Interlude: Fortune Found

Speaker 1 A powder blue sky that seeps into white and yellow edges with the burning glare of a sun whose rays fall on sand, stone, rock, and canyon.

Speaker 1 Buttes and mesas populate an orange-yellow landscape as the lone cry of a buzzard,

Speaker 1 feathers visibly missing from its wings, circles lazily through air filled with more thermals than not.

Speaker 1 Effortless to stay aloft as the heat of the stone bakes upwards towards an unrelenting sky.

Speaker 1 In the shadow of of a mesa,

Speaker 1 ringed at its far edges by stone buttes and fairy chimneys, tall towers of yellow striped sedimentary stone,

Speaker 1 we see

Speaker 1 what remains of a town that once thrived.

Speaker 1 Dusty rails,

Speaker 1 the whisper of what was to become a factory, shops and houses, windmill,

Speaker 1 and the tracks of what we have learned is called a locomotive.

Speaker 1 Here in the free roads, I would ask each of you to describe a part of this town. And I would love for each of you to describe a part of this town

Speaker 1 where things didn't quite turn out as the people had hoped.

Speaker 1 Just off the central thoroughfare, there's a sign that kind of once was held between two posts but now hangs only from the left side

Speaker 1 that reads Elia's Wonder World

Speaker 1 and is filled with

Speaker 1 crumbled towers

Speaker 1 and creatures made out of paper

Speaker 1 You can tell that there used to be kind of little seamlets or areas for children to explore and play in.

Speaker 1 However,

Speaker 1 I think you can very much tell in part by how

Speaker 1 how little is left that a paper-mache playland was never meant to live in the desert and that whoever created it was someone who spent day after day remaking and reshaping elements of this kind of playground

Speaker 1 because they would continuously melt and fall apart.

Speaker 1 In the shadow of the awning out on the wooden walkway out in front of Ellia's Wonder World

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 a mostly white

Speaker 1 cat figure of paper mache.

Speaker 1 It originally was orange with black stripes, the form of a tiger, and out in front as one of the finest pieces to see, the sun bleached it of its color in the better part of a year and a half.

Speaker 1 The

Speaker 1 mouth or face of this tiger has melted off and is being kept structurally sound starting at the throat by a massive wasp's nest where

Speaker 1 brown and black striped desert wasps, these angry, longed-winged things, buzz,

Speaker 1 matching the waves of heat emanating off the tin roof as these wasps move to and fro, flying forth from a headless tiger.

Speaker 2 Down at the far end of the town,

Speaker 2 where

Speaker 2 like a governor's mansion or

Speaker 2 like an important person to the town was building their estate

Speaker 2 behind the house where there's a little bit of a grade to the landscape.

Speaker 2 It looks like it's the beginning of terraforming to like make sort of like terrace steps for gardening and adding like more plant life to this area.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 halfway through the second step, there's a massive like rift in the ground where they hit something important and it split the earth and ruined the foundation of the like house and the area around it.

Speaker 2 And the crack seems pointed directly at the heart of the town.

Speaker 1 The Mayor's Canyon, as it's come to be known, moves out from the abandoned terraces.

Speaker 1 The Governor's Mansion

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 a wonder to behold.

Speaker 1 From town, the back of the mansion was never completed. But from the front, beautiful marble, stone steps,

Speaker 1 and a sort of smear of rust in the central archway at the front because

Speaker 1 the official seal was pulled down a generation or two ago and melted down for scrap metal.

Speaker 1 This place has been abandoned for a long time, and

Speaker 1 down in the canyon, matching the buzz of the wasps, you can hear a occasional

Speaker 1 of a rattlesnake's tail.

Speaker 1 It is a hot enough portion of the day that even a cold-blooded reptile will seek the shade.

Speaker 1 At the base of that canyon,

Speaker 1 it's hard to see, but there is water deep down there, something cool and deep. This place was not built by fools.
There was a hope, once upon a time, that this town would thrive.

Speaker 1 And...

Speaker 1 It is impossible to tell if the canyon is the wound that that killed it or simply the incision of some

Speaker 1 divine bureaucratic surgeon who opened something up to see just how bad the rot was.

Speaker 2 On the outskirts of town are a collection of small,

Speaker 2 almost nondescript buildings with what would have been once white picket fences surrounding tiny plots in the back.

Speaker 2 This was supposed to be housing for the workers in the factory,

Speaker 2 specifically for the workers that had family. There were hopes, once upon a time, for this to be a thriving town that could become home to families.

Speaker 2 In each front yard

Speaker 2 is a tiny planter box.

Speaker 2 The hope was that everybody would be able to grow some little home crops, maybe tomatoes or rhubarb for the table.

Speaker 2 Now those boxes are

Speaker 2 home to dust

Speaker 2 and trash and tiny desert mice.

Speaker 2 A

Speaker 1 dusty, tired-looking group of hunting dogs, wild,

Speaker 1 speckled with mottled brown and deep black, and patches of what looks like a dusty indigo, a kind of blue patches of fur speckled over them.

Speaker 1 Long jackal-like snouts and

Speaker 1 shorter tails, almost like deer, that seem to have a white underside for them to be able to be raised in communication.

Speaker 1 Lope dispiritedly through

Speaker 1 this tiny neighborhood. Harlow's Glades, they were called.
Glades here was an aspirational name to give to these homes.

Speaker 1 The dogs sniff lazily, hoping for a brave or adventurous mouse to pop their head up. These dogs have been eating mice more than they would prefer.

Speaker 1 There hasn't been a prong-horned antelope around here in a while.

Speaker 1 The dogs breathe dejectedly and go to find a shadow somewhere to lay down in.

Speaker 1 Harlow's Glades lies in sight of the rotting and ruined back of the governor's mansion at the edge of Fortune's Fields, the town where we find ourselves.

Speaker 1 Fortune's Fields was supposed to be a small city.

Speaker 1 At its height, it only ever got to a big town.

Speaker 1 Nowadays, Fortunes Field is a small town,

Speaker 1 living in a husk of what used to be

Speaker 1 inside a larger husk of what was hoped to be.

Speaker 1 A group of miners in dusty overalls and flat caps come trudging out with their carts from the mine.

Speaker 1 There hasn't been any silver found here in quite some time, but there's some coal.

Speaker 1 Coal's good.

Speaker 1 You can sell coal.

Speaker 1 You just need to get enough that the train that comes to carry the coal doesn't have to burn more coal than the coal you find. Oh my God.

Speaker 2 That's it. That made me the most sad I could be.

Speaker 1 The miners and their families. A

Speaker 1 water tower with a small hook for passing trains to refuel and fill up on water

Speaker 1 stands with an illegal stent in the side of the water tower for townsfolk to come and steal the water because there's not enough to go around otherwise.

Speaker 1 We see a rotting governor's mansion and a sheriff's office

Speaker 1 with an open pane of shattered glass that some Samaritan has at least cleaned up from the ground, though the window has not been replaced because no one has cared to.

Speaker 1 This town

Speaker 1 still has

Speaker 1 maybe

Speaker 1 a thousand people here.

Speaker 1 Not not a big,

Speaker 1 not not nobody, not a hamlet, not just a stand of farms. There's there's a working mine here, factories defunct, there's a working tavern here, though the inn never gets any visitors.
There's

Speaker 1 half of a dream flickering here in this space. And I'd love for each of you

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 describe for me, if you could, somebody

Speaker 1 with one last

Speaker 1 chance.

Speaker 1 There's

Speaker 1 a like 25,

Speaker 2 maybe 26-year-old woman.

Speaker 2 The daughter of Moonshiners.

Speaker 2 Good work for a place that is

Speaker 2 holding on

Speaker 2 with white knuckles at the very edge of oblivion.

Speaker 2 The alcohol used to be just sort of strong and poorly flavored, but she's been ranging farther and farther out into the desert

Speaker 2 to find a sort of like scrub brush that grows beneath cacti

Speaker 2 that she turns into a flavorant.

Speaker 2 And she's just so convinced that if she can get on one of these trains and leave this town and sell

Speaker 2 this

Speaker 1 very special

Speaker 2 alcohol, she can't even land. She doesn't know a name yet.
She doesn't know what to call it.

Speaker 2 She just calls it fortune.

Speaker 2 And she knows if she can sell it somewhere, she can uplift her family and then maybe the whole town can be about this and there's a way back.

Speaker 2 She just needs to make enough and find the right person and get out of here for just long enough.

Speaker 2 It could be big. It could change everything.

Speaker 1 As this woman is walking through the town,

Speaker 1 someone calls out her name. What name did they call out?

Speaker 2 Millie.

Speaker 1 Millie.

Speaker 1 Millie!

Speaker 1 How you doing there, stranger? Oh,

Speaker 1 hi.

Speaker 1 You look up and see hanging out in front of the general store with about three or four young men that are a rotating cast of kind of ne'er-do-wells is Mr. Hollow.

Speaker 1 Mr. Hollow is not the man who built the general store, but he is the man who bought the general store

Speaker 1 after

Speaker 1 the former owner of the general store suffered a very bad accident where both his legs were broken. Oh,

Speaker 2 Got it.

Speaker 2 Millie like raises her hands

Speaker 2 and just the glare off of how bright and how much the sun is bouncing off of the hard earth. She can barely see it.
She only kind of knows from his voice and the direction.

Speaker 2 So she doesn't even see the other people that are around, but just yells, oh, Mr.

Speaker 1 Hollow, hi, hi.

Speaker 2 Hi, it was a good, it was a good, and she shifts like she has this big, like, it's not canvas, it's like old plastic that she shaped into, like a big sack.

Speaker 2 And it's very large, but it's full of very, like, sparse, dry plants. So it probably only weighs, like, five or ten pounds, but it might be a quick, like, she could fit inside of this bag.

Speaker 1 It was a good, it was a good trip.

Speaker 2 Um, I'm gonna be able to, this should probably take maybe four days to, you know, reduce down.

Speaker 1 How are you? How are you?

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm doing mighty fine now that you're back in town, but

Speaker 1 I'd be remiss if I didn't say

Speaker 1 came up a little light on that last batch. You know, the

Speaker 1 fellas here in town, they like a stronger drink. No, no, I know, I know, I know.

Speaker 2 I'm so like I said before, I'm so sorry about that, but I think this one, it'll be, it's going to be so good. I just need a couple days, and it will be so strong.

Speaker 2 Thank you, thank you so much for your patience.

Speaker 2 All of you. All of your patience.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 He smiles and nods.

Speaker 1 The smell of the scrub brush in that bag. This is a varietal, a hardy desert anise seed.

Speaker 1 So this like intense liquorish kind of smell emerges from the bag behind you for a this like liquor that you make out here, this moonshine, that

Speaker 1 is completely completely clear when distilled, and if it touches ice in any way, it turns milky white.

Speaker 1 You

Speaker 1 head off through the town, and uh, who else is here in Fortune's Fields today?

Speaker 2 Harry's a man who was educated abroad, he's seen a lot of the empire,

Speaker 2 the neighboring lands,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 2 he decided to settle here. He settled here

Speaker 2 in order to try and grow his practice as a doctor.

Speaker 2 But one thing led to another. He fell in love,

Speaker 2 wife passed away,

Speaker 2 and he just always found a reason to stay. here in the community.
He knows everybody here. It's comfortable, even though it's deeply physically uncomfortable in this part of the world.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 2 try as he might, he just can't find a reason to hop onto the train and move on to somewhere bigger where he could actually have a thriving medical practice.

Speaker 2 Harry's office

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 2 what was formerly

Speaker 2 a back room of a saloon.

Speaker 1 At one point he had a full building.

Speaker 2 It was shiny, mahogany,

Speaker 2 clean counters.

Speaker 2 It's something he always grumbles about now,

Speaker 2 but

Speaker 2 it was

Speaker 2 a much better maintained room at the saloon, and as the town shrank and shrank, it was important to be near where the action was, and that was always the saloon.

Speaker 1 Harry, you hear a commotion as there's a loud clang of mine carts hitting each other, and you can hear shouting from the mine entrance.

Speaker 1 Looking up the sort of main thoroughfare in the town, you see there's dust being kicked up as a group of men rushes shouting ahead of a larger, slower group of men who appear to be carrying someone in a stretcher.

Speaker 1 Whoa, hey!

Speaker 2 Hey, hey, come on over.

Speaker 1 You see that running over.

Speaker 1 There's a man, you see, he has a thick pair of overalls.

Speaker 1 You see, he has kind of a checkered shirt underneath that has a shawl coming up around his neck, a smaller kind of like skull cap clinging to his head.

Speaker 1 He comes up, wipes dust and dirt off of his eyes, and you see that he comes and says,

Speaker 1 Fahad, his leg!

Speaker 1 His leg!

Speaker 1 And you see a young man that you would recognize as Fahad.

Speaker 1 He

Speaker 1 has clearly suffered an accident, and you can see that through thick wrapping of canvas, a dripping wet with blood leg.

Speaker 1 You can't see anything under the knee, but from the saturation of blood in the fabric, you can tell that this is about as bad as an injury can get in that part of the body.

Speaker 2 All right, bring him on in.

Speaker 1 Harry, looking at Fahad down there, fahad is a

Speaker 1 handsome he's got deep hazel eyes and long black eyelashes in any other universe he would have like the countenance and bearing of a prince and you see there are like some popped blisters on his hand he's got these dirty overalls on and uh looking up you can see he's missing a couple teeth that just comes from uh basically he he grew up here he was one he was one of the people that started in the mines as a kid without parents.

Speaker 1 And so just went a couple of years without anyone telling him to chew on this certain cactus gum that keeps your teeth from rotting.

Speaker 1 And by the time anyone that was in his direct family explained that to him, he'd already lost a bunch of his teeth.

Speaker 1 You walk in,

Speaker 1 what did you do as he lands in front of you?

Speaker 2 As he lands in front of me,

Speaker 2 I clear everybody out with a dismissive gesture of my hand. I pull out a

Speaker 2 knife from my boot and I start to cut off the canvas pant that is starting to pool with blood.

Speaker 1 You see that the tibia in his leg, the main leg bone, has had a brutal pulverizing break. So it's not a clean break.
There's probably a couple, like two or three inches.

Speaker 1 The mine carts are slightly angled out, and you think that his leg got caught in between two of them clanging together and fully crushed and separated

Speaker 1 so there is a ruined couple inches of multiple fractured bone and you can see the tibia darting out trying to break through the skin under the knee

Speaker 2 at the dance hall were you lad all right

Speaker 2 harry uh takes takes the knife and and quickly

Speaker 2 quickly and expertly cuts the canvas from the pant leg, pulls a bucket of

Speaker 2 the precious water that is available here in the back room.

Speaker 2 It's already warm, he was already working on cleaning,

Speaker 2 and starts dunking strips of bandages in there, ready to set the leg.

Speaker 1 Go ahead and give me a medicine check, and I'm gonna give you your stat block right now.

Speaker 1 There's a five on the door for ten.

Speaker 1 He's not gonna keep this leg

Speaker 1 Lou

Speaker 1 dusty white-collared shirt,

Speaker 1 pressed, pleated, striped pants,

Speaker 1 overalls with

Speaker 1 the metal elements shined just this morning and polished shoes. Standing at 4-7

Speaker 1 is Okie Page,

Speaker 1 affectionately referred to around town as the railway stooge,

Speaker 1 but personally holds his title as second deputy close to his heart.

Speaker 1 Okie, for the most part, is a is a pretty friendly chap, is not but but his job is to kind of maintain

Speaker 1 the rail station, make sure that they don't take too much water

Speaker 1 and make sure that there are no delays in the schedule.

Speaker 1 The railway station,

Speaker 1 a long concrete block, benches, lamps. This was made at a time of investment when the name Fortune's Fields felt appropriate, felt a little bit aspirational, but like it was going to happen.

Speaker 1 Silver was coming out of that mine in droves.

Speaker 1 And you can even see some silver embossments here and there on your desk.

Speaker 1 There is a covered awning that covers most of the exterior concrete block of the rail station. A long, long stretch.
You could have an 11-car train come through here.

Speaker 1 It's been four-car trains for the entire time you've been stationed here, but you could take 11 train cars here.

Speaker 1 There's a small small interior area with a countertop

Speaker 1 that has no food or service at it but there is a samovar would do you think uh uh do you think that okie would have would make coffee in the large public coffee maker for himself there very much so very so there's always fresh coffee at the rail station the best part of his day

Speaker 1 and the most involved yeah you know being the second deputy station agent and the person running the concessions stand is not where you saw yourself ending up.

Speaker 1 No, but Oki holds in his heart that maybe somewhere some station's in need of a new second agent or even a first agent.

Speaker 1 You look and see a calendar.

Speaker 1 Today is a big day.

Speaker 1 There was a holiday, which means there was a three-day delay. So it has been 17 days since the last time a train came through and there should be a train coming through today that'll have food and

Speaker 1 stuff for repairs it'll it'll be uh the mining comp uh company um

Speaker 1 uh the gundring mining and geological speculation company the gundring gundring g-u-n-d-r-i-n-g

Speaker 1 so that train will be coming along

Speaker 1 The the rail you don't work for the mining company you work for the rail line But the mining company does they do they They send stuff here every two weeks, except when there's a holiday and then it's you have to wait 17 days.

Speaker 1 Looking at your desk in front of you, you see there's some paperwork, there's some missives that have come through,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 hopefully there will be some news about a possible transfer

Speaker 1 or even a promotion, given that you're the second station agent. And they still, they've told you that they were not going to offer a promotion to first agent, that you would be replaced.

Speaker 1 or that the old first agent who passed away uh would be replaced

Speaker 1 but uh that was about a month and a half ago and they have not replaced the first agent yet

Speaker 1 ok pours himself just a bit of the coffee takes a sip

Speaker 1 oh now that's just right all right uh and walks over to the mail and starts oh maybe today maybe today maybe today maybe today yeah you see there's a little mailbox there's there's a

Speaker 1 and of course, the mail is a small, probably like 14-foot tower with a little crane arm.

Speaker 1 And the trains, sometimes, if they don't have anything drop off, they'll just set the mailbag up and the hook just snags it off the train as it blasts through Fortune's fields on its way to somewhere better.

Speaker 1 Okie's worst days.

Speaker 1 Okie, you begin to hear a commotion from the town.

Speaker 1 And I think walking past the general store you see millie out on the street uh walking past um millie let me ask what kind of animal are you riding in from your uh adventures in the desert uh and where would you be headed to

Speaker 1 millie's got oh gosh

Speaker 2 i wish it was a horse it I don't even think she's riding it. I think she's got a little, like,

Speaker 2 it's like a mule. So it's big enough that Millie could ride it, but she's so afraid it will die

Speaker 2 if she adds any stress.

Speaker 1 It's so old.

Speaker 2 She doesn't know.

Speaker 1 Like the vet

Speaker 2 here died forever ago. And as much as she likes Harry, he won't help her with sort of any animal husbandry questions.

Speaker 2 So she doesn't know if the how old the mule is, if it's a boy or a girl, or what its name was.

Speaker 2 So she just calls it Bud and is hoping to just be as neutral as possible.

Speaker 2 So she's sort of trying to coach Bud into continuing to walk.

Speaker 1 Bud the mule gradually starts to swerve towards the small, muddy, wet patch underneath the stent of the water tower right outside of Oki's office to go and lick the mud for some spare water.

Speaker 1 Okay, okay, bud.

Speaker 2 We don't have time for this. We have to go.
What is this sound? Please, please, there's water at home.

Speaker 1 Please. Okie, you see Bud the Mule turn and lower his graying nostrils.
He's got some cataracts.

Speaker 1 There's a little bit of white in his eyes as he begins to nuzzle at the muddy patch under the water tower. This is undignified.

Speaker 1 I think Oki will open the window from his office that looks out.

Speaker 1 Hi now, Millie. Hi.

Speaker 2 Hey, Okie, how you doing?

Speaker 1 I'm good. Train's due today.
Oh, you were excited. I am.

Speaker 2 Can you get some of that? Do you have a little extra coffee?

Speaker 1 Oh, would you like some? I made it, but it doesn't seem like anybody's coming by to buy any. Oh, you're so sweet.

Speaker 1 Okie's gone. Oh, bye.
Reappears. Here you go.
Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 1 You see, there's also, I don't know if you take it, there is a lovely little canister in a little ceramic container of cinnamon sugar, which is how people take their coffee out here.

Speaker 1 And there's also a dusty cardboard box of milk flakes.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm sorry. Did you want milk flakes in there?

Speaker 2 I'm so good. Thank you.

Speaker 1 Oh, all right.

Speaker 1 You're so sweet. Hey, well, you know, it's real nice for all y'all to have me.
I may be moving on today. We shall see.
But

Speaker 1 I've enjoyed my time here.

Speaker 2 We've enjoyed having you.

Speaker 1 Oh, that shucks.

Speaker 2 And while you're doing that, Millie's going to reach into

Speaker 2 a little vest pocket and pull out a small flask and just pours a bunch of alcohol into it. Takes one more sip and then hands you back the cup.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 better coffee. Are you going to finish it?

Speaker 2 Oh, I'm good for now.

Speaker 2 But thank you. If you want to finish that out,

Speaker 1 would hate to see it go to waste. Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1 What is?

Speaker 1 What is that?

Speaker 1 Oh, you know.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 It sounds, it's like someone painted licorice on a bullet and shot you in the mouth.

Speaker 1 Ow!

Speaker 1 My throat! Yeah!

Speaker 2 Right, I know.

Speaker 2 The follow men like it stronger, so I've been making it stronger.

Speaker 1 You see, Millie, that across the train, the other side of the train tracks, they never even finished the bridge over there.

Speaker 1 Coming up from

Speaker 1 Harlow's Glades, you see that one of the hunting dogs sniffs the wind and raises and looks in the direction of Bud the mule.

Speaker 2 Okay, hold on, hold that thought.

Speaker 2 I immediately lock eyes with the dog and pull out just a big, it's an old like rifle, but she's never, it's rusted through. There's never been a bullet.
It's just a big club to her.

Speaker 1 Incredible.

Speaker 2 And she like just tees up like she's going to swing away.

Speaker 1 Like, try it.

Speaker 2 Fucking try it.

Speaker 1 You see, this is an old, you've got like an old Ruvian rifle, which it has the hammer on the back of it, but there's just a place where you insert a small runic disc that takes a small, basically fire elemental and releases it when you shatter the disc.

Speaker 1 So this sort of like little magical, like, oh, it's just something that's supposed to shoot.

Speaker 1 And it's got the barrel is really thick, so it's like a narrow opening and a wider metal bullets heavy rifle on your back.

Speaker 1 Looking out towards that field as you sort of brandish it, you see that the hunting dog looks at the mule and looks at you.

Speaker 1 You see, these dogs are so overheated that many of them ruled out killing this old mule also.

Speaker 1 They're supposed to go after antelope. A mule is like slightly at the upper range.

Speaker 1 Like, you see, this dog is going, if I scare him enough that he has a heart attack, can I eat him then?

Speaker 1 And then sees you brandish a thing and just slumps his head sort of disappointedly in between his paws to cover his nose from the intense as you see.

Speaker 1 By the way, as the shadow has moved and it gets closer to high noon, an entire pack of these hunting dogs is just hugging a two-foot shadow at the edge of a house.

Speaker 1 See, they're just like basically glued to the side of a house out there.

Speaker 1 From up and away outside of Dr. Harry's office, you hear, Millie, Millie, it's bad.
We need alcohol. Got it, got it.
Um, I got got, I'm, Okie takes off.

Speaker 1 Have a good day.

Speaker 2 Good luck with leaving forever.

Speaker 1 I'm gonna go brush my teeth.

Speaker 1 Millie, rushing into Harry's doctor's office,

Speaker 1 you see a shattered leg that is just gushing blood onto the table.

Speaker 1 Harry, go ahead and give me a medicine check. You're adding plus five to this

Speaker 1 just to tournikate the wound. DC10

Speaker 1 16. Plus five.
We're 21. So the bleeding has been staunched,

Speaker 1 but you can see that

Speaker 1 the wound on the leg, bone shattered,

Speaker 1 blood everywhere.

Speaker 1 And you can see that it looks like it took some time. He was probably deep in the mines when this happened.

Speaker 1 You think this has been bad for a little while. But you rush in because Harry this thing has to come off.

Speaker 2 Is he still conscious?

Speaker 1 He is still conscious. Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 Millie's gonna reach behind her and just grab whatever bit of like the roots and shrubs

Speaker 2 that she can like reach without having to take the whole pack off because now she's in a small room and quite bulky and snaps him off and she immediately throws it into her mouth, starts chewing it.

Speaker 2 And the thing is, like to make this, she has to boil it for a really long time because there's like sort of like a latex fluid that's around it.

Speaker 2 So she's like chewing it, like just spitting gobs of like

Speaker 2 milky white, like latex that would be like poisonous and it's kind of burning her mouth. It spits it out and then takes this like wad of like the red root and jams it into Fahad's mouth.

Speaker 1 You jam into Fahad's mouth. He's going to make a little constitution

Speaker 1 check here.

Speaker 1 You see that he begins to chew, he begins to get like loopy and out of ease.

Speaker 1 so he but you see he's still kind of conscious as you lean over to put that in his mouth

Speaker 1 He looks up at you Fahad goes

Speaker 1 So I'm down

Speaker 1 so I'm down in the mine.

Speaker 2 What'd you what'd you see grandpa

Speaker 1 He says

Speaker 1 he says you have to double back to find the silver

Speaker 1 And he kind of goes out of it again.

Speaker 2 Yeah, wash your hands! Wash your hands! Wash my

Speaker 1 covered in dust. See, there's an old sort of almost like spherical, like wide-built miner says, don't wash your hands.
That's how you get a clap.

Speaker 2 Jared, shut the fuck up. Why are you helling you, Jared? That is not the case.

Speaker 1 Get out. Get out.
Out, out. Everyone out except for Millie.
That's how I got it, not anything else.

Speaker 2 Yeah, probably.

Speaker 2 That man is a slut.

Speaker 2 And I'm just sort of wiping Fahad's head as he's like drifting out

Speaker 2 and then pulling another flask out. Millie doesn't have a problem.
This is research. And it's just grain alcohol that I immediately put in your hand, Harry.

Speaker 1 Harry, you're holding grain alcohol. You're looking down at the leg, and there is a saw next to you.
All right. Okay, here we go.

Speaker 2 Here, wait, sorry. I'm sorry.
Here, here, what are we? Where are we going? Where are we going?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 2 I'm sorry, Millie, but the leg needs to come off. You can either be here for it and help me hold him down, or you can

Speaker 2 go out into the saloon. Okay, I don't need to go into this.

Speaker 2 He's not going to be able to work anymore in the mines if his legs is off. Well, if the leg doesn't come off, he might not make it at all.

Speaker 1 Harry, you look down and can see

Speaker 1 amidst the mess, as you like, use water to like clean and look off at the leg, you can already see the beginnings of what is going to be like a necrotizing infection in the leg.

Speaker 1 Like, the leg's gonna die.

Speaker 2 I also know that we don't know exactly when the train is coming. There's no way to get him on it into a neighboring town with better equipment soon enough.

Speaker 1 Give me a medicine check. See if he has enough time.

Speaker 1 One. No.

Speaker 1 You think there's enough time? Right. No.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 Okay. Is there anything you can do? Like, maybe if.
Because he's not going to be able to work. And if he can't work, he's not going to be able to do anything.

Speaker 2 He doesn't have any family.

Speaker 1 Right, it's about

Speaker 2 it's almost noon.

Speaker 2 I think we can get him over to the station.

Speaker 2 Try to put him on the next train.

Speaker 1 Oh, he says the train's coming today. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Come on, lad. We'll get you back to the dance hall yet.

Speaker 1 You guys get Fahad up. A group of men comes with you.

Speaker 1 As the men get out,

Speaker 1 you hear a sharp clap of

Speaker 1 a little bit of magic.

Speaker 1 And you see that Mr. Hollow looks out from the center and says, Fellows, fellows, fellas, oh, oh, oh, oh,

Speaker 1 where's everybody out in the middle of the day? Running around, you're going to fall down, pass out of heat. Aren't you fellows supposed to be working? I got it, I got it, I got it.

Speaker 2 Mr. Hollow, I'm so sorry.
There was an accident down in the mine, and we have to get Fahad on the train, or maybe his leg will be off. So

Speaker 2 we just, that's what we're doing. If that's okay with it, we're just gonna go do that.

Speaker 1 And he goes, well, I have a contract with the Gundring Mining Company, so

Speaker 1 it's my business to make sure that things are going according to how they want things here in town to run. You see, he walks over, looks down at Fahad, who again sleepily kind of looks up and says,

Speaker 1 Grandpa,

Speaker 1 I saw him down in the mine.

Speaker 1 He told me where the silver is.

Speaker 1 Shit.

Speaker 1 And you see Mr. Hollow looks down, raises an eyebrow, goes,

Speaker 1 all right. Well, we don't need all of you to do this.
Millie, pick three other men. We'll help you get down to the rail station.
We'll get Fahad down there and make sure he's taken care of. Oh, God.

Speaker 2 Um, okay, sure. Um, and I

Speaker 2 point it three random, three random people. I'm not even looking.
Like, there's that sense of fear

Speaker 2 when around Mr. Hollow that you don't want to turn your back on him or, like, not

Speaker 2 be looking at him.

Speaker 2 So, she just sort of taps three different textures of shirt without turning her face from Mr. Hollow

Speaker 2 and sends the rest back.

Speaker 2 But, you know, he's, uh, I just gave, he's got some of the shrub root in his mouth, so he's babbling nonsense because of just for the ball.

Speaker 1 Give me a little deception check.

Speaker 1 14. 14.
Okay.

Speaker 1 You see, Mr. Howell looks at you and says, all right.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry he's feeling unwell. He looks down at the leg and says, ooh, that's not good.

Speaker 1 You guys are going to make your way to the rail station. Okie!

Speaker 1 You see that... A group of people are coming towards your rail station, including one young man on a stretcher who is being moved towards you as fast as possible.

Speaker 1 Okie's gonna come out out of the train station now, not just through the window. How now, what's this?

Speaker 1 Mr. Hollows up and says, Got a young man.
We're trying to move on down to Greaves or somewhere. They got a better doctor's clinic.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 I'd like to use my skills in railway bureaucracy.

Speaker 1 Does it make sense that there would be space on the train that's coming today, given it has been

Speaker 1 17 days? 17 17 days.

Speaker 1 Give me a railway bureaucracy check. The difficulty is five.

Speaker 1 And I add a plus two.

Speaker 1 20.

Speaker 1 I know what I know, and I don't know much else.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 You don't think there are passenger cars on the train coming today?

Speaker 1 They could throw them in the engine somewhere or something like that. Like, you know, there's a, like, where could he go?

Speaker 1 Yeah, you don't think there's necessarily going to be a passenger space. Just one second.
Okie's going to run back in.

Speaker 1 I want to go through the inventory and see if there's something I could, like, if Fahad can fit on, like, if I can use railway bureaucracy, my only skill, to create a world in which we, in which Fahad is considered part of the inventory that they're picking up.

Speaker 1 Like, if we literally put him on top of a bed of coal, is there space for him?

Speaker 1 Go ahead and give me a railway bureaucracy chest.

Speaker 1 The most essential skill in the west.

Speaker 1 Five.

Speaker 1 On a five, I think that what you could do, the best you can do is give him a letter of passage with your station agent seal. Got it.

Speaker 1 I'm going to pull out one of,

Speaker 1 out of a, out of a well-kept folder, pull out one of my station agent stationery

Speaker 1 and write a quick note about this man needing passage to the next

Speaker 1 to Greaves. Gotcha.
And then run back out.

Speaker 1 Alright.

Speaker 1 I don't know if there's going to be...

Speaker 1 I don't know if there'll be space because the train, you see, it's going to be packed. But we'll give him this letter and we'll do our best.

Speaker 2 Much appreciated, Mr. Page.
Yeah, of course. Thank you, Okie.

Speaker 1 You see, Mr. Hollow looks over at you, Harry, and says,

Speaker 1 Nah, this is a hard thing to see. You think the boy's gonna lose the leg?

Speaker 2 No way of knowing. It all depends on when they can get him to Greaves.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 it'd be a shame for him to lose that leg, that's for certain.

Speaker 2 True, a real, uh, real, real damage to your asset there, huh?

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 you think so little of me, Doctor?

Speaker 2 I don't think much of you at all.

Speaker 1 Huh. He smiles at this doctor with a fucking death wish.

Speaker 1 I think he's going to make a little insight check.

Speaker 1 He enrolls a Nat 20.

Speaker 1 He eyeballs you.

Speaker 1 He's assuming that you are drunk to be this mouthy to him.

Speaker 2 I am fully focused on VOD. I am still trying to staunch the flow of blood.
I'm wrapping the wound.

Speaker 2 I'm changing out bandages, like really, truly in crisis mode. This is definitely not the first time that I have spoken back to him this way, but

Speaker 2 probably the least cordial that I've ever been.

Speaker 1 Mr. Hollow nods, and you see he says, Faha, can you hear me? And you see, the young man looks up and goes, huh? You see, he goes, you said you saw your grandfather in the mine?

Speaker 1 You don't have any family, son. And you see that he goes,

Speaker 1 I had a dream about him, though.

Speaker 1 He's down there, he had a silver beard.

Speaker 1 You see Mr. Holland nods,

Speaker 1 old gray beard, huh? And you see how it shakes and says, no, silver, silver, like

Speaker 1 it was made of silver. The beard was long,

Speaker 1 and he had a...

Speaker 1 He had a flat cap, but

Speaker 1 he had long pointed ears.

Speaker 1 And he had his knuckles rolling, dragging on the ground. He looked like a

Speaker 1 kind old man. And you see that Hollow looks out at one of his young men.

Speaker 1 Give me a

Speaker 1 perception check, anyone who wants to.

Speaker 2 30-20.

Speaker 1 13.

Speaker 1 4.

Speaker 1 Millie, you

Speaker 1 look over at the guy he looks at.

Speaker 1 This This young guy's name is Jack, and you see that he's got

Speaker 1 sort of a new guy that's shown up in Hollow's crew.

Speaker 1 Jack, for a lot of the guys that work with Mr. Hollow, are

Speaker 1 rowdy and

Speaker 1 dangerous and otherwise kind of like, you know, very impetuous. Jack's always been a very quiet guy.
You see, he's got

Speaker 1 vest,

Speaker 1 sort of string tie on,

Speaker 1 but you've always noticed him because he

Speaker 1 has like uh i don't know if you call it just a funny thing of birth that his ears are a little bit folded in so he has that kind of like a little bit of a point they're not long they're the same size as a normal ear but they just fold a little bit like they're pointed and

Speaker 1 he has some like those side incisors are a little bit baby teeth so he's got kind of two buck teeth and the teeth on the other side are a little bit smaller and some more pronounced canines he has like a little bit sharper or longer.

Speaker 1 So he has kind of a little bit of a fucked up smile in a cute way, sort of.

Speaker 1 Holla looks at him as

Speaker 1 Fahad tells this story, and you see the kid nods at Mr. Hollow and heads out of the rail station.

Speaker 1 Harry, I'm going to need a medicine check from you.

Speaker 2 15 plus 5 for a dirty 20.

Speaker 1 Let's go! Okay,

Speaker 1 we are going to make constitution saves based on these medicine checks.

Speaker 1 He will be making this with advantage. He only has a plus one and he needs to get a 12 or higher.

Speaker 1 Oh no. That is a 10 and a 9.

Speaker 1 The way we're going to do this is Fahad is still alive.

Speaker 1 But as the infection begins to set in, his body starts to heat and he starts to get a fever.

Speaker 1 He

Speaker 1 is going to, while alive,

Speaker 1 fail his first death-saving throw.

Speaker 1 He is still conscious,

Speaker 1 but that happens in that first hour.

Speaker 1 Hollow takes off with his men as well as you're working with Fahad here.

Speaker 1 Millie and Okie, is there anything else you guys are doing during this time?

Speaker 1 So there's just

Speaker 1 a man dying in the railway station.

Speaker 1 Okie, there's a man.

Speaker 1 There's a man dying in the railway station.

Speaker 1 There's a fresh pot of coffee, and Millie is here with Bud the mule outside as Hollow and the rest leave. Okie is pacing back and forth because this isn't supposed to happen at the railway station.

Speaker 1 And as the second deputy, he knows it's his job to keep the railway station clean and tidy. However, he also understands he's going to walk up to Millie.

Speaker 1 Millie,

Speaker 1 is there a.

Speaker 1 I don't. I don't want to.
I don't want to. I don't wanna be insensitive

Speaker 1 just

Speaker 1 there's a train coming by today and

Speaker 1 a lot of supplies and uh it just doesn't make a lot of sense if uh there's blood everywhere you know

Speaker 1 I'm just trying to uh

Speaker 1 trying to meet everyone here halfway

Speaker 1 okay

Speaker 2 yeah come on lad you gotta fight this man's dying and you worried about there being blood in the station well I'm will that reflect poorly on you?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yes, it will. I mean, it is the, it is the, it's, well, it's the first,

Speaker 1 it's the first agent's job, but when there is no first agent present, it is the second agent's job. Uh, second deputy agent's job to keep the uh the station

Speaker 1 in chip shape.

Speaker 2 Millie, I need a bucket for the vomit. One second.
One second. One second.

Speaker 2 Okie, you know that everyone in town calls you a stooge, right?

Speaker 1 Well, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean,

Speaker 1 it's, they're not wrong. I just,

Speaker 1 care deeply about my job, but I also care deeply about this town. Okay.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 2 if I promise to come back and clean up all the blood, can you just kind of let it ride right now while our friend Fajad is dying?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 1 I appreciate that. Thank you.

Speaker 2 And thank you for the coffee.

Speaker 1 Of course, do you need any more?

Speaker 2 No, um, no.

Speaker 1 I'll put on a fresh pop. Oh, let me go make coffee.
Jesus. Hair.
Never mind.

Speaker 2 We don't need it anymore.

Speaker 2 I uh I'm gonna

Speaker 2 pull out of uh I have many uh belts and pouches on a bandolier across my chest, um, and I pull out uh a little bit of willow bark that I have to uh give it to him.

Speaker 1 Go ahead and give me another medicine check.

Speaker 2 11.

Speaker 1 11. Okay.

Speaker 1 He will make this next constitution save uh flat.

Speaker 2 I can't look

Speaker 1 Fifteen.

Speaker 1 That's a success.

Speaker 2 Okay, whatever you're doing is working, but I

Speaker 1 can't help.

Speaker 1 I'm gonna go.

Speaker 2 I need to figure out what he was. Maybe he saw something, or

Speaker 2 he was raving.

Speaker 2 That

Speaker 2 thing you gave him. It's, you know, I

Speaker 1 he was.

Speaker 2 Fancy pink olifense. And

Speaker 2 it's, it's.

Speaker 2 It's it's nothing. I need you here.
Please.

Speaker 1 Just keep him talking to you.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 You talk to him. Keep him alive.
Get him to grease.

Speaker 2 And I'm going to take off. And I'm running towards the mines.

Speaker 1 As you run towards the mines, we're going to roll another check here. I'm going to need a medicine check from Doc Harry.

Speaker 1 Just give it a minute. God.

Speaker 2 11.

Speaker 1 11.

Speaker 1 Another roll in front of the board. Oh my god.

Speaker 1 That's a two.

Speaker 1 That's two death save failures.

Speaker 1 One success. Are his eyes supposed to look like that?

Speaker 1 He is. He's on his way.
You can tell that he is close. He is very close.
How long until the train is scheduled to arrive? The train is scheduled to arrive

Speaker 1 this afternoon. It's about 12.15 right now.
Train's supposed to be here at 1:20.

Speaker 1 Okie's looking at his watch, up at Fahad, up at his watch, at the schedule, at Fahad, at his watch, and it just don't add up.

Speaker 1 You look, I'll say this too. I'm going to need another medicine check.
Gotta be DC 15.

Speaker 1 This is no longer about Fahad's livelihood, but this has got to be at least a DC-15 from the dock for something unrelated. Or related, but different.

Speaker 2 15. 15.

Speaker 1 The infection is visibly spreading through the leg.

Speaker 1 The train should be here any second.

Speaker 1 But this is your last chance to amputate the leg before it doesn't matter anymore. Before the infection spreads enough that it won't matter anymore.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 Mr. Page.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm going to need you to assist me right now.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 You know what I'm saying? Come over here.

Speaker 2 I need you to hold this young man down.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 2 I'm going to operate right here.

Speaker 1 All right. Where do I need to move right now?

Speaker 2 Just hold him, hold his shoulders here.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Duh.

Speaker 1 Gonna do it. We're gonna operate.
We're gonna operate right now.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. What are we doing here?

Speaker 1 Hold him down.

Speaker 1 This is gonna be, once again, a DC-15 medicine check.

Speaker 1 Anything below a 10, disastrous.

Speaker 1 10 to 14

Speaker 1 means he's still got to make a save, but there's a better shot. 15 and higher means you save him.

Speaker 1 Please don't kill him. Oh my God.

Speaker 2 He don't got no family.

Speaker 1 Here we go.

Speaker 1 Ain't nothing to it but to do it.

Speaker 2 Okay, so I'm just rolling flat.

Speaker 1 Rolling flat.

Speaker 1 That's a 15 on the dive. That's a 15 on the dive plus five for a dirty 20.
In the middle of your railway station, a doctor begins to saw into a man's leg.

Speaker 1 No!

Speaker 1 No!

Speaker 1 The saw connects with the wooden, like the wooden bench of the rail station.

Speaker 1 Fahad, keep him quiet. Fahad passes out.
Fahad bully. Hoki passes out.

Speaker 1 Hokie passes out.

Speaker 2 I'm working in silence. There is only the sound of it.

Speaker 1 Doc. Keep the hacksaw going.
Doc, you take the leg off. Alcohol applied.
Clean bandage. Wrapped up as best you can.

Speaker 1 And the fucking leg comes off.

Speaker 1 Doctor, go ahead. You go ahead and give me a constitution saving throw.

Speaker 2 12.

Speaker 1 You collapse, tired, just like breathing heavily.

Speaker 1 You see in the door with Oki is out on the ground. Fahad is unconscious.

Speaker 1 At the door of the rail station, you hear,

Speaker 1 and a hunting dog pokes its little snout into the railway station, sniffing after Fahad's leg.

Speaker 1 Eh.

Speaker 2 I uh nudge it on over to him.

Speaker 2 Someone's gonna get a chance to eat good in this town tonight.

Speaker 1 This

Speaker 1 completely sober doctor gives a leg to a wild dog?

Speaker 1 That has to be against some oath, right?

Speaker 1 Some oath.

Speaker 2 There's no centaurs in this world.

Speaker 1 Once it's off your body,

Speaker 1 it belongs to nature. To the streets.

Speaker 1 Millie,

Speaker 1 where have you run off to in town?

Speaker 1 I...

Speaker 2 So Millie is very deferential to the hollow men

Speaker 2 and Mr. Hollow.
She hates him him and doesn't trust him one little bit. He is part of the rot in this town, and whatever he is interested in, she is immediately interested in.

Speaker 2 So she is running towards the mines because the ramblings of

Speaker 2 an injured miner shouldn't have been that interesting to him. So I'm just trying to sneak up and figure out what they're doing.

Speaker 1 You rush up, go and give me a stealth check

Speaker 2 21.

Speaker 1 Woo, baby.

Speaker 1 Sneaking up into

Speaker 1 the sort of top of the mine. The mine is busy right now, but you can walk up.

Speaker 1 Some of the guys have gotten back to work, but

Speaker 1 there are a couple different

Speaker 1 areas. The place that Fahad was injured,

Speaker 1 you

Speaker 1 enter

Speaker 1 and get, like, I assume a little little lantern and begin to head down the line there.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 with that stealth check, you continue on down.

Speaker 1 And you begin to hear

Speaker 1 of something

Speaker 1 tapping on the walls. Give me an Arcana check.
Arcana or religion.

Speaker 1 10

Speaker 1 There's some little nursery rhyme.

Speaker 1 There's some little thing in the back of your of your mind that was like

Speaker 1 one, two, three,

Speaker 1 banging on the knee. Four, five, six, gather up the sticks.
Seven, eight, nine, heading down the mine. Tap, tap, tap, tapper's gold shine.

Speaker 1 There's something

Speaker 1 in the tapping, and you hear a voice going

Speaker 1 and you see a little shine from down a little mine area that perhaps worryingly to you does not seem supported by wooden beams.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 then I'm going to walk forward toward it, turn down the lantern just a little bit.

Speaker 2 I'd like my eyes to try to like acclimate.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'll do something grosser.

Speaker 2 I think in like dealing with Fahad,

Speaker 2 Millie's got blood on her hands. So I'm going to wipe blood onto the front of the lantern to turn the light red so my eyes can acclimate to the dark a little more easily and keep walking down.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 in the cadence of like this random person's like muttering,

Speaker 2 whenever there's

Speaker 2 the little break for the tap,

Speaker 2 I think I'm gonna like feel across the wall. And if I can find a place that's not like soft earth, that might be like a little harder rock, I'll tap three times to like join in a little bit.

Speaker 2 Tap, tap, tap.

Speaker 1 The The sound stops and you hear.

Speaker 2 Can I hear where it's coming from?

Speaker 1 Further down this unsupported opening.

Speaker 2 Yeah, she's gonna keep walking forward.

Speaker 1 One, two, three.

Speaker 1 Tap them on the knee.

Speaker 1 Four, five, six. And the mine opens up, picking up the sticks.

Speaker 1 and you see a figure looking at you that looks like a kind old grandpa until you realize that the distance away from you that he is is farther than you think and that his head is massive.

Speaker 1 He is

Speaker 1 probably if he stood up to full height, he'd be like 10 feet tall.

Speaker 1 His head is disproportionately large for his larger than body. The shortest part of him are his legs that are probably about three or four feet long but hunched down.

Speaker 1 And you can see his feet are long and he's standing on the balls of his feet, so he has almost like a digitigrade ankle.

Speaker 1 But the feet don't look like animal feet, they have like long, dirty, crusty toenails. He's got a dirty old pair of overalls, a filthy undershirt, but his skin looks clean, although wrinkly.

Speaker 1 It's just his clothes are filthy.

Speaker 1 His beard is long, shining silver. And you see that he's got these long ears.

Speaker 1 His nose is like this perfectly sort of spherical, but it's got the flared.

Speaker 1 So it's like a spherical front and then spherical nostrils that sort of pop out like little supporting character sort of buds on either side.

Speaker 1 Pure busted capillary nose, like full red to the kind of duller, like sort of dusty beige of his skin silver eyebrows

Speaker 1 yellow irises to his eyes his head is about the size of like i don't know like a state fair winning pumpkin just huge huge head got these long ears little bandana tied around and you see he's got a lantern hanging from a belt a pickaxe and you see in front of him his lantern shining on a vein of silver that you couldn't span your arms across, going in either direction.

Speaker 1 Wider than a human body.

Speaker 1 Hello, dear.

Speaker 1 What can I call you?

Speaker 2 My name's Millie.

Speaker 1 Can I offer you a drink?

Speaker 1 Ooh,

Speaker 1 I'll have the last sip or the last bite, but I won't take more than that.

Speaker 2 Millie reaches to that first flask

Speaker 2 that made Oki do a spit take earlier. And as she

Speaker 1 like she's just holding it out and is a little afraid to walk forward with it, but offers it out.

Speaker 2 She remembers that like when she was younger before her grandparents died,

Speaker 2 whenever they would make like a big batch of anything out of like the big stills behind their house, they would pour it out for three seconds for whoever else would pass by. And I never knew why.

Speaker 2 I thought it was just like something bad was in the batch,

Speaker 2 and something just sort of clicks into alignment.

Speaker 2 And if she's terrified, this is a scary man,

Speaker 2 but is gonna kind of take a deep breath and thinks of her family and offers up her flask.

Speaker 1 You see, he raises it to you and takes a sip, and he says,

Speaker 1 and hands it back.

Speaker 1 He He smiles and says, Well, Millie, you can call me Tipothy. Tipothy?

Speaker 2 It's very nice to meet you, Tipothy. Is

Speaker 2 that yours?

Speaker 1 Oh, this?

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 well, it's the mines.

Speaker 1 Yeah, plenty to go around. We'll all get rich here.
Look at this, the vein of silver.

Speaker 1 You want to get rich, don't you?

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 2 guess I guess

Speaker 2 I just don't wanna

Speaker 1 be hard up.

Speaker 2 I don't think that's quite the same thing.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 you're saying you don't want

Speaker 1 you don't want all of it?

Speaker 1 Oh, I'd be happy to give it to you.

Speaker 1 How much of it do you want?

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 2 I'm sorry, I don't want to be rude, but for for what? Why are you why are you being nice?

Speaker 1 You offer me the last sip of your flask. One kindness deserves another.

Speaker 1 Oh, thank you. You could be the richest woman in town with this vein of silver.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 2 oh, I don't

Speaker 2 wouldn't know what to do with it. I'm

Speaker 1 okay.

Speaker 1 Did you see

Speaker 2 a young man in here earlier? How he has like really pretty eyes and like long lashes and long hair?

Speaker 1 Young man, young man. He got his leg got hit by some carts.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 yes, young fellow with with the hazel eyes. Yeah, that's Vod.

Speaker 1 Give me an insight to check here, too.

Speaker 1 Nine.

Speaker 1 I I asked the young fellow what he wanted, if he wanted all the silver, and he said yes, but

Speaker 1 I asked him what he'd be willing to pay for it, or what he'd give to have all of it. And he said, anything.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 it's a tough thing for him to part with his fortune like that. His true fortune, you understand? Not his wealth, but his luck.

Speaker 1 Wait,

Speaker 1 he paid with his luck?

Speaker 1 As he says that Fahad paid with his luck,

Speaker 1 you see that there is a, what looks like a small,

Speaker 1 uh, a small pouch in, like, sort of hidden in one of the pockets of Tippety's overalls.

Speaker 1 And it shines a little bit as he mentions Fahad's luck.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 2 so he's already paid for it then, yeah?

Speaker 1 Well, I'd think so, yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1 But, you see, he sort of smiles here a little bit and goes,

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 you've already paid for a kindness as well, and I owe you one. And I won't be left in anyone's debt.

Speaker 1 Sir, I don't.

Speaker 2 I'm not trying to do a weird deal and work you out of something that you negotiated,

Speaker 2 but is there any chance I could get his luck back?

Speaker 1 You'd rather have

Speaker 1 a poor man's luck than all the silver in this mine.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 For the last sip, he tosses the pouch to you.

Speaker 1 And as he does,

Speaker 1 you see that the light in his lantern goes out, and you hear the snarl of a jackal nearby.

Speaker 1 Tipothy goes, run!

Speaker 1 And gets his hand and shoves you out of the mine. And you see eyes gleaming in the dark as from a predator.
And you are suddenly back out in the mine.

Speaker 1 You do not see the opening that you walk down to find this spirit, but you are holding a small leather pouch in your hand with something shining within it.

Speaker 2 Screaming running through the mine. Anyone that sees you, yo, wake it up, I wake it up, my wife.
And I am booking it for the train station.

Speaker 1 You book it for the train station as fast as you can. You're holding this pouch at this exact moment in the timeline, this is

Speaker 1 when you begin to saw into Fahad's leg.

Speaker 1 As the leg comes off and one of the hunting dogs, you see a dog taking off with Fahad's leg. Ow!

Speaker 1 You run to Fahad who's unconscious. You see Harry's there.
You have this small pouch in your hand.

Speaker 2 I'm

Speaker 2 sipping a steaming fresh cup of coffee.

Speaker 1 Just like two passed out people.

Speaker 1 What happened? Is he okay?

Speaker 2 He's gonna make it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he's gonna make it. Thanks for your help, Les.
Sorry to be able to do it.

Speaker 1 Run forward, push you out of the way.

Speaker 2 And open up the pouch. What do I do?

Speaker 1 What do I pour? How do I do? What do I do? As you open it, light

Speaker 1 shoots out of the thing. The rail station fills with light.
Oki, you wake up just to see this light going everywhere.

Speaker 1 As the light is shooting in all directions,

Speaker 1 you see that Fahad's luck returns to him.

Speaker 1 But I would like for

Speaker 1 everyone else here to roll a pure luck check in front of the board. 11 or higher, 10 or lower.

Speaker 1 That's a 20 on the day!

Speaker 1 Oh!

Speaker 1 Oh my. Oh my god! All right.
Go off, Harry.

Speaker 1 20 on the day. On a nat 20, Harry, you look and see these things running off in all directions.
The hell is going on?

Speaker 1 As it does,

Speaker 1 the biggest source of light goes straight to Fahad, but you see that as the pouch opens, other sort of these little moats of shimmering gold light, the fortunes of fortunes filtering everywhere.

Speaker 1 On a Nat 20, you see that a incredible piece of fairy magic is happening. On Nat 20, you can grab some for yourself

Speaker 1 or you can determine something else on a Nat 20 that you want to happen with all this lux shooting everywhere. Well now, I'm an old man.

Speaker 2 I've been been around here, and as I say, you know, there's just something that's always kept me here. You know, first it was meeting Foo,

Speaker 2 and then it was, uh, you know, living our life together, and then taking care of all the folks that always needed something from old Harry. And then it was Foo passing away, and she's buried here.
And

Speaker 2 basically, what I'm trying to say is that I don't really, I think,

Speaker 2 I think I've had a lot of

Speaker 2 this, uh, a lot of good good in my life, I think. More good than bad.
And

Speaker 2 I think some of the young folks here could use a little bit of whatever this

Speaker 2 shiny magics

Speaker 2 is.

Speaker 2 So I think

Speaker 2 maybe I'll take a little bit of that, if any of it'll fit into

Speaker 2 what I can distribute through my back saloon room, but I'll leave the rest of it for the young folks.

Speaker 2 Use it more.

Speaker 1 On a Nat 20, you grab the biggest piece of it and release it. And having been released, instead of darting frantically hither and yon, you see that it tumbles like a tumbleweed out

Speaker 1 through the doors of the station towards the governor's canyon.

Speaker 1 Millie, what did you roll? Yeah, I did.

Speaker 1 14. 14?

Speaker 1 You grab some as well. Boom.

Speaker 1 And Okie, you gotta roll, baby. Let's go, baby!

Speaker 1 10.

Speaker 1 You said 11. I said 11.

Speaker 1 Wait a minute, wait a minute. Okie sees the two of you and just starts swinging his hands

Speaker 1 across his body. Sorry, I forgot to mention what skill we were using.
This is a railway bureaucracy.

Speaker 1 And the train pulls into the station.

Speaker 1 You see workers coming off to start unloading. There's in the train.
Okie, you're standing there looking. Fahad wakes up and you see that figures begin to

Speaker 1 sort of walk into the town.

Speaker 1 As they do, you see that the first

Speaker 1 figure sort of walks in,

Speaker 1 coming from the railway,

Speaker 1 and goes up and says, Okie Page,

Speaker 1 second deputy page,

Speaker 1 at your service. I'm sorry for all the mess.

Speaker 1 First Deputy Page.

Speaker 1 I got terrible news. What?

Speaker 1 As your first action as station deputy, you're gonna have to give notice to the town.

Speaker 1 The uh

Speaker 1 the Empire is uh launching an assault. This is a conscription notice.
Need every young man in town that can report for conscription to report right away. Oh, it's well

Speaker 1 hey, I'm reading it.

Speaker 1 It's not to be a.

Speaker 1 You see that you have papers that are promoting you, and as your first action, you're communicating to the town. Okay, it's not me.

Speaker 1 I have to tell every young man in town they're going to join the military. That's correct.
Okay.

Speaker 1 You see that as Fahad gets his luck back, this conscription notice comes through,

Speaker 1 and you see that looking up, Fahad's like, suddenly being like, am I going to have to go to war?

Speaker 1 And you look down and you see the station agent looks down and points at him and points to the dog carrying his leg off and goes, lucky, and walks away.

Speaker 1 Millie, with that luck check, you see that there are other figures coming off and unloading the train in this moment.

Speaker 1 See, walking through the town with that luck check,

Speaker 1 Jack approaching and you see him approaching and you see his eyes flicker with a reflectiveness that you saw down there in the dark you don't think Jack is human

Speaker 1 you think that you heard a jackal snarling down there in the dark and you see he's got a sack in one hand that is twitching and moving as he walks towards the general store

Speaker 2 How lucky do I feel right now?

Speaker 1 You feel incredibly lucky.

Speaker 2 Then I want to...

Speaker 2 me and these little dogs. They've been trying to get Bud for a while, but they like smaller prey.

Speaker 2 And I just want to give like a little side whistle, which I can't do, like just a little

Speaker 1 to get the dog carrying Fahd's leg. Lucky.

Speaker 1 You see the dog turns at the name Lucky, snarls, cocks its head to one side, and charges at Jack.

Speaker 1 And you see, right as he crosses the shadow of the bell tower of the old governor's mansion, he crosses some line where he's out of the sun for a moment, turns, drops the bag, goes,

Speaker 1 and turns into a jackal and sprints out of town, chased by this hunting dog.

Speaker 1 You see, the bag kicks one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,

Speaker 1 bursts, and the sack is empty as Fahad looks out, grabs your hand, and goes,

Speaker 1 oh my god, I don't have to go to war. I know where all the silver is.
Yeah, I know where all the silver is.

Speaker 1 We have to find a way to.

Speaker 1 You see.

Speaker 1 Out in the governor's canyon, you hear a rush of water as a spring erupts.

Speaker 1 Water rains as as it begins to flow. That bag opens and a dust devil kicks up from the bag, the empty sack where Tipothy was kept.

Speaker 1 And you see that last moat of light sent down there by the doctor

Speaker 1 as golden luck fills the town and water flows under iridescent sunshine, casting a rainbow light over the village.

Speaker 1 Tipothy has kept his promise.

Speaker 1 Millie, you watch the jackal flee into the desert.

Speaker 1 And your new dog, Lucky, comes back as Fahad goes,

Speaker 1 Would you want to go into business with me? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's called Tapper.

Speaker 1 It's called Tapper.

Speaker 1 Tapper.

Speaker 1 He says, all right, Tapper.

Speaker 1 He says, you got it.

Speaker 1 And Okie, you look out. And

Speaker 1 as you see, the station looks out and says, The hell happened here?

Speaker 1 It's been a strange day.