Hex In The City (Part 2)

Good evening, gentle listeners or watchers, and welcome to Distractible. This episode, Wonder Weaving Wade continues the epic adventure as the journey gets darker. Brainy Bob proclaims his humanity, dumps the Limbas, disbelieves, and acts deeply psychotic. Monobrain-celled Mark jumps to the rescue, has divine inspiration, tortures, gets pinched, and dumps bait from a fork in the road to leotards. It's time for Hex in the City, part two. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Distractible. We're going to jump right back into the action of Hex in the City. We had to cut the last one. So we're going to jump right back into where we were. So if you haven't seen part one, this is your chance to go watch part one of Hex in the City before we continue, because otherwise none of this is going to make sense. There is no small talk. There is no big talk. There might be some end talk. We're going to get into Hex in the City, part two, right now. As you make your way down, again, you're not in a great area. You hear gunfire in the distance. You hear screaming. You hear yelling. You hear anger, boarded up windows, a building on fire. It looks like. There's a smoke coming from a building up ahead. You're continuing to push on, but you feel a bit of trepidation as you do. You see a railroad track coming up that you're going to have to cross to keep going. And again, there's a building on fire. You hear sirens in the distance. There's more gunfire than before. And it's unnaturally dark. There are streetlights. There's light from the fire. You can see, but the sky itself is just darkness. You don't see stars. You don't see a moon. Maybe it's cloudy. It looks like maybe it rained recently. It's a bit wet around. But things just again are feeling wrong as you approach the railroad track to cross over. I need you both to make a deck save. Oh, oh, seven, 20. Oh, God, geez. Mark, roll one more time for me. Oh, okay. Hey, don't undo my 20 man. My 20 was so good. No, no, no, it does not undo your 20. It was a bonus. It was a bonus thing as you go to cross the railroad track almost out of nowhere. You hear the sound of it. You hear the sound of a train. You're going to step over it. Mark, you jump back. Bob, you almost freeze. This came out of nowhere. You feel Mark's hand. Grab your back. This was the bonus role and start to pull you back. Your hands go out as you're pulled back and one of them kind of gets hit. So you're gonna take another five points of damage, which is a lot less than you would have taken by getting hit by a train typically fair enough, I guess. But Mark pulls you back in time so you don't get just walloped by this train that came out of nowhere. With superhuman reflexes almost, you jump back and start to pull Bob back and this train goes flying by in the front of the train. You can't really make out because you're still jumping backwards. The train has a lot of cars. Again, there's some of them seem to be on fire. There's people crawling over them, maybe trying to escape whatever's going on in the city. I'll have you both roll me perception checks again, which is wisdom. 19. Couldn't use that for the train situation. 12. Bob, you notice first some of the people crawling around on this train. They're not moving like normal people should, and there are people on top of the train kind of fighting these people and kicking them back. You just fought some mobsters and newsboy people, newsboy hats or whatever, right? That was weird. These seem to be zombies crawling over this train like they look undead. Some of them and Mark, you're starting to see this too. Some of them look like they're missing limbs. They're kind of rotted and people are fighting them off on top of this train, trying to like hold them down and in the distance, some of these fires, you see people running through it. I know those are probably zombies too, kind of burning, not paying attention to the fact that they're hurt at all. Just charging at groups of people that are fleeing, fighting, frozen and different, different parts of the city here. Things have opened up. You're no longer just in an alleyway. You're almost at like a, think like Fountain Square in Cincinnati that opens up. There's still a bunch of buildings around, but there's a nice little opening, a nice little area here. But the area is not nice right now between the fires, the gunfire, people fighting with melee, people on the ground being bit. Somehow you're in a zombie area. You're in a zombie apocalypse. Damn. I turn to Mark with my fucked up arm and I start to look a little more crazy and hairy than I did previously. I say, no, man, they're trying to stop us. Did you notice how that train came out of nowhere, man? They're trying to stop us. That's the way we have to go. Oh, I feel like it's only pure luck that I managed to grab the neck of your neck enough to pull you back. Yeah. We're almost obliterated. Yeah. Thanks for that. No, it's you're here. So just keep doing that. And, uh, I'll, I'll keep doing the thinking and you keep doing all of the things that require physical movements or action actions. Okay. Okay. All right. Just keep me alive. And, and, and, uh, it's clear and I understand it now. Like ratatouille, like ratatouille, you're going to control me. Oh, I control you. Okay. So I'm Remy and you're what's his face. Okay. I'm going to ratatouille you. Which one was the brains? Remy was the mouse while you two are debating this. You guys are aware that you're standing right next to this train, which is now past you're out in the open and there are zombies and people running around and some people are having trouble discerning one from the other. They're definitely attacking anything that moves that gets too close to them. You do not feel like you're in a safe spot to continue this conversation. You can either join in the action or try to keep a low profile. All right, brainiac. We got to move. Is that my job or your job? You're right. We have to move together. But my brilliant idea is as we move. have to start yelling we're alive we're not zombies we're alive so everyone knows which side we're on in this situation all right sounds good i like that yeah we definitely don't want to be on the zombie side all right so you're not stealthing through you're trying to make sure the people don't attack you understood and which direction are we moving across the train tracks further east you're continuing to move kind of in the east direction it's not as perfectly straight line but you're definitely overall you've been moving east um as you move east yelling we're alive and we're not zombies and we're saying we're not zombies too yep both of those somebody fighting a zombie looks over and says that's great i also am not a zombie and then they continue fighting uh can i scan around for any weapons i can pick up because i don't have one at the moment oh you didn't grab the uh cricket bat from before oh did i oh i did did i i did i said you guys could grab those weapons if you wanted to so yeah i sort of assumed that that we each took one uh otherwise if you do want to scan i mean you're welcome to look around and just while we're walking and shouting i figured i might as well um that's gonna be perception i'll be another wisdom check 12 12 so you do see things thrown about people have been being attacked some have won their fights and have lost their fights so there are like a couple of handguns there's a metal pipe there's things like that lying around the unfortunate thing is they're all very close to groups of zombies so you can go try to grab something but you're going to be walking right up to the things that you're thus far trying to avoid i'm not going to risk it not going to risk it unless so there is some commotion you do notice as you're looking around some of the undead are looking in your direction and making their way and these aren't just the slow whatever zombies these are crawling around on all fours they were climbing up on the train cars these things move almost uh what was the was it world war z or whatever where the zombies kind of move more creepily and stuff so it's like more much more dexterous zombies they're making their way toward you and it looks like they're starting to pick up the pace a little bit i have an idea and i look over at mark and i say wait a minute change the strategy and i start yelling we are zombies we're dead like you we're zombies and i look and i'm kind of like huh you're you're the rat to my my two we worry we are zombies we are dead and then i connect two brain cells i go like what if you yell one and i yell the other which one do you want to be i'll be the live one i'm not i'm a zombie i'm not i'm dead i'm not i'm a zombie i'm dead i'm alive i'm gonna have you both roll charisma checks maybe not for the reason you think got an eight i got a five oh no you yell this and the zombies don't start coming your stop coming your way the person who said that's great i'm not a zombie either looks at you and you and says that's great oh no they are that's great i'm also oh no and they just keep switching what they're saying in response to you as they continue to fight the zombies themselves seem to be mindless they're just they're just coming at you they're not listening to the words you say they're just hear the noise and they're coming at you i feel like plan is working exactly as i had hoped but i look around just to see if make sure that it is how are we in like they're about to jump us territory or how far away are the zombies from us right now you're gonna have to run to avoid fighting them and even that's going to come with its own risks you could try to just bolt you could try to run and hide but at this point like they're making their way your direction and they're picking up speed you have we'll call it like 10 seconds before they're on you do we see anywhere that we could try and get inside of if i if i glance around is there like a building we can dart inside of there are lots of buildings around i'll say there's one that's definitely not in great shape broken glass broken windows you don't know what's going on inside of there So there could be more trouble in there, but the buildings aren't exactly closed and locked up tight. That one's not on fire at the moment. So yeah, there's at least one you can make your way inside. It's tall too. The buildings around you are very tall. Very tall. Just as an experiment, I have a thought and I want to try it. I tell Mark, don't actually do reach for it or anything, but just imagine you're taking the SpaghettiOs out of your backpack and eating them. And just think really hard about doing that. Like you're using them from your hot bar in a video game or something. But don't actually do anything. Just like see what happens. All right. You think those SpaghettiOs would taste pretty good. You kind of wish you could heat them up or had a bowl, but they sound good. Nothing else happens? I look at Mark as he's about to explode and I say, Stop, stop, stop. That was a terrible idea. I'm a fucking idiot. We got to run. All right. Okay. Is your goal to just bolt through the building or to use the building? To hide? I feel like we got to keep moving. My goal would be to like go in, do some loops around, scooby-doo them, keep heading east somehow once we get lost in the building. Okay. So as you run into the building, I'm going to have you make two checks. Dexterity, just to make sure you guys don't trip over the rubble and crap that's thrown all about the floor. And then perception checks to figure out kind of a way through here. My first rule is an 11. Okay. That's a dex. And then a 13. Oh, it's 20. Whoosh. Five. Damn it. You guys go into this building and Bob, you don't fall over. You don't, you kind of, you know, stumble here or there, but you don't fall over. You maneuver around. As you're carefully maneuvering, you see another door on the other side of this building. Again, to the east. It doesn't look like a door that belongs in this building. There's a lot of like glass doors, metal doors. This looks like a wooden front door with some like light behind it. Mark, you do not see the door, but man, are you dodging and weaving your way through this place? You even flip over a shopping cart for no reason. Why is there a shopping cart in this building? It's not a store. I don't know, but you dodge over it. Bob is catching up to you, looking past as you're maneuvering around like an acrobat. Looking very impressive to Bob. When you land, you were facing Bob and kind of like, dude, I just did more than paying attention to your surroundings. Ta-da! You say run, Bob. I run just like back when I was in high school. You really do, man. You know what? You deliver. I look up at Mark from. His glorious landing, and I point at the door that goes out to the east, and I'm like, come on. And I keep stumbling clumsily around towards it. When you get up to where Mark is, he's buying again. The shopping cart doesn't look like it belongs inside the shopping cart. You see, Bob, you see three bags of Cool Ranch Doritos. That changes things. We need those. Do they all? How many fit in Mark's backpack? Oh, they'd all fit. Yeah, they'd all fit. Are they full size or fun size? They're just like the little fun size. Yeah, we definitely take those. We check those all. Wait a minute. Those are bait. I forgot I'm putting the pieces together. I forgot about the pieces. I'm getting a flashback here. I put one of them in Mark's backpack. I hand one to Mark, and I take one, and I say, open them and spread them around. And I just take mine and go, and it's only got like five chips in it. But are you sure we got to open all of them? Oh, I saved one. I saved one opening two. I put one in the backpack for later. The chip that flies up. Do you eat it, or do you just let it fall? I mean, it basically flies into my mouth. I probably eat it. I have to eat it if it's going to be like that. You recover one hit point. All right. Damn, that looked good, man. That looks so good. The rest of them do go flying around, and you've got one bag in Mark's backpack. At this point, are you going to sit around and see if the bait works, or are you going to make your way toward the door, or do you have another plan in mind? No, we turn. I grab Mark's arm. I'm like, okay, now we run and run clumsily towards the door. You guys beeline toward this door, and you hear commotion behind you, but at this point, you can't really tell if the bait works or if they're just falling behind. You get to this door, you open it, and you almost immediately find yourselves on the other side. It's a house. It feels like the foyer or foyer to a house, but on the back, there's a guy sitting behind the counter, and he looks like a security guard, and he's just sitting behind this counter that is in what looks like a nice house's entryway. But behind him, the walls are stone. The back wall, I'm going to make you roll, feels like the entrance to a prison, but set inside of a nice house. We're not zombies. We are alive. We're not zombies. Oh, wait, no. I'm a zombie. I'm dead. He's a zombie. He's dead. He's alive. He's not a zombie. Charisma checks. 18, baby. 18, baby. Yeah. The guy looks up, and he looks at you back and forth as to what you're saying, and his head just keeps going back and forth, and it speeds up and speeds up. He disappears. What? You hear a clanging noise as he disappears, but he's just gone. You hear what sounds like a loud gear, like imagine a grandfather clock, you know, you're like not the not the dinging, but like the workings inside of the clock turning, but something going wrong inside. Like, oh, that's not that's not a good noise of the gears meshing. You hear that, but kind of echoing around. Well, that was weird. I remember hearing a clanging on the ground. I kind of peer my head over the desk he was sitting at and look at maybe what fell down. There is a set of keys. I reach for them. I tell him to reach for them. I told him to do that. He grabs them and has the set of keys. I don't know if that was a spell you cast to expunge him from reality, but he left his keys. Jingle, jingle, jingle. There's the metal door inside that looks like there's a key. Those keys would open. I look at Mark even crazier than before. I think I'm really starting to understand this. I think I know how we can beat him. It's it's it's it's like a computer. We just need to keep opening tabs. The next guy we talk to, I'm going to try something. Just don't try it on me. Where do those keys go, man? I I'm not sure there's a door or a wall. Roll me perception checks as you're looking over the keys to see what they go for. Fifteen. What do we got? Eleven. Bob. As you're looking over the keys, you see one of them. It looks like it would fit the metal door here. Just initial thoughts like that looks like it could go there on the key. You see the word alpha and then you see zero point one. You can point that out to Mark and Mark. Now you see as well. I see it. Look, Mark, Mark, do you see that? Oh, numbers. I know numbers. It definitely looks like it'll go to this door. Oh, we got to go through the door. Just out of curiosity, I go and like, take a peek through the door behind us and just like, see if that other building is still in there. What's going on. You open. The door. And as you do. Yeah, you don't see any movement right away, but that hallway is still there and it looks like the grocery store wasn't really a grocery store, but there was a shopping cart and some supplies in there. But the office building is still there. Can I tell if, like, the chips got eaten that we scattered about? Not from here. You can't. You'd have to backtrack. Well, I close and lock the door and we got to go that door. Can't go back. Got to go east. OK. All right. All right. So you go toward the metal door, you put in the key, I'm assuming, and open the door. I let Mark put the key in. I stand back and I go. And I, I stand right at the opening. I'm like full on where the cracks come through. I turn the key and I my head first head first into the gap as you go in there. It's not quite jail cells or a prison. It's almost like four big metal cages are set up and there are benches along the walls and there are people that look completely identical to each other sitting on these benches just staring straight ahead, kind of in your direction as you make your way in, as you go in there. There's was in four cages and then there's a door on the left, a door on the right and a door straight ahead. The door straight ahead has a tiny little slot on the top of it. Like you could go and view inside and they each have, you know, just normal door knobs and stuff. Hey, Bob, you got a lot of test subjects to test your spells on. Yeah, no, I got an idea. Uh, do the, they look straight ahead. Do we have any infer any idea if they're noticing? On our existence or if they seem like they're awake or alive or anything, they don't appear to, if, if they didn't look so human, you would assume they were just mannequins the way they're sitting there staring straight ahead, not blinking, not doing anything. All right. I walk up to Mark, uh, like I have a theory I want to test, but I think we should go take a look at that in that slot first, just to make sure nothing bad's going to happen. And I want to, I want to, I'll take a look. So you don't get put in any kind of risk. And I stick my eye. I first lift the flag. Flap looking right in like a cartoon. Mark's eye goes through the slot. Like it's a relatively big, like rectangular slot. So you don't have to really just peek with one eye. I put both my eyes right up to it. It's a very bright white room. And there is a guy in the middle. Um, he's got disheveled brown hair sitting, uh, as a crisscross applesauce, just in the middle of the room facing away from you. So you can't really see his face. Um, there is some movement you can see he's. Breathing. Unlike the other people sitting out here. He looks like he's still alive or functioning, whatever, have it, but he's just kind of sitting there facing away from you, facing away. So, okay. All right. Before I turn and relay all this to Bob, I shut it. So, you know, Bob, there's a guy in here. Looks a little different from the other ones. Maybe use your spells on him first. And then I opened it again to look after I realize it's safe. I rush up to Mark and I like peer over a shoulder and I look in and once I sort of look for a second, understand what's going on. I go, Hey, I work at are you the architect hey just to see what he does he kind of shakes his head for a moment then peers over his shoulder and when he sees eyes looking in he gets up and he makes his way over quickly i don't know what you're saying but you guys got to get me out of here i don't know how long it's been i'm alive i'm not a zombie i'm alive i'm not a zombie i'm dead what does he do he looks sad for a moment and he goes oh you're part of it too and then he turns and starts to walk back to the middle of the room i died i stopped cowering behind mark and i stand out and we're like no no listen wait no that's just a test we developed i was i was testing the system we're not part of the system we're also pretty confused what's going on here god talks to me yeah god does talk to us but that's sort of that doesn't help our case i don't think uh we have the keys from the guard that was like out front do you you know which one can oh does a key open to this or what's going on here he like looks down and if you follow his gaze you see where the the door is to this there's a big latch you can pull it doesn't require a key but whenever if you do pull that i'm assuming you guys do well not yet not yet we don't know okay well he looks down there's a big latch it looks like you can kind of pull it back is it this latch as far as i know yeah that should let me out are you sure you aren't part of it i shut the latch before we answer i go to bob are we sure we should let him out maybe we should quiz him first we don't know who this is i don't get the vibe i got from you trustworthy friend i don't get that from this guy i want to run my experiment i want to try my spell out here before we do anything too crazy snark bob you guys gotta get me out of here listen just hang on man we're there's a lot of like robots or whatever the hell out here i'm just gonna try something i go sort of to where i think all of the not people sitting around should be able to see and perceive me and i sort of like put my arms out wide like i'm about to do something very dramatic and i just go hey uh everybody units enter maintenance mode nothing happens i try another theory where i go up to one of them whichever looks the most androgynous i lift its shirts i lift its shirt into the belly not up higher not up higher oh okay well sam you put the shirt down a little bit i guess you i poke its belly a little bit i just like poke just get an idea of the texture of it it feels like skin maybe a tiny bit rubbery but it feels like skin but there's no movement no response i try to pinch off a piece of it how hard are you trying well like half half at first half trying seeing seeing if it was human flesh would you get a chunk or would it not it feels like human flesh so as you try to grab it i mean it'll it'll kind of bunch to some extent but like you feel like you're gonna have to rip at this like an animal would to rip human flesh to get a piece off i look up at the face see if there's any response you guys closed the thing so no no and we're in the hallway he's saying he's talking about the robot or whatever oh the person's the face of the person you're messing with yeah yeah yeah yeah there's no response oh okay i pull hard i mean your nails dig in a little bit you you feel you're starting to scratch at this flesh i mean you definitely think that with enough force or time you could rip this but no matter how much pressure you've put on so far there's been no response but you are holding and hurting them okay i lean over my shoulder bobby like you ever seen backrooms i haven't actually i haven't either probably not pertinent in this world but i was gonna say that you could eat him too and that would be relevant if you saw it but you didn't you haven't seen it so you know what roll me roll me a perception check mark as you're doing this 19 oh shit you feel like maybe in the right eye of this person that you're messing with maybe you see a tear in the back of your eye and you're like oh my god i don't like this i don't want to see this i don't want to see this i don't want to see this i don't want to see this i don't want to see this i'm still standing in the middle just sort of looking around expectantly just saying a string of things like a username admin password one two three four initiate debug mode zero nothing's happening immediately around you that you can notice bob um you guys you guys are in the room with the 4k just again there's doors to the left and the right and then there's the door with the slot so that door with the slot you guys did close so he can't see out there so i'm going to zoom out right now you imagine he could still hear you know that little slit's probably not soundproof nothing in this room seems to be really happening everything is kind of frozen other than what you've interacted with all right i give up on that and i look pretty deflated i go back to the thing hey dude what's your name i've been here so long i actually don't remember my name do you have anything for like a a headache my head is really pounding i look back over my shoulder without closing the thing and say too loudly to mark that's a bad sign yeah yeah we got we got names i know your name so you guys are a part of this it's all it's all fake it's all fabricated we're trapped here oh we knew that do these things ever move out here not us the other the whatever people sitting on the benches sometimes um why don't you guys roll roll the die i think this will be like perception three one there's nothing more i can give you there but he says sometimes is there some kind of stupid being or field that makes us make bad decisions or in here because this smart guy i pat him on the shoulder this smart smart yeah guy here this big brain you can see how smart he is lucro smart he is he was making really bad decisions early on and i think it was some kind of like magic field from what i know what you do here is just you it's almost like a sandbox i can't be right without consulting mark or giving it any more thought i sort of just mutter over my shoulder like well i guess we don't have a choice and i have to reach down and open the thing the bolt that's locking the door and just go chunk as you pull that open it does reveal a keyhole you have a set of keys you imagine one of them will fit there's a secondary lock holding this guy in this was a big metal kind of brace you pull it back now there's a keyhole okay i try the ring of keys can mark tell which key goes in do we know with a little bit of messing around you can find the key pretty easily eventually a key fits in there and unlocks uh and as you unlatch the door you can hear the metal bolt kind of move into place and you can open the door from this side i stick my face in the gap uh he goes to move out and then sees your face appear and kind of regards you you're really not part of this oh he slowly reaches out to like touch your face oh you let him okay so he feels around your face kind of like pinches a little bit it hurts he pinches it actually hurts a little ow you can pinch my face yeah you won't pinch his face he holds his hand out the keys uh we'll keep the keys i think we'll keep the keys but you show us the way out we'll all leave together have you seen ratatouille uh roll me another quick check as you say you'll keep the keys six oh it's right on the edge of a four and a twelve that is honestly kind of on the line uh how about in the middle it's an eight we'll just say it's average between them he looks slightly disappointed as you say you're going to keep the keys but he shrugs it off and goes to lead you through the door when you were first coming in it was a door onto your right but now it's from his room it's a door onto your left uh he goes to open that door as he goes to open it it's locked he looks to you to open it i look at mark and i go and i go i look back at him and i go for listeners i give mark a knowing look and i'm smiling at bob i realize mark's not gonna do it and i say open the door oh oh okay all right i go over and i filter through the keys and i try him oh oh sorry okay you find the key you unlock the door you managed to go and step through as you step through you see like a police armory and there's people in here that are gearing up but they're not moving they're frozen mid gear up so there are things around you can grab there's uh weapons there's armor all kinds of stuff but ultimately the people you'll kind of have to like either move them out of the way or take things off of them i sprint for the good stuff i start shoving out of the way like dibs dibs dibs dibs sure you grab like full riot gear shotgun there's an assault rifle pretty much anything you want in here all the bullets i can fit in my bag uh as you're doing as you're grabbing things he just turns to regard this place isn't real you don't he goes to like reach for your facing and then thinks better of it and just moves on walking to another door the rooms have a slight rounding to them so it almost feels like as you make your way around you're going in a bigger circle the room he was in was also kind of a round room that he was sitting in the center of i grab like a handgun and just like check the chamber and make sure there's a magazine full of bullets in it and that's all i take but i sort of like take that casually just in case i want to look like nicholas angel from hot fuzz after he gears up with like the guns out here shotgun and and bullets bandoliers all over you are super geared up uh he continues to lead you into another room if you unlock it i look at mark again and i go and i go yeah cock the shotgun yeah cock it again my look turned sour faster this time i go open the door oh sorry i dropped the shotgun and i reach for the key sorry yeah i'll get it next time okay okay so if you imagine a circle when you first walked in you were in the bottom of the circle in the middle there was a round room that he was in you guys are making your way kind of around here so this was the armory now you're in the top right quadrant of the circle this room it feels like a lobby almost like the one you came in on but like the lobby of a different building there's nobody in here it's empty there's a door that doesn't look like it has a way to open off to the side and then there's a a door that the guy that you freed is moving toward that kind of continues the back of the circle like he's going to the top of the circle he ignores the door off to the right but there is a door there you just don't see a handle nor do you really see anything beyond that if you try to look through the windows on it does our nameless friend walk up to the door that looks like it will open and wait for the key situation yes this time i walk very obviously making a point to walk right over to where the key goes and stand and look at it for a second and then slowly look up to mark and give him that same knowing look like okay all right man all right i get it i i got it and i shuffle over shamefully you know i kind of casually look down at the keyhole back at mark until he makes his way over i'm i'm getting to it there's a lot of key all right i try them one at a time while mark's doing that i look over at our nameless friend and i say are you sure this is the way sure it's not that other door over there let's see what he says because i can tell the door is probably not gonna open but i'm curious what he says this is the layout that's the way to nothing i don't want to see what nothing looks like you don't you open the door and this last room you see a door across the way but he does not go toward that door instead you look to the right and the ground slowly kind of just disappears you know it's it's a building a hallway but the hallway becomes just darkness he lets out what seems to be a sigh of relief and starts making his way down that hallway toward the nothingness the emptiness i regard our nameless friend and i i don't aim my gun at him but i sort of heft the pistol like i'm concerned like i might aim it at him if he does anything crazy i look at him and i say are you familiar with the proclaimers the proclaimers you know that song i would walk 500 miles i would walk 500 more you know that one i'm confused what does what does the song have anything do you know the song or not sure i want you to show us the way you know the song or not sure i want you to show us the way you know the way you go first and you keep singing that song to prove that you're all right while you make that little walk and i sort of like gesture with the with the pistol in my hand and i also sort of look like i've got to like shoo him away like go go on like i don't aim it at him you know but and while while i i say that and i look over at mark and i'm kind of like and i go oh okay i got and i go for the keys again and i try to look for a door it needs to be unlocked i'm like uh you want to go the other one okay i gotta go over there i forget that i have a pistol in my hand and i just like grab my head and i'm like no no no no you stay here you stay with me he's gonna go you said i'm like gesticulating wildly with the handgun all uh roll me d20s both of you roll me d20s as this happens he starts he goes toward the emptiness singing the song he told him to sing 16 7 mark he's doing it so he's listening to bob's instruction that's weird but you know he's doing it bob he's very happy to do this like he's perfectly fine like uncomfortably fine with his willingness to oblige as he goes this way and he's almost picking up the pace putting distance between you as he makes his way this way something in your gut tells you something's wrong as he's putting distance between you and making his way down this corridor that he says is the way out i'm just mumbling along to him singing it's stuck in your head it's a bop call after be like hey come back come back all right show us the way come back i told you the way and he just goes to empty the magazine you're gonna fire it okay um roll attack the dex roll i think to use weapons like a range weapon right eight you fire and the bullets he must be a fan of the matrix the bullets as they get to where he is they're on target but they stop all of a sudden you hear a bunch of commotion behind you like the brooms you came from you hear the gearing up you hear yelling you hear someone screaming you hear an alarm going off these bullets stop just behind him and he keeps bolting out he's starting to become hard to see he's a few steps away from probably just being gone so so we could still see him he's just like disappearing kind of yes yeah he's very quickly starting to fade out of your sight I look at Mark for some reason I still don't talk assuming that he'll understand what I'm thinking I sort of look at him and like gesture down the way the guy ran away and I'm kind of like eh like try to see if he's ready to go or what what he's thinking I'm like okay yeah now now you guys start making your way down the hallway and I turn and run in the direction the man went things behind you sound awful the noises it sounds like everything you've heard all like a room behind you it's it's like all of the noise is all of a sudden collapsed into being right next to you things feel very tight you feel like you're claustrophobic almost and the only air is in front of you and that even that feels like it's starting to dissipate you're gonna have to bolt it I am frenzied running as fast as I can going I'm dead I'm a zombie I'm dead I'm a zombie I reach into my bag and grab the last bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and I go like I have an idea and I rip it behind me like as I run as fast as I can uh okay both of you roll me dex checks you gotta get you gotta move quick 11. three oh no um Mark I need you to make me I'm gonna have you make me one more check all right 11. how's an 11 do God as you're running the guy in front of you completely disappears from existence behind you you take a glance over your shoulder Mark and you see what looks like people metal fire wood concrete you see all kinds of things all mesh together and it's moving toward you at kind of a scary speed and you hear again all of the noises you think you hear the guy talking about hot dogs you hear the mobsters trying to beat you up you hear fire burning you hear a train you hear all of these noises coming from this fall behind you as you're running down the hallway it catches you for a moment and you slow down as you're looking and listening Bob you take off you are just getting the out of here the guy in front of you is completely gone Mark you realize what's happening and you go to take off again and as you feel things in front of you starting to disappear and your mind getting a little bit hazy all of this just hits you right in the back pushing you that last bit out uh you're gonna take 21 points of damage oh damn so you're down to 22 health but if you think if you think about it if you think about it all those cool ranch Doritos would have been the last thing in between me and it they would have hit me in the back too right they sure they sure do so now you have some crumbs on your back damn hot open things go dark and what feels like a moment later you open your eyes you're in a transparent pod like nothing you've ever quite seen before it's like a a nice trans list translucent blue you can see through it but there's like a bit of a blueness to it there are wires and things kind of floating around you nothing inserted like no IVs or anything but there are things that are definitely like floating around you that almost look like they should be attached you hear seems like an alarm going off but it's a noise that's unfamiliar to you and it's an almost it's a different pitch it's definitely an alarm but like it's just again sounds like an alarm you haven't really heard before and the pods you're in open up and you're free to get out you're in what's almost like a white leotard uh it's like a tight skin tight outfit short sleeve no backpack no weapons no armor nothing that you had Mark you feel like you don't feel great Bob you're okay but Mark you feel like absolute whoa your head feels like you just got cracked in the back of it and there are entities moving around outside of the room that you're in there's like a window you see movement and that's not human movement that's something you've never seen before Bob can you roll me you can both roll but Bob this it's gonna be a little bit easier for you Nat 20 baby who damn Mark you you must be on drugs the things you're seeing don't make any sense for just a moment Bob you see something run by and that's a familiar shape but not something you've ever actually seen before you've seen a carving of that you're remembering things all of a sudden you remember a little bit of being inside this simulation with Mark but you guys started running around together you after not being together for a while the Shepherd that entity running by looks like an etching of the Shepherd do you remember whenever Mark came to visit you and that's what that was but they're not coming in to attack you they're they're fleeing they're running away not YouTube but there's something else that's here that's escaped that has them scared and now you guys are gonna have to escape from it too but not today yay that's the end you guys escaped the simulation all right man that Dorito trick did nothing that took a lot longer than I anticipated I should have known that it wouldn't be super short but it still took longer than I thought I had a few more combat set up so I expected you guys to be a little bit more beat up so I was gonna have food lying around to help you heal while you were in there that's fair that's fair but yeah I I cut a lot out to uh to get us so I apologize if it seems a bit rushed I did cut a lot out to get us through it but um ultimately you guys were in a simulation as you figured out pretty early on that was kind of the plan if you had gone West you would have gone into like some suburbs and rural area but then immediately you'd find yourselves entering the outskirts of the same city again there was no real escape from the city and the only way out was to make your way deeper and deeper in the first ring of the city was just normal day-to-day bullshit with people being a little bit off and then as you get in there you know crime filtering that you guys got to and then there was going to be a lot more going on with the zombie area i had a lot more planned for in that and things other than zombies but again just for time constraint i kind of trimmed that down way way much and then at the end you guys had different options so the guy inside the cell um you could have tried to fight him and kill him you could have left him there you could have helped him escape you could have just talked to him like there were different things you could have done to interact with him so that could have gone a lot of different ways ultimately you open the doors and let him lead you all the way out which you know the ramifications of that maybe we'll get to one day but whatever what's the worst that could happen yeah it's probably fine i'm sure we'll see him again the implication i'm sure you two pieced it together but just to make it perfectly clear is that the events of the choose your own adventure episode the shepherd you two are the same people from that mark and bob and instead of a choose your own adventure i left a lot more open this time to give you a lot more freedom in the world so i tried to guide you a little bit i tried to leave it very open for you guys to have a lot more interaction rather than me just telling you do this or do that but they the the creature the entity the alien entity from the shepherd they have you two and they put you in a simulation that you guys have ultimately broken out of that was cool hopefully it was fun sorry it took so long i was fun i would do that for a couple more hours i went really light so there wasn't like flat out perception rolls and stuff right i just gave you basic stats just have a little bit of a dice to roll because i didn't want to go super long into well is this slide a hand or is it just like no i just i'll just roll we'll roll the pose checks rather than having an ac and stuff so i thought that would be a little bit better let me know you know everyone out there watching listening and how you guys enjoyed it hopefully the descriptions were good enough and things but that's the kind of tabletop rules i like barely any yeah i'm still trying to refine it so you know a bit more guidance maybe a bit more stuff but trying to make it for an hour long episodes uh i'm curious what the feedback will be because people love the shepherd episode people like this i don't think anyone would be mad if we did episodes like this where it became multi-part things and we got to do more of like a yeah this time there were no i mean you guys figured out you were in simulation pretty quick and that was the idea i kind of wanted you to know that so you knew you had to work within the rules to get out of it but there weren't really like the clues lying around like they were in the shepherd to figure out it was them i wanted that to be the end surprise was i did not even consider that that would be tied back in i was just like okay we escape and we win so when you guys are like yeah i'm bob and mark i was like perfect snark and bob perfect good enough for me but uh thank you guys for watching um as far as points go i definitely think you guys did a good job and i'll see you did a great job of keeping up with that the entire time so how many 20s did you each roll bob you rolled one there at the end mark did you roll two 20s before that or was it more than that i rolled three 20s i believe i think i rolled three i know i rolled the one at the end there and i know i rolled at least one other one but i think i feel like i rolled one that was awesome and then one that just didn't fucking matter at all i so so i was thinking i had three 20s but i'm not a hundred percent sure if that's right who physically opened the door to let the guy out was that mark that physically opened the door he opened the door and i stuck my face in there yeah well i i opened the sliding thing but then you had the keys and you kind of keysed it but then i was kind of it's kind of it's kind of a tag team situation but i was sort of the one in the door opening position i guess all right so going through here before you do that i'm just gonna preemptively try to make sure bob wasn't trying to do the bounty board where he calls the other hosts out by the wrong names the whole time nope but i did do a bounty ah shit i built a lego kit during this episode i built a lego city riot rides thing i built this was unopened until we started recording and while we were sitting here i built this little jeep there's a little fellow in there i built the whole lego kit during the episode thank god you picked the episode where i made it two hours long to do it so that's pretty good yeah well i finished it in like the first 20 minutes and was like all right i'll cash that in soon and any minute now that's gonna end uh how many points is uh is that worth like two one or two i don't we usually do it's like what one to three points for bounties we've only done a few of them it had 22 upvotes it doesn't have a specificity of the points i mean that's a pretty basic one this was not this was not a special kit this is just a random picked it up at like target kind of thing and it was maybe it was it was like eight bucks it was maybe 60 to 80 pieces like there's a bunch of little pieces in here but it's not complicated i would say it's one to two points mark what do you think one to two points or two oh it's up to you i have no idea and bob roll a d20 if you're a little higher than 10 if you're 11 or higher it's two points don't worry mark i'm gonna roll my shitty one uh-huh 15 okay two points there you go yeah because i was looking at the bodyboard after you i realized he's calling me skirm or whatever it was i don't even know if he said my name so yeah like he could have claimed that one too probably viewers listeners let us know did he say our names normally or should he get another point for the bounty for that uh going through points then since bob you got the bounty points because we were mean to you uh you called dibs on the phone your early 18 perception success and your elbow drop got you points you rolled three nat 20s that we remember right now uh and you continued the doritos bit there at the end which i found very funny for a total of eight points bob you got points for singing as you showed off your phone fair and reward i can't even tell what i wrote here i think it says fair and reward i don't know what that means you got dodge point you got a finisher point for the bounty and you got points for singing as you showed off one of the bad guys hell yeah i have two d20 points for you that we remembered for sure you're saying you think there's a third d20 i think that i think that two is fair i think there might have been a third but i can't specifically recall what it was for so i felt like mark was succeeding a lot more than you overall so i gave mark the three d20s mark generally had way better rolls than i i turned it around in the back half but mark was killing it there you got a point for uh bossing mark around and having him use the keys all the time mark use the keys mark use the keys you were the original dorito spreader so you got a dorito point uh you let the guy out i gave you a point for that and you got the two points for the lego bounty giving you a total of 11 points so right now it's 11 bob 8 mark damn thank god i did that bounty pretty good spread so now i guess we see what about my drawing you didn't give me a point for the drawing you know what you know what mark i'll give you a point for your drawing that's pretty fair i did like the drawing yeah i did the how many bonus points wheel tell us the answer i bet it's three give me one it is one it is one okay never mind i don't know if this is on the wheel but i want to add luck was not on my side the luck the least lucky point oh that's not the one we're not doing that one nope we're skipping right to one man show my whole screen every screen just died can you hear me we can can you hear us i think that red time disease just spread oh no we better get through this quick spin the wheel spin the wheel all right one spin for all the beans if the coin has not been flipped flip it apply to the last contentious thing is the last contentious thing whether mark gets a point for the drawing this is my drawing i think so right that was the last thing we debated okay uh heads mark gets another point for that tails we take away his drawing point yeah i suppose oh i got heads i got heads oh i get two points you get two points for the i mean that's still just gets you to ten that would have been really cool if that did anything and i used all of my accoutrement today use the coin use the dice i keep around all my little biddies man uh mark you you did some heavy lifting today but ultimately bob did a bounty the bounty really you would have won if bob didn't do the bounty so do you want to give us the loser's speech that you know the the bounty really took it from you i mean i think uh right now all i see on your screen weight is a white bright white light so i'm gonna do this as i did in the thing and i'm gonna talk to god god why have you done this to me i was your strongest soldier and yes i fought your toughest battles but i won i slayed at those battles and i think that i deserve it better than this uh I will send wade after you like he hunted you down before i will fire guns into the sky at you uh so think harder next time when i'm praying to you you better pick up the prayer phone I love prayer threat all right okay all right all right talk soon uh Bob winner's speech uh you look normal to me so I'll just do a normal dear Wade you made the right choice today I know you always favor me and I appreciate that and I know this is generally an unspoken deal but I feel so confident in my good graces that I've earned with you completely factually and not at all just in my head that I'll I didn't all say the quiet part out loud I don't think I'm ever gonna lose another wait episode the rest of the time the show exists I think I've got it locked in I think we know we know where we each other stand and I really appreciate your uh your honesty and your unfairness and we did flip the coin already so I can say that without triggering any chaos in the in the post credits here so thank you good job go team Bob Wade yay we did it well done on the bounty I don't think Mark nor I suspected anything that whole time so well done yeah that was fun that was fun for me I'm not really ever dm'd other than the choose your own and then this these are my first two ever attempts at it in life so anyway point being I'm glad you guys seemingly had fun with it hopefully everyone out there enjoyed it I also think that's the first time we've ever gotten that coin flip the wheel spin yeah I did not know that was on there I went we've gotten that I think that's the first time we just happened to not use the coins that was kind of cool we got to use it so anyway uh thank you boys uh if you guys haven't already check out the scary tapes I think the last one of those just came out so if you haven't listened to those um there are different trigger warnings and stuff you know because they do go over certain topics and things but I had a great reading them. I know we put a lot of pressure on Mark to do a lot of the heavy lifting things he's got the best voice of all of us but bob and i had fun doing voices for other characters and they were really well written stories i had a good time hopefully those of you that listened in or watched enjoyed so check out the scary tapes if you haven't already hopefully we do more stuff like that in the future because i had a good time with that merch we have distractible dot shop check out there's probably stuff if not there will be stuff soon check out market markiplier bob at my skirt me at minion 777 lord minion 777 stay tuned for the next one where bob will host this one because he did the bounty and he won until then podcast out © transcript Emily Beynon