INTRO
SATAH: Welcome to Folio, an actual play podcast about solo and epistolary TTRPGs. I'm your host, Satah, and I'm showcasing multiple possible experiences of self-paced games by inviting guests to play them alongside me so I can compile our stories together. You can support the show financially at patreon.com/foliopod or join there as a free member to get access to the bonus podcast feed.
This is episode two of our games of The World We Left Behind, a game about exploring an alien planet and discovering what happened to the sapient species that once called it home by Samantha Leigh. With me again are Nick Butler and Dorian. Check out TidebreakerRPG.com for a big sale on Nick's cinematic TTRPG Tidebreaker and support your local library for Dorian.
Last episode, we set up our stories and heard our characters' first discoveries. As you heard, number cards direct you to draw a specific symbol on the card to be interpreted as part of your discovery. When you find a face card, you can draw anything, but you also have to describe the outcome of the card's unique scene prompt. We are going to see that play out immediately. Let's explore.
GAME
NICK: So, we're going to go through the taking the turn steps again. Move to the adjacent card.
DORIAN: After sort of seeing the forest of needle spires, which doesn't take too long; they're pretty similar to each other, I'm going to move to the next card.
SATAH: I landed kind of right in the middle, not right in the middle. I landed at column two, row four. So I think I'm just going to make my way around the edge of the map by going over to column one.
NICK: [Singing] Pick up the card under the die!
DORIAN: And this is… a card I am struggling to turn over.
SATAH: I got the four of spades.
DORIAN: Oh, it's a face card. I will have to look up what that means. I know there's a trait scene.
NICK: It is the king of spades.
DORIAN: So this is the jack of diamonds. Diamonds is a plant. This is great.
So I find the corresponding prompt on the trait scene table, describe an event that occurs with the trait, and then… do I draw a symbol for this? "The player can draw any symbol, not limited to the symbol prompts, add new details to the art, or colour in part of the card." I'm going to do this before I read my trait prompt, because I think it's interesting if I then have to work with what I've done.
Now this is a standard deck of playing cards, so there's not a lot of room in the art to add new things. So I'm just going to do some kind of abstract little lines that are sort of around the jack's head and next to the big diamond symbols. They're a little wavy. I like a wavy line.
"The Jack of Diamonds: the plant is useful to you." Alright, so I think I've been walking for a little while. So I've moved from the needle spires into this little forest of these… it's not a forest. It's a grassland. So there's these like sort of sinuous, like grassy plants that, um… you know, they're rustling in the breeze, and the overall appearance is kind of like an ocean when there's like wind blowing on top of it. Like there's sort of waves in the grass.
And the plants are pretty soft. Um, like they brush against my skin very lightly. And I think I'm scraped up from exploring the needle spires. Like, I tried to climb one of them– maybe I fell and there's kind of a nasty– like just a scrape. Not enough to me for me to call for medical attention, but it hurts. And what I do is I take some of this like soft, flexible, like waving grass, and I weave some of it into kind of like a… a mat type form and I use that as a bandage so I'm able to like weave some of the plants and wrap them around my arm just to like stop the scrape from getting further aggravated. And they feel like pretty soothing. Like I think these plants– this plant bandage like actively kind of like soothes the injury I have.
So I'm going to call this, uh, gauze grass. You don't have to name it but that I think is the easiest way for me to sort of summarize what I've found here.
My character has a little like journal, because, you know, you have to track what you'rere doing sometimes. And I think despite the spaceships, my people are pretty low tech. So it is a paper journal or it is like a physical thing that I write in. They're not just, you know, like narrating to themselves as I am doing right now.
So they make a note of the gauze grass. I think they check– they sketch it a bit and they sort of describe how they've used it to treat their wound. And then they carry on.
NICK: So what we're going to do is we're just going to draw a new symbol that is not related to the symbol prompts. I'm going to draw a little fist. It is a spades card, which means it's a vestige.
I think because I just headed west from a landing pad, this is actually going to be a research lab.
"Trait scenes: if the encounter card is a face card, find a corresponding prompt on the trait scene…" Okay, so the king of spades says, "the vestige contradicts an assumption," which means, hmm. Eugene was assuming that… there had to be some sort of data here that could be uncovered. Well, it contradicts the assumption, which means there's nothing here.
He walks in, the Herakles system ready.
NICK AS EUGENE: Hmm. Well, it looks like there's attempts at terraforming. There's hydroponic systems in place. I cannot visually confirm any other signs of life, scavenger or humanoid.
And in fact, it is unusually clean compared to the scene I just left. There's footsteps leading away back towards where I came from.
I wonder… if it's safe to venture in. However, this is what they've paid me for, so I think… I think I'll have to press forth.
NICK: Going inside, it seems that there's computers, there's lab equipment, what looks like a dais with almost like a capsule system with a little roof above the thing. And there is a glass door that pops open as soon as Eugene approaches it.
He steps into the tube because his curiosity gets the best of him. And then the glass door closes right in front of him. Little robotic arms pop out of the back casing and interface with the ports on the back of the Herakles system, removing the adrenal tubes and placing in syringes inside.
There is a flood of images that enters Eugene's brain. He sees science workers. He sees– he sees maintenance crews. There's people loading docks. There's other folks with clipboards and monitoring all of the signs in this laboratory. It feels like a science vessel for sure, but it also feels military.
And when the visions stop, the machine replaces the Hercules system's adrenal tubes back into your ports. And Eugene wakes up.
NICK AS EUGENE: [Gasping awake] I really need to stop stepping into alien technology. These people were not human. I don't know what I just saw. This place…
NICK: He starts to think a little bit more. Past what I just described. He saw other images flashing in between. He saw what seemed like almost like a spore cloud eating away at the metal a little bit. Eating away at the dirt. And then the people. The people were being cleaned away. Almost like, um… almost like looking at, like, acid eating away at meat. They're just gone.
As his eyes adjust, he realised that this place, it's much emptier than he originally noticed. There's no signs of life here. It feels like there was never signs of life here, despite all of the signs that there was intelligent beings that were here. What were they doing? What happened here?
SATAH: The symbol prompt for four is a square. I have drawn a cube. It's a square with extra parts to make it 3D. Spade is a vestige. "Scrap of parchment, a tree with carvings, a village built into a mountain." Interesting. This is such a like artificial environment that I'm trying to parse out what that would be.
So there are a bunch of cubular-ish shipping containers around, right? I'm picturing them as big rectangles though. I think what this is, is like– so I go up– I'm going up to one of the shipping containers that has– that, like an animal is clearly burrowed into. And I pull out my space crowbar and crack the door off, essentially, and go in.
And inside are just a bunch of unmarked boxes. Which is strange, because they should probably be marked with, like, you know, biomedical like alerts or warnings or honestly corporation names. Like they should be branded. But this is like a bunch of just still-closed generic cubes.
And I think if I wanted to hang out here a little longer, I would like try and figure out like if the animals that burrowed in here had like interacted with them or if anybody has. But I think I'm just kind of scouting right now. So I'm going to, like, leave here, and I'm going to turn my energy down to four, and I'm going to go up to column one, row three.
NICK: Eugene, now with four energy left, is going to keep going west. He's a straightforward guy, so he's going to go into a straight line until something distracts him.
We're going to pick up the card. We're going to reveal it. It is the two of hearts. Alright. The two, the symbol is a circle. There's a circle. I'm going to draw… a little line through it. It also kind of looks like a hammer now because I started the line a little bit close to the top edge of the circle and went right through the bottom of it.
Now we have discovered another creature card. I'm thinking that this is also kind of a bird, but it's more of a– more of like a secretary bird. Like this is– this is like a secretary bird meets a red kangaroo. So it's tall, it's lanky. It's got the trademark claws of the secretary bird and the extremely jacked physique of the red kangaroo. Like this- this is a creature that looks like it's going to kick you in the next week if your chest isn't actually just eviscerated by the claws on the end of it.
This definitely could have been descended from a velociraptor.
It's currently chasing after something small, something furry, but also kind of reptilian. Everything seems to be descended from reptiles on this planet so far. I don't know. I haven't watched any Jurassic Park or anything recently, so I don't know where I'm at. It's just where my head's taking me.
Okay, so what I think Eugene's going to do is… take a moment. He's going to think to himself that he's been paid to figure out what happened. Uh, he just got his first clue– well, his second clue. He found out that there was intelligent life here and they're dead, uh– as far as he knows they're all dead but the lights are still on. The lights are still on. The technology is still working and the technology is also trying to tell him something.
He's going to remind himself that he is a veteran mercenary, that he is reliable. Remember we said that he's grumpy. He's reliable. So far– I think right now I have been misportraying him, um. The previous action,  he's just kind of moved forward and he's like– I feel like he's running from things. Um, we're gonna play that up a little bit.
I think, in Eugene's words…
NICK AS EUGENE: That was unnerving. I, um, really don't like my mind being probed like that. I'm used to combat scenarios but not… I don't like being forced into things before I'm prepared. I need to take a moment. Reassess. Maybe go back to my ship. The Gargantuan has a couple of extra things for situations like this. I don't know whether to go back the way I came, or see if I can find a way around to avoid the wildlife here and maybe not get into whatever that was back at that lab before I have what I think I might need to explore that further.
Come on, Eugene. What are we going to do?
South. There's a trail going south. Looks like there might be a vantage point there. Probably surveyed the surrounding area. Maybe I can get more of a clue of what's going on.
What was that spore cloud? Why do I even know it's a spore cloud? There must have been some sort of– some sort of things communicated non-verbally and my brain is just starting to fill in the gaps by itself.
Is that what's happening? I'm not equipped for these kind of things. I'm supposed to go in, find the treasure, leave. The threats are usually terrestrial. Sometimes they're extraterrestrial. Sometimes… it's usually something that breathes, something that bleeds, something that shoots back. I've never dealt with things that just eat. That don't have a form like this. This is… damn it! Eugene, you got this. Breathe. Breathe. In. Out. Heracles, lower the adrenal input. Calming. Calming. Calming. Calming.
Okay. Alright. Let's go south.
SATAH: Two of spades. Two is a circle. Okay. I have drawn two circles that are overlapping, kind of like a Venn diagram with not a lot of stuff in common. And again, spades: a vestige.
Ooh. So I keep cracking open these containers and at least the next few also still just have those unmarked boxes, which is starting to get unsettling and also annoying because I'm looking for specific kind of materials.
And what this is– the Venn diagram made me think of like data. And so in one of them, finally– I think what it actually looks like is that this one didn't get fully packed, almost as if it was sent in a hurry. And they were like, "Truck's leaving, truck's leaving. Ship's leaving. We don't have time. Shove in as much as you can. It's got to go." And so it's a little more haphazard in here.
It's not perfectly– like a lot of the other ones, everything's strapped in, it looks like it hasn't moved in ages. It didn't move in flight. It's just strapped down perfectly. This one's a little more chaotic. And there's a clipboard with… I think I'll make it, like, it's a language I can't read, but there are charts on it. I don't know what they're measuring. Or… really any other details, but I can– I recognize a graph when I see it, you know? I don't– I can't read the language, so I have no idea what number is going up, but I can tell that number go up for sure.
And I think I just… is it literally a clipboard or is it like a data pad that still for some reason has battery? Oh, I mean, it's- it's- it's a- it's a clipboard because this is shifty, right? They- they were doing all of this, like, not digitally as much as possible so that it couldn't get hacked or recorded or… or who knows what their exact motivations were. But it's paper. And that's actually kind of a weird thing.
But I'm going to take it. And uh… do I have direct communication to my crew? … Yes, but I don't think it's constant. I have to call them. And I'm not going to call them just to say what this is. But… I like the idea that that's even true of- of data transfer here. Like, I could send them a picture of this to start translating it, but it isn't like texting a picture. We have to establish a connection and then I send the picture. I call them to be able to send it.
And so I just– I take pictures and I take the clipboard and I'm thinking– I'm like, when I call them later to like say what's up, I'll send this picture then, and hopefully one of my cool linguist… clone siblings can start translating it or recognizing it.
NICK: We have three energy left and we have discovered the nine of clubs. The nine is a half circle. I'm going to draw a little arrow symbol on the bottom of that half circle, so it looks like a turn. Clubs is landscape. This is perfect.
Like, Eugene thought when he looked down the south way there is a trail and it does indeed lead to a cliff face. Um, the cliff face is overlooking the research lab and it's overlooking where the um… oh we didn't name the creature from the last card. Uh, we're gonna name it the boss bird. So it's an upgrade to the secretary bird.
And this is the Overlook on nine. And let's see. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to immediately camp but unveil every adjacent card to nine.
It's a solo game. I can adjust rules as I goddamn please.
Okay, but we will draw our symbols as necessary and go through Eugene's thoughts for each.
DORIAN: Oh, and we already have our first ace! This is the ace of spades, and let's look up what that means.
"When you uncover an ace, you find a trait that brings you closer to understanding what happened to the planet's missing sapient species. Each ace answers a key question. Check the colour of the ace, then roll the d6 on a corresponding table." The ace of the spades is a black ace, and that means that it speaks to the past. So I'm going to uncover an answer that connects to the past of this species who used to live here.
[Die clunking] One thing about rolling a die is I always feel like my first roll is crap, and I need a do over. So we're not even going to talk about the result. The question seemed interesting enough, but I need something that actually like rolls. [Die rolls] Well, it's the same. It's a one. So I find something that helps me establish "what the species values."
An ace's trait type does not need to match its suit, so I have full latitude here. Um… so this is interesting because I haven't established too much about this place yet. So I have a lot of free reign in thinking about… what the species valued.
I'm going to find a tower. I think it's kind of a watchtower, and I think it is made out of these like reeds or something. Like it's flexible, it's thin, and it is thatched with the woven mats of what I've started calling the gauze grass. It's run– I mean, it was thatched. The like structure or the frame of the tower has been preserved. I think it's kind of a petrified wood sort of situation. And there's enough evidence in the landscape around it, in, like, traces of, like, ancient, like, weathering– there's evidence that, like, this probably was thatched with gauze grass.
So what I'm learning that the species valued is making use of the landscape around them and, like, creating things in a way that worked with the landscape rather than imposed their will on it.
So I'm writing that I have found the Reedy Watchtower.
I am drawing a… awkward little symbol. You should see– I'm not a good artist.
NICK: We revealed the seven of spades to the west. So sevens are curved lines. I'm going to draw a curved line going like that. And we're going to draw a straight line at the top. You know what, we're going to draw two. So it looks like– almost like that cool S that the millennials had in high school?
And I think it being a spades, it's a vestige. So we're going to say that this was a valley. Both of the sides of the valley have been caved in, though. Eugene can't see what's at the bottom of the valley. It's very deep and the light doesn't quite reach all the way down.
So I've spent the energy, but I didn't go to the card. So I think it's fair to say that he doesn't know much about what he saw there. He only knows what the landscape looks like over there.
SATAH: Turn my energy die down to three. It's so funny how bad I am at finding a specific number on a die considering how often– relatively often I interact with them as an object.
I'm gonna just keep going up up the column. Row two. The nine of diamonds got our second nine which means our second half circle. Drawing a half circle that is a line sideways… like a c, the letter c. And I'm going to draw a couple extra circles around it and inside it so it looks kind of like sideways radio– radio.– a sideways rainbow, or like a sort of broadcasting signal signifier.
Diamonds are a plant. "A thimble-sized bush, a mossy beetle, a box made of woven vines."
So I think what this is, is that… I keep moving down the line of these containers. I think I skip a few at this point. I start looking for one that like looks a little bit different, just because I'm sick of seeing all the generic boxes in a row.
And I go up, um, and I'm walking around to see if it looks different, if it has those animal burrow holes in it, and it doesn't. What it does have is a series of vines that are clearly coming from inside that were strong enough to pierce the steel wall of this shipping container. And then… I'm looking at the curve that I've drawn. One of the like inexplicable things about it is that the vines then curve back in to grow back into the shipping container.
So it almost looks like there are plants growing inside of the container that went to like grow outside and then went, "Nope, we don't like that! We're going to go back into the shipping container." And again, with enough force somehow to pierce steel.
Yeah, and I don't go in there because I just immediately, like… I mean, I like plants, right? I know about plants. And I think one of the things that I know because I know about plants is that I don't know what the fuck is going on with these plants. Because that's weird. They should want to get outside, right? They should want light. They shouldn't be, like, shying away from it. Makes me think that maybe they, like, need some amount of toxic air or something. Like, this air is breathable for me, and maybe they– this plant, like, needs a different air. I think I'm looking– I look at it and like the vines are thick enough that it is essentially– it's plugged up the holes that it's made. But that's one of the reasons why it couldn't just retreat in. It couldn't like pull the vine out of the hole that it punched through the wall because it needs it to be plugged, I think, to keep the air in. The nasty air that this plant needs.
Take a little picture of that. Do I take a sample? Am I a sample taker? No. I think that I do a lot of scouting… like I'm very focused on specific like cybernetic stuff. I get sent out to recover the stuff that is relevant to what I do and stuff that I know about. But also I do a lot of, in that process, scouting to send like other members of the crew, but also like teams? Like I'm like, "Hey, taking a picture of this weird plant… specific clone sibling who is a scientist, you might want to come and get a sample. If I try and get a sample, I'm scared it'll poison me because that's happened before."
Yeah, so I'm just, I'm taking pictures, I'm recording. And if asked, I will come back and take a sample, but I'm not doing it until I've been asked to because it's dangerous.
I've written, "vine that punched through a container, then back in." Uh-oh!
NICK: So, to the east, we have the Ten of Diamonds. A ten is an arrow. I'm going to draw the arrow going east. And I'm going to put a little skull at the end of the arrow. The diamond symbol is a plant.
I'm going to say that this plant is a gigantic Venus flytrap style plant. One of the boss birds is wandering around this area, and it is immediately eaten by this Venus flytrap. It looks like the boss bird wasn't enticed by anything that the flytrap style plant, um– because normally Venus flytraps, they– I believe what it is is that they emit a certain scent to attract the flies, and that's what gets the flies to land. This thing just looks more like an unassuming plant. And Eugene just really thought that it was just strange flora until the flora ate the bird that passed by. And he looks at that and he goes, "Well, we're not going east." [Laughs] That's pretty much all he got from that.
SATAH: And turning my energy down to two, I'm going to go up to the corner. Column one, row one. Three of spades. So three is a triangle. Yay, the best shape! I have drawn two triangles facing away from each other, kind of like up and down arrows in an elevator or volume buttons or something.
Spades are vestiges. Mmm…
Could be… volume buttons. Like I go into a container and there's a radio in there, which maybe like is like, ooh, is somebody living in here?
I am drawn to the idea that it is elevator buttons. As if, like, part of a ship or a building had just been cut up and shoved into this container to be sent away. Yeah, that is such a weird image. I'm going to do that.
It's like I crack open the shipping container and stop dead for a second and just kind of survey it because it really just– there's- there's a wall in there. And there is an elevator. And a big section of the container is taken up by like the elevator shaft that has been crumpled as much as possible to fit in here, folded up and just really shoved in as hard as possible. And there's part of the walls that– the elevator doors, like all of the elevator doors are sort of like neatly stacked, and that's where I see that symbol, the up and down triangles.
And then the elevator is just… strapped in there.
And I think I will tie this to a medical thing in that, like, this was ripped out of a hospital, which I know because I recognise the symbols on– maybe not on the doors, maybe on- in the mechanisms? In something. I'm like, oh, that is a chain of private hospitals. Right? Why would they deconstruct a building and like shove it into a shipping container to be brought elsewhere? Why wouldn't they like reuse some of the materials or dispose of them sort of in a regular way? This really looks like they were trying to hide something. What is it?
And again, I think Eggo just like stares for a little while and has this like deepening creeping sense of unease and even horror, like, something is so not right here. And they step backwards and shut that door.
NICK: Ten of spades. Spades are a vestige. And the ten, as we just discovered, is an arrow. We're going to point that arrow going west. And at the end of that arrow is going to be a star.
So this vestige is going to be a stone circle. He can see the stone circle, and he can kind of see what looks like… what looks like drag marks. They're very noticeable indents in the dirt.
Eugene has a visor that lets him see a little bit further. It doesn't filter the light or provide light, which is why he really couldn't see the bottom of the caved-in area. But, um, from this side, the sunlight is hitting at an angle that allows him to see from south of him fairly easily, but not so much to the west. Honestly, I can't really picture what direction the sun would be to do that, but just buy in with me? Alright, cool.
Yeah, he sees the stone circle. He sees the drags. They're going west, which means that there might be something important right to the west of this Ten of Spades. This Ten of Spades is on the bottom of my map. So somewhere along the bottom of the map, we might be finding something crucial. But we'll find out later.
So Eugene is now going to camp.
SATAH: My energy goes down to one, and that means that I immediately rest, which in the campaign would involve leaving the planet, shuffling the cards back in, laying out a new map, but in the one-shot version, we are just going to do a camping scene and then start a new leg of this journey.
DORIAN: Camping.
DORIAN & SATAH: "Your characters set up camp for a much  needed rest. Answer the following questions."
SATAH: "Where do you set up camp?" Just outside of this shipping container with the weird crumpled elevator in it. Which is because it's like, "Okay, this is too fucked up for me to just keep going. I'm seeing too much weird shit. I got to call the Dead Ringer and discuss some of this to figure out what we're going to do going forward."
I'm not planning on like fully sleeping, but just like chilling and calling home.
DORIAN: So I think I set up camp like under kind of the– the watchtower? Like, within where its base would have been. Uh and I think, you know, I have a bedroll– like a blanket with me and I sort of– I throw that over like the scaffolding of the watchtower to make a kind of like tent for some shelter from the elements rather than just like sleeping out in a sleeping bag under the stars.
NICK: So I set up camp and on the top of the cliff face um there's a small grove that overlooks the other points of interest that we discovered. But it's a little secluded enough where I'm not going to draw too much attention from myself.
As the sun goes down, he sets up his little agency-provided campfire equipment. A tent that pops out from the Herakles system. There's a little compartment in his shoulder– in his pauldrons– pauldrons are on the top of– gauntlet. In his gauntlet that shoots out a little tube. The tube opens up and there is a bar, a bar, a bar, bar, that makes like a little cube that projects like hard light. And the hard light opens up a little bit on the bottom to give him a little crawl space and then closes in when he steps inside. And it lets heat in, does not let other matter in, and that keeps him relatively safe.
SATAH: "Which trait during this leg of the journey was most interesting to each character?" Ooh, what was the most interesting to me? Probably the elevator. I think there's been sort of increasing dawning horror, so "interest" is a strange word in some ways.
I do think with the farming background, like I am a little drawn to the vine things, but that is so much– that like– that is something that I'm so much closer to understanding than whatever's happening in the elevator. So it's kind of a toss up between the two, but definitely– definitely one of those two.
DORIAN: I found the gauze grass really interesting. Like I said, I sketched it. I took notes. I think it's really… I want this journey to like reveal more than just a potentially useful plant, but I can take comfort that like, even if I were to be forced home now, I would still have found something that could be useful to my people.
SATAH: "What does each character do during their rest?"
DORIAN: Y'know, I write up my day's worth of travel. I think that is sort of my custom for the end of a day, or what I intend to be my custom; this is only my first night. I want to write up everything I've seen and my thoughts, and I want to just sort of parse and process it myself. Like, I think when you're doing the day, you're kind of… you're too busy experiencing to really, like, necessarily take the time to sit down and, like, unpack everything that's happened to you. And I think that's the value of the camping for my character, for Gwyn, is it's a chance to do that reflection and to be like, "Okay, like, what are the pieces I'm putting together?"
This is probably where they reason out the answer to the question. Like, the fact that the way the structure was built means that these are people who kind of respect or want to work with the land– or at least it implies that. I think, you know, one discovery is not enough to say that with certainty, but it's the direction that their mind is going.
SATAH: I'm going to call. I'm gonna call the Dead Ringer and send a bunch of the pictures that I've collected so far to be like, "Hey. This is not straightforward. It's weird. There's weird stuff. What should I do? If you want me to take samples, please advise me on exactly how. And also look up this company and see why the fuck they would have wanted to just throw away an elevator. Thank you."
Do I have any theories so far? I mean, it is definitely dawning on me that people seem to have been treating this as a place to– like, normally, you know, when a planet like this is abandoned… it certainly gets picked over, but people aren't normally adding new stuff to it? But in this case, it seems like… it's hard to believe that this stuff was being shipped here when it was actively being used, though maybe it was. And so… it seems to me like maybe this stuff has been disposed of here using its abandoned dump status as a cover? I'm not totally sure but that's– that's kind of the feeling that I'm starting to get. Though I do still– I think it has still been a while. Like, those plants had time to grow– though who knows how fast they grow. The– mostly the thing is that those the animal burrows, the holes, looked

old, so they've been here for a little while.
NICK: Let's roll a little d6. [Die rolling]
SATAH: "Once you've answered the questions, roll the d6 on the camp scene table." [Die clattering] Four. A deeper understanding. Ooh. Okay.
There are a few different directions to go here. And it makes sense because I'm in conversation with home base, the Dead Ringer, and they're sort of like providing insight on some of the stuff that I've seen.
Process of elimination. I don't think it's greater understanding of the plants because I think– I really think that there would need to be a physical examination of some kind to see what's going on there. It seems unlikely that it's understanding where the unmarked containers came from because they're so purposefully… unmarked, right? It could be something about the like data and the manifest that I saw, or it could be something about the elevator.
I think they're still working on translating… the manifest. In part because that'll lead to more information about the unmarked containers, right? Because it was found in a container full of those.
And so it's not a full understanding of what went on with the building and the elevator, but it's like… someone manages to find information on a building that this corporation, these private hospitals… got rid of in a hurry. And I think that they– the thing that they find is like– is an article talking about– it's very much a puff piece? Clearly sort of like created by that corporation that like vaguely alludes to "an incident" and how they're taking it as an opportunity to upgrade their facilities, and assuring the public that it's all been dealt with. But it doesn't really have any details.
But part of what I– what we are like coming to understand is that there was a capital I Incident in one of these private hospitals and this corporation was so terrified of details of that being understood that they vanished the hospital. Just razed it to the ground. Had it broken into component parts and- and sent possibly to a bunch of different locations. Maybe all here. I don't know. We'll keep– we'll see what we find in the rest of these containers.
But… yeah, we definitely learned that. Do I want to have a slightly better understanding? Like, can we find an article that actually talks about what the incident was? Or is it too far buried and maybe we'll figure it out later?
As I'm starting to think about this, I'm also trying to figure out some genre stuff. Like… is the elevator haunted? Is that something I want to be real? I'm not sure. I'm genuinely not sure.
Which I think means I'm going to settle for they can only find the corporate puff piece right now. Information about the actual incident has been buried. They're going to start looking. They're going to be digging into it while I continue to wander around this planet. And also trying to translate that manifest that I sent them pictures of.
DORIAN: Then we have a camp scene.
NICK: I got a two on that. So it's a resurfaced memory.
DORIAN: Which is a resurfaced memory.
That's pretty interesting, I think, because I haven't done too much to define Gwyn's past or memories.
NICK: Eugene sits down by the fire and he starts to think about himself. And maybe… maybe this is why he instinctively moved away from that lab.
He himself is the result of some lab experiments gone wrong. And what I think he instinctively uncovered was that this was something similar, perhaps even from the same company, because this is his home star system. It just happens to be that this planet itself was undiscovered.
This time period that he lives in, man has only recently achieved interstellar travel. So they're only maybe like 200 light years from Earth. The hyperdrive's giving them a couple of light years in a day or two. They've found some very Earth-like system– Earth-like planets around… this– around Eureka. Repopulated those planets and have developed new civilisations with new roles and better people and less cops. [Laughs] You know, uh, collapse happened. A lot of it is just going through those growing pains again until people have figured out a way to live with each other. But we won't go too far into that.
But we will go into what Eugene has been thinking about his time being experimented on. The Herakles system is not unique to him, but it is unique in how it's responded to his body. Eugene is capable of superhuman feats. He is not superhumanly durable, though. So he can fight. He fights very well. He jumps really high. He's extremely strong. The Herakles system, if it's overused, it… it has adverse effects on his heart, so he needs to take frequent breaks when he's activated it. So he's very not particularly comfortable with relying on it, and he's absolutely not comfortable with using the illegal upgrades that he's needed to maintain it. There's been some legislation on humanoid manipulation– like, uh, manipulating organic sentient beings with technology.
And he's been pondering that. He's pondering the events that led to things like the Herakles system being developed and even needing to be developed. Was there a need for it?
This is me going off topic a little bit, but I feel like there's a lot of things that we do today that is… the result of people that are very capable in a way of making feats happen, but not so capable in understanding the implications of what they've done and what they might do. And I feel like there's a little bit of yourself in every character. TL;DR, uh, Eugene has some thoughts on this. [Laughs]
DORIAN: A resurfaced memory from the experiences I've had today.
Um… I think Gwyn hasn't been alone very much in their life, like truly alone. I think they have a pretty tight-knit family. And then, of course, like, this is a society that's into learning and stuff like that. So I imagine there's a lot of, like, sort of communal, like, teaching of younger people. And that includes, like, young adults. So I think a lot of people aren't alone very much until they go out on this journey by themselves.
And so Gwyn is remembering some period, like, a number of years ago where they got to be alone. Maybe there's a period of time, like, just a little bit between, um– you know, during the years you're growing up, like there's a little bit of a break between like different like eras of schooling, as it were. And so you get a little time to sort of like explore independently within the community and within your like home territory as a way of preparing yourself and like setting yourself up for the longer journey that you will take a few years later. And so Gwyn is remembering that and is remembering specifically like that they like being alone with their thoughts. That like… you know, maybe they incline towards being kind of a solitary person and they're in a society that doesn't necessarily allow for that very much.
So they're remembering just like being alone with a journal. And I think they used to use a journal to kind of invent stories or speculate about stuff, and so they're remembering that and kind of like comparing it to what they're doing now, discovering stuff– and I think– and like putting clues together in that way. And I think they like the latter better, but… there's a bit of nostalgia for when, you know, they could just kind of, like, write things or invent details without having to, like, connect them to stuff that they've actually, like, observed or figured out.
And that's the first leg of my journey!
SATAH: And we'll start leg two!
DORIAN: So I've started kind of, like, doing a spiraling out kind of thing, and I see no reason not to continue with that. So that is what we're going to do. I've passed through the center of the map, and I'm going to work my way outward from there, from the ace that I've stopped at.
So we have found the six of diamonds. I remember diamonds are a plant… and a six is straight lines. So I've drawn a few straight lines.
And I think what these are is, having found the tower, I want to find the sort of like reeds that it was built out of. So I go digging a bit, and I find– not literally in the earth. But I like, I look around, I explore, I wander, and I find this like stand of these bamboo-like plants along the bank of a river.
And these plants are… again, they're sort of reddish. If you've ever seen Japanese knotweed, which is like a major garden, like invasive garden pests around where I live. But it's like, it's a very dark red and then around kind of the joints, which are a little knobby, it gets a little bit lighter. So I think these are like that, but you know, they're much like thicker, more robust, a lot more like bamboo. And they have these gorgeous, like sort of like globes of flowers at the end, kind of like a… I'm so bad at flowers you guys. But like, you know, you can imagine like a Queen Anne's lace, except instead of like a flat like burst of little flowers, it is a sphere.
So they're very pretty. And I, you know, I sketch them, I take a little note. And then I… I think I decide to follow the river for a while.
NICK: So he wakes up, he steps out of his hard light tent, he presses a button on the Heracles system's gauntlet, and the tent tube goes right back into the gauntlet from whence it came.
The sun unveils a new day. He looks down from the overlook, he sees the cave-in to the west, he sees the stone circle to the south, and he sees a nope to the east and a nope to the north. But the bigger nope is to the east. He does not want to deal with the giant boss bird eating plant, which we are going to call a Bird Nest.
So I think what he's going to do is he's going to head back north. The lab is calling him. His memories have triggered in such a way where he's thinking that there might be something that could be uncovered if he goes back in there and re-explores it. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to go north.
We've encountered the Boss Bird again. Alright, "If you have not yet filled all four margins of the card, add any detail about the trait to one of the empty margins."
So I'm thinking what we might answer is "what unexpected feeling or memory does this trait evoke?" Eugene's discovery of the Boss Bird really reminds him of another trip that he's made for a different employer. He was on a desert planet and he encountered what looked like a cheetah. It was very fast like a cheetah, but it was so much stronger. Cheetahs in nature are typically bullied by other predators in Africa and that wasn't the case here. This cheetah for some reason had all of the aspects that make cheetahs on Earth effective as far as their speed but this cheetah had a much larger head. It was  aerodynamic and it did not hamper the cheetah's top speed at all but what it did do is give it increased bite force in a way that let it compete with other animals on the planet and this um– this made Eugene remember… man has done a lot of genetic mutations with animals and sometimes it goes well. And they had been experimenting with a lot of the genetic mutation stuff in unpopulated planets and trying to develop ecosystems in a way that they could hunt and do animal husbandry in new ways.
Eugene is just reminded of that. So we're going to write mutation advancements on the right side of that card. His energy has dropped down to five.
SATAH: Turning my energy die back to six. I'm gonna go right over, start walking along the row. Column two, row one. Four of hearts. Four is a square. I have drawn two squares with a line connecting them, which could be a little bit looking kind of like a square pair of glasses. Hearts are creatures.
So I think what this is… this is not… there is no, like, I'm not going to directly– I'm not going to put animal harm on screen, but it will be implied in that these are… I'm looking at the squares and how they're connected, and it made me think of rat cages that have, like, tubes between them for enrichment, you know? And I think that, again, cracking open another shipping container, this is another bunch of material probably from that hospital that is, like, a medical testing wing that they've just dismantled. There's, like, no reason to believe that animals were put in here, but clearly they were experimented on, as is often the case.
And I think it's just… yeah, it's just a bunch of equipment. And this one I definitely do tag as, like, this is strictly relevant to me, potentially. There might be, like– because it's the whole wing. Like, it really just looks like they… almost like they tipped the room open and just poured it in here, which means there could be like medical supplies and parts and that kind of thing that would be helpful for machine maintenance and cybernetic upgrade. Ooh, there might even be like painkillers or drugs or that kind of thing, like the type of stuff that they would just have on hand for that.
NICK: And we're going to go back to the research lab, dropping his energy down to four. What we have to do here is, "If you've already encountered his face card, describe how the situation changes, escalates, or gains new context. Other players may provide additional details to the same." We're playing solo, so this is just on me.
Again, this is the King of Spades. So the King of Spades means "the vestige contradicts an assumption." And we've already contradicted that the research was still there. But he thought that the research was going to be on the computers. It might be like some paper or something.
The research is gone because the computer systems, other than that capsule, were destroyed. But there has to be a trace of something here. So when Eugene steps back into the research lab, he powers up the Herakles system. He looks around. He steps past the capsule, and he starts exploring the loading bay. He sees that, um… it's extremely clean here. It's clinically clean in a place where people work and that tends to be dirty because there's a dock. There's things to, well, unload. There's actually an old ship that is also, like, oddly pristine that has been sitting there for quite some time. But if he hadn't had those images placed into his head, he would not have known that because there's no trace of age. There's no trace of any sort of rust or any like natural decay. Anything that would indicate that time has passed here.
He discovers some glass. There are some crates that were open and um they're turned over and it looks like shards of glass have been spread all over the floor. It looks like there's a little bit of blood on the glass and it's- it's definitely– it's dry. It's crusty. It's very dark. It's blood that's been sitting there for quite some time. Which, compared to the rest of the clinically clean atmosphere that he's been in, that looks like that- not even bacteria is present, this one spot is eerily contrasting.
NICK, AS EUGENE: This doesn't add up. This doesn't add up at all. Herakles system. Reroute power to cognitive function, to vision. I need to analyse this material.
NICK: The Herakles system responds non-verbally, just giving a beep that can only be heard within Eugene's own head. He has sonar implants within his ears that are subdermal. You can't see them. But if you were to inspect him very closely, you can see the incision marks behind his earlobes. But he keeps his hair very like… neat and tidy but covering his ears so like you'd really have to like be comfortable– he'd have to really be comfortable with you for you to find out that he has those implants. But it's also not particularly hard to extrapolate because the neural– the adrenal ports on the back of his neck are not covered by his hair. His hair doesn't grow long enough to to get down that far. It's more like on, uh, between the shoulder blades on his spine.
He doesn't have like a heads up display or anything. What it really is– it's more just kind of like a– like an intravenous kind of injection thing that goes into his brain and like directly to his optical nerves to like hyperactivate them, which hurts like shit. But– so he- he grimaces a little bit and he- he kind of like strains, but like when he starts to adjust to the pain a little bit and his eyes start to focus, he can see exactly what's going on with the blood and what happened.
He can see that it's been eaten away a little bit. The glass itself is almost completely unmolested as far as its structure. Eugene is not exactly a highly qualified scientist, but there's some things that you have to know to do his job, and, um, he's able to extrapolate from what he notices from the blood and from what he notices from the nature of that glass and comparing it to the other metals in the area to understand that there's something specific about the glass and anything that that glass is touching that has kept the microbes and the spores from interfering with it.
NICK, AS EUGENE: If I had to take a guess… I think that this might have been where they kept the cloud. We're going to call it… Thanatos.
So the Thanatos spore must be contained by this specific type of glass. I will have to take a sample of it and bring it in for analysis when I return to base. At the moment, it seems that it doesn't quite want the metals, but it will eat through metal. This is just my initial thoughts.
Scout log day two. Add everything I've said. We'll update my findings tomorrow. For now, I need to explore more.
NICK: So we're going to drop his energy down to three. And on this card, we're going to add special containment glass onto the margin.
DORIAN: I don't have fingernails. That's the problem. If I had fingernails, this would be so, so simple.
Oh my goodness! You know, we are already at the second day. So this is a short day.
SATAH: Turn my energy down to five and I'm going to keep walking along the row. [Gasps] My first ace.
NICK: And without doing another scene, because that last scene went a little long, I'm going to add another discovery there before I move on.
And we're going to say that this discovery was specifically about what the, um, Thanatos Spore is after. He has hypothesis: carnivore. There's something that he needs to check before we get the final margin for this card. So I'm going to put it down– drop his energy down to two, and go back to the landing pad.
DORIAN: So I think… I follow the river for a bit, but not for very long before I run into a red ace, which answers a key question about the present. This is question three: "What has been preserved?" What do I find and how does it speak to what has been preserved?
I think I find a larger settlement. And I think these people had sort of like domed buildings? Like the Watchtower was made out of reeds and it's quite tall. But they have these domed buildings near the sides of, um– near the banks of the river and they're made out of like river clay largely. And so that has hardened and it's, um– you know, they're obviously quite old, but they've stayed intact for the most part.
And when I go inside, most of them aren't large. The larger ones I think are a bit more damaged, but it looks like they have– like the furniture such as it is is pretty– pretty simple, not decorative. I think whatever decorations they used haven't really been preserved, but the furniture is like built right into the walls almost of these domed clay dwellings. And so like going into one of them, you can see kind of like the shape of the living spaces that these people use kind of as like an echo or a shadow of– of how their homes would have been laid out.
So what has been preserved is sort of their houses and the kind of floor plans of them.
NICK: He returns to the Pyramid Peckers, eating at the corpses of what he assumes were the scientists and the landing dock workers trying to escape. And he notices something.
Let's see. This is the Three of Hearts. The hearts are a creature. He notices something about the creature.
The Pyramid Pecker has been eating things that should have been already devoured by the cloud, and it itself looks like it might have been affected by it a little bit. Eugene isn't really sure how, but… the bodies, on closer examination– it looks like a lot of it has already been devoured, but there's no- there's no signs of tearing or shredding from what an animal– there's no animal-style injuries on these cadaver. What it looks like more is that these have mostly been eaten away by whatever the, uh, the Thanatos spore. But it seems that the spore itself works slowly. Much, much slower than his memories from the capsule would have let on.
The Pecker is avoiding some of the corpses. And Eugene doesn't know why yet. So what we're going to do is add a note that the Pecker is particular.
SATAH: The ace of diamonds. Okay: "discovering the ace. When you uncover an ace you find a trait that brings you closer to understanding what happened to the planet's missing sapient species," which– I think I have been playing as if I don't– I have no knowledge of that as a thing. Which I think is fun, so– but I think that whatever this is it is going to somehow be like, "Oh shit, people were here."
"Each ace answers a key question. Check the colour of the ace and roll the d6 on the corresponding table. Re-roll if you get a question you've already answered." So this is an ace of diamonds, so it is red. Three. "What has been preserved?"
That's… [Laughing] potentially quite dark in the context of all the weird medical stuff I'm talking about.
What is the ace's trait? "The ace's trait type does not need to match its suit." Probably will, because I love to be guided.
Diamond is a plant. Okay. "How does this trait answer the key question?"
The first thing I thought of is that I crack open one of these shipping containers and it is a little micro farm. Is there another direction I want to go?
I'm thinking… could be evidence of like… plant fibers being woven into something?
Mmm. Yeah, okay. So I crack open this container and I think, retroactively, as I'm looking at what is in here, I kind of think distantly like, "Oh, that was a lot easier to open than I expected," as if it's already been opened before.
And what– the thing that is in here is, um… there are like reeds that are growing or there's a long grass that grows here. And I think it's an odd colour, makes it very distinctive. And it's a weird texture, which– not sure if that was here or if it was terraformed or– if it's been- if it was- if it was different and then evolved because of some of the shit that's been dumped here. But there is like distinctive grass on this planet.
And in this shipping container is like a loom or some sort of setup that really makes it look like clearly somebody was in this container, like processing this grass into fabric. To build- to make clothes and materials. I have the image of a big sail for some reason. I don't know if there's water on this planet. You'd hope not, if they decided to use it as a dump. But.
Yeah, just someone was in here and they had perfected a process of manually turning this grass into workable fabric. And it's this whole like tiny industrial– not tiny, like, pretty big because these containers are so big– but it's this industrial setup.
And there's signs of– not signs of life exactly as it was inhabited, but people worked in here. There are places along the wall that are slightly different colours because hands rubbed against them so often. There's like a spot next to the door that's a little shinier because clearly somebody would come in and lean there as they took off their outside shoes.
And it's all just here. It looks like somebody was in the middle of a project when they- when it stopped. Yeah.
"Have you encountered any other traits that relate to the key question?" Not sure yet. I think this is such a like, "Oh my god, wait, was somebody living here?" That like, I'm gonna have to sort of think back and make connections, because that wasn't even an option that was on my mind before.
Write a summary… and because this is the one shot, immediately do another camping scene to start a new leg of the journey. Which is something I kind of added just because I think it's a fun framing device.
NICK: We had an arrow on the Ten of Diamonds pointing to a skull. So that's the Bird Nest. But that arrow probably means something else. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to head south. We're gonna drop our energy down to one. I think dropping my energy down to one immediately goes to camping. Yeah, we unveil all of the trait stuff first and then do step four, which turns the die to one, and then we do a camping scene.
Okay, so since it's a straight line, I'm going to point the straight line down and then add a square. And hearts are creatures. And this creature is going to be a… hm. straight line square. I'm thinking this is going to be more of like a– like a dachshund. Like one of those long wiener dogs.
And it's a group of them. There's a group of very long tubular canine type animals. These don't share the reptilian features that Eugene has discovered on the Boss Bird or the Pyramid Pecker, so what he's assuming is that these may be native to Eureka.
They don't pay Eugene any mind. He doesn't seem to be what they would normally expect to see on Eureka. Or perhaps he is. Though the researchers were alien, they were humanoid. And I don't think that these animals… have had any particularly negative interactions with the staff of the Eureka's laboratory that's nearby. But so they, yeah, they don't really care.
So we're going to call them Canis Longus, just to give it a science fiction-y kind of name compared to the shit that Eugene has been calling other stuff. And then we'll go to the camp scene.
DORIAN: Alright, and already it is back to camping. I think exploring this like... abandoned almost like fossilised village you know takes up- takes up most of a day. Like walking along the river until I found it took a decent amount of time and then, uh, exploring it takes longer.
SATAH: "Where do you set up camp?"
DORIAN: I briefly consider sleeping on one of like the bed ledges within one of the domes but it feels too weird. It feels a little bit haunted. Like it feels a little bit– I don't think I believe in ghosts but like sleeping on the bed of someone who, you know, maybe has not been there for centuries is just a little too like intimate and strange?
So where I set up camp is a little bit away from the buildings with my tent, with my bedroll. Sort of like near the riverbank but not so much that the ground is soggy.
SATAH: I think that I am resting in this shipping container, in this… loom… room. To call– again to call, uh, and be like, "Hey. Am I in danger? Is this an– is- is this inhabited? Like, what's up?"
DORIAN: Uh, "Which trait during the leg of the journey was the most interesting to each character?" It was obviously these houses. I think I find these fascinating. I think they're really unlike however it is my people build. I think we probably use like pretty conventional, like, buildings and architecture in a way that, you know, that humans on Earth would recognise. Like maybe we mostly build with wood. But like our buildings are, you know, made out of many disparate pieces that all like come together and are joined in various ways. And then our furniture is obviously completely separate. So these like single form dwellings that look almost like they were like grown out of the mud are like super different for me and super fascinating.
SATAH: "Which trait during this leg of the journey was most interesting to each character?" There's only been the two and boy, this one sure says a lot more than the animal experimentation wing. Comes out on top.
DORIAN: And what I do during my rest is, you know, I… whereas with previous things I've sketched sort of like one example, I think I spend a while like sketching sort of like the layout of this village and like I sketch, you know, know different scenes of like the insides of these smaller dwellings. I try and reconstruct like what the– what the larger sort of like communal buildings must have looked like. These are the ones that have kind of collapsed under their weight over the the intervening years.
So like I think I'm really trying to puzzle it out and that's what I do during my rest.
SATAH: "What does each character do during their rest?" Yeah, I'm going to call the Dead Ringer and say, "Hey, it's me again. Update. Am I not alone on this planet? Because that's a different risk assessment. What's up?"
And there's certainly no– there must not be any surface level evidence of anyone ever having lived here because we would have known that coming in. But now this is another thing that home base, the Dead Ringer, is starting to dig into.
NICK: Rolling the d6. We got a five.
DORIAN: Camp scene. [Die rolling]
SATAH: Roll for my camp scene.
DORIAN: I'm not doing a resurfaced memory again. I'm simply going to reroll.
NICK: So, "strange sight." We have, honestly, when he starts to set up his camp, the dachshunds start to encircle his camp, and then they all, like, beg a little bit. Like, they get on their back legs and start panting. It's almost like they're expecting food. Eugene ignores them and dims the hard light a little bit. And the dachshunds, I think, have been adapted to this behaviour and realise that that means that there's no food here and they all go away.
DORIAN: "A deeper understanding."
SATAH: Another four, "deeper understanding." Cool.
DORIAN: I was thinking about this. I think as I'm sketching out the layout of this settlement, I think I figure out something about, like, how these people structured their society. I think like… we've already established that I come from a pretty communal group of people. And so I think that whoever lived here before wasn't that. I think it is like mostly single dwellings, like maybe even stuff that would only really be sized to fit one person mostly, with like a couple of, like, larger ones that are enough for, you know, like two to three people if the people were around my size. So like a small family. And then like there's only really one or two like large sort of like things that– remnants that might have been a community building. So like– and I think those are– they would be very central for my people, but I think those are near the edge.
And so like, I'm getting the sense that like this- these were pretty atomized people. Like they led largely individual lives and then they sort of only came together under unusual circumstances and spaces that weren't necessarily used very much and that were sort of out of the way of the kind of core environment. So that's very different. And I'm starting to realise that because of the work I've done to sketch this place.
SATAH: This is going to be about the elevator. And it is essentially going to be… elevator's haunted. But hashtag sci-fi. Because I think what it is, what we find out, is that, like, there was an AI in the elevator– little Muzak AI– that gained sapience, or… maybe they pushed it to have sapience because they were like… "Ooh, you're not going to have to push buttons anymore! The elevator will be able to talk to you and figure out where you need to go!" It's like almost like replacing an information desk. Like, "Now you can just step into the elevator and be like, 'Hey, I'm looking for this person,' and the little AI will be able to tell you where they are. It could just be a non-sapient directory, but we love to shove people into things for some reason."
And anyway, this one didn't like its lot in life very much and became a little bit of a poltergeist. And I think probably… killed a bunch of people… [Laughing] in horrific elevator-based accidents.
And they really wanted to cover this up and did so pretty successfully, but that's one of the reasons that it was just hucked off was that they're kind of quarantining the AI too? But not in a responsible, cool way. And we're now like, oh shit, does that mean that the– is the AI still in there? Just trapped? That sucks.
Not my expertise, but it does mean that I think probably another crew is on the way from the Dead Ringer shortly, or they're out on a job right now, and as soon as they get back, they're going to be headed my way to do some more investigating.
OUTRO
SATAH: This has been Folio, an actual play podcast about solo and otherwise self-paced TTRPGs. To find where you can find the show, check out foliopod.carrd.co. Sign up as a paid member at patreon.com/foliopod to vote on games and get early access to the bonus feed with edited audio-only versions of live streams a little while after they happen and occasional other stuff.
You can follow Dorian on Bluesky at MichiffOtt and honour him by supporting your local library.
You can follow Nick Butler on Bluesky at fallonmyblade and find his games at fallonmyblade.itch.io. Physical copies of his cinematic TTRPG Tidebreaker are deeply on sale right now at tidebreakerrpg.com.
You can follow Satah– and that's me– on Bluesky at posatahchips.gaygothvibes.online and check out my work at gaygothvibes.online.
Next week, Dorian and Nick and I will continue our games of The World We Left Behind by Samantha Leigh. Everything I mentioned here is linked in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening, and take care out there.