So, uh we finished our last scenario, which was the first scenario of the Demnatio Memoriale fan campaign by Hank Bellinger.
uh I did some editing of it.
uh I'm Patrick.
uh The scenario we just wrapped up was called Dead Man's Switch.
We are starting the second scenario whose name I'll tell you at the end.
Shocker.
So let's get the ball rolling on that.
Let me just pull something up super quick.
Yeah, it is mid-August 2020.
COVID-19 lockdowns have been in effect since March.
1,000 people die from the disease every day.
Social distancing and masking are still heavily socially enforced in Washington.
Unemployment is the highest since the Great Depression, and Americans are still cooped up at home.
Black Lives Matter protests continue across the country.
Jimmy, how is Morrison spending his lockdown?
you know, so I think because he lives in a small town, uh, kind of North East of Seattle, he can probably still get out and go on trails, uh, cause he's not around anyone.
Uh, but beyond that, he wanted to work on some of his skills specifically cause he's a biathlon guy and a coach.
He wanted to work on his motivational speaking, which I put down as like persuade.
So I imagine he's probably like,
watching a lot of videos on like how to motivate people maybe like networking with other coaches.
Yeah, talking with other coaches about how do you you know, get your people motivated and then he's doing a lot of like talking to himself in the mirror.
You can do it.
No, no, that not that last one.
I love it.
um
And then the other skill he wanted to work on ah was uh military science C.
This didn't really come up before, but he wasn't a military ah and he has quite a bit of skill in land military science, but he's like, I live near the coast.
This should probably brush up on some of the C stuff too.
Yeah, don't forget you can also improve your core stats, strength, dex, con, int, power, charisma.
That's that is also on the table.
I thought about Charisma, but his isn't that good and I didn't know it was one more point in Charisma, assuming I even pass would be worth it.
So although I guess it would be a 50 or 60 instead, because you increased the bass, right?
So instead of an 11, it would be, yeah, that's all right.
What I don't know is if increasing your base stats increases your calculated stats.
So would that improve all of your bonds by one?
I'd say, yeah.
Same with improving your constitution would improve your maximum HP.
Improving your power would improve your maximum sanity.
That sort of thing.
So.
sense.
That's on the table.
How are you improving your military science?
See.
Uh, probably just reading a whole lot, like a lot of just like books about historical sea battles, looking up stuff about like tactics, things like that.
Uh, probably not necessarily like swimming skills and stuff like that.
Although I guess, you know, he could, but.
a lot of um United States Navy handbooks and training guides available on just .gov sites.
can get field manuals.
Yeah.
What is your uh military science see at right now?
it's zero.
I have 60 in land.
Yes.
Is that different?
Okay.
I love that you're doing military science, the most useful skill in Delta Green.
Well, so what I had originally proposed was like, can I stay on the case for this operation we're going to do and look into things and be like, what's the layout of this
island?
Like if we know that we're going to prepare for this thing, like what's the history of the place?
What's, you know, there look at like, if there's any kind of tourism board stuff, what kind of industry they have and then like geographic layouts.
But it sounds like that was, yeah, go ahead.
that and I want you to do that.
You haven't got the mission yet.
Do it on mission time.
um Yeah, sure.
You can learn military science C, get ready to get.
Not much points.
3D6 percentage points to that skill.
uh Before you roll this, uh we never really discussed on Mike who Morrison is, what he used to do, what he does do outside of Delta Green.
What is your background?
so essentially he, uh, was in, I don't think I've really specified, but, uh, yeah, just put former military, but I'm going to say army, you know, did maybe like six years did
some kind of like, uh, essentially I based them on like the special operator class.
So essentially like special operations stuff did a six years got out when he was still relatively young.
he got really into skiing and with his background in like special operations and firearms, he was really drawn to biathlons.
So he got really into biathlons.
Uh, I looked this up at some point, but I forgot now he would be like a little bit on the older side, but still within the age range to be like Olympic level biathlete.
Got really into that.
Uh, I had put Olympic biathlete in my history, so I didn't expound upon that much.
Um, and I didn't.
are you famous?
No, I don't think I mean, can anyone here name a single by athlete?
Yeah, famous or otherwise?
Yeah.
sought out for tutelage.
In the biathlete community, you are perhaps a household name, or at least, like, even odds of knowing, right?
Yeah, you know, I imagine it's uh it's one of those communities that like viewed from the outside.
You're like, I don't really know much about this, but probably within it, it's probably pretty small and probably any like big biathlete thing.
You're going to know 70 percent of the people there by name, if not like personally.
Sure.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Roll those, roll those bones.
Let's start with your persuade.
I have stay on because actually I have other...
listeners following along at home, we're doing personal pursuits straight from the agent's handbook of the game.
uh In downtime between scenarios, uh home scenes, little vignettes get played out uh in Delta Green games where you show the everyday reality of these people.
um What Agent Morrison is doing is taking the improved skills or stats
uh personal pursuit by training or studying extensively the agent can try to boost two separate skills or stats uh by attempting to roll under their stat.
If they fail a check, he gets to add 3d6 percentile to the skill.
If he passes, he gets nothing.
So did you pass?
Persuade.
rolled a 29 on a 24.
So I did not pass.
I failed.
Yes.
Yep.
3D6, roll it.
uh that is 16 right yeah 16 which is pretty good two sixes and a four so i'll uh i have so that would put me up to 40 from a 24 so yeah i'll take it
Now, give me that, yeah, me, yeah, Rolled Military Science C for me.
I rolled 88 on a zero, so...
Yeah.
You get 3D6, you don't get the max.
That'd be really funny though.
It would be funny.
I got four.
Four.
That makes sense to me, frankly, given that you're starting at zero and you're doing this at home during lockdown alone.
Or, or, art?
Yeah.
actually, who are you spending lockdown with?
ah So that would basically just be my wife, Sarah Brown.
Awesome, yeah.
Yeah.
So each increase to a stat or skill reduces one bond by one as you let other responsibilities lapse.
Who are you neglecting to learn four points of military science?
C.
Um, you know, so I, as far as bonds, have my wife who I'm mainly spending lockdown with and then also my brother Charlie.
ah
Maybe you're not calling Charlie as much as you could be?
or not like hanging out with him since like I'm technically not supposed to like go out and be with him So I I would lose two from him like one for each skill
could pick one from your wife, you could pick two from Charlie, you can split it up however you like.
Okay, I'll say two from Charlie.
Sounds good.
Hey Nick, I'm getting like a ton of like hissing or static or something from I think your mic.
It's gone.
Fixed it.
Yeah, I think it's just picking up the environment.
yeah, it's, yeah.
Is it showing anything when you're not talking on your little bar?
looks like it.
Let me see.
It's unusual.
Seems like the gain's just maybe really high.
You might have just been a little louder than you should.
Hot mic.
I mean, it's glowing orange, so that should have been our first hint.
Weird am I loud enough or okay?
Yeah?
exactly as loud as you used to.
It's just the ambient is gone.
Yeah, that's really interesting.
Uh, yeah.
So Agent Morrison is neglecting his relationship with his brother to, uh, read up on naval, military history and, uh, to take self-help courses in motivational speaking.
What a way to spend lockdown.
Nick, what is Miles?
up to.
And again, I don't think we really talked too much about who Miles is or was before becoming an agent, so let's talk a little bit about that too.
Yeah, Miles is an associate laboratory director for national security at the Pacific Northwest Laboratory.
And he spends most of his time in Seattle, but also goes to Richmond, Washington for some nuclear facilities.
His education is in chemical physics.
So he oversees a lot of the field operations and foreign intelligence analysis of things like nuclear, chemical, and biological technologies.
more, excuse me, more recently he's been getting into things about HABs, so harmful algae in the Pacific Northwest.
Awesome, yeah.
So it sounds like he's not just a suit in a administrative role.
He is somebody with doctoral degrees in this field um doing stuff at a technical level.
Yeah, he got his PhD at UW for chemical physics and before that he was in chemical engineering at Stanford.
And he spends his lockdown, I mean, mostly doing what he always did before.
He's working remotely now, but his morning runs are less about fitness during the lockdown and more about calibration.
They're still five miles long around Seward Park and he kind of uses that.
that run to disperse the ideas and the stress of being locked in his house.
ah Sometimes he takes his son, whose name is Wintow, in a stroller and pushes him in front of him as a little passenger in his orbit.
But the whole time he's calculating like what six feet is as he's running by people and sticks to the strict guidelines.
Most of the time he'll wear a mask on his runs as well if it's a little busy.
If it's not and it's early morning, he takes it off.
yeah, the returning home for him
is almost like an airlock procedure.
He'll strip off like some of his clothes, wash his hands immediately.
He usually tosses away the N95 mask.
He doesn't wear the washable ones.
And ah he greets his wife, Mei, and she usually has a coffee and a tired smile for him.
And they don't.
necessarily talk a lot about the pandemic itself.
They're just kind of managing themselves and the chaos in a controlled environment.
So they have this like bubble of logic that they've built and they're trying to keep the outdoors out.
Yeah.
No, I love it.
That all makes sense.
Is it one of those like jogging strollers?
Oh yeah, Bob.
So, it's a Bob, yeah.
very good.
All right, so what is your personal pursuit for these couple of months?
Yeah, it's really just fulfill responsibilities.
So just honing in on the new parenthood and then the relationship with his wife as she's still recovering from her C-section.
Yeah, for sure.
Okay.
Give me a sand check.
okay.
85 over 67.
All right.
Failure on this check adds one to your bond with your wife.
um A success would have improved it by one D6.
A critical success would have also given you a point of sanity and a fumble would have meant some disastrous conflict reducing your bond by a D4.
uh
Great, yeah, I'll take the one.
yep, beats the alternatives.
Jordan, what is, who is and was Magpie?
Yeah, Magpie m was, well, a bit of a gifted lad.
He was at home a lot, while his foreign, dignitary parents were abroad.
m his kind of measure was academic and uh athletic and em about his ability to perform against his parents' expectations.
And so
When they said reach for the stars, he took them pretty literally and he was on a trajectory towards working for NASA trying to get a position on a space shuttle.
And so he enrolled in the Navy and working on a naval vessel.
He took his GI Bill and went to college and getting into the medical field and going to medical school.
goes back into rotation on the Navy, does a second tour uh in the medical facility there.
um And as he is starting to apply for flight school to earn his pilot's license, he learns that he is absolutely motion sick when it comes to flying.
And his dreams are kind of shattered where he stands.
And that's about where we find him at the beginning of the 2020 lockdown, where he's really trying to figure out how he can pivot his career choices and his frustrations into
something more profitable.
And so he's looking to kind of specialize em into em like private security for people who are medically compromised, especially.
um I think that might be why Madison and or Morrison may have sought him out in particular.
seems like Mole and some of the other boys, but Mole in particular is maybe a little unstable and might need a little more looking after than your average bear.
so, um to, over the course of this lockdown,
I'm trying to look the part, put some things on my resume, some certifications in firearms and more in pharmaceuticals.
Awesome, yeah.
How are you practicing uh pharmaceuticals and firearms during the lockdown?
Because I believe we discussed your living situation.
You live on a uh floating house on the lake, floating home.
uh just a scooter's ride away from where we uh met at the original meet point.
Yeah, I stay there with my sister, uh which has been a couple years in the making.
uh And by the end of this, it's a couple years into breaking.
And we'll see how breaky it gets as I kind of try to turn our place into like a Navy SEALs training ground, right?
I got a VR.
um headset taking up like the biggest room at a house and I like threatened to break through the glass door every single day in that one and I'm dry fire practice with a laser
training trigger I got you know we're running drills malfunctions and maintenance there's a little RC boat that one of the kids likes to drive around and I'm popping shots at it
with uh a airsoft pellet on the on the lake um it hasn't sunk yet so we got an LK thing going um
And then on account that I was causing so much of a stir up in his living situation, driving my sister mad.
And she actually put my email address in on all the mailing editors on all the pharmaceuticals.
And so I started getting all the promotional materials and I got uh free sample packets of SSRIs and you know, uh little trifold booklets out the ass.
And so I do go ahead and get to reading on some of those.
And I start, you know, contacting some of the people who would author them and
the people that co-peer review studies and things like that and building a little community in there.
new guidelines, new drugs, just keeping yourself up to date.
Yeah, as bleedin' edge as you can get from a paper cut on one of these things.
Yeah, awesome.
Yeah, that sounds good.
ah Give me a check on firearms and then give me a check on pharmacy.
Okay, yeah, so neither of these is a sure thing.
Firearms, we're looking for a 60 and a 95 will do just about anything for us.
Do you wanna see that 3D6 then?
All right, 3D6 coming at ya.
14, we take those.
So that's a 60 up to 74.
Jesus Christ, that you get real familiar with that airsoft pistol.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's one of those things where I'm doing the in and out of the magazine so many times.
Right, and I'm only discharging one pellet every time, and my neighbor comes out and he's like, you're gonna clean those up, right?
Because there's just a pool of 700 of them that have pebbled up in a little nook there.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Okay.
uh Give me that pharmacy.
pharmacy.
61 is more than 40 and 3D6 is looking like 12.
All right, that's pretty good, pretty good, pretty good.
All right.
Now, so we talked a little bit earlier today about how you don't have any firearms actually listed on your sheet with a 60 firearms.
Did you want to go ahead and try to obtain a restricted weapon?
Yeah, yeah, we're doing a little time jump back in time to see uh how, if I was able to like flesh out my personal uh armory with a little bit of the US national supply.
Yeah, do you want to have stolen a fully automatic submachine gun from the United States Navy armory?
Why yes, Patrick, I do want that.
Okay, uh what skill are you going to try and do this with?
Yeah, so I understand, I don't really know how it works, but I do understand that at the end of each spending period, they're looking to re-up budgets and so a bunch of inflated
spending comes through and they just slam yes, green, green, green on anything that comes through.
And so I try, I understand where the cracks are.
I try and make an inflated order and I try and see that one of those kind of slips off into the shadows.
uh, sounds good.
What skill?
Very good.
Uh, and what do you have in bureaucracy?
All right.
And if you fail this, this is like, this is like jail.
Yeah, no, I do.
I do understand that this is kind of the crash out period, I suppose.
Right.
So.
is right after you find out that you puke in planes and you're like, fuck, I'm out.
Better get while the getting's good.
Right, there's a bit of, you know, they would have spent it on something dumber than this anyway, and you know, and I'm owed this, and you know, I've hit an unofficial breaking
point.
Yeah, all right, well, here we go.
31 is under 40.
That is good enough on your sheet.
So you have stolen a...
Yeah, you've stolen an unusual expense restricted weapon.
Good for you.
You've had it this whole time.
Yeah, I think put it on your sheet.
ah It's straight out of the book.
You have a...
You've got an MP9 fully automatic submachine gun.
The skill is your firearm skill.
It's got a base range of 50.
It does a D10 if you're firing it in single shot mode or 10 % lethality if firing bursts.
It has an ammo cap of 30.
It's also super illegal.
Do not get caught with this.
Hell yeah.
Yeah, well I do walk a little taller.
You keep talking about how you take Lyme scooters everywhere.
Do you have a car?
funny.
Yeah, we do.
We do.
Yeah, we share one.
She commutes in the normal time.
Okay, alright.
is it?
Golly.
Yeah, no, I can tell you're curious.
em Yeah, I think it was decidedly not my choice and so I really don't get along with it.
It's one of those two-seater hatchbacks.
One of those ones that makes you go like, now how on earth did somebody design a car like that?
Who was this for?
Lo and behold, it's for me.
Apparently, yeah, right.
Awesome.
Where are you keeping your stolen United States Navy restricted SMG?
Is this uh just like normal everyday business or carrying?
Yeah, I mean...
you've got it in a, it's got a carrying kit, like a Pelican case, I'm sure.
Sure.
Yeah, it goes in a duffel, you know, so as to be inconspicuous as with most other things when we're moving around.
em But as far as um day to day, I think it is just underneath the headboard.
There's a headboard that is not actually attached.
And so it's just able to be kind of like slipped up and you grab it out from under and then set it back down.
Like you meant to screw it in, but now you're just kind of making it look like you never meant to.
Sounds good.
What I was getting at was does this live in the trunk of your car if an incident turns up where you're on site and you realize you need your gun, will you have it on you?
I guess it depends what I'm on site for.
It sounds to me like you have to plan to bring it along because it lives at home.
Yeah, yes, if I was being called out for uh to be prospected to, you know, or for for a job, then it would certainly be.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
But for surprise like anything, no.
All right, that sounds excellent to me.
And I'll tell Jimmy when he gets back too.
uh But Nick, Sam, Jimmy, if you guys need any uh non-incidental gear, we can talk about that now.
hey, Jimmy, can you hear us?
Yeah.
hey, head, Chordless, how nice.
Did any of you want any non-incidental and or restricted gear that makes sense for your characters and backgrounds?
And again, there's a whole mechanic for obtaining it and if you fuck it up, it is bad.
Magpie rolled a 40 % or go to jail check.
Yeah, I probably would not try to obtain anything unauthorized.
I do have experience with heavy weapons uh and demolition, ah but I'm not going to try to sneak any of that stuff home.
There are non-restricted heavy weapons.
Hmm.
Specifically, there's a handheld flamethrower that is an unusual expense.
It's like the one you can buy from what's his nuts, the shithead.
Who?
I dare say it is unusual.
Yeah, Elon.
It's a boring company.
you mean Leon Tusk?
God.
We're gonna get to that.
Yeah, no.
If you want to have...
Okay.
I am.
It is an unusual expense, which means there's a potential for it to damage your financials or your relationships with the people you share financials with.
Hmm interesting, how does that work?
can you pony up five grand without your wife figuring out?
Hmm.
And the way you do that is either...
Well, so there's a couple ways you can do it.
You can use illicit cash.
You can use your own money.
You can try and requisition it from the government.
Or you could try and obtain something on the black market if you wanted a restricted item.
um The easiest and safest thing for you to do would be to spend your own money.
Which, all that happens is you say, I'm paying for an unusual expense.
The stress of spending this reduces one non-delta green bond by one.
um You can then make an accounting test to have done this without um hurting your financials by cleverly taking out credit cards by hiding the trail.
Hmm.
That sounds like too much work.
I have like a story way, but it wouldn't be quick.
It'd be like, oh, well, you know, essentially I do a lot of shooting.
like just in my life, I have a pretty big budget for like ammunition anyway.
Maybe say over the course of a couple of years, instead of shooting like, you know, 500 rounds a week or whatever I normally do for practice, I just shoot 400.
And then after a couple of years, I set that money aside and then I'm like, boom, flamethrower.
Yeah, so that's how you would get the unusual if you want you can roll that accounting and then have that flamethrower
Yeah.
plan.
And hear me out.
If you succeed on it, canonically, you're like one of the guys from the station in the thing, right?
Like you're the fucking ski master with the daddy beard and the flamethrower.
Now, I will put it out here.
If you're willing to risk restricted and a major expense, there is a general purpose machine gun on the...
If you're a guns guy and you were in the military and you don't mind maybe retroactively going to jail...
Yeah, I feel like jail is not something that he's willing to risk.
uh Ruining my finances, I don't know what that means in terms of the game, because we've never actually done that.
Yeah.
broke, you're gonna have a really tough time later.
You can get fired from your job.
There's rules about being prosecuted, and there's rules about having Senate hearings.
like, uh-huh.
You're playing a game with a bureaucracy skill as its own line.
It does, yep.
My accounting's only 10.
I'm gonna...
I'm gonna have to let that dream of uh being one of the flamethrower guys from the thing just remain a dream for now.
can have it.
You just damage your finances and your relationship with your wife.
Okay.
I love it.
That's, I think that's a great like character point is like, no, I could do this.
I won't.
Why would I do that?
And Magpie's like,
Yeah.
Chase really wants that flamethrower, but he's like, huh?
What am I going to do with it?
You know, ski behind my trainees and be like faster.
You
Ha ha ha ha.
Don't let the flames getcha!
So does anyone else need restricted gear?
Sounds like no.
I'm a wife guy, no thanks.
Yeah.
alright, okay.
Sounds like a plan.
Then, uh, yeah, Sam, what is...
Mull's deal?
Who is and was Agent Mull?
Yeah, so, uh Mole, or Leon Tusk, is a corporate director at BlackRock.
So he does like mergers and acquisitions.
So he's just like truly going in and doing corporate espionage.
uh He grew up in the Seattle area, went to Yale for undergrad, Harvard for law school, was clerking with like a SCOTUS like track, because he was seen as smart and charismatic.
And then the minute he could, he got out of it and said,
and I'm gonna make money, enjoying a small corporate firm and then moved his way up to corporate director at BlackRock.
In the pandemic time, Mole lives on, and let me know if this doesn't make sense, but lives on Mercer Island, has a nice big house there.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
And he's got almost a little bit of a compound.
At this point in the pandemic, he's...
knee deep in his addiction uh that is going on like online forums, on eBay and undercutting people for things he knows that they really love and like fucking buying it
out from underneath them.
ah So he's got in his like basement, this computer set up and then just all of these fucking expensive tchotchkes.
And it's purely just like he's, you know, he like trolls forums for like
I don't know, Snow Globe collectors, and if he sees somebody who's really looking for this one thing, he undercuts them and buys it out from underneath them all just to maintain
some amount of control.
Yeah, total freak, yeah.
would he buy uh like access to a large number of people's webcams on the dark web so that he could watch their faces while he beat them to the buzzer?
Yeah.
minute he found out that he could do something like that, it was like sweetening the pot that he could see.
Like when you didn't get the item that makes you think about your father that you've been pining about on this online forum, he can watch it happen and he's like, fuck yeah.
I did that.
guy waltzed up, he's like, baby let me show you what I can do for you.
And the rest is history.
what is Leon Tusk's computer science?
Yeah, okay, fine.
Scum, what the hell?
Yeah, he's not great.
um
All right, horrendous.
What's your personal pursuit other than cruelty for cruelty's sake?
cruelty's for control sake.
uh He is forced to go to therapy, unfortunately.
um I think that he, uh what I had in my head, I don't think it's a court injunction, because I think that Black Rock, yeah, is like, it tries to keep everything inside.
And so Black Rock is like,
He did something, said something off the wall, because he's already kind of like on the edge there, did something on one of these like trip, business trips when he was like
trying to do mergers and acquisition shit and undercut somebody.
And boom, like he got in trouble.
They wanted to keep it in house.
So they hired some like therapists.
He refuses to go see anybody because A, it's the pandemic and B, it's mole.
And so they are doing it all over Zoom and he's taking it like not very seriously at all.
It's like clicking through.
He's on the forums.
Yeah, he's on forums hunting.
So, but I guess actually I say that, but I think there's probably a moment where he does have to take it somewhat seriously, right?
And he reflects on something bad that's happened to them, to himself, I would say, eh because he's doing it like, I think they make him do like six sessions or something like
that.
And so the first couple, he's not taking it seriously at all.
And then by the time, you know, rolls around to the sixth session, he's like,
in the pandemic like fully.
And so he's not been able to talk to anybody.
His normal, he's a people person, even if it's like a shitty being shitty to other people, he's still a people person.
And so this has affected him in ways that he has no ability to figure out and like no introspection to figure out why this is like causing him suffering.
And I think that like on that third or fourth session, something actually comes out about like the violence he's seen.
Okay, do you think...
So I got a couple of questions for you.
Because Go To Therapy is like a whole ass half page in the rulebook.
It is by far the most complex and it is the only one that can actively damage NPCs and the systems around them.
So here, yeah, it's wild.
I wondered about that because that's an interesting idea that the therapist takes on the harm.
that you can damage your therapist's sanity if you choose to tell the truth.
Telling the truth to your therapist uh makes the therapy better for you at the risk of your therapist, one, becoming harmed, two, not believing you, and three, becoming a threat
to Delta Green.
What?
are you doing?
First, are you truthfully telling your therapist the activities that caused you to lose sanity?
You know, think that he, because, so, I'm just gonna be real with what I think Leon would do, because I think that he is not meaning to do any of this stuff, and then the minute it
gets down this rabbit hole of talking about control, I even think it's probably because they start talking about all the shit that he's got in his background as a way to get in
with him, and then they, yeah, and he's like, you know, this one, this was Paulson this is his father, died with this, and I bought it, you know, right before.
You know, and he's like showing off all these different like tchotchkes.
I I think there's this moment, he has trophies, there's this moment where like his eyes like almost glaze over and it becomes, he just starts like saying like the actual like
weird shit that he's seen.
um
So yeah, you're gonna tell the truth.
um Is...
Yeah, give me a s- what do you think?
Uh, are you paying for a high quality therapist?
Your teledoc?
Yeah, I, know, initially I had thought about like, was it like a better help kind of thing?
You know, like, um, not to denigrate anybody, but like, you know, is it somebody that you're paying for that you have no idea?
But my sense is, that if it's like HR and the corporate director uh position requiring this, they have somebody on retainer who is probably used to hearing fucked up stuff,
right?
Very highly paid.
Maybe not the fucked up stuff that, you know, Leon's going to dump on them, but definitely at least like, you know, bad stuff.
enough for him to be able to say, what am I paying you for?
Right?
Like, what are we really paying you for?
Yeah, so first give me Persuade.
That's a 21 on an 80.
Okay, ah yeah, the therapist believes you about the things you've seen and the things you're telling her.
um
Yeah, give me a 75 % psychotherapy roll.
22 on a 75.
is that a critical success?
It is.
Yeah, wow.
Okay, you get six sand back up to your limit.
How far were you down?
Okay, so we discussed this and I don't know what you think about this and what everybody else thinks about this.
My current was 37.
It says 40, but then in the rules it says the max is 99.
Do you guys play that you can go over the 40 or not?
I don't really care at all.
So I'm just happy to have some sanity back.
I don't know that the rules say the max is 99.
I either.
I thought I looked this up.
Well, it sounds like we also don't know that the rules say that the max is your starting value.
Therapy cannot increase sanity beyond the agent's power times 5.
perfect, okay, cool, that sounds good.
Okay, cool.
That maximum sanity on the AutoCalc sheet trips me up because it's like your mythos, yeah, because it's like your mythos minus your, or your 100 minus your mythos.
So, okay, cool.
Well, that's.
true.
Your max sanity can never be higher than 100 minus your unnatural skill, which is true, but not helpful.
Okay, so I get three back.
Yes.
then, do you suffer from a disorder?
yeah, I did, didn't I?
Did you?
No, no, no, no, we yeah because every time I rolled I had that
It should be written on your sheet.
Yeah, Megalomania, that's right.
Yep.
Holy shit.
from a disorder or critical success on a therapy role, cures it.
My god.
Leon is healed.
This was a laying on hands.
is maybe not a good thing.
Your agent develops a bond with the therapist equal to half your agent's charisma.
Cool.
I love that.
Okay, do we wanna just make up a name for the therapist or should I just write therapist?
Okay.
McKinsey Stillwater.
to write therapist.
Yeah.
uh
What's her slogan?
Your mind will be still as well.
Yeah, there we go.
Still water, still mined.
Is that a half round up or down?
It sounds good, eight.
uh Write cured next to the disorder on your character sheet But do not erase it the next time you gain a disorder you must roll another secondary sand test if that fails the cured
disorder returns in full force alongside the new one
Okay, cool.
m
uh Last but not least, can you make a sand check for Dr.
Stillwater for me?
That's going to be a 65%.
37 on a 65.
Fuck yes!
Holy shit.
Okay, yeah, no.
pretty good downtime.
Yeah, that's pretty good for Leon.
Downtime is really important for characters' survivability between missions.
Can Morrison maybe uh send a message to Mole or send him a link to a message board about flamethrowers?
Antique flamethrowers.
Yeah.
Hey, you can really screw some guys on here.
Buy some of them flamethrowers with all your BlackRock money.
I'm kidding.
You don't have to.
You can say no.
Nick, your mic is doing that thing again.
Yeah, what the hell, Nick?
I don't know.
It's so strange because there's no ambient noise other than my PC, which is like uh far away.
So I don't get it.
like room tone, quite honestly.
Like just the tone that you get in like a room.
And so I feel like it's maybe just gain.
It's like I'm on like one game right now.
wild, because I have to turn my gain all the way up for this.
And I feel like I may be quiet for you guys here talking you.
mean.
at like half and above and it's like, yeah, never been like this.
I don't know.
uh Jimmy, does Morrison want...
You can totally ask Mull to buy you an expensive gun.
And it's going to work exactly the same way, because if you piss off your teammate by asking to borrow $5,000, go for it, man.
Yeah, totally, I'm here for that.
Absolutely send that text.
I'll just send him a link to uh, I'm not gonna ask.
I just know that this is Yeah, I just know that this is like a proclivity that he has and I'm like, hey flamethrower message board
What are you gonna do with that, Sam?
think Mole is going to click it and then start browsing and if there is anything on there that he seems like he can harm someone else with, um yeah, then he's gonna do it.
All right, Jimmy, roll straight luck.
oh, sorry.
You
ah No, that's a 63.
No, these are weirdos and they're all doing like weird kind of scammy things.
Yeah, soft sit people.
Not to say the soft sits weird, I am one, so.
I'm gonna let you guess which one if I'm the soft sitter mole is.
Yikes.
I don't know if a corporate lawyer could be as soft set.
That doesn't uh quite line up.
It might formal if he's like, yeah, he's like, he's like, I understand these laws and I use them to harm people and better my situation, but they don't actually apply to me.
I maybe, kind of.
God, I'm playing a real piece of shit, I'm sorry guys.
It was like you gave me a chance to be a character and I just said fuck it, huh?
Yeah, we.
you.
And Jimmy's the best guy we've ever met.
Yeah, I guess that's true, right?
The yin and yang of hand on the door.
I do love at the top, I read when you get me your character, I read the name.
And I was like, please do not roleplay this.
I cannot handle it.
And so far you haven't.
okay, cool.
Just wait till I get my ketamine.
God.
Why do you think I'm working on pharmacy?
Yeah, fuck yeah
That's the end game here.
The end game is to get the ketamine.
Get the ketamine, get the girl.
Well, if can I'm gonna go get some water if that's okay Take a break.
Okay.
Oh He's back I'm still gonna get water if that's okay
We're going to grab a cup of water, but Nick, let me see if I can hear your.
Yeah, there's a little ambience.
Yeah.
I don't know what there is to do about it.
Like, you know, stay muted when you're not talking, I guess.
Yeah, sure, weird.
Sorry.
All right, I'll be right back.
and so I finished uh Buffalo Hunter Hunter yesterday is good yeah it's a book and it's excellent
What's it about?
Uh, it's about this.
yes, I actually listened to the audio book for this one and they did some cool stuff with it, but essentially it's a lady who gets contacted because somebody finds a journal from
her like great, great, great grandpa who was a pastor, uh, on like a frontier church in, I think it was Wyoming or Montana.
I don't remember which, um, but, uh, she reads through this journal and it's his account of like stuff that happened at the church.
and it's really good.
Cool, maybe I'll check it out.
Hey, Sam, I had a couple of questions about how Mull is spending his pandemic.
Do your wife and kids know you're down there in the therapy basement?
That's a good question.
Yeah, I think so.
um I think that probably in the first couple months, maybe the first couple months of the pandemic, when flights and stuff were shut down, when I couldn't go anywhere, because
they're used to me being gone constantly, I would say, like in and out of their lives.
I think there was this period of time where we tried to pretend like we were like a family that like knew each other and did stuff.
And then that quickly unraveled the minute I was like exposed they were exposed to me and I was exposed to them for like a continuous period of time You know what mean?
um So that probably took a couple weeks, maybe a month uh And then we went through the stages of just fighting with each other constantly And then finally I kind of just retired
down to the basement where I've been pursuing stuff um So I think that they are like nebulously aware
that I had to undergo some therapy for something that I did, you know, in the prior, right before the pandemic started.
But I wouldn't say that they're like fully aware of what I'm doing down there.
And now at this point, it's like, em I'm imagining it's like we are doing the things that polite society requires of us.
So we'll have like dinner together.
Maybe we have like our chef make dinner and do stuff, but otherwise we're not spending a whole lot of time with each other.
With your megalomania cured, how does your behavior change?
that's a good point.
um think so.
So we'll say because we I said it was like a couple sessions in and we were doing like a session maybe every week or something like that.
So we'll say that like two months into the pandemic, then I after we have this kind of breakthrough, I start reevaluating other people, I guess in general, right, that people
exist outside of me.
I lose a little bit that solipsism.
um And that's when he
breaks from his cave and his cave is still like got a bed.
It's got like a shower.
It's got like its own like mini kitchen.
I mean, it's like a giant like, like area, like basement that he could basically live out of, I think comes upstairs um and actually takes his Atticus and Tiffany out to like fish
for the first time, something that maybe they did years and years ago.
Cause Atticus is 15 and Tiffany's 13.
um So when they were younger, maybe four or five, he would take them out fishing.
he has this like spark of insight or this moment of like understanding that like these people exist outside of him and are actually like beholden to him.
And it goes pretty awkwardly I'd imagine, cause you know, he's basically been gone for the last like nine years of their life more or less.
um But it's that like maybe beginning I think of like a relationship sparking again because he's able to talk to them about like school.
You know, he's like, well, how are you even going to school?
zooms, you know, a thing or whatever.
And he's finally learning some of these details.
And that's like maybe the first kind of spark we see.
em And then maybe there is like a small scene where his wife uh sees him bringing them both in.
And there's like this moment of like maybe connection there.
I don't know how long lasting that's going to be given where he is.
But there is that kind of moment where she sees, you know, the guy that she married like 15 years ago.
Yeah, awesome, I love it.
That all sounds great to me.
So let's jump into the scenario itself.
It is the evening of August 15th, 2020.
You all receive a summons in your usual ways.
So Morrison finds rolled up instructions in a
the hollow of a tree on one of its roots after going through several trail closed signs.
um
Mull gets an encrypted email, if I recall correctly, and has to dial in from the red phone in his basement.
uh Miles, how does Miles get contacted?
It's a dead drop, right?
it's a dead drop on his run route in Seward Park.
All right, he picks up his instructions and uh Magpie goes ahead and receives an encoded Morse communication from the robotic baby robins that they installed uh in his, not his
backyard, he lives on a houseboat on his roof.
Yeah, it's not the most convenient, but it gets the job done.
At this point, how do you feel about the robotic bird's nest on your roof?
em Well, it's more about like fending off the questions from strangers about the unseasonable times that they seem to be nesting, I suppose.
em But I'm not a what ornithologist.
em So I don't have to answer too many of them.
And it goes OK for me.
I don't feel like it's been going off too much.
Like when was the last time I even had to pay them any mind?
Yeah, sure.
All right.
You get a message, all of you, from Agent Madison.
She has called you to meet her at the Anacortes Ferry Terminal, 8 a.m., August 16th, tomorrow.
It is 8 p.m., August 15th now.
What are you telling your families, if anything?
Yeah, I would say, hey, I gotta go do a nuclear inspection on site in out in Richmond.
So it might be a few days.
I'll call you as soon as I know, you know how these things go and give her a hug and a kiss and kiss my son on his forehead and get on the road.
em I'll talk to my sister uh and tell her that her misdeeds actually landed me a spot uh on a panel uh and I'm talking uh at a pharmaceuticals conference em over in such-and-such
and em I'll be back whenever I demo it please.
She's surprised, ah but is actually really supportive.
That's really cool to see you getting out there like that.
Yeah, well thanks.
It feels good to have something, you know, real going again.
Yeah.
Morrison tells his wife, uh, I forgot to mention this when I was kind of doing the background on them, but I'd mentioned before he does do search and rescue as well.
Kind of like back, you know, back country search and rescue.
He tells his wife, you know, with COVID there's a lot of people interested in getting outdoors.
We've got a lot of people don't really know what they're doing going out on the mountain for the first time.
Somebody got lost.
I got to go look for them.
Hopefully be back in a couple of days, but you know, might be a little bit longer.
We'll see how it goes.
Sounds good.
I Mull tells his wife um that we're trying a new uh retreat, nature retreat, amongst all the corporate directors.
I'll probably be gone a couple days at least.
So don't expect me to come back anytime soon and then kind of pieces out.
Alright.