The Afterparty at the End of the Tide, Part 2

What happened to all the zombies? Remember all the wildness in the Divine Labyrinth? And is Eric’s heel turn complete or is the worst… I mean, best still to come? All that and more answering YOUR questions at the end of Campaign 3! 

We’ll see you next week with the start of the ONE SHOT DERBY! Then right into Campaign 4.

Housekeeping

- RSVP for our Campaign 3 drinks pop-up at jointhepartypod.com/popup

- LIVE IN PORTLAND, March 23! Get your tickets at jointhepartypod.com/live

- Last call on our limited-edition Campaign 3 dice! Get yours before they’re gone at https://jointhepartypod.com/dice

Sponsor

- Green Chef, where you can get free salads for two months plus 50% off your first box at greenchef.com/jointhepartyfree

Find Us Online

- website: jointhepartypod.com

- patreon: patreon.com/jointhepartypod

- instagram: instagram.com/jointhepartypod

- bluesky: bsky.app/profile/jointhepartypod.com

- twitter: twitter.com/jointhepartypod

- tumblr: jointhepartypod.tumblr.com

- facebook: facebook.com/jointhepartypod

- merch & music: jointhepartypod.com/merch

Cast & Crew

- Game Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver

- Co-Host (Umbi), Co-Producer, Sound Designer, Composer: Brandon Grugle

- Co-Host (Chamomile Cassis), Co-Producer, Editor: 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 Podcasts: 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, hi, hello, and welcome to the Afterparty. This is not the coming in of the Tide, but the leaving of the Tide.

Brandon:  Whoa.

Amanda:  The Tide is going out.

Brandon:  Whoa.

Amanda:  And this is—

Brandon:  Whoa.

Amanda:  —the second part of our Afterparty, The End of the Tide.

Julia:  Oops.

Brandon:  Whoa.

Eric:  Wait, Brandon got tugged— Brandon got caught in the undertow. Hold on. Amanda's mom, go save Brandon.

Amanda:  Brandon, swim parallel to shore. Swim parallel to shore. Don't try to swim in.

Brandon:  Which one is parallel?

Amanda:  Along the shoreline.

Brandon:  Okay.

Julia:  The left, right.

Eric:   We also need a fourth member and someone to edit the podcast, because we're gonna dive—

Julia:  Fair enough.

Amanda:  Oh.

Eric:   —we're gonna dive in the sea.

Brandon:  I'm back, I'm back, I'm back. It's fine. I made it.

Julia:  Aw. The siren saved you.

Eric:  Wow.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Now, Brandon's in her thrall, though. Oh, well.

Julia:  Hmm. Brandon's just gonna do random plugs about sirens. Go visit them on their islands. They won't eat you.

Eric:  You know those hot ladies on the rocks? Go talk to them.

Brandon:  They're nice.

Amanda:  Nothing bad will happen to you.

Julia:  Brandon, just remember, like, every, like, 10 minutes or so, you got to do that plug. T

Brandon:  They're ca— they got candy. It's good.

Amanda:  Folks, we have a lot to get to today as the Tide is going out. First, a section of the Afterparty called Wow, You Did It.

Julia:  We did.

Amanda:   All about reflecting on the campaign and what we have accomplished together over these last two years.

Eric:  Before we get started, I want to thank everyone who wrote in for— because this is Afterparty at the end of Campaign 3, Part Two, everyone wrote in questions about it. Thank you. Everyone on Discord, everyone on Patreon, everyone on Instagram and on Bluesky.

Brandon:  Hell yeah.

Eric:  We really appreciate it, and it's nice to— here's the thing about Join the Party listeners, you're all very nice and respectful, and none of you are toxic. So it's very nice to give you all opportunities to talk to us and say stuff that we're asking for, which is really nice, and a lot of you had incredibly thoughtful questions. There's a lot of questions that I collected that we had already covered in Part One. So imagine there were, like, two, three times as many questions as we're going to read out.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Gotcha.

Amanda:  Hell yeah, man.

Brandon:  Yeah, thank you all.

Amanda:  Alrighty. Let's begin then with Elissa, whose child has probably tripled in her lifespan during the course of Campaign 3. "Eric, do you feel—"

Brandon:  She's 99 years old now.

Amanda:  No, the baby was already in Campaign One and now— okay. Anyway, "Eric, do you feel you were adequately able to accomplish your goal of being a heel with the DM glove, as promised in the pre-theme song, part of episode one of this campaign?"

Eric:  Oh, let me— hold on, I have to talk to myself when I'm wearing the DM glove. Let me put it on.

Brandon:  Oh, no, it's here.

Eric:  It's here.

Brandon:  Oh, no.

Amanda:  Eric, if you just address that to your camera. If you just address that to your close-up, please.

Eric:  Honestly, I didn't have to because Brandon kept trying to kill himself.

Julia:  Fair. Fair.

Eric:  I mean, listen, I think that I did a lot of stuff that I really wanted to, which is make sure that we had definite villains for you to fight against, use the classes that Mage Hand Press— there is some really basic DM advice, which is shoot arrows at monks. Which is if you don't shoot arrows at monks, and they don't get a chance to catch it out of the air and throw them back.

Julia:  True.

Eric:  So being able to give everyone opportunities to explore this stuff, and you know, the core narratives that also were built into the Mage Hand Press classes, like, make the witch feel weird and out of place, give the sharp shooter things to sharp shoot, and give the Mad Bomber things to bomb, I think that I certainly touched on. So I feel good about that. You know, I— there's other thing, and I've been thinking about this a lot, as we've been preparing for what we're doing after Campaign 3 is, like, it's hard to keep— make fights interesting in Dungeons & Dragons, it just is.

Brandon:  It really is.

Eric:  So, you know, doing the multiple stage boss fight with the Harvester, I thought was really fun. The ship combat, I thought ended up really—being really fun. And I, you know, I feel like I did my best in the last few episodes, but it's hard.

Brandon:  You did very good.

Eric:  Thanks, Brandon.

Amanda:  Here is a nice follow-up question from Bella, "Are you guys proud of the world and story you created? I feel like you pushed a lot of the boundaries in DND storytelling, really departing from the typical, "we start in an inn/tavern." DND stories, in my experience, of that kind can be very interesting, but also very similar.

Brandon:  Oh.

Amanda:  And I love this observation, because it's like we're going back and reverse engineering a lot of what Eric was talking about in the end of 2022, as all this stuff was fomenting and we were deciding what to do in Campaign 3.

Eric:  Speaking of, I would really love to share the disclaimer that was at the beginning of the first episodes that we put out, because we were recording this in September 2022 and so much about Dungeons & Dragons changed over that time into January 2023—

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  —when we released it. Okay. Let me read it to you. "Hello, this is Eric from the present tense of January 2023. We recorded this episode at the end of September, even before we recorded the One Shot Derby episodes." Remember that? We did that in between—

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  —the Camp-Paign and Campaign 3. "This all happened before the open gaming license debacle with Wizards of the Coast. As well as their move to change the word race for species, but not really changing what it meant. More of a find and replace. What's funny is that this doesn't change anything that I or the rest of JTP folks have to say, other than it being novel, that we're using species for our upcoming game, because Wizards of the Coast has been a bad steward of DND for a long time."

Amanda:  Say it again.

Eric:  "The game they're selling you is not the game that we play at our table or the game that you play at your table. And it imperative that we keep this corporation's feet to the fire. This will all make sense when you hear the next section as I will explain what we're doing in our DND game set in Verda Stello." All right, now, back to it.

Amanda:  Eric, and would you give yourself a 12 out of 10 or 13 out of 10 for prescience?

Eric:  Very prescient, especially now that DND 2024 is now fully like Overwatch or Fortnite.

Julia:  Eric with the dodgeball of Apollo getting ready to spike it at all of us.

Amanda:  I need my Katy Perry skin. I need it.

Eric:  It's just that and me using a term for Nepo baby, before everyone came on to the term Nepo baby. Amanda and I called it Dad The Coach.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  Dad The Coach. I didn't hear that. That's great.

Amanda:  They might be a good player, but also their dad's the coach.

Eric:  But also their dad's the coach, which is why they're on the travel team.

Amanda:  So—

Eric:  Yeah, they're not gonna— dad is not gonna not have their son on the travel team.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Easier when dad's the coach.

Eric:  So, yeah, that's me and Apollo's Dodgeball.

Amanda:  So, Eric, fair to say that you feel like you did indeed push the boundaries of DND storytelling with an all-Homebrew and indeed non-Hasbro-owned setting for this campaign.

Eric:  I was trying, folks. It was fun coming back to a fully created world and doing it on our terms, which I feel like we did. But, you know, even that felt novel at the time when we were making this. And now thinking about where actual play is and where Hasbro, the company is, it's like— it feels like we have to do something else to push forward the things that I was excited about when we started Campaign 3.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Brandon, Julia?

Julia:  Yeah. I am very proud of, like, the world of Verda Stello and the decisions that led to the story that we created. I feel like I could spend, you know, a 10-year campaign in Verda Stello if we weren't, like, making a podcast, and we were only meeting, like, once a month. And, you know, everyone's scheduling conflicts were weird, and it's a whole thing. But, like, I loved this story, I loved the characters that we all had, and I— I'm very proud of it.

Brandon:  Yeah, I'm also very proud of it, too. I think I— I've— at least, I won't speak for y'all too, but I feel lucky that Eric likes to, I think, hopefully, and also chooses to take the burden off of us by heaving the boundary-pushing of DND storytelling on his back. I feel lucky that I get to, yeah, just like sort of play in the space that he provides. And, yeah, I think that's really a sweet thing to say. I don't think— you know, when we're playing it week to week, we're not thinking about that. So it's good to get that feedback that we're actually still doing it.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  I mean, we've been doing— I feel like we've been making stuff at this level and, like, at our size, for, I don't know, six years now. If Join the Party started in May 2017 and Brandon and I were talking about that for all of 2017 when I started at SiriusXM in 2016, right? I think that we've been at the level of success and size, and therefore— and also, you know, creative outlay for this since 2019, and it's 2025. And so much about actual play has changed under our feet while that's gone on. So the only thing we can do, instead of, you know, to me, we could be— all move to LA and pursue trying to use actual play as a way to become, you know, actors or whatever. Or we can just keep doing this thing, and I think that we decided to, you know, just keep working on the artistic project that we did.

Brandon:  I would not recommend moving to LA during a pandemic either, if we could—

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  Oh, right, Brandon did that.

Amanda:  Is that bad for you?

Brandon:  Yeah, it wasn't great. Yeah.

Amanda:  We're glad you're happy in the land of Amazon and—

Julia:  The land of no sun.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Brandon:  I think it's beautiful right now.

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Debatable.

Eric:  Yeah, look at all these crows. They wouldn't follow me around in LA.

Brandon:  Oh, I forgot to tell you guys not to take a quick sidebar, but the other day, we did a class— another class that this time, it was called Crow Talk, and we learned—

Amanda:  Is that how they said it?

Brandon:  That's how I said it every time.

Amanda:  Good. Someone should.

Julia:  I did see Lauren's post about that and—

Brandon:  Hell yeah.

Julia:  —was like, "Yes."

Brandon: We learned all about crows, baby.

Amanda:  Incredible. I really want to second what Brandon was saying. I just feel like I can be a very run-of-the-mill player in an extraordinary world—

Brandon:  Boo!

Julia:  Boo!

Amanda:  —in setting. No, no, no. Stop it, no. It's not—

Julia:  Boo. Bad self-talk!

Eric:  Amanda doesn't get to turn— tear down herself to compliment me, no. Brandon, get her. Brandon, come across the country and get her.

Brandon:  I know what you're trying to say, but you're very good.

Amanda:  Because my only exposure to DND and the tabletop role-playing world has been on Join the Party and—

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  —in home campaigns with Eric and Julia.

Brandon:  Right.

Amanda:  I am, therefore— this is my normal, and I feel so lucky that this is what I expect. And I imagine I'd find run-of-the-mill 5e very boring. I certainly found the DND movie boring for that very reason. Again, I think in some people's cup of tea, that's wonderful, but it's not mine.

Eric:   Well, I want to point out that Amanda was trying to read on her phone—

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  —with the light on—

Brandon:  God, I love that.

Eric:  —at, like, a press screening that we went to for the TV movie.

Amanda:  Yeah. And then Eric said, "You better step out". And I said, "I will." I find it lucky that this is what I think of as normal, and I very much take this like genre-pushing, boundary-pushing making something in the theater of the mind for audio, specifically, where your imagination can turbo charge the things that we are doing and experiencing. And that Brandon sound design is really lifting up, so that it feels like you're in the room with us. That is getting to my, like, theater kid heart in a way that I absolutely love, and to me, is synonymous with actual play and tabletop games in general, and why they are so successful and wonderful.

Brandon:  Yeah. I'm sorry for booing you.

Julia:  I'm not.

Brandon:  I'm not.

Julia:  Don't talk about yourself that way.

Eric:  The Tribunal says we're not sorry for booing you.

Amanda:  Tsuyu the Sable wants to know. "Eric, how do you feel about not reaching 69 episodes? But also, Brandon, how do you feel about not reaching 69 episodes?" Let it be known, I really wanted to do 69 episodes, and I was overruled.

Julia:  Yes.

Eric:  I intentionally did not want to do 69 episodes. I wanted to do 68.

Brandon:  Yeah. How do you feel about that, Eric?

Eric:  I feel great about it.

Brandon:  Great. I also feel great about it, UNO Reverse Card.

Eric:  No.

Julia:  Yeah, we really got out voted by Eric, even though the majority wanted 69 episodes.

Amanda:  Some things, Eric is the deciding vote, and that was one of them.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  We— honestly, like there was a few episodes here and there that we needed to cut into— because, one, they were very long, but two, you know, life gets in the way when you're doing a podcast for seven years. So we probably would— didn't even get close to 69 honestly, like in reality, but— yeah.

Eric:  And I'll— just also in things that happened in the last arc that I didn't know would take so long. I did not think that the Mango Crossing arc would take so long.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  So that's all— other stuff that just ended— we ended up playing out. Yeah, right, because I got Joker-fied, because I recorded, like, eight episodes in three weeks.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  That was over the Mango Crossing.

Brandon:  Oh, God, that was such a good eight weeks, or whatever.

Eric:  I wanted to die.

Amanda:  It was bad.

Eric:  I wanted to die so badly.

Amanda:  As the person who lives with Eric, I have to say, I'm not going back. We're not doing that again.

Brandon:  But as his creative partner in life, love, and podcasting, it was great.

Amanda:  That's right. That's right.

Eric:  I'm gonna be such a dick to you when we make the theme song for the next campaign.

Amanda:  Tsuyu also wanted to know, "Now that the campaign is over, do you plan to return to Verda Stello at any point in Join the Party's future? It's such a wonderful world."

Brandon:  Thank you.

Julia:  I mean, I think the answer is not yet. We don't have plans for it yet.

Eric:  Hmm.

Amanda:  You know, we revisited all of our campaign settings during the Rolling Bones live show tour. I definitely loved being able to revisit some of those characters in a live setting, so maybe that's on the table.

Eric:  It's probably the one—

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  —I would go back to live the most.

Julia:  Hmm.

Brandon:  Yep. Yeah, I don't know what we're doing in our live show in Portland yet on— fuck, what's the date?

Amanda:  March 23rd.

Brandon:  On March 23rd, go to jointheartypod.com/live to get your tickets now.

Amanda:  Oh, my God. Two live shows, the price of one?

Brandon:  What?

Julia:  Whoa.

Brandon:  Fees included?

Eric:  Keep podcasts weird?

Julia:  Keep podcasts weird.

Eric:  Keep podcasts weird.

Amanda:  I'm gonna drink something so weird that night, guys. You won't even know.  You won't even know. 

Eric:  There's gonna be cold brew in my cocktails, folks. It's gonna be crazy.

Brandon:  Ooh.

Amanda:  It's gonna be sick. Well, speaking of the theme song, Alistair said, "Even after listening to all 100-ish episodes, I am still blown away by how amazing your intro song is."

Eric:  That's good shit.

Amanda:  "How often do you find yourself humming it during editing? And any hints as to what music will look like for Campaign 4?"

Brandon:  There's a weird thing that happens when you are dealing with the same material over and over again, whether that be, like, mixing a song for someone else or writing/composing a new song or editing someone's voice/— I don't know, trying to think of something that repeats over and over again, but like a promo, whatever it is. You have to listen to it over and over again where, like, it sort of just stops sounding like anything.

Eric:  Hmm.

Brandon:  And it suddenly becomes like the constituent parts and, like, white noise, almost in a way.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  So I purposely don't listen to it.

Julia:  Meanwhile, I have a opposite feeling, and it's mostly about editing my own voice, which is, I will be sitting there editing on, like, hour, like, two or three, and I'll be like, "Shut up, bitch. Bitch, shut up."

Amanda:  Oh, Ghoulia, no.

Julia:  "Talk in full sentences, bitch. Come on."

Amanda:  Oh, no.

Brandon:  I understand that. I have the same thing with me. I'm like, "Stop fucking pausing for 30 seconds between every thought, you dumb idiot."

Julia:  I will say, I think it has gotten me more aware of how I talk on mic, editing my own voice.

Amanda:  That's good.

Eric:  True.

Brandon:  Definitely.

Eric:  The theme song is really good. I think it's really good.

Amanda:  I love it. I listen to it every time I review a draft of Join the Party. It plays in the beginning and then it comes back again at the end. And I go, "Oh, thank goodness," because I wanted to hear it a second time.

Julia: I sing along with it every time, like just a little hum.

Eric:  I'm really proud of the lyrics.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  I listened to this the theme song for the first time in a long time. When I was getting the episode description ready for the last episode, for episode 68, I pulled the lyrics from somewhere, and I put it in there, and I'm like, "These are really good lyrics. Good job, Eric."

Amanda:  Yeah. And every time I listen to it, my experience is, "Lauren's got such a good voice," and then it's, "Julia's got such a good voice." And then it's, "Roux has such a good voice."

Brandon: Yeah.

Amanda:  And then it's, "Man, Brandon can really sing." And then we get to the, "Huh!" and I listen to it myself, and I cannot hear it. I know I'm in there. I know I'm in there.

Brandon:  Yeah, I don't mean to imply that I'm not proud of it, because I am very proud of it. It was really fun to make. And, yeah, everyone who sang on it and did sound effects and other vocal stuff for it—

Julia:  Huh.

Brandon:  —were super fun and amazing to work with.

Eric:  Huh!

Brandon:  But, yeah, Eric was the best huh-er, for sure.

Eric:  It made me feel like Rick Rubin when I came up with that. I was like, "We're missing something. Can I go huh?" And then you're like, "Yeah, sure." Then I did it and it made the final cut. I'm like, "This is what Rick Rubin feels like all the time."

Amanda:  Exactly.

Eric:  Just in Shangri La combing his beard.

Amanda:  He should get a crystal DM glove.

Brandon:  Ooh.

Eric:  Oh, yeah.

Amanda:  Like, when he puts on the glove, then he touches the mixing board, you're like, "Oh, something nasty is about to go down." If I win the lottery, you— I wouldn't tell anyone, but there would be signs by Swarovski DM-ing glove.

Julia:  Brandon, speaking of singing and music, it is about time to plug the siren.

Brandon:  Oh, right, yeah. If you guys meet the siren down the block and you're scared because she looks a little bit menacing. Don't be so scared. She's very nice, and she'll give you a nice big hug if you just walk over there, swim over there and say, "Hello, I'm yours forever."

Julia:  Awesome. Thank you.

Eric:  I'm now afraid of the new horror movie, which is a siren with legs. That scares me. We have already started talking about the next theme song.

Brandon:  Yeah, I don't want to give anything away. Probably won't have singing, may have other types of speaking words.

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Oh.

Eric:  Yeah. I don't want it— yeah, we decided we did not want to have another theme song with lyric, but that doesn't mean anything. I think it was more that sea shanty near— needs lyrics.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  But everything else is open for interpretation.

Brandon:  Yeah, it's really identifying what the song, the theme needs for what we're trying to do with it.

Eric:  Yeah.

Brandon:  And this one doesn't need singing necessarily.

Eric:  Yeah, 100%.

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  That's a really good way to describe it, without be— without giving anything away.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  It will make sense once we start talking about it.

Julia:  I'm trying to picture that genre with song, like, lyrics, and I'm—

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  —just like, "Oh, they would be so silly."

Amanda:  It would be very silly. Speaking of genre, this is a great question from TJ, rolls Nat 20s for hugs, "I guess an overarching JTP question for me, the pod has covered the classic fantasy DND realm, superheroes, kids at camp, fighting monsters and now bug and plant pirates. What do you all feel you've learned about yourselves and your play styles and GM styles through these diverse worlds?" Which we answered a little bit in our last Afterparty, but I like doing this through the lens of the different worlds. And then TJ continues, "What ideas and tropes and through lines have stuck with you the most from across these arcs? What keeps you excited to keep playing TTRPGs for strangers on the internet?" For me, I really love how each campaign has a different theme about how human beings interact with each other.

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  I think a lot of campaign two was about responsibility, about how we use power. The Camp-Paign was about asserting yourself, in my view, and realizing that the people who are in charge of things above you and you expect that they have a plan, may not have a plan, and sometimes it's down to you being there in the moment, needing to be the person that acts. And then I love in the pirate story, how everybody thinks they're doing the right thing, and that really is one of the themes that stuck with me. I don't know what that theme is going to be for Campaign 4. I know some of the things that I'm excited to get at from a character perspective, but I love picking that up over time and looking back knowing what, you know, we were going through as a society, as, you know, colleagues in Eric's life. Like I love seeing the things that are on your mind, that I know are important to you, that, you know, you're working through, figuring out make their way into this art. And I really love looking back at the end of every campaign to sort of notice that through line.

Brandon:  Absolutely, yeah.

Julia:  I also— I love, in particular, both like in the games that we played and also the characters that I played for each of the campaigns, that I've been a part. The, like, themes of what we owe ourselves, what we owe our communities, and what we owe to each other. And I think that's something that when I'm doing character creation, I think a lot about the motivations in those themes. So—

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  —that's something that I often think about before we even, like, start really talking about a campaign. I'm like, "Okay, what is this character's motivation and what is the thing that they're going to owe to themselves, owe to the rest of the people in the party, and also owe to their communities?"

Eric:  Yeah. I like that. That's what— how I think about Campaign 2. Campaign 2 is, when you're put in charge of a community, what do you do? The campaign was, if you're a child or you're someone who needs the support of a community, can you do that and thrive, or can you navigate the people who are putting that community together for you? And then Campaign 3 was all about, can I serve myself and a community at the same time?

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Yeah. As a player and play styles, each one is definitely different and I think— as someone who's not an actor and I'm not— I don't want to put any words into Julia's mouth or anything, or any other actor, but like the different campaigns for me have each taught me what I am willing to play, what I don't want to play, and where I'm willing to push myself.

Julia:  Hmm.

Brandon:  Both in play style, of course, because, you know, I also— like Amanda, you know, I'd played a couple games before we started actually recording, but nothing major. So I learned how to be a better team player and also, like, rated my chaotic-ness and when to let it out. But also, like, what kind of characters I want to play and what kind of people I want to bring into our fictional world, and how I want them to interact with their world has changed over each arc, of course. Like as much as you love Tracy, he is very selfish in my point of view, and sort of going the other way with that, with Milo, and then coming into your own and the campaign, and then— and this one, reasserting some of the selfishness but from a different perspective, from a more knowing and more fun perspective, like really learning what kind of play style I enjoy doing, and then moving in a way that I want to explore in the next one. Which we'll do in the next campaign, too.

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:  Hmm.

Eric:  Umbi was much more cynical than I would say selfish. It's like—

Brandon:  Yeah, that's a better word. Yeah.

Eric:  —I'm— I— I'm doing this for me because I know what happens when I don't.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  Like, I'm gonna blow something up with my bombs, because how else are we gonna get anything done?

Brandon:  Which I— yeah. I think selfishness turned mature ends up being sort of cynical, you know?

Eric:  Yeah, for sure.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  Or, like— yeah. Or your community-mindedness fermenting into the need of cynicism.

Brandon:  Yeah, exactly.

Amanda:  It gets drunk, so tasty, but a little hang over the next day.

Brandon:  Oh, we should have had some honey, people, some bees that made Mead.

Julia:  Hmm.

Amanda:  Well, we have the whole island that we— you know, the hive structure in the, like, skeleton.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Julia:  I bet there's a bunch of, like, bee monks that make Mead somewhere out there.

Eric:  I— Julia, I think you've invented that, like, five times throughout campaign three at some point.

Julia:  Probably. Probably.

Eric:   We are— we have chartreuse monks. Don't— didn't we?

Brandon:  Yeah. Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  And we don't know—

Amanda:  We talked about it, yeah.

Eric:  And we don't know what type of Greenfolk they were, because that's why they're—

Julia:  Right.

Eric:  Because that's the whole thing about chartreuse.

Julia:  I just love monks. Okay?

Eric:  No, I— respect— respectfully, Julia, you have invented that multiple times.

Julia: That's fair.

Brandon:  Respectfully, make sure you shoot arrows at them.

Julia:  There you go.

Amanda:   And I'd say, as to TJ's final question about what keeps us excited to keep playing TTRPGs, I'm not done. I am excited to, like, see the next evolution of this. Brandon, as you were talking, I was thinking about almost like a— you know, I watch a lot of food competition shows, and there is always the challenge where it's like, you know, make a— basically, like, a bake sale. Like you're making an individual dish. All you want to do is stand out and I— that's how I feel I brought my own energy to Campaign 1. Then in Campaign 2, I feel like I overcorrected a little bit and I was like, "Okay, this is, like, a planned tasting menu." We have, like, many different, you know, courses and, like, how are we all gonna fit together? And, like, make sure nobody's going in too much of a direction. Still really fun. But this felt like a potluck, where you are thinking about— you know, there is a spreadsheet. Like, you don't want to make exactly the same dish as somebody else, but also, I trust that everyone else is gonna figure out how they fit in—

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  —in the best way. And so I don't know if that metaphor, you know, works for everybody else, but it really does for me and I like the potluck approach, where you— again, like, you want to be conscientious, but also you want to, you know, do something challenging or excellent for yourself. And in the end, I think the audience gets a balanced meal, where all of us kind of bring our own flavors.

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:   Yeah, I think it's more exciting. Like, can you go to the bake sale that has unique but incredibly big and bombastic desserts? Where you're like, "Ooh, an Ube brownie. Ooh, ice cream. Ooh—" whatever, you know? You get to, like, move back and forth between the different desserts. This metaphor has gotten maybe a little bit too far, but I think that's a good one. I liked it.

Eric:  I can ground this in a different way. I think it matters that Join the Party existed before Multitude existed, and continues to exist as Multitude, the collective, but also our jobs grow and change. Increasingly, actual play seems to be someone's like foray into doing this, into creation, or it being the parasocial machine that runs parallel to the main outlay that people are doing. But it's nice that this just is and continues to be our actual play show that we're doing. And it's just nice to pour our creative and, you know, gamesmanship, our creative energies into it.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  Eric, let's get really honest about your creative energy. Okay? Will you come with me?

Eric:   Sure.

Amanda:  All right. Nerd22 wants to know, "Was this entire season just to make a lox joke? Because we— as we all know, there's salmon and the lox, but also, at the beginning, you kept referring to Verda Stello as a bagel or bialy-shaped world. If this season was a massive lox joke, I swear that is so absolutely ridiculously hilarious. It would be really funny. I support you. I love it."

Eric:  Yes.

Julia:  Great. Cool. Cool.

Amanda:  Damn, dude.

Brandon:  Damn, dude.

Julia:  Wow.

Eric: Now, did I  have it the entire time and— or did people point it out to me throughout Campaign 3 and now I'm just saying yes? Who can say, really?

Brandon:  Who can say?

Eric:  But I'm saying yes now. Yeah.

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  N/a Nicole asks, "Did you players have spare characters keyed up just in case something bad happened?

Brandon:  Yeah, I—

Julia:  Yeah, we already talked about Captain Copernicus Cobb is not yours, Brandon.

Brandon: No, no. I did [yells incoherently] Captain Copernicus Cobb is mine.

Amanda:  Brandon selected, invented from his brain, whole cloth, Captain Copernicus Cobb, I heard. Is that true?

Brandon:  Yes, exactly. Thank you.

Julia:  Why are you screaming? Why are you leaving the frame? Why are you taking off your headphones?

Brandon:  Why are you burning down your house?

Eric:  Why are you— Julia driving to the ocean to scream at it?

Julia:  I think I picked dig and roll one time instead of Brandon.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  And Brandon has been like, "I'm stealing everything from Julia. Anything I could possibly steal is now mine."

Eric:  Okay, let's talk about Captain Copernicus Cobb for a second. How did you envision— so if Cammie died—

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  —what role would this older, disgraced corn pirate fit in?

Julia:  He was not going to be a corn pirate, first off.

Eric:  Okay, great.

Julia:  I refused to play a corn character. This is not gonna happen.

Eric:  Which is a little corn cob running around.

Amanda:  I'm gonna give you weird poops.

Julia:  I was gonna have him, I think, bee from Hot House and this idea of like, these, like, trained military people who were then being sent out to find goods and resources that could be then used by Hot House in order to build technology.

Brandon:  Hmm.

Julia:  And then at some point, he was like, "Actually, piracy is kind of fun." And then go from there. But I don't know how— I mean, you and I would have had to talk about how we would have incorporated him into the party and how they would have met him, but—

Brandon:  Yeah. If I would have played him, he would have just been a bumbling corn cob, so—

Julia:  I was really— I think, at the time, I was watching BBC's Ghosts, and I really liked the captain character from BBC's Ghosts.

Brandon:  Hmm.

Julia:  And I was gonna really kind of play on that archetype.

Eric:  During the pandemic, Amanda's dad recommended the US version to us, because they had a Dungeon & Dragons episode and I said, "Okay." And then we didn't talk about it again.

Julia:  Fair, fair.

Brandon:  And then you sat in silence for dinner for three hours.

Eric:   We were driving around to see if we could get good bagels, but all of the bagel shops had fully 50 people unmasked in them at all times, so we never got bagels.

Julia:  Hmm. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. I ha— I think I've watched like two or three episodes of the US version. It's not very good, but I love Rose McIver, who is the main character in that, so I gave it a chance

Eric:  Oh, she was in the Don't Trust the B---- In Apartment 23, right? With Krysten Ritter?

Julia:  I don't know if she was. She was in iZombie. That's what I know her from.

Eric:  Oh, sure.

Julia:  And also A Christmas Prince.

Brandon:  A Christmas Prince.

Eric:  Oh, right, Christmas Prince. Oh, that's good.

Brandon:  Yeah, I didn't have any other backup characters. I'm never gonna die. I'm also immortal, so I don't plan for the worst-case.

Eric:  Brandon, I have you on tape saying you're a bumbling corn cob.

Brandon:  But an immortal one.

Amanda:  I also did not have a backup. But if it came to it, I would have figured it out. I think I'd be more interested in taking over an NPC than I would introducing a new PC if that is an option.

Brandon:  Oh.

Eric:  Oh.

Amanda:  Depending on kind of what's going on in the campaign at the moment. But there were a couple times that I fully thought Troy might go down, and I was not thinking about what would happen next.

Brandon:  Yeah, you were just bawling your eyes out.

Julia:  Fair.

Brandon:  We had to cut a lot of time.

Julia:  A lot of just Amanda crying.

Amanda:  Crying.

Julia:  We're like, "It's okay. Like you haven't even rolled a death saving throw yet."

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  Amanda was crying so much, she was farting, too. It was re—

Julia:  Oh. Toots.

Eric:  So it was just like alternate—

Brandon:  Oh, oh.

Eric:  —crying and farting.

Amanda:  Yeah, I'm a tootsie little baby.

Brandon:  What NPC would you have taken?

Amanda:  We can have that for the soundboard.

Brandon:  Thank you.

Amanda:  I think, like Julia said, it would be a matter of, like, talking with Eric about his priorities, about what he thinks is interesting. I could definitely see myself, like, trying to find a way to integrate, you know, Tessie the Storm with— what the crew is doing.

Brandon:  Hmm.

Amanda:  Or maybe, you know, one of the characters from the One Shots that we did in universe in Campaign 3. I really liked my spider plant captain.

Eric:  Oh, that was good.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  Good stuff.

Julia:  We were all gonna be captains.

Amanda:  Yeah, we'll see, right? But I mean—

Julia:  Just a party of captains, if all of our— if we get a total party kill.

Amanda:  If— Julia, if everyone's the captain who captains the captains, and the answer is none of them probably.

Julia:  Probably.

Brandon:  I would have loved this— the last campaign, where it's Amanda playing the spider plant from the thing, me playing Captain Cornelius Cobb—

Amanda:  Uh-huh.

Brandon:  —and also Julia playing Captain Cornelius Cobb.

Julia:  Well, you could play Captain Cornelius Cobb. I'll play Captain Copernicus Cobb.

Brandon:  What the fuck ever, man.

Eric:  Twin corn cobs.

Julia:  Twins.

Amanda:  Here's a question from Mike, "First of all, thank you so much for this story. Every campaign somehow surpasses the last, and you always leave me feeling both heartbroken and eager for more by the time I reach the end."

Julia:  Yeah, me too.

Eric:  Sometimes I cut the niceness that people say because it feels really self-indulgent, but I kept this one. Thanks, Mike.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  Mike continues, "I wanted to ask, one, is there a character choice that surprised you the most over the campaign? And two, hey, Eric, are you planning a different heel turn for the next campaign? Eyes emoji."

Julia:  I think Troy trapping his sister on the Lake Encounter ship really surprised me.

Eric:  Same.

Brandon:  Yeah, that's true.

Eric:  I thought I had you.

Amanda:  Nice. Yeah. Love to surprise people. Hell yeah. I was shocked when Kidd Cervantes left with the Cloud Key after the Bullseye Games. I thought, like, the game wouldn't let us progress beyond that same point without a key, and it did.

Julia:  Fair.

Brandon:  I was shocked when the key and Archimedes went off together and then had that, like, really hardcore sex scene.

Julia:  Uh-hmm. It was very—

Amanda: That was really surprising.

Julia: Brokeback Mountain of them.

Brandon:  Those are weird— it was beautiful, beautifully shot, but it was kind of character for us.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  You know that trope in movies where— with the dead wife scene, with the wife under the white sheets, and I'm imagining that one with those two.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  Vaseline over the lens.

Eric:  Yeah, yeah.

Amanda:  Oh, yeah.

Julia:  Eric, any of our character choices surprise you?

Eric:  I think when Julia— it doesn't wreck my shit, like other players in actual play wreck entire— what feels like entire chapters of stories get sloughed off when Emily Axford steps onto the screen. But when Julia does something as Cammie, who is so powerful, which I started to adapt to at the second half of the story, when people acknowledged how scary and powerful magic is.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Which was the whole deal with Piney, I think, in the second half of the story, especially Piney avoiding you at the pirate meetings and then everything that happened with Piney at the end. Just when you pulled out something that was so powerful that I just had to deal with when I rolled a 12, it was— it really surprised me every time.

Julia:  Is that the possession or was that the polymorph?

Eric:  Those two, but I think you would do something, just like do a spell that would just change everything. And I— you know, I think that has to do with all the magic lovers getting into the DND next play testing, whatever, but—

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  —still.

Amanda:  There— you can tell when that happens, because Eric will be like, "And it just— and that's just it, and it just works."

Julia:  And I don't, like—

Brandon:  And it works.

Julia:  —saved, it just happens.

Brandon: I don’t get to do anything?

Amanda:  Yep. Good stuff. Eric, here's a very Eric specific question from Dallas Douglass, "In the hypothetical low quality CapCut edit of the story of Campaign 3, what do each of you think would be the highlights of your characters or favorite NPCs?" Now, first, could someone explain this reference to me?

Eric:  There are presets on CapCut, which is the partnered video editing software with TikTok, that you can kind of just put presets in of, like, video clips or photos. And it's kind of, like, is FanCam-esque.

Amanda:  Hmm.

Eric:  I think that's what kind of I've been thinking about a little bit.

Amanda:  Yeah. Okay.

Eric:  So just like each one of them getting dramatic moments.

Julia:  I really think that Havana running back to us through the fire—

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:  —after deciding—

Brandon:  Hmm.

Julia:  —to stay in the Divine Labyrinth was a real moment there for me. That made me cry.

Eric:  That really cemented everyone making Havana Tropicana Fancams.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  For sure.

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Yeah. I feel similarly about us, like, going for Gloria and bringing her out of the inner sanctum in the maze of like, "Oh, no, no, we are— we're making her part of this crew." Love it.

Julia:  Troy's, like, wing reveal at the—

Brandon:  Hmm.

Julia:  —during the Bullseye Games arc—

Brandon:  When he swoop down.

Julia:  —I think—

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Yeah. That's good.

Amanda:  And maybe the first time you call Baba Rutabaga as Cammie. That was— I was like, "Oh, this can happen?" Like, amazing.

Julia:  True.

Brandon:  And then for me, it's the hardcore sex scene between these two NPCs

Eric:  We have to include the Bullseye Games falling apart, like the stadium falling apart.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia:   Uh-hmm.

Eric:  God, I need to look up the pun I made about the boulder werewolf disease. Oh, lycanthropy. When we hear lycan—

Brandon:  Lycanthropy, yeah.

Eric:  —the word lycanthropy for the first time.

Brandon:  How could you forget?

Eric:  That one's for me.

Amanda:  Oh, that was so good, and also so upsetting. All right, folks, this one is for Eric specifically, from Shelby. "What is the arc, character, story, or world-building element you're most proud of in this campaign?

Eric:  Lycanthropy.

Amanda:  Yay.

Eric:  I felt really good about that. I was feeling frustrated with where I kind of drew myself into a corner by making this underwater prison, which I wanted to do.

Brandon:  You put yourself into an underwater prison?

Eric:  Yeah, I was in an underwater prison.

Amanda:  That's self-sabotage, man.

Eric:   I feel like I started too many questions and didn't have enough answers. And when I started to figure out what happened in the city that made it vulnerable to getting take over by the Diamond Knot, I was like, "Oh, the lycanthropy, that really helps the whole thing out." And it fleshed out Gloria, too. It also helped with, like, the black— I knew that there was a secret Gloria room, which you all didn't even need, but, like, the blackberry wine being involved in the whole thing, and then the brine— the pickle brine, keeping people alive, that all kind of really came together for me.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Now, who else is just thinking Gloria hole? Who else is just having an intrusive thought of the word glory hole?

Julia:  You know—

Brandon:  I think that's just you, Amanda.

Julia:  —I think that might just be you, buddy. Let it go, like a leaf on the breeze.

Amanda:  All right.

Brandon:  I'm gonna put that one on the old sound board, too.

Amanda:  I'm gonna pop into the kitchen to get us some blackberry juice spritzers for—

Brandon:  Ooh.

Amanda:  —the rest of this Afterparty and—

Julia:  Ooh.

Eric:  Amanda's gonna put her head in the freezer and cool down—

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  —while getting us food.

Amanda:  We call that the Arctic Gloria hole. We'll be right back, folks.

Julia:  Oh.

Amanda:  We'll be right back.

[theme]

Amanda:  Hello, it's Amanda. When everything is a lot I love to be wrapped up like a burrito or maybe a baby, and so today's midroll is brought to you by rolling yourself up in a duvet or comforter, depending on where you live and what you call it, and transporting your bed blanket to the couch. Sometimes, folks, we need that kind of support, and I highly recommend you check it out if you never have before. There's nothing like duvet on the couch. Okay? Thank you and welcome to our newest supporter on Patreon, Nicole S. Thank you for pledging some real life money to help us make this real life show. If you also want me to thank you by name in the midroll, you gotta join Patreon as a paying member. Now, you can follow us for free on Patreon to just get updates about the show, leave us Afterparty questions, all that good stuff. But if you want stuff like our biweekly Party Planning podcast, our patron-only Discord, which is so adorable and is filled with photos of cats laying in the sun and dogs enjoying their crates, you have got to join at patreon.com/jointhepartypod. Remember, folks, lots happening in the Join the Party universe right now. My last plug for the plant-pirate dice, that's at jointhepartypod.com/dice, if you want to remember Verda Stello forever in your beautiful Dispel Dice with Kraken eyes and flowers and octopus tentacles, you've got to get your pair. Once we sell out of our plant-pirate dice, we are not making more. So don't be like the folks who wish they had Chad dice and cannot ever get Chad dice, go to jointhepartypod.com/dice. Next, we are having a live show in Portland, Oregon, along with Spirits on March 23rd. Those tickets are available at jointhepartypod.com/live. We can't wait to be there. We're highly encouraging masking, by the way, so if you are immunocompromised, disabled, or COVID cautious, we got your back. You can come to the show. Do that at jointhepartypod.com/live. We are also having a drinks pop-up. Listener Nick and his wonderful partner Maya, are doing a pop-up around the corner from the Multitude studio on February 20th. That's next Thursday. Oh, my God, only nine days from now. It is free to attend. You don't pay a cover charge or anything. Just pay for drinks if you want to, and make sure you tip Nick and Maya, okay? Come on over. You can RSVP for free at jointhepartypod.com/popup. And finally, some housekeeping. Next week, we are going to begin the One Shot Derby. We'll tell you more at the end of this episode, but we are so excited, gonna be five weeks of the One Shot Derby, and then it's Campaign 4, baby. We're getting right into it. There's nothing interstitial. It's just the One Shot Derby and then right into Campaign 4. The channel for Campaign 4 guessing and sort of, like, supposing what might be happening, I'm forgetting this word, it's called Speculation, is live now in our patron-only Discord. So come on over, enjoy, and I look forward to hearing your theories. There's a ton happening at Multitude these days. I'm recording this midroll after recording an episode of Spirits, which means that I am just in a bubbly, wonderful mood, as if you have gotten to hang out with your bestie and talk about one of your favorite subjects while making jokes. That's what I get to do every week with Julia, and it is so much fun to be 400 plus episodes deep into our eight-year-old podcast about mythology, folklore, queerness, feminism, modern, adulthood. We have grown up on this podcast, and you can come over with us. We want Spirits to be a place where you can come and think about the stories we tell each other and laugh, and also feel something. And I hope that it's something you really enjoy, because I love making it. So listen, go to spiritspodcast.com or just search for Spirits wherever you download your podcasts. Jump in anywhere. You don't have to catch up on all of those episodes, but shout out to the real ones who do. We are sponsored this week by Green Chef. They are a meal delivery service that makes it easy with recipes curated for a variety of lifestyles and dietary needs. They have pre-made sauces and pre-portioned ingredients, meaning there's less prep and less mess, meaning more time where you can savor their delicious restaurant-quality meals. I made something a couple days ago and thought to myself, "That only used one bowl and one pan. That's a real feature." I love that. So if you want to create eating habits that last, Green Chef makes that easy because you use fresh, organic produce and quality Whole Foods delivered to your door each week. You can just stay on track with whatever you want to do with your eating this year, even on your busiest days, with salads ready to go in five minutes or less, ready-to-blend smoothies and grab-and-go protein-packed breakfasts. I feel like I'm tagged in this photo. I need to do more protein. Thrive all year with clean, easy meals from Green Chef, go to greenchef.com/jointhepartyfree and use the code jointhepartyfree to get started with free salads for two months, plus 50% off your first box. Thrive all year with clean, easy meals from Green Chef, go to greenchef.com/jointhepartyfree and use the code jointhepartyfree to get started with free salads for two months, plus 50% off your first box. Have you ever wondered what might happen if a fictional reality TV cast found themselves in a DND campaign they didn't know they were a part of? I never have, but candidly, now, I am. Luckily, there is, welcome to Real Housewives of Dungeons and Dragons. This is an actual play DND podcast following The Real Housewives of Anaheim as they're dropped into a fantasy world and have to learn how to fight or cat fight for themselves. Featuring guest stars like Will Campos from Dungeons and Daddies, Heather McKinney and Christie Wallace from Sinisterhood, and Daniel Montgomery from Fear Initiative. Hear new biweekly podcasts of row DND, that's a very good joke for those of us who know the housewives, wherever you get your podcasts, plus access to mini campaigns based on other reality TV favorites, like The Traders and coming soon, Below Deck on their Patreon at patreon.com/housewivesofdnd. Now, back to the show.

[theme]

Amanda:  All right, everybody, I'm back. Are you enjoying your Martinelli sparkling apple juice and blackberry juice spritzers?

Brandon:  It's delicious.

Julia:  Yes.

Amanda:  Hooray.

Julia:  Are you okay? Oh, I'm fine. Why would you ask me that?

Eric:  It took you 30 minutes to do that?

Julia:  Okay.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia:  Okay.

Eric:  All right.

Julia:  I had this— I had to harvest and squeeze all the blackberries, and then wash my hands. It looked like a crime scene where I killed the purple alien.

Julia:  Oh, no. So specific.

Amanda:  Folks, I'm very glad that I had the chance to wash my hands so thoroughly after that break, because our next section here of the Afterparty is What Had Happened Was, where we talk all about specific events, episodes, and unanswered questions from the entirety of Campaign 3. But before we do that, it's important that we don't cross-contaminate anything from our world into the world of Verda Stello.

Brandon:  Hmm. Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  So what we're gonna do is Scrubbin' in with the Question Surgeon, Michelle Spurgeon, MD.

Brandon:  Oh, very good. Very good.

Eric:  I'm washing all the way up to my elbows.

Amanda:  Gotta. You gotta. All right, so a list of excellent questions from Dr. Spurgeon, first. Dr Spurgeon would like to know, "What was up with those hivemind greenhouse head guys?" That was another horrifying reveal that should probably be in the CapCut version.

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  Eric, what was up with them?

Brandon:  They were—

Julia:  Hot House.

Amanda:  Just creepy guys from Hot House, using the hivemind tech?

Eric:  That was important because it was supposed to signify that they were from Hot House, and that was— it ended up being more important later, because it created the Rotten Key. But it was supposed to be the— that Hot House was trying to smelt their own keys instead of playing by the rules.

Julia::  Right.

Eric:  It was a very sort of— there's like a signifier that, like, the Messiah is gonna come back when there's a red heifer that you sacrifice for it. And in a book that I really like The Yiddish Policemen's Union  by Michael Chabon, where, instead of what happened with Israel, now, the Jews— they made an Israel-like country in Alaska, and there is a whole subplot of genetically modifying the reddest, purest heifer to bring back the Messiah.

Julia::  Yeah, they're actively trying to do that in, like, Texas.

Eric:  Oh, yeah, they're still— they're doing that right now.

Julia::  Yeah.

Eric:  But that's like the Christian Zionists are doing it to hasten back Jesus.

Julia::  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  What a cool book.

Amanda:  It is such—

Eric:  Cool.

Amanda:  —a good book, yeah.

Eric:  Yeah. It's a noir set in alternate history Alaska. It's very cool.

Brandon:  I like that. I love that.

Amanda:  Highly recommend it. Dr Spurgeon asks, "Do you wish you'd been able to touch on anything else in your backstory?"

Julia:  I don't think so. I was kind of anticipating, Eric, you bringing back the, like, Paladin that tried to take in Smelly Haze in the second Legends from the Past episode. I thought somehow they were going to come back into our, like, current story—

Eric:  Oh, sure.

Julia:  —and, like, storyline. So I was anticipating that and I was like, "That would be cool to explore," but also then I kind of forgot about it, like two arcs later.

Brandon:  Eric— guaranteed Eric would have immediately killed them with some sort of hilarious, silly trap.

Julia:  Very possible.

Eric:  There's something about Cammie's backstories, I just loved— in similar inspirations from, I guess, some of the offshoot stories of Game of Thrones, but also from the Becky Chambers' oeuvre of sad things happened to you in the past and now you're a cool space pirate.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  I really like that for Cammie, that the stuff that happened to her in Open Fields was terrible and traumatic, but we are never going to see these people ever again.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  And I think that Cammie did a really good job of dealing with people from the path in the Bullseye Game episode, so I'm like— I feel like we're all set. I feel like we got it.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  And especially when Havana had his religious episode, this happens in season two of every television show, had to do that, and I think Cammie just kind of dealt with it. I'm like, "All right, good. Now, Cammie can deal with being an incredibly powerful magician."

Julia:  Nice.

Brandon:  Yeah, don't forget—

Amanda:  Oh.

Julia:  What happened?

Amanda:  I tried— what's the name of Buffy's male sidekick?

Eric:  Xander.

Julia:  Xander.

Amanda:  I just tried to Google Buffy man and it came up with buffed men. It was not what I wanted.

Julia:  Amanda goes “Nooooo.”

Amanda:  I was gonna say, "Yeah, remember when Xander gets really evangelical in season two." Oh, sorry.

Eric:  Yeah, but also in True Blood, also in Friday Night Lights.

Amanda:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eric:   There's always an evangelical plot line in season two of every TV show.

Julia:  Yurr.

Brandon:  Now, are we not going to acknowledge that Amanda is just talking about Gloria holes and buffed men this entire Afterparty or—

Julia:  No.

Eric:  Brandon, I'm trying to move on and give her questions to answer.

Brandon:  Okay. Right.

Amanda:  Listen, two such examples in 47 minutes of tape is about average. Okay? About average. I felt very satisfied with the amount of Troy's backstory. Obviously, Threelips was a really entertaining through line, and then tragic through line that happened throughout, and Diannalyse appearing. That was another shocking moment, I have to say, that I did not expect, and Eric did not, you know, forecast to me in any way. And was just incredibly exciting to see that character from the past arrive in our present.

Eric:  Yeah, bringing Di and also made— kind of unlocked quite a lot of fun stuff to happen in that whole arc, which I was happy about.

Amanda:  So cool.

Brandon:  Yeah. And I've— somewhat for Umbi, like I— I'm very happy with it. I intentionally avoided touching too much on his backstory, because I think for Umbi, like, his past is dead.

Eric:  Yeah.

Brandon:  So, like, he didn't want to touch on it. And I, you know, I commend Eric for still finding the humanity without that ability. But, yeah, I mean, obviously there could— we could have done lots of cool stuff with Umbi and his backstory, but I don't think any of it would be terribly relevant to the Umbi that he is today. So—

Julia:  I thought it was funny every time we tried to really bring up any sort of, like, Umbi past.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Like, "Oh, Umbi's daughter" or, "Oh, Umbi's ex-wife." Brandon was just like, "No, that doesn't exist and it won't ever exist."

Amanda:  Can't confirm it.

Brandon:   Or did it?

Julia:  Oh, okay.

Brandon:  Who can say?

Julia:  Who can say?

Brandon:  Is Umbi lying? Am I an unreliable narrator?

Julia:  You are.

Brandon:  Yes and yes.

Amanda:  Definitely.

Eric:  Yeah. It was all funny. I mean, the only thing that we really pinned down was, like, he was a representative of Overstalk, which we did see. And then, Umbi's just strange Ronan walking around Verda Stello, solving weird problems was really fun.

Julia:  Love that for him.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  I think— you said strange and I think you meant to say cool.

Eric:  I meant weird, like, weird— Umbi was brought in—

Brandon:  Oh, okay. Like Doctor Strange?

Eric:  Like a monster— like you were playing your very own Monster of the Week campaign.

Amanda:  In your life, yeah. That's a good way to look at life.

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  And finally, from Dr. Spurgeon, "Who was your favorite NPC and why?"

Julia:  Havana Tropicana, and I do not need to explain.

Amanda:  I love Sil and Harold. I love them. I'm gonna be thinking about them for the rest of my days, anytime I see a splotch on the side of a vehicle of any kind.

Brandon:  Kidd Cervantes, Kidd, Kidd Cervantes.

Julia:  Kidd, Kidd Cervantes.

Eric:  I want to give a shout out to Tessie the Storm and Piney. I really liked playing them. They were a lot of fun.

Amanda:  What a duo.

Julia:  And famously, you're already on record for loving Archie.

Amanda:  Of course.

Eric:  Oh, right. I said Archie before, I said Archie before, but I feel like Archie's gotten their due, for sure.

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  From Sarah KH, "After rooting in vain for Diannalyse to switch sides, I wonder, why was she so convinced? Aside from the alliance with her family and sibling rivalry, was there something that the Diamond Knot promised her, either tacitly or implicitly, that so deeply motivated her to thwart Troy's efforts?" Great question.

Eric:  She believes in power. She believes in that— the powers that be would take care of her, and she was an agent of that power. And it certainly helped that her brother currently took power that was so fleeting in the Crags.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  I think she just believed that she had to do what she had to do when Troy was fucking it up.

Amanda:  It's a great question. And her motivation was, like, really— like, it both makes sense, and also, I desperately wish for there to be something else that Troy could just be like, "Oh, they're blackmailing you? Of course, I'll take care of it." But no, like, sometimes people you want to count on, you know, you can't count on them, or they believe the narrative, and you so clearly see that that is a false promise, and you can't convince them otherwise.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  My motivating factor for playing die was she cannot be convinced.

Julia:  Hmm.

Eric:  She— Troy cannot convince her to switch sides.

Brandon:  Yeah, and people digging their heels like that all the time, so I think it's very normal.

Eric:  Which is why I kept bringing up situations of her kind of saying the same thing on— with only slight escalation of—

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  —"Troy, stop it. Troy, you need to stop it. Troy, come with me and we can stop it, and things will go okay." And every time I wanted to see if Troy would break and buckle.

Amanda:  Hmm. Hell, yeah, dude. Only buckling Troy does is his wings when he puts him away.

Brandon:  Nice.

Eric:  I thought you're gonna say a sex thing.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  So thank you for that one.

Brandon:  Only buckling Troy does is when he makes a blueberry buckle for his grandma.

Amanda:  Yes, that's exactly right.

Eric:  Stupid.

Amanda:  This is the asexual representation we need in the world.

Eric:  Oh, my God.

Amanda:  All right. BentoCatto said, "So, like, there were so many zombies (interobang)?! What happened to the Rotten Key and the zombie angler fish?" They were in that horde at the very end, no?

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:  In my mind, if— and I don't know what the answer to this is, but I think if the Rotten Storm had gotten destroyed, all the zombies would have died, like vampire rules. But I don't know.

Brandon:  I like the idea that— in my head, at some point, they realized that we had got to the Salmon first, and like at the— in any cartoon where they're playing dodge ball, they're like, "Fine, I'm taking my ball and going home."

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  And they just all walk away.

Eric:  I think that without the motivating factor of getting its hands on the Salmon, the Rotten Spirit that inhabited Audrey and then the Rotten Key just got frustrated and paralyzed enough that they took care of it.

Julia: Okay.

Eric:   Like with something that's so single-minded when you take away the one— the A to B thing, then at least there was a moment where someone probably took care of it and then vampire rules. Yeah.

Julia:  Vampire rules.

Eric:  Like it wasn't the ginkgo crab, but it was probably once the Salmon portal closed and the Rotten Key was like, "What? What?" And then someone chopped off its head, Like, there's—

Julia:  Nice.

Eric:  —a moment of indecision with something so— is single-minded, then someone probably took care of it.

Amanda:  nohugsjustbugs wants to know, "Did Tessie the storm die when the Rotten Key merged with her? If not, did she/they, plural, try to take revenge on the Sea Whip crew for Piney's death?"

Eric:  Nah. Too gross when they merged, I can't tell you.

Julia:  Fair enough.

Amanda:  That's fine. bugs also asks, "Did Jeremiah Stalks make up everything about the keys? If so, why?"

Eric:   Yeah. Oh, man, Jeremiah Stalks, what a butthole. I don't love needing to make up an NPC in the single last moments of a story, but I think it had to explain where the drought stones came from in the first place. I think Jeremiah Stalks thought very literally, while Cammie didn't. And Jeremiah Stalks was like, "Turn— just turn it back on, stop it." And he didn't change anything. He didn't break the wheel. He just made the wheel turn again.

Brandon:  Hmm.

Eric:   And I think that was the issue that I was trying to get at, is that there's nothing wrong with the Tree of Life, but it's a tree, and it's gonna get its roots into pipes at some point. It kind of signified how civilizations and people just kind of kick things down the road instead of fixing problems.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  There was a great follow-up question I'm going to jump down to. From Miriam, "Please break down the 13 Dried Carvings for me. How does the prophecy of, quote, 'the water will slow to fall, but the tides are turning, find the Infinite Lake to replenish the world and discover the Salmon who will grant you a wish of whatever you desire."? How was that split up into 13 pieces?

Eric:  It wasn't split up into 13 pieces.

Julia:  There was just 13 different carvings that said the exact same thing.

Eric:  The seedlings— once Jeremiah Stalks came back and said, "I took care of it," then all of them in 13 different places in the basin of the Cascade, made the drought stones, and then said, "All right, I guess we're done."

Brandon:  Wait, I don't think we answered, though. Did Jeremiah make up the keys? Like, make up everything, like the rhymes and stuff?

Amanda:  I think Jeremiah made up the lore.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Like, he, you know, he made it up to have some gravitas to the situation.

Eric:  Yeah. I think he made up the lore. I think it might be some combination of, you know, the Planter putting its thumb on the scale, the Diamond Knot hiding them, et cetera, et cetera.

Amanda:  nohugsjustbugs also wants to know, "Were the knotted tree roots the work of the Diamond Knot, or did the Diamond Knot take their name from the tree roots?"

Eric:  Ooh, maybe the second half. Maybe the second one, I like that.

Brandon:  Ooh. Maybe.

Eric:  That's cool.

Julia:  Who can say?

Brandon:  Ooh.

Amanda:  Very cool.

Eric:  I came up with the Diamond Knot just because I thought it was an interesting name for a world government, but entirely possible with the tree roots.

Amanda:  You were foreshadowing it all along. And finally, from our friend bugs, "What played out when the crew stepped back through the Salmon's pool into South Kompos, where the rotten army and all the other pirates were still waiting?" Do we have head cannons for this post-ending scene?

Julia:  I think the word spread that the Cascade was turning back on pretty quickly, and everyone kind of dispersed.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Right.

Brandon:  I don't think there's anyone there.

Eric:  If I can go further on the thing that we said about how the Rotten Key went away. I think that Rotten the Storm was like—

Eric (as Rotten the storm): What? They got to the salmon portal? No!

Eric:  And then Kidd Cervantes, like, shot its head off.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Julia:  Nice.

Eric:  And then all the zombies disintegrated. And then everyone's like, "Oh, no. All those people extremely died." And then the Cascade turned on, and everyone got distracted.

Julia: That makes sense to me.

Amanda:  Totally. It's like— at a party, if somebody says, like, "Oh, there's a different, cooler party down the block," and then everyone just leaves. It's like, "Oh, no, I went to the bathroom, but now the party's empty." Here are a couple more zombie follow-ups from kat, "Did any of you consider using your wish to get rid of or handle the Rotten Key or to un-zombify people? If so, what led you to choose your wish over wishing for that?" Kat, never occurred to me. I didn't care enough about anyone who got turned into a zombie, except poor Salix.

Julia:  I was gonna say, Salix was right there.

Amanda:  Except poor Salix, I know, but I had too much on my mind.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  Yeah, I didn't— honestly, I didn't just think— I didn't think about it, but I also sort of just assumed that there was no going back, which is probably a silly assumption with— when you have a magic salmon, but I don't know.

Eric:   I understand where you're all getting at, but at the same time, this felt like the point in the RPG, where it says, "Hey, before you leave, save, this is the end of the story."

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Yes.

Brandon:  Right.

Eric:  So it's cool. Like it's fine.

Amanda:  And I think, yeah, we were less concerned about changing what has happened than affecting what will, so that was where we were. We're focused.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda: Kat also asked, "Given that there were multiple times it got close, did you consider what would have happened if Umbi became zombie?" Zombie Umbi. And kat has gotten many Jokens in Discord for that excellent pun.

Julia:  I think we kind of talked about like, oh, if Umbi had died, like, if the Waterer thing hadn't been what it was, like, we would have gone on, like, a quest to bring Umbi back. So I think we maybe would have gone on some, like, weird, divine quest to cure the zombie-ism, or something. I don't know.

Eric:  It could've bene fun.

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  It would've been fun, just going around being like, "Brains, brains."

Eric:  I would have given you another character or something.

Brandon:  I do also like the word— the name zombie, because it in my head, it sounds like Zumba, and I'm imagining Umbi doing Zumba—

Amanda:  It sure does.

Brandon:  —and it's very funny.

Eric:  That was on the table. That was all extremely on the table.

Brandon:  Zumba?

Eric:  Yeah, Zumba was on the table. Especially at the pirate meeting when Audrey walked up, it was in 100% on the table that Umbi could have died, and/or zombified or something.

Brandon:  I mean, it wasn't, though, because he's immortal, so—

Eric:  Oh, right, I forgot.

Julia: Right.

Eric:  Okay.

Brandon:  Yeah, I don't think that was on the table. Zombie just reminds me of the show Zoboomafoo that I watched as a kid.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  Yeah. I was at a wedding a couple— a week or two ago.

Eric:  And Zoboomafoo was there?

Brandon:  Excuse me. God, I wish. He was the ring bearer.

Julia:  That's cool.

Eric:  He was the ring monkey, Brandon. Come on.

Brandon:  And we went to a bar afterwards, after the reception, and they had like, a TV behind the bar that was playing like— I forgot what they called. It was like PBS Classics or something, PBS some— PBS Retro. That's what it was.

Eric:  Hmm.

Brandon:  PBS Retro.

Julia:  Oh.

Brandon:  And it was just Zoboomafoo the entire time. And I was like, "Oh, this is my place."

Eric:  Oh, it's good stuff.

Amanda:  Damn.

Julia:  That's amazing.

Amanda:  Love to age into the buying power— demographic for which retro nostalgia is made.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Genuinely, very helpful. Eric, how did Orello end up with a key that hurts?

Eric:  Oh, who knows?

Julia:  Didn't he— I think you just like you narrated it and he just like, "Found it washed up on a beach."

Amanda: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eric:  Oh, that's right. He— there was the key that still hurt, got— it got sent out during Amanda's one shot with the guest.

Julia:  Correct.

Amanda:  When we blew up the whole cave and it upchuck us.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Yeah. Then it just kind of washed on shore. That's right.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  I forgot about that.

Amanda:  LoafOfBret says, "Remember episode 31 with the labyrinth burning around Havana? That was good."

Eric:  That was good.

Julia:  I did. That was in my CapCut.

Brandon:  Yeah. Check out the CapCut version.

Eric:  Yeah. Check out the Fancam.

Amanda:  No question. No question. ChloeSA wants to know, "How did Piney survive almost drowning, and then get out of the ship and to South Kompos so fast?" So  the order of events is the ship with Piney in the hole got itself very quickly to South Kompos. But I assume that when we actually, like, crash landed in the, you know, active fight, that there was a bit of, like, a scuffle, and Piney got away.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Julia:  They also canonically have teleportation power, so—

Brandon: They can teleport, yeah.

Eric:  Yeah, they opened a window and walked through, for sure.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  Hell yeah. Mike asks, "Is there someone in the campaign you'd have liked to use benign dismemberment on, Julia? Seeing as you couldn't use it on Umbi."

Julia:  I did get to use it on Nonny.

Brandon:  Nonny. Yeah.

Julia:  And that was fun.

Eric:  That was cute.

Julia: It was just one of those spells where I'm like, "Man, this has to have a purpose at some point, and I gotta use it."

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  But I was— I'm kind of picturing when I picked it as a spell, like, "Oh, well, if any of us got, like, shackled to something, or—"

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  You know?

Brandon:  Yeah.

Julia:  Something like that. Or, like, if someone got zombified, got bit, I could just dismember them and they would hopefully be safe.

Eric:  There was something about the electric whip that I didn't get to talk about, because by the time you found it, it was late enough in the campaign that I didn't want to introduce it. But if you'd found it earlier, the electric whip would have been the possession of a different pirate, and they would have been really pissed that you had it.

Brandon:  Ooh.

Julia:  That's cool.

Eric:  Yeah. I didn't get a chance to do it, or I kind of like erased it from the item description before I ended up giving it out, but that was on the table.

Julia:  That was where it all turned because that's where Brandon got real pissed at me.

Amanda:  Mike also asked, "Was Troy's wish planned in advance, or did you come up with it in the moment? The wish of the salmon felt so fitting and like the perfect conclusion to the story. I honestly couldn't have imagined a better ending." It's just what felt good in the moment, baby. I didn't know what to do, and that's what Troy would have done, I think.

Julia:  First thought, best thought.

Brandon:  That's the answer.

Amanda:  All right.

Julia:  See? That's it. That's it, baby.

Eric:  I remember sitting there and being like, "Okay, now I have to come up with a wish, something I've been telling all three of you to think about the entire campaign. I guess I gotta do it now."

Amanda:  GreatSpaceCow says, "After finishing the last episode today, I can officially say that the Rising Tide campaign has been my favorite DND campaign I've ever encountered."

Brandon:  Oh. Oh.

Amanda:  "It truly feels like I was a part of your campaign, and all I did was listen, laugh, and cry. Congrats to all of you for creating a world that was actually magic. I couldn't have asked for a better story and ending. Thank you." And then a number of wonderful questions, starting with, perhaps, our most asked singular question, "Eric, what else is on that dig and roll table? We gotta know."

Eric:  Okay. On number one, was the sea— was the seal whip, the electric whip. Number two was a— something the serpentine horn, which—

Julia: Which is like a cursed horn, right?.

Eric:  Yeah, like a cursed horn. Three was blowfish armor, which would let you swim better, and also you could blow up like a blowfish. Number four was nothing, which is what Brandon rolled first.

Julia:  Nice.

Brandon: Sure.

Eric:  Number five, was— it was a mimic chest, but it was a frog tongue that would grab the first person who came within 20 feet. And—

Julia:  Brandon.

Eric:  —number six was— there was a cave system under the island that we dealt with.

Brandon:  Ooh.

Julia:  Wow. We only dug and rolled two times then, huh?

Eric:  Two times. Yeah.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Wow.

Brandon:  Now, I am not— I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I do trust my collaborator.

Eric:  Brandon, I told you I felt so bad that you rolled a four.

Brandon:  I know

Eric:  I told you, at the time, in the episode that I felt bad.

Brandon:  I know, I know. I know.

Eric:  I was like, "Four? Who would roll a four?"

Brandon:  Who rolls a four? No one rolls a four.

Eric:  Not— certainly not first.

Brandon:  That's silly.

Eric:   Who would roll for a first?

Brandon:  Who would roll for a first? If it's Brandon, he's gonna get a one.

Eric:  Yeah.

Amanda:  So bunch more questions from GreatSpaceCow here, "Were there any secrets similar to Troy being a royal prince that were never exposed?" PCs, players, anything else? Anything else you were planning?

Julia:  No.

Brandon:  No.

Eric:   I still think it was really funny that I surprised Julia with the lottery.

Julia:  Yeah. I didn't anticipate that happening.

Brandon:  Wait, you guys didn't talk about that beforehand?

Julia:  No.

Brandon:  Oh, shit.

Eric:  Julia—

Amanda:  Wow.

Eric:  —I  knew that Cammie was an outcast, and I also knew—

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  —that Cammie had been a pirate from a very young age.

Julia:  Yes.

Eric:  And that she also had lived in Open Fields, so she was cast out from her town in Open Fields. I did not tell Julia what I was going to do.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  Hmm. That's fun.

Amanda:  There's also a follow-up question to that, do you hate the fact that Open Fields town, one in hand was right, that banishing Cammie would eventually bring the Cascade back on.

Brandon:  Oh.

Julia:  No. No.

Brandon:  I don't know, that sounds right to me.

Amanda: Is that not what happened?

Julia:  Because if Cammie hadn't left, they would have killed her, and that would not have brought the Cascade back on.

Brandon:  I don’t know, Julia.

Amanda:  Well, therefore, banishing her saved her life, and you turned on the Cascade.

Brandon:  Yeah, exactly.

Julia:  Uh-uh. Uh-uh. Uh-uh.

Amanda:  I mean—

Brandon:  I think they were right.

Amanda:  I mean—

Julia:  I don't think so.

Eric:  I made that as a point in the monolog that I did in the last episode, when the Cascade turned back on. Throughout Open Fields, each township congregates in the town square to congratulate themselves on the particular brand of virtuousness that got them through the 50-year drought. I intentionally named that, because I'm sure they thought that they did the right thing. Yes, I— they 100% would be like, "Good thing we cast out that weird child."

Julia:  Hmm.

Amanda:  Bummer. Brandon, what made you not want to take the peaceful ending the Waterer offered Umbi?

Brandon:  Because Umbi doesn't want to die.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  That's the whole thing.

Julia:  Because chaos.

Brandon:  Umbi is not afraid to die, but doesn't mean he wants to die.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Umbi doesn't like someone else controlling his fate other than him. And, yeah, I think he doesn't like authority, you know, obviously, for lots of reasons, because they have failed him in the past.

Eric:   Something about that that I thought was really interesting and funny when Umbi turned the tables on the Waterer, was that, yeah, Umbi doesn't like being told by anyone to do— what he's supposed to do. And it's really—

Brandon:  Right.

Eric:  —funny that that includes even a god who had a crush on him, who had a good suggestion. I— like, I gave—

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  —the tastiest version of what listening to someone else might sound like, and Umbi still pushed against it, which I love.

Brandon:  I will say that I don't think Umbi is aware when people are flirting.

Eric:  Well, he was— I was also made— it wasn't even about that. The Waterer is just being overtly nice to you.

Brandon:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eric:  Where they're like, "This is a god who is incredibly powerful." This is someone who thinks you're great and will continue to be nice to you, and gave you an incredibly soft landing, and like the lightest slap on the wrist for you defying the natural order of things, and still Umbi pushed against it. I loved that.

Brandon:  Yeah, but— yes. And he thought that way, because the— yeah, I mean, like, the people in the Senate were this, like— you know, I'm sure he respected the queen bee at some point too, and the fact that, you know, they fucked everything up, regardless, you know?

Eric:  For sure.

Brandon:  He has trust issues, is what I'm saying.

Eric:  It's good, it's good stuff. That was the whole thing with Di. Di sticks to her guns. That was the whole thing about Baba Rutabaga. Baba Rutabaga sticks her guns, and Cammie, I think, inherited that. It's great.

Julia:  Yeah, hell yeah.

Amanda:  Where was the cloud key originally hidden, Eric? Who found it and brought it to the Bullseye Games?

Eric: I— who knows?

Brandon:  In the clouds.

Eric:  Some— I don't know. I mean, Kidd Cervantes had it. Kidd Cervantes probably did something comparable to what you dealt with in the labyrinth to get the cloud key.

Amanda:  Hmm.

Eric:  Like, I don't know, but I'm sure you could write a prequel short story about it, you know?

Julia:  My theory is what we talked about in the fake play about getting the cloud key.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Where, like, Kidd Cervantes had to scale like an Asgardian style—

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  —wall—

Eric:  Oh, I love that.

Julia:  —to get to the cloud key at the top.

Eric:  Yeah. Kidd Cervantes probably shot down a massive bird to get it, too.

Julia:  Cool.

Eric:  It was in the nest or something like that. Yeah, for sure.

Amanda:  Love it. Remember the puppets? Remember the Palladium? So good.

Brandon:  How can I forget, Amanda?

Amanda:  Eric, once and for all, who created the locks, who created the keys? Was the Planter involved? Because they did create the Key with a Gaze. I— my headcanon here is that the Key with a Gaze is just a weird quirk of Greenfolk biology and that was— the fact that it was, like, replenishable, the fact that it was like, you know, maybe grown or planted in something, you know, that you could construct a maze around, was the beginning of, like, the Diamond Knot's key lore, and that's where the sort of idea came from, from them.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  Oh, I'm not sure— yeah, it's a good question. I think that the Planter mirrors a lot of creation myths that I really like. Some of which, you know, are from my religion, but also— well, other ones that I see reflected, which is whoever created the world just kind of lets it be, right? And then they get tempted to put their finger on the scale, but it really messes things up. So I think that the Planter probably when they— there was— the Planter was involved somehow, and these keys getting created. It's like the Salmon is too powerful, the thing cannot exist. It has all these wishes. I think the Planter created the keys, and then also made one of the key— gave the keys a little bit too— one of the keys too much juice, and made it alive, and then locked the salmon up. And the Diamond Knot in the past, which was, you know, an ongoing meeting of all of the rulers of all four of the countries where, like, "Hey, this exists. We should probably get our hands on it and build fortifications around it."

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  Because also the blackberry dragon was there, so it was a lot easier to know where it was before—

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  —at some point— well, it was probably easy to figure out where it was at some point and then it became super hidden. Yeah, I think that the divine creator put their hand on the scale and made it worse, so—

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  —that's the vibe I was getting at.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Makes sense to me.

Amanda:  Makes sense to me, too. Nerd22 wants to get really specific on one moment from the final arc. So in Legend of the End 3, the Rotten Key thinks, after being turned into a ginkgo crab and being merged with Tessie the storm, pirate queen, 'I had hoped that after merging with Tessie the storm, this wouldn't happen to me anymore,' or something along those lines. And I assume this refers to being turned into a ginkgo crab. If that's true, has that happened to them before? And if so, who did it? Was it someone we know? And how many times has this happened? Because they did use the word anymore, which implies that it happens, if not frequently, at least twice before."

Eric:  In my head, the rotten spirit has existed for a very, very, very long time and has battled with various magicians who is probably polymorph them at various times, which is what I was thinking.

Julia:  That's fair.

Amanda:  Love it.

Julia:  That's fair.

Amanda:  So funny. And a question here from Gingerness. "Hello, longtime listener, first time question asker."

Eric:  Hello.

Amanda:  Welcome, welcome. "This season was so wonderful. Thank you so much for giving us all something so joyful and inspiring in this time that we are in. Now to the questions, we met the Salmon. What a gem. Is the Salmon its own deity or is it a page fish for the Waterer and the Planter?"

Eric:  Kind of their own thing. A creature with incredible powers. That's just what happens when you create stuff. Oopsie.

Brandon:  Yeah, kind of like a Brando. If you can imagine like a Brando.

Amanda:  Hmm.

Brandon:  Sort of like a creature with its own special powers.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  Yeah, it's like that.

Julia:  I like it as kind of a Hermes to the gods on Mount Olympus sort of vibe.

Amanda:  Yeah, that hits. "Speaking of a thing you created, we never got to see the metal frog used on Cammie's cape. What would the liminal—"

Brandon:  True.

Amanda:  "—space look like if they had attract a Greenfolk there for a round?"

Julia:  Big regret. Big regret.

Amanda: I picture just the inside of the frog's stomach, very Jonah and the whale style.

Julia:  Ooh. It just swallows us?

Amanda:  Yep.

Julia:  Cool.

Eric:  Now, it was more about having a tea ceremony on the rug, and the frog was a little dude. But I am now liking that you have to go inside the frog to have the tea ceremony.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia:  We'll never know.

Eric:  We'll never know.

Brandon:  We'll never know.

Amanda:  And finally, "It was Mandy Potash's wish to become a silly, goofy message at the top of the Cascade."

Eric:  Yes.

Amanda:  "Like, if they put the glasses on and read it, would the crew have seen some body horror of Mandy becoming a flower message?"

Eric:  Sure, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, Mandy potash was just like, "I want to be a fun message for the rest of my life."

Amanda:  I mean, great. That sounds great.

Julia:  Wild. Wild choice, girlfriend.

Brandon:  Don't we all? Don't we all?

Amanda:  Folks, that's it for What Had Happened Was, which brings us to our next section, What If?

Eric:  What If?

Brandon:  What if?

Julia:  What If?

Eric:  Marvel presents What's IF?

Amanda:  Now once more, guys, I've told you, and I need you to do it again, we have got to scrub in with the Question Surgeon, Michelle Spurgeon MD.

Brandon:  My skin is gone at this point.

Amanda:  Gotta replenish the moisture barrier with good moisturizer afterward.

Julia:  True.

Amanda:  "Do you think your characters would stay on the sea, or would they go back to land and do something different with their lives?"

Julia:  I think we end up going back to the land, and then eventually, when Troy goes back a year later, potentially we go back to sea.

Eric:  Yeah. And also, it's the whole thing of everyone got trapped inside by the Cascade, which I thought was—

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  —funny.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm. Dr. Spurgeon also says, "Do you think Troy and his siblings will ever reconcile?" I think no. I think—

Julia:  Fair.

Amanda:  Troy remains on the sea, and I like to imagine some of his other brothers, like, defecting and coming to join him, maybe a couple others. But I think for Diannalyse and certainly Hyperion, like they are so committed to the monarchy that there's no way they're reaching out to Troy. I think Troy may take it on himself to evangelize, like direct democracy everywhere, all over Verda Stello, and eventually that'll probably bring him into conflict with his family, if they're still in power.

Eric:  I can also— yeah, I can see the house of Breakstone getting sacked within three years, too.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  It just— there was nothing special about the Breakstones either than the fact that they grabbed power at the time.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  More like the broken stones.

Julia:  Am I right?

Amanda:  Cha.

Eric:  Ladies.

Brandon:  Cha. Ladies.

Amanda:  "Will the Diamond Knot continue to be in power, or will it dissolve?" Only a thing.

Eric:  Always and forever. Can't do anything about it.

Brandon:  I don't know. I think Umbi and Troy take a hard swing at it. We'll see.

Eric:  We'll see. I think we'll see. Then we'll see. The Diamond Knot is just the name of a meeting, and also a hammer that anyone can use to do their own thing. So it's both, like, incredibly powerful and nothing at the same time. So it's—

Brandon:  Hmm.

Eric:  —hard to think.

Amanda:  I have to imagine somebody will use the infrastructure, or the name, or the legacy, or the threat for their own purposes. You know, regardless of whether or not the organizers of the Diamond Knot as it was before the events of the final arc exist.

Eric:  Sure.

Amanda:  And finally, from Dr. Spurgeon, "Without the need for keys, will anything happen to the labyrinth? "

Eric:  Nah, man. It's just where— what the— where the Planter goes to hang out.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  I think there's other stuff in there that people might quest for that isn't the key.

Brandon:  Almost certainly.

Eric:  Oh, my favorite NPC was the one who was crazy in the labyrinth.

Julia:  Oh, yeah, the guy was like, "Bird seed, bird seed."

Eric:  That was awesome. God, when you were separated and you interacted with the NPC at two different times, that was awesome. I loved that.

Julia:  I don't like this guy. We're all, like, not about this. This is not—

Amanda:  It was really— not how I'd split the party if I had to choose, because I feel like Troy badly let down, you know, the Umbi-Troy contingent, but it was so much fun.

Eric:  Separating you and then stalking you with the Harvester was really good. I was really into that.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  Oh, and the descriptor of the Harvester, that was another, like, real shivery moment.

Eric:  Sarah Barra did a drawing of the Harvester. That is exactly how I envisioned them. It was so good.

Brandon:  Ooh.

Julia:  Fuck yeah.

Amanda:  From Elissa, "What would have happened if the crew had gone to Lake Encounter all the way back in the Book Depository arc, instead of at the very end? I mean, curious about the implications of the entire unfolding of the story based on that choice."

Brandon:   You know what would have happened, Eric? We would have hit 69 episodes. That's what would've happened.

Eric:  Shut up. Shut up.

Julia:  Probably, probably.

Eric:  Never. Absolutely not. We would have hit 70 episodes, Brandon. I think it would have been more of a table setting or lore dump, or, you know, context episode, and changing what you all thought of the— I think you would have all been a lot more skeptical of the Salmon if you had gone there earlier, and it would have been harder to get you to do certain things, for sure.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  It's like, oh, we all think the Salmon is just a pile of flotsam. That sucks.

Brandon:  I don't know. I don't think any of us would have— we ever seen that and thought— like I don't know. I think that. I don't know. What would you guys think?

Julia:  I think it would have been a situation where we'd be like, "Wow, they got it wrong, but we know—"

Brandon:  Yeah.

Julia:  "—the real Salmon is," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know?

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  I think it would have been something that maybe I would have leaned on more that more— less people believe that the Salmon existed.

Brandon:  Hmm.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  I can imagine us almost, like, lowering our threat expectation of other people pursuing the Salmon.

Eric:  Yes.

Amanda:  Because we're like, "Oh, if everyone thinks it's a joke, then like we're the only ones who are on to ones who are on to the truth of it." When in fact, there were lots of people vying for the keys to either have the keys as a powerful object or to actually pursue the Salmon. And so I see myself like underestimating threats and how badly other people want to access the Salmon.

Brandon:  Yeah, that's fair.

Julia:  Hell yeah.

Eric:  My answer is the vibe would have changed, which could have had very, very large plot changes.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  Well, well.

Julia:  Okay.

Amanda:  Eric, tell me about this sliding doors moment.

Eric:  No.

Amanda: From GreatSpaceCow, "Could Troy have taken all the divine pups from the Divine Labyrinth?"

Eric:   Yes, that's why he was there.

Julia:  For all of them?

Eric: To test you. You could have, you could have let them all go. I don't think you would have—

Julia:  And then—

Eric:  —taken them with you, but the whole point of the center of the labyrinth was to cause problems to get you all kicked out and then hunted by the Harvester. Like, how quickly can I get kicked out of the zombie safe house?

Julia:  Imagine Troy for the rest of the campaign with just an army of puppies.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia:  An army of puppies following him around.

Brandon:  I got a big boat.

Amanda:  A six pocket, like baby carrier followed by— like chained together, like child chain of pumpies.

Julia:  Like a little a train of tiny, tiny wagons.  Pretty good.

Eric:  You have to remember, Troy failed the check to resist messing with the pump— messing with the puppies.

Julia: Yeah.

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Well, my one true puppy, my one son is my trusty steed. I like to— maybe it's a clip for the Big Red Dog situation, and it grows to be, like, as tall as Troy. That'd be fun.

Brandon:  That'd be fun.

Amanda:  Yeah. But no, GreatSpaceCow also asked what pumpy was doing in the flash forward and I think—

Eric:  A giant cliff of the bigger dog situation.

Amanda   Hell yeah, dude.

Brandon:  Big orange dog.

Eric:  Big Orange dog.

Amanda:  Big Orange dog.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:   I mean, even those giant pumpkins that win the state fair start out as little pumpkins.

Brandon:  That's true.

Amanda:  That's true, you know?

Julia:  That's what I was picturing when you said he got giant, I'm like, "Yeah, like the State Fair pumpkins."

Eric:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  Yeah. Buy puppies responsibly, and then adopt, don't shop.

Brandon:  And also pumpkins.

Amanda:  You're so right, Brandon. You buy a pie pumpkin. You forget about it for two weeks. You come back and it's all that's in your kitchen.

Julia:   Uh-hmm.

Amanda: From LoafOfBret,  "What would have happened if the zombies had reached the Salmon?"

Eric:  Great question. It was certainly a possibility.

Amanda:  And related, Mike asks, "What would the rotten keys wish from the Salmon have been?" Probably, the Rotten Key would have taken over the Salmon, would be my guess.

Eric:  Oh, no, the Rotten Key would have destroyed the world.

Julia:  Cool.

Amanda:  Oh, good.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Julia:  Tight.

Amanda:  Really easy. It's like—

Eric:  It was a lich. It was a lich. The rotten spirit is a lich. It would have just killed all Earth. All— it would— everything would be gone.

Julia:  Cool.

Amanda:  Hmm.

Brandon:  And that's how our earth came into being.

Eric:  Just like Battlestar Galactica.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  n/A Nicole said, "Julia, if Cammie could have taken a third grand hex, which would you have chosen?"

Julia:  Probably the flying one. I really liked this idea of turning the ship into the walking house, which was an option for the witch class.

Eric:  Oh, yeah.

Julia:  However, I was gently prodding Eric about that, and he's like, "Well, a ship is, like, this big." I'm like, "Yeah, no, it would be, too."

Eric:  It's bigger than a hut. It wouldn't have given you—

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  —the thing you were looking for.

Julia:  But imagine if our ship had little chicken legs and could walk on—

Amanda:  Adorable.

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  Imagine ship with chicken legs full of puppies.

Julia:  Uh-hmm. Full of puppies.

Amanda:  I mean, call me Lake Encounter, because I'll be selling tickets to admission, baby. Like it would be the talk of the bialy.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  Nicole also wants to know, "Brandon, was there a bomb or bomb-related spell that Umbi didn't get to use in the campaign that you were excited about?"

Brandon:  Nothing that was actually attainable, but there— I think at level 20, there is an atomic bomb that you can get, which is—

Julia:  I'm kind of glad we didn't get to that point. I'm not gonna lie to you.

Eric:  It was— Mage Hand Mike is just like, "LOL. I'm putting this in there."

Brandon:  Yeah. Yeah.

Amanda:  Yeah. I can't say I regret not hitting that. And for me, "How scared were you of Troy going down after Salix fell on him? What was your plan to get out from under the willow tree if Umbi hadn't been able to manhandle it off?" I don't know what I would have done, and I would definitely be open to hacking off my own arm if it was, you know, multiple hours, more than one day situation.

Brandon:  You know what have happened? Umbi would have thrown a potion at you, and then you would have had to take off all your clothes and, like, oil up—

Amanda:  Oh, I see.

Brandon:  —and slip out from under that tree.

Amanda:  Getting real slippery.

Julia:  Hmm.

Brandon:  Yeah, yeah.

Julia:  We love making things slippery towards the end of the campaign.

Eric:  That would have been such a problem if Salix had fell on Troy. Like, it would— I don't even know if you would have been able to do it, because Troy would have been fully under Salix.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  No— like, no— I big enough that Troy was fully underneath the giant tree.

Brandon:  I probably would have had to, like, bomb the tree to, like, take it apart, and then Troy would have had to take a ton of damage or something.

Eric:  Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

Julia:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Yeah, it was a real—

Brandon:   I think Troy would have been done. Troy would have been out at least— or at least, like, got zero hit points.

Amanda:  Down if not out, for sure.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Shelby asks players, "What were your headcanons for what happens to our lovely side characters after the Cascade comes back on? I would love to see Gloria open up her own non-pirate Forge and get back in the local government game."

Julia:  I think Gloria would have become the mayor of the Hold.

Brandon:  Hmm.

Eric:  Hmm.

Julia:  You know how we didn't do the hard power, soft power thing?

Amanda:  Yes.

Julia:  I think Gloria would have gone down that trail.

Amanda:  I love that. I think Orello opens a chain of gift shop-esque trading posts all around the border of the Cascade, where it's like, he figures out some way to, like, communicate in between the, you know, the pirate center and the outside of the Bialy, and then has, like, an absolute monopoly, becomes filthy rich, and all he does all day is, like, sit out front of the main store, like in a lawn chair, just, you know— or not even a lawn chair. That's too low class for him. Like on a throne, just—

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  —like looking over his trading empire.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Yeah.

Brandon:  What do you think, Eric?

Eric:  Honestly, I put all of my juice into the monolog that I wrote.

Amanda:  Hmm.

Julia:  Hell yeah.

Eric:  So if I left someone off, it was just like, I just did not think of it, but I tried to put as much. I really put a lot of my juice into a Orello being there at the exact moment when the Cascade came back on. So if I left someone off, I kind of just focused it all into a Orello.

Brandon:  Obviously, Archimedes is the builder now.

Amanda:  Oh. yeah.

Eric:  We talked— yeah, yeah. We talked about that.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  For sure. And then finally, folks, it's Our World and Beyond. Instead of walking the spoiler plank, we are climbing the crow's nest to see what's over the horizon.

Brandon:  Oh.

Amanda:  First on Verda Stello and then beyond?

Brandon:  Oh?

Eric:  There is one thing I wanted to address. I know that we're already, like, a bunch of  time into this. But I wanted to address one question that I forgot to copy in, that Melanie asked from the Discord about the monologs that I did in those last few episodes. Sometimes I don't get a chance to say everything that I want to, because I'm writing the game. And then Brandon's like, "Hey, you should say this." And I'm like, "Yeah, you're right." And then I get a chance to, you know, flex some pros, and write it out, and then record it. So the scenes of the three baddies, when you all come down to South Kompos City, that final battle there, I wrote out beforehand, and then I read, and then I wrote what would happen with a lot of other people around the world when the Cascade turned back on.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:   So that was nice, and thanks for telling me to do that, Brandon.

Brandon:  Yeah, of course.

Amanda:  Listening to it felt like I got to listen to a finale, because I got to hear that, like, that beautiful monolog and it gave me the same like, "Oh, my favorite thing is ending, but I'm satisfied feelings."

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  From ItsMeDannyB, "Iin the theoretical end of the season flash forward segment, which of the PCs, if any, have a surprise partner or spouse, and who may or may not have had a little sapling or offshoot or larva of their own?"

Brandon:  Hmm.

Amanda:  And, Eric, you noted too that Danny asked this on January 13th, so this is one that I wanted to make sure we got to at the end of the campaign.

Eric:  Where we did have our flash forward, yeah, and the answer is Umbi.

Brandon:  Hmm.

Julia:  Hmm.

Brandon:   I mean, I— yeah. I mean, who knows? Like Umbi probably— he probably doesn't have any saplings of his own, but he might hook up with some, you know, older ladies at some point.

Eric:  Hell yeah.

Brandon:  But who can say?

Julia:  Yeah, Umbi is living in— what is it? The lakes, the villages? What's the—

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  —horny Florida place?

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  Yeah, exactly.

Amanda:  Whatever that is.

Eric:  It's still called the Florida Keys.

Amanda:  from Ckrichter, "Afterparty question from me is, if you did another story set in Verda Stello, which NPC would you want to play as?" It would be so fun to explore what Aubergine is doing.

Julia:  I was gonna say Fran Bois, so maybe it's a  French Resistance arc.

Eric:  This so fun—

Brandon:  It was fun.

Eric:  It would be so funny to play Star Wars—

Amanda:  Yes.

Eric:  —against the Crags.

Amanda:  Yes.

Eric:  That'd be sick as hell.

Amanda:  That'd be awesome, truly.

Brandon:  I mean, yeah, I would kill to be Kidd Cervantes. I'm mad that I didn't make that up and get to play it—

Eric:  Sorry, sorry.

Julia:  It would be really funny if Brandon had to play a silent character for an entire campaign.

Brandon:  Every time that me and Lauren watched a TV show and we see someone who is, like, just a either in a coma or, like, you know, doesn't have any lines for a reason on a television show. We're like, "Goddamn, that's a good day at work."

Amanda:  It is. You're so right.

Eric:  I'm really happy with how the One Shots went. I think that I got my yayas out for this by doing the One Shots. And—

Brandon:  Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya.

Eric:  Thank you, Brandon. And those are like the anthology of short stories written by other characters in my wor— written by other authors in my world vibes that I got from that. Especially seeing the first introduction of the key that still hurts and the fake Salmon Berry were— the fake Salmon Berry were all extremely ones I wanted to hit on.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Hell yeah.

Eric:  And then, just like the one with— the one that you did, Brandon, with Connie Chang and Jasper, was like, "This is what some— what other pirates are getting up to, the stupid shit that they're doing while— instead of looking for the Salmon."

Brandon:  Uh-hmm. Oh, I missed my little ant vampire.

Julia:  Hmm.

Eric:  So funny.

Amanda:  Oh, so good.

Brandon:  It was cute.

Amanda:  From Anna.matronic,  which, Anna, if you are not a drag queen, consider licensing your name to a drag queen. That's incredible. "Is a massage chair in Verda Sello, just a centipede that you sit on?"

Brandon:  Yes. And then you can get the better— the, like, upgraded version, which is a millipede.

Amanda:  Oh, my God.

Julia:  Flintstones rules, I guess, you know?

Amanda:  Even better.

Eric:   Anna is in the Discord and made a point this week to refer back to a message that they posted months ago and was like, "You're answering this question." I'm like, "Fair."

Amanda:  We are, Anna. Thank you. From Hannah W., "When each of you went into combat in this campaign, what was your character's battle theme song playing in your head? This is also me assuming everyone has background music in their head for combat."

Julia:  My first thought was the Pokemon like battle— or—

Amanda:  Julia, this is playing in my head right now.

Julia:  Pom, pom, pom, pom, pom, pom, pom, pom, pom, pom, pom, pom, pom.

Eric:  Te, ne, neeeeeee.

Amanda:  That's starting--

Julia:  Yeah. Oh, maybe I was wrong. Maybe that wasn’t Pokemon, anyway.

Eric:  No, I think— wait, was that the—

Brandon:  No, that— it bleeds into each other, the 007 and the—

Amanda:  It feels like Mission Impossible but it’s not, yeah.

Brandon:  Yeah, Mission Impossible.

Julia:  All right. Well, then, it was Mission Impossible or whatever.

Eric:  It's both. They're the same.

Julia:  What I'm just saying.

Eric:  They're the same.

Brandon:   Yeah, they're really similar.

Amanda:  That's the definitive answer.

Brandon:  This is a problem that I have because there's a choice that I always make of, like, does this battle need something in the background, in terms of music or whatever, to make it propel it forward? And I've done it in other campaigns and other, but it's tough because it gets really repetitive, because for— because of DND, as we were talking about earlier, battles last for 60, 70 minutes sometimes.

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Brandon:  So I'm glad that you have battle music in your head, at least, as it's going on, Hannah.

Amanda:  Yeah, I hear the, like, "Ching," of, like, a B drill coming out of a Pokeball. Oh, yeah. No, a 100% that's what's happening.

Eric:  It's Pokemon battle music, is the answer.

Amanda:  Yeah, yeah.

Julia:  All right, fair, fair.

Amanda:  From Chloe SA, "What happens to Bartlett when Umbi dies?"

Brandon:  I think he cries a little bit. No, actually, I'm gonna take that back. I think he— Bartlett has a rich, full life outside of Umbi.

Amanda:  Thank you.

Brandon:  He has a whole bird wife and bird kids.

Amanda:  Bartlett's the one who has a surprise spouse and family.

Brandon:  Yes. And when Umbi dies, he's like, "Gawk. Thank God." And he goes back to his family and takes care of them, and is very loving. He walks in with a briefcase, and he's like, "Oh, my kids."

Eric:  I find it really funny that all of that is true, but as soon as Umbi dies, Bartlett dies immediately afterwards.

Julia:  Because he's animated by Umbi's magic.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  Yeah. Yeah. Bartlett goes, "Oh, no," and then it falls apart.

Brandon:  Well, no, that's not true, because he's—  like, he's not animated by Umbi's magic. He's just created by Umbi, so, like, once he's created, he's created.

Eric:  He's— he's Frank— you're right, he's Frankenstein. But I still—

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  —find it really funny that Bartlett dies—

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  —as soon as Umbi dies.

Amanda:  Hilarious. From LoafOfBret, "Shout out to Harold and Sil. While they didn't have a ton of time in the last arc, they are the MVPs for me of Campaign 3."

Julia:  True.

Brandon:  Shout out.

Eric:  They didn't get a chance. You guys didn't pull the scout ahead move, because you knew exactly where you wanted to go and knew where you were going. So they didn't get a lot of play in their last arc, but I love Harold and Sil. It was really nice that just Brandon saying, "Oh, we need to make sure our ship looks shitty so we can hide."

Amanda:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  Turned into Harold and sill.

Amanda:  So good, so good. From Shelby, "If you could revisit any location or character in Verda Stello via a One Shot, what would you pick?"

Julia:  See,  I didn't see the revisit in this, and my immediate instinct was, what if we were all competitors in the builder games?

Brandon:  Ooh.

Amanda:  I mean, hell yeah. That'd be so much fun.

Brandon:  Just like Hunger Games, but what, with plant and bug people?

Eric:  Yeah.

Julia:   Yeah. I mean, all of our characters would probably die, but it'd be pretty cool on the way, yeah.

Brandon:  Yeah, dramatic deaths.

Amanda:  That  would be better.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Eric:  That would be fun to do as, like, a four-episode One Shot.

Brandon:  Ooh.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  100% as a limited series.

Brandon:  Oh, maybe like at a live show, like in Portland in March.

Amanda:  Do you guys want that? Do you guys want that? Maybe like at a live show?

Eric:  No, no, no. It would have to— I feel—

Brandon: At jointhepartypod.com/live?

Eric:  I would want to play it out as a fuller thing. I can't get that all done in one live show.

Julia:  I also really like this idea, because I'm picturing doing the same games as the Bullseye Games arcs, so it's like, "Oh, we didn't do well enough in Name That Dog, and so one of us died."

Amanda:  "Shit,  I forgot the capital of Arkansas." Puhhh! My character's gone.

Julia:  Fuck!

Brandon:  That's really good.

Eric:  So funny. I would want to go back to the Book Depository Island, the Book Depository Park.

Julia:  Hmm.

Eric:  I— there's so much more to explore there. Just going— you doing a heist of it could be fun. You doing— you, like, going and attacking Tessie the storm as a rival company, anything like that. Oh, the people who I love that we didn't get a chance to explore. Remember the life insurance company I created for Amanda's One Shot?

Amanda:  Yeah.

Julia:  Oh, yeah.

Amanda:  That was so good.

Eric:   God, I love— I gotta look that up. It was like Blue something.

Brandon:  Yeah, it was really good.

Amanda:  Yeah, those people were amazing.

Julia:  It was Blue Lotus.

Eric:  Right. And Blue Lotus was something that I looked up. Oh, right. The Blue Lotus was from ancient Egypt, where they associated with the life cycle and rebirth, which I thought made sense for a life insurance company.

Brandon:  Hmm.

Eric:  I found— I had written down this tweet that grant Howitt had made that there should be a DND campaign where a PC is a cleric working for a dungeon delving insurance company, like what they have in Delicious in Dungeon. S I really wish we had had more time to explore the life insurance company—

Brandon:  Yeah, it was really fun.

Eric:  —on the Great Salt Sea.

Amanda:  Man, Grant, just every post, a good idea. My answer would be the separatists in the Crags. I'm really curious—

Brandon:  Hmm.

Amanda:  —what the whole nightshade encampment, Le Monde, is like, and I would love to go.

Eric:  There's something I really wanted to explore more, was that there were mega fauna in there. There's, like, that Tumblr post—

Brandon:  Ooh.

Eric:  —going around—

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  —that, like, there's much, like, the deeper you go in the ocean, the weirder the creatures get. The deeper you go into a giant forest, the weirder and bigger the creatures get. And I really wanted to explore just the animals—

Brandon:  Yeah.

Eric:  —of Le Monde as well.

Brandon:  That would have been fun. My answer for me as a person, Brandon, would— I would want to go to that fucking bar and get one of them Researchers Delight.

Eric:  Oh, the Researchers Delight.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  That was great.

Brandon:  Yeah.

Amanda:  Maybe we can get one together, I don't know, several hours before, but not too many hours before our live show in Portland, Oregon on March 23rd, 2025.

Brandon:  Where you can get tickets at jointhepartypod.com/live where all the fees are included and you get two shows for one?

Amanda:  Exactly, right.

Brandon:  Whoa.

Amanda:  Like, I know it's very affordable for listeners, but I think we might be able to eke out just enough money that we can pay for some multi drinks.

Eric:  I only want to go for Spirits, so I'll leave halfway through.

Julia:  Fair enough.

Brandon:  Now, if anyone wants—

Julia:  It's gonna fun.

Brandon:  —at the live show wants to get— send us all Researchers Delight on stage, I ain't gonna stop you.

Julia:  Uh-hmm.

Eric:  First explain to the bartender how— what a Researchers Delight is and then we'll go from there.

Brandon:  Like, do you know all the densities of your various liquors?

Eric:  And are they all different colors? It's really important they're different colors.

Julia:  Very important.

Amanda:  Can I maintain the layers as I carry it up to the stage?

Julia: They have to pour it up in front of us.

Amanda:  True.

Julia:  That's the delight of it.

Brandon:  That's the fun, yeah.

Amanda:  Speaking of fun things we're doing in the future, folks, what's coming up? What's on the horizon?

Eric:  Join the Party is over.

Amanda:  Eric, you can't keep saying that. You can't keep saying that.

Brandon:  Nooooooooooo!!

Eric:  I've never said it. This was a funny joke one time. We've literally already talked about what we're doing for Campaign 4. They know I'm joking. They know I'm joking.

Amanda:  The next four weeks, people are going to be the One Shot Derby. We are so excited.

Brandon:  One Shot Derby.

Eric:  If those of you remember from the last time that we were in between campaigns, we are going to play out the character creation of three tabletop RPGs that we want to expose all of you to, and then everyone's going to vote on what they want us to play out the full game version of and we're going to release it on the Patreon.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  Yeah.

Eric:  It's a lot of fun. I've been really digging into tabletop RPGs that I think all of you will really, really like. We've already recorded the episodes too, so we know you're gonna like them.

Julia:  Yeah. Yeah.

Eric:  See, remember, I was joking about the podcast ending. I'm also happy we're not taking a week off, honestly, I think it's really cool that we're just going to keep putting stuff out on Tuesdays going forward.

Julia:  No bad Tuesday.

Brandon:  No bad Tuesday.

Julia:  None. We made a promise.

Amanda:  Not one. You might individually have a bad Tuesday, but there's never—

Brandon:  No, you can't, Amanda.

Amanda:  Oh, you're right.

Brandon:  You can't.

Amanda:  Fuck, shit. Damn it.

Brandon: Not when Join the Party's out. Yeah.

Eric:  So we're going to do the One Shot Derby episodes. There's going to be an Afterparty for the One Shot Derby to make sure that everyone has enough time to vote on which game they want us to One Shot Derby. And then after that, we're just going into the Campaign 4, folks.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Julia:  It just happened.

Eric:  Campaign 4 is coming very soon. We're already working on it.

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  Yeah. We have a release date—

Brandon:  Uh-hmm.

Amanda:  —and everything. We are so excited. Make sure you follow Join the Party pod on social as, number one, to enjoy Eric's great Canva creations, but secondly, because we will be keeping you posted all about what is coming next, and maybe dropping some hints of some shape or form.

Eric:  Some hints?

Brandon:  Yeah.  I was gonna ask Eric, do you want to give one adjective to either describe something from the One Shot Derby or from Campaign 4.

Eric:   Oh, didn't we do emo— we did emoji at one point.

Brandon:  Emojis, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amanda:  Each of us did an emoji for— to tease Campaign 3, yeah.

Julia:  Okay.

Amanda:  Can we each do an emoji for Campaign 4?

Julia:  Yes.

Eric:  My emoji for the One Shot Derby is the wine glass.

Amanda:  Ooh. That's really fun.

Julia:  Cool.

Amanda:  Mine is the racing horse.

Julia:  Mine is— ooh, let me think, what do I want to do? Mine is the knife emoji.

Brandon:  I'll say the train emoji.

Amanda:  Hmm.

Julia:  Okay.

Eric:  Good one. Strong. Strong choice.

Julia:  So that's for the One Shot Derby. Do we all want to do one for Campaign 4?

Amanda:  Let's save that to the One Shot Derby Afterparty.

Julia:  Okay.

Brandon:  Hmm. Okay, so have to tune in?

Amanda:  Have to tune in.

Brandon:  Maybe you'll get a few little sneak peeks.

Eric:   Campaign 4 is coming so soon, I almost don't want to tease it. Like you're gonna find out so soon, folks.

Amanda:  Five weeks. Five weeks only.

Eric:  Five weeks.

Amanda:  It's gonna be great.

Brandon:  Five weeks.

Julia:  Wild.

Amanda:  All right, everyone. I think that'll do it. We are standing here where our beach chairs used to be perched on the very edge of the shore, and now there is, you know, 100 yards of wet sand with those weird little crebs who pop up to breathe and then pop back into the sand.

Julia:  Aw.

Amanda:  What an image, what a journey, what a life. I can't wait to see you all on exactly six days next Tuesday.

Brandon:  Julia, you knocked over my sand castle.

Julia:  Sorry, Brandon. I'll help you rebuild it.

Eric:   I never need to remember what the name of that teenager possessed by an evil entity is anymore.

Brandon:  No one gets that joke because it's always cut.

Amanda:  No one knows because we keep cutting it.

Eric:  I know, I'll tell them right now.

Julia:  Yeah, it was cut.

Eric:  I could not remember if her name was Audrey or Aubrey the entire time, I always got it wrong. No matter what it was, I always got it wrong.

Amanda:  And Julia's gentle correction and Brandon's excellent edit means that nobody ever knew.

Eric:  No one ever knew.

Brandon:  Nobody ever knew.

Julia:  There you go.

Amanda:  Well, we love you. Thank you for listening and please tune in to the One Shot Derby and to Campaign 4. You have no idea what we're cooking up for you.

Eric:  What a good time to get new listeners to jump on board.

Julia:  Oh.

Amanda:  Wow.

Brandon:  Yo, ho, ho.

Amanda:  A pirate's life for me. Goodbye, everybody.

Brandon:  Bye.

Julia:  Avast ye.

Eric:  Okay. So it's like a panda, but it's covered in moss.

Amanda:  Oh.

Julia:  Oh.

Eric:  So that would just be kind of—

Julia:  Okay.

Eric:  Like the white parts are green, instead of black.

Amanda:  Oh, my God. That's so cute.

Julia:  Oh. Well, I guess—

Eric:  This is— I just— I had one last idea, I wanted to throw it out there.

Brandon:  Okay, cool. Great.

Julia:  Cool.

Eric:  I figured.

Amanda:  What is, like, pandan, the—

Brandon:  Yeah, pandan.

Julia:  Yeah, pandan. A pandan.

Eric:  So it's called— it's a pandan panda.

Amanda:  Oh.

Eric:  It's pretty good.

Brandon:  Oh, delicious.

Amanda:  Smells so good. And may your rolls trend ever upward.

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