A Knight of Shreds and Patches Transcript Episode 26: The Earth on All Sides Transcript by Cameron Robertson
Intro:
[hurdy gurdy music begins]
Nick: Welcome, listeners, to A Knight of Shreds and Patches. An immersive actual play podcast. This episode features the talents of –
Cameron: Cameron Robertson as Emma Blackwood.
Sydney: Sydney Whittington as Cassidy Shard.
Nick: Nick Robertson as GM and Narrator.
Sydney: Hello listeners, this is your editor, Sydney, with today’s messages:
Thanks again for all the cast member applications! We really enjoyed listening through everything, with y’all showcasing so much creativity and all the voice acting skills. We emailed the first round results out to everyone last week, so definitely let us know if you submitted something and haven’t heard from us.
And with that, we wrap up today’s announcements and head into episode 26: The Earth on All Sides. And so...
Join us, for now our tale to yours attaches To carry hope: a Knight of Shreds and Patches.
[hurdy gurdy music ends] [electronic beeping] [robotic powerup noise begins] Distorted Robotic Voice: Power restored. Systems online. Reconfiguring audio connection. [robotic powerup noise fades to radio frequency static]
[over radio] Cameron (as Emma): Last time on A Knight of Shreds and Patches, I finally finished cleaning out the back of the rig. Found approximately 67 screwdrivers, but I still hadn’t found any of Pallie’s notes or journal or drawings or anything to help me with the Knight. Then I checked her arm and I found an audio recording device where she kept an audio journal. I feel like that’s probably going to be emotional to listen to. After that we went to the Bird’s Nest and Shawn came and offered us a job to go mining. [radio static]
Episode Start:
Nick: We open to the sound of an untuned engine echoing around the outskirts of the city. The outer borders of Eagle Hill are much less populated and much more rundown. Screeching around a corner, we see Emma and Cassidy in the ride that they've procured to make it outside of the coral walls of Eagle Hill and to a mine where they'll hopefully find raw materials, enough to satisfy the hunger of the fabricator, the request of their friend Shawn Ward, and make enough money to hold on until Wyatt and Zee-o can be found. Described your ride.
Sydney: Cassidy and Emma are on a big cruiser motorcycle. The handlebars are out wide. Cassidy's driving up front, her same canvas jacket and boots that she normally has on this time with a helmet, full face sealed off. Emma is right behind her on the motorcycle hands around Cassidy's waist, maybe not looking super comfortable, but Cassidy knows what she's doing. It's not her vehicle of choice necessarily, but Cassidy knows how to get a motorcycle around. To the side of the motorcycle is a big side car with a wheelbarrow strapped down inside and a couple of other various supplies that would be used to help get this ore back in a non-human powered function but also to get it in and out of the cave. Not likely to take the motorcycle in with them.
Cameron: Emma is still wearing her standard outfit of cargo pants, boots, a big warm cozy sweater, but has added a leather type material jacket over it and has her head fully encased in a very large helmet. And while is minorly uncomfortable with this mode of transportation, has ridden horses before so isn't concerned about the falling off piece is just I think more to do with not necessarily trusting the soundness of the machinery.
Nick: There is the occasional rattle pop as this motorcycle backfires, but you got a good deal on it and you exit the city limits and into the no man's land between Eagle Hill and the coral wall taking The Pike; a long, mostly well-maintained road that heads outside of town for several miles. As you drive the wind whips past your heads. Even in the helmet you can hear it shriek as you continue onward. It's a gray winter morning with a threat of snow or sleet but nothing coming down. Your skin is covered with gloves and jackets so that you don't feel the pinch of the cold air whipping against you.
And we get a camera angle from much further away, off of the road, behind a pile of rubble that was once a home and you see two people watching the motorcycle go by, the rattle of the engine the only noise in the otherwise quiet landscape. They're wearing leather jackets and military helmets, and one of them is holding a pair of antique field glasses, large binoculars with an anti-reflective coating on the lens and the field glasses track you as you drive towards the horizon.
The next thing we see is the motorcycle pulling up at the coral wall. It appears to be unbroken; it would need to be watertight as they use this to enclose the tides and control the flow of the ocean to help maintain farmland and places to live. The wall has grown this far out as though pursuing some nutrients in the soil or something with the currents, but this area is enclosed all the same. Do you look for a way to get your motorcycle over the wall? There's a couple of ways you could probably figure out to do it or do you leave it here and go on foot to follow Shawn's directions to the mine?
Cameron: How far did Shawn say it was beyond the wall to the mine?
Nick: Not very far, probably a quarter mile at the most maybe less. Your main concern would be if you leave this vehicle unguarded here and people find it they may take it from you.
Sydney: Yeah Cassidy is not going to want to leave the vehicle not just right outside the mine.
Nick: There is wreckage and various pieces of building and masonry and plants around. You could probably find a place to ramp and drive up and over the wall. It would just be a little bit unsteady. A little difficult.
Sydney: Is the wall rough or how climbable does it look?
Nick: The wall would be very claimable by hand for you, for an inexperienced climber, it'd be a little taller. Imagine a texture kind of like brain coral, so there's plenty of places to do a pinch grip, but there's no full handholds.
Sydney: Well, Cassidy's gonna, before making a decision on what the specific way to get over this wall is is gonna go climb up on it and look over the top to see what the other side looks like.
Cameron: To see what the options back down are. [laughing]
Sydney: Yeah. The challenge is like, well, we can maybe be able to like ramp something over if our motorcycles stuck on the other side, and we have to cut down trees or something that's not useful.
Nick: Go ahead and make me an average Athletics check to get up there quickly and easily.
Sydney: Sure. So we're rolling two yellows against two purple on Athletics.
[dice rolling]
Sydney: A triumph, a success, and two threats.
Nick: Oh, okay. So you are able to climb up the wall pretty easily. I think the threats are that parts of the wall are more dry and brittle than you're expecting and break away in your hands. You're still able to climb up, you don't cut yourself. It doesn't take particular effort, but it does look like someone has been kicking around at the wall at this point. So if someone were say, inspect it or be trying to follow you, there would be evidence that someone climbed the wall here. That being said, with a triumph, what would you like to see on the other side of the wall to help you move this motorcycle?
Sydney: The most useful in a practical sense would be like a big thick tree that's tall enough to be over the wall in a way that it's stable and we can rig up some kind of pulleys around it because we've got rope because Cassidy is prepared to climb. We've got carabiners that can be used as pulleys, or at least as force magnification.
Nick: Yeah, there's a large pine tree with surprisingly thick and hardy branches that seems to have grown up almost intertwined with the wall and it has several branches hanging all the way over the wall and to where you are, it would be pretty easy to use that as a basis for rigging up some sort of pulley system to get the motorcycle up and over safely. To do that, however, I'm going to need a Mechanics check from Emma or Cassidy, could be collaborative, at average difficulty and you can have two blue die because of this tree making it a lot easier.
Sydney: Cassidy calls down to Emma and goes,
Sydney (as Cassidy): All right. I think I've got a good spot where we can get the bike over, um dig in the sidecar and look for the spool of rope that's got the black stripes on it, because that one's going to be solid for basically any load that we're going to be able to throw at it.
Cameron (as Emma): Alrighty.
Cameron: Emma does so.
Sydney: And they start getting working on it to get the knots tied and the anchor points and the pivots and everything done in a way that it's going to be stable and useful.
Cameron: So I'm going to make the assumption that both my Intellect and Mechanics is probably higher than Cassidy's.
Sydney: Correct.
Cameron: So I will take a blue die for us working together.
Sydney: Cassidy has a lot of climbing knowledge. She knows how knots work, she knows how to do the anchors and the ways to do like the force magnification by running it through the pivot points, but this is also a lot bigger than a person. So she points Emma to like approximately what would be done and then Emma is making her own.
Cameron: Emma knows where you need to connect to on the motorcycle to lift it to not damage anything and important stuff like that. All right, so I have three yellow, three blue and two purple.
[dice rolling]
Cameron: Two successes and two advantages.
Nick: Nice. I think the advantages just lead to this being much faster. You don't have to even spend strain or particularly work to pull the motorcycle up and over. It goes really smoothly and you're able to lower it down and retrieve all of your gear. It doesn't leave any evidence on the tree or anything that you've done this. It goes about as well as could be expected. Do you hop back on and keep going?
Sydney: Yeah - what, how does that ground look?
Nick: The ground looks much the same on the outside of the wall as the inside of the wall. The Pike is more broken up, especially close to the wall, but has large non damaged stretches as well. Trees begin to spring up pretty close and it quickly thickens into a pine forest.
Sydney: Cassidy is going to keep driving while there's pavement to get about as close as possible, but at the point where it starts either being a challenge to maneuver or a risk to the bike, she will get off. Hopefully that's close enough that she can scout to find to the entrance of the mine before coming back and like walking it with Emma.
Nick: You drive along the road and maybe a few 100 yards beyond the wall as the road starts to become smooth in longer stretches, you can accelerate and then you have to slow down and pick your way through rubble and then accelerate again. And before you would say be able to get up to a high speed on the motorcycle, you see the landmark that Shawn called out was when it's time to break off into the forest to find the mine. From a certain angle, it looks like an eagle with its wings folded coming from the city. But Cassidy as you turn off the motorcycle and start to head into the woods to scout, you see that from other angles it just looks like a boulder. It's one of those perspective tricks. So do you leave Emma by the motorcycle and head off into the woods?
Sydney: Yeah, so Cassidy is gonna scoop up her bow and her quiver now that they're not riding anymore, and they're not going to get snagged on anything and suits everything back into their comfortable spots at her hip and over her shoulder, and then sets out giving Emma just a nod and a,
Sydney (as Cassidy): Be right back!
Nick: Go ahead and make me a Survival check for how quickly you're able to hone in on this mine. The thing about it that's interesting, you already know, is that it's close enough that Shawn figured you could get there and back in a day. But it must be hidden in some way because other people haven't found it and really explored it yet. So there's something weird going on here and the instructions that Shawn gave you were turn right at the Eagle Rock and walk straight into the forest. So you're going to need a little bit of skill here. It's going to be average difficulty.
Sydney: So Cassidy knows what she's doing in the woods. So she's got a yellow, two greens against those two purples.
[dice rolling]
Sydney: Two successes.
Nick: Cool. So I have this image in my head of Cassidy moving through the woods, and she's the kind of person who watches her step very carefully and moves silently. Shadows move over her face as she stalks deeper into the woods, and maybe 200-300 yards into the forest, not that far, about the time where you wonder if maybe your angle was slightly off, but before you really think about turning around and backtracking, you see something kind of out of place. It looks like a wishing well. It's a round stone ring that rises up to about waist height. Looks like it was mortared together a long time ago, half of it is sprouted trees and moss and lichen. Part of it's fallen down on one side, but there's still a slightly rotted cover and post above the ring, like where you would hang a bucket. But there doesn't appear to be anyone who's used it. It doesn't really look like a functioning well and when you lean over the side, it goes down further than you can see.
Sydney: Cassidy is going to do a quick scan of anything else around, not checking out the well like in the wells specifically, but looking for traces of people or if the ground has been broken, whether fresh or historical to show that this is the place.
Nick: Digging around for a while, you don't find a lot. You do find what might be a couple of tracks of somebody having walked through here in the last week or so, But that's a week old track. It could have been a pig, it could have been something balling and getting moved, but you have a hunch that maybe it was somebody walking and not watching their step. And as you're shuffling through the pine needle floor of this forest, you hit something with a clank and you unearth it with the toe of your boot and see a rusted piece of shovel. And as you dig a little bit more with your toe you find some, it looks like industrial cast offs, bits of metal, bits of pulley, a small pile of something abandoned here. It's the best lead you have to go on.
Sydney: Cassidy is gonna key her radio back to Emma, and go,
Sydney (as Cassidy): [over radio] All right I think I found it. Well, something suspicious at least. Um are you good to walk the bike over or do you want me to come back and find you?
Cameron (as Emma): [over radio] Yeah, I think I can get the bike over there.
Cameron: And sets her radio back down. It's basically a little baby walkie talkie that's looped onto a necklace chain so she can wear it around her neck. And she drops that back down and it falls into the lumps of her sweater. And she walks over to the side of the bike and grabs it by the handlebars and picks it up and starts walking it in the perfect, you're watching a movie and the high schooler has stopped riding their bike to walk with their friend along a tree lined road, it's just that but she's walking with this motorcycle through the woods.
Nick: You get that feeling of being watched while you're pushing the motorcycle. It's still the morning but not much of the overcast sunlight makes it through the trees as you walk deeper into the forest and you get that itching on the back of your neck. Do you speed up or do you fight the urge to hurry?
Cameron: I think Emma focuses really hard on maintaining speed and playing at nonchalance. And just like looking around in a 'I'm observing nature' type of way, trying to see if she can see anything that actually like is legitimately watching her or if it's just a weird you're in the woods feeling, but is trying to maintain her pace and to not act like she's noticed anything.
Nick: As you're walking around, you're very careful. You look relaxed. You know, on the outside, that you appear to not have noticed anything, but you don't see anything. It's like the woods themselves are just giving you the heebie jeebies. It's that feeling of going out to check on some of the livestock at night before bed and on the way back to the house you just feel like you have to run.
Cameron: Oh, it is very important to run when heading back to the house.
Nick: And you have that thought just as you break into a small clearing and you see Cassidy standing next to a well in the middle of the forest with nothing else around it. No sign of people.
Sydney (as Cassidy): It's not the most obvious entrance, but I - looks deep enough and based on the directions from Shawn I suppose this is it?
Cameron (as Emma): Yeah, I mean, I, I don't know why else there would be a well in the woods.
Sydney (as Cassidy): It's deep enough I can't see down and I don't have anything I want to throw down there to uh light it. I would rather save those knowing we're going into the darkness.
Cameron (as Emma): That makes a whole lot of sense.
Cameron: Emma kicks out the kickstand on the bike and leans it over and walks over and looks down into the well.
Cameron (as Emma): [echoing] Hello.
Nick: Your voice echoes as though mocking you down into the depths.
Sydney (as Cassidy): Well uh... [sigh] Guess we are going down.
Sydney: And Cassidy starts getting out climbing rope again.
Nick: Question. What do you tie your rope to? Do you tie it to the wall? Do you tie it to the structure? Do you tie it to a tree nearby?
Sydney: Cassidy's going to do a tree because she's not sure of the structure, like the motorcycles not heavy enough to necessarily be a really convincing anchor, and she's used to tying anchors on trees. So she just picks a thick tree within a few feet of the well and just does it around behind then brings the rope over to the edge of the well and looks down and looks at Emma.
Sydney (as Cassidy): Hey, Emma. So I have this rope in my hand.
Sydney: Cassidy throws it down the well.
Cameron (as Emma): Uh huh.
Sydney (as Cassidy): We are going down. Do you know how to [chuckle] repel down a rope?
Cameron (as Emma): Ummm I assume you hold on and you, you walk yourself down on the wall.
Sydney (as Cassidy): I mean, kind of. That is a way to do it.
Cameron (as Emma): I've painted the sides of barns before and you kind of do a similar thing to hang off the roof when you need to paint the top of it. But like -
Sydney (as Cassidy): Would you prefer to be first or second?
Cameron (as Emma): Um. I'll go second. So I can watch you do it to get my technique down.
Sydney (as Cassidy): All right.
Sydney: Cassidy goes back to the motorcycle to the side car where there's the pile of gear, grabs out a small pack with the specific for caving equipment, and there's the clanking of some sounds like small metal containers back and forth. And then looks at the wheelbarrow that's wedged into the sidecar and looks at Emma and goes,
Sydney (as Cassidy): Are we optimistic enough to take the wheelbarrow down with us or do we want to find where we're looking for and then come back up? Have to do a couple of trips.
Cameron (as Emma): I mean, given that we don't know how much space we're going to have once we get down there I think it makes sense to head down first, find where we want to go make sure we actually have space to get the werebear down there.
Sydney (as Cassidy): Yeah -
Cameron (as Emma): Cause like if it's real small down there, and we can't stand up having the wheelbarrows not really going to be that helpful.
Sydney (as Cassidy): Yeah, of course, if we get down there and we can't stand up we're gonna have hard time getting out 250 pounds of ore.
Cameron (as Emma): Yeah, well, yeah. But we'd have more of a chance than if we got the wheelbarrow stuck. [laugh]
Sydney (as Cassidy): Yep. This is very true.
Sydney: So Cassidy gets her stuff out and puts her harness on, goes over properly straps into the rope for a repel, and then does a review of the basic technique with Emma, knowing that there is proper equipment available because Cassidy has stuff so if Emma wants to do it the safer way as opposed to just walking down the wall, but it is more complex and if it's short enough that it's not a danger, then it's up to Emma, whether she wants to try an unfamiliar technique or just go down. But at the end of the review, and the shrug of Voila,
Sydney (as Cassidy): All right here goes.
Sydney: Then Cassidy ties in, gets her gear ready and starts down inside of the well.
Nick: So as you repel down, are you jumping? Are you just sliding? What kind of technique are you using?
Sydney: Yeah, it's a slow, pushing off the wall and drifting down a few feet and then landing again, to bending her knees coming to a stop. As she gets down below the line where she can easily see, she reaches up and keys a different button on her wild tech radio headset and a headlamp turns on coming out of the same light where the small overlay screen is and light is illuminated around her with a little bit, it's the slightly too white color of bright artificial light, but it definitely is very useful for the type of detail work in knowing where your feet go as you're descending the entrance to a vertical well into a mine.
Nick: Emma, from your perspective, looking over the side, you see Cassidy disappear carefully down into the darkness, a brief flash as she activates her headlamp and then a light swinging around as she checks her feet and goes further down. And then after a while the sound changes, the echoes get further away and you see the rope lose its tension as Cassidy unhooks at the bottom.
Cameron: Emma turns on one of the small lanterns you'd have for if the power went out.
Nick: Yeah, it's a almost cube shaped lamp with a solid top and bottom that emits a diffused electric light. It surrounds you in a warm sphere of light, but does not show things into the sharp detail that Cassidy's focused illumination does.
Cameron: Yeah. And then she hooks in and kicks off.
Nick: How does it feel dropping into empty space into a pit of unknown depth?
Cameron: I think the fact that it's so dark makes it fun. I think if Emma could see exactly what was going on, and like actually judge how much distance she was going through, she'd probably be slightly more freaked out. But now it's just the feeling of weightlessness as you're falling briefly before catching yourself on the wall and then kicking back off. She doesn't have all the visual stuff to freak her out. So it's fun. It's very different than trying to climb back down a tree after you've gone up it.
Nick: As you're thinking about that, you see some movement out of the corner of your eye and willfully look away as something climbs along slowly on the wall as you continue to descend. And you come to the bottom. It's feels like solid stone with a thin covering of dirt. Cassidy is looking around having waited for you. And the tunnel only goes one direction, a slight angle down. You can't quite stand upright in it, either of you, and that seems to be the way to go.
Sydney (as Cassidy): Welcome to the mine. These miners were apparently very short.
Cameron (as Emma): Yeah, well...
Cameron: How tall is Cassidy?
Sydney: Like 5'6".
Cameron: Okay, Emma's 5'8", so neither of us is that tall.
Nick: Cassidy has to bend her head a little. Maybe she bends her knees just a bit to make sure she doesn't hit her head on an outcropping. Emma has to stoop slightly to walk.
Sydney (as Cassidy): Well...one way forward.
Cameron (as Emma): Lead on. You've got the pointy lamp.
Sydney (as Cassidy): I've also got the bow.
Cameron (as Emma): That too.
Sydney: And Cassidy double checks it on her back and the arrows at her waist.
Cameron: Emma removes the pickaxe from her back that has replaced her baseball bat for this expedition.
Nick: And down into the well and the mine you go. The tunnel becomes smaller quickly. Soon you're bent almost double, then you're both crawling on your hands and knees until you come to a point where it narrows even further. Cassidy shining your light through this tiny gap, you figure you could cram your shoulders in and wriggle your way through, but it would be a tight fit. And the light goes through this area and out the other side and you can't see what the other side looks like.
Sydney: Cassidy calls up over her shoulder.
Sydney (as Cassidy): This is very small. We're not gonna be able to get anything out of here.
Cameron: Emma scooches up slightly, not being able to quite get even with Cassidy but getting around to the side enough that she can also see where the path continues to lead.
Cameron (as Emma): Well, I mean, you'd have to be able to get something else right. This was a working mine.
Sydney (as Cassidy): Unless we've came in the wrong entrance.
Cameron (as Emma): It'd be real slow going but you could like push things through I guess. [laughing]
Sydney (as Cassidy): Yeah but if this is actually the mine, then they would have dug it out further, right?
Cameron (as Emma): Yeah...
Cameron: As we've been walking have we seen any signs of humans having been here?
Nick: You're not seeing any of the equipment or debris you would expect from an active mining area, but you can tell that this tunnel, or parts of it, were carved with tools. You can see chisel marks, and it's rough edged, this area was maybe the product of a cave in, but if that happened it was so long ago, the stone appears almost fused together. There's a little drizzle of water that maybe helped combine the stone with sediment. But at some point, it was touched by human hands.
Cameron (as Emma): [sigh] So it looks like the walls were carved, so I mean if this was just a well, it wouldn't make sense to have continued it this direction, like your goal with a well is to go down until you find water. So really, you wouldn't be traveling into the well, so it wouldn't make sense to have this path coming off of it.
Sydney (as Cassidy): Yeah.
Cameron (as Emma): But also, I feel like if you were building this out, um I would have done something here to make it a little bit bigger.
Sydney (as Cassidy): This is not - yeah, this I don't, not a fan.
Sydney: Cassidy as the ceilings are low and right now she's sitting on her elbows in the dirt. This is not climbing outside.
Sydney (as Cassidy): [sigh] I wish we had a better way to do this, but uh I - You want to go first or second?
Cameron (as Emma): Um. I can go first this time.
Sydney (as Cassidy): All right.
Cameron (as Emma): See if there's anything useful over there.
Sydney: Tell me if it looks terrible or if I need to drag you out by your ankles.
Cameron (as Emma): Yep. All righty.
Cameron: Emma and Cassidy awkwardly do the shuffle dance so that they're in the opposite positions so Emma's closest.
Nick: You both catch an elbow to somewhere soft at least once. There's just not enough space to do it gracefully. And Emma as you press your shoulders into this small gap, feeling that there's maybe a half an inch of space on either side that you're going to have to wiggle through here, worm like, to get deeper into the earth, make me an average Discipline check as your mind screams at you that this is the last thing you want to do.
Cameron: I have the dice pool of two green versus two purple.
[dice rolling]
Cameron: One success and two advantages.
Nick: Great. I'm going to apply your advantages to something that's going to happen. You wiggle yourself into the space, you feel your legs pulled up from the floor as you end up parallel climbing through this choke point. You lead with the pickaxe and with your hands in front of you it makes you a little narrower and lets you pull with your fingers at least and you can't help but think about that this is not a very long distance. Walking you wouldn't even notice it even crawling it's not that big a deal but down on your belly with the earth on all sides it feels like forever as you inch your way along probably two times the length of your body maybe a little more and I need you to roll me a Coordination check at average difficulty and you can have two blue die because of how disciplined you were in starting this.
Cameron: We have altered the dice pool slightly by having two green, two purple, and two blue.
[dice rolling]
Cameron: A success and two advantages.
Nick: You feel pushing ahead the pickaxe start to slip and grab the handle before it goes. Using it to feel ahead of you, you can tell you've come to the end of this choke point. But as you reach further out, you can't feel the ground beyond it. Were you pushing your lantern ahead of you?
Cameron: Yeah.
Nick: You are able to push the lantern and hold it out over the gap, but the light is too weak. It's darkness in every direction beyond this. You seem to have found some sort of abyss.
Cameron (as Emma): Uh-oh.
Nick: Cassidy you hear a quiet and slightly nervous 'uh-oh' echo back from the choke point.
Sydney: Cassidy takes a deep breath and then goes,
Sydney (as Cassidy): You all right?
Cameron (as Emma): Yep, um. I appear to have reached the end of this little baby tunnel.
Sydney (as Cassidy): Okay.
Cameron (as Emma): And I'm looking out the other side here before I exit and I can't see floor, I can't see ceilings, um. I'm not hitting anything when I swing my pickaxe around. My lanterns not bright enough to see farther than a few feet.
Sydney (as Cassidy): That's~ not promising.
Cameron (as Emma): Nope.
Sydney (as Cassidy): Um...
Cameron: Emma grabs a rock that's next to her in the tunnel and drops it into the open area.
Nick: With you dropping it it took a couple of seconds for it to fall to the ground. You have another pebble you figure you could drop it. You heard the distant clatter as it hit something and it didn't sound like it bounced and kept falling. It seems like there is a bottom a few seconds below you.
Cameron: Question about this tunnel. Does it broaden at all before it reaches this open area or is it still just like the super tight? Is it enough that I could come forward and like beyond elbows at the end of it?
Nick: Yes, you could get up on your elbows there. If you were particularly flexible and foolhardy, you could probably manage to scoot your way to the edge and hang off by your fingertips. But there would be a decent chance of you falling if you did, but it's not impossible.
Cameron: All right. I'm going to pick up another rock and thinking really good math thoughts, drop it, and figure out, based on how long it takes, how far the ground actually is away from me.
Nick: Emma roll me a Classical Knowledge check to see how long this rock falls down to a fraction of a second and then to calculate what that means distance wise.
Cameron: What is the difficulty?
Nick: I think it's hard, telling the difference between 2.1 seconds and 2.8 seconds is not easy.
Cameron: All right. I'm going to flip a story point to upgrade. So I've got a yellow, two greens and three purples.
[dice rolling]
Cameron: A success and an advantage.
Nick: With a success and advantage, you figure that the rock falls for about 2.4-2.5 seconds somewhere in there. Why would Emma be able to count by tenths of a second? What did she do back in Thunder Bay that let her calculate that closely when she was focusing?
Cameron: I think one of the first big interesting projects that she had, the first couple of them were clocks. So she spent a lot of time figuring out exactly what a second is so that she knew if it was clicking at the correct speed, but clocks were an easy thing for people to give her to work on that didn't really, if you have a broken clock, it's not really impacting the farm all that much. So they would give it to her.
Nick: Did Emma repair a clock for her oldest brother's house who lives in his own house and is married and make it so that it skips minutes occasionally, and he kept being early to stuff early in the morning?
Cameron: If that happened, it's probably because Emma's mom asked her to do that because her brother's always late to everything.
Nick: Oh, of course. There was no mischief in this decision at all.
Cameron: Oh, no, it was tot- well, I mean, there was mischief, but it wasn't solely on Emma's part. This was a family plot to try to get her brother to show up on time, and Emma was like, that sounds like an interesting mechanical problem to solve.
Nick: So having that it's about 2.4 seconds, 2.5 seconds of falling at 32 feet per second per second of gravity's acceleration you figure it's probably a little over 100 feet from where you drop the pebble to the ground. It's a good distance. If you had gone head over heels out of this tunnel, that might have been the last mistake you ever made.
Sydney: Cassidy is drumming her fingers waiting for Emma to do something because Emma hasn't moved but,
Cameron (as Emma): The floor appears to be around 100 feet down.
Sydney (as Cassidy): How- You said you couldn't see it.
Cameron (as Emma): No, I dropped a rock.
Sydney (as Cassidy): How did a ro- okay. Sure. So what do you want to do about it then? Your ankles are still here.
Cameron: Well if it was twice the length of my body, I'm, I'm no longer visible to you. Unless you're looking through the hole.
Sydney: Yeah, I have nothing else to do.
Cameron (as Emma): Um~.
Cameron: I pick up another rock and I just chuck it out.
Nick: You hook a rock, there's a second of it flying and it hits the far wall and then falls again and falls to the floor of this shaft. It's a decent distance calculating that distance based on the velocity of your throw is going to be a lot harder than calculating dropping a rock and knowing how fast things fall.
Cameron: Yeah, she was really just trying to see is there something right there that I can reach? And she established that No, there is not.
Cameron (as Emma): Um, okay, Cassidy?
Sydney (as Cassidy): Yes?
Cameron (as Emma): So I think our only option here is going to be to repel down from this hole.
Sydney (as Cassidy): Lovely.
Cameron (as Emma): Yes. Um.
Cameron: Emma feels around on the area around where she's leaning now to see exactly how much space she has to work with over here.
Cameron (as Emma): I could possibly stay balanced - eh I could probably stay balanced while hooking myself up over here. Um,
Sydney (as Cassidy): Did you, is there any like outcroppings or something that we can use as a proper anchor or is our spot this tunnel?
Cameron (as Emma): Our spots this tunnel. Any anchor things gonna be on your side. We got nothing over here.
Sydney (as Cassidy): Hmm. Great. Well, I guess let me go back up and get the long rope from where we tied it to get down here.
Sydney: Cassidy turns around and starts going back up to climb back out, redo the anchor in a way that you can take the rope with you, and then repel back down with both ends of the rope to then pull it in after her.
Nick: And that's pretty routine for you. You're able to knock that out in a few minutes. Emma you're sitting there in the dark looking into the abyss. You heard the retreating sound of Cassidy leaving and it's probably the most alone you've ever felt.
Cameron: I'm just singing to myself listening to echoes. I have my little lantern with me so I'm not completely in the dark I'm just very quickly surrounded by dark after the lantern light runs out.
Sydney: When Cassidy gets up to the top she takes a deep breath and looks around at the trees and at the sky. And then takes another deep breath and then gets to work untying and resetting the anchors.
Nick: There's one brief shot of Cassidy looking back down into that dark well and realizing oh, she does not want to go back in there. But she left Emma down there and she knows she's going to and we cut ahead to Cassidy with the long rope back at the choke point hearing a surprisingly chipper voice echoing around in the tunnel and back to her singing a song.
Cameron (as Emma): [humming Girl from Ipanema]
Sydney: Cassidy gets down to the bottom and Emma's ankles are dancing to the song that's echoing around.
Sydney (as Cassidy): I'm back. Are you - Have you lost it in the meantime? Or?
Cameron (as Emma): Hmm? Oh. Nope I was just entertaining myself.
Sydney (as Cassidy): Okay. I've got rope.
Cameron (as Emma): Awesome. I guess do you just want to thread it through here?
Sydney (as Cassidy): Ehh - uh. Yeah, I guess so.
Sydney: Cassidy looks around for like, a loose chunk of rock or something that's big enough to be not movable, but at least somewhat in this hallway to be able to use it as a potential anchor point or as a start of one.
Nick: So you're able to slide Emma the rope, tie it down. Emma, you toss the rope out into the abyss and watch as it falls and feed the rest of it in. And now all you have to do is get out of this thin tunnel and lower yourself down. I'm gonna need a Coordination check from you at hard difficulty. This is very tight quarters and, so you have the rope fed through your harness, you're not going to fall, but even with that getting out of this tunnel and beginning to repel is going to be very difficult. You run the risk of cutting yourself on the edge of the tunnel or slamming into the wall. So you have to be careful and it's going to be hard.
Cameron: Could I do an Athletics check to do it through strength rather than flexibility with Coordination?
Nick: Sure.
Cameron: All right, good. I am stronger than I am agile. Got a yellow, two greens, and three purples.
[dice rolling]
Cameron: Three successes and a threat.
Nick: So you're able to do it. You managed to hold your body weight with small stabilizing muscles as you inch your way out. It's really hard, but you're able to swing around without hurting yourself or damaging the rope or your harness. But you do take a strain to do so and you're able to repel down to the cave floor. Cassidy you see Emma's feet and her lamp disappear. You don't hear any screaming. The rope tightens rhythmically with the pattern of Emma repelling. And you can't help but think about that open sky and the trees far above you, as it's your turn to go into this tunnel.
Sydney: Yeah, Cassidy throws one glance back over her shoulder at the well that she is pretty sure she could still climb without a rope and then down at this abyss that has a rope hanging into it and there's a point at which she imagines with her trying to plan for every eventuality that if something goes wrong, this may not be - it gets hard to find a way back and that's not great. And she takes a deep breath and steadies herself and then goes forward following the same way that Emma went down, sticking her head out and looking at the same abyss after having squeezed through.
Nick: And I need you to make me that same average Discipline check but with two black die because of your innate yearning for open spaces.
Sydney: Yeah. Can I have a blue die because I know that it's possible because Emma did it first and Emma's bigger?
Nick: You absolutely can.
Sydney: I am rolling two greens and a blue against two purples and two blacks.
[dice rolling]
Sydney: A success and a threat.
Nick: You make yourself go through. You know Emma did it, you know it's possible and that she needs you and that you're here for a job, but it's pretty rough. You feel yourself sweating, even in the cool air of the cave, you take a strain by forcing yourself to do this. But as you focus on keeping yourself centered and keeping yourself moving, almost as soon as you've started, you've inched your way to the edge where the rope falls down into the dark. Far below you you can see a silhouette of Emma peering around with her lantern. And I need you to make a hard Coordination check.
Sydney: Yep. I am rolling two yellows, two greens against three purples for this.
[dice rolling]
Sydney: Three successes and two threats.
Nick: You're able to do it easily and quickly, but in your rush, you lose your balance a little bit and have to grab yourself to keep from slamming into the wall. You do one of those quick corrections with your arm to stop your momentum and pull a muscle in your shoulder and you take two more strain as you work hard to not hurt yourself. But after that it's easy going. You repel down. There's no wind the air is still, but your movement stirs the air.
Sydney: Once getting out onto the wall, even though there's still cave around, because it's not pressing in the same way, this does feel more comfortable to Cassidy. It's like climbing at night as opposed to being in a tunnel.
Nick: And you make it to the bottom. Cassidy you shine your light around and you begin to see mining equipment. There's old rusted, burned-out pieces of wild tech that looks like it used to be autonomous mining, but also minecarts as cliche as it is, bits and pieces of shovels and picks, some rail tracks leading off into the darkness in various directions. And you can see that metal restraints and wires and cables and platforms lead straight up from this tunnel. Your light doesn't reach all the way but it looks like it may reach up further than where you came in. Your entrance appears to have been a ventilation shaft cut by miners long long ago and you've now found the main mine. You're one step closer to your silicate ore, to completing the job that Shawn got you, and to helping power Eagle Hill to keep their fabricator, the heart of the city, running. Now you just have to find your prize in a dark and abandoned mine.
[hurdy gurdy music swells]
Outro: Aly (as Zee-o): End of episode. Commencing end credits. The following information will be placed in the show notes for your added convenience.
This has been A Knight of Shreds and Patches, an actual play podcast using the Genesys game system from Fantasy Flight Games. The show is edited by Sydney Whittington, and features the talents of:
Sydney Whittington as Cassidy. Sydney can be found on our Discord server, which is linked in the show notes, and on Twitter @ sydney_whitt.
Cameron Robertson as Emma. Cameron can be found on Twitter @ midnightmusic13 and on Instagram @ reading_and_dreaming. Cameron is also a player on Tabletop Squadron, a Star Wars Edge of the Empire actual play podcast.
And Nick Robertson as narrator. Nick can be found on Twitter @ alias58. Nick is also the GM for Tabletop Squadron, which you can support @ Patreon.com/TabletopSquadron
This podcast features the musical talents of Dora Violet and Arne Parrott. You can find Dora at facebook.com/doraviolett. You can find Arne at atptunes.com.
The official artwork for this podcast was created by Rashed AlAkroka, who can be found on Instagram and Artstation @ rashedjrs.
You can follow the Patina on Twitter @ akosap_podcast or visit the website: www.akosap.com. Until next time…
...Audio Offline.
[hurdy gurdy fades]