The Adventure Zone: Dust - Episode 3/Transcript

Transcript by the lovely volunteers at TAZscripts.

Travis: Previously on The Adventure Zone:

Travis: You see a pair of gloves on the table, they are workman’s gloves. At the tips of the fingers there are kind of… claws.











[Theme music (The Adventure Zone: Dust Theme by Griffin McElroy) plays]

Griffin: Should we go over clues first, or do you want to just hop right into this shit?

Justin: I think it’s very useful to do the clue recap. Dad, what clues do you have, Dad? I want to start with Dad. Give me a clue.

Clint: The first clue uh the, uh, is the uh…

Griffin: Real quick question: are all the clues going to take this long?

Clint: Silver dust! On the twin scars across the abdomen, refined silver dust, which we have to assume is coming from the silver mine.

Griffin: And the gloves, the gloves I found.

Clint: Yes, the gloves with the two blades.

Justin: I prefer order and method.

Travis: Use your little gray cells!

Justin: Use your little gray cells. The first clue: Jeremiah was confused and felt betrayed when he died. Ann didn’t want Dylan to talk. Silver dust on Jeremiah’s clothes. Ann grew up with Dylan and Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s blood was on Dylan. Jeremiah was celebrating, he was drinking a lot. He was—

Griffin: [crosstalk] He was married to Ann.

Justin: He was celebrating his marriage to Ann. I did these chronologically, so that’s kinda— you kinda gave away, yeah. Liam has claw gloves with silver dust on them.

Griffin: Uhh, yes. All good.

Justin: He was the murderer.

Griffin: Yeah, so Liam was the murderer, I kinda beefed it there. Cause I could’ve just like, werewolf attacked him. Case closed. End of arc, two episodes in, but I forgot I guess. And that’s just bad detective work, but I’ve got a lot going on right now, so… Um…

Clint: This Ann is not Anna, Augustus’s daughter, right?

Travis: No.

Griffin: No.

Justin: No.

Griffin: That would be fucking wild.

Travis: Why would that?

Griffin: Another thing, I got sort of accosted by two toughs—

Travis: Approached. I would say approached.

Griffin: Well, they were nice about it, but I was accosted by two toughs working for the Banshee, local sort of criminal ringleader in town, and Gandy got… feasted upon.

Travis: Got— got fed on. Feasted makes it sound like, “Oh let’s go crazy."

Griffin: Travis— you wanted a fucking hard arc, bro. You wanted a fucking dark tone I’m trying to give it.

Travis: Yes, but I also want appropriate word choice.

[Someone snickers]

Griffin: Okay, that’s fine.

Travis: Words mean things, Griffin.

Griffin: And so that’s where we left off.

Travis: I’m also— I have two names for said toughs. Ellis and Blackwood, named for listeners Lucy Ellis and Ethan Blackwood.

Griffin: See? Keep on tweeting folks, keep the dream alive.

Justin: Ann— Anna’s full name is Anna Cardium Cash— sorry, not cashew that’s wild.

Clint: Cashews!

[Everyone laughs]

Justin: Anna Cardium Parsons.

Griffin: All right, where are we picking up Travy?

Travis: When last we left, we’ll say that the feeding has just completed.



Travis: It was minor.

Justin: Skipping the whole feeding?

Travis: It’s just like eating a sandwich, you know what I mean? This is straight to business. People always want to romanticize vampire feeding, but this is just like, “I’m hungry, I made a sandwich, gobble gobble.”

Clint: Yeah, but it’s not that much fun for the sandwich.

Travis: Well…

Griffin: Maybe.

Travis: You know, maybe? You don’t know? Maybe the sandwich is like, “Yay, my purpose!”

Justin: “I did it. I reached the culmination of all my dreams.”

Travis: “I’ve done it, I’m a sandwich.”

Justin: If you’re a sandwich and you have dreams other than getting eaten, I bet your parents are like, “Oh Jeffrey…”

Travis: “Stick to what you know.”

Justin: “What a wonderful world that would be. I would love for you to be a district attorney also."

Clint: “We should have never given you those participation medals.”

Travis: “Oh, we encouraged you too much Jeremy the Sandwich.” And also Errol has been approached by Ellis and Blackwood. I would like to resolve that first.

Griffin: Yeah sure, are they carrying heat? Are they packing heat?

Travis: Let’s say probably? They’re not like pointing guns at you or anything. They have so far been incredibly civil. They seem reasonable.

Griffin: It’s kind of important, I feel like, for Errol in this situation to know if they’re packing heat. I don’t know if there’s a roll I can make.

Travis: Do you have like a perception roll you could do to see if maybe you like smell gunpowder?

Griffin: There’s Figure Someone Out.

Travis: Okay, yeah, go for that.

Griffin: This is embarrassing, I’ve been packing and I packed my dice up.

Travis: Oh, I thought you were gonna say like Errol’s been packing heat.

Clint: He’s packing.

Griffin: I mean, he is. That is a… six plus mind I believe? Yes. And my mind is zero. I failed.

Travis: Okay. You suspect that they are since they work for a crime boss, but you cannot pinpoint where that would be or if they are for sure.

Griffin: I say:















Clint: [laughing] “What’s going on with Errol?"





Griffin: And I reach down and—

Travis: Uh, I should also clarify. Ellis is doing all the talking, Blackwood seems actually fairly uninterested in you and is just kind of looking up and down the street. You know, keeping an eye around.

Griffin: Sure. Oh it— good. I reach down, thumb and forefinger like I promised, and grab the hilt of my— what’s it called on a gun? Not a hilt. But like—

Clint: Grip.

Justin: A handle?

Clint: Grip.

Justin: Grip. Grip, grip grip grip grip.

Griffin: Grip, yeah, and I pull it out of my holster, and I fling it to the side of the street and into the community watch alarm bell.

[Clint laughs]

Griffin: And I think when that happens, and this is not me just sort of retroactively trying to screw you over, there is a thing on my character sheet about my neighborhood, my territory, that says “People here work hard to keep the streets safe.” And so this is sort of how I’m envisioning that being realized in the world.

Travis: Okay.

Griffin: And I think when the bell rings as my revolver collides with it, I think just, even though it’s a late hour, I think porch doors— or front doors open up and porch lights come on. And then there’s, you know, five or six people now probably weapons in hand, looking at this scene.





[Ellis gasps]

Travis: He looks offended.



Travis: He offers you a business card.



Travis: And they head off.



[Justin laughs]









Justin: Are you as sure you’re as well-liked as you think you are here?



















[Chorus of werewolf neighbor laughs]

















Griffin: I go pick up my revolver, kind of sheepishly.



{11:32}













Griffin: And I holster my weapon—



Griffin: I would love to regroup real quick, just so I can— I have the, what I believe, what Errol believes I should say, is the murder weapon. I would love to get that to my companions. I know we talked about how that process was kind of automatic, the info-sharing process, but I think it’s weird that there wasn’t any blood on it and so I’m wondering if there’s something that—

Travis: That’s great, ’cause I conto— concocted in my mind this whole system of like psychic paper—

Griffin: …No.

Travis: Where you can write down notes and they would get it on their notepad, but this is way better. You guys go talk to each other, let’s say.

Griffin: I don’t want to strong arm Gandy into like spending a beat investigating these gloves or whatever, but like these are razor-sharp gloves with silver dust on them. It feels pretty, I don’t know, it would be good at least to rule out Liam.

Travis: You are a werewolf with certain senses, I mean, blood—

Griffin: That is true, I guess I could just—

Travis: —is probably something you could detect.

Griffin: Yeah, but you told me that I didn’t detect any blood on it though, is that just by looking at it?

Travis: Yeah.

Griffin: If I went a little bit deeper. Mmkay. I guess I could roll Bloodhound on it.

Travis: I mean, even if you just wanted to go like, basic level investigate and check it out and look at it and just straight-up roll if you don’t want to do a corruption point. I mean you could— you’re not inept, you could do just kind of basic investigation.

Griffin: Bloodhound doesn’t give me a corruption.

Travis: Oh, excellent.

Griffin: I’ll just go ahead and do that, ’cause I don’t think that would take an hour.

Clint: Well Gandy has Tracking. She has a spell called Tracking.

Griffin: Yeah, that would be good if I think we need to figure out— Let me Bloodhound it and see if there’s actually blood on it.

Clint: Okay.

Griffin: ’Cause if there’s not, like, that would be wild. So I’ll roll Bloodhound. That is a… six? And a four, that’s a 10, plus blood is a 12.

Travis: Great, so here’s what you can tell from it. There is no blood on it, but it was recently cleaned and oiled. And you know it’s been thoroughly scrubbed, and it’s fairly recent. Now whether that is because it had blood on it or because you know, Liam just takes care of his tools is unclear, but it does seem like it has been scrubbed clean in the recent past.

Griffin: All right, I— what this power says is I pick up a scent from whatever I do, and I can follow that scent to the person who has them. And I’m assuming I’m just kind of doing this in the street after putting Carrion Street back to bed, all embarrassed-like. Is this sit—

Travis: And just so you know, Derek is still watching you sniff some gloves.

Griffin: Great, great.

Travis: So just like know that.

Griffin: No, I’m being— yeah. I’m very aware of that. Is that scent— are those stink lines just leading me right back to Liam on the porch of the—

Travis: Yes. I mean, these are Liam’s gloves. You have no reason, especially since the stink lines, you have no reason to think that anyone else has interacted with these.

Griffin: All right. Let’s— I think let’s regroup now.

{15:21}

Travis: Okay, so Errol heads to the town square. Now Gandy and Gus, you do not know of Errol’s regrouping plan, so I’ll turn to you. The feeding has completed, it was brief. And what you found Gandy, is as it happened — and whether this was something on your end on or something that happened during the feeding — it kind of just blanked out that time period as it happened. You try to recall the feeding, and it just fuzzes out whenever you get close to it in your memories. Now Gus, you were there to witness, you kept an eye, you made sure it didn’t get out of hand, but it was brief. It just seemed like Slate took just enough to feed and move on.

Griffin: Are they still there?

Travis: Yeah, so that’s wrapping up and they got the first information about who would be interested, and the question was asked “Who is the Banshee?” And now! [dramatic gasp] I shall answer that question from Marcus.







Travis: What, you want me to just be like, “Oh yeah, it was Steve. Steve did it! Go get him.” Like Marcus is in a cage downstairs, he doesn’t know shit about shit!



Travis: What did you want to know?

Clint: I wanted to know if it was Steve!

Travis: It wa— Listen, I can tell you right now: It was Steve.

Griffin: Let’s get him!

Clint: Aha!

Travis: Go get Steve. But you’ll never find— Steve is a ghost!

Griffin: I ring the bell again.



Travis: Steve is Keyser Söze. So what are you two gonna do now? If you want to just say like as you’re heading out of Slate’s home, you see Errol in the street. Save a little bit of trying to figure out why you would go looking for Errol, but I don’t know, unless you guys want to do that.

Griffin: Yeah, let’s have 10 minutes where we just wander down the streets of Dry River just like:





Travis: He’s a ghost!











Travis: I’m gonna say that you are having an intimacy moment right now.

[Griffin laughs]

Travis: So I would like you both to do what that— what happens when you have an intimacy moment.

Clint: Okay.

Travis: So for the Spectre, when you share a moment of intimacy, physical or emotional, with another person, you hold one. Whenever they get into trouble, you can spend your hold to be there.

Justin: Cool.

Clint: With the Wizard, when you share a moment of intimacy, physical or emotional, with another person, decide whether you care about them or not. If you don’t, they go about their business as normal. If you do, they take negative one ongoing to escape until they get some intimacy somewhere else.

Travis: So do you care about Gus?

Griffin: This is a big decision to be made after the ghost cashews thing.

Travis: Hey listen, you can’t introduce the idea of ghost cashews and just like, and I, the GM, am like, “Meh, I don’t care about ghost cashews.” Of course I care about ghost cashews! We’re making a moment here. And you know I think that that happens whenever someone has a delicious Parsons cashew. A moment is made.

Griffin: Of ghostly cashews that were murdered in a terrible passion.

































Justin: And he digs in his pocket.











Griffin: So let’s go over clues.

Travis: We did that already, so if we want to do like the propeller spin. And that’s where we’re at—

[Clint makes cartoony spin transition noise]

Justin: What was— can we actually go over the earlier clues? My clues were just from the last episode. So if we have any, like, earlier stuff that we think might be germane.

Griffin: I think we got everything actually.

Travis: Yeah, the silver dust and Dylan’s thing, “she” wouldn’t want him to talk. That’s— well I have actually also been keeping track of what I know versus what you find out.

Justin: Would it be worth, like, should we try to… Let me ask you this, Travis, are we at a point now where we can have a conversation and try to piece together…?

Travis: Absolutely.

Justin: Okay. I think—

Travis: I think that would make for good radio.

Griffin: Let’s have that scene. Yeah. Okay so let’s regroup now that everybody’s all cashewed up.

Clint: Mm!

Travis: Is that how Errol sounds?

Griffin: Uh, no that’s how Griffin sounds.

Travis: Okay.

Justin: So who’s cashew— so Griffin McElroy, Griffin Andrew McElroy, Andy to his friends, is saying to me, Justin, that I’m cashewed up.

Clint: Tyler to his friends.

Justin: Yes. Ty-ty Baby.

Griffin: Um… yeah. So I imagine we’re like around the Black Maria at this point, sort of in the town square.



























Griffin: And I unclasp a pendant that I have around my neck and hand it to Gandy, and I say:





Travis: And if I may, Griffin, so that it doesn’t seem like Gandy is a shitty wizard, just because you couldn’t be located magically doesn’t mean that there isn’t other, like— that’s a thing that people often take for granted in this world with magic and wizards and location spells [Griffin: That’s fair.] and everything is like, private eyes can just find you.

Griffin: Yeah, that’s fair. I still give it back to her and say like:





















[Gandy sighs]







Travis: Just to clarify, when you— the instructions on the back of the card do explicitly say to come alone.

Griffin: Yeah fuck off, no way. [Theme music fades in] I mean, cool, thank you business card, but eat my shorts.



{28:20-33:26} AD BREAK

Travis: So you head into the sheriff’s office. Connors is there, of course, at his desk. He’s got his feet up on the desk but still very much awake, just kind of keeping an eye on everything. Do you want to check in with him or just head on over to Dylan?

Justin: I feel like it might be worth— If we have time, like, is it worth seeing if he’s discovered anything? Because they were working on it too, weren’t they?

Griffin: Yeah, we catch the sheriff up on everything we’ve learned so far. [Travis: Yeah, yeah, yeah] Do we want to tell him about the marriage? I don’t see any reason to keep that a secret.

Clint: I think the more that we can use him, with his prescient powers to know if people are lying or not—

Justin: To what extent did they— I mean, he’s dead, right? I mean, what does it— I think it’s okay to— How much did he— did she want you to keep it a secret?

Griffin: Uh, she didn’t seem eager to tell me, but she didn’t tell me explicitly not to tell anybody. I think it’ll— [Justin: I think it’s fine] Oh no, she DID. She said to keep it a secret. Oh, well.

Justin: She said to keep it a secret? Okay, then don’t mention it. I mean, it’s your information to do with what you want. I wouldn’t, but it’s up to you.

Griffin: Okay. Yeah, Okay, alright, then we don’t tell him about that part. We tell him about everything else.









































Griffin: What time is it?

Travis: I think at this point you’re in like the 3 to 5 [a.m.] period.











Travis: And just to clarify, ’cause that was our first mission, Johnny Mathis was Abigail’s husband previously. I don’t think we had said it out loud on the show yet. I’ll let everyone know at home: we’ve already met Jonathan… the ghost!

Clint: [Imitating dramatic music] Bum bum bumm!

Griffin: Really?

Travis: Yeah. That was the ghost that—

Griffin: That was who that—?

Travis: Yup.

Griffin: He seemed awfully cavalier about his son being framed for murder.

Travis: He didn’t know anything about it, remember? He said he didn’t know— all he knew was that the spirit had come through and had felt surprised and hurt.

Griffin: Interesting, okay. I completely missed that.







Travis: Okay, so you head over to the cell where he is still faced away from the cell. What do you do?

Griffin: First off, I say:









Travis: He leaves.





























Griffin: That was fucking great.

Clint: That was.







































Travis: Okay, so what’s the plan re: the Banshee?

Justin: The Banshee, right?

Griffin: Yeah, I think that going to the Banshee is the next thing, right? Because after we go to the Banshee, I feel like we’re gonna know, if not everything, enough to know who to go for.

Travis: Cool.

Griffin: And so we can go talk to Liam now, but like, why not go rule out this other thing first, and then we can make a call?

Justin: I’m gonna be seen and heard, but not felt. I was going to do the invis thing, but with a name like “the Banshee,” I’m pretty sure he’s gonna be able to know sort of my whole thing. Sort of, you know, my… bag o’ tricks.

Griffin: You’re… what you do. Um, I mean, he told me to come solo, so I think the best thing is for me to appear to come solo and have the two of them in sort of… ready to launch a fucking rescue mission, as will probably be required. Gandy, I don’t know what you are capable of in that department. I don’t know if you have, like, stealth capabilities.

Clint: I have a— she has a spell called Veil where you can spend one hold to make yourself invisible from sight, but it’s just for a few moments, so I don’t know if that’s gonna be so great—

Travis: I mean, that could give you the advantage if you want to come in and kind of scope out before revealing thyself.

Clint: Well, like everything else, it’s tied to one of her artifacts, so, I would love to try to do that [Travis: Yes!] and work undercover.

Griffin: Yeah, let’s do that. Um—

Travis: Okay, so, as you head out the door towards— you pass Connors on the porch.















Griffin: And we head to the Banshee!

Travis: So you approach a house, I assume you follow the instructions, the— it’s in what appears to be an abandoned home, all boarded up, the roof is caved in. And the instructions lead you around the back of the home to the storm cellar door.

Griffin: Fuck.

Travis: The lock is rusted, but when you try the door you find that the actual arm that the lock is on isn’t attached to the door, it opens cleanly. And as you head down you find a well-lit kind of foyer? Where Ellis and Blackwood are waiting for you, and I assume, tell me the prep.

Clint: Well, I sh— I need to. I’ve got to channel to do the spell, so that is a nine plus two for mind, that’s 11.

Travis: You’re totes veilèd.

Griffin: What’s that give you?

Clint: Okay, all right, all right, Veil. “Spend one hold to make yourself invisible from sight for a few moments.”

Travis: Okay, you’ve done that.

Clint: And so when I channel, if I roll 10-plus, I get three holds.

Justin: There we go.

Travis: Okay.

Clint: Okay. All right.

Travis: So you are veiled.

Griffin: Yeah, so you could just keep veiling yourself.

Clint: Okay. And is Augustus, are you invisible?

Justin: Uh, you know I wasn’t gonna be, but if you’re gonna be it seems weird for me to not be.

Clint: Okay.

Griffin: I fucking love that scene of the two of you just like poof! “What’s up?”

Justin: Alright, yeah.

Griffin: I make as much noise coming down the stairs as I possibly can to hide the fact that my two companions who definitely can still be heard creaking the floorboards are coming down also. So I’m coming down like:



Griffin: And I reach the bottom of the staircase and everybody else does too—







Travis: And Blackwood kind of lays a hand on Ellis’s shoulder.







Travis: And he pulls back a curtain, and you enter a room. And there is a well-polished table, richly decorated room. It smells nice, you know, a little floral but not sickly sweet. Just enough that you can tell someone took the care, you know, to kind of spruce up the place a little bit. And sitting at the table is a little old woman, about 65 I would say? And she gestures for you to sit at the opposite end of the table.

Griffin: Uh… I do? Ensuring that I make a lot of noise as I like scoot the chair back— I’m very concerned that somebody’s gonna hear my friends, so it’s just like [slow chair scooting noise] as I scoot it back, and I sit down and uh—













Griffin: Before we go any further, can I actually roll Face to a Name to see?

Travis: Absolutely.

Griffin: That is a one, uh-oh! And a six. So that’s a seven, and I add my— what faction are they?

Travis: Uh, well.

Clint: Spectre, right?

Griffin: Well, we don’t know that. Doesn’t seem like it.

Travis: They are Night.

Griffin: Night. Okay. Uhh… okay. So that is a… that’s not good.

Travis: You rolled a one and a six, so that would be a seven.

Griffin: Yeah, so it’s a seven, plus one is an eight.

Travis: Okay, so here’s what you know about the Banshee.

Griffin: Daria Cross was the wizard who tried to transform me, and she was a part of the Banshee’s like, team, or whatever and was kind of excommunicated after doing this spell to try to, uh, try to revert me back to a human— permanent human state. And because of that, I have been hiding Daria in Carrion Street [Travis: Yes.] and that is why— that is what I remember to be sort of our main point of contention.

Travis: Now, here’s—

Griffin: But I don’t know anything about, like, their operation here.

Travis: Right, so the Banshee is kind of a fingers-in-a-lot-of-pies criminal boss. And I will say that the reason — to flesh out the backstory between you and the Banshee with what you’ve just given me — I will say that maybe the Banshee was trying to leverage the fact that they knew you were a werewolf and wanted to be a politician, to maybe try to get you in their pocket a little bit. And that’s why [Griffin: Love that.] when this spell happened to cure you of that and kind of rob them—

Griffin: Oh, that's good, Travis!

Travis: Hey, thank you very much.

Griffin: So it’s not a like, they were upset that one of their team members did a job outside of the purview of the Banshee, but rather that because of what Daria did, they lost a foothold. That’s fucking great, yeah.

Travis: Hey, thank you very much! And so the thing about the Banshee is nobody knows much about them. And everybody knows of the Banshee, everybody knows the kind of crime ex— you know, network and web, but as far as personal information goes, nobody seems to know anything about the Banshee as an individual. But yeah, other than that you don't know much about the Banshee.

Griffin: No, but I imagine that like, criminal ringleader complicating things in town, not my fucking favorite person here. Like, I wanna explain because they have been so congenial towards me, but like, I fucking know what they do here. I know what they— I know what their stuff is.













Griffin: I am lying. I’d like to roll to deceive. There’s a move called Mislead, Distract, or Trick.

Clint: And your rolls have been shitty lately, too.

Griffin: Yeah… That is a five and a two, another seven. I have zero mind. “On a seven to nine, pick two. You create an opportunity, you expose a weakness or flaw, you confuse them for some time, or you avoid further engagement.” Um… I want to say maybe create an opportunity and confuse them for some time maybe?

Travis: Okay. What opportunity would you like to create?

Griffin: Is the opportunity for my friends to remain concealed on the table?

Travis: Sure, yeah, we’ll go with that for some time.



















[Banshee laughs]

















Griffin: The hairs on Errol’s neck this whole time are fucking standing on end. Like, I— this— I want to sort of wave away any sort of narrative dissonance here because Errol’s whole shit is like trying to stop folks like this from hurting the people who they kind of prey upon. But at this point, like, he’s so desperate to keep Dylan alive that I think he’s probably willing to like bend the rules a little bit.

Travis: Well let me make it a little easier for you!







Justin: I think as Errol continues to struggle with this decision, Augustus materializes.



Griffin: Uh-oh!









Clint: Gandy visualizes— materializes on the other side.











Travis: And she slides an envelope across to you. And it soon as it reaches the front of you, the spirit that has been occupying the body in front of you leaves it.

Griffin: Oh, fuck.

Travis: Leaving behind the corpse of the old woman it was using to speak with you. And the Banshee is gone from the room.

Clint: Nice disguise!

Griffin: I— I say:



Griffin: Are the other two folks still there?

Travis: I mean, you can look.

Griffin: I look, are they still there?

Travis: They’re gone.







Griffin: And I open up the envelope.

Travis: So you open the envelope. A key falls out, a house key [theme music fades in]. You pull out the piece of paper that’s in there, and on one side is written an address. A local address, you can tell it’s here in Dry River, not far from where you are now. And when you turn it over, it simply says, “Don’t trust Connors.”

[Theme music (The Adventure Zone: Dust Theme by Griffin McElroy) plays]