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 to get early access to the bonus feed, or join there as a free member to get delayed access to the bonus podcast feed.
This is episode three 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.
GAME
SATAH: Alright. It's been a couple days. Had some unexpected situations and circumstances etc. to deal with. It's very funny to come back to one shot after a break, but that's also my experience with trying to play one shots with groups of people, so that's alright.
DORIAN: I tell you what, if I get another really short leg, I might just discreetly shuffle up some of the cards and re-deal them because I do want to be able to spend some time.
SATAH: I'm going to turn my energy to six and start leg three.
NICK: I think this would be day three.
SATAH: I'm going to keep going along the row. So I'm at column four in row one.
NICK: He heads south, determined to explore more and figure out what's going on in this place.
SATAH: I got the nine of clubs, the first clubs. Got to open the game PDF again.
Nine is a half circle. Yeah, so this is our third nine, our first clubs. Half circle. Let's see. So I've drawn a half circle that is facing up like a smile or a cup and then I drew two little lines coming out of the side of it… could be dimples. Could be bad handles on a cup… Who knows. Let's see. What are clubs? Landscape.
So I think what this is is that I'm gonna– I hit the, like– I hit one of the borders of this section of shipping containers, the ones that I've been investigating and there's a valley here that I think, you know, lightly horrifically, this this place has been turned into a dump, right? So it's this like weird like– it's this striking horizon where there's this dip and you can see pretty far across, see the sky, see the way that the light plays into the shadows because of the different depths of the ground, and then it's just kind of filled with stuff. [Laughing]
Um. I think it looks like such a mess that I'm like, there's probably stuff that's relevant to me in there, but it's not a high priority. If we don't find stuff elsewhere, I can come back and start digging through this. Maybe bring a metal detector of some kind? Some sort of specialised metal detector that can… find certain types of materials. Who knows? That seems like a tool that we'd have. Uh… that I maybe… I was just like, wait, if we have that, why wouldn't I bring it? I think the answer would just be someone else is using it right now. We only have one, and so I've been sent off to scout without it.
But yeah, this is just a big valley that is full of sort of loose trash.
DORIAN: Okay, we've got another ten, and this one is the ten of spades. Spades, I believe, is a vestige– yeah. So this makes sense because I am still on my way out of the village.
And a 10 is an… arrow. I'm going to take some inspiration from the spade and we're going to kind of round it out.
And what sort of vestige do I find? I think I'm spending some time sort of like out near the outskirts of the village and I find like… one of the largest sort of clay structures I've seen. You know, it's a little farther down the riverbank so it is still made of clay and it's almost like… it's amphitheater-like and like there's a little sort of like– so there's this sort of great curved like area and then it kind of comes to like– there's a point that's sort of like funneling– like the fulcrum or the focal point is facing away from the water. Like it all kind of narrows and there's like almost a little like kind of smaller, um, structure at that end, which is pointing away.
And I don't know entirely what to make of this structure. It's quite different from anything I've seen I'm putting amphitheater with a question mark. And I wonder if I want to… yeah, I think I'm going to spend another turn here. And I'm going to explore it a little further.
NICK: He reveals the Eight of Clubs. Okay. An eight is a cross symbol. Cross is going to have an X on the bottom right… so it kinda just looks like a T X. And for clubs, first encounter, it's landscape.
I think this landscape is a river. We're just gonna call it a river and we're just gonna keep going.
DORIAN: So for a subsequent encounter I get to add a new detail about the trait to one of the– one of the empty margins. And I am going to choose the prompt question, "How does this trait relate to a different trait you've seen?" and I of course am going to like– I'm mentally comparing it to these domed dwellings and like I'm pretty sure that this is an open– this was designed as an open air space because it doesn't, um– at the size it is and the shape it is, like, you wouldn't be able to build a domed roof over this. So it's not a space that people lived in and it's not really a space that you could like work in or anything because like it's completely open.
So it's like, this was a gathering space that they used for something, like when they did need to come together as a community, and it gives me a sense of the size of the community, which I think is decently big. But like, why they gathered here or what for? I'm not sure, but it' one of the only like clear gathering spaces I've seen, which stands in stark contrast to the very individual dwellings I've spotted before this.
SATAH: And I'm going to turn my energy down to five and I'm going to go down. I'm going to go down to column four, row two.
I got the 10 of hearts. So the symbol for a 10 is an arrow. Pretty simple one, yeah. I drew an arrow pointing to the right. And hearts are creatures, right? Yeah.
I think… so the thought I had was, it's a directional sign. Not for this planet necessarily, but just is– like directional signs from somewhere else that were tossed here. And it's like saying like, "This way to…" something to do with animals. And I was trying to think, is it related to the like animal experiment wing that I found? Maybe, maybe not.
I think– though I'm trying to be careful, as I stated at the top of the game, to be very vibes-based, as much as possible, without trying to sort of find a clue in every single card– it is a sign that was clearly… taken off of a building of some kind. Don't know if it's the same one. And I think what's unusual about it here is that it has been repurposed, as if somebody found a bunch of directional signs and tried to repurpose them to be useful here. It's like if– let's say the zoo threw out a bunch of their guidance materials, like, "elephants this way" and you were on some weird planet and you were like, "There's dangerous stuff here. I'm going to use the 'elephants this way' sign to indicate–" maybe not even danger, but "that way to the mountains," you know, and "I'm going to use the penguin sign to be like– that's– all of the penguin arrows will lead you towards our little makeshift fridge area."
So it's like… navigation that reuses materials and also theoretically isn't super helpful to outsiders? Which could be good.
And I think… there's a limit on how much I know about what the purpose of this is here at the moment, but it does seem like, you know, I see one of these signs– and what is it? I don't think it's a zoo. Do I want to keep this as sort of the like rotating around the medical and scientific stuff? I guess zoos– like research zoos that aren't doing experimentation but are doing like animal rehabilitation and studying their life cycles and that kind of thing, that's close enough related that I could see how their garbage would end up here. So maybe it literally is zoo signs. Elephants this way, penguins this way… space giraffes this way.
And I see this sign. And realise like, "Oh, it's been affixed to this shipping container as if it is actually guiding people somewhere." And I look around and a few containers and a few spots have these signs. Maybe not affixed– yeah, no, it's put there in a way that makes it look like it could be an accident. But it's like, it would be weird if all of these are just… it would be a weird coincidence for all of this, but if you're not looking closely, if you're not investigating, if you're just passing through, you wouldn't pick up the pattern.
And I have no idea what they are guiding towards or what they are, but this is a repurposed zoo signage as wayfinding tool.
DORIAN: That's another ace, and we're not doing that. So I'm just going to discreetly shuffle up the various cards I've got going on here, because it seems like all my aces ended up super close together.
NICK: Um, Eugene's die goes down to four and he's going to go west. He's uncovered the ace of diamonds so we're going to go to discovering the ace, page 20. This ace is red, um. So we're going to roll instead of just listing off the table options. We've got a four.
So four is, "What has changed since the species disappeared?"
I think that, um, there is a overpopulation of predatory species and not enough prey animals. Eugene has thought about this a little bit, and it seems that even the flora is hostile. This planet is extremely hostile.
Eugene has been able to avoid conflict so far because it's not his job to be an exterminator. It's his job to find out what happened and get out. If he happens to have to fight, he's good at it. He does his job and he leaves. He doesn't enjoy it. He just doesn't.
So there's an unbalance in the ecosystem.
DORIAN: I am keeping, to be clear, everything I have already discovered exactly where it was. I am just mixing stuff up a little to make it so that this game isn't 20 minutes long. For my own sake, as well as for the sake of good radio. You know? You know.
NICK: Alright. So we go to the stone circle. Eugene looks at the stone circle. He sees the drag marks and, uh, he notices that there are certain minerals and things that would be present in the soil composition of the ground here that are just missing. So I'm going to write "missing minerals" on this and we're going to go west.
DORIAN: It's interesting so far, this solitary journey. It's interesting, like, feeling myself pulling from various like touchstones I have while also working to find ways of, uh– of making things my own.
And then the other interesting piece of it is like– and this is something I found with other like mystery style stuff– is trying to find ways of like, making things mysterious and open-ended while still feeling like that I'll be able to close off the mystery at some point in a satisfying way. I think that's one of the things a lot of like freeform or like tabletop mysteries struggle with is how to strike that balance where like you're finding clues that point somewhere, but that you aren't, you know, just being led to a predetermined answer. That's a tricky balance to strike. And I can feel myself trying to strike that here. And it is obviously easier with one person than like with a group of people. We'll see where I end up.
Well, where I've ended up right now is on the queen of clubs. So clubs… I've run into before, and clubs is a landscape. I can draw a symbol, I can add details to the art, or I can colour in part of the card, and then I describe a trait based on that modification.
So the queen of the clubs is interesting. She's holding, like, some flowers, and she's got a bunch of little, like, arrowhead symbols on her sash. And I'm going to colour those in. They remind me of spades, which is a little interesting because she is, in this context, a landscape card. Um, and so I'm thinking about vestiges because of the spade-like arrowheads, and I'm thinking about plants as well because of the flowers she's got. So I want a landscape that kind of incorporates elements of these other things we've seen.
I've been following this river, uh, and I think I've been following it upstream, actually. I think that's sort of the direction that some of the settlement-type stuff seemed to lead… no, I'm lying. My instinct when I was initially picturing things was to follow the river downstream. That just feels more naturally to me, and I think… I see no real reason not to have done that.
I think the river widens and it widens into like a broad shore. And I think what I found here is sort of a like, uh– so like things have been getting stonier and this is kind of like the craggy kind of like rough shore of a– there's a little waterfall, not a small– not a large one, but like the water kind of cascades down these like rock shelves into a small… a small lake. And that's what I found here.
It's still got some of those bamboo type plants growing near it, but these ones are like smaller and like a little like frailer. I wouldn't want to try and build something out of these ones because the soil is poorer and I think they're not getting what they need to grow strong.
SATAH: And turn my energy down to four. I'm going to go down one more. Row three in column four. I got the king of clubs. "If the card is a face card, draw any symbol, not limited to the symbol prompts. Add a new detail or colour in part of the card." Yeah, I struggle with the open-ended part here so I think I'm probably just gonna colour in– I'm gonna– sorry, king– colour in your eyes so they're all scary. Yeah. The king– kings; there's two of them on the card– now have weird all-black demon eyes.
And the face cards get scenes, trait scenes. So the king of clubs: "the landscape rumbles beneath you."
Oh, I think what this is, is that I start to follow the signage, the "elephants this way" arrows. I just walk alongside them. And get to a part of– piece of land that is unstable. Oh, maybe it's been filled in. It's like– it looks like just solid land, but what it actually is is a bunch of trash that they then kind of put sod over, and it is deeply unstable as stuff degrades, etc., underneath. And so the signage that I was following is probably indicating… hey don't go this way, or danger this way, or something like that. Or at least indicating, like, that this covered-up spot is here. And I find that out by walking on it and it's scary. It, like, shifts underneath me and feels like I'm gonna get just swallowed up by the earth that I sort of stumble back in alarm.
What does that have to do with the thing… the coloured-in eyes. Um… whatever. It's metaphorical. It's about- it's about– I now understand what the signs were leading me towards and so… I drew it up– I coloured the king's eyes in super black and that represents my ignorance as I walked over here because– I- I had this– I had the the veil  of ignorance that has now been lifted. That's what it means. Don't worry about it.
DORIAN: And from the craggy lake I find the three of spades. This is a vestige. And this vestige, I use a triangle.
I put a few triangles together into something that looks kind of like a little fence, or what I think it's actually going to be, which is a bridge. It's a long bridge– I don't recall the names of different kinds of bridges. This is a very, like, uh– I think in eighth grade we studied, like, different kinds of bridges a bit? It's the one that's not a suspension bridge. It's the one that uses, like, a structure of kind of, like, triangle-shaped girder-type things to… to cross a span.
And it's made of, again, this kind of like petrified wood like reeds. It is beat up. It is precarious looking. It is a little scary.
And I think I am going to very cautiously try and kind of pick my way across it.
SATAH: Turn my energy down to three and I'm going to go further down in the row. Column four, row four. The eight of spades. The symbol for eight is a cross, which… I'm going to draw an X. And I'm drawing another X beside it. I'm not doing three because this isn't… I stumble upon the secret trash planet's porn theater.
Spades are a vestige.
Two X's beside each other. It looks a little bit like crossed out eyes of like a cartoon death… mmm. If I could interpret it as like an "X marks the spot type thing" and what I find as I'm making my way back from that landfill is I find a couple of shipping containers that are full of what I've been looking for. A bunch of the, like, cybernetic things that I can hopefully reclaim to do repairs for our augments. Yeah, why not? That's fun.
Which I think I just– I tag. I'm still scouting, but I tag the location of this so that I can sort of, like, come back later and start salvaging, but there's no reason to do it now. Because the other thing is, depending on how many resources the Dead Ringer can spare, maybe we just lift these whole containers, you know? We'll- we'll investigate further later. We're doing broad before details in this investigation.
NICK: We uncover the two of clubs. A two is a circle symbol. I'm going to put a little gun– like a little gun sight on the top. Clubs is landscape. So a little gun sight on the top of the landscape.
I think this, honestly, this just looks like another valley, but it's got like a log going across the either end of it of, like a really humongous ancient tree that fell across. According to closer inspection, the log looks like it was cut down on purpose and has been outfitted with some polymers. So it's like a semi-natural, semi-man-made bridge. There is extensions attached to it to make it look like it was supposed to be there, but it was definitely purposely put there.
This makes Eugene confused. So it's like, were so many people here just bored that they're making, like, things out of the aesthetic? Like what happened there?
DORIAN: If you build a bridge, you're building it to somewhere, you know? So I'm assuming that there's something at the end of this and I want to know what it is.
NICK: At least it's not just decay and things trying to eat him.
DORIAN: What it is, is the eight of hearts. Now hearts– ooh, my first creature! Eight is a cross shape.
I don't really know what I've drawn here. It looks a little bit like wings and a little bit like a pinwheel. And so I'm going to run with that.
And I think it is a strange sort of like four winged bird. I think what I learn, like– I think I've not seen too many animals yet. Like, I think stuff has been pretty small. I think stuff's been pretty quiet. Like– and I've kept my distance from larger animals or like from places where, you know, I see stuff moving and suspect there might be larger animals. But I've gotten the impression that like they stay away from the… you know, the places that people sort of settled. Like, I don't think those environments are, like, super hospitable to the wildlife.
So I haven't been super close to an animal, but on the other side of this bridge, I come across this kind of, like, four-winged bird, and I think, like, it's… I call it a bird because that's the frame of reference I have, but it's, like, quadrilaterally symmetrical. So, like, its head is in the center of this sort of, like, four-winged body, and it kind of, like, flies in a… it also looks like, you know, you've seen these videos of jellyfish where they kind of, like, puff out their body and, like, move that way? So it's, like, flapping its wings like that.
And there's probably a few of them. And, you know, I see them, like, startle and, like, sort of, like, fly up, and they move surprisingly quickly, so they're gone almost as fast as they came. And I think we've seen these, like– I've said we've explored parts of this planet before, so we may not have seen this specific bird, but we've seen stuff like it, and we know that the life here is, like– does have this sort of odd, like, quadrilateral, like, fourfold symmetry, um, so that's not super surprising, but I do my best to sketch like this specific bird in case it's one we haven't seen before. And I move on.
SATAH: Okay, energy to two and I'm going to go over to column five in row four. [Gasps] Another ace! The ace of spades. So this is a black ace. So… right, yes. The two ace tables are… time locked, essentially. Red cards are in the present, black cards are in the past, which I think is sort of covered well enough in what the actual questions are that it doesn't matter too much to be super conscious of it.
So black card, rolling my d6. A six. "What was destroyed?"
"What is the ace's trait?" It doesn't have to match the suit, but again, probably will. Spades are vestiges, right? Yeah.
"How does this trait answer the key question?" I– so this has to, I assume– yeah. This is about the planet's missing sapient species. Which I'm interpreting broadly as just, like, a society, basically, because unraveling the mystery of what happened to a species could be like… if they're sapient, then there are probably differences in them and then it's like– there's just a lot of– it feels like too big of a question to me in a lot of ways once you once you have the sapience in the mix. Yeah, it's complicated.
DORIAN: The four of hearts, more creatures. This one's square, is my symbol. So that does fit with this fourfold symmetrical situation. And I think not long after seeing the birds, I come across kind of a herd of these kind of like– I'm going to call them reptilian, because that's fun to me. But they sort of seem like they're behaving– like they're scaly… Imagine like a scaly cow kind of thing, like scaly cattle. But you know it's it's a lot more squarish and there's like an eye on each side and its mouth is under kind of the the bottom of its body so like they– they'll like walk over it– like I think that's similar grass to what we've seen elsewhere. And like the whole time they're walking they're just kind of like munching up grass from underneath them. So like they just leave a trail of like– almost a worm trail of like grass they've consumed directly under where their body has passed by.
So, uh the scaled grazers. I watch them for a while. They're pretty big. So I decide to head in a slightly different direction. I don't want to get into the herd and discover if they're like aggressive in some way. And in any case, I've been interested in like the stuff that the people have been leaving behind. Like that's the kind of like, you know– even if people have like– even if my people have studied the former habitants of this place before, they haven't studied it in this part of the planet so I might be able to learn new things about like their architecture and stuff that's- that's different from other regions. And that to me is more likely to result in actual new discoveries than if I spend a bunch of time observing the wildlife.
SATAH: "What was destroyed?" This could be negative or positive. Like it could be about the destruction of something harmful that allowed them to live here or it could be destruction of… obviously something that harmed them, maybe caused them to leave, or go extinct or whatever it was…
This is a tough one because it feels like it could define a lot of what is going on with them, which I know is part of the point, but it's like a big decision.
I thought about the idea of farmland that was destroyed from an act of hubris somehow, like they were doing some sort of experimentation with plant genetics and cut off their own food source. Is that what I want their downfall to be? I don't know.
At this point, maybe I need to know more about who lived here, even if the characters don't. The vibe I'm getting is a little bit of an Isle of the Misfit toys type thing. We're talking about the- the- the haunted elevator AI. And if there's a bunch of weird medical waste here, I can see– I could see how a lot of experiments end up here, presumed dead but not actually? Or… [Chuckling] or. There could be a Frankensteining situation where… oh no, I felt myself get very attached to that idea as I said it. [Laughing]
So. The idea. Possibly– I think that I'm going to end up tying in the weird elevator AI– but the idea that a bunch of different body parts and things were here and there was someone– I think probably the elevator AI– who got, like, found themselves in a chassis somehow– started doing Frankenstein stuff and creating people. And built a whole society of these people who were made of of a bunch of different body parts and weird stuff.
I think that's very fun. It's a little insane. And I– that's okay.
My character doesn't know that yet but I think what that means– the answer to what was destroyed is… the lab that they were able to build new people with. I think that they were sustaining themselves… just, like, whatever got sent here, they would just make new people. Or– in a way that's– kind of mirrors the way that I'm looking for stuff to repair cyber augments, sometimes a vat would arrive and they'd be like, "Oh good, Cindy needs a new heart. Let's plop that in her."
Yeah. And the lab was destroyed. And so I think it did lead to their downfall, and I don't know yet how immediately or how tragically, but it certainly removed their ability to create new people and also have healthcare. Uh, revenant health care. I need– I'll need to find a– I'll need to find a word for what these people are.
Yeah. But what does this look like for Eggo?
Mm. So they found those shipping containers of augments. And then they go to open another container and it's really hard to open. And they manage to force it and inside is just… it looks like there was an explosion and the walls are all charred and- and just something happened in here. Don't know if it was an accident, don't know if it was purposefully sabotaged or what, but.
And I don't know– I don't know how much Eggo can like recognise it as the remnants of a lab. Maybe there's like a medical table in the middle that didn't totally get destroyed or something that like lends to like, "Oh, was this a hospital?" Like, "Was this a medical facility that was made here? Maybe? I don't know?" All Eggo sees is the this charred destroyed section of some sort of medical facility or lab.
But what we know is that this is where they were doing Frankensteining.
NICK: He heads west again. We found ace of hearts! Alright, let's go.
So we're going to go back to the discovering the ace thing. We're going to roll for red because the ace of hearts is a red thing. There is a one. "Where is the species now?"
Well, it seems that something happened. There was an accident. I think what happened is that there was genetic mutations that went wrong. That's kind of where we've been leaning with this story so far.
The Thanatos spore got loose. It ate away at a lot of the flesh of that alien species. And I think it adapted to the environment. And some of the natural– the natural creatures here ate it and they were transformed for it. So– 'cause there's no traces of the spore as far as where Eugene has traveled, and he's gone through quite a bit of this planet exploring. He's seen what's happened to the place, but this particular card, I think he's found another research station that's had some videos that's shown him the data logs that he's needed to uncover what happened to the species. He's going to have some other questions that he needs answering before he goes home to make his final report. And we're going to try to uncover that within the next hour.
SATAH: "Have you encountered any other traits that relate to the key question?"
The idea that the animals who've been burrowing caused– like, chewed on some wires and caused an explosion seems possible. I don't want to definitively say that yet, just in case there's a more interesting explanation of– though actually, maybe- maybe I will at least say there is a burrow hole here and we can maybe define later whether this was an accident, a freak accident, or if somebody specifically– it was an accident that was set up by somebody.
Is anything else related? I think a lot of stuff has been. It's probably not a coincidence that this is right beside a bunch of the cybernetic bio-waste, right? Like they were probably using that.
NICK: Yeah, there might have been something that happened with the researchers. But honestly, I think we don't know all the details yet. We just know the end result. We found out the end result as soon as we landed. We just needed to confirm everything. And having found two labs and they're both empty? Well… uh, we can't really say that the prognosis is going to be positive for them.
SATAH: "If you have found other aces, review them. Write any new details you've learned about their traits or the questions they answer."
What was my other ace? "What has been preserved?" Oh. Well, hmm. It's not really new, and Eggo doesn't necessarily– [Laughs] That's a silly name. That's funny. Caught me off guard that time when I said it.
Eggo hasn't necessarily learned, but now we know, like, yeah, someone was making clothes. That's one of the reasons that they were processing these plant fibers into fabric. They were making clothes for themselves. I guess it partially answers the question of why they didn't have clothes already? Like, they weren't coming here with bags packed. New people were being created here, fully formed, and needed to have a wardrobe. But that isn't super new– that could have sort of been assumed in some ways.
DORIAN: So we are moving to the queen of, uh, diamonds. I know what shapes are.
So diamonds is a plant. And the queen can be anything but is like… a scene.
I totally forgot about the rules for a face card with my last one. The queen of clubs is "The landscape hides something." Pretend I answered that with the craggy lake. And you know, we will carry on with face cards correctly in a way that we have not done hitherto. That's actual play, baby.
So the queen of diamonds does have a specific prompt. And that prompt… oh good, she is carrying plants. This is perfect.
This prompt is, "The plant releases spores," which I personally am a little concerned by. You know, the spores are a little ominous.
So, you know, I see… I think the grasses here have changed. Like this isn't the soft gauze grass I was at earlier. This is something– this is more like a meadow. That was tall grass. These are a little lower. Think kind of like clover or like a flower field.
And they are flowers. And as I start to walk through the field, like– there's just like this like poof of like pollen, or, um– I'm shaking up something with my movement and it gives me just crazy hay fever. Just really, really terrible. Like these spores are a massive irritant to me. So I kind of retreat a little bit.
And fortunately, the field of like these really aggravating flowers is not huge, so I'm able to get back to something a little grassier. It does mean that I am setting up camp a little closer to the Scaled Herd than I would like to. But, you know, that is how it goes sometimes. Like, I need to stop for the night because I'm a wreck.
SATAH: With that, time to camp.
DORIAN: And I– which is to say, it is a camping scene time.
And I'm setting up my camp just at the side of this– like, far enough away from these plants and hopefully upwind from them while kind of nervously eyeing the herd of grazers, which is still visible off in the distance.
SATAH: I don't think I like being in that destroyed atmosphere, so I sit outside.
DORIAN: "Which trait during this leg of the journey was most interesting to me?"
SATAH: Oh, I mean, I found what I was looking for, right? I found a bunch of the augment garbage. So this is intriguing and cool, but ultimately that is… that's really my focus.
DORIAN: I think it was the bridge. The bridge was alarming, to be clear, but it was interesting. And it's like a more complex structure than I've seen before here. And I think it's– I don't think our- where I'm from has a lot of like large bodies of water, so I think its like- its construction is quite different from anything I've seen firsthand, although it's something I've probably learned about.
SATAH: "What do you do during the rest?" I call the Dead Ringer again and say, "Hey, checking in, found some stuff. Here's the like, geotag location. By the way, I'm becoming pretty convinced that people were living here. It looks like they even had a hospital set up. There's no signs of life at the moment but something weird is here for sure, so let's just have our guards up."
[Clunks of things falling over] Oop boop boop! I'm throwing my ancient tablet.
DORIAN: During rest, my notes are a little hastier than normal because I am a little unnerved by my current situation where I'm kind of between this field of like really irritating flowers and this herd of animals that I don't know what they're like, so it's not the best rest in the world. Like I'm keeping an eye open. I'm trying to get my notes down comprehensively, but I– I don't sleep well, I don't think.
SATAH: And I'm gonna roll a camp scene. Five: "a strange sight." [Gasps]
DORIAN: The scene is a good meal.
SATAH: It feels like it would go against the spirit of the game to see one of the people who used to live here. But… I think it would be fair to say that I see a cyborg or an android on the horizon, sort of dutifully walking along, checking things.
And probably this is the elevator AI, right? Or one of their descendants. Not sure how that works exactly. But they're far away. And I think they're also– they're across that, uh, unstable ground. And it isn't clear to me if they are an automated droid of some kind or a person, because they're just sort of moving along and very methodically checking things, which could just be running lines of code and algorithms or could be a developed sapient machine. But they're very far away. But it is odd, especially after having been alone here for so long and so surrounded by… the word I immediately called up was meat? But just, you know, very human bodily stuff, seeing this lone android gently picking their way across the horizon is very strange.
I don't think they notice me. Or if they do, they don't indicate it.
DORIAN: I have rations, you know, I have like food I brought with me. And it's not– it's not like space agey. It's like good, like trail food. I think of, you know, like pemmican or like, you know, good durable like trail bread. And I think this is a good meal in the sense that like, It's the same food I've been having, but I have a little more of it. It was a long day. It was an exhausting day. And I, you know, I need a little comfort food. So I eat like– I've been making good progress. I eat like two days worth of rations and I hope that it doesn't screw me up later.
SATAH: That, yes, that was leg three.
Start of leg four. Turn my energy to six. I'm going to start moving back up the map. Going up column four, I'm in row three.
Eight of hearts. Eight. Right, the cross. I guess I'll do a cross, but I'm going to put a rectangle around it so it kind of looks like a window or a shelving unit. Hearts, creatures.
[Pause] Wow, I'm really struggling with this one. Uh…
So I think, again, it's not evidence of any life on this planet. I think it is a shelving unit that's been knocked over, and inside there are old nests with the remnants of hatched eggs. So there were– there was something that was probably a bird or something that lived here and successfully… propagated the species. Had kids. They hatched. But they abandoned this nest maybe pretty quickly because the hatched eggs are still in there, which maybe is just a habit of the species. Maybe these are some birds who are like, I lay my eggs somewhere and then as soon as the baby emerges we peace the fuck out and live somewhere else. But maybe not. Maybe they were scared away, maybe they just migrated, maybe they were hunted. Not sure. But this is more evidence of– of another creature. Because they're probably not the same things that were burrowing the holes. Though who knows? Could be a very weird animal.
DORIAN: Let's see. I just woke up after having my experience with the horrible flowers. So I'm going to kind of try and skirt around that. I think I do have some stuff to kind of protect my face, you know, I've got a mask. I've got like– they do equip people who go on this journey with the tools to do it safely.
So yeah, maybe I don't skirt around. I just suit up in my little mask and goggles and wrap a scarf around my face to further insulate myself, put on my gloves in case it's irritating to my skin, and I'm going to continue forging through.
And I've hit the three of diamonds. So it is still plants. So I'm drawing another triangle. Gotta make it a different symbol than the bridge… I'm gonna do something kind of compass-y.
And I think now that I'm goggled up and suited up, I can appreciate these plants a little more. I think as I get in thicker– because I do want it to be different, because if I were to stay with the pollen plants, that would be how I'd add traits to those, so I want this to be a different plant.
And I think as I've gone through those, I've found like another plant interspersed with them. These kind of like a… like little four-pointed star-shaped flowers. There's that quadrilateral symmetry again.
And on these plants, there's some kind of little, like little bugs. Little bee-like bugs. They've also got a radial symmetry to them, but unlike, you know, the presumably like vertebrate or like animals with skeletons, like these little bug ones like are… oh man. What if they are like fully like three-dimensionally like radially symmetrical? Like it's almost like a little sphere with like– like, these kind of, like, cilia-like hairs all over it. So it kind of, like, there's no real discernible, like, top or bottom to this bug, and it just kind of, like, leaps from flower to flower and does… something. I'm not really clear of what, but. I'm intrigued.
And it clearly has, like, some kind of close relationship with these flowers. I think it's– like, uh, I used to have a garden, and there were these, um, I grew sunchokes, which are these, like, big tall sunflower type things, and, like, when the leaves were furled up still in the spring, sometimes you'd see an earwig just kind of like nestling, kind of like tucked in almost like a little sleeping bag. It was kind of cute. And so I think these bugs kind of fit, you know– these flowers, these four-petaled flowers have like a central section, like the center of the flower. I don't know flower words. Um, but you know, like there's this little like cupped section almost. And these bugs kind of like pop right in there. Then they roll around or swivel a bit like a ball bearing, pick up some pollen, and then they hop over to the next flower. So they're doing something. And I, you know, know enough about how these things generally work that I assume they're contributing to pollination in some way.
They're really neat, and they make me feel slightly more positively towards this whole field, which has otherwise been a pretty unpleasant experience.
NICK: Now, having gone through most of the southern quarter of this world, the southern hemisphere, we're going to travel north.
Eugene's energy goes down to three, and we uncover the eight of hearts. As we know, hearts are creatures. There's been abundant creatures on this planet. But what is an eight? An eight is a cross. I'm gonna do a cross and put some teeth over it.
So Eugene, as he's traveling north, this is a very thick thicket. Like, it's very woodsy here. The trees are ancient. They are tall. They are thick. They cover the canopy so much that light is barely getting in.
Until he hears that first football. Then he hears the crack. Then he hears the air rush and pull away from him, as if something is inhaling.
Something very big is inhaling.
And it's inhaling hard enough to pull him forward. Then another footfall. And a crack. The cracks have thuds. Large thuds. Something like trees falling.
Then he hears the roar. Eugene reflexively puts his hands up to cover his ears. His ears hurt. It feels like the eardrums are almost about to burst. It's an intense pain in his head. He… 
NICK AS EUGENE: Heracles! Heracles! I need protection!
NICK: The Heracles system immediately responds to his commands. It's like instinctively reading his vital signs and knowing exactly what it needs to be done. All it needed was the okay. Eugene's ears start to close up around him, almost like there was like, um… like a cochlear shell that's surrounding his– his ear lobes so that the sound is- is deafened, but not completely– not muted completely. He can still kind of hear ambient noise around him. He can definitely hear that roar again. But it's not knocking him off his feet anymore.
But what it is doing is making him scared. His heart is racing. It is thumping. It is doing double bass pedals from the best death metal drummer that you have ever heard. That shit is going [Aggressive mouth drumming] as the beast starts roaring in. And the trees start falling around him. Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom! All over the place.
And then the maw appears. over the canopy as the light starts to finally come in around him and show that this motherfucker makes the T-Rex look like a puppy. It is huge. It is muscular. It's vascular. Its teeth are the size of skyscrapers. Maybe Eugene is exaggerating this a little bit. I'm doing a little bit of my own narration, I'm doing some of his. But all we know is that we have seen something larger than anything that we have seen before. And it knows that we are here. And it is hungry.
The Heracles system responds. The light around the Eugene's suit starts pumping liquid into all of his limbs, all through his chest. There is a gear going through the circle, almost like a little turbine that starts spinning rapidly. And like you can see the armor start to react to Eugene's will as he dodges a foot that leaves a giant crater.
When the foot lands again to almost intend to crush Eugene where he stands, he rushes forward, jumps up, and the air just seems to suck in around Eugene and then burst forward as his feet flare up and launch him into the sky. He comes in with the meanest uppercut that you have seen since Ryu in Street Fighter 4 when he hit that motherfucker with the Shin Shoryuken. And he cracks this monster right in the jaw, sending it… slightly up. Just a little bit.
NICK AS EUGENE: That's not supposed to happen.
NICK: This T-Rex does not have the same weakness as its ancestors do. Its arms are actually rather long and functional. And when it feels Eugene's fist, it hits Eugene so hard that he goes flying through three trees.
He slumps down from the top of the tree about twenty feet in the air, and just… [Thumping sound] onto the ground. The tree then cracks, hits Eugene, cracks around him. A little bit of energy is dispersed to break the tree, the part that would have otherwise crushed a normal man. But now there's just a dead tree sitting in front of him and a very annoyed monster charging forward to finish the job.
Eugene stares. And he thinks, "Shit, I didn't think it was going to be like this. But I wasn't paid to die. And I'm also not paid to take you out."
And he puts all of the energy into his feet. The same energy that would have sent him flying upwards sends him vertically forward, right through that monster's feet and out of the clearing.
I'm going to spend an extra energy to get him out of that alive. There's nothing in the rules that say that, but I think for dramatic tension, that's what we're going to do.
DORIAN: We have another face card. This time I'm remembering that there is a prompt question. And I'm remembering that I'm going to draw my addition to it before checking the prompt, because that's more fun to me.
Um, this is the king of spades. He's got a pretty gnarly looking sword. He's got a good mustache. I'm just going to give one half of him, you know, this is the classic, uh, symmetrical, you know, up and down, mirrored deck of cards. I'm giving one half of him some cool streaks in his hair. That's what I'm feeling. How will I relate this to a card– or, to a prompt? We will find out, because the prompt is… "the vestige contradicts an assumption."
That's really interesting. What assumptions have I made? I've made the assumption that these people live a pretty solitary existence. I've made the assumption that they build based on the materials that are around them in the environment they currently are. I've made the assumption that they don't like gather in large groups.
I think the assumption that's contradicted here is… the idea that they build out of the materials where they are. Because I think I find a vestige that's still- still made out of natural materials, but I think I find a… I find another one of those reedy watchtowers, like the first one I found with the first ace, but we're not anywhere near where those reeds grow. And so I think in order to build a watchtower here, people needed to transport their preferred material, which is like these sort of like bamboo like reeds that petrify as they age, they needed to transport it quite far. 
And I think like, this one, a little more of the thatch is preserved, and it's not the gauze grass that I initially discovered. It might be like– I might not have been wrong about the gauze grass on that first watchtower, but this one's thatch is some material I haven't encountered yet. It's not these pollen plants.
But like, it's made in the same way as the watchtower I previously discovered, but with materials that, rather than being from the surrounding environment, are clearly things that people like transported some ways, because they're what they prefer to build with.
So my assumption that people use what's around them is wrong. This vestige shows that they have materials they like, and I just happened to be in the place where those materials were sourced.
SATAH: Turning my energy down to five and going up to row two in column four. The two of diamonds. Symbol prompt for a two is a circle. I've drawn two circles, one inside of the other, looking kind of like a donut. Diamonds are a plant.
I think maybe quite simply this is just a weird plant that looks kind of donut-y. And I think I'm leaning into the body horror and saying that it's also a little bit fleshy. [Laughs] This is a weird meat plant.
I don't get too close to it. I definitely have a rebreather or, you know, a respirator of some kind on 'cause I'm on an unknown junk planet. But probably a lot of our equipment is all like old and reclaimed. So don't want to like stress it unnecessarily. So I see these weird fleshy circular flowers just looking like a weird meat tube. [Laughs] And I don't go near them.
They're– oh, ooh, they're growing from the edge of that unstable land, the like, landfill filled in part. They're just kind of growing up from under there. And it's like, mm. Just going to avoid those and keep looking at my storage crates.
DORIAN: Seven of hearts. My reshuffling of the aces really worked, you guys.
SATAH: [Card sounds in the background] I just abruptly in the middle of a turn decided that the six by six grid was a little bit too long and had to text the episode guests to be like, "Hey, please switch to the five by five as I'm about to do," which means I'm going to grab all of the cards that I haven't turned over yet. I'm going to take all the aces out. Shuffling the cards, shuffling the cards. And laying them out.
This is going to be silly. This is going to mean that I'm going to have to double back on some cards because I just changed the grid side halfway through, but it's fine. It's ultimately for the best.
Okay, so I've got this donut looking plant. [Laughs]
DORIAN: A seven, I haven't done before. This is curved lines. I'm going to go something sort of sinuous, kind of an S curve. Do some sort of like scalloped edges… and hearts is a creature again.
Um, so I've made it past that field. And I want to find, like, if there's… the last watchtower was pretty close to some dwellings. And I want to find if this one is similar, like, if there's a place where people live near me.
So I'm going to arc back towards the lake on the assumption that, like, you know, if these people were anything like us, they probably did need water. Almost everything does. And on the way… a creature. Doesn't have to be a literal creature.
Yeah, I'm going to find, um… oh god, the possibilities are dizzying. You know, I think what– my instinct is telling me, though– like, it's not on the way, actually.
I think I climb the watchtower. And don't worry, this isn't going to be me cheating a bit by– I would have to explore the watchtower card more to add details about it. But this one is… it's in slightly better shape. I'm able to climb it and, like, actually look out for signs of habitation.
And I think I see in the distance what I initially think is, like, uh… I think I see a river in the distance, kind of like that shimmering, like, reflective thing. It's, like, curved. It arcs like a river.
And then I see it move.
And it's sort of like– what I've actually seen is– it's closer than I thought. Like, I thought it was just really far away, but still be able to be seen because it was river-sized. But what I've seen is, like, a large, like, snake-like creature. It shimmers like a river. But I see it, like, slither away, essentially, and leave, like, a trail in the earth behind it. And I come down from the watchtower, and I'm gonna head in a direction that's not towards that thing. Because it unsettles me. It's a reminder that, you know, not everything here is– things here have been pretty safe so far. And my people, I think, do want the people who go on these Vectorages to be safe, but there's real danger. It's not pretend, you know, it's not like a sanitised, like, "Oh, you better go off and discover something, but like, we're holding your hand through the whole thing." There is risk to what I'm doing.
SATAH: Turn my energy down to four and go up to my corner. The queen of diamonds. Face cards, you can draw whatever… um… the queen is holding a flower, which is worrying after the flesh plant thing. [Laughs] I'm going to turn the flowers that the queen is holding into weird circles, because I think I know what this means.
What is the actual event for the queen of diamonds? "The plant releases spores." Good! Great! So exactly the thing that I was just worried about? Yeah. Yep.
I… go to make my way further away from these weird flesh plants, and it seems almost like sensing my presence, or maybe- maybe in reaction to some shifting underneath, in that unstable filled in landfill part… I'm gonna have to– what is the– there's a word for that process when it comes to dumps. I don't remember what it is. But.
I think the spores are like… it's funny because they're not as light as you expect spores to be. They, like, shoot out in a burst of energy and then sort of like… they don't float on the air for very long, they just flop down on the ground? Because this- this uh- this weird flesh plant hasn't quite mastered a lot of the plant aspects of being a flesh plant? Which is good because it means I'm not going to breathe them, probably, but I just sort of stare in horror and, uh, continue trying to back away from there.
Out of the corner of my eye, I'm like, "Are the spores following me? Are they crawling towards me?" I don't think so, but it feels like they are, and so I don't know about all that.
DORIAN: Found the four of clubs. Four is a square. Clubs is landscape. I think as I move past the flower field, I get to an area that is kind of like a um… rocky kind of, uh… what's the word I'm looking for? Like, is it a moraine? I'm going to Google a moraine real quick. "Material left behind by a moving glacier. This is usually soil and rock." I don't think that's quite what I want.
I'm thinking of like the Canadian Shield, which is just a big rocky plateau. Oh, a geologic shield. That's literally what it's called. It's thin soil over bedrock.
And I think I got to an area where, like, the soil has been kind of scoured, maybe by things like this big snake that move across it. And so, like, the rock has been kind of, like, revealed. And I think the rock here is pretty dark, and it cracks into this sort of, like, mosaic-y… I mean, it's really more hexagonal than square, but that's okay. Like… the laws of shearing force still apply, so, like… but think, like, you know, like, the Giant's Causeway in Ireland or things like that.
So, like, I've come across this, like, rocky plateau. And it doesn't feel super promising in terms of finding more civilisation, but I don't know, right? I'm going to stay near the edges of it, but I'm going to continue, like, along the edge of where the landscape changes to see if I can still find water somewhere and, like, evidence of civilisation.
And you know what? I do. Because my next card is the six of spades.
SATAH: Gonna have to do some repeats here to get to new cards.
So. I'm going to turn my energy to three and walk back over. I'm at the nine of clubs again, which was the… just valley of loose trash. And let me check the rules for re-encountering a card. "Subsequent encounters: if you have not yet filled all four margins of the card, add a new detail about the trait to one of the empty margins. Consider answering one of the following questions with this detail. How does this trait relate to a different trait you've seen? Which unexpected feeling or memory does this trait evoke? What peculiar sound, smell, or taste does this trait have? How did this trait come into being? How is this trait similar yet different to something on another planet?"
And then there's stuff about the campaign version where you shuffle cards back in– I really love this rule, so I am going to highlight it. Because in the other one– you lay out your grid– in the campaign version, you lay out your grid, you write on your cards, and then you shuffle the cards back in, and then lay out a new grid from the full deck. It means that sometimes you're going to encounter the same trait across multiple visits to the planet and so I– and I really like the rule, "If this card appears across different journeys consider: is the exact same– is this the exact same trait you saw before, or is this a different instance of the trait, either identical or divergent?" I just think that's a really lovely way to let your players basically be like, you know, I- I'm on a different side of the planet, so probably this flagpole isn't the same flagpole– unless it goes all the way through the planet, which is its own fascinating thing– but it could also be, "Oh, we've just learned that the people who put that flag up were also on this side of the planet." I just- I think that that's very cool and- and leaves a lot of exploration space, uh, which is great and very fun in a game like this, especially one that is encouraging you to do longer play and multiple visits and that kind of thing.
All of those compliments were true, and also, I'm stalling on adding a detail.
Valley of loose trash.
So one of the suggested questions, "How does this trait relate to a different trait you've seen?" I think… I'm going to relate this to the strange sight of that android who was methodically picking through stuff before.
As I'm looking– I'm plodding back across, I'm looking– something catches my eye and I look. And I realise that what looks random… this looks like just a bunch of loose trash, is actually sorted. Not in a system that makes immediate sense to me, but clearly there is some sort of logic to it. And it dawns on me that the android I saw on the horizon has been collecting bits of trash from other parts of the planet and bringing them here to sort. For whatever… their purposes are.
And I definitely sort of like… note that for like, ooh, if I can figure out what their system is, then… maybe I'll find a big pile of the stuff that I need that they've already helpfully sorted for me. And that I clearly am planning on taking from them at this point. Sorry, buddy.
NICK: And we discover the jack of diamonds going north.
Jack of diamonds is, "the plant is useful to you." Um, okay!
So this plant is rare. And Eugene wasn't expecting it to grow at a place like this. But this plant is called Aphrodite. And it is named after the goddess of love because scouts all over love this plant, um, because what it does is, for anyone that has been augmented by things like the Heracles system, this is exactly the kind of plant that recharges his systems.
Eugene opens up the gauntlets on the Heracles system and sucks in the Aphrodite.
NICK AS EUGENE: Restore systems. Aphrodite located. Deploying processing unit.
NICK: Um, the processing unit is a little spherical drone that pops out and it has a little claw that extends out of a little circle that comes out, grabs the Aphrodite, puts it in a little tubular thing that extends out of the mouth, inserts it, and starts to glow a little bit. And all the little pieces, like, come absorbed into it. And then it go back into his system.
There is a slight hum. And the lights on the Heracles system fades, but Eugene lets out a sigh of relief.
NICK AS EUGENE: Oh, fuck. This definitely can't take any more hits like that.
I put some distance between myself and that beast… but it's going to have to wait 'til the morning. Hopefully it's lost my scent.
I can't… I…
NICK: And then Eugene collapses.
SATAH: And I'm going to put my energy down to two. I can either go back to the ace of diamonds, which was the fiber processing place, or go down to the repurposed zoo signage. Either of those will get me to my unflipped cards.
I think I'll go over to the ace of diamonds. In a standard game, you can't repeat aces because you only put one ace in each grid and then you're done when you've seen all of them. But for the one shot… "When you find an ace, keep it on the map, start a new leg rather than an entirely new journey. If you land on the same ace a second time, discuss which new fact you learn about the ace's trait." Yeah, so I'm just going to look att he… I'm going to do the subsequent encounter thing again.
I think… a thing I'll note here, specifically a new detail, which feels kind of obvious in some ways, but I think is worth explicitly noting, is that… this was not destroyed. This, in fact, the prompt of it was "What has been preserved?", which makes me think that it's been maintained, even if it's not maybe in active use.
It's not in active use, I think, for sure. But it has been maintained in some way. And part of what that would indicate to me is that if the lab was destroyed on purpose, it wasn't because they were trying to just wipe these people out. They maybe didn't want them to create new ones, but clearly they were like, it's okay if you keep making clothes to be able to weather the elements.
Alternately, it could imply that it wasn't on purpose, that it was just a freak accident, and then the people just continued to live here for a while and made clothes and whatever, but… I think, yeah, it's mostly the extra detail that I'm adding is, given the context of what I've seen elsewhere here, it is notable that this space has been actively maintained in some way, as if someone is making sure that it's operational in case anyone ever needs to use it again.
DORIAN: So a six is straight lines.
And I think I find another one of those amphitheater type formations, but this one is like… literally dug into or carved into the rock and I haven't seen much evidence so far of these people's ability to like do that kind of large scale like construction type stuff. Like, that is new and and pretty striking. And I don't think I quite know what to make of it and I still don't understand what these constructions are for. Like, this one's really in the– like the middle of friggin nowhere, as far as I can tell. So like, was there evidence of this civilisation here, like beyond the amphitheater, that like simply has been worn away and this is all that remains? Or… I don't know.
But because it's dug into the earth, it is a decent enough place to camp and that is what I'm doing because I have run out of energy on my die.
SATAH: Energy goes down to one, so I'll set up camp here! Which I did before, right? Because I– you have– I- I camp when I find an ace. And I think this is actually setting up camp. This is- this is like– this has been a full day, and I am gonna get some rest for the night.
DORIAN: So I am setting up camp within the, like, bowl of the amphitheater, because it provides a bit of shelter from, like, the elements. I'm hoping that the fact that it's still preserved means that, you know, it's relatively safe, although I can't be too sure.
SATAH: "Which trait during this leg of the journey was most interesting to each character?" Definitely the sorted trash. The weird fleshy plants were alarming, but the– the bunch of junk that seems to be in some database that I don't fully comprehend is much more interesting. And relevant to me.
DORIAN: I think I took the most notes about the second watchtower, because it did communicate some interesting stuff about these people who lived here before me. But on a personal level, I really liked those round little bugs in the flowers. I found them so unlike the life I was used to that, like, it didn't register to me what I was looking at initially. But I was fascinated by them, and I would like to learn more about that as well. I spend a lot of time on my little illustration of the bug.
[Die rolling] And my camp scene is a strange sight. You know, I've had so many of those. This whole place is strange to me.
I think what it is, though, is in the night, the rocks around here, uh– and particularly, like, the rock at the sort of, like, plinth or focal point of the amphitheater– it has one of those, just like the previous one. It luminesces at night. The rocks here at night glow with this sort of… it's almost like the color of you know like when you start to heat metal and it turns that kind of dull red before it starts to progress through orange and yellow and white. It looks like that.
I don't think it is warmer, at least not perceptibly warm to my touch. It doesn't heat. But the rocks glow and the rock at the focal point of the amphitheater glows more than any of the others.
SATAH: Roll the camp scene. [Die clattering]
NICK: [Die rolling] Hey, fuck me, it's an emergency! [Laughing]
SATAH: Six. Oh, good! An emergency. Of course, the one where I decide to sleep, there's an emergency.
"Go straight to the emergencies section. You must return to your ship and temporarily leave the planet. Roll the d6 to discover why, then decide the specifics." Oh, fascinating. Okay.
NICK: So, apparently, Eugene has NOT made enough– enough distance between him and what we're going to call the the Apex Predator. It's- that doesn't have a fancy name. It's an emergency. Eugene was responding and he was doing what the fuck he does best.
SATAH: Okay! So this means– because normally in a one shot you do not leave the planet, but I'm going to, because there was an emergency! Let's see what the type of emergency was. [Die clattering] Two: "a message from home."
NICK: So we're going to roll a type of emergency. [Die rolling] Hey, we got a five. It's "an environmental danger."
SATAH: I get a call that… says that they're starting to pick up weird energy signatures that are moving towards me. The easy assumption is that android that I saw? There are more of them. And they've noticed that I'm here. And a bunch of them just blipped on, and then they all started moving towards me. Uh, and somebody on the Dead Ringer was paying attention and was like, "Hey, get out of there, please." And I do.
NICK: Okay. So the environmental danger is actually the Aphrodite itself. Apparently the Apex Beast is not a predator that eats meat. What it is, is a very large and angry herbivore that particularly also likes Aphrodite, and so they see him as a competitor.
SATAH: "Answer the following questions. What is the trip back to your ship like?" Fast. And I think very evocative of the thing that I mentioned early on, which is the chase scene through shipping containers.
They're all pretty far away, I think, whatever is moving towards me, presumably more of these androids, but I can't be totally sure. And maybe at least a couple of them are quite close. I would- I would guess that I was discovered because one of them came into this shipping container and found me while I was asleep, which I don't love. Or at least sensed me from outside of it. I don't know. Maybe peeked through, uh– peeked through an animal burrow hole who knows. But I'm- I'm dodging and weaving.
There's no active danger, really, it seems like? But… running.
NICK: The trip back to the ship is long, it's arduous, it's got the Apex Beast on his toes. Um, the Aphrodite was enough to get his systems back fully functioning temporarily, enough to overdrive himself from the jack of diamonds on the far western corner of the p– the western hemisphere of the planet, to the landing pad where the Gargantuan is, on almost the eastern– the terminus of Eureka. 
He hops into the Gargantuan. He fires up those engines and the Apex jumps. Like surprisingly, surprisingly high for a creature of its stature. And it gets a grip on the Gargantuan.
SATAH: "How do I feel about leaving the planet?" I don't love it. Takeoffs and landings are hard. I'm not a good pilot. And so it's not just like, "Oh, this is a threat and that's frustrating." It's, um, "Now I'm going to have to land again." Because I do have to come back here to keep looking for stuff once the threat has diminished. But I'm not thrilled about it.
NICK: Eugene hits the thrusters and puts it into hyperdrive to put as much force between him and this creature's hands as possible. You hear the roaring of his engines struggling because, like, they're being compressed by this creature's massive weight and its extraordinary strength, almost crushing the space-tier metal.
But the hyperlight engine triggers just at the right time, pushes the Apex creature off. It starts hurtling back towards Eureka, falling, falling, falling.
SATAH: "What happens while off-planet?" I don't think I go… do I go all the way back to the Dead Ringer? Maybe I do. I go back to the Dead Ringer, and I'm still planning on going back, but I basically just… stock up. I bring a couple… some, like, weapons or defensive equipment… and maybe at this point… no, I think it's funnier if the metal detector thing still isn't back. So I just– I'm a little bit better armored and, uh, armed. Armored and armed.
NICK: A shock wave spreads that pushes all the clouds. It makes what was once a overcast day into clear skies for a moment before the air rushes back in.
SATAH: "How long does it take you to return to the planet?" Very little time.
I'm looking at the map. I'm on the Dead Ringer. I'm looking at the map that they were watching, and I watch these energy blips circle around this processing plant- makeshift processing plant- for a while, and then disperse and flicker off, and at that point, I go back. And I think it's like a day, a day or two.
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 livestreams a 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– 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 finish 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.
POST-CREDITS
SATAH: [Laughing] There are some drawbacks… to using the ancient tablet. [Laughs] Which sounds like a wizard shitpost, but is actually about… you know, how… this is a very old Samsung tablet and trying to open a PDF on it… [Laughs] may as well. You may as well need to be a wizard. There we go! Okay!