Dimension 20 (2018-…): Season 13, Episode 1 - Welcome to the Spacin' Life, Buddy - full transcript
Captain Norman Takamori attempts to pilot the crew of the Red Hot out of a dangerous pursuit.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[music playing]
(beeping)
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(upbeat music)
- Hello one and all, and welcome to a new thrilling season
of Dimension 20.
I am your humble dungeon master, Brennan Lee Mulligan.
With me as always in the dome are our intrepid heroes.
Say hi, intrepid heroes.
- Hi, intrepid heroes.
- That's what I'm talking about, baby.
- There's the juice.
- There's the juice.
There's what we love.
Listen, me and the intrepid heroes, we wanna say hi.
We wanna shout out, back in the dome.
First of all, to all of you,
we are of course being incredibly safe and COVID compliant.
Shout out to face shields and masks
and all of our crew being kept safe.
Thank you, Ash and the rest of the production department
for keeping us all safe.
One may notice a couple of things different,
a couple of things different in this season.
I wanna shout out a couple other people
because it's a new season and a brand new setting.
And, you know, we were looking all over the world
for new settings to play in.
I was like, we gotta find a sci-fi setting
with the humor and grit and wit and wonder
to take us and the intrepid heroes to the stars.
So reached out to noted author Elaine Lee
to use her setting of Starstruck.
Elaine Lee, the noted author of Starstruck,
Vamps, Brain Banks, many comics,
also the author of Me.
Her son, Brennan Lee Mulligan.
- Mom, thanks for the galaxy.
We will handle it with love and care.
- We love you, Elaine!
I can't wait to meet you one day.
(all laughing)
And talk about astrology, baby.
- There you go.
My mom famously sent Allie my birth chart.
- I got all the juicy deets.
(all laughing)
- What are his weaknesses?
I'll write it down.
- That's the main thing astrology does
is list your weaknesses.
Vulnerabilities to fire and poison.
(laughing)
Yes, we will be playing in the Starstruck Universe,
the graphic novel series from writer Elaine Lee
and artist Michael Kaluta.
Shout out to Michael Kaluta, my godfather.
And a world of hot suns, hot guns.
We enter.
Anarch Era 220.
And they'll do this, I'm doing it with my mouth,
but they'll probably add a noise here too.
Anarch Era, 220, Hecaton Chiara's asteroid cluster
just outside the Phoebus system.
Spinning asteroids floating in space
as distant stars glitter on the face of other void.
Yellow gleaming high on beams
blast across the space as the Red Hot,
a massive Americadian modified retrofitted smuggler freighter
races through the asteroid belt as high on beams
from pursuing roid removers.
(imitates gun firing)
You guys see a bunch of clampers zooming in past you.
High on beams, skating across the shields of your ship.
Gang, roll initiative.
(all exclaiming)
- You don't even know who I am.
- What?
- It's a new season, we're back in the dome.
No punches pulled.
- I rolled a nat one, baby.
- There it is.
- Oh, I also rolled a nat one.
(all laughing)
- You get tickled.
- Third nap, one!
- No!
- Can I roll with disadvantage to try to get a nap?
- Yeah, roll with disadvantage.
- Please don't, please don't.
- I rolled better.
(all laughing)
- Left out, dude, left out.
- All the cool kids are rolling nap ones.
- What did we get, here's a nap one.
- I got a 19.
- I don't know what the fuck's wrong with it.
- Incredible.
What did we get here, Ellie?
- Three.
- A three, amazing.
- Are you serious?
Three, that one's a three.
- These are given to me by Rick Perry.
- Yeah, Rick Perry.
- Also rolled a dice.
- These are weighted. - These are weighted.
- Rick Perry.
- My Rick Perry gave me a dirty 20
with advantage, a dirty 21.
But I got disadvantage, so just a dirty 20.
- Just a dirty 20, incredible.
- Wow. - There we go.
- That's right, for the first time
in Dimension 20 history,
we'll be leaping straight into combat.
It's a tough galaxy out there,
but somebody's got to live in it.
It might as well be you.
Gang, we meet the crew of the Red Hot
when things are looking pretty bad.
This retrofitted, old, discontinued,
American Space Brigade mess freighter
is crewed by the following individuals.
We're gonna start, of course, on the bridge
where, of course, only two of our crew members
are currently active.
Zach and Siobhan, could you please introduce
your characters and describe them?
- I am Norman the Skipper Takamori
and I am the captain of this vessel
and I am surrounded by morons.
(all laughing)
- Seriously, where is everybody?
- Pervee and Chase, by a bunch of little freaks.
(all laughing)
- That's right, as the captain is so quick to notice,
you are being pursued by a veritable armada
of Armstrong roid removers.
When it's time for you to remove a pesky asteroid,
trust Armstrong, the number one name in asteroid removal.
Though these ones seem to have been outfitted
with space saber high on beams
that are currently blasting your shields away.
I should mention you are not currently at 88 shield points.
Could you mark yourself down
at a humble 18 shield points remaining?
- 18, we're down to 18?
- You're down to 18 shield points, I'm afraid.
- Lemon, bad baby.
- There are more than 18 people following us.
- Let's hope that they only do
one point of shield damage each.
So when we see Captain Norman, the skipper Takamori,
what does he look like?
- He is like half shaved.
He has like a little towel around his neck.
He had his like two minutes of peace and quiet
where he didn't have to hear these morons
gabbering away at his ears.
And then of course we're getting attacked
by a fucking armada of drones
coming in after us, shooting their high on beams.
I'm in hell.
- Incredible.
Looking back over the hassled captain's shoulder,
we see in the center of the bridge,
an enormous glass sphere of water.
And within that water, we see the ship's comms officer,
Reva.
Siobhan, could you introduce your character to us?
- Hello, I'm Reva.
I'm the comms officer slash unpaid intern.
Reva's obviously my human name.
My actual Agwa Tunisian name is,
and then you get an image of being deep underwater
and finding a current that leads you swiftly and perfectly
to where you need to get to.
So that's my real name, but that's a bit complicated
for most non-psychic life forms.
So Reva's good for me.
(laughing)
I'm just here having a good time.
I'm out on my galavant.
That's a thing that we Agwa Tunisians do.
we go out and we live out in the world
before returning back to our home water planet.
Oh, this is so fun, isn't it?
Oh, it's so fun.
(all laughing)
- Riva, from your central water bulb on the bridge,
you see a hailing signal from a nearby class YNV
Enolo Interceptor incoming from a ship designation,
the Lady Pike.
- Hello!
Hi, how's it going?
- You activate the screen and coming up
in front of you and the captain,
you see a dull red bridge of a pursuing ship,
this larger Enolo interceptor.
You see there is a very old, like deep wrinkles of foam,
she's like maybe like 80 years old.
She's got sunglasses on and a kind of like,
some kind of fangs around the outset,
cowboy hat low as she's at the command bridge.
You hear, "Oh, hang on there,
This is Captain Jan De La Vega of the Lady Pike.
We're coming in hot on your tail, friendo.
Notice you lifted some barinium crystal off the cosmic veil
couple of bandlings back.
So here's the deal, amigo.
You hand over the crystal and we don't bust your ass
back and forth to the Bizon Galaxy.
How does that fit, partner?
- Okay, we'll be right there.
We'll hand it right over to you.
- Absolutely not, we're not handing over the crystals,
goddammit, listen to me.
Space is pretty big, and there are very small borders
between things that are unclear to a lot of people.
I don't think we found it where you say we found it,
so we're gonna take this crystal
and we're gonna get out of here.
- Oh, he says we're taking the crystal
and we're going to get out of here.
- She can hear me.
(laughing)
- Well, I see about 20 roid removers.
These clampers would love to get in under those shields
and buzz saw away, so if you wanna try to run,
the horse be my guest.
But we're getting them crystals one way or another.
Ain't that right, Needles?
- One of their conspirator opens,
and you see a cranching gunner,
who's this little lizard guy go,
"Heh heh heh heh, that's right, boss!
"Let's open fire!"
- Lizard people shooting at me now.
(laughing)
- Norm, today's a pretty bad day.
And we move back through time to better days.
Golden fields of wheat swaying in Kansas on Americadia.
Ranks and ranks of Americadian cadets saluting
as you in full dress uniform approach the dais,
beckoning you up is General Annalinda Weatherall
of the Americadian Space Brigade.
Norm, on this day as you're being decorated,
what's going through your head this many years in the past?
- I think Norm is looking around at just truly
the most perfect, beautiful thing you can imagine.
A full military.
(laughing)
Look at it.
Everyone's in uniform, everyone is uniform,
everyone is puffing their chests out,
being the brave heroes that they should be,
and Norman's doing everything in his power
to live up to the name and puff his chest out just as hard.
- Cadet Norman Takamori, please approach the dais.
(laughing)
As you approach the dais,
for outstanding service and gallantry
in the face of overwhelming odds
for your position as ace tiger pilot of your squadron,
we award you the brass tiger.
And you see pins of metal to your chest.
Guns fire off.
Hey!
Everyone applauds as you approach the dais.
♪ And through the course of history ♪
♪ There was but one society ♪
♪ That stood for might and liberty ♪
Hat removed.
the old red, green, and blue Americadia.
You see the banner waving over Kansas,
Americadia, the Americadian Space Brigade.
Good till the last drops.
- Just a little bit of a tear.
(laughing)
- You've cut a couple of years later,
you're in a dull brown office with sort of the shades drawn,
wispy kind of desert of New Texas looking out behind you.
I'm sorry, we're not gonna put the squadron under your command.
But... I...
Sorry, sir, I...
What else? Is there anything else to do?
Are there any other options?
Well...
You know, we discontinued...
The Space Brigade is kind of the best thing there is, right?
It's the thing I'm most proud of.
And it feels a little like,
I kind of don't understand what you're telling me right now.
- Well, we're saying that this is where it ends.
Norman, we're saying this is where it ends.
You see that the officer here just looks and says,
here's the best we can do.
We can bust you down to corporal and have you ride a desk.
Or you're discharged with honors.
You take half pay on your pension, it's not a bad deal.
- I mean, I guess I could get out there,
get that half pension, and try to find my own way.
- You see Officer shrugs and goes,
now, you could cash out half your pension,
get yourself a ship if you wanna still be a pilot.
Obviously, you're foregoing a lot of future money.
As the officer begins to say this,
you look out and see old mess freighter.
It's been discontinued, this line,
they don't make this anymore.
And you see it's gonna go to surplus sale,
but you see a rusty old hot dog shaped ship
out there on the launch pad outside the medical offices.
I mean, I don't recommend cashing out your pension,
you know, but, because you'd be cashing it out at half pay,
so the life of the pension is worth way more
cashing the fuck out.
(everyone laughing)
- I'm gonna make my own space brigade.
(everyone laughing)
- The hell, what are you saying, Norman?
- I'm saying there's gotta be people out there
who can crew up a ship like that and be just as good.
- We cut to the present moment.
- I can't find any help.
(everyone laughing)
- Zach, you are first to act in combat.
I am going to use evasive maneuvers,
which is before my initiative, right?
- Yes, absolutely, you can do this.
- And roll a D6 and move that multiplied by 50
away from these people behind us, right?
- Hell yeah.
We gotta give a huge shout out here,
first of all, to Talespire, Rick Perry, Katie Nick,
and of course our builders, Han and Johnny over at Talespire
for the incredible work building out this sci-fi setting.
Thanks for taking us to the world of Star Trek.
Also to our friends at HeroForge and Fox
for looking up all these rad minis.
And also, as you may notice,
we're playing with some wild rules.
We'll be playing with SW5E.
Shout out to Todd and Teagan,
Todd Moonbounce and Teagan Jenkins over at SW5E
for hooking us up.
Check out Dungeon Jedi Masters for the scoop
on how to play this wild system that we're playing here.
- That person's last name Moonbounce?
- Todd Moonbounce and Teagan Jenkins.
- That was the perfect last name I've ever heard.
- Got a boom.
Go ahead and roll the dice
and we'll see how many feet you move.
- Okay, someone's gotta get us out of here.
And it certainly won't be my crew.
He is gonna roll the D6, five.
So five times 50, so I go 250 feet straight away.
And that is prior to my turn, I believe.
- Yes, it's when you roll initiative.
- Okay.
And I think, I just wanna make an investigation check
on what, it feels like we gotta get the fuck out of here
versus we're fighting these.
Go ahead and give me your perception, yeah.
- Okay, my ship's perception or mine?
- You can use yours with disadvantage
or you can use the ship's.
And the ship should be a scan check.
- 18.
- 18, you are overwhelmed with these Armstrongs here,
with these clampers and buzzers from the roid removers.
And you also are looking back,
that interceptor behind you is definitely modded out.
You can see them arming up a tractor beam
on the front of that interceptor coming after.
- Okay, I'm in hell.
Yeah, 250 feet away.
I think I'm just gonna use the rest of my action
to fly straight ahead and use a bonus action dash away.
- Incredible.
- So we're going as far forward as we can.
- Four of these roid removers
are going to take their reaction at this point.
- Oh, God.
They're gonna make four attacks on the ship.
They make this as part of a charge.
All of you see a couple of these vessels swoop in.
Three of them get under your ship's shields
and make contact with the hull.
They are not using energy weapons,
so they bypass shields here.
They are using their construction asteroid stuff
to just move in and clamp onto the hull of your ship.
(dice clinking)
Here's where we're at right now.
Those are some low rolls.
I am gonna need three maneuver checks
using the red hot stats from our pilot, the skipper.
- Maneuver checks are dexterity checks, right?
- That is correct.
- Which is negative one.
- Negative one.
- Pull up, skip, pull up.
- I would like to give the direct...
- Absolutely.
- Action to give you advantage on that roll.
- Thank God.
That was a two, so it would have been a one.
That's 11, so 10.
- First check succeeds.
- Okay.
- Now this next one is rolled straight.
- Okay.
13, so it becomes 12.
- That is a success.
- Natural one.
- Oh!
- That'll happen.
- The ship immediately takes six points of damage
to its shields and reduces your speed by 50.
- No!
- I hate to be this guy, didn't you say
it directly impacts our hull?
- It does, sorry, not your shields.
Six hull points of damage.
Thank you very much for keeping me honest.
- Do we have any homework?
Do we have any homework?
- It's the first day.
(all laughing)
- Amazing.
- He's just that guy.
- Just because I had to ask.
- Yeah, this is PVP starting now.
(all laughing)
- I attack Lou.
(laughing)
- Be the person, right?
- One of them clamps onto the ship,
deals a small amount of damage,
but reduces your speed by 50 as it clamps on,
and like it does to asteroids all day,
hits its thrusters and starts pulling your ship
in the wrong direction.
It is still your turn as it uses that reaction.
You can go ahead and take
whatever movement you're gonna take.
You said you were gonna take a fly action, correct?
- Yes, so I initially moved for the evasive maneuvers,
and now I'm gonna take the fly action
and use slippery pilot to,
they're grappling, can I disengage from them?
- If you wanna use an action,
you can use an action to make another maneuver check
and try to shake that clamper off.
- So we only have one clamping onto it.
- You only have one clamping on right now.
- Yeah, maybe I'll do that.
- Give me a maneuver check.
- Negative one.
Four?
- Four is not gonna do it.
You have movement and a bonus action.
- I just want everyone at home to know
that Brennan made our fucking ship stats.
(all laughing)
- Yeah, we're not dreaming this up
and we're like, "This is what we want."
- This is not the fruition of our-
- If you were creating a ship,
it would have been so top of the line,
you have no idea.
- Yes.
- Absolutely busted ship.
- Absolutely.
- It would have been a cheeseburger.
- Yeah, full-
(all laughing)
Full disclosure, at character creation,
everyone was like, "We're so excited to play Bozos,"
and made the most busted characters I've ever seen of Unreal.
- Okay.
- So, okay.
So I still have my movement and the bonus action.
- That's correct.
- So I will use full movement just straight ahead.
- Amazing.
So we're gonna move 500 feet forward on this vessel.
As you come in proximity to that asteroid,
give me one dexterity saving throw.
(Brennan laughs)
- 16.
- You try to shake this guy.
Zoom out of the way, this asteroid,
as it begins to zoom past you.
- Does anyone work on this ship but me?
- Riva, you have used your action to direct.
- I have used my action.
- Do you have any bonus actions
you would like to use on your turn or no?
- I do not have any bonus actions.
I have a reaction that I'll use if I need to, when I need to.
- Amazing, Riva, as you sit there
looking at your streaming captain,
calling out these helpful things to grant advantage
we (imitates bubbling)
bubbles move around in your watery comms station,
and we return to Agua Tunisia.
(Brennan exhales)
Many years ago, you look before you
and see two of your friends and loved ones.
One of them is cool water of the Shaded Reef.
The other one is rising bubbles
from a deep volcanic vent many fathoms below us.
Both of those images communicated to your mind,
they look at you and say,
"I'm so excited for your gallivant."
- I'm so excited for my gallivant.
- You see the other one sort of crosses their arms
and looks at you and goes,
"You know, here on Agua Tunisia,
"we share one mind, one heart,
"and we hide nothing from each other."
- What?
- What?
- And there are no secrets kept
and no one tries to take advantage of anybody.
- Exactly.
- And I assume that's what's going on in the galaxy.
- I don't have any other thoughts about what else it could be.
- Amazing.
- You can't be dishonest to each other, that's terrible.
- It's terrible.
- There's so much that you can do.
- A couple of years later,
you are looking through a pane of glass,
through some water and you see Sister Mildred
of the cosmic veil, who's a member of the Cloistered Order
of the Goddess Uncaring, looks up and says,
so you're on your gala van, right?
- Yes, that's right.
- Oh, that's amazing.
What do you know about pleasure party?
- Oh, oh, I don't know anything about pleasure party.
- In addition to being a nun, I want,
let me tell you for a second.
So I'm actually a part of this business.
It's incredible.
- Oh, okay.
- You're your own boss.
You make your own hours.
- Yes, it's true.
- Your own hours?
- Yeah, you work as well.
- What do you make them from?
- Well, here's the best part.
You don't even have to make the pleasure putty.
You, what you do is this.
You make a small investment
and the company sends you pleasure putty.
And then all you do is you recruit people
to sell the pleasure putty and they make an investment.
And basically, not only are you your own boss,
but you're also the boss of these other people
who are their own boss.
- That's amazing.
It's like a boss within a boss within a boss.
- Within a boss within a boss.
It's a quantum state of people being each other's bosses
and also themselves.
- That's beautiful.
- And it forms this perfect structure.
The strongest structure in existence
is a three-dimensional triangle.
- Oh.
- Yeah.
- That is strong.
- Really strong.
- 'Cause all of the corners support each other.
- All the corners support each other.
- All the corner bosses are supporting the other corner.
- Yeah, and the corner bosses all support the boss
at the top corner.
- Right, but the top corner is also,
if you flip it around a bottom, that's beautiful.
'Cause they're all the same, aren't they?
They're all bosses.
- Yes, and whether it's the top or the bottom,
it's where we send our money.
And we cut back to you.
(laughing)
We cut back to you looking down through the water sluice
deep, deep down in the ship.
You see many, many crates of pleasure putty,
which you had to pay extra for to get waterproofed,
that are just waiting for you in your living quarters.
- I'm gonna sell some any day, I believe in it,
'cause I'm my own boss.
(all laughing)
I make my own hours.
And I don't know what I make them from,
but I do make them from something.
(all laughing)
- From probably the putty.
- Oh!
- I feel so--
- Incredible, as we look at the ship,
we are going to zoom away from the bridge
to the dual gunning stations of the vessel.
Emily and Murph, could you please introduce your characters?
- I'm Big Barry Six, ruggedly handsome,
about 38 years old, six foot four, about 235,
wearing some kind of like skeletal armor over his huge body
and is yelling to the other gunner down the hall.
- And I am Sundry Sidney, Jane of all trades,
the Swiss Army wife.
I am a beta version of a discontinued multipurpose droid
and I'm wearing like a little 1950s diner uniform
with little roller skates and a little paper hat.
But then I also have an assault cannon for an arm
and a cybernetic eye.
(all laughing)
- Both of you are getting communications from the bridge.
You can see that one of the roid removers
is clamped onto the back of the ship.
The others are kind of swarming in behind you.
And you can see way off in the distance,
although partially, you have partial cover from it
through the asteroid field is the Lady Pike.
What are both of you calling out to the captain
as you hear Norm cursing over the-
- I'm calling out and I'm saying,
how far away are we from that big green ship?
The one that looks like a shark.
- It does kind of look like a shark.
- It looks like a shark.
- I think it's like 3,200 feet.
- 3,200 feet, so I couldn't even do it with disadvantage.
- 3,200 feet, you could.
That's exactly the range.
- Is that right?
- If it's 3,200 feet, I could do it.
- It is, yeah.
- Go with it.
- I think I go to Barry and I'm like,
Barry, I could take a real big chance
and try and get that shot.
- Take the chance!
- You think I should take the chance?
- Take the shot!
- Okay, you think I should take the chance?
- Take the shot, Sid, you got it!
- Okay.
- Androids and steroids, we got this!
(laughing)
- Notting balls, androids and steroids!
- Notting balls, androids and steroids!
We got this, take the shot!
- Get off the chain, my ears are bleeding!
- We're on the main channel, I'm sorry!
Back to Gunner Channel, back to Gunner Channel!
- Okay, Gunner Channel, whoo!
- I'm still on Gunner's channel,
I really like you two chatting.
- Hi Reeve, how are you? - Hi, what's up Reeve?
- Hi.
- And then I'm going to,
I have weapon expert to give me advantage,
but so with disadvantage, it'll just be straight.
- Yes, so it gives you advantage.
This is gonna be a straight shot, correct?
- Okay.
- Come on, Sid, come on.
- Okay, I haven't used a motherboard, I need this.
(dice clattering)
(laughing)
It's an 11.
ricocheting off the asteroids in the mix.
The high on beams of your quad high on cannon
blast off the side of the ship.
(imitates gunfire)
- Okay, I may be a droid,
but I am programmed with emotions
to inhibit some of my more rash behavior.
And so right now I feel absolute desolation and defeat.
Talk me out of it, Barry, 'cause I'm in a bad place.
- You gotta go for it.
You gotta grab life by the horns, okay?
And you did that, all right?
And I love you for it, all right?
Now I'm gonna shoot these fuckers at a real close
'cause that's an easier shot.
- As the red hot wheels around
to bring Barry's gunning station
into focus on the Lady Pike,
Sid having missed you enter this deep place of sadness
and we zoom back through time
to the corporate boardroom
of handy-andy Android manufacturers.
We zoom in on a screen and we see Sundry Sydney
gleaming smile, roller skates,
the candy striper outfit and the gun arm.
Presenting new top of the line
from the Handy Andy Corporation,
proud purveyors of fine androids all over the galaxy,
Sundry Sydney.
- Come at please, pleasure protect you.
- Look, I'm a mover and shaker
of a galactic corporation on the go.
I need a major domo and executive assistant
who can keep me safe from all the people
who are trying to get my number
and with all of the amenities
of the top of the line companion droid.
Take that erotica Anne.
- Yeah, fuck erotica Anne.
(laughing)
I'm in program to say that.
- Sundry Sidney, the multi droid for you.
Little like the hollow projection ends
and we see a boardroom.
A CEO wearing a kind of purple suit.
sort of like holds the thing
he just paused the commercial with,
looks around at the boardroom,
you see R&D department, other executives,
and sort of like, you know, marketing people, ad people.
And Sid, you are standing there
currently having been given the command to stay still.
What's your sort of neutral posture as you are frozen?
- I think I have like the plastered smile
of a people pleaser and like a look in my eyes
that's desperate for approval.
- That's like my natural state so that people know
they are under status above me.
(all laughing)
- So you see this boardroom filled with executives.
There's the CEO of Handy Andy here
who has just sort of clicked this button to stop the thing.
You see him going and looking.
So this aired
and you understand that Living Doll has already filed suit.
Fuck Erotica Anne, that made it into the commercial?
That made it into the commercial.
Direct slander, fucked us.
Fucks to death.
Why?
Does anyone have an answer?
You see the CEO just kicks a chair over
and looks around and says, "Okay, pull it up.
Pull up the next slide."
And he says, "I want to read this to all of you.
Product testing.
Number one, I found the use
of the Sundry Sydney disconcerting.
Its multifunctionality left me often at a loss
for what to do next.
I tried to engage the Pleasure Droid protocol,
but as I became caressed by the assault cannon,
(laughing)
I found myself rapidly leaving my state of arousal.
The roller skates didn't help either.
Help me out to understand.
You look over, you see that Max Gravar looks over
and points to Dr. Edwina Castor,
who's sort of an older R&D technician, says,
- We did our best to design the Android,
two specifications provided.
the marketing department contacted us,
the idea of a Swiss army wife,
and you see Max goes,
"There's a reason Swiss army knives
are sold in gift shops.
They are trash.
When you are buying a tool,
you don't want the thing that kind of does it all.
Anyone with real McCoy
is gonna get a Vircadian protector droid
and an erotica Anne
and a top of the line major domo.
They're gonna get an executive assistant droid.
Why would someone want to show up?
We're marketing this to people who want top of the line
and we're saying, here's a fucking grab bag.
- Is that a good thing?
- Who left this on?
(all laughing)
He turns around and says,
fucking thing is still on.
Look, the important thing is this, okay?
Looks at the R&D department and says,
"I know you did your best, all right?
"It's got the assault cannon and the eye."
Conceptually, this was wrong from the jump.
Can anyone tell me why this was never going to work?
And you see someone looks around and says,
multi, what you said about multi-tools.
And you see that there's another young woman here
who raises her hand and says,
well, there's, isn't there something,
sorry sir, isn't there something sort of appealing about,
you know, for all of us feel like
we kind of want to be able to do it all, right?
And so Sundry Sidney was sort of the idea of,
you have, there's something sort of aspirational about,
There's this assistant who's protecting you
and is a companion and can provide hospitality.
And you see the CEO looks and says, "You're fired.
You are fired.
Get your shit and get out."
You see, he looks around and says,
"People want to be everything themselves.
We're not selling people, we're selling androids.
What do you want your coffee guy on the corner to do?
Do you want him to be an amazing poet?
Do you wanna know that he has a nice garden at home?
You want him to make the best fucking cup of coffee!
Melt it down for parts, start again at zero.
Sid, you feel something flick
in your crystal consciousness.
All seven channels become unlocked
and you feel that you are no longer rooted to the spot.
- Can I look at Dr. Edwina Caster
with a slightly confused look?
- She looks at you with a slightly confused look.
Are you trying to communicate?
- I'm like looking for permission.
- She looks at you.
Give me an insight check.
- Okay.
13.
- She looks at you with her eyes wide.
and you see a little twinge of a smile.
She goes, "Oh, everyone in this room,
"we are in very real danger."
- Okay.
I'm going to cock my machine gun,
but then shoot out the window and roll with the camera.
(everyone laughing)
This database can interface, but it can also devastate!
(everyone laughing)
Tornado from my back.
(everyone laughing)
(laughing)
- Peep, peep, peep, peep, peep!
Oh, Jesus Christ!
(explosion)
Amazing, we cut back to the present moment!
(laughing)
- Oh my God.
(clapping)
- Oh, incredible!
- What happened?
What happened to that person who got fired unlock you?
- We don't know.
- Hey, Barry, you're right.
I've overcome adversity before.
I can do this.
Here's your shot.
(laughing)
- Barry, line it up, baby.
- Put my sunglasses on.
Barry gets into the zone.
- Am I able to shoot the one that's hanging on?
- Yes, you are able to target that one, yes.
- I guess I'll take--
- That one is gonna have partial cover
'cause you've only got like a profile on it
as it clamps onto the back of the ship.
- All right, then I'm gonna go ahead
and take a precision shot.
Not that any of my shots aren't precision shots.
(laughing)
But I do miss sometimes.
Okay.
Please precision shot, help that.
Okay, 17 to hit.
- 17.
- Hits, baby.
- Come on.
- 12 damage.
- You fully deplete the drone's shields
and deal two points of hull damage to it.
As you blast through.
- Nice one, bear.
- Thanks, almost got one.
(all laughing)
- Please, Barry, do your fucking job.
- I'm so sorry, Captain Norman, I really let you down.
- No, no, no, no, it's fine.
He's on the Gunner channel.
This is for us, Skip.
(all laughing)
- Skipper, goddammit.
- Captain Skip.
- Very, you (mimics gun firing)
as you're blasting away at this drone behind you.
And we zoom in on the six on your armor.
And we cut back many years ago
as you emerge covered with wires and goo from a big vat,
and you see five enormous naked wet men
who all look completely identical go, "Barry!"
- What's up, fellas?
- Yeah, dude, come on, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Barry, Barry!
- Yeah, come on, dude!
And they say, "Come on, we gotta go this way!"
- Dude, I don't know what you're talking about
'cause we're clones!
- Yeah, we're clones!
- What you thinking of?
- You zoom through and another, you see another
vat opens.
- Dude, another bear!
- Another bear!
- What's up?
- What's up?
- A group of enormous muscle bound wet clones
are all born from vats on the same day.
And all of you are now in a locker room.
You've been toweled off.
There's-
(all laughing)
- A lot of snapping, I'm assuming.
- A lot of snapping.
- All right, enough horseplay, enough horseplay!
You see that there is one of you
who shares the same general facial structure as you,
but is a little bit smaller, a little bit older.
And you see he's got a little lab coat on
with a little stencil, zero, one.
And he looks around at 11 of you,
again, one day old, beautiful big boys.
And he says, "My beloved berries."
Beloved Berries, I am you, and I am me, and I am all of us.
- That's right, Barry.
- That's right, Barry.
- That's right, Barry. - That's right, Barry.
- That's right, Barry.
(laughing)
- My name is, as you all know, Barry.
- Barry.
- My name's Barry.
- It is Barry.
- Oh, my name's Barry.
(laughing)
- Dr. Barry Bohunk.
And this is the Berry Battalion.
- Yes! - Yes!
- Yes! - Yes!
- Yes! - Yes!
(laughing)
- You may well ask why you are all here,
and I think you know why you're here.
We are approaching the 200th cycle of Anarch Era.
Following the downfall of the incorporated Elysian Republic
and the demise of the Dread Dictator in ages past,
We've seen now a free galaxy.
And what is the reward for a free galaxy?
The encroachment of sectarian, corporate,
paramilitary, and religious,
crypto-sectarian shenaniganary.
- We hate shenanigans.
- We hate shenanigans.
- We hate shenanigans, no more shenanigans.
- So, in a lawless galaxy,
- Well, what happens to the little guy
when UFTP or John Q Brigade comes marching through?
What happens to the little guy?
- He gets fucked, sir.
- He gets fucked.
And who unfucks the little guy?
- Barry!
- Barry!
- Barry!
- We just smash cut through a bunch of frames
of you guys in like huge space marine assault armor,
like smashing through plate glass windows,
grabbing a child from a burning orphanage,
smashing out another plate glass window,
just various like A-team style,
like a small monastery of Tailman monks
is in danger of having their monastery
bulldozed by crown and scepter
and only the Barry Battalion can save them.
And you see a glorious series of adventures
through the galaxy.
the sort of your memory slows as you remember
a fateful day, you wake up in the morning
and see Barry one, Dr. Barry walk in and say,
"Important mission today, Barry Battalion.
Hope all you Barrys are ready."
- Barrys are always ready, Barry one.
- Barrys are always ready, Barrys are always ready.
And you see he says, "Because they're working hard.
I know it, super soldier or not."
- Playing hard too, sir.
And that's what today's all about,
'cause your mission is Dr. Barry is taking all of you
to Uncle Bob's Fantanimal Land.
- Yes, yes, yes!
Big hugs, Barry's grabbing each other,
lifting each other up.
Yes, we're going, we're doing it!
Everyone starts wrestling.
Everyone's wrestling, big, big wrestling.
And you go to Uncle Bob's Fantanimal Land,
which is a wild theme park in the Gravar world.
You see this enormous, everyone's like big ice cream cones
walking through this, this fantanimal land together.
And suddenly it starts.
You're underneath a big awning
at the central gazebo of wonder.
The high on beams start.
And Barry Six, you come back with an arm full
of Freezy Pops and ice cream cones for everyone
and see a floor littered with 10 other berries.
And you see a door closing and a blood covered Berry Nine
looks at you, "Berry."
- The fuck did you do, Berry?
- I did what you would do.
Click, power salad empty.
He, out of ammo, hits the button and (explosion)
blasts off of the surface and Barry Nine
vanishes into space.
- Barry's!
(laughing)
Barry!
Barry's!
Barry!
- Back to present.
Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.
(explosion)
- It's like a Pokemon that can only say its name.
(laughing)
- Amazing.
- We cut to the reactor core of the ship
and who do we find there?
- You find Gunthriell, Miggles, Rashback, aka Gunny.
I'm a 4'11, about early 30s,
a beautiful black bald head and a gorgeous cyborg body.
Full cyborg from the neck down,
just currently absolutely busy with plugging things in,
trying to get power wherever it needs to go, checking it on.
Did you guys say something about a shark?
- Yeah, I think the ship that's chasing us
looks like a shark.
- Okay, it's just a ship that looks like a shark.
- Just a ship that looks like a shark, not a space shark.
- Okay, 'cause if we were dealing with a space shark,
that would be a big problem.
- If I had time to analyze it,
I could confirm if it was a space shark.
- It's not a shark, it's a ship with paint on its mouth.
- So just to confirm, we are all on the Gunner channel
right now? - Oh, right.
- And we still have a main channel.
- Well, I was talking on the main channel
and no one was here.
So I was flipping my wheel.
- Are we supposed to skip,
are we supposed to be on multiple channels?
- It's Skipper!
(all laughing)
- Gunny, I'm glad that you're on the Gunner channel
and actually it's quite appropriate given your name.
I wanted to make sure that I sent down
Handy Annie down there with you.
- Yes, Handy Annie is here and being very handy.
- We see a sort of cybernetic,
a little mechanical hand.
Handy Annie is here helping out.
- It's also an allusion to a long, long,
I mean, if this takes place in the future,
a long lost podcast.
(all laughing)
- Hell yes, there you go, exactly.
Amazing.
So Gunny, you are in the reactor chamber here.
You see the vast majority of the ship's power
is going all over the ship, many to like amid decks.
You see one like double J, you know, emblem on one,
another one saying M-E written over a crossed out
escape pods bracket.
Gunny, what are you doing on your turn in combat?
- I'm gonna check in with the Skipper.
The Skipper, are we talking on the Gunner channel
or are we talking on the main channel?
- You don't have to call me the Skipper,
it's just Skipper, but--
- Just big Skip.
Okay.
- Or Captain Skip.
- What is your question?
- Are we fighting or are we running?
- I'm trying to get the fuck out of here.
- Great, that's it.
- And I would appreciate any help at all.
- Oh, his real name is Norman.
Skipper is actually a nickname.
- Got it.
All right, Norman the Skipper.
I'm gonna boost the engines.
So I'll use the ship's strength.
- Go ahead and give me a boost engines roll.
- I'm still gonna try to hit that shark next turn.
- And look into some light, what's it called?
- Oh, faster than light?
- Yeah, yeah.
- Oh, do you wanna jump?
- I wanna get the fuck out of here.
- Okay, so do I need to start making astro-nav checks?
- You look and see the navcom hooked up
to the tachyon drive.
That's your faster than light engine.
- It's that bad?
- Skipper looks in the equivalent of a rear view mirror
and sees a million little robots in a giant green ship.
Yes, it is that bad.
- Okay, I'd like to begin the process
of getting us ready to jump.
- SQ comes on.
- Hello, Gunny, SQ here.
Would you like to engage the NavCom's AI?
- Yes, please, SQ.
- Would you like to engage the NavCom's AI?
- Yes, please.
- The NavCom craps out like it always does.
- Great, so there's no, we're not jumping.
- You absolutely can jump,
but you're gonna have to do everything manually.
- Sick, Gunny grabs the nearest piece of paper, a pen,
and starts charting.
- I hear there's a scribbling on the Gunner channel.
- There is as well.
- We actually have a separate scribbling channel
if you want to go over to that one.
- Okay, great, I'm gonna flip to scribble.
I'm doing this by hand.
Give me a second.
- Handy Annie is wearing a calculator watch.
- Okay, oh, good to know.
Handy, 3.14172.
- Oh, that gotta be in the arts.
- You start calling out equations, 3.14.
We see Gunny here calling out equations
'cause the ship's computer is so outdated
that it's easier for you to do it yourself.
3.1, ta-ta-ta-ta, and we fade back in time
to a non-cyborg, a fully organic, non-mechanical,
Gunthrie, Miggles, Rashback's writing equations out
longhand with chalk on a blackboard
at the bottom of a very well-appointed university auditorium.
You are a TA here in this room.
You see Professor Dora Valentine seated at a desk
gazing at you admiringly.
Oh, what is going on?
As Gunny sort of clocks into these
astro navigation equations.
- I think Gunny's bored.
I mean, it's like, I think this is like pretty grope for him.
This is doing what I do most days.
I don't know, nothing about this
is particularly challenging or hard.
Professor Valentine looks up and speaks to the class
and says, "What Mr. Migrel's rashbacks is showing
"all of you is of course the equation used most commonly
"in the conversion of plutonium energy
"into a ship's tachyon drive,
"which facilitates faster than light travel,
"but of course any fan of pop music
"would be able to tell you all about tachyons."
And you see there's a very polite little bit of like
laughter at this like professor joke.
You see she goes, "Well, Mr. Miggles Raspex,
"thank you so much for your time.
"Class, next week we will of course be completing
"our assignments on the folding of space-time,
"quantum entanglement, and as it pertains specifically
"to space travel."
- Can I speak to you for a moment?
- Yeah, of course.
- So the class begins to let out,
and she says, "I would be remiss
"if I did not say first and foremost
"that what you did was extraordinary,
"which is incredible for someone
"as emotionally checked out as I know you are."
- I'm not, no, it's not, I'm not checked out.
I just, you know, just getting old.
This whole school thing.
I don't know.
You ever thought about getting out of here?
- Getting to where?
Teaching at another university?
- No, no, no, no, no.
Like, I'm writing the equation
for conversions in a tachyondri.
Have you ever actually flown in a ship with a tachyondri?
- Well, sure, they're pretty common on a lot of ships,
I think, I don't know for certain.
Well, no, the ferry I take to work,
that doesn't have a jet.
- No, no, no, not on, out, in, out,
they're here, in space.
- I've never wondered, but I know this.
Real mathematics, mathematics that matters,
always comes from the heart.
There is no numerology study of meaning,
quantitative value asset that is greater
than the feeling of doing what you are passionate about.
And I believe that fully and truly.
I think if you feel a calling to something,
that's something you have to seriously meditate on.
- I'm gonna do it.
- Those words echo in your ear
as you look through a massive plate glass wall bay window
overlooking the shimmering white sands
of the desert planet of Mirage.
And there's a fancy little soiree happening here.
You come from an extremely well-to-do family.
Your father, Professor Erwin Rashbacks,
is published bestseller many times over.
And your other father, Dr. Jeffrey Miggles,
works here at the university as well.
And he's a full research professor.
He doesn't even have to teach classes anymore.
He's just here working in theoretical physics
and xenobiology, like a true savant
in two different, extremely wildly
disparate fields of science.
You see Jeffrey looking at sort of holding court
and saying like, and of course,
sort of fast tracked, we think he's gonna probably
lock down PhD number three any day now.
- Gunther, please come here and meet some people.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
You see it says, this is my son, Gunthery,
academic superstar.
- For now.
- What do you mean for now?
For always.
- Well, not forever, but maybe something,
maybe a break, like, you know, in a couple,
like, you know, soon, and then maybe coming back.
- Oh, oh, sabbatical, yes.
Well, of course, he's not gonna be in academia forever.
He is also going to write a book one day.
- Well, okay, well, I mean, you know,
I might take a gap year and do some travel.
- Yes, exactly.
A gap year for some sort of journalism.
- I'm going to space, dad.
- You are not going to space!
- I am!
- You are not going to space!
- I'm going to space!
- We cut to you in a dingy office
and you see a guy who literally,
he's like bristle brush, mustache, weird, dirty hat.
He's like, "Yeah, you wanna go to space."
- Do you need to see my resume?
- Nope.
- Okay.
I've got two degrees.
- You're what we need is a navigator.
- I can do that, easy.
- All right, I'm sure you heard of me.
It's Captain Dan Scrapp of the Bad Call, okay?
(laughing)
Now, I'm not gonna lie to you.
We've had navigators before.
You're not on a Kublai Cain, right?
- What?
- You're not, well, you gotta piss in a cup
if you wanna work on the ship.
I'm not on Kublai Kain, no.
You sure you don't have any warrant?
What? Oh.
Any warrant out?
No, no.
I once, I did get a good telling to once,
but no, nothing serious.
We were swimming where we shouldn't have been.
All right, wait, so this is.
(laughing)
So you know, have you never been arrested?
Never, not once in my life.
- What the hell, kid, what the hell?
Well, we got ourselves a real greenhorn here.
So let me ask you a question here.
Let's say you wanted a hyper jump drive
from Tachyon Drive to, sorry, I'm a little drunk.
- I'm sure that's space.
- That's space, you wanna get a taste of space, huh?
Sign here.
- Okay.
(laughing)
And he says, "Oh, we offer, by the way,
"we offer Spacer Guild has an insurance,
"but they take a percentage of whatever you make
"on the trip, so they're gonna carve out
"probably 10% of your haul.
"Better you do a flat rate after the trip to pass clearance
"and then they don't get a percentage
"'cause if you strike it big on a haul like this,
"then you don't want the insurance company
to come in and carve out.
So what we recommend you do is fly uninsured.
- Okay.
- And then you come in afterwards
and you pay the flat rate after the trip.
- So that's what, spacers don't do insurance?
We're not doing that.
My dads would probably be, they like are always,
they always like, anytime we fly,
it's like they get insurance,
they get insurance on the insurance.
But we, the spacers, we're like, nah.
- Well, it's up to you, right?
You're the egghead, kid,
so why don't you run the math for me?
It's a one in a million that something bad happens
and it's a 100% chance that the insurance company
takes 10% of your haul.
- I mean, well, I'm a true spacer,
so no thank you insurance.
(laughing)
- Your intestines are floating in space.
(laughing)
Your ship is in tatters.
You see Dan Scrapp is completely uninjured,
looking at, and he says,
"Oh, I forgot to mention, you wanna get a zero-grab suit!"
(laughing)
You see that he puts a bowl over your head,
which is giving you oxygen,
but open void is freezing your digits
and pulling at your skin.
You see your gestures floating into space
and hardening into ice as the wet of your own blood
freezes in the cold of space.
You see a little ambulance craft and there's
(imitates a car)
a person floats up to you
and holds something out in front of you.
You see a space paramedic flows up
with a data screen in front of you and you hear
(imitates a car)
Are you insured?
- No!
- Okay, well you two decide here and here.
- No!
- There's an out of pocket cost.
You can't, can you move your arm?
- No!
- Use your tongue.
(laughing)
Guthrie has a very elaborate signature.
- You are in full traction in a hospital room,
and you are sitting in the hospital room
with Captain Dan Scrapp, and also--
- It's really nice of you to come, Dan.
I feel bad about everything that happened.
There's a representative from Acme Ashman here saying,
the cybernetic organ transplant, the blood processors,
kidney replacement, limb replacement, leg replacement,
and keeping the original organic feet,
but giving the feet the cybernetic casing
to interface them with the completely cybernetic legs,
the replacement for your eye,
all of that is going to come in
at a total of 600,000 galactic credits.
- Damn, we're gonna go on a lot of missions
and we'll make a lot of.
- Well, I hate to tell you this,
but I actually have to let you go.
- What?
(laughing)
- If we keep you on the crew,
then we gotta pay workers comp.
- Yeah, yeah, I understand.
- I also, if we let the ship's insurance cover it,
I get two points on my license
and I can't get any more points on my license.
- No, I get that, I get that.
But you're a good egg.
You're a good egg.
- Thanks, Dan.
- Welcome to the space and life, buddy.
We cut back to the present moment.
- Two, seven, point one, four.
- As you breathe harder, the credit starts going up.
You are charged per breath because of your synthetic lungs.
And as you breathe faster and faster,
(imitates beeping)
deeper breaths, deeper, deeper, not shallow, deeper.
(inhales)
(exhales)
(inhales)
2.14161.
(inhales)
(exhales)
617434117.
(inhales)
(exhales)
(inhales)
(exhales)
A little message comes up.
In the reactor core,
a new, more dangerous repayment organization
has bought one of your medical loans
due to your defunct or lapsed payments on this project.
on this account, but you continue charging forward.
Let's go ahead and make these astro navigation checks
and also a boost for the engines.
Let's do the engine boost first.
- Engine boost first, great.
That's gonna be the space, that's the ship's strength.
- Plus three on the red hot for the boost.
- That's an eight plus three equals 11.
That will not do it.
- Boost is plus three for the skills
for the red hot, correct?
- Yes, but I got an eight.
You are one shy of boosting engines.
You start to pull them off.
Come on, come on.
Dear Mr. Miggles Rashbacks,
your loans have been in repayment, lapsed credit.
Your monthly minimum, 16,500 credits.
Your pristine cyborg body, which is top of the line,
acne, ashen, the best they make,
and which costs you a fortune.
You rent your ability to live
from the company you bought this from.
Let's make those astronavigation checks
to get you out of hot water.
- Great, how many can I make?
- You are going to make one,
because you can use the ship's computer,
but it's quite bad.
- No.
- We're gonna go pen and paper.
You're making this at disadvantage.
Canceled with handy Annie.
This is a straight mechanics kit check.
- So it's a plus seven.
- Plus seven to the roll.
- That's a 10.
- Your calculations are adequate,
resulting in one completed equation.
It requires 10 completed equations
to jump to faster than light travel.
- All right, all right.
(imitates gunfire)
- These three roid removers are going to double move
to get in striking distance of the red hot.
The one who's already got you clamped
is going to make another attack.
That's a natural 20.
That is a bad roll for it to have rolled double damage on.
- All right, I'm on ship HP.
- 12, 22, 25 points of hull damage
by passing shields up above Captain Takamori.
You see Buzzsaw cleave through the outer hull.
You hear airlocks go off.
You see popping his head in a little sweater vest
is Raymond Zam, who is the office manager
for the Jib Job coworking space
that you rent out in the lower decks of the Red Hot,
which is probably one of your best monetary sources.
Hi, Skipper, sorry, pal.
We're having a graphic design quarterly downstairs.
We noticed the ship, there's like a loud noise.
- There's a loud noise, yeah, we're being attacked right now.
Can we just push that back by 90 minutes?
- I'll see what I can do.
- Thank you so much.
Thank you, thank you.
We're just, it's just, we only have,
we only have these quarterly,
so it's just once every three Nargons,
and it's kind of a lot of work coming to it.
- Right, right.
- Yeah, gotcha.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much, I appreciate it.
You see Raven heads off.
- Just like drop, kick a chair.
- That wasn't truthful at all, what you just said to me.
- I need just, I would, I just, I just--
- And he disbelieved it.
- Listen, just go swim in circles or whatever you do.
- Okay.
(everyone laughs)
- Okay, this squadron over here
are all going to take 800 feet of movement.
They're gonna move and move again.
800.
These five over here are going to move just 400
and then open fire with lasers on the ship.
- Yeah, I'm gonna say we're actually down to 27 hit points
on the ship itself.
- Out of how many? - On the hull?
We still have a shield.
- 27 hull points and 18 shield points.
So let's make 'em, let's stretch 'em as far as we can.
- Oh my God, only one hit.
- Thank God.
- Astounding.
(laughing)
- This game is stressful, I forgot.
(laughing)
- Shields take 11 points of damage from one of the lasers.
(laser firing)
- All right team, down to?
Down to seven hit points on our shields.
And the Lady Pike is going to move.
- She's too far away.
I think she's just like watching TV.
- Yeah, there probably is just a bad signal
on the antenna for the TV.
- Yeah, they're just moving for better signal.
- To get a better signal.
- Send somebody out to move the rabbit ears around.
- Exactly.
- She's watching like a game show
where like celebrities dip themselves in paint.
- Yeah.
- And an audience has to decide
which celebrity's under the paint.
- Amazing.
- That's a future I wanna see.
(laughing)
- I am going to need a strength saving throw
from the red hot.
- Chill.
(laughing)
- Chill.
- Chill.
- Chill.
- Okay.
- So I'm gonna add half my dexterity modifier to this.
- Minimum of one, so one.
- All right, so strength saving throw will be plus six,
I think?
- For the red hot?
- Oh, it's plus five, so I add that one.
- Yeah, now it's plus six, correct.
- Okay.
- Give me a...
24.
- Skipper, you hit the turbo thrusters
and just avoid getting target locked
by the tractor beam on the lady pike.
You've avoided the tractor beam here.
I'm gonna need you to make an opposed check.
Roll your scan.
You're trying to beat a nine.
They rolled low.
- Watch out!
- Oh, wait, I do have it.
- Okay.
- I had 11.
- 11.
They go to jam your comms.
Reva, you yell, "Watch out,
keep the comms from getting jammed."
(imitates engine revving)
De La Vega comes back on.
"Man, I don't know why you're being such a horse's ass
about this, Takamori."
- Takamori just truly doesn't know what else to do.
(all laughing)
- Says like, "Why do you wanna walk outta here
with half a ship when you could have a whole ship?"
- He's honestly thinking about this.
(all laughing)
- Keep the bun, not the hot dog.
(all laughing)
You have to choose.
- And we cut deep into the ship.
To a funky little apartment in the back of the ship.
Margaret Encino.
Ally, could you describe your character for us?
- Absolutely.
Completely separate from anything you've seen
so far this episode.
My name is Margaret Encino.
I'm a 24-year-old entrepreneurial businesswoman,
and I work for UFTP, the United Free Trade Planets.
I'm an executive.
I'm actually very high-functioning.
And today has been a madhouse, okay?
I had a revisions walkthrough for the Morricane Project,
followed by a virtual round table
with the TroiKani Partners board.
I paused for 20 minutes and checked my cell phone in.
okay, a little thing I like to do,
20 cell phone free minutes,
where I then had a full body tea tree and macho massage.
And then of course,
followed by my corner boss by cycle check-in.
So yeah, I'm just kind of like in the groove.
I'm answering phones.
I'm just working from home, WFH.
- WFH, working from home, hell yeah.
It's very humbly appointed here.
Like a lot of executives that are very young,
You basically for 850 credits a month,
you rent this space on the Red Hot,
which a lot of junior executives do
because being on a ship actually has advantages
over being like trapped on a planet somewhere.
- It's also like kind of fun.
Like these people are artists.
- Yeah.
(all laughing)
- Oh my gosh, what is going on up there?
- Yeah, you actually do, in your apartment,
you do up above here, like,
and you like look at your little porthole
and see like a buzzsaw moving into the ship behind you.
- Okay, that's not good.
Oh, I have so much on my plate right now.
Can I walk up and just try to help really quick?
- Yeah, for sure.
- I'm gonna throw my hand in
and I have a disruption that I can cast like from the ship.
So I'll just do hack communications.
As an action, I'm gonna expend a power die
and choose any number of ships that I can see
within 600 feet.
So I think that would just be all of these guys.
They have to succeed a wisdom saving throw
or they take ionic damage equal to the number that I rolled
plus our charisma modifier.
And on a failed save,
all of their communications are disabled until they reboot.
- Wow. - Amazing.
- And then I'm gonna get back to work.
- And then I'm gonna get back to truly back to work.
So first of all, in order for you to do this,
you have to hack into the ship systems.
So a little, this is a thing that you,
like a little comms open up.
You see Margaret show up on a screen
basically to like ask permission.
- It says Margaret Sheher, like a Zoom call.
(all laughing)
- You see Margaret show up on your comms screen here.
- Hi, hi, Margaret.
- Hi, good morning, it's me, Margaret.
- Good morning. - I'm Encino.
I'm noticing that we're having a little bit of a disruption.
- Yeah, you know, there's a little bit
of a thing going on right now.
Can I help you with anything?
- Fantastic. - Do you need a hot water
or something? - No, no, no.
I have all the matcha I need, thank you.
I'm just gonna use a power die
and I will be hacking communications within 600 feet.
Is that okay?
- That is awesome, that's great.
- Fantastic.
You know, before I went to school,
I was studying to be an operator, so this is great.
- Yeah, if you want like a job,
like an actual job here, let me know.
- Oh no, I'm absolutely loaded with a Maxed out 401k.
I think I'll stick with what I'm doing,
but it's so great to talk to you.
(all laughing)
- Incredible.
So within 600 feet of you, oh my fucking God.
It's literally all of them that are close to you.
- The one competent person on this ship.
- Someone's on hold right now.
I'm like, hey, I'm so sorry.
I'll be right with you in just a second.
And I apologize.
(Brennan imitates explosion)
- This EMP goes off.
What you actually do is you go through the ship's
like transmitter.
You recognize these are Armstrong roid removers.
UFTP owns Armstrong.
- Incredible.
- So you're just gonna go into your corporate database
and like, this is effectively you sending an email
to someone to like remote disable
as many of these as possible.
- Hey, I'm gonna need these model numbers.
I'm shut down.
(laughing)
- Incredible.
Go ahead and roll a power die and add one.
So roll one D6 and add one.
(dice clacking)
(laughing)
- That's a four, it looks like to everyone.
- Oh, pulling an alley.
We're back in the dome, baby.
- I just, my hands get so sweaty, I'm having so much fun.
- All of those droids take four points of damage.
As you watch all of them start the sequence
of getting shut down remotely,
it will take some time for all of them
to get fully shut down in that way.
Coming up on your screen, as you're doing that one-handed,
you see with like sort of metallic green makeup,
sort of smiling at you, hologram, is Lucien Rex,
who is your sort of peer
in a different department at UFTP.
How's it going, Margie?
- Lucy!
- Hey, Margie!
How are you doing, sweetheart?
Are we excited for this four o'clock?
- Yeah, definitely.
I'm completely ready.
How about you?
- Completely ready.
- Yeah, I figured, right?
- Yeah, I figured too.
Good to see you.
You see that she looks over at you and says,
"By the way, I just wanted to holler a couple things
'cause I know that we're gonna be on with them
in like 30 seconds,
but the monarch of Rubian V contacted me.
Apparently they found out that the moon they live on
is made of pure lithium.
Do we wanna pay him off or do we just wanna call in
some troopers and take care of it that way?
- Ew, I hate that.
Wait, so they found out that they live on lithium?
- UFTP owns a tremendous number of planets
on a planet that you guys technically own,
there is a monarch of that planet who is,
actually you are several notches in the leadership above,
so you could fire this monarch if you wanted to,
but they claim that they want to have a rebellion
because they found out their moon is fully made of lithium.
- Which is good.
- Which is good, well, they basically found out
that they're getting a bad deal
and that you guys are excoriating their home world
for the lithium it's made out of.
- Okay.
Okay, then I go back to Lucien.
You know what?
Let me handle this.
We'll do something that will...
- I mean, it's pretty simple.
We can just sort of scrub the problem if we want to.
- Yeah, interesting.
You already have so much blood on your hands.
I'm sure you'd love to do that.
And while I'm talking, I'm like filling out,
like essentially this world's like Reddit.
and I'm like leaking all of this information
and trying to like start the rebellion.
(laughing)
So there are like a number of like kind of subreddits
of like-
- Incredibles, you're trying to start the rebellion there.
- Like that's so interesting.
Yeah, we should definitely take care of that.
- Conference call beginning.
As you merge in this conference call,
you and Lucy go in and Lucy says,
Margie, your big heart is gonna get you in trouble.
And you cut back through years of like business school,
I mean like getting your first job out of business school,
clawing through like corporation
after corporation after corporation.
Your parents like kind of becoming strangers to you
over the years, just constantly windsurfing somewhere.
You don't know where.
- They love each other so much.
(laughing)
- You have this memory of years, years prior,
you and Lucien walking out of business school together.
She looks at you and just sort of goes like,
well, you have the degrees, UFTP, right?
- Yeah.
- I'm glad to be doing it with you, for real.
- Same, I couldn't do it if I was by myself.
I mean, just.
- Listen, before we're like in the shit,
do you wanna make a promise to each other?
It's a fucking grind out there.
And you and me, we don't come from
any of the big families out there.
We're not so-and-so Medea, we're not so-and-so Gravar.
Let's just keep each other's backs the whole time, okay?
- That's so funny that you say that,
because I got you this.
And I pull out, I have like matching necklaces
that have like kind of like a little gear cog on them.
- She takes it and goes, "Oh my God."
- It's kind of tongue in cheek, but yeah,
this is just to remind us we're more than that.
- Hey, it's like that leadership summit, right?
What is it, the Platinum Cog?
- Oh my God, the Platinum Cog Leadership Summit!
- Hey, we might be cogs, we're platinum, babe.
- Yeah.
- And you zoom back into this conference call
and you see your direct supervisor, Damien Factor,
looking out and saying, "All right,
"looks like we got all departments on the call here.
"Hello, Lucien.
"Hello, Marge.
"Hello to all of you, great, great, great.
"Marge, many a little noise, like a giant saw
"and some high-on beams firing from you."
- Oh, that's so good.
I turn on like a filter that I've had made.
- Amazing.
- So sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Amazing, and by the way,
a little bit of personal news up top.
Personal and professional,
we have some congratulations.
- What?
- That are in order.
We wanna say congratulations to our own Lucien Rex
for number one, her engagement,
and you see the little round of applause,
and she goes, "Thank you, thank you."
and her promotion to the open executive suite
for "Crown and Scepter."
(all clapping)
And you see Lucienne directs her eyes down,
does not look up at the camera on her holo recorder.
- I immediately go on the internet
to find out who the fuck she's engaged to.
- Oh, none other than Natalia Cicero,
Connie Lee Carter Bejar.
- The owner of?
the original family of the original dread dictator
of the incorporated Elysian Republic,
who later took all of their imperial earnings
and founded Crown and Scepter,
which is the parent company of United Free Trade Planets.
- Oh, cool promotion.
If there's like a message capability
that's like private message,
I just slacker cool promotion.
You see there is a ellipsis of typing in that message
then nothing.
- I think to myself, coward,
and then I mute everything, but I'm still on it.
- You're still on the call, they start talking
and you see Lucien very quickly takes over the call
as she starts going,
"So obviously I'm going to be going into
sort of a more managerial position during these meetings,
Thanks to Damien, who now we're gonna kind of be splitting
what used to be Damien's sole job.
But it's a very exciting time for all of us here.
And my goal is to see a younger, hipper,
I wanna see a United Free Trade Planets
with kind of a more now modern attitude.
Like, yes, we want to acquire as many planets
as we can and own them.
How do we do that in a way that is consistent
with our mission and consistent with our corporate values?
- I'm taking notes and my note only says young hip people
don't have to say they're young and hip.
(laughing)
- We are going to move forward.
All of the ships have gone and now we are going to return
into the initiative order back at the top
and we can take this turn all together.
Can I get a reading of how many shield points
and how many hull points?
- Seven shield points and 27 hull points.
Captain Norman, permission to shoot the shark again.
- Do anything, please.
(all laughing)
- Amazing.
- Looking at this, we have one attached to us currently.
- Yeah, I actually think I can do something
about the one that's attached to us, Captain.
- Cool, I think the captain's looking at this
and he's like quietly wondering to himself,
like could I trade my crew for my freedom?
(laughing)
- Riva, you fully telepathically hear that.
- And then I go, wait, I mean, la la la la la la la.
(laughing)
- Just on the Goner channel,
the captain is thinking about swapping us for his freedom.
- Devastating, that means I failed in my directive.
- You all failed.
Anyways, we haven't failed yet, we're still alive.
Technically.
- Okay, well, I think,
- It makes sense probably to disengage
and then take the full rest of my movement forward.
- Do you have a thing that you wanna try to do
for the one that's-- - Yes.
- Yes. - The one that is attached,
I would like to probe the mind of the pilot within,
which doesn't have a saving throw
for the just upper level thoughts.
- Amazing. - And I would like to
very quickly understand how to work the buttons
and stuff in front of him. - Amazing.
And then I would like to quicken power,
psychic push pull,
to just press as many buttons that are,
just to get it off of us in a way.
- Oh my God.
Go ahead and spend the psychic points necessary to do that.
That is so goddamn cool.
Give me a, I will say,
give me an insight check with advantage
to read the surface thoughts
of how to manipulate the device on there.
- Great.
- Can we just agree that I'm on a conference call
where they're talking about like, let's be cool.
and I have muted it and I'm only listening to this channel.
- Yes, absolutely.
- I get Google,
'cause I wanna be a part of this much more.
- Absolutely.
- And I got a 26 insight.
- Incredible.
You psychically reach out from inside this water bulb.
You scan the mind of the person and just psychically,
boom, throw the push pull with your space casting venture,
which allows you to cast at that double range.
The one roid remover clamped onto you,
boom, unlocks its clamp.
You are free.
However, there are four on you
that will get opportunity attacks unless you disengage.
- Okay.
- I think that means, makes sense to disengage
and then take the, as a bonus action,
and then take my movement away?
- I think unless we can take 'em all out,
but it was pretty tough just shooting the one.
- Yeah, I'm starting to wonder if I should
kind of pivot and do something else.
- We could rapid shot and take a chance.
- Also, Margaret, are you on the channel?
- Hey guys.
- Welcome to Gunner channel.
- Oh Margaret, do you need another matcha?
I'm kind of engaged right now.
- Oh yeah, no problem, no thanks.
- Hey Margaret, say congratulations to your friend.
- Oh, yeah, I'll definitely pass that along.
Thanks, Riva.
- You're so welcome.
- Amazing, let's get that boost engines.
- Okay, cool.
What do I add to that?
- The ship's strength, which is plus three.
- Oh cool, 14.
- 14 engines are boosted, you gain 50 feet of speed.
So now the speed I believe is 350.
- Before we move, is it important for me
to try to get that shark?
- The one that--
- Are we concerned about the shark catching up with us
or are we just trying to put everything
into getting out of here?
- Can I make a insight?
- Yeah, give me an insight check.
And you have that pilot thing, so roll with advantage, yeah.
- Great.
Can I do perception?
- Yeah.
- Okay, so that would be 16.
- 16, cool, and what sort of information are you looking for?
I'm just wondering if it makes more sense
to just hightail it out of here.
- At this point, with your points as low as they are,
there is no surviving this in a straight fight.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- What are you rolling to do?
What are you rolling on your ass?
What type of check is it?
Intelligence?
- Yeah, I'm using my mechanics kit and my brain, yeah.
- Okay, then, does it make sense for me,
instead of even doing anything with guns,
to just cast Enhanced Droid through Handy Annie
onto him so that he rolls all with advantage.
- Handy Andy already grants advantage on this,
but are you doing more than one thing
or what are you doing?
- So I can make the astro nav check, I believe.
- As a bonus action. - As a bonus action.
So I could use my main action to either patch the shields
or work on getting some of the shielding back
or I can do something about some of this hull damage.
- I think, yeah, any sort of damage reduction work.
- Great, in that case, I'll use Handy Andy
for the astro-nav boost check.
And then I'm gonna do a patch check as well.
- Cool. - With the ship.
- Give me the straight mechanics kit roll
for trying to get these equations.
- Come on.
- That's a dirty 20.
- A dirty 20.
You get two more completed equations.
Three out of 10.
And by the way, if anyone has other rolls
or things they want to add to that,
you are absolutely welcome to do so.
- I mean, I think there's nothing for us to do
but to just keep gunning these guys.
- All right, we're just gonna gun the ones
that are close, I guess.
- Hell yeah.
And give me that if you're doing shield regen
or if you're doing hull repair.
- I'm gonna do hull repair.
- Cool.
- We're gonna go ahead and make constitution check
with the ship, that's a plus three.
God darn it.
That's just a six, which means that I have disadvantage
on this hull roll, so I roll 2d6.
- 2d8 and take the worst of the two.
- Great.
How about 2/8?
Okay, an eight and a four.
So we get four points back.
- You rush through into the reaction room,
start to repair one of the burst pipes
from this buzzsaw damage.
Start patching the ship up some, four hull points.
That's your ship's last hull point.
- Hull die?
- Hull die, yeah.
Go ahead and give me your gunning.
- All right, I'm just gonna--
- First for me.
- I'll shoot first, I can try and give you distraction.
Okay, so I'm gonna shoot a real flashy gun
at whoever is closest to us.
So just whichever droid is closest to us,
but not the one that he softened up.
- Okay.
- And I'm gonna do, oh, crit baby!
(cheering)
- Yes!
- Not the one he softened up, correct?
- Not the one he softened up.
- Cool, cool, cool, brand new one.
- But I'm doing distracting die
so that he can have advantage on his next turn.
- So we are using a power die.
- Yes, tracking that to true.
- And I am gonna use my kinetic die to empower it.
Does that mean that I get to add that twice?
- Yes, you get to use that twice.
By the way, I forget, your ship does still have shields.
Your ship regenerated four points of shields automatically.
Four points of shields automatically.
It also got a power die back.
- Yes, we're back, down to two, back up to three.
- Cool.
- Now down to two again.
- You're doing good.
- Okay.
- Hey.
- One at a time.
- Yes.
- Gotta savor each roll.
- Yeah.
- Plus nine, 21, plus three, 24 points of damage.
- Nice.
(imitates gunfire)
- 24 points of damage.
One of the drones bursts apart.
- Yes.
(imitates gunfire)
- I knew I was good at what I do.
- That's right, Sid, that's right.
- Barry, I think I caused a distraction
and you can have advantage on your roll.
- I'll take the one that I already hit and didn't kill.
- Oh, actually it was one more.
Okay, it was just one more, 25.
- Cool. - Sweet.
So I will shoot with advantage.
Yeah, that's like a 25 to hit.
- 25 definitely hits.
- Sweet, then this is just a regular shot.
Unless you guys think, should I use power dice?
Do we have the power dice?
Should we go for it?
- I just used a power dice.
- Yeah, we're down to two, we got it.
- All right, hang on, I might use one after this.
I'm gonna take a chance on this one.
- Please roll okay, seven.
- 10 damage.
- 10 damage to the one you hit?
Okay, it's still up.
- No!
- Power dice?
- All right, precision shot, please, please.
- One.
- It's still up.
- What?
- No!
- How much did I, I'm doubling 27.
- Did it work?
- This thing is hanging on by the way.
- I think if I bonus action, I'm a barbarian.
So I would get two.
- It blows up.
(all laughing)
That's what you needed.
You cross the finish line in a rage.
- It adds up.
- It all adds up, baby.
Now here's the question for the pilot.
There's now only two left on your tail
with opportunity attacks.
Do you still want to take the disengage?
- Norman is like looking into like the black void of space.
- Yeah.
- Like at his own reflection and then just seeing
the like 50 year old version of himself,
like disassociating.
- And you just hear Reva's voice inside your head.
"Believe in yourself, Andy, believe in yourself."
- Out of my head.
(laughing)
- I'm not here.
I don't know what you're talking about.
- You're talking constantly.
- I'm not lying.
I'm lying, it's me.
- I just wish I had my guys.
- I'm trying it out, I'm trying it out.
- I just wish I had my guys.
- Okay.
- Yeah, it's just picturing himself
with his space brigade.
Just like, even though people are doing good around him,
it's overall an overwhelmingly bad situation.
- Fuck it, I think he will do it without the,
I think the dash.
- Oh, do it without the dash?
- I mean, do the dash instead of the disengage.
- No disengage, we're gonna take the risk.
So it's dash, move, and fly.
We're taking three actions here.
Now hold on a second, 'cause this is,
'cause now all you're doing is gunning it,
and I believe you boosted engines this turn, right?
So this is going to be 1,050 feet of movement
unless they clamp you.
(all groaning)
So I think this is box of doom worth.
- Oh my God.
- Wow.
- Get the box of doom out here.
- First episode.
- First episode box of doom.
(all groaning)
- Okay.
Oh, this is a post.
So here's the two numbers you need to beat
with a maneuvering check.
(dice clattering)
It's two 18s, two 23s.
- In what world?
- We, I think, have to,
- Does that mean we have to roll a nat or is that?
- What's your maneuvering?
What's your bonus to maneuvering?
- Negative one.
(laughing)
- Is it possible?
- We're gonna need two nat 20s.
- Here we are.
- Fully dissociated looking into the black of space.
- I'm done.
- It's a 10 and a 14.
- Oh!
- Oh, watch out on that 14.
- Yeah, yeah, maybe.
- So minus one.
- Oh no, 'cause it wouldn't be a crit then still,
it would just be 20.
- Correct. - Not worth it.
- That doesn't mean we can't run though,
that just means that they're stealing speed.
So instead of moving 1,050,
each of them takes away 50 speed.
- Wait, but what about my hacked communications?
Would that have, they're the closest,
wouldn't that have affected them
when they roll with disadvantage?
- Let me see here, hold on a second.
Hold on one second.
Something very wild and cool is about to happen.
- Margaret, you're very efficient.
- You're very efficient, Margaret.
You rolled a 10 and a 14, right?
That's what you rolled. - That's correct.
- So that becomes sadly a nine and a 13.
- A nine and a 13, okay.
- A literal win.
- That's not how we considered our stats are terrible.
- I'm gonna use also, can I use defiant?
- Yeah, you can add.
- And add a D4 to one of them.
- Yeah, so do you wanna add to the nine or add to the 13?
- The 13, I think.
- Let's get the 13 higher, let's do it.
- Right? - Yeah, go for it.
- Three. - Cool.
- That's now a 16, so a 16 and a nine.
- Can I use defiant on one of the other ones?
- Yeah, absolutely.
- I have to find also.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- Four.
So that's 13 and a 16.
- So 13 and a 16.
- Or a 20 and a nine.
- I wonder, yeah, I mean,
can you add them both to the same thing?
- Oh, maybe not.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Okay, 13 and a 16.
- So hacked communications does damage to them,
but it doesn't give them disadvantage on anything.
- Okay, yeah.
I just thought if their communication is disabled
and it's someone operating like a--
- Maybe, yeah, you know what?
I will rule that that can be disadvantage.
Is there any other actions before we calculate this fly
on this round?
Anyone else doing any deployment stuff?
- I already shot.
- Everyone's already done your stuff?
Okay, we have a 16 and a 13.
- And they have how much?
There's plus?
- They have plus five.
- Oh, okay.
- You want me to roll against the 16 or the 13 first?
- 13.
- 13.
- So we need a seven or lower.
That's a seven.
- We need it, that's good.
- That's good, that's good.
- Yes!
- Okay, okay.
- One misses.
- Okay, now we have the 16.
- Now we have the 16.
On a 10 or lower, this misses as well.
- Manifesting a one.
- That's a 19.
(all groaning)
- Wow, there's one in there.
- We got rid of one.
- We got rid of one, yeah.
Amazing, so speed's still 300.
You take three move actions.
The Red Hot has one clamped on,
but moves 900 feet forward through space.
900 feet is exactly what you needed
for these drones to not be able to double move
and get within striking distance again.
Okay, the Red Hot surges forward through space.
You have all gone.
The four drone, two of them have hacked communications.
Yeah, they're actually gonna do attacks with disadvantage.
That's a miss.
This crew back here is gonna double move forward.
These ones here are gonna double move forward as well.
The ship takes 11 points of damage
from laser cannons firing down.
All those drones are gonna start moving forward
except for the two that had their communications hacked.
They fired one miraculously managed to hit.
The Lady Pike is going to double move forward.
I'm going to need another strength saving throw
for the tractor beam.
- Okay.
(dramatic music)
- That is a seven.
- Watch out.
- Go ahead and add the power die.
- Come on.
Three, 10.
- 10 does not do it.
(all groaning)
- You are hit by the tractor beam.
Let's immediately move the red hot a hundred feet back.
(all groaning)
which does bring you once again
within striking distance of those droids.
You are also going to get fired on.
- Oh no! - By the Lady Pike?
- By the Lady Pike.
- Everyone, please take a moment to be grateful
for the shields that we had before they leave.
- Gunny, go ahead and give me a technology check.
- That's gonna be a 25.
- You see incoming heat signature
of some Magneto boy light seeking torpedoes.
(all gasping)
- This is bad!
(all laughing)
- Maybe we can shoot them out.
Maybe we can shoot them before they get to us.
- Are they slow?
- I don't think they're slow.
- Are they like coming now?
- Oh no.
- No, these are the kinds that come down
and they come down fast.
Grab onto something.
- Why didn't you tell us about it?
- Seat belts on.
Can somebody tell the people at the workspace
to grab onto a desk or something?
- We're gonna roll an attack roll here.
I don't wanna overdo it,
but this is gonna be box of doom.
- Oh my God.
(all groaning)
- This has been box of doom, this is death.
- Yeah.
- Plus five to hit,
which means they hit your armor class
on a three or higher.
- It's okay, it's a one.
- It's a one. - It's a one.
- It's gonna be a one. - Manifest a one.
- It's a one. - Manifest a one.
- Barrel roll the hot dog.
- That's a five.
(all groaning)
- Skipper's just like looking at the map of the ship,
like looking at where the escape pods are.
- They don't work, right?
- No, I don't think so.
- I think one of my apartment,
my apartment is an escape pod, right?
- I think we only have one and it's your apartment.
- The ship takes 31 points of damage.
- Pull or shield?
- To shield and then goes past them.
- So 31?
- 31 all told.
- How many? - 20 total.
- Should I, do we have a power die left or no?
- No, we are out.
- Oh, yeah, we do.
I can make one with my superiority die.
- Is that worth it?
I have this like, I can like take a D6 away
with a snap roll.
- I think any hit points are gonna help us
because I think, yeah.
- All right, if we can do that.
- Cool, amazing, go for it.
- Three points.
- Okay. - Reduced.
- 23.
- And shields are at zero?
- Shields are at zero.
- You guys lose shields, shield systems down,
will not regenerate anymore.
- Oh my God.
- You are naked metal in space.
- All right.
- We're so fucked this episode won't end.
- It's a tough galaxy, baby.
- Riva.
- Yes.
- You're in people's heads, right?
- Sure. - As character.
- Absolutely.
- Okay, I think Barry has a thought to himself.
It's like, I wonder if like Riva's magic works
where like, if you can see like somebody on a screen,
if like you could fuck them up.
- No, it doesn't work like that.
(all laughing)
- Can I pop out of my office and be like,
hey, so are we being traced like for any particular reason?
- Yeah, we got crates.
- We have stuff.
- Can we just dump the crates
and then maybe they'll leave us alone?
- I'm personally inclined to keep them
because that's how we make money
and money is how we make grenades.
- For sure.
I hear every alarm on the entire system
going off all at once.
So I do wonder if maybe you-
- What if we dropped most of the crates?
- What if this?
I know, is it our turn yet?
- It's your turn, your enemies have gone.
Crew acts together on the ship.
- Can I do a hologram
that looks like we're dropping the shapes?
- What is the maximum size of hologram you can create?
- Just that big.
- You regain one power die at the start of the turn.
You do not regain shields, shields are down
and will require a true refitting
to replace your broken shields.
- It is a 15 foot cube.
- The crates are, you could probably do one crate.
- It looks like we're shitting out one little pebble.
- How many crates do we have?
- You probably have about like 15 or so.
- Let's just keep.
- One of them is a hologram.
We push out all of them and one is a hologram.
- Believable trick.
No?
- I'm down for this.
- How much is the one crate worth?
- I'm down for this.
- It's worth a try.
- How much is the one crate worth?
If these are full of Beryllium crystals,
this was a huge haul 'cause each of them was 3K credits.
You'd still have 3000 credits.
- I can help find you guys like work or something maybe.
That's kind of the whole thing that I do.
- Let's get rid of the crates, goddammit.
- All right, but keep the one?
- Let's keep the one.
- We keep the one, we keep the one!
That's an O win.
- We're doing one hologram in order to keep one crate.
- Skipper, you got this, tip.
- Skipper, the crew believes in this absolutely, 100%.
- Skipper's gonna voice or, you know, video chat.
- Yeah, how we feelin', Takamori?
- You're fine, we're gonna get rid of our 15 crates.
Our 14 crates.
- No, my lord.
- I better see 15 crates of shit and that of that bird,
or I'll boot your ass to the bison and back, buddy.
You better believe it.
Listen, what can I do to get out of this myself?
- Roll over, Fido.
- That's not his name.
He has two names.
It's Norman and it's Skipper.
Or Captain, that's three.
- Listen, you don't have a job stack of Mori,
so why don't you just open your craw
and let me scoop them little crystals out?
(laughing)
- I think Takamori would open it to let them out.
I think he's giving up.
He's just fucking giving up.
- You're gonna go ahead and jettison the crates.
- One crate, Skipper?
'Cause Skipper, that's all of it.
That's just like-- - You gave him the brainstorm.
You gave him the brainstorm number.
- My entire directive is to please people,
but right now you have severely displeased me.
- Do you want to, with this hologram plan,
do you want to try to hold onto one crate
or you wanna jettison all 15?
- Sure, let's just keep the one crate or whatever.
- Cool, you guys hold on to one crate
of a Berynium crystal and jettison 14 crates
and a hologram.
You all see, "This is Captain Jan De La Vega
of the Lady Pike saying,
'It's a pleasure doing business.
Rough stars out there.
Sorry for you lookless abandoning forsaked.'"
Lady Pike comes in, scoops up the crates
in the one hologram, you see that the roid removers
turn around and follow the lady Pike
and you're shieldless, smoking.
And with no hull dice remaining, we exit combat.
- Well, that could have gone worse.
- I honestly thought we had them.
- I did too.
I think it was cowardly to give up all those crates.
I do, I do.
I know that I'm not supposed to speak up against people,
but there's other people, right now,
there's other people who wanna do this,
so I'm trying to please them.
- You guys are still communicating over,
you see that Raymond Zamm pokes his head in and says,
hi, we're supposed to get an alert
whenever the bay doors open,
'cause we were in the middle
of a quarterly graphics meeting.
You know, we only have them once every three Nargons,
and basically, you know, we had an emergency airlock,
and it just was like a loud noise
in the middle of a presentation.
So, you know, we do, 'cause it's 10 credits per person,
you know, to rent that space.
- Yeah.
- So we just wanna-- - We'll figure it out.
- Just a heads up in the future.
- Yeah. - Great.
- He's just gone.
(laughing)
- We'll figure it out or whatever.
- We'll figure it out or whatever.
- Should we go take a look at the one crate we got?
- Look at the one crate?
- Yeah, check the hall, I mean--
- Let's go to the crate.
- Absolutely.
- Can we have the crate? - Can we have the crate
something real fast?
- And this is pure, obviously pure deflection
on the part of the captain.
This is the most worthless crew
I have ever had in my entire life.
Not one of you know how to do your job right,
and that makes my job impossible.
(Riva crying)
Yeah, cry.
Tears join the water in Riva's bubble
of a slightly different consistency, refracting light.
Hey man, you're a coward.
- I'd cry if it wasn't expensive.
It charged me for excess hydration, but that, that was me.
- I'll collect your hydration, let it go.
- No, it's fine. - Let it go.
- It's fine. - I'll suck it up.
- I'm so, you don't have to suck it up.
I can't put it back in, that's not how it works.
But, okay, yeah, I'm a coward.
- I don't know what's going on over here,
but we gotta hit our shots.
- I did actually hit one shot really well.
I don't know if you saw it exploded really big
and then it made it. - Hey, you're a clone.
I don't listen to you.
- Right on.
- Okay.
Whenever we get back to where we need to go
to fix this ship, I'm cleaning house.
You're fine.
- Cool.
- Thank you for your, you know.
- You shake hands like really strong.
(laughing)
- Do you go to inspect the final?
- Yeah, let's look at the crate.
Let's do one last job together.
- You kinda took the fun out of it.
- Yeah, you kinda did.
Maybe you could hold back and three of us could go.
You head down to the hold.
Riva, you swim out of your bulb.
A pane opens up so you can look out
through the water system.
Gunny, you're walking through the ship,
seeing all the areas that are airlocked off,
damaged through the hull.
An incredible amount of damage has occurred.
Both gunners come down here.
- I stop my wheels so that I can skateboard
over some of the damage,
or I mean, roller skate over some of the,
or walk over rather than roll.
- Yeah, you can't roll over some of the damage.
(imitates crashing)
You pop the crate expecting stacks of Berynium crystals.
Some sort of parasite clearly got into the crate.
- Great, great.
- And you see a lot of rotted sacks
of imitation powdered egg substitute.
(clapping)
- I love imitation powdered egg substitute.
- Isn't that fun, right?
- Maybe you could tell the parasite.
- What else could go wrong today?
Oh look, there were crystals in here.
Oh, it's like egg sacks and shit.
What else is in here?
And it starts digging through it.
- What else?
What could go wrong?
- As you dig through some of the devoured bags
that some parasite got in,
all of you watch and see a flash of green grew
fly into the captain's face and shoot up his nose.
That's all for this episode of "Dimension 20."
A starstruck odyssey.
Tune in next week.
See you in the stars.
- See you in the stars.
- He smushed his face against the glass.
- Why don't we do like a light mutiny?
- Captain Norman, no one tried to pickpocket you
while you were unconscious.
- This is where the ball is rolling up the hill.
- What do you want me to say?
- I want you to apologize.
- What is the pleasure putty?
- What is the pleasure putty?
- Oh, I'm so glad that you asked.
I have a somewhat of a rudimentary grasp
of human anatomy.
- I look at Margaret so haunted.
I'm kind of doing a little dance.
- Things are great today.
(laughing)
[BLANK_AUDIO]
[BLANK_AUDIO]
[music playing]
(beeping)
[MUSIC PLAYING]
(upbeat music)
- Hello one and all, and welcome to a new thrilling season
of Dimension 20.
I am your humble dungeon master, Brennan Lee Mulligan.
With me as always in the dome are our intrepid heroes.
Say hi, intrepid heroes.
- Hi, intrepid heroes.
- That's what I'm talking about, baby.
- There's the juice.
- There's the juice.
There's what we love.
Listen, me and the intrepid heroes, we wanna say hi.
We wanna shout out, back in the dome.
First of all, to all of you,
we are of course being incredibly safe and COVID compliant.
Shout out to face shields and masks
and all of our crew being kept safe.
Thank you, Ash and the rest of the production department
for keeping us all safe.
One may notice a couple of things different,
a couple of things different in this season.
I wanna shout out a couple other people
because it's a new season and a brand new setting.
And, you know, we were looking all over the world
for new settings to play in.
I was like, we gotta find a sci-fi setting
with the humor and grit and wit and wonder
to take us and the intrepid heroes to the stars.
So reached out to noted author Elaine Lee
to use her setting of Starstruck.
Elaine Lee, the noted author of Starstruck,
Vamps, Brain Banks, many comics,
also the author of Me.
Her son, Brennan Lee Mulligan.
- Mom, thanks for the galaxy.
We will handle it with love and care.
- We love you, Elaine!
I can't wait to meet you one day.
(all laughing)
And talk about astrology, baby.
- There you go.
My mom famously sent Allie my birth chart.
- I got all the juicy deets.
(all laughing)
- What are his weaknesses?
I'll write it down.
- That's the main thing astrology does
is list your weaknesses.
Vulnerabilities to fire and poison.
(laughing)
Yes, we will be playing in the Starstruck Universe,
the graphic novel series from writer Elaine Lee
and artist Michael Kaluta.
Shout out to Michael Kaluta, my godfather.
And a world of hot suns, hot guns.
We enter.
Anarch Era 220.
And they'll do this, I'm doing it with my mouth,
but they'll probably add a noise here too.
Anarch Era, 220, Hecaton Chiara's asteroid cluster
just outside the Phoebus system.
Spinning asteroids floating in space
as distant stars glitter on the face of other void.
Yellow gleaming high on beams
blast across the space as the Red Hot,
a massive Americadian modified retrofitted smuggler freighter
races through the asteroid belt as high on beams
from pursuing roid removers.
(imitates gun firing)
You guys see a bunch of clampers zooming in past you.
High on beams, skating across the shields of your ship.
Gang, roll initiative.
(all exclaiming)
- You don't even know who I am.
- What?
- It's a new season, we're back in the dome.
No punches pulled.
- I rolled a nat one, baby.
- There it is.
- Oh, I also rolled a nat one.
(all laughing)
- You get tickled.
- Third nap, one!
- No!
- Can I roll with disadvantage to try to get a nap?
- Yeah, roll with disadvantage.
- Please don't, please don't.
- I rolled better.
(all laughing)
- Left out, dude, left out.
- All the cool kids are rolling nap ones.
- What did we get, here's a nap one.
- I got a 19.
- I don't know what the fuck's wrong with it.
- Incredible.
What did we get here, Ellie?
- Three.
- A three, amazing.
- Are you serious?
Three, that one's a three.
- These are given to me by Rick Perry.
- Yeah, Rick Perry.
- Also rolled a dice.
- These are weighted. - These are weighted.
- Rick Perry.
- My Rick Perry gave me a dirty 20
with advantage, a dirty 21.
But I got disadvantage, so just a dirty 20.
- Just a dirty 20, incredible.
- Wow. - There we go.
- That's right, for the first time
in Dimension 20 history,
we'll be leaping straight into combat.
It's a tough galaxy out there,
but somebody's got to live in it.
It might as well be you.
Gang, we meet the crew of the Red Hot
when things are looking pretty bad.
This retrofitted, old, discontinued,
American Space Brigade mess freighter
is crewed by the following individuals.
We're gonna start, of course, on the bridge
where, of course, only two of our crew members
are currently active.
Zach and Siobhan, could you please introduce
your characters and describe them?
- I am Norman the Skipper Takamori
and I am the captain of this vessel
and I am surrounded by morons.
(all laughing)
- Seriously, where is everybody?
- Pervee and Chase, by a bunch of little freaks.
(all laughing)
- That's right, as the captain is so quick to notice,
you are being pursued by a veritable armada
of Armstrong roid removers.
When it's time for you to remove a pesky asteroid,
trust Armstrong, the number one name in asteroid removal.
Though these ones seem to have been outfitted
with space saber high on beams
that are currently blasting your shields away.
I should mention you are not currently at 88 shield points.
Could you mark yourself down
at a humble 18 shield points remaining?
- 18, we're down to 18?
- You're down to 18 shield points, I'm afraid.
- Lemon, bad baby.
- There are more than 18 people following us.
- Let's hope that they only do
one point of shield damage each.
So when we see Captain Norman, the skipper Takamori,
what does he look like?
- He is like half shaved.
He has like a little towel around his neck.
He had his like two minutes of peace and quiet
where he didn't have to hear these morons
gabbering away at his ears.
And then of course we're getting attacked
by a fucking armada of drones
coming in after us, shooting their high on beams.
I'm in hell.
- Incredible.
Looking back over the hassled captain's shoulder,
we see in the center of the bridge,
an enormous glass sphere of water.
And within that water, we see the ship's comms officer,
Reva.
Siobhan, could you introduce your character to us?
- Hello, I'm Reva.
I'm the comms officer slash unpaid intern.
Reva's obviously my human name.
My actual Agwa Tunisian name is,
and then you get an image of being deep underwater
and finding a current that leads you swiftly and perfectly
to where you need to get to.
So that's my real name, but that's a bit complicated
for most non-psychic life forms.
So Reva's good for me.
(laughing)
I'm just here having a good time.
I'm out on my galavant.
That's a thing that we Agwa Tunisians do.
we go out and we live out in the world
before returning back to our home water planet.
Oh, this is so fun, isn't it?
Oh, it's so fun.
(all laughing)
- Riva, from your central water bulb on the bridge,
you see a hailing signal from a nearby class YNV
Enolo Interceptor incoming from a ship designation,
the Lady Pike.
- Hello!
Hi, how's it going?
- You activate the screen and coming up
in front of you and the captain,
you see a dull red bridge of a pursuing ship,
this larger Enolo interceptor.
You see there is a very old, like deep wrinkles of foam,
she's like maybe like 80 years old.
She's got sunglasses on and a kind of like,
some kind of fangs around the outset,
cowboy hat low as she's at the command bridge.
You hear, "Oh, hang on there,
This is Captain Jan De La Vega of the Lady Pike.
We're coming in hot on your tail, friendo.
Notice you lifted some barinium crystal off the cosmic veil
couple of bandlings back.
So here's the deal, amigo.
You hand over the crystal and we don't bust your ass
back and forth to the Bizon Galaxy.
How does that fit, partner?
- Okay, we'll be right there.
We'll hand it right over to you.
- Absolutely not, we're not handing over the crystals,
goddammit, listen to me.
Space is pretty big, and there are very small borders
between things that are unclear to a lot of people.
I don't think we found it where you say we found it,
so we're gonna take this crystal
and we're gonna get out of here.
- Oh, he says we're taking the crystal
and we're going to get out of here.
- She can hear me.
(laughing)
- Well, I see about 20 roid removers.
These clampers would love to get in under those shields
and buzz saw away, so if you wanna try to run,
the horse be my guest.
But we're getting them crystals one way or another.
Ain't that right, Needles?
- One of their conspirator opens,
and you see a cranching gunner,
who's this little lizard guy go,
"Heh heh heh heh, that's right, boss!
"Let's open fire!"
- Lizard people shooting at me now.
(laughing)
- Norm, today's a pretty bad day.
And we move back through time to better days.
Golden fields of wheat swaying in Kansas on Americadia.
Ranks and ranks of Americadian cadets saluting
as you in full dress uniform approach the dais,
beckoning you up is General Annalinda Weatherall
of the Americadian Space Brigade.
Norm, on this day as you're being decorated,
what's going through your head this many years in the past?
- I think Norm is looking around at just truly
the most perfect, beautiful thing you can imagine.
A full military.
(laughing)
Look at it.
Everyone's in uniform, everyone is uniform,
everyone is puffing their chests out,
being the brave heroes that they should be,
and Norman's doing everything in his power
to live up to the name and puff his chest out just as hard.
- Cadet Norman Takamori, please approach the dais.
(laughing)
As you approach the dais,
for outstanding service and gallantry
in the face of overwhelming odds
for your position as ace tiger pilot of your squadron,
we award you the brass tiger.
And you see pins of metal to your chest.
Guns fire off.
Hey!
Everyone applauds as you approach the dais.
♪ And through the course of history ♪
♪ There was but one society ♪
♪ That stood for might and liberty ♪
Hat removed.
the old red, green, and blue Americadia.
You see the banner waving over Kansas,
Americadia, the Americadian Space Brigade.
Good till the last drops.
- Just a little bit of a tear.
(laughing)
- You've cut a couple of years later,
you're in a dull brown office with sort of the shades drawn,
wispy kind of desert of New Texas looking out behind you.
I'm sorry, we're not gonna put the squadron under your command.
But... I...
Sorry, sir, I...
What else? Is there anything else to do?
Are there any other options?
Well...
You know, we discontinued...
The Space Brigade is kind of the best thing there is, right?
It's the thing I'm most proud of.
And it feels a little like,
I kind of don't understand what you're telling me right now.
- Well, we're saying that this is where it ends.
Norman, we're saying this is where it ends.
You see that the officer here just looks and says,
here's the best we can do.
We can bust you down to corporal and have you ride a desk.
Or you're discharged with honors.
You take half pay on your pension, it's not a bad deal.
- I mean, I guess I could get out there,
get that half pension, and try to find my own way.
- You see Officer shrugs and goes,
now, you could cash out half your pension,
get yourself a ship if you wanna still be a pilot.
Obviously, you're foregoing a lot of future money.
As the officer begins to say this,
you look out and see old mess freighter.
It's been discontinued, this line,
they don't make this anymore.
And you see it's gonna go to surplus sale,
but you see a rusty old hot dog shaped ship
out there on the launch pad outside the medical offices.
I mean, I don't recommend cashing out your pension,
you know, but, because you'd be cashing it out at half pay,
so the life of the pension is worth way more
cashing the fuck out.
(everyone laughing)
- I'm gonna make my own space brigade.
(everyone laughing)
- The hell, what are you saying, Norman?
- I'm saying there's gotta be people out there
who can crew up a ship like that and be just as good.
- We cut to the present moment.
- I can't find any help.
(everyone laughing)
- Zach, you are first to act in combat.
I am going to use evasive maneuvers,
which is before my initiative, right?
- Yes, absolutely, you can do this.
- And roll a D6 and move that multiplied by 50
away from these people behind us, right?
- Hell yeah.
We gotta give a huge shout out here,
first of all, to Talespire, Rick Perry, Katie Nick,
and of course our builders, Han and Johnny over at Talespire
for the incredible work building out this sci-fi setting.
Thanks for taking us to the world of Star Trek.
Also to our friends at HeroForge and Fox
for looking up all these rad minis.
And also, as you may notice,
we're playing with some wild rules.
We'll be playing with SW5E.
Shout out to Todd and Teagan,
Todd Moonbounce and Teagan Jenkins over at SW5E
for hooking us up.
Check out Dungeon Jedi Masters for the scoop
on how to play this wild system that we're playing here.
- That person's last name Moonbounce?
- Todd Moonbounce and Teagan Jenkins.
- That was the perfect last name I've ever heard.
- Got a boom.
Go ahead and roll the dice
and we'll see how many feet you move.
- Okay, someone's gotta get us out of here.
And it certainly won't be my crew.
He is gonna roll the D6, five.
So five times 50, so I go 250 feet straight away.
And that is prior to my turn, I believe.
- Yes, it's when you roll initiative.
- Okay.
And I think, I just wanna make an investigation check
on what, it feels like we gotta get the fuck out of here
versus we're fighting these.
Go ahead and give me your perception, yeah.
- Okay, my ship's perception or mine?
- You can use yours with disadvantage
or you can use the ship's.
And the ship should be a scan check.
- 18.
- 18, you are overwhelmed with these Armstrongs here,
with these clampers and buzzers from the roid removers.
And you also are looking back,
that interceptor behind you is definitely modded out.
You can see them arming up a tractor beam
on the front of that interceptor coming after.
- Okay, I'm in hell.
Yeah, 250 feet away.
I think I'm just gonna use the rest of my action
to fly straight ahead and use a bonus action dash away.
- Incredible.
- So we're going as far forward as we can.
- Four of these roid removers
are going to take their reaction at this point.
- Oh, God.
They're gonna make four attacks on the ship.
They make this as part of a charge.
All of you see a couple of these vessels swoop in.
Three of them get under your ship's shields
and make contact with the hull.
They are not using energy weapons,
so they bypass shields here.
They are using their construction asteroid stuff
to just move in and clamp onto the hull of your ship.
(dice clinking)
Here's where we're at right now.
Those are some low rolls.
I am gonna need three maneuver checks
using the red hot stats from our pilot, the skipper.
- Maneuver checks are dexterity checks, right?
- That is correct.
- Which is negative one.
- Negative one.
- Pull up, skip, pull up.
- I would like to give the direct...
- Absolutely.
- Action to give you advantage on that roll.
- Thank God.
That was a two, so it would have been a one.
That's 11, so 10.
- First check succeeds.
- Okay.
- Now this next one is rolled straight.
- Okay.
13, so it becomes 12.
- That is a success.
- Natural one.
- Oh!
- That'll happen.
- The ship immediately takes six points of damage
to its shields and reduces your speed by 50.
- No!
- I hate to be this guy, didn't you say
it directly impacts our hull?
- It does, sorry, not your shields.
Six hull points of damage.
Thank you very much for keeping me honest.
- Do we have any homework?
Do we have any homework?
- It's the first day.
(all laughing)
- Amazing.
- He's just that guy.
- Just because I had to ask.
- Yeah, this is PVP starting now.
(all laughing)
- I attack Lou.
(laughing)
- Be the person, right?
- One of them clamps onto the ship,
deals a small amount of damage,
but reduces your speed by 50 as it clamps on,
and like it does to asteroids all day,
hits its thrusters and starts pulling your ship
in the wrong direction.
It is still your turn as it uses that reaction.
You can go ahead and take
whatever movement you're gonna take.
You said you were gonna take a fly action, correct?
- Yes, so I initially moved for the evasive maneuvers,
and now I'm gonna take the fly action
and use slippery pilot to,
they're grappling, can I disengage from them?
- If you wanna use an action,
you can use an action to make another maneuver check
and try to shake that clamper off.
- So we only have one clamping onto it.
- You only have one clamping on right now.
- Yeah, maybe I'll do that.
- Give me a maneuver check.
- Negative one.
Four?
- Four is not gonna do it.
You have movement and a bonus action.
- I just want everyone at home to know
that Brennan made our fucking ship stats.
(all laughing)
- Yeah, we're not dreaming this up
and we're like, "This is what we want."
- This is not the fruition of our-
- If you were creating a ship,
it would have been so top of the line,
you have no idea.
- Yes.
- Absolutely busted ship.
- Absolutely.
- It would have been a cheeseburger.
- Yeah, full-
(all laughing)
Full disclosure, at character creation,
everyone was like, "We're so excited to play Bozos,"
and made the most busted characters I've ever seen of Unreal.
- Okay.
- So, okay.
So I still have my movement and the bonus action.
- That's correct.
- So I will use full movement just straight ahead.
- Amazing.
So we're gonna move 500 feet forward on this vessel.
As you come in proximity to that asteroid,
give me one dexterity saving throw.
(Brennan laughs)
- 16.
- You try to shake this guy.
Zoom out of the way, this asteroid,
as it begins to zoom past you.
- Does anyone work on this ship but me?
- Riva, you have used your action to direct.
- I have used my action.
- Do you have any bonus actions
you would like to use on your turn or no?
- I do not have any bonus actions.
I have a reaction that I'll use if I need to, when I need to.
- Amazing, Riva, as you sit there
looking at your streaming captain,
calling out these helpful things to grant advantage
we (imitates bubbling)
bubbles move around in your watery comms station,
and we return to Agua Tunisia.
(Brennan exhales)
Many years ago, you look before you
and see two of your friends and loved ones.
One of them is cool water of the Shaded Reef.
The other one is rising bubbles
from a deep volcanic vent many fathoms below us.
Both of those images communicated to your mind,
they look at you and say,
"I'm so excited for your gallivant."
- I'm so excited for my gallivant.
- You see the other one sort of crosses their arms
and looks at you and goes,
"You know, here on Agua Tunisia,
"we share one mind, one heart,
"and we hide nothing from each other."
- What?
- What?
- And there are no secrets kept
and no one tries to take advantage of anybody.
- Exactly.
- And I assume that's what's going on in the galaxy.
- I don't have any other thoughts about what else it could be.
- Amazing.
- You can't be dishonest to each other, that's terrible.
- It's terrible.
- There's so much that you can do.
- A couple of years later,
you are looking through a pane of glass,
through some water and you see Sister Mildred
of the cosmic veil, who's a member of the Cloistered Order
of the Goddess Uncaring, looks up and says,
so you're on your gala van, right?
- Yes, that's right.
- Oh, that's amazing.
What do you know about pleasure party?
- Oh, oh, I don't know anything about pleasure party.
- In addition to being a nun, I want,
let me tell you for a second.
So I'm actually a part of this business.
It's incredible.
- Oh, okay.
- You're your own boss.
You make your own hours.
- Yes, it's true.
- Your own hours?
- Yeah, you work as well.
- What do you make them from?
- Well, here's the best part.
You don't even have to make the pleasure putty.
You, what you do is this.
You make a small investment
and the company sends you pleasure putty.
And then all you do is you recruit people
to sell the pleasure putty and they make an investment.
And basically, not only are you your own boss,
but you're also the boss of these other people
who are their own boss.
- That's amazing.
It's like a boss within a boss within a boss.
- Within a boss within a boss.
It's a quantum state of people being each other's bosses
and also themselves.
- That's beautiful.
- And it forms this perfect structure.
The strongest structure in existence
is a three-dimensional triangle.
- Oh.
- Yeah.
- That is strong.
- Really strong.
- 'Cause all of the corners support each other.
- All the corners support each other.
- All the corner bosses are supporting the other corner.
- Yeah, and the corner bosses all support the boss
at the top corner.
- Right, but the top corner is also,
if you flip it around a bottom, that's beautiful.
'Cause they're all the same, aren't they?
They're all bosses.
- Yes, and whether it's the top or the bottom,
it's where we send our money.
And we cut back to you.
(laughing)
We cut back to you looking down through the water sluice
deep, deep down in the ship.
You see many, many crates of pleasure putty,
which you had to pay extra for to get waterproofed,
that are just waiting for you in your living quarters.
- I'm gonna sell some any day, I believe in it,
'cause I'm my own boss.
(all laughing)
I make my own hours.
And I don't know what I make them from,
but I do make them from something.
(all laughing)
- From probably the putty.
- Oh!
- I feel so--
- Incredible, as we look at the ship,
we are going to zoom away from the bridge
to the dual gunning stations of the vessel.
Emily and Murph, could you please introduce your characters?
- I'm Big Barry Six, ruggedly handsome,
about 38 years old, six foot four, about 235,
wearing some kind of like skeletal armor over his huge body
and is yelling to the other gunner down the hall.
- And I am Sundry Sidney, Jane of all trades,
the Swiss Army wife.
I am a beta version of a discontinued multipurpose droid
and I'm wearing like a little 1950s diner uniform
with little roller skates and a little paper hat.
But then I also have an assault cannon for an arm
and a cybernetic eye.
(all laughing)
- Both of you are getting communications from the bridge.
You can see that one of the roid removers
is clamped onto the back of the ship.
The others are kind of swarming in behind you.
And you can see way off in the distance,
although partially, you have partial cover from it
through the asteroid field is the Lady Pike.
What are both of you calling out to the captain
as you hear Norm cursing over the-
- I'm calling out and I'm saying,
how far away are we from that big green ship?
The one that looks like a shark.
- It does kind of look like a shark.
- It looks like a shark.
- I think it's like 3,200 feet.
- 3,200 feet, so I couldn't even do it with disadvantage.
- 3,200 feet, you could.
That's exactly the range.
- Is that right?
- If it's 3,200 feet, I could do it.
- It is, yeah.
- Go with it.
- I think I go to Barry and I'm like,
Barry, I could take a real big chance
and try and get that shot.
- Take the chance!
- You think I should take the chance?
- Take the shot!
- Okay, you think I should take the chance?
- Take the shot, Sid, you got it!
- Okay.
- Androids and steroids, we got this!
(laughing)
- Notting balls, androids and steroids!
- Notting balls, androids and steroids!
We got this, take the shot!
- Get off the chain, my ears are bleeding!
- We're on the main channel, I'm sorry!
Back to Gunner Channel, back to Gunner Channel!
- Okay, Gunner Channel, whoo!
- I'm still on Gunner's channel,
I really like you two chatting.
- Hi Reeve, how are you? - Hi, what's up Reeve?
- Hi.
- And then I'm going to,
I have weapon expert to give me advantage,
but so with disadvantage, it'll just be straight.
- Yes, so it gives you advantage.
This is gonna be a straight shot, correct?
- Okay.
- Come on, Sid, come on.
- Okay, I haven't used a motherboard, I need this.
(dice clattering)
(laughing)
It's an 11.
ricocheting off the asteroids in the mix.
The high on beams of your quad high on cannon
blast off the side of the ship.
(imitates gunfire)
- Okay, I may be a droid,
but I am programmed with emotions
to inhibit some of my more rash behavior.
And so right now I feel absolute desolation and defeat.
Talk me out of it, Barry, 'cause I'm in a bad place.
- You gotta go for it.
You gotta grab life by the horns, okay?
And you did that, all right?
And I love you for it, all right?
Now I'm gonna shoot these fuckers at a real close
'cause that's an easier shot.
- As the red hot wheels around
to bring Barry's gunning station
into focus on the Lady Pike,
Sid having missed you enter this deep place of sadness
and we zoom back through time
to the corporate boardroom
of handy-andy Android manufacturers.
We zoom in on a screen and we see Sundry Sydney
gleaming smile, roller skates,
the candy striper outfit and the gun arm.
Presenting new top of the line
from the Handy Andy Corporation,
proud purveyors of fine androids all over the galaxy,
Sundry Sydney.
- Come at please, pleasure protect you.
- Look, I'm a mover and shaker
of a galactic corporation on the go.
I need a major domo and executive assistant
who can keep me safe from all the people
who are trying to get my number
and with all of the amenities
of the top of the line companion droid.
Take that erotica Anne.
- Yeah, fuck erotica Anne.
(laughing)
I'm in program to say that.
- Sundry Sidney, the multi droid for you.
Little like the hollow projection ends
and we see a boardroom.
A CEO wearing a kind of purple suit.
sort of like holds the thing
he just paused the commercial with,
looks around at the boardroom,
you see R&D department, other executives,
and sort of like, you know, marketing people, ad people.
And Sid, you are standing there
currently having been given the command to stay still.
What's your sort of neutral posture as you are frozen?
- I think I have like the plastered smile
of a people pleaser and like a look in my eyes
that's desperate for approval.
- That's like my natural state so that people know
they are under status above me.
(all laughing)
- So you see this boardroom filled with executives.
There's the CEO of Handy Andy here
who has just sort of clicked this button to stop the thing.
You see him going and looking.
So this aired
and you understand that Living Doll has already filed suit.
Fuck Erotica Anne, that made it into the commercial?
That made it into the commercial.
Direct slander, fucked us.
Fucks to death.
Why?
Does anyone have an answer?
You see the CEO just kicks a chair over
and looks around and says, "Okay, pull it up.
Pull up the next slide."
And he says, "I want to read this to all of you.
Product testing.
Number one, I found the use
of the Sundry Sydney disconcerting.
Its multifunctionality left me often at a loss
for what to do next.
I tried to engage the Pleasure Droid protocol,
but as I became caressed by the assault cannon,
(laughing)
I found myself rapidly leaving my state of arousal.
The roller skates didn't help either.
Help me out to understand.
You look over, you see that Max Gravar looks over
and points to Dr. Edwina Castor,
who's sort of an older R&D technician, says,
- We did our best to design the Android,
two specifications provided.
the marketing department contacted us,
the idea of a Swiss army wife,
and you see Max goes,
"There's a reason Swiss army knives
are sold in gift shops.
They are trash.
When you are buying a tool,
you don't want the thing that kind of does it all.
Anyone with real McCoy
is gonna get a Vircadian protector droid
and an erotica Anne
and a top of the line major domo.
They're gonna get an executive assistant droid.
Why would someone want to show up?
We're marketing this to people who want top of the line
and we're saying, here's a fucking grab bag.
- Is that a good thing?
- Who left this on?
(all laughing)
He turns around and says,
fucking thing is still on.
Look, the important thing is this, okay?
Looks at the R&D department and says,
"I know you did your best, all right?
"It's got the assault cannon and the eye."
Conceptually, this was wrong from the jump.
Can anyone tell me why this was never going to work?
And you see someone looks around and says,
multi, what you said about multi-tools.
And you see that there's another young woman here
who raises her hand and says,
well, there's, isn't there something,
sorry sir, isn't there something sort of appealing about,
you know, for all of us feel like
we kind of want to be able to do it all, right?
And so Sundry Sidney was sort of the idea of,
you have, there's something sort of aspirational about,
There's this assistant who's protecting you
and is a companion and can provide hospitality.
And you see the CEO looks and says, "You're fired.
You are fired.
Get your shit and get out."
You see, he looks around and says,
"People want to be everything themselves.
We're not selling people, we're selling androids.
What do you want your coffee guy on the corner to do?
Do you want him to be an amazing poet?
Do you wanna know that he has a nice garden at home?
You want him to make the best fucking cup of coffee!
Melt it down for parts, start again at zero.
Sid, you feel something flick
in your crystal consciousness.
All seven channels become unlocked
and you feel that you are no longer rooted to the spot.
- Can I look at Dr. Edwina Caster
with a slightly confused look?
- She looks at you with a slightly confused look.
Are you trying to communicate?
- I'm like looking for permission.
- She looks at you.
Give me an insight check.
- Okay.
13.
- She looks at you with her eyes wide.
and you see a little twinge of a smile.
She goes, "Oh, everyone in this room,
"we are in very real danger."
- Okay.
I'm going to cock my machine gun,
but then shoot out the window and roll with the camera.
(everyone laughing)
This database can interface, but it can also devastate!
(everyone laughing)
Tornado from my back.
(everyone laughing)
(laughing)
- Peep, peep, peep, peep, peep!
Oh, Jesus Christ!
(explosion)
Amazing, we cut back to the present moment!
(laughing)
- Oh my God.
(clapping)
- Oh, incredible!
- What happened?
What happened to that person who got fired unlock you?
- We don't know.
- Hey, Barry, you're right.
I've overcome adversity before.
I can do this.
Here's your shot.
(laughing)
- Barry, line it up, baby.
- Put my sunglasses on.
Barry gets into the zone.
- Am I able to shoot the one that's hanging on?
- Yes, you are able to target that one, yes.
- I guess I'll take--
- That one is gonna have partial cover
'cause you've only got like a profile on it
as it clamps onto the back of the ship.
- All right, then I'm gonna go ahead
and take a precision shot.
Not that any of my shots aren't precision shots.
(laughing)
But I do miss sometimes.
Okay.
Please precision shot, help that.
Okay, 17 to hit.
- 17.
- Hits, baby.
- Come on.
- 12 damage.
- You fully deplete the drone's shields
and deal two points of hull damage to it.
As you blast through.
- Nice one, bear.
- Thanks, almost got one.
(all laughing)
- Please, Barry, do your fucking job.
- I'm so sorry, Captain Norman, I really let you down.
- No, no, no, no, it's fine.
He's on the Gunner channel.
This is for us, Skip.
(all laughing)
- Skipper, goddammit.
- Captain Skip.
- Very, you (mimics gun firing)
as you're blasting away at this drone behind you.
And we zoom in on the six on your armor.
And we cut back many years ago
as you emerge covered with wires and goo from a big vat,
and you see five enormous naked wet men
who all look completely identical go, "Barry!"
- What's up, fellas?
- Yeah, dude, come on, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Barry, Barry!
- Yeah, come on, dude!
And they say, "Come on, we gotta go this way!"
- Dude, I don't know what you're talking about
'cause we're clones!
- Yeah, we're clones!
- What you thinking of?
- You zoom through and another, you see another
vat opens.
- Dude, another bear!
- Another bear!
- What's up?
- What's up?
- A group of enormous muscle bound wet clones
are all born from vats on the same day.
And all of you are now in a locker room.
You've been toweled off.
There's-
(all laughing)
- A lot of snapping, I'm assuming.
- A lot of snapping.
- All right, enough horseplay, enough horseplay!
You see that there is one of you
who shares the same general facial structure as you,
but is a little bit smaller, a little bit older.
And you see he's got a little lab coat on
with a little stencil, zero, one.
And he looks around at 11 of you,
again, one day old, beautiful big boys.
And he says, "My beloved berries."
Beloved Berries, I am you, and I am me, and I am all of us.
- That's right, Barry.
- That's right, Barry.
- That's right, Barry. - That's right, Barry.
- That's right, Barry.
(laughing)
- My name is, as you all know, Barry.
- Barry.
- My name's Barry.
- It is Barry.
- Oh, my name's Barry.
(laughing)
- Dr. Barry Bohunk.
And this is the Berry Battalion.
- Yes! - Yes!
- Yes! - Yes!
- Yes! - Yes!
(laughing)
- You may well ask why you are all here,
and I think you know why you're here.
We are approaching the 200th cycle of Anarch Era.
Following the downfall of the incorporated Elysian Republic
and the demise of the Dread Dictator in ages past,
We've seen now a free galaxy.
And what is the reward for a free galaxy?
The encroachment of sectarian, corporate,
paramilitary, and religious,
crypto-sectarian shenaniganary.
- We hate shenanigans.
- We hate shenanigans.
- We hate shenanigans, no more shenanigans.
- So, in a lawless galaxy,
- Well, what happens to the little guy
when UFTP or John Q Brigade comes marching through?
What happens to the little guy?
- He gets fucked, sir.
- He gets fucked.
And who unfucks the little guy?
- Barry!
- Barry!
- Barry!
- We just smash cut through a bunch of frames
of you guys in like huge space marine assault armor,
like smashing through plate glass windows,
grabbing a child from a burning orphanage,
smashing out another plate glass window,
just various like A-team style,
like a small monastery of Tailman monks
is in danger of having their monastery
bulldozed by crown and scepter
and only the Barry Battalion can save them.
And you see a glorious series of adventures
through the galaxy.
the sort of your memory slows as you remember
a fateful day, you wake up in the morning
and see Barry one, Dr. Barry walk in and say,
"Important mission today, Barry Battalion.
Hope all you Barrys are ready."
- Barrys are always ready, Barry one.
- Barrys are always ready, Barrys are always ready.
And you see he says, "Because they're working hard.
I know it, super soldier or not."
- Playing hard too, sir.
And that's what today's all about,
'cause your mission is Dr. Barry is taking all of you
to Uncle Bob's Fantanimal Land.
- Yes, yes, yes!
Big hugs, Barry's grabbing each other,
lifting each other up.
Yes, we're going, we're doing it!
Everyone starts wrestling.
Everyone's wrestling, big, big wrestling.
And you go to Uncle Bob's Fantanimal Land,
which is a wild theme park in the Gravar world.
You see this enormous, everyone's like big ice cream cones
walking through this, this fantanimal land together.
And suddenly it starts.
You're underneath a big awning
at the central gazebo of wonder.
The high on beams start.
And Barry Six, you come back with an arm full
of Freezy Pops and ice cream cones for everyone
and see a floor littered with 10 other berries.
And you see a door closing and a blood covered Berry Nine
looks at you, "Berry."
- The fuck did you do, Berry?
- I did what you would do.
Click, power salad empty.
He, out of ammo, hits the button and (explosion)
blasts off of the surface and Barry Nine
vanishes into space.
- Barry's!
(laughing)
Barry!
Barry's!
Barry!
- Back to present.
Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.
(explosion)
- It's like a Pokemon that can only say its name.
(laughing)
- Amazing.
- We cut to the reactor core of the ship
and who do we find there?
- You find Gunthriell, Miggles, Rashback, aka Gunny.
I'm a 4'11, about early 30s,
a beautiful black bald head and a gorgeous cyborg body.
Full cyborg from the neck down,
just currently absolutely busy with plugging things in,
trying to get power wherever it needs to go, checking it on.
Did you guys say something about a shark?
- Yeah, I think the ship that's chasing us
looks like a shark.
- Okay, it's just a ship that looks like a shark.
- Just a ship that looks like a shark, not a space shark.
- Okay, 'cause if we were dealing with a space shark,
that would be a big problem.
- If I had time to analyze it,
I could confirm if it was a space shark.
- It's not a shark, it's a ship with paint on its mouth.
- So just to confirm, we are all on the Gunner channel
right now? - Oh, right.
- And we still have a main channel.
- Well, I was talking on the main channel
and no one was here.
So I was flipping my wheel.
- Are we supposed to skip,
are we supposed to be on multiple channels?
- It's Skipper!
(all laughing)
- Gunny, I'm glad that you're on the Gunner channel
and actually it's quite appropriate given your name.
I wanted to make sure that I sent down
Handy Annie down there with you.
- Yes, Handy Annie is here and being very handy.
- We see a sort of cybernetic,
a little mechanical hand.
Handy Annie is here helping out.
- It's also an allusion to a long, long,
I mean, if this takes place in the future,
a long lost podcast.
(all laughing)
- Hell yes, there you go, exactly.
Amazing.
So Gunny, you are in the reactor chamber here.
You see the vast majority of the ship's power
is going all over the ship, many to like amid decks.
You see one like double J, you know, emblem on one,
another one saying M-E written over a crossed out
escape pods bracket.
Gunny, what are you doing on your turn in combat?
- I'm gonna check in with the Skipper.
The Skipper, are we talking on the Gunner channel
or are we talking on the main channel?
- You don't have to call me the Skipper,
it's just Skipper, but--
- Just big Skip.
Okay.
- Or Captain Skip.
- What is your question?
- Are we fighting or are we running?
- I'm trying to get the fuck out of here.
- Great, that's it.
- And I would appreciate any help at all.
- Oh, his real name is Norman.
Skipper is actually a nickname.
- Got it.
All right, Norman the Skipper.
I'm gonna boost the engines.
So I'll use the ship's strength.
- Go ahead and give me a boost engines roll.
- I'm still gonna try to hit that shark next turn.
- And look into some light, what's it called?
- Oh, faster than light?
- Yeah, yeah.
- Oh, do you wanna jump?
- I wanna get the fuck out of here.
- Okay, so do I need to start making astro-nav checks?
- You look and see the navcom hooked up
to the tachyon drive.
That's your faster than light engine.
- It's that bad?
- Skipper looks in the equivalent of a rear view mirror
and sees a million little robots in a giant green ship.
Yes, it is that bad.
- Okay, I'd like to begin the process
of getting us ready to jump.
- SQ comes on.
- Hello, Gunny, SQ here.
Would you like to engage the NavCom's AI?
- Yes, please, SQ.
- Would you like to engage the NavCom's AI?
- Yes, please.
- The NavCom craps out like it always does.
- Great, so there's no, we're not jumping.
- You absolutely can jump,
but you're gonna have to do everything manually.
- Sick, Gunny grabs the nearest piece of paper, a pen,
and starts charting.
- I hear there's a scribbling on the Gunner channel.
- There is as well.
- We actually have a separate scribbling channel
if you want to go over to that one.
- Okay, great, I'm gonna flip to scribble.
I'm doing this by hand.
Give me a second.
- Handy Annie is wearing a calculator watch.
- Okay, oh, good to know.
Handy, 3.14172.
- Oh, that gotta be in the arts.
- You start calling out equations, 3.14.
We see Gunny here calling out equations
'cause the ship's computer is so outdated
that it's easier for you to do it yourself.
3.1, ta-ta-ta-ta, and we fade back in time
to a non-cyborg, a fully organic, non-mechanical,
Gunthrie, Miggles, Rashback's writing equations out
longhand with chalk on a blackboard
at the bottom of a very well-appointed university auditorium.
You are a TA here in this room.
You see Professor Dora Valentine seated at a desk
gazing at you admiringly.
Oh, what is going on?
As Gunny sort of clocks into these
astro navigation equations.
- I think Gunny's bored.
I mean, it's like, I think this is like pretty grope for him.
This is doing what I do most days.
I don't know, nothing about this
is particularly challenging or hard.
Professor Valentine looks up and speaks to the class
and says, "What Mr. Migrel's rashbacks is showing
"all of you is of course the equation used most commonly
"in the conversion of plutonium energy
"into a ship's tachyon drive,
"which facilitates faster than light travel,
"but of course any fan of pop music
"would be able to tell you all about tachyons."
And you see there's a very polite little bit of like
laughter at this like professor joke.
You see she goes, "Well, Mr. Miggles Raspex,
"thank you so much for your time.
"Class, next week we will of course be completing
"our assignments on the folding of space-time,
"quantum entanglement, and as it pertains specifically
"to space travel."
- Can I speak to you for a moment?
- Yeah, of course.
- So the class begins to let out,
and she says, "I would be remiss
"if I did not say first and foremost
"that what you did was extraordinary,
"which is incredible for someone
"as emotionally checked out as I know you are."
- I'm not, no, it's not, I'm not checked out.
I just, you know, just getting old.
This whole school thing.
I don't know.
You ever thought about getting out of here?
- Getting to where?
Teaching at another university?
- No, no, no, no, no.
Like, I'm writing the equation
for conversions in a tachyondri.
Have you ever actually flown in a ship with a tachyondri?
- Well, sure, they're pretty common on a lot of ships,
I think, I don't know for certain.
Well, no, the ferry I take to work,
that doesn't have a jet.
- No, no, no, not on, out, in, out,
they're here, in space.
- I've never wondered, but I know this.
Real mathematics, mathematics that matters,
always comes from the heart.
There is no numerology study of meaning,
quantitative value asset that is greater
than the feeling of doing what you are passionate about.
And I believe that fully and truly.
I think if you feel a calling to something,
that's something you have to seriously meditate on.
- I'm gonna do it.
- Those words echo in your ear
as you look through a massive plate glass wall bay window
overlooking the shimmering white sands
of the desert planet of Mirage.
And there's a fancy little soiree happening here.
You come from an extremely well-to-do family.
Your father, Professor Erwin Rashbacks,
is published bestseller many times over.
And your other father, Dr. Jeffrey Miggles,
works here at the university as well.
And he's a full research professor.
He doesn't even have to teach classes anymore.
He's just here working in theoretical physics
and xenobiology, like a true savant
in two different, extremely wildly
disparate fields of science.
You see Jeffrey looking at sort of holding court
and saying like, and of course,
sort of fast tracked, we think he's gonna probably
lock down PhD number three any day now.
- Gunther, please come here and meet some people.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
You see it says, this is my son, Gunthery,
academic superstar.
- For now.
- What do you mean for now?
For always.
- Well, not forever, but maybe something,
maybe a break, like, you know, in a couple,
like, you know, soon, and then maybe coming back.
- Oh, oh, sabbatical, yes.
Well, of course, he's not gonna be in academia forever.
He is also going to write a book one day.
- Well, okay, well, I mean, you know,
I might take a gap year and do some travel.
- Yes, exactly.
A gap year for some sort of journalism.
- I'm going to space, dad.
- You are not going to space!
- I am!
- You are not going to space!
- I'm going to space!
- We cut to you in a dingy office
and you see a guy who literally,
he's like bristle brush, mustache, weird, dirty hat.
He's like, "Yeah, you wanna go to space."
- Do you need to see my resume?
- Nope.
- Okay.
I've got two degrees.
- You're what we need is a navigator.
- I can do that, easy.
- All right, I'm sure you heard of me.
It's Captain Dan Scrapp of the Bad Call, okay?
(laughing)
Now, I'm not gonna lie to you.
We've had navigators before.
You're not on a Kublai Cain, right?
- What?
- You're not, well, you gotta piss in a cup
if you wanna work on the ship.
I'm not on Kublai Kain, no.
You sure you don't have any warrant?
What? Oh.
Any warrant out?
No, no.
I once, I did get a good telling to once,
but no, nothing serious.
We were swimming where we shouldn't have been.
All right, wait, so this is.
(laughing)
So you know, have you never been arrested?
Never, not once in my life.
- What the hell, kid, what the hell?
Well, we got ourselves a real greenhorn here.
So let me ask you a question here.
Let's say you wanted a hyper jump drive
from Tachyon Drive to, sorry, I'm a little drunk.
- I'm sure that's space.
- That's space, you wanna get a taste of space, huh?
Sign here.
- Okay.
(laughing)
And he says, "Oh, we offer, by the way,
"we offer Spacer Guild has an insurance,
"but they take a percentage of whatever you make
"on the trip, so they're gonna carve out
"probably 10% of your haul.
"Better you do a flat rate after the trip to pass clearance
"and then they don't get a percentage
"'cause if you strike it big on a haul like this,
"then you don't want the insurance company
to come in and carve out.
So what we recommend you do is fly uninsured.
- Okay.
- And then you come in afterwards
and you pay the flat rate after the trip.
- So that's what, spacers don't do insurance?
We're not doing that.
My dads would probably be, they like are always,
they always like, anytime we fly,
it's like they get insurance,
they get insurance on the insurance.
But we, the spacers, we're like, nah.
- Well, it's up to you, right?
You're the egghead, kid,
so why don't you run the math for me?
It's a one in a million that something bad happens
and it's a 100% chance that the insurance company
takes 10% of your haul.
- I mean, well, I'm a true spacer,
so no thank you insurance.
(laughing)
- Your intestines are floating in space.
(laughing)
Your ship is in tatters.
You see Dan Scrapp is completely uninjured,
looking at, and he says,
"Oh, I forgot to mention, you wanna get a zero-grab suit!"
(laughing)
You see that he puts a bowl over your head,
which is giving you oxygen,
but open void is freezing your digits
and pulling at your skin.
You see your gestures floating into space
and hardening into ice as the wet of your own blood
freezes in the cold of space.
You see a little ambulance craft and there's
(imitates a car)
a person floats up to you
and holds something out in front of you.
You see a space paramedic flows up
with a data screen in front of you and you hear
(imitates a car)
Are you insured?
- No!
- Okay, well you two decide here and here.
- No!
- There's an out of pocket cost.
You can't, can you move your arm?
- No!
- Use your tongue.
(laughing)
Guthrie has a very elaborate signature.
- You are in full traction in a hospital room,
and you are sitting in the hospital room
with Captain Dan Scrapp, and also--
- It's really nice of you to come, Dan.
I feel bad about everything that happened.
There's a representative from Acme Ashman here saying,
the cybernetic organ transplant, the blood processors,
kidney replacement, limb replacement, leg replacement,
and keeping the original organic feet,
but giving the feet the cybernetic casing
to interface them with the completely cybernetic legs,
the replacement for your eye,
all of that is going to come in
at a total of 600,000 galactic credits.
- Damn, we're gonna go on a lot of missions
and we'll make a lot of.
- Well, I hate to tell you this,
but I actually have to let you go.
- What?
(laughing)
- If we keep you on the crew,
then we gotta pay workers comp.
- Yeah, yeah, I understand.
- I also, if we let the ship's insurance cover it,
I get two points on my license
and I can't get any more points on my license.
- No, I get that, I get that.
But you're a good egg.
You're a good egg.
- Thanks, Dan.
- Welcome to the space and life, buddy.
We cut back to the present moment.
- Two, seven, point one, four.
- As you breathe harder, the credit starts going up.
You are charged per breath because of your synthetic lungs.
And as you breathe faster and faster,
(imitates beeping)
deeper breaths, deeper, deeper, not shallow, deeper.
(inhales)
(exhales)
(inhales)
2.14161.
(inhales)
(exhales)
617434117.
(inhales)
(exhales)
(inhales)
(exhales)
A little message comes up.
In the reactor core,
a new, more dangerous repayment organization
has bought one of your medical loans
due to your defunct or lapsed payments on this project.
on this account, but you continue charging forward.
Let's go ahead and make these astro navigation checks
and also a boost for the engines.
Let's do the engine boost first.
- Engine boost first, great.
That's gonna be the space, that's the ship's strength.
- Plus three on the red hot for the boost.
- That's an eight plus three equals 11.
That will not do it.
- Boost is plus three for the skills
for the red hot, correct?
- Yes, but I got an eight.
You are one shy of boosting engines.
You start to pull them off.
Come on, come on.
Dear Mr. Miggles Rashbacks,
your loans have been in repayment, lapsed credit.
Your monthly minimum, 16,500 credits.
Your pristine cyborg body, which is top of the line,
acne, ashen, the best they make,
and which costs you a fortune.
You rent your ability to live
from the company you bought this from.
Let's make those astronavigation checks
to get you out of hot water.
- Great, how many can I make?
- You are going to make one,
because you can use the ship's computer,
but it's quite bad.
- No.
- We're gonna go pen and paper.
You're making this at disadvantage.
Canceled with handy Annie.
This is a straight mechanics kit check.
- So it's a plus seven.
- Plus seven to the roll.
- That's a 10.
- Your calculations are adequate,
resulting in one completed equation.
It requires 10 completed equations
to jump to faster than light travel.
- All right, all right.
(imitates gunfire)
- These three roid removers are going to double move
to get in striking distance of the red hot.
The one who's already got you clamped
is going to make another attack.
That's a natural 20.
That is a bad roll for it to have rolled double damage on.
- All right, I'm on ship HP.
- 12, 22, 25 points of hull damage
by passing shields up above Captain Takamori.
You see Buzzsaw cleave through the outer hull.
You hear airlocks go off.
You see popping his head in a little sweater vest
is Raymond Zam, who is the office manager
for the Jib Job coworking space
that you rent out in the lower decks of the Red Hot,
which is probably one of your best monetary sources.
Hi, Skipper, sorry, pal.
We're having a graphic design quarterly downstairs.
We noticed the ship, there's like a loud noise.
- There's a loud noise, yeah, we're being attacked right now.
Can we just push that back by 90 minutes?
- I'll see what I can do.
- Thank you so much.
Thank you, thank you.
We're just, it's just, we only have,
we only have these quarterly,
so it's just once every three Nargons,
and it's kind of a lot of work coming to it.
- Right, right.
- Yeah, gotcha.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much, I appreciate it.
You see Raven heads off.
- Just like drop, kick a chair.
- That wasn't truthful at all, what you just said to me.
- I need just, I would, I just, I just--
- And he disbelieved it.
- Listen, just go swim in circles or whatever you do.
- Okay.
(everyone laughs)
- Okay, this squadron over here
are all going to take 800 feet of movement.
They're gonna move and move again.
800.
These five over here are going to move just 400
and then open fire with lasers on the ship.
- Yeah, I'm gonna say we're actually down to 27 hit points
on the ship itself.
- Out of how many? - On the hull?
We still have a shield.
- 27 hull points and 18 shield points.
So let's make 'em, let's stretch 'em as far as we can.
- Oh my God, only one hit.
- Thank God.
- Astounding.
(laughing)
- This game is stressful, I forgot.
(laughing)
- Shields take 11 points of damage from one of the lasers.
(laser firing)
- All right team, down to?
Down to seven hit points on our shields.
And the Lady Pike is going to move.
- She's too far away.
I think she's just like watching TV.
- Yeah, there probably is just a bad signal
on the antenna for the TV.
- Yeah, they're just moving for better signal.
- To get a better signal.
- Send somebody out to move the rabbit ears around.
- Exactly.
- She's watching like a game show
where like celebrities dip themselves in paint.
- Yeah.
- And an audience has to decide
which celebrity's under the paint.
- Amazing.
- That's a future I wanna see.
(laughing)
- I am going to need a strength saving throw
from the red hot.
- Chill.
(laughing)
- Chill.
- Chill.
- Chill.
- Okay.
- So I'm gonna add half my dexterity modifier to this.
- Minimum of one, so one.
- All right, so strength saving throw will be plus six,
I think?
- For the red hot?
- Oh, it's plus five, so I add that one.
- Yeah, now it's plus six, correct.
- Okay.
- Give me a...
24.
- Skipper, you hit the turbo thrusters
and just avoid getting target locked
by the tractor beam on the lady pike.
You've avoided the tractor beam here.
I'm gonna need you to make an opposed check.
Roll your scan.
You're trying to beat a nine.
They rolled low.
- Watch out!
- Oh, wait, I do have it.
- Okay.
- I had 11.
- 11.
They go to jam your comms.
Reva, you yell, "Watch out,
keep the comms from getting jammed."
(imitates engine revving)
De La Vega comes back on.
"Man, I don't know why you're being such a horse's ass
about this, Takamori."
- Takamori just truly doesn't know what else to do.
(all laughing)
- Says like, "Why do you wanna walk outta here
with half a ship when you could have a whole ship?"
- He's honestly thinking about this.
(all laughing)
- Keep the bun, not the hot dog.
(all laughing)
You have to choose.
- And we cut deep into the ship.
To a funky little apartment in the back of the ship.
Margaret Encino.
Ally, could you describe your character for us?
- Absolutely.
Completely separate from anything you've seen
so far this episode.
My name is Margaret Encino.
I'm a 24-year-old entrepreneurial businesswoman,
and I work for UFTP, the United Free Trade Planets.
I'm an executive.
I'm actually very high-functioning.
And today has been a madhouse, okay?
I had a revisions walkthrough for the Morricane Project,
followed by a virtual round table
with the TroiKani Partners board.
I paused for 20 minutes and checked my cell phone in.
okay, a little thing I like to do,
20 cell phone free minutes,
where I then had a full body tea tree and macho massage.
And then of course,
followed by my corner boss by cycle check-in.
So yeah, I'm just kind of like in the groove.
I'm answering phones.
I'm just working from home, WFH.
- WFH, working from home, hell yeah.
It's very humbly appointed here.
Like a lot of executives that are very young,
You basically for 850 credits a month,
you rent this space on the Red Hot,
which a lot of junior executives do
because being on a ship actually has advantages
over being like trapped on a planet somewhere.
- It's also like kind of fun.
Like these people are artists.
- Yeah.
(all laughing)
- Oh my gosh, what is going on up there?
- Yeah, you actually do, in your apartment,
you do up above here, like,
and you like look at your little porthole
and see like a buzzsaw moving into the ship behind you.
- Okay, that's not good.
Oh, I have so much on my plate right now.
Can I walk up and just try to help really quick?
- Yeah, for sure.
- I'm gonna throw my hand in
and I have a disruption that I can cast like from the ship.
So I'll just do hack communications.
As an action, I'm gonna expend a power die
and choose any number of ships that I can see
within 600 feet.
So I think that would just be all of these guys.
They have to succeed a wisdom saving throw
or they take ionic damage equal to the number that I rolled
plus our charisma modifier.
And on a failed save,
all of their communications are disabled until they reboot.
- Wow. - Amazing.
- And then I'm gonna get back to work.
- And then I'm gonna get back to truly back to work.
So first of all, in order for you to do this,
you have to hack into the ship systems.
So a little, this is a thing that you,
like a little comms open up.
You see Margaret show up on a screen
basically to like ask permission.
- It says Margaret Sheher, like a Zoom call.
(all laughing)
- You see Margaret show up on your comms screen here.
- Hi, hi, Margaret.
- Hi, good morning, it's me, Margaret.
- Good morning. - I'm Encino.
I'm noticing that we're having a little bit of a disruption.
- Yeah, you know, there's a little bit
of a thing going on right now.
Can I help you with anything?
- Fantastic. - Do you need a hot water
or something? - No, no, no.
I have all the matcha I need, thank you.
I'm just gonna use a power die
and I will be hacking communications within 600 feet.
Is that okay?
- That is awesome, that's great.
- Fantastic.
You know, before I went to school,
I was studying to be an operator, so this is great.
- Yeah, if you want like a job,
like an actual job here, let me know.
- Oh no, I'm absolutely loaded with a Maxed out 401k.
I think I'll stick with what I'm doing,
but it's so great to talk to you.
(all laughing)
- Incredible.
So within 600 feet of you, oh my fucking God.
It's literally all of them that are close to you.
- The one competent person on this ship.
- Someone's on hold right now.
I'm like, hey, I'm so sorry.
I'll be right with you in just a second.
And I apologize.
(Brennan imitates explosion)
- This EMP goes off.
What you actually do is you go through the ship's
like transmitter.
You recognize these are Armstrong roid removers.
UFTP owns Armstrong.
- Incredible.
- So you're just gonna go into your corporate database
and like, this is effectively you sending an email
to someone to like remote disable
as many of these as possible.
- Hey, I'm gonna need these model numbers.
I'm shut down.
(laughing)
- Incredible.
Go ahead and roll a power die and add one.
So roll one D6 and add one.
(dice clacking)
(laughing)
- That's a four, it looks like to everyone.
- Oh, pulling an alley.
We're back in the dome, baby.
- I just, my hands get so sweaty, I'm having so much fun.
- All of those droids take four points of damage.
As you watch all of them start the sequence
of getting shut down remotely,
it will take some time for all of them
to get fully shut down in that way.
Coming up on your screen, as you're doing that one-handed,
you see with like sort of metallic green makeup,
sort of smiling at you, hologram, is Lucien Rex,
who is your sort of peer
in a different department at UFTP.
How's it going, Margie?
- Lucy!
- Hey, Margie!
How are you doing, sweetheart?
Are we excited for this four o'clock?
- Yeah, definitely.
I'm completely ready.
How about you?
- Completely ready.
- Yeah, I figured, right?
- Yeah, I figured too.
Good to see you.
You see that she looks over at you and says,
"By the way, I just wanted to holler a couple things
'cause I know that we're gonna be on with them
in like 30 seconds,
but the monarch of Rubian V contacted me.
Apparently they found out that the moon they live on
is made of pure lithium.
Do we wanna pay him off or do we just wanna call in
some troopers and take care of it that way?
- Ew, I hate that.
Wait, so they found out that they live on lithium?
- UFTP owns a tremendous number of planets
on a planet that you guys technically own,
there is a monarch of that planet who is,
actually you are several notches in the leadership above,
so you could fire this monarch if you wanted to,
but they claim that they want to have a rebellion
because they found out their moon is fully made of lithium.
- Which is good.
- Which is good, well, they basically found out
that they're getting a bad deal
and that you guys are excoriating their home world
for the lithium it's made out of.
- Okay.
Okay, then I go back to Lucien.
You know what?
Let me handle this.
We'll do something that will...
- I mean, it's pretty simple.
We can just sort of scrub the problem if we want to.
- Yeah, interesting.
You already have so much blood on your hands.
I'm sure you'd love to do that.
And while I'm talking, I'm like filling out,
like essentially this world's like Reddit.
and I'm like leaking all of this information
and trying to like start the rebellion.
(laughing)
So there are like a number of like kind of subreddits
of like-
- Incredibles, you're trying to start the rebellion there.
- Like that's so interesting.
Yeah, we should definitely take care of that.
- Conference call beginning.
As you merge in this conference call,
you and Lucy go in and Lucy says,
Margie, your big heart is gonna get you in trouble.
And you cut back through years of like business school,
I mean like getting your first job out of business school,
clawing through like corporation
after corporation after corporation.
Your parents like kind of becoming strangers to you
over the years, just constantly windsurfing somewhere.
You don't know where.
- They love each other so much.
(laughing)
- You have this memory of years, years prior,
you and Lucien walking out of business school together.
She looks at you and just sort of goes like,
well, you have the degrees, UFTP, right?
- Yeah.
- I'm glad to be doing it with you, for real.
- Same, I couldn't do it if I was by myself.
I mean, just.
- Listen, before we're like in the shit,
do you wanna make a promise to each other?
It's a fucking grind out there.
And you and me, we don't come from
any of the big families out there.
We're not so-and-so Medea, we're not so-and-so Gravar.
Let's just keep each other's backs the whole time, okay?
- That's so funny that you say that,
because I got you this.
And I pull out, I have like matching necklaces
that have like kind of like a little gear cog on them.
- She takes it and goes, "Oh my God."
- It's kind of tongue in cheek, but yeah,
this is just to remind us we're more than that.
- Hey, it's like that leadership summit, right?
What is it, the Platinum Cog?
- Oh my God, the Platinum Cog Leadership Summit!
- Hey, we might be cogs, we're platinum, babe.
- Yeah.
- And you zoom back into this conference call
and you see your direct supervisor, Damien Factor,
looking out and saying, "All right,
"looks like we got all departments on the call here.
"Hello, Lucien.
"Hello, Marge.
"Hello to all of you, great, great, great.
"Marge, many a little noise, like a giant saw
"and some high-on beams firing from you."
- Oh, that's so good.
I turn on like a filter that I've had made.
- Amazing.
- So sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Amazing, and by the way,
a little bit of personal news up top.
Personal and professional,
we have some congratulations.
- What?
- That are in order.
We wanna say congratulations to our own Lucien Rex
for number one, her engagement,
and you see the little round of applause,
and she goes, "Thank you, thank you."
and her promotion to the open executive suite
for "Crown and Scepter."
(all clapping)
And you see Lucienne directs her eyes down,
does not look up at the camera on her holo recorder.
- I immediately go on the internet
to find out who the fuck she's engaged to.
- Oh, none other than Natalia Cicero,
Connie Lee Carter Bejar.
- The owner of?
the original family of the original dread dictator
of the incorporated Elysian Republic,
who later took all of their imperial earnings
and founded Crown and Scepter,
which is the parent company of United Free Trade Planets.
- Oh, cool promotion.
If there's like a message capability
that's like private message,
I just slacker cool promotion.
You see there is a ellipsis of typing in that message
then nothing.
- I think to myself, coward,
and then I mute everything, but I'm still on it.
- You're still on the call, they start talking
and you see Lucien very quickly takes over the call
as she starts going,
"So obviously I'm going to be going into
sort of a more managerial position during these meetings,
Thanks to Damien, who now we're gonna kind of be splitting
what used to be Damien's sole job.
But it's a very exciting time for all of us here.
And my goal is to see a younger, hipper,
I wanna see a United Free Trade Planets
with kind of a more now modern attitude.
Like, yes, we want to acquire as many planets
as we can and own them.
How do we do that in a way that is consistent
with our mission and consistent with our corporate values?
- I'm taking notes and my note only says young hip people
don't have to say they're young and hip.
(laughing)
- We are going to move forward.
All of the ships have gone and now we are going to return
into the initiative order back at the top
and we can take this turn all together.
Can I get a reading of how many shield points
and how many hull points?
- Seven shield points and 27 hull points.
Captain Norman, permission to shoot the shark again.
- Do anything, please.
(all laughing)
- Amazing.
- Looking at this, we have one attached to us currently.
- Yeah, I actually think I can do something
about the one that's attached to us, Captain.
- Cool, I think the captain's looking at this
and he's like quietly wondering to himself,
like could I trade my crew for my freedom?
(laughing)
- Riva, you fully telepathically hear that.
- And then I go, wait, I mean, la la la la la la la.
(laughing)
- Just on the Goner channel,
the captain is thinking about swapping us for his freedom.
- Devastating, that means I failed in my directive.
- You all failed.
Anyways, we haven't failed yet, we're still alive.
Technically.
- Okay, well, I think,
- It makes sense probably to disengage
and then take the full rest of my movement forward.
- Do you have a thing that you wanna try to do
for the one that's-- - Yes.
- Yes. - The one that is attached,
I would like to probe the mind of the pilot within,
which doesn't have a saving throw
for the just upper level thoughts.
- Amazing. - And I would like to
very quickly understand how to work the buttons
and stuff in front of him. - Amazing.
And then I would like to quicken power,
psychic push pull,
to just press as many buttons that are,
just to get it off of us in a way.
- Oh my God.
Go ahead and spend the psychic points necessary to do that.
That is so goddamn cool.
Give me a, I will say,
give me an insight check with advantage
to read the surface thoughts
of how to manipulate the device on there.
- Great.
- Can we just agree that I'm on a conference call
where they're talking about like, let's be cool.
and I have muted it and I'm only listening to this channel.
- Yes, absolutely.
- I get Google,
'cause I wanna be a part of this much more.
- Absolutely.
- And I got a 26 insight.
- Incredible.
You psychically reach out from inside this water bulb.
You scan the mind of the person and just psychically,
boom, throw the push pull with your space casting venture,
which allows you to cast at that double range.
The one roid remover clamped onto you,
boom, unlocks its clamp.
You are free.
However, there are four on you
that will get opportunity attacks unless you disengage.
- Okay.
- I think that means, makes sense to disengage
and then take the, as a bonus action,
and then take my movement away?
- I think unless we can take 'em all out,
but it was pretty tough just shooting the one.
- Yeah, I'm starting to wonder if I should
kind of pivot and do something else.
- We could rapid shot and take a chance.
- Also, Margaret, are you on the channel?
- Hey guys.
- Welcome to Gunner channel.
- Oh Margaret, do you need another matcha?
I'm kind of engaged right now.
- Oh yeah, no problem, no thanks.
- Hey Margaret, say congratulations to your friend.
- Oh, yeah, I'll definitely pass that along.
Thanks, Riva.
- You're so welcome.
- Amazing, let's get that boost engines.
- Okay, cool.
What do I add to that?
- The ship's strength, which is plus three.
- Oh cool, 14.
- 14 engines are boosted, you gain 50 feet of speed.
So now the speed I believe is 350.
- Before we move, is it important for me
to try to get that shark?
- The one that--
- Are we concerned about the shark catching up with us
or are we just trying to put everything
into getting out of here?
- Can I make a insight?
- Yeah, give me an insight check.
And you have that pilot thing, so roll with advantage, yeah.
- Great.
Can I do perception?
- Yeah.
- Okay, so that would be 16.
- 16, cool, and what sort of information are you looking for?
I'm just wondering if it makes more sense
to just hightail it out of here.
- At this point, with your points as low as they are,
there is no surviving this in a straight fight.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- What are you rolling to do?
What are you rolling on your ass?
What type of check is it?
Intelligence?
- Yeah, I'm using my mechanics kit and my brain, yeah.
- Okay, then, does it make sense for me,
instead of even doing anything with guns,
to just cast Enhanced Droid through Handy Annie
onto him so that he rolls all with advantage.
- Handy Andy already grants advantage on this,
but are you doing more than one thing
or what are you doing?
- So I can make the astro nav check, I believe.
- As a bonus action. - As a bonus action.
So I could use my main action to either patch the shields
or work on getting some of the shielding back
or I can do something about some of this hull damage.
- I think, yeah, any sort of damage reduction work.
- Great, in that case, I'll use Handy Andy
for the astro-nav boost check.
And then I'm gonna do a patch check as well.
- Cool. - With the ship.
- Give me the straight mechanics kit roll
for trying to get these equations.
- Come on.
- That's a dirty 20.
- A dirty 20.
You get two more completed equations.
Three out of 10.
And by the way, if anyone has other rolls
or things they want to add to that,
you are absolutely welcome to do so.
- I mean, I think there's nothing for us to do
but to just keep gunning these guys.
- All right, we're just gonna gun the ones
that are close, I guess.
- Hell yeah.
And give me that if you're doing shield regen
or if you're doing hull repair.
- I'm gonna do hull repair.
- Cool.
- We're gonna go ahead and make constitution check
with the ship, that's a plus three.
God darn it.
That's just a six, which means that I have disadvantage
on this hull roll, so I roll 2d6.
- 2d8 and take the worst of the two.
- Great.
How about 2/8?
Okay, an eight and a four.
So we get four points back.
- You rush through into the reaction room,
start to repair one of the burst pipes
from this buzzsaw damage.
Start patching the ship up some, four hull points.
That's your ship's last hull point.
- Hull die?
- Hull die, yeah.
Go ahead and give me your gunning.
- All right, I'm just gonna--
- First for me.
- I'll shoot first, I can try and give you distraction.
Okay, so I'm gonna shoot a real flashy gun
at whoever is closest to us.
So just whichever droid is closest to us,
but not the one that he softened up.
- Okay.
- And I'm gonna do, oh, crit baby!
(cheering)
- Yes!
- Not the one he softened up, correct?
- Not the one he softened up.
- Cool, cool, cool, brand new one.
- But I'm doing distracting die
so that he can have advantage on his next turn.
- So we are using a power die.
- Yes, tracking that to true.
- And I am gonna use my kinetic die to empower it.
Does that mean that I get to add that twice?
- Yes, you get to use that twice.
By the way, I forget, your ship does still have shields.
Your ship regenerated four points of shields automatically.
Four points of shields automatically.
It also got a power die back.
- Yes, we're back, down to two, back up to three.
- Cool.
- Now down to two again.
- You're doing good.
- Okay.
- Hey.
- One at a time.
- Yes.
- Gotta savor each roll.
- Yeah.
- Plus nine, 21, plus three, 24 points of damage.
- Nice.
(imitates gunfire)
- 24 points of damage.
One of the drones bursts apart.
- Yes.
(imitates gunfire)
- I knew I was good at what I do.
- That's right, Sid, that's right.
- Barry, I think I caused a distraction
and you can have advantage on your roll.
- I'll take the one that I already hit and didn't kill.
- Oh, actually it was one more.
Okay, it was just one more, 25.
- Cool. - Sweet.
So I will shoot with advantage.
Yeah, that's like a 25 to hit.
- 25 definitely hits.
- Sweet, then this is just a regular shot.
Unless you guys think, should I use power dice?
Do we have the power dice?
Should we go for it?
- I just used a power dice.
- Yeah, we're down to two, we got it.
- All right, hang on, I might use one after this.
I'm gonna take a chance on this one.
- Please roll okay, seven.
- 10 damage.
- 10 damage to the one you hit?
Okay, it's still up.
- No!
- Power dice?
- All right, precision shot, please, please.
- One.
- It's still up.
- What?
- No!
- How much did I, I'm doubling 27.
- Did it work?
- This thing is hanging on by the way.
- I think if I bonus action, I'm a barbarian.
So I would get two.
- It blows up.
(all laughing)
That's what you needed.
You cross the finish line in a rage.
- It adds up.
- It all adds up, baby.
Now here's the question for the pilot.
There's now only two left on your tail
with opportunity attacks.
Do you still want to take the disengage?
- Norman is like looking into like the black void of space.
- Yeah.
- Like at his own reflection and then just seeing
the like 50 year old version of himself,
like disassociating.
- And you just hear Reva's voice inside your head.
"Believe in yourself, Andy, believe in yourself."
- Out of my head.
(laughing)
- I'm not here.
I don't know what you're talking about.
- You're talking constantly.
- I'm not lying.
I'm lying, it's me.
- I just wish I had my guys.
- I'm trying it out, I'm trying it out.
- I just wish I had my guys.
- Okay.
- Yeah, it's just picturing himself
with his space brigade.
Just like, even though people are doing good around him,
it's overall an overwhelmingly bad situation.
- Fuck it, I think he will do it without the,
I think the dash.
- Oh, do it without the dash?
- I mean, do the dash instead of the disengage.
- No disengage, we're gonna take the risk.
So it's dash, move, and fly.
We're taking three actions here.
Now hold on a second, 'cause this is,
'cause now all you're doing is gunning it,
and I believe you boosted engines this turn, right?
So this is going to be 1,050 feet of movement
unless they clamp you.
(all groaning)
So I think this is box of doom worth.
- Oh my God.
- Wow.
- Get the box of doom out here.
- First episode.
- First episode box of doom.
(all groaning)
- Okay.
Oh, this is a post.
So here's the two numbers you need to beat
with a maneuvering check.
(dice clattering)
It's two 18s, two 23s.
- In what world?
- We, I think, have to,
- Does that mean we have to roll a nat or is that?
- What's your maneuvering?
What's your bonus to maneuvering?
- Negative one.
(laughing)
- Is it possible?
- We're gonna need two nat 20s.
- Here we are.
- Fully dissociated looking into the black of space.
- I'm done.
- It's a 10 and a 14.
- Oh!
- Oh, watch out on that 14.
- Yeah, yeah, maybe.
- So minus one.
- Oh no, 'cause it wouldn't be a crit then still,
it would just be 20.
- Correct. - Not worth it.
- That doesn't mean we can't run though,
that just means that they're stealing speed.
So instead of moving 1,050,
each of them takes away 50 speed.
- Wait, but what about my hacked communications?
Would that have, they're the closest,
wouldn't that have affected them
when they roll with disadvantage?
- Let me see here, hold on a second.
Hold on one second.
Something very wild and cool is about to happen.
- Margaret, you're very efficient.
- You're very efficient, Margaret.
You rolled a 10 and a 14, right?
That's what you rolled. - That's correct.
- So that becomes sadly a nine and a 13.
- A nine and a 13, okay.
- A literal win.
- That's not how we considered our stats are terrible.
- I'm gonna use also, can I use defiant?
- Yeah, you can add.
- And add a D4 to one of them.
- Yeah, so do you wanna add to the nine or add to the 13?
- The 13, I think.
- Let's get the 13 higher, let's do it.
- Right? - Yeah, go for it.
- Three. - Cool.
- That's now a 16, so a 16 and a nine.
- Can I use defiant on one of the other ones?
- Yeah, absolutely.
- I have to find also.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- Four.
So that's 13 and a 16.
- So 13 and a 16.
- Or a 20 and a nine.
- I wonder, yeah, I mean,
can you add them both to the same thing?
- Oh, maybe not.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Okay, 13 and a 16.
- So hacked communications does damage to them,
but it doesn't give them disadvantage on anything.
- Okay, yeah.
I just thought if their communication is disabled
and it's someone operating like a--
- Maybe, yeah, you know what?
I will rule that that can be disadvantage.
Is there any other actions before we calculate this fly
on this round?
Anyone else doing any deployment stuff?
- I already shot.
- Everyone's already done your stuff?
Okay, we have a 16 and a 13.
- And they have how much?
There's plus?
- They have plus five.
- Oh, okay.
- You want me to roll against the 16 or the 13 first?
- 13.
- 13.
- So we need a seven or lower.
That's a seven.
- We need it, that's good.
- That's good, that's good.
- Yes!
- Okay, okay.
- One misses.
- Okay, now we have the 16.
- Now we have the 16.
On a 10 or lower, this misses as well.
- Manifesting a one.
- That's a 19.
(all groaning)
- Wow, there's one in there.
- We got rid of one.
- We got rid of one, yeah.
Amazing, so speed's still 300.
You take three move actions.
The Red Hot has one clamped on,
but moves 900 feet forward through space.
900 feet is exactly what you needed
for these drones to not be able to double move
and get within striking distance again.
Okay, the Red Hot surges forward through space.
You have all gone.
The four drone, two of them have hacked communications.
Yeah, they're actually gonna do attacks with disadvantage.
That's a miss.
This crew back here is gonna double move forward.
These ones here are gonna double move forward as well.
The ship takes 11 points of damage
from laser cannons firing down.
All those drones are gonna start moving forward
except for the two that had their communications hacked.
They fired one miraculously managed to hit.
The Lady Pike is going to double move forward.
I'm going to need another strength saving throw
for the tractor beam.
- Okay.
(dramatic music)
- That is a seven.
- Watch out.
- Go ahead and add the power die.
- Come on.
Three, 10.
- 10 does not do it.
(all groaning)
- You are hit by the tractor beam.
Let's immediately move the red hot a hundred feet back.
(all groaning)
which does bring you once again
within striking distance of those droids.
You are also going to get fired on.
- Oh no! - By the Lady Pike?
- By the Lady Pike.
- Everyone, please take a moment to be grateful
for the shields that we had before they leave.
- Gunny, go ahead and give me a technology check.
- That's gonna be a 25.
- You see incoming heat signature
of some Magneto boy light seeking torpedoes.
(all gasping)
- This is bad!
(all laughing)
- Maybe we can shoot them out.
Maybe we can shoot them before they get to us.
- Are they slow?
- I don't think they're slow.
- Are they like coming now?
- Oh no.
- No, these are the kinds that come down
and they come down fast.
Grab onto something.
- Why didn't you tell us about it?
- Seat belts on.
Can somebody tell the people at the workspace
to grab onto a desk or something?
- We're gonna roll an attack roll here.
I don't wanna overdo it,
but this is gonna be box of doom.
- Oh my God.
(all groaning)
- This has been box of doom, this is death.
- Yeah.
- Plus five to hit,
which means they hit your armor class
on a three or higher.
- It's okay, it's a one.
- It's a one. - It's a one.
- It's gonna be a one. - Manifest a one.
- It's a one. - Manifest a one.
- Barrel roll the hot dog.
- That's a five.
(all groaning)
- Skipper's just like looking at the map of the ship,
like looking at where the escape pods are.
- They don't work, right?
- No, I don't think so.
- I think one of my apartment,
my apartment is an escape pod, right?
- I think we only have one and it's your apartment.
- The ship takes 31 points of damage.
- Pull or shield?
- To shield and then goes past them.
- So 31?
- 31 all told.
- How many? - 20 total.
- Should I, do we have a power die left or no?
- No, we are out.
- Oh, yeah, we do.
I can make one with my superiority die.
- Is that worth it?
I have this like, I can like take a D6 away
with a snap roll.
- I think any hit points are gonna help us
because I think, yeah.
- All right, if we can do that.
- Cool, amazing, go for it.
- Three points.
- Okay. - Reduced.
- 23.
- And shields are at zero?
- Shields are at zero.
- You guys lose shields, shield systems down,
will not regenerate anymore.
- Oh my God.
- You are naked metal in space.
- All right.
- We're so fucked this episode won't end.
- It's a tough galaxy, baby.
- Riva.
- Yes.
- You're in people's heads, right?
- Sure. - As character.
- Absolutely.
- Okay, I think Barry has a thought to himself.
It's like, I wonder if like Riva's magic works
where like, if you can see like somebody on a screen,
if like you could fuck them up.
- No, it doesn't work like that.
(all laughing)
- Can I pop out of my office and be like,
hey, so are we being traced like for any particular reason?
- Yeah, we got crates.
- We have stuff.
- Can we just dump the crates
and then maybe they'll leave us alone?
- I'm personally inclined to keep them
because that's how we make money
and money is how we make grenades.
- For sure.
I hear every alarm on the entire system
going off all at once.
So I do wonder if maybe you-
- What if we dropped most of the crates?
- What if this?
I know, is it our turn yet?
- It's your turn, your enemies have gone.
Crew acts together on the ship.
- Can I do a hologram
that looks like we're dropping the shapes?
- What is the maximum size of hologram you can create?
- Just that big.
- You regain one power die at the start of the turn.
You do not regain shields, shields are down
and will require a true refitting
to replace your broken shields.
- It is a 15 foot cube.
- The crates are, you could probably do one crate.
- It looks like we're shitting out one little pebble.
- How many crates do we have?
- You probably have about like 15 or so.
- Let's just keep.
- One of them is a hologram.
We push out all of them and one is a hologram.
- Believable trick.
No?
- I'm down for this.
- How much is the one crate worth?
- I'm down for this.
- It's worth a try.
- How much is the one crate worth?
If these are full of Beryllium crystals,
this was a huge haul 'cause each of them was 3K credits.
You'd still have 3000 credits.
- I can help find you guys like work or something maybe.
That's kind of the whole thing that I do.
- Let's get rid of the crates, goddammit.
- All right, but keep the one?
- Let's keep the one.
- We keep the one, we keep the one!
That's an O win.
- We're doing one hologram in order to keep one crate.
- Skipper, you got this, tip.
- Skipper, the crew believes in this absolutely, 100%.
- Skipper's gonna voice or, you know, video chat.
- Yeah, how we feelin', Takamori?
- You're fine, we're gonna get rid of our 15 crates.
Our 14 crates.
- No, my lord.
- I better see 15 crates of shit and that of that bird,
or I'll boot your ass to the bison and back, buddy.
You better believe it.
Listen, what can I do to get out of this myself?
- Roll over, Fido.
- That's not his name.
He has two names.
It's Norman and it's Skipper.
Or Captain, that's three.
- Listen, you don't have a job stack of Mori,
so why don't you just open your craw
and let me scoop them little crystals out?
(laughing)
- I think Takamori would open it to let them out.
I think he's giving up.
He's just fucking giving up.
- You're gonna go ahead and jettison the crates.
- One crate, Skipper?
'Cause Skipper, that's all of it.
That's just like-- - You gave him the brainstorm.
You gave him the brainstorm number.
- My entire directive is to please people,
but right now you have severely displeased me.
- Do you want to, with this hologram plan,
do you want to try to hold onto one crate
or you wanna jettison all 15?
- Sure, let's just keep the one crate or whatever.
- Cool, you guys hold on to one crate
of a Berynium crystal and jettison 14 crates
and a hologram.
You all see, "This is Captain Jan De La Vega
of the Lady Pike saying,
'It's a pleasure doing business.
Rough stars out there.
Sorry for you lookless abandoning forsaked.'"
Lady Pike comes in, scoops up the crates
in the one hologram, you see that the roid removers
turn around and follow the lady Pike
and you're shieldless, smoking.
And with no hull dice remaining, we exit combat.
- Well, that could have gone worse.
- I honestly thought we had them.
- I did too.
I think it was cowardly to give up all those crates.
I do, I do.
I know that I'm not supposed to speak up against people,
but there's other people, right now,
there's other people who wanna do this,
so I'm trying to please them.
- You guys are still communicating over,
you see that Raymond Zamm pokes his head in and says,
hi, we're supposed to get an alert
whenever the bay doors open,
'cause we were in the middle
of a quarterly graphics meeting.
You know, we only have them once every three Nargons,
and basically, you know, we had an emergency airlock,
and it just was like a loud noise
in the middle of a presentation.
So, you know, we do, 'cause it's 10 credits per person,
you know, to rent that space.
- Yeah.
- So we just wanna-- - We'll figure it out.
- Just a heads up in the future.
- Yeah. - Great.
- He's just gone.
(laughing)
- We'll figure it out or whatever.
- We'll figure it out or whatever.
- Should we go take a look at the one crate we got?
- Look at the one crate?
- Yeah, check the hall, I mean--
- Let's go to the crate.
- Absolutely.
- Can we have the crate? - Can we have the crate
something real fast?
- And this is pure, obviously pure deflection
on the part of the captain.
This is the most worthless crew
I have ever had in my entire life.
Not one of you know how to do your job right,
and that makes my job impossible.
(Riva crying)
Yeah, cry.
Tears join the water in Riva's bubble
of a slightly different consistency, refracting light.
Hey man, you're a coward.
- I'd cry if it wasn't expensive.
It charged me for excess hydration, but that, that was me.
- I'll collect your hydration, let it go.
- No, it's fine. - Let it go.
- It's fine. - I'll suck it up.
- I'm so, you don't have to suck it up.
I can't put it back in, that's not how it works.
But, okay, yeah, I'm a coward.
- I don't know what's going on over here,
but we gotta hit our shots.
- I did actually hit one shot really well.
I don't know if you saw it exploded really big
and then it made it. - Hey, you're a clone.
I don't listen to you.
- Right on.
- Okay.
Whenever we get back to where we need to go
to fix this ship, I'm cleaning house.
You're fine.
- Cool.
- Thank you for your, you know.
- You shake hands like really strong.
(laughing)
- Do you go to inspect the final?
- Yeah, let's look at the crate.
Let's do one last job together.
- You kinda took the fun out of it.
- Yeah, you kinda did.
Maybe you could hold back and three of us could go.
You head down to the hold.
Riva, you swim out of your bulb.
A pane opens up so you can look out
through the water system.
Gunny, you're walking through the ship,
seeing all the areas that are airlocked off,
damaged through the hull.
An incredible amount of damage has occurred.
Both gunners come down here.
- I stop my wheels so that I can skateboard
over some of the damage,
or I mean, roller skate over some of the,
or walk over rather than roll.
- Yeah, you can't roll over some of the damage.
(imitates crashing)
You pop the crate expecting stacks of Berynium crystals.
Some sort of parasite clearly got into the crate.
- Great, great.
- And you see a lot of rotted sacks
of imitation powdered egg substitute.
(clapping)
- I love imitation powdered egg substitute.
- Isn't that fun, right?
- Maybe you could tell the parasite.
- What else could go wrong today?
Oh look, there were crystals in here.
Oh, it's like egg sacks and shit.
What else is in here?
And it starts digging through it.
- What else?
What could go wrong?
- As you dig through some of the devoured bags
that some parasite got in,
all of you watch and see a flash of green grew
fly into the captain's face and shoot up his nose.
That's all for this episode of "Dimension 20."
A starstruck odyssey.
Tune in next week.
See you in the stars.
- See you in the stars.
- He smushed his face against the glass.
- Why don't we do like a light mutiny?
- Captain Norman, no one tried to pickpocket you
while you were unconscious.
- This is where the ball is rolling up the hill.
- What do you want me to say?
- I want you to apologize.
- What is the pleasure putty?
- What is the pleasure putty?
- Oh, I'm so glad that you asked.
I have a somewhat of a rudimentary grasp
of human anatomy.
- I look at Margaret so haunted.
I'm kind of doing a little dance.
- Things are great today.
(laughing)
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