00:00:05.61 sidekqpodcast Hello, and welcome to another exciting episode of Sidekicks and Sidequests the Best, unofficial Dungeons and Dragons podcast in my humbly biased opinion. I've got an awesome guest for you this week, but before we get to my lucky contestant, I have to leave you in suspense with the first ad read. Insert ad read here in post-production, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All right, and without further ado, I turn the microphone over to my guests. 00:00:34.40 sidekqpodcast I turn the microphone over to my guest and ask, hello mystery contestant, would you care to introduce yourself? Tell us who it is that you are and what is it that you do? 00:00:43.72 Hannah _she_her_ Wonderful. My name is Hannah Wright. um ah By day, I'm a teacher. ah But usually, if I'm on the internet, that's because I'm making podcasts. I am a director and sometime producer for Bloody FM. 00:00:55.73 Hannah _she_her_ And I make an indie show that is a fantasy adventure show that is about what happens to adventurers between the adventures ah taking place in a magical inn. 00:01:06.03 Hannah _she_her_ It sounds, you know, it's a little familiar, I would say so to this audience. 00:01:08.95 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 00:01:11.87 sidekqpodcast Yes, I was going to say the first I ever heard of your podcast was um because, ah well, in between. 00:01:17.21 Hannah _she_her_ Have I said the name yet? It's in between. I-N-N, in between. There we go. Okay, good. 00:01:22.21 sidekqpodcast um Yeah, no. So, ah you know, trying to make a long story short, a previous guest of this show, Andrew Strather, was once a guest on a similar type podcast called The Inn at the Edge of Greenwood, which I quite enjoyed. 00:01:34.39 Hannah _she_her_ I love that show. 00:01:35.33 sidekqpodcast the the perspective of an innkeeper and the guests would come on and they would embody, you know, these adventuring characters and they would be trapped, you know, pulled through the the the magics of the weirdness of the woods and they would find themselves to be guests in this inn and they would have this ah story and stuff like that back and forth with the guests. 00:01:55.23 sidekqpodcast You know, and that show, ah you know, for whatever reason, I guess, you know, decided to draw the curtains closed. But for the finale episode to kind of help set an idea in the mind of the audience of like, oh, the innkeeper is actually, you know, he's formally going to become an adventurer now. And the the way that finale episode ended of his podcast was actually a crossover with your show in which the aforementioned innkeeper ah finds himself in the goblins head and speaks with Tessa, who is the proprietor or the caretaker of this magical inn. 00:02:18.88 Hannah _she_her_ Mm hmm. 00:02:31.38 sidekqpodcast And then he gets introduced now that I've started listening to the in between. ah podcast from the very beginning, I'm not quite sure as far as that finale for the Inn at the Edge of Greenwood, is he meeting the original ah group of adventurers or just some other group of adventurers and then they go off and it's you know it's implied that, oh, he's gonna go now journey with them and be an adventurer and stuff. 00:02:55.27 Hannah _she_her_ I tried to take a very, uh, postmodern view as far as, like, extra canonical stuff. So it's whatever you want it to be, Kurt. 00:03:05.66 sidekqpodcast Oh, it's it's the, okay, I see it's the end of um ah the Christopher Nolan movie with the spinning top. 00:03:05.93 Hannah _she_her_ Just believe whoever you like. 00:03:15.94 sidekqpodcast It's like, oh, did the top fall over or not? 00:03:18.90 Hannah _she_her_ It's less that and more like the the part of the story that I wanted to tell, I told that. The rest is up to you. It is not my problem now, I guess. Not my problem not my privilege, I guess. 00:03:29.29 Hannah _she_her_ You know, if people want to fill that out with fanfiction, please do it. I am honored that In Between has a thriving archive of our own tag that I do not go on because I read the fanfic, but it makes me happy to check sometimes. 00:03:37.60 sidekqpodcast Mm-hmm. 00:03:43.75 sidekqpodcast Yeah, and and ah quite a healthy Patreon, too, which I checked out, and I was like, that's amazing that you have so much for your podcast, and it's it's so great. As you said, it's the downtime. 00:03:53.97 sidekqpodcast It's all the in-between stuff, and every episode has like a very clever name that kind of alludes to what's the tension, what's the problem, what's the thing that they're struggling with, you know, between the actions. 00:03:56.03 Hannah _she_her_ Mmhmm. 00:04:05.89 sidekqpodcast your podcast isn't necessarily devoted to dice rolling and combat and stuff like that. It's more role-playing and like getting into the meat and bones of of character study and stuff like that. 00:04:18.89 Hannah _she_her_ It's not even based on a real campaign. It is entirely scripted and not improv at all. um Except for a couple of lines that I'm mad that I did not write. 00:04:29.91 sidekqpodcast Well, awesome. Yeah. So, you know, now that we know your credentials in the space, obviously, you know, it goes without saying the next question should be a no brainer, but do you currently or have you ever played Dungeons and Dragons before? 00:04:42.63 sidekqpodcast If you're making this kind of podcast. 00:04:42.91 Hannah _she_her_ Every freaking week, Kurt. Every freaking week. my ah My dad actually runs a club and I play in one game and run another for that club. but um He is the one who introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons originally. 00:04:53.88 sidekqpodcast Oh, that's cool. 00:04:55.90 Hannah _she_her_ yeah Just imagine you know teenage me and my siblings who were significantly younger than me all playing AD&D the best we can. 00:05:04.42 sidekqpodcast Wow, that's cool. 00:05:05.59 Hannah _she_her_ It was awesome. 00:05:06.40 sidekqpodcast Like you got, you got cred, you got street cred for sure. 00:05:09.70 Hannah _she_her_ I don't know about that. I would not play AD&D now. It's like not fun to me. 00:05:16.82 Hannah _she_her_ Oh man, but I've played Gerbs, I've played fantasy, I've played Monster of the Week. 00:05:17.15 sidekqpodcast But your dad still rocks old school. 00:05:20.47 Hannah _she_her_ I love them all. I don't love like a crunchier mechanic, but I like a story. I love telling a story. 00:05:26.94 sidekqpodcast Mm, okay. and And yeah, so dad started you with A, D and D and you went on to go and explore and find all these other various tabletop role-playing games. 00:05:36.89 Hannah _she_her_ Mm-hmm. 00:05:37.12 sidekqpodcast And so do you find yourself more drawn to the more role-play heavy sorts of stories? I know you said not crunchy, but like you're not opposed to combat or or or anything like that. 00:05:49.75 Hannah _she_her_ I think it all depends on the group. you know i run one group that ah I run one group that is ah the what is it the Wild Beyond the Witchlight, I believe is the name of the module. 00:05:52.34 sidekqpodcast Mm. 00:05:59.89 Hannah _she_her_ um And that group is that two of the three players are brand new. 00:06:00.05 sidekqpodcast Ah, me. 00:06:05.37 Hannah _she_her_ you know They're not necessarily familiar with the mechanics. um But there is a way to play Witchlight where you don't have to do any combat at all. And as such, they've become much more into the roleplay of it. 00:06:17.41 Hannah _she_her_ um Even though they do like the combat when it rolls around but then I have, you know, my group that I run for my dad's club is ah much more of a I have one guy there who's also been playing since a D and&D and um for his character arc. 00:06:32.25 Hannah _she_her_ um I was like, here is a dungeon. I crafted it just for you. And we just dungeoned for like three or four sessions. And I i don't love dungeoning when I'm a player, but running a dungeon is very fun. 00:06:42.89 sidekqpodcast Mhmm. 00:06:44.48 Hannah _she_her_ um And I didn't mind that at all, because even if we weren't role playing at all, even if there were three encounters per session, it was it was fun because they were having fun. 00:06:54.22 sidekqpodcast Awesome and so with this podcast maybe you know in the we might now when we get to the random encounter section we'll see if it's if it feels very much like an episode of in between but on this podcast called sidekicks and side quests we like to we like to focus on the other we like to focus on the background actor the best supporting uh you know uh oscars if you will so for you Do you happen to have a favorite NPC ah or sidekick character, whether they be from RPG, video game, movie, film, television, et cetera? And why is this character your favorite NPC or favorite sidekick? 00:07:31.52 Hannah _she_her_ I have a favorite as a DM and I have a favorite as a player. Which one would you like to hear about? 00:07:37.64 sidekqpodcast We can hear both of them. 00:07:39.30 Hannah _she_her_ Okay, as a DM, um I threw in this encounter um where my players were trying to take over the Thieves Guild, long story. um But I threw this encounter at them for this wizard who also wanted to take over the Thieves Guild and he specializes in, um excuse me, and um constructs, puppets, that kind of thing. 00:08:01.22 Hannah _she_her_ ah And, you know, they ended up not killing him for some reason. 00:08:01.27 sidekqpodcast Mm. 00:08:07.28 Hannah _she_her_ I'm not entirely sure why they didn't kill him. But, you know, they caught him and I'm like, oh, how do I roleplay this dude? 00:08:10.45 sidekqpodcast Mm. 00:08:13.51 Hannah _she_her_ You know, what kind of a weirdo is a magician who focuses on puppets, but also really wants to be head of the thieves guild. So I played him off like kind of a big nerd. And they decided, well, we're not we're never going to kill Atlas. Atlas is our new pet NPC. So they ah let him go. But then they hunted hadette him down at the apartment where he lives, bought his building. They're his landlords now. They break in into his house all of the time. Every time they come up to him, it's like, Atlas, our best friend. He's like, oh, my God, stop you guys again. 00:08:47.08 Hannah _she_her_ and and i don't know how this happened but i love that they love him oh my gosh oh atlas his life is so hard um do you are you familiar at all with uh titan's grave oh yeah yeah 00:08:59.66 sidekqpodcast Okay, so that's your favorite as the DM, but what about as you as a player character? 00:09:10.26 sidekqpodcast Yes, I remember that show when it came out on a Geek and Sundry Nerdist. Yeah, that was ah that was a good short little romp they did. 00:09:19.04 Hannah _she_her_ So much fun. So my friend um got... 00:09:20.78 sidekqpodcast Five gold in a party. Yeah, classic, yeah. 00:09:23.96 Hannah _she_her_ Classic. My friend bought the book and ended up trying to run it in Fantasy Age, and we ended up not liking Fantasy Age, so we switched it to Monster of the Week, and it's it's very fun. um All of that said, ah I really... 00:09:37.06 Hannah _she_her_ but we We started that game. um My character in that game is this like furious, deaf, teenage spellslinger um who... like the first NPC that she met basically uh was this like another nerd another nerd uh who was in the bar and she like asked him to explain a tech thing and he and he's like the the fantasy age equivalent of a dragonborn i don't want know what that is but he's like you know of course i know how that works how dare you and she's like no no no can you tell me how it works and he's like explaining a tech thing to a pretty girl, I would die for you. 00:10:12.31 Hannah _she_her_ So now he is my boyfriend. He's my lizard boyfriend and I would die for him. He's the best boy in the whole world. 00:10:18.91 sidekqpodcast Okay, all right, that's pretty cool. 00:10:20.10 Hannah _she_her_ um His name is Sleth, but no relation to the original Titansgrave character. 00:10:25.91 sidekqpodcast Ah, okay. It's been a while since I've watched it, so if I go back and and watch it, if it's still on YouTube, hopefully, I know some, yeah, sometimes they they remove old videos, I don't know why, but perhaps they'll, I don't know, maybe they won't. 00:10:33.21 Hannah _she_her_ Probably, yeah. 00:10:39.88 Hannah _she_her_ I just, you know, I feel like I need to disambiguate from Hank Green a little bit. that but that This is my schlesk. It's not his schlesk. This is my boyfriend. 00:10:50.51 sidekqpodcast Right, right. All right, excellent. Moving along with the next question, focusing on the side quest this time. 00:10:54.55 Hannah _she_her_ ah 00:10:58.16 sidekqpodcast What's been a favorite side quest or B-plot element from you? Again, same sort of criteria, RPG, video game, movie film, television, et cetera. And why is this side quest or your B-plot element your favorite? 00:11:11.01 Hannah _she_her_ Nobody does side quests like audio drama. Audio drama is great at this because sometimes what an audio drama creator really wants is something that would have a following but not a big enough following to like get funding from TV or movies or what have you. um So audio drama people love to make stories about side quests and my favorite side quests are from the shows Absolutely No Adventures and Side Questing and It's oh my gosh. So both of them are about a hero who is given a great destiny and then absolutely rejects it and is just like I'm gonna run this bakery now or I'm gonna just help people find their pigs that they lost and and that's the whole show and I adore it. It's just so comfy and like there's something very affirming about these characters being like I have decided who I want to be and 00:12:03.60 Hannah _she_her_ and you don't get to tell me that. um And settling into being a hero in the way that like on their own terms and in the ah their own way. And I love them for that. 00:12:14.80 sidekqpodcast And hopefully no, ah you know, ah necromantic evil overlord that's just like in the background, making his master plan happen, and then it's gonna come crashing in on this bakery being like, ah, you fool, you are the chosen one. 00:12:29.20 Hannah _she_her_ Oh no. Snig has talked his way out of so many necromancer evil ones. You would not believe it. He hired one as his baker, so... 00:12:38.39 sidekqpodcast Oh, touche. All right, well then... 00:12:39.37 Hannah _she_her_ Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, you can't beat Snig. He's the chosen one and he wants to make k croissants. 00:12:44.62 sidekqpodcast Mmm. It seems kind of like the power set of Domino or like She-Hulk and Deadpool as long, like with Ultimate Luck and with like Fourth Wall Breaking, it seems. 00:12:57.56 Hannah _she_her_ There is something to that for sure. And like the the writers of absolutely no adventures in side questing who are, um they are Destiny Howell and Talmonia respectively. They're both very in the genre. 00:13:09.16 Hannah _she_her_ They're both very genre aware. And there is like a bit of that that goes into it, but most of the time they get out of adventuring and choose their own destiny by being clever and kind. 00:13:11.19 sidekqpodcast Hmm That's very cool I dig that and I'll have to hopefully go check that out of one of the very various many other things You know, I'm still trying to get through all the in-betweens and and all this so final question here is 00:13:20.71 Hannah _she_her_ And it's it's just really refreshing. It's very nice. 00:13:25.80 Hannah _she_her_ Mm-hmm. 00:13:29.34 Hannah _she_her_ Please do. 00:13:37.00 Hannah _she_her_ um my i Don't ask me about podcast recommendations. I have a spreadsheet. 00:13:42.05 sidekqpodcast Oh. And then for the final question here in the personal interview section of the show, what are you passionate about and why? 00:13:52.75 Hannah _she_her_ I think storytelling and I think giving kids space to ah grow up and figure out their own stories. 00:14:02.56 sidekqpodcast Okay. Any, anything more to elaborate on that or just like period finish. 00:14:03.60 Hannah _she_her_ Yeah. 00:14:07.72 sidekqpodcast That's, that's it. That's the answer. 00:14:09.86 Hannah _she_her_ I feel like for storytelling, I definitely am the sort of person who is haunted by stories, like I mostly write, because if I don't, then um it will just choke out my brain until it's the only thing I can think about. So I have to write things down in order to like function as a human being. 00:14:26.95 sidekqpodcast Mm. 00:14:26.92 Hannah _she_her_ um And I'm lucky that I get to do that in a space where then I can you know get some really cool, nice folks to record all that and make it real and exist and other people also like it. Like that is that is such a privilege to work in in audio drama. um And it is also nice that in doing that, I get to connect with people and show them ways in which they can be okay being themselves too. You know, I'm a middle school teacher and it's so hard to be self and be so confused and mad all the time. And I, giving kids the space to figure out their own story, you know, giving kids the space to say, you know, you can't talk that way about any of my students, even if that student is you, you know, you can't like, you know, please don't mistake feeling bad about something for actually doing something about it. 00:15:22.07 Hannah _she_her_ um you know, these kind of like little encouragements that I can nudge them in the direction of like, you have agency over your home life, you have the choice to become who you want to be, you know, if you don't like who you've become, become something else, you can change again, you can always change. um That is something that I am passionate about is like, you get to decide who you are. And of course, circumstances make it so difficult sometimes. Like sometimes, 00:15:49.77 Hannah _she_her_ You have to be like at a dead-end job because it's the only way to pay your freaking bills, and that's totally understandable. um But you also get to decide what kind of person you are at this dead-end job paying your freaking bills. um you know You have a little bit of control, even if you can't control everything. 00:16:10.67 sidekqpodcast Right, it's like with the the classic, the Winter Warlock, of course, from ah the Rankin Bass, Santa Claus is coming to town. You just put it one foot in front of the other. 00:16:18.94 Hannah _she_her_ Exactly. 00:16:23.45 sidekqpodcast You said middle school teacher and I have vivid memories of getting that song stuck in my head in like seventh grade math class. So like trying to do a math test and being like, put one foot in front of the other. 00:16:36.88 sidekqpodcast And then just like kind of cheering myself up like, yeah, we're figuring out like point A to point B and the locus and the you you can clearly tell i all my middle school education stuck third in my... 00:16:47.02 Hannah _she_her_ yeah You do great middle school math, I'm sure. 00:16:50.74 sidekqpodcast Yeah, yeah, but no, that's cool. I mean, I have a i was going to ask what ah you know a grade level you taught because you know i have ah I have a three year old. So I was like, oh, that's very cool that you're dedicated to you know your students and stuff like that. 00:16:59.89 Hannah _she_her_ Aww. 00:17:03.64 sidekqpodcast And hopefully with all the chops and everything that you've brought to in between, you're able to bring that into the classroom. Maybe you're not like an English literary teacher, but maybe you find ways to gamify in your classroom and it like engages the kids and lets them have fun. And like you said, that space to grow and be creative and find their voice. 00:17:27.84 Hannah _she_her_ That is always the goal. And I teach science and math, so about as far from English as you could possibly be. um But my hope is is that like helping kids to understand the world, to think critically about it, like that is just as important to figuring out who they are and how they move about the world as English classes. 00:17:33.56 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 00:17:49.83 sidekqpodcast Indeed. Well, I think we've covered all the ground there is to cover in the personal interview section that now it's time to head into some NPC creation. 00:18:07.65 sidekqpodcast And NPC Creation is brought to you by you, the podcast audience and our patrons from Patreon. So now is the time of the show where we give a shout out to our comfortable patrons and above with a loud hoorah. So ah to you, our queen of the Patreon. 00:18:25.16 sidekqpodcast Goblin Katie, aka Katie Downie, as well as Anson Jablinski and good old mom and dad. We say, cheers. You know, we are a mighty but fierce crew here at the Levitating Platter. All of these folks get to introduce what ah what is called an element of chance to our random tables that we have here for NPC creation. So ah they get to introduce a bit of and chaos and and fun ah into the random dice rolls that can be that can't be rolled on this part of the show. So if you want to learn more about our humble little Patreon community, you can ah go to my podcast website, you can go to the show notes below, or just go directly to patreon dot.com forward slash sidekicks and side quests, learn about the accommodations we have awaiting for you, ah and help us to grow and expand our operations in this demiplane and worlds beyond. 00:19:19.25 sidekqpodcast So ah yeah, so we're here in NPC creation, ah and well, we didn't discuss this beforehand, but the question becomes, who, the question becomes, are we going to randomly generate a character today or do you have someone that you've brought and that we're gonna discover who they are through the questions? 00:19:41.32 Hannah _she_her_ Oh, I- I- it's random generation. 00:19:41.79 sidekqpodcast I know the really obvious one would be like, I know the real obvious one would be like, oh, Tessa's gonna show up and we're gonna, you know, gamify ah Tessa and the goblins head. 00:19:48.45 Hannah _she_her_ what 00:19:52.31 sidekqpodcast But if you wanna randomly generate ah an NPC, maybe hopefully question mark to be featured on a future episode of ah of In Between, you know, I'm cool with that too. 00:20:04.41 Hannah _she_her_ I think my favorite thing about um thinking about characters is the implications. So let's see what the dice give us as far as implications. 00:20:13.95 sidekqpodcast Perfect. Okay. Well, if you have your standard array of dice at the ready, virtual or otherwise, ah the first question that we have to ask ourselves is what is the name of our character? And we determine that with the role of a d20. 00:20:30.52 Hannah _she_her_ Okay. I have rolled. A four. 00:20:35.93 sidekqpodcast A four. Your answer was provided by our previous guest, Katie Demeteus. Mabel. 00:20:45.32 Hannah _she_her_ Mabel! 00:20:45.58 sidekqpodcast M-A-B-E-L, Mabel. 00:20:47.51 Hannah _she_her_ I really- can we- just real quick, Gravity Falls. Are we into Gravity Falls here because the resurgence of Gravity Falls has- oh, I'm living for it. 00:20:53.66 sidekqpodcast Oh yeah. 00:20:55.70 Hannah _she_her_ Anyway, sorry, side note. 00:20:57.04 sidekqpodcast Okay. Yeah, no, I loved watching Gravity Falls. ah Finally, for the first time, once Disney Plus came out, and I was like, you know, I've heard of Gravity Falls, but I've never actually watched it. 00:21:08.86 sidekqpodcast And like, I got i got hooked. I was like, this is a very D and&D-esque sort of a ah concept. Even them playing their their version of D and&D with Weird Al Yankovic voicing the evil wizard, and you had to roll the D, 00:21:14.95 Hannah _she_her_ Oh, yeah. 00:21:25.32 sidekqpodcast What was it, like a D700 or something like that? And you had to get... 00:21:28.07 Hannah _she_her_ I believe the it was the D29 or something stupid like that. 00:21:35.20 sidekqpodcast Right. It was like a weird number that you had to roll on it. That wasn't the maximum or the minimum, but that was like the super good number that you needed to roll in order to make whatever you wanted happen. 00:21:43.81 Hannah _she_her_ Yeah. 00:21:46.43 sidekqpodcast So, all right. 00:21:46.99 Hannah _she_her_ I'd play dungeons, dungeons, and more dungeons. i ah that's Maybe that's just me. I like math. 00:21:53.03 sidekqpodcast ah All right, so Mabel. All right, excellent. So now ah the next question, what is the ancestry of our character? We determined this with the role of a D100. 00:22:04.84 Hannah _she_her_ Ooh. 00:22:06.60 sidekqpodcast And if you you know if your selection is something that you don't want, where' you know we're always free to re-roll on this show as many times as you want or need. 00:22:07.12 Hannah _she_her_ Ella. 00:22:15.50 Hannah _she_her_ Sounds like a plan. What you got for a 38? 00:22:18.81 sidekqpodcast 38 as I check the list. Ah, okay. So it would be yet another Thrykreen or a Crowl. Crowl, which is I guess the Ravnica version of a Thrykreen. 00:22:29.85 sidekqpodcast But we've had several Thrykreens already appear on this podcast. So happy to include another one if you so wish. 00:22:38.13 Hannah _she_her_ Let's reroll. 00:22:39.72 sidekqpodcast Sure, go for it. 00:22:43.04 Hannah _she_her_ 42. So not that much different. 00:22:46.47 sidekqpodcast Okay. Well, interestingly enough, Mabel, you have a, again, I tried to go through every monster manual and every published book and find every iteration of something that would have the ability to communicate language. 00:23:00.55 sidekqpodcast um So for 42, it says zombie, ghoul, or skeleton, any kind. So if there is a zombie, a ghoul, or a skeleton that you would like Mabel to be, ah what kind? 00:23:07.68 Hannah _she_her_ Okay, I love that. 00:23:14.68 Hannah _she_her_ Alright, let's just say dead-flavored for now. Did you know, Kurt, that I'm terrified of zombies? They give me such bad nightmares. 00:23:22.82 sidekqpodcast Oh, well, I love zombies in ah in media and fiction, so we're like, yeah, okay. 00:23:27.91 Hannah _she_her_ This is perfect. Alright. We have a dead girl Mabel. 00:23:32.70 sidekqpodcast Okay, all right. 00:23:36.43 sidekqpodcast As I take a sip of my drink and and edit that out later. Okay, so Mabel is some sort of in the realm of, Zombie ghoul skeleton, so somewhere in that neighborhood. 00:23:46.95 sidekqpodcast Okay, well, we can we can we can pin that down later. 00:23:47.51 Hannah _she_her_ We can figure that out. 00:23:50.44 sidekqpodcast Okay, well, now we need to figure out what's the job or role in society that Mabel the undead would have. 00:23:57.24 Hannah _she_her_ This is so exciting. 00:23:57.50 sidekqpodcast This is just a regular D10 role. 00:24:00.44 Hannah _she_her_ So exciting. How about a five? 00:24:04.49 sidekqpodcast A five, ha ha! Okay, well, your answer was suggested by one of our Patreon supporters, my dad, Wayne Crenwogie, a balloonist. 00:24:12.42 Hannah _she_her_ Thanks, Mike. Oh my gosh! 00:24:17.65 sidekqpodcast So, 00:24:17.72 Hannah _she_her_ Oh, okay. You're making balloon animals. You got to be a clown, right? 00:24:22.52 sidekqpodcast well, I think balloonist in the sense of like hot air balloons, I believe. 00:24:27.04 Hannah _she_her_ Oh, okay. All right. That makes more sense. Oh, man. 00:24:30.86 sidekqpodcast and if in a fantasy medieval, ah inside inside of ah a fantasy medieval sort of a fantasy land if we're assuming that. 00:24:30.99 Hannah _she_her_ Dead clown, though. 00:24:38.78 sidekqpodcast Unless you want to take it like literal you know balloon, I don't know. 00:24:39.30 Hannah _she_her_ Okay, this feels good. 00:24:44.27 sidekqpodcast i can I'm sure we could Google it and figure out if balloonist is more for like hot air balloons or like actual like, I just blow up the things for the kids and make like dogs and dragons and butterfly wings and stuff. 00:24:57.27 Hannah _she_her_ I find both intriguing, but let's go with the hot air balloon balloonist. 00:25:03.82 sidekqpodcast Okay. All right, interesting. So Mabel operates some sort of hot air balloon service or but you know something or another. Okay. and then And then let's see, the other thing we get to roll for, ah for the time being, before we take a slight pause on the dice rolling, we need to figure out the age range of Mabel. So this is a D8 roll ah to give us some sort of rough idea on how old we should expect Mabel to be. 00:25:29.52 Hannah _she_her_ eight. 00:25:31.00 sidekqpodcast Immortal, well, it makes sense, she's undead, so she is immortal. 00:25:30.98 Hannah _she_her_ So I'm guessing. 00:25:34.25 Hannah _she_her_ who 00:25:35.38 sidekqpodcast So the immortal Mabel, who is a balloonist. So with these key details in mind, when you hear Mabel, who is zombie, ghoul, or skeleton, is a balloonist, like for a hot air balloon, and is immortal, ah what is the physical description that comes to mind? 00:25:53.63 sidekqpodcast What are you picturing when you imagine Mabel? 00:25:58.32 Hannah _she_her_ Let's see. 00:26:04.05 Hannah _she_her_ Being able to fly a hot air balloon is something that is like one of those lifelong hobbies. So she could have died at any age. um But did she die? 00:26:15.73 sidekqpodcast True. 00:26:17.59 Hannah _she_her_ OK, so the question I want to ask for her is, how did she die? um Because if we know that, then we can like establish some things about her. So I don't think I want her to have died in a hot air balloon accident. 00:26:33.83 sidekqpodcast who 00:26:33.82 Hannah _she_her_ because I think that i so I like the idea of her being dead and being like, well, I'm dead, I might as well learn how to fly a hot air balloon. 00:26:44.16 sidekqpodcast okay interesting okay now very important question because you know typically we hear zombie ghoul skeleton more times than not 00:26:44.97 Hannah _she_her_ So this is like a new hobby for her or... 00:26:51.55 Hannah _she_her_ Yeah, yeah how fally a party is she? 00:27:00.67 sidekqpodcast Right, but my my question that I was aiming for was like, what's her degree of independence? Was she like, reanimated in the gun and left to ah her own devices, or because of the balloonist thing and maybe, you know, 00:27:16.63 sidekqpodcast tangentially thinking of like what was, you know, what, you know, balloons have been used in combat because you're trying to look at the battlefield and, you know, survey how everything looks. um Is she a balloonist in some undead army or something like that? Like spying on the battlefield and figuring out where the holes in the defenses are so that way the and undead horde can come spilling through. 00:27:41.08 Hannah _she_her_ That there is something so whimsical about. an undead balloonist in an army of the dead working for a necromancer. Is this an office sitcom? Are we making an office sitcom where she's Mabel the balloonist? This maybe is the best thing I've ever heard. 00:28:01.82 sidekqpodcast Oh, man, yeah. Well, this definitely would, ah ah back in at the end of March, when when I participated in FateCon, one of the scenarios I ran was called Hallowed Be Thy Name, which was, ah again, my I guessed it on an episode of Dispel Magic, where he talked about the Hallowspell, and the idea is if, oh, you can get enough high-level clerics and stuff together, you could make like a ring, or like you could make a defense network of all these hallowed grounds, and like undead wouldn't be able to get through. 00:28:31.77 sidekqpodcast the scenario I came up with was like, okay, this priest is here. He's trying to get the last section ah consecrated so that way the undead can't break through. So I'm imagining in the scenario, the balloon is up and Mabel's looking around and she's like, ah. And then she's like trying to tell her lich overlord, like, look, there's the last section that isn't plugged. Like, we should send our troops over there. 00:28:55.97 Hannah _she_her_ This cleric didn't expect the balloon! 00:29:00.80 sidekqpodcast Exactly. 00:29:01.24 Hannah _she_her_ This is the greatest NPC we've ever created, I think. Listen, I've listened to some of this show, and I'm pretty sure mine is the best one, I'm sorry. 00:29:11.56 sidekqpodcast Wow, fighting words. Yeah, you'll have to you' have to take on some of our our guests. 00:29:13.72 Hannah _she_her_ like Yeah, nope. 00:29:16.34 sidekqpodcast yeah that be but well that would be there Well, now there's an idea for the Patreon is I should do like a bracket of like all the NPCs fighting each other, but make all the guests come back and like argue for like who would win in a fight. 00:29:16.45 Hannah _she_her_ I'll fight all of them, I don't mind. 00:29:31.05 sidekqpodcast So there you go. There's an idea for the bank. 00:29:32.97 Hannah _she_her_ Delightful. 00:29:34.48 sidekqpodcast Yeah. Okay, so we're we're thinking of these things. 00:29:35.87 Hannah _she_her_ ah 00:29:37.49 sidekqpodcast So okay, if we run with this idea that she is a servitor within this undead army, is she more of a skeleton? Is she more of a zombie? Is she more of a ghoul? Because i you know skeletons obviously just bones. 00:29:51.10 sidekqpodcast Zombie, I know you said not your favorite. you know So there's the obvious popular images we have of zombies and you know in the monster manual and stuff. And ghouls are, kind of gaunt, but they seem to be at least more intelligent, if not feral, is like the impression that I get. 00:30:07.29 Hannah _she_her_ will Yeah, if you're a ghoul, you're eating people. 00:30:12.21 sidekqpodcast Right, like you gotta munch on some fresh flesh. 00:30:13.60 Hannah _she_her_ A little more mindless. 00:30:15.01 sidekqpodcast I mean, as a zombie, you do too, but like, you know, zombies are like, you know, or milling around slowly. Yeah, mindless, maybe not necessarily intelligent. 00:30:27.80 Hannah _she_her_ I think that probably, uh... I like the idea of a talking skeleton, because first of all, how is she doing that? 00:30:35.95 sidekqpodcast Oh, yeah, for sure. 00:30:39.14 Hannah _she_her_ But second of all, to operate a hot air balloon, you don't necessarily need, like, flesh. um It might actually be an advantage if you don't have flesh, because you are dealing with fire and cold in the elements. 00:30:45.23 sidekqpodcast Right. 00:30:52.73 Hannah _she_her_ um That would make much of a difference in terms of weight. 00:30:52.86 sidekqpodcast That's true. And I believe this L 00:30:57.52 Hannah _she_her_ So the amount of fuel that you would need would be much less. 00:31:01.34 sidekqpodcast true and I'm pretty sure it was on an episode of Kill Every Monster when they were talking about the low level undead and it was mainly zombies versus skeletons. 00:31:02.47 Hannah _she_her_ Yeah. 00:31:11.40 sidekqpodcast The idea that I heard was like skeletons are more like mechanically trained so like whatever tasks they could do in life or they're just easily trainable. So maybe Mabel, once in her real existing life, was a balloonist. And so the necromancer raised her up and was like, great, you're going to operate my balloons for surveying the battlefield as I do my conquesting of the world. And so just very rodent mechanical, goes up in the balloon, and maybe like the ah alive minion of of the Lich or whatever is actually there with the binoculars or the the spyglass and is looking down drawing notes and diagrams and just maples they're just operating the balloon and it's just a skeleton not really you know mindy much else but maybe like you said maybe she was given a magic item or just retained the ability to speak in some way 00:32:03.63 Hannah _she_her_ If she, okay, you've introduced two ideas that I really like. And the first one is that maybe this was Mabel's idea. Maybe she was like, well, you know, my Lord Lich. um I was a balloonist at one point. And listen, I know it sounds a little crazy, but if we can't get through the barrier walking, what if, what if we flew? This is great. um I also like the idea of her having a bestie on the balloon with her. 00:32:32.67 sidekqpodcast Oh, okay, do you wanna roll for a bestie? 00:32:32.70 Hannah _she_her_ Like, this is, yeah. Ooh, maybe we should roll to our bestie. 00:32:35.58 sidekqpodcast You can make, if you wanna... Yeah, we can go backwards and and make a bestie. um Yeah, so let's see, let's ah what's another d20 roll ah for another name from the list? 00:32:41.97 Hannah _she_her_ Let's go. 00:32:47.74 Hannah _she_her_ That was about 16. 00:32:50.66 sidekqpodcast 16, ah, from previous guest, Nolan Page, Steinway, that's a pretty strong name. 00:32:57.20 Hannah _she_her_ That's very powerful. 00:32:59.40 sidekqpodcast Steinway, S-T-E-I-N-W-A-Y, which may bear a similar naming convention to a popular brand of piano. So, you know. Let's see, and then ah can you do another D100 roll for a random ancestry? Or do you just, in your eye, you hear Steinway, like, I know what Steinway is. 00:33:21.10 Hannah _she_her_ Ooh. I feel like I want Steinway to not be undead. I think I want him to be kind of an Igor character, so maybe like a human lackey of some kind. 00:33:29.90 sidekqpodcast Okay. Okay. So just you're assuming human lackey. 00:33:35.28 Hannah _she_her_ Yeah, that's what that's what feels good to me. And your best friend's a skeleton named Mabel. 00:33:38.11 sidekqpodcast Okay. 00:33:40.57 sidekqpodcast sure okay all right so we have the idea so Steinway is the lackey who basically well he's he's a servant also of this lich character um but Steinway's in control of Mabel or they're they're both seen as like co-equals so it's like in the animated kids movie it's like Steinway, go, explore, fine find those gaps in the lines. 00:34:04.57 sidekqpodcast Yes, my lord. And then like, come on, come on, Mabel. And then she's like sassy and talking back and there's a bit of banter and. 00:34:11.40 Hannah _she_her_ There's xylophone music as she's walking. and 00:34:16.46 sidekqpodcast Yeah. Like Corpse Bride. Yeah, kind of like, ah oh, corpseride mbel Corpse Bride, 00:34:25.29 Hannah _she_her_ I don't know, because the Corpse Bride movie was a... it was It was a good movie, I liked the movie. But then I found out that it's also like this pretty bad misinterpretation of a Jewish folktale. um And like, um I don't know if I want to mess with that. I think, and also, because um In Between is a show about friendship, and you can ship if you want to, but that we're not going to get into that. 00:34:49.52 Hannah _she_her_ um Like, yeah, feel free to rate the fanfic. I know it exists. I've been to the tag. But I'm focused on the friendship aspect, right? So I think I want Mabel and Steinway to be best friends. 00:34:59.71 sidekqpodcast Okay. 00:35:04.07 sidekqpodcast Okay, they're best friends. Like Steinway's like, Mabel, you really get me. And then Mabel, like does Mabel talk or is Mabel all just like xylophone noises the whole time? 00:35:14.89 sidekqpodcast And then like Steinway's able to understand and interpret. 00:35:15.31 Hannah _she_her_ No, that's a good question. 00:35:18.79 Hannah _she_her_ All right, so the first thing I'm thinking about is handboating, which would be very funny. um But they're also, I'm also thinking about, I love playing with the mechanics of of disability, like in in the game with my beautiful lizard boyfriend. 00:35:24.60 sidekqpodcast Yeah. 00:35:32.95 sidekqpodcast Mm-hmm. 00:35:36.69 Hannah _she_her_ My player character is deaf and that has like really interesting mechanical implications. So I think maybe she can't speak, but she speaks sign language. 00:35:47.72 sidekqpodcast Okay, so yeah, and I think with um some of the last stuff they introduced with the Arata or the um Unearthed Arcana, they talked about like, it's just assumed that like, there's a common sign language. So it's very practical abuse, like, hey, you're exploring in the dungeon, you don't wanna make noise, just, 00:36:07.16 sidekqpodcast common sign to each other be like hey two enemies down the hallway you take the right one i take the left one kind of a thing so it's it's a no-brainer um so that's cool okay so so Mabel makes use of sign language i also like to think comically she just like kind of like um makes like xylophone and hambone noises and Steinway is just able to interpret it like oh yeah no problem like boss Mabel says you know 00:36:16.19 Hannah _she_her_ I love that. 00:36:24.81 Hannah _she_her_ you 00:36:32.53 sidekqpodcast A league that way, my lord, and we'll find we'll find fresh grounds for corpses and stuff like that. 00:36:38.02 Hannah _she_her_ Oh my gosh, I love them. 00:36:40.90 sidekqpodcast So it's kind of like a wacky R2D2C3PO sort of a thing. 00:36:44.80 Hannah _she_her_ Yes, definitely. it's ah It's a dynamic duo that um I think is maybe question marked there for the kids um in this fiction that we're building. 00:36:53.61 sidekqpodcast Mm. 00:36:57.02 Hannah _she_her_ Or alternatively, if we want to get into the implications of you know a Mabel doesn't have a choice but to work for this Lich Lord, why the heck is Steinway there? like What is in it for him? 00:37:06.89 sidekqpodcast right o right yeah like you know if he's you know like the the lich is his brother uh if uh you know it's like the lich was nice to him one day and he was just like you know what whatever you want to do man i'll follow you um or just like he needed a 00:37:08.96 Hannah _she_her_ And this is interesting too, because there's nothing I like more than an evil character who is evil, like with a purpose. 00:37:30.40 Hannah _she_her_ We could do what Disney does and make all of the bad guys like absolutely disaffected good guys who actually maybe have a point but Captain America still has to beat them up for some reason? I don't know. 00:37:41.01 sidekqpodcast Hmm. Yeah. And sometimes with kids stuff, it's just someone can be bad to be bad. Like, you know, because they do bad things. 00:37:46.73 Hannah _she_her_ Yes. 00:37:47.78 sidekqpodcast So, you know, maybe maybe ah Steinway is a bad guy. ah He could just be bad. 00:37:52.73 Hannah _she_her_ i 00:37:53.96 sidekqpodcast And like, I need to work for the bad guy. Because like, that's what I do. 00:37:58.42 Hannah _she_her_ ah He's a real Doofenshmirtz in this like sword sorcery sort of undead army. 00:38:06.26 sidekqpodcast And I did not watch Phineas and Ferb, but I know the meme of like, oh, if I had a nickel for every time something happened, I'd have two nickels. It's really weird, but I would have two nickels. 00:38:18.29 Hannah _she_her_ It's not a lot but it's weird that it happened twice. 00:38:21.78 sidekqpodcast Right. 00:38:21.87 Hannah _she_her_ Uh yeah Doofenshmirtz is uh very deliberately an evil guy but that doesn't mean he's like a bad person. 00:38:28.99 sidekqpodcast Right. So kind of like, uh, so Steinway, you know, if, you know, pre prescriptive rather than, oh, wait, no. Descriptive rather than prescriptive is lawful evil. 00:38:40.60 sidekqpodcast You know, he has like, you know, the, the code or whatever that he follows, but that doesn't necessarily mean that like, I'm out there like punching babies and stuff like that. It's like, I just, you know, the lich wants to invade the kingdom. 00:38:53.75 sidekqpodcast That's what we do. Like that's the plan. 00:38:55.38 Hannah _she_her_ Yeah, precisely, you see my vision. 00:38:55.91 sidekqpodcast That's the game that we're doing. 00:39:00.42 sidekqpodcast Yes. Okay. All right. Very good. So now that we kind of, oh, and then, uh, the age range, uh, you know, the DA age range, we know Mabel's immortal cause she's like the skeletal figure, but what about Steinway? Are we talking like younger, older? I don't know. Let's roll a D eight and figure out. 00:39:18.54 Hannah _she_her_ Okay, all right, this is gonna be fun. 00:39:24.48 Hannah _she_her_ What the? Okay. I'm sorry. I just rolled three eights in a row, which doesn't make any sense. I don't trust this dice roller. I should have brought my real dice. They're downstairs. um ah But after rolling and testing to make sure that it would stop rolling eights, I rolled a one. 00:39:43.59 sidekqpodcast Well, that would be child. Are you okay with Steinway being a child? 00:39:47.36 Hannah _she_her_ It's actually really good. 00:39:50.71 sidekqpodcast So a child who's deliberately chosen to be evil, but maybe doesn't fully understand how they're evil? 00:39:56.73 Hannah _she_her_ No, no, no. He signed up. He signed up to be evil. And the evil Lich Lord is like, I guess I'm not above throwing a child into combat. 00:39:59.69 sidekqpodcast Oh, he's signed up. 00:40:03.53 Hannah _she_her_ Sure, why not? 00:40:05.24 sidekqpodcast Ah, okay. 00:40:05.59 Hannah _she_her_ And this is his best friend, Nabel, who's a skeleton. 00:40:09.85 sidekqpodcast okay interesting okay and so and so you were talking about like you know so the lich isn't above using this child who who of his free will question mark uh signed up to join this evil lich army but he has enough of a heart question mark to be like you you could go with the balloonist like that'll keep you out of the way of any fire well it'll keep you mostly out of the way you know they people would have to fly up there or be in a sky ship or something like that to even you know or have really long range on their bows to be able to get to you so you should be fine up in the balloon kind of a thing yeah 00:40:47.52 Hannah _she_her_ but Precisely, yeah. I think, I actually really like the idea, and maybe this is just because this is my students, but I like the idea of him being a middle school aged kid, so like 12 or 13, because I've never... 00:41:00.09 sidekqpodcast Ooh, okay, so just, he's not quite a teenager. He's almost, maybe tries to push it to be like, oh, I'm this um'm this teenager, but he's always reminded that. 00:41:03.23 Hannah _she_her_ No. 00:41:06.95 Hannah _she_her_ I was voice correcting, and yeah. 00:41:09.24 sidekqpodcast No, you're just like, you're just 12. Like, come on, you're not a teenager, come on. 00:41:14.20 Hannah _she_her_ My favorite part about this is I've never met a middle schooler who didn't wonder if they were secretly evil, so this is perfect. 00:41:14.36 sidekqpodcast Yeah. 00:41:21.03 sidekqpodcast a Okay, so we are treading familiar ground. 00:41:24.54 Hannah _she_her_ Oh yeah, yeah. 00:41:26.45 sidekqpodcast Okay. 00:41:26.46 Hannah _she_her_ They're like, do you think I'm a psychopath, Miss Wright? And I'm like, I don't think that. No, why would you? No, anyway. 00:41:33.94 sidekqpodcast Well, I signed up to join this lich's army, and I got a sweet job being in the balloon with my new skeleton friend Mabel. Yeah. 00:41:41.17 Hannah _she_her_ Do you think I'm a psychopath mis-right? No, Steinway, I think you're misguided. Okay. 00:41:47.15 sidekqpodcast Dear Mom and Dad, I got the new job with the lich. It's awesome. I get to be with the skeleton all day. Hugs and kisses. 00:41:56.03 Hannah _she_her_ This is... I think that Mabel has to be, like, the only adult maybe who realizes, like, oh my gosh, that's a whole kid. I guess he's mine now. 00:42:10.12 sidekqpodcast So the deep latent ah maternal instincts kick in to be like, Steinway is my precious boy and I will not let anything hurt him. 00:42:19.46 Hannah _she_her_ I don't know if it's even maternal so much as like, oh my gosh, someone dropped this lost puppy. I have to make sure he doesn't get injured. 00:42:28.54 sidekqpodcast Right, right, precisely, okay. um So now that we kind of, oh, and then of course, you know, before we can continue on, what what sort of physical appearance do we have for Steinway, the 12-year-old, who willingly signed up to join this lich army and is the buddy of Mabel the skeleton? 00:42:48.41 Hannah _she_her_ Okay, think of the most awkward child you can. Just real awkward, like limbs don't know where they're going. Maybe like too long-limbed for maybe how pudgy he is. 00:42:59.65 sidekqpodcast Mm. 00:42:59.69 Hannah _she_her_ That's, that's Steinberg. He's just awkward boy. 00:43:03.55 sidekqpodcast Ill-fitting clothes or too big of clothes? 00:43:05.44 Hannah _she_her_ Oh, yeah, no. Listen, the lich is gonna maybe put him slightly out of danger, but he's not gonna go so like back to school shopping for him. 00:43:13.60 sidekqpodcast Ah, okay. so So definitely dress the part of the of the henchmen. 00:43:19.97 Hannah _she_her_ Oh, absolutely. 00:43:20.07 sidekqpodcast Ill-fitting clothes ah definitely looks the part, the edgy hot topic ah tween that's like, yeah. 00:43:26.89 Hannah _she_her_ Just so awkward. Oozing awkwardness. 00:43:30.61 sidekqpodcast painting black all over his face to like try and make his eyes look more sunk in to imitate the ledge. He's like, yeah, we're doing this, Mabel. 00:43:37.52 Hannah _she_her_ Trying to do his hair. All he's doing it is making it greasier. Yeah, disgusting. 00:43:42.71 sidekqpodcast Yeah. 00:43:42.74 Hannah _she_her_ Middle school. 00:43:44.09 sidekqpodcast And then Mabel's just like, bum, bum, bum, bum, dum, dum, dum. And it's like, yeah, I know, I know. i' i'll i I'll work on it later. Yeah. And they're just having like this. 00:43:52.26 Hannah _she_her_ Perfect. 00:43:54.77 sidekqpodcast They're just having this banter up in the balloon while they're like you know observing the battlefield and stuff. okay subtle Okay, so with each of these characters, now that we have an idea of like who they are and you know what they look like, I think it helps to narrow down for the role-playing aspect, what three adjectives would you use to describe Steinway and three adjectives to describe Mabel? 00:44:18.34 Hannah _she_her_ Okay, um for Steinway, I think we want to do, awkward's got to be in the mix. I think also earnest, because there's nothing more embarrassing as a t as a middle schooler than being earnest, like really, really caring about what you're doing. um And should we say email? Because that's pretty beautiful to say email. 00:44:49.75 sidekqpodcast i'm trying to Now I'm trying to remember that song that was popular on MySpace back in the day. I must be email. 00:44:58.27 sidekqpodcast I walk around in tight pants, don't you know? I'm emo. Yeah. 00:45:02.47 Hannah _she_her_ That's the one. Yeah, exactly. That's Steinway. 00:45:04.32 sidekqpodcast Yeah. 00:45:04.80 Hannah _she_her_ It's like, Betty, you can't pull off those pants. 00:45:05.66 sidekqpodcast Okay. 00:45:06.63 Hannah _she_her_ No one can. 00:45:10.06 sidekqpodcast Eyeliner that I stole to draw on my face. 00:45:14.31 Hannah _she_her_ I shoplifted this. That's evil. 00:45:17.64 sidekqpodcast I stole this from the shop. Yes, I stole this from the shop. They were flabbergasted that a skeleton was with him, so they didn't stop him. They were too shocked. Do anything. 00:45:26.83 Hannah _she_her_ We don't have a security guard. 00:45:27.80 sidekqpodcast He was like, yeah, I got away with this. 00:45:29.44 Hannah _she_her_ What am I supposed to do with this? 00:45:33.58 sidekqpodcast And then for Mabel, what three adjectives would you use to describe Mabel? 00:45:33.83 Hannah _she_her_ Oh. 00:45:38.53 Hannah _she_her_ I think um tactical for sure. 00:45:41.92 sidekqpodcast Mm. 00:45:41.94 Hannah _she_her_ She's thinking through all of all of the the implications. She's looking at the ah pros and cons of the placement of the enemy troops. um You know, Steinway's doing the reporting, but she's the one who comes up with the report. 00:45:56.61 Hannah _she_her_ ah I think also begrudging. because she doesn't necessarily want to be this kid's new best friend. 00:46:09.17 Hannah _she_her_ Um, but also like, you know, maternal is like not quite the energy I want to go for here because a big sister for sure, like much more of a ah babysitter. 00:46:16.61 sidekqpodcast Big sister. 00:46:24.91 Hannah _she_her_ Um, but like, uh, I don't know, like an older cousin that you follow around, you know, um, 00:46:30.74 sidekqpodcast okay 00:46:31.83 Hannah _she_her_ Because Steinway thinks that Mabel is the best. Steinway thinks that Mabel is the coolest thing ever. um Look at me and my best friend. 00:46:37.91 sidekqpodcast Okay He had never seen a skeleton up till this point joining the liches army he's like this is so cool I'm around death stuff all the time and look at this look at this cool skeleton. 00:46:41.95 Hannah _she_her_ Yeah. 00:46:47.63 sidekqpodcast I'm with 00:46:48.87 Hannah _she_her_ This is so emo. I love it. Yeah. um So I think that like definitely she just kind of wants to do her job in balloon. um But now she has she has a babysitting job. 00:46:57.91 sidekqpodcast Mm. 00:47:02.21 sidekqpodcast Mm. 00:47:02.33 Hannah _she_her_ But she is genuinely fond of the kid. I don't know how to encapsulate that in like one or two words. um 00:47:10.04 sidekqpodcast Okay. 00:47:12.90 Hannah _she_her_ Um... 00:47:14.10 sidekqpodcast Tactical begrudging and 00:47:16.78 Hannah _she_her_ We'll just go babysitter. It's not an adjective, but it is about right. 00:47:21.27 sidekqpodcast Okay, yeah, yeah. I'm sure we could you know go to the thesaurus dot.com and and find a good one, but ah but yeah, okay, I dig. Now we get to go back to some dice rolling ah because we like all of our NPCs to have a valuable on them. So whether that's a valuable item, a piece of lore, a secret, or an ideal or concept. So because we got double the NPCs, you get to roll twice for the D4s for the category and then twice for the d6s for the particular thing. 00:47:53.08 Hannah _she_her_ Let's go. All right, my d4s are 1 and 4. 00:47:59.80 sidekqpodcast OK, so one of them is going to have an item, and then one of them is going to be subscribed to like an ideal or concept. ah So who would you like to have what? 00:48:11.05 Hannah _she_her_ I think that Mabel's gotta have the item because 00:48:14.04 sidekqpodcast OK. 00:48:14.99 Hannah _she_her_ She doesn't keep much of her own agency, so subscribing her to an ideal or concept doesn't seem like like it tracks necessarily with what we built of her character. 00:48:24.70 sidekqpodcast Perfect. Okay, now we get to roll two d6s and figure out what we get on each. 00:48:28.67 Hannah _she_her_ Okay. I have a two and a five. 00:48:33.15 sidekqpodcast So which one would you like to go where? Two and a five. 00:48:40.17 Hannah _she_her_ Let's say ah two to Steinway five to Mabel. 00:48:44.63 sidekqpodcast Two to Steinway, five to Mabel. Okay, so for Mabel, this totally is simpatico. is It gels, it synergizes because it's a suggestion from Patreon supporter, my dad, Wayne Crenwell. 00:48:59.89 sidekqpodcast Again, here it is. An advanced balloon vehicle that has a built-in invisibility slash cloaking device. 00:49:08.36 Hannah _she_her_ Oh, heck yeah. 00:49:08.42 sidekqpodcast So that's the balloon. Yes. 00:49:10.63 Hannah _she_her_ Does your dad like balloons? Hey, excuse me, Wayne. Um, do you like balloons? 00:49:17.75 sidekqpodcast I don't you know i'd never have asked them, not to be too tangential, but there are fond memories ah when my dad is an Air Force veteran and we were stationed in West Germany back when Germany was divided. 00:49:29.05 Hannah _she_her_ Oh! 00:49:33.21 sidekqpodcast And there are times or or occasions, ah maybe at least maybe once, but they did go on a hot air balloon ride in Germany. I was down on the ground, ah but yeah, they went on a balloon ride, you know, and just in the countryside of Germany and just enjoying the scenic, ah you know, German rolling hills and trees and forests and all that. 00:49:42.48 Hannah _she_her_ That is, oh my gosh. 00:49:55.24 sidekqpodcast So maybe that's where it came in, where he got his inspiration for these suggestions. that he added to the element of chance. So again, Patreon supporters, you you should sign up and you know at least you know the $4 level gets you to be able to to do this. 00:50:11.16 sidekqpodcast So there you go. 00:50:11.73 Hannah _she_her_ This could be you. I love that. 00:50:14.12 sidekqpodcast This could be you. 00:50:14.63 Hannah _she_her_ theres here in um I'm in northern Colorado, and I am lucky. Every day on my way to work, there are there's some avid balloonists out there, because i'm literally, they are out there every single morning, like just putting up balloons. 00:50:28.27 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 00:50:29.62 Hannah _she_her_ I usually see them at launch, and it's just like the best, just driving by like, oh, look, they have their friend, the squiggle one. 00:50:38.37 sidekqpodcast Hmm and then Yeah, and the only time that we get balloons here at least in my areas like if they specifically are are like oh here's a festival of the thing or just like a special event that we're doing for the town and we just happen to have all the you know, the balloons may be on the ground but they fill them up with the hot air and So you can see like all the you see them all light up and stuff. 00:50:39.73 Hannah _she_her_ The squiggle one isn't always here. 00:51:00.84 Hannah _she_her_ I love a balloon festival. 00:51:02.58 sidekqpodcast So very cool 00:51:03.63 Hannah _she_her_ Talk about your childlike wonder. My gosh. 00:51:08.64 sidekqpodcast And then for our friend Steinway, of course, he has to subscribe to an ideal or concept. 00:51:10.83 Hannah _she_her_ Yes. 00:51:13.48 sidekqpodcast And his ideal was suggested by previous guest, the spouse of Katie de Mateus, Ben Martin Mooney, astrology. 00:51:20.69 Hannah _she_her_ ah Oh! 00:51:21.66 sidekqpodcast So Steinway is really into astrology. 00:51:25.51 Hannah _she_her_ ah I love that for him! This emo te- You know what? 00:51:30.01 sidekqpodcast So he's this little, 00:51:31.79 Hannah _she_her_ That is- Oh my gosh, that track's so hard. Like, you're gonna latch onto something when you're an emo teenager. This trilogy works so well. 00:51:42.10 sidekqpodcast is it is his astrology is what led him. ah Now astrology is a different than is different than astronomy. So he's not so much studying like, oh, these are the constellations and like all this so astrology is more like, oh, I see signs and personalities and stuff based on the constellations and positions of the planets and all this stuff, which ah horoscopes and all that stuff, right? 00:52:03.68 Hannah _she_her_ precisely. 00:52:05.97 sidekqpodcast That's what we're talking about astrology. 00:52:06.02 Hannah _she_her_ Right. A lot of math involved to, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be mean to some listeners, I'm sure, but a lot of math involved to accomplish absolutely nothing. 00:52:15.69 sidekqpodcast Mm hmm. 00:52:17.22 Hannah _she_her_ um I don't, I don't ascribe to so ah astrology myself, but I love the idea that he does. 00:52:17.78 sidekqpodcast Okay. 00:52:22.72 Hannah _she_her_ ah You know what? 00:52:22.93 sidekqpodcast Mm hmm. 00:52:23.20 Hannah _she_her_ I think that the reason that he thinks he's evil has to be because like the alignment of his stars, like his sun sign and moon sign and ah what's the other one? 00:52:34.72 Hannah _she_her_ I don't know, Mars sign? I don't remember. I don't ascribe to astrology. 00:52:37.39 sidekqpodcast Something's rising, something's falling, you know, yeah. 00:52:40.77 Hannah _she_her_ Exactly. But like his three signs are set up in such a way that it's like he's like the doomed child or the doomed man or like he's the evil man. 00:52:48.82 sidekqpodcast Oh, ah okay. 00:52:50.38 Hannah _she_her_ So he's like he got it in his head that that means that he has to go and be evil. 00:52:55.05 sidekqpodcast So he found the baddest dude that he could, signed up for the Lich's army. And is he practicing like, because he's high enough in the balloon, he can see the stars, and he's constantly like doing readings ah for Mabel. 00:53:07.03 Hannah _she_her_ Yes. 00:53:07.52 sidekqpodcast And of course, she doesn't, you know, she's a skeleton, she is she could care like she can care less, and she doesn't care. 00:53:09.15 Hannah _she_her_ i 00:53:13.20 Hannah _she_her_ Her life has not changed for hundreds of years. She's been ballooning and breaking hearts for every, to all the doubt, all the time. And here comes this kid who's like, you're going to make it meet a tall, dark stranger probably. 00:53:28.86 sidekqpodcast Okay. And ah yeah, I was going to say this this this ah tween has never heard the weird owl song, that's your horoscope for today, which is a hilarious song. 00:53:37.49 Hannah _she_her_ No, and honestly, that's the that's a shame because it's a good song. 00:53:41.67 sidekqpodcast It's a great song. It's a very Ska influenced song. So probably helped me contribute to my love of the genre of Ska music. Okay. All right. So now we kind of know, you know, what drives them as characters. So getting to learn more about them. But of course, all of our NPCs have to be able to offer side quests to adventurer characters, to player characters. So, 00:54:06.72 sidekqpodcast What is going to be the quest that Mabel and Steinway are going to need help with, that they're going to petition a bunch of player characters, a bunch of adventurers to go and do on their behalf? So is it a matter of both of them are offering separate side quests or together they need the players to do something? And if you want to randomly generate that, the last dice to roll is a d12. Or if you're inspired, you can kind of think of it now. Or maybe, you know, roll it and then use it as a springboard or something. 00:54:37.21 Hannah _she_her_ I think I have the method by which this quest might be offered, but I don't know about the quest itself, so I'll roll that d12. 00:54:45.41 sidekqpodcast Sure. 00:54:47.39 Hannah _she_her_ I have a 4. 00:54:49.08 sidekqpodcast A four. Again, this, ah I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you to re-roll because this answer from Nolan Page has come up a couple of different times. And I just, I don't think that Mabel and Steinway need the player characters to deliver a breeding pair of a rare species of an animal to a reserve to help them to repopulate their numbers. 00:55:07.60 sidekqpodcast That doesn't seem like it jives with them. 00:55:10.85 Hannah _she_her_ They're not very eco-friendly, these balloonists. 00:55:13.38 sidekqpodcast Yeah. 00:55:17.82 Hannah _she_her_ but All right, let me see. Come on, dice roller. What are you doing? This dice roller sucks, actually. Nine. 00:55:27.33 sidekqpodcast Nine. Okay, let's try this one. This one, this answer was suggested by previous guest, Galyza Champion. Kill a very big monster, but the monster is chill and isn't violent or doing anything bad. Does that sound like something Mabel and Steinway would need help with? 00:55:44.29 Hannah _she_her_ Absolutely. I think that they're this monster is in their way, or maybe like the monster has some kind of I'm sorry I squeaked my chair so hard you can edit that part out. 00:55:57.60 Hannah _she_her_ um Maybe the monster has some kind of like, I don't know, you harvest fuel off of the monster, but it has to be dead first and Steinway is 12. And freaking Mabel has a CR of one quarter. So they're not going to beat this monster by themselves. um So they have to recruit the adventuring party in order to get fuel for the balloon because otherwise they're stranded. 00:56:22.76 sidekqpodcast Right, and the and their Lich Overlord has specific demands. 00:56:28.46 Hannah _she_her_ Yeah, they gotta get back to the Lich Overlord. 00:56:28.55 sidekqpodcast Especially... 00:56:30.42 Hannah _she_her_ That would be, it's just unprofessional. 00:56:30.86 sidekqpodcast Yeah, they gotta to get back to the Lich. 00:56:34.30 sidekqpodcast Okay, very cool. It might be a very interesting way. This side quest would be like ah like a way to introduce the big bad evil guy. like Just showing like who's in his army. 00:56:42.11 Hannah _she_her_ Okay. 00:56:44.27 sidekqpodcast It's like you've got Steinway and Mabel. They're like this odd couple. It's like, hey, we need we need you to kill this. ah Well, I'm just trying to think what's a very big killer, very big monster. Well, we need you to kill this thing because it has this component that we need to be able to make Mabel's hot air balloon run. And if we don't get it, we don't get back to our boss in time. He's going to be real mad. 00:57:08.87 Hannah _she_her_ I also, I feel like, sorry, excuse me, I'm coming off of a cold, I'm really sorry, Kurt. 00:57:17.47 Hannah _she_her_ um I also feel like it's really important that the way that this quest is presented is with Steinway threatening to kill the adventurers and Mabel being like, he's not gonna kill you, but can you can you help us anyway? He's like 12 and he's got like a pen knife and he's like, I will get you. 00:57:35.28 sidekqpodcast Oh, right. And then Mabel's there, like, handboning xylophones, signing, being like, hey, you know, just like, just help us. 00:57:38.13 Hannah _she_her_ Yeah, she's signing, you know, music or the child. He's kind of dumb. Can you help us kill this thing? 00:57:46.89 sidekqpodcast Okay. Do you have any idea of what this very big monster is or do you leave it up to a dungeon master to figure out what that monster is? 00:57:55.91 Hannah _she_her_ Well, um, before I was a teacher, I was a chemist and I am thinking about how hot air balloons tend to run on. 00:58:00.92 sidekqpodcast Ooh. 00:58:04.04 Hannah _she_her_ I want to say it's like, it is a gas, right? It's like butane or pentane or something. 00:58:08.46 sidekqpodcast Mm-hmm because all the hot air has to go into the balloon itself to help it to rise and then you know You have the weights you take the weights off and then the balloon lifts up into the air. 00:58:08.56 Hannah _she_her_ um 00:58:17.58 sidekqpodcast So makes sense to me Sounds 00:58:18.32 Hannah _she_her_ Right, yeah, you have ah a torch inside that literally blasts fire into the air, and then a parachute, which is a little hole at the top that you open with the pull of a rope. um But, no, I just know about them because of a book, ironically, that I read in middle school. 00:58:28.40 sidekqpodcast like you've been in a hot air balloon before 00:58:35.09 Hannah _she_her_ um 00:58:37.31 sidekqpodcast It's all connected. 00:58:37.77 Hannah _she_her_ uh it's full circle um let's see i mean if it's something gaseous then that's difficult to capture so it's probably got to be some kind of a liquid fuel which makes me think it's like a black jelly or something like that like uh yeah yes black pudding is what i was talking about yes 00:58:38.35 sidekqpodcast It's all big one circle it's all one big circle. 00:58:55.18 sidekqpodcast Ooh, look. Like a black pudding ooze, you mean? 00:59:03.40 sidekqpodcast Ooh, okay. And so, so I know, you know, so Mabel's valuable is this advanced balloon vehicle that has built-in invisibility and cloaking device. 00:59:16.06 Hannah _she_her_ Mm-hmm. 00:59:16.69 sidekqpodcast For some reason, I got an image of ah the Wonder Woman invisible jet that they're just kind of like sitting in there in the invisible balloon. 00:59:21.02 Hannah _she_her_ There's just an outline. 00:59:23.72 sidekqpodcast Yeah, it's the outline. And then Mabel turns it off. It's like, OK, here's my balloon device. it's barely like The balloon is barely inflated at this point, but they're parked somewhere like in a field or off you know in the woods or something like that. 00:59:37.93 sidekqpodcast And then somewhere nearby, is a cave entrance and they suspect like oh there's a black pudding in there or they did some recon trying to look for something as a fuel source and they're like ah black pudding but you're a tween and i'm a skeleton there's no way we're going to be able to take that thing on so they need the the heroes to go in there 00:59:55.96 Hannah _she_her_ C.R. C. Heck no! 01:00:00.90 sidekqpodcast so So kill the black pudding, bring back what remains you can of it, because obviously it's an ooze and it's going to be hard to collect that. um Maybe conveniently inside this advanced balloon device there are ah you know crystal or glass vials or jugs or something like that that there are fuel canisters, fuel jerry cans if you will, magical jerry cans that you can use to like Slurp up all the black ooze to be able to to pour into the into the the burner or whatever, right? 01:00:10.44 Hannah _she_her_ who 01:00:31.75 Hannah _she_her_ Exactly. And Steinway is like, or else we'll kill you. And Mabel is like, we will give you 100 gold. 01:00:34.87 sidekqpodcast Okay, 01:00:38.03 sidekqpodcast okay so that's what you're thinking the reward for the party is gonna be is a hundred gold and 01:00:41.69 Hannah _she_her_ Something like that. I'm terrible at scaling magical payments. Not a not a chance. can i like there is I always end up giving my players more money than they need. 01:00:52.04 Hannah _she_her_ And then they're like, what's the point? I can just buy all the magical items I want. And then I'm like, hmm, weird. Conveniently, this giant city doesn't have that magical item. 01:01:02.16 sidekqpodcast Mm. Guess you'll have to go explore another tomb and and find a magic item that's collecting dust. Or not collecting dust, because it's magic. 01:01:10.04 Hannah _she_her_ Yeah, precisely. 01:01:11.39 sidekqpodcast Yeah. 01:01:13.57 Hannah _she_her_ I forgot the magic items don't collect dust. 01:01:16.94 sidekqpodcast Right. 01:01:16.98 Hannah _she_her_ ah Someone get me some. 01:01:17.10 sidekqpodcast They don't collect dust. They don't rust. They're just like weird. It's like all this this rusted, crappy stuff. And then like the one cool, good-looking thing in here. 01:01:26.44 Hannah _she_her_ And then strangely, a perfect bow. 01:01:26.74 sidekqpodcast Yeah. Mm-hmm. 01:01:31.19 Hannah _she_her_ Yeah, but all of that to say. ah Yeah, it's like some kind of monetary reward, like I don't know, maybe Mabel does alright for herself. Maybe the Lich, maybe she's union. 01:01:43.24 Hannah _she_her_ ah The Lich has to pay her like a little stipend even if she doesn't use it. but She's been working for him for so long. 01:01:47.96 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 01:01:50.77 sidekqpodcast Interesting. Yeah, very interesting take on a glitch. 01:01:52.15 Hannah _she_her_ I love the idea of a goon union. Oh my gosh, that's so good. 01:01:59.85 sidekqpodcast Well, I mean, Yeah, well, I mean, yeah. be Sorry, I was trying to think of like, you know, like a union and like, well, it does cost money or at least spell components to be able to raise the dead. 01:02:11.35 sidekqpodcast So um unless it's, you know, from their adventures on the ground, like, you know, because Mabel is 01:02:11.98 Hannah _she_her_ Mm-hmm. That could be. 01:02:19.55 sidekqpodcast a skeleton and coming across commoners who can't really defend themselves against skeletons, maybe that is accumulated wealth over time that she's ah taken or whatever, whether that be through violence. 01:02:31.85 Hannah _she_her_ Yeah, she just has little box. 01:02:34.68 sidekqpodcast Okay. She's willing to offer up her mont whatever gold amount that she has as reward for helping. And Steinway is just trying to be an edgy tween and says like, a fine, I won't kill you. ah Has nothing else to contribute, you don't think? 01:02:53.10 Hannah _she_her_ I think that, like, as soon as he ah gets on, like, Mabel's gonna have to convince him that's like, no, if we pay them, then that means they're serving the evil lord, too. Then he's like, oh, okay, that's fine, then. 01:03:05.29 sidekqpodcast Okay. Yeah, yeah. I read this in the stars. That's good. Like, yeah, yeah. 01:03:08.65 Hannah _she_her_ Oh, yeah, no. Ooh, yeah, this is the auspicious meeting I read about in the stars. It's like, okay, okay, hun. 01:03:13.55 sidekqpodcast yeah Yeah. 01:03:16.07 Hannah _she_her_ He's over this little ash flame, his little diet, his star charts. 01:03:16.94 sidekqpodcast Okay. 01:03:20.99 Hannah _she_her_ That's so cute. Oh my gosh. you 01:03:25.22 sidekqpodcast And then the flip side of the equation, what's going to be the consequence of failure or refusing the call to the adventure? So the party stumbles across this advanced balloon and they decide not to take them up on the, hey, go kill this black pudding, scoop its remains up into these magic jerry cans so that way we have fuel to be able to get back to base. 01:03:47.70 sidekqpodcast What if the players turn hostile against the poor tween and the skeleton and decide to fight them? Obviously, it would be a a steamroll unless they're a low-level party. 01:03:58.67 Hannah _she_her_ Oh yeah. 01:04:00.06 sidekqpodcast um And maybe the advanced balloon has defensive capabilities or not, I don't know. you know However, Dungeon Master, you conceptualize this advanced balloon device vehicle. 01:04:11.46 sidekqpodcast um But yeah, what's going to be the consequence of failure or refusing to call it an adventure or getting hostile or whatever? 01:04:16.88 Hannah _she_her_ It really depends on the party here because if your party is Murderhobo inclined, then they could just kill Steinway and Mabel. And if they do that, then I would definitely give the ah the balloon defensive capabilities so that they can like, so basically they have to destroy the balloon so that they like feel a sense of accomplishment in defeating this tool of the Lich Lord or whatever. 01:04:40.32 Hannah _she_her_ um 01:04:40.49 sidekqpodcast Mm. 01:04:41.53 Hannah _she_her_ ah while still, like, I don't know, getting their kicks killing a 13-year-old child? 01:04:49.14 Hannah _she_her_ Which, I mean... 01:04:49.20 sidekqpodcast What about if they if their aim is to capture? Because in my head, I would think, oh, a low-level party comes across an advanced balloon device that'll help us traverse the world and not have to roll random encounter rolls and stuff like that traveling through the woods. 01:05:02.78 Hannah _she_her_ so 01:05:03.41 sidekqpodcast Yeah, we're stealing this balloon, and we're going to go on joy rides and adventures together in it. 01:05:08.74 Hannah _she_her_ Oh, I have absolutely done that before. um As a, like, I accidentally gave a party a flamethrower once because it didn't occur to me that by giving the enemy a flamethrower and then they kill the enemy, they're gonna pick up the, I didn't, it just did not, I don't play enough video games. 01:05:24.08 Hannah _she_her_ um So, I can see that being a hazard. 01:05:24.61 sidekqpodcast you 01:05:27.72 Hannah _she_her_ And I will say that if we want to go do pinch morts with it, it absolutely has a self-destruct button. 01:05:34.31 sidekqpodcast Okay, so there is the ability of Mabel, or Steinway being able to self destruct this device, but if the you know again the failure of this quest presented so if they So if they are so if they're clever, they're successful They somehow managed to get past all the countermeasures and they don't trigger the self destruct device then the party has this advanced balloon device, but it's low on fuel. 01:06:00.83 sidekqpodcast So they're, you know, they're still gonna have to figure out how to fly this thing and work the device. So that's still a problem in and of itself. And then maybe it has a panic device or some sort of alarm spell that like, Oh, someone other than these two people are aboard the ship now. 01:06:16.93 sidekqpodcast Now the lich knows, hey, my, my balloon has been taken out. 01:06:18.78 Hannah _she_her_ Yeah, you've gotten the attention of the Lich King. 01:06:22.33 sidekqpodcast Yes, the lich king. 01:06:22.45 Hannah _she_her_ I've written a new encounter table and all of these guys have wings, like, yeah. I could also see a failure state of them killing Mabel and taking ah Steinway, and in that case the consequences would be having to deal with a 12 year old emo, um which is not for the faint of heart. 01:06:39.97 sidekqpodcast Mm. 01:06:43.62 sidekqpodcast Right. And then same sort of same sort of thing because I'm sure that the Lich is like doing sendings to Steinway being like, so now Steinway becomes like a plant inside the party. So he's like, I want you to follow these people, be their loyal, ah simpering, ah sniveling follower, you know, do their every bidding. 01:07:06.29 sidekqpodcast But really, you're going to report on them to me whenever i whenever I do ascending to you. Don't talk out loud. Talk in your mind. And then you just tell me what they're doing. And so then Steinway becomes the ultimate betrayal. 01:07:19.34 sidekqpodcast Ah, curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal, you tween. 01:07:23.83 Hannah _she_her_ ah Precisely. I could also see like a wind state where they recruit Mabel and Steinway and those are just like your followers now. 01:07:26.20 sidekqpodcast Oh. 01:07:33.17 Hannah _she_her_ um That would also be fun from a mechanical point of view because again, it's a 12 year old and a CR one quarter ah skeleton and you have to protect them now. 01:07:33.45 sidekqpodcast Ah, OK. 01:07:44.76 sidekqpodcast Right, because they're the only ones who know how this balloon actually works. 01:07:48.51 Hannah _she_her_ Exactly. Yeah. And you can like leave them at the balloon, but there will be encounters where they're in the balloon with you. 01:07:50.12 sidekqpodcast Okay. 01:07:54.06 Hannah _she_her_ And if Steinway falls out the balloon, what are you going to do? 01:07:58.81 sidekqpodcast Right, yeah, like, oh, shoot, like dive. 01:08:01.43 Hannah _she_her_ No, my beloved NPC! No! Feather fall quick! 01:08:06.78 sidekqpodcast Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah. You know, feather fall, or you tie a rope off and you dive over the edge, very like action heroes swing under the balloon, come up the other side and drop them back on deck and stuff. 01:08:18.73 Hannah _she_her_ which would be very cool for the players. There's a lot of good options here, I think. 01:08:21.18 sidekqpodcast Very cinematic. Yeah. 01:08:22.80 Hannah _she_her_ Oh yeah, absolutely. 01:08:24.66 sidekqpodcast Okay, so then it's it is possible, quote, in failure that you could succeed because now you've gained two hirelings, two follower characters. ah But then, you know, it still might be the same thing where it'd be very interesting because, you know, as far as like scrying and stuff like that, because maybe Mabel can't or doesn't disclose whenever she's being scried on. And so the, ah so the lich is able to know like exactly what's going on the whole time. So maybe the lich plays it cool. Like, okay, I don't know who these jokers are that stole this advanced balloon from me, but let me figure out what their deal is. And then when they least expect it, okay, now I'm going to send like a battalion of my, maybe well, maybe a battalion of my low level undead. And if they keep, 01:09:12.37 sidekqpodcast you know, fighting against them, I'm going to send more and more impressive things until I finally send a death knight after them. If a death knight can't stop them, then I'm just going to have to come take care of it myself. 01:09:23.73 Hannah _she_her_ Yes, exactly. It would be a really cool build for this big bad evil guy. um It could also be a really good way for like, ah and you know, the more story focused kind of party to like have a really good redemption arc with this like kid who is threatening to kill them in their sleep. um And a literal skeleton who's just like, I literally just work here. um And like having them, i I don't know, I've had parties who would love that as a redemption arc, who would love that as like extra side quest task, um make this 12 year old not so feral. 01:10:00.01 Hannah _she_her_ ah It'd be perfect. 01:10:00.27 sidekqpodcast Mm hmm. 01:10:02.04 Hannah _she_her_ I think I've said that he's both 12 and 13 and I've decided he's both and he doesn't know which. 01:10:07.62 sidekqpodcast Ah, right, of course, you know, that time period, maybe he's not, you know, he can read the stars supposedly, but ah has never read a calendar before in his life. So he can't exactly tell you when his birthday is. 01:10:18.59 Hannah _she_her_ He doesn't know what day it is. 01:10:23.02 sidekqpodcast Calendars are for narcs. 01:10:24.96 Hannah _she_her_ I also like the idea of him just um doing astrology really, really wrong for a long time. Especially if you end up with something like a circle of the stars druid or something. 01:10:32.30 sidekqpodcast Oh. 01:10:35.57 Hannah _she_her_ And they're like, that's literally not how any of this works. 01:10:35.72 sidekqpodcast Oh. 01:10:39.77 Hannah _she_her_ Steinway, please. 01:10:42.05 sidekqpodcast You've been reading it both upside down and backwards. I don't know how you've done it, but you've been reading this all wrong. 01:10:45.67 Hannah _she_her_ Yeah. 01:10:48.65 sidekqpodcast It's like, I was supposed to be a good chosen one. i And then he has like the existential crisis saying they're being like, I've been bad this whole time, but I'm really supposed to be good. 01:10:59.20 sidekqpodcast Yeah. 01:10:59.73 Hannah _she_her_ There's nothing better than that. Oh my gosh, this is perfect. 01:11:04.72 sidekqpodcast All right. 01:11:04.95 Hannah _she_her_ Yeah, I'm pretty sure, listen, listen, in this bracket, my NPCs would not win a fight, but they would win your heart. 01:11:13.32 sidekqpodcast Parts, yes. 01:11:17.06 sidekqpodcast Okay, and then do you think there are any other optional questions to explore for this dynamic duo, or do you feel like Steinway and Mabel are ah are set? 01:11:28.01 Hannah _she_her_ I think for the right party, exploring Mabel's backstory might be interesting. Like who were you when you were alive? 01:11:33.48 sidekqpodcast Mm. 01:11:33.60 Hannah _she_her_ um Especially if, you know, while she was alive, you know, you could draw some interesting parallels between like one of the player characters in her past life or, um and like maybe they were very similar up until Mabel chose one pass and the player character chose this other path. 01:11:44.04 sidekqpodcast Mm. 01:11:49.67 Hannah _she_her_ I'm like, I don't know, that could be really existentially satisfying. um I think, you know, finding, Steinway a place where he is like loved and fulfilled like especially if he joined up to the lich as an orphan or something like that like finding him a home and making a home for him could be like a really beautiful story um i like the idea also of him absolutely having loving parents who miss him and like having to track them down and being like here's your son we fixed him for you don't worry 01:12:07.48 sidekqpodcast Mm. 01:12:22.55 sidekqpodcast Oh, 01:12:26.38 Hannah _she_her_ He doesn't do astrology anymore and he doesn't think he's evil. 01:12:26.60 sidekqpodcast oh if it's 01:12:29.02 Hannah _she_her_ Have have fun. You're welcome. 01:12:31.69 sidekqpodcast Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, very, very, yeah, very loving parents. And he's like one of many siblings. And just like it was an honest mistake. Like, he said he was going to go out and go apprentice for a trade. That's what he told us. And we he said he was heading to the big city. They're just simple farmers. And they're just like, 01:12:49.50 sidekqpodcast And he sends back money and letters and stuff like that, but he lies through his teeth in the letters. 01:12:52.45 Hannah _she_her_ Oh! 01:12:54.66 sidekqpodcast And then they don't realize that he's been serving this you know ah this great undead, his mom, chiding him, being like, the zombies were in the root of beggars. And you told me that you were learning to be a blacksmith, like an honest like an honest kid, and beams him with a frying pan or something like that. 01:13:09.76 Hannah _she_her_ it 01:13:12.70 sidekqpodcast Yeah. 01:13:13.97 Hannah _she_her_ Black with a wooden spoon. Boy! Why is there undead in my garden again? 01:13:17.50 sidekqpodcast Oh, man, yeah. 01:13:20.60 Hannah _she_her_ Oh my gosh. 01:13:21.18 sidekqpodcast They're Mabel's friends. They're Mabel's friends. Mabel... Mabel asked and I said they... 01:13:24.59 Hannah _she_her_ Mabel was hosting a tea party. 01:13:27.23 sidekqpodcast Yeah. And then there was a cute little tea party scene going on in the garden. 01:13:30.67 Hannah _she_her_ Oh my gosh. 01:13:31.10 sidekqpodcast Yeah. 01:13:33.24 Hannah _she_her_ I also like the idea of ah him coming back with all these necromancy skills and the best friend Mabel, but him being like a happy, well-adjusted kid now. And like, and now he just like, oh, mom, do you want me to ah bring up some skeletons to help you plow? 01:13:41.82 sidekqpodcast Hmm. 01:13:47.62 Hannah _she_her_ And she's like, I mean, I wish you wouldn't, but yeah, sure. Okay. I don't want to do it. 01:13:54.34 sidekqpodcast So the the prized bull that died three years ago, he resurrects the bull. So now it can be put on the the oxen plow and just like, you know, till the fields and stuff like, yeah, yeah. 01:14:01.90 Hannah _she_her_ Yeah, exactly. 01:14:05.56 sidekqpodcast Reduce, reuse, recycle. That's the motto of our farmstead. 01:14:09.99 Hannah _she_her_ Our farm is about sustainability. 01:14:14.20 sidekqpodcast We use every part of the cow and I mean every part. 01:14:19.37 Hannah _she_her_ Including after the cow is gone. 01:14:21.89 sidekqpodcast Yes, yes. He fed us in the winter and now his bones work to plow the fields to get it ready for spring. Yeah. 01:14:30.03 Hannah _she_her_ He's been pulling out tree stumps. We're gonna plow a whole new field because of him. You want me to like just let him die? 01:14:34.58 sidekqpodcast Yeah. 01:14:35.67 Hannah _she_her_ Are you kidding? 01:14:39.14 sidekqpodcast Very cool, yeah. So it sounds like we got pretty a pretty awesome dynamic pair of characters that I think it's time we throw them into. A random encounter. 01:14:50.48 Hannah _she_her_ Oooh! 01:14:57.38 sidekqpodcast And insert here for the final ad read for Zencaster, all that stuff. Use the code, get discounts, support the show, all that good stuff. All right, so we are here now in the random encounter section of the show. This is where we do our role play vignette scenes of the NPCs that have been created today. So ah you having a pair of characters, you know, 01:15:19.56 sidekqpodcast feel free to adopt a voice or just say like Mabel just says this or Steinway does that. But I think you will do a fantastic job of handling these NPCs. But the question becomes, who am I going to be in this scene that we're going to present these characters in? are Am I an adventurer character who stumbles upon this pair as their balloon is low on fuel and they need to get back to base? 01:15:43.05 sidekqpodcast Is it ah me being this lich overlord? ah Is it a scene in the past with ah Steinway and his parents on the farm? Or i don't or is it something far in the future and where it like we were kind of riffing on? like you know the The hypothetical that Steinway and Mabel were reformed and they went back to Steinway's farm. I don't know. whatever Whatever you're thinking would be a good scene today. 01:16:09.07 Hannah _she_her_ I do like the idea of playing out, um meeting an adventurer. 01:16:14.74 sidekqpodcast Okay, so as you said that you've listened to a couple of episodes of this podcast, do you know which adventure character you'd like ah Steinway and Mabel to meet? Or do I need to go through the Rolodex of characters? 01:16:29.41 Hannah _she_her_ i think that i I think that you should choose one. um I've listened to some of the show, not not enough of it, I would say. 01:16:35.04 sidekqpodcast I see. Okay. Well, that's fine. I can list them all. i And people are usually impressed that I can do this with no notes. Not humble rag there, but let's see. 01:16:42.15 Hannah _she_her_ Hehehe. 01:16:44.48 sidekqpodcast So we've got Duncan, who is the happy-go-lucky adventurer for hire. No task too small, no feet too daring. We've got Sonya, the warrior woman who started as a barbarian and then multi-classed into a paladin who serves to redeem the undead. 01:17:00.51 sidekqpodcast We have Korak, who's the lawful evil arcane trickster roguish dwarf. We have Chrisley, who's the herbalist botanist wood elf druid, who then multi-classed into a cleric who serves loving memory. We have Orion, who is the astral elf illusionist wizard, who's kind of like a Spock sort of a guy. um We have Agape, who is the lilac colored tiefling sorelock, so started as a Feywild, 01:17:27.76 sidekqpodcast a magic ah sorcerer, and then made a pact with one of the other NPCs made on this podcast to get an archfey warlock pact. And then the newest NPC that we've created is Life Spell the Necromancer. He's a forest gnome, old man, and he has his faithful manservant Octavius. ah Could be very interesting to have a budding romance between Mabel and Octavius, who knows? But ah really it's you to choose who you'd like them to encounter. 01:17:55.21 Hannah _she_her_ Alright, I'm interested in Sonya because I want to know what it looks like to try and redeem the undead. 01:18:01.99 sidekqpodcast Okay. All right. You want to meet Sonia. Okay. So as I check my notes here, uh, to see where is the last place we left Sonia and her adventures, uh, in the podcast. So, um, okay. Interesting. Wow. It really has been quite a while since we've heard from her. Would you like to go ahead and set the scene or would you like for me to set the scene? 01:18:26.13 Hannah _she_her_ Uh, I think I will start if you'd like, like to dual DM this one. 01:18:31.34 sidekqpodcast Sure, yeah, go for it. 01:18:32.55 Hannah _she_her_ Okay. Um, Sonia comes across, uh, something in the trees that is hard to make sense of. 01:18:42.77 Hannah _she_her_ It is tarp-like in that it is draped over the branches of the trees, um but it is also smoking a little and strangely distended. It looks as though it is a particular shape, and that shape is not typical of a tarp. 01:18:59.19 Hannah _she_her_ Underneath this a huge shape that is trapped in these tree branches hangs a basket that is hanging on by one of the three ropes it looks like it was previously hanging on by. And just underneath this basket, ah looking like ah they may have fallen from this basket, ah is a skeleton and the most awkward 12 year old boy she's ever seen. 01:19:21.87 sidekqpodcast Yes, and as ah as we recall, where we last left Sonja, she was with Axios, the Revenant priest, and they were in the major city, and that's where they encountered Kira, who worked in this manor and revealed herself to be this death knight. And they had to go find, and go on this whole quest to find this ring um that was being in the possession of a gambler. um And so through that whole adventure, well, 01:19:51.20 sidekqpodcast You know, because I'm the I'm the DM of this podcast metanarrative will say that she was successful in getting ah helping to get Kira out ah from her death knightness and she's redeemed. And so ah Axios was very ah congratulatory to Sonya. 01:20:08.22 sidekqpodcast and he said he was going to remain in the town and help deal with any other undead redemption that needed to happen. He trusted Sonia to be able to go back on the road. He actually kind of pointed her. he's you know He's like, I feel like there's something that's going to be going on outside of town. Just give it a couple of days. 01:20:24.83 sidekqpodcast you'll know it when you see it. And so Sonia is walking into this scene already having that sort of sense of like, there's something here that I need to stop and see. And so she approaches the scene and she, see again, she sees the skeleton and she sees the tween and you're surprised because you know she looks like a barbarian paladin mix ah where she's got like hide, but also like plate and stuff like that across and these religious symbols that depict um uh the god who wishes to redeem the undead um on her person uh and she does she's not hostile she does not draw her blade she kind of comes up on the scene and she's just kind of like well uh it seems like you two uh took a tumble there you mind telling me what's going on here 01:21:13.21 Hannah _she_her_ Uh, the boy speaks and says, hey, back off! What are you supposed to be anyway? Some kind of like circus guy? 01:21:22.26 sidekqpodcast And she definitely narrows her gaze and growls. And she's like, little boy, you will refer to me as a lady in my presence. 01:21:31.17 Hannah _she_her_ Oh, first of all, I'm not little, okay? I'm like 13 or something. A second of all, um we need fuel for this balloon, and you're going to help us get it. um At this point, does Sonia speak a sign language? 01:21:47.16 sidekqpodcast ah Yeah, it's assumed that all my adventure characters know common sign. 01:21:51.88 Hannah _she_her_ OK, so if I can do some Foley for you real quick, but I don't know if you can hear that at all. 01:21:57.79 sidekqpodcast Sure, go for it. 01:21:59.07 Hannah _she_her_ All right, ah the skeleton starts to sign and says, ah please don't take him too seriously. He's very young. um If you could help us, we would appreciate it. 01:22:11.42 sidekqpodcast and Sonia looks impressed seeing the skeleton communicate and so you know she actually regards ah Mabel with ah actually a great deal of respect more than probably either Mabel or Steinway would expect and she's just kind of you know she's interested so she's like I have not encountered a skeleton like you before. ah Forgive me. ah She'll bow and she'll say, my name is Sonia, and I serve he who wishes to redeem those ah in the slavery of undeath. And if you would like my service in this simple matter, I'm happy to help. But if you want greater freedom, that I can help deliver. 01:22:58.18 Hannah _she_her_ Steinway immediately says, freedom from what? We don't need anything. What are you talking about? um Mabel, meanwhile, is signing. um You promise a lot. My name is Mabel. This is Steinway. We just need fuel for the balloon. 01:23:15.26 sidekqpodcast And, uh, and Sonia will roll an insight check and based on, I mean, there's only so much you can read into sign, but maybe the posture of the skeleton, but we'll say she does really well. 01:23:24.36 Hannah _she_her_ Oh, there's body language. 01:23:26.23 sidekqpodcast Yeah, there's body language. She does really well on insight check. And, um, you know, what's the vibe that Mabel's trying to put across as like Sonia has given her a real good read over, uh, to, to gain her, uh, sense of motive and stuff. 01:23:41.78 Hannah _she_her_ I think that she can tell absolutely that Mabel's focus is on Steinway, on keeping the kids safe. um like The for the balloon is something they need, but mostly she just wants to make sure that like If there is like a defensive posture about Mabel, it is in putting herself between Sonia and Steinway. 01:24:05.47 sidekqpodcast Okay, and Sonia soian notices this in regards, and so um she'll turn to Steinway and say, your name was Steinway, is that correct? That's what Mabel told me. 01:24:16.04 Hannah _she_her_ Yeah. li but Yeah. Stop talking about me behind my back. 01:24:22.18 sidekqpodcast And ah Sonia smiles and says, ah so what what brings you here ah to be with Mabel? 01:24:31.30 Hannah _she_her_ Uh, we have work to do. Uh, it's not really any of your concern, but we have our Lord's bidding to do. So whatever. 01:24:41.66 sidekqpodcast She'll ask for the name of the of the Lord, ah the Dark Lord that you serve. ah do Does Steinway or Mabel volunteer that information? 01:24:51.74 Hannah _she_her_ Steinway doesn't, maybe they'll absolutely does. 01:24:55.62 sidekqpodcast Okay, and I think she'll roll her history check and she'll be like, ah, she she understands who these two work for. 01:24:55.74 Hannah _she_her_ I don't. 01:25:02.38 Hannah _she_her_ Um, 01:25:04.26 sidekqpodcast Okay, and were you gonna say something? 01:25:04.69 Hannah _she_her_ um would it be a surprise then? Yeah. Would it be a surprise then to Mabel that like this 13 year old kid? 13 mark year old kid is working for a Litch. 01:25:18.37 sidekqpodcast Yeah, she would certainly, Sonya would definitely be concerned, you know, of, of one so young and, you know, uh, working willingly with this, you know, on paper, very bad guy. 01:25:30.76 sidekqpodcast And so she's like, I have not been with my order long. Uh, I am directly under the tutelage of Axios. Um, I don't have the same abilities. 01:25:40.58 Hannah _she_her_ Ew. I think he knows the name Axios. It reacts immediately. 01:25:45.13 sidekqpodcast Okay. 01:25:45.11 Hannah _she_her_ Ew. Boo. Boo. Ew. Gross. 01:25:51.25 sidekqpodcast she She resists the barbarian urge to just pull her sword out and strike him down. She swallows that and shes she she continues. ah Maybe she has to like kind of like crack her neck a little bit, a loud bone pop doing that. 01:26:07.64 sidekqpodcast And she's like, my friend, my mentor Axios, has done many wondrous things in my presence. And he's a great teacher. And he's taught me a lot about second chances and redemption and not necessarily taking things quite at face value and seeing you know the truth that's really there behind the reasons why you're doing things. like and she looks at Mabel and she's like and I can see that you care for him and you want him safe and protected and then she'll look at Steinway and I guess probably you know she'll be like I can see someone who's searching for purpose and is desperately reaching for anything uh for meaning but 01:26:53.32 sidekqpodcast you're still just young and you need to have, you need to live your life and you need to have experience in order to grow and find your true way and your purpose. And if me helping you to get fuel for your balloon will help you do that and begin your journey of redemption, are you willing to take my help? 01:27:11.57 Hannah _she_her_ He's like, I'll take whatever fuel you can get us. I don't know what you're talking about with purpose. I have a purpose. I serve my dark lord. Obviously. 01:27:22.20 sidekqpodcast Hmm. And what does Mabel say? 01:27:26.99 Hannah _she_her_ Mabel just shakes her head. 01:27:31.59 sidekqpodcast Okay. So you have no objections to me helping you in this endeavor. 01:27:37.08 Hannah _she_her_ Nah dude, you look like the kind of person who can beat up black pudding. 01:27:42.49 sidekqpodcast Oh, a black pudding, huh? 01:27:44.69 Hannah _she_her_ yeah just don't let it like you know corrode your armor or whatever if you call that armor ah i mean it's gotta to be like when you're 01:27:51.48 sidekqpodcast She flexes hard as an intimidation check. How high do you think Sonya gets an and an intimidation check against this tween? 01:28:07.09 Hannah _she_her_ when you're that young you don't feel fear in the same way because that's just not something that your frontal cortex has learned to do yet so i don't think that it phases him too much but i like i think that like in his hind brain he'll be like oh like some kind of lizard brain responsible oh she go eat me and like step back like just a little 01:28:31.06 sidekqpodcast Okay. Okay. And then she holds a hand up to Mabel, like, I'm not actually gonna hurt him, but I just need to like, I need to put this pup in his place. ah You know, he's he's being a little mouthy. 01:28:42.21 sidekqpodcast I'm resisting every urge to kill him in my old ways. I'm trying to be this, trying to be this paladin, trying to ah fulfill this oath and redeem the undead. um So she says, all right. 01:28:52.39 Hannah _she_her_ Mobile Science just, she needs he means well. 01:28:58.31 sidekqpodcast I know, I know you care for him and i and I appreciate that and I understand that and I can, I sense it. you know i'm I'm working on talking talking to him and understanding how he goes about his mission of redemption. 01:29:15.91 sidekqpodcast I can see that for you. She's like talking to Mabel directly being like, you know, trying to again, trying to proselytize, trying to encourage her and be like, if you don't want to be a skeleton and be undead and be trapped in this life, I can help you basically cross over, you know, find peace eternally in a non-threatening way, like in a good way, like willingly allowing yourself to be released. 01:29:35.60 Hannah _she_her_ Hmm. 01:29:42.48 Hannah _she_her_ I think if I may, I would ask for like another inside check. Like, how do you think that like, do do you think that Sonia is clocking how this kind of new proselytizing attitude is received? 01:30:01.69 sidekqpodcast um I mean, she's been under the tutelage of Axios directly for a while, especially off this last adventure. The two of them were working closely hand in hand. So like she's coming off of a high of like she's been doing really well. She's been, you know, again, it's like I've been hanging with the master, with the teacher. He trusts me like I'm going out there and I'm doing the work like he does. ah So ultimately her goal is to like be able to like find Undead to like report back to Axios to be like, hey, I found someone who's receptive, please come here. So that way you can actually do the power to like redeem the Undead um or to lead you know Mabel, in this case, to like bring her with her ah to go and find Axios so that way this redemption can happen. 01:30:53.57 Hannah _she_her_ In that case, I think that Mabel will sign, don't make promises you can't keep. 01:31:03.28 sidekqpodcast and she'll smirk and nod her head and be like, all right, fair enough. We'll see, we'll see how I can keep my promise. So she like, now she does the whole thing of like taking out her huge, like broad sword off her back, examining in it, um you know, like checking out her magic bracers and all these other things. And she'll be, and she'll check her gear, make sure it's good. She hasn't used it in a little while. It's been a couple of days, ah yeah months in podcast time, but um she stoves her gear. She checks it to make sure she looked, it looks good. 01:31:38.22 sidekqpodcast And so she turns to the pair and she's like, all right, lead the way. So she's going to take this very seriously. You know, they need fuel. So she's going to be their help. And so she's like, all right, lead the way to the fuel. 01:31:50.41 Hannah _she_her_ Okay, I think that what ah they're going to lead her to like a nearby cave. And I think what she is subject to as they walk is like just a mini lecture by Steinway who thinks he knows exactly how a balloon works and knows like some stuff, but isn't exactly like communicating it very well yet because he hasn't like sorted it into a logical pattern. So it's just like an inundation of information about why they need the black pudding and how it's gonna burn and like it doesn't burn very clean but it'll work just fine and like you know they'll have to like clean out the balloon later but whatever it's fine and uh they'll have enough fuel to get back to the master and like they have some scouting to do and this is what the parachute is and this is what the torch is it's just like a constant stream. 01:32:37.62 sidekqpodcast ah Yeah, and I think Sonia will be polite up to a point, but she will you know like try and entertain more of a side conversation with Mabel. So whatever they decide to discuss as they make their way ah to this cave, to the Black Pudding. And what closes out the scene? How does the scene ah close out? 01:32:57.20 Hannah _she_her_ I think that Mabel's gonna be asking questions about this god, because chances are good she's never heard of this god. Like, it's kind of one of those, I'm not gonna tell my ah enslaved army of the undead about this god who could possibly save them, um which is a real-life tactic of enslavers in the real world. anyway um Pretty messed up, right? yeah So I think that she'll probably ask some tactful questions. So it's mostly up to like where Sonya wants to lead that conversation. 01:33:33.43 sidekqpodcast All right. 01:33:39.69 sidekqpodcast And scene. So we did it. We made it through the random encounter. So how was it getting to play a Steinway and Mabel? 01:33:46.82 Hannah _she_her_ I love them. I'm going to put them in every game. 01:33:51.03 sidekqpodcast Hey, we did our job on this podcast. We're changing D and&D games left and right. All dozen of them, right? 01:33:58.18 Hannah _she_her_ All doesn't. 01:34:01.23 sidekqpodcast There are dozens of us, dozens. 01:34:05.94 sidekqpodcast But yeah, so what did you what did you think of your experience on the podcast? you know Mabel and Steinway didn't exist an hour and a half before this conversation started, and now they're fully fledged NPCs that are ready to go into any D and&D game. 01:34:22.86 Hannah _she_her_ I have a friend, this is gonna sound like a tangent, but it's not. I have a friend who's ah my philosophy major friend because everyone has one of those. um And they're the first person who told me about like the source of the term platonic, ah like meaning love that is true and real, but not romantic. 01:34:44.02 Hannah _she_her_ um And the way that they paraphrased this like idea of Plato's was, You know what's better than sex is writing a book together. And I feel like that's the beauty of D and&D in general is getting to tell a story together, like getting to craft the shape of a narrative together, which is why people are so mad when one person takes over the whole narrative arc of a story. 01:35:08.96 Hannah _she_her_ or when the DM like just railroads people into whatever plot they want because it's not the point you know if you're playing the role-playing game it's because you're playing it as a group you're making something that's a little bit tangible together and i think that that's what's beautiful about like this show and also like tabletop role-playing games in general it's let's get together and tell a story. And no matter what, at the end, someone's gonna be like, we should make this into a book or we should have a podcast because they need someone to know that the story that they made together is beautiful and perfect. And maybe that book or podcast will never come to fruition. But the thing the story will always exist and be treasured by everyone who got to be there for it. 01:35:53.69 sidekqpodcast Yes, just like I will treasure Mabel the skeleton in Steinway between Emo Henchman. 01:36:01.67 Hannah _she_her_ You'll never forget him. 01:36:01.82 sidekqpodcast I'm now seeing, I'll never forget him, I'm i'm imagining bonus content for In Between be like, oh, the misadventures of Steinway and Mabel. It's like, yes, yes, let's hear the next en installment of them. 01:36:14.41 sidekqpodcast And you have brilliant voice actors that are being a perfect tween in a xylophone, a hambonin skeleton and stuff, sound effects. 01:36:24.14 Hannah _she_her_ I know some people who speak sign language. I know some people who have done sign language fully. 01:36:30.59 sidekqpodcast um Okay, that would be very cool. so you know i'm all I'm not above giving away ideas to other people to you know profit off of, certainly. 01:36:32.82 Hannah _she_her_ oh 01:36:38.05 Hannah _she_her_ hu 01:36:39.55 sidekqpodcast that's what this That's what this whole hobby and this whole endeavor is all about, is just trying to empower ah people to have fun, greater fun, with some goofy NPCs that we make. 01:36:50.05 sidekqpodcast so um So yeah, you know as we're here in the ah final, final moments of the episode, I always like to leave it to the guests. So the the stage, the microphone, the soapbox, the platform, ah to tell us you know what projects you've got going on, where can we find you on social media, what are the Patreons, and then any passions or causes that we need to be made aware of. 01:37:01.70 Hannah _she_her_ Oh. 01:37:14.58 Hannah _she_her_ Great. I would say that if you want to find my work, you can always find In Between at thegoblinshead dot.com. um You can see some of my work for Bloody FM on the podcast The Dead, which is ironically a zombie podcast. um Or Regroting Dracula, which is zombie free but full of vampires. So there's there's that. 01:37:40.25 Hannah _she_her_ um And yeah, ah let's see, projects I'm working on now, ah looking at another horror adaptation, trying my darndest to write season six of In Between, um Pray For Me, I don't know. 01:37:57.41 Hannah _she_her_ um Uh, yeah, if you want to find my work, thegoblinsaid.com is a good place to start. There's a tab that's got current project stuff. ah There's writing that I do constantly also on that website. That's extra stuff that the Patreon folks get to see early. So signing off for the Patreon is a great deal. Um, uh, there's, and as for causes and, uh, 01:38:25.52 Hannah _she_her_ you know, things that I want people to be thinking about. um I would love for folks to, um next time they see a child or a teenager being annoying in public, just remember that it's their first time being alive, just like you, and they're figuring it out. And if they're not harming anyone, then just leave them alone. Let them do their thing. It's fine. Let the kid exist in public. 01:38:52.18 Hannah _she_her_ um 01:38:52.67 sidekqpodcast Let them be awkward and bear the repercussions of their actions. 01:38:57.10 Hannah _she_her_ They'll get there. They will get there. They'll learn. Just let them be. um Yeah, try not to be a jerk to a kid today. I feel like I shouldn't have to say that, but sometimes I do have to say that. 01:39:10.27 sidekqpodcast Well, I think that's very good, you know, as a good reminder to us all. Yeah, we all were once awkward teens trying to figure it out. 01:39:16.78 Hannah _she_her_ Oh my gosh. 01:39:17.25 sidekqpodcast And, you know, some of us are lucky enough to grow out of it or some of us just embrace it and just become even more weird. ah Clearly I have. So, ah so yeah, yeah. 01:39:27.85 Hannah _she_her_ Oh, same. 01:39:29.98 sidekqpodcast So, Ms. Wright, Ms. Hannah Wright, thank you so much for being a guest on this podcast. I can't wait to have you back on making even more interesting NPCs. 01:39:40.29 Hannah _she_her_ Aw, thank you, Kurt. 01:39:43.15 sidekqpodcast And...