Episode 27
Episode 27: Stuck in the Mire with You
Book and Ocean squelch into the Stew in the hopes of finding some much needed medical supplies. It's dark, it's wet, and Ocean is very happy to have a newly aquaticized vehicle.
This one is mostly Subnautica.
Transcript
Welcome to Oops!
Speaker:All Apocalypses, a show where we explore the collapse of society by playing fun tabletop role playing games.
Speaker:I'm your host, Stu Masterson, and I'm joined by two storm troopers impotently shooting into the darkness.
Speaker:I was holding my breath so that I could speak well.
Speaker:That's a very good one.
Speaker:You made me laugh and I lost it all.
Speaker:Okay, that was actually a good one.
Speaker:Hey, everyone, I'm Brady and I play Book McCready, a sleuth whose favorite date is a Monday romantic walk under the moonlight.
Speaker:Oh, that's pretty relevant.
Speaker:That he now officially knows that he can do with the help of some mirrors, some smoke and mirrors.
Speaker:And I'm Ocean.
Speaker:Fuck.
Speaker:And I'm Jacob.
Speaker:I play Ocean.
Speaker:I couldn't tell what you did wrong at first.
Speaker:I had to stop.
Speaker:I was about to go full forward and I was like, wait, hold up.
Speaker:I'm Ocean, a gentle Jacob.
Speaker:A gentle Jacob.
Speaker:But I play Ocean, a gentle giant who is now going from a semi-aquatic gentle giant to a fully aquatic gentle giant.
Speaker:And you had to say gentle giant three times.
Speaker:I regret that.
Speaker:I regret saying it that way.
Speaker:Remember when you changed it one time and now you have to come up with a new one for the rest of eternity?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:You regret that decision?
Speaker:Nah, I like it.
Speaker:You could have just had a nice, good, short intro like me.
Speaker:I think it's fun.
Speaker:You change yours every time.
Speaker:What are you talking about?
Speaker:Oh, I black out when I do the intro.
Speaker:You call us a different thing every week.
Speaker:I didn't realize that.
Speaker:This week, we're going to try to fall in love with Book and Ocean by answering another one of these 32 questions to fall in love.
Speaker:This one is again going to be a little rough for Ocean.
Speaker:That seems to be a repeating theme, but I promise you they're about to get much better.
Speaker:Okay, I trust you.
Speaker:I've been holding on to that promise for, I think, 10 episodes in a row now.
Speaker:Speaking of, one of my friends actually just started going out with somebody, and I have sicked these questions to fall in love on him to ask with his date.
Speaker:We'll see if they're actually successful on his next date.
Speaker:Next episode, my friend is no longer seeing.
Speaker:My friend is like, these questions are dumb as shit.
Speaker:The question this week is how do you feel about your relationship with your mother?
Speaker:Oh damn, that is hard.
Speaker:I think like a lot of boys' book really looked up to his dad, but he was really tight with his mom.
Speaker:He was a mama's boy.
Speaker:I think for the first half of books life, he always thought that like his dad was like the super smart one who was like super handsy, tried to learn a lot from his dad.
Speaker:And then just one night at dinner, his mom said something that completely unraveled that assumption and made him realize that like his dad's an idiot compared to his mom.
Speaker:And ever since then, yeah, I think ever since then, like he was like her little ugly duckling just falling around trying to learn as much as possible.
Speaker:What do you think it was that your dad said?
Speaker:That was very dumb.
Speaker:Okay, so I think it was, it wasn't anything that CD said that was super dumb.
Speaker:I think it was something that Zine Machine said where he was like, oh shit, you did that?
Speaker:I think she was talking about maybe the power system in Hamlet opening, or I think maybe we had just gotten electric lights.
Speaker:Book didn't know that either of his parents had anything to do with it.
Speaker:And then his mom mentioned at dinner that that was more or less her, her baby was getting us electricity and electric lights and power.
Speaker:And he was like, oh shit, that's cool.
Speaker:My mom knows what she's doing.
Speaker:I think going the obvious routes of saying like, oh, he didn't really have much relationship with his mother because he didn't know his mom.
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, I think that's true.
Speaker:But more specifically, I think Ocean doesn't think about having a mother very often.
Speaker:I don't think it's something that he's really put much thought and care into.
Speaker:I think I've said something similar to that in the past, but I think that's also one reason why he's kind of interested in books kind of situation because books are so obsessed with his parents, and Ocean's like, what the hell is this all about?
Speaker:They're just two dudes.
Speaker:They fed you when you're a little, what else are you expecting?
Speaker:That's a healthier point of view, I reckon.
Speaker:But without having that familial bond that he feels, I just don't think it's something he really even thinks about.
Speaker:Maybe that will change.
Speaker:What do you think he would want in his mom?
Speaker:I think he would want someone very soft-spoken and comforting.
Speaker:Somebody to reassure him that everything's going to be okay and tuck him in gently and be sweet.
Speaker:Because that's very frequently not the case.
Speaker:Yes, I think Ocean's almost always vaguely stressed and panicked.
Speaker:And somebody would be like, Look, Ocean, it's all right.
Speaker:Just lay down, go to sleep, take a nap.
Speaker:It's all good.
Speaker:You'll be all right.
Speaker:Would be very comforting for him.
Speaker:That's cute.
Speaker:That's very sweet.
Speaker:Stu, what do you want in a mom?
Speaker:Yeah, what you think of your mom?
Speaker:She's pretty cool.
Speaker:She used to play fun, like rhyming, come up with the dumb song games with me.
Speaker:So that's probably where I got most of my good street cred.
Speaker:For your rap career?
Speaker:For my rap career.
Speaker:Your mom helps with a rap career.
Speaker:That's impressive.
Speaker:I still remember most of them too.
Speaker:Oh, shit.
Speaker:Well, we have beginning of session moves to kick this off.
Speaker:So let's get back to the action.
Speaker:Let's do Beginning Obsession Moves.
Speaker:Already?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Who has Beginning Obsession Moves?
Speaker:I don't think I do.
Speaker:That's my Visions.
Speaker:You don't have any?
Speaker:I thought you got one, Booker.
Speaker:Did you talk about it?
Speaker:Did I get one with Sniff the Wind?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Oh, I do.
Speaker:I did get one because I have, um, I have a devotion.
Speaker:Oh, yeah.
Speaker:You roll cool, because right now, your people, to your knowledge, you have not seen them, but they seem, they're, they're pretty chill right now.
Speaker:That, that was a nine.
Speaker:On seven to nine, they offer you all of their devotions, but choose one demand.
Speaker:Well, I rolled a nine, and, uh, my people are demanding, my following is demanding solidarity.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:And Ocean, make your move.
Speaker:It's my Visions, so I get to roll hard.
Speaker:It's a ten, so you hold one.
Speaker:So I got two, which means one time in the next adventure, I can make you have a vision that completely takes you out of the action, or I can make you twice have one during a moment of transition.
Speaker:And now both of you roll barter.
Speaker:Last thing.
Speaker:God.
Speaker:Our barter is so bad.
Speaker:Five.
Speaker:Well, it was fucking five, so that's fine.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:You guys are heading out of town, right?
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:We're gonna take the spider to the stew.
Speaker:The camera will pan back towards Crandall, walking through the streets, whistling, waving at everyone, and he's causing a little bit of a disturbance because no one knows who this man is, who has just shown up, but he is walking roughly in the direction of Johnny Hertz's shack.
Speaker:And he walks by and he stops for a minute, and it starts admiring some art that has been spray painted on the side of one of the buildings.
Speaker:You see it is this kind of mannequin shape.
Speaker:It kind of looks like the first stages of a sketch, where you block out a person, like this mannequin sketch, holding up a very detailed head that looks just like Vesuvius in the air in a dramatic fashion.
Speaker:And written behind them, you see a series of numbers that are crossed off one at a time, and it started with seven days from now, and then it got crossed out six, five, four, three, oh.
Speaker:Previously, you guys did a quick swing by Hamlet Opening to pick up some of your things, mostly the refurbished spider, much more capable of being wet.
Speaker:You dropped off a lot of your little stragglers that were hanging on with you, leaving behind Meanie and Crandle, to become citizens of Hamlet Opening, hopefully.
Speaker:Yeah, but we still have fake Suvius.
Speaker:You still have fake Suvius, and unfortunately, you're also bringing with you a guide.
Speaker:So, we're back up to two people falling here.
Speaker:I forgot about that.
Speaker:So, the spider is even more cramped than usual.
Speaker:Yes, the spider, which has one of the negative tags of cramp, is now incredibly cramped.
Speaker:So, you guys head out with all of the supplies you need from just Book's Place.
Speaker:Is there anything specific you're planning on bringing, besides your normal adventuring stuff?
Speaker:I think we should bring stuff to trade with.
Speaker:I think that was a big problem we ran into last time.
Speaker:So, before we go, Ocean wants to go through his stuff and find things that he would believe are valuable.
Speaker:And specifically, how he's going to do it is he feels like he had pretty good luck with that little server cooler that he found.
Speaker:So, he's going to go through and use thingspeak in different objects and find one that seems super valuable that they might be interested in.
Speaker:Okay, just give me one thingspeak roll.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:My weird has been upped, so my god, please let me be more successful.
Speaker:It's a fucking five.
Speaker:Oh, a full failure.
Speaker:Excellent.
Speaker:Hey Stu.
Speaker:Yeah?
Speaker:What's the name of our guide?
Speaker:Cow tools.
Speaker:Cow tools?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Cow tools?
Speaker:Like, like, mow tools.
Speaker:Just cow tools.
Speaker:Like cow tools.
Speaker:Okay, but like cow, like bovine.
Speaker:Like cow.
Speaker:Like a bovine animal.
Speaker:Like C-O-W.
Speaker:And then tools, like T-O-O-L-S.
Speaker:And that's a good apocalyptic name.
Speaker:Does Jacob die?
Speaker:Okay, I thought there was a follow-up question.
Speaker:I don't know why you interrupted us.
Speaker:Well, I thought they were with us, so I was like, I didn't want to be ignoring them, because I figured there's...
Speaker:We're not there yet now.
Speaker:We went back in time.
Speaker:You go walking around your junkyard trying to find something that kind of speaks to you, and you keep putting your hands on it, just like you have with several items before, but just nothing seems to click, and you're like holding up, shaking it to your ear, putting your ear against it and hearing the ocean, which is your name.
Speaker:That's pretty cool.
Speaker:But then finally, your eyes just lock on this closed box.
Speaker:It's like this sealed trunk that has a pretty significant lock on it, and you can't remember where you got it.
Speaker:You don't remember like retrieving this necessarily, and you find it very strange that it would remain locked.
Speaker:Like, you find a locked box, you're going to break that lock open and get inside of it, but you feel something in there calling to you.
Speaker:Oh, so I just found this locked box that I haven't seen, but it just feels it calling to me.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:It's like the size of like three briefcases stacked to each other, but one clamshell locked box.
Speaker:So Ocean scratches his head because like, I don't remember getting this thing.
Speaker:He's going to fish out some bolt cutters and cut the lock off so he can get inside.
Speaker:As you cut it, there's just a little like sound, and it clicks open, and you're able to very easily open it up and you see inside of it, it's mostly filled with just foam, like a nice molding, like a gun case.
Speaker:But inside of it are a couple fairly well-conditioned items that you don't really know what they are.
Speaker:They definitely look technologically advanced.
Speaker:They have one of them has like some sort of transmitter on it, and then there's cables that connect it to another like piece of it.
Speaker:But it doesn't look like a radio, doesn't look like something you've seen before.
Speaker:But you feel that it is tremendously valuable, and this would be a great trading item.
Speaker:Does it seem like it's powered at all?
Speaker:You can try.
Speaker:You want to poke around it?
Speaker:Yeah, I want to poke around with it.
Speaker:Try and figure out.
Speaker:This doesn't seem like a bad thing, does it?
Speaker:Oh, it's super cool.
Speaker:You go and you...
Speaker:There's no obvious power button, but you notice at the top there's like a little dial and it clicks and nothing seems to change on it, but you do hear like a very high-pitched humming sound start coming from it.
Speaker:So you can tell it's like on, but there's no indication of what it's doing.
Speaker:It just continues to scratch his head and say, well, this seems useful.
Speaker:I guess I'll take it to book and see what he can make of it.
Speaker:So he'll shut the briefcase, he'll turn it off as far as he can tell whatever he did to turn it on.
Speaker:Shut the briefcase.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And he'll grab that and then he'll just kind of fill a sack up with random salvage items that he's found in his place just to have some other things possibly to trade with.
Speaker:And he's going to go find book.
Speaker:Book is probably loading up the spider right now.
Speaker:Loading up the spider, yeah.
Speaker:Every trip back and forth between the spider and my room, I'm just staring at that mirror to see if a moon just pops in out of nowhere.
Speaker:But yeah, I think I'm bringing a book to read out loud on the way.
Speaker:Which one?
Speaker:So yeah, I'm carrying Jurassic Park.
Speaker:As you come up, you see Ocean starts running her way, but you are intersected directly by a very young guy.
Speaker:He's at most probably 20.
Speaker:He's got like long shoulder length brown hair.
Speaker:He's wearing a dumb hat, and he has so many pouches on.
Speaker:He's wearing a vest with just like tons of pouches all over him.
Speaker:He looks kind of dirty, very, very small.
Speaker:And he goes, hey, it's me, Caltools.
Speaker:I heard that you needed a guide to the stew.
Speaker:Hey, fella.
Speaker:I like your hat.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Nice to meet you.
Speaker:Caltool.
Speaker:I'm Ocean.
Speaker:Caltools.
Speaker:Caltools.
Speaker:Nice to meet you.
Speaker:Here.
Speaker:And Ocean reaches his hand out to shake his hand.
Speaker:He touches it.
Speaker:He has a very strong grip.
Speaker:Like this man is scrambling along rocks all the time.
Speaker:Just so I know, is it Cowspace tools or is it Caltools one word?
Speaker:Two words.
Speaker:Two words.
Speaker:So first name Cow?
Speaker:No, my name is Caltools.
Speaker:Okay, got it.
Speaker:I don't know why this name is so confusing to me.
Speaker:I just wanted to make sure I was pronouncing it correctly.
Speaker:Since we're going to be working together, I wanted to start off on the right foot.
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:I, uh...
Speaker:Or the right hoof.
Speaker:You'll remember that.
Speaker:Caltools disliked that.
Speaker:Is there anything you'd like to know about the stew before we head off there?
Speaker:I can get you in the general direction, and maybe on the way, we can start going and I can tell you guys some interesting things.
Speaker:Yeah, are you from the stew?
Speaker:No, no.
Speaker:I'm just the only person who feels safe enough to go trade with them when they don't come out.
Speaker:Usually when they want to trade, they send people out with like some goods, but it's...
Speaker:I'm not gonna lie, it's a little like haphazard getting in and out of there.
Speaker:Are the Stua people?
Speaker:I thought it was a place.
Speaker:It's a place, but there's people there.
Speaker:Oh shit.
Speaker:Well, shoot, hey, before we go, what kind of things do they usually trade with?
Speaker:We can see maybe we can find some things for that.
Speaker:So they're mostly scavengers, so they're anything that would help them do that.
Speaker:There's a lot of really old buildings and stuff torn down there that they go into and try to collect as much as possible from it.
Speaker:But that also means they don't have access to a big, huge, glowing city like you guys do.
Speaker:So if there's anything that's unique to that, that would also be really surprising and make them happy.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Book thinks about the light that we...
Speaker:I was just about to say, do we still have that light?
Speaker:It was broken.
Speaker:The question is, did Book have time to fix it?
Speaker:I think we did fix it, actually, didn't we?
Speaker:I go re-listen to every episode.
Speaker:And didn't we make it waterproof?
Speaker:I think you're just making shit up.
Speaker:We made the spider waterproof.
Speaker:No, because I remember when I broke it, I was in the sewer and it got waterlogged.
Speaker:And I think I don't remember.
Speaker:I don't remember either way.
Speaker:We either have it and it doesn't isn't fully functional or we have it.
Speaker:And it is fully functional.
Speaker:You have a broken light.
Speaker:OK, Stu has decided for us.
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:If you thought you fixed it before and if we said you fixed it, you go to turn it on and it turns on for just a second.
Speaker:And then it goes, well, that seems like it could.
Speaker:I'm sure they could like this thing here.
Speaker:Let me let me see if I can figure out what's wrong with it.
Speaker:Oh, God, are you really?
Speaker:Ocean is going to try and things speak it specifically because there's an option is how can I fix this?
Speaker:There's also an option called Stu doesn't tell us what went wrong, but something clearly went wrong.
Speaker:But I have plus two weird I should be succeeding these damn roles.
Speaker:OK, that's a seven success.
Speaker:Six, OK, one.
Speaker:So is that the one question you're asking?
Speaker:Yeah, that's that's really what he wants to know is how to fix it.
Speaker:What's wrong with it?
Speaker:And how can I fix it?
Speaker:OK, you you touch this and you feel its inner workings almost explode outward like a big plate of spaghetti, except you understand that spaghetti.
Speaker:It's like that.
Speaker:It's like that.
Speaker:And you you trace through the mini wires and coils and connections to batteries and things like that.
Speaker:And you realize all that's wrong with this little thing is there's one little capacitor that's blown.
Speaker:Hold on one second.
Speaker:I think I think I can fix this.
Speaker:Do you have any capacitors book slaying around?
Speaker:I mean, I have I have stuff we can take apart.
Speaker:Do you know what the what the capacitance is?
Speaker:Yeah, an ocean tells him whatever it was.
Speaker:Because he can read.
Speaker:They're colored.
Speaker:Yeah, I think I think the book has some electronics like some some old resistors and capacitors and stuff.
Speaker:Some basic stuff that we could use.
Speaker:Yeah, totally.
Speaker:If you know that you could probably just take it with you and fix it on the way if you want.
Speaker:Yeah, let's do that.
Speaker:Yeah, I have a portable soldering iron.
Speaker:What the fuck are you talking about, Stu?
Speaker:You literally just poke them in there.
Speaker:No, you got to solder it.
Speaker:Okay, you continue?
Speaker:Are you going?
Speaker:Yeah, I'll do it on the bumpy ass.
Speaker:Yeah, you can do it now.
Speaker:No, I'll just burn my fingers on the road.
Speaker:That's fine.
Speaker:Or we could just say that I do it.
Speaker:Use the cigarette lighter.
Speaker:Soldering isn't hard.
Speaker:Yeah, see, that's way cooler.
Speaker:So I can use the cigarette lighter to melt down the tips and put it on.
Speaker:Nope, too late now.
Speaker:No, I do something even cooler.
Speaker:I use one of those plasma lighters, you know?
Speaker:Oh, those are really cool, actually.
Speaker:They make the most annoying noise.
Speaker:Okay, you guys are on the road, heading through the long dark.
Speaker:Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker:Hold on.
Speaker:Oh, my God.
Speaker:We're not done getting exposition here, Stu.
Speaker:I literally started with I want to start this in motion.
Speaker:Yeah, but Ocean brought over something.
Speaker:He called my name.
Speaker:He wanted me to take a look at it.
Speaker:I know that...
Speaker:He did not.
Speaker:None of those things happened.
Speaker:This is revisionist history.
Speaker:I think I did say that I was wanting to show this to Book.
Speaker:I think I did actually say that.
Speaker:You said that by yourself.
Speaker:And then Stu intentionally interrupted that sequence because he doesn't want us to investigate.
Speaker:And then he forgot.
Speaker:And now you're trying to go back in time.
Speaker:As we were loading the car and getting the light in and all the stuff, Ocean is going to pop that thing in the little luggage area in the spider and be like, oh, by the way, Book, what are you making this thing?
Speaker:And he pops it open and shows them.
Speaker:What do my elf eyes see?
Speaker:You have not seen anything like this before.
Speaker:You said it has a transmitter on it?
Speaker:Not necessarily a transmitter.
Speaker:It just has two separate components that are able to be connected with a wire.
Speaker:I would like to use compassionate presence on the little dude head.
Speaker:Can I say hi, little guys?
Speaker:Who are you?
Speaker:Are you talking to me, Couchwolds?
Speaker:Or are you talking to the Electro-Ox?
Speaker:I'm just kidding.
Speaker:I don't do that.
Speaker:Well, I found it at my place.
Speaker:I tried to get some information about it when I was looking at it, but all I could really tell is that it was valuable.
Speaker:I don't really remember seeing it before.
Speaker:It's odd.
Speaker:I wonder if somebody left it here.
Speaker:Ocean, I've never seen anything like this before.
Speaker:Did you turn it on?
Speaker:I did.
Speaker:It just makes a whirring noise.
Speaker:It clicks it.
Speaker:It's very quiet.
Speaker:You have to stop and listen to it to actually hear the hum.
Speaker:I want to really quickly shut it off because I'm nervous.
Speaker:I don't want it to explode.
Speaker:It could very well be a bomb.
Speaker:I don't know that we should trade this.
Speaker:I don't know how we would market it to someone if we don't know what it does.
Speaker:I'm nervous that it might be planted by somebody who might not be our biggest fans.
Speaker:Yeah, that's why I wanted to show it to you, see what you made of it.
Speaker:If you think we shouldn't trade it, then we can leave it here and leave it in your workshop maybe and look at it later.
Speaker:Maybe we'll have time to look at it on the way.
Speaker:Or maybe someone in the stew will know what it is.
Speaker:There's no harm in bringing it.
Speaker:Well, that we know about, so I want to make sure it's off, and I want to close the lid and pack it away.
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:What next?
Speaker:Now you can skip all the scenes to watch what we're trying to do.
Speaker:I'm afraid to.
Speaker:Okay, you guys are rolling down the Long Dark in the Spider, which isn't quite as fast as the Humvees or the Jeeps that you've been in recently, but it is a fun ride.
Speaker:This is the actual first time we've driven the Spider on a non prologue session.
Speaker:That's true.
Speaker:Yes, we drove it in session zero, and then it's been kind of broken ever since.
Speaker:So when Ocean gets in and kind of touches the Spider, he feels hands on the steering wheel, which is less like a standard car steering wheel, more like an off-road rally car, go-kart, not a go-kart.
Speaker:Like one of those square ones?
Speaker:Yeah, like one of those square steering wheels with the corners that usually have the buttons on the middle.
Speaker:And as he's holding it, he's like, oh, and he just feels at home sitting in the Spider.
Speaker:Like this is his comfort.
Speaker:And then you pan up to the two people?
Speaker:Yeah, he kicks it in the gear, and he's so used to driving this thing, he feels all its bumps and prods and kicks when it drives, and he looks like he's just having just in bliss, just finally in his element.
Speaker:And I imagine the other two of you are kind of like squished together, uncomfortable.
Speaker:I think CowTools is sitting on my laps.
Speaker:It is only two seats, right?
Speaker:It's a cramped.
Speaker:Specifically, it says rugged, aquatic, sloppy, and cramped.
Speaker:Sloppy.
Speaker:I love sloppy.
Speaker:The Spider roars into the long dark, leaving a big cloud of dust behind it.
Speaker:As you look in the newly fixed rear-view mirror, you see that the traveling merchants seem to be getting ready to head out, too.
Speaker:And Caltools goes, Yeah, I'm just going to meet up with them a couple days from now.
Speaker:No problem.
Speaker:I'm super good at navigating this area.
Speaker:You guys can trust me with anything, anything at all.
Speaker:But what do you want to know about the stew?
Speaker:Well, what are the people like?
Speaker:Are they usually pretty amicable to trade dealings?
Speaker:They seem pretty nice.
Speaker:They're a little standoffish.
Speaker:I think they're worried about people finding what they have down there.
Speaker:But besides that, they're very open to trade and very fair.
Speaker:And you know where these medical supplies are?
Speaker:Medical supplies?
Speaker:No, they probably have some.
Speaker:But I don't know where any specific medical supplies are.
Speaker:Oh, right.
Speaker:No, we know where they are.
Speaker:And I take out the notes that we got from Maple, and I pass them to Kao Tools, and I ask him, based on these directions, do you know where we're trying to go?
Speaker:Do you know where we can find this stuff?
Speaker:This is just basically pointing you to the stew.
Speaker:Like, there's all sorts of stuff down there.
Speaker:I turned to Kao Tools.
Speaker:I keep wanting to say Kaotails.
Speaker:It's not my name.
Speaker:Yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker:I'm just...
Speaker:I apologize.
Speaker:Yeah, sorry.
Speaker:So I guess we'll see what we...
Speaker:I guess we'll just see what they have.
Speaker:Yeah, they're pretty friendly, if you know how to find them.
Speaker:I'd fix the light.
Speaker:Okay, he's still working on the light.
Speaker:Do I have to roll?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Oh, that's cool.
Speaker:As you guys plunder further deep into the Long Dark, you start leaving the area that you're familiar with, Ocean, and you start having to rely on the directions from Cow Tools, who gives you pretty good directions.
Speaker:He warns you way before things come up, but his directions are also very strangely phrased.
Speaker:It'll be like, when you see the stalagmites that look like a sad camel, you're going to turn left two tunnels after that.
Speaker:So you really have to interpret what he's going with.
Speaker:And there are several times you almost pass it, but then he points at it, and he's like, there's the camel.
Speaker:You're able to follow the instructions.
Speaker:Give me a sharp roll ocean.
Speaker:Ooh, ten.
Speaker:You realize that as you're continuing, it's barely perceptible, but you realize you get this kind of warmth in your tum tum, and you're a little joy that you maybe at first think is just because you're back in the spider having fun.
Speaker:But you realize that you are very slowly descending deeper and deeper with all of the turns that they make.
Speaker:Like usually, the long dark is very windy up and down all over the place.
Speaker:But you realize turn after turn, it's just like small declines, nothing like crazy.
Speaker:But you feel yourself getting lower and lower over a significant amount of time.
Speaker:So you feel you feel pretty good and deep now.
Speaker:That's weird.
Speaker:That's unsettling.
Speaker:But as we're going deeper oceans, like, all right, finally, we're going down.
Speaker:And he starts feeling a little bit excited about the prospects of going deeper and deeper than he has been.
Speaker:And then a huge blinding light shines in your face as Buck finishes repairing.
Speaker:Oh, God!
Speaker:Shit, sorry.
Speaker:Oh, shit, sorry.
Speaker:I guess, oh, man, I thought I had the switch off.
Speaker:Maybe I might have wired the capacitor on backwards.
Speaker:It looks like it works great.
Speaker:You've done a number to it.
Speaker:He scratches his eyes.
Speaker:And that was a safety where off is on and on is off.
Speaker:So any people not used to it won't know how to use this light crackle.
Speaker:Eventually, you guys are, it starts getting, the caverns start getting larger and larger.
Speaker:It seems like almost less winding tunnels and more just interconnected caverns with these like access points.
Speaker:CalTools tells you to slow down for a little bit.
Speaker:And he, oh, shit, you used to not have windows, but now you have to have windows.
Speaker:What do you want your windows to be made out of?
Speaker:Is it like plexiglass or like a thick glass?
Speaker:I imagine it's wood.
Speaker:Saran wrap.
Speaker:I'm going to say probably plexiglass.
Speaker:Something super that's not going to like shatter if something gets hit.
Speaker:Yeah, very repairable.
Speaker:As you slow down, Kautul's leans all the way against the glass, pressing his nose up against it and just is staring, looking for something very hidden in the shadows.
Speaker:And eventually he goes, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.
Speaker:And Ocean feathers the brakes and comes to a stop.
Speaker:He immediately opens the door and runs out into the darkness.
Speaker:Kautul's?
Speaker:I would like to turn on the light and point it in the direction that he ran.
Speaker:You flash it on and he looks back at you like Gollum in The Two Towers.
Speaker:His eyes glint a little bit.
Speaker:His eyes look massive.
Speaker:And he's bent over looking at this somehow.
Speaker:This is a thing.
Speaker:I don't know if you guys have seen it.
Speaker:Probably.
Speaker:It's a boat that's overturned and shoved up against the corner of this cavern.
Speaker:It's a pretty large boat.
Speaker:It's like a pontoon boat that looks all torn to shit.
Speaker:And he's looking at the letters on the side of it and he goes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:This is the one.
Speaker:You got to move this out of the way, and then you should be able to make it down in there.
Speaker:Kowtools, this might be the wrong time to ask, but are there any horrors of the maelstrom down here?
Speaker:Probably.
Speaker:Have you encountered any?
Speaker:No, not myself.
Speaker:I would like to help Kowtools move the boat, but then I realize I'm too weak and I have to call for Ocean.
Speaker:Yeah, Ocean comes out and pulls the boat out of the way.
Speaker:Book and Kowtools are pushing on the side of it as hard as they can, and it's like gently rocking a little bit.
Speaker:And you go to pull it out, and there's actually a big clunk where it's like stuck, and you can't move it.
Speaker:But as you pull it out, you get enough Kowtools and Book get enough leverage, and it actually slides to the side.
Speaker:It's on rails on the bottom.
Speaker:Oh, that's cool.
Speaker:And you see this opening that is barely large enough to fit the spider in.
Speaker:It's just this completely dark hole that with the light shining, you can see it's wet in there.
Speaker:There's some little reflections of moist ground.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:Does this take us to the stew?
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:You just go down there.
Speaker:What is this?
Speaker:Is it just a passage?
Speaker:Is it a tunnel?
Speaker:Yeah, this is like the main entrance.
Speaker:Once you get in there, it's pretty confusing, and it changes all the time.
Speaker:There's always portions that just start flooding, so there'll just be a path you can't take.
Speaker:Like last time I was here, I told you.
Speaker:And so I can't really help you figure out exactly how to get there, but I can kind of map out the general direction, and I've actually already done that for you.
Speaker:And he pulls into one of his many pockets and gives you a better-than-a-zoom map, but worse-than-a-real map, that shows a few.
Speaker:It shows this entrance tunnel, and he has a little red X that says you are here.
Speaker:And he goes, careful, this map will not be accurate once you move this spot, because that you were here won't be true anymore, right?
Speaker:Because you'll be somewhere else up there.
Speaker:So don't get confused by that.
Speaker:But once you go into the tunnel, here's kind of how it's laid out, generally.
Speaker:Like these are the ones I've seen that aren't flooded, and you see a bunch of different paths mapped out.
Speaker:It looks very man-made, the types of tunnels that he's showing.
Speaker:They're very like 90-degree turns, or like gentle curves going around places.
Speaker:And the most important thing is he points out a big gold star, and he says, this is where you're trying to get.
Speaker:No matter what tunnels you have to take to get there, you're trying to kind of get in this direction.
Speaker:So just try to keep your bearing, don't get turned around, and you should be fine.
Speaker:Why does it sound like you're about to leave us?
Speaker:Are you about to leave us?
Speaker:Well, I thought my job was to come right to here and leave you guys.
Speaker:Well, I mean, it can be, if you want to go and look scared.
Speaker:He goes, can I just ask you a couple questions first?
Speaker:Yeah, I was hoping the entire car ride you could do that, but right here is fine too.
Speaker:Is that?
Speaker:Well, I thought you said you were leaving.
Speaker:I meant the previous like 12 hours of travel.
Speaker:Well, we had to read Moby Dick since we were going on a sea adventure.
Speaker:Yeah, books giving me reading lessons.
Speaker:Cow tools.
Speaker:Is there a lot of open water that will be traversing?
Speaker:There are places that kind of remain more flooded.
Speaker:So, yeah, most of the people who live there get around on boats.
Speaker:And just for how deep is the water?
Speaker:It starts like this, and he holds his hands like six inches apart, and then he goes, and it goes to this, and he holds them as far as he physically can move them apart.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Well, I think I can stand in that much water.
Speaker:Oh, no, you cannot.
Speaker:Oh, I thought those were like literal.
Speaker:I thought those were actual distances.
Speaker:As far as I can move my arms, man, I'm sorry.
Speaker:Yep, that's fair.
Speaker:There's no other way to express depth that adds on me.
Speaker:Well, thanks, Cow Tools.
Speaker:It's been thank you.
Speaker:I could stick around for a price.
Speaker:I look at Ocean.
Speaker:I just shrug.
Speaker:This is up to you, dude.
Speaker:How much you want?
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:What cool shit do you have?
Speaker:Oh, gosh.
Speaker:I hold up the light.
Speaker:No, no, no, we gotta get some of this stuff to trade for the medical supplies.
Speaker:Ocean, how comfortable are you navigating?
Speaker:Or I guess how much do you trust me to get us to direct you with this map?
Speaker:As long as you're confident in yourself, look, I'll trust you with anything.
Speaker:I wouldn't necessarily say that I'm confident.
Speaker:Well.
Speaker:But I'll do it.
Speaker:I mean, as far as bargaining chips, we have the light, some scraps, and a thing that we don't know what it does, right?
Speaker:And cow tools, I don't want you to get too far from your folks.
Speaker:Yeah, they will not wait around for me very long.
Speaker:So I guess this is goodbye.
Speaker:And I stick my hand out.
Speaker:He shakes it and goes into the darkness.
Speaker:He's whistling as he goes along.
Speaker:You hear it slowly, slowly disappear.
Speaker:I turn to Ocean.
Speaker:That guy's like a smurf or some shit.
Speaker:I don't know what his deal is.
Speaker:Ocean shakes his head, and he's staring off with wonder into the distance.
Speaker:I'll never forget that man.
Speaker:I can't even remember his name, dude.
Speaker:He just had a powerful aura.
Speaker:That's true.
Speaker:And a powerful stench.
Speaker:I think my clothes are going to smell like that guy for a while.
Speaker:That could be very much what I was smelling.
Speaker:Well, all right.
Speaker:Well, Book, you're ready for this?
Speaker:I look into Ocean's eyes and I nod slowly.
Speaker:Let's get us some needles.
Speaker:That's as good as I could do.
Speaker:Okay, you hop back in the spider and roll down into this dark tunnel.
Speaker:Are you leaving the door open behind you or closing it?
Speaker:Oh, before I would want to close it.
Speaker:Ocean wants to check and see.
Speaker:Ocean checks first to see if it's obvious on a way to open it up once we close it from the backside.
Speaker:From the inside.
Speaker:It actually seems easier to open from the inside.
Speaker:There's this big thing you can get leverage on, like a big handle that you can pull across.
Speaker:That looks like it was welded to this side of the boat.
Speaker:Okay, in that case, yeah, let's close this off.
Speaker:And Ocean pulls it shut.
Speaker:Okay, you are in basically pitch blackness besides the light of the spider pushing forward.
Speaker:Before we leave, I would like to tie a string to the handle on this side of the door.
Speaker:Is there anywhere I could tie it off that's secured to a wall?
Speaker:You could tie it to a different part of the boat.
Speaker:You can find a stalactite.
Speaker:Yeah, just something to...
Speaker:And not like a heavy string, like something that would snap, but basically I want to put it there so that on our way back, we can see if anybody followed us in.
Speaker:Oh, that's smart.
Speaker:That's smart.
Speaker:That works.
Speaker:So yeah, you set that up.
Speaker:I thought you were going to literally try to breadcrumb this with a rope, and I was like, that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard in my life.
Speaker:No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker:I just want to...
Speaker:Right around the corner, and you're out of rope.
Speaker:I'm just worried that we were being followed.
Speaker:Yeah, that was good.
Speaker:That was smart.
Speaker:The earth almost immediately just becomes this muddy sludge, and the spider slows to a crawl as you start slomping and glomping forward in this wet, wet tunnel.
Speaker:The ocean shifts into a lower gear, and it's like, well, this might be kind of tough to navigate.
Speaker:I thought it was just going to be water, to be honest with you, Ocean Book.
Speaker:Ocean Book?
Speaker:What's your approach as you move forward?
Speaker:Are you just going slow and steady, trying to work your way through till something changes?
Speaker:We're an unfamiliar area.
Speaker:Spider is an off-road vehicle, but you gotta take some of these muddy terrains super, super slow to get through it.
Speaker:I want to make sure Book has enough time to navigate where we're going and fully comprehend the map, so I'm going to say slow and steady.
Speaker:Okay, give me a Deal with Bad Terrain roll.
Speaker:How does that work?
Speaker:When you have to deal with bad terrain, roll plus cool, modify, bigger your vehicle's handling.
Speaker:On a 10+, you fly through untouched.
Speaker:On a 7 to 9, choose 1.
Speaker:Okay, so cool plus handling.
Speaker:What's your handling?
Speaker:Handling is only 1.
Speaker:So that is a 7.
Speaker:Oh, almost dangerous.
Speaker:Choose 1 of either you slow down and pick your way forward, you push too hard and your vehicle suffers harm as established, you ditch out and go back to find another way.
Speaker:Slow down.
Speaker:We're going to slow down and pinch our way forward.
Speaker:That seems like the most apt choice.
Speaker:Oh yeah, it becomes this just thick churning mud where you get to the point where you're barely rolling forward and you try to, once you get out of like one big muddy ditch, you try to make it so you are going slow enough to just always keep like a little forward momentum.
Speaker:Look, give me a read-a-bad situation.
Speaker:Hell yeah.
Speaker:Hell yeah.
Speaker:Whoo!
Speaker:Thank god for plus 2.
Speaker:That's a 10.
Speaker:Ask 4 questions.
Speaker:That's sharp, right?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Oh, I do get to ask 4 questions.
Speaker:That's so fun.
Speaker:That's so fun.
Speaker:So, are we stuck, or are we just...
Speaker:No.
Speaker:You're not stuck.
Speaker:You're just moving very slowly.
Speaker:You've gotten stuck a few times.
Speaker:You've been able to keep moving forward, but you're just going very slow.
Speaker:Okay, Stu, I would like to know, what should I be on the lookout for?
Speaker:What is our best way through?
Speaker:What poses the biggest threat to us?
Speaker:And what represents the best opportunity for us to find resources that will help us navigate the Stu?
Speaker:As you crawl your way forward, just as you would expect by following the map, you see it opens up into a larger cavern, that the whole ground is just this swampy muddiness, that there's actually standing water in the center of it right now.
Speaker:And all you guys can hear is trickling all around, as moisture just accumulates on the stalagmites and drop down.
Speaker:Pleasant.
Speaker:Book, you notice a few things when you come in here.
Speaker:Are you shining your light around, too?
Speaker:Or are you just using the headlights?
Speaker:I would say that, yeah, as, yeah, Book would probably be shining the light, like, behind them and kind of all around to be looking out for things that could damage the vehicle.
Speaker:As you're looking around, you notice a few things.
Speaker:You're trying to find a good way of kind of being able to keep moving forward within this.
Speaker:And this room is actually particularly not prone to using the spider's grappling capabilities, because it's a big, large, open area.
Speaker:Then there's not much that you could shoot and grab on to from here very confidently.
Speaker:As you look around this entire room, there's just tons of flotsam and jetsam all around, thrown all willy-nilly.
Speaker:It looks like mostly just rotted stuff that would not have any value to you.
Speaker:But as you shine the light, you see somehow caught up in the corner against one of the walls, there is this very large plywood board, like, eight feet by four feet, that is just barely cracked in the middle.
Speaker:And you think that would be something useful to get you moving quickly when you get stuck, you'd be able to grab it, shove it under your tires.
Speaker:That is exactly the kind of thing I was wanting to look for.
Speaker:Would you want to try to get it?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Ocean, when he sees that, he navigates a little bit closer by to reach out, to grab the board.
Speaker:And you said it's kind of splintered, like about to break in the middle, you said?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, the rest of it looks pretty good, but right in the middle looks like it's almost broken, like someone broke it, but it's still holding on.
Speaker:Yeah, so he's going to grab that and he's actually going to split it, like with his knee, split it where the break is right in the middle to have two different plywood pole sheets now.
Speaker:So that way he could have one on each set of tires if he needs to.
Speaker:While Ocean is doing that book, you have time to kind of shine your light around a little bit more, and you see something catches your eye.
Speaker:Everything down here is just muddy and gray.
Speaker:There's stone walls and just mud everywhere, but you catch a little glimpse of color, and it's all the way up on the ceiling, and you see the ceiling is absolutely covered with these very bright violet mushrooms that do not look like particularly welcoming to eat, is what I would say from your experience of researching botanicals.
Speaker:Ooh, interesting.
Speaker:And while you're looking at that, you think you hear something, and you stop for a second and it's nothing, and then you think you listen a little bit harder, and there seems to be the sound of rushing water.
Speaker:Oh, shit.
Speaker:And you think it's coming from...
Speaker:I didn't lay it out super well, but this is a big open chamber with an exit on each cardinal direction, basically, and you think it's coming from your right side.
Speaker:So if you came in through the south, you'd hear it coming from the east, but it is barely coming over the sound of random drops and things like that.
Speaker:You just hear water getting louder, like a very distant waterfall almost, but you can tell it's increasing water.
Speaker:Oh, shit.
Speaker:That was all four questions.
Speaker:I don't know if you caught them all, but they are all in there.
Speaker:Yeah, I think so.
Speaker:So I think I caught all.
Speaker:So the biggest threat is the mushrooms.
Speaker:No, the biggest threat is the...
Speaker:The biggest threat is the mushrooms.
Speaker:What we should be on the lookout for is the water.
Speaker:Rushing water.
Speaker:And the best opportunity for us to find stuff was the plywood.
Speaker:What was our best way through?
Speaker:It's from the directionality that the water is coming.
Speaker:You don't want to go down there.
Speaker:Okay, got it, got it, got it, got it.
Speaker:And maybe directly across from it would be the furthest from it.
Speaker:You don't know how all of this works, but yeah.
Speaker:Okay, got it.
Speaker:Hey, Ocean?
Speaker:Yeah?
Speaker:I think we got a boogie.
Speaker:Okay, let's do it.
Speaker:I hear that noise.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:You start moving.
Speaker:Which exit do you head towards?
Speaker:I want to look at the map.
Speaker:Yeah, so...
Speaker:Do any of them look more direct?
Speaker:Yes, the one straightforward would be more direct, but that's perpendicular to the water that's coming.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Do any of them look like they go up?
Speaker:I'm assuming it's a flat map.
Speaker:Yeah, none of them look like they go up from here.
Speaker:Ocean, I think we should try to hit the far exit.
Speaker:That's going to be our most direct route.
Speaker:We just don't want to get stuck in here when water starts pouring in.
Speaker:No, that makes sense.
Speaker:Alright, and Ocean starts navigating.
Speaker:But we can always anchor ourselves with the gravels.
Speaker:We could, and theoretically, I can be fully submerged if we get rushed by the water, but I'm just not quite ready to test out the fully submersible part of the spider just yet.
Speaker:Yeah, Ocean, I agree.
Speaker:You go as quick as possible.
Speaker:You notice the water is starting to fill up in this room, actually.
Speaker:So when you look out, there's now like two inches of water everywhere on the ground, and you realize that at this rate, you probably won't be able to make it all the way out before your tires are submerged.
Speaker:If it continues at this rate that it's going now, you could try to use your boards real quickly, and I'd give you a bonus on your driving thing, or you can just try to whip it out now and keep them for later.
Speaker:I think we should hold on to the boards.
Speaker:Because even if the wheels are submerged, no matter which tunnel we go into, water is going to leak out of this room and go down.
Speaker:So we're not in a good spot regardless.
Speaker:Is there a surface that I can see off in the distance that I can successfully grapple to?
Speaker:At this point, since you've continued going towards that wall, you think you could probably shove it into the wall in front of you.
Speaker:Ocean fires the grappling.
Speaker:And the ceiling would work, too.
Speaker:Into the mushrooms?
Speaker:Where it seems like you would want us to go.
Speaker:I want you guys to survive.
Speaker:Ocean fires the pitons.
Speaker:Pitons?
Speaker:Pitons?
Speaker:Putons?
Speaker:How do you say that?
Speaker:Petons.
Speaker:That's not how I thought you'd say it at all.
Speaker:Which is the worst way it could possibly be pronounced.
Speaker:I think I cut out that joke from one of our intro episodes where I complained about how dumb the word pitons is.
Speaker:Yeah, I always...
Speaker:It looks like pittons.
Speaker:Oh yeah, pitons or pitons would be like a real word.
Speaker:Piton.
Speaker:Yeah, I like pitons.
Speaker:That's how I would say it if I was English.
Speaker:So he fires the piton into the wall, directly across from at the end of the hall, to grapple on and see and use that, you know, pull on the winch to try and pull the spider away from the water as fast as possible.
Speaker:All right, give me an act under fire roll.
Speaker:That's a seven.
Speaker:Seven.
Speaker:You hit the wall easily.
Speaker:It's a massive, huge wall.
Speaker:Not a risk of missing that bad boy.
Speaker:And you start cranking along, but you feel your back tires are completely like stuck, just slurping out.
Speaker:And you feel it starting to give.
Speaker:You know it's going to work, but it's slowing you down just enough that before it starts pulling you out, both of you are able to see a rushing wall of water coming in that direction you heard, and it is not particularly clean and nice flowing water.
Speaker:It is covered with all sorts of shit.
Speaker:You notice probably most concerning that there is a bunch of scrap metal, mostly like sheet metal that's torn and jagged, and it is going in this direction, and you don't think your tires would be particularly happy about it as you start cranking forward.
Speaker:Can we basically strap the plywood to basically put armor on the side of the...
Speaker:Since the tires aren't doing much anyway, we're being dragged forward by the peon now.
Speaker:Can we stop accelerating tires, just bore them up with the plywood to try to protect them from debris?
Speaker:Is that a good idea?
Speaker:You can try.
Speaker:Oh, I'm for it.
Speaker:I think that's a good idea.
Speaker:Boke is going to turn to Ocean, and he's going to fucking hate himself for saying this.
Speaker:Ocean, I want you to keep winding the winch.
Speaker:I'm going to try to crawl out and bore up the tires, protect the tires.
Speaker:Oh, Lord.
Speaker:And I would like to hang out of the open door cockpit of the spider and try to basically use, like, ratchet straps and punchy cords.
Speaker:As Boke leans out to do that, Ocean says, Hold on one second.
Speaker:And he gets a rope from the back in the backseat area, and he ties it around his waist so that way he can pull him back in if he possibly goes overboard.
Speaker:That's smart.
Speaker:Ocean, this is probably a good time to tell you that I cannot swim.
Speaker:That's what I got the rope for, bud.
Speaker:Thanks, Ocean.
Speaker:Looks like you're going to be learning today.
Speaker:This sounds like something challenging to me.
Speaker:Would you like to try something challenging?
Speaker:Yeah, I'll try something challenging.
Speaker:I'm shitting bricks, man.
Speaker:The first number was good.
Speaker:The second number was not so good.
Speaker:What is it?
Speaker:Plus aggro?
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:So that was a six, but Ocean tied a rope around me, which means that he helped.
Speaker:I was just about to ask him if that can help, that I'm giving him a little bit of leverage to kind of brace himself.
Speaker:I would let you make an assist roll to try to help with that.
Speaker:But remember, things will go very wrong if you fail this.
Speaker:And I think you're only at plus one history.
Speaker:I'm actually at plus two history with Book.
Speaker:With my improvement, I'm going to take plus one aggro, which brings me to zero aggro, which doesn't help me for this fucking roll.
Speaker:Even though it would have gotten me a seven if Stu was nice.
Speaker:Ocean uses the rope to prop him to help support Book, so he has a little bit more...
Speaker:You know, he can lean out a little further.
Speaker:Hopefully that helps him.
Speaker:Go for it.
Speaker:This will be really bad if he...
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Let me know if I have plus two with Book right now.
Speaker:So I hope I'm not even going to look at the dice when I roll it.
Speaker:Oh, fuck yeah.
Speaker:That's a 12.
Speaker:You guys both get plus one.
Speaker:That brings you to a solid mix success.
Speaker:Hell yeah.
Speaker:I'll take a mix success.
Speaker:With a 12, he only gets a mixed.
Speaker:Damn.
Speaker:You go and you grab both planks, and you go and try to shove them into, it's now like four inches of water, and under that, just mud.
Speaker:And as you push in, you feel this weight and this massive force of tons and tons of mud start sliding up the side of it.
Speaker:And your finger grip is like just about to give out.
Speaker:And you have it barely angled, you have to hold one in each hand, so your arms are like spread apart, trying to cover this mud.
Speaker:As this water rushes through, and you start hearing just these thuds against the end of it, you have this thud, thud, thud of all this different jetsum and flotsum plopping around.
Speaker:And this huge piece of sheet metal that's just torn off and this sharp jagged edge shoots forward and pierces directly through your forearm.
Speaker:And you take two armor-piercing harm, and this obviously causes you to wince and drop them.
Speaker:But as they fall down, it seems like they are covering the wheels in a satisfactory way.
Speaker:So I definitely didn't get to ratchet strap them into place at all?
Speaker:No, they're being held in by the weight of the mud and water.
Speaker:But aren't we getting pulled forward?
Speaker:I assume he stopped that while he was tying you down, but it's up to you guys.
Speaker:You can keep being pulled forward if you want.
Speaker:I imagine the winch that is used is an electric winch.
Speaker:So I kind of imagined it was like there was like a on the steering wheel, there's like a button he could press that kind of holds it, that kind of starts winding back or unwinding.
Speaker:So he's got to hold the button down, but he still has his other harm.
Speaker:He still has his other arm that he could use to...
Speaker:Then yeah, you realize you don't have, there's no way you're going to be able to tie both of these down right now, but they are wedged in.
Speaker:If you don't move much, you should be fine.
Speaker:But as you pull forward, you'll definitely be out of the protective bubbles of your two plywood boards.
Speaker:As I'm trying to crawl backwards back in...
Speaker:So is the shrapnel still in my arm?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay, I leave it there.
Speaker:How big is it?
Speaker:Badass.
Speaker:Like eight inches.
Speaker:Oh, that's pretty good.
Speaker:That's pretty good.
Speaker:Okay, I'm going to crawl back in the car.
Speaker:Ocean, new plan.
Speaker:Fire another grapple, like directly behind us.
Speaker:Basically, I'm saying we want to try to anchor ourselves in place.
Speaker:All right, do you want me to stop pulling forward on the one?
Speaker:Yeah, the plywood, I didn't tie it to us.
Speaker:It's stuck in the ground, so we want to...
Speaker:Did you close the door?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:The second you close the door, this huge clay pot smashes against the window and explodes out.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:While Ocean does that, I want to try to bend the metal so that it's no longer going to stab myself in the eye, but I don't want to pull it out.
Speaker:So I'm saying, like, if there's a piece going into my arm and then a piece protruding out of my arm, I want to bend both in, like, an S shape so that I have, like, a gauntlet, but not a cool one, one that hurts really bad, but doesn't, hopefully, contribute to me bleeding out and dying.
Speaker:Give me an act under fire.
Speaker:I was going to say you try something challenging, but I think you could bend this if you weren't in a bad situation, but the bad situation just happens to be very bad.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So the act under fire...
Speaker:It's just plus 4, right?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So that is a 9.
Speaker:A 9.
Speaker:Oh, that's almost a full success.
Speaker:Almost.
Speaker:So you go and bend it, and you are able to bend it.
Speaker:It hurts really bad while you're doing this, and you take an additional one point of armor piercing harm.
Speaker:Yeah, I thought you were going to do that.
Speaker:You now have a really cool little bangle on your arm.
Speaker:But no, it seems completely like safe-ish.
Speaker:Like you won't accidentally poke something.
Speaker:It's not going to get in your way.
Speaker:It's still very sharp around it.
Speaker:And very painful.
Speaker:You will need to get this taken care of at some point.
Speaker:But for your immediate future, you're okay.
Speaker:Ocean, you go and shoot the second grappling thing.
Speaker:I'm going to give me another deal with capturing roll.
Speaker:It's cool.
Speaker:Plus handling.
Speaker:That is actually a 2.
Speaker:That's a 11.
Speaker:Yeah, you shoot this.
Speaker:You're not able to hit the back wall entirely, but you find like a portion in the side wall where you think it will kind of wedge you in good enough.
Speaker:And you shoot it there and you feel it anchored in.
Speaker:Give me a roll that is just plus massive of your vehicle.
Speaker:Plus massive.
Speaker:That is another 11.
Speaker:You're so good at this.
Speaker:I apparently am.
Speaker:Am I stable, by the way?
Speaker:If you haven't taken too much damage, then yeah.
Speaker:Well, I'm at 9, so I don't know.
Speaker:I don't remember where unstable happens.
Speaker:I believe 9 is unstable.
Speaker:I think after 6 is unstable.
Speaker:Oh, poop.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Okay, your very good roll luckily reduced this from what would be 2 harm to your vehicle to 1 harm.
Speaker:With 2 harm, there was the potential for each of you to take 1 additional harm, and there would have been a functional damage.
Speaker:1 harm is just cosmetic damage, which still isn't great when you're in an underwater scenario.
Speaker:I'm gonna actually let you choose.
Speaker:I'm gonna give you an option, which is what I like to do with my mix successes normally, but I'll do it with this damage one.
Speaker:Either you're going to have a very slow fuel leak, or your headlights are gonna go out.
Speaker:Oh, God.
Speaker:Leaving you with just the handheld light.
Speaker:But we do have the light.
Speaker:The fuel leak will be very slow, but it will definitely exist.
Speaker:I don't like the idea of having a fuel leak, no matter how slow it is, in this environment, with no way to get back to the main area if something goes wrong and we lose all our fuel.
Speaker:The other thing is, could Ocean tell that there was a fuel leak?
Speaker:If the headlights go out, we know about it, and we can address it.
Speaker:Would we notice that there's a fuel leak if we don't?
Speaker:I bet after all this, Ocean would do a full...
Speaker:once he got over to the stew and was in a comfortable area, wherever the settlement is, I bet he would do a full body examination of the car.
Speaker:I don't know if he would immediately know it, but I bet by the end of...
Speaker:by the time that we got to where we were going, he would know for sure.
Speaker:But I think I'm gonna go with the headlights, because we do have a light right now.
Speaker:It's pretty damn bright, and I don't like the idea of being trapped in the off chance that these people don't have fuel for us.
Speaker:As the door closes, the claypot shatters, you shoot the anchor back into the other wall, and you feel this moment of stability.
Speaker:You just feel this tension against all portions of the spider.
Speaker:You feel the cables kind of straining, and then suddenly you just hear from the water pressure just breaking both of your headlights right off.
Speaker:And if you have any sort of cool overhead light, that also breaks.
Speaker:He has a cabin light and he has one of those obnoxious Jeep lights that are on the top.
Speaker:Yeah, the light bar, yeah, that breaks too, certainly.
Speaker:Pleasing everyone.
Speaker:I loved that thing.
Speaker:Pleasing highway drivers around the world as the light bar breaks.
Speaker:You guys just hear, now certainly hearing and not seeing without those headlights, your car getting peppered with just different things all smashing into it.
Speaker:You feel like you're almost kind of like swirling around a little bit.
Speaker:You feel the car start rising up.
Speaker:The spider kind of gained some elevation like you're floating a little bit.
Speaker:And as you're shining the light around, you can't discern where the top of the water is now, but you know it is certainly above you.
Speaker:How would you guys like to proceed?
Speaker:Look, do you still have that light?
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:And I switch it on, and I want to kind of shine around us and get a sense of our surroundings.
Speaker:Is the water still pouring in or has it kind of studied?
Speaker:You can tell there's still a flow of water, but it's definitely slowed down.
Speaker:You can see most of the detritus is flowing in front of you like this.
Speaker:But it doesn't seem to be swirling, whirling.
Speaker:Ocean, should we start cranking along?
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, we know where the wall's at.
Speaker:We might not be able to see anything, but...
Speaker:I'm just...
Speaker:What's the map looking like from that?
Speaker:Do you seem to know where we need to go?
Speaker:I mean, straight ahead is still the most direct route, but if the water's flowing across from us, the winch we're gonna swing wide of it, we might need to shoot another anchor to our right.
Speaker:I'm assuming the water's coming from our right.
Speaker:I was picturing I was in the passenger seat.
Speaker:Accurate.
Speaker:So we might have to send one like 45 degrees to the right, to starboard.
Speaker:And then he shakes his head.
Speaker:What the fuck is starboard?
Speaker:Holy shit, Vesuvius!
Speaker:Are you okay?
Speaker:Vesuvius!
Speaker:I got rattled around a little bit there.
Speaker:I forgot you were on my shoulder.
Speaker:You've been so quiet.
Speaker:Do I seem okay?
Speaker:And he has a giant piece of shrapnel coming in one cheekbone and going out the other one.
Speaker:You look great, buddy.
Speaker:Yeah, you seem okay.
Speaker:Look, maybe we should leave him in the car for now.
Speaker:I look at Ocean as the shrapnel is like an inch from my face.
Speaker:I go, I would actually argue that we should keep him exactly where he is.
Speaker:He sneezes and you feel it like tickle your cheekbone.
Speaker:He's like, oh, man, that is that is mighty dirty down here.
Speaker:Oh, my God.
Speaker:So he looks like Two-Face with a giant because he got burnt previously, didn't he?
Speaker:You know how I got these cars?
Speaker:Yes, I was there.
Speaker:You gave me some, too.
Speaker:Vesuvius, we're going to when we get back, when next time we get back to Hummel opening, we're going to we're going to give you a little bit of makeover.
Speaker:We're going to we're going to get you patched up like a like a new body.
Speaker:No, absolutely not.
Speaker:If we could.
Speaker:Oh, I'm just where I just the last time you had a body.
Speaker:It didn't go so great for the three of us.
Speaker:That's true.
Speaker:I mean, maybe we could find something.
Speaker:We could put you on like a little RC car.
Speaker:That would be terrifying.
Speaker:I mean, adorable.
Speaker:It would be creepy as hell.
Speaker:Oh, my God.
Speaker:We have to go.
Speaker:Why are we?
Speaker:Why are we chit chatting?
Speaker:We have to go.
Speaker:We're pulling.
Speaker:I would recommend that we disengage from the rear, shoot something like 45 degrees to our right, and help use it to try to vary the rate of pull on that to try to aim us at the entrance that we're going for.
Speaker:Okay, give me another handling roll.
Speaker:I promise I'm not going to make you do like 500.
Speaker:Do I deal with difficult terrain?
Speaker:Handling plus cool.
Speaker:Handling plus cool.
Speaker:We've done a lot of these today.
Speaker:Hey, I'm letting you power level some stats.
Speaker:You really are.
Speaker:That is a 10.
Speaker:Hell yes.
Speaker:Hell yes.
Speaker:You don't even need my help.
Speaker:You time it perfectly.
Speaker:You disengage the rear one, and you start flowing with the water, and you have this anchor point in front of you, and you see yourself heading generally towards the entrance there, but you know you're going to be a little too far back, and may even hit into the wall.
Speaker:But you're able to wait long enough to actually see the other side, the other room on the other side of this door, and you're able to shoot one of your harpoons directly through that, and you feel it make a purchase in a wall, and you crank yourself forward just enough to be able to slide Tokyo Drift right through the doorway.
Speaker:Spicy.
Speaker:Very spicy.
Speaker:Are we still underwater?
Speaker:Book is very afraid of carbon monoxide.
Speaker:Yes, you're getting a little lightheaded, I would say.
Speaker:Fuck.
Speaker:I shine a light above us.
Speaker:What do I see?
Speaker:This ceiling has much less mushrooms, but still some on it.
Speaker:Can we see the surface of the water breaking?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:You can tell there's a good footage, probably.
Speaker:It's hard to tell with the light refraction stuff, but you can see the light shining off of a ceiling, so there's at least some space above the water.
Speaker:So we just have to get the snorkel above water, right?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So are we worried that the mushrooms could dissolve the...?
Speaker:We just know it's the biggest threat to us.
Speaker:I don't think we know.
Speaker:I assume their spores would poison us or something, to be honest with you.
Speaker:Okay, that's a very intelligent thing to be afraid of.
Speaker:How's like mushrooms?
Speaker:I mean, I hate the fucking texture of mushrooms, but I'm not going to go up there and start biting on them like Mario.
Speaker:Sorry, Ocean, you probably don't know who Mario is, and I explain who Mario is as we start to lose consciousness.
Speaker:Mario Vespucci, the creator of the radio.
Speaker:Are you?
Speaker:That's some AIS response, because Emerigo Vespucci is the person who discovered the United States of America.
Speaker:Actually, no, he sailed.
Speaker:Yeah, no, he did.
Speaker:I'm thinking of Antonio Marconi.
Speaker:Got it.
Speaker:That's a similar...
Speaker:Didn't expect to get a history lesson.
Speaker:Neither of those are correct.
Speaker:Don't learn from that.
Speaker:It's googly Elmo Marconi, you nerds.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Well, look, I think we should probably...
Speaker:I'm a little bit worried about those mushrooms, but I think we should probably ratchet up to the surface to at least try and...
Speaker:Can we maybe try to aim for a non-TrueMe spot?
Speaker:I'll do my absolute best for sure.
Speaker:I trust you.
Speaker:Roll Navigate.
Speaker:Roll your fucking bird.
Speaker:Now, you're actually going to roll Attack Something.
Speaker:Attack Something.
Speaker:Fuck me.
Speaker:That's great for me.
Speaker:No, he's good at that.
Speaker:But that's another 10.
Speaker:Oh, sweet.
Speaker:Does that mean we miss a mushroom or hit a mushroom?
Speaker:You miss a mushroom, which is what you're trying to do.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You see the ceiling and you aim for it and shoot in this gap where you think you got kind of enough space where none of the like, if these are giving off spores or anything, your snorkel would probably be OK.
Speaker:It pierces deep into the ceiling and it does not make the sound you would expect it to make.
Speaker:It's not like a nice big clunky metal sound.
Speaker:It's more of a squishy, glunky sound as your harpoon squelches into the ceiling.
Speaker:And you see all of these mushroom looking things start kind of quivering, and these tendrils start unwrapping down from the cap of it and curling into the water down towards you as you crank upwards.
Speaker:There's a tendril coming down towards us, you said?
Speaker:There's dozens of tendrils from each mushroom coming down towards you.
Speaker:Is this like a giant urchin?
Speaker:Maybe.
Speaker:What the hell are you talking about?
Speaker:Does it look like an anemone?
Speaker:Maybe in a way.
Speaker:Certainly these tendrils that are coming down are very anemone-like, but not the like giant roof that's squelched for some reason.
Speaker:That definitely seems abnormal.
Speaker:Is this like a tentacle situation where it's something that, if we think about it for long enough, we'll realize that it's something that we recognize, or is this like a new thing?
Speaker:Absolutely not.
Speaker:A new spooky thing.
Speaker:Okay, new spooky thing.
Speaker:Got it, got it, got it.
Speaker:But where your harpoon shot in, you see this very dark, almost black liquid start spraying out into the water, and clouds that area a little bit.
Speaker:That's not what I was expecting at all.
Speaker:Yeah, when I say tendrils, these are like hair-like, whispery things coming down, but they are growing from the ceiling, kind of around where the harpoon has shot into and kind of following it down towards the spider at a pretty brisk rate.
Speaker:Probably about like a foot every few seconds.
Speaker:Are we above the surface, at the very least?
Speaker:If you continue cranking, you will be at the surface, but you will also be very close to all of these things.
Speaker:So that's up to you.
Speaker:Ocean wants to crank it enough, so that the snorkel of the spider is above the water, but the majority of it is still submerged.
Speaker:To try and avoid coming in contact with the tendrils.
Speaker:Yeah, you're in your nice little safe coffin.
Speaker:Give me a read-a-bad-situation rule.
Speaker:I don't like the term coffin in reference to the thing that we're in.
Speaker:It's like a coffin of life.
Speaker:It's a nine.
Speaker:Ask me one question.
Speaker:Oh, I'm going to go with, what is my best way through these tendrils?
Speaker:So the best way through these tendrils, you see it seems like they have reacted pretty heavily to the thing that shot near them, and they're all kind of coiling around that.
Speaker:If you try to move in a, like, I guess, non-standard or perpendicular directional way, they're probably going to be slower to react to you.
Speaker:Ocean, should we cut the line?
Speaker:Like, obviously, we have to surf.
Speaker:Did we surface?
Speaker:You're at the portion where you're almost surfacing right now, as you figure it out.
Speaker:Ocean is going to pop.
Speaker:He's going to pull the winch so that he's popped up above the water, kind of jumps up over a little bit.
Speaker:The moment he surfaces, he's going to fire the other pit piton into the wall away from them, and he's going to crank the one on the wall away from them as fast as possible while dropping the one in the ceiling.
Speaker:So he's going to Spider-Man swing it to the other side.
Speaker:Okay, give me your last Handling Roll of the Day.
Speaker:Deal with that terrain.
Speaker:I've succeeded every one of them so far.
Speaker:Don't fail me now.
Speaker:Okay, that's a seven.
Speaker:You execute this maneuver pretty flawlessly.
Speaker:You rocket just out of the top.
Speaker:Do you open the snorkel so you can actually get some air in?
Speaker:Yes, that way we can kind of fresh out the cabinet.
Speaker:You immediately realize you guys were actually way more lightheaded than you thought.
Speaker:You get this gasp of fresh air immediately, and you're like, whoa, and you get an oxygen high real quick, and you use that second of focus as you're floating in the air to aim your second harpoon and shoot it against the far wall and crank it at maximum speed, which I assume means mashing the button a bunch of times.
Speaker:Yeah, just pushing it down and holding it as hard as you can.
Speaker:It's pressure sensitive, like a DualShock 3 controller.
Speaker:Oh, hell yeah.
Speaker:I'm deciding that's true now.
Speaker:And you start pulling yourself or you're almost like skimming over the top of the surface as you move along.
Speaker:And you see, especially book, you can see as you're not focused on this wall in front of you, that the top of the ceiling is reacting to going underneath it, and these tendrils keep start coming out, but they don't move super quick and you're staying like right in front of them as they coil around.
Speaker:And you guys make it to the far wall, which is out of reach of these tendrils for now.
Speaker:It seems like they are somehow just continually growing.
Speaker:You see like one in the distance that's now like 26 feet long, just like going through the water up towards you.
Speaker:But you've created a bit of a safe distance from it.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I don't like that.
Speaker:That was pretty effective.
Speaker:That was more effective than I was thinking it'd be, honestly, with a seven.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Are we still on the right track?
Speaker:Yeah, you guys are you you're like one chamber away from the this massive room where that gold star sits.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:On the map.
Speaker:Ocean, we're almost there.
Speaker:We just have to get through this.
Speaker:But is there like another kind of doorway thing in between or do we just go straight?
Speaker:Yeah, it's this it's like a big chasm that kind of narrows to pretty small.
Speaker:It goes into darkness pretty quick, so you can't see where it is.
Speaker:But it seems like that's the main direction here.
Speaker:You guys have taken basically the most direct route you could possibly take, and this chasm leads forward towards that.
Speaker:All right, I say let's, yeah, damn the torpedoes full steam ahead.
Speaker:Keep on keepin on.
Speaker:Three bells.
Speaker:Ocean, give me a Rita Sitch roll.
Speaker:So close to getting an improvement.
Speaker:I'm one xp away, but I'm two rolls away in sharp, which is sad.
Speaker:That's a six.
Speaker:As you continue downward, it gets darker and darker and it's harder and harder to see, and you have to be very careful navigating through this chasm.
Speaker:It's barely bigger than the spider.
Speaker:I'm having to remind myself you're not just in a fucking submarine where you can drive.
Speaker:You're moving by shooting harpoons in the wall and pulling you forward.
Speaker:So you get to the point where you have to inch along to move forward, and you're trying to aim this harpoon and you're kind of dragging yourself.
Speaker:You feel some uncomfortable scraping a few times, and Book is having to keep that light shining directly on where you need to shoot next, like one at a time, to keep moving.
Speaker:And you slow down a lot as you're getting through this chasm, and you look and it seems to be opening up in front of you, and you notice there's actually light in front of you.
Speaker:And then you realize as you're looking up into this open room that the light is shining pretty bright because there's not much water above you, and it is rushing out at a very quick pace.
Speaker:And suddenly you are left wedged in this chasm.
Speaker:Oh, no.
Speaker:In the air as water floods out, you look over this edge and there's this massive waterfall, and there's a big valve at the bottom where water is just pouring, and you are just wedged at the top floating in the air about 50 feet above the ground.
Speaker:Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Oops!
Speaker:All Apocalypses.
Speaker:If you use the Spotify app, there's this little Q&A thing that pops up under each episode that says, what do you think of this episode?
Speaker:I promise I read every single one of those, and the ones we have gotten so far are very delightful, but more people should use that feature, because I get some nice direct feedback from people, and I have heard some very good ideas that I may or may not steal.
Speaker:The music and editing was performed by Stu Masterson.
Speaker:Brady McDonough made the logo.
Speaker:And Jacob keeps us safe from any rabid animals that are out in our neighborhoods.
