Daft Monks
Two best friends. Both named Nate. One cyberpunk city full of terrible decisions.
Daft Monks mixes irreverent conversation with an improvised comedy adventure. Hosts Nate Casimiro and Nate Stalcup turn games, pop culture, and everyday frustrations into a world where corporations run everything and their heroes can barely manage the commute.
Meet Roy, a corporate overachiever convinced his promotion is coming, and Ash, an electrical worker who would prefer everyone leave him alone. Together, they stumble into trouble far beyond their job descriptions.
Start with Season 3, Episode 1: A Breakdown in Commute-ication. It introduces the city, the characters, and their first disastrous day. No earlier seasons are needed to follow this story.
Explicit language and adult humor. Earlier seasons remain available in the archive.
Daft Monks
A Breakdown in Commute-ication
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Roy wants a promotion. Ash wants to get through the day. In a city run by corporations, neither ambition should require a traffic catastrophe—but here we are. Meet the new characters of Daft Monks’ cyberpunk comedy adventure, including a corporate overachiever whose driving skills leave something to be desired.
This is the start of the Season 3 story; you do not need to finish the earlier campaigns first. The episode includes the Nates’ catch-up about Phoenix Fan Fusion and games, an introduction to Beacon City, and Roy and Ash’s first morning in it. Follow Daft Monks, then continue with Season 3, Episode 2: What Goes Up Must Come Down, Eventually.
Explore our original podcast archive for 50+ episodes of antics and one-shot adventures:
Listen to the Prequel Podcast.
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The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in Daft Monks are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, characters and products is intended or should be inferred.
Host catch-up
SPEAKER_05Hello and welcome to the Daft Monks podcast, season three. It's a new beginning. Hey Nate.
SPEAKER_06Trace baby season three.
SPEAKER_05We made it.
SPEAKER_06We did. First off, congratulations, Nate. Uh, we're probably the first podcast to do a major marketing event and then not record for a month after that.
SPEAKER_05You know, Nate, like I uh blame our enemies that we made at the con, uh aka State Farm. Absolutely. I think they're out to get us.
SPEAKER_06So just to clarify, we are not sponsored by anybody, let alone State Farm. But State Farm will be brought up many times season three of the podcast because of an event that we just worked that we will be recapping uh shortly in this episode. So here's to you, State Farm, you piece of shit.
SPEAKER_05Thanks for nothing.
SPEAKER_06Watch that chick end up listening to our podcast.
SPEAKER_05Oh, yeah, right. She doesn't know anything about anything.
SPEAKER_06She's like, I don't listen to the podcast, but I'll follow you. I was like, all right.
SPEAKER_05I don't even know what's hip. What's hip right now? Bobbleheads.
SPEAKER_06She was weird, man. We'll get to it. We'll get to it. We'll get to it. Oh my gosh. All right, Nate. I mean, where do you want? Because like listeners, Nate and I also we did a big marketing event at after the season finale at a at a convention. And then it's been just the summer, kind of summer travel, different training events, and then 4th of July is coming up, so we were just getting back in touch with each other. So, Nate, what do you want to talk about?
SPEAKER_05First things first, Nate, let's talk about the con, and then we'll talk about the thing we're trying to do.
SPEAKER_06Yes, absolutely. Very excited to talk uh some about some of that stuff. All right, so listeners, uh, it was about a month ago now. So if you're if you're if you signed up and subscribe to us and been waiting for us to put out an episode, we apologize. But last month we were at the Phoenix Fan Fusion event, was a pretty uh pretty large convention. I don't know the numbers, but tens of thousands of people, and we had a booth right outside the exhibition hall. And I'm sure everybody who went to the exhibition hall knows that because we did not stop just slinging our shit or all uh weekend.
SPEAKER_05Yelling at random people, a lot of yelling at people. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_06I mean, we tried the gaminate. We peer pressured, we heckled, we begged, yep, we grumbled. Yeah. You tried being nice, that was shocking.
SPEAKER_05Ooh, that was awkward. More people left from that than anything.
SPEAKER_06No, we definitely had like our different audiences. I look forward to talking to. But uh yeah, we we basically just had a booth, we gave away a Steam Deck, really cute story. The grand prize was a Steam Deck, and it went to a listener who he had said that his computer was like super out of date and he couldn't like play his Steam games. So now I hope he can play on his brand new Steam Deck.
SPEAKER_05And you're welcome.
SPEAKER_06If I was a competent marketing person, I would have pulled up his name. Oh, okay. So his his his username is Emerald Archer. So we'll just go by that. I won't say his real name, we'll just go uh congratulations, Emerald Archer, on your Steam Deck win. And I hope you're listening to the fucking show and I didn't just give you uh $600, $700 piece of software like hardware for free.
SPEAKER_05Right, for nothing. So listen to the show, Emerald Archer.
SPEAKER_06Just listen. You have to listen. If you haven't listened to all episodes up in this point, you definitely need to listen on entirety of Threason Three. Then you can like move on.
SPEAKER_05Right, then be happy.
SPEAKER_06It's in the contract. When you sign that ticket, you actually also agree to these terms and services.
SPEAKER_05It is in the fine print at the very bottom. We're sorry we didn't mention it. It was actually on a ticket that you wrote on. You should have read that. That's your fault.
SPEAKER_06Uh Nate, what were your thoughts? You've never been new. Okay. Well, I you've done some you you live close to Vegas, so you've done what was the game you were a level up expo.
SPEAKER_05And it was um similar to that, except for I enjoyed ours more because I didn't have to walk around the massive hordes of people. I just got to sit at my little table where I'm safe and then just yell at people. So uh I had a great time. There was definitely uh a wide variety of people.
SPEAKER_06It was just nerds, it was just nerds. That's really it. It definitely started off really well for us listeners because as soon as we got there, the booth next to us, Hilton Vacations homes, which what a weird sponsor that like like these like these people literally are taking like a day off to buy like $70 minis. Like, do you think they can afford a vacation home? Like I don't know if it was the right audience, but anywho, the booth next to us or the sponsor next to us didn't show up. So immediately we were given their booth or half of their booth. So we took their table, we took their chairs, we literally like moved the railings over, we literally reorganized the whole thing before anybody noticed, and then what little space was left was taken up by the Chandler Police Department. Yes.
SPEAKER_05All they had was a little table with pencils on it. Like, what are you giving away?
SPEAKER_06Did you hear actually what they were giving away? No, it was like something like track children. Like I ended up like in a good way, like to keep track of your children. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Somebody eventually came over and I think I cracked a joke and they were like, Oh no, they're giving out these. I'm like, Oh, that's actually kind of cool. Um, we just got stickers, but uh neat.
SPEAKER_05But that's a way to track children as well. Be like, where's the sticker? Like, oh, there it is.
SPEAKER_06It uh you know, absolutely. My coworker does events, and she said put candy and stickers on the table, like chocolates and Jolly Ranchers, and I'm like, that's a fucking stupid idea. But I did it, Nate. And what I learned was all the kids would scurry over, and then their parents would come to claim them, and that's Nate when we struck.
SPEAKER_05Yes, that's when I would seal the deal, be like, Oh, you got kids, I got kids, don't they suck? So, you know what makes your day a little bit better?
SPEAKER_06Listening to Daft Monk's podcast, and they're like, Which your children cannot listen to, which you reminded every parent, uh, which makes sense.
SPEAKER_05Lots of cussing.
SPEAKER_06I definitely learned, I thought like the Steam Deck would be a big draw, and it definitely was for certain people. However, people know what a prize wheel looks like, Nate. Like they see a wheel with things and they know they're gonna get stuff, and so they saw that wheel, and people like you would see it, like someone would just come over and like like start like swinging their hand at it. That's not how that works. And I would usually be really nice about it. I'm like, let me tell you my pitch, blah blah. And you were just like, you literally would always start with if they tried to do that, there are rules, is how you would always start that conversation.
SPEAKER_05But they respected the rules and then they followed anyway.
SPEAKER_06They did. You kind of like shamed them into like signing up, and then I just bribed them. I think my strategy was bribery, and yours was like shame or flirtation or just any other means of deception.
SPEAKER_05Yep, there was a lot of deception going on. I was rolling great all weekend.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, it it was also hilarious because like sometimes it'd be like DD pod and no one gives a shit. And then it'd be like free stuff, and they'd come up and they'd be like, Why didn't you say it was a DD pod? I love DD. And I'm like, Well, Jesus Christ, you know, like whoever what like no matter what I say, it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_05What do you want? Yeah, there's like I think six people maybe that were like, Oh, I don't even want a prize, I just want to follow a good pod. And I'm like, Well, this ain't it, but I'm sure you don't want a prize.
SPEAKER_06Well, and then like I just out of habit I said DD pod. Like, when's the last time we rolled dice on the so if you're listening to us, we mostly do role play guy. Like, it's as if we're playing DD, but then we got bored of the dice and just stopped rolling. Occasionally we'll work it back in, but like we it's it's the murder hobo shenanigans that you come to love. And like, like let's face it, uh honestly, I even on the pods I listen to, Dungeons and Daddies, like the part where they roll is not like except when it's like funny and they roll a now one on something or whatever, it's not the most exciting bit.
SPEAKER_05No, there's nothing.
SPEAKER_06And I just end up editing it out.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, the only time it's exciting is when you're actually at the table and you can see somebody else roll, and you're like, oh, what'd they get? Because even when we play on Discord, I'm like, oh my god, hurry the fuck up. Even though you're using an auto clicker, you know, like Jesus Christ, let's hurry this along.
SPEAKER_06Just do it. Just do it. Nate, we got some new friends. Uh another pair of gay people moved in their neighborhood. Uh not on my neighborhood. Watch out. No, no, not my neighborhood. Like just I guess just Tucson in general. Um, and so I don't know, we like mutual friends or friends or whatever, got in touch and we like hung out and they're really cool people, but they uh were like, Do you want to start a DD group? I'm like, absolutely not. Like, I like I well, actually, that's not the answer. The truth is, of course I do, and a month in, I'm not gonna want to do it anymore. So I was just honest with them. I'm like, if anything, I'll do a one-shot with you. This was fun. We do one Saturday night, and then we don't do it again for a very long time. Right. Like, I can barely find the energy anymore to get on and record an episode with with you, let alone do like four hours of shopping in in the medieval realm.
SPEAKER_05Right. Cause is you know who gonna be on there? Like, was he gonna join in with this one shot group?
SPEAKER_06Voldemort, or no, you know, or my other gay friends, like or like the you kind of describe them in the same fashion.
SPEAKER_05So well, when you're the DM, uh he's the exact same person. He is Voldemort, but when it comes to shopping, what else you got? What else do you got? I'm like, what do you want? He's like, I don't know what you got. I'm like, well, what do you fucking want? Like, well, what do you got? I'm like, I don't have anything prepared. I had no idea anybody's gonna come into this fucking shop, let alone spend 45 minutes haggling for what you could have it. Just fucking take it.
SPEAKER_06Nate, no lie. I have done now at this point expense reports while playing Dungeons and like that's when I knew I had to stop playing the game remotely. I was like multitasking, doing the most mundane things while other people were playing. I'm like, this is not good for them, it's not good for me, it's terrible for the DMs. So, but I am I don't know, I want to do like a one-shot with uh pro professional DM who is really great with the rules.
SPEAKER_05Oh, the Canadian guy.
SPEAKER_06Yep, the Canadian I Ryan, Ryan. It was a really basic white guy name, honestly. So I was like Sean, Chad, Jeff.
SPEAKER_05Works at a coffee shop. Um really basic.
SPEAKER_06Uh no, he he was he was really good, but so I want to get him back, and then the two new gay people, then me, and then the other two, and I'm like, that'll be the gayest DD group that has ever occurred.
SPEAKER_05Right. And that's when I invite myself to make things weird.
SPEAKER_06That would be odd. Anywho, the convention was really great, getting back on topic. We had over 800 subscribers. We've only seen we have seen a little fall off, nay. Some people did immediately unsubscribe. Yeah. Um, but I think maybe like 20 people out of like 800 or something. It wasn't bad.
SPEAKER_05Oh, that's not bad.
SPEAKER_06Hopefully, I was seeing we we are getting people going back listening to the old stuff. They probably have been waiting for some new stuff. And the good news is now we're back, we're back on track recording season three. Uh, we kind of just took like a summer break.
SPEAKER_05Right. I was really hoping for that call a Cthulhu filler episode, but that never showed up. I don't know what happened with that.
SPEAKER_06Yes, so it's not I well, first of all, uh Donnie, if you're listening, it's not like that's a bad episode. It's fucking three hours for every one hour, is six to eight hours of editing for me. So three like every time I go, I've now spent so much time on that. When I go back into it, I'm like, no, nope. I just close it. Like, so I need to finish what I'm thinking is maybe publishing that in a two-parter. Oh, okay. But it also doesn't have like a very obvious midpoint. So it it's just been I've been exhausted. I'm moving Nate. We haven't talked about that yet on the part, we're gonna we came out of nowhere, but uh so Donnie, uh, it's a hilarious episode. I just let's never record three hours again because the amount of editing is bonkers, right?
SPEAKER_05And then it being called a Cthulhu, too, it's not our normal cadence of banter, which I think is a little bit easier for you to cut through and edit through, or is this banter bullshit that we do in the beginning? And then yeah, it was great.
SPEAKER_06It was just like like I said, we I am just doing you and I and this patterns I learned, and with a th it's just any third person, there is a little bit more like I have to pay more attention and just like and just edit out a lot. And also I did like a filter a little bit on Donnie's just to get his quality a little bit better. So it uh Donnie, it's gonna go live, it's gonna be beautiful, but it's it's just also taking forever, and unfortunately, just I've been I've been uh Nate. So after the convention, I had immediately to drive over to a two-week training where I got sick as a dog, possibly COVID again, and I think so did you, and I think so did Chris.
SPEAKER_05Yes. So did we get it from the convention? I don't know.
SPEAKER_06I don't know, but logic says absolutely lutely, Nate.
SPEAKER_05I'm pretty sure handshakes going on.
SPEAKER_06And it could have been you, listener. You could have been the person that got us sick. And if you were Fuck you. Yeah, I wasn't gonna say it, but yeah, you know, like next time wear a mask, whatever. If you're not feeling well, stay home. Or no, I'm just kidding. Um, shit happens that I mean literally, like you go to a convention, you expect to get sick. That's how I've always known, I guess, especially as like a college student. It's like, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, there's too many people there to not get sick. It's fine.
SPEAKER_06But it was brutal. I was at a two-week military training and I was dying. There was like a two-star general, and I was just hacking my brains out in the back. I just excused myself and went, I had to like go into the bathroom and just like keep coughing and then drink water until like my throat stopped. And like, I just excused myself from a two-star general's presentation, like unheard of, but I'm like, I was so obnoxious, like just interrupting. It was terrible. So, but that said, I still won a medal at the end of my training niggas in that fucking OP for having manners. Honestly, it's just like it's big fish in a small pond. Like, there's a bunch of 18-year-olds, like, this is their first job, and then like I'm in here, like, whenever we have to do something, I'm like, what if we made a plan and did it in half the time? And also, there's like 200 of us. Maybe all of us don't have to do it, maybe we take turns and stuff, like like wild ideas instead of like literally sometimes this happens all the time in the guard, maybe the military in general is like six people go do something, and then other people are trying to look busy, so they do something that undoes what the other people did, and then you guys are just in the cycle of being in a hundred and ten degree weather doing undoing each other's work.
SPEAKER_05Oh, yeah. I had to sit on one meeting for our Air Force base that we take care of, and there was all of us, and then I kid you not, Nate, probably sixteen other people in this meeting room, and the entire time it was everybody saying, Well, what about my building? Is my building gonna stay in power? And then the young guy, who is apparently the only one that went to college and is younger than everybody else in the entire fucking room, is the one running the show, and he's like, Hold on, let me check. And then he would check for 10 minutes. No, you're gonna be fine. And then the next guy next to him would be like, Well, what about my building? Is that gonna be in power? And I'm like, What the fuck is going on? Like, everybody here has a backup generator. Who gives two shits if the main power goes out? Like, that's the whole exercise of this thing is what would happen if the whole base goes out of power, you know, and now we're here we are complaining. And some of the people were like, No, that's not good enough. My I can't go out of power. And we're like, really? Oh, okay. Then I guess if there's ever a solar flare or an EMP or a nuke that goes off, like, we'll be sure to get your building back on first, you know?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, it there's there's a lot of the military, like, so this always happens like a couple times a year where like some big wig, at least for the army, like comes over, he's like, he take he takes the lower enlisted and he's like, tell me what you guys are dealing with. And it's always like I just like kind of shrivel up in a corner because they just complain about like the most ridiculous, and it's just because like these are some kids' like first and only job, and they're like they don't know what like the real world is worth and worth bringing out. Like they're hard workers, they're great people, they're smart, even kids like over the course of their career, they'll do amazing stuff. But it's just like when you take like a lot of like 18 to 21 year olds and ask them how the army could be better, you get a lot of wild suggestion that nobody can, and that guy just has to be like, Yeah, that's a great suggestion. And you know, he's just writing and he pretends to write stuff down. I'm like, he's not writing that down, Nate.
SPEAKER_05If I imagine like 20-year-old me in the military, like, what do you need to make this place better? I'm be like, free Red Bulls in the vending machine. I think with that, a lot of things could happen.
SPEAKER_06I mean, that's the level. Like, we were only one night, uh, the the like busiest part of training, we would go to bed at 11 and get up at six, and he's like, We're supposed to get at least eight hours of sleep, and everybody was like, Shut the fuck up. Like, what do you think happens if you deploy? Like, like you think you think we're we're getting eight hours of sleep, and everybody's just like well rested and getting like IV drips of vitamin D for they go out. Like, what the fuck?
SPEAKER_05Wait till you have kids, the fucking jokes are you, motherfucker. Like, you're lucky to get five hours.
SPEAKER_06You think the military treats are terrible? Wait till your own blood does it to you.
SPEAKER_05Yes, and then they look at you like you did something wrong.
SPEAKER_06Oh, absolutely. So that was my training, Nate. But leaning into our next topic, the end of training got pretty exciting because of something not related at all to training.
SPEAKER_05Mm-hmm. Tell me more.
SPEAKER_06Well, do you want to share with our listeners this exciting uh endeavor?
SPEAKER_05I will I will share it from my point of view. There I am, sick as a dog, laying in bed, contemplating whether or not I'm going to live or die. And then Nate gets a hold of me and says, Do you have an updated passport? And I said, Maybe. I looked at it, it was not updated, it was expired. I crawled back into bed, barely able to breathe. And then he texts me back, Whoa, I'm trying to get us on this TV show, so you need to get that fucking taken care of. And I'm like, Okay, so here I am, super sick, might I mention. I crawled on my hands and knees to the car, where then I drove to the post office to get it handled.
SPEAKER_06Listeners, I know this sounds like asking a lot, and it is, but also that's a not how it happened, and then B, we live like two hours from the border to Mexico. There's really no reason not to have your passport. It like doesn't even make sense. And his just expired. Like, it's not like he's never had a passport, it just expired, but I will give you credit, like you had mentioned like in Perump, like I knew and I knew this was gonna be a thing for you too, because even like my partner when he went to go get one, they like were like wanted more proof. They didn't like accept his naturalization citizen like like certificate. They wanted more proof that he was married to a citizen, like ridiculous stuff. But like you can't just roll into a post office, usually a lot of these you have to make appointments. Oh, yeah. So I was like, hey Nate, I need to do this. Also, you need to figure it out, and it's not gonna be easy. And I knew I knew it was a big ask, but Nate, so we can't say the name of the show. Okay, but we did we you can talk about it more. I we auditioned for I think can we even say what type of show? I don't even know we should say what type of show.
SPEAKER_05Can we say what company of the show? Can we say that?
SPEAKER_06Do we don't know the company?
SPEAKER_05Well, not the the company company, but the what it's gonna be watched on. Did they tell us?
SPEAKER_06I don't remember. It's on a major broadcast. All they said is on a major broadcast, right? It's uh fuck it, we're not gonna get any many. It's uh it's a game show. So it's a game show and contestants in pairs, Nate. So naturally, when I got my email newsletter, and by the way, I got an email that did have hundreds of people on it, but it was like a short list email, so it wasn't like the usual casting email because I'm in the circles, Nate. As you know, I have connections and hookups in all areas of all aspects of life.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, casinos and whatever, yeah.
SPEAKER_06I'll get to that. Um, and uh anyway, I got an email that was actually like clearly it was like a list of people who maybe got farther or they found at least somewhat interesting. So, like kind of callbacks of like you didn't get it, but you might get it for something else. So I was on that list of like, hey, new show coming, uh, need it in pairs, uh, send, you know, fill out the supplication, send a clip. And Nate Natchez is like perfect. Like you, me. This is us. And I don't I I think it's probably not safe to say the contents of the the game show, but it is a combination of brain and brawn, Nate, which is perfect fit for us because we are the like ish fit nerds or the popular nerds, is what I like to think. Like, we're like the heathers of of men. The heathers. Okay. Well, what's what's like the equivalent of that? Like, what's what's yeah, that's actually a really good analogy. Yeah, you fucking got it. Like I did, I got it.
SPEAKER_05But no, you are absolutely right. It does require both the brain and the brawn, which I think we excel at. And if we do get on the show, I think we're absolutely gonna crush it. Because in our trial run, uh, when we did get interviewed, I think we fucking nailed it. I only missed one question.
SPEAKER_06You only missed one question, I think I missed two. One of them was super obvious. Helicopter. You should have done the whole interview like that, that would have been so good. Anyway, no, I think we did a good job, but you know how it is. Like, I don't know if we were big enough. Like, one thing they did tell us, so they're always very honest with you if you're listening. Um, when you do like these auditions, and basically you can just once you get on a newsletter for like a casting thing, you just keep getting them. That's what happens. And now these auditions happen over Zoom. You don't have to be in person, you have to go to Hollywood and stand in line and bullshit.
SPEAKER_05So, could you imagine if we had to do that? I'd be pissed at you.
SPEAKER_06Oh, no, I would never ask you to do that. I was honestly, I kind of didn't think you were gonna do the passport thing, so I really appreciate it. But anywho, guys, uh, they're usually pretty transparent of like this is what you have to do. When I was trying to do Squid Games, the reality TV show, they were like, We need the quirky person. And nay, when that comes out in a couple months, I cannot wait to see who that quirky motherfucker was that. Yeah, that real piece of shit. But for us, so what they told us this time was that it's a game show, you have to be really animated when you get answers. And if there's one thing I don't think we did, we were just decent or good at the trivia. So we were just like, question, answer, question, answer. Like we were supposed to be like, yeah, or oh, I didn't get uh like what? Like we were supposed to like react when we got answers, and we didn't do that. We were just like, yep, yep, yep, yep. Like, so I don't know if we gave them the reactions they wanted, but we should probably find out, Nate. I would imagine it records in like August. So I think we're gonna find out in like a week or two, because they probably have to start like making plans and whatnot.
SPEAKER_05Fingers crossed.
SPEAKER_06Let's hope your passport comes in. We did lie or exaggerate and say it was arriving or already here.
SPEAKER_05If everything goes according to plan, it will be here in time. But it is the United States post office, so it will not go according to plan.
SPEAKER_06Anyone I've ever known, at least in like Arizona, three to four. Right, way earlier. Everybody, like multiple people who have renewed, gotten new ones when I got mine, when David got his.
SPEAKER_05I'm hoping we get on the show. And then you didn't notice, but when you were doing uh your answers, she told us to be quiet, but I was trying my best to make like extremely exaggerated facial expressions.
SPEAKER_06Oh, I didn't. Okay. Maybe oh good. Maybe maybe that'll help then. I did uh I I know I moved around more, like you stood very stiff, uh, I remember. Yes. Like when you were answering the question. It was so stupid. They made us stand up. That was outrageous. I I literally so I got on the call before you, you were like two minutes behind, and uh I got in the call before and she's like, So you guys gonna have to stand up? And I'm like, fuck, Nate's gonna be pissed. Like literally, I like literally as soon as she said that, I knew that was gonna sour your mood. You actually were good sport about it. But what sucked is I actually was just like on Zoom or like had like a headset or a wireless headset, but Nate has like a PC for gaming with like a wired headset, so he's like, I literally cannot pack up. This is connected and I won't hear it. But they we we did our best. It was just weird.
SPEAKER_05I felt like a piece of meat, like it just made us like stand and spin in a circle so you can look at my hams. Like, don't look at those.
SPEAKER_06It was wild, it was wild. So I better get it, Nate. I mean, I can't imagine there's funnier, smarter, but also nerdier people than us, like that specific combination. I can't believe I can't imagine.
SPEAKER_05Oh, yeah, and as good looking as us. I fucking doubt it. I've been to that Phoenix fan fusion, and let me tell you, I was one of the most handsome motherfuckers there. No joke. I don't even mean to toot my own horn, but I saw some of those dudes, and it was like a creature, you know, crawling from the slums, and each one of them I thanked personally for listening to this podcast. So thank you for signing up. I know who you are.
SPEAKER_06If if you're new to the show too, if this is your first episode, don't take anything we say seriously. We know we are ourselves either. So I mean we're we are like assholes, but we we don't uh if you met us, I think hopefully you saw we are like cool people. Yeah, State Farm. State Farm. We didn't talk about State Farm. So Nay, uh describe the rivalry, um, the epic battle of marketing prowless that we had with State Farm.
SPEAKER_05It all started when we first showed up. We were there first, kind of. But they looked over at us and we had red Daft Monk shirts on, and of course they had red State Farm shirts on, and I could see it in their eyes that they thought that this was going to be a battle of some kind to get the most signups. Little did they know that they had no ammunition in this battle. They had bobbleheads that you could take a picture of yourself on a very shitty Nintendo 3DS picture camera and then glue it to a um very generic bobblehead. Meanwhile, we had humor and loud voices, free bags, free dice, giving away a grand prize.
SPEAKER_06And also the ask took like seconds, like a follow. The equivalent of like a follow on Facebook, but in a podcast app. And what they wanted you is take a long ass fucking survanny. That was gonna happen. No. Imagine, guys, the swag they were giving away. Imagine a 3D bobblehead, except the head is now a 2D thing that you just slide up like a crappy little like, you know, whatever picture of your face. Like very poor. It looked so tacky to me. But what was crazy was I'd say Saturday, Sunday, they kind of had equal amounts of volume as us or almost as much. But on Friday, we were kicking their ass. For whatever reason, nobody gave a shit about stay hard on Friday, and they were just staring at us. Like, I don't know if it's because we were loud and we were like in like, you know, at that point we were still enthusiastic. That faded over the three days. But in the first day, we were like funny, enthusiastic, we were loud, we were slinging our shot, and I don't know, but uh, but like especially the guy. So most of them were there to just get you to fill out the serving at the bubble head. But there was also, if you had insurance questions, there was a guy that would answer that, and he was in black, and that guy in black would smile, but like he was about to fucking snap and just stare at us. Also, you know, we're just a podcast, they're like a professional business going to like trade show to trade show, and we were annihilating them, and I'm just like, and the woman who came up was like she was an interesting person, she seemed quirky to say the least, and she's like, I've been doing this for 20 years, and I'm like, Well, then you should quit your day job, ma'am, because I'm doing this as a hobby and I'm blowing you out of the water.
SPEAKER_05Oh, yeah. The best part was Friday, like you said, where we could see what their shtick was, like they were just like standing there when we like wave people over, and that was it. Meanwhile, me and you well, not Chris, but me and you are yelling at people and flagging them down and getting them in there, and we are loud, like you can hear us across the whole convention floor, and then the very next day they immediately started stealing our tags.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, they literally literally did. They would walk in the area, and if we had like a big crowd, they would walk around us and like say there's it was and like to me, it was funny. It was also just like a little sad because again, like they have like a corporate budget. We also we always got there earlier than it, which blew my mind because I'm like, you guys, this is your literal job to come to these events. And they would roll in way later after people had like basically right before people would show up. And I'm like, what are you doing? Like, you guys suck.
SPEAKER_05Oh, yeah. I'm actually really surprised that you didn't get an email from State Farm with like a job offer, you know.
SPEAKER_06I would never join that team. That is a losing team that I would never not State Farm, but at least the State Farm trade shows is not where I want to be. But anywho, it was a great time. So and that almost catches us up. The only other thing, Nate, I kind of wanted to talk about is uh have you been playing any games lately?
SPEAKER_05I played some Street Fighter VI, I've been playing a lot of that, and then now I have jumped on to Diablo. And let me tell you, Nate, the druid is the biggest fucking disappointment in my entire fucking life. I was looking so forward to playing a druid in a Diablo game and immediately get shit on all over the fucking place. I am more than disappointed. I am ready to I already gave up on it. I made it to level 40 and I have given up on him. I'm playing a fucking necromancer now because the druid is such a disappointment, like everything else in my life.
SPEAKER_06I was there when you found out about the druid and just lost your shit, and it blew my mind that I didn't know that this was like a thing that the internet was upset about. Classic. We both have like our different stereotypes or our audiences. Nate's is the angry internet audience, I think, generally, especially when it comes to straight white males. Um and so that's my demographic.
SPEAKER_05Donnie, are you listening?
SPEAKER_06Are we even gonna talk about what the issue was or the first part?
SPEAKER_05I was extremely disappointed at the character select screen when it's a big fat dude or a big fat chick. That is my druid. And when I picture a druid in my head, I'm not really picturing that, but a little bit later I let that go because with the lore, it's like they're all descendants of the bull cathos barbarians or whatever, and then they split and became druids. So yeah, they're gonna be big burly people, and I came to terms with that. But then once I started playing, and I immediately was getting shit on left and right, and you know what, Nate? It would have been fine. The game would have been fucking fine if there wasn't a thing called the fucking internet where I could go online and see rogues and necromancers shelling out millions of points of damage left and right while I'm sitting there as a fat fucking bear doing nothing. There it is. I'm pounding around, you know, and I'm gonna be able to do that.
SPEAKER_06Is this about the damage? Is this about the damage, or were you unhappy with the character model? Let's call it what it is, Nate.
SPEAKER_05It's the damage. It's it's the damage, Nate. Okay, guys. If we're actually using physics, you know what would give out more damage? A fat fucking bear. Like that would give out even more damage than what he's given. So he is giving out the damage equivalent of what the character should look like, a scrawny woods person. That's what he's giving out. Not big fat energy. He's definitely not giving that out. The numbers are pathetic.
SPEAKER_06How is okay? We're gonna move on from that because that's just a can of worms that I well I did open up, but um I how was Diablo 4? I've I've yet to I've played the past Diablos, I two was phenomenal, three was not as much as we wanted to. What was four?
SPEAKER_05Four is uh amazing right now, as far as the story and the cinematics and the world that they built. Like obviously I haven't got to end game yet because it takes me fucking 26 hours as a druid to try to get to level fucking 40. But other than that, that's wild, Nate.
SPEAKER_06Because back in the day, you basically played the story and you're literally maxing your level in like a day.
SPEAKER_05Yep. I haven't finished the main story yet, like I said, because I got so disappointed. So I played with the druid, I kid you not, Nate, for maybe five, six days, and then whatever hours that I can. Obviously, I'm a dad and I have work full time. In a quarter of that time, I have almost caught up to him with the necromancer because it just fucking blows shit away. Everything else is great, and then I did forget about the the learning curve because I played so much Diablo 3, I had I couldn't even tell you something fucking crazy, like 300 something paragon points. So I would just immediately max stat everything if I made a new character, and he would just be overpowered as soon as I started. And then now starting in Diablo 4 with nothing, I'm like, oh man, I forgot how weak you start out.
SPEAKER_06Well, tell me how the end game is, because I mean that's like I remember the story I feeling like really underwhelmed for Diablo 3, and then really enjoying the end game content. So let me know when you get to that point. I'd be very curious. I I am a fan of Diablo, it's been a minute.
SPEAKER_05I I know right now I'm already a fan of how their system is set up because in Diablo 3 it was you needed to find certain armor sets in order for a build to work, and this is a lot more open to where you just find aspects and you can put that on whatever fucking armor you want. And then that is your build.
SPEAKER_06No, I I support that. Well, looking forward to it. Nate, I have been playing more games than I usually do. Ooh. So uh Tears of the Kingdom uh is really good for Zelda. I I just left the tutorial island, it's huge, it's massive. Anyone who's played the game, like the tutorial is like a pretty big thing, like many hours, or at least a couple hours if you're taking the time to explore. And it's good, but it's so big and wide scale and massive. Like, I think I'll be playing that game for months or possibly years. Oh dang. Whereas so Final Fantasy 16 came out. Anybody who knows me, I'm a huge Square Enix nerd, really love Final Fantasy.
SPEAKER_05That's demographic. You got a lot of people over the table with your uh Final Fantasy knowledge for sure.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that was like the only thing I recognized cosplays from. You recognized a lot of that was definitely one of your strategies too, was like calling out their cosplay. Like, come on, blank name.
SPEAKER_05Vash the Stampede. Yep, Bridget from Guilty Gears Drive.
SPEAKER_06That it worked. Tag him and bag them.
SPEAKER_05It worked. Bridget came right over. I bet you're listening right now, Bridget.
SPEAKER_06Bridget, I hope you're doing well. Um don't remember who you are.
SPEAKER_05Um I just broke the yo-yo. I remember I almost broke their yo-yo.
SPEAKER_06Anywho, where were we even at? I don't remember.
SPEAKER_05Video games.
SPEAKER_06Oh, games. Uh Final Fantasy 16, pretty fucking good, Nate. Turn-based combat is officially dead for a JRPG in Final Fantasy.
SPEAKER_05Oh.
SPEAKER_06I thought I was gonna hate that. Nope. That all is super polished.
SPEAKER_05Smooth.
SPEAKER_06It has like some of the cool elements of like a souls game, and then the like elements and the lore of a Final Fantasy game.
SPEAKER_05So do you still get like a whole list of abilities, or how does that work?
SPEAKER_06Nope. So it's not, you know, like there's a lot of like real-time games where you still like bounce between them and you for people who know like Kingdom Hearts, that's kind of like a hybrid. Final Fantasy 15 was a hybrid. Now it is kind of like playing MMO with like you have cooldown timers and abilities that are either spells or physical. Basically, you keep getting powers of the major Final Fantasy summons, you can map those abilities. You still have a limit break, which is just like a heightened power mode where you can channel up to three different elementals abilities, and then you can like mix them. It's pretty cool. It's it's it's a very uh in-depth, thoughtful battle system, and it's all action, but it's fun. I I didn't miss it at all. Um, the only thing I will say is it does uh pacing wise, sometimes it like you have this like really epic story event that was like pretty wild, and then suddenly you're doing MMO, like go collect three flowers. Which older Final Fantasies like didn't need to do. Like that was something you could do on the side, but that did not really happen as like part of the story.
SPEAKER_05Right to push the story forward.
SPEAKER_06Do you know anything about Final Fantasy X and Eight?
SPEAKER_05No, not really. I played a little bit of seven, and that is the extent of my Final Fantasy.
SPEAKER_06Ten for me is kind of like the kind of standard for Final Fantasy, and that game starts off with like you show you wash up in a foreign realm, and then you go on a pilgrimage, and then you discover that your dad is sin, and then you try to kill God, and like it just keeps escalating, and like at no point do you stop and be like, collect seven flowers, you know, like and that's the only thing is like this game uses mechanics that they use in MMOs, because they worked in Final Fantasy XIV, which is an MMO, but at the end of the day, it's just kind of like I don't really want to do that in a single player game. Right. But otherwise, story's really good. It's very dark, Game of Thrones medievally.
SPEAKER_05Ooh, I like that.
SPEAKER_06I definitely would recommend it. If you're a casual OJRPG, afraid of the action-y stuff in the new game. Nah, you can handle it. I can handle it, you can handle it. It's very generous with potions and dodging Tommy. I was really happy with it. I'm maybe 20 hours in with probably a good 30 plus hours left and lots of hunts and bonus content.
SPEAKER_05Ooh, so Final Fantasy gets a Daft Monk's approval recommendation.
SPEAKER_06I give it an 8.5 out of 10. Ooh. Possibly even a nine, but just the pacing, sometimes doing like really boring quests as part of the story drives me crazy. And hub world bullshit.
SPEAKER_05And then they throw the shop at you. They're always throwing the shop at you. And then I noticed too, Diablo is doing that now too, where it's like, it's the same icon for if you get a level up or if you have like an inbox message. I'm like, oh, what's that? So I click it and it's like, come to the shop. And I'm like, fuck you. I don't want to come to the shop. Plus, all the druid ones look like shit. Like, so what am I gonna fucking buy? You know, half the time I'm a fucking bear, anyways. One of the worst ones that I've seen in a while is I went back on Mortal Kombat 11 just a little bit ago, and they actually took it down because it was so bad. It was as soon as you hit the start screen and you're back in the main menu. About three-quarters of the screen was, Hey, have you tried Hogwarts Legacy? I'm like, what the fuck? What's this have to do with Mortal Kombat? And yes, I've tried Hogwarts Legacy. Like, what do you fuck you doing here?
SPEAKER_06What is it because it's made by the same people?
SPEAKER_05Why I think WB games, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Wow, that's aggressive.
SPEAKER_05Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_06Like to advertise another game in that game that has no not like a crossover marketing event, but like it's just like just a WB. Like, hey, you like Halo? Like, not really, but like Right?
SPEAKER_05Oh, yeah, it's bad.
SPEAKER_06All right. Thank you, listeners, for letting Nate and I uh if if you're new, we do always start with a good 20 to I usually run it's more like 20 minutes of banter. We call it banter, it's just conversation. Honestly, it's really important, guys. It it warms us up. It lets you into our lives, and if me and Nate don't see each other, we're in different states right now. This helps us get like in a good place to do some really fun roleplay. And if we if we just started with the roleplay, it would be terrible. And now it's just kind of bad.
SPEAKER_05So you're welcome. And I've actually had a a random person come up to me at jujitsu class, and they're like, I love the banter party of rep your episodes. Like, I found your podcast, I love the banter. It's just once you got to the campaign that is kind of too far out there for me.
SPEAKER_06That's fair.
SPEAKER_05And I'm like, okay, that's that's fair, you know, everybody has different strokes.
SPEAKER_06That's that's the that's the compromise we made. Is it's it's always one or the other. Like, no, I don't think anybody listens to our episode 100% usually. So there's some people, but some people are here for the banter and some people are here for the campaign. So if you're here for the campaign, then go in Spotify. You can literally just click the timestamp and it will jump you to the part of the episode that is the campaign. That's the new thing I started doing. But if you're here for the banter, then just go ahead and sign off. I don't care. Like, whatever, sign off when you're done. We we try to give the best of both worlds. Um, but to me, it's really just about Nate. Like, I think this is like a warm-up for us, and it gets us ready to just do dumb shit.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_06So
Introducing Season 3
SPEAKER_06we are ready to reveal season three. For the super fans, a trailer did come out. Do you want to talk a little bit, Nate, about that trailer?
SPEAKER_05Yes. So the trailer, it was actually just in the story, which uh threw some people off from what I'm told. They were expecting us to just talk about what was gonna happen, but no, if you took a snippet of the world that we were going to be playing in, that was the trailer.
SPEAKER_06It was a teaser. It was a teaser.
SPEAKER_05Yep. So um, if you don't know, our world is cyberpunk, and we are set in the future. So imagine Cyberpunk 2077, Johnny Mnemonic, Demolition Man, uh Blade Runner, but in the universe of RD Hunters.
SPEAKER_06No, we don't plan to follow up with the same characters. We're gonna make some fresh characters. I'm actually really excited. These characters are very much exaggerations of ourselves. Yes, yes. So that's gonna be fun. But Nate's really passionate. If you didn't know this by now, Nate's pretty passionate about like the cyberpunk genre, and we thought it would be fun to do something. We needed a break from Belmont and Helsing, so we want to do something a little different. And our one goal, I would say, we put a lot of time into it. It's maybe not exactly where we want it to be, but we actually took some time these last few weeks to talk about the world. What does the bar in that world look like? You know, like what are the neighborhoods? Like, we asked ourselves a lot of questions. Like we want to try to have a more concrete world instead of like me and Nate literally making everything up on the spot. This actually is a world that kind of has like a system, some politics, some other stuff. We try to acquaint each other with it so that when we roleplay, we're within the confines of of universe. It's still gonna be funny, it's still gonna be cyberpunk, but it'll also be a little more serious.
SPEAKER_05Yes, uh definitely dark, dark undertones because everything cyberpunk is depressing. Because have you seen the future that they're living in? It's awful. But at the end of the day, it's still us, so we're gonna try to make it fun.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I mean, like our future right now, or our like the present right now is just depressing. So at least depressing in the future is like, ooh, that's interesting. They have a suicide booth.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, at least it's in the future.
SPEAKER_06So that that's the goal. So season three, we're excited to kind of unveil it. I think today's episode is almost like a session zero if you've done, you know, like a tabletop role-playing game. I think we'll talk a little bit about the world and then we'll jump into a little bit of episode one. All right, so we talked about the theme. It is cyberpunk, we talked about like what we want to accomplish, like having a world that has like parameters, I don't know, boundaries. Like we can't roll out in uh a roller scooter in the Sun Temple, right? It has to at least be cyberpunky. Yes, like a giraffe shouldn't be like flying a winged giraffe, like that doesn't make sense. Right. That's definitely gonna show up now somehow, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_05But unless it's a uh cyborg winged giraffe, and then we'll allow it.
SPEAKER_06It's like what was a Chucky, oh no, not Chucky Cheese, Toys of Rust, their mascot was a giraffe. So now it's gonna be like a cyber giraffe store that sells like toys.
SPEAKER_05Like, come on in, kids! Like, oh, they brought that back. I fucking hated that place.
SPEAKER_06And that's the show. That right there is uh there you go.
SPEAKER_05I think uh starting out, I'll go ahead and read the uh history that I wrote up. It's just a small little thing of Beacon City. Beacon City is where the fall of Van Helsing happened and the climax, the finale of the last season. I think I'll pick up with the history of Beacon City, and then from there we can talk about our characters a little bit and then get into the role play for just, you know, a little session zero style.
SPEAKER_06Get your yeah, give you a little taste.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. So here we go.
SPEAKER_00Um in the machine, I can think it's green, and we trapped in the machine. That's the word reality's green, but it's been a new ever time. Living as a call, living as a living, killing the fellow scar, killing the fellow scar.
SPEAKER_05Not this voice. Not me.
SPEAKER_04Legend
Welcome to Beacon City
SPEAKER_04has it. The three immortal heroes, along with a pregnant donkey, established what was once Beacon, a safe haven for everyone that didn't wish to live with the constant fear of monsters, creatures, and everything else, non-human. Beacon became so popular that it grew in size over the coming decades. Now, a dominant force in the country, the people of Beacon, to develop themselves to eradicate any and unmagical beings left in the land. After a few hundred years, the mission was a success. There were no longer image pieces of magic left in this new world. Meaning with a game. Like every rhythm is in the course of the beacon city, how too much swelling how the country was being run to take place. Revolution would have a course of the country from the extremists of the string of the city placing the place within the explosion with the huge portion of the city. People cleaning safety work and future before me. The collapse just control. The ease separate themselves from these crimes. They took it up on them to create a political system to be the buffer of the blame for the majority of the city's problems. A minute was created. Now, out of the public eye, the corpse do whatever they want with no repercussions.
SPEAKER_05That is our beginning history of the world that we are living in in Beacon City. And then this city being so thick, you know, and hustle and bustle. Like there are hundreds of thousands of people that never even leave the city. They are born here, they die here, they never even step foot outside the gates of Beacon City. And like that's the vibe we really want to go for with this.
SPEAKER_06Absolutely.
Meet Roy and Ash
SPEAKER_06Alright, so the character I'm gonna play, I went with Roy, an enthusiastic ladder climber. He is drinking the Kool-Aid at his job. He has worked the same job his entire life. I imagine you do your schooling when you're younger in Beacon City, and then like you take like an evaluation, and then they match you with a corp, like that you work for. He lives in the dorms in the corpse. So the corps literally have dormitories in like the slums, and like you literally live in the dormitory for your corp, and that comes out of your pay.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And fun fact, that motivation came out of the military who charged me for my meals at my two-week training. So that's where that thought came from. So yeah, Roy is like when you went to work, and that guy's like, Man, I cannot wait for Culture Day or whatever. He's like, I'm gonna be on the fun committee because I'm gonna make sure everybody loves their job. That is Roy. Like he really is passionate about his corporation. Beacon Group is the corporation that Roy works at for. It's also one of the major. Do we say how many major corporations make up kind of the tribunal?
SPEAKER_05Um, as of right now, writing, I have three, but we can always add more.
SPEAKER_06That's what I thought. Corporations as a whole have power over Beacon City, but there are three main ones, and Beacon Group is a big one. It's literally named after the city. So Beacon Group is uh one of the ones in power. In fact, I think currently is the current mayor of Beacon Group mayor. Yes, no, yeah. Okay, yeah. So anyway, Roy, super on board, loves this job. He's been trying to get a promotion for quite a while, and it just hasn't worked out for him, but he thinks today is his day.
SPEAKER_05Does he think that every day?
SPEAKER_06Yep, yep. And then as far as what he looks like 5'10, stocky, short brown hair, balding. Uh he's me, guys. He's literally like he literally is me if you've met me, so just kind of like a stocky average in every sense. I'm gonna say he's a little bit more underfed because he's on like the cork meal plan, which is like just very minimal and not like super, it's mostly just focused on like the bare minimum nutrition that you need to like live. So he's he's not as like thick as I am, but otherwise he's like average in every sense. Probably I'd say he is early 30s, birthdays in or late December. No, um yeah, uh beyond that. I didn't think too much. I don't like to get into detail, like yeah, whatever, blue eyes, if you need to know that shit. Well, yes, we'll probably change some of that as we go. I don't like to say he has size 12 shoes because later we'll definitely end up making him wear like clown shoes or ribbon shoes, and we'll make fun of it. Like Nate made fun of the size of my hands at an adventure.
SPEAKER_05I'm going to be playing Ash. He is an electrical worker at a power plant, but he is also trying to make it big by writing uh jingles for corporation ads. He's not very good at it. He is always on the verge of offing himself because he hates this world and he hates the people in it, he hates the technology, but for some reason he always finds himself caught up in it. That's pretty much him. Everything is a bummer. It is me. So imagine just me if I didn't have a wife or a family, and I just had my job and this podcast, and it would just be depressing. But he tries his best to make it through. And then I think how he gets a majority of the joy in his life is by talking shit on other people and seeing how bad they have it, and then he's like, Well, at least I don't got it that fucking bad, you know.
SPEAKER_06These characters are exaggerations of us by by another name. So pretty fun. I think that might help the role play to you to just be a little bit more organic. At least me, Nate's good on his toes. I I'm a little it's like the cogs are just slowly, abruptly turning sometimes with me. But yeah, really excited. Um, I think the the Ashroy dynamic, it works for us in real life, so I imagine it will work eventually, but they're gonna come from different worlds, and yeah, their worlds are gonna collide. I'd like to start the role play by talking about Dante.
SPEAKER_05Yes. Okay, so all we know from Dante is a symbol that he places on things after he has done a cyber attack, and it is just a very menacing looking fiery D. Not a not a penis, the letter D. And any other time he's made like a visual representation of himself, he's always like AI, like CGI behind him, fiery wall of flame, and he just is this black, shrouded, cloaked figure trying to portray himself as being very menacing and very edgy, and just over the top in general.
SPEAKER_06I absolutely nate when you described him or when I listened to the trailer, I got Amon from Legend of Korra.
SPEAKER_05Ooh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. That's perfect too. Yeah, I like that.
SPEAKER_06Alright, so obviously that trailer was like a prequel kind of, so that already happened. That broadcast went live. Dante works out of a van. He's like doing the hacker thing in the back of a van. And I I think this is important. I it's a question I never got around to asking you. Like, what does transportation look like to you? Because that's that's part of Roy's plot for the first day. I imagine, and tell me if I'm wrong, I imagine there's still vehicles on the ground, but that is more reserved for like lower workers, but then there's like more expensive things that we can call them hovercrafts, whatever you want.
SPEAKER_05Right. No, you are absolutely correct. So a majority of the poor people can't even afford a vehicle, so they're just walking on the streets and trying to use public transportation, and public transportation in Beacon is a fucking absolute disaster. Everybody else besides that will have a car that is on the ground if you're part of the lower middle class. Yep. And then upper, or you get Nate, your character being working for a corp and in a corp building, there's probably either some kind of shuttle, like a Google shuttle that flies everybody from the corporate of the city. 100%.
SPEAKER_06So we didn't we didn't coordinate this hundred percent. I just want we I want to make sure we're on the same page, and we are. Anyway, Dante's working out of a van on the ground level, on like the actual earth level of the roads, and because nobody would suspect that. And anyway, now we
The adventure begins
SPEAKER_06start with Roy. This is like a Monday morning in Beacon City. We're gonna start with Roy waking up in the dorms. So Roy wakes up in the morning, he has to be at work before uh 8 30, he gets there for 7. So he's up at 5 30 to just prep himself. He does some exercises in the morning in his bunk. He has like a room, but it's kind of like I don't know if you saw Futurama, it's like a closet. It's like a college dormitory, really, like but even like less flattering. It's very very sterile and very, very corporate. Like it has like the like vision, like Beacon Group's mission statement is part of the decor and shit like that. Like anyway, he wakes up and immediately he looks at a photo of the president and CEO of Beacon Group. It's just like his headshot. I imagine, like, um you know that guy that looks like an animated corpse, but he's a Senate and he's been a senator for like 30 years.
SPEAKER_05I'd say even more animated corpse, like he should have died a long time ago, but with technology, it is like Oogie Boogie.
SPEAKER_06Like, if he opens his mouth, like worms and just maggots are gonna come out. So it's it's not a flattering photo. But anyway, it's like his headshot, like trying to smile, and every morning he wakes up and he's like, Today's the day, I come for your job.
SPEAKER_05Had like a stroke at some point in his life, so only half of us smile, the rest of it's all droopy down.
SPEAKER_06And and you know how people will like do sit-ups to like a version of themselves out of shape, or like you know, Arnold, or like he does like little, like a couple crunches. He only does like he does like eight crunches, and like that's enough for today, coming for you, big guy. And then he starts to get ready and he like whatever, he does that stuff. So he gets ready, does his thing, and he goes out to like the common hall. So I'm not very much a bitching's like fucking awkward sort of like a territory, but it's a very corporate. He goes to the common hall, which just has like assignments and like project priorities. You know how like we have to go home and like not think about work, like maybe you get some texts or emails, but you just don't check them. But here it's like your like your TV, like from the hours of like six to nine, have like news and stuff managed by the corporation, by the way. But then like from like you know, six to eight a.m. it's like your assignments for the day on your television. So anyway, uh same thing when you go out in the common hall, it's like a lot of information to do your job even before you get to your so anyway. He's like checking, he's always like on point. He like double checks what his priorities are, and he sees he has a special assignment from his boss. He actually needs to drive in that day, he has to pick up a vehicle from the parking sector, which driving on the lower level is not common for people. So, not people, some people don't know how to drive. He's like, Oh shit, like, all right, whatever. And he goes down to the parking garage. Um, and so he like goes up to like the little like kiosk booth and he enters his his employee number. Like everything is done by your employee number. Like, you know how like social security is like your social security number is easy for everything. Here it's like you want to buy something, you enter employee ID. You want to like register for your parents' funeral, you put your employer ID. He enters that, and then the guy turns to him or a holograph or whatever you want it to be. I I think it's still a person. Yeah, still a person. Like, yeah, for for something this mundane, they're not allocating technology and resources.
SPEAKER_05No, they're not put a real person in there.
SPEAKER_06And he's like, Oh, Roy, I haven't seen you down here in quite some time. Yeah, I got this uh special assignment, and frankly, I'm just glad they trusted me to drive a vehicle after what happened last time. And uh the guy laughs, and then Roy laughs, and then they remember that he like literally like collided into somebody's vehicle, and I don't know if that person survived or not. Hey, uh, what am I driving today? And uh the guy like takes through some files, pulls out like a rental car key thing, but it looks more like a fob or like a or I don't know, he like scans his player ID and then it like adds the vehicle startup information. Employee ID is gonna be like the credit cards of the future or whatever, or like the the Apple Pay or whatever. So he like puts it on his ID and he's like, uh, or like row seven, parking spot 16. And he's like, Oh wow, like I am really at the bottom of this uh facility. And uh anyway, he goes down and he he finds his vehicle.
SPEAKER_05He's like, Oh, tires, huh? Oh kicking them.
SPEAKER_06Well, this is uh not part of my usual job description, but uh every day is an opportunity to learn a new skill to get to the top because one day I'm gonna be the CEO of Beacon Group. And I'm like saying that to somebody who's like smoking a cigarette and then just like blows smoke in my face, and he's like, or you know, vaping or whatever they're doing then. And yeah, I'm gonna go and spend about 20 minutes trying to figure out how to start the vehicle.
SPEAKER_05I want to say, as you're like getting into the car, one other person comes out and they're like, Oh, hey Roy, have a good day. And then like you turn to look at him, and then he gives you like a dirty look, and then he keeps walking to the guy smoking a cigarette and like gives him a fist bump and then keeps going, his name was Roy.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, he gets really excited for a sec, and then and then it's like uh he gets in the car, and I also want to imagine like they reused a lot of older vehicles, so even though they function differently, they have things like cassette players in them, like you don't do anything, but they're just like, whatever, we have these vehicles, like we don't want to waste it. It's very I imagine for the lower level there's a lot of archaic technology. So immediately Roy is like trying to put his like employee ID in the cassette player, it's not doing anything, and eventually he like drops it onto like a little pad, and the pad kind of like magnetic charging for your phone is just like employee ID 7654872, welcome. And he's like, Yes, welcome, go. And like immediately like reverses into that. I want to imagine that guy who like was making fun of him, like was like walking back to his vehicle, and the car just like backs up into him and like knocks him over. He's not like dead or anything, but like hits him and like the guy kind of like falls down. He looks back and he's like, Huh, forward.
SPEAKER_05I'm gonna say, uh, after you backed into that guy, a little icon on your heads-up display pops up, and the voice from the car poppings in.
SPEAKER_02It seems you were in an accident of some sort. Please watch the tutorial on earthbound driving, it's only 30 minutes long on the MeTube channel. Click yes for more.
SPEAKER_06I'm gonna say he's like, I don't got time for that. And he hits no, and then it's like, You've been subscribed to the Earthbound training program.
SPEAKER_02We go over walking, driving, communicating, greetings.
SPEAKER_06He's like, I don't got time for this. I'm only gonna be 90 minutes early instead of two hours. And he's just like, Let's go, baby, and like changes it into question mark. There's like a question mark on the gear shift, and then starts driving. Man, I wonder why they even gave me this vehicle. And in the back, you do hear, or he doesn't hear because he's oblivious, but the person who's on the ground, like whose foot is like clearly broken now, hears some like rattling in like the trunk. Like something unsecured is definitely shifting as this car who hit him is driving away now and outside of the the motor garage.
SPEAKER_05So now we are into the day of the life of Ash. Now I wake up in a very shitty apartment to the sound of gunfire. Blah blah blah outside. I look out my window, it's a normal occurrence, but son of a bitch, I'm up two hours before I'm supposed to be. And you know, it's like too late to go back to sleep, but too early to really be awake. So, like, fuck it, I'm awake now. So I wake up and I hop on my little computer and I just start surfing the web, and then somehow I lose track of time, and then now I'm almost late for work. Um, I run outside. I don't have any kind of um transport at this point, it's currently in the shop. I don't know how to fix things myself, so I sent it to a very seedy location where they're going to charge me an enormous sum of money for some stupid amount of work. It's probably something like a one spark plug is blown in my car, but I don't know how to fix it myself, so fuck it. I'm gonna spend the money and just deal with it and then bitch about it. So, you know, I'm gonna walk and try to get on the city bus. Uh, nine times out of ten, the city bus is down due to people raiding it or flipping it over or catching it on fire or some kind of suicide bomber being on the bus. But you know what? I'm feeling it. I'm gonna take my chance. Walking by the bus station, I glance over and see that there is a suicide booth. And I pack my wallet that I put in my front pocket because I have back problems, and I can't put a wallet in my back pocket because it causes my sciatic to flare up. So as I'm walking by the booth, I'm like, this is the day. Just go in there and end it all. But then as I look at the price tag, it they bumped it up another five dollars, and I'm like, what the fuck is going on here? 55 bucks just to off yourself? Like, this is getting outrageous, and I am saying this out loud, like, to nobody. I'm just screaming at the suicide box. You keep up in these prices, nobody can even afford to kill themselves in this fucking city. This is ridiculous, and I am sick of it. No, go ahead. I'm I'm not in line. You can you can go around me. And some guy with a walker was like hitting me in the back with his walker, and then I'm like, yeah, just fucking go around.
SPEAKER_06I imagine before that night he's like, that just we two got stuff to the book for. And then he just goes past you and gets in the booth. You just hear like blades and like and like like splatter afterwards.
SPEAKER_07Self-cleaning mode and it's quick aside, Nate.
SPEAKER_06Um, I know neither I was about to ask you if you've ever been to London, and I'm like, you don't even have a passport. Um do you know in London they basically have booths on the in the road? They're um they're like porta potties, but imagine like high-tech booths. Like imagine like a port, like uh just like a cylinder, and you pay first, and then it opens, and inside is like a bathroom. Oh, and it's just in the middle like of the sidewalk where a mailbox would be.
SPEAKER_05Yep.
SPEAKER_06That's a thing in London.
SPEAKER_05This is exactly what our suicide booth is.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, there's one like every other block. Yeah, like a Starbucks. Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_05Especially here in the port, poor part of town.
SPEAKER_06There's like membership like bonuses too, or something.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, they got like a little pass card like for so many family members that use the booth to get a free one. So after this old man walks in, I'm like, you rich motherfucker, like, look at you affording to be able to kill yourself. Disgusting. And then like I look down at my watch, like, oh fuck, I'm gonna miss the bus. All my ranting got me late again. So now I I start running, but I'm not in the best shape of my life. So uh I'm getting a little And Nate.
SPEAKER_06I imagine as you go running, you start running and you weren't really like paying attention at the moment, because then I gotta go fucking late. And you almost get hit by this. Uh, I don't know, what what do you want to know? What kind of vehicle do you want to describe um Roy driving?
SPEAKER_05Oh, Roy, it'd be a like very late model. So like when we're picturing vehicles for the listener, um we are still using in our mind a 80s future uh reference.
SPEAKER_06So it's a very it's retrofitted, but it's still like the 80s.
SPEAKER_05It's a very 80s sedan, and it just has like some fucking tubes and shit coming out of the side of it. Everything looks aftermarket like uh it was just a piece of shit that they're like, you know what, we're gonna use it. Uh has a logo of your company on the side of it.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. So as Ash is crossing the street hastily, he almost gets hit by a beacon group car. And as like the car doesn't even move, he just like jumps out of the way. He's like, what the fuck? And the car just keeps going, and then nothing. Like it didn't even acknowledge that it almost hit him right now.
SPEAKER_05Well, son of a bitch, I guess I couldn't be that lucky. If I got hit by a beacon car, that'd be a sweet payday. But of course they don't know what they're doing. And then uh instantly on my uh heads-up display on my uh lens system. Imagine our lens systems that we talked about in the trailer, exactly like the new iPhone glass thing that came out, the view or whatever the fuck it's called. So it's completely transparent. You can just see my eyes, it looks like I'm wearing some like Yeezy shades or some shit like that. But then when a message pops up, then one side goes opaque, so I can read the message, but I can still see out of my left eye.
SPEAKER_02And it's like a message from the beacon group. Sorry for the almost collision. Have a good day.
SPEAKER_06I also want to imagine that the the lens option you just described is actually for poor people because only poor people are out like in the sun. And so the alternative to that, which does almost the same features, is a holo watch. So and that's what so that's what most people. So Roy has a watch, almost like the fucking R2G2, like, but it like comes out of his watch. And so advertisements, updates, emergencies, um, newscasts that you didn't ask for, um, will will play on that. It'll just activate a lot of times without you doing anything. So that that is the more if you're a white-collar worker, you probably have a hollow watch. And if you're a blue-collar worker, because you're out of the sun, you actually need some you're not a very useful worker without you know, your corn is rolling out. Also, there's some weird shit in the atmosphere from all the pollution from the corpse. So actually, the sun is especially harmful now, then more so than it is in like our time. So if you have lens, you're definitely like a blue-collar worker. Correct. I like that a lot. So we can cut back to Roy, and Roy's like, man, he's like, he's not looking at the road at all. He is on his holo watch, he's like typing things in, and he's like, it really would have been nice if they told me where to park this thing. Like, I've never like I've never even driven this thing into the office whatsoever. And he's like looking down, he's saying this while he's like, and then the car is just like going forward, like into like sectors and lanes that are not. I don't imagine it's like a two-way road either. I imagine it's like six lanes, but it's like every other lane can go in opposite directions. Or it's just like what nobody cares, right? Because it's the road, it's earthbound. So earthbound, it's just like don't hit anybody, is the rules, kind of back like when it was like horse and carriage, you know. And uh so it's just like the car is just doing like very weird maneuvers to just like not hit people. Um, it's kind of been like an autopilot, and he's just trying to find parking. And all of a sudden, though, he does hear like a horn, and it's one of the buses that like the only bus that runs on time is coming in an opposite direction, and and it's just like I'll edit that in with some like actual noise, and that does cause him to look up, and he actually does take control for the first time ever. He touches the wheel, he's only been like holding the the gear and like telling it like forward and shit. And uh, but anyway, he hears the horn from the bus and he does actually swerve it, which you're not really supposed to do on earthbound vehicles these days. Like, you there's literally just like a button that's like dodge or like pivot. I don't know, there's like there's like lateral movements, and there's like Ways to drive these things now that he does he's not aware of. You didn't watch the 30-minute video, of course. And so he really burns the wheel. So then he like almost hits another vehicle which slopes and hits this like nondescript van. And that van proceeds to like roll over multiple times and then like crash into the bus that was trying to avoid and he and it's like a horrible, horrible disaster. Anyway, once Roy swerved, that was kind of it, and he went back to looking on his phone of like where he has to park this vehicle, and there's just like a major fucking pile up behind him.
SPEAKER_05And then uh immediately on his holo watch, he gets a message that pings up on the heads-up display, but it's also accompanied by a voice, and it just shows up as soon as all that happens.
SPEAKER_01Congratulations, this is Dante. You have successfully taken me out.
SPEAKER_05And then I imagine you just like ah fuck that.
SPEAKER_06Um, and yeah, Roy is just on his his merry way. Uh let's go back over to Ash. In the distance, you hear like loud screeching noises and like horns honking and shit.
SPEAKER_05I'm like, oh shit, I'm late, and then I start running, and then I show up and I look around the block, and the city bus is now completely on fire with what was a van underneath of it, and then uh another guy comes crawling out of another car that was involved in the accident, and I'm looking at him like this piece of shit caused this whole fucking thing to go down. I'm like, hey, motherfucker, thanks a lot for the bus, you piece of fucking shit. And he is so razzled from being in the accident, he probably doesn't even hear me. At one point, he's his holo watch goes off, and it's a message, and it's like this is Dante.
SPEAKER_01Congratulations. You murdered me.
SPEAKER_05And then he swipes it away. And then Ash looks back over there like, Rich motherfucker's got a holo watch. What a piece of fucking shit this guy is, probably too busy looking at his fucking holo watch to see where he's going. Now I'm gonna be late to fucking work. This guy's a real piece of fucking shit, man. And then, like, people are on fire and trying to get out of this bus while I am just uh on the ground bitching about it. And I'm like, kick a rock and then continue uh walking to work. I am officially going to be late now, and it is all because of this fucking bus catastrophe.
SPEAKER_06Going back to Roy, he has made it to the parking facility. He was able to pull up 17 different emails that cross-linked into an eventual map of where the beacon crew parking is on the earthbound level. And he gets to like the gate, flashes his employee badge, and like, ah, I haven't seen one of those in a while. Uh uh, go on in. You can really, aside from my car, uh, you can take any spot you want. And he like opens the gate, he's like, Thanks, thanks, pal, and they're thanks, bud. And then he like he drives, uh, Roy tries to drive in. He thinks he's got it now. He's just using the wheel, which you're not supposed to do at this point, and somehow like ends up like trying to parallel park next to that one vehicle in the entire empty lot.
SPEAKER_05It's an entire empty like parking garage, and he's like, I'm gonna park right next to that.
SPEAKER_06He's like, I'm gonna practice. I'm always trying to improve myself, and he's trying to like parallel park this vehicle when it actually has a la again, it has like a lateral like button. He like almost does it pretty well, and he's like, There, and he hits the park button, or what he thinks is the park button, he then finally does hit the lateral button and just ram into the side of the other car, and then it parks, and you hear the like click of like the doors unlocking, and it's like Thank you for driving, being group corporate vehicles.
SPEAKER_02Any damage will be taken out of your paycheck.
SPEAKER_06Meanwhile, the car alarm from the guy next to you is going off, like and then uh he gets out of that car and he's like, Well, I don't know why that guy parked there, like honestly, like the whole lot's open. But then he looks back and he can see in the you know, in the course of the collision that the trunk popped open. And he walks over to the trunk, for the first time even realizing that there is a trunk or that the backs of vehicles open, and he looks down and he sees something that can only be described as a child. Bum bum bum. I think that's where we're on to today.
SPEAKER_05That works for me.
SPEAKER_06As always, listeners, when we start off a new season or like a new story arc, it takes time for us to warm up to our characters, so give us time, but with the power of editing and some sound effects, this will hopefully be an enjoyable start to season three of the Daft Monks Podcast.
SPEAKER_03Thank you for listening. And this is a ad from Biotechnica DE. Thank you for purchasing our new DNA-approved meat. Now, with the power of DNA, we can provide meat to people that can no longer afford it. Yes, these cows have been extinct for a millennium since that one guy was running around punching them. But now, with the power of biotechnica DNA, we can bring meat back to your mouth. Thank you.
SPEAKER_06Like as he's finishing the advertisement, like his holo watch goes off, and he's like, This is Dante. Just like while still on the air.
SPEAKER_01You ignored my first message, but now is a second message. You managed to thwart me, and I am going to divulge all of my deepest, darkest secrets to you about hacking the net.
SPEAKER_06So that was during like a live commercial read. And so we're gonna think that like we'll come back to this, but maybe somewhere, someone out there, maybe takes some of this information to be continued.
SPEAKER_05Like, oh, another one of these fucking ads. Let me guess a fucking prince in Nigeria needs my help, and I'm the only one that can help him. Like, get fucked.
SPEAKER_06Nate, I know a couple people were like, oh, this Dante guy seems like a royal, you guys actually developed a real protagonist or antagonist, and absolutely not. Literally, from the time I think you made this trailer, I was like, Oh, is this gonna be a character? You're like, No, we're gonna kill him the first episode. So got you. If there is gonna be a super villain, it is not gonna be that easy.
SPEAKER_05He's not gonna be named Dante.
SPEAKER_06We are gonna have a villain, it might be Roy and his driving skills. The real menace. Fun fact. Fun fact, uh, a lot of little tidbits in these stories that were basically our real lives just being said as as as role play, but it was just us. But uh, Nate, would it surprise you that I failed my first two driver's license tests in Rhode Island?
SPEAKER_05It does surprise me. Now, your husband on the other end, when he drove me to the airport, I was in complete fear of my life the entire time. Yes. And I was wondering, like, are you looking at the same road I'm looking at, or what are we doing? I was scared. He told me he was very lost on the way back, but not on the Oh no, on the way there we did four U-turns, and then he almost hit a Mercedes. And he's like, Oopsie Daisy. Like, it was nothing.
SPEAKER_06He loves to tell me how bad of a driver I am. Uh, and I am, and I am, uh, but yeah, he that's funny.
SPEAKER_05Oh, yeah. I was as soon as I got to the airport, like, I'm glad I'm here two hours early because that ride.
SPEAKER_06You are safer on the plane on a flying aircraft than in my husband's.
SPEAKER_05We hit turbulence and the plane started shuddering really bad, and I was like, cool as a cucumber. I'm like, it can't get any worse than what happened earlier.
SPEAKER_06Exactly. Alright, guys, thanks for listening. If you are a new listener from Phoenix Fan Fusion, welcome. We'll be back to a weekly, sometimes bi-weekly cadence. So excited to have you. You don't have to listen to the old episodes if you don't want to. But please, if you are a new listener, give us a subscribe, a follow, a like, whatever the fuck it's called in the app that you are using. And yeah, we will see you next week.
SPEAKER_05Episode number two will be coming up shortly, and we're gonna jump right into the action.
SPEAKER_06See you next week.
