The Glitterbois Play Rifts #006: Broken Concrete Pillows

Breakfast Puppies.

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

This is Troy. This is Troy. And we're going to have so much fun. You're listening, glitter boys. Right, let's go.

After your battle with the Death Weave Spider, the four of you, along with, of course, Bronson and Dromedary Bosephus and the Archonauts whom you rescued from the Spider's Webs camp in the wilderness, well short of the ruins of Old Detroit, but far from the safety of New Laszlo. Of course, you are not fools. And so you take turns standing watch and guarding against whatever perils of the night there are. You know, of which there are no doubt many in the Michigan wilderness at some point. It's not his watch, but he awakens anyway. Riley comes to. Like, you know, it's one of those. When you wake up, like, gasping for air, middle of the night, very dark, and in the distance, you can see a red orange moon rising above the tops of the mountains. And you see silhouetted against this moon is a figure. And it must be massive to be visible from such a distance. It looks like some man standing on top of the mountain staring down at you. And you just have this distinct impression that even through, despite the distance, despite the darkness, you can see his face. It's like this noble, like, almost carved from marble visage staring directly at you. And before you can can determine whether it is menacing or, you know, some combination of attentive and stern, you awaken in the middle of the night. Looking around in the distance, you see Henry walking this circuit patrol around the camp. It's dark. You look to where you saw the man, and of course, there's nothing. The moon is high above, bright white. And of course, there are no mountains in Southern Michigan.

I am gonna climb on top of the mountaineer.

Yep.

And just pull out the notepad I've had shoved in a pocket and start trying to sketch out the image that I remember from my head as much as possible and just kind of sit up there and try to sort out the recollections of my dreams, details, that sort of thing.

Do you actually have any skills in any of the arts?

Oh, hell no.

There are a couple. Okay.

Let me tell you, it'll be great if it was drafting, though.

Well, I don't think we'll roll. We'll just assume you do the best you can and it means something to you. But the rest of the night passes uneventfully. You all awaken?

Yeah.

Get breakfast going. The Archonauts are rousing.

It sure would be nice if this breakfast had bacon. Bronson.

I hate bears. We'll find him. Probably. He might have run really fast. Riley tell you I eat the bacon?

If I end up murking some poor bear just for this dog's ego, that might be just a road too far.

Bear is delicious. I'm told it's greasy.

But yes, Troy definitely is helping with breakfast, if not the primary chef. And because he heard Riley wake up last night, because he didn't sleep and he hears like a beast. I would cook whatever I think Riley would without saying anything, whether that means fresh coffee or pancakes or whatever. Riley would like to go with his breakfast of cigarettes. I make sure that that's prepared because anytime you're waking up in the middle of the night, that's usually not great. I don't call it out to him, but I just offer a little comfort as a friend without words.

I can imagine that there's been a post gaming late night Denny's run a time or two, so you might have a good sense on that.

Oh yeah, and this was. This is the 90s. You could still smoke in restaurants everywhere.

And let me tell you, Riley did

cherries didn't know what hit him.

Yeah, I think a lot of restaurants the 90s, you had to smoke. They gave you cigarettes when you came in.

I do remember seeing cigarette machines in the front, like entryway of every single restaurant. The one that stands out to me the most because it was the restaurant that we went to very frequently, usually on Sundays was Shoney's. It was always a cigarette machine in front of Shoney's.

The good old days.

No,

the carcinogenic days. So you guys are making breakfast? The Argonauts seem in much better spirits than the day before. Torben, the mystic that you first rescued, is helping.

Is the fire lady just on fire? Am I crazy?

She's on fire again. She did dismiss her flames when she slept.

Okay, okay. I wasn't sure if that was like her natural state or she toggles it off when she doesn't need to fire on.

Yeah, and she's kind of standing off to one side surveying the area. Let's see which of you would she approach. So she looks at Troi midway through, he's doing something and you know, makes the gesture with her hand to come over to her away from the others.

Yeah, sure. Step off to the side. Hope you guys are feeling better today.

She nods. So she's tall and bald and she is dressed in clothes. But it's Hard to discern anything except this living flame that surrounds her. Strangely enough, you don't feel a lot of heat as you get close to it. She says, yes, thank you again. I assume you were the leader of your band.

Troy drops his head for a moment, says, no, our leader. Our leader's actually not here. We've lost him trying to recover him. I'm kind of the inspirational lead at times, but, you know, we kind of.

Yeah.

And he actually struggles with that because he's like, yeah, we don't really have a leader. We had a mic. He was our leader, and we lost and we're trying to find him also. Let me just get the you look hot joke out of the way so I don't have to let it roll around in my craw. Look hot. It's done. Carry on.

She has that look in her eye.

She's heard this before.

Yeah, it's the person that's heard the joke a thousand times. And, you know, she doesn't comment. She just gives you a sharp nod. There is a duty that we have that we must fulfill. All of us cannot go with you to Old Detroit, but I will send Torben if you wish.

Remind me, which one was Torben?

The dude who led us there. We found him in the forest.

Oh. You know, any help would be appreciated. I'm sure the rest of the crew would be fine with that. You guys got places to be. Is Torby gonna be able to catch up with you afterwards?

He will return to New Laszlo if that is your intent to return there.

Honestly, I don't know. But we'll send him back that way with drom brahm. Thanks, Mr. Cat. He's not eavesdropping.

Mr. Cat was eating the entire time with one ear, just swiveled in your direction.

I'm gonna branch far above, just looking down.

Yeah, that would be great. I mean, I know we'll take whatever help you could give us. Uh, we're kind of new to this place and we need to get in and out fast. If you think Torben's the best, we'll take it.

He knows much about the mystical dangers in Old Detroit.

He was the only one who didn't get captured by the spider. So it's true.

She wouldn't be here in the first place if he hadn't.

Is everybody eavesdropping? I'm just kidding.

I'm just messing around with my sound filtration system and amplified hearing.

Hugo, is everybody eavesdropping? And Riley plate going, like, what?

We will go north with you. Until you must turn south towards the ruins. But from there, Erasmus, Quen, and I will continue on our path. We will likely be back in New Laszlo within a week. If you return there, we would like for you to seek us out so that we could properly show you our thanks.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't know how long this will take us, but we'll send word if we're not going to be back in time. I don't know how the hell we're going to send word, but it sounds like a thing you could say.

Well, that is Lou Lazlo is our home.

Excellent. We have a friend there.

Whenever you return there. Yes. Oh. Who is your friend?

A woman by the name of experience. And we're also kind of friends with this red wizard guy. Jolly Red. Jovial Red.

Jovial, that's right.

So, I mean, if we have to send back word about us or about your teammate. Check it. You could check in with them if you haven't heard from us.

You are new to this land, and the people that you meet and become acquainted with in New Lazlo are experienced. Dinsmore and Jovial Red.

And that's good, right? That sounds like a good thing. That's not a good.

Which is impressive.

Well, I think we can count you and your lot as further proof of the fortune of our companions. You're clearly exceptional individuals. Mr. Cat would have told us if you were unworthy.

I hope that you find your leader. Mike.

Quiet. You don't want Bronson to hear you say his name.

He must be truly great to lead such noble warriors.

I'm just gonna let that set there. I'm not gonna respond.

You just do that quiet, vague nod thing.

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes she dismisses her flames and gives Troy a hug.

Yeah, Troy hugs back.

Oh, and here I thought she had the hots for you. And she's going all cold on you.

If I remember correctly, didn't you say that she was kind of slimy?

Oily, I think that's what.

Yeah, there's a sheen to her skin.

Gotcha.

Slimy and oily are very different vibes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She smells vaguely of kerosene. No, that's not right. But it's close.

Mineral spirits, per chance.

Maybe, but that is all she has to say.

Again, thank her. The company, the help, is all we would ask for. I think I speak for the rest of the group in that we've probably got some food to spare if you guys need it. Just don't take the gems from Riley. He's really focused on it.

We would have had food if the bacon hadn't been eaten.

Yeah, that damn bear.

But yeah, after the conversation, Troy probably kind of passes that along in a very haphazard like, oh, by the way, it sounds like they're going to be splitting off at some point, but Torben is going to come along with us.

Okay. Yes. Do you guys have breakfast? Break camp. Is there anything you guys are going to do before you get back on

the trail at some point during that breakfast or maybe this even started the night before, but refresh me. We have Torben and what's her name?

Veyra.

Veyra. Who are the others? Erasmus and Quinn and what?

Wrecked.

Okay, who are. What are they? Quick, quick rundown.

That I couldn't tell you. I've just been writing down names.

Oh, good, good.

Erasmus is the technical wizard and Quinn is basically a swordsman. He calls himself an eldritch headhunter, but it's basically just to do with magic swords.

He's the one. He's the one that I will have targeted the way a cat targets somebody new and has essentially. I have essentially inserted myself into his physical presence. But I'm also an eight foot tall cat. However, I'm an eight foot tall cat who three days ago wasn't an eight foot tall cat. Or, you know, two weeks, whatever. So it's like standing there and I bend down and just headbutt him and then headbutt him again and start to purr.

I will pay you. I will pay you real money if it turns out he's allergic to cats.

And I'm gonna keep at it until he starts petting me.

Yeah, see? What's your physical beauty?

Mr. Katz?

Yeah, Mr. Katz. No, yours is a human. Yes, Mr. Katz.

Oh, no, I didn't know if you answered me rightly. It's just a. Yeah, I would give

you a. I'd give you a 13. Nathaniel, you don't have to lowball yourself.

So it doesn't take very long. Immediately he just starts scratching. Come here. I got a cat. Big old Fluffy,

we're best friends.

Scratching under your chin.

Yep, yep, yep. He's into it.

You bought that? Big spotter.

Riley is kind of looking vaguely stunned at this because Riley has considered doing this a time or two, even though he doesn't particularly like cats,

but he

was pretty sure that Mr. Cat would kill anyone who dared attempt that. And the fact that this is happening.

So the neck, the head, the ears, the chin, all of those are fine. If you touch the belly, it's a 50. 50 chance.

Yes, but what about the spot where your tail connects to your belly butt? Because with cats it's like 50, 50 chance.

Yeah. This guy, he has cats. So he just doesn't try any better.

Doesn't risk.

You're, you know, an eight foot tall superhero.

Yeah. You could take a hand off with.

Yeah, he's a bigger man, really dark beard. He's got this shimmering suit of plate mail that you can just smell the magic coming off of it. And two long swords on his back. There's a lot of magic on this guy, but none of it is attached to his body. It's just all equipment. Like he himself is just a normal person. He's just loaded with magic gear. Yeah. He's happy to scritch.

Yeah. At some point following said scritches and maybe analysis of those weapons. I'll show him the. The knife that I have. And in kind of a. Yeah, well, look what I've got. But also a curiosity. Like I've got this. Do you know anything about it?

Rude weapon. Wow. I've see few of those.

So they're rare, Special valuable.

Yes.

Good.

Though Torben is more of an expert than I. Oh.

Oh.

Good to know.

I assume it's not one of the evil ones. You don't seem foul.

Definitely not.

Don't judge weapons like that. Sometimes an evil blade could be your friend.

The amount of time Mr. Cat takes clean himself.

There's just this like sub audible from the executioner's sword on Troy's back.

I will nudge Erasmus Musin Musilax. What's his name? Erasmus. That's the Techno Wizard? Yeah. I'll kind of be like, listen man. And I keep it quiet because I don't want to offend Riley. Really? I say listen. Our guy Riley, he's really into tech, but he's new to this place. Maybe you can ride in the cab and give him some pointers. It seems like you actually know what you're doing with this tech stuff. Just as a favor, I know you guys are parting ways, but if you could just give him some pointers.

Help.

Help.

Dial him in a little bit. I think he was trying to fan a laser pistol. Okay, cool.

Is he a techno wizard as well?

That's a. Ha ha. I fist bump him and walk away.

I observe this and nod approvingly.

Yeah, so you see Erasmus, he has this bewildered look on his face. Not sure what to do now, but just kind of shrugs and goes back to his eggs. All right, so you guys pack up. Everybody piles in the mountain here. There's More than enough room. Veyra just flies above it, you know, wreathed in flame. And you guys head north, Dromedary Bosephus guiding you. About two hours later, dromedary starts guiding you, you know, through this old forest road. You start heading vaguely south. And that is when Erasmus and Quinn dismount and the they and veyre say their goodbyes and head due north on some unknown errand.

Before they leave, I. I like gesture for veyre to come to the driver's side window.

Yeah. She flies down, wreathed in flame.

I hand her my steel lighter and go like. Just in case you ever run into that problem again.

She takes it, smells it, nods at you, gives you a big smile, White teeth amidst the fire. Thank you, Riley.

See you around.

You and your friends are very strange.

Yep.

And she flies off. Quinn and Erasmus, like, hurry off on foot after her.

What a bum deal for a trio. One can fly near the trail, like, all right, well, guess we're see in a couple hours.

So Dromedary looks around. Hey, yeah. Everybody ready to go to the broken grid? It's what you pay me for.

Yep, we're paying him. That's what. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, we did paid.

Okay, okay.

Do it up front.

And I don't have the money on me. Just in case you're thinking of getting smami. Dromedary is smart.

Yep.

I even left my good pants at home.

That's probably a good call.

Yeah. So you guys head south. The four of you, Bronson or Scorschikov, inside Henry's head. Drum and Erasmus.

Are we still in the vehicle?

Yes. Okay. But you. You come out of the woods in kind of this grassland. There's a huge hill in front of you, and this is where Dromedary says, hey, hey, we should stop here. He has everybody get out and you walk up this hill. And as you get get close to the top, he gets down and starts crawling up to the top and motions everybody to get down. You crawl up to the top of this hill, you look over, and you have this wide landscape view of the ruins of old Detroit Windsor. Now, obviously you guys had seen. Have seen pictures of Detroit, you know, on the news and movies and things like that. Maybe you've even been to Detroit. It's not that far from Cincinnati. But the cityscape, or rather the devastated ruin that you look down is like nothing from your memories. The late 20th century. To the west, butting up against the. The huge forest that you followed north is this scorched expanse, seemingly roiled by wind. And the occasional lightning strike from a clear sky. Dromedary points that, that's, that's, that's the Howling Fields goes for miles. And there's worse things than lightning there, let me tell you. You can see just flickers of shapes, maybe silhouettes in the distance in this howling field. Near to that is this solid, almost mountain sized mass of metal and flowing lava. And you could see remnants of structures amidst it. He says that's the Cauldron Zone. I never go there. It's full of mutants and demons. It's just bad. It's bad. Then there's a. More ruins, buildings overgrown with vegetation. You see this massive cathedral covered in like thick thorns. That's. That's the Silan Crown. That's a place we could go. You can see across the river into Old Windsor. Overgrown and buried, but kind of in the center of the city is this high tech spire. A few of them, you know, glass and steel buildings. Look like they're almost in pristine condition, surrounded by swarms of what you assume are birds. But Germany says no, no, those are drones. Nobody can get close to any of that. They attack everything and everybody. We're not going to go there neither. There's a single bridge spanning the river. But it. But running down the center of the bridge you can see is an active Leyline that ripples with energy at regular intervals. And it's powerful enough that it is visible in daylight.

Yeah, that's a totally sane laugh. That's a totally sane laugh.

We're not going to go near that neither. And in the river, and the river itself is an island. If any of you are very familiar with the geography of Detroit, it would be Belle Island, Belle Isle. And it's covered in a forest that looks like it's made of glass.

Oh my God.

How. What's the rough? I'm trying to place this stuff. How far out are we looking at this from? Like 15 miles away.

Miles. Okay. Yeah, you guys are miles away.

Okay.

Probably like 10 miles.

Okay.

Okay, so we want to go to where he found.

Where he found the shirt.

Mike's stuff. Yeah, that's our destination.

So all this, under this, under all of this is the broken grid. So here's your options, adventurers. See that cathedral? And this is the one he pointed out earlier with like the thorn. You know, the, the tangled greenery around it. That's. That's the Thorn crowd. We could. There's a. There's an entry there. It's pretty safe during the day, but at night a lot of. Lot of things that we don't want. And you know what undead are.

Yes.

Yep.

Ghouls.

My tail starts flipping,

says, I know of another. There's another place across the river. It's this. They call it the Windsor Biolabs Complex. Yeah, it's. It's dangerous. But no one dead. I've never been across the river, but I know how to get there, theoretically.

Listen, I think I speak for all of us. You are kind of a coward. Right now, we want to be stealthy. So how did you get in last time? That's the way we want to go. We don't want to pick a fight if we don't. Actually, Mr. Cat might want to pick a fight.

Yeah, we go through the thorn crown. It's pretty safe during the day, but we got. We can only go in and out during the day, so once we get in, we. If we. We ain't coming out at night.

And are we gonna have to walk from here to there, or can we drive up?

I wouldn't. I would. I think you should. It's up to you. But if it was me, Detroit, I don't know if you know, this is not a safe place for hubcaps.

That lines up.

Yeah, neither is Cleveland.

I heard Mike once say there was something there called pizza.

He said it was good.

Like a mutant.

Your guess is as good as mine.

Depends how much you pay for it.

I just kind of glance over at him and go, I got a question.

Yeah.

How do you know they're mutants?

Because the people that I bring all the time say those are mutants.

Fair enough.

Thanks.

As opposed to just DB's or just ugly people?

They could.

Well, I mean, like, he's got butter face now. He's just ugly.

All right, look, look, between you and me and the cat, all humans look the same to me. But people say that's racist, so I don't say that.

He is very correct with that.

It's kind of more speciesist, but, you

know, don't use big words. They don't make you smart.

How? You smell very different.

All right, well, daylight's wasting. We want to camp out here another night and hit it first thing in the morning. And roll.

Now, about what time of day is it?

It's a little afternoon.

Will it be any safer or less camping in the grid if we have

to, versus the cramp? Oh, get in and camp in the. The grid's got to be like a subway.

That's.

That's what I'm getting.

It tells you that. That he's been Told that the broken grid is the the infrastructure under the city. Subway, emergency shelters, maintenance tunnels, that sort of thing. But also you guys can tell that Detroit definitely changed a lot between what you remember and now. Because there were definitely no buildings as high tech as what is in the center of Detroit currently in the late 90s it is.

How far of a walk are we thinking it is from here to the place that Drom recommended that we go in?

I think he was saying 10 miles.

10 miles.

Thorn Crown.

Yeah, we gotta do that on foot. Yeah, we camp in the morning.

We could do that in like 35 minutes.

Especially if you and I carry everyone.

Yes.

I'm sorry. Eight foot Mr. Cat.

He moves fast. We move fast. We just gotta carry over.

I don't believe Drom does. I don't believe the.

Oh, I forgot we also mystic that is with us. So camp here and just pre dawn.

I know that smoker's lung over here certainly doesn't.

I was going to give him a piggyback around it. I wouldn't do that.

So Torben says the short DB is correct. The Thorn Crown is a center for undead creatures. Traversing it at night would be highly inadvisable.

Do those undead go into the grid? If we get there and we get into the grid before nightfall. Are the undead a problem?

No, I don't believe they go in. For some reason they seem to stay above ground. I've never seen any in the grid.

What time did he say it was?

A little bit after noon. I would prefer that we go without the specter of time hanging over our shoulder. We could have an easier stroll. Not have to push ourselves and you know, not be like constantly looking up at the sun worrying if it's going to be a problem if we go in the morning. That's my gut.

I'm sure.

It's my proposal.

I'm sure Torben could use an extra bit of time to rest up after his adventures.

Oh yeah. Getting all that PPE back.

Yeah.

Yeah. Fair.

Torben looks at Dromedary looks he goes and also what is your plan for Rus gut?

Rest.

What now?

And Drummer says I wouldn't get to worry about it. We're going to be in and out. And Torben kind of, he gives them a look like really? Ruscut Jala is the queen of the broken grid. And most pay tribute to her before they gallivant around the the area.

But what's her preferred expedition? What's her preferred form of commerce?

Cigarettes.

Well, that pitch out a luck. So he says know that she wants anything in particular? I. I've only been to her court on one occasion, and we traded her a number of portable water filtration jugs. And this seemed to greatly preserve. Radiation can be a problem in the grid.

Could I get her name in the chat?

Yeah, yeah. Let me put it to appreciate it.

I'm running with rust gut.

See, I even wasn't entirely certain.

Rustgut.

Yeah, it's Rustgut. Jala.

Got it. Thank you.

So I think she and her servants food tech to clean water or maybe handle radiation. I'm not sure. I think these are the things that the few people that live in the ruins would most value.

Listen, I've been thinking about how to make good on this bacon thing. Bacon's gone. Cause of the bear. But we got potatoes and there's bacon grease in there. Maybe we get some, let that cook overnight. Then we got something that's tasty, unusual. These kind of. She seems like she's probably eccentric. I want to show up with something that not everybody's going to have.

I mean, we still have couple cases of produce in the back. We can just bring that in. It's probably the first fresh food they've seen in a while.

Yeah. I can't imagine if they have a radiation issue. Fresh food is. Fresh produce is super common, but it stays fresh longer. Yeah, well, that's true.

Suddenly it's best not to think about what they eat the broken grid too much.

It's not pizza.

I'm biting my tongue.

This is not super important, Mr. GM, but as we're traveling, I can see a long ways and I am going to be watching for science and stuff. I want to see if this is like a Detroit that at one point diverged from our path in the chronology. That sounds way smarter than Troy is. But basically I'm looking for like, oh, yeah, that's an actual place in the Detroit that I've been to. You know, that's a subway station. That's Jefferson. Jefferson Square. Like, is this a divergent from our timeline or is it a totally different place that just. Yeah, this is a good place. People ended up here because of geography and, you know, essentially just trying to read signs and look at buildings and see how far different this is from the world that we came from.

Yeah. So I would say if. If Troy has been to Detroit, the outline of Belle Isle looks like what you remember.

Okay.

And you're pretty sure that when the guy. When Dromedary and Erasmus are talking about the Thorn Crown, some of that reminds you of Detroit's Cathedral Row. And so it looks vaguely familiar. Obviously a lot has changed, but.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So there's some connection, but a lot has changed.

Yeah. And you definitely recognize the bridge spanning the river.

I don't know this, but my character would. And maybe some of our listeners would. When did the rifts open? In the Rifts timeline, there was a time when the rifts started opening on Earth. Right. Is that not true?

Yes.

Does anybody know when that was?

Here's the problem. I also play a lot of Fallout, so I can never get the dates right.

It's not super important. Just trying to start to put together like, yeah, we're actually in the Rifts universe that we had real knowledge about. Like, we haven't really leaned on that. Our characters knew the game world. We could take advantage of that.

But if I'm seeing that they have a lot more information on that in the complete role playing game known as Chaos Earth.

Indeed they do.

So I think it was either the 2000 and 70s or the 2000 170s.

Okay.

Or maybe the 2270s.

Yeah.

Something like that.

You definitely know it was not the 90s.

Okay. So this could literally just be a much forward version of our own world.

Could be, yep.

Okay, so you guys are going to camp overnight.

Yeah. And if they're going to be doing the whole bacon thing with the. With, you know, preparing the food, whatnot, I'm going to keep watch over it just in case.

For safety first.

100%. I don't trust that bastard anymore.

The rifts opened up roughly 2116.

Thank you.

Oh, okay then. I was 100% thinking of fallout.

Yeah. Okay.

Give or take decade or two.

Are you guys going to do anything particular the night before or during the night until you had head into Old Detroit?

I feel like Henry's willing to take watch for the night. Let everybody get a full night's rest.

I didn't sleep last night, so that's probably a good idea.

Yeah, it's been a real busy time.

I can't think of anything else. I forgot to charge up my knife. So it doesn't have any power.

There's a ley line right over there.

It's got a very specific need that requires I think, dusk till dark or dawn to dusk, exposure to sunlight.

Oh, do we need to put a mount on the top of the Mountaineer for it?

Well, I was thinking something like that. Or if we could just like, you know, strap it to Henry's head.

Just stab it into the chair when we're driving you hang it from the rear view mirror.

Not that the rear view mirror shows anything.

That would be post apocalyptic as.

Yes, it would.

That's very true. Yeah. So you guys make camp on the opposite side of the hill from Old Detroit Windsor. And Henry is keeping watch. Correct. So you guys make an evening meal. You know, you're not trying specifically to be quiet, but there's not a lot of heavy conversation around the campfire this close to obviously, such a massive ruinous rift affected place. She got his bed down for the evening. And Alex, what is Henry's procedure for keeping watch? What does he.

So walking the perimeter. However, he is occasionally just checking in with Gorshkov. And I would love to think that he, at this point, is able to multitask pretty greatly, but that's up to interpretation. He is talking softly in response to Gorshkov, at the very least, simply because he doesn't want to keep anybody.

You can walk and talk.

It's amazing.

But just to make sure you are still talking aloud.

I am still like, oh, Gorshkov, man. Like, what do we think about figuring out how to, like, be consistent with the, you know, the arm blades and, you know, muttering and kind of getting to know him, cracking some jokes.

They're a simple, simple solution. You get better.

Oh, get good scrub.

Awesome. Okay, dad.

Well, if we had, say, six months to run through combat drills, this would be simplified.

Well, we'll see if we got six months or six years ahead of us Palace.

We could also find transport, return to Russia, reenlist in military. This would be optimum.

Yeah, I don't think we're gonna find Mike there, buddy. So one step at a time. To be clear. I keep bugging him.

Yeah.

So are you doing this while you're patrolling, or are you just kind of a sentinel somewhere?

I am patrolling.

Yeah.

Like, I. I guess the idea being that if I'm talking to Gorshkov, maybe I'm a little distracted. Not trying to be, but I am patrolling.

You would love Russia. There are many potatoes, lots of trees, monsters to fight. Dimensional shear radiation detection increasing 7%. 14%. Velia. We should investigate. This could be dangerous. 32% dimensional shear radiation building towards quantum events.

Geez, buddy.

We should move to an observation position. 45%. 47%.

Okay, okay, okay, okay. Let's go. Let's go.

I start following his. His lead.

Yeah. So he directs you up the hill.

Okay.

And you can see, like, this flare of blue light from the other side of the hill, and you get to the top and in the distance, the ley line bridge is just this cascade. Cascade of energies.

Yeah.

Fluctuating between varying shades of blue. 98%. And you see this, like there's this. And it goes out for a moment and then there's this ripple of blue at the center of the bridge. And this is miles away. You're zooming in and you see like this coruscating circle as this rift opens in the middle of the bridge.

Gorshkov, begin recording.

I have been recording. Literally, I do not stop recording. It is always recording. I even record. You do not go poop. But it would if there were poop time. I would record.

Thanks, buddy.

So you. You see this vaguely, this head of something emerge through the rift and you think it's small. Then you realize, no, I'm really far away. That must be massive. It looks vaguely like the head of a dog, but there's tentacles hanging off one side and it like lashes around. And this rift doesn't seem like it's going to be getting any larger. And then the thing pushes through the rift. The rift ripples and expands and this creature that has to be the size of at least a van, maybe pushes itself out onto the bridge. This huge, dark, massive beast, padding forward on these huge taloned feet, comes through the rift, looks around. It's mouth moving soundlessly. The rift snaps closed and it charges into the ruins of Old Detroit.

First question, as a player, as a Rifts player, Henry being one, would I recognize this creature?

No. Well, let me ask this. Is this.

We have established that. That Mike liked big monsters.

Yeah. Yep.

So here's the question. Did Mike and. And Alex, this will be yours to answer. Did Mike always get the newest rifts books? The moment they came out.

He's about three, four months behind.

Okay.

Had to save up.

That's not bad. That's pretty good. Okay, so in your last session, when you guys defeated John Villain, he had two of these as his servants that you fought. And you're pretty sure Mike called them dark Behemoths?

Holy moly. Okay.

Don't remember a ton because you were super high.

Of course, as is tradition is Korshkov. Is that what I think it is? Is that a dark behemoth?

You know this creature? I'm impressed. Will you.

Oh, yeah. We barely survived our last encounter with two of them.

Now, yes, we. We do not call them this in Russia.

What do you call them in Russia?

Take dog, because you shoot them a tank.

Such eloquence this Russian language that it

is most beautiful language. In world.

All right, so at this point, is the rift still open?

No, the rift is closed. And the bridge kind of goes back to its kaleidoscope of fluctuations.

Okay.

And Gorshkov says it is some distance from us. It would be unlikely to find our scent. I suspect we are out of its hunting range.

Right, Right. Safe for the time being. But boy. Boy, howdy. Fellows are gonna want to know about this in the morning.

Why?

Well, at the very least, to freak out Drum, since he's a bit of a, you know, precious asshole.

Yes, this is agreeable.

Then after staring at the, you know, the area, you know, I'm not fixing to wake anybody up. That was the whole point of me taking night watch in the first place. So I'm going to resume the night watch and trolling.

I got a small, quick question.

Yeah?

As a practitioner of magic who hasn't actually been exposed to a heck of a lot of magic, Would a rift suddenly blowing open in the Leyline next door wake him up?

If you were a Leyline walker, I would say yes.

That was my thought.

Same or a shifter, maybe. I'd give you.

It was just whether or not, like, you know, he still gets this. He's still coming to terms with the whole weird tingly that he gets from magic and stuff. And. And like, whether or not that that would set a skin crawling enough to wake up going like, what the is going on? Was a question.

Your dreams might be interesting.

Let's say you get the moment the rifts opens. Your dreams get super weird.

You have no idea what he dreams about now.

Yeah, you literally having that dream that Weird Al described the song Stuck in a closet with Fanna White.

Weirdly enough, that was what I was thinking.

Yeah, they just get super elusive and very strange. But the rest of the night passes uneventfully. Guys, wake up. Good morning, sun. What do you guys make for breakfast before you set out into the ruins?

We prep some tribute food.

Okay.

I appreciate it. Thank you.

Greasy potatoes.

Listen, Bacon. Smoked potatoes.

That does sound better.

I cooked yesterday. So Troy's gonna sleep in and let somebody else take care of breakfast.

Henry can step in on that. I'm waiting for people to wake up anyways to tell them, like, oh, check it out.

Riley wakes up and immediately starts smoking. Yeah, but for some reason, ever since the bear incident, Riley seems a little off put on the concept of cooking for around certain parties.

What, are we gonna find Mark today?

We're gonna try, you little thief.

Okay.

I miss Mike.

I miss Bacon and Mike too.

This is Why? I didn't want to wait. Bronson has said that 37 times since you decided we should camp yesterday. We know you miss Mike, man. Just bzzz, bz, bzz.

I miss Mike.

All right, guys. Hot potatoes. Hot greased potatoes. Start hucking potatoes at people.

Yep, yep. Totally do the claw peel.

So you guys eat?

Yeah.

I assume you're not taking the Mountaineer?

No. Yeah, yeah.

Why have the mobile billboard?

Do you want to like stash it somewhere? Like park it in the woods or something?

Yeah, that was kind of my plan.

And for what it's worth, when we do breakfast, I let everybody know what I saw last night. Weirdest thing, guys. Portal opened. What looked like a dark behemoth.

I thought Mike made those up. Those are real thing.

I mean, I was never the one buying the books, man.

Could barely afford the pizza fund.

You know where Henry's money goes.

If Henry was anything like. I remember gaming with you way back in the day, Alex. I'm assuming Henry just brought pizzas all the time. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. That was like core to his. Yeah. Yeah.

He would just show up with like. These are three rejected pizzas. Bam.

Rejected. Wink. Oh, there's too much pepperoni on this one. I had to turn it back.

So, Jacob, you're pretty sure Mike threw in the dark behemoths because he had just gotten Sidescape before you guys fought John Villain.

Oh, boy.

But it ran into the ruins, right?

Yeah, it ran into the ruins. Where we're going.

We're going to go under the ruins.

Hey, Bosephus, can something in the size of. Can something the size of a van fit in the undergrid?

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Why I turned back to you.

Okay, you're right.

I am itching to move. I am itching to get out there. I am like doing that cat pacing thing that large cats will do when they're getting agitated and impatient.

Your back's twitching a little bit.

Just a little bit. Yeah.

Torben. Torben, you could tell, agrees with Mr. Cat. He's ready. He looks at the sun. We should get moving.

Oh, yeah. We were leaving early, right?

Yep.

I pop as many remaining cooked potatoes into my side pockets and I'm ready to go.

Riley pops two cartons of cigarettes into the sling bag he's carrying, along with his usual paraphernalia, plus the entire box of bullets.

Oh. Okay. You guys set out, climb the hill, get a morning view of Old Detroit, and then angle towards the thorn crown, where you will if Dromedary and Torben keep wanting to call him Erasmus. For some reason, that's the techno wizard who's not here. Are correct. Will be a path down to the broken grid. And you pick your way. Occasionally you'll see chunks of old road sticking up out of the grass. This is not a full forest, but there are trees here. And there you see the remains of what must have been large concrete buildings that are just down to foundation and hills and odd places that you're pretty sure are probably just piles of debris that have been reclaimed by nature. And as you get into the Thorin Crown, you can definitely tell it's this cluster of crumbled cathedrals and once grandiose buildings tangled in vines. And when you're this close, you can see there's bones and dark iconography amidst the greenery. NPC. What specifically, other than magic, can Mr. Cat smell?

Thank you for reminding me, because I was thinking about this earlier. So the things that I can find, I can sense supernatural beings, I can sense psychic and magic energy. I can. I can also judge location and distances of sounds. I can recognize prey by sound. And then I can also do tracking of supernatural sigh. All that stuff by smell. And it varies whether or not it's latent or active. Now, what you reminded me of was that I totally forgot to say this earlier, but my intention was pretty much from the moment we started this journey, to just kind of keep paying attention to that sense. Keep it open, you know, smelling and listening into the environment to see if I feel any of those pings as opposed to just doing it like, you know, on a reflex or something.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Oh, quick note. I am grabbing the blue gray. Not blue gray. The blue flame lantern.

Hmm, Good idea. As you guys move into this thorn crown, Mr. Cat can smell magic in the supernatural just kind of ambient in the air most strongly around structures that are still standing. There's not a ton of them, but there's this one grandiose cathedral that you know for certain there are supernatural evil creatures within. You can just smell them. The smell wafting out is noxious and almost as bad as when you fought the Iron Zombie, but of a different flavor, so to speak.

Any similarity to the spider demon?

No.

Okay. My tail twitches. You know, hair is standing up a little bit more on end. But we have a mission. So not distract anyone with that. They don't.

And that's just because of his sensing the magicky. The magic sniffing or supernatural.

Supernatural.

Okay. Yeah.

There's no actual, like scent. Notable scent. Scent.

Troy would have a vague sense of rot and decay. And mildew amidst the natural smells of vines and weeds, but.

Gotcha.

You wouldn't smell the same sort of thing that Mr. Cat is smelling.

Perfect. Thank you.

So, dromedary leads you through this. This tangle of ruined buildings and trees and debris. On this. At first, you think it's. Is this. Is he just leading us randomly? But eventually, no. You come to what looks like a subway entrance that's partially covered by fallen trees. You can see stairways leading down, those kind of square subway tiles on the walls, and faded remains of old advertisements. Somebody says, yeah, yeah, Huey. This is one of the ones. And he's looking around really, really on edge. Eyes wide. Yeah, yeah, let's go. Come on. The ghouls don't come down here for whatever reason. Maybe they know something we don't know. I don't know. And unless you guys have some reason not to, he will lead you down into the broken grid.

Nope.

And as we are descending the steps into the darkness, I light the brass lantern.

Okay, so the lantern comes alive with this bright blue flame, and it is very useful illumination and not at all hot.

I experimentally try to light a cigarette off of it.

It does not work. So, as you enter, Henry's radiation sensors start slowly going up, not spiking. You're not in Chernobyl. But the level of radiation below ground is definitely higher. Significantly higher than above ground.

Okay, is that what we're calling Gorshkov now?

No. Chernobyl.

No, the. The radiation sensors are going off now. Gorshkov being like, hey, buddy, gotcha.

Oh, no, you can see these on your HUD since the. Since the Cyrillic was translated to English. You could monitor those yourselves, though Gorshkov does make a note of it.

Okay.

Okay. All right. Got it. Gorski. All right, guys, we're getting a little irradiated here. Getting close.

How do you know that?

Little thing called clink, Clink.

How many? Rontingen.

Gorshkov. How many what? Riley said so.

Gorshkov says at least three.

At least three.

Yeah, we're fine. I've decommed worse.

Cool.

All right.

Drum says his voice quiet. Yeah, so it'll be about. Let's see if we navigate, and we're talking about three hours to where I found that jersey you guys are so up in arms about and looking for. Quick and quiet. We can get there. You can do whatever you want to do. We can get out of here, get out of Detroit before nightfall. Sound good?

Sounds good to me.

What about this queen lady? Is she Gonna meet us on the way and take her. Offering. Do we need to leave in a mailbox or something? I don't. I just don't want to deal with her giving us any crap.

Yeah, you don't want to cross old rgj.

So Erasmus says I can take you to her court if you wish. And Dromedary's just. Yeah, you know, if she don't know where he is.

How about we size up where he found Mike? And if there's anything that leads us to actually want that trouble, then we go look at that trouble.

That seems fair. Sure.

Yeah.

Okay.

We're basically gonna go there, search, come back this way maybe, and then camp in this place overnight in the radiation so that we can leave the following morning and not fight undead. Right? That's the plan.

It'll be ideal.

Yeah. Sweet. He does not say sweet with that much enthusiasm.

So you guys set out into the broken grid. It is irradiated, partially flooded in some areas. And there are some tunnels which you can tell are definitely old subway lines. And some that dromedary leads you down are maintenance corridors connecting lines. A couple of them are, you can tell, are definitely basements of, you know, office buildings. And there's in one, you see old cubicles stacked in a corner mop bucket. You see lots of definitely pre riffs, you know, quote unquote artifacts. But broken mops and rotted shirts, there's nothing of value. As you move through most of it, you hear echoes from far away, Occasional spikes on the radiation. Everyone make a save versus disease.

I do have a thing I want to be doing too.

If you have a cloak, if you have one of the apocalypse cloaks on, you get a plus one bonus to whatever bonuses you might have.

So I did not succeed.

I am lucky. I rolled a 14 without plus one. That is 15.

I'm gonna double check. Under, over, over.

You wanna roll high?

Okay, okay, okay. I did, I did. I rolled high. I made it.

I'm sorry. Who failed and who passed?

Henry passed.

Passed, fail

as is appropriate for a chain smoker. For some reason I passed with by rolling a 20.

There you go. There you go.

It's 8 o'.

Clock.

You got some heroism on.

Oh yeah, that's right.

We got heroism. I forgot about that. I'm going to spend a heroism reroll that because that was a NAT one. Okay, that's so much better. That becomes a total of 16.

And nobody wants to see Mr. Cat when his hair starts falling out.

That's not a good luck.

Or needing to Vomit.

So I did pass.

We've seen Mr. Cat.

You guys are fine. But you know you are taking some significant rads as you move through.

Yeah.

Fortunately, you have these handy dandy cloaks.

This is going to.

And eventually. No good.

I was just going to say. I'm pointing this out now so you won't call me out later. As we're walking, Troy is absolutely making sure that Bronson is drinking water constantly because I want him peeing everywhere so we can find our way back by smell.

Very smart. How's Bronson faring? Just made me worry about.

I feel okay.

He has no idea I don't give

a shit about Torben. How's Bronson doing?

Bronson's got a. He's got a green cloak, right?

Yep.

Yeah, great. So that helps.

I mean, if you gave him one, he's going to wear it for sure.

Yeah.

Well, I guess then we should also be taking a look at Dram and Torben. Are they holding in there?

Drom seems fine. Torben is sweating, but, you know, he says he's okay.

It's also got a cloak.

If it starts hitting us hard enough that we notice it that quickly, it's bad.

Riley takes a drag and goes. It's only the equivalent of about three chest X rays simultaneously.

That's not bad. That doesn't sound bad.

I mean, there is a small difference. Rather than in a fraction of a second we're going to be standing it for hours. But, you know, I mean, there's.

Yeah, there's a slight difference.

We can trust Riley with health advice. Right? Right.

So eventually you take a side passage off one of the subway lines. You get to a chamber that was definitely at some point an electrical room. Riley can just tell, even though the door is gone and all the tech has been ripped out, the floor is the classic. I think of it as elementary school hallway tile. And there's a huge hole in the middle of the floor that's clearly been smashed open. Rebar is exposed to the concrete. And as you angle the lights of the blue lantern below, probably 15ft down is this huge pile of detritus floating on a pool of dirty, murky water. And Drum says, yes. So see, when a river gets high parts of the lower grid and he points through, the hole down there can flood, which can drive things up here, which is not good. Don't be here when that happens. But some parts, like, I guess that place down there, are always waterlogged. And you know that shirt you guys are so worried about? The one that Bronson is definitely wearing the Bengals jersey. I fished out that. And so you guys can see, you know, this trash and things floating on the, on the surface of the. This water.

Well, at least we don't have to worry about the jersey being sterile.

What would you like to do?

Henry turns to Bronson. Bronson, buddy, you smelling anything? I guess, same question, Mr. Cat. Smell Mike anywhere?

Well, I don't know. What. I don't have a smell mike.

Skill, perception.

Bronson leans down and starts. Let me see. Yeah, I think probably, but I mean if you, you have tracking though.

Oh, I do, I do. No, yeah, definitely no.

The smell of fish, dead fish and river water.

A little bit of 200 year old sewage refuse.

Yeah, yeah. I was about to say, strangely enough, even though you have been in obvious subway lines and sewer lines, it doesn't smell to you like a modern city. You could definitely tell it has been abandoned for a very long time though. You know, you have passed by humans, human like scents on the way here. It's not to the level that you would have expected.

Okay.

And Bronson says, I don't smell him. I should jump down there.

Oh boy. Putting a hand on Bronson's shoulder before you do that, buddy. Let me, let me. Let's see if we see any other stuff. I don't know. I'm trying to see any, any signs that might stand out as 19. It was 1996, right? Yeah, 96ish. Other debris. It doesn't quite fit the surrounding.

You can roll your perception,

man. I don't smell a hint of Axe body spray. I don't think he's been here.

Oh man.

I mean, he just floated downstream though. This water down below flowing.

It is not. It is.

Looks somewhat stagnant. Okay.

The moment.

Yeah, I would say that someone should jump in. I'm not going to. And I certainly don't think the cyborg should.

Probably not.

I think, however, jumping in there would be a pretty crazy idea.

Henry rolled a 19.

You're looking for things from that you would recognize.

Yeah, anything 1996 ish. That just is standing out from this general post apocalyptic refuse.

Like some Jordans or some jams.

Yeah.

A receipt for pizza. What was it? Pizza Palace. Yeah.

You see two things that could be from the 90s. You see a coffee mug and you see a pile of CD cases.

I retrieve both of them.

Okay. So remember, it is about 10 to 15ft down. How are you retrieving?

All right, so coffee mug. Definitely have that in mind. Extending my vibro blade. Dip that into the goo kind of hook it into the, you know, whatever you call the handle. The handle of the coffee mug. Pull that out, try and not get much goo on my. My body.

Let's. Let's say. Let's just say it's, you know, 12ft below you.

Yeah. You can reach it.

So you're gonna lean down. Listen, I mean, you're tall, but you're not that tall.

You lean down. I'll just. I'll hold your other hand as an anchor. You can lean down and grab it.

Sounds like a plan.

It's a great idea.

Yeah.

All right. Dip in.

No, I'm stopping this. I am a cat, but I'm also an extremely intelligent cat, and I see the flaw in this problem because, for one, I'm terrified of getting into water. But I also recognize how much that cyborg weighs, meaning Troy's not going to hold that cyborg up.

I got you, man. We've done this before.

I suggest you swap places.

All right, Mr. Cat, as per usual, when you're right, you're right.

Alternate idea that might be more successful. You got a grappling hook there, buddy?

Oh, yeah. Can you just grapple it?

It's a coffee mug.

No, no.

Grapple the wall while you're reaching for it.

Listen, I would trust me more than these walls, but you do you.

Oh, hold on, guys. Let me get that. All right, now, Riley, when you're right, you're right. So Henry turns around, shoots his grappling. Yeah. My grapnel launcher. Boom. Chunk. And then use that as a way to keep myself from falling in. Is my arm. That's going to get, like, my arm and some of my chest in for that.

You're like, £2,000 or. I don't know. You're ridiculously heavy. You don't need to be going in the water. Okay. I think Shot was trying to fuck with you.

No, he's got rocket boosters. He goes.

I mean, it's. Oh, actually, I. Technically, absolutely.

Like a stone.

Yeah.

Perhaps the super limber climbs all over everything, can leap, like, 60ft. I don't know. Perhaps the crazy should do it.

Throwing rude things out Now I have to die.

I'm just trying to. Over here.

Now, this is. This is probably a good plan. So, guys, I can see that there is a coffee mug down there. And apparently it looks like some CD cases that. I can't remember a good Soundgarden title.

Super unknown.

Thank you. Grab the CD cases, man. Coffee mug's probably gonna say Duncan's, and I'm gonna make you throw it back.

I was looking forward to figuring out what the coffee mug said. World's best dm gm.

Okay, so who's going in the hole?

He's gonna anchor himself to the wall. Henry's gonna anchor himself to the wall.

And then the crazies going down.

Right, Right.

Cause it's a pretty crazy idea.

He's not in a position to argue with Mr. Ca.

Fine.

You anchor to the wall, then you lower me down.

For sure, bud.

Riley's just smoking and shaking his head.

Here, just hold on to my peg leg. I'll go down head first.

Maybe your real leg, in case your peg pops off.

We're going to try and recover this stuff using this weird technique for no particular reason.

Riley draws his firearm.

Good one. Henry fires his grappling hook into the wall. Smashes in the concrete, secures itself. He lowers himself down. So Henry is hanging by his grappling hook and, you know, presumably bracing himself with his feet through this hole. And then he is lowering Troy down by his one good leg.

Yeah.

Things from this pile of floating detritus.

Correct?

This is correct.

That is correct.

Okay, so, John, you are hanging about a foot above this water, which is black and turgid and smells disgusting. There's all sorts of stuff floating on the surface. You can reach lots of things that you don't recognize, including some that are just obviously trash, like scrap pieces of wood, some kind of rivers, weed. And the coffee mug or the CDs.

Okay, well, as side note, I will break my nose on the way down because I would rather smell my own blood and taste it in my mouth than what's coming up from this.

That rules.

I have super good sense of smell. It's bad. I definitely break. He breaks his nose on the way down. So he just smells coppery blood.

Take one hit point of damage.

I fucking regenerate damage. I don't regenerate it because I need to not. But yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think the CDs are more promising. We all know what Mike like to listen to. If this was his stuff, then that's good. And I am worried. I think World's Best GM or something.

You have sdc, right?

I do. I have sdc.

Yeah. So I think a broken nose is probably just one SDC and not one hit point.

I mean, I got a bunch of hit points, too. I'm fine with whatever.

Not that it matters, but. Okay, so you go for the CDs.

Yeah.

So the first one you pull up says doom mods on it.

Okay.

More like Doom wads.

You don't particularly remember Mike playing a lot of Doom.

I dropped that one back in the water.

The next one is a Pearl Jam album. A few are classic hits from the 1950s.

I mean, pop it open. Does the CD in it still look relatively good?

You pop it open and it's a rewritable cd. Full of porn.

It does. Exactly.

Mike's personal collection.

I'll bring up a few of them. Well, just the fact that they're from our age and they're still in decent condition is promising.

It's pretty damning in terms.

Now, hold on. Jacob does bring up an important point. If you pop any open, especially the ones from the 50s, they are clearly burned CDs. They are not from the album of whatever it was, except for the Pearl Jam. That one's real.

Then they have handwriting on them. Does it look like Mike's shitty handwriting?

It does.

Fuck.

They're porn titles. They're adult films. Yeah.

Saving rights.

Well, I take the Doom mods. That one says do mods, but that is not in my tenure.

I take Bang Bus 36, and I think that's evidence enough. And I say, pull me back up.

Okay. Roll your perception.

Would any of my heightened senses affect this roll at all?

Absolutely. You know what? You can have advantage because you have heightened senses.

Okay. Got a perception bonus of zero. Okay. Oh, NAT20. Thank you. Advantage. So first one was a five, but with the advantage, got a NAT20.

So you see, like, you're about to be pulled up, and you see a book floating. And it's not one you've seen before, but it definitely has, like, some artwork. And then you see on the front of it, it says riffs. Dark Conversions.

Is that close enough that I can reach it?

You could definitely reach it. Yeah.

Okay. And I'll grab it. That seems important.

This is not a Rifts book that your character would be at all familiar with.

Dark Conversions.

Yeah. You've never seen it, but it says riffs, and it looks like palladium artwork up front.

Snag it. That is. That's a clue.

Yeah. You pull it out of the water, and underneath it is, like, this orange ball. You take a moment, you're like, I'm not sure what I'm looking at. And then it blinks.

Wait, the book blinks?

And I'll show you a picture of what you see. No, the ball seems to blink like a giant eyeball.

It is a Star wars trash compactor monster. Oh, wow.

Except.

Oh, fuck.

And then you see the outline of this Thing with tentacles and more eyes that open and clearly machine parts. And you realize combat has started while you're hanging upside down a foot above a giant pile of turgidlock.

A cliffhangering sob.

I just want to get up and get Gorshkov to load that CD. Just to see him react to Bang Bus 36.

No, it's not. You're gonna be like Pepin Gorshkov. Pop in some Pearl Jam as our battle hymn.

Stephen Ho.

Gonna roll it. Initiative, just for the audience's sake, I don't purposefully try to put Troy in these situations.

No, Mr. Cat does. I'm gonna consider this a dramatic change of situation and roll my insanity again, because now would be a bad time to be depressed.

I would.

Balanced.

Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna roll initiative just to kind of get a feel for where things are. Jacob, Mr. Cat, roll normally. Henry and Troy roll with disadvantage. And the monster, the broken grid cyborg horror is going to roll with advantage.

I'm going to be honest, this 8, which doesn't include the disadvantage, sounds appropriate.

And you don't have any bonus for your initiative under the fight dam.

Probably not enough to counteract the disadvantage, but let's find out.

Everybody knows what I mean when I say advantage, right?

Roll twice, take the better disadvantage, roll twice, take the worst. When he says disadvantage, roll twice and take the worst of the two.

Oh, okay. So eight still.

Yeah. Plus whatever you got from your initiative, which is on the fight page. If you're not on that page, think it's zero.

Yeah.

Oh, really? I'm surprised you still go faster than me.

I don't react fast, but I react.

Make it count what you do.

Yes. All right, Jacob, what's your initiative?

My initiative is a bangin 12.

That's not bad, Mr. Cat.

Mine is a nat 20 with my bonus for a total of 24.

Cat like reflexes.

I think you were eight, Henry.

Eight. Troy, five.

It's a bad time to get a five, I'll be honest.

Perfect. Mr. Cat goes first. And Mr. Cat, all he really knows is he vaguely sees something move in the water, and he sees Troy and Henry just freeze.

Would this ping on my senses?

Oh, it would not ping. No, it wouldn't. It's not supernaturally evil.

Well, is it supernatural at all, is the question. It doesn't have to be evil for it. Okay, got it.

Yeah, well, it's not supernatural or magic.

Looks pretty cool, to be honest.

It's horrific and monstrous, but is that

they freeze If I like lean over and look down, do I see anything?

You see a bunch of vaguely. I like orange orbs in the water.

I'm gonna grab Troy's legs and pull. Or Henry's legs.

Sorry, like, what are you doing a fishbone to me? Jesus.

I'm gonna grab Henry's legs to pull Henry up. So Henry holds on to Troy and pull Troy up. We're gonna get some Three Stooges action up in here.

Okay. What is your strength?

My strength is a modest 36

augmented nor normal.

My max carry weight just for carrying is 731 pounds.

Okay.

I suspect Henry weighs more than 2K.

But you're not lifting him, you're just yanking him back.

That's just the carry. I believe the lift is two or three times that. Like the. The stand in place.

Well, I could reference that real quick.

Never the book right here.

That sounds right. I haven't read those rules in a while, but I do know that the, like the drag is way higher than the. The carry.

Yeah. This is really just dragging.

Yeah. So I'm gonna say if that's your turn, you can just drag. You can pull Henry up essentially. You're not gonna. I'm not gonna say you're not gonna be able to pull him fully up because a round is a very short period of time. And I just looked up single action.

The max lift for a non supernatural character is times two. Yeah. So it's.

So you could lift 1400.

Yeah. 1462 pounds.

Troy, how much do you weigh? A buck fifty. Okay. You might use Henry as a jungle gym. And pull Troy.

He pulled you out. I'm tugging you back. Tugging you back.

Yeah.

Just don't let go of me.

I'm going to do slowly, slowly pulling you.

Yes. So he's slowly pulling Henry back.

Okay.

Riley is actually next.

Riley is going to do something incredibly stupid.

Yeah.

Okay. Were you feeling left out when you saw how incredibly stupid we were being? Like, I gotta get in on this.

There's a mug and some CDs in that filth.

Maybe you could grab my leg and pull me.

Uh,

yeah.

Sh.

No, I am actually going to find my power tab.

Find my God.

There we go. And dump a electric arc into the water.

Ooh.

Huh.

Okay.

Using of course, using my handy dandy revolver as the weapon. Focus effect to channel it through.

Yeah. So shooting electricity into water, we'll say that does double damage.

Ooh.

46 MDC. I like that a lot. Do I need to roll to hit? Since I'm trying to vaguely Target it, but I'm shooting it into the water.

So, I mean, theoretically, you could actually hit a wall or Troy. So, yes, I rolled a 14. Oh, yeah, that's a hit.

And you're going to ruin all those remaining porn CDs. What the fuck is that?

All right. Oh, okay.

13 points of damage.

Ooh, nice. Oh, man, I almost forgot something. 13 points of damage.

Good.

Everyone make a save versus horror effect.

Do.

Well, that seems rare.

I know. I hate me for requiring it.

I'm going to go ahead and sacrifice.

You lying.

Oh, I don't have savers. Oh, there it is.

I got an 18 total. The boat.

Oh, you're good.

Okay.

You're fine.

All right. 15. After burning a hero, you're fine.

19. So after burning the hero, you're like, all right, I'm guilty, you know?

22.

Jacob.

What?

You guys are fine. You're getting used to the many monstrosities of Riff's earth. So Riley fires a lightning bolt, essentially, into the. This pool of water. It ripples across. There's this metallic screeching. The tentacles start writhing. Like, have you ever seen fish caught in a net? As they're brought towards the surface, all these tentacles come up, out. This thing pushes up.

I've seen octopuses in a net being pulled to the surface. It's terrifying. Shit.

Yeah. This is similar. Henry, you go on eight. It's your turn. But it is also the broken grid. Cybernetic horrors. Turn. Guys, go simultaneously. What are you doing? You are being pulled up by Mr. Cat.

However, this would work. The simultaneous idea of retracting my grappling, winching myself back, while also simultaneously with my other arm pulling Troi out the filth.

If you were standing, it would actually look pretty cool, like you'd be doing one of those muscle poses.

Right. In my head. It's like I'm like this.

Yeah.

Where can I find the carrying capacities again?

Visual bits.

You're strong enough. I would say you could manipulate Troy in whatever way you wanted.

Damn right.

You've been doing that for a long time, buddy.

You won't be able to get out of the way before. Before it could attack you for sure. But you could be moving yourself out as well.

My concern is with Troy, so I want to remove him from danger. I feel like he is in more danger than I am, so that's my priority.

Yeah, I would say you can spend an action essentially just to heave Troy out of danger.

An action is spent heaving Troy out of danger.

Could you, like, throw him.

Okay.

Like a little Bit.

Yeah. Yeah. I assume that's what he was doing.

Yeah.

Tossing you over my shoulder, back onto dry land.

I like it.

That's what I would.

So that means when the thing surges out of the water, its tentacles wrap around Henry, lashing around his cybernetic body, and it is going to make a power tentacle attack. And that is gonna hit on a 17. Are you going to try to parry or dodge? I'm gonna say you can't.

I honestly was going to suggest I couldn't either. I.

Wait, are you being attacked or am I being attacked?

I'm being attacked. Yeah.

Well, I'm sorry.

Yeah. I don't feel like in my current position that would be appropriate. So I think you could carry.

Here's, here's. Here's an idea. Can I dodge for him even if like with a penalty, or make it a disadvantage as I kind of roll

him over, jerk him out of the way, swing him to one side?

I think he's just too heavy to be moved that agilely. He's two tons. But you could attempt to parry it if you wish.

All right.

I mean, who am I to argue with mechanics?

And parry's first free.

There we go. That's a D20.

Yep.

Well, yeah. You just freed up an arm by throwing Troy.

It's true. Just as true as this. Six eye rolled.

Yeah. No.

So we see Henry hurl Troy up through the hole. Troy goes up and nimbly lands on his feet because he's a crazy.

Yep.

But before Henry can refocus himself to defend himself, tentacles slam into him and wrap around him. You're going to take. And this will be to your torso. Hold on. Die. Don't get too excited. 13 points of mega damage to your torso.

All right.

And you are restrained. And these tentacles begin compressing. So that is another 20 points points of damage. You guys can hear Henry's metal body starting to crack. And you need to make an opposed strength. Check.

Sorry.

And you can.

He is still anchored to the wall in the cat.

You said 20 on top of the 13. Thank you.

Yeah. He's gonna get advantage to get not dragged down into the Merc. It's gonna try to drag you down. You can make an opposed strength chick. And actually I'm gonna let Mr. Cat roll his as well.

Nice.

So you'll both have to fail for Henry to get pulled in.

Got it. What is the role with the strength?

Yeah, strength.

How do work physical strength? Just roll and add your physical.

Well, you just. Yeah, well, so one thing you could do so D20, essentially one number on a D20 is 5%. So you can just times your strength by five.

Gotcha.

And roll percentiles.

That works. Whatever your strength is, multiply it times 5. Roll percentile. There's essentially we're both rolling and the only way we can fail is if both of us roll a 99 or 100.

Yeah, okay,

well if it's essentially if it rolls better than you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You want to get as far lowest roll as possible.

That's a 71 from Henry and a 33 from me.

I rolled a 41. So you guys, you know, manage to maintain Henry's position as it is trying to drag him down.

Okay.

And it is Troy's turn. You just landed on your feet above ground. Tentacles are wrapped around Henry. This monster's trying to drag him down. Mr. Cat's pulling on Henry's legs. There's the straining as something is strong enough to actually crumple Henry's mega damaged body.

So I am going to stride back towards them, catching the blade. The die just dropped on the ground up here with my foot kicking the blade up into my hands. And I'm going to do a called shot for the ten tentacles with the massive sword. I imagine that's probably two to three actions, but I definitely did not have the giant two handed sword in my hands.

There's a tech question there. Do you have to make a called shot against the only visible body part

or is it just.

I will say no if.

If it will increase my chance of severing them or causing them to break free, I would still do a quick called shot if that makes sense.

In this particular case, I don't think you have to do a called shot.

Okay.

If you were facing the full creature and the tentacles were just willy nilly.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. My strike bonus is not bad. And I need to transcribe that. Do you have the sword? Extra bonuses for the sword handy.

That sword.

They're in the chat. I guess I'll

heroism I can get them for you.

If he doesn't dodge or parry, which he probably won't, then it's an 11 plus whatever the sword gives me. I think the sword.

Yeah, I mean, he can't see you as you run in, so essentially he's not gonna have any chance.

So an 11 will hit and I think it's 46. But we're saying you're correct, sir. And we're saying with the current system, I will roll that and then it will add my regular damage bonus. For my.

I believe so.

That's correct.

Times two if it's robotic. Times three if it's supernatural.

But I'm neither of those. Yeah, I'm just augmented. Okay, that's fine. I'm comfortable with that. So that's gonna be. 5, 11, 14 plus 19. 33. 33 MDC.

Wow.

Plus it also would drain PPE and ISP if it has them, but I doubt it does. So I can roll that if you want though. So full on two handed.

Oh, you like a spin attack, man. It was.

It was chopping shit up.

So your total damage was how much? 33.

33. Being able to add 19 to it did help. Yeah.

Troy charges in spinning, sweeps this huge executioner sword slashes through these tentacles. Black blood spews out all over Henry and Mr. Cat. The thing screeches. The tentacles are yanked back down to the hole. It pushes its bulk up. There's just this horrible warbling screeching sound. The tentacles are thrashing. Blood is spraying everywhere. Bronson's going, oh no, Mr. Cat. What do we do? Drum is running. Torben is holding over his ears. And it is Mr. Cat's turn.

I'm gonna force myself to make a saving throw. I passed. I was giving myself a horror save versus being covered in that.

You're covered in disgusting eye.

It is pretty gross.

Your poor coat.

I know.

I'm a cat. It's gross.

It's disgusting. Oh, this is.

I got to lick it off.

I'll be what Bronson's for.

You're going to let a dog lick you?

Bronson would get so sick licking. Because he's not going to lick it and spit it out. He's just going to swallow it.

There. We just started the fan fiction.

Thank you.

Okay.

Anyway, you heard it here first, folks. We're shipping Mr. Cat.

Dear God.

So what am I doing is I'm going to continue doing what I was doing, which is pulling Henry.

Okay, I'm going to say you pull Henry completely out of the broken hole in the floor. The two of you like collapse back in a pile of metal and stained fur. His grappling hook to the walls slack. Henry's covered in sucker marks from where the tentacles wrapped around him and crushed his armor. And it is Riley's turn.

Riley's going to pump another energy electrical arc into the this SOB. Okay, that'd be a 15 to hit.

Yeah, for sure.

Eight mega damage. All the while screaming, die, you octopode.

Yeah. The energy arcs over the water and through it. You can see it's racing around. It's scorching it. The. This noxious smell of seared flesh and burning wires like melted plastic is coming up through the hole. It is Henry's turn and the monster's turn. But I'm not going to tell you what it's going to do, Alex. What is Henry going to do? You're laying there on your back. Riley is firing his electricity gun, whatever that is, down into the hole. You can hear the beast screeching and screaming.

Mad luck. Love to stand up and start blasting my, you know, arm cannon, as it were, but, you know, that was a big experience. That was pretty traumatic and a lot happened here, so, you know, sure. Again, forgive me for my lack of knowledge of the system.

Is there a way for me to

do a defensive action where I'm like,

all right, let me get up and

be ready if that thing pops out. But I'm not quite.

Simultaneous action is what we brought up last time. You can say, if he takes an action, I'm gonna go at the same time. But you're already simultaneously in him, so I don't.

Yeah, that's a good point.

When I asked about Areedy, that was what was brought up last time. That's what I remember.

I mean, if I'm the ultimate badass, I stand up immediately, no repercussions, and fire my Wilkes Remy 147 Sharper Shooter Rifle with 3D6 MDC damage into the water. Hopefully I roll, right?

Yeah, you just need a four

if

you want to go defensive. I mean, I'd say you would have advantage on any parry or dodge if it attacks you or Troy at the

very least, because you're still kind of behind me.

Right?

Well, I'm probably beside you now because I had to run up to Chompy Chomp.

Can I do a defense? Yeah, let's do a prepared move if that attacks any of my comrades, if that's all right.

Yeah, yeah. You set yourself ready to cover them. There's on your heads up display. There's all sorts of red warning lights going off. And worryingly, Gorshkov is not talking.

Oh, he's fucking concentrating.

Well, he's probably in here right now, just got the shit squished out.

Troy and Riley are looking down the hole. You see this thing just like lunge away down into the darkness, trying to get away. And it is Troy's turn.

I'm fine with that.

Yeah.

Okay, cool. Turn back and pick up the book. If it's fleeing, that's good enough. In Troy's mind. I'm not going in there after it, guys.

Quiet settles in the room. The water, which was roiling, begins to settle. And it seems like it has fled.

Let's get out of here. In case it's going for reinforcements.

Let's not forget to pick up the totally worth it loot.

I pick up the cd, I pick up the book. I say see if Gorshkov can process this. Hand you the cd. It's a dvd.

It's burning. There's a couple of different things. Your Doom mods, your Pearl Jam cd.

No, I didn't take those.

Oh, sh.

You get one and one CD only.

Fuck.

Actually, I give the CD to Bronson. I say, good job, buddy. We're on Mike's trail. Here.

Oh, thank you. I will wear it.

That's a great idea.

Oh, God. He's gonna be walking around with the fucking jersey and a CD like a giant medallion on his neck. Oh, my God. Reflective style.

He's getting some 80s rap rappers vibes going on at this point.

Very much. Yeah, for sure. That's exactly what he's gonna do. He's gonna run a chain through it. Yeah. So you have Riff's dark conversions, the cd. You look around. Torben is there. That was. I've not run into whatever that was. And Dromedary is gone. And you can hear like the sounds of feet echoing down the corridor.

That's cool.

What would you guys like to do?

We need to get Bronson to chase him down. So we're not stuck here?

No, we know our way out. Bronson marked a path for us.

Yeah, I don't want to lose Bronson to the wastelands. There's that dark behemoth fucking around.

Fair? Fair. My vote is we get the fuck out of here.

Let's do it.

Bounce.

Sounds like a plan.

Though, admittedly, we came here looking for Mike. We found evidence that Mike was here,

which we technically already knew.

More concrete evidence. But are we just saying, oh, we knew he was here and now we can leave, or we need to stay here.

Do we need to go back and lick our wounds or. I feel fine or slime in some

cases, because that might change our. Do we need to catch him or not?

Bronson should have some tracking abilities. I wonder if he can, like, now that he has. Now that he is here and with the CD that was just pulled out of the water, would he be able to maybe get more of a ping on something in the vicinity that could lead us.

Yeah.

He smells the CD. I'm sorry, Mr. Cat. Nothing around here smells like Mike. Except this. He smells the C. Oh, but I think that's off the jersey. And he looks at Troy smelling. And that book.

Yeah. I was about to ask what's the published date on that book?

The publication date is 2002. Yeah, 2002.

2002. I paused to double check the index because if it's really bad, I know it's legitimate risk book, it should be totally unuseful. Okay, that's notable.

The index at the back of the book.

Wherever they put it. Probably in the middle.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

If it looks legit. I've seen Rift books. It looks like a legit Riff book. From a year past when we came here. Correct. What was it?

Several years? 97.

97. Okay.

Yeah. You look at the back, there's ads for Nightbane and Between the Shadows and Night Lands. And on the back. On the inside of the back cover, which is normally just white. There are in Mike's. What you think of as Mike's handwriting is a strange series of numbers written in black marker. Dozens and dozens of numbers.

I said let him go. Let Drom go. Let's find someplace safe. Set up camp here. Look over this book before we leave. That's my vote. Riley, you usually have an opinion. You haven't said nothing.

I'm letting you do this. One

famous last word.

I'm going to sniff Riley to make sure it's really him.

Sniff who?

Right? Riley just said he's going to let Troy take the lead. I'm going to sniff Riley to make sure it's really Riley.

It's a doppelganger. No, no.

Riley looks at you and as if the stench off of him didn't give it away, Riley just his look alone, given that the man has like no filter is like whatever we do is fucking stupid.

Fuck it. Okay, so you guys have recovered a Rift's book. Riff's dark conversions. So if you have a physical copy of that book in real life, you can refer to it at any point in the game while we're playing.

What if we don't have a physical book but a digital copy?

Well, I believe you know how to get to Palladium online. No, you can recur. PDF is fine.

Okay, cool, because I have.

Hey, we'll have one of those. I got a printer at my house

and 200 sheets of loose leaf.

Five.

Will be in the grocery store lobby for a while.

That's right. Yeah. There you go.

He just reminded me that I printed fan fiction in the past. What a fucking Waste of paper.

I printed the mage books from World of Darkness. Mage Troy is smart enough to know that he's not smart. So he will hand the book off to Riley. Oh, yeah? Yeah. And you know, kind of point out. It looks like Mike's handwriting. I can't tell for sure, but it's got to be connected. Can't be a coincidence.

Riley's going to take a good hard look at those numbers that Mike scrawled on.

Looks like Mike's handwriting.

Do you have like the math skill can you use.

Does it look like a telephone number?

No, this is. There's way too many numbers to be a telephone number.

Oh, son of a bitch.

Coordinates.

What if he was just like that guy in that movie who was writing out all the numbers of PI?

That's what it is. That's what he was writing. You guys don't know exactly what it is right now. Okay, cool. Are you going to try to exfiltrate the broken grid?

I think we stay here, Justin. I think we stay here. Our original plan was to stay a night here. We move away from here. We stay the night. If we look, we spend one night looking through this book. If there's something else we need here, we can get it.

Before we go, Riley just looks at you, takes out his cigarette, which is only half smoked, tosses it in the pool of the water the thing was in, pulls out a fresh cigarette and lights it. That's the first time you've ever seen Riley waste half a cigarette?

If we're going to stay overnight, we should at least return to the entrance. I feel that it would give us more options. I do not wish to remain next

to the sinking pool. Not next to the pool, close to the entrance. Far enough to not tempt the ghouls to break their moratorium on coming in.

Gorshkov, you got some sort of handle on the chronology of the hour of the day? What time is it?

Yes, it is 1:00pm all right, I

got a bit to wait, but I'm still down.

You know, he entirely gives you the time in Moscow.

He's like, I thought about doing that, but I. Either way, I thought that would be too cruel, taking his word for it.

Korshkov would never be untrue to me. Tell me a half truth.

Okay, so you guys are gonna move back through the broken grid near to the entrance.

Near to the entrance. Set up camp, study the book.

I think there solid plan.

So you guys leave this room with its the hole in the floor to the pool. And you go just out of the maintenance corridor to one of the main subway lines. The trunks that you've been following. And soon enough, your blue light illuminates figures standing in the darkness. A half dozen. The best way to describe it is filthy, hunched, hairy humanoids with huge incisors. Cybernetic parts. Cyber rat men, basically, hunched in the darkness, watching you. And one of them holding up dromedary by one foot. Trespassing in Jala's domain. We found your little spy. One of them points at you. Now you have to answer to Rascat. You hear Torben mutter, oh, I was afraid of this. And we will end there costed by cyber ratman.

So we run afoul of rat gut.

I.

Which, yeah,

yeah, yeah. I didn't think we'd make it to the front.

I didn't write it down on my list of names for nothing.

There you go.

Well, that ruled.

That was. That was fun.

I did not expect combat. This.

I'm glad we did not have to fight all of that thing because it was doing dishing out a lot of damage real quick.

Well, so were you.

Henry's fine.

Henry's fine. Yeah, no, Henry's fine. Except for we don't. He's the only one who doesn't heal.

Well, you.

You dealt just about the same amount of damage to that creature as it did to my torso. Like, that was a lot.

It's a giant evil two handed sword, so that helps.

Yeah, it did take a fair amount of damage. That is certainly true. Riley did a lot of damage as well. So.

Yeah, the lightning shots into the water. Yeah, that was. That was smart.

That was badass.

Good.

How sustainable is shooting that for, like, I'm assuming you spend the ISP or PPE or whatever to like, can you do that all day kind of thing?

No, I cannot do it all day, but I can do it far longer than you'd suspect.

Okay, cool, cool, cool.

It's. It's one of the weirdly balanced spells as far as damage and effect. Effect to ppe.

Yeah.

So thoughts folks?

A fantastic time as always. My only regret is that I didn't find myself with enough time to finish the previous sessions podcast before we started this. Because even though we got to the spider and I knew we ended with the spider, that fight was awesome.

It's. I like the addition of fleshed out NPCs, even when they're transitory. I had no idea that we were only going to see the other three for a couple hours in game time. I like the fact that I didn't anticipate that they were going to immediately part off.

Well, as someone that's listened to the special secret podcast, it's great.

It was. I enjoyed it.

Yeah. I will say that that one has taxed. Not taxed. Has pushed my expertise, my skills. There we go. Yeah. Oh, that battle is. I am. I'm having fun with it. Yeah.

Nice.

I'm hoping that the final result is going to be even more awesome.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I think it was fun even without any special effects. Not that I'm saying don't add them because I definitely like them. So you guys get 250 XP.

Okay.

Though the real treasure is the friendship you made along the way.

And the porn CD.

And the porn CD. Definitely.

It's porn CD from the 90s.

Yes. A ripped porn CD.

Yeah. So it's like, at best like 480p.

Oh, God.

Well, this is a lot of fun. Thanks again, Kyle.

Yeah.

This is the best Drift campaign I've ever run because when I read it the last time I was, you know, teenagers, so I was dumb.

It's the best one I've been involved in. It's also the only one I. I don't.

I don't remember the last time I played. So this is. This is great for me.

So the best ever that you've had been in as a player.

There's a lot of best by default coming out here. All right. This is the best game of riffs I've played in decades. I haven't played in decades.

Kyle, this is the best game I've ever played under you.

Yeah, that's very true. Yeah, it's necessarily true, which is the best kind of truth.

Come up with all these all night. Yeah, this is great.

Highest ratio of cat to dog interaction.

Hopefully the listeners are enjoying it.

I just hear Mikey Mason playing the best game ever in the back of my head at the moment.

Yeah, we've gotten a lot of good feedback and people are constantly chomping at the bit for more. So I think that's a good sign that we're doing something pretty awesome.

Excellent.

That rules. Well, we love how many voices there are in this game, not just from our gm, but across the board. I really appreciate everybody, but especially our gm because I fucking love Bronson.

Yeah. Yeah. I have no idea where the Bronson voice comes from. I really don't know. It's not an old prospector, sadly.

Yeah.

My favorite voice.

I've listened now to almost all of the Bastard Quest things that I don't think I've heard Bronson's voice there.

Yeah, no, I don't. It was. I would like to say I did a lot of work shopping on it, but, no, it was completely spur of the moment.

And see how it's kind of adjacent

to some of the.

Oh, turkey feathers.

Yeah. I don't know, I just figured a talking dog who's never been able to talk and just suddenly was able to would be just exuberant all the time about everything. Feels like, even bad things. Yeah. Oh, Mr. Cat.

His first words were, I will kill you.

Yeah.

Let's go ahead and close this out. Listeners at home, thank you for giving this a shot. Thank you for sticking with it. And we hope to hear from you more in our Discord server. You should drop by, tell us what you think, and then you should also drop by Bastard Quest Discord Server and listen to theirs, because that's a podcast that Kyle does.

That's right. Yes.

A lot of fun going on for quite a while. I think we're roughly equivalent in episode numbers. If not, you might have even surpassed us by this point. So that's pretty awesome.

Oh, gosh. Yeah, we have a bunch of them.

Yeah. So there's a. There's a. There's a good backlog there. If you haven't checked them out yet, you're. You're going to be set for a while. By the way, I'm npc.

I'm just Jacob.

I'm Alex.

And I'm still Sean.

And I'm Kyle. The best.

All right, folks, we'll catch you next time. Thanks for listening.

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 unlimited 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. In 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 Furbyguide 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 theglitterbois. That's B O I S and check us out [email protected] glitterboys 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.

Much like the Amazonian removed moves her breast, I too will aim for effective podcasting.

And then next session, we're gonna call it quit.

I think that's a wrap, guys. One thing I've always admired about Kris Kristofferson, his attention to detail.

I'm here for this.

Did you know he combed every single one of his hairs not together individually? Yeah, he had 17 different kinds of hair grease.

17?

You say 17?

Three were illegal, one was made out of people. Now, hey, wait a minute here. Good people. Oh, well, then bad people, but slightly illegal.