The Glitterbois Play Rifts 14: He's a Slurmph!

Breakfast puppies.

This podcast contains adult language and content and is meant for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

I guess you're probably listening to the Glitter Boys. I guess.

Your drive from New Laszlo in the general direction or at Sanilac, a ruined industrial city on the shores of Lake Huron from which you have heard there are coalition commandos, Rangers operating is relatively uneventful. Don't encounter any terrible beasts or bandits. You do see a flying V of Canadian duckbills, but that's about it. They're far in the distance and according to your map and the locals you talk to. Your last stop before you get to Port Sanilac, which is, as far as you can tell, not currently inhabited, is the fortified kingdom of Vlasic. Like the Pickle.

Okay.

Because this is where Vlasik pickles were originally invented. In Vlasic, Michigan.

Of course.

Yeah, Vlasic is less like a what we would think of as a modern 20th century town and a small village surrounded by a heavy berm piled with MDC slag and a deep ditch. Despite all that, there do seem to be a significant amount of people moving around the town. Visitors, looks like, at least in the Rift, Sarah Flask is a kind of trade town. You're welcomed through and told the best place to stay is the brass hitch. But before you fully enter Vlasic, a guard. There seem to be none of them in Northern Gun. Samson Armor walks up. Oh, hey, welcome to Vlasic. He's leaning in the window of the Mountaineer.

So. And he's fully suited up. I'm assuming that voice is coming through his speakers.

Yes. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

I was like, he's leaning through the window of the vehicle of the Mountaineer. I'm like, took me a minute before I remembered how tall Samson Armor is. Yeah.

Like.

Oh, hey. Howdy. How you doing?

Good.

So have you been to Vlasig before?

First time in Pickletown.

Okay. Hey, our pickles are great. You're going to love it. But there's a couple rules all visitors need to understand. You have a pay the gate toll, 25 credits per person. Do you plan on engaging in any trade?

Hadn't crossed our minds, but now that you mention it, maybe.

Okay, well, you will owe the queen 10% of what you sell.

Noted.

So I assume you guys will pay Tim 25 credits per person.

I'm gonna haggle that the cat isn't a person, but a pet. Trying to get it knocked down, but

I'm gonna headbutt him.

When you're headbutting me, I'M like, see, I rest my case. I rest my case. He's not sentient,

you hear? Henry, quiet.

You can see tons of DBs walking around like he looks at you. Well, never heard that one.

It's just a big cat.

Yeah, big cats pay 25.

All right, fine. Highway robbery.

He also goes to the rest of the laws. No slavery in town. No summoning inside the walls. No power armor flights over the market without explicit permission. Any blood debts, you take care of it outside of town. And any caravan that shelters raiders loses all protection. Are these agreeable?

Yeah, that'll do. We can manage that.

All right, well, hail queen Mara and carry on.

As we pull away, I turn back and look at y' all and go, so. Do we know enough about this place to know how tightly they are aligned with the coalition?

It doesn't seem from their points of discussion that they align with the ideals of this coalition.

I don't think so either, but just keep in mind we might fall in the classification of raiders after the whole death's head transport incident.

I'd like to take a deep whiff of the town. Am I picking up on any supernatural magical things? I'm not like wanting to pinpoint anything, just like, how does this town overall smell?

It definitely smells way less magical than New Laszlo, which was just this constant low level perfume of sorcery. But you definitely smell magic in significant amounts and also DBs. Enough different scents that you could tell there are lots of DBs. And of course you could also tell that by just looking around. You figure the humans are still definitely a majority, but there is a lot of DBs in this town. Enough that if they have any sort of relationship with the coalition, it must be a very, very strained one. There doesn't appear to be any, you know, if the DBs are second class citizens, it is very hard to discern that, but they direct you to. You were told that the brass hitch is really the only real place to stay. And as the hours growing late, you guys could stay there or you could find a place to just park the mountaineer camp out there before continuing on to Port Sanilac. Or if you wish, you could just continue on to Port Sanilac, not resting and see what happens.

So this is not our destination. This is just a stopping point, a

chance to sleep in an actual bed.

Henry won't begrudge you guys that.

Yeah, Troy, did you roll your die?

I did. Troy's on top of the thing by the way, but he's kind of chillaxing mid range. Mid range.

Mid range, yeah.

Yeah. So Daisy, who is traveling with you, told you that this is the last civilized place to stop before you get out to the coast on the east side of Michigan.

What's Daisy like?

It's a great question. Daisy is a. Which I'm sure she would have told you about herself while you guys were driving for hours. She's a third generation pilot. She had Glitter Boy armor, but lost it on a very, very bad day. Well, she still has it, but she. It needs significant repair. But she took one of the Coalition Samus power armor suits that you guys gave the Torchbearers, and so that's what she's wearing now. She keeps a detailed logbook that she constantly jots away in from the inside of the Mountaineer. It's pretty much a hick technician power armor pilot. Basically does not seem to take a lot of things seriously.

Gotcha. When she talks about the Glitter Boy that she lost, does she do it in hushed tones or is it more of a flippant thing?

It seems not. Not hush tones, but definitely mournful. Like I miss Lucille. I'll get her back though.

Get her back? She wasn't well. Exploded.

No, but I need a lot of components. I'll get her back up and running. Then those scum sucking side hunters are gonna pay.

Duly noted.

Troy's gonna roll off the top of the vehicle, pat the door and kindly announce. I'm gonna go get some rooms and see if they require a pet deposit. I'll be back.

Okay. Sh. So Troy goes into the brass hitch.

Yeah.

Which is not far inside the gate, you know, inside the defensive fortifications of Vlasik. And you could tell that this inn or slash tavern is built inside some pre rifts, pre apocalypse commercial building that has been heavily modified and there's brick and timber built around it, but it clearly has this warehouse shell that everything's built into. Go into the tap room. There's a massive brick hearth, heavy fire with multiple stew pots and meats cooking on it. It's a lot of smoke, it's loud, there's drinking. That's the place that Troy would probably like.

Smells good.

I'm down.

Yeah. I'll take a moment to kind of take in the scene, use my heightened senses to kind of scan it, you know, is there any like, oh, they're going to roll us if we come. If not, I'll try and figure out how to secure some rooms.

Let's see. It seems pretty typical for the sort of small town in. Right. There's people playing Cards. Clearly, people talk in business. You can see that. Obviously there's lots of travelers. There's. There's enough people with mud on their boots that don't look like locals that if they were rolling travelers, they'd be alienating a significant portion of their clientele.

Perfect. I serve myself a bowl of stew and then head up to the front to pay for rooms.

Yeah. So you walk up, there's a woman with a big apron on near the bar, and as dictated by TTRPG guild rules, she is cleaning a mug with a rag.

But it's an MDC mug.

It's an MDC mug. That's right. No, she's behind the bar serving drinks. She has a prosthetic left hand. That cybernetic, or bionic, rather, seems a little out of sync. The fingers will twitch at the wrong times, and she'll straighten them before he gets working in. And she says, welcome to the hitch.

Thanks. And I just gotta say, you are exactly the kind of person that Mike would have loved creating. You're kind of making me feel a little nostalgic. Magic. Can I get a room? Actually, probably two.

Yeah. Don't know who Mike is, but I've got rooms.

You would have loved him. He loved surly bartenders with cyber arms.

Oh, okay.

That's very specific kink. But. If he shows up, she winks. No, I'm just joshing you. Yeah, it's a handful of credits for two rooms. Fifteen a night each.

We didn't discuss how funds would be spread out, but I'm assuming I have some funds on me. I'll pay for it. I'll put a little bit extra in. I know that we're probably gonna damage the property. I don't say that, but I just lead with a little extra.

She says you need a warehouse, vehicle or goods. It's extra, but we could handle it.

We have a vehicle that has pretty good security, and I suspect one of our crew is probably going to stay with the vehicle.

Henry was going to volunteer to stay.

I think we're good as long as we can park it someplace it'll be out of the way. We don't need to store it.

Yeah, yeah. One of the boys outside could set you up.

Perfect.

Thank you.

She hands you a beer, and, you know, you can go on your way.

And some soup.

Yeah, yeah.

Mug of beer, mug of soup.

Pour them together.

It's a thick vegetable stew, and there's lots of smoked meats in it. There's a guy with a tray walking around with black bread.

I'M not leaving here.

Yeah, I was gonna say we're gonna have to drag him out of here.

Sean, roll your perception. Well, well, how is your psychological mood right now?

Oh, I'm right. I'm right in the middle. Which means if I am in a. In the limelight or a critical move, I get a penalty, but otherwise I'm just right down the line.

Okay.

It's that rare, rare middle of the road state.

Okay. Which is probably like Troy at his most socially perceptive. Arguably.

He's not over focused. He's not inwardly focused. He's just kind of. He's present in a way he's not normally present in the moment. Yeah, sure.

So you know what?

You can have advantage and I don't have a perception skill.

It's like a. You just roll a D20 on these sheets.

It's in the saving throws area.

Ah, thank you.

Yeah. Because why wouldn't it be?

It would be because I put it there.

Oh my God. It's. Well, hold on.

The rule mechanics are more like saving throws.

They changed it in the new Ninja Turtles Redux. They made it a skill.

It's very bad.

Oh, so it's full blown skill now?

Yep.

Why is my perception so horrible?

Well, most people. Most people don't have a bonus.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Am I the three?

You have a plus three.

It just says three.

That means it's a three point bonus.

Oh, yeah.

Which is super good.

It was good.

Okay.

Okay.

I was like, I thought I had to get a 3 or less. I'm like, geez,

when you play football.

So how's that CTE working out for you?

That's going to be an 18, thanks to the advantage.

Yeah. So that's phenomenal. So you notice a couple things. Lots of locals, but definitely some traders. There's a griot hunter trapper in a corner. You can tell he smells like hides and venom. You see a. A woman that reeks to you of magic. She's got. She's covered in dust and burn marks on her gloves. She's got these heavy goggles and a face mask. And you just think, wow, she looks like a Leyline walker in the Rifts book. Oh, she totally is. Probably a ley line walker. And then in the corner, you notice some people that. Not that you recognize, but you recognize their type. They're hunched, covered in fur with rat faces and cybernetics, covered in rags and tattered cloaks, eyeing everybody suspiciously and chittering amongst themselves. And it looks like the sort of rat men you fought in the sewer Thing? Yeah. Beneath Detroit.

So when Mr. Cat eventually walks through the door, does he notice? This Mr. Cat is not paying much attention to them. But if Troi has noticed the rat people, does he notice. The rat people notice Mr. Cat in any level of intense stare.

Like, oh, they def. When Mr. Cat walks in, they definitely notice Mr. Cat. Now, whether it's because they recognize Mr. Cat as being someone they fought in the broken grid, or it's a giant cat, apex predator. Yeah.

Yeah. I will pass on what I've observed and I'll kind of, as I come back out to see if they've sorted things out, share that information. Kind of throw in. There's a lot of travelers here. Maybe some of them will know more about our target. Any of you want to socialize and Mr. Cat, please do not start a fight.

I just.

Just stink on it.

I just swish my tail and walk a different direction, a little couple of flippy tails and move on.

Did he just sashay?

So who's staying in a room? Obviously, Daisy. Daisy Boone is all about staying in a room with a bed. She's. She's down.

So my question where I stay tonight will depend upon the end of the last session. We have talked about, mainly joked about, but talked about the concept of maybe putting Gorsh cloning Gorshkov into the Samus.

Yes, I. It's. He and I discussed it a little bit offline and it's gonna take a little work on my part. We'll get you a fork.

Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Because if that ever happens, if that does happen, my response would be, I'm going to stay and hang out with my suit and talk to Gorshkov.

There was not enough time. We were a little too busy. And then, you know, it's probably something I'm working on tonight, actually, while lying in the bed.

Where's Bronson staying?

Bronson has been following Mr. Cat this entire time. I like the looks of these people. Mr. Cat, he has a gun.

It's good to keep him armed.

And his. What did you guys get him? Like razor?

Yeah, yeah. Vibrate claws.

Vibro claws? Yeah, yeah.

Or something like that.

Trying to sharpen them and breaking rocks on them. He doesn't fully understand how that works.

Quit ruining my whetstones. Those are for tools.

We'll stay here.

Yeah, we should probably sleep two to a room just to be on the safe side. That's my opinion. I'll share a room with Riley if you'll share a room with Bronson.

Mr. Cat, what about our lady she gonna stay with us or Daisy gonna

get her own room?

Oh, she'll get her own room.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah. She paid her own way in then.

Yes. Mr. Cat and Bronson. Mr. Cat will set up somewhere. If he can find a table in a corner. If he can't find a table in a corner, he will find a table in a corner. Empty table in a corner. He will find a table in a corner that is occupied by the most. Intimidate the least intimidating looking person and convince them to give him the table in the corner.

Okay. Convince them how?

By being an 8 foot tall cat that looms over them.

Okay.

And grow.

Yeah. There's some locals that decide to take another table after Mr. Cat approaches a

headbutt him as he walks away. Gentle headbutt.

Yeah. He stumbles away. You don't know how he took that? Probably badly.

Oh, no.

So Alex Henry is going to stay with the Mountaineer.

Yep, me and Gorski.

Now, is he doing anything particular? Is he just getting.

Getting more familiar with this here sledgehammer railgun? Talking to Gorshkov about it, essentially. Learning everything from Gorshkov.

Yes. This is excellent weapon. I commend you for completing the mission that got us this piece of extremely valuable Sovietsky technology.

Yeah, Riley was saying it's pretty hot.

The temperature readout is standard currently.

Oh, buddy, what do you mean it is hot?

I mean it's heavy.

Heavy?

Yeah. Tubular.

He immediately tells you it's weight in kilograms.

It is 155 pounds according to your crude American system of weights and measures.

Could have fooled me as I toss it from hand to hand.

Yeah, but he is helping you integrate it into your system.

Love it.

And I'm sure I gave you guys all the stats for this, right?

I. I pulled them up. It's in the Warlords of Russia book.

Oh, it was in Warlords of Russia.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

The AK series is what's in Soviet ski.

Oh, all right. Well, there you go.

My only question is to what extent do I need to pay attention to my ammo?

Well, let's see. It only fires in 20 round bursts.

Sure.

And has a 3000 round ammo drum.

Okay. So for now I won't worry about it. But would you prefer me to keep track?

That's 150 bursts, man.

And I think you purchased more than one ammo drum. I don't remember.

Love to think so.

Yeah, I believe so. I believe you. I believe I remember specifically. We specifically talked about you getting more ammo for it.

Okay, so you have 150 bursts. Effectively. One thing to remember or to keep in mind is that it also requires an EPAC to actually operate it, but they don't actually say how many shots each he pack gives. So just be aware that there's a GM fiat tier, a surprise rule that

might come into play at some point.

I would say that's something that you only have to worry about if something goes wrong and you know, roll a one. Right, right, right.

What is the per burst damage on that gun?

It's. Oh, per burst or in the 20 round burst?

Yeah.

1D 4X10 MDC.

No, no, these are. I'm sorry, he was giving you modified ones. It's 1D 6 times 10 plus 20.

Holy.

Yeah.

Okay.

Otherwise I'm pretty sure everything Jacob said is correct. I did modify it slightly from the original rules.

So you need to get weapon proficiency Paired firearms.

Paired firearms.

That mean you can have railgun in your right hand and then railgun in your left hand. Oh, Lord.

And it can be integrated with Cyberlink, obviously, since it's designed for a Borg.

Too bad you didn't get the Nikita,

what can you do only one Metal Gear Solid weapon reference at a time. Metal Gear. Oh, Nikita.

And Jacob. Riley is working on a fork of Gorshkov.

Yeah, forking him out so I can install him the Samus suit.

Yeah, yeah, no, make me have to do a slightly different Russian accent. I think it's a great idea.

Dueling Gershkovsk.

Dueling Gorshkovs.

It's Gorshkina this time. All right.

Pretty funny that you bring that up, but yeah, I think that was actually Jacob's idea.

So, yeah, Riley's gonna get stop by the main room to grab a bowl of stew, soup, whatever, and as much bread as he can tangle, gather up and head up to his room to throw on his headphones, start going through his brand newly acquired music collection and start writing code to fork Gorshishkov.

Cool.

I was thinking that it might be wise, if possible, to talk to Gorshkov about running a constant scanning for any coalition signals.

Oh, gotcha.

Yeah, I don't know if anybody else is doing that, but figure, wise choice.

So Gorshkov's question would be, what does Henry mean when he says coalition signals?

Signals that are emanating within a radius of like 50 to 100ft.

No, he would mean like, how. How is he to discern, like whether a particular electronic signal is coalition or not?

Oh, they ain't got any unique identifiers. Or are they that slick?

I've got an idea.

I don't know much about Coalition, Henry. I am from Russia. We do not have these fascist assholes there. We have whole different type of assholes.

Okay, so I got an idea. Now this is more of a player thing. But maybe, maybe based on the knowledge from my knowledge that the Coalition grunts and soldiers tend to be given very minimal educations. Oftentimes that doesn't include being literate. True. Which one could then assume that perhaps their Power Armor suits come preloaded with everything that the user would need to do in order to work to do their job in a Power Armor suit. Thus the people in charge wouldn't have to be like, okay, now I need you to sign into this frequency, this frequency and this frequency. Perhaps the Coalition soldier in the Power Armor suit could have like a set of bands that are already pre tabbed to their buttons. And if that is true, then it could be. And I've got radio basic. I think you've got radio. Perhaps we could figure out what those frequencies, what at least the default frequencies are for the Samus suits.

And we already had a sample of their encryption from all of the bugs and stuff that we had to remove.

And that soldier that got away, I

think that mysterious soldier. Yeah, that seems reasonable. The Coalition would almost certainly have. Yeah, these are the frequencies we use. We trust our encryption tech over whatever technology the primitives out there in the hinterlands are using.

Good to see that in 200 years fascists have not gotten any smarter.

And also quite frankly, the Coalition probably considers it more valuable to ensure that their forces are operating in an integrated fashion rather than worrying about electronic warfare overly much, considering they fight a lot of things that can probably detect you by smell or sorcery, so.

Right, that makes sense.

They don't have a lot of high tech enemies. This is true.

Yeah, not until. And this hasn't happened yet, I guess. What is it, Quebec?

Yeah.

Goes its own way. But that has not happened in our our rifts yet. If it does, we will see. Yeah, they don't have any high tech enemies, do they? Not really.

Until now.

Yeah. So they're almost certainly wildly overconfident. I guess the Pecos Empire would be the closest. And they're very slap dash. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Yeah. So Alex, do you have radio basic?

I do.

Okay. I would say you could roll your radio basic.

All right.

Try to decipher which frequencies the Coalition would most likely be using. And you can have an advantage because you've had a Lot of coalition equipment to examine.

Hell yeah.

All right, let's go. 19 out of. And my percentage is 40.

Okay. I was gonna say, I hope a 19 would.

Yeah.

So you and Gorshkov work out a list of frequencies that according to the Armor Coalition army you've analyzed, and of course, the Samus power armor that you've examined, almost certainly the coalition will be using. And he'll keep an eye on any use of those. It does tell you none of those bands are currently active in your immediate vicinity.

Okay. But we can at least do an ongoing ping or check on a regular basis.

Hindley, I am artificial intelligence. I can monitor them all time because I do not get bored. And also I can segment part of my memory to do that.

I don't know, man. Half the time you do sound kind of bored.

That is because I'm Russian.

Accurate.

Yes.

Right on.

Yeah. So essentially, just anytime you're wondering if there are coalition signals, you can ask and we'll figure it out. But yeah, Gorshkov will watch that.

So at the moment there are none. Now that we're in town and I'm assuming getting parked or whatever.

Yeah. As you move around Vlasik, he's not picking up anything. Lots of different types of radio traffic, but nothing like that.

Got it.

So what about Troy and Mr. Cat? How do they spend the evening?

Troy's gonna hang out downstairs in the kind of common room for a while. Just drink some stew and eat some beer. Cause he's sharing a room with Riley, and Riley's not fun to hang out with and just kind of listen to see if anybody has come from the direction we're going.

We have a very sweet corner table you can join us at.

That sounds wonderful. I guess that's where I'm at.

Just don't sit between the cat and where he's mean mugging the table of rats.

Oh, I was gonna say maybe that's where I should sit so he'll stop eyeing him. But yeah, I'll join that table, relax, and keep an ear out. But he's not. He's not pushing it. He's not eavesdropping. He's just has open senses. He's enjoying some stew. In the company of a cat and a dog, apparently.

Yeah, Bronson is just eating bowl after bowl after bowl of stew until he's forced to stop. Presumably, hopefully by one of you, because he's not going to stop until he vomits.

I think he should learn his lessons himself.

I kind of want to hear him

learn his Lesson, I think at some point, Troy looks at Mr. Cat, Mr. Cat looks at Troy and we're both like, let him do it.

Soup dripping off of his furry face.

So NPC, you know, amidst all this, Mr. Cat is watching the tap room. You notice as you look as people keep coming in and out of the door to the end, across the street there's a bookstore. It's called Borg Books. And you see there's a Borg, obviously putting up a sign. The Collected Works of Robert Howard. Available now.

I just get up and walk out. Okay, something has attained my interest. I'm going that way.

Okay, you head across the street. Borg Books is this tiny one room bookstore and it is full of paperbacks stuffed floor to ceiling. And they all look like fairly new printings. Not that Mr. Cat would necessarily know what old printed books are.

I like the way they smell.

But these are definitely new. So someone has some, you know, a book printing press and access to old manuscripts. Again, not that Mr. Cat would know, but it is a veritable bounty of 18th, 19th and 20th century works. And wrapped in ribbon are all these stacks of books. And it's written and there's a little sign. The Collected works of Robert Howard. And it's six books tied together with ribbon. Now out of character. These are definitely not all the works of Robert Howard, but it's what they think is, you know, given what it survived to the, to the Riffs era.

I remember Mike liked these books. At least you're like, I remember that name. I'm going to pick them up and look at them.

Oh, so there's a big Borg in there. Hi, welcome to Borg Books. Are you a reader?

Casually? No.

Oh, all right.

I have only known how to read for about four months.

Oh, it's a great skill to have here in Rift's Earth. You never know what you'll need to read.

Do I need to read these?

Yes.

His eyes turn into dollar signs.

You can tell he was thinking about it. He's like you do. It's my understanding that all cats read these.

An appeal to pride.

They tell a tale of a man who rose from humble origins and became a king, slaughtering his enemies.

My tail is perking up, up, up, up. Goes right up into the question to the little question mark. Tail.

Yeah. He notices sword at your waist. And he used a sword most of the time.

How many of your money is.

It's five credits a book. This is a six book collection. So 30 credits sold very well. I think you're going to like these, sir.

Curious. Do you by chance have any books called Plat? It's an element. Palladium. That's it.

Let me check my inventory. And he goes and gets this huge tome that's full of yellowed pieces of paper that he has clearly scrawled by hand his entire inventory. And he starts going through. Palladium, you say? Now, is that the name of the book or is that.

I do not remember. It seemed to be important the last time we stopped at a bookstore.

Seem to be important. Oh, okay. Well, actually, yes, I do. I have a small used section. Now, these are actual relics. And there's like a case behind the counter. And he opens it, and there's lots of actual books from, you know, the. The Golden Age.

That smells.

I have this. And he takes out the Rift's Bestiary. This be of interest to you? It's by this palladium company. Now, this is a collector's edition. This is actually from the long, long ago.

I'm going to look over the book. Is it in good condition?

You look it over. He hands it to you. It's in pristine condition. And there's a note instead. It says, Mr. Cat, buy this book. It's written in black, and it says under it, mike, I close the book.

It seems in pretty good condition.

Yeah, I think so.

How much are you selling it for?

4,500.

4,500 for this. This book? 4,500.

Well, sir, this is a bona fide relic from the Golden Age. This is probably the only one of its kind the whole world.

Excellent. I'm going to step away for a moment. Get on my little radio. Riley, I need $4,500 to buy a book. It told me to buy it.

Where are you?

Across the street.

God damn it.

All right, I'll be right. I cross the street and, like, I come in the door and I look irritated and I'm like, who's scamming the cat?

I hold it up.

Yeah, there's this giant Borg. Welcome to Borg Books. Another reader, I hope.

Are you. Let me see that. Let me see that. I see the note from Mike.

Yeah.

I'll give you four grand.

Believe, sir, 4500 is the list price.

List price? List price. Oh, so you have a distributor?

No, no, that's just what I put on my list.

I see. And as the keeper of the list. And as the keeper of the list, you can change the list price. I see. My friend here is already picking up six more books for you. I'm sure you can give us a slight discount.

Well, let Me check with the manager. And he looks at his name tag. Oh, that's me. Also, no

applaud. Well done.

I was imagining his head just spinning

around doing that exact same thing.

This is like somebody with 500 bartering over a Snickers bar. Guys, we have the money. Just pay the man for the book.

Riley's irritated and he's a misanthrope.

Fine. I had to. I had to pay 3,500 to it for the. For the peddler just a week ago. I.

So you're making 500 credits on the deal. You're making profit.

I would like to make a thousand.

I would like to make a TH000 too, but, you know, life's hard like that.

Well, maybe you could find someone to buy it.

Fine. I slapped the money on the counter and.

Thank you. Would you like it gift wrapped?

How much is that?

That's free. It's complimentary, sir.

Mr. Cat, do you want your book gift wrapped?

If it's complimentary, then you have to do it.

Gift wrap it for the cat.

Very well. And he starts. He's terrible at gift wrapping. Jesus Christ. Absolutely awful. But he does get it done. And he hands you like this horrible package of folded and increased wrapping paper with a bow on top.

Jesus Christ. Thank you. Jesus Christ. He wraps this like fucking fuels handlers. Fuck. Jesus.

You know, we Borgs have amazingly good auditory sensors.

Good. I storm back out across the street. Cat, when you are done paging through that, let me take a look.

So you leave. Yeah, I'm going to turn back to the cyborg. You mentioned you purchased this a week ago from a peddler.

That's right.

Was that peddler by chance a cyborg as well?

No, I don't think so.

That is all. Thank you. Bye.

Oh, very well. Have a good day. Come back if you want to read more. And like he. After you walk out of your. So you guys now have the Rift Bestiary in your possession?

Volume one.

Volume one, indeed. Yeah. If you find the volume two, that will make them have to publish it.

Yeah. Yep.

Ah, Inside baseball.

Yep, yep, yep, indeed.

So, Sean, all this is going on Troy and Bronson sitting there. Well, Troy sitting there, Bronson is eating. Then he excuses himself very suddenly, goes to the bathroom, comes back and gets another bowl of stew.

I have one ready for him when he comes back.

Oh, thanks, Troy. I was a little hungry after I threw up.

We've seen this before back in Mike's basement. You just everybody feeds him around the table, he pukes, he comes Back. This is not new.

So you're sitting there. As the night goes on, people are clearly that live in town, getting off work, coming in to drink. Locals and a db, Clearly. Large db, very wide, tall. And actually, I'm going to throw a picture into the chat of the discord. So you can see, it's a big db, Green face, wide mouth, a little slimy. He's got these orange work coveralls on, hat. It looks slug like. He looks around, and then he locks in on Troy, and he's making his way across the tap room, waving at Troy, a wave back. Hey, it's me.

He said, Justin.

Dustin.

Good to see you. Justin. Yeah, I absolutely get his name.

Good to see. I thought you were dead.

Yeah, I've thought that a lot of times myself, man. Hey, pull up a seat. Was Stu's good? I don't think Mr. Cat's coming back.

Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. He sits up, like, rubs his hand together. Hey. Hi, dog person. I'm Dustin. I'm Bronson. And they. Yeah. This guy slaps Troy on the back. Good to see he's, like, shaking you. You want a hug?

I'm assuming that Troy is as oblivious as Sean is in this moment.

100%.

That's fine, though.

Never seen this guy.

Troy's a hugger. So he's like, yeah, yeah. I throw.

I thought I was the only one that lived. He's clapping you on the back?

Yeah. I slide him. Slide him the beer that I had been working on and be like, yeah, tell me what's been going on, man.

Oh, just. I got a job. I'm a garbage man. He takes the beer, just slurping it down. Oh, that's good.

Trying to figure out how I can fish some information out of this guy.

Yeah.

So how did you. How'd you end up here? How'd you end up not dead?

You know, hooked up with some friends. They keep an eye on me. You know, good times, bad times.

Yeah.

Friends, you know, people like you. I like to keep friends around.

Oh. Oh, okay. I just thought all your friends were dead except me.

You got to make new ones when the old ones die. Come on, man. Come on. You can't linger on the old stuff.

Oh, right.

Sorry.

You got a new job, I got some new friends. All right.

Yeah, no, that's a good point. Oh. Do you ever get back to Memphis?

Not yet. Not yet. I'm working on it. You know what? All right, listen, you haven't met Bronson before. Bronson. Love stories. What's a. What's a good story we could share with Bronson, tell him a little bit about, you know, the old times.

Oh, the last stand of the mad marauders, the wilds of Missouri. And he goes into this tale about the. The mad marauders, DBs, crazies, desperate folk organized in Memphis. We're going to liberate eastern Missouri. Some grandiose plan. And the story ends with a brutal slaughter at the hands of the coalition. Which Dustin tells in great and excited detail.

So as he's telling this as a player, I have a theory that these bodies that we're in existed before we got here. So maybe this form that Troi is

in had a past.

The way he tells the story, does that meet that kind of theory? Like this is maybe what this person did before Troy was behind the wheel.

That seems to track, especially the way he tells about how he thought Troy died. Because if you remember, way back in session two, Troy had a dream where he was fighting across this wreckage battlefield and he faced a huge skull faced robot that shot him from long range with a lot of missiles.

Oh, yeah, that seemed rude.

Yeah. And according to the story that Dustin tells, he saw Troy, or Edmundo, as he calls you, taken out by a huge flurry of missiles from coalition combat robot.

I remember we all had dreams that night. Except for me. Mr. Cat, your sleep is pleasant and uneventful. All right.

That's right. Yeah.

So after he tells the story, Troy's, you know, gonna kinda come clean. Man, that's bits and pieces. I gotta be honest. I think I got pulled up into some kind of ritual. Most of my memories are fractured. It's good to hear a little bit of the past. I'm glad I'm alive, but I remember. I'm surprised. I was surprised too. I was surprised too.

Yeah, I found a couple of your fingers and you got them now though, so that's weird.

Oh yeah, there's a crazy stuff. We regenerate like a mofo to prove it, I will stab myself and then regenerate.

Oh, shit. That's crazy. But I guess it makes sense. I'm a Slurf. We don't do that.

Are you. You staying in town? Are you passing through? This is where you got your garbage gig? Or more of a. Oh, I live here.

Yeah, yeah, I'm. I'm the town garbage man. They said, do you. Are you trained garbage man? I said, I'm a Slurf. And they said okay. But nobody else wanted the job, so I guess that was it. Man, it was tough. I was down in the dumps for quite a while. Especially after all you guys died. I got hit by a missile, too, but I'm a Slurf, so it just blew me about 37 miles and I woke up little while later.

If I'd have known you'd have made it, I probably. If I remembered, I would have come looking for you. But listen, it's been a long day. I should get some rest. Why don't come back tomorrow? Let's catch some breakfast on me. Catch up a little bit more if you aren't going to be busy with the trash.

Oh, no, I just do trash once a week and they let me eat some of it.

Holy cow.

Yeah, people throw on all sorts of good things.

Hey, there's some fresh, only slightly digested food in the bathroom if you want to, you know.

Oh, no. Olive Bronson, they don't let me do that anymore. They said it's weird and gross and if you want to stay here, you can't eat out of the toilets anymore.

That's fair. That's fair.

Yeah.

And I said I can digest anything. I'm a Slurp, but, you know.

Yeah.

These people, right? And he kind of jostles Troy with his elbow, which is massive.

I jostle him back with my mega strength.

I have missed you so much. Also, you still owe me a little bit of money. It's okay, though.

Now you're not just messing with me because, you know, I've taken a few too many hits to the head, right? No, listen, we'll settle up over breakfast. We'll settle up over breakfast.

Great.

All right.

All right.

And if you think of any more good stories. Bring them. Bring them. I got some. You meet the rest of the. The posse and tell us to, you know, we can reconnect.

Oh, no. I mean, everybody else is dead. Well, I mean, except your wife, I guess. She's probably fine.

Oh, there it is.

Okay, bye. And he walks out.

See you for breakfast, bro.

Bye.

Oh, that mundo just dropped a Mundo on.

I would say that that is a solid change in the scene. You might want to reroll.

I'm gonna get one in the morning anyways. Oh, yeah. Okay.

So, Troy. How late do. Troy? Mr. Cat Bronson actually doesn't stay up much longer. He doesn't? He gets close to vomiting a second time and then finally cuts himself off and goes up to bed.

Troy drinks about half a dozen beers trying to forget that encounter. Realizes that's just not going to work because of his metabolism. Then he goes upstairs and wakes up

Riley you walk in, Riley is like locked in, you know, got his headphones on, just rocking out to tunes, writing code frantically, every so often adding a song to a playlist.

Whatever's plugged in, I unplug it until I get Riley's attention.

Riley, like starts to pull his gun, realizes, slides it back in. Oh. What do you want?

I just had the weirdest. I think this body is borrowed and the previous owners might be looking for it. Also, I had a wife. She doesn't know that I'm not dead. Oh, and she doesn't know about not Catherine or not Jennifer. I can't remember her name. I need to talk.

I like. Riley is very self conscious that he is like a misanthrope asshole. The fact that you need to talk, it's like. Okay, pull up a seat.

He dragged something over.

Yeah.

The bodies are borrowed. We knew this.

I thought they were just made for us. When we got here, I met some guy who remembers Edmundo, which is not a bad name, but is not my name. And now it's my name. And I don't know what to do. He's going to come for breakfast. I want you to meet him. Maybe he'll bring my wife.

No, Like, why?

He's a garbage man and you like junk. Could be an opportunity. I'm paying for breakfast. Out of our slush fund, but I'm paying for breakfast.

We have got to get you on some meds.

Jesus.

Who do you want me to take instead? Mr. Cat?

Yes. So wind this back for me. Somebody walked in, recognized your body.

Dustin. Dustin walked in?

Yes.

I thought it was Justin, but I didn't quite hear him right. Dustin is his name. He recognized me as an old friend and he thought I had died.

And obviously you hadn't.

Or maybe I did, I don't know. But he said I was hit with missiles and I kind of remember that.

Oh, so you're getting some of those past life flashbacks too?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we should have talked about those when they happen, I guess, but I just thought it was a bad dream.

Yeah, I.

There's a lot going on.

There's a lot going on. Long story short. So somebody recognized you. Told you your wife is still alive. Is your wife in this town?

I didn't ask. But if we've got friends, we might still have enemies that we don't even know are enemies. You seem like you would have made some enemies. We need to figure out who we were before we were we.

Given how comfortable I feel in this body, I'm pretty sure that whoever occupied it last time was also a Cantagoras. Fuck.

So it's in the blood?

Yeah.

Now you've got Riley wondering if he has the same blood type out of necessity. So you didn't think to ask whether your supposed.

It was a lot? That's why I invited him to breakfast. So you could come up with the questions we could ask. We could talk to everybody. I don't know what to ask him and what? I've never had a wife.

Well, neither have I. Yeah, but didn't

you try that one time and then it failed? You could give me some advice. Come on.

I'm sorry. I would love to give you advice, and normally I would, but I'm a little short in the. Hey. I'm inhabiting a dead body of your former husband. Here's how to handle the situation, Vice. It's a little outside of my league. Well, listen, I'll come to breakfast.

Goddamn, we'll do breakfast. You can have the room. I'm gonna walk around. Maybe I'll spot her. And Troy leaves.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Don't let. He's gonna get pulled into an alley. His wife's gonna be like a headhunter.

It's gonna be bad scene.

I mean, I've got a massive enchanted sword and a chain gun and I definitely care. A minigun. Definitely carrying both of those.

She survived being slaughtered by the coalition, like so.

Alex.

Oh my God. She's a collaborator.

Oh, that's a good idea. Alex. Henry is at the Mountaineer. And it's parked in such a way it's not in this big warehouse garage next to the Brass Hitch, but it's close enough. You can see the entrance. And you see what looks like a bunch of rat cyber rat men, exactly like the ones you fought in the Broken Grid come scuttling out of the hitch and into the the storehouse. And you can hear engines activating inside after they go in. Okay, a couple of them were giving you dirty looks. Do you do anything or do you let them go on their way?

My expressionless face just kind of follows them because they mean mug me.

Yeah. You hear one of them mumbling Ripper Chassis killer. They go in.

Cool face, dude.

Then a minute, a couple minutes later, they come out on ATVs and start heading down the road away.

Henry laughs at the spectacle.

They're heading to the northeast out of town.

Which direction

you're going? Northeast.

They're gonna rat us out. Sorry.

Cool. They didn't futz with me. So Henry just kind of goes back to his Business.

Okay, so Troy walks around. Classic. For how long?

All night. He's just doing that out of character. I don't. He doesn't necessarily need to encounter anything. He's doing that antsy walking. He's just walking all night. He doesn't need to sleep.

I mean, your wife is not in town, you know, out of. Out of character. She's not.

If he does come across any women, he will ask, are you my wife?

A lot of odd looks and one or two that seem into it, but it's not the ones you would want to be into it. Right. You know how that goes. Yes, I'll be your wife. Shitty.

I mean, let's put it this way. You're obviously a crazy. You have the head stuff. And there is a crazy wandering around downtown asking random women if they're his wife, we're going to get the police.

Oh, God.

Or if they seem slightly interested, that's when I say, were you sad when I died? And that usually then they're done.

That does tend to end the conversation. Oh, you are crazy. I see. Very well. No, thank you. Okay. Unless one of you wants to do something significant for the evening, we will proceed.

I am just hacking like a madman.

I actually slept in the truck because when Bronson goes on one of his food benders, you don't want to sleep in the same room as Bronson. So I have returned to the truck and curled up with this book and began reading.

Definitely not with a heightened sense of smell in the Bronson chambers at that point.

And by book, I mean I am reading the Rift's Bestiary to see if Mike was wanting me to read anything specific.

Are the rat men in that one?

That's a good question. No, I. As far as I know, I made those up. But. But I mean, there's a lot of stuff in the best here.

There's a lot of the d. I was just reading the demon. Sorry, the Death Weaver spider. I remember that. That friendly fella.

Death Weaver spiders in there.

Yeah. Yep, yep.

So you go through. And you're looking through the various entries. You do notice the Deathweaver spider, which you fought. And obviously the dark hound, though you realize the one that you guys encountered was. Was not as large as what seems to be detailed here. But there's no other notes that you can find mentioning or that were clearly made by Mike or any notes of any kind other than the normal printing.

Okay. And then I'm going to close the book and begin reading the other books.

Okay, cool. Well, we can justify that. As you using NPC's knowledge of riffs. But you do not find any other. There are no other notes from Mike other than the obvious ones that we've already talked about when you guys found them. Like the one with the coordinates that Riley deciphered.

Gotcha.

And I think the. The one that says Mr. Cat by me, I think in the coordinates, I think those were the only notes. But the next morning, because wake up, breakfast is being served in the tap room, which is mostly apparently smoked sausages and black bread and a kind of local gruel that's mostly barley and also beer. And when you get down there, when you get down to the tap room, Dustin is there waiting. Hi, Mundo. Good to see you, buddy. I'm here for breakfast.

Glad you could make it, man. I hope you had a. Got some sleep. This is my associate, Riley.

Hi.

Dustin. So you know Edmundo from back in the day.

Oh, yeah.

You say his wife's alive?

I think so.

Does she live here in town?

Oh, no, no. I came here so that the coalition couldn't find me.

Do you know where his wife is

right now? No, I'm not psychic.

Okay.

Do you. Where was the last place you saw his wife?

Oh, well, she was there in Memphis, after those of us that lived retreated. And she was super sad. Got it. And then she got mad. But you know, wives.

I would have invited Henry to join us for breakfast too, if he wants to come in and chill.

Why was she mad? Because Edmondo was apparently dead.

Yeah, well, and also the. Whatever we were supposed to be doing in Missouri failed. So I think she was mad about that. It's her plan. And you know, people get upset when their plans don't. Don't work. Or at least you people do. I don't. I'm a Slurp.

Where are you originally from, Slurp? Oh, so it's your people and the place. Got it. Understood.

Yeah, he's a Slurp man.

Yeah, but Slurp. You get it? And he's just eating this porridge with his hand.

I'm a Slurp man, so there's no so Riley was. Riley is not inhabiting the corpse of one of my old allies, or else he would have probably recognized.

Oh no, he appears to have no recognition of who anybody else is.

Well, Edmundo, I think you're in the clear as far as your ex wife goes for now.

I mean, I've got to reach out to her somehow. Listen, Dusty, if you hear from her, you let her know I've been thinking about her and she can leave a message for me here. And I'll have a woman in every town.

I mean, I feel bad about how

things ended, you know, with Rockets. And I'd like to make it right.

Okay, well, I mean, as you can

gather, Dustin Edmundo here has got his can rattled a little hard, and his memory ain't what it used to be. So, you know, he might be a little. Not like you're used to.

Oh, okay. Well, I get it. Right? That makes sense. It was a big battle and he got hit with a lot of missiles. But, no, I haven't seen your wife since then. I only knew her because she was your wife and she was kind of in charge of everything.

Riley is just staring at you like

I'm gonna place a hand on his shoulder and look at Riley and I'm. You guys can't say anything. I know I've taken a lot of head damage. This mom stuff, the rockets. I can only remember that I called her Snookums. I can't even remember her real name.

Oh, God.

And then I'll look at him. I'm out of character. I'm fishing for a name.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I can't ask people if they've seen Snookums. Of course they've had. They got their own Snookums. You gotta help me out here, man.

Okay, well, her name is Cara Zayn.

With a C or a K?

With a K. And he. He looks at you. Does that help you get your memory back? Some people say that all you have to do is hear a certain word or name and you get all your memory back and you have like a massive seizure or something, and then you get magic.

Zany. Karazane. It'll come back to me.

So you do have this immediate memory that does boil up in your subconscious. You remember this stunningly beautiful woman, incredibly ambitious, driven, powerful sorcerer. And you remember her rages.

Were we the baddies?

And, let's see, I'm. I'm guessing. Probably need to check something.

Riley. She was hot. We need to find her.

Yeah.

This says. Yeah, I haven't been back to the Federation of Magic in years, so obviously I haven't seen her.

And that's the other leg.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think she's still friends with Dunkson. I don't know.

Did he say Tungsten or Dunston?

Dunskin.

Dunskin.

Do not want.

Which I'm sure Riley would recognize that as being Lord Dunstan.

Yeah. The two players who really know the world are having aneurysms here. The two of us who don't are kind of like, those are cool names.

But he doesn't know for sure because it's been many years since he was there and since he had any real knowledge of what was going on in the Federation of Magic. So any do bear in mind Dustin might not be the most reliable narrator. And it's been a long time since these things happened.

He's a schlump.

He's a Slurp. Yeah, I'm a slurp.

Dustin. Dustin. Dusty. Dusty, my friend.

What up, Mohawk?

Hey, thanks. You know, it's grown on me.

I like it.

Did you ever meet Dunskin?

Nope. He was too scary.

Yeah. Yeah.

Cool.

So you and Edmundo were working for him?

Oh, the Mad Marauders were hired by the Federation of Magic, so. Sure. Mainly because of his wife.

His wife.

Great.

Then we all died. Well, I didn't die.

But, you know, the mad part was my idea. I came up with that.

Hey, yeah, that's true.

It might be.

God, you know how to pick a body.

So does my wife.

Yep.

Hey, listen, listen, Dusty, Dustin, I really appreciate this. Here, take this as a thanks. And I'm gonna give him my shotgun.

Oh, thanks, man. I love shotguns. Hey, hey.

Before you take that shotgun, I quick pop it open and hand it back.

The shotgun shell.

Shell,

Yeah.

I forgot about that shotgun. Shells have sentimental value. You're welcome to the.

Oh.

Oh, okay. Well, that's okay.

It was loaded, no safety on. That's just how I carried it around.

We don't want to know what it was loaded with.

I know what I gave him. Most of the stuff on the list I'm still regretting giving him.

I didn't know what was loaded. At any given time,

you're in a manic phase, loading and unloading the shotgun.

He says, yeah. If you ever decide to form the Marauders up again, I'll be on board. It's got to get more armor and guns as a. You know, the last ones got blowed up.

Do you not have a gun now?

Yeah, I got a shotgun.

Is that all you got?

Yep.

Come on out to the Mountaineer.

Okay.

In a weird.

It's just absolutely.

It's absolutely weird. You've.

Riley never seen you give away anything.

Riley takes the guy outside, pulls out one of the cheapo sidearm, one of the Sky Cycle pilot sidearms, and hands it to him and goes like, good. This is a little more potable. And you can carry it on the job.

Oh, cool. He tosses it his mouth slurps it down.

Can you?

Don't worry, I'm a slurp. We have internal cavities we can store things in. That's in. And he's poking around on his body. Stomach Seven. Not acidic stomach.

I am totally unsurprised by that. You are an amazing fellow, Dustin.

Oh, thanks. So, give you something there?

Ah, no, no, no. No need for that.

I got a bunch of watches. And he goes, it costs up like a pile of watches that are covered in snot and bile. Pick one.

I pick through the pile and pick out.

There's a Timex, man.

One that looks easy to clean, that's metal and.

Oh yeah, that one's my favorite. You're gonna love that.

Okay, I got a question for you. And I kind of lower my voice and go like so. Not that we are raiders, Dustin, but why does the town guard have such a big issue with raiders around here?

Oh, well, it's because of all the side stalker tribes have been kind of a problem of late. Doing a lot of raiding and it's not good for business.

No, I can imagine not. Okay, thanks. I was wondering why the guards were so hard on it when we pulled into town.

Yep, they've been packing some serious heat lately.

Yeah, I was kind of surprised. I saw the Samson at the gate. Is that a new acquisition here in town?

Oh, yeah. I think the Queen has been spending a lot of money with Northern Gun to keep things safe.

Makes sense.

I tried to volunteer for the guard, but they said, nope, you're a slurp. And I said, fair enough.

So back in the days when the mad Marauders were a thing, what'd you do?

Oh, grenades?

Really?

No, I love grenades.

I just appear.

Say the word.

You say grenades three times, Mr. Cat just appears.

He doesn't look at Mr. Cat. He just like jerks of them. That's a giant cat.

I was wondering whether those extra eyes were vestigial or not. Guess I know now. Yeah, Mr. Cat here is our grenades and explosives aficionado.

Yep. I love grenades and explosives. You know, they're very similar. Some people say they're related.

Some people do say that.

I like to think of the grenade as Dynamite's weird cousin.

You make a valid. I'm agreeing with a fucking slug.

Mr. Slumps.

Yes, giant cat man.

What do you think of the coalition?

I do not care for them. They killed many of my friends. I would like to disembowel most of them probably. There's some of them that are nice and I wouldn't want to Hurt those few nice people. But the others can all die.

How many days until your next job?

Oh, I have to pick up the trash next Tuesday, so. Five days.

Great. You wish to come with us and fuck up the coalition with grenades?

We will provide the grenades.

Yeah, they don't pay me much. Also, I don't need much because I can just eat anything. I ate a pine cone.

I think you and our dog would get along very well.

I love dogs.

Now we got two things to clean. Mr. Cat's Litter Box.

Oh, I'll clean it.

So, yeah, we're gonna take a jaunt to, as Mr. Cat put it, fuck up some of the coalition. You in?

I'm in. Do I get to hang out with Edmundo?

Oh, of course. Edmundo's key to the operation.

Who's Edmundo?

Edmundo.

Edmundo is our good friend, crazy friend's name before we all woke up Mr. Cat on the slabs.

Understood.

We've explained to Dustin here that Edmundo's memory is kind of jagged and he doesn't remember much of what happened after all the missiles hit him in Missouri.

Edmundo, do you remember the money that you owe me? I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

Oh, that does remind me.

Edmundo, how much money did he owe you?

He owes me $750.

Dollars. Well, credits Riley is like glaring at you and just opens up the pocket and starts counting out credit vouchers.

How much interest on that, my man?

I am very interested in it.

800 sounds good. That's 800.

Oh, okay, great.

Riley, come get my stuff.

I'll be back in a little while.

Riley folds the credit vouchers and slides it back into his pocket. All right, when you get back, I'll have it all organized for you.

Great.

Thanks. Riley. You son of a. You really came through for me there. It's Mundo, by the way. Not Ed. Mundo. Mundo, Just Mundo.

Oh, not Troy Mundo.

Oh, perhaps you are actually named Edward Mundo.

Mundo.

I feel like I owe it to my dead comrades to Mundo it up. So if we could just. Mundo.

Troy.

Troy's gone. I'm not gonna answer that.

Mundo.

Troy becomes Mundo.

Let's just make one thing clear. I am not traipsing across half this goddamn continent to find your fucking lost wife that you never even knew.

I saw her, dude. She had the.

And the look I dream of the sex worker I met in Iraq all the time.

I'm just saying if we meet her, let's just be nice to her and

let's not get Away with Troy and place my big meaty cat paw on his shoulder and kind of squat down so we're eye to eye, very solemnly look in your eyes, Edward, I will gladly help you find your wife.

I will place a hand on Mr. Cat's shoulder. You are a noble creature. Very worthy.

Riley turns, storms off into the fucking Mountaineer going, God, fucking Jesus fucking God.

Troy feels another hand on his other shoulder. Sponsored I will too help you find your wife. When did you get married? I did not go to the wedding. Is it because you don't love me?

God damn it.

I. The invitations got lost in the temporal rift. Oh, well, you can come to the next one.

Oh, hooray.

I don't know which is worse, the fact we might end up in Appalachia or Missouri.

Jesus.

I can almost hear Gorshkov slapping his head from across the way. What the hell?

On that note, since we're near the car, Henry waltzes out, finally kind of rejoined the party, like, oh, hey guys. So, by the way, I kind of forgot about this, but Gorshkov keeps telling me to tell you some of those ratmos came in and kind of headed. What'd you say, Gorshkov?

Which direction they headed northeast, which is our intended route towards Port Salinac. There is nothing in that direction except for Port Selenik. So it betters to reason that these cyber rat men were heading in that direction, perhaps on a similar errand to our own. Though I doubt theirs will be as militant.

Yeah, they suck. Who's this little slimy dude?

He took off.

Who was that little slimy dude?

Yeah, that's Dustin. He's gonna be riding along. He doesn't like the coalition about as much as we don't.

Hell yeah, little dude. Give him a slimy high five.

Dustin would be all about the high fives, that's for sure. When he comes back, he is carrying a massive garbage bag. I'm ready to go. I got all my stuff.

How many grenades are in that garbage bag?

There's a fair amount of grenades. So it's also just random stuff, like a couple different sets of coveralls, different hats, pieces of garbage. Just random detritus that he must have found but is carrying around for some reason. Bronson is very interested.

Dustin, you ever want to be in the cavalry before?

Be in the what?

The cavalry.

Oh. Oh, I don't know what that is, but I'm in it.

Yeah, you are. Now do it.

Jesus. Cool.

Anything. Anything we gotta handle here in town? Oh, by the way, Cat, anything In the book catch your eye.

Do you know the stamina of the Cimmerian? They are expert climbers, just like me.

So you didn't read the book Mike left? You spent all night reading the.

I skimmed it. There was nothing in there of interest to me.

So you spent all night reading the works of Ron E. Howard.

The Collected Works.

Oh, I love those books. I just bought some.

You know who his best character was? Mr. Cat? In my opinion, Solomon Kane.

I'm guessing there were no Solomon Cain in that.

Oh, I can guarantee it.

No, they were just Conan books. And it wasn't even all the Conan books.

Oh, of course. It's probably a Robert Jordan one in there somewhere.

Oh, for sure. Yeah, One of them was definitely the Robert Jordan Conan book.

Five of the Wield of Time or something.

Oh, well, see, Robert Jordan wrote Conan books. That's true. At the early part of his career.

Yep.

Oh, and we also have somebody on our team who's prone to great melancholies.

All right, anything else we need to do in town before we head out?

Gang, we do have a mechanical idea. We know that the cyber rats are going the same direction. We also know that both myself and Bronson have fought these creatures. Maybe not those specifically, but we are familiar with them and what and how they smell.

And there's a good chance they're gonna ambush us.

Yes, Ronson is much better at this than Mr. Cat, but the idea of tracking by scent, at least, sort of keeping our noses open as we go, much as Gorshkov is scanning for frequencies, I think the whole time, then that at least Mr. Cat will and will try to convince Bronson to do the same thing, to pay attention to the psychic airwaves and see if we can sniff them out.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I can also track by smell, so if this is discussed, I will keep my nose open as well. I also make sure to give Dustin a piece of armor. He can have my left leg. He needs to have some kind of armor.

Oh, he's fine. He does. He says he doesn't want armor.

Really? All right, yeah, I forgot.

It doesn't hurt him. Yeah, lots of things don't hurt me. I'm a Slurf.

Well, if there's nothing else to do here, I regretfully hand over 800 credits to Dustin.

He swallows them.

I'm sure he's got a wallet pocket

somewhere in there that goes into the cat litter stomach.

I walk back into the bar and go, how much sausage? How much sausage can I get for 200 credits?

You can get a lot of sausage. They are very happy to accommodate that order.

I slapped down 200 credits and then whatever else it'll cost to get a, you know, one of those quarter kegs of beer.

Oh, they, they throw that in. Yeah, okay. Yeah, like tons of beer.

Carry that out and throw it in the back of the Mountaineer. I look pointedly at Bronson and go, there ain't going to be any bears that are going to get that sausage, are there, Bronson? You're going to keep a sharp eye on it, right?

I will watch it and I will fight any bears that are probably fast.

Good. Because good dogs share sausage.

And then I can't.

Oh, this is a moral quandary.

I had several people offer me sausage last night. Riley, if I knew you were interested.

So you guys set out heading out of Vlasik, and this is where Daisy Boone departs. She's instructed Mr. Cat a significant amount on the armor and she flies off to meet the rest of her comrades in the old fortress at Saginaw. Okay, you guys progress northeast. The road ends, you're going cross country several times. You do smell the rats. You even pick up a crude trail left by ATVs. You can't follow it the entire way due to, you know, close trees and the Mountaineers. Huge. But eventually you are in a field. Definitely used to be some sort of construction here. There's rubble piled on the ground and old remnants of civilization. In the distance you can see what according to your map reading, should be Port Sanilac. But what you do see is the definite ruins of a golden age city. Mega damaged buildings covered by a massive, obviously alien forest of redwood sized trees with these dark purple, almost black leaves. And then there's more native plants, mosses and vines covering them. And so it's just this forest of large trees right on the coast. You can see Lake Huron beyond. There are no obvious signs of people or habitation. You lost the trail of the. The rat man, though you still get a whiff of them on the wind every now and then. And there's no, there's not an obvious coalition base here is what I'm looking at. But you guys are still some distance from the core ruins of the port itself, which are amidst these massive trees. What would you like to do?

I'm going to turn to them and go like, so do we want to do this loud or quiet?

Let's recap what exactly we're doing. Again, we were looking for rangers.

Coalition rangers? Yep.

Okay, so without going too metagamy, if These are Coalition Rangers. Rangers as in the Ranger occs? They're badass.

Yep.

So is that death heads transport we took out? Yeah, but hey, I love testing my luck.

It was real fun and real cool. But these are like. Well, again, not going to get too into. Let's just say they're badass. Okay, so what, are we just supposed to find them and take them out or what?

We were going to clean them out.

Do we have any knowledge of where they are? Specifically here, this area. So anywhere these 12 square miles or something.

Gorshkov, you picking up anything?

So now here's the question on your cybernetics, Alex. Is there any sort of list about the range of your sensors?

I've got cybernetics basic, so no.

Unless I look at. I think he means on the actual stats for the gear. The cybernetics. Not the skill, the actual equipment.

Correct.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's see.

Borg

cybernetics package. What? Let's see. Built in range 20 miles.

Wow.

Built in radio receiver and transmitter head jack.

So radio is 20 miles. That's pretty good.

Amplified hearing is 360. Oh, wait, no, it varies, but up to 1,000ft away for things. Yeah. 20 miles. Oof.

That's impressive.

I also have a radar sensor in my right forearm, but I figured that's not as helpful in the forest.

No. And you're not picking up any radar signatures?

Currently.

So Gorshkov says he is getting intermittent coalition radio traffic. It's all encrypted and it's brief and in his opinion, professional. What direction is it coming from at this point? Due east. You know, he estimates it's prox the most. The transmissions are approximately a mile away in the ruins of Port Sanilac. Where exactly? He can't triangulate at this point, but that's where they're emanating from.

Share that with the company.

What I would give right now for an artillery detachment.

Yes, as would I.

Well, said we could try and triangulate it. I mean, we have multiple people who have radio basic. We could move around the perimeter and try and triangulate. At least get us a little closer than the 12 square miles Nathaniel mentioned. Just an idea. Puts us leaves us out there where they may spot us longer, but it would narrow our search.

Yeah, too bad that my PRC here is just a glorified radio.

So it's.

But that doesn't matter. A radio is all we really need. So we got a radio. If we set the Mountaineer as point A and then move, send Henry out to One direction. And I can take my jetpack.

Oh, that would. Okay, yeah, I forgot. We'd have three radios, so we could get a triple.

And even if we can't decrypt it, we would still recognize. Recognize a signal. And that's all we need to triangulate.

Yep, that's all we need to triangulate. Two's always iffy. Three, we're in the money.

Getting some mileage out of this skill.

Yeah, Henry was just thinking I'd run straight into that area.

It's like, oh, take some potshots, guys.

That'll give away your location. My intention is to jetpack and keep it low, low, low, low, low to the ground.

Okay, so who is going to do the triangulation? Specifically, I assume Riley.

Well, yeah, I'm gonna sit in the. I always want to call it a Marauder Mountaineer and get the signals from these two and run it or run the math on it.

So Henry and Mr. Cat are gonna go in different directions.

We have code names now. Henry is now Major Tom Riley. Riley, you are ground control.

I.

Well, I am Mr. Cat.

Oh, you're not Major Tom's wife.

I'm Mr. Cat. Okay.

Okay. Let's see. I think. I guess radio basic would work. Unless you have a different skill you'd like to use, Jacob.

No, I'll go with radio basic. Can I borrow some dice? I forgot to grab those before I came downstairs.

My. Sir?

Yeah, sorry.

Yeah, those two, I think. Don't we all have radio basic? Yeah, yeah, probably Bronson has it, too, so.

Oh, does just Riley need to roll or do. Does anybody. Everybody need to roll?

Well, everybody's. I guess everybody that's helping on the triangulation actually should roll, so.

Okay. I succeeded with an 1842 out of 62.

I'm gonna. It's late enough.

Today.

I'm using heroism. I had 75 instead of 40 and 36. Perfect.

There you go. So you guys have a rough location in the center of this mass of trees and ruins. You don't know what it is, but you know you could go there specifically because at least one of the radio transmissions is coming from that location.

What I would give for a mortar right now.

I could just throw one of your fancy grenades.

That is true.

Speaking of grenades, we have a friend who likes grenades.

Oh, yeah, Dustin.

I do like grenades.

Dustin, better warm up the grenade collection. We're gonna need them.

Okay.

Do you prefer. Do you prefer plasma grenades or plasma grenades?

Oh, definitely plasma grenades.

Excellent. Good choice.

Mr. Cat.

Do we want to do this now or should we wait until cover of darkness? I'm just.

The triangulation or the attack?

The attack.

Oh, for sure.

Makes sense.

You could see in the dark, right, Mr. Cat?

Absolutely.

You could see in the dark.

You know, nothing has suggested that I actually could. I don't have any infrared.

Your eyes aren't even real, man.

I would assume that somewhere in there

as a standard feature by I'm looking it up now. You should have like an optics package or something.

I would think so.

You got the. You got like 4020 vision. It's not good.

I got amplified hearing. I do have mechanical eyes with a polarized filter, but I don't know.

So that helps with flashes and flares and stuff like that. The polarizing, I think.

Curse my weak bladder.

Yeah, leave that one in. One of them is very specifically night vision.

Got it.

And you don't have it. Okay, okay, Scheizer. And now that I now knowing that I'm wondering. It is likely that these guys probably do have night vision equipment. It would actually maybe be at our disadvantage since we do not anybody, any

of us who has on the armor. And I know we bought you a suit of armor, Troy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was some of the mondo.

We bought you a suit of armor. At least a helmet, I think you.

I'm wearing the helmet. No, I have the whole suit. There's a. I forget which type it is. But there's a suit of armor that I have.

The plastic man.

We replaced the plastic man with something else.

Are you actually wearing the goddamn chest piece finally?

Yes, for now. But it's the flight suit for the coalition pilot. Flight suit.

And those all have like optics and thermal optics and stuff built into them.

Yeah. The only one of us who is sans that would be me. Because otherwise it fucks with my magic.

And that means Bronson has a only slightly damaged suited plastic man.

Yes, and let me tell you, it was a pain in the ass getting it to fit him.

We got him a special helmet.

You did?

We did. And then we filled it with gravy or something.

Chili.

Chili.

Still smells like chili.

I bet he doesn't mind that.

He does not care at all. That's. You know, for Bronson that's a feature, not a book.

Why don't we just wait here until tomorrow? Just maybe the guys on the motorbikes will come back out. They will think we're not coming. Just we know where they're at. It feels silly to rush in there and get killed.

That is a good question. The synths that we have been tracking on the Ratmen. Does it lead into the same place now that we have triangulated that signal?

So you guys had picked up the trail of the Ratman a couple times on the drive out, but you couldn't follow it directly because they were had much smaller vehicles than you. So they would go more through the forest while you kind of had to maneuver around. But yes, they were going in largely this direction. Whether they are in whether that trail. I mean you can always search around to try to find the trail.

Yeah, I'd like to do that. And employ Bronson with. He's not busy.

Oh, Bronson is always ready to go smell things.

Yeah.

Okay. What skill are you using? Npc.

Well, the easiest one to do would be track.

Perfect. Seems very appropriate for the situation.

Oh, and Bronson also has track. And he can track and track by smell. He can do both. Oh, barely. But now I'm gonna spin a heroism on that. How much? Wow. My first was a 66 over 60 and my second is a 59 under 60.

You know, even if spy one still a success. So you pick up their trailer.

Totally smelled them. Yeah.

Are the two of you following it in?

Not all the way in, but I want to see if we can like get as close as we can. Just kind of like be. Be like this is heading directly towards the signal.

Yeah.

Okay.

So yeah, so you follow it some distance in just to the edge of these massive trees. And it seems like it's going in the general direction of the triangulated signal.

Okay. Come back and report. It is unlikely. It would seem unlikely that Coalition Rangers would work with creatures like this, but I don't know. Coincidences, bounties.

All the more reason to wait. Maybe they'll just kill each other and save us the effort. We can go pick up the pieces.

There's merit to that.

I honestly though, I think the evidence this is that they are working together. And that seems like a tip off.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We could always send our new friend in with his own weapons.

And the. They used the Dog Boys. Maybe they're expanding into Rat Boys.

Rat Men.

Yeah.

This is a little out of sorts for them, I will say, you know, but who's. Who knows, you know.

So we wait out here for the night and see what happens. Right? Sounds good. Then we go in if we have to.

Yeah, that sounds like the plan.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it would be better for us to go during the day even though that several of us can see at night. If they're working with heat vision or heat sensors, we will stand out more in the night.

Oh, fair point.

They're gonna have the advantage of the home terrain. It's.

Yeah, we've seen Predator.

We'll just coat ourselves in mud then.

No, I scoff at that idea.

You scoff at that with your face. But your tail is doing that disgusted

twitching thing behind you, and Bronson just

adopts a frown, thinking he had a chance to be covered in mud.

Yeah.

Okay, so are you guys going in now or are you going to wait? It's morning. It's not even noon yet. So if you wait until nightfall, that would be a significant period of time.

Yeah, sooner we'll be better then. The longer we wait, the more they have to prepare. I mean, we don't know they know that we're coming, but they could. Especially if those rat guys up to no good, storm the castle.

If you guys go in on foot, I could stay with the truck and I could drive it in. If things go sideways, they're going to need you, Riley, with your tech skills. I can drive.

My tech skills are not exactly that helpful in a firefight. And that's kind of what we're going into.

But you have the magic stick.

I have several magic sticks. Are you speaking about one in particular, Mr. Cat?

The rod of Asher Kadan, I believe it's called.

Yeah, that's what I'm currently contemplating.

It just sounds powerful. Yeah, they could use you. Besides, this gun shoots a long ways. I could just spray bullets from back here.

And I can throw grenades.

You have a railgun? Do both.

You were given two arms for a reason.

I only need one to fire the railgun. The other one can fastball special all

day long, just windmilling as I blast.

So

if Troy stays behind? I don't know why Troy would want to stay behind, but it would be a good idea to have somebody watch

if I get ambushed. I'm not going to get ambushed in the truck. I'll be aware. Riley, love you, man. But if you're here buying the truck by yourself, you could get taken out.

Don't get the truck more ruined than it already is.

What about Daisy?

Daisy's gone.

She's departed. She departed, though. Yeah.

Yeah.

Also, we need somebody to keep a watch over. In my sweet, sweet suit of armor,

I turn to Dustin. Hey, Dustin, you good at sneaking?

I'm a slurp. No.

Riley quietly squares in Arabic.

I think we should bring him because

he's basically unkillable and he's got a shitload of grenades.

Yes, Grenades, I mean. And he doesn't have to walk with you. He can walk somewhere else. That's what we used to do back in the day, right, Dustin? You go off that way, they go this way.

Oh, yeah. Everybody always said, hey, Dustin, go. Walk ahead. And then I'd get shot at. But it's okay. I'm a Slurf. It does hurt, though.

It's worth it to see you burp up them bullets later, though.

Yeah, that's because they get lodged in my abdomen and my slurp body pulls them into stomach three. So you're all trying to figure out what to do. You look around, and that's when you realize Bronson is gone.

Yeah.

Are the sausages still here?

They are, some of them.

Some just wave them in the air.

And there's a note that says, I'm gonna go be a hero.

Fuck.

It's in crayon.

God damn it.

Godspeed, Bronson.

We gotta save the dog.

We have to save the dog.

We gotta save the dog.

Yes.

Bronson cannot die.

He can. He's pretty squishy, actually.

I'll die before I see him dead. Loud it is.

Loud it fucking is. All right, what sets the stage?

Well, if he's going in as a cowboy, he could make for a really good distraction.

Yeah, but the slow sneak methodologies just kind of went out the door.

True, and after last night's eating, we can track him by smell, no problem.

Who needs a microchip when you've got a stew dog?

Yeah, just piles of crap every 10ft. Okay, so we end on the group resignedly going into Port Salanac, or, excuse me, Port Sanilac, in pursuit of Bronson.

I assume we want to do this on foot.

I've got a jetpack.

Okay, we want to do this on foot and. Jetpack.

Yeah.

Got it.

The Mountaineer doesn't have any weapons, right?

Not yet. On foot, I did not have time to install a cupola. That was the plan.

Oh, yeah. If anybody tries to take it, no defense, no alarm.

Oh, there's an alarm.

We could leave Dustin here and tell him to blow it up if anybody tries to take.

No, no.

All right, all right. On foot, it'll be fine. Just take the keys.

Yeah. All right.

Yeah.

So we will pick up next time at no doubt, the completely bloodless encounter with the Cyberg Rat Men and Coalition Rangers in the ruins of Port Santa La. I'm sure you guys are going to get along just fine with them.

They seem like perfectly reasonable people.

Mm.

It's all misunderstanding yeah, that's why I

have these ranger stats here, because they're reasonable.

That's like eight different stats about reason.

Oh, they find that very reasonable.

Oh yeah.

Save versus good ideas. Well, I'm looking forward to see where this goes.

Me too.

As am I. We're off to save the doggo. The wonderful Doggo of Oz.

I think Mundo is a great name.

Mundo rules. Mundo's gold.

Troy thinks Mundo is a great name.

When all this wraps up, Riley is going to have some heavy, heavy fucking introspection.

But no therapy, right?

The fuck? Do I look like some sort of loser? I say, smoothing my moat with faux hawk.

Yeah, yeah. You can't go to therapy if you have a mohawk and you're from the 90s.

Of course not.

No, silly.

I just gotta say, Kyle, your choice of his wife.

You bastard.

I don't see the problem. Great character.

I don't see the problem. Honestly, just.

That was unexpected. Well done. Well done for folks listening at home. You'll find out someday.

Yeah, hopefully not. Hopefully motherfucking not.

I mean, she's one of the sort of nice people in the Federation of Magic. Depending on where you encounter in the

timeline, I'm pretty sure she's scrupulous.

I think so.

Yeah.

Yeah. So are some of what's his name's buddies down on the edge of the vampire kingdoms of Mexico. They're just a chill bunch too.

Yeah, they're just nice people.

Yeah, that's. Seriously. So if ever, if ever, some of our missions are like, okay, we need to go check out this thing in Mexico. No, no, I will go to South

America before I will go to Mexico.

Yep.

Yeah, Mexico's a bad place.

Yeah.

Bad deal. You know, it is one of the. Obviously I'm trying to tie in the Federation of Magic, so. I love the Federation of Magic and it's one of my great regrets that when they did the Coalition War campaign, they went to war against Tolkien instead of the Federation of Magic.

Yeah, it could have been.

Seems like freaking more natural enemy, right?

Inherently. Yes. But you can also kind of see it at the same time with some of the hints and side things of some of the backroom dealings that were hinted at going on between the two.

I mean. Yeah, but they didn't. Those didn't exist until they added them during the campaign, like as a reason to justify it. Whereas up until that point, the Federation of Magic was the obvious target. And it could have been so epic.

Oh yeah, no, it was 100%. I love two groups of assholes fucking each other. Up. It's.

But I think that it. For all the losses that the Coalition takes in the war against Tolkien, I think it makes way more sense if they took those fighting the Federation of Magic because how do they not just roll over Tolkien? It's like 40 people live there.

Right?

Yeah.

That was the one down. That was the one. What?

Yeah.

With the whole.

Yeah, yeah.

No, there is only post hoc political reasons for it. It makes very little strategic sense. The only pre existing thing I can think of is it was hinted at that Tolkien was aiding, much more frequently aiding forces operating in Coalition territory opposed the Coalition.

So. But you know, the Federation of Magic killed the guy.

Yeah, yeah. No, no,

it's. I don't understand why they didn't do that. Because that is the. That is the war that they have been foreshadowing right. For all the risk books up until we actually get to the war against Tolkien. And then it's like, hey, remember that one place we mentioned twice? That's a major threat that the Coalition wants to take out. So what are you talking about?

That there is one valid reason I can think of targeting Tolkien first and that is the Coalition has not had a substantial military mobilization in quite some time. And if you're gonna get your ducks in a row to go and take on somebody like the Federation of Magic having a small little war.

Yeah. They want an easy win.

An easy win. Iron out the bugs in the system because like the one thing that's pointed at is they are mustache twirling fascist assholes.

Sure.

But they're not totally incompetent.

So before we turn this into a whole new episode topic, let's wrap up the Rifts game here, close this out. So if you don't know who we are. Hi, I'm npc.

Hi, I'm just Jacob.

And I'm Sean.

Then there's Kyle.

Hello.

So, Kyle, quickly tell folks about your other podcast. If they haven't listened to it yet.

Yeah. I'm Kyle. I'm the main GM on the Bastard Quest podcast. We play lots of different games. If you thought this was good, you'll probably like that. Though it is a lot more comedic on Bastard Quest. Not that we don't have jokes here. We do. It's just more ridiculous, I should say, on Bastard Quest.

But it's a. It's so good.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, it's so fun. Just. Yeah, you have a good camaraderie in your group.

Yeah, I think we have a good dynamic. We're all dumb.

Yeah. So folks, please Drop over to Bastard Quest, check out their shows. They are really good. We have a few things that we're starting to do with this podcast. So whether or not I chose to leave it in the episode, there was a previous comment about things that I'm adding to the Patron version of these episodes. The sound effects and whatnot. And sometimes that includes music that I probably shouldn't put in. And I definitely can't legally put in on the main feeds on like YouTube and stuff. But hey, you know, on our private feeds I can probably do. I can get away with a lot more.

Yeah. And I have to say that if you're listening to this and it's the non sound effect version, you gotta go listen to the sound effect versions. They are so great. It super cool.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. So if you haven't heard those and you want an example of what they sound like, go back and listen to episode 1212, which is the last one that we have released up to this point by the time we're recording this. But in episode 12, I kind of went all out and I was like, I gotta share this publicly. It was just too fun. Yeah, so go back and listen to that. This is a good example of what the kind of. The kind of stuff that I'm doing in the Patron episodes or the Patron version. Otherwise it's the same content. I just add sound effects. And if you want to subscribe, we have a KO Fi page and we also have a direct tip jar which really does the same thing through Pinecast, which is an audio host. Both of those things are linked in our show notes. Okay, that was a long spiel. So, folks, join us online. Come drop by Discord, tell us what you think about it and we'll catch you next time. Starships, Magic, Mystic Martial arts, romance.

All of these can be found in

a Cloak of Blades by Isaac Sher. You might have heard my name before. I've done a lot of voiceover work for Breakfast Puppies and I've recently released my first novel.

It's available on Amazon as an ebook and paperback and you can get it

for free if you have a Kindle on the limited subscription.

I do hope you'll support my work

as you're supporting Breakfast Puppies. And it's been a pleasure talking with you today. Have a good one. You've been listening to the Glitter Boys, a Palladium Books fan podcast. Glitter Boys, Rifts, the Megaverse and all other such topics are the property of Kevin Sambita and Palladium books, please buy all their stuff and help keep them in print and making more games. You can order [email protected] and their entire catalog is available digitally at drivethrurpg as well. Our opening music is 8 bit bass and lead by FurbyGuy from freesound.org this closing music is Caravana by Philip Gross, available at freemusicarchive.org all sound effects used are self made or acquired via Creative Commons Zero License. If you like what you have heard, find us on Twitter and Facebook as TheGlitterBoys. That's B O I S and check us out [email protected] glitter boys and also join us on the Breakfast Puppies network [email protected] Discord and if you want to help us out, please spread the word and help us build a community. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you next time.