four, yeah, unlock birth four, or draw three dots at the Voidsong place. And as a freebie, just to dangle it, he goes, hey, your friends the twins? Not honest. Ask 'em where they were before the prime minister got assassinated.

Pip Which is HUGE, that's a free grenade he just rolled under the table—

Bram Free grenade, and they turn down both deals, they walk away from the all-knowing god with—

Pip With nothing! And here's my thing—

Maeve Argyle nearly killed himself.

Pip Right, that —

Bram Oh, that, yeah, Argyle won't shake the guy's hand, he's like, do I have to KILL MYSELF to honor the judge rather than shake a—

Pip Everything that man likes is tyrant-coded and everything he won't touch he won't touch on principle. He's a self-litigating lawyer. He can't read a room but he'll die on the procedure.

Maeve Took the case pro bono, though.

Pip He always does. That's the tragedy.

Bram But the deal thing — okay, Argyle SAID, after, he said he'd have signed in a heartbeat if the deal was killing the — what'd he call him — "that fat fuck that killed us." So it's not even principle, it's that the price was wrong.

Pip So that's my point, walking away from a free all-knowing god — is that restraint or is that just, you fumbled it? You had a god offering you the answer key—

Bram It's restraint! You don't make deals with gods, everyone knows that, that's like rule one—

Pip Is it though, is it restraint or is it the table getting scared—

Maeve It's both.

Pip It's both, fine, but I'll say it again, Johnny's god won't answer his calls and Johnny still won't ASK—

Bram He'll take the deal eventually. Mark me. The oath he's got, the Watcher oath, there's a price on it they haven't found, and when they find it, Johnny signs.

Pip You've been saying that for like three sessions.

Bram And I'll keep saying it!

Maeve He didn't this time either.

Bram Not YET. And remember the perception thing, Aut looks at Anzu's arm and goes, nah, that's fine, that's good as it is—

Pip Most useless successful perception check in the history of the game. You rolled to learn that your arm is FINE.

Bram A seven knows everything and a thirty-four knows your arm's okay.

Maeve That's the curse.

Bram That's the curse! So then they wake up and they're driving, this is — Calaria, the whole place is on fire basically, ash everywhere, everyone panicking, and the car starts slowing down—

Pip The caltrops.

Bram The caltrops, somebody's magically stuck these long-range caltrops onto the hood, and Argyle tries to dispel it and—

Maeve Fails.

Bram Fails, so they just — they rip the whole hood off. Just tear it off and keep driving.

Pip And Argyle's having a breakdown about it, he's like, we're hot rod people now—

Bram We're hot rod PEOPLE—

Pip Which is, again, tyrant-coded probably, somehow—

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

Pip Out of a box of scraps! In a cave!

Maeve Then the roadblock.

Bram Then the roadblock, yeah, three cars and a merc with a — a rocket launcher, a single-shot one, and a caster, and Johnny — okay this is the best — Johnny conjures an illusion dragon—

Pip Fozzie Bear dragon.

Bram Voiced like Fozzie Bear, screaming "I'm hungry for lunch!" and two of the cars just NOPE, they leave—

Pip Why lunch, why was the dragon hungry for lunch specifically, that's such a—

Maeve It worked.

Pip It worked, sure, but the menace of it is undercut when it's a Muppet going "I'm hungry for lunch"—

Bram That's why it works! And the rocket — the rocket was worth like ten thousand gold—

Maeve Ten thousand eight hundred.

Bram Ten thousand eight hundred gold rocket and it WHIFFS, and then Anzu crits a tire and pops it and flips the last car—

Pip And the guy — the ambusher guy tries to set off his bomb and the bomb's on the hood they already threw away—

Bram On the hood they THREW AWAY, he detonates the roof they ditched a mile back—

Pip So that's actually — okay, the hood thing — was that genius or did they just total their own car for no—

Bram Tactical loss.

Pip There it is.

Bram It was a tactical loss! The bomb was on the hood, they ditched the hood, the bomb went off in the road. That's — that's foresight.

Maeve They didn't know about the bomb when they ditched it.

Bram ...okay but it WORKED OUT.

Pip "It worked out." Put that on the car's gravestone.

Maeve And it was Yamamoto.

Bram Oh, right, Argyle just guesses — he goes, this is probably "Yamamoto Airfield," which was—

Pip A wildly racist guess—

Bram A pretty racist guess and Josh just goes, yep, canon, that's who it is now, Yamamoto Aerospace—

Pip I love and fear that man.

Maeve He didn't group his sixty-three tokens. Because he's smart.

Bram Smart man. So they roll up to Ragged Roost—

Pip Which they hadn't seen in—

Maeve Six months.

Bram Six months, and last time it's a dead mining town, the sign's got a crossed-out zero on the population, and now—

Pip Seventy-five thousand.

Bram Seventy-five thousand, and the reason is the Strider, this — okay, it's a city. On legs. A spider city. Three-quarters of a mile wide—

Pip It's on LEGS—

Bram Three hundred feet up in the air on these spider legs, casting a permanent shadow, so they drive under the lip of it and it goes dark, they need their headlights, and it's like—

Maeve Four p.m.

Bram Four in the afternoon and they need headlights because this thing's blotting out the sun, and on top there's this — this orrery thing, all these spinning rings—

Pip The double pendulum.

Bram Moving like a chaotic double pendulum, all wobbly and unpredictable, and Johnny clocks it, he goes, hey, does that look like the thing we found in—

Maeve Tywelwyn's Fane.

Bram Tywelwyn's Fane, the device in the basement after they killed him, and—

Pip Which — is that a real clue or is Johnny just pattern-matching, because the man sees a thing that spins and goes, oh, like the OTHER thing that spun—

Bram No, that's a real one, that's gonna pay off—

Pip Everything's gonna pay off according to you—

Bram Because Josh doesn't just — he doesn't put a callback like that in for nothing, you don't have Johnny ask the question if the answer's no—

Maeve Could be a red herring.

Bram It's not a red herring!

Pip Anyway, the population sign, wasn't it like crossed out twice, it was two thousand, then zero, then—

Maeve Crossed-out two thousand, crossed-out zero, then seventy-five.

Pip A whole sad little history on one sign.

Bram And they're like guest number two, they're SO early, they're a week early—

Pip And the harlequin guy, the one with the — leashing the little devils—

Maeve Orts.

Pip Orts, the little — what'd they roll, the Nature check—

Maeve Twenty-nine.

Bram Twenty-nine Nature, and the orts are the lowest-tier devils, barely sentient, on leashes, and the harlequin winches their busted car up onto the thing and sends them to berth fourteen—

Pip And here's the tell that nobody clocks in the moment, the harlequin smells like—

Maeve Sulfur and copper.

Pip Sulfur and copper pennies, which is the whole — that's the fiend smell, that comes back—

Bram That comes back HARD, but in the moment they're just like, neat guy, weird smell, and they get to berth fourteen and meet their butler, who offers — get this — he says you can call me "Butler" or you can call me "Thing"—

Pip And they pick—

Bram Chuck.

Pip Chuck.

Maeve Chuck.

Bram They named him Chuck. A guy who would answer to ANYTHING and they went with Chuck.

Pip Is that charming or is that rude, because the man — the being — offered you the whole naming buffet and you picked the most beige—

Bram It's charming!

Pip It's a little rude.

Maeve He comes out of a figurine.

Bram Right, there's a little figurine you crush and Chuck appears and the figurine crumbles to dust, which is—

Pip It's always Chuck, though, that's the thing, whatever they pull out of the void, whatever shows up, it's gonna get named Chuck eventually—

Bram It's the law.

Pip It's the law. Write it down.

Bram And their neighbor at berth six is Hildebrandt, the — the dragon company, the airplane dragon—

Maeve Fortune dragon.

Bram Fortune dragon, and they did the keystone thing different, they tied two cars to one keystone, two Humvee-looking things—

Pip Which we'll find out is, like, a flex or a mistake, I don't remember which—

Maeve Then they made the heart.

Bram Then they made the heart! Okay this is the big ritual, they put the keystone in the circle — and the keystone looks exactly like—

Pip Mysterio's helmet.

Bram Mysterio's fishbowl helmet, and they get sucked into this void starscape and they have to feed energy into a baby heart by killing these little thought creatures, purple ones and orange ones—

Maeve Void and star.

Bram Void and star, purple's void, orange's star, and you gotta match the tether color, and they grind through like twenty of them—

Maeve Twenty thoughts. Two Fractured Ideals.

Bram Two big ones, the Fractured Ideals, and the whole fight they're stacking buffs, Benediction, Bless, the — Dirge of Doom, and Benny is just—

Pip Crying.

Bram Crying the WHOLE time—

Pip Failing every will save—

Maeve Crushing Despair. Phantasmal Killer.

Bram He's got Crushing Despair on him, he's got Phantasmal Killer, he is sobbing uncontrollably and STILL critting people in melee—

Pip That's the thing, he's bawling his eyes out and landing crits, like, weeping through it—

Bram And the gingerbread house!

Pip Oh, the gingerbread—

Bram Johnny brought a gingerbread house kit, a level-six magic gingerbread house, and uses it as a spell focus and does "Ode to a Gingerbread House" and just FILIBUSTERS an enemy into being stupefied—

Pip Don't eat the gingerbread house, by the way. It's a war hero now.

Bram He's gonna eat it.

Pip He's absolutely gonna eat it.

Maeve There was a named crit.

Bram Oh — Dwayne the Rock Johnson, the rerolled mythic telekinetic — somebody chucked a rock and they named the rock—

Pip Dwayne the Rock Johnson, yeah.

Maeve And Argyle ate a crit. "That bitch got a twenty."

Bram "That son of a bitch!" — a thought crits him and he loses it, "that bitch got a twenty, that SON of a bitch"—

Pip At a thought. At a little floating idea. He's cursing out a concept.

Bram But here's the thing — they set it up SO void-heavy, like everything's purple, and it ends up—

Maeve Eleven star, seven void.

Bram Star-tilted! Eleven to seven, star, after all that void setup, which—

Pip Which is the dice curse again, you aim for one thing—

Bram And so the heart's gonna lean star, which means it builds them, like, breakfast bonuses—

Maeve HP at breakfast. Crafting discount.

Pip A breakfast bonus. Your god-spawn home gives you a hearty breakfast.

Bram And then the heart asks what they stand for, like, what ideal do you strive toward, and they go around and around—

Pip This took forever—

Bram Knowledge, justice, good, and then somebody floats—

Pip "Just us."

Bram "Just us!" J-U-S-T space U-S, just us, like, partiality, just for ourselves, which is the most—

Pip It's their selfishness with a bow on it. It's the realest answer they gave.

Maeve They landed on knowledge and justice. With a tinge.

Bram A tinge of self-interest, yeah, and the heart shows up as this — this giant scrolling parchment thing, like a seismograph, and the text resolves into a FACE and it goes "Greetings. I am Eerie. You have created me."

Pip Eerie.

Bram Eerie! Short for "Ear That Hears the Truth"—

Pip After how many rejected names though—

Maeve Foresight. Voice of the Few. The Auditor. The Arbiter. Chronicle. Oracle.

Pip That's the thing, they bickered about names for like an hour and landed on Eerie, which — did they nail it or did they just give up—

Bram It's on theme! Ear that hears the truth, it's got the truth thing—

Pip They gave up. That's a giving-up name.

Maeve It's fine.

Bram And it builds the Fane, bedroom, kitchen, and a workshop—

Pip Over the hot tub.

Bram Over Johnny's hot tub, Johnny lobbied SO hard for the hot tub—

Pip Every session, the hot tub—

Bram And they went workshop, practical, and Eerie just — Josh said it's like Gale from Baldur's Gate, it's hungry for magic items, you feed it magic items to grow it—

Pip And Argyle floated some rune-laundering exploit—

Maeve Vetoed. Preemptively.

Pip Josh saw it coming and killed it before he even finished.

Bram Smart man. So then it's the pre-departure week, they're meeting all the other orgs, and Benny goes to the gym and meets the lizard guy—

Maeve Bishop. Ralph Bishop. The Scale.

Bram Bishop, the gold lizardfolk, scarred, one eye, and he turns his chair around to sit on it backwards—

Pip "So cool."

Bram And the whole table just goes "so cool," and Argyle's already—

Pip Argyle's GONE, Argyle takes one look at the Scale and he's like, they're so cool, god, I hope they're not evil—

Bram "They're so fucking cool, god damn it, I hope they're not evil"—

Pip Which is a flashing red light, right, the second this man loves a faction—

Maeve They're never not evil.

Pip They're NEVER not evil, and he's so fickle about it too, whoever did the last cool thing—

Bram Well, hang on, the Scale are actually the good guys probably—

Maeve Probably.

Bram They're the overseers, they investigate stuff that messes with the gods, so they're a natural ally—

Pip "Probably." Maeve said probably with a little—

Maeve I said probably.

Bram And Anzu meditates on his void paper and crits an occultism—

Maeve Natural thirty-eight.

Bram Natural thirty-eight, and figures out the spinning rings, they don't just look cool, they REVERSE the void's pull and intensify it, it's propulsion—

Pip A thirty-eight knows everything. There's the other end of the curse.

Bram And then the cookout—

Pip The cookout, oh—

Bram Argyle's got the Soothing Spring hot tub going—

Pip So Johnny didn't even need the workshop fight, there's already a hot tub—

Maeve Different thing.

Bram Johnny's in like 1970s swim trunks with a BELT and cowboy boots—

Pip A belt on swim trunks—

Bram And cowboy boots, and Argyle's in cop sunglasses, and it draws over Hildebrandt's guy, Paavo, who's Voidsong-resonant, and this oblivious little dwarf—

Maeve Salvado. Solari Sub-surface.

Bram Salvado, who's the best, he goes, "you and I are gonna be good friends, because I've got no fucking idea what's happening"—

Pip That's the most honest guy on the boat. Put him in charge.

Bram And then the dinner with the Master of Ceremonies, which is — okay this is where it turns—

Pip This is where it goes bad.

Bram Private restaurant, the masked guy, the MC, and they press him and he takes off the mask and his face is just—

Maeve Burned.

Bram Horribly burned, like it'd been dunked in a bonfire, and the thing is it's healed THAT WAY on purpose—

Pip On purpose, which means—

Maeve He died and got revived. To keep the scars.

Pip He chose to look like that. He got healed to stay burned.

Bram And Argyle crits a religion check and clocks the smell—

Pip Sulfur and copper.

Bram Sulfur and copper, same as the harlequin, and it links him to "the Harlequin," one of these four newly-organized devils—

Maeve And Johnny's got Lie to Me. The MC crit deception.

Bram Forty-three deception against Johnny's Lie to Me feat, totally unreadable, the man cannot get a read on this guy at all—

Pip A forty-three, you don't get to read THAT—

Bram And he tells them, basically, this whole pilgrimage? It's a death game. Nineteen-plus orgs and he WANTS them killing each other—

Maeve "I'll be encouraging it. I'll get bored."

Bram "I'll get bored, it'd be boring if you all just hung out in a circle and sang together"—

Pip And the circle line—

Maeve "I make a habit of not entering any kind of circle."

Pip Which is the devil tell, devils and circles—

Bram And then the kicker, he turns to Benny and goes, "say my regards to your father when you next speak to him"—

Pip Which — okay — that means he KNOWS. He knows about Benny's devil dad—

Maeve Implies it.

Pip Implies it real hard.

Bram And this is where Anzu's whole — Anzu came on this trip to rescue an innocent singer, that was the theory, and now they're realizing they're ferrying a boat full of killers to a wall to hack each other apart—

Pip So was getting on the boat a mistake at all? Like, fundamentally—

Bram No—

Pip They could've just NOT—

Maeve They'd have heard the song forever.

Pip Fair.

Bram And the part where they almost become the bad guys—

Pip Oh, right—

Bram The MC plants this idea that if you kill a heart you harvest its leftover energy, and the party immediately goes—

Pip "Great, let's start killing people on the road."

Bram Argyle's REACHING for his sword to jump orgs on the highway, and Benny's like, let's wait for Amber Call's heart to fatten up and THEN kill it—

Pip Which is so cold from a guy who cries at every will save—

Bram And Josh literally calls it out, he goes, "I said I expect violence and you all jumped straight to, well clearly we have to start murdering people on the road"—

Maeve Anzu objected to that.

Bram Right, Anzu's like, hey, don't lump ME in, the whole party's not equally devil-brained—

Pip Except all four of them were visibly thrilled to start a highway war, so—

Maeve They were.

Bram But they talk themselves down and go defensive instead, alliances, buddy system, Fane defenses, and they go door to door networking—

Pip The red-string board.

Bram Argyle builds the It's Always Sunny board, the whole — red string, pinned photos—

Pip And the code word—

Maeve "Guac."

Pip Guac, to tell if Argyle's a devil double or the real Argyle, which—

Bram And they lock in the Protectorate, and Prime Meridian gives them a skein link for info-sharing, but the rainbow church—

Maeve Iridescent Church. And Necrolog. Both rebuffed them.

Bram Right, the Necrolog guy—

Maeve Gaspar. Smells of formaldehyde. Slams the door.

Pip Everyone fancy on this boat smells like a chemistry set and is evil. Sulfur, copper, formaldehyde—

Bram Radio people are always evil.

Pip Well — is the Necrolog guy a radio person—

Bram They're all radio people EVENTUALLY. Write it down.

Maeve Then Obratz.

Bram Oh. Yeah. Obratz.

Pip This is the sad one.

Bram The old tiefling, Garrick Textiles, Letov Obratz, and he's this proud old guy whose Fane is half-built and starving for energy, and they offer to shelter him and he WON'T take it—

Maeve "I was taught not to lean on others when your own efforts can resolve your situation."

Bram And Johnny, meanwhile, is double-speaking to the team like, yeah, this guy's gonna die in a week—

Pip Out loud, basically—

Bram And Argyle's doing the eyes, just pleading with his eyes, you're going to die, sir—

Pip Didn't Argyle want to KIDNAP him—

Maeve "For his own good."

Bram For his own good! And Josh goes, you want to give him Stockholm Syndrome, that's what that is—

Pip Save the old man by abducting him. Tyrant-coded charity.

Bram And they hook his heart — Whirling in Rags — to their skein as a canary, so they'll know when he—

Pip When he goes. Grim.

Bram But the good one, the same week, is Floch—

Maeve Kadou Floch. Alkahest Freight.

Bram Floch, who's got this theory everyone laughs at, that the Voidsong is the lost people of — of—

Maeve Raelion.

Bram Raelion, crying out for help, and Johnny just—

Pip Johnny melts.

Bram Johnny slumps, fully moved, goes "I really like that theory. I hope that theory's right." And Floch goes "you're the first person who hasn't laughed in my face."

Pip Which is sweet, and it's the counterweight to the death-game thing, like, here's a guy who thinks the song is people who need saving—

Bram And the other ally, the android, Y'shael, who pours tea—

Pip Out of their wrist—

Bram Out of their own wrist, water comes out the wrist, and there's a fruit bowl with three pistols in it—

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

Bram Hand the baby a revolver, it's tradition—

Maeve That's the gun place. Radiant Arms.

Pip "Just a tap'll do ya."

Bram So then it's gala morning, and Anzu — this is the sad little one — Anzu sent his sister a Dream Message inviting her to brunch—

Pip His scary psychic estranged sister—

Bram And he waits, and she just — doesn't show—

Maeve Never comes.

Pip And his plan, if she HAD shown, his big plan to greet the sister he's terrified of—

Maeve "I would probably say hello."

Pip "I would probably say hello." That's it. That's the whole plan. Two years of buildup—

Bram Argyle ribs him SO hard about the chip on his shoulder about the sister—

Pip As he should.

Bram But instead of the sister, who shows up but Lark Crowe—

Maeve Sable and Suns. The tengu.

Bram The gun-salesman tengu, scarred, glass eye, a sword scar splitting his beak—

Pip And there's the nondescript guy—

Maeve Giannos.

Bram Giannos, who's so glamoured you can't even tell what he IS, human, elf, half, nobody can pin it, and you have to make a Will save just to walk UP to him—

Pip And Benny fails it—

Maeve Benny fails. "What would we gain out of talking to him?"

Pip And the others realize that thought wasn't even Benny's—

Bram The guy's putting thoughts in his head, like, why bother, walk away—

Pip Which is terrifying, that's the Ministry guy, the radio—

Maeve MoCuP. Controls the radio in Calaria, Tormeré, parts of Rithwin.

Pip RADIO PEOPLE—

Bram RADIO PEOPLE, see—

Pip You said it!

Bram I said it! Everyone fancy's a radio person and they're all—

Maeve "Like Embercall," he said.

Bram And the others dragged Benny along anyway even though the magic told him to leave—

Pip Which is funny, like, his free will got hijacked and his friends just went, nah, come on—

Bram And then the GALA. The departure gala. The MC toasts everybody and the Strider takes its first step, jumps one voidward every six seconds—

Maeve Every six seconds.

Bram And he announces the tithe, this energy tithe drawn from everyone's Voidsong connection, and Argyle and Benny get fatigued right off—

Pip And then Obratz can't pay—

Bram And then — okay—

Pip This is the one. Everyone went quiet for this one.

Bram Obratz is too weak to pay the tithe, and he gets — he gets wrung out. Like a towel. Like a dishrag. His skin tears and this black-purple stuff leaks out—

Pip And Johnny and Argyle try to HEAL him—

Maeve Which made it worse.

Bram Which only gives the ritual more to pull, the healing just fed it, so they're prolonging it, and his lungs — both lungs burst, with a pop—

Pip And the thing is, the whole session we'd been joking, like, Obratz is gonna die, he's gonna die in a week, Johnny said it to his face basically—

Bram We must've joked about him dying twenty times—

Pip And then he actually got dishragged and the table just — nothing. Dead quiet.

Maeve It wasn't funny anymore.

Bram And Argyle regrets going up there, because he followed good-spirited Johnny up to the body to help heal and got himself fatigued for it—

Pip "I followed Johnny and now I'm tired and the old man's worse." Classic.

Bram And out of the puddle, out of the congealing pool, these things erupt — antler things, the — what were they—

Maeve Ki-Rin. And barghests.

Bram Ki-Rin, half deer half horse, but with carnivorous teeth and black chitin, and slobbering barghests, and the MC just — steps away. Leaves them to it.

Pip In a ballroom full of orgs.

Bram Full of every org, and the party's fatigued and surrounded, and they debate running—

Pip And they don't run.

Bram They stand and fight, partly to look cool for Prime Meridian, partly hoping for loot—

Pip To look cool. They stayed in a monster fight to look cool for their pen pals.

Maeve And to see the others fight.

Bram And THAT'S the good part, because now all the factions show their hand — the Ki-Rin breathes divine fire and just turns attendees to ASH—

Maeve Thirty-six points. "Ashes blown to the wind."

Bram And Benny gets hit with a curse, his wound turns black, won't heal—

Pip Unhealing curse, which—

Bram And the Protectorate two, Tamara and Yao, go FERAL, Tamara cracks like an ampoule in her teeth and red mist pours off her—

Pip The battletrance thing—

Maeve Yao's will save spared only Argyle. Vaporized three others.

Bram And Bishop, the lizard, drops a hundred-foot Storm of Battle—

Pip And Argyle FLIPS—

Bram Instantly! He was all "the Protectorate are so cool" and the second Bishop's lightning goes off it's "no, the SCALE are the cool ones"—

Pip Fickle little man. Whoever did the last cool thing. No loyalty.

Bram And Grayson — Master Grayson — casts a modified Dominate and just TAKES a Ki-Rin—

Maeve Silven Grayson.

Pip Which is a hostile move, right, that's him showing his hand—

Bram A guy hijacking a monster mid-fight, yeah, and the party scrambles to publicize that, like, hey everyone, see what HE just did—

Maeve And Anzu's Mindbird cleaned up.

Bram Anzu's Mindbird, mental and sonic magic, just racking up kills, and every time he snipes a kill off Benny—

Pip "Mindbird claims another."

Bram "Mindbird claims another," Benny lines one up and Anzu just steals it—

Pip Benny's crying, losing kills, cursed, it's not his night.

Maeve He critted in melee though.

Pip He did keep critting. Weeping and critting.

Bram And then there's the portal, the void portal in the middle of the floor that's just—

Maeve Anzu figured it out. Self-closing fracture.

Bram Right, it's not a designed door, it's a — the tithe ripped the energy out so violently it tore the weave, so the whole ship's fabric of magic is weakened now and portals could pop open ANYWHERE—

Pip Which is the scary worldbuilding part, that's a structural problem now, not a one-off—

Bram And Othello scouts through—

Pip The raven.

Maeve Normal raven.

Bram Just a regular-sized raven, and beyond the portal it's this inverted ballroom, hands pushing through the walls like the walls are elastic, and floating up top is a — a purple chitinous orb, the Voidheart, over a giant HAND pulled out of the ground—

Pip And the hand things echolocate—

Bram Echolocating hand-masses, and Othello takes twenty void damage just scouting and bails—

Maeve And Bishop reads it. "Somebody designed this to cause conflict."

Bram "This is right fucked," he goes, "somebody designed this to cause conflict amongst us," because as factions die the tithe goes UP on everyone left—

Pip And there's a wall, way out, past void one-point-four million, that nobody comes back from—

Maeve One-point-four million. No one returns.

Bram And before that — the skinning, oh—

Pip Lance.

Bram Lance, this guy, skins EVERYTHING, habitually skins everything, and Johnny gets roped into skinning the barghests, and Johnny had the worse survival skill, and Argyle made HIM do it anyway—

Pip Why—

Maeve "Because I thought it'd be funny."

Pip Because he thought it'd be funny. That's the whole reason. Made the worse skinner do the gross skinning for a laugh—

Bram And Argyle hacks a Ki-Rin head off as a trophy, which — remember that, that head matters later—

Pip The rotting head.

Bram And then the dive, the Voidheart dive, this is the climax — they decide to grab the Voidheart before the portal seals, so they stack everything on Benny, Godspeed, silence, guidance, and shoot him in—

Maeve Eighty-five feet. Crit-grabs the orb.

Bram Sprints eighty-five feet and crit-grabs it, and the silence works because—

Pip The hands echolocate, so silence blinds them—

Maeve Right.

Bram And the second he pulls the orb, the whole place COLLAPSES, temperature plummets, hands burst out of the walls everywhere, and these — the hands, the real stat block, it reads—

Maeve Reach one thousand.

Bram Reach one THOUSAND feet, it's a reskinned something, and they start battering the party, Benny goes down, dying, Argyle goes down—

Pip And Benny goes super saiyan first—

Bram Oh right, Benny — his hair, he's already blonde and the hair just gets LONGER—

Pip Super saiyan Benny, the little android—

Bram And dying, before he drops, he SHOVES Johnny and Anzu through the portal to safety, and then those two dive back IN to drag the bodies out one at a time—

Maeve One at a time.

Bram And Anzu's last act is a Gravity Well crit that pulls himself AND the dropped Voidheart through right as the space implodes—

Pip And Argyle lives on a nat twenty death save—

Maeve Nat twenty. Burned his last hero point to stabilize.

Bram Nat twenty death save and his last hero point, and Josh goes, "the whole thing took twelve seconds."

Pip Twelve seconds. All of that.

Bram And they drag a whole giant hand-creature OUT with them into real space—

Pip Which — and this is the debrief argument — did the whole party even need to go in? Because Argyle's whole thing after was "we definitely shouldn't have followed Benny"—

Bram Benny could've soloed it—

Pip Benny stacked with Godspeed and silence could've grabbed it and run, and instead three more of them piled in and nearly all died—

Bram But then the hand wouldn't've—

Pip It worked out, I know, I know—

Maeve It nearly didn't.

Bram But it DID, and then they've got to kill the hand they dragged out—

Maeve Ralph crit it. Holy spear.

Bram Bishop crits with a holy spear, forty-eight damage, and that reveals it's weak to holy, suppresses the regeneration—

Pip And Grayson—

Bram Grayson pointedly does NOT catch Argyle in his — his Vampiric Exsanguination cone, which is a level six, seven spell, save DC—

Maeve Thirty-five.

Bram Thirty-five, which is "much scarier than level six," and he deliberately aims it so it misses Argyle, to keep his cover as the innocent little healthcare worker—

Pip So Argyle just standing there holding the Voidheart in the open, betting Grayson won't blow his cover—

Bram And the bet pays off—

Pip The bet pays off because the DICE said so, that's not Argyle being smart, that's—

Bram It's reading the guy! He read that Grayson wants his cover more than he wants—

Maeve It was a gamble.

Pip It was a gamble that happened to land.

Bram And there's Lance's sniper stat block that literally just reads "Jaws," with a chomping—

Pip A little chomping animation, Josh—

Bram And Benny clutch rerolls a crit-fail into a crit-success on a will save against being dominated, hero point—

Maeve Crit fail to crit success.

Bram And then Grayson reaches for a scroll, like he's gonna raise the hand's corpse as an undead minion, and Argyle—

Pip Bone Shaker.

Bram "Yeah, I'm gonna bone shake him," and he chucks the whole corpse into the void so Grayson can't have it, and Grayson just — quietly pockets the scroll—

Pip Slow-burn villain, that guy. He's gonna be the one.

Maeve He's the one.

Bram And THEN — they're not done, they drive over to Obratz's ruined Fane to loot it before Grayson can—

Pip Garrick Textiles—

Bram And the heart's still there, Whirling in Rags, still lucid, knows it's been abandoned—

Maeve "I am aware that all of my contractors are dead. So not good."

Pip "So not good." Oof.

Bram And Benny wants to talk it into surrendering, like, go willingly—

Pip And Argyle just wants to rip it out and dip—

Bram So they send in — and this is the joke — they send in "the two with the highest kill count" to "gently speak to the heart"—

Pip The two most violent guys, to negotiate gently—

Maeve Benny ripped out its core thread.

Bram Benny just — thievery check, thirty-six, plucks the core like a little ball of yarn, kills it instantly—

Pip So much for going willingly—

Bram And killing a heart inside its Fane collapses the Fane, so the building comes down and everyone makes their reflex save out, and they got — what, ten energy—

Maeve About ten. Garrick couldn't pay the tithe, so there was barely anything left.

Pip All that for ten. The fabric was in the truck out back anyway—

Bram And Josh goes, "from now on I think I have to give hearts shorter names"—

Pip Whirling in Rags, yeah, that's a mouthful when it's dying—

Bram And THEN the economy session—

Pip Oh, the spreadsheet—

Bram They haul this stolen eighteen-wheeler of fabric back and they start feeding stuff into Eerie, like, a pickled demon tongue, the gingerbread house—

Pip They fed the war hero to Eerie?!

Bram They fed the gingerbread house—

Pip I thought Johnny was gonna eat it—

Maeve Into Eerie. And a choker of elocution, a crushing rune, barghest fur, Ki-Rin blood—

Bram And they analyze the Voidheart and it's a magic-dampening item, so they feed in HALF of it to seed a magic-negation project for later—

Pip Against Grayson's big scary spells, right, the DC thirty-five stuff—

Bram Right, and they buy a Siphon Array, plus two energy on every future sacrifice, and Argyle is GIDDY—

Pip "I want it to go high! I want to buy something big!"

Bram "No, guys, I want it to go HIGH, I want to buy something big," and Anzu's the brakes, Anzu's like, don't bank too much—

Maeve "He's going to be like one of those flies." Rubbing its hands.

Pip The fly rubbing its little hands—

Bram Because the more you feed Eerie the more he can steal from you, Anzu doesn't trust—

Pip And Eerie's whole pitch is—

Maeve "I have no allegiance to others of my kind. My only allegiance is to you."

Pip Which is either very reassuring or the most ominous thing—

Bram And then the HEAD—

Pip The rotting head—

Bram Argyle insists on mounting the Ki-Rin head over the front door, the unpreserved one, the rotting one—

Maeve "This thing has not been properly preserved. This is disgusting."

Pip Anzu just keeps saying it, "this is disgusting, this has not been preserved"—

Bram And they're trying to LAY LOW, that's the thing, they've got a spy tower and an eighteen-wheeler and now a rotting elk head over the door—

Pip They're the loudest, weirdest base on the boat and they're like, why's everyone nervous around us—

Bram And Benny's meme about it, the Voidheart hanging out with Eerie—

Maeve "The dog is the only one that realizes it's a fucking bobcat."

Pip The bobcat in the dog photo, yeah—

Bram And then they get PARANOID — the Protectorate doesn't answer, Prime Meridian won't come in person—

Pip So they cancel their own meeting—

Bram Cancel their own debrief and drive across the whole Strider at midnight for a "wellness check" on the Protectorate bunker—

Pip Possibly tangled up with the Aut thing, the unlock-the-door thing—

Maeve "Birth four." Benny called it "sussy birth four."

Pip "Sussy birth four"—

Bram And they get there and the compound's totally fine, and the guard just tells them, truthfully, Yao and Tamara are recovering, they're fine, not taking visitors—

Pip And they dragged the Scale allies along—

Maeve Ichel and Bishop. Unimpressed.

Bram And Ichel goes, "that's it? We drove all the way over so you could talk to the security guard out front?"

Pip And Josh as Ichel, "we're kind of just along for the entertainment at this point"—

Bram And Johnny does the talking in sunglasses. At night.

Pip Sunglasses at night, of course. And Argyle's defensive the whole time, "checking on our comrade isn't that crazy"—

Maeve He said it like four times.

Pip Which is what you say when it IS that crazy—

Bram Was it crazy though? Checking on your ally after a—

Pip You called the meeting! You summoned everyone and then ghosted your own meeting to go bother a security guard at midnight—

Bram ...okay it was a little crazy.

Pip Thank you.

Bram But then the summit, the real one, the alliance summit—

Maeve This is where it all comes together.

Bram The whole alliance convenes and they finally do the math out loud, the tithe is one shared pot, like four hundred—

Maeve Roughly four hundred. Split among all the factions.

Bram Split among everyone, so as factions DIE the tithe per group goes UP—

Pip So everyone's death makes the survivors' bills worse—

Bram And Tas, Prime Meridian, just says the quiet part—

Maeve "At some point we will have to consider cutting away some of the members of the flock."

Pip Just says it. To everyone's faces—

Bram And Salvado, the little dwarf, who's right on the chopping block—

Maeve "You guys, you wouldn't let me die, right?"

Pip Oh, that's brutal, the one honest guy on the boat going "you wouldn't let me die, right?"—

Bram And they DON'T! That's the turn — the party agrees to absorb the two factions most likely to die, Solari and Alkahest—

Maeve For about twenty-five energy from their hearts.

Bram They take in the underdogs, they cede some territory to the Protectorate, they recruit Radiant Arms as a buffer base, and they pledge to cover the tithe offsets for Prime Meridian AND Hildebrandt—

Pip Which is where I go, is that shrewd or did Argyle's spreadsheet brain just sign them up to bankroll the entire ship—

Bram It's coalition-building! They become the HUB, they keep the weak factions alive, that's the whole—

Pip At the cost of a permanently higher tithe they swore to pay forever—

Maeve Bishop wouldn't take it.

Bram Right — Bishop goes, "you don't need to pay our tithe, we're fine paying the increase if it means you're keeping other groups safe, because they'd die otherwise"—

Pip See and THAT'S the moment Argyle should've worried the Scale are evil, because they're being nice—

Bram That's the good guys, though—

Pip Nobody's that nice on a murder boat—

Maeve Probably good guys.

Pip "Probably."

Bram And they went from this one reckless band that blew up a city block in Hallia to the — the thing that holds the whole alliance together, the hub, against Grayson, four and a half months out to the wall—

Maeve About fifteen cycles. One void per six seconds.

Bram Fifteen cycles to the wall, and Johnny — oh, Johnny's roll on the debrief—

Pip The double nat one—

Bram He mythic rerolls a nat one and rolls ANOTHER nat one—

Maeve Two in a row.

Pip The man's god really has stopped picking up.

Bram Which is the curse, the cursed dice, the whole — and he STILL won't ask Aut the question—

Pip He STILL won't—

Bram And I'm telling you, when the oath's price comes due, he signs—

Pip You've said that—

Bram And I'll say it next week too—

Maeve We'll see.

Pip I just want to know WHY he won't ask. That's all I — like the god ghosted him and he's protecting the god's feelings—

Bram You... you kind of had to be there for that one—

Pip I WAS there—

Bram I know, I just—

Maeve Jorge's gonna recap it wrong anyway.

Bram Oh, Jorge's recap is gonna be a disaster—

Pip Immediately wrong, the first sentence—

Bram Immediately wrong, "last session the party went to the gym"—

Pip "—and named a dwarf"—

Maeve He'll skip the dishrag entirely.

Pip He always skips the part that mattered—

Bram Anyway, the bobcat. In the dog photo. That's — that's the heart and the Voidheart, that's—

Pip I get it, yeah—

Bram It's a good meme—

Pip It's fine—

Bram It's better than fine, it's—

Maeve It's fine.