What was the inspiration behind the Waterer evaluating your life seeds come from? Can the economy handle such a glut of Eric WTFs? And does Archimedes Sevens squeak? All that and more on this week’s Afterparty.
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Cast & Crew
- Game Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver
- Co-Host (Umbi), Co-Producer, Sound Designer, Composer: Brandon Grugle
- Co-Host (Chamomile Cassis), Co-Producer: Julia Schifini
- Co-Host (Troy Riptide), Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin
- Theme Song: Lyrics by Eric Silver, music by Brandon Grugle. Vocals by Brandon Grugle, Lauren Shippen, Julia Schifini, Roux Bedrosian, Eric Silver, Tyler Silver, and Amanda McLoughlin. Available for purchase here.
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
- Multitude: https://multitude.productions
About Us
Join the Party is an actual play podcast with tangible worlds, genre-pushing storytelling, and collaborators who make each other laugh each week. We welcome everyone to the table, from longtime players to folks who’ve never touched a roleplaying game before. Hop into our current campaign, a pirate story set in a world of plant- and bug-folk, or marathon our completed stories with the Camp-Paign, a MOTW game set in a weird summer camp, Campaign 2 for a modern superhero game, and Campaign 1 for a high fantasy story. And once a month we release the Afterparty, where we answer your questions about the show and how we play the game. New episodes every Tuesday.
Transcript
Amanda: Hey, everybody, Amanda here with a quick announcement. We relaunched our merch store with a wonderful new partner, and a bunch of the stuff that used to be sold out is back, plus international shipping is cheaper than it's ever been before. So go to jointhepartypod.com/merch to shop the merch store and pick up a physical or digital copy of Model Our Nations, which is out now at jointhepartypod.com/merch.
[theme]
Amanda: Hey, hi, hello.
Eric: HR is here because we're still on a joke strike, apparently.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: And the three of you have not talked to me except in flat, monosyllabic answers for three weeks, and I'm very upset. So I have HR here, which is a stuffed animal toucan we got at PAX Unplugged last year.
Julia: Yes.
Eric: And we're going to finally moderate this.
Brandon: Correct.
Amanda: Yes, Eric, that sounds like a fair and balanced way to run a business.
Eric: Okay. HR Toucan, what do you have to say about this?
Eric (as HR Toucan): You can get a pizza party if you make jokes to Eric again.
Brandon: Oh, shit. Eric, knock, knock.
Eric: Nice. I broke Brandon already. Here we go.
Julia: I want to read 50 books and then get a pizza party.
Eric: Julia, you were always allowed to read 50 books. You didn't need a sticker pack and Pizza Hut to tell you.
Brandon: Oh, you did.
Julia: No, I already do that as an adult, but it would be nice if someone gave me a pizza party.
Eric: I guess that there's no, like, formal program about it, but I assume that, in some sort of way, you have read 50 books and then Jake makes you pizza.
Julia: Huh.
Amanda: In aggregate, in aggregate, that happens.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Folks, a lot to talk about here on the Afterparty, where, of course, we talk about everything that went down over the last three episodes in Join the Party, which just happened to be a particularly eventful crop of episodes here. But first, everyone is— I'm sorry. Everyone is yelling, "Take my money." Model Our Nations is out now at jointhepartypod.com/merch. Eric, how do you respond to these allegations?
Eric: I did it. I— wait—
Brandon: jointhepartypod.com/merch?
Amanda: Woo!
Brandon: jointhepartypod.com/merch?
Julia: Whoa.
Amanda: Oh, am I hearing correctly that we have our very first printed TTRPG from the mind of Eric Silver at jointhepartypod.com/merch, brand-new merch store for the occasion?
Julia: Whoa.
Brandon: jointhepartypod.com/merch?
Eric: I can't—
Brandon: jointhepartypod.com—
Eric: I can't—
Brandon: —/merch.
Eric: —affirm or deny. I'm trying to figure out what bit I'm doing right here if I'm on trial for murder or I'm still the HR representative.
Julia: Are you not a crook?
Eric: I am definitely a crook, Julia. [mumbles] But, yeah, you can look for it in the merch store. We're gonna be at PAX Unplugged, Amanda and I. See, if you're going to that, you can come pick up some copies in person, and I'll write— I'll make a move for you, I'll write in your book for free.
Amanda: Whoa.
Eric: We're also gonna bring some copies to Twenty Sided store in Brooklyn, New York, which will be great, and hopefully we'll be in more places going forward. We'll see how it works out.
Brandon: Excellent.
Julia: Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.
Amanda: Hey.
Brandon: Excellent.
Amanda: Incredible. I mean, that episode came out since we had blast on our last Afterparty. So I did just want to point out that people had excellent feedback. They loved the epi. It was a whole-ass One Shot that Brandon and Julia made incredible characters. Mischa did incredible sound design.
Julia: Include yourself in the incredible characters, please.
Amanda: Thank you. Thank you.
Julia: And, Eric, everyone had a good character.
Amanda: Shit, you're right.
Brandon: Get 'em. Get 'em, Julia. Get 'em.
Amanda: Fuck.
Julia: Get 'em, get 'em.
Eric: Yeah, Julia, take her down.
Amanda: Aah! No, it was great. Thank you, Mischa for indulging the most toxic podcaster habit, which is being like, "Hmm, put in some sound design of like a realization here," but my version was bees.
Julia: "What if I was a bee and you have to do that for every single time I talk?" And Mischa said, "Sure."
Amanda: And they did. They did.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: My favorite phrase that Amanda has ever said is still "loose bees."
Amanda: Yeah. It's really good. It's really good, and I've peaked. I thought Troy Riptide was the peak. Now, it's loose bees.
Brandon: Oh, you can go turn your volume down if you need to, Amanda. Is that what you—
Amanda: Oh. No, no. You're right. You're right.
Julia: Sound joke.
Amanda: Shit.
Brandon: Sound joke.
Amanda: Shit. Should I quit?
Eric: You guys should go back on jokes strike. I'm taking the pizza party back. I talked to HR.
Julia: That wasn't for you. That one was for Amanda.
Amanda: It's a joke over correction. Eric, how does it feel to be the author of a printed TTRPG, what is out in the world that people really enjoyed? Such as Jaya, quote, "Conference room on a moon orbiting the evil gas giant, making you evil is so fucking funny. This episode rocks."
Julia: It's true.
Eric: That was funny. No, I enjoyed it. I think it's a really fun game. I've played it a few times recorded now. I've played some not recorded, and I'm really happy with it. So please pick it up. I think that would be nice. Please give me your dollars. I'd really like 'em if you want to break off of some.
Brandon: Venmo $5 to Eric directly, and you'll lose that money forever. He won't give you anything.
Eric: That's true. I will give you a hint in Join the Party the game if you Venmo $5, but that related to you picking up Model Our Nations.
Julia: One of the secret missions should be Venmo Eric $5 and you gain a point at the end of the game.
Brandon: Ooh.
Eric: I think that's always in there.
Julia: Okay. You should write it—
Brandon: You should just—
Julia: —in some of the ones at PAX Unplugged.
Eric: At PAX Unplugged, I will write, "If you Venmo me $5, show your friends and you get a point."
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Can you just make a business Venmo? Like a one-off Venmo account where it's not your personal one and you just throw that in there? I think you should do that, Eric.
Eric: I'm okay with people knowing my Venmo.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: I'm okay with it.
Brandon: Okay. Well, great. Then what it is? Tell us.
Eric: I think it's @ericelsilver, I think. Or it's either that or elsilvero, you can just Venmo me.
Julia: Just do it.
Eric: Just do it.
Julia: Just do it.
Amanda: I dare you. Eric, how much do we have to Venmo you to resuscitate the Key for a Gaze?
Julia: I think I asked that question in the episode. I'm not entirely sure.
Brandon: It's @elsilvero, people.
Julia: Hmm.
Brandon: E-L, silver, O.
Eric: Thank you.
Brandon: That's right.
Eric: I did not have my phone on me so that I can concentrate on giving you the choices nugs for my notes, so thank you for doing that.
Amanda: All right, folks. Lots to get to here. Eric, if you refuse to allow us to bribe our way back to resuscitate our favorite NPC of the day, we're just gonna have to go back and talk about the incredible plot beats that led to that beautiful filled with pathos demise. Of course, we begin here with episode 59 where we're on Mango Crossing. We're dealing with the ghost, meeting the negotiator, coming back up the mountain. And we have a lot of important questions, the most important being one from Psychic Kitty Art here, and this is a multimedia question, so—
Julia: Oh.
Amanda: —I'm just gonna bring something up right here.
Brandon: Oh.
Amanda: So it's important you guys know from Psychic Kitty Art. "I recently learned that Death's Head hawkmoths squeak."
Julia: Oh.
Amanda: "Naturally, that makes me wonder, does Archimedes Sevens squeak?"
Brandon: What? What do they sound like?
Amanda: So please hold, now I'm going to count down and play this video, 3, 2, 1.
Julia: Oh, I hate that noise. Ooh, that itches something in my brain weird.
Brandon: Yeah, I hate that, too.
Eric: That sounds like rubber.
Julia: Ooh.
Brandon: It sounds like it's clipping.
Amanda: It sounds like someone is scratching their nail on a microphone or, like— yeah, like squeaking two pieces of rubber together.
Julia: Or, like, on a, like a screen, like a metal window screen.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: You know?
Brandon: Like a holographic card.
Julia: Ooh.
Brandon: Or whatever.
Julia: Oof.
Amanda: Do we think Archie makes this noise when he laughs?
Julia: When he laughs? Hmm.
Brandon: I don't think Archie's ever laughed at his entire fucking life.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: So maybe he doesn't know.
Brandon: Maybe.
Julia: I think that's when he cries.
Eric: Little squeaks.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Oh.
Julia: Little, tiny, squeaky sobs.
Eric: I love it, what Brandon said.
Julia: Mmkay.
Eric: Does it— well, does it when he laughs? He never laughs, so we wouldn't— he would not know.
Julia: So we would never know. That makes sense.
Eric: He lost that ability by being in the Hunger Games.
Julia: Fair.
Amanda: Oh, tough.
Brandon: Hey, HR, HR?
Eric: Yeah. What's up?
Brandon: Can I get a bonus for winning, Eric, right there?
Eric: The bonus is the pizza party that I took away.
Brandon: Weeeee!!
Eric: That was for Brandon now!
Julia: You know what? Like, I think companies like— not Goodreads, because Goodreads is owned by Jeff Bezos, and so I don't want to support it. But, like, stuff like StoryGraph, which is a great, like, book tracking website.
Eric: Uh-hmm.
Julia: I think they should partner up with pizza places. And once—
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: —you've read 50 books within a year, you can get like a $10 off your pizza or something.
Eric: That would be sick.
Amanda: That's an incredible idea. My sister sent me yesterday not a request for home repair, but instead—
Julia: Oh.
Amanda: —a photo of someone's tattoo, like a pen and ink drawing of an old Pizza Hut stained glass lamp.
Brandon: Oh, yeah, I remember those.
Julia: Ooh.
Amanda: And I said, "Bailey, that's good."
Julia: Bailey, Bailey, you get that shit.
Brandon: Yeah, that's good.
Julia: You go.
Amanda: All right. Back to the matter at hand, Anna.matronic, great name, says, "Did Gayle know that DiAnnalyse was on her back? From the way she was walking, always facing front, it seems like she knew Di was there. I know Umbi told her to face them, but even backing away to leave, this felt too intentional for Eric to have just said. So I was surprised at the beginning of Legends of Mango Crossing VI, when everyone was like, 'Oh, my God. How did Di get on Gayle?' Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But no, did Gayle know?" So, folks, did Gayle know?
Brandon: I remember you rolling as well, and so it was definitely a successful roll somewhere in there when you were—
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: —deciding what to do with Di. So, yeah, I'm curious.
Amanda: Spill, Eric, is Gayle an unwitting accomplice?
Brandon: Spill.
Julia: Spill, spill, spill.
Amanda: Or is Gayle a witting participant?
Eric: Gayle was an unwitting accomplice.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: I assumed that Di cornered her and held a terrible necrotic dagger up to her big— to her— what was— she was a lily pad?
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Lily pad.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Yeah. Held a necrotic dagger of to her lily pad arteries and said, "I'm gonna tape myself to your back." And she said, "Okay, I'm a negotiator." Like in an action movie. So, yeah, I— she was there the entire time.
Brandon: Eric, what action movie have you seen where someone tapes themselves to someone's back?
Eric: Brandon, I've seen so many action movies that are just as crazy. Den of Thieves 2 is gonna come out soon. There was an entire movie where a guy was in a phone booth and trying not to get sniped.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Like lots of stuff. This is basically Collateral, the movie Collateral with Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise with gray hair. Great movie, by the way.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: You all know that I love action movies too, because of my reference to—
Julia: The Fugitive.
Eric: "I didn't kill my wife." The Fugitive, thank you.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Which I showed Jake after we talked about that for the first time and he's like, "This is a really good movie." I'm like, "Yeah, I know it."
Eric: That movie rips. There could be 20 of those movies a year, but instead we have Red One where J. K. Simmons is Jacked Santa.
Julia: There is a Taron Egerton action Christmas movie that's coming out about someone like him getting bribed to let a package through TSA on Christmas Day.
Eric: Oh, yeah, I saw that. I would watch that. I'm gonna watch that.
Julia: I would watch that, too.
Brandon: What's in the package? What's in the package, Julia?
Julia: I don't know. I haven't watched the movie yet, Brandon?
Amanda: A bomb.
Eric: I assume bomb.
Julia: Probably a bomb.
Eric: I assume bomb.
Brandon: Or a nice gift for someone's mother.
Julia: Very possible as well.
Eric: You mean anthrax?
Amanda: In a fruitcake?
Julia: My mom always asks for anthrax for Christmas and I just keep saying no.
Brandon: Every year.
Eric: I'm already looking— trying to look forward towards Valentine's Day, which is where the Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose John Wick style movie is gonna come out.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And Ke Huy Quan already has incredible martial arts training, so he's gonna rip.
Julia: Cool.
Amanda: Can't wait.
Eric: So it's called Love Hurts. I'm very excited about it.
Amanda: It looks absolutely incredible and I can't wait to go. Hey, honey, do you want to be my date to Love Hurts?
Brandon: Gross!
Eric: No, I'm going with HR.
Julia: Fair.
Eric: I'm going with the toucan.
Brandon: How are you gonna—
Julia: As we know the toucan is Amanda, so—
Brandon: No, how are you gonna know which one's which?
Julia: Amanda, you can Parent Trap him.
Amanda: Speaking of movies that I probably don't get the reference to, Christian the Just OK come on our Patreon post, "I need to hear the Captain Key, quote, Captain Keyes. 'I don't keep it loaded, son. You'll have to find ammo along the way.'"?
Brandon: Yeah, I didn't get this reference, either.
Amanda: Do you know what this is?
Julia: I don't know what that is.
Eric: I think Captain Keyes is from Halo, the Halo series if I remember correctly. So that sounds about right.
Brandon: Oh.
Julia: Oh.
Amanda: All right. Well, do you want to do the Captain—
Eric: No, it's just an NPC from Halo. Like, it's not that good. But I appreciate that there are nerds out there who consume all the same things. Thank you to everybody who makes One Piece references to things I make. You understand where I'm going.
Brandon: I've never once played the Halo storyline.
Eric: True. The Halo storyline, the campaign is nothing to write home about, truly.
Julia: Jake loves it.
Eric: It's good. I mean, like, co-op was always great, but I think that Halo always shined if you weren't playing with somebody else, regardless.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Like—
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: —you know, the whole thing with the Arbiter still doesn't make any sense, and I'm, like, 33 years old.
Julia: But it's Keith David, so who cares?
Eric: That's true. That's very true. Shout out, Keith David.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Shout out.
Eric: The Arbiter does sound like an Eric Silver NPC deity. I just have to put it out there.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah, the Arbiter was, like, alien Jesus, but then flipped on the aliens.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah. And then you got to play as him, which was kind of cool because he had an energy sword.
Julia: Yeah, it was pretty dope.
Brandon: Tight. You get to play as alien Jesus?
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Oh, man, that's good.
Julia: Voiced by Keith David.
Amanda: In a further movie reference, Barbie wants to know, "Eric, did you feel like Andy Serkis a la Gollum and Smeagol when the Key with a Gaze and Archie were talking to each other for so long?"
Eric: This is a necessary evil you have to do as a dungeon master, which is have NPCs talk to each other, because sometimes it's— although harder, it's less clunky than delivering exposition like in a bad action movie. So, you know, it's just one of those things that has to happen.
Brandon: Hell, yeah. I— recently, I'm rereading the books, and so we're watching the movies after I finished the books. And I recently watched the second movie, and I was like, "Eric did it better."
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: Aw.
Eric: Than Andy Serkis?
Julia: Damn.
Eric: We just saw the new—
Julia: Academy Award winner Andy Serkis?
Brandon: More like Academy Award loser Andy Serkis.
Amanda: Whoa.
Eric: Get 'em, fuckin’ get em.
Brandon: Whoa.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: Get 'em.
Amanda: I guess that's right. For most Academy Award winners, you could also correctly call them Academy Award losers, and that's a metaphor, isn't it? Ain't that life?
Brandon: Ain't that life?
Julia: I think, technically, everyone is an Academy Award loser.
Brandon: That's true.
Julia: Right?
Brandon: Well, I'm an Academy Award didn't even tryer.
Amanda: Let's be nominated and then lose.
Julia: I'm just saying all actors want to win an Academy Award, and when they don't get nominated, they are the losers. Does that make sense?
Amanda: No, I think if you're nominated but lose, then you're an Academy Award loser.
Julia: Oh, okay. Interesting.
Amanda: You're a nominee and loser.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: No, I'm with Julia and I like putting that I'm a 33-time Academy Award loser.
Julia: Every year, baby, every year.
Eric: I'm putting that on my bio. That's awesome.
Amanda: Wow, snubbed again. No, it's pretty good. You're right. I yield, I yield.
Eric: No, that's good stuff.
Brandon: What y'all can't see when we record the main episodes, though, is Eric is wearing a mocap suit. We don't know why, he's always done it.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: No. He's just covered in balls all the time.
Eric: Hey, HR here.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Julia?
Julia: Hmm?
Eric: Let's keep it clean, huh?
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah, I wasn't gonna touch that one, but—
Eric: Oh, you mean the balls? Got 'em. All right.
Julia: Got 'em.
Brandon: Uh-oh. Who's the HR of HR? Who watches the watchers?
Julia: Who watches the watchers indeed?
Eric: Rorschach.
Amanda: Into Episode 60, as we flee Mango Crossing, there is a lot going on before the climactic final few minutes of this episode, so we'll build to it.
Eric: It's really crazy. I want to talk about this for a second. So much happens in this episode, and then I'm like, "Hey, fuck you guys." Like I just— I do want to take some time to talk about the mother tortango, specifically.
Brandon: Oh, I'm sorry. Real quick, before we move on to 60, I did have a quick question about the negotiator.
Eric: Sure.
Brandon: Was that a fever dream invention? Or were you always planning to have some sort of intermediary, here's path B that you could take. I just want to make sure you guys see it kind of thing?
Eric: Both, Brandon. if you remember correctly, I did turn into the Joker at the beginning of this episode, because we had recorded—
Julia: Right.
Brandon: A Joker in a mo-cap suit.
Eric: Yes, because my mocap suit. If my mocap suit was too tight. Because we had recorded like five, seven episodes in a very short amount of time, including something to be revealed later, Afterparties, Party Plannings, and Model Our Nations, and getting ready for Model Our Nations, so I was feeling insane. I did not know what I wanted to happen, necessarily. Like everything in 60, I needed time to think about that wasn't while we were recording seven episodes.
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: So this definitely was a filler episode in my head, in an anime sort of way to, like, release the pressure valve in my brain.
Julia: Sure, sure.
Eric: So I— Brandon, I would say a combination of both.
Julia: Gotcha.
Eric: I more, like, wanted some more time for you to ruminate and— on what is going on here, especially because all of you charge so quickly into helping Archie and the Key with a Gaze, I feel like I had to set stakes on why Di wanted Troy not to do this.
Brandon: Yes.
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah. I gotcha. Cool.
Eric: And also, I was trying to think of an interesting way to introduce Archie's, like, life goal, and I thought that having an interloper literally stumble into it— or be forced into it was a fun way to do it.
Brandon: Love it. Amanda, I've laid out a nice carpet for you to continue on to Episode 60 now, if you would like to take it.
Amanda: Oh, thank you so much.
Brandon: It's shag.
Julia: Oh. Don't trip.
Amanda: Oh.
Eric: I'm imagining red carpets being shagged, and it's so rude to everyone wearing heels.
Amanda: Feels so nice in my toes.
Julia: What if it just let us not have to wear heels then, though?
Amanda: Ideal.
Brandon: Ooh.
Eric: Julia, a butterfly is flapping its wings and everyone's barefoot on red carpets now.
Julia: Yeah, we did it.
Eric: Hollywood's different. We self it.
Amanda: Why did my brain say huge for the foot community? Moving on.
Julia: HR, HR.
Amanda: NoHugsJustBugs wants to know, "Are the stick people duplicates considered to be Greenfolks, or are they constructs or automatons?" What do we think?
Julia: I would guess construct, right?
Brandon: That's a good question. Yeah, I think it's probably construct, but that's interesting.
Eric: I did not know the answer when we first put it together, but I think once I introduced Piney and you saw Piney, constructs, yeah. They're like—
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: —magically arcane held together constructs that are only held together by, like, arcane energy doing their stuff.
Brandon: Now, Eric, what if instead of sticks, they were groups of stick bugs in the shape of us? Are they then Greenfolk?
Amanda: Brandon, you bring up an excellent point, because bugs, which is what I lovingly call them, continues, "Are different kinds of sticks needed to make different kinds of Greenfolk? Because I am just now realizing the horror of sticks having to come from living trees first, which are themselves Greenfolk. So stick duplicates are most likely a horrifying amalgamation of body parts from dead Greenfolk."
Julia: Calm down, calm down.
Brandon: Calm down. Figure it out.
Eric: Here, take a— shh, I'm petting you like a horse. Take a break.
Brandon: Fingernails.
Eric: Remember, plants and Greenfolk both exist.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: I think, honestly, that makes it horrifying in the other way, that you're turning tree into Greenfolk or—
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —at least a simulacrum of a Greenfolk and I think that's just as horrifying when you think about it.
Julia: Though, I'm sure there is a form of necromancy in Verda Stello that does take, like, dead tree folk and then reanimate them, a la skeletons.
Eric: Yeah. I mean, that's—
Brandon: Hell yeah. Hell yeah.
Eric: That's what I was envisioning the zombies like—
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: You know, like the rot getting in there and, you know— something being alive inside of death, which is something we end up talking about in the next episode. Yeah, I think that there's some room for that and we're seeing that with the zombie Greenfolk.
Brandon: I also would assume— look, I'm not a tree, so I don't know. But I would also assume that, like, not every branch is, like, an important branch. Like, you know, I might lose— like, if I got a haircut, is that the same as, like, a tree losing some non-essential branches, you know?
Eric: That's a good point.
Brandon: It's not a horrifying thing, unless you realize that you're bald, like me. But—
Amanda: Pull back, pull back.
Julia: Pull back, pull back.
Brandon: Pull back. Oh, shit, HR.
Amanda: All right. SavedMan97 says, "What would be the giveaway for each characters or players? Open field doubles?"
Eric: This was so funny. This is actually a call— that scene was a callback to when we played Monster of the Week in the—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —when you were lost in the woods. So it was fun like this— all of a sudden, we were playing a different game almost on this one level of escaping Mango Crossing. Having Umbi pinned down like that and then, of course, immediately get out of it with the Natural 20 when I rolled a 1, was really fun. And I'm like, "I don't— you are getting beared down on by stick people. This is scary."
Julia: Yeah. The minute you started kind of describing how we were all separated, I was like, "Oh, I know what you're doing. I remember this from the Camp-Paign. I'm ready for this."
Eric: I have a bad feeling in my stomach like I did 18 months ago.
Amanda: Yep. It was genuinely chilling. It was like— it was very horror movie— like, it really gave me some, like, dread in my stomach to be like, "Is this Brandon/Julia talking to me, or is it not?" It was, oh, so good.
Brandon: Can I just repeat to everyone listening to me? That Eric knows me so well that he was like, "Amanda Julia, they can play along. Brandon, I'm not even gonna give him a choice."
Eric: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, shout out to Brandon— Shout out to Amanda and Julia, who really played along there.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: That was great. And it's so spooky.
Julia: I was ready for it immediately. I was like, "I know what we're doing. Let's do it."
Brandon: Yeah, that was honestly impressive. There was no cuts. Like, there wasn't some explanation that Eric said to Julia off-screen. It was just, like, Julia just played along. And I remember while playing, I was like, "What the fuck is happening? Why are you competing with each other?"
Eric: Yeah. And I—
Amanda: Did you guys have a group chat without me?
Eric: I got to feed lines to Amanda, which I thought was better, because of Troy's— you know, Troy's stick figure simulacrum was the one kind of exposing what was happening here.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: So that was different. But Julia just fucking jumped on it. That was great.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Love it.
Eric: We didn't answer the question. Did your— did your characters have—
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Oh.
Eric: —like things that stood out? Like, what would the stick version of you be something that could not capture the Greenfolk version of you?
Brandon: I mean, Umbi would be like— well, we're not talking about, like, things that are, like, opposite, right? Like, it wouldn't be— like, if Umbi were like, "I love my wife and children," then we would know it wasn't Umbi, right?
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Right.
Eric: Right.
Brandon: Is that too obvious? Like, are we looking for more subtle things?
Julia: Yeah. I mean, like, so, for example, I was gonna play it as straight as possible until Eric told me not to. But I think if there was something that was going to be a giveaway, in my mind, I don't think the simulacrum would have had a Nonny, because that requires—
Brandon: Hmm.
Julia: —Cammie's magic.
Amanda: Nice.
Julia: And I don't think that it would be able to replicate that in that way.
Eric: Yeah. For me, for Archimedes Sevens, I think he was so big that it would be really easy to, like, see where all the parts come together.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Cool.
Eric: Like it wasn't all one scarecrow. It was almost like Lego pieces and you could really see— you wouldn't see the seams on Legos so— in that way.
Brandon: I think it would be— for Umbi, I think it would be his fear of death. I think, like, if—
Eric: Hmm.
Brandon: —you, like, took a torch too close to the thing, they'd be scared, right?
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: But Umbi would be like—
Brandon (as Umbi): Oh, light me a fire. Who cares, man?
Julia: Like the Scarecrow.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: And I think with Troy, probably a sense of humor. I can't imagine that would be baked into the homunculus.
Brandon: Hmm. Uh-hmm.
Eric: I like— this is, like, AI can't capture our weird human flaws.
Amanda: Right.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Well, guys, there's no delaying it any longer. Eric, I have a few— in the US, we have the right to face our accuser, and so I think it's important—
Julia: Jesus.
Amanda: —that I just have a few things that I like read out to you here. So N/A Nicole, "Eric, how dare you make the Key with the Gaze so lovable, then rip him away from me?"
Brandon: Yep.
Amanda: Heard. There's basically an entire campaign's worth of Eric What the Fucks with Italian pinching emoji.
Brandon: Little conning emoji.
Eric: This is so funny.
Amanda: Excuse me, Eric, you can't talk yet. Ljmckarns says, "Even the cat is asking, 'Eric, what the fuck?'" And excuse me, may I—
Eric: I— no, I have to— that needs context. I— the Afterparty questions that I asked for on Twitter and Instagram, and Bluesky. Follow Join the Party on Bluesky, we're jointheparty.pod.com on Bluesky.
Julia: We're all there, except for Brandon, just like every other social media we have.
Eric: Exactly.
Brandon: That's how you know my stick figure.
Amanda: Yes.
Brandon: I used a video of a cat that I saw when I was going to the grocery store, and the cat was looking at me disapprovingly because I was filming the cat on the street. But the cat also was looking at me disapprovingly, because I killed the Key with a Gaze.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Point of order, I have one more accusation, which is that Brae, of course, moderator extraordinaire, says, "You know, we always ask, 'Eric, what the fuck?' 'But never, 'Eric, who, when, where, why, or how the fuck?'" And so I would like to narrow down right now on Eric, how the fuck?
Julia: See, I think— I also— I followed up with that— with Brae, but I also think that the Afterparty is exactly where, every single three weeks, we ask Eric, how the fuck?
Eric: True.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Uh-mm.
Brandon: I'm gonna ask Eric, where the fuck?
Eric: Here.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: We're in our recording— our recording on the DAW.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: In the podcast is where the fuck.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: I don't know where souls go when they die, Brandon, but the Keyes is gone.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: But we sure can't talk about it. Okay. Let's talk about how the fuck. I knew this was gonna happen the whole time.
Amanda: No. Ugh!
Julia: Rude.
Eric: This— I've been seeding this since I revealed a splash of pickle vinegar in the drawers in the—
Julia: File cabinet tower.
Eric: Yeah, in the file cabinet tower of all the magic items, right?
Amanda: No.
Eric: So I knew— so the Dilly dagger exists, right? And the Dilly dagger exists to take energy out of things—
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —that shouldn't have it.
Amanda: Like our best friend? Like our friendships?
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Di also said, "Don't hang out with the Key with a Gaze and his partner? Archimedes Sevens."
Julia: I think they were in love.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: So Di was like, "Troy, don't do this. This is an international incident. Stop it. Also, I'm holding the Dilly dagger. Look at this. I literally cannot put the final points of the connect the dot puzzle together for you, because I'm an assassin, Troy, but please finish." And Troy's like, "Huh. Okay, bro, look at this barrel I have." So I knew that this was always something I had on the table, and I was working up to it, and seeded it here.
Brandon: Seeded it?
Julia: Oh.
Brandon: Nice.
Julia: But—
Amanda: 61, Brandon, we'll get there. We'll get there.
Eric: So the difference, which I thought was interesting, was that Troy was carrying the Key with a Gaze there at the end. Di is a master assassin. You got away because the mama tortango created so much chaos, which, again, was so funny. I really do want to talk about it if we have a moment.
Julia: Yeah, we'll talk about that next.
Eric: And a little trivialized some of the more sneak away portions of Mango Crossing. Fine. Win games however you want. I don't care as the DM truly. But I'm like— but this is still on the table. This didn't get stopped. And Di— you didn't stop Di because Troy just kind of insulted her, like a little sister. And we knew she was there, so she's gonna make the move— she was gonna do the thing that she has communicated she was going to do the entire time, which is, from afar, without getting yourself hurt, especially because you are splashing through the water. She is going to even give up the Dilly dagger to do this thing.
Brandon: Oh, my God, guys. She was named Di the whole time. How did we not see that?
Julia: No, we saw it. We do.
Amanda: It was brutal, y'all. Like, I felt like I let down my compatriot, my party, the campaign.
Brandon: Did you really?
Julia: Really?
Brandon: Did you actually feel that?
Amanda: Yeah. Yes.
Julia: Oh, Amanda.
Brandon: Oh.
Amanda: Because the— there— there's so rarely an opportunity to be like, "I save this person's life or I don't." And like that really is how that final roll felt to me.
Brandon: Hmm.
Julia: But I also think, Amanda, even if you had been successful on that first roll, we're dealing with an assassin. There would have been multiple other rolls after that, probably dealing with it. And yes, you would have had, like, more opportunities to combat it. But I think at the end of the day, like the key was probably going to die, because, as we know, we're bad pirates, and Di is a good assassin.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: And we— as established by the dice rolls earlier in the arc, yeah.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: It felt like a necessary part. I mean, nothing is necessary in D&D, of course, but it definitely felt like one of the closest to necessary things to happen, you know?
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Dungeons and Dragons is a game about, you know, rolls. It comes down— the mechanics all come down to these dice rolls. Like you can't get things done— or the game does not want you to get things done unless you do them. And as a Dungeon Master, you have two choices. One, you do all the exposition, and then you funnel it into the dice roll, which is a game— which is a, like, expression of tension. And then you need to make sure the dice roll is effective and breaks in one way or another. Or you do the other way, where you try to roll first and then justify through explanation. It's more of a creative exercise of justifying what happens next based on the numbers. And in this way, everything was leading to this number— everything was leading towards this roll, so it either happened or it didn't. Julia's right. Di might have tried to follow up in some sort of way, especially since she gave up the Dilly dagger to do it. Giving up the Dilly dagger and not getting the kill probably would have not been acceptable to her, and she would have done something else.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: But, like, you know, if a dice is rolled, Brandon, then stuff— then something happens. That's how— that's the whole point of what— of the game we're playing.
Julia: Brandon's like, "Why am I being accused? What's going on?"
Brandon: Look, I didn't want to bring this up, Eric, but I did look through— I did control— I didn't do a deep dive, I didn't reread the whole thing, but I did do a control command F in the player's handbook, and there ain't no rule that says when a dog rolls a dice, it always counts. So you can kiss my—
Julia: Well, you're not a dog, Brandon. I think you searched the wrong words.
Brandon: –little ass.
Eric: Sorry, we're gonna have to redo episode 61 because Brandon is being a butthole, so I'm just gonna kill him.
Brandon: I do have a question, though, about 60.
Julia: Yeah. I also want to talk about the tortango mama.
Brandon: Oh, yeah. Well, I was going to ask, what things, levels, challenges did we skip out on, if any? Like that we— like the first level of the Mango Crossing, we used the shoot 'em up arrow to do a zip line?
Amanda: Yep.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Was there a plan for what that, like, sort of challenge would have been? And the same in the last one, I think we sort of just, like, barreled through it, so—
Julia: Yes, because the tortango was doing chaos.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: I knew there were going to be four stages, and I had some challenges for each one. Like, obviously, you kind of plowed through the reverse of how you got up Mango Crossing, which is deciding if you were gonna confront, like, large battalions, basically, or a war camp, but the tortango mom took care of that. Getting down was fine. I just kind of gave you that bonus—
Brandon: Okay.
Eric: —for using the zip line, especially because it's like I didn't introduce the game yet. So if you do something, I'm not going to say no, I'm just gonna reward you for doing it and move on.
Julia: Yay.
Eric: So, no, we didn't lose it. I don't think we lost anything.
Brandon: Cool.
Eric: Which I was happy about.
Brandon: Good.
Julia: Hell yeah.
Brandon: I didn't— yeah, I super didn't want to barrel through something, that would have been fun to do.
Amanda: Well, it sure felt like we got some kind of advantage with Cammie's exceptional bond with the mama tortango. So, Julia, how long has this been percolating in your brain?
Julia: I think when Eric introduced the tortango, I was like, "All right, I think I have spells that are going to be helpful for this." And I think I spent a lot of time talking to you, casually. I'm like, "So is this like a monster, or would you consider it a beast? Like, what are we talking about here?" And you're like, "Oh, it's a beast." I'm like—
Amanda: Like, how specifically heavy do you think this is for calculating the dosage of this thing I want to put in?
Brandon: It's super casual.
Julia: If we were talking about, like, size-wise, like, is this, like, a giant? Is it large? Like, what are we talking about here?
Brandon: If I were to cast the spell, like, when it counts, like, would it matter?
Julia: Just like casually.
Eric: I— you can't lie to Julia, because she's always fishing for information, so I'm—
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —not gonna lie. I'm just like, "Yeah." The problem— like, also, the other problem with Dungeons & Dragons is because everything is so dice roll, everything that's not explicitly your friend is an enemy, right?
Amanda: Hmm.
Eric: But that's not how animals work.
Julia: Correct.
Eric: So that's why we settled on beast.
Julia: Yeah. And it worked out great. I did not expect it to start talking to me in that voice that it did.
Amanda: I love her.
Julia: I loved it. I was super into it.
Brandon: Yeah, it was so funny. I didn't expect that, either, but here we are.
Julia: Here we are. That's what D&D is, baby.
Amanda: Eric, how did the mama tortango rank on the list of NPCs/inanimate objects/foes that you did not expect to have to make a personality for? Because there's been a lot. Let's be honest.
Eric: There is.
Julia: Quite a few.
Eric: I'm trying to think of other ones that I wasn't expecting.
Brandon: Well, you had to give me a personality when we first met, so—
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: That's right. I installed Brandon's personality chip when we were working at SiriusXM.
Amanda: From Stone Face forward, this has been a clear underpinning of Join the Party as a podcast.
Eric: Oh, yeah, I guess you're right. Stone Face is obviously the goat, and the first— the best, no gods, no kings, only stone face. But mama tortango's up there because I was not expecting this to happen. And Julia is like, "So she talks to me," and I'm like, "Here we go."
Julia: Here we go. Let's fucking go.
Eric: Yeah. You know, my mom does— when she really puts on her Long Island accent, she's like, "So I says to her, I says, meet me in housewares."
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And she says things like that a lot. And of course, if you’re from Long Island–
Brandon: Holy shit.
Eric: It's like, well, if you— I— "and I says to her, I says meet me in housewares." So that's where that came from and I'm like, "Well, this— that would be really funny to do right now, so here we go."
Brandon: Eric, I am begging you to record your mother next time she does that so I can hear it.
Eric: I— I'm sure she would love that if I told her it would be on a podcast, she would do it immediately.
Julia: My favorite Long Island activation phrase is a story from when my mom was trying to find a place for them to get married. And my mom said she went to a place, and the guy giving them the tour said, "We'll do it up real nice for yous, guys."
Eric: That's awesome.
Julia: And I was like— and my mom says, "I'm not getting married here." Great.
Brandon: That's fucking awesome.
Amanda: Incredible. All right, folks. So much to talk about in episode 61. We are, you know, confronting our cosmology and afterlife. We have a ton of questions about the remainder of the campaign. But first I gotta nip back into the kitchen for some mango tartlets. Oh, they're so cute. Vegetarian.
Brandon: I love a mango tartlet.
Julia: I was gonna say, did you make them out of the tortango?
Amanda: Vegetarian, don't worry.
Julia: Hmm.
[theme]
Amanda: Hey, it's Amanda. I know that there are a lot of cat fans out here in the audience. I've never had a cat, and I was allergic to them for most of my life, until very recently. So one thing I know about cats is that they love to lay in a sunbeam, and so I would highly encourage you next time you notice a sunbeam laying across your desk or your couch or your bed, to just lay your little face in it and pretend that you are an adorable cat, because I do that frequently, and I gotta say, it's delightful. Welcome to the midroll. Oh, it's so warm. Thank you so much. And welcome to our newest paid supporters on Patreon, Rash, Christian the Just OK. Christian, I think you're great because you're a patron mostly, and Martin M. We are only able to make Join the Party as good and as thoroughly, and as weekly as we do because of your support on Patreon. Remember back when there was one Tuesday a month with no Join the Party? That was terrible, and now there's no bad Tuesdays because you got us there on Patreon, to show your love and to get bonuses like Discord access, our biweekly Party Planning podcast. There is a dinger coming out on Friday, I promise you. Ad-free episodes and even early access to new episodes of the show, a whole day before anybody else. Join us today at patreon.com/jointhepartypod. Now, new feature on Patreon, you can also follow us for free if you're kind of, like, getting off of social media and you're like, "Oh, I don't know." Check us out for free on Patreon. Just make an account. Follow us totally free. You don't need to spend any money to stay in the loop with all of the Join the Party news coming up. We always announce all of our news on Patreon and here in the midroll. So go ahead, follow us, or support us in— with money at patreon.com/jointhepartypod. So much happening at Multitude these days. And if you're anything like me, you're probably the most online person that several of your family members know. I know there are some of you out there for whom that's true. So if this week, whether it's for US thanksgiving or just for the upcoming winter holidays, you are about to see a lot of people who are going to be like, "Hey, what's Skibidi Toilet?" Or whatever. I highly recommend you start listening to Wow If True. This is our newest Multitude member show, and it is your one-stop internet culture shop, explaining how what's happening online shapes the real world. And it's hosted by Internet experts and real-life besties, the tech culture journalist Amanda Silberling and the science fiction author and former attorney, Isabel J. Kim. They are incredibly funny. They are incredibly online. They talk about Neopets, but also horizontal mergers, which makes my heart so happy. And the specific questions that they answer are things like, who is Bigolas Dickolas? Why are Silicon Valley Bros. biohacking their mouths? How many secret babies does Elon Musk have? It's more than one, folks. It's a lot. So go on and listen to Wow If True wherever on the internet you listen to your podcasts. New episodes come out every other Wednesday. This episode is sponsored by our brand-new merch store. Now, there are a few exciting things I have to let you know about. Okay. Number one, our old merch vendor, by mistake, marked a bunch of items as out of stock that were actually in stock just sitting in their warehouse, not being able to be bought by you. So if you went to the merch store at any point since, like February, and thought, "Oh, my God, I wish I could get a Tracy sticker or a Camp Diogenes poster, or, I don't know, like a beautiful sticker of an AI generated Pokemon Grumfungo that supports trans rights." You can now buy them because you were always able to, they just made a big mistake. So the reason that you are now able to actually buy those items is because we launched a brand-new merch store with a brand new partner called Certified Crucial. This is a wonderful small business based in Virginia, founded and led by fellow creators. And we are cooking up so many exciting new merch items, including one that will drop sooner rather than later. But for now, you can buy all of the physical items we already have in stock, which we've always had in stock, but you haven't been able to buy since February, plus digital items like games and ringtones at jointhepartypod.com/merch. That's right, same link. So that brings me to international, folks. Listen up. I know those of you who don't live in the US are like, "Please, I want to buy stuff, but international shipping, it's so expensive. Why?" Great news, your shipping is now cheaper than ever before. If you've been holding off on shopping at the Join the Party merch store or the Spirits merch store, which are now fulfilled by the same place because the shipping was way too expensive. Try it now, see what it would cost, because Certified Crucial is working hard to make the non-US addresses as affordable as possible to ship, too. Amazing. And then finally, if you have not yet picked up your copy of Model Our Nations, the game that Eric came up with for the Diamond Knot episode of campaign three, which we ran an incredible One Shot of last week. It's so beautiful. The physical copy is gorgeous. He printed a real game, and I'm so proud of him. So go to jointhepartypod.com/merch to buy your physical or digital copy of Model Our Nations. It makes a great present for the TTRPG lovers in your life. And every physical copy comes with a digital download, also, because not having a PDF of a thing you own in physical form is like, why? No. We're better than that. So you can buy a physical copy, which comes with a digital version, including a printable character sheet and a fillable character sheet. It's incredible. Check it out at jointhepartypod.com/merch. And remember, patrons, if you're at the $10 tier and up, you do get 10% off all merch, so go to your Patreon messages for your 10% off code. All right, folks. That's it from us. Now, let's get back to the show.
[theme]
Amanda: All right, folks, we are back. There is some tajin you can also sprinkle on top of the tarts.
Julia: Oh.
Eric: Ooh.
Amanda: They're so good.
Julia: Amanda, you did it up real nice for us guys.
Brandon: I ate 19 of them.
Amanda: Well, good thing I made three dozen.
Brandon: Great.
Eric: Brandon, don't worry, we have medicine in our bathroom, so I'mma do it up nice for you guys.
Brandon: Hey.
Julia: Oh.
Amanda: I'mma do it up real nice for you guys.
Brandon: Do it up real nice for you guys.
Amanda: Oh, incredible. Julia, that's the new, "You think you're better than me?" But, like, a little bit less aggressive, just a little bit.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: All right, folks. So we're now in Episode 61 and an arc titled— Eric, sorry, what's that? Legends of the True Salmon?
Eric: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Oh.
Eric: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Are we meeting the salmon this arc? Because we haven't played the whole arc yet. I sure hope we are.
Brandon: I saw the Discord messages, and they're spoiler tagged on my notifications. And so I was like, "Why are people bitching about the title? Like, what happened— what's wrong with the title?" And I had to go back and look it up, and that's how I found out.
Eric: I didn't tell you all I was doing it. Amanda put this as the last episode of the Mango Crossing arc, but like, you're gone, so we got to do the next thing.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Incredible. Jaya was like, "Legends of the what? Excuse me." And a lot of people were very excited about this title. I saw a few of you sneaky Petes saw it on Patreon, because if you're at a certain Patreon tier, you get early access to episodes, a day early than everybody else.
Julia: That's true.
Amanda: And so you could see the title before it was it paywalled on Patreon, and everyone was like, "Oh, my God."
Brandon: Oh, my God.
Amanda: So good. First, we do just have to address something important in terms of fandom. So Katja wants to know, "Eric, why'd you pull a Castiel on Umbi?"
Brandon: Guys?
Eric: I'm gonna have to ask our resident supernatural person, Brandon, to tell me what that means.
Brandon: Are they referring to when the— okay. Katja, goddamn it, I'm so sorry. Are you referring to when Castiel was pulled from perdition or—
Amanda: That would be my assumption.
Brandon: —something else? But, I mean, honestly, Umbi, Castiel, it's like, which one do you shoot? I don't know. They’re the same.
Amanda: Well, with the— how do they ship Umbi with anybody else, you know? Like, there's not the same iconic ship available.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: I don't know.
Amanda: Who's the Destiel of Join the Party?
Julia: Is Troy Dean?
Brandon: And that's why Eric insists that all of his NPCs are straight.
Eric: That's so rude. I cannot believe that. All of the NPCs are straight and Jewish. That's it.
Amanda: Oh, no.
Brandon: That's it?
Julia: Famously.
Amanda: Speaking of spin-offs, by the way, this is from Spaceman_namecaps. "Can we get a sitcom spin-off of the Key with a Gaze moving in with the Planter? Where the key tries to teach the Planter that sometimes you just gotta let loose, baby, and do pirate shenanigans. But the Planter's insistent that the fun is messing with pirates in a maze, and it's them trying to find a healthy middle ground and the high jinks along the way.
Brandon: I like it.
Julia: That's the new odd couple, baby.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: I mean, they're bringing back Will & Grace, essentially, so why not?
Brandon: What if it's Two Men and a Baby, but the water, the planter, and the Key with a Gaze is the baby?
Julia: Oh.
Eric: That's good.
Amanda: That's pretty cute. But, Eric, I know you talked a little bit about the fact that you worked with Dr. Moiya McTier of Pale Blue Pod here in the Multitude collective, to think about the cosmology of this universe. And a ton of people were so interested in how specifically you went about choosing the water— the planter seeds the sort of, like, Anubis, like, weighing and sorting out of your deeds. So tell me a little bit about your inspiration and how it felt to unveil all of that to us.
Eric: Well, I think we're gonna say if some of this on the microphone, but I will say it again here, because it was very important to me that Amanda and Julia did not hear this before the episode came out.
Julia: Before Umbi revealed it to us as well.
Eric: Right, exactly.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: So, you know, Umbi is gonna use the hint that the Waterer gave to him at some point, but I didn't— I had to save a lot of the thoughts to myself because I couldn't talk about it. But now, Julia and Amanda have listened to this episode and know what's going on, so I could talk about it a little bit.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: So I did talk to Moiya about it, and I'm like, "Okay, I do want to have some conversation about there being a death god." I've alluded to this Waterer a few times, but we haven't fleshed them out at all. I want to make sure they're not Anubis. When you're doing world-building here in 2024, it's just as important to not do something as do something, because of how many times the same genres and cliches are tread. So there's only two choices when— because of the types of people who make a lot of the stories that come out, either it's the Grim Reaper or it's Anubis, those are your only two choice in your death gods. Maybe throw in a Hades if you're feeling fancy, right?
Julia: Why, have we used Anubis in the past or something like that before?
Eric: I have also used Anubis in the past, but that was more funny to mess with Brandon, more than anything else.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: That there was a dog in the afterlife, but he was hanging out with a dead cat.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: So I was like, "I want there to be a death god, may— you know, like a death life god that is called the Waterer and it ha— and does evaluate your choices. Not in like a saint peter sort of way, but in a way you need to just, like, reckon with yourself and whether or not you did things that you thought were, like, appropriate or, like, worthy of being like a Greenfolk the way that, you know, citizens and humans have to do things for each other, not based on, like, a, you know, Christian right and wrong.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And I was like, "I want it to not be Anubis. Tell me everything about Anubis and what I can do on the opposite." And Moiya was like, "Well, Anubis is pretty serious, and it would be funny if this— if the Waterer wasn't serious." And I'm like, "Oh, that would be cool."
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: The other thing was, like, since it was the Waterer and it was about water, Dr. Moiya McTier suggested the seeds thing, which is a real thing that I know from all of my— the whole reason why this whole campaign exists is for all my plant friends, all my prep— my plant friends.
Brandon: Who that?
Eric: All three of you.
Brandon: Is that us? Is that us?
Eric: Literally, all three of you.
Julia: That's us.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: That's us?
Brandon: Everything is silly with little plant guys.
Eric: And I thought it was interesting, because it's the reverse of what Anubis does, right? Like, if your heart is heavy, it's full of sin, as compared to the feather, right?
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Right, Spirits Podcast? A boozy dive into mythology, legends—
Julia: Yes. The balance against Ma'at.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: Yeah. So I thought it was kind of interesting that, like, you want it to be heavy because it's filled with, like, spirit.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: I guess under Anubis, with Ma'at, all the seeds would be suspended perfectly in the middle, like a Jell-O shot.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: And I didn't want it to be like a scale, like you're not— because scales of justice is not what I'm going for. It just like—
Brandon: Right.
Eric: —either it's filled with life force or it's not. And that's very similar to how you determine if seeds are good or not.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Yeah. I love that.
Amanda: So good. From my good friend Bugs, that's again, NoHugsJustBugs, "I thought it was—"
Julia: Bugs.
Eric: Bugs.
Brandon: Bugs.
Amanda: And Bugs. "I thought it was really interesting that the Waterer measures a life in seeds, given that the ecological view of an organism's success in life is its fitness, defined by how much of its genetic material it can pass on to the next generation of offspring. Eric, was the use of seeds an intentional nod to this concept, or am I way overthinking?"
Eric: Yeah, similar. How you need to— the pla— a seed to be viable has to be filled with stuff that's good and viable. And if it's not, it floats— because you did a bad job. It's like you wrung all of your humanity, for lack of a better word, out of your life, and your seeds— your seed packet with all of your seeds, doesn't have anything you can use it with.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: I think this is true of the world also that much like a, you know, a dandelion, where— when it's, you know, a little bit changed to spread its seeds a little bit better, for the seeds to find a little bit more purchase and grow a little bit more efficiently. I think a good measure of a life is the deeds you leave behind and how it inspires others to do similar things. So it's a —
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: —incredibly resonant concept for me. I love this. I'm probably going to get a tattoo of, like, the outline of a seed packet with, like, a few seeds in it.
Eric: Oh, really?
Brandon: That's cool. I love that.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Oh, that's cool. Hell yeah, dude.
Brandon: Yeah. Amanda, you do have to tell us if you are full of seeds on the inside, though.
Julia: I mean, technically, we all are.
Eric: Like a big pumpkin, Brandon, you know she is. Something I was having a little trouble getting across was like the Waterer navigates the reincarnation. So it's like the path has some of that stuff on board. They're just, like, way too overly dogmatic about it, which was fun to, like, talk about and have the Waterer threaten Umbi by turning them into a durian slug 10 times in a row. I thought that was really funny.
Julia: Cool.
Eric: But— so it's like the Waterer will push you on to, like, the new path that you're going on when your soul comes back to them. But the thing I was trying to say, both to Cammie and to Umbi is, like, the Planter created the keys, so you can't put this toothpaste back in the tube, because it's not a Greenfolk. It is a— and the whole reason why the Dilly dagger works, and the whole thing about pickling is, like, if you're messing with forces, you can't put— you can't fix it, because you're doing something unnatural in the first place.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: It's like, you know, when you're making an Ikea bed, and instead of trying to put it in with the slots, you push it too far and it breaks. Like it works, but if you pull it out again, it's broken.
Brandon: No, I've never done that, Eric.
Amanda: Yep.
Eric: Oh, unrelatable to Brandon.
Brandon: I don't, I can’t relate to that.
Amanda: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Yeah, I'm too good at putting furniture together. Never once.
Julia: Oh, wait, are we doing the joke thing again?
Amanda: We have a lot of great questions about the world, and our characters, and how we're feeling as we are sailing swiftly toward the end of this campaign. Here's great sort of a think 'em up from Ginger, okay?
Brandon: Ooh.
Amanda: Unironically, so you know it's serious. Ginger, thank you for observing our strike and not crossing the picket line.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: "Should pirate crews learn to unionize? I feel that having rules laid out for different scenarios might be avoided if they do, like mutinies for more totalitarian crews, but also for the Sea Whip, they probably could have figured out that Harold and Sil needed more supplies for intense missions." And Ginger. I think you're right. I think we under resourced an essential worker on our ship.
Julia: I do think that the problem is that, you know, the point of unionization is, like, collective bargaining.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Julia: And I don't think if— and this is proven by the summit that we all went to a couple arcs ago. I don't think we could all come to an agreement on, you know, what the union rules would be or—
Amanda: Hmm.
Brandon: Well, there's no one to bargain with, like—
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah. There's just, like—
Amanda: Captain as management—
Brandon: I think what you're describing is just a bigger crew, you know?
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Like a— yeah.
Eric: I think we just need an operations person on the Sea Whip.
Amanda: That's true.
Julia: We need pirate laws, you know? Like the Pirates of the Caribbean movies where they have a rule book.
Brandon: Well, those exist, right? If I called parlay, Eric would be like, "Yes, parsley."
Julia: The parsley parlay, of course.
Amanda: Damn it. Why don't we make them the moderator of Model Our Nations? That would have been great.
Julia: Because that wasn't pirates, you know?
Eric: Yeah, Julia makes a good point. I— that's true. It's like when there are no rules and everyone's out for themselves, you can't really get anything done. That's the thing that I think was the problem of the gold-plated moth guy.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: I can't remember his name, but I love him deeply and I love doing his voice.
Julia: The first thing I thought was inglorious, which was not it.
Eric: Also good. That could've been good as well.
Amanda: Also good.
Eric: But, yeah, like when no one agree— when you don't agree on a set of rules, then there's no wiggle room, and I think that's more of the problem, even if everyone's trying to get something done, even if there is, like, an overarching problem that everyone needs to take care of.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: Ginger also wanted to know, "This episode we saw Umbi first thing in the morning, as well as heard a lot of comments about how odd it was that he was naked first thing in the morning."
Julia: We sure did.
Amanda: "Did do the crew of the Sea Whip have morning routines? And if so, what are they?"
Julia: Oh.
Brandon: I like to think that Umbi does wake up nude as the day he was born, and then, just like— because he's old, he probably wakes up before everyone, and so he takes a dive off the boat and does a little swim, and then comes back in.
Amanda: Nice.
Brandon: Yeah. Get that nice, refreshing sea air into your lungs.
Eric: I love you diving off of the boat. And again, as I've established, Green folk are bad at swimming in salt water, so every morning you almost die—
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —to refresh yourself in the morning.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: But Umbi's not afraid of that.
Eric: No.
Brandon: But as— well, yeah, as we established, one, he's not afraid of dying, and two, he is an Olympic swimmer. He doesn't know that.
Eric: No, he's an Olympic diver.
Julia: Diver. He's a diver. There's a difference.
Brandon: Yes, but everyone is— so in a world where everyone sucks at diving and swimming, the people who are in the Olympics are slightly better.
Eric: No, you're right. I agree with that. That's true. That's true.
Amanda: A solid average. I love that.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: All right, what's Cammie's morning routine? There's got to be a morning constitutional tea.
Julia: Yeah, I think Cammie—
Brandon: You shit into your tea.
Amanda: Oh, shit, I forgot.
Julia: "Julia, that was evolution, not constitutional."
Amanda: Julia, how about Cammie? There's got to be a morning cup of tea, right?
Julia: Yeah, I think Cammie is the first one in the galley every morning. Probably, like, makes a like— in my mind, it's like a bowl of gruel, but it's probably like oatmeal or something like that. So, like, there's a communal meal that everyone can go and scoop, or what have you. And then takes her tea out to the deck and enjoys the sunshine.
Amanda: That's nice.
Brandon: I like the idea that Cammie has to go into the galley in the morning before everyone else and, like, quickly stab anything that grew eyes overnight.
Julia: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: Real, real. That's why Cammie does it. And the fact is, you're making, like, terrible Open Fields peasant gruel—
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: —and it's like, well, Cammie killed all this stuff and made us breakfast even if it sucks, so I guess we're eating it.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: It's like, "I don't want to make eggs. I'll eat the weird gruel."
Julia: No. Yeah.
Amanda: Eric, what does Havana do every morning?
Eric: Oh, God. I think Havana sleeps late, like a teenager.
Amanda: Really? Hmm.
Julia: Well, yeah, because he's a college student.
Amanda: Young man.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. I think he keeps weird hours. Yeah, he sleeps super late. I think there's plenty of times where you have to wake him up because someone cut off a hand or something, and he's like, "Okay."
Julia: Okay.
Eric: But I mean—
Julia: Just Umbi— like, it's Cammie bringing Umbi into Havana's room and Umbi's just holding a stump and Cammie's like, "Havana, wake up."
Brandon: Wake up.
Eric: Well, we described Havana's room in the beginning of this arc, too.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: I think— because he also has his lofted bed and all this stuff—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —I think it's also— he tries— he does that so that it's harder— as hard as possible for someone to wake him up.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Mornings are his me time.
Eric: Yeah, for sure.
Julia: For sure.
Amanda: And I think Troy is now taking the pumpy out for playing on the deck.
Brandon: Oh, fun.
Amanda: And I imagine that Harold and Sil have come up with some kind of, like, you know, ball toss game to tire the pumpy out first thing in the morning, get the zoomies out.
Julia: Cute.
Brandon: That's good.
Eric: Oh, my God, I'm imagining the pumpy with zoomies, it's cute.
Amanda: So cute.
Eric: So cute.
Brandon: So cute.
Amanda: And, Julia, Ginger asked for you and me specifically, "What do we think Cammie and—"
Brandon: Wow!
Amanda: "What do we think Cammie and Troy have as ideas for what to do when they find the salmon and move on to the next part of their lives? For Brandon, does Umbi feel satisfied with this being the last chapter of his life?
Brandon: You two first-
Julia: Do you want to answer first, Brandon, since you had such strong opinions?
Amanda: I think you should.
Brandon: No, I think you two should go first, because you are more interesting and important because you went first.
Amanda: Yep.
Julia: I don't think Cammie has a plan for after all of this. I was thinking about this, and I think Cammie would accidentally start a cult.
Amanda: Nice.
Julia: Not like a bad one, necessarily, but like, you know—
Amanda: Just like a self-improvement cult.
Julia: Yeah, one of those, like, communes in upstate New York—
Amanda: Easy.
Julia: —that is fairly liberal, and— you know, one of those.
Amanda: Julia, you'd be so good at it.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: I don't think a commune is necessarily a cult. You could just have a nice commune, you know.
Julia: A lot of times they are though, and Cammie has like—
Amanda: That's when they slouch towards cult.
Julia: Yeah. Cammie has strong opinions about religion, so I think it would end up being a cult regardless.
Brandon: Hmm. Yeah, that's true.
Amanda: It's pretty good.
Julia: Cammie would end up switching classes from witch to martyr.
Eric: Real. I'm surprised— sometimes I'm like, why was Cammie not a martyr? It would have been so complicated. That class is really complicated and I—
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: —don't know how it would work on actual play, but Cammie is basically doing all that stuff anyway.
Julia: I would have figured it out.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Mage Hand Mike, you're crazy for that one.
Julia: Hmm.
Brandon: Amanda.
Amanda: I don't know if Troy expects to survive this, or has a plan beyond it. We all know he takes his day one league at a time, his life one league at a time. And—
Brandon: I love the idea that that statement is one step at a time, but league is a much longer distance.
Amanda: Uh-huh. Yeah. Just one little ship, you know, sail 'em away at a time. I don't know. I don't know. I think this is more important than cementing legacy, finding the salmon, you know, figuring out how he can leave a positive impact on the world is more important to him than preserving his own life.
Brandon: May I proffer to you on a little silver platter and a cloche?
Amanda: Ooh.
Brandon: And I take off the cloche.
Amanda: Oh.
Brandon: And I unveil to you that Troy turns into a sort of daring magician type figure, like a Houdini type figure. And maybe his whole thing is that he gets into a barrel over the, let's say—
Eric: Over the Cascade once it comes back on.
Brandon: Had he— thank you. Over the Cascade.
Julia: Or the Craggish calls, like, at the end of the Crags.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: On the edge of the world.
Amanda: Yeah,
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Brandon, this is an incredible headcanon. You have missed one very important facet of Troy's personality, which is that he'd be too delighted by his own magic tricks to do them for anyone but himself.
Brandon: You do a sleight of hand card check, and he's like, "Oh, fuck. Cool. That was awesome."
Amanda: Yeah, yeah, like–
Eric: He'd be like, "Yo, you want to see how I did?"
Julia: Whoa.
Amanda (as Troy): Wait, where did it go?
Julia: Yeah, yeah.
Amanda: Yep, yep, yep.
Brandon: That's amazing. I
Eric: "It was behind my hand the whole time."
Amanda (as Troy): "That's amazing."
Brandon: "Did y'all see that shit?"
Amanda (as Troy): It is behind my ear.
Julia: Troy would be the worst magician ever, because he reveals it as soon as he does it.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: I love that.
Amanda: Exactly.
Brandon: Or—
Amanda: Exactly.
Brandon: Or is it the most fun magician ever, you know?
Amanda: He's having the most fun possible.
Eric: It would be so funny. You know those videos where, like, people are watching magician and then run around with, like, their hands on their head? Like, "Yo!" Imagine the magician did that.
Amanda: Yeah. Like that looping GIF of like the kid going, "Yo, out of the frame." That's Troy.
Eric: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: I would love that. That'd be awesome.
Amanda: Oh, it'd be so good.
Brandon: As for Umbi being satisfied, I think— I don't think he thinks that way entirely. Well, one, he's not afraid to die. We—
Amanda: He accepts it.
Brandon: Yeah, he accepts it. And he's—
Amanda: His satisfaction doesn’t matter, almost.
Brandon: Yeah. He is religious in the sense that, like, he does believe in the cosmology of the world, so he's not, like, stressed about what comes next. He's just not, like, overtly religious like the Open Fields folks. So, yeah. I mean, I think he would be equally happy living another 400 years and equally happy dying tomorrow. I think he's just a— you know, he's just a just. He's just just, you know?
Amanda: He's just Ken.
Eric: He's one of those just.
Brandon: He's just. Yeah.
Amanda: Now, folks, we are finishing this Afterparty on Episode 61, so obviously Aidan, a Cryptid says, "How many episodes are left and is it eight?"
Brandon: Is it?
Amanda: Nice.
Julia: Yes.
Eric: No, it's not eight. I'm not ending a 69. Come on.
Brandon: But Eric, is it?
Julia: Hmm? Hmm?
Eric: No.
Amanda: Is it three?
Eric: Did I say we had three episodes left? Because that's not true. I know for a fact that's not true. We were recording more than that.
Julia: Uh-huh.
Brandon: Oh, you might have been like, "I don't know whether we have three or a bunch more." So—
Eric: Oh, that sounds like something I would say.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah. I really don't know— when 61 was finished, I'm like, "I truly do not know how many episodes we have left. It could be three, it could be 10, it could be anything."
Brandon: Is it eight?
Julia: Is it safe to tell them that we're still recording? Like we haven't recorded the finale yet?
Amanda: Yes, that's fair to say we have recorded a few more episodes as of now, since Eric is no longer the Joker. And we—
Eric: Thank you.
Amanda: —have not yet recorded the finale of the campaign. So we also don't know how many episodes are left.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Skree.
Eric: It's coming, though.
Julia: Skree.
Amanda: It's coming. It's coming.
Eric: It's coming.
Amanda: There have been a lot of good questions, by the way, about like reflecting on the campaign, reflecting on our characters. We're going to take all of that in a big, old Afterparty at the end of the journey, whenever that does come. So keep them coming, and don't worry, I'm saving those. Laura wants to know, "Eric, have you known from the start what the salmon is, or was it undefined until later in the story?" Do you know what the salmon is now?
Eric: First of all, I want everyone to know I have been sitting on the stupid seafoam flotsam salmon for 40 episodes.
Amanda: Oh, my God.
Eric: Ever since you all didn't go to Lake Encounter, I'm like, "I know that this thing is just a piece of flotsam with googly eyes, I know it. I do know what the salmon is. I've always known what the salmon is. We'll see what happens.
Amanda: What is it?
Eric: You thought you can get me, huh?
Amanda: We want to know.
Eric: You'll find out.
Amanda: Now.
Eric: I really relished in Troy going down to the exhibit.
Brandon: It was really good.
Julia: It was really good.
Eric: And really just stretching that out for as long as possible at the end. I have so much fun doing the ends of podcasts. It's— I have so much fun doing the ends of these episodes. They're like, I don't care that I don't know how to start them. I'm fine with it.
Amanda: Here's a comment from Katy, speaking of Troy, specifically. All right. So Katy has a sort of a cascade of comments here. I feel weird reading it about myself. Eric, would you read this for me?
Eric: Yeah, sure.
Brandon: Oh, yeah. And Eric, can you do— can you throw some stank on it?
Eric: Sure. Amanda's comment in episode 61, small thorax, big legs is my favorite shape of woman."
Brandon: That was some good spank.
Eric: "Is getting big end of episode 57 vibes, where she said, 'Yeah,' but they died thinking of thighs, so not that bad."
Julia: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. This is what Amanda sounds like in my head.
Brandon: That's really good.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Both the quote and the voice, very good.
Eric: "And I just want to know from all of you, but mostly Brandon doing the editing, is there any hesitation that's being edited out there on these kinds of lines? Are we all just immediate off the dome, first thought, best thought? And for Amanda—"
Brandon: Okay. Everyone, everyone, shut up. I got it.
Eric: Okay.
Brandon: Amanda has a certain kind of brain disease—
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: —that has started probably in the Camp-Paign, maybe?
Amanda: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: Where she just fucking says the first— literal first thing that comes to her brain—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: —first thought, best thought. There's no hesitation. It comes out like— I don't know, what's a good metaphor? It doesn't matter.
Amanda: Again. Brandon, do you want to hear what my brain supplied for that?
Brandon: It's— yes, I do.
Julia: What?
Brandon: Yes, please.
Amanda: Like a greasy kid on a water slide.
Brandon: Yep.
Julia: Oh, yeah?
Amanda: Where did that come from? Where did that come from?
Brandon: A 100%. Yeah. Where did that come from?
Eric: Why is the kid greasy?
Amanda: Where did that come from?
Julia: Why does he need to be greasy?
Eric: Did he get there greasy and then ran away on a water slide?
Brandon: I don't know if it's something we trained into Amanda in terms of doing D&D for six years, or whatever the fuck. Or if it's something that you consciously chose to do, but good Lord, is it good content.
Eric: I want to pose something that I think that since Amanda played the least amount of Dungeons & Dragons out of all of us, we really saw her growth as a player.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And, like, Inara was like standard, basic Dungeons & Dragons player.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And Aggie in Campaign Two was like, "All right, I'm going to explore parts of myself." Campaign Two, being in the real world, quote-unquote—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: I felt Aggie felt the most like Amanda in my head, but she just had superpowers, right?
Amanda: Uh-hmm
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: But then there was a moment when she created Dr. Bertha Bones.
Julia: I really think that was the turning point. Yeah.
Eric: A 100%. Where this cracked open and Amanda's like, "Oh, my characters can be—" in the way that I think I create NPCs, like they're bits. And then you just live in the bit, so you know what to say. So Dr. Bertha Bones—
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —certainly, right? That's the most straightforward for a One Shot. She likes putting parts on to animals. All right. Great. Camp, Carrie-Anne, that's definitely— it starts to become a little bit more fleshed out as a game, as people call it, in the long form improv comedy community where— or in TV writing, where it's like, "All right, this is a character defined by their thing." And Carrie-Anne's was, "I love camp," and that has been— you really played in that space. Troy, being a himbo prince, has really kicked open the doors, and I feel like you are just ready to say what you're going to say every time living in this world.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Thank you.
Brandon: As for the rest of us, I definitely take time to think of things and ask for suggestions from the crowd here. Julia is pretty much tight, on point every time. Just knows exactly what to say and what to do.
Amanda: Julia clocks into work.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: This is my real like I have concentration for two and a half hours, and then my brain shuts off.
Eric: In between— the reason why Julia is so fast going to the bathroom is that the work clock is right there, so she sees it, and she realizes she's on the clock, and needs to get back to her seat.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: And then Eric is both, I think. Like, often you know exactly what you want to say. That's probably the most often, but sometimes you're like— occasionally, you'll be like, "What's a good thing here or there?" And then Julia will say, "This."
Eric: Yeah. I gotta— I feel like my— I'm off the table, because I have to think of the most stuff to say.
Brandon: Yeah. I mean, that's the problem, is you have a million things to think about, yeah.
Amanda: But very rarely do you hesitate for more than a few beats.
Brandon: No. Yeah, yeah.
Amanda: You almost never say like, "I need a minute," and then have us just kind of, like, chit chat. You're almost always finding the words to describe the thing that you know you want to do.
Eric: Well, I mean—
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: —I think I don't necessarily want you all to help me. I think that's the whole premise—
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: —of what we're doing is, like, if I need to stop, I need to, like, take my headphones off and think for 30 seconds, I really do.
Brandon: Right.
Eric: So— but it's— that's more like story generation stuff. I feel pretty good about stepping into character. A lot of people sent me— did you all see this, like, Instagram clip that was going around of— from Sesame Street where Elmo and Zoe were talking to a pumpkin?
Amanda: No.
Brandon: No.
Julia: No.
Eric: Oh, my god. Okay, I'm gonna send this. I'm gonna find it and show it to all of you.
Brandon: Please do.
Eric: And Julia, please put the audio of this in here, because—
Julia: Okay.
Eric: —I've never felt more seen that this is how I do characters.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: All right, let's go.
Brandon: Here's the clip.
Elmo: Wow. Elmo didn't know pumpkin patches could be so surprising.
Mr. Pumpkin: Very surprising.
Telly: Hey, you're a talking pumpkin.
Sally: Wow.
Mr. Pumpkin: That's right, I'm a talking pumpkin. And I got lots of things to talk about.
Elmo: Oh, like what, Mr. Pumpkin?
Mr. Pumpkin: Well, like all the great stuff you can do with us pumpkins this time of year.
Sally: Oh, what kind of stuff?
Mr. Pumpkin: Pumpkin stuff. Look, check it out.
Amanda: Deeply Eric coded. Deeply Eric coded. You're right.
Eric: So it's like, if I'm not delivering story or exposition or I gotta think about what happens next, I usually like— Amanda, like just— I'm trying to get into the game of the character that I've made, and it's usually stuff like this.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Like pumpkin stuff.
Brandon: Pumpkin stuff. That's pretty good.
Amanda: Incredibly Eric coded.
Julia: Us trying to grab information out of NPCs and Eric goes, "Pumpkin stuff."
Brandon: Pumpkin stuff.
Eric: It's like this NPC is a pumpkin. It does not know what's going on with the Diamond Knot.
Julia: Fair.
Brandon: I definitely— I do think that Eric is by far the quickest out of all of us in terms of improv brain.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Julia is the most composed and second quickest. And then me and Amanda, if we shut our brains off, we could do some crazy shit.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Yeah, that's right.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: But our brains get in the way.
Amanda: Yeah. Katy wants to know if my brain's always in this place, and I only let you see small pieces, or if it comes and goes. This is always happening here. This is—, it's always like this in here. And I— this is a safe space where I can let it out in the slightly different from my own voice of a himbo butterfly, which—
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: —you know, part of me wishes I was. Seems simple, seems nice.
Brandon: It's interesting.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: So we do have different brains then, because I ha— my brain does not do that normally. I have to completely shut it off—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: —and just go straight from heart to mouth, I guess, speech.
Eric: Hmm.
Amanda: I'm like an AM-FM radio, where the AM Radio, it's just— it's shouting bullshit at me all the time. And then the FM radio is what is, you know, in the forefront most of the time. But here in Join the Party—
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: —I get to just let it ride.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: I love it.
Eric: Katy also says, "These are my favorite parts when Amanda says wild shit. I've listened to them several times now, and the first time I listened to 57 I was working my library job where I shelve return stuff in its appropriate places, and was giggling uncontrollably in the children section. So thank you for the highlight of my day."
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: People in the library are like, "Why is there just a large sounding child in the—
Julia: Hee, hee, hee, hee, hee.
Eric: Tee, hee, hee, hee.
Amanda: Thank you for listening to our podcast at work.
Julia: Yes.
Eric: Wage theft with us.
Brandon: Also, thanks for being a librarian. That's tight.
Amanda: Right.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Awesome. All right, folks, any final words here before we move on to spoiling that plank?
Brandon: Smattering.
Julia: Yerr.
Eric: I didn't— didn't get a chance to talk about it that much, but Cammie calling Baba Rutabaga—
Julia: Baba Rutabaga.
Amanda: So good.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: —was really good. I thought it wa— you know, I got to do weird stuff, like, having her reach through Nonny, which I thought was really fun.
Amanda: So good.
Julia: Someone said they screamed at one of those points.
Eric: Yeah. But also Baba Rutabaga doing— like, doing the most mom shit possible and, like, slamming so many cabinets.
Julia: That was very funny.
Eric: And then she had, like, a guy in a cauldron.
Amanda: So good.
Eric: I was like, "Yep, this is your mom witch. Here she is."
Julia: I loved that scene. That was very fun, especially because, like, I was going into it very emotional from Cammie's perspective. And then it being so, like, relatable, but also funny was, mwa, chef's kiss.
Brandon: And may I remind you, Eric? The guy was not in the cauldron. He was the cauldron in my head.
Amanda: His mouth was the cauldron.
Eric: Oh, that's right, we turned him into the cauldron.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Right. We turned him into the cauldron. That was awesome.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Cammie's like, "Okay."
Eric: Yeah, there's a hard thing, and something I've been trying really hard not to do, which is be like— when you— you all asked me, like, a world-building question, I can't just be like, "I don't know. Maybe, no one knows." Because it's like you need to know, because it's fiction. Like—
Julia: Right.
Eric: —this isn't the real world where we don't know where we go, where we die. People do know where you go, where you die. Brandon, you were talking about being religious. It's a different thing about being religious when you know that gods exist, right?
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: And you've seen them, and you can talk to them, and some of them are jerks, like the Planter is. I really imagine the Planter being, like, very uptight, and the Waterer not being, and that was the whole thing I was getting across during the conversation between the Waterer and Umbi. So I tried really hard during that conversation with Baba Rutabaga and Cammie to be like, "All right, I need to stick to my cosmology that I'm about to reveal with the Waterer of like, you can't bring the Key with a Gaze back, because the Key with a Gaze is an unnatural creation only from the water."
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Hmm.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: And I think that's really important to try to get across. If someone would know it, you have to balance the human thing of a child talking to a parent or trying to explain the unknowable to someone who wants to know, right? And then Baba Rutabaga probably knows, so it's like, how do you bridge that emotional gap and trying to be sensitive and soft with someone, while also saying, "Yeah, the Planter is a stuck up butthole, and there's nothing we can do about it. I saw him once."
Brandon: Yes.
Julia: Yeah, yeah.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: It's like, yeah, you could try to Hercules or Euripides yourself, or Orpheus yourself, but I'm not letting you do that, because that's stupid. I know people who've Orpheus themselves, but I'm not letting you do that, child. Don't do that.
Julia: Fair.
Eric: I'm sure there's a whirlpool somewhere you could jump into, but it's— that's a whole other campaign.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: I bet Orpheus is like a bell pepper.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: I like it. That's pretty funny.
Julia: Or a cicada, like a loud bug.
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: That's good. It's like, whatever you do, don't fucking die, and they go, "Uh-hmm." Immediately, fucks and dies. All right, folks. Lots coming up. We haven't played all of the episodes that we're going to be talking about on the next Afterparty, so we don't even know all of the plot that is going to be happening by the time we get there. So lots of questions about, is this the final arc? Is this the real salmon? What is going to happen on the ship at Lake Encounter? Question from SharpSnooter, "Could the key—"
Brandon: Wait, Amanda, I gotta go on the plank first. What are we doing?
Eric: Yar.
Brandon: I gotta get on the plank.
Amanda: Brandon, step back at a safe distance.
Julia: Yar. Avast ye.
Amanda: You're not—
Brandon: I don't stand on the plank?
Amanda: No. No.
Julia: No.
Amanda: You're not going over the plank. The questions are going over the plank.
Brandon: Oh, I've been going over the plank the whole time.
Amanda: Brandon, that's why you're so crusty with salt water.
Julia: Hmm. That's why you got pneumonia.
Eric: That's why Brandon's covered in barnacles.
Amanda: SharpSnooter wants to know, "Could the Key with a Gaze be brought back by Audrey the rotten queen? Can you revive or zombify something that technically wasn't alive in the first place?"
Eric: I would say no. I can't—
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: If I can't let Cammie do it, I can't let the zombies do it. That's, I think, the finality of this whole thing is like— you know, like assassination in the real world is a big deal because you— that person's no longer here anymore, you turn them into an object. But—
Julia: True.
Eric: —when— you know in a place when you revivify, what does dying mean? But in this particular case, it's like you sure did turn this life full creature into an object very fast.
Amanda: Hmm.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: We had a couple questions about, "Will the Rotten Key have to take the Key with a Gaze's place?" That we don't know.
Eric: Hmm.
Brandon: Ooh.
Julia: Interesting.
Amanda: And Anne, "I have so many questions about the theological implications of the Planter versus the Waterer. Can you choose which deity you go to after you die? What happens?"
Julia: Oh. Hmm.
Amanda: Who can say?
Brandon: I know one character is going to find out.
Amanda: Who can say, Anne? Who can say?
Julia: Havana.
Brandon: There's another question here Under the spoil the plank from the Newsette Gazette.
Amanda: Oh.
Brandon: And—
Julia: Who's that? Is it from Brendon Gragle?
Amanda: Oh, my.
Brandon: It's Barndon Gargle.
Amanda: Oh, no.
Julia: Uh-huh.
Brandon: And it's— does Umbi have a family? Does he have kids?
Amanda: Was that Umbi's real daughter?
Eric: Yeah, that was great. The Bar Mitzvah, again, was awesome. I really—
Julia: Hell yeah.
Eric: I really like that.
Amanda: Oh, my God. The idea of just like a catering hall filling with water as, like, people's party dresses start to poof, like I—
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Ugh, chilling in the best way. So good.
Eric: I mean, the Waterer said— the Waterer challenged you, it was like, "Those weren't your real kids, right?" And Umbi was like, "No. No, I don't know."
Julia: "No. It wasn't."
Brandon: But who can tell— who can say if you can lie to the Waterer or not?
Julia: Well, you'll come back as a durian slug if you did.
Eric: 10 times, Brandon.
Amanda: So good.
Eric: 10 times.
Amanda: So good.
Eric: You'll be the stinkiest slug ever.
Brandon: Maybe Umbi would love to be stinky.
Julia: He already is.
Brandon: No.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Brandon, if you got any stinkier, then the Waterer couldn't flirt with you, so watch out for that.
Amanda: It's pretty fun for me, because that's not how Eric flirts in real life, and so it's just like— it's a fun new flavor of Eric flirting that I get to hear to our co-worker on the podcast.
Brandon: Does Eric flirt by being a little kitty who knocks drinks out of your hand?
Amanda: No, that's different. It's a little kitten mode.
Brandon: Okay.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: I gotta go a little kitten mode, Brandon. I gotta lock in.
Amanda: All right, folks. Lots of business to be done as we sail toward the end of this campaign. I'm having so much fun. I don't want it to end, and yet, the horizon is coming and I'm stoked.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: All right.
Julia: Avast.
Brandon: Avast.
Amanda: Say farewell, players.
Brandon: Yar!
Julia: Farewell, players.
Eric: Fair— fell— farewell, players.
Amanda: May your rolls turn ever upward.
[theme]