Eternal Lies 22: A Plague of Grackles

0:00 Daniels Dread Tails is a show for grown-ups. It may contain adult language and adult themes. Please check the episode description for content warnings. Last time on Eternal Locks, after covert chat with a terrified sound engineer, our investigators took some time to unwind both alone and together. Rested and confidently on the trail of Jonathan Brooks, they dug into new leads at a burnt out record store that was still being watched and the aforementioned engineer's abode. Falcon Kane found nothing but the ash and remains of Lesser Maus, but Smalls and Kern soon found themselves on the receiving end of gunfire, waiting out their assailant until the police arrived and took care of the problem.

0:42 The party regrouped at a cafe and shared their progress, when suddenly the calls of abominable birds began to ring out. The die is cast, the pact is sealed. My God, have mercy on our souls. It's Daniel's dread tails. Anyway, horrible birds just like you, their strange 'cause they have glistening and grizzly mouths ringed with tiny hook teeth and they are flying towards you, ready to attack however you may. No, yes.

1:23 I was about to say not to be the guy that asks for homework and all, but is this going to be a stability test? Once they once you are attacked by it, you will take a stability test. You know what, we should just make the stability test right now to see. Yeah. That would be. Creepy as fuck. Yeah, I mean, attacking you is also upsetting, but we'll just get it all out of the way because you're actually first scene. You're only supposed to take the most difficult stability test. And they're going to attack. They're going to be attacking. They are going to be attacking so let me double check the exact difficulty here. Is there a plus one because they're a Methos creature? Could somebody remind me where we are and what we're doing? Like is this a good place to start shooting or no? You were just having lunch.

2:13 I think you guys were just having lunch. Yeah. Yeah, just on a street. I hope the street uncrowds itself with the advent of birds. Yeah. How is everybody else reacting the quote UN quote civilians? There aren't a lot around. It was kind of a bad vibe. There was a funeral procession that just walked. Through here. Oh yeah. Yes. Yeah. OK. So you are free to start shooting Renee. I I didn't say that, but the people will. You don't have to worry about friendly fire in this situation. That's good. Yeah, I was not worried about that, but now I kind of AM. Yeah, yeah.

2:55 So what's the what's the difficulty? So it's a potential loss of five difficulty. Yeah, you're attacked by a supernatural creature. So that's stability loss of five. And it's plus what difficulty? Because it is a mythos creature. I am burning 2 points. 1. Russell, do you mind rolling for me? I'm I'm going to spend 2 points. OK. I as well. I'm spending two on this. It's A7 for current. I still fail. Oh boy. I succeeded so oh, so he got a full spread.

3:37 Oh, this is this is off to a great start. So I think Smalls is currently in a this like deer in a headlights fugue type state. Seeing this 'cause this is his first time seeing literally anything methos related or even really supernatural. He thought this was all just a bunch of hokum at first. He's been going along with all of this thinking we were all genuinely crazy people. Huh. He's. Writing a book. I thought he went to Miska Tonic. I mean, those are not mutually exclusive, but. Here's Here's what we're going to do. Those of you who passed your stability check, you will be able to react before the birds attack. OK, good.

4:28 How's Colin doing, by the way? Colin failed real bad. That was a one. It was, yes. But I didn't spend any extra points to fail that bad, yeah. Yeah, yeah, Street is what, half empty? Yeah, 3/4 empty even. I really don't want to start shooting in the middle of the street, like crowded or not, because I don't want to draw attention to us. Yeah. So here's what I'm going to do. We're in a restaurant, right? I think we were like sitting on the patio, but yeah. OK, I'm gonna grab a chair and I'm assume a batter's stands, so the moment the birds enter my vicinity, I'm going to start batting.

5:12 That's pretty awesome actually. I'm going to pull that knife I never get to use and stab some birds when they also when they come near. I guess stabbing a bird would be difficult. I am going to slash at the birds. Make sure you keep like 5 feet away from me out of my valet range. Let's not accidentally hit each other. Yeah, 'cause Kearns is raging and I'm going to reckless attack. OK. I will have both of you guys make attack rolls. Difficulty. The hit threshold at the moment for this many birds is 4. That's a four people. Would it be? Scuffling.

5:52 It'll be whatever you want to use. I think a chair would be weapons. Yeah. It's an improvised weapon now. Yeah, improvised. Yeah, it would be weapons. OK fine. I'm gonna spend 2 points of weapons, could you please roll for me? Yeah, we both had. Pretty good. That's 8. You both had, yeah. I succeeded by double. Unfortunately, greater success does not actually get you anything else. It just makes sure that you had. Yeah, now roll your damage, OK. What kind of damage would a chair deal to a bird? How much damage do knives do? -1. OK, knife is -1 small improvised weapon is also minus.

6:34 I don't think a chair would. I guess a chair would. Count as a small weapon. I guess a chair is a big improvised weapon that does 0. 0. Fuck. I don't know. Perfect. I do no damage to the birds. I do 2 damage to the birds. Nothing's more disheartening than like a zero damage attack. Well -1. I don't think you can heal the enemies so. You wave your knife around. Extra birds appear. Oh, that's a cool knife. No. Hang out with that knife. The knife of murder. This isn't what I expected. Murder.

7:18 Wait, no, that's crows. We're dealing with grackles. You're dealing with awful grackles so you're trying to stab, but the birds are flying all over the place. You take a big swipe with the chair though and knock 2 to the ground. Killing each point of damage you do is going to kill a bird. Nice. Now the birds are going to attack no, because there are enough of them. As you start knocking down the birds, they'll be able to attack less targets, but at the moment they are able to definitely attack 4 targets. So each one of you is going to be attacked by these birds. Well, that's not fair. And they're going to add a one point of scuffling to their role. So smalls 7 to hit. Ouch.

8:01 Oh. Boy. Solid. JB also 7 to hit. Burn price. Two to hit. Miss. And calling for the hit. You sunk my detective ship all. Right. That chair is really doing like Kearns is doing great against the birds so far. Yeah, I was about to say the dice tell the story. I'm just windmilling the chair around so they can't even get at me. Address the chair, you should feel good. Their attacks do one D 6 -, 3. However, they do a minimum of one damage whatever they want. So and I'm just going to roll damage for all of you. One damage.

8:44 OK, OK. Yeah, as the birds Peck at you and start biting at you, the other two can try to go. Now remember, you're, you know, you failed your stability test, so it's like fight or flight or freeze. I suspect fight is where we're going to go, but I'm not the one to tell you what. Please choose Fight. Colin's big on flight. No. I am A1 armed man in a bird fight. Punching was my strength and that just does not seem like a good idea here. Colin is going to try to get in of doors. OK.

9:24 There is a restaurant nearby, so obviously I run to the funeral procession and try to climb in coffin. OK. Do you? Want to get arrested? I will go into the restaurant because that is the obvious thing to do. Yeah, you're able to run inside. The clientele are also looking around, kind of flabbergasted and shocked. I don't know if the guy runs the place or not but it looks like they're getting ready to lock the door. But you are good to get in and hide from the birds Big glass windows though. Cullen's leaning up against the door. He sees the shock, stares everybody in the place and he nods and says birds.

10:11 What else can you say? And what about you, Doctor Smalls? He's probably also going to head for the nearest enclosed area, so probably for the inside of the restaurant also. OK. You both run inside. The restaurant, yeah, Smalls isn't a fighter. He he he may be athletic, but at best he's a mid scuffle. So you're like a bodybuilder. The muscles are just for show. Working on the glam muscles. A healthy body leads to a healthy mind. Oh, you picked the wrong job to keep a healthy body, my friend. Or a healthy mind. Or a healthy mind.

10:53 Well, see, Smalls is going to try and work on that right now and I would like to attempt a little bit of psychological triage on myself. Oh, that's probably a good idea. Because I'm an alienist, I can make the role at a difficulty 3 and I can do it to myself, but instead of being at 2 sanity points per Psychoanalysis Point spent, it's one for one. OK, you get inside and you start to take deep breaths. Taking deep breaths and like, no, this can't. No. There has to be a logical explanation for this though, and it kind of does veer off a little bit because he's like, you know what, if I can dissect one of these, I might be able to Basically starts going off on a tangent about how he can use it to further his career.

11:47 OK, so yeah, it's less affirmations and more I can make some money off of this. OK, we'll see if he's still feeling his calm when the birds start smashing into the window. Spoilers, but I'm going to spend one for the role and I fail. So no, I do not make myself feel better by doing this, and that's fine. I'm still in the positives, so I can still use all of my abilities. It's it's. It's fine. How is it that both the rules you've tried to make so far, you spent enough points that the only way to fail is A1 and then you hit a one? Yeah, yeah. It happens sometimes. OK, folks who are outside, what do you do? Well, I was feeling a lot better about our odds when there were four of us.

12:36 But if Kearns is going to keep fighting, I'm going to keep fighting. If Kearns tries to run, I'm going to run. Kearns is invincible with the chair. That's true. Hang on, can I have Mace on me? I don't know if that'd be a thing yet. No, no, you all misunderstand. A Mace. Mace spray was developed in the 1960s. Back. Damn it. Wait, Kearns was in World War One mustard gas? Does he have any mustard gas? Oh, here's the thing. Can I look around and see if there's a fire extinguisher nearby? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, there's there's probably a fire extinguisher inside the restaurant. It's a good place for a fire extinguisher.

13:17 Yeah, yeah. OK, as all of this runs through my head, I shout at JB. Get inside, I'll cover you. And I keep swinging the chair around while walking backwards towards the door. Don't gotta tell me twice. I break. Make a break for the door. OK, you are able to get in, although the some people have run out the back. Many people have run out the back. The odor is sitting there sort of stunned and confused. He doesn't even know who to blame at this point. That sounds like a hem problem. Yeah. And are you going to attack with the chair then? Yeah, I'm going to be backing up, covering JB and myself and swinging the chair and I'm just going to roll straight. I think 3 should have spent.

14:01 Yeah, unfortunately, yeah, you do not hit the. I mean not enough to like take down a bird. You maybe like wing them, but not really. And now they're going to attack you before you get inside. Then you can be inside, but they're going to get an attack on you because you were attacking. They're spending one point to hit you. They rolled A1 though, so while it's upsetting, they're not able to actually hurt you as the feathers are flying all over the place and you guys get inside this restaurant I guess. I call GM preference. Well, just look how the roles have gone. That's just not fair. Take it up with roll 20. OK, I.

14:42 Sometimes the day. On the last time we were recording said that I hate women and stuck to this idea if any and I that means I'm mad at her although that that does mean that I hate women. You're not helping, you're gay. Forget I said anything. Not helping your case at all bud. OK. Well, good thing I'm only about 60% women on a good day, so. Fair enough. So you guys are inside the restaurant for a moment. Everybody has run out the back except for the odor, who is sort of flabbergasted about what's going on. And the birds are now pecking at the windows. Yeah, I guess the two who have not taken their actions yet can go.

15:26 So that would be call it and smokes and then we'll get to the rest of you guys. So should I be in flight mode for a while? Yeah, your call. Your call. OK, Colin is going to run to the kitchen and try to find the grease pit beautiful. The great big deep fryer full of burning hot oil. OK. I like the way you think, which is a shame because you do it so rarely. Oh sorry, sorry, I couldn't help myself. All right, I'll just go cry over here now. All right. So you're trying to get to the deep fryer, and as you run back there, the odor says, hey, wait, what are you doing? Get out of there.

16:08 No Hable Espanol. They just silent my dude. But if you didn't speak Spanish, you wouldn't know that, yeah. Yeah, I'm going to try and patch myself up a little bit. So is it just a straight spend or am I going to need to roll? This is not really the time to be doing it. If it's not the time to do it mechanically, at the very least narratively right now, Smalls is currently bandaging himself up because it's really the only chance for reprieve he's had. Gotcha. And you're not going to want to walk around with like open wounds if you. Bird wounds. Yeah, yeah.

16:50 Who knows where those mouths have been? Oh yeah, exactly. At the very least, narratively, that's what he's doing right now to take up the time. But yeah, other than that, I really don't have anything mechanically that I have planned. OK. I'm going to say everybody could do one more action before the birds break in. I'm going to shout at the owner I think. Or the Fuego por favor fire extinguisher please. He points, confused. OK. I go and grab that that thing and I'm a make ready. Hang on, hang on. Maybe drop a couple tables OK to their sides so we can use that as cover. Gotcha. Yeah, to clarify about the first aid, you could use first aid if you could focus solely on healing the person you were trying to heal at the moment with the birds pounding on the window.

17:43 That's not that's not going to happen. Yeah. So we're using tables as cover. We have a fire extinguisher. OK. Yeah, then J VS going to also get behind table cover and get ready with the knife. Probably yell at smalls, grab something if you can and get ready. Smalls is just going to kind of look at him quizzically and go back to mentally preparing for what is to come. Yeah, everybody reacts about like that. First time they encounter something like this. Yep. Cullen grabs A putt to scoop oil from the basin and then realizes this is going to be much more difficult with one hand. Shit.

18:23 Hey I could use a hand in here. I shoved the fire extinguisher into smalls arms and army crawl into the kitchen. Whether Smalls uses this option is up to his currently compromised discretion, but he does have an option now. That is why I did not give him the gun. Smart is stable. Yeah, as the horrible sound of squawking gets louder and louder as at least like 50 birds bust through the window of this restaurant and just fill up the entire place with squawking attacking. Nice. Feel free to use your knife.

19:06 Give us those anime rolls. Got a 50% chance to hit. I succeeded. Yay, got your damage. Oh, come. On all right. I just asked you not to roll the one and what did you do? Such a betrayal, Nathan. Yeah, JB is not equipped to fight birds. I'm going to commit a homicide on my laptop. JB needs a baby, needs a bigger weapon. Can I spend weapons points to up my damage by the way? No. Good to know, good to know. There's no real way to boost damage outside of getting a better weapon.

19:48 Yeah. I need a better weapon. Yeah. So Smalls is going to pull the pin and activate the fire extinguisher. OK. Directly into the path of these voids. OK, yeah, let's see. That would mess them up. I'll even give you a + 1 to the damage on plus one to the damage on that. And I think it's probably weapons. I mean, it's not a real weapon. Athletics for being able to aim accurately. It's not athletics, fucking no. I had to try look. I should be able to use bluff to climb, no shut up. Can I argue that the damage should be bigger because many fire extinguishers from the 1930s contained highly toxic and dangerous chemicals, primarily carbon tetrachloride? Oh God.

20:43 That's like the stuff they use in like glass fire grenades. OK, +2, but you're not going to get a bunch of uses at it. I'll be fine with the +2 also because you don't really have a skill for it. If you are using this as a ranged weapon, which is what it sounds like, that's a firearms check. OK. Well if you can't add points, it's a straight 5050 shot. Just make sure you don't breathe this stuff. I rolled A3. Damn it. Get your fire extinguisher checked. Yeah. We're gonna get killed by birds. Short record tonight, yeah. As you're looking at the birds, you see that there are like mouths growing off the sides of their bodies as well. No.

21:26 At least some of them mouth birds, yeah. What are the other two doing? Colin, what do you need? All right, so we're going to create a thermal reaction of explosive magnitude. I need something hot and something cold and then I combine them so that the birds get bad stuff happen to them. OK, I'll grab the oil, you grab the ice. Ice great idea. I don't think that's how. I'm not going to question it. You do you. No, I've worked in the kitchens. I know what happens if you drop ice into a boiling hot oil. It just fucking explodes. Also got a friend who had a bad run in with a home still. Oh cool. Yeah. Yeah, it's. A bitch. Yeah, it's, it's no good.

22:08 You could like look that. You could look that up. I will not. Yeah, I've made the mistake of Googling something to learn about injuries twice in my life. Once I googled the word mangled to see what a mangled arm looks like. I regret doing that. And once it was to see what a third degree burn looks like, and I regret doing that too. Oh. Boy. Yeah, yeah. So I will not. This is, you know, to be fair, this is probably exaggerated a little bit, you know, because it would be more that like it wouldn't necessarily always explode like a grenade necessarily, right? Although I guess it depends. It would spray boiling hot oil everywhere though which? Is what we really need right now, so. Yes, unfortunately I do imagine this going on behind Smalls and JB.

22:57 Hopefully the birds will act as a buffer. Right, they have filled the whole place. OK, hang on. Can we, can we just think about it like how do we, how do we do it like add the birds and not add them? Thinking comes later. We need to do stuff fine. OK, OK, You're the brains. Let's go. Oh. No. Why? Is Oh no the. Brains, The other person is current. Yeah, yeah. OK, which one of you is making an explosives role? Oh, I can do that. Our brains were red and.

23:37 I don't think I even take a minus to that one. No. What's my difficulty? The hit threshold is 4. OK. Question, yeah, since we're sort of coordinating this attack, can we pull it? Yeah, I'll let you do that. You're not going to be able to make it attack this turn, but you can. Yeah, you can assist. That's fine. Does that really make sense for what we're doing? Yeah, I'll spend 2 points. I'll spend 1. OK, you. Succeed. Make it happen. All right, so I was going to treat this damage equivalent to like a pipe bomb, but I which would be a + 2 damage. However, I'm going to give it an extra fucking five more damage on top of that because birds are relatively easy to kill an explosion. Yeah, flying type mythos monsters are weak against fire. Yeah, yeah.

24:28 So this would be a + 7. To the birds. Or against the birds. Yeah, yeah. I suppose we'll. Deal with God, you guys. JB and Smalls. We can't do zero damage. Oh wow. Get him. Fuck. Oh no, that's still, that's still 10. Yes, you killed. Ten birds. Nailed it, problem solved. Now there are No. There's still enough birds that they're hit Threshold. Yeah. They haven't changed once you've killed a few more birds. Well, once you kill a few more birds, they're actually going to get harder to hit. But there's going to be a chance they disperse everyone. Every once in a while, you kill a certain number of birds. OK, that's good.

25:11 You now need to roll the damage for your friends. Who we said we're hiding behind cover. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So -1. Right, I rolled the two. OK, so there each of them is going to take one damage. I can look at that. I can look at that. That's just a bit of boiling oil. Suck it up. Yeah. Oil spray. Yeah, I mean, from experience, it's not that bad. You see the restaurant owner is on the phone calling the police. Perfect. Yeah, that's back up. Not unwise. Not, not on you necessarily, to be clear. Yeah, on the. On the birds, Oh, they're never going to send anybody. What's he going to say?

25:54 We're being attacked by birds. The police aren't going to come. They're going to think it's a prank. There is a way we can make the police come. Let's not do that, though. Whatever it is you're about to think that would make the police guaranteed to come. Let's not. Bird attack. Oh no. And stuff. No shotgun. Yeah, well, actually a shotgun would be a pretty good idea right now in terms of killing birds. OK, this is going to go up against everyone. Get a roll for each one of you in turn. We're going to do Smalls, JB, Colin, then Kurtz. Small money all whammies. Small money, all whammies. Smalls.

26:36 Damn it. JB. Woo. Thank God. Colin Kurtz all. Right, I can take it. It wasn't all whammies, but at least I didn't get take. At least I didn't take a hit. The damage is 2 to everybody. Except for me. I kind of want to say it's because I like jumped on top of you, sort of covered you. Your heroism is noted and appreciated. Everybody else got something to do. What do you do? Third time's the charm. Cullen would like to slide a pan over to JB as it has a.

27:19 Larger a larger. Weapon. Yeah, it may be a little easier to swat a bird with. It you know what, that's fair and I am going to spend 2 points from weapons. Just don't roll A1. And I make in exactly the right place for this too. OK, I I succeeded. It's plus zero damage. And that is? You're using a large weapon. Better. That's better. Or I guess this may be a heavy club esque woo. 5. OK, just turns out it's probably a guy. If you needed a club, just swag. Those motherfuckers out of the air to get fucked. Bird swarm.

28:01 Yes, good job you are smacking the birds. You have taken down like 5 of them as they ride around on the ground screeching out. Their voices are sounding almost human, but speaking in syllables that have no connection to traditional language, which will set you on. 676767. I'm gonna smack you right now. All the kids are saying that. Thankfully the high schoolers are over saying that that's mostly guns and kids were doing that. Bring less shit. Yeah, I'm in grade 3/4.

28:44 Oh yeah, no, of course. I mean. Unfortunate. So that's what JB did and that's what Colin did. I guess if there's another small thing you want to do, Colin, you can. But getting the the frying pan was the main thing I think we're doing finding the. Right. Yeah. And very appreciate I'm in a support role right now. It's very appreciated man. Smalls and Kurds, what's the plan? Smalls is going to attempt the fire extinguisher one last time. Yeah, I imagine this is probably the last shot that's in it. Yes, I was going to give you 2. Yeah. All right. I was assuming it was going to be a 2. 5050 roll at least a four.

29:25 You got this, You got. This I rolled a. 4 Woo. Yay. All right. Second Birds. Fire extinguisher does +2. Yeah, you said +2. Knock those motherfuckers out of the sky. Four. That's going. Yeah, OK, I have good news and bad news. Yay, good news. The bad news? OK, bad news. Their hit threshold just went up. To five, I assume. To five, yes, their hit threshold is now 5 because there are less of. Them. Yeah, that makes sense. However, they can only attack three people now, and I'm going to roll to see if you have broken their will.

30:10 Oh, is that good? That's a. That's a low number. Is that good, Dan? Is their will broken? If the role is equal or greater to the flock's previous hit threshold, the flock maintains its cohesion and continues to attack. OK, that's I rolled A1 though, so that's bad. The birds. The birds run away. No, you gotta. Yeah. That's fair. They are, yeah. You're fine, don't worry. About it. OK, we introduced them to our kitchen nightmare. Yeah. OK, we did. OK, can I say that while this all has been happening, Kearns ran into the kitchen, came out with a cleaver, with a cleaver in each hand. Like, bring it on, you fucked.

30:59 Oh. I mean, to be clear, they're not like gone, but they are sort of flying away now, going back up into the sky with several on the ground that you have killed. There's 29 birds left that started with 50, so you got a lot of birds. Wow. All right, Yeah, let's Skidoo. We're we're going to want to grab a couple of these. Yeah. We already had lunch turns. Very funny. The man says. What the hell was that? Can we have A to go bag please? No, no, no.

31:39 Kearns let's get like 3 bags. Yeah, 3 to go bags and here's the money for our food. I think it's best if you just forget this happened. The cop car pulling up outside. Shit. Is now, you know what, maybe you heard the sirens earlier, but it was sort of being drowned out by all of the bird noises. And two Mexican police officers get out of the car and are looking around and the first one says we got report of an animal attack, He says as he, like, sort of kicks one of the birds. What the hell is going on here?

32:24 Animals attacked us. Presumably one of us is translating, yeah. Yeah, a bunch of birds came and attacked us and we fought them off with stuff we found lying around the kitchen. Yeah. Yeah, so. The cop looks over at the the owner, it says OK, is this an insurance scam? That's a fair question. That's a hell of a scam. Yeah, my friend, if it was. No, no, look, these are weird mythos. Birds. Look in its mouth. Jesus. Christ. As you look at it, it no longer looks like a crazy Bithos bird, it just looks like a normal grapple of. Course.

33:05 OK, so I'm just playing with his mouth, all right. Pretty full bird, all right. Like to attack people? OK. We'll go, hey, we'll get out of your hair. Let's just let's go, team. Let's just grab. Grab, I'm I'm, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm going to have to. Take our statement. I'm going. To and let us go. Yes, yes, I'm going to need to take your statement. He looks over. If you guys are the witnesses, I'm going to need, well, the odor and at least one of you to come and make a statement. I understand that this is, I don't, I don't know if I understand what's going on here, but I'm going to need at least one of you to come with me down to the station and make a report. OK, should I do it?

33:50 Because this, this man, I think, is about to stick his remaining hand up the Greco's butt and use it as a fucking puppet. Who has cop talk? Oh, I do. Could Colin can then conceivably use cop talk to talk his way out of having to leave? So the owner is now seeing me speak fluent Spanish to these cops after saying I don't speak it. He must think we're the worst motherfuckers after all this. Hey, we protected his restaurant. Is that what this was? OK, yes, fair. The owner says, I think, I think this what our man brought the beer.

34:33 He, he, he commands the birds. He's a bird wizard. What a thought please. I prefer the term Aviomancer. You know, this might actually help our case because Colin usually says something and it sounds insane, but that's good for us because it's making the owner sound insane right now. OK, Yep. Colin, what would you like to do with this situation? I'm sort of thinking a cup talk reassurance combo where I'm telling them I will swing around later to do this. You know what, I think the cop talk is going to let you do that, he says. OK, here's my card. Just swing by the station by end of day, maybe get yourself cleaned up.

35:20 Oh, that's a fantastic idea. I was planning to get over there later anyway. And what's your name, Sir? Michael Love, Shaq. OK. Thank you, Mr. Love. Shaq and where are you staying? The Casa de Cucaracha. Good thing that's the name of an awful real place. You should be staying at a better place than that. But sure, All right, stay out of trouble. Would love to get a statement from you. Come on by, pick yourself up. We have a medic at the station if you want it, but. Oh, smalls, huh? You were looking to get patched up? Did you want to accompany these fine gentlemen? Pretty confident that I can patch myself up, thank you. Yeah, that's all right.

36:10 Let's regroup at the hotel. Before we go, can I write this poor man a check for repairs? That's nice, yes. And like Bill it to Miss Winston Rogers. Less nice. Less nice, yeah. She gives me the per diem and everything but I don't. She's in another country is the thing. You you'd probably need to pay him and then like get reimbursed by Winston. All right, fine. Yeah, you are her top. Goon I I read this this man a check for repairs and I apologize profusely.

36:53 I think you have one point of Winston Rogers credit rating that you could use for that. I'll give you 1 floating point if you're spending on that. Anything else you're not going to get reimbursed for, but she'll she'll give you that one. OK, well. Yeah. Wait, is that 1 floating point per person or? Let's say 2 for the whole group. OK. Yeah, so say my goodbyes and leave and catch up to the others and I go, yeah, well, let's, let's try not to blow up anything else if we can. I don't know. We tend to do a lot of blowing up on these excursions.

37:34 Just our line of work I suppose. As you're leaving, I need you to make a sense trouble Difficulty 4 check. Fuck. I'm going to spend my 2 remaining points. That's a 2 for Colin. Fuck sake. Fuck sake, you're rolling a lot of ones there buddy. I know. Oh, did everyone fail? I only see 2 rolls so far. No, I just failed. Nope, there's a third one. You are our last. Toe OK, I'm I'm spending my 3 points. OK. I'm spending my three points, So what do my paranoid eyes see? You see that there was somebody who was watching all of this go down. You don't see them, but you see evidence as you're leaving of like, there is definitely somebody like sitting in an alley across the street smoking and watching this happen. And maybe you were chatting with some people. I, I don't want to go through quite all of it. But he ran away.

38:32 When the police came, somebody said yeah, it was a guy with some binoculars. Yikes. Yeah, looks like, looks like we're still being watched. And the background, we just see him shuffling off as Colin says he prefers the term aviomancer. You know what I'll give you? I'll give you one more thing about it while you're being watched, because you you succeed, I'll give you one more piece of info. You catch somebody who tells you that they saw somebody. He's a shorter Mexican guy, had a hat chain smoking so fast you think he was drinking them. That description. That's something. We don't see all of that scene play out, but you, you catch that little bit of info maybe for one of the soccer who look at that's nice as you make your way back to the hotel at like it's like 3:00. In the afternoon.

39:24 Yeah, in the afternoon. In the afternoon, Yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot's happened. Yeah, it's been quite the day. The very least, we need a shower. Yeah, we got this record repaired too. We could listen to that. You could. That's absolutely true. You could listen to the record. Are you sure? That's. Why? I, I I. Don't wise. This is a bad idea. Wise is staying home and taking it easy. I think we are beyond wise now. I put it on. I mean, do you have a record player in your room?

40:04 No, I think there's one in the hotel bar. Oh. Put it in the fucking jukebox. You know what, I it is your call, but I guess I did establish you were in a very nice hotel, so you'd probably get a record player for your room. Oh fuck. This is, I mean I I was kind of willing to attempt to yellow it, but record player in a room would probably be the better idea. All right, you're going to listen to the recording. Yep, I think it's just all of us in the room, isn't it? I think so, if you're all yeah. Yeah.

40:45 You know what? JB covers his ears. Probably was. Yeah, JB is going to cover his ears and is fully ready to fucking kick the record player off the dresser if everybody else starts going insane. Yeah, if they just start stabbing people, yeah, fine. It's just a record. The way you guys are so scared about some music, Music's nice. Daniel. Music in the real world is nice. Yeah, I'm going to pop a pill before we do. Just head into it a bit extra relaxed. I think Colin has been trying to get the brass knuckles on this entire time since the restaurant. Yeah, it's kind of hard to put it on the one hand. Accidentally invented a fidget spinner here. The song itself is not a very complicated song. You hear a simple guitar, occasionally little bits of drums and a woman's voice rhythmically singing some simple phrases in Spanish, and then also wordlessly cooing and crooning.

42:09 A little bit of a jazz, a little bit of a. The things you hear are MI corazon, MI Amor, MI lombre and MI Boca. My heart, my love, my name and my mouth. Yes, it's really relaxing, Really relaxing. JB stab it, it's relaxing. Here is what's going to happen if you would like you can just really embrace the song, give yourself over or you could make a difficulty 3 stability test. No stability loss at stake to resist the hypnotic effect. Do I Also you don't know what will happen if you said you were covering your ears, you're.

43:02 OK. You're not on Nectar right now, are you? Not? OK, Yeah, you're. Hilarious that you asked that, Dan. I'm scared now. I'm going to leave this up to the Bunny gods and roll AD six. If I roll high, I'm going to just like relax and chill out to the music. If I roll low, I'm going to try and fight it. OK, So apparently I'm trying to fight it. OK, It's just going to be a straight roll though because I'm low on stability. It's difficulty 3, so you've got a 2/3 chance. There we go. Yeah. A5 OK, OK. Colin does not think he deserves to relax, so he will fight it. OK.

43:46 That tracks. That's a three. I did explicitly say that I'm heading into this a little extra relaxed. You did. Nobody was pulling my tongue and yet I went and said it. So you just get a, you just get a vibe with it. You get a vibe with it. So yeah, you see, Kearns, Kearns is like his eyes are kind of half hooded and like he's nodding his head to the beat. Kearns, I have great news, gain a point of stability. Thank you.

44:26 I also need you to make a note somewhere on your character sheet. Uh huh. Gave themselves over to song 1. All right, OK. Probably goes under mental disorders, right? Yeah, that's a, that's a decent place to put it. Yeah, that's all. So it just feels nice. And like, it's, you know, the other people with you maybe find it a little bit like weirdly upsetting, but you're just sort of like, there's something about it, man Something like really. Yeah, and that Lady has some pipes on her. Nice. Yeah, she's definitely got a mouth on her too, just just singing about.

45:09 It she so you say she's got some pipes. I, I will be clear, you know, she's got a beautiful singing voice. She's not singing loudly. It's very sort of a very sort of soft sort of voice that you're here. My brain is not entirely connected to my mouth right now, Kearns is. That is not not Renee. Gotcha. So you've listened to the song outside of Nothing seems to have you know if you were expecting something else to happen, it has not. Well, that wasn't so bad. Yeah, and that was actually really nice. Cleared my head. I feel better. The songs you know, you keep thinking about the song. It's kind of like stuck in your head.

45:50 Me Boca, me nombre, me corazon. I just keep like keep like humming it to myself. Fun. See. Wasn't that nice? Wasn't that nice, everyone. I feel like you guys should just relax a little bit. You can stand to have some stability. The last. Time. Was pretty good. Relaxed in this fucking game. JB got kidnapped well. What are the chances it'll happen twice? Hi. Not 0.

46:33 Hey everyone, I'll get you back to the show in just a second. Just popping in to say we have a Patreon. The plan is to keep all our real content free, but with the Patreon you'll have access to the things that are easier to miss in an audio format, along with a couple extras like the Super mid music I make with the show, scans of Renee's paintings, and an episode or two that never made it to air. We didn't get into this to make money, but if we could hire an editor, the rest of the cast would have no choice but to release me from the terrifying editing dimension that constantly shifts and turtles one with my feet. When water comes, it smells wrong and I haven't seen my family in weeks. Once when I was sleeping, something grabbed me and threw me across the room, but when I opened my eyes there was nothing there except the computer and a pile of strange coarse meat. Sustained me for another few days. And the echoes and pispers are a pain to remove from my track. You can find it at patreon.com/dread Tails. So you have some time, if you want to patch yourselves up a little bit, you can spend your first aid. I will say, even while the birds did fucking come for you when you were out on the street, I would say that the hotel at the moment is a relatively safe place, which means you can restore your general abilities.

47:34 All right. Yay. Yay, got all my son's trouble back. Wait, all of them or is there? Oh, no, no, no, no. I was going to tell you what You don't get everything. Yeah, no. No, no, there's rules. There's rules you may refresh up to three general abilities except for Health, Sanity, and Stability. OK, sense. Trouble. All right, 3 abilities. And can I roll my first aid before restoring those? Yeah, sure. OK shit, in that case I will spend all five and then I will refresh that one. Refresh sense trouble. So technically the way refreshes work is you need to find somewhere safe to rest, and you could only do it once per session. OK.

48:21 OK, good. It'll be athletic. Yeah, I'm, I'm a 10 out of 12 health. I think I'm doing OK. I am at. I'm a four of seven. Six of eight. You guys are so wee. Hey JB, want to do some mummy stuff on each other? What? You know, bandages. Oh, oh, mummy. Wouldn't you not Mummy? Wouldn't all? Right. Yeah, yeah, sure. You guys think weird things sometimes. We think we're things. Your brain is broken. But yeah, let's totally first aid each other. Lovely. Yeah, how many points are you doing by? It's one to two on somebody else. OK.

49:01 Right now it's yeah. Right. It's 2:00 to 1:00. If you're it's one to two, you get 2 points. Yeah, yeah. OK, so I'm going to spend one point to give you 2 health back. Yes. How much help did you need again? I was down three, but the last injury was 2, so, well, there you go. That's all you can do. I will spend a point on you as I believe that was the same for you. Yeah. Yeah, my last injuries were both bird related, so. So it's not the last injury you took, it's the injuries you took before the scene in the seat. So yeah, it's one per seat. For example, if you get shot and then somebody punches you during the same fight, you could repair both. If you get shot, run away, get into another fight, then somebody punches you, you could only heal the punch. OK, OK.

49:47 So I would have only regained 4 of that. Even still the damage that you took earlier. Both of my both the hits I took I believe were bird related, so yeah. So does one point do it or should I spend another? No one point does it. Perfect. In addition to this, Collin's going to be getting gussied up in his best FBI costume. Oh. Right, because we're going clubbing, aren't we? No, I have to go to the police station before end of day. No, you don't. You gave them a fake name. No, you don't. Do you remember that fellow who was shooting at you guys? The police came. What do you think he's doing right now? Oh. Oh guys, call me crazy, but I think Colin just had a good idea. Holy shit.

50:30 I also want to say this FBI suit is like something Colin Special ordered. He's never got a chance to wear it and he's super excited about. It is it going to fit? It might be a little Peggy there. You go. The issue is that probably ordered it when you still had. Both arms. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you can like tie one sleeve and it's probably and yeah, it'll be fine. Yeah, it's not a. Huge. That's just going to be an issue for any clothes Colin gets going forward. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, safety pins. OK, so sounds like going out this evening. We've got at least one person going towards the police, yeah. I don't think we should be on our own. I think let's travel in pairs.

51:19 Yes, always buddy system. Yes, buddy system. Who wants to come with me? I think because only the two of us speak Spanish, Mr. Cain, we should separate so each pair has a Spanish speaker. That makes sense. Yeah. JB Smalls. I think I will stay in this JB if you would. Stay in. Oh, you're, you're hilarious. Have fun clubbing. All right, let's go, Colin. Yeah, that's what you're wearing. Like, look at me. Come on. You got to bring it up. JB. I. Look like a detective. Yeah, you need to look like you work for the FBI.

51:59 I'm going to tell them you're my partner. I do have a suit. Come on, we can go through my stuff. It's all right, I have a suit. OK, let's do this. We're not going to have a cute montage play and dress up with Cullen's suitcase. Tempting, but no. You had one, it was great. You put on a suit, it comes out, you shake your head, comes out with different suit, shake your head, come out a crazy suit. You sort of like thinking it for a little bit and then eventually shake your head though again and then it comes out. The 4th 1 is a good suit. Kearns is pretending not to look but, but is in fact very much looking.

52:41 I'm going to say a thing here to remind you guys, perhaps about a clue that you didn't remember. You do have Leticia de la Loses apart that address. Oh, yeah, Don't forget that. Yeah, you got that after being fired on. Should that be where Kerns and smalls go? I would say yes, but. It's a little early to go clubbing. It is a little early to go clubbing. And and we should all go clubbing just because that scene will be insane. That's probably. That's also probably a good point. You probably should all go clubbing. Don't worry. Remember she got a lead on where you could buy Nectar.

53:24 You should all go to that. Oh no, no, I don't think JB should go to that. It's only difficulty 5 to resist DID. You guys start without no? No, no, no, no. This is just side chat. Yeah, there was some discussion about maybe before that everybody should go clubbing together and that maybe you 2 should go investigate the apartment that you guys got the address for while the other two go to the police station. And then maybe I'll go clubbing together because that might be more fun if everybody's together for the club. Yes. Yeah, let's do that.

54:06 And Daniel wants to kill us all as a group. But. Then nobody can feel singled out. No, we we all know that he has it out for me. So. He might, but the dice clearly don't today. Yeah, yes. Anyway. No, it's the chair. Shall we? We shall. OK, so me and Colin, we're going to the police. No, you had to. Where? Where would you go? You know what? It doesn't matter. You go to the police station. Forget.

54:46 I don't need to name every historical place of the goddamn but you. Want to quitter? Look into your heart, you know it to be true. OK, give me a second. Well, there's look, there's policy in Metropolitan. You head to the Federal District Police Department and you were given the card of A A Jose Blanco. Jose Blanco, OK. Josh the White. I guess. And you wander into the police station.

55:27 It is a you know, it's a police station. You've been in them before. It looks like a pretty standard police station, except for they speak Spanish here and not English. So I will be relying on you to do most of the talking. You also don't see a vice squad. You don't see the telltale signs of people trying to crack down on prohibition. They drink bloody over here and it's. All right, yeah, I'll try and find the guy whose name is on this card all. Right card. You were directed back to Jose Blanco's desk. He's a young officer. You notice that he has a small scar near his jawline on his left cheek. And he says thank you for coming. I did want to talk to you about the incident this afternoon, Mr. It's Michael Love Shack.

56:18 This is my partner Gravy Boat Jones, and we were actually headed here later today anyway. Gravy boat Jones, how do you do when I shake his hand? Yes, hello. I'm, I'm sorry you were headed here already. Is there some sort of issue? Yeah, we're a couple of Hoover's boys, and from the sounds of it, you might have someone in your custody that we've been on the lookout for. We have several people in custody. I don't really know what you're talking about. What does this have something to do with these birds? No, it's actually just a happy coincidence.

56:58 Yes, unrelated incident. Well, it's a coincidence. OK, we've had a very busy I'm sorry week in Mexico City. Yes. Well, first let me get a statement about the the birds. You'd say what? What happened there? Birds attacked us indeed. And you? JB gives a brief if you explain mythos free explanation. Yeah, and was there a particular reason why the birds attacked? It truly defies all logic. I am not a bird expert, I'm afraid. OK. And what?

57:41 And I'm sorry, you're looking for who? A real dangerous character might be using an alias. He was involved in a shooting yesterday and his real name is Reg Killworth. But not sure what he'd be going by around here. What does? Reg Kill. Real, real nasty sort. They've been looking for him in LA. I feel like I heard that name somewhere. OK, you know, there was a shooting yesterday. But the guy, well, you're not going to be able to be interviewing him. He's down at the morgue these days. What happened? Yeah, well might be worth a shot. Jesus. What happened to him?

58:23 Well, he got into a shootout with police officers. Yeah, that'd do it. Detective Gomez is in charge of that case, Yes, you could talk to him. Yeah, by all means. Mind sending us his way? Yeah, and he brings you to a an actual office that says Detective Javier Gomez office, All right. And he sort of peeks his head here and says, Detective Gomez, I have some gentlemen from the Federal Bureau of Investigation from the United States. They said they had some. They know something about the shooting yesterday. And you see inside is Detective Javier Gomez.

59:05 He has a still sort of youngish face, but it's slowly gaining sort of a granite edge, as it were, as he gets older and more hard. He's got slicked black hair, part of just a little off center. And he's got, you know what? He's got big hands. That'll be a thing about him. I got big hands. And a thin mustache I. Was going to say he sounds handsome. And then you describe the big hands and I'm like, oh, I'm I was almost a Yowie character. Oh no. No mustache. No mustache. I guess that comes later. And and the big ass sword at his side, yeah. That also comes later. Anyway, he says, yes, I we're always willing to collaborate with our friends from up north.

59:52 But come on. Come on in, gentlemen. Thanks. And he introduces himself. I'm Detective Javier Gomez. You are. Michael love Jack. Gravy Pope Jones, how do you do this this. Is gravy Bo Jones? I greet you with, Oh, nice to meet you, Mr. Jones. He speaks English. Good. He has an accent, but he speaks. English. OK, so he knows that these names suck, but he's too polite to say anything. Yes, you're sort of looking around. Cop talk is let you get the vibe this guy is a junior detective on the major Case Squad. So like, he's theoretically working on the big crimes, but he doesn't get the good big crimes as it were, and he gets a lot of weirdos in trouble. Here there was a bit of a shootout yesterday. Yes, there was a shootout, but we had reports of two strangers breaking into somebody's house and then another person taking the shots at them.

1:00:59 At least that's what witnesses reported. Police arrived on the scene. The man fired back. The police tried to talk him down. He didn't seem to speak Spanish or really any language for that matter. He just seemed to be yelling incoherently. At least that's what my officers say. He's dead now. We weren't able to determine his background. Ethnicity is Hispanic or Mexican. I don't know if they're using the term Hispanic yet, that he's probably a local I guess, but. I don't know, might not be our guy. Then do. You know who he is. Well I was thinking it could possibly be a Reg killer if he's a crack shot.

1:01:40 Real sick stuff. Shoved some guys in a safe. Wanted in LA. Oh. If you'd seen it, it'd be haunting you. Nightmares. I feel like I remember reading something about that, but I can assure you this is not your Mr. Kilt. At least I don't think so. You check him out down in the morgue if you'd like. Not much to it. There's some fairly obvious identifying marks we might want to look for. Of course. Is he involved in anything else? What what what brings you guys down here? You're just looking for this guy. Is is he involved in anything? You could say that we'd like to confirm. Oh, you know that.

1:02:25 Go ahead, JB. I was going to say. Not JB Gravy vote. Oh my God, I was going to say, Because of the sensitive nature of the cases involved, we'd like to check to make sure it's our man before we inform you of the exact nature of his prior offenses. Look, I understand that you have jurisdiction where you come from, but this is my case. I can't be sharing files or bodies about authorization or jurisdiction. I think I will use some cop talk, but I will also clue this guy into the light, light mysteries. What's going on here? Like there's there's a religious organization involved and they're doing bad stuff.

1:03:15 Like what sort of stuff are they active down here in Mexico? Do you have it? Do you know anything that they've gotten up to? There's drug running involved, I'll tell you that. Wait, drugs? Intimidation. It's some new one. Kids call it nectar. Ah, I've heard about this. We've been looking into this Nectar stuff. It's, it's not actually illegal because it's not like nobody really knows what it is, you know? And because it's not legal, there's only so much you can really do at this time. I know some of the dealers, some of them have been working out of a club at least occasionally.

1:03:55 We've been checking it out. But yeah, they've been up to something. We had some evidence that they might have been involved in an arson case that I was investigating. The record store. Well, it was a record manufacturing place. Yeah, there, yeah. And if you remembered correctly, my name was listed in the article that you read. Yeah, isn't that fun? You know we don't remember that I. Can speak out of character too. You know, we don't remember that. Yeah, yeah, There's that record place. There's another place, El Studio del Manana. The proprietor is in fear for his life. He's holed up in the place. Wait a minute, wait a minute, that that business is owned by the person who lives in the house where the shooting took place.

1:04:42 Absolutely, yes. We'd actually spoken with him previously, just following up on leads. They really put the fear of God in the guy and told him not to talk to the police. You and I both know that's the first thing you do when they say that. OK. Oh, wow. So who? Who do you know who's in charge of the thing? Is it this Killworth guy? It could. Be. Oh no, no, just in my opinion probably more of a small time goon within the organization that if it's even the same guy. Well, thank you for sharing your information here. I really do appreciate it. I just, you have to know, I can't really give you information about an ongoing investigation without, you know, bureaucratic authorization.

1:05:32 Oh, of course. However, if we can take a look at the body, that would be well closer anyway. That's part of it. We'll be can't let you just. We will be in and out is. There some sort of investigative skill you're going to use to to fix. Me, I have reassurance, I believe. I can fix him. I do not have reassurance. Reassurance. Why do I not have reassurance? The only interpersonal skill I don't have is flattery. OK. So you have reassurance. Yes. OK. And cut up. And bureaucracy. Oh, oh, you have bureaucracy, huh? Yes. You make a bureaucracy spend.

1:06:13 He could. He could probably help you out. Oh, am I filling out? Paperwork. Sure. Yeah. OK, Absolutely. You're going to send it off to Washington, not Quantico. It wasn't Quantico yet. People are going to be very confused up there. Yeah, I think you are able to do you sort of know the right forms to say to fill out and whatnot to send an official request? And he says, well, if you're sending in that request, I suppose you could read these files and look at this information. I can't give you any copies of. Oh, that's fine. I have a phonographic memory. You know what he meant. That's that's audio, Yeah, OK.

1:06:55 Never mind. So first he gives you the information he has about Jorge Novo's death, which is the from Novo record production. The fire was arson and we have evidence that a maroon 4 door car pulled up around 10:33. Men got out with a gasoline can. One of the men spoke Spanish with what sounded like a Russian accent. Yeah, that'll be Kronelov, Yeah. Kronelov, definitely who? Kronelov. It's a name we heard. I figured some of this stuff would be known to you already. No. We can share notes when we're done here. Yeah, well, no, we couldn't. We could find this Cronle off guy.

1:07:35 But yeah, I mean with the information you gave us, you'd be like 6 to 8 hours. We'd get a lot more info for you. I don't know if we're going to be able to make any arrests immediately, but we can. I mean, you tell us that this stuff about the the record store and all that stuff, but as they Cronle off like, I mean, I appreciate it. We're definitely going to look into them. Oh man, now everybody's going to know the secret that Colin is actually a confident detective. Look, I don't mean to be rude. Were you guys in a fight earlier today? Oh, with some birds. Oh my God, are you the? Yeah, you. Were in the bird. That was us. Yep, Yep, that was us. It's been a very busy couple of days in Mexico City, so. Is that you?

1:08:21 Don't you don't think the birds are related to this Kronolov guy, right? Is he? Is he the mastermind this Kronolov? Yeah, another goon I think. We do know that he has ties to Oh God, what was the name of the? Oh Brooks. Jonathan Brooks. Jonathan Brooks, former head of I guess former head in so far as it's not that he stopped, it's that the blaze died. But and Jonathan Brooks, former head of Loose Discos, we believe he is a significant part of this. OK, this is really useful I. Real quick assess honesty. Is this Is this guy being genuine with us? Is he part of the conspiracy? He is not OK.

1:09:04 He does not appear to be part of the conspiracy. Because I realized we're sharing a lot so. I figure if he was part of the conspiracy, we'd be dead already. Yeah. The leads that he give you, he also mentions that you could get the drugs at a club called La Paz. It's not always there, but it's often down there and that he'll look into some more of this stuff. And the fact that you're saying that like, this is all connected to nectar, the birding was related to the nectar traded, whatever. He's like, OK, so now that if you're telling me that the drugs are actually involved in killing people, we get maybe a task force to go. But there you go. Careful. Yeah, lots, lots and lots of killing, yeah. Seriously, be careful. These people are powerful and these people are dangerous. Step lightly here.

1:09:49 These ones actually seem to be some of the more incompetent ones we've dealt with, but we're not really hot on their trail, so that may have changed. Well, don't worry, we're the police. I know you guys are are part of your the your big Bucky bucks up there in the States, but we will do just fine down here. If you ever need anything, give me a call. And please don't try to go after these people by yourself. I can send an officer with you if you need protection if you're ever in mortal danger. That would be much appreciated. We're actually planning to take it fairly easy for the night anyway. We're going to go out clubbing. OK, you be careful out there.

1:10:31 You too. Well, it's, it's nice meeting you. You know what? It's funny. I never, I know this is sort of a crazy thing. I never asked for your your ID. Oh yeah, we already gave it to the guys up front. Oh, OK, OK. And then we. I mean, I just wanted to. Sorry about the smell. What? I thought which what? You took a shower, you grub. And that was the very useful conversation with the police, Like, hey, you also. You quickly take a peek down in the morgue. He looks like a dead thug who's been shot. You don't see any mouths or anything throwing on it, OK, or anything like that. Any.

1:11:13 Any. Tattoos mouths was definitely on the list. Yeah, but tattoos or such? No all. Right instructions for occult resuscitation. No, I feel like those would be in his belongings and probably would have been mentioned to us. Amateur move. You always get him tattooed on your buddy. Yeah, it seems like the police, or at least Detective Gomez here, are like on the ball more or less around here in Mexico. A startling and pleasant change of pace for this campaign. They're not incompetent or bought off. Well, they, you know, they hadn't figured it all out, so maybe they're a little.

1:11:55 Yeah, and they and we did kind of manage to literally just walk in. Yes. Meanwhile, the other two were back at the hotel. Where are you guys go? It's a little too early to go clubbing. Is there anywhere you guys want to go investigate or you just going to wait for the clubs? Think the option was Miss De la Luz. So you do have, you do have your apartment you got shot at trying to get that address. So yeah. Yeah, she sounds delightful. Yeah, maybe sending the person who was hypnotized by her singing earlier to do this wasn't a great plan. I'm. Sure, it's fine. I'm sure it's fine. Of course. You head across the city a little bit to De La Luz's apartment.

1:12:39 It's La Cruz 29 apt 18. You go to you see a rather modest 21 unit building. It's a quaint aging walk up building with a quiet little courtyard garden and a lot of like sort of seems like there's a lot of older folks all. Right. Yeah. And you go up to the apartment door and it is, of course, you know, locked. You should maybe have brought some flowers or something like like, we're fans. Well, preparedness, yeah. Yeah, I mean, there is a garden, but. Well, if I fail preparedness, I'm I'm a pluck some daisies or something.

1:13:23 Is it a roll or a spend? You could. You could just have. You're fine. I'll let you. Thank you. Do you knock on the door? I mean, yeah, yeah. OK, nobody. I like that the first thing you said is that it's obviously locked, so that means that the impulse is to walk up the door immediately, try it, and then knock. Yeah, I know what you guys are like. That's fair, yes. Yeah, yeah, nobody. And a little. Hurt. That's literally what happened when you broke into that guy's place where he was sleeping on the couch, and then he went back out and then you knocked. Yeah. It worked out great. We. Did.

1:14:03 Yeah, miraculously. But if like any of that had failed, you would have gotten shot, Colin. Yeah, you win some, you lose some. I put my ear to the door. You don't hear any. At one point somebody comes up and says, I'm sorry, are you looking for someone? Yes, actually we are. We were wondering if Senora de la Luz was at home. We are, can you say that we're fans or that we're delivering flowers from fans? Cuz like if we're fans, they, they can just like turn us away immediately. What do you think? Up to you I think. I'm pretty sure the outcome will end up being similar regardless.

1:14:47 But yeah it's your call. You are the voice at the moment cuz smalls can't speak Spanish. OK, yes, actually we were wondering if Senora de la Luz was at home. We've we've got some flowers from a fan that we're delivering. De la Luz. I'm a I'm a landlord that doesn't belong to a De la Luz, that belongs to Rosario Maria Lopez. Well, it belongs to me actually. But rent it out to her. Her fiance paid for a year in advance like 5-6 months ago. They got a few months left on their lease. I used to get a lot of noise complaints from there. I haven't had them. Had them for a few weeks now but no I haven't seen them around. OK, that was a lot of random info. He just sat at me through the door. Well, no, he doesn't say it through the door. No, he, he saw you.

1:15:39 There's the guy who's in. The hall. OK, there's the guy in the hall. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, no, they're not here. Sorry about that. Have a good day. Have any idea where they went? I don't know, her fiance paid for it. Maybe she's with her fiance. Landlord shrugs, goes back to go to another apartment that picks up them. Break in, break in, break in, break in. Before that, smalls. I mean, you could, you could ask them something if you'd like, but they, they've said all their, they don't even have a name, their name landlord. So they're kind of done. OK, but what are you doing smalls? Well, I was just gonna mention to Kearns, maybe it might be a good idea to get the fiance's address if possible. I'm sorry Sir, do you happen to remember the fiance's name? Brooks.

1:16:31 Brooks. Of course, American guy. All right. Well, thank you very much, Sir. Have a great day. Yeah, OK. The guy's gone now though. I don't have any locksmithing or anything. Yeah, neither do I. Yeah. So the only way I could do that is brute force, but we probably don't want that. I mean, you can break it open. It's not a great lock, but that's easy enough to. Break. Yeah. It's going to be noisy though. Which floor is it on? This is on the third story. Perfect. I mean, there's fire escapes, right? Yeah, if you'd like, you could try to make a stealth roll when you're breaking down the door to not get noticed. I mean, they'll notice if they come by the door to see that it's broken, but you know.

1:17:13 They are less likely to notice a broken window, I think. This is true. If it's especially, it's on the third story. Are you going to try to climb up then? Nor is Smalls going to try to climb up Mr. I'm really good at athletics, just not good at fighting. What do you think? I mean I have no stealth so. Yeah, I have a little bit of stealth, but from what I understand, we both have athletics out of the wazoo, so. Difficulty 2 Stealth Difficulty 3 Athletics to get up there. One of you could do it and let the other one in, or you know. You know what? I'll just do the athletic spend soil spend 2 for athletics. OK, then I'll need you to also make a stealth roll. OK, so that'll just be a 5050. Oh, difficulty 2, so a little better. All right, I rolled A2.

1:18:00 Yeah. The bare minimum. Yeah, a lot of old people here are not really paying attention. You're able to break it to the apartment. Smalls opens up the door from the inside. And as you were walking through the apartment, you could tell that this place has been dug through. Drawers are empty. A picture is missing from an array of family photos hung on the wall. The bedroom closets contents are spread across the floor near a pile of empty hangers. This place has been, well, somebody's been going through the stuff here, maybe. It's definitely all spread out all over the place. What does my crime scene profiling ability tell me?

1:18:42 Christ, I always forget that you can do this and it specifically says remind your GM about it. This is the aftermath of a hurried packing session, not a robbery or a search. OK all. Right, yeah, and I let Kerns in and inform Kerns that it looks like Miss De la Luz was packing to leave in a hurry. Yeah, sounds about right by the looks of it. The only real sign of actual damage that you notice are photographs. Two photos hang on the wall and they've been smashed and gouged right through the glass. Direct. Where's? Where's? What? Like a knife.

1:19:22 OK. In both cases, the subject is a young Latino woman. I bet she doesn't look like that anymore. I bet you're right, yeah. No, probably not. Think I'm going to take the pictures? OK, here, I'll show you one of them. Please tell. Now you're going to look at this and you can say, oh, she's got a fucked up face. That is where the knife is gouging in. But let me let me post this right here in the front of the line side. Spooky. All righty. That's where the mouth grew. What? Are you talking about who said there's anything about a mouth growing there? Outside of that immediate thing, Are there any skills you want to use as you're looking away?

1:20:04 I have nothing. Do either of you have evidence collection? Forensic. Yeah, no, my character is geared towards dealing with people. I have neither evidence collection nor forensics. We sent the The Alienist and the Muscle to investigate a crime scene. Well, see. We're we're both. Designed for dealing with people, just in different ways. Yes, I also have. I have a lot of sense trouble. Can I use that somehow? No, you do find a couple of things that you don't need to have skills for, but if there's anything else that you would have find with your skills, they are not there. But it's always a dump to find usually the most important, a flyer that says Leticia de la Luz called Javier Luna.

1:20:51 And it seems to be for a club called La Paz. It seems to be where they're performing. It's for an older performance, actually, about a year ago. OK. You also find a love poem that was delivered to her on the bedside. From who? Oh, that's a good point. It's actually in an envelope and I actually uploaded it into the Eternal Lives chat here. You could read the love poem. You could also look at the love poem envelope with either one of you like that. My beautiful Rosario, your lips are gateway opening on ecstasy to heaven. I visit breathless lately. Your teeth are the towering stalactites whose rigid touch feeds my endless appetite.

1:21:38 Your face turns from me now, your name lost as you turn your brow, but your new name is graced with light like stars lightly tossed across the night. If only one wish I might be granted as my Mystic rights are loudly chanted. It would be that your mouth might multiply so that I might kiss them all as an endless lullaby. Signed JB. And the envelope has an address on. It yeah, you have JB's address. We have J BS address. Thanks for listening.

1:22:23 Donovan Smalls was Damien, JB Falk was Nathan, Frank Kearns was Renee, Daniel was our GM and Colin Kane was Russell who also mix mastered in music this episode. Our album art is by Trinity the Tea Time Witch. Our main theme is by Claire LW on SoundCloud and the unnamed song used for the Mythos record. This episode is one I've been calling honey. I did the guitar, Renee did the vocals. We have a website, discord and Patreon if you're so inclined. Daniel and Nathan have old podcasts you can check out, Wrath and Story and Forgotten Errors, Kingdom Hearts podcast respectively. Damien has a Twitch channel at twitch.tv/magical Hack and Renee has a deviant type page where she puts some of the paintings she's done inspired by the events of the show. Again, thanks for listening and until next time.