Chapter One: Apollo's Cradle - Episode 4

Suffer Not: Chapter One - Apollo's Cradle

The Marshal and Special Agent get stuck at a door but not only do they find a few clues but a few friends as well.

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Suffer Not is recorded while playing the Call of Cthulhu RPG created by Chaosium.

Transcript

00:00:02 [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] All right, guys. Let's do a little recap of last episode. What do you two remember? All right, so I believe we started at the burnt shack on the path, you know, after we found like the can of tuna and stuff like that and then we proceeded west. The larger burnt shack, right? Uh, no, the the original one. Isn't that where we started? Oh, the one that's completely rubble. You started at the ranger station, I believe, and got attacked by a bear. That was the Was that the beginning?

00:01:12 That was the beginning of last episode. Yeah. Oh, okay. So, we were attacked by a bear. Yep. Uh birdie shot him masterfully. And then you guys like didn't do any uh inspecting of the bear. You just left. Correct. Which is strange. Yeah. You just shot it and walked away. Hey, cool. You know. Yep. And then we proceeded down a path. After that, we found the first shack in the woods. Yeah. You also found the rers's letter. The rers's letter or journal. That's right. The one that mentioned uh it like

00:01:47 dynamic or dynamite. And uh Nope. You found that one the episode before that. Oh. So in the shack that you found this little shack that had a burned corpse in it. That was like one of the first things you found after going over the wire. Ranger Oadiah Adams. Yep. his journal. When you got to the old ranger station, the one that was all like burned down and [ __ ] up, you found within the what used to be the top of the ranger tower that crumbled, you found a little lock box or a drawer that had a journal in it. That's right. And

00:02:20 he was talking about how a lot of people with materials and stuff kept on going out. Yep. Then afterwards, bunch of [ __ ] started happening with animals. That's right. overaggression. Mhm. And this is all after you guys got shot by that bear. Yep. Shot the bear. Shot the bear. Shot at by the some kind of shootout on March 28th and he was recolocated on the 29th. They said a gas leak of sorts. That's right. Yeah. So, there was a gas leak supposedly and that was the excuse they gave for moving old

00:02:59 Jebidiah. So, yeah, we read that letter. We proceeded to head west. We stopped um off the path to eat some food and kind of chill. And then we saw stalked by something. Yeah, there was something out in the woods that we saw. It looked humanoid in shape, but we didn't actually encounter it. I left him food though. You did leave him food. And then we proceeded west and we came up to a fork in the path. One heading southwest, the other heading northwest. And we went northwest. And then we ran into some

00:03:32 buildings, like a clearing with some buildings, and they were all burnt down. The middle one had scorch marks. The other two also had scorch marks, just not as bad. But the middle one, the eastern, I believe it was eastern side of it had collapsed. The two long walls, right? One of them collapsed in and the other still stood. And you could kind of get inside to look at stuff, but I mean, you guys haven't gotten to that building yet, but yeah, from the periphery of the clearing, you could kind of make that

00:04:06 determination. And that's where we ended. Correct. Yep. All right. I believe we're about to walk into the main building in the center. Cool. So, we open our scene with you two in the clearing. Dubois, you went and I believe you went left and looked at the smaller kind of bunk shack. Correct. And then Sadeski, who plays Tate Clay, went and checked out what turned out to be a tool shed. Correct. And you guys are now approaching the centermost building. All right. The way I see it, we get up there and we just count to three and

00:04:56 open that bad boy and see what we got. Are there any windows on that center building? There are, but they are shuttered. Birdie, I suppose you should probably lead with that shotgun then, huh? Yeah. All right. Tate will pull out his revolver and have it at the ready behind Birdie. Count of three. One, two. Bird's gonna open the door. Opening the front door. There's a wall by the door with another door. And the room that you can see from where you're standing is just tossed and turned. There are two corpses

00:05:42 inside this this room that look identical to that one you had found earlier. Just dehydrated husk. There's some desks, some tables, papers scattered all over. What do you do? That's what you see right now. No people. Just the two corpses. Birdie is going to enter the front door and clear the left corner and take us to the right. So, Bird, are you clear left with your shotgun? Correct. Okay. Do you say anything? You're just jumping in? Uh, I just go in and look left. Okay. It's dark. You can't make out a lot.

00:06:22 There is light that is peeking in through cracks in the building. Uh, there is a little bit of a hole from where the the wall had collapsed over on the other side. And you look in and you see essentially what I just described, right? There's two corpses, dehydrated, blackened, charred. Uh, you can see that from right where you're standing. You see a couple of tables pushed up against the windows and stuff like that. The door that you just opened up very slowly looks to have been forced in relatively

00:06:57 recently, like the wrong direction or the right direction. Uh, like somebody would have forced their way in from the outside. Yes. Okay. Yeah, there's a chair on the floor that looks shattered, like maybe somebody had propped it up against the door handle and just beat the [ __ ] out of the door until the old chair broke. Okay, Tate follows and goes kind of checks the right side. The right side is just a wall essentially with a door. The door is locked or closed. Birdie. Yeah, I got this room. All

00:07:31 right, cool. I'll keep an eye out here. And Tate's gonna go and try the door handle. The door handle is locked. Birdie, it's locked. I kind of want to open one of these shutters to get more light in here. Tate will kind of turn back. Go. Go ahead. Bry's going to attempt to open up the shutter on the front left wall. Okay. There's a table leaning up against where the shutter is. So, I'm assum you move that over. Hey, we're going loud. Birdie is going to put like he's not just going to throw the table, right? He's going to lean it back

00:08:09 and try to set it down without, you know, he's not going out of his way to make more noise. Okay. But he understands that this is going to be it's going to make noise. Yeah. So, you go ahead, you move the table, set it down as quietly as you can, but it kind of bangs around a little bit on the floor. Yeah. You push open the shutter and then take the little stick and stick that in there so it holds open. You let a lot more light in. Mhm. It's kind of a little bit rustic in here. There's a deer antlers hanging from the wall that

00:08:43 you can see now. Go ahead and roll a spot hidden check. Uh that is 30. 30 under 70, I believe. Is there anything in particular you want to look for before I just give you a general? When when Birdie opens the shutters, he's looking outside. So, he's going to look out there quick, right? Just make certain everything. Okay. And then he's going to turn around and look into the room with doing his best to not block as much light so he can get a good sense of what's in this room. So, like I'd said, the room is a mess. There's a lot of

00:09:14 like rubble and debris and branches and similar to all these other buildings, animal droppings and stuff like that. With your roll, you kind of notice that there's a nice thick layer of dirt and dust on a lot of stuff in here. However, it does also look like it's been disturbed. One of the bodies appears to have been moved. In fact, one of the arms and legs look to have snapped. Like they are pretty brittle. And whoever moved that one did not make the same mistake with the other, but it looks like it was disturbed. It looks

00:09:52 like folks have been here before us. While this is happening, Tate's going to put his ear up to the door and listen for anything. That door right to my right. Roller listen check. That is 70 over 60. You don't hear anything out of the normal. The forest, the wind blowing against the cabin or the lodge. The wood all kind of caks a little bit. You almost feel like maybe this building's a little unstable. And Dubois, yes. Birdie also finds a couple cigarette butts. One kind of over in the corner and another

00:10:30 one over kind of by the rubble. Looks like somebody flicked it right into it. H. You got a good way to get in here, birdie? I'm pretty sure it's just both of us here right now. Well, you know, I'm thinking you could step back a ways and just give it a good boot. So, if we trust this building enough, I mean, let's uh let's see here. We should probably come back to this. Well, yeah, maybe we'll find a key. Tate wants to investigate the skeletons and then start opening up drawers and cabinets inside of this

00:11:04 area. How do you want to look at the bodies? Looking at the bodies and kind of goes down and first wants to look at where they were drugged from or moved from. And then he's going to look at uh everywhere around him, rearranging parts of the bones or bodies, whatever is left there, uh for anything he can find. Then after that, he's gonna kind of go desk to desk and drawer to drawer, opening up cabinets and cupboards and what have you. Birdie, I'm going to check a little bit more specific. I kind of want to see if

00:11:44 there's anything on these skeletons or hidden away here. All right, key would be great. You notice anything? I I'll take a peek. I did find some fresher normal cigarette butts over here. Might be the same as what you seen? Those ones on the ground? Yep. Are they the same? They are the same brand, Apple Strikes, and they don't look all that old. Certainly not as old as everything else here. Yeah, those are the same Apple Strikes. All right. And they kind of look a lot newer than the ones at the Ranger Station. And still newer yet than

00:12:17 the ones we saw on the way here. Yeah, we didn't get any intel on Creedmore's preferred brand of cigarette as far as I can recall, but you know this there's a good chance this is from him and his party. We don't know that, but yeah, I'm thinking you could be right. It's either him and his party or or there's some other folks out here. Whoever drug the bodies around. Yeah. Um, you poke around. Um, keep an eye out for me, would you? You got it. Um, thank you. While he's digging around, Birdie's actually going to go over to the the

00:12:52 door that's locked, and he's just going to look at the door itself and the lock. He's going to size it up. How sturdy is this thing? I'm going to make you roll for that. Perfect. Okay, Sedeski, please roll a roll another spot hidden check for me. Or roll a spot hidden check for me. Going up by one. That's a 71 over 60. Okay, with a 71, you open some of the drawers and what you find inside is a mixture of glass wear and some what you might think is digging equipment. So like some little tels and

00:13:33 shovels and and like brushes and stuff like that. And then you also find what's your education level? 70. Okay, so it's pretty good. So you would recognize what like a beaker and an Erlin Meyer flask is. Opening the different cabinets and drawers, you you find a myriad of scientific equipment. You find some cked, capped, and otherwise sealed jars and bottles of stuff. A lot of it though, you can't make out what the label actually says, but it generally looks pretty mundane. I'll grab a couple beers. Okay.

00:14:11 The empty ones are there. Oh, I thought there were full ones. No. No. Mo most of most of the stuff is empty. Okay. Is there anything that's full? There's a couple. Yeah, but the labels are faded away. I'll grab the full stuff. Anything that's full. Okay. There are five that are full. One is kind of a darker color. One is a little bit yellow. And the other ones are clear. They all appear to have the same general viscosity. Okay. You're grabbing all of them? Yes. Are you like trying to put them in your bag or are

00:14:42 you I'm just grabbing them for now. And putting them on a table. Are they big? They're maybe like a 250ml. So like not small but not large. Holster the pistol and grab one brown, one yellow, and one clear one. Okay, birdie. I'm going to step outside real quick. What the hell you got there? I want to check out something with these. I They got a whole bunch of science and digging stuff here. So, what I think they're digging for something. All right. Trying to figure out something. What are you doing with them uh them flasks? What do

00:15:19 them science people do with the flask? You're not going to start mixing stuff, are you? I mean, you could produce on the ground. On the ground, huh? Well, just be careful, man. Some of that stuff could be flammable or toxic. Heck, might have a nasty gas. I I'll watch myself. Thank you. All right. Okay. Tate heads outside. Tate heads outside with his uh three flasks. Meanwhile, Birdie, you're eyeing up the door, the wall that it is attached to. And you want to What do you want to do? You want to figure out like

00:15:55 how sturdy it all is. Yeah. I mean, if this door is made of 4x4s, Birdie knows he can't kick through it. Can I see your character sheet real quick? Absolutely. Uh, how about roll a I'm going to say a difficult education. So that's half your education. All right. So you need to roll what? A 46. I rolled a 45. Oh, wait. Wait. No. You said it's it I have to take half away. Well, it's So if your education is 703, I Right. But like as an example, just for like simple math, right? If your education is uh 70, cut that in half.

00:16:35 You have to roll below half that. Ah, I rolled uh 45 over 36 and a half. Okay. Is this a round up or round down game? Let's just say in general round down. I think that's generally what I do in a general sense. Okay. Uh generally speaking, stick to that generally. Yeah. So yeah, you look at the wall and the door and you think that, you know, you're not really sure. Uh, it seems like it could be sturdy, but you know, your partner did say it seems a little fishy, and it might also be a little fishy.

00:17:16 H Birdie's going to grab the handle. Is it a round knob? Is it a lever? It is a lever. By's just going to grab it and kind of just kind of give it a good kind of shake, rattle it a little bit. Okay. So, yeah, it's like one of the lever handles that has a little like keyhole right underneath it. You grab it and give it a good shake. More like a push forward, pull back, apply force, apply force. Like does this thing feel like it was stamped together at IKEA or was it lovingly crafted by a master artisan?

00:17:55 You know, it has a a little bit of like just a very very very small amount of wiggle, but it it doesn't move very much. No, it's it's pretty stiff. Got it. But uh yeah, so that's that's what you got. What are you thinking? Uh, Birdie's going to leave it alone and well, he's going to poke around a little more. He's going to do his own cursory inspection of the bodies, but mostly with his eyes and his feet, like kind of just nudging. So, as you nudge them around with your foot and kind of look at them, they look gross.

00:18:30 Are they just straight up carbon basically? Closer to like beef jerky. Got it. No clothes? No. I mean, maybe they had clothes once upon, but no, there are no clothes on them. Sounds or it was a nudist colony. Who knows? Birdie's gonna the room that has the locked door. He's going to get a better sense of its scope. How big is it based on what he can see? Is there like an interior window that leads into this locked room? And did you say you're leaving the building to look for one? No, cuz the room is inside the building. Oh. Oh. Oh.

00:19:03 Oh. Oh. Okay. Okay. So, you're looking at the wall that holds the door to see if there's windows on it. Correct. And there should be at least two interior walls for this room, right? If not three. Yes. All right. How deep into the the main structure does this this room go? Is it like a 5x5t room? Is it a 15 by 15? No. So, you would the building in total is about 25ish feet. You're guessing without a tape measure. The walled off section is maybe 37th of the overall length of the building. Perfect. Yeah. So, it's a it's

00:19:42 a good eight 8 n ft long. Yep. All right. Uh Birdie is now done looking for little things. He's looking for a pry bar. You don't see a pry bar. Mhm. Looking around. I'll I'll roll over your previous spot hidden. the the roof that you're in is pretty barren besides the stuff that your partner found. What about the table legs? The table legs are attached to the tables. All right, Bernie's going to go over Are they Is it Are they folding tables? Are they solid oak? Um, no. They they appear to be very rudimentarily built. a couple

00:20:23 2x4s with some 2x4s with some like skinny poles and some nails. Bernie's going to try to work one of the table legs off. It would be really easy. So, I won't even make you roll for it. You go ahead and pull one of the table legs off. Birdie is going to go wedge that into the lever handle of the door, and he's just going to try to apply some force. Roll a strength check. Roll start with strength. All right, let me see what the strength check is. That's 24 under 50. Okay, now roll a a luck check. Sure.

00:21:06 38 under 45. So you pry with this table leg some You really give it some elbow grease, man. and you you break off the door handle and the wall that it's attached to kind of moves. The whole building kind of shimies a little bit. Birdie is going to back up out the front door. It's a Yeah, it seems like pretty unstable. You back out and the building still stands. But you you just got you just kind of puckered up for a second there. Oh [ __ ] All right. Tate, what is Tate doing outside? After Tate gets outside, he's

00:21:48 gonna quickly turn around and run back in. Don't mind me. Grab an empty beaker and run back outside. Not run, but like power walk, you know, hustle. He's motivated. He wants to go like 25 ft out from the buildings, right? And dump uh half the bottle of the dark brown stuff onto the ground. Take 10, 15 steps back, light a match and throw it at it. Anything happen, you take the cork out and you right away can smell uh what smells like gasoline. You would recognize this. It's a very distinctive smell and it's

00:22:33 very uncommon in this time period. Smells like gasoline a little bit. You dump it out, throw a match at it. It ignites. Okay. Tate's gonna run up to a different spot and dump kind of the yellowish fluid on the ground. Walk back. Throw a match at it. Okay. So, you unccorked the yellow one, pour that out, and then flip a match at it. No more than half the bottle. Okay. No more than half the bottle. This one smells very gross. It smells like if if for the modern listening audience, like if you just mixed every single harsh chemical

00:23:14 you have under your sink right now and kind of let it fester in some like moldy sink soup. It's pretty [ __ ] gross. He holds it away from him after smelling it while dumping some. And then you run away and you flip a match at it. It's nothing. Nothing happens. Okay, he's going to do the same thing with some of the clear. Okay, pop open the clear. Your education and all that's pretty high, so you'd probably recognize what pure alcohol smells like. Pour a little bit out, flip the match at it, it

00:23:50 lights. Two of them are flammable. Well, let's see what happens. And he's going to take his empty beaker and mix equal parts of all three of them. Okay. So, you pour the clear one and then you pour the brown one and then you start to that real stinky one. You start to pour that in and this brownish yellowish smoke starts to come up out of it. It singes the be Jesus out of your nose and starts to like really burn your eyes like really really bad. He would stop instantly. Okay. So, you you like poured a little bit in and then it's the

00:24:27 smoke up into your face. It's It's like 50% as bad as being pepper sprayed. What the What the [ __ ] We're not We're not doing that anymore. And Tate's going to Tate's going to make his way towards one of these smaller outbuildings. Okay. And he's going to take the bottle of the mixture and just huck it at the side of the building. Okay. Crash smoke. And then he takes the bottle of clear and hucks that at it. Okay. Crash splash. Where is Birdie while this is occurring? You walk outside after breaking the door handle just then as

00:25:16 he's throwing the the flasks at the building. What the hell are you doing, Tate? Tate, right as you're throwing that second flask, out comes Birdie. It leaves my hand and I watch it hit as Birdie walks out and I just look over at him. What the hell are you doing? Science, Birdie? Exactly what they were doing here. I doubt that's exactly what they were doing here. It makes some sort of burn your skin [ __ ] Well, uh, I'd say quit mixing then. By the way, I don't know. The interior looks like folks barricaded themselves

00:25:58 in there, right? I mean, tables leaning against I think so. Well, tables leaning against the shuttered windows side of the building collapsed. I mean, there was a chair chair up against the door. I mean, that Yeah, there was a there was a battle here. I suppose that checks out. Well, seeing as how you're out here breaking [ __ ] and making noise, I I really want to get inside that locked room. And uh did you make your way in? Well, I broke the handle off and felt like the whole building was going to

00:26:25 come down. So, I got an idea. What's your idea, Birdie? I'm gonna shoot that lock with the shotgun. I'm going to do it from We don't We don't want the whole building to collapse, Birdie. Well, I think we kind of do. Can I try something first? Just remember, man, the walls shook bad. What are you thinking? And Tate makes his way over towards the window. We saw the shutters from the inside and there's no nothing structural about them. I don't think they're very strong. All right. You just want to open up the

00:26:55 shutter. I think we just bash it in from out here. That's damn good plan. Tate will take his wrapped up rifle and smash out the windows. Then reel back again once he gets the windows smashed. Clear out some of the glass and try to smash through the shutter on the inside. with your with your Craig Jorgensson the the buttstock of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like he would have done this before. Roll a roll a strength check and tell me what your dice say and compare that to your strength check. My dice say 89 over

00:27:39 55. Okay. Okay. So, you do all that and then you take your rifle and give it a good the butt of your gun thuds against the shutter. Birdie, these are some nice shutters they got. H. Well, let me give it a shot. Birdie's going to grab the table leg. Okay. And he's going to assess the shutter. See if there's any way to get some leverage or if he just has to smash his way through. Looking at it, uh, you don't really see like a a super good way to get purchase with it. Like the table legs kind of thick. The window

00:28:22 is not very big. These windows are kind of like a, you know, 2 by3 situation. They're they're not large. So yeah, you you don't see. So he would just beat on it. He would grab it and similar to a butt stroke, you know, kind of a jab with it. Hey, give it a couple couple whacks and see if it's worth the effort. Okay. Well, roll a strength check and tell me what you get. I rolled an 11 under 50. That's a critical success. Okay. So, Clay Clay kind of clears out the glass and everything and then gives

00:28:59 it a good like smack with the butt of his gun. You come over with your table leg and you you give it a good good wind up. You're you're about to like butcher a hog or you're like a Spartan at the at at you know thermopoly. You're like take it Persian right through the shutter and the table leg gets kind of stuck. You've busted a a hole in it. Table light gets stuck, but you manage to pull it out, but the shutter is still shuttered. Tate's nursing his arm. Birdie is going to strategically position the table egg

00:29:41 in the hole he made and use that as a lever to push this thing in. Okay, give me a another luck check. 55 over 45 critical fail. You stick it in and you're trying to maneuver it in such a way to like really pry it open. You can feel some the table leg brushing up against something really really solid and then you go to give it another good tug. Maybe put like your body weight on it. You snap the table leg. All right. Well, that plan sucked. Try your shotgun, Birdie. Birdie's gonna take the shotgun

00:30:29 out, put it to his shoulder, and fire around right at the shutter strategically. But yeah. Yeah. Not like just in the dead center. He's going to he's going to widen the hole. All right, [ __ ] it. Boom. Are you Are you doing both barrels or just the one? Oh. Oh, he's he's a one barrel at a time kind of guy. Okay. He's economical. Yes. Okay. How how very wise of him. Okay. So, you punch a fist-sized hole right next to your table legs sized hole. What do you do? Do you think that'll flip it around and give it a

00:31:12 butt stroke right next to the hole? Well, it might just slide open now. A testing butt stroke. Okay. So, you you clearly moved something on the other side. The shutter is now it has a little play to it, maybe an inch or two. It's not opening all the way. And now the hole is large enough that you can see something like really really solid and metal is in front of it. I I think we keep trying. I mean, let's uh How high up is this shutter? It's like you got to kind of like be on your tippy toes a little bit to get up

00:31:48 to it. Tall building. Yeah, it ain't short. Let's Man, there's something leaned up against probably another actually. Uh Birdie's going to push the shutter in as far as it can go. And then he's just going to stick his hand in through the hole. Maybe it's just his fingers depending on the size of the hole and tap whatever's on the other side of it. Tung tong tong. Some pretty thick hollow metal. Some thick hollow metal. Yeah, you hear that tong type of sound. Dude, I bet you 50 Cents says there's a filing cabinet in

00:32:24 front of this thing. Uh Bry's going to push against the thing and see if there's any wiggle room to maybe get a rocking motion with it. Tate will make his way inside. Okay, Tate, what do you do inside? Birdie, what the hell happened to the door handle? Told you I broke it. He's going to try the door. See if it'll push open. It does not. Tate wants to take a look at the door and try to figure out if he can figure where the locking mechanism would be. You can see that there is a keyhole underneath where the

00:32:56 door handle was. Okay. But that's all you can visually identify. Assuming it's directly to the left of that, Tate will put his revolver an inch away and take a shot. Okay. Okay. So, you put your revolver up to the the like lock and you pull the trigger. Well, like just to the left of it trying to shear the bolt. Oh, I see. Okay. And you have a 430 cal pistol. 40 cal pistol. Yeah, 40. Okay. So, it's not small. You pull the hammer back, put it up, boom, pull the trigger, and you leave a coke can sized hole. Uh,

00:33:40 what do you do? Preparing himself to jump out the front door, he steps back and take a big [ __ ] kick at where this door handle used to be. Roll a strength check. is a 42 under 55. 42 under 55. Yes, sir. Okay. So, you give it a good You managed to get the door open. Actually, then I jump outside. Roll check. 83 over 35. You kick the door and it goes in. The building starts to shake, wobble a little bit, and then you hear something crack. As you're jumping out of the building, you hear something crack and then crumble and

00:34:34 then tumble. And then like the the build like the room that you guys were in caves in that outside wall kind of like pushes inward a little bit, but only on that side. Oh [ __ ] Looks like you got it, huh? Bird's outside. Did the whole building just collapse? That half of the building collapsed. Huh? The like the the the part that you were just in has now collapsed. Tate will uh try to sneak around the other side of the building. We just so much noise before Birdie sees him. Okay. And then what? Uh Birdie's

00:35:13 standing like I don't think that's possible because it's the there's the front door and then the window that I'm on. So he was Yeah. So you jumped out the same side that he's at he's at right now. He he like hung his head in shame and snuck around the corner. Oh, like you don't see me. I mean [ __ ] We knew that was likely to happen. Quit playing grab ass and let's uh see if we can't figure anything out with this. We going to look for stuff through the rubble now? I mean, who knows? Oh, well that mean it was the only locked

00:35:43 door in this place. Working together. Yeah. Birdie's going to assess from the outside. Okay. From the outside, the 47ths of the building that you guys were in that had the two corpses and sciency stuff and tables and what have you has collapsed in on itself. The other three sevenths of the building with the locked door that you shot open and then kicked appears to still be kind of sort of standing like the eastern wall has collapsed. And so it's kind of in this awkwardish triangle. It appears that the

00:36:19 roof is still held up by something but not as high as it used to be. And the door is open. Well, you can't see that because it is all rebel now. Okay. Where where that you that door is now inaccessible. Yeah, you know, we might have just made a ton of noise and spent some rounds for Diddley. Let's just poke around. Let's not go inside. Let's see if we can't Dude, I think this is a lost cause. Birdie? Yeah, let's check and head out. Birdie, you were trying to kind of get some leverage with that thing, right? Mhm. Is there a role you

00:36:53 think you could make that would work for that? For the leverage? Yeah. Hm. Birdie is pissed, right? Like, god damn it, this ain't supposed to work. And he's gonna he's going to grab the shortened end of the table leg that snapped, but there's still some usable left, I I assume. And he's just going to jam it into a likely looking wedge and [ __ ] heave. Okay. How heavy is your character? Uh, Birdie is I'd say he'd be 5'11, 190 pounds. Okay. So, you you do as you said, right? Stick the short end in there and then

00:37:37 give it your all. He's not going to pull a disc, you know? Right. Right. Right. But he's like like if he were to hang on it and give it his his full weight again. Yes. It's a shorter stick now, so it's a lot harder to break. Yep. You get less leverage on it, though. But, uh, it doesn't break, but you you feel the thing that you're trying to move move a little bit. He's gonna redouble his upper. It's like, "Come on, you Tate will join and help." Tate, well, I got you, buddy. You hear as you both get into it

00:38:13 and you're both like really pulling down on it. Something big and loud on the other side seems to have fallen and smashed. and you hear something big, heavy, and metal hit the ground behind the shutter. The this part of the building kind of wobbles a little bit, too. It's now more unstable than it was previously with the other half still intact, but very fortunately, it does not give way. You want to sneak in there and peek around, birdie? Yeah. Uh, yeah. Give me a give me a hand up real quick. I ain't going in right

00:38:53 away. I'm going to get my head up there and look around. Tate will kind of put his hands down so Birdie can step up and try to hoist him up a bit. So Birdie's going to have his hands on the window sill and he's going to get up so like he has plenty of room to kind of see around there. Peeking into this window with a little bit of light that is coming in like around your head and body. You are able to make out what looks like a row of lockers almost like an armory. Uh, you also see a really tall big safe. And

00:39:31 you see the back of what maybe would be a filing cabinet, but could also be more of these lockers. They are made of what appears to be rather thick metal with locks on each of them, except for the safe, of course, which has its big padlock and everything. Huh. Well, Tate, looks like we found ourselves the armory. Well, that seems pretty necessary to us now, doesn't it? Yeah. Birdie, what's in there? It's going like lockers in a safe. Can you get into the safe? Well, I mean, not without the combo or the key. It's a big safe, too.

00:40:09 Yeah, she's a sizable one. Birdie is going to look in the room and just Does this look like if I sneeze in here, it's going to crumble and kill me? Yeah, it looks like the roof is kind of being held up by the row of lockers and safe on the other end of the building. Yeah, this is bad. This is real bad. One of the lockers does look to be open, though. All right, there's an open. It looks like there's an open one. I'm going to tell you what. Here, Bernie's going to swing one leg in and like have one arm outside of the building. You

00:40:45 hang on to my arm. If I go, if I make any kind of noise, you just pull. Okay, you got it, Birdie. Birdie's gonna ease into the room. Testing the the the footing and everything. How far away is the the apparently open locker? Is this something he can reach from the window or does he have to get into the room? You would have to like get into the room. All right. Well, fortune favors the bold. I'm going in. Do you want something to hold on to? Uh, I got to go too far in for that. What is your Do you have like a

00:41:23 dexterity uh stat? I have a deck of 70. I'm going to roll it secret for you. Okay, if I may. Yeah, you may. So, you get one step in there and you're kind of holding on to the like window sill. You get one step and you're like walking on this like locker that you shot at and managed to push over and it's five locker wide array that is bolted together. There's a hole now in the back of it where you shot it. And the one that's open across from you, you very delicately holding on and then you have to let go, reach over, you grab the

00:42:04 open locker. Do you open it? Yes. Very carefully. You said your Dex was a 70, correct? Okay. So, you managed to get the locker open just a little bit, cracking it. You can see inside what looks like a helmet. It looks like the the helmet would cover like the full face. You see metal tubes into a nose piece below two rusted holes which contain broken glass. The rest of the suit, as you manage to get it open, it appears to be a light brown material and you see some red stripes. Your right foot slips a little

00:42:51 bit and you kind of like lean into that locker a little too hard and you push and and the the roof of the building starts to move and some logs peep down a little bit and start to collapse around you. What do you do, Sedeski? What does Tate Clay do? You notice this standing there right there? Birdie, get out. Birdie is going to turn and leap towards the window. Roll a dex check to grab his hand. Take Clay. 17 under 35. You managed to just grab his hand to give him just enough pull to get him halfway out the window where

00:43:28 you're able to push yourself the way rest of the way out as the building collapses in. Jesus. Holy Birdie. Yeah. You good? Uh Birdie's going to do the Kate's going to check Birdie over. Yeah. Birdie's going to pat himself down like I think so. You scratched yourself a little bit trying to get out. You weren't paying attention to the nails and splinters on the way out. You carved your arm up a little bit. Not enough to take damage, but you know, it'll hurt. Oh, yeah. That was close. Curiosity killed the cat, birdie. Man, I

00:44:05 I say we move. Well, yeah, but hold on. Let me tell you about this real quick. Let's Let's walk and talk. All right, cool. Let me uh let me get my bearings. Uh B's going to roll a cigarette real quick and take a swig of water. Seeing that canteen. Are his hands kind of shaking as he's rolling it up? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Seeing that Tate also smokes a cigarette. Okay. So, the building now is in rubble. Can see certain parts of it are a little taller than others. There's some brown from some of the scorch

00:44:38 marks. There's some green from some of the plant life that was growing into the building and now is forever buried within it. Standing there smoking your cigarettes, taking deep breaths both of the tobacco and the oxygen of the forest, you do kind of see the corner of something metal just barely poking out of just tons of, you know, logs and 2x4s and roofing materials. Is that what you're going after, Birdie? Oh, what's that? Look right there. It's some metal corner. Huh? That could be one of them one of them wall

00:45:16 lockers. Heck, that might have been corner of the safe. I don't know. Let's Let's try to clear it quick. All right. Uh you first, man. I got to got to get my bearings. Tapped him in the chest a little bit. What are you talking about? That was nothing for a guy like you. Come on, horse man. All right. All right. All right. Let's go. Birdie is going to see if there's any way to clear some debris away to take a peek at more of this. Tate alongside actually Tate's probably leading this operation right

00:45:53 now. What does Tate do? How does he lead? Judging by what's around the area, this corner, right? He's going to start clearing stuff from this corner, you know, trying to pull and move logs away or brush debris away. the odd stone or two, whatever shingle, whatever would have fallen on this. Getting up on top of the pile now, you're able to move a little bit this way and a little bit that way and kind of brush off some of this. You're able to reveal a little bit more of this corner. And it does uh you would think

00:46:31 resemble just because Birdie had mentioned it earlier. You would think Yeah, it makes sense that this would be the top of a safe. I don't think we're getting anywhere with this birdie. Yeah, it didn't look open to me when I looked at it. Didn't get a great look at it. Well, tell you what, let's just let's move a little bit more and see if this bad boy shutter. If it's Loctite, we move on. If it's a jar, well, we got some digging. Birdie, it's not a jar. It's a safe. Oh, I'm sorry. Forgot I'm dealing with a Navy man. A jar is akin

00:47:05 to being open slightly while we're moving rubble away. So, anyway, I got a peek into one of them lockers and you know some looked You ever read read Jacqu Kustoau? Yeah, that might have been on my reading list. 20,000 leagues under the sea. Well, either way, they talk about got them suits for being underwater. Big old helmets, something kind of like that was in there. It had a big helmet with the the eye pieces and tubes running all up towards its face and uh kind of a heavy brown material for the the suit

00:47:48 itself. It looks strange. It's really strange being out here. I think if we go further in, I might find out why. Yeah, agreed. Agreed. We don't have the suits now. Somebody brought the building down. Yeah, I mean, but I I don't know about you. I wasn't going to put one of them on anyway. I'm probably just unlucky. Yeah. Well, let's uh let's clear away a bit more and see if the door to this safe's open or shut tight. You're you're not really able to remove much more debris than would reveal half

00:48:22 of the very top corner. That's really it. To get to actually opening the door, you'd have to clear away a ton. You'd need like a crew of people here. Yeah, birdie. I don't think it's working. Yeah, maybe we can come back with a few horses and pull it out. But I'd like to get a horse. Can I have both of you roll a spot hidden check for me? 21 under 70, 55 under 60. Standing on top of the rubble, trying to clear it off, you guys are having your conversation. Clay, out of the corner of your eye, you notice something dark off

00:49:06 in the distance. Slaps Birdie in the arm gently. The sun is now starting to set. You guys have been here for the rest of the day. Your stomach grumbles a little bit as you realize it's maybe dinner time. And then you look over at this dark figure in the woods and you recognize it. It looks similar to what you'd seen earlier that day when you stopped to eat. Birdie, it's back. It's back. Where? Whatever we saw when we ate earlier. Where at? And he points right over there. Oh [ __ ] Just kind of darted off. Birdie, you look over to

00:49:47 where Clay just pointed. You don't see it there anymore because it darted off. Your eyes move around the woods and then you see a figure off in the distance. It's maybe 30 yards away to your left. Clay, give me some food. Give me some food. You look over there out of the periphery of your eye to your right. You look over and you see another one. There's a few of them, birdie. All right. [ __ ] your food. Get your rifle out. Something looks to shine a little bit on the one to your right just before

00:50:22 it darts into the woods. The one on the left is now gone. All right, new plan. Birdie is going to pull out his shotgun, pop the brereech, remove the spent shell, and get a fresh one in there. What's your plan, Birdie? I mean, right now we're standing on a pile of rubble, and we got unknowns running around in the woods, and they're moving quick. Kind of hope we can be friends with them, but thinks they might have been burning down stuff like this. Something tells me they ain't our friends. All right. Friends come up and they say

00:50:58 hi and they wave and they have to or they're scared of us. Yeah. I'm not getting the sense of wild animals here. I'm getting the sense of creepy dudes out in the woods sizing us up. We haven't been shot yet. I didn't see a gun. That could be a plus for us, Birdie. Hell yeah, it's a plus. Let's get moving a little bit. Well, I mean, right now we're in a clearing. That means we can see them coming, right? If we're on that trail, they could be right up on us before we know. I say we stick tight here. I'm talking

00:51:31 get our backs to something. Yeah. Well, let's do it. Probably both of us, I'm assuming, start making our way, checking our surroundings, and putting our backs to one of the cabins around us. I say we go into that bunk. We can we can barricade the door. We can cover the windows. We can get a little we can build a little fire or something in there. We can at least then we have walls around us. I'm agreeing with you. I just hope it works out better for us than it did for these guys. True. True. But it's without walls, we're just out

00:52:06 in the open. I got your back, Birdie. Let's make our way into it. All right, we're going to make our way into the into the shed while we still have daylight. Bird's goal is to get into the the bunk room and then Wait, wait. We have camping gear and [ __ ] Yeah. Okay. Do we have a means of light candles or? Yeah. I mean, you both have hurricane lantern tied to your backpack. Perfect. All right. Let's get in there. How about this? I'm going to stand right out at the front door. You get in there and just kind of set it up

00:52:40 how we need to have it set up. And I'm going to keep an eye out here. Sounds like a plan. Can I have you both roll a listen check? I rolled a 9 under 60. I rolled a 96 over 60. As you guys jump down off of the pile of rubble, you look around. You don't see anything right away, but Birdie, you can hear shuffling and and twigs cracking all around the clearing just as the sun starts to hit that point where it's turning pink. You can hear just on the other side of the rubble. This All right, move it. Move to that

00:53:17 right now. Move to the bunker now. Moving. We got We got folks close. You hear footsteps quickly from multiple directions. Birdie is going to He's going to run to the shed. Head on a swivel. So, you guys hop off of the rubble and you're on your way to bunk shed. Yes. Uh and you hear footsteps. from behind it. No, because I can hear them. Yeah, I can guesstimate. Are they 10 feet away from me or 30 feet away from me? Like they they are like directly on the opposite of the rubble about to come around the corner. So they

00:53:56 are maybe 15 to 25 ft you would guess based on your listen check. And the pitterpatter of the footsteps is pretty loud over there, but you can hear more around you. It's hard to guess exactly how many individuals are coming towards you. Birdie is just going to tight and he's going to turn around 180° and pull that shotgun up right down the the side of the building waiting for him to come around. What's going on? Gun up. Tate will pull out his pistol. Have birdie's back. What's your decks, Clay?

00:54:32 35. And yours is 73. Correct. Birdie, you are first in initiative order. Being able to hear this sound, you flip around and look and the corner of the rubble right around it comes this person. It's a person. That's the the the first thing that comes to mind is a person. Two legs, two arms. One of the arms is holding what looks like 2x4, some some kind of clubbing thing. and you look up and you see I mean essentially the same thing you saw in that locker. You see something along those lines. Yeah. And

00:55:09 it's running at you really quick. Uncomfortably quick. Uh especially for the like noises it's making. Is it faster than a normal human being can run? No, it is a normal human speed though fast. Not like the fastest not like Hussein bolt or something, but it is it is quick. Quick enough to like Whoa. But you are faster. You turn around. It is your turn. What do you do? I'm shotgun to shoulder and I'm putting around center mass. One or both barrels? One barrel. Go ahead and roll to shoot. All right. 57. What is your shotgun stat?

00:55:47 60. So you hit. Okay. Birdie turns around, brings the shotgun up to his shoulder, and he looks down the barrels, and he's braced. He's ready. He sees that guy run around the corner and he just lines those barrels up right on his chest. Right. He's not going for the head. He's not, you know, and he boom pulls the trigger. A nice fistsized hole opens up. You can see the forest from behind the thing for just the blink of an eye. A single frame. It goes flying backwards three feet. Its back hits the ground and

00:56:23 it slides a little bit. It does not move. Next up, you hear more feet racing towards you. Clay, directly to your 2:00, right? If you're facing the bunk house that you guys are running toward, are you like still facing the bunk house? I assume it's still It hasn't been your turn yet. Yeah, I I said I took uh 36. So So yeah, to your two o'clock, you can see one of these black silhouettes is rushing out of the forest. It looks humanoid. You see a head, arms, legs. You see a a a brownish kind of uniform with some really faded

00:57:02 red lines throughout it. And did you ever describe what the thing in the locker looked like to him? Yeah, like a deep sea diving suit. Right. Right. Right. Right. And you see something that looks very similar to this. Oh, like a gas mask kind of. Yeah. Yeah. And it runs out of the out of the forest, out of the woods into the clearing. It is like 20ish uh like feet from you. Then you hear another one coming. You don't see this one, but it sounds like it's opposite of the bunk house. It is now your turn.

00:57:36 Birdie, I got two more. He has his revolver out. That's one shot. Or you would have one or three. If you fire three times, all three of them are difficult. So, you would take half of your actual like shooting stats. Okay, he's just gonna put his arm out. Bow, take a shot at him. And I roll a 60, which meets my skill of 60. Okay, roll damage. Six points of damage. Okay, you fire at it and you manage to hit it right in its left shoulder. It recoils. Its body really feels that impact. It doesn't fall on its back, but it is

00:58:15 clearly hurt pretty bad. You hit it somewhere that I assume Clay has shot men before. Oh, absolutely right. Something is wrong here. It doesn't go down the way that a man would. Uh, having been shot where you just shot it in kind of the left shoulderish area. Most people outside of an extreme case of adrenaline would be like knocked back down. But this thing kind of there's like this big puff of dust behind it and it recoils backwards, but it doesn't do what a normal person would do having been shot that way. Then

00:58:51 from the other side of the bunk house comes a third one. It runs you you can hear it coming from the woods and then it comes just around the corner. Right then, Birdie, it's your turn. All right. Do I still hear another one? Cuz I heard more than one where I was facing. No. So you you can hear from where you're standing, you can hear the one on the other side of the bunk house. And you can maybe see it a little bit peeking out from the other side. It would get cover if you shot at it. And directly

00:59:21 behind you, you can see the one that Clay just shot. Birdie is going to turn to his left, checking out the bunker. He's waiting for the one to come around the bunker. I want to add something a little bit. So, when it comes around the corner of the rubble, coming around the corner, you see almost exactly what looks like what was in that locker. Two glass eye holes with a large nose piece and a tube going to some container presumably behind it. Uh, this like brown uh like thick fabric, but it's ripped up

00:59:54 and there's buttons missing. Uh, and these like faded red streaks. Birdie is going to turn to his left to ready up for the one that is on the opposite side of the bunker. The bunk house. Okay. So, yes, if Birdie wants to take aim on the Are you aim you're aiming at the side of the bunker that you can or not bunker. Uh side of the bunk house. Bunk house where I believe I can hear this thing and I'm pretty certain it's going to come out this side. Okay. So, kind of the kind of the left side backing up. Clay. Okay, you're readying

01:00:30 your action, Clay. The one that you just shot continues to run toward you, and you can now very clearly see and hear this this it has this like really gross labored breathing through whatever apparatus kept the inhabitant alive at one point. just like and it it manages to recover from that shot and close that 20 ft up to you and then it goes to take a swing but it is not its turn. It used its turn to get up to you right then the other one on the other side of the bunk house you can hear it birdie moving up down the wall

01:01:12 and then you get a shot at it. Go ahead and roll to hit. That is an 11. So, critical success. Nice. Go ahead and roll damage with a extra die. Would that be close combat or no? He would get the the full 4d6. Yeah. 16. Boom. So, right as it gets past the bunk house and it's starting to close the distance toward Clay. Right as you get a full shot on it, you pull that trigger, hammer hits, the barrel ignites, and just a full load of buckshot hits that son of a [ __ ] right in the head. The head, neck, and a little bit of the

01:01:56 collar bone is just [ __ ] vaporized. The impact is so violent that that the the body doesn't go flying backwards. It just kind of the head vaporizes, goes away, and the body just crumbles right there. It is now Clay's turn. This thing is up close to you. Close enough to start swinging at you. Not wanting to ruin too much of whatever it's wearing. Tate still arms outstretch revolver trained on him. Trains the revolver towards the heart area. Pulls another shot off. If you're going to specifically aim at the heart, I will I

01:02:31 will make you roll disadvantage. I'm sorry. Okay. Okay. Go ahead. Feel like that's fair. Sure. That is a 10 o and a 33 under 60. You shoot at it. It recoils, runs up towards you. You hear more movement to your right as something goes around the bunk house. Birdie. Boom. On overwatch blows it the [ __ ] away. You with this one up in your face. Pull your gun up. Try to shoot it in the heart. Roll damage. I rolled seven points of damage towards the chest area. Seven points, you hit it and you put a nicesized hole

01:03:08 in its chest and dust kind of goes out the back. It goes flying backwards and hits the dirt and it doesn't move. Its hand twitches a little bit. The item it was holding with Malice previously releases and it continues to twitch a little bit before it stops moving. Birdie is going to breach his shotgun and reload real quick. Heat. Heat.