The Adventure Zone: Amnesty - Episode 11/Transcript

Transcript by the lovely volunteers at TAZscripts.

Griffin: Previously, on the Adventure Zone...

Griffin: You just see... water. Then you see your body, and you are face-up. You look unconscious, and you are falling.















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

Griffin: The last slivers of sunlight cascade down the peak of Mt. Kepler and onto the scene at H2-Woah, That Was Fun!, casting long shadows off the towering water slides at the rear of the park. The last member of the skeleton crew working here to prepare for the park’s closing weekend left around a half hour ago. Now it’s just the three of you with Barclay in tow, standing at the entrance, readying yourselves for the battle to come. And Duck, just on cue, Minerva appears right in front of you. She turns and she looks at your surroundings and she says,



Travis: Do we see Minerva?

Griffin: No, only Duck can see Minerva.















Griffin: You step away, and Minerva follows suit, and she says,









Griffin: She laughs and she says,





Griffin: When you mention this vision, again, this vision of Minerva that appears in front of you is not very— there aren’t any specific features that you can pick out, but you can tell she kind of takes a step back and looks kind of nervous as you say that. And then sort of realizing that "Uh-oh, that's probably not good for getting him psyched up," she says:





Griffin: And she says,



Griffin: And then she disappears. And with that, the light finally fades as the sun finishes creeping back behind Mt. Kepler, and floodlights fastened to tall metal poles all around the park kick on automatically, illuminating the battlefield. Barclay gathers the three of you together and says,

















[Clint and Travis laugh]



Griffin: Barclay says,



Griffin: And he gestures you all toward the wave pool in the center of the park, and he says,







[Justin laughs]

Travis: Okay, well then Aubrey will volunteer as tribute.

Griffin: M’kay.

Travis: I assume this is like a slope into it.

Griffin: Yeah, absolutely yes.

Travis: Kinda gradient thing. So she kicks off her super cool boots that are so so rad you guys. You know, they're leather, don't want to ruin them.

Justin: Wait, are they real leather?

Travis: No, fake leather.

Justin: There we go.

Griffin: Okay.

Travis: Fake leather. They're fleather.

Justin: [Laughing] As they say.

Clint: That's leather made out of feathers, yeah.

Travis: Yes, fleather.

Justin: I love when Robin Williams invents fleather.

[Clint and Travis laugh]

Justin: The whole basketball team looks great in a very humane way. [crosstalk] Then they win the game because of it.

Travis: [Crosstalk] Yes, it's really wonderful. Everyone is just so awed by their cruelty-free uniforms that they just let them dunk as much as they want.

Justin: "They've earned this one." The other team is cows.

[All laugh]

Travis: And she just kind of walks into the water, and then just kind of stands there and tries to think, "How would bait think?"

Griffin: I don't think you have to think that for very long.

[{7:20} “The Water Confronted” fades in]

Griffin: There are just a few moments of quiet that falls over the park, and then you all hear a deep groaning from the pipes below the park that reverberates up through the ground. And the flood lights shining down on the wavepool, they begin to flicker erratically, and then they turn back on as the pipes fall silent.

And then a small ripple forms in the middle of the pool and lazily rolls outward towards its edges. The ripple bounces off the perimeter of the pool and travels back to the center where it collides into itself, sending a single small droplet of water into the air. It hangs there for several seconds, and then crashes back down into the water with a massive, continuous splash.

From this turbulence an arm, thick as a truck and easily 8 feet long, pulls itself out of the water. And then another follows suit, and then the two arms hoist a massive school-bus-sized watery torso out of the pool. This vaguely humanoid shape pounds its enormous fist into the water, sending water cascading high into the air. And as it falls, the elemental now towering over your party begins lumbering towards you.

Let's start with Aubrey. Aubrey, what do you do?



Travis: And she, you know, hands him the keys.



Griffin: You toss him the ring of keys, and he catches it from the side of the pool and then sprints back to the control booth. And you see him quickly make his way into the booth and start fiddling with the panel. He smiles and knocks on the glass and the elemental turns to the sound of knuckles rapping against the glass in the control booth. You see Barclay with this big shit-eating grin on his face and he starts to wave, and he yells,



Griffin: And then he slams his hand down on a button on the control console. The elemental sort of turns away from this distraction and starts floating back in your direction. And then it seems to like, miss a step. And then it tries again and it nearly falls over as another small wave pushes past it across the surface of the pool. And then larger and larger waves still begin to just belt the elemental who pounds its hands into the water just trying to stay stable, affording you all a window to attack. So as long as the elemental is in the wave pool and the waves are active, you all take +1 ongoing for all actions against the water elemental. That just means you get a flat +1 bonus to everything you try to do.

Travis: Sick. So with that going, I guess I'm gonna like, hurl a fireball at it.

Griffin: Yeah, sure. Roll to Kick Some Ass.

Travis: So then that's eight, I rolled an eight, plus two plus one, so 11.

Griffin: Okay. On a 10+, you definitely hit it. You also get to choose one extra effect: you gain the advantage, take +1 forward or give +1 forward to another hunter; you inflict terrible harm, +1 harm; you suffer less harm, -1 harm; or you force them where you want them.

Travis: I'm going to say I'm going to grant +1 forward to Ned. Because I know Ned's got the NARF Blaster, and I'm trying to stand as distraction so he can line up a shot.

Griffin: Okay. What does that look like? What are you like doing to give him the advantage, like in fiction?

Travis: Well, and this is a line I thought of yesterday that I'm very proud of, Aubrey holds a ball of fire as this— you know, in her hand and says:



Travis: And throws it at his head, and in trying to like "Look over here, look at me, stupid!"

Griffin: Okay, you're just trying to gain its attention.

Travis: Yes. I feel like you guys don't appreciate the Aqualung thing.

Griffin: I mean, you just said Aqualung—

Justin: The problem was the several minutes of buildup I think.

Travis: Yeah, that's fair, but like how clever are they you know?

[Griffin laughs]

Justin: [Crosstalk] Hey, oh yeah yeah yeah.

Clint: [Crosstalk] Just for an Aqualung? But does that mean—

Justin: It's like in... you know in the— I love the moment in Casablanca where he's like, [imitating Humphrey Bogart] "Hey I'm about to say some dope shit. Here's lookin' at you, kid." Like, it's a little bit blunting.

Griffin: Okay—

Justin: "I just thought of something cool to say before I leave, Scarlet. Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." And then he opens the door back up. "What did you think?" It's so—

Travis: "Did you get it?"

Justin: "Did you get it?"

Clint: "I feel like it didn't really land."

Travis: "I didn't get as much appreciation from that as I thought. Can I try it again?"

Griffin: What— how much harm do you do on your fireball attack?

Travis: Two harm, and then with fire, another two harm. And because I rolled a 10+ I don't have to worry about the fire spreading in the water.

Griffin: Yeah, that would have been wild for me to try to get that going. But I think just last time, you do hit it, but it does not seem to be quite as damaging as you would have hoped because you are throwing a fireball at a massive creature made out of water. You threw a really good fireball, so it definitely still does some harm and it definitely accomplishes what you were hoping in gaining its attention. In fact, it sort of— it's got its two arms, its two huge arms down in the water just trying to keep itself stable— after you hit it, it kind of rears backwards, and one of those arms flings upward and throws just an enormous ball of water at you with tremendous force that plows into you and knocks you backwards, just out of the water. You were standing kind of in the shallows, and you take two harm. Actually, probably—

Travis: Well, thank goodness because with my armor, I take one harm.

Griffin: Yeah, I think your vest, like, glistens with that shimmering red thread as the water hits you and protects you, and you only take one harm. Let's do Duck next.

Justin: Where's like the ball of light? Can I detect it currently?

Griffin: You cannot. As we've sort of established in the past, if the ball of light is surrounded by too much water, it is sort of invisible to you.

Justin: Okay. I want to go away from Aubrey and away from Ned to like, just distract in yet another direction.

Griffin: Mkay, like to the side of the pool?

Justin: To the side of the pool, exactly.

Griffin: Okay.

Justin: That's exactly what I was thinking. So Duck, I think, is gonna like half-climb down the ladder into the pool. I'm imagining it's right— he's right about there.

Griffin: Okay.

Justin: And just like, take out Beacon and sort of futilely slash at the pool, just like "Is this anything? Is this doing something? Is this— is this an attack?"

Griffin: If you did that, you could definitely reach like, one of its arms.

Justin: Perfect.

Griffin: Just 'cause this thing is pretty broad and you would definitely be able to reach it hanging off the ladder on the side of the pool.

Justin: Right. Then that— that's what I'm doing. I take out Beacon and slash at one of the arms. While hanging off the ladder.

Griffin: Okay, roll to Kick Some Ass.

Justin: I will roll to kick the proverbial ass.

Clint: Ooh!

Travis: Hell yeah!

Griffin: Holy shit, that is an 11 for the roll, plus tough.

Justin: Plus two tough, so 13.

Griffin: Plus one for the waves. So that's—

Justin: Fourteen! [Crosstalk]

Griffin: [Crosstalk] Your roll...

Travis: You kick its whole ass and its asshole.

Justin: I kick its entire ass.

Clint: And you got a little taint in there too!

Travis: Oh no.

Griffin: Gross. So choose a benefit from the list. You can gain an advantage or grant it to somebody else, do terrible harm, suffer less harm, or force them where you want them.

Justin: I am going to give one forward to Ned.

Griffin: All right, so Ned will have two forward on his attack.

Clint: Woo!

Justin: And that's two harm, right?

Griffin: Yes.

Justin: Okay.

Griffin: Okay, so you deal two harm. Describe what this like, looks like.

Justin: Duck's kind of hanging off of the side, and he pulls out Beacon, and I think that when he pulls Beacon out it's coiled, and as he's swinging, Beacon unfurls, which catches the monster off guard. You know, they aren't prepared for it. They didn't really think they were gonna be in danger, and then Beacon unfurled at the last moment and just like, slices through the arm.

Griffin: That's sick, yeah, the arm—

Justin: It's cool. The other thing I will say is we gotta start naming these bad boys, or else it's going to a lot of like "the monster." They have names. They have hearts and souls, right?

Travis: Aqualung. What about Aqualung?

Justin: Aqualung is what it is called, now. Excellent.

Griffin: Okay, Aqualung swings one of its arms at you as it sees you kind of vulnerable hanging off the side of the pool. And as you unfurl Beacon, it tries to just pound you against the wall, and your sword just vivisects the arm, and the water sort of harmlessly sprays around you off to each side. But it sort of loses its balance and just kind of collides into you, kind of crushing you up against the wall of the pool. You take two harm as you sort of are crushed, and then the continual force of this thing falling into you pushes you backwards out of the pool, which if memory serves is actually zero harm because you're a tough boy.

Justin: Yes, I'm a tough boy.

Griffin: Ned, they have teed you up real nice.

Clint: First of all, Ned runs over to the other side of the pool, opposite from Duck. So we're basically hitting from three different sides.

Griffin: Okay.

Clint: And he climbs up on the lifeguard stand so he has an elevation, little bit of an elevation—

Griffin: Okay.

Clint: And he's not in the actual water, which he does not want to be in, takes aim towards the base of Aqualung, where it's flowing up from the actual wave pool. Ned's gonna shoot it with the NARF Blaster, surprise surprise.

Griffin: Okay, go ahead and roll to Kick Some Ass.

Clint: That is a 10.

Justin: [deep] Oh yeahh.

Clint: Plus, nothing for tough, three forwards correct?

Griffin: Yeah, so that's a 13 total.

Clint: So 13, so Ned nimbly climbs up the lifeguard stand.

[Justin giggles]

Travis: Who's Ned Nimbly?

Clint: Ned Nimbly! He's Aqualung's buddy. Ned "Nimbly" Chicane climbs up the lifeguard stand, kind of hooks his feet in like, the armrest, cradles the NARF Blaster on his hip and pulls the trigger and yells:



Clint: And fires.

Griffin: The glowing dart comes flying out of it and hits it at the base— oh, choose a bonus effect please.

Clint: The extra harm.

Griffin: So that's gonna be three harm. With that, the dart comes flying in and hits the elemental at sort of the base of its trunk where it was connected to the water, and you just cut completely clean through it. This figure, which was still kind of reeling from fucking up the attack against Duck, just sort of collapses down into the water, just losing its form completely. And you probably have a brief moment of relief, thinking "I just dunked on Aqualung," and then... I think in lieu of just doing the harm back to you, I'm going to set up a soft move. All of the water now doesn't have this humanoid form in it anymore, but the water of the pool starts gathering towards the side of the pool that is facing Ned. And it starts raising up out of the water, forming this huge wall of water that threatens to come crashing down to just royally fuck up your whole shop. That is the situation, and we get back to Aubrey. Aubrey, Ned is about to get smooshed. What do you do?

Travis: So Aubrey flings out her hand and says:



Travis: And instinctually uses some magic.

Griffin: Okay...

Travis: So that is nine, and Aubrey instinctually bars a— let me see what the actual terminology is, bar a place or pert— portal to a specific person or type of creature.

Griffin: Okay. Let's do this: you reach out your hand and yell to warn Ned, and you feel something stirring inside of you.

[{19:42} Opening from “The Water Confronted” fades in]

Griffin: It feels like when you've, you know, cast your fireballs and lit up fireplaces all cool and done your fiery tricks in the past, but there's something different about this feeling. And time seems to slow down.

[Another World builds and fades out]

Griffin: Aubrey, we see you, and you're back in your childhood home several years ago. As you've kind of talked about before, it was sort of a palatial estate. It was a testament to the comfortable upbringing that you received due to your family's wealth. And yet, despite the luxuries afforded to you in this place, you are leaving it tomorrow. You are going to set out to follow your dream to become a famous stage magician, the Lady Flame. And you are seated at the dinner table with your mother and father. He's prepared you your favorite meal for your last evening at home. What is that? What is Aubrey's favorite meal?

Travis: You know...Like a really good, like, fig and pear and bleu cheese salad. [crosstalk] Something like that.

Griffin: Okay. It's your favorite meal?

Travis: More and more, I was gonna say steak, but we just had that whole fleather conversation, so...

[Clint laughs]

Griffin: Sure, this is a very cruelty-free world that we've created here.

Travis: Yeah.

Griffin: So your favorite meal is here, and you're all enjoying it, but the air around the room is kind of uneasy. And after nearly completing the meal without a single word spoken over the table, your mom says:





Griffin: She says,



Griffin: And she gestures towards a baby rabbit eating from a small dish at your side. And she says:





Griffin: She smiles and says,



Griffin: And then there's another couple minutes of silence as you all finish your meal. And then your father clears his throat, and he says:









Griffin: He sighs, and he says,





Griffin: He stands up from the table suddenly, and he looks dejected and he picks up his plate and his silverware and starts to walk into the kitchen and he says,



Griffin: And he leaves to room to start cleaning up. And it's later that evening, and you and Dr. Harris Bonkers are in bed. You had some trouble falling asleep that night, and your door creaks open. And in the moonlight, you see your mother enter the room, and she sits down beside you in the bed and picks up Dr. Harris Bonkers, who she pets affectionately in her lap, and she says,



[Travis laughs softly]



Griffin: She says:





Griffin: She says,







Griffin: And she unclasps the necklace that she's wearing, and a beam of moonlight catches it perfectly refracting red light back up onto your face. And she says,



Griffin: And she scratches her neck, and she says:



[Travis and Clint laugh a little]



Griffin: And she gives you a tearful hug and slips it on over your neck, and it hangs down nearly to your navel. And your mom smiles and she says:





Griffin: She says,



Griffin: And she walks out of the room. Later we see you asleep in the dead of night, your entire family having retired after an emotional evening.

[Opening of “The Water Confronted” fades in]

Griffin: And then we see a car, an Imperial Crown Coupe, pull up just in front of your house with its lights off, with two figures silhouetted from within.

[Music swells and fades out]

And then we're back in the present, and what do you do?

Travis: So when her hand flings out as this thing is about to crash onto the lifeguard stand, I'm just picturing it kind of like, hitting almost an invisible barrier, like you know a [makes invisible barrier noise?? "wom wom wom wom wom"] in the air. You know what I mean? Just kind of stopping it from hitting Ned. I would say that it is kind of a, like, blast of wind stopping it from hitting, so like blowing it backwards, you know what I mean? And I think, with it being water, it looks awesome.

Griffin: Yeah, okay so, Ned, you actually feel— you see this wall of water about to come crashing down on you, and then you feel this like gale-force wind at your back that blows forward. And just as this water's about to crash down, this wall of wind curves upward and catches it in the air, and it just starts peeling away at the water, just throwing it effortlessly backwards into the pool, creating almost like a reverse pipeline. And not a single drop gets on you as the wall of water is turned away. And with that, the elemental Aqualung, I guess, splashes back down into the pool and kind of just thrashes there. The water's just thrashing, just furious at its failure. And then Ned, you, from your position, you see that faint yellow light on the surface of the water, still kind of fighting against the waves, and it dives downward into a drain at the bottom of the pool and disappears out of sight, attempting to make its escape.











Justin: I yell out:



Griffin: In the woods, we see a— a section of chain-link fence boxing in a series of pipes, just sort of like making a U shape in and out of the ground with a large sort of hex bolt valve at the center of them. And there, we see Pigeon, and she has a huge wrench that she kind of nods and yells:



Griffin: And throws the wrench onto the hex bolt and turns it. And then is kind of knocked backwards as a force sort of slams against the closed valve, rattling the pipes. And then it tries that a few more times, and you hear Pigeon say:





















Griffin: The pipes beneath you underground in the park creak again, louder and longer than before. You all actually feel slight tremors beneath your feet, which causes the windows in the main office to just shatter from the vibration. There's a tower of maps next to an info desk that just topples over, and then silence falls over the park once again. And you all hear the sound of water lapping against cement, this time, from the lazy river surrounding the park.

[“The Water, Confronted” fades in]

You all see a mound of water lift off a few feet from the river traversing its path around the park, gaining speed as it moves. And that mound lifts higher and higher from the water, growing slowly as it collects all the water in its path. And then this form splashes downward, and suddenly launches up and out of the river's path with every drop of water from the river following it, forming a massive snakelike form that is barreling towards your party at ramming speed. Duck, what do you do?

Justin: Is it sort of— is it still serpentine? Is it coming sort of straight at us, or?

Griffin: Now it's just charging right at you like a train.

Justin: Alright, Duck extends Beacon in front of him, point first, and just starts sprinting at it.

Griffin: Mmkay.

Justin: Yeah, it's just gonna try to skewer it. I don't have a better plan.

Griffin: I think as you get close, you actually see in the head of this thing the yellow light as you are just sort of several feet away from it, about to collide. I guess roll to Kick Some Ass.

Justin: Yeah, I guess man. I was thinking about chickening out, but I think he's just kind of thinking on instinct at this point. Yeah, that roll to kick the proverbial ass is— do we still have advantage or have we lost that now?

Griffin: You do not, this thing is not in the wave pool anymore.

Justin: All right. Oofa doofa!

Griffin: That's a— that's a double snake eyes I guess for a big nasty four.

Justin: That's a big nasty four! Whew!

Griffin: Plus [crosstalk] for tough?

Travis: [Crosstalk] Well that's an experience.

Justin: Oh, yeah plus two for tough.

Griffin: Still is a six, which is a failure. Go ahead and mark experience.

Justin: I've learned something from this.

[Clint laughs]

Justin: This is a good experience for— you know what, honestly I'd rather have the experience. It's a good experience. Okay, so I guess I'm... sprinting at it, just like "AAAAH" with Beacon extended, and I think there's a moment just before we collide where Beacon sort of like, almost half-whispers like,



[Travis laughs]

Justin: And then they collide.

Griffin: The snake, which is just barreling at you, you are not harmed by it ramming into you with this like tremendous amount of force. It kind of opens up as it is about to collide with you and just kind of like envelops you and catches you in the form of this snake, and Ned and Aubrey, you now see Duck flying backwards back into the rear of this snake shape, just twisting around helplessly in the water. It whips up its tail at the last second and you are launched violently out of the form of this snake. And now Ned and Aubrey, you see Duck just ragdolling through the air just 20 feet high, sailing away and out of sight back towards the corner of the park and down into the reservoir at the back corner of the park. And Duck, you're just barely able to hold on to your senses as your arc turns back toward the ground. You see the reservoir just flying towards you, [“The Water, Confronted” fades in] and you also see the metal bridge spanning the reservoir's circumference which you fly closer and closer to, and then your head collides with its guard rail with a sickening thump.

You remember a night from decades ago. You have woken up with a start in your childhood bedroom, just doused in sweat. You take a moment to collect yourself and your senses one by one sort of flicker back to life, and that is when you smell smoke. It is pouring into your bedroom through the crack under your bedroom door, through which you can see dancing orange light pulsating in from the hallway. You hear a furious crackling noise from beyond that door. You do not, however, hear the smoke alarm. What do you do?

Justin: I— I go to the door. I— I’m trying to remember, like, my—

Griffin: [crosstalk] The Red Cross, like, fire safety—

Justin: Yeah, exactly. I think— Do I have any—

Travis: [crosstalk] You’ve gotta check with the back of your hand.

Justin: Do I have any— yeah, that— right, exactly.

Clint: [crosstalk] Stop, drop, and roll! Don’t forget to stop, drop, and roll!

Justin: I’m not currently on fire. [Clint: Oh.] Am I on ground level, and is there a window?

Griffin: You are on the second story of the house. [Justin: Eugh.] There is a window.

Justin: I kick the door.

Griffin: Ok. The door just, like, easily gives way as you kick it. Actually, you are surprised by how easily it gives way. You are sort of surprised by the strength you muster as you just effortlessly boot the door open. You see the sort of lock mechanism, the actual doorknob interior part of the doorknob, just come completely off the door and come out into the hallway. And a blast of searing hot air hits you in the face, and you see the hallway of your family house just up in flames. The fire is climbing up the walls, engulfing rows of framed photos of your family hung there. A burning beam has fallen through the ceiling, cutting off the rest of the hallway that’s leading to your parents’ bedroom, the door to which is still closed. And you also notice that, on the other end of this hallway, leading downstairs and into the living room, there is no fire. Your path leading out of the house is free and open to you, should you choose to use it.

Justin: What about the door to my little sister’s room?

Griffin: That is across the hallway from your parent’s bedroom. That door, you can also see through the flames, is also closed.

Justin: All right. I grab a blanket off of my bed and I kind of drape it around myself [Griffin: Ok.] and I sprint through the fire towards, uh, Jane’s room.

Griffin: Ok. Roll to Act Under Pressure.

Justin: Isn’t it odd, conceptually, to roll during a flashback? I understand that we are doing this, but it just strikes me as weird.

Travis: ‘Cause, listen, it either happened or it didn’t, you know?

Justin: [crosstalk] It either did— it either happened or it didn’t, but it’s the immutable nature of fate, I suppose. So this would be...I rolled an eight, I have a two to Cool, which would make it a ten.

Griffin: Okay! You set out to do what you want to do. So there’s this burning beam sort of cutting off the rest of the hallway between you and the bedrooms of your sister and your parents. How do you— what does it look like as you get around that?

Justin: I— I think I just jump over it. And maybe I’m, like— that’s instinctual, and I’m kind of surprised, like, oh, shit! Wow, I really cleared that. ‘Cause, like, I wasn’t big into sports or anything. [Griffin: Yeah.] I haven’t really like put my body to the test, or anything.

Griffin: Yeah, you like sort of effortlessly contort your body into this shape as you kind of dive, covered in this blanket, just clean over this beam that has fallen down at a diagonal into the hall, and do a perfect roll as you land and come to your feet just surprised at what a badass you are right now. What do you do?

Justin: I smash open the door to Jane’s room and— I’m screaming, also, to try to wake everybody up, but I smash open the door to Jane’s room to make my way over to grab her.

Griffin: The walls and ceiling of this room are just completely engulfed. Burning embers are raining down from above. One lands on your forearm as you kick this door open and you feel it singe your skin before sort of reflexively shaking it off. And the bed in front of you is occupied by a shape that is completely covered by the blankets, seemingly still unconscious despite the sort of immediate danger posed to them by this blazing bedroom.

Justin: I throw off the blanket and scoop her up. She’s, uh, seven, so it’s not too tough. I scoop her up and gra— take the blankets with me so I can cover both of us on the way out.

Griffin: Ok. As you scoop her up and sort of wrap her in the blanket that was on her bed, another two beams fall through the ceiling inside the room right in front of the door back out into the hallway, cutting off your exit. And with this she kind of comes to, and starts coughing, and she says,







Justin: I grab her TV/VCR combo that she has there, little 12-inch job, and I chuck it at the window as hard as I can.

Griffin: It’s like picking up like a, like an empty cardboard box. It is, the weight is nothing to you, as you lift up the TV/VCR combo and throw it through the window. And it smashes apart, and— the heat from this room is incredible, but as you smash open the window, you feel an even more powerful heat coming from outside, and there’s a flash of light and it takes a moment for your eyes to adjust and when it does, you see outside, and there’s the sun.

It’s not hanging in its usual place in the sky {Another World starts}, it looks like it’s just mere miles away from the surface of the earth, just occupying the entirety of the horizon. And in the distance, you see a white beam of light shooting upward from the surface of the earth, traveling all the way up and into this nearby sun. And you see everything around the base of this beam just getting sucked up into it— trees and cars and houses and the earth itself, all travelling up the beam to be destroyed by this massive ball of fire in the sky. And as you gaze up on this scene, the gravitational pull of the beam gets stronger, pulling in more and more of the earth until your house starts coming apart, and you feel yourself flying upward, into this beam, into the sun.

And then you wake up in your bed again. {music fades out} And standing at the foot of your bed, watching over you intently, is a humanoid shape made out of faint translucent light, and a voice comes from it and says,





[laughter]





Justin: I jump through her, throw open the door, do not kick it, I’m not that out of it— I throw open the door to, like, check for fire.

Griffin: Nope, nothing is amiss. You actually see Jane open the door, deeper down the hallway, and she kind of peeks out and rubs her eyes and says,





Griffin: She kind of, like, gives you a— a sneer, like, “Okay, you don’t have to call me goofus,” and dips back into her bedroom, and Minerva, from behind you, says,









[Clint laughing]

Travis: This is— by the way, this is tripping me the fuck out, because the voice Justin is doing right now sounds like 15-year-old Justin—

Griffin: It’s very good.

Travis: It’s tripping me out.

Justin: Now am I— now I’m in my head about it.

[laughter]

Griffin: She says,











{Another World fades in}

Griffin: And this figure extends its hand outward to you.



{music fades out}

Griffin: And then we are back in the present, and we see Duck Newton, unconscious, sinking to the bottom of this deep reservoir as his vision dictates. Next in the order is...Ned!





Travis: And she’s running towards the reservoir.







Griffin: What are you— Ned, this thing kind of— it stopped for a moment, as it did its little maneuver to chuck Duck through the air— oh, that’s fun, “chuck Duck.” But now it turns back towards you as you are yelling to Aubrey to come back when she’s done saving Duck’s life, and it starts moving and picking up speed as it moves towards you. What do you do?

Clint: I’m going to do what Ned does best, and that’s run away. [Griffin: Okay.] But as Ned is running, he’s going to basically, you know, just fire away with the Narf Blaster, just kind of raking along the body of the water snake, just to try to distract it and keep it away from Aubrey and Duck, and at the same time, running away is a big component in this.

Griffin: Okay. Since you are shooting it, I think still Kicking Some Ass is the way to go.

Clint: [laughing] And that’s a 12!

Griffin: That is double sixes, folks.

Clint: I have zero Tough.

Griffin: All right! So pick your bonus effect. I think it sounds like, based on the maneuver that you said, if you want to, like, keep this in the rules of the game, you force them where you want—

Clint: I think that would be, cause I wanted to— I wanted to cha— I wanted to move away from Duck and Aubrey.

Griffin: All right. Describe what this looks like.

Clint: Ned says,



Clint: And just starts firing away, just shot after shot, while he runs, he’s kind of leaning backwards, shooting at the snake along the length of its watery body, and basically heading towards one of the big water slides, just away from them.

Griffin: Here’s what happens. You do this sick dodge roll out of the way and the snake rolls past you, and now you’re sort of running parallel alongside it as it continues its trajectory past you, just firing bolt after bolt into its side. It takes 2 harm, and one of the bolts, I think, hits it close to its head, and as that happens, you see the snake form, just for a moment, kind of spasm, and a bunch of water sort of shoots out of the side of it, almost like it had this surface tension containing all of it that it just sort of loses at a few points, and water just spills out of it. And you manage to get past it, but it does a quick u-turn, you know, 30 feet behind you, and then starts chasing you towards the water slides.

The water slides at the back of the park, there are three main, large water slides. They are all built into the same tall wooden tower, with staircases leading up it, with a line sort of separated into three parts where people, you know, wait in line and then get to the slide that they want to go on and disembark from there. But it’s all part of this one central structure, and you run towards that direction.

And it is gaining on you and gaining on you, and right as you hit the pool at the base of this water slide structure, it finally catches up to you and collides with you, knocking you forward. The tremendous force, though, of this thing just barrelling to you, hits you and knocks you into the water for 2 harm. And it continues its path and sort of travels over you as you are now in the pool, not unconscious like your friend Duck but sort of dazed from the force of the impact. And as you look upwards, you see the snake start to lift up and away from the surface of the pool, and it begins to climb this wooden tower, this tower of slides.

And then you see the water from the pool that you’re actually in start streaming upwards, like a, like a sink faucet that’s been left on, and it’s pouring water upward and out of the pool. And then you see a few more appear, and then dozens more, until like a hundred streams of water are pouring upward as this snake starts coiling around this wooden tower, just twisting all around it, weaving between the stairwells leading to its peak, and soon the water from the pool floats up and joins it, and now it’s no longer a snake coiled around this wooden tower of slides. Now it is just a mountain of water, just completely engulfing the whole structure.

You can see sort of silhouetted from the floodlights shining into this mountain of water from behind, you see pieces of the slides start to break apart. {50:38 music fades in} You see a set of stairs from this wooden tower get torn off the structure completely, and all this debris is just sort of revolving around inside of this huge mountain of water, like they’re caught in a whirlpool. The water in the pool has drained out from around you, you are now sitting at the bottom of this empty pool at the base of the structure. And a piece of one of the slides, just this gigantic section of black pipe comes flying out of the mountain and it lands with a crash just a few feet in front of you, bouncing a few times before rolling to a stop at your feet. And you can tell that the elemental is panicked and wounded, but now also it is armed. {music fades out}

Aubrey, you are up.

Travis: So, Aubrey’s sprinting over to the reservoir. [Griffin: Ok.] How far is it?

Griffin: It’s not too far, there’s a chainlink fence between you and the water. Although I assume, actually, there is a gate with a padlock on it for easy access to park employees.

Travis: Okay. I’m going to do an— can I do another instinctive magic?

Griffin: Yeah, for sure!

Travis: Ok. So Aubrey is going to climb the fence, is her plan. [Griffin: Okay.] And so, like, she’s kind of running and goes to do like a running jump at the fence. Rolled a ten, plus two, yeah, and I’m going to say that’s like a gust of wind as she goes.

Griffin: Ok, sick, yeah. A— you’re running and you leap, and you feel this emotion of you want to defend your friend, you want to save your friend, and that sort of creates, if you will, a literal wind beneath your wings as you leap, and the wind sort of also catches you as you fall to the ground, and you just sort of keep speed as you hop effortlessly over the fence.

Travis: [crosstalk] And she says out loud,



Travis: And just keeps running.

Griffin: Okay. Now what?

Travis: So when I get to the reservoir, what do I see?

Griffin: You can barely see, thanks to a floodlight shining down into the reservoir, you see Duck’s form. He is about twenty feet underwater. This is a deep, deep reservoir with this metal bridge sort of spanning across its center point.

Travis: Okay, well she’s going to jump in and, you know, grab him and pull him out.

Griffin: Okay. I think this would be another Act Under Pressure. Unless you want to use magic to somehow do some cool shit with the water to help you out.

Travis: Yeah, so like she, you know, same deal, takes a big deep breath, let’s say that’s what it is, big deep breath and once again finds that she’s able to stay underwater longer because of that, you know what I mean? Surprised at her ability to hold her breath. And I rolled a six, plus two, so an eight.

Griffin: Okay, it works imperfectly. Choose your effect and a glitch. The keeper will decide what effect the glitch has. So you want to do something beyond human limitations, you are using the wind to I guess fill your lungs? As you want to dive down and reach Duck. You have to choose a glitch from the list. Usually we don’t get these because you got those hot magic rolls, but—

Travis: Yeah. I’m going to say— I’m going to do the one harm, and say that it works, I can hold my breath, but it ends up, like, hurting my chest, you know?

Griffin: Yeah, for sure. You— it— most notably you take one harm, ignore armor. So you take this deep breath, and it’s kind of crazy deep, you take this huge inhale and as you do so, you feel actually a pretty terrible pain from inside your— from inside your chest, and I think you start feeling heart palpitations that kind of stop you in your tracks a little bit. Take one harm. However, you now have just what feels like endless breath as you dive into the water. Describe what happens next.

Travis: So yeah, she’s swimming through the— gotta grab that Duck, and she’s swimming trying to grab him by the back of his shirt, trying to pull him out of the water. So this is probably another Act Under Pressure, right?

Griffin: No, I think you’ve rolled enough on this turn that I would just give it to you. I think, actually, what you can do is, you actually feel the wind inside of your lungs make you buoyant, as you grab onto Duck by the scruff of his collar and pull him upwards, and you kind of just shoot upwards as the wind takes you to the surface of the water. And you pretty easily get Duck out of the reservoir. And with that, Duck, as you feel like the wind on your face, your head is just pounding. Did I make you take harm when you hit the bridge?

Justin: No, but it seems legit.

Griffin: I’m going to say— I mean, you fell two stories and cracked your head on the side of a bridge. I would say that’s pretty extreme damage. I would say that’s four harm, but you will— obviously that will be cushioned a bit by your natural armor. [Justin: Ok.] But as the wind hits your face, as you are pulled out of the pool, you regain consciousness. And there is Aubrey, kneeling over you, looking like she just has really bad gas, I guess?

[Travis laughing]

Justin: All right. The first thing she hears is,









Travis: And she smacks him.















Griffin: He’s pretty far away. He led— he purposefully led the snake away from you all, so he is—

Clint: What a brave, brave man he is.

Griffin: He’s kind of on the opposite corner. You all are towards the back end of the park, but he’s in the other corner where the water slides are.

Justin: All right, I guess we’ll just start— I won’t say running, but, I mean— I think we have to start moving towards Ned. There’s a fence, right?

Griffin: Yeah.

Justin: I can probably slash through that with Beacon. [Clint: Ooohh!] I would like to speed things up a bit, cause I’m not jumping any fences right now. In fact, let me just say that.

Griffin: Okay. I don’t even think this would be a Kick Some Ass roll, because that’s for like, if you and the thing are going to do damage to each other—

Justin: Kick some fence’s ass!

Griffin: As funny as it would be, the image of this fence, you slashing it, and then it falling over onto you to deliver the death blow, I think you just slash through the chain link and open up a hole in the fence, and probably supported by Aubrey, the two of you start making your way over towards the slide structure that is engulfed in this mountain of water that Ned, you are currently at the foot of. And Ned, you climb to your feet at the base of this pool right in front of this mountain, and you see towards the peak, just sort of right at the surface of the water at the peak, probably 30 feet up, you see that yellow light, and it is glistening at the peak of this mountain of water above you. What do you do?

Clint: You know what, there comes a time in every coward’s life [Travis: Uh huh.] where you know the only— the only way you’re going to survive is by attacking back. In this case, maybe the best defense is a good offense. So what the shit, just— Ned has a strap that the Narf blaster is on, so he kind of flings it back so it’s hanging off his back, and he goes running— dives into the water, trying to climb up that wood framing.

Griffin: Okay, this is definitely going to be Act Under Pressure. You get inside this mountain of water, and the world around you just goes silent as you dive just straight forward. It’s not like a pool of water, it is a massive tower of water, and you just jump right into the side of it. And it takes a second for your eyes to adjust, but you see just huge pieces of lumber just swirling around, and you see a slide just get easily smashed apart by one of these huge pieces of lumber, and so all this stuff is just swirling around in the water towards you, and as you swim upward toward that light at the peak, you are sort of avoiding it as you go. So roll to Act Under Pressure.

Clint: Ha! Twelve!

Travis: Wow!

Griffin: Another double six??

Clint: And also add one for Cool, so that’s 13!

Justin: That can’t be right [laughing]. There’s no way.

Clint: Sorry, Ned has one Cool! He’s got zero Tough, but he’s got one Cool.

Griffin: All right. The scene is, you are swimming upwards, and easily avoiding these huge chunks of the tower that are flying all around you.

Travis: I’m going to say wherever Duck and Aubrey are, they just like stop and they’re like, “What the fuck?” as Ned’s just like, [makes “whooshing” sound to imitate Ned dodging pieces of timber]

Griffin: There are a series of floodlights shining into this mountain, and so you all can just kind of see the silhouettes of these pieces of tower and slide swirling around Ned’s form as he just doggy paddles upward into the sky, towards the peak of this mountain. I think at one point, a huge chunk of that same slide that landed at your feet earlier coming right towards you, and you just kind of plank your body and go completely through it as it flies in your direction {Another World fades in} and you are swimming and not sure if you’re going to be able to hold your breath long enough, and that light is getting closer and closer, and brighter and brighter.

{music fades out}

And then, Ned, you are standing in a dark room that you are not supposed to be in. It has been a week since the wreck that saw you and your partner in crime separated, which left him to an almost certainly unpleasant fate, and you’ve spent this week putting your distance between yourself and that scene, just as much distance as possible, mostly hitchhiking and walking down highways, probably discreetly trying to catch a bus, probably with a hood pulled up as you go. And you have found yourself in some podunk town where finally you can catch a breath. However, it’s kind of hard to do so when you are as cash strapped as you find yourself at the moment. And so you stop to find a few quick bucks the only way you know how: by taking it from someone else in the dead of night.

And so you went in the first seemingly unoccupied building that you came across in this town, this modest looking shop of some sort down by the river, by the entrance to town. There were no cars parked outside, and the location is far enough away from the rest of town that you figure you’d be in the clear if you wanted to poke around and see what you could burgle. So you jimmied open a window and you crept inside, and the moonlight through the open window highlights a few peculiar things in this room: some weird taxidermied animals that look like they’ve been sort of composited together using parts from multiple animals; there’s a pedestal with a large clay disk on it, which is pressed with what appears to be a large footprint; there is a wire rack tower with a bunch of maps to local tourist attractions; and toward the back of the room there is a desk, sitting on which is an old timey looking cash register. What do you do?

Clint: Well, Ned “Ninja” Chicane very quietly moves towards that cash register and opens it.

Griffin: Okay. I think there’s a lock, which you, you know, certainly have experience popping open, go ahead and roll to Act Under Pressure.

Clint: Seven, plus one, which is for Cool, so that’s eight.

Griffin: The register pops open and you see just an empty drawer inside as it pops out to greet you. And then you hear a shotgun cock from behind you, and hear a voice say,





















Griffin: You hear her laugh this just sort of joyous, kind of croaky laugh, and flips on a light switch, and there you see an older woman, you’d guess probably in her 70s. She is wearing some pajamas, she has an eyepatch, and she is holding a shotgun that she has pointed in your direction. And she smiles this big, toothy grin, and says,





Griffin: She says,

















Griffin: And she says,

















Griffin: She smiles, and she says,









Griffin: She says,

















Griffin: She says,















{Another World swells, and then fades out}

Griffin: And then we are back in the present, and Ned, you dodge a few more pieces of debris, and now you can actually see the night sky through the surface of the water at its peak, and floating immediately in front of you is that yellow light, {music fades in} that as you approach it, you actually feel it starting to control the water, creating a current that is desperately, desperately trying to pull you back down. What do you do?

Clint: I think he’s gonna— this is the best time to take the shot. I think he’s going to have to take the shot.

Griffin: Roll to Kick Some Ass.

Clint: Ok. That’s a seven.

Griffin: You are point blank with this light. Rather, you were— it is trying to pull you away, and I think it’s sort of gaining some ground, and you desperately try to paddle against the current, and then just grab the Narf blaster [Clint: Yep.] and sort of twirl it around you on its strap, and let a dart fly.

Clint: Opens his mouth and yells out,



Griffin: And then, Aubrey and Duck, you see from outside Ned’s silhouette pull out the Narf blaster, and then you see, just for a moment, a sharp light leave Ned’s silhouette and enter the light at the peak of the water mountain.

{music fades out}

And then you see pieces of debris just start falling inside this mountain. Some of it falls out the side and tumbles down into the empty pool below, and then you see the water in this mountain just start to melt away. It just starts lowering down, down to the ground, losing its shape, dispersing back down into the pool, overflowing that pool, since it had some water from the river in it, too. And Ned, you see, right in front of you, the dart still sort of pushing up against the yellow light that was controlling everything, until finally, it pushes its way through and then this, this light, it starts to flash over and over and over again, and as it flashes, it almost looks like it’s growing into a new shape and colour. What you see floating in this water as you are descending down to the ground is what appears to be a humanoid being made out of white light {music fades in} about your size, with two legs and four arms, and a domed head, all made out of this gentle white light. And you actually see two small, black eyes appear on its face, and meet your gaze. And you instantly know that this being, whatever it is, it means you no harm.

And then finally the mountain disintegrates completely, and now you and this figure are just standing on the ground right outside of the pool, and you see this figure sort of look at its arms, one by one, just sort of examining its body, and as it does so, the light from one of its arms starts to break apart, just sort of disintegrating and floating away in the air, and in its last moments, this white humanoid shape, it looks back up in your direction, Ned, and then it slowly and cautiously nods, and then it evaporates completely in a cloud of soft, white particles of light, drifting upward and winking out of view one by one.

{music ends}

{Amnesty theme}

Griffin: Duck, you have returned home to your apartment building after your successful hunt. It is pretty late, the lights in your neighbours windows are all out, only the flickering street lights outside shed some light onto your approach as you return for the night. And as you crest the top of the stairs to your second story apartment, you see a figure at your door. They are kneeling down, and they appear to be busying themselves with something that you can’t quite ascertain, right in front of the door into your apartment. What do you do?

Justin: I yell,



Travis: Duck’s new catchphrase!

Justin: Duck’s new catchphrase! “Hey, what the fuck?”

Griffin: As you yell that, you startle this figure, who kind of falls down, and you hear like some objects hitting the floor. And as they turn to face you, you see the warm, craggy face of Leo Tarkesian, your next door neighbour and proprietor of the local general store, who you whipped into existence at the beginning of this arc with your beautiful brain. And he is knelt over your doormat, where he has left a couple of paper bags filled with groceries, which he is now trying to refill with some of the objects that he dropped as you yelled and startled him. And he smiles as you catch him in the act, and he says,









Griffin: He says,





Griffin: He pulls out a box of Wild Berry Froot Loops—

[Travis laughs]















Griffin: He says,





Griffin: You and Mr. Tarkesian go to open your doors, and he turns the knob into his apartment and he stops and he turns to you and he says,













Griffin: He says,



Griffin: And he starts to step into the room and he takes one more step back outside, and looks at you and says,



{Amnesty theme fades in.}

Griffin: And then he walks into his apartment and shuts the door behind him.

Ned, you’ve returned to the Cryptonomica, which you have barely spent any time in the last couple of sort of frantic, monster hunting days. And as the chime above the door rings out, announcing your entrance, two figure in the room turn to face you: Kirby, and Agent Stern. They are both hunched over Kirby’s computer where you can see that they were watching the video captured on Kirby’s camera of your first run-in with Bigfoot.

Now, you have a display set up in the Cryptonomica showing some of this video, namely Bigfoot’s appearance from out of frame, where he engages with this corrupted bobcat. This sequence— this part of the video runs for about 30 seconds or so before the video loops, and it edits out a few things— it edits out your attempt at faking a Bigfoot sighting with a Chewbacca costume, it edits out you beginning to take the camera equipment apart, where you unplug the shotgun microphone out of it, which luckily then muted the video during your conversation with an off-screen Barclay, when he sort of stumbles upon you, and it also edits out the final shot of the footage, of the Bigfoot and bobcat battle being lit up by your headlights as you drive full speed into the scuffle, knocking over the camera and ending the recording before your involvement in Barclay’s rescue sort of is shown. But Agent Stern has just seen this footage, and he says,



Griffin: And Kirby, who looks understandably kind of nervous, excuses himself to the back room. And Agent Stern says,









Griffin: Agent Stern kind of picks up on your tone, and he says,





Griffin: He has a briefcase that he walks over to the main desk here in the Cryptonomica, and he pops open, where he pulls out his badge with his name and picture and badge number and identification info on it that he sort of lays out. He reaches in and pulls out a case file that he opens up and inside you see pictures of other Bigfoot sightings, along with missing persons reports, sort of attached to each picture and each sighting at various points across the country. And he pulls out— well, there wouldn’t be a warrant, I don’t think, but he pulls out this documentation to sort of support his case. And he gestures towards it, and he says,









Griffin: He sighs, and he looks kind of disappointed, and he says,





Griffin: He pinches the bridge of his nose with his fingers and looks up at you, and he says,



Griffin: Aubrey, you are sitting in the dining room of Amnesty Lodge, and joining you at your table is Dani, who has Dr. Harris Bonkers sitting in her lap, who she’s kind of petting absentmindedly while looking out the window, and just outside that window you see Barclay step out of a small maintenance shed and look over into the hot springs, which begin refilling, much to the delight of the lodge’s Sylvan patrons, who are all standing around the empty pool expectantly sort of ready for a rejuvenating late night dip. And they all cheer at Barclay as he turns the water pump back on from inside the shed, and Barclay looks up and gives a big thumbs up in yours and Dani’s direction, and Dani smiles and says,









Griffin: She says,



















Griffin: And she looks out the window at the springs filling up outside, and she says kind of wistfully,





Griffin: She smiles and lifts up her hand from petting Dr. Harris Bonkers and places it on yours on the table. I don’t think she was expecting you to respond in the affirmative when she asked you about your family, and she smiles and she says,



Griffin: And Dani is interrupted by the slamming of the front door into the lodge’s lobby. Standing just in front of the doorway is an imposing figure who is draped in a ratty, dirt-covered coat, and a cloak partially obscuring a scratched-up, filthy face. And this figure is clearly wounded, using what appears to be a shotgun as a crutch as they stumble into the lobby, and after taking a few steps forward, they say,





Griffin: And she throws you the keys to the truck parked outside and says,



[The Adventure Zone: Amnesty Theme by Griffin McElroy plays]

Griffin: And she falls to her knees and collapses on the ground in a heap. And without missing a beat, Dani pushes herself back from the table, knocking over her chair as she rushes and throws open the window, and all the Sylvans outside look up as Dani announces the good news: