Fireside Chat for Chapter Four and All of Book One

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Fireside Chat for this, our chapter four of the Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One.

I am your host, Erika Isha-e, and with me, as always, by this fireside, Abria Iengar.

Hoo-hoo, crackle, crackle.

Let's talk stuff.

Oh boy, this whole chapter.

Oh, so much to chat with you about.

And I'm here with Brennan Lee Mulligan.

Ahoohoo, Crackle Crackle.

So excited to get into all things about chapter four of The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One.

Also, an exciting chapter because by definition, this is our final chapter of book one.

And therefore, this will be our talk back

for all of the first 54 episodes of the Wizard, the Wish, and the Wild one.

And if you're listening to this, you may not actually be by the fireside.

Disney, this is a public talk back

episode.

So you guys should know that we do talk backs for each and every episode of the podcast over by the fireside, which is our Patreon, where we have lots of goodies and bonus content and awesome stuff for everybody.

Say it.

Say it.

Say what we call it.

We call it the fireside.

That's the name of our Patreon.

So there's a seat warm and ready for you by the fireside.

If you've gotten here

like listening to book one, and you think, gosh, darn, these guys tell some good actual play stories, you can come and support our work over on our Patreon for Worlds Beyond Number.

Yes.

Beautiful.

And with us here for this momentous Talk Back episode is Lou Wilson.

Hey, it's me, Lou Wilson.

Yes.

For those crackle, crackle.

Oh, hoo-hoo and crackle, crackle.

For those those of us who normally join us by the fireside on our Patreon, you know that it is a rare and special thing indeed to get Lou Wilson onto our chats because normally we host quite a number of guests that sound very similar to Lou, but are actually

good friends of his who are filling in while he is, you know, circumnavigating Panama and

on his various adventures around the globe.

Yes, this is,

you know, I like to be here for firsts.

I like to be here for the big ones.

This is our first ever book talk back, and I just said Panama can wait.

I love it.

Amazing.

I would love to put forward to the August Council that I now hold a little bit of unfinished business to open our

talk back,

which was from the end of episode 54's talk back, but it feels very appropriate for talking about chapter four, talking about book one.

I didn't are we allowed to cuss you out about the epilogues now?

Cuss me out about the epilogues.

Yeah, had no idea we were out of the room for that.

We had been reunited.

We were all leaving.

How dare you?

You can't keep getting away with this.

And yet I do.

And yet, I clearly do.

Damn it.

That was

any curveballs for you?

So, so the

again, for those listening to this, I would assume it would be a hot start to have your first bit of content you're consuming from Worlds Beyond Number be the talk back for all of book one.

But just to reiterate from our friends, because it's been two weeks since it dropped in our finale.

After, if you haven't heard it, my God, talk about a Nick Fury.

I want to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative.

After the end credits, after Taylor's dulcet tones, thank you for listening to Worlds Beyond Number.

There are, I think, six epilogue scenes.

Don't be surprised by what you did.

Well, I just, you, I was, I was just running through being like, here's all the shit going on in the world that we need to get into or discuss.

Um,

and uh, uh, yeah, I, so, like, like, you, but you guys knew that there were going to be, there was going to be like a little bit of bonus material in that episode, but were you caught off guard by did we?

Is that a thing we knew?

I think so.

Abria, Abria left immediately.

So I

think we were

under the gun the entire time.

We were like, we got to get this finished so Abria can catch a flight to New York.

I had to time my sworn sobbing.

Taylor came and he's like, you got three minutes.

I was like, okay.

I was present.

I was present as you recorded some of these.

However, their content, I did not know.

We have no idea.

So they were recorded at camp.

They were recorded at the camp.

Yeah, after you had.

Cool.

I wasn't sure if they were like a, like, came back and did them later.

Fun.

But I didn't know how much.

I think the fact that there were six was

far beyond.

I think I knew,

I knew like conceptually about like two of them, but I think four of them were straight up like, what's this now?

What's all this then?

My personal favorite was the reveal that,

oh, I'm now, uh god opelfin was it no opalfin was awesome and it that if anything i just felt validated at being like i should have let this go when i had the chance um my bad my bad i almost i can't believe i was

our team he was gonna be on a team so why not why not have it be ours um

but i think that uh

oh my god will gallows that's it yeah will gallows out of the corners in uh in rhymers bay i was kind of like, oh, shit.

All right.

Like that one, I got genuinely kind of in a way that I don't often get.

I have a hard time listening to my own podcast.

That is a genuine moment where I'm like, oh, shit.

It's got to make sense because being a crime boss in a port city, like we've established like the history of rum runners in the Shroud Mountains.

Like

the singer's cellar is in the, is, is like literally like again, once again, it, to me, it's very like Court of Miracles vibe from Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Like,

right?

Like, but to me, the idea that like, who are the, who are the friends,

friends used very lightly here, who are the people the Grenot would reach out to in a crisis that maybe they wouldn't be excited to call in a favor from, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

And the idea that they're like, we should call in a favor.

We've been sending this guy stuff for a long time.

We know that he is a business contact of ours from across the sea.

Maybe we can get him out to the coast of the empire to help us solve this problem.

And then lo and behold, there's Will Gallows meeting Neif,

two people that know Ursulan in very different circumstances.

Wait,

yeah.

And you're saying one of the Grenot had also had a little piece of the noose because that imagery, I just walk around with that in my heart.

I only have so much.

Ah, God, stop.

Anyway, it's cool.

It's so cool.

It was great.

And him in the connecting tissue being Bear, the strongest.

Did you say the strongest man in Silvery?

Yeah.

Yes.

It was

so good.

And now I want that crime boss and Neef,

Crime Boss and Little Waif

Little Side campaign.

Crime boss and waif.

Crime boss and crime boss and wave.

Yeah.

I

love the Regina George

writing in her burn book of injury.

Watching Ahme.

I was like, I hate her with the flames, flames on the side of my face.

It's look.

No, I was just going to say, mine is absolutely whatever is going on with the spirits.

Opalfin on a throne in the low-key pose and the ink demons and then Pomeroy and Arima.

Oh, God.

Oh, yeah.

The spirits are messy.

Oh, Pomeroy, don't be a cop who goes to jail.

Don't be that.

Pomeroy.

It was pretty nasty.

Like, that was, that was like, I was like, oh, this team does not look as fun as one might hope, you know?

Like, it is like, like, oh, in that moment, I genuinely was like, okay, I don't need to be his champion.

This is kind of like a lame.

They haven't invested that much in the locker room situation here.

Like, it's not

the culture.

The culture on the team.

You have to invest in culture.

Yes.

Yes, exactly.

The culture at the Man in Blacks

on the Man in Blacks team is not my favorite.

It's not that fun.

Very tech startup.

They're like, yeah, I was employee three.

Oh, you're a jester on a throne.

Get out of here.

yeah yeah there's a there's a ping pong table out in the mall yeah

yeah i think there's a strong claim that as of the resolutions of of book one

of named characters pomeroy's having the worst time i think that that is i have a hard time thinking of anyone who's in a worse position having a worse material time than Pomeroy um having been dragged to the spirit world after many long years of torturing and capturing

you get what you get yes uh-oh-oh uh-oh oh

what else I was there was one uh the Yorin one was a was a banger oh

that was okay okay I don't like Abria Abria but but okay okay Suvi I'm sure would not like this

with Yorin and Grimoire.

But you, Abria, my dear friend, by the fireside.

In the horner corner.

Yorin can do so much better.

I foundationally don't enjoy Grimoire being like a nasty, like anti-vaxxer of a lady.

I don't like, I don't like her vibe.

Yorin is a beautiful man of color, and I don't need him slumming it with whatever Grimoire's whole fucking deal is.

I do not like her.

I mean, but she's got

let's go hey

okay called akea called him handsome in the in yeah introducing herself i ship it i ship it i ship it i ship it now

are

all right

are you seeing like is the most sorry there was a my uh

there's like a leaf board right behind me as i started talking um

Are you in the moment that Jorin and the witches are all like linked up, is that like they're on the same team?

Or is it just that they're like in contractual talks?

I think I need to leave you with what you saw.

I don't think we even see Yorin's response in this scene, right?

We see the three yes votes on the Coven of Elders show up, save Yorin's ass from the flight of Gautmai in the Shroud Mountains.

And

I think what you see, it was just this essentially thing, like we forget that the whole arc of chapter four was like two to three weeks.

So people go from like, where are the witches?

When are they going to start the witch war?

It's like, hey, man, they're cooking.

Two weeks is not a long time.

They're doing their thing, right?

Bro, I unpack after two weeks.

Yeah.

They're still like, I'll go get the winner gear out, but like tomorrow.

But also, because of their connection, Marara's connection to the man in black,

that means we've seen the man in black act.

How in concert is Marara with him

and thus the witch is with him?

And now how connected is the man in black to Yorin?

Because now they're one degree separated by his side piece.

Yes, yes.

So I think that you, I think you can draw a conclusion that at least under the banner of the man in black, if you look at what the information we have is from what was said in chapter three at the conclave and what was said in this scene the the network is the man in black under his banner marches naram orima Obelfind,

the king of storms,

the chalices of Ruve, and that he is actually all that he is in disguise as all of the patrons of the warlocks of Ruve.

We see that he

has the ink demons now at his castle with Pomeroy in tow, and of course his champion wielding the sword of knight, Sir Curran, a spirit of the dead.

And then having sided with him, the coven of elders, right?

Not with full unanimity, but the coven of elders voted and said, yes, we will go to war

with the man in black.

With is an interesting term, right?

Because it's very,

there's like, does the with of the coven mean that they are his servants?

Maybe not, but does with mean we are an ally?

Probably so.

And so we see Hakea approaching Yorin, who we see has just finished or concluded this effort with the shape changers allied with the Houses of Gauthmai.

Houses of Gauthmai suffered a bad beat.

Yorin and his shape changers, with heavy losses, still seem to have accomplished their mission in the Shroud Mountains, which was slightly different than the House of Gathmai, which had to do with

Quicksilver.

Yorin getting up to some sneaky stuff in those mountains.

So, in any case, I think that it should fill you with a sense of dread and not one of certainty.

That's my goal for that.

Yorin,

he's being approached.

He's being approached by the witches

in terms of, hey, I love seeing a free agent getting offers.

That's great.

But don't make me smack the shit out of my uncle and be like, really?

Hey, he's got, hey, he's got to play somewhere.

You only got

so many good playing years.

He's got to play somewhere.

So, you know, like, hey, hey, if you don't want someone to take a bad contract, you got to give them a good one.

All right.

All right.

Well, and that's my thought, too, is because not everybody is, number one, on board with everything that the man in black and his side is

aiming to do, nor are all of them aware fully of the scope of what he hopes to accomplish in his side of the world.

And they also don't know that there is option three, which is Ursulan and his banner and our trio and now his father.

I was about to say, I'm like, Ursulan, can you pick this dude up off the waiver wire, please?

I also

there's a snake draft joke in here

at some point.

It is crazy, too, that the, that, again, that nap 20, it does change,

it changes all the math because it does suddenly put you in this position where you go like, okay,

we had our offer before yesterday.

This was our offer of like, we're a scrappy team.

We got a great culture, great culture on this team.

Great culture.

What's up, baked out the ass, all right?

You trying to eat?

Yeah, yeah.

You trying to eat?

You trying to eat?

And you just signed LeBron.

Like, that's the other thing, is

it's just this thing of like, we going from no great spirits to one great spirit changes the fundamental nature of the offer if you're trying to sign other great spirits, right?

Like, it's a very different

the beginning of book two is just us going into different kind of corporate office spaces being like

we want to tell you what we're trying to do here

at bright horizons all right what we're trying to do is what we're trying to build here foundationally is something to save the world and the different pieces of it

the yeah this

the jersey will say the wizard the witch and the wild one but you'll be getting your paychecks from better from brighter tomorrow LLC.

Yeah, brighter tomorrow's LLC.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

I'm just saying, okay, now we're stuck in like a sports analogy, and I did just do my fantasy draft yesterday.

Do we consider the Great Bear?

Like, okay, if he's LeBron, is he our franchise player or is he our sort of veteran that's going to get our younger, scrappier squad up to speed?

I defer to people that actually, I think that the basketball, let me tell you what I think the Great Bear does.

And let's like, who's on the squad?

Going Going into book two,

the only people you know you have on the squad are the three of you, Task and the Fox.

Who do you guys feel like is on the squad?

You can fundamentally say on the squad, under our banner, get what we're about.

Yeah, under Sugi.

Sufi doesn't have a contribution from it.

We have some hard.

Actually, wait, our first bait.

I was going to say that there was a great

from our Konorama Cam for Brennan.

Is there a particular Nat 20 or Nat 1 from the first book that stands out as having drastically changed the shape of the story?

They happen in the last episode.

Okay.

Nat one, Sworn is not here.

Nat 20, Great Bear is here.

I mean, literally nothing impacts my life more than the characters I'm going to be playing, right?

So like the, that is hugely impactful, hugely impactful.

And I already know things about the Great Bear and Sworn and

book two and things like that.

But in terms of, I'm interested in, again, like in you guys saying, who do you feel like you've actually got on the team?

If anybody, maybe it's just the three of you and the two familiars.

I feel like we could.

You go, you go.

I was just going to say, we could pick up Will Gallows for probably like two weeks.

We could do it.

Oh, sure.

Like, you know, just the two A's.

Like, we have him.

Like, we could probably get him in for a big game, but

I don't think he's, we can't sign him, but for a big game, we've got Will Gallows, you know?

I like that.

I rock with that.

Yeah.

Oh, for sure.

Absolutely.

I think

in that vein,

I wouldn't want to employ them full-time.

I don't know sports.

I'm going to just throw some stuff out here.

I would say also the Granot.

I think the Grenot

would at least sort of be in the stands, you know, to pack a home game.

Oh, sure.

They can be fans.

I just, I don't know if sort of without their fundamentals, and by their fundamentals, I mean the great bullfrog, what's their contribution?

Exactly.

Well, but

they don't hop no more.

So that's just people.

I hate to do this to you, but they don't hop no more.

They don't have back hop.

These are just agents.

Well, and the thing is, is the waterways,

the waterways, their underground networks, the smugglers' caves and sort of the waters and and the sort of uh uh

water transportation waterways of umora i think okay erica i hear you but unless i need like a frosty ass gimlet as we're on the way to like challenge the man in black i don't know what yes i don't know what a rum runner is going to do for a man

we did we did we did actually we did actually i've immediately thought of that pringles man bartender from the ace of wands

yes um but what i'll what i'll say here is we do actually see a little bit from the

it's one mention in the epilogue where I do mention Grinot witches.

That are actually witches, which is the first time we've seen, I think, witches plural that are not Coven of Elders is just momentarily mentioned.

So it is true that the

sort of like those gifted of the great bullfrog, that has vanished, but that's not the limit.

of Grinau magic.

So I just want to put an asterisk there and say that we do see some like cool folksy waterway witches in the singer's cellar for a brief instant in that way.

Yeah, so and even aside from skills,

we in terms of

you know Jorn was fighting a war about the supply chain.

And I think that that is in terms of the workings and the lifeblood of Umora, that is where they're going to come in clutch.

Also, Amelia, we have Hannah and Galt.

Galt?

Hannah.

Hannah.

Hana, Gult, Ghost, Flickr.

The cottage is popping off right now.

I also think the wildest thing is you have Elbeth, Dr.

Yagi, Hena Hena Mohe,

and Dalma all back at the, I think, back at the cottage with

three artificers and a construct.

And I like, what is going on at the cottage?

What are, how are Hana and Gult making themselves useful?

Less of a cottage, more of a forge.

I keep thinking about it.

I feel like there's a...

The scenes I know I immediately want to run when we get back to book two.

Great bear and Ursulan and Ahmed talking to people at the cottage.

Because like Hannah and Gulp, I mean, Gulp has been in fucking jail for weeks, but the, but like, how quickly does it turn to like, this is a lovely little cottage?

Hinge is a little bit squeaky.

You know, you know, like, like, how quickly does it turn into, I don't know, it feels fun.

Fun things.

It's so cute.

Also, I am,

the less, uh, uh,

the thing I'm also wondering about is, is Hana and Suvi

and their relationship

coming out of this.

Yes.

Um, yeah.

That will be interesting.

Again, different Ghibli movies.

Yeah.

Also, I can't believe no one's mentioned it.

We got Neif and the Elk.

We got Neif.

Oh, my God.

Come on, dude.

Starting.

I mean, the Great Bear will be our center, but, you know, Neef and the Elk will get in there.

They have a small forward for sure.

You know?

100%.

I think the Elk's going to do big numbers.

I love a high-value rookie.

This is going to be good.

Exactly.

Ooh, going back way, way back to the beginning.

We've got Arthur.

That man has been drawing a bath for our squad.

Important.

Yes.

We have Arthur.

Never forget Arthur.

Reach way back into the pocket.

We got Oscar.

He's cool.

What's he?

Oscar in the acting troop?

Yeah.

The people you're putting on the squad are making me a little nervous for you guys.

Rosalyn.

Rosalyn.

Rosalind.

I was about to say that.

Just this for Rosalind.

We got day one, Rosalind.

Day one, Rosalind.

She's not new to this.

She's true to this.

She's a day one, straight up.

Like, she's been on the team from the beginning.

All right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it sounds like the people that are firmly on the squad are a lot of little sweeties, Roslyn.

For a second, I thought Roslyn, because you said Oscar, the actor, I for a second was thinking of I forget the ingenue of the theater, the one who's goes,

I've been working on a third bird, yeah.

Let's get her in here,

but sparrows three times, penguins,

sparrows,

penguins, uh, canonical in Umora.

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Oh, no, I can't wait to get the three roads.

Yeah, look at it, looking at Hanna, Neif, Gult, gult

um uh roslyn versus on the one side obelfin and orima and naram or steel and the citadel and the endeavor it's it's it's tough it's tough it's tough out there yeah what's that it's a bad beat coral moral

oh we do have coral moral i couldn't say him because i cannot pronounce him

um hell yes well but there's lots of people that you guys want to talk to you're headed on a train to find the great library of Narwara.

Um, uh, you, you have a, um, you, and the great, that great bear really, great, great bear, great bear.

Uh, franchise player.

Also, question, question.

If, when we get the great bear, do we get a lot of his children to

unclear.

I mean, this is what we play book two to discover or to find out.

Unclear.

Okay.

Unclear.

Lou, I need you to start charging up that crit.

Well,

I don't have the best relationship with some of my younger siblings.

Also, they are like

children adjacent.

So, just like, let's keep that in mind, you know?

Well, let's be clear.

I think the Citadel's done a lot of big moves with child soldiers.

Okay, great.

Okay.

And that's and that's the organization we're trying to.

We're building our own Citadel, right?

That was the mission statement I got my father in.

They're doing a Citadel thing.

We kind of want to do a Citadel thing over here, just kind of with a better culture, you know?

Right, we have pizza parties.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And unlimited PTO.

Yeah.

Well, should we get big pictures?

Should we start talking about the whole damn thing?

The floor.

Yeah.

Are we did we miss any of the epilogues?

I feel like there's one I'm not thinking of.

The only one we didn't get was the man in black on the road to the cottage.

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

Protecting Protecting the cottage.

Yeah.

Hey, Brennan, name that wizard.

Who went down?

Oh, the wizard who went down?

Yeah.

The wizard's staying at this point.

Damn.

That's great.

Nice.

Got him.

Got him.

Got him.

Dolph's just in the back going, I'm going to invent a power washer real quick.

That's going to come right up.

Don't you worry.

Don't worry about it.

Well, incredible.

Oh, and sly.

We have sly.

Oh, and sly.

Yo, actually, that is true.

That's another sly's sly.

Yeah.

Big player.

Big player.

Big player.

Oh, and the rest of her salon family.

Can we can also be in the stands?

Sly.

Sly is like that incredible player who's always out with injury.

You know what I mean?

He's sort of

like,

I feel like if we were like, Sly, can you make it to the meeting?

And he's like, sorry, I missed it.

And you're like, well, I didn't even tell you what it was.

And he's like, I know.

I missed it.

I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's like, he goes on to injured reserve right away, but he becomes sort of like a bench coach in a really big way.

Yeah.

Where you're like, when you do see him, he's going to gas you up.

He's going to yell like, you're on the right path, kid.

And then you're like, all right, thank you.

Oh, my God.

Well, very exciting.

So that, so there's, there's book two

staring us down from

the misty future.

But it's really fucking exciting.

It's really fucking exciting.

Should we do some audience questions yeah

i mean let's pop off with the big one from frank i see let's just let's let's take the biggest bite uh frank asks thanks frank for the gang what was the best favorite role of the campaign so far how did it make you feel and what was the worst most hated role of the campaign

I feel bad because my truest, like I will, I will do, I will desperately try to come up with a better answer, but the truest answer is Ursulan's crit

speaking to the great bear.

That just was the exact right, like, oh, we've brought it all together and we've sort of peeked at the door into the future and it's it's bright.

It's just the best feeling to have ended.

Book one on.

There's a beautiful, it's one of those things where this, where you realize the story that you're all telling.

together and it's it's bigger than all of you, right?

Which was the idea of

which was the idea.

I talked with Taylor about this in the producer's chat: of the idea of how the characters have been changed almost cosmically by each other.

And I think that there is an absolute mirror in Suvi

mastering these secrets of adapted witch spells and in the philosophy that she communicates to Steele in the final episode, going,

we are changed by the world, and how that relates to the idea of like,

there's an echo of that to the thing Soft says in the memory with him and Stone's first kiss, where he's like, how much effort do we waste demanding the universe do things it already wanted to do?

How much better would we be at this if we allowed the universe to just exist?

The ways that Suvi goes, we are changed by the world, that makes me a good wizard.

And then Ursulan takes the wildest spirit of them all and makes him know honor, This golden thing of the mortal world that he fell in love with as a cub.

I don't know.

It's a beautiful thing.

Everyone mirrored each other in

how we've been changed by the world and that that is not a curse.

That's a blessing.

Well, we actually have a question from Jacob Boline.

Thank you so much, Jacob.

Wait, is no one else going to answer the question?

God damn.

I mean,

I will say, I think, you know, I agree that I think one of my favorites is that final rule because it just, it does feel like from children's adventure to the end of book one, it feels like, it feels like, whoa, we did it.

We made something.

We made something and the dice went with us.

But I also will give it up for I was pretty, as an audience member in the room at the time, I think that there are a few net 20s I've been more thankful for than Suvi in the cave with Yorin to just

get on board because it just felt like it was like, oh, I know, I know the place.

I know, hey, I've argued with Sufi.

I know, I know, I know how arduous this can be.

And for that Nat 20 to just be like, you're in, I think was just like, I don't know, it meant that we got to watch Sufi

run around with a bunch of shark people under the water more sooner, which is all we want and all I want in the story.

The dawn,

oh, yeah, the dawn, dude.

Gorgeous.

Gorgeous.

Really stunning.

I fucking love that.

My God, I'm trying to think of my

favorite roles.

Least, I know my least favorite role.

And I'll say this.

I'll say this.

And I really love what it developed about the world building.

I wanted Steel to fucking eat that curse in that last.

I wanted Steel to eat that curse in that last fight.

Because that's that's also a very fun Thomas the Rhymer kind of thing of like, but

I love where it got us to with a view into her own inner workings.

And I still love the, you know, the thing we talked about in the episode talk back, but that foxfire on it.

I was like, Brennan,

so I can choose the duration of it since she wronged me so bad.

Yes.

So she is permanently fox fired.

That is correct.

That is correct.

Which is a

wild.

Also, I think someone I saw someone push funny thing was just where it's like, we got to see that fan art now.

I mean, I'm sure she'll use illusion to lens flare.

Yeah, I'm sure she'll use illusion to make herself look more normal.

But the idea that, like, without an illusion, you just see this rippling green fire on her.

So, is there no way to remove?

Like, there is a spell called remove curse.

Is it not that one, though?

Uh, uh, I would say that let's actually look up the wording of remove curse.

This is maybe an interesting piece of design

within Umura.

And I will say the only reason I

like that, because like the curse worked, but tongue tie didn't.

There is a part of me that enjoys at least for like this big, like it's the, it's the act one confrontation with one of the big bads that like.

There has been so much interesting tension across book one with like Subi not feeling like she exists in a fairy tale like her friends are.

I love that like the fairy tale moment where that would hit because you you're you're teaching a kid a lesson about like justice in the world.

The fact that it doesn't hit is that little extra beat of like and it's not a fairy tale across the board.

Yeah, so it'll be it'll just hit even harder when it happens well down the line.

I love that.

I'll say too, there is some there is there is some uh

uh there is a what is it?

What would you call it?

There is a there's some someone capable of casting curses dead on the ground of 12 Brooks who managed to get off a heart seeker curse on steel

who also

tough break

but

I love the

I love those roles.

Wait, and if anyone else wants to answer the roles question, please do.

But Erica, you had another question lined up too.

Oh, yeah.

Was Erica a little frozen?

Erica just said on the side that their connection keeps dropping.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

The worst possible timing.

Hi.

Hello.

Hey, hi.

Sorry, can you hear me?

Yes,

you had a question lined up from Jacob.

Yes.

Jacob asks, if we touch the world and it changes us, how has Umora changed each of you?

And also a thank you for such an inspiring story.

And that I hope that I can bring an ounce of your energy to my own table.

I, the, the thing that I love most about

all of this is that it inspires others to tell their own stories.

So please, yes, do that.

But how has Umora changed each of us?

Umria?

Why are we calling on people?

Why?

Fuck!

That was, Erica, that was genuinely.

I genuinely was like, damn, damn, that is absolutely ruthless to be like, hey, so tell me how this playing the game changed you.

Abria, go ahead.

Abria, we all know.

Abria, we all know.

Gently, like, I'm going to reread the question and think, oh, shit, I'm up.

Yes.

Exactly.

I'm the host.

I've been the host of this entire book for a reason.

I ask the questions.

I like that it's taken till the end of the book to watch you sort of be drunk on power.

And I, it's a good look i like it

um but to actually answer i think there's something

other than to really get the opportunity to again across four years sit and steep in

what this style of storytelling means at different ages and to different kinds of people like what is the point of fairy tale like what is the goal of fantasy and like how do you exist and like and what do we as adults making content primarily for adults?

Like, what's the, like, what's the moral and what's the lesson?

And like, what things thematically do we care about?

And how do we like bring that forward?

I just like

that telling a story allowed me to think about the philosophy of like how I want to move through the world and think politically about my place inside of

like change and growth and empire and action and activism, and all the ways that you can get stuck, and all the ways that you want to move forward, and what the difference between telling stories about great action and what

praxis actually feels like and requires.

So, yeah,

it's made me it's it's clarified, it's sharpened my beliefs.

I fucking love that.

See, that's why I asked Abria.

Damn it.

I like pressure.

Pressure, it feels good.

Thank you.

I love that.

Call on someone else now.

Yeah, you can.

Brennan, it seems like you have something to say.

Big substitute energy.

I think.

How has this changed?

Something has changed.

I think

that the way this

story has changed me is that

I think that there's something in the story that we talk about.

I forget when it happened.

It might have been...

Are we getting a little...

Sorry, are we getting a little crackle?

Audio crackle?

I'm hearing it.

Let me just airplane mode my phone real quick and see if that helps.

I'm getting a little bit of a scritchy scratchy.

Yeah.

I will also.

Is that better?

Yeah.

That feels better, right?

Okay, good.

So I would say that the

way I feel about it is

there's a moment in the story.

I forget the moment that it happens, but I remember talking about the idea of maybe the biggest change

is not

transforming, but actually becoming who you've already been.

Do you remember talking about this in terms of, it might have been Ursulan or Ahme or something along those lines, but like naming your breath, right?

I think that

telling the story with all of you that is about heroism and magic and a world full of wondrous things that is also filled with horrors and nightmares and the forces arrayed against our heroes feel impenetrable and unstoppable and overwhelming.

And that, nevertheless, our heroes try, and we can see the seeds planted in this first book of how and why they might be able to bring that brighter tomorrow

is an articulation.

And I think that that is a type of transformation that this has changed within me is talking about, you know, the things Ursula Kalequins has said about revolutionary imagination and the kind of things we've said about like, what is it?

In other words, like, if I'm going to change, I have to know what I'm changing into.

And if I'm going to change, I have to be able to imagine what that change might be like.

And I think that,

like you're saying, Abria, it's like.

It feels almost obstinate to be like, I'm more convicted than I was at the beginning.

I haven't changed.

I'm more set in my, but that's actually not what what it is.

It goes, a thing that was a foggy, misty wish has now been more articulated and rendered.

And I feel that the way I've changed is that I step more sure-footedly, having told this story with all of you, that there is one more dream in a vast sea of dreams.

And this is our contribution to a constellation of stories of which many creators have told and must continue to tell throughout time,

telling people that there is a brighter tomorrow and that if you are kind and cunning and you work great magic upon the world, you too might bring it to bear.

That's that clarity.

The change I have felt is clarity.

Oh, it.

Oh, you bring it to me?

You can bring that brighter tomorrow to me?

To me, Bear?

That's so kind of you, dude.

That's so thoughtful.

And how has it changed you, Lou?

It hasn't.

You know, I'm kind of

love that.

I'm kind of the same person I was when we started this journey.

You know, I still like waffles.

I still wake up in the morning.

I put my shoes on.

I go to work.

You know,

I make the donuts.

I come home.

I kiss my beautiful wife on the cheek.

I go to bed.

I watch my favorite TV show.

You know,

I'm just a regular guy.

No, I mean, I think that for me,

it's, I think, a lot more towards my like creativity, my process, and

this art form in

this art form of of using games to tell stories I feel like it's more my conviction in this as an effective way is this this this is more than a game if you do it with the right people

with the right support and the right constraints like that you can

take

rolling dice and character sheets and do something absolutely profound

and that that's that's a pursuit

worthy.

It's like a worthy pursuit to kind of invest yourself in this.

And that, you know, people will forever chirp at me

being confused as to why I do this particular form of storytelling.

And I think that this story and the time we've spent telling it has just kind of furthered my conviction and

how profound.

And like, I don't know, the, I mean, us even talking about our least favorite and favorite roles, right?

It's just, it speaks to the amount of control, but lack of control that, that just influences and makes the story better and greater than it ever could have been if we all just sat down and wrote exactly what we wanted to happen.

And then put, we're like, oh, maybe here we shouldn't, they should have to find a new way to get around it.

Like, I think there's just uh

how how this storytelling manifests and its engagement with community and the connectivity that exists between the four of of us in doing it.

There's no other way to tell a story

this good

without playing, without making a game of it.

And I think that I believe that

fully and truly.

Nice.

Erica.

Ah, damn it.

This story and the process of telling it with you all, I think has changed me fundamentally on a personal level

in my,

as Abrias said, the way that I engage with activism and also as a storyteller and

creative and somebody who has studied stories their whole life.

I've been in this art form since literally day one of it being a public, commercialized

storytelling medium.

And nobody has done it like this group.

I think the thinking of it as a story and a, with messages, and themes, and character arcs that we wanted, did not plan for, but wanted to tell and that were guided by the game and the game design,

has not been done before.

And the fact that everybody did it and did it to tell such a

clear and

purposeful story

is incredible and still kind of blows my mind.

I have never felt more supported in this,

in art.

I have never felt

more sort of comfortable

in terms of creating art that is personal and culturally specific.

And

also,

I feel like,

yeah,

it has changed, you've all changed my standard for art and the messages that it tells in life.

Whenever I watch something or hear something,

I realize, oh,

it is possible to

have a very clear, purposeful vision from

a team of artists and not have it interfered with either by a committee or due to fears of public reception.

You can make commercially successful art that is purposeful and has a message and is risky and

you know, that

profits

its creators.

So I, you know, on a weird level on a personal and storytelling and also the way that I engage with commercial art,

it has changed my standards.

Amazing.

Okay, I've got a question for the squad because I think thinking about the like book, well, it's not my question.

I'm going to read it.

Thank you.

Big Ted of Calderon fame for a very good question.

But this is like, I don't know, it feels very good now that we're at the end of a book to like look back and think about, you know, the road less traveled and all of the like little turn left moments.

So

Big Ted writes, if you could pick one what if moment from book one to go back and explore the alternative outcome, what would it be?

And I'll start to give everyone a little time to think

because I think my one little like nuclear button that I remembered having in my notebook and in the back of

my head in case things like broke bad in a way and I wanted to make a,

I like sitting there going, like, okay, here's eight big swings.

Let's see if we're going to use any of them.

In Arc 3,

if Suvi had gone with Ame and Ursulon to go grab the wand like I wanted her to,

she would have destroyed it immediately.

Wow.

Yeah.

Ooh,

that so I go to your home and blow up a bus station, and suddenly, yep, suddenly all.

Yep.

Wow.

100%.

Wait, okay.

Wait, so how does it work?

Are you, you understood the wand of coven from the from us watching it in the thing, right?

Yeah.

So is there a point?

part of it?

And Suvi points it out to Ursula as she was walking away.

Like, hey, go get that.

So is there a part of you at some point that was like, or like when it was introduced, is Suvi is quietly in the back of their mind going, I think I should destroy that?

Like, versus even just like capturing it and keeping it for yourself.

Like destruction over like possession.

No, I think this is very specifically the reaction to Suvi's fear of, hey, you guys are about to go vote on what happens, like what you're going to do about the Citadel.

And I'm actually not convinced you're going to let me leave because it would be the stupidest thing in the world to be like, we're voting to go to war and you're the one that's going to go home and like warn your people.

So if Suvi had had any pushback about leaving, she would have like locked in and been like, totally fine.

Do you want to go get that wand on the way out the door?

And then the moment she was in contact with it,

I would have thrown every destructive spell I had at it to snap the wand because that solves the problem of the coven's unanimity.

No more coven.

No more coven.

Oh, Doctor.

I'll tell you what.

I think that's the point at which Suvi's like, oh, I'm not getting home, but if I can save my, like, if I can save my like people, I'll do it

now.

Now, let me tell you who would have had a ball with that.

And that is yours truly.

I would have had a ball with that.

Wow.

In that what if spin-off episode, what would have happened?

Yeah.

Yeah, Brandon.

This question is fun because the result, the consequences machine is in the room with us.

You want to run the physics engine on breaking the wands in ace?

Yes.

Tell us.

Give me the ragdoll physics of this interesting choice.

I need to keep an ace up my sleeve because the wand still exists.

And

play simulation.

Play simulation.

Play simulation.

Here's what I'll say.

We will never, unless another conclave occurs in the story,

it's possible that the wand will be broken at some future point in the campaign.

I don't know what the plans that you all have will be or won't be or the feelings towards the coven of elders and how they will remain and how they will change and all of that stuff.

Lots of different options and potentialities in the future.

What I will say is breaking it while all of its members are physically present would have been absolutely the most dramatic way of breaking it.

And I'll leave it at that.

Tight.

Damn.

You got to know.

You're like, they got to do it just to see if any of them is going to like arc of the covenant in the corner.

That is a

spicy answer.

What are other, what are other big swings?

Maybe that we'll find one that I can

play out.

i have one that's not a big swing and never i don't think ever would have happened but i do think like in a very real way there's nothing in my character outside of external stimuli like especially at that point in the story there's nothing in me that was actually chasing this

this

but i am like oh what if we just wait for steal in the first uh

in our movie like what if we just wait for steel like there's a part of me no part of Ursula, until like Brennan, you and I actively discussed it and were like, give some, let's, like, let's create some stimuli.

Like, quest fever was something like that didn't have to happen.

And I think there's fully a world outside of Quest Fever where Ursulan is like, let's, uh, hey, what's up?

I'm just going to be drunk for three days.

Like, let's fucking

just chill in until Steel shows up.

So, like,

like

not living in a DD campaign, being like, oh, an authority figure is going to solve the problem for us.

Let's have a drink and relax.

Right.

She keeps promising she'll be here soon.

I mean, that's the thing, right?

Is I've been playing Steele knowing what her true MO has been the entire time.

And it's one of those funny things where you look back on the reactions to some of those episodes where people were like, were like, why aren't they just letting Steele, who has all the resources, help them?

Everything she's saying is so fucking reasonable.

And I love that because it's true.

Yeah.

It's true.

Everything she was saying was so reasonable.

And it's so reasonable to say, you're a child.

I'm one of the world's greatest wizards.

You want me to let me take a crack at this, Chief?

Like, I can help you out.

And what's great about that is, in real life, bad guys say reasonable things all the fucking time.

It's almost like language is a game and you can cloak yourself in the veneer of reasonableness with very minimal effort if you're smart.

And it's one of the most frightening parts of being a human.

It makes me wake up in a cold sweat all the time that the worst ideologies you've ever heard of can with a trick of language be made to sound like the obvious choice.

Oh no!

Oh no!

So in those, in Arc One, right, Steele's just going like, hey, keep it on ice.

Let me get there for a quick second.

I'm going to look into this.

She, at that time, I'm playing her knowing she's the architect of the curse on Ame and saying, we need to find out who did this to you, right?

Like,

if you guys had waited, she would have scooped Ame up, said, we got to take her to the Citadel.

She's sick.

They would have taken her there,

you know,

probably in that world, have gone in through the curse to find out the nature of the coven without her memories, were delayed in the process of the station of the world's heart actually being able to pass on to Ahm.

And they probably find a magical way to break the coven of elders magically before they wake Ahme up with either no memories or no memories of the coven or you know, something along those lines.

Like, send Ahme back to go be the witch of Toma.

don't wrong her in any way that can come back on us but maybe we break the coven in this moment magically remote snap the wand some some other way of using the curse as a foot in the door to get into the magic of the coven

and would naram have been freed

um how would have how would steel have covered up the naram situation or like she assuaged us of the naram situation uh i think that my plan was if you were gonna let steel get there she would have had moro killed freed naram

and taken all of the research from the derrick so in other words we should have let her come that would have been fine remember also like the plan like 12 brooks was already happen like she already knew she was in other words she would have been like you dumbass we're working on this you know what i'm saying she's like think about her already knowing about lucent court think about in other words it's like god goddamn, like, like parallel discovery, except this guy's a moron.

Like, does that make sense?

You know what I mean?

Like, like,

but, but she would have taken the lenses and been like, now that is interesting tech.

We can use that, right?

Like, so, in other words, being like, oh, that's like it, you know, so in other words, but I think she would have been like, my lord Naran, like, everything she says to Suvi about like, don't needlessly antagonize spirits.

They're fine.

Like, she doesn't have, like, that is actually accurate to steal.

She does not have a special enmity towards spirits past what she has towards other human beings, which is like the one thing that humans and in other words, when she's like humans and spirits, it's like it's all part of the same.

She's like, it's all like, don't get heated up.

In other words, like the young Suvi in Arc One being like, I hate these spirits.

This is our world.

And they're that's not what she was like, but all right, all right.

But you know what it is.

You had a certain what, okay.

In your words, what was Suvi saying in that

interaction with Steele?

She uses some strong language about Orima in that scene.

She says, I don't think I hate them, but I'm closer than I thought.

Okay, gotcha.

Well,

people really popped off when she was like, I don't know, man.

They seem quite bad.

They almost killed my friends.

And everyone's like, Suvie is a racist.

It's like, oh, okay.

We got there quickly.

Interesting.

Heard.

Put it in the official record.

We We didn't get it exactly right.

But I think that the

within that, in other words,

taking the negativity of the horrifying experience with Orima and Lamry and the horror visited on the landscape around Port Talon and extrapolating that out into a broader, this is how I'm feeling about spirits.

I think that there is a moment where Steele goes, like, don't worry about that.

But where that's genuine coming from Steele and the place that's coming from is like, listen, I get being bothered by the things outside of your control.

We're so close to not having that be a thing anymore.

Don't sweat it.

You know, like

real.

In other words, being like,

when you're like, you're like, they just moved their bishop.

Fuck these guys.

And her being like, dude, it's checkmate and two.

Like, don't worry about it.

Like, you know what I'm saying?

Like,

that's her attitude, right?

Like, that's where she's coming from in that scene.

The chill, sinisterness of like her perspective.

Oh, I'm very excited to go back and re-listen to all of this now.

But all of her chillness comes from someone who's certain of victory, right?

You know what I mean?

Like, that really what it comes down to is like, is her being like, you don't need to get mad at these people.

They're about to not matter anymore.

And

the, which comes from a very real place, I think, in the way that Steele is informed as a villain from Brennan's own methodology, from like how you put a little bit of yourself and all the characters you play, there really is a strong thing for me in real life when I see people get to a place of

peak, of emotional distress

against people that are not.

I've talked

to close friends being like, you're mad at somebody or you have a strong feeling about somebody.

Is that person in between you and your goal?

Because if they're not, this effort is wasted like you don't need someone can be trying to pick a fight with you but if they have nothing you need and can't stop you from getting what you want that's wasted effort um

uh

that is that's a distraction uh and the like looking at steel net so in other words ame goes to citadel naram is freed with a with a you know i had a whole thing planned with her of getting there and being like my gentle wave lord please da da da da da like with our dearest apologies this you know like all of that being like being like, yeah, man, you're going to come out in the wash.

This is a way, yeah, this doesn't, this is all going to happen.

I cannot envision this story without the rain road and the exact way it happened.

It feels crazy.

That's so great.

I do wonder about my big sort of thing is that what if Ahme had trusted Suvi and steel, you know, and done things that were very reasonable.

Like, like, you know,

they everybody was right to be like, Ahme, you're acting crazy.

Like, like, they offered all this medical care, you know.

Why didn't you take that and wait around?

Like, they, they, you're, you are there, a guest in their home, and they are like, hey, hang on for a minute.

Like, I know you have to go, but we're, like, making sure we're checking, you know, checking your work here.

And instead, like, you go and you pop off.

and just all the steps along the way where Ahme could have taken Steele at her word and didn't,

like,

what would have happened?

Yeah, we get what would have happened if we waited for her important talent, but like, what if we had

a

chapter?

Like, we talked about the end of chapter one.

If you go to the end of chapter two, I mean, yeah, there's a,

you know, I think this is a,

I I feel that I'm experiencing this every day in the world that we live in in terms of a slow creeping dread as people are like, things are fine.

Things are fine.

Things are fine.

Nothing, nothing weird or like, like, how different is life than it was five minutes ago, 10 minutes ago, yesterday, and a week ago?

You know, like all this stuff, the, the, the crackdown where you see the people like Lessario Racamante getting dragged out of the thing, the Imperial skyships in the Citadel, Steel being like, there's a, there's a hunt for someone, there might be a a traitor here.

We have Imperial Wizards in the Citadel.

All of that was specifically to create this feeling of dread closing in.

You'd been given this timeline by Sly.

This was once again, as the person playing Steel,

when you guys said,

you didn't give her Sly's name, but you said someone in Kibani court told us

we have this amount of time.

She immediately believed that 100%, lied about not believing it, but believed it 100% and went, oh, great.

I just got to keep this kid pinned down for 48 hours and something happens.

Oh, my God.

So all of that was fabrication from my part of her being like, and her being like, I can make a witch see things that I want them to see.

She knows that's true.

She just did it with the fucking stars in the southern sky.

That was so crazy.

Yeah.

But yeah, she was, she literally, all, but again, how reasonable was she being?

And look, I know, like for everyone that advocated on behalf of steele's point of view in that chapter you're not your your perspective was not a wrong one but it was one that people like steele know exists and take advantage of liars and manipulators in real life know how to craft something to seem reasonable and make it seem like not doing what they want you to do makes you a bad person and makes you a uh uh like unreasonable because the

is the tell me tell me to calm down i dare you i dare you to tell me to calm down right and like it doesn't mean that there won't be it doesn't mean that there won't be another point in time where prudence is the right choice and impulsive action is the wrong choice life is filled with case-by-case judgment calls where you have to make a different call than the one you made before because in some way you can't even perceive the circumstances are different.

But yeah, I was playing a bad guy and she was trying to get you to stay.

And

that was the reality throughout that.

And all the things she was saying about like, we're going to keep you safe.

This is going to happen, da, da, da, da, were all her pressing.

Like, you know, the credit she had bought by being so reasonable and friendly up to that point was she was spending it in that moment to get you to not leave.

And I think that the

fox in that moment had that little thing of like, you can feel the trap closing in, right?

You know, which was fundamentally me going like, well, I think it was like even more so than in Port Talon, even more so than in Port Talon.

I was like, well, if Amay stays here,

I don't like, I'm going to have to pull some like, if Ame stays here, I've said she's dead.

And

if Ame stays here, I have said she's going to die.

I don't know how to save the story from that.

So the fox being like, I feel a trap closing in was basically me being like your little spiritual, cosmically aligned thing is telling you to run because there isn't a logical reason to do it.

There's only an intuitive reason to do it.

Tiger in the grass, yeah.

Yeah, tiger in the grass.

Sometimes you can feel the eyes on you and you go, and you're like, I think I should run.

And someone goes, prove it.

And you're like, I can't.

I can't prove it.

I can't prove it in this moment.

I just think I need to run.

It's crazy too.

I feel like, because the very unique thing of the type of storytelling we do is that you have to be both sides of that coin.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think even as your player at times, it's crazy because you've got one half of you going, my God, just hang.

We got nowhere to be.

Stay.

And then the other half of you is going, you feel crazy, right?

You feel like we got to get out of here.

But it's all your voice.

It's your voice saying all of the things.

Yeah,

the Fox and Steele have the same voice, just in different moods and vibes.

It's both my voice.

Not that, but just in that it's all like, Brendan, you are the world, and thus it is your responsibility to be both of these Felix.

And it's just like, oh,

wait, oh.

That is a thing that I think Abria is especially good at with me at being like, don't you push that big red button, Erica.

Can you push it?

Don't you do it.

I'll pile drive you through a table.

Don't you keep rolling.

Don't you?

Yeah.

Look what happened.

Oh, wow.

Let the dice feel a story.

Man, that is really hard, though.

And like, I do want to give, Erica, I really want to give you your flowers on this because like as much as I like make jokes about like defending Suvi's perspective on this, like having to sit and live in the world where you as a player are responding and making choices based on an intuition.

of the like construct of the world in your imagination.

So you have to imagine that you're getting all of these like micro signals.

And I cannot, I can't fathom how difficult it is to play sincerely in that and not feel

like the choice you're like

to make it feel like it doesn't feel meta.

And I'm watching a character look around and clock something that no one else can see, and none of us can see any of it is just a testament to how good and grounded and like lived in and just how good of an actor you are.

It's it's amazing.

It's amazing.

You're very good.

Really, really good.

All of you guys were great too in that scene.

I also think too that whenever we do these long flashbacks of recounting the what-ifs, you always erase a little bit of complexity from them because you, you know, things get redacted.

Yeah.

But like, it's always important to remember Suvi goes with them to the Gallithopter.

Like the initial impulse to the initial impulse to leave no matter what, even with Steel having been like, hang tight, Suvi doesn't, doesn't alter that plan until Steel is like, this is a direct order, right?

Like, and also, Ahme does not blow up a bus station.

The Fox does.

And I'll stand by that till the day, till my dying day.

All right.

What is your fox?

The fox and Ame are one guy.

I didn't know that Suvi was Catholic like that.

All right.

It's Ame and the Fox of the Holy Spirit.

and also with your fox yeah

um uh i love it i love it can i answer another question yeah

this one comes from joachim thank you joachim

uh how did you come up with wave breaker uh we came up with wave breaker together in the children's adventure uh

what's that where can we listen to that well the children's adventure was our unique take on uh a session zero where we built the characters by actually playing out the childhood summer in which they met.

So, for those of you who have perhaps exclusively listened to the Wizards, The Wizard of the Witch and the Wild one on the kind of main feed, on the Patreon exists a six-episode series

in which we build these characters from scratch.

Eight episode series?

Wow, that's two more episodes,

all for only $5 a month.

But yeah, in that, I think at some point, Brennan describes us going upstairs and finding a bathtub filled with swords.

And

of those swords, we picked out this one.

And I believe each of us described an element of it.

And

then Brennan gave it the name Wavebreaker.

And then we didn't think about it for a number of months.

And then when we did our first ever camp,

where we recorded, we recorded the last like three or four episodes of the children's adventure and the first two episodes of the campaign.

That was

when we realized that the thing we all made up together in a fun, sweet exercise

was going to be fundamental to the story we were telling.

I still remember when Fred Suvi being like, here for you,

giving it to her salon because it was like such a lovely gesture.

Sure, giving it to that was not hers to give.

The most six-year-old shit.

And Grandma Ren being like, just go up to the attic and use that sword.

And we're like, ooh, give it away.

She's like, you want?

I still remember when Brendan, when we were doing like the official stat block for it in the campaign, when we got it back, and he was like, it's a plus two or plus three weapon.

And it was like, whoa, this is

I'm like a level one character with a plus three weapon was really uh felt like we were we're gonna I was gonna break the rule like I was gonna break the game I was like this is this is too much

and yet it was just right but it's I think I think big magic items go a long way to helping a party slightly under the average party size you know what I mean like just balancing for encounters like

the the fact that like giving a plus three sword in a three-person party completely advisable in terms of just like,

okay, plus three swords really good.

You know what would be even crazier good?

One other guy.

You know what I mean?

Like more HP and like one more

like stack in initiative.

Yeah, one more.

One more unarmed strike.

Yeah, one more unarmed, one more stack and initiative.

Yeah, imagine one other fifth level character running around.

You know what I mean?

Like,

I don't know.

A plus three sword is fucking incredible.

Casting fireball is pretty good, you know?

Having extra attack as a martial class is pretty good.

Like, so within all of that, I think it's important to remember when you're balancing for small parties,

give them the goods, baby.

Give them the good shit.

I also think it just did a really beautiful job of

implying the scale of like Graham Wren's world and the world of Umora when you're like, she's got artifacts in the bathtub.

Yeah.

Just vibing.

That's something that she's forgotten about.

And it's the coolest, so it's one of the eight coolest swords on Umora.

Like, that's just so rad.

In a bathtub up there.

But what I love about it, too, is we are seeing why that is.

Flicker is a giant stone living construct powered by candle magic who's just hanging out because they had to get him out.

He's just a big friend.

So I love that.

Again, it was, I felt like there were so many apotheosis, catharsis moments where the characters are self-actualized by the finale of the game.

And one of them for Ame for me was the villagers riding by in a cart as Flickr waves at them being like, young witch at the cottage, shit's about to get crazy again.

Like, what was the moment up to with that bath, when that bathtub,

like, think about her walking out of a teleportation or flying in with a broomstick and being like, okay, thank God, bag full of swords.

Being like, okay, I'm going to put them in the bathtub until I find out what to do with them.

40 years later, they are in the bathtub.

Wait, on that, can I ask another what if?

Yeah, yeah.

Is there a ghost and flicker don't go to the to the um to the yeah to go be uh tortured by hooked mouths?

Like, if if if ghost and flicker

If ghost and flicker like is there a world where ghost and flicker come with us?

Like is there like could ghost and flicker have done anything else?

Or could they have stayed in Port L?

Ghost and Flicker could have done anything else.

I mean, like, yeah, Ghost's life was in chaos when Findlay fled.

Like, she didn't have, like, her life.

In other words, leaving her was not also a good answer.

Taking her with you to where to do what.

I will say, the best case scenarios, it was not a situation where the Empire was always going to look at Ghost and go,

but a world where Suvi is there to lean on her name in person is a very different universe.

A universe where Ghost and Flickr board the Epiphany as guests of the Sword of the Citadel is a very different one from the one where they have to get on a ship and go to Caro.

It's just like real Pinocchio, Fox and Cat.

How many people get a hand on the ball before

Ghost finds the right person to share a name with.

You know what I mean?

Like, it's just, that's really the, the, the end of the day is too many malevolent actors got to be a wicket through which ghost had to pass, right?

I do think you've, you've done a great job of making it so that we can't really, if, if, if a person doesn't fit in a sack or a vial or like a pocket, like we kind of just have to go like, hey, good luck out there.

Like it's, it's pretty tough to bring people along.

Make your way to the cottage.

You'll get there eventually.

Yeah, it's really tough for them to be like, hey, roll with us.

You know, we kind of know where we're going on a date.

Like, we're very much on the fly.

So it's like, what's up?

If you can't fit in here or like in here, like, you actually can't come with us.

Well, you know, I needed that dispelling agent.

So I think it worked out the best way it could.

Listen, we did.

Let's use it.

We did use it.

I can't remember when you made us use it.

And it was just this kind of like

I i felt myself actively dissociate for like the first time when i was like when i used it when we used it on that alarm spell on the grey it was just kind of

man

we're supposed to be doing this

what's all this what's all this what's all this moral ambiguity

look at this comfortable i don't think suvie makes it to abison if she doesn't have the dispelling agent to like disenchant uh that little like past like the stone of passage so yeah that was the moment where i was like oh no i thought about the consequences and i'm like me as suvie has gone away inside my own head and i have to drag myself back and that was where uh sufi's sort of uh

storming uh the beach in normandy vibe came from was me feeling myself actually do that and go like lean in for the battle

I love that.

My God.

I love that so much.

The, the, yes, I think a lot of there, there were a lot of different paths there.

I feel like I want the what if questions I want to ask for you guys,

because there's a lot of like, what would have, what would the world have done?

But I'm trying to think if there are any like close calls or edge cases that you, that like

how you guys would have reacted differently if something had gone differently.

Um

I guess like some of my questions are maybe about like

God, it's it's I because really, really, there's,

the question I have for you guys is, is there anything that you guys remember from the campaign where you were close to making a different call?

Does that make sense?

Like, are there any things where it was like it was on a knife's edge and it just ended up the improv came up a certain way and you almost made a different call than the one you made?

Uh, Suvi

having the conversation with Silver in bracket.

I was mostly not going to do that and then got like, just got caught in the moment and was like, oh,

this is an opportunity.

That's my what-if question for you.

If you hadn't told Silver the real plan,

would you have still left with Ursulan and Ame?

And if not,

and therefore Silver didn't know your secret and therefore Silver doesn't die, would you have gone to Caterwall Lane and had the departure from the Citadel that you had?

I, you know, I think she was always going to go.

Like she was locked in from the like, match my breath and walk in my footsteps.

It was just about the, like her trying to live in the truth that she is seen modeled from Ahme about like radical candor and trusting people with even uncomfortable like where like where you're sitting.

But I do wonder

I do wonder what it would have like I don't know how the rest of the book goes.

Man, give me a second.

Someone else go.

What would I have done?

I love that.

I wonder what else here.

The,

in terms of other what-ifs,

for Erica or Lou, is there anything that you guys felt in that way that was like a different, almost like a different,

you were close to making a different call.

Lou,

a question for you.

What would you, here's my what-if.

I know you were close to taking the sword of knight, or that it was at least a thought.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

If the man in black had been a little bit less honest, or maybe just like a little bit less convicted that Ame and Suvi's death was a foregone conclusion in the fight against the Citadel,

if he, if the man in black had simply been like, they must, they, like, they must adhere to my cause, or they will be an enemy as well.

Whatever.

Does Ursulan take if the man in black slows his role a scoach?

Does that theme go differently?

I don't think so.

I think he has to, he has to, it's a little bit more than a scoach, right?

Because I do think, like, fundamentally, in this kind of like,

I forget when we talk about, because it's a conversation we have with the man in black at some point.

I don't know if it's that one, but it is this kind of like, I'm not going to tell my friends what to do, which I feel like is that, is the kind of the underlying thing of freedom, right?

It's like, I am not going to, I can't like force them to get on your team.

You like that's, I can join your team and be a guy on, like, and I can try and show you, show them how great being on your team is, but compelling them is not something I could do.

I think if he had been, if he had straight up lied a little bit more and made it sound like, it was not a foregone conclusion.

Like, truly, I think there's just that question, right?

Which is like, well,

is the path you're on at odds with theirs?

And he's like, it is.

I think if he had lied in that moment and an insight check hadn't allowed me to see the truth, I think there's a part of me that would have excitedly been like, if this

maybe we can make this work.

I think

the man in black is going to lie so much.

That's, I mean, but I think Ursulan is a trusting,

you know, as we learn at the end, Ursula wants to believe the man of black so badly.

So I think there is maybe a fun,

there is definitely a what if if you play that scene a little bit differently

where Ursulan takes the sword.

I think it'd be interesting, like, I feel like me, Lou, yes, because I think it is an interesting, like, if you had sold me, Lou, the person on this kind of like a vision that Ursulan could get into, I think story-wise, I wouldn't have been in the contractual nitty-gritty of like, so like, how long is the term for?

And, like,

you know, if you start doing stuff I don't like, can I just go home?

Like, I think if you had set it up differently, there's definitely a world where Ursulan is like, I think I can make these two things work.

Like, I think I can be your champion and be a friend to my friends.

Hey, brother, I wish.

I wish.

I mean, again,

since I have have seen the culture that is going on at the Man in Blacks team, I'm actually okay with it.

But at the time,

to wield that sword would have been everything.

I feel like I joked about it in the fireside at that time, but to just be like two swords, you know, just like, yeah, to be just,

you know, dual wielding would have been amazing, you know.

And one, and once again, if he had offered a gun instead,

if he had just offered a six-shooter, dude,

A six-shooter and a poncho, and I'm here.

He gives you a big, a big

wide-brimmed hat and goes, saddle up, partner.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Oh, it then becomes the man in black and the gunslinger, and we get sued by Stephen Kay.

Oh, please.

There you go.

It's so funny for me.

I think that there's no world in which Amay doesn't do all the things that happened because I, Erica, am mech piloting her, and you guys have all told me what to do.

I mean, it's like, you know, we are so, I think, on the same page for telling this same story, despite not even having discussed it beforehand.

But it's like, I know that like...

it would have been nice if Ahme had just been like, hey, it seems like you're having a bad time here at the Witch's Coven.

Let's just,

let's not talk about

difficult things right now.

And Ahme and Suvi don't have a big blowout argument and Suvi stays and stuff.

But I, Erica, know that it needs to happen.

So it just happens, right?

Like, I

like

all of these things.

But

I think.

I have a what if for you, Erica, if you prove that's okay.

Yeah, because I have only one thing that I can think of, and it's because there just wasn't enough time and circumstance.

But you ask yours first.

Okay, I'll ask yours first, and then you go.

What if in the role to persuade Hakeea at the conclave, you had rolled a nat 20

and and had and that and that Hakeea, just due to being charmed by you, votes no.

And the Coven of Elders, because that was again, I know that it's this story is so grand and it all feels like it could, it could only have ever happened this way.

There's a world where the Coven of Elders stays neutral, does not join with the man in black.

If that happens, what would Amy, how would Ames have actions have changed immediately following that vote?

It would have 100% been what Ursulan did with the Great Bear.

She would have approached her and asked her to not choose a side, Citadel versus Man in Black, but she would have said, We need to stop this because I can see bad actors on both sides.

That's a very, that's a tough uphill climb because I'm telling you,

I fucking love Hakea and playing her so much.

She would have been like, Whoa, whoa, whoa.

We just decided not to do something.

Let's give it 50 years of

I wait.

I thought you were on team don't do something.

Now you're on team do something.

I can't keep up.

This kid is so lovely.

She's so cute.

And I don't know if at that point Am I would have been like, yeah, Team Three has to do something about it or rather of it like she would have been like, please get people to at least not go to the Citadel or at least not be on the man in black side.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Do you think you would have had a stronger sense of like, we are the third option?

Because my brain doesn't conceive of us being that until very late in the day.

Yeah, the problem is, is that it wouldn't have been third option is a team.

It's just like, please, like, just hold on, like, don't join the witches, but don't defend the Citadel yet.

Like, we gotta, there's something here that needs to happen, right?

Right.

But yeah, I think Ame wouldn't have necessarily been.

So it wouldn't have been like with Ursula and the Great Bear.

It would have been more like, at least, like, please be part of our team and our think tank of what to do next.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

That's really true.

The other one

that would have been in that same arc

was, I think, Ame

would have really very awkwardly and,

you know,

with difficulty tried to sort of ask Tefmet out.

Yes, try to at least be like, hey,

do you want to get tea sometime, but like not because you're sick tea, but like

a few minutes.

I know we only have a few minutes left, but this is actually the perfect thing for our last question here from Stuart.

For all the PCs, what is one hope and one fear you have going into the next book of of this game?

Many, again, way on down the line.

We got so many stories coming your way in the immediate interim.

We got Hint.

We got Lou Wilson GMing for us, and then we take it to the stars with Solari.

But

whensoever book two occurs, one hope, one fear.

Erica, you're saying.

I have none fear.

None fear.

None fear.

None fear.

But asking out.

a human, I think, for Amay is one fear, maybe.

Yeah.

Actually.

I love it.

I think it's that.

I think it's just that.

But I think one hope for me is, I mean, I just, we're going to be on a train.

I am excited.

I love trains.

And yeah, seeing the free roads.

I'm so excited to explore the free roads.

Nice.

Abria, we got to stop calling on me.

God damn it.

Abria, you're up.

Abria,

you have such an energy that's like real pick-me stuff.

Like, I just feel like you want it

so badly, dude.

Absolutely bodied by Lou Wilson in the last minutes of pick-me.

Biggest, like biggest hope

is sworn.

Sworn somehow pulling through and finding a way to like reconnect with him.

Biggest fear, I think if Suvi hears her name cloak destroyed, I think she'll start to spiral about like, and this also goes back to like the end of that last question about like what would happen if no silver.

uh i think she's been very close to a paranoid like arc and i think this would just i think she's just very close to being launched into it the idea of suddenly feeling uncovered and unmoored magically is the scariest thing for her yeah

uh what is like how many books are you thinking my guy

like i'm trying to i'm trying to think like where what like what level of badassery do we need because i if book two is like the book like i got hopes but if book two is like the book on the way to the book like then i got other then i got other hopes and dreams if we if we have a similar speed right we did levels one through five i could say oh that's right we're going to 20

there's epic there's epic levels There's epic levels.

Five books.

There's epic levels.

I would say that I think

it's very possible.

And don't hold me to this.

Don't everybody get

nobody do nothing.

I think I could see a world with four and I can see a world with three.

I think three or four books, because 15th level is also extraordinarily powerful.

You know what I mean?

Like there's, yeah,

that's how I feel.

I think three or four books feels solid to me.

Cool, cool, cool, yeah, yeah.

All right.

I think my hope, my hope for book four is that, you know.

Book four?

Or book three.

Or excuse me.

Sorry.

Well, here, I'll tell you my hope for book four.

We kill all these motherfuckers.

All right.

Every motherfucker is standing in our way.

He going down.

No,

my hope for book two

is that we fight less and we're just,

you know, everybody's more chill, you know.

No,

what's my hope for book two?

My hope for book two is that,

you know, we just get to, I feel like book two, truly as I start to think about it, is Ursulan's like badass era.

This is where, like, this is his like no mercy era.

Like, I genuinely think Ursulan's

issue at the beginning of book two is that he enjoys ending lives too much.

Like, he's just in his John Wick mode.

You know,

I think I genuinely have real John Wick energy planned for Ursulan in book two.

Um,

and

my fear is that Brennan will make the enemies too strong for me to go and kill John Wick.

Fifth level, very different, man.

Fifth level is different.

But also that I think that

my other fear is I think there, I think the beauty, right, of book one was that we watched untethered people become more tethered or like to build this community that we now have

like that we now get to move move forward with into like our search for that brighter tomorrow.

Uh, but I think that also means that there's more things Brennan can go after, uh, more things that our heart rests on, uh, that he can, that he can put in jeopardy.

And I just, if you come from RoRo, I'll fight you, Brennan, the man.

There will be no initiative, it will just be an all-out brawl across the podcast table.

Okay, note to self, build a sturdier podcast table.

Brennan, you have to answer the question.

Hopes and fears.

Oh man, John Wick or something.

One hope, one fear.

My hope for book two

is that

we get to play it and it is very, very fun.

My fear, oh no, I'll be more specific.

I'll answer the question for real.

My hope, my hope for book two

is:

I think

my hope for book two is that

all of our amazing players get to rest with their incredible achievements and the growth they have achieved, but also sink our teeth into the joy of the demons that are left to wrestle with, which I think I have a very clear eyesight about.

I'll say this, and I'll leave this as a little.

This is this is, I don't play these characters, but I have to love them and know them in order to make good stories for them.

I think I'm going to leave the

things I see that are my, I think, hopes and fears combined because I think it is the road of trials, and there are hopes and fears in all trials.

I think for

Suvi,

Suvi has done the great magician's task, like great sacrifice for the secret names of the world.

I've talked to Abria in the past about Odin on the world tree, about the things that great magicians do to learn the secret names of the wind.

I don't think anyone has lost more than Suvi has lost, and therefore has paid the highest possible magician's price.

And as someone who is unmoored from a previous home, I'm excited to see.

I think my hope for Suvi in the next book is magician.

That's my word.

Is the idea of like, I have lost my tower.

Let me learn the secret names of the world.

I want to see Suvi after that level five and being like, I love magic.

I want to see Suvi the magician.

That's what I want to see.

Is like, what does her relationship to wizardry become?

And how does she prove?

every false idea of magic wrong.

That's my, that's like, that's stuff I think about.

I think for Ame, I think that Ame, this is now, Ame has, has like gotten her memory, saved the world, kindness and cunning, and has set the tone for the new witch of the world's heart.

I think for her, it is, how do we move from the shelteredness of Toma and now like, I think Tethmet's a great thing.

How can you be the witch of the world's heart if you've never had your heart broken?

And what are the things, what are, what are the things Ame has to do to get a level of experience with the world world and all of the things you do?

Like, how do you hold on to your kindness and your cunningness, but come to know the capital W world?

In other words, like, we think about Ahme struggling with the soldiers in the Shroud Mountains of like, why can't I know you?

I think book two, the hope and the fear for Ahme is, how do you come to know the vast variety of peoples in the world of which you are the steward of its heart.

And is that process a smooth one?

I don't think so.

And then for Ursulon,

John Wick, John Wick,

get the gun of the man in black, blow, blah, blah, blah, blow.

I think for Ursulan,

as spirits become greater, their domains increase.

And

I think for Ursulan, I think about freedom and I think about honor honor and I think about

can one be a spirit of freedom and the heart's desire while also being a knight who pursues obligation and responsibility.

And I think that there are, I think that when I think of Ursulan, I think of the warrior's path of threading the straight and narrow when sometimes the virtues you are called to are aligned and sometimes they are in conflict.

So I think that's, those are my hopes and fears for all of our beautiful PCs and the journeys that await them.

I can't wait.

Yeah, that was fun.

I was yelling a lot during.

Yeah, Abria had to mute, but we still saw her screaming soundlessly.

I was hollering.

I am

shaken to my core here.

Thank you so much to my dear, dear friends for joining me for this very special,

very public fireside chat.

Abria, ahoohoo, and crackle, crackle.

Ahoohoo, crackle, crackle to a brighter tomorrow.

To a brighter tomorrow.

Brennan Lee Mulligan, thank you.

Ahoohoo, crackle, crackle.

That's my favorite one.

And Lou Wilson, thank you so much for being here.

Ahoohoo, crackle, crackle.

It's been nice seeing everyone.

I'm going back to Panama.

I thought you found yourself there.

What more do you have?

Well, once you find yourself,

what greater joy is there in life but to revel in the nature of the self?

There's thousands of foxes in Panama.

There's thousands of foxes in Panama.

But hey, we'll see everyone over by the fireside.

You know, it's not over.

It's just beginning.

You ever just say some kind of like fake profound shit where you just say kind of a series of words that sound meaningful?

But if you hit the like pattern,

you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

Yeah,

Erica, you want to give us,

hey, thank you, Erica, for all of your hosting over the entire book of book one.

Thank you, Erica.

You want to give us a little a hoohoo and a little crackle, crackle?

A hoo-hoo, crackle, crackle.

Yay.

Yay!

Yay!

Yay!

See you guys next time.

More to come.