Stardust Rhapsody | Ep. 3 | Cold as Ice
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Welcome to Legends of Avantris. I'm Labouche, and you're listening to Stardust Rhapsody. Here's what happened last time.

You find yourself at the precipice of a stairway that leads down and into the asteroid. I've downloaded a schematic of the compound. Nice! And that's not a fucking exaggeration, this thing is a compound. I will commit a horrible war crime if we can force the doctor to pay Veep Kidd. There's one more room, right? How do I recreate it? There's no time left. They'll be here soon. You have to let me finish. You don't understand.

That doesn't matter because you're worth a barrel of credits. You're landing at the end of the stairs. Two massive creations. Why don't you pick out something your own size? Oh, yeah! You don't understand. You have to let me finish. If you don't, we will all be killed. You're fucking cloning humans. What's the point? The boss, they sent me here.

Provided me everything I needed to continue my research. His neck begins to elongate and bulb.

As an explosion bursts out, this asteroid is beginning to explode. I fucking knew it! We gotta get the fuck out of here right now! As the hangar bay is closing, you're able, as it's shutting, you catch the faintest glimpse of the asteroid. As it explodes, a circlet expands from its center. Looks like we got out of there in the neck of time. The Rhapsody takes off into space. Bounty turn it.

Space Station 777 to the boss. Space. Out here, the starshine is so piercing, your path is often filled with light, purpose, and promise. It can be so bright, sometimes you don't realize the light has faded until it's long gone.

The Rhapsody cuts a slow but purposeful path through the ether, leaving in its wake a shattered meteor of horrors. The words of the bounty fill your mind as you think of the children in the tubes and the works of the doctor. For a moment, you sit quietly as the picture of Maze rotates in front of you. The words "Bounty Turn In" at Space Station 777 to the boss.

You find yourself sitting in the living room right at the monitor, everybody else sitting where you might find yourself classically after a successful bounty, if you reflect upon it that way.

And you... your ships have been left in the hangar bay currently under repair after your adventures. And you know you have about 30 minutes until you arrive at your destination. What are y'all doing? So I've just read that... have I gotten a chance to sort of reread the bounty? Yeah, absolutely. I would say it's probably at this point, it's probably like a couple of hours past the events on the meteor.

You're like, you're heading back to the space station. You're closing in on it. You've definitely had an opportunity to reread the bounty. I set the monitor like silent. Stop. What? How did I miss this? What's wrong? What is it? The person that took this job out is listed here as the boss. No! No!

What is Bruce Springsteen doing in outer space? Of course it is. Who is the boss? Oh! Oh! I guess that's a fair point, though. Maybe this is a different "the boss." I think you're just being hopeful. Maybe a couple people go by "the boss." Hopefully. Well, I don't know why the fuck he would be so scared of this fella. But maybe it's a good thing that he's fucking dead and we can turn him in alive.

I mean, after what he did to those kids, I don't think there was any chance that he was leaving that lab alive. And for all we know, I mean, it seemed like he knew his time was up. As far as I'm concerned, bounty's successful. We have what we need. We make the exchange and we move on. I guess that's fair. We still have his head. But what about everything that happened?

His nose is like... It's just... It's on his neck. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just so cheap. It's just floating inside of you. No, no, no. I took it out. I put it in a space mason jar. A space mason jar. Oh!

Oh, I'm feeling real down, Doc. Oh, really? Why do you feel so lonesome and depressed? I didn't say that. Oh, I feel like nobody. My head like turtles in a little bit.

Very funny, Chuckles. Chuckles, do you have to do that with every head that we turn in for a bounty? I mean, it's a hilarious joke! There are so many punchlines that a feathered head sets up! But why keep using the same one? This is the 24th time!

Well, you know, you can't argue with the old class. I wish we could. - Sandy's just like sitting with her head in her hands thinking, like, I'm thinking and I'm gonna say it out loud. Do you guys think that the boss would do this to Jackson too? Will more people do this to Jackson? Are there any other Jacksons? - The fact that he wanted him dead or alive, he's either trying to hide,

what happened or his goals have changed. That's what I'm scared of. But with everything we saw I don't think we can just turn this one in and move on. Well I don't like the idea of furthering this jackass' plans. Especially given the installation he made on the good doctor there. It almost seems like we were just insurance.

Either way, I mean, we can take the jackass' money though, right? Nothing wrong with that. That's of course, yeah. Thank you, Rhett. You're speaking, uh, you know, intelligently here. A job is a job. We don't need to get wrapped up in anything that doesn't concern us, alright? There are plenty of credits to be made out there. Plenty more jobs for us to take. Do we know anything else about the boss other than what we learned on the asteroid or what his name is on the bounty?

Well, I guess we're about to meet him in not too long. He's the one we're turning the bounty into on Space Station 777. Kavir, have you heard of this boss before? Uh, roll a... Let's see what the checks are. Roll a... How to D&D history. Roll a history check. History check? Sure. That's a 14 and a 15.

With a 15, you would have never met him, but you wouldn't necessarily have ever heard the name before, but you might be able to draw a couple parallels to understand that there are several less than reputable people that run casinos in Space Station 777, and you would assume that this is one of them.

Well, I mean, given my excellent choice in the company I keep for work, you present party exempted, of course, he's probably one of the guys that runs the casino there in the space station we're heading to. So I say we start knocking on doors, we'll probably find him. Casino? Come on, this is perfect!

We turn in the head, we get our credits, we have a nice drink, a nice meal, finally get some good food, and we relax for a change, all right? As long as you don't head back to the craps table. Just a little bit of gambling, and my share is my share, all right? That's fair. I just don't want you to complain about all the pies being gone when you're out of money. Well, no, we won't be out of money when I hit it big on the floor. What?

"Dani, I'll teach you all the rituals to get the best result for the plot machine." As long as I can have the food! "Oh yeah, if you get free food and free drink, and you don't have to dip, the girl can bring them." It's entirely optional! Chaotic evil chuckles. That's fucked up. "He'll keep bringing you drinks, even if you don't do them!" That's fucked up.

Oh, yes, that's true. Well, maybe this time there'll be slightly less chaos and bloodshed.

Well, and let's not forget that we gotta use a good portion of the reward for all the fucking repairs I have to do to all your ships. How much could it possibly cost? Like, ten credits? That's pretty funny. How much is a banana, Michael? $20? Is that a fucking joke? Well, I don't know. What do repairs cost? I mean, when I got super repaired by Rhett during our battle with the Dinobots...

I said, when it asked me what service I wanted, I said premium most expensive so I could get out there real quick. What does that cost? It's probably like, I don't know. We're talking in the... $15? $15? We're talking certainly in the thousands. Oh.

Well we gotta run real big at the Flops Band-Aid. We got a tall order ahead of us. Maybe I can try and plug in again. Oh, that's right.

We'll try it this time. I don't know if your dino tech is gonna really interfaith with their... their "cafino tech". I'm the "cafino player". That is not what you said last time. Well, I thought it'd be funny if you tried. I don't want to get roughed up by the pit boff this time. Okay, I'm ready to go, but we must not forget about Jackson.

I don't think there's much to do about Jackson besides remember. Uh, you know... Nothing's surviving that explosion. What about Perfect Jackson? That's right, we don't know what happened to him. Well, I mean, just because we didn't see the body explode into a million pieces, we saw the asteroid explode into a million pieces. I think you can presume. How many times has presuming gotten us in trouble? Yeah, that's a fair point.

I've learned one thing: if you don't see them die, you can't assume they're dead. Well, look... But you know what they say about presuming? It makes a "prev" out of you and me. The one-way ticket to the top! If we just keep presuming, we'll be president of space! That doesn't make any sense. Kvir makes a good point, alright? That's a pretty good rule of bounty hunting in general.

We don't have a body. We don't see a body. We can't count anything being concrete there. Either way, if Perfect Jackson is out there somewhere flying around in his little pod, maybe he's got little boosters on the bottom. Somebody scooped him up. R2-D2, make me a gin and tonic. I would like to eat that. Well, maybe one day.

All right, Hank. How are we doing? It's this moment that Hank alerts you that you have an incoming cause. You are now breaking into the section of space where you can start to see the space station as you look out. And it cuts a brilliant splash of colors and lights all throughout the sky. You see...

Just neon eruptions in all spaces. Greens, blues, golds, everything fires out in all directions as you approach this. You come across a massive, what looks like solid gold-plated space station that spins like a top.

Or like a roulette wheel. As you approach, you can see giant, gorgeous structures erupting out of every aspect of it. It is enormous. You would not be able to walk from one end to the other if you had a thousand cheeseburgers of time. That's a lot of time. Like, at least... Did someone say cheeseburgers? This is the Space Casino.

Yes, they clearly tried to keep it very low key. You can see as the side, it's kind of this large open circle that rims the outside of the space station plated in gold. You can see 777 etched in the side. Or it like embossed in the side. Oh, I get it. Get what? You get it like slots. Oh, yes.

Very clever, Space Caffeino Botha. Very clever. Should we just call it Space-ino? It saves time. Yes, I think so. Or just Casino. Oh, what about Triple Stab?

Yeah, triple theft sounds pretty cool actually. It does feel like if we refer to everything as space X, we can just ditch the space. It's implied after a certain point. Not if you are on a planet. Then we have to distinguish. Well, all planets are in space. That is true. But when you are on a planet, it feels different. You have a planet drink and a planet casino.

Casino. Hank alerts you that a call is incoming. Oh yeah, my phone's ringing. It's not a video chat, but just an audio line comes over. God damn it. The Rhapsody. Hello, Rhapsody. Hello, who is this?

If you could follow the directions on your map, you will dock in a special docking station. Oh, just customer service. Alright, is there like a number or are you just gonna, you know, just give us the cords? Follow the directions on your screen. It should be simple to navigate.

Alright Hank, I got this one. I'll get in my pilot's chair and I'll take control. And I'll start to follow the directions on that screen. Just as you and another three lines of dock. It's like a cartoon hand. Is this unusual?

Or does this kind of thing happen normally when we are doing bounty stuff? You would know in very legitimate, very high-end... If you were approaching a solid...

base as opposed to any kind of ramshackle space station you may come across. They wouldn't do something like this. You would just fly in and park in public parking. This is clearly the effect of what feels a little bit more like a concierge service. It's very regulated. The intake is only for those who are welcome to be there. Well, then I don't even blink. Yeah.

I didn't know we were doing so well. Nobody be nervous. This is normal.

On your screen will pop up as you're looking out and you see the space station extending in front of you, you will see a selection of dots almost that just like kind of begin to geomap your travel in front of you and as long as you stay on that course it will pull downward just slightly and around to the side of the space station and you will be directed up into a docking station.

Try to fly through all the golden rings to You do so The ship heals as you go through Fancy don't you think wait chuckles are you some like diamond platinum high roller her level of their loyalty program?

Oh, let me see if I can-- I need to check all of my membership cards. And I pull out a wallet, like a comically large wallet, and just like the photo holder, and they're all like member clubs all on the space casinos. I was absolutely convinced you were gonna 52-card pick up all of your-- Uh...

Oh yeah! Look right here! Oh, it's expired. Maybe they'll remember me. Other way! Look, we're gonna follow this in. He doesn't have directions to where the fucking boss is, so I think you're right. We gotta have to either ask around... I doubt we can, you know, I doubt it's public knowledge where he's held up. I mean, given the fact that he's called "the boss" in quotation marks means he probably doesn't want to be found too easily.

And can we keep that head hidden? Maybe give it to Kavir so we don't send anybody off? This is a nice place. Oh, you mean this. Oh, I can put it in my hat! Oh, no, my head pops back out. I can put it in my hat, I mean, if not a rabbit, but if Kluith enough. It ends up the same way. Oh, hey guys, you can play a lot of slaw. That's how you get a hat head. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

And I will continue. Oh, oh, oh! Heads up, Rhett! Turn left! You do turn left. You follow the pings on your star map as you fly down and into the hangar bay. You...

Opening up in front of you is a massive, ornate space. Far bigger than any hangar bay. Maybe not any hangar bay you've ever been in, but this is an enormous...

luxury space. It's not rinky-dink. It's not dirty. You can tell immediately that it's very clean. Lined along every edge of the hangar you see ornate ships. You know to be incredibly expensive. They're fast. They work well. They would overtake you in any kind of space movement, but they are classically ugly. Um...

Wow! This is not room keeping. No, this is a hell of a lot nicer than Electrum Nugget. Bravo! Bravo, Mike!

Not like his Electrum is paid, but I couldn't help myself. The electric nugget had really good nuggets. It really did. Really good. That's all that was good, though. Are they all uniform in their design? Like they're part of a squad or...

No, you're looking at like Tony Stark's garage, you know with like luxury spaceships on every side They're just like, you know, they're reminding us just how poor we really are. Exactly. Yeah, nobody nobody flies these space spaceships You know, they're just there for for the status But they're not like it's not squashed. It's very clearly like an ornate luxury collection. It's the high roller. Yeah, like oh, yeah, oh

Do we think this could be the boss's hand? Anything's possible at this point. Was he expecting us? I don't know. I'd have to imagine he knows who the fuck we are. And I'm guessing he has some kind of intel of what fucking happened. So I wouldn't be surprised. A guy like this who puts out a hit on someone like the Doctor probably has his ducks in a row. We should be prepared. And I've been like...

beer gut belly, like, laying back in the seat, and now that we're arriving, I'm gonna stand up and hit a few buttons on my chest console, and it'll, like, shh! It's like Homer Simpson when he sucks in his dick. I am ready to go. Uh, and you do this, don't you?

All right, Hank, keep an eye on the ship. Get started on repairs. We won't be too long, I don't think. I'll give him a scratch, and I'll get up from the chair, and... All right, I'll hit the button on the...

What do they call that? Like, I don't know. Ramp? Yeah, the ramp. Bay or whatever. It'll go down. And head out. Your cargo door kind of descends, and you all begin to walk down the ramp. At the end of it, you're met by what seems to be a robot butler. Black tuxedo, gray slacks, black shoes, very, like, you know, metallic face, and

The boss has been expecting you. That answers that question. I feel a little underdressed. Am I okay in this? You look terrible. You will have to change before we can enter Elysium. And he gestures behind him at a flight of stairs. I'm gonna run towards the robot and say hello and try and shake its hand. Hello, my friends! Are we safe here?

Its arms don't move. They're folded behind it. I'm just like... Oh, that's cold. Look at you. I promise I do not have tricks like chuckles. You are safe in Elysium as long as you have the bounty. If you do not, you will be killed. We've got the bounty. Then enjoy the wardrobe. Don't.

Don't worry, here. I think the battery's right behind your ear. And we'll reach out. There's not an ear. I just reached behind the slide and it said, Go use the battery! Oh, you had it the whole time, Mr. Robot Butler!

There's like a digital mouth and for a very brief moment you think you catch the faintest glimpse of just like... Oh god! A single pixel? Yeah, a single pixel raises up on one side for an instant. I literally dunk the head into my hat as it gets bigger and... Please be careful. Change and we will head up into Elysium. And I will escort you to the boss.

Is the robot butler insinuating that we need to go back on the bebop? He's presented us with a wardrobe. He's pointed at a room you can go into and a selection of clothes. All right. You heard the robot. Do you have any clothes for a motley in? I've got a bit of a yogi bear build. I don't know if they generally tailor that commonly. Hey, boo-boo.

Anything you seek can be found at Elysium. Oh, how about that? Will any of these outfits fit over my suit? Anything you seek can be found at Elysium. Let's just get this over with. I hate this stuff. And I'm going to, yeah, I'll have to do the wardrobe. All right. I wonder if there's cheeseburgers in the pocket.

Oh, or at the very least, Beets-churgers! Is that anything? Oh, anything! Oh gosh! Oh, you know the play is actually to get a cheeseburger and a double-decker of cheeseburger and a double-decker of Beets-churgers and pull apart the cheeseburger and stick the Beets-churgers inside. What is that? Delicious. Wow. Give me five, give me five. Oh yes, we're gonna order so many, JMP. Oh!

You go into the wardrobe room. It's just a small section right off of the hangar bay. Just, you get the sense, anybody who might be flying in, traveling from a longer distance. It's like a little bit of, you know, there's showers, locker rooms, things that can be locked away, but there's also a section where you can select new clothes should you choose.

And anything you'd seek can be found there. You will find that everything is in your size. I'm gonna head straight to the new clothes. I'm not gonna look at the used clothes section, I'm just gonna head straight to the new clothes. Come here. Yes. Will you take my suit and hide it away? Yes, absolutely, my friend. I will take my helmet.

put it down, release myself into a blobby goo, unzip, uncheckle, unconnect all the things and roll it up, stuff it into the top of the helmet and hand it over to Kabir like a gift-wrapped present. And now I'm basically just one big ooey blob as I start to look through the clothes to find a suit or something. Um...

Everyone roll a group performance check. Oh! Charisma. Group performance. Oh, natural fucking 20. Yay! Yay!

Plus zero. 17. 17? I don't know if it's worth shifting with these dice. Yeah, I got a 15. 15? Okay. Four. How many twists do we have? It is what it is. I got an 11. 11? Okay. 25. Oh my gosh.

Uh, so you all go through, you start shifting through a couple of things. Oh, I think, you know, this looks like it might fit. That looks like it'll do. Uh, Rhett is the first to step out. Uh, you have found a, uh, like, uh,

gray-blue suit, like a city skyline color. A large, brimmed, sharp hat complements its top. And accompanying it, what you've also decided to put on, is a white trench-like overcoat. Not designed to have your arms actually fit through, it just rests over your shoulders and flows behind you like a cloak with every step you take.

You have a tie, just like a standard necktie dripping down from the end of the suit and you can be in whatever color you choose.

Is this tacky? I feel like this is too much. No, you look great. Does it make me look stocky? No, you always look stocky. You look great. Stocky's your thing. I guess that's a good point. But you make it look good in that. Yeah, you're looking good, big guy. Looking good. I just found one of those pushy sales bots and they just told me what to do. So, I mean, I just trust them, but...

You look very dapper. All right. I kind of like the hat. Hats are very in. Remember, you can put things in there. Oh, yeah. Does it have an interdimensional portal to honk space?

You pull the hat off and you look in and swirling within it you see rows of jagged sharp teeth going *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting* *Grunting*

I think 25. 25, okay. Chuckles is the next one out. A simple pinstripe suit. You've decided, you've opted to keep your gigantic clown shoes and you maintain your bowler cap. But on that, you have a large peak lapel design suit with

with a wide band on it, and it is in stripes of black and white. Oh! With matching pants. Look at this! This is what all of the made men in my serial shows wear. Let's do this. Okay, I'll grab this. Oh wow, it's even made for a motley. Here we go. Oh!

Okay, my shoes and my hat don't really match and I'll say, I'll go, out of my eyes, there'll be an MS Pink color picker and I'll point and I'll press the bucket and I'll press white and black and I'll go, boop!

Like one of those kid pics apps

I mean, yeah, I will have kid pics for all five of you who know what that is. I'm gonna load up Hypercard! Yeah. Unbelievable. How do I look? Do I look like a real wide guy, eh?

I don't say this often, but you look respectable. Oh, thank you, Kavir. Yeah, I'm with Kavir. You should dress like that more often. Oh, should I? Should I really mix up my color scheme? Oh, I guess I gotta mix up. Hold on. Boop.

and I'll do the color picker on my face too, and all my reds and blues will just turn to black and white, and I'll look kind of like a serious gangster clown. Like a flippin' noir clown? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, I'm so monotone. Gosh, I have a black nose instead of a red one. It's so...

It's just jazz. No, I scream. It's just the female of the Godfather.

That happens exactly. Fucking brilliant. That happens exactly. Dandy, you find a dress. It is that of a flapper style. You find pearls to complement it and a headband that will wrap around the single feather extending out of it. The dress has beautiful sequins.

It is very flashy and gorgeous. Wow, this is fun. I'm going to start swirling the beady skirt around and checking out the feather, wondering what type of bird this came from. What dad did make this? And the pearls. Dani, have you ever had the opportunity to dress up like this? No. Well, enjoy it. This is fun. You look good. You're doing it well.

I kind of look like a cake. That would be really good. You look like you're ready to cut a rug. Let's go. Okay, here you go. I'll pull up a rolled up rug and a giant pair of scissors. Why am I doing this? That's what you do when you dress like that. Quick, quick, quick, cut the rug, cut the rug. Or else it's having you in a bad luck. Oh, gosh. Now that's the proper caper. Oh.

Um...

Kvir, you have found a white, almost turtleneck style sweater, thin wire frame sunglasses with very dark lenses. What? Damn! Okay. You, over top of it, a brown suit jacket with brown matching pants, and you have slide jet black velvet shoes.

I have to say, I am surprised they would have something I like, but I really like this. Man, having to follow up Kvir is going to be tough. I think you might pull off those shades better than you would, though. I don't disagree with you.

Pike, you have found a very traditional tuxedo, double-breasted, with a black bow tie. You have, should you choose so, sleeves pushed up as you would classically wear on your jacket. And you have found a...

A sharp magenta pocket square that sits in your breast pocket. As I'm changing, I would mutter to myself, "I hope they don't lose my jacket," as I'm leaving my normal jacket with them or whatever.

I would not do anything with my hair. I would leave it there, and I would still have the same beat-up pack of cigarettes. I wouldn't transfer them over to anything fancy, and I would just stick them in my inner breast pocket. You'd do so. You'd do so. And, Labouche, you have found a... You have found gray suit pants and a black...

I'm still without my suit and I'll see it lying down there and I'll just sort of like

sploosh down and enter all of the various arms and legs of the suit and just sort of form a general humanoid shape into it. And then you'll see my eyes come out of one of the leg pants and be like, nope. Come out of one of the arms, wrong again. And then finally I'll find the neck hole. Does this sound like a movie? No.

Eventually I find myself in the correct configuration. You beba towards your suit and clothes, and as you get there, what was once a flat sheet of cloth on the changing table just starts to fill out as you form into it. But that beer gut is sort of back in there. I'm lumpy in parts. I'm not quite doing the best job without the pressure of my suit being what it is. Well...

If we can all keep it together, we might actually pull this off. Looking good, guys. Oh, thank you. We all look really great. Why don't we just dress like this normally? I feel like we'd be a lot more effective criminals...

There's too much work. We can't afford it. I think we all look better this way, and I'll tighten my tie and my head will get a little bit bigger. It also restricts movement. I feel a little constrained in this. You do have the tuxedo designed to kind of pull your shoulders back for posture. It's a little tighter in the chest, and you would find that you can't extend. You don't have full extension of your arms forward. The other question I was going to ask was, would it be out of place for me to be wearing my golden gauntlet?

Not at all. Not keeping it on? Not at all. It's like jewelry. Yeah, it looks like ornate jewelry. Okay.

So my frame is normally very narrow shoulders and then it goes wide like Yogi Bear. But this, for the mobster, it's incredibly wide. You're like, "Swearing it off!" Like the mobsters from the old Lany Tunes. And I'll look like, "Well, I don't want to steal Red Thunder, but do I look boxy in this?" I was fully expecting Chuggles to pop out in exactly what Dandy's wearing. Like, "Ahh!"

Something does look a little off, Chuckles. You feeling alright? I feel great! Okay, you look good. I just can't tell what's different. You're like literally inverted. Are you ready? Let's get this over with quickly. Yeah, we're ready enough. It's hard to hold this shape. Now or never. Yeah, we're coming.

You all start to walk out of the changing room. You see this butler droid standing there. As you file out one by one, he looks you all up, down, right and left.

That is much better. But for a moment he pauses on the bouche, and you can see that you two are wearing almost the exact same outfit. Oh no! And you see that one pixel just bounce up on the left side of his face. Follow me up the stairs.

And he'll turn and start walking towards the other end of the hangar bay. You'll see an expanse of stairs that kind of run up to a gold inlaid door. The hangar is kind of like a gray polished steel. But this golden door heads out. And from behind it, you can start to hear the sounds of music. Um...

Oh.

In front of you, halls of gold. You see waterfalls at every corner of the room. You see people dancing, singing, trays of food, of drink going from here and there. You see tables spread out along the floor. The carpeting is red silk everywhere you can find. It is the most lavish space you have probably ever been in.

And imagine the track No Sleep Till Brooklyn, Prez, as the door swings out and you walk out in slow motion right at the front. Pike, Kavir, Dandy, Chuckles, Laboosh, as you enter into the casino right behind this butler droid. Follow me and I will take you to meet the boss. As soon as I take my first step on the silk carpet, I'm...

It's just a little slick. And I will start walking, but it's clear that I'm scurrying a little bit. Whatever I'm made of does not interact with me. Do you need a pair of sticky squeakers? They're not helping. See if you get used to it, and then I'll pull out an extra pair. That'll be a last resort. I'll take them.

Are you sure? Yes. I reach in my hat and pull out another pair.

And they're kind of like... I'll take the shoes and I'll put them behind my existing feet and from behind my ankles other feet will grow into them. And now I feel more comfortable and can walk forward without issue. Okay, I'm sure we'll be able to get those off at some point. The bush is now walking throughout the casino in the front two sections of feet wearing giant squeaky clown shoes in the back two sections of feet wearing much smaller black wingtips.

It's incredible. You make your way through these halls. The sounds of music, of laughter, of success, bells ringing, people cheering. You are, the adrenaline is starting to course through you. You are wrapped up in the energy of this space. It is intoxicating.

When something catches the corner of your eye, or you might even consider it like, we're here to meet the boss. Why don't we play a game or two as we're getting ready to go? As you might be looking around at the tables, you'll see that most of them are full. But your attention will be drawn to one.

Because there is a loud, jeering player at a table. It's very similar to Kilovax, a very large creature. Dark slate gray skin, giant jaw, almost look like he's made of stone.

You'll hear him call out, "Nobody can beat me!" And he's slamming the table, he's taking drinks, he's not tipping. He is just making a scene. And as you come upon it, the butler pauses for a moment and snaps his fingers.

out of what feels like nowhere these two not as big as this creature but these two large creatures start to just like casually flop back and forth across the floor they are big pink

large craniums as well, kind of slicked back, large protruding ears but fall down their face and long whiskers come out from either side. They're wearing nothing. They have white stomachs. They're covered in kind of a fur. The only thing that is a little odd is each one of them has two giant gauntlets at the end of their arms.

And they approach this player and say nothing. What do you do, Wong? You're not getting me up from this table? I'm winning too hard! They continue to say nothing, but it is clear that he's now being asked to leave the table.

He leaps up. You're not gonna pull me away! I'm winning! You can't stop this winning streak! He pulls back a massive fist and throws it at the first one of these guards. As his arm moves through the air, stone erupts out of his skin and forms at the end of his knuckles. You know that if he was throwing this at you, you would not want it to connect.

Almost lazily, the first guard raises a hand and catches the punch effortlessly. As it connects with his gauntlet, the rocks disappear immediately. Catches the fist and throws the other fist into his stomach, and the player collapses. And he says, it's time to go. One of the guards says that. And they both pick him up from either arms, and they carry him off.

It seems as though the boss will be occupied for about 20 minutes. Here are 1,000 credits. Enjoy whatever game you may. For each of us? For each of you. Oh! No. Well, thank you. Wait a second. All right, Captain. I'm going. Ha ha ha!

You turn to talk and there's a paper cloud. Yeah! Your hat stays there for a second and then it's gone. That's exactly what happened. All the rest of you, let's not get too distracted, all right? We're still on the clock. We still got a job to do. This is a lot of money. I will not be spending this money on gambling. It is Elysium Casino Credits.

Think of it like funny money. It's gone if you don't use it. Can we purchase drinks with it? Or is it just for gambling? You would know that the drinks are free. Can we purchase food with it? You would know that the food is free. Wow. Listen, Rhett, you know I'm not a big gambler. I'm just going to play a couple hands so I can get a free drink or two. Come on. And that's fine. I think it'd be in Pilates if we didn't use it. Shoot, let's use it. But...

Let's not get too fuckin' crazy like Chuckles is probably gonna do alright. No one can control Chuckles, and that's just the laws of nature. It cuts to the waterfall. Chuckles has found his way to a top of one of the waterfalls and leaps for a moment, pauses directly into the air before taking the shape.

Before taking the shape of a large, bulbous, black and white cannonball as he crashes into the pool below, splashing water at everyone beneath. And they're loving it. The crowd is starting to eat it up. They think it's part of the show. This is so exciting! Do you want to all sit at the same table? This is more fun.

Well, it depends for what. Roulette? I'm more of a blackjack guy myself, and it might give us an opportunity to kind of space out and see some different things. Okay. I should have left that part out. It was implied. To out and see some different things. You mentioned a lot of the tables are full. Are there any that are...

Half empty, completely empty. If you start to look through kind of what games you can play before you start asking for them, the first table you come across that you would all be able to sit down at, or however many of you choose, is a game called Fate's Stay, which resembles Texas Hold'em.

There is also a 21 table, which is the effect of blackjack. And then there are races that you could bet on. Oh. I would definitely go try to find a 21 table that is not too crowded so that I can sit down and just kind of leisurely gamble until I can get a drink. Cool. I've always been a poker man myself, so I guess I'll see y'all later.

Is this seat taken? Excuse me. Excuse me. Oh, not at all. What are you doing here? My chuckle. I didn't know you could afford a leap. Oh, you know. He's called life insurance.

Sitting at the table with a large brimmed hat and a flower and red hair extending out from either end is in fact Ma Chuckles, who has eluded the silly goose authorities for one more time. Where would everyone else like to go?

I'm gonna go bet on some races. What kind of animals are they? That is a good question. The animals that you would see when you get to their races resemble enormous wolves, but they are not canine in origin. They have large protruding jaws and their skin lacking fur is like almost a snow white, but it edges towards gray.

and their bottom jaw extends out further and has two enormous canines that jut upwards and covers the top portion of their mouth. They do not have eyes. - Whoa. - That's wild. - Are they going around a track? - Oh yeah. - Do I know what type of animal this is? - Roll a nature check. - Five. - Damn. - 16.

So with a 16, you would know-- you would check your animal databases, your animal mind. And you would know that this is not a creature you have ever come across before. This is described to be an exotic creatures racetrack.

I will bet on these exotic creatures, but I do not like the way that sounds. I also will have made my way over to the races because I just want to do one and done, like get all 1,000 credits, either see them blown or maybe I'll get surprised happily. But as I'm walking to the race and following Dandy, I'm realizing looking around that every single robot servant is wearing exactly what I'm wearing.

People are handing me finished plates and dirty glasses and stuff. No, no, no. Okay, yes. Fine. I'm just taking them and pulling them into my body and just continuing on with my day. And you do. People are handing you, oh, take this, take this. Oh, sir, yes. Yes, I am complete. Thank you. And as you take the plates and the glasses, they'll absorb into you, and as you move throughout, there's little, like,

trails of compiled refuse behind you. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm leaving perfectly clean plates. Sometimes in stacks. But yeah, I'll gamble on one of the exotic animals. Perfect. Were you at any of the Timbs? I was debating. Would this be your first time in a casino? No.

Almost certainly. So then I'm gonna accompany the bush. Okay. So you three to the tracks, 21, and Rhett and Chuckles are at, uh, Fate's Stay. Well, Chuckles is looking for slot machines. Chuckles is at slot machines. I thought that he was looking for slot machines like a hack, so I named the space station after slots, and I, you know, you could imagine you'd see it coming, but here we are. Um, anyway...

Let's start with 21. Oh. Pike, you sit down at a table and across from you, not a robot, but actually what seems to be a similar creature from what you saw the guards to be, except much smaller, wearing a red vest over a white shirt and small gray pants. Um...

similar pink skin, fur, long pointed ears that kind of slick back and down. And just like

I refuse to elaborate. Okay. I won't ask any questions. There's no good way forward. So... I wouldn't do that to you. You sit down, and the rules, you would know them ahead, but I'll explain them to you now. Because you're a degenerate. That's right. We will roll 2d10. Okay. You and I. All right. I believe I will roll publicly. Okay.

One counts for either one or eleven of your choice. If I hit twenty-one, I win. If you get closer or I bust, you win. Okay. Okay. Did you bust? Yeah, I like to bust. Listen, listen, this is meant to be played amongst friends.

Yikes. Busting makes me feel good. Busting makes me feel good. Hand him a three. You're at 13. 13. I got an 18. I'll stay. You'll split up. All right. I will roll again. I don't think I can split in this style. 21. I think I'll roll again. I'm back. Just one? Just one? Okay. You're just adding to it, right? Yeah.

You got a... Hard 17. Dealer has to stay. Pike wins. That's insane. I'll roll one more time. Another four. 21. 21 is not like black. 21.

Is this dice loaded? No, no, perfect. You can choose to roll another dice or you lose. I guess in this version of 21 I would have to try for it. I'd lose either way. You're going with three. 21. Natural three! I've never been so happy to roll low in my life. Well there's a tie. Everybody keeps their money.

That's called a push. I don't know. That works in space. This is Space 21. I would say for, like, Pike knows how to gamble. He's certainly not what I would classify as a gambler, right? He, like, knows the rules. He's there to have fun. He knows it's not his money. He's much more interested in getting a nice drink.

Yeah. You would be sure people would come up to you at the table consistently. Robot bowlers walking by. Anything you could imagine or order can be yours. They have a selection of cocktails. Should you choose to peruse their menu? He would get some sort of a rye on the rocks, like a nice, you know, top shelf thing if possible since it all seems to be included. The highest...

Because, you know, he's used to being on the Rhapsody where we don't always have the nicest stuff. So he would definitely take advantage of like a high shelf booze if possible and just continue to enjoy the gambling atmosphere and the fun. You've ordered and they will bring over to you in a rocks glass that is curved almost like a, like a, like has a bit of a swirl to it, almost like a ram's horn. But it sits in this stand.

And they'll say, "Here you are, sir." "Uh, high water."

And it is, they present it to you, it is some of the best bourbon whiskey you've had over rocks. Or what did you say, rye? Yeah, rye over rocks. Some of the best rye whiskey over rocks you have ever had. With just hints of something in it you can't quite place, but just takes it to another level. I would light a new cigarette, take a few puffs, enjoy the drink, and continue to casually gamble. Focus much more on the drink than the actual gambling. You do so. Yep.

Um... Fate stay. Poker. Oh, that's me. Okay. Give him my dice back. Good luck, big guy. Oh, so there's no slot machines on this? We'll get to you. We'll deal with you later. I have my lucky three I'm looking for. You're pulling the lever over and over and over. It turns out to be a robot. Don't stop.

Don't stop, baby. You win. Don't stop, baby. Keep pulling. Keep pulling. I'm so close. Yay! Okay, so you would also know the rules of Fates Day. What we will do is anyone who is playing will roll a private d12 to keep it away. Once that number is revealed to you, you can either fold or continue. Normal buy-in is 100 credits.

We'll then roll three d12s publicly. And the goal is that your dice plus the dice on the table, your total is the highest.

The caveat is, if your dice is a match with any of the dice that is on the table, you add an additional value of it. So if the dice on the table are 6, 7, 8, and you hold a 6, you would... I can't quick math that, but 27 plus 6, you'd have 33.

So because you have a 6 and a 6, you would add an additional 6 to your total. If you had a 7, you'd have a 7 and a 7, you'd add an additional 7. If you had an 8, you'd have an 8 and an 8, an additional 8 to the total. Make sense? Alright. So a pair is really a triple. Pairs look like a triple. Yep. I gotta find a d12.

And you see the same kind of dealer at your table. Smaller creature, actually standing in a chair. Pink fur. You can't actually see his stomach. He's wearing a white shirt, red vest over top. Ready to play? Yeah, deal me in. All right, here we go. Good luck. Good luck.

Good luck to you too, buddy. My chuckles roll at B12. It's just a head inside of a giant wire. Jesus.

You can see this like... Oh god, that's good. Ma Chuckles, roll a d12. Sorry about your husband. No, privately! Oh, there we go. That was bad. And then if somebody with three d12s could roll three d12s on the table for me. I got you. I get re-branded. Two, eight, and nine. See the deal?

Derek the dealer? He's not the dealer, I'm the dealer. He's just, I can't, you know, I only got so many D12s over here. I am robot. I fool.

So you've rolled a d12, so you have one number value. There are three numbers on the table. Your goal is to beat my value. So either you have no matches with anything on the table, but your dice is higher than mine, or you think that I have no matches on the table and you do have a match.

Yeah, I'm gonna fold. Oh, well, perfect. The win again. I'll have the shot of day.

And there's a robot that has been... races over to you, trembling, another Chardonnay, and they know that the request is coming quickly, so they just start sprinting back to the next class. It's supposed to be a double. It's supposed to be a double. And we'll go to the races. Uh,

You all see these creatures, you get over there and you see they put out three creatures for you, or four creatures for you, each one of you chooses. You have one, two, three, and I'll take the fourth. And they are as described, these massive, what look like, almost to give you the sense of like giant white wolves, just no fur, very light gray, almost white skin.

uh, enormous, uh, jaws, and you see, uh, what kind of looks like, uh, like a space rhino, uh, kind of, uh, tossed out in front of them, and they rip it to shreds. Uh, it, like, instantly. I mean, the first one that goes in, its jaw cracks open, uh, and slams like a crocodile, uh, and splits the rhino in half. Uh, and then, they, uh,

Just start to rend and destroy in a matter of probably eight seconds They're like in they're like in a recessed arena, so they're in like they're coming to a track but they're They're like down. They're not like touchable. It's like you're behind the plane of the bus Well, you're behind you're in a viewers box. I missed the plot. Why are the wolves tearing apart the animal? They're being fed

Oh, okay. It's like the intro scene to Jurassic Park. I was hoping that it was... Yeah, the rhino is tied to a post. I'm just crying, and I'm going to call Marvin, the robot or whatever, the paranoid robots around us, and just ask for ten double cheeseburgers with extra whatever that stuff was. Beans churgers. Beans churgers in the middle. Beans churgers. And I'm just going to hang my head.

I love that you still want to eat it. I'm so hungry. Oh, I'm sad. Yeah, this is sad. This is a painful moment. It's the space version of, like, Ben and Jerry's. Oh, yeah. I love eating the best space rhino burgers.

And this robot raises up a giant tray, like Flintstone-sized marble slab, with just piled on top 20 double cheeseburgers stuffed with beans, jergans. You have it. And this is probably 40,000 calories of food, but that doesn't impact. It doesn't even mean anything. It does.

I will have to empty my compost bucket at some point. I love the straight face. I will have to. This is a fact. A bucket's getting bigger. That's going to happen. As I'm eating these, are our animals randomly assigned to us? I can't pick? You can pick. I want the runniest looking one. There is one at the far end that looks just a little bit smaller than the rest. That's the one I'm betting on.

You bet on that one. I'm going to bet half of my money, so 500 Elysian credits. Okay. And all the while I'm stuffing cheeseburgers into my mouth, I'm going to be thinking about how I can...

get them out of there and escape. I'm going to try and free them. Do you have names for the horses? No, they have... Mine has a name. It's called Freedom. But it's spelled with a four. I only ask...

He'll know why I asked. Pike's ears twist, like something's wrong. Rhett's voice plays with a lot of reverb. Now remember, don't get distracted. Come here. How does this work exactly?

Well from my experience, and I apologize Dandy, I forgot about the feelings, you want to pick the one with the coolest name. So far that's worked for me sometimes, but usually it's at least fun. So if we look at the names here, we have... Crash Lightning. Crash Lightning, not bad.

Freedom. Freedom's the... Freedom can be the freedom, but it's 4-3-3-DOM. Yeah. Yeah, correct. They don't have to be cool. They can be ridiculous. It's like Santa's... Are they named like horses? Like, Spades Connect from Planet Nine. One blow over the cuckoo's nest. I hate my wife. Off to the blue, actually. Yeah. Yeah.

Who framed Roger Rabbit? Oops, I did it again. And we just pick one. We don't bet on multiple at the same time. You can. You can bet on two of them, three of them. You could bet on all four, but you're going to lose three out of the four. The second is named Time Stand Still, and the third is named Girls Just Want to Have Fun. I personally...

Like time stands still. That's very on brand for you. It is. It is. It is a surprise to nobody. But you are free to choose whichever one you want. I guess I will pick... I will pick...

Girl just wants to have fun. Which is very on-brand for you. A thousand on girl just wants to have fun. Yeah, I mean, did you just pick one? Can we do like a superfecta trifecta box? You pick one. Go back to 21. You're in 21 drinking high water, right? What kind of casino is this? No superfecta? Boo!

No exacto! Pikes not a degenerate Andy is. Pike doesn't do that, that's Andy. Sorry, I'll try to keep the peanut gallery down. Oh god, they're melting! And I would put 500 on the time standstill.

I put a thousand on girls just want to have fun. Before I can say you don't want to bet all your money. Okay. And the house will bet on Crash Lightning. So what we'll do is we'll roll a d4, and each one of us will roll a d4 together, and then we'll total them, and whoever reaches 21st will win the race. Ooh. Sorry, say that again?

Everyone will roll a d4. Okay. Together, every round, we total the values. And whoever reaches 21st will win the race. If I get 21, do I, like, drop back to 15? Your space wolf explodes. What?

"Girls, that's what they have fun!" "Too much fun!" So we've made it 20 exactly. No, no, you just remember it's the 21st. No, Warren. It's 20 or higher. 20 or higher, yes. Alright, round one. Nice. Let's start. Is that a three? Four! Yeah, that's a three. Four?

Four read'em pulls into the lead. Well, unless... What did you have? One. One? Okay. Girls just want to have fun. What did you have? Three. Three?

Come on! Come on, Gus! Have fun! Come on! You need a hat. All right, round two. Everybody roll. Darn. It's not like a good three-year-old sister now. One. Gus is going to have fun! Come on! You know how you can, like, trip both of his ankles great instantly? Oh!

Come here. One. One? I got a one too.

Alright, Crash Lightning pulls into the lead. Time stands still in... Sorry, Freedom, For-Reedem in second. And Time stands still in third. And girls just want to have fun in last place with broken ankles. It's tripped over its own jaw. Round three.

I got a three. Freedom, three. Girls just want to have fun right herself. Her ankles unbreak and she starts to reach forward. Yes! Yes! Four! Come on! I got a one. One, alright. Crash landing still in first, but Freedom right hot on the trail. Girls just want to have fun pulling into third place, passing time. Stand still. Round four. This is sad.

Time stands still? Four. Four? Girls just want to have fun? One. And four read them? Three. Oh!

Freedom pulls into first place as they round the track on the other end. They're coming back for the second half. Crash lightning in second. Time stands still directly on its heels, and girls just want to have fun falling back into fourth place. It's gog. Okay. Freedom, two. Come on, guys. Time stands still. Two. Three. Oh, man.

Alrighty, Freedom pulling into first. Crash Lightning falls just into second place. Time stands still in third, but girls just want to have fun hot on the trail in last place in a neck and neck race. Alright, alright. Freedom, three. Almost big rolls. Girls. Go, girls. One.

Oh my god, they hold positions I think. Hang on, let me do the quick math. They hold positions as they come around the track. They are closing in. Freedom actually very close to the finish line with a four could take it. And final, well, next round.

Oh boy. I'm fucked, I know. Everyone else is at like 19, 18. Time stands still? Yeah, uh, 4. Oh! Oh! So close. Girls just wanna have fun? 3. So I'm at 14.

And freedom. Two, so I'm at 18. This is like photo finish. This is very exciting. Freedom and time stands still in a neck and neck heat for the finish line. Crash lightning in second place, falling beneath the two. And then girls just want to have fun. It's

And certainly final round what we'll do is unless you both roll ones Whoever takes the highest total will pull into first place Okay, final round roll your dice

I'm just like, "wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa." Photo finish. Wait, but what did Crash Lighting get? A 12.

And my previous total was a 17. It's a 3. Oh, we tied! Photo finish! Uh, girls just wanna have fun? One. I think, is the horse's name Girls Just Wanna Have One? And Freedom? Yeah, you can see Freedom got a one. One? Oh! Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is like, bro, I am free to have none!

I ate most of that other thing. I'm very upset. Sleep coma, that's on me. I had a big space rhino. I shouldn't have eaten so much rhino. Went straight to the ankles. Girls just want to have fun. Did eat the majority of the rhino before the race. Can I pass guidance on myself while gambling?

I was debating on cheating. You would think that that would be considered cheating, but you're welcome to try. But you would believe that that would be considered cheating. It wouldn't benefit the race. The race is over at this point. The race is over. You can play cards or something. Clever thing. So Crash Lightning and Time Stand still in a neck-and-neck dead heat cross the finish line together, followed right behind them for 3-3 Dom. And...

In last place, bringing up the rear very casually, jaunting through the finish line is Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. I like impressing my face up against the glass and defeat just like... I'm gonna console him.

And how much did you bet? 500 Elysium credits? You win 1,000. So you're up to 1,500 Elysium credits. And it's at this time that the Robot Butler, the liaison to the boss, returns to collect you all.

if you are ready to go. What did I do with my clock? Oh, fuck! All right, slots. I'm off. I'm doing my rituals. I'm looking for my lucky one. It's a 19 or below you lose.

I'm looking for my three lucky ones which are: "Invaded from the Planet Moolah," "Lucky Larry's Lobstermania 2," or "Leprechaun Goes to Hell." It's a real slot machine, ain't it?

I said it can't be one. It has to be number two because they completely overlaid on what is garbage. So I'm looking for any of my three life pieces. Please leave the leprechaun ones. You roll a d20. Do they have any of my lucky? Or do they only have Lucky Larry's? Roll a d20. Roll an investigation check.

17. Nice. 17. You see Lucky Larry's Lobster Heaven 3. The brand new slot machine that's just come out. It doesn't look like anybody has ever touched it before. Oh, they really

Ruined it in Lucky Larry's Lobster Mania 3. Everyone knows that Lucky Larry's Lobster Mania 2 is the best. Right next to it is 2. They don't know. No, no, it's just a 3. And they don't even have a pina colada-ville here. God, this video sucks.

No Pete Nicolatoville, no Lucky Larry's Lobster Mania 2. I'll sit down at Lucky Larry's Lobster Mania 3. Let's see how they changed everything. I'm just going to be tapping. Okay, let's go. This helps.

Come on, come on! You spend time and time again. You're there, you're pulling the lever. You're playing the slots. You're playing the slots, bless your heart. Here we go, I'll have a whiskey sour, please. And they bring you a whiskey sour. A robot runs up. Oh, thank you. It's in a very similar ornate glass that kind of spins and swirls and sits within its own kind of crystal stand.

And it's delicious. It's the greatest whiskey sour you've ever tried. Oh, wow. I could get used to this place, even though they don't have a Pina Colada or a Lucky Larry lobster manger, too.

You pull the slot machine, roll a d20. I roll a two so I lose all of my points. Oh, man. That's why you don't want to play three. Yeah, what the fuck? If it only had been two, I would have won big. This is a rip-off. They changed all the algorithms. Um...

You walk past the leprechaun one and the motion sensor makes him light up. A friend in need is a friend indeed, but a friend with gold is better, I'm told. Oh, they only have leprechaun go to heaven. He's doing this and he's like floating up and down. Green wings extend from out beyond him. And they're actually just dollar signs. Perfect. Um...

So yes, with that, the robot baller will reappear. The boss has freed up. Is everyone ready? I think it's time. I have a large soft serve ice cream. Yes. You didn't even get my drink. All right. What can I do with these leftover credits? You can cash them out. Oh.

It is real money. Have a nice time, sweetie. Good playing with ya. You wanna go cash out? I'll go cash out with you. Good luck with the surgery. I'm seriously fine. Sorry about the smell. Um...

Great. You are... Do you go with the robot baller? Yes. I would finish the rest of my drink, light a new cigarette, and follow the gang in the robot baller. You do so. And, Rhett, whatever drink you would have wanted to order, you have the option to have with you. Oh, here it is. Thank you. Thank you.

You're drinking an extra-large piña colada. With an umbrella. With what I ordered. It's like one of those meters. It comes in a giant stein, and you're actually a little surprised at how much you enjoy it. Not your usual beverage. Not usually my thing, but... Nice and fruity. You...

You follow the robot butler. He takes you through the hallways on a winding path through the game floor. You don't think you could have navigated through this on your own if you had 20 tries to do so without a guide. He brings you to the other end of the casino hall floor where you'll see a gigantic, golden, ornate elevator.

You begin to walk up to it, but he veers briefly off to the side. Where you see a smaller, less ornate. Not ornate at all. Almost what would look like just a utility elevator.

And he motions over to this one. It's almost tucked away. If you like looking at the initial The initial one you wouldn't have caught it immediately at all as he directs you towards it And press the button you get in there are no buttons on the paneling in front of you not a one No display. It just seems to be a sleek

empty box and yet he reaches forward, he puts his palm to the wall, it lights up in response and the elevator takes you up. Give some music. I didn't realize that was different music I was showing too. I was like, why is this so crazy right now? Metal music. You, the elevator rises.

It gets to its zenith. The doors stretch open and you enter into a business office. The same red silk flooring, two leather couches on either side of a, not a hallway, but just a room stretches out in front of you. In the dead center, a simple wooden chair seated in it.

is the player that you saw from the table as before. Behind, just on the other side of him, a large teak wooden desk with simple papers on it. The two bouncers that had brought him up there stand directly in front of them. As the doors swing wide, one of them launches a fist

straight into his stomach. He keels forward, his wrists tied back behind him as you enter the room. - Oh, Crow and the Rhapsody.

In the chair behind the desk, it will spin around. It is a massive chair. The back stretches up almost as tall as the room itself. It is humongous. This totally jet black leather as it spins around. You look up and your eyes stream down and down and down and down and down and down and down until...

You see just over the threshold of the desk similar slicked back pink ears is all you see. Just like over the lip of the desk? Over the lip of the desk. You just kind of see like fluffed ears and then folded back. Jumping out of the chair and standing on top of the table

You see a similar creature to what you've seen kind of running throughout the casino, but in a black tuxedo with a gold chain that runs from his pocket within his jacket. On each one of his fingers, a bejeweled golden ring. Ten in total.

Give me just one second to deal with my uninvited guest here, and then I'll get to you. Oh, uh... Alright. We'll wait right here. Take your time. So, you think you can come into my casino and just do whatever the hell you want, huh? No, no! No, I was playing a game fair and square! No, you weren't! No, you were working the table,

you were gonna get one over on us here at Elysium. Well, it's just not the case, okay? No. Please, boss. Please. No more. Don't you worry. There is no more. Because you're done. And as he says it, he leaves from the table, jumps up into this guy's lap, 20 times his size, 20 times his size, and he slaps him in the face.

And as his hand connects, roll a group perception check. Oh, dear god. Fuck.

Oh, natural 20. Hey, I got a good number. That's pretty good. Perception? Oh, I got a 23. Here we go. Perception, you say? Huh? Seven. 21. 21, about a six. Anyone over a 18 will catch the following. The briefest glint. And we'll say if you got over 20, you almost get also this, like...

buzz that cuts the air for a brief moment like an energy from the rings as he slaps this this player in the face You hear the sound of what sounds like a pencil breaking And you realize that he is Feels good

Andy does that, but Pike is like stone-faced. It doesn't make him flinch, but that's disgusting.

His, you can see even from the back, his jaw is completely dislocated from his face. The only thing leaving it still attached, the skin that now hangs there as it sways back and forth. His head slumps forward as he sits in the chair. The only thing that's causing him not to fall to the floor dead is the ropes that are tying his wrist behind his back. Get this garbage out of here!

And the goons the much larger much larger creatures with the gauntlet at hands move forward cut the ropes Behind him take him away and walk into a room. That's just off to be right Sorry, you had to witness that I don't like to conduct business in front of some of my other business associates he jumps back up onto the table and Stands on the table Come in come in

Can I have somebody get you something to drink? Howdy. I'll take a cowboy if you can make those. Yeah, we can make anything you want. Anything you seek, you can find here at Elysium. I'll have a cowboy, thank you. Coming right up. You know who we are, presumably? You're the crew of the Rhapsody. I'm told you have what I sent out for. Is that the case? So you are their boss?

That's me! But you can just call me Boss! Uh, well, yep, that's us. We're the crew of the Rhapsody and we do have the bounty, so we're here to collect plant-painting. Well, here you are. 50,000 credits for you! Do you have what I asked for? Oh, do we? He kept it very well preserved. Oh, I know I put it around here somewhere.

Cut to one of the waiters in the area and he's got like an extra bunch of empty glasses. There will be a portal that opens up near him and snatch a whiskey sour off of a tray. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Oh, here it is! This guy's really gonna help us get ahead with those credits. You already said that. Not in front of the boss. Give me the fucking head! Oh, here you...

I don't want to toss it at you. That'd be very disrespectful. You walk up, he extends out, he takes it in both hands, and he looks it over. Yep, I'd recognize this son of a bitch anywhere. Well, good work. Do you have anything else he had? Oh, uh, nope. Nope. We, uh, unfortunately, the whole damn place exploded. So no other evidence, uh...

Of note. That was it. Roll Deception check. He's like hiding behind that. Can I assist him? Sure, are you assisting? Since I'm the one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure. You roll an advantage. Oh, thank god. Oh yeah, I'll let you roll. Yeah, 23. That's a shame. That's a shame. Just working on some stuff that really would have changed the game, you know? But, uh... But...

That'll do! That'll do, so... Yep, he's dead! Yeah, he was a real wise guy, you know? You gotta call him Brukelot because he's sleeping with the fish guppies, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's pretty good! Well, uh... Well, good. He give you any trouble? No more than any other bounty that we deal with on a weekly basis. I'll puff up. No.

Crying a little. We weren't horribly emotionally scarred by anything we saw there, either. We were a bunch of hard and wise guys ourselves, you know? Yeah, you look like it. He looks at you skeptically. Well, I suppose that's it, then. Well, if I could have the credits, please.

There you are. You don't got an envelope? He hands you over 10,000 credits. 10,000? I believe the job was for 50,000. It was for 50,000, but you docked in my hangar. And we went to work on repairs on that ship of yours. And it seems...

Somebody opted for premium super repairs inside. We had to restock your, your, uh, your... Your premium super repairs, uh, inventory. All the Seltzer machines have been replenished. Wait, wait, wait, hold up, hold up. You know how much space Seltzer costs? That's like 40,000 credits at least. I didn't authorize any kind of repair, Chuckles. Was this you? Hank wouldn't have done this. Hank, you there, buddy?

Uh, you actually try to reach out to Hank and communications from this room are blocked. Oh, that makes sense. Hank, wait! I can't hear you. I got my new bubble suit. Oh, uh... That's all you get in return. When that dapper-looking robot asked me to find the dotted line, I didn't read it. I never do! Look, I got you right here! He pulls out this big contract and at the bottom you just see a giant smiley face.

Unsurprising, yet predictable. Yeah. We're gonna have to talk about this later. No, well that means that we're really souped up and ready for our next adventure.

I guess we are ready to go then. Got all the repairs handled? Are they done or are we going to have to wait around? No, there's no waiting here. We're pretty good at what we do. It's all done. You're not going to run into any accidents out there. Fresh brake light fluid and all that? There's no fluid in brake lights. That's crazy talk. Exactly right.

I can understand how this would be a little disconcerting for you though, so, um... How about I do this? How about I offer you another job? And... I'll double the reward. What kind of job? Oh, what other kind of job are you equipped for? I'm gonna slide you another bounty. Somebody took something from me and I want it back. But this one... I want alive! I'm gonna turn to Rhett and kind of quietly, you know, as an aside, just say...

I'm not so sure I like this, Rhett. Well, what did it take? And why do you want him alive? Well, the "what" is for me to know. The "why" is because I want it back. And if he doesn't have it on him, I need to know where he put it. Alright, well, if you give us the details, we can look into it. With one caveat: we turn him in, we'd like to do it somewhere else, if you don't mind. What do you mean, somewhere else? You don't like the Elysium?

Just, you can send one of your shuttles out to come get it. Oh, that's fine. But we'll call it $90,000. Pickup fee. That's fair. You got yourself a deal. I'll send it over your way. You let me know if it works for you. And let me just say, it works for you. All right. I'll take a look. We'll ask around. One last thing. Are there any public contracts out on this guy, or is this the only... Are we the only ones in the know?

He's a little notorious, but there's nothing out for him currently. This is a bit of a disagreement between he and I. So it's personal. Do I recognize the type of creature that blossoms? Yeah. Yeah. I would say that you would all know this. This is a common race that you would run into in...

That is often seen running mercantilism, games of chance, merchants, traders, anything to do with kind of corporate business stylings. Do you see them spread throughout the galaxy? Does he present us with the bounty here or it's like back on our ship at the holodeck? All right. It's in your inbox. All right.

I pull it up. You got ma'am. I thought you disabled that one. Why don't you read it back on the ship? I trust that you're going to accept it. I would just give you a knowing nod. Yeah, I'll save this for later.

We've already uploaded the coordinates to where we believe he was heading straight to your computer. I believe your cute little dog Hank is taking a look at him right now. Alright, good to know. And we're certain that the Rhapsody is not bugged by the Empire. Don't worry about that if you were thinking about it. What? Who was thinking about it?

Oh, I'm just saying not to worry about it in case anyone was on top of mind. You're saying that you're Empire spies coming into the space station? What are you saying? No, no. What I'm saying is that, I mean, obviously, because it was Empire Tech that the good doctor had, or the bad doctor had, that, like, I don't know if they would be wanting to know or hunt us down, but I'm just letting you know that we're good. We ain't rats.

My chuckles didn't raise no rats or squealers, you know? I got sticky squeakers, not squeaking squealers. You know what I'm saying? Jesus. Look, you can ignore what he said, right? If I find out you're lying, and you're driving Empire business around here, and you're some kind of... you are some kind of squeaky squealer, then you're gonna be the one strapped to the chair next.

And you ain't getting a massage to the face! Oh no... That's my money maker! Get the hell out of my office! Yes, sir! Alright, let's go! Thank you. We all immediately get on the elevator. Yeah, get the fuck out of there. I don't like that he had access to the ship. I don't know who knows what else he had access to. I'll connect with Hank and get back on the ship. Are we being let out? You...

So the way it'll work, the robot butler will take you back. This elevator has direct access to the hangar bay, specifically.

So from where you are, it will actually run one floor beneath where the gaming hall was, and it'll open up directly back into the hangar where the Rhapsody is. Is the robot with us, or he just put us in the elevator? He rode the elevator down with you, but upon it releasing, you'll move back into the hangar bay, and he will stay on the elevator. I hope you enjoyed your stay at the Elysium.

Come again soon. Do we get to keep the clothes? You may keep the clothes. Nah, regardless, I'm getting my jacket. Yeah, I'm gonna get my things. Oh, yeah.

Guess what, I'll collect our things. We'll hit the locker room. You hit the locker room. You can change out of your more ornate outfits. You can regain your suit. You can redawn it. You can move back into any of the clothes that you had on before. And should you choose to do so, you can keep your formal wear. I'll wear all...

I'll get changed, but I'll keep it with me. Might as well. Basically tailored. It would be a waste not to. I'll roll up my suit and store it in my suit somewhere. My suit's inside my suit. You do so. A compartment can pop open and you just stuff it around. There's a little hanger. Well...

I'm sure that the boss is just helping us out and not trying to entrap us and getting increasingly intertwined with the mob.

and then basically own our lives and souls forever. It's probably not what's happening, right? He's a good fella. Good fella? Yeah, he means very well. Well, if he would stop signing your name without reading what the fuck you're signing, we'd have 40,000 more credits to fucking use. But look how shiny the Rhapsody is! You look up at the Rhapsody and there's like a streak of glinting light rides the side ending at a wing point and it goes...

And it looks gorgeous. It looks better than it ever has been. Some of the scratches, some are deep. Some can't be removed, right? But it's been buffed. It's been polished. Your super premium battleship repair stations are all refilled and re-energized. And it's looking good. I mean, you're taken care of. I put both my hands on my pockets and take a long draw on my cigarette as we walk up the plank back into the...

the rhapsody and I'll look to her and say, eh, I liked her better before. There's an ad for the Lobster Sloth game on the website. So last phase. Alright. Well, you know, now that I look at it, it looks, you know, she looks good. Not 40,000 credits good. Well, then we get to keep the knife thread. Hank, Hank,

Hey, sir. Did you authorize this, or did they just start doing stuff? Hank will respond and say that he attempted to stop them, but they provided authoritative paperwork signed by a membership of the Rhapsody, and at that point it was beyond his abilities to interfere. Here's some treats. All right, well, at least you tried, buddy. Repairs look good. Everything in the ship's in tip-top shape.

He'll paw into the console and charts and bars and readouts and energy levels will display on the screen in front of you and everything is pumping at max efficiency. I gotta be honest with you, Rhett. It's a lot of money, but I still don't like this. At least we had the foresight to think about a neutral pickup. Yeah, that was good thinking. Well done. I mean...

Here's the thing. Right now, we don't have any other jobs. And, uh, you know, I guess I can see the details. But at this point, we can take 90,000 more of his credits as long as we're not, I guess, even if we're not the ones killing him, he's gonna be killed. One way or another, it certainly feels that way. But in the meantime, what do we do with this? And I'll sort of snap my fingers and then the research papers go out. Thanks for backing me up on that one, Kevere.

I had a feeling we weren't going to give it to him. I'm wondering if we had he would have paid us more than ten grand. At this point it doesn't matter and you know at least he's not at least furthering those plans per se. And besides it's only 40,000 credits. Easy come, easy go. Well I'll go to the monitor and I'll sit down. All right gang here's what we got.

The name's Rex Maxim. He's 6'1", weighs 190 pounds, capture difficulty ratings rated 5 out of 10. Not that that means shit. He's wanted alive, like he said. He's a notorious treasure hunter, thief, and serial philanderer. He stands accused of stealing from the boss, amongst several other intergalactic crimes. We must also return any and all stolen goods in his possession.

Payout for successful completion of contract says here $100,000, but I guess $90,000. Have any of us heard this name before? Yo, yeah. Yeah, you would have for sure. A small, just wry smile will form at the corner of my mouth.

If you would read this on the holo vid, you will also see the image of your target. You will... You're...

your toes will start to curl in your shoes for just a moment. As the visage of Rex Maxim spins in front of you, you see an extremely handsome solar elf. Son of a bitch. This is my cowboy Andy. He has a sharp white leather cowboy hat. Orange hair pours from under it.

The protection of the hat ends in just, sorry, the hair as the orange comes out from under it ends in what is like sun-kissed vibrant red hair. And beneath that you can see he's wearing just a light gray duster long coat. You would certainly have had adversarial run-ins with him before. We're all just in awe of how handsome he is.

Would I have been there, or would this be... Oh, yeah. Yeah, the two of you would have. The two of you would have, for sure. Yep. Pike, that kind of looks like you. But better looking. No. That guy has been a thorn in my side for longer than I can remember. Yeah, my chuckle don't shut up about his stupid memoirs.

She loves books. And he does! He has a several collection of his memoirs, capers, the exciting and maximum adventures of Rex Maxim. I call this guy a joker, but I don't want to compliment him. Did you say he was a serial philanderer? What does that mean? He takes cereal? I think he's just, he's a criminal. He just, you know, he breaks the law and makes money.

And, uh, you know, this fancy jackass, he's, uh, I mean, he's well-known across the, uh, the galaxy, but, I mean, do we really want the rep of being the ones that bring him to justice, so to speak? Well, he claims he's never been caught. I'm not so sure about that. And, quite frankly, he's more annoying than anything. Maybe when we capture him, we can avoid detection and...

People won't know what's up. As you say, he's more annoying than anything. The hollow image spins for a moment and its eyes catch yours and... And I still know no change in expression. Well...

And Dandy, don't worry, once we take him in, he won't hurt any cereal anymore. That's good. Yeah. We're after his lucky charm, so as long as we follow our nose, that bounty, it'll be great. I wonder how we're gonna know what he took when we pick him up. What is it that could be so valuable to the boss? You do not think it's related to Jackson?

Please tell me if nothing is related to Jackson. I can't answer that question. Unfortunately, I have no fucking idea. Uh, but based on what I know about old Rex, he doesn't deal with cloning and genetics as far as I know. What do you think? No, that doesn't seem like his style. And quite frankly, when we find the guy, he can't shut up about anything, so I'm sure he'll spill the beans.

That's a good point. I mean, he'll probably just fucking tell us. Would he think you guys are friends? Funny word, friends. So, yes? No. But we don't need to go in guns blazing. As much of a jackass as this guy might be, he's certainly not a pushover. There's a reason he's as infamous as he is.

Well, why don't we have a conversation with him? And, uh, you know, see what he says. We can learn a little bit more what's going on, and maybe there's a lot more money to be made in whatever, you know, whatever contraband he's stealing. Uh, or otherwise. Potentially turning on the boss? I mean, that's risky, but... Sounds dangerous. Well... That's what I'm implying. At the very least, there's always a chance that he doesn't know what he got into. That's true.

He is kind of a jackass. You've said that. You know, sometimes it's just a little personal. Sure, sure, yeah. Let's just be sensitive about it, alright? About what? Just about his stunning visage. What? He's very handsome.

And Pike's a little upset about it. I like make my face like morph into his face, and then I'll look in the mirror, and I'll look back at him. I don't see it. Well, he's very well dressed. He looks, he has a bit of a ruggedness to him. It helps offset what you might expect by being such a skinny elf boy, you know? Probably a deliberate choice. What do you think?

What do you think, Dandy? I sense that Pike is not happy right now. Oh, no, I'm very, like, just stone-faced. Oh, okay. Very hard to tell. Playing it very cool. Okay. He'll cry in his room later. Nonsense, the hat's a little much for me. Let's find the guy. We got his coordinates. You know, I'd like a few of you to check the ship for any kind of tracking devices. How are we going to find him?

Well, they sent us a location of where they think he was headed, but if he's not there, then we got work to do. Is there a way we can... draw him out? Maybe meet us somewhere? Do you still have his number?

I don't keep contact with the guy. I don't know who you think I am. At the very least, he's loud. We'll find him. Long time. Get to drink? I have a great business opportunity. I haven't seen you since high school. Chocolate bar. Would you like to make six figures working only, tenant?

I just figured through past dealings and how often you've spent time with this jackass. No, this is not spending time with him. These are run-ins very much against our will, if you know what I'm saying. Sure, sure. So, if you guys know how his brain works, we can set a trap for him. We'll get the biggest bowl of cereal this side of the galaxy. He won't be able to resist it.

Actually, Juggles might be on to something. Could we set up some sort of a fake contract to lure him out? Surely his ego will make him take the bait. I feel like for him to move on anything, he'd have to have some sort of proof that there'd be something to take. I mean, unless he just takes a bounty and take our word for it, and we just, what, we put on fake mustaches and say, hey...

We're looking for a genuine cowboy to help us with the job. We'll give you 80 million credits. Surely somebody that you know from one of your days can set something up. You know, some sort of a third party thing. We never have to touch it. I mean, we don't know where he is. We don't know who he's talking to. What lines of communication he has right now. I think we follow these coordinates. Go to where he may be. See if he's there.

And then, if we feel like we need to use that plan, we do it. Or, we just, without letting him know anything, maybe we have another run in. And all you gotta do is start asking him questions about himself and he won't fucking stop talking. Alright. Sounds like at least a place to start. We got a plan. Alright. Dandy, you're the cords.

I'm gonna go up ten minutes. Just kidding. At least you won't know we're coming, so we don't have to rush or go through the hog stream, right? Not today. Look, I'm just not moving. No, neither am I. We just cleaned the ship. Yeah. I'm gonna get out of these clothes. And I'll go to my room and change.

And you chart the path, the coordinates that they sent you. You won't be using the honk weave today. There is a... It is a... It seems to be a simple journey through the stars. But the coordinates they've sent you take you to the very distant edge of...

of not known space, but civilized space, right on the edge of wild space. And as you head out, you may all do whatever you would normally be doing, but the Rhapsody will take on, maybe through Hank's piloting, and it will fly its way towards the planet that the boss has directed you to.

You'll fly for about three days. You go through food, what have you, any ration you could want to find or anything like that. You'll find that Elysium and the boss, true to his word, didn't skimp on anything. Anything you could be looking for. I mean, your shelves are stocked with food, with fine liquor, drinks.

uh, with whatever you could seek to be comfortable on your journey. Soft serve ice cream. You got a new machine. Yeah. Your, your mixed space soft serve ice cream is actually working for the first time since you've ever had it. Um, chocolate, vanilla and twit. Uh, no,

No, the twist doesn't work actually. The twist doesn't work. It's just the vanilla and chocolate. You can attempt to twist it yourself, however really all you can do is awkwardly get it in one half of the cup and the other in the other half. After a couple days travel, you arrive towards a planet. You can start to see it as it pulls into distant view.

It is like sheer white as it pulls in from where it was. It looks almost like a planet covered in ash as you fly closer to it. The sensors will be telling you, Rhett, as you pull in, you've found a comfortable place to land, flat land. You could bring the whole full Rhapsody down and make planetary surface landing.

Is there like a city that we'd be landing in, like a port? Or would there be just sort of like we go in and find somewhere on the ground to land? You are currently, as your scanners would go out and seek anything in the area, we'll say within probably 100 miles of where you are, it doesn't immediately detect large signs of life. Like large collections. Yeah, it's like the silly, yeah.

The planet seems largely uninhabited, so this will be a wilderness job. That is my favorite kind of job. That's what you're best suited for. It is what I'm best suited for. I don't know, Rhett. Something doesn't seem right here. This certainly doesn't seem like the kind of place that Rex would be. Yeah, why would he be coming here? Something's off. I mean, maybe he's looking for, I don't know, like some kind of mining claim or other natural resource gig that he's trying to get in on.

I don't get it. Well, he figures no one will find him here. Maybe he's hiding. Laying low, yeah. Do I know this planet? Roll a... roll a nature check. While she does that, the coordinates we got, did that get us just to the planet, or is there a space on the planet that... It got you to kind of like a specific location, like kind of the, like, yeah, a general location area. 14. With 14, you, as you're pulling down to this planet...

You go to think on it like if I come across this before do I know the name of this planet? Do I know exactly where it is? And the answer is no however when you think about it you start to get you start to get flashes of a People you see who you think Might be Bracken Standing on something that looks like this planet and you see

dead bodies surrounding you. Just for the briefest instance. What is Bracken? Bracken was the space pirate, the captain space pirate, triceratops that you... Eye patch. Yeah, with the eye patch. Thank you, Chokras. That you battled in the first session. Oh. Well, I will communicate that, um...

And for just a moment, just a fleeting brief moment, I would say you have a bone crunchingly overwhelming urge to make planetfall. Make what? To touch the planet. Touch it, yeah.

So I'll do that. I'm gonna go down and almost right away, I'm gonna cast Plant Growth. Well, you're in the spaceship. Oh, I'm sorry. Let's go down. I'm gonna cast Plant Growth. I'm just kidding. I'm gonna communicate it. There has been a lot of death here. A lot of death has happened here. We should go. We should go down and I can try and heal it. Heal this planet. You've been here before? I do not know. I do not know. I cannot say.

But it's, I feel something. Maybe being, walking on the planet will be like walking down memory lane and will awaken your memory. Maybe, but I do not know. It does not seem good. It is anti-life. Whatever's down there or whatever was down there. All right, Hank, bring her down.

The Rhapsody descends. Jets blast and cut out as you approach the planet's surface. Your descent slows and slows and slows. You can feel the familiar mechanical hum as gears, energy pulses through the Rhapsody. Feet kick out.

There's a little rock as you touch down on the planet's surface. You head to the hangar bay, excited to see what lies ahead of you, what this planet is, where Rex is. And you punch the command in to drop the hangar bay door. And as it opens, you are hit with a blast of snow and cold.

Oh shit. And I need everyone to roll a constitution saving throw. As it is intensely cold out. Oh, I got a natural one. Con saving throw. Yeah, let's twist that. Let's twist that. Oh, I got a dirty 20. Nice. Is it that one? Yeah, pull out a beauty. Constitution saving throw. Constitution saving throw. As we step out onto the ramp.

And I feel the cold, I go back in the ship and immediately come back with the exact same jacket that I'm wearing but it's bigger and puffier. No, no fur. It's just a puffy zip-up. It's exactly what I'm wearing but puffy, like, snow jacket. And long sleeves. What did everyone get? 21. 21. 19. 26. 14. 18. 20. What was yours? 21. I had to sort of look out. You...

Dandy, you, as you maybe are excited to get to the planet's surface, you are the first one out on the ramp. And as the winds and the snow whips through, even through your body, it's the type of cold that cuts beyond to your very core. It feels like knives ripping through you. And you take one level of exhaustion. Jeez Louise.

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Thank you, Derek. As the hangar door bay falls down, the wind blasts into the Rhapsody. You can feel it immediately. You're struck by the chilling cold. You know that to spend any amount of time on this planet, you will have to deal with this first before you can step foot out into the blistering, intense cold. Mm-hmm.

Had to be an ice planet. I'll be right back. I'll be right back, too. Dandy, you're looking a little chilly.

I am chilly. I'm exhausted. I'm going to go back to my closet. It's mostly clown suits. But I'm going to come back with matching snow suits with the full-headed hood with fur along it. And one will be blue, and one will be pink. And we're going to be ice climbers. I'm so much warmer now. Thank you, Knuckles. Oh, you're welcome. You're also now oddly connected by a string. Yeah.

And your jumping speed doubles. Oh, and if we need to bash anyone's head in, they actually come with these giant mallets. And also, if we coordinate well enough and spam right trigger, we can trade chain grab. And everyone will complain that it's cheating and ban it from local tournaments. I do not understand what you're talking about. You'll learn later, don't worry. If she means Pikachu. If we're all actually putting on...

winter gear, then I'm canonically wearing exactly what I said. With a magenta scarf. Absolutely. I'm wearing the same suit as always. Maybe I shrink my arms in just a little bit to protect what's exposed. But then at the top, one of those mercury thermostat levers, I just push it all the way to the warm side and it keeps me a little bit warmer. Yeah.

There's like a little glow, like an orange glow inside. I'm gonna go put the turtleneck on that came with that suit. Nice! And we're feet on planet now, right? Well...

I don't know where Rhett was going yet. I would basically have this big, puffy, light gray, almost like a duster that's maybe fur-lined on the collar. It would keep my neck warm. It would have all of the same holes that give access to the ports in my flesh.

for the ether engine. And so I will also grab, knowing that we're about to go out into the wilderness, and I will

suit up with my harness and secure that in. And head out. What a badass. I feel so lame in my turtleneck. You all do so. You go, you get your... You've traveled the stars for a long time together. You've encountered just about every different scenario you possibly could. Um...

You have been in the cold before, and so you have the equipment to handle this. Now this planet is frigid, and it doesn't look like there's any solace in any direction. And so you know that no matter what, this will be a survival session. Kidding. If we were to look up, like,

Would we be able to see the sun or is it kind of like cloudy and there's like weather like actually snowing going on? Roll an investigation check. At disadvantage. I hope I don't miss the sun. Oh, that's pretty good. I think it's only a little plus though since it's int. So we're gonna call it...

A 19. Oh, a disadvantage? A 14. Sorry, I apologize. I was assumed I was at advantage. With a 14, you look out and the winds swirl, the snow's coming down. It's not so much that it is a cloudy sky, at least that you can tell. It's hard to tell whether or not it's clouds or it is just gray, but you look up and you...

Maybe catch the faintest outline of what you hope in the deepest parts of your heart is what you would think a sun would be. But you cannot, you are not confident. - Yeah. - As I like, I'm gonna start like putting my hand towards the planet in my pink little cape coat and would I have a sense that I could grow something here if I tried? - Ball of nature check. - I'm gonna try and terraform.

Can I twist it and twist it? Absolutely. And I'm changing that dice. Okay, a little bit better. Eleven? With an eleven, I would say that you would know... I mean, you go to touch the ground and you can't reach the earth. The ground beneath you is covered in a layer of snow. Probably as you walk, as you move throughout, it's...

Not knee deep, but you're above ankle. And so to get to the ground, you would think that if you were to try and grow something, you would have to grow something that was native to this environment, or else it would not stand a chance of surviving at this point. Oh, I could do that. Okay. You can try. But I'm not going to. Okay. We're on an ice ball. I just want you to know I can. Rhett...

Visibility's real bad.

Visibility is pretty bad. If you're normally whatever your range of vision is, I would say it'd be cut in half at this point. Not necessarily like your hand in front of your space, but you cannot make out solid objects beyond probably at best 80 to 90 feet out. Do we have a coordinate direction once we're on the planet, or was the just...

It's on the planet, go for it. This is... you've landed in the spot that the coordinates have brought you. So now it's up to you to use the tools at hand to attempt to track down your target. Are we sure that he is here? I don't think so. Well, I mean, I don't think we're sure. Is he here?

This could be a trap. Looking around, why would he be on this ice planet? And as I'm talking, my helmet is starting to fog more and more and more. And I have to, like, stretch out with little tendrils and sort of... Trust me, Laboosh, I don't like it either. But again, maybe that's why he's here. We don't want to be here. What are the odds other people will stay long enough to try to find him? That is a good point. Your sensor said you didn't pick up much life.

I mean, certainly no settlements large enough to be picked up by the scanner. I can't imagine there's any civilization for miles. Do you think... They died. They died? They died. Died like recently died or died like... I do not know when they died, but many died when they died. So nothing happened when she touched the planet? Ice, right? Just touched like a sheet of ice, effectively. A layer of ice and snow.

Permafrost. And like I had the urge, like you said, to like... You had a very split, fleeting urge to make planetfall and to touch the planet. But that passed while you were in the ship. But the like, almost like primal drawl to get your hand onto the surface of the planet passed while you were in the ship. Like an instinct. Like an instinct. Oh.

My dinosaur instincts. What do you think, Rhett? I mean, surely anybody here would have to find some sort of shelter, right? Cave? Outcropping? Underground? Come on, I wasn't built for this. Well, I don't have a... I don't have... My mechanisms aren't that highly detailed to be able to pick them out of a fucking snow field, so I don't know. Does anyone else have anything like that? Danny, can you, like, sense...

Can you reach out into the, I don't know, the natural world and find this guy? Oh, use your crystals! I don't know. Mach Uncle is always talking about crystals and how powerful they are. Are you sure those are the kinds of crystals you're talking about? Oh. Probably not. Oh, of course he's... That's very funny. LAUGHTER

Is that June? How many June is it this time? We could always space out and communicate when we find something. I don't think that's what he meant by space out, but it's a good idea. Oh, I did the thing, huh?

Just so I know, who has the highest passive perception? Oh boy. Probably this guy. I would bet me money it's me. Let's check. Or maybe Dandy. Dandy or Pike. 15. 15. Wow. 17. Wow. Damn, how does that even work? I'm just... Okay. He's proficient. Whiz biz. He's like the perceptive guy. Just look at him. Look at those ears. No follow up. Look at those elf ears. I always take a direction. Would his scans have shown like...

I guess, a direction for these pockets of life? I would say that generally the scanners, well, Rhett, roll a perception check utilizing your scanners so you may do it straight. Should I twist this? Probably. Yeah. We got a few.

That's a little better, and I'm proficient, I think. Did we get a long rest? You got a long rest, yeah. Before we touched down. Okay. That's an 18. Nice. With an 18, you pop up on your scanners, your handheld scanners, and there's a lot of interference. Oh. The snow is heavy. It's frying. Oh.

Please try again later. You see, it's difficult. The signal is difficult to get through, but the Rhapsody itself has made planet fall, and that's a very powerful conduit for signaling purposes. And though you're surrounded by a heavy layer of snow, you start to see a very small blip rapidly approaching your location. What in the hell?

What do you mean, what in the hell? Hey, are you seeing this? Yep. Think that's a glitch? Take a look. Something's flying towards us. What direction? How fast does it look to be going on his sensor?

It's moving fast. It's moving fast. I don't know, kilometers is probably more relevant to space, but it's moving like 80 space miles per hour. I would immediately take some sort of defensive stance, maybe turning away from Rhett so that his back is towards mine and be like, be ready for anything. I'll start to stomp away from the ship. I'm going to make it a little farther out into the ice sheet field. Just stomp?

In case the big target that's obvious behind us gets attacked. Let's circle the wagons!

I'll take out one of those big, like, Hoth binoculars from Empire Strikes Back. Yeah. And look through and scan the horizon and the direction that I think... How many, like, trees and things are there? Like, how... None. It's like leaf, leaf, flat, white tundra. Like, imagine the desert, but just layers of white with, like, a tenth of the visibility. Yeah, I would just, whatever direction everybody's kind of looking, like, pick a different direction and see what I can see, my elf eyes might see. Yeah, yeah.

Rhett, we'll keep your perception check. You know the direction that this is coming in. You get out your giant Hoth binoculars. They flip out from behind you. Hoth brand. The equivalent of Hoth binoculars. And they connect towards your face. Your mechanical eye side zooms out a little.

as you peer in the direction and you start to see, you're able to peer some of the veil of the heavy snow and you see just like a cloud of white crashing behind this small black

hover bike that's racing towards you. And you can see at the crown of this bike a white hat. You're not going to like this bike. If I look where he's looking and I squint real hard, would I be able to see anything? Or is it still way too far away? It is...

Roll a perception check. You need to roll a perception check. It's a speeder. No, tell me now. It's fine. I would be squinting and leaning kind of down towards a red. I would say you need mechanical assistance to pierce the veil of the snow blindness. You can't be telling me it's going to be this easy, right? I mean, you can guess who's on that speeder. I'll light a cigarette like moths to a flame.

It just goes down. I'm like... And I'll flick it off and it'll flick off and blow away on the tundra. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it doesn't even touch the ground. The wind is so strong it whips it out of the air and it just disappears into the mist. We piped not litter. I'll just...

So all we gotta do is just set him up the bomb! And I'll pull out like a giant cartoonish bomb. We'll just plant it and it'll blow up to smithereen as soon as he drives over. His base will be a long time. We can't kill him, alright? We gotta keep him alive. We still have to figure out what he took. Oh!

Just once, no bombs, alright? Nothing that explodes. No cream pies full of cinder blocks. No razor blades, none of that, alright? Jesus. You didn't say anvil. Just nothing that'll fucking kill the guy. Or hammers. Non-lethal anvils would be fine. Sludge hammers. Tandy and I are holding giant hammers. Not this time. Well, let's get ready to subdue him if we need to, but let's just have a chat.

Pac, what do you think? Why would he just come upon us like that? He's got to be in over his head or something, right? Surely he's figured out by now that he's in trouble. Maybe he feels guilty. He's going to turn himself into us. Or perhaps he's been stuck here and now he's dying and he sees help and he's going to come grovel. Should I try to punch him unconscious either way? No! Yes! Please! Oh, I mean, no!

No violence, all right? My hands look like two sledgehammers. As much as I would love to, let's go with what Rhett's saying and hear him out. I'm here if you need me. That's what you're here for. We appreciate it. All right. As you're having this conversation, it's now, there is like a split second.

You can all see this speeder now crashes into view. It is moving so fast. You saw the visage of Rex Maxim before. You see a familiar white cowboy hat. You see a heavy light gray duster he has on. If he wasn't riding a black speeder, he would be almost imperceptible to the eye. I lean over to Red and I say, how's he even keeping that hat on?

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if it was surgically attached. It's really cool. Sorry. No, you're good, you're good. He races into view, the speeder kicking up. He pulls within maybe ten feet of your party. Do you try and do anything to stop him? Very much on Rhett's orders, as long as it doesn't look like he's gonna damage the ship or us.

I would just basically stand there waiting for him to stop doing his thing. Yeah, I would want to stand there looking as if we're expecting him and we're like waiting to receive him. Yeah. Presumably for some kind of conversation and if he just starts attacking then we'll play it by ear. No, I just imagine him like whipping up. He's like, he's actually just like, he's like, he's like whips it around and he's just doing donuts in front of us. Yes!

And we're just waiting for him to be done. It was one of the funner boss fights in the Final Fantasy VII remake. So he...

You see as he drives up, you see a speck of amber coming from the front of him. His cruiser doesn't even slow down. He spins the broadside. He flip kicks the pedals, pushing the right, depressing down, pulling the left up. The speeder flips. He begins to cascade over the top of you, and as he does...

he takes a lit cigarette out of his mouth and as he flies past you you'll now see that it's in pikes uh as he lands on the ground on the other side and careens away

Uh... Blasting out of the area, away from you. He spins around for a brief moment one more time as he looks back and the vehicle, the speeder stops. And you hear him almost shout something across the snow, but with the wind, roll a perception check.

This guy's pretty cool. I'm literally about to say that. Oh, I did not roll well on that one. Oh, I rolled pretty good. Ten. Sixteen. Wow. I also got a ten, because I rolled very low.

20. 20? Yeah, you guys killed it. I got a 23, even though I'm totally fogged over in my helmet. I'm really trying to lift him hard. 23, we'll say with a 23, we'll just go with the highest. Labouche, you hear this as he shouts out over the snow, the whipping winds, the crashing snow. You hear him shout out,

I didn't believe it was you guys. Good luck! As he careens away. He may be a jackass, but that was cool. That was pretty cool, Kavir, you're right. I mean, gosh, he's got style, he's got great things, he's got a pretty, pretty face. He just showed up to wish us good luck and goodbye? I'll turn to Rhett. Eh, I'm not so sure he's going to be very interested in talking. I mean, what the fuck was that?

He just wanted to check it out and then just taunt us? Classic Rex. Look, if we don't have any kind of vehicle or something that can traverse this, we're never going to catch up to him. Could we turn Hank into a fled dog? I can get it to fled if you provide the dog. I mean, we could try. I...

I mean, how... Is he going back in the exact direction that we saw him come? He's continuing to move forward. So he just went through us. He came, like, basically from your south, flipped over you, offered a cigarette to Pike, and then continued on to the north. So you drive, like, almost in a straight line. You would maybe get the sense that you're landing...

The actual Rhapsody on the planet was very perceptible. And possibly something that was in the area would have come to investigate on its way to whatever its goal was. Well, he's on the move. I mean, should we go after him now? I mean, we have to. We just got to figure out a way to catch him. Yeah. He's got to be going somewhere. Hmm. All right. Well. Oh, Ordandy, can you summon the little mini-mini-mammoth?

They could pull a sled through the ice and snow. That would be pretty heavy metal. Yeah, probably. I could summon a whole bunch of my little wolves. They like the snow. I don't have a sled. I do. Or I can create one. Well, let's give it a shot. Or... Or... What we could try is, you know, if we try to make some sort of, like,

Hover something with one of our vehicles. I mean, I don't know how like ridiculous that would be how big are our personal ships pretty bad I mean they're um You get the size like on pretty average like they're they're like pretty big trucks like really pretty big trucks. Oh We can't risk damaging them again. I'm gonna lose all our credit Are you sure because I'm about this close just taking out the sparrow and lighten them up. Oh

Then we won't get anything. Yeah, you're right. That's zero dollars plus ammunition plus fuel credits. And then in this economy with this space inflation, space gas prices are out of control. That's fine. Fine. Could all of this team fit on my pterodactyl? Like on the wings of my pterodactyl? You can only do that because of the power that the Rhapsody offers you to take that form in space.

And not in space anymore? No, you're on, you're landing on a planet. Yeah, we're on a planet. We're on a planet in space, but yeah. Here's the thing. I think it's not like he's just going to go forever, right? I think we just follow him. And I'm not sure how much Hank pulling the sled is going to be any faster than us just trudging through the snow. Same thing with your raptors or mammoths or whatever else.

Alright, big guy. You're the brains. And I'll just put a hand on his shoulder and I'll just begin to start trudging the direction that Rex went. Just off into the snow. Disappear. Not very fast. Yeah. You know, just at a leisurely pace. Same. I blindly follow Rhett wherever he goes. Seems like the only option. I'll look back over my shoulder. Well, you coming? Alright, let's go. I like this sled idea. And I'll start to trot forward.

And you do so. You are walking through the snow. It's coming down. It's hard to see. You can't see beyond probably now maybe 20 feet in front of you. But...

Rhett, you're following your sensors. You are now that he's so close, you have been able to identify a heat signature coming off from his hover bike. And so you understand. You can't see what's ahead of you or around you, but you understand the direction that you're heading. But even with your protection, it is so intensely cold that I need everyone to roll a constitution saving throw. Oh, boy. No.

Is it twistable? It's twistable. Let's just each twist once. I got a 21. 21 passes. My jacket is surprisingly well made. It's down. It's down... It's down a swoosh feather. It's very goofy looking, but it works. 22 as well, yeah.

I've sorted out that I can avoid the fogging issue if I fill the entire helmet with my goo. There's no space. And so with a 26, my head just looks like a giant green orb with two eyes floating around in it. And the mustache. The mustache is always there. No matter what I'm describing. So everyone passing.

17. 17, sorry. Everyone passing, you pull your coats a little tighter, chuckles in dandy, connected by string sharing blue and pink warmth.

Labouche now looks like a green lollipop, one of those gigantic ones. Everybody else pulling the jackets in, warming the ethereal engine, pushing heat into your down jacket, your sweater, insulated. You pull the collar up a little bit, try and get close to the bottoms of your ears. And you're able to move forward.

You, as you track Rex, it's probably about an hour you see his heat signature continue in the direction that he was going before it goes out. But not because your scanner lost sight of him, just the heat faded away.

You know that if you were to continue walking after him, after his hover bike, for the span of the hour it took him, it would probably take you somewhere around 15 to cover a similar distance, hours. Well, he's not stopping. Should we try the sled thing? We could.

We need something that could tow it. And I don't think Hank's up for it. I mean, look at the size of him. My wolves. Or I could just be a polar bear and take us all. Well, I'm thinking that if you can...

How long does your summon, from a meta perspective, how long does your summon beast last? It's like ten minutes. Let us check. I think it's an hour. They have this conversation, cut to five minutes later, and LaBouche is just pulling a sled by himself. It lasts three hours. Dang. You're wild-shaped. Wild-shaped. Wow. So I think that's the way to go. Okay. I could become a polar bear and just run.

Polar bear might be too high of a CR at this point. From that perspective. It's two. This is space. It's a solar bear. This is a you guys question. I don't know.

Eight, four. But I'm sure there's something vaguely prehistoric that would be thematically appropriate and maybe... A tringle-ba-dingle. From the planet Ice. A mammoth calf. Like a teacup woolly mammoth. A teacup woolly mammoth. A woolly mammoth calf you would be able to shapeshift into. Okay, I can only do this once a day.

Okay, let's do the little bit of holiday cheer and magic. Oh! As I reach into my hat, and I just pull out a big, a giant, like, wooden sled that's as big as I can, like, basically is five feet across, five feet across, meant for the...

to go as slickly on ice or snow and it'll fall onto the ground and it'll be like super just bedazzled with like...

It'll be like super gaudy with like fire streaks on it. Like a dragster. I thought you were going in the classic Coca-Cola sled direction. No. Like a flyer 99. What do they call those? Like carts. Yeah, basically. Yeah, like hot flyers or something that had like flame streaks on them. Radio flyer. Radio flyer. Yeah. It's a red wagon. Yeah, same I did. Yeah.

Basically, it's the limit that my bard magic will allow me to create as it'll fall onto the snow. And you're easily able to pull this out of your hat and produce a sled that comfortably will sit the five of you, and you can fasten a connection to Dandy, for sure, if you'd like to tie off the...

In my creature, I kind of, when I wild shape, I don't have the same thing where I, the colors and the kind of cosmic dust swirls from my body. Instead, it's like savage tree. It's like very primal, like nails start to like grow and...

the things around me start to pop off and then I turn into the like mammoth calf dinosaur creature. And yeah, you do so. Your stone form begins to shift and change as you kind of like beast wars like twist around and change into this small and adorable but small for a wooly mammoth so still quite large as you stack up to the party.

and you would find that you're easily able to move this sled along with them. Oh, thank goodness it was a magic coat. I'm imagining a woolly mammoth in a big, big, puffy coat. Exactly. Yeah, 100%. The coat is not absorbed into the form of the woolly mammoth. That's incredible. With the hood and everything. Yeah, the hood. With the fluffies. And we already have the rope, so we can just tether you up. Gosh, hey, Danny, why the long face?

And you carry forward. The movement is now you've significantly increased your pace. It's still slow. You're not moving it quite as fast as a speed bike would, but you have significantly changed your ability to travel through this environment. And you carry on in this way for probably another...

We'll say 20 to 30 minutes or so and you've covered significantly more ground than you had at first when just walking. When, once again, group perception check. Come on! Oh, not bad. Come on! Oh man, he's on like every other roll here. I got an eight. Oh, am I supposed to be disadvantaged? Yes. I haven't been doing that.

So, we'll play. I don't know that you've rolled. Well, we did one just now, I think. That was a saving throw, which you're on disadvantage of. Okay, got it. 22. Yeah, I didn't do well on this one. 8.

And I'm a viking. This lollipop looking motherfucker. My eyes are floating all over the place. I get a six. Nineteen. Nineteen. As long as some of the group does well. So, Rhett and Rhett and Chuckles. Rhett, we'll say that on your...

Scanners, you start to see another heat signature coming from behind you. Moving fast, moving rapidly, but not as fast as Rex was moving. But it's moving fast. From behind us? From behind you. And Chuckles, you hear...

On the wind, as it whips around you, you get this swirl of cold that kind of wraps around your head, sends a shiver down your spine. As it moves through and around your face, it carries on it a guttural howl. There's some kind of spooky monster or something coming. Yeah, I'm seeing something coming up behind us. From where? The south? The south?

It's coming in. It's on the southern wind. Something spooky this way comes. What do you mean spooky? I hear it howl. It's like an alien monster. You look back. You look back behind you. And you can see, as everyone starts to see this, you start on your readout. Bing, bing.

You see probably 15 to 18 heat signatures erupt on the readout. And what you all start to see as these creatures erupt from the snow, maybe at this point, we'll say 250 feet behind you, you see a familiar sight.

A very white, light gray skin. A elongated jaw with two massive canines erupting from the front of a slavering frost wolf. Hideous creature with no eyes and a panting snout. It is not hideous. As a pack starts to run at you. It is misunderstood.

You would start calling that misunderstood? The arms in my engine that normally hold my grav cannon when I'm not using it will pass it to me and I'll grab it. And I'll just be ready, aiming it. I guess, are we surrounded? No, no, no, no. They're coming at you. So on your left is kind of like a heavy inclined snow hill.

On your right, as you've been moving along this path, is actually a pretty sheer drop-off. And you're still moving forward. They're running at your back as you're approaching them. Oh, Dandy, you better step on it! And a big pedal will be in the sled as I just step on it with my shoe. I'm going to start running. And Dandy takes off. The sled rockets back. You're moving quick. The woolly mammoth arm is going...

this sled dragging along and the wolves start to split a little distance between you. But they now, sensing you and sensing the hunt is on, they start to gain traction a little bit. And I would ask what everyone plans to do, with the exception of you, unless you have something, what everyone plans to do to keep them at bay from catching up.

The second that I see Rhett basically, you know, arm the cannon or whatever, I would have been like kind of sitting cross-legged on the sled, you know, trying to keep my balance. But the second I see Rhett move into motion, I would turn around and like...

be on one knee, using my left hand to support myself against the sled, raising the gauntlet that I have, and it would begin to warm up and glow these same kind of radiant colors, the magenta, the orange, the yellow, as I kind of point and level and prepare myself to try to pepper these creatures to the best of my ability to keep them at bay. Yeah, absolutely.

I would almost be sitting down trying to maintain my balance on this sled without my arms and just having my cannon and lobbing whatever I can at them as they got close. I would say your cannon has a front flip down that can U-mount on the edge of the... Oh yeah, like turret mount? On the edge of the... Minigun style? Yeah, minigun style. So your edge on just the back of this sled as it's being pulled...

60 miles per hour by a woolly mammoth calf in one direction. Your turret gun style. And Pike heated up gauntlet firing blasts. Bang. My headcanon is that your gear, you just have gyroscopes in it and you can't fall over. You actually have gyroscopes in your pack that will stabilize you. That's perfect. All this gear that you carry. What's everyone else saying?

Seeing the wolves gaining ground and seeing everyone start to get ready for combat, I'll look at the hill of snow to the left and I will...

that I can perhaps trigger snow coming down and perhaps pushing them off the side. I'll get up from my seat and I'll get over to the back of the sled and I'll make my way over to the left side of the sled like so. Then I will stretch and with my long arm I will dig into the ground and almost smack into the ground to try and trigger an avalanche.

That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. That's pretty good. Oh man, that's pretty good. And as he's doing that, I cast Guidance on him, just in case he needs to do something. Yeah, I'm right there behind you. Cool. Yeah. And I can do that. I can do healing spells while they're in wild shape. Yeah. Yeah. That's a perfect-- I can see what you guys are doing. I can see what my features are. I can even know what I have. All right, so we'll resolve all this in a second, but Chuckles, Kvir, Danny's casting Guidance.

I am going to reach into my hat and pull out a piñata. And it's a piñata of a polar bear wearing sunglasses and pink speedos. And

as I'm going to just say, oh, I hope this works, and I'm going to throw it out behind us to wherever I think the wolves will be coming in to kind of attack us. And the effect of that is basically Nathair's Mischief, which is a 20-foot cube that basically it'll then, when they get into range, or the thought is that it'll basically pop

and it will cause random magical effects as magic, clown-like magic will appear from it. Non-violently, hopefully, fingers crossed.

Have some confetti! I will be sort of preparing my-- so the sands have come out of my hourglass and I'm just sort of preparing to cast a spell as soon as they get close enough.

If they're within 200 feet, then I would use the chrono ray, so it actually saps time from them and slows them down. Oh, yeah. Shit. And then if they're farther, then I would have to use my sandblast. Man, you guys are cool. Um...

Hell yeah. So, the wolves rapidly start to close distance on you. Kvir hits first. You see the swirling sands as he's able to kind of reach out. You see it come up their paws, their legs,

as it starts to slow them moderately as they stop to gain on you but they're still in dogged pursuit. Rhett and Pike, you have the Ether Cannon, your solar gauntlet, you're at the back, you're just covering, you have Overwatch, you're just covering a pepper spray of...

blue and orange and magenta fire out from the back of this of this sled as these dogs are just getting ripped into and you start to see they're getting shredded back there there some of them are bleeding a little bit they absolutely look rough you even are able to knock between the sands encroaching into wounds the ether cannon blast

Hits one square in the head, chunks its head down into its neck, and it stumbles forward on its legs as it rolls through the snow and it dies. One of the solar blasts shoots out and catches one clean in the shoulder. It's a right shoulder. As it goes down, it tumbles off the cliff.

falls. As the polar bear extends out, there is an explosion as it drinks a dark liquid and puts its sunglasses on. As it bursts out, confetti lights. Ah, they're stunned! Ah!

It's in my eyes. Oh, but delicious? So I roll for the effect. Oh, sorry. I had no idea how it works. But basically, I mean, I don't know if you want it, but the idea that a bunch of apple pies would fall out, and then whatever ones would fail or a couple of them, they would smell it and they would lift up and just kind of float over to it for a brief period of time. Like Scooby Snack at it.

So several, 18 in total, two, three have dropped down. These pies, these apple pies roll out. The first one, slavering, stops and just starts to eat it and is just back, is lost out of the pack. The second, as it runs up, it's one paw, two paw, three paw, four paw goes into four pies and it starts, it can't run, its paws are stuck, it starts to slip around on the ground as

goes off the ice and slides off the cliff. As he goes totally off the cliff and careens through the air. It smells fantastic, though. And then Raboosh stretches out his arms, rockets out fists, slapping towards the incline on the snow shelf, digs in his hands, and as

As Dandy is ripping the sled forward on the woolly mammoth, drags across, ripping through snow, and absolutely is capable of starting an ice sled. And nothing hungers for blood like ice. It moves forward as there were about 13 wolves left. The ice comes.

And it is bound for this pack of wolves and they're in for a bad time. And it crashes in. They're fast. They're past the pies. They beat the smell. They're fast. But it takes out the back half of the wolf pack. And there is seven wolves left. Still rapidly approaching. At which point...

Roll another perception check. Uh oh. Come on! I'm due! Ha! Oh. Jesus! Another eight. In my wild shape form, am I still exhausted? Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's the snow. That's just like, the snow in my eyes, guys. The snow in my eyes. Ooh! Seven. Fourteen. Eighteen? Yeah. Nine.

Four? Uh-oh. No, we all rolled one. We're all eating them. We're in the middle of combat. I'm hanging onto the back of the sled, touching the earth. Yeah, you're on the back. You're grabbing the earth. You two are just boom, boom, boom, boom, pow, pow, pow, pow.

You're throwing pies. You're pulling the sled. Kavir, you start to feel it is crazy out here. The sled's rocking. Everything's wild. Wolves are running down. There's apple pie everywhere. There's a snow avalanche coming to take it down. The wolves, it's moving right behind you. You start to feel the ground tremble. Oh, no. Guys, does anyone else feel that?

I don't know, Kevir, we got a lot going on, you know what? Yeah, I understand, but look underneath, look at the ground.

Do we see like any visible as you ask you and as he calls that out? You all start to feel it erupting out of the ice You see two massive far larger than these wolves two massive snowy land sharks erupt out in a massive open jaw motion

They reach up and chomp down the remainder of these wolves. They shred through them in instants. Ice sharks! Hell yeah. And then they take note of you. What the hell is a land shark? That was Jossam. And they move. They start to move for you. Forward, towards you. Are they faster than the wolves? They are. They...

You do not currently seem to be faster than wolves. Seeing this happen, I'll reach into my puffy coat pocket and pull out a cigarette. I'll lean over to Rhett and I'll say, "Help me out with some of that Aetherflame."

As I see all of the things that happen, oh, all of those wolves had parachutes and they're just fine! As I'm shouting towards Dandy and she's running in her mammoth form like a Dragon Ball Z dog. I'll cut to the wolves.

Oh, those creatures had parachutes. They're just fine. They're going to make it. Keep running, Dandy. We're going to catch that cowboy soon enough. Chuckles, do you have more bombs? Oh, I don't want to trigger an avalanche. I mean, Rhett said no bombs. What do you think I'm trying to do?

Oh, yeah, I think, hopefully I don't trigger my wild... Bombs! Bombs! Please, bombs! Bombs now! Okay, here's one, and it will be, I'll pull out a giant, like, glittery pink bomb, as I'll hand it to you. Ah!

Okay. I will, um, my entire arm will shrink down like this and I will just shot put it. It'll shoot out like 15 feet, my entire arm, before finally the bomb releases. I'm endeavoring to get it to land in a spot where I see the most buildup of ice as we are rocketing along this ledge.

You launch this Barbie bomb out into the out into the ether you target on the ice right there And you except in a French accent and you shoot it out towards the right there And it sails through the air well, what does this bomb do? In a 20-foot cube each creature must succeed on a dexterity saving throw or be blinded and

And it will explode into glitter and lights and neon. And it is basically a Barbie bomb. It's like super disorienting. Basically a flash bomb. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it'll say, I'm a girl that's similar but legally distinct from Barbie. In a world that's similar but legally distinct from Barbie world. Ha ha!

Come on, Legally Distinct Party! Come on, Legally Distinct Party! Let's go to Legally Distinct Party! You launch this Legally Distinct Bomb out into the air. It lands on this sheet of ice. It... Boom! Beep!

explodes in this beautifully pink, colorful, confetti-style explosion. And once again, the ice moves. You can see that it's erupted right in front of these...

These ice sharks and clearly it is they're blinking. They've gotten the ice But their their legs touch the ground And you can almost feel that they can sense your movement as the as the the sled is rocking and rumbling as the the hooves and the giant legs of the woolly mammoth strike the ground

They know exactly where you are and they are coming. I was worried they wouldn't even have eyes. Oh, for sure. But that was a great play. Especially because of the song. I would continue to try to, now having a lit cigarette and just thinking about the situation and being like, ugh.

I would try to pepper them a few more times, like fully expecting it to basically do nothing. But I would want to just see. So I would line up and see if I can find a spot maybe in their face, you know, and fire off a few more radiant bolts. These are gigantic creatures. They have a deep blue outer shell and surrounding them on their legs, their body, almost like this white fur as it goes back at times...

As you, they gain, you gain distance, you start to split off between them. It becomes a little hard to track their vision as they move in and out of the snow blindness. And you look back. Roll an attack roll. Oh boy. This has not been my strong suit the last few rolls. Come on! Twelve. Eleven. Eleven. You fire back.

Bang! And this streak of orange flame fires through the night, or just fires through the air, and lands direct hit on this ice shark, and it just bounces off its shell. I'm gonna go, "Yep, that's about what I expected." Alright, you got any heavy weapons tricks here? 'Cause now would be the time to use 'em. How close are they to us?

They're gaining. They're probably... We'll say at this point, they're 60 feet behind you. 60 feet. Um... All I can do is shoot them! At least right now, until they get closer. Um... There's two of them? There's two of them. Are we going along a cliff? Mm-hmm. You have, like, a cliff face on your right. Yeah. You have a sheer, kind of steep, sloped incline on your left. Um... I'm gonna try something...

I don't know how else to say this. This game is literally destroying things. I'm going to look around and I'm going to say, Andy! When I tell you, you just need to stop and we all need to be as quiet as possible! I'm going to turn around and wink at you. And I'm going to wait until we're as close to the edge of the cliff as possible. And I'll say, okay now, stop! Stop!

And then I stop. As I am going to cast... What the fuck is it called? Phantasmal Force and twin it on both of them.

Nice. And I want us to entirely stop and basically the image, and it's a full sensory illusion, but basically including sound, and both of their heads, and basically have us, the sound of a mammoth, and basically visualize the image in their head of us, but basically in the air, immediately veering away off of the cliff in an attempt to get to the bird's house. Holy shit! And do that.

I also enjoy tremors. Do we have to, like, stealth or anything? Uh, as... And so basically, I'll just basically... My big finger will go... Will get huge as I'll go... How does tremor sense work? We have to not be making tremors. If we're not making tremors, they won't be able to sense the tremors. That's fair. I mean, I don't know if it relies on... I think it might rely beyond sight and sound. That's what I'm worried about. Anyway...

I'm very quiet. Yeah. Yeah. Let me just ask, this phantasmal thing, would it create... It's an intelligence saving throw. Okay. And the DC... 15. 15. DC 15. And so, I'll twin it.

And I'm gonna pull out a balloon as I'll just blow it. And I'll just work super fast like there's a cloud of white comically cartoon dust around me as my hands, like multiple hands are coming out. You'll hear buzzing and drilling and sawing as effectively a...

like a target dummy in WoW, but in the shape of like a mammoth and like a sled and all of us are on it, but they're all like really cheap facsimiles. And they're just all floating on the, out in the midair. And so that is the image that I'm projecting to them.

You create this like perfect off-ramp like it looks very clearly like the ice road Connects off to the right here. You can see a visage of yourself continuing off that way Everyone roll a group stealth check And I'll dread all of you. Oh, so it's roll disadvantage roll this Surely I'll get more than two 18

At disadvantage. 15. And if we're already at disadvantage, we have to roll again a third die to drag and take the lowest of all. Oh, really? Wait, are we already at disadvantage? I'm at disadvantage because of... I think we're probably disadvantaged. I'm exhausted. You're exhausted. Oh, you're disadvantaged. So you're triple. You roll three dice. Yeah. Sure.

I was not exhausted. I was not exhausted. It's just a might with my armor. I'm not that bad. I just want to make it. You're disadvantaged. It doesn't matter. I got a six. I rolled a natural one, so that's a five. Fourteen. Fourteen with the dragon. I actually got a ten. Believe it or not. I got a nine. You see...

You create this perfectly painted facsimile that looks like the road carries off the edge of this cliff. You see, as you quietly sit there, until one of the Iceland sharks gets right up on you and goes for your facsimile and goes straight off the cliff as it veers off and falls and goes deep down until its chute deploys and it goes...

And then it's in this moment that you all start cheering for Joy. And as the second Iceland shark was about to leap off, it tracks you immediately and it starts to turn towards you and it continues the chase. Oh, Dandy, keep running! Come on, keep going! Go, go, go, go, go, go! As my wild magic triggers...

Tell me it just explodes us off the cliff. Oh, I got kill all land sharks. I was going to say, oh, I got explode all slugs. Yeah, that's worse. It's a difference between 54 and 55. Big difference, you know? Oh. What do you mean, oh? Oh.

I cast Misty Step, arriving at my location in a burst of delicious food. You just explode into muffins and donuts. So basically, I just like, oh, it goes to my thighs, then I blow up, and my thighs get gigantic. And I blow up, and it's like, ah!

and I'll just basically arc back onto the sled. But now there is tons of muffins and pies and baked goods. Oh, well, if anyone would like to enjoy that. Oh, my God. I'm going to immediately start grabbing pies and, like Frisbees, I'm going to start whipping them towards the land shark, just seeing if I can do some damage, because I have no range to attack, but I can whip some pies.

You do so, you're throwing pies, they're flying out, everyone, the Aether Cannon is still blasting out, you're still trying to just slow it down, keep it away from you. It's at this point, Dandy, you would see that the cliff face is starting to come to an end, it's starting to round off to the right, and the slope is starting to level out, as you can see not too far ahead of you that you're about to open up into just like wider open terrain.

And I need who would be at the towards the front of the sled anybody Just a problem probably I'd be front cuz I just be teleported or forward onto it you and Danny roll perception checks oh I think it's just straight, but I only have a plus one 13 It's good it's 11 Yeah, you're charging ahead

So we- what do your mammoth eyes see? I see... uh, twelve. The two of you begin to see, as the larger slope starts to flatten out, at its precipice, you see a couple of black dots begin to line the ridge line. And then, they leap onto the ice, and you see what looks like

black spheres rolling towards you. I'm just keeping on running.

You keep running. As you do so, the ice land shark is gaining and gaining and gaining and gaining. And it's almost at the back of the sled. The ether cannon is going off. It's peppering. The ice land shark's jaws are now open. They're firing straight into it. You dislodge a tooth as it's looking to chomp down on you. You're firing off desperate,

blasts of solar rays. The sands are whipping out, slashing into its jaws a little bit. But it's almost upon you it's going to slam down when suddenly 12 black penguins sled down the hill and crash into the side of the land shark and knock it off the cliff face. What in the world is going on on this planet?

Like, twelve penguins. Sled down this hill. And crashed into the side of this ice land shark. Are they like normal penguins? They're, uh, great question. They are, uh, they look relatively normal, however they are quite large.

They're probably the size of Laboosh, each one. Oh! Wow. So the ones you can race down in Super Mario. Yeah. And it's as this happens that the... Newt, Newt, motherfucker. LAUGHTER

What the hell is going on here? I hate this planet! I hate this planet!

Everything's trying to kill us! I thought we said this was lifeless! The Penlins, they're our friends! It knocks the Ice Landshark off the side of this cliff as the Ice Landshark sails off, just gets absolutely bodied as two kind of like double tackle and just shove. It goes...

like just a 12-foot perfect horizontal before it just drops to certainly it'll be fine as it flies off the cliff. Then as you finish this chase, you open up into this more open section, and the penguins start to slide down and just kind of circle around you as you slow to a stop. And they're just like sliding on their stomachs.

And then they start to stand up. And there's big black penguins, white bodies, classic. What an explosion of blood and bone. Get up. You see some red. This is angry feet. They take out bed rubbers.

The penguins spin around you as they start to stand up and they're all really quite large. And one has kind of like a vibrantly golden plume of tuft of hair as it sweeps back. And it's just a little bit bigger than...

the others as they kind of all stand up and start to waddle back and forth. And they start to greet you in a very sing-songy penguin fashion. I'll very naturally start doing that. I'm actually going to hide behind the bush because until this moment I didn't realize I was afraid of penguins.

If you look inside their mouth, it's a fucking nightmare. They don't have any penguins in the desert. The penguins waddle up towards Laboosh and tower over and... Get them away! Get them away! Say, ah, friends come here. It's fine. Are you sure? Everything else on this planet's tried to kill us so far. I have a good feeling for once.

Nice running. You did a great job. All of those animals that were very blameless all just ran away and had parachute. And they all made it okay. So I don't sense that the penguins are like... I sense that they're friends. We're on animal handling check. It's at this point you hear this very quiet... And that's the first wolf that landed on the planet. We start hearing dozens of them. Eighteen.

18. With an 18, you get the sense that they seem very non-threatening. And not just they're non-threatening, but they seem very pleased and happy to see you. And they're very playful. Can they speak to these guys?

Can the penguins speak to that? Just in like penguin, does anyone speak penguin? Oh, let me check. No. No. No. No. They communicate in like a degree of squawks and like clapping. Greetings, Dandy. Where are we? Do we have a sense of like maybe how far we are from...

I would say in all of the commotion, actually, Rhett, when you were tracking Rex's ship, but you lost the heat signature, but you still kind of had an idea of where that was, but in all this commotion, you were focused on other things, survival, like blasting down these things.

And now you don't know exactly how to get to where Rex is, or where he might be. Well, I'd say we've seen it all now, but I'm almost certain things are going to get weirder. Weirder than this? This is pretty freaking weird. Yeah. Weirder than this. I was just going to say, I'm going to drop my mammoth form, my baby mammoth form, and I'm going to try and speak with them.

Are you using speak to animals? I'm gonna try and speak to them and I'm gonna be like hello. Thank you for saving us Well, are you using the spell speak with animals or you just oh, okay? Yeah What does that do?

Mm-hmm. Cool.

So they're still as dumb as penguins. We enjoy fish and meat. Hello, citizens of the Solar Federation. You know what they say about big penguins. Our ship has crust landed. We require assistance. That doesn't work. They're constructs. I'm going to say thank you so much for saving us from those big scary sharks.

It communicates. I'm clapping my hands. It claps its hands, and you get the sense that it's communicating with you that you are welcome, and they're very happy that you are here. And I'm going to say, we are looking for somebody who looks kind of like Pike over here, our friend. They glance at Pike and kind of do like this with their hands, but more handsome. And I'll be like...

Have you seen him? Where can we find him? We have! We have! He came through here not too long ago before you. He was no fun though. He didn't play with us. That is so rude. You guys are fun.

You seem fun. Oh, I am fun too. Can you maybe help us find our friend? We need to get to him. We can help you find him. We can even take you there. We know where he is. Oh my goodness. I love you penguins. Only if you play with us first. What do we have to play? What do you want to play? Our favorite games are snowball.

I knew it! The red mist of a penguin erupts as the party's equal. I'm just going to say, no, no, no, trust me on this one. Gently snowball fight with our penguin friends. They're going to help us. So I communicate that with everyone. And I pick up a little snowball and I just kind of like toss it gently.

At the end of each of their flippers, a human hand emerges. They break off their flippers. Try and introduce a playful snowball fight with penguins. Oh, we're having a snowball fight! Yes!

I love snowball fight! Okay. Everyone roll a group performance check. I would just very kind of nonchalantly pick up a nice ball and attempt to lob it underhand at them. I have to twist. Performance, you say? Ha! Twelve.

I'm kind of unenthusiastic about it. I'm like, "Uh, okay." You just toss it. I don't want to hurt anybody, so I'm just like, "Here, catch." I rolled my first natural 20, and then I butt. You got no disadvantage!

So don't get so excited. Auntie, congratulations. 18, okay. 25. 25? You put on a show. Yeah, where Chuckles is alive. He's juggling. 22. 22. Chuckles, Dandy, Kavir, you are in this snowball fight. Chuckles, you are crafting ice sculptures in seconds. You're taking up the snow. You're just...

Fortunately for you, they're just all llama corns. But they take on life and they will run out. And they're running after these penguins, chasing them in every direction. The penguins are loving it.

My child llama corn soldiers as they as they run out Danny Kavir you both are having the time of your life you shaping these But the more enthusiastic you are in throwing the snowballs the more they're loving it and they're chasing you down oh

And that's Kavir, I will defend you! And I'll grab a full swab of snow and like... And whip one way too hard, like basically ice at this point. You create a super dense snowball. I just superman it into... Nebula snowball. And Luke...

LaBouche, Rhett, and Pike are approaching this in a way that looks like they never had a childhood. That's very accurate. They're throwing snow off Pike very half-heartedly. Rhett is taking a very mechanics approach to it. Well, this isn't the perfect snowball yet. I mean, you've got to clean off this. You can't throw a ball that's not a ball. You know what I mean? Here, here we go. I'm going to dust this off. You've got to take off one of those nerves. Get out.

It's those ice cream scoops with both sides. It's the Spongebob moment where you craft the perfect one single snowball and everyone's throwing a thousand snowballs at it. I only throw one snowball. You only throw one snowball the entire snowball fight time. I'll build a snowman really quick and I'll put a hat on it and it'll come to life. It must have been some magic in that. Oh wait, what are you doing?

What are you doing? What the hell? He has a rip off his head. Screams. What? What?

No, not the abyss! And it's right around this time we hear the second wolf laugh. No, please don't make me go! No, what about that? That must have been some magic. What was my purpose? Why was I created? I love a good snowball fight.

That's a nightmare. It is. Admittedly, even for those who have never maybe had a snowball fight before, with maybe the exception of Kavir, is everyone starts to have a good time. And this carries on for about 10, 15 minutes as you're throwing around. You're having a great time. You're relaxing for the first time in kind of a while, even before...

before your last bounty, before you stepped out with Dr. Maze, before you met the boss, before you traveled here, right? You've had moments of downtime, but very little moments of just childlike fun and spaces to kind of step back and just enjoy, truly enjoy the moment together. And you start to do so. And the penguins seem...

Like they're filled with murderous intentions. The penguins seem pretty happy. They seem that like even for those even dealing with Kvir, they're really quite happy with this display you've been able to put on for them. After a time, I might like catch eyes with Rhett or something and just kind of give him a small smile and like kind of like a, mm.

What do you think? For a change. Yeah, like it wasn't so bad. And then I'd compliment. I'd say, that looks pretty darn good. Let me just shave a little bit off there. Hold on one sec. I'm almost done. Hold on. Hold on. You're usually like, there's no measuring caliber. I'll start with the boost roll and then attack roll.

Yeah. Oh, God. Kill this penguin. Yeah. Watch out. Yeah. All right. So I've rolled a higher than a 10 twice since we've started playing in the last three hours. Nat 20. Nope. Nope. It's still a 17. 17. Dread. He doesn't want you to hit this penguin. Eight. 16. 16. No.

They have an AC at 35. Yeah, and unlike the unenthusiasm or the actual play, like, I don't get it. And I just fucking went, lob in L, like a softball-sized... Did you see me freaking out? Do I see what's happening? You've compressed into ice. Are you having fun? Yeah. Then no.

You pack this super dense snowball. It's time to put the fight in fight! And you lob it out at one of these penguins. It soars through the air, and with the dullest thud, it collides with its body, just stops immediately and drops to the ground without losing any of its form because it's so dense. And the penguin just...

Uh oh. And falls over. Yeah, you do hear the gasping sounds. Just the absolute, like... Ha ha, I win! Uh oh. No. Oh.

Oh, a little roughhousing. Yeah, a little tough for the penguins, but they're still into it. I'll run up to the penguin and drop to my knees and be like, are you okay? It's his first time playing this game. That was a good hit. Oh, good, you like that? No.

Oh no, I'm sorry! Alright, let's make another one. Okay! Stop making those snowballs! What? Stop making those really hard snowballs, we don't want to hurt our friends.

Oh, that's right. Oh, Penguin, this has been a joyous bit of childlike play, so could you now please rat out the guy that's on the run so we can apprehend him and turn him over to the mob where they will surely torture and kill him, please? Oh, we haven't played that game before. I hope it's a very fun game. Well, we'll take it to him then. Well, roll an animal handling check before they just blindly agree.

Chuckles. Oh, I can't hear them. Huh? Oh, okay. Danny, what are they saying? I said what he meant to say was that we would love for you to come help us find this guy and show us where he is. Oh, another game. We'll take you there. Let's race.

And then we'll, six penguins will line up at the top of the pathway ahead. And they'll start to take a, they'll motion for you to get behind one. Each one of you will take a penguin. They'll motion for you to get behind one. And invite you to go penguin sledding. This is so fun.

This is so fun. I love this planet. I love this planet so much. You know what this reminds me of? No, honestly, this reminds me of Super Mario N64 with the penguin, right? Oh, yeah. Okay, cool. Hell yeah. Even if you miss, you always take the shortcut. Yeah, I was thinking Avatar The Last Airbender Episode 1. Oh, Penguin Island. That's where I went. It's Penguin's wedding! Do you want to go Penguin's wedding with me?

Let's go! Penguin! I'm hopping on. I'm ready. I'm like, giddy up. So the penguins all take to the line. Does everyone line up with the penguins? Oh, yeah. Are you sure about this, Dani? Absolutely. You're going to have such a good time. What else are we going to do? We've got to go find this guy. They are offering to take us on their backs.

Yes, we're gonna go on their backs and they're gonna ride on their bellies and we're gonna go through the snow faster than I could take you with the mammoth. This is gonna be the best time we've ever had together, okay? The best time. Thank you, strange tuxedo creature.

I'm gonna step on mine like a surfboard. I'm just like popping this. Oh yeah, this is just like snowboard kids. Let's go. Are you sure about this? I mean, the engine alone weighs like a quarter ton. Are you gonna be able to support that?

Do you know what that means? Do you know what a... Anyways. I think he's got it. They're tough. They seem enthusiastic. Your penguin sinks into the snow. They get another penguin? Yeah. A second penguin comes up that has to double carry your weight. Are you going to be okay if you're having to ride one of these? I don't know. You will be okay. Hop on. Are you sure...

We'll find out. We have to go. Let's do this. Let's do it now. Do you want me to strap you to the penguin? No, no. That's terrible. You don't want to be strapped down to the penguin that you wanted to get off? No, no, no. I appreciate it, my friend, but let's go. Let's go. Okay. I choose the penguin that I hit really hard. Okay.

Let's go! In a display of dominance. So you all line up on these penguins and they all, they're standing and then they take just the briefest little hop

and they go horizontal and they start to careen forward. You all kind of run after them a little bit and then leap on, some of you surfing them, some of you crying, some of you tying around, slapping them on the back. Go! Go, damn you! As you move forward. And just for fun, let's see who wins. Um...

We'll roll, and they're very similar to just the standard racing rules. Let's just roll three rounds of D4s.

And let's go four. Four rounds, four fours. Four fours. We'll go four rounds of D4s just to see who takes it. I don't know why I'm rolling. You're the only one that's going. This is very spacey. Four. Round one. Oh, okay. D1. Four. D4. Oh, yeah. This is going. Six. One. Three. Four.

I'm writing it down. Four. I'm writing it down. Three. Yeah, you should just track your own. No, I'm not going to track them. That's way too much. I'll just do this, and then...

I'll just call the rounds. I'll call the rounds. Oh, I love those pens. All right, everyone got it. Round two. Round two. Another four? Oh! Dang. Another four? Oh, it's Rhett and Chubbler. Rhett was a little hesitant at first. He started to hear him start to gleefully laugh and pop the snow. And Chubbler's a master surfer. Did everyone have their round two? Yep. Okay, round three. Round three. I got a three on round three. Four. I'm in last place. Ah!

Chugwold starts to pull up into the barrel of an ice drift and takes the lead easily, I think. That's three fours in a row, right? Yeah. What is everyone's total right now? I'm at five. After four rounds, you got a five, I got a six. Come on! We're on the round stage.

I am very much like 10. 10? 9. 12? 9? 8? 12. So you have a chance. You're at 8. Yeah, we're out of here. I think it's just between Chuckles and Kavir. Just behind Chuckles, just surfing. He's enjoying it. Round 4, final round. I'm not giving up. Darn! Oh, a 1! Wow! 13! 12! Oh!

God, you missed it by one. Oh, we can do this. And Chuggles just skips. The penguin comes to a halt as they all kind of scream, careen down towards the same time. Chuggles, surfing on the back of his penguin, leaps off and tumbles through the snow as the clear--

We'll all hit a ramp, a snowbank, and fly out on the ground like the top of his beak. Jeez! Pike took the shortcut and he just got lost. It was actually not a shortcut at all. Call me Anthony Falcon. That's pretty good. I certainly arrived last with a six.

And so I'll slide in very slowly. Everyone's already coming. Yeah, we were struggling. So I would see you absolutely trying to urge this creature. Come on! Why are you so out of breath? And the bike would be more focused on hanging on than trying to race quickly, so we definitely come in last. Yeah. After getting off the penguin, I'll have a smile on my face because that was admittedly fun, but then the penguin goes to clap me on the back. I'm like, ah! The whole time, the reason why you're going so fast is you're going to, and you're like, ah!

Incredible. Yeah!

The penguins all slide down. You've been, though this race happened mechanically very quickly, it actually took kind of a while. That's why it's in turns. They really took you on a journey, but they just cruised through the ice. Something about them, as they approach the snow, they just totally, it repels off their bodies. They're flying down these sheets of ice, down the snow, and you have moved incredibly.

a great distance as they all as you hit your final ramp and chuckles did a 360 no scope beat grab to land at the finish line. That was messed up.

Oh, God. Oh, no. Penguin abuse is not funny. Okay. Somebody's coming to stop us for sure. Yeah, no penguins were harmed in making this session. Your penguins all screwed up at...

to once again kind of this flat open snow field and they stand up and they're so excited, they're clapping their hands, they haven't had anyone to play with in quite a long while and they love it, they're loving it. You become great, great friends of the penguins. And as you arrive in your location, the one with the golden,

crown of feathers kind of swooped back a little bit. We'll go to each and every one of you and just kind of bow and tap its beak on either one of your shoulders. And you'll feel, as that happens, as it goes down the line to each and every one of you,

That you feel almost like a warmth come over you and a mild protection from the cold. It's not quite as biting. The wind doesn't hurt quite as bad. The chill doesn't quite reach your bones. You start to feel relatively comfortable. You still need your snow gear, but...

you don't quite, you don't feel the cold quite as much. Having been kind of like detached from this whole thing from the beginning, like kind of weirded out, like not really sure what's going on, now recognizing that there's like, you know, a level of like sentience, there would be this reverence I think that Pike would have in understanding that these are some sort of, you know,

ancient creatures or special creatures and Pike would kind of warm up a little bit and also kind of like give a little bit of a bow back. Yeah. After receiving this blessing. Absolutely. It bows deeply to you as well and spins on a foot in a circle and cheers and starts to clap, bounce back and forward and clap. A blessing from the Emperor.

Not that kind of Emperor. What? How did they do that? Some kind of venom or something in their feathers? Not sure. No! They're going to kill us? Am I going to die? No! It's the power of friendship! Exactly! I have taught you something. Yes, you have! We are unstoppable. Whatever we face will be nothing compared to how scary those sharks were.

I'm sure nothing bad could go wrong on this score, fella. I'm kidding, that doesn't happen. AT-AT walkers appear. What have you known? Incredible.

Do we have a sense of where this guy is? Roll a perception check. You can make it a group perception check. Come on! Am I still exhausted? You didn't take away my exhaustion. 20. Oh, much better. 21. God, I have to... It's group, though, so it's fine. It's group, yeah. My rolls have cooled off there for a bit. 6. 12. Perception? 13.

Which is great for me. Juggle? Oh, I fail horribly. Okay. Seven. So whoever beat a 15, whoever reasonably beat a 15, you might be enjoying yourself, but you're looking around, and you can see the snow's still fierce. You're not quite feeling it as difficult in your extremities, but you can see a small black object just on the edge of your vision.

as you look out probably about 50 feet to your north. Yep, there he is. All right. Well, thank you, Penguin-kind, for your weirdly magical boon. Yes, thank you so much. And I'm going to tell everybody on look back to them and be like, I think the best way to say goodbye to our friends and thank you is to clap.

Make sure to smile when you do it. - How do you do that? - Congratulations! - Yeah, like this! - Congratulations! - Thank you, penguins!

Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations! I feel more like I just lost in Super Smash Bros. That's exactly what I thought of when you started doing that. That was so good. You really captured it. Thank you. They start to clap and dance and twirl and bounce and they're so happy.

that they were able to help their new friends get to their goal, to where they wanted to achieve. Well, he's got to know we're here. Certainly we've been lured here. Maybe not. I mean, maybe because we took penguins as opposed to, you know, giant vehicles, maybe we'll get the jump on. It didn't sound like he thought we'd last long. Good point. Good point.

He probably thinks we're frozen to death or eaten by ice worms or sharks. All right. How long do we think it's going to take to get there, Donut Master? Five minutes. It's a walk. Five-minute walk. I don't think we're going to make it. We're going to come all this way and we're just going to die. I had four minutes in me, maybe. But the five-minute walk, too much. Right now. Right now.

All right, is it just totally flat? For now. Oh. Oh, boy. Well, he's going to see us coming a mile away, so let's just do our best here. I guess that's fair. We can try to lay low, I guess, but if he happens to look in this direction, he'll probably see us coming. We don't really have much other choice. Let's get this over with. You move forward towards what you know to be the Black Speeder.

You trudge through the snow. It's a little thicker than ankle deep still. And you don't quite feel it as harshly as you had previously. But it's still just difficult to navigate through. Like it's deep snow. You have to move one foot in front of the other. You can't casually shift forward. You have to lift a boot every time you want to step.

So it's going, but it was a short walk. You begin to approach the speeder. And before you can fully make out what this layout ahead of you looks like, just beyond it you start to see the large gray shape of what is either a mountain or a colossus.

just beyond the black speeder as you approach it. Something begins to form in the just slightly further distance. Is there, do we feel anything, hear anything? It's just... Just a large, ominous mass in the snow. What is that? I don't know. I can't tell either. Is it a landmass? It's moving, though. Bzzz!

I want to see if I can really make out what it is. This is my cue to tell me, can I see it? You slap your hoth monocles down, and the one eye extends out. And you pierce just beyond the speeder, and you look towards it, and you see what looks to be a gigantic snowy mountain that has maybe a brief cutout in front of it. And roll a perception check.

Twelve. Twelve. That's what you say. And as I'm looking through, a giant, like, poorly made puppet yeti monster will appear in my mind. And I'm going to single-handed smack both of us across the face. There's some kind of fucking...

Sheltered mountain? Something. Like a cave? It doesn't look natural to me, but maybe it is. But maybe that's where he's holed up. Maybe a city built into the mountain. I mean, it's huge. Danny said there were people here once. It would protect him from all of this. Oh, and maybe that's where the people are that survived. Oh! Underground? If they survived. We have no way of knowing if he is here or if he has moved on.

Based on our new penguin friend's instincts, perhaps that is where we will find them, but... Well, I don't... We may be in it for the long haul. Did anyone bring food? I wouldn't expect Rex to just leave his bike behind. Let's be realistic. It's too valuable. This is a good point. Should we sabotage it, like blow it up? So he can't leave? Let's just get there first. Okay. See what the fuck's going on.

We might also be able to use it. Oh, that's true. We probably should. It'll keep us speedier on the Rhapsody. It seems silly that we don't. I know we can't afford it. After this job, maybe we can. So we'll add it to the list, and I'll see if the budget allows for it, all right? All I know is that for Decemberween, I want a brand new shiny bike. Is there any way you can program it to ride itself back to our ship?

I mean, I could try, but I mean, just for it to, you know, I'd have to fashion some sort of device to allow it to understand its own location, navigate the terrain. Yeah, yeah. You could just say no. I mean, it's possible, but it's... You're always... All right. Okay. Can we go ahead?

Yes. Let's go. Let's try to be, you know, somewhat stealthy about this, all right? Labu still goes first. Activate cloaking. And I'll just very slightly shimmer. As is tradition. And I will go first, but I will set a pace that I think is going to allow everyone to steal to the best of their ability. So you... Sure.

You had reached the black speeder. What you found there is that the vehicle planted on the ground off.

Rex is nowhere to be found. A small brief campfire. Some wood, some ash, some cinderang, almost completely covered over by the snow at this point. But you can see at now it's actually stopped snowing. The visibility is still poor. The sky is still gray. It hangs in the air. It's a little bit easier to see

to see what's around you. And you would all notice relatively plainly the very faintest outline of footprints heading towards the mountain. And you move towards it. And as you walk, it begins to, its enormity begins to make itself known to you. You approach it. It is a giant structure. It looks like a mountain.

And you realize as you take one step, another, another, you close the distance, the brief non-snowed covering that you saw when you looked towards it, Red, was an entryway. But not that of something to an open cave. You see large, ancient doors as you come upon it.

with giant extending stone-like walkway that moves towards you. And as you approach these doors, you can see that the cold and the ice has moved from the bridge up to just the very bottom of the doorway. And in its enormity,

split between its giant openings, you see the visage of an ancient creature. Looks to have the head of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

and just an absolutely gigantic body, massively muscular. A long tail sweeps out around its torso and spirals down to the base of the door. This is a real Tyrannosaurus rex? It is a humanoid, with the head of a Tyrannosaurus rex, but it's also the body of a humanoid.

humanoid Tyrannosaurus rex. It's a statue? Or it's living? It's like a bas-relief painted into, not painted, it's like actual carving into the front of a door. I have an image in my head, let me know if this is way off, but mountains, sort of like this structure in the mountains and it's all big massive. I'm getting the Thundercats headquarters. Is that like kind of sort of what the entrance looks like? Hold on.

I'm getting general scales from Star Fox. Not including the bathroom leaves. It's pretty iron-forward. It's very Thundercats. But if it were covered in snow, right? If it were covered in snow and if the giant cat was more covered in snow and more mountainous. And more dinosaurs. And T-Rexes. And more dinosaurs. More general scales from Star Fox. Do I feel anything when I see this? You feel it deep inside.

kinship with the area and once again, this primal instinct to interact with the surface washes over you for a moment. Wow, so I'm gonna go up to the surface and put my hand on it. Of the door? Yep. You do so. I'm gonna communicate like, this feels so familiar. I've never felt this before on the Stardust Rhapsody.

I don't know what it means, but... Is this... Does it look... the stonework, do I get similarities between Dandy's construction? Do I see? You do. It looks very similar to the stone of Dandy. Is the door reacting in any way to her touch? It doesn't seem to be. Stands to reason. I mean, if you look at the tool in here and the stone, the way you're constructed, very similar.

Do you think that I am from this planet? Maybe you survived whatever happened here. Well, I mean whatever it is, it's clear that you're from the same peoples. Maybe. Maybe your makers are down there? Maybe. We can finally ask them all those questions that you've been having? Maybe. I don't want to get your hopes up, but I'm very- I'm getting excited for you, Dandy. I feel confused.

And honestly a little scared. You guys are my family. Well, if a jackass like Maxim's hiding out in this fucking place, I feel like whatever was here isn't anymore. And he's just using it as a hideout. How many of us recognize what the dinosaur-looking creature actually even is? Or does that look alien to a lot of us? The concept of a dinosaur, like, I don't think Pike would have any idea.

You know that there is a race of ancient aliens that traverse the galaxy that are in the form of humanoid, intelligent...

like dinosaur style people, but they're very uncommon to encounter. And it's a very, it's generally very strange that Bracken of the Ironside Pirates is of that. Oh, that's fair. That's fair. Okay. Um,

It would be very uncommon for you to like come across a structure like this, but you wouldn't necessarily have no idea what this is. You might think that it plays to that, but no idea why or what it could mean. So it's the same race as Bracken, but like a T-Rex instead of a... It looks even more primordial than Bracken. Oh, okay. So even like as if this were towards the beginnings of when a humanoid style shape would begin to form.

That is maybe good advice

And you know, we're all being very brave today. Look at Kavir. He faces fear of gigantic arctic bird monsters. And we all need to be brave going into this. And we may find some answers for you. Even if we don't find your makers. Okay.

Let's go in. You can do it. That is right. Well done, Kavir. Thank you, thank you. And I slap your arm. It's always a little too hard. It's always a little harder than you want it to be. You're right. You did a very good job, Kavir. And I'll stick my thumb out and I'll kind of tap your turtleneck. And there'll be a sticker that says, I'm a brave boy. With like a smiley face on it. And I think it was the apple with the worm coming out and smiling. All right, Dandy.

How do we get inside? I'm going to try and open it, and I try and open it. You start to push on the door, and you feel it briefly start to give, but it is incredibly heavy, and you get the sense that it would take all six of you pushing against it to swing the doors wide open. Guys, come help open the door. Stand aside.

Okay. I'm going to roll back my blue puffy coat sleeves all the way up, and then these comically cartoonish Popeye arms are going to appear. Or I'll do... And they'll puff up. They're very clueless and plated, but they look strong.

The arms that are attached to my engine will come up and also push with me. They do all of that and then I put one hand on it and it starts swinging. LAUGHTER

You all go up to the door, all of you in various ways looking to push. Labu standing just behind, feet planted into the ground, both arms extended and elongated and pushing against both sections of the door. Everyone shoves and these giant, ornate, ancient primal doors swing open. And in front of you...

The first thing you see in a hall of darkness and gray and stone is the beautiful, fiery, elongated hair of Rex. As he says, oh, so you made it, Rhapsody.

And that's where we'll end the session.

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